Random stuff from MMO Champ and Blue Posts

An assembly of trivia from readings around the place, mostly from a MMO Champ post..

Mists of Pandaria Flying for Alts – “WTB Book of Pandaren Flying (BoA – requires level 90 to purchase) = 2400gold, PST.”

“We’re not sure if we’ll be doing this. The tome worked out well enough for Wrath of the Lich King as an experiment, but so much of the experience we spent a lot of time and effort shaping in Pandaria is negated by flying. In addition to the upcoming reputation changes for alts (when a character on the account hits Revered), we’ll consider other methods of potentially speeding up the leveling process for alts, but we don’t think “allow flying” is necessarily the best answer.”

Meh, either way. It would be nice but also not a game breaker to walk while leveling. It really didn’t feel restricted to me. When I bring an Alt through it will be nice to see the content faster, and perhaps level in a manner I enjoy, or have more control of. Nice, but not a drama. By the 3rd Alt I can see their point.

Updated Raid Schedule Heart of Fear & Terrace

• Oct 30: Heart of Fear (N)
• Nov 6: Heart of Fear Part 1 (LFR), Heart of Fear (H)
• Nov 13: Terrace of Endless Spring (N), Heart of Fear Part 2 (LFR)
• Nov 20: Terrace of Endless Spring (LFR), Terrace of Endless Spring (H)

Are you guys happy with the daily system playing such a large role in end-game content? (via Blizzard twitter)

“I think the valor and charms feel good because you can cap them. I think rep itself would be better with a cap.”

Idiocy. Inspired idiocy. Only a fool is happy with the gating on Valor and Valor gear.

There is almost nothing worth getting until Exalted with each gear faction, and by 90 all the other rewards are moot. Justice Points are useless as far as I can tell, and if anyone knows what Justice can be used for except for buying odd gear for alts then let me know. Please.

This post demonstrates the general feeling of linking dailies to Valor, and the time it takes. The fact that it is written in caps does nothing to dismiss that the sentiment is correct.

HEY BLIZZARD – IT SUCKS.

The charms are fine. It’s not meant to be 100% loot, its meant to be an extra roll of the dice. The dailies themselves are OK in repeat, but what they grant access to is non-nonsensical. For example I’d love to buy an upgrade now that I am Revered with the Klaxxi which was higher than item level 463 and didn’t cost Valor. Instead I keep grinding that out until Exalted so I can get an upgrade quest reward. Then I will not be doing anything for the bugs again, and would go back and kill them in the name of the Empress if given the chance.

What is trolling (post)? Well behaving like a dickhead when somebody else is affected. If you are irritating somebody, you’re trolling. If you are not sure, you’re trolling.

Here is a  happy player, with renewed faith. If sarcastic then weird, if not then why post?

A poster suggested removing rewards from LFR. Yes, I think he’s a troll, but he got 3x Blue responses, so he’s good at it. Apparently.

Less WoW Account Security Flaws

So WoW’s account security got a shot in the arm today, with the forums requiring the authenticator.

Isn’t this more of a “sorry it took so long” situation? This was so bloody obvious that it surprises me that it has taken till now. Maybe there were technical reasons why this could not be done, and as a consumer I do not appreciate the work involved. Maybe.

But maybe it is also not unreasonable to expect this level of forethought when a feature like the authenticator is introduced, and expect a change to the systems we use within a good timeframe. Say less than two years after the press release.

I think the change was implemented to help slow down account hacking. If you think about it the forums are the perfect place to brute force attack a username/password combination; as its a web based delivery system that has to be tollerant to many different interfaces, and has been around a very long time. That means it was probably installed to be a basic solution, and became the juggernaut before anyone really saw what was happening.

The follow-up question is why now rather than later or much earlier; and only Activision-Blizzard could tell you that; the cynics will say its because hacks cost too much (meh), but it could also be that it will be a legitimate and substantial improvement to the forums systems, that has been planned for a while. If the changes for RealID were being planned, it stands to reason that this was part of it.

So yes, it is a very good move, and something that has been asked for a long time.

Update 8 Aug 2010:

Further to the account security, the WoW login screen now recommends some security measures, like letter and numbers – but still fails on the upper or lower case for those characters.

Nice Forum Sigs

Found a nice little site that offers forum sigs and avatars for Warcraft, which are well put together. Check out wow.magelo.com and the examples below.

The Avatar example to the left is something I can see using on forums and blogs for a nice degree of easy personalisation.

The image is grabbed by the Magelo site from the Armory, so that the image that you place in the Armory is re-used by them, and therefore by you as well. Clever.

And of course the full bragging rights example below.

Found via Psynister’s blog – go read it, and happy killing.

Public Forums using Real IDs

This is a very bad idea. I’m wearing a tin foil hat as I type, but this does have very far reaching implications.

I cannot see the value to players, and frankly cannot see why it would benefit the community either.

Maybe the younger generation are more open to this? But maybe those very same young people are not life-skilled enough to realise what the risks are.

This has massive potential for abuse and issues, and this is so bad that I think nothing short of hundreds of pages of posts will make any impact. So post now, and often. I think we need to deafen Blizzard with the bad feedback. It will hopefully be overturned by somebody with half a brain at Blizzard.

For those who said Real ID was a slippery slope; which was opening pandora’s box – you were right.

I don’t think we are at the end of that slope yet either.

Conspiracy Theory: They make a suggestion so stupid, that the community implodes; then they retract it. Next they make a smaller change, and can cite the earlier as an example of listening to teh client base and also making the 2nd action seem small by comparison.