Tagged News: world of warcraft

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.

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.

'Tis the season again and Blizzard is collaborating with Father Winter to bring the Feast of Winter Veil events from December 15th till January 2nd. In addition to the regular events, this year we'll enjoy a few more special surprises:

-The Preserved Holly that players can get from completing special holiday quests can now be used on flying mounts. This will temporarily turn their flying mount into a flying reindeer that trails sparkles as it flies through the air.

- Handful of Snowflakes: this is a new item you can obtain by /kiss -ing a Winter Reveler NPC. It will create a light snowfall above any targeted player.

- Burning Crusade Holiday Bosses: as in past years, certain bosses will be dressed in a festive fashion and will drop seasonal hats when defeated. The holiday versions of the bosses will begin on Dec. 25 and end on Jan. 2. These bosses include:

*Grand Warlock Netherkurse (Shattered Halls)
*Grandmaster Vorpil (Shadow Labyrinth)
*Exarch Maladaar (Auchenai Crypts)
*Captain Skarloc (Durnholde Keep)
*Nethermancer Sepethrea (Mechanar)
*High Botanists Freywinn (Botanica)

- Mechanotoy: This is a new gift that can be obtained from under the Winter Veil tree in Ironforge and Orgrimmar. It lets you summon a Mechanotoy non-combat pet to follow you around.

Plus, check out the rest of the list after the jump!

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.

Gamasutra posted today a report by Janco Partners' analyst Mike Hickey, who talked about World of Warcraft's churn rate and its future prospects:

In his note, in which the financial analyst raised Activision's share price target from $20 to $35 in advance of the merger, Hickey particularly noted: "We expect the Company's WoW franchise will provide a strong source of continued growth. However, with a multitude of competitive MMOs positioned to enter the channel, potential subscriber fatigue and competitive options could undermine subscriber growth projections."

However, he continued: "That said, with only 4 years in the market, World Of Warcraft continues to attract subscribers at an amazing rate, with churn reported to be below other well performing subscriber based business models (we are thinking below a 4 to 5% per month.)" Churn rate refers to the number of subscribers who leave the service during the month.

The analyst concluded that WoW still has much steam in its engines, evident by Vivendi's large majority stake in the newly merged Activision Blizzard company.

The online resource website Howstuffworks has published their own World of Warcraft: A Beginner's Guide. The guide does a very good job at covering an array of basic topics, like etiquette, solo vs group play, and battlegrounds, all meant to help new players start their adventures in Azeroth with some much needed information.

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.

VideoGamer.com talked to Blizzard's executive vice-president of product development, Frank Pearce, who denied any current plans to create a World of Warcraft sequel:

Speaking to VideoGamer.com, Pearce said the team is still waiting to enjoy new content as players before turning to what must be an inevitable sequel.

"We haven't even started to think about a sequel," he said. "The team still has a huge wishlist of exciting features to add on top of what's already been implemented since launch. Not to mention, we're all still playing the game pretty heavily ourselves, and there's a lot more content that we want to see as players."

Asked when the new expansion might be released, Pearce was typically cagey, sticking to the "not ready till it's ready" mantra Blizzard is famous for.

VideoGamer.com will feature an extended Blizzard interview next Monday.