changes
Latest
Removing diminishing honor to the fix the AFK problem
Relmstein's latest post asks an interesting question: will the removal of diminishing honor returns in patch 2.4 help Blizzard combat the ongoing AFK problem? His suggestion is that removing the diminishing honor will mean that there is more honor available in the BGs, and that that will drive players back from the "peace cave" out into the battlefield (since they were only AFK-ing because they didn't think they could earn honor fast enough.But I've got to disagree-- people were (and are) going AFK not because they couldn't pick up enough honor, but because they didn't want to play at all. Going AFK is free honor, and it will keep being so until Blizzard just plain cracks down and starts kicking AFKers. Diminishing honor returns means nothing to serious AFKers-- all they care is that they're earning honor for free. When (or maybe if) Blizzard stops that from happening, then they'll be able to stop AFKers.As for the removal of returns, I can only think that it'll mean, if anything, more honor farming and turtling. Blizzard says they've crunched the numbers and determined that it's the right thing to do, but I don't see how supplying those Iceblood turtlers will constant honor is going to help things. We'll have to see what effects arise when the new patch drops on the PTR.
Beta Beat: Simple sync with Changes
This one is ostensibly for developers, but if you ever rock a revision control system or get excited about a little late-night diff-and-merge for whatever reason, your life may have just gotten easier. Changes is an app designed to simplify project synchronization and differencing for groups or individuals working locally or remotely. It provides a GUI and an impressive list of features for an initial release, including MacFuse support, Subversion and other SCM integration, a TextMate bundle and a command line utility. Yes, it bears a resemblance to FileMerge, but Changes offers features and options well beyond Apple's aging utility. Because it uses existing systems (chdiff) and provides a plugin SDK, it's both easy to implement and extensible. The command line utility and F-Script support provide additional options for incorporating Changes into your existing workflow. I appreciated the familiar interface and was impressed by how simple it was to integrate Changes into my existing TextMate/Subversion workflow with a few keystrokes. Changes, which is a Leopard-only release, is currently in beta and is available for immediate download. As of today, the download requires registering for a beta key but the developer has let us know that an upcoming build will switch to a simple time-locked beta. If you dig the software you can get a pre-release discount on a full license, receiving $10 off the $39.95 release price, but the offer is only good until the end of the beta period. And, less importantly, I made it through the whole post without a Bowie reference. Phew. Update: The new build mentioned above has been released and no longer requires registering for a beta key. An email address is still required for download, but it's less hassle now.
Change your gender? Blizz says no
Character customization is on its way into Azeroth-- when Wrath of the Lich King comes around (whenever that is), we'll be able to change the way our characters look more than ever. But Blizzard still isn't interested in letting us change the most major functions of our characters-- Vaneras over on the EU forums makes it pretty clear that gender changes are never going to happen.Gender changes are still a subject that inspires a little taboo in real-life, but actually, in World of Warcraft, it's something that a lot of players might want. Plus, while it's obvious that Blizzard wouldn't want people changing race or class (since there are actual abilities that go with both of those choices), there is no difference in the game between male and female, save for the cosmetic look. Sure, the story behind it would be a hard workaround (I'll let you imagine how that might play out, or, more likely, not), but allowing gender changes wouldn't upset the game, and would let those who feel they've made the wrong choice, err, "fix" things.The fact is, however, that just like race and class, the gender you chose when you rolled a character have probably determined that character's existence. While changing the character's gender is just a cosmetic thing in terms of code, it's not in terms of identity, and that's what Blizzard has a problem with. The idea of a role playing game like WoW is that you choose a role to play. And if you have the option to change that role at a moment's notice, what's the point of asking you to choose in the first place?
The Daily Grind: Massively useful!
The cat is out of the bag, and what we've been doing for the last while is now out for you all to enjoy. We crawled around the Internet, assembling a crack team of both veteran writers and fresh new talent. We debated and dreamed about what was important to us for Massively to cover -- and then built the site based on our vision as a group of gamers dedicated to the MMO cause. We've been assembling news and views and putting in playtime on old MMO favorites and hot new titles. We ruthlessly stole the comment system from Joystiq, allowing you to have your own user icons and comment voting. We've talked to developers, gone to events like E4A, and got a whole slew of truly amazing swag to give to you, our day-one readership. We've also made sure to listen to what the community cried out against and as such have done away with Google's AdSense on both Massively and WoW Insider. You can be assured you won't see gold/gil/isk/etc. sellers all over our front page unless we're calling them out.So for this, our first ever Daily Grind, we'd like to ask you just one question. After you've had a chance to kick the proverbial tires and drive Massively around the block, pop back here and give us your .02. Community is key in the games we all love, and a site about them should really be no different. As such, tell us this -- what would you like to see in your MMO site?
Odd choices for gear changes in 2.3
I was browsing the MMO-Champion list of gear changes in 2.3 when I noticed something odd.A lot of the changes to gear in 2.3 are welcome upgrades, especially in the lower level instances like Shadowfang Keep or Razorfen Kraul. But why, when changing loot in Blackrock Spire, did they change the Warmaster Leggings from tank to DPS pants? Why are three of the better paladin drops in Blackrock Depths being changed to generic DPS plate? It could be a sign of future thinking on the way Retribution Paladins are itemized, it could be intended towards leveling Death Knights (as is suggested in the comments), or there could be some other reason I'm not even remotely close to guessing. (Smarter folks than I suggest that this is just a case of gear that wasn't really good for paladins or warriors at that level getting brought more into line with other item budgets.)Some changes have clear goals - the Bloodmoon Cloak is clearly now aimed at casters. I've had two warriors that wore it for the stam it used to have, but that's clearly no longer going to be the case. Similarly, a great many items like the Embrace of the Wind Serpent from the Temple of Atal'Hakkar, several items from Maraudon and even more items from BRD are having their stats adjusted by removing their various resistances and adding direct stat boosts like agility and crit. These are changes that make sense to me, but why change the Warmaster's or remove plate geared for paladins?Have any of the other gear changes made you scratch your head? Do you think this is just a case of items getting improved item budgeting or are changes ahead for how certain classes/specs use certain items?
Amazing updates to the UI in 2.3
Tons of amazing gems found in the patch 2.3 notes (Art from our /silly comic called this "the patch that keeps on giving). Here's just a few of the UI-slimming things Blizzard is implementing in the next patch: Auction House categories have been cleaned up-- no more "Plate > Cloak" categories. "Battle Map" is now available for all zones, not just PvP battlegrounds. Does that mean you can pull up the map and see where all players are at all times? Sounds like it to me. Game objects that you can interact with now have a glow around them and their name over them. Wow! No more searching for twenty minutes just to find that little switch you have to click on. We'll be able to send 12 items in a single mail message! Bye bye, CTMailMod. Monsters that need to be looted by people in your party will now have the name of the would-be looter visible in the tooltip. Bye bye, "LOOT YOUR CORE HOUNDS!" Actually, that one I might miss. And we've heard that there are big enhancements to the minimap-- bankers, auction house tellers, repair people, and quest givers can now be optionally tracked on the minimap. Additionally, fishing anglers will be able to track fishing holes-- but only after obtaining a crate that contains a book from fishing. Wild. The whole thing about interactive items glowing? It's like we're getting "WoW for preschoolers." Don't get me wrong, it'll be a huge help to everyone doing quests, I'm sure, but at what point are we getting a big arrow you can see from halfway across the zone that says "Kill This Mob to Finish Your Quest"?Thanks to everyone who sent this in!
The Care and Feeding of Warriors: What the heck just happened?
The Care and Feeding of Warriors is confused and irritable this morning. Matthew Rossi does not understand the purpose of the changes to warriors in 2.3 and, like all warriors, his first response to confusion is to hit things. Well, okay, that's also his first response to most situations. Hey, it works surprisingly often! Anyway, this time he has decided that today's column will be discussing them, as perhaps out of our shared discussion will come enlightenment. Or at least an idea of how he's going to have to respec.So, yeah, I am at a loss for words. Go ahead and check out the changes and then come on back.I'm going to reprint the warrior specific changes here and then start discussing them.Warrior * Charge will work more often when targets are up against unpathable areas like walls and poles. * Defiance (Protection) now also grants 2/4/6 weapon expertise. * Devastate (Protection) now combines the effects of Sunder Armor into its effect. It is also now affected by all talents and items that affect Sunder Armor. * Disarm is now subject to diminishing returns in PvP. * Improved Berserker Stance (Fury) now also reduces all threat caused while in Berserker Stance by 2/4/6/8/10% * Improved Intercept and Weapon Mastery have swapped locations in the talent trees. * Intervene will no longer place you in combat. * Hamstring now has a 10 second duration when used on PvP targets. * Mace Specialization (Arms) now has a reduced chance to occur but generates 7 rage instead of 6. * Pummel: Interrupting a channeled spell with this ability will now always properly prevent casting spells from the same spell school for 4 sec. * Shield Bash: Interrupting a channeled spell with this ability will now always properly prevent casting spells from the same spell school for 6 sec. * Shield Slam (Protection) now always tries to dispel one Magic effect on the target. * Sweeping Strikes and Deathwish have swapped locations in the talent trees. * Sweeping Strikes (Fury) now lasts 10 seconds and affects your next 10 swings. * Tactical Mastery: This talent also now grants greatly increased threat from Mortal Strike and Bloodthirst when in Defensive Stance. * Weapon Mastery (Arms) now reduces duration of Disarm effects against you by 25/50% rather than giving you a 50% chance to avoid or full immunity to Disarm effects. * Whirlwind: This ability now strikes with both weapons when a Warrior is dual-wielding.Some of these are just plain upgrades. The change to Devastate is especially welcome - when I'm tanking I'll probably never bother to hit the Sunder button again. Threat reduction in berserker? Can't see anything bad there. But the changes to the arms and fury trees leave me shaking my head in confusion. Buff or nerf? Honestly, I really can't tell you.But of course I'm going to try, because otherwise this column is just me going huh? over and over again for a while.
DS Daily: Changes for FFIV
Final Fantasy IV is making a change that makes everything new old again -- as in many later games, in the DS remake, characters will be able to learn abilities that were once unique to other characters in previous versions of the game. Siliconera has the details from a recent article in Jump magazine:" ... one of the newer features to grace the Final Fantasy IV DS remake is the ability of your (main) party members to inherit the abilities of former party members. As I mentioned above, it is possible for Cecil to inherit Edward's Sing ability as well as Palom and Porom's Twin Magic ability ... This makes things a bit interesting as it allows you the ability to customize your characters will [sic] skills that highly benefited you from previous party members, though I don't know how much you benefited from Edward's singing."Hmm. It's an interesting change, and we're sure opinions will be all over the place. Where do you stand? We're frankly undecided as yet, but it's not like you have to use anything ... so, does it really matter?
Late to the party
Tobold's got a good post up today about players 8,999,999 to 10 million-- folks who've come late to the party that is World of Warcraft. Lots of people like to brag that they started playing on the beta, day one (Tobold's one of those), but I didn't-- while I watched WoW news with close attention, and remember watching a livecast of someone playing a gnome Mage on Winamp, I didn't actually pick up the game until the May after it came out. Still, I was early enough that there were still some newbies to level up with-- I remember grouping at level 5 in Teldrassil with four other people who were discovering the game just like I was.Nowadays, says Tobold, things just aren't the same-- if you're just coming on board, you might wonder where all the nine million players in this game are (answer: Outland). And with every expansion, the real action will get farther and farther away from the starting zones-- would you come to this game when WotLK releases if you knew that you had 80 levels and two expansions to get through before you joined the rest of the world?There are probably benefits to coming late to the party as well-- nowadays, we have guides aplenty, and you don't have to suffer through any of the old bugs or balance problems that have already been fixed. And if you're looking for single-player content, there's plenty to go through. But joining up with the other 10 million players now isn't nearly the same experience that everyone had a few years ago.
Bring on the horizontal changes, please
Mystic Worlds lays out exactly what is, in my humble opinion, the biggest problem with World of Warcraft right now: We need some horizontal change. As I said in my impressions of BlizzCon, Blizzard seems intent on building more and more vertical content into the game-- Zul'Aman is built to be played after Karazhan, and Wrath of the Lich King will add another 10 levels onto the top of the 70 we have now. And while Blizzard keeps building up, they're more or less ditching everything that happens from 1-58. Even worse, the only changes we're seeing there are going to be to move past that stuff faster-- not only are they ignoring it, they're working on pushing it out of the game entirely.So Mystic Worlds wants more horizontal changes. That doesn't necessarily mean midlevel content (although a lot of her suggestions mean more things to do for midlevel players). Instead it means that Blizzard should take a breath, and set their teams on making the existing game experience more fulfilling. Things like guild halls, single player dungeons, more professions (Inscription will probably provide new items 1-70, but Woodworking has been necessary for a long time), and little touches-- more live events, gambling minigames (that all players can do), and fun little additions that all players can get involved in, not just those who have made it to 70.Now, there has to be some part of Blizzard that is pushing for this stuff-- it's not quite as simple as casual vs. raiders in this case. But Blizzard seems to think that they're behind on high end content, and that they're rushing to catch up to players who are hungry for more of it. I don't think either perception is true. If anyone is hungry for new things to do, it's players who have more than three alts, and yet a main that hasn't yet reached 70. I'm more than willing to trade one of the three or four 25 man instances planned in WotLK for two or three of these "horizontal changes," and I'd guess most other players are, too.
Possible Retribution improvements
Shamans and paladins have long been in an "evil twin" type relationship, though which one is evil, I couldn't possibly say. Probably both. Anyway, since Enhancement Shaman improvements possibly destined for an upcoming patch were previewed at Blizzcon, it seems only fair that we should see some Retribution Pally buffs as well. And here they are! Crusader Strike cooldown reduced to 6 seconds, from 10. Vengeance duration increased to 30 seconds, from 15. Improved Seal of the Crusader replaced with Sanctified Crusader. Sanctified Crusader replaced with new talent, Sanctified Seals, whose tooltip reads: Increases spell and melee crit by 3% (with 3 pts) reduces the duration sanctified seals. World of Raids notes that this tooltip doesn't entirely make sense and is probably not finished. So what do you think? Do these changes take some of the sting out of the Death Knight, which many see as a slap in the face to Retribution? Note that these changes are still under development; don't count on these making it into the live game intact. Allegedly, they are bound for patch 2.3, which is still a ways off. At the very least, these can be taken as insight into how the devs are thinking about Ret.[via World of Raids]
Motes of shadow, and their drop rate.
More mote issues going down on the forums. Hildebrand says the recent changes to Mote of Shadow (in which Blizzard removed them from all demons everywhere to just void-based creatures) have caused the droprate to go too low. Removing them from demons wasn't a bad move, because considering the expansion is based on fighting the Burning Crusade, they're everywhere. But void creatures are pretty rare, and while you can pick up tons of motes just killing the Hellfire Peninsula void crowd, you just don't run across them in normal grinding anymore.Drysc says that even though the drop rate was lowered, something strange has happened-- the Mote of Shadow prices have generally stayed the same. Either someone had a stockpile, or the demand just isn't there. Of course, prices in the AH on every server are different (one server's trash is another server's treasure, so to speak), but Blizzard doesn't see a problem with Mote of Shadow right now-- if anything, they want them rarer.I think the center of this argument really lies in how crafters are supposed to come across these items-- is farming supposed to be part of the game? I'm a big fan of the "you should get every craft item you need just by sweeping the landscape while you level," but obviously many more players go above and beyond that, and actually spend hours just farming craft items. Should Blizzard tune the drop rates for the farmers, or for the grinders?
2.1.2: Undocumented changes
Every patch has its patch notes listing changes. However, for reasons that are not entirely clear to me, every patch also comes with a bunch of undocumented changes, not listed in the patch notes. Thanks to WoW's tireless army of enthusiasts, many of these changes come to light, and are collected in places like this World of Raids post. There's nothing that looks terribly important to my eye; however, for the sake of completeness, it's all copied after the jump. The changes that look the least unimportant: New items have been added to SSC bosses loot tables (some of them can be viewed here) the Monstrous Kaliri [changed] to not attack people on the ground (Skettis) Fire Elemental Totem now cause guards to aggro them when dropped in neutral cities.
January to June: the iPhone's evolution
Believe it or not, the iPhone shown in January wasn't in final, launch-ready form. Crazy, huh? An enterprising individual has managed to compile no fewer than seventeen ways that the phone's software has visibly changed between Macworld and the recent commercials -- and that's just from the few calculated product shots that Apple has seen fit to shown the world, so there's no telling what else they've been brewin'. Most of the changes are super minor (and may not even be software changes, but rather user config or mode changes) like the presence of a Bluetooth icon in the upper right of the idle screen, last updated indicator in the mail screen, and the addition of a "Podcasts" icon in the music player, but hey, it's our job to microanalyze this stuff, right? Click on for the full list with pictures.
You may have noticed some new things at Wii Fanboy ...
That's right folks, your eyes aren't playing tricks on you, we have some new features here at Wii Fanboy! As always, we're doing our best to bring the content you want in the most efficient way possible, so to help us do that are a couple of new features here at the site. First up, we now have pinboxes.
Miyamoto hints that Miis may be on the move
In an interview with LevelUp, Nintendo's Miyamoto hints that we might be seeing the Miis marching out of their parades and into virtual worlds similar to The Sims. Since Miyamoto didn't reveal much at GDC this year (in part due to shareholder regulations), they grilled him about his speech, and about Sony's PlayStation Home announcement. While Miyamoto claims not to have seen the video of Sony's goods (which is hard to believe, you think he'd be studying up on the competition) he does go on to say, "I wouldn't be surprised if we also did something along those lines further in the future ... in terms of taking the Miis and expanding them, that virtual kind of Sim-type experience. It's something that a lot of people have already done and shown interest in, and we have a lot of people internally who are interested in that type of a project too." We'd be interested too, as long as it doesn't feel like Nintendo is trying to copy anyone else's effort. Bring on something that allows us to take our Miis out of the house using the DS. Maybe you can teach them new skillz in some kind of game, and then bring them back home, or take them to visit someone else. Then they teach that person something new, and they teach two people, and they teach two people and then the world is taken over by Miis. Check out the full article for the details, as well as Miyamoto's description of bizarre-sounding game called Love and Berry.
Two specs too easy?
As far as basic skills go, every character of a given class in WoW is the same (assuming they bothered to train all their skills; I've certainly left Feedback on my Priest and Wound Poison on my Rogue well alone). Where character customization comes in is with talents and gear. Gear is relatively easily switched -- many classes carry multiple sets routinely, and mods like ItemRack or Outfitter are great at helping you switch between them. Talents, on the other hand, are not quite so easy to switch up. Not only do you have to trek back into Azeroth to a major city to find a trainer, but you also have to pay, and of course the more you respec the more it costs. Granted, even the 50g maximum cost is a lot less now than it used to be, due to inflation, but it certainly adds up, and it's not really attractive to pay 100g (respec away, then respec back) just for one night of instances, PvP, grinding, or what have you. Blizz have said that the respec cost is not going away, as they want talents to have some kind of lasting implications, to be a somewhat weighty choice, but it does get somewhat frustrating to have to gimp yourself in one part of the game to be great at another part.Tobold's MMORPG Blog is always a good read, and today he debuts a new column about "single features that I think are easy enough to implement and which could make World of Warcraft a much better game." This being WoW, I'm sure the idea has arisen before, but this week Tobold has come up with the idea of letting everyone have two specs and be able to switch between them for free. You could still charge to change either spec, on the same plan as before. To avoid on-the-fly spec switching abuse, you could make people go to a trainer to switch. If this were implemented, I'd also want to see a spec switcher NPC in Shattrath, because that's where the party is these days.
iTunes 7.1 first impressions
So I just finished rebooting the computer after loading the new iTunes and QuickTime updates and here's what I found. After launching iTunes and going through the mandatory "click accept" thing (I mean, honestly, does anyone ever read those things? I don't.), I waited for a couple of minutes while iTunes "updated" my library. I've got a very small library compared to most people, so I'm a little wary about how long this might take for other people. The new full-screen Cover Flow (shown here) is nice and easy to use. Click the button at the bottom right of the screen to zoom in and out from full-screen mode. When you control-click (or right-click) items in your library, there's a new "Apply Sort Field" option, where you can pick Same Album, Same Artist, Same Album Artist, Same Composer or Same Show. Select any of these and iTunes will prompt you whether to change the Sort field for all matching tracks. (e.g. If you select Same Album, you affect the Sort Album column, and so forth.) I'm still unclear as to the utility of this new option. Let me know in the comments why this is important. Finally, there's a new AppleTV help option in the Help menu, but the links are still pretty much all bogus. This will probably change as AppleTV actually ships. Check out all the screenshots in our gallery. %Gallery-1902%
Perrin Kaplan mentions Nintendo Wii 2.0 ... already?
Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes, turn and face the strain, ch-ch-ch-ch-changes. When asked if the Wii will have a hardware revision in an interview with GameDaily, Nintendo's Perrin Kaplan, vice president of marketing and corporate affairs, said, "Sure, absolutely. You'll see the ways in which we do that."Although Nintendo has consistently updated their portable units with revisions, console hardware revisions, like those in the NES and SNES, were held off until the end of the console's life cycle. This Wii revision, apparently in the cards for as early as this year in Japan, is probably not welcome news to those who just purchased the $250 console at launch. Hopefully the DVD upgrade, and whatever other goodies Nintendo has in store (other than new Wii colors), will be a simple software upgrade and not make early adopters feel like they've been gypped.
Breakfast Topic: Wishlist
2006 was a year of much change for our favorite MMO, from patch 1.9 through 2.0.1 (not to mention the BC beta). Here's a quick rundown: 1.9 saw the first world event in the form of the opening of AQ. It also contributed further to server unification by linking auction houses. Paladin talents were updated. 1.10 gave us weather effects, new Priest talents, and Tier 0.5. 1.11 introduced Naxx, keyrings, nifty Mage talents, and a global LFG channel, which was quickly patched to default to off. 1.12 had cross-realm BGs, the EPL and Silithus PvP objectives, and new Rogue talents 2.0.1, as I'm sure you all know, was the day the add-ons died, honor got completely overhauled, and we all got shiny new abilities and talents to tide us over till the expansion. What would you all like to see come to with WoW in 2007? Is the Burning Crusade giving you all your wishes, or do you have more burning desires for the game?
