Okay, the graphics aren’t fancy. The soundtrack isn’t rocketing rolling metal. But, this is a perfect example of “all things come together.” Whether you find the jokes funny or not, I think everything in the mis en scene comes together just right for short’s formula. Anything more involved than its current graphics would probably distract from the jokes. I did happen to laugh, and I look forward to the next installments.

And now for something completely different, a comedic short titled Wrath Shorts 11 - Rather Be Playing DS by Apt-T Productions. You might remember them from a short time ago as the same guys who did Frank and Beans and Dude, Where’s My Mount? Or, maybe not. These guys are doing a lot of neat short-and-sweet joke reels, and their style is really growing on me.

I can’t really talk a lot about the plot of “Rather Be Playing DS,” because the movie is really short. (”Wrath Shorts” isn’t just a clever title, you see.) To sum up, Healer and Tank argue about stepping into an instance. Tank’s nervous because of the healer’s past performance. There’s a punchline, and comedic justice is served.

Take a watch through the video when you have a moment today. And don’t forget to check out the previews of the Tier 8 gear MMO-Champion is offering.Our intrepid YouTube adventurer Dan O’Halloran found this video posted back on the 5th of January this year detailing the Ulduar raid zone thus far. It was made using private server technology, and contains heavy spoilers. You’ve been warned.

However there are areas which are vibrant and high quality. Parts of the place resemble (as expected) the ancient gods look to it. The place could (and will) be sitting right next to the Halls of Lightning.When you watch the video you’ll notice that much of it is incomplete. Large areas are nothing more than gray swaths with no content in them. This is intentional and normal – the areas just are not developed yet.

Obama didn’t promise to fix every problem in the next four years. Rather, he told us that the challenges we face “will not be met easily or in a short span of time.” He told us his intentions and gave us his vision for the country, but he never said it would happen overnight. He said we must “[give] our all to a difficult task.”

Likewise, don’t tell your members that everything will be perfect just because you’re in charge now. Promise too much, too soon, and you’ll only disappoint them. It’s far better to identify your intentions. That way, even if you ultimately fail, at least they knew what you stood for and what you were trying to accomplish.

It really had nothing to do with the column at all, so I found the situation extremely unproductive. I decided I’d never do that again.

But I was there in D.C. last Tuesday and I wanted to share some of my observations about how to handle a transfer of power. It’s a situation that can come up from time to time in a guild when a long-time leader has to step down for personal reasons — or in democratic guilds when a leader is voted out. Let’s talk about how Bush and Obama handled everything and what we can learn from their example. Read the rest of this entry »

First, the entire movie is basically framed as if it were a comic book. I like when PvP movie-makers take a little extra time to try and present the action in a new and interesting way. Insane Gouge Crits did something similar a few weeks ago, and I’m definitely interested to see where this trend will go. Dialogue in speech bubbles, framed shots, and even the opening magazine cover reinforce the 4-color world of Fleks.

Second, Flekz puts effort into being playful with the movie. Odd cuts and angles frame scenes in a jaunty kind of way. (Do I lose points for using the word ‘jaunty’?) It refers to Flekz as ‘our hero,’ reminiscent of other web-slinging comic books that play with 4th wall awareness. PvP movies aren’t the normal trade of WoW Moviewatch, but we do occasionally see PvP movies that we want to mention. It’s good to be aware of the variety out there, and maybe each genre can learn a little something from one another. Flekz from Eredar (EU) created Fleks Fire PvP 5 as a movie mostly about, you got it, his fire mage doing stuff in PvP. But there’ are a few things in this that I want to point out as being special and interesting.

I very much hope that transcripts of GDC’s panels find their way to the web shortly after the conference. One of my favorite parts of BlizzCon and BlizzCast is the somewhat behind the scenes look into the process, and the philosophy that goes into how and why Blizzard does what they do. This pretty much sounds right up my alley, and I know a lot of you have expressed the same sentiment each time a new BlizzCast has gone live. I’ll definitely be watching for any transcripts that pop up.Jeffrey Kaplan (also known as Tigole) is scheduled to speak at this years Game Developers Conference, which should prove to be really, really interesting for us WoW players. The conference is aimed at sharing knowledge among game developers, and Kaplan’s panel is aimed at discussing World of Warcraft’s questing system, as well as how gameplay has an effect on lore and story.

As someone who regularly geeks out about the lore of Warcraft, it disappoints me that I can’t be there to listen to it in person. Gameplay always has a really large effect on how the lore of a video game world is allowed to play out (especially in MMOs) but a lot of those constraints have been overcome with the advances made in Wrath of the Lich King. The things they’ve done to overcome those issues largely come from Tigole’s team of developers.

Dispel Magic has a 30 yard offensive range and a 40 yard defensive range. In addition, Inner Fire increases Spell Power now in place of the outdated healing power stat. Levitate has been changed to cost 3% of base magic and Prayer of Fortitude buffs the entire raiding party now.
Apart from that, changes made to the talent tree include tier movement and mana cost changes to Absolution, Divine Spirit, Improved Power Word: Fortitude, Improved Power Word: Shield, and Silent Resolve. Other changes include reduced durations, damage percentages and cool-own alterations to numerous talents.You should get to know the following information. The Shadow tree are talents to increase spell critical strike rating, increase spell damage of Shadow spells, and utility talents like Silence and threat reduction. The Holy tree talents designed to maximize healing and Holy damage. The Discipline tree talents designed to increase mana regeneration, provide for more damage absorption, and better buffs.
In a few days, the shadow tree has been altered with Devouring Plague now costing 25% of your base mana and the cool-down cut to only 30 seconds. 15% of the damage from this spell will now heal you. Fade now only has one rank and Mind Control has only one rank and will work on targets of all travels with a percentage mana base rather than fixed costs. Mind Flay has had its damage reduced at all ranks and Mind Soothe has been cut to one rank with a percentage of base mana cost.
Such Mind Vision, Psychic Scream, and Shackle Undead have had their mana costs changed as well as to a percentage of the base Shadow Word Pain’s damage has been reduced and Shadow fiend’s duration has been boosted to 18 seconds major change is that Vampiric Touch now up to 10 party members with a 0.25% MPS gain when you deal damage with Mind Blast.
For the time being, Desperate Prayer has been expanded into 70+ ranks and is available to all races in the Tier 3 talents of the Holy Tree. Holy Fire has been altered to a 2 second cast time and a 60% increase in initial damage. In the duration of the attack, the total effect has been cut to 7 seconds and now has a 10 second cool down. Holy nova now costs 25% of base mana and Hymn of Hope restores 2% of your mana ever 2 seconds to all party members within 40 yards for 8 seconds. This is a channeled spell. Holy Nova has also been made a trainable ability and Holy Reach affects Divine Hymn. Other changes in the talent tree include decreases in cast time, mana cost changes, and tier movements.

The quests in Northrend offer more variation and some old favorites have been improved, such as the Ring of Blood quests in Nagrand which you can do in Grizzly Hills and in Zul’drak.
Dungeons are challenging and are spread around in most areas for you to pit your skills for better loot. When you get to level 80 you can test your skills in heroic dungeons for amazing drops and badges to gear up with. They are much more fun with the introduction. The Oculus, a dungeon in Coldara where you get to fly your own dragon, go up against huge bosses in The Halls of Lightning and Utgarde Keep. There are plenty of things to keep you entertained.

The scenery has improved greatly since: luscious greens in Grizzly Hills, frozen snow dunes in Dragonblight, the return of Hemet Nesingwary in Sholazar Basin, there is much more to discover.
   There’s Dalaran, a beautiful floating city in Crystalsong woods, home of the Kirin Tor faction. Both Alliance and Horde will find sanctuary there plus access to all kinds of vendors, trainers and the Violet Hold dungeon. You will find nearly everything you need, except the Auction House unfortunately.

The many new factions make gaining rep a bit more challenging, such as the Wyrmrest Accord. You can fly dragons for dailies to gain rep with the Wyrmrest which leads you to your very own Red Drake mount when you reach exhaled. Additional new mounts have been added to make the journey through Northrend a little more comfortable and stylish. Some of these mounts hold multiple players and you can even engage in aerial combat with some flying mounts.
PVP has been catered for. Head off to Wintergrasp where you can do dailies for excellent rewards by collecting Stone Keeper Shards as currency, which drop from Dungeon bosses.
Working for the Lich King, you wonder how you can be a Hero, until the very last quest where all is revealed. This is something not to be missed.
In the game, your actions have impact on the world around you. For example, by completing certain quests you can dramatically change the environment. It will look similar to players who have also completed these quests. Those who haven’t yet will still see the environment in the usual unaltered state. It actually feels like you’re making a difference to the game world and this definitely brings a feel-good-factor.
If you’re not level 68 yet, we suggest you double your efforts and hop on a boat or a zeppelin to Northrend as soon as possible. With more patches and content on the way, The Wrath of the Lich King will keep you busy for some time to come. Northrend is an absolute joy to explore.
Definitely, Blizzard has redeemed itself with this expansion.The only downside is the fact that you must go back to Outland to become level 68 before you can enter Northrend. However the Death Knight is a tough cookie so you will quickly reach the frozen continent.
The Burning Crusade did not have much of a storyline. Wrath of the Lich King has the feel of a cinematic movie. You’ll be drawn into the quest lines that gradually reveal the story behind the Lich King such as Angrathar the Wrath Gate, which can be unlocked by doing a long quest line in Dragon Blight.

Massive PvP
Siege participants should no longer unnecessarily get teleported out.
The Massive PvP tab can now be opened without being in a guild and without being on the Massive PvP playfield.
The ballista won’t play an explosion particle on each player near the impact any more. The impact visual effect has been changed to be more appropriate for a ballista impact. This should improve performance during sieges.
Two Wayfarers of Asura have decided to observe the conflict in the Cimmerian end of the Border Kingdoms.
The losing guild in a siege battle will no longer be able to immediately build a keep anymore.
The winner of a siege battle should always be reported correctly.
While participating in a siege, the defending players will now have a red cloak and the attackers will have a blue cloak, for the duration of the battle.
The PvP area marker should now always appear on the map, as intended. The minimap will show the name of the guild that owns a Battlekeep, and when the next window of vulnerability is.
The Catapult and Trebuchet particle effect was updated so that it does not play a particle effect on every player that gets hit by the explosion.
If a player leaves a group during Massive PvP they now have 60 seconds to find a new group. This should make it easier for players to organize players between the two different raids.
You can no longer interact with NPCs of a Massive PVP City after you lose it to another guild.

PvP Minigames Read the rest of this entry »

The high latency while raiding places like Naxxramas and Malygos is still there. The servers are still packed with queue. The patch was a near disaster. And we’re still getting bug reports in every 10 minutes, both in comments and via our tip-line.Latency and connectivity issues will be fixed in patch 3.0.8. The crowds cheered, babies cried in joy, and dog and cats started to live together. The world would be right again.

Many people want to know why this hasn’t been fixed. People are out looking for blood. The whole head on a pike sort of thing.

The communication that I believe we are all looking for goes beyond just the announcements and platitudes about the servers being down for maintenance. The communication I believe we need is something more. Let me pretend I’m Blizzard for a moment. I’ll put on my blue makeup, crack my role playing fingers, and write what I think would be good communication from the blues (I give props to Kevin Smith and his constant role playing on Smodcast for this idea):

Dear community,

We’ve recently found ourselves facing serious latency, connectivity, and in-game problems. This is an unfortunate and very frustrating situation for all of us. We are working day and night to solve these problems, and ask that you are patient while we undertake the development and testing that will be necessary to fix the multitude of issues present.

We are all players too. We go home after work to play the game only to be greeted by hour queues and endless lag as we try to conquer Naxxramas and Malygos. We hate that. Nothing is more disappointing for us in-game than to have to call a raid because the severs are not working. We’re there. We understand where you’re coming from. We hear you loud and clear.

While we can’t promise you a timeframe for the fix to this, we can promise you that everyone in the company is dedicated to bringing you the best experience possible in game. Fixing these things is all we’re talking about at work, it’s all we’re focused on at the moment.

In our years as a company we’ve grown from a small organization to one of the largest gaming companies in the world. And while we’ve added countless numbers of personnel to our ranks, and spend millions of dollars developing products, the one thing that has remained consistent is our unending devotion to bring to you a good game to play.

We still have that devotion, and we still want to deliver to you a great time. We ask for your support as we work to make this a reality again.

Sincerely,

Blizzard.
/endrp

Okay, now wouldn’t that be a bit of better communication than:

” We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this may cause. Thank you for your patience while we work to resolve these issues.” (source)

Now I’ve worked high up in a company where communication had to be precise and well thought out, even ran by lawyers to make sure we weren’t going to get ourselves in trouble. There is no doubt that a statement like the one I RP-ed would take a day to produce. But in the end it would provide something much better, much more personal, and much more understandable than the current dogma that is coming out of the mouths of the majority of the blues.

No one is asking for the world here. All people want to know is when, and what, is being done to fix this.

A better way to approach the situation is to try to come up with contingency plans and other activities to do. If Blizzard cannot get their servers to work, to the point that many consider the game playable, then people will need to focus on other aspects of the game or try to work around the problematic parts.

On the couple servers I play on many of the top guilds have decided to stop raiding for the night if there are any problems with high latency in the raid instances. On Alex’s server people raid only for a couple hours after 10pm when the queues and population have dropped off. And still other guilds I know have just said forget it completely and are on hiatus until these issues are fixed.
For me, the latency has encouraged me to pickup my alts and start to power level them through Outland / Northrend. I’m doing about a level every other day for a few alts. It’s not particularly hard either, with the rest bonus and how easy it is to get through 58 to 70 now.

However for many the latency and continuous issues present in the game are getting to a point beyond annoying. The lack of communication from Blizzard isn’t helping much either. While Ghostcrawler has been very forthcoming about the problems that exist in his department (game design and internal game mechanics), there has been a serious lack of communication from the rest of Blizzard on the other issues.

Focus is essencial for casters but it’s very beneficial fo Warriors too. In a 2v2, your focus allows you to constantly see both opponents health, mana, cast bar, debuffs, and instantly pull off macro’s. For instance, in a lock/shadowpriest match, easily the toughest 2x DPS you’ll run up against, being as your healer is almost gauranteed to be silenced for 7 seconds and feared/DCd at some point. As usuak we save the pummel for the shadow Priest, as it shuts down more of his damage, but spell reflecting a UA or mind blast is huge, and very easy to pull off if you watch your focus’ cast bar.

Pets are a free victory rush to well geared Warriors. If you spend more than 10 seconds or 100 rage trying to kill a pet, you’re doing something wrong. Pets are very much worth killing in 2v2 and greatly increase the match in your favor once an SL lock or hunter’s pets are all dead.

If your latancy is above 300, it really sucks. You have to anticipate casts by thinking like your target, which it turns out is actually pretty easy to do. You got SW:P’d, the vamp touch is coming next. Your pali bubbled, mass dispel inc. Dropping your DPS target to pummel a holy light, healing touch, greater heal and so on. Read the rest of this entry »