Interview with Felicia Day and Jeff Lewis from
I’m sorry it took so long to get to, but my interview with Felicia Day and Jeff Lewis from The Guild is up.
http://media.libsyn.com/media/worldofwarcast/InterviewWithFeliciaDay.m4v
A review of the Recruit-A-Friend program
Dace on our forums has done a well-written review of the RaF program. You can read it here.
Blizzcon ‘08
Hi all. I don’t have a ton of time to write. It’s 8;30 PST and I’m still trying to organize the day. Yesterday was a whirlwind, I don’t think today will be any less. I spent the first part of my day here napping since I’d been up since 4am EST. I got on line for my ticket and waited for a little over an hour. It wasn’t bad, the line moved pretty quickly. I finally met up with Shawn Coons from How I WoW and on the way back to the hotel, I got a call from Molly from Women of Warcraft with whom I went out to dinner with. After that, drinks with Shawn and Patrick from How I WoW, Randy from The Instance, and Molly. Pictures are up here. Check back for more stuff later.
Proof!
Back in the episodes about the reputation experiment, I observed that there seemed to be fewer Horde quests than Alliance, at least for quests that gave reputation. I expressed my belief at the time that this didn’t apply just to reputation quests — overall, there were simply more things for the Alliance to do in the old world than there were quests for the Horde.
The new achievement system has given me the proof.
The achievement system, which will be introduced in a patch prior to the release of the Wrath of the Lich King expansion, introduces achievements for completing quests in the classic (pre-expansion) World of Warcraft, in the Outlands, and in Northrend. The quest achievements for Outlands and Northrend simply state “complete X number of quests in [Zonename]“, with no differentiation between Horde and Alliance.
However, the classic quest achievements do make this differentiation, and it’s pretty interesting: Alliance are directed to complete 740 quests in East Kingdoms and 765 quests in Kalimdor, a total of 1,505 quests. However, the Horde are directed to complete a mere 580 quests in East Kingdoms and 715 quests in Kalimdor, for a total of 1,295 quests.
This is not a “gimme” for the Horde. Yes, the Alliance will have to complete more quests, but the Alliance have far more quest density. The reason the Horde don’t have to complete as many quests is simple: the Horde don’t have as many quests they can do.
Some Alliance may think this is unfair, but it’s truly an advantage for them. Greater numbers of quests mean more experience, more rewards, more reputation, and less work to find all of these things. Yes, they will have to complete more of them to get the achievement, but in some ways, this redresses the imbalance in the old world between the Horde’s relative dearth of quests. Alliance can get exalted with reputations up to ten levels earlier than the Horde can. They can actually level a bit faster due to the experience bonuses connected with quests. The fact that the Horde could, in theory, complete this achievement faster is small compensation, given that by the time you get up to this level, Horde are having to dig under rocks to find quests to complete.
To me, this is an interesting historical note on Blizzard’s early assumptions about the game. It’s clear that Blizzard did this not because they “hate the Horde” — they simply didn’t expect as many people would want to play Horde and thus didn’t put as much development into it. If the proportion of the achievement quests represents the differences in the actual numbers, there are 14% fewer Horde quests than Alliance quests.
It is true that overall, there are fewer players choosing Horde than Alliance, and if the census at Warcraftrealms is at all accurate, there are approximately 11% fewer players on the Horde side than on the Alliance side. But does this mean that they deserve a less rich experience? Obviously by the time The Burning Crusade came around, Blizzard agreed that the answer was no, because they put the sides on greater parity and gave them at least approximately the same number of things to do.
If nothing else, it’s an interesting look into the early psychology of the initial WoW development team — not to mention something of a vindication for me, since I got a fair number of emails from outraged Alliance players who told me I was nuts.
Episode 69: Pally roundtable and a new logo!
It took weeks, but we finally got episode 69 scheduled and edited. Whew! Thanks to all our Paladins that helped put the roundtable together.
We also have a new logo! Renata’s friend Damien Shamahan (Shamination on the boards) made a bitchin’ new logo for is. Thanks, Damien! We also have the new logo on items in the World Of Warcast Store.
Will burn peasants for food
It’s official now: there will be no more attunement necessary to get into Onyxia’s Lair. At first I thought “Yes! Easy gold at level 80″, but then something inexplicable happened: I felt sorry for the little whelp. It used to be that you had to work your ass off to get into Onyxia’s Lair. That goddamn quest line was a pain in the ass to do, mainly because it wasn’t always easy to get a group of 5 that wanted to wander around Blackrock escorting Marshal Windsor around like he owned the friggin’ place (could you pick up the pace? We have a dragon to kill). Not to mention the wipes, the respawns, getting it done on alts, killing miners in BRD that were happily mining until you set them ablaze looking in their pockets for a crumpled up piece of paper. I’m happy to not have to go through that again.
With the removal of the attunement, and the new level cap at 80, Onyxia and all the other old-world bosses are going to feel quite lonely. Sure, a few people looking to pad their Achievement List might still poke their nose in there and see if they can solo the old bird, but she’s pretty much going to be curled up in a ball with nobody to talk to. The same goes for the bosses in Molten Core and Blackrock Spire. All this work these bosses do to get to the top, spewing about how they’ll be running Azeroth, only to be toppled by a small group of level 80s that can kill them by pretty much spitting on them.
Maybe Blizzard should change the voiceovers on these bosses. Ragnaros can say “What? You’ve toppled Illidan? Well, go easy on me. Better yet, have these things and leave me be. I have this ring. One of you take it and go. Here’s some gold too”. Or Onyxia can just cower in a corner, showering players with gold and loot while waving her paw at the players to leave her alone.
I also though of another issue and that’s future expansions. How much is really left? Two I can think of off the top of my head are The Emerald Dream and The Maelstrom. Once those two are implemented (if ever), unless Blizzard thinks of something new, perhaps they should think about booting these bosses from their roosts and putting in new ones with new instances. One thing that annoys me about MMORPGs is how static the world is when you as a player are doing so much around it. There should be some world event where something happens to these old-world dungeons. I say nuke the site from orbit-it’s the only way to be sure.
Blizzard offers wallpapers/ringtones, just not to the USA
If you look up “epic fail” in the dictionary, you’ll see such things as blinking into High King accidentally or speccing fire just for A’lar. Blizzard put up a web site for mobile users: http://mobile.blizzard.com which offers mobile users ringtones and wallpapers based on Blizzard games.
First of all, Blizzard is VERY late to the game. As far back as I can remember, people have been putting up ringtones and wallpapers on their cell phones, even if they hack the phones to do it. I had to go through extremes just to get a wallpaper on my Motorola T720 years ago.
Today it’s as simple as putting a wallpaper on your memory stick (Sony Ericsson), or adding it to your photo library (iPhone). Ringtones may be a little more tricky on iPhones, but the Sony Ericsson supports ringtones of almost any kind (MP3, WAV, MP4) that come directly from the memory stick.
So why would people pay for wallpapers and ringtones nowadays? Back when you used to hack your phone to customize it, it was because your carrier forced you to do it (I’m looking at YOU, Verizon). That was the reason why I terminated my contract early with Verizon in the first place. They crippled their branded phones to force you to go through their store to customize your phone, whereas the exact same phone on another carrier like Cingular wouldn’t have such restrictions.
What’s worse for Blizzard is that they don’t support the United States. AT ALL. Don’t they understand that by not supporting the USA, they’re going to seed the idea in people’s heads about how to do it for free? Those few people that would rather pay $1.99 for something are now going to find free ways to do so.
If a company with popular frachises like Blizzard is going to go into the mobile arena, they have to support their largest markets.
Blizzcon lottery emails going out
Several people are reporting that they’ve received winning lottery notifcations for the Blizzcon ticket lottery, including Shawn Coons from How I WoW. Check your emails!
World Of Warcast makes the grade on alltop.com
For those of you that don’t know, alltop.com is a site that aggregates news of a certain category and places the top sites in a list for people to browse through. For World Of Warcraft, our site made the list.
http://world-of-warcraft.alltop.com/ (scroll to the bottom)
Episode 68 is up
Starman’s going to Blizzcon
Starman goes mage horde. Again.
Coming back to the game after a break
Competitor’s Tabards
Blizzcon
Recruit-A-Friend
Wrath of the Lich King:
- Glyphs (Inscribing)
- Hunter Pets
Newbie Tips
iTunes or Direct Link