Warcraft Experience

WarcraftMovies.com have recovered from their Christmas lull and have posted a bunch of new movies for our viewing pleasure!

Once again the thought is….”another report that 1.9 will be out on Tuesday” but reports from the test servers show January 3, 2006 as the release date. Boy I hope so.

I wonder how long they can string the agony along for the pallys and the annoyance for the other classes before we all lead a mass revolt against them. In fact I am getting anxious myself, because one day they might fix the issue with arcane missles! AND I’ll get my water-cooler productivity pumped up a bit.

Have you played under the tree and shaken those presents to see what goodies would drop out? How about finishing those seasonal quests? (I did some of them on Bellisimo and netted about 3k - 4k XP.) If not, you better finish up soon! Just as quick as you can say New Year hangover the festivities will be over on January 2nd.

O and don’t forget to stock on snowballs for July snowball fights!

The end of year seasonal fun kicks off with the Feast of Winter Veil which many of you will remember from last year. You’ll find all sorts of things happening around the world including festive quests, snowmen, other players hurling snowballs at you and more. The event runs from December 15th until January 2nd.

• The Feast of Winter Veil is upon us, and Greatfather Winter is busy spreading holiday cheer in major cites across the land! Here are a few holiday treats players can now experience in-game:
• The Jinglepocket Goblins have set up their seasonal fare shops in major cities. Adventurers can purchase many holiday favorites - including Greatfather’s Winter ale, candy canes, gingerbread cookie recipes, and mistletoe.
• All the cheer-spreading is making Greatfather Winter hungry, and he is looking for adventurers to get him his daily fix of milk and cookies.
• Smokeywood Pastures needs a few brave adventurers to investigate the disappearance of a shipment of holiday goods traveling though Alterac.
• Unconfirmed reports say that consuming eggnog during a snowball fight can have some chilling results.

This just in, Eyonix just announced on the general Forums there are going to be a few more new realms opening up on the first week of January 2006:

On January 3rd, we are opening a new PvE realm and a new PvP realm, and for the first 48 hours, character creation will be unavailable. Each realm will allow character transfers from certain high player population realms. After 48 hours, players will be allowed to be create characters as normal. Character transfers will be open for 7 days.

A list of eligible realms, and the names of the two new realms will be made available shortly.

Seven Skull Studios announced it’s latest online WoW comic. Check it out! Be sure to visit the archive to see past comics.

It’s rather interesting that it is about a RP server. We were just discussing in vent last night if you can say you are /AFK or if you have to use some snazzy phrase like “I’m having an out of body experience”. Fill us in if you know!

The online game World of Warcraft is hugely popular with more than five million people now regularly spending time in Azeroth, trying to turn apprentice adventurers into fully-formed heroes. World of Warcraft is a Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game and, as that lengthy title implies, gives gamers the chance to control characters in a large net-based fantasy world.

Characters can be one of several different races, that includes humans, orcs and cow-like creature called Tauren, and can take up a profession as warrior, thief, wizard, priest and so on.

But for some Warcraft players slaying monsters and gathering treasure is not enough. Instead of swords they are using economics as a weapon.

This is because for all its fantasy trappings, one aspect of Warcraft is alarmingly similar to the real world and that is the importance of money.

Money talks

Game cash in the form of copper, silver and gold coins helps characters buy better weapons and armour so they can stay alive longer and climb the ranks of their chosen profession.

Powerful characters need cash to buy their mount

And it is in the making of money that many players are starting to exploit the freedom of the game world.

Most Warcraft players’ efforts to build up a bankroll for their character revolve around the in-game auction houses.

In these virtual sale-rooms players earn cash by selling the loot that drops off monsters when they are killed. Others players auction off the raw materials they find in the game world so others can use them to make magic potions, magical items or other useful items.

But use of the auction house does not begin and end with bidding, buying and selling - many are turning use of it into as much of a game as adventuring in Azeroth.

Evidence for this can be found in the fact that at the recent BlizzCon conference, the biggest cheer about the forthcoming WoW expansion went to the news that it will give every city an auction house.

Read the entire article on BBC News.

[From World of War]

PCGamer Says No to Gold Ads

Finally, a print publication has taken a stand against gold advertising according to a statement in the February issue of PCGamer. Aubrey sent along this quote.

“After months of behind-the-scene talks with our sales department, I’m extremely proud to announce that starting with last month’s issue, PCGamer will no longer accept ads or ad dollars from Gold Farmers. Screw them. As a company we have agreed to turn down what literally amounts to hundreds of thousands of dollars in annual ad revenue so that you, as a reader, can game easy knowing that we’ve got your back.”

As the statement from PCGamer says, it is a huge revenue loss and it’s something we have also had to deal with, there’s a lot of money involved in the secondary market. Now if we can only get Blizzard to stop promoting sites advertising gold farming and the secondary market we may actually get somewhere. Thanks to Aubrey for sending this over.

Asmiroth has updated his Getting Alchemy to 300 FAST guide today so be sure to check that out.