Did you hear? The guild, ‘Goon Squad’ on the realm Mal’Ganis took two Alliance flight masters hostage. I’m trying to figure out how they kept them after kiting them to Bael’Dun Keep in the southern Barrens.
This turned out the be a brilliant hostage situation on a PVP server. Sadly, the GM’s killed the flight masters before the full-tilt battle started.
Sounded cool 
Hawk from AppleGeeks did a guest spot at GUcomics. It’s an orc playing with a Nintendo Wii. It’s priceless.
enjoy
File under: recently posted on the WOW boards… Honestly, I still don’t get the current combat system.
Eyonix (Offical Blizzard poster):
With the upcoming release of the Burning Crusade, we thought we would take the time to explain more on a new stat that we are introducing: Combat Ratings. These ratings are being used for any combat stat that previously was percentage-based such as: critical strike chance, hit chance, dodge chance and defense skill. Combat ratings are only used with effects generated by items and do not apply to effects that are generated by spells and talents which will continue to work the same.
The following combat ratings are currently in use: weapon skill, defense, dodge, parry, block, hit chance, spell hit chance, critical strike chance, spell critical strike chance, resilience, haste, and spell haste.
*We may introduce others at a later time.
Combat Skills
Unlike fixed percentages such as 2% critical strike chance, combat ratings diminish in potency as your character increases in level. 2% crit is the same at every level, while 28 critical strike rating grants 4% crit at level 34, 2% crit at level 60, and 1.27% crit at level 70. This allows us the ability to create and add new and better items to the world without eventually reaching a point where every character has a 100% chance to critically strike.
Below is the level 60 conversion for combat skills:
Weapon Skill Rating 2.5 rating grants 1 weapon skill
Hit Rating 10 rating grants 1% hit chance
Spell Hit Rating 8 rating grants 1% spell hit chance
Critical Strike Rating 14 rating grants 1% critical strike chance
Spell Critical Strike Rating 14 rating grants 1% spell critical strike chance
Haste 10 rating 1% haste
Spell Haste 10 rating grants 1% spell hasteDefense Skills
The impact on the defense skill and weapon skill systems is slightly more complicated. Many people do not realize these skills actually grant percentage-based benefits already. For example, every 25 points of defense skill grants a 1% dodge chance, 1% parry chance, 1% block chance, 1% increased chance to be missed and 1% decreased chance to be critically hit by physical attacks. Weapon skills have a similar effect for the attacker. Items will now grant skill rating rather than skill directly, and that will convert to an actual skill increase.
Below is the level 60 conversion for defense skills:
Defense Skill Rating 1.5 rating grants 1 defense skill
Dodge Rating 12 rating grants 1% dodge
Parry Rating 20 rating grants 1% parry
Block Rating 5 rating grants 1% block chanceResilience
Resilience is a special new rating which we have created to reduce the effects of critical hits against your character. It has two components; it reduces the chance you will be critically hit by X percent, and it reduces the damage dealt to you by critical hits by 2X percent. X is the percentage resilience granted by a given resilience rating.
Below is the level 60 conversion for resilience:
Resilience 25 rating grants 1% resilience
Each time you go up a level, the amount of rating needed to get the same benefit will increase. An example of the scaling involved would be the current implementation of Agility which has always worked this way in the live game, requiring more agility for the same critical strike chance as you go up in level
Weeeeeeeeeee!
For your viewing pleasure:
File under: How Blizzard will get your money in the few hours when you are not working, eating, sleeping, or in-front-of-your-computer.
TCG in-game rewards revealed (finally!)
If, like me, you’ve been waiting for the WoW collectible card game to finally justify its existence, wait no longer. From the beginning, Blizzard and cardmakers Upper Deck have promised that cards in packs would give in-game rewards, and today they revealed the deets.
- Special ‘Loot’ versions of cards will have scratch offs that reveal codes to be redeemed in-game.
- The ‘Loot’ version of someone named Landro Longshot (the lore of this escapes me, if you know it, speak up) will grant a unique in-game tabard.
- A card that shows a Thundering Hippogryph will grant a new non combat pet– awesome!
- And then there’s the one you really want: the loot version of ‘Saltwater Snapjaw’ will grant players their very own big-eyed turtle mount. That’s right, the rumors were true. If you find this card, you can ride around on the back of a freaking turtle (Upper Deck is quick to point out that it goes regular speed, even though it’s a turtle). Also, the mount is usable by players of all levels, which means you can finally ride out to Hogger. Because of that, I’d assume it’s a 60% mount, not 100%, but they don’t say specifically.
- Every card pack will have a card that gives ‘UDE Points,’ which you can use to redeem for other cards or in-game items in an online system. Two trinkets are first up in this system: a trinket that puts on a fireworks display, and another that changes you into an ogre mage.
- Finally, apparently there will be three loot rewards with every series of cards that Upper Deck releases– the first series, Heroes of Azeroth, is due this month, and the second one, called Onyxia’s Lair, is scheduled for November.
The FAQ about the in-game loot answers some more questions, but not the most important one: how many of these stupid card packs do I have to buy to get a turtle mount? Of course it’s all random, so it could be one or one hundred, but they don’t list any ‘drop rates’ (is that what you call it in CCGs?) on exactly how rare these loot cards are. On the other hand, if you do end up buying a hundred of these things, I hear there’s some kind of actual card game you can play with them. Who knew?!
(Via WOW Insider.)
No lie, those precocious youngsters from South Park Colorado will cut loose in our favorite imaginary world/addiciton Wednesday night on Comedy Central. Youtube is kind enough to host the 19 second trailer.
Sorry it’s been a slow news day :}
I’ve dabbled in Second Life, but couldn’t find much to do that had lasting enjoyment. After I toured around looking at everyone’s nifty creations, I realized all the neat stuff had to be purchased from someone. Blah.
In case you missed it, SL is one of the few other MMORGS that has Mac and PC clients. It cost $10 to join for life and you can build nearly anything in-game.
Anyway, I found this article (see below.) Apparently some guilds discovered that SL is a great place to plan raids (see the screenshot below) like a war room. It’s a pretty sexy idea. Add Vent and that’s a pretty dynamic remote planing tool.
Which brings me to my point there’s a point?. What if Guilds used SL for guild halls? You all get together and buy some of their virtual land. Build a structure you like (the sky is literally the limit.) Post text from DKP’s and bank inventory for people to see. Hold meetings. Plan Raids and BG campaigns.
I know you could just get one of the free guild web sites, but none of them are interactive at this level plus you get to fly. This could be fun and add to the guild value.
At Last! Something useful to do with Second Life!: “Sean Bonner:
I’ve written before about my less than glowing feelings about Second Life. I’ve got friends who practically live there, and guildies who spend tons of time on their own island but everytime I check it out I leave disappointed and wondering ‘ok, so… ?’ Well, some folks on the alliance side of We K(no)W finally figured out something useful to do there – plan raids during Tuesday downtime. Above is my Avatar standing on the UBRS map with a few notations. I’ll admit I only lasted a few minutes in there again this time, but at least it was interesting finally!
(Via Metroblogging Azeroth.)
There is a long running discusion at Metroblogging Azeroth about guild halls.
The key issue is real estate. Where would Blizzard put guild halls so that the world didn’t get filled up with guild halls. While there are numerous other issues of concern, such as the economics of storing additional items in a guild bank/strong box instead of the bank, real estate is really the most serious issue.
One thought that I had was to have multiple distributed instances (like instance dungeons). Rather than just one (potentially crowded) instanced gateway perhaps Blizzard could use some of those vacant buildings in each of their cities and sell access to one as a guild hall. Say your guild officers find a nice place in the Dwarven Quarter of Stormwind and have 500 gold to buy a guild instance there.
I don’t even begin to know what would be in a guild hall (swimming pools and masseuses) but at least it would provide one more thing high level characters to spend money on. It might be nice to have a dragon kill point scoreboard or a stat board for Raids and loot. It might be nice if there was an in game message board for wish lists and help requests.
What do you think?
If you work from home, this could be the next big thing. Not!
The Half-Suit, Great for Videoconferencing!: “
Staying at home working in your underwear is definitely a luxury. Hell, I do it everyday. But on occasion you need to bust out that old webcam for some digital face to face interaction. The Half-Suit will make you look like a business professional without having to even own a suit. It slips on top of your body and can easily fool co-workers into believing you actually care about your appearance. The Half-Suit retails for $135 to $150.
The Half Suit – Business On Top, Party Below [Trend Hunter]
(Via Gizmodo.)
