Wanted to let the Instance crowd know that I created a new print, in both 12×18 and 20×30 inch sizes, featuring everyone’s favorite Stranglethorn cat. You can order them if you wish, by clicking here. Full color, high quality limited prints, signed as well. US and international orders accepted.
Special day two coverage of Blizzcon 2009, with the on-the-scene help of Patrick, Shawn, Turpster, Nicole, and Marc. Thanks guys! Get the goods below!
- The RSS Feed
- The MP3 File
- The iTunes Subscription
- The Zune Feed
Special day one coverage of Blizzcon 2009, with the on-the-scene help of Patrick and Shawn. Thanks guys! Get the goods below!
- The RSS Feed
- The MP3 File
- The iTunes Subscription
- The Zune Feed
A quick note to WoW players and Instance listeners out there. The Instance Podcast will be covering Blizzcon in two daily wrap-up episodes tonight and Saturday night. Live recordings will happen, but you will want to keep your eye on my twitter feed as to when that will be. I’ll be working with people on the ground in Anaheim to talk about all the big stuff coming out of the con both days.
A few links that will help you out. Here is the live uStream feed for when we record. Here is the iTunes link for the actual episodes (which will be made available shortly after recording.) Here is the episode RSS feed. And again, the Twitter feed.
Big News Of The Week
The Crazy Fire-Breathing Woman Is Back
Blizzard announced the return of The Brood Mother Onyxia this week, in a big nod toward the 5th Anniversary of World Of Warcraft, which is happening in only three months. And they left no doubt that they had been sitting on this one, as they posted a Public Test Version 3.2.2 almost immediately.
Rumors And Scuttlebutt
A Big Heaping Helping Of Rumor Pie
Several gaming news sites that report on Blizzard and World Of Warcraft took speculation closer to fact this week, crediting anonymous sources at Blizzard as having confirmed that the third expansion to WoW will be named Cataclysm, and that Blizzard will be adding two new playable races to the game next year – the Worgen for Alliance and the Goblins for the Horde. Before we say another word, we must stress that this is not confirmed in any way. Blizzard could be playing a nice false-leak joke on fan sites. It wouldn’t be the first time, as in June 2008, Blizzard inexplicably posted a big ice wallpaper image just before announcing Diablo 3. That ice led many of us astray.
Arena Season 6 Has To End Eventually
A post this week on the official forums by Bornakk gave us the following,
“We are currently planning to end Arena Season 6 as early as August 25. At that point we will go through our normal process to determine who is eligible for the end-of-season rewards. This process should take approximately one week. It’s very important for players who feel that they may be eligible for the arena-specific titles and/or Furious Gladiator’s Frostwyrm to refrain from transferring their character to another realm until after Arena Season 6 ends. The following Arena Season will not begin for at least one week after the current season ends. During this time between seasons, all rated matches will be turned off and only skirmishes will be available. When Arena Season 7 begins, all team ratings, personal rating, and arena points will be wiped, but matchmaking rating and honor points will remain.”
Blizzard Is Pimping Your Crazy Guild Events
At least in the EU they are. Check out this link to the WoW Europe events page, where Blizzard is listing in-game events being run by people like you! The list currently includes a number of player-hosted events like The Running Of The Gnomes, The Running Of The Peons, The Forest Taint RP gathering, The Running Of The Something Else. Let’s face it, people like to run.
Town Cryer
Darren G. writes: With the new onyxia raid announced, don’t you think that the game has become a little over populated with dragon bosses lately? Off the top of my head, I can think of many. We have sapphiron, obsidian sanctum, razorscale, all the blue dragons in the nexus instances, and the one in violet hold. And soon we’re expecting onyxia, the other sanctum portals, sindragosa, and in future expansions ones like deathwing. BC had, if memory serves, no dragon bosses except for the infinite dragonflight. Not to mention all the dragon mounts we all have. I doubt you could log in and sit still in northrend for 30 seconds without seeing a dragon flying overhead. In classic this would be unheard of. Also, Obsidian sanctum is way too similar to onyxias lair to be in the same expansion. I was of the impression that obsidian sanctum WAS the new onyxias lair, or at least a homage to it.
Delizaar from the wyrmrest accord server writes: I am in a guild at the moment that seems to be having a rough time with choosing officers it seems the GM is choocing them as her “favourites” not to how well they perform. I was wondering how do you choose your officers and what expectations do you have of them?..I hope to send this podcast to my guild master if you answer it hopefully it can solve some issues.
Drop Of The Week
Casualty Of Warhammer
Jeremy Monken is a former employee of Electronic Arts who was kind enough to share with us his story of working at Mythic Entertainment during the final days leading up to the launch of Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning. As a former employee of EA, he is not at liberty to discuss any proprietary technology or internal conversations. The information presented in this article is his opinion, or was taken from news sources external to EA, or was made public by Mythic Entertainment or Electronic Arts. It is also one hell of a story.
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, FigurePrints!, TypeFrag and Godaddy for sponsoring this episode.
- The RSS Feed
The MP3 File
- The iTunes Subscription
The Zune Feed
Fans of Vincent and Steve of Experience Points fame will want to check it out. They look ready to do whatever two man that gets thrown at em.
Both sizes both come signed. Available in both 12×18 and 20×30 inch prints. Store link.
Blizzard’s Mike Morhaime has confirmed all:
We can’t think of a better way to close out this year’s show than having Ozzy rock the house… Many of us at Blizzard are lifelong fans of Ozzy’s music, and we’re thrilled that he’ll be performing for all of our BlizzCon attendees as well as those joining us via DIRECTV and the live Internet stream.
Is there much more to say? This is not a confirmation from Blizzard themselves, but it’s as good as we’re going to get on a weekend.
Big News Of The Week
It’s Like Christmas In August
Blizzard released version 3.2 of World Of Warcraft this week, a huge patch entitled “Call Of The Crusade”, much to our surprise and with the clear intention of getting it out there early enough before Blizzcon to get the bugs killed in the wild, rather than wait at least three more weeks. This thing is huge!
Rumors And Scuttlebutt
PvP Servers May Get Ulgier
Blizzard announced this week that they have lifted the restriction on PvP realms that prevents you from creating characters on both factions. Is it a revolution for the PvP realms? It only happened 3 days ago, but we have some ideas.
Hunters Get Some Crazy Statistics
A poster named Friscos brought a very interesting blog to our attention this week, with a thread on our forums entitled “Extremely disappointed in the Hunters of the world!” The blog is called Big Red Rhino. What this guy did was to sort the data on pets that was published by the Armory Data Mining blog a couple of weeks ago. Confused yet? Check it out here.
Town Cryer
John B. writes: Obviously World of Warcraft is a game that’s designed to be played constantly… you do X, get item Y, and then achievement Z, so now you can do raid A because you have items B C and D, etc. There are so many who have the time and devotion to sit in front of the computer day in and day out toiling away at quests and achievements, to get everything to make their characters the best they can be, etc. What about those of us who play on a more casual basis? It’s so tough to keep up with everyone when they play so much more, and have the best gear, and someone like myself can’t do much with them when I do get to play since the stuff I have isn’t sufficient for me to be doing what they’re doing. Case in point, the new instance (Trial of Champions or something). I can BARELY heal the regular, the heroic, forget it, but everyone is Ulduar 25 geared and even they are having trouble.
Drop Of The Week
Did They Seriously Make Second Skin Available For Free?
It certainly looks like it. The acclaimed documentary about MMO players just like you and us has been distributed worldwide for free for you to watch on a website called SnagFilms. In case you’ve missed it so far, Second Skin is an intimate look at three sets of computer gamers whose lives have been transformed by online virtual worlds. It’s free to watch for the next week, SnagFilms is pulling it after August 13. That may not preclude you from being able to watch it on another site like Hulu after that date, but we really want to encourage support of sites like SnagFilms. It’s a brave new world, baby.
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, FigurePrints!, TypeFrag and Godaddy for sponsoring this episode.