David Nelson Sterling Heights, MI - http://www.wowinsider.com
Dave is a pretty boring guy with a secret life as a warlock on the Argent Dawn and Uldaman servers. In addition to WoW duties, he manages to find time to go to grad school for a masters degree in accounting and is working on passing all four parts of the Michigan CPA Exam. Good times indeed!
David Nelson Sterling Heights, MI - http://www.wowinsider.com
Dave is a pretty boring guy with a secret life as a warlock on the Argent Dawn and Uldaman servers. In addition to WoW duties, he manages to find time to go to grad school for a masters degree in accounting and is working on passing all four parts of the Michigan CPA Exam. Good times indeed!
My friend Jack (name changed to protect the innocent) is a chronic reroller of the worst variety. New server comes out? He is there! He quickly levels until about 35 or so, then another batch of servers hit, and off he goes. He really enjoys the uninflated AH prices, the lack of high levels making him feel inferior when he strolls through Ironforge and the general chaos of the early days of a server. He even admits to enjoying the lame level 25 guild drama.
I mean, he pays fifteen dollars a month, and he should be able to play any way he wants. But on the other hand, chronic rerollers can leave some servers barren after the initial rush. If you check out any of the various WoW census sites, such as Warcraft Realms, you will see some servers barely chugging along. Do chronic rerollers contribute to that?
So what do you guys think? Does Blizzard encourage chronic rerolling with constant new server releases? Wouldn't it be easier to slap the recommended tag on low population realms and get those servers some new blood? Or does it not matter, and they should cater to guys like Jack just like they try to cater to other player types?
I have seen reports of druids winning the Hand of Ragnaros before. I seem to recall one raidleader handing off the Eye of Sulfuras to his druid girlfriend, but I could be wrong. Hey, it isn't like I committed the brilliant forum thread to memory.
Well, now we have another report of a druid snagging the HoR, this time it's Napier, a druid from the Greymane server. As you can imagine, this thread is dominated by folks either calling Napier the most selfish player in the history of MMORPGs or defending his right to spend his DKP as he sees fit. And yes, Napier has a long-winded response to the haters, which contains his rationale for spending his DKP on the mace. All in all, a typical forum thread, but there are aspects to it which raise some interesting questions...
Shouldn't any DKP system have some kind of priority list or mechanism which prevents warriors from bidding on a caster staff or a druid from, I don't know, snagging a legendary mace which serves him no purpose whatsoever? I have never been in a guild that employed a straight DKP system which didn't make allowances for class needs. There is no way, for example, a hunter could bid on leather, simply because he could wear it.
Is a druid with the HoR the absolute worst example of misguided DKP use? Or have you seen worse? Does your guild restrict rolling on certain items to particular classes? Or is it a free-for-all? And at this point, so close to the expansion release, does it matter who gets what? I mean, we will be upgrading everything very, very soon.
The WoW.com forums occasionally provide some insight or humor, but for the most part are a cesspool of stupid comments, flaming and ridiculous antics. This is really unfortunate, as while there are a ton of good World of Warcraft community sites out on the net, the WoW.com forums are the most visible and almost certainly the most visited. The forums could really be a place for good discussion...if only they weren't nearly useless in their current form.
My question for you folks is this: Is there any way possible to make the WoW.com forums a useful community building tool? Or is it simply a lost cause? There are some other gaming sites that manage to keep some semblance of order and usefulness...Cheap Ass Gamer and NeoGAF come to mind (albeit on a smaller scale), so it can be done. But how can Blizzard to do it on the scale of the WoW.com forums? Is it an impossible task? Or something that simply requires more community policing and stricter moderation? Any examples of well run WoW forums out there?
Blizzard has given us a couple holiday gifts, and both are pretty darn cool.
First, Blizzard brings us some holiday-inspired WoW themed wallpaper to bring the festivities to our desktops. A blood elf kid trying to kill the the gnome baby with her missile boots? I am liking these blood elves more and more each day!
Blizzard has a hilarious new holiday skit available for download, in which a classy blood elf and his murloc producer tryout new voice talent for the Burning Crusade. I'd go into more detail, but I don't want to spoil it for you. However, I will admit, the troll towards the beginning had me laughing out loud. You can download The Night Before Wintervale in the mp3 format here.
I have one of THOSE friends. You know the type. He loves videogames. Has a 360 and Wii, plays a ton of games on his PC and is the very definition of a hardcore gamer. He really enjoyed Warcraft III and Starcraft. He played Diablo II until his mouse broke. However, there is one issue with this guy...he absolutely refuses to buy World of Warcraft. He won't even download the demo. He tried Everquest once, hated it, and swore he would never play one of those MMORPGs again.
He had the same attitude about Diablo II, thinking it to be too "nerdy" for him. But once he finally broke down and bought it he played for months on end. I am 100% confident that if I bought him World of Warcraft and a two-month gamecard, he would eventually, at the very least, give the game a try. And I just know he'll like it. Then I'd have my friend to adventure with in Azeroth.
Or maybe I should just let him be and not expose him to the WoW addiction. Hah. So, my question for you guys...should I pick this up for him or not? Is WoW a good holiday gift? Have you ever given WoW as a gift?
We wrap up our look at the best Breakfast Topics of the year with four topics that don't really fit into any particular theme, but were fun anyway!
Everyone likes to complain. Don't believe me? Check out the forums sometime! Elizabeth tapped into our natural desire to whine with her question...what's the biggest problem with World of Warcraft today? What was the number one problem according to the comment crew? Other players.
Why doesn't every spider have legs? Why is that bear carrying around a shotgun? That makes no sense! In reading through the comments, Threadrick asks the question I have often wondered...where do mounts go when you aren't riding them?
With the Burning Crusade right around the corner, I began to wonder what would happen to Blackwing Lair and Naxx. Apparently so did a lot of you folks, as we got a ton of comments regarding the fate of endgame instances come the expansion release. While some players felt they would instantly become ghost towns, others hoped Blizzard would rebalance the encounters and the loot tables to make them viable again. Here's hoping it's the latter.
You just know when you start an instance and you have your priest rolling need on leather, it's going to be a long night. Sometimes, you just know your group is doomed. For being a topic full of humor, the best response was a serious one from Hugh "Nomad" Hancock, who claims he knows a group is doomed when he notices the people he is adventuring with are rude jerks. I find this to be true nearly all the time. The more rude the group, the less likely it is we ever finish.
Well, that's it for 2006. We've had some great discussions about PvP, buying gold, classes and guilds. And I imagine in 2007 we'll be talking a good bit about the Burning Crusade, and hopefully start hearing rumblings of a new expansion on the horizon!
There will be no regular Tuesday maintenance this week. That would be Tuesday, December 26th for you calendar impaired folks. Is this a late Christmas present from Blizzard? Well...sort of. According to Drysc, the retrofits they have been doing to server hardware over the past year have made it possible to go longer than one week in between maintenance periods. Good news!
For those of you behind a firewall at work, here is Drysc's post in it's entirety:
"Since the game's release, one of our most important service goals has been to reduce the amount of time realms are down for weekly realm maintenance. The various hardware upgrades and retrofits we've done over the past year have put us in a position to begin testing the ability to go longer than a week between maintenance periods.
In the upcoming weeks, we will be testing the effect of a live maintenance, where regular maintenance tasks are run during off-peak with realms live. On Tuesday, December 26 there will be no scheduled downtime for weekly maintenance. We will perform all necessary maintenance tasks while the realms are live. We are anticipating the possibility that we may need to perform rolling restarts off-peak if we find that a realm restart is necessary; however the downtime for each realm would be less than 10 minutes if it was required."
It would be really nice if this holds and we can make the Tuesday downtime a thing of the past.
I read a lot of bad attempts at being clever in the forums. I see tons and tons of bad PvP videos. It is a pretty rare event when I am impressed by anything that is posted in the WoW.com forums. But this poem written by Scrann from the Earthen Ring server is really, really impressive. He takes Twas the Night Before Christmas, puts a World of Warcraft spin on it and it works perfectly.
For those of you behind firewalls at work, I have included the entire text of the poem below and after the jump. Enjoy!
Twas the night before BC, and in World of Warcraft Not a creature would /stir, /sing, /dance, /silly, or /laugh The servers were hung, all instancing ceased In hopes the expansion would soon be released
The children were nustled all snug in their beds (Only orcs; no young tauren, trolls, or undeads) And I, in my warlord's gear, from PvP Had just trekked to the inn for some rested XP
When out by the bank there arose such dissent I wondered if Blizzard started a world event I went into cat form, to ensure my good health If demons were invading, I was gonna be stealthed
This week we are reviewing some of the more interesting Breakfast Topics of 2006. And what roundup of Breakfast Topics would be complete without discussing everyone's favorite WoW activity: ganking! Last October I posed the question...carebear or ruthless ganker? I learned several things from the comments:
First off, just because you frown on ganking and corpse camping doesn't mean you are a carebear. However, if you really enjoy ganking and corpse camping, it is probably safe to say that you are ruthless.
Quite a few folks really, really enjoy the ganking aspect of a PvP server. Both on the giving and receiving end. I can see this point completely. I enjoy ganking the occasional Night Elf, and I enjoy leveling in contested areas knowing something very bad could happen at any point.
Vlad put it best when he said "hey, it happened to me so I'm going to make sure it happens to everyone." That might be the truest statement ever made in regards to PvP servers. I got relentlessly ganked by 60s during my 30s. So when I hit 60? I killed everything I could. Heck, one of those 34s I am ganking might be the alt of one of the 60s who caused me so much grief in the Hinterlands way back when. I never camped, but every gnome on my server was killed on sight.
And lastly, some wise words from Roseroyce04: "Do not EVER gank (cross faction duels don't count) someone unless you're confident you're going to win. Because if you fail, you will suffer." How true is that? If you attempt to gank someone while they are at half health and engaged with a mob, and you fail? Um...prepare to be camped my friend.
And beyond just the good times of ganking, or not ganking, we also discussed what is okay in a duel. Are potions alright? Oh yes...I almost forgot the new PvP system!
Have any new insight or thoughts on any of these topics? If so, please share!
Mommy, what is that tiger doing to that reindeer? Maybe you don't want to know. AgentMichi from WoW_Ladies has some amusing screenshots of some great World of Warcraft graphical bugs.
Not Addicted has some shopping tips for those of us looking for a last-second present. No, not from Target or Macy's, rather, from the fine stores inside Azeroth. How about some goggles for dear Aunt Trudy?
Finally, Tobold gives us an early gift with his outlook on World of Warcraft in 2007. Not really so much from a gameplay standpoint, but rather from a business and subscriber point of view. As usual, Tobold makes some good points, and contends that 2007 will be WoW's peak year, and while it will still be millions of members strong, 2007 might be the summit of Warcraft's popularity.
We have had a lot of Breakfast Topics over the course of the past year. Some subjects are more popular than others. Some topics only appeal to certain classes. Some only to PVP junkies or the Naxx raiding crew. And then some topics completely explode and become the most commented on Breakfast Topic thread of the year.
Gold buying and you is the topic that inspired more comments, and more arguments, than any post this year. It started innocently enough. One of my guildies mentioned he had bought gold, was promptly tossed from my guild, and I wrote a post about it. You guys took it from there. There seemed to be three camps of folks in the comment thread...
People who don't condone gold buying under any circumstance. Shadowbrand hopes that those that buy gold get "ganked until the end of time." Pretty harsh! They blame the overpriced economy on gold farmers, and ultimately on the gold buyers. Gold buying is bad!
Another, more neutral group, that while they don't buy gold, can see why someone might. Lykaon makes the point that gold farming equals time and time equals money. He thinks gold is easy to get, so he doesn't buy any, but he could see the rationale behind those that do. If you don't have the time to farm it, why not buy it?
A rather vocal minority who believe that buying gold is just fine, and that everyone else is on the wrong page on this issue. Forsaken points out that he has bought plenty of gold, and having a wife and kids makes it too time consuming to spend hours and hours mindlessly farming.
So there you have it. If you haven't read the comments in the gold buying Breakfast Topic, you really should. A lot of our readers went out of their way with some really excellent comments. Of course, some of the conversations get a little heated, but hey, it's still fun to read! And if you have any new opinions on gold buying, by all means, leave your comments right here!
I honestly don't know how many days played I have across all my toons. Maybe around 130 or so? Probably more than that, and definitely more than I'd care to admit over dinner with my family next week. But certainly less than 200. And absolutely nowhere near 300. According to this thread, Stian, from the Destromath realm, has over 300 days played. The odd thing is, it took him a little over 40 days to reach level 60. That seems like a long time for the 1-60 grind. Maybe he spent a lot of time camping the Auction House while at work which contributed to his long days played to 60, and his rather notable days played. As you can imagine, the forum trolls were less than kind:
Monkyman from Uldum claims that Stian pulled a Homer Simpson and had one of those little bobbing bird things hitting his keyboard to keep the toon logged into the game 24-7.
Plenty of folks declared Stian to have absolutely no life. This response should be in the Forum Trolling for Beginners handbook.
Another smaller group then defended him against the "haters". This response would be in the Advanced Forum Trolling 101 textbook.
Many folks noticed that he has nine ranks of starfire on his hotbar.
Finally, Taranis from Cho'Gall breaks out the South Park staple "How can you kill, that which has no life?"
I am not the kind of guy to judge, afterall, I write for a WoW blog, but 300 days played just seems excessive. Maybe he spent a lot of time AFK, or camps the auction house. I just can't believe he physically sat at his keyboard and played one character for 300 days over the course of two years.
What do you guys think? Did he pad his days played? And if he did, why in the world would he want to do that? Or is he simply the poster child for WoW addicts everywhere?
We enjoyed talking about guilds, no doubt. But what kind of Breakfast Topic did we enjoy chatting about more than any other in 2006? Classes.
Have you heard about the Burning Crusade expansion? Hah. Anyway, Elizabeth wonders what class you folks will be playing come the expansion. I am working on a rogue and a pally, but I might just start a warrior come January 16th. Heck...who am I kidding? I can't give up my super-overpowered warlock!
We have been playing the same nine classes for darn near two years. Wouldn't it be nice to have some new classes to play? I liked the idea of a battlemage, while necromancer and bard were some of the favorite choices of the comment crew.
Which class is the the easiest? Hunter? Warlock? Well, Elizabeth says hunter. I had an easy time with my warlock. Comment crew agreed with Elizabeth.
Beyond how easy a class is to level, or how powerful it is, the question is simply...which class is the most fun to play? I really, really enjoyed my priest way back when, and I am really liking my rogue right now. I'd say warlock, but you are probably sick of hearing me talk about my damn warlock.
Everyone remembers their first. First class that is. Mine was a rogue, which I retired, but have recently revisited. Good times!
Finally, every class got a review. Some liked theirs more than others. As a priest when they were reviewed, I was initially happy. Then not so much.
And hey, if you have changed your opinion, or you weren't a regular when these topics were discussed, feel free to chime in! Any ideas for fun new classes? How about some new insight on your class review?
Regular snowballs will no longer knockdown groupmates in the battlegrounds. Why? Well, with forced grouping, Blizzard doesn't want you to get stuck with a team-hating type who will constantly knock you on your butt via a well-placed snowball.
Hardpacked snowballs may now only be used against the enemy. This should hopefully stop the griefing, which was apparently pretty annoying for those trying to rack up some honor.
I can't think of many people being too unhappy with these changes, unless they enjoyed the thrill of annoying their teammates. Actually, there is quite the spirited discussion in the hotfix thread in the forums, as some folks will dearly miss those snowballs.
This forum thread isn't particularly long, but it is actually useful, and prompts some additional thought and discussion. Imagine that! The original poster, Revelatia from Demon Soul, complains that he/she is ready for Westfall too soon after running out of quests in Elwynn. Level 9 questing in Westfall? Not much fun. To my surprise, instead of incredibly stupid responses and sarcastic "NOOB!" replies, Revelatia spurs a good conversation on Alliance-side low-level questing. Even Drysc gets in on the action. Some of the replies include...
Bouncing back and forth between other starting areas. I do this a lot myself. I do all the low-level quests in Loch Modan, roll into Westfall around level 13 and then quest and grind myself all the way up to level 17 or so before I start looking for new adventure.
Make sure you do ALL the quests in Elwynn. This includes the farm quests in the South and the logging camp quests in the East.
You could do some of the higher-level quests in Dun Morogh. I have to admit, I tend to avoid Dun Morogh. Too much running in my opinion.
It's always nice to get a forum thread that is constructive and not overrun with lame replies. And this one is useful as well! Win-win.
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My friend Jack (name changed to protect the innocent) is a chronic reroller of the worst variety. New server comes out? He is there! He quickly levels until about 35 or so, then another batch of servers hit, and off he goes. He really enjoys the uninflated AH prices, the lack of high levels making him feel inferior when he strolls through Ironforge and the general chaos of the early days of a server. He even admits to enjoying the lame level 25 guild drama. .jpg)
I have seen reports of druids winning the Hand of Ragnaros before. I seem to recall one raidleader handing off the Eye of Sulfuras to his druid girlfriend, but I could be wrong. Hey, it isn't like I committed the brilliant forum thread to memory. 
The WoW.com forums occasionally provide some insight or humor, but for the most part are a cesspool of stupid comments, flaming and ridiculous antics. This is really unfortunate, as while there are a ton of good World of Warcraft community sites out on the net, the WoW.com forums are the most visible and almost certainly the most visited. The forums could really be a place for good discussion...if only they weren't nearly useless in their current form..jpg)
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I have one of THOSE friends. You know the type. He loves videogames. Has a 360 and Wii, plays a ton of games on his PC and is the very definition of a hardcore gamer. He really enjoyed Warcraft III and Starcraft. He played Diablo II until his mouse broke. However, there is one issue with this guy...he absolutely refuses to buy World of Warcraft. He won't even download the demo. He tried Everquest once, hated it, and swore he would never play one of those MMORPGs again. .jpg)
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There will be no regular Tuesday maintenance this week. That would be Tuesday, December 26th for you calendar impaired folks. Is this a late Christmas present from Blizzard? Well...sort of. According to Drysc, the retrofits they have been doing to server hardware over the past year have made it possible to go longer than one week in between maintenance periods. Good news! .jpg)
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This week we are reviewing some of the more interesting Breakfast Topics of 2006. And what roundup of Breakfast Topics would be complete without discussing everyone's favorite WoW activity: ganking! Last October I posed the question...carebear or ruthless ganker? I learned several things from the comments:
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We have had a lot of Breakfast Topics over the course of the past year. Some subjects are more popular than others. Some topics only appeal to certain classes. Some only to PVP junkies or the Naxx raiding crew. And then some topics completely explode and become the most commented on Breakfast Topic thread of the year. 
I honestly don't know how many days played I have across all my toons. Maybe around 130 or so? Probably more than that, and definitely more than I'd care to admit over dinner with my family next week. But certainly less than 200. And absolutely nowhere near 300. .jpg)
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And what a glorious era it was! Tigole has announced that Blizzard has applied a hotfix which will accomplish the following:.jpg)
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