Tag: World of Warcraft

Monday Night Cap: Daily Questing


Welcome to your night cap, for Monday September seventeenth, star date two zero one two. Daily activities are a great way for MMOs to keep their communities interested and playing. From a design stand, it directs the more casual crowd to a list of chores that can be completed even if the person doesn’t have much time to play. They can also introduce players to certain features that they might not have found or tried on their own.

Take Guild Wars 2, for a recent example. Every day players are tasked with killing x number of mobs, x type of mobs, collecting x number of materials and completing events. With fast teleportation, the entire daily list can be completed in a half hour or less, and offers a nice reward for completion. By spacing out the events, players are essentially pushed into exploring the world.

Daily quests are especially nice in sandbox games, where the player might be overwhelmed by the vast number of choices of activities, but don’t have much in the way of guidance. RuneScape is introducing its own list of daily activities, to give the player a set of tasks to get them going, offering bonus experience for participating.

And yes, daily quest timers are also used to herd players and place artificial limits on content. Certain MMOs place timers on when you can raid dungeons, or how much experience you can obtain in one day (Final Fantasy). Some titles limit how many times you can pull a reward from a boss. This is a controversial, and well disputed issue among various communities.

A developer would tell you that the reason is wealth difference, and that they don’t want a player who can only raid once or twice a week to feel at a disadvantage to someone who has the time to raid ten times a night. The player’s side is that they pay the subscription (or whatever the model is) and therefore should be able to raid as much as they want. Another argument by the community is that MMOs are a time investment, therefore the players with more time should naturally have an advantage over those with less.

So dailies aren’t perfect, but they do aid people like myself who often quit MMOs not out of bad quality, but simply because they lose our attention. On the other hand, having dailies linked to multi-day events can result in an alienated player if for some reason they miss a day and have to start over.

How do you feel about dailies?

Blizzard: Will Not Up WoW’s Free Trial


World of Warcraft may still be at the top of the game, but if the past few years are any indication, it is a title that may be lost in the foreseeable future. Since it hit its peak just a couple of years ago, World of Warcraft has seen a substantial loss of players, down to the current level of approximately nine million. Still, this figure doesn’t appear to have frightened the top brass at Blizzard Entertainment.

In an interview with Gamasutra, Blizzard stated that the developer has no plans to increase the current free to play limit. Producer John Lagrave commented that there are special parts of the game that he would rather reserve for paying customers.

“We looked at whether Level 20 would give you a good sense of what our game is, and we think it does. We’ve definitely slid some of the pay-for features into the first 20 Levels,”

Sorry, gamers who for one reason or another are still holding out.

Blizzard: Will Not Up WoW's Free Trial


World of Warcraft may still be at the top of the game, but if the past few years are any indication, it is a title that may be lost in the foreseeable future. Since it hit its peak just a couple of years ago, World of Warcraft has seen a substantial loss of players, down to the current level of approximately nine million. Still, this figure doesn’t appear to have frightened the top brass at Blizzard Entertainment.

In an interview with Gamasutra, Blizzard stated that the developer has no plans to increase the current free to play limit. Producer John Lagrave commented that there are special parts of the game that he would rather reserve for paying customers.

“We looked at whether Level 20 would give you a good sense of what our game is, and we think it does. We’ve definitely slid some of the pay-for features into the first 20 Levels,”

Sorry, gamers who for one reason or another are still holding out.

International Sanctions Shut Down World of Warcraft in Iran


Iranian gamers may be waking up to find that access to a number of games will be going away in the coming weeks. According to the BBC, while the Iran government would like you to believe that the games are being banned as “western propaganda” used to “poison the minds of the youth population in Iran,” the real culprit appears to be international sanctions against the country. While many publishers already have no intention of releasing their games in Iran, this does mean that gamers in Iran will find their IP addresses blocked from accessing previously available services.

Blizzard responded to recent comments of Battle.net being blocked in Iran with the following:

We can’t speak to reports surrounding the Iranian government restricting games from its citizens. What we do know is that United States trade restrictions and economic sanction laws prohibit Blizzard from doing business with residents of certain nations, including Iran. We’ve recently tightened up our procedures to ensure compliance with those laws, which means we must restrict access to our games by players in those nations.

Iranian youth may want to consider a proxy if they intend on continuing to poison their minds with western propaganda.

(Source: BBC)

World of Warcraft Mobile App Now Free For All


Good news, World of Warcrafters, your game just became a little bit freer. As a convenience service, Blizzard launched the World of Warcraft remote. This service allows players to connect to the auction house remotely, chat with their guild, review prices, and bid on items even if their character is not at an auction house. Up until now, this service cost about $3 a month on top of your regular Warcraft subscription. As announced today, Blizzard has made all of the features of WoW Remote available for free.

Starting today, all of the features that were previously part of the optional World of Warcraft Remote subscription service are now available for free to all World of Warcraft subscribers.

Players who had already been paying for WoW Remote have received a thank you note, as well as 7 free days of game time and a non-combat pet.

(Source: World of Warcraft)

Blizzard Servers Breached


Grab your authenticators and rev up the conspiracy machine. With all the server breaches that have happened over the past year or so, it seemed inevitable that Blizzard would eventually be the victim of such an attack. A security notice on Battle.net has been posting warning users that a security breach has resulted in delicate information being released.

According to the notice, encrypted passwords, security questions, email addresses, and mobile authenticator information was stolen in the breach. Mike Mohaime points out that the information leaked is not enough to recover an account, however users over the next few days will be forced to change their secret questions and mobile authenticator users will be required to update to a new version of the software.

All in all the breach was bad, but as several sites are pointing out, it could have been much worse.

(source: WoW Insider)

World of Warcraft Dropping More Weight: Another Million Subscribers Lost


World of Warcraft is a paradox in and of itself: While the subscription numbers continue to drop, Blizzard has been very quick to point out that the game just continues to become more profitable. The problem, according to Blizzard, is that players are becoming bored with grinding content in between expansion packs. To stem the flow of gamers, Blizzard has offered everything under the sun minus the kitchen sink to bring back their ex-customers. So far, Blizzard has offered full upgrades to Cataclysm, free level 80 characters, a copy of Diablo III for subscribing for a full year, and more. To take care of what they see as the source of the leak, Blizzard has committed to less downtime between expansions and more content.

The latest numbers from Activision show World of Warcraft standing at 9.1 million subscribers, a ten percent drop from last quarter. Warcraft’s new expansion, Mists of Pandaria, launches later this year and hopes to stop, if not reverse, the exodus of players.

Despite this bad news, World of Warcraft remains the top subscription MMO by a wide margin.

(Source: Gamasutra)

Now This is How You Charity: World of Warcraft Server Blade Charity


It is that time of the year again! Blizzard was once again out and about and ready to give. Blizzard auctioned off two thousand original World of Warcraft server blades, with the proceeds to go to St. Jude Children’s Hospital. Well the final tallies are in, and Blizzard has raised $330,000.

“Each winner in this auction will own a small monument to those collective experiences. The best part is that this auction benefits a great charity doing tremendous work in helping children from the U.S. and around the world.”

Blizzard holds regular charities in World of Warcraft with benefits toward the Red Cross, Children’s Hospital, Make-a-Wish Foundation, and more.

(Source: Games Industry)

Raptr Rewards: Claim Mists of Pandaria Beta Keys


*Note: Since I’ve received numerous comments in regard to this and the other Raptr articles, I would like to point out that this is not a sponsored article. MMO Fallout does not accept offers for sponsored articles.*

We here at MMO Fallout love Raptr. If you haven’t heard of it, Raptr is a service similar to Xfire which tracks your games, achievements, time played, and more. As you play games and earn achievements, you rank up in comparison to your fellow gamers, and this is where Raptr leads the pack: Every so often, Raptr offers some great rewards for the simple act of ranking up. These range from in-game items to full games, and coupons to buy games. On the downside, the promotions are quantity and time limited, so you’ll need to be fast to earn them.

The latest deal to hit Raptr soon is a promotion for World of Warcraft. Starting later this week, players who are ranked “Experienced” (top 60%) or above in World of Warcraft will be able to claim a Mists of Pandaria beta key. There are only five thousand keys to be claimed, and they are guaranteed to be gone within just a few hours of the promotion starting.

On another fine note, this giveaway is available in all regions except for China and Korea. Sorry! Beta keys are redeemed through Battle.net.

MMO Fallout will be showcasing more Raptr rewards as they appear.

(Source: Raptr.com)

Activison Blizzard Up For Sale? For $13.2 Billion


Can someone loan me $13 billion? According to Bloomberg, executives from Vivendi SA will meet later this month to determine if the company will sell off its majority 61% share in Activision Blizzard. The report came from anonymous sources, noting that the meeting is secret and the details of what is discussed may or may not be shared with the public.

With Activision’s sales of $4.6 billion, and the launches of Diablo III and World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria this year, I can see why Vivendi may not be interested in the company anymore. After all, there are only so many places to store the massive amounts of dough that Blizzard alone brings in on a yearly basis, let alone including Activision with the Call of Duty franchise.

Of course, I jest. Bloomberg notes that this would be another move to distance Vivendi from the spend-happy disaster that was CEO Jean-Marie Messier, who was booted out of the company in 2002 after a $77 billion spending spree that left the company nearly bankrupt. As for what Vivendi would do with the $13 billion that their share of Activision is worth, well I believe this picture provides one alternative:

(Source: Bloomberg)