Posts with tag chatting

Drama Mamas Lisa Poisso and Robin Torres are experienced gamers and real-life mamas -- and just as we don't want our precious babies to be the ones kicking and wailing on the floor of the checkout lane next to the candy, neither do we want you to become known as That Guy on your realm.

Silence. It can be relaxing. It can be peaceful. And it can be heavy with the lack of replies after you say something. Just what does silence in guildchat mean?

Dear Drama Mamas,

I recently joined a guild that's been working hard on DS. I've only been on a few raid nights (maybe three guild runs). But I've got serious mic shyness. So I literally hadn't said a word yet. Nor have I told anyone I'm that shy. The others kept on chatting, friendly and all, and I just kind of hung around, pew-pewing, etc. like I'm supposed to. I rarely said anything in guild chat either and was just doing my own thing and showing up when I was supposed to. Needless to say, I did get a little lonely. But I just couldn't get over my shyness. Or the fact that the all-guy raid team (as far as I can judge from voices on vent) was intimidating me, unintentionally of course. But I think it's a good guild, I hope we just have to warm up to each other.

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There are quite a few interesting UI tweaks in the latest build on the patch 3.3 PTR. First up, Blizzard seems to be making quite a few changes that aim at streamlining current frustrations: the Ignore list is set to 50 different entries (to match the Friends list), XP earned in a quest will show up in the rewards section on the quest log, and not only can any member of the raid now mark targets, but instant quest text is now turned on by default for all players. The last two changes are somewhat questionable -- cynics that we are here at WoW.com, we can see raiders in PuGs messing around with raid marks "for the lulz," which could be frustrating for raid leaders. Then again, it'll be much easier than the current situation of having to set up a marker as raid leader or assistant. Instant quest text, too, seems like a choice by Blizzard to step away from the immersiveness of having quest text write itself across the window, but then again, who doesn't have it set on instant already, and Blizzard has already admitted quests aren't that immersive anyway.

There is another issue, though, that may be worth Blizzard's reconsideration before bringing all of these changes live.

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Patch 3.3 is the last major patch of Wrath of the Lich King. With the new Icecrown Citadel 5-man dungeons and 10/25-man raid arriving soon, patch 3.3 will deal the final blow to the Arthas. WoW.com's Guide to Patch 3.3 will keep you updated with all the latest patch news.

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Normally, this wouldn't rate too high for us -- lots of people have ideas about how to use World of Warcraft, and many of them never actually come about. But then again, this is in the Wall Street Journal of all places, so we'll give it a look. If you're on Twitter, you've probably heard about what's going on in Iran right now -- there was an election, the "official" results given were judged as rigged by many involved, and the government seems to be cracking down on both news media and citizen journalism, as well as protesting citizens, to very sad results. How does World of Warcraft fit in to all of this? Andrew Lavallee of the WSJ's Digits blog points to this report by Craig Labovitz, which talks about how Internet traffic has been filtered out of the country around the election. At the very end of his analysis, Labovitz points out that channels for videogames, including both Xbox Live and World of Warcraft, have shown very little government manipulation. That suggests that if the government in Iran does continue to shut down certain channels, citizens there might be forced to spread the news through any virtual route they can, including possibly Azeroth.

This is obviously all just analysis and speculation so far -- while there clearly (from those charts) has been interference in the media, no one (as far as we know) has yet had to resort to chatting in World of Warcraft to get their message out, and though what's happening in Iran is made up of some very serious (and seriously unfortunate) situations, the fervor online about using brand new channels like Twitter to share real-time news is often overstated. Personally, I believe that even if Twitter didn't exist, this information would find another way to get out. Still, the interesting thing to take away here is that even our "silly" video games today are actually media on a global level.

Thanks, Cedars!

Our podcast is back yet again this afternoon, and it's sure to be a good one. Turpster and I will welcome our bloggers Lesley Smith and Robin Torres on to talk about the biggest news in WoW from the last week: we'll touch on the new Druid forms and what we all think of those, 3.1.3 and how it's worked out so far, players with amazing achievements in game (like the level 1-80 no deaths guy, and Ensidia's big finish), and scams you might want to look out for ingame. And if we have time, we'll talk about one of the stranger stories to come out of the WoW community lately.

The show begins over on the our Ustream page at June 6, 2009 3:30 PM EDT , or you can jump after the break to see an embedded feed. We'll also answer your email, which you can send to us at theshow@wow.com, and as usual we'll be chatting live both during and after the show. Should be a lot of fun -- we'll see you this afternoon!

Each week Matthew Porter contributes The Creamy GUI Center, a column aimed at helping you enhance your WoW experience by offering an in depth guide to addons, macros and other tools we use to play WoW, along with commentary on issues that affect how we all play.

Let's face it, WoW without chatting to your party, guild, or friends would be pretty boring. One of the major reasons we log in sometimes is to see what everyone's up to. So when you stop and think about it, that little chat box is a cornerstone to the user interface. We spend a good chunk of the time when logged in looking at it. We might as well try to make it as functionally and aesthetically pleasing as we can. This week we'll look at addons that spruce up our chat box and help us communicate better. We'll also check out addons that help keep track of our whispers to other players, and addons that grab our attention when there's activity in the chat window. Let's get to it!

John Bohannon has been writing for Science magazine as "The Gonzo Scientist," and his most recent writeup, on a real scientific conference held in the World of Warcraft, is a great read. We reported that the event was happening back in May, and now Bohannon's put together a really honest report (from how the conference was funded to the reasons why it was chosen to be Horde-only) on what its like for these scientists researching virtual worlds to put their money where their mouth is, so to speak, and actually hold a conference ingame.

They had to deal with everything from conversation direction (they appointed one person to get whispers on any questions for speakers, though, as anyone who's ever been to a mass ingame event will tell you, you can't really keep people from yelling and screaming) to mobs in the Barrens. And it sounds like they did get something done -- besides the panels, which were only slightly frustrated by griefers, they took expeditions throughout the world, and did do a little thinking about how different meeting in RL and meeting in a virtual existence is.

Very good read. The end of the article has a link to a PDF book about the conference, but it's hidden behind Science's membership wall. Still, Bohannon writes clearly and fairly about the game, and it's fun to think of a bunch of scientists actually trying to navigate a virtual world while doing their own research.

This show goes all the way to 11, and you can be there with us live tomorrow. Turpster and I (and a few other folks from WoW Insider and WoW Radio) will go live on WoW Radio at 3:30pm EST tomorrow afternoon for episode number 11 on the WoW Insider show.

On this week's episode, odds are that we'll chat about World of Warcraft-- what's that? Oh, you want specifics? Patch 2.3 is the topic of the week-- everyone wants to know what's changing, how to deal with the changes, and why changes aren't happening (that last part is for you, Shamans). Also, after basically discovering that it's cheaper to buy the cards than the packs to get the loot cards, you might imagine that I have some interesting opinions on that, and you'd be right.

So come check us out tomorrow afternoon at WoW Radio and on irc at irc.wowirc.com in #wowradio. See you then.

"Hey guys, anyone want to run SL?"

"Sorry, can't, about to log."

"Sure, what classes you have?"

"Just me and the tank right now."

"I'll go, invite me."

"And that's when I had to whip it out, right in front of everyone."

"... what?"

"WTF?"

"Whoops MT sorry."

"wow."

What's the craziest mistell you've ever heard?

I can't remember the first time I was invited on Teamspeak (some people use Ventrilo as well-- I've got both free programs installed on my PC, just in case) for an instance-- for some reason, I'm thinking it wasn't until I got invited to a raid at level 60, but considering the way that things are now, I'm really surprised it wasn't earlier. Maybe it's just because almost every instance I run is with guildies, but TS is basically a requirement for grouping-- a requirement that most of us are happy to comply with, but a requirement nonetheless.

Yakov isn't so compliant-- he says Vent is a crutch, and the fact that every group he enters asks him to "jump on Vent" is rubbing him the wrong way. He says a simple 5 man run doesn't call for using Vent, and that he'd rather listen to his music then his guildies chatting it up on Teamspeak.

I disagree-- not only is it more fun to chat with people on Vent (I tend to know the guildies I've talked to on TS better than the others), but it's just plain helpful, whether the instance is hard or not. If you're disappointed that your guild isn't asking you to come on more instance runs with them, and you haven't downloaded Vent or TS yet, that's probably why.

Of course, like all things, Vent can go horribly wrong. You can be annoyed by your guildies' voices (I'll just say that some people's accents are a little offputting and leave it at that), or like Yakov, you can rather listen to music then random guild gossip. But especially if you're a player just getting to the endgame where there's a lot to learn, jumping on Vent is one of the best things you can do to make sure you know what's going on when. It's not a difficulty thing, although coordinating a pull on TS is much easier than typing strat in the chat channel. It's more of a communication thing-- the more and the faster comm there is, the better you'll all be.