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Around Azeroth: Kiko and the lavender moon |
by Elizabeth Wachowski  on Mar 12th 2010 (5 minutes ago)
Yes, yes, it's my second Los Lobos reference in as many days, but they're a good band and "That Train Don't Stop Here" is pretty tight. Anyway, Karli sent in this screenshot of her character using the Rituals of the New Moon to give her lupine friend some companionship. I'd be somewhat concerned that when she changes back in two minutes she'll be the other wolf's dinner, but even if it wasn't domesticated, WoW wolves of this particular fur color tend to be under level 10.
Do you have any unusual, beautiful or interesting World of Warcraft images that are just collecting dust in your screenshots folder? We'd love to see them on Around Azeroth! Sharing your screenshot is as simple as e-mailing aroundazeroth@wow.com with a copy of your shot and a brief explanation of the scene. You could be featured here next!
Remember to include your player name, server and/or guild if you want it mentioned. Please include the word "Azeroth" in your post so it does not get swept into the spam bin. We strongly prefer full screen shots without the UI showing -- use alt-Z to remove it. Please, no more battleground scoreboards, Val'kyr on mounts, or pictures of the Ninja Turtles in Dalaran. Older screenshots can be found here. |
Cataclysm Stat & System Changes |
Have you been curious about all the stat changes that Blizzard reps keep talking about for Cataclysm? They come in bits and pieces and hints here and there but finally Eyonix has made a comprehensive post about what we can expect.
As many of you know from panels at last year’s BlizzCon and posts here on the forums since then, Cataclysm will bring about major changes to familiar character stats such as Intellect, Armor Penetration, Defense, and others, ultimately designed to make the effects of stats more easily understandable and make gear choices more interesting. As these changes will have a significant impact on how stats work and relate to one another, today we wanted to offer you a closer look at exactly what’s in store and explain some of the rationale before Cataclysm arrives.
The most obvious question these changes raise is "Why are stats being changed, and why now?" As the game has matured, we've run into increasingly complex issues with the current stat system. Many stats are inherently confusing, and the way they interrelate can feel convoluted. Attack Power, for example, currently translates to damage, but so does Armor Penetration. Defense provides five different statistical benefits of varying utility. Mana regeneration involves understanding multiple stats and rules and often ends up being irrelevant anyway. In addition, the difference between a "good stat" for a class and a "bad stat" can be extreme. Some casters want Haste but not Crit; hunters want Armor Penetration but not Haste. There are other overarching issues, as well, such as Intellect not being very exciting for casters despite it being a core stat -- and these are just a few examples.
Our ultimate goal is make gear a more interesting (and less confusing) choice by making each stat valuable to more players. While the reasoning behind some of the following changes may be clear, we understand that you may have questions about some of the less obvious alterations, and we'll do our best to answer any questions you may have here on the forums.
What You’ll See on Gear
Stamina - Because of the way we will be assigning Strength, Agility, and Intellect, non-plate wearers will end up with more Stamina than before. Health pools will be much closer between plate-wearers and other classes.
Spirit - Come Cataclysm, this stat should only be found on healing gear. Non-healing casters will have other systems in place to regenerate mana, and we are designing special solutions for Elemental shaman and Balance druids who often share gear with healers (more on this below). Raid buffs that currently boost Spirit (such as Blessing of Kings) will only boost the primary stats of Stamina, Strength, Agility, and Intellect. We are also likely changing the five-second rule and other quirks of the current regen system.
Intellect - Intellect will now grant Spell Power (more on this below). Intellect will also provide less mana than it currently does.
Haste - Haste will become more attractive for melee classes by allowing them to recover resources such as energy and runes more quickly. Our intention is for Haste to let you "do stuff" more often.
Block Rating - Block is being redesigned to scale better. Blocked attacks will simply hit for 30% less damage. Block rating will improve your chance to block, though overall block chances will be lower than they are today.
Parry - Parry no longer provides 100% avoidance and no longer speeds up attacks. Instead, when you parry an attack, it and the next attack will each hit for 50% damage (assuming they hit at all). In other words, Dodge is a chance to avoid 100% of the damage from one attack, Parry is a chance to avoid 50% of the damage from two attacks, and Block is a chance to avoid 30% of the damage from one attack.
Mastery - This is a new stat that will allow players to become better at whatever makes their chosen talent tree cool or unique. It's directly tied to talents, so what you gain from improving this stat is entirely dependent upon your class and the talent specialization you choose. We’ll talk more about specific Mastery benefits in the future.
Armor - The way Armor mitigates damage is not changing, but the Armor stat has been rebalanced to mirror changes to the armor curve in Cataclysm. As a result, bonus Armor will go down slightly overall. We are also changing the mitigation difference among armor types so that plate doesn’t offer so much more protection than mail, leather, and cloth.
Resilience - This will only affect damage done by players and critical damage done by players. It will not impact crit chance, mana drains, or other such effects.
Strength, Agility, Hit Rating, Expertise, and Critical Strike Rating - These will all still appear on gear as well. Aside from situations mentioned elsewhere in this list, in general these will function similarly to how they do now, though the details -- such as how much Hit Rating you might need to effectively combat high-level creatures (more on this below) -- are likely to change.
Being Removed from Items
Attack Power - This stat will no longer be present on most items as a flat value, though it will still show up on some process. Strength and Agility, which will be present on items, will grant the appropriate amount of Attack Power (generally 2 Attack Power per point of Strength or Agility) depending upon which stat a particular class favors. Agility may provide less Crit than it currently does.
Spell Power - Spell Power is another stat that you'll no longer see present on most items. Instead, as mentioned above, Intellect will grant Spell Power. One exception is that caster weapons will still have Spell Power. This allows us to make weapons proportionately more powerful for casters in the same way they are for melee classes.
Armor Penetration - This stat will no longer be present on items. Armor Penetration will still exist in talents and abilities.
Shield Block Value - This stat will no longer be present on items, since the amount blocked is always proportional to the amount of damage done. Talents and other effects might still modify the damage-reduction percentage from 30%, however.
Going Away Completely
MP5 - This stat will be removed from the game completely. Holy paladins and Restoration shaman will be redesigned to benefit from Spirit.
Defense - Defense is being removed from the game entirely. Tanking classes should expect to become uncrittable versus creatures just by shifting into Defensive Stance, Frost Presence, Bear Form, or by using Righteous Fury.
Spell Ranks - Spell ranks will cease to exist. All spells will have one rank and will scale appropriately with level. The levels at which you can learn certain spells are being changed in order to fill in some of the gaps, and we will be introducing some new spells to learn along the way as well.
Weapon Skill - This stat will be removed from the game completely. Classes will start with all the weapon skills they need to know and will not need to improve them.
What Else You Should Know
Combat ratings - All ratings will be much harder to "cap out" at maximum gear levels. Ratings will be steeper in Cataclysm, and creatures in later tiers of content will be harder to hit or crit, similar to how level-83 mobs are harder to hit or crit than level-80 mobs.
Reforging - While these changes will go a long way to making a wider variety of stats more attractive, we understand that sometimes you simply don’t want more Hit Rating on your gear or you’d rather have more Haste than more Crit. In Cataclysm, we are going to give players a way to replace stats on gear as part of the existing profession system. As a general rule of thumb, you’ll be able to convert one stat to 50% of another stat. While some conversions (like converting Stamina to Strength) won’t be permitted, the goal is to let you customize your gear more.
Gems - We are changing the gem colors of a few stats as a result of these adjustments. For example, Hit is likely to be blue instead of yellow. We'll have more details on this in the future.
(...) Changes to Existing Gear
As with previous expansions, we plan to roll out these changes and modify all existing gear shortly before Cataclysm launches, though it’s still too early to say exactly when. For the most part, the gear you have will still be good for you, though there will be exceptions, such as warriors using leather and mail armor.
If you are a tank (druids excepted), expect to see:
- No more Defense on gear. Existing Defense becomes Dodge, Parry, or Block Rating.
- No more Block Value on gear. Existing Block Value becomes Block Rating.
- You’ll have as much Stamina as you’re used to, though you may notice your tanking plate has a bit less Stamina than a comparable piece of DPS plate, since we tend to take the gem budget out of your most attractive stat.
- Bonus Armor on gear will go down slightly.
If you are a melee DPS class, druid tank, or hunter, expect to see:
- A lot more Stamina. Bear-form Stamina scaling will be lowered as a result.
- Strength if you wear plate. Agility if you wear mail or leather.
- Existing Attack Power becomes Agility and Stamina.Armor Penetration becomes Haste or Crit.
- No Intellect on melee gear. Hunters won’t need Intellect since they will no longer use mana. Shaman and Retribution paladins will get mana and spell damage in other ways.
If you are a DPS caster, expect to see:
- A lot more Stamina.
- All of your Spell Power converted to Intellect and Stamina.
- No Spirit. You won’t miss Spirit, though, because you won’t need it for DPS or mana regen.
If you are a healer, expect to see:
- A lot more Stamina.
- All of your Spell Power converted to Intellect and Stamina.
- Spirit instead of MP5. You’ll probably be happy with Spirit, though, because mana regen is going to matter more than it does currently. Healing paladins and shaman will benefit more from Spirit than they do currently.
If you are a Balance druid or Elemental shaman:
- You will still share gear with Restoration druids and shaman.
- Your gear will have Spirit on it. It won’t have Hit on it.
- You will have a talent that converts Spirit to Hit. We will adjust talents accordingly so that you want about as much Spirit as, say, a warlock wants Hit.
- Hit on rings and other such gear will still benefit you.
- Raid buffs will no longer boost Spirit, so you shouldn’t find yourself unexpectedly over the Hit cap because of buffs.
Many lower-level items with nonsensical combinations of stats, such as Agility and Spirit, will be changed. We're also updating quest rewards, trade skills, and loot drops to support better itemization for class builds that weren't widely available or used prior to The Burning Crusade (such as Balance druids).
We're aware this is a lot of information to take in, but this is still only a piece of the larger picture, and many of these changes rely on integration with other systems we haven't yet discussed in detail. In the weeks and months ahead, we'll continue to tell you more about these changes, along with all of the new and exciting features we have planned for Cataclysm.
-- Rill_of_WE @ 11:12 PST
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Cataclysm Mastery System Preview |
Last week, we gave you an early look at the changes we’re making to the stat system in World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, and explained how these changes will ultimately provide players with more interesting gear choices and make stats easier to understand. Today we’d like to go into more detail about a brand-new feature that’s an integral part of this overhaul: the Mastery system, a set of new game mechanics designed to allow players to become better at what makes their chosen talent tree cool or unique. With this system, we want to accomplish three things: give players more freedom in how they allocate talent points, simplify some of the “kitchen sinky” talents that try to do too much at once, and add a new stat to high-level gear that makes you better at your chosen role.
Here’s how the system works: As you spend points in a given talent tree, you’ll receive three different passive bonuses specific to that tree. The first bonus will increase your damage, healing, or survivability, depending on the intended role of the tree. The second bonus will be related to a stat commonly found on gear desirable to you, such as Haste or Crit. The third bonus will be the most interesting, as it will provide an effect completely unique to that tree -- meaning there will be 30 different bonuses of this nature in the game. This third bonus is the one that will benefit from the Mastery rating found on high-level (level 80 to 85) gear.
One of our primary goals with Mastery is to give players more flexibility to choose fun or utility-oriented talents rather than make them feel obligated to pick up “mandatory” but uninteresting talents, such as passive damage or healing. (For examples of the kinds of powerful but boring talents we’re talking about, take a look at the talent tier just above the 51-point talent in many of the existing trees.) In a sense, Mastery makes it so every talent in (just for example) a rogue tree essentially has an invisible additional bullet point that says “…and increases your damage by X%.” This way, if you choose a talent like Elusiveness (which reduces your chance to be detected while stealthed) or Fleet Footed (which affects movement), you won’t feel like you’re giving up damage in exchange for utility.
There will still be talents that boost damage, of course, but those talents will also affect the way you play. For example, you can still expect to see talents like Improved Frostbolt, which reduces the cast time of the Frostbolt spell; it increases DPS, but it also affects the mage’s rotation. Piercing Ice, however, is just “6% more damage” and is the kind of talent we’re trying to eliminate by implementing the Mastery system.
As we get closer to Cataclysm’s release, we’ll go into more detail about the changes coming for each class, including individual talent-tree adjustments and how Mastery will affect them. In the meantime, here are a few examples to demonstrate the three kinds of passive bonuses we described above. Please keep in mind that we're still working on this system, and the handful of examples we're providing here are, of course, subject to change.
Holy Priest
For each talent point spent in the Holy tree, the priest also gets:
* Healing – Improves your healing by X%.
* Meditation – Improves your mana regeneration from Spirit in combat. This would likely replace the existing Meditation talent from the Discipline tree, which many Holy priests consider to be a “must-have.” Regeneration will also probably be determined by whether you are in or out of combat, and not the “five-second rule.
* Radiance – Adds a heal-over-time effect to direct heals, such as Flash Heal. Mastery on gear would boost this bonus, and no other talent tree would grant it.
Discipline Priest
For each talent point spent in the Discipline tree, the priest also gets:
* Healing – Improves your healing by X%.
* Meditation – Improves your mana regeneration from Spirit in combat. This would likely replace the existing Meditation talent.
* Absorption – Improves the amount of damage absorbed by spells such as Power Word: Shield and Divine Aegis. Mastery on gear would boost this bonus, and no other talent tree would grant it.
Frost Death Knight
For each talent point spent in the Frost tree, the death knight also gets:
* Damage – Improves your melee and spell damage by X%.
* Haste – Improves your melee Haste by Y%. This might allow us to remove some of the Haste in the Icy Talons line of talents.
* Runic Power – Improves the rate of runic power generated by abilities. While all death knights want runic power, Frost death knights would generally have more runic power than Blood or Unholy death knights (who would receive a different benefit from their respective trees). An Unholy death knight who sub-specs into Frost would still be able to benefit from this bonus, though because they’re investing fewer talent points, they’d benefit to a smaller degree. Mastery on gear would boost this bonus, and no other talent tree would grant it.
A couple other things to note: Currently, we’re not planning to retrofit the Mastery stat onto current level-80 gear when we roll out the stat-system changes prior to Cataclysm’s release. However, Mastery will begin appearing on select quest and dungeon items. You will also gain a small amount of Mastery by wearing gear of your intended armor type (such as plate for paladins). For players with dual specs, when you change between your two chosen specs, the Mastery bonuses and the benefit you receive from the Mastery stat on gear will adjust automatically based on your new spec.
We’ll have more details to share about these and other changes we’re making in Cataclysm in the future, and we’ll do our best to answer your questions about the Mastery system here on the forums. For information on many of the stat changes being made in Cataclysm, please check out our earlier update at -
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=23425636414&sid=1
-- bobsoji @ Monday, 8 Mar, 2010
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Man in the middle attacks circumventing authenticators |
It has been brought to our attention that Blizzard's technical support department is currently handling a security exploit that is, in a limited capacity, circumventing authenticators. Before we get into the details, please do not panic. This does not make authenticators worthless, and it is not yet a widespread problem. Do not remove your authenticator because of this, and do not base your decision on whether or not to buy an authenticator off of this. They are still very useful, and your account is much safer with an authenticator than it is without one.
This is not the only report of this that we've seen, but it is the first time that a Blizzard representative has openly acknowledged that there is something afoot. For a full account of what happened, check the thread on the EU Technical Support forums. To sum up: There is a piece of malware (emcor.dll is what is being reported at the moment) that is being used as a hijacking tool to facilitate Man-in-the-Middle attacks on users
 Kropaclus
Because the hacker is only receiving the data as it is transmitted, they are not able to log in more than once unless you are repeatedly broadcasting your authenticator code. They cannot change your account information. They are only in your account until they log off or are disconnected. The password is still your password. They are unable to remove or replace the authenticator. Removing the authenticator would require at least three different authenticator codes from you. One to log in to account management, and two for the actual removal. The chances of this happening are incredibly, obscenely low.
If you don't scrub the malware from your computer, they can hijack your account again the next time you try to log in, but the same rules apply. The damage done is limited and temporary. Make sure you do a virus/malware scan to make sure you don't get hijacked a second time, just like you would do with any keylogger.
This security breach is unfortunate, but keep in mind that it's far more difficult to do than the keylogging we've suffered for the last few years. Hackers that used keyloggers could theoretically gather thousands of user names and passwords every day and get around to them at their leisure. Your account information could be stolen today, but it might not be used until two weeks later when the hacker needs to fulfill an order. In the case of a Man in the Middle attack like the ones we're seeing now, that can't be done. Authenticator codes need to be used within 30 seconds or they expire. A Man in the Middle attack needs to be done in real time with a large amount of timing and accuracy. This sort of attack is possible, but we don't expect it will happen as frequently as basic keylogging.
What can you do about this type of attack? The same thing you can do about any attack. Keep your virus scanning software up to date (and update regularly, as this exploit is very new.) Scan regularly. Practice safe surfing. Read the thread in the technical support forums on this issue very closely, remember the warning signs. If you run into anything unusual, do not repeatedly try to log in. Play it safe and run a virus scan. Your authenticator is still protecting you against a vast majority of hacking and keylogging methods, it is certainly not money wasted and you shouldn't remove it in a fit of frustration.
Blizzard is very much aware of the issue and are actively looking for a solution.
Edit: This is a PC only attack, at the moment. Mac users are immune to this particular virus, however they are not immune in general. Mac users must practice the same security methods as PC users.
Tags: account-security, authenticator, breaking, exploit, keylogger, keyloggers, malware, man-in-the-middle, safe-surfing, security, security-exploit, technical-support
Filed under: Account Security |
Why Blizzard can't (and won't) sell gold |
In any discussion concerning botting, farming, hacking, or gold-buying, someone inevitably makes the argument that Blizzard should cut out the middlemen and sell gold to players themselves. I wanted to use this article to explain why this would not necessarily be a good idea. We don't need to get into the legal situation, or examine why assigning a real-world price to in-game currency edges us closer to a world where in-game property can be taxed. All I have to do is tell you a story from the not-too-distant past that involves:
- Prices that would make Zimbabwe look like a model of inflationary restraint, and:
- What happens when money -- in this case, gold -- loses meaning.
On the Wrath of the Lich King beta servers, one of the largest differences between them and their live counterparts was the astronomical price of almost everything on the auction house. You could expect to pay 600-800 gold for a single blue-quality gem, and equally inflated prices for enchanting materials, flasks, and other raid consumables. Were you planning on gearing a character to raid at 80? Here's hoping you had 30-50K gold at your disposal, or the sympathy of a craftsman who could provide enchants or consumables at far below "market price." So what happened? If you've never transferred a character to a beta or PTR server before, this is what happens; copying a character takes a snapshot of what the character has in its bags, bank, and gold reserves when you click the transfer button. Experienced players typically send all of their banker's gold and valuable items to a character they're planning to transfer, so that the "snapshot" taken is of a character with all of your account's gold and marketable items. Because you can usually copy multiple characters, it's possible to reproduce an incredibly valuable character several times over. Do you have 25,000 gold on your main when you transfer it to the PTR? And you've got three character copies total, and you copied your main three times? Congratulations; you now have 75,000 gold on the PTR as a result of the 5-minute time investment it takes to copy the toon three times. To some extent the PTR economies are always a bit weird as a result of this practice -- people want to test things on the PTR without having to worry about gold -- but things were even weirder on the beta servers. A lot of guilds planned to learn tier 7 raid content there, and they didn't ever want to deal with gold as an issue. As such, many of them loaded transfer characters with as much gold as they could carry from the guild bank (after transferring, the player in question could simply re-deposit the gold back in the bank on the live servers), reproducing a guild's savings dozens of times over on the beta. Imagine a server with guilds that could literally "make money" by just reproducing a toon with a lot of stuff on it. That would be beta -- and, as a result, the enormous inflation on the beta auction house, because gold simply ceased to have much meaning. Any economist could tell you that this was the inevitable result of:
- Players who could increase their gold reserves with no effort, cost, or consequences, and:
- Players didn't care how much gold they were spending because it had no impact on their "real" character -- just its disposable PTR/beta counterpart.
When individual gold reserves skyrocket on a server-wide basis, prices inevitably rise when people are: a) able to afford more expensive goods, and b) willing to pay for them. That's OK if your characters are already wealthy, but it's a pretty raw deal for new players or anyone who's rerolled on the server in question; there won't be anything on the auction house that they'd realistically be able to afford, particularly if the person in question is a brand new player who's unfamiliar with the game's economic system. It's like asking someone on food stamps to find low-cost housing in downtown San Francisco -- it ain't gonna happen. If you've ever wondered why there are so many "gold sinks" around, why repair bills remain in the game, why crafting professions tend to be expensive, and why equipping and raiding on a high-level character requires so much gold, that's why; it's part of Blizzard's effort to keep players paying for things, thus curbing (somewhat) the inevitable trend towards inflation. The general idea behind Blizzard caving to player requests and selling gold on an official basis is that they'd be able to put the gold-sellers -- and through them, an entire network of hackers and phishers -- out of business. To be frank, I think it's a bit optimistic to assume this, if for no other reason than the price war over gold that would likely result, and the fact that Blizzard is at a competitive disadvantage. If Blizzard:
- Sells gold at a higher price than existing gold-sellers: Then people who already buy gold against the terms of use will continue to do so from gold-sellers, because the only selling point to "Blizzard gold" would be that it's legal -- and that's not a sufficient incentive for people already comfortable with ignoring the rules. Moreover, for newer players it would have the unfortunate effect of making it seem like Blizzard condones buying gold if they sell it themselves.
- Sells gold at a lower price than existing gold-sellers: It runs the risk of encouraging hyper-inflation on servers. Gold is already pretty cheap, consequence (I suspect) of hackers' increasingly sophisticated means of parting players from their accounts. Blizzard running the prices down to drive gold-sellers out of business would be the definition of a Pyrrhic victory. The more inexpensive that gold gets, the more that buying it becomes a rational choice over spending the time to farm it in-game or taking the risk of playing the auction house -- and the closer we edge to the situation on the beta servers.
The bottom line is that selling gold would not be a panacea to present monetary ills, even aside from the advantages it would afford players with greater disposable IRL income. Blizzard cares about what happens if WoW's in-game economy goes to hell. Gold-sellers do not, and -- perversely -- their "product" becomes more attractive as server inflation rises.
Tags: account-hacking, account-security, buying-gold, gold, gold-buyer, gold-buying, gold-farming, hacker, hackers, hacking, wow-gold, wow-gold-farming
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Blizzard
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Cataclysm Expansion 2010 |
This BlizzCon we're hearing a lot about the ways guilds will be changing in Cataclysm. Not only will you be able to contribute to your guild by doing the things you already do like daily questing and PvP, your guild will be able to use its new abilities to directly benefit the members in various way. Even more intriguing is the talk of being able to transfer an entire guild to a new server at once.
However, even as things change for guilds, one thing remains the same: you will not be getting a guild hall. You're going to have to keep hanging around on the streets with us Hoi Polloi, I'm afraid. Still, what we are getting is extremely thought provoking on its own.
Frankly, the idea of leveling up your guild is not one I would have ever had on my own, so kudos to the folks at Blizzard for completely blindsiding me. At present we're hearing that there will be 20 levels of guild experience, and that levels will be earned though things people in guilds do anyway like killing bosses, playing in the new rated BGs and arena matches, and through progression in professions and reputations in game.
As guilds level, they'll gain access to guild talent specs, with talents that can directly make life easier for the guild's membership.Talents that will allow for mass resurrection and reduced repairs have been mentioned, although we're also hearing that "We're not going to be character talents in the guild talents. We don't want to put talents players have to have in the guild talents, ie: they have to have this talent in order to kill this boss." That seems like a very smart move to me, making guild talents provide convenience and perks rather than necessary boss killing abilities. Other possibilities not yet confirmed but mentioned in the Systems Panel were allowing for mass Guild server transfers (rather than the situation as it is now, with individual members having to transfer and then recreate the guild on the new server) and allowing guilds to purchase bank tabs via the leveling system. Guild Achievements will also be a part of the new system.
Other parts of the new guild system are guild vendors (selling reagents for guild currency earned during the leveling process) and guild heirloom gear, also purchased with guild currency and allowing you to level faster. These items will be bound to guilds and thus leaving the guild loses you the item. There will also be a Looking for Guild system similar to the current LFG system for grouping, and there will be a variety of new Guild UI options, including being able to look at other guild member's profession books and a percentage of all gold looted being sent as a bonus to the guild's bank. You'll even be able as a guild to invite other guilds to events like raids.
This is all rather astonishing stuff that should help make guilds a more involved element of gameplay. I'm extremely interested to see how this all plays out.
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Player Housing and Upcoming Features |
A lot of roleplayers seem to want player housing, but I have my doubts as to how well it would actually work out. On one hand, it would be nice to have a place in the game that we could actually make our own, and customize to some degree. We could go there and have private conversations open only to people we want there, so we wouldn't have to worry about random people wandering by and trying to annoy us.
On the other hand, I fear that player housing wouldn't get much use among many players unless there were really clever tricks that could connect it intimately to the rest of the game world. If Blizzard just put in some extra instance doorways in a city, where a designated portal just led you to your own guild's special house, people might show up there for guild meetings, but most of the time they would want to be out in the world doing things, questing, crafting, or fighting in PvP. It could be nice to use the guild house as a place to hang out when you're just chatting with friends instead of adventuring, but if it's too far out of the way then people would never bother going there.
In order to make it work, every guild house would have to have some sort of private portal mechanism, so that people could easily go there when they want a break from questing for a few minutes. If they make it like the PvP Battleground queue so that whenever you open a portal from a certain spot you can just portal back to that spot whenever you want to leave, then it could really be the sort of place people meet up in on a fairly regular basis during their play time. They could go there to get items from a personal bank, guild bank, or even trade items with one another and then go back to their other activities. |
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Blizzard allowing cash for items and gold in the future? |
See this little guy? Isn’t he adorable? He’s Mini KT, the Littlest Lich – and he can be yours for the low low price of $10 USD. That’s right, I said $10 DOLLARS, not 10 gold, and he’s not the only pet you can get in-game for that amount of money.
Remember back when we noticed that interesting new pets were appearing in the source files of the game? I was intrigued by the Pandaren Monk pet, but WoW.com also noticed a Core Hound Pup along with Lil KT up there a while back on the PTRs. Speculation ran rampant that they were potentially collector’s edition pets for Cataclysm, but now we know their true purpose: Blizzard will sell them in-game, through their Blizzard Store online, and likely through Battle.net at some point.
If you drop the ten bucks on the Pandaren Monk, half of that purchase will go to the Make-A-Wish foundation, which is a pretty good reason to spring for it.
In any event though, this is Blizzard’s first dabblings in micro-transactions in World of Warcraft, and it’s gotten more than a few people pretty riled up. Many other MMOs that have gone before WoW (and likely those that will come after) that used micro-transactions to get more real money out of the players who are subscribed, and most free MMOs use micro-transactions to get money out of players who can sign up and play for free, but if they want the best gear or a custom avatar or better graphics, they have to shell out a little cash.
The argument on both sides of this is immense, loud, and pretty empassioned: some people herald micro-transactions as the end of World of Warcraft entirely, both as a popular game and as a professional, high-quality one, labeling micro-transactions as the mark of MMOs that are on the decline. The other side sees this as another fantastic way that players who are willing to pay for it can customize their characters, and look forward to other potential options like special RP clothes, custom avatar appearances, and more.
Personally I can see the logic of both sides of the equation, but I have to call attention to the fact that Blizzard has essentially already given players what they want for real money in-game in the form of faction changes, race changes, server transfers, and so on. Even appearance changes (which cost in-game money, not real money) came at player behest. I’m completely on-board with the thought that only MMOs that need money or are moving to a “free to play” model currently make heavy use of micro-transactions, but World of Warcraft certainly isn’t there, and it’s certainly not on the decline.
So the moral of the story? If you don’t want to spend real money for an in-game pet, don’t buy one. If there are enough people who agree with you, it’ll be unpopular and Blizzard will shut it down. If on the other hand there’s a demand for it and people love the idea, it’ll grow in popularity and more items will likely be added to the store. In any event, it’s likely not the end of World of Warcraft as we know it – that’s going to happen in Cataclysm.
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