mbazeroth
Latest
Silvermoon University holds class in Azeroth
Silvermoon Unversity is an interesting little guild-- they go above and beyond the call of RPing over on Twisting Nether. The guild is run as a real university inside Azeroth. Instead of guild officers, they have "Instructors," new guildies are called Freshmen, and so on. "Higher education meets the Horde" is their motto. That's great.And it all translates into guild activities, too-- they take field trips in different subjects (right now, on their homepage, they have a piece of news up about a "marine biology" trip off the coast of Theramore), and apparently the people in their "School of Literature and Art" actually write and perform plays, too. If you look elsewhere on their site, you can even find a "yearbook," complete with quotes, "skills" (professions), and a place of birth for each character.Very interesting. Seems a little wacky to me, but lots of their characters haven't reached 70 yet, which means they must be getting a lot out of this roleplaying, enough to keep them from actually playing the game itself.[ via a slowly reawakening MBAzeroth ]
April's fooled? Players rubbed the wrong way
As you probably figured out on Friday, I love April Fool's Day (yes, I posted the joke on Friday, but it was Phat Loot Phriday, and if I'd posted it yesterday, no one would have fallen for it! Lots of people did, though, and I'm glad everyone liked it so much-- shout out to my good friend Tamzarian on Thunderhorn for coming up with the idea). But even though I love not believing anything I read on April 1st, there is a case to be made that it's getting a little out of hand. Everyone on the Internet is lying through their teeth around this time every year.And some people are a little miffed. While most players enjoyed the CM/poster role-reversal on the forums (which spawned Tseric's now immortal phrase "lol wut?"), not everybody did. A few players say that Blizzard is outright making fun of their customers. Jonas over at MBAzeroth says the same thing: that the CMs are calling players, some of whom have real concerns about their gameplay experience, "trolls." What if, after waiting for twenty minutes in the grocery store line, the cashier made fun of you when you walked up to check out?Now personally, I think that's a load of hooey. Blizzard is responding to player concerns as best they can, and no one can keep everyone happy all of the time. And even if Blizzard is making fun of their customers, it's an April Fool's Day joke on a videogame forum. Have a sense of humor, guys. As I said yesterday, the best part of the whole "blue for a day" joke wasn't when the CMs made fun of the players, it was when the players made fun of the CMs by parroting their own words back at them.I won't tell anyone what's funny, though-- if being fooled isn't your thing, you'll just have to turn the computer off next year and come back on April 2nd. And if you think Blizzard is laughing at their customers instead of listening to them, quitting the game is still completely free. Because for some people, April Fool's is serious business.
Culture of terror seeps into WoW
I believe it was George Jellinek who said, "The history of a people is found in its videogames." Err, wait, maybe that was something else. At any rate, it's true that the entertainment of a people reflects its culture, and so it might come as no surprise that twice in the past few days a couple of real-life mashups have appeared around the WoW community.First, MBAzeroth continues it's Daily Blink series with a story that the Alliance has actually invaded Canada. Apparently, the Horde insurgents found there pushed them over the line, and despite the protests of gamers, Katrina Prestor and her armies are taking over the Great White North.With good reason, maybe, because this forum post tells a mashup story of an Orc arrested on suspicion of creating a nuclear bomb. Talho reports that a 70 Orc was caught mining Uranium Ore (at a skill much higher than 375), and using tradeskill alts and Goblin Engineers to assemble a bomb outside Ironforge. The Chinese are even involved-- apparently they were assisting with farming materials for the weapon. President Bush, says Talho, has dispatched two 25-man PvP raids in retaliation.At a time when advertisements for a cartoon are causing bomb scares in Boston, it's interesting that the mood of our time is even seeping into this game we play.
Players deal with even more patch bugs
Bugs aplenty in 2.0.3. We mentioned a few yesterday, including the raid promotion issues and the disappearing target frame issues, but players keep finding more.Peridoc from Daggerspine has collected a bunch of them, including the ones above, delays on some characters in the loading screen, and alignment on the Battlegrounds score sheet.Lots of people (including our good commenters) are mentioning that icons have gone all wacky everywhere-- some icons have completely disappeared and some just show the wrong thing. Some textures have messed up, too. Blizzard is collecting the issues here, along with video card specs, which means it's probably a driver problem-- upgrading the drivers on your videocard wouldn't hurt. If you've got an Nvidia, you can get those here. Just know that it is being worked on.Finally, MBAzeroth (and some more commenters) have said there's a problem in AV (and, I believe AB): flags can be capped from many yards away. Obviously, that makes defense pretty unmanageable. Blizzard knows about the issue, and is, as always, working on it.If you've got more bugs, you can include them below, but don't forget to drop them on Blizzard's tech support site, too-- the quicker they know about them, the quicker we'll see them fixed. Someone said the target frame thing was a problem with CTRaid, so updating addons wouldn't hurt, but most of these are real bugs (I'm guessing they have to do with little upgrades to the actual game engine for the expansion, but that's just a guess). At any rate, when you head out into Azeroth, be ready with your bugspray.
Clueless man plays WoW, writes about it for the media
I think MBAzeroth is right, this has to be the most clueless, uninformed piece of junk journalism ever written about World of Warcraft. And I'm including the Australian video.You've gotta read this thing-- I don't think I could make up something so out of touch. And World of Warcraft is the granddaddy of online communities. On one hand, it's a sprawling, seamless fantasy, where you choose an avatar -- a rogue, fighter, Mage -- and go forth in this virtual world to hack, slash and maim your way to glory. On the other hand, it's supremely social. Players band together, chatting incessantly. They hook up for virtual drinks at the inn, share a slab of wild boar meat. They dance, they have picnics in the woods, they even share a bed on occasion. But do they love? That's exactly what I aimed to find out in my social experiment - without crossing that fine line into creepiness, of course. It goes without saying that the age range can be anywhere from 10 to 110 in the virtualverse. And gender identification is notoriously spotty. The idea is no more ambitious than to connect with someone in cyberspace. So I dress my online persona for success, a slick sorcerer in a long blue robe, flowing Magely locks, and, of course, nice shoes. Footwear, I'm told, proclaims the man. I name my avatar Prufrock -- and wade into Warcraft. There are dozens of people running around the entry point, the old stone abbey, and chatting and obviously getting adjusted to the control scheme. "Yay! I got my Voidwalker!" some warrior declares in the general chat window that runs along the bottom of the screen. He is, I assume, referring to some fancy piece of equipment earned in battle."Share a bed"? "Fighter"? And don't even get me started on the warrior/ voidwalker thing.MBAzeroth thinks he thinks it's a dating service (and not a hack and slash), and they might not be wrong. But the craziest thing is that this guy is supposed to be a videogames journalist. He's played with a PS3, for Thrall's sake! How can you possibly be a gamer, and yet so completely clueless about what WoW is?Of course, there is the possibility that he's trying to be funny. For someone that names their character after a T.S. Eliot poem (about a clueless loser--- oh, the irony), maybe this is what passes for a joke.
Socialtext announces press conference inside WoW
MBAzeroth points us to what might be a first in the World of Warcraft: Socialtext, headed up by CEO Ross Mayfield (a.k.a. Kalevipoeg of We Know on Eitrigg-A) is planning to hold Azeroth's first ever press conference. On December 1st, 5pm server time in Goldshire, Socialtext is going to take questions from players in the game. About what, we have no idea, but considering that Second Life has been getting all the marketing attention lately, it's interesting to see a company trying to mesh the real world with WoW.If that's what they're doing, that is. Socialtext's site has no announcement about a December 1st press conference anywhere on their blog, and Mayfield's "announcement" of the conference includes more than a few jokes-- no ninjas allowed, "questions will only be taken from journalists in PVP mode," and a link to Project Azeroth (for those Hordies who might be a little confused by all the Common going around). I'm not quite convinced this is a serious commercial entry into Azeroth-- it could just be a dig at companies like Dell who "hold press conferences" in communities like Second Life without actually incorporating the community they're entering. The guys at We Know, umm, "know" Warcraft, and it could be they're suggesting holding a press conference isn't possible (especially not in Stormwind-- you should hold it somewhere fun like on a run through Deadmines, guys).But you never know-- the only way to be sure will be to log into Eitrigg on December 1st and see what you can find in Goldshire. Mayfield's announcement does promise "those that survive the experience will gain 1 gold piece and a Socialtext tabard" (whatever that is), so it could be a money-making opportunity for both parties, in the real and the virtual world.
