World of Warcraft

Let’s say that you’re thinking of starting your own guild on Warcraft. Even if you’re starting up a small group with some friends and people you like to play with (as I have on Warhammer) here are a few things to get started with that will make your experience all that much easier.

Ground Rules: You’re gonna need some rules in place so that you know the type of player you’re looking to attract. Keep it short and to the point. This allows you to save time for yourself and others that are looking to join. An example would be “Level 20 prefered, but negotiable. We usually do small-group content and love to pvp.” This means that players will know that you’re not into raiding 6 days a week, and will join your guild for the right reasons. Be sure to talk to people on a one-on-one basis, since it gives you an idea as to whether they’re a good fit for the guild.

Ventrillo Server: You’re gonna need a way to communicate with your teammates, and doing so via voice is the quickest and most convenient. If you’re looking for a Ventrilo Host, Darkstar is my company of choice. They can accommodate just about any Ventrilo Server size.

Guild Bank: Always set rules in regards to your guild’s assets. If you have valuable crafting materials, be sure to limit the number of stacks and items that players can take. This helps to avoid drama and if someone decides to leave, they won’t be tempted to take everything with them.

There’s been an awful lot of hullaballoo over the recent rumors and suggestions by Blizzard CMs that at some point in the future, kills in battlegrounds could result in experience gains for characters below the level cap. I’ve experienced such a system first hand in my time at Warhammer and to be honest it was one of my best pvp experiences so far. The reason for this being that being able to level while fighting other players gives you a much broader spectrum in terms of options for getting your character to the cap.

In this way, it helps to lessen the “grind” feeling of repeatedly doing quests..killing mobs..going to the next area…questing..killing mobs. It may still be slightly repetitive, but I think there’s a much more replayable aspect to fighting other players that may think and react differently. That said, it appears that we may not be seeing experience from battleground kills for some time to come, according to a recent Blizzard CM post:

Battlegrounds wins/losses and honorable kills will not award experience after the next patch, nor upon the release of Wrath of the Lich King. It could always happen somewhere down the road as we work to improve PvP progression, but there are no plans for changing this in the immediate future.

While I understand that some players have twinks and enjoy them (blah), I don’t particularly endorse the practice, but Blizzard could allow players to have their cake and eat it too! Just give the players the option to turn BG experience off if they want to. That would allow players looking to level to gain experience benefits, while those that would like to remain at a particular level still have that option.

Oh man, here we are again for Blizzon. First of all no, I won’t be attending though I would really like to. I’ll have to use my superwowblogger status to get a spot for next year. Right guys…..?

Regardless, there’s still plenty of interesting stuff to be had, and certainly we’ll have a much better picture of what to expect in the expansion after this. Here we’ll listen to the devs talk about what they’re going, why they’re doing it, and what they will do in the future. Combine that with some interesting costume attire and various other fun events, and you have a convention worth going to. So, what’s on the schedule? A number of things caught my eye:

Firstly, I’m excited to hear anything Blizzard and it’s talented developers have to say about the newest iteration of the Starcraft Series. I loved Starcraft. In fact I practically lived and breathed it for awhile back in my easy-geek days of being a jock/scholar during the day and hardcore gamer at night. I somehow doubt I’ll ever be ever to recreate that experiences (who has responsibilities anyway?) but I’d like to know anything new that I can learn about the game.

I’d also be happy to sit in for the Blizzard raids and dungeons panel. To be frank, I’ve never had much of a taste for raiding. It’s too time consuming, for one, and the whole trashtrashtrash BOSS trashtrashtrash model doesn’t do it for me. I hated SSC, loved Hyjal (I know, there’s lots of trash in there too, but it’s fast-paced and exciting), and since then have given up on the raiding scene until further notice.

I’ll be keeping an eye out on other blogs and talking to friends who are making the trip. If I happen to find anything useful, I’ll let everyone know!

It’s always a cat and mouse game when it comes to getting your class properly buffed up to what you think should be it’s fullest potential. A lot of this is internal testing, and changes that seem awesome on the PTR may make it to live in some weakened, ultracrappy state. Other influences are of course consumer feedback, but we all know that community moderators and developers take our feedback with a grain of salt. Rightfully so, given some of the er.. “suggested” talent ideas I see over on the forums. Some of us really would like to be as overpowered as humanly possible, I guess.

But paladins, for me, never really fit that description. I wanted to get a healer up to snuff in Warcraft, and the closest character I had to 70 just happened to be a paladin. I hated retribution as I leveled, especially coming from a pure dps class, but I suffered through and made it to 70. Unfortunately once I got there, I was often told that I picked the wrong healer to level up! I pushed through with what I had, but admittedly at times (lack of AoE heal in particular) I felt insufficient as a healer. It appears this may not be the case for Wrath of the Lich King though, as a recent Blizzard post let us know. Here are the buffs we may (note: maybe) expect once WOTLK goes live!

Righteous Defense — cooldown lowered to 8 sec. It had been 10 sec recently and is 15 sec on live.

Infusion of Light — now affects Flash of Light or Holy Light. Flash of Light is reduced to 0 cast time with 2 ranks, meaning that if you’re running around and get a Holy Shock crit, you can also Flash without stopping.

Judgements of the Pure — haste benefit now up to 15% with 5 ranks (was 10%).

Enlightened Judgements — range benefit is now 30 yards with 2 ranks (was 20). This means you can judge or heal from the same range without having to run around so much.

Bacon of Light — no change here, but I can never miss an opportunity to call it Bacon.

With every additional expansion that we see added to Warcraft, you often see a push pull relationship when it comes to graphics. On one hand, many players in WoW run the game on machines that are significantly dated, and it’s been a cornerstone of Warcraft’s success.

On the other, there are players that want to see new and flashy graphics or a graphical update to a dated graphics engine. Looking at Warcraft’s system requirements for Wrath of the Lich King can be found below:

* PC:
o Windows XP SP3 or Vista SP1 (Windows 2000 no longer supported)
o Pentium 4 1.3 GHz or AMD Athlon XP 1.5 GHz (up from 800 MHz Intel/AMD). Dual-core recommended.
o RAM: 512 MB/1 GB for Vista, doubled from same as previous. 1 GB/2 GB recommended.
o Video: GPU with hardware transform and lighting and 32 MB VRAM, same as before. Recommended 128 MB VRAM.
* Mac:
o Mac OS X 10.4.11 (10.3 no longer supported)
o PowerPC G5 1.6 GHz or Intel Core Duo. Big change here: G4s are no longer supported. This one actually affects me, since I do have some G4 machines hanging around the house. Intel 1.8 GHz recommended.
o RAM: 1 GB, up from 512 MB. 2 GB recommended.
o Video: Hardware transform and lighting, 64 MB VRAM. On the face of it, this rules out the integrated graphics found on MacBooks and Mac Minis, but there’s been no official word on it yet. 128 MB VRAM recommended.

All in all, it doesn’t look like there will be any huge changes to the requirements for the latest expansion, but you may need a slightly beefier machine if you’re on the low end.

Let’s face it, Warcraft is under a lot of player vs. player pressure of late. A lot of players are tired of the arena system, and the problem has been exacerbated by the fact that some battleground gear will actually pigeonhole players into fighting in the arena due to arena points being required to purchase them. Other games focusing more on PvP combat like Warhammer Online have also served to light a fire under the development team, who are looking to offer comprehensive solutions to counter what many perceive as a superior pvp based environment. With that in mind, Tigole recently graced the forums with his presence and had this to say about Battlegrounds and other developments in the expansion:

Actually, we have been discussing new battlegrounds quite a bit lately. Wrath of the Lich King will feature Strand of the Ancients (attack/defend) as well as Wintergrasp (non-instanced, world PvP).

But past that, we are exploring ideas that would involve expanding our Battleground content in future patches and beyond. We believe we have some strong ideas for improving Battlegrounds and PvP as a whole in the game and we’re definitely going to focus on improvements in the future. Now, it’s very early to be talking about some of this stuff but I think it’s important for the community to know that it’s on our minds.

Our general thought is that we could provide more BG content over time. The BG content that we could provide could be of higher quality with a higher degree of accessibility. Overall, we’d like to have more content and variety. We also want the gameplay experience in the BGs to be better directed. We’re also exploring the concept of a complimentary “competitive” bg system as well. Over time, we’d like the focus of PvP to shift back to being more BG-centric and more focused on Horde versus Alliance — the core of our game.

We’re also planning on improving some Battleground and PvP features in general. For example, we want to give you the ability to queue for Battlegrounds from anywhere in the world. We’re also going to explore EXP gain through the PvP system as well as low level itemization to support that.

Please don’t take this post as a promise. This won’t be an overnight process. Not all of these things are set in stone and guaranteed to happen. It would take us a while to shift in this direction. But these are some of the current thoughts on the development team. I think it’s important for you guys to know some of our thought process in regards to PvP.

Experience in PvP? Queuing for battlegrounds from anywhere in the world? Sounds a bit like warhammer….not that that’s a bad thing. In fact, I think games playing off of eachother and implementing what works to make players happy is always a welcome change. I mean who would really argue against the ability to queue from anywhere?

If you’ve played Warcraft for any length of time, you’ve probably noticed a botter here and there. You’ll see them running from monster to monster in repeated patterns, and any attempt to communicate will fall on deaf ears. You can even run your targets near them and they’ll be kind enough to help you kill it even if it’s already been tagged. You’ll often find them running around remote areas and other places that people don’t usually come by very often.

Blizzard has it’s reasons for hating botters. They taint the economy, filling it with gold earned by characters earn it by grinding longer than any one person could ever hope to attain. They also undermine the average player’s gaming experience. It’s no secret that most average players take the path of least resistance. If players no that botting won’t be enforced, you’d see a whole slew of players making a practice of it and really, no one wants to play with a sea of empty player husks mindlessly hopping from target to target.

As a result, it appears, Blizzard sues bot program maker MDY industries. The suit was first filed in July of 2008, and it appears that they’ve won about $6 million dollars in damages. It’s likely they’ll take that case to the next step, trying to get the program shut down permanently. Many players on the forums like to watch the court coverage and weigh in on one side or the other, but ultimately I think it’s good for the health of the game that botting is strictly prohibited.

Let’s face it, getting a flying mount took a lot of time and dedication. Whether it was easy or not will depend entirely upon who you ask. Some brands of players can and do grind endlessly for hours on end, as is demonstrated by the incredible amount of gold that some guilds possess and many auction house merchants that spend the day bidding up prices on controllable products. Either way, it took a lot of time and effort for me to get my epic flying mount. When I first heard that the mounts will have a less important role in Wrath of the Lich King, I was somewhat delighted and a little dismayed. Let me explain:

I was happy to see that flying mounts would take a back seat simply because in my opinion they really dealt a blow to an already suffering world pvp situation. Being on the ground meant that someone could swoop in from above, kill you, and then just fly off, never to be seen again. It really made fighting in the open world irritating and frustrating. On the other hand I was saddened to see a previously important accomplishment quickly tossed to the wayside by progression in Wrath. That said, Bornakk, a Blizzard CM, did recently point out that flying mounts will still have their place, and we’ll have the option to get more of them:

Q u o t e:
Is there any point trying to make the money to get an epic flyer at this stage?

That depends on if you want to continue using the 60% flying speed mount in Northrend or not. I guess it just comes down to how you want to travel in the expansion.

Q u o t e:
Are there any plans for new flying mounts in the expansion, and when can we start using them?

There are lots of new flying mounts that will be available. Some through the achievements system, some dropped from bosses, and some purchasable. I believe all of the new flying mounts require Artisan Riding Skill to use as they are all fast.

Flying mounts can be used in Northrend once Cold Weather Flying is purchased which becomes available at level 77.

The next expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, is just around the corner and do in to be released on November 15 of this year. As such players have posed a variety of questions to community monitors over at the official Warcraft forums. Let’s take a look shall we?

One of the first questions I noticed marked with Blue was that whether Blizzard would be wiping low-level characters upon expansion release. That didn’t really make any sense to me, given the number of characters people use for guild storage or their own personal pack mule. Needless to say this was taken care of by Eyonix pretty quickly:

/rumor

We’re not going to be deleting any characters.

Another player recently raised concern as to how much content the expansion will actually provide. Certainly upon first glance Northrend does look smaller than Outland, and one has to wonder how many new areas, quests, instances, etc. could possibly be fitted into such a small amount of land. Neth, however, was quick to point out that the continent will be more than meets the eye:

Looks are a bit deceiving. Northrend is a large region with many places to explore, provided you can survive the denizens within it.

Other news buzzing on the forums is that the new battlegrounds pvp gear will now require arena points as well as honor to attain. I’m not entirely sure why this change was put into place, but it has been confirmed by Blizzard. Many players are unhappy that they’re being forced into a pvp type they don’t approve of, and I wouldn’t be surprised if this gets reversed sometime before the expansion launches.

I’ll be honest, one of my favorite aspects of any MMO are the in game events that help to change and shape the world. In WoW there have been a few notable ones. Obviously with most holidays there are a variety of in game events with quests and vanity rewards or brewfest mounts and what have you.

Other events though, are designed to usher in a game changing addition, such as a new raid instance or even an expansion. When AQ was first introduced, there was a server wide effort to unlock the gates and a huge epic battle was fought upon completion. I was there to watch it, and it was a total blast. Unfortunately the servers didn’t think so, and the whole place was completely lagged, night on unplayable. Despite this glaring problem that Blizzard has intelligently not repeated, I really enjoyed myself.

The scourge event was another such occurrence that I enjoyed. Necropolis appeared all over the world, allowing players to fight off the scourge invasion of their cities or elsewhere on Azeroth. One player had a gripe with the event, however:

Well, I just checked the Events Calendar, and like many other things over the years that we’ve been told would or would not happen (that the opposite is true), the vendors never came back, nor is the invasion coming back…it’s listed as a one-time event.

Thankfully a Blizzard CM was happy to give us a hint that we should expect the scourge to re-appear at some point before or after the expansion:

Still have your Necrotic Runes?

No?

Pity….

I don’t think it’s any coincidence that Blizzard has come up with a number of big announcements in the wake of the recently launched Warhammer Online (servers open up on Thursday). For one, I “believe” that 3.0 will be released today, which means the introduction of the new expansion talents and such. Also you can find the announcement below regarding Wrath of the Lich King’s release date:

In the frozen wastes of the north, the Lich King Arthas Menethil rallies his undead army and schemes to bring an end to all life on Azeroth — and in a couple of months, you’ll begin your epic journey into Northrend to confront the Lich King and his minions yourself. Blizzard Entertainment’s second expansion to World of Warcraft — Wrath of the Lich King — will be in stores on November 13 in North America, Europe, Mexico, Argentina, Chile, and Russia, and on November 14 in Australia, New Zealand, Thailand, Singapore, and Malaysia. The expansion will be available in Korea and the regions of Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau on November 18, and the launch timing for China will be announced at a later date. For more information, read the press release or visit the Wrath of the Lich King website.

Some players are skeptical as to the likelyhood of Blizzard successfully launching by that time. I’m sure they’re eager to get the new content to players, and I’m actually a little shocked that they managed to get the expansion out the door as fast as they are. I’m excited for the new changes myself.

Well, it appears that the human racial is once again changing! It’s no longer called the fall of humanity, but “every man for himself.” If you’re looking for details, here’s what game developer Kalgan had to say about it:

Don’t get too used to it though, this is beta! The next build will feature three significant changes to racials.

“The Fall of Humanity”: removed

We’ll be trying out a new Human racial in its place…

“Every Man for Himself”: Removes all movement impairing effects and all effects which cause loss of control of your character. This effect shares a cooldown with other similar effects.

also, a significant change to Shadowmeld…

“Shadowmeld: Activate to slip into the shadows, reducing the chance for enemies to detect your presence. Lasts until cancelled or upon moving. Any threat is restored versus enemies still in combat upon cancellation of this effect.”

Yes, it can be used in combat. Yes, the effect is very similar to what was previously “The Fall of Humanity”. The cooldown is 3 min.

Boomkins everywhere will likely rejoice at the shadowmeld changes! Or anyone prone to generating copious amounts of threat. Me? I’m wondering why humans get a better racial than my poor gnomes do. I mean it’s a trinket that you don’t have to equip! Then again escape artist isn’t on the same cooldown as the pvp trinket, so perhaps it balanced out in the end eh? Regardless I think it’s a welcome change and “fall of humanity” was a bit dramatic, not to mention a terrible pun, so I’m all for that change.

I’ve never really been a huge proponent one way or the other when it comes to racial abilities. I think on the whole some classes get great things and others get meh. I never really thought perception was all that and a bag of chips, but then I never played a human rogue either. I hated will of the foresaken as much as the next guy, having played classes that rely primarily on fear to get that undead with a mace of sodomy out of my face.

That said for better or for worse there are some changes to the racials that you may be interested to hear about. First off Will of the Foresaken is going to be toned down a smidge. Rather than grant immunity, it’s just going to break fear and that’s it. I don’t really think this is a particularly unfair change, especially to all the gnomes out there who have escape artist, which kind of brings the two on par with each other. Given the combination of will of the foresaken and the pvp trinket, most undead players will still be close to fear immune anyway after diminishing returns sets in.

As for perception, that’s on the change block as well. Actually it’s on the cutting block, because it’s been scrapped and replaced with something completely different! It’s being replaced at the moment with “Fall of Humanity” which, as I’m told, pretty much allows the player to feign death once every 5 minutes. Some people think it’s overpowered and others think the cooldown is too long, but I know I’d be happy with anything that broke target in pvp. Just a thought.

With the release of Warhammer Online just around the corner, many players are making wild speculations about the potential ramifications, if any, for Warcraft and the industry as a whole. Some players believe that the increased competition will be the death of Warcraft. Others think it’ll pull away all the idiots. Still others believe that it will put Blizzard on it’s toes and force it to find new and innovative game play. Whatever the case, I do have some news for you.

Warhammer will not “kill” Warcraft.

Like many MMOs, there’s a certain base of players that love the game and would not be willing to leave it until the last server is shut down. Given the fact that Warcraft has such a large playerbase, they have a much more loyal fan base. Also Warcraft has made a significant impact on the industry, pulling in many players who honestly never even considered gaming before. All of this is good from a macro point of view and causes the MMO niche to thrive, but it also means that taking away players in significant amounts will be increasingly difficult.

Think about it. If you play video games with any sort of consistency, you’ve probably figured out how most of them generally work. You can sit down to almost any game type and have the controls figured out in about 10 minutes. Players who are not used to this sort of thing though, take more time and energy to learn the game’s mechanics and nuances. They’ll be even less likely to want to leave the game for a new one.

I’ll be playing Warhammer because I’m a PvP advocate and Warcraft’s pvp, for me, is getting a little stale. I’ll likely still be keeping my Warcraft subscription around for awhile afterwards. I have some good friends who play and the game is still enjoyable, but that doesn’t mean I’m not open to something new. I think if Warhammer does prove to be a true competitor to Warcraft, it’ll be good for both games in the end.

I’ve always had a soft spot for vanity pets. I think it helps flesh out and develop the personality of your character and also helps to spark conversations with your fellow players. While I may have a soft spot, I don’t have a death wish. Grinding endlessly for a dragon whelp or oozeling pet (see above) never really struck me as worth while, so I decided to go with a few that were relatively easily attainable but still unusual. Here are my top 3:

Spore Bat Not so difficult to obtain (exalted with Sporregar) but still typically rare probably due to the fact that not many people want to get exalted with the Sporregar for any reason. I happen to be revered at the time the pet was added, so I went for it. I was not disappointed. He’s my top pick for favorite pet.

Lifelike Mechanical Toad: If there’s one thing I love more than pets, it’s engineering. The unpredictable, quirky nature of the profession was always fun for me (less so in Burning Crusade…thanks Blizzard!) and so I’m always happy to show off my engineered pets. From dragonlings (combat) to Mechanical squirrels, my toad is the favorite of all of them.

Speedy As a hunter I had always wanted a turtle as my pet, simply because turtles are one of my favorite animals, but their skills and damage were sub-par, so I was forced to grab the next best thing. Enter speedy, the cute baby turtle obtained from the children’s week line of quests. Not very rare, but still a lot of fun.