Project Lore

Gamasutra's Chris Remo recently sat down with Alex Afrasiabi to chat about some of the design philosophy behind the upcoming expansion. Though Afrasiabi might not be the household name that a Samwise Didier, Tom Chilton, or Mike Morhaime is, you might start to hear it more often. Why? Because he occupies a very important position on the development team: Lead World Designer for Cataclysm. And with the world about to undergo some significant changes, he's got his work cut out for him. Afrasiabi remains tight-lipped in the interview, typical for a Blizzard employee, but he does paint an exciting (if destructive) future for Azeroth and hints about what we might expect are dropped like bread crumbs for those who can read between the lines. For instance, he cites that "the cataclysm starts out with rumbles, and what those rumbles are are the stirrings of Deathwing beneath the world." Perhaps, then, we'll start to feel earthquakes as part of the events leading up to the release of the expansion. Zones like the Barrens are in need of a major overhaul, while those like Loch Modan still meet Blizzard's standards. He also spends some time talking about how they prioritized zone restructuring in Cataclysm. Though certainly some attention needs to be paid to those that are important to the progression of the story (meaning areas like Azshara were going to be turned upside-down regardless), others will be changed merely based on an internal ranking system. Essentially, those zones that Blizzard decided they were most unhappy with will undergo drastic modifications, while those that were deemed acceptable will be remodeled less. According to Afrasiabi, Loch Modan is one part of the world that will be transformed "lightly" (though he hesitates to say any given zone will be affected as little as that term might imply). Much of the article focuses on the use of phasing and its role in quest design from here on out. Apparently, Blizzard wants to focus more on "showing, instead of telling," which seems to mean less reliance on quest text to relay the story. Providing players with visual information, or scenes that are acted out in the course of completing a mission, seems to be the way of the future. One of the exercises that Blizzard's quest designers reportedly utilize is to see if someone can figure out what they're supposed to be doing with being given any textual information. They better they can manage without it, the better the quest's design is. One big surprise to come out of the interview is that the invention of phasing was sort of an "a-ha!" moment, a serendipitous accident like Newton watching the apple fall from the tree. Afrasiabi says that it the mechanics, now used to create a more progressive game world, was born out of a bug in the Blade's Edge Mountains. Phasing was implemented by a programmer as a quick fix for the problem, but ended up becoming key to the future of World of Warcraft. Of course, this is only a taste. I encourage everybody to head on over to Gamasutra and check out the rest of the interview. There's plenty more to read, and some really intriguing stuff in there worth speculating about!

Click to read more ...

I recently had the opportunity to speak with one of my favorite WoW bloggers, Gevlon of Greedy Goblin. Gevlon is one of the few players in the game who has reached the elusive "gold cap" of 214,748.3646 gold. He is known for being extremely cynical and having radical and critical views of almost everything in WoW - from the game becoming too easy and the value of networking in game to more complex topics like objectivism, feminism, and welfare. I've been known to be cynical at times, and Gevlon's unique ideas often give me some great food for thought. Thanks for talking with us today. Tell us a little bit about yourself and how you started blogging. I've been playing WoW for 2 years. I've never had problems with making gold, had around 5-10K gold all the time. I had my first 100G before lvl 20, and 5000G before going to Outland. I thought everyone was like this. Then someone asked for 1000G for their epic flyer and promised they would "farm a lot" to pay it back. I asked him what "farming" was, and he described the terrible routine of grinding elementals in Shadowmoon for hours. Others joined in guild chat and agreed that besides buying gold, your only choice was grinding. That's when I decided to make this blog. Larísa helped with the first steps; I figured out the rest. What is the appeal of collecting gold? You often criticize gold sinks like the Traveler's Tundra Mammoth or the motorcycle mounts, so what do you spend your gold on? The appeal is not grinding. Ever. Nor doing daily quests. I haven't done a SINGLE Argent Crusade daily; no wolvar pups for me either. For me, gold has one purpose: raiding. I pay five thousand gold per week to a guild to raid despite my 20-30% attendance. You have talked about how you "buy" a raid spot since it is easier and quicker for you to make money than it is for you to spend time with groups that are just learning the encounters. Can you talk about this briefly? I like the challenge of raiding, but I don't want to spend 3-4 evenings on it, especially since serious part of it is repetitive. Orbituary is great at first, fun the second time, and just boring third. By paying, I attend 1 raid per week. I skip farm-raids and go directly to the most interesting hard mode attempt. I was present on Orbituary and Steelbraker first, and currently I'm going to Vezax hard tries. I don't even have the normal Vezax kill. I've already written that I find gear upgrades overvalued, so I don't bother farming gear. My gear is a mixture of random ilvl226 with 213 and even 200 trinkets. I still got lot of gear, since everyone else already farmed everything out of Ulduar normal modes, so I have no competitor for ilvl226. You "roleplay" a "greedy goblin" a bit on your blog, or at least use it as a metaphor for the archetype of a player out to make gold wisely. How and why did this start? Goblins are a money-oriented faction in WoW, so it was an obvious identification. I've started the blog in a roleplaying fashion, but that faded away quickly. I like the word "goblinism" since it is without the non-business aspects of real world philosophies. Terms like "liberalism" not only mean free market, but also the support of gay rights. "Neo-conservatism" not only means deregulation, but also violent crusades against the "enemies of freedom". I don't want to say anything about these things; they are simply not my topic. By being "goblinist" I don't have to struggle with comments like "how can you still support neo-conservatives after Abu Ghraib?" You have recently started a "goblin apprentice" program where you help lucky players learn how to make gold and blog about it. Can you tell us about this? From time to time I post an "apply now" post. People send me mails. I pick one, create a banker toon on their realm and start giving them advices how to make gold. Post their progress on the blog for other readers. When I write this, the second applicant is not yet selected. The first one made 5K in a week. What WoW economy-related blogs do you read or suggest?

• Just My Two Copper
• Zekta's Stuff
• Warcraft Econ
• One Copper
• The WoW Street Journal
• WoWenomics

Do you think that the professions are "balanced" for money-making? People agree on one thing: the worst professions to make money are the two they currently have, no matter what they are. Inscription is definitely the most profitable, simply because it's the most complicated (you have to juggle 350 recipes), so not many people do it. The rest of the crafting skills have a similar gold per hour ratio, and all of the crafting professions are way above grinding or even gathering. You seem to have mixed feelings on Inscription. What do you think about the profession, and what would you do to change it? WoW is made "casual" friendly (I really hate this "politically correct" term). Still, Inscription needs lot of addons, seed money, and serious time to start (after that it's running quickly). So I'm not surprised that there are not many scribes who use it to make money. I would change the glyph system so that adding glyphs does not destroy old glyphs. When you apply a new one, you should get the old glyph returned to your backpack. That way, the huge demand for glyphs would decrease (and also the huge money the common players pay to goblins). What posts do you suggest new readers read to get an introduction to your blog? The "my business" tagged posts. They are the most directly about making money. What/who is M&S, and where did that terminology come from? Morons and slackers. I believe WoW is easy and everyone who fails in it is either as dumb as piece of rock or as lazy as a welfare leech. However, real casuals cannot fail as they don't raid or PvP. There is no "success" or "failure" in fishing coins. What add-ons do you recommend or use for your daily trading? Auctioneer. The rest is for crafting: Lil'sparky, whohas, possessions. What do you think about gold farmers? Should Blizzard being doing more to stop them, or are they inevitable and even essential to the current game economy? They will exist as long as there are M&S who can't make money. Blizzard won't do anything about them since the goldfarmers also pay them $15 a month and they don't harass other players. What simple tips can you offer to players looking to pad their wallets a bit? Have the Auctioneer addon so you won't sell stuff for half price. Also, don't be a packrat. There is deflation; the items that are worth 100G today will be worth 10G a year from now. Sell everything in your bank that you don't use or plan to use in a short time. You can buy it back later cheaper if you need it. Thanks for talking with us! Thanks for the opportunity!

Click to read more ...

Activision Blizzard CEO Robert "Bobby" Kotick on Thursday said he is "optimistic" about the future of the game industry as "a very low cost form of entertainment, if you look at the dollar-cost-per-hour." CNBC interviewed Kotick, who was in Sun Valley, Idaho, for the relatively secretive annual Allen & Company media mogul conference. Here's what he had to say about Activision Blizzard stocks performing above expectations in a down economy:

While Kotick does not speak specifically about WoW, there were some pretty interesting aspects to the interview that I wanted to elaborate on a bit because they can be applied to our favorite MMORPG. The journalist interviewing Kotick first points out that Activision Blizzard (and Electronic Arts) stocks were performing well Thursday. That's just a snapshot in time showing the trading levels at that point in the day, but if you look at the levels over the past six months or so, you'll see that the values have been rising steadily. Not surprisingly, the stock market apparently was on the minds of many Thursday who attended a panel on the economy at the conference. Although not an expert on the economy, Kotick pointed out that the availability of new hardware and the diversity of gaming experiences combine as a way to satisfy a lot of different entertainment needs all in one punch. As Kotick puts it, "While I'm relatively pessimistic about the economy, I'm very optimistic about the ability for video games to satisfy entertainment needs of consumers." And since we've been talking a bit about the future of WoW lately, I also found it interesting that Kotick said he's been looking at his expectations for Activision Blizzard over the next 5 to 10 years. He said that increasing production values, more effective in-game social interactions and the physical aspects of gaming "are really great catalysts for expansion of our audience; and we're still in the early days of markets like Western Europe, (and) in China." So perhaps WoW (or the next MMO) will be more of a world-wide audience? It seems that Kotick is hinting at that thought, which seems like smart business to me (more subscribers = more $$). Also along the idea of more money, Kotick said that lower the price of hardware, "the more consumers will be willing to purchase (it)." Makes perfect sense to me. Of course, a PC is a pretty hefty pricetag for someone just to play a game. But one would assume most people would have their computer for other uses, as well. What does everyone else make of this interview? Can you think of any other ways in which Kotick's ideas may be applied to WoW or the future of other Activision Blizzard MMOs, or do you think his points were too general to draw any real conclusions?

Click to read more ...

The Spreading Taint, often referred to as Taint for short, is a well-known GLBT-friendly (gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender) guild on the Proudmoore server.  They have been featured in many publications, both WoW and GLBT related, for their success is many areas. I recently had the privilege of speaking to the guild leader, Kyan, about life in <Taint>. Thanks for talking to us about The Spreading Taint, known more commonly as Taint. Can you introduce yourselves and give us a brief introduction to Taint? I'm Kyan (real name - Jason). I am the guild leader of the Taint family of guilds. Our guild was established on Proudmoore the day that World of Warcraft launched. Taint started as a very small group of friends from the west coast who came together to create an environment to give gay gamers a harassment-free gaming environment and a place that people could come together for social networking. Since then, we have grown from a tiny group of friends to a guild of nearly 3,000 characters, and are currently the second largest guild in World of Warcraft. The Spreading Taint is made up of several guilds. Can you explain the purpose of each of these guilds and why the spreading taint does not use one guild? There are a few reasons why we have split up the guild. First, there is a problem with the guild interface in the game. Once a guild reaches 500 players, newly added players will no longer show up on the guild tab on the social pane. Therefore, you are not able to easily promote, demote, set notes, etc., for any of those new players. Once guild banks were added to the game, we decided to work toward dividing the guilds up according to player level. Each guild bank is designed to provide gear, recipes, crafting materials, and quest items that are appropriate to that level of the game. As we expanded, we added two raiding guilds and a PvP guild. They are able to maintain their own guild banks to store the items needed for their day to day activities. How close are each of the guilds? Are the guilds even considered significantly distinct? We are all one big happy family. All of the guilds are connected in one guild chat via a chat mod that we use, so when you are chatting with other players in game, you could be talking to someone in any of the nine guilds that we currently have. Proudmoore has a reputation for being friendly to GLBT players. Do you feel that Taint has significantly improved Proudmoore's reputation and attracted new GLBT players? I do believe we have. We have many people that transfer to Proudmoore from other servers who hear about how friendly the environment is on this server. Many of the new members we get are transfers from other servers who have heard about us or found our guild through web searches. We also get many first time WoW players that join who were told about our guild by our members. While I would like to think that Taint has played a major role in making Proudmoore a friendly environment to GLBT gamers, I also need to give a nod to all of the other GLBT guilds, both horde and alliance, who make this server a wonderful place to play. How is playing on Proudmoore different from playing on other servers? Do you hear less homophobic comments like "that was gay" after a wipe? I do believe that Proudmoore is more accepting of GLBT players than other servers. I believe that this is a result of our visibility. Just about any time that a pick-up-group gets together for a raid or instance, you are likely to find a Taint member somewhere in the mix. Other players soon realize that we are gamers, just like them, and can play as well, or often better than alot of the other players out there. Why do players choose to join Taint? What benefits are there to being a member of an GLBT friendly guild? To many people, Taint is like a second family. There are always people on, 24x7. The nature of the guild, being what it is, provides an atmosphere where people can chat socially, ask for personal advice, and just feel at home. <Taint Invaders> recently got the server first clear of Ulduar 10 and many other server and horde first boss kills in Ulduar 10 and 25 man. Can you talk a little bit about Taint Invaders? To what level are members of <Taint Invaders> independent of Taint and to what level are they still members of Taint? <Taint Invaders> is our progression-focused raiding guild. We decided to set up a separate guild for the raiding teams to provide their own guild bank space and customized raid ranks. Though we have a different tag above our heads, we are definitely fully integrated with the other Taint guilds. We share the same guild chat, website forums, and run instances and raids with each other. <Taint Invaders> recently got a complaint from a player stating the guild name was offensive and a GM required a name change. You were able to retain the name after a petition. Can you comment on what kinds of harassment Taint receives from players and what Blizzard's relationship with Taint and other GLBT friendly guilds has been like? This is not the first time that we have been confronted with a guild name change. While we generally do not have a problem on Proudmoore, we do occasionally have people that for whatever reason, decide to try and target us with a report of an offensive guild name, and many times, the GM handling their ticket initially sides with them, based on the way they worded their complaint. While this has been frustrating for our guild, we have often managed to get this decision reversed. In this most recent incident, we actually had a very quick and helpful response from Blizzard, and were able to get the name restored, thus, saving our progression rankings on websites that track raid progress and achievements. As far as Blizzard's position on GLBT guilds, I feel that they have taken a neutral position now, which is just fine by me. There was an incident early on with a GLBT guild that was disbanded due to the nature of their membership, and the backlash that Blizzard got was a wake-up call for them. Treating us, and any other GLBT guild out there, with equal respect and consideration as other guilds, is all that we ask, and they have delivered on that. Proudmoore is a PvE server. Can you tell us about <War Taint> (my guild!) and how it came about? <War Taint> is our 9th, and most recent guild. We have quite a few members who enjoy the PvP aspect of the game, and spend a great deal of their time participating in battlegrounds, arena, or world PvP. Following the successful introduction of our two PvE raid guilds, some of the officers and members started seeing the potential benefits of having a more organized structure to the PvP side of the game. Establishing this guild allows us to more easily post in-game calendar invites to upcoming events for those who are interested, as well as the ability to maintain a separate guild bank dedicated to PvP materials. We have seen many dead alliance leaders and war bears as a result! Do you feel that Taint attracts more casual players? Is there a population of hardcore players in Taint? The majority of our nearly 3,000 toons are casual. Most people log on to quest, do dailies, PvP, hang out in guild chat, or do whatever it is that they enjoy doing. Our hardcore raiding members, while extremely successful, actually make up a small percentage of the guild as a whole. What are the demographics of Taint like? Males, females, GLBT, etc? I do not have exact numbers, but I'd guess that about 90% are male, and about 90% are GLBT. Is there an age restriction for guild membership and why? Yes, we have a strict 18+ rule. This is in place because we generally do not monitor or censor guild chat, and therefore, it can get a bit racy at times. As such, it is not an appropriate environment for minors. Can you tell us about Taint RL meetups? We have real-life meet-ups around the country all the time. Most often, they are local meet-ups organized by the members themselves in the major cities, usually held at a bar or nightclub for an evening. Once a year, we put together an annual Taint get-together, where we invite anyone who is willing and able to make the trip to join us. Last year, we rented a famous house in Las Vegas for the weekend. This year, we will be invading New Orleans during Southern Decadence. What is Taint's guild chat like? Is it WoW-oriented or more GLBT-culture oriented? Taint guild chat is "like a box of chocolates, you never know what you're gonna to get." It can go from talking about class/spec theory crafting to someone talking about what they did with someone they met at the club last night. Where can players learn more about joining Taint? Anyone interested in Taint can visit our website at http://taint.rtgc.org to find out more information. Thanks for your time! No problem!

Click to read more ...

His WoW-inspired lyrical creations each have started out as karaoke fodder "on stage, in front of a bunch of people in a bar that have no idea who Arthas or Sartharion are, and just stare at me like I am insane." Ryan Myers has been dreaming up the parodies in his head for years, he said, but it was just within the past couple of months that he decided to act on the impulse. I first heard "Ninja Raiders" at the end of The Instance!, episode #141 (apparently I missed "Action Bars," which was played on episode #140). And the response was immediate. That night, I logged onto my main, got on Teamspeak, and sang along every time someone started belting out, "If you like it then you should have rolled need on it," and "QQQ♪..." Then I sought out the video, which Ryan made with his and his guildies' characters, along with "the assistance of a Party Grenade to make unwitting passers by part of the dancing shots," he said. Apparently, I wasn't the only one enthralled. Ryan said he has gotten an "overwhelmingly positive" response to those two songs, and also to "Clint Felwood."

"After that episode came out, Ninja Raiders seem to spread like wildfire, through forums and trade chat. I'm guessing it was a little more successful since it is a real 'video'. I was a little embarrassed when it became popular... it's the first video I've made, so there's a lot of rookie mistakes in there, like leaving the cursor on the screen and whatnot. I'll be going back to make videos for the other two, so hopefully those will look less amateurish."

Here's a little more about the man behind the lyrics, 30-year-old (with "the body of a 29 1/2 year old") Ryan Myers, from the suburbs of Chicago, Ill. Project Lore: How did you get into WoW?

"I've been playing for about 4 years. I downloaded the free trial just to give it a shot, though I was determined that I would never 'buy some stupid game that you have to pay for each month'. Well, you can see how well that plan worked out for me."

PL: What are you working on in-game?

"My main is Ember, an 80 night elf rogue on Aerie Peak. Though I have also been leveling a draenei shaman. I've been messing around with the Argent Tournament a bit, and just starting to get into Naxx (we have a very casual guild of just a few friends, so we're a bit behind). My friends have actually yelled at me to 'stop being creative and play more.' "

PL: How did you start making parody songs?

"I've been writing them in my head for years, but it's only recently that I started recording them. I didn't think anything would come of it, I just recorded 'Action Bars' while really bored one day, and then decided to send it off to the Instance just for the hell of it. I didn't think they'd ever even play it."

PL: Is anyone else involved in the creative process?

"No, though I do have to say that my wife gave me the first line of 'Clint Felwood' (if I didn't mention that, she'd kill me). Otherwise, it's all me. Except of course for my poor guild, that I force to dance while I film them."

PL: What kind of reaction have you gotten so far from anyone who's heard the songs?

"The reactions have been overwhelmingly positive... it seems like my only harsh critic is me. I know that my voice isn't the greatest, and I sing off key a little, so I get super self-conscious about that. But people don't seem to mind, they just dig the parodies. I always assume everyone will hate them, but that's never the case, thankfully."

PL: What's your favorite song you've done so far?

"Action Bars is still my favorite... not only because it was the first one I did, but also because it's about rogues, so obviously I identify with it the most. It's funny, I used to listen to the original song 'Handlebars' (by Flobots) all the time, but the other day when I tried to sing along with it with the real lyrics, I couldn't do it... I kept sliding back into Action Bars."

PL: Are any of your lyrics based on RL experiences?

"Ninja Raiders definitely, especially the 'hunter weapon' part. I've been part of some pugs where it is just mind blowing what some people will roll on. And I have heard the response of 'QQ more' on more than one occasion when someone was asked about their ninjaness... so I couldn't help but put it in as my own little revenge."

PL: Do you have any other upcoming songs that we can listen out for?

"I've got a couple bouncing around in my head, so there's definitely some on the way, I just haven't decided which one will be next. Ultimately, I'd like to have at least one song for each class. I'm heading to E3 next month, so I have made that a deadline for myself... I will have at least one more song and one new video done by then, if not sooner."

And here we have some of Ryan's favorite lyrics from each song: Action Bars: "I've won about a million Arathi Basins make druids AFK in exasperation they all try to heal with their restoration but I just respecced to assassination" Ninja Raiders: "I need no permission, did I mention everything is a hunter weapon... don't tell me that you don't secretly want to be just like me and need every boe that you see" Clint Felwood: "the boomkin aura, I'll bust it out for ya the fauna and flora all call me destroya" So is anyone else a fan? You can bet I'll be waiting for Ryan's next lyrical nugget. In the meantime, go download MP3s of each song at his Web site, Roboguzu Entertainment. Share the love with your buddies, and let us know what you think!

Click to read more ...

If you've been following Project Lore for a while, you probably saw Allakhazam's interviews of Alex, Brandon, Zand, and Joshua. Finally, the newest member of the Project Lore had a chance to sit down with Tamat, Editor in Chief of ZAM, and they chatted about all kinds of things. Check out Jeff Cannata's interview at the fresh new ZAM site and let us know what you think!

Click to read more ...

Allakhazam continues its interview series with with the Project Lore crew this week by conducting an interview with Lylelovett, Project Lore's protection warrior tank, AKA Joshua Brentano. When he isn't busy tanking for Project Lore, Joshua is also the Executive Producer of the hit G4 show, Attack of the Show. Joshua talked with Allakhazam about such topics as tanking, WotLK, and the future of WoW. Check out the interview with Joshua and let us know what you think! Also, don't forget to check out the other interviews with Dorkins, Juggynaut, and DrDark!

Click to read more ...

Allakhazam continues its interview series with Project Lore, this time featuring the star of Ten Days of Knight, Zand Broumand. Previously, both DrDark and Juggynaut were featured in interviews that both revealed some interesting information. This time, Dorkins AKA Bigwang AKA Zand Broumand had some interesting things to say. They discussed WoW, other video games, and a little bit about our new Soloing segment. If you want to find out more from Zand, check out the interview here and let us know what you think!

Click to read more ...

I'm sure most of you have heard of one of the largest MMO news and information sites out there, Allakhazam. They cover just about every MMO out there, with a great community to boot! They recently asked to do an interview series about Project Lore over the next few weeks, and we couldn't be happier to chat with them. This week, Alex Albrecht, AKA DrDark, sat down and talked with Allakhazam about the origin of Project Lore, his characters, opinions, life, and of course, World of Warcraft. Check out the interview here and let us know what you think!

Click to read more ...

Recently, I was interviewed for a feature on Nihilum's site. Nihilum is one of the most well known and amazingly dedicated guilds in the world, and they have claimed many world first kills. They are also one of the guilds that has completely beaten all of the Burning Crusade content, including the final boss of the Sunwell Plateau, Kil'jaden. The interview covered all sorts of subjects, from behind the scenes info about our videos, to Alexis' Wrap-Ups, Alex's CNN interview, and the upcoming Wrath of the Lich King expansion. Check out the interview on Nihilum's site!

Click to read more ...