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http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/faq/technology .html Clearly states windows or mac. Those of you who choose to buy the game to play on an environment clearly not supported by the company play at your own risk. But don't whine about it when something goes wrong.

Drysc (Blizzard poster) confirmed that "[a]n operating system would not produce a false positive[...]." So, no. This does not appear to be targetting linux/alternate OSes.

They Changed their minds about that. But there's probably just not that many left, I think Blizzcon was about 8000 people. However when they're on ebay, they go around $400.

Free online play is a big draw for us computer gamers who were leery of a recurring fee to play online.

Personally, I think the tier 3 gear (Naxx, AQ40) was added as a stop-gap measure to keep the hardcore, play 24x7 players satisfied until the expansion could arrive. (BTW, I think you meant .5 and T1 gear since there is no T2.5)Only a small percentage of players have T3 because it does represent an immense amount of time playing. If gear is the main reason you and your friend are playing, maybe you should log off.

I don't know, but one of the things I'd like to see improved in WoW is the "everyone has the same body type" thing, maybe sliders for how thin/muscular/fat/tall/short you want someone (with limits, of course, so that humans are always taller than dwarves, for example).

From the Character FAQ at http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/faq/characters .html

Can you tell us more about what options are customizable on your character when you create it? We don't want to overwhelm players with too many choices when they start off. That's why we are concentrating on features that players will notice right away. This includes things like hair style, hair color, skin color, and facial features. Players can of course also get to select their race, gender, and class. The remaining elements of character customization will be done in-game, through the choices they make in the gear they wear and the many talents they can learn.

Can players customize the height & weight of their characters?
Height and weight is not changeable due to how it affects character animations and items on the character. We wanted to concentrate on making each race's animations distinct and special, which meant working on unique models and not allowing changing of height and weight. If we allowed that, then the result would be wonky-looking or distorted movement when the animations were applied to an inappropriately sized model.

O.o I was being ironic... or were you just quoting me for truth? If not, I direct you to http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/search.html?foru mId=10001&characterId=118201689&sid=1

You are aware that the expansion also adds content to the main world, right?

Such as the dungeons Karazahn and Caverns of Time, as well as the starting areas for each race. If you look at the WoW map, you can already see where the Blood Elf starting areas of Eversong Woods (including the city Quel'Thalas) and the Ghostlands are located. They're on the Eastern continent (Eastern Kingdoms) in the north-east, above Eastern Plaguelands.

The Draenai starting zones are Azuremyst Isle (including the city The Exodar) and Bloodmyst Isle off the north-eastern part of the Western continent (Kalimdor). This is not yet shown on the map, though.

I'm going to guess that the starting areas for the two new races will be available to all players, simply because they are part of the main world. It would seem rather jarring if you tried walking down a road or riding on a boat and were suddenly stopped for some reason.

Blizzard isn't adding any new classes this round. All they're doing class-wise is allowing each faction to now have the other faction's unique class.

These classes will be available to the two new races.

What does need to be balanced:
1. The two new races' racial abilities. Each race in World of Warcraft has 4 racial abilities, normally split into 1 Active and 3 Passive skills. Most of the Passive skills are plusses to resists, attributes, professions, and weapons, but there are exceptions.
2. The new talents and spells for each class. Rather than just give classes higher versions of their existing skills, Blizzard has created new spells and abilities.

The Talent trees have also been shuffled around in the expansion... although there's a good chance that the new talent trees will be available to all players. There are 3 talent trees available to each class. Players currently receive 1 talent point per level starting at level 10. In the present game, this means you top out at 51 points at level 60. The expansion bumps both up by 10.

Talent Trees are constructed so that you have to spend points in the lower talents in a tree in order to access the higher level talents. That's also why there's 3 trees per class: You can't gain access to the best talents in a tree without first spending 30 points in lower talents in said tree.

The expansion adds two more levels, making it so the best talents take 40 points in lower talents to reach. New talents have been added at other points in the tree as well.

I hate blog links. Here's the real deal: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topi cId=38244050&sid=1.

I think you're confusing the actual terms of use with the disclaimer on ebay auctions.

How many shards is Warhammer Online going to have?

One, like EVE Online, or eleventy bajillion, like World of Warcraft?

Side rant for /.ers:

I don't like the fact that WoW is called a Massively Multiplayer ORPG when it's got tons servers. Not one massive one. So it's very difficult to play with your friends if they started on server Y and you started on server X and you're not allowed to transfer your character to their server, and they're unwillling to play on yours - or some other scenario. Whereas EVE has one server. Tranquility. If you play EVE, you play with everybody else playing eve. One economy, one server with all your friends and enemeies.

And for the record, I'm currently subscribed to - and playing - both EVE and WoW.

It used to be that if you wanted to play any game you merely had to purchase every console. Yes, it was expensive but we did it for the exclusive games that were only available on a single system.

Now they are trying to make it so that if you want to play every bit of a cross platform game you have to buy multiple copies? Screw that. When Soul Calibur II came out with exclusive characters on each system, I responded by not buying the damn game. Here it looks like Rockstar is trying to generate artificial demand for downloadable content; something else designed to extract money from gamers.

Yea, yea, feed me the line about games costing so much money to produce now. I don't care. Movies cost several million dollars to produce and you can buy the DVD for a single Andrew Jackson. Gamers are being charged three times that much for something that only cost a fraction of the price. Yes I understand that there are other factors here... I'm not that dense, it's just that they don't need to nickel-and-dime us afterwards.

I'm tired of companies raising prices and then charging more for the "privelidge" of playing online. I'm tired of companies cramming questionable tech down our throats that only raises cost and causes delays. I'm tired of games that are strictly service based even though you still have to pay full retail price. I'm tired of companies charging me yet again for games that I already own; I mean I already have two copies of Super Mario World, two copies of Super Mario 64, and three fricking copies of The Legend of Zelda and for only 23 more dollars, I can play them all on one console. Hooray for shovelware.

Yes I'm ranting. Sorry about that. The whole thing just makes me wonder why I play games anymore. Can I at least get an "amen"?

I think there are some good lessons to learn from TCL/Tk, that can be applied to Lua gui api design! (But not to the Lua language design! ;-)

TCL was popular because of Tk, which was the best X11 user interface toolkit of its time. One reason Tk was so successul, was that the Tk toolkit was tightly integrated with the TCL scripting language, and they nicely complemented each other. Tk called out to the TCL scripting language to do most of the work, instead of trying to do all that string bashing, table lookup, configuration, plugging together and scripting stuff in C, like "Xt" (the Ech-StoolKit) and Slowtif make so awkward. So it was quite easy for Tk programmers to configure guis and script callbacks with TCL, without having to modify and recompile any C code. TCL worked well with C because it nailed something that C sucks at: string processing.

In the same way, JavaScript is popular because of Dynamic HTML, not because it's a good language. The killer app is really DHTML, and JavaScript is just along for the ride. Outside of the realm of Microsoft's ActiveX/OLE/IScriptingEngine, it's difficult to integrate JavaScript with C. But languages like TCL and Lua, and tools like SWIG make that easy.

I'm optimistic that some form of Lua will eventually find its way into common use for scripting web browsers, and even more interestinig stuff like 3D virtual worlds ala WOW and There. It will spread through the same as the Flash virus used to infect 98% of all desktops (ActiveX, Netscape plug-in API), and other even more infectious vectors: computer games. The WOW and There clients are basically just smart 3D VR AJAX engines, scripted in Lua. WOW, Lua's already There!

-Don

There can be only one

Good thing neither myself nor Blizzard will ever have to find out! I don't run anything that high traffic and they have 175 servers (or "Realms") to split that traffic between.

Yep, there is a difference between WoW FPS under Mac OS and under Windows. WoW runs a bit slower on the Mac because of OpenGL drivers and threading issues, which means that the rendering work isn't threading as evenly as possible across the multiple processors and cores. This is an issue that will supposedly be fixed in MacOS 10.5. However, WoW still does run just fine under the current Mac OS.

If you absolutely must get the absolute best performance out of WoW then you can always use BootCamp or a similar application to run the Windows version of WoW on your Mac. WoW comes with both versions on the install disk so just use the one you want to use. I know a lot of people who run WoW under Mac OS X and hardly even notice a little loss of FPS.

BTW, if you really want to see some amazing tech support, check out the WoW Mac Tech Support Forum. Those guys are amazing, they really go the extra mile to solve problems and give out information. I wish every company's tech support was this good!

Blizzard doesn't have shades of gray- it just has the illusion it does. Most of the decisions are bone-crunchingly simple. Bowazon or Javazon? Ice mage or fire mage? But it FEELS like there are enough choices to tempt people (much stupider than yourself) into doing something besides one of the two effective builds.

What would TRUE customization be? Diablo2 and World of Warcraft both let your characters choose from three pages custom-built talent trees per class. Imagine if you could make a custom character with three pages from ANY of the classes. Combine the necromancer's skeleton page, the druid's wolf/bear summoning page, and the assasin's shadow summoning page to make a "You and What Army?!" general. Or in WoW, combine the paladin's protection tree page with the warrior's protection page and a hunter's survival talents to make the character that can't reasonbly be killed.

Of course Blizzard doesn't allow that level of customizability. It would be a nightmare to playtest all the interactions and stop overpowered strategies. Blizzard allows enough multiple choice questions that players FEEL novel while still feeling the safety of using tried-and-true "cookie-cutter" builds identical to tens of thousands of other people. ("Combat Dagger - 15/31/5- Most experienced rogues agree this is the #1 raid dps build. White damage boosted by Slice and Dice provides exceptional sustained damage. If you want to be #1 on the damage meter, this is the build for you." http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topi cId=11961735&sid=1)

There's something soothing about knowing you can be the exact same well tested, well understood build as thousands of other rogues and really top the damage meters! Blizzard's tests are multiple choice, not essay questions, and a lot of people like it that way.

And I'd definitely avoid trying to flush it as an alternative.

Anything that Blizzard Entertainment considers contrary to the "essence" of World of Warcraft.

How many hundreds of hours have you spent supporting sales for your 50 hours of production product?

Did I mention my software is as complex as Notepad? I don't get all that many support requests. I get up in the morning, I pour myself a cup of cocoa, put in the ice and wait for it to cool, and check my email. 5 days in the last week it was to news that I had gotten richer when I was sleeping (I live in Japan, so purchases happening in the US workday happen in the middle of the night here.) Two times in the last six weeks I've seen "Hey, I've got a question...". I spend 2 minutes writing an email answering the question, then I chug my cocoa and go to my day job.

I spend a little time in the evening working on marketing and the next version, of course, but like I said its a hobby. And its certainly more intellectually stimulating than my previous time waster.

It's always possible, but it's definitely not the focus for the Burning Crusade expansion. As we add new content to the game, it's influenced heavily by everything that we've learned from past design implementation. From a design standpoint, there is much more we can accomplish in creating smaller raid environments. From a player's standpoint, it represents a greater potential for less time devoted to downtime and also allows for easier and faster coordination.

We're still very focused on creating epic raid encounters that provide epic challange, and from what I've seen we're dead on course. So, to answer your question, there are no plans at this time to create raid environments that exceed a player-cap of 25, however, we will always evolve this game in the direction that we feel is most beneficial and on a long enough time line, it's difficult to state what's in-store.

Who can set the parental control?

>

Anybody who has access to the account login/password can do the initial setup of the parental controls and set the parental control password. Once an account is under parental control, it can only be modified with the parental control password.">

In WoW it's possible to set a schedule for the playtime.
So it's easy to prevent the kids from playing at schooltime or during the night.
Check the FAQ at their site for more information.

I hear there is this small shop nobody has ever heard of that makes some kind of chat client with dragons in it. But what would I know, I'm a Windows guy.

My casters are female, because honestly, men should not wear dresses. Robes. Whatever. Judge for yourself: Armor Sets. Play around with that page for a bit. Try viewing one of the caster sets with both male and female models. Sorry, the men look gay as hell. A male should not wear the Devout Skirt.

Conversely, my other characters are all males: warrior, paladin, rogue, etc. Either way I don't think it reflects on me as a person. Gender plays no meaningful role in game mechanics. All it does is change how your character looks. I don't have any deep psychological reason for playing female casters and male everything else. I just think men look stupid in dresses.

"You know, you have a turn of phrase every so often that I know you know is intentional... I know that you know exactly what I mean... By your definition any music that doesn't use a classical symphony orchestra is indistinguishable one from the other... All music using drums and base IS THE SAME -- (no matter how wildly different it really is, but hey, it's your view of things) and "at the end of the day" since it's "all the same" it can't be good. Your girlfriend was "enthralled" by something you viewed from a distance with distaste"

It's unfortunate that you choose to make a discussion an attack on a person, especially when you have no idea who that person is or the contents of their music collection and bookshelf. I supposed I have been drawn in by a "flame". (and I don't mean a beau or heart-throb)

"to condemn entire genres, indeed, entire art forms"

I condemned the genre's name, a word which means "The creative imagination; unrestrained fancy", when that genre has become uncreative and choked with preconceived characters and scenarios. I suggested they start using a different word or phrase for this genre. The genre is not without merits, but it is not creative. Lots of staid, predictable things in life retain some merit.

You seem prone to making broad assumptions based on things which aren't said. What if you read my post this way: I said I played Diablo, Dungeon Seige, even DnD... if I hated the genre so much, why would I waste my money on the software/books, and why would I waste my leisure time on them? If you took the time to look at things from a different point of view, perhaps there were different assumptions you could have drawn from my words.

Speaking of the meaning of words, since when is "enthralled" a negative, contemptuous word?

"All music using drums and base IS THE SAME -- (no matter how wildly different it really is, but hey, it's your view of things)"

My view of things is that someone who is deeply immersed in something (such as a genre) can become so focused that they see broad differentiation where the average or casual observer sees only relatively minor variations. Sometimes people focused like that are unable to pull back to see the forest because they are paying such close attention to the differences in conifers. Producing minor variations is not being creative. Being aware of the big picture (and any flaws it exposes) does not mean being unable to appreciate the minor variations and sub-species, er, sub-genres. Yes, Black Sabbath and Nirvana produce very different songs, but in the big picture, they are the same: guitar, bass, drums, distortion pedal, and undeniably mediocre vocal performances. (btw, Geezer Butler certainly smacks his bass, and if you have ever seen Bill Ward or Dave Grohl drum, it is obvious they are bashers - jeez, Grohl beat the living daylights out of my friend's drum kit and completely wrecked a new set of skins in less than an hour, back around 1989-90).

"Your method of plucking out a bit of similarity here and there... I'm not familiar with the "Warhammer" .jpg you linked"

The jpg came from the article, for pete's sake. If you look at the photos I think it is indisputable that the similarities are remarkable. The WoW link was only two clicks deep. I mentioned before I didn't have to make any effort to find these similarities. This stuff is upfront, common genre content. I'm not plucking anything - a point I was trying to make was that the dwarf thing is just one example of the broad similarities within the genre; there are countless others, indeed including plots. Yes, minute similarities can be found between two of any piece of fiction, but that is not my point.

"Diablo isn't WoW isn't FFXI and so forth -- they aren't at all similar; your comment that fantasy constitutes nothing more than "Olde Tyme Wizard's Worlde" is incorrect at best, slightly flamish at worst.

In what way do you find the aforementioned dissimiliar games "terribly predictable"? These games are very different one from the other, and hardly fit the "Ye Olde Wizarde" paradigm."

I have played Diablo, never Wow or FFXI. I have played Dungeon Seige. Admittedly, I got bored with both Diablo and Dungeon Seige and never completed them. I played DnD as a child and I'm familiar with Tolkien. A girlfriend years ago was enthralled by fantasy fiction and I read a bit of her collection. I'm sure I've been exposed to Fantasy work on other occasions.

To someone who is a fan with broad exposure, there is surely a huge difference between the different games, books, movies, etc. To someone who is a passive fan or less, the differences are not so apparent. The same goes for anything; hockey teams, NASCAR drivers, speaker cable, techno music: some kid's mom might not be able to tell the difference between Black Sabbath and Nirvana, while maybe the kid thinks they are polar opposites of each other - Kurt Cobain and Tony Iommi the same? That's crazy-talk mom! At the end of the day, both bands bash drums, smack a bass, turn up the fuzzy guitar and moan about their problems.

Yes, the Fantasy Worlde contains a lot of product I have never experienced, but the samples I have indulged in or just glanced at have been very similar. If my memory serves me well, Diablo has some sort of walking skeleton/zombie hordes. Guess what: so does Dungeon Seige. If I dug out my olde DnD book I suspect there might be something similar in there. Dragons, taverns with ale in steins, pointy armoured hats with horns, thatched roofed houses... yes there are dissimilar elements in every product, but there are broad similarities for the casual fan or casual observer.

Take the pointy hat guy for example. I would say that guy and Gimli from LoTR are the same and predictable. Gee, look: WoW has similar stuff. Maybe others would call me crazy and point out the scores of differences - ooo, one uses a hammer and the other uses an axe... but come on; they're all short, stocky, there's lots of facial hair with braids even... predictable. I'm not even trying: this stuff is falling in my lap.

"If you feel that you have an idea for a great scifi game that will *also* be attractive to tens of millions - or even several million - people, you'll get an eager reception by a gaming company; that is, if you can create the game and make it both workable and appealing."

This is the fallacy which those refuting criticism of something they favour sometimes fall back on, the "if you don't like it, then why don't you do better?" thing. I'm not a game designer. It's not my job to design games. I can't cook, but that doesn't mean I can't say a restaurant serves crappy food. I can't kick a ball, but I have opinions about how England played in the World Cup. Where is the sense in expecting me to start working out with the squad just so I can earn the right to say they stank? That's ludicrous.

It's no different when I say Fantasy genre product is uncreative and hardly based in fantasy at all.

"For the large corporations creating the games, it comes down to market research and dollars. Don't think for a minute that they would hesitate to spend millions upon millions to craft new ideas if their research indicated that those ideas would be viable and make them money."

First of all, are you agreeing with me or disagre

"Diablo isn't WoW isn't FFXI and so forth -- they aren't at all similar; your comment that fantasy constitutes nothing more than "Olde Tyme Wizard's Worlde" is incorrect at best, slightly flamish at worst.

In what way do you find the aforementioned dissimiliar games "terribly predictable"? These games are very different one from the other, and hardly fit the "Ye Olde Wizarde" paradigm."

I have played Diablo, never Wow or FFXI. I have played Dungeon Seige. Admittedly, I got bored with both Diablo and Dungeon Seige and never completed them. I played DnD as a child and I'm familiar with Tolkien. A girlfriend years ago was enthralled by fantasy fiction and I read a bit of her collection. I'm sure I've been exposed to Fantasy work on other occasions.

To someone who is a fan with broad exposure, there is surely a huge difference between the different games, books, movies, etc. To someone who is a passive fan or less, the differences are not so apparent. The same goes for anything; hockey teams, NASCAR drivers, speaker cable, techno music: some kid's mom might not be able to tell the difference between Black Sabbath and Nirvana, while maybe the kid thinks they are polar opposites of each other - Kurt Cobain and Tony Iommi the same? That's crazy-talk mom! At the end of the day, both bands bash drums, smack a bass, turn up the fuzzy guitar and moan about their problems.

Yes, the Fantasy Worlde contains a lot of product I have never experienced, but the samples I have indulged in or just glanced at have been very similar. If my memory serves me well, Diablo has some sort of walking skeleton/zombie hordes. Guess what: so does Dungeon Seige. If I dug out my olde DnD book I suspect there might be something similar in there. Dragons, taverns with ale in steins, pointy armoured hats with horns, thatched roofed houses... yes there are dissimilar elements in every product, but there are broad similarities for the casual fan or casual observer.

Take the pointy hat guy for example. I would say that guy and Gimli from LoTR are the same and predictable. Gee, look: WoW has similar stuff. Maybe others would call me crazy and point out the scores of differences - ooo, one uses a hammer and the other uses an axe... but come on; they're all short, stocky, there's lots of facial hair with braids even... predictable. I'm not even trying: this stuff is falling in my lap.

"If you feel that you have an idea for a great scifi game that will *also* be attractive to tens of millions - or even several million - people, you'll get an eager reception by a gaming company; that is, if you can create the game and make it both workable and appealing."

This is the fallacy which those refuting criticism of something they favour sometimes fall back on, the "if you don't like it, then why don't you do better?" thing. I'm not a game designer. It's not my job to design games. I can't cook, but that doesn't mean I can't say a restaurant serves crappy food. I can't kick a ball, but I have opinions about how England played in the World Cup. Where is the sense in expecting me to start working out with the squad just so I can earn the right to say they stank? That's ludicrous.

It's no different when I say Fantasy genre product is uncreative and hardly based in fantasy at all.

"For the large corporations creating the games, it comes down to market research and dollars. Don't think for a minute that they would hesitate to spend millions upon millions to craft new ideas if their research indicated that those ideas would be viable and make them money."

First of all, are you agreeing with me or disagre

First, there is currently a serious PVE imbalance between the Horde and Alliance. Conventional wisdom held that the survivability of paladins and their raid-wide buffs were balanced by superior Horde DPS. This has been proven false. The Horde does not do more DPS.

The statistical superiority of Blessing of Kings, the superior mana regeneration of Blessing of Wisdom and Judgment of Wisdom, not to mention the increased 40% DPS potential of Blessing of Salvation* makes the Alliance superior in a PVE setting in almost every way to the Horde. Second, don't even mention PVP because it is irrelevant. The factions are balanced in PVP and in no way is the current state of PVP broken in massive favor of one side or the other like it is in PVE.

When designers plan out encounters, be it in a dungeon or raid environment, they have to consider what each class will be doing in that fight. Some fights make exclusive use of a particular class ability, such as priest mind control for Instructor Razuvious, or hunter Tranq Shot for Flamegor. Without these abilities, you cannot beat the encounter. They are designed this way on purpose. With a difference in the factions, you cannot design a fight around paladins or shamans because of this fundamental difference. From a design perspective, you have effectively marginalized both classes. There is currently not a single fight in the game that requires a paladin or shaman.

Furthermore, the concept that Alliance should have more survivability whereas Horde should have more damage limits the potential for timed encounters. Take Patchwerk, for example. You have 7 minutes to do roughly 4 million damage before he enrages and you lose. Most Alliance guilds are killing him in about 5:30-6:00 whereas Horde guilds are coming in at just under 7 minutes. Do you see the problem here? Even if Alliance guilds actually did less damage than the Horde, (which they don't), you couldn't design encounters like that without screwing one side or eliminating the whole concept of a burn-or-die fight. Equalizing the factions improves the PVE game.

When you design fights that do not require specific mechanics, you eliminate the potential for creative, new encounters. By allowing both factions to have all classes, the designers can create more innovative, class-dependent encounters that do not marginalize any one class. As a raid leader, I'm very excited about this change for two reasons:

1) Encounters will be more fun and creative. 2) The versatility this change offers is tremendous. My current plan for a standard operating procedure will be something like:

3 druids 3 shamans 4 paladins 5 priests +- depending on what we need for an encounter

Speculating that this will somehow break the game or eliminate the need for shamans is asinine. Adding another 10 levels to the game automatically trivializes old content. If you want to see how this is true, go to BRD and let a level 52 mob cast on you. See how many times you resist. At level 70, a level 63 mob can no longer land crushing blows. This makes current fights like the Twin Emperors or Nefarian trivial. Players that aren't currently able to see this content will be able to PUG it with 15-25 people at level 70. The point is, we don't even know what abilities and changes will occur to classes in the expansion. Shamans could get bloodlust, which would make the best paladin buff of today pale by comparison. We just don't know, so speculating about how shamans will be worthless is stupid.

Now, for the people whining about how this is a cop-out decision, or uncreative, the developers have been debating this since alpha. After a year and a half, they realized how drastically distinct classes broke PVE. For those complaining that they should "fix" shamans, here is why you are wrong:

Raid-wide "greater totems" are a bad idea because the core design behind shaman

...this screenshot, then. http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/burningcrusade/imag eviewer.html?/burningcrusade/,images/screenshots/, 45,61,/burningcrusade/townhall/draenei.html - Looks like a Draeni to me.

WoW forums explode. Incidentally, Blizzard information page containing lore about the announcement.

I thought there was only one chat front-end: http://worldofwarcraft.com/

Here's a news flash for everybody!!

There are video cards out there that cost almost $600. There are processors that cost over $1000 dollars, and there are games that cost over $150 per year to play on top of the $50.00 you pay for it up front. Oh, and guess what? People buy them.

You want to know WTF Sony is thinking? For starters, how much money they are going to rake in. I for one am going to laugh my ass off when Sony sells out of the PS3 this year. This zealot attitude that so many (certainly not all) people have on this site toward anyone with market share really amazes me sometimes. Don't like what Sony's doing, don't buy it. Just don't go around predicting the demise of Sony, cause it ain't gonna happen. Sony is not Sega, the PS3 is not the Jaguar, and $600 is not going to be too expensive for a lot of people.

Mod me a troll, call it flamebait, but somebody has to say it.

Yes... 2005 was the best year in gaming for me. It's the year Sony, in their infinite idiocy, ruined Star Wars Galaxies with their New Gay^H^H^HGame Enhancements and I found out that there was a much better game out there with far more activity and fewer bugs that I should have been playing all along. WoW > SWG. Maybe Lucas will give the SWG2 contract to Blizzard and save the day.

The whole way they went about this thing sucks. They need to spend more time and effort to develop a system of analyzing accounts before banning because alot of good people got caught up in this fray including one of our admins, a long time player. We posted his story on our front page yesterday: http://www.abfnet.com/ Here's the whole story, just on case: Warning to all who play World of Warcraft By ctcost Late last week, one of our Administrators, *cough cough* Wolfman. Had his World of Warcraft account summarily banned. The sequence of events went like this: 1) Wolf received a letter out of the blue stating his account was suspended because a character he had never created, or heard of received "something" from a compromised account. 2) 2 days later, without any questioning or correspondence from Blizzard on the account, he received an email stating his account was permenantly closed. Not for the original reason mind you, but because he supposedly had let someone else accesss his account this time. 3) Wolf replied to this letter with the following: Quote: Hello, My account name is w0lfman I have recently received an email saying my account was "banned/closed". Please provide me all the information available regarding this matter. 3) He called Blizzard Support. After a half hour of wrangling the guy said he could do nothing, his Supervisor could do nothing because it was the wrong department. Wolf had to contact the account admins that had closed his account via EMAIL ONLY. His second option was to send a letter to a PO BOX in Irvine, CA. No matter how hard Wolf tried he could not get a phone number for these people, he could not get a physical brick and mortar address. Also, there is no listing on the State of California's website for a Blizzard Entertainment in terms of INC. LLP, LLC or any other limited partnership. 4) Wolf receives an email return from his original query: Quote: Hello William, > > Account Name: W0LFMAN > Offense: Unauthorized Account Access Policy > Details: Unauthorized access to another World of Warcraft account > > The actions detailed above have been deemed inappropriate for World of > Warcraft by the Support staff of Blizzard Entertainment. Please review the > World of Warcraft Unauthorized Account Access Policy at > http://www.blizzard.com/support/wowgm/?id=agm01889 p. Access to another World > of Warcraft account which is not registered in your name constitutes > unauthorized access to another World of Warcraft account, whether or not you > had permission from the registered user. As such, this World of Warcraft > account has now been closed by the Account Administration staff based on > review of the above account infraction incurred. This action has been taken > in accordance with the Terms of Use > (http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/legal/termsofuse.h tml) and our game policies > (http://www.blizzard.com/support/wowgm/?id=agm0171 2p). > > Last, according to the World of Warcraft Terms of Use, to which all players > agree when installing World of Warcraft, Section 3, Paragraph C [Rules Related > to Game Play] states that you may not do anything that Blizzard Entertainment > considers contrary to the "essence" of World of Warcraft. This entails access > to another World of Warcraft account, including, but not limited to, the > deletion of items/characters and redistribution of in-game currency or > possessions. The bottom line is that we want World of Warcraft to be a fun > and safe environment for all players. > > We thank you in advance for your time and for respecting our position. > > > Regards, > > Alchavian > Account Administration > Blizzard Entertainment > http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/ Talk about general....there is nothing in this email that remotely tells what

As no one seems to link to the true source:
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?fn=w ow-general&t=8703206&p=1&tmp=1#post8703206

And if you want to see Rob's post on it:
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread-search.as px?ForumName=wow-general&Author=EnoYls&Cluster=Wow

As no one seems to link to the true source:
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?fn=w ow-general&t=8703206&p=1&tmp=1#post8703206

And if you want to see Rob's post on it:
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread-search.as px?ForumName=wow-general&Author=EnoYls&Cluster=Wow

From TFA:
"We haven't yet begun planning a BlizzCon for this year, and truthfully it isn't intended as an annual event. We had a lot of fun though, and we're looking forward to getting another one going and inviting everyone to come hang out with us and check out everything that is Blizzard."
Original Link to Post:
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?fn=w ow-general&t=8612315&tmp=1#post8612315

The first one was a hit (apparently, I wasn't there.) Tickets did sell out, and there were some really sexy (and.. uhhh... unfortunately not so sexy) ladies dressed up as Succubus! (Im sure /.ers can appreciate that!) The next BlizzCon will likely be to announce the next BIG project after Burning Crusade is released - likely Hero Classes, another expansion, or a new game in the works (StarCraft 2/WC4/Whatever).

Be sure to read this thread before getting too far into the relationship:
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?fn=w ow-general&t=8666633&p=1&tmp=1#post8666633

What you state doesn't sound that contradictory to me. Selling the entire shebang isn't transferring virtual assets (as in, it's staying with the original account), whereas selling gold is counted as transferrance, as it is going from your account to someone else's.

I tend to disagree with both, as it's a game. Selling accounts ends up with high end characters in the hands of people who, well, are willing to buy accounts, and there are enough asshats out there without adding lazy asshats to the equation. Selling gold just drives up prices for everyone else. Both make the game less fun.

Having gone to have a read of the EULA that the game installed with and the terms of use on the website what does appear contradictory is in the EULA it states (as one of the parent posters mentioned) that

You may permanently transfer ownership of the Game and all parts thereof

Blizzard Entertainment does not recognize the transfer of Accounts, and any authorized transfer of the World of Warcraft software (as set forth on the worldofwarcraft.com website) will result in the permanent deletion of the Account attached to that software.

NO they don't. Hence my point. The game doesn't just have to support direct9, they have to support win98.
Of the three mentioned, Galactic Civ 2 is the only one which runs on windows 98

WoW does not support win98
San Andreas also requires windows 2000 or XP


Hence my point. The games may run use DirectX 9, MS may have been patching Win98 and have given it support for directX 9, but the games themselves do not. In other words... it doesn't work... because the venders have decided not to support windows 98 anymore (directX 9 notwithstanding)

The raids are getting better in WoW. The Naxx ones look really fun.

MC is a boring zerg, Onyxia only slightly less so. BWL is so-so. Certainly it' s better than MC.

The stuff they added after those though has gotten progressively more interesting. Most of ZG is alot more entertaining than MC and Ony. And the Rajaxx fight in AQ20 is still boatloads of fun.

Troll on over to the game's website and have a gander at the first news listing.

Or for the impatient, check the Draenei page directly.

Troll on over to the game's website and have a gander at the first news listing.

Or for the impatient, check the Draenei page directly.

Well, it's pretty official now since they have updated the expansion website with information on the Draenei.

It also explains that the Draenei are the remnants of the Eredar race who chose not to become evil demons back when Sargeras was forming the burning crusade.

It doesn't make sense that the Draenei are a sub-race of the Eredar. Did they migrate to the Orc homeworld ages ago, or something?

I was under the impression that The Broken (pic here) were the unmutated version of the Draenei. The new race pics don't look anything like that. The head shape is all wrong, not to mention the number of fingers and the lack of a nose.

We need Blizzard's official announcement and press release to make sense of this, I think.

Actually, it's 17 realms. Database scanning will conclude about 1:20 PDT, determination of what'll take to restore corrupt data will be made, with an eta of 8:00 PDT before things're back to normal.

And this just two days post regular maintenance [snigger] times.

For the anal there's no way to determine what percentage of of total realms that is, cause http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/realmstatus/ is timing out.

So, no WoW for you poor sods on the affected servers.

[Prediction: with service like this, mass defection is imminent]

I am a student in my final year of high school. Earlier this year I completed a two year diploma in programming (Java was my major language, but I also learned SQL and various programming and computing concepts), and have done a fair share of Lua scripting, along with basic C++. So I would say that some kids do still program, but we are in the vast minority.

The fact is that today's programs often require several programmers working for extended periods of time to produce anything even remotely impressive. Children's first encounters with the results of programming will most likely be in the form of games (whether they be recreational or educational), and this will be the level of programming to which they become accustomed. As such, when they learn how to print "Hello World" onto the screen for the first time, they are often less than ecstatic. When they learn that creating a fully functional GUI might take a bit more time and effort, all interest that they had in the wonderful world of programming often disappears.

This, coupled with the fact that most Computer Studies teachers can barely program, let alone teach programming, provides little incentive for kids to learn how to do anything themselves (my teacher, for one, has never taught the class the basics of OOP, and most students are afraid to ask a question, lest the teacher launch into an hour-long lecture on everything *other* than the subject of the question, and how Microsoft is the source of all his problems).

The problem is that most children are used to instant visual results, and have neither the time nor the patience to achieve those results from scratch (especially when doing so would result in comments such as "you should rather be picking up ladies, har har"). From my experience, most schools do not cater to these children either. They teach programming to those who are already willing to invest a lot of time and energy into it, and not to those who have a passing interest (there were over 60 people in my grade studying computers two years ago, now there are about 9).

I became interested in programming seriously about 5 or 6 years ago, in anticipation of the scripting that would be possible with Neverwinter Nights. I found that most teachers were less than eager to teach me a lot more about programming, and was forced to pursue my interests on my own (which, to say the least, was not very easy).

I think that, as games include the possibility for modification via scripting (NWN and WoW are just two examples), we will start seeing more and more kids interested in programming. Granted, there may be a learning curve involved, and the scripting can be a (sometimes) watered-down version of the real thing, but it can provide the instant result that will keep kids interested and the subject and wanting more.

AT&T's backbone can handle the WoW load (assuming Blizzard doesn't keep all of their servers in one physical location, which they don't) the question really becomes "Can Blizzard's Servers Handle xyz"

I'm going to take a wild guess (that is based in some fact) that they use Windows servers. Which is fine, Windows Server 2003 isn't that horrible of an OS. But how in the hell do they develop these things on one individual server. They announced on the official site awhile ago tht they were deploying new servers on "updated hardware." So this means that the hardware was dated when they opened the 20 servers the previous month?

Isn't EFNET able to run on 500Mhz servers (well, multiple 500Mhz servers.) Of course, none of them use Windows (I don't believe, correct me if I am wrong) but it is the same concept: sending a TON of information between people in a TON of channels. I'm sure blizzard's servers are much more complex, but lets think about what data is necessary to send: User Location, Location of other NPCs nearby, chat in specific zones, chat server side, chat, chat, plaintext communication, chat, chat. Etc. All of the character location is client side (see: Client Side Cheats) so I just don't get it. How can they not keep these god damn things up?

Now I understand downtime every week. Or unannounced downtime during the week, but come on. One thing a lot of people have mentioned is the fact that there is a waiting list to get into the servers. I would imagine this isn't hardware/software side but simply an effort to not overload the servers and have every NPC on the server dead in 5 minutes because the population is too high. I would rather wait 20 minutes (perhaps with a big beep when I have a spot) if it means I will have an acceptable gameplay experience when doing quests, rather than fight with each and every other user on the map over 20 Crazy Murlocks (aren't they all crazy?)

Per Windows Statements: Unofficial WoW servers all run on Windows. The servers themselves aren't amazingly complex if someone reversed engineered it in about a month. Literally, they reverse engineered them IN A MONTH. Most of the actual game play is client-side. Although I believe they use an absolute ton of memory.

It would have been nice if the actual blizzard tech team said something to the /. community in their last interview, instead of their PR team replying to everything.

Bah.