We’re always mindful that not everybody plays the game in the same way, or has the same experience on different servers or factions, but every so often a certain madness seizes us and we feel the urge to … tell the truth. In that vein, I am pleased (sort of) to present The Cynic’s Guide to World of Warcraft.
This article owes a heavy debt to Ambrose Bierce’s The Devil’s Dictionary. If you want to see a real master at work, read that.
Achievement A means of distilling the worth of a player down to an arbitrary number, although as with so many other features, someone else found a better way to do the exact same thing. See GearScore.
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Spiritual Guidance is a fickle mistress. By the light of day, it hits the outlet malls with Dawn Moore, gets Oreo McFlurries and has light-hearted discussions about last night’s episode of Glee. By night, though — Wednesday nights in particular — it Shadowcrawls on back to Fox Van Allen for some wild flaying and searing. When you break it down, everyone likes a bad boy.
Fact: According to World of Logs, the top shadow priest DPS on a regular 10-man Lord Marrowgar kill was just over 13,000 DPS. Feel inferior? How about this, then: The top shadow priest DPS on a 25-man heroic Blood-Queen Lana’thel kill is about 27,600. I can’t say for sure whether or not that’s before the 20% buff went live, but when you’re doing over 27k, who cares about that extra 5%?
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When news starts coming from Famitsu regarding Final Fantasy XIV, it usually heralds information coming direct from Square-Enix shortly thereafter. Only a short time after the leak that gave us a look at the world map and some of the points of interest, the official site updated with more information on the world. While there was some information accessible from the prior scans, the new section on Limsa Lominsa details the city extensively, as well as adding sections for the two other city states, Ul’dah and Gridania.
Although the three states each bear some similarities to Final Fantasy XI’s great nations, they’re quite different in feel and in scope. The biggest similarity seems to be that much like the previous game, they’re filled with distinct personalities and locations. Limsa Lominsa is the only city to get full detailing on its landmarks, but those range from the former pirate dive that’s been turned into the adventurer’s guild (The Drowning Wench) to the city’s center at an ancient swamped battleship (The Mizzenmast). Final Fantasy XIV fans are encouraged to take a look at the official site for its updates, which continue to paint the world of Eorzea in broad strokes.
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Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to get through this thing called life. Electric word, life. It means forever and that’s a mighty long time. But I’m here to tell you — there’s something else. The World of Warcraft. A world of never-ending gnome corpses. You can always see the shadows, day or night. So when you call up that Spiritual Guidance columnist in Beverly Hills — you know the one, Dr. Fox Van Allen — instead of asking him how much of your time is left, ask him how much of your mind, baby. Cause he’s going to flay it into effing oblivion every Wednesday.
Ladies and gentlemen, my first car ever was my grandmother’s old 1986 Ford Taurus. It had a digital speedometer and a pretty kicking tape deck. I even got the sample cassette tape that came with the car. I spent some of the best years of my life cruising the Garden State while listening to Neil Diamond’s Heartlight and the theme to Cats. (Before you judge, most of you were listening to Sugar Ray and the theme to Friends instead at the time.)
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If you are the leader of a guild that has a large number of people who have account security issues, you regularly get emails from Blizzard that say the following:
Recently one of the members of your guild was the victim of an account compromise, and during the course of our investigation it was discovered that items were removed from the guild bank while the account was out of the control of your guild member. The items have been returned to you as attachments to an in-game mail. We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this has caused.
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Posters on MMO-Champion’s boards have gotten into the Cataclysm alpha and started datamining female worgen models and animations. While the models don’t have textures yet (i.e. you’re only going to see a bunch of black and not their faces or anything) and some of the animations are placeholders borrowed from existing models (mostly female draenei), this is the first look we’re getting at one of Cataclysm’s most hotly anticipated features.
WARNING: This post is stuffed full of spoilers. It is a spoiled piece of concentrated awesome wrapped in spoiled paper boxed and shipped to Spoilertopia courtesy of Spoiler Express. Don’t click below if you don’t want anything to do with unofficial information.
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I love numbers. I love facts and statistics, I love looking through them and speculating on the different possible interpretations. As we move into the end of Wrath, I thought it would be a nice time to take a look at everybody’s favorite number, DPS, and see how each spec is doing in ICC.
But rather than just looking at the top DPS of each spec, I thought it would be more interesting to see where the average DPS for each spec is, across all gear levels, all skill levels — to get a glimpse of how the average raider is doing. While we don’t have access to the DPS of every raider out there, we do have something close, and that something is World of Logs.
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The past couple of months have not been kind to Mythic Entertainment, with an uncomfortable double-header of a huge billing fiasco followed by the closure of the Mythic Store. The billing especially produced a great deal of outrage from players, understandably concerned about their account security as well as the potential impact on their bank accounts. Even reversing the charges didn’t leave everyone completely mollified — but Mythic has put in the effort to try and not just apologize and reverse the error, but help regain the trust and goodwill of the players.
Both Warhammer Online and Dark Age of Camelot players will receive two items of their choice on all current and future characters, with Warhammer Online mailing out tokens and Dark Age of Camelot simply allowing you to talk to a Royal Accountant. The items include dyes, decorations, temporary disguises, and other fun toys for players to help recover from the aftershocks. On the off chance that you didn’t receive the items and were billed multiple times, the team at Mythic has a specific appeals process to ensure correct delivery. As bad as the error was, it’s good to see that players will be compensated nicely for as long as they keep playing.
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It’s not quite as stunning as the earlier announcement regarding Turbine and Warner Bros, but for the free-to-play world a big shakeup has taken place. Nexon, known for MapleStory, Mabinogi, and the upcoming Vindictus among others, has acquired a controlling share of NDOORS Interactive, known principally for Atlantica Online. The deal was announced in Korea late Monday evening, with Nexon explaining that they had acquired 67% of the company’s shares including those of the former chairman, Seung-Mun Kwon.
Nexon CEO Su-Min was quite pleased about the acquisition, stating that the addition of the technical expertise and experience of the NDOORS team would help with the company’s long-term plans and global expansion. There’s no word yet on what this will mean for the operation of Atlantica Online in the US and elsewhere, although it’s reasonable to assume that Nexon would likely consolidate their operations. We’ll have more for you on this story as it develops and as further details come to light.
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Reports on the official forums this morning are that those who completed the Dalaran orphan’s quest (Oracle pet/Wolvar pet) last year are currently unable to start the quest again today. Blizzard has already chimed in with a response:
Aredek — Children’s Week not workingI’m terribly sorry about the delay in getting back to you all regarding this issue; however, this is an issue we are presently looking into. At this time, players who completed the Dalaran Children’s Week quests will be unable to re-accept the quests. We hope to resolve this issue as soon as possible, but we do not have an ETA to provide at this time.
We will surely let you know as soon are more information becomes available.
Thank you all for your patience!
source
This annual reset glitch has happened a few times in the past with other seasonal events. This issue should not be affecting the Stormwind, Orgrimmar or Shattrath orphan quests. It should also not be affecting those who are doing the Dalaran orphan quest for the first time. More information about the current seasonal event can be found in our Children’s Week guide updated for 2010.
We’ll update this post when Blizzard announces the fix.
Castille World of Warcraft
World of Warcraft on the iPad? Apparently, thanks to an interesting service called Gaikai. Gaikai, currently in beta, is a new technology that will let you play any game online in your browser. Here’s how it works — Gaikai hosts the games on their servers and worries about the hardware and software updates, then they stream the games to you through your browser. They call this technology “Streaming Worlds.” What does this mean for the average WoW player? Well, when you have a computer that otherwise looks seemingly impossible to play WoW on such as the iPad, you can use Gaikai to stream the game via Java, Flash or Silverlight to your computer, resulting in the screenshot shown above.
While the screenshot is amazing, there are doubts to its credibility since iPad’s browser doesn’t support Flash. Unfortunately no video of the game in action was provided. However, the concept surrounding Gaikai, and the implications for browser-based games that are graphically intensive like World of Warcraft are fascinating.
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Reports on the official forums this morning are that those who completed the Dalaran orphan’s quest (Oracle pet/Wolvar pet) last year are currently unable to start the quest again today. Blizzard has already chimed in with a response:
Aredek — Children’s Week not workingI’m terribly sorry about the delay in getting back to you all regarding this issue; however, this is an issue we are presently looking into. At this time, players who completed the Dalaran Children’s Week quests will be unable to re-accept the quests. We hope to resolve this issue as soon as possible, but we do not have an ETA to provide at this time.
We will surely let you know as soon are more information becomes available.
Thank you all for your patience!
source
This annual reset glitch has happened a few times in the past with other seasonal events. This issue should not be affecting the Stormwind, Orgrimmar or Shattrath orphan quests. It should also not be affecting those who are doing the Dalaran orphan quest for the first time. More information about the current seasonal event can be found in our Children’s Week guide updated for 2010.
Castille World of Warcraft
From the official WoW Spanish forums today comes three important new facts about Cataclysm:
You will need to discover the dungeon first before it will appear in the Dungeon Finder It is possible heroic dungeons will require attunements The internal gear checking will be stricter for Cataclysm heroics than it is for current Wrath heroics The translated blue announcement is as follows:
DraztalLooking to Cataclysm, maybe you want to know that, for normal dungeons, players must discover the dungeon in the world prior to access it from LFD tool. It is possible that you could see attunements for heroics and raids (which would be similar to the one of Karazhan). Developers arent sure yet of whether they use attunements or not. However, heroic dungeons at level 85 would probably have more gear requirement (in comparison) than heroic dungeons at level 80.
Castille World of Warcraft
As the years have passed in the World of Warcraft, I find myself meeting more and more players who have no idea what I’m talking about when I mention some memorable quest or tiny hideaway in a level 50 zone. This is by no means unexpected in a game as old as WoW, but I find it quite tragic that those near and dear to me are missing out on things that once captivated me. So what do I do? Well, I grab my semi-interested guildmate and whisk him away on a field trip; I take on the role of an Azerothian tour guide. Sometimes I even wear a funny hat.
I really enjoy the concept behind achievements like The Loremaster and World Explorer. It has a very “go see and experience the world for yourself” feel to it that I can agree with. The problem is I think those achievements are a bit overwhelming for the average person, myself included. I really can’t imagine actively going out and doing the hundreds of “gather 10 berries/feathers/saliva samples” quests for fun. What I’d really like to see is an achievement system that focuses more on quality than quantity: Loremaster Lite, for example, or World Explorer’s Top 20 spots. Kind of like Blizzard’s way of saying, “Hey, here is the stuff we are most proud of. Go see it.”
Blizzard is busy, though. But hey! I’m here, and I even have a funny hat to wear in real life! It’s not an explorer hat; it’s a squid hat. (It looks like a squid is eating my head when I wear it.) As I sit here, allowing my brains to be munched on by this crocheted Cthulhu, I have to wonder: are all those things I love about the old world going to exist once Cataclysm comes out?
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This multiple-rule-breaking screenshot was sent in by obvious sadist Stache of on Korgath. This reminds me that it’s about time to update our forbidden screenshot list. Anyone have any suggestions? One of the slots is already going to be filled by Celestial Steeds, so you can skip that one.
Do you have any unusual, beautiful or interesting World of Warcraft images that are just collecting dust in your screenshots folder? We’d love to see them on Around Azeroth! Sharing your screenshot is as simple as emailing aroundazeroth@wow.com with a copy of your shot and a brief explanation of the scene. You could be featured here next!
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