Casual Huntering

Posts Tagged ‘News’

There was another Q&A twitter session recently. It was very enlightening. I wanted to talk about some of the points that we discussed, but I’m definitely not going to go over the entire session. Go here if you would like to read it in its entirety.

Hunter (Of course I have to start with the hunter stuff.)

Q. The Hunter class has many odd and situational abilities such as Mongoose Bite and Aspect of the Beast – are there any plans for changes to these types of abilities?

A. Mongoose Bite is most likely a goner. Let us weep. We think Aspect of the Beast could have some cool uses for Beastmaster hunters.

I really hope that Beastmasters will be a viable raid spec again someday. /crosses fingers

Q. Are hunters likely to see more stable slots for their pets in the future? With the current variety of pets, the amount they have right now seems too small.

A. Arm-waving here, but a model I would love to see is dramatically expanded slots (so you can store all those Spirit Beasts) but have a smaller number of “active” pets, like 3. You could summon an active pet from anywhere in the world, when outside of combat. You would swap a pet from active to the stable at the Stable Masters.

This is a great idea!! I mean really do you use more than 3 pets at a time anyway? We always have several pets that we just can’t manage to say good bye to, and … who would ever say adios to a Spiritbeast for goodness sake. I think this isn’t such a bad idea. I hope it happens.

Death Knight (My only other level 80 character is a DK at this point, I’m enjoying the class thoroughly).

Q. Two-handed (2H) frost death knights was a really fun playstyle that died when dual-wielding (DW) was introduced. Are there any plans to make using two-handed weapons more appealing?

A. We can’t make every death knight tree PvP, PvE and tanking viable and also offer both 2H and DW options for all three of those. We are currently designing Frost as a DW-only tree.

Right now my death knight is a 2 handed frost spec tank and 2 handed unholy spec dps. Why?  Because I haven’t picked up one handed weapons yet, but I totally want to dual wield with my frost tank. I won’t say more to further demonstrate my noobness when it comes to this subject.

Raids & Dungeons (I admit I have skipped a lot of the questions here.)

Q. What have you learned from this expansion’s emblem system?

A. Having that many different kind of emblems is overwhelming. In hindsight, we wish we had done maybe 2 emblems: the current tier and the previous tier (Frost and Triumph at the moment). They also felt a tad too grindy when 3.3 first came out before all of the sources of emblems were available.

I’m glad that they are simplifying this; it was a bit too overwhelming, confusing, and complicated previously. I don’t’ want them to make it so simple that its almost stupid, but I think 2 tiers are enough.

Q. Are there any plans to allow cross-realm raiding?

A. If we can solve the problems with it, we might give it a try. One of the problems is getting the group back together, especially on the longer instances. Loot drama and stuff like that is always a problem. There is also the ongoing concern about the concept of your realm having less of a sense of community.

I personally don’t see how this can end up being a good thing. Our raid group does some puging for ToC 25, but they have a “good list” and a “bad list”. With random, you get what you get. There just seems for too much coordination that needs to take place and too much time required. With that being said, I think it would make raiding more accessible to someone who doesn’t have a raiding guild or don’t have enough people to do 25 mans. I agree about the loss of the community feel though. I’m all over pugs for 5 man, but this looks like it could go sour.

Q. Will we be seeing more Caverns of Time in Cataclysm? War of the Ancients, maybe?

A. We will definitely see another trip to the Caverns of Time during Cataclsym. You are going to have to ask Chromie for more details though. =)

I love Caverns of Time dungeons, the lore, the story line, the chance to go back in time, it’s all epic in my opinion. I’m glad they are doing that in Cataclsym.

Q. Why have we not seen World Bosses in this expansion?

A. They just have problems. It’s always a race to get to them, which tends to favor larger groups who are online often, and it’s hard to discourage or even prevent players outside the raid from helping or screwing things up.

A#2. World bosses are something that we have been talking about more as of late. We really like the concept, but there are certain design problems we would like to address before we bring them back. Stay tuned.

I’ve been wondering about this myself. I thought it was cool having random world bosses in different areas. (don’t go over there if you don’t want to be eaten by a dragon **head nod**). I remember leveling and visiting the center of Darkshire only to be quickly killed by the large dragon there. I didn’t like dying much, but it was cool to see it. But I see the problem here; I wouldn’t have a chance being as casual as I am with my play time. I’m a little curious what they plan on doing.

Q. With the advent of Heroic Shadowfang Keep and Heroic Deadmines, is there any likelihood of other older instances made Heroic?

A. Yes. We are hoping to do more than just these two, but it just comes down to time. We are focusing on getting the new Cataclysm dungeons done first and then we can look into doing more old-world Heroics.

I’m so stupid; I thought that it was odd that they were only doing Shadowfang keep and Deadmines. That will be awesome; with new patches will get new old school heroic dungeons. What more could you ask for??

Cataclysm (not everything, just the questions that interested me).

Q. Regarding Cataclysm, can you reveal any of the ‘major changes’ in Blasted Lands and how this will affect the lore?

A. I love the fact that one of our first questions is in regards to the Blasted Lands! We have big plans in store for this zone in Cataclysm. We will be revamping the entire flow of the zone so you can expect an entirely new experience here. Some of the big changes include an opening to the coastline for a new play area, as well as a large new worgen area in The Tainted Scar.

You know, I don’t think I did anything in the Blasted Lands except go through the portal to the outlands, maybe I should check it out before the expansion. (I probably won’t).

Q. Should players be concerned about what gear they pickup in this expansion, because of the gear overhaul that is coming?

A. I wouldn’t stress over it. You’ll probably replace that gear pretty quickly. Since we have 5 levels, we don’t really want players getting all the way to 85 without having upgraded at all.

Yeah, of course a gear reset is coming. Kind of makes me want to work on alts instead of my main for the next few months.

Q. With the Lich King defeated, in Cataclysm, will the Plaguelands be green and beautiful again?

A. Western Plaguelands will finally be free of the plague in Cataclysm. It’s hard for the Scourge to survive without their beloved Lich King. I guess this means we need to rename the zone?

I love it; I always thought the place was kind of ugly anyway. These kinds of changes that fit with the storyline get me excited. I’m going to be tempted to roll a bunch of new characters and start over. I’m sure a lot of people will be doing that.

Q. Will we get some info about the other zones revamped in Cataclysm, like Stranglethorn Vale or Tanaris?

A. Yes, we are hoping to do a few specific web features on a few of the old world zones and exactly what is changing with them. Stranglethorn Vale is seeing a large amount of changes so it is a great candidate for this.

A#2. A. Some Tanaris goblins wisely invested in desert real estate and reaped the benefits when it became beach-front property.

Oh, do I remember the days of STV leveling on a PvP server. Can I say gank city? I remember be camped on multiple occasions. I think it’ll be good for the area to get a face lift. Them goblins are so good with money. I’d be tempted to hire one as an accountant if I didn’t think he’d rob me blind.

Q. Will there be any type of water mount, like, submarines?

A. We actually have two brand new subs that we made for Cataclysm. These submarines will be used as transports. We have one for gnomes and one for goblins. The subs are huge too! Both are about the size of the Gunships from Icecrown.

Can I just say how full of win this is? Now I think I’ll work on leveling my hunter first before making a worgen or goblin just so I can get my engineering up to make one of these. I’m very stoked about this. (update: I thought about this more and more, what was I thinking, these are just going to be like the boats or blimps for massive transport, not a mount. /fail)

Miscellaneous

Q. Where is my moose? Did you see that Ghostcrawler?

A. That was so epic. I was sure the screenshot was shopped until we saw the actual video. I guess we’re going to have to do a moose now…

Yeah, where’s our moose??

This Q&A session got me really excited for up and coming WoW stuff. I’m pretty darn excited for Cataclysm.

I’m sorry I keep throwing out these articles are you guys, but this one was a kind of funny read. The article is entitled “Online World of Warcraft casts a spell” from the Monterey County Herald. There are some funny things in there, and some reminders that some people are just plain stupid. I had to share with you some of my favorite parts of the article.

“Some players skip meals, miss work, avoid sleep, abandon relationships, ignore the phone, literally escaping what no longer feels like real life on behalf of reinventing themselves as characters in a figment of their own dreams and imaginings. Others insist they have it in check.”

I like to think that the majority of us have it in check. Stupid people keep making a bad name for us, again, it’s not the game. If it wasn’t WoW it would be something else for these people. Now this whole “reinventing themselves”, that’s just silly in my opinion. Oh and I don’t skip meals.

“I’m used to playing every day, on average, maybe four hours a day. Sometimes, on the weekends, I’ve played for well over 12 hours a day. I think it’s the ultimate form of escapism. I mean, here is this whole other world that is a lot friendlier and more exciting than the one we live in.”

Have any of you played 12 hours in a day? I don’t think I have the stamina for it.

“The Internet is littered with stories of abandonment and betrayal, projected affection and protracted engagement, financial ruin and divorce, ostensibly related to WoW. A now popular Internet report out of the United Kingdom begins, “A woman has divorced her husband after he used the computer game World of Warcraft to conduct affairs with a series of imaginary woodland creatures.”

Imaginary woodland creatures?? Brigwyn could have a hay day with that line right there.

“Once, I came into his office wearing Victoria Secret silky blue booty shorts and a tank top to get his attention. He said, ‘Do you have to do that right now? Can’t you see I’m just starting a raid?’ And when our 3-year-old daughter came in and said, ‘Daddy, can I have some apple juice?’ He told her he couldn’t leave his raid, and told me, ‘If I get killed during this raid because I went to get apple juice, it will be on your head.’ He doesn’t call it an addiction. I call it much more than that.”

Okay, look. There are some things that are just more important than WoW. I would have to tell my guildies that “you guys, looks like some family emergency came up, hmm, I’ll have to see you guys later”. Now, I understand being in a raid when your daughter asks you for a drink. Of course saying “If I get killed, it’ll be on your head” to your 3-year-old? Now that’s just silly.

“I think I was addicted to the game when I first started playing four-and-a-half years ago, much the way I would be with anything new and exciting, and not unlike the fascination with, say, a new car,” said Philip Geiger, 46, of Carmel. “But it was pointed out to me, and I agreed. I never abandoned my daily responsibilities and interests and, in time, it found its place in my life. I now go on two 2-hour raids a week, after the dishes are done and my child is in bed, plus two or three hours a night a few other nights a week. You could say, for me, it replaces TV.”

As I’ve said before, this is probably what most people are like. But hey, who wants to write articles about normal boring people like us?

I just ran across this article about a professor, Kevin Werbach, who plays a level 80 shaman. It’s nice to see the news not completely bash on Warcraft or its players for once. This is a guy who graduated from Harvard Law School, who is one of President Obama’s advisers, and who has also started up his own technology firm.

And he plays World of Warcraft.

The article has a tone of “We can’t believe that this upstanding guy plays something like this.” Yet they continue to spin it in a positive light. Its almost like they wanted to say “Well, if this guy likes it then maybe it isn’t all that bad.”

The article made me feel like our society still views playing MMOs as an “atypical hobby”. At least they are finally realizing its a hobby, not just some video game. Werbach explains to reporter how he got started, sounds like he’s actually a pretty casual player.

He started playing WoW three years ago when a friend’s friend started a guild and wanted people to join. On a typical week, he meets up with his guild one night for several hours and then logs in on the other days to check the auction house. The game has become Werbach’s substitute for TV, though it provides him with more than entertainment.

We’ve been saying that forever, its a substitute for TV for us. Why is sitting on your @ss watching non-interactive TV for hours on end excepted as something far more socially acceptable than a game where you have to use problem solving skills, you socialize with others, and interact in a beautiful virtual environment. It drives me crazy.

I loved the final quote Werbach gives, which finished off the article.

“This is not just a few 15 year old pimply kids playing Dungeons & Dragons,” says Werbach. “This is 11 million people paying to play this game.”

Amen

Well, apparently it is patch day after all. I know from first hand experience, seeing how the patch is 95% downloaded on my computer at this very moment.

Is there anything that I’m horribly excited about in this patch? Let me think about it. Well, I like the fact that they are getting more mounts available for us. I’m going to get that silver hippogryph pretty soon here. I’m going to go buy mounts for all of my level 20-30 alts. I hate being without a mount in the low levels. It will be nice to be able to get up to 15 of those argent tournament marks in a day instead of only 5. Oh, and how they are changing the token system is great news for me. I might actually have a chance to get some decent gear some day.

Oh and now I have some patch notes to look at. Apparently that darn Black Knight is alive again somehow. It’ll be fun killing him. Finally getting a timer on warsong gulch, finally!!! I hated getting marks with that battleground, it only took like 40 years!!! We’ll actually be able to use traps more often now, the snake trap might not get ignored so much.

Oh, I just saw that we have a limited time to do some new children’s week quests, but with Wolvar and Gorloc orphans. After that they will be apart of the regularly schedule children’s week holiday.

OooooOooo, engineers are getting some fun stuff. Like this portable Wormhole generator? Lets you travel from different locations in Northrend, I’m all over that. We no longer need the goggles to track gas clouds, just as long as we have the emote extractor, that’s awesome. A new repair bot, that’s always nice to have. They buffed potion injectors. A steam-powered Auctioneer, letting you go to the AH where ever you are. Hmm.. lots of love for engineers, I’m very happy about that.

Well, its finally downloading and everything, lets hope I can get in and get some dailies done before I have to go to work…

Ha, I can’t log in at all, wouldn’t you know it. Probably should go out and see who has already updated their addons for this patch. /sigh

What are you excited about with patch 3.2? Are you excited?

World of Warcraft has been down in China since June 7th now. Blizz is facing a possible ban because of crazy Chinese laws. Apparently the Chinese government is accusing blizzard of breaking their laws by trying to get around the laws that restrict foreign companies from operating online games. China has been known to limit and restrict their countries access to the outside world (remember the Olympics?), but come on, MMOs are huge in the east. And what are they really going to hurt.

Its my understanding that everybody plays MMOs over there. I met a guy from Korea who moved over to the United States. When he lived in Korea he played MMOs because everybody did. It’s the cool thing to do, but when he came over here he stopped playing because apparently for many its not so cool. Football is so much more interesting /yawn. (that’s another blog post altogether). Its just interesting how different cultures accept MMOs and others don’t so much. (another blog post).

So, Blizzard was going to have NetEase take over the China side of World of Warcraft, but they weren’t so ready to take over. Now they are under investigation. If the Chinese government don’t like what they see then a permanent ban could come for WoW. Sad, I know, but I guess lots of the Chinese players have been getting on Taiwan servers. Who knows just how long the government will let that happen.

Sucks to be living in China right now I suppose. That’s so funny how the internet has changed everything in the last few years. Countries like China that don’t want to have too much foreign influence on their people are having a hard time because of things like MMOs, twitter, facebook, blogs, etc. You can’t filter everything out, well, I guess  you can if you just shut off the internet.

It is also making the world a very small place. I normally feel distant when events like the Iranian protests broke out, but when I was following the event on twitter I felt more involved, like I could talk to the people right there. Get their first hand experience. The people were able to let us know what was really happening. And outside influenced the people of Iran.

How much western influence do you think comes through with MMOs. Do they get our pop culture references? I’m sure that Haris Pilton is probably not on the Chinese servers (not that anything is at the moment). They probably have their own inside jokes, who knows. Maybe we are making the people of china more violent? I don’t know. But its interesting to think about. (I don’t really think that WoW makes people violent). Just what does the Chinese gov think will happen if they let their people play world of warcraft, we’ve already got rid of the skeletons. (I guess Skeletore is probably banned as well).

Well, I’ve probably rambled enough now. So, I best end this post quickly. lol, and I probably should get back to work. Anyway, what are your thoughts on all of this?

Well, MMO Champion is out there on the forefront of WoW news, again. They wrong an article Blizzard Trademarks “Cataclysm” somewhat recently that points towards what the next WoW expansion is going to be. Basically, Blizz has set aside the name “Cataclysm” for trademarks for a future up coming project.

This term refers to The Great Sundering which left Azeroth a mess (moving continents here and there, destorying the Well of Eternity, and all of that jazz). The well of eternity apparently became that centor vortex known as the Maelstrom in the middle of the map to Azeroth. (consequently my brother decided to fly out there during a glitch and reported that there is nothing to be seen, at this point in time).

So, there is also a lot of talk about a new goblin city, Undermine, which is located on the Isle of Kezan, which could likely be the next continent in the expansion.

Of course this is all just speculation. I wonder what kind of hero class we’ll get next time. I also think they should make a short race for the Horde, maybe Goblins? Probably not, they are too neutral to be on either side. Murlocs would be a fun race to play, especially if they have pink hair? Well, maybe not…

What do you think is coming in the expansion?

I know that most people on in the “WoWosphere” are much better at getting at information quickly, quicker than me anyway. At any rate I came across this recently. The guys at blizz are working on making it so you can change sides. That’s right. You can stick to Thrall or that one Stormwind king and trade sides. Well, you will at some point in time in the near future. So, blizzard announced that they plan on making it possible for a player to change their faction .

At first I thought it was going to wreak havoc on the war mentality of Azeroth. Then I thought, that there would be a traitor thing going on. I just could picture a Orc chilling in Iron Forge who wrote off the Horde. Could we as an alliance keep ourselves from killing him? What confusion would pursue. It would be awesome. But alas, it won’t be like that, instead you character will magically turn into a “roughly equivalent character”. So, I assume if you are going to change your pally over that no matter what you’ll be a chicken rider or if you are a druid you get to become a cow. Hm…
So, it looks like there are a lot of kinks to work out for this. I’m not going to participate. I’m assuming that it’ll cost you money like it would if you want to change the gender of your toon. However, as my brother pointed out last night, this would be awesome to reconnect with friends that happen to choose the other faction. We have several real life friends that are playing horde on our server. Perhaps we’ll be able to talk them into joining the alliance.
So, I assume that’ll mean that reputation will change to equivalent reps? Does that mean you can complete twice as many quests for the lore achievements? For that matter, does that mean you could complete all alliance specific achievements then make a switch over? Ha! You could switch over and plague a hated guild that you got booted from or something.
And how can you justify this for RPers? That’s confusing, but I’m sure someone out there will come up with a good story involving some kind of accident with a gnomish invention or a transfiguration gone bad or something. I don’t know. But it’ll be interesting at any rate.
Would you be willing to pay money to switch factions? I have too many friends and family on the alliance side on my main server to want to switch. But it’s nice to have options.

I know I usually post about World of Warcraft stuff, but I know my brother @emithal loves this show so, basically I’m posting this for him.

I ran into this some articles on Massively that we’re talking about up coming MMOs. And low and behold what did I come across??? Well, they are making an MMO based on Star Gate, maybe old news to some of you, probably doesn’t mean much to most of you (As for myself, I’m only interested in World of Warcraft at this point in time). But I know that my brother-in-law loves the TV show so I wanted to at least mention this real quick for his sake.

I don’t know anything about the game play or anything. I know at this point you can still sign up to be considered for the Beta testing. I barely have enough time to try to keep up with WoW, but I know that WoW’s days are number, it can’t last forever. As blizzard had said when asked if there is a WoW killer out there… what did they say again? I said something like “we know there is a WoW killer out there some where and we hope that we are the ones making it.” (probably not word for word). I assume that they are right, I probably will only quit playing WoW for another Blizzard MMO, but its interesting to see what other people are doing. And as I have said in previous posts I think the new Blizz MMO will be Star Craft, something completely different. But what do I know, lol.

So, here you go Ryan, here’s your Stargate MMO, now don’t quit WoW the second this one comes out, okay.