MMO Roundup: Diablo 3 tips, Hamill returns as the Joker, and more
Sometimes, you’d like to know that there are other MMOs out there, right? It’s not all WoW, all the time! Our sister site Massively can provide you with everything you need to know about all of the other MMOs around — past, present and future. Five top tips for your first few days of Diablo III Most of us are hip-deep in Diablo III already, but if you’re one of the holdouts waiting for a rainy day to get started with the game, you might want to store these tips somewhere precious. ArenaNet: Guild Wars 2 a ‘reaction’ to sluggish MMO design Do you believe that the MMO genre has been stuck in a rut over the past few years? So does Christopher Lye, the global brand director for ArenaNet, who publicly denounced the post- World of Warcraft trend in the industry as stagnant. DCUO ‘s Last Laugh features Hamill as the Joker Sony Online Entertainment is bringing out the big guns for its next DC Universe Online content patch. The Joker is set to return for The Last Laugh, and fortunately for everyone, his voiceover duties will be handled by none other than Mark Hamill. EVE talks smack about Diablo III ‘s login woes EVE Online is letting the trash-talk fly at the newly launched Diablo III by displaying the message “37…3007…315300.” It’s code for “Play EVE . Servers are up, login is fine” on the game’s login screen. This, of course, is making reference to the myriad error codes that Diablo III players experienced over the course of the game’s launch. Massively’s week in review Don’t let WoW Insider do all of the talking when it comes to Massively’s best content of the week. The Massively staff themselves have picked out what they think is the best content their site has to offer in their own weekly roundup. Filed under: MMO Roundup , Diablo 3 MMO Roundup: Diablo 3 tips, Hamill returns as the Joker, and more originally appeared on WoW Insider on Tue, 22 May 2012 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
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Shifting Perspectives: Scribbles from an alternate universe
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat , bear , restoration and balance druids. This Tuesday, we joyride through Pandaria with fountain pen in hand. Old school, baby. I’m back to scribbling. Every beta, a pile of poorly organized notes starts to grow at the side of my computer with numbers , observations , witty column titles (these I seem to have misplaced this time around), questions, gripes, and a truly stupefying amount of cat hair . I turn this pile into a series of articles on how druids are doing and try not to think too hard about having possibly misread my chicken scratch to ruinous effect. (In unrelated news, until linking the above articles, I hadn’t revisited the video I shot of a premade druid in level 85 blues off the Cataclysm beta and was horrified by the set of responses. Or better yet, here’s the video I shot of female worgen casting animations . Oh, YouTube commenters — you never fail to deliver!) This is actually a collection of notes from the last several weeks on the beta. Most of them are bear-flavored, because there’s not much point to questing as restoration unless your other hobbies include watching paint dry, snail racing, or the complete works of Schopenhauer. Continue reading Shifting Perspectives: Scribbles from an alternate universe Filed under: Druid , (Druid) Shifting Perspectives Shifting Perspectives: Scribbles from an alternate universe originally appeared on WoW Insider on Tue, 22 May 2012 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
Lichborne: Ghostcrawler discusses death knights
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Lichborne for blood , frost , and unholy death knights. In the post- Cataclysm era, death knights are no longer the new kids on the block. Let’s show the other classes how a hero class gets things done. To say that the death knight community has been a little grumpy this past week is probably an understatement. Essentially, what happened is that we got a post from Ghostcrawler discussing some of our M ists of Pandaria beta issues , and in almost all cases, he wasn’t quite on board with our complaints. This week, we’ll hit some of the highlights of what Ghostcrawler said and what they mean for our class, as well as look at some of the changes we have seen coming from the beta. It’s not a disadvantage — it’s a feature In the list of perennial death knight complaints, there are three that are probably pretty near the top and have been for a while. First, unholy pets and summons do not scale with mastery. Second, unholy has very little in the way of burst AoE. Finally, critical strike is incredibly undervalued for frost due to Killing Machine . Ghostcrawler pretty much breezed through all three of these complaints with a classic “working as intended.” That’s not to say he didn’t explain all three reasonings to some extent, but they all boiled down to the idea that the dev team is perfectly happy with the skills working this way, because they’re all calculated differences that separate the death knight trees from each other. Continue reading Lichborne: Ghostcrawler discusses death knights Filed under: Death Knight , (Death Knight) Lichborne Lichborne: Ghostcrawler discusses death knights originally appeared on WoW Insider on Tue, 22 May 2012 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Read
The Queue: Ghost city
Welcome back to The Queue , the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft . Adam Holisky ( @adamholisky ) will be your host today. The next minigame that Blizzard should put into WoW needs to revolve around catching ghosts. Why? Because Ghostbusters . Lars asked: Will there be a World First or Server First achievement for the first Panda or Monk to level 90? And if so, do we know what will disqualify such an attempt? I’m thinking of heirlooms and Deck of Rogues/Mages/etc… Continue reading The Queue: Ghost city Filed under: The Queue The Queue: Ghost city originally appeared on WoW Insider on Tue, 22 May 2012 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
Around Azeroth: An army of fun
If one were interested in rallying an army of minions to take over the world, a gang of punk gnomes and a Murkablo may not be the best choice. No matter how inspiring your speeches on the streets of Stormwind are, the moment you turn your back, they’ll be off drinking the Azerothian equivalent of Everclear and grape juice and looking for very small goth ladies. (Thanks to Ortiz of Extirpation on Ravenholdt [US-A] for the screenshot!) Gallery: Around Azeroth 3 Want to see your own screenshot here? Send it to aroundazeroth@wowinsider.com . We strongly prefer full-sized pictures with no UI or names showing. Include “Azeroth” in the subject line to ensure your submission dodges email spam filters; if you’d like to be credited, also include your name, guild and realm. Filed under: Around Azeroth Around Azeroth: An army of fun originally appeared on WoW Insider on Tue, 22 May 2012 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
Last Week in WoW: Error 37 edition
The big Blizzard news this past week, of course, is that the Error 37 boss dominated just about every Diablo III player, preventing them from even logging into the game. Blizzard issued a mea culpa for the issues, and to be fair, the servers seem a lot more stable as of this writing. Don’t think WoW ‘s been letting its sister franchise hog the spotlight, though. Mists of Pandaria development does continue apace, including a few new beta builds, and we got all the news on what’s changed and what’s new. Downtime today is from 1 a.m. to 9 a.m. PDT, so you should have some time to read up. Hot news and features We have a quick rundown of five things to watch out for in the Stormstout Brewery . Matticus takes a look at the new Shado-Pan Monastery dungeon. Check out some new voice emotes for male pandaren . We take a look at some of the newest hunter pets in Mists of Pandaria . Healers, rejoice! Spirit gear may make a comeback in Mists . Check out Wowhead’s preview of Townlong Steppes , a new Mists zone. Engineers get some cool new toys in Mists . Archaeology has seen some improvements in the beta, including improved digsites . Continue reading Last Week in WoW: Error 37 edition Filed under: Realm Status , News items Last Week in WoW: Error 37 edition originally appeared on WoW Insider on Tue, 22 May 2012 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
Breakfast Topic: The best NPC conversations in the game
Blizzard has increasingly programmed NPC conversations into the game as a means of adding flavor to the world and personality to the characters with whom you interact, and some of them are just amazing. In the classic game, these conversations started off very simple, with Stormwind children running around driving everyone crazy with arguments over which misbegotten whelp had stolen the other’s doll or something like that. In Outland, you could catch performances of stand-up comedy in the World’s End Tavern in Shattrath. By Wrath of the Lich King , mortally wounded NPCs insulted each other from separate bunks in Crusader’s Pinnacle , and major lore figures argued about interfaction strife at the Argent Tournament. But I think it’s tough to argue that Cataclysm hasn’t been a million times better. For my money, it’s tough to beat the flavor conversations you tend to hear in goblin outposts (yeah, I’ve been on a goblin kick lately), including the one above, which occurs in the aftermath of the Azshara quest Mystery of the Sarcen Stone . Finding blood elves and goblins together is a recipe for comedy either way — the two races could not be more different — but this is what happens when the blood elves’ preening sense of history runs headlong into the goblins’ morally questionable pragmatism. What’s your favorite flavor conversation in the game? Filed under: Breakfast Topics Breakfast Topic: The best NPC conversations in the game originally appeared on WoW Insider on Tue, 22 May 2012 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
3 things the Black Market Auction House needs to succeed
The Black Market Auction House seems to be a controversial topic. Some players love the idea, while some players utterly detest the idea with every ounce of their being. Regardless, the theory behind the Black Market Auction House is a solid one. Removing gold from the WoW economy is something that is desperately needed in the days of Auction House kings, in order to balance everything out. If the Black Market Auction House works, it’ll even out player gold to a reasonable level, keeping items on the regular Auction House at reasonable prices. And for those who spent the tremendous amount of time it takes to amass their fortunes, it means that they finally have something to spend their reward on, something tangible and — let’s face it — something pretty cool. In expansions past, we’ve only had one or two really major gold sinks to speak of, whether crafted mounts, or really useful mounts purchased from a vendor. Once those mounts were purchased or crafted, there was a vast sea of nothing for people to spend that gold on. But the potential for abuse runs pretty high with this thing. And as I pondered the potential side effects of the Black Market Auction House, I realized there are certain things that really need to be in place to make it work effectively. Continue reading 3 things the Black Market Auction House needs to succeed Filed under: Analysis / Opinion , Mists of Pandaria 3 things the Black Market Auction House needs to succeed originally appeared on WoW Insider on Mon, 21 May 2012 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
