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The science of language, community, and MMORPGs
Back in August, Massively wrote a little post about Swedish research on MMOs and language learning. That article provoked me, a gamer and teacher of English for speakers of other languages (ESOL), to hunt down the original research and talk directly to the researchers, Dr. Liss Kerstin Sylvén from the University of Gothenburg and Dr. Pia Sundqvist from Karlstad University, to better understand their research and findings. Note that we'll be talking here about games and language learning specifically, not other forms of game-related education. Also, Sylvén and Sundqvist don't consider themselves "gamers." Sundqvist remembers Pac-Man as her first game, both admit to playing Angry Birds on their cell phones, and Sundqvist is "allowed" to sometimes watch her 17-year-old son play League of Legends. I find this interesting because they are non-gamers who seriously consider games capable of being educational without specifically being developed to do so. This isn't a simple merger of a hobby with work; this is work in a field of interest that's still being explored.
WoW Archivist: Class protests and the Million Gnome March
WoW Archivist is a biweekly column by WoW Insider's Scott Andrews, who 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? It first appeared on our sister site on October 8th, 2014, and is included here by permission. Betas make players nervous about their class. It happens every time. Blizzard makes changes, often drastically, and for better or worse some people hate the changes. I've been keeping my eye on the beta class forums since the Warlords beta began, and I've seen a lot of unhappiness this time around. The ability pruning that was one of Blizzard's major design goals for classes this year has removed depth from rotations, taken away both utility and cosmetic options, and in some cases radically altered or deleted abilities that players enjoyed. Beta testers have voiced strong opposition to many of the changes. In 10 years, I haven't seen players this up in arms about class issues since classic WoW -- an era when many specs and mechanics were simply broken in PvE, PvP, or both. This past Friday, something happened that I believed would never again happen in WoW: an in-game class protest. With much more open lines of communication from developers to players in recent years, I thought the game had matured beyond the point that such things would ever be necessary. But here we are, almost 10 years after the most famous class protest in WoW's history, and players once again felt the need to gather in Azeroth to voice their complaints.
World of Warcraft launching patch 6.0.2 on October 14th
It's been a while since a real patch hit the live servers of World of Warcraft, but that's all going to change soon. Specifically, it's going to change in four days from today. The pre-expansion patch for Warlords of Draenor will be hitting the live game on October 14th, bringing with it stat squishes, new character models, and all of the general improvements you'd expect going into the expansion. Of course, there aren't many new systems to play around with aside from a handful of new talents... and the limited-time level 90 version of Upper Blackrock Spire. This 5-person dungeon will pit players against the forces of the Iron Horde and will, again, be available for only a little bit of time. The same is true of the pre-launch invasion event, which forces players to fight off Iron Horde attacks from beyond the Dark Portal. Take some screenshots of your current character model now, buy things with Justice and Valor points, and get ready for the patch in less than a week.
The Daily Grind: Do server merges make you more or less worried about an MMO?
Server merges, megaservers, connected realms, server consolidations -- call them whatever you want; a server merge is a merge, and it means a game's population has shrunk and servers need to be shed. Usually, MMO gamers take that as a herald of doom and race to the forums and blogs to argue over the technicalities of who's going where, what stuff will be lost in the transfer, and who predicted something patently inevitable a year ago. Onlookers pronounce the game a failure. But maybe that's the wrong atittude altogether. By the time most games merge servers, I'm usually heaving a sigh of relief. RIFT, Star Wars: The Old Republic, Star Wars Galaxies, EverQuest, even World of Warcraft -- all of these MMOs benefited enormously from their merges or faux-merges, in spite of the way merges look to people obsessed with schadenfreude. For players playing a game whose devs recognize a population problem and fix it while they still have the resources to do so, it's practically a game-saver, not a game-killer. When you're stuck on a dead server in a game that has just enough resources to keep going but not enough to merge, then the game is screwed. What do you think: Do server merges make you more or less worried about an MMO? 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!
World of Warcraft's garrisons will send Leeroy Jenkins to protect you
Part of the potential fun of owning, building, and operating a garrison in World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor is that you'll be leader to several NPCs known as followers. A new garrison dev diary today talked about the acquisition and benefits of followers and how that will change your gameplay. Followers can be obtained through several means, including quests, reputation, and a once-a-week headhunter service. Once there, followers can be sent out in missions alone or as a group in order to bring back rewards for their kind and generous master. Players can accumulate up to 25 active followers of various quality types and can level them up over time. Probably the most interesting facet of follower ownership is the use of a select handful as bodyguards. Players can attach a bodyguard to them for general world questing, asking such famous figures as Leeroy Jenkins to fight by your side. Once enough reputation with that NPC is reached, the bodyguard will attain several helpful abilities, such as being able to summon friends or create a portal back to your garrison.
Blizzard posts official BlizzCon schedule
You've got your tickets purchased, your hotel arrangements squared away, your bags all packed. You're ready for BlizzCon this year! But leaving aside the fact that you can probably unpack your bags now as you've still got a month to go, what are you actually going to be doing at BlizzCon? That's what you can find out by taking a gander at the official schedule, which tracks the events of the day on both Friday and Saturday for World of Warcraft, StarCraft 2, Hearthstone, and Diablo III. A floor map is also available so that congoers can get a feel for the layout before arrival, although that's of less interest to fans planning on taking advantage of the streaming options available for the convention. If you're thinking of buying a virtual ticket for the high-quality streams, take a look at the schedule and see if it's stuff you want to watch streaming live. Unless, as we said, you've already got your bags packed to go in person.
Leaderboard: Warlords of Draenor vs. Shadow of Revan
Last time in Leaderboard we pitted this winter's Warlords of Draenor expansion against this fall's Nightmare Tide expansion. This week, let's see how the top dog fares against another highly anticipated MMO content dump, this one bolstered by the worldwide media juggernaut that is Star Wars. How about it, Massively readers? Warlords of Draenor or Shadow of Revan? Vote after the cut! Ever wish that you could put to rest a long-standing MMO debate once and for all? Then welcome to the battle royal of Massively's Leaderboard, where two sides enter the pit o' judgment -- and only one leaves. Vote to make your opinion known, and see whether your choice tops the Leaderboard!
World of Warcraft shows off the dungeons of Warlords of Draenor
As the release of Warlords of Draenor inches ever closer, it's no surprise that players might want to know what dungeons they'll be running religiously for the next several months. The official World of Warcraft site has been updated with a preview of the eight new dungeons being added with the expansion, four of them intended for leveling along the way and four of them pegged at level 100 for players who have already reached the top. On the leveling path, players will stop in the Bloodmaul Slag Mines, the Iron Docks, Auchindoun, and Skyreach. Once at the cap, they can start exploring the Shadowmoon Burial Grounds, the Everbloom, and the Grimrail Depot... or they can take a trip back to Azeroth to view the revamped Upper Blackrock Spire. Take a look at the full preview for more of the lore backdrop for the newest dungeon drives coming to the game in November.
The Daily Grind: How should MMO quests be delivered?
I was tinkering in Ultima Online last week when I spied something I had forgotten about: quest givers with yellow exclamation points over their heads! In Ultima Online! The much-maligned mechanic has even retroactively invaded ancient sandboxes. But I started to wonder what MMO players would accept as a mechanic for quest delivery. World of Warcraft's exclamation points are hated, Star Wars Galaxies' mission terminals seemed artificial, WildStar fans complain about pop-up quests, and there's no way I'd want to go back to EverQuest's keyword-based quest text. Hail, a_quest_giver_001! So how, exactly, do you want your MMO quests doled out? 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!
World of Warcraft offers up the complete Tales of Pandaria
Do you feel that you got a sense of all the storytelling to be found in Mists of Pandaria? Probably so; you've had more than a year to get through everything, after all. But there's more to the lore than just what's found in World of Warcraft. The complete Tales of Pandaria series of short stories has been collected on the official site, complete with the option to download the stories for offline reading. None of them is essential for understanding what took place on Pandaria, of course, but each of them provides a larger context that questing can sometimes miss. Not really your thing? More interested in watching players beat one another up in-game? Then you can watch the World of Warcraft North American Arena Tournament this Sunday. Starting at 9:45 a.m. EDT, the live stream will cover the best-of-five matches between the current teams in the running, with the three best teams getting a shot at the championships at BlizzCon. If that's more interesting to you than fiction, get the full details on how to watch and who's in the running.
Leaderboard: Nightmare Tide vs. Warlords of Draenor
There are a couple of big fantasy MMO expansions coming out in short order. RIFT's Nightmare Tide drops on October 8th, while World of Warcraft's Warlords of Draenor releases on November 13th. Given those facts, I bet you can guess the content of today's Leaderboard, can't ya? Vote after the cut! Ever wish that you could put to rest a long-standing MMO debate once and for all? Then welcome to the battle royal of Massively's Leaderboard, where two sides enter the pit o' judgment -- and only one leaves. Vote to make your opinion known, and see whether your choice tops the Leaderboard!
World of Warcraft increases fees in China
It's going to be a little more expensive to vacation in Azeroth from China in just a couple of weeks. MMO Culture noted that Chinese publisher NetEase is jacking up World of Warcraft's fees for the first time ever in the region. As of October 16th, the fee will go up by about 45% to become 30¥ for 2700 minutes and 15¥ for 1350 minutes. Instead of paying a flat subscription per month, Chinese players purchase blocks of time to access World of Warcraft. NetEase handles a bundle of properties in China including World of Warcraft and reported an increase in profits for the previous quarter. However, Blizzard pointed at Asia as the location for a "disproportionate" amount of the 800,000 subscribers lost earlier this year.
How Blizzard is improving World of Warcraft's e-sports appeal
World of Warcraft is no stranger to e-sports, though its cousins deeper in the Blizzard family tree have fared far better. During the Hearthstone qualifiers at last weekend's DreamHack Stockholm, Blizzard Senior Manager of eSports Kim Phan spoke to PCGamesN about the challenges faced by World of Warcraft in the e-sports subgenre. "I can definitely say that WoW 3v3 Arena right now is kind of hard to watch, in the form that it is, and so there are things that we want to evaluate," she explained. "World of Warcraft was obviously created well before e-sports blew up to the way it is now. We knew there was a competitive element to World of Warcraft, and then it just kind of blew up from there. Warlords of Draenor's upcoming spectator mode is intended to address the difficulty of following arena matches, but Blizzard isn't stopping there. Even raids might be worth watching, Phan says. "Ideas have been brought up like Battlegrounds. People enjoy watching live raids at BlizzCon. What makes something an e-sport really depends on what people want to see. We are taking a close look into how we can better support e-sports."
Season Two of WoW's Brawler's Guild detailed
Blizzard has broken down the changes coming to Brawler's Guild content in World of Warcraft. Season One achievements (i.e., pre-6.0.2 achievements) will be marked as legacy and will be replaced by new Season Two goals. Additionally, all tiers "have had their boss line-ups remixed," according to today's dev blog. You can read the rest of the changes on WoW's official website.
WoW Archivist: Bottlenecks
WoW Archivist is a biweekly column by WoW Insider's Scott Andrews, who 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? It first appeared on our sister site on September 24th and is included here by permission. Wherever thousands of players try to complete on-rails content, bottlenecks are inevitable. For Warlords of Draenor, Blizzard is trying to be proactive about eliminating them. Back in July, CM Zorbrix posted a "targeted feedback request" about bottlenecks in the beta. Given that the introductory experience is completely on rails before the expansion unleashes players into its less structured zones, this is a real concern. WoW hasn't had the best track record when it comes to bottlenecks. As we help Blizzard loosen the bottlenecks of the future, let's revisit those of the past.
WoW's final Lords of War video is not about an Orc
The fifth and final entry in World of Warcraft's Lords of War video series has arrived, and if you're tired of Orclords of Orcnor, then rejoice because this one is about a Draenei: Vindicator Maraad, the narrator of the series. On the downside, Maraad's backstory is still mostly about Orcs; he's Garona Halforcen's uncle, for example. On the upside, his backstory also involves a lot of killing of Orcs. So there's that. The full video is below.
World of Warcraft gives you a way to undelete characters
Those World of Warcraft GMs are probably beyond sick and tired of player petitions to undo a character deletion if a recent dev post by Blizzard is any indication. Coming with Warlords of Draenor is a new feature that will allow players to resurrect a deleted character with its gear and enchantments intact. The studio even said that it will even hold onto deleted character names "for a limited time." There are a few exceptions to the undelete feature. Toons under level 10 won't be recoverable at all, and those between levels 10 and 49 will be lost forever after a set amount of time. Also, players can use this function only once every month, so undelete wisely!
World of Warcraft offers up another Garrison preview
It's been quite some time since the first official preview of Garrisons for Warlords of Draenor, so you could be forgiven for thinking that a second part wasn't coming. But it has finally surfaced on the official site, talking about the various sized plots in your World of Warcraft Garrison and the buildings that you can construct. As you upgrade your Garrison, you get more and more spaces for buildings in three different sizes: small, medium, and large, each of which provide different benefits. Small buildings (and a few special buildings that are not upgraded and can be quested for) allow you to set up profession workspaces in your Garrison. Medium buildings offer a variety of resource additions, ranging from the ability to trap animals for leather to picking up special dungeon quests, and large buildings offer unique tricks like transporting between distant points or training special mounts or even riding your own siege engine. Take a look at the full preview for more details of how the buildings break down and where players can acquire the better blueprints.
Analysts estimate Blizzard's lost investment after Titan's cancellation
Titan's official cancellation notice yesterday didn't come as much of a surprise to MMO players; after all, the game had been backburnered more than a year ago, its staff transferring to Warlords of Draenor and other Blizzard projects. But the cancellation means Blizzard might never fully recoup its seven-year investment in the game, and that has some analysts worried. "Development costs for Titan may have amounted to tens of millions, perhaps $50 million or more," says one such analyst, Billy Pidgeon, as quoted in a GamesIndustry.biz piece yesterday. Wedbush Securities' Michael Pachter upped that estimate: "My guess is 100 - 200 people at $100,000 per year, so $70 - 140 million sunk cost. It's pretty sad that it took so long to figure out how bad the game was. I expect them to go back to the drawing board." Still another industry observer, David Cole, argued that the current games market simply no longer tolerates seven-year development cycles and high overhead. Pidgeon stresses that it's not all doom and gloom, however: "Blizzard has cancelled several games in various stages of development in the past. Costs for unreleased games can be significant, but launching substandard games can harm the reputation of a successful publisher such as Blizzard. Expenses for development can be considered R&D, and benefits can include invaluable training, IP and technology that can be applied to other games."
Blizzard officially cancels Titan
If you were holding onto hopes that Titan would be the next great thing from Blizzard, it's time to douse yourself with a cold bucket of reality. Polygon is reporting that Blizzard has officially canceled the Titan project, saying that it ultimately wasn't fun. "We had created World of Warcraft, and we felt really confident that we knew how to make MMOs, so we set out to make the most ambitious thing that you could possibly imagine," CEO Mike Morhaime commented. "And it didn't come together. We didn't find the fun. We didn't find the passion. We talked about how we put it through a reevaluation period, and actually, what we reevaluated is whether that's the game we really wanted to be making. The answer is no." Senior Vice President Chris Metzen said that the decision was necessary as the studio goes forward: "We were losing perspective and getting lost in the weeds a little. We had to allow ourselves to take that step back and reassess why the hell we were doing that thing in the first place." The studio didn't put out details on what Titan was going to be, except that it had "some cool hooks." Blizzard also said that it isn't going to be working on another MMO at this time, but won't rule out the possibility of a follow-up to World of Warcraft in the future. If you want to tease yourself with "what if," you can read Massively's summation of the Titan project.
