Two huge games collide! Panic in the disco! Cats and dogs, living together!
It’s true – you can make just about anything in Minecraft. I’ve seen people make huge statues of their favorite video game characters, I’ve seen people make starships, massive skyscrapers, and more. But this – this is the first time I’ve seen anyone make Deathwing.
The full-size version of the dragon doesn’t fly or anything, but he certainly does look menacing and imposing, and the details and color are just right. He’s pretty impressive, and Nessy should be proud of the work he’s done. Glad he’s earned a place in the hall of fame – we wouldn’t want any random adventurers to happen upon Deathwing and decide to take him down, now would we?
I picked this one up over at WoW Insider today, so all credit goes to them for discovering it. Tank for Me Matteaus was originally supposed to be a simple celebration of Matteaus’ birthday and a thank you from his guild, Defenders of the Horde on Kilrogg [H] but it turned into something special. Something different. Something truly epic.
Each week over at The Blog Azeroth Forums, the community comes together around a shared blog topic – interested WoW bloggers can pick up the topic and make posts on their own sites to respond to it, and all of the responses are collected and linked at TwistedNether.net. “What Is Your Favorite Weapon?” is this week’s topic!
This week’s shared topic over at Blog Azeroth was a particularly fun one to think about. Kallixta asked the group:
I was comparing a new upgrade to my older item when it struck me how much I liked my old item. Like is wonderfully subjective and I hope others will explain their measure.
Is your favorite weapon something with strong memories for you? Is it something that just works well for RP purposes? Or maybe the balance of abilities meshes better than normal to your spec and play style?
Admittedly, I don’t do much RP, and I’m not exactly an endgame high-end raider who doesn’t have time to think about the looks and story behind a weapon because he’s too busy min/maxing to care, so I think I’m right there in the middle with those players who have fallen in love enough with a couple of his items that they simply won’t ever leave the bank. Here are a couple of them.
WoWCrendor is back again with a fantastic video that – I really hope – will silence the people who just can’t stop whining about server maintenance and wondering what’s happening behind the scenes during maintenance periods.
I mean seriously – it happens every single week, people. Aside from that? Just watch.
The fine folks at Raid Ready (who we spoke to a while back) have taken a break from making hilarious internet videos and ar eback to working on the Raid Ready service. In the interim though, they need some new videos, preferably from folks like you and I for whom sometimes World of Warcraft can be a little close to reality for some people’s comfort.
So, they’re looking for your videos! That’s right, YOU.
The video above outlines what they’re looking for and what’s at stake, namely a bag of delicious delicious skittles. And 6 months of pre-paid WoW game time, a 2009 Blizzcon Authenticator, and a Starcraft II poker set! But seriously, skittles!
Head over to the Raid Ready: Do It Yourself page for the full contest details and to find out how to enter!
The beauty of all of the whole caramelldansen meme is that regardless of what you’re a fan of, there’s likely a video of it. This can’t possibly be the first one related to World of Warcraft – heck, it’s not even the first one I’ve seen, but it’s definitely one of the most adorable. Maybe it helps that I play a Paladin.
I have to admit, I kind of feel bad for the old guy, but you know what – ten bucks says that guy just whispered his hunter and rogue friend before pulling aggro on those griefers. Expect sniping and de-cloaking to commence in the moments after the end of this video.
Yeah, I like to make up my own endings for things.
This hilarious video (hit the link to see it in HD at YouTube) is one of three that have been unlocked over a Raid Ready, all designed to give you a little bit of a clue as to what Raid Ready will be when it’s released.
Okay, the videos themselves don’t say too much, and that’s okay because they’re all hilarious – the one above is the first to be unlocked, and since then there’s another great one that parodies an eHarmony ad, and yet another that makes me feel awful for that poor guy – he just wanted his morning cup of joe.
Anyway, between the site and the videos, I had to find out what this Raid Ready business was all about, so I dropped the team there a line to find out what they’re planning and what they could tell me about it now.
I noted the air of mystery around the videos, and I asked what exactly Raid Ready was going to be: a Web site? A service? An add-on? A utility? A subscription service? What was the deal? Here’s what Stubby, one of the folks behind the scenes working on Raid Ready, had to say:
Raid Ready is a new way to measure the readiness of players and entire raids for certain content. In the past 3-4 years several methods have been introduced that give players what I feel are rather ambiguous ways of measuring their readiness for certain content. What’s wound up happening with all these methods is that we have several sites, add ons and calculators which give you either a number or a graph that tells you what you’re ready for and how you rank against other players. The problem with these systems is that they tend to use things which don’t matter to measure the capability of players. I’ll be 100% honest. The only real thing that matters is a player’s ability, but there’s no true way to measure that outside of having that player in your raid and seeing how they perform.
Raid Ready doesn’t focus on iLevels or achievements to make it’s assessment of players or groups. Instead it takes the accumulated research on player stats and measures known good stats against the stats of players in your raid, allows for variance in stats to compensate for others and mathematically takes into account players who will make up for others in order to come up with an assessment that determines whether a raid can find success in the content they’re attempting. The idea is not to tell a raid leader that their raid will pull content off but to give them a better understanding of what they’re taking in so they can be better prepared and build strategies accordingly. This is really just a small part of what we intend to do but at it’s core this is what Raid Ready is.
So, I asked, it’s more about understanding the overall “talent” of a player, as opposed to his or her gearscore or total HP or DPS averages, right? Some way to determine how a player will likely perform overall, not just a stack of numbers that supposedly define them, right? Stubby replied:
Somewhat a look at talent. It does take some level of understanding of a class to be able to stat properly, but more to the point it’s about knowing whether the group as a whole based on the known required stats can pull off the task at hand. In that way, yes, our approach is much more holistic and takes the character into account over gear.
Very interesting – so we still don’t know how Raid Ready will do what they’re planning to do, but the concept is exciting regardless – imagine as a raid leader having the ability to understand the capabilities of your group and whether you have the right mix of talent, stats, and skills to get the job done, as opposed to just staring at some potentially non-representative piles of numbers that supposedly will help you make a judgement call on your own.
We’ll have to wait and see what the folks behind Raid Ready have up their sleeve, but the prospect is exciting, and the videos are more than entertaining!
So 2010 is coming to a rapid close. But what does 2011 hold in store for us World of Warcraft players? We already have Cataclysm, what more could we ask for?
Well – since we’re all busy making resolutions and claiming we’re going to lose weight or get to the gym or something else like that, I was curious what some of us were planning in terms of Warcraft resolutions – things we wanted to see 2011 bring to us, or things we wanted to do with a new year and a fresh start. So what did I do? I asked Twitter, of course!
I want my ‘mad scientist’ of a huntress to be a Professor, of course!
…and camels! CAMELS FOR EVERYONE, EVERYWHERE! They are so cute!
And I’d really like to kill Deathwing. Not because I’m a big raider, but, damnit it’s PERSONAL this time.
Personally, I’m going to make up for only getting two toons to the level cap in Lich King. The others were all SO CLOSE.
As for me? My Warcraft resolution is to experiment with some classes that I had normally thought were practically unplayable by my play style: that means I need to get back to leveling my Shaman, and maybe try out a Druid. I’m also planning to hit the level cap with a few more characters this time around – by the time Cataclysm hit, I only had 2 level 80s and a ton of lower level alts. I’d love to have some variety, fill different needs in heroics and raids.
Perhaps my biggest resolution though is to get back to playing more often! RL just keeps getting in the way, and I want to dive back in full force now that Cataclysm is out. I’ve been away too long, and my enemies have grown soft, as it were.
What are some of your 2011 World of Warcraft resolutions? Let us know in the comments!
The venerable TotalBiscuit, of The Cynical Brit, has an amazing tutorial on how to get a super-secret achievement in one of the more fun quests available in Mount Hyjal! In this quest, you’re supposed to climb trees, grab bears, and throw them down to a tampoline, but if you do something different you could earn something very unusual for yourself! Check out the video to find out how!
…and if you believe any of that, or that the video itself is real, I have a bridge in New York to sell you, nice and cheap. Enjoy!
