Project Lore

Earlier this week this video (thanks Kotaku) showing that someone had created a way to play World of Warcraft on the iPhone started circulating. TechCrunch called it the end of the world, and Gizmodo thought it had some potential. I just want it in my hands! The technology behind the program is a program called Vollee. Most of the processing is not actually done on the iPhone, but instead uses streaming video of the rendering done on another machine. The functionality was pretty basic, but it includes auction house access and also what would at least be a great way to get some dailies done without having to bring your computer on vacation. Unfortunately, the future of this and all WoW related iPhone Apps is up in the air. Blizzard just issued a Cease and Desist order to the makers of the popular apps, Armory Browser, Warcraft Characters, and Warcraft Arena Calculator. These apps used information that is freely available on the Armory, so why Blizzard would do such a thing is not quite clear at the moment. Perhaps Blizzard is making its own version of those Apps listed and doesn't want any other products out there to confuse users. Perhaps they're working closely with the creators of the Vollee application to give all of us addicts a way to get some WoW in while we're on the go. Whatever the reasoning, there is still a lot of potential in the iPhone and other smart phones for all of us. As a user of an iPhone and a couple of the apps that got Cease and Desists, Blizzard's decision to send out those C&Ds is a little frustrating to me. Hopefully Blizzard creates something amazing or gives up some control to the huge number of developers out there. I'd love a way to log in and chat with people while I wait for the bus and using the Auction House on the road would be amazing. What do you guys think? What kind of phone are you guys using? What World of Warcraft apps are you using on your phone? Would you play WoW on it if you could? What other WoW-related apps would you like to see?

Click to read more ...

One of the major pieces of content from the latest major content patch was Ulduar, the new raid instance. Many people are exploring the instance and killing the bosses inside. Many people are also dying inside Ulduar... a lot. Blizzard has decided that people are dying too much. This has caused the developers to make many of the bosses much easier so that those people who are having trouble can experience the content much quicker. This is quite in line with their determination to allow all players to see the encounters, but not necessarily defeat them in their most difficult incarnations. The guys are starting out with a few of the earlier bosses in order to hopefully have more players full clear the instance, or at least get a little bit further. I have yet to beat all of the bosses inside Ulduar, having only cleared up to Yogg Saron, and I know many others have also not cleared the instance. However, it is only the third week that the content has been available, so I'm ok with some of the encounters taking many tries to defeat. How do you guys feel about the nerfs? Here are some of them in detail, in case you're curious:

• The Ignis the Furnace Master encounter has received the following changes: The interrupt effect and duration of the damage from Flame Jets has been reduced, the damage from the Slag pot has been reduced, the number of Heat stacks needed to transform an Iron Construct into a Molten state has been reduced, the base melee damage done by Ignis has been reduced, and the damage bonus Ignis receives from Strength of the Creator has been slightly increased.
• The Assault Bots on the Mimiron encounter will now attack faster, in turn they will do less damage per hit.
• The XT-002 Deconstructor encounter has received the following changes: The duration of Tympanic Trantrum has been reduced, the timer for XT-002 to hit berserk has been increased, the damage of Light Bomb has been reduced, the effect radius of Light Bomb has been reduced, and the health of XM-024 Pummeler has been reduced.
• The aggro radius for several trash mobs before General Vezax has been reduced and the health has been reduced on Void Beasts and Faceless Horrors.
• The Kologarn encounter has received the following changes: The damage of Stone Grip has been reduced, the amount of time to break someone out from the right hand has been increased, the radius and damage of Rumble has been reduced, and the damage of Focused Eyebeam has been reduced.
• The Assembly of Iron encounter has received the following changes: The damage of Rune of Death has been reduced, the damage of Chain Lightning has been reduced, and the damage of Lightning Whirl has been reduced.

Click to read more ...

Noblegarden started on Sunday, and if you're like me, you want that Violet Proto Drake, which means you'll have to get your egg hunt on. Being a late addition to the Long, Strange Trip world event meta-achievement, the collection of achievements required to attain "the Noble" title was quite certainly affected by feedback from the player community regarding other similar achievements. If you remember, many players were upset that they had to rely heavily on the Random Number Generator (RNG) for certain parts of the other holiday meta-achievements. Luckily, Blizzard recognized this fact and both retroactively changed the Fool for Love achievement and decided against including random achievements in the Noble Gardener meta-achievement. While there are still Noblegarden achievements that do rely on the RNG - Sunday's Finest and Dressed for the Occasion - they are not part of the Meta. This means it is basically possible - even with the worst of luck - to brute force your way to the title, getting one step closer to that 310% flying mount. Breaking it down, you'll have to open the following number of eggs to complete all of the required achievements: 100 for eating (Required for Chocoholic) 100 for Spring Rabbit's Foot (Required for Spring Fling) 50 for Spring Flowers (Required for Shake Your Bunny-Maker) 50 for Spring Robes (Required for Desert Rose) 5 for Noblegarden Egg (Required for Noble Garden) This totals out to 305 eggs, which will take a bit of a time investment. If you manage to find an egg every 15 seconds, that will come out to over an hour of egg hunting. If you have more trouble finding the eggs, it will take even longer. Remember, this is the maximum number of eggs you'll have to open. Most people I talked to got at least one required item within the first 50 or so eggs they opened, so you'll probably need to open fewer eggs. By the time I had looted 300 eggs, I already found nearly everything I needed from the eggs, so I purchased the last thing I needed - the spring flowers - and picked up the Spring Circlet to complete my collection. All of the other items you'll need for achievements are obtainable through other means. The Tuxedo Shirt, Tuxedo Pants, and Elegant Dress are all tradeable, meaning you can get Blushing Bride for a few coins at the auction house or even free if you find a generous person who will loan or give you a tux. Remember, though, you will not get Sunday's Finest or Dressed for the Occasion unless you specifically loot the items from eggs. The Blossoming Branch is a reward for the daily quest to turn in 20 egg shells and can be used on other players to help them get Hard Boiled. Remember to find someone who has one in their inventory to help you get that one. The Spring Circlet, for 50 chocolates, is not used in any achievements. Mages may want to collect the Tome of Polymorph: Rabbit, which can be purchased for another 100 chocolates. Even though the requirements for the meta-achievement are not completely dictated by the RNG like Be Mine! was, they can still take a significant amount of time to complete. I'd estimate that it took me three to four hours to complete all of them, including collecting eggs, traveling, and finding all of those females for Shake Your Bunny-Maker. So, do you guys prefer having alternative ways of getting items in addition to the RNG, or would you rather just leave out the randomness completely? Or heck, would you prefer all of it to be in fate's hands?

Click to read more ...

One of the first things I did after patch 3.1 came out was check all of the new achievements. Which of the new titles would I go after? What new and interesting boss mechanics lay ahead in Ulduar? Where might I be spending most of my time doing dailies? All of these questions were answered by looking through the long list of achievements that Blizzard added in the latest major content patch. While doing that, one of the things I noticed was that above the Argent Tournament tab of the World Events achievements was a tab with no achievements available inside - the Darkmoon Faire. I asked a few guildies if anyone else had noticed or cared about this, but alas, I am was alone in my everlasting quest to increase that meaningless number by a few points. Today on the Blizzard forums, there an official response from Bornakk, kind of. Well, all he said was, "No comment at this time. >_>" My personal hopes are that a revamp of the Darkmoon Faire is coming that will add in all sorts of achievements. One that I came up with was something like this:

Also, adding in new features to the Faire would probably make getting the Insane in the Membrane feat of strength just a tiny bit easier. Any of you have ideas for expanding Darkmoon or adding achievements?

Click to read more ...

With Yogg Saron having already been downed many times all over the world, there remain a few challenges from Patch 3.1 that have yet to be overcome. Wraith, an EU guild has managed to unlock the 10-man version of Algalon the Observer, the "True" final boss encounter of Ulduar by defeating the Assembly of Iron, Hodir, Thorim, Freya, and Mimiron, all on their hard modes. MMO-Champion has a multitude of screen shots courtesy of Wraith, along very few details about the fight, but it is being speculated that each raid has only one hour per day to attempt to defeat the boss. I've heard rumors that failing to defeat Algalon results in the destruction of Azeroth, though I can't help but feel that might be a bad move on Blizzard's part. I guess we could all escape to the Outland, though. Check out MMO-Champion's post for all of the crazy screen-shots, and leave your predictions on how long it might be until we see a world first Algalon kill.

Click to read more ...

Today's extended maintenance has been going on for a while now, and was even extended an extra two hours in order to deploy a quick bug fixing patch to the servers. Hopefully once realms are actually up it will go much smoother than last week's introduction of Patch 3.1. The official patch notes for this relatively minor patch cover mostly bug fixes, but we also get a free respec! That is never a bad thing in my eyes. Full notes follow: General

• In order to address issues with the dual talent specialization system, all players will have their talents points refunded. Players who have purchased dual talent specializations will have both specializations reset. Glyphs will not be affected by this reset.

Bugs

• Characters who are not of the same race or class are once again able to view each others' professions linked in chat.
• Fixed an issue in which player and pet nameplates were appearing larger than normal.
• Thrall's throne has been adjusted back to its proper size and the base replaced. He will no longer need to defy gravity.
• Fixed an issue with a display error on druid leather helms.
• Corrected an issue for GeForce2/ATI 7 series card users that would result in critical errors for select actions in game. As a result certain projected textures, like spell effects and targeting circles, will no longer render on some terrain objects.
• Achievements
  • Corrected an issue preventing players from earning the achievement, "Storming Stormwind." Players who were not properly awarded this achievement for completing the objective should retroactively be granted completion.
• Warlock
  • Demonology
    • Fel Synergy (Rank 1): Corrected the tooltip to now display the proper healing amount.
• Dungeons and Raids
  • Caverns of Time: Culling of Stratholme
    • Fixed an issue with the outside map not appearing correctly.
    • Fixed an issue where an incorrect skin was being applied to certain classes/races when the Human Illusion buff is cast upon them.
  • Ulduar
    • The mob packs in the XT-002 Deconstructor encounter can now be engaged separately and are no longer linked.

More Ulduar trash to figure out? I can't wait! What are your thoughts?

Click to read more ...

In press release earlier today, Blizzard announced that, in China, World of Warcraft will be licensed to NetEase.com, who already has the rights to operate both Starcraft II and Diablo III. Once Blizzard's current deal with The9 expires in June, NetEase will take over the operation of WoW in China, with further details to be announced on their website. According to a VentureBeat article, that means Blizzard's cut of revenue from WoW in China will increase from about $50 million per year over $140 million per year, almost purely profit. It will be interesting to see if this means that Wrath of the Lich King will be coming soon for China, because they still have yet to see it released. This is a reminder of how, although WoW is a huge and global game, we aren't even able to interact in game with nearly everyone due to restrictions like different regions, languages, and servers that the game is played on. In the Totally Rad Guild, we have people from all over the United States, Canada, Australia, and probably more that I don't even know about. So how about you guys - where are you gaming from?

Click to read more ...

MMO-Champion just posted this video of a Russian guild taking out Sartharion with all three drakes up on Normal mode in 76 seconds. Of course, after killing the dragon, the drakes enrage and kill the raid, but it's interesting to see someone do it. They used a single healer (Resto Shaman FTW), Pally Tank, One Rogue, One Feral Druid, Two Death Knights, and Four Fury Warriors. For those interested, the WWS (WoW Web Stats) of the encounter can be found here. It's a pretty amazing accomplishment but I don't think you're awarded the Achievement, title, or mount for doing it that way (the achievement that pops up at the end is Gotta Go When the Volcano Blows).

Click to read more ...

Image from TheBuiBrothers.com

The First Annual Streamy Awards Ceremony was held Saturday in Los Angeles, and among some very tough competition, Alex Albrecht took home the Streamy for Best Host of a Web Series for his work on Project Lore. He managed to beat out his co-host on Diggnation Kevin Rose, Boing Boing TV's Xeni Jardin, EPIC FU's Zadi Diaz, and Wine Library TV's Gary Vaynerchuck to win the first Streamy for Best Host. Project Lore was also up for Best Hosted Web Series and of course the Audience Choice Award, but those categories were won by EPIC FU and Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, respectively. Another MMO-related show that you may have heard of, The Guild, won quite a few Streamys as well. Felicia Day and friends took home Streamys for Best Comedy Web Series, Best Ensemble Cast in a Web Series, and Best Female Actor in a Comedy Web Series. The big winner, though, was Dr Horrible, which won seven Streamys. For all of the awards, check out this list of Streamys winners on Tubefilter. Also, thanks to everybody who nominated and voted for Project Lore on the Streamys!

Click to read more ...

In honor of the Streamys, Obama Girl, along with Barely Political, made this little tribute to the nominees, including Project Lore! Check it out, and while you're at it, take the time to vote for Project Lore on this last day of voting at http://vote.streamys.org/

Click to read more ...