I have been thinking about this topic for a while, the idea of having Xbox Live style achievements in WoW. Blizzard appear to be thinking about the same thing, according to rumors of a new achievement system in Wrath of the Lich King, but how they are implemented is possibly the most important factor.

When I thought about achievements in WoW, I was hoping for a medal that would show to people: “I achieved that!” Currently I know very little about the level 70 standing next to me bar his title and a few details. [More...]

Posted by Sweenster on http://www.mmorpg-info.org.

Via Raph Koster’s blog is an interesting news story about Chinese gold sellers in serious trouble. It seems that following a dispute, one man reported his partner … ending up with them both getting some unwanted attention. [More...]

Posted by Taymar on http://www.mmorpg-info.org.

Wondering what to do today? Curse.com have done a great Daily Quest Guide, rated and broken down by area. This is great for gaining the most out of your 25 quests per day - bookmark it now!

Wondering what not to do today? Don’t mess around with Customer Service! Auryk posts an in-depth breakdown of a petition gone wrong ending in a reminder not to attempt to defraud your GMs.

Wondering what’s to come for tomorrow? WoW Insider reports that Wrath of the Lich King is in alpha and that initial invites have gone out for testing.

Posted by Taymar on http://www.mmorpg-info.org.

There is a good write-up in the Sun-Sentinel of the World of Warcraft RMT court case that Antonio Hernandez has filed against IGE U.S. in Florida. He’s filed it as a class action suit which means that the court case could, if successful, involve a pay-out for every one of World of Warcraft’s ten million subscribers.

“This loss of time, conservatively, amounts to hundreds of thousands of hours of subscriber time and causes the irreparable harm of driving subscribers away from World of Warcraft,” according to Hernandez’s lawsuit. “The economic harm incurred by this loss of time is in the millions of dollars.”

This will be critical as IGE have already argued that Hernandez can’t show loss which would mean there is no case. They’ve also stated that they are not selling gold - which IGE most certainly is but IGE U.S. may not be - that is, Hernandez is suing the wrong company. The key is the class-action component, if Hernandez can show that the gamers have suffered loss.

Needless to say Blizzard (and every other big gaming business) will be watching this like a hawk.

No surprise that the Google ads on that page are for buying WoW gold - I’d have thought they would watch for negative articles when doing the keyword matching !

Posted by Taymar on http://www.mmorpg-info.org.

Almost upon us is patch 2.4 for World of Warcraft, the last major patch before the Rise of the Lich King expansion and, thus, the conclusion to the
Burning Crusade storyline.

It’s a huge patch in terms of added value and there’s a patch trailer available (see it on YouTube or download the HD Version for PC and MAC). A lot of the test realm changes for the patch have been with balancing aspects for the classes which aren’t currently finalised and therefore not discussed here. So what do we know is coming with 2.4 ?

• A new area to explore - Sunwell Isle
• Increase in daily quests
• New 5 man instance
• New raid instance
• Sunwell Isle

Aspects of the Sunwell Isle remind us of the Opening of Ahn’Qiraj, in that it’s the combined effort of the playerbase to open things up. Repeatable quests will slowly change the quest hub from a small camp to a town, opening up vendors and additional quest NPCs.

Increase in Daily Quests

At the moment daily quests are limited to 10 per day. With 2.4 this increases to 25 so all your current quests can be dailies if you so wish.

New 5 Man Instance

The Magister’s Terrace is the new 5 man instance with the usual assortment of trash mobs to kill, unique boss fights and new loot. The end boss of the instance is Kael’Thas. Yes, the boss you kill as a raid in The Eye is now available in a post-defeat weakened state for a 5-man group to kill. Poor chap gets no rest!

New Raid instance

Sunwell Plateau is the raid instance and much like the Isle itself, the instance is slowly unlocked as more players complete the trials within. Killing the bosses within gains an item called the Essence of the Immortals which is handed in to the mages of the Sunwell Isle to help destroy the barriers, giving players access to the inner areas of the plateau and the
fight against Kil’jaeden himself.

The Fury of the Sunwell patch is shaping up to be be a great amount of extra content for both the casual and hardcore playerbase. Parts of the patch are downloading in the background now so it’s hopefully just a week or two until we get the full patch.

Posted by Talthinar on http://www.mmorpg-info.org.

There’s something soothing about the confessional - admitting your sins and getting absolution from a stranger. WoW mages clearly have felt under some duress. Gompers started a simple thread entitled Mage Confessions:

I wait till the end of AB,EToS,WSG summons before i except, no table/AI for you!

I PoM sheep on trash pulls so everyone sees I’m the quickest poly in the raid.

10 pages go!

The bulk of the confessions seem to be about damage or sheep. Or both:

i keep my sheep button right next to my ap pom iv frostbolt, so people will always see how awesome i am on accident

Hungry fighters out there should be aware that a surprising amount of the admissions are about tables in battlegrounds:

I confess that when I put up a table in a BG, and it disappears within 3 seconds…

It’s really me clicking feverishly to get all my biscuits, then rapidly deleting them all. Then I blame it on the hunter, and tell everyone my CD is up.

And quite obviously, there isn’t a mage on the server who is truly out of reagents:

When people ask me for ports, I tell them I’m out of reagents, but I’ll be happy to port them if they go bring me one. The ones that actually do this, I give a port to. I usually end up with extra reagents, and a tip on top of it, which I just don’t understand.

Gompers wanted 10 pages. It hit that within 48 hours and the thread is now 26 pages, including this admission that any gamer can understand:

3. False excuses I’ve used to leave an instance:
a. Need to take mom to hospital.
b. Need to tuck kids in bed.
c. WIfe tells me to get off computer.

I dont have a mother, kids, or wife… take a hint :)

Apparently rogues and warlocks have started their own versions of the confessional. Luckily nonconsensual PvP is limited to Alliance vs Horde, else I suspect the next mage to claim he was out of reagents might get stabbed through the heart.

Technorati Profile

Posted by Taymar on http://www.mmorpg-info.org.

Noor the Pacifist had decided to level without killing. It’s an interesting idea - except that real people don’t count.

It looks like PvP is a huge part of your strategy. Do you foresee continuing to PvP the whole way up? I have to; the repeatable daily battleground quests are the only way to “grind” XP if you aren’t going to kill mobs (not counting the very slow repeatable seasonal quests that you can do each year).

Am I missing something here? I love the idea of playing a pacifist and only doing quests that are based on exploration or delivery. But somehow killing other players doesn’t fit in, for me.

Maybe I’m being overly cynical as it is right on the back of the Save the Virtual Whales post on GirlmeetsWoW - I really don’t understand how you can happily kill pixelated people and object to killing pixelated bears - especially when the cartoon bears are causing issues for the cartoon people who live in the cartoon village you are trying to get faction with.

I don’t know, maybe I need to get a grip.

Posted by Taymar on http://www.mmorpg-info.org.

How many level 1 cows would it take to zerg a level 70? Eagle’s Pride decided to put it to the test:

We tried our best to re-create a boss-like fight for level 1 cows to raid. We crunched some numbers, did some tests and balanced it for 25 level 1 cows. The fight had 4 phases, different abilities set off with different macros and emotes. The “boss” had roughly 4000hp, took about 10 mins to kill, did moderate damage to people as you’ll see. Sadly we didn’t manage a way to hold threat or make spells effective against the “boss”.

They’ve put two videos up (boss and raider points of view) although depending on your musical inclinations, you may wish to turn the volume down. The event itself looks like it was a ton of fun - what a great idea! Hats off to Eagle’s Pride for coming up with something new.

Posted by Taymar on http://www.mmorpg-info.org.

Feast of Winter Veil starts today! There are holiday quests including one that will turn your mount into a flying reindeer - how can you resist? Or /kiss any Winter Reveler NPC in order to get a Handful of Snowflakes - ok, it’s not as fun as a snowball but you can make it snow on the player of your choice. And if you pop by the Winter Veil tree (either Ironforge or Orgrimmar) you can get your very own Mechanotoy.

Burning Crusade bosses will have special festive hats in their drop table as of December 25th so you might want to pop by these instances:

• Shattered Halls
• Shadow Labyrinth
• Auchenai Crypts
• Durnholde Keep
• Mechanar
• Botanica

Ingamers have a full history on their wiki if you want more background details.

And if you are still looking for a gift for that WoW player in your life, well, what about a 3-D model of his or her character? You have to admit they are gorgeous…

Posted by Taymar on http://www.mmorpg-info.org.

World of Warcraft players can make their guild message of the day really stand out by using hexadecimal codes. Vlacula has written a cute little php function to generate the codes for you to copy and paste. Just type the text you want in the message and then type the code of the color you want in the “color selection” field. Copy the line for the channel you are outputting to and paste it into WoW - simple!

I shouldn’t admit it but I sort of like the gradient function of the previous version best. The preview function only works in IE, though.

Posted by Taymar on http://www.mmorpg-info.org.