Category Archives: World of Warcraft

You Got Your Facebook In My Orc Game

Blizzard rolled out a social network yesterday. Really! Here’s the overview:

- Ability to make initial friend connections through exchanging email addresses. This exists entirely independently of WoW; your friend displays online as their real name, and shows what server and character they are on. – Ability to make subsequent friend connections through browsing the friend lists of users on your own friend list and sending requests. – Ability to set your “What am I doing?” status.

That’s it.

Notice anything missing? You should.

The below assumes that this feature will become popular. Which, in fact, I suspect it will. There has been some thought put into the interface and chat features of this system – in fact, far more thought than has been put into World of Warcraft’s own friends list and chat system. And friends and chat are why people play MMOs. So, assuming everyone gloms onto this as the new default standard for friends listings within the community and it doesn’t, say, wither and die like “meeting stones” – consider these points.

- A minor point to most – Blizzard has abdicated from enforcing any sort of cross-team chat protection. There’s nothing protecting you from hopping on an alternate-side alt and doing your bit as a realm spy. Of course realistically, nothing prevented you from doing the same with an IM program. But this is different in that it goes counter to systems that are already in place. Why bother scrambling cross-team chat if you’re going to enable it in a different interface? It sends a mixed message, or more accurately the message that Blizzard forgot they were doing this in the first place.

- With this feature, Blizzard essentially disengages the player from the avatar. Now, World of Warcraft is only very, very peripherally a role-playing game in the sense that your character may or may not be human and may or may not cast spells at mobile bags of improvement called “monsters”. However, to this point, players have had the ability to be anonymous. That is gone. You see, the “RealID” system is keyed automatically – and unchangeably – to the name listed in Blizzard’s billing system as the owner of your account. If I wanted to be known as “Lum the Mad” – which, in every MMO to date, I have had that option to do – to protect myself from people who, just as a random casual aside, may have an unkind word or two to say to the real person behind the author of many of these blog postings – I would either have to change my name in Blizzard’s accounting system (which I’m not even sure is *possible*) or simply shrug and say, oh what the hell, it’s not like there are unstable people out there on the Internet! I mean, it’s not like I’m female or anything.

- There are no opt-outs in this system. There is no privacy protection within this system. There is no option for me to turn off the ability of my friends to browse my friends list. This system, in other words, is even more draconian about its enforced disdain for privacy issues than Facebook’s. When you make Facebook look like a paragon of privacy defense, there may be an issue or two. You can’t even opt out from the system itself. To quote Blizzard’s FAQ on the subject:

To stop using Real ID, simply remove all of your Real ID friends from your friends list, and do not accept any more Real ID friend requests.

That’s right, the opt out is to simply, you know, ignore any request you get! Also, if you’d like to opt out of our marketing list, just don’t read all the marketing we send you.

Why would Blizzard launch a social network with no privacy protection and no opt-out features whatsoever? Because they think people who are concerned about privacy are stupid and worth laughing at. And because in Activision’s august halls, someone looked at World of Warcraft’s millions of subscribers and Facebook’s billions of advertising revenue and said “Hmmm.” And no one thought any of this through.

Whee!

My God It's Full Of Stars And Also Money

Blizzard up until this point has pretty clearly insisted that all items being upsold on their item shop were cosmetic in nature only. Today that distinction blurred a bit: for $25 you can buy the fastest mount in the game for all your characters.

You do need to have previously unlocked a super-fast mount in-game to unlock the fastest speed possible, and you’ll still need to have paid for the actual skill to use the mount, which is by far the most expensive part of the equation. Still, this is actually a concrete item to be used, as opposed to a vanity pet that follows you around.

Expect the line to be blurred a bit more. Especially since at the moment, there’s actually a queue to give Blizzard $25 to get a Edward Cullen-sparkly mount.

No. Really.

Yes. Over $600,000 worth of orders for a sparkly virtual mount, waiting in line patiently…

(When learning this, I immediately heard the plaintive cry “It’s for my girlfriend!” shortly thereafter. Uh HUH.)

All You Zombies: A Message From Your Lich King

My deepest apologies.

It is my understanding that my invading forces, in their attempts to besiege your cities and snuff out all life on Azeroth, have inconvenienced the activities of common civilians. In the future, I will ensure that your commanding officers are informed well in advance of planned invasion times so that they may properly fortify themselves.

I have also looked into the issue of my plague being too quick in its purpose and too difficult to cure. Please be reassured that I have taken the matter up personally with my top necromancers and that any further incarnations of said plague should be only a slight challenge for your natural immune systems to overcome. Please forward any additional complaints to either Kel’thuzad or Anub’arak. 

Regards,
the Lich King Arthas.

(Source)

All You Zombies: Shuffling Off Into The Sunset

In an announcement COMPLETLEY UNRELATED to the Blizzard forums exploding with pro- and anti-zombie related sentiment, Jeff “Tigole” Kaplan announces that the zombie plague is ending today.

While we recognize that the event could prove to be disruptive at times, we hope you made the most out of it while it lasted. Part of playing in a “living and breathing world” means that things are going to change from time to time. We meant no harm but only wanted to create a lasting impression on players as they head to Northrend to defeat the Lich King. The Lich King’s goals (as you will soon learn) are to turn the Horde and Alliance not only on one another, but on their own kind as well. I think the plague truly demonstrated this firsthand.

Have Kaplan and Blizzard learned anything about implementing world events from this? Let’s ask the Angry Eight Ball!

Well, there you go.

All You Zombies: Everything I Needed To Know About Event Design I Learned From F13

So, at first blush, turning every World of Warcraft server into a zombie movie? AWESOME!

Turning every server into a PvP server? Eh, not so much.

Blizzard has a history of telling whiners to STFU about such things, and this is no exception. As CM Nethaera says, if having an event where other players randomly cause all your quest turn-in and flight NPCs and you yourself to explode upsets you… maybe it’s just you.

While we don’t mind constructive feedback, this event will continue and has an end. It’s not forever, though some would like it to be.

 

If this event is causing you undue pain or stress, then, it might be a good idea to take a little time off until it is over. Again, it won’t last much longer and has an end. It’s important that you take care of yourself first and foremost above anything else.

Remember kids, it’s just a game! Certainly not a world or a social hub or anything like that that would preclude care being taken in randomly upsetting millions of people as an introduction to a new expansion.

 

The curiously named WoW blogger Lume the Mad has more commentary, including tales of his thwacking errant guildmates.

But don’t get me wrong. I’m all for having fun with people near the cap, considering they can immediately defend themselves. But thinking about the lowbies who have yet to build up connections on a server, I can’t help but wonder how frustrating this event must be for them. How many of them have quit over this fiasco? I’m willing to bet a rather sizable amount. The fact that safeguards weren’t put in place for low level areas is greatly disappointing.

 

What’s more, there doesn’t seem to be any purpose to becoming a zombie other than to kill and infect other players and NPC’s. If there was actually a quest to perform as a zombie, and if lowbies could actually defend themselves, I’d be a whole lot more forgiving and inclined to view the event in a positive light. I definitely think it has its place as a fundamental concept. But the specifics are broken.

In retrospect, there are some takeaways here.

  • Players really, really like world events that mix things up, especially ones that allow you to temporarily ‘play the bad guys’.
  • Players absolutely cannot be trusted with ‘playing the bad guys’, especially on servers specifically set aside from world PvP (where you can assume players selected those servers for a reason). Given the ability to kill other players with impunity, unsurprisingly for those of us with MMO live team experience, a very high percentage will immediately rush to new player areas and make the lives of those who thanks to game mechanics can’t do anything about it a living hell. While laughing. And bitching at anyone who tries to stop them.
  • No one at all is complaining about the temporary new dungeon/raiding content.
  • Maybe keeping the brainsucking zombies segregated in a high level city (oh, I don’t know, maybe Shattrath, where you have to be level 60 to gain access unassisted) would be a nice compromise.
  • Telling your players STFU and log out if you don’t like it? Not the best idea.

Anyway, it won’t last much longer, and if suffering random death and expensive durability hits upsets you for some reason, well, I’m told there are other games which would be glad to have you! Oh, wait.

 

Not Everything Posted Here Is Funny

Ezra Chatterton, the World of Warcraft fan with terminal brain cancer whom Blizzard memorialized in-game, has died.

My son, Ezra Phoenix Chatterton, Ephoenix the Hunter, Squirlanator the Mage, is gone. All we have left in this world are memories of him. Please remember that he was a good person, smart and clever but also very kind, that he loved to play World of Warcraft, that he loved rice pudding and fettucine alfredo, and that he went through so much pain and still found ways to smile all the way to the end. Please remember too the kindness of Blizzard, and the overwhelming love of the WoW community. Without these gifts, Ezra would still have found a way to be happy and optimistic, just not as easily.

Today's Edition Of Developer vs Developer (DvD)

I’m trying to cut down on the Warhammer stories, really, but then I see links to media interviews or posts and I can’t help myself. It’s got all the drama of Dawn, but surrounding an actual fun game. How can a blogger resist! Anyway, in today’s media clipping, Mark Jacobs smacktalks back at the Blizzard boys.

Do you believe Blizzard’s plan to introduce open world PVP into World of Warcraft is an attempt to position themselves against WAR?

Oh absolutely. I think imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. You have a game that’s been out for four years, they’ve never put in world PVP like ours, they’ve never been able to level through PVP like in ours.

I think it’s absolutely a reaction to Warhammer. It wasn’t like all of a sudden the idea of open world PVP or levelling through PVP came into their heads and went ‘nobody’s ever done this before’. I don’t think it was accidental that they’re talking about doing it when Warhammer comes out. Four years and suddenly, miraculously, at the same time Warhammer comes out that’s when they start talking about these things… I think it was Jeff Kaplan who said they like to look at other games and learn from them – well, I’m flattered.

He’s right, of course (smacktalk based on truth is always the best smacktalk!) Considering that Blizzard’s designers were avid DAOC players, this isn’t precisely a new development. And hey, if Blizzard takes one of Warhammer’s best features (levelling in PvP from level 1) I’m all over that.

Until they nerf death knights. Which you know is going to happen sometime in January, right? Just checking.

Too Much Stuff

I’m playing Warhammer, because I can be a Bright Wizard and set things on fire. Longtime readers will know that this is a key requirement of my MMO experience. On the positive side, Warhammer is tons more stable than Age of Conan was, and I can actually run it. On the minus side, I’ve heard rumors that there is an NDA’d test server with a “SECRET PATCH” waiting to go out with class balance changes. If Mythic actually has managed to run a test server with an NDA… well, that’s certainly original. After all, no one really cares about the details of upcoming patches, especially when they contain class balance changes! So on the positive side from that, that is definitely something World of Warcraft isn’t doing. Take that, haters!

But then there’s the Witcher. The Witcher is a great RPG from Poland which lets you play an amoral drugged-up medieval vigilante that leaves a path of sex and violence in his wake. I find this concept cool for some reason. And they just issued an Enhanced Edition which features an English translation that doesn’t suck. No, really. It’s a FEATURE. To be fair, I don’t think anyone really expected a deep RPG from Eastern Europe to have great dialogue that shouldn’t be cheaped out on. But anyway, I should really play that.

But there’s the Force Unleashed. It lets you be a DARK JEDI and THROW STORMTROOPERS AGAINST A WALL.

But there’s Rock Band 2, which is like Rock Band, but TWO!

But there’s my old World of Warcraft guild, which occasionally sends me plaintive IMs asking me to come back, promising they’ll never return to Molten Core ever again!

But there’s

But there’s

But there’s

But there’s not enough hours in the day.

Threat Condition VASHJ

No, I did not make this up. Someone in our fine, perfectly normal intelligence community was actually retarded enough to try to diagram how uberguilds can plan terror attacks through MMO STRATEGERY.

I can totally see where they are coming from. However, I think, as usual, our fine, perfectly competent intelligence community are being somewhat hung up by the WoW-centric coverage the media pays to our MMO industry. As a PATRIOT and an AMERICAN and someone who thinks Sarah Palin is SOMEWHAT ATTRACTIVE in a kind of TINA FEY way, let me explain how our entire industry can be subverted by the forces of darkness and Islam.

No word on how our completely not silly at all intelligence establishment plans to stop the clear and present danger of terrorists using Myspace, Facebook, AOL IM, Gmail, carrier pigeons, or other less intricate and mind-blastingly retarded ways of exchanging information with one another.

Al’Qaeda luckily has not yet taken advantage of World of Warcraft’s jaw-droppingly unlimited tools for the planning of global terror, since the group was riven with guild drama shortly after arguments about DKP.