C.K. Sample, III, co-lead blogger for The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) and contributor to PSP Fanboy, TV Squad, and Cinematical began his gaming career with Pong. Since then he has owned and played almost every gaming console that the world has thrown at him. His all-time favorite games are Populous, Legend of Zelda, Super Puzzle Fighter Turbo II, Diablo II, and, of course, World of Warcraft. He also loves making the PSP do more than it was originally intended to do to such a degree that he authored a book on the subject: PSP Hacks.
C.K. Sample, III -
C.K. Sample, III, co-lead blogger for The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) and contributor to PSP Fanboy, TV Squad, and Cinematical began his gaming career with Pong. Since then he has owned and played almost every gaming console that the world has thrown at him. His all-time favorite games are Populous, Legend of Zelda, Super Puzzle Fighter Turbo II, Diablo II, and, of course, World of Warcraft. He also loves making the PSP do more than it was originally intended to do to such a degree that he authored a book on the subject: PSP Hacks.
We're all crammed in a hotel room in the vicinity of E3. 12 bloggers getting ready to cover the heck out of E3 from every angle possible for the Joystiq tier of Weblogs, Inc. So, of course, the first thing I thought of when I arrived in the room was: I wonder how WoW will perform over an EVDO connection being shared over a Kyocera stompbox by a bunch of bloggers. The answer: Not totally horrible. The frame rate was shooting 17-20fps on my MacBook Pro with no noticeable lag during the minute or so I ran around the Crossroads with a good spattering of other players. In any case, check back over the coming days for more E3 goodness (Diablo III!?!?!).
Oh,
man. So last night, I got a chance to play a few rounds in Warsong Gulch. Usually, I have a good amount of fun doing
so, following along with nicely placed orders and helping out while trying not to get slaughtered, lose my tank, or go
through all my soul shards. I'm not going to name names here, but last night, I was in a group with a complete and
total jerk who continually bossed everyone in the team around because he was a higher level, continually calling us all
noobs and flipping out constantly about how we all couldn't do anything right.
The thing is, we were winning
until he started yelling repeatedly, "EVERYONE IN THE MIDDLE NOW!" And since the team was a little n00b
heavy, most people listened to him. This left our flag unguarded by any but my lone self, who ignored him until I just
gave up, and we quickly had our flag stolen and planted and he just kept shouting "WHAT? HOW!?"
Because your strategy sucked. You need people to charge in the raid, and people to guard the flag. Put all your cards
too heavily in one place or the other and you are screwed. Word to the wise: good leaders don't start yelling at you and
calling you all noobs. If that happens to you in game, it is time to pick a new leader. What do you think? What's your
best BattleGround strategy? Who has been your worst leader?
ps—There's an update this morning, and I
only need one more signature on the charter for Akama's Horde WoW Insider Guild.
This is much
better. After this morning's patch, the
new, universal binary version of WoW running on my 17-inch iMac Core Duo is very speedy. I'm seeing between 50 and 60
frames per second consistently. That's on a 1.83Ghz Core Duo with 2GBs of RAM and 128MB of VRAM.
Who says
a Mac isn't a gaming machine?
ps—I'm in the Royal Quarter of the UC on Akama if anyone wants to
come sign the charter.
So, I grew tired of the maintenance message and
decided, "What the heck?", so I tried logging in. To my joy, my screen immediately started downloading an update.
I launched the updater and there it was: 1.9.3.5059, streaming down through the Internets to warm the dark rotting
recesses of my Undead heart.
Why am I so pleased to get an update and still be locked out of doing anything
since the realms are
still down, you ask? Easy: I have a new Intel-based iMac, and this patch seems to have finally made World of
Warcraft run natively rather than via Rosetta, as the comment at the bottom of the login screen no longer mentions
Rosetta, but only GCC Intel. Nice!
All
realms are currently down for scheduled maintenance until 11am PST.
Looks like I picked the wrong day to log
in and sit in the UC all day waiting for people to come up and sign the WoW Insider guild charter on Akama. In any case,
later on today, after things are up and running, I will be logged in on Akama, sitting in the Royal Quarter of the
Underground City waiting for people to come by and sign our charter. I will simply have it running while I am busy
doing other work on my computer, so if I'm AFK for a while, just be patient. I will return.
For the
HORDE!
UPDATE: They are back up now, and I'm waiting in Akama for anyone who wants to sign our
guild charter. My handle is Cks.
So, I eagerly loaded the new patch and logged in. I noticed that I had some new mail and low and behold I won the
Shadow Wand I was trying to nab over at the Orgrimmar Auction house. Very nice. So I open the mail expecting to grab
the attached wand only to find no attached wand!
As I sat there cursing into the screen, I noticed the
broadcast message: "We are aware of the current issues with the mail system. At this time we are working on a
resolution and we ask that you please do not delete your in-game mail. We apologize for the inconvenience."
Who else thinks I should get the wand for free for this inconvenience? ;-)
Sorry for the
technical difficulties over the long weekend; however, I'm happy to report that things should be performing more the
way you'd expect them to now. Comments are back up and running. I just did a test one on another post.
Thanks for bearing with us. More content to come soon...
I'm still relatively new to World of Warcraft. I've been playing for about 3 months, but only on and off with a few days here and there of serious questing. The highest ranked character I have is a level 15 Tauren Warrior. In any case, I'm at that intermediate stage where I'm starting to learn a lot of things that the seasoned gamer takes for granted and that the complete newbie has no idea about, so I thought I'd share a few of these basics that I've noticed recently for those of you who are just getting started. These will most likely garner "Well, d'uh" from those of you who have played the game for any amount of time. In any case, here's three random bits:
Yesterday, when I was riding over to Mulgore, someone else on the airship with me kept asking "Where is this going?" I then told him/her to hit M to pull up the Map. n00b: "Oooooh!"
Also, while at the Crossroads when you see the little guy with the big guy as his bodyguard on the road selling weapons, if you think, "Wow, that seems a bit overpriced," that's because it is. Don't buy from him.
You can kill as many Plainstriders as you want, but if they are not in the area that the quest you are on says they need to be when you kill them, then you're not going to make any progress on that quest.
Joystiq is reporting a bit from Gaming Steve with an image that seems to indicate that the new race everyone has been talking about may be the Murlocs.
I hate the Murlocs. They have killed me multiple times when they all swarm together with that annoying gurgling battlecry of theirs.
Have you ever noticed how, after playing WoW for hour after hour, you start greeting people on the street by saying things like, "Well met!" or you start making odd connections between your real life and your virtual World of Warcraft life?
Well, I don't have a Paladin in Azeroth (yet), but I had that odd feeling that the Matrix and the real world were colliding somewhat when I launched Bloglines this morning and discovered that Dictionary.com's word of the day for today, December 14, 2005, is Paladin. Definition: "1. A knight-errant; a distinguished champion of a medieval king or prince; as, the paladins of Charlemagne. 2. A champion of a cause."
This is a totally fictitious article, but it's somewhat amusing and WoW related, so I thought I'd share: "While you can't turn a corner without seeing [Bill Gates] pimping the Xbox 360 these days, he actually prefers PC gaming. Most folks think he's dreaming up the next big thing for Windows when he's locked away in his office. Uh-uh. He's working to level up on the Mal'Ganis server in World of Warcraft."
I especially recommend that you read the comments on the Digg page where I found this. My favorite is by Toecutter who says: "He wouldnt level up anyways he would just pay someone." Ha ha.
Since it's a slow weekend, I thought I'd throw up a post about our gaming. Earlier today, Damien and I were questing through Azeroth together. We're building up our Undead Warlock characters and just bought a guild charter so that we can start a WOW Insider guild for everyone to join in on. Damien will post later with more details on that. In any case, this shot was taken while I was waiting for him and I decided to start dancing. I had just helped him get his VW, as the day before someone else had helped me get mine. I've been playing a lot on my own, and, so far, I haven't felt the group pull. It seems like every time we go to group quest, we're all at slightly different points in the game from our solo gaming. This means that some of us have to repeat quests we've already done and we have to ask help from others. In any case, thanks to Damien, I finally finished The Family Tomb, which is the quest that I currently hate the most. I died so many times. Anyway, do you prefer parties or solo? Let us know.
In any case, it's an interesting read, giving us the gold farming experience from the perspective of actual Chinese gold farmers. We already knew that Blizzard sees gold farming as being illegal, but it's interesting to see the people involved in it as a business talk about it as if it were akin to working on Wall Street.
One 23-year-old gamer, named Wandering in Azeroth (so watch out for 'Wandering') notes: "I make about $250 a month, which is pretty good compared with the other jobs I've had. And I can play games all day." $250 a month for playing World of Warcraft? Perhaps we should look into launching a WOW Insider Chinese. If these gold farmers can write, they could probably make more money blogging the game than gaming the game and the gold farming industry would diminish (Yeah, right!).
Thanks to WOW Insider Reader, Dr. Funbags, for sending this one in!
Josh set up a WOW Insider Flickr group for us earlier today and membership is open to the public, so get in there, join up, and start sharing your favorite shots of Azeroth with us. Don't forget that Josh started another Flickr pool for your custom UI in WoW.
You've all heard the stories. People have died from exhaustion from playing video games too much. People have started affairs and ruined marriages in virtual worlds like World of Warcraft.
If this sounds familiar: here's your chance to share. It's Jerry Springer on WOW Insider time: Has your devotion to the world of Azeroth ruined or negatively impacted your real-world life? Give us all the dirt.
This is much
better. After this 
All
realms are currently down for scheduled maintenance until 11am PST.
Hello readers,
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