Author Archive
Epic Fail - Blizzard to Reset Honor Points for Wrath of the Lich King
Just when Warhammer Online is providing some serious competition to World of Warcraft, Blizzard decides to go ahead and piss off anyone who has spent significant time grinding the four (count ‘em FOUR) PVP Battlegrounds,
As many of you know we will be featuring a new Battleground, a dedicated world PvP zone and all new PvP items in Wrath of the Lich King. In order to make the transition from The Burning Crusade to Wrath of the Lich King flow as smoothly as possible, all accrued honor points will be reset at the launch of the expansion. We do this to ensure select players do not have an unfair advantage at level 80 from stockpiling honor to instantly purchase the newest Wrath of the Lich King PvP rewards. For those with unspent honor points prior to the release of the expansion, we will be offering a few upgrades and special rewards in next content patch solely for purchase via the honor system.
As many commenters have posted on the forums, that is simply bullshit. I’m one of those people who, according to Blizzard, would be disadvantage since I don’t have a huge stockpile of honor points sitting waiting until I reach level 80. But since earning honor points is nothing but a boring grind anyway, I’m not sure what difference it makes if you wasted 50 hours the past month or due it in December. To say it puts the average player at a significant disadvantage is absurd.
What it sounds like is yet another stupid time sink put in the game to keep players busy. Hmmm..you just spent weeks grinding 50,000 honor points? Okay, we’ll reset those to zero so you can experience the joy of weeks of grinding all over again!
If that wasn’t bad enough, they’re also resetting Marks of Honor which are badges you get for completing a battleground. Most of the gear you can buy with Honor Points requires a certain number of Marks of Honor. It is much harder to obtain Marks than honor points especially in the defective-by-design Capture the Flag BG Warson Gulch.
If I didn’t know better, I’d swear Mythic has planted a mole inside Blizzard.
Tags: Blizzard, World of Warcraft, Wrath of the Lich King
Scott eVest Fleece 5.0
As people who know me realize, I am a complete gadget freak. As such, I’ve been lusting after Scott eVest jackets for a couple years now, but never quite pulled the trigger. When I saw an announcement of the new Fleece 5.0 jacket, I couldn’t help myself and pre-ordered one which finally arrived this week.
And it’s even more awesome than I thought it would be. With 24 pockets, its got more than enough room for me to carry around my digital camera, voice recorder, both of my iPods, my GPS datalogger, several encrypted flash drives, headphones, cell phone, Nintendo DS, spare batteries and cables for all of the above, and occasionally my flash-based HD camcorder (which is compact enough to carry but a little on the heavy side).
Everything a growing boy needs.
LVCRAFT
I was at a local mall of all places when I walked pass this car and had to do a doubletake.
Tags: Cthulhu, H.P. Lovecraft
Bejeweled as WoW Addon?
WoWInsider has a preview of a World of Warcraft addon from PopCap Games that puts Bejeweled into WoW. This is apparently going to be completley free and I guess I could see someone playing this while on some flight to Darkshore or something, but really . . . why??
Tags: Addon, Bejeweled, Blizzard, Computer Games, PopCap Games, World of Warcraft
Of Course They Let Bigots Vote
Politico carried an interesting analysis of an AP-Yahoo news poll which is one of the examples of why I’m so ambivalent about voting,
More than a third of all white Democrats and independents — voters Obama can’t win the White House without — agreed with at least one negative adjective about blacks, according to the survey, and they are significantly less likely to vote for [Barack] Obama than those who don’t have such views.
Ah yes . . . even bigots get to vote. Of course that’s hardly the only irrational views held by those who will determine the next leader of the free world. Depending on the poll, 40 to 50 percent of Americans believe God created the world in just 6 days — and presumably, those people also go to the polls to vote.
Which is not to say that I have any particular sympathy for Obama (or McCain for that matter) knowing that people who hold irrational views hold the futures of the candidate in their hand. After all, both of the candidates not only hold irrational views but go further and espouse views they clearly do not personally believe in but nonetheless feel they have to make public displays of fealty in order to curry favor with this or that cross-section of voters.
I see ads about the importance of voting, civic duty, the ideals of democracy, blah blah blah, but our presidential elections have always struck me as more like episodes of mass delusion and hysteria that rock the country every four years. Modern political campaigns are simply social versions of ergot poisoning that induce hallucination and madness in true believers.
Tags: 2008 Election, Barack Obama, John McCain, Racism
Licensed World of Warcraft Halloween Gear
Apparently Blizzard has licensed costumes and gear for Halloween. Nice.
Thunderfury sword:
Orc Warrior mask:
Tags: Blizzard, Cosplay, Costumes, Halloween, World of Warcraft
Best Pie Chart Evar
Via Flowing Data comes the best pie chart evar:
Tags: Pie Chart
Tales of the Plush Cthulhu
John Hanson has a funny photo-story of what happens when a plushy Cthulhu is unleashed on unsuspecting stuffed animals
Tags: Cthulhu, H.P. Lovecraft, Plushy
Did Spore DRM Cost Electronic Arts $25 Million?
Staci Kramer wrote an interesting take on the fact that Spore was apparently the most heavily pirated game in history — there were an estimated 500,000 downloads of cracked versions of the game from BitTorrent sites. At $50 apiece, Kramer’s take is that Electronic Arts left $25 million on the table in its efforts to make the DRM as draconian as possible.
Normally I’d take something like Kramer’s analysis with a grain of salt. I suspect a very large percentage of folks who downloaded the game from BitTorrent would have done so regardless of the DRM scheme that EA had in place. Moreover, aren’t anti-DRM folks always making the case that illegal downloads can drive real world sales, so EA may in fact pick up customers who download the game, try it out, and decide its worth $50.
That said, it was nice to see how quickly EA backpedaled. First they caved on the ridiculous three install limit. Then they had to switch gears on their one account per registration key nonsense. If they’re smart (and this is EA we’re talking about so who knows) they’ll wait until December and announce a Christmas present patch that removes the Securom DRM which obviously caused so much trouble to all those folks who uploaded crack versions to BitTorrent.
Given the bad publicity, EA would be smart to rethink its approach to DRM in time for the Sims 3 release (currently scheduled for February 29, 2009). That and maybe get WIll Wright to actually finish Spore so its actually a playable game rather than a half-assed tech demo for an amazing set of content creation tools.
Tags: Computer Games, DRM, Electronic Arts, Spore, The Sims
Peggle Nights
I don’t understand the appeal of Peggle at all, but my kids, their babysitter, and a whole host of other people can’t seem to get enough of it. And now, PopCap has released a sequel, Peggle Nights.
Tags: Peggle, PopCap Games