World of Warcraft 4

Filed under: (Guild Leadership) Officers’ Quarters

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

Lately I’ve gotten a lot of e-mail from readers with a similar theme. People ask me, “Should I stick with my guild even though we aren’t raiding yet?” They say, “We just lost five members because we haven’t cleared Naxx.” They tell me, “I hate PUGs, but I can’t even run a Heroic with my guild because only two people are 80.”

They ask me to weigh their guild against their desire to run group content. And the fact of the matter is this: I can’t answer that question for you. And I’ll tell you why.

Continue reading Officers’ Quarters: Waiting at 80

Officers’ Quarters: Waiting at 80 originally appeared on WoW Insider on Mon, 29 Dec 2008 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Fan stuff, Virtual selves, Odds and ends, Humor

Just in case, like me, you missed last week’s Guild episode, you get not one but two episodes of The Guild today. In last week’s episode, we found out more about the eye-dentity of Mr. Eyepatch, and now episode five is out today, ready to watch.

This week, Zaboo continues trying to become a man, with the usual creepy results, and Tink shows a new side of herself — Felicia promised us a while ago that we’d see new relationships sprouting up between the characters, and that’s exactly what we’re getting. Plus, the stuntman, who seemed like he might fit right in with the gang, might not actually be on exactly the same page.

And this episode also shows off the show’s bigger budget in a pretty exciting way (not to mention that the cinematography is looking really good lately). We almost can’t keep up with all of The Guild coming out this year. Is it possible to have too much of a good thing?

The Guild: Season 2, episode five originally appeared on WoW Insider on Tue, 30 Dec 2008 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Screenshots, Around Azeroth, Galleries

Hey, what has two thumbs and is too scared to face a pre-BC raid boss? This guy! Actually, Blabba from Bladefist is less a coward and more of a victim of circumstance. As he tells it, his guild took ten people through to brute-force Molten Core, only two of whom had ever done the instance before. The experienced leaders decided to have some fun with the group on Ragnaros. They told the casters to stand with their backs to the wall, but informed melee that they were on their own.

As such, Blabba was taken by surprise when Rag’s knockback blasted him to the top of the pillar. He jumped down, managed to get in one hit with his weapon, and was hit back to the pillar again. After this experience, he decided that his guild could nine-man Rag and stayed atop the pillar for the rest of the fight. It took his group two minutes to locate him after the boss went down. I can’t blame him — I’ve spent many a boss fight wishing I were watching it from a safe distance away.

Do you have any unusual World of Warcraft images that are just collecting dust in your screenshots folder? We’d love to see it on Around Azeroth! Sharing your screenshot is as simple as e-mailing aroundazeroth@wowinsider.com with a copy of your shot and a brief explanation of the scene. You could be featured here next!

Remember to include your player name, server and/or guild if you want it mentioned. Please include the word “Azeroth” in your post so it does not get swept into the spam bin. We strongly prefer full screen shots without the UI showing — use alt-Z to remove it. Please, no more battleground scoreboards, double-mounts, or pictures of the Ninja Turtles in Dalaran.

Around Azeroth: Raiding for cowards originally appeared on WoW Insider on Tue, 30 Dec 2008 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, News items

The Huffington Post (among other sources) is reporting that FCC Commissioner Deborah Tate has resigned. This is the woman who, less than a month ago, said that World of Warcraft was one of the top reasons for college drop-outs. Now, I can’t entirely blame someone for seeing MMOs as a bad thing, there are certainly a lot of people who don’t seem to have the ability to throttle their playtime, but that really wasn’t her first silly act or statement while she held her position (taking advice from corporations is bad, mmkay). A lot of people will take this news as a godsend.

Of course, that doesn’t mean she didn’t do any good at all. Your personal views may differ from hers depending on the topic, but she’s generally pretty well regarded for her efforts when it comes to issues regarding children and their protection. Personally, I don’t agree with the extreme ‘think of the children!’ mentality (or Tate’s approach to it) that’s become increasingly common, but again, my opinion doesn’t represent a nation. A few out of line comments don’t negate her efforts entirely.

Continue reading FCC commissioner Deborah Tate resigns

FCC commissioner Deborah Tate resigns originally appeared on WoW Insider on Tue, 30 Dec 2008 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Blizzard, Account Security

Back in late October and early November, you may (or may not) remember that Blizzard was having some substantial issues with their character transfer system. To prepare for the release of Wrath of the Lich King, there was an epic number of people moving characters around for one reason or another. A problem came up where some characters were getting lost in limbo along the way. Stuck, and unable to be played.

One of our readers wrote in this morning with a followup, and it seems that everyone who had issues is being granted a 15-day playtime credit on their account to make up for it. Half a month across the board is a pretty substantial credit, especially considering many of the people we’ve heard from were only locked out of their characters for a couple of days. I’m sure we’d all prefer there was never a problem to begin with, but this is a pretty generous compensation if true. I was impressed when they gave everyone a three day credit awhile back.

Continue reading 15 day credit given to players affected by character transfer issues

15 day credit given to players affected by character transfer issues originally appeared on WoW Insider on Tue, 30 Dec 2008 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Fan art

Emkephalin from Terenas sent us this picture of a wonderful Christmas present created for him by his mother. As the story goes, Emkephalin introduced his mother WoW a few years ago, like so many other players who play with their family. She waited until she’d officially retired before starting the game, which probably was a wise move. In a few short days, she reached the limits of what you can do on a trial account, and immediately went out and picked up her full retail copy.

Flash forward to this Christmas season. Among WoW-playing and scuba diving, it turns out Emk’s mother also creates tile mosaics. You can imagine his surprise when Emkephalin removed the wrapping paper from the top of this table to see the wonderful Horde pattern created on the right. Emk was obviously pleased enough to drop us a tip, as well as a picture link to see it for ourselves.

This is a continuation of how WoW has inspired people for the season. I can’t wait to see what next year brings, and am probably going to invest my time between now and then to learn how to make something myself. It certainly would be awesome to enjoy coffee over such a distinctive table.

A table for Horde, please originally appeared on WoW Insider on Tue, 30 Dec 2008 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Fan stuff, Virtual selves, Blizzard, Factions, Classes

Most Minnesota Vikings fans are saying that their punter, Chris Kluwe, is probably the best dropkicker to play for the team, and this profile in the Star Tribune reveals something else about the young (he’s 27) football player: he also plays World of Warcraft. Not only is he breaking team records left and right, but he’s an avid videogame player, and talks about his time in Azeroth so much that a local morning show has dubbed him “Chris Warcraft.” His Wikipedia entry also says he once sent a signed Wrath mousepad to a fan in Canada, too. So while he might not be 80 yet (the Vikings have been busy winning my sorry Bears’ division this year, and now they’re headed to the playoffs), he has been around and playing lately.

Unfortunately, while there are quite a few notes about his game-playing around the ‘net (he’s also a big Guitar Hero fan, so Activision-Blizzard will probably appreciate that), we haven’t seen his characters mentioned anywhere, so we have no idea what class or race he plays. For some reason, Mage jumps to mind as a complete guess, and so does Horde, but we’ll probably have to ask Kluwe himself to find out.

Update: Internet detectives in the comments below say he’s a Troll Rogue on Kil’jaeden. And that he’s already hit 80 (isn’t he supposed to be practicing for the playoffs?).

Update2: Kluwe got in touch with us and confirmed that yes, he’s an 80 Rogue (so I’m 50/50 on the random guessing). He also says that he hasn’t had too much time to play lately, since he and his wife just had a baby girl. And he says that if you really want to be amused at how he spends his time, check his achievements. Yes, he’s a Merrymaker.

Vikings punter Chris Kluwe plays WoW originally appeared on WoW Insider on Tue, 30 Dec 2008 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Odds and ends, Blizzard, Economy, Making money, Wrath of the Lich King

Our good friends over at Massively have teamed up with the GamerDNA site to come up with some stats of MMO playtime this year, and the results are very interesting. Unfortunately, those results are buried under some pretty confusing charts (and these are all approximations of what’s happening from GamerDNA information, not actual subscription numbers), but we’ll see if we can pull out the salient points for you.

In (very) short, WoW rules. Two games that most pundits thought might affect WoW playtime, Warhammer Online and Age of Conan, in fact, didn’t affect WoW logons in the least, according to this data. And while guest contributor (and GamerDNA writer/analyst) Sanya Weathers says she may have spotted a short decline in WoW playtime right around the release of WAR, that was quickly overshot by the release of Wrath, as WoW’s numbers jumped right back up.

But while Blizzard has weathered the competition this year, things might not be so hunky dory for them in the future: while games like Lord of the Rings Online and EVE Online are showing sharper increases, WoW’s population seems to be leveling out. It’s still growing, sure, but not at the rate that it has been (and perhaps at the slowest rate in the game’s life). And you have to think, as we said on the podcast last week, that whatever other expansions Blizzard can come up with, none will be as interesting to their players as finishing off the story of Arthas Menethil and the Lich King. WoW is still the undisputed king of MMOs, but the stats say we’re closer to the end of its reign than the beginning.

Massively and GamerDNA chart the MMO market in 2008 originally appeared on WoW Insider on Tue, 30 Dec 2008 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Breakfast topics, Leveling, Death Knight, Wrath of the Lich King

It’s over a month after the release of Wrath of the Lich King and the World of Warcraft’s first new class since its release. And though I’m guessing you all know exactly what I’m talking about, for the sake of clarity, I’ll spell it out: we’re talking about Death Knights. When everyone had an expansion box in their hot little hands, the first thing most of them seemed to do was hop off to roll a shiny new Death Knight. (Note: calling a Death Knight “shiny” to their face may or may not wind up duels to the death, but personally, I wouldn’t risk it.) The starting zones were crowded and no one could have wanted for companionship while leveling up towards Northrend (unless they needed a healer, anyway). But after a month and a half? The rush is over and the crowd has died down. Have you rolled your Death Knight? Were you waiting on getting a main (or a main and an alt or two) to 80 first? Is anyone out there still rolling Death Knights?

Breakfast Topic: Death Knights and you originally appeared on WoW Insider on Tue, 30 Dec 2008 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Realm Status, News items

Have you seen Blind yet? Seriously. It’s on the site, I swear. It’s so good we posted it twice, even. Well, I guess three times, now. And seriously, guys. The music is fine. Awesome even. This is probably the most dynamic, well plotted, well choreographed WoW Movie to come across the desk here at WoW Insider, so even if you don’t watch WoW videos, you are going to want to give this one a watch. Also, I just realized that the title “Blind” refers to the rogue skill, so that’s cool too.

If you can’t find the time to watch it now, you’ll have time in a little bit when the rolling restarts start. They start at 5 AM Pacific for American servers, 10 AM Pacific for the Oceanic servers. And once you’re finished watching that and you pop your jaw back into place, try some of these articles:

Continue reading Tuesday Morning Post: Blinded by the Light edition

Tuesday Morning Post: Blinded by the Light edition originally appeared on WoW Insider on Tue, 30 Dec 2008 07:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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