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The Lawbringer: Mail bag 11
Pop law abounds in The Lawbringer, your weekly dose of WoW, the law, video games and the MMO genre. Mathew McCurley takes you through the world running parallel to the games we love and enjoy, full of rules, regulations, and esoteroic topics that slip through the cracks. I'll beat this dead horse until it rains horse pieces -- thank you all so much for coming out to the WoW Insider Show live podcast at PAX East. There was a lot of love in that room, especially for Lawbringer, which was a pleasant surprise. More people asked me about specific Lawbringer topics than anything else I write about, so you all must be enjoying something going on here. Speaking of you, I've got a couple of emails that you sent in that I'd like to answer. Reading your reactions and opinions about the subjects of these articles is great in the comments, since there is instant gratification, but there is something about the delayed reaction and thoughtfulness of an email. I may not agree with you -- I usually don't agree with anyone, much less myself -- but I'll read what you've got to say.
The Lawbringer: Mailbag 10
Pop law abounds in The Lawbringer, your weekly dose of WoW, the law, video games and the MMO genre. Mathew McCurley takes you through the world running parallel to the games we love and enjoy, full of rules, regulations, and esoteroic topics that slip through the cracks. With Mists of Pandaria information on the horizon, players are clamoring for release dates, beta information, and everything in between. People just want something, anything, to tide them over. How about The Lawbringer? We're talking some Mists beta and the Diablo real money auction house. Won't you join us? Mailbags are fun because the discussion topics come to me. Readers always have some great questions, and I'm more than happy to delve into an answer or two. This week's questions are ones that I get frequently and, with the recent couple of weeks' being newsworthy and fun, emails sometimes get left in the mud. Well, let's answer some emails. Our first Lawbringer email comes from Toro, who wants to know what's up with Mists of Pandaria beta access that is guaranteed through subscription to the WoW Annual pass:
The Lawbringer: Mailbag 7.0
Pop law abounds in The Lawbringer, your weekly dose of WoW, the law, video games and the MMO genre. Mathew McCurley takes you through the world running parallel to the games we love and enjoy, full of rules, regulations, pitfalls and traps. How about you hang out with us as we discuss some of the more esoteric aspects of the games we love to play? Wow! Did you see all those cool announcements and awesome World of Warcraft news items that we are currently reporting on? Me too. I'm writing this article much earlier than BlizzCon, so you'll have to excuse my lack of foresight. How about we mailbag us some Lawbringer questions? Albert wants to know what's up with gold sellers stealing gold and why Blizzard can't just track it and remove it. Seems simple, right? Hello, love your column. I was wondering if you can explain something. When these gold sellers hack someone's account and move their gold, can't blizzard track where the gold is going and just claim it? I mean i assume they have the tools to do anything in game, they are god. Seems simple enough to do, i got hacked, see where gold went, take it back. do it for a few months and done. am i missing something? Thanks in advance, Albert Thank you for the email, Albert. It probably is not that tough to track currency moves and associated transactions, but it's really about the volume of text and transactions that go on at any given time. It must be hell to search through all the records to find this stuff, even if you know the name and server that people are on.
Addon Spotlight: A very mailbag episode
Each week, WoW Insider's Mathew McCurley brings you a fresh look at reader-submitted UIs as well as Addon Spotlight, which focuses on the backbone of the WoW gameplay experience: the user interface. Everything from bags to bars, buttons to DPS meters and beyond -- your addons folder will never be the same. Oh, hi. There have been so many mailbag questions lately that it might be a good idea to just, you know, get them all out of the way in one shot. You guys love sending me in questions! If you've got a question for Addon Spotlight, send it on over to mat@wowinsider.com and hopefully I can get to your question. There will be addon recommendations. There will be heartbreak and sadness. There will be reunions and jubilation. So many emotions are running through me right now. A mighty burden Hey Mat, I know you dislike Carbonite, and it took me a long time to understand why, but I get it now. It's huge and slows down my computer, and they don't make their code easy for other addon authors to use. I've decided to not use it anymore, but there are a few things I really, really miss about it! Top on the list is the infinite scroll and sizing of the map and its google earth type layer. I also really liked being able to right click the map to place a "go to" waypoint. Finally, I miss the "Punks" feature that alerts me when an enemy player is nearby and also puts a dot on the minimap with the player's approximate location and time last seen. Everything else it does that I like I've found replacement addons to use, and I like that I'm using less memory than with Carbonite. I'm also having a lot fewer conflicts with my other mods. Are there any addons out there that can give me back the three features outlined above? Thanks for any help you can give me! Ann Thanks for the email, Ann. Carbonite is one of those addons that has its heart in the right place but overstays its welcome very quickly, like relatives in your living room or that raider who holds down his push-to-talk button constantly. The bloat you feel with Carbonite is heavy, it's true. All of the features that you describe, like the map scaling and that Google Earth layer, are the ones causing you the bloat and slowness. That's the problem.
Addon Spotlight: 4.2 champions and troublemakers
Each week, WoW Insider brings you a fresh look at reader-submitted UIs as well as Addon Spotlight, which focuses on the backbone of the WoW gameplay experience: the user interface. Everything from bags to bars, buttons to DPS meters and beyond -- your addons folder will never be the same. Patch day for 4.2, Rage of the Firelands, has come and gone. The world, surprisingly, did not end -- well, end again, I guess, since the cataclysm and all. Patch 4.2 went surprisingly well, with only a few issues with a couple addons, highlighting the fact that the changes made to the WoW interface did not catch most addon authors off guard and many addons didn't even need an update to stay solid. So today, we're going to look at the champions and troublemakers from patch 4.2, Rage of the Firelands. Most addons stood the test of patch day, easily being integrated back into our UIs with the simple click of the "load out of date addons" button. We had a few troublemakers, but nothing that prevented the fall of raiding civilization like the patch 4.1 changes to scrolling combat text and damage parsers ... although there were a few snafus.
Gold Capped: Competition in tailoring
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Basil "Euripides" Berntsen aims to show you how to make money on the auction house. Email Basil with your questions, comments, or hate mail! This week's community post is the most recent recording of the weekly JMTC's meeting. I was invited to attend this one and answer a couple of questions. I got an email from Aralo on Altar of Storms recently that I wanted to share. I know cloth is not what a person would call a high profit market. It's cut more often then gems, skinned more than leather, melted down more than ore, and well you know where all these puns go. In Wrath on my sever, I was able to (haphazardly at least) able to maintain a steady hold on the more demanded markets. In Cataclysm, though, I'm struggling to stay afloat. Embersilk is particularly rough. I bring this up because never have I seen you really talk cloth that was not a cooldown. Do you have any ideas on how to stay afloat on threads or maybe some add-ons other than auctioneer to help build and maintain my market? Admittedly, part of the reason I want to share this is all the awesome puns. Secondly, I do have a few answers. I'll be writing up a proper tailoring guide next, I promise, but in the meantime, I want to talk about that "steady hold" on the market.
This week on The MMO Report
This week on The MMO Report, Casey Schreiner starts things off with a bang by highlighting Undead Labs' zombie MMO-in-the-making and a spectacularly polarizing quote by developer Richard Foge that first broke right here on Massively. Moving right along, Casey takes a look at Star Wars: The Old Republic's recently announced PvP Warzones, scenario-based battles that will see players fighting for control over various objectives. He also spends a segment on the drama surrounding All Points Bulletin -- or more accurately -- its firesale. The new sci-fi MMOFPS Genesis A.D. also gets a mention, and its shiny trailer grabs the spotlight for a few precious seconds. Finally, the episode pays a bit of lip service to Blizzard's charitable endeavors via the Moonkin hatchling promotion and finishes things off with a death-defying dive into the nether regions of Uncle Casey's mailbag. Check out the full episode after the cut, and if you're looking for past episodes of The MMO Report, head over to G4TV.
Addon Spotlight: Grab bag 2
Addon Spotlight focuses on the backbone of the WoW gameplay experience: the user interface. Everything from bags to bars, buttons to DPS meters and beyond -- your addons folder will never be the same. This week, raaaaaaandom addons! You are cordially invited to another wonderful Addon Spotlight Grab bag extravaganza! Next week, I'll be talking about the Cataclysm in-game ability notification system that Blizzard is working on. That would have been this week, if my beta wasn't screwing up and I didn't get all the pictures and potentially video required for a proper post for you fine readers. Instead, you get a grab bag of fun, useful and downright crucial addons that might not be the biggest guys of the bunch, but they definitely do ... something. Plus, "grab bag" is fun to say.
AddOn Spotlight: TellMeWhen
Addon Spotlight focuses on the backbone of the WoW gameplay experience: the user interface. We'll look at everything from bags to bars, buttons to DPS meters and beyond -- your interface folder will never be the same! This week, TellMeWhen tells you when to do something, because you were too busy reading illicit tells or drawing male anatomy with AVR all over Dalaran. Welcome, friends! Since the Cataclysm friends and family hoo-hah was announced, all anyone wants to talk about is the future. "Future this" and "Deathwing that." Enough! Live your lives in the moment. What better way to live in the moment than have an addon help you know when things will be ready? TellMeWhen might be able to help you.
Anti-Aliased: The mailbag edition
Well hello there intrepid Massively readers! This week, instead of my usual selection of complaints crammed into the tight space of a single column, I've decided to do something different. This Monday, I opened up a call for questions on anything MMO related on the Massively Facebook fan page, the Massively Twitter, and my own personal Twitter. You guys didn't disappoint, and you certainly sent me more than a few intriguing e-mails.So, for the past three days, I've been preparing responses to some of the questions that landed in my inbox. What did intrepid readers ask me to answer? Whose e-mails did I select from the pile of text I received? What is the airspeed of an African Swallow? These and many other questions (except that swallow one, that one's been done to death, go Google it or something) shall be answered after the break! Thundercats, hoooooooooo!
Rumor: Smash Bros and Metroid Prime press conference coming soon?
The clues are beginning to come together: there's a countdown on the official site of Super Smash Bros. Brawl, and some rumblings of Metroid Prime 3: Corruption news coming around May 20th. In this month once reserved for the mighty E3, it's been quite some time since Nintendo has held a major press conference. Finally, good 'ol Matt has made it perfectly clear in a recent IGN Mailbag: he's on his way to Seattle next week for some mysterious reason, and it's not for Starbucks.About freakin' time, Nintendo. For a company still claiming that the big three will release in 2007, they've been awfully tight-lipped about the impending trio. We look forward to bringing you some surely awesome news coming next week ... uh, you know, assuming that this actually happens.
