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Ritual of Summoning is actually still broken [Updated]
The article's image expresses how I, and I'm sure many others, feel about this.Ghostcrawler posted last night that Ritual of Summoning would be fixed today. Nethaera posted small, but important, patch notes saying that it had been fixed. "Ritual of Summoning no longer has a 2 minute cooldown and will now function as intended."However people are reporting that it still isn't working correctly.Ghostcrawler now comes out and says that it'll be fixed sometime later today. "We are still on target to get this fixed today (Tue, Jan 27). I did not mean to imply that it would be fixed when the servers came back up."Left hand, let me introduce you to right hand. Right hand says things like "We'll fix this today." Left hand says things like "These are the patch notes for this patch, which is now live." Right hand should tell left hand that not everything is live just yet, and update the patch notes accordingly.Now that I got my tenses all screwed up, we'll update when Ritual of Summoning actually is fixed.Update: It is now fixed, for real this time.
Officers' Quarters: /facepalm
Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership.Sometimes I get an e-mail describing to me a guild leader who fails for so many reasons that I am simply at a loss for words. However, words are all I have to work with here, along with my trusty Picard ASCII (courtesy of Blizzard poster Datth), so I will do my best. I warn you that this e-mail is a very long read. But those of you who want some insight into exactly what not to do as a guild leader, read on! Dear Scott, Around May the more progression-ready members of my casual guild started filling in spots for an established raiding guild doing 10man content with promises of moving to 25man content fairly quickly in order to see the BC raid instances pre-WotLK. One thing led to the other and I ended up gutting my guild of those more dedicated members and all of us joining up with the raiding guild which seems to be usually how these things go. What I ended up discovering is the guild I joined into had been much bigger and more organized at one time but was in its last throes and the person who brought the two guilds together was given the GM role in order to facilitate his, and others, dreams of 25man content. Long story short the raid guild had long since mastered Kara, but always struggled on ZA, and had only barely glimpsed the insides of the 25man instances.
Publisher stocks hit by market freefall; analysts optimistic
If you haven't looked out your window today, you might have missed stocks that are falling faster than Chicken Little can blink. Game publishers were not immune, as the NASDAQ (where most publishers are listed) Composite Index fell 199.61 points, or 9.14 percent. As for the individual publishers, Gamespot points out that Electronic Arts saw a 9.16 percent drop to $36 a share. Activision Blizzard was hit hard with a 13.8 percent drop to $14.12 a share. As for the console makers, Sony and Microsoft saw a 5.09 and 8.72 respective percent drop. Overseas, Ubisoft's stock dropped a whopping 21.5% to €45.50 (US $65.37) on the Euronext market.Despite these stock drops, analysts speaking to Gamasutra remain optimistic, with Wedbush Morgan's Michael Pachter expecting none of the companies to be affected by the lending crisis. Lazard Capital Markets' Colin Sebastian predicts a "cocooning" effect where people flock to games as a cost-efficient form of escapism. In what is surely the most "no duh" prediction, Sebastian expects World of Warcraft to continue serving as an unwavering money stream for Activision Blizzard.[Image Source: Digg]
Pre-order alert! Activision Blizzard trademarks 'Dance Hero'
Now that getting innovation out of the rhythm music genre is like squeezing blood from a stone, Activision Blizzard has jumped to a new (old) pool of possible cash. According to 1UP, Actizzard has trademarked the title Dance Hero for "computer game software" development. Hey, it makes sense. After all, Guitar Hero was the North American equivalent to Konami's Guitar Freaks and considering Dance Dance Revolution is still a cash cow for the Japanese giant who'da thought it would take this long for a clone?According to our sister site Joystiq, the trademark filing showed up around the same time a rumor cited DJ Hero, a title reserved by Activision in February, is already in production. True or not we'd like to think Activision is only stockpiling trademarks and not actually ever use most of them. If half the titles they register turn into games we're going to have to buy up Facepalm Hero just to showcase how annoyed we are.
First screens for MLB Superstars might cause your face to drop into your palm
We think one of our readers said it best. When the game was originally announced, we thought it was going to be a train wreck, and these first screens of one of the minigames in MLB Superstars, Baseball Bocci, show that not only did the train get derailed and crash into a building, but that building was also full of babies, puppies and all of the most delicious candy in the world. We hate to be so harsh, but come on. It's baseball. Why would you try to combine it with bocci? Why?%Gallery-31217%[Via press release]
Breakfast Topic: Doncha hate it when...
...you're doing a collection quest and you don't understand why the widgets aren't dropping -- until you realize you're grinding in the wrong area?And doncha hate it when you're just a few pulls away from finishing an instance when your main tank says, "Sorry guys, I've got to go, I didn't realize it was so late"?And doncha hate it when you finally grab that last pig's spleen, turn around to head back to the quest hub -- and walk right into an elite who sends you back for a corpse run?And doncha hate it when you go to turn in a quest after leaving an instance run... and then realize you left the quest item back on the last boss' corpse?I mean doncha? What else do you hate in game?
Nintendo: Hardcore gamers 'critically important to us'
"Absolutely the hard-core gamer crowd is critically important to us." Which would explain why so much of Nintendo's E3 press conference was taken up by spirited flailing, smiling soccer moms and the worst rendition of the Super Mario Bros. theme the world has ever been forced to endure. But Nintendo hasn't forgotten about the mythical "hardcore" gamer crowd, Cammie Dunaway tells Wired. The executive VP of sales and marketing, who insists that she's a "genuinely smiley, nice person," explains that "the Zelda and Mario teams are hard at work," possibly on something that could rival the infinitely desirable Super Mario Sluggers. "And even Super Mario Sluggers, which is certainly an expanded audience title, but what core gamer doesn't love Mario and baseball and finding out which combination of characters are going to do what kind of crazy things in the field?" she ponders.Dunaway also notes that Nintendo is committed to a variety of games, catering to casual players with titles like Cooking Navi, and exciting tougher crowds with the DS iteration of Grand Theft Auto. We mean, she must have seen it, right? "I have not looked at the product. Have you?" Well, no ... but we haven't been incorporating it into our sales pitch either.
WoTLK to bring new emotes
I know I've complained a bit about Warcraft's lack of character customization, but I must say that it seems like they've been slowly but surely taking steps to make things better on that front. There's the dance studio and the barber shop incoming, of course, but here's another leak that's popped up from the Alpha: New emotes! I know it sounds silly, but having pre-made emotes can really add to the fun factor of playing your character. Add them in macros (but don't spam them, that's just annoying) or use them to register your enjoyment, surprise, shock, or disgust at the situation. There's some really good ones in here that I've been wanting for a while -- although, word to wise, Blizzard: Facepalming is generally done with one palm, not two. I know you've seen the facepalm ASCII on the General Forums, too. Also, I would like to thank you for allowing me to finally act as my hero, Phoenix Wright, through the magic of emotes. I know it's just a minor thing, but still, I'm looking forward to having a bit more variety in playing with my character in the social part of the game. Now if we could only get outfits and player housing too... [Via Deathknight.info]
