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The Queue: Why are warriors so awesome?
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com's daily Q&A column where the WoW.com team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Adam Holisky be your host today. Today has to have some special significance. If you take the month and the year and add them together and subtract 2000 you get the day. The day. It's like, the world is going to end or something, and it isn't even 2012! Oh well, here are the last questions I'll ever answer in The Queue, because it's the end of the world as we know it (which happens to be today's reading music). Rhornez asked... "Why are warriors so awesome?"
The Daily Grind: What do you look for in a guild?
A large part of MMOs is the social aspect of gameplay, and a large part of being social is trying to find a guild that suits your style. From listening to guild recruitment shouts in cities and recruitment channels to reading all of the recruitment posts in fansite forums and official forums, there's many things you need to take into consideration when picking a guild. So for today Massively readers, we wanted to know what you look for when you're choosing your guild. Do you look for a casual environment where you can go at your own pace with other guild members? Do you look for a guild that's all about the PvP? Is roleplaying a high priority on your list? Or do you want to go for a guild that does all of these things in different combinations? Give us your thoughts on this matter by dropping a comment on this post. We're interested to hear how you make this difficult choice!
Preview of character creation in Final Fantasy XIV
The start of the beta signups for Final Fantasy XIV was certainly good news for the many people anticipating the game next year, but it didn't exactly pierce the fog surrounding the game. Square-Enix, of course, has always played their cards close to their chest when handing out previews, but there's still so much more to learn about the game and a number of curious people. FFXIVCore, a fansite with an active base of users translating as much new information on the game as possible, has posted a set of new scans and translations detailing that most important of processes in an MMO: character creation. While there isn't as much hard information as fans would like (and isn't that always the case), the characters on display boast a wide variety of slight differences, as noted by the article. There's also some information regarding a third force in the game's main conflict, the Garlean Empire, although details on it are scant. Still, the promise of a detailed character creator is certainly alluring, as are most of the pictures we get regarding said character creator. Final Fantasy XIV often winds up releasing news and previews in chunks, so it's best to keep an eye open for the next few days for further possible information.
The Daily Grind: How do you learn the game?
MMOs are complicated beasts. In most games you have at least a detailed set of game mechanics and combat systems to learn. That's not even getting into things like Fallen Earth with its maddeningly expansive crafting, or EVE Online and the detailed economy, or Champions Online and a costume creator that some find more engaging than the actual gameplay. There's a reason why most popular games spawn countless websites, forums, chat channels, and so forth -- because there's a great deal to learn, a large number of mysteries, and often a limit to how much useful information the game itself gives you. So how do you learn your game? Do you browse forums and ask questions, building up advice from a community? Do you read the numerous sites devoted to the games, such as databases and wikis? Do you buy print strategy guides and try and adapt to the changes as they come, piece-by-piece? Or do you eschew all of the above, preferring to just let yourself amble along and learn things by example and inference? There are a lot of resources out there, and we all have our preferred ones, but today we want to know about yours.
DC Universe Online creative director answers questions from the fans
One of the upcoming SOE titles we're hoping to hear more about is DC Universe Online -- the superhero MMO that will build on the DC Comics legacy. DC Universe Online's Creative Director Chris Cao recently did a video interview with DCUO Source that explains how the devs have approached the game's design. Cao fielded a number of questions posed to him by the fansite's readers -- How will player feedback impact the game's development? Will there be voicework in DCUO from the actors who've voiced characters in the various DC animated series and video games (specifically, Kevin Conroy)? How will DCUO handle secret identities? All good questions. For the answers, check out the video interview with Chris Cao at DCUO Source.[Via MMORPG.com]
Twisted Nether and friends unveil Azeroth United
The Twisted Nether folks have been a huge part of the WoW community for a while now -- I finally got to meet both Fimlys and Nibuca in person at the last BlizzCon, and of course we've mentioned them and their work here on the site before. They've recently announced another big project, in coordination with Stompalina over at Rawrcast and our own Eddie "Brigwyn" Carrington, author of the Scattered Shots column and curator of The Hunting Lodge, and it sounds exciting. Azeroth United is an "Internet media community" centered around World of Warcraft, so it'll be a hub for sharing news and support around not just bloggers, but all WoW-related fansites and online resources.It sounds like their first project will be a large-scale charity drive, much like the Children's Week auction that Brigwyn put together earlier this year. More news on that, we're told, is coming soon, and we'll keep our ears open to see what they're up to. We've seen the power of the Warcraft community before, both in making a difference with donations and and uniting under a common flag, so a project like this is sure to be fun to watch. Stay tuned for more when we hear it.
Global Agenda fansite competition offers up more keys for next closed beta phase
With Global Agenda's current closed beta being all the buzz these days, getting in is no easy feat. Hi-Rez Studios is treating their testing phases as actual controlled testing -- with only around 1,000 people to start and mandatory feedback from the testers. If you're just looking for a free game to play for a few months, you might want to look elsewhere.Going hand in hand with that, many Global Agenda fansites are being offered a very small amount of beta keys to distribute to their readers. You may remember earlier in the month when we gave away 10 keys for AgendaSource.com, and now we're here to help another fansite give away their keys. Keep reading below for more information.
Five new Global Agenda fansites to keep your eye on
Hi-Rez Studios recently announced the winners of their Global Agenda fansite contest and taking the top prize is Agenda Source. All winners received beta keys for distribution on their sites and coupons for the Global Agenda Merchandise store, where you can make your own custom T-shirts.Fansites have played an important role in the MMO community since the genre surfaced back in the late 1990's. They are great sources of game information and often even break news before official sources. Not only that, they're a great place for people to gather and chat about their favorite past time. EVE Online recently touted their blogging community, which is 235 strong. This batch of Global Agenda fansites were recognized for their "superior creative design, depth of content, and innovative use of community-building features."Second place went to Global Agenda Mission Control, third to HexAgenda, fourth to The Global Agenda Wiki, and fifth to The Alliance of Agencies. Combined, these sites boast some great tools and features, including: a "What We Know" section, Q&A section, Twitter Feeds, RSS Feeds, forums, polls, IRC chat channels, and wiki. We recommend that you bookmark these sites now, especially if you want a chance at getting into beta!
April Fools 2009 Roundup
April Fools.I like it and I don't.It can sometimes be hard to distinguish between real news and fake news, especially with some of the elaborate schemes people do in order to make the fake stuff seem as real as possible. And there's a lot of it too. Google and Blizzard win the day, as usual. C.A.D.I.E anyone? The page is a throwback to the 1990s Geocities pages many of us made back then. My Geocities site had to do with Star Trek and lots of other nerdy stuff, although someone on staff had a Digimon site (I'm not telling who...).After the break you can check out our list of all the April Fools jokes that went on yesterday that pertained to WoW. And for posterity's sake we've taken as many snapshots of the pages as we could and put them in a nice gallery so 10 years from now we can all look back and go "Aww... isn't that... /facepalm."%Gallery-49097%
Resto4Life is closing its doors
Sad news on the druid blogger front. Phaelia of Resto4Life fame will be closing her doors on March 19th. Resto4Life is, in many people's opinions, is one of the best Druid healing blogs out there. Phaelia is one helluva intelligent resto druid, and a funny blogger to boot. Phaelia posts that she's ending her bloging for a number of reasons, chiefly among them is that there is a new baby tree that her and Mr. Phae are expecting. So despite our sadness at seeing her go, there couldn't be a better reason!The community over at Resto4Life is really quite a good one, and as such Phaelia is going to make a final post in March comprised of all the reader submitted screenshots and artwork she gets. And to add to the coolness of it, she's randomly awarding a Belkin Nostromo Speedpad N52TE to someone who submits some artwork, purchased with the money she's made from the site.Class act all around, and a great site that will be missed.
Tank Spot and WoW Achievements become official fansites
Tank Spot and WoW Achievements have both been added to the official World of Warcraft fansite program. The fansite program is Blizzard's way of recognizing sites they like, and really contains an excellent listing of places to get your WoW fix (besides WoW Insider, of course).Tank Spot offers great community with forums, videos, and guides to virtually every aspect of tanking. The folks that frequent the site are quick to offer sound advice, and can often be seen on the official forums providing key discussion within the greater tanking community.WoW Achievements is a relatively new site, and offers great information on all the achievements in-game and the players who earn them. One of the more interesting things on the site is a listing of the top players worldwide who've earned achievement points. If you're curious, the top player right now is Beelsebub over on Azuremyst EU. He's got 7630 achievement points, which is quite amazing.If you're interested as to why WoW Insider is not part of the fansite program, you can check out an article by Mike Schramm back in August of last year.
Mines of Moria press event reveals Balrog footage
On September 23rd, Turbine and Codemasters Online set up an exclusive private press event in London, England for predominant fansites to get a hands-on presentation of the newest expansion for Lord of the Rings Online: Mines of Moria. This event was hosted and narrated by Executive Producer Jeffrey Steefel.One of these fansites in attendance, The Madhouse Tavern, was lucky enough to grab some shaky-cam footage of this gameplay, including the infamous Balrog. As Steefel guides the onlookers through the Balrog's cave, he mentions the fact that this is now "officially the worst beast in Middle-earth" with a whopping 513,250 hit points! The footage shows the lead-up to the monumental creature, and then a bit more as it proceeds to kick some player butt. Check out the video embedded just after the jump, and the Madhouse Tavern's complete write-up of the event at their website for more information!
How Blizzard mishandled the BlizzCon ticket situation
As you may or may not know, we here at WoW Insider are not an official Blizzard fansite. There are a few different reasons for that, but one of them is that within the Fansite Program Code of Conduct, there is a clause that states, "fansites should present content that is supportive of World of Warcraft and Blizzard Entertainment." We don't disagree with that clause -- fansites are run by fans, and they should support Blizzard. But our status as an unofficial site leaves us completely free to talk indepth about situations where Blizzard has messed up big time. And as many players already know, the BlizzCon ticket sales process that took place earlier this week is definitely one of those situations.Blizzard is, of course, a game company. No one expects them to put on events like WWI and BlizzCon -- they do so to serve the community that's grown up around their games (and, let's be fair, market and advertise their products to the core of their fanbase). And the community loves those events, both hearing about and attending them. Which is why it was a surprise to no one (except maybe Blizzard themselves) that when the ticket sales kicked off Monday morning, it was a nightmare -- the site was hammered by fans trying desperately to buy tickets, the Failoc was a familiar sight, and within a few hours, even Blizzard.com's main site was down.Everyone could have predicted that there'd be problems like that -- when a fanbase of 11 million tries to buy 12,000 tickets, of course you're going to have technical problems. But Blizzard's mishandling of the situation didn't happen on Monday morning -- anyone can suffer from server outages. It happened over the next two days, days full of frustration, endless page refreshing, and a lack of useful communication from Blizzard about just what was happening.
The geography of WoW space
World of Warcraft has seen the rise of a massive community of diverse players. Most of us do not simply log into WoW, but visit a number of news sources, fan sites, and web-bases resources to stay on top of new developments in the game. Tim Howgego has created a map of the virtual WoW community. In this image he has categorized some of the most popular spaces that players visit outside of Azeroth. His map is divided into several areas:
Psst...want some WotLK alpha talent info?
As you may have noticed, Blizzard sent us a request that we remove unreleased information relating to spells and talents in Wrath of the Lich King, and we have chosen to comply with that request. However, obviously that cat is out of the bag (and was before we got there), and if you want to find that information, one good place to look for it is the Wotlk leaks wiki.From flight paths to pictures to spells and talents (including those for Death Knights) to profession information, that wiki is a great resource for unreleased information. Obviously this is stll alpha information, and everything is unfinished and changeable -- if any of you were playing WoW in alpha or beta, you know how much things changed before release (and after). Still, it's nice to get a glimpse of what's in store.
WoWWiki levels up
Those of you who have been around for a little while will no doubt know about one of the most useful resources in this World of Warcraft: WoWWiki. If you're new to the party, let me tell you about it. WoWWiki is, as the name suggests, a wiki about all things Warcraft. From boss strategies to patch history to insanely detailed lore, if it's about the Warcraft series, it's probably on there somewhere. And if not, it's a wiki, so you can write it yourself!The occasion for this particular post is that they have just completed some major upgrades to their software and infrastructure. Here are the highlights: WoWWiki is now hosted in a distributed fashion across the Wikia network, which should mean more stability and less chance of catastrophic failure. A new default skin, which looks nice and classy. The OpenSearch plugin is now working again, so you can add WoWWiki as a search engine in Firefox or IE (though I still prefer Firefox's search keywords). Click on the menu by your search field while browsing WoWWiki to check it out. A proper sidebar menu, with links to important parts of the site. This fixes my single biggest complaint about the site, which is that it was hard to navigate. The sidebar is also now customizable; users can pick which widgets they want to see over there, and in what order. This is very cool. A new version of MediaWiki, which brings many feature improvements and bug fixes. Head on over and check it out! And thanks to Kirkburn and everyone else who has helped make WoWWiki such a fantastic site.
Wowhead screenshot contest
My long-time personal favorite WoW database site, Wowhead, is having another one of their contests: "The Lost Screenshots." This time, all you have to do is submit screenshots for NPCs, items, or other things that don't have one already. The winners will be the three people who submit approved screenshots for the greatest number of entries. Win what, you ask? First prize – Acer 22" Widescreen LCD Monitor Second prize – BFG GeForce 7900 GS Video Card Third prize – Logitech MX518 Optical Gaming Mouse That's some fairly serious prizes. Note that dressing room and model viewer screenshots are disallowed. There are a few other tips and rules for the contest on Wowhead's contest page. I'm pretty excited about this one; it sounds like a lot of fun hunting down things and taking photos of them. (But then again, I loved Pokémon Snap, too.) The contest started at 12:01 AM EST yesterday, and runs until 11:59 PM EST on Tuesday, September 11. So get snapping![image via this excellent Dark Legacy comic]
New database site: WoWDigger
For those of you who are still a little uncomfortable about Wowhead, here's a new alternative. By IncGamers, the people behind the venerable WorldofWar.net, WoWDigger aims to fulfill your databse needs and then some:WoWDigger is not only a World of Warcraft game database, but also a place where your character matters. Upload your character and see your recipes, quest log, bank, talents and more!. Choose what information you share with your friends, the WoW community or your guild!IncGamers has always been staunchly anti-RMT (real money transfer), so you don't have to worry about that when using their sites; they promise that "There will be at no point gold selling adverts or any affilition to gold selling on WoWDigger." And with "choose what information you share..." in their description, they seem to be taking a bit of a jab at the Armory, with its privacy concerns. Furthermore, they are trying to keep the site banner-free:As you may have noticed the site contains no banners. We intend to keep the site this way as best we can with the backing of the community. If you like the site and use it you can help the dev team by pressing the donate button on the right, this will go to cover server hosting costs. We know such a site like this is resource hungry but are going to do our best to keep the site ad free. Overall it looks like a decent site; a little bare-bones in terms of content at the moment, of course, because it just started, but once it gets off the ground it might provide a nice alternative to the Affinity triad. Personally, I plan to still use Wowhead (due to design, speed, and content), but more options never hurt. [via Into the Web]
Wowhead on the acquisition
This is what I like to see. Wowhead, as promised, posted a much more detailed page on their acquisition by (as they put it) the ZAM network. According to Tim "Evilseed" Sullivan, Wowhead's CEO, "[ZAM] have no relation with IGE. They are all about content and building communities and tools to help gamers, just like what we've done with Wowhead." A very interesting Q&A follows; here are the bits that answer the questions that I've been most concerned about:Q: Didn't you sell to a bunch of gold sellers?Tim: Nope, and that would have been a deal killer. The ZAM guys are an independent content business, and they don't promote RMT (Real Money Trade). Period. You will never see gold ads on Wowhead or their other ZAM sites. We made sure that was true before proceeding.Q: What is the deal with Affinity Media? Why all the secrecy?John [Maffei, president of ZAM]: Affinity Media is a privately held company with gaming assets that operate independently. This includes the ZAM Network. The reason we are not more forthcoming in what the company owns and does it there are a lot of moving pieces. At one point, the company owned IGE but it was sold this spring. It was a private transaction so we can't reveal details. As head of the content network, I was thrilled we sold.
Wowhead sold for $1M? Update: Confirmed.
var digg_url = 'http://digg.com/pc_games/Wowhead_sold_for_1_million'; We're still waiting for official confirmation on this, but word is that Wowhead, my favorite WoW database, was just sold to Affinity Media for around $1 million. The source claims to have worked at IGE back in the day, so he seems somewhat credible. The rub here is that Affinity Media used to own IGE, the notorious gold dealing empire, but according to this Gamasutra interview from a few weeks ago, they sold IGE, and "If you go to any of our sites, you'll never see a gold-selling ad." Affinity Media also owns Thottbot and Allakhazam, so if this rumor of Wowhead acquisition is correct, they will now own all three of the major databases. So far we have no official confirmation of this story; WoW Insider is trying to reach both Wowhead and Affinity Media for comment. But if the rumors are true, our supposed last refuge against gold sellers may have just been sold.[ Thanks, Ahmed! ]Update: Wowhead has posted a confirmation on their front page and says that since IGE is "out of the picture," they decided to join Affinity Media's ZAM content network. They also promise more information later today.
