Burning Crusade Recap

Patch 2.0 Before the Storm

The Burning Crusade was the first expansion for World of Warcraft. Released January 16th 2007, The Burning Crusade was the best-selling PC game of 2007 in both North America and Europe, and it was also the fastest-selling PC game of all time, selling nearly 2.4 million copies in its first 24 hours and approximately 3.5 million in its first month.

The Burning Crusade introduced players to two new starting races, The Draenei on the Alliance side and the Blood Elves for the Horde. Also, the classes Paladin and Shaman which had previously been faction specific were made available to both factions for the first time. Along with the new races, two new starting areas were added, along with the new capital cities, The Exodar and Silvermoon. While many players believed that the Burning Crusade would have much to do with Draenei, the blue space goats ended up as supporting characters as the Blood Elf storyline took center stage throughout TBC.

With the introduction of Outland, players were able to quest and level, to the new cap of 70 raised from 60, in seven vast and varied zones. Most players agree that entering into Hellfire Peninsula the first time changed the WoW experience forever. And the subsequent zones, from the giant mushroom land of Zangarmarsh to the eerie ethereal zone of Netherstorm. While it took most of us several weeks to get from 60 to 70, the first 70, a french player named Gullerbone, accomplished the feat in just 28 real time hours. Gullerbone was the first to have access to the newly introduced Flying Mounts. Long awaited, these mounts added a third dimension to the game: altitude. Disappointing was the fact that the new mounts were Outland only, but many a player agrees that flying mounts were one of the best things to come from TBC.

The profession Jewelcrafting was introduced at TBC launch. it allowed players to create gems to fit into the new socket system Blizzard added at the same time. These gems enhanced items which in turn enhanced players stats and abilities. More customization was praided by the community and theorycrafters began rewriting their old formula to maximize their characters.

The release of TBC also saw the end of the 40 man raid. All new raids would be 25 man maximum and while many thought this was great, Blizzard took a new design approach when it came to raiding. While in the old 40 mans one or two players could essentially come along for the ride. in TBC there was no room from slackers. All 25 would have to know their assignments and complete their tasks with precision.

On the PvP side of things, a total revamp of the Honor system was implemented, removing the old title system, though players could still display their highest rank reach title. Honor would now be accrued daily and together with the now transformed Marks of Honor, both would be used as currency to by PvP specific items and gear.

The first two Arenas were first introduced with the TBC release. 2v2, 3v3 and 5v5 matches began immediately, though rated matches were to come later. The first Arena season began on January 30th, 2007. And an E-Sport was born.

Patch 2.1 The Black Temple

Patch 2.1 the first content patch after the expansion brought what was believed to be the final raid instance of TBC, The Black Temple, into the game. Once the heart of Draenei worship, the Temple of Karabor fell to demonically corrupted orcs who slaughterd the priests who resided there. The Shadow Council seized this opportunity to take the Temple for itself and renamed it The Black Temple. During the second war, the orc shaman, Ner'zhul opened several dimensional portals to make his escape. The result was the almost near destruction of Dreanor itself. The pit lord, Magtheridon, drawn by these portals, came to the remains of the world, now called Outland, and took the Temple as his own. From their he ruled Outland until the coming of Illidian, who imprisoned Magtheridon in the depths of Hellfire Citadel and took both the Temple and Outland as his own.

2.1 gave us many great changes. The daily quest was born here with the introduction of Skettis and Ogrila. This gave players an opportunity to make vast amounts of gold they had never before seen. Epic flight mounts were soon a reality for many players to whom they had previously been out of reach. Additionally, the Netherwing faction was added and we all began the reputation grind to exalted to receive the long awaited NetherDrake mount.

Much to the chagrin of warlocks and paladins, who expected a summon able flying mount, druids received their epic flight form. While the druids rejoiced, those on PvP servers ( and sometimes PvE servers ) were introduced to the term "druid bomb" for the first time.

The new battleground matchmaking system went live with 2.1. Designed to match combatants of similar equipment quality and organizational level to battle each other. The system was very forgiving,to keep queue times low, with promises of tweaking later on down the road. Bliaazrd also introduced a third arena map, the ruins of Lordearon, and season 2 began on June 20th.

Patch 2.2 Voice Chat

The now infamous Voice chat patch was one of Blizzards failures. when released voice chat not only didn't work well, but caused so much lag even for players not using it that the game was nearly unplayable. Blizzard eventually fixed the lag issue, but to this day the voice chat feature goes relatively unused by the vast majority of players.

2.2 also brought the report an AFKer function to the battlegrounds. By right clicking a players name, one could select report afk from a drop down menu. When enough reports are registered, a 60 second debuff would begin to count down. Once the timer is up a new debuff would appear that will prevent the player from gaining any honor while it is on. This debuff can be negated as soon as the player engages in PvP combat. AFKers still plague the BG's but the attempt was made at least.

2.3 The Gods of Zul'Aman

The Gods of Zul'Aman came to Azeroth in patch 2.3. The second TBC 10 man raid was a marked departure from the first. An outdoor timed raid instance with a troll theme, ZA as its called by players, was a welcome addition to the average raiders schedule and one of the most intriguing raid instance thus far. If you haven't seen the patch trailer for this, then you are really missing out. A quick search of YouTube of The Gods of Zul'Aman will clear that right up. The only question left by the trailer is: is taking a helpless prisoners eye out with a dagger really the work of the "good" guys?

Guild banks also came to WoW in 2.3 and we all learned that an open guild bank leads to an empty guild bank. The drama that ensues from a members sudden disappearance with all the guild loot was wonderfully depicted in the first season of The Guild. It can happen to you.

The experience required to get from 20 to 60 was dropped. The experience gained from quests from 30 to 60 was increased and all dungeon quests had their experience and reputaion rewards increased. WoW on easy mode had begun and just in time for everyones alts to explode in Dustwallow Marsh, which had been revamped with over 50 new quests and a new nuetral goblin town called Mudsprocket. Also, vendor discounts were expanded with a scaling discount system for each level of reputation gained with a faction. 20% discount for exalted is nothing to scoff at.

And the daily quests just kept on a-coming. Success in the battlegrounds now meant a decent gold reward as well as an extra 419 honor.

Many elites in the old world were changed to normal mobs to accommmodate solo play, thus making many quests easier to accomplish and speeding the leveling even more.

Fisherpeople of the world rejoiced as the ability to track fishing nodes went live. Finding the journal, which was fished up in crates sometimes found in fishing nodes, was easier than expected and within days every respectable fishing person could now track schools of fish and so much more.

2.4 Fury of the Sunwell

The Fury of the Sunwell brought the final chapter in TBC lore. The glorious fount of arcane energy known as the Sunwell empowered the high elves for millennia, until the death knight Arthas laid siege to the elven kingdom and corrupted its sacred energies. Seeing no other alternative, a band of survivors led by Prince Kael'thas destroyed the ancient fount. Over time the surviving elves fell prey to a crippling magical withdrawal. Promising salvation for his people, Kael'thas had returned. The Sunwell began shine once again, but whether the sacred fount will usher in deliverance or destruction remained to be seen.

And the Sunwell Isle hit the servers. Players scrambled to do as many of the new daily quests, whose limit was now raised from 10 to 25, to get through the newest and possibly the most interesting in game world event up to that time. By completing quests, players were able to unlock new buildings, NPC's and still more daily quests. Though on PvP servers, Sunwell Isle became a nightmare, on the PvE servers they quickly became the center of Azeroth.

Included in Sunwell Isle was the first new 5 man instance in 14 months. Magisters Terrance was immediatey hailed as a hit. The final boss, Kael'Thas Sunstrider made his second appearance here confusing players who had found him in Tempest Keep as well.

The Sunwell Plateau was the latest and final 25 man raid instance of TBC. Players were able to match themselves against the like of kalecgos, in both reality and the spectral realm, the terrifying pit lord, Brutallus, and eventually Kiljaeden the Deciever himself.

On the Pvp front, the first Global Arena Tournament took place with $120,000 for tournament winners, $75,000 of which will go to the first place team. Players were be able to create level-70 characters with epic equipment and compete on special tournament realms. Blizzard threw it's full weight into this with special appearances made by Blizzard V.I.P.s on the tourney servers themselves.

For the Battlegrounds, Alterac Valley went through some serious changes. The horde starting cave was moved back closer to their base, and the join as party option was finally implemented. Over in Warsong Gulch, the flag carriers would receive 50% increased damage done to them after approximately 10 minutes and 100% increased damage after approximately 15 minutes and could be tracked for 45 seconds after picking up the flag.

Addons took a big hit as the Interface options screen got a huge redesign. And a Keeper of Time represenative was added to Shattrath to port players from tehre directly to The Caverns of Time.

Patch 2.4, Fury of the Sunwell, was dedicated to Gary Gygax the gaming giant and genius behind the ever popular Dungeons and Dragons pen and paper game. Gygax passed away on March 4, 2008, just weeks before the release of 2.4. His vison inspired so many in this genre that to not mention his passing in some way would have been remiss.

Fishing quests are finally implemented giving players more reason to drop a line in and see what comes out, bringing the changes The Burning crusade brought us to a close. The next patch Echoes of Doom was released recently and is the first part of the Wrath of the Lich King storyline.

No more brains.

This week ended the zombification of Azeroth. The cure has been found and the infection has been stymied. There was alot of debate about the invasion. From people turning uber fan boy for Blizzard to those who claim the infection has caused them to cancel their accounts. While I could go through the details of the new plague, this is going to be an opinion piece. I know I am prone to ranting. It's because I care passionately about the MMO's I play. I for one have long wanted a more dynamic enviorment within the persistent worlds I choose to inhabit. And the recent outrage at just such a dynamic world has got me to thinking again. I just heard a collective sigh from our listeners as they brace themselves, but I ask you to not fast forward the podcast, but listen with an open mind and think about what I am about to say.

The first real outcry I heard against the event was from a few Rper's on my server, claiming the event was ruining their scheduled RP events, with zombies attacking ( both player and NPC's ) their favorite hangouts in various towns and cities. I shook my head at this is disbelief. What a perfect opportunity to RP...missed. Then others expressed their concerns. They just wanted to level. They didn't want to take part in this event and how dare Blizzard ruin their gameplay with this event. I tried to explain to those that such things don't happen very often...almost never. And that this was the time to take part and enjoy so a year from now they could look back and reminisce on how great a time they had while the event was going on. There were some who threw themselves fully into the event. They found ways to spread the infection as best they could and complained when someone ran through killing off their perfect zombification of a town or a paladin threw cures to stop the spread.

Just when the event was hitting it's height and phase 5 threatened to turn every one into zombies, even those who disliked the event started getting into it. They had simply had enough. Large groups of players started forming "cleansing" raids and began pushing back the tide of the scourges new plague. when I saw this, I was happier with WoW than I have ever been in the past...happier at that moment than with any MMO I have ever played. I was rejoicing," Blizzard did it! They created an event that had players to re evaluate the game and take a stand against world changing threat. Finally a truly dynamic world!!!" Within the hour, the announcement came that the NPC's had found a cure and the plague would be over in a few hours. As news spread, the raids fell apart as it was going to end soon no matter what players id, the need was no longer there. I wanted to weep. Just when it was getting good, they pulled the plug.

Now Blizzard claims this was their plan all along. They had a very specific schedule, they said, and it had been met. I believe them, but god I wish they had approached this differently. Imagine if they had added a little bit of the AQ opening to this event. Sure, a cure can be found but the NPC's need herbs, cloth, leather, zombie parts, necrotic runes...whatever. Then give players a little argent dawn faction rep or even better, home faction rep, like 25 per turn in and get players moving to defeat the spread of the plague. Oh, and make the cure faction specific so the Alliance and Horde are racing to cure their side so they are immune while the other side is still infected.

Which leads me to my only complaint about the event: It just didn't last long enough or effect enough of the world. just as players were getting together to deal with the issue, it was over and that cooperation fell apart. Blizzard accomplished what to my direct experience was the first real dynamic world changing event in MMO history. yes, there was a plague in Horizons, but it didn't have the effects that this one did, though Horizons did give it a valiant effort at a dynamic world, they simply don't get enough credit for what they attempted with that game. But this new Scourge Plague was covered by both Fox News and Time magazine online. Think of it! An in game event covered by real world news as if it were an actual real world event, given the same seriousness and credence as a flood in some corner of the world you barely know the name of. This alone places me squarely in the Blizzard fanboy faction. We, folks, are simply not worthy. With the rumors and these are just rumors, I can find no confirmation on this, that the U.S. government actually paid for Blizzards data of the event to use as a model for tracking a biological weapon scenario added into the mix of uber cool scourge invasion fun facts and what we have here is a full blown conspiracy theory in the making and folks you just aren't going to get that from other games.

Spore update

Last week, I loaded up Spore to find all my game files had been corrupted. Needless to sat, this was a painful revelation. The Thare, my cell to space game, was gone. Though I was able to recoup my creations, I had to restart completely. I evolved my new race, the Lucardae, from cell to space and began my conquest again. Because of my previous failures with the Thare, I was able to move much more quickly with the Lucardae. I found the key to conquest was keeping all races allied with me, except the one I was currently at war with and my terraforming tools became my best weapons. Turning on my allies isn't very ethical but my desire to rule the galaxy cannot be denied. Unfortunately, terraforming takes a homeworld down to only three colonies, so I had to adapt my plans as taking an enemies homeworld intact creates an enormous amount of wealth.
I found Earth and colonized Ganymede within the Sol system. I plan to expand beyond there but I want the destroy Earth achievment without actually destoying Earth. This is easy enough to accomplish. I found that by saving the game prior to Earths destruction and then restarting at the save, gives me the achievement and an intact Earth as well.
The Grox have not yet been an issue. I have expanded to approximately 30 systems and though I have made contact with the Grox, they do not seem intent on attacking me. I am too busy isolating empires that exist only with my empires borders to bother with the core anyway. I plan to conquer an entire arm of the galaxy before taking on the Grox anyway.
The strategy at that point is to terraform a Grox planet to T1 and repeat the process as I approach the core. I do not plan on loading up on health regens and making a run on the core. I want to clear a path there and eventually crowd out the Grox completely. It's going to be a long process but it's my goal and one that I believe can be achieved. Most of the other people who express a desire to reach the core all seem to ignore the conquest over the Grox option, so it would seem to be my choice based simply on that.
The Lucardae are a Shaman race which gives me the return ticket superpower. I may try a completely militaristic and aggressive race next. I don't remember what the superpower is but I assume it will be compatible with a game of pure conquest. The Thare were very aggressive once they reached the space stage and I have encountered them in my current game. The game remembers their expansionist ways and is acting accordingly. While I have currently allied with them, I believe I will have to eradicate them soon or they will become too large for me to deal with in an efficient manner.

Episode 20

Episode 20

WoW Happenings

This week, I finally farmed, purchased or begged enough Dampscale Basilisk Eye's to become neutral with The Scryers. After that it was a matter of turning in the Firewing and Sunfury Signets I have collected since getting Grimme into Outlands. I had to use about 20 Arcane Tomes ( I had 27 saved up ) to finish it off but I went from neutral to exhalted in the time it took to do the tunr ins. So I have successfully completed my transformation from Aldor to Scryers...all for two tailoring recipes that will essentially become obsolete in less than two months. But it was something to do. Now my focus will be on earning gold...as I am under 2kg and possibly leveling my 19 warrior up a bit before Lich King hits.

It's the beginning of the month...don't forget to get your Consortium Gems and the Brew of the Month is.....

This months brew is Autumnal Acorn Ale Its a very special ale that gives the buff or debuff , friend of nature. This creates a Squirrel that runs up to you and either falls madly in love with you or bonks you on the head with an acorn, complete with the bonk sound effect. Its silly its stupid and its just plain fun. So I'm raising my bottle of Autumnal Acorn Ale to all you fellow Brew of the Month members and cheers!!!!


Warcrafter.com

In an effort to expand our horizons a little Ive tracked down a little website that everyone should take a look at. Warcrafter.com offers the best little character sandbox I have ever seen. I loaded up my main and saw stats I didn't even know existed. It showed me that I should be able to with my frostbolt I should be able to get 5.9 damage for every 1 point of mana I spend, that I will generate 1503 threat per frostbolt or 601 threat per second. I played with the upgrade function and found out what my stats would be as I upgraded through various gear and using the 3D model veiwer I could even see what my character would look like if I were able to acquire these items. And thats just the from the cursory glance I took at it last night after hearing about it. I believe this website is a must for theorycrafters, or anyone else who like me are trying to upgrade their gear just a little bit before Lich King hits. Additionally, you can see who the top 50 guilds are on your server or the top players based on their gear score. Where do you rank amoung them...I was shockingly embarassed by where I ranked so don't even ask. So if you're wondering if that guild your thinking of joining is in the right profression phase for you, check it out here. You will need to register but it doesnt ask for an email and registration was instantatious. It took all of three seconds. Thats Warcrafter.com add it to your favorites and enjoy.

New Polymorph spells in Dalaran

Wow insider is reporting that there are two new polymorph spells for mages, which can be purchased in Dalarn. They are Polymorph:black cat and Polymorph:Serpent. This will give all you discerning mages a chance to have your polymorphs do something a bit dofferent than the same old sheep. But wait there's a catch. Each spell though purchaseable will cost you a whopping 2500g. So as much as Epic flying training to get them both. I realize that after we are all 80 and bored to tears with Lich King, getting these two spells may become my goal and at such time I may take great pride in the fact that I earned the gold to get these two completely useless cosmetic spells. At such time, I ask you our listeners, no ...I don't ask, I demend, that you flood us with emails about what a complete loser I truly am. All that being said I should, in all fairness to our listeners, who deserve the best fact checking we can possibly provide, tell you all right here and now that the source on this is none other than Mike Schramm who as many of you know is notorious for bad reporting and sensationalism. So if it turns out that these spells are not the uber gold sink as they are being made out to be, either Blizzard changed it before release or good ole Mike Scrammed it up again. Thanks.


Jay Mohr and Patton Oswald to headline Blizzcon

Thank god no one is going to Blizzcon to be entertained by these two D listers. Ok I like Jay Mohr in Jerry MacGuire as a stereotypical shallow loser and in Suicide Kings as the slightly crazy rich boy, great movie btw if you havent seen it youre really missing out, but Mohr has never been an A list stand up comdian, and Patton Oswald? Well unless he's gonna take a shot from an open window of the Texas Schoolbook depository...oh wait wrong oswald...who is this guy again? Yeah a nobody who hangs out at the lame vulgarfest called Celebrity Roast...unbelievably bad....here's some news to Network TV...you're losing ratings because your shows suck, I'm sick to death of reality TV. I don't care if some fat idiot middle aged hasbeen from a 80's boy band can dance, I want to see quality televison and while your at it, take a chance on something decent and quit stealing shows from the BBC, though that has been the best source of American television lately...whoa crazy tangent there. Anyway, thank god no one is planning on going to Blizzcon to be entertained by this so called "talent" Back to you, Luke.


Echoes of Doom

Blizzard has named patch 3.0.2 Echoes of Doom. This will be the last content patch before the release of WotLK on November 13th. Now I realize alot of people dont want to listen to another podcast that just reads from the patch notes, and we won't get crazy into that but I feel we should hit upon the major points of this patch which are:

* New class spells and talents
* Stormwind Harbor
* Barbershops in Capital Cities
* New Zeppelin Towers
* Two Brand New Arenas
* Hunter Pet skill revamp
* Inscription profession
* new User interface Options like the new pet and mount spell pages
* Achievement System



And alot more. For a complete breakdown of whats coming in the patch ( believed to be coming either this week or next ) go to official world of warcraft website and click on their under decelopment link found on the left hand side of the page.

Brewfest is over!

Last night, at 11pm my time, brewfest offically ended. There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth, mostly behind my keyboard as I realized brewfest was not going to last another day as I had believed and I did not yet have enough tokens to purchase a full set of brewfest clothing so my undead could look like an idiot ready to polka. But its required for the achievement and I ahve nothing else to do in game so what the heck I thought Id go for it. I stood there waiting for the Dark Irons to come up out of the ground and try to drink from the kegs as I frantically drank and threw my mug to bonk them on the noggen thereby preventing them from drinking up all the brew and well, instead, everything just despawned....as it faded away into whatever netherworld it goes to, many players who stood with me expressed dismay and frustration. But all good things must pass and while, in my opinion, this wasnt the best brewfest ever, it was fun and I will look back on it fondly....the first of every month when I get to try a new brew. And watch out for the broken bottles as I throw them willy nilly at people as they stand outside Orgrimmar Bank...Hey its fun for me.

Tigole on Battlegrounds

we are exploring ideas that would involve expanding our Battleground content in future patches and beyond. We believe we have some strong ideas for improving Battlegrounds and PvP as a whole in the game and we're definitely going to focus on improvements in the future...We also want the gameplay experience in the BGs to be better directed. We're also exploring the concept of a complimentary "competitive" bg system as well. Over time, we'd like the focus of PvP to shift back to being more BG-centric and more focused on Horde versus Alliance -- the core of our game.

We're also planning on improving some Battleground and PvP features in general. For example, we want to give you the ability to queue for Battlegrounds from anywhere in the world. We're also going to explore EXP gain through the PvP system as well as low level itemization to support that.

TBC Raid instances nerfed

MMO Champion is reporting this week that all monsters in TBC raid instances had their health points reduced by 30%, bosses included. This was later confirmed by Bornakk and the story was then picked up by WoW Insider. Bornakk went on to say that all physical damage done by the nerfed mobs has been nerfed as well, though not their spell damage. This means theyll be hitting you for less and have less hit points and be much more soloable once we are all level 80. Thanks Blizz, though I can solo trash mobs in Hellfire Ramparts, the bosses are too tough for my little mage, maybe at 80 it'll be different now.

Championing

World of Raids has posted a great article on Championing, a new reputaion gain feature coming in Wrath. It seems while wearing the tabard of a particular fashion, which can now be purchased at friendly instead of the usual exhalted, all reputation gained while in a level 80 dungeon will be applied to that particular faction. The shortest dungeons sum up to a 300 gain in normal mode, 1000 in heroic mode, the longest close to 700 in normal and 2000 in heroic. So far I am only aware of four factions this will work for. The Argent Crusade, from which I will get the Brillient Spellthread recipe, Kirin Tor, who will sell to me my Saphire Spellthread at Exhalted, The Knights of the Ebon Blade, who hold the secrets to the 32 slot soul bag, and finally The Wyrmrest Accord, who sell the pattern for the Mysterious Bag, which turns out to be a 32 slot enchanting bag and of course exhalted with the Wyrmrest means access to the Red Drake flying mount, so yeah I'll probably be working that one to exhalted. The article explains everything you need to know about Championing...its not that difficult really, but if you want to read it and take a look at the factions and their rewards head over to http://www.worldofraids.com/news/312.html. And as long as we're talking about factions, click the link to the Kalu'ak faction. At Exhalted you get access to the Penguin pet and an epic fishing pole that allows for underwater breathing and gives +30 fishing. The Kalu'ak cannot be championed unfortunately but apparently it has plenty of quests to give so we shall see.

Gigantique bag news

Remember back when Haris Pilton was turned into a vendor selling the Gigantique bag, the 22 slot bag, for outrageous amounts of gold? Well, if you listened to The Grind back then you probably heard us say that there was no way Blizzard would not give tailors a decent sized bag to create in the expansion. Everyone remeber that? Well, we got one right. With exhalted reputaion with the Sons of Hodir factions, a group of friendly giants, tailors will gains access to the pattern for the Glacial bag a 22 slot BoE bag. The mats are 4 moonshroud, 4 ebonweave and a Eternium thread. How rare those items are or how expensive they might be is unknown but I guarantee it'll be cheaper then the Gigantique bag...of course the Gigantique bag does have at least one achievment attached to it, so you just know people will place their coins in the gold sink, just because. Word is however, the quest line to get to nuetral with this faction is similar to getting to nuetral with the Netherwings. A long quest line some reporting as long as 20 quests, but much easier and much more fun than the Netherwing rep questline. No word yet on how to raise it from neutral to exhalted but hey, it cant be that tough right?

Episode 19

last weekend after editing the show I headed into Lower Blackrock Spire, I have upgraded a couple pieces of gear over the last month thanks to badges and honor and decided it was time I finished soloing it to get my Upper Blackrock Spire key. While getting to the final boss was a piece of cake, the boss itself, Overlord Wyrmthalak, wanted to be a pain in my neck. my first attempt on him ended with me dead and him at 1% health, yes I said one attempt. My second attempt ended with him at 6% health and me dead and angry at my bumbling fingers hitting the wrong keys and allowing myself to die on something I should obviously pwn. Needless to say, I finally called out for help and Sathios, a level 70 hunter came out toadd that last little bit I needed to finish off Wyrmthalak, Then I went and soloed Emberstrife and back to LBRS to finish up the quest and get the ring that is the key. Woot! Now I can start trying to solo UBRS...might need help there too.

Then of course, I have started playing alot of Bejeweled with the new release of PopCaps official WoW Addon. I challenge you all to a bejewel off!!! fear my leet skillz, lawl!!! Anyway, it silly and my wife actually asked me why I continue to play WoW if I'm so bored I'm playing Bejeweled...it's a legit question I suppose.

Use your honor before the expansion!

As many of you have heard by now, Blizzard will be doing a complete honor wipe with the release of WotLK. This means any honor you have left when you log out Nov 12th will be gone when you log back in on Nov 13th, Lich Kings scheduled release date.

Blue poster, Eyonix, had something to add to the subject:

For those with unspent honor points prior to the release of the expansion, we will be offering a few upgrades and special rewards in next content patch solely for purchase via the honor system.

These items are cloaks and trinkets ( four of each for your theorycrafting pleasure ) And according to MMO Champion, the honor purchased gems are also undergoing a serious change, they won't be bind on pick up or unique-equipped anymore and players will be able to sell them at the AH.

Corrections and changes

Last week we reported a few things that either turned out to be untrue or were changed this week

First up, Blizzard has changed the requirement for the Leading the Cavalry achievement which yields the Albino Drake mount as a reward from 75 mounts down to only 50. This makes this achievement much more accessible to more players.

Next, Steve and I discussed Brewfest last week ( which we will be doing more of this week ) because Brewfest was only a day old at the time, we had spent that time preparing for the showing instead of ingame experiencing the content for ourselves. therefore, we reported what our sources had told us about the Boss and how to get to him. After releasing the episode however, we found that there was indeed a shortcut to the boss in BRD and that both mounts had a possibility of dropping for both factions.

Thanks to Evieloot on Laughing Skull and Teel from the Naughty Secretz guild on the Azuremyst server for clearly that up for us.

I guess we Schrammed it up on that one.


Speaking of wild rumors...

When asked, players who have been around since before the release of the Burning Crusade will often speak fondly of the Undead Invasion that occured just prior to and during the introduction of Naxxramas. Speaking personally, this was without a doubt my favorite in game event and I would love to see alot more of things like this on a regular basis in WoW. blizzard has hinted at the Undead invasion becoming an annual event which had people wetting themselves with joy, but alas that never happened and now that we can all see the new calendar we see its not listed there as a scheduled event ( though why an invasion would be announced or even annual makes no sense lorewise ) That being said however, Kisirani, a blue poster recently decided it was time to get us salivating all over again.

Responding to a poster who was concerned about the the necrotic runes still in his bank after so long and others responding they had long since deleted theirs ( Its been almost two years after all ) Kisirani said:

Still have your Necrotic Runes?

No?

Pity...

To which Springfoot of the Spinebreaker server posted:

This was why I had originally called it inconsiderate. Since the last scourge invasion, I have rolled 3 three new classes, deleted them, rerolled, transferred servers, left the game for 6 months, transferred back, reinstated characters...

I suppose I just find the time scale Blizzard is operating on to be inconsiderate. It's a little like telling someone "Hold onto that 2005 quarter, sonny! It'll be worth a lot of money someday." Sure thing, grandpa.

Interestingly enough, I believe both my mage and priest have a ton of those Runes on them - only because I don't play those characters anymore.

To which Kisirani replied:

If people chose to get rid of the runes, that's certainly their choice. I can understand wanting to free up bank space, certainly, particularly over the space of time.

Many people playing now never had the chance to get those runes, and if you have none you're right on par with them.

But I don't lie when I say the Necrotic Runes are going to have a use again... quite soon.

The important part of this is the last part of his statement: the Necrotic Runes are going to have a use again... quite soon. If this means we will see another Scourge invasion in the near future, I am all for it. but I hope Blizzard expands upon the previous event and creates something more immersive and even more fun than the last time. Blizzard has a tendency to revamp things a bit sometimes its better sometimes its not. I certainly hope they get it better this time because the Scourge invasion was hellafun.

Steve, have you seen Goriladin?

Hunters, if you don't have http://www.bigredkitty.net/ in your favorites by now...well, then you are a noob. But you don't have to remain a noob. Go to http://www.bigredkitty.net/ right nwo and save that website to your favorites. then ofcourse watch the Gorriladin video. yes, that's right, Gorilladin. AOE grinding for hunters in WotLk will be easier than ever before. Go watch the movie and learn 2 play. Big Red Kitty has long been one of the top hunter resources on the web and thsi latest edition proves he isn't slipping in the slightest. That http://www.bigredkitty.net/. Learn it, love it, live it.

September 6th, 2008

This is how a Universe is born.

At the time of this recording it is September 6th, which means tomorrow is September 7th and that can only mean one thing. After 7 years of development, Will Wright is finally releasing the hugely anticipated Spore. In just the last few days, I have seen the Spore commercial on television, seen articles on it in major media and even heard a report on it on National Public Radio. Some posters out there are claiming to have played it already and the news is not good. According to these sources, it gets repetious and boring fairly quickly, but I am going to urge all of you to run out and buy it anyway. And Ill explain why.

There are very few games out there that are truly innovative. And if anyone has been listening or reading my blog ( no one reads my blogs boohoo ) you know I believe innovcation to be one of the two most important factors in gaming today. Spore offers two such innovations. First it has found a way to send large amounts of information in very small packages which allows for the second: Once a player enters the space exploration phase of the game, it reaches out across the internet and grabs planets from other players from all over the world. This means that as long as people play the game there will always be more to explore because Spore is the first ever virtual infinite universe in the history of man. The very concept is mind boggling. In addition, it is estimated that within a month of release, the number of creatures created by players within this virtual universe will exceed the number of species currently inhabiting the Earth. The metaphysical implications of this are too many and far too fun to discuss here, but the vision and scope of this project are immense and This is something we in the gamer community should support. So get out there, buy your copy of Spore. Support innovation like this and demand the same out of the box thinking from other developers.


Content Patch coming within weeks

A big thanks goes out to Eyonix for recently letting us know that a content patch is coming within the next few weeks. It may even be live by the time this podcast hits Itunes. Just as before Burning Crusade hit store, Blizzard is patching in a bunch of content prior to the release of Lich King. And while the list of things he gave us was not comprehensive, he did said Blizz will post the full patch notes when they're available. And I for one am happy to see Blizzard patching these things into the game soon as it means Lich King cannot be far behind.

here's the list:

Stormwind Harbor will be added
Babrershops added and functional in capital cities ( I think this means Org and Ironforge only...or is Stormwind the ally capital? I dont know. )
Something about zepplin towers outside of org and tirisfal glades. Theres zep towers tehre already so they must be getting a redesign to accomodate the new zepplin paths to Northrend.
Two brand new Arenas!! with new layouts, terrain hazards and moving ( yes moving ) obstacles....Oh I hope there two spike walls that clamp shut at crazy speeds and send little gnome parts exploding across the arena!!!!! I might actually do arena if I could see that once in awhile
Guild Calendar ( About time!!! )
hunter pet skill revamp so all you hunters can relearn the way your pets work PRIOR to trying to grind out another ten levels in Northrend
And last and certainly not least Burning Crusade players will be able to learn and skill up Inscription to 375!!!!! Once they have Lich King they can take it up beyond that as will all crafters.

So we will be able to skill it up, but no word yet on if we will actually be able to USE the inscriptions prior to Lich Kings release...seems like there will be a huge outcry if that is the case, so we'll just have to wait and see.

Now does anyone remember how long between the last content patch hit and Burning Crusade was released?


Four European servers close!

With patch 3.0 four EU realms will close for good. The realms, Molten Core, Shadowmoon, Stonemaul and Warsong, apparently were the homes to the vast majority of Russian players who have now migrated to the new Russian servers and left these realms ghost towns. Characters still on the servers will all be given free transfers to as yet unannounced EU realms.


New 1 - 60 record set: 19 mins 34 secs. Thanks Recruit a friend.

A wow player named Bryan has posted a video at Gametrailers.com under the name bwonderve which shows him leveling a level 1 paladin to 60 in under 20 mins all while in stormwind, and it wasn't a hack. Hows it done? All with Recruit a friend. Seems BryBry leveled two characters to level 60 using the 300% exp gain, then used those two characters to grant 60 levels to the pally. A crowd formed as the mass dings occurred and it was obvious some were perplexed.

jmathews said: so you still needed to make two other characters lv 60 right? seems kinda pointless to me...

bwonderve said: Those 2 extra characters get 300% experience, it only takes 1/3 of the work to level them up.
I get 3 characters for less than the work of 1 at regular difficulty.

Could ComCasts new Bandwidth cap lead to something far worse?

Internet Service Provider Comcast has had a long reputation as an enemy of the peer to peer community. There have been many reports over the years of Comcast sending out letters of warning to customers stating the customer was using too much bandwidth per month and they needed to stop. These customers were paying for "unlimited" plans but that didn't seem to deter Comcast. Without stating a hard cap, they have been known to disconnect customers in good standing ( meaing they paid their bills ) after Comcast deceided their badwidth comsumption was too great.
Well, recently Comcast announced all customers would be held to a maximum of 250 GB bandwidth per month. Now this worried alot fo WoW players and Eliah Hect over at WoW Insider posted an article to ease their fears. Currently. a MMO player even a very hardcore one would not use up a 250 GB cap in an entire month of play. But what happens when other ISP's begin follwoing suit?
Eliah Hect took into account only WoW play, which is great for most of us, I on the other hand have a family. A family that loves their internet. My kids are crazy for XBox Live, I love to download podcasts...alot of podcasts, I record a podcast, I play WoW, My wife absolutely loves streaming video, I love WoW movies...and all that has me wondering if my family might hit that 250 gb limit some month down the road, especially when my kids get a little older and start playing MMO's of their own.
250 GB seems like an awful lot of bandwidth, but is it alot when divided by four heavy internet users all uner the same roof? That leaves my personal bandwidth use limited to 63 GB a month and that should be enough right?

But what happens when other ISP's follow Comcast's example and limit bandwidth...but they limit it lower...at say 200GB or 100GB. And with the local or regional monopoly most cable companies enjoy, how will this limit us as players of MMO's? Or even just internet users?

The internet has almost completely replaced Television for me as a source of entertainment. Any limiting of the entertainment worries me. What about all of you? Contact us at Thegrindpodcast@gmail.com and let us know what you think. Operators are standing by.

This is how a world ends

Blizzard made a change this week to the leveling curve in the WotLK beta. Gone is the easy experience that was getting players from 70 to 77 in a week or so ( Had the leveling cap of 77 not been there, most would have reached 80 already ) and it's been replaced with a system that requires 80% more experience to level. Yes, you heard that right. 80%! As you can imagine, players went ballistic on the beta forums.

Now to be fair to Blizzard, they made the leveling process quite quick in the beta to begin with in order to get some players up in levels to test various aspects of the expansion in that level range. With the second wave( possibly third or fourth by the time, this podcast hits Itunes ) of beta invites, they needed to slow down the leveling to the normal pace in order to efficiently test the vast multitude of quests they have placed into Wrath ( over 800 by the last count we made here at the Grind )

However, instead of just telling players this, and trusting the playerbase,the only response from Blizzard on this was in a thread started by a player pretending to be selling his Beta account due to his now inability to level in a reasonable amount of time. Blizzard responded wonderfully by saying:

Your ability to post on the forums is a privilege, as is your chance to participate in the Beta. Constructive criticism is far different from complaining, and we'd prefer you to utilize the former.

This coming from the people who hired Furor Planedefiler as a quest designer, the most notorious complainer in MMO history, who posted the now most infamous "Fix it or I quit" post ever. And one of the designers who helped to bring us the broken and bugged C'thun and then insulted the WOW version of himself for calling Blizzard on it in EXACTLY the same way Furor called Sony Online Entertainment on the broken Planes of Time.

I am here to tell you beta testers you SHOULD complain if you think something is wrong. And you should do it as LOUDLY as possible. Create as much of a stir over this as you can because the rest of us non beta tester can't. If you don't then you are not doing your part to represent the rest of us and help to steer Blizzard in the directions that will be the most enjoyable for the player base as a whole. And though some may disagree with me, seeing whats coming has quickly turned from excitement to disappointment to downright disdain for me personally. And Blizzards attitude on this has become decidedly more and more SOE. Maybe it's has something to do with success or just years of the constant trolling on their official and nearly unmoderated forums that just kills a developers spirit. Maybe developers need to move on to other games to keep from silently hating the source of their livelihood. I don't really know, but game after game, for over a decade, we in the MMO community have watch great games go bad and the very developers that created something wonderful slowly stab their creation into a bloody mess.

After seeing the downrank debacle hitting the forums this week, I realized that the information that Blizzard was giving players was different in different places. So I posted about it. It was a simple post pointing out that while Blizzard claims that downranking was "never intended" they had gone to great lengths to support it in the past. Look at the Warrior class. When a warrior receives Heroic Strike Rank 2 it completely replaces heroic Strike rank 1. But new ranks of spells don't replace old ranks of spells. Why program one set of abilities one way and another set of spells another? The only logical explanation is they INTENDED players to cast lower ranked spells in certain situations. otherwise, having to program different spellbook methods for different classes is just a bunch of wasted time and unnecessary work.

In addition, the Add On GUI API used to have a CastBySpellName function. Blizzard removed this years ago to help prevent automation, but the function required that a rank be specified in order to work. Why include that if Blizzard original intention was for players to always use the highest rank of a spell.

Additionally, just a couple of months ago, a poster placed a nice little Healing for Beginners guide on the Priest forums. This guide had only 5 sections. Section 2 dealt with overhealing and section 4 dealt with downranking. The Blue responded that it was a great guide and added it to the sticky thread of great guides! If a guide is 40% about an unintended and about to be changed aspect of the game, why sticky it and lend Blue post support to it?

So I posted this. And I got a response from a Blue. Wait...I should tell the truth....I got 14 responses from Blizzard. Not all to me but that's how many times a Blue posted in the thread before it reached its 500 post limit and automatically closed just a few hours later.

Now I want you all to pause a sec and think...during this little rant I have not said one way or the other about my opinion of downranking. I have not said in any way how this change will effect gameplay for better or worse. because that is not what the post or what my happy little rant here is about. My rant is about this:

Blizzard has shown support for the technique of downranking in the past and for them to claim that it was never intended is just very forthcoming with the truth.

Of course the lousy moronic forum trolls immediately jumped in and started a debate on downranking itself but worse, so did the Blizzard employee. The Blue barely answered my concern and then posted a wall of blue text about how downranking needed to be removed, which was no where near the point of my post. But I accepted it, grabbed my stepsons and went to get our haircut.

When I got back home, the thread was 16 pages long and the Blue had posted several times more. I watched it but stayed out of the debate as it was about the pros and cons of the change rather than what my original post was about and then, in response to posters worries that Blizzard was trying to fit a square peg in a round hole, the Blue posted that, and I'm going to quote this:

We have reverted things in the past that we felt just weren't working out so I'd hate for people to believe that once in, in forever for everything we do. We don't work like that and I think it misrepresents us by saying this.


At that point, I had to rejoin the fray. You see this particular blue had posted something else in the Beta forums. And I'll quote that as well:

As noted, this isn't a bug and has been a conscientious change in design. This isn't something we will be changing, but that doesn't mean that your feedback isn't wanted.

Understand. This is the exact same Blue poster telling the public forums one thing and the private beta forums the exact opposite. now, I am going to be blunt here and I'm not going to pull my punches. Where I come from, that's called lieing and I dont know about the rest of you, but I don't like being lied to. It insults my intelligence. And I realize the normal cumulative I.Q. on the official WoW forums is a negative number, but that doesn't excuse this for me. By telling players a revert is possible, we are only looking at this, in public, but privately saying its going thorugh no matter what is not only devious to the nth degree, it's downright dangerous to the playability of a game.

I remember logging into Ultima Online after one "minor little " patch and found the game completely unplayable for the next two weeks. And though Origin did eventually relent and revert, their testers on their public test realm had spent a month prior to the patch telling them that the change was bugged. I've seen developer after developer get overconfident and ignore the playerbase only to find their game lose multitudes of players. Dark Age of Camelot anyone? And my worry is that now that Blizzard is firmly entrenched in their stance that they can tell us anything and we will continue to press the payment button in order to get our daily WoW pellet, it will only get worse from here.

Blizzard supported downranking in the past

I am the kind of person that gets offended when someone is less than honest with me. Especially when evidence to the contrary is so readily available. I do not see the downranking nerf as that big of a deal. It'll make the game harder, yes but not unplayable.

But I cannot abide someone intentionally misleading me. It's a matter of principle. Tell me the truth and I can accept that. But don't misrepresent the facts and expect people like me to just follow along blindly.

Blizzard is not being forthcoming with the truth ( That's the nicest way to say it ) and here are only three of the pieces of evidence out there showing that this is the case.


First, the fabrication:

---

Q u o t e:


Zarhym wrote:

This change was made primarily to prevent downranking, as it's a technique that was never quite intended.

---

Now the facts:

Blizzard has supported it in the past. The devil is in the details, my good Blizzard peoples. Allow me to show you.


1) If downranking is unintended then why are those spells accessible to the players?

Heroic Strike rank 2 completely replaces Heroic Strike rank 1. A warrior has no access to lower ranked abilities once he learns the higher ranked one. And yet, all lower ranked spells are still accessible once a higher ranked spell is learned. One cannot claim that they didn't intend to program the game this way. Unintended effects of programming is called a bug. Is Blizzard claiming that the practice of downranking is exploiting a bug? No they are not. In fact they cannot because they have supported downranking in two other ways.

2) CastSpellByName() API function

Why have this function require a rank delineation if Blizzard only wanted the highest rank to be used? Hmmm? Why add it at all? There seems to have been alot of programming work going into allowing players the ability to downrank, doesn't there?

3) Why sticky a guide about overhealing and downranking if it's unintended?

Over on the EU forums, the following thread:

http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=4271898338&sid=1&pageNo=1

It's a Priest guide which covers 5 points. 2 of the points are overhealing and downranking. If Blizzard didn't support downranking then why is the Blue Response as follows:

---

Q u o t e:


Wryxian wrote:

Nicely written :-) This thread should be appearing in the Forum Watch on our front page. Also, I’ve added it to the “useful thread” sticky post, here in the Priest forum.

---

So as recent as June 10th, 2008 ( when this blue response went up ) Blizzard employees were supporting the downranking practice.




In conclusion, Blizzard has supported the practice of downranking through their purposeful inclusion of accessible lower ranked spells, inclusion in their own .Lua functions for add ons and through their continued support of guides for new players explaining downranking and its benefits. For Blizzard to now claim that this was unintended is a falsehood and I for one cannot stand by and allow them to try to pull the wool over my eyes without standing up and saying," ummmm........no."

Gaming needs more innovation

Just over ten years ago, I was introduced to my first MMORPG. My brother brought over his copy of Ultima Online, loaded it up on my computer and showed me his new world. He tooled around the world for a bit and then got up and forced me into the chair. A few minutes later, Roland Boone was born. He didn't last long actually. By the end of the first gaming session, I knew I was hooked and the next day, after work, I drove out to the office store and bought my very own copy of Ultima Online. It was a Friday night and I stayed in from the bar scene for the entire weekend skilling up my character. I haven't purchased a console game since that day. For me, if there aren't a thousand or so other people online with me, it just bores me to death.
So I am a MMO geek. At first, it was a secret shame. Most of the people around me had no idea what I was talking about if I said I played MMORPG's. Some actually looked at me like a deer trapped in the headlights. Eventually, I came to realize that we MMO'ers were actually pioneers. Television over the years has included more and more interactivity. The viewers at home are asked to vote via phone or internet, to participate in someway with what they are watching. From home game versions of their favorite game shows to interactive webisodes, more and more interactivity continues. And what could be more interactive than a MMO? Beyond that, I have always wondered how long before MMO's and Virtual Reality merge to become the ultimate immersive experience?
I came to the conclusion that MMO's are to 21st century what Television was to the 20th. The fact that games are now the number one money making entertainment genre only solidified that belief in my mind. And now, with the popularity of World of Warcraft, my secret is no longer my shame, nor is it others. Some folks have even started placing their gaming experience on their resumes. And to everyones astonishment, some employers are even taking that experience seriously!
So when I see how far we have come in terms of acceptance, it saddens me a little to realize how little true innovation there has been in the MMO genre. Some developers talked about different ideas but for some reason the truly revolutionary could never make it to market. A great example of this was a little game called Boundless Adventures ( or was that the company name? I was never quite sure. ) They developed a world which they would seed initially then let run for at least a month before any players were allowed on the server. Why? because their NPC's were programmed to congregate and build on their own. So each and every server, while having the same terrain, would have different city, town, village, camp and spawn areas which were to be completely decided by the NPC's themselves. This would allow for players to destroy towns and cities and they would stay destroyed but in a week or two NPC's would gather together in a seperate location and begin to build again. The concept excited many of us but alas it was not to be. Boundless Adventures died along with so many other forward thinking ( and backward thinking ) MMO ideas.
The next great innoovative game will be Spore. It will be the first MSOG, or Massive Singleplayer Online Game. But wait, how can it be massive and a single player at the same time? It does so in the space exploration mode. Every time a player advances into a new area of space, the game connects to the internet and downloads new content from other players. What this means is, when released, Will Wright and Co. will have created the worlds first infinite virtual universe. Yes, that's right INFINITE! Think about that for a day or so and get back to me. The game itself may not be any good. It may fail miserably. But, the technology and concepts that create an infinite universe will now be out there for others to expand upon and build whole new universes for us to explore. And that is truly innovative.

Level 58: Time to go to Outland?

For a long time now, I have watched players run straight into Outland the second they hit 58. Either they have heard about how great the loot drops are there or they experienced it themselves with their mains and now that their alt is 58, they choose to take the exact same course they took the first ( or second ) time through. They level quickly through to 60 while in Hellfire Peninsula, and move into Zangarmarsh or Terrokar Forest at 60 or 61. They love the new zones, the new quests, the speed at which they are leveling. And then they finish up these three zones at level 64 and move into Nagrand and they hit the wall at 64 miles an hour.
Not all classes will hit that wall. Some will only be slowed down. But Nagrand is the spot that they all feel their leveling to 70 has become a grind again. So they realize, they have to go out and grind a level to get back on track.The question is why? The answer is very simple, and some even knowing the answer, still make the jump to Outland at level 58.

The issue is this: Hellfire Peninsula was designed for a level 60 character, and the zones that follow were designed to build off Hellfire. What this means is, if you enter Hellfire at level 58 and start doing those quests, you are using them for the wrong level. And thus, you will be using Zangarmarsh and terrokar Forest for the wrong levels as well.

With Patch 2.3, Blizard tried to fix this for people by both decreasing the experience needed to level all the way to 60 and increasing the experience acquired from quests. This took zones like, Eastern Plaguelands, Winterspring and Silithus and made them excellent places to level from 58 to 60. But, because Blizzard didn't say specifically to stay out of Outlands until level 60, players, in general, ignored the change post level 58 and entered Outland. Some entered believing they could get to 70 faster, some believed the great gear in Outland was the reason to move out of Azeroth, some entered Outland for a much needed change of scenery and still others moved into Outland because they had done most of the quests in one or two of the 55-60 zones and were frustrated with finding more quests for the zones to level. Each of these reasons all stem from the same source: Impatience.
Player want to level. They want to be 70 so they can take part in the end game content. And let's face it, with the complete lack of players to level with or run level appropriate instances with, who can really blame them? They want to play with their friends or just be able to run the content to make some friends. What these players do not know or understand is, with that lack of patience comes a price they must pay at level 64 and then again at level 70.

If a player moves into Outland at level 58, they are effectively leaving thousands of gold untouched that could be theirs at level 70. They are planning to use Shadowmoon Valley and Netherstorm to hit max level, when if they were patient they would have hit 70 before ever entering these zones. Imagine for a moment if you hit level 70 while halfway through the Blades Edge Mountains quest lines. That would leave all of the quests in Netherstorm and Shadowmoon Valley with level 70 gold only rewards. How many thousands of gold is that? How much further along would your grind to 5000 gold be if those quests were used for gold and not experience? Every time I am in Netherstorm and I see someone below level 70 there questing, I cringe for them. I know what a mistake they have made and there is no way for them to fix it now.

The worst part is: The mistake is usually made somewhere in the characters 40's or 50's everything stems from there. Boredom and impatience leads players to move out of a zone before it is complete. They can handle the next zone so why not? The zone their in is driving them nuts and they decide to move on. But they leave all that experience untouched and therefore need other zones/quests to replace it. So it's replaced with experience that would be better for other levels, until finally, they move into Outland and lose out on thousands of gold they need for their Epic Flying mount.

I recently leveled a mage to 70. It's my new maina nd my new favorite class in the game. I leveled fairly quickly, though I spent alot of time talking to people, going to guild meetings and such. In other words , many hours of leveling missed. But I was able to get to 70 in 11 days, 14 hours, 30 minutes and 52 seconds. I have included a screenshot of hitting 70 to confirm the time. Now, there are leveling guides out there that claim they can help you level to 70 in just about 10 days game time. The guides can be very helpful and I won't say don't use them if you find them useful. But, they are not needed, in my opinion. Just grab all the quests and do them. Turn them in and do all the quests that are made available at that point, and just keep going. Then at 58, stay out of Outland. Go get to 60 or even 61 ( as I did with my mage ) before hitting Outland. I hit 68 in Nagrand and used Blades Edge Mountains to reached 70. That meant every quest I had not yet done was a huge gold reward and I was able to get my epic flyer in no time at all.

If you are patient, you will hit Outland stronger and the leveling will be smoother and quicker. You will hit level 70 with literally hundreds of quests left to do and thousands of gold just waiting to be yours. Yes, the 25 daily quests per day can really help out with your gold grind to 5000. But if you are a marathon session player, those dailies run out fairly quickly and then what do you do? You do the quests that others have done to level and you make tons more gold. I have my epic flyer on two characters, on two seperate factions and on two different servers, so I have had to grind out 5k gold twice, with no help, no loans and no in game gold purchased with real life money. And, I can say from experience, a little bit of patience, put me so far ahead that the time "lost" at level 58 - 60 was more than returned to me at 64 and at 70.

- Grimme

Big Download interviews Blizzard about the Arena E-Sport

World of Warcraft's Arena Tournament launched on March 31, 2008, letting players immediately create level 70 characters and equip them with high level skills and epic armor. Competitors from around the world battle for up to $200,000 in cash prizes. At the same time, the Arena Tournament underscores Blizzard's intentions of using WoW's PvP gameplay as a type of eSport. WoW rose to become the most popular MMO in the world primarily because of its PvE content, and using its PvP for eSports marked a sharp turn in the game's focus. We catch up with WoW's Lead Designer, Tom Chilton, Paul Della Bitta (Senior Manager, Global Community and eSports) and Joong Kim (eSports Manager) to get the inside story about balancing PvP and PvE gameplay and what players can expect to from the future of Azeroth.

Tell us about the Arena Tournament and how World of Warcraft is taking steps towards becoming an eSport.

Tom: When we first created World or Warcraft, we always imagined that PvP would be very important in general. We didn't anticipate turning it into an eSport, so it's one of those things that's been evolving over time. In Burning Crusade, we developed the Arena system because we wanted a competitive element - we wanted something that felt like a sport within WoW itself. It so happens that it's a pretty good platform for eSports, since it's fun, fast-paced, action-oriented and well enough balanced. After running the arena seasons on the live servers, it seemed like a natural extension to move toward a more organized eSport tournament.

Are you going to take what you learn from the Arena Tournament and apply it to PvP areas in the live game?

Tom: Yes. It has a nice symbiotic relationship in a lot of ways. Since everyone will be playing on equal footing in the Arena Tournament Server as far as equipment, and players can change their characters as necessary, they're able to experiment with a lot of things that would be difficult to try out on a live server because of the limitations of leveling up a character. It provides us with an interesting petri dish, where we can evaluate how things are playing out on the tournament server and then apply that knowledge to live game where possible.

Do you think that there will be a time when the Tournament Arena will have its own rules and balances separate from the live game?

Tom: No, we intend for the games to stay very much the same in terms of rules and balance. Any changes we make on the live server will be reflected on the arena server. Anything that we learn and deem necessary to change on the arena server will also apply to the live server. It's very important to us that the experience on the live server feel well balanced, so any lessons we learn will work in both directions. We also want the game to feel consistent so that the Arena Tournament server still feels like World of Warcraft gameplay. We don't want it to start diverging and feel like a completely different game.

What is the ultimate goal with the Tournament Arena? Will there eventually be televised gameplay?

Tom: As a game designer, my ultimate goal is to have it be fun and exciting. I'm sure Paul has more to add.

Paul: As far as televising goes, eventually the players competing online will transition to a live event to each of the regions where we're running the tournament. The winners of those live events will go to a global final. We know our players are very interested in watching, so we're looking to broadcast them in some way. We'll be releasing more details as we get closer to those events.

There is an objective. We want to give our players the opportunity to become pros and show off their talents. Our players will have the opportunity to become superstars within the World of Warcraft community.

When are the Arena Tournament Finals expected to start?

Tom: Joong can answer that.

Joong: The online portion of the Tournament will end mid-July. Global Finals will begin late in the year... probably around October or November.

Any word on where the Global Finals may be held?

Joong: We're still looking around for where the best place is.

Is the Arena Tournament a sign that Blizzard will be dedicating more of its resources to PvP content instead of PvE?

Tom: No, I definitely wouldn't say that's the case. The vast majority of the team is dedicated toward developing our continuing expansions. By its very nature, it tends to be mostly PvE content. I think since the Arena Tournament is a new that it's getting a lot of attention right now, but it's not changing our development focus as a whole.

What are some of the challenges in developing PvP content and balancing it against the PvE aspect of the game?

Tom: There are a lot of challenges. World of Warcraft is a very complex game, and you can break PvE down into a whole bunch of subcategories like soloing and questing. Then there's 5-man content, 10-man content and 25-player content - all have their own type of balance. Then throw small and large group PvP on top of all that. At the same time, we're trying to preserve the feel of a class-based game, where each class feels distinct and a different gameplay experience.

The reality is, we know the game wouldn't be as balanced as a game that is purely designed for competitive eSports, but it's balanced enough for people to feel good about their classes and their choices. We're keeping in close communications and getting to a point where people feel that all the classes are viable across all the different situations. That's certainly the case in PvE. We see more viable classes and specializations now than before The Burning Crusade. So, even though we've introduced a competitive element with PvP, we've managed to improve the balance for PvE.

Do you guys play in the PvP areas? Any favorite classes?

Tom: Obviously, all the classes are dear to me. Our class team is full of guys that play a whole bunch of different characters. Every single class is fully represented across the development team as a whole. We're just as lively discussing class changes internally as we are on the forums. There are definitely a lot of people who are passionate about the game. Most people on the team are actual players and play every night.

We actually have an internal Blizzard Tournament going on because so many people here are interested in competing but are ineligible to play in the real one.

There appears to be a divide between PvP and PvE players. Some believe the risks and rewards of PvP aren't high enough, while others think that PvP is too unbalanced to be worth the effort. Do you think there should be a stronger blending of the PvP and PvE experiences?

Tom: We prefer that players experience a mix of content instead of pigeon holing into one kind of gameplay. The game ends up being more fun for more players that way. We like to create the game mechanics to encourage players to do different things. That's not to say we're trying to force people's hands if they want to do something exclusively. A player can focus on PvP in Arena Tournament and be successful, but we try to put in mechanics to allow or encourage crossover. I would liken it to questing, where it's more fun to do a variety of different ones instead of the same kill quests over and over. In the same way changing up quest types and areas are fun, changing up gameplay is fun. We often comment that although players may prefer one kind of game over another, even hardcore PvP players enjoy the PvE content quite a bit.

Is it possible, or even a priority, to design PvP areas to minimize griefing for new PvP players?

Tom: I think that deals with each person individually. We have separate PvE where players can't be killed by other players unless you do something that allows you to be killed. So, it really comes down to personal choice. People that sign onto a PvP server do so knowing that they can be killed by other players out in the world. Players looking for that kind of random, spontaneous, gameplay use the PvP servers so we don't intend to introduce rules to limit it.

Would Blizzard make class changes to encourage more diversified PvP configurations?

Tom: We'd like to see equal class representation, but some classes are inherently more popular than others because of what people imagine themselves to be within our world. So, regardless of balance, there will always be some classes that are more popular than others. Then there are PvE considerations along with all the different PvP configurations (2v2, 3v3 and 5v5), which makes the issue tricky.

How do you determine of a class, power or team combination is over or under powered?

Tom: A combination of gut, listening to players and looking at statistics. We're always listening and playing and looking over trends. We collect all that data and make decisions based on it. There are certain things we leave in because a class is powerful in one area but weak in another. We often won't bring down an area where a class is strong without bringing up an area where it's weak.

Thank you for your time.

Source: http://news.bigdownload.com/2008/05/13/pvp-vs-pve-blizzard-on-world-of-warcraft/

So you want to be a guild master?

Hi. Join my guild

I am currently unguilded. Today, as I was running through Shat, I suddenly get an invite to a guild. I didn't join the guild of course, but I did speak to the level 15 hunter who was trying to recruit my level 70 mage to his new raiding guild. And yes, his highest level character is the 15 hunter.

The conversation went something like this:

ME: Hello. You know you really shouldn't send out guild invites without first asking the person if they want to join a guild. It's considered rude.

LEVEL 15 HUNTER: Do you want to join?

ME: I don't know. What does your guild have to offer?

LEVEL 15 HUNTER: Offer? We aren't paying people to join.

ME: I mean, what type of guild will you be?

LEVEL 15 HUNTER: A fun one ( I roll my eyes )

ME: What's your web address so I can read up on your guild?

LEVEL 15 HUNTER: huh?

ME: Do you have a website yet?

LEVEL 15 HUNTER: No. We are gonna be a raiding guild. We don't need a website.

ME: Hmmm...OK. So if you're going to raid, will you be using DKP?

LEVEL 15 HUNTER: DKP?

And it only got worse from there. I knew I was dealing with someone who had no idea what they were getting into and I took it upon myself to point this person towards a few free guild web hosts and explained what Ventrillo is. Yes, I had to explain to him what Ventrillo is and why it's useful.

The experience got me thinking about how many guilds are out there now and how there are so many that never meet their in game goals simply because those in charge, shouldn't be. So this is for all of you folks out there who are thinking about breaking away from your guild and starting your own.

What you need

Anyone starting their own guild should have the following things:

1) Alot of free time.

Nothing is worse for a guildie than being a member of a guild who's guild master is missing in action most of the time. Be prepared to spend alot of time online. Your presence is necessary. Players who are in guilds simply to have a guild tag above their heads will not contribute to a guild and those that want to contribute will expect their leader to take an active role.

2) Know alot about the game.

It's not enough to just want a guild because you think it will be cool. A guild master should have a vast working knowledge of the game. You don't need to know every little detail, but you better understand more about the game than the average WoW player. Only a fool would follow a fool.

3) Purchase a Vetrillo server.

Yes I know, WoW has in game chat, but it's really bad, especially for raiding. It is far too limited to give your guild the edge it needs in a raid, in a 5 man or even just for a guild event. So if you cannot afford a Ventrillo server ( at least a 50 man ) then find a guild to join. Don't start your own.

4) Have a website.

There are plenty of guild web hosts out there that offer free hosting. It won't cost you a dime. Look at a few, decide which you prefer and use it. When not in game members will need to check in for guild news and event times. A website offers this option. Without it, it's like doing an instance without buffs. It can be done, but it's much harder and just plain stupid.

5) A modest temperament

As a guild mater, you will be called upon to set guild goals, manage members and settle disputes. Very few people will ever say thank you. You must be able to keep your cool when everyone else is flipping out. And you must be able to see all sides of an issue, not just your own.

Yes, there are plenty of guild masters out there who do not have the right temperament and their guilds progress. But look at the WoW forums and look how much drama is created by that. Drama kills guilds. Period.

Yeah that's me

So you can do all five of those things? Well, son, that's just the beginning of what you will need. But that's a whole other article.

If, on the other hand, you lack one or more of the above five, then rethink your reasons for starting your own guild. Remember a guild isn't just a guild. It's an in game home. And by creating one, you are saying you will be responsible for your members leisure time. For every player out there, WoW represents their escape from the real world. If you choose to lead you are saying you will help ferry them through that world. That's alot of responsibility. Its alot of hard work. And if you don't have what it takes, you will only cause yourself and a great many others alot of grief.

Don't be that guy.

- Grimme

The Grind Podcast

Alterac Valley 2.4

The screaming match over Alterac Valley began the day it opened. Alliance and Horde screaming across the forums, IRC channels and blogs about how this battleground is proof of Blizzards love of the opposing faction. While the Horde has long decried the issues of the Alliance bridge and placement of the NPC's in their base, Alliance has pretty much cried about everything relating to the Horde. And as always, Blizzard made changes. Just to refresh everyone, here is the list of Alterac Valley related changes made in 2.4.

• Captain Balinda Stonehearth can no longer be interrupted, silenced, or have her spells slowed. In addition, her water elemental cannot be banished, and does increased damage.


• Vanndar Stormpike and Captain Balinda Stonehearth have had their health totals reduced to match the health totals of Drek'thar and Captain Galvangar.


• Warmasters/marshals in Alterac Valley now increase each other's maximum health and damage by 25%. This is a stacking effect.


• Horde players will now start the battle closer to Drek'Thar and Frostwolf Keep.


• There is now a Join as Party option.

Now, accepting the premise that Alterac Valley is essentially a race to kill the enemy general, these changes can only be seen as a nerf to the Horde. Balinda and her pet were both buffed, thus slowing the Horde down. Van and Bal both had their hit points reduced but only to the levels Galv and Drek were previously, so this only balances the four main targets. Or does it? Consider the fact that Galv has no pet helping him, while Balinda does. Sure, the water elemental isn't that tough but it's still more than Galv has.
The Horde starting location was moved back as well. We now start considerably further back, which had the Alliance salivating in anticipation of this change. Their infamous zerg race to Drek was about to get that much better. But then 2.4 hit, but I'll get to that.
Lastly, the warmasters/marshalls now increase each others health and damage by 25%...each!!! This is a huge nerf to the Horde who often ( at least in my battlegroup ) had to start on Van with at least one marshall still up to hope to snatch a win from the Alliances ever growing domination of Alterac Valley.

And then 2.4 hit and something happened. Being moved back forced the Horde to play a better defense. And that has made all the difference. Since the inclusion of reinforcements, I have come to believe that the focus of AV has complete changed for the Horde. I believe that Blizzard quietly changed their viewpoint as to each factions role in AV and has made changes to broadcast this new philosophy. We Horde should listen to the signs as it points the way to our chance to completely dominate Alterac Valley. At least until the Alliance howls on the official forums become so loud it wakes the dead ( but that just may mean more rerolls to Undead so I'm all for it. )

The last two patches have brought changes that essentially slow down the Horde in the "race" the the General but have left us a way to win as well: reinforcements. By mounting a strong defense, the Horde can dwindle the Alliances reinforcements down very quickly. many players are skeptical of this. They are afraid of getting into long drawn out battles that essentially decrease their honor per hour gain. that being said, using an addon called Honor Kills Counter, I have logged my AV's since 2.4 and taken notes on the strategies used by the Horde in each battle.

In four out of my last five AV's, the Horde has played a strong defense. Some call this the "turtle." The Horde won all four in which they "turtled." However, this turtle did NOT mean we mounted no offense. In fact, by focusing most of our players on defense, were able to stop the Alliance advance and thus allow our offense time to get to Van and kill him. The longest of these AV's lasted just 26 mins. Our single victory without a Van kill lasted 31 minutes. The difference in honor was 50. We got 50 less honor not killing Van, than we would had we killed him. Compare that to the 250 less honor we received for a loss and ask yourself, is it better to extend the match 5 - 10 minutes if it means a chance at 200 more honor?

A long time saying among players is: The Alliance is built for PvE and the Horde is built for PvP. If this is true, then the genius behind Alterac Valley 2.4 is that it pits each side against it's weakness and caters to its strength. With the NPC positioning in the bases, Alliance can skip over much of the PvE that the Horde inevitably faces in each match.

Consider this:

Thus the highest form of generalship is to balk the enemy's plans, the next best is to prevent the junction of the enemy's forces, the next in order is to attack the enemy's army in the field, and the worst policy of all is to besiege walled cities.

-Sun Tzu, the Art of War

The Blizzard built defenses of Frostwolf have huge, gaping holes in them that allow the Alliance to move quickly to their objectives. This design has led to the Alliance tactic of the quick rush to the end and many a Horde defeat. By plugging up those holes with players, we can force the Alliance to engage us or engage our NPC's. Either way, we can slow them down or better yet stop their advance completely. This follows the highest form of generalship.

The Alliance will often send one force to defeat Galv while a smaller ( unusually stealthed ) force moves to take our Relief Hut and Frostwolf Towers , East and West. After the defeat of Galv, the larger force moves to join up with the smaller force. To prevent this "junction of forces" the Horde must "attack the enemy's army in the field" or more to the point, use the IB chokepoint to halt the larger forces advance. Hold them there. Force them to split their forces further through respawns at Winterax. Now their larger force becomes two smaller weaker forces, both of which will be easier to defeat.

The bridge is without a doubt the best chokepoint in the game. It is defended by the archers from the North Tower and thus, can be held by relatively few Alliance players for several precious minutes. When the Horde gets stuck at the bridge, we are besieging the Alliances "walled cities." Players must get across that bridge and to the Aid Station flag at all costs. By taking Stormpike before the Aid Station, the Horde is allowing the Alliance to turtle behind its defenses and that becomes a much harder nut to crack. But, by forcing them to respawn at Stormpike, or better yet, their cave, with our forces within their base, the bridge is turned from an obstacle to an asset. Thus, their walled city becomes ours.

If the Horde can play to it's strength, PvP, and field a strong defense, while it's offense smartly turns the Alliances strengths into our own, the Horde should be able to dominate Alterac Valley.

Note - This article was written by a player with a Horde main character and with a decidedly Pro-Horde bias. Alliance players will just have to be a little understanding about that.

Scammer pwn'd by Blizzard

For all those who say that Blizzard doesn't know whats going on in their game, I submit the following:

A poster, Kiranth, on the official WoW forums posted a thread. Here is the text:

i at last was able to get my flying skill, i got it on a monday used it til the server went down for updates on tuesday morning, when i got back on the skill wasnt there, but i still have my epic flying mount ? but can no longer use it, i talked to gms they said they cant find my history, so they dont know why i have the epic mount but no skill, all they said is i have to buy the skill again, i talked to many gms every day for a month, then after that the gms said i waited too long , what else can i do? i talked to gms i sent emails to Blizz at this point im getting to i dont even fell like playing anymore and thinking of quiting my 3 accounts and cancelling them, the lack of help is very frustrating, one of the GMs said that it sucks to be me! what else can i do, blizz is ignore n me and will not help me so im posting this maybe someone in blizz will do something to help

Based on the grammar, spelling, lack of proper capitalization, we can assume this poster is either young, English is not their first language or a complete idiot. Personally, I'm going with the last choice.

Several posters responded, all trying to figure out what happened to this poor soul. Isn't it amazing how everyone who plays a video game seems to think they understand all the code and infrastructure behind it?

Then in pops Auryk, fearless blue poster to shed some light on the subject. Here's the text:

Alright, Kiranth, sorry for the delay I had a lot of information to look through. Seeing as how this took place about two months ago, the logs were a little harder to look up. Let me go though, step by step, and detail the turn of events as I see them:

You first petition in on Saturday, 02/16/2008 at approximately 02:09:10(GMT) asking that we look into your missing flight skill that you claim to have purchased five days prior. In that petition you declare that you purchased the epic riding skill on Sunday with the money you had been saving up for two months and were playing “till the servers went down for maintenance on Monday morning.”

According to my records you were offline when the Game Master attempted to contact you. So as you said, they sent you an e-mail.

I see that you re-petition in that same day, almost nine hours later at 11:10:44(GMT). Here you mention that you are missing the riding skill that you just leaned on Monday, and that you played all night until you were kicked off Tuesday morning.

Again, I see that you were not online when the Game Master received your petition, so they send you a second e-mail stating that they were unable to verify the loss of the gold on this skill.

The very next day 02/17/2008 you petition in twice more; once at 03:33:01(GMT), which (as you have even stated here in this post) mentioning that you borrowed most of the gold to be able to purchase this skill. Unfortunately this was also received while you were offline; e-mail sent asking you for more information on the issue – specifically a timeframe of when this happened. The second being, at 15:39:25, where you actually got to speak to a Game Master, who informs you that they are unable to verify that you ever purchased this skill.

After that I see no contact being made with anyone from our In-Game Customer Support Department until 03/06/2008 at 20:04:07(GMT). At this point it has already been over three and a half weeks since you said you have purchased the epic flying riding skill. Again you get in contact with a Game Master while online, and they inform you that they are unable to verify you purchasing the skill and apologize, letting you know that they are not going to be able to reimburse you for the skill.

Since then I see no further contact with us until this post, which ambiguously mentions that on “a Monday” you got the skill and no longer have it, and would like it to be looked into.

I understand that you were unable to petition in via the in-game client, whether it was because your account’s billing cycle had lapsed, as you say in your third petition – due to the fact that you were away on a trip, as you claim in your fifth petition – or because you had to get a new computer (including a “fairly good graphics card” and double the ram of your old computer) as you told your guildmates – however in the future, I would recommend that you take the time to send an e-mail into WoWGM@Blizzard.com if you ever experience an issue that is fairly important to you. This way we can look into it as soon as it takes place.

I have a feeling, however, that in this specific case would not have done much good, if any at all. The reason I say this is because upon doing a few searches of my own, I see that at 2/11/08 at approximately 20:48:45(GMT) you zone into the Outlands with 149 gold 98 silver and 42 copper. I see that at 21:38:05(GMT) you purchase your Red Riding Nether Ray (which at Exalted with Sha'tari Skyguard costs 160 gold). Following that, you log out with about 14g99s42c, congratulations on your Primal Waters selling. :0)

A search within a few days of this purchase shows that at no time did you have the 5000(ish) gold that is required for purchasing the riding skill itself.

I also find it a bit confusing when you mention on 03/01/2008 between 20:12:20 and 20:12:51 that you, “cant wait for the faster mount” because you “just need the skill [cause you] already have Red Riding Nether Ray”

I hope this clears up any confusion or frustration you may have about this situation, the only thing I have left is that I would like to take this time to remind you of our stance on Defrauding or Attempting to Defraud a GM, Kiranth. Whenever possible, we try to give players the benefit of the doubt in questionable situations. We honestly hope players do not attempt to take advantage of this trust, and provide their full cooperation. However, if we later find that an attempt was made to defraud a GM, the offending player may have action taken against them. Attempts to defraud a GM include, but are not limited to, misdirecting a GM's attention, withholding information, providing false information, and any attempt to "trick" a GM.

Now, THAT is some research, huh? The fact that all of this information ( I especially like the primal waters comment ) is logged and somewhere for Blizzard to look over gives me that warm and fuzzy feeling. Call me a fanboy if you like, but I just LOVE it when Blizzard lays the smackdown on some idiot. Ever notice it's always the dumbest person in the room who thinks they're the smartest? Well, hopefully this is one moron who learned his lesson. Kudos to Auryk on one of the funniest smackdowns I have seen in a long time.

What do you think?

NOTE: I accidentally edited out the initial credit for this article. WoW Insider had an article on this subject which prompted me to comment on it as well.