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I apologize for the late article.Being finals week and all, things get pretty hectic for a lot of us.You will appreciate that I'm writing as my students are busily completing their final exam.
As in life sometimes in World of Warcraft we come across unpleasant or stubborn people that challenge us.Whether it's in Guilds, PUGs, or just the environment, at some point someone will get on your nerves.Thanks to the perceived anonymity of the internet, people feel they can be much more brazen and offensive then they ordinarily would.I'm not asking you to let violations slide, but try to be mature about the situation.Let's talk about how to deal with difficult situations.
I think there are few things more disturbing in the modern world than ill-conceived notions of racial, religious, and sexual divisions. For some reason parts of humanity continue to believe that just because one group or another looks and/or acts differently, they are bad. One of the reasons I enjoy WoW and just games in general is because it allows us to escape the problems this world gives to us, even if only for a few hours a week.
Unfortunately, some people find it necessary to bring their attitudes in game. We've covered some of this before, from border-line inappropriate arena names to sexism in WoW. However while playing an arena game recently fellow writer Amanda Dean came up against a team named "Rosa Parks Stole My Seat," and this name is possibly the most offensive one I've seen. Rosa Parks (for those of you who need a history lesson) refused to go to the back of a bus because of her skin color and continued to sit in the white only section of the bus, despite being told to do otherwise. She represented a key moment in the history of civil rights.
I've had my fun with rick rolling before. But Rastley and GM Khadarish took it to a new level when Rastley managed to rick roll a GM, all while getting a few gold spammers taken care of. The original screenshot of this was posted on the Customer Service forums, with various CMs and GMs sounding in. Belfaire even comes on to authenticate the conversation.
I really enjoy it when the Blizzard staff interacts with the fan base like this. We've even been lucky enough to get whisked away for some special face time. I think it shows that behind the corporate face they have to put on, they're really just people too – and like a joke now and then. I wouldn't recommend doing this however, since you might catch a GM that doesn't think it's funny – but since it worked in this case, it's golden.
Check out after the break for the full screenshots. Pretty funny stuff.
Yes, that pic above is the priest's robe, direct from Arena season 4 (you can click on it to see a bigger version), and here is the priest's helm from season 4. As the story goes over at World of Raids, a player on EU Arathor accidentally deleted some season 1 items, and a GM then accidentally gave him season 4 items in replacement instead. The items were taken right back (duh), but their IDs were activated on that realm, so anyone with a little item ID knowledge could pull up the stats.
For comparison, these have boosts almost all around from the season 3 items, which is pretty much to be expected. And while the Stamina is clearly much higher than anything we've seen at the higher levels, the actual damage doesn't compare much to even the Tier 6 stuff. PvP gear in season 4 is all about staying alive -- we've seen a few other items leak out already, and it's the same deal on those.
Which is probably as it should be. We should note, also, that this stuff may not actually be done -- although the fact that it's spawnable on the live realms might mean that Blizzard is ready for season 4. I still don't think we'll see it until after the arena tourney, but who knows?
You might recall, if you've followed WoW Insider in the past few months, that I've been a relatively strong advocate of the making sure naming and RP server policies are enforced and have felt that if the community's going to be made to it, we should get better tools for the job. While I even got in a very productive conversation with Belfaire about it, I'm not holding my breath on a lot of my proposed tools and reforms seeing the light of day. After all, I work for WoW Insider, not Blizzard itself, and hey, not everyone agrees with me on how this stuff should work. Which is cool. Variety is the spice of life and all.
That said, for policy reporting curmudgeons like myself, Wachunga of the Maelstrom server has created a pretty good tool: the NameViolation addon.
Nehthaera today wanted to let a lot of the naysayers out there know a thing or two about their April Fool's jokes and the issues with the servers. She tells us the obvious, more or less: the people who do the April Fool's work are completely separate from the people that do the server and development work.
So these elaborate and well done jokes have exactly zero impact on the servers. They don't have anything to do with maintenance, with patch 2.4, or with Wrath of the Lich King (well, unless you actually believe there'll be a bard class). This means they could have done nothing for April Fool's, and things still would have been as difficult as they were yesterday.
I want to give Nethaera two thumbs up for her post. I really enjoy it lately when GMs and CMs lay the smack down about issues like this, especially to whiney forum posters.
Based on my experiences, and a slew of other folks posting over at the Blizzard Customer Service Forums, it appears many Tier 6 instances are having issues with stability tonight. Half the raid or more is constantly disconnecting at seemingly random points.
Several CMsGMs are looking into the issue – but it is wide spread. This means that it is almost assuredly an issue with the Blizzard servers. Based on testing I've done it is not an issue with addons. After a disconnect, all addons were turned off, and the disconnects still happened.
Stay tuned to HKO Insider for the latest. Hopefully they'll hotfix this one right up.
Updated 11:00 p.m. EDT:Belfaire posted "We're gathering the appropriate info now. I have no ETA on a resolution, only that it'll be [fixed] ASAP." (April Fool's text removed for readability.) Updated 12:44 a.m. EDT:Belfaire also let us know that Q.A. is working on the problem, though no fix has been announced yet. Seems they are at work on it.
Updated 1:00 a.m. EDT:Potential solution from Belfaire: "Please have your entire raid delete or rename your Interface folder and let me know here if you encounter the issue again. [One] group said that they ran without mods, but if what I think's happening is actually happening, even if one person has [an addon], it can affect the raid."
We are all rather critical of Blizzard at times. After all, many of us spend an inordinate amount of time in the game; especially the WoW Insider staff on patch days. We expect things to work in a certain type of way, and we expect that when we encounter a problem, things will be solved ASAP.
Nothing is wrong with these expectations we have, and indeed we should have them. After all, we want this game to be the best game possible. For many folks it's the only one they'll play. The happiness and smooth sailing in game is principally the responsibility of the customer service department at Blizzard. They're the ones to fix our issues when something goes wrong.
Drysc, one of the most visible community managers, made a wonderful post earlier this week on exactly what happens in Blizzard's support services. The full post and response are worth taking a second to read. The bullet points of his posts are as follows:
There is a mechanic in game that we are all aware of, and one that exists for a good reason: when we attack a mob, we get the mob's loot. That's the mechanic. If you're solo grinding mobs out in Shadowmoon Valley for some Primal Fire, you want to be sure you're the only one that can get the loot. The same goes for groups – if you're grouping and killing Murmur in Shadow Labs, you want to be sure that everyone is going to get his pretty blues.
But what if the mechanics of the boss fight dictate that you won't hit the boss? In fact, what if successfully killing the boss means that you have to stand on the opposite end of the playing field the whole time? You don't hit the boss, you don't get the loot – but you've done everything right. In this, the game mechanic does not represent fair play, nor does it encourage success. In fact, the mechanics are a complete contradiction of each other.
I've recently encountered this problem, and it's a real pain. Read on after the break for what happened, and what can be done to solve it. It's rather long, but this is a serious problem that Blizzard needs to fix, and all the facts need to be laid out completely and in a way that is full of thruthiness.
As you may recall, a few days ago, I wrote a little Dear Blizzard letter on the subject of enforcing the RP and Naming Policy. Of course, Once one writes a letter to someone, it is a good idea to deliver it, and thus I delivered it, or at least the issues therein, over on the Customer Service Forum. I was lucky enough to have Belfaire, who you may remember from his post explaining Blizzard's stance on multi-boxing, answer some of my questions and concerns. I also got some pretty well thought out feedback from a couple other people browsing the forums, including some roleplayers who disagreed with some of my points, so I think the threads worth a read in itself, and I'll comment a bit more on what Belfaire said after the break, now that I've had time to digest it a bit.
First of all, I really do have to thank you for changing the name of that guy called Longjohnson. Yeah, He sent us this pretty long rant about how it was unfair his name was changed, but honestly, it was a pretty clear violation of the naming policy against inappropriate references to bodily parts or functions (Sorry Jason, I'm only siding with you to a point here. Your character's name needed to be changed). That said, I'll give him this: It is pretty annoying that he was able to then proceed to the Armory and find 19 characters named Longjohnson and 60 characters named Bigjohnson. If a name is impermissible because of being profane or inappropriate on one server, it should count on them all, right? Every server has the same set of naming rules, except for RP servers, which have the extra "appropriate for an RP server" qualifier, so this shouldn't be a problem. Mike has actually observed that enforcement tends to be a bit lax in the past regarding both the naming policy and RP server policy, but I figured it was worth bringing up again.
Drysc has issued a challenge to the World of Warcraft community to meet Blizzard teams out on the Tournament Test Realm and compete in the 2v2, 3v3, and 5v5 Arena brackets. This follows a relatively successful worldwide brawl over the TTR last Sunday, where WoW Insider fielded a team of its own, although most of the time was spent waiting for the realm to get back online. Blizzard reached record numbers for the TTR tournament, prompting hardware upgrades which will be put to the test on Wednesday, between 5:00pm and 8:00pm PDT.
Blizzard employees will make special appearances on the TTR near the vendors and Arena promoters, easily spotted as they will be the only characters with Guild tags -- <Blizzard Entertainment> for their Horde team and <Blizzard> for their Alliance team. If you can't spot the Guild tag, you still probably won't have trouble finding them and their gigantic mounts. Drysc says he expects problems to crop up -- it is a stress test, after all -- but that Blizzard is ready to resolve any issues that might arise.
If you haven't gotten onto the TTR, now's a good time to download the PTR client and make your own pimped out Level 70 characters. The more players log on to the TTR during the tournament, the better Blizzard will be able to test their new build and hardware. Plus, it's always good to see what crazy antics Blizzard employees will be up to.
We all deal with them. Their annoying spam, their flooding of the general channels. Those gold sellers deserve the kiss of death. Wouldn't it be nice if their industry just went and slept with the fishes?
In a tactic that even Don Corleone himself would be angry at, gold sellers have sunken to a new low. John M. wrote in to tell us the tale of a fellow guild mate who fell under the gaze of a gold seller who took his account hostage, demanding payment from his guild. Sit back, open up a new window with this Godfather music, and read on after the break.
Our Guild had been going downhill for a while now. At the beginning of the year, key officers and members, cornerstones of our raiding team, quit the game for one reason or another. Some of our members got hacked, just like WoW Insider's Amanda Dean. This took the wind out from under our sails, despite great success in Serpentshrine Cavern and Tempest Keep. As 2007 closed, I envisioned us taking down Vashj and Kael within the first quarter of 2008. I was stoked. There were good times when we'd take down two new bosses a week. Of course, Murphy's Law happens. While key team members quit the game, others took extended (sometimes unannounced) leaves of absence, and with diminishing raid attendance and obviously performance, other members looked elsewhere for better raiding opportunities. And when it rains, it pours.
A little over a week ago our Guild bank was robbed. It was cleaned out -- so empty I could almost imagine the sound of flies buzzing about -- well, okay, it wasn't that empty. On the third tab, the robber was kind enough to leave us ten stacks of Roasted Clefthooves. At first it struck me as odd because we had fixed our Guild permissions somewhat after our GM left the game to take a shot at a relationship and play with his Nintendo Wii. In what order exactly, I can't be sure. He passed the mantle off to one officer who passed it to another officer who later passed it on to me. So for a while, I was GM of a Guild that wasn't quite doing anything but waiting on people to come back to the game. So imagine my shock (more like anesthetized indifference, to be honest) when I was going to deposit items into the Guild bank only to find that it had nothing. Well, nothing but those clefthooves.
A guildmate drew my attention to this interesting video of the New Year celebrations outside of Ironforge on the US Proudmoore server. Apparently, a GM appeared as a fire-spewing gnome and had some fun with the players gathered to see the fireworks. Check out the video above to get a complete look at his antics.
WoW Rookie is brought to our readers to help our newest players get acclimated to the game. Make sure you send a note to WoW Insider if you have suggestions for what new players need to know.
I think there are few things more disturbing in the modern world than ill-conceived notions of racial, religious, and sexual divisions. For some reason parts of humanity continue to believe that just because one group or another looks and/or acts differently, they are bad. One of the reasons I enjoy 
I've had my fun with 
Based on my experiences, and a 
We are all rather critical of 
There is a mechanic in game that we are all aware of, and one that exists for a good reason: when we attack a mob, we get the mob's loot. That's the mechanic. If you're solo grinding mobs out in 
Dear Blizzard,
We all deal with them. Their annoying spam, their flooding of the general channels. Those 
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