Greg

What is WoW’s Lifespan?

 Opinion  3 Responses »
Sep 202008
 

Massively has an interesting post – What is the potential lifespan of an MMO?

So here’s my rambling take on How long will these games last?

As Massively points out Ultima Online is still making a profit after having been out for 11 years. Anarchy Online is still alive and kicking, as is Everquest and a number of others.

So I think my answer is this – as long as the game is fun for a large enough group of players such that the company can continue to make a profit. Blizzard has the right stuff and the right business model and I hope that some of the others figure that out and can continue.

If you have an ongoing profit maker why would you ever deliberately kill it?

There’s a group of players who’d always looking for the next great thing and who won’t stick with one thing for long. Then there’s a group who finds enough there that they will stick with it for years. As Nyhm said in his interview, PvP is still fun (he’s been playing since the beta) and he’s got a big group of friends who play.

The End is Near

The End is Near

People will say, “The End of WoW is Near” and then we look at the subscriber numers and see that WoW has added another million.

Right now WoW is Blizzard’s cash cow and I can’t see any reason for them to ever end the game themselves. As far as the competition goes, well, there’s nothing which is going to knock WoW off the throne for a big enough group of players that it’ll actually hurt WoW.

Especially since there’s room in the market for a number of big games and a bunch of smaller ones.

If it does, then Blizz will get off its collectinve butt and do what it does best, put its game back on top.

Now, if Blizzard, or any company, loses its drive or interest or is taken over by someone utterly clueless, then we may see then end.

I think WoW’s going to be around for a long time. I hope WAR will be. My boys are playing it now and it looks good. There are a few other games I’d like to play, but don’t have the time for right now.

So how long can they last? As long as the owning company is making money with it and doesn’t decide to kill it for other reasons.

What do you think?

edit 9/23: Part Time Druid has some interesting remarks on WoW, WAR, DAoC, PvP and PvE.

“I’m not going to write some meta piece about how there is no WoW killer, though I do agree with that sentiment. WoW has become the McDonald’s of MMOs, the best competitors can hope for is to become Wendy’s or Burger King. They aren’t going to topple World of Warcraft.”
Warhammer Online: Why I’m Not Worried

The New Orgrimmar Arena

 Arena, wrath of the lich king  Comments Off on The New Orgrimmar Arena
Sep 192008
 

One of the many additions, for all you Arena fans out there, that’s coming to WoW with The Wrath of the Lich King expansion is the new Orgrimmar arena.

Spooncraft has a video which shows of some pretty interesting features of this particular arena.

Holy crap am I excited about Arenas!? YES I AM! This would be a first for a long time, but I think Blizzard has just made arenas fun for me. I figure if they’re going to turn the PVP game into an FPS Team Deathmatch, then at least make the maps fun to play.

Check it out here: First Look at the New Orgrimmar Arena in Wrath of the Lich King

Maintaining Your Account’s Security

 Miscellaneous  Comments Off on Maintaining Your Account’s Security
Sep 192008
 

Blizzard, as you may know, has a widget called the Authenticator. This is a hardware device that makes it very difficult to have you account hacked.

ExNovis has a write-up about it and answers the “Yes, but is it really secure?” question:

So the Blizzard Authenticator is back on sale, even after a day of being sold out. This time, it’s available in more countries and it looks like Blizzard understood there would be a huge demand for them. I bought one for myself, and for my partner, Cantara. Sometimes, I get teased from people about ‘wasting money on a device that doesn’t provide total security.’ Well folks, Blizzard has stepped into the fray of the debate and confirmed, yes, the authenticator is secure!

Here’s the rest: For The Last Time, YES, It IS Secure

Update on Wrath of the Lich King Release

 wrath of the lich king  1 Response »
Sep 162008
 

As I mentioned previously, the pre-order page for Wrath of the Lich King is up on Amazon.com.

The release date has been moved from Nov 3 to Nov 13 (darn close to my Birthday!) Given that Blizzard is willing to let release dates slide if things need more work I wouldn’t say the 13th is etched in stone, but it’s probably close.

edit: Since it’s on the front page of the official World of Warcraft site that date’s probably pretty well etched. Still, don’t be too surprised if it slides a bit.

Get yours here: World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King Expansion Pack

So just off the top of my head, here’s a reminder of what’s coming in November:

  1. [tag-tec]Deathknights[/tag-tec] are coming, hide now.
  2. All classes will have new talents, changed talents, and the talent trees are being shifted around. Hopefully Bliz gives us all a free respec.
  3. Level 80. Who’s gonna get there first? The guys playing 24/7? The writers of the leveling guides? Nyhm?
  4. New cooking recipes (some of which will be in our cookbook.)
  5. The Inscription profession. Glyphs will be inscribed onto your naked flesh with Raptor Claw pens… Oh, waitaminute… wrong game.
  6. Modified professions
  7. New daily quests and badges from those quests, which will allow you to buy high end recipes for various professions.
  8. Northrend. ’nuff said.
  9. A new BG and Arena to slaughter alliance in.
  10. New dungeons, raids, and some changes to the raiding system.
  11. Various buffs, nerfs, and bugs. Hope they fix the “randomly fall off your mount and die, while flying way up high” one.
  12. And a partridge in a pear tree…

Word has it that Bliz is going to provide a free patch that will incorporate a lot of the Wrath changes. I expect this is to make sure that people who don’t buy Wrath are still on, more or less, the same page as those who do buy it.

This will be a huge download, but will be handled as a background process so it shouldn’t force long waits on people. Estimated time on a dial-up connection is 3 weeks, 2 days… (just kidding, I think.)

When does it happen? Real Soon Now.

Get your Wrath on Amazon, here.

By the way, you DO have to have Burning Crusade installed in order to play Wrath.

Edit: There is going to be a Wrath Collector’s Edition, but it’s going to be hard to find. Here’s the link to the Amazon page, but as I write this it’s only available from Amazon’s 3rd party sellers. For the low low price of just $300.00 (no, that’s not a typo.)
World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King Collector’s Edition

If you want it then check back to the Amazon page every now and then, to get the Amazon price just in case they get some in. Or camp your local game store.

Level 80 Rogues in Wrath of the Lich King

 wrath of the lich king  Comments Off on Level 80 Rogues in Wrath of the Lich King
Sep 132008
 

My wife and both kids have got their [tag-tec]Wrath of the Lich King[/tag-tec] beta keys, but not me. Sob. Guess I’ll just mooch off their accounts. Mwahahaha!

So as you may know, especially if you read my other post WoW PvP, Blizzard is letting you copy premade templates of level 80 PvP characters into your Wrath beta account. (They’re also letting you move your regular PvE characters to PvP servers, but that’s another post. )

If you have your beta key, you log into the WoW Beta page, pick the copy template option, and go from there. You’ll land on a page which gives you two choices, one ally, one Horde, for each class in the game. You can pick any three and it takes about a day for them to copy over.

Once it’s copied you’ll have a nicely PvP geared 80, in Dalaran, to play with. My Rogue, for example, has 747 resilience. Not bad. 😉

There’s an interesting glitch, though. Apparently, and I assume this will be quickly fixed, some classes have invisible gear. The female Blood Elf Pally, for one. There are others.

The gear is a mix of blue and purple, so this isn’t a maxed out character. PvE geared characters are not available. I assume this means they want to test the PvP system, right? Well the instances are open (and Rogues don’t need a key,) but the battlegrounds and arenas are not, at least as I write this. Being beta things will change and then change again.

Here’s the Rogue with Weapons:
Level 80 Orc Rogue Showing Weapons

Click here for the full size shot

If you’re wondering… I went with a Shadowstep build on this one. The world server is down at the moment, so I don’t have exact numbers, but it’s a pretty basic build. You can hit the level 80 WoW Talent Calculator here and play around with builds.

You do start with some stuff and some nice bags. Haris Pilton, in Shattrath, sells the Gigantic bags at a Gigantique price.

Here’s a screenie of the Orc Rogue with bags. Note the bandages (heal 5800) and the poisons, which are now (will be) bought from vendors. No more flash powder for your Vanish, either.
Level 80 Orc Rogue with Starting Gear

Click here for the full size shot.

Naturally, when Wrath goes live all beta characters will be deleted. Still, this gives us a good chance to play around with talents and see what gear will be coming.

I’ll probably use Zygor’s Guide and blast my Rogue to 80 ASAP, then work for some of that gear in the BGs and Arenas (with my 1200 Arena rating.)

Deathknights are a lot of fun so far, so that one will be next. After that, we’ll see.

I expect all the new talents and everything DeathKnight will be significantly tweaked between now and release, so take all beta info with a hefty lump of soothing spices.

WoW PvP – Hunters, Gnomes, and Level 80s

 PvP  1 Response »
Sep 112008
 

Looking around my blog list I came across a couple of interesting PvP posts that I thought you might like to see.

This first one is arena based, but I think it could be easily used elsewhere, in the unlikely event that you can find cooperative players in the BGs. Since my main is a Rogue i particularly liked this one.

Rogue / Rogue vs. Druid / Rogue is no easy match, typically any team with a druid is going to be a tough match for a double rogue team. That said, using systemic decision making and quick reflexes we can learn how to effectively counter these 2v2 teams.
Rogue / Rogue Vs. Druid / Rogue 2v2 Arena Strategy

Gnomes. There’s just something disturbing about them. Must be the remnants of the radiation poisoning. It is rather interesting how those Tauren mallets are just the right size…  Anyway, here’s a fun story of the Hunter and the Gnome Rogue.

The Tauren Hunter was merrily bounding into the Silverwing base in Warsong Gulch; she had been enjoying these player-verses-player excursions lately and was rather fond of her 25,000 honor that she had stockpiled for when she would hit 70 in a couple more levels and would need a nice set of war gear to go with her set of standard adventuring gear. She made it to the roof of the enemy building when suddenly she was jumped upon! By a very persistent gnome rogue.
The Fable of the Gnome Rogue

Rogue’s Eye View has something which some of you know about already, but maybe a few don’t. Hope into your very own premade level 80, then go kill the other 80s!

To those that don’t know, earlier this week it was announced that level 80 premades are available to players in the beta test.

In order to copy over a premade character, you’ll need to log into your account at beta.worldofwarcraft.com and make your way to the character copy section.
Level 80 Premades Available for Beta Servers

An Interview with Nyhm

 Videos  8 Responses »
Sep 102008
 

Nyhm is a character best know for making a series of well loved videos on YouTube. Most of these videos have hundreds, or thousands, of 5 star ratings from his fans, so check them out sometime. I’ve posted a few of Nyhm’s videos here, but just search his name on YouTube and you’ll find the others.

I managed to catch Nyhm in-between battles against the evil Gnome hordes and asked him a few questions, but note the edits, below:

edit: As you’ll see in the comments there is some, ahem, question, as to whether this fellow is actually the some one as the one who did the videos. I’ve also removed the links to the guides until I get this sorted out.

edit 2: I updated the discussion in a later post, but I should have linked to that post here. Here’s the post that clarifies everything and, yes, I should have linked to it sooner. And yes, I did step in it. My bad.

The commenters below are correct, there are two Nyhms. One does the videos (and it’s his video below) and the other Nyhm writes the guides. Their only connection is the same name and that they both play Warlocks. So as I mentioned in the other post, from here on out I’ll refer to them as Nyhm of the Videos and Nyhm of the Guides whenever I mention either of them.

The interview is from Nyhm of the Guides:

How long have you been playing WoW?

(Since) November of 2004

What kind of raiding and PvPing do you do?

I don’t do much raiding anymore, but I pvp all the time on alts, friends’ characters, and my arena team.

What keeps you playing after all this time?

PvP just never seems to get boring, and I have a lot of friends that play.

Is Nyhm your main character? Or mostly just the face for your productions? (And I did find him on the WoWarmory.)

Nyhm is my main but I don’t play on him anymore

What got you into making videos?

Nothing really, I just decided one day that I wanted to make WoW Videos.

Who’s on your production team? Or do they prefer to remain in the shadows?

My friends help me out a lot.

What equipment and software do you use to make the videos? (He makes videos related to his guides.)

Fraps and Sony Vegas

What’s the first character you’ll be working on when Wrath of the Lich King is officially released?

Deathknight, of course

Are your guides written from your own efforts and experiences or do you have a team behind them?

They are mostly written by me but I have a lot of help from friends

What made you decide to write leveling and gold guides when there is quite a bit of competition already?

One way to keep the game interesting is doing things out of the game like making videos or guides so it was just another WoW related project that I wanted to complete.

So there you have it, the (really short) Nyhm Interview. If you want to check out his WoW guides you’ll find them here.

And now, Nyhm of the Videos will explain, in great detail, why Mages pwn.

Your WoW Addons Crushed by the Wrath of the Lich King

 wrath of the lich king  1 Response »
Sep 102008
 

[tag-tec]Wrath of the Lich King[/tag-tec] is going to bring many changes to the World of Warcraft and one of these changes will be to crush many of the addons that you’re using. As if you didn’t already have that figured out.

This is to be expected given all the basic changes being made. Blizzard is revamping a lot of stuff and I think a lot of it isn’t making it into the patch notes (big surprise, right? ) So with the addons there are many that work and many others that partially work and some that are totally broken.

Being that the whole thing is still in beta I think we can expect more breaking, more pwning of defenseless addons, and maybe a few that suddenly start working.

WoWwiki has a list of wow addons that currently work, or don’t, with the Wrath beta. Check it out here.

If your favorite addon is broken you might want to send some flowers and/or cookies to the developer and beg them for a Wrath update.

Life Beyond the Lich King

 wrath of the lich king  Comments Off on Life Beyond the Lich King
Sep 082008
 

This is from the G4 website. Blizzard is thinking a little farther into the future here:

Blizzard said that they already have plans for future expansions of World of Warcraft even before the release of Wrath of the Lich King this fall, according to an interview with VG247. Lead designer Tom Chilton said:

“We actually already have ideas on how we’re going to expand on that in the future,” Chilton told us when asked if more land was going to be added to the game…

Here’s the story

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