Results tagged “WoW Insider” from From the Abbey to Outlands

The air has grown chilled, the waters stilled. The signs point to the event that has been anticipated with bated breath. Prepare yourselves, for... 3.0.3 is nearly upon us. The downtime is extended right about the same length of a usual patch maintenance, and people are preparing. While it is hard to know what the patch will actually hold, since even WoW Insider is only quoting the PTR notes, which could have changed in the 3 week or so run that the PTRs had.

We know that many Ret changes were hot fixed, which Siha points out were done without PTR testing, and other changes are so small, like the Hallowed Be Thy Name change, that they are unlikely to not make the patch. The Druid talent reset is pretty much a given, along with many of the changes to their talents. Other than that? Well, anything could happen. WoW Insider got something right, though, that Patch 3.0.3 is most likely going to happen, even if we haven't seen the typical 'thanks for testing' message on the PTR forums. 

Note: WoW Insider is using guesses and labeling Test Realm info as confirmed patch info. This should be noted, but isn't. PTR notes at launch can differ wildly from live patch notes.

I first saw word of this from this post on Twitter by WoW Insider author Eliah Hecht. Matt quickly reposted, followed by me. The url in the post points to this post by Eliah on WoW Insider. The summary of the story is that WoW Head, my favorite game info database site, as well as their sister site Thottbot, have what is tantamount to an announcement that Wrath of the Lich King will release on November 13, 2008.

Now I do need to point out that we have no confirmation of this on the WoW site as yet, though Malgayne from WoW Head says it is legit and suggests the time was set for midnight, and the admin who released it is 3 hours ahead of Blizzard in Irvine, CA. What does this mean? I think we will have 3.0.2 within 7 days either way of Blizzcon. I think we will have a CE announcement, if not at the time of the official announcement of the date, within days. I think.... that midnight PST can't come soon enough!

[Update 1: The Customer Service forums are the first to get a blue response, though it remains inconclusive.]

So as I was preparing for work this morning, I noticed WoW Insider had an interesting post about a change in the descriptions of the three different Death Knight talent trees, Blood, Frost, and Unholy. The changes are interesting, moving away from stereotyped roles of a spec(tank, DPS, PvP, etc) to a more tagged type of description, as well as removing the description about what the presence does from that tree.

WoW Insider suggested a pretty decent guess from my perspective of why this might have been done. One of the reasons that we have the current tank shortage in the game is perspective. We have Warriors not wanting to lose the loot priority value of being the main tank in raids, and thus have complained at any improvements that could potentially see them replaced in that role, such as buff to Paladins or Druids as tanks.

Blizzard being attentive to warriors has led to a deep tank shortage, because no one wants to spec their character in a way that will make them less effective or desirable to the overall gaming population. WoW Insider points out that the change to the trees could be a lead up to a change in thinking from Blizzard. If the company stops referring to trees by the stereotypical terms, DPS, Heal, Tank, PvP, Raid, etc, we just might see players change their thinking.

I have to agree with the writer of the piece in that we could just as easily see the terms to describe something, for example Tank, change to be the new terms, control, counters, and combos. We could see 'LFC(control) DK for Naxx' instead of 'LF Tank for Naxx'. Of course, there is something to be said for the stereotypes. Which is nicer to see: 1) 'LF AoE Pal, Threat War, Swipe Druid, Control DK for <instance>' or 2) 'LF Tank for <instance>'? I think 2 will be it.

In the end, this still has the ring of a move away from the age old stereotypes and to a new way of thinking about how characters are designed and planned, as well I would think in how they are evolved as the future expansions hit. As Blizzard brings more Hero classes into the game in those expansions to be named, this will undoubtedly help them broaden the classes beyond the narrow stereotypes that have plagued them since the game was in beta.

Will changing the descriptions of the classes in the game and in the future change how you think about them? Or will it just be a matter of same crap, different pile? Do you think this will even have any effect on the game and it's instance and raid aspects? Let me know what you think in the comments!

I am an avid reader of the WoW Insider blog, and today, like many before, they showed me the funny behind the game's Forums. This post on WoW Insider, pointing to the humor in this post on the forums, showed the power of the GMs and Moderators on the official forums. They can pull up ticket histories and chat logs, transactions and account history.

But wait! WoW Insider blogger Amanda Dean had her account hacked and the refused to return her stuff. I have heard this result from many people, even my own guildies who were told that Blizzard had no record they had any gear. What? The company that has records of tickets, transactions, and chat logs from months before, they keep all of this but don't have record of gear a player had for several weeks before a hacking? I don't buy it.

So gold farmers get the account, make thousands of gold off the stuff therein, traumatize players and rack up charges on their credit cards, All of this and Blizzard has nothing to say? They have no record of the gear or the possessions? Having observed the IT industry for a long time, I would simply say that I think this is utter crap. Either Blizzard's server people are utter crap and can't maintain documentation worth a damn, or they are lying to customers in order to avoid having to restore gear to too many players.

Sure, there is probably a few who get their stuff back, but overall there is a lot of people who have hacked accounts, in many cases through no fault of their own, and Blizzard disregards their problems like it is nothing. I would call on Blizzard to explain how they can prove all of these things to humiliate a person trying to defraud them, but when a player gets hacked they can't pull up even the basics of what a player was wearing a few days before. Of course, as always, they will likely say nothing, ignoring the demands of their customers, cause god knows there are more where the departing came from!

Perhaps my brush with fame had gone to my head, but I am calling here and now for a few things. I am offline for a couple more days, so this does impact me a lot. First, reading this post from WoW Insider's Eliah Hecht saying his server is at 59% done on Phase 1, has me concerned. I would love a chance like we had for the AQ opening, to see out of game the progress being made. This is a new kind of war effort, isn't it? Let us call for a new war effort status page!

Second, I worry that the Isle is opening too fast. Half a phase in 1 day? Completely open in a week? I can only hope that 2, 3, and 4 are harder, requiring more time and effort to get them opened up. At this rate, assuming Argent Dawn is about the same rate as Eliah's realm, when I get in sometime Friday, the Isle will be nearing the end of phase 2. That's missing pretty much half of this epic world event.

Lastly, I am not sure how much I like the idea of some dailies not being able to be done after some phases. What if I have that, completed, in my logs? Will I still be able to turn it in for rep? In another post on WoW Insider a staff writer posted a link to this timeline of dailies for the Isle, and it shows that we have a lot of dailies, twenty of them, and I worry that some will vanish before I even get a chance to break glass, destroy portals, or many of them.

[Update: And this post tells me that after about 24 hours of stable servers, Argent Dawn has reached second phase of the Isle of Quel'Danas. Maybe I can get in for phase 3 and 4...]