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April Fools at Tobold's blog: WoW to cost $20 a month
We have to admit, Tobold's April Fools' joke is easily one of the better ones coming out today. Upon first glance his reasoning for the $5 dollar subscription bump seems somewhat plausible, citing rising power costs and the weakening dollar. However the real treat is beyond the joke, in the comments where 'Mike Morhaime' -- co-founder and current president of Blizzard -- makes a comment about the joke being a good idea and to wait for official announcement on the World of Warcraft website. If that weren't enough, the director of Activision Blizzard Jean-René Fourtou mysteriously pops up in the comments afterwards and publicly fires Morhaime! Oh no, what will happen next? Ah, well then things take a truly inspired twist as the CEO of Electronic Arts John Riccitiello triumphantly appears to announce that Warhammer Online is actually coming out May 1st and then promptly thanks Actiblizzvision for allowing EA to scoop up their lost customers.We thoroughly enjoyed the joke, as it's fairly surreal to see even fake versions of these people posting comments on a blog.
Insider Trader: Crafting speculation in the Flower Kingdom
Insider Trader is your inside line on making, selling, buying and using player-made products.To celebrate the kick-off of HKO-Insider, Insider Trader will be doing a bonus column this week! As the closed beta has only just been put in the works, there are understandably few details floating around.Currently, we have confirmed at least the following professions: Mining. Gathering fruit from the wild. Tailoring. Furniture-crafting. Farming. Cooking. House-building. This week we will speculate on what we might see, and compose a wishlist for what we would like to see. Join us on Friday as we resume our normal schedule and delve deeper into the concept of mining as a profession, building on today's overview as well as player feedback.
World War WoW
World of Warcraft has received its fair share of criticism concerning the necessity of having the best gear. Casual players often find it impossible to acquire. Raiders spend hours getting their sets built. PvPers can't live. Often times, your ability to fight and win is not dictated by your cleverness or strategy. It is determined by just how much your Frost Bolt can crit for.As a few articles on PvP in World of Warcraft note, PvP is a meaningless struggle that simply makes that poor little level thirty gnome wish he never walked through STV. This form of PvP, commonly known as the gank, occurs mainly in the open world, in between the great cities and towns, where quests are painstakingly completed. Players will leave a neutral city only to be bombarded by hostiles ambushing unlucky travelers right outside the gates. Though Horde and Alliance die in droves in this manner, no one tends to care. The sun still shines upon Stormwind, the plague remains untouched, and the banners of war seem to have been furled up and forgotten. Yet the one defining moment after a kill, be it hard or easy, Arena or BG, is the receipt of the honor point.By turning in honor points, players can work their way up the ranks to acquire Tier 6 gear. The more honor points, the bigger the sword. With this system in place, Blizzard has managed to make another aspect of the game quite gear dependent. Players with more time wielding the blade have a definite advantage over those who are just starting out in the realm of combat. Fighting in the WoW Arena quite often resembles reaching for a carrot on a stick. You may read Patton when you wake up, you may watch old war movies and study game footage, but you may not own that elite sword of gnome crushing and without that, you're toast.
April Fools' Alert #1: Blizzard adds bards, brings WoW to consoles
We warned you yesterday that Blizzard couldn't be trusted on the first day of April, but zut alors have they ever outdone themselves this year with no fewer than four separate pranks! If there's an alternate reality version of you who's equally dorky but much, much more gullible, he's about to pee himself.For instance, did you know that Lich King would be adding an awesome bard class to World of Warcraft or that WoW was coming to consoles with the decidedly old school Molten Core (there's even a trailer!)? Well, you must have heard about Tauren marines in StarCraft II, right? You haven't even seen Diablo II: Loot Pinata?In case you're wondering what Blizzard is doing with the hundreds of millions they're earning from World of Warcraft ... it's this. It's just this.
Find out why WoW conquered the world
Gamasutra has published an article titled "Why World of Warcraft Made It Big." The article was written by Michael Zenke, a member of the family here at Massively! Zenke argues that there's no one reason WoW was the game to explode into the mainstream in Western markets, instead of EverQuest II or City of Heroes. Accessibility, low system specs, polish, storytelling, fun factor, and yes, timing -- all of these had something to do with it. He also suggests that in the wake of The Burning Crusade, WoW is as strong today as it's ever been.So, this begs the question -- and this is not one that's addressed in the post -- is there a game coming that will leave WoW in the dust just as WoW surpassed EverQuest? Or will Blizzard reign as kings throughout the foreseeable future? Maybe we'll see an industry like the one Corey Bridges of Multiverse described -- a place where democratization of the MMO development process creates hundreds or thousands of successful, user-generated experiences? As curious as we are, we're smart enough not to make blind predictions. So let's see what happens this year with the big releases like Age of Conan and Warhammer Online, as well as the democratizing experiments like MetaPlace.
April Fool's Days of Blizzard's past
Yes, loved by some and hated by others, tomorrow is 4/1, April 1st, known around the world (or at least the Internet) as April Fool's Day, and odds are that you'll have a lot of fools trying to play with your head. As you probably know, our friends at Blizzard love April Fool's, so you can probably expect to see some shenanigans from them tomorrow.Just to get you ready, here's a quick roundup of what they've done in the past few years. It seems like they've been upping the ante for a while now, so be "prepared": you never know what we might hear from them tomorrow.2004: Blizzard announced that two-headed Ogres would become a playable race... playable by two players, that is. Not many people fell for this one -- MMOs are all about being social, but playing a character with another player? A little too wacky to be legit.Lots more after the break, including the chaos that went down last year (Tinfoil Hats, anyone?) in the Warcraft community.
Blizzard tweaks XP at level 70
Our good friend Boubouille at MMO Champion has news of an XP change in the game, but not where you might expect. Blizzard has secretly changed the amount of XP earned... at level 70.But wait, you say, we don't earn XP at level 70! Ah, but we do -- after you hit 70, you actually continue to earn XP to level 71, but you never actually ding. And while before the patch, the amount you had to earn to "hit" 71 was about 814,700, now it's up to 1,256,500. Which makes sense -- while some folks are saying this might have been done to just fix a bug, Boubouille says it lines right up to the difference between vanilla WoW and the Burning Crusade, which means we'll need to earn about 50% more XP per level in Wrath of the Lich King.Of course, this affects a few other things in the game -- Mania notes that pet loyalty is based on percentage level XP earned, so Hunters at level 70 will now need to hang out with their pets for longer to earn a higher loyalty level. But Blizzard isn't nerfing anything here -- from what we can tell, they're just lining up level 70 to become the first level of the next expansion instead of the last level in the game.
Sounding off on ingame sound
If you checked out the unofficial changes in patch 2.4, you'll have noticed (or just heard on the realms) that quite a few sounds got changed. Some are louder (as in that annoying PW: Shield sound), some are quieter, and some are just plain missing (it's a known bug that Tigers and Sabers don't roar anymore). But this brings up an interesting debate: many players are saying that they never would have noticed -- they rarely ever play with sound on anyway.Playing with music off is one thing (and yes, many people prefer to listen to their own music while playing), but playing with the sound completely off seems like it would be tough -- there are a lot of audio cues going on in the game, and with sound off, you might not notice that a party member accidentally pulled another mob offscreen, or that someone behind you is casting a certain spell, or any number of other things that have specific audio to them. That doesn't need to be the only thing you listen to (I usually have to turn down the game sound during raids, just so I can hear what's going on in Vent), but surely listening to game sound makes you a better player.Do you keep the sound muted all the time, and if so, why? And do you have any trouble playing if you do? Of course, it does help you avoid that annoying PW:S sound, but as someone who keeps the game sound up (though not the music), it seems like there are specific cues meant to be heard while playing the game. Don't you miss those with the sound off?
MMOGology: Playing around
Whether it's completing quests, running dungeons, or taking down super villains, any good game has decisive goals for player progression. Most of the time there is a clear and structured path that will get players quickly from one goal to the next. You level up, you unlock new abilities, you get better gear and you take on more challenging and entertaining tasks. It could be as simple as that; a straight and narrow path to completing a game. So why do many of us get in snowball fights outside of the bank in Ironforge? Why do we join others playing music outside of taverns in Lord of the Rings Online? Why do we jump off the highest structure we can find, only to fall to our deaths? Could it simply be because it's ... fun? MMOGs afford us interesting opportunities to goof off with others and "play" a game in ways that developers may never have intended.Of course, many people don't like playing around, even when playing a video game. They love the challenge of being the first to complete every objective. They consider any diversion from the leveling process to be a waste of time and potential experience gained. While I fully understand and appreciate the desire to have the bragging rights as the first guy to hit the maximum level, or the first guild to take down the latest raid boss, I personally could never do it. I guess I'm somewhat of a slacker when I play MMOGs. Sometimes I like to fish, or climb the highest mountain and stare at a virtual moon. I don't mind that I'm not progressing toward the end of the game because I'm just enjoying having fun doing whatever it is I'm doing at the moment. Sometimes when our gaming experiences become overly competitive I think it's healthy to stop and smell the virtual roses. After all, we're playing a game. Shouldn't our main goal be to have fun, however it's defined?
[Updated] Gliding through a nasty Blizzard
Blizzard recently announced the folks behind the creation and sale of the popular Glider program, MDY Industries, are the latest target in an ongoing campaign against bots, hackers, and gold farmers. Blizzard claims that Glider, a third party software program that turns your character into a bot, has caused them in excess of US$20 Million in revenue. In their motion against MDY they claim: Since Glider levels players faster, Blizzard lost revenue from shortened subscriptions Glider violates their EULA and TOU through bot-ting Glider can be used for gold farming, damaging the in game experience of others Blizzard must spend money and time tracking down Glider users MDY claims innocence, of course, stating that nowhere in the EULA or TOU (at the time the motions was filed) was a violation dictated that covered the use of the Glider program. Glider does not modify any of the game files nor does it mine or hack data from any of the game servers and thus, they argue, is not a violation of any of the rules governing the use of WoW. MDY believes that Glider 'has actually increased WoW's subscription revenue' since players hit the critical level 70 faster, with less frustration, and often find themselves craving more and opening a second account.As the creator of Glider, Michael Donnelly, makes clear, it all started as a noble desire to catch up to his friends and enjoy content together. The case has caused Blizzard some bad press over the method used to inform Mr. Donnelly of their desire to sue his company. An unidentified private investigator, a lawyer, and a nice little note at the door asking him to stop selling the product they believe hits them in the wallet. Has Blizzard gone too far? What defines cheating? Who is truly at a loss? All questions we have to find answers to amidst the approaching storm.[Updated to fix links]
He said, she said: Does Blizzard support homosexual stereotyping?
He Said / She Said is a new feature at WoW Insider, which looks at the game from masculine and feminine points of view. Today, Amanda and David discuss the age-old question: are male night elves and blood elves "gay?" Does Blizzard intend to give us that impression, and if so, why? If that's not what Blizzard intends, then why is gayness such a big deal when people think of elves?Read on to see the conversation.
The Daily Grind: Is player housing overdue in WoW
It seems that while Blizzard is doing a good job of making sure that there's more than enough raiding content out there to satisfy the folks who have gotten to endgame. But what about those folks who are just enjoying the ride, and very slowly and casually getting there, or who have just joined? As our sister site, WoW Insider pointed out, unless you have The Burning Crusade installed, there's really very little for you in the new content patch at all. Enter the easy way for Blizzard to fix this: guild or player housing. Blizzard has mentioned adding it before, but it has yet to materialize. What do you think? Is player or guild housing overdue in World of Warcraft? Do you think adding another layer like that might help to retain members, giving them something else to do, as well as giving the game a bit more of a gold-sink?
Living in a material virtual world
Whether you play WoW for the phat lewt or not, we can all agree that the end-game is mostly item-based. How cool do you feel when you're the only one running around with the Twin Blades of Azzinoth? Well, what if it suddenly became much easier to obtain those blades, and everyone was running around with them? Regardless of the argument that item-based raiding is good or bad, it's still nice to know that people are aware of how hard you worked to get your best, flashiest gear. This is also why we hate gold sellers.Apparently, many players are not too happy about the ease in which high-end loot is obtained after patch 2.4. Over at Kill Ten Rats, they believe the changes are not a big deal and it will actually help players experience this higher-end loot before the expansion comes out. It's the thrill of the hunt, right? It's the exploration of a new dungeon, or the socialization aspect, isn't it? Regardless, it makes us wonder why Blizzard is doing this now. Possibly in preparation of things to come with Lich King?
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Keeping the gold mine running
With the infighting, bickering, and massive grinding of AQ behind us, the release of Sunwell Plateau in World of Warcraft seems to have taken Blizzard in a new direction. With a majority of players at 70, the Sunwell is the next big thing. For Blizzard, it is another step towards gaining and retaining their massive player base until the upcoming release of WotLK. Blizzard has managed to implement a successful marketing strategy geared at generating a quick boost of income while giving the players who remain active more endgame material to conquer. Players are rushing to the Sunwell Plateau in order to participate in a one time only world event. The area is jammed with Horde and Alliance from all guilds on every server. It reminds me of the excitement in Anvilmar during initial days of the game when hundreds of players vied for that one wolf to spawn among a sea of corpses. For Blizzard this has resulted in increased headlines and an increased spotlight as other games announce delays. They have also witnesses the reactivation of dormant accounts and the continued subscription of millions of players who had completed most, if not all, of the end game content. The strategy of releasing free content to players as they await the newest expansion keeps the players happy. The increased attention and revenue generated keeps Blizzard happy. It seems like a win-win situation that other MMOs should model their own content updates after.
One Shots: The Blogosphere is everywhere
Just when you think you're safe to go wandering around in your favorite game, the Blogosphere pops up to offer you tips, tricks, or just a giggle, as today's screenshot shows! This image comes to us from Bradley, who happened to spot this curious sight while traveling through Tranquillien in World of Warcraft. Here's what he had to say:Just saw this Tauren jumping around and his name gave me a chuckle. The Blogosphere is in mah gamez! Someone needs to change the Wikipedia entry for Blogosphere. Have you seen something that made you stop and giggle in your favorite game? If so, why not snap a screenshot of it and send it in to us! It takes only a few minutes to pop it into the mail to oneshots@massively.com, where your screenshot will live on in our gallery! You can't beat that. %Gallery-9798%
Drysc on Blizzard customer service
We are all rather critical of Blizzard at times. After all, many of us spend an inordinate amount of time in the game; especially the WoW Insider staff on patch days. We expect things to work in a certain type of way, and we expect that when we encounter a problem, things will be solved ASAP.Nothing is wrong with these expectations we have, and indeed we should have them. After all, we want this game to be the best game possible. For many folks it's the only one they'll play. The happiness and smooth sailing in game is principally the responsibility of the customer service department at Blizzard. They're the ones to fix our issues when something goes wrong.Drysc, one of the most visible community managers, made a wonderful post earlier this week on exactly what happens in Blizzard's support services. The full post and response are worth taking a second to read. The bullet points of his posts are as follows:
WoW to be localized for Latin America
Blizzard has announced that World of Warcraft will soon be fully localized for Latin America. The new Latin American version of the game "will be based on the existing European Spanish version but will feature entirely re-recorded in-game speech." There will also be Latin American region servers. Latin American players as well as Spanish-speakers in the U.S. and Canada who have been playing on the North American realms will be offered character transfer opportunities.The Latin American region doesn't normally get its own official game servers even with huge releases, but as well all know, WoW is a groundbreaking global phenomenon. Adding support for this new region will expand upon its already colossal subscriber numbers.Oh, and Blizzard is hiring a whole new customer service team to offer 24/7 support for the region, so if you want to work for Blizzard y si usted habla español, this is your window of opportunity! Buena suerte! [Via WoW Insider]
Patch 2.4? WoW!
So here's the question: what's so good about Blizzard's World of Warcraft patch 2.4? What's changed? What's been improved, and what's been fixed? More importantly, have the patch changes given lapsed players a reason to come back, and non-players a reason to try the game? While I'd love to have one of our WoW specialists answering those questions for you, most of them have shut off their mobile phones and pagers, with mumbled threats involving spleens, sporks, and being tossed "hogtied, naked, and alone into Naxxramas" if I disturbed them while they were experiencing what the patch has to offer.
The Daily Grind: Is the WAR delay good or bad?
Now that the gnashing of teeth has somewhat abated, there's been some talk about whether or not delaying Warhammer Online to the "fall" was a wise idea or not. A lot of people we've heard from think this is going to prove to be a really big problem for EA Mythic, as delaying that long will put them in the range of releasing sometime near Blizzard's upcoming WoW expansion, Wrath of the Lich King. Others have said that this may cause people who are jonesing for some good fantasy PvP right now even more reason to check out Age of Conan when they may have originally intended to just hold out for WAR -- which could lose them subscriptions. Then there are the folks who say that the delay is wise, well needed, and forward-thinking for them. They say that it gives them time to make WAR the absolutely most amazing game ever. (We can only assume someone at EA is having a head-explody moment at how long this is taking, though.) But this morning we thought we'd ask you -- do you think the delay is good or bad for WAR?
Kael'thas in two places at once
This thread over on the forums starts off a little silly (it's a complaint about Kael'thas being both in Tempest Keep and Magisters' Terrace at the same time), but later on gets into some really interesting commentary and thinking about just how the lore and story in this game works. Obviously, there are no problems with having Kael in two places at once (as Bornakk says with an epic burn, a character can be alive on page 1 and dead on page 10 at the same time), but it's interesting that that's not always what happens in the game. Griftah, for example, was never in two places at once, and neither was Hemet Nesingwary -- both of those characters had progressive lore storylines. But Kael, like Thrall, has a storyline that evolves as a character moves forward in their own storyline, and so Blizzard has placed him in two different places at once, and asked players to move their own characters to see the storyline in order.Interesting stuff. Scuzz makes a particularly interesting point in the thread -- the World of Warcraft really does revolve around player characters, not NPCs. If you discover through quests that Onyxia is actually pretending to be a woman in Stormwind, all of the NPCs your character meets will be shocked. It's a sign of Blizzard's talent at game creation that something can be both known by most players and discovered by one player almost every single day.Of course there's no problem with Kael being in two places -- I would rather have my character move through a changing world than have Blizzard worry about making sure "reality" was kept correctly. But it's an interesting line being walked very well -- if you do the two instances in order, you get a much better story than if we were simply fighting a generic third boss in Magisters' Terrace.
