Chinese WoW partial relaunch pics, comparison shots of censorship
MMOsite.com has nabbed some pictures of the return to the Chinese World of Warcraft . As you know if you’ve been paying attention, the game has been offline over there for a few months now, but the game just recently got approved to go back online, and so they’re in the middle of a “partial relaunch” (which I believe is taking the form of a closed beta) and the servers are crowding up again. As you can see, there’s a stampede ( much like ours ) going on in Thunder Bluff — looks like players are happy to be online again. They also have some comparison images of the censorship found over there . Anything with skulls or bones on it is out, and the offending images have been replaced with piles of dirt and bags and debris. Blood appears as black oil rather than red liquid , and even player corpses are out. As you can see, everywhere players die, there are instead little graves and tombstones around. Very interesting. No idea if this actually “helps” in China (or what the point of the censorship is — seems as though it’s a cultural thing, more like it’s a respect for death and dead bodies rather than worrying about whether people will be disturbed by the mention of violence), but of course the government over there has final say on what goes into the game, and apparently this is what they approved. Hopefully Chinese players will be headed back to Northrend before long. Filed under: Analysis / Opinion , Events , Odds and ends , Blizzard , Leveling Chinese WoW partial relaunch pics, comparison shots of censorship originally appeared on WoW.com on Tue, 11 Aug 2009 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Read
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WoW Insider Show Episode 102: Stupid big-tongues
We had a terrific time (as always) on the live podcast last Saturday afternoon, as Zach Yonzon , Mike “Belfaire” Sacco , and Turpster and I sat down to talk about the most popular stories in the World of Warcraft . Of course patch 3.2 was at the forefront of our minds, and we chatted about what each of us was most interested in, from the new BG to the 5-man Trial instance . And we got a little bit of discussion in about the various classes and roles they play in instances . Of course we answered your emails as well — we talked with Michael Sacco about the “Additional instances can’t be launched” issue that’s going around (that I got hit with for the first time yesterday, actually), and a reader emailed us about BRK’s gun — so awesome to see our friend get recognized, and deservedly so. It was an excellent show, in my humble opinion, and a great way to squeeze a week’s worth of WoW news into just one hour. This week, the podcast will be at a special time — we’ll be going live on Thursday at 1pm Eastern . That’s a little earlier than we usually do it, but it should give our friends overseas a chance to tune in when they might not have been able to before (and if you can’t make it live, don’t worry, the recording will be in iTunes soon after). See you then! Get the podcast: [ iTunes ] Subscribe to the WoW Insider Show directly in iTunes. [ RSS ] Add the WoW Insider Show to your RSS aggregator. [ MP3 ] Download the MP3 directly. Listen here on the page:
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Spiritual Guidance: A Lightwell primer
Every Sunday (usually), Spiritual Guidance will offer practical insight for priests of the holy profession. Your host is Matt Low , the grand poobah of World of Matticus and a founder of No Stock UI , a UI and addons blog for WoW . What exactly is Lightwell? How is it used? Why does no one use it? Oh Lightwell . The things you could have been. Misunderstood by many and under-talented by a large number of Priests. Will you ever see raids? Perhaps not. But we can try! Lightwell The first thing Lightwell novices need to understand is the purpose of the spell. It creates a Holy Lightwell wherever you want it that any player can interact with. A player who uses it gains a charge that heals them for more than 4500 health over a period of 6 seconds. It’s got a 40 yard placement range. Be sure you pick up the Lightwell glyph for it. A 20% boost to Lightwell ticks go a long way and will help make this talent even more worthwhile. There is a slight downside. If the player under the effect of a Lightwell charge takes a hit that’s 30% of their total health, the effect disappears. Continue reading Spiritual Guidance: A Lightwell primer Filed under: Priest , Tips , Tricks , Raiding , Talents , (Priest) Spiritual Guidance Spiritual Guidance: A Lightwell primer originally appeared on WoW.com on Mon, 10 Aug 2009 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
Cataclysm races leaked
WoW.com has learned through multiple sources close to the situation some details on the next expansion, to be called World of Warcraft: Cataclysm . As we’re getting into the season of news and information, all major leaks and spoilers will be happening after the break. If you don’t want your surprises ruined for you, don’t read this post. If you want to know, click after the break and enjoy. This policy worked well for us during the testing phase of Wrath of the Lich King and we’re pleased to continue it now. After the break, the new playable races of Cataclysm . Continue reading Cataclysm races leaked Filed under: News items , Cataclysm Cataclysm races leaked originally appeared on WoW.com on Mon, 10 Aug 2009 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
Patch 3.2 in Review
Warning: Fanboys and Fangirls beware, as this is not a post you will like. I am about to criticize Blizzard, and if that offends your sensibilities, go ahead and mark as read. I don’t mind.
For the rest of you who are still reading, I want to take a hard look at a few aspects of patch 3.2. I am going to try not to wax poetic about how wonderful the BC patches were–in a sense, that was a different game for a different time, and I was also a different player. What I am going to do is talk about Blizzard’s successes and failures under the current design ethos, which I will sum up as Time Sinks for All Players.
Under the somewhat tongue-in-cheek category of the time sink, I comprehend raiding, dailies, instances, and overall reward structure. Let’s look at each of these aspects of patch 3.2 and examine whether Blizzard succeeded in their global goal of keeping their millions of players interested in their game. Notice that I’m not going to talk about class balance, which is a necessary part of any patch and which will be ongoing. I’m talking only about the New Cool Stuff that came in last Tuesday.
The Crusader’s Coliseum
Let me use my Mystic Orb of the Walrus (actually, a bouncy rubber ball full of green sparklies) to channel for you the Crusader’s Coliseum development meeting.
“You know, we really should make a raid instance for this patch.”
“Yeah, something like Zul’Aman. That was really great.”
“Nah, that took us forever to design. We need something easier, like a 5-man.”
“We put a lot of work into those 5-mans! I just don’t think that we can spare that much time.”
“I’ve got it! Why don’t we design an instance with just one room? We can make one room in like, a week.”
“Yeah, YEAH! And oh, let’s make them run it four times per week instead of just two.”
“Excellent. Also, we should make it take four weeks to get each tier piece, even if the bosses are pretty easy. Let’s require an emblem turn-in for each tier piece–that way it will be like old ZG rep gear, and some of them will never get it!”
“Aren’t they going to riot?”
“Well, as long as we let them get some emblems from the heroic daily, we’re good.”
When I walked into the Crusader’s Coliseum, I had a moment of panic as I realized that I was going to be spending 4-5 months of raiding within its hexagonal walls. When I panned my camera upward, I noticed that, far off center in the Alliance cheering section, there were 6 identical Syds cheering me on. I was so creeped out that I got a haircut right after the raid. In an instance where design has been reduced to brown walls and even the spectators are not individuated, how can I have any hope for interesting boss mechanics?
The Crusader’s Coliseum is, quite simply, lazy design.
The Daily Drudgery
Daily quests ought to be fun and easy. If I’m a farming type player, which many are, I’m much more likely to repeat something I find pleasant. I like the Dalaran cooking dailies, for example. They don’t require too much running, and the rewards are sufficient for the time spent. The gold standard of dailies will always be the SSO dailies of Quel’Danas. They used to be so quick, fun, and convenient that I did them on three characters. I will admit that my interest in the game is much lower now than it was back when my guild was working on Illidan. However, I’m pretty sure I’d grind at least one character through similarly well-designed dailies. The Coliseum-area dailies do not measure up. They are quite widespread and hard to do on one’s own. I particularly find the revised version of Battle For the Citadel a pain in the arse to solo. In order to kill 3 commanders, I have to clear any number of lieutenants and get my ass kicked multiple times by respawns. Don’t even get me started on Threat from Above! Dailies should be a solo operation, as they’ve historically been one of the few things one can do in WoW at 4am. As for the new dailies, I’ve only done a couple of them, and they take you a bit far from the questgivers for my taste. Out of ten or so possible dailies, the only one I really love is Among the Champions, where I get to school some NPCs in the joust. I particularly enjoy beating the stuffing out of the uppity Undead guy–if, indeed undeads have any stuffing left after the whole decomposition thing.
The trend in Wrath seems to be to design dailies which take more time and return proportionally less gold. In turn, the non-currency rewards (pets and mounts) are much better than they were in BC. The dailies are almost a pure time sink–and regrettably, I just don’t have that time. For earning money, the AH is the only way to go. I don’t think 6 or so dailies per day, four days a week, would actually pay for raiding, while two hours a week of selling flasks certainly does.
5-man Instances
I hate to say that I haven’t tried the new instance yet. I’m glad there is one, and I’m sure I’ll get there if it ever comes up as the heroic daily. Because of the reward structure, I try to do the heroic daily whenever I’m on (which is….not that often). I don’t want to be the absolute last person in my raid to buy a tier piece (though truth to tell, I’m in competition for that bottom spot). The thing is, Blizzard de-incentivized their 5-mans during Wrath. Naxx 10 was very easy and accessible compared to the heroics. However, its design was ugly as mud. Meanwhile, the art design for 5-mans was excellent. Most of us saw this beautiful dungeon art only a few times due to the lackluster rewards compared to Naxx. From all reports, the new 5-man is pretty easy, so it’s no Magister’s Terrace. I found Magister’s Terrace to be both challenging and beautiful, and I ran it with all three of my characters (one in tier 6, and two in…crafted purples and Kara gear). I think that Blizzard has–to their own detriment–gone away from the older design of heroics, which allowed some to be much harder than others. I find the hardest Wrath heroic to be Oculus–and I managed to complete that one the day I turned 80.
Rewards and Other Phat Loot
Developers be praised, we’ve got another armor tier to acquire! I love gear. I’m glad that the stats for the three iterations of Tier 9 are actually an upgrade on Ulduar gear. My greatest disappointment with Ulduar (which I love on all other points, including art and gameplay) is that the stats on the gear were such small upgrades from Naxx stuff that I actually didn’t get to see my character improve in noticeable ways even after equipping my new pieces. The only real performance upgrade that I was able to feel was the 4 pc bonus–which for resto druids is widely considered OP. This new patch is just the opposite–I can tell that at least the middle and upper varieties of T9 are going to make a difference in my power and sustainability. I’m jazzed about that. It’s too bad the armor designs themselves are, well, lazy. Many people have commented on this, but suffice it to say, in a few months of work and struggle, Syd is going to go from a gorgeous, glowing creature whose attire includes motifs of branches, leaves, moonlight, and starlight to, well, a Buckethead. Morever, we’re all going to be Bucketheads. I refer you back to the article header should you have any question as to what one’s head looks like when a bucket is equipped in that slot.
Well, let’s say that I can ignore the ugliness of the “new” armor art. There are still many non-gear rewards to be gained in 3.2. The one thing I actually care about, the Ulduar drake that I’ve been working for, is still available (thanks!). It will take a lot of hard raiding to get there–my guild, for one, is not anywhere near done with Ulduar hard modes. There are also new horsies from the Coliseum, mounts upon mounts from Champion’s Seals, more cute pets (even a wyrmling of a different color–who cares, but thanks), and even more tabards (that look pretty much like the old tabards). The game seems to be focused on acquiring volumes of things right now. It’s not “let me get this one beautiful unique mount” but “let me grind for 10 mounts so I can add to my achievements.” I have to say, I’m not too excited about all of it, because too many things seem to be reskins of the same old stuff. My preferred mount grinds are Winterspring Frostsaber (the only kitty with no armor), which I’ve done on one character and started on another, and the Stratholme speed run for Rivendare’s horsie, which I’ve put a few tries into on Syd and ultimately intend to acquire.
How could WoW have hooked me into grinding for new rewards? Well, they could have made them…really new. Let me grind for a raptor mount, and let the horde grind for a Winterspring Frostsaber. That would be pretty sweet. Let me buy the horde mounts for Champion’s Seals. Better yet, make me an entirely new mount–how about a rideable Jormungar? I guarantee you, my play time would have gone up! The new orphan quest is an example of a “good” reward. The gorloc and wolvar pets are pretty unique, and I stayed up an hour later than usual to get my cute little baby oracle.
No More Lazy Design!
The take-home message here is that developers need to spend time and resources on their game. Period. No game is so good that a patch can bring out more of the same and expect to reinvigorate the masses. I think the art budget in particular for WoW needs to go up exponentially.
What is the one thing that I love in patch 3.2? New druid forms! They’re really quite nice (and no, I was not one of the people who complained that they weren’t done right). In my mind, Pink Kitty is pretty much the best thing ever, and I even changed my much-beloved seafoam hair in order to gain access to it. The druid forms are a good example of what happens when you give the community something they’ve asked for and actually spend a little time on it. You get Syd, happily running around in cat form, which has pretty much never happened before. I can has cheezburger naow?
Here’s hoping that the devs announce something astounding at Blizzcon. Something must be done to make up for the overwhelming mediocrity of 3.2…unless, they really do want us to run out and buy Aion come September.
“
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(Censored) World of Warcraft Returns To China
And We Think It's Bad In Dalaran
Most of ProjectLore’s bloggers have been following the whole “WoW in China” escapades pretty closely. I’m not exactly sure what draws us to the topic, but various voices have touched upon almost every aspect of the struggle to keep our favorite MMORPG up and running in the world’s most populated nation. We’ve got you covered from the originating factor of the partnership switch, the following lawsuits and outages, all the way to everyone’s favorite pastime, gold farming. And now for the latest installment, WoW’s return to China.
Seeing as you clicked on the loaded title I will just hit you with the details straight away. For starters, according to MMOSite.com World of Warcraft saw a one week relaunch in late July (v3.1.3) with millions of players participating, or attempting to. To get Wrath of the Lich King, and WoW in general, back online the title has been censored in various ways. Nearly all of the changes have to do with the prevalence of dead bodies (read Undead/Scourge) that are everywhere in WotLK.
- Undead mobs have had their models redrawn to patch up the bare bones (this was done for vanilla WoW and TBC as well).
- Piles of bones, and other items, in the world have been modified to sandbags, sacks of grain and the like.
- Bleed effects now cause black goo to spew from the target. Many players are joking that it’s oil. It also appears that blood of non-humanoid targets may have been turned green, as seen on this wolf.
- Various spell and talent icons have been modified to remove bones. Most of these have been replaced with “generic boxes.”
Where The Bones At?
To me the modifications remove a lot of the sinister, nefarious, and downright disturbing aspects of the Scourge, and even the freed members of the Forsaken. I do wonder how the Government in question can justify adding a patch of skin to an Undead knee, but allow an Abomination to exist in the title. Better yet, Thaddius. The electric monstrosity is “built from the flesh of women and children” for C’Thun’s sake. It’s unfortunate that the Chinese players can’t experience the content as it is meant to be played. At least they get to play a slightly modified vision, instead of nothing at all.
For those of you interested in the finances the 50+ days down may have on Activision Blizzard’s stock, it appears that there is little to worry about. According to the excellent Gamasutra, the company only makes 6% of its worldwide WoW revenue from China. This is largely due to lopsided contract Blizzard had with The9. The old contract granted the developer a low revenue stream of only 20%, according to some insiders. By restructuring to a much friendlier agreement with NetEase Blizzard should begin to pocket far more cash from China. Enabling the company to make up for the 50+ days of losses rather quickly. Of course, it remains to be seen how many hourly users Blizzard may have lost due to the down time.
The saga continues.
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Officers’ Quarters: The raid leader retirement plan
Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers’ Quarters , a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership. Every raid leader has this moment. You’re trying to get the raid ready for a boss attempt, but you just can’t get people to focus. Someone’s taking a quick bio. Two people are still arguing over the loot from three bosses ago. Another person is whispering you ill-conceived advice for changing your strategy. People seem to be more interested in listening to your healing lead talk in Vent about a movie she just saw than they are in buffing or putting on resist gear. Then someone that you can’t replace DC’s for the eighth time that night and you just snap. You wonder if it’s worth it. You wonder what it would be like to be a grunt rather than a general. Someone who just follows orders and doesn’t have to worry about anyone but themselves. Sprinkle in some real-life stress in your life and retiring from raid leading suddenly seems very appealing. This week, one officer wonders how to give up his general’s stripes without causing too much fuss. ‘Lo there, I’ve been a huge fan of your column for quite some time, and it’s one of the few that I read immediately rather than saving for downtime during the game. I first got hooked during the 4-part casual raiding columns , which came at the time my guild was first venturing into Kara. Anyway, I’m the executive officer in charge of raiding (supreme raid leader) for a successful casual/social guild on a server infamous for its lack of progression. It’s a position that I’ve held since we started into Kara in Feb of ‘08, and since we first started raiding I’ve gained a couple of assistants that do an excellent job helping coordinate things. The issue, in part, is that RL has started rearing its ugly head, and my work hours have been slowly increasing. [. . .] Continue reading Officers’ Quarters: The raid leader retirement plan Filed under: (Guild Leadership) Officers’ Quarters Officers’ Quarters: The raid leader retirement plan originally appeared on WoW.com on Mon, 10 Aug 2009 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
WoW Moviewatch: Shining Dreamscape
You may recall Snoman as the chap who did WotLK White Dreamscape . Snoman didn’t feel like other preview videos had done justice to the landscape in Wrath of the Lich King , so he created White Dreamscape to give it a much better showcase. Now, Snoman has just released the new video in his Dreamscape series , in which he takes the modelling of Azeroth, and creates something new and interesting. This video was absolutely gorgeous. It’s filled with brilliant and breathtaking views. The technical aspects of Snoman’s work are leaps and bounds above much machinima, and every angle and scene shows off his incredible eye for detail. I’m usually hesitant to use words like “gorgeous,” but I can think of few videos that deserve it as much as Shining Dreamscape . Interested in the wide world of machinima ? We have new movies every weekday here on WoW Moviewatch ! Have suggestions for machinima we ought to feature? Toss us an e-mail at machinima AT wow DOT com. Filed under: Analysis / Opinion , WoW Moviewatch WoW Moviewatch: Shining Dreamscape originally appeared on WoW.com on Mon, 10 Aug 2009 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Read
