World of Warcraft

Lich King Class Qualms

2008-08-28T06:02:04Z

I got my Beta Opt-In e-mail at work. With shifty eyes I looked towards my co-workers all huddled in a small smoke-filled room, each of us typing away on our keyboards with research articles open on the conference table. Looking left and right, I clicked the print button. Sprinting to the printer, I grabbed for my golden ticket. Without packing up my personal things, I ducked out the door, work forgotten. Reminiscing about Gene Wilder’s crazy antics, I whistled the whole way home.

While Beta-Testing, something dawned on me. I was waiting for a quest mob to spawn so that I could whirlwind its face off when I thought to myself that I was experiencing a parody of life. World of Warcraft to me at this time was a metaphor for how everything should be.

During the days of Vanilla WoW, most things were taken for granted on my realm. People were still discovering what the game had to offer. With the first expansion pack “The Burning Crusade” most addicts complained about things that they felt should be changed. Thus, with so much complaining going on, the game itself was changed around to suit the needs of the demanding public, and WoW matured. It grew from the industry standard. It continued raising the bar. The users defined the game as it changed. Blizzard provided the content while the users dictated how their characters would interact with that content. Surely, Earth would be a better place if it could be changed accordingly.

If world governments would open up their doors to the demanding “users” or citizens, and start taking suggestions, I think that we would literally witness a dramatic change. Don’t get discouraged, I’m sure your democracy is better than any other place in the world; take it from WoW however, and know that it can always get better, and more balanced. A shining example of this is how Blizzard released a “Class Feedback” section on the forums, which quickly (nearly instantly) grew from a single post on each official class forum to 75-100 pages in length, full of posts of people who were eager for change to their class. Sure enough, suggestions from each and every post were taken into consideration, and many of the more frequent suggestions were actually implemented. Fury Warriors for example, in the latest build of the Beta, received two very important buffs to their class: PvP Viability and PvE Effectiveness. They can now buff the entire raid to do a ton more damage, and compete in arenas with the best of the arms cookie-cutters. Some people might suggest that changes like these are supposed to happen during the event of an expansion pack—but I disagree. Changes like this happened because the WoW citizens wanted it. They spoke out, and eager ears listened.

So keep demanding change, brothers and sisters—please give a 10, 25 or 50 word donation to your respective forum, and don’t let the flamers get you down.

Pally, Shaman & Druid: Why Hybrid Classes Don't Work

2008-07-01T08:55:07Z

There's an interesting editorial up at Kotaku Australia discussing the problems with hybrid classes, such as the Shaman and Paladin, and why ultimately they don't work:

People aren't looking for a class that can't excel at anything. Sure, players of hybrids will say they're fine being a lesser substitute, but when push comes to shove, no one wants to be left behind because a pure class does better.

The writer also says he'll be doing a follow-up, suggesting a replacement for the "Holy Trinity".

The billion dollar question: Why is WoW so popular?

2008-04-05T02:27:54Z

In this opinion piece Growling Dog Games Blog responds to a recent article posted on the Gamasutra site. Excerpt below:

"With over 10 million subscribers World of Warcraft has made Vivendi an awful lot of money. So how did Blizzard do it? How did they break out of the MMO niche and conquer the Holy Grail of PC gaming: the mainstream masses? For every aspiring game developer that’s the billion dollar question…"
Read more

Can WoW teach the US Government about Terrorism?

2008-03-22T02:25:30Z

I really don't know where to begin with this one. On one hand, there are some resemblances in acts within the game, but actually comparing it to taking hundreds or thousands of lives? Lives that don't come back? No resurrection to recover from a wipe? Yeah... that's a bit much, honestly.

According to this article on Wired, the Center for Terrorism and Intelligence Studies "thinks the game could provide a powerful new way to study how terrorist cells form and operate."

"The main strength is that [Warcraft] involves 'real' people making real decisions in a world with some kind of [controllable] bounds," said Blair, who said studying players' actions could prove useful to military intelligence analysts. "To put it academically, you have both dependent and independent variables."

A Yale University terrorism expert commented in the article by saying the following, which seems to make more sense than the initial foray into mild insanity.

"This is very interesting and relevant to the times," he said, "though I wouldn't base a new counterterrorism strategy on the nuances of a videogame."

What are your thoughts? Will the Center for Terrorism and Intelligence Studies find something useful, or are they barking up the wrong tree?

A Guide to the Holy Paladin

2008-03-10T23:40:50Z

Recently the Curse.com team has had the privilege of bringing on a new member, Zyuu, who has an incredible amount of experience with World of Warcraft -- especially the Paladin class. We were very excited to hear that he wanted to share some of that experience with everyone, and we gladly published his Holy Paladin Guide here on Curse.

It was also featured initially in The Curse Word -- our weekly newsletter -- so if you want to be one of the first to see some of the cool content we have in the works nowadays at Curse, then be sure to sign up!

Zyuu has done everything in the game, and he wanted to give some insight back to the WoW community with this guide. Whether you want suggestions of talents, gear, macros, addons, or general play style, it's all there.

Check it out, it's definitely worth the read.

Awesome World of Warcraft Valentine's cards

2008-02-14T11:12:40Z

Pwn your geeklove this Valentine's day with this collection of oh-so-printable WoW Valentine's cards that you would never find in any store.

Pros and cons of WoW powerlevelling, part 3

2007-12-12T07:04:12Z

Kotaku AU has posted the last part to its "Pros and Cons of WoW Powerlevelling" series.

The articles explore one player's experiences with a professional powerlevelling service:

"Every minute of my day was consumed spying on my Paladin - wasted time in hindsight. I didn't care so much about what level it was any more. All I concerned myself with was getting my account back in one piece."

Link to Part 1
Link to Part 2
Link to Part 3

Xbox 360 Controller for World of Warcraft

2007-10-19T17:48:56Z

Blue Orb unveiled its new free software package on Wednesday, only available through Xfire – SwitchBlade. The SwitchBlade software will allow Xbox 360 gamers to configure their controllers to work with their PC, specifically for the game World of Warcraft.

Whilst World of Warcraft is currently the only supported game, Blue Orb have plans to add other games as time goes by.

As well as supporting the standard wired Xbox 360 controller it also supports the wireless controller as long as you have a windows-supported wireless receiver.

In addition to its 'plug and play' pre-configured options, SwitchBlade is a highly customizable application. Experienced World of Warcraft players get extensive opportunities to reconfigure button mappings to match their unique style of play.

We all know that World of Warcraft is popular, but a lot of gamers are just hooked on the console controller experience.

This software has the potential to drag in gamers who may have been waiting for console-like solutions and answers to the control aspects of World of Warcraft.

The new software is available here.

Virus outbreak = false

2007-06-19T21:56:41Z

Hey,

Recent virus outbreak is false:

Recently a couple of virus-scanners have been reporting the following programs: - Backgrounddownloader - WoW patch executables

The listed programs are reported to have the following malware: - Trojan-PSW.Win32.WOW - R/PSW.WOW.RG.3 - Trojan horse PSW.Generic4.TUV

Don't be alarmed, it seems some virus-scanners have been falsely listing these files as malware. To resolve this check the link.

Yours sincerely, MVP Schwick (Europe)

Search for your Realm on Facebook

2007-06-11T03:51:39Z

The WoW Import tool for Facebook (developed by GuildCafe) has been updated to version 2.0. In addition to importing WoW characters from the Armory and into your Facebook profile, you may now search on your realm to find other members of Facebook who have characters on the same realm as you. Find out about who you've been playing with!

Import WoW Armory Characters to Facebook

2007-06-04T05:29:54Z

You can now import World of Warcraft characters to your Facebook profile. This uses the new Facebook Platform technology, and seamlessly gathers character information from the Armory. No additional accounts beyond your Facebook login are required.

Key loggers

2007-05-25T13:36:33Z

When downloading a mod that is a .exe file make sure you run a virus scan on it. Usually these files contain harmful files such as key loggers and Trojans.

PS: Curse has an anti-virus scanner but no technologies are 100% reliable.