World of Warcraft

[Arataniello]

Continue please.

[Migey]

Id really like to continue a Cataclysm based discussion tbh, focusing on everything and anything that Cata will bring.

Im really worrying about hunters. On the one hand, they now look semi awesoe, and Blizz seems to be doing a good job of making all of the specs viable, and focus seems well thought out, but on the other hand, some things dont seem well thought out at all, and some things seem to have the potential to kill hunters off.

[Mack Kilimaro]

Following up on Rhom's inquiry from the previous thread...

Have you been paying for the account the whole time? I don't know how those characters could have remained active if the account was inactive. Unless you figure your ex-wife eBayed the toons to spite you, which would really suck. Not sure if Blizzard would have a remedy for you in that case.

[Poobah]

Blizzard have quite rightly decided that something that angers a massive amount of their players, and if rumours are to be believed many of their employees too, is not good and in an open letter to the community Mike Morhaime, Blizzard's CEO has announced that the whole real names on forums thing is being scrapped.

[Shryke]

Activision caves: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=25968987278&sid=1

Hello everyone,

I'd like to take some time to speak with all of you regarding our desire to make the Blizzard forums a better place for players to discuss our games. We've been constantly monitoring the feedback you've given us, as well as internally discussing your concerns about the use of real names on our forums. As a result of those discussions, we've decided at this time that real names will not be required for posting on official Blizzard forums.

It's important to note that we still remain committed to improving our forums. Our efforts are driven 100% by the desire to find ways to make our community areas more welcoming for players and encourage more constructive conversations about our games. We will still move forward with new forum features such as conversation threading, the ability to rate posts up or down, improved search functionality, and more. However, when we launch the new StarCraft II forums that include these new features, you will be posting by your StarCraft II Battle.net character name + character code, not your real name. The upgraded World of Warcraft forums with these new features will launch close to the release of Cataclysm, and also will not require your real name.

I want to make sure it's clear that our plans for the forums are completely separate from our plans for the optional in-game Real ID system now live with World of Warcraft and launching soon with StarCraft II. We believe that the powerful communications functionality enabled by Real ID, such as cross-game and cross-realm chat, make Battle.net a great place for players to stay connected to real-life friends and family while playing Blizzard games. And of course, you'll still be able to keep your relationships at the anonymous, character level if you so choose when you communicate with other players in game. Over time, we will continue to evolve Real ID on Battle.net to add new and exciting functionality within our games for players who decide to use the feature.

In closing, I want to point out that our connection with our community has always been and will always be extremely important to us. We strongly believe that Every Voice Matters, ( http://us.blizzard.com/en-us/company/about/mission.html ) and we feel fortunate to have a community that cares so passionately about our games. We will always appreciate the feedback and support of our players, which has been a key to Blizzard's success from the beginning.

Mike Morhaime

CEO & Cofounder

Blizzard Entertainment

[Shryke]

I don't know if they got posted in the last thread, but there were alot of rumors from people who knew people inside Blizzard that this shit was all Activision. Apparently Blizzard had been told "The game is all yours. But anything to do with B.net and the forums and that stuff is controlled by Activision".

[Poobah]

Someone should really send Kotick for a long walk off a short cliff. Also I totally beat you to the punch on that announcement ;)

[Gertrude]

Yeah, most people are blaming Activision and Kotick. Meh. I'm just glad that they listened. It really was a horrible idea. I still have the RealID disabled because I was not a fan of that once it was known friends of friends could see your name. It disqualifies me from a possible beta key, but whatever. It'll be here soon enough.

[Weak With The Dawn]

I don't know if they got posted in the last thread, but there were alot of rumors from people who knew people inside Blizzard that this shit was all Activision. Apparently Blizzard had been told "The game is all yours. But anything to do with B.net and the forums and that stuff is controlled by Activision".

Yeah I had read that too.

I'm glad they decided not to force this on people. I tasks a lot of disrespect for your fan base to go ahead with something that had a good % of the community up in arms.

Re: Cataclysm

Everything I've seen for it so far looks pretty sweet, but no ones really ventured into the remade old world with any depth. It's all level 80-85 zones or Goblin Worgen areas. I want to see barrens quests and Desolace, etc.

I'll most likely be leveling a troll druid and a goblin warrior, so I'm really interested in how the *new* old world looks.

[Shryke]

Westfall is now one huge CSI: Miami pisstake that establishes all the new bosses and the new story for Deadmines.

[Gertrude]

I was planning on leveling a troll druid, but ... hmm. I'm not fond of the forms, specifically the coloring. Yes, I know those colors are already found in the trolls skin/hair, but I would never put artic blue with day-glo yellow. I'd be fine if at least one combo was toned down a bit - blue skin, blue-green hair, but no. I'm a dork, things like that matter to me :P

I'm also really interested in seeing the old world and the changes.

[Poobah]

Re: Cataclysm

Everything I've seen for it so far looks pretty sweet, but no ones really ventured into the remade old world with any depth. It's all level 80-85 zones or Goblin Worgen areas. I want to see barrens quests and Desolace, etc.

I'll most likely be leveling a troll druid and a goblin warrior, so I'm really interested in how the *new* old world looks.

Check out Total Biscuit's channel he's done a load of flythroughs of old as well as new areas. And his videos are probably the best ones out there anyway, his commentary is great. I've recently become a big fan of his podcasts since watching his videos and he's a great pundit.

[Shryke]

TotalBiscuit comes off like a TotalTool most of the time.

And one who hasn't played the game in a long time since there's shit that's in right now that he's all like "Wow, this Cataclysm addition is awesome!".

[Weak With The Dawn]

TotalBiscuit comes off like a TotalTool most of the time.

And one who hasn't played the game in a long time since there's shit that's in right now that he's all like "Wow, this Cataclysm addition is awesome!".

Haha, yeah there was a lot of that in his Goblin Area video. I don't mind most of what I've seen by him, I think he's a little cheesy, but I can handle cheese.

[Erlend]

I don't know if they got posted in the last thread, but there were alot of rumors from people who knew people inside Blizzard that this shit was all Activision. Apparently Blizzard had been told "The game is all yours. But anything to do with B.net and the forums and that stuff is controlled by Activision".

That could be true for all I know, but it seems very popular to blame these kind of decisions on some evil, faceless corporation in the background without much evidence. Another example is that pretty much every unpopular decision from Bioware the last few years have been blamed on EA.

I was planning on leveling a troll druid, but ... hmm. I'm not fond of the forms, specifically the coloring. Yes, I know those colors are already found in the trolls skin/hair, but I would never put artic blue with day-glo yellow. I'd be fine if at least one combo was toned down a bit - blue skin, blue-green hair, but no. I'm a dork, things like that matter to me :P

After comparing the troll bear forms and the tauren bear forms I'm pretty sure the troll models are temporary, since they are so much less detailed.

[Poobah]

I find him far more entertaining than a silent flythrough or something with little or no commentary. He does sound rather broken record after a while commenting on how everything will probably be phased, I agree. I still think the vids are generally very good, he shows a lot, and comments on stuff in more depth than "omg this is new, look at it" so yea.

[Poobah]

That could be true for all I know, but it seems very popular to blame these kind of decisions on some evil, faceless corporation in the background without much evidence. Another example is that pretty much every unpopular decision from Bioware the last few years have been blamed on EA.

Bobby Kotick just comes off like a massive arsehole whenever he gets the chance. Kudos to him I suppose fornot pretending to be anything he isn't, but greedy bastard who only really cared about profit to the exclusion of all else isn't exactly a crowd pleaser.

[Mack Kilimaro]

I don't know if they got posted in the last thread, but there were alot of rumors from people who knew people inside Blizzard that this shit was all Activision. Apparently Blizzard had been told "The game is all yours. But anything to do with B.net and the forums and that stuff is controlled by Activision".

It's a narrative that has truthiness to it, though obviously none of us are really in a place to assess the accuracy of it.

It feels like this was a little corporate power struggle, though. You can imagine some Activision bean counters having run a cost-benefit analysis where they completely failed to consider the backlash against this policy. Probably some guy thought he knew what people who play games are like because his wife plays Farmville and Mafia Wars or something. Blizzard people said, "No, really, this is across the line," and the Activision people said they were doing it anyway. Then it was announced, the WOW community blew up, and now Blizzard can say, "Hey, I told you so."

Did it actually play out remotely like that? Hell if I know. But it seems like the most plausible scenario.

[Shryke]

If you believe it about only 1 person in the games industry, it should be Kotick.

Everything the man says makes him seem more and more a business guy who knows nothing about the gaming market.

He's probably got an MBA.

[Kalbear]

Got done with the second zone for Vashj'ir, and I do have to say it's vastly improved compared to the Kelp Forest. Between getting the mount, the architecture, the quests and the awesome battlemaiden experience, it's hugely improved.

The lore is also awesome. Again, the battlemaiden quests are totally win for this, and the ending blew me away. Really utilized the vast scale of it.

Still think it's stupid that you go faster traveling on the ground.

Still really fast leveling; I made it to 82 at the end of the second subzone.