They ask about an iPhone app, and Morhaime says Blizzard is working on connecting mobile devices up to the game, but he also specifically says they’re not looking at a stand-alone app. So maybe a mobile version of the Armory? I’d love to see an iPhone app, as we’ve said before, with mail or auction house functionality, but maybe Blizzard doesn’t see the majority of their audience on the iPhone anyway. Then again, their Mac guys always need something to do.

MTV’s Multiplayer blog has an interview with Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime (who is apparently sitting pretty with the elven ladies after last week’s big expansion launch). He says that he sees no end to the expansions — Blizzard has told us before that as long as they have ideas (and players), they’ll keep making content for this game. He also says that they’re happy with the subscription model in the United States — although we’d imagine that both of those things might get rethought if Blizzard’s subscription numbers were going the other way. For now, though, while things are headed up, Morhaime sounds pretty happy with the way things are.

Varian Wrynn talking to Varian Wrynn #2 is just a silly, piss-poor way or trying to drag character development out of him. Come on now. He can’t talk to another character about his past? He needs to talk to himself? Oh no, it can’t be an inner monologue, either! You know what we need? Two Varians so they can be emo together. Come on. Varian Wrynn has the potential to be a really engaging character, but this writing make me cringe. I don’t care if the clone turns out to have some totally super awesome twist in the end, this is still terrible.

If you’ve been following the World of Warcraft comic, you might be pleased to hear the official WoW website posted a preview of issue #13 last night. After reading it, if you’re like me, you’ll be dramatically less pleased. Maybe you’ll enjoy it, but I personally have no idea how much longer I’ll keep reading this thing. The comic was never really good good, it was corny good, which is sometimes exactly what you’re looking for. It’s quickly falling out of corny good into bad.

On a few realms, Blizzard ended up giving some of the awards to multiple players, resulting in the ingame mail you see above. We’re not sure if it’s because they all hit within a certain time period, or whether Blizzard’s servers weren’t working correctly, but as you can see, they say the issue is fixed for now. If you did rush to be the first on a server, you can be satisfied that you’re the only one.

Apparently there have been some mistakes made in the realm-first achievements being given out. You’ve probably seen these (Blizzard apparently broadcasts them across the realms) — when someone hits level 80 or finishes a profession first, they attain a feat of strength achievement. They don’t get the original titles, but they do get credit for getting their first.

I’ve heard a few people hating on how many old world NPCs you run into in Northrend, complaining that Blizzard is just recycling old content. I quite seriously disagree in this case. Seeing NPCs progress in the world alongside us gives a much greater feeling of the world being a story, and as we go up in level, the world moves forward. I like it a lot, and I hope it continues into the next expansion, too.

We have an old gallery sitting around of some of the returning faces you’ll see in Northrend, so you can check it out if you want. Be warned, there are some minor spoilers inside.

We’re waist deep in the content of Wrath by now, and despite the newness of the strange land, it all feels so familiar, too. Not only have we gone back to the gothic (yet sparkly) style of Old Azeroth, but we’ve been followed to Northrend by a whole lot of old friends.

I’ve been having a lot of fun bumping into ‘old’ NPCs and quest givers that I’ve helping out on my journey from 10 to 60, or 61 to 70. They add a real sense of progression and continuity to the world. I solved their problems years ago, and that’s allowed them to move on in life, for better or for worse. It’s also strangely heartwarming to see people I did quests for so long ago, like a little slice of nostalgia.

It’s certainly true that we keep hearing about how easy Wrath is, or how it’s somehow been “dumbed down.” I’m a firm believer that you can only brush aside so much smoke before you have to admit there’s a fire somewhere. So, yeah, the game is probably easier than it used to be. But I think it’s more fair to say that end-game content is more accessible than simply “easy.” We’ve seen the desire for accesibility repeated in phrases like Ghostcrawler’s “Bring the player, not the class.” It’s repeated when Blizzard considered moving away from class forums into role forums.

I think the issue, here, is one of pacing and intent. Is Blizzard creating a game meant for someone who constantly strives to be a total completionist? How much weight do they place on the race-to-completion when they build content? What portion of players actually “raid competitively?” We know Karazhan was among the most visited instances in the game, even if it eventually became simple farming material for many. What conclusions has Blizzard drawn from that instance’s success? Read the rest of this entry »

But Northrend has been different — I didn’t want the inane chatter, the constant stream of questions (sometimes answered, usually not), and the occasional desperate requests. I wanted to be in Northrend by myself, more or less, and explore the world as if I wasn’t on the same server as thousands of people. And it’s been worthwhile, for the most part — while I’ve dived back in there once or twice just to check and see if certain quests are bugged for anyone else, I’ve mostly stayed out of there, and I think it’s made the game better.

Some of you will probably think I’m late to the game — you may have removed the General channel on day one, and the Trade and World Defense channels along with it (I’m keeping the Trade channel, though — when I am in cities, I kind of appreciate the bustling back and forth, and I’ve found a few deals in there). For the moment, though, I appreciate a quieter Northrend. No General for me, thanks.

I have a confession to make: all the whining, questions, and confusion that’s been in General chat for the last few days? I haven’t heard any of it. As soon as I logged in after the expansion, I typed “/leave general” and strangely enough, haven’t looked back. I usually enjoy General — it reminds me that I’m not playing a singleplayer game, and most of the comments there, while not really the smartest, are at least pretty entertaining. I figured if you’re going to play a game with other people, you might as well give them the opportunity to talk with you.

I’m terrible at design, but maybe there are some budding designers out there with some kickass ideas. If you win, not only do you get your ideas included in the Runes addon, but you will pick up a free 60 day gamecard as well. Hit up their dev thread if you have questions about how the mod works — hopefully we’ll see some creative entries here when the times come to vote for a winner next month.

DeathKnight.info is having a Death Knight Disease Design contest (say that three times fast) — they’re working on putting together a disease-timer addon for you former slaves of the Lich King, but they need a little design help with it. What you’ve got to do is take the graphic above (you should probably take the one off of their site, just to be safe, because it’s got to be a certain size), and design a way to use it as a disease timer — it’s got to show all the info you’ll need in an addon, and it’s got to “look awesome,” too.

We had a great time (as you can probably hear), and you can listen to the show right on Massively. WoW Insider covers WoW, but Massively covers all MMOs, so if you’re also a fan of Guild Wars or LotRO or Warhammer, check them out. And if you’re a Turpster fan (who isn’t, really?), you can also see him every week in his video series over there, called TurpsterVision. Thanks to Zenke and Schuster for letting us run amuck on their podcast — we’ll have to return the favor on the WoW Insider Show soon.

Miss hearing Turpster and I on the same podcast? I do too — I think our show has definitely come into its own, but at this point, there’s just a scheduling conflict keeping us apart (Turpster’s new show is recorded at exactly the same time as ours). Worry not, however, because whenever we can, we’ll try to podcast together, and here’s your first chance to hear us again: Michael Zenke and Shawn Schuster of our sister site’s Massively Speaking podcast invited both of us on to sit down and talk about the Wrath release with them. Read the rest of this entry »

Feral attack power will be removed. Instead, attack power in feral forms will scale based on weapon DPS. As with the armor change, this should make no actual difference to your performance - the conversion will be such that your DPS remains the same. What it does do is make it so some staves might be useful to both hunters and druids (for instance), or some two-handed maces might be useful to feral druids. In Ghostcrawler’s words: “This does not mean we are no longer going to create bear and cat weapons, just that those weapons will be slightly less niche than they are now.”
These changes will be coming sometime before 3.1 (Ulduar), which I’ve been referring to as 3.0.4 (though perhaps 3.0.x would be more accurate).

Both great changes in my opinion; the armor change should give us more viable options for tanking jewelry and weapons, instead of being forced to hold on to whatever has armor. And the FAP change will just mean we don’t always have to DE a feral piece if the one or two ferals in the raid already have it; and conversely, there won’t necessarily be only one weapon in a given raid that’s of use to ferals (I’m looking at you, Stranglestaff). Read the rest of this entry »

In Wrath, Blizzard implemented a new UI and system for their vehicles, and some bar mods haven’t been updated to reflect these additions. Or they have, and players haven’t updated on their end. As far as mod updates go, this is one of those things that counts as a big deal. If your bar mod is suppressing the vehicle UI or preventing your action bar from switching over to the vehicle’s abilities, you’re not going to be able to complete a lot of quests, and those ones tend to be the most fun and unique. Naturally, some quests are buggy, but a vast majority of them aren’t. If you’re consistently running into issues with vehicle combat, please, check your mods for your sake. A lot of the quests are way fun, so before writing them off, check things on your end first.

If you absolutely must have a bar mod and yours isn’t Wrath compatible yet, you might want to check out Dominos. There are other updated bar mods, absolutely, but this one seems the most popular recently. If you’d rather stick with something else, just hit Curse or whatever and check for updates. You’ll be glad you did. Read the rest of this entry »