Big News Of The Week
Patch 3.0.8 To WoW Is Imminent
Blizzard updated the patch notes for the next code change to the game yesterday, and it looks to us like we’re only a week or two away from seeing some useful, as well as some questionable changes to Azeroth, Outland and Northrend. We talk about a few of those that we skipped, or only touched on in episode 131 of The Instance.
Rumors And Scuttlebutt
Are You Authentically Playing WoW?
Authenticators are back. Or are they? You can only know by checking for yourself.
Logitech To Raise The Bar, Hopefully
Over at Engadget this week, we noticed this story about new hardware coming for WoW players and other PC gamers from Logitech. They described four new peripherals that will represent the top of their lines when they arrive later this year – a keyboard, a mouse, a headset and a gameboard, called the G13. The gameboard is available in the U.S. now, but coming to Europe at the end of March. Now what about prices? Here are the MSRPs for the four devices:
-G19 Keyboard $199
-G35 Headset $129
-G9 Mouse $99
-G13 Gamerboard $79
Looking Back On 2008
To close out the year, Massively.com and GamerDNA published a huge analysis of the players and playtime statistics that they collected throughout 2008. It’s a big article, but we break out the highlights for you here, and you can follow this link for more.
Town Cryer
Gurkan writes:
I found a rather interesting movie on youtube, one of the thousands of WOW criticizers, that tries to get a message to mostly “christian” families. A message that WOW is infested with demonic activity and it is the work of Satan. Of course i dont ridicule these people, they believe whatever they want to believe. And they feel that it is their own responsibility to warn their loved ones. Here is the link to the movie. “World Of Warcraft, is it killing you? It will!”
Willy W. writes:
I was wondering if there was a mod that would check you spelling in game. I am dysgraphic and have very poor spelling do to my learning disability and I am often mis-spelling words and being made fun of in game.
Check out the Eloquence mod here.
Drop Of The Week
The Craft of War: BLIND
By far, the most submitted link to our inbox the last two weeks has been this re-animated machinima by a fellow who calls himself Percula. It is, indeed, a must-see.
Additional show content provided by Mean Gene, Patrick from France, Darrell the Tipgiver, Steve “Buxley” Pietrowicz and the outstanding Instance Community.
Special thanks to DogHouse Systems, TypeFrag and Godaddy for sponsoring this episode.
I’m not seeing the new podcast in iTunes. Is there a delay between upload and availability?
I’m fiending over here guys. :-p
That guy from the youtube video should just play a Paladin.
You guys are gonna get soooooooo much hate mail bout that youtube video.
Blind was wicked cool awesome … as was the show (as usual) *big hugs guys* ~ SJ
hey guys its Willy W thanks for the mod I love it
After this new patch I can finally make a PVP char at 55, and prevent myself from getting reamed by high level chars, what a way to make the game easier.
Maybe Scott was thinking about the fact that you only get one skill-up per node, i.e., for the first hit on the node, when he was thinking that you “tapped” the node on the first hit. That’s the only issue I can see with this change… no more sharing the node for more than one person to get a skill-up off it.
Lol, that song is soooo gay. Great show overall.
MacGyver music…nice. I hope most everyone has seen the MacGruber vids from SNL. Too good. Good show.
Hi guys
-Looks like iTunes users may not be able to download the new episode right now. It tries for a few minutes then shuts down the download with an error. All my others downloaded ok, so I’m assuming its a problem at the source.
-Sly
Kealii, 70 Tank Warrior, Kirin Tor.
Tanking in most of the original and BC instances *is* relatively easy – especially with all of the new stuff we have to keep aggro.
My real question is this: what is the Tank’s job? I was told that the Tank was supposed to grab and keep aggro on EVERYTHING POSSIBLE. I find that Prot Warriors have a difficult time with this kind of Tank philosphy, as most of their high aggro-grabbing abilities are focused on one enemy, and not based on aoe bombing mobs. Thunderclap is *NOT* a good aggro grabbing ability.
My philosophy is that the Tank is best used as a guy to keep one or two of the most difficult enemies and protecting the Main Heal. If the tank does his job, DPS and CC can focus on one enemy at a time, and be assured of good heals from the MH.
I have not done much in the way of Tanking in Raids – but have found that raid PUGs are hell on a Tank’s ability to do his job.
Anyhow. Sorry Patrick. Tanking is not easy all the time. Sometimes it is – but that is totally dependent on the instance and the group you take with you.
You can still share nodes — just let the non-ore-getting skillup person tap it first and make sure they don’t have autoloot on.
Very nice show once again.
Btw Scott, you spelled it correct. It’s Gurkan.
And yes it’s spelled different in different languages
Keep up the good work as always!
Gurkan out!
mind putting the URL to that offline talent calculator in the show notes? I’m doing a google search and not finding it.
In regards to your “Massively.com and GamerDNA published a huge analysis” I have some issues.
-Who actually uses Xfire, do you know of people currently using it?
- In regards to AoC I really believe it has great potential to refine and grow into the high end MMO of choice (much like Crysis is to fps). It is the most graphically intense released MMO to date… I can’t think of any MMO recently announced that try’s to achieve the same level of AoC character graphics, AI, world environment… The down sides to AoC were there; it was released to early, Funcom moved very slowly in regards to fixing bugs, UI was less then desirable, the pvp system offered nothing, their bg system felt like it did in WoW classic before battle groups came along, and their customer support was subpar. On a good note much of the errors have changed, there is still much more work to be done but hell there is tons of bugs/features with WoW that have been known yet still remain in game.
- In Warhammer online you are talking about a game that looks graphically like it was made in 2000, the thing setting it apart was its pvp centered game play which was at low levels. I found War to be very dull at the higher levels, I ran into long que times to join bg’s, with high level siege capturing about the only thing to do as a high level I found it fun at first but it became old very quickly (all the castles basically have the same layout).
- That all said WoW is still my favorite Game.
Whiskeyed, Im not sure that the graphics issue is the point, I think the issue raised is that AoC will struggle to find a niche for itself, I dont think graphic content is enough.
Besides graphics every aspect of the game is covered better from another mmo.
Even Old ones EQ = raiding king and until a mmo tackles 80 100+ man raids that take a year to complete again will remain so despite its outdated graphics.
War will take over Daocs pvp slot despite the graphics being moded. Sadly Daoc still was better in pvp than war is, imo
WoW will remain the number 1 achievement what i like to call OCD mmo, pc incorrect but what the hell, and yes I play it atm along with eve, for the exact reason I can log in for a few hours a day and still get stuff done, despite its graphics engine being 4 years plus old.. and yes WotLK looks good but as quoted ” for a 4 year old engine”
See the pattern? Graphics dont keep players content does and unless funcom finds a niche for AoC its going to be an unhappy road