MMO Gaming

So, it seems The Burning Crusade expansion has, at least for a time, dropped down to only $25. If any of you WoW players, are former WoW players haven’t picked it up yet, now is as good a time as any to get it and save yourself a few bucks in the process.

Thanks to PacoDG for the tip.

burning crusade, wow, world of warcraft, tbc, blizzard, amazon, price drop, cheap prices

Over at Broken Toys there is a Youtube video of the dances seen in World of Warcraft alongside the live versions of the dances. Quite frankly this is what makes Blizzard so good at what they do. Watch the video. Every move is nearly flawless. They need to be paying some people double because their artists and animators are dead on accurate.

Fairly funny and a good example of what all games should do as far as character animating goes (I’m talking about you LOTRO…what I’m not talking about is Tabula Rasa, which I haven’t yet seen because I don’t have a beta invite yet)

Imagine yourself playing an MMO where all players used proper spelling and grammar. That’s right, no more “leet-speak” (1337 5p34k if you prefer…I feel dirty just looking at that). No more “your a fat bastard” (that’s “you’re” for all you geniuses who missed it). And certainly no more “pwn3d” being spewed in chat.

At least… that seems to be Blizzard’s plan. I can only hope this is real, it would be so wonderful. A world where some semblance of intelligence existed…just imagine.

spelling, grammar, spelling tests, stupidity, world of warcraft, blizzard

Hmm…I may have to see about going to this one. $100 per ticket though? Plus air fare and hotel? That’s some expensive crap to hear them tell me everything is “working as intended”.

I don’t know…I’m just a little thrown off by the way they are mugging me by the high entrance fee…I mean…don’t I already pay them monthly to not answer my questions?

Check out the Press Release.

blizzcon, blizzard, world of warcraft

All caps title, how cool am I?

Google alerts are perhaps one of the best things ever. For instance, they found me this article, which I would’ve have ever seen otherwise. The article comes from a guy who knows people who play World of Warcraft. Calling this guy a WoW player would shame the community, but he has, in fact, played the game, so in that most loose definition he is in fact a WoW player.

The point of this article seems to flip between “I don’t get why so many people like WoW” and “What’s wrong with power leveling?” but I’m just going to talk about the latter in this post, because he brings out a couple of interesting points.

He (Mike Musgrove) admits to using a power leveling service to skip those horrible levels 1-20 (because those are the annoying ones) so he could get to the more fun content. Mike gets a quote from the COO of a power leveling company in the article which is pretty interesting. I’ll quote it below.

“The practice is analogous to someone who maintains a beautiful garden but doesn’t always have enough time to perform all the yard work himself, and therefore hires a gardener,” he wrote in an e-mailed response to questions about the company. “Some purists might call hiring a gardener ‘cheating,’ but we believe most people are quite comfortable with it.”

My first thought when I started reading the article was that Mike was the kind of person who didn’t really like the premise behind the MMORPG so it is no wonder he didn’t like WoW. This quote though got me to thinking, is it really so bad to hire someone else to play through the crap for you (especially if you have already done it on one character)? I don’t know.

I’ve always felt that power leveling was sort of the least of evils. Buying gold is, aside from plain silly, going to mess up player-driven prices. Power leveling though…really doesn’t hurt anyone. Oh sure, the player who gets himself power leveled may suck horribly when they begin to play the character for themselves, but plenty of players suck horribly who have played their character the entire time, so that argument seems a bit off. There is the chance that such a company could rip you off, take your account name and password and you would never get it back and all sorts of problems ensue, but finding a “reputable” power leveling service would help to avoid that.

So what’s the big deal really? Is it so bad to skip the drudgery of boring content to get to the “good stuff”?

Personally I would be all for a company sponsored “power leveling” of some sort. Whether that means it cost me X dollars to start a character at X level or some sort of micro payment where you can pay X amount to gain a level. Say tomorrow Blizzard instituted a policy of allowing people pay $1 to gain a level on any character lower than level 60, assuming that account already had at least one other level 60+ character on the server. Would you take advantage of it? I would, I’d love to level some alts up a few levels to skip content I’ve done many times before. Is there a big difference between that and a power leveling service?

power leveling, blizzard, world of warcraft, skipping content

You would think they could manage to keep the WoW forums online, well, all the time. I constantly get errors from the forums. The features that should be available to use are broken. Or, one of my favorites, I write a post that takes longer than the time-out period for my session and it logs me out, losing the post entirely. That’s just poor forum software.

I don’t check out the forums all the time, usually my realm forums about three times a week, and the general forums maybe once. When I do want to look at the forums though, it would be nice if, you know, it was possible to. I understand that in-game downtime would be much more of a hassle to people, and I don’t disagree, but making your web presence suck doesn’t exactly put customers in a good mood either. Of course, I don’t think Blizzard much cares about their customers anymore.

Is anyone else annoyed by how shockingly awful the WoW official forums are? I know they just upgraded, but I think they should do it again, with an upgrade that actually works.

world of warcraft, forums, downtime

I ran across something funny in the WoW General forums today. People are saying Cyclone is overpowered. Cyclone, for those of you who don’t know, is a level 70 Druid spell that can be used as a near worthless crowd control. It stops the enemy from doing anything for six seconds and they are also unable to be attacked. It is not dispellable. Of course, after three times the target becomes immune. The trick to this move is it lasts 6 seconds the first time, then 3, then 1.5 (ish) and then the target is immune. That’s about 10 seconds of crowd control, at best. It’s a crappy move in PvE, and only mildly useful in PvP. Sheep is a far better crowd control technique, even with it’s ability to be dispelled fairly easily. Frost Nova or even the Druids Entangling Roots ability can be much more useful against melee attackers than Cyclone. A shaman totem (sorry, I don’t remember which one, I think earthbind perhaps) can be just as useful in slowing or stopping the target.

If you honestly believe Cyclone needs to be nerfed it is obvious you haven’t actually had it used against you. Please Blizzard, don’t nerf the already mediocre abilities you gave us in the expansion.

blizzard, burning crusade, cyclone, druid, nerf, pvp, arenas

world of warcraft, chat logs, chat, shadowmoon valley, general stupidity, funny chat, humor

I don’t know many people that are fans of repeatedly killing the same thing over and over to increase a certain thing, in this case reputation with various factions in World of Warcraft. My main is a Skinner/Leatherworker and it seems that all the good leatherworking patterns are with the most annoying groups to get my reputation up with. Of course, I would probably be saying the opposite if I had to grind rep with others, but that’s a different matter.

My main problem is the entire idea of grinding reputation for a group, but especially when these rewards are mildly, if at all, better than what I can use. Some of the rewards at Exalted reputation are nice, but none that I think are worth the time it would take to grind that out.

Given, they did make reputation easier to get in the Burning Crusade expansion, so it isn’t nearly as much of a grind as the earlier reputations were (furbolg rep anyone?) but it is still an annoying time-sink. I know, this probably goes against the entire idea of MMOs in general. They are just one time-sink after another to get a reward, which isn’t necessarily bad, if the time sinks don’t feel like I am spending 4 hours at a time killing the same enemy. There needs to be some variation in what is being done, some way that is more fun to gain this reputation than a mindless grind for an item drop.

For instance, running instances is a grind, but it is one that is still fun (a little less so when wiping obviously) it doesn’t feel like I am wasting my play time when I run an instance. For players that enjoy PvP doing battlegrounds over and over is a grind, yes, but still fun because things can change. Who you are fighting, who you are working with, etc. and that is the way that reputation should work as well.

Repeatable quests, also, aren’t great ways of making it more fun to grind the reputation because there is no variation. It would be different, if what I was doing had some sort of effect on the world I was playing in, but that isn’t the case so it feels mindless and boring.

At any rate, going any further would probably be best left to a Repairing Gears topic, which I don’t want to get into that particular topic this week.

repeatable quests, reputation, grinding, farming, instances, battlegrounds, rewards, time-sink

Blizzard, it seems, has recanted their previous statements so adamantly saying they will not bring back the global LFG channel. For those so lazy they refuse to read, it basically says come the next major content patch the global LFG channel will return in World of Warcaft, with a few stipulations. Mainly you have to be using the LFG/LFM system currently in place.

I’m not really against it, in fact, I think it will be a big help in getting groups easier, but it still seems like an artificial fix to a system that wasn’t designed properly in the first place. They give themselves just enough of an out to say they weren’t wrong in the first place about the LFG system but they are willing to work to make it better, when quite frankly they needed to just apologize for a half-done system and redo it, which I can hope from that post is still coming sometime.

Via WoW Insider

Blizzard, patches, drysc, world of warcraft, looking for group, lfg, lfm, chat channel, lfg chat, global lfg, WoW Insider

The server I am currently playing on in WoW is a transfer server, which means, for the most part, everyone that moved over already had a high-level character and moved to avoid queues and the like. It was not immediately open to be rolled on, so no new characters were popping up.

That is why, when I decided to roll a Human Priest and mess around with leveling I expected it to be deserted, completely barren. Apparently that isn’t the case. There’s hundreds of them. All of them completely oblivious to how the game works, what to do, how to do it, the way to do it. They are all noobs. I am surrounded by them. To my right; noobs. To my left; noobs. In front of me; noobs. Behind me; some jackass horde rogue trying to get me to flag PvP.

These people invite me to groups at random. They will attack the same mob I’m hitting to help me kill it, just to be helpful. These are obviously people who haven’t played the game before. That was clear when the first attacked Hogger, the elite, bane of Elwynn Forest. I watched him die. A second came, I laughed as he fell before Hogger’s might, 3 came at once hoping to overcome the beast and he cut them down as if some logger from the fiery depths of hell. And still I laughed. I tagged the demon with a Mind Blast, then Shadow Word: Pain. He ran at me but I turned and used my own shield, throwing on a Renew as well. A Warrior came from the side, stunning him momentarily as I readied another Mind Blast, the one that would send him to his grave. The great beast fell and I took the paw from off him, the forest was safe again, until the giant respawned.

As I came running back I saw the brute once again cutting a swath of destruction through the unwitting fools, and once more I laughed.

Given, I was probably enjoying their misery and death just a little too much, but I find it fascinating that so many of them seem completely unable to read the quests.

I answered one question a person had eight times. This is not an exaggeration, it is the real number. He wanted to know where the vineyard was. I told him. He asked again a few seconds later, and again I explained it to him. It took eight times to get the point across. Or rather, it took eight times before I scared him so much he didn’t dare ask again for fear I would actually disembowel him.

I guess what happened is our server is now the default new server for people just starting up, trial accounts or full accounts. To be honest, I’m kind of torn between which I like. The enjoyment I get from seeing the incomprehensibly stupid do utterly moronic things cannot be matched, but I may prefer going back to the empty wasteland then having all my mobs killed by pure luck from the infestation of inbreeding all around.

That’s just me though.

World of warcraft, drenden, rabbits, hogger, elwynn forest, shadow priest, warrior, blizzard, new server, newbie, noob

After spending all day (quite literally in fact) shoveling and blowing snow I hopped on-line momentarily to see what was going on in the world (wide web) and to write up a quick post to be later followed by Repairing Gears. Thanks to WoW Insider I was able to find this post on the World of Warcraft official forums about guild halls.

Now given, the original poster can’t even form a coherent sentence to back him/herself up but the important thing to notice is Drysc’s response, the second post. If you find it disheartening you aren’t alone. The casual way in which it is nearly blown off fascinates me, but he does bring out a good point about what people expect, or would expect, from a guild hall. I wanted to give the heads up now as I will be referring to points in this post with the Repairing Gears later today, where I will talk a bit about guild halls in more detail than the previous parts.

And, if any of you feel like sending the folks at Blizzard over to my articles on the WoW guild system, particularly the guild halls, I’d be happy to accept the traffic.

world of warcraft, forums, wow insider, blizzard, guilds, guild halls, repairing gears

It figures, I got out of my pajamas late at night, went to stand in a line in the freezing cold, and now Blizzard decides to offer a downloadable option for getting the Burning Crusade expansion pack.

For anyone that doesn’t already have it this should solve a few problems. First, it’s never sold out, and second you don’t actually have to get up to buy the game. This should let people enjoy a whole new level of laziness never before seen. To be perfectly fair though, I am glad they are doing this and it’s something that in my mind should have been done before the launch of Burning Crusade. I can see the reasons not to, but I am all for convenience and driving 45 minutes to go to the mall and get the game is not convenient for me (yes I live in the middle of nowhere).

Anyway, enjoy your downloads, jerks!

I wanted to share a little quest I was doing in Outlands earlier. It’s a series of quests actually, each time you rescue the same idiot from ogres that he keeps getting captured by. But I’ve kind of jumped into this without the proper introduction, so here it goes.

Currently, I’m level 67 (nearing 68 actually, hooray for flight form!) and questing in Nagrand (finishing up as the case may actually be) a zone in Outland. There’s a lot of ogres in Nagrand. One of the quests you run across in one of these ogre camps is a quest to free a Draenei named Corki from a cage where he was being held by the ogres (and yelling at them to just eat him so he could get away from their stench). Corki is a level 60 NPC, so I chock this capture up to a run of bad luck while walking around and figure setting him free is the right thing to do. I kill some ogres, grab a key, and Corki is off to the races and back, one would assume, to the village of Telaar a safe-haven.

I return to Telaar to tell Corki’s father of my feat and get my reward (Corki’s father, it appears, is also the “leader” of the town.) After talking with his father, I find out that Corki has once again been captured, not 5 minutes after I let him free. Now I’m a bit annoyed. I mean, what kind of bozo doesn’t have the basic brain functions to go back to a safe place rather than wander down the road in search of more ogres to aggravate with taunts and jeers and some well placed assumptions about their mothers’. But, okay, I’ll give it to him. I’m not happy about it, but I’ll rescue the twerp, against Darwin’s better judgement.

Now it’s off to another ogre camp to find Corki once again and free him from the clutches of the ogres (at this point I was almost hoping he would be boiling in a large pot when I got there, as Corki’s pops didn’t say anything about the condition he had to be in when I brought him back (and if it came right down to it, I’m pretty sure I could kick the crap out of Corki Sr. and take his 3 gold)).

So, off I go in search of the elusive Corki at another ogre camp. Once again I find him in a cage, ogres on all sides which I must first…take care of…to acquire the key. After some brief ogre genocide I found the bum with the key and head for the cage to let Corki go; a second time. I unlock, Corki runs, and all is once again right in the world. Now all that’s left is the running back to town to grab some gold from the distressingly lazy. I get back, and here’s what I see before me after telling the sperm donor that his son is safe:

Now, on some levels, I find this amusing (see underlined portion) but on others I find it just frustrating. Quite frankly, this oxygen waster can be swallowed alive and whole by an ogre because he has it coming. I’m now rooting for the filthy wretches rather than against them. If not for the blue items now being offered I would leave Corki to become the next meal (and if my assumption about ogre eating habits two sentences earlier is true, Corki will probably be coming out eventually anyway).

It occurs to me at this point that the ogres have the right idea, when he gets back to town throw him in a cage so he can’t run off again, that’ll teach him a lesson for sure!

Blizzard, World of warcraft, outland, burning crusade, nagrand, Corki, quests, quest chains, amusing pics

Recently Blizzard opened up transfers from the Gilneas realm (where I previously played, along with several other realms) to the new realm Drenden. The Gilneas server was located on the east coast, and had an east coast time offset (GMT-5). Blizzard announced that Drenden was an east coast server as well. For many people, this made us believe the realm was located, obviously, on the east coast, that would seem logical, to move from similar servers to similar servers.

When I first arrived on Drenden I thought my latency was a bit high (latency is a measure, in milliseconds, of how long it takes information to travel from computer to server, may also be known as the ping time) hovering between 200-300ms (it now jumps from anywhere between 250-800ms). On Gilneas I frequented between 30-100ms latency. I thought, like many others, this increased latency was due to server strain. The expansion had just been released, lot’s of people all crowded together, constantly fighting over mobs, it seemed reasonable enough. Then I headed back to Darnassus the one day to train after leveling my druid. Darnassus was deserted save for 4 others with me. My latency remained high. That’s the first time I thought that we were on server physically located on the west coast. I remembered playing on the Hyjal realm when I first started the game and experiencing similar speeds.

I’m not the only one who noticed, and I’m certainly not the only one who feels cheated, no scammed, by what Blizzard did. Several people paid to transfer from Gilneas, and similar realms to this new east coast server, they were cheated more than anyone.

In my mind, this is blatant disregard for players. With all the great things Blizzard has done recently, especially what a great job they did with the expansion, it’s easy to begin forgetting why Blizzard still has a ways to go with customer care. Then they do something like this and it becomes all too clear.

I don’t want the option to transfer to a different server, as some in that forum topic are suggesting. I want the Drenden server to be setup on the east coast and information copied over from the current server. I’m sure this could be done during a maintenance period, maybe even an extended one for “select realms”. It may seem unfair to say that I don’t want to move to another server given that I don’t want to have the latency, but I’ve set up a guild on Drenden already, made friends, begin running instances with pre-defined groups. I don’t want to lose people that might not transfer, especially for something that rightfully shouldn’t have happened.

I’m hoping this gets straightened out soon, I’ll try to keep everyone updated.

Blizzard, latency, ping, cheated, servers, slow gameplay, world of warcraft, realms