Posts with tag ninjas

Choose the adventures of the WoW.com staff as we level our characters in <It came from the Blog> on Zangarmarsh (US-PvE-H).

Roblinator may not work for the Venture Company, but this sure shows that the rest of the goblins aren't exactly environment-friendly. Putting rockets on chickens seems a bit irresponsible.

Poll results

• In a dead heat, elemental edged out enhancement for Shockbroker, by a nose.
• Prupher will be questing like the wind.
• The votes for a PvP event were for Gurubashi Beatdown, but Milanor's suggestion of Pirates vs. Ninjas seems rather popular. In fact, I won't repoll it. So start collecting Deviate Fish, adventurers. Expect this event in the very near future.

Schedule

• Adam Holisky as Adammentat, the level 56 tauren druid, will be on Monday at 10 p.m. EDT
• Anne Stickney as Annephora, the level 42 troll warrior, will be on Tuesday at 1 a.m. EDT (which is Monday at 11 p.m. Zangarmarsh time)
• Robin Torres as Roblinator the goblin huntress: Wednesday, 11 p.m. EDT
• Amy Schley as Patent, the level 24 troll rogue: Thursday, 10 p.m. EDT
• Lisa Poisso as Prupher the proofreading druid: Thursday, 10 p.m. EDT
• Fox Van Allen as Foxlight, the level 22 blood elf paladin: Friday, 8 p.m. EDT
• Michael Sacco as Shockbroker, the goblin shaman; Christian Belt, as Selfloathius, the level 16 blood elf warlock; Elizabeth Harper as Faience, the level 24 troll shaman; Matthew Rossi as Andrenorton, the level 17 troll mage; Michael Gray as Grayfields, the level 17 tauren hunter; and Gregg Reece as Sandwichdoc, the level 16 troll shaman, will be making appearances as they can.

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Please join us on Zangarmarsh (US-PvE-H) in <It came from the Blog>. Guild ranks of "Blog Lurker" or above can invite, so /whisper Robiness or any online member. You are all welcome as long as you play by our simple rules -- basically, don't be a funsucker! Visit the guild FAQ for more details.

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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.

Ye not be forgetting It came from the Blog's Pirates' Day parrrty!

• When: 5pm EDT (3pm Server Time, 2pm PDT) Today
• Where: Meet in Orgrimmar in front of the bank on Zangarmarsh U.S.
• Who: A Horde character, any level
• How: Send a tell to Robiness or any It came from the Blog member to join the guild

Be ye in league with Bloodsails? The Booty Bay guards arrrr sleepin' off a bit too much brew, so ye can join in on the parrrty. Aaargh the guards be wide awake and feisty.

Drag yer carcasses to Orgrimmar early, else ye will be travellin' to Booty Bay on yer own. Thar will be no summonin' fer lazy landlubbers. Ye have been warned.

There have been a number of sites lately, especially with the recent rise in endgame pickup groups, designed to help you find and examine potential PuGgers quickly. But none of them have made it quite as easy as Zarkmark, a site that allows you to quickly rate anybody you come across ingame by "zarking" (rating them up) or "marking" (rating them down) them. Then, they offer a quick search, which will not only give you a one-click link to the Armory, but an easy-to-read screen of how many people have rated the player you're looking at. Theoretically, ninjas will never find a group again.

Of course, theory is theory, and right now, the Zarkmark directory is pretty empty, so odds are that for any given player you look up, you won't really get much feedback. But you never know -- if players jump in and populate the site (and it wouldn't help to have a little help from them -- instead of just an Armory link, it would be nice to see a player's gear and achievements right there on the page), we might eventually get a pretty accurate picture of what someone's reputation looks like.

In fact, I'm a little surprised that Blizzard hasn't ever considered a reputation system in-game. Xbox Live carries one off pretty well -- even though I've never actually used it to consider who I do and don't play against, I have rated players and I know it's very easy to see scores if I wanted to. Given the rising numbers of VoA ninjas and PuGing in general, it might be worth it for them to give each player a socially-created rating in the LFG interface.

More politicians are coming out of the WoW closet. Jeanne Stevens is a WoW player -- with a 70 Orc Hunter, a 58 Troll Shaman, and a 53 Blood Elf Rogue -- and a Republican running for the Connecticut state legislature. And she freely admits it in a new interview with Wandering Goblin, as covered by our sister site, Massively. Her hunter is balanced between marksman and survival, her shaman specs elemental (close to my heart!), and her rogue climbs the assassination talent tree. Will she be able to master the beasts in her political race? (Okay, you go ahead and insert your own shaman or rogue wordplay here.) Maybe she'll hold some in-game speeches or rallies. She could hold forth on top of Orgrimmar's bank, or maybe lead a raid to Stormwind as a metaphor.

Is it surprising that a Republican chooses Horde? I think you could make a case for either faction going with either political party. Personally, I love to see that she's middle-aged and a woman, which defies Blizzard's assumptions about the majority of WoW gamers. She also chooses pirates over ninjas. I'm not sure there's a political comment there, but I'm sure someone will show me the light.

[Thanks to Wandering Goblin via Massively.]

Mesta on Eldre'thelas has an interesting tale of woe over on the forums: he had someone within his guild ninja a few items from the guild bank, and then they discovered the next day that the guy had "disappeared" completely-- he not only didn't appear on their server, but he didn't show up in the Armory, either. Metsa thinks name change, and that appears to be the likeliest scenario-- not a lot of reason to ninja valuable items if you're just quitting the game with them. So it looks like yes, name changes will simply let ninjas run free.

Blizzard's official response in the thread is pretty apathetic-- Bornakk basically says that you've got to be careful about who you let into the guild bank ("l2bank," essentially). Over on Massively, we recently posted about something called "MMOrality"-- the idea that players uphold a social code in game. But that's all based on each player having their own identity, and the premise that if someone does something wrong, you can hold them responsible for it. But these paid name changes, it seems, takes away that little bit of justice-- if we can't hold players responsible for their actions at all, we can't enforce MMOrality in any way.

Blizzard still can-- obviously, they know who's who even if names get changed. But just the same, I'm not sure if players should necessarily have access to name changes-- the majority of people who change their names have legitimate reasons for doing so, I'd guess, and it's a shame to let the few ninjas ruin everything. Is there a way we can allow players to pay to change their identity while still making sure those who break the "MMOral" laws are held responsible for what they do?

While Robin and I think it's a great idea, some people are in an outcry about the upcoming name-change service that Blizzard is offering. As Monsoon tells Blizzard on the forums:

This is probably the worst ever decision ever made. How are we supposed to track ninjas and retards who may apply to our guild if there is no way to track their name changes?"

Nethaera calmly responds:

Perhaps putting them on an ignore list might help.

The ignore list will be automatically updated once that character's name change gets activated. Of course no system is fool proof, and there will always be someone looking to exploit things, but realistically, is it a terribly big problem if people you consider "ninjas" and "retards" yet are still unwilling to put on your ignore list can change their names once every 90 days?

In my experience, the kind of person who likes to call others "retards" generally isn't very nice themselves, and tends to find new "retards" all the time (with no offense meant to Monsoon here). I don't think it would be possible, even if the ignore list were extended to include a potential thousands of names, for some people to be satisfied that all the "ninjas" and "retards" were sufficiently dealt with and removed from the system

Yes, I know, yesterday was International Talk Like A Pirate Day, if I thought of this question on ITLAP Day, then that should make this count, right?

Yar. Anyways, I got to wondering, which class would make the bestest pirates in the open waters, or on the open lands. My first reaction was rogues -- those scoundrelly rascals -- who could launch surprise attacks and scheme and cheat their way into any big adventure. But then I thought, no, rogues go around pick-pocketing people, hiding in the shadows, and wearing those silly hoods. No, indeed, rogues are actually much closer to ninjas with their "Ambush, Eviscerate, Vanish!" style of attack! And everybody knows "all nature says that pirates and ninjas must be enemies."

So then I got to thinking maybe warriors would be better -- fury warriors! Dual wielding those fancy rapiers, shouting at the top of their lungs, wearing that fancy... plate... armor.... And then I thought, pirates don't wear plate armor. They have to wear snazzy buccaneer pants, a gentleman's jacket worn all lazy-like, and possibly have some good dreadlocks for good measure. Some dirt always helps too.

My conclusion was that no class is an exact pirate match, but some classes come pretty close in spirit. Warlocks, for example, are very piratey in their own way, going against the grain of society so to speak. But perhaps it doesn't matter which class you are, as long as you can say "Arrr matey!" and perhaps have some Savory Deviate Delight. What do you think is the most piratey-est class in the World of Warcraft?

I have to give my aging eyeballs credit for this story. I was reading news feeds this morning and didn't have my glasses on and completely misred a word from this post from Windychan121 on the Livejournal WoW Chicks community. I thought she began her blog entry with "Ninjas need to get a title". Yeah, I really need to start using "Large Fonts".

It got me thinking though, even after I figured out what Windy really meant to say. For a great part of the history of World of Warcraft, the game used player titles to reflect PvP rank. Although this was a dearly beloved part of the game for some people, it got removed (even though people got to keep their existing titles) when the first expansion was released when the PvP system was totally changed.

Fast forward to present-day Azeroth and we're seeing a lot of people in the capital cities with new titles which reflect their status in the Arena ladder, with titles like Gladiator, Duelist, Rival, and Challenger.

Going back to the ninja topic, why don't we give ninjas titles? Before you start throwing overripe produce at me, sit back and think about this for a second. Think of a system where you would have an option at the end of an instance, when you zone out, to rate the conduct of players in your instance or raid. It could be as simple as a good or bad rating, perhaps with a drop-down menu to specify the type of activity the player engaged in. People who consistantly got bad ratings from a high percentage of the members of their groups would start to accrue points towards various less-than-desirable titles. Of course positive player reviews would have the reverse effect. While I think this is a tremendous idea, I don't think it will ever be implemented for the simple reason that it could have a negative impact on the subscriber base. But do we really care if we lose those people? It's something to think about.

What other uses can you foresee for player titles?

[Special thanks to 'Aello' from Gnomeregan for lending a hand in the screenshot!]

Blue Forge Fire (Bloodhoof-H) sent us two of their recruitment commercials to show this week. If you like this one, you'll love the one after the jump.

Yup, once again it's time for GuildWatch, your weekly dose of guild drama, downings, and recruitment notices. If you want your guild here, email us at wowguildwatch@gmail.com. To read GW, clicky linky below-y.

Our new weekly feature GuildWatch is back, featuring as much guild drama, raiding, and recruiting as you'd want in a week. This week, we've put things in a new, easier to read format, and it all starts right after the jump.

And remember, GuildWatch runs on your submissions. If you want your guild listed as recruiting, downed someone awesome over the weekend, or know about some great guild drama going on, drop us an email at wowguildwatch@gmail.com.