MetroWest Boston Club
2 Hunter Talent compares for Raiding / 5 mans2010-03-08 00:00:00First off, in my opinion, you should have Hawk up almost all of the time in a 5-man or raid situation. There are exceptions, of course, which I'm sure someone will be happy to bring up. But, in general you should use Hawk to improve your dps, rather than Viper to conserve your mana. I use Viper all the time when soloing, but only rarely in
In 5-mans, fights are short enough that you shouldn't run out of mana. Drink between fights. Don't gimp your dps during a fight to conserve your mana.
In raids, fights can be longer, but you should expect to use consumables to keep from running out of mana. There are times when Viper can be used, but in most situations Hawk should be up to increase your d...
Wtf? Never thought to ask before2010-03-01 00:00:00Tells you everything a hunter needs to know. If I were a noob and just started the game today, reading that guide would instantly make me a pro. 3:2 Macros are the most effective / efficient dps in the game currently if you have a 3 second bow / gun / cb. faster weapons use 1:1 only go for slow attack speed bows.
3:2
showtooltip Steady Shot
/cast !Auto Shot
/castrandom exists] Kill Command
/cast Steady Shot
/script
3:2 Macro - This supposedly prevents Auto Shot pushback. It involves 2 macros, as listed below. Be sure to change the MultiBar location to the one you place your macro on.
showtooltip Steady Shot
/console Sound_EnableSFX 0
/cast !Auto Shot
/click
/cast Steady Shot
/console Sound_EnableSFX 1
/script
showtooltip Kill Comm...
Beta Test, System Requ's, Interface, & PvP2009-11-09 00:00:00y Anton Zlygostev
"....This will be a massively multiplayer online role playing game where hundreds and even thousands of players will live and explore the vast and persistent game world that this game has to offer. You will form friendships, go on conquests to slay monsters and just hang out while having friendly conversations with other players. World of Warcraft will feature rich environments and will contain interesting content which will be frequently updated and changed
Warcraft 3 will blend very well with World of Warcraft. You will see familiar monsters, spell effects, places and even interface icons. Yet at the same time, World of Warcraft will be a completely new and a unique experience that will captivate its players for a very long time to come. At the time of this preview the game features 5 different races: Humans, Orcs, Tauren, Night Elves and Dwarves. Blizzard plans to add more races in the future to expand the player base and give more options to current players. Each character can be customized to look unique and you will be provided with many character modification options such as hairstyles, skin color, tattoos and unique facial builds.
As you start up the game and start playing you will level up fairly easily and therefore you don't have to be a hardcore fan in order to enjoy this game. There will be no pain...
Kings of the World 2009-10-24 00:00:00For a game that isn't even available yet, World of Warcraft is remarkably popular. Indeed, when Blizzard decided to open up beta applications to Europe earlier this year, the developer received ten times the number of expected sign-ups.
Perhaps as a result of this, Europe is now a key consideration in Blizzard's strategy for World of Warcraft - Europe will have a full local team in place shortly after the game launches simultaneously in the US and Korea this winter, all the support and infrastructure will be hosted in Europe (the servers are in France), and the game will initially support English, French and German languages, with the possibility of more being added at a later date. During a recent stress test of the game, designed to give Blizzard an idea of how the servers performed under strain, up to 3,000 players were playing concurrently - and the ongoing US beta regularly enjoys 2,000 concurrent players.
Speaking to the assembled hacks on a recent press tour stop in the UK, Blizzard producer Chris Sigaty confirmed that the long-awaited European beta could kick off as soon as this week, and said that in terms of future support, the company would "patch all regions simultaneously," so Europe wouldn't be left lagging behind. There is still the issue of players from the US and Europe being unable to play together, but as this was a design decision Blizzard is considering ways to let the hardcore world-spanning guilds get round this.
Seated comfortably in a rather grand old house somewhere in the leafy English countryside this week - well, outside London in any event - we had a chance to talk to Sigaty, accompanied by Blizzard PR coordinator George Wang, at length about the forthcoming European launch, some of the problems inherent to running a game of this type and how Blizzard plans to deal with them, the benefits of the stress test, and Blizzard's stylistic approach to games in general. Oh, and since Sigaty also acted as producer on Warcraft III, we decided to sneak in a question about what that team's been up to since then. We'll get slapped for that, but it was worth it.Eurogamer:
Do you have a planned European release target at the moment?
Chris Sigaty:
We're saying right now winter. We hope to do it as soon as possible after the initial launch, but we don't even know for sure when we'll launch in the US and we are trying to do a simultaneous launch in two regions currently - the US and Korea - and with all the interest from Europe we actually think that the ramp-up is going to be extremely quick, and the closed beta should start any day. We're not going to run that for anywhere near the length that we ran the US beta, because really a lot of that was getting the balance down and all that - that's not going to be necessary - so we expect the game to go out very shortly after the US does, and we're currently saying we're targeting this winter.Eurogamer:
Is it really up in the air?
Chris Sigaty:
It's not that it's so up in the air, it really has more to do with when we do launch in the US, so we're shooting as hard as possible - everybody's at work, and I don't even know if I should be saying these things [shoots a look and a smile at George], but everybody's working literally seven days a week there and we are trying to get this game out this year if possible.George Wang:
Actually we're hoping it's going to be launched in the US and Korea this year, and the European launch is coming a few months after that.Eurogamer:
So early next year?
Chris Sigaty:
That's what we're shooting for.Eurogamer:
Do you have any idea of the subscription costs at this point?
Chris Sigaty:
That's still totally being discussed. My best guess is that it'll be something similar to other games, but I have no idea - I haven't been involved in those decisions and I know they haven't been made yet.Eurogamer:
Blizzard traditionally has a history of not showing much leniency to cheaters. Is that a policy you plan to uphold with World of WarCraft?
Chris Sigaty:
Absolutely, yeah. It's extremely important to the ideals we're going to try and uphold with our community support and live teams. We fully intend to, in all regions, to take care of griefers, that sort of stuff. And when they're identified, if there are people that are ruining...
Dave Mirra BMX Challenge for Wii2009-10-20 00:00:00Crave Entertainment today announced Dave Mirra BMX Challenge for Wii. The Dave Mirra video game franchise has sold more than 2 million units across all platforms, and the latest installment is sure to please fans with its arcade-like feel and diverse play. Dave Mirra BMX Challenge for the Wii video game system features, 12 different environments and 13 bikes to choose from. Each unique environment includes two race paths, an...
Lead Blizzard Dev Outlines 9 WoW Quest Problems, Admits to Designing Stranglethorn Quest2009-10-14 00:00:00With a scant 40 minutes to address the gathered masses, former World of Warcraft director Jeffery Kaplan had a lot to cover in his "The Cruise Director of Azeroth" lecture.
The presentation saw an extremely candid Kaplan, now working on Blizzard's next-gen MMO, recognize and address the nine major problems with World of Warcraft.
But before getting into the nitty-gritty details, Kaplan made one thing abundantly clear: the WoW team is aware of the problems, and is actively working to fix them.
1. "The Christmas Tree Effect"
What this means, and this is kind of a weird one, but you show up to a quest hub, and your minimap is lit up like a Christmas tree with quest exclamation marks.
The weird thing is, if you ask our fans, they love this. This is to them a good quest hub... They go in and vacuum up the quests. But we've lost all control to guide them to a really fun experience.
Kaplan noted that this leads to users not reading the quests, not bothering to remember which quest giver gave what, and forgetting the order in which to do the quests.
"It's much better to have a slow, guided experience," he said. "I think if you go to [Lich King zones] Borean Tundra or Howling Fjord, you'll always have a ton of quests to do, but you'll never have more than 6 or 7 quests in your quest log."
Kaplan amusingly revealed that some WoW quest designers try to get around the problem by stacking quests onto a single NPC. He showed one NPC that was stuffed with eight quests.
"It should just say 'Do Elwin Forest' at that point," he said, laughing. "'Come back to me at 60.'"
2. Too Long, Didn't Read
Kaplan explained the age-old internet phrase, relating it to WoW quests that are simply too wordy.
"World of Warcraft quest designers are limited to 511 characters," he said. "That's all that will fit into the data entry. And all you programmers know why it's not 512."
Some quest designers ask for more space, Kaplan said, saying, "Why are there only 511 characters? We gotta have more, let's blow that out."
But Kaplan would prefer to see WoW quests go in the other direction.
"I actually wish that the number was smaller. I think it's great to limit people in how much pure text they can force on the player. Because honestly... if you ever want a case study, just watch kids play it, and they're just mashing the button. They don't want to read anything."
3. Medium Envy
Kaplan prepared the crowd for a rant at this point. I'm as guilty of this as anyone else. We're so fortunate and privileged to work in a medium that is not only an art, but a revolutionary interactive form of entertainment. It's unfortunate to see so many games try to be what they're not, including our game at times. Of course we should embrace the concept of story... art, literature...
Chocolate Hangover2009-09-18 00:00:00Welcome to the 554th edition of Loading... If you aren't reading this in your e-mail, you could be. Sign Up
A big round of clap for Cody Bye, who anted up, put the pedal to the metal and went sleepless for a week just to grind out the Loading... columns last week. What is especially interesting is that he had more viewers than Quentin Tarantino's new movie, Grind House. When it comes to the grind our Cody is one of a kind.
Many of you likely spent the weekend with family and friends devoutly re-enacting the Easter story, eating heaping plates of turkey, ham and scalloped potatoes, followed by bags of chocoloate eggs that had been delivered by a life-sized rabbit. It's these kinds of events that give the crazy-people ammunition, literally.
Oh I know, many of you have giggled or chortled that a person who blows themself up to get 72 virgins must be nuts. I'll go out on a limb and claim that those same goofballs were pointing to the West over the weekend, mispronouncing "crucify" and deliberating over the demon that lives in a man-sized bunny suit.
Meanwhile, not to be outdone, Pope Benedict, his gold vestements shining and shimmering, reflecting in the polished marble floor beneath his silk-covered feet, denounc...
A Review of Dungeons and Dragons 4.02009-09-10 00:00:00It was during the summer of 2008 that Wizards of the Coast, famous for such products as Magic: the Gathering, finally dropped the axe on Dungeons and Dragons version 3.5. What they brought out afterwards, Dungeons and Dragons 4.0, has some good points to it. However, this is also like saying that a child's coloring book has some good points to it when one has just finished contemplating the Mona Lisa for several hours.
For those who haven't grown up with tabletop roleplaying games, allow me to begin at the beginning. Decades ago, Dungeons and Dragons was released to the public as a tabletop roleplaying game. The purpose of a roleplayin...
Activision Blizzard is Not Blizzard2009-09-07 00:00:00Former Blizzard employee Michael Sacco has posted an informative guide about Activision-Blizzard, what the company does and how it has, and hasn't, affected the day-to-day operations at Blizzard.
It's been over a year since the merger between Activision and Vivendi Games resulted in the creation of Activision Blizzard, which immediately surpassed Electronic Arts to become the world's largest independent videogame publisher. Yet even after all that time, there is still a significant amount of confusion over just what Activision-Blizzard is and, just as importantly, is not. Michael Sacco, who worked at Blizzard as an in-game support rep for three years, recently posted a very informative write-up about the company on WoW Insider, in which he explains that "Activision-Blizzard is not Blizzard."
"Blizzard is a game development studio. They create video games from start to finish and prepare them for distribution," Sacco wrote. "Activision-Blizzard is a publisher. It is t...
Preparing yourself for Lich King2009-09-04 00:00:00If you're looking to get a head start on the new World of Warcraft expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, you might be a bit overwhelmed on where to start. Should you hoard mats, and if so, which ones? Since everyone and their grandmother will be making a Death Knight, should you be making some twink gea...