Tagged News: blizzard

Those who've tried to summon somebody inside Zul'Aman recently have probably noticed that the entire instance has been flagged as "no-summoning", similar to the entire zone of Netherstorm. It seems that there's some sort of wall-jumping exploit that allows players to defeat the chest timer quicker than intended, so:

We had to disable summoning yesterday via emergency hotfix due to some exploits. We're hoping to re-enable summoning as soon as possible. We know it's a big inconvenience and we apologize.

On a related note, we're looking into fixing some issues with summoning that would once again enable us to allow warlocks to summon people into an instance from anywhere in the world. This could happen as soon as the next big content patch (2.4.0) if all of the technical issues can be resolved by then.

It seems everytime Blizzard closes a door they open a portal to the twisting nether. The long-awaited return of into-instance summoning will be a great boon for many guilds who already have a hard time getting people to show up on time for raids.

Tuesday morning. It's a magical time for the friends and family of most WoW players, a time where their loved one emerges from their dank cave and actually engages in social contact. The mail gets picked up, clothes get washed, perhaps even pets get fed. No matter what the server, if it's between 3 and 11am (pacific standard time of course) on a Tuesday, you can bet WoW players around the world are doing the mythical something else.

Players have never questioned this natural phenomenon until now, whenposter Dranlu asks "Why do all the realms have to go down at once?". Drysc gives us the best answer he can:

I won't go into the technical nature of "why" we have Tuesday maintenance, I think that's better answered at another time and by someone more qualified than myself, but that didn't seem to be your real question anyhow.

The reason why we take down all realms at the same time is because it's quicker, it doesn't restrict some realms more than others, and it doesn't force players to swamp other realms that are up. If anyone remembers some of the larger issues we had back a couple years ago or so, when a realm or group of realms go down, everyone on those realms would converge on a single realm and more or less grief the entire population of that realm. Not fun for the original players of that realm. It's quicker because the maintenance can take a while, and doing one group of realms at a time would mean some group of realms, or multiple groups, would not be available near or during prime time, and we like to avoid that whenever possible of course.

We have made some great improvements though in our maintenance times, and we're now able to schedule rolling restarts every other week which only require realms to be down for 15 minutes or so. We're continuing to refine the process, and make improvements where possible.

In the end, enjoy the scant time you do get away from reputation grinding and PvP. Go see a loved one (assuming they're awake) or get some homework done. Better yet, watch the sun rise over your monitor as you obsessively refresh the WoW forums.

A new practice of cheesing the personal rating requirement on s3 shoulders and weapons has been defeated according to this succinct post by Tyren:

Please be aware that with this week's maintenance, purchasing arena season 3 items that have a required arena personal rating will now also require the purchaser's arena team rating to be at the same point values as well.

Unfortunately, this will not be properly displayed within the game; the in-game display will be fixed soon in an upcoming patch.

This change is a response to a new method the always ingenious arena crowd developed. Members make up a team full of their mains and alts, then proceed to win with their mains and lose with their alts, keeping their team in the 1500 range. Since many teams in that range are of the "lose 10 games a week and get your epics" mentality, they can easily farm up their personal rating without moving into the more difficult brackets. No longer so, as now their hampered team rating will prevent them from getting the tastier pieces of gear that were previously available to them.

Jobs have been listed for this 'next gen' MMO for quite awhile now but with no official response from Blizzard on just what this project is, speculation has been rampant. Many people believed this new project would just be another WoW expansion, but finally a Blizzard official has responded to confirm that this next-gen project is in fact an entirely new MMO:

Drysc:
No, it is an unannounced Next-Gen MMO.

And that doesn't mean an expansion for World of Warcraft either.

The confirmation is available here on the official WoW boards.

The phenomenon that is World of Warcraft is poised to conquer yet another international territory in 2008: Russia. According to this press release the members of the WoW Europe offices are busy assembling a Russian-speaking team to support their latest localization.

Release is planned for sometime in 2008 and there's no word whether or not they'll get The Burning Crusade right away, but since it seems Blizzard will be directly handling the port (rather than having an outside company do it like with the Chinese version) there may be a smaller gap in getting things rolling.

Full press release after the bump!

If you've seen the latest celebrity WoW commercials featuring William Shatner and Mr. T of all people, I guess it's not so surprising to see Jean Claude Van Damme either. Of course this is a French commercial for WoW FR but apparently Jean loves playing a Mage. I guess he gets enough of that martial arts stuff in real life and just likes turning people into sheep.

Click below to see it.

Many of us, me included, were wrangled in by that sky blue 'recommended' tag and found ourselves adrift in a sea of so-so players, endless group searches, and exceptionally easy farming.

Blizzard is doing what it can to help this, offering a new round of free server transfers from some of the more bloated queue-happy servers to some of the smaller, less popular, ones:

Source Group A
Burning Blade
Warsong**
Laughing Skull
Arthas

Destination Realm A
Jaedenar

Source Group B
Spinebreaker
Mug'thol
Mal'Ganis
Tichondrius

Destination Realm B
Nazjatar

Source Group C
Sargeras
Dragonmaw
Bonechewer
Illidan

Destination Realm C
Maiev

The transfers are scheduled to stop when the destination realms reach their target population, so if you're considering it, act sooner rather than later.

Please be aware that key loggers have been added to a massive amounts of AddOn packages on several different AddOn sites.

In general we recommend not downloading any AddOn packages that have executables or batch files that run installers or data collectors, as they may have been tampered with.

Cairenn has posted an excellent description of the problem and how to resolve it if you've already installed an infected package:

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=3168484081&sid=1

In addition, WoWInterface.com has taken the step of quarantining any package that has an executable installer. This was a bold move to ensure the safety of the community and is greatly appreciated.

Video game giants Blizzard and Activision have announced an $18 billion merger. The two new found partners claim that the merger creates "the world's most profitable games business."

The companies behind Call of Duty and World of Warcraft are merging in a deal which could shake up the global video games industry.

Activision and Blizzard have said they will form "the world's most profitable games business" in a deal worth $18.8bn (£9.15bn).

US-based Activision also makes hit console games such as the Tony Hawk series and Guitar Hero.

Nine million people pay a monthly subscription to play World of Warcraft.

Read more here.

Ever since the start of Arena Season 3 it seems that quite a few players have been experiencing issues with server queues due to the sudden influx of players both signing on to get their new loot and also vie for a shot at a higher arena rating now that they've all been reset to 1500. Drysc informs us of what they're doing:

We have raised some of the maximum population caps on a few realms that were hitting regular queues just from 2.3. If it's required we can do the same for more realms, or take some other action to help bring populations back in-line.

But will we be seeing any new realms anytime soon? Nope:

It's a possible solution if it really looks like there's enough there to make up a whole other realm. What we could possibly do is open a new realm, have free transfers from all Oceanic realms to it, and disable character creation. It would all depend on actual numbers and trends of players, which I don't have in front of me.

It would be a shame to jump the gun and assume that the 2.3 and season 3 buzz won't die down, cave in to short-lived complaints, and open a new realm/offer transfers for what will very likely be a short term problem.

So for now, just sit tight. Like usual, the reports are most likely greatly exaggerated. But if you're worried about 2v2 Arena queues, Drysc thinks you should try another bracket:

There's a limitation on how many games can run at the same time, and while we're always looking to expand and improve our infrastructure to 'give some extra slack' to those types of restrictions, there are no current plans to see an increased amount of games running.

We recommend playing in the larger team sizes, or outside of the peak play times. 2v2 teams are obviously the most abundant, and if you just go up one team size to 3v3 or play before or after the peak ~5PM-9PM, you should have an easier time.

If tournaments like Dreamhack mean anything, 3v3 is the bracket to work on, so get practicing!