WTFlux

I’m trying to figure out how to make this thing better.  There is about 2405 blogs that are hunter/priest focused so I’m going to spin this different….or try.

Here are some blog direction ideas.  Plz comment on them.
-Guild managment/happenings
-daily/weekly WTF (something that happens that makes you say - WTF?)
-Professions
-How to find the center of gravity of a rocket.

kkthxbai

oh yeah, I made a druid.  Her name is foshizzil.

I know this isn’t real WoW related, but the internetz ate mah Penny Arcade. Can anyone get to http://www.penny-arcade.com?  The store and PAX2008 websites are both up, but apparently they are not on the same box?

I’m sad.  I needs mah PA.

There have been recent murmurings in the WoW-blogosphere lately about the casual nature of World of Warcraft, and how the hardcore players hate this trend, etc. I’m soo, so sick of this crap. Let’s go back to marketing 101. Very simple very obvious things here, so all you epic raiderz can understand. Blizzard built a game, a MMORPG in order to make money. Their goal is first and foremost to make money, second to make it a high quality game. The game, World of Warcraft has 10 million subscribers. The high - end bleeding edge (have EVERYTHING on farm) content guilds probably don’t even garner 5 percent of those subscribers. Let’s actually say somehow they represented 10% (1 million subscribers). How do you build a game so that the maximum amount of people will subscribe, and make the most possible money? You’ve got to listen to the 90% of subscribers when designing a game, and design and build content that they can perhaps someday attain. Blizzard actually learned how to do both with the expansion pack - The Burning Crusade. No one balances the raid content and the casual content with a kinder learning curve in the entire industry. Thus, we have 10 million subscribers, and a great game. This isn’t subjective, it’s fact. 10 million people don’t subscribe $15 dollars a month to a poorly made and maintained game. Having said that, producing raid content is important to the high end raiders and in a trickle down effect - important to everyone.

Recently a guild called Risen decided to voice their displeasure (commonly referred to as QQ - or crying) about how World of Warcraft was so casual, and all the n00bs can get great gear without any work. (my paraphrase) A recent WoWInsider article also hit on this proclamation, and I’ve mulled it over for a week or so and I want to sound off on this because I can and this attitude annoys me.

The QQ post from Risen concluded the thoughts:

…What happened to the competition? What happened to the encounters that took time to learn? In BT PTR [Black Temple Public Test Realm] I said this, and people told me it would be different on live. It sure didn’t seem that way to me. Nihilum praised the Souls encounter and Illidan both…

This has always confused me. If you don’t want to fly through content, and you want to take your time trying to solve raid encounters, why the hell do you spend hours and hours and hours on the PTR before it even goes live? Why do you look at successful world first videos, share strategies, etc.? Now I have no idea if they did that, but I’ve got a hard time believing they didn’t have any input from anyone or anything. Do you want to go up against hard content? DON’T LIVE IN THE PTR. What’s the fun in that? Experience the content when it is released and play like everyone else. You’re already better than 99% of the population - so naturally you’ll get content down before everyone else.

The competition argument is equally perplexing. Hell, entire websites were conceived because of the very competition you say isn’t there! All we heard about in the first few months of BC was the competition between guilds and all the world firsts flying around like crazy. What more competition do you want? Competition drives quicker results, chewing through content. This is normal, this is constant. I really don’t even understand 1 argument presented by Risen. They even contradicted themselves pointing out that arguably one of the best guilds on the planet - Nihilum actually praised Blizzard for the Black temple encounters and raid content. So I have the best guild saying Blizzard did things right - and a guild that worked really hard pre-BC to knock out Naxx content and got pissed when level 64 quest gear was as good as their epics crying that all their work will be for nothing if they can’t dominate n00bs like the good old days. LOL, aww poor babies. To me it seems like a bunch of spoiled brats are QQing because they beat the internetz and now don’t have anything to do.

Basically the WoWInsider article took a relatively casual friendly stance on the post by risen:

WoWInsider says: “The big complaint that so many people had was that they were a little put off that they could replace their most uber gear with level 61 greens off of Hellboars.”

LOL. I wasn’t put off. No one I played with was put off. We all thought it was kinda hilarious that in our green level 63 quest gear - we looked like pimp clowns. Somehow, as a dumb casual n00b I was able to figure out before BC came out, if level 61 greens are better than epics, why should I spend time raiding right now? You see before The Burning Crusade, there were 2 different types of level 60 players. Raiding players and players that tried to raid, and played casually. The difference was hilarious. A raiding level 60 would completely annihilate a casual 60. Blizzard tried to narrow this gap by giving casual players heroic instances, badges, arena teams, and easier rep grinds. There is still the raid crawl with tier X geared raiders. Now casual players have a chance to close the gap if they try hard and get organized with the time they have to play. Now the epic raiderz don’t have such a big lead on casuals, and apparently they are pissed. It’s not enough that they get to see places and encounters in the game that I’ll never experience, or have weapons or gear I’ll never get to see or equip - but they want to utterly dominate everyone else in all levels of the game. I think it’s hilarious.

They’ve since then wrote a post to talk about all the noise they made with thier comments. They go on to say:

…Yes, there are enough raiders who have seen Illidan to make it worth Blizzard’s time to continue to create content for them. No, nowhere was it said that 5mans, 10mans, and even solo content should be excluded. It is all being put out in this game slower than it is in AC1, and AC1 has been out for what, 9-10 years, and has less than 1% of the player-base of WoW…

I see the argument they are trying to make, and I think it’s made with raid-blinders. They are looking at things through their epic raiding glasses, not through the 9.5 million subscriber glasses. No, there is no way in hell there are enough raiders who have seen Illidan to make it worth Blizzards time to continue to make RAID content for them at the pace they want it. My point is backed up by results and fact. Blizzard knows it isn’t cost effective to do this, they haven’t done it, and never will. AC1 might be able to get away with it BECAUSE they have less than 1% of the player-base of WoW. There is a REASON they have less than 1% of the player base of WoW, and I’ll leave that up you to to extrapolate.

Then they throw out the Charles Barkley - “I’m not a role model” card:

…The post was -not- made to get attention from Blizzard. The post was not made to try to get anything changed…

Sooo, one of the top 20 guilds on the planet throws out a post telling the world why they quit WoW, and how horrible and boring WoW is, and damn those casual n00bs for getting free epics, etc. - and they DIDN’T expect any backlash? ARE YOU SERIOUS? I’m sorry, that’s ignorant. I bet they know now. It doesn’t matter if they care about the WoW community - they are a part of it.

Actually I wasn’t mad at them, hell I could care less about Risen - this is something that has been brewing in the community since The Burning Crusade came out and raiding guilds weren’t the only people covered in purple anymore. It could have been Risen, or Death and Taxes - whatever. In a private moment, I would think most raiding guilds grumble about this issue. No, raiding guilds don’t deserve more input on content, no Blizzard isn’t going to cater to you, no- no one cares if you quit. It’s not because I’m being mean, it’s because you’ll be back - and you’ll pay your money just like everyone else. Don’t be fooled - Blizzard is a company, they want to make the most money possible. That is priority number one. It seems kinda harsh and cold - but that’s the way it is.

Link Dump:
http://risen-guild.com/
http://www.wowinsider.com
http://nihilum.mousesports.com/en/news/

HOKAY. I am a sucker for anything beta. Just so you know.

I ran across a new social gaming sight called The Ugame network. Normally, I would just watch it with passive interest- but I saw a World of Warcraft character hiding behind the login. It’s a closed beta, so you will need to submit your email address. If I get in, I’ll dutifully report if this is cool, or dumb. Has anyone been able to get in and fool around with this???

Link Dump:
http://www.ugame.net

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Ok, this is my last post about RSS, I SWEAR. I did some world PvP with my hunter last night and I’ve got a post coming soon.

I recently searched for my site in Google reader with the following 4 different RSS/atom feeds:
http://wowguildbank.com/wtf/?feed=rss
http://wowguildbank.com/wtf/?feed=rss2
http://wowguildbank.com/wtf/?feed=atom
http://feeds.feedburner.com/Wtflux

They all have subscribers. I have no idea if they are all getting my posts, but I can guarantee you that http://feeds.feedburner.com/Wtflux is the correct feed. This lets you get the full, formatted, RSS feed from my blog. If you don’t have that as your feed, you might want to switch to it.

As you can tell if you come see the blog, it’s coming back together slowly. Thank you all for your patience.

This is going to probably be a long series, having not much to do about WoW at all- rather WoW blogs. I read a few design blogs, but I am no expert. I do love looking at blog design, and feel a bit sad when people concentrate on feed readers instead of visiting the actual blogs. However, I use a feed reader, and I understand why people use them. Because of this, I wanted to bring light to some of my fellow bloggers’ designs. I know of at least a few that have completely changed their design in the last year or so- something you would have missed unless you visit their actual blog.

This is by no means a complete or ultimate list, it’s just a list of the blogs that I like the design of. I’m a sucker for simple, clean designs, with great imagery and colors. Here is a list and a small summary of each site and its design.

Egotistical Priest -
General look: I love the great contrast with the black and white of the page- the broken lines framing each section add a great deal to the sections themselves. I’m also a complete sucker for the dark charcoal grey used as the background for each section.

Banner: The banner is among the best I’ve seen. The priest looks like she BELONGS in the clouds doing priestly things. Perfect blending, great font, and the search box contrast even adds to the banner.

Complexity: Very low- very easy on the eyes.

Go see for yourself:
http://egotisticalpriest.omen-guild.net

tell em I sent ya!

(I’m not going to write these every day, but hopefully sprinkle them in amongst other, more WoW centered posts.)