tigerclaw
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2.4 is not being released today
Many thanks to Smokecom for sending us a link to a post made by Tigerclaw. In response to a patch 2.4 release date thread, he tells us (post copied in totality):"It's not today. Cancel patch alert!"Well, there you have it. No patch 2.4 today. This of course means that all of you who voted March 18th in the guess the patch 2.4 release date contest are not going to win, I'm sorry to say. But it also means that my guess of March 25th is starting to look pretty good. So we are left with at least one more week of running to Mount Hyjal, and one more week of 30 yard cyclone. Maintenance should be ending in about one and a half hours from now. Enjoy!
Blizzard reveals new unannounced game in development
In an exclusive interview with Gamasutra, Blizzard revealed they have 3 development teams hard at work on games. WoW has 135 developers, Starcraft II's team has 40 members and a third unannounced title has a team of 40 members. Frank Pearce, Blizzard's Senior Vice President of Product Development, said "Team 3 is working on something really awesome. I can't give you any hints but it's totally awesome."Be still my beating heart. Of course, the speculation on the forums has begun and Blizzard CM Tigerclaw is fanning the flames:When our awesome new World War II first person shooter ships, you'll all be saying "aw why didn't I see that coming!"A few players suggested that World of Tacocraft is on the horizon. Tigerclaw ran with the idea:You could have power-ups and add-ons, like you could wrap the taco in an authentic Chicago-style pizza... maybe even dip it in batter and then deep fry it til it's golden brown... That's what I call a Taco! Personally, I would like to see Diablo 3 or another MMO on the horizon. Hopefully, they will tell us more at Blizzcon, but Blizzard is notoriously reticent with this kind of information, so I'm not holding my breath. What new game would you like to see from Blizzard? Do you think they'll tell us at Blizzcon? Would you eat a deep fried, pizza wrapped taco?
Voice chat coming in 2.2.0
Coming in 2.2.0: Integrated voice chat.Tigerclaw, who I've never heard of either-- is he a dev? He says he's "in a whole other building than the CMs"-- has bad news for all of those Teamspeak and Ventrilo hosts. Apparently come 2.2.0, you won't need to run any extra programs, as players will be able to speak to each other via the normal client. Tigerclaw also says a PTR for the patch is upcoming, but he definitely does work for Blizzard: he doesn't give any clues at all as to when this might happen.So let the rampant speculation begin! Lately I've been playing a lot of the Halo 3 Beta (traitorous, I know), and I love the way voice works in that game: you can push a button to talk over a radio to your whole team, or just speak into the mic without pushing anything, and only players near you ingame will hear what you're saying. I doubt WoW will be that complicated (not to mention that a lot of players don't like that "feature"), but it's a cool effect, and here's hoping Blizzard comes up with some interesting ways to use voicechat onward. What if Hakkar's whispers were heard only in your own personal voice channel?
iTunes controls for Mac not working as intended
If you're running WoW on a Mac and trying to listen to iTunes while playing, you've probably hit the same problem Timi over on Kirin Tor has: the controls ain't just workin' quite right.Sure, crossrealm BGs are cool, but for a few people, ingame iTunes controls were an even more awaited feature. The dev team didn't get it exactly right, however-- Tigerclaw tries to explain why over on the forums, but I couldn't get much farther than "a Plan-B version was shipped using 'osascript'... to solve the blocking/deadlock issue" before I gave up and reached the same conclusion you probably will: Blizzard shipped something out that didn't work the way they wanted it to (that snickering you're hearing right now is people who played Hunters right after WoW's release, when the class wasn't even close to done).Even if it isn't working right, however, it still seems to be working, as Timi finds a solution after a little tweaking. Tigerclaw, of course, promises the next major patch will bring relief (have we heard that before?), but if you want help, you can probably find it on the support forums. Meanwhile, Rollak offers us another program that does something even Blizzard hasn't done yet-- control iTunes while playing WoW in Windows. Pretty slick-- maybe that's the guy Blizz should hired to implement this feature next patch.
