Starting in 1996, Alexa Internet has been donating their crawl data to the Internet Archive. Flowing in every day, these data are added to the Wayback Machine after an embargo period.
The first MMO I got hooked on was EverQuest. The harsh nature of the game forced you to bond with other people. Some of those bonds have lasted longer than I played the game. I started EQ seven years ago, and while it's been at least a year since I've logged in, I still chat with people I met in-game even though they've quit as well.
In my EverQuest guild, I had over 2,000 posts on our guild's message boards. In my various WoW guilds I'm lucky if I have 50 over the last two years. One-third of my AIM list is people I met in EQ; zero are from WoW. How about you? How often do you talk out-of-game with other players, and will you keep in touch after you've quit the game? Is it because WoW doesn't have the hardships of other games, or am I just and old fogey remembering the good old days?
Every Sunday, Eliah or Elizabeth will bring you their thoughts on the Priest class with Spiritual Guidance. Whether it's keeping your fellow players alive or melting their faces, you can read about it here!
This week, we've got a special episode co-authored by your two Spiritual Guidance writers, Eliah Hecht and Elizabeth Harper. In the course of emails around the WoW Insider bullpen, we noticed that there were some differing perspectives on the utility of Blizzard's favorite Priest stat, Spirit. So we decided to sit down and hash it out the old-fashioned way: an IM debate. Both of our mains are priests in a similar situation. We're Holy-specced and raiding somewhere around the middle of Karazhan. So considering how similar are gameplay niches are, it's interesting to note the differences in our opinions. On with the show, and do let us know what your take is.
Eliah Hecht: So. It's going to be a complicated issue, because you've got a lot of different kinds of priests to worry about...Holy vs Shadow, leveling vs raiding vs PvP...My take on it is that Spirit is paramount for all leveling specs, and for raiding holy priests, and not so much for the other spots on the grid.
Elizabeth Harper: See, I'm of a couple of minds on it for leveling. On one hand, you get more benefit from less spirit at lower levels, so leveling, I think you get more out of it. But it's still an issue of practicality -- leveling up, i'll grab spirit if it happens to be on something I otherwise want. But the size of mana and health pools is still more important. (And if you have spirit tap, a little bit of spirit can go a long way)
It appears that it is time for me to branch out from my usual silly antics here on WoW Insider, and take a moment to flex my writing skills instead of my artistic ones. Today I would like to speak to you about some of the long history of WoW, but not in the "Know Your Lore" sense of history. WoW Insider reader Tim wrote in to request some information on the evolution of World of Warcraft, from its infancy in beta to launch and beyond and I, having been here through the majority of it, decided that I should put pen to paper (fingers to keyboard?) and share what I know and what I have witnessed along the way.
Are you aware (and I'm sure some of you are) that at one point in World of Warcraft, there was an experience penalty suffered when you were slain? Indeed, even though the lack of experience loss is one of the things that sets current WoW apart from other MMOs, back in its infancy the death penalty was practically the same as what you would find in EverQuest or Final Fantasy XI, though without the de-leveling found in the latter.
Let us take a moment to sit down, pull up a cup of your favorite socially acceptable beverage, and go over a handful of the many changes that WoW has gone through since Blizzard introduced it to a select number of beta testers back in 2004.
All the World's a Stage is brought to you by David Bowers every Sunday evening, investigating the explorative performance art of roleplaying in the World of Warcraft.
For a long time now I've wanted to write an introductory guide on how to get started as a roleplayer. After all, roleplaying is something a lot of people would like to try, but really don't know how to begin. The problem with getting started is that various misconceived assumptions may sometimes block us from trying and dampen our enthusiasm. In the particular case of roleplaying, these mistaken assumptions might be along the lines of: "Roleplaying is lying to people about who you are," and "roleplaying is something weird people do," and "roleplaying is a waste of time for noobs." To the contrary, we have seen in previous articles that roleplaying is actually an exploration of who you are, a way to understand and connect with other people, and, in fact, a variant on things perfectly normal people do all the time anyway.
So now -- where to actually begin? Certainly there is no perfect way to begin as a roleplayer, so today I'll outline three basic steps, which you can try and see if they work for you. I would be particularly interested in feedback from people who try out this method as first time roleplayers: if you do try it and have a great time, please come back and tell us about it; or if you try and something doesn't work, come back and tell us what went wrong. It's been a long time since I was a beginning roleplayer, and though I'll do my best to plot a path into this hobby, I only got to be a beginner once! Perhaps other beginning roleplayers will also share their experiences below, and you can see which path suits you best.
One of the latest screenshots of Wrath of the Lich King shows a pink-colored sky over Northrend, with some possible cloud-moving effect I haven't seen in WoW before. When I look at this screenshot I imagine all those clouds roiling in the sky and I wonder if Northrend couldn't possibly beat Outland in most interesting skies after all.
It's a tough comparison -- Outland planets floating above the horizon are hard to beat, whereas Northrend will be limited to a more terrestrial skyscape. When The Burning Crusade first came out, I remember being impressed that the skies had any animation at all, whereas now, of course, the bar has been raised much much higher. Still, there's a lot that the skies of Northrend could offer us, especially if Blizzard were to go crazy with clouds and colors inspired by the Aurora Borealis.
What do you expect of future WoW skies? Do you hope for ever-increasing complexity, or do you think simple and realistic is always best?
"Sunwell is coming along nicely," says Tigole (a.k.a. Jeffery Kaplan). "It will be on the PTR shortly after 2.3 goes to the live realms. We still need to perfect 2.3 a bit on the PTR." There it is. Most of us suspected that patch 2.4 would be the big Sunwell patch, but now it's official. There's going to be lots of new instancing coming up once all the big changes in patch 2.3 go live. Tigole even adds that "The 5 person dungeon is complete and the 25 person raid instance is progressing nicely. There's also a cool "public" area featuring brand new daily quests called Sunwell Isle."
The 5-person dungeon plus even more daily quests are a bit more to look forward to for those casual gamers who thought all their goodies were finished in 2.3, and that 2.4 would be almost entirely about the new 25-person raid dungeon. For the more hardcore-inclined among us, this will be the startling conclusion to The Burning Crusade expansion, the last big raid before Wrath of the Lich King! How does it feel? Exciting? Nostalgic? More of the same?
Appropriately titled "The One Where They Kidnap Thrall." And for once, the combined might of Illidan, Kael'Thas and Archimonde are able to pull off their dastardly plan to rule all of Azeroth. Except for one little problem. Which you'll have to watch to see.
The fourth episode of this popular series holds up the fine tradition of comedy established by the first three. If this is your first exposure to this series, be sure to check out installments one, two and three.
Reader Eckstremus sends us this shot showing off some of Azeroth's weather patterns. (Which usually seem both mild and fleeting -- Azeroth is a pretty sunny place, all in all.) For those of you who can't recognize the location through the storm, we're looking out on the boat dock in Auberdine -- though I couldn't tell you if that's the boat to Darnassus or the boat to the Exodar.
Do you have a unique shot of Azeroth or Outland that you'd like to show off to the rest of the world? Tell us about it by e-mailing a copy to aroundazeroth@wowinsider.com, with as much or as little detail as you'd like to share with the world!
Patch 2.3's Zul'Aman contains quite a few surprises. First, there was the bear mount from the first boss in the new 10-man raid zone. Now, there's voodoo frogs that hand out epic profession scrolls.
Early reports from the PTR claim that the frogs that hang out around the altar/forested area early in the instance are actually humanoids cursed by Forest Troll voodoo. Players can use Amani Hex Sticks looted from Zul'Aman trash mobs to transform the frogs back to people.
Those un-cursed people leave behind money, Amani Charms or sometimes transform into vendors. For sale on these NPCs is various items, possibly including stat food, a new non-combat pet, Mojo and/or a Sealed Scroll Case that contains a random profession recipe scroll. The scroll can even be for an epic recipe.
The new non-combat pet, Mojo, is a blue frog companion with a special talent. If you /kiss Mojo, he will turn you into a frog and whisper sweet nothings into your chat box. Which is why I've always been against PDA (public displays of affection.)
Finally, on your way out of the zone, all the transformed humans will cheer you on your way out. And then, presumably get hexxed back into frogs for the next round of adventurers.
The other day Mike wrote about how he considers the Headless Horseman event to be too easy, how giving away epic gear equivalent to those found in Heroics somehow cheapens the epics others have to earn. Evidently he's not the only one with that concern. Posters on the forums were complaining about this very issue, and Eyonix had this to say in reply:
Players have a chance to participate in a fun holiday event and get a nice ring (or helmet) two weeks out of the entire year. The drops are great items, and upgrades for many, but they are certainly far from the best in-game. I'm sorry but this event doesn't undermine anything you've accomplished. Are you sure your complaint doesn't stem from the fact that your epic raid loot makes you feel like you're better than others who have lesser gear?
I'm not accusing, just asking.
He makes a valid point, that Eyonix. While some of the gear from the Headless Horseman encounter is very good, this is something that happens for only two weeks out of the year. Much like the epic loot dropped from bosses for a limited time last year (I can recall a faboo belt I got off a Lich in undead Stratholme) during the fall, these items are only available for a limited time, so act now! Really I see it as a great way to gear up those that can't run Heroics, and currently I think this is the best holiday event we've had. The items are good, but are they so good that they're worth making a fuss over?
I woke up yesterday morning eager to log in to the PTR and explore, only to find out that I would have to wait until the evening for such a foray into testing because of a new patch they were putting through. When the servers came up again and I finally logged in, I was surprised by what I saw, or rather what I didn't see.
Several male models in the game seem to be missing a leg. The current lack-of-leg conspiracy is spreading even to certain NPCs, a fact I can attest to because I witnessed poor Harrison Jones with the same affliction in the vestibule to Zul'Aman. To be specific, the illness affects certain boot models, causing them to vanish entirely from the character's left leg. When the boots are removed, the leg assumes it's normal opacity.
Does this mean someone is infecting footwear with invisibility? Will we log in one day to find our heads too have disappeared? We will keep a close watch on this crisis and report to you whatever grizzly details we encounter. Let it be known that WoW Insider will not stand idly by while characters' limbs begin to disappear.
It's time once again to celebrate our mageness with Arcane Brilliance, and this time we're going where I certainly have not gone before: the PTR.I finally got my character transfers to go through, and my immediate thought was to slip on into the PTR and check out how the changes to mage spells and talents affected my character with the addition of Patch 2.3.A lover of experiments, I figured one was in order, and so happily spent the morning blasting things in the name of gaming science.
The parameters of said experiment were the following:I used the same spec on both the PTR and the live server, and decided that for simplicity's sake I would record data on three separate types of spell damage: using only Fireball, using only Scorch, and using my normal spell rotation.Now, you'll notice that my spec is a basic fire spec, newly reclaimed after some time spent as a blended POM/Pyro mage.I have decent gear, not the best, not the worst.I would say that I wear middle-of-the-road items, some Tier 4, Spellstrike and Spellfire, and the enchants and gems I have are also of the meh category.They aren't terrible, but I haven't had the opportunity to deck out this mage with all the snazzy +12 spell damage gems I would like.So the following are the experiences of a mage with some lower-end raiding gear, a fire spec, and a curious nature.
The "!" and "?" quest-giver symbols now show up on the minimap very clearly.
Clicking on the new magnifying glass button gives you a list of all the different things you can track, including existing tracking abilities, as well as places to repair, buy ammo, aucions, banks, and so on.
Flight Masters you haven't met yet will always show up, whether you are tracking them or not.
Quest-givers' "!" symbols disappear from the minimap if their quest is too low-level for you (which is too bad if you are going back for more reputation).
For hunters: the various creature-tracking abilities now distinguish between neutral and hostile mobs, via yellow and red dots, respectively.
Druid root is very good for crowd control outdoors due to it working on any mob type, but most instances and raid zones are indoor only. In Burning Crusade the Druid class got a new spell, Cyclone, that worked indoors as well, but with a 6 sec duration (and diminishing returns), it was only effective in limited situations.
Druids have asked loud and long for more reliable crowd control abilities. And now it looks like they might get it.
Player Wisperella recently specced Moonkin and feels she would be more desirable in groups if the Druid Entangling Roots spell were usable indoors. With a 27 second duration and a 1.5 second cast time that can already be made uninterruptible through Talents, it could make Moonkin an integral part of many groups. Especially since Moonkin with their high armor won't get squished so easily trying to crowd control a mob that's pounding on them.
Community Manager Eyonix responded that an idea along these lines is "possible" in the Wrath of the Lich King expansion. He couldn't guarantee that it would happen, but let us know that he has been campaigning for it "a very long time."
Time will tell if this will be one of the handful of new abilities Druids will get in the expansion.
This just in: In addition to the latest Patch 2.3 updates we just noted, the various heroic instance keys will no longer require "Revered" reputation with the various factions around Outland. "Honored" is now sufficient to get you in to Heroic dungeons everywhere.
This raises myriad questions: Does this devalue the heroic instances at all, or does it simply open them up to more players? Is it a slap in the face to all those who had to grind their way to revered up to now, or is it just the natural progression of opening up content for more and more people to access as time goes by? Will anyone run regular Steamvents, Shattered Halls, or Shadow Labyrinth when they can just skip to the heroic versions? Will this get thousands (or millions?) of players who got burned out on the rep-grind back into the game?
The first MMO I got hooked on was EverQuest. The harsh nature of the game forced you to bond with other people. Some of those bonds have lasted longer than I played the game. I started EQ seven years ago, and while it's been at least a year since I've logged in, I still chat with people I met in-game even though they've quit as well.
It's time once again to celebrate our mageness with 
Druid root is very good for crowd control outdoors due to it working on any mob type, but most instances and raid zones are indoor only. In 
