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Odin the All-Father's Diablo 3 account hacked
Someone has had the audacity to hack Odin's account, and He is demanding that Blizzard restore His items immediately. In a post on the Diablo III general discussion forums, Odin insists that not only should His items and gold be returned immediately but also that a human sacrifice be performed. He blames Blizzard for giving his data away, since his system is completely secure, and therefore it must follow the rules, else be cursed. Here's an excerpt of the All-Father's complaint: So I'm Odin, the All-Father; I am Iron Grim, the One-Eyed. I'm the Longbeard, Lord of Ghosts, Wise One... you get the idea. My gaming rig is engraved with protective runes, and my firewall is a wall manned by Heimdell, who sees and hears any threat to the residents of Asgard. Every day at sunrise, my entire system is massaged with a poultice of angelica, burdock, comfrey, dill, and moss provided by Eir while a healing galdr is chanted over it. My ISP is two ravens that bring me news of all the happenings in the world and is always 100% stable and secure, personally watched over by the birds. Don't ask me how they do it; I'm not spending another day on that damn tree just to find out. It's powered by human sacrifice, although I have no idea how this could be relevant; I've just seen others with the same problem posting it. Given that personal info has never been leaked by Blizzard before, it seems unlikely the hackers got the All-Father's info from anywhere but Him or one of his subjects on Asgard. He describes a seemingly impenetrable system, however, protected by magic, herbs and faithful creatures. Someone with access to His computer must have responded to a phishing email or was otherwise careless with His login info.
EU fansites giving away Mists of Pandaria beta keys
If you're living in Europe and waiting patiently (or even not so patiently) for an invite to the beta for Mists of Pandaria, then consider these fansites -- for they are just giving them away. CM Nakatoir posted the list of participating fansites with stashes of keys to give away on the forums, making it all the easier for you to find and enter as many as you can. There are also threads linked for German, Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian players, with a French thread on the way. So get out there and enter some sweepstakes. There's nothing to lose and a possible Mists of Pandaria beta slot to win. If you're an annual pass subscriber, however, you should already have access to the beta. Just head over to your Battle.net account page and check for the Mists of Pandaria beta account. From there, you can download the client and log in to start experiencing all the beta fun. It's open warfare between Alliance and Horde in Mists of Pandaria, World of Warcraft's next expansion. Jump into five new levels with new talents and class mechanics, try the new monk class, and create a pandaren character to ally with either Horde or Alliance. Look for expansion basics in our Mists FAQ, or dig into our spring press event coverage for more details!
Guild Wars 2 gets all social before the beta weekend [Updated]
There's no shortage of players waiting eagerly to jump into Guild Wars 2 beta testing this weekend, but that's still several days away. It's very possible that you really need a steady shot of Tyria a little earlier than that. Fortunately for you, there are options open as the community team pushes interaction in a big way. The game's Facebook page is the center of a rather art-centric promotion: As the page nears half a million Likes, the team is releasing a new piece of art for every 10,000 new fans. Not your cup of tea? That's all right, as the team has also set up a Pinterest page to show off the best game-related fan projects. There are also boards set up on the same page where you can show off screenshots of each race, whether you're opting for the diminutive Asura or the towering Norn. It's a good chance for everyone to get involved in the Guild Wars 2 community before the weekend gets underway, even if it won't make the test start any faster. [Updated with clarification regarding the picture forums.]
Diablo 3 beta servers go down for good on May 1
The Diablo 3 beta servers, running on and off for testing since last September, are coming down for good on May 1. At that point, all of the characters currently in the game will disappear forever. You'll be able to being the full quest anew when when Diablo 3 launches on May 15.The forums for the game are also being locked down. To post there after May 1, you'll need to either have pre-purchased Diablo 3, or have an active StarCraft 2 or World of Warcraft account. So, if you have complaints about Diablo 3 but don't meet that criteria, you'll have to go, oh, you know, anywhere else on the internet.
Flameseeker Chronicles: Setting up for success
Community Team Lead Martin Kerstein updated the ArenaNet blog a few days ago with some information about his team's plans for the Guild Wars 2 community. The two big bits of news were that there will be official forums (to the evident skepticism of the Guild Wars 2 Guru mods) and there will not be a typical fan site program. The most interesting bit, to me, is this: "Our goal is to use a scalable, inclusive ecosystem instead of a rigid fan site program that doesn't scale well and excludes large parts of the fan base." What I'm hoping this means is that the team members are opening themselves up to a lot more flexibility in which fan sites they support. This is great if it means that small blogs and niche communities can be more easily promoted; we already see this happening, as the Guild Wars 2 twitter feed is usually full of retweets pointing out various fan creations and posts. The flip side of this is equally true. In his article, Kerstein talks about wanting to promote a mature and helpful community, so hopefully the lack of a rigid structure in fan site support means the team members don't feel pressured to include and support toxic communities just because they've hit standardized milestones. I have high hopes for this scalable community engagement style, and I hope to see it pay off for a lot of smaller fan sites and projects. If the folks at ArenaNet want to demand more of the quality of their community, more power to 'em.
The glyph of the future
Variations on the glyph system are a subject I think about all the time. I have ever since Path of the Titans was announced and then scrapped. I understand why it was scrapped, but it did disappoint me. It sounded cool, and I wanted to play around with the options it would provide. Recently, forum poster Madcapmcgee has asked all of us what kind of glyphs we might want to see introduced to the current system. Do we want cosmetic glyphs? If so, what would we want? Vanity glyphs? Quality of life glyphs with no direct effect on combat? And what do we want for our prime and major glyphs? For myself, I want a glyph that lets me dual wield polearms with Titan's Grip. I have a Hellreaver, and dang it, I want to swing two of those beasts around. (Well, technically, I have a Kiril, but transmogrification means I get to have a Hellreaver.) I'd also like to see a glyph that reduces the cooldown on Heroic Leap out of combat so that I could use it like Blink, a glyph that caused me to grow every time I hit an enraged state (which is why I grabbed that Kiril that was on the DE chopping block, frankly), and finally, I'm dying for a glyph that makes Mortal Strike automatically add the Rend effect so that I never have to Rend manually again. What do you, the viewers at home, think? What glyphs do you want to see in... the future!?!? (Imagine this in my best Criswell impression.) World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria is the next expansion, raising the level cap to 90, introducing a brand new talent system, and bringing forth the long-lost pandaren race to both Horde and Alliance. Check out the trailer and follow us for all the latest MoP news!
Winners and losers of Cataclysm
Forum poster Breccia put a lot of thought into his list of the top 10 winners and top 10 losers of Cataclysm. I don't agree with all of his choices, but I definitely agree with what he has to say about Neptulon being one of the losers -- we need a resolution of that storyline and soon. It got me thinking about who I'd consider the winners and losers of this expansion. The status quo got a pretty serious shake-up in Cataclysm, and a lot of fortunes were changed for good or ill. Personally, I really think the worgen took it on the chin this expansion. Not only is the female model lacking (in my opinion) compared to the original preview (that semi-permanent snarly and atrophied muzzle needs to be redesigned badly), but worgen players got to see their cool storyline concluded Horde-side while they were traipsing around in the night elf starting zones. Even today, most of Gilneas is a ghost zone. I love the worgen, and I really hope we get to see them get more involved in Mists. As for winners, I'd definitely put Velen up there as a stealth winner. While the draenei still haven't been as active as I'd like, the quest in the Swamp of Sorrows where Velen appears is a huge lore goldmine for the future. Not only does Velen spell out the true nature of the conflict at hand, he sets the stage for a war so vast and terrible it makes all previous struggles on Azeroth pale to insignificance. He also flat out corrects the idea that the Light hates the broken, showing that it's the draenei themselves who have a touch of bigotry in their souls to conquer. I could go on all day, but it's more interesting to see what you think. Winners and losers of this expansion? What are your choices? World of Warcraft: Cataclysm has destroyed Azeroth as we know it; nothing is the same! In WoW Insider's Guide to Cataclysm, you can find out everything you need to know about WoW's third expansion, from leveling up a new goblin or worgen to breaking news and strategies on endgame play.
EVE Evolved: New tools for the community
Earlier this week, CCP Games released a much-needed complete overhaul of the official EVE Online website. Having been in operation for nine long years, the old website had become a mismatch of marketing information aimed at new players and tools for the existing player community. The overhaul split the page into two awesome websites, with a new community site to cater to existing players and an impressive new main page to attract future players. The main page uses HTML 5 to deliver incredible interactive views of the EVE Online galaxy and dozens of in-game ships right there on the website. The community website houses all of the news, devblogs, knowledgebase articles, fictional chronicles, and support tools that existing players use, but with a much neater layout than the old website. In web developer CCP Alice's recent In Development video, she revealed that the team would be working on new community tools following the launch of the new websites. With the community site completely de-cluttered, there's now room to incorporate a lot of the tools players want or currently use, opening up some interesting possibilities. In this week's EVE Evolved, I discuss the new EVE Online website and community portal and speculate on awesome new community tools we might possibly see in the future.
The Summoner's Guidebook: A community guide to League of Legends
Greetings, summoners, and welcome to the first installment of the Summoner's Guidebook! For a new player, the Guidebook is a one-stop-shop to gaining familiarity with the various elements of League of Legends. For the more advanced players, we'll also be covering ways to improve on weak areas of your play and how to deal with the toughest of matchups. I was a new player once, and I remember being extremely daunted by the number of things I needed to learn to be competitive in LoL. Although the journey from newbie to expert was long and difficult, I learned a lot about common mistakes and how to reduce them. If you're looking to step up your game or if you're just getting into the League, the Summoner's Guidebook is the place for you to learn without being treated like you're a noob. This week, we're going to cover the community resources available to you. There are a lot of websites dedicated to League of Legends, and it would be foolish to assume that this column is the only place to get advice on the game. If there's something I haven't covered yet or there's a topic I'm unfamiliar with, you can be sure that one of these places will have the info you're looking for. This article can't possibly cover all the League fansites on the internet (there are probably hundreds), but I can focus on the ones with the best information.
EverQuest Mac fans fight for survival; SOE responds
While many players are celebrating the announcement of EverQuest's upcoming free-to-play transition, there is one EQ community that was crushed by the news. The small but dedicated fanbase of EverQuest: Macintosh Edition found out that with F2P, EQMac and its one server would be sunsetted on the same date. EQMac fans have begun to stage a campaign to save their favorite game, but it looks like there will be no budging SOE's mind on the matter. SOE President John Smedley took to the forums today to answer specific questions about the shutdown. "It breaks my heart to have to do this," he laments, before admitting that it's a done deal. Smedley cites the fact that the codebase is so ancient that only one SOE programmer knows how to work it, the player population is too small, and SOE was never that "proud" of the version. However, Smedley promised that he will run a poll to see if there's enough interest in a Mac port of the current version of EverQuest. If the response is big enough, he says, the company will consider doing it. Meanwhile, the game will be available for current players free of charge until the March 29th shutdown. SOE has a celebration planned for its final hurrah. EQMac came out in 2003 and was unique for remaining "frozen in time" in the years since, receiving no further active development or expansions. We will be covering this game and its shutdown more in-depth in a future Game Archaeologist column, so stay tuned.
EVE Online website revamp detailed in new video devblog
EVE Online has undergone countless changes and iterations since its first release in 2003, with major graphics overhauls and new gameplay systems arriving every year. In contrast, the official EVE website hasn't changed much over the years. With background information, screenshots, video, forums and knowledgebase articles, the EVE website now juggles content designed for prospective players and existing community members alike. CCP aims to change all that with a complete overhaul that will split community tools like the forums, knowledgebase, and account management from marketing designed to attract players. In a new video devblog, web-developer CCP Alice shows off some of the features of EVE's brand new website. Built using HTML 5, the new page will feature a full built-in renderer able to show prospective players the EVE Online universe map and interactive renderings of every ship in the game. "Now that we have a better eveonline.com, the focus after this one is to focus on the community," says CCP Alice, hinting that new community tools will soon be on the way. In a follow-up devblog today, Community Manager CCP Guard confirmed that players will soon be able to start their own corporation forums hosted on CCP's servers. Check out the full video after the cut.
'This is Aperture' music video channels The Nightmare Before Christmas
This past holiday, while we were busy sipping eggnog and chorusing the neighbors with classic holiday tunes, a group of dedicated Steam forum members were creating an incredible Christmas music album featuring Valve characters. "Goodbye Christmas Caroline" spawned more than an album, though, as one especially holiday spirit-filled member then crafted an entire music video around one particular track."This is Aperture" takes the characters we've come to know and love fear from the world of Aperture Science and recasts them as singers in a magnificently dorky rendition of The Nightmare Before Christmas' "This is Halloween." Take a look at the rather impressive re-creation above and then compare it against the original just after the break! Consider it a late holiday gift from us to you, but, ya know, one that we totally didn't make.
Profanity filters, homophobic slurs, and Blizzard's shaky relationship with the LGBT community
Warning: This post may contain language that is offensive to some. Yesterday on the official World of Warcraft forums, a poster brought up the fact that the word "transsexual" gets censored by Blizzard's mature language filter. Almost immediately after, another poster brought up the fact that the word "homosexual" is censored as well. The obvious follow-up question has stirred a hornet's nest of controversy: Why are these considered bad words? Predictably, that forum thread quickly spun out of control. It was ultimately locked by a moderator, but not before Blizzard Community Manager Bashiok chimed in: "Transsexual" censored by filter We've reviewed our filter list and there are a few words there that should not be blocked as profanity; we'll be removing them in a future patch. source So case closed, right? Well ... hold on. Before we simply close the books on the matter, there are some important questions to be answered. Namely this: Why was "transsexual" censored in the first place?
Bring another game's items into WoW
Gnome warlock Shadowcog posted a fun thread on the World of Warcraft official community forums asking players to bring iconic items from other games into Azeroth. Shadowcog opened the discussion by citing the Magic Mirror from The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, one of my favorite games of all time. It got me nostalgic in all sorts of ways. Even Daxxarri got into the mix, looking to bring in the Snarks from the Half-Life series and draenei-crewed Battlecruisers appearing over the skies of Kalimdor. Oddly fitting, really. Personally, I would have gone with some of the ork creations from the Warhammer series, since I could see orcish and goblin technology coming together to create such monstrosities. Which items would you bring in from other games? What magical artifact or ancient relic from some distance universe would you want your WoW character to possess? (Thanks again to Shadowcog for an awesome post!)
"Ask Different" welcomes your Apple questions
Most of the people savvy enough to be reading an Apple tech blog are probably the ones who get asked a lot of computer-related questions by family and friends. Perhaps you provided tech support over the holidays. But what happens when you have a question? Who can you ask for help? My favorite spot for Apple Q&A is Ask Different, which is part of the Stack Exchange network of sites. I've only been using it for a few months, but unlike all of the other "help forums" I have used in the past, this is one I return to almost every day, because it's better. Most web forums are horribly ugly. Posts are crammed full of animated GIF signatures and a whole bunch of irrelevant information about the user. Many have huge distracting ads which are inserted in-between questions and answers. Discussion threads can go on for pages and pages, making it difficult to find any good information among the cruft. Ask Different is clean and straightforward: a question at the top of each page, and answers below. Good answers get voted up, bad answers get voted down. Users can have their own "avatar" but other than that, the only other information you'll see is "reputation data." More on that in a moment. More importantly, it is not a discussion forum, it is a place to ask questions and get answers, hopefully so that the next time someone has a similar question, they can find the page where it was asked and find the information they need. Most web forums are also notoriously horrible for the trolling, flame wars, and related nonsense. Ask Different has administrators and moderators who not only help keep order, they will even edit questions for clarity, as well as make suggestions on how questions can be improved. If a question is deemed off-topic, it is closed. The end result is a much nicer experience than any other forum I have ever used. When you first join the site, you will have only very basic privileges, such as asking or answering a question. As your reputation increases, you will gain the ability to do more things on the site. Your reputation data is posted alongside your question and answer. If you ask a good question, it will get voted up, and your "reputation" will increase. Provide a good answer, it too can be voted up (not only by the person who asked the question, but also by others who read it), and your reputation will increase. If you want to join Ask Different, you probably won't even have to make a new login. You can use your Gmail, Facebook, Yahoo, AOL, WordPress, Blogger, LiveJournal, or any other Open ID login. (If you want to make a separate Stack Exchange login, you can do that too.) Just head over to their login page and you can be up and running in a few minutes. (Note that Stack Exchange uses Gravatar for avatars, so if you want your own picture on your account, you'll need to connect it to a Gravatar account.) Your account will work across the entire Stack Exchange family of sites. Once you are there, take a look at questions with no official answer yet or post one of your own. With so many bad web forums out there, you might have given up on ever finding a useful one. Trust me, I understand, I use Google Chrome's personal blacklist to block search results from several of them. Ask Different is truly useful, and it will only get better with more people who are willing to share their knowledge. Also, just a little heads up that if you don't have an Ask Different/Stack Exchange account yet, you might want to get a head-start and set one up soon, because we have a little something planned for next week. All I can tell you right now is that it will only be for TUAW readers, and you'll need an account on Ask Different to be able to participate.
Valve: Any Half-Life 3 clues are 'community trolling the community'
So your friend heard from his friend who used to go out with a girl who was a cousin of a Valve developer that Half-Life 3 would be released as a Steam exclusive this March? Or maybe you just crawled across a convincing website which seemed to point to another, long-awaited iteration in the Half-Life series? Well bad news, friends: "You are being trolled." That's the word from Valve writer Chet Faliszek, who says on the Steam forums that "there is no ARG," and there are no official hints out there at all that a third Half-Life game is coming any time soon. We don't care how convincing that secret FTP that the guy on IRC told you about was: any Half-Life 3 rumors so far are completely unofficial, as great as that fan-made Portal short was. Then again, it would be just like Valve to say that an official ARG wasn't official, wouldn't it? Maybe they're just trying to hide the real story by saying it too is a fake! Conspiracy!
The Emperor is stuck in a queue? BioWare shall redouble its efforts!
Is it a wonderful problem to have when your MMO is so popular that everyone trying to crush through the door at the same time is causing painful queues? Or is it a problematic wonder? Either way, the BioWare live team has been struggling to keep up with demand for Star Wars: The Old Republic access -- but the team may be getting closer to winning the war on wait time. BioWare's Greg Zeschuk stopped by the forums to assure players that the company is "redoubling its efforts" in tackling the issue. As a result, players should already be seeing quicker access to SWTOR: We've also being doing our best to get every little bit of possible performance on our servers to increase capacity: We've "turned them up to 11" to do our very best to get you in and playing as quickly as possible. As a result - you should now be seeing significant improvement versus waiting times at the end of last week. The team is also working on a way to hold players' places in the wait queue in the event of a disconnect.
BioWare defends its decision to not have individual SWTOR server forums
With the launch of Star Wars: The Old Republic came a new and improved forum system for the community, and everyone lived happily ever after. Right? Yeah... not so much. It turns out that BioWare neglected to include individual server forums for its many, many, many shards, and this omission has rankled some players who were looking forward to talking amongst their new communities on the site. TOR-Talk got in touch with BioWare to ask about why the individual server forums were cut down to four ruleset forums. Senior Community Coordinator Allison Berryman says the decision was a matter of practicality as there would be too many forums and not enough moderators to go around: "Generally speaking, server forums for many MMOs tend to be largely un-moderated and can become unpleasant to visit." Instead, BioWare hopes that server communities create and moderate their own server-specific sites and forums. "This is also a great opportunity for the community to come together in their own ways – on fan sites and through other resources," Barryman said. "Of course, we want people to visit the official forums, and will use them to provide information that's of specific interest to the community, but we also love to see the community coming up with cool stuff on their own."
BioWare updates fans on staggered SWTOR launch
If you're still not in Star Wars: The Old Republic's early access phase, you're not alone. In fact, BioWare's Stephen Reid took to the forums today to update impatient fans on just how the staggered pre-launch will continue to roll out over the next few days: Today, we invited people who had pre-ordered up to the very beginning of October (roughly). Tomorrow, we're going to be inviting the same number of people again; that will take us up to the last week or so of November. On Friday, we'll be inviting even more, and we'll give you an update on that tomorrow. You'll see more servers coming online tomorrow, and almost certainly there will be some queuing. That was always expected. As a reminder, our plan here is to maintain healthy server populations post launch, and during the excitement of launch that will mean queues. That said, we'll be working hard to keep those queues reasonable. That's good news for those who pre-ordered late and who otherwise might have thought they'd have a much longer wait.
Lock and (re)load: BioWare preps us for The Old Republic's launch
With 15 days to go before Star Wars: The Old Republic's launch, it doesn't seem like there's much time to get everything stocked and ready before the year's biggest release happens. Fortunately, BioWare's helping us to run down the preparation list with a series of informative forum posts. First on the list is to make sure that SWTOR players have the latest version of the client installed on their computers. BioWare says that if you played the game prior to November 25th, you'll probably need to install a completely new client; if you played since, you should be good. There are instructions on the forums as to how you can check which version you have. Pre-orders are wondering about early access, which BioWare says is the same between the three editions of the game -- it only matters when you added your pre-order code, not which edition you purchased. More information about the early access program is coming later this week. Finally, BioWare is preparing to make major changes to SWTOR's forums following a December 10th outage, during which all posts and PMs will be erased (as will infractions!). New forums, including those covering crew skills, story, lore and PvP, will be added, and guild forums will be expanded significantly. Those just starting to learn about the game will appreciate the new player help forum and community blog that's coming with the update.
