Posts with tag quality

When team Canada's Olympic roster for the men's hockey team was announced, I was extremely excited to check out who had made the cut and who didn't. For the most part, I agreed with all the choices. I'll admit a few of the selections had me wondering why. I had to ask myself why a player like Brenden Morrow (captain of the Dallas Stars) was selected over other players. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that it wasn't always about the goals or the points. There were people that brought in certain intangible qualities that just could not be measured.

I started thinking about raiders and my guildies for a moment. Who was valuable and what did they contribute? Sure they didn't exactly bring dominating numbers into the game, but they were able to hold their own in a race. For example:

• Theorycrafter: That guy in the guild who happens to hold a degree in math or physics? Yeah, he will theorycraft the heck out of you and anyone else who asks him for advice. Not only will he tell you what gems and enchants to get, he'll even write up a multi-page theorem indicating the balance of stats required for optimum performance.
• Veteran raider: She's been around since Molten Core and remembers what its like to wipe for weeks and even months on end for one boss. Still believes that the new content isn't as bad as it was back then. Instills a sense of calm in the raid during the most turbulent of raid nights when things don't seem to be executing. Also happens to be your grandma who makes the world's best chocolate chip cookies.
• Diagnostician: This is the player who can accurately recall every wipe and the series of events that led up to it. Just give him a few seconds to double check his information on some death logs and review his videos. Yes, not only can he give you a good explanation as to why and how a wipe happened, but he has it on tape in case anyone tries to dispute it.

So now allow me to ask, what intangible qualities do you bring to a raid? Are there other people in your guild that offer something unique as well?

Our buddies over at Figureprints, the company that makes custom 3D printed sculptures of your WoW characters, have expanded their business yet again -- this time, they're opening the doors to you EU players. Ed Fries, who we have spoken with twice now, says that they are finally ready to expand overseas, and EU players can now order their own custom figurines through the website.

There is a small catch, however -- at this point, while there is no lottery as far as we know, they are charging European customers €129.95, which ends up being about $166, or about $30 more than the US price of $129.95. And obviously shipping overseas from the company's HQ here in America probably won't be too cheap either, and shipping is extra no matter where you're buying the figures from. It looks like Figureprints just figured they'd charge "129.95" to both sides of the world, but thanks to the exchange rate, EU folks are actually paying more.

But then again, we're guessing that people who have been waiting for their chance in the EU to pick one of these up will probably go for the higher price anyway. Figureprints started out a little rough with their limited production capabilities, and a few early bumps in quality, but lately it seems like they're rolling along better than ever.

Welcome back to The Queue, WoW Insider's daily Q&A column where the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft.

The title above is only half-joking. Patch 3.0.8 didn't supply any real content which is what we're all waiting for, but at this point rolling out patch 3.1 too quickly would be a disaster. I think game quality is worse now than it was before 3.0.8, so I'd much rather see things working smoothly again before they throw patch 3.1 at us. Of course, I'm also pretty bored with Wrath already, so...

Zoidberg asked...

So, what do we know about 3.1? What do we know about dual spec? Anything about Ulduar? Anything about DK nerfs? Warlock buffs? Will I get any Silver Covenant rep?

Develop magazine got to talk to Thomas Tippl, who is Activision's CFO (we've heard a lot from CEO Bobby Kotick, but never from Tippl before) about the Activision Blizzard merger and how it will affect both companies. Tippl reiterates what we've heard before: that Activision has no plans to tell Blizzard how to do their jobs when they've been doing so well already.

He does, however, say that a "portfolio review" is in order, and so employees of Sierra (Vivendi's other games division) should start working on their resumes, if they haven't started already. He also says the sales teams of each company will likely be consolidated -- they want to put an "all-star team" together, but the thing about stars is that not everyone can be one.

So the merger remains good news for Blizzard, not-so-good news for the rest of Vivendi. We're still curious to see what happens when/if Blizzard falls out of Activision's good graces. Sure, everything is peachy-keen right now, but when Blizzard's stubborn commitment to quality bumps up against Activision's almost yearly franchise releases, who'll walk away the victor?

[Via WorldofWar.net]

As I mentioned on the WoW Insider Show the other day, reader Chad G. sent us a tip about the Figureprints character he received (probably one of the first shipped figures that we've heard about so far), and as you can see from the pictures, he was a little underwhelmed by the quality, While the actual process went OK, the figure itself just seems kind of dusty, which hardly counts as the "vibrant" colors we were promised back when these things were first announced. From across the room, he says, it's hard to make out any colors at all -- the whole thing looks "dusty black."

Chad says he doesn't know if he would buy this thing again, although since he posted the pictures, he says that Figureprints is sending him another figurine, so maybe this was a mistake (there was also apparently a spot of paint missing on the figure's arm, and that seems more like a flaw in the specific figure than the process). Either way, while it's cool to have your character in actual, real 3D form, maybe the Figureprints folks don't quite have all the kinks worked out yet.