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Blizzard answers your questions in Ask the Devs Q&A
If you've been waiting for the answers to the Ask the Devs Q&A, your wait is over. Not only have they answered the first installment of questions, the fine folks at Blizzard have even opened a new thread for more questions you may be burning to ask. Questions this time out ranged from PvP/PvE balance issues to death knight mastery runeforges to why moonkin don't have Execute. I personally found the discussions on Outland quest flow and why Blizzard doesn't just separate PvP and PvE spells to be pretty interesting. Take a look and pose your own questions if you don't see what you wanted answered this time out.
Player banned from Dragon Age 2 forum 'accidentally' loses access to entire game
There are bans, and then there are bans. One user of BioWare's forums found himself facing one of the latter after having his account suspended for allegedly using inappropriate language in a post -- but instead of just keeping him from socializing temporarily, it prevented his PC copy of Dragon Age 2, purchased online, from running entirely. EA has acknowledged that this actually happened to the affected user, but calls it an error. While it says it intended to temporarily ban the individual for violating the forum code of conduct, "there was an error in the system that accidentally suspended a user's entire account." "Immediately upon learning of the glitch, EA took steps to restore the user's macro account and apologized for the inconvenience," the publisher told Joystiq. What it didn't say is what -- if any -- steps are being taken to prevent similar mega-bans from happening in the future. [Thanks, Jeff]
Final Fantasy XI and XIV open official forums
When Final Fantasy XI first launched in North America, official forums were not ubiquitous. Some games had them, and some didn't, but their absence from the launch wasn't odd. Final Fantasy XIV's launch late last year, however, came well after an official board became standard practice. Square-Enix has moved with the times, resulting in an event that many players had likely expected to never see happen -- the official forums for both games are now open, with a welcome letter available for each. While each forum is still considered to be in a beta state, players can log in using their Square-Enix IDs and begin posting immediately (any player of Final Fantasy XI still using a Playonline ID alone will need to get a Square-Enix ID and link the two). The shift is being accompanied by a change from game announcements being posted on the main page to postings on the forums, which should help fans of FFXI and Final Fantasy XIV more easily discuss updates and pending changes in a community atmosphere.
New EVE forums available for testing
Last month, CCP Alice from EVE Online's web-development team revealed that the official EVE forums would be getting a complete revamp as part of the ongoing Incursion expansion. The new forums will have several advanced features, including a powerful search feature, a "Like" button next to posts, and the ability to subscribe to an RSS feed of search results. The new forums are nearing completion and, in true CCP style, developers have released them for public testing and feedback-gathering before they go live. Developers need your help to make sure the forums are everything you expect. Head over to EVE Gate and sign in to give the new forums a test. If you've noticed anything wrong with the new forum, or even if you just have a suggestion for a change you'd like to see made, leave your feedback in the New Forum Feedback Portal. The web-development team is adding highly supported ideas to a review list for further development. When the new forums come in, the old forums will remain as a locked backup in its current location on the EVE website.
Trion Worlds posts RIFT's official server list
With a little over a day until RIFT's head start kicks off the live version of the game, community anticipation is high for Trion World's dynamic brainchild. Players have been waiting for specific details of the list of server names and rulesets to pick their in-game home -- details that are now answered. On the RIFT forums, Community Manager Abigale finally posted a full list of the servers available for the game's launch. The list includes 17 US and 12 European servers, associated with PvE, PvP, PvP-RP and RP types. The European servers also are categorized according to language: French, English and German. The team is planning to release specific forums for each servers, but in the meanwhile you can check out the full list after the jump.
Enter at Your Own Rift: Pre-launch checklist
I'll just come out and say it: The month or so right before the launch of a highly anticipated MMO is simultaneously ecstasy and agony, full of love and loathing. The waiting sucks, but the anticipation is delicious. The enthusiasm from the community is electric, but the heated emotions can be toxic. The discussion is fascinating, but the know-it-alls are annoying. Personally, I kind of wish we could be at launch-plus-one month right now, just so that the frenzy of insane opinions will have died down and we can just, y'know, play the game without feeling as though we were in the middle of a verbal rugby match. Like any MMO, RIFT's going to have its positives and negatives, but I feel that this launch is going to be something we haven't seen in a long time: a solid, stable MMO that offers up a complete package. That pleases the Justin. Since I can't whip out my magic remote control and fast-forward to April, I propose we do the next best thing. Let's open up our imaginary quest logs and run down a checklist of seven "To Dos" and a few "To Don'ts" to help us prepare for RIFT's release. Planning can be fun! Shut up, it can be!
The Daily Grind: Should devs prioritize player requests?
A couple of recent threads on Funcom's Age of Conan forums got us to thinking about MMO development priorities and how (or if) they're affected by playerbase desires. Leaving aside the more outlandish requests from the eternally dissatisfied vocal minority that lurks in the shadows of o-boards everywhere, most games feature an intelligent community filled with suggestions that would, on paper at least, expand the game and its playerbase. For whatever reason, though, it's rare that even the smallest requests are acknowledged, let alone implemented. Lacking development experience ourselves, we can only guess that this is because of time constraints, budget constraints, or visions of a game that leave little room for branching out. Ultimately, we're left to wonder if some MMOs wouldn't be better served by heeding a few of the wishes of their more reasonable players. As one poster succinctly stated: We asked for PvP and got Bori. We asked for a Priest of Mitra/Herald of Xotli revamp and got a Ranger/Guardian revamp. We didn't ask for horse racing or graphical engine upgrades (the former was recently implemented in AoC while the latter is currently Funcom's top development priority). For today's Daily Grind, we'd like to know your take on the situation in general. Should MMO devs prioritize customer requests? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
Nethaera's guide to getting the most from the forums
It's no secret that even after the move to the new digs, the forums can be kind of a rough place. Part of it can be the "squeaky wheel" phenomenon, of course. People don't often stop and make posts on a forum when they're happy about how something is going. Still, it can be a bit of a slog to get through sometimes. Nethaera wants you to get as much out of the forums as possible, however. Nethaera - Getting the Most out of the Forums We've gone through a lot of changes in the last year together. Between a brand new community site and a brand new expansion, there's been a lot to adjust to. We want to make sure that the experience everyone has on the forums is the best it can be and wanted to take some time to remind everyone of the things that haven't changed and the conduct that is expected while in them. source Some of the suggestions made seem obvious (read the terms of service and forum guidelines, for instance), but a lot of posts get closed for being off topic or extraneous, so it's probably helpful to go over them again. It's probably also fair to say that some of Neth's points fall under the category of "common sense," or what some folks call Wheaton's Law.
Gank like a pro with the Ganker's Kit 2.0
WoW forums user Tantojutsu put together the great Ganker's Kit of Ganking 2.0, based off of an older and hilarious thread, detailing the wonderful items and abilities available to make stalking and killing player prey in game that much more fun. Rogues are already deadly and frightening, and when I hear that stealth sound, I immediately spin my head around looking for a sign of a shadowy attacker. Some of my favorite points on the list include a list of banners you can plant on your dead foes, the use of focusing lenses to quickly point toward a target, and using the 2010 Winter Veil MiniZep pet as air recon. Tantojutsu put together a great list, and all of you would-be gank artists should definitely check it out.
The Anvil of Crom: In praise of forum PvP
Hello my fellow barbarians, and welcome back to The Anvil of Crom. The new year is but a babe at this point, but there's already a lot going on in the world of Funcom's Hyboria. If these first few days are any indication, I'm certainly not going to be hurting for column topics in 2011, and the Age of Conan community isn't going to be hurting for discussion items either. As far as my in-game adventures are concerned, I'm plugging away at the Khitai content with my Demonologist and seriously considering making him my permanent main. I'm still waffling a bit as I love alts and love the way they allow me to experience different parts of the game, but the post-80 grind is simply too much to bear on multiple toons. I guess moving to a single-character playstyle is ultimately a good thing, but in past games I've been unable to shake the nagging suspicion that I'm missing something. Look for more on this in a future column (assuming I can make up my mind). Anyhow, it's been quite a while since I took the community's pulse (mid-November to be exact), so what say we take a look at what's got Age of Conan's players (and developers) talking of late.
Blizzard working on ways to improve dungeon finder
The current dungeon finder is of course a vast improvement over the old LFG channel, but it can always be made better. In response to a forum thread about the dungeon finder's ever becoming performance-based, Zarhym weighed in with some interesting news. Zarhym - Dungeon queue should be performance-based We would love to implement better ways for Dungeon Finder to detect if players know what they're doing in dungeons beyond just the gear they've accumulated. We have some long-term design goals in mind for this we're not quite prepared to share this early on though. ;) source What was more interesting was the idea that Blizzard wants to improve the educational aspect of the service, however. With the current vote kick system, often players who are forced out of a group may have no idea why they failed, especially when they are new to the game.
Enter at Your Own Rift: Community guide to RIFT
BLOG POST OPENED! Swiftly, readers rally together to fight the imminent threat to the internet as dark words stream down from the tear in cyberspace. Unholy pronouns and sentence fragments begin to march toward civilized forums, remolding the fabric of reality in their image. Fortunately, valiant defenders of all that is true and grammatically correct push back against the invasion, suffering heavy losses until... BLOG POST SEALED! If you couldn't tell, this is the maiden voyage of Massively's weekly column devoted to Trion World's upcoming MMO, RIFT. We've been excited about this game for a while now, and with the NDA drop, the announcement of the launch date, news of the collector's edition, and upcoming beta events, it's as good a time as any to start talking about this addictive fantasy experience. Karen Bryan and I will be trading off weeks to cover RIFT from our different vantage points, and we're pretty geeked at the prospect. To kick off the very first Enter at Your Own Rift, we'll be following the Massively tradition of posting a community guide to all the hottest and most helpful links about this game after the jump.
Shifting Perspectives: The unbearable suckhood of pugging
Every week (usually), WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat, bear, restoration and balance druids. This Tuesday, we soothe everyone's ego by telling them it's not their fault (while secretly thinking it's everyone's fault). I apologize for the recent absence, guys. While I would like to say it had something to do with battling hordes of evil minions from some morally questionable wizard with an abundant set of apostrophes in his name, the truth of the matter is that I've just been crushed by work. It didn't help that I started a Shifting edition on gearing a restoration druid at level 85 and thought, "Hey! Wouldn't it be nice to include all the gear available to druids from Cataclysm quests on up, à la Emmerald's old gear list, so that people know exactly where they stand in relation to upgrades?" Some 1,600 words later, I am pleased to report that I am almost to the end of the shoulder slot. Yeah. You're gonna have to give me another week or two on that ... unless you're planning to go naked from the shoulders down. If you do, send pics. Anyway, it hasn't escaped my attention that the forums more or less exploded once people started getting into heroics. One contingent claims that Cataclysm heroics are too difficult and need to be nerfed. Another insists that everyone claiming that heroics are too difficult is a bad player with bad gear and bad talent choices and bad glyphs and they should feel bad. Personally, I've seen enough of both the dungeon finder and guild groups as a tank and healer to arrive at my own conclusion: People on both sides of this argument are equally correct. Or, if you're in a judgmental sort of mood today, they're equally full of it.
Deck the halls with Coralax costumes in City of Heroes
At one point in development, the Coralax were going to be the new epic archetype for the villainous crowd in City of Heroes. Now, they're just another low-level villain group with some memorable looks to them. But for the next twelve days, they can be something more -- namely, they can be your new clothing. No, you aren't getting missions to skin the Coralax and wear what's left as a hat. The Paragon Studios team is taking the opportunity to give away the never-before-seen costume code for the aquatic humanoids via social networking through December 23rd, skipping the weekends. While similar giveaways have happened in the past, they've always been with costume codes from a recent convention. The Coralax costume is totally new and unprecedented, and that means whoever snags one owns a unique part of the game's history. Since the team won't be announcing where the codes will be dropped next, it's up to players to keep a close eye on Twitter, Facebook, and the forums to try and snag a code in time. Good luck to City of Heroes players eager for the new costume, because nothing says the leadup to the holiday season like a mad dash for something everyone wants.
Microsoft closing Halo Wars website, folding into Waypoint community
Avid Halo Wars players, whose attention hasn't been swayed by 2010's exhaustive list of strategy blockbusters, were greeted with some unwelcome news this past weekend: The game's stat tracking home, as well as its official forums, will be shut down on December 15. The loyal community is being persuaded to move its conversation over to the Halo Waypoint forums. On the same day as the closure, an update will launch for Halo Wars, forever severing it from the soon-to-be-discontinued website. The update will also remedy a few Theater mode issues that were keeping players from viewing cutscenes, but, according to 343's content producer, "it won't include many of the fixes that we all wanted it to include." As you can imagine, the responses on said post are well-measured, even-headed and entirely polite. There's just this air of understanding permeating the entire discussion that's ... well, it's really inspiring.
The Anvil of Crom: Community update - The Musical
Welcome back, intrepid readers. This week, the Anvil of Crom is going to crush our collective enemies, drive them before us, and hear the lamentations of their women. Also, I'll be singing today's column in the key of QQ, to the tune of Conan the Musical. OK, maybe not literally, but we will visit a place that seems to revel in over-dramatized lamentation, namely the forums! Yes, it's high time for another community roundup, that time-honored tradition by which I take a look at what Age of Conan's playerbase is currently up in arms about and add my fuel to the fire. This time around, there are actually some constructive discussions going on in addition to the usual Craig-Morrison-broke-our-PvP wailing, so join me after the cut to see what's what in the meta-cloud surrounding Funcom's Hyboria.
Official forums are now read-only
The official forums have gone read-only as promised, effectively shutting them down. The new forums, over at the new World of Warcraft community site, are your new go-to forums. If there are any threads you loved, discussions you cherished, and anything memorable you wish to keep, it would be best to save those now. The forums are staying read-only until the end of the month, and then they are going away forever. End of an era ... Forums going read-only These forums will remain read-only until the end of the month, after which they and all of their posts will be removed ... forever! If you have any posts, information, stickies, etc. that you'd like to keep you'll want to have finished saving it before then. We've all enjoyed the past few years on these forums, and look forward to creating many more with you on the new community site. See you there! source
Breakfast Topic: What threads from the old WoW forums will you miss?
Blizzard announced on Monday that the official forums we've been using the past six years will become read-only on Wednesday, Nov. 17. The forums will be replaced by the new World of Warcraft community site, which offers new and improved forums, as well as a bunch of other features. That's all good and fine, but Blizzard also said in half a month's time, it will delete the old forums and all the threads in it will be lost forever! Eek! Wait a second ... What am I worrying about? Google Cache will likely allow us continued access to the old forum content for years to come, even after it's wiped off of Blizzard's servers. Still, in that moment of concern that all those years of information would suddenly be lost, I wondered: "What will I miss from the old forums?" My mind immediately went to "I think my tank is seeing another healer," a thread about an healer suspicious that her tank is being unfaithful. The thread was so epic, WoW Insider actually already wrote about it. Just check out this excerpt from page 21: She really ruined me. I was depressed about going solo. I was spending all my time in the Underbelly, knocking back Noggenfogger and bandaging myself to mailbox dancers. -- Grokthul Also, as a PvP priest, how could I miss the comedic gold of "Disc priest/Shadow priest 2v2"? The OP had me at, "When the hunter comes to save giraffes, just darkness priest licorice beam his paladin to slow him," but by the time I read "ice tent," I couldn't breathe anymore because I was laughing and crying at the same time. Are there any threads that stand out in your mind that you'll miss?
Official WoW forums going read-only on Wednesday, new community site and forums ready
Last month, Blizzard announced that it would be launching a new World of Warcraft community site, with new and improved forums. At the time, Blizzard said that the existing official forums would be phased out after testing of the community site was complete. The community site went live earlier this month. Now, a wave of identical blue posts has hit every section of the WoW forums with the following message: Bashiok -- Forums Going Read-Only This Wednesday, November 17 these forums will be put into a read-only state. At that time we'll be inviting all posters to fully migrate to the new World of Warcraft community site and forums. http://www.battle.net/wow These forums will remain read-only until the end of the month, after which they and all of their posts will be removed ... forever! If you have any posts, information, stickies, etc. that you'd like to keep you'll want to have finished saving it before then. We've all enjoyed the past few years on these forums, and look forward to creating many more with you on the new community site. See you there! source So that's it! We won't be able to post in the official forums anymore after Wednesday, Nov. 17, and we have until the end of November to save anything on the official forums we want to keep or remember!
Exploring Eberron: The race discussion has been banned
Don't worry, it's just a one-week ban. Once again, it was an interesting week for Dungeons and Dragons Online fans. Tuesday night's banhammer took everyone by surprise, and the reactions on both sides were pretty interesting. I was really excited to discuss DDO races this week, but this week's problems left me thinking long and hard about the dynamics of player/developer interaction in this game. Check out that handy comments section at the end too, because I'd really love to hear what you have to say on the banning issue. Follow along after the break, then weigh in!
