Eric Vice

Gaming By Eric Vice

Gold farmers try to take their game onto guild web sites

Last week I wrote about my harrowing experience of finding a gold farmer in one of my instant messaging windows. Apparently somebody "in one of those countries" (I'm slapped on the wrist every time I single-out China) must have swallowed a creativity pill. Just when I thought there was nothing new on the horizon, Aleeyah from Livejournal posted an article -- complete with screenshot -- of an odd in-game e-mail that was received from someone we can fairly safely assume is in the professional gold farming business.The written English in the in-game message is nearly bad enough to send one of my editors into a seizure. It's almost bad enough you can't understand it at all. The bare essentials that I can (barely) glean from the message is that the farmers are now offering gold to guilds in exchange for advertising.Why would they do this? As I said in my last article on this subject, I think they're losing on the home front. I think their current marketing techniques are not bringing the level of revenue that they want. I think more and more people are discovering just how easy it is to right-click a spammer when they're checking their mail, silence the spam, and have the feel-good feeling of knowing they've done something right for their community. I know I do it all the time. I won't go as far as to call Blizzard's anti-spam tactics a flourishing success, but as the old saying goes "If you can't beat 'em, wear 'em down," and I think that's exactly what is starting to happen.So if real-money transactions are frowned upon by Blizzard and prosecuted by Blizzard, why wouldn't they just try and move their advertising medium to neutral ground? Sure, there are lots of guilds that will have nothing to do with selling their corporate souls to the devil in this manner. You can rest assured however that there are also lots that would jump at an opportunity like this that could pay for all their bank tabs for nothing more than a measly advertisement on their guild web site. It does bring up the interesting question however, of whether a guild that supported a gold farming business financially could potentially face retribution from Blizzard. While I can't see a guild getting banned en masse for this, it would sure be a wakeup call if such a guild logged in to find their tag gone along with all their guild bank slots and contents.Does this mean that the spamming around the Ironforge and Orgrimmar mailboxes is going to let up? Not likely, or at least not very much. It just means "these people" have found yet another way to devastate our server economies for their own profit.

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Gaming By Eric Vice

The evolution of the gold farming industry

It's a rare event when I wake up, walk to the computer, yawn, and think to myself what I could possibly write about only to have an article walk up to me, sit in my lap, and cuddle. Today it happened.We've all seen what I call the evolution of spam in-game. First it was just straight tell spam. Blizzard fixed that. Then it was group spam. Now it seems gold farmers have taken to just sitting in the capital cities and screaming their lungs off until they get reported and/or zapped by a GM.I think the reporting mechanism is starting to get to them though. Every time they lose an account (when it's reported) they have to make a new one. In the scope of the money they're making it's really not a big deal, but it's tedious repetition and I saw the first signs this morning that they've shifted their focus and are moving to more aggressive tactics.I fired up Adium (my Mac instant messenger) and was immediately greeted by a request for contact authorization. I'll stop here for a moment so you can gasp, because what happened after this is exactly what you think. I looked at the address that was requesting authentication and it didn't really ring a bell. I looked at the display picture and saw a cropped screenshot of two blood elves staring back at me. I reasoned that it had to be someone from my guild, even though I wasn't sure who. I accepted the request and the contact appeared on my contact list. As it turns out, they were online.

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Gaming By Eric Vice

Breakfast Topic: The stealth /gquit and other lost art forms

If a guild mate logs in at an hour when most of the guild is sleeping (or simply nobody is around) and /gquits, is it a stealth /gquit?Amanna over at Adventures in Azeroth (who I have to wonder might be the first appliance-spec druid judging by the name) asks this question after having done this exact thing. Many times over the past couple of years I have been tempted to do this myself. There is always such a recoil when you leave a guild, even if you try to take the high road and make it as drama-free as possible. No matter how many people there may be that irritate you in any given guild, there are always two or three -- or twelve -- that really like you and don't want you to go. Thus, your planned drama-free departure is suddenly less drama-free.How can you get out of a guild and make a clean break? Have you ever performed the stealth /gquit personally? Was it successful?(And yes, I watched Mr. Deeds the other day, and it was foremost in my mind when I created the accompanying picture. Does it show?)

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Gaming By Eric Vice

AddOns for the beginning player

There isn't a web site on the planet that loves it's readers more than WoW Insider does. So when Brenda from Florida wrote to us and told us how much she loved World of Warcraft, and asked us for opinions on what "essential" add-ons she would need to get started, there was no choice but to respond and offer up this recap of addons for beginning players.There are hundreds of add-ons out there, and as your journey progresses through the game you will find new ones you like. This is just, as Baloo from The Jungle Book would say, the simple bear bare necessities.Lightheaded - Since they inflated the experience benefit in the last patch, using Lightheaded to quest brings experience so quickly it will make your head spin. Lightheaded adds quest information from the comments on the Wowhead.com database site to your quest log. All the information you would have to tab-out for is at your fingertips. I heartily recommend using Doublewide in concert with Lightheaded, which will put your quest log in two panes instead of one to make it fit more easily on the screen. It's like peanut butter and chocolate, two great tastes that go great together. If you want to learn more about Lightheaded check out this awesome article (with accompanying awesome screenshot) from our own David Bowers.Cartographer - You need Cartographer. Cartographer is essentially "the" map add-on as far as I'm concerned, You'll find all the great features of Cartographer on the page I linked, but the most important Cartographer feature to a new player (who uses Lightheaded) is that when you click a set of coordinates in Lightheaded, it will show you a floating arrow on your screen that points the way to your destination. (As a free tip, I will also mention that you can ditch the arrow and clear all waypoints by typing /noway. Yes, I know you can do it with the mouse, but... I'm one of those weird keyboard people.)

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Gaming By Eric Vice

Shaman awesomeness duplicated in other classes

I love my shaman. She is not my main character, but I have a blast playing her. She is unashamedly almost full restoration spec. I love the flexibility of the class, and I love the fact that even though I'm most commonly an instance healer, I can take a (little bit of a) beating when I have to.The other great thing about being a shaman are all the cool abilities that are unique to the shaman class. Or are they?Baluki has written an excellent post on his blog outlining some of the ways that you can duplicate some of the more unique shaman skills using potions, trinkets, and various other forms of voodoo. Some of them are obvious, like using Goblin Jumper Cables to resurrect another player, which mimics Ancestral Spirit. I didn't know though, that there is a Darkmoon Faire card you can use to give yourself a 10% opportunity to reincarnate when you die, which mimics the shaman Reincarnation ability.You're going to have to read the rest of the article to find the rest of the good stuff, but it's definitely worth a read. Baluki has obviously done a lot of research and presented a very nice resource to us! Thank you, Baluki!

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News By Eric Vice

Pet food with stats is coming in 2.3!

Hot on the heels of the announcement that 2.3 has been pushed to the Blizzard Downloader, I found this lovely post from the highly-esteemed tradeskill priestess Kaliope about a pet food recipe she is playing with on the PTR that will go live with 2.3.Ironically I was just reminiscing the other day of the summoned pet gear items that mages are able to summon for pets in the original Everquest and wondered why no pet-specific items existed in World of Warcraft. (The degree of accuracy with which Blizzard continues to read my mind on occasion is startling!)The recipe for Kibler's Bits, which is obtained from the daily cooking quests from The Rokk in Lower City, makes pet food that offers twenty strength and spirit for thirty minutes. I would be somewhat amused if this food had an amusing debuff if eaten by a player.Buzzard Meat. Is there anything it can't do?

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PC Gaming By Eric Vice

World of Carebearcraft

A gentleman by the name of Rokhazulu from the guild Sociopath on the Smolderthorn server wrote a post on the general forums this morning that caught my attention. In his thread titled "World of Carebearcraft", Mr. Rokhazulu cries out to his listeners, extolling the virtues of faction-based player versus player combat that "made Warcraft such a great strategy game for the generations." Mr. Rokhazulu seems to feel that even though the PvP feature is present in World of Warcraft, the PvP spirit is definitely not present. I know lots of people who PvP. I know lots of people who literally live in battlegrounds. If I'm reading this right, what Rokhazulu wants is violence and carnage. He wants active rivalry and hostility between the two main factions and immersive world PvP. Checking the server list, I find that Smolderthorn is indeed a PvP server. Are the PvP servers becoming carebear-infested wastelands? Are PvP players becoming – no pun intended – a dying breed? Do you think world PvP in World of Warcraft is viable as it is now? What do you think can be done to improve it?

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Gaming By Eric Vice

Is the new Cheat Death cheating?

I was standing under Moen's Nozzle of Inspiration a while ago. No, that's not an in-game item, I'm talking about my shower head. Ever since I got back from my mini-vacation this week I've just been completely blank about what to write about. There were a few topics rolling around in my head, but no stories. Suddenly, the rabbit joke appeared and everything came into focus. You've all heard the rabbit joke. A guy is traveling down the road when he accidentally sends a rabbit to its permanent death. He pulls over to verify if the rabbit is indeed dead, and as he's standing there staring at the rabbit cadaver, a mysterious passerby stops and asks what's happening. The saddened man explains that he didn't mean to kill the rabbit, and points to the dead animal on the ground. The mysterious passerby goes to their vehicle and returns with an aerosol can. He picks up the rabbit, sprays the rabbit, and in a moment reminiscent of the Mr. Jingles scene from The Green Mile, the rabbit springs to life. The happy varmint leaves the two onlookers, travels down the road, waves, travels a little further, waves, and continues doing this until it disappears out of sight. The two relieved strangers part company leaving our original rabbit killer standing confused on the side of the road wondering what was sprayed on the rabbit. He picks up the can to read it. "Hare spray. Revitalizes hare, and gives it a permanent wave." Well. Some people are mighty worried about what Blizzard is intending to spray on some previously nerfed rogues, and I would be one of them. I was personally so sickened by the Subtlety talent tree (that served me well from levels one to seventy) that I recently respec'ed to a common Assassination/Combat blend. While mere words can't explain how deeply amusing it is to watch something die when you're not even hitting it, I really miss the "WHAMMO" effect I used to have in the subtlety tree. It looks though, from changes on the PTR to the subtlety tree that subtlety may not be a lost art form after all. Eliah applied more than adequate emphasis to the changes in the Cheat Death talent the other day, but Doomilias over at A View From Behind has experienced the changes first-hand and even as a rogue says the changes are overpowered. He believes there is no way that Cheat Death is going to go to the live servers with a 33/66/100% spread. He thinks that a 100% immunity to killing blows coupled with a brief period of invincibility and a short cooldown is a recipe for disaster. Doomilias thinks that this "new and improved" Cheat Death is going to breed an entire nation of roguetards that will flood battlegrounds like an army of ants. What do you rogues think? I don't know what the rest of you think, but I think I'm going to copy to the PTR and spec back to subtlety and give this new stuff a try!

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Gaming By Eric Vice

WoW knows no age

As I was driving home from lunch today, I was thinking about (brace yourself) last night's episode of Grey's Anatomy. You may wonder how I'm going to steer this toward World of Warcraft, but bear with me for a second. I was really excited when I heard that Edward Hermann was going to be making an appearance this season, and thought maybe he would be filling the role of the replacement for Isaiah Washington's departed Preston Burke character. (No, you haven't browsed to TV Squad by accident. Hang on. I'm getting to a point.) As fans of the show recently found out though, this was not the case. Mr. Hermann's character Dr. Norman Shales was not to be an experienced, wise cardiac surgeon He was to be an intern learning to be a doctor after spending thirty years of his life as a pharmacist.Last night as I watched Dr. Shales attempt to "relate" to the other interns and residents and attending physicians (who were all half his age) I suddenly realized that the reason I was enjoying this character so much (other than the fact I love Mr. Hermann's work) is that his role as Dr. Shales is really a metaphor of the experience of so many middle-aged and older players (including myself) in World of Warcraft.I am fortunate to be in a fantastic mature guild where the median age is probably ten years higher than most, but I think I still rank among the top five oldest. Guild events aren't a big deal. The discomfort comes in interaction with folks -- who may be perfectly fine players -- who either can't believe somebody in their late thirties (or older) is playing World of Warcraft, or can't understand the way somebody in that age bracket thinks.Even though I know I'm not the oldest World of Warcraft player in the world, I was encouraged (and amazed) to read this interview reposted on incgamers.com of an interview with an 80-year-old World of Warcraft player. (Be warned. The English is very, very rough because the interview is translated. I think "mad" is meant in a good way in it's frequent uses in the interview.) What's the oldest player you've seen in your guild or server? How do they contribute to your guild? How do you handle them differently?

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Tomorrow

Tomorrow By Eric Vice

An argument for permanent death

I'm all about good ideas to improve the game we all love. I've even been known to toss them out to you folks on occasion. This morning though, in my morning perousal of the internets, I found a blog entry that just about made my eyes pop out of my head.Our good west-coast friend Cap'n Jack posted a couple of ideas yesterday that certainly had the benefit of being novel, if not extreme. While I don't think my head can completely wrap itself around his first PvP-themed suggestion, I'm really intrigued at his second idea: Permadeath.That's right folks. The Cap'n is suggesting that once you die, you're dead. If you can't find a benevolent druid, shaman, priest, paladin, or an engineer with a set of jumper cables within thirty minutes of death you're toast. Game over. Thanks for playing. We'll see you at the character creation screen momentarily. Jack further proposes that if the grim reaper does defeat you, that you would be allowed to start the character over at Level 1 naked and without skills, but retaining your name, your race, your class, and -- most importantly -- your ignore list.While even my wildest imagination cannot fathom the amount of hate comments I'm going to get over this article, I should state that I don't agree with 100% with John, I'm just presenting his idea for discussion. As a longtime MMOG player, I've seen the penalty for death gradually diminish from year to year and game to game. While I might not be entirely in John's corner on this issue I can agree that some more "serious" penalties for death might be refreshing. What are your thoughts? I'll be hiding in the WoW Insider bomb shelter. Let me know when the coast is clear.

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Gaming By Eric Vice

PTR character copier appears broken

During a spirited conversation with someone over the number of public test realms (that was rather reminiscent of the "I See Four Lights!" episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation), I decided to download the newest PTR client and take a look. At first I made a (new) gnome rogue and then quickly decided "to hell with this level one crap" and ran off to the character copy page to copy one of my Gnomeregan characters or maybe copy a premade character. My hopes were dashed as I discovered that somehow the character copier was broken. The video just handed to me (and linked above) by a trusted Blizzard source may provide illumination on what has transpired. (Humor intended.)Blizzard poster Hortus informs us that they are aware of character copying issues and that the problem is being investigated. We have also received private assurances from our anonymous source that the platen glass in the PTR character copier will be reinforced to accommodate Taurens and other more "rubenesque" characters.

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PC Gaming By Eric Vice

Zul'Aman cleared on the PTRs

Warcry reports this morning that less than 24 hours after the launch of Zul'Aman on the test realms, that the Europeans have done it once again and the guilds Curse and Death Wish have cleared the instance all the way to Zul'Jin.The article notes that the loot quality appears to fall between Karazhan and SSC, around level 132. Each boss reportedly drops two Badges of Justice while Zul'Jin drops three.It certainly looks like there is "fresh meat" just around the corner for the raiding community. If you missed it, be sure to go back to check out the Zul'Aman preview so you can get ready for the latest ten-man instance when the next content patch goes live! With a high-level raid in such close proximity to (potentially) flagged lowbie blood elves, I can see Zul'Aman being a very popular Alliance destination!

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Gaming By Eric Vice

Another option for new content: factional class flipping?

Last week I talked about mid-level content and as expected, many of you expressed an opinion. One comment in particular from autumnbear got me thinking. Autumnbear writes:"How about updating the overall lore for the game, and allowing more class choices for the current playable races. Still waiting for the Night Elves to teach my Human how to be a Druid, especially since he's Exalted with both Darnassus AND the Cenarion Circle."Now that's something I can chew on. What about quests that will allow you to make race/class combinations that are not otherwise available in the game? I think this is a tremendous idea if the process is sufficiently difficult to prevent everybody and their uncle's cat from doing it. The original Everquest had epic quests that took some players months to complete. Everquest 2 had the betrayal quests which allowed you to change factions which took a really long time to complete.Why shouldn't a human, in Autumnbear's case, who has earned significant faction with Darnassus not be able to learn the finer points of being a druid? Gnomes have no healing classes. Why not create a very difficult quest line for those gnomes who are exalted with Stormwind that would allow them to become a paladin or priest?I know I'm going to get a billion comments about game balance. Admittedly this would likely not count as "mid-level" either, but I think that if it was properly implemented it could be a valid source of that new content that everybody is craving.

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News By Eric Vice

The foot-moving thing? It happens. Want me to kill him again?

Sean Connery and Nicholas Cage fans will recognize my lame attempt to quote the line from The Rock (without digging out my copy.)Gitr noted on his blog yesterday that after he killed Frostmaw recently, he noticed something strange. Much like the foot of the Marine in the aforementioned movie, it's hand was still moving -- clenching and unclenching his staff -- even though it was clearly dead. I don't know if this is something that can be duplicated every time, but it would sure freak me out. About once or twice a month I get a somewhat more amusing graphical bug where the mob keeps "looking at me" even after it's dead, causing the body to spin on the ground if I run around it in circles.While some bugs are annoying, some like these are amusing and even interesting. What silly in-game anomalies like this have you seen?

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PC Gaming By Eric Vice

Life after Warcraft for one of its most venerable podcasts

There are a lot of good World of Warcraft podcasts out there, including our own. There are a few though that are really considered pioneers, and I think Taverncast is probably one of them. Despite their extremely erratic production schedule, they've been around longer than most and the quality of their production has always been top-shelf.Yesterday, they released their final "exclusively" WoW-themed podcast. Eloy explains in his blog that several changes in the lives of the cast have brought about this change, most notably that only one of them still plays the game on a regular basis.The podcast will continue though, it will just be less WoW-centric. As one of their long-time fans, I know they will continue to rock with whatever content they choose to focus on.Finally, on a personal note to Infernal Bill, Cromley, Eloy, and Kirnkaterre... I hope you enjoyed the voicemail I left for you. It comes with love from one of your Canadian fans. (You'll have to listen to TC32 to understand the Canadian connection.)

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Gaming By Eric Vice

Players want more mid-level content!

I was intrigued to read the results of the poll over at Kinless' Chronicles. Before they moved from their old blog hosting provider they started a poll asking what people wanted the most in World of Warcraft.Of all the poll results, I was most interested by the fact that 64% of respondents wanted more level 20-60 content and only 15% wanted more end-game content. Also of note is that only 12% wanted more races in the game. So in other words, people don't want new "starter areas", they want alternatives to the "grinding content" that they've run so many times they can do it in their sleep.I pretty much agree with all the poll results and wonder why Blizzard seems to have turned a blind eye to the obvious. I think it's fair to say that most of us have one or two high or maxed-level characters, and a handful of lower level characters we "mess around with" trying to find something we like. So why don't they develop new mid-range content?What format do you see new mid-level content content being packaged in? New zones? New quests? New instances? What about just new items? Personally, when I played The Sims, I always loved the "item packs" that gave me new items to play with in-game. They weren't a content expansion, they were pretty inexpensive, but they offered some new items to spice up gameplay. I think this could be a cheap way for Blizzard to throw the mid-level people a proverbial bone without spending a lot of development time.

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Gaming By Eric Vice

Brewfest starts at midnight server time!

Trouble is brewing in the forums. Sorry. Couldn't resist. Apparently there has been some miscommunication about the in-game Brewfest event. Even the oft-infallible WoW Insider team has been an accessory to this crime, and for that we humbly apologize. There's been more than a little bit of chatter about it on the forums as well, and Drysc dutifully stepped to the plate and addressed the angry alcohol-deprived mob. (Thankfully, he survived a lynching. This time.)In my opinion Drysc took more of the blame on Blizzard's behalf than he needed to. The misunderstanding, from my perspective, has all been about verbage. The promotional material I've seen indicated that Brewfest would "go live" today, it didn't say the festival would actually start today. Like the Darkmoon Faire, Blizzard has opted to put a day of setup and teardown at each end of the event to add to roleplay realism. Personally, I think it's a nice touch.The good news is that the festival actually starts tonight at midnight server time. Be sure to check out Dan's guide to Brewfest festivities and make your way to your faction's Brewfest location!

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PC Gaming By Eric Vice

AOL plans WoW social network at wow.com

Those of us who have ever tried to buy a domain know what I'm about to talk about. All those really great, short, three-to-five letter domain names are taken. You may think you've thought of something nobody else would use, but as soon as you run to your web host of choice and type it into the search box your dreams are shattered as you discover it's already registered to someone else.Over the course of it's many corporate acquisitions over the years, AOL has obviously picked up the ownership of a premium domain name or two. One of them -- wow.com -- was acquired when they took ownership of the remaining assets of Compuserve many years ago. In its article posted this morning, Techcrunch.com reveals that AOL has decided to pull wow.com out of mothballs and use it as a social networking site for World of Warcraft players.I guess this is one instance of patience paying off. They've owned this domain for what appears to be a very long time, and now they've found a great use for it. All I know is that if America Online has decided to take this on, they will do a fantastic job. I'm looking forward to seeing how they execute this plan.Oh. And I should probably take a moment to "do the voice" of that guy who reads the fine print really fast at the end of the car commercials and say "WoW Insider is a part of the Weblogs Inc. blogging network which is owned by America Online."

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Buying Guides

Buying Guides By Eric Vice

One of the best (and funniest) PVP articles I've ever read

I'm not a PvP guy. People on the staff think I'm a PvP guy but I'm not. Why do people always assume rogues are PvP freaks? I don't know. Anyway. It's not to say I don't like a little bit of world PvP once in a while, but compared to some of the peeps who have more arena points than they have Air Miles, I am for all intents and purposes, a PvP noob.Having said that though, I've been clutching my stomach for a good ten minutes and wiping away the tears of laughter after reading this epic post from Relmstein entitled Lessons Learned From Levelling On A PvP Server. While some of it is side-splittingly funny (yes I know I just invented a word), like all good comedy, it's funny because it's true!If you're considering rolling on a PvP server (something I've tried and failed many times), you may want to print out this article and stick it on your wall. It could save your life!

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News By Eric Vice

The server hamster is having a coronary

Yes folks, 2.2 has gone live and most of you who are reading this have already been greeted by the lightning-fast login screen that was a result of of the new patch disabling all your add-ons.Fear not, you can "Enable Out-Of-Date Addons" and most of them will return to life. Some however, most notably those that affect unit frames, may not behave as you would like them to. As a result, a lot of you are hitting the add-on sites right now. The add-on site I visit regularly hasn't moved this slow since 2.0 went live. The hamsters powering the servers of these sites are near collapse, as pictured. Here are a few notes and tips to get you through the next 48 hours and back in the game. At the time of this writing, voice chat isn't enabled yet on the launch servers. Don't ask in General. Don't shout from the rooftops. It's not online yet. It probably will be soon. Be kind to the server rodents. There are lots of good add-on sites on the internet, and if we can distribute the traffic a little bit, it will make the experience less arduous for everybody. Curse seems to be getting hit pretty hard at the moment. If it's not responding or too slow, don't forget WoW Interface, or ui.IncGamers.com. If you use a lot of Ace2 addons, you might want to fire up the updater application, or check files.wowace.com. If all else fails you might luck-out with Google or by looking in the readme.txt of the add-on in question to find the author's personal site. There's always strength in numbers. Many hands make light work. All those folks you've bragged your addons to are likely looking for the update too. Share information.

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Gaming By Eric Vice

Chinese MMO puts the kibosh on 'dem "less feminine" female characters

The illustrious and oft-misunderstood cheese connoisseur Turpster of WoW Radio made a comment in the WoW Insider podcast last weekend to the effect that everybody in World of Warcraft is a guy, which was especially amusing because Elizabeth Harper was on the show with me. Warcry's Razorwire posted an article this morning that just about made my eyes pop out of my freakin' head on this very subject. To make a long story short, as one of my friend's often says, a Chinese MMO has banned the account of every male player in the game who played a female character. Yes Virginia, they made every player in the game verify with a webcam. While not a foolproof system (especially if you have a female family member or friend who can be bought for the right price) it obviously netted them results. Since the first day I played World of Warcraft I've heard adult players like myself tell me how much extra they'd be willing to pay to play on a server where age of majority is verified somehow. This kind of verification though, seems to me to be just a little bit over-the-top. At the same time though, I can see where certain segments of the gaming population would be jumping-up-and-down excited about it. What do you think about gender verification? Please keep it clean and respectful. I have the prototype for that paladin ranged weapon BRK talked about yesterday and I'm not afraid to use it.

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News By Eric Vice

The key(s) to not getting banned

Just yesterday in fact, I was at my local computer store after having a bite of lunch to make my semi-regular browse of their wares. One of the items I saw that screamed "Buy me! Please!" was a Zboard Fang. I'd seen them at EB before, but they were always hanging on a rung so high you'd have to be Michael Jordan standing on the back of a Tauren to reach them. These Fangs were close enough to the ground for a gnome to reach so I picked up the box and had a look. I am definitely a keyboard guy. I hardly ever use the mouse at all – except to click totems on occasion with my shaman. The allure of the Fang and it's programmability was strong though. I only set it down and walked away when I started to think about how long it would take me to get used to it. Today while following a story tip, I found a proverbial bee's nest of forum activity about one of the Fang's competitors, the Logitech G15. Although the G15 has a full QWERTY keyboard and and adds a programmable LCD display, it's core function and purpose is the same. It allows you to define programmable keys for in-game functions. The question arises (and has arisen many, many, many times before) whether these products are legal for in-game use. The answer from more than one blue poster in the previous link is: "YES! They are legal!" Blizzard draws the line between right and wrong not at what keyboard (or accessory) you use, but what you use it for. A button to open your bags is not going to get your account banned. A timed macro to run around in a circle and kill everything in your path while you watch Twister in the next room will get you banned, because you're essentially "botting" at that point. The line seems to be drawn between attended and unattended play, but common sense is clearly the watch word here. What other hardware input device toys do you use in your day-to-day play? What do you think about these Zboard and Logitech products that are marketed so aggressively to the MMOG market? Your comments are key!

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News By Eric Vice

The night before voice chat

Tomorrow, if all the prophecies come true, Patch 2.2.0 will finally arrive to a server near you. A subset of the server population will experience the new voice chat to test out as the service is slowly phased to the rest of the population. Many of us who have the privilege of being in "good" guilds have been yakking away happily on Ventrilo or Teamspeak (or even Google Talk or Skype in smaller groups) for quite some time. But to the "small guild" community, tomorrow and the days that follow may represent one of the biggest milestones in game development since the launch. To those who are uninitiated to the world of voice, let me offer you a few tips to get you through your introduction to this wonderful new vehicle of gameplay.

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News By Eric Vice

And now for this skill testing... instance?

I was just sitting in Ironforge a minute ago trying to peddle my enchants. The members of the guild I'm in were sitting around shooting the breeze about Burning Crusade instances. Somebody remarked on BRK's article earlier today about hunters "once being in demand" in Blackrock Depths, and I chimed in that as a subtlety rogue I've felt a little left-out of some of the Burning Crusade content. It seems from my vantage point that hunters and mages own the vast majority of the Burning Crusade instances because those of us who have to be in physical contact with our targets who don't have the benefit of plate armour are getting the bejeezus beaten out of us in this series of instances.While I can see the progression that Blizzard has taken, and I can understand the necessity for encounters to increase in difficulty I'm having a really difficult time finding the willpower to flush my carefully crafted rogue build down the toilet that I spent so much time perfecting.So let's shift gears for a moment to solo instances. Yes, we've talked about them before. I think that with the right implementation though, that we could kill a number of birds with one stone.How many crappy rogues have you met in-game? Ok, put your hands down. We can substitute any class into that question. There are lots of players with no skills floating around. We've all seen warriors who don't sunder, mages who don't realize they can summon (food and water), and even shamans who don't know what a totem is. Yes, I'm serious, I've seen every one of those.So here's my idea - with apologies if somebody else already thought of it first. I know Dan brushed gently against it a few months ago. Why not make an Academy style instance where players could go solo, maybe every ten levels, and be taught in "live fire" situations how to use the skills they've acquired in the last ten levels. Loot would have the benefit of being class-specific (or at the very least class-appropriate), and lunchbox letdown would be next to non-existent. The only obvious problem to me, is that the gear would almost have to be Bind on Pickup, and they'd probably want to make it so once you beat the last boss that you couldn't come back until you graduated to the next bracket.Then everybody would have something to do, nobody would feel completely useless, and best of all it would have a positive impact on the skill level of the players on our realms and in our guilds. What do you think?

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News By Eric Vice

The wisdom of experience

Keen wrote a great piece over on Keen and Graev's Gaming blog that really caught my attention. Obviously Keen has been "around the block" like I have and has his share of regrets just like the rest of us who have been chained to the MMOG genre for any length of time. He reaches back to some of the past games he's played and talks about some of the mistakes he's made that he won't ever repeat. I'll make you read the article to find out his other two, but his first one is no not take an officer position in a guild on impulse and to give it a lot of thought. I couldn't agree more. More than a few of the twenty odd guilds I've been in over the course of my MMOG experience have crumbled because of mediocre or semi-committed leadership, or leadership that wasn't united in focus and direction. Regrets are not something that need to stay chained to us that keep us from meeting our potential. Identifying our regrets help us to improve ourselves. What are your biggest regrets in World of Warcraft or in other games you've played in the past? What are you doing to ensure you don't make those mistakes again?

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