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WoW Archivist: Patch 2.3 -- Azeroth iterated
WoW Archivist explores the secrets of World of Warcraft's past. What did the game look like years ago? Who is etched into WoW's history? What secrets does the game still hold? Blizzard likes to talk about their "iterative" process, meaning they make many small improvements over time to produce the best possible result. In the case of the lackluster patch 2.2, players were disappointed that more was not done. With the game's subscriptions still skyrocketing, Blizzard felt pressure to deliver a major dose of new content and improvements. In November 2007, Blizzard answered the bell and unleashed an iteration that reshaped the game from top to bottom. Players of every level experienced sweeping changes to their play experience -- many of which are so integral now that it's hard to believe we played without them for so long. If you ask players about patch 2.3, they'll call it the "ZA patch." Zul'Aman was a great raid, but 2.3 offered so much more than that.
50 quadrocopters take to Austria's skies for synchronized swarm (video)
If AscTec's Hummingbird quadrocopters continue to fly around in your nightmares, you might not want to watch their latest video -- even if they resemble hypnotic robot fireworks. Ars Electronica Futurelab and Ascending Technologies teamed up for this latest show, programming 50 LED-equipped quadrocopters to frolic over the Danube last week. Watch them dance after the break.
Quadrocopters don creepy eyes, build synthetic Christmas tree of envy (video)
First we let them play music, then they started juggling. Now quadrocopters are feeling emotions as well; namely, jealousy. One of Flying Machine Arena's dainty quadrocopters, nicknamed Juliet, was compelled to build its own synthetic Christmas tree after spying an authentic fir through a glass window. Sure, stacked bricks of festive foam seem innocent enough, but look into those ping-pong ball eyes and tell us you aren't a little worried that next year's "war on Christmas" will be the machine's war on humans. Fly past the break to see Juliet's envious construction project for yourself.
Quadrocopters reined in by Kinect leash, we feel safer already
It seems like the folks over at the Flying Machine Arena are finally starting to catch on -- those quadrocopters are going to kill us all. Thankfully, after teaching them to juggle and tap out some tunes, the researchers came to their senses and put the flying machines on a Kinect-controlled leash. Instead of flitting about autonomously, the four-rotored nightmares are directed by a puppeteer waving his hands. Movement is controlled by the right hand, while raising the left one tells the copter to do a little flip for its master's amusement, and a commanding clap makes it sit down like a good little pup. Best of all, if you don't give it any arm-waving instruction it just hovers and waits until you tell it otherwise. On further consideration, maybe we haven't been creating our own murderers, but a new man's best friend -- after all, they don't eat much and can't chew up your remotes. Check out the video after the break.
The OverAchiever: Mountain O' Mounts from professions
Every Thursday, The Overachiever shows you how to work toward those sweet achievement points. Today, we are convinced that archaeology's RNG won't apply to us. There are a number of interesting (and by interesting, perhaps I mean "occasionally very expensive and likely to drive you insane via RNG-laden accessibility") mounts available from professions, though for some of them, you'll have to be a practitioner in good standing before you'll ever be able to learn them. Regrettably, I am the bearer of some very bad news this week concerning the Vial of the Sands for all those of you who like circumventing the highest costs in the game. Also read: Combining The Ambassador and Mountain O' Mounts Mountain O' Mounts in Outland Mountain O' Mounts in Northrend Mountain O' Mounts in 5-man dungeons Mountain O' Mounts in raids Mountain O' Mounts from achievements Mountain O' Mounts from PvP
Six-rotor drone counts trees, not kills
Relax everybody, unlike its antonymous quadrocopter cousins, this six-rotor drone isn't here to kill, only to count plants. Researchers from Oregon State University are hanging cameras from reasonably-priced RC aircraft to help nurseries track inventory -- a task often performed by workers wandering the orchards and keeping tally by hand. Image analysis software automates the process and, with the addition of other sensors (such as infrared), it could one day be used to spot irrigation problems, identify diseased trees, and estimate crop yield. The machines themselves can climb to over 80 feet and stay aloft for up to 40 minutes while hauling 5-pounds of photo gear. At around $10,000 it's a safe bet that no one will be shooting bottle rockets at balloons with this thing, but it should be well within the reach of farmers who spend that much in money and manpower to track their trees anyway. Two more photos after the break.
Quadrocopters juggle balls cooperatively, mesmerize with their lethal accuracy (video)
You've seen one quadrocopter juggle a ball autonomously while gliding through the air, but how's about a pair of them working cooperatively? Yeah, we've got your attention now. The Zurich-based lab that brought us the piano-playing and ball-bouncing quadrocopter is back with a simply breathtaking display of robotic dexterity and teamwork. Like all mad scientists, they call their Flying Machine Arena research "an experiment," though we see it a lot more as a Pong-inspired dance of our future overlords. We all know how far video games have come since two paddles batted a ball between one another, right?
Quadrocopter plays the piano, wishes us a happy and complacent holiday (video)
Our worst frienemies, the quadrocopters, have decided to act cute for the holidays and play us a merry little jingle. Yes, the guys and gals behind the Flying Machine Arena have put together an airborne robot sophisticated enough to lay down a few seasonal notes on a Yamaha electronic keyboard. And we're still sitting around debating inconsequential topics like net neutrality -- all of human civilization is at stake here, people! Be a good citizen and watch the video after the break to scout out any weak points to this most imminent threat to humanity's survival.
Breakfast Topic: Crafting pride
For some reason, crafting has always been a big part of massively multiplayer games. Maybe it's their quality as loot-collecting simulators, but from the very early graphical MMOs, players have almost always been able to create and modify and trade and sell items of their own. Though we don't talk about it as a mechanic much (you press a button and get what you crafted, what's the big deal), it's certainly one of the main reasons people play World of Warcraft, and the crafting system has come to not only fuel the economy, but has ended up becoming one of the best ways to show off and present your customized character. So our question today is: what's your favorite or most important crafting item? I'm in the middle of leveling my paladin, and he's just now reaching the highest reaches of Engineering, which is a skill I've never leveled up before, but have always wanted to. I haven't gotten together the gold for epic flying yet (well on my way at level 73), but I did make normal flying machine as soon as I could. And my big goal with this character, other than getting him raiding ASAP, is to make the Mekgineer's Chopper -- ever since we first saw it in the early days of Wrath, I've planned to get a character up high enough to make it. I know, I know, I can buy it, but for me it's a crafting thing -- I want to go out, find what I need to find, and craft it with my own virtual hands. Any other crafted items that have you wanting to make something for yourself?
Bat mounts? Blizzard, please make it so.
An interesting post popped up on the forums, mourning the passing of racial mounts, which apparently nobody uses anymore. The poster pointed out that most people now using bears or mammoths, every Death Knight using their cool Deathchargers, and a rare few actually still using their faction mounts. This sparked a flurry of responses and even had Eyonix chime in with his thoughts (and enviable epeen stroking when he casually dropped his Spectral Tiger in the conversation).I'm actually guilty of not riding my faction mount, the closest I ever got being the Swift Warstrider. I currently use the very awesome but all-too-common Black War Bear (every day, it's like 40 more people pop up with the mount), and for flying I use the not-so-common but also not-very-awesome Albino Drake. On my engineer I'm enjoying the Turbo-Charged Flying Machine and I plan to get a motorcycle when he dings 80. If I could afford Salvaged Iron Golem Parts and everything else, that is. There are really quite a lot of mounts to choose from, which is probably why the easily acquired, 'vanilla' mounts aren't as popular.
Barrens Chat: Dead ringer
I don't have much to say with this comic this week, thank goodness. With a two page reaction paper due tomorrow, and two exams Friday, I greatly enjoyed the time I took from my week to sit down and do this comic. With that said, I would like to send out a sincere "I'm sorry for your loss" to the five of you whom have recently (read as: within the last month) experienced something similar with a very different piece of hardware. At least that made one of you turn your World of Warcraft subscription back on.Anyways, have you ever wondered what it would be like if things in Word of Warcraft worked the way they did in real life? Like if for instance some large corporation made your Mechanostrider instead of that nice little Milli Featherwhistle? You could be minding your own business, enjoying a nice breeze from running through Nagrand when, Bam!What do you think? Have you ever just thought about something like that? Standing there one day being shocked back to life and thinking "Gee, what if these jumper cables malfunctioned?" Maybe it's just me, but when I see my Engineering friend zooming around in his Turbo-Charged Flying Machine while I'm stuck on my poor, unflying kodo, I sometimes giggle at the thought of him crashing.At least he's not our healer. Barrens Chat is being devious this week, while the author enjoys picking fun at those unfortunate enough to experience the one of the many rings men (and women) fear most. Past victims have been shockingly few, however not all innocents were spared. Come back next week for a new comic!
WWI '08 Panel Analysis: PvP part I, Lake Wintergrasp
We've been receiving a constant stream of news from the ongoing Worldwide Invitational in Paris, France, and we've gotten hints of changes coming to the game that promises overall improvements to PvP. In the developers' panel discussion, we learned of a Shadow Priest talent called Dispersion, which Blizzard hopes will allow the underrepresented Shadow Priests to become more viable in Arenas. The dungeons and raids discussion yielded plans to further continue the purchase of PvP gear through PvE, such as from reputation. The panel at the WWI earlier was cleverly titled "PvP Game Systems", where Tom Chilton and Corey Stockton discussed Lake Wintergrasp, new Arena maps, and the new Battleground. It was a rather uninspired panel compared to the previous ones, revealing very little that anxious players didn't already know. Because of the suspiciously lengthy yet predictable presentation, very little time was left for questions (of class balance, I bet), although a few good ones were asked -- and surprisingly answered -- during the session.
Whirligig: the generation, jury rigging, and joys of the gyrocopter
...And associated technologyOr:"IT'S WHISPER QUIET!"Since the very dawn of sentience, since the first daring Gnome looked skyward and said "Hey what's up there," since the first drink addled Goblin fell back near-insensate and said that those birds weren't so great, anyone could fly if they had a mind to, before falling into a Dark Iron Ale-induced coma, it has been our dream.Since the first parachute cloak failed to deploy (Engineer 2nd Class Amplebottom regrets packing her bloomers in that pack, and points out respectfully that the quantity of cloth involved did slow Engineer 1st Class Plummetorque's descent somewhat), we have held out hope.Since the first Engineer took flight in Outland, we have dreamed, demanded, planned, protested, and raised our voices (amplified or otherwise) as one, crying out to the great Engineers, the Blue Gears of the World, for succor. Let us, we have cried out, slip off at last the line and mooring, the chain and the anchor. Let us, we called from Shattrath and Stormspire alike, cast off into the air, in machines we have made ourselves, and trusting only our craft and our skill, reach out to touch the skies themselves!Ahem.Many of us, however, died in the process. Turns out our craft and our skill are not always the most trustworthy of companions, much less copilots, much less sole source of support between our posteriors and the unforgiving, unresilient ground below. However, after much research on both flight and gravitational acceleration, Engineers have at their disposal two crafts for aerial flight. Herein we discuss the components required for each model of the Engineers' Flying Machines, and possible advantages therefrom derived.
Insider Trader: The rhyme and reason of crafting
Insider Trader is your inside line on making, selling, buying and using player-made products.With news of new recipes and crafting tweaks in patch 2.4 flooding in, it's hard not to get excited about what Wrath of the Lich King might hold for our favorite professions. The trades in WoW aren't currently necessarily aging very gracefully, yet fresh directions seem perfectly attainable with a little design effort. In the meantime, plenty of new players (and new characters) set off on the trade road every day. Many of them naively believe that a trade that complements their chosen class will provide them the gear and cash they need for the road to 70 and beyond. But with today's accelerated leveling curve slingshotting players past Old World content into gear that's positively steroidal compared to crafted options, crafters often don't see any significant return on their investment until the end game.So why pick up a trade? We've got three good reasons, immediately ahead.
Vertipod aims to be "Segway of the sky"
This one's been making the rounds lately, but we'd be remiss if we didn't take a moment to acknowledge any invention that boasts to be the "Segway of the sky," which is just what upstart Air Buoyant claims its so-called "Vertipod" could one day be. According to Danger Room, this flying machine employs a gasoline or ethanol powered 440-cubic-centimeter engine to propel one brave along individual at speeds up to 40 miles per hour while hovering 15 feet off the ground, with a propeller, naturally, spinning perilously close to your feet. What's more, Air Buoyant's Pete Bitar says the contraption could even have consumer appeal, with a $10,000 kit planned that "can be assembled in a weekend."[Via Tech Digest]
Blizzard posts engineering mount gallery and Hallowe'en costumes
If you haven't checked the World of Warcraft official site in a few days, some new goodies have popped up that you might enjoy. Blizzard added a gallery for photos of players dressed up in WoW-themed Hallowe'en costumes, including several cute pictures of children (can you say baby murloc?), and some nifty ideas. They also added an engineering mount gallery, to both the engineering and the flying mount pages. Of course, the WoW Insider turbo-charged flying machine gallery was up first, and we're not gloating about it. No; we're merely linking to Blizzard's! Actually, they've compiled some unique and truly beautiful shots, so it's definitely worth perusing. Although Blizzard is always open to receiving your screenshots, at the moment, they're quite interested in shots of the new Cenarion Expedition mounts. Check out our mini-guide to taking screenshots if you're not sure of the technicalities, and then mount up for the camera! Alternatively, start grinding in Coilfang, and begin saving your gold. If you fancy one of the flying hippogryphs, it'll set you back some 2000g. If heading out and snapping some fantastic shots is not your style, or if you simply do not have the time, then perhaps you should head over to our Caption This contest page and try your hand at winning a 60-day WoW gamecard. %Gallery-10309%
Gallery: Turbo-Charged Flying Machine
Patch 2.3 injected a whole lot of new life into the game -- from unexpected class buffs to nasty jungle trolls, the latest patch from Blizzard gave a whole lot of bang for the buck. When it comes to bang, however, arguably the loudest, most spectacular one comes from the new Engineering flying mount. This whirling, sputtering thingamajig -- which Blizzard poster Drysc has called "the best flying mount in the game" had Engineers scrambling to get their Hula Girl Doll from that purportedly perfidious peddler Griftah as soon as 2.3 went live. Don't believe the hype? Check out our latest gallery to get up close and personal with the Turbo-Charged Flying Machine. Don't get too close, though. That exhaust can get really nasty.%Gallery-10309%
Your post-2.3 engineering checklist
With new engineering toys comes the race to gather enough materials to make them, preferably on patch day. The complete list, while daunting, is a necessary checklist every engineer will want to work through.Assuming that you will want to craft the new Field Repair Bot 110G, as well as the Flying Machine and, if you're a wealthy engineer (oxymoron, I know), the Turbo-Charged Flying Machine, you will have some prep-work in addition to gathering materials. For the bot, you will want to be revered with the Consortium and already have flight, as you will need to farm Gan'arg Analyzers in Blade's Edge Mountains. If you are only crafting basic flight, you will want 350+ engineering skill, level 70, and expert riding skill. If you are looking to make your epic, you will need to make both mounts, as the original is used in crafting its successor. You will also be needing artisan riding skill and engineering 375. If you're not quite there yet, check out Lisa's guide to maxing out your engineering in order to be ready for patch day. Now that you have all your Gnomish Battle Chickens in a row to make everything that is new, it's time to tackle the hefty list of ingredients.
Insider Trader: Engineering -- The Final Stretch
Insider Trader is your inside line on making, selling, buying and using player-made products.Today's special issue of Insider Trader is all about business. Your profession? Engineer. Your goal? Engineering (375) and a Turbo-Charged Flying Machine. We'll show you how to get there as quickly and painlessly as possible. Link over to our favorite 0-300 leveling guides, and then mull over our collection of tips for the final stretch from 300 to 375.Before you begin, consider this: As with "recommended" powerleveling paths in all professions, your mileage may vary according to your individual server's current pricing and demand for both the materials you need for crafting and the products you create as you go. A non-traditional path to 375 may just be the ticket, depending on what's hot and what's not.No matter how you choose to get there, it's never too soon to start collecting your Flying Machine mats and getting ready to take flight in style. Prepare for liftoff!
Breakfast Topic: Make up your own mounts
A poster on the forums asked about whether people would like to see spider mounts in the game. It's true he was just asking out of boredom, but to me this actually an interesting question. We have the Black Qiraji Resonating Crystal, of course (pictured here, courtesy of Wowhead), but that's more or less impossible to get now, and it's not exactly a spider in any case. What sorts of new mounts will there be then? Nethaera responded: "I couldn't tell you what possible new mounts there will be. :( Perhaps a little further along we'll have information on more of the fun features that are getting added in with Wrath of the Lich King." What mounts would you ask Blizzard to put in the new expansion? Flying machines are already going in at some point, and bats and hippogryphs have already been mentioned. How about rideable owls? For land mounts, maybe you could ride on the shoulders of your very own yeti! Better yet, what if we could pilot our own slow, yet moveable siege weapons?
