Category: World of Warcraft

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Refer-A-Friend

The last time I made a run at World of Warcraft, I made my wife play along in the interest of creating something else we can do together. We made it to about level 40 and then Lord of the Rings launched. We gave that a try and she went back to WoW. I was hooked and so we went our seperate ways even though still sitting side by side in the computer room. After I switched to playing LotRO in a static group once a week, I lost interest in playing it solo the rest of the week so my thoughts turned back to WoW. We tried to have her now level 80 hunter power my level 40 hunter through some quests but it just was not that much fun, and I was not finding my hunter to be much fun anyway.

Flash forward a few patches and I asked her if she would be interested in giving the refer-a-friend program a shot. She’d have to start over but with triple XP we ought to get up to level 60 pretty fast. She was ok with the idea so we launched our attack, this now being my third account at this point. Blizzard loves people like me.

Continue reading Refer-A-Friend

The Two-Button Phase

I understand why your game goes through the two-button phase. It gives new players a moment to learn things before adding complexity. Maybe it is comforting for people on their first MMO. You have a little/auto-attack and a bigger attack. Maybe it is a melee attack and a ranged attack. Whatever it is, when you are in the tutorial, you have two things you can do other than moving around.

It is very important for your game to get past this phase as soon as possible. The longer I sit there with just two buttons, killing three flavors of rat ten times each, the less likely I am to think that anything awesome lies behind it all. Giving me something non-interactive next is fine. Armor, a defense, a buff or heal that I will not need in the intro, fine. Very soon after, give me something shiny to hit things with. If I am still in the two-button phase ten minutes into things, I am probably logging off and never coming back.

: Zubon

A Revolutionary Step?

There is a lot of discussion when a new MMO pops in on whether its advancements to our beloved genre are iterant evolutionary steps or something revolutionary.  World of Warcraft was often seen as the perfect evolutionary game coming off of the Everquest-type MMO.  I think there was one revolutionary step that World of Warcraft had that is often overlooked: quests.

Lots of RPGs and MMOs had quests, but World of Warcraft took the concept and ran with it.  It changed the MMO landscape forever.  No longer were people supposed to go grind and putz around in the zone made for their level.  They now had a keen purpose.  The quest-based MMO design demarcated a term called grind.  If a player had to go out and kill ten rats to gain a level it was grind.  If an NPC rewarded a player with quest text and a quest reward for killing ten rats, it was not.  Could the MMO genre imagine a PvE-MMO with purpose that was not saturated with quests in every zone? Continue reading A Revolutionary Step?

“The Guild” Continues to Entertain

Continuing the proud Internet tradition of cross-linking as much as possible, I must recommend The Guild’s newest video called “Do You Want To Date My Avatar” as an entertaining few minutes. Possibly a bit cheesecakey for your more conservative workplaces, and bound to get you weird looks from folks not familiar with gaming. Watch near the end as they begin to fall out of character for more laughs.

Spotted on Broken Toys, Digital City (which has a nice behind the scenes interview), my LoTRO’s kinboard, and many other places.

Hard Core Brother: The Next Interview

Previously…

Ethic: Let’s start off with getting a feel for where you are in WoW right now. Tell us a little bit about the guild you’re in and what they are trying to do at the moment.

Grim: I’ve been with Juggernaut since July of 2006 (Immortalis on Hellscream/Dalvengyr prior to that). There is only one challenge left for us in the current tier of content, and that is known as Yogg+0. Yogg-Saron is the final boss in Ulduar, and you have the option of utilizing up to four NPC’s to aid you in the fight against him, each one providing a special set of buffs to make you stronger, faster, more resilient, etc. Needless to say, using all four NPC’s makes you quite strong, and the fight is quite easy. Most guilds at our level of raiding have successfully defeated Yogg-Saron with only one NPC’s aid (Yogg+1). Yogg-Saron without the aid of any NPC’s, however, makes the encounter extremely difficult. Currently, only five guilds in the world have accomplished this feat. Sadly, the strategy we’re employing involves two tanks (warrior + deathknight), so I get to cheer them on from the sidelines until patch 3.2 rolls around.

Continue reading Hard Core Brother: The Next Interview

MMO Twittering

I have given my thoughts on Twitter, and my fervor is beginning to erode.  I even camped out a name.  No, I didn’t get Ravious.  Some impostor has squatted on my namesake.  I did get my “real” name though, which depends on who you ask: my mom or Magneto.  Recently, an add-on for World of Warcraft was made that allows people to tweet in-game.  This (and the fact that nearby taco trucks tweet location) brings me from doubtful to enlightened in my view of the micro-blogging application.

I like signing on and checking my guild page to see where people are adventuring.  That small amount of information can be helpful, but rarely has it helped me group up with guildmates.  Most of the time I have grouped up in guild chat where pertinent information can be exchanged.  Sure, it helps to know that they are in the Lonelands, but they might just be passing through.

A simple tweet could change that if it is used as some active status report.  I always feel guilty when a guildmate expends will and energy to let his band of brothers and sisters know that he will be farming trolls for the next hour.  Would any of us like to join him?  Now, instead of guilt-tripping some hobbit healer to be turned into troll foot-jelly, the guild member can just update his playstyle on Twitter.  It’s brilliant!  Sign on and scroll through meaningful information immediately.  Hey, you say, Bobthefarmer is working on Yak rep, I will join him.  It becomes your choice rather than a reaction to a plea for help.

Stupid Turbine’s add-on policy.

–Ravious
wanderers wandering all round the town

Like WoW

Describing Aion as “WoW with wings” caused one commenter to conduct a whole review and ranking system comparing, in his opinion, which MMO was most similar to Aion.  As was to be expected, it was differentiated from World of Warcraft at every possible instance.  Comparing an new MMO to World of Warcraft is a pretty common occurrence throughout the MMO blogosphere and game forums.  It is damn near the MMO locus.  Yet, there is much to differentiate even Runes of Magic ffrom World of Warcraft.  So what does WoW-like mean? Continue reading Like WoW

The Rough Road Back To WoW

My wife has been talking about starting a new character in World of Warcraft and I decided it would be fun to join her. Our past duo was fun, until she left me in the dust around level 40. She kept on going to 80, and I switched over to LotRO. The first question in my mind was, should we take advantage of the Refer-A-Friend deal which would give us triple XP or should we do the Scroll of Resurrection deal which would give her a free month? Or, should I just reactivate and go? Well let’s think about that some.

I have 2 accounts available to me, one has Burning Crusade expansion and one has Wrath of the Lich King on it. The BC account is pretty old, and would meet the “90 day inactive” Scroll of Resurrection requirement. The Wrath account has not been inactive long enough. Looking at the Refer-A-Friend deal, we decided that paying $80 for the game and both expansions was too much so we ruled it out.

Continue reading The Rough Road Back To WoW