Has WoW become less social?

So, I was trolling around on the MMOC forums and ran into a pretty decent thread. It happens so and then, not a lot but, it happens. To be exact, this one. The dude who started it has since gotten banned from the forums - never a pretty sight, but it's happening a lot lately. He probably had it coming though. However, the dude (or chick, can't tell) did have a perfectly valid observation. The game seems to have lost the social prowess that it had in the older days. People simply don't care about reputation anymore, large guilds matter less and less. What, how, why? Look at it this way, when the game was still in beta and even the first year of it the game was "new". This will attract a certain type of player who is willing to try new things. A curious player, explorers so to say. Since the game is new (beta even), the game will be poorly balanced, difficult, full of bugs and not much information is available for the players about available items, monsters and cookie cutter skill builds. So, everything has to be discovered and explored by the players themselves. The type of player who has no patience for such things will usually quit early on, thus leaving a much different player foundation in the game than we can see today. So, years go by and the game adds three new expansions, slowly evolving into the WoW we know today. Millions of players worldwide, all investing their money into it on a monthly basis. This cash is used to keep developers active, new Game Masters, quality control, TV advertisements, gigantic server parks all around the world and swords and shields for Blizzard's long time employees. (You know it, you've seen it, and you know you want one too) Now, a different kind of player will be attracted to the game than before. The "cool kids", not just the warcraft fanboys but their friends and friends of their friends because "WoW is big and cool and you should play it too". Unlike before, these guys have everything handed to them. * Short dungeon Queues, connected to a whole battle group. * Detailed theory crafting. * Detailed boss tactics in game even. * Easy mode dungeons. * Raid finder and easier bosses that are downed in hours or days instead of weeks and months. * Epic gear for tokens. * Daily quests. * Smaller zones, less travel time. * Cookie cutter builds on a hundred WoW related websites. * XP needed to level cut by 30% and more if you have access to hierlooms. * 300% XP boost if you get recruited by a friend. * Cheap mounts, mine 1 stack of copper bars and sell it on the auction house and you'll have enough. Something which took people weeks to do before. And more, plenty more. Now, most of those early "veteran" players will have already quit the game in search for new things to explore, but the players who are currently joining the game are playing an entirely different version of WoW than we started those many years ago. And, these players will still stick around because they "like" the fact that they can troll forums and have millions of players read their garble. (Call them trolls if you like) This generation of players is, in comparison, a lot younger and still completely different from the ones who joined the first year. This "evolution" of MMOs is something you could probably write pages and pages worth of school assignments about, psychology of a gamer and so on. There is plenty of material for studies in the analyzing a MMO's and it's playerbase's evolution. Perhaps it's even been done already, I can't really be bothered to spend a day on google trying to find articles about it. But, perhaps this post will inspire someone to do so in the near future. In the end, yes the players in the game today are very much different. More arrogant, lazier, less tolerant, less used to difficult and hard won progress. It's a laid-back generation right now that is used to having a lot of convenience (See above). And they aren't likely to find a different game anytime soon because no game has had anywhere near the money put into it for development and refinement yet. The majority of gamers who started playing WoW 7+ years ago is not likely to still be playing. They are off looking for new challenges, new things to try, discoveries to be made. Or simply waiting for Diablo 3 like me. In a way it's simple evolution, some people leave, others remain. But, on a different scale than we might think, a scale that has been researched very little so far, and yet one that we see and are involved in ourselves. Just look at your own guild and tell me how many people have left your guild in the last year? More than a few no doubt. Of course, I'd be curious to see other people's thoughts on the matter. But in the end I fear the original poster was correct in his thoughts. WoW has become less social. And it's not just because of the dungeon or raid finder. That doesn't mean there aren't still awesome people in the game, but not the overall feeling you will get in random groups or pvp battlegrounds...

A journey of 7 years

I've played World of Warcraft for, seven, nearly eight years. I got into the game at the recommendation of a close friend. One who I now longer speak to. Not for bad reasons, we just, don't anymore. It was open beta, you could try it for free and discover new things, explore new lands never seen before. I started out as a lowly warlock in a dark land discovering magics untold and summoning demons at my will and command. Undercity my home at the time. Not long after did I create a paladin, who did slay those very same demons. I was inexperienced and yet made progress through strange lands with always a friend at my side. A shield and a sword were my tools of the trade, using a talent tree spec one would now laugh at to even consider. Elwyn forest, Westfall, Redridge mountains, Duskwood and so many more. Progress was slow, but everything was new and every level our characters gained made us more powerful. She did not care much for the strength of her armor, greens she would use while I looked for blue. The paladin looked like a clown, armor a mix all red and green, blue and gray, gold and black. It mattered not, for in duels I beat plenty of others. A quick heal a stab or two there, clashing my shield. If she did sleep, my adventures would always take me back to the darker forests and places of the Undercity. People looked strange compared to the humans and elves, but still I belonged here more than among those pretenders. The warlock was abandoned for now, but not forgotten. I started a Troll, a rogue so they say and stealth was his game. The lands were different yet again and it was at the use of a dagger and blade that he did show me a new way. STAB in the back and dead was my foe, so different from a sword and shield and... so much MORE fun. Eventually we did part ways, my friend then going elsewhere and not heard of for many a year. Stranded as I was on an American server with high latencies I decided to make the best of things and create a life anew with my knowledge thus far. A new rogue is what I thus made. Zurgat I named him, for no reason other than my own. He grew to be level 43, then more. New friends were found and old friends rediscovered. Night Lions at first, a guild of few people. Fellowship of the Horn came later, and was his home for near two years. In here I discovered a new game, Raiding. Only occasional at first, then more and more. My voice was heard on teamspeak and ventrillo, fewer would disagree with me as time did pass. Promoted to new ranks within the guild, and eventually made to lead a mass of 40 players, picking heads among others still waiting to enter. Molten Core, Onyxia's Lair and Blackwing Lair did we complete and conquer. Vaelastrahz was especially fun, and frustrating. The game would change though, the Burning Crusade was announced and would soon arrive. We did manage to start on the Temple of Anh'Qiraj, but would not complete even the first boss before that time. Still, we did try and try and try. 80%, 70%, 50%. I do not recall it exactly, perhaps we got to 23% in the end, but then the Burning Crusade came. A new land awaited, and we had made great plans for our future. Some friends would be angered, but we would lay new roads into a brighter future with more progress. Rampage was created, a new guild rising from the ashes of one mostly neglected and full of casual players. FEL REAVER! *Splat* I only died perhaps three times to them, but it's always fun to look back at them. I hope Blizzard will add such monstrosities back to the game in the future. Eventually the guild players would reach 70, and the raiding began again. 10 man this time, and later 25. Constantly members would be gained and lost, an ongoing struggle for every guild in the game, especially since 40 man raids were the default before then. Karazhan, Serpentshrine, Tempest Keep, The Black Temple, and even Mount Hyjal did we conquer and complete. Quite proud of ourselves we were too. The Sunwell was something different, but even so we did barely get past the Twins before the nerfs started and patch 3.0 was installed. Wrath of the Lich King would start a new expansion. Sooner than expected sadly. Naxxramas we cleared, and every other instance. Some on heroic mode, some not. 3.x was a less amusing time, though the new lands were fun to explore at first. Many disagreements did arise from whether we should clear a boss on heroic mode or not, so that we might have to skip another boss later, or get one more item from another to better our abilities. The Burning Crusade was more to my liking, it was harder and no choices needed to be taken on how to defeat a boss. You either did it, or did not. But when you did "it felt good", you had achieved something together that took weeks or more of trying. 4.x was coming, and things fell apart, Rampage a mere shadow of it's former self. Some players gone to be with their family, away from the game, others to different servers and yet others to start a new guild for themselves. Such is the way of many guilds in WoW and we were not immune to this change either it seemed. Cataclysm held some challenges still, the guild, and two private storage guilds would all reach level 25. But, little more glory was to be had. We recruited several guilds under our wing, and we did manage to clear a number of 10 man raids but as far as satisfaction went in those kills... the spark of it has been somewhat lost. Perhaps 10 man raids are simply not as glorious as the old 40 player raids were, or the player-base in general had changed too much from what it was before. Regardless, before the release of patch 4.3, Rampage was no more. Oh it still exists on a few alts, but no longer active. Perhaps it'll open an eye from it's slumber when 5.x comes around but I have no high hopes for it. Life is a journey, regardless of your eventual destination, what matters most is the sights you see along it's path. And indeed, we did see many things and made many new friends along the way.

Dragon Tavern Logger v1.0.7

Ho ho ho! It's another DTL update. v1.0.7 this time with a special Festivus fix included. Version 1.0.7 can be downloaded here. Updates in v1.0.7: * Fixed the name of "Abyssal Mines" in Zones.ini : All subzones have now been fixed and confirmed to be spelled correctly! * Added option to block out logging of "double XP" monsters such as spawn during festivus. Since these can spawn in all areas and may disrupt data integrity. Data analysis dialog (F9): * Added ability to completely hide certain rows based on kill count. * The dialog should now save it's settings more reliably. * The level column now sorts by it's first number rather than by text. So, it will sort as: 1,2,3,4,5,6 instead of 1,20,3,50+,7 etc. Plenty more data as well, but this time all the sub zones have reached the minimum of 25 monters.

Goggle Cat Comics

Every so and then you get an itch that tells you to do something NEW and interesting. Some people ignore the itch, or drop everything and focus on that thing alone. I myself simply try to do everything at the same time :P

I've started another blog called: Goggle Cat Comics a few weeks back, and been posting small comic references on it every few days. Perhaps you already discovered, perhaps not. At any rate, it's growing steadily, got a bit of art by Mipeo from MMOC on the headboard, and more comic links being added every few days.

Obviously, you're welcome to drop by and have a look, add suggestions for other comics to add to the list and whatnot. I've still got over 300 links to add, but since webcomics grow on the web faster than mushrooms in a moist forest I doubt I'll be finished anytime soon.

Also, it's allowed me to play around with the blogger templates some more and make a few improvements on RRVS, you'll notice the post footer looks different from before. The share buttons are smooth and updated. Don't be shy about using them ;)
Not only that, but the page should load faster as well!

Anyway, have a peek: Goggle Cat Comics.

Dragon Tavern Logger v1.0.6

About three weeks since the last version, it's time for another update. New features inside: v 1.0.6 here. Some fixes, improvements and stuff to make life a little better. Updates in v1.0.6: * Fixed the name of "Fork Tongue Clutch" in Zones.ini * Fixed Alt+F4 to close application. * Added "Lazy Zoneview" option. This ensures the zone view is never cleared automatically. To combat a so far unknown issue some people were having. * Added ability to pre-fill your username and password. Note: These are stored locally in DragonLogger.ini as plain text. So, only use this feature if your pc is 100% secure. Otherwise, just stick with the user name. * Added data export to .csv file format. See Menu: Browser -> Export. The exported data is controlled by your other preferences (such as include host data) * Added option to preferences(F11) to export .csv data as total kill count(default) or percentages(as seen in the analyze dialog). Inventory dialog: * Added progress dialog upon cubing more than two items. To show it is working hard on making your items into gold. * Sort columns are now remembered on open/close. * Position on screen and width/height are now remembered on open/close. Data analysis dialog (F9): * Dialog is no longer modal. Meaning you can keep it open while exploring, and press the new refresh button to update the data. * Sort columns are now remembered on open/close. * Position on screen and width/height are now remembered on open/close. * Now has a smaller "minimum" size. And once again "lots more data". But this time you can export it as well!

Amazon and Stanza

Some small level of praise where it's due.
After many... MANY weeks of harassing Amazon, they FINALLY released an update for Stanza, so that it will work with iOS 5.


If you have NO idea what I'm talking about here's the lowdown:

* Small company creates free e-reader app for iOS.
* The free appp becomes THE most popular e-reader app for iOS.
* Small company gets bought out by Amazon, to remove competition.
* Updates to the app stop completely.
* Apple releases iOS 5, Stanza breaks down.
* Many users are unable to open their e-books.
* Community in uproar since no viable e-reader replacements for iOS exist.
* Community angry at Amazon for stopping updates.
* Community VERY angry at Amazon for being told Apple is responsible for updates, even though Amazon has the source code.
* Amazon VERY reluctantly releases an update.
* Community happy, but looking for viable replacements just in case.

Dragon Tavern Logger v1.0.5

It's not been "all that" long since the previous release, but I figured this is a worthy update. Behold it's awesome glory! v 1.0.5 here Also a quick honorary mention to the Farm-Fresh Icons by FatCow. I've added a good few of those in this version. So the application is looking a lot "better" than before. It's a relatively short update list this time, but all useful stuff. I figured it would be unkind to keep people waiting for a major feature that was announced months ago. Updates in v1.0.5: * Fixed the names of "Temple of Filth", "The Sandy Beggar" and "Den of the Delvisha" in Zones.ini - hope that's the last of them, but can't be 100% sure just yet. * Data analysis dialog(F9) added. You'll be able to find detailed % of which zones have the highest population to hunt. * Added background color preferences(F11) for the data analyzer. Fixed colors for now, but you can change the activation %. * Inventory list by default now sorts the value/weight column instead of the weight column. * Main window tables and Inventory dialog table changed to "read only" - doesn't affect anything but it looked silly if you tried to double click it. * Added lots more icons. And of course "lots more data". But I could add that line to every update :)

BlizzCon day 1

So, that is day one done. Onward to day 2. Big recap post here on MMOC. Diablo 3 The video is interesting. The rest that was shown, is mostly old news. There should be some more stuff about D3 coming this Saturday however. Panda bears Where to begin... Basically, there's going to be an expansion added which adds more dungeons, more raids, a new race that both factions can use, and a new class which will be rolled by just about everyone and is going to roll on leather armor. We'd thus have: * 3 Cloth classes: Warlock, Mage, Priest. * 3 Leather classes: Druid, Rogue, Monk. * 3 Plate classes: DK, Warrior, Paladin. * 2 Mail classes: Shaman, Hunter. I anticipate the next class to be added will be using mail armor. Don't you agree? That is another year and a half away at the least though. Still, I recall blizzard writing something like: * The reason why we don't release a new class and a new race in the same expansion, is because we want balance. If we released a new class and a new race at the same time everyone would be rolling that exact combination. So instead of having a variety of players roll "race" warrior, shaman, rogue etc, the majority of new characters would be "race" + "class". And yeah, that is EXACTLY what is going to happen now. Mostly because Undead Monks would look utterly ridiculous. Not to mention gnomes, or dwarves. Or gods no,. Tauren monks. o_o No female pandaren shown yet, much like when the worgen were first unveiled. But,. they will be fat and ugly much like taurens in all likelyhood. Horde AND Alliance This will be the first race that will be playable by both factions. Imagine the confusion on PvP. Imagine the frustration at all the haters of the race who are unable to kill the bears by switching factions. This, really is just a clear case of lazy blizzard, or lack of available development time. I can just imagine the conversation that must have gone on at Blizzard Activision HQ. "OK, we need a new class for this expansion, anyone ideas?" "Let's add Pandaren!" "That is not even a class but a race, are you retarded? That was an April fools joke from years ago." "But then we could add monks!" "But if we add a new race, we'd need a different race for the other faction as well." "Why not just make it available for both factions? Would save us a ton of work!" And shit ensued. Whoever ended up actually agreeing with the original idea certainly shouldn't earn his Christmas bonus this year... If they are going further down the furry path - as they seem to be, they might as well have added Tigren - image top-right, drawn by Susan Van Camp. It would fit perfectly with the Asian like culture of the Pandaren, give both factions a new race and would allow them to utilize the monk class as well. I'm going to guess some dick at Blizz HQ saw this movie one too many times and stole just about every idea for the new expansion from there. It could have been less bad than it is slated out to be right now. But they won't be changing this stuff this late in development. I'll wanna sho yu mah pokermans! So, another major feature of this expansion will be "pet battles". "Challenge other players’ companion pets with your own collection in a new tactical mini-game, and find out who's king or queen of the pint-sized battlefield." OMG, doesn't that sound exactly like the pokemon game we already heard so much of? Also, pet battles will be considered part of the level 90 endgame. Seriously just, what the heck. Blizzquote Q: What are companion pet battles? In Mists of Pandaria, we are adding a new tactical mini-game that will give the Snowshoe Rabbits, Mechanical Squirrels, and other cute lil’ companion pets players collect something to do other than stand around looking adorable. Companion pet battles allow players to pit their pint-sized pals against other players’ pets (or against special critters you come across in the wild) in strategic, turn-based combat. Pets will level up as they earn combat experience, and each companion in the game will have its own set of stats – such as attack and defense rating – along with unique abilities with their own tactical merits. During a pet battle, players will be able to swap companions out strategically depending on which pet they’re facing or what abilities might come in handy against a given foe. Pet battles are meant to be completely independent from your character’s main progression, and the rewards won’t offer additional advantages in regular PvP or PvE situations such as Battlegrounds or raids -- though they should help pass the time while you’re waiting for your group to recoup from a particularly nasty wipe. Say what? More distractions, as if recovering from a wipe didn't take long enough already. Now we'll have people messing around with their pets instead of healing, buffing and getting ready to go again. Uncool. Now, there is one thing that is somewhat unclear - they are referring to these critters as "companion pets" rather than "pets" or "vanity pets". This puts me to suspect you won't be using your current collection of 175+ pets. Though, there are enough pets there, and the numbers are coming close to the giant number of pokemon that some of you might have memorized. But still, there is still a fraction of doubt that is not addressed in the list of features. Pet Battle System * You will be able to collect, level, and battle with companion pets. * It will be accessible to all players. * Works with almost every pet * Pet Customization, you will be able to name your pet, give them visual abilities, etc ... * There will be "Wild pets", you can find them in the world and engage in battle with them. You will then be able to get that pet and add it to your Pet Journal. * Pets have random stats, some of them will be very good at tanking, some will have a CC ability, etc ... * Some pets will only be found during a specific season, while it's raining, or during the day or the night. Some of them will only spawn in the spring, when it's raining, in elwynn forest at night! * Most pets will become tradable, even after it's leveled, etc ... * Pets will be account wide * Your pet journal will display info on all your pets, including stats, skills, and also drop locations and lore info for the pets you don't have yet! * Winning battles earns you experience, and levels your pets. * You will learn new abilities. Every pet can use 3 abilities in a battle at one time. * Every time you level you will also increase the stats of your pet. * You will level multiple pets to build your team. * You have 3 battle slots, one for each pet in your team. Yes, pokemons Every.Single.Feature of this pet battle system is screaming pokemon. Now, I've got nothing against pokemon - aside that it's for kids who shouldn't even be playing WoW. But don't put this crap in my WoW and expact me to love it. At the same time though,. it couldn't possibly be worse than Archaeology. *groan* See here for more features listed in the BlizzCon panel. Talents v3.0 So, our entire talent tree is going AWAY and being rewritten, redefined, recreated from scratch. Instead, you'll get some passive / free abilities every 10 or more levels, and a "talent point choice" every 15 levels. rather than have the freedom to choose a wide variety of ways to spend your points in weird and amusing specs as was the case in Talents v1.0, or be forced to spend at least X points in 1 tree and then have 10 more points to spread around like in Talents v2.0, blizzard decided people weren't really using that freedom because a lot of people were using cookie cutter builds. Well DUH, if there is a best way to spec your character to do the most healing, or more damage then people WILL spec that way. So, instead they got rid of those choices entirely and invented Talents v3.0 where... you get 6 choices of 3 talent specials. In the case of druids and pretty much every other class you can investigate those choices and quickly notice that you now have even less of a choice than before. You will either pick a PvP talent, a PvE talent for DPS or a PVe talent for Healing (or utility if your class does not heal). GUESS WHAT? Every single PvP player will be picking the PvP talents, every healer will be picking the healing talents, and every DPS will be picking whatever talents result in the highest Damage on a Raid or instance boss. The trees are not final yet, but so far it's a sad looking affair. Realistically, the only way they'll get me to try this expansion, would be if they added a Real Money AH like Diablo 3 is getting. So I could sell my junk and be done with it. Also, the Mists of Pineapple website by blizzard.

How to crash MMO-Champion

Simple, just run a BlizzCon.

502 Bad Gateway

Only took about 15 minutes of half the world hammering F5 F5 F5.

The thing that really got it down though was "Mists of Pandaria is the next WoW Expansion". Oh boy...

diablo.incgamers.com seems to be having the same issue - gee I wonder why :P

Well, I suspect MMOC will be down for pretty much the rest of the evening unless they invoke the "emergency interface" again, but what I did manage to pick up so far was the following:


Data!

* New WoW expansion, "Mists of Pandaria". Talent system will be revamped.
* PoD will not have a "main villain" as we had in WotLK and Cata, but will focus on the Alliance vs Horde war. It seems that idiot leader from Stormwind is going to escalate things after all...
* Diablo 3 will be "free" for people who subscribe to WoW for 12 months. (40 euros one time fee, vs 12x13 euros = over 150 Euro) Bwhahahahah! No really, what? Oh yeah you get a flying tyrael horse mount as a bonus. But seriously, you will be playing Diablo 3. Why on earth would you want a 12 month WoW subscription at the same time? Ridiculous.
* Diablo 3 will be available in a collector's edition box as well.


WoW expansio:

* Level cap: 90 (Expected really)
* New class: Monk (Inspired by the Diablo 3 monk perhaps)
* New race: Pandaren (OK, this, is just gay, lame, stupid, retarded. I hate it, but we'll see how things end up in time.)
* Pve Scenarios (What?)
* Pet Battle System (Got to catch 'em all, yo)
* New continent: Pandaria
* Challenge mode dungeons.

Whole bunch of pictures here once you can get on there.

Utterly ridiculous I say. Disgusted.



* The Pandaren were initially planned to be the Alliance race in The Burning Crusade.
* The Pandaren will be playable by both Alliance and Horde. (Say WHAT? Confusion all around... this was supposed to be a neutral race. But then, so were Goblins.)


Diablo 3

Now this is more like it. Black soulstone.



Speaking of Diablo 3, D3 Markets is a really interesting site to take a look at some time.


Pandaren Racials

Yeah, the sequence of this post is a bit messy, but it'd be weird to add updates in the middle.

* Bouncy: Reduces fall damage by half. (So, they are all rogues in a way)
* Inner peace: Double rested XP. (Even faster leveling,. silly, but I guess expected.)
* Gourmand: +15 to cooking. (Lame and useless, but fits lore I guess.)
* Epicurean: Double stats to food buffs. (That seems rather OP to me... Just imagine your rogue getting +120 Agi instead of +60 from a food buff, quite good overall, but won't compare to specific +5% beasts damage or +5% pet damage that some races have. time will tell I guess.)

And Blizz made an Official Page for the expansion.

Dragon Tavern Logger v1.0.4

I spent most of my saturday getting the new features in. And I must say it's AWESOME to finally have the data stored separately. Updated the changelog / download link on the DT Forum, and of course v1.0.4 can be downloaded right here from hotfile. A few fixes and some new major features in this release. Updates in v1.0.4: * Fixed name of "Planar Crossroads" and "Sliverghoul Burrow" in Zones.ini. * Inventory list dialog is now sortable. * Implemented alternating row colors for all tables. * Collected data is now stored separately from the developer data. You will never have to worry about losing your data after upgrading again! * Added preferences dialog (F11). Currently you are able to hide the developer collected data, and show/hide the combined data columns. * Added hotkey for help dialog (F1) and about dialog (F2). Main screen: * Gathered data method changed to "table views" to support host/local data. * The table row indication for new creatures found during this exploration attempt will now draw in a "bold" style instead of show "(+1)". * Zoneview and Dataview tables are now sortable! - Current sort column and direction will be remembered in the settings. * Made the screen slightly less wide. (Around 40-50 pixels or so) * Added ability to hide the browser navigation bar. You can find the option in the preferences dialog (F11). * Added ability to manually refresh the data view with the push of a single button. (The image on the right is from an early beta of 1.0.4) See this post for older versions. Stay tuned for more updates in the future.

Blood, Vampires and Violence

A wise man once said: "With Great Breasts comes Great Responsibility". Now, whether you find that a wise quote or not he should have said: "comes a large horde of teenage fan boys". I haven't even really started telling you what I was about to tell you, and yet I know for SURE you have been looking at the image on the right. You were, right? I knew it! The Game At any rate, I've been playing the Open Beta version of a game called Rusty Hearts. It is Free to Play and available on Steam. Like pretty much all Free-to-Play games it has some ways for you to spend money and buy in-game items to look better, get faster XP and be stronger and better than the other players who don't use their parent's credit card to buy virtual goods. The Good Even though it's beta, the game "as it is" it enough to keep you busy for a good few nights. The world is fairly small (one town with three areas) right now, but each area has access to one or more dungeons with several (4-8) sub-dungeons. Each available in up to four difficulty settings. Normal, Hard, Very Hard and Blood mode. The game has an Auction house - though it's not yet fully functional. Or if it is, I couldn't get it working the way it should be. The controls are fairly easy to get use to - basically smash anything and everything as soon as it's off cooldown. And there are a ton of quests to ensure you always have a reason to go to each of the dungeons. Tons of items, stuff to craft, some mild comedy (card board cut-outs of some npcs), and several indications that the game originates from the Asian areas. The Bad Being a beta game is fine, and gives you an excuse for some of the bugs, random crashes, glitchy graphics, hopping npcs, and server downtime. The Auction house search feature not working, and Goldspammers going on and about their way for over 12 hours straight on the same character without getting banned, is pretty lacking. Either not enough GMs, or simply a low priority on the to-do list. PvP, due to the fact that you can "buy" a number of advantages PvP is going to be unfair. The advantages might be small, but in PvP it's the small things that will determine the outcome of a battle. Still, you'll quickly find PvP to be more skill based than dungeons. You won't win if you don't know how to block, dodge and counter attack a good opponent. And the ugly The atmosphere would be great, if not for the fact that... you got people running around in teddy bear or shark costumes. Or with cardboard-cat head boxes on their head. Beside that, there are currently only three classes/characters that can be selected. Coming this October 25'th a fourth is being added to the mix. (As seen in the first picture up top) This will put the total to two guys, and two girls. Frantz, a sleepy looking half-vampire. Angela, a witch with (an) epic b.. ig sword. Tude, a werewolf, still mostly in human form. Natasha, a gunslinger with great big round b.. eautiful eyes. That's it. Beyond that, you have a wide range of craftable and questable customization to allow you to distinguish from the masses. Black hair, white, brown, blue, yellow and many other colors. Regular clothes, cowboy, drag-queen, vamp and many others. But you'll always be the same "character" as the others. One of four. Especially in the starter area, that gives people the creeps. But still,.. It's without question the game aims at the teenage generation of gamers. But, if you can look past the initial impressions (I assure you, It's pretty easy to do so) you'll quickly find the game to be a hectic and bloody fun hack-n-slash that will suck up most of your spare time. Plenty of epic b.. oss battles at the end of some dungeons as well, if that's your thing. And I know most of the WoW players will want some diversion from the endless daily quests ;) I'll let the screenshots speak for themselves. Lots of fire, explosions, and a tiny girl swinging around a Scythe twice her size.

Steve Jobs 1955-2011

Rest iPeace.

Some didn't like him, but one way or the other, he's had a profound effect on how we listen to music or make calls.

Dragon Tavern Logger v1.0.3

I just updated version 1.0.3 of the Dragon Tavern Logger. If you have no idea what it is - which is more than likely - then I would refer you to the DT Forum for the latest info and download link. What the crap is this Dragon Tavern? See a post from 2-3 years ago here. It's nice and slow, just log in once a week and your character will slowly evolve and be able to compete with others. A good thing to play around with during raids. If one character takes too long for you, just make up to 20 total. The Logger is mostly a little project I made out of personal frustration, to analyze the game, log some data as you explore and play, and save myself the trouble of keeping a google spreadsheet up to date. I figured others might enjoy the functionality so far (especially the inventory cleanup feature) and would care to try it out. It's free, so don't hesitate to give it a whirl. v1.0.3 can be downloaded through: Hotfile. Updates in v1.0.3: * Fixed browser window losing focus after closing the Inventory list dialog, or pressing certain action buttons. It should be a bit less "strange" to use now. * Disabled buttons when logged out or timed out. * More button icons added. * Buttons are now double buffered - which stops the strange icon fade-in / fade-out after selection on Vista and Windows 7. * Added several button tooltips. * Menubar added, to fit in a lot more actions and shortcuts for the future. * Hotkeys dialog added. It shows you all the known DT hotkeys and how to enable them. * Page source dialog: Added select all ability (Ctrl+A), as well as Escape button to close. * Dialog creation changed to runtime rather than global. (You shouldn't notice much other than a slightly smaller memory footprint) * Subdialog default positions changed to "Owner Form Center". So, no more random positions on those. * We are now hiding several "strange" urls like google syndication, facebook, blanc, javascript e.a. that were reported earlier. Remember this is a Dragon Tavern logger, so while other webpages might work - it is not the main focus of this application. As a result of hiding these urls, the buttons and menu actions should be enabled/disabled in a more reliable & predictable manner. * Disabled "Return to tavern", if you are in the tavern. It isn't going to do you much good to go where you already are. * Added the list of monsters found in the tavern. * Now keeping track of the latest version of the application you started. So we can show a changelog on startup later. Inventory dialog: * Added "select common" button. * Changed select weight in to work as "this weight and greater". * OK button renamed to: "Portal It!" * Turned warning text red. Updates in v1.0.2: * Added application icon Main screen: * Button tab order improved. * Added "about" dialog. (Questionmark button topright) * Added some icons. It's not much, but looks better at least. * Page source button. Mostly for debugging purposes. * Inventory list button now has a better placement among it's fellows. * Inventory list button is now disabled properly. * Inventory list button can now be pressed even when you are not on your inventory page. It will try to load your inventory, "and then" open the dialog. Inventory dialog: * Button tab order improved. * Added 5 new buttons : Select all by weight: 10, 11, 12, 13, unselect all. * It will now tell you how many items you have selected. * Implemented number of cube charges available. * Show a warning if you select more items than the available cube charges. * No longer tries to recycle selected items if you do not have a cube. * Will not show certain buttons if you do not have a cube. Further updates Planned updated in the future should include better sorting, more analysis options of the data you have collected and more options to customize the interface.

Music for today

Let's try something different.
How about some music?

Do you know Pong?
And not just "know of it" but actually KNOW pong, used to own the original Atari thing, with specialized controllers? Yeah, I'm that old I guess. But age aside it is more than a little amusing that such an old game still holds a place in people's hearts today. And, not just that - it actually makes a pretty amusing (and difficult) game at that. I present you with Pwong 2, go on try it. See if it surprises you in how bloody well difficult it is. I love it. and it has some great music as well ! Popcorn remix-EON

And, this one is for our English friends near London ;) Riot! Just because you can!

Now, since we're on the subject of the big green island anyhow, Scotland is pretty much the logical next step, right? Bagpipes! Oh yeah, but not the old ugly classic sound used to scare armies on the battlefield. No, bagpipes mixed with dance / trance / something... I don't know what to call it really, but it sounds good.

In order to keep this post "slightly" on topic of World of Warcraft, let's include the night elf dance with... Alizee - remixed of course ;) No offense to the girl, but compared to the remix the rest of her songs are just... not that interesting to listen to.

As well as one we Dutch know as "Hakkuhhhhhh"! Scooter - Kondor.

If that's not quite your thing, try the more throaty / metal approach. Stone Sour - Inhale

Too slow?
Ok, how about something a little faster then: DJ Paul Elstak - Rainbow in the sky. In terms of music I guess it's a bit dated, but still, one has to appreciate the classics.

Speaking of classics, I could listen to this one again and again:

Ahh, sweet memories.
Music by: Chris Huelsbeck - Visit his site!

Link cleanup

I just cleaned up some dead links from the comic links bar, as well as some old/outdated theorycrafting links. Even removed one which had some gold-seller links on it (I ain't having any of that shit on here).

Which means, there's some room on the bar for new links!

So, if you got a GREAT WoW site, or comic. Feel free to let me know - I'll have a look at it and perhaps add your link to the static bar :)

Caption this!

You have no doubt all heard and seen I Can Has Cheezburger, right? And there's a bunch of other caption sites "out there" on the big ole interwebs.

I figured hey, lets see if anyone can come up with some funny warcraft captions. So, here's a few images to get you started. I'm sure there are a lot of creative spirits out there :P

Be sure to post them here as comment!

If you come up with a really funny (and good looking one, no crappy paint please), I might go ahead and throw one on EasyCanvasPrints and hang it on my wall. Remember, you can always use the ICanHasCheeze lolbuilder.

Achievements all over

Metagaming at it's finest. Achievements aren't just limited to World of Warcraft after all. Most flash gaming sites have incorporated the system in some way or the other. There's Kongregate, Newgrounds, Armorgames, and oh so many more. Kongragate has implemented an achievement system that spans a large variety of games and even put a few "achievement packs" together in the form of some small quests. Newgrounds has simply a ton of games, but it's falling behind the others as they are simply not sorting the system very well. Complete idiots can add the points to their games, and the whole list of games is just a huge single list. Of course, it is still "beta", but it has been that way for well over a year or two. There has been plenty of time to improve on it. It's just not happening. Kongregate has em nicely sorted by genre, year, and 20 per page. Even the list on your user page is neatly ordered compared to the giant list of don't press this link unless you want to crash your browser. Yeah... Armorgames is "in progress" on version 3 of the site. Many things will improve when it's released, but until then we're stuck with version 2. Still an awesome game available there, is the latest version of Gemcraft. Tower defense in a way that just completely redefines the genre. Champions online A WoW clone, but not quite. Perhaps the biggest thing this game has going for it, is that it's free. It does have a huge number of microtransaction options to buy special costume parts, a hideout, extra missions, more character slots and so on and so forth. The second big thing is customizeability. (Is that even a word?) You will be very hard pressed to find two characters in game who look exactly the same. (Excluding the NPCs obviously) First, you can change the thickness, height, fat, muscle, arm length etc of your body. After that, you can change the colors of your custome. No big deal, Eve Online can do as much. But then you can mix and match the rest of your costume from a large variety of parts. As shown above in my Fire and Ice characters. Fire is the predefined "dps" class, or archetype as it's known here. Ice is a "tanking" class which gives you high health, high threat and so on. Almost all classes have ranged spells. For faster travel you can get giant jumps (Like hulk, rawr, hulk smash!), flight like superman, teleportation like.... I dunno, fast run like the flash, and a variety upon those types with different graphics. Before I bore you too much with simple stats I'll just give you a quick few points: * Crafting system, which is rather limited. * Equipped items do not show on your avatar, hence you can customize your suit and looks yourself. * Level 40 is currently max level. * Dungeons and heroic dungeons. * No ingame achievement system - but over 600 achievements directly linked to steam. * Gold membership / pay per month is an option if you choose it. A fun bit about gold membership (normally you are silver) is that you can "create" your own class. You basically pick whether you want to tank/heal/dps, and can select all the base abilities from there on. You want to tank with ice shield, and have a high dps acid bolt? Healing aura? No problem, no restrictions. Sadly, the game itself lacks the huge world that you can explore in World of Warcraft or the decades worth of lore. In the end it all feels a bit stale. Sure there's the continuous stream of quests, daily quests, event quests (basically a fixed location world boss on a short spawn timer which awards loot to those who did the most damage), 5 man instances and pvp. Even an auction house which is underused, and all the spam in /1 just like old barrens chat. The graphics are so-so. Not as comicky as in WoW, but nowhere near as high res as for example Eve or Rift. Mostly you'll be soloing, and leveling up is somewhat slow. Since it's free, there's not much harm in giving it a try. At worst you don't like it, at best it's a few hours to keep you off the street. I highly recommend getting flight as travel form - since you can avoid enemies more easily, but heck, try em all! Swords and Potions This game is like a cheap rip-off of Recettear, without the ability to do the cool dungeon crawling yourself. Still, a decent game, but with a lot of flaws. It should keep you entertained for a bit though. It (currently) has a 30 min wait time for "game turns", which is too long a wait to really get into it comfortably, and too short to allow it to be a casual game like for instance Dragon tavern, where you can log in once a week and not miss out on anything. It's basically designed to make you spend real money to buy extra turns, recipes and other upgrades. The "guild" system is awfully designed, I'm not even going to waste any words on it. I'll just tell you, avoid joining a guild other than for point trading. Which is another oddity. As your crafters "work" they gain points which stack up to 1000. These points you can use on other players to improve some of the items they bought. Indeed not even on your own items if you have the proper crafter for it. You can't send or buy items or points, you have to physically join a guild with the other player and then click the vendor to improve their items. No safety net to prevent scamming either for that matter. The NPCs will rip you off at every chance they get and curse you in your face if you don't have the item they are looking for. Vendors will bleed you dry, and other players will send ruffians to steal your items or vandalize your shop. Oh yeah, and if you open a tailor + sorceress shop, don't be surprised to find yourself annoyed at the huge number of customers that simply keep on asking for swords, armor, bows and flutes. It seems the signpost outside of shops is yet to be invented. On to quests, unlike the first quest where you are kindly offered the suggestion to please keep an eye out for an old guy's bag of clovers, the other quests are "hidden" in the form of extortionists and blackmailers. If you, like most other players are in any way intelligent enough to not fall for blatant blackmail from NPCs, then you're apparently doing it wrong in this game. You have to pay huge sums of money in order to unlock the following quest chains. If you tell the NPC who is coming to your front door, asking for 4500 gold "welcome tax" to take a hike. He won't come back, you won't get the follow up quest, and you won't get the 25.000 gold quest reward. How is that for logic then.. eh? Well, give it a try, hope the creators adjust the difficulties later and enjoy it for what it is. A quick time killer. Here's an example of a shop with two crafters. On top the Sorceress who makes potions and mixes herbs. In the bottom the Blacksmith who mainly makes weapons and armor. *Puts on his robe and wizard hat* Sorry, but this is not that kind of game.

It's t-t-t-takeover tuesday!

Seems a number of large games got hacked and/or became the victim of a DDOS.

Eve online, Minecraft and the games site The escapartist all seem to be down today.
Way to go on ruining my evening you damn kids!

First sony gets hacked, several times in a row (they kind of deserved it though), and now it seems the hacking continues on to different sites and companies. Is this the beginning of a new trend? Let's wait and find out...

Anyway, see for more info:
* facebook
* eurogamer.net
* ibtimes

So, yeah.
Also, it seems Steam is now listing a bunch of free to play games. Guess I'll spend a bit of time on that today :P

The ugly thing called Yahoo

I really should post more often, but I guess the infrequent updates are as good a reason as any to sign up to the RSS feed ;)

So, I was lazy and snagged an image at random. It still serves the same purpose.
Yahoo is bad. Evil even. A filthy large corporation that abuses the stupidity of the common user to it's own ends. And rather poorly at that.

(Yeah this is one of those random rants)

Many years ago on a different computer, probably this one, I installed the yahoo messenger because well certain people didn't use ICQ and MSN just wasn't "that hot" in America. I suspect it still isn't. MSN is big in europe, Yahoo is big in the USA, and ICQ is just an empty shell with BLOODY AWFUL customer support that, indeed, was taken over by yahoo at some point in history. Goes to see how all evil things are linked.

So about yahoo, why is is bad you ask?
Well, for starters they will install unwanted software on your computer. Adware, spyware, bloated junk of all sorts that you will not want anywhere NEAR your computer. Yet there it is ready to install as soon as you try to install anything they offer in .exe format. Enabled by default on any assorted software and no way to uncheck it.
Back then when I installed the messenger it gave me some kind of "yahoo mail" as well, and there was no way I was able to get rid of it. It showed up in the installed software list, you could try to uninstall it... But it wouldn't go. Filthy software. Nowadays they will try to install some completely useless toolbar into your IE or firefox browser.
I assure you, that is the LAST thing you want to install.

If you are looking for a good way to chat with friends... well I'm not going to recommend trillian or MSN to you. Certainly not ICQ, and no way in hell will I tell you to get AOL AIM.
So what should you get? I don't know really, you tell me.
Currently I'm using Pidgin, which works and connects to people using all the most common protocols much like trillian.

At any rate, another reason why yahoo is an evil, filthy BAD company that you should boycott whenever you see a chance to do so is this. A week or two ago I sent an email to someone using a yahoo address. Now you'll say "well there is your problem", but seriously I haven't had any yahoo spam on that email in YEARS for as far as I can tell. And yet, no more than 10 minutes after I sent that person an email. *poof* A newsletter from yahoo arrives.
Suspicious? Yes, yes indeed. Those assholes actually had the guts to send me spam for emailing one of their members? Seriously, what the F yo.

Accidents happen...

Sometimes when you least expect it.

Like for example, at 0.38 in the middle of the night... When I was "trying",.. oh so very much to get some sleep. The picture on the side here, is the resulting image I took the next morning.

Apparently, either a joyrider, or some drunk idiot in a red car was racing around the block (Yes, I could hear him doing exactly that for the past half an hour). After having done so for a while I suddenly heard a *BLAAAAAAM!* and then silence. So, I checked outside (sadly my bedroom is like 10 meters away from where the fool hit the blue car. (as you can see on the image) So my adrenalin got a nice big spike right there, and sleep was pretty much out of the question for the next 15-30 minutes. Especially,,,,.... since after a crash like that a whole bunch of other people woke up and came outside to have a look at the wreck that the red car left behind.

As you can see, or not see from the image, the red car indeed did a hit and run.
Basically what happened was, he hit the blue car, the blue car hit the white car, and then he backed up and drove away. No idea who, but I haven't heard much more of this a day or two later. Other than the blue car having gotten towed away, and the white one still being there.

The end of trillian

I'm sure many have heard of the program called "Trillian".
It's an Instant Messenger interface which supports the MSN, yahoo, icq, skype and a number of other protocols.

It's always had a fairly good reputation as far as I was aware, but it turns out they recently took up a deal with "OpenCandy". As part of this deal, they are now distributing Trillian with the OpenCandy32 Adware.

Also known as: "Adware:Win32/OpenCandy"

Or that is what MSE detects it as.
Basically, it's a piece of software that comes along with the Trillian installer, that delivers unwanted advertisements in places you will not want it to be delivering them to. And, you won't even get a choice about installing the stuff.

Basically, trillian and it's distributor are done and dead for as far as I'm concerned. Perhaps you've heard of the company called "Gator", which used to do the same with the software called GetRight? Well, this joke will kill Trillian as surely as gator killed GetRight.

R.I.P.

I'll just stick with Pidgin for now.

4.0.6, stupid damn patch

OK so, yay we get a patch. Bunch of fixes, bunch more things got broken. I'll add to this list as I run into things. Newly Broken * Stealth looks different. It's like I'm moonwalking in slow motion now, it sucks. Other changes * Open GM ticket, 2 Days 10 Hr remaining. LOL! * Blade flurry is a toggle, that is kind of nice at least. * Archaeology junk is now worth more cash. Not like we need more money, but still. Other interesting... Ah yes, if you are a hunter and used to have Ancient Sinew Wrapped Lamina, then you should probably make a GM ticket to try and get it back. "If" for whatever reason the GM tells you they won't restore it, then make ANOTHER ticket because they totally WILL restore it. They did for me, so no reason they won't do it for you as well.

Gaymes you will wish to avoid

Indeed, a play on words. So, aside wow theres dozens of games you may run into on the internet. One particular type that keeps tempting me and then just crash kill and delete is the "build stuff in your browser" sort. You know, travian, freesky, those sort. I started Batheo a week or two ago, and at first it's quick and fast, new buildings take a minute or so to complete. And then... you get hit by the first signs of "pay now or you wont be able to compete". As with all, and I mean ALL of those type of games you can simply NOT compete with players who steal their parents credit card. Faster build time, helper interface, free money, extra loot, more armies, and so on and so forth. This batheo game is particularly evil in that regard. But yeah, you start with a 1 minute cooldown on buildings, soon it turns 10 minutes, and more, and more. I just hit level 30 on my main building, it would take 7 hours to upgrade it to 31. And there are MANY more buildings that would need upgrading. You just wait, and wait, and click once or twice, then go back to waiting. I don't know why I bother trying for more than a few minutes when I realize what kind of game it is. Either way, I highly discourage playing such games. They completely rely on idiots paying for them. And there is NO WAY you can compete with other players unless you do. Pretty much ruins the whole point of playing the game. It's not the size of another player's wallet that I wish to play against after all. I just deleted the links to the game site. Edited my password to a random garbling of characters, and logged out. It's the best way to stop straight away really. Good riddance. Back to more wow Currently got two characters up to 85, and working on a third. Professions are a bit slower but the obvious (mining and herbalism) are capped, as is Archaeology, cooking and fishing. I do say, Arch is still the most painfully boring one to raise. Whoever thought that one up needs to get fired real quick. And now they're nerfing the skillups in such a way that it'll take you half the time to raise that it did before. So much for that... The joy of being one of the first to raise that skill quickly fades with the rising jealousy at the speed of which players can raise the skill now... T_T Easy money The Auction house is a well known place to get yourself some easy cash. Even more so now in Cataclysm. Buy Zephyrites, Nightstones and Jaspers when they are 10-15 gold, and then put them on the AH when the daily JC quest that needs those is active. People will gladly pay 30-40g per gem. That's about 300% profit right there. You'll be hated by just about every JC on the server, but you'll be a rich (wo)man.