Posts with tag terra nova

Speaking of lawsuits, Terra Nova is reporting that there's been class-action lawsuit filed in Florida against IGE for... well, I'll let you read for yourself:

The case involves IGE's calculated decision to reap substantial profits by knowingly interfering with and substantially impairing the intended use and enjoyment associated with consumer agreements between Blizzard Entertainment and subscribers to its virtual world called World of Warcraft.

The lawsuit seeks both monetary damages and a stop IGE's gold farming activities. (If you just can't get enough legalspeak, you can take a look at the entire text of the lawsuit here, via Terra Nova.) Now, I have to admit that I am not a lawyer and cannot tell you whether this lawsuit has any substance to it. However, I can assure you that over here at WoW Insider we'll be looking for any updates on this -- so we can pass them right on to you.

A thought experiment, of sorts, over at the forums: could you control 40 characters at once, enough for endgame raids or PvP all by yourself?

Inspired by this video of a mage-heavy raid downing Ragnaros, player Xzin (who currently plays five characters at once) wonders about the logistics and feasibility of upping that to 40. Given the time it would take to level 35 more characters to 60 and gear them up for MC, I can only conclude that Xzin will have to really want this challenge in order to put the money and time in.

As Terra Nova debates, perhaps it's an issue of human-computer interface design and control; taking charge of 40 different characters is far more akin to a real-time strategy challenge than MMO play. Still, there are always people who want to beat the game in new and interesting directions; as he's planning to keep everything above-board, good luck to him.

Terra Nova has an interesting article about the "cultural borrowing" that takes place in World of Warcraft - the way certain races in Azeroth have characteristics shared with social and ethnic groups from the real world.  However, I do wonder whether the characterization is really a negative one when the different factions (both the primitive Horde and the refined Alliance) are shown with equal strength  and capability.  Regardless, the article does present some very interesting food for thought.

This idea from Terra Nova would certainly help clean up Barrens chat: nerfing characters as a penalty for bad behaviour in-game. If you use an alt to misbehave, then they'll all lose a level every time you break the bounds of decency.

Key problems with this idea include inconsistency between GMs (we've already seen the trouble one slightly misguided GM can cause) and the systematic targeting of players; if you really want to hurt someone, get everyone you know to report them and suddenly they'll be back at level 0.

As Terra Nova's commenters observe, social pressure and access control (making the players ashamed to misbehave, and banning them) are the most effective ways to control behaviour at the moment. However, if you lost a little bit of xp every time you called someone "gay" in general chat, you might well be less inclined to bigotry in public--the idea's got some potential.

The PlayOn project has been quietly gathering data about how we play World of Warcraft for the past eight months, across five representative servers, and their findings are neatly summarised over at Terra Nova.

By looking at the time spent in groups, and the social interactions embodied in guilds, they've found some interesting results:

Academic weblog Terra Nova has a furiously raging debate going on with one of its recent posts, "The Horde is Evil". The original poster, Edward Castronova, claims that the Horde races are inherently evil -- "One element of this is the fact that the words 'troll' and 'orc' and 'undead' have implied evil creatures for as long as those words have been in use in the English language (since the 9th century in the case of 'orc'). No one, not even mighty Blizzard, can un-do the meaning of a word in a matter of a few years." -- and that we should consciously be aware of the evil inherent in a "bad" character when we play it.

The comments thread is filled with denials, mainly from Horde players, citing examples such as Shrek the ogre and the Tauren race's inherent nobility as refutations of this hypothesis. It's an interesting point to think about. If you play Horde, do you do so because you like the power-driven, warmongering, "evilness" of the races? Or as an antidote to the Alliance's sickly-sweet blathering about the Light? Or perhaps just as an experiment, to explore the whole game?