Kill Ten Rats

I’m really enjoying my two characters in World of Warcraft. I have a Rogue and a Shaman. They are both very fun for me. The last time I had this much fun with a character was the original Feral Intendant in Asheron’s Call 2. Turbine screwed them up. I really hope that Blizzard leaves my two favorites alone. Sure I can see some small changes, but if they redesign the way the class works like Turbine did to the FI, I’ll puke.

The level cap in World of Warcraft is currently set at 60. I have no idea if they intend to raise it any more, but they did raise it several times during beta if that is any indication.

Anyway, a few people have reached level 60 now. What is that, 2 or 3 weeks? It remains to be seen if that is good or bad for the game as far as retention goes.

For me, it is good as I know I will be able to progress in the game at my own slow pace. But I have to wonder if the “end game” is fun enough to keep people around. Talking to the people I know that have been at 60 during beta all say that it is more than fun enough.

Blizzard has been beating around the bush about something called Hero Levels. I assume that will start at 60 and may provide some alternate advancement. Memories of AC2 burn into my brain. We’ll see.

Blizzard does good:

We wanted to take this time to make an announcement about a serious hacking violation in World of Warcraft, one for which we have zero tolerance. Certain individuals have been identified as using speed hacks to accelerate their characters. This goes against the theme of fair play that we have instituted for the game, and is in clear violation of the World of Warcraft Terms of Use.

Those individuals who were caught using the speed hack have been banned from the game and have had their accounts closed. We must stress once again that we are opposed to hacking and cheating of any kind and are dedicated to maintaining a fair environment in our games. This will serve as a final warning to others who are considering using the speed hack. If you are caught using it, you will be banned without question from World of Warcraft and your account will be revoked.

Here are a few tips for World of Warcraft that I have found to be helpful and yet not so obvious:

1. “Num Lock” triggers autorun.
2. Quick looting: shift-right click to autoloot everything from a corpse.
3. Quick mining/harvesting: shift-right click to mine/harvest a node AND auto-loot it.
4. More info: hitting the “V” key will bring up names and health bars above all NPCs and mobs.
5. Bag management: shift-B opens up all bags for easy access.
6. Taking screenshots: alt-Z switches off the UI to make them look nice.
7. Managing stacks: shift-left click on a stack, enter the number, click on an open spot in your bag.
8. Check out the alternative interfaces available such as Cosmos and CTMod.

Oh, and let these take your breath away for a small moment in time.

Over the Thanksgiving weekend, players continued to buy World of Warcraft in record numbers, with a total of over 350,000 copies of the game selling through. Blizzard Entertainment and its retail partners expect the remaining supplies of World of Warcraft to sell out soon. Blizzard is currently evaluating its ability to ship additional games to retailers, given the unexpectedly high demand on the servers. The company continues to increase server capacity to accommodate the growing number of players connecting to the game. As the additional servers are brought online and proven stable, additional copies of World of Warcraft will be made available at retail. Blizzard will announce the availability of those additional games as soon as they are on shelves.

I am going to talk about some of my favorite features of World of Warcraft over the next few weeks or so, just because I can.

Up first: Sharing Quests

“You can share your quests with your entire party. In order to utilize this option, you need to open your quest log, select a quest, and press the “Share Quest” button. All members of your party will now be presented with the quest like you were the quest giver NPC.

Some restrictions:

1. You can only share with party members

2. Party members must be nearby when you share

3. Party members must meet the pre-requisites of the quest itself. For example, if you are on step 2 of a quest and your friend is still on step 1, you could not give him a “short-cut” to step 2.

4. Quests generated from items cannot be shared.”

OK, here is how this works: You get a quest to go get some gold dust that is dropped by creatures in a mine. You head out there. When you arrive at the mine, you spot 2 people getting ready to enter the mine. You ask them if they are doing the “gold dust” quest. They say they are doing a quest that requires they kill 10 miners, but they have not heard of the “gold dust” quest. They add you to the party. They can now share their “kill” quest with you and you accept it. You can share the “gold dust” quest with them and they accept it. Now instead of each of you having to kill 10 miners, you only need to kill 10 amongst your group. While looting them, you will all be able to retrieve gold dust as well. If there was a quest to kill an elite mob, you would all be able to loot the quest objective when you kill it as a group. You do not need to kill it once for each person.

No more waiting for one person to go “acquire” the quest. You can give it to them directly.

1) A death process similar to the one UO had (i.e. becoming a ghost), only… Weaker

I don’t know what UO had, but death in WoW means nothing. It’s harmless. In fact, I used the ghost form to travel through a dangerous area tonight.

2) A death penalty that allows –negative– XP….

Hmm. There is no XP penalty for dying in WoW so I’m not sure what you mean here.

3) Having to go find your corpse…

Yeah, you are a ghost that runs really fast, your corpse is on the map and you only need to get close to it to resurrect. Hell, you can run over water even. When you appear as a ghost, you are at the nearest cemetary as well. Hardly a pain.

4) Item decay

No affect on anything other than a little money drain now and then. I click one extra button when I sell stuff to a merchant once every so often. Big deal. Your items are always repairable, they do not ever disappear.

5) Level-based game (any game that is not skill-based is inferior IMHO)

Yeah, it is sort of a combo. As you use skills, they go up as well.

6) Patch Method. Peer-to-Peer for patching. Stupid. Blindingly stupid.

Not so sure this is the case now that we are in retail, but I’ll wait to see. During beta is was no big deal to me.

7) Segregated game play. Race/Faction… Something that I dislike in AO even.

Well yes, the Horde and the Alliance cannot play together, but I have yet to find this an issue. You can still go to all their areas and hunt all of their mobs. It is World of WARcraft after all. The whole point of the game is to fight the bad guys eventually. Even on PvE servers you will have the option, and it is quite elegant how they handle it.