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Behind the scenes with a Blizzard forums MVP "green"
Who are the "greens," the shining emerald jewels of the posting community on the official World of Warcraft community forums? How does one go from being, say, Eldacar the PvP enthusiast to Eldacar the forums MVP, who recently unleashed a volley of questions on the current state of WoW PvP that gathered a virtual storm of opinions and insights on the official PvP forums? Who is this guy, and why is everything he posts on the forums in bright green letters? Here's your answer -- the scoop on a green straight from one of the blues, Blizzard Community Manager Jonathan "Zarhym" Brown: "Eldacar's posting style and contributions to the community first crossed my radar during Cataclysm beta," Zarhym explains. "He had created some very useful guides on the beta forums detailing good feedback and bug reporting etiquette. I stickied his information and had brief contact with him via email and in the beta around that time. "In the fall of 2011, once the community team solidified plans for expanding the MVP program, his name popped back up in part because of some PvP-related posts he was working on," he continues. "I really make an effort to try and hang onto the names of constructive, eloquent posters -- whether or not they're critical of some of Blizzard's decisions. The MVP program is really meant to be a reflection of the diversity within our community. Its members are just a collection of folks from the community who are embraced by their peers for their knowledge and personality, to the extent that we want to give them official recognition. I think Eldacar's a damn fine example of this." A "damn fine example"? Frankly, we're with Zarhym -- Eldacar's thoughtful approach and obvious passion for his subject matter made trumpeting his recent call to arms for player feedback a no-brainer. So who is this guy? And how'd he get so damn fine, anyway?
Spiritual Guidance: The sorta-official shadow priest census
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. On Wednesdays, shadow priesting expert Fox Van Allen's comes from out of the darkness to bask in your loving adoration. Spiritual Guidance has been edited for broadcast. Usually, I'm uninterested in hearing about anything but how good-looking or awesome I am. I tend to make an exception on topics relating to shadow priesting though. It's a fun spec in Cataclysm, and I sure hope it stays a fun, competitive spec in the Pandatown expansion too. Thankfully, there's something we can all do to guarantee the future of shadow priesting. Blizzard has started a thread on the official Blizzard forums specifically soliciting feedback from priests of all stripes. They ask some important things of us: what we think makes shadow priesting fun (and not fun), what we think of our rotation, our wish list, and what spells we use the least. The answers will be read by the development team and used to mold the shadow priest of 2012-13. Given the importance of the thread, I thought it'd be interesting to go through the responses there so far, share a few with you, and give my own answers and reactions. Today, it's all about where shadow priests are and where shadow priests should be going.
Official WoW forums going read-only on Wednesday, new community site and forums ready
Last month, Blizzard announced that it would be launching a new World of Warcraft community site, with new and improved forums. At the time, Blizzard said that the existing official forums would be phased out after testing of the community site was complete. The community site went live earlier this month. Now, a wave of identical blue posts has hit every section of the WoW forums with the following message: Bashiok -- Forums Going Read-Only This Wednesday, November 17 these forums will be put into a read-only state. At that time we'll be inviting all posters to fully migrate to the new World of Warcraft community site and forums. http://www.battle.net/wow These forums will remain read-only until the end of the month, after which they and all of their posts will be removed ... forever! If you have any posts, information, stickies, etc. that you'd like to keep you'll want to have finished saving it before then. We've all enjoyed the past few years on these forums, and look forward to creating many more with you on the new community site. See you there! source So that's it! We won't be able to post in the official forums anymore after Wednesday, Nov. 17, and we have until the end of November to save anything on the official forums we want to keep or remember!
New Blizzard community website, forums begin testing in November
The announcement came out this morning on the EU forums that Blizzard is getting ready to roll out its new community website and forums for World of Warcraft some time in early November. Anyone who has been to the community site for StarCraft 2 will already be aware of some of the new features including a more advanced forum system than what we have now. Features will include the ability to report a post for trolling or spam without changing pages, being able to see a quick summary of the thread by mousing over and letting players up- and down-rate responses. The current forums will be set as locked during the beginning of the transition and then will be completely removed toward the end. This means that if there are any old guides, posts or fun things from days of old that you want to see moved to the new forums, you should copy them to your own computer now. One thing that is curiously missing from the announcement is what alternative Blizzard has developed to its original Real ID forums concept since it was thrown out. StarCraft 2 has a centralized handle that is associated with your Battle.net login, and it is the same handle/avatar that's used for multiplayer games. Hopefully, they'll provide more details on issues like this as things start to lead up to the changeover. The full blue post is after the break.
Mike Morhaime: Real names will not be required on official Blizzard forums
digg_url = 'http://digg.com/gaming_news/Blizzard_Retracts_Real_Names_NOT_Required_On_Official_Forum'; In a move that is sure to generate just as much discussion as the initial decision itself, Mike Morhaime, co-founder and CEO of Blizzard Entertainment, has released a statement that says "real names will not be required for posting on official Blizzard forums." Morhaime says that Blizzard has been "constantly monitoring the feedback" given by the community and that they are "driven 100% by the desire to find ways to make our community areas more welcoming for players and encourage more constructive conversations about our games." The other upgrades to the forums will still apply, such as rating posts up or down and conversation threading. This will, no doubt, make many members of the community quite happy. The full statement (updated) after the break.
The Daily Quest: What's in a name
Here at WoW.com, we're on a Daily Quest (which we try to do every day, honest) to bring you interesting, informative and entertaining WoW-related links from around the blogosphere. Is there a story out there we ought to link or a blog we should be following? Just leave us a comment and you may see it here tomorrow! Take a look at the links below, and be sure to check out our WoW Resources Guide for more WoW-related sites. The internet today has been awfully, awfully chatty -- which is interesting given the topic. Since Blizzard's announcement earlier today that the official forums would be displaying the real names of players come Cataclysm, people haven't been able to keep quiet about how they are going to be ... keeping quiet once these new forum changes come into play. Let's take a look at a few blogs around the web regarding the new Real ID changes. World of Matticus talks about the good and bad of forum-wide Real ID. Big Bear Butt plans for a Cataclysm -- not the expansion itself, but the changes it brings. Empowered Fire discusses their disappointment in the forum changes. Broken Toys tells Blizzard "You got your Facebook in your message board about my orc game."
Forums go up; forums go down...
The official forums have been quite fickly over the past few days. Sometimes you'll be lucky and you'll be greeted by what you're trying to look at, other times you'll get an "error500" message, and still other times you'll see a message like the one pictured above.The plight of the official forums seems to mirror the activity on the servers. Queue (har har har) the Homer Simpson-esq: Forums go up; forums go down... Forums go up; forums go down... The past few days of hellish lag, unstable forums, and broken parts of the game have been like the song that never ends. (Note to self: Eat some lamb chops tonight.) After four days of the patch, we're still getting a constant stream of tips detailing bugs and other errors.I wish I could say that we'll report to you when this is all fixed, but honestly I don't think that is going to come anytime soon. Perhaps next Tuesday they'll roll out another patch to fix some of this, or change something in the datacenters, etc... It's really nearly impossible for us to know exactly what's wrong.
Level 80 forum icons revealed
We've learned that new forum icons are available today for level 80 players. Not that anyone is level 80 yet, and not that you can actually post in the forums. But they're there and we have compiled them into a gallery for your easy viewing pleasure.I like the Alliance ones the best. Some of the Horde ones seem rather underwhelming.The forums recently underwent an upgrade to Wrath of the Lich King graphics, and are now all nice and icy blue. The zombies even invaded the forums for a brief time, but it seem they have been driven back. %Gallery-36746%
All Blizzard forums are again locked
Nethaera just laid the hammer down folks. All of the Blizzard forums have been locked. This means you will not be able to post on them at all. It looks like they will remain locked for the remainder of the day. Quite ungood for those of us that like to use them productively.They've done this so the community manager can communicate with the community better. They need to get information out quickly, and cannot have the forum system overloaded and explode as it did last night.This is not the first time we've seen them lock the forums in the past twenty four hours, although I do hope it is the last time.On a brighter side of things, our comments are not locked! And we don't really subscribe to the 1984 doctrine. Newspeak here I come!
