annoying
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Rocobo perfects the "annoying robot" concept
The Roboco is a robot toy that seems to exist for no other purpose than to annoy flesh-based lifeforms, with its whole premise being to "react" to the owner's mood. For example, if you're angry and shout at it, it'll flap its wings and aggravate you even more: if you're nice and stroke it, it'll aggravate you again by "singing," or displaying a smile graphic -- let's just say at least it can't compose lullabies. At ?1,130 (under $9) it won't exactly break the bank, but if you're just going to throw it out the window within five minutes of buying it, you might as well hold onto your bucks.[Via TechDigest]
Fed up with ingame gold whispers
Like Sniffledoo, I'm done with it. This ingame gold whispering is getting worse and worse, and it's time something drastic was done about it.If you have no idea what I'm talking about, you can consider yourself lucky, but I'm guessing it's become pretty widespread by now (at first, I'd just chalked it up to being on a high population server). Spammers are almost constantly sending whispers ingame to buy and sell gold and powerlevel characters. Blizzard has of course said that they are banning players who get reported as spammers, but, also like Sniffledoo, I think it's time they went another step-- it's time to go after the sites that are doing it.As always, IANAL, but clearly we know where these spam messages are coming from-- they are being sponsored by the sites advertised (I can, unfortunately, list a few of them off the top of my head, but I won't link to any of them, because they just don't deserve it). Does Blizzard have a legal claim against these sites for ruining the player experience and consistently breaking the TOS? If they have documented this activity, couldn't they take it to court and at least sue these sites for ruining the game experience?It's gotten to the point where I would almost be willing to agree to a TOS that says "I agree to be sued for spamming" if it means Blizzard has a better legal footing against these idiots. Reporting these players is the best thing to do right now (even though these are alts that are just created and deleted, maybe even in a matter of minutes), and there are even addons now that will block and report this stuff for us, but why can't Blizzard do more? Why haven't they gone after the sites sponsoring this junk?Update: A couple of people have already mentioned the gold links on this site-- in case you missed it, we are constantly working to get rid of them. WoW Insider does not condone or endorse any activities that are against the TOS, including powerleveling and gold buying and selling.
Breakfast Topic: Recruiting regrets
I've never recruited anyone to the game (I have helped convince a friend to play, actually, but the truth is that he didn't need much convincing), so I've never imagined a situation like the one that faces Aerna: she and another friend recruited a third friend to play WoW with them, but now he's become nothing but an annoyance. He begs for powerleveling, doesn't know how to play his class, and generally makes a mess of things, forcing her to run away from him to play Horde (so it's not a complete loss..).So what can she do? I'm trying to figure out why they're friends in the first place-- can it really be true that someone you like hanging out with in RL can turn into a menace inside Azeroth? It could be that he just needs some guidance on ingame etiquette and strategy. On the other hand, I can definitely see how two people who don't have much in common (co-workers, maybe) might find their relationship pushed to the limit when brought to the world of Azeroth. Have you ever recruited someone to play the game that actually ruined the experience for you?
/e is easily amused by emotes
Impossibility over on the WoW Ladies Livejournal is, I'm sure she'll agree, a newbie. But she did just finish Deadmines (grats!), and she was surprised, after completing the instance, to see the message above. Her rogue ripped her off!Now, as she soon learned, she didn't really get pickpocketed-- rogues can only pickpocket mobs, not players. But she did get emoted-- what happened was that the player typed "/e successfully steals.." and it appeared like that above. You can do all kinds of fun things with emotes, because although they always appear in orange (in the default UI), players, even experienced ones, can get them confused with all the other messages coming by. The most common trick is usually "/e rolls 99 (1 - 100)", which looks like you got a really nice roll (except for the color, of course, which makes the trick easy to spot in a big list of rolls). Another good one is "/e receives [Sword of Awesomeness]," or just shift-click whatever item you want it to look like you just looted something cool on your own.A warning: Just like the old Piccolo, lots of players usually find this more annoying than funny, so use it at your own peril (and you should never use it to try and rip other players off-- alert players will know exactly what you're doing, and then you're in real trouble). But a little levity sometimes goes a long way, and it's a fun trick to use once in a while.
Breakfast Topic: Most annoying mob in The Burning Crusade
With every new expansion comes a new mob to hate. Pictured here is my most hated mob for The Burning Crusade. Found in the Shadow Labyrinth of Auchindoun, these Fel Overseers hit cloth really hard, and have a very annoying Intimidating Shout fear effect that is annoyingly resistible and resets aggro on the tank until the tank is back in melee range. When I say "annoyingly resistible" I mean that I often resist it, and the tank doesn't, so the tank is halfway across the room and I'm being stabbed at for for 1,200 to 1,900 hit points per swing, with a very nice critical hit one time of 4,796. My favorite part is how this thing is classed as a "demon", but immune to both Banish and Enslave. The best method I've found for dealing with them is to make sure everyone is in very short range, so everyone gets feared, including the healers. Hunters are excused if they can feign fast enough to achieve the same effect. This generally means the mob will follow the tank around. Since there's no warning, and he hits so hard, trying to stay in berzerker stance to have anti-fear abilities up is somewhat hazardous. The cool down on the fear is very short, on the order of 30-45 seconds, so even fear ward and berzerker stance will eventually be on cool down when the fear hits. If I don't get feared, I either will try and drain-tank the big guy, or simply run after my tank, so the tank is in melee range as soon as the fear fades. Either way has about a 75% success rate, where success is me not needing a rez at the end.So, The Burning Crusade has been out for about a month now, have you found a new most annoying mob?
Buzzing, copter-inspired Blowfly alarm clock goes on sale
We see far too many fabulous ideas that simply never make it to market for one reason or another, but after a lengthy stint in proverbial purgatory, the Blowfly alarm clock has hit production. The design looks a bit more mainstreamed that previous conceptions, but the functionality remains in tact and looks to be the perfect annoyance to force you to rise in the early AM. Sporting a shiny black base, blue backlit LCD, large-format numbers, and the obligatory mini-copter launcher, this alarm clocks purportedly blasts the chopper into the air whenever you're supposed to awake, and unless you get up, catch the flying object, and place it back into the clock, that awful screeching nose simply will not cease. So if you're the world's worse snooze abuser, and you don't mind stumbling around your room with eyes half closed, you can cure that late arrival syndrome for just DKK299 ($53).[Via GadgetReview]
"Summn plz": the joy of being a warlock
Everyone thinks it's so easy to be a warlock these days. Sure, we have dots that will kill you long after we ourselves have died to your teammates. Sure, we can have a pet that is essentially a small warrior attack you while we sip Foster's in the shade. Or we can ... we can ... I'm not exactly sure what the Destruction 41-point talent is because no one uses it. Some kind of AOE? Whatever. Anyway, the point is that life as a warlock has its annoyances. Take this conversation my level 51 lock, repairing her armor in Undercity, had with a level 16 warrior in Thunder Bluff today. Warrior: can you please summon me to undercity? Me (figuring the guy at least said please): Sorry, I don't have a group right now. Warrior: how hard can it be to find a group in UC :P Me (thinking I'm not going to find a group to summon this guy without payment): How much are you going to pay me? Warrior: 0.00 Me: So basically, you want me to use my own soul shard and my own time to find a group so I can summon your lazy behind? Warrior: um ... yeah Me: Hell no. Walk. The average warlock has this conversation many, many times before hitting 60, and an interminable number of times thereafter. In a raid, you have to summon stragglers, dispense healthstones, soulstone important people and make sure you have Curse of Elements up or your mages will eat you alive. Speaking of mages, they also have it rough when it comes to being bugged -- they have to portal people places and create food and water for the whole raid! Warlocks, mages, how do you deal with the annoyance of random tells for "summons" or "wtr plz" when you're chilling in Ironforge?
Annoying sound, video problems mar high-def World Cup broadcast
While the guys playing in the World Cup are professionals, it seems the stateside broadcasters are still very much amateurs when it comes to displaying the beautiful game. I've caught a couple games since the tournament started, and while the quality of the broadcast is excellent. You can see everything very clearly and the sport is more fun to watch in widescreen, as you can see the positioning of the players better. While it is almost enough to wipe the nasty taste of the Winter Olympics debacle from my mouth, and doesn't have the HDTV compression problems cited in Korea, there are still some issues to be worked out.
