WoW gold Grrl’s Warcraft Gold Guide for World of Warcraft-www.hisgoldwow.com

New around here? WoW Rookie points WoW’s newest players to the resources they need to get acclimated. Send us a note to suggest a WoW Rookie topic.

It takes all kinds (of players) to make a (game) world - but now that Blizzard is shaping game content specifically to slingshot players into endgame raiding content, it’s easy to get the impression that raiding is “the” way to play WoW. New players seem expected to sail through the levels and zip gleefully into PuGs or a raiding guild. All those “accessible” raids and achievements and gear are suddenly sounding more and more like “requirements.” DPS minimums, required achievements and Armory checks serve as your credentials to get into groups. Everywhere a new level 80 turns, there’s something new to measure up to.

So what if you don’t know where to start? What if you miss the mark in the wrong group with the wrong players - will you forever be known as a “scrub”? Will you find yourself blacklisted from the PuG circuit? Is it still practically possible to gear up and catch up? What if you can’t get into a successful progression guild? Will you be labeled an oddball or outsider? What if you can’t break in - or what if you decide you don’t want to?

With all these questions and anxieties at stake, WoW Rookie went straight to the voices of experience here at WoW.com. Their answers? Yes, a WoW rookie absolutely can still catch the curve, ride the wave and enjoy endgame content — or not. Despite all the talk of playing “the right way,” WoW is still very much an open-ended game in which you choose your own playstyle. The choice is yours.

Here’s what four of our staffers had to say.

Matthew Rossi (Totem Talk, The Care and Feeding of Warriors): My advice would be to decide first what you actually want to be doing. Do you want to tank in five-mans, DPS in heroics, heal in raids or just go around pet collecting? What’s your focus? What do you enjoy doing, and why do you enjoy doing it?

Raiding can absolutely be a lot of fun. The fights can be worth the price of admission just to see them sometimes. You’ll get to travel Azeroth, meet old and new figures of lore and importance and help kill them. It’s something I’ve been doing since the old days of MC - and I’d certainly say that if a grumpy old curmudgeon like me can do it, you can too.

But do you actually want to? Don’t do anything in this game because you feel like you have to or are expected to, is my advice. You’ll resent it, you won’t have as much fun, you’ll burn out and stop playing - and I don’t want to see that happen. So the most important thing is to first decide what you want to do.

Once you’d decided that, gearing up really isn’t that hard. It takes some time (but soon to take less with the new Emblem system for 3.2 coming out), and you’ll want to take advantage of the various factions and their gear options. Doing quests and dailies, you can actually put together a good enough set to run heroics at this point, whether you be a tank, a DPS or a healer.

Don’t let yourself be pushed into fretting about it, either. To be the absolute “best” tank or DPS or healer can often be very technical, yes. But frankly, if you’re just starting out, don’t worry about being the best. Worry about learning.

Do some runs that push you out of your comfort zone. Don’t let jerks get you down. Do your best, yes, but don’t hold yourself to some impossible standard set by some guild in Finland that killed Algalon while upside-down.

In the end this is a freaking game; it’s not your second job. There are guilds and players out there waiting to play at the same level you are, whatever that level is. Find what you want to do, do it, and ignore the people who scoff at you because you’re not wearing a legendary codpiece.

Robin Torres (WoW Casually, It Came from the Blog): I was once on a cruise with one of my sisters. She pretended her name was Wendy to a group of, umm, laid-back musician types, because they said she looked like their friend Wendy. A couple days later, they came up to her, very worried that they had made her feel less special. They told her to “be your own Wendy.”

This advice really applies to playing WoW: be your own casual. You should stick to your own idea of fun, and don’t let anyone tell you your fun is any less valid than theirs. If you want to play in the end game, then great! If you don’t, then that’s great, too. There is still lots of stuff to do that doesn’t involve heavily structured, highly geared group activities. And believe me, just because the hardcore players are more vocal on the forums doesn’t mean that they are the majority. We casual players are just too busy playing or doing that real life thing to muck about in the community as much.

I think those guys on the cruise ship were very wise, as well as relaxed. In all things, be your own Wendy.

Jennie Lees (Ready Check): I wrote about a conversation I had with my mum, who’s a casual player, about raiding (specifically, why she doesn’t do it). Some of the comments from readers on that are pretty good, too.

The Turpster (TurpsterVision, WoW Insider Show): I have one rule when I play WoW: Be the best! If these so-called casuals can’t grow a set to be able to say, “No, mum! I don’t give a F$£K if it’s your birthday. I got three other dudes here and we are waiting for one more DPS and then we are going to take it to Shadowfang Keep and get some phat loots … Honestly … You just don’t understand …”, then they should quit WoW now - or at least transfer off of my server where all the pro gamers play …

That’s all I have to say on it.

In all seriousness, totally got to play the game for you. Like others have said, set your goals early on and stick to them. You will get a sense of fun and achievement. Remember that it is a game, and don’t get too sucked in. You will never be the best - even (among) the hardcore players, no one is ever the best, so don’t try to be. (Ok, yeah, I am the best - but that is beside the point …)

Filed under: World of Warcraft | No Comments »

This installment of All the World’s a Stage is the thirty-sixth in a series of roleplaying guides about how to roleplay various aspects of the lore and gaming elements of WoW.

What is inscription anyways? I mean, we all know that it’s the newest profession, added in Wrath of the Lich King, and it lets you make these “glyphs” which allow you to modify or improve your various class abilities in interesting ways. In gaming terms all that makes perfect sense, but when it comes to telling a story with your character, there are a lot of details missing.

Technically, a glyph is a character or symbol, like a heiroglyph or a pictograph, which we can see to a certain extent when we click on the glyph and put it into our in-game glyph interface — it looks pretty cool with all those circles and lines and stuff. But what does it really mean? Are you pasting these symbols into a book of some sort? Are they getting magically tattooed onto your skin somewhere?

And where did inscription come from to begin with? Has it been around in Azeroth all along somehow, or was it some sort of ancient knowledge only discovered recently, around the time in the Warcraft lore when the Wrath of the Lich King begins? If it was discovered, then who discovered it and how? How exactly does a scribe learn these glyphs? Does he or she pore over ancient tomes that haven’t been read in thousands of years, trying to decipher ancient texts? Or is the art and magic of it more in the artistic calligraphy of it rather than any difficulty in discovering or interpreting the symbols themselves?

There are far more questions than answers when it comes to roleplaying a scribe, and to a large extent each roleplayer is free to choose his or her own approach. What follows is the just one suggestion as to how you might work out a plausible solution — please feel free to read it and improve upon it in whatever way you like.

A dearth of lore

When jewelcrafting was introduced in The Burning Crusade, it came with this new species called the Draenei, who had lots of connections to jewels and the magics they could contain. It made sense that everyone in Azeroth would start learning this new and mystical profession with their arrival on this world.

But inscription is less clear. To me it feels as though it’s been around for a long time, perhaps as a long forgotten art form, and it’s only recently been discovered again. Although we don’t know many characters in the Warcraft lore who have identified themselves as magical scribes the way our characters can, we do see a number of characters who use “runes” and other forms of magical writing. Death Knights and the Lich King himself are the most obvious examples, but Iron Dwarves also use runes of various sorts to bring about magical effects. The inscription we can all learn as a profession may be related to that in some way.

On the other hand, we could say that there are significant differences between runes and glyphs as well. It may be that a death knight’s runes are pure evil (like fel magic), while glyphs are more neutral (like arcane). Also, the death knight’s rune interface in the game actually uses symbols that look more like modern-day icons rather than cryptic magical writing of some sort. Perhaps death knight runes are more about necromantic energy than they are about letters in some ancient and evil language.

An ancient language

Personally, I prefer to ignore the in-game icons in the death knight interface and assume that the actual death knight runes look more like the original ones used in the Wrath beta (and now in death knight addons such as “DKiRunes“). I also assume that they are letters in some ancient writing script whose origin is not clear. It could be the language of the Titans, the Old Gods, the demons, or even the ancient elves from before the sundering of the world. Even the Lich King himself, I would say, is only partly aware of the full meaning of the language he uses in his necromantic magic.

I would also argue that this language was lost for the most part on Azeroth, except in Northrend. The Lich King probably discovered it years ago when he was originally banished in the northern continent, and bent its magic towards his aim of raising a massive army of undead. Later on, Dwarven expeditions would have had a chance to head north and discover these runes in their archeological excavations. Having brought this knowledge back to the other races of Azeroth, the peoples of the world could have learned how to use these magical symbols in ways that are totally unrelated to the Lich King and the undead. They could discover that, just like English words can be used to promote enlightened understanding as well as bigotry, the words of the ancient language can be used to improve one’s Fireball spell as well as channel undead energy through a death knight’s runeblade.

So from my point of view, inscription glyphs and death knight runes are basically different words the same language. The difference between scribes and death knights lies in how they use these symbols more than in the symbols themselves. If you look at the original death knight symbols, they even look similar to the glyphs, which helps to support this idea.

The art of inscription

If you consider other ancient writing systems with pictorial elements, such as Egyptian hieroglyphics or Chinese characters, there’s always some element of art involved in the actual writing which goes above and beyond the actual meaning of the word itself. Hieroglyphs were presented with great clarity and color, while Chinese is presented in more abstract forms, often flowing from one stroke to another like streams of water. It stands to reason that a decent scribe in Azeroth would have to do more than just write a glyph in any old way, but would have to inscribe it very carefully, with the utmost attention to art and form, in order for it to have its magic.

When I imagine what it must be like to be a magical scribe (as opposed to just a regular scribe who would take notes at meetings and such), images come to mind of our characters studying old tomes long buried and forgotten, covered in dust and ancient writings few living people now understand. As the difficult translating work goes on, people discover more and more tattoo-like markings which have a magical power of their own when written on or transferred to a person’s body.

Being inscripted upon

I’m only assuming that glyphs are written on the body itself, of course, but actually it’s an open question not yet clarified in the game or in the lore at all. Are they written on your weapons or armor? Do you carry around sheets of paper with these magics written on them?

If they are written on the skin, a master scribe could write them on a magical sheet of paper, and then adventurers like you and me could just apply the glyph to their skin so that the glyph could transfer it over. These glyphs would then stick to the skin like tattoos, which could be either very discreet, hidden away under the clothes, or else displayed openly wherever one likes.

One glyph might make a person slightly better at shooting a particular type of arrow, while another might make a shaman’s lightning more potent. Many would seem to have no effect at all if they were worn by someone with no actual ability in the designated area. Perhaps a typical scribe might seek willing (or unwilling subjects) to practice writing particularly indecipherable glyphs upon, in the hope of discovering what they do. This could be something we do while we level up the profession.

Other possibilities

All this is only one of multiple solutions to the problem of adapting inscription to the lore of Warcraft. If you prefer to say that the inscription your character studies is more of an artistic thing than anything involving ancient texts, then feel free to make it your own branch of the art. If you feel like the artistic element shouldn’t matter, then there’s room for that too.

One could imagine other possible origins for inscription as well — are all glyphs cursed because of some connection to the Old Gods? Have they been around in Azeroth all along? Perhaps it doesn’t really matter that inscription was only added to the game in Wrath of the Lich King, if we all just agree that it’s been around all this time as far as the story is concerned. Virtually every aspect of this profession can be re-imagined in one way or another.

How do you fit inscription into the lore and into the life of your character?

Filed under: World of Warcraft | No Comments »

This week’s comic list is a good one, so settle in and start clicking. To answer a comment on last week’s post, comics can be submitted through the WoW.com tip form, or left as a comment on the most recent Sunday Morning Funnies post.

• Check out the latest from Cru the Dwarf.
• Dark Legacy Comics: Toe Stub.
• This comic from GU Comics is related more to Activision-Blizzard than to WoW specifically, although there is a WoW reference.
• Check out the latest from Experience Points.
• The latest Flintlocke vs. the Horde got me laughing, although you should check out the Taco Time comic first, if you haven’t.
• This isn’t the most recent comic from LFG, but I thought it might stand alone better.
• NoObz: To Pull Or Not To Pull.
• NPC: Just Like Me and Squirrel Flavor.
• Check out the latest from Teh Gladiators.
• Backward Compatible has a WoW-related comic out.
• The Adventures of Disgraph T. Dwarf: Druids with Candy.
• Check out the latest from Kuo.

Filed under: World of Warcraft | No Comments »

Videogamer.com has an interview up with Ryan Barker, the lead designer for seminal MMORPG EverQuest. When asked if he thought WoW would exist without EQ having been around, he replied that he didn’t think so, and that Blizzard designers would likely agree with that statement.

I think he’s right, too. The success of EQ allowed for countless imitators and innovators to follow in its footsteps, and WoW is certainly both of those things. What made WoW successful in the first place, beyond brand recognition, was the fact that the developers — whose team consisted of a number of former EQ devs and prominent community members! — refined and added on so many features cribbed from EQ. They made the formerly hardcore-only genre accessible to a wide variety of players and age groups, and in doing so broke subscriber and sales records — thus continuing to make new MMOs financially plausible. And with WoW’s improvements to the diku formula, the genre is now filled with WoW imitators as well. History repeats itself.

Sure, it’s entirely possible that WoW could have existed without the advent of EQ, but it would have been a very different game if it existed at all. And I doubt it would have been anywhere near as good without having been able to learn from EQ’s myriad mistakes or study its successes. We owe a lot to Old Man EQ. Now get off his lawn.

Filed under: World of Warcraft | No Comments »

Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers’ Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership.

“Normal” mode sounds so dull, doesn’t it? Who would want to be “Normal” when you can be “Heroic” — particularly when being Heroic garners better loot and, for healers specifically, a chance at the ultimate healing mace, Val’anyr. Most guilds on my server prefer the larger raids, and who can blame them? Normal mode is often seen as a fun distraction. Something for raiders to pass the time with, or gear up their alts in, when their guild isn’t tackling the “real” version of the instance.

Sometimes Normal mode is easier. There’s no question that fights like Vezax are much less complicated when you’re only dealing with 10 players. It’s certainly nice not having to worry about switching tanks on Kologarn or interrupting Auriaya’s Sentinel Blast. But sometimes Normal is not easier. The margin of error is a lot thinner when one death means you’ve lost half your tanks, a half or a third of your healers, or 15-20% of your DPS. And it could be that your raid doesn’t have a single battle rez, let alone three or four. Maybe that’s why players prefer Heroic raids: Unless you’re going after the more difficult hard-mode encounters, it’s not the end of the world when you screw up and die.

This week, one guild leader asks, when most serious raiders only want to run Heroic raids, how can someone recruit for a Normal raiding guild?

Hi Scott,

I’m the GM of a reasonably-successful 10-man raiding guild (we’re ranked in the top 90 US guilds according to GuildOx’s “Strict 10-man” filter). Like many other guilds, we’re seeing a decline in attendance lately (as per your most recent column, “Surviving summer“), and it’s become obvious that we need to recruit 4-5 more people of various classes/specs so we can reliably run our scheduled raids without depending on 100% perfect attendance from anyone.

Unfortunately, it’s been incredibly difficult to find potential recruits. Most of the people posting on the official Guild Recruitment forum are looking to run 25-man raids. Is there a perception that 25-mans are for “serious” raiders and 10-mans are for “casuals”? We’re not a casual guild nor are we bad players, we just prefer the more close-knit sense of camaraderie that comes with a smaller group. The type of players we want to recruit — experienced raiders who are dedicated min-maxers and really want to push difficult content — seem to gravitate towards 25-man guilds. Surely we can’t be the only progression-oriented raiders who prefer 10s to 25s, right? How can we find potential recruits who feel the same way?

Cheers,
Abima
GM of <Business Time>, Moonrunner-US

Abima, I feel your pain. My guild is in a similar situation. We run Heroic raids with other guilds from time to time, but we focus mainly on trying to be the best Normal-mode guild on the server. It puts us in a difficult place. If one thing is true about dedicated Normal raiding guilds, it’s that we’re a niche market. You definitely have to temper your expectations for the number of quality applications you’re going to get.

Here’s the good news. Heroic raiding guilds are a dime a dozen. Some are more successful than others. Some are absolutely excellent: They mastered Ulduar in a few weeks and began working on hard modes shortly thereafter. But many others struggle along, barely able to keep their roster intact, sometimes filling in the gaps with PUG players. They get boss kills, and they get loot, but they rarely go after hard modes or achievements. Their players don’t interact much outside of raids. If they ever stalled out on raiding for a week or two and the loot dried up, the entire guild would collapse.

For some raiders, that’s not enough. Those are the raiders you have to appeal to. You have to emphasize two things: the family-like atmosphere and the push for achievements and hard modes.

The first emphasis is an easy sell. Clearly you value the closeness of your community or you wouldn’t be a Normal-mode raiding guild at all. But you still need to make it clear what that means in your recruiting pitch. What do you do differently than a typical Heroic raiding guild? Do you hold special events that have nothing to do with raids? Do you allow your raiders more input in determining the direction of the guild? Tell people about these differences.

The second emphasis is something you can’t just talk about. You have to prove it. The biggest problem with serious Normal raiding is getting people to take you seriously.

Looking over your armory, I like that you’ve gone after some of the wackier achievements, like Not-So-Friendly Fire and Dwarfageddon. You’ve also managed some impressive ones from Tier 7 raids like And They Would All Go Down Together and A Poke in the Eye.

However, so far the only hard modes you’ve defeated are Sartharion with one drake and Flame Leviathan with one tower. Now, if you can do those, I guarantee that you can do them with two drakes and two or even three towers. You can also do Freya with one Elder. Try them out! Those achievements can be part of your normal clears without taking up a large portion of extra time, and they convey a message that you’re serious about hard modes and about excelling in general.

For now, though, you should probably focus on getting Yogg down before you get too deep into hard modes. Having cleared all Normal raid content without the help of Heroic Ulduar loot will be a feather in your cap. The nerfs this past week should help you with that. Skip some of the earlier bosses for a couple of weeks so you can push right for Yogg.

I don’t want to turn this column into armory bashing, so I’ll stop there. I’m not trying to pick apart your accomplishments here — I’m just trying to help you prioritize. Your guild has a lot to be proud of so far!

The bottom line, for any serious Normal raiding guild, is you have to take advantage of getting all your best people in a raid when you have them. Take an extra 20 or 30 minutes to get a hard mode achievement like Knock on Wood when the opportunity presents itself. Then tout these achievements when you recruit. No, it’s not the same as defeating the full hard mode would be, but it’s an indication that you’re heading in that direction.

That will signal to other like-minded players that you aren’t just a bunch of lazy slobs for whom putting together 25 players is too much work. That you are, in fact, real raiders in a real raid, and that you do take it seriously — perhaps more seriously than some Heroic raiding guilds do!

/salute

Filed under: World of Warcraft | No Comments »

Addon Spotlight takes a look at the little bits of Lua and XML that make our interfaces special. From bar mods to unit frames and beyond, if it goes in your Addons folder, we’ll cover it here.

A reader wrote in a few days ago with the question “What add ons would you consider helpful/essential for a new raid leader?”, and as a raid leader myself, I thought it was such a good question that I’m devoting this Addon Spotlight to it.

Deadly Boss Mods

Boss mods are very helpful for all raiders, of course, but particularly crucial for raid leaders, who need to call out when raiders need to do things. If you’re not familiar with boss mods, they basically aim to tell you any information about boss abilities that you might need to know during a fight. For instance, on XT-002, boss mods will tell you if anyone has a bomb debuff, when XT is about to throw a Tantrum, how long the heart has left, and so on.

Up until last night I used BigWigs, an alternative to DBM, but DBM shows you so much more information that I don’t think I’ll be going back to BigWigs any time soon. One especially key point in DBM’s favor is that it will show you health bars for mobs that need to die at the same time, like Stalagg and Feugen or the trio of elementals on Freya. Still, BigWigs is almost as good if you want an Ace version or if you just hate DBM for whatever reason.

Download Deadly Boss Mods at Curse/WoWInterface (I’m not linking to their official site because it has gold ads)

Omen Threat Meter

This is pretty much the only threat meter anyone uses these days, as far as I know. Crucial for yelling at the DPS to back off, or the tanks to pick it up. And since raid leaders are often tanks themselves, it’s a good way to monitor your own performance.

The default appearance is pretty terrible (parchment background, ugh), but it’s relatively easy to configure.

As a note of interest, threat meters are now 100% accurate in WoW 3.0, since addons can access threat information directly from the game API - no more guesswork.

Download Omen at Curse/WoWInterface

Recount

Love them or hate them, a damage meter is a useful tool if you know how to use them right. Recount is my current favorite, although there are others around. You do need to take damage meters with a huge grain of salt, because many things can affect a player’s performance (are they melee on a movement fight? did you put them on adds?). Still, information is good to have.

Recount is a fairly flexible and powerful damage meter. It records damage out, damage in, healing done, healing taken, dispells, resurrections, deaths, and more that I don’t even remember right now. It can break down a player’s damage, showing you how much comes from what spells (as pictured at right). It can list overall data, or data for any given fight. It can report to any channel you like. It works great for me, but again, there are many healing meters around; if you don’t like Recount, find one that fits your needs.

Please don’t put much stock in healing meters, though. They’re next to useless.

Download Recount at Curse

Raid frames

Blizzard’s raid frames are…well, I could politely call them “feature-light.” From range to ready check markers, custom raid frames can give you much more vital information, and in a much more compact space.

I use Grid because I fell in love with it as a healer, but X-Perl is also extremely popular. Pitbull will also work and is very powerful and flexible, though it’s labor-intensive to configure.

Download Grid at Curse/WoWInterface
Download X-Perl at Curse/WowInterface
Download Pitbull at Curse/WoWInterface

oRA2

Honestly, I don’t use this mod and don’t plan to, but many people here at WoW.com think I’m crazy for that. It’s basically a successor to the venerable CT_RaidAssist. It lets you do things like set up main tank frames, polls, and reagent/durability checks, and more. If that sounds like something you need, oRA2 is probably your mod.

Download oRA2 at Curse/WoWInterface

Acheron

This was a new mod to me; I owe Chase big time for pointing it out. Acheron produces death reports. When somebody dies, you can right-click their unit frame and click the Acheron menu entry, and you’ll see everything that happened to them in the six seconds (or so; configurable) prior to their death.

So whether it’s because they stood in the fire or because they really weren’t getting any heals, you can find out - and link it in whatever channel you want. Crucial. I used it at least half a dozen times last night in Ulduar.

Download Acheron at Curse/WoWInterface

That’s about it as far as what I consider near-mandatory for leading a raid. Of course, you also need anything that you would want for helping you play your class, or helping you play in general (cooldown bars, a bag mod, and so forth). If your raid uses DKP, you might want a mod for that.

A chat mod like WIM could come in handy to manage all the whispers you will be deluged with from time to time, although for my money it takes up too much space; I just use Prat and a separate tab for whispers.

There are literally hundreds more mods out there that could make your life easier in raids. In this article I just tried to hit some major categories (and Acheron, which is a revelation to me). If you think I missed anything crucial, or if there is a much better mod in one of these major categories, let me know in the comments. Happy raiding!

Filed under: World of Warcraft | No Comments »

Today’s musical selection for the queue will be the late great John Coltrane playing My Favorite Things in 1961 opposite the piano stylings of the equally great McCoy Tyner. Yes, some people may cover their ears and scream “omg soprano sax!” but others will no doubt spend 10 minutes watching and listening to these master musicians partake in this performance of a quintessential jazz song.

Kayri asked…

“A question about the speculation on the next expansion; everyone thinks it will be either The Maelstrom or The Emerald Dream. How will we quest in The Maelstrom? Are we going to swim around all the time?”

We don’t know. There was some aquatic mount rumblings when patch 3.1 was on the PTR, however that was mainly for the turtle mount you can get via fishing. It’s completely possible there will be more underwater activities if the next expansion is The Maelstrom, as it would certainly fit the lore.

And if the next expansion is the Emerald Dream, I fully expect to be able to jump on a horned Night Elf and ride him around like a Caribou.

Bart asked…

“With all the extended updates, restarts, etc., I was wondering does anyone know what it is that takes 12-14 hours to do each fortnight? It just seems like a very long time to need to have everything offline and I was genuinely curious to know roughly what happens during that time.”

The servers are a gigantic group of computers working together with one another. Think of the tens of thousands of people who connect to a server every day. In the perfect world there’d need to be no restarts or maintenance on the servers, but the world is far from perfect. With that kind of load things fail and become worn out, needing to be replaced.

A lot of people say “Blizzard is making billions of dollars a year, why can’t they get their servers to work?” Well, that’s true. But those people who say that need to remember that no one else in the world is running an operation like Blizzard is. Google and Microsoft have things that are close, but search technology presents significantly different requirements on their servers than a constant input and output of game information to tens of thousands of players at once.

Blizzard uses maintenance time to refine their servers, replace hardware, make things work smoothly, and do other things that would otherwise hamper performance and stability if the realms were live. Web servers are commonly taken offline for maintenance, but you rarely ever notice it because other servers are there to jump right in. However with dynamic and ever changing game data on a truly massive scale, things like that are not always possible.

I also think there is a good and necessary psychological component to having the servers be offline; it forces people who would otherwise play non-stop to get out and have look at the real world. We all know people like that. Ensuring an interruption in their play schedule is a good thing.

Ian asked…

“Should I gem to get the socket bonus?”

That depends on many factors. First and foremost there are one or two key stats that you want to focus on and get them to a minimum level. So gem for those stats until the minimum levels are reached. If you can be creative and get the socket bonus, great. If not, don’t worry about it at all.

When you’re at the minimum levels for key and critical stats, like hit or defense, then you can start to take a look at the socket bonus and compare and contrast what your overall stats would be like with and without the socket bonus in place. An example: your socket bonus gives you 100 more DPS when the gem you put in only gives you 50 more DPS. If you put in an off-color gem into the socket, you get 140 DPS but no socket bonus. The best option in that case is to put in the 50 DPS gem and get the 100 DPS socket bonus, because 150 DPS > 140 DPS. This is just an example, but it’s the kind of calculations you’ll need to make if you want your gear to be 100%. Most people do not achieve this level of gearing and just go for the maxing gem strategy where they use whatever gem will give them the most DPS / critical stat off the bat each time (ie: Warriors always stack stam gems).

Alex asked…

“What is your favorite color?“

Ecru

Terethall asked…

“What is the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow?”

What do you mean? African or European swallow?

Filed under: World of Warcraft | No Comments »

World of Fighter (yes there’s been a name change), the newest game from The9, the former publisher of WoW in China, is not going to be a WoW clone, or a Warhammer ripoff. Rather it seems to embody most of the characters from Capcom’s flagship title Street Fighter and a few of their other IPs.

The teaser website for the game has been updated with a flash movie showing artwork of Chun-Li, Ryu and other characters moving across the screen and announcing the game’s new name. It seems like Simon Belmont from Castlevania is also among the ranks along with some generic Asian-style characters. However what it actually is in terms of game play or genre remains unknown. Could it be a Street Fighter MMO?

We’ll keep you updated but given the announcement that The9 are suing Blizzard, it’s really no surprise that this new title has taken such a drastic change. How Capcom feel about this, however, remains to be seen.

Filed under: World of Warcraft | No Comments »

Many thanks to Sacco for covering The Queue last Friday. For some odd reason he decided to start drawing this weekend, and you can see one of his drawings above. For the other image you’ll have to check out our Twitter page (it wasn’t done when today’s edition of The Queue was written).

If you’re wondering about the title, we’re not going to talk about the mistake Adam made over the weekend when he was setting up WoW on his fresh dual-boot linux install. It’s just really not worth going over how he managed to delete his WoW directory that has lasted him since pre-BC. Not at all.

Remember that The Queue is here to answer your questions, and you can either leave them in a comment in this article or contact us with them. So without further ado…

Swampsquach asked…

“When you do the repeatable Frenzyheart/Oracle quest in Sholazar Basin, does it have any effect on the current rep you have with either one? For example, if I get revered with the Oracle’s and then do that quest but pick Oracle’s again, is that just free gold? Or does it set your rep back to honored?”

The quest to select which faction you’re aligning yourself with will set your faction standing at friendly to whatever faction you select, and make the other faction hate you. Does this mean that if you’re at Oracle exalted and select Oracle, that you’ll now be down to friendly with the Oracles? I don’t know, but why would you want to try that?

My advice: only use this quest when you’re wanting to switch between Frenzyheart and Oracles.

Airleagen asked…

“If the new instance has a 5, 10, and 25 man version, how do we enter the heroic/non-heroic version if there are three choices?”

The new 5-man dungeon (heroic and non-heroic) will be a separate dungeon from the 10/25-man one. Think of it as a Hellfire Citadel, a 5-man and a raid each having a different entrance portal. I should note that we haven’t actually seen the new place yet, but unless Blizzard changes some major game mechanics, this is how it’ll work. You can also read the blue statements on the new dungeon.

Jason asked…

“So I have a question: Will the new WoW.com have a mobile site like i.wowinsider.com?”

i.wow.com now works. There were some initial technical difficulties, but those are all taken care.

Many of you asked…

“Why do I still have to confirm my comments even after creating an account on WoW.com? Doesn’t that kinda defeat the purpose of creating an account?“

WoW.com profile and comment integration is coming soon. And not the Blizzard soon.

Many of you asked…

“When is wow.com going to fix the broke WoW Head links in the ‘read more’ version of stories?“

Soon.

MechChef asked…

“Hey Sacco, who are you?“

Sacco joined us back in December. He used to work for Blizzard under the forum name Belfaire. Based on real life images, I can confirm he is indeed a Talbuk with a penchant for Hawaiian pizza. Or is that Alex? I get those two confused.

Filed under: World of Warcraft | No Comments »

Corrupted Blood plague incident

The Corrupted Blood plague incident was one of the first events to affect entire servers. Patch 1.7 saw the opening of Zul’Gurub, the game’s first 20-player raid dungeon where players faced off against an ancient tribe of jungle trolls under the sway of the ancient Blood God, Hakkar the Soulflayer. Upon engaging Hakkar, players were stricken by a debuff called “Corrupted Blood” which would periodically sap their life. The disease would also be passed on to other players who were simply standing close to an infected person. Originally this malady was confined within the Zul’Gurub instance but made its way into the outside world by way of hunter pets or warlock minions that contracted the disease.

Within hours Corrupted Blood had infected entire cities such as Ironforge and Orgrimmar because of their high player concentrations. Low-level players were killed in seconds by the high-damage disease. Eventually Blizzard fixed the issue so that the plague could not exist outside of Zul’Gurub.

The corrupted blood plague so closely resembled the outbreak of real-world epidemics that scientists are currently looking at ways MMORPGs or other massively distributed systems can model human behavior during outbreaks. The reaction of players to the plague closely resembled previously hard-to-model aspects of human behavior that may allow researchers to more accurately predict how diseases and outbreaks spread amongst a population.^[67]

Usage problems

In September 2005, Blizzard gave all European players two free days of play as compensation for repeated network failures. During the early days of World of Warcraft’s U.S. release Blizzard also gave out free days to compensate players for days lost due to problems on their end. The issues were suspected to be Blizzard’s upstream Internet service provider.^[68] Weaknesses of the client-server model used by World of Warcraft have also been exploited in order to crash the cluster of servers that make up a realm.^[69] Exploits also include characters being able to instantly change location or teleport.^[70][71]

At various times, World of Warcraft players have experienced problems with connecting to and logging in to the game. Cases include long delays waiting for usernames and passwords to be authenticated or large queues on certain realms. Sudden server crashes that would force realms offline also occurred. The situation became worse when trying to coordinate activities across a number of players or guilds on the same realm. On May 3, 2006 Shane Dabiri, World of Warcraft Lead Producer, stated that new realms would be introduced to relieve the burden on existing ones. Existing realms would be upgraded. The paid migration service was also unveiled at this time.^[72][73]

Security concerns

When a player creates a World of Warcraft account, they are asked to choose a username and password. Whenever that player then plays World of Warcraft, they are asked to supply the same username and password in full. This is also the case when using account management facilities online. This type of authentication is vulnerable to keystroke logging. While this is not unique to World of Warcraft and is common to many MMORPGs, the game has been directly targeted with trojans being specifically crafted to capture account login details.^[74] Attacks have been reported as early as May 2006, although they may extend as far back as July 30, 2005.^[75]

In September 2006, reports emerged of spoof World of Warcraft gaming advice websites that contained malware. Vulnerable computers would be infected through their web browser, downloading a program that would then relay back account information. Blizzard’s account support teams experienced high demand during this episode, stating that many users had been affected. Claims were also made that telephone support was closed for isolated periods due to the volume of calls and resulting queues.^[76] In April 2007, attacks evolved to take advantage of further exploits involving animated cursors, with multiple websites being used.^[77][78] Security researcher group Symantec released a report stating that a compromised World of Warcraft account was worth US$10 on the black market, compared to US$6 to US$12 for a compromised computer (correct as of March 2007).^[79] In February 2008, phishing emails were distributed requesting that users validate their account information using a fake version of the World of Warcraft account management pages.^[80] In June 2008, Blizzard announced the Blizzard Authenticator, a hardware security token that provides two factor security. The token generates an one-time password based code that the player supplies when logging on. The password is only valid for a limited time, thus providing extra security against keylogging malware.^[81]

In the United Kingdom in February 2008, the Halifax Bank claimed that stolen credit card details were regularly being used to fraudulently pay for World of Warcraft accounts.^[82] A statement from the bank read that a “significant number of fraudulent transactions through Blizzard’s gaming sites” had been observed. As a result, the Bank had stated that transactions with Blizzard would be blocked by default, requesting that customers contact them directly to authorise payments. However, in the Autumn of 2008 this was no longer the case and Halifax accepted that the majority of transactions were legitimate and removed the default ban.^{[citation needed]}

Blizzard makes use of a system known as Warden on the Windows version of the game in order to detect third-party programs, such as botting software, allowing World of Warcraft to be played unattended. There has been some controversy as to the legality of Warden. Warden uses techniques similar to anti-virus software in order to analyse other running software on the players’ PCs, as well as the file system. However, unlike most anti-virus software, it sends a portion of this information back to Blizzard, which caused privacy advocates to accuse it of being spyware.^[83] One example of the information Warden collects is the title of every window open on the system while WoW is running.^[84] Blizzard has not stated what information is passed by Warden over the Internet, or if that information is encrypted, so it is entirely possible this information is passed over the Internet back to Blizzard. On balance, many gamers responded positively about the development, stating that they supported the technology if it resulted in fewer cases of cheating. Blizzard’s use of Warden was stated in the Terms of Agreement (TOA).^[85]

The Warden’s existence was acknowledged in March 2008, during the opening legal proceedings against MDY Industries.^[86] The lawsuit was filed in federal court in Arizona, and also listed Michael Donnelly as a defendant. Donnelly was included in the suit as the creator of MMO Glider, software that can automatically play many tasks in the game. Blizzard claimed the software is an infringement of its copyright and software license agreement, stating that “Glider use severely harms the WoW gaming experience for other players by altering the balance of play, disrupting the social and immersive aspects of the game, and undermining the in-game economy”. Donnelly claims to have sold 100,000 copies of the $25 software.^[87]

Filed under: World of Warcraft | No Comments »