30 December 06 - 16:48You R Not Prepared

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29 December 06 - 20:02Slashdot's Games of the Year

Legend

Full Tilt Poker

Eve Online

Final Fantasy XII

Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion

Half-Life 2: Episode One

 There you have it. 

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29 December 06 - 10:43Do Not Allow Your Child To Have A Digital Camera

Because no one under the age of 18 is mature enough to have web access and the ability to "show-off".

Yes dear, my-space is blocked and no I will not unblock it.

Raising teenagers is tougher than I thought.

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29 December 06 - 08:03Melt Downs

Reminds me of gaming blogs and the whole self important thing.

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22 December 06 - 10:09Blizzard Closes 105,000 Accounts

In our continued efforts to combat cheating in World of Warcraft, more than 105,000 accounts were closed and over 12 million gold was removed from the game economies in Europe, Korea, and the US in the month of November. The closed accounts were associated with activities that violate World of Warcraft's Terms of Use, such as using third-party programs that allow cheating, and farming gold and items. These types of activities can severely impact the economy of a realm and the overall game enjoyment for all players.

We will continue to aggressively monitor all World of Warcraft realms in order to protect the service and its players from the harmful effects of cheating. Please note that selling World of Warcraft content, such as gold, items, and characters, can result in a permanent ban of the involved accounts from World of Warcraft.

Many account closures come as the direct result of tips reported to our GMs in game or emailed to our Hacks Team <http://www.blizzard.com/support/?id=eHacks000> by legitimate World of Warcraft players. If you suspect that a World of Warcraft player is using an illegal third-party program to farm gold or items, or is otherwise violating our Terms of Use, please report the suspected infraction via one of the means listed above. All reports will be investigated, and those that prove false will not result in corrective action.

As always, thank you for your continued support, and best of luck with your continued adventures in Azeroth! (more)

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21 December 06 - 07:32Blizzard allows raiders to exploit for over two weeks

Since the 2.0X patch this exploit has been in the game. Though some claim it is fixed, now. It's just great that Blizzard was all allover the honor reduction in the PvP Battle Grounds but to this very day raiders are getting the best gear in the game at zero risk.

On a funnier note, fixing the exploit broke mail. I kid you not.

Oh and Blizzard employees aren't above using exploits either.

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20 December 06 - 15:35Gaming Blogs get Ranked.

Look at the wonderful table over here.  This little old blog is in the top 15 beating other blogs in googles nonsense link ratings like Broken Toys, Kill Ten Rats and many, many others.  It's probably the commercials.

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19 December 06 - 12:57It's Official, Everyone Hates Sony

I'm tired of Sony's bullshit. ... I'm tired of Sony's bullshit. You may know Sony most readily as the company that recently recalled something on the order ...

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15 December 06 - 14:58Let's Make a Real MMRPG

Make it and they will come.

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12 December 06 - 14:11Lies, Damn Lies and God Damn Lies.

How does one even report on something like this? Players were wondering if they needed to grind and grind hard for the new pvp rewards because the rumor racing around every server was that prices were going up.

Blizzard addressed the rumors:

Drysc- More than likely the prices will be adjusted for the current honor rewards sometime after the expansion releases to reflect their 'value' more appropriately when compared to expansion items.

That would mean the prices would be going down though, not up.

[edit]Changed original text to indicate that the prices, if lowered, would happen sometime after the release of the expansion and not right when it releases. I wouldn't want to mislead anyone in to thinking that they can save up for release day and spend their honor on newly cheapened items before running in to Outland. Likely that will not be the case.

[ Post edited by Drysc ]

Posters asked and asked

oster: Nethaera at 2006-12-11 15:11:41 Subject: Re: Extended Maintenance- 12/12/06
	Q u o t e: I have heard of rummors of increasing the cost of HWL weapons, is this going to happen? It's just a rumor.

And they were told not to worry.

Then this happens:

Nethaera - Now that the Before the Storm content patch has been live for the past week, we’ve had a better opportunity to track the rate at which players are accumulating honor, and subsequently how easy it's been to obtain honor rewards. In gauging these elements, we've determined that the effort required to obtain honor rewards is more trivial than we had intended. As a result, during today's maintenance we’ve applied a hotfix that reduced the amount of honor gained by approximately 30%. This change allows the honor rewards to be obtained at rate that better reflects the item’s in-game value.

The reason that we decided to reduce the rate of honor gain rather than simply raise the honor cost of each item, is to ensure that everyone’s time and effort participating in PvP since the patch is not diminished. As this change will only affect future honor accumulation.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

An obvious point needs to be made, at no time in the games history will these items be such a return on the investment. It doesn't matter what price or cost Blizzard sticks on them a month after TBC is released. They will be worthless. People will be grinding to 70 and playing a different bracket and frankly no one will want these items.

I have to ask, what was Blizzard thinking? I'm sure they weren't thinking at all.

It just doesn't get any better than this update:

Drysc-  "The comment made about honor reward prices being reduced post-expansion was worded carefully as the change is not set in stone. After the expansion releases there is a strong possibility that honor reward prices will be reduced as their relative value will be decreased when compared to expansion items. The wording used was carefully chosen to avoid being locked in to a promise of a change that is a couple months off, not to sidestep or carefully divert a question about honor gains as a whole.

The honor gain change implemented and announced today was a change that was developed within a very short amount of time; after the above statement on reward prices had already been made. In order to save the servers and battlegrounds from unneeded stress it was decided that we would announce the change during maintenance. The post made about reward prices not changing had already been made, and short of announcing the honor gain change itself the post was there to stay.

While the prices of the honor rewards are not technically increasing, the intent of that statement wasn’t to misdirect the question into a specific avenue where something positive could be said. We can’t prove what we know or when we know it, or that our goals are to build a positive community and not to use petty diversion tactics (although this post could be step towards that). You can and likely will draw your own conclusions from the statements made and this clarification, but I thought it important to at least attempt to provide some insight into the events leading up to today, however futile that may be in light of the change itself. "

 I left off saying Blizzard didn't think about this change and Drysc goes and confirms that with this statement: "The honor gain change implemented and announced today was a change that was developed within a very short amount of time; after the above statement on reward prices had already been made."  You see Drysic said it won't be changed at ~"12/10/2006 02:09 PM PST"  But we have the Neth saying the same thing at " 2006-12-11 15:11:41" The point is this decision was made within less than 12 hours of server shut down.  To go from everything is fine to a 30% reduction in reward is staggering in less than 12 hours. 

Point in short is this, Blizzard might want to consider thingking about things and fixing wrongs before they sneak in and nerf.  Nothing is worse than a sneaky nerf.  ;^) 

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11 December 06 - 12:02It's Your Fault The New World of Warcraft LookForGroup Interface Sucks!

Nethaera - "The problem with people saying they are just going to use /lookingforgroup is pretty simple to see. First off, it diminishes the use of the new tool and makes it harder for us to refine it in a way that makes it more useful for players. Second off, it makes it hard on the people learning how to use it and enjoying it to be able to continue to do so. By default you are the ones making the system not work because it only works if people use it. Now, to add to that, there are other things to consider. The new Honor system just went in. That means most people are spending time playing in the Battlegrounds and some even are forgoing honor to try out the new Arena System. If you look at the number of BGs that were running since we started the new system, you'd see a large increase in their use. That means there is a smaller pool of players actually looking for PvE groups let alone, smaller dungeon groups. Aside from that, there are many players doing things such as finishing off quests, gathering resources, working faction as well in preparation for the launch of the expansion. It is also coming up on the holidays so many people are doing things such as preparations for their holidays, holiday parties, holiday shopping, vacations, traveling and whatever else. It's a very busy time of year. I have a feeling we'll see a slightly different result in the use of the LFG interface once the expansion launches, but that will largely have to do with the players deciding to use it and doing so. It's a good tool. Are there refinements people want? Yes. Will the tool get some more refinements? Most likely so since we want it to be something that people use and enjoy using. Will it be useful if people don't use it? No. It takes people using it to make it useful. The fault isn't as much in the tool as it is people's willingness to learn how to use it and try to use it on a regular basis. I'm not saying 'don't use' a /lookingforgroup channel by any means. If that's your choice then great. But perhaps people that aren't liking the system haven't given it a fair shake and at current there are other factors involved in why it isn't being as succesful as people would like for them to be. Just a few thoughts for people to ponder on this fine Monday morning."

Use the Broken tool or we won't fix it is akin to "It puts the lotion on its skin or it gets the hose!".

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09 December 06 - 10:51Oh sure we'll use your material but we'll be damned if we give you credit.

Break a story and what do those oh so integrity laden folks in the gaming blog rants world do? Why they just credit the guy who took it from you in the first place.  And things get set right. "Hat tip: This is Not A Community via n3rfed"

Hattip: Killtenrats  Thanks.

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07 December 06 - 16:54Blizzard Loves You This Much

Tseric- "I'm sure it's easier to pass that judgement from your well-informed, armchair designing position. Because of the way in the whole expansion is being pushed out, the gap that we are currently in was expected to cause a number of issues. With so much content that is being pre-released, we are going to see a number of inconsistencies that will be resolved on release of the expansion. Plain fact is that this is about production schedules and not about you. This is needed for smooth production of the game, because when expansion hits and people are actually patching the rest of the content, we will have more pressing issues than going back to check some loot tables. This is about putting in order as much as we can as soon as we can, so when serious matters come down the road, we have as many resources available to address them quickly. Issues that, I assure you, will be more important than this. This isn't about you. It's about the game. Find something more worthwhile to complain about. This issue will not change until the expansion is released, so railing against me or anyone else on the boards is a categorical waste of your time." http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=54935516&sid=1&pageNo=1

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