Newslist For MMOValue

A tipster named James sent us a pointer to store.wowhead.com a little while ago, and as a few people have noticed since, the Wowhead store is now open for business! Here’s what they’re selling:

Official Wowhead merchandise (a t-shirt, a hoodie, and a mousepad, so far – does anyone still use mousepads?)
WoW paraphernalia, like those steins, and some LapWorks and Steelseries hardware products.
Some random gaming hardware that seems to have nothing to do with WoW, like Guitar Hero for PS2, and Xbox 360 accessories. It is at a discount, though, so that’s cool.
The Burning Crusade collector’s edition. I guess they had some extra copies [now seems to be sold out].
One interesting feature of the store is “reward points.” Every item you can buy gets you a certain number of reward points; the amount loosely correlates with price, but I couldn’t determine a direct correspondence from one to the other. Basically they idea is: buy stuff, earn points, spend points on rewards. So far the rewards consist of the original WoW and the various Wowhead merchandise, and the points add up fast – as the site points out, a $30 Xbox controller nets you enough points for a copy of WoW, and almost enough for a t-shirt.

For the technically inclined, I inquired about the underlying technology of the shop. The front-end work is all in-house, and so should hold true to the beautiful Wowhead aesthetic, but the e-commerce engine is the popular open-source platform Magento.

Castiglione World of Warcraft

I love Battlegrounds. I think they all have their positives, though my favorite is still Alterac Valley. So I’ve been wanting to hold an It came from the Blog BG event for a while and I’ve decided it’s time… Time for the first Battleground Bonanza! Here are the details:

When: Wednesday, December 2, 11:00pm EST (8:00pm PST, 9:00pm Server time)
Where: The Hall of the Brave (where the Battlemasters are), Orgrimmar, Zangarmarsh U.S.
Who: Any level 10 or above Horde character.
How: Ask any It came from the Blog Lurker or Robinella for a guild invite.
What: Battleground premades
Though any Battleground level character is invited, I will be playing on Robinella, who is a level 60 Death Knight and will therefore be playing in the 60 to 69 range BGs. We will be forming groups and hitting as many level/group-size appropriate BGs as we can for an hour or so. If you can’t make it to the Hall of the Brave in time for the event, you will miss out on the first screenshot, but will still be able to participate. If you are unfamiliar with Battleground play, please do some homework so that it will be more fun for both you and your teammates.

More details are after the break.

If you haven’t logged into the guild for a month or so, you may find that you have been kicked from the guild. We had a huge influx of members last week and because the Guild Roster is buggy over 500 members, I’ve gone through and kicked all but the most recent players. So, if you find yourself guildless, please re-join. You are more than welcome. If it bothers you to have to ask to rejoin before every event, just login regularly to keep yourself active.

I know that this is a common raid night, but we will be having a Saturday event soon if you can’t make this one. Near future plans include a Hogger raid and some Feast of Winter Veil fun.

If you have any other questions about the guild, please see our It came from the Blog FAQ.

Koeningsmark World of Warcraft

World of WarCrafts spotlights art and creativity by WoW players, including fan art, cooking, comics, cosplay, music and fan fiction. Show us how you express yourself; contact our tips line (attention: World of WarCrafts) with your not-for-profit, WoW-inspired creations.

Zarhym may not care for cranberries, but we do — and since Pilgrim’s Bounty is over and you can’t get the ingredients for a good Cranberry Chutney anymore in game, we’ll just have to make it at home instead.
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gmaxwell World of Warcraft

All of the recent discussion surrounding what people are planning for their Worgen and Goblin characters got me to thinking about the ingame races that just don’t get that kind of love. It’s no secret that certain race/class combinations are underplayed (witness, for example, the ingame hell of finding a Dwarf or Orc rogue for Turkey Lurkey), but some races are just massively underplayed, period. If Warcraft Realms is at least ballpark accurate, then Humans are roughly 5 times as popular as Gnomes, Dwarves, and Trolls at 80. Draenei are twice as popular at 80 as Gnomes and Dwarves, and Blood Elves have a chokehold on the Hordeside population. Zardoz’s Armory Data Mining (fast becoming one of my favorite WoW sites) did a breakdown on class, race, and gender populations as of November 4th, and the results are pretty illuminating. In case you’re wondering, Dwarves, Orcs, and Tauren are the least likely to be female, and Draenei, Blood Elves, and Night Elves the most likely (although Draenei are the only race in the game to have a female majority). The most played combination in the game is the Blood Elf paladin, and the least-played are the Dwarf rogue (I for one am shocked) and the Troll warrior.

So my question is — if you don’t play an underplayed race/sex combo, why don’t you play them? For me, the breaker is usually the animations; a lot of the animations on the more underplayed race/sex combinations are just grindingly dull. The male Tauren warrior, for example (a hugely popular combination) always seems very dynamic, smashing their shields into someone’s face with a great slashing special attack. The female Troll warrior, by contrast (a hugely unpopular combination), just kind of…ineffectually pokes at things. I tried to play one for a bit and finally shelved her just because it didn’t feel like she was actually doing anything. Then again, I also have a huge herd of female Tauren characters, who are just as unpopular and have an incredibly boring casting animation, so I could be completely off-base. However, it does seem like there are consistent patterns to what most people are willing to play, and I’m curious to hear why people don’t like the less-popular combinations.

gmaxwell World of Warcraft

Hot on the heels of a much larger achievement we’ve recently covered (Twenty-Five Tabards), I’ve decided to do The Keymaster in this article for two reasons:

I recently watched Ghostbusters.
Do I need another reason?
Actually, the other reason is that if you’ve done Twenty-Five Tabards, Keymaster is usually pretty easy because you’ve likely got some Burning Crusade faction rep under your belt. I could tack on a third — I’m constantly surprised at the number of players who aren’t keyed for some of the old-world dungeons, and by “surprised,” possibly I mean “irritated,” because I keep getting pestered to go open doors. Happily, just about all of these keys can be soloed at 80 for most classes, and none of them are particularly time-intensive (with the possible exception of the Scholomance key due to insane travel time) to get.
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gmaxwell World of Warcraft achievements, The Overachiever

New around here? WoW Rookie points WoW’s newest players to the basics of a good start in the World of Warcraft. Visit WoW.com’s WoW Rookie Guide for links to all our tips, tricks and how-to’s.

Your evil plan has come to fruition: your significant other, best buddy, school pal or co-worker has finally confessed an interest in playing World of Warcraft. Send your buddy a Recruit-A-Friend invitation, and let the bodies hit the floor. You’re about to cut a mean swath through Azeroth while enjoying some sweet side benefits:

300% XP bonus for both you and your recruit (when grouped)
10% reputation bonus for you and your recruit
The ability to summon one another to each other’s locations across the world
30 levels of “free” XP from your recruit, granted to any of your lower-level veteran characters
A free month of game time for every recruit who upgrades to a retail account
The ever-so-sweet, exclusive Zhevra mount for one of your characters, once your recruit pays for 60 days’ worth of game time

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Castille World of Warcraft

It’s been five years since this game launched, and it’s changed so much that you might have forgotten what life was like back then. But thanks to the magic of the Internet, those times are saved in clear HTML. Let’s dig up some memories of the early game.

It’s interesting to think what Blizzard was like before World of Warcraft. Today, the two are almost synonymous — while they have two other major franchises (and one secret IP hiding in the works), it’s almost impossible for anyone to think of Blizzard without thinking of WoW, and vice versa. The company has become almost solely defined by what they’ve done with this game. But of course, before the release, that wasn’t the case.
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gmaxwell World of Warcraft

The November community address for Aion is out, and it’s mostly good news.

The good news, of course, includes the stunning nine-minute trailer depicting the future of Aion. Player response was overwhelmingly positive, and netted NCsoft more than a few immediate resubs. The Community Team has also been doing a good amount of work that, while not quite as fun to look at as the trailer, brings results that players can’t help but be just as happy about. The Aion team has set up a dedicated Game Surveillance Unit focused solely on taking out bots, gold spammers, and the like. (It seems to be working so far, a recent Tweet reports over 27,000 botting accounts banned this week.) The community address also mentioned the ubiquitous grind complaints. Some short-term changes to grind, loot, and risk vs. reward are on the way, and a more long-term solution seems to be in the works.

On the downside, the server transfer system has been delayed until the Community Team can be sure of releasing a solid finished product. It’s a frustrating issue for players, but hopefully the delay will be worth it.

Mustapha Aion

Yes indeed, this Friday is none other than Black Friday, which means the deals will be aplenty, the crowds will be horrendous, and the holiday money drain will begin (of course, you could go with Buy Nothing Day, but that seems a little too grinchy to me — why not go ahead and buy while the buying’s good?). Fortunately, there are a few WoW deals floating around out there, in case you need to pick up a copy of the game for a loved one (or that Recruit-a-friend account you’ve been planning to make).

The regular WoW vanilla game (useful for leveling to 60, but if you want to go past that, you’ll have to buy the expansions) is on sale in a few places for super cheap — the Ladies of Leet saw it at Best Buy for just five bucks, and Gamestop’s matching that price. Gamestop also will have the Battle Chest (with WoW and BC and a few other goodies) for $19.99, and Newegg has the same price if you don’t want to fight the crowds. Unfortunately, there’s no sign of Wrath on sale — you’ll still have to pony up the $40 if that’s the one you want. But stay tuned in the comments — if readers can find better prices on this stuff, we’re sure you’ll see them below. Good luck out there, happy deal finding.

Koeningsmark World of Warcraft

If you play EverQuest, EverQuest II or Free Realms and happen upon a Station Cash card this week, you may want to considering picking one or two up. Sony Online Entertainment will be giving players with accounts in good standing a 25% boost to any Station Cash card they redeem between Monday, November 23 (after 10:00am PST) and Sunday, November 29th (before 10:00pm PST).

A pretty good offer if we do say so ourselves. In fact, we kind of wish we knew that for our second episode ReSubbed this week, as we could’ve mentioned it during our jaunty exploration of EverQuest’s trial zone. Oh well, at least you know now!

Castille World of Warcraft

1-2-3-4-5 might not be the combination on your luggage, but it could fetch you a tidy sum of gil or some rare items in Final Fantasy XI in the near future. The third iteration of the Mog Bonanza event is incoming, and those five digits might be the key to riches. Or to irritation at having thrown money away on a ridiculous gamble. Starting on December 24th, all characters who have been in existence for at least 45 days may purchase a Mog Bonanza marble, which then is inscribed with five digits of the player’s choice. On January 29th, 2010, a set of winning numbers will be chosen.

Of course, you might argue that your odds of getting exactly the right five numbers are rather low (1 in 100,000 or so), which is true. But luckily for everyone involved, it’s easier to win than matching the whole number. The best prizes go to those who match all five numbers, but even if just the last digit of your chosen numbers match the picked numbers, you win a reward. Your odds of that are about 1 in 10, which isn’t a bad deal. For the full rules and the details of the rewards, take a look at the official page, and start dreaming of high-powered artifacts and buckets of gil in Final Fantasy XI. (We recommend 8-1-5-1-6, if you’re so inclined.)

Mustapha Final Fantasy XI

Two of the biggest aspects of Champions Online are easy to point out: the character creator and the wide selection of powers. Certainly it’s not the first game to use a classless system by a long shot, but the visual and immediate nature of power selection and the cosmetic effects of those choice are a big part of the game’s distinctiveness. So it’s hard not to be interested when Bill Roper sits down and talks with MMOCrunch about which powers he thinks worked excellently out of the gate and which onces were a bit less impressive.

Bill gushes quite enthusiastically about powers such as Force Cascade, Killer Instinct, and Thermal Reverberation — powers that encourage alternate playstyles or different combinations of abilities. He’s also enthusiastic about Uppercut and Haymaker, which he feels have an excellent payoff if they’re used successfully and force the player to think more carefully. On the flipside, passive offensive powers don’t have nearly enough effect, Chain Lightning tries to encourage alternate approaches but fails to do so, and summoning doesn’t mesh nicely with the game’s core play aspects. Roper also talks about what’s being planned for the underwhelming powers to help bring them more in line, as well as discussing data mining and the infamous launch day nerfs. Take a look at the full interview for more details.

Castro MMOPRG News

Eurogamer Portugal had the good fortune to chat with Cryptic’s Dan Stahl, the producer of Star Trek Online last week for an overview of the highly-anticipated MMO. The interview covered some ground we’ve seen before, some we have not, and gave his perspective about the creation of STO.

Eurogamer and Stahl talked about his view of things like ship customization vs. remaining true to the Star Trek “look”, combat styles on the ground and on ships, and general content. His enjoyment and pride on the game shines through clearly and makes the interview a fun read. “I really think that people who play the game for the first time will look at the game and say ‘Wow, they nailed it.’” The translation of the article can be read courtesy of Google Translate, with the original here.

sarah2009 Uncategorized

WoW’s fifth anniversary and the interviews surrounding it have ended up providing us with some previously-unknown tidbits of information — which is a good thing, especially when it comes to stuff we’ve been wanting to hear about for a long time.

This particular tidbit comes from the Warcry network interview with J. Allen Brack and Samwise Didier about the game’s anniversary, and it’s about a subject near and dear to our constantly-complaining hearts: new character models. They might even be coming in Cataclysm.

Says Brack:

“Even though things would be better with new (character) models, we’d probably spark a lot of player outrage. So we’ve talked about giving players a choice between the classic models or the new ones, but it might not be something we want to take on at the same time as we remake Azeroth.”

That’s pretty big news.

We’ve been wondering about the status of these old models for a long time. His language indicates that it might not be a Cataclysm feature, but we sure hope so. Troll models are a bit long in the tooth — pardon the pun — and human males desperately need an update more than almost anything. But really, all of the pre-BC models do. Even just a few extra polygons and animation fixes would really help. Draenei, blood elves, and now goblins and worgen all look so good compared to our old dumpy avatars.

If you’re wondering why less character customization options exist in WoW than in many other MMOs, just ask Samwise, who had this to say:

“We gave very simple choices, and there wasn’t any of this ‘Is my guy five pounds overweight? Are his eyes sea blue or sky blue?’ Don’t get me wrong, that sort of thing is cool, but we made a very simple UI and character creator, and that’s one of the main things that helped people gravitate to the game.”

Makes sense. Just, please, Blizzard. Listen. Make everyone’s models look better — the number of people who’ll complain that their human female just isn’t as moonfaced as she used to be is incredibly small compared to the number of people who’d resub in anticipation of not having a hare lip on their human male. Don’t worry about the luddites. Just bring WoW’s graphics into this decade, and bring our models with ‘em.

Cephalonie World of Warcraft

The good folks at the Orange County Register got invited to Blizzard’s official WoW anniversary party that took place last Thursday on their Irvine campus, and their report is now posted. It sounds like quite the event — lots of free food and beer, head honchos regaling employees with their tales of the early days, and Rob Pardo suggesting that just like geek culture helped define this game, this game might help define geek culture going forward.

The picture gallery included with the piece is a good browse, too — you can see all of the Blizzard heavyweights hanging out together, and the great spread set up on the campus. The Register’s also been asking Blizzard about their memories of the game — they’ve got more memories from Samwise, launch day stories from Shane Dabiri, and some thoughts from Pardo and Frank Pearce (who, strangely enough, at first didn’t believe that Blizzard belonged in a hardcore niche market like MMO gaming — he didn’t want to make “a game that never ended,” he says). All good stuff. Congrats once again to Blizzard on five years, good to see they celebrated in style.

Castres World of Warcraft Blizzard, News items