Posts with tag Twitter

If you're interested in WoW design and discussion, but don't yet follow twitter, you might want to reconsider. A lot of the developers are regularly active there. For example, yesterday our own Adam Holisky had a nice little chat with Ghostcrawler, Bashiok, and some other folks about WoW's talent design, and wondering if there was another big overhaul being considered for the next major expansion. The answer, bluntly, is no. Blizzard seems content with the current system.

@bashiok @djtyrant @adamholisky The *current* talent design feels pretty solid to us. We'll iterate but no overhaul plans. #famouslastwords

- Greg Street (@Ghostcrawler) May 9, 2013

Player Mihaly Ducz replied that three choices every fifteen levels feels kind of thin, but I have to admit that I kind of agree with Bashiok's response on that one: there are already plenty of spells and abilities in the game; I am perfectly content to have fewer of them, or at least more passive options so I don't have to agonize over how to redo my bars again. How about you? Are you content with the current talent system? What might you like to see changed or modified in the future?

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Today's New York Times crossword includes a clue that any non MMO player wouldn't know. Amongst the standard pop-culture references and strict definitions, today's crossword puzzlers encountered the following clue, as shown by Jack Thompson (no, not that Jack Thompson) via Twitter.

@cm_zarhym @warcraft You guys made the Times crossword this morning. 4 letters, beginning with "R." twitter.com/Thejackthompso...

- Jack Thompson (@Thejackthompson) May 2, 2013

Raid is the obvious answer -- to us. But I would think it's a pretty hard answer for a non-gamer to come up with.

Does this mean that World of Warcraft is part of the mainstream? Are we going to be able to use MMO lingo around the water cooler now? Do we want to?

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It's always a little funny when new patches come out. You start off just loving it... new stuff, new challenges. But then you get bored and start hating life. So, how about you guys? Is the honeymoon over?

Join our staff by telling us how you feel about the new patch in the comments. And, of course, read on in What Are You Playing to see what we're doing this weekend!

Anne Stickney (@Shadesogrey) I'll hopefully be spending the weekend on my new server. If not, then I'll be spending the weekend not really logging into WoW aside for dailies. As for 5.2 -- I love the patch, I love the content, I haven't really gotten bored with anything yet. However, the re-structuring and subsequent splintering of my guild has put a bit of sadness over the whole thing. On the other hand, the Isle of Thunder is tremendously entertaining, and every time I see a tree or structure struck by lightning I stand there marveling and hoping it will happen again because it looks really, really pretty.

Another weekend is upon us and we're all doing our best dinosaur hunter impression. So when we asked the team what they're playing this weekend, we took the time to ask specifically about the patch. In this week's WRUP, we talk about exactly how patch 5.2 is going.

Adam Holisky (@adamholisky) SimCity 4000.

Anne Stickney (@Shadesogrey) I'll be writing this weekend mostly, and helping my dad with the atrium project if needed. And then raiding on Sunday, which leads me to the bonus answer: I absolutely love the Throne of Thunder. Hands down the best raid we've seen in a long, long time, and my guild is only at boss #4 in the thing. I do love exploring the Isle of Thunder and the Isle of Giants too, but man, that raid. That raid.

Patch 5.2 is only a couple of weeks away, so you'd better start prepping for all that it will bring. Although many things can change during PTR testing, it's nice to receive confirmed news. We've assumed for some time now that 5.0 raids would become cross-realm accessible once patch 5.2 hit, and now we don't have to wonder any longer. Ghostcrawler confirmed via Twitter that we will indeed get cross-realm 5.0 raid content in 5.2:

@reliqeu @cm_zarhym @bashiok Yes.

- Greg Street (@Ghostcrawler) February 8, 2013

The community has embraced cross-realm raiding since it was introduced in patch 4.3.2, and it remains a great way to catch up on old achievements. With new cross-realm content, players will be given more opportunity to experience MoP raiding -- be sure to revisit the cross-realm resources out there as patch 5.2 gets ready to drop! Are you looking forward to slaying all the things with new and old friends?

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Halloween is right around the corner. Let's be honest, though: this weekend is the Halloween party weekend. This weekend is when we will dress up as ghouls, ghosts, and goblins and terrorize one another with pumpkin shots and pumpkin muffins and pumpkin pies and pumpkin all the things. We might go a second round on Halloween itself, but this weekend is the party weekend.

So let's see what the intrepidly ghoulish WoW Insider staff is doing this weekend...

Welcome to WRUP, where we try to convince you that we're not spending all weekend shuffling every day Pandaren. No, really, we do other things, too. Like shower (occasionally), get some exercise so we don't become Pandaren-shaped, and even play with the offspring. (They're quite adorable.)

This week we asked your intrepid WoW Insider team what they like to do that isn't play video games. We're all multi-facted like that.

Allison Robert (@AllisonRobert) More work in heroics, possibly an LFR or Vaults run with the guildies depending on laziness (I'm betting we'll be lazy), and finally taking an organizational approach to my farm. At the moment, my favorite thing to do outside of WoW is drawing and painting, but otherwise you'll find me reading or jogging.

Our favorite Lead Systems Designer of World of Warcraft joined Twitter yesterday, meaning we can now get our daily doses of his infamous "nerf me, bro" in 140 characters.

Actually, he's been pretty approachable and has already been answering questions and communicating with players. It'll hopefully end up to be a great medium for him to interact with the playerbase, which hopefully won't go all insane over everything he says (and doesn't say).

Already he's dropped an interesting tidbit when asked if there's a chance they'll remove the requirement to be in a raid when entering an instance: "Yes (meaning there's a chance)."

Follow Ghostcrawler on Twitter at @GregTStreet @Ghostcrawler.

Just don't spam him asking for a pony.

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It's open warfare between Alliance and Horde in Mists of Pandaria, World of Warcraft's next expansion. Jump into five new levels with new talents and class mechanics, try the new monk class, and create a pandaren character to ally with either Horde or Alliance. Look for expansion basics in our Mists FAQ, or dig into our spring press event coverage for more details!

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Zarhym broke the news to us via his usual gentle tweeting: There's no Spirit of Competition for this year's Olympics. It's understandable that pretty much all companion pet development time has gone into things like Mists of Pandaria's pet battles, a whole host of new tameable pets for said system, and so on. It's understandable that people would be bummed, as the Gold Medallion is no longer available within the game -- and thus, if you don't have the Spirit of Competition, you won't be getting one.

Perhaps the Spirit of Competition can be brought back as a prize for being the very best, which up to this point no one ever was.

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It's open warfare between Alliance and Horde in Mists of Pandaria, World of Warcraft's next expansion. Jump into five new levels with new talents and class mechanics, try the new monk class, and create a pandaren character to ally with either Horde or Alliance. Look for expansion basics in our Mists FAQ, or dig into our spring press event coverage for more details!

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For so many World of Warcraft players, the game is all about connections. It was connections (a glowing recommendation from gaming industry insider, WoW player, and previous interviewee Liz Danforth) that led us to contact Australian librarian Ellen Forsyth for an interview (not coincidentally connecting even more dots, WoW-playing educators and innovators Peggy Sheehy and Lucas Gillispie, in the process). And it's connections that Forsyth draws for a living in her work as a professional librarian who both studies and advocates for gaming in the public libraries -- that's right, gaming for the people!

"Libraries, games, reading, content creation, stories and a few other things as well" -- that's how Forsyth's Twitter profile characterizes her interests, a fairly delectable concoction for the typical WoW Insider reader. We played the WoW card to tempt Forsyth into chatting with us about the regular academic symposia she moderates in Azeroth (the Ironforge library, to be exact), the growing influence of games as a public library resource, and the sweeping imaginative and technological vistas opening up as more and more readers discover the parallel worlds of gaming -- and of course, World of Warcraft.

Each week, WoW Insider and Mathew McCurley bring you a fresh look at reader-submitted UIs as well as Addon Spotlight, which spotlights the latest user interface addons. Have a screenshot of your own UI that you'd like to submit? Send your screenshots along with info on what mods you're using to readerui@wowinsider.com, and follow Mathew on Twitter.

An odd email was sent to me by a reader expressing his concern over some of the new additions to the user interface coming with Mists of Pandaria and, more specifically, with the monk class. This got me thinking -- we need to start getting ready for the next expansion, and we need to do it now. Klaxons are sounding and alarm bells are ringing! Monks and pandas are coming!

So how do we go about talking about designing a preliminary UI for the monk? First, we have to look at what is being added to the interface through the new class. Second, we have to use our current vocabulary to discuss what could potentially be applied to monk-specific UI elements.

Each week, WoW Insider's Mathew McCurley brings you a fresh look at reader-submitted UIs as well as Addon Spotlight, which focuses on the backbone of the WoW gameplay experience: the user interface. Everything from bags to bars, buttons to DPS meters and beyond -- your addons folder will never be the same.

Once in a while, I head over to Twitter and ask my followers for information. Some answers are just found better through crowdsourcing. People send recommendations to my Twitter and email accounts unprompted, as you might expect, but when the floodgates open with a call for submissions, people like to put their dog in the race.

I recently hit up Twitter for another round of addons recommended by my Twitter followers. These addons run the gamut from old favorites that will never die to new dynamos that shook up the addon community. Be sure to follow me on Twitter so that you always know when I make a call for submissions and get your favorite recommendations into the column.

Every week, just at the start of the weekend, we catch up with the WoW Insider staff and ask them, "What are you playing this week?" -- otherwise known as: WRUP. Join us to see what we're up to in and out of game, and catch us in the comments to let us know what you're playing, too!

Ladies and gentleman, there is a Twitter account I'd like you all to meet: @horse_ebooks. On its surface, it's nothing special -- just a Russian-owned Twitter spam account designed to sell (predictably) ebooks about horses. To appear as if it were a human, the account employs a comically bad algorithm that tweets seemingly random sentences fragments.

If @horse_ebooks is an attempt to pass a Turing test, it fails on every level. Little it says seems relevant to horses; nothing it says seems to make sense. It's short dispatches are internet-age poetry at its finest -- absurd works of art, all. It's my inspiration.

But that's not the only Twitter account I'd like to introduce you to. There's also the must-follow @WoWInsider. And @mikesacco. And @foxvanallen. And ... well, this kinda brings me to the week's bonus question that I asked our columnists: If there's one Twitter account you'd recommend everyone follow, what would it be?