The concept is nothing new, but it wasn’t introduced to World of Warcraft until last November’s patch 4.3. One man – appropriately known as The Mogfather – saw potential for extreme virtual wealth.

The Mogfather’s goal was to prove how profitable the transmogrification could be. Players aren’t able to sell any products created by the process, but that didn’t deter the entrepreneur. He started buying up auctions for cheap armour that looked cool: “When I looked at those armor sets that were primarily made up of lower-level items from The Burning Crusade and vanilla, my design eye kicked in,” the Mogfather told Joystiq. And he did all this before patch 4.3 landed.

Then, once the new feature hit, he relisted his designer items at a higher price based purely on their aesthetic appeal. “I took the pricing spread of fashion and brought it to my markets.”

People wanted to look cool, and were willing to pay top dollar for the privilege. 45 days later the Mogfather hit WoW’s gold cap of one million gold. Then he decided to give his fortune away: “In all seriousness, giving away that much gold has been pretty difficult,” says the Mogfather. He has experienced four insta-bans after all.

It started with a gift of 400K to a random player. Blizzard assumed the Mogfather was a gold seller and instantly banned him. Then he gave 100k to 100 players and got rebanned But over time he established some “fans” within Blizzard’s customer service team who realised his wealth and generosity were genuine. According to The Mogfather they would be the ones to release him from his “prison cell” after each major giveaway.

Eventually, the Mogfather started targeting his gifts to promote his business: “I gave half a million gold to players who strutted around in their transmog outfits. So in a way, it was my way of giving back to the community that I had taken all the gold from.” He was a bit like a modern day, fashion-conscious Robin Hood.

For more on The Mogfather’s exploits, read the full interview on Joystiq, or follow him on Twitter.

In our recurring Three-Way video segment, three editors go head-to-head-to-head as they take on the same section of the same game with unique strategies and play styles. Once they’ve put their methods to the test, the editors convene to survey their colleagues’ trials and exercise their inalienable right to copious wisecrackin’. In this edition, Josh, Chris and Tyler tackle a round of World of Warcraft capture-the-flag PvP in Warsong Gulch. Josh takes the role of bodyguard while Chris heals and Tyler focuses on running the flag. Check out the introduction above, and see how the team fared in the following videos…

The Bodyguard

The Healer

The Flag-Carrier

They also act as a weird microcosm of Blizzard’s wider strategy. The BattleTag system hopes to offer a more advanced form of Real ID, in which players can create a single identity that they can use in-game, as well as in the Blizzard store and across all of their game forums. The Battle.Net balance looks to create a currency of ‘Blizzard bucks’ in which funds earned in Diablo 3 can be used to buy mounts and game time in World of Warcraft, and could be extended to mods featured in the upcoming Blizzard Arcade. Blizzard are looking to connect their games into one unified Battle.Net universe from which there will be no escape.

We’ll get to see how that all unfolds over the next year or so, but for now, to celebrate the new year, Blizzard also announce a permanent price drop for WoW’s expansions in the store.

Merry Christmas PC Gamers! We’ve finally reached the end of our Christmas giveaway, it’s been a great ride, and we’ve given out some amazing prizes, but all good things must come to an end.

We’re going out with a bang though, giving your the chance to win a copy of World of Warcraft: Cataclysm signed by the dev team. That in itself would be an awesome prize, but we don’t do things by halves, and neither does Blizzard, and they’ve given us a monster bundle of goodies to go with it, including posters, t-shirts, action figures, comics, mousemats and more. It’s an amazing prize, and one lucky reader will win it.

Check inside for full details of what’s included, and a chance to win it.

Deep breaths people, this is a big list. Included in the prize is:

• A copy of the World of Warcraft: Cataclysm collector’s edition, complete with art book, soundtrack and trading cards. Signed by the dev team.
• Five World of Warcraft action figures.
• Battlenet Authenticator
• Wrath of the Lich King soundtrack
• Hardback World of Warcraft comic, collecting six issues.
• Steelseries QcK World of Warcraft mousemat.
• Two World of Warcraft Cataclysm T-Shirts.
• World of Warcraft baseball cap.
• Three World of Warcraft posters
• Inflatable Frostmourne sword.

 
We also have a few spare mousemats, posters and stickers to give away to particularly impressive runners up.

Let’s have a close up of that signed collector’s edition shall we.

Gorgeous. To enter, simply tell me:

Blizzard are planning to introduce Chinese Panda-men, so I want you to come up with a new race for World of Warcraft. Something as cool as Native American cow-men or Jamaican trolls.

If you win, you’ll get a private message and your name will appear in this week’s winners, be sure to contact us with your address for delivery. This competition is open to UK readers only, if you don’t claim your prize within three weeks of being notified, we will give it away to someone else.

Good luck everyone! And congratulations to all our competition winners, we’ll be shipping your prizes out soon.

The new talent system let you assign points into a tree of abilities every level or so. Instead, you’re given a menu of abilities that unlock at pre-defined intervals, and at those intervals you’ll pick one from three. It feels, immediately, less RPG-y that by not assigning points every level (or in Cata, every other level) you’re making less choices. But, I do agree with Ghostcrawler who pointed out in his blog that “you will have more choices that *matter*.”

His point, and the objective of the talent point revamp, is that WoW is dominated by cookie cutter builds. That their game, an RPG, doesn’t let players have choices in how they develop their character.

He’s right.

But in making that point, and in developing an alternative to talents, the WoW team have exposed one of the fundamental faults of WoW: that every system of character improvement is dominated by orthodox builds, and there’s practically zero potential for player choice.

At maximum level, where Ghostcrawler says that most of their players “spend the majority of their time,” character power and improvement is determined by the armour and weapons players pick up from dungeons, daily quests and PvP. Players then customise their armour and weapons through the in-game economy. Here’s the problem: progression at end-game demands stat increases. The stat increases come from armour upgrades, and are augmented by the addition of gems, enchants and reforges.

The Mists of Pandaria update is due to arrive next year.

Jewelcrafters produce gems that can added into sockets on items, improving base stats. Enchanters provide scrolls which are added onto the item, improving base stats. And some of those stats can be moved around via reforging.

Here’s the problem: those system seem to exist to support the in-game economy – not to give players choice.

Jewellrycrafting first: for every every build in the game, there are cookie cutter builds for the gems that you’ll add into your armour. If you’re playing a Feral Druid, you’ll want agility gems in every socket possible. Fury Warriors want strength wherever possible. Priests want intellect gems. The list goes on – but fundamentally, whatever your spec, you’ll want a specific gem to go in your slots.

Enchanting is exactly the same. Enchanting demands that you improve your weapon and armour according to what your spec demands. Each piece of armour will have an orthodox stat increase that you’ll want, and no choice as to what to apply. Every Warrior wants the same weapon enchant. Every Priest wants the same bracer enchant. There’s almost zero choice.

Finally, re-forging. Reforging is used to reduce stats that your spec needs on a piece of armour, and increase the stats of something you do need. For example, warlocks will first reforge their crit rating to hit rating until they reach the hit cap – the point in game where the maths and dice rolls at the heart of boss fights are weighted so that all of our warlock’s spells hit. From that point, our warlock will reforge any crit rating to haste. They’ll do fewer critical hits, but they will cast spells faster – meaning it’s a straight increase in their damage output.

The question is – will, or even should, the WoW developers rethink how player progression works at end-game?

The updated system might create more variation in WoW's population.

Personally, I think they should. I think the best decision they’ve made in years is the introduction of transmogrification in the latest patch. Transmogrification finally allows players the chance to wear any equipment they’ve gathered in the past to the very latest content – essentially making all of WoW a dressing room to create a cool look for your character. It doesn’t change your character’s power – what transmogrification does is transfer the stats of one item, onto the stats of another. But it does mean you’ve finally got the chance to look different to all the other max level warriors.

I’d like to see that customisation applied to player abilities as well. I think the route to get there is going to be really hard, and the only way I can see for the WoW team to get there is to introduce profession slots that have no statistical. For instance – could every meta-gem, rather than offering an increase in base stats – give an extra bonus ability? Could weapon enchants have a unique activated ability, rather than deliver a rigid increases in your damage output?

The model here should be engineering. Engineering is by far the most fun profession in your game. Engineers, if they choose to do so, can fire rockets from my hands, deploy shields, fire a boomerang that can collect loot from dead bodies from afar… All fun, useful stuff, but not directly about player power. However, all the engineering silliness is overshadowed because it conflicts with the enchanting slots. If I’m raiding, I don’t need my rocket gloves. The game’s designed in a way that I need that extra intellect. And that feels like a real shame.

When reading Ghostcrawler’s defense of WoW’s new talent system, I found myself nodding and agreeing. But I really want the team to go further. Much, much further.

World of Warcraft’s Hour of Twilight update has been detailed in full in the official patch notes on Battlenet. The update will finally give WoW players the chance to defeat Deathwing in the new Dragon Soul raid event. A new Raid Finder tool will let out-of-guild players get raiding parties together quickly, and the patch will add a collection of new games to Darkmoon Faire.

The Deathwing fight itself sounds incredible. It takes place in two parts, the first asks players to “parachute from soaring gunships to attack the monster mid-flight and attempt to weaken him by ripping away his armor.” The final confrontation happens deep in the Maelstrom.

In the run up to that encounter, three five-man dungeons will send players back in time to recover the Dragon Soul, the greatest weapon ever forged. Thrall thinks that may be the key to defeating Deathwing. Many enormous bosses have other ideas, and will try and squash you underfoot at every stage.

The patch also makes a huge number of balance changes and adds a ton of new loot to earn. Transmogrification NPCs will let you customise the appearance of your armour, Void Storage will give you plenty of long term cupboard space. To get you warmed up for the final fight, here’s an awesome picture of Deathwing impaled on a tower, from patch 4.3′s End Time dungeon.

Kotick also has doubts about how EA are going to pay George Lucas the massive licensing fees for the Star Wars uber-franchise. “Lucas is going to be the principal beneficiary of the success of Star Wars,” Kotick said. “We’ve been in business with Lucas for a long time and the economics will always accrue to the benefit of Lucas, so I don’t really understand how the economics work for Electronic Arts.”

Analysts are predicting that The Old Republic could pull 3 to 4 million World of Warcraft subscribers into the Star Wars universe, so Kotick is understandably looking for holes in the game. But publishers EA and developers BioWare are going to have to ensure there’s enough new content to keep players interested once they’re over the initial peak. Apparently EA needs at least 500,000 subscribers to make TOR profitable – we doubt they’re going to have many problems reaching that number.

Developers Blizzard are keen for feedback, so it’s essentially a beta test without letting people actually play the game. Check it out and let us know what you think in the comments.

You can read it all in the latest issue of PC Gamer UK, which should be on shelves shortly and arriving with subscribers right now. It’s also available online, digitally through Zinio and Apple Newsstand, and it should already be with subscribers now.

Our second enormous feature this month is the Christmas gift guide, in which the PC Gamer staff dress up in their Christmas outfits and bring you the best novelties for your oversized stocking. There’s graphics cards and gaming lights, touch screen gloves and a Minecraft pickaxe, Tim even dares taste the infamous Baconaise. He was rushed to hospital shortly afterwards. He will never eat bacon again.

In our previews section this month, Chris Thursten tells the story of twenty hours as a straight laced Jedi Consular in Star Wars: The Old Republic. Meanwhile Rich saves the galaxy from the killer spaceship robots in Mass Effect 3′s new multiplayer mode and Graham learns how to kill a man humanely in Introversion’s darkly comic Prison Architect. You’ll also find previews of King Arthur 2, The Secret World, Crusader Kings 2 and Ghost Recon Online.

In reviews, Graham gives his definitive verdict on epic man shooter Battlefield 3, while Tom Senior discovers his inner pimp in Saints Row: The Third. Richard Cobbett straps on his spandex to check re-review the now free to play City of Heroes before quickly descending into villainy in Payday: The Heist. We also manage footballs in Football Manager 2012, defend dungeons in Dungeon Defenders and murder greenskins in Orcs Must Die! You’ll also find verdicts on Might and Magic Heroes 6, Stronghold 3, Take on Helicopters, Renegade Ops, Deus Ex: The Missing Link, Serious Sam: The Random Encounter, Airline Tycoon 2, Train Simulator and Dead Rising: Off the Record. Finally, Steve Hogarty reviews The Sims 3: Pets.

Elsewhere in the issue, Adam Oxford checks out the best gaming laptops, Dan Griliopoulos uncovers the secret history behind the making of Football Manager. We also take a look at the Witcher 2′s 2.0 patch, and reminisce about Croft Manor in Tomb Raider 2.

Want to know what the PC Gamer staff has been playing lately? Well it’s a good job we have the Now Playing section then isn’t it? In his last ever PC Gamer article, Craig Pearson builds himself and his girlfriend little place in the country in Minecraft before becoming one with the force. Graham shares the shame of how his addiction to Fifa 12 tore him from Supreme Commander’s embrace, Richard Cobbett cries his way through Limbo’s looming arachnids, Tom Francis gets stuck in an infinite loop replaying the Diablo 3 beta over and over again and Tom Hatfield makes a meal of attempting to cook soup in Project Zomboid.

Would you like to get an extra stylish subscribers cover next time your order PC Gamer? Perhaps you’d like to get it before it even hits the shelves? Well help is at hand, because you can subscribe now and save money. You can also get a digi-mag from Apple’s Newsstand app or Zinio if you’re some kind of futuristic science person.

The item consists of a few fireworks, a “feat of strength” added to your achievements, a visual only tabard and a 7% bonus to experience and reputation gains while active. To get the package, you’ll need to log in between now and 3 December. “It’s been a truly incredible seven years, and we’d like to thank you all for joining us for yet another fantastic year,” say Blizzard, adding a request that players “please observe all goblin and gnome fire hazard warnings and celebrate responsibly.”

The downward trend comes in the wake of another reported subscriber loss three months ago, which saw the total subscribers dwindle to 11.1 million. 2011, then, has been a steady downhill slope. So, what’s changed? For one thing, Blizzard cites troubles in “the East,” but also notes that WoW’s still “one of the most popular online games in China, and remains by far the most popular subscription-based MMO in the world.”

Speaking during a conference call (via VG247), Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime also took aim at Cataclysm’s lack of truly engaging casual content and noted that Pandaria’s pet battle system looks to patch up that particular leak. However, for those less inclined to cuddly pandas or pocket-friendly monsters, Morhaime promised enough murderous Horde vs Alliance fun for the whole family. First, though, a certain dragon who’s also the apocalypse needs slaying, and the beginning of the end’s only a week away.

“It’s really not intended to go out and drive new user acquisition, that’s a whole other strategy,” Morhaime said of the upcoming update. “But it does drive engagement with the game, and so that will impact churn if we do it successfully, and will eventually drive winback, as players tell each other about the content they’re enjoying.”

So, are you still pumping precious monetary lifeblood into Blizzard’s MMO behemoth? Or has your extended stay in Azeroth finally come to a close?

PCG: Having even a semi-neutral race is a big deal for World of Warcraft. Does that indicate any change of direction for PvP in the game?
John Lagrave: We had meetings prior to the launch of Cataclysm, talking about what we wanted to do with the next expansion. We started kicking around a lot of ideas… In lots of those meetings, [we asked ourselves,] “What’s interesting about the panda? What do we want to try and do with that?” The idea of having a neutral race has been floated around [the development team] for quite awhile. We thought about the idea for many expansions. We talked about, “Well do we want to add a neutral race? Do we ever want you to choose [a side]? Do we want to leave the race neutral forever? What does it mean to leave them neutral?”

We went back from having Pandaren characters stay neutral. Let’s go back to that notion of faction warfare. We do a lot of the “evil, great big nasty villain” thing, but Mists of Pandaren really returns back to what classic World of Warcraft was. It was all about “You’re alliance or you’re Horde and I can’t stand you, I want to kill you.” There was all the raiding and stuff to do in there as well, but PvP and world PvP was awesome. You were in Hillsbrad and suddenly the whole place lit up. You were like, “It’s on. Its all on.” Everybody is calling everyone in; people are flying in. It was great fun.

PCG: During his presentation at BlizzCon, Chris Metzen said that in Mists of Pandaria, “The enemy is war itself.” That seems to indicate that the expansion will be about more calm or peaceful activities.
JL: It is really about Horde vs. Alliance. I think the calm before the storm is that you start off going through the starting area and then Pandaria itself. You’re going to kill things and find out about the rest of the world and find out how it works. I think that’s the calm: the leveling experience and the combat you’re going to do before you get to the challenges of the rest of the game. Pandaria is pretty tranquil and peaceful. The vibe is pretty cool in that respect. Then once you are done with that leveling experience, it becomes all about that ganking.

Not exactly the colors I had in mind when kicking ass

PCG: In the Wrath of the Lich King expansion, WoW went towards Wintergrasp style PvP because of how world PvP disrupted the early leveling process. Are you going back to world PvP because the benefit is worth the cost?
JL: I think we overestimated the damage. It certainly is disruptive. I remember my Rogue was in Undercity and I was doing something in the royal quarter. The Alliance rolled in and were killing everyone and I was like, “Oh man. I just want to drop off my quest. I’ll stealth out and … Oh, now I’m dead.”

So it is disruptive, there is no two ways about it. That said, it was also awesome. That is a very memorable experience for me. I don’t remember much of leveling in Arathi Highlands as much as I remember the event of being ganked in the royal quarter.

It will be disruptive to some, but not to everybody. I think we can live with that.

PCG: Do you think the new outdoor monsters will promote a lot of PvP?
JL: Absolutely. One of the focuses is to get more folks out into the world itself. Whatever we decided to put out there, monsters or events, that will drive folks out of the safety of the city. People tend to hole up and wait for the queue to pop. It makes sense because that’s the way the game works right now. It’s awesome when you’re a low level guy and get to see some dude in Tier 12 rolling through and you’re like, “Holy crap. What is that? That is the most badass thing ever.” That’s a great thrill. I hope we do a lot more of that.

Other pandas laughed, but deep down he just had to dance

PCG: Pandarens can play as Horde or Alliance. Is there anything in the gameplay or lore that address the fact that Pandaren are killing their own kind in PvP?
JL: One of the questions people ask about the Pandaren is, “What about in PvP and battlegrounds?”. What you really find out about PvP is that people really look at the tags and not many look at the silhouettes. They’re not asking, “Is that a whatever and should I attack it?”. In some cases, the silhouettes really are distinguishable like male taurens are easy to see, but really, in the thick of things, you are only looking at tags and the red names. We don’t think it will be too confusing.

You're barking up the wrong tree...

PCG: So pet battles are a fun twist on dueling PvP. How much time do you expect players to put into pet duels? Is this something a player could spend all their time on, or just toy with between raids?
JL: I think the idea is more between raids, downtime, and waiting for raids to start. Maybe waiting for the group to get back after a wipe. Hopping on for fifteen minutes and doing some pet battles. It is much more a side thing than it is an entire focus.

Now, there will be people that absolutely focus on getting all their pets and getting all their pets leveled up. We have a lot of pets in the game, over 100. If people enjoy it and want to spend the time on it then great! It’s seen as another interesting activity for you to do. You as a player don’t get specific benefits for leveling your pets: you don’t gain more power. Your pet has a higher level but it doesn’t matter, as a player. It won’t affect you in PvP or raids. Just something awesome to do.

Unless fully equipped, the little $10 lion can be passed on to friends and fellow guild members as a gift, or traded for in-game gold in the auction house. In the official Guardian Cub FAQ Blizzard say that they made the Guardian Cub tradeable to give players a way to get a new pet within the game without having to visit the pet store. It also happens to give players a legitimate way to sell their pet for gold within Azeroth, effectively bypassing external gold farmer operations.

“We’re ok with it if some players choose to use the Guardian Cub as a safe and secure way to try to acquire a little extra in-game gold without turning to third-party gold-selling services,” say Blizzard in the FAQ, adding “we also hope this change will help reduce the number of incidents of scamming via trading for invalid pet codes.”

“It’s important to note that we take a firm stance against buying gold from outside sources because in most cases, the gold these companies offer has been stolen from compromised accounts,” continues the statement. “While some players might be able to acquire some extra gold by putting the Guardian Cub in the auction house, that’s preferable to players contributing to the gold-selling “black market” and account theft.”

All other World of Warcraft pets will remain untradeable for now. It’ll be interesting to see if that changes if the Guardian Cub proves to be successful. While we ponder that, let’s look at this image of a Guardian Cub meeting a fully grown flying lion. D’awww.

We caught up with Blizzard lead system designer, Greg Street, at Blizzcon to discuss how the war for Pandaria will pan out. He tells us that it will start out as a peaceful land, but become increasingly war torn with the addition of each post-release patch.

“It’s more about just ramping up the conflict. When players get Pandaria the box or the digital download or whatever and they go in there there won’t be very strong Horde or Alliance influence in the continent. They’ll see a lot of Pandas, they’ll see a few Night Elves and Tauren and those but they won’t have big established bases or the kind of things we saw in Northrend,” says Street.

“Over time, say with our first major content patch, now both sides have established a bulwark and they’re starting to build up and then maybe in the second patch there’s a big open battleground where the Pandas are kind of caught in the middle of this big conflict between Horde and Alliance.”

“We did a little bit in Wrath of the Lich King where we introduced this whole new quest hub with the trial of the crusader and then again in Cataclysm with the molten front. It makes it feel like things are changing over time even though it’s not a gradual change, it’s just that the patch comes and then one day and now there’s all this new stuff there.”

Street agrees that the slowly growing conflict in Mists of Pandaria is quite a change of pace from the world-ending menaces introduced by Wrath of the Lich King and Cataclysm. “You have to have conflict, you have to have someone to fight, it’s not a peaceful game, but we thought it would be good to have a break, to have a beautiful environment instead of an oppressive destructive environment,” he says. “we thought that it was a question of pacing.”

The expansion will raise the level cap, add a new neutral race, The Pandaren, their homeland, Pandaria, a new Monk class and much more. Find out more in our post from Blizzcon on the World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria announcement.

For some reason, MMOs take to Halloween like machete-wielding psychopaths to teenagers on camping trips. Why? Who knows? But it’s stupidly fun, and you get to punch zombies in a videogame. That, like, almost never happens. Find out what the likes of WoW, Rift, World of Tanks, DC Universe, and many more are up to this Halloween after the break.

• World of Warcraft — WoW’s brought back Hallow’s End, which lets you “corral orphans” to earn candy currency, which is redeemable for holiday themed rewards. Or, if walking children down alleys isn’t up your alley, you can light your opposing faction’s Wickerman on fire and then rain on their parade with a hail of stink bombs. I guess the orphans are there to correct the karmic balance of you being such a huge jerk.
• Rift — Rift’s going with the tried-and-true tradition of a real-life costume contest. Winners in each of three categories (terrifying, beautiful, and bizarre) will pick up in-game items – including an owl! Also, Trion released this new Halloween-themed trailer, which is basically the best thing.
• Lord of the Rings Online — Harvestmath is in full swing, with Mad Bilbo’s Haunted Burrow is leading the charge. You can also win an Autumnfest Steed, which is great, because one can never have too many steeds. The real stars of LoTRO’s show, though, are all the player-hosted events, which Turbine has kindly highlighted.
• Age of Conan — Conan’s “Nights of Lost Souls” bring two solo quests and one team quest that see you hunting and ultimately having a pleasant tea party with three of the titular Lost Souls. Wait, did I say “tea party”? Silly me. But this is Conan. Honestly, what do you think you end up doing to them?
• Champions Online — This is already a game about running around in silly costumes; it may as well be Halloween year ’round. So Champions is having a real-life pumpkin-carving contest. Winner gets 1,000 promotional points, with second and third placers taking 500 a piece.
• DC Universe Online — The Scarecrow’s opened his “dark lair” to all the heroes in DC land. That, er, probably wasn’t the greatest idea on his part. You can probably see where this is going: Repeatedly pound the Scarecrow’s face into pumpkin mush, collect tokens, and exchange them for Halloween-themed trinkets and style items.
• City of Heroes — Sure, other MMOs celebrate Halloween, but City of Heroes may just trump them all. In addition to a brand new co-op event called Dr. Kane’s House of Horrors, there’s a two-part (zombie apocalypse and deadly apocalypse) monster invasion event, and good old-fashioned trick-or-treating.
• World of Tanks — For many years, I’ve petitioned for Party City to add a tank section. Giant, soulless hunks of steel and death, after all, are people too. Until society catches up with my forward-thinking ways, however, we’ll just have to make do with WoT’s costume contest, which sees players send in images of themselves playing the game while in costume. Winner gets a premium account for an entire year. 

We caught up with World of Warcraft’s lead systems designer, Greg Street at Blizzcon. He admits that most recent expansion Cataclysm got it a bit wrong. “In Wrath of the Lich King we heard from our players that the PvE content was too easy,” says Street. “So we were like okay, clearly what we need to do is make the PvE content harder, which we did for Cataclysm and then players told us ‘it’s too hard, I can’t handle it!’”

Blizzard’s solution in Mists of Pandaria is to introduce varying difficulty levels for different players. “Halo had like five difficulty levels, Civilisation had eight or something,” says Street. But Pandaria won’t introduce set difficulty levels per se, instead delivering a range of experiences within Pandaria’s world. “On the hard end we want it to be at the hard end of Cataclysm, but then on the easier end we want it to be on the level of Lich King.”

How do you apply difficulty levels to such a varied game? By setting fire to players. “On a harder boss we might say ‘if you stand in the fire you will die, you cannot stand in the fire’” says Street. “On easier difficulty levels we might make it so you can stand in there for a while and with enough healing you can maybe just ignore it completely and stand in there, or you have enough time for someone to say, ‘Hey dude, you really should get out of that.’”

In addition, Pandaria will feature a new “challenge mode”, where dungeons become competitive arenas. According to Street, the wider audience of players aren’t interested in multiple attempts at taking a boss down. “They just want to kill the boss, and for them that’s kind of the end of the story for their character and they’re totally happy for that. It was really a very different experience from the traditional raiding model and so we’re trying to offer something for both groups of players.”

Blizzard have released videos of three of Mists of Pandaria‘s nine new dungeons. The word ‘dungeon’ is slightly misleading. These take place in huge jade palaces nestles among swathes of cherry-blossom. The fly-throughs give us a good idea of what Pandaria itself will be like, heavily influenced by far-eastern architecture and geography, but all shiny and WoWed up.

These dungeons are set on the new continent, which has been hidden beneath a mystical mist for centuries. The once peaceful isle is about to be torn apart. When the mists lift, the Alliance land on the Northern shore, the Horde land on the Southern shore, and they’ll presumably have a great big fight in the middle. See more of the new continent in the other two videos, embedded below.

And Episode 5 doesn’t end there – it may be our biggest yet, so now is an especially superb time to find out how PC Gamer itself has built on its classic roots by downloading the free PC Gamer Digital base application and checking it out. We’ll see you there!

Here’s more on what you’ll find in Episode 5…

PCG Plays: Diablo III
Editors Dan Stapleton and Tyler Wilde jump into the Diablo III beta for a click-happy go at each of its five unique character classes: Witch Doctor, Wizard, Barbarian, Demon Hunter, and Monk. See which were Dan and Tyler’s favorites, and get prepared for your first run when the game releases early next year.

Tribes: Ascend – GameView Interactive Preview
Survey the upcoming free-to-play shooter Tribes: Ascend in a self-guided, interactive tour of one of its expansive maps, and get a strategic head start before the beta launches!

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive – The Remaking of Dust
See the reimagining of Counter-Strike’s most iconic map in our interactive comparison of CS: Source and Global Offensive, with commentary from PC Gamer Senior Editor Evan Lahti.

Art of the Shooter – Interactive Gallery
Discover the artwork which became the foundation for some of most celebrated PC shooters ever made, with insights from the artists and developers themselves. Inspect every detail, or sit back and soak it all in – it’s up to you!

World of Warcraft Protip: Critter Achievements
Learn how to snag three World of Warcraft Achievements with ease! It all depends on how much malice you harbor for small animals.

A bamboo curry’s worth of information on World of Warcraft’s panda-based race has hit the internet. In addition to Blizzard confirming details of the new animation system, an official website has launched and a video of the bears in action has leaked.

The video, sneakily shot by MMO-Champion, shows Pandaria’s starting area, as well as the impressive animations that bring the cuddly warriors to life. According to Blizzard art director, Chris Robinson, the Pandaren have ten times the facial bones as other races, making them more mobile and expressive. That’s good news even if you’re not planning to play as a panda. Blizzard say they’ll be retro-fitting the tech to the old races, eventually.

Robinson said that “I want to stress as well that it’s a massive undertaking to go back and do this. And to a lot of people it’s something that won’t be considered shiny new content.” Blizzard are also concerned about maintaining the “look and feel of the original models,” and want to find a way of revamping the old races that won’t put off players who have spent years with their characters.

One way or another, Mists of Pandaria is going to be quite something, but what do you think of it? Did the very mention of a race of pandas send you running for the ‘cancel subscription’ button, or do you dig the cuddly new race? If you’re a lapsed subscriber, will Pandaria tempt you back into Azeroth? And what about all the other announcements at Blizzcon this year? Are you tempted by the WoW Annual Pass, and what do you think of Blizzard DOTA? And what about those new StarCraft 2: Heart of the Swarm units? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.

For the lowdown on Blizzcon 2011, check out our day one round-up, and the day two Blizzard DOTA details, Blizzard Arcade news and overview of StarCraft 2: Heart of the Swarm’s new units.

It’s not all been about World of Warcraft, either. New units have been revealed for StarCraft 2: Heart of the Swarm, new trailers have appeared for Blizzard DOTA and Diablo 3, and we’ve learned something new about each one of Blizzard’s upcoming titles. Below you’ll find our guide to day one of Blizzcon. Get all the latest at a glance.

World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria

 

 
World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria expansion announced, with news of a new playable race, a new Monk class, new zones and a raised level cap.

World of Warcraft Annual Pass launched. Subscribers get a full, free digital copy of Diablo 3, a mount and access to the Mists of Pandaria beta.

Here’s the World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria Blizzcon trailer.

And the first Mists of Pandaria screenshots.

The races, creatures and zones of Pandaria are detailed at the World of Warcraft preview panel.

An overview of WoW’s new Monk class

The new World of Warcraft Pet battles system brings Pokemon to World of Warcraft and commits Owen to a lifetime of addiction.

Here’s an overview of WoW’s new Battlegrounds

Rich takes a look at the Pandarens because he loves pandas and secretly is one

More on WoW’s new Challenge Dungeons and PVE scenarios

Diablo 3

 

 
The stunning CGI Diablo 3 trailer from the opening ceremony

Blizzard say Diablo 3 has “something like 2.8 trillion builds,” and want to encourage players to experiment with more of them

Normal, Nightmare, Hell and Inferno difficulties detailed. 70% of items will appear beyond Normal difficulty

Diablo 3 is getting team deathmatch, achievements and battle standards

StarCraft 2: Heart of the Swarm

 

 
The official list of new and retired units for StarCraft 2: Heart of the Swarm emerges

Heart of the Swarm has a fascinating story evolution system

The Heart of the Swarm beta is “months, certainly not years away.”

The StarCraft community will get to decide when esports tournaments shift from Wings of Liberty to Heart of the Swarm

Blizzard DOTA

 

 
Beyond its introduction at the opening ceremony, not much was seen of Blizzard DOTA today, but day two’s panel should reveal plenty more. We’ll be covering it live when it kicks off later today.

PVE Scenarios

These are short instances made for a few players, designed to replace open-world group quests. These will be more epic events, held within tiny instances, that players can participate in while leveling in open world areas.

They will scale with player level, so that high level players can go back and complete any PVE scenarios that might’ve missed. Because they’re designed to be casual, there will be no role requirements in the tool that you queue up with, and the devs said that it’s designed to be short enough that you can complete one while waiting for your dugneon/battleground queue to pop.

As a part of their plan to let players progress through whatever content they want to play, these will reward Valor Points (the currency used to purchase high-level gear).

The first example the devs gave for a hypothetical Scenario was a Goldshire scenario for low level human players to kill the notorious Hogger elite NPC. This would be a staged event that tasked you with killing 35 gnolls in the area. Once you do that you get a task to escort a human guard. He leads you to Hogger, who is the final boss you must kill. You take him down and you’re done–nice and easy.

The second example was designed to feel more like a PvP experience, without actually pitting you against real players. The first task would be to kill 50 horde soldiers, then you assault their base to destroy 5 catapults and a few towers. After that, the Horde leader, General Drake emerges from the keep and you have to take him down.

The two examples feel a bit grindy, but these were just hypothetical examples, so hopefully the real ones will have more creative tasks for you to do.

No time to kill, just dragons

Challenge Dungeons

Dan, our office’s current Orcs Must Die leaderboard master, is going to love this one. Challenge Dungeons are essentially time trials that have you race through dungeons as fast as you can for bragging rights and some sweet-looking loot.

Each challenge dungeon will have a leaderboard that lets you compare your best scores against your friends, guildmates, or your entire server. All of your gear will be scaled down to a standardized level during these challenge runs, so you won’t have the time-old “well, your gear was just better than mine” excuse when your buddy bests your score and bumps you off the top of the leaderboard.

But not all rewards are social (although the best ones are), so there are also rewards for people that achieve the Gold, Silver, and Bronze medal times. Those will reward Valor Points to buy new gear, as well as unlock a unique set of gear, exclusive to Challenge Dungeons, that has no stats on it but looks awesome. The purpose is to let you use the new Transmogrify system to show off your awesomeness with the gear’s appearance.

I can’t wait to compare challenge run times with my guildmates. Bring it, Dan!

Pandarans are a bit more martial than their real-life counterparts, but they do share some similarities in their provisional racial powers. They love eating, and get a 100% stat benefit from food items. Their appetite necessitates culinary ability, and to reflect that, Pandarans have their cooking skill increased by 15. ‘Quaking Palm’ works as an active racial ability, putting enemies to sleep for 3 seconds. They’re also ‘Bouncy’, reducing fall damage by 50%, so you can spend your evenings hurling a fluffy object off a cliff without feeling too bad.

Pandaria’s Chinese theme extends into enemy design: you’ll be fighting brand new Jinyu (koi-carp men), Hozu (mischievous monkey men), Mantid (sentient insect men), Mogu (ogre-ish men), Verming (tiny cute rabbit men), and Sha (hulking manifestations of negative energy… men).

The most important element of the new race? They love beer. One of the new continent’s first dungeons is Stormstout Brewery. First guild to organise a piss-up in it wins.

Update: Blizzard’s J. Allen Brack announced during an interview after the panel that the dev team wants to get the pet system playable on the WoW mobile app. He said “it would be a huge undertaking,” but assured that the team has talked about it.

One of the main goals of the system is to give players a new type of activity to do in World of Warcraft and to make it accessible to as many players as possible. While some of the vanity/companion pets will be excluded from the system, they said that “almost all pets” will be usable in the new combat system.

Pet battles are very similar to pokemon duels: they’ll be turn-based battles between teams of 3 pets per player (PVE and PVP). Pets gain XP from battle and can level up to level 35, unlocking up to 6 abilities along the way. Each pet can take 3 of those 6 abilities into battle each time. You’ll also be able to name all of your companion pets now (My winter gnome servants shall be called Interns).

It’s going to be a little more difficult to collect pets now. The ones you already have should almost all work in the new battle system, but there will also be Wild pets out in the world. You’ll need to track them down and battle them with your existing pets to beat it down and capture it to train it as your own (sound familiar?). But finding these wild pets may be the trickiest part. The devs said that wild pets will have complex variables that control when they appear in the world. One example they gave was that one pet might only appear in Terrokar Forest, while it’s raining in the nighttime. Wild pets will have random stats when you capture it, so you may want to keep recapturing the same wild pets until you get one with stats you want.

The good news is that all those captured pets won’t go to waste while you wait for the best one. wild pets will be able to be traded and sold on the auction house for in-game currency. More importantly, Blizzard is “working very hard” to make sure that pets will be account-wide, so that you won’t have to capture them on multiple characters.

And you won’t be scouring Wowhead for secret tips on how to find these pets. Blizzard will be adding an official Pet Journal in the game that will show you all the pets in the game, along with their abilities, and where to find them all in the world. This will work similar to the dungeon journal.

You will also be able to earn items to boost pets, and you can track down pet masters around the world to challenge them. If you can best them, you’ll earn a special ability that you can brign into battle to help your pets win.

This system sounds incredibly deep and complex–it sounds like, if you wanted to, you could pretty much spend all of your WoW time in this new pet battling system. Pet masters, ready yourself!

Blizzard has 4 main goals for this expansion

• Give players new things to do, not just new raid bosses. New types of activities.
• Get players to leave cities and spend their time out in the world. To do so, they’ll be adding a lot of outdoor raid bosses, like old times
• More options to progress your character. You can get valor points through daily quests, pvp, raids, etc. But raids will still be faster.
• No more cookie cutter builds in talent trees. (We’ve heard that before, but hopefully they’ll have good plans for it

Mists of Pandaria details

• It will be a single continent, like Outland and Northrend (not like Cataclysm’s content)
• That new continent will have an auction house
• Alliance and Horde will crashland there during a naval battle, and then both try to take over the land for resources (just like every piece of land they find)
• Pandaren will be neutral form 1-10, and then you make a choice
• The island is on the back of a giant turtle

Other people on the island:

• Jinyu: race of wise fish-men. Can stick staff in the water to hear what’s going on around them
• Hozu: wise monkey-men who stand on two feet.
• Verming: “the new kobold” — it’s a cuter rabbit-type varmints that are tunneling underneath the farm land and stealing vegetables.
• Mantid: sentient insect race that’ve lived on the island, but cut off by a giant wall from the pandas, and have begun to go a bit crazy.
• Mogu: the big villains, they used to control the island before the pandas kicked them out. They’re back and they’re pissed. Looks like orc/ogre hybrid
• Sha are demon-dragon looking spirit creatures that manifest anytime bad thigns happen on the island, lore-wise. Will be major

Jade Forest zone:

• Alliance and Horde entry zone
• Horde teams with Jinyu, alliance with the Hozu
• Because we’re fighting with each other and with the wildlife, our violence will start to make the Sha appear, which pisses the peaceful Pandaran off.
• This is the theme of the first dungeon: outdoor beautiful mountains/valleys has been taken over by the Sha. You have to go in there and cleanse them out to undo the corruption you’ve caused
• The closest look is probably Stranglethorn Vale or ZG.

Valley of the Four Winds:

• Zone in two partsnorth side is panda farms, south side is jungle
• Players can choose to go one way or the other. Can come back later, but don’t have to.
• They want the dungeons to “fit in the zone” — physically see it, give it a presence in the zone. This dungeon is Stormstout Brewery
• This zone will have your first interaction with the mantid insect race
• The wall of the island borders this zone, and they’re beaking through a bit

Playable Pandaran race info:

• You start out neutral, and at level 10 you get to pick Horde or Alliance
• They can be everyhing but Warlock, Death Knight, Druid, and Paladin. They are the only race so far announced that can be Monks
• Racial ability: increased stat benefits from food
• Racial ability: Cooking skill increased
• Racial ability: Rested experience lasts twice as long
• Racial ability: BOUNCY – you take 50% less fall damage
• Racial ability: You put a target to sleep for 3 seconds

• Mists of Pandaria will have 9 new dungeons
• 6 of those dungeons will be in Pandaria itself
• Many of them will take players indoor and outdoors to keep it interesting
• There will be 2 more classic dungeons redesigned as heroic dungeons: Scholomance and Scarlet Monastery
• Mogu and the Mantid will be featured in the 3 raids that will be available at launch
• The Raid Finder will be available for all raids, meaning that there will be 3 diffculty levels (Raid Finder, normal, and Heroic)

Here’s the debut trailer for the new World of Warcraft expansion, Mists of Pandaria which was shown about half an hour ago during the opening ceremony of Blizzcon 2011. The 90 minute Mists of Panderia panel is kicking off RIGHT NOW, so I’ll be bringing you more info from there momentarily. Meanwhile, look! Pandas! In World of Warcraft!

Mists of Pandaria will also add new PVE scenarios, a pet battle system and a new talent system.

In the new expansion, Alliance and Horde will take their conflict to Pandaria, a “land of balance and harmony and beauty, and hope.” Previous World of Warcraft expansions have added colossal evil forces, in Mists of Pandaria “the true enemy of the franchise is going to be war itself.”

New zones in Panderia include “the lush Jade Forest, treacherous Kun-Lai Summit, and other exotic areas of Pandaria designed for high-level characters.”

This is mad. But amazing. The Pandaren were initially created as an April fools joke for Warcraft 3, but have since taken on a life of their own. A pandaren pet has previously appeared in WoW, and the lore has plenty of occasional references to the brewmaster. Chris Metzen just told the Blizzcon interviewers that Blizzard considered putting the the pandas into the Burning Crusade expansion, but never quite made it in. Now seems like a much more sensible time, especially considering WoW’s launch in China.

The World of Warcraft panel will be kicking off shortly, we’ll hear more very soon.

The Diablo 3 Collector’s edition was also announced during the opening ceremony. The big boxed edition will contain an art book, a collector’s edition soundtrack, behind the scenes DVD documentary a DIABLO SKULL and a 4 GB USB stick. There’s still no release date for Diablo 3.

One game that certainly will be there will be Diablo 3, will Blizzard add new features to the beta? Perhaps they’ll take some time to tackle the controversial Diablo 3 real money auction house at the Diablo 3 open Q&A panel.

Starcraft II: Heart of the Swarm will be present too. Blizzard have recently been teasing Starcraft units for the game, and with a major tournament taking place at Blizzcon, it would seem the sensible place to unveil them. E-sports enthusiasts will have a lot to look foward too, as we’ll also be seeing the GSL finals reach their thrilling conclusion.

It’s been a long time since we heard anything about Blizzard’s Battle.net marketplace, for selling mods and maps via Starcraft 2. However with Starcraft Universe on show, we could be seeing more from it soon.

Blizzard Dota is also on the schedule. With League of Legends enjoying phenomenal success, and Valve’s DOTA 2 on the way Blizzard could be looking to get their own entry into the MOBA genre on display soon.

Finally, there’s the outside bet, the mysterious Project Titan. It’s unlikely that we’ll hear anything about this closely guarded secret, but who knows? It’s Blizzcon. Anything could happen.

What do you expect to see at this year’s Blizzcon? Alternatively, what are you hoping for?

The sale is set to run from today through to November 14, and the blade that once housed Steamwheedle Cartel, the home of our enormous and ever-growing WoW guild, is on the list. If you’re a long-time WoW player, all of the adventures you’ve had in Azeroth once likely took place in one of these bits of hardware. It’s a great keepsake for dedicated fans, and they’re helping charity as well. How much would you pay for a WoW blade?

Update: Sorry for the trouble our international fans had launching PC Gamer Digital. We patched it up with Valve’s help and everything is good to go now, so you can jump in whenever you’re ready! If you have any other technical issues, please contact support at pcgdigitalsupport@pcgamer.com. We’d also love to hear what you think about Digital in general, and you can tell us by e-mailing pcgdfeedback@pcgamer.com. Thank you for your patience and enthusiasm!

In this episode, you’ll explore the brilliant L4D2 map Helm’s Deep Reborn in an interactive 360-degree strategy guide, join us on a daring Warsong Gulch flag run in our World of Warcraft Three-Way, learn how to shoot down a helicopter in Arma 2 (seriously, helicopters are jerks), and more. Read on for all the details…

L4D2: Helm’s Deep Reborn – Interactive GameView Strategy Guide
Explore our annotated virtual guide to Helm’s Deep Reborn, Team Chivalry and SeriouS Samurai’s epic LOTR-based survival map for Left 4 Dead 2.

World of Warcraft – Three-Way!
Josh, Chris, and Tyler form an almost-cohesive unit as they play a nailbiting round of capture-the-flag in Warsong Gulch.

Arma 2 Protip – How to Shoot Down a Helicopter
In this week’s Protip, Senior Editor Evan Lahti walks us through his elegant method of dealing with pesky helicopters in Arma 2.

PCG Plays: Dungeons of Dredmor
This week, PC Gamer editors Evan Lahti and Chris Comiskey play indie roguelike Dungeons of Dredmor. See why this $5 RPG has devoured so many hours of their precious, precious gaming time.

Then vs. Now – Comparison Gallery
Oh, how things have changed! In this slider gallery, originals go head-to-head with their modern counterparts.

“Thinking in terms of allowing the public to entertain each other? That’s amazing. That’s amazing business. You’re all sticking around for each other. We see systems – for instance, Warcraft III – the guys who developed DotA, that thing took on a life of its own. They used this toolset, and suddenly it was a whole new way to engage RTS audiences. If you can provide toolsets or whatever game contrivance to allow people to entertain each other, that’s a hell of a spot to be in,” Blizzard lore lord Chris Metzen said during a panel at GDC Online.

“It’d be really cool if I could design my own castle and have people run through it. It’d be fun if I could design this big, epic quest line and let my friends run through it. The thing you run up against is quality level. With WoW, you’re going to get millions of submissions. There’s a lot of creative people out there. But maintaining a level of editorial control and quality control is just logistically impossible. But it’s something we talk about from time to time. I think it would be amazing if we were able to open this thing up.”

Among many, many other things, Metzen also discussed what it’s like to be adding a new IP to Blizzard’s holy trifecta after all these years – and the almost suffocating level of pressure that sometimes entails.

“Obviously, I can’t get into what our thinking is in particular [with Titan],” he said. “But if you’re fortunate enough to have that hit game that’s beloved by X number of people, that expectation of performing again or outdoing the competition that’s also learned from your big hit can become very, very intense.”

“It’s a bitch,” he added, resulting in uproarious laughter from the audience.

“But there’s glory to be found – a testing or refinement process where you have to look soberly at the game. Projecting ahead ‘Well, what would be the next level?’ What did we learn from this one? And what will we absolutely never do again? You have to take an exhaustive audit about what worked and what didn’t and really try to envision something that may be radically outside your comfort zone because no one’s ever tried. But it can be a very daunting process.”

And there’s plenty more where that came from. I was fortunate enough to sit down with Metzen after the panel for an exclusive interview, and you’ll see that in the coming days.

Cute pets in WoW? That’s nothing new.

But pets that can be bought for real-life cash and then traded in the in-game Auction House? That sounds like a currency to me. A proxy currency that might provide WoW with the missing link between real-world money and your Azeroth gold. Is WoW going a bit Diablo 3?

There’s more to the $10 Guardian Cub pet than first meets the eye. Whereas most WoW pets are classed as BoA items (Bind on Account), the Guardian Cub pet is classed as a BoE (Bind on Equip) item. That means you can buy a set of Guardian Cubs even if you have no intention on activating them for personal use in-game.

After purchasing the furry little bugger, there’ll be a brief cooldown period before you can sell it on, but you’ll eventually be able to trade them with other players for in-game currency. You’re free to pack your inventory with the little critters too, though they will take up one slot each. You’ll need a separate cub for each character on your account, unlike old-school pets – who are tied to accounts, not individual characters.

The Guardian Cub will cost $10. But how much will they sell for on the Auction House? Only players can decide.

Blizzard say the main reason for the new, tradable breed of pets is so they can be obtained in-game through trading or friendly gifting among friends. Fair enough.

The devs also list another reason though: “We also hope this change will help reduce the number of incidents of scamming via trading for invalid pet codes.”

Yes, the Guardian Cub might be a strokable, wide-eyed beast, but he’s actually designed to combat account thieves and bring down the sketchy world of gold-farming. What a cheeky chappie.

Blizzard are honest about the hidden potential: “While our goal is to offer players alternative ways to add a Pet Store pet to their collection, we’re ok with it if some players choose to use the Guardian Cub as a safe and secure way to try to acquire a little extra in-game gold without turning to third-party gold-selling services.”

The real-life cost of a Guardian Cub will stick at $10, but the in-game value will fluctuate depending on the state of the auction house. Blizzard stress that the Cub is not a refundable item, or a sure-fire way to recieve gold for cash, but a step towards reducing the negative impact of gold farmers:

“Please keep in mind that there’s never any guarantee that someone will purchase what you put up for sale in the auction house, or how much they’ll pay for it. Also, it’s important to note that we take a firm stance against buying gold from outside sources because in most cases, the gold these companies offer has been stolen from compromised accounts. While some players might be able to acquire some extra gold by putting the Guardian Cub in the auction house, that’s preferable to players contributing to the gold-selling black market and account theft.”

You could feasibly make a living through Diablo 3's in-game transactions.

Jay Wilson recently confirmed that any cash earned in Diablo 3 will be transferrable to other Blizzard game.

That means you could unlock Diablo 3 items through natural play, before selling them on the in-game auction house. You could then use your earnings to buy a bunch of Guardian Cubs and sell those cubs on the WoW auction house for gold – thus converting Diablo gold into WoW gold like some form of futuristic Blizzard alchemy.

I’ve got a feeling that the apparently innocent Guardian Cub could end up having a massive effect on Azeroth, a bit like horse armour, or Eve Online’s monocle (mentioned by the CCPs CEO in his recent apology).

Oh loot. When did you get so complex? What’s your take on the Guardian Cub?

The undisputed king of the MMO hill has evolved and changed over the years, sure, but tweaks and landmasses do not a new game make. That, however, is why Trion Worlds boss Lars Buttler is so thrilled that his game and others are finally shaking things up – even if only a bit.

“I think nobody can ever predict that there’s another WoW because WoW basically had, for seven years, no competition,” Buttler told IndustryGamers. “There was nobody launching that created an experience that was even remotely comparable – never as deep, never as polished. Now that has changed, obviously. Rift is out there as the most serious competitor they ever had, and now with Rift updating and evolving in the most dramatic way, that is changing everyday. But our goal is not necessarily to create one giant product that everybody has to play, but to give people choice.”

Trion Worlds is hedging its bets on that large degree of choice with its newly announced development platform, Red Door. Essentially, it’ll allow developers to use Rift’s backend tech to power their games while also functioning as a sort of social network for players. To Buttler, then, there’s no MW3 vs BF3-style struggle to sell the most and trash-talk the loudest. Bring ‘em on, he says. The more, the merrier.

“I’m actually extremely excited about what’s happening in our space. When we started five years ago, there was only WoW. Now there’s Rift as an absolute serious contender, with the most dynamic gameplay ever. Then there’s Star Wars, then there’s End of Nations coming. Then there’s Defiance coming ahead of Star Wars. So we’re not afraid at all. We actually look forward to it with great excitement. It makes our point.”

Which sounds fantastic. Now I just need to set aside, oh, roughly my entire mortal life to play all of them.

Mark reckons massively multiplayer games need to evolve dramatically if they’re to be successful. “We’ve got to break out of the mould.” said the CEO. “If I see another action MMO combat game with exclamation points over quest givers, I’m going to commit seppuku! We’re pouring so much money down a very stale formula. It’s an illusion to say that “Oh, that’s safety. It used to be safety but it’s not anymore.”

According to Mark, creative indies might be MMO’s saving grace: “Gamers are ready to try different things. It’s time to take risks and I’m really looking towards the independents to try that. I want to see the Notch of MMOs. Please don’t spend $200 million on another WoW clone because it just doesn’t do anybody any favours and you’re going to lose your shirt.”

Firefall is attempting to meld the FPS and MMO genres when it gets released this December. I asked Mark why more developers haven’t experimented with two of the most popular genres on PC. He describes a venn diagram to help explain his theory: “I used to draw what I’d call “The Circle of Suck”. Tabula Rasa came out and Hellgate: London came out, and I drew one circle that said “MMO gameplay.” I drew another circle that said, “shooter gameplay.” Where they intersect – that little sliver – is full of suck.”

“We were trying to blend the two genres, but it wasn’t fun. So [with Firefall] we picked one or the other. Let’s get the shooting right, and selectively add in the MMO elements. Let’s take the idea of open world sandbox play and feature hundreds of players instead of four or eight player co-op. Let’s take towns, crafting and resources and combine it all together. And that group would be a much more fun game when we started playing it than anything we’d tried before.”

Firefall is due for release this December. The complete interview with Mark will feaure in issue of PC Gamer UK. Read our Firefall preview or watch the gameplay footage embedded below for more. Have you ever experienced the “Circle of Suck?” Did it suck?

Andrew Kuhar: When making the posters, I knew that Bosses like C’Thun and Ragnaros are so visually recog­nizable that I didn’t want to stray too far from what most players probably remember about them. I remember seeing server-first Ragnaros-kill anno­uncements all the time, with guilds posing for a picture around the fallen Hand of Sulfuras.

At the same time, C’Thun’s giant eye was, and still is, absolutely terrifying. I had some conceptual fun in the C’Thun poster by making the text (comprised of various phrases he whispers to you as you descend underground) look like a vision test. That sort of juxtaposition—a sentiment against an image—also allowed me some liberties to acknowledge both the old and new worlds in the other two posters.

In the case of Shadowfang Keep and Deadmines, the spotlight fell on Lord Godfrey and Vanessa VanCleef. Both are new characters, but are busy filling in the shoes of two old-world veterans: Archmage Arugal and Edwin VanCleef.

The SFK poster is an image of the keep’s silhouette at a distance. Godfrey’s words are quite true: he replaced the only human character that was left in the instance.

The in-game flashback of a young Vanessa seeing her father assassinated is very moving, and I decided to tie that into who she becomes later in life: a radical movement leader in the Deadmines dungeon. The poster is definitely the most abstract of the bunch. The only thing drawing the scene is Edwin’s blood: in a pool beneath him, smeared from the battle, across his sword, and on Vanessa’s hands. As a small homage and foreshadowing, I drew in the red bandanna worn by Defias members, which is now worn around Vanessa’s face.

If you’d like to see more of Kuhar’s art, you’re in luck. His portfolio/website is readily available at http://andrewkuhar.com, and you can read his various game design musings at his blog Digitalchemy. You can also follow him on Twitter here.

Now the Bioware doctors have had a chance to respond. Their upcoming MMO, Star Wars: The Old Republic, will require subscription costs identical to the already-established World of Warcraft. That’s $14.99/£8.99/€12.99 per month.

Speaking to Industry Gamers about Smedley’s comments, Bioware’s Greg Zeschuk seems to think that gamers will always be willing to cough up for quality: “Those are very kind words in a way. It’s interesting – I think there will always be a place for premium content at a premium price and that’s one of the differences.”

Greg reckons brand loyalty is also a factor: “Free to play is very much about trial, about ‘Hey, I don’t know what this is, I don’t have confidence that it’s any good, but I’m willing to take a look at it,’ versus ‘I know this is good, from a trusted source, and it’s the biggest license in the world.’ So it’s a different value proposition.”

WoW's numbers are dropping, but it's still the biggest subscription MMO around.

Fellow Bioware bigwig, Ray Muzyka had his say too: “There’s more competition for entertainment dollars now than ever before from social and play for free, and all sorts of entertainment, which I think is actually really healthy from an entertainment industry perspective.”

Muzyka also thinks quality of product is the most important aspect: “I agree with Greg that there’s a space for a certain number of premium products that are subscription based or whatever the premium pricing model is. But they have to merit it, they have to earn that from a consumer trust perspective and delivering and exceeding expectations. I think The Old Republic is definitely in that triple-A premium category. That’s the feedback reading from the players and data testing.”

Has free to play changed the way you spend cash on games? Will you be laying down a subscription for The Old Republic? Let’s talk cold hard cash in the comments.

Even the bulk costs are identical: a three month subscription comes to $13.99/month (paid as a one-time charge of $41.97/£25.17/€35.97), while a six month subscription costs $12.99 per month (paid as a one-time charge of $77.94/£46.14/€65.94).

So: here’s a good game for your Saturday. You can afford to pay for one subscription game per month. What do you pay for?

Minecraft and World of Warcraft combined? Surely such a thing would be the most popular game in the world, no? That’s the thinking behind this clever parody video that was recently posted to Reddit. The video charts the progression of ‘BillyDaMan’ from lowly level one wolf hunter to his first five man dungeon raid. There’s dozens of jokes packed into it, all of them very familiar to anyone who has played WoW for any length of time. My favourite is when immediately after transmogrifying himself to look ‘unique’ two identical characters run past Billy in the background.

Sadly it’s been mostly done through editing rather than a fully fledged mod, so we won’t be getting a chance to actually play Mine of Worldcraft ourselves, just watch it. Still, a man can dream.

Each individual track costs $0.99 and albums cost $9.99. Stick the StarCraft 2 music on in the background while preparing dinner this evening, and use your skyrocketing actions per minute ratio to make a feast fit for a Zerg brood.

The announcement reveals plans for two more World of Warcraft expansions over the three years. Could one of these be the Mists of Pandaren expansion we’ve previously heard rumours of? In addition, the first expansion to Diablo 3 will be expected by the end of 2014. The two planned Starcaft 2 expansions, Heart of the Swarm and Legacy of the Void, are expected in the same period.

By choosing to refer only to ‘proven properties’ Blizzard have left the door open for a new ‘unproven property’ to be released in that same period, such as the long rumoured Project Titan.

Tom says that PCs are on the up, and that the “big spike” and “bigger dip” in player numbers post-Cataclysm is not a cause for concern. This is good news for everyone.

“In a lot of ways I see the PC as potentially a re-emerging sort of platform,” says Tom. “I think that the PC has always offered ways to approach games that you can’t necessarily approach on console, even if it’s just because of UI restraints.”

Tom understands the strengths behind our control scheme of choice: “Keyboard and mouse opens up options that you can’t get replicate as easily with a controller in RTS games like Starcraft 2. If you look at the way we do an MMO like World of Warcraft, our communication method and all that kind of stuff, it kind of implies a level of UI complexity that would be really hard to pull off on console.”

“I think that combined with the digital distribution in a lot of ways has the potential to me to make the PC a really strong gaming platform going into the future,” he continued.

Blizzard CEO Mike Morheime recently mentioned that WoW’s player base has declined at a faster rate than they did after the release of previous WoW expansion, Wrath of the Lich King. I asked Tom whether he was concerned about the drop in subscriptions.

“We had a spike when Wrath of the Lich King launched and we saw a steady decrease all the way up to when Cataclysm launched,” says Tom. “So it’s a fairly normal pattern for us. It’s interesting that with Cataclysm we saw a much bigger spike than we had ever seen before with an expansion.

“I think the things about Cataclysm that inherently gave it more reactivation appeal than our previous expansions because of the redo of the level 1 to 60, stuff like that… the big spike is also followed by a bigger dip. So some of that makes sense and is reasonable.”

The lead developer did admit that Cataclysm might have been lacking in fresh endgame content: “I don’t think we did a good enough job of evolving the endgame. In terms of adding new types of PvE activities for people to do.

“At the time we kinda felt like ‘Oh, what people really need is more content; they’re tired of Icecrown Citadel, they’ve been doing that for about a year. That’s where we need precious new content.’ But I think it goes a little deeper than that. I think we have to be more diligent about creating new opportunities for new types of gameplay at max level.”

Says Blizzard: “Visiting a Transmogrifier will present players with a new interface that will allow them to change the appearance of an item while retaining its original stats. This means that you can raid in your paladin tier 12 Immolation set, but look like you’re wearing Lightbringer, while priests can bring Benediction back — at least in spirit. Hunters can once again roam the jungles of Stranglethorn Vale in their tier 2 Dragonstalker set. You could even slip into the saucy tailored Black Mageweave set for that matter. You know, with the thigh highs, and the little gloves, and the cute little… ahem.”

Whee!

This actually the best thing in WoW since forever. I’m totally farming the old druid tier sets, starting tonight.

That is all.

The Transmogrifier is a new NPC that will let you change the appearance of any piece of armour while keeping its stats. It’s not known whether you’ll have to own the piece of armour with the appearance you want to steal, but Chilton says that it will be impossible to change an item into a completely different armour type or class armour set. Hopefully the system will save your character from some of WoW’s most ludicrous costume pieces.

The other NPC vendor will provide Void Storage. It’s a new type of bank designed to hold old inventory pieces. How much this will cost and the limitations of the kinds of items you can stow away haven’t been announced just yet.

In other WoW news, the Real ID party system has finished beta testing and is now available to all players. The system lets friends of the same faction invite each other into 5-player normal or Heroic dungeons irrespective of what Realm everyone is on. It’s a free addition for everyone who has RealID enabled. For more information, check out Blizzard’s Real ID FAQ.

Well, the Void Storage merchant could perhaps offer “storage” for your inventory in some sort of “void,” maybe offering a more efficient way of managing vast amounts of loot. The Transmogrifier is trickier, but suggests an ability to change the appearance or properties of an item. But why would you want to do that? We’ll find out more from Blizzard’s showing at Gamescom next week. Let us know your best theories about the new NPCs in the comments below.

The pets were introduced into the game back in May. In the period stretching from the pets’ launch to the 31st, July Blizzard gave 100% of the proceeds made from players purchasing the pets to the Japanese charity, meaning WoW players managed to raise $2 million in just three months.

The Cenarion birds sold for $10 each, which means over 190,000 players must have contributed to the total. This this isn’t the first time Blizzard have sold in-game pets to help charity. Just last November we reported that players had raised $800,000 from the sales of Moonkin Hatchlings, with half of proceeds going towards the Make-A-Wish foundation. WoW players should give themselves and their Cenarion Hatchlings a hearty pat on the back.

It already seemed likely that Blizzard would use their next expansion pack to add a new continent to World of Warcraft. Of all the new lands and races Blizzard could add, many players secretly held out hope that they’d finally get to see the tropical lands of Pandaria, home to a race of sentient pandas called the Pandarens.

MMO Champion have spotted a newly registered Blizzard trademark for “Mists of Pandaria.” Those players might just get their wish. POMG.

The trademark, filed late last week, is registered to cover “computer game software” and “entertainment services,” suggesting that Blizzard aren’t simply using the title for a spin off product like a book. It could be part of an upcoming patch, but if the plan is to add the land of Pandaria, then that would likely require something bigger.

Some Pandaren art from the WarCraft 3 April Fools' reveal. D'awww.

Adding Pandarens to World of Warcraft would be a spectacular move from Blizzard given that the race was initially created as an April Fool’ joke for WarCraft 3. Since then they’ve become more and more popular, and have worked their way into many different aspects of WarCraft lore.

The WoW wiki has conveniently amassed all of this Pandaren lore into one page. Essentially, they’re an independent race of beer-loving panda men with awesome martial arts skills and excellent hats. The closest you can get to a Pandaren in World of Warcraft right now is to buy the Pandaren monk pet from the Blizzard store. Pandaria would be a huge shift away from the apocalyptic fires of Cataclysm and the recent Firelands update. How would you like to be a panda in World of Warcraft?

UPDATE: Graham demands we remind the world of the Pandamonium cartoon.

You might think the man in this video is playing World of Warcraft on Kinect because it looks hilarious, but you would be wrong. He is a scientist and he is doing it for science. Dr Skip Rizzo, of the University of Southern California’s Institute for Creative Technologies, has created FAAST (Flexible Action and Articulated Skeleton Toolkit), a piece of free middleware that allows off the shelf PC games to use motion sensing technology.

More details inside.

Speaking to Joystiq Dr Rizzo said “You can play (World of Warcraft) with some simple gestures, but it’s not fully evolved so that all the literally thousands of keyboard emulations are in place to be able to play in its full form.”

FAAST apparently allows you to map and configure your own gestures, customising motions you’re comfortable with “So what we’re able to do is to specify the gesture – and it can be any gesture. It could be jumping up and down that would move the thing right or left (although that wouldn’t be natural). You could jump up and down to fire. The idea is that the software we built allows us to assign any gesture that can be picked up by the Kinect to emulate what the keyboard actions would be.”

The project is aimed at using games for rehabilitation, therapy and education, and to make games more accessible to disabled gamers. With Dr Rizzo saying: “This is really the future of a lot of home-based rehabilitation, to create rehab games that require natural body action to interact with the game, as well as using games that people already know and love and trying to find ways that we can specify the body therapy, the body activity to do that. Our mission has been to do that, and we see this as groundbreaking.” Adding “And that’s really what the vision of our research group is all about. We know we can change the brain, and we know we can rehabilitate people after significant injuries so they become more functional. But it’s hard as hell to get people to do that physical therapy or that cognitive therapy in its traditional form because it’s so damn boring.”

When asked about the response of gamers to the technology he said: “It’s not going to be for everybody. There’s a lot of people who are just going to want to sit there. They don’t want to exercise. They want to play the game, and they love the game — and that’s fair enough. But there is a segment of the population that will play these games for the exercise and will enjoy the physical activity for some types of games that are well-matched.”

Would you play with motion control if you could customise it yourself? If the answer is yes, you can download FAAST for free from the University website.

On this week’s podcast, the rag-tag PCG squad members Chris, Dan, Tyler, and Lucas join forces once again with recurring special guest Brian Brushwood. Listen in awe as they chat about post-apocalyptic themes, Zynga’s intimidating market share, World of Warcraft’s Rage of the Firelands, and some more zany Truthiness and Falsity questions. Also: find out which nostalgic games we love, and which ones aren’t looking too hot these days.

PC Gamer US Podcast 278: Days of Yore

Have a question, comment, complaint or observation? Leave a voicemail: 1-877-404-1337 ext 724 or email the mp3 to pcgamerpodcast@gmail.com.

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Players that like what they see can purchase the game and the Burning Crusade expansion (which increases the level cap to 70, opens Outlands, and unlocks the Blood Elf and Draenei races) for only 20 bucks. In addition, anyone that currently owns the original game, but did not have the Burning Crusade expansion, now has that expansion automatically added to their accounts for free.

What do you think? Will you play around in the new endless trial mode? Is this the Blizzard’s first step in making WoW free-to-play? And is that a change you want Blizzard to make for WoW?

Update: Blizzard has released a full FAQ on the new system, which details (among other things) the restrictions on the trial accounts. It looks like our pie-in-the-sky dreams of building a guild full of level 19 PvP twinks on free trial accounts might be out of our reach…for now.

The full restrictions are:
- A level cap of 20.
– A maximum of 10 gold.
– Trade skills are capped at 100 ranks.
– Unable to trade via the Auction House, mailbox, or player-to-player.
– In-game access to public chat channels unavailable. Players are limited to communicating using only say, party, or whisper.
– Characters will be unable to create or join guilds.
– Characters are not able to send whispers to other characters unless they have been added to the characters’ friends lists or have received a whisper from a character first.
– Characters will not be able to invite other players into a party.
– Characters will not be able to join parties with other characters above level 20.
– Voice chat disabled on Starter Edition accounts.
– Realms experiencing login queues will prioritize players who have full, paid accounts.
– Starter Edition accounts are not eligible for character transfers
– RealID features are disabled on all Starter Edition Accounts.

This was a change that Blizzard snuck in under my radar, and I expect a lot of players will be surprised to see arrows next to their toons’ names on the chracter select screen when servers finally come up and everyone is able to log in. Clicking the arrows simply moves them up or down the list accordingly. Nice and simple.

Why all the big hubbalub over a tiny feature, you ask? Well, this is the sort of change that I only expect hardcore MMO players to fullly appreciate. When you’re selecting characters from a list several times a day for years, the fact that your most frequent selections are scattered between lumpy undead corpses you haven’t touched since Silithus was a threat starts to grate. I for one am happy to finally lower my level 60 undead rogue down to the forgotten depths he belongs at, and rocket my goblins and trolls to the top. Take that, Forsaken jerks!

Ah, the joys of fighting alongside 50 million other players killing the same mobs as you on patch day.

New daily quests in Hyjal

A lot of servers are still down at the time that I’m writing this post, but once your server comes online (and you’ve patched enough addons that you aren’t getting spammed with a wall of error messages), you’ll want to head up to Hyjal to find the new daily quest hub. The message boards in capital cities all have a breadcrumb quest that’ll lead you to the exact location if you’re high enough level. Once there, you’ll get a quest to help an NPC army open a portal to the Firelands–it’s a simple kill waves of minions quest that culminates in a simple boss battle and some jibba jabba from Malfurion Stormrage. Lore junkies’ll love it, but the rest of us just want to hurry up and get ahead of the rest of the patch day pack.

The Hyjal quest hub is still surprisingly peaceful on my realm: Alliance players were fighting alongside Horde without even glancing at each other. Don’t expect it to stay that way for long, though–early questers are usually so focused on beating content that they’re happy to ignore one another, but the gankers will be on later tonight. If you can get on now and start the quest chain, I’d highly recommend it. Otherwise, be ready for some epic pvp fights tonight!

The new currency is Marks of the World Tree, rewarded from quests in the new hub. The first few quests have you fly around the zone defending different NPCs from attack; they took be about 15 minutes to defeat and then I’d unlocked the first phase of the daily quest hub. There are only three daily quests available at first: one to kill enemies and summon a ghost wolf to howl over their corpses and one to collect berries. Upon completion, you get a follow-up quest to go summon a kill a felhound nearby.

Oh yeah, take that, fire bad guys!

The quests are all very simple, straightforward stuff and not very exciting. I ended up with 12 Marks of the World Tree, with a quest to collect 20 to unlock the next tier of daily quests, like the Argent Tournament functioned in Lich King expansion. It looks like you can gain four Marks a day through the three daily quests (which will likely rotate), so we should be able to unlock the new tier of daily quests by Thursday if you stop by every day. And you should: it’s super quick to do, and you know your guild will want you to be attuned and ready to raid asap! After all, there’s a whole heap of new loot waiting for you all inside Firelands.

UPDATE: There is another quest chain available in capital cities (found near the portal to Cataclysm zones) that sends you to Hyjal to meet with Thrall near Nordrassil. It leads to a long cinematic with a ton of lore and some crazy fire-dragons that I don’t want to spoil with screenshots. All in all, this is an 11-step quest chain that takes you to all of the new Cataclysm zones for unique encoutners. Without giving away the details, you absolutely must play this if you care about lore at all. Even if you don’t, it’s worth your time for the fun group encounters along the way and the ilevel 365 epic cloak you get at the end.

If you’re stuck at the office for now, you can pass the time by reading the full patch notes, watching the video for Thrall’s epic questline, and taking a look at the new Ragnaros raid boss.

Other regions have been enjoying the most recent expansion for the past seven months, but Blizzard have only just got around to preparing the content for China-based players. We doubt they’re complaining though – Wrath of the Lich King took almost two years to appear in their territory.

Blizzard co-founder, Mike Morhaime is predictably happy about the announcement, saying: “We’ve always appreciated Chinese gamers’ passion and support for World of Warcraft, and we’re excited that they’ll soon be able to enjoy all of the great new content this expansion has to offer.”

WoW patch 4.2 is due to launch soon. See the first footage of it here and read the extensive patch notes here.

The bosses look great. They are huge. There’s a giant fire-man, a giant fire-spider, a giant fire-bat, and a horned demon called Shannox who has two giant guard dogs. They are made of fire. Patch 4.2 also makes a large collection of balance changes. You can find the full patch notes here. Check out the Firelands preview on the World of Warcraft site for more on the new raid.

Other additions include a new epic quest to complete the legendary Dragonwrath staff. Reforging the staff will let its wielder turn into a member of the Blue Dragonflight, and will grant every member of the guild involved a new non-combat pet. There are a ton of rebalancing tweaks to Cataclysm’s dungeons to make them easier. You’ll find the full patch notes below, nabbed from World of Warcraft blog.

General

• All existing Valor Points in the Currency tab have been converted to Justice Points.
• The Keyring bag slot has been removed to make room in the user interface for new features.
• Keys which no longer serve a purpose in the game will be removed from player inventories. Compensation for the keys will be automatically provided in the form of each key’s vendor sell price in gold.
• Keys which are obsolete quest items will be removed from player inventories.
• Keys which may still be of use to players will be transferred to regular inventory space. If a player’s bags are full, these keys will sit in a backlogged inventory until sufficient space is made available. Once space is opened, the keys will appear in regular inventory upon the player logging out or switching zones.

 
Achievements

• Bear-ly Made It (new achievement): Save all four prisoners before they are sacrificed in Zul’Aman on Heroic difficulty.

 
Classes: General

• All healing critical strikes now heal for 2 times a normal heal (+100%), up from 1.5 times a normal heal (+50%).
• Dodge: Death Knights, paladins, and warriors no longer receive any bonus to their chance to dodge from Agility. Their base chance to dodge is now a fixed 5%.
• Parry: Death Knights, paladins, and warriors now receive 27% of their Strength bonuses as parry rating, up from 25%. This conversion still only applies to Strength above and beyond their base Strength.
• Players are once again free to dance in combat (without causing graphic errors). Other animations, such as attacks, will take precedence over dancing. The dance animation will be suppressed until the higher priority animation is complete. Fun has been unnerfed.

 
Buffs

• All class abilities which place a buff on friendly targets no longer generate any threat. This goes for raid-wide buffs like Mark of the Wild and Power Word: Fortitude, as well as triggered effects such as Blessed Resilience or Fingers of Frost, and single-target buffs like Dark Intent and Hysteria. The exception is buffs which directly cause healing or damage, such as Thorns or Renew. Abilities such as these still generate normal threat.

 
Crowd Control

• Many crowd control abilities no longer cause creatures to attack players when they are cast. The creature will not attack the player when the crowd control wears off, and nearby creatures will not become hostile to the player either. However, if a visible player gets too close to the target creature, the creature will remember and attack the player when the crowd control effect wears off. The intent is to make it easier for dungeon groups to manage crowd control assignments and pulling packs of hostile NPCs. The abilities affected by this change are: Hibernate, Entangling Roots, Wyvern Sting (will still cause hostility when it begins to deal damage), Freezing Trap, Polymorph, Repentance, Shackle Undead, Blind, Hex, Bind Elemental, Banish, Seduction.

 
Pets

• The Aggressive pet stance has been removed and replaced with the Assist stance. This stance will cause the player’s pet to attack the player’s target. The pet will not change targets unless the master attacks a new target for a few seconds.

 
Spell Interrupts

• When interrupted while casting a single-school spell such as Mind Flay or Frostbolt, players will now be able to cast dual-school spells such as Mind Spike (Frost and Shadow schools) or Frostfire Bolt (Frost and Fire schools). However, being interrupted while casting a dual-school spell will still interrupt all respective schools as intended.

 
Death Knights

• Obliterate base damage has been reduced to 150% weapon damage, down from 160%.
   
  Talent Specializations
   
  Frost
  • Annihilation now increases Obliterate damage by 12/24/36%, down from 15/30/45%.

   
  Unholy

  • Unholy Might now increases Strength by 10%, up from 5%.

 
Druids

• Druids now gain 1 attack power per point of Strength, down from 2. They continue to gain 2 attack power per point of Agility while in Cat Form or Bear Form.
• Entangling Roots and the equivalent spell triggered by Nature’s Grasp no longer deal damage.
• Ferocious Bite damage has been increased by 15%. In addition, its base cost has been reduced to 25 energy and it can use up to 25 energy, for up to a 100% damage increase.
• Innervate now grants an ally target 5% of his or her maximum mana over 10 seconds, but still grants 20% of the druid’s maximum mana over 10 seconds when self-cast.
• Mangle (Cat) damage at level 80 and above has been increased to 530% weapon damage, up from 460%.
• Omen of Clarity clearcasting buff from now lasts 15 seconds, up from 8 seconds.
• Ravage damage at level 80 and above has been increased to 975% weapon damage, up from 850%.
• Shred damage at level 80 and above has been increased to 520% weapon damage, up from 450%.
• Swipe (Cat) now deals 600% weapon damage at level 80 or higher, down from 670%.

 
Talent Specializations

Balance
• Earth and Moon’s duration has been increased to 15 seconds, up from 12.
• Fungal Growth spell visual effect has been updated to be less visually intrusive and more aesthetic.
• Lunar Shower has been redesigned. When casting Moonfire, the druid gains Lunar Shower. Lunar Shower increases the direct damage done by Moonfire by 15/30/45%, and reduces the mana cost by 10/20/30%. This effect stacks up to 3 times and lasts 3 seconds. While under the effects of Lunar Shower, Moonfire generates 8 Solar Energy, and Sunfire generates 8 Lunar Energy. The amount of Lunar/Solar Energy gained does not change based on the number of points spent in the talent, or stacks of Lunar Shower. Those druids who wish to delay transition in or out of an Eclipse state should now cast the one of their two basic attacks which will not move the Eclipse bar (either Starfire or Wrath).
• Solar Beam has a new spell effect.
• Wild Mushroom: Detonate can now also trigger Earth and Moon, in addition to Starfire and Wrath.

 
Restoration

• Symbiosis (Mastery) has been removed and replaced with Harmony. Harmony increases direct healing by an additional 10%, and casting direct healing spells grants an additional 10% bonus to periodic healing for 10 seconds. Each point of mastery increases each bonus by an additional 1.25%. Healing Touch, Nourish, Swiftmend, and the initial heal from Regrowth are considered direct healing spells for the purposes of this Mastery. All other healing from druid spells is considered periodic.

 
Glyphs

• Glyph of Berserk duration increase is now 10 seconds, up from 5.
• Glyph of Ferocious Bite has been redesigned. It now causes Ferocious Bite to heal the caster for 1% of maximum health for each 10 energy used.
• Glyph of Innervate now causes the druid to gain 10% of his or her maximum mana over 10 seconds when Innervate is used on a friendly target, in addition to Innervate’s base effect.

 
Hunters

• Multi-shot damage has been reduced. It now deals 120% weapon damage at level 80 or higher, down from 137%.
• Traps now scale with hunter stats such as hit, expertise, spell penetration and attack power as intended.
   
  Pets
  • Intervene (Pet Tenacity) has been redesigned. The pet runs at high speed toward a group member, reducing the damage done by the next melee or ranged attack made against them equal to 50% of the pet’s total health.

 
Mages

• Pyroblast: The version of this spell cast when Hot Streak is not active did slightly less damage than the Hot Streak version. Its damage has been increased so that both versions of Pyroblast now do the same amount of damage.
• Spellsteal mana cost has been increased 100%
   
  Talent Specializations
  Fire
  • Impact: When Living Bomb is spread via this talent, it will only be spread to two additional targets. The net effect is that if the Mage’s most recent Living Bomb target is the same as their Impact target, that target will no longer lose the Living Bomb effect. If Living Bomb is active on multiple targets when the Impact effect is cast, Living Bomb will remain active on the most recent Living Bomb target, and will be added to two other nearby targets.

   
  Frost

  • Deep Freeze and Ring of Frost will now cause diminishing returns for each other.

 
Paladins

• Divine Light mana cost has been increased to 35% of base mana, up from 30%.
• Flash of Light mana cost has been increased to 31% of base mana, up from 27%.
• Holy Light mana cost has been increased to 12% of base mana, up from 10%.
• Rebuke, Divine Shield and Divine Protection have new icons.
• Seal of Righteousness – now can be proc’d by any melee ability, not just single target melee abilities. This adds Hammer of the Righteous (the physical component) and Divine Storm to the list of abilities that can proc it. In addition, Seal of Righteousness procs can now crit.
   
  Talent Specializations
  Holy
  • Beacon of Light can no longer be dispelled. In addition, it now transfers 100% of the heal from Holy Light, but still 50% of the heal from other spells.
  • Denounce has been redesigned. It still reduces the mana cost of Exorcism. However, it no longer has a chance on Holy Shock of making Exorcism free and instant. Instead, it has a 50/100% chance to prevent the Exorcism target from causing critical effects for the next 6 seconds. This effect can be dispelled.
  • Holy Shock mana cost has been decreased to 7% of base mana, down from 8%.
  • Infusion of Light can now lower the cast time of Flash of Light by 0.75/1.5 seconds, in addition to Holy Light and Divine Light. In addition, the old Denounce spell overlay effect has been transferred to Infusion of Light since Denounce is no longer a proc.
  • Speed of Light now increases movement speed when Holy Radiance or Divine Protection are cast. In addition, this talent now reduces the cooldown of Holy Radiance by 13/26/40 seconds, up from 10/20/30.
  • Walk in the Light now improves Word of Glory healing by 30% in addition to its current effects.

   
  Protection

  • Ardent Defender has a new spell effect.
  • Guardian of Ancient Kings now uses the ‘Assist’ pet stance functionality.
  • Hammer of the Righteous mana cost has been lowered to 10%, down from 12% to match Crusader Strike.
  • Judgements of the Wise now procs on attempt rather than on strike, which means judgements that miss can still grant mana. This is to help ensure Protection paladins are not starved for mana if they aren’t capped on hit rating.
    Retribution

  • Seals of Command: This talent now makes Seal of Righteousness hit an unlimited number of melee targets, instead of only 2 additional targets.
  • Selfless Healer can no longer be dispelled and cannot be stolen via Spellsteal; and, in addition to its current effects, it lowers the cooldown of Word of Glory by 5/10 seconds.

   
  Glyphs

  • Glyph of Truth: The expertise bonus granted by this glyph now also works when Seal of Righteousness is active.

 
Priests

• Devouring Plague damage done has been decreased by 12%.
• Mind Blast damage done has been increased by 12%.
• Shadowfiend now uses the ‘Assist’ pet stance functionality.
• Shadow Word: Death damage done has been increased by 12%.
• Shadow Word: Pain damage done has been decreased by 12%.
   
  Talent Specializations
  Shadow
  • Mind Flay damage done has been increased by 12%.
  • Sin and Punishment’s Vampiric Touch backlash Fear effect now longer has diminishing returns.
  • Vampiric Touch damage done has been decreased by 12%.
  • Priest Bug Fixes
  • Players will no longer prematurely cancel a channeled spell when clicking on the Lightwell.

 
Rogues

• Blind duration against enemy NPCs is now 1 minute, while the duration against players remains 8 seconds.
• Stealth now once again begins its cooldown once the rogue leaves Stealth.

 
Shaman

• Lightning Shield and Water Shield can no longer be dispelled.
• Unleash Elements is now in the Nature school, and thus can no longer be used if a shaman’s Nature school has been locked out.
• Water Shield has had its internal cooldown reduced to 3.5 seconds, once again matching other shields. The amount of mana restored when Water Shield procs has been reduced by 50%.
   
  Talent Specializations
  Elemental
  • Lava Flows now grants a 30/60/90% haste buff when a Flame Shock effect is dispelled, up from 10/20/30%.
  • Thunderstorm now reduces the movement speed of players it knocks back by 40% for 5 seconds.

   
  Restoration

  • Improved Water Shield has been redesigned and renamed Resurgence. When Water Shield is active, Resurgence causes critical direct heals to restore mana (Resurgence rank 2 is roughly equal to 150% of the old Improved Water Shield value when a Healing Wave or Greater Healing Wave critically hits, and scaled down accordingly for faster or multi-target spells).
  • Mana Tide now grants 200% of the caster’s Spirit, down from 400%.

   
  Glyphs

  • Glyph of Unleashed Lightning (new Prime glyph) allows Lightning Bolt to be cast while moving.

 
Warlocks

• Soul Harvest has a new spell effect.
   
  Warlock Bug Fixes
  • It is no longer possible to leave combat while channeling Drain Soul.

 
Warriors

• Overpower now has a 1.5-second cooldown and global cooldown (Taste for Blood’s Overpower cooldown has not changed).
  Retaliation, Recklessness and Shield Wall no longer have stance requirements.

 
Dungeons & Raids

• Dungeon Journal is in the process of being implemented. While some UI elements may exist in the current Public Test Realm build, the feature is not yet complete.
• The Firelands, a new 10- and 25-player raid, is now available for limited testing. Please visit the PTR Discussion forum for the latest raid testing schedule.
   
  Bastion of Twilight
  • The damage modifier on Normal has been reduced for Arion, Elementium Monstrosity, Feludius, Ignacius, and Terrastra.
    Removed one of each type of Bound elemental from the Ascendant Council chamber.

   
  Arion

  • Chain Lightning damage has been reduced.

   
  Cho’gall

  • Health, melee damage, Health of Corrupting Adherent, Depravity damage, Corrupting Crash damage, Flaming Destruction damage, and Unleashed Shadows damage has all been reduced by 20%.

   
  Corrupting Crash and Depravity

  • Halved the amount of Corruption they give to 5 from 10.
  • Corrupted Bite effect caused by Blood of the Old God reduced.
  • Damage Taken from Corruption of the Old God per Corrupted Blood has been reduced from 3% per stack to 2% per stack.
  • Debilitating Beam damage has been reduced by 20% to 6,400.
  • The duration of Twisted Devotion has been reduced by 25%.

   
  Dragon Siblings

  • Health, melee damage, Twilight Meteorite damage, Devouring Flames, Blackout damage, Unstable Twilight damage, Twilight Zone damage, Twilight Blast damage, Fabulous Flames damage, has all been reduced by 20%.

   
  Elementium Monstrosity

  • Electrical Instability damage has been reduced.

   
  Feludius

  • Damage due to being Frozen while Waterlogged has been reduced.

   
  Halfus

  • Health, melee damage, Fireball/Fireball Barrage damage, Furious Roar damage, Scorching Breath damage, Shadow Nova damage, has all been reduced by 20%.
  • Nether Scion, Slate Dragon, Storm Rider, Time Warden, and Orphaned Emerald Whelp health has been reduced by 20%.
  • Shadow Nova base cast time has been increased.

   
  Ignacius

  • Rising Flames now increases damage by 3% per stack, down from 5%.

   
  Terrastra

  • Harden Skin now increases Physical damage dealt by 20% (down from 100%.)

   
  Blackwing Descent

  Atramedes
  • Health, melee damage, modulation damage, Roaring Flame Breath damage, and Searing Flame damage has all been reduced by 20%.
  • Modulation no longer causes Sound in normal difficulty.
  • Sound given by Sonar Pulse has been reduced to 3 (from 5.)

   
  Chimaeron

  • Health reduced by 20% and melee damage reduced by 10%.
  • Chimaeron will now only cast two caustic slimes per 30 second cycle, at second 17 and second 23.

   
  Drakeadon Mongrel:

  • Time Lapse no longer stuns.
  • Frost Burn silence is now 3 seconds

   
  Dwarven Kings

  • Whirlwind no longer drops threat.
  • Execution sentence now deals damage only.
  • Shield of Light absorption now reduced.

   
  Magmaw

  • Damage and hit points reduced by 20%.
  • Lava Parasites have been diminished
  • Lava Spew damage, Magma Spit damage, Massive Crash damage, and Infectious Vomit damage have all been been reduced.
  • Mangled Lifeless no longer instantly kills, and damage has been reduced.
  • Parasitic Infection has been decreased.

   
  Maloriak

  • Health, damage, Aberation health/damage, Arcane Storm damage, Prime Subject damage, Flash Freeze/Shatter damage, and Scorching Blast damage has all been decreased by 20%.
  • Aberration stacking damage buff decreased.
  • Prime Subjects no longer fixate, and are no longer immune to taunt.

   
  Nefarian

  • Animated Bone Warriors take 33 seconds to fall over, (down from 50.)
  • Blast Nova cast time increased.
  • Chromatic Prototype Health reduced 20%.
  • Electrocute damage reduced 30%.
  • Fewer Animated Bone warriors spawn.
  • Magma Stacking debuff effect reduced 75%.
  • Nefarian health and melee damage reduced by 20%.
  • Nefarian’s Shadowblaze cast frequency cannot increase beyond 1 per 15 sec.
  • Onyxia health and melee damage reduced by 20%.
  • Shadowflame Barrage damage reduced 20%.
  • Tail Lash damage reduced 50%.

   
  Omnotron Council

  • Barrier absorb amount increased by 100%.
  • Increased the cooldown on Power Conversion (Converted Power chance).
  • Health, Melee damage, Electrical Discharge damage, Lightning Conductor damage, Health of Poison Bomb, Incineration Security Measure damage, Arcane Annihilator damage, has all been reduced by 20%.
  • Flamethrower damage has been reduced by 40%.
  • Static Shock caused by Unstable Shield damage and Poison Bomb damage has been decreased by 50%.

   
  Deadmines

  • Vanessa VanCleef (Heroic difficulty) now has a sweet, sweet voice to accompany her dialog.

   
  Throne of the Four Winds

  Al’Akir
  • Acid Rain now stacks every 20s (up from 15s.)
  • Electrocute now pulses every 1s (up from 0.5s.)
  • Feedback duration increased to 30s (from 20s.)
  • Health, damage, and Wind Burst damage have all been reduced 20%.
  • Lightning and Lightning Rod recast time has been increased.
  • Lightning Strike friendly chain damage has been halved.
  • Will no longer use Static Shock on normal difficulty in phase 1 or phase 2.

   
  Conclave of the Four Winds

  • Gathering Strength cast time has been increased
  • Ice Patch slow is now 5% per stack, up to 10 stacks (down from 10% per stack, up to 30 stacks), damage reduced by 20%.
  • Rohash, Anshal, Nezir melee, Ravenous Creeper health/damage, Ravenous Creeper toxic spores damage, Hurricane damage, Sleet Storm damage , Permafrost damage , Slicing Gale, and Wind Blast damage have all been reduced by 20%.
    Wind Chill damage decreased by 20%and now increases damage taken by 5% per stack.

 
Guilds

• The daily guild experience cap has been increased by 25%.
• The weekly guild reputation cap has been increased by 25%.
• The guild experience cap is now removed at level 20, down from level 23.
• The Reins of the Dark Phoenix, purchased from the Guild Vendor, has had its art improved. It’s now less transparent and indisputably more awesome.

 
Items

• Darkmoon Card: Hurricane damage done when triggered has been increased by 40%, however, it can no longer deal critical strikes and no longer receives any modifiers to its damage from the equipping player.
   
  Set Bonuses
  • The 2-piece resilience bonus from Cataclysm PvP sets no longer stacks. If a player wears 2 pieces each from 2 different Cataclysm sets, the player will only receive the 400 resilience rating bonus once. This change does not apply to PvP sets from prior expansions.
  • The 4-piece Elemental shaman PvP set bonus (Gladiator’s Thunderfist set) has been redesigned. It now causes Lightning Shield to generate an extra charge, rather than consuming one, when it is triggered by receiving damage, up to a maximum of 3 (9 with the Rolling Thunder talent).
     
    Tier 11 Set Bonuses
    • Restoration druid Tier 11 2-Piece: This set bonus has been redesigned to work with the new Restoration druid mastery. Druids with this bonus now receive the bonus to Spirit while the Harmony mastery bonus to periodic healing is active.

     
    Tier 12 Set Bonuses

    • Hunter 4P: The effect which makes Shots cost no focus now also makes Kill Command cost no focus.
    • Mage 2P: This set bonus can now also be triggered by Frostfire Bolt.
    • Mage 4P: The portions of this bonus referring to Arcane Missiles have been removed. Instead, the set bonus now makes Arcane Power reduce the cost of Mage spells by 10% instead of increasing their cost.

 
Professions

 
Skinning
• Players can no longer skin corpses already being actively skinned or looted by other players.

 
PvP

 
Arenas
• The Ring of Valor has been added to the Arena rotation once again.

 
Battlegrounds

• Eye of the Storm has been added into the rotation as a 10-man Rated Battleground. The tug-of-war style capture points have been replaced with Arathi Basin style capture points to better support 10v10 competition. This change applies only to Rated Battlegrounds.
• Eye of the Storm is otherwise still a 15-player Battleground with tug-of-war style capture points.

 
War Games

• Many improvements are being made to the War Games interface, though the changes are not yet fully functional.

 
Conquest Points

• The minimum cap on Conquest Points earned per week is now 1500 at 1500 or less Battleground rating. The maximum cap remains 3000 at 3000 or more Battleground rating. The cap continues to scale non-linearly between those two points.
• The game now separately tracks different Conquest Point caps for Battlegrounds and Arenas. The cap for Arena rating will always be 2/3 of the cap for Battleground rating at any given Arena rating. Players may earn a total number of Conquest Points per week equal to the higher of these two caps, but once players have reached the cap for either Arenas or Battlegrounds, they can no longer earn Conquest Points from that source. Conquest Points from Battleground holidays only count toward the total Conquest Point cap.

 
Quests & Creatures

• There are no longer oddities in the critical strike and dodge chance of lower-level creatures.

 
User Interface

• Characters can now be reorganized at the Character Selection screen. This feature not yet fully functional and the reorganization of characters doesn’t save at this time.
• The cast bar can now be moved to display below the Character frame.
• Move Pad is a mouse-click interface for movement which is now built into the base interface.
• Raid Profiles are in the process of being implemented and are not fully functional. Raid Profiles will allow players to save the raid window user interface layout based on type of content (i.e. 10-player raids, 25-player raids, Battlegrounds, etc.).

A standard pass for the event will set you back $175, but if you can’t make it all the way to the Anaheim Convention Centre, there will also online passes available that give you access to official live streams of the main Blizzcon events. Full ticket details can be found on the BlizzCon site.

The update is being tested on the PTR alongside patch 4.2, but it’s unclear whether Blizzard plans the new feature with the major content patch or not.

Nethaera also warns that “certain elements of the cross-realm Real ID party system will be premium-based,” which is a nice way of saying that you’re gonna have to hand over some money to unlock parts of it. She went on to clarify that only the player sending out the invitations will need to have those premium features. It seems likely that you’ll have to pay the premium fee in order to create a cross-realm party and invite friends, but that it will be free to accept the group invitations of those that have paid. What do you think?

The Journal will list detailed descriptions of each bosses’ attacks, and the exact challenges players will encounter in each boss chamber, but will the new addition ruin the surprise of WoW’s raids? And will listing every boss attack make them too easy to defeat?

The Firelands is a top level raid set to be added in the upcoming 4.2 patch. It will be available as both a 10 and 25 player raid at normal and heroic difficulties. It will contain plenty of tough bosses, not least the region’s ruler, Ragnaros.

Every Firelands encounter, including Ragnaros, is listed in the new Encounter Journal. MMO Champion’s preview of the journal dishes out every detail of the Ragnaros fight, including information on each stage of the battle, and a list of every attack Ragnaros will use at each stage. Thanks to the new Journal, you’ll know exactly what you’re in for before you even see the new raid.

But is this a good thing? You might say that the WoW community will mine a new raid’s data a day or so after it comes out and make the information public anyway. Listing each bosses abilities will let groups get straight to making strategies, without the frustrating trial and error period spent learning boss patterns. However, for some, the Journal could ruin the sense of discovery that comes from learning a new raid. What do you think?

PC Gamer US Podcast 272: Monstrous

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First prize includes – deep breath – the now-rare World of Warcraft: Cataclysm Collector’s Edition boxed set, a super-rare Mottled Drake loot card that unlocks an in-game flying mount, the Assault on Icecrown boxed set, the World of Warcraft Trading Card Game Worldbreaker Epic Collection, a World of Warcraft Trading Card Game booster pack, the Wrath of the Lich King soundtrack, enormous Horde and Alliance flags and an inflatable Frostmourne sword, as seen modeled by the PC Gamer UK team here. PHEW.

We really have to give them away as soon as possible, because we keep falling over them. If you live in Europe, read on for details on how to win.

UPDATE: The winners have been chosen! First prize – NoX, because that sounds like exactly the sort of thing Tim might do if he owned a continent. Second prize – Eccles, because there aren’t enough Laser Death Cats or Plasma Doom Dogs in games. Last but not least, slaaneshi611, because Incontinent is a brilliant name for a continent. Winners, please check your forum account messages for details on how to claim your prize. Thanks to all who entered!

Here’s the complete roundup of all the prizes, sent over by Cryptozoic Entertainment. So. Much. WoW.

First prize

• World of Warcraft: Cataclysm Collector’s Edition
• Horde and Alliance flags
• Assault on Icecrown Citadel boxed set
• Super rare Mottled Drake loot card that unlocks the Mottled Drake flying mount in the game.
• World of Warcraft Trading Card Game World Breaker Epic Collection
• World of Warcraft Trading Card game booster pack
• Inflatable Frostmourne sword
• Wrath of the Lich King soundtrack
• World of Warcraft stickers

 
Second prize

• Assault on Icecrown Citadel boxed set
• World of Warcraft Trading Card Game World Breaker Epic Collection
• World of Warcraft Trading Card game booster pack
• Landro’s Lil’ XT card that unlocks Landro”s Lil’ XT non-combat companion in the game
• Inflatable Frostmourne sword
• Wrath of the Lich King soundtrack
• World of Warcraft stickers

 
Third prize

• Landro’s Lil’ XT card that unlocks Landro”s Lil’ XT non-combat companion in the game
• Inflatable Frostmourne sword
• World of Warcraft Trading Card game booster pack
• Wrath of the Lich King soundtrack
• World of Warcraft stickers

 
All you have to do to win is live in Europe and post an answer to the following challenge in the comments below:

The next World of Warcraft expansion will probably add a new continent. Ideally, we’d like a PC Gamer continent all to ourselves. Come up with a funny name for such a continent, and briefly describe its greatest landmark. The three most chucklesome entries will take the prizes. Good luck!

However, Blizzard and their partners, Netease, were looking to launch the new expansion pack in China this year.

Mike also highlighted the recent addition of premium mobile services for World of Warcraft, in the mobile auction house and mobile guild chat, whilst also letting slip that a new premium mount would be added to the game soon.

I bet it’s a flaming flying horse. With laser eyes.

Mike said that ‘the game does not have a launch date. We’re working very hard to try and release it this year, but we will not compromise on quality.’ He also confirmed that the Diablo 3 beta will hit in the third quarter of 2011. Squee!

During Activision’s financial predictions, they carefully noted that the predictions were based around ‘not expecting a Blizzard game in 2011′. But the company pointed out that if their prediction were to come true, ‘we’d expect two Blizzard titles in 2012.

If we had our betting hats on, that would put the Diablo 3 release date as early 2012, with a new World of Warcraft expansion hitting late 2012, and Heart of the Swarm landing in 2013.

You’ll get the tools for free until May 10, so it’s worth signing up asap if you want to see what the fuss is about. You’ll can bid on and post auctions from anywhere in the world (reception-allowing).

iPhone or iPod touch users should download the World of Warcraft Mobile Armory, whereas those of you with Android phones should get the World of Warcraft Remote App. It usually costs £2.49/$2.99 per month for the services.

In a comforting touch, Blizzard have already boosted loyal existing subscriber’s accounts by one week.

PC Gamer US Podcast 267: Skyrim – Heart of the Darkspore

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Read on for the details.

The Armory app itself is free, but you’ll need to be signed up to World of Warcraft Remote to access the Guild Chat and Auction House services (which gives you the chance to create auctions and bid on items). It costs £2.50 or $2.99 per month. The chat functionality is temporarily available on the free version of the app. Paying Android users can fiddle with their auctions via the WoW Remote Auction House App, though it doesn’t support Guild Chat quite yet (it’s coming “soon”). All subscribers can tweak their bids via the official WoW website too, so don’t feel too left out if you haven’t got a fancy phone.

Blizzard’s official site is down at the moment due to a high volume of traffic, but check back later for more info.

PC Gamer US Podcast 268: Yo Mamaly

Have a question, comment, complaint or observation? Leave a voicemail: 1-877-404-1337 ext 724 or email the mp3 to pcgamerpodcast@gmail.com.

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Finally, if you can’t make it to California, Blizzard will be offering virtual tickets at $39.99 each. These will give you access to live streams of the event, including the opening ceremony and coverage of the various tournaments that will be taking place over the weekend. For more information on the event, check out the Blizzcon 2011 site.

Playing on the US RP server Feathermoon, this player achieved what most thought impossible (while still maintaining one’s sanity): grinding through 85 grueling levels via gathering Professions alone. Think it’s all a hoax? The proof is in the profile pudding—Everbloom’s character profile plainly shows that he/she/it has reached the level cap without killing a single enemy. But what’s this? One completed quest?! Not exactly—this was an unfortunate misstep, where a quest was completed simply by opening a letter from an NPC (which Blizzard couldn’t redact). Nonetheless, this is an imposing achievement, especially considering that the character was created around last November.

Kneel. Gather. Repeat 99999999 times.

For the players who think they’ve seen and done it all in Azeroth, this seems like the ultimate challenge and test of will, akin to old Diablo II challenges of pacifist Hell completions. Everbloom highly recommends the experience, saying:

“Being on the ground and sneaking around mining and herbing and eventually archaeology, going everywhere to get every single point of discovery xp that you can, really gives you a chance to see an amazing world up close and personal. I spent hours swimming around reefs and flying to the farthest reaches of the maps… I have been playing since day 1 on other characters and I even have an original Loremaster (you know, back when it was hard) and I saw so MANY new things with Everbloom that it really made it worthwhile for me to continue on with this character, and each level was a major achievement!”

Not exactly epic loots.

Everbloom even implies that they’ll be starting over to accomplish their goal proper, proclaiming “I shall stick to my 0 kills 0 quests attempt yet again! Come join the … fun? ;)” Whether you respect this kind of determination or you think someone needs to get a life, there’s no denying that Everbloom’s accomplished an impressive feat. What’ll they think of next? Getting to level 85 solely through fishing? It seems resourceful WoW-addicts can still find ways to enjoy the beloved MMO in alternative and amusing ways.

Blizzard have utilised their latest Deep Dark tech to better realise the gloom of the new environments. They demonstrate the transition from concept art to in-game ambience with this revealing screenshot.

The dungeon will be available to players of level 83 and above. You’ll need Cataclysm to run it.

• Your guild must be level 5 or higher.
• Members participating in challenges must have earned honoured reputation with the guild.
• To earn credit for dungeons, 3 out of 5 players must be guild members.
• To earn credit for battlegrounds, 8 out of 10 players must be guild members.
• To earn credit for raids, 20 out of 25 players must be guild members.

 
Challenges will also be useful for younger guilds looking looking for a weekly XP boost. If you still manage to hit the increased experience cap, you’ll be awarded extra gold to compensate. Sounds like a pretty good deal, no? If you’re looking for a guild to join, then look no further than the mighty PC Gamer Guild. To join, simply swing by our forums and say hello.

Is this legit? The blog only dates back to January 2011, and the author’s Twitter account goes back several months before, with 157 mostly WoW-related posts. If it’s a cleverly orchestrated scheme, it would’ve required several months’ worth of planning, all leading up to this. But of course, stranger things have happened. What do you guys think?

Gibeau made the comments in an interview with Industry Gamers. “When I play World of Warcraft, you go and get your quests, and you go and do your quests, but it feels more like doing a shopping list at times.”

The Old Republic, meanwhile will be more about “talking to characters, learning what’s going on, investing in it, getting emotionally attached to it. You can still go in accessible ways and grind out quests if you want, but at the same time there’s a higher-level story that’s carrying you through The Old Republic.”

Gibeau admits that he is a fan of the Blizzard MMO, but says that “on multiple levels we’re highly differentiated and different from World of Warcraft. We’re not being slavish or imitating them at all,” saying that the different look and feel of the Star Wars universe will set it apart.

“It’s very different than orcs and humans and night elves and the rest. On the first level, the IPs are highly different, the gameplay highly differentiated, and the stories highly differentiated. I love Blizzard products, but they’re not the entire market. There is an opportunity to come in with a new IP,”

Bioware are hoping to release The Old Republic later this year. For more on the game, check out the latest trailer, or head over to the official Star Wars: The Old Republic site.

Lucas stood victorious over Anthony’s body. Anthony lay on the ground, a broken man, crimson blood dripping from his freshly-broken jaw. Lucas held his swordpoint to Anthony’s throat, ready to deal the finishing slice that the fans were chanting for. But he hesitated, and instead hurled his sword into Josh Augustine’s chest, killing him instantly. “Are you not entertained?!” Lucas screamed, as Dan and Evan continued their work. “Is this not why you are here?!”

In the shadows, Anthony fought through the pain and crawled to safety, his shattered arms barely able to pull his lacerated body. With a grimace, he turned back to look at Lucas with a cold, hateful stare. “This…isn’t…over,” he whispered.

Is this not why you are here?!?

 
This arena’s topic:
With StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm looming on the horizon and e-sports enjoying a pleasant resurgence, it seems that Blizzard’s space mega-franchise is on a roll. But what are the negative repercussions to all this new content?

Will SC2′s expansions do more harm than good?

Lucas: YES. You either pay to play or you get left in other players’ collective dust.
Anthony: NO. Some people will play the original game, others the expansion, but both co-exist.

Lucas: Now, don’t get me wrong. I love me some Blizzard games, including (but not limited to) the Warcraft, StarCraft, and Lost Vikings series. But if you ask me, the seemingly-omnipotent developer is about to make a serious misstep by giving Heart of the Swarm a separate ladder—the same mistake they made with Warcraft 3: The Frozen Throne. Blizzard should add all of the new multiplayer-only units, free of charge. Then nobody gets left behind, and it won’t feel like you have to make 3 easy payments of $59.99 in order to get the most out of StarCraft II.

Anthony: Blizzard isn’t forcing anyone to purchase the expansions. They are optional, and as such, multiple communities are born through this process–and that’s not a bad thing. If you were forced to buy the expansions, there would only be a single community. But let’s look at SC: there is a SC community and a Brood War community. Same with Warcraft 3. While the hardcore tournament players will always get the expansion to stay on top, the casual players are often happy just sticking with the original game.

Lucas: Why you gotta play me like that, Kerrigan!?

Lucas: But why should competitive people have to shell out in order to stay relevant? The way I see it, a professional-level Frozen Throne player is somebody, and a professional WC3-vanilla player is nobody; being skilled at the outdated model is like trying to impress someone with your first-generation iPod. What if I want to buy the Protoss expansion pack, Legacy of the Void, without HotS? Will I be trapped in some kind of multiplayer limbo? Blizzard is essentially locking you into an ultimatum: either you give them your money, or you fall by the wayside into obsolete multiplayer ghettos.

Anthony: I think you are comparing apples to oranges. Think of it in terms of the boardgame Risk: you can play regular ol’ Risk or you can play the massively expanded version that includes tons of different units. Both are full games, and both have full communities, and they’re equal because they’re both under the Risk banner. Blizzard will be smart with LotV: they’ll create ladders for every combination of game they put out. It doesn’t mean that you won’t be able to compete with others—you’ll still able to play against people who have Wings of Liberty and LotV. If you never get an expansion, you will continue to be able to have a great experience just with the original game.

Anthony: You won't see Grom Hellscream in the expansions!

Lucas: But by definition, having seven individual ladders (Wings of Liberty, HotS, LotV, WoL+HotS, WoL+LotV, HotS+LotV, WoL+HotS+LotV) would drastically fragment the SCII community. Put it this way: I bought the new WoW expansion, Cataclysm, simply due to the compulsion I felt to stay current and not get left behind. It’s the same reason hardcore raiders and patch-notes theorycrafters do what they do. But I barely played Cataclysm, and thinking back, I can’t really justify the amount of money I paid for the game plus a month’s subscription. I just hope the same feeling doesn’t creep over me when I inevitably (and bitterly) buy the new StarCraft expansions.

Anthony: Ok, they most likely won’t have separate ladders—maybe Blizzard will take the WoW approach where if you want to play LotV you need HotS. Just like if you wanted Wrath of the Lich King, you needed Burning Crusade. But if you didn’t buy the expansions, would you really have been left behind? Like I said, Blizzard is smart. Just because you don’t have the expansions doesn’t mean that you can’t experience the rest of the world with everyone else. With World of Warcraft, you wouldn’t be in some bizzaro Azeroth where it’s only you and a handful of people who didn’t pick up the expansions. You see everybody all the time. True, you can’t go to Outlands or Northrend, but you didn’t want to—otherwise you’d get the expansion. Smart programming on Blizzard’s part keeps WoW from becoming fragmented, and should do the same with SC2. Blizzard loves their fans, so whatever they do with SC2, I know it’ll be worth whatever we pay and will work out in the end.

The Verdict:

As always, the lives of these wretched interns rest in your devious hands. Tell us who you think won, and King Logan will be pleased with a new champion of the arena while the other is fed to the lions. PS—no Josh Augustines were harmed in the writing of this article.

At GDC last year Bungie’s creative director Joe Staten was asked what Bungie’s next game would be, saying: “Wouldn’t it be great if we could make a world that was always there for you? Wow. That would be great.”

The new series, which is yet to be named, will be published under Activision.

(via IGN)

Speaking to Eurogamer at GDC, lead producer J. Allen Brack said “We feel like the player base isn’t really ready for the next raid yet.”

Read on for the details.

Blizzard are planning on releasing smaller updates more regularly, rather than larger ones at longer intervals. According to Brack, patch 4.1 will now feature “a dungeon revamp, as opposed to an entirely new tier of content with an entirely new raid.

“I’m sure there’ll be some grousing about the 4.1 decision, and if it ends up being the wrong decision, then we won’t do it again, right? That’s one of the nice things. We’ll learn from this and make the right decision in 4.2″ he continued.

“We’ve started to put a build up on the PTR [Public Test Realm] so that players can take a look at it. Usually we’re on the PTR for six to eight-ish weeks, plus or minus four weeks I would say. So that’s probably where we are in terms of the development of 4.1.”

After the interview, Blizzard issued the following statement to Eurogamer regarding the patch.

“Patch 4.1 provides our players with access to the completely redesigned Zul’Aman and Zul’Gurub five-player dungeons, where they’ll be able to experience challenging encounters featuring all-new boss mechanics, obtain updated epic-level loot, and possibly acquire rare mounts.

“Releasing an epic raid dungeon before its time would, in the words of Ragnaros himself, be ‘too soon!’”

(via Eurogamer)

World of Warcraft. Starcraft. Diablo. We’re extremely glad that Mike Morhaime and Frank Pearce founded Blizzard 20 years ago. This video just popped up on Blizzard’s youTube channel. Watch it and accept their thanks graciously.

What would you like to thank Blizzard for? I like cloaked Banshees best.

During a talk entitled “Remaking the World of Warcraft through Cataclysm”, Tom said “The ‘world’ part of World of Warcraft is arguably its strongest asset. That’s what made it go on from being an ordinary game to being a great success. Elwynn Forest is that classic high fantasy forest environment with a Sherwood Forest type of appeal. Mulgore is a place where it drives you to explore, drives you over that next hill. It was super important for people who come back to WoW for them to feel like it was the same world. It was really where we knew we could really fuck it up.

“We did a poor job of telling versus showing or experiencing the story. By and large, people didn’t read the quest text. For the most part, people just want to know what to kill, and where to find it.”

For more information on World of Warcraft visit the official site, or sign up for the PCG Guild via the forums. What do you think is World of Warcraft’s greatest asset?

You can read the full list of patch notes on Blizzard’s official blog.

Do you embrace patches or fear change? Let us know in the comments.

The Corrupted Blood attack was inserted into the game by Blizzard in 2005 as a spell cast by Hakkar; the end boss of the Zul’Gurub dungeon. When attacked, Hallar cast a hit-point depleting spell which was supposed to last for just ten seconds and only apply within Zul’Gurub. However, players soon realised that if they teleported out of the dungeon and into player-filled areas, the spells effects could be passed on to others. “People were infected,” said Fefferman, “and instead of killing Hakkar or dying themselves, they went back to the cities and infected others.” And so started the plague; an epidemic that contaminated city after city within Azeroth.

Blizzard reacted like any real-life government would, and started to quarantine areas. Fefferman noted the reaction from players was very similar to that expected from real-life people subjected to quarantine. “We saw compliance with quarantine measures,” she says. “We saw courage, we saw suspicion of the quarantine and Blizzard’s intentions. There were people maliciously running in and infecting guilds. We saw looting. It was incredible to see the diversity of response.”

Fefferman has said the World of WarCraft player base (6.45 million at the time of the plague) has worked well as a useful sample in predicting real-world events; showing that regardless of government action, human behaviour always poses a hurdle. “Is it all we need? No,” she says, “but it’s a good place to start.”

[via Edge]

If you’ve looked at your World of Warcraft latency report since patch 4.0.6 went live last week, you may have noticed that what was once a single large number – often over 200ms on a decent connection – has been divided up into two smaller numbers called Home and World, which are 32ms and 178ms respectively on my current machine.

Many people – including me – initially assumed that the former, lower number was something to do with their LAN. Turns out we were wrong, and in a post picked up by MMO Champion’s Blue Tracker, Blizzard representative Brianl did an excellent job of explaining what was going on:

In essence, ‘Home’ refers to your connection to your realm server. This connection sends chat data, auction house stuff, guild chat and info, some addon data, and various other data. It is a pretty slim connection in terms of bandwidth requirements.

‘World’ is a reference to the connection to our servers that transmits all the other data… combat, data from the people around you (specs, gear, enchants, etc.), NPCs, mobs, casting, professions, etc. Going into a highly populated zone (like a capital city) will drastically increase the amount of data being sent over this connection and will raise the reported latency.

So far so straightforward, and Brianl went to describe how the difference between the two figures can be used to diagnose connection problems.

If your ‘Home’ connection latency is low and your ‘World’ connection latency is high, that frequently indicates that there is some sort of QoS congestion controls being applied to your internet connection, at either the micro (LAN) or macro (WAN) level. A common symptom would be that you would be able to chat, but not to cast.

The most interesting part of the discussion, though, is a few posts later. Brianl revealed that around the same time as the patch, Blizzard had also made some changes to the way the ‘World’ servers for instances, raids, arena and battlegrounds handle network traffic. The changes were designed to lower client latency, but because the changes resulted in higher pings for less than 2% of players they hit CTRL-Z and reverted to the old system on Sunday night.

The problem, according to Brianl, was that reducing the ping times means increasing the number of times a game client talks to the server per second. On slower connections, or where ISPs deploy traffic shaping policies to throttle heavy users, the increase in packets sent to and from the servers was enough to flood the available bandwidth and cause substantially higher latency, making the game unplayable.

So far, so much kudos to Blizzard for trying something new and then fixing an unforeseen problem pretty quickly. Also, to Brianl for bothering to explain something fairly esoteric for a lot of players.

But here’s where we get licence to indulge in some rampant speculation. Traditionally, the MMO client/server server relationship has been planned with high average latencies in mind in order to manage the vast quantity of information coming in from thousands of players at once – and the actual lag is disguised by game design which doesn’t require perfect synchronisation between the two. That’s why WoW and Eve et al aren’t ‘twitch’ games: a 16 player FPS server running a relatively tight map can afford to update each client in near real-time without using much in the way of bandwidth. For MMOs, there’s a literal ton of data in each update with player positions, NPC movements, item caches and so on.

Even in instances, there must be a point – probably higher than the 12ms Brianl claims he was getting over the weekend – where lower pings won’t actually have any noticeable effect on the gameplay.

Thus we can reasonably surmise that playing around with the underlying network structure isn’t necessarily to benefit current WoW players, but to test a new architecture for the next game – Titan – and that it needs FPS-style response times. QED.

Or they could just be trying to make WoW better, of course.

More seriously, though, it does raise highlight an issue about how technically viable a large scale MMO with all the rich detail of WoW but the fast pace of – say – PlanetSide – is. The WoW problems were caused by two things: invisible traffic shaping by ISPs and wireless connections including 3G and WiFi not being up to the task. It’s one thing for Blizzard, which now makes up a significant part of all internet traffic, to experiment with low latency gaming and be able to move from one network management system to another smoothly and quickly to avoid complaints. But for an MMO of the future which is more reliant on low pings and whose parent company isn’t as well resourced, and is fighting against more traffic shaping in the non-neutral net, it’s going to be a massive issue to overcome.

Towards the end of last year, a leaked Blizzard memo confirmed the existance of “Titan,” rumoured to arrive in later 2013.

Read our review of World of Warcraft: Cataclysm here. Tim really, really likes it.

(via arstechnica)

“You were reported to PayPal as an Intellectual Properties violation by Blizzard Entertainment Inc. for the sale of World of Warcraft Merchandise. If you feel your sales do not infringe upon the intellectual property rights of the Reporting Party, please complete the attached Objection to Infringement Report by January 21, 2011. The completed form should be faxed to the attention of the Acceptable Use Policy Department at [number removed] or emailed to [email removed]. Should you choose not to object to the report, you will be required to remove all World of Warcraft Merchandise from the website [url removed] in order to comply with the Acceptable Use Policy.”

The use of Paypal could then be revoked for offenders. With many gold farmers based outside of the US, attacking them through Paypal is easier that using the courts. While Paypal is convenient, it’s by no means the only way to buy things on the internet, but it’s good to see Blizzard taking on the problem.

[via WoW Insider]

The fixes are the usual tweaks to various gameplay issues, with slight alterations being made to some of the classes (Druids, Paladins, Priests and Rogues) and some Dungeons and Raids (The Bastion of Twilight, Blackwing Descent, Deadmines, Throne of the Four Winds and The Vortex Pinnacle).

You can find the full list of fixes over at the official World of WarCraft website. While many have already been deployed on all realms, Blizzard note that some may not be implemented until your realm is restarted.

Within 24 hours of modder Ryan Winzen’s ‘pre-alpha’ World of StarCraft video hitting YouTube, the video was pulled due to a claim of copyright infringement by Activision. Blizzard have finally released a statement explaining their motivation, revealing that it’s the actual name that’s causing difficulties, not the content: “With the name so closely resembling that of World of Warcraft, we wanted to discuss the title of the mod with the developer, and as part of our routine procedure, we contacted YouTube to request the video be removed while that discussion took place” said Blizzard. “It was never our intention to stop development on the mod or discourage the community from expressing their creativity through the StarCraft II editor.” In fact, it actually appears that Activision/Blizzard have a copyright on the name World of StarCraft.

Meanwhile, at the mod’s forum, Wizen posted “The Deputy General Council from Blizzard contacted me last night to discuss the details of the World of Starcraft project, We talked for a while and apparently some people from Blizz were concerned I was developing the game somehow outside of SC2.” He also explained that he’s looking to change the name of the mod to either StarCraft Universe or StarCraft Chronicles.

And if the news that the mod still lives wasn’t good enough, Wizen has also been contacted by Riot Games – the studio behind League of Legends – with a job offer. Tom Cadwell, Design Director at Riot posted on the League of Legends forum: “When I see a modder with a lot of drive that has done something cool, I tend to contact them. I shot him an email recently asking if he was interested in exploring an opportunity here. As to what comes of that, who knows — that depends on the mutual fit and his own goals.”

[via The Escapist]

Cooked up by a new company called Gamer Food, the bars (which come in flavours such as Mana and Health) are supposed to give gamers a boost between matches and raids. They’re completely natural and hand made, and feature organic clover honey, rice cereal and more.

For those less fond of Blizzard’s MMO, there are bars based on it’s space-faring cousin StarCraft. Protoss Delight and Zerg Push are all well and good but we can’t help but notice that there’s no Terran-inspired munch available. Everyone knows that Terran are OP anyway, so it’s not a big deal. OUCH. Rich just punched me in the face.

The bars are $9.99 for a pack of three, or a twelve bar pack for $32.99. If you’re salivating just at the thought of such cullinary delights, jump over to Gamer Food’s website and put in your order. What would you call a Starcraft/Warcraft-inspired bar? Owen has gone with “Chrono Boost” whereas Rich likes “Creep Tumour”.

[via Big Download]

• Even after we fixed their mastery, Feral druid bleeds still do a lot of damage and are undispellable. We plan to shift some of that damage back to main attacks. They are also a little too hard to control. Given that they are already hard to root, snare, or polymorph, we think the fear immunity from Berserk is too much.
• Arms warrior burst damage might still be too high in PvP, while we don’t have a great way to adjust their sustained damage for PvE. The Lambs to the Slaughter talent is a good place to address this. We also might nerf warrior stuns.
• We think Arms and Fury warriors are getting too much damage out of Heroic Strike. We want it to be clear that it’s a rage dump and not make it the hardest hitting ability.
• For Holy priests, we’re increasing Chakra’s duration and changing Surge of Light so it can now from Flash Heal and Greater Heal and can crit.
• We’re making some additional buffs, such as Pain Suppression and Barkskin, undispellable.
• We’re buffing Wild Mushroom. It’s a cool spell that isn’t getting enough play.
• Empowered Touch will now benefit from Regrowth as well. We’re also buffing the Glyph of Regrowth.
• We are looking at Holy Concentration (after our most recent buff) and Omen of Clarity to make sure they don’t account for too much mana savings.
• We are probably going to remove Drain Mana from warlocks. It is incredibly situational in PvE but causes problems in PvP. This might mean we need to evaluate Mana Burn as well.
• Inferno will no longer increase the radius of Hellfire.
• Shadow and Flame can now proc from Incinerate in addition to Shadow Bolt.
• We want to redesign Improved Soulfire.
• Censure will no longer break Repentance.
• As part of the Marks and Beastmaster buffs, we’re buffing Aimed Shot, Kill Shot, Chimera Shot, and Kill Command.
• To reduce mage control, we are discussing reducing the duration of Frost Nova and Ring of Frost.
• We want to make it clear that Combat is intended to use fast off-hand weapons. We also want to polish Revealing Strike a bit.
• We want to make sure Enhancement shaman avoid caster weapons.
• We want to make sure Unholy DKs prefer two-handed weapons.
• Necrotic Strike needs to be affected by resilience.
• For Cataclysm, we changed Death Strike almost completely into an ability for Blood DK tanks, which is a bit unfortunate. We want to make sure it is still a useful button for Frost or Unholy DKs who need healing.
• We also want to address DK mobility in PvP.
• We think we overnerfed Every Man for Himself, and are reverting it back to a 2-minute cooldown again. We might evaluate other racials after we’ve seen more PvP.

While all of the above updates are planned for the future, Blizzard have already been busy releasing hotfixes and mini-patches to quickly correct balance issues. The changes made by the latest hotfix are outlined in another blog post on the World of Warcraft site. Wondering whether to take the plunge and go for level 85? Check out out World of Warcraft: Cataclysm review.

Well, almost anything. It turns out not even Gamon can handle a tide of three hundred naked level 1 Orcs. The attack has to be seen to be believed. Fortunately, the whole thing was recorded. You’ll find the incredible video below.

Matches can take place in any Arena or Battleground. The limit on player numbers in each battle is set by the arena that’s chosen. The update is set to arrive with Arena Season 9, which is set to kick off later today. Head over to the World of Warcraft site for more information on the update, and details on how you’ll be able to initiate War Games once they’ve been added.

The figures were helped by the huge simultaneous worldwide release that Blizzard organised, which saw the game go on sale in US, Canada, Mexico, Argentina, Chile, Europe, Russia, Southeast Asia, Australia, and New Zealand at the same time. Over 15000 people attended midnight launch events that took place across the world on December 7th.

Blizzard weren’t the only ones holding launch events. For more World of Warcraft goodness check out our Cataclysm launch liveblog and our Cataclysm first impressions.

If you’re just diving into World of Warcraft, why not join the PCG Guild? The 500 strong Horde army is tearing it up on Steamwheedle Cartel. If you fancy getting involved, swing by the PCG WoW Guild forums.

He also spoke about some story changes that Blizzard plan to make: “We have this weird story now where you almost go back in time when you hit the Burning Crusade and Lich King content. We’re going to have to do something to bring that up to speed. You’re hearing all about Deathwing and all the destruction and then you leave Azeroth and go to Outland and they’re talking about Illidin. That’s a little bit of a non-sequitur, particularly for new players. We need to make that whole story a little smoother.”

Speaking to Eurogamer, Street said that the concept for the next expansion is “pretty close to locked in”, but added that Blizzard were also considering releasing smaller expansions more often, saying “we can’t generate content fast enough for a lot of our players… If we delivered on expansions more often, I think players would love that. It always comes down to the quality level, we’re not willing to cut too many features or sacrifice quality to be able to come out quickly,”

“The risk is that we try to come out with a leaner expansion more often and we end up cutting features or making it shorter and then still taking two years. That would be… we can’t do that.”

For more on the launch of Cataclysm, check out our first impressions and our our blow by blow account of the expansion going live.

And it’s good. Really, really good. The World of Warcraft of today is streets ahead of the World of Warcraft that launched six years ago. And the new levelling content that’s been added finally brings the opening stages of the game to the same quality and entertainment levels that veteran players will have seen with the previous two expansion packs.

Right now, WoW is a phenomenally entertaining game; and I think you should take the free trial and have a play right now. You don’t even need to buy the new expansion to have a poke about the new Azeroth.

Most of the revamp of WoW for Cataclysm has concentrated on the 1-60 levelling experience – the bit you may have played when WoW launched. The quests in that portion of the game were embarrasing, rarely a variation on “kill 10 of these”, or “collect five of their ears”. Rarely did the quests ever try any story telling or development beyond: “go to this dungeon and kill this epic boss inside”.

Things are very different in the WoW of today.

Take Westfall. Westfall is a low tier zone, a weird Children of the Corn parody where robo-scarecrows and gnolls are running rampant in gorgeous cornfields. Westfall at sunset is one of the most beautiful places in gaming. But it was always a tedious, monstrous grind. Collect boar tummies. Kill scarecrows. Collect parts. Kill gnolls. There was no storyline, only grind.

Now, in WoW, when you enter Westfall, you immediately stumble upon a murder scene. A family lie dead, alarm-bots are scurrying around an upturned horse and cart. Giving out the quests: Horatio Lane, of what appears to be CSI: Azeroth. Your first quest isn’t to kill the hobos who’re wandering about the fields next door. It’s to get witness statements, to find out what happened, and to gather clues. They lead to a group of brigands. Brigands in a cave. There you’re given a cardboard box, and asked to evesdrop on a meeting between the brigands and a shadowy figure who may, or may not have been implicated in the murder.

The story continues: to an Alliance village under attack. To an abandoned town where the homeless are finally starting to organise. To a watchtower, where a sniper takes out the elite guards while you sneak in. And finally, to an epic reveal of a new enemy.

It’s breezy, funny, and swift. I burned through the zone in around three hours, gaining about five levels in the process. I loved every minute of it – from the writing of the quests (the new quests incorporate pop-culture references way beyond lip-service – some zones are full blown parodies). The writing and the storytelling is as good as any fantasy game I’ve played. And it’s delivered in a context where you can share the story as you go along with mates.

There are some caveats. I’m a WoW fan, and I was entranced not just by the content, but how much better it was than the previous incarnation of WoW. It’s also worth pointing out that the tech WoW is powered by is old, and the engine struggles with complex animations. Most of the scripted sequences involve character models attempting to emote, and speech bubbles.

But this new content is a riot. And it’s all over the place. In the new Redridge Mountains, you’ll discover WoW’s answer to the A-Team, and put their team backtogether for one final mission. In the new Azshara, you’ll ride Shredders, tiptoe through a vast minefield, and eventually take part in a bizarre recruitment ceremony for a deranged wizard. In the Ashenvale, you end up taking a series of increasingly demented Kodo journeys, before turning into a mobile artillery targeting imp.

Occasionally, you’ll come across an old quest that the developers have left in, just because they can. Hogger, for instance. Or Nesingwary’s hunter quests in Stranglethorn Vale. And yeah, they’re nowhere near as good as the new stuff. But it’s still fine. Old players will smile. New players probably won’t even notice.

That's the second biggest gun we've ever seen.

I’ve been playing WoW for a long, long time. But the last two weeks of creating and then playing with low-level characters is the most fun I’ve had in the game since launch. It has a sense of freshness of content, but with a layer of nostalgia.

Levelling new characters is incredibly easy now, and, thanks to the way new abilities are given out, it’s more fun. At level 10, you’ll earn a character defining ability – something you’d usually have had to wait until you reached top level for. And the dungeon bosses – even at low level, have had their abilities tweaked so that they actually test what your character can do from the off. In Deadmines, an underground cavern that’s ripped straight from the Goonies, one simple fight now demands low level players dodge great pits of fire as they appear beneath their feet. It’s like “my first raid boss”.

Not everything is perfect. I was baffled by the lack of changes to the early Orc starting area – Durotar is still too big, and still too empty. Queues for dungeons are long, and the groups you meet via the dungeon finder are of very variable quality. It may be that the game is just too scripted now: thanks to clear signposting and a re-worked levelling map, you’ll rarely, if ever, have to make those epic journeys through places you shouldn’t really be. You’ll explore, but I doubt you’ll go off the beaten track. And finally, it may be that the levelling is just too fast. There are bonkers numbers of ways to boost your levelling speed now, through rest XP (stay offline for a bit, and Blizzard will double your levelling speed), recruit a friend mechanics (if you can get a friend to join you, Blizzard will give you triple XP), heirloom items (items that can be posted between characters that can help you level alts) and the new guild mechanics (those in a guild can earn an extra 10% levelling speed). I found myself outlevelling content before I’d finished a zone. Which was a shame: I really wanted to finish the storylines.

The original trollface.

I also wonder how it’s going to feel when players leave Azeroth and enter the Burning Crusade area of Outland. The main reason for a WoW veteran to play the remade old areas is the thrill of the new. Unfortunately, that’s going to end when you get to level 60 – at that point you’ll be punted into Outland, the area added in the Burning Crusade. These are zones that any veteran will have quested through at least once. Probably many more. I do wonder if the Cataclysm shouldn’t have altered Outland too, or built zones with content that could take you from 1-70, or even 1-80, skipping the expansions entirely.

Even so, this is a stunning rebirth for WoW. Earlier this year, Mike Morheime, Blizzard’s president said that 70% of WoW players rarely make it past level 10. I’m expecting that number to start rising dramatically.

New Home Page features

• Browse Armory data
• View and manage auctions
• Guild news feed
• Friends list for quick access to Armory profiles

Character Profile Homepage

• Reforging options
• Enhanced tooltips with more information than ever before
• Raid progression, including recommendations
• 3D character model view (coming soon)

Character Profile subpages

• Events
• PvP (coming in Season 9)
• Remote Auction House
• Reputations
• Guild information, including calendar interaction and progression

Guild Profile subpage

• View guild progression, top contributors, your current reputation, guild news, and more
• Guild Roster with enhanced search and filter options
• Guild Perks
• Guild Achievements

New Game Section

• Beginner’s Guide
• Adventuring in Azeroth 101 — beginners should start here
• Updated race and class profiles
• Realm Status page with real-time updates and new filter options
• Patch Notes

Forum Improvements

• Insert item tooltips into forum posts
• Click on the new sword icon and enter an item ID number to insert an item tooltip link!
• Enhanced Quoting
• Select a portion of another post and a pop-up option allows you to paste it directly into the reply field

The new site has hit just in time for the release of Cataclysm, which will launch at midnight.

The video uploader. Mr Zoddiak, who participated in making the video, said “It took about a week of planning, around 40 runs by myself to imagine the setup and route, an hour to setup the raid of 26 people, around 2 hours of practice runs and slight tweeks to placements, and a few real tries. What you see was our final go of the night. Over all, we had alot of fun.” Another video is planned for the new year.

• Level 10 – Arathi Basin and Warsong Gulch
• Level 35 – Eye of the Storm
• Level 45 – Alterac Valley
• Level 65 – Strand of the Ancients
• Level 75 – Isle of Conquest
• Level 85 – Battle for Gilneas and Twin Peaks

The new tighter bracketing system should ensure more even fights across each Battleground. For an overview of the rules and objectives of World of Warcraft’s massive PvP arenas, check out the entry on the World of Warcraft site.

[via MMO Champion]

If it’s legitimate there are some things to be seriously curious about. There’s a mention of Battlenet third parties, It also slates World of Warcraft’s fourth expansion for release in 2012 and pegs the World of Warcraft Movie for a late 2012 release.

Then there’s the mysterious game ‘Titan’ at the bottom of the diagram, scheduled for arrival in the latter stages of 2013. Hrrm?

[via Gameinformer]

My brand-new Paladin snuck towards the back of the Lion’s Pride Inn (past the naked bodies dancing on every surface in the place) and watched Chris Hansen threaten the residents with Dateline: Azeroth. “I have the chat logs right here”, he said to a Hunter attempting to make the moves on a feral Druid, before proceeding to read back some of the socially-questionable exchanges made between the two.

This was a troll of epic proportions. Goldshire on the Moon Guard RP server is famous for its “special” brand of role-play, often involving ridiculous metaphors and WoW characters dancing in underwear–it was only a matter of time until someone tried to clean up the place Chris Hansen-style.

In front of me, a naked Draenei and Night Elf started to dance on the tables asking for tips. One of them was bold enough to ask Chris Hansen if he wanted a dance. Fortunately, Chris was able to resist her feminine charms and got back to business. “Sir…we have some videos we need to show you.” Chris had turned his attention to a Rogue who was trying his best to buy a Draenei girl a drink. Unfortunately for the Rogue, Chris had other plans.

Chris’ speeches and threats to the residents were drawing a crowd. Was it possible that he could talk some sense into this ERP’ing crowd? If he could redeem even that single Warlock asking the Druid for a night out, his efforts would be worth it–or maybe the naked Gnome streaking through the streets of Elwynn, yelling that he needed a woman.

“Sir, she’s 317. That’s a child in Draenei years”, Chris continued on his mission to save Goldshire from it’s debauchery. Unfortunately, the Human responded by emoting /rofl and applauding Chris’ attempts. A few Draenei strippers inched closer to the conversation and started to dance on the tables. A Warlock tried to convince Chris to join her upstairs. The Rogue that Chris was chastising didn’t take the accusation of chatting up an underage Draenei seriously and continued on.

As I left the Inn to continue exploring the post-Shattering Elwynn Forest, I turned back for just a moment and saw that Goldshire had taken hold of Chris as well. He was stripped down to his boxers dancing on a table next to the Draenei. No one is safe from the clutches of Goldshire–not even Chrishanson the level one Human Priest.

The party rages on...