Posts with tag game

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Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Basil "Euripides" Berntsen aims to show you how to make money on the auction house. Email Basil with your questions, comments, or hate mail!

Don't mind the intrusion, folks. It's me, Fox Van Allen. I'm filling in for Basil this week while he deals with the parasite that recently burst from his wife's stomach. (That's what those baby things are, right? Am I recalling seventh grade health class correctly?)

If any of you have been following me on Twitter (and if you haven't, for shame), you may already know that back in March, Heartbourne of Lore Hound challenged me to a race to the 999,999g 99s 99c gold cap. I immediately accepted. After coming up with some basic rules (no gold buying, no server transfers, no "borrowing," no interfering with each other's auctions), the race to a million was on.

During the contest, I was quiet about my gold-making activities -- I didn't want to tip off the competition. But now that the contest officially ended this past week, I'm free to talk about what happened. And so, my friends, what follows is the tale of how someone with virtually no gold-making knowledge went from next to nothing at the start of Cataclysm to, as of June 10, over one million gold.

This Breakfast Topic has been brought to you by Seed, the AOL guest writer program that brings your words to WoW Insider's pages.

We are now a good 6 months into guild achievements. As a guild leader, I think the concept, as executed, is great. Although we're casual and we run all content, trying to get certain achievements has provided us with incentives to level toons, level professions and to work together.

Every week, I post to the guild web site, a tally of what we're working on and how far along we are in finishing an achievement. Doing all the Burning Crusade heroic 5-mans made people run the regulars to get enough honor to get their keys. People went into instances they didn't know existed. Attendance at our retro raid nights spiked when we announced that we needed this run for the guild achievement. We're small so the 25-man achievements will probably elude us, but people take a look at what still needs to be done and they help make it happen.

As I pointed out in The Queue on Sunday, I'm super excited for Marvel vs. Capcom 3. Getting hyped up over the slow trickle of character reveals is almost as fun as getting the game itself, and the latest set of reveals got me thinking -- what if Capcom teamed up with Blizzard to make a Blizzard vs. Capcom fighting game?

Most Blizzard characters are ripe for a fighting game setting, either from being part of a martial universe already or just looking the part. From the StarCraft universe, we could probably expect to see Raynor and Tychus repping the Terran side of things, Tychus with his marine armor and Jim walking around unarmored (because he looks cooler that way). Kerrigan is the best (and possibly only) choice for a Zerg representative, and Zeratul is the obvious Protoss challenger. Diablo is full of perfect fits, too -- Diablo 3's monk, for example, is already based off of fighting game characters. Going back even further into Blizzard's history, Blackthorne and the Lost Vikings could make an appearance too.

But what about Warcraft? There's limited roster space and a whole lot of playable character possibilities. Would you want faction leaders? Big bads? Classic heroes? What races would make the cut? Who would best represent the expansive Warcraft universe? And most importantly, what kind of awesome special moves would they have?

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They both have millions of users across the world. They both have made and broken friendships and relationships, and they both have raised millions if not billions of dollars for their respective companies. And chances are that they're both so popular even your grandma knows about them. Gamasutra has written an interesting post comparing both World of Warcraft and Facebook of all things, and they say that the two are more alike than you might think: both enable you to create an identity, and use that identity to interact with others, and both give you a wide variety of options to do so (in WoW, you can slay dragons together, and on Facebook, you can tag pictures or post on walls). Gamasutra wants to get to the center of where exactly the interactivity lies, and in doing so, figure out what makes Warcraft a game, and Facebook a network.

One major difference is in the interface -- obviously, WoW is wrapped in a fantasy world, so that in between all of the socializing, you're also fighting the Scourge or the Burning Crusade. Facebook has games, but it doesn't have that overarching narrative. WoW also rewards group teamwork and coordination, while Facebook leaves collaboration to its own rewards. And of course the cost is another big difference: WoW is still a subscription game, while Facebook pays in other ways. But the amount of similarities between the two are pretty fascinating. And comparing the two, as Gamasutra does, really makes you think about just what interactivity means, and how two apparently very different types of interactive media aren't that far apart after all.

Ravius over at Kill Ten Rats ruminates on the importance of reputation in these very social games that we're playing with each other, and it resonated with me in terms of a few different things going on in World of Warcraft right now. We've talked lots before about ninjas and how that back-and-forth works -- in that case, karma is directly driven by what other people think of you, and of course that's seen more weakly in lots of other places around the game, including guild recruitment, your friends list, and just the general server at large.

Ravius talks mostly about the negative reputations we earn, and certainly that's a powerful motivator for a lot of people. But positive reputation is also a strong force in this game -- I'm interested to see how we deal with earning and keeping positive reputation in the new Dungeon Finder and eventually the Battle.net system. Gone may be the days when you build up a good reputation by saying "remember me if you need a good DPS" at the end of a run. It'll be interesting to see what methods we replace that one with.

World of Warcraft and Philosophy got released a little while back -- it's a book by Luke Cuddy and John Nordlinger that examines WoW-related topics like roleplaying and the Corrupted Blood plague, and ties them into philsophical ideas and thinking. TechFlash has now posted an interview with Nordlinger, and it's a good read as well. Nordlinger says that one reason they chose to talk about World of Warcraft in this way is that it's so incredibly big -- when you have 12 million (give or take a few at this point) people playing a game with a GDP larger than some smaller nations, you're going to touch on all sorts of interesting ethical, moral, and other philosophical ideas. He says the book has been pretty popular, and a few universities are currently considering teaching courses based on the material, not only because it's interesting, but thinking about the game in this way helps improve abstract thinking in general.

And perhaps most interesting, he says that reading the book could help players better make ethical and moral decisions in the game. Just ninja-ing the mount from an Onyxia raid might not mean much to you, but when you look at the bigger picture, and what those actions mean for ethics in general, Nordlinger says the book might help players "make more aware decisions, if not different decisions." Of course, in practice, trying to explain higher philosophy to ninjas might not have the desired effect, but it does seem true that exploring the higher meanings of this game and the intents of the people playing it might put a little more meaning into the pixels as well.

The 5th anniversary press continues -- this time it's a site called Techland, where our friend Tracey John (who also writes for Massively) interviews Jeff Kaplan about his reflections on the last five years of the game. It's surprising to hear that early on, Blizzard wasn't so sure of their success. Despite the fact that even before WoW, they had made some of the most classic PC games of all time, they weren't sure that going the subscription route was a good idea. But one of the companies' founders stood up and gave a pep talk, and promised a whole million subscribers, apparently. Of course, they'd go on to make many times that, but that was good enough to get the team going again.

Kaplan also says that he is a little bummed that Blizzard didn't scale back raiding earlier -- 40-man raids were a little unwieldy, he admits now, and smaller raids would have meant more content in the vanilla days. But he does say that since the game has been updated so much, most of the stuff they wish they'd done different has actually been done differently. And in the future, he says that better technology will play a big role -- bigger instance capacity, and things like cross-server instances and other innovations. The next five years, he seems to hint, should be just as interesting as the first.

[via HolyPaladin]

Earlier this year, we wondered just what would happen now that my favorite dreadlord, Varimathras, was vanquished in the Battle for the Undercity, and now Kisirani has provided us with a hint: someone whose name includes a "B." When someone repeats the question on the forums, she posts a note delivered by a bronze whelp hinting that someone will be back in Varimathras' place as of patch 3.3. The note is signed only with a "B," and (as Kisirani probably intended), it's anyone's guess just who that is.

And if by "anyone," you mean the denizens of the Blizzard forums, they all seem to think it's Nathanos Blightcaller, a Forsaken who has been sitting in the Eastern Plaguelands since the game began. He's recently been mentioned again in the game, as Varian Wrynn has sent Alliance players after him in Bolvar's place, and so it makes sense that he may rejoin the Banshee Queen and take his place at her side. Balnazzar, Varimathras' demon brother, is another guess, though he's currently serving secretly with the Scarlet Crusade, so who knows how he'd come to that position. And of course, besides Bornakk, anytime you hear B you have to think of our friend Bolvar, whose fate we'll probably learn in patch 3.3 no matter what. As for who it really is, we won't know for sure until we see them in the Undercity.

It's the third anniversary of Phat Loot Phriday and in celebration we bring you an item that we can all enjoy. So raise a pint and enjoy the feast before you!

Name: Black Jelly (Wowhead, Thottbot, Real life)
Type: Common FoodDamage/Speed: N/A
Attributes:

• Why are we featuring a food on Phat Loot Phriday? Because it's only the best food in the game right now -- this baby restores 45,000 health and 38,400 mana in one sitting. For both of those, this is the biggest gain you can get.

This story's from last week, but I love it anyway -- over at the Greedy Goblin, Gevlon's guild was getting a little tired of all of the achievement-checking and gear requirements for endgame raiding, and so they set out to do something that many experienced raiders might admit seems impossible: take down Yogg-Saron with nothing but blues on. That means no epics at all -- no epic gear, dropped or crafted, no epic enchants, no epic gems. They did use profession bonuses, but everyone should have access to those by now (all it takes is money, and all that takes is time). And of course, they did it: toppled Yoggy with the group you see on the page there. The combat log is also posted, and it's about what you'd expect: none of the damage numbers are crazy high, but the group works so well together and plays so evenly that they get it done. That's the message to be taken away here: gear is nice, but nothing will get you farther than a well-oiled group of solid players.

So close... and yet so far. As you can see, our BlizzCon bingo didn't quite win this year -- even if you count Chris Metzen's regular glasses as non-sunglasses, and even if you just plain assume that the "coffee" in Ghostcrawler's cup on Saturday morning was actually gin (I saw him drinking whiskey, but not gin, unfortunately -- not sure why I didn't just buy the guy a drink), our BlizzCon card didn't score again ths year. There was no actor announced for the WoW movie (though if Tricia Helfer does get a part, we might call that one even), Diablo III trilogy plans weren't announced, and we didn't hear anything at all about another iPhone app or the new MMO. Sad trumpet indeed.

But there's always next year. Thanks for playing. If you did actually get a bingo this year, let us know exactly how (I don't remember any devs ever saying "soon, TM," but I was away from the panels a lot this year). Maybe next year we won't make the bingo card quite so heroic, but then again, who doesn't love a good challenge? We won't nerf something we're just doing for fun.

Ethic at Kill Ten Rats has a post up about something that a lot of you have probably been through: more and more I'm hearing about people returning to the game. I've been playing ever since I signed up a few years ago, but that's really only because I'm writing about it -- I'm pretty ADD when it comes to games, so left on my own, I probably would have walked away from WoW a long time ago. But Blizzard is really good at bringing players back by tweaking the game in exactly the way they woud like. I feel like if I had left, I would have definitely come back in for a while, if not with Burning Crusade than definitely with Wrath.

Of course, Ethic's issues aren't really with deciding to return or not: he's having more issues actually trying to get his old accounts back. There's a laundry list of rules and limits to contend with, between dealing with having or not having the expansions, the limits on the Scroll of Resurrection program and the trial accounts, and dodging all of Blizzard's various limits on how to start and use new accounts to the game. Man -- if I had left and was planning on coming back, and I read Ethic's post, I might not even bother.

But quite a few people have come back, and I'd guess that even though there are confusing things about trying to find your way back into the game, a good number of you have done it. I'd like to know, so here's a poll: how many of you have left and come back, and how many times?

Here's an interesting bit of info from the Nielsen folks: over 400,000 women are playing World of Warcraft in the US, which means it's the most-played "core" game for that gender. And even more interesting, females 25 years or older make up the largest block of PC game players overall, and they account for 54.6% of all gameplay minutes in December of last year. Girls don't just play WoW -- they're quickly becoming one of it's main demographics.

You can read the report in PDF form over here -- the chart above might be the most interesting piece of information, as it shows that though males still make up a huge part of the PC gaming audience, many of them have now moved on to consoles, and women (especially older women, over 25), during the last month of last year, are making up a huge audience for PC games. Later in the report, you can see what kinds of games women are really playing: Solitare, Freecell, Minesweeper, and all of those other little attention grabbers on every PC. But among those widespread casual games is our own World of Warcraft. And while the 25-52 male audience of 675, 713 for that game still remains larger than the female audience in the same demo, the ladies aren't far behind.

Neilsen also calculated some base stats for WoW, including the fact that 1.8 million unique people played the game, and the average time of gameplay per week was 744 minutes, just over 12 hours (slightly up from last year's average). Additionally, of those who play World of Warcraft, their second most-played game was Solitaire, followed by Warcraft III. Fascinating stuff. Remember that these are statistics, so they are more general trends than anything else, but it's definitely true World of Warcraft and PC gaming in general is no longer only the domain of the male demographic.

As you have probably heard, Blizzard will be removing the Plagued and Black Proto-drake mounts from the game as of 3.1. Currently they're available from the meta-raiding achievements, but since Blizzard wants to keep them rare, they've put a limit on the time you have to finish off those achievements before Ulduar gear and higher levels make them too easy. Lots of players are less than happy about this -- we're not in the right place right now to do these achievements, but we still really want a chance at these drakes. But Bornakk defends the decision over on the forums: he says that they didn't want the achievements to be "watered down as patch after patch goes by."

One player suggests tweaking them in a little different way: the new Herald of the Titans achievement actually requires you to have a certain iLevel on your gear, so that you can't get it if you're geared out so well it makes the fight trivial. Players want to know why Blizzard can't do that with the Glory of the Raider achievements, so that no matter what new gear we get, the difficulty stays the same.

But Bornakk confirms that it's not a matter of difficulty, it's a question of rarity. If players were always able to get the mounts, there would always be more and more of the mounts in the game. They want to cut off the supply, period. The good news is that there will eventually be more rare mounts to go after (and I can't wait until I see that Gnome head flying around). But the proto-drakes' time is almost up.