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Apple.com reveals iLife upgrade, reaffirms MacBook Air refresh
Ah, it's good to see Apple can leak its announcements ahead of time just like the rest of the world. Overzealous forum mods on Apple's own site have been setting up Discussions sections for products to be announced at today's Back to the Mac event a little early, which has inevitably been picked up by some sleuthing souls over in Poland. A little bit of URL manipulation has revealed separate forums for a new iMovie '11, iPhoto '11, and GarageBand '11, all three of which are core components of the iLife suite, leading us to go ahead and presume that Steve Jobs will be discussing an iLife '11 later today. There's also confirmation of the new MacBook Air with an "MBA (Need official name)" forum emerging, alongside a mysterious "Reserved 20 10" destination. [Thanks, MM]
EVE Evolved: EVE players debate microtransactions
Sometimes it seems as though the entire MMO industry is moving toward microtransaction-based pricing schemes. With the success of free-to-play titles like Runes of Magic and Free Realms, it's clear that microtransactions are becoming a popular alternative to the standard subscription model. Famously, Dungeons and Dragons Online also proved that a hybrid model with both subscription and microtransaction options could be a great success. Even World of Warcraft has hopped on the microtransaction bandwagon with its infamous sparkle pony and cosmetic pets. With the industry moving firmly in one direction, questions have been raised over whether EVE Online will ever implement any kind of microtransactions. Believe it or not, the first steps toward doing just that have already been taken. It was discovered some time ago that the Incursion expansion this winter would give players the ability to buy extra neural remaps with PLEX. Neural remapping allows players to re-assign a character's attributes using a points-based system. As attributes are only used to determine the speed with which skills train, remaps allow players to max out the stats required to train a particular branch of skills. In this opinion piece, I look at the microtransaction debate currently raging in the EVE community and weigh in with my opinions on this controversial issue.
New Jumpgate Evolution forums now live
Jumpgate Evolution forum members will be happy to hear that the old JGE forums are a thing of the past. The new forums went online today, replacing the old ones that a NetDevil staffer referred to as "broken in many ways." As with many new sites, this one still has a few bugs to be fixed and additions to be made, so the News and Announcements forum contains a welcome post with a list of known issues. That post explains how players can bring their login information to the new forum and gives a list of features that are still in the completion process. The forums and subforums are all functional -- though missing a few bells and whistles -- so check them out for yourself!
New devblog reveals only 54 developers working on EVE Online
Icelandic MMO developer CCP Games has always made a point of being open and transparent with players. Through tools such as the Council of Stellar Management (CSM) and in-depth devblogs, a great deal of CCP's internal workings have been laid out in the open for all to see. In the latest CSM summit, CCP revealed that it couldn't commit any resources to CSM issues for at least the next 18 months as too many development resources were being used up by Incarna and Dust 514. EVE Online's new senior producer CCP Zulu (formerly CCP Zulupark) elaborated on the issue yesterday with a full devblog on CCP's current allocation of developer time. In the devblog, Zulu provides a complete breakdown of CCP's current development teams, what projects each developer is assigned to, and what we can expect to come over the next year and a half. The devblog confirms grim fate of issues raised by the CSM, with no teams assigned to cover player-raised game defects. Perhaps the most surprising thing to come out of the devblog, however, was that only 54 members of CCP's "200-person development team" are working on anything that directly affects the current EVE populace. Of those, only 22 are working on features for the next expansion. Skip past the cut to find out why there are only 22 developers working on features and what the reactions of the EVE player-base have been since the announcement.
Toshiba looking to standardize wireless memory cards, crash Eye-Fi's party
We're big fans of Eye-Fi's wireless memory cards, which enable you to toss that card reader out the window and download all your pictures wirelessly. So far Eye-Fi is about the only player in that little niche, but Toshiba's looking to blow it wide open with charmingly titled "Standard Promotion Forum for Memory Cards Embedding Wireless LAN," which could be given the equally catchy abbreviation SPFfMCEWLAN (a name that is, thankfully, subject to change). Toshiba's forum, which also includes Singapore-based flash company Trek 2000, will look to create a standardized 8GB SDHC card with integrated 802.11b/g, able to transfer JPEG and RAW images either from camera to a server or directly to another camera. Toshiba is hoping other camera and flash manufacturers will join in the standardization fun and we certainly do too -- just like we hope they move past 8GB quickly.
The Tattered Notebook: I'm in ur community, stalking ur threads
Last week's small little interview was fun, but this week it's time to get back to business. I haven't stalked threads in the forum for a while now, and I'm afraid that I'm losing my touch. So this week I've dived back into the official EverQuest II forums to bring up the most recent discussion topics -- many of them centered on the changes made during Halas Reborn. Freeport and Qeynos still dominate the hot topic list, suggestions for things Dave Georgeson should fix in the game are being collected, and one thread muses on the past and future of the game. In short, don't miss out on this week's entry in my Tattered Notebook. Do not disgrace the power of the Tier'dal, as the Community Manager Dark Elf has done! Otherwise I will have to invent stern punishments, like withholding lolcats from the internet. Do not force my hand!
Breakfast Topic: 101 things to do before the world dies
On the EU forums, a character named Redbranch from Thunderhorn came up with what I thought was a pretty nifty idea -- getting his/her fellow players to chime in on a list of 101 things to do in old Azeroth before Cataclysm hits. It's sort of the WoW equivalent of The Bucket List, and the responses range from the violent ("Slaying as many people as possible") to the nostalgic ("Go base jumping again in Feralas") to the practical ("Prepare plentiful supplies of gold"). Then Slorkuz chimed in with the following: Slorkuz Quote: The old world is changing forever. Let's compile a list of things to do before the end. 1) Play through all the starter zones, to give some idea if each race's lore. Visit the Shimmering Flats! source We already know that Thousand Needles is going to be mostly underwater in Cataclysm, but it was another nudge to the realization that the world we know is going bye-bye forever. Right now, my personal "bucket list" includes doing the dungeon set 2 quest line, but I'd love to hear from other players on how they're approaching the "end of the world."
More Cataclysm change details for druids
Fear not, my fellow druids; your feral analysis post is going live later tonight, and resto sometime tomorrow. Daniel Whitcomb and I have been talking about the incoming changes to the spec, and particularly the decision to change the tree of life from a constant form into a cooldown. I honestly didn't know how to feel about it at first. But before we get to that, Ghostcrawler stayed up hellaciously late last night to answer questions from druid players about the Cataclysm changes currently planned, and we've collected all of them here for you.
Upon logging into World of Warcraft, I immediately...
Last week Eyonix started a poll on the forums asking players what they do directly after logging in (all of the options are listed in the picture above). For me, it's no contest -- before I do anything else, I always pop the friends list up to see who's around. The only time this doesn't happen is if I'm logging on in a rush for the night's raid, but I try to limit the number of times that occurs. Reading this poll has made me realize the extent to which I depend on my bank alt for mail and AH-related business; my main very rarely needs to check her mail. If you're interested in responding to the poll, it'll be running for another day or so, and you can find it here. Because it's on the official forums, you'll be prompted to log in to your forum account before replying.
Doing something nice for other players
This is one of the few forum threads of late that has given me hope in mankind rather than the other way around. Jastiri of Antonidas started a thread asking players what the last nice thing they did for another player was, and relates his/her own tale of running into a new level-15 player who had saved 20 silver and materials to pay a tailor to make 6-slot bags. This "just about broke my heart," Jastiri wrote, who then made the newbie five 16-slot bags and offered 10 gold. The player thanked him/her for the bags but didn't accept the gold, insisting that the bags were gift enough and that he/she intended to pay Jastiri back for them eventually as well. How can you not love that?The whole thread's full of little gems like that that, and was lovely to read. Share the wealth, readers -- what have you done lately for other players?
Richard Knaak signing in the Midwest, Blizzard artists' forum at UC Irvine
Stuck in the Midwest and didn't have enough money to go see all the fun at BlizzCon 2009 this year? We've got a little (very little) bit of condolence for you: Richard Knaak, author of the Warcraft novels, is doing a signing tour this weekend around the Midwest in Missouri and Kansas. Blizzplanet has all of the dates and places -- he'll be in St. Joseph, MO on Friday (today), and then in Overland Park, KS and Lawrence, KS on Saturday and Sunday respectively. Not quite as fun as seeing Ozzy, but if you're out in the middle of the country, there's your chance at a little facetime with someone helping shape the WoW universe.Unfortunately, I'm stuck in Chicago, and -- oh wait! I moved to Los Angeles last weekend, which means I'm actually going to get to go to this artists' forum down at UC Irvine in California. Where I am (it's still a little weird to say that). The Laguna Art Museum (which has an ongoing relationship with Blizzard) will be hosting some of Blizzard's and other artists on October 1st, and they'll be talking (we presume) about creating art and other media for games and digital entertainment. Usually this is the part of the post where I'll ask you to send us pictures if you go, but what the heck -- I'm in the neighborhood (not really, but closer than Chicago), so maybe I'll get a chance to go and check it out for myself. See you there?
Official Cataclysm forum opens
The official WoW forums got another section today, one dedicated to the upcoming World of Warcraft expansion Cataclysm. There's nothing useful in the at the moment, like a roundup of everything Blizzard has posted about the third expansion, or short bullet pointed lists of major features (although we have such information in our Guide to Cataclysm).These forums are open to the general WoW population, and are NOT the alpha / beta forums. The alpha has NOT begun yet. But things are at least moving in the direction of more Cataclysm presence in WoW's official community.With Cataclysm expected to be released in 2010 (remember, according to Mike Morhaime, not us), we should start seeing greater details about what was announced at BlizzCon in the next couple months. Lots of good stuff to know, and hopefully this forum will be a conduit for Blizzard's old top hats like Ghostcrawler to begin some more detailed information dissemination. World of Warcraft: Cataclysm will destroy Azeroth as we know it. Nothing will be the same. In WoW.com's Guide to Cataclysm you can find out everything you need to know about WoW's third expansion. From Goblins and Worgens to Mastery and Guild changes, it's all there for your cataclysmic enjoyment.
Death to spell power plate
In a recent set of posts on the subject of Prot Paladins wearing holy gear in PvP, Ghostcrawler mentioned that Prot Paladins are not intended to be able to out heal Holy Paladins in the same gear and that fixes are intended that will remove their ability to do this. I'd like to offer a suggestion: destroy all spell power plate. Destroy it! Destroy, destroy, destroy! Exterminate it! Extirpate it from the surface of Azeroth! Perhaps in a Cataclysm of some kind. (Except Judgement. That can stay.)My reasoning isn't to nerf Holy Paladins as healers. I love all healers equally. Rather, my idea here is to incorporate a class design that's been picking up steam since the end of Burning Crusade. Back before patch 3.0 dropped, two Paladin specs wore spell plate, Holy and Protection. Since that was two specs out of a possible six plate wearing talent specializations (2/6 = 1/3 = roughly 33 percent, I'm not doing a repeating) that meant that there was a fairly sizable minority that wanted the stuff.Flash forward to Wrath of the Lich King. There are now three plate wearing classes. Two of them (six total talent specs) have absolutely no use for spell plate. The one class that does use spell plate? Well, the Protection tree was revamped, so tanking Paladins don't wear it. Retribution has been giving spell plate the stink eye forever. So we now have 1 out of 9 possible specs wearing the stuff, and yet it drops everywhere. There's no reason spell plate needs to exist, much less be a protected species by Blizzard when they went out of their way to do away with tanking leather, for example.
Breakfast Topic: The joy of phasing
Rayless on the General Forums asks a question that I've always wondered about but never poked into; how exactly does phasing work? If you've leveled through the Death Knight starting area, done the Wrath Gate questline, or quested in Icecrown (and you should really do all three), you've had the opportunity to see Blizzard's most intricate phasing in action. However, Zarhym and Crygil are pretty cryptic on how it's done, and it's up to players to fill in the details. In a nutshell, phasing is all about the information that's sent (or not sent) to your computer by the game server; Blizzard can toy with anything that's not client-side, affecting which buildings and NPCs you can "see" but not affecting the game's basic geography. I was surprised to discover that phasing has technically been in the game since launch -- ghosts and stealth are a form of phasing, as are (I would assume) the ghosts of Caer Darrow -- but the hugely elaborate set pieces of Wrath are simply a more complicated evolution of the same mechanic. Given the success of phasing, players have been kicking around suggestions for instances or zones that could do with a touch of it, and Gnomeregan seems to be a pretty consistent pick. I'd have to agree, but I'd also add the Echo Isles (the Gnomes and Trolls have overcome their low-level foes by now, surely?) and perhaps Duskwood for starters. Is there any other zone or instance that you think would benefit from a little reality-bending?
Time change for this week's European extended maintenance
European Blue Ancilorn has updated the times for this week's extended maintenance which will affect a large percentage of realms. We mentioned the extended maintenance to you last week and that Ancilorn was keen to make sure players had an "opportunity to plan accordingly".The selected realms will be offline from 1:00am to 3:00pm CEST, not 3:00am until 5:00pm CEST as we previously reported. The following servers are affected by the extended downtime: Balnazzar, Bloodfeather, Darksorrow, Defias Brotherhood, Earthen Ring, Frostwhisper, Genjuros, Haomarush, Hellscream, Laughing Skull, Lightning's Blade, Magtheridon, Neptulon, Nordrassil, Quel'Thalas, Ragnaros, Ravencrest, Runetotem, Shadowmoon, Shadowsong, Shattered Hand, Silvermoon, Skullcrusher, Spinebreaker, Stormrage, Stormreaver, Stormscale, Sylvanas, Terenas, The Maelstrom, The Venture Co, Thunderhorn, Turalyon, Twisting Nether and Vashj.
Breakfast Topic: Would you change your faction?
Earlier this week we reported on Nethaera's stunning revelation that faction changes were in the works. Yeah, I was just as amazed. It might just be an idea at the moment, a work in progress which we might not get access to until a patch or even the next expansion. The logistics are mind-boggling. Would this be a literally blending of species into factions so Humans could join the Horde and Taurens the Alliance or would your character literally be transformed into another species? How exactly would the lore work around that? We've had character customisation for a while now and the ability to change gender but changing faction and possibly even species. That a whole new kettle of fish.So, constant readers, in the wake of this bombshell I'm very eager to know what you think. Does the very idea of changing faction seem contrary to how the game works? Would you consider jumping factions? Would you rather see characters choose whether to become Horde or Alliance? Could you change your very species to join the opposing faction? From a lore perspective, how do you think would this work and, indeed, does it need to have a basis in lore? After all no one questioned the gender change. What do you think?
Valve updates Team Fortress 2 for fairness, community responds
When Valve introduced the first four class updates to Team Fortress 2, an achievement system was used to help unlock new weapons and items. According to Valve, that system did not work as intended. In the end, instead of playing the game toward fun and rewarding goals, hardcore players would grind achievements to unlock the game's latest weaponry. At the time, users complained the achievement system was changing the landscape of Team Fortress 2's online community -- mostly because some of the achievements were so difficult to acquire regularly.In response, Valve has changed the new weapon system with the latest update (Spy & Sniper). In the new system, Team Fortress 2 utilizes Valve's Steam Cloud, automatically rewarding players new weaponry and items previously only attainable through completing achievement related tasks.According to Valve, the new system is designed to reward gamers based on how long they play Team Fortress 2. Play more, get more. But according to the game's forums -- and multiple emails to Joystiq -- some players are unhappy with the changes.
EU forums get separate Horde and Alliance guild recruitment areas
Now while the US forums have had this feature for a while, EU Blue Wryxian has posted that the EU forums have a little more order this afternoon. Rather than clumping the Horde and Alliance guild recruitment threads together, they now have separate areas to, as he puts it, 'increase the usefulness and accessibility of the Guild Recruitment forums'. Despite his entreaties to the contrary, we're sure it's more to do with furthering the mutual dislike between factions. However that said, it will certainly save a lot of time and hassle.So if you're Alliance and looking for a guild, take a look here while Hordies can go here.
Finding unfinished quests
Alan on LJ is having a problem I've been thinking a lot about lately -- like me, he wants to go back and finish the Loremaster achievement, which asks you to clean up all of the quests in the old continents. But like me, he's wondering just how he'll find all of those old quests -- unfortunately, there's no way to know which quests have and haven't been done, and while of course, there's a "low level quest" tracking option, that still requires you to run around to all of the different quest locations to find them.A forum thread like this one is a huge help, but still, there's no way in the game to really go back and easily find which ones we've missed. Even with a list like that, you might spend twenty minutes trying for a drop before realizing you've already done that quest. Blizzard promised us a little while back that they'd be changing the "discovery" mechanic (so that we'd be able to see on the map which areas we hadn't discovered for the achivements yet), and an option like that might be helpful for cleaning up old quest -- say that low level quest tracking might work over the entire map, or there might be a magic box in Dalaran that would have whatever quest items we might need.The good news here is that Blizzard has built a fair amount of leeway into the quest achievements -- you won't need every single one to get the points, so the more obscure drop-based quests can probably go undone without worry. But just like the World Exploration achievements, a little more help finding the quests we might have missed would go a long way.
PTR forums are up! Panic some more!
Maybe PTR character copies being up today isn't a fluke after all ! The US PTR forums just came up as well, ready to become an unceasing wall of jungle animal noises. Head on over if you're so inclined. With the character copy page being up too, signs are continuing to point to it being 3.1 PTR go time very soon. Be ready to download that client and, as always, keep an eye out here for when the PTR news trickle inevitably turns into a flood. We swear to shake it up if you swear to listen.
