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World of Warcraft News
A week's worth of WoW news to share. Last weekend saw the first anti-Ebaying lawsuit as Blizzard makes good on it's claim. This week they've released a patch for the game, adding in new content and unleashing the Holidays on Azeroth. Blizzard has also put up an intriguing preview of PvP Battlegrounds. From that article: "Lower-level players who wanted to contribute in other ways to the battle could also do so by undertaking PvP-related quests, such as capturing wolves or rams to provide mounts for cavalry charges, claiming a nearby mine and ferrying resources back to the main base to upgrade allied troops, or capturing enemy graveyards to lengthen the run back to the frontlines for revived adversaries."
Hard to say how endgame will play out, especially with varying populations between the Horde and Alliance. Currently I play Horde on the Argent Dawn roleplay server, and from the info there there are 3 times as many Alliance members as Horde members. Here's to hoping there's some way server population evens out.
True to its nature, Blizzard has created a game that improves on almost every aspect of the genre instead of trying to be too original. The largest drawback to their game is the lack of meaningful PvP, which many seasoned veterans are drawn too. However, there is some speculation that they will go the DAOC route (with keeps, PvP points, realm wide benefits) that will add some meaning to PvP. Even in beta, it was more polished than most games were after two-three years in the market. Even with a spectacular launch where over 250,000 units were sold in just the first day, and had a record 100,000 playing on the afternoon of the launch, they seem to be commited to improving and growing the game, and that is very good to see. It is not everyone's cup of tea, but game companies can definatly take some lessons from someone like Blizzard. Their reputation is well earned, and they continue to live upto it.
... like 10 free days or so. Money's very tight, I've been burned before, and I tend to be oddly picky about what games I allow to become my masters. Something that you have to pay for upfront and then to continue using (versus say UT or the likes where online is free) needs to have a very good way to prove it's worth its customers' money. Star Wars Jump to Lightspeed just offered something like that but you have to sign up for a $15 subscription to FilePlanet, a site that offends me by its very money-grubbing existence.
they've really gone all-out. every major city is decked out in colorful lights, there are vendors selling snowballs and cookies and candy canes, there's even an orc dressed up as "Greatfather Winter" (Santa), and 3 new holiday-related quests. one them requires you to kill a big yeti named "Mr. Greench", and the reward is a random holiday related prize, such as the ability to turn yourself into a snowman at any time, or the ability to build a showball-making contraption.
they've even got a whole backstory of lore about Greatfather Winter, what it means, where it came from, and how it ties into each race in the warcraft universe.
i could live a little longer in this prison
A lot of us veteran MMO players place a lot of value on the effectiveness of the first patch, post launch. Blizzard appears to be doing its job well. Many areas of the world were slighly modified (addtional mailboxes, npc with repair capabilities, etc...) to make irritations that don't add to gameplay go away. They seem to be struggling with implementing a satisfying fishing system, but are rightfully concerned with keeping fishing from being a botting paradse. Although there is nothing spectacularily ambitious with the first patch, it shows a commitment to quality playing and a dedication to attentive management rarely seen in online games.
Blizzard seems to be aggressively tackling the PvP system, and players, including PvP endgame folks seem hungry for the content that they are promising, but patient for its delivery. If Blizzard is able to add excellent PvP content quickly, and without bugs or hitches, they will pull off a major coup.
One of the critical issues of several other MMOs is that they are often released with critical issues at launch and have to spend the first 6-12 months addressing those issues, or
inserting launnch content post launch. WoW's launch was so smooth, that they seem able to really dive straight into the management and improvement role that a developer should be in, as opposed to a crisis management mode, as often is the case with ambitious MMOs, post-launch.
Oh, good, more news on Blizzard pretending to solve the massive hack problems in its game when in reality all they have done is make a public appearance nothing more. They are not preventing hacks. Hundreds of hacks and exploits reported in beta 98% of which were still working just fine in release for those who knew about them. This is nothing more then Blizzard pointing there finger and saying "Now don't do that, play fair with the other children". That is a mockery of most serious players intellect nothing less.
It's good to know that Blizzard is trying to invent some form of endgame to their game, but they should have done that when they went into development. They were either nieve or did not care. I don't understand how everyone so willingly passes the buck for Blizzard when this company has been around for years longer then most game companies and has a large enough player base to know better. The primary problem however is not the fact that there is no end game, it is that WoW's style of gameplay simply does not support it. Stylistically WoW is not designed correctly to keep players for extended periods of time, without creating new characters over and over.
Blizzard is not a new game company, they have been around, they know the scene and they knew well ahead of time what their strengths and weaknesses were. I could have probablly lived with the somewhat simplistic gameplay if the security on the game simply had not been so bad. Why am I hammering Blizzard on that point so hard when they are new to MMORPGs? Simple, security for Blizzard has been an ongoing problem since Day 1 with every single one of their games. And from the appearance of WoW it was again nothing more then an afterthought. I am sorry you don't force players to pay a premium price per month for a game that the security that is suppossed to protect those paying players interests is half-assed at best. Blizzard knew their security was bad, they knew it in Phase 2 Beta when it got hacked and free servers started popping up. Name another MMORPG that had free servers and a boatload of hacks in phase 2 beta... You can't.
The reason I am so angry at Blizzard is they knew before they ever released a public beta, they knew as soon as they released public betas, they knew for months all through beta that their security was compromised fully and yet they stood by and did NOTHING. Why do WoW players accept this halfass indifferent attitude about something that effects them profoundly and directly? I completely fail to understand why. Blind "fanboi's"? I would like to think there arent that many... I know there are always a few but nearly an entire player base? Surely not. If EQ ~ EQ2 ever had this kind of security flaws and they knew about it and took the stance Blizzard has, there would be flipping riots. Yet everyone simply brushes it off and says, Blizzard is new... it's OK.
Even with a spectacular launch where over 250,000 units were sold in just the first day, and had a record 100,000 playing on the afternoon of the launch, they seem to be commited to improving and growing the game, and that is very good to see
I'm confused, why would a spectacularly successful launch not lead to improvements and growth? I mean in general. With Blizzard specifically it should be even less surprising given that they have a history of supporting games for many years after release and that is without a monthly fee. Starcraft, a six year old game, was patched this year.
WoW is a great, and addictive game. It has tied together a lot of great ideas that have developed over the years into a casual fantasy game that likes to make as much fun of itself as it provides fun to the player.
I think at the core, a lot of the annoyances of other MMORPGs have been removed or significantly reduced, while at the same time not making it too easy.
The holiday additions are nice, but I expect they will be short lived considering the effort they required to be implemented. I just hope they didn't spend too much effort on content that will probably only be fitting for a week or so, while so many other problems need addressing.
- Some basic powers (ie Arcane Missiles) have unpredictable bugs which can get you easily killed when they simply don't do anything. There are several others which don't do what the description says (Blink should free you from rooting).
- The Auction House and Mail systems have frequent lockups, even at slow times, such as early in the morning. They are often unpredictable too -- for example, you could conduct a series of actions which take only a second or two each, and then suddenly one takes a minute or two, during which everything queues up and happens at once.
- Blizzard's first response to a bot problem (with fishing) has resulted in a wild overreaction which not only took the fun out of playing the profession properly, but now it even *encourages* botting, since that's the only way you could get any use out of it anymore.
- Maintenance windows are inconsistent. Some mornings there's maintenance, some there aren't. And when there's not, it seems like everything is running very slowly.
- Yesterday's major downtime had *VERY* little feedback as to what was going on and when it was expected to be resolved. The nearly complete lack of communication on a downtime that significant is something which needs to be reviewed.
- In fact, there doesn't seem to be much PR presence on the forums, or anywhere for most issues. I don't get the feeling there is anyone listening to our concerns. I get the feeling there is a huge tall stone wall between the players and Blizzard, and occasionally they toss down a message written in blue ink, which has very little value content-wise to assure us of specific resolutions that are being made to the most pressing problems.
Don't get me wrong though. These are minor issues which I have faith will be ironed out with time, and there is still tones of fun to be had. It is still a *very* new game which has a long road ahead of it.
Obviously being this new, I expect there to be some problems. However, coming from a technical background, it can be frustrating when many of these problems seem very simple in nature to fix; and the poor communication makes it all the worse when there's noone to "absorb" our frustrations.
Please consider making an automatic monthly recurring donation to the EFF
Ok now that WOW is up and running, please move on to D3 and apply the same improvement philosophy. runewords won't tide me over forever.
Mod me off-topic if you like, but I'm too lazy to go find an answer to this.
I'm thinking about getting WoW, but I'm curious if I want to purchase two accounts (one for me and one for my wife) so we can play on seperate machines, do I need to purchase two full copies of the game? Or will one copy with two paid accounts be enough?
Forget the whales - save the babies.
iMac G5 owners, and probably owners of most other mac setups, should be aware that right now World of Warcraft has major graphics performance problems on that platform.
I have a Windows Pentium M _laptop_ with a mobile graphics card that just creams my brand new 20" 1.8ghz G5 iMac in WoW playability.
Apple + Blizzard + NVidia may be able to help this in future, but as of the latest MacOS & WoW patches the problem is still there.
Syntax error: loose != lose, affect != effect, then!=than
Hrrm.
He has wife who not only lets him play but wants to play with him.
What's your wife's email? I'd like to take a shot.
A bit nit picky I know, but there isn't a lawsuit yet, just a cease and desist letter. Companys send out thousands of those for every real lawsuit they file. I am watching for the first real lawsuit on this. Fairly large real money is in this market and it is still completely unclear if it is legal or not. It will be a big deal when the first lawsuit sees its way thru to resolution in court.
Plastic Squid Harmless Toy
The problem with the G5 iMac is the graphics card - the Nvidia 5200 was a very bad choice by Apple as it's a very poor card.
It's of note that both Nvidia and ATI cards have issues with shader support on Mac OS at the moment, due to driver problems. Apple have been petitioned by games developers about this and are aware of it.
My PowerBook (with a 1.5 Ghz G4 with 1 GB RAM and Radeon 9700 Mobility 128 MB) plays WoW admirably however, it's very playable with settings on all high/some on medium.
And I say that as someone with a reasonable gaming rig (P4 3.2 Ghz, 2 GB DDR400 RAM, Radeon 9800 Pro 256 MB, 10K RPM SATA HD).
WoW is actually one of the best performing games for Mac OS X (a platform which has been riddled with really awful ports that perform very poorly, especially since transition from Mac OS 9).
Sadly Apple made a very bad choice with the Nvidia 5200 and I feel it really hurts their brand reputation as a result.
I've got a Powerbook with the same specs as yours, and I was curious about how WoW displays. I remember that in Warcraft III, the interface was designed for a 4:3 screen ratio so both the interface and the in-game 3d models looked really squished and distorted when you displayed it on the Powerbook screen. Did they fix this for WoW, or does everything still look squished?