dungeon-scaling
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Potential new WoW feature caught on video
We're hedging pretty hard on this one, ladies and gentlemen, partly because I'm trying to rein in my excitement that this could actually be a real video of a new feature. Somehow, Aipok managed to leave what looks like an instance of Temple of the Jade Serpent and zone into Stratholme, taking the option to "Teleport to Instance" while still in an instance himself. Not that weird, right? Well this is when things start getting a bit odd. Because this has been doing the rounds, I was ready for what was coming. Aipok's health suddenly drops to 11.1k. He wades into the skeletons, as you would, with the confidence of a level 90 in a level 40-ish dungeon, and he dies. Only then, looking through his combat log, does he realize that something is awry. On ressing, his health is even lower, at 5.9k. He opens up his character pane, and all his gear has been downscaled to ilvl 43. His character attributes appear to have been downscaled, too. Now, this has Aipok in a strange position. Has he just happened upon a very specific and weird bug? Is this an accidental hop into an unrevealed new feature for 6.0? Could players entering old content be downscaled to match it? Or, could this all be an elaborate hoax? Personally, I want to believe, so I'm going to choose to. What's more, Blizzard devs have talked before about this tech being completed. As long as this was optional, and perhaps even if it wasn't, I'd love this. It'd refresh old content and make it a challenge again. And, if you could earn upscaled XP while downscaled, a fun way to reuse old content to level. But again, remember, this is not an official announcement, or an endorsement, or anything from Blizzard. It's one video of one weird dungeon. It could be a hoax, it could be a bug, it could be nothing at all. I'm excited, though. Are you? And what could it reward?
Ask Massively: The next internet fad will be tires edition
Tires are round bits of rubber that are placed upon the wheels of vehicles in order to facilitate spinning or something. Also, sometimes your parents might string some rope around one because they're too cheap and lazy to buy you a decent swingset. Anyhow, the next thing on the internet will be tires. I'm calling it right now. Don't look at me like that. We're talking about the same people who made Rebecca Black and Happy Cat famous. Just... tires. Rolling or... whatever. It's time for Ask Massively this week, as you could probably tell from the introduction about half a step away from a schizophrenic rant. This week, we've got a question about scaling instance difficulty and a couple of questions from our forums, none of which has anything to do with tires. If you'd like to ask a tire-related question, leave one in the comments or mail it along to ask@massively.com. I guess I can answer MMO questions, too.
Aika introduces scaling instances for players
Irregular schedules are the bane of group content. When you can't know when you'll log in or how long you'll be online at a stretch, it's really hard to make plans that involve getting other people together, and that's assuming that the content in question isn't an hour of continuous play. So Aika's latest addition should be a welcome change to players -- the development team has changed all of the game's instances to scale according to group size. Scaled-down dungeons operate under a few restrictions, none of which are terribly restrictive -- players will have a slightly lowered drop rate for items when in a smaller group, to compensate for the lowered difficulty. Although some comments in response allege that the difficulty is still tuned a bit high or low in certain spots, it's a welcome change that's been requested in several games over the years. So if you can't get a half-dozen people together in Aika for a simple run, you don't have to keep looking -- you can just go.
