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
Okay, guys. You’ve had plenty of time to do it, and now the countdown’s just about over. As of tomorrow, only Battle.net accounts will be able to log into the game. If you merge your account before the deadline, you get Mr. Chilly, the adorable penguin pet, but if you do it after the deadline, all you get is a permeating sense of failure.
Just go and merge your account(s) while you’re on your break and reading this! It takes almost no time, the process is painless, and you get a small flightless bird that serves no useful purpose. If you don’t take care of it now, don’t say we didn’t warn you when you log in tomorrow and you’re spending an extended amount of time with Roary McFrostwyrm.
We’re not legally liable for the damage that might cause. We’ve done our part. The rest is up to you.
For those of you who’ve already merged your account, just read the next post. Don’t stare. These guys were just busy, that’s all.
MMOvalue World of Warcraft Account Security, News items
There will be a round of realm maintenance for everyone tomorrow, Tuesday November 10th from 5:00 a.m. PST / 8:00 a.m. EST until 11:00 a.m. PST / 2:00 p.m. EST. This is more or less the “normal” maintenance time we’ve all come to know and love.
The downtime tomorrow should not be taken as any indication that patch 3.3 is dropping; that event is still a couple weeks away at best. The patch tonight was a “tools patch,” that while temporarely screwed things up for the majority of people, wasn’t anything that changed things significantly — at least as far as we all can tell.
If anything else develops of this downtime, we’ll be sure to let you know.
MMOvalue World of Warcraft News items, Realm Status
There’s been a few achievements that have been added in the latest patch 3.3 build.
As you can guess, taking down the Lich King has its rewards. If you manage to defeat Arthas in Icecrown Citadel in 10-player heroic mode, you will henceforth earn the title “Bane of the Fallen King.”
A new faction for you to earn reputation with will be established as well. The Ashen Verdict, if you manage to earn exalted with them, will grant you a title reward that adds “Of the Ashen Verdict.” No serious details yet on how to grind out rep, but when I was on the PTR clearing trash to Festergut, I noticed I was gaining Ashen Verdict reputation by killing various mobs. They’re similar to the rates players earned rep with when working through Black Temple for the Ashtongue.
Arena players have a new title and a Frostwyrm pet to look forward to for season 8. Good luck on earning the Wrathful Gladiator title!
The players who are more into battlegrounds will be experiencing change as well. The achievements to gain exalted with Warsong Gulch, Arathi Basin, and Alterac Valley factions have been removed from their Meta-Achievements. You’ll gain special titles if you manage to reach exalted with the factions at least.
Glory of the Hero Meta-Achievement has been slightly changed. The Party’s Over achievement which involves killing Prince Taldaram on Heroic with under 5 people is no longer part of that particular meta. Although, personally I don’t think it’s that difficult to take out that boss with 4 players.
Lastly, in case you missed the news earlier, Master Angler of Stranglethorn has been changed. It will be changed to Master Angler of Azeroth instead. You can gain this achievement by winning the Kalu’ak Fishing Derby or the Stranglethorn Fishing Extravaganza.
Kanghi World of Warcraft achievements, News items
There hasn’t been much new news on the Patch 3.3 PTR for us hunters the last couple of weeks. Then all of a sudden in the latest build something intriguing popped up over on MMO-Champion. Shown above, it looks to be a blue glowing ethereal bear. Looking eerily like a bear form spirit beast.
This got me thinking that there are 3 possibilities (okay, I’ll admit there are a lot more than 3). First, Blizzard has been secretly planning on allowing shamans learn a new ability called spirit bear that will finally allow them to tank. Next, maybe night elf druids will be able to Shadowmeld in bear form. Finally, my personal favorite, could this be a new spirit beast?
The idea of a bear form spirit beast isn’t out of the question. So far we’ve had a couple of cat forms and one wolf. Adding a bear form would fit right in with the standard pet forms.
I don’t know, but I can’t wait to find out. If it does turn out to be new tamable spirit beast, I’ll call him DeadElvis. If not, maybe this is what a tamed druid will look like after they learn hunter form. Either way, stay tuned and as Patch 3.3 develops we’ll let you know what we find out.
Castro World of Warcraft News items, Rumors
As it stands right now, when a blue or epic item is dropped in an instance, players have several options to choose from: Need, greed or pass. A recent glance at the new Patch 3.3 PTR UI changes shows some new strings:
LOOT_ROLL_DISENCHANT = “%s has selected Disenchant for: %s”;
LOOT_ROLL_DISENCHANT_SELF = “You have selected Disenchant for: %s”;
LOOT_ROLL_WON_NO_SPAM_DE = “%1$s won: %3$s |cff818181(Disenchant – %2$d)|r”;
The first two lines mean that other players in your party or yourself have selected the dropped item to be disenchanted. The last line means if roll spam is turned off, what you’ll end up seeing is something like “Player has won Item (to be disenchanted)”. I suspect how the priority on loot will work is players who select Need will get first crack at it, followed by Greed rollers. Disenchant would be the third option. Pass would be last.
I have this strange feeling that we’re not going to see that many players passing on an item anymore even with no enchanters in the group. This will be helpful during raids where there are no enchanters around to help break any items that aren’t going to be used.
Koeningsmark World of Warcraft News items
We’ve been getting a steady stream of tips and tweets in about the stability issues plaguing nearly every server tonight, and Blizzard has finally confirmed that something isn’t working right.
Most people are experiencing extreme lag both in instances and out in regular zones. There doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to it all, just constant server-side lag that impairs things like looting, completing quests, using items, buy items, or trading things to other players.
Pretty much every wonderful thing that could have lag to it does; including the lovely 30 second mount cast.
Hopefully the rolling restarts that will be taking place tomorrow morning at 5:00 a.m. PDT / 8:00 a.m. EDT will fix this. Although I’m hopeful that there would be some quick resets tonight to apply a hotfix or whatever else Blizzard needs to do in-order to make the game more playable.
We’ll update this post with any additional information if we get it
Mustapha World of Warcraft Bugs, News items
We’ve had some serious maintenance in the last few weeks, and it looks like they’ve come to an end. The extended maintenance that’s been going on has been to fix the much hyped “Additional instances cannot be launched” error, and by all accounts the bug has been fixed. But let’s not kid ourselves, there’ll be at least a dozen comments claiming differently after this post goes up. But it’s all good, because eventually the cross-server instances are going to take care of that problem entirely.
The maintenance tomorrow will run from 3:00 a.m. PDT / 6:00 a.m. EDT until 11:00 a.m. PDT / 2:00 p.m. EDT.
Koeningsmark World of Warcraft News items, Realm Status
I already mentioned that there’s an excerpt from the upcoming Stormrage novel in the back of TokyoPop’s Warcraft Legends Volume 5 manga, but if you’re anxious to get yet another glimpse before February 2010, you’re in luck. Pocket Books has posted a new excerpt over at their site, and all you need to grab is an email address.
The excerpt doesn’t reveal any new lore per se, but it does tease pretty damn well, and should bring up some pretty nostalgic memories for a lot of Alliance players. Combine this with the excerpt from the manga, and you’ll get a pretty good idea of where the story’s going, I think — Right into the Heart of the Emerald Nightmare, as we confirmed with authour Richard Knaak at BlizzCon a week ago.
As to whether it will cover the Cataclysm, or not, that’s a bit up in the air. However, considering we know that Malfurion will be back in the waking world fighting Ragnaros at Hyjal, chances would seem to be good.
You can check out the excerpt at Simon and Schuster’s website.
Castro World of Warcraft Lore, News items
Wow, okay, we didn’t see that coming, at least not this fast. European Blue Wryxian announced this morning on the official forums that the PTRs are back up for testing patch 3.2.2. Character copy is up for both pre-mades and your own characters (the wait time is currently an hour but this is definitely going to change). There are four realms being offered, two PvP and two PvE: Remulos, Brill, Fordring and Naralex. So far, the PTRs seem limited to EU-only but we’re sure America can’t be far behind. We’ll update you with more as we have more but in the meantime, if you have a European account, click here to download the client and copy over a character.
WoW.com is currently hopping onto the PTR as quickly as we can to find anything and everything we can, so keep an eye on the site.
Update: Patch notes are in the process of going up. We’ll have them over here on WoW.com as well as soon as we’re able.
Catalans World of Warcraft Events, News items
Bornakk has just announced that the end of Season 6 will come as early as Tuesday August 25th. You’ll want to be sure that if you’re eligible for arena rewards that you don’t transfer your character or generally screw with your arena team. Just relax and let the rewards happen.
After Season 6 ends, there will be one week of downtime where no rated matches can happen.
Season 7 will begin after this week of downtime, at which time all team and personal ratings will be wiped, along with your arena points. According to the announcement matchmaking ratings will remain (as well as honor points). None of this should come as too much of a surprise, as we’ve known about it all for a while.
This roughly places the start date for Season 7 at Tuesday September 1st. However these things can change, so just pay attention to the news and watch out for the exact date.
Kocherberg World of Warcraft Arena, News items
In an official press release, Blizzard announced today that StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty, the first installment of the Starcraft II trilogy, previously indicated to be released in the last quarter of this year, is delayed to the first half of 2010.
The release cited the massive amount of work necessary to overhaul Blizzard’s online matchmaking service, Battle.net, as the main culprit for the delay. Since the new BNet will be part of every new Blizzard game from here on in — including World of Warcraft, as players with BNet accounts have seen — it’s vital that the service be working properly before the game’s release.
StarCraft II was never officially dated — only an on-the-sly indication — and multiple financial sites have reported the now-official release date as the first half of 2010 following this announcement and Activision-Blizzard’s quarterly financial report.
What does this mean for the WoW player? Well, it means that if you were expecting the focus of BlizzCon, or one of the focuses of BlizzCon, to be a StarCraft II release date, you’d be incorrect.
Castille World of Warcraft Blizzard, News items
According to the in-game announcement, there will be two hours of maintenance tomorrow August 6th on all realms. The maintenance announcement has changed throughout the evening, but seems to have settled on this downtime.
The downtime will happen from 5:00 a.m. PDT / 8:00 a.m. EDT and last until 7:00 a.m. PDT / 10:00 a.m. EDT. This of course assumes that there’ll be no extended super-fracken-duper maintenance put on top of that. And we know just how much Blizzard loves to increase their maintenance periods. If there is you’ll hear it here.
While the maintenance is going on, you can check out WoW.com’s Guide to Patch 3.2 and read up on all the things you missed, or think you missed. There is also the beginnings of a list of bug fixes; a list that’s sure to grow over the coming days.
Kocherberg World of Warcraft News items, Realm Status
There’s a detailed server maintenance announcement for tomorrow, Tuesday August 4th. And off the bat: we still don’t know for sure if Patch 3.2 is dropping tomorrow. You can bet that we’ll be burning the midnight oil waiting to find out, though. (Note, that would be inadvisable. If you attempt to ignite a petroleum product on this ship at zero hundred hours you will activate the fire suppression system, which would seal off this entire compartment.)
All realms will be down from at least 3:00 a.m. PDT / 6:00 a.m. EDT until 11:00 a.m. PDT / 2:00 p.m. EDT tomorrow. However a large group of special realms will be down from 12:00 a.m. PDT / 3:00 a.m. EDT until 12:00 p.m. PDT / 3:00 p.m. EDT.
Those special realms are those in the battlegroups Emberstorm, and Whirlwind.
Check after the break if you need to see a listing of which realms belong on those battlegroups, and stay tuned to WoW.com tonight and tomorrow for all the patch 3.2 goodness.
Minor update: The service alert, which is obviously suffering from a typo, now reads in part: “..we expect all realms to be playable by approximately 11:59PM PDT on Tuesday, August 4.” Emphasis added. Hey, at least they’re honest, right?
Update: Blizzard changed their announcement to indicate that only Emberstorm and Whirlwind would be going offline for an extended period.
All the realms which will be offline for an extended period tonight include:
Emberstorm Battlegroup:
Antonidas- Normal
Drenden- Normal
Farstriders- RP
Hydraxis- Normal
Mok’Nathal- Normal
Moon Guard- RP
Nazgrel- Normal
Nordrassil- Normal
Quel’dorei- Normal
Rivendare- PvP
Shandris- Normal
Tortheldrin- PvP
Whirlwind Battlegroup:
Anub’arak- PvP
Blackwater Raiders- RP
Bladefist- Normal
Cenarion Circle- RP
Cenarius- Normal
Darrowmere- PvP
Echo Isles- Normal
Hyjal- Normal
Lightbringer- Normal
Maiev- PvP
Misha- Normal
Ravenholdt- RP-PvP
Sisters of Elune- RP
The Forgotten Coast- PvP
Uther- Normal
Vashj- PvP
Castro World of Warcraft News items, Realm News, Realm Status
We saw it last night, and the problems have once again appeared this afternoon. Authentication isn’t working as intended for non-Battle.net accounts. This means if you haven’t transformed your WoW account into a Battle.net account, you’re probably not going to be able to get into the game easily.
The transformation process can be initiated at us.battle.net. It only takes a few minutes and is relatively painless. Converting your account to Battle.net is not required at this time, but I don’t think anyone should be surprised if it is soon.
Malkorix has said that there are problems, and they are aware of the problems, but don’t have any ETA on a fix at this time. He also makes a point to note that converting your account to Battle.net is only a reported and unconfirmed by Blizzard solution. However we can say that we haven’t seen any issues with Battle.net accounts.
We’ll update this post when we have more information.
Castres World of Warcraft News items, Realm Status