In response to a summer vacation topic WoWInsider posted the other day, the Collegiate Times has posted a list of summer vacation ‘do’s & don’ts’ (how quaint), and coming in at number five on that list:
5.) DON’T lock yourself in your room all day playing video games. It’s only acceptable to spend eight consecutive hours in a virtual fairy-land if you are doing so with another human. Instead of closing your door and giving everyone the sneaking suspicion that you have formed an irrefutable bond with your right hand, knock on the next room down and make friends with dudeface so you can combine your warrior fighting noob powers. Don’t worry, Zelda’s Twilight Princess will be out in November, and you will have plenty of time to hide away in the darkest corner of your room to ride Chocobos and raise your HP to “Level 9 - Congratulations! You’ve graduated to the shameless rank of social outcast!” - insert retainer slurping noises here.
So, does that mean that as long as you’re playing games with other people, then it’s ok? Is it just the Zelda games they want you to stay away from? And if so, why do they want you to wait until the school year to start playing? Something’s fishy here…
Latest word from Drysc of Blizzard about migration…
To compensate players for any inconvenience caused by this week’s realm migration and subsequent downtime, we will be issuing a 24-hour time extension to all players with an active account and characters on the affected realms (listed below).
Seems Blizzard has settled that little controversy a while back regarding a lawsuit filed by Brian Kopp. If you remember, Brian Kopp filed a suit against Blizzard about his guide, The Ultimate World of Warcraft Leveling & Gold Guide”, being sold at eBay. Well, this suit has been settled out of court as reported by cnet.
Eyonix, the Community Manager handling the Shaman community in the midst of their review, has been a busy little bee tonight - offering up tidbits about what to expect with the remainder of the review (though we’re still not sure when that’s coming at this point). Here’s a quick snippet:
We appreciate all the feedback we’ve received concerning the Shaman’s totems. We don’t believe the current totem system is as “broken” as it’s currently being made out, despite a few recently implemented encounters that make totem-use a little bit awkward. With that being said, we will be looking into “quality of life” improvements. Such as UI showing which totems are currently active, and a means to destroy active totems etc…
Also, it should be known that we have currently decided against having totems affect the entire raid group. There are a few reasons for this, but primarily we don’t want to decrease the number of Shaman desired in raids.
Got something to say about that? There’s plenty of discussion going on right now over at the Official Shaman Forum. Read more for a list of all the new posts tonight, with direct links.
In keeping with Blizzard’s aggressive stance against cheating in World of Warcraft, we banned over 30,000 accounts in the month of May, and with that removed well over 30 million gold from the economy across all realms. The banned accounts were taking part in activities that violate the game’s Terms of Use, including using third-party programs to farm gold and items, which severely impacts the economy of a realm and the overall game enjoyment for all players.
We will continue to aggressively monitor all World of Warcraft realms in order to protect the service and its players from the harmful effects of cheating. Please note that selling World of Warcraft content, such as gold, items, and characters, can result in a permanent ban of the involved accounts from World of Warcraft.
Many account closures come as the direct result of tips reported to our GMs in game or emailed to our Hacks Team by legitimate World of Warcraft players. If you suspect that a World of Warcraft player is using an illegal third-party program to farm gold or items, or is otherwise violating our Terms of Use, please report the suspected infraction via one of the means listed above. All reports will be investigated, and those that prove false will not result in corrective action.
Thank you for your continued support, and good luck with your adventures in Azeroth!
Testing has been fantastic on the PTR’s worldwide. You guys are doing an awesome job at identifying bugs and helping us fine tune the encounters. We still feel as though some encounters need more tuning. Because of that, we’re going to put up a new PTR build sometime today or tomorrow. We’ve made a lot of changes to everything ranging from the average clearing mobs to many of the bosses. You’ll also see a number of bug fixes in that build. We’ll want feedback on all of the encounters. Here’s a quick summary:
-Patchwerk: Minor changes
-Gluth: Minor changes
-Grobbulus: Significant changes
-Thaddius: Lots of bug fixes, minor changes
-Gothik: Major changes. Lots of tuning and bug fixes here. Also, anti-exploit measures implemented. Please try to break this encounter and give detailed reports of how you do it.
-Instructor Razuvious: Minor tuning changes
-4 Horsemen: Major tuning changes
-Noth: Major bug fixes. Major tuning changes
-Heigan: Almost a complete overhaul.
-Loatheb: Minor tuning changes
-Anub’Rekhan: Minor tuning changes
-Grand Widow Faerlina: Lots of bug fixes. Minor tuning changes
-Maexxna: Some bug fixes. Tuning changes
-Sapphiron: New Spell Art improvements. Tuning changes. Bug fixes.
-Kel’Thuzad: He’s all out of bubblegum…
The community team and QA will notify you when the new build goes up on the PTR. We’re also running extensive tests nightly with QA to test and tune this content. We want to give you guys a great patch. This extended PTR period (while trying on patience) will make for a better patch for everyone. Thanks for helping us out.
What we’re experiencing with this game is similar to the “adhocracy” of many successful open source software projects. It represents the future of real-time collaborative teams and leadership in an always-on, diversity-intensive, real-time environment. World of Warcraft is a glimpse into our future.
Interestingly enough we’ve been calling it Warcrack for awhile. I know many people that have multiple level 60s, stay up all weekend raiding and generally forget what that other “instance” is called - outside world…