Tagged News: vivendi

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!

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.

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!

A cursory glance at the new heroic badge loot available post 2.3 reveals a surprising explosion of balance druid loot, a spec that was once forced to resort to stealing gear from mages and warlocks just to survive. This wasn't surprising though as Edrik from Terenas reminds us...

Right at the end of the [Curse Gaming interview] video Tigole starts answering questions on the ZA patch and badge loot.

"We also want to throw a ton more items on the heroic badge vendor ... to flesh out off-specs like Moonkin Druids and Retribution Paladins."

Edrik goes on to ask...what happened to the retadin itemization that we were promised? As it stands, retribution paladin itemization is similarly barren and an issue of heavy contention. The few raiding retadins out have generally resorted to using generic plate DPS gear alongside their spec-specific tier set and hoping they can make up for it with promises of massive crits and raid synergy. But where's the gear? Drysc says it's already there:

Ret badge rewards are there, technically, but it isn't as apparent as there's still some class changes coming that will be "finishing" the intended vision of hybrid itemization.

You don't want the DPS plate now, but we want you to want it. Similar to the Heart of the Wild change, and the first 'lean' into having kitties desire rogue itemization. It's an overall change in itemization focus as we move forward, and into Wrath. We're in a state of transition now, and it's going to be a bit uncomfortable in some cases.

Similar to the movement away from itemizating feral druid cat DPS gear with strength as opposed to the more popular attack power for rogues, it seems that we might be seeing a change to the way retadin abilities work, most likely a removal of the added spell damage component of Crusader Strike, which currently adds 40% of the paladins holy spell damage in additional damage.

World of Warcraft Lead Designer Jeffrey Kaplan talks to us today about the upcoming Wrath of the Lich King expansion in this new WarCry Q&A.; Jason Rice finds out about raids, story, reputation and more.

WarCry: The death knight is being billed as a tank/dps (damage per second) hybrid. How do you see them fitting into raids alongside protection warriors, feral druids, and protection paladins?

Jeffrey Kaplan: We made some really good strides in The Burning Crusade to improve the feral druid as a hybrid tank/dps class. That will be the general direction we'll be looking to go with the death knight. Obviously, the protection warrior is in a good place in terms of dungeon and raid tanking. And the protection paladin is hands-down the best multi-target tank. Of course, there's always room for improvement, but you can see the general direction the tanking classes are headed. While all of these classes are capable of fulfilling similar roles, they offer very different abilities and playstyles.

Click through to read the full interview.