Ok, this is a quick bragging post. The Tank rewards gave me the Green Proto-Drake mount. I’m stoked. This means that I’ll never grind out that bloody Oracle daily quest rep, or feel compelled to thump my head against those eggs that all my mount-hunting mates seem to loathe.
Happy dance. Continue reading
One of the few things I like in game which is not strictly an advantage or with a great purpose is having some of the groovy mounts. I’m not a mount collector by any means, but there are a few I have that I really like.
The Drake of the West Wind is a nice looking dragon – and well worth the time and grind. I may even continue to do the daily quests.
Might be old news for the SC2 core, but darn impressive none the less. A programmer named Lomilar on the TeamLiquid site has used a highly intelligent and adaptive program dubbed Evolution Chamber to find the optimal build orders for StarCraft 2.
This program has devised a method of building units which was otherwise unknown, and leads to a very high probability of victory; particularly for those players who excel at speed builds (from what I understand). Players who use this are the guys who seek optimal performance, and its hardly surprising that somebody built an app to do it.
This is very interesting for gamers in general, not because it’s possible or just a freakishy cool and strange thing to do (well to me anyway), but because it raised a hell of a lot of dire ranting from members of all sorts of communities, for all sorts of odd reasons.
Q. Why is it possible? A storm in a teacup?
A. It always was. Because this is nothing new, and the computer program just makes doing the math so much faster that it is now tactically viable in terms of game affect. You could brute force open a safe, or the correct build order for units in Civ 1 as well, it takes time and programming savvy.
And yes, this will be added to the communities of interest for such things, absorbed, and developed into a finer mechanical bases for strategies.
Q. Is the game broken now?
A. No more than before. A RTS is about strategy, speed, and knowledge. You need a strategy to guide your thinking, speed to build and control units in optimal ways, and knowledge to understand the changes in a game and how to react. This app gives some of the puzzle a fixed path.
Q. Is it perfect?
A. Honestly I doubt it. I’ll bet that somebody already has a working counter-strat or at least a way to mitigate the overall affect. And that means that those games will come down to other factors to determine who wins.
Q. Who will use this?
A. Everyone will eventually benefit from this, although the affect on my RTS skills will be zero, as I suck badly enough that even with a strategy like this in my head I’d not be able to execute. The good players will get better, and the great ones will continue to be great. The advantage of this strategy will also fade over time amongst the community of solid serious players.
Q. Were the mega-skill-rts players going to win anyway?
A. Yes, but they beat you faster now. Get over it, or practice more. And they’ll beat each other in far more clever ways with this too.
Q. What next then?
A. Using the app mid-battle to alter the strategic recommendations is next. This will basically be a trainer app, which helps rote learn good responses to classic strats. I think it is not significantly different from a chess uber program being used as a training tool for high end chess players. Chess being turn based is a point of difference, but as a trainer – this app does the same thing.
Q. Does this destroy the enjoyment?
A. For some it increases it; for others it makes the game pointless for multiplayer. Each person probably already knows which they are, and this app does not change the battleground by much for those folks.
Read Further http://gizmodo.com/5679355/can-artificial-intelligence-beat-humans-at-starcraft
I have a guldmate who is literally obsessed with mounts, and finally got her Bird mount from the Sethek Halls. Grats Genowen.
This is the one item that I think she’d never get tired of, and would strike fear and loathing into her guildmates. Which is kind of par for the course. I’m thinking of Nesty (one of the resident Shadow Priests) as the target for this.
A range of thoughts from The Instance shows 190 to 192. Kind of a catch-up bucket post, as I’m listening to them as a batch. I’ll say up front that I really like these guys; and the personal edge and plain language version of the game the present is really valuable. If you don’t listen regularly show #192 is a good one.
Toon Models
From show #192 the Randy and Scott chatted about an improved model creator for Warcraft. The idea being to introduce a toon adjustment option similar to other games where we can customise more of the appearance of our characters. I think most players would like the option to alter more of their appearance; especially over time as they realise what they like.
Damn guys, I would love this but I can see why it is difficult. C models, with R variations, wearing A gear, with P options adjustable via the barber; well than gets you: CRAP! = a lot of variations to load in real time in Dalaran (Lag-a-ran).
Perhaps the game code could be altered in a future version to only adjust the subtle display of toon models during low traffic areas, or it could be a UI preference – giving the tollerance level for models to be adjustable. eg. In town I don’t care, but in Instances with my mates it would be nice.
Perhaps only useful in the DeepRun Tram?
The Instance #179 & #180 talks about new mounts, and by all things holy I think we can go way past riding Hoverboards and Wasps, we can reference the fun ideas in a shared topic on Blog Azeroth, which started it up for me a while back in August 2008.
We might soon see submarines, and all sorts of oceanic mounts. I expect I’ll never see the phoenix or another ultra-low-drop-rate mount, but some of the stuff the Instance crew talk about in #179, and touch on in #180 is interesting.
Just saying its a great thing to add in an expansion, gives breadth of fun to everyone, and has no balance issues to speak of really. And I kind of support a Jetpack for Engineers; more so it can explode or go out of control.
Just in via Wow.com in the PTR – our Alts might be flying at 68 in Northrend. Awesome-sauce.
Guess what! Zarhym responded just a short time ago to a thread on the official forums clarifying the change. It looks like this could very well be making it onto the live servers. Zarhym said:
Just to confirm, Tome of Cold Weather Flight is actually a new heirloom item planned to go into patch 3.2. At level 80 players can buy this heirloom item from the Cold Weather Flying Trainer in Dalaran for 1,000 gold and send it to an alt of the same realm, faction and account. The tome can be used to learn Cold Weather Flying at level 68, consuming the tome in the process.
Please note this feature is not yet in the newest version of the public test realm patch notes updated today. The item and its functionality are subject to change during the testing process.
Note that the cost shown in the picture (900g) is due to the faction discount.
/drool + /happydance all in one. I love a good Ptr rumor.
This might just be a PTR thing to assist with some testing, but hey it looks legit, and it is not April 1.
Apparently Patch 3.2 will lower the cost, increase the speed, and lower the level requirement for mounts.
Linkage via WoW.com, and the WoW Forums.
That is great; bring it on. Especially the speed increase for normal flyers. Nothing but win for anyone leveling at the moment. I’m happy about this even though I purchased normal riding yesterday on an alt. Continue reading
I could not help myself, or stand to crawl through the air when I knew that a faster option was available. Yeira the (soon to be Shadow) Priest has her epic flying skill, and a new Blue Gryphon.
Anyone got any change?
Once more my Priest can fly very very slowly while leveling. Hindsight tells me that I should not have blown all that gold on the epic flying skill for my Druid, Paladin, and Warlock. The need for gold will keep me doing my daily quests in a quasi-regular manner.
But then I treat hindsight like I treat my sense of right and wrong; like a red headed child whining at my hip for attention. /slap and move on. Fun to be had, and nobody like a know it all.
If/when I get the epic flying skill, I think Yeira won’t be treated to some silly strange or expensive mount. It’ll be something functional and inexpensive. Mortigen the Death Knight is the glamour whore who gets the good stuff.
