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.