Earlier this week Joi Ito gave a talk about WoW at the 23rd Chaos Communications Congress. We Make Money Not Art posted some fantastic notes from the talk (as well as the image to the right) as did Plubimi. The entire talk is online now on Google Video and Joi talks about much of the value of WoW as well as the areas where Blizzard is really missing it, and compares some of that to Second Live. It’s definitely interesting to watch and you don’t need to have several level 60’s to understand what he’s getting at. And the undead shadow priest in the last slide looks like a total bad ass. I bet all the alliance on his sever runs in fear the moment he shows up. kek.

This is a repost of something I wrote on the Blizzard PvP Forums. I wrote it to maybe, elicit some kind of reaction, but … alas … “hord r ghey” is a more popular topic, lolz.

It’s my story…
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We’re coming up on Christmas here, and Hannukah’s well underway, and yesterday was the Solstice. Whatever your personal affiliation, there’s a festival of joy and mirth amid the cold of winter or warmth of summer. Thusly, I present to you my WoW Christmas List:

1. Take the BG chat out of AV: I am really aggravated by all the nominally useless BG chat in Alterac Valley of late. Too many people shouting and screaming for “need 2 more for Balinda” followed by “We don’t do Balinda, you nub” which generally devolves the BG chat channel into something even Barrens denizens would frown upon. Seriously, get rid of this before it makes the PVP experience totally unrewarding.

2. Give Neuroxin back his forums access: Neuroxin is the leader of the World of Warcraft Community on LiveJournal who has had his forum access revoked for reasons that are so arcane at this point even the blood elves don’t have the slightest clue as to why. Give him back his forums access as a Winterveil present.

3. Ship TBC On Time: With all the delays and pushback that TBC has seen already, it’s really important that Blizzard ship this on 16 January like they promised this time round.

4. Nerf Hunters: Just because.

5. Stop Messing with the Addon Community: No really. Now, I understand that Decursive wasn’t actually what you wanted as part of the game, but there has to be another way of coping with that besides suddenly making it not function in 2.0. Find ways of making it disadvantageous from a gameplay perspective, but don’t just outright remove it.

6. Figure out a way to stop in-game spam and gold-farming: It’s getting out of control. I can’t go an hour online without seeing spam of some kind or another. It’s getting to the point where I think mailing gold amounts over 20-30g should be tagged by the bank.

7. Rethink the 25 man hard raid limit: this one’s just a drama that’s waiting to be played out, and it will not be played out in a pretty fashion. Give it some rethinking.

That’s the small part of my list. Really, I’d just settle for a successful 45-minute run or The Headmaster’s Charge

With High Warlord gear suddenly attainable for anyone who wants to grind the 30,000 points, I’m back on the honor grind again. God, it’s so appealing not to have to consider leaving my wife and cat and head out to AV 16 hours a day 7 days a week just to get ahold of a spellblade. Imagine my amusement when I am in an AV and see this:

How much would that suck? To pop into the AV as they lose both towers AND the Aid Station?

Ouch.

Oh, yeah. We lost.

This week has been a real rough one over on Eitrigg. First, there was the adventure of the missing NPCs on Wednesday night. Then there were the repeated crashes of Kalimdor, and then of Azeroth, throughout the week, and now, right as we’re going in to try Hakkar again, the server goes down like a cheap hooker: nasty and full of teeth.

So, I’m over on Khadgar, dealing damage with my dwarf paladin, who’s up to a whole level 6, while I’m waiting for Eitrigg to sort out its issues. The problem here is that Eitrigg has several guilds full of really productive, high-profile advocates for the game, but you are quiet when it comes to our badly broken server, we get very frustrated.

Fix it. Before I roll a gnome.

Along with everyone else, I suspect, we’re still seeing major patch problems on our realm. Last night, in BWL just after killing Broodlord, we were all disconnected from the server…and couldn’t get back in on our mains. Alts were fine, but all instances were down and our mains couldn’t connect. BGs have been laggy to the point of being unplayable, with common problems like not being able to mount/dismount, etc. I have a collection of BoE loot that I’d like to put in the AH, but without Auctioneer I’m not sure how to price it. Addons are causing major problems.

Which brings us to the subject of why we were in BWL last night rather than Naxx…
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Damage Per Second

Originally uploaded by tbridge.

This is my DPS for the Jeklik fight we did tonight on Eitrigg after all the NPCs & Mobs came back. I’m specc’d heavy into Affliction with some Demonology to back it up, and this was the first time out running with all five DoTs hot. Wow, can those things pump out some serious damage. Unstable Affliction is a second Corruption. Damn, I love this patch.

Well after day two of the patch the servers are still plagued by bizarre problems. My server had no NPCs. ANYWHERE. No fires. No furniture. Just a vast howling empty landscape.

Left to their own devices though, WoW players came through with some exciting impromptu content.

Some people explored the unexplorable (at their level) racking up huge XP.
The Horde raided Stormwind and the Alliance took the Undercity.
Of course a lot of hearthstones were used after the rolling restart brought back the NPCs.

And lots of people just took a leisurely tram or zeppelin ride just for the joy of it.

The 2.0.1 patch has a number of people crying like 8 year old girls with skinned knees. Most of them are bitching about how overpowered warlocks have become, so it’s time to do a little Myth/Facts when it comes to Warlocks, courtesy of this thread on Myths about Warlocks. It’s important to get your facts right if you’re going to whine and cry like the little girls most of you men are.

A sample or two:

Sproc: MYTH: All 10 warlocks on your server get together and Hold hands walking side by side down zones killing everything in their path like the great wall of deathcoil.

FACT: This statement is only 1/2 true, as Warlocks ride single file to hide their numbers

Nightwoolf: MYTH: A Warlock can only have one pet out at a time.

Each one also does not need to be directly controlled by the warlock. For example if the Felhunter sees a Mage, it automatically soloes it. If a Succubus sees a Warrior it automatically seduces it with an enchanting lullaby. There are also some rumours that one Warlock on Firetree had a mysterious 5th pet however nobody has ever been able to confirm these rumours as of yet.

Curse of Agony, Corruption, Siphon Life, Unstable Affliction, Immolate, Fear, Light Stretching, Cup of Tea, Collect Gold.

It’s almost time. I promised a new UI setup guide and I’ll deliver as soon as the patch is out and I can be sure stuff doesn’t break. For up-to-the minutes and some mirrors of your favorite apps, just in case Curse and WoWI go down again, come to #ktwow on irc.freenode.net, we gots the goods.

mogUI 2.0 will be completely Ace2 and have a lot of cool new macro features using the 2.0 macro system which rocks most socks in its versatility (and complexity, of course). A full UI and screenshots here, soon, or on my website.