Biggs' Zone

A Geek's Cogitations, Conjectures and other Cortical Experiences

Category: World of Warcraft Page 11 of 13

Blizzcon 2013 Opening Ceremonies

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On November 8, 2013

In Gaming, MMORPG, World of Warcraft

blizzconBlizzcon 2013 is this weekend (if you didn’t know). I didn’t get a virtual ticket this year, we have to save some money but the opening ceremonies are free to watch. If you watched it then you might not find anything in this post that you didn’t already know. It has been two years since the last BlizzCon so I know everyone is pretty excited about what they are announcing (even if you’re not playing WoW anymore).

Heroes of the Storm – The video introducing Dustin Browser was pretty cool. All the different heroes fighting each other. They showed some content of Heroes of the Storm. It pretty much looks like League of Legends with all the Blizzard heroes. Based on the glimpses of the videos you can play as Arthas (as the Lich King), Carrigan, Diablo, etc. I’m not much of a LoL fan but the game does look cool and I’m sure if you are a fan of both games then you’re going to really love this game.

**Big News** Beta sign-ups for Heroes of the Storm are live!

HearthStone – Rob Pardo. Originally a stealth/experimental project at Blizzard. Despite how “geeky” a battle card game seemed to be, when they were playing the game internally they logged so many hours they decided that they must have something pretty good, and thus HearthStone was born. This is Blizzards first tablet game and there will be iPhone and Android versions (haha, no Windows Phone!). Honestly, I can actually see myself playing HearthStone on my tablet more then on my computer.

**Big News** Going into beta next month.

If you went to the show or ordered a virtual ticket then you will get a special Blizzcon card called the Elite Tauren Chieftain and when you play the card, yea, its pretty awesome! Adding golden player cards, like the golden cards, which are fully animated. It looks kind of cool.

World of WarCraft – Of course the illustrious Chris Metzen talked to us about the WoW expansion. We all kind of knew it was called Warlods of Draenor – Metzen predicated the announcement by talking a lot of origins. He called the Alliance the “Captain America Faction” … love it! It sounds like we might be fighting some pretty old school villians which will be kind of cool to see (some names Metzen through out were Gul’dan, Hellscream, Blackmoore, etc. So it’ll be interesting. After building up the Alliance and giving some love to the Horde, the next expansion video debuts:

Warlods of Draenor – It will contain a new zone called Draenor (kind of obvious) The video said you will be able to build and upgrade garrisons so that might mean some kind of player housing. I’m sure the details of garrisons will come out in future panels, I will have to watch some of the other live blogs to learn more. Obviously the new level cap is 100. All the existing character models are getting new looks and upgrades and, of course, new items and loots. You can see the video below:

Please feel free to share anything you saw and your thoughts, positive and negative.

WoW: Timeless Isle Unimpressive

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On October 1, 2013

In Gaming, MMORPG, World of Warcraft

timeless-isleWe are about two weeks into WoW’s last big content patch for the current expansion. This patch included a new island called the Timeless Isle which is littered with elites and rare mobs. I have been actively completing the daily/weekly quests and killing rare mobs often on two toons since the patch dropped and I’ve got to say, I’m unimpressed.

The final reputation to farm is Emperor Shaohao and its a brutal grind! There is a daily question to kill 20 elites, a weekly quest to kill 5 rares and gather 50 epoch stones. It’s brutal! I think the worst part is that there’s nothing that makes it worth the grind. You can gather a ton of Timeless Coins and Valor Points, but there’s nothing to spend them on. There isn’t any new rep gear that’s higher than 500. It’s just a bunch of commodity crap (as if we don’t have enough commodity items taking up space in our bags already)! The BoA pieces are kinda nice, and with Burden’s of Eternity you might be able to upgrade your gear to 535 but after you are finished finally killing 20 mobs, you are pretty burnt out.

So why do I keep going out there?? I don’t get it. I know how much of an awful grind-fest this island is but I still find myself going out there daily and killing mobs. Granted its a great way to gear up alts since you can mail all the BoA pieces to any toon on the same server and upgrade straight to a 496 ilevel. As far as my main raiding toon is concerned, I don’t think there is really anything that island has to offer that is of any use to my character’s advancement.

I don’t know. I feel like the Isle of the Thunder King had more to offer.

/shrug

The Blizzard Authentication Frivolity

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On November 13, 2012

In Gaming, Soapbox, World of Warcraft

The fact that a group of players and greedy lawyers think they can scam Blizzard with this frivolous lawsuit about account security is hilarious almost to the point of absurdity. It’s like suing the police department because someone broke into your house. It is the responsibility of the PC owner to secure their computer and account. Blizzard cannot, and does not, force people to purchase an authenticator (which they sell at a loss, by the way), they simply encourage their use to help further protect your account.

The ignorance of people these days is infuriating and I love Blizzard’s response to the allegations:

“This suit is without merit and filled with patently false information, and we will vigorously defend ourselves through the appropriate legal channels.”

I think that’s legalese for “you’re stupid for even suggesting that this is our fault!” – I heartily agree. I haven’t seen where any of the names of the accusing parties have been given, obviously because they will be ridiculed to the end of their days by anyone with an IQ larger then their shoe size.

Come on people, there are better ways to make money. Try getting an actual job, that seems to be working out well for me.

WoW: Add-ons and LUA

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On November 2, 2012

In World of Warcraft

I can get a little add-on crazy with WoW sometimes. I know there are a lot of people out there that like to troll about using add-ons but I say to each their own. I currently have 25 add-ons installed (I don’t really know if that is a lot or little compared to what others are running). I recently downloaded an add-on that hasn’t been updated since March 2011 and the author has said that he won’t be updating it anymore because of changes in life, which is understandable.

Remarkably the add-on still worked great but there were a couple of idiosyncrasies that I wished could be tweaked. I thought, well, I’m a programmer by trade so I opened up the code and, in about 10 minutes, figured out what I could do to change the add-on.

So it got me thinking, would it be worth perhaps taking over this add-on and/or perhaps venturing into my own add-on endeavors. I don’t know if there is a suggested method or IDE for writing and debugging add-ons other then clicking save and launching the game to see if you get any LUA errors. Perhaps its something I will start researching. Has anyone else out there spent some time messing around with LUA and writing/maintaining add-ons?

WoW: Is Player Housing Coming?

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On October 22, 2012

In World of Warcraft

I never played Farmville because I didn’t use Facebook to play stupid games; I barely play games on my iPhone and iPad. I was rolling my eyes when I first read about The Tillers which is, for all intents and purposes, Blizzard’s adaptation of Farmville in WoW. Now we are three weeks into the expansion and I find myself checking my farm first thing.

I’m addicted to my farm! I even log out at the Inn above Halfhill Market. While I have no inclination to start doing Farmville, the mechanic Blizzard has developed to allow every player to have their own farm has my mind wondering … is player housing coming?

Apparently I’m not the only one. I, lovingly, stole this excerpt from a post of The Queue from WoW Insider:

BlazeNor asked:

With this farming aspect added to the game that seem to be done with phasing, do you think this could open the door to housing? For example allowing players to own a piece of land and building on it though reputation and dailies.

I absolutely do think it could lead to that, yeah. I think our farm in Mists of Pandaria is Blizzard’s testing ground for player housing. The question has always been, if they give us player housing, what do you do there? Do you just retire after a hard day of questing, make some popcorn, and watch some TV in your house in Stormwind? No, that’s boring. They won’t just give us a room to put up some paintings or whatever and leave it at that. They would want player housing to be an activity, something with goals and objectives. Our tiny little farm in Valley of the Four Winds is a good example of housing being an actual activity — to get something for your farm, you need to work towards it, you have to earn it. It’s a great start. They’re seeing what works and what doesn’t.

I could totally see them building on the Mists of Pandaria model and doing something like … we’re on whatever continent or planet comes next, and the Alliance (or Horde) entrusts you with a newly established, totally ramshackle stronghold. You need to improve its fortifications, make friends with local warlords or mercenaries, recruit officers, and bling out your throne room. That would be way more epic than an apartment in Old Town. Though the roleplayer in me thinks an apartment in Old Town would be pretty sweet, too.

I know that Blizzard has been talking about the possibility of player housing for a few years now and I agree with the author (Alex Ziebart) of that post. I think its very possible to implement player housing and I do think Sunsong Ranch is their beta test. Actually the idea of revitalizing a “ramshackle stronghold” is really cool. I think I almost like it better then player housing.

I have noticed something though that I think they may have to tackle. Even when you are in a group with someone, you cannot visit their farm. I would think that if you introduce player housing or player strongholds, players will probably want to invite their friends to come over and play.

Perhaps that is something Blizzard is working out as well.

/Cheers!

WoW: Mists of Pandaria Impressions (thus far)

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On September 28, 2012

In World of Warcraft

I’m going to try to talk about what I think of the Mists of Pandaria expansion without revealing too much about what is happening lore-wise. I know its only been a couple of days since the expansion has gone live, but I feel like I already have enough to talk about to warrant this post.

The premise is the war between the Horde and Alliance has heated up to volcanic proportions as a result of the senseless demolition of Theramore. The fighting between the two factions has brought them to the shores of Pandaria, a peaceful and lost island of the Pandarians. The presence of this island has only now been revealed thanks to Deathwing’s attempted re-ascension. Now both sides are battling for control of this island and the Pandarian’s are stuck in the middle, forced to choose a side.

I know the European launch seemed to have gotten off to a rocky start but I think the seamless launch in the US went off flawlessly. I would even go so far as to say that this is probably the smoothest launch Blizzard has had with a WoW expansion.

I haven’t played the Horde side yet, but so far the Alliance side is pretty fun. The battle pretty much starts right away as you are sent to the island in search of something very precious that has been lost. Although, about half way through questing in the Jade Forest you are ready to smack the little punk. I have only just begun my adventure and I have only reached level 86 so far (because of that whole “real life” thing that gets in the way).

I have also tried out the pet battles, which is pretty much WoW-style Pokemon, but its still pretty entertaining. If you are an avid pet collector, like my wife is, then you will find this component to be very fun and will only exacerbate your addiction. The nice thing is, since pets are not account wide, it doesn’t matter what toon you are on, or what server you are on, any pet you capture as a result of your pet battle, all of your toons will have it.

I am anxious to reach the max level and try out the scenarios, new dungeons and new raids. Perhaps I will have a follow up post after I have progressed a bit more into the new content. Feel free to post your thoughts and comments from your MoP experiences thus far.

/Cheers!

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