Those party hosts in Sleeper Cartel on Perenolde are at it again — they’re holding yet another in-game party, this time to celebrate Halloween, and it sounds like another player-run blowout: free food and drinks, costume and trivia contests, and lots more. There’s something called the Dead Man’s Run, and we have no idea what that is, but it sounds like a bunch of low level gnomes will die, which is always run. They tell us they’re planning on having a live DJ spin tunes, just as they did at their summer party. And they’ll have player-run questlines to do as well. You have to give it to them: Sleeper Cartel never seems to run short on creative things to do in-game.
I’m sorry to say that, as much as I’ve reported on these, I’ve never actually been to one. But I think that’ll change with this party — it kicks off at 7pm MST next Saturday, October 24th, on the US server of Perenolde, and they’re holding it at what they say is one of the creepiest places in the game, the Ruins of the Scarlet Enclave (a.k.a. the Death Knight starting area, sans leveling Death Knights). I just marked it on my calendar, so I do believe that I will see you there.
Castille World of Warcraft Virtual selves
Zoltan of Aegwynn is the guy who’s been sitting on top of the overall achievement point lists for a while, and he’s just recently cracked the incredible total of 10,000 points. At the time of this writing, he’s finished off a total of 908 out of 931 achievements currently in the game, giving him a total of 10,005 achievement points.
The Champion of Ulduar is the one that put him over the top according to his Armory profile, and strangely, he doesn’t appear to have any of the Feats of Strength (edit: never mind, I read it wrong — he’s got plenty). He is only missing the two World Event achievements left (Brewmaster and the meta-achievement, neither of which are yet possible), the Sea Turtle achievement, and then a few more Heroic Ulduar endgame points. Given that the 3.2 patch achievements will likely come out before Brewmaster, there’s no way yet to clear everything completely, but he’s as close as it gets.
Very impressive indeed. Zoltan has just one or two people on his heels, and then the numbers drop out to a few hundred below 10,000 (and strangely enough, the top five players are all EU folks). There’s no reward for all of those points (and Blizzard has no plans to offer any), but it’s quite, as you might say, an achievement.
dreadmage World of Warcraft achievements, Virtual selves
This got somewhat lost in the news shuffle over the holiday weekend, but Blizzard has posted another issue of their extremely irregular Gadgetzan Times fan-fic-oriented newsletter, for the first time since May 2008. This time around it consists of two pieces of short-form fan fiction, an amusing “classifieds” section, and a slightly half-hearted crossword about the dungeons of WoW.
It’s an interesting thing for Blizzard themselves to come out with, as it has been from the start. I really like the idea — characters from Azeroth report on events in and around their world — but it could use a little more polish and effort, not to mention a more regular timetable. On the other hand, they’re still publishing more regularly than my Illusionary Tactics column. Maybe I should not call this particular kettle black.
Cephalonie World of Warcraft Blizzard, Virtual selves
BlizzCon 2009 tickets will likely go on sale soon, and before then, Zarhym is here to reassure you: Blizzard is doing what they can to make sure things will not go the way they did last year. Unfortunately, he doesn’t go into detail on exactly what that means. We’d have to think that they wouldn’t just open up the floodgates on a site that wasn’t ready again, but while most thought that the lottery that ended last year’s ticket sales worked pretty well, it looks like that may not be the plan just yet. Whatever they plan to do, we hope it works out in a fair way and with a minimum of fuss for those who do try to go. Anything without the Failoc or the FailSCV is a plus in our book.
Zarhym also says that they will be giving us advance notice before the tickets actually start selling, so people will have time to make travel arrangements if necessary (and/or ask the wife or parents for the money to go if need be). And he says that a pay-per-view type of event, as they did last year, or even a live stream of some of the events online, is not beyond the realm of possibility.
Of course, even if you don’t make it for whatever reason, you can be sure that WoW Insider will be there and covering everything that happens, from the awesome costumes to the possibly blogger-threatening danger. Stay tuned for more info soon.
MMOvalue World of Warcraft Blizzard, blizzcon, Virtual selves