coordination
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Tech team-up offers behind-the-scenes glimpse at Apple retail
Here's a post from Fortune that's really intriguing: It's about a company named Lark, that's notable not so much for their product (a wristband that monitors you while you sleep in conjunction with the iPhone), but for the fact that they've decided to retail exclusively in Apple Stores, and all of the caveats and deals that go along with that. Lots of the deal, obviously, is still hidden behind agreements, but the extent to which Apple has gone hands-on with this product is impressive. When CEO Julia Hu showed up at a Apple expecting to pitch her product, she instead was told that Apple knew all about it, and Apple apparently proceeded to completely redesign her packaging to sell in the Apple Stores, as well as book her on a "roadshow" demo event, specifically to show off Apple products and partners to its retail investors and potential clients. It's all interesting, and it shows that even when Apple appears to be taking on a somewhat risky bit of tech for big placement in its stores, the company has usually done the research and all the work behind the scenes already.
The Daily Grind: What do you do when someone just doesn't get it?
Tackling the endgame rush in any game can be a difficult proposition, whether it's the brutality of Final Fantasy XI or the staggered progression of World of Warcraft. It's always made more difficult, however, when someone doesn't understand what he's supposed to be doing. Sometimes, even instructional videos, pseudo-Gregorian chants, and screaming epithets over ventrilo will all fail to get someone to realize that he needs to stay put during Flame Wreath. And there are only so many times a group can take failure when there's an obvious weak link in the chain. On the one hand, we've all had one or two things that we know we ought to do, but we're just not quite capable of doing reliably. On the other, there comes a point when the rest of the group is paying for one person's persistent mistakes. So how do you handle that one guy who can't seem to get what he's supposed to be doing? Do you try and get him kicked out? Kick yourself out pre-emptively? Or do you just resort to blaming him for any and all failures?
The lost art of crowd control
The emblems changes are driving traffic back to the Heroics, and I love it -- 5-mans are my favorite thing to do in the game, and there's nothing more fun to me than sitting down with a group and trouncing a Heroic, reeling in all of the gold and loot we can carry. But there's something missing, still, even in these glory days of achievements and Stone Keeper's Shards and Emblems of Conquest. Yes, it's crowd control. Groups are still gung-ho on AoEing everything in their way, and Blizzard hasn't shown any indication, even in the design of the new instances, that crowd control is anything they want to keep around. I can't remember the last time I trapped something in a group on my Hunter, and I'm sure that the last time I did, some Death Knight broke it right open, Death Grip-ped it back into the group, and then AoE'd it down to nothing.Bornakk actually replies in the thread that we're just being nostalgic for nostalgia's sake, and that even when CC was required, people whined that they needed to have certain classes in their groups. But what class doesn't have CC these days? Even Shamans got their CC, just as it wasn't actually needed any more. Crowd control added some semi-serious strategy even to trash fights in instances, and while we originally heard that it would come back at some point, Blizzard certainly seems to be done with it.But we can be patient. The new instances in 3.2 are light to completely empty on trash, so maybe they're waiting for Icecrown to really put our CC skills and coordination to the test. I play a Hunter at endgame currently, so I might be biased, but I do love 5-mans, and I do miss the extra coordination and teamwork that a big CC-required pull provided. Hopefully they can find a way to mix that back in without requiring certain specs or classes to be along for the ride.
40 men on a raid
Kavis wonders if he's the only person who wants 40 man raids back. I'm sure he's not the only person, but I'd bet he's in the minority. Forty man raids may sound super fun in theory, but in practice they are pretty miserable-- it's hell to coordinate the schedules of 40 people on a regular basis, and then it's even worse to actually get them to line up on time and do what needs to be done. I don't know if Kavis ever actually ran Molten Core or BWL or Naxx, but while 40 man raids were fun while they lasted, 10 and 25 man raids are much, much easier on raidleaders and guildies alike.As Bornakk says, the devs love 25 man raids too-- since 40 man raids could be carried by about 25 good players anyway, it makes things much easier for everyone, in terms of individual contributions.Now, if Kavis is asking to return to the 40 man content, I'm completely down with that. BWL, AQ, and Naxx were fun to go through when you had a good group rolling (as rare as that was), and the content there shouldn't be abandoned (Naxx, we already know, is likely being repurposed in WotLK). But as for a return to the days of trying to get 40 people together for five hours on a Sunday evening? No thanks.
Multiboxing in formation with Xzin
Xzin, always ready to show off his multiboxing setups, sent us a video of movement tests for his 10 boxing group. Yeah.I don't know-- I don't really find this exciting at all. I mean, sure, there's a little bit of skill in actually coding this stuff all out and hooking it all together, but after you do that, what's the point? Isn't this close enough to botting that Blizzard would frown on it? Sure, if you pull this off, you'll be able to win a whole BG by yourself, but if I had a couple grand in cash to waste on all this stuff, I'd just hire Pandemic to come and do it for me.Are you guys interested in news about multiboxing or not? If there's a large group of you who finds this fascinating, I'm more than happy to post this stuff when we see it come through. But while I can see the skill in coordinating 10 computers to do your will, the results just don't thrill me that much.Thanks, Xzin!
