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[1. Local]: What do Thrall, iPhones, and a Cowbell have in common?
Reader comments – ahh, yes, the juicy goodness following a meaty post. [1.Local] ducks past the swinging doors to see what readers have been chatting about in the back room over the past week. Be sure to dive into the comments area of each thread (not this one!) and add your own thoughts – unlike your mama, we like us some hot, fresh backtalk.What do Thrall, iPhones, and a Cowbell all have in common? They're part of the comments all you readers left this week. Thrall missing from Orgrimmar That dirty Orc Thrall went missing from Orgrimmar this week. He ended up coming back, spontaneously respawning across all the servers. But while he was gone there was rampant speculation as to where he went. Reader Roflpanda suggested that "He went to congratulate Obama on his victory of the presidency." Right on. Crazyfool retorts back that Thrall actually "...moved to [the] Undermine to escape the new socialist Azerothian order." Anderone hinted that there might be something going on between Thrall and Jania Proudmoor again: "Has anyone checked with Jania? He's probably snuck over to Theramore for a few hours..." Scionic chimes in: "Boom chickie lok tar." More of the best reader comments this week after the break!
Ask WoW Insider: Cashing out Badges
Time once again to put the considerable brainpower that you, dear readers, have to good use (and by good use we mean other than making funny things about the Failoc). It's time once again to Ask WoW Insider. This week we have a question for you from fordarkness over on WoW LJ -- it's about Badges of Justice, and just when and how would be best to cash them in before the expansion.Obviously, the expansion isn't going to bring in new badge vendors that we can use these for.... Epic level 70 gems will probably still be around and used for your intro raiding gear, but chances are they'll be replaced pretty quick too.I'm debating liquidating my badges into gems, nethers and vortexes and selling them on the AH. Of course, there's the issue of "how soon is too soon" and "what if the patch puts in some new vendor items", along with "I need to get the items out on the market before it becomes flooded and no one wants them due to the imminent release of the LK expansion"!So whaddaya think? If you have extra badges, liquidating them into Nethers and Vortexes isn't too bad an idea, since even Badge gear might be overtaken by green gear a few quests into Northrend. But then again, even crafted gear that uses those items might end up being useless within the first few levels, so what's a Badge hoarder to do?What's your plan for getting rid of the Badges you have left? Are you just going to spend them as you need them and see what solutions present themselves when Wrath arrives? It would be interesting if Blizzard, say, offered an XP reward in exchange for them after level 70. Or have you already liquidated your stock by selling out Primal Nethers on the AH? What happens to your Badges when the way to Northrend opens up?
Rock, Paper, Shotgun discovers that WoW is a "dirty word"
Today we return to a debate that simply will not die. Gaming blog Rock, Paper, Shotgun -- a very smart blog that is a combination of progressive and traditionalist, if that makes any sense at all -- felt the need to defend itself after it previewed Warhammer Online and made numerous comparisons to World of Warcraft. It even inserted a WoW screenshot as a joke.If you've been following this debate (which already reached a raging napalmic inferno of internet vitriol when Richard Bartle compared the games in an interview with us) then you know that RPS was just asking for trouble. And trouble it got, in the order of more than 200 comments.The latest development: RPS blogger Alec Meer wrote a personal, diplomatic, and even impassioned post in which he attempted both to defend the comparison and to defend WAR in the face of said comparison. He also tried to explain why the connection infuriates WAR fans so much. The money quote: "Telling a WAR player that his game is similar to WoW is like telling a goth that he's emo." Needless to say, it's worth a read. Did you enjoy this? Make sure to check out all of our previous Warhammer Online features, and don't miss any of our ongoing coverage as Massively goes to WAR!
Site updates around WoW Insider
There have been a few tweaks and updates the past few days around here at WoW Insider. First of all, you've probably noticed that our comments system has been upgraded a bit, and now in addition to signing in with your standard Weblogs, Inc. name and password (more information about how to do that here), you can choose to sign in with with your AOL or AIM screenname. Unfortunately, there is no way to link your Weblogs, Inc. profile (which you can see by clicking on your name in any of your comments) with your AIM screenname, so you'll have to recreate your profile (or just keep using your old signin). But if you're new to the comments section, you can now use your AOL SN to leave a comment. This is a fairly new system, so there are still a few glitches floating around -- if you have a problem with anything, let us know, and we'll try to fix it and/or get back to you.Since we're talking about profiles, now might also be a good time to point out that you can change that default picture that goes with your profile. We've got lots of icons to choose from (and even more here), so if you're still using that boring gray question mark face (what are you, a low level questgiver?) spice it up a little bit by clicking on your profile page and putting a picture in there. The more colorful our comments section can get, the better.And finally, some good news for iPhone and iPod touch users -- while you can always see the full version of our site on those devices by using MobileSafari to go to wow.com, you can now see an iPhone-formatted page at i.wow.com. And if we may say so, our designers did a really great job on it. They continue to work hard to make our site better all the time, so stay tuned for more updates to WoW Insider and the other sites in the Joystiq network.
Use your AOL or AIM screen name to leave comments
Have you noticed? We've upgraded our comments system to make it just a little bit easier for you. There are now three tabs for you to choose from: New Readers, Returning and a fancy new AOL button. Returning readers will be able to use their existing log-in information as usual. However, there's a bonus for those of you that have been too confused by our comments system in the past.If you use AOL or AIM, you can use your existing screenname and password to leave comments on the Joystiq network. The first time you use your AOL/AIM name, you'll get an e-mail sent to your account with a temporary password. This will let you change your avatar and info on our sites. To access your account, simply click on your avatar on your previous comments. We really hope that this new system will make it easier for you to participate in our community -- especially if you haven't left a comment before!If you're new to the comments section, why not give it a try? You'll be surprised at how easy it is!
Ask WoW Insider: Defining mains and alts
There's a ton of asking going on around this site lately -- between "Ask a Lore Nerd" and "Ask a Beta Tester," you guys are asking more questions than a two-year old who just learned what "why" means. But this column, Ask WoW Insider, is the O.G. of Ask columns here on the site, and unlike all of the other Ask columns, we put the question back to you readers. Chippen of EU Doomhammer sent in this great question this week:We are having a discussion in our guild whether alts have priority on loot before guild members and we do have different views on this. Some say that an alt is an alt, and need to wait to be geared up, while others can't really see the problem. What is a main and what is an alt? I suppose a main is the...well...I don't know. The first character I created? Or is it the character I play the most? Or is it the character I want to play the most and also enjoying playing the most? When does an alt become a main, and is it possible to swap between the two?If you're asking me, I'd say it's definitely possible to switch mains (I've done it a few times) -- your main is currently the character that's getting the majority of your playtime, and the one where loot matters the most to you. Some guilds ask you to declare a main, so that they can make a clear distinction for passing out loot, while other guilds just have players switch alts depending only on what situations require what.So let's show up those other Ask columns and give this great, open-ended question out to you, our dear readers: what is a main and what is an alt? And what's the difference between the two?If you've got a question for our readers to be posted right here in the original Ask column, be sure to send it along to ask@wow.com. And there's lots more Ask WoW Insider, including this question on abusing the /roll, and how to make friends and influence raiders on a new server.
The Daily Grind: Do you get raid performance anxiety?
In yesterday's meaty comment discussion that followed the news about Blizzard president Mike Morhaime's admission that Age of Conan stole away some World of Warcraft users, one Massively reader (Heraclea) brought up a very valid reason for leaving WoW -- "performance anxiety" in the endgame.WoW is obviously not the only game with this problem; pretty much any MMO with a big raid focus (and maybe some others too) can be a bit too intimidating and demanding for folks who just want to play games to relax. This might be one essence of the hardcore/casual divide. Maybe hardcore types play to excel in competition, while casual players play just to unwind. Or maybe the problem is more complicated than that.Let's get to the bottom of this! Are you turned off by raids because you get performance anxiety? If so, why do you think it happens to you? And for extra points (cause we totally keep track; okay, not really!): is there a way games can be designed differently so the endgame isn't so draining?
Breakfast topic: Burning questions
Wrath of the Lich King news started off as a trickle. First it was the development of the expansion than the addition of the Death Knight class. Then we had a lot of speculation and evasive answers from Blizzard. Now that the Beta test has been opened up there has been a flood of information. Most of this comes from the observations and mining of players, more so than Blizzard itself. Perhaps the most frustrating part of the WoW experience is waiting for Blizzard to give us information. There are some tidbits that we're all excited to hear. When will we see Wrath go live? Will there be another expansion? Where does Kalgan live, and does he have decent body guards? I'd like to know if there are any plans for additional server types in the future. We always do our best here to get as much information about WoW as possible as quickly as we can. If you had the opportunity to ask your three most burning questions of the game developers, what would you ask?
WoW Insider's Winter's Veil in July contest
Hey, everybody, it's Great-father Winter! What's up G-FW?! What's that? You want to give some Winter's Veil swag away right now? But Great-father, it's the middle of summer here in the real world -- the Winter's Veil festival takes place in December! Aw, look at that scraggly beard, we can't say no to you. What the heck, we'll do it!Yes, WoW Insider (and Great-father Winter, along with our our friends at Upper Deck) is giving away a TCG Winter's Veil Collector's Set, featuring all kinds of holiday-themed TCG goodies. To enter, just leave a comment on this post telling G-FW how your summer is going before next Friday, August 1st, at 11:59 PM EST. You may enter only once (please use a real email to comment, so we can get in touch with you afterwards), and one commenter will be selected in a random drawing to get a free Winter's Veil Collector's Set (MSRP $39.99). You must also be a resident of the United States or Canada, and age 18 or older -- all the rest of the contest rules can be read by clicking here.Good luck! Thanks, Great-father Winter, for spreading your holiday cheer even during the offseason!
Forum post of the day: Moving moments
Since its inception World of Warcraft has been an evolving game. Someone who played only shortly after release would hardly recognize the game now. Blizzard has always welcomed feedback, but some changes have elicited more feedback than others. In a thread entitled "Epic moments in WoW QQ history," Gatsukaa chronicled some of the most upsetting events that have occurred in the evolution of our game: Moment 1: WoW is first released. Hunter and warlock pets could be one-shot. Hunter dps was pretty lackluster. Soulstones gave you rez sickness (I think). No soulshards from PvP. The first emo whiners in WoW were born: Hunters and Warlocks. World of Roguecraft video is released showing how a rogue in crap gear could wtfpwn people while warlocks were so gimp. Result is that warlocks went on to get buffed in nearly every patch as they were on their way to god-hood. No more world of roguecraft videos. Hunters saw substantial improvements as well, but weren't made into demigods.
Big set of icons from the WoW comic
Popehippo on WoW Ladies LJ was kind enough to post these 59 icons, directly from the World of Warcraft comic. They actually come from all over the place, including the comic itself, as well as from cover and concept art. And there's all kinds of different stuff in here, from Orcs to dragons to Druids to Naga.They're meant, of course, to be used on Livejournal, but they work, I'd imagine, for all kinds of icons, from Twitter and IM to even the comment profiles right here on this very site. If you've been poking around for a Warcraft-themed online identity, look no further, odds are that there's a cool piece of art you'll find in this big layout Popehippo's assembled.
Poll: How many 70s do you have?
Drew sent us a question he wanted us to ask, and I'd like to know the answer to it as well: How many level 70 characters do you have? Blizzard has made changes to the leveling curve to make it easier to get alts up the ladder, but how many players are actually taking multiple characters all the way to 70?I'd also like to know, in the comments below, whether they're different classes or the same class -- I suspect that of the people who have multiple 70s, there are more folks who take the same class all the way up than we expect. And the other question is whether you're going to take all these 70s to level 80 or not -- will the Death Knight take up most of your time, or do you plan to get everyone at 70 up ten more levels in the future?%Poll-16003%
The Daily Grind: Do you defend your favorite MMO?
You see it all the time in forums and comments. Someone will come out against a game mechanic, or class, or quest, comparing it unfavorably to a different (and presumably better) game. Someone who loves the maligned game jumps in to defend it, frequently attacking the other game in retaliation. Then it's the initial attacker's turn to defend, rinse and repeat, ad nauseam.After the dust has settled, however, is either party any the wiser for the exchange? Two extremes of opinion typically tend to cancel each other out, either side espousing their own beliefs so vehemently that no middle ground can be attained. In the end, does it really matter if someone else thinks your game sucks? Do you bother to defend your favorite MMO?
All the World's a Stage: Finding the right realm
One of the most common difficulties many roleplayers face is that of finding other people to roleplay with. To help overcome this challenge, All the World's a Stage presents a guide to finding roleplayers in three parts: "finding the right realm" for roleplaying, "joining the right circle" of roleplaying friends, and "wearing the right mask" to attract other roleplayers to you.Due to reasons we have discussed earlier, RP servers can vary widely from a very few who maintain their immersive roleplaying atmosphere, to the majority which often seem little different from a normal PvE or PvP server. Although Blizzard takes their RP server guidelines "seriously," they cannot enforce these rules wholesale, and rely on the players themselves to do much of their own policing and reporting where necessary. RP servers thus vary a great deal in terms of how many people there actually make roleplaying a priority, how many will report someone breaking the RP rules, and how many will strive to maintain that precious gem of mass cooperation: the roleplaying atmosphere.It may not be obvious to a new player, but there are tools roleplayers can use to find the realm that suits them best. There may be no standardized way to group up for RP, but the fact holds true: "seek, and ye shall find."
Breakfast Topic: Instance for sale
Ixus sent us a question about hiring mercenaries in World of Warcraft: he's a level 20 Warlock who paid a level 57 a whopping 1g to run him through Deadmines since he couldn't find a group for it. We have mentioned this topic before, but it's usually in posts about beggars, and I don't know if we've actually considered what could be a cottage industry: actually setting rates and hiring out higher levels to complete various tasks for lowbies.Is this an OK thing to do. I'll admit that I've run lowbies through instances before, but never for gold -- usually it's a friend of mine who just wants some extra gear from a certain instance. And I've been offered gold for an instance run, but I've never accepted it, and I'm not even sure what I would charge to actually run someone through an instance (I'd probably have pretty high terms: 5-10g and a portion of the drops, depending on what class was going through).Have you? Do you think this is the kind of thing that's legit (and if so, should Blizzard maybe even implement a "looking for mercenaries" channel for lowbies to find their benefactors?), or should lowbies all go find their own groups like you had to and stop pestering you to run them through Wailing Caverns for their pittance?
Today is the last day to enter WoW Insider's Dell notebook giveaway!
I'm serious as a raidleader on progression night-- if you haven't left a comment over on this WoW Insider Dell notebook giveaway, you better queue up and do it right now, because today's your last chance (the whole thing ends at noon). And if you have left a few already (the contest has been going for eight days), go leave your last one now (on that post, not on this post-- all this post gets you is on Santa's naughty list) because you get to post one per day.Right smack dab at noon Eastern, WoW Insider's Dan O'Halloran is going to close the comments and choose one lucky winner to take home the whole package-- notebook, WoW schwag, FigurePrints figure, and those Blizzard beta keys. And if you did enter, check your email in the next 48 hours, because that's how he's going to make it the luckiest day of your life.Yes, even luckier than that Tuesday you heard school got closed, and Blizzard decided not to do maintenance so you could play all day, and you discovered a whole six-pack of soda in the back of the fridge that you didn't even know you had, and the donut truck crashed outside your house, and the donut guy came knocking on the door asking you to help them clean up the donuts before they all went bad. Even luckier than that.
Reminder: WoW Insider's notebook giveaway continues
Have you seen WoW Insider's huge contest for that kitted-out WoW edition notebook from Dell? It is blowing up-- there are already over eleven thousand entries and counting. And did you know that you can actually enter once every day the contest is in effect, all the way until this coming Friday afternoon? Sure, with 11,000 people entering, your chances of winning are pretty slim. But if you've only posted once already, you could double them by posting today. And triple them by posting tomorrow. See where we're going with this?Run over to the WoW Insider contest post and put another comment up if you haven't already today (and in the meantime, you can drool over their writeup of the system and think how much money you'll save if you win). Sure, it's repetitive and mindless action with the slim promise of a great reward, but c'mon, we're MMO players. We're used to that by now, right?
New icons for commenters!
In honor of our new comment system here at WoW Insider, I've made some icons for our readers to use! Now instead of the mystery man in the little box next to your comment, you can use one of these neat icons. Don't know how? No problem! It's very easy.First, browse the gallery of new icons below, and find one you like, then click on it. After the picture has loaded, right click it, and choose "Save As" (or "Save Image As" if you're using Firefox), and then save the picture to your desktop.Next, find one of your comments and click on your name. This should take you to your Profile page. After signing in with your password, click on "Edit picture," then hit the "Browse" button. Navigate to the desktop (or wherever you saved the image from earlier), select the image, and click "Open."Finally, hit the "Upload" button to upload your new icon to your profile. Now all of your comments will be accompanied by the image you've selected, instead of the mystery man in the gray box!%Gallery-11181%
Check out the new hotness: TUAW gets threaded comments!
As some of you may have already noticed, TUAW has joined the ranks of Engadget, Download Squad and other Weblogs, Inc. blogs and launched an updated comment system.Now you can reply directly to comments, vote comments up or down in terms of popularity and even add a picture to your profile. Check it out!
Hooray for a new comment system!
Many of you have already noticed, but we figured it's probably protocol to announce that we have a new comment system. Those of you that hang out on Joystiq should already have a pretty good idea of how it works, but here's a quick rundown. Your comments will now feature your avatar image. If you haven't already set up an avatar, you can do so by clicking your user name in any of your comments. This will take you to a profile page where you can log in with your password (which can be found in comment confirmation emails if you don't already have one). Here you can edit some personal info and upload an avatar. Comments can now be voted up or down. Positively rated comments will become more visible, while negatively rated comments will become less visible. See a thoughtful, well-written comment? Vote it up! Do you see a hateful, irrelevant piece of garbage that should be expunged from all the internets? Vote that sucker down! You can also report comments that may be inappropriate. Finally, you can now reply directly to individual comments, which will make conversations (and flame wars) flow much more naturally. There you have it folks, a comment system with personality, flair, and usability. Enjoy. Oh, and feel free to ask questions about the new system (or just try it out) on this post.
