Neutral Guards At Summoning Stones?

A poster on the WoW Forums says that summoning stones need neutral guards, to stop players from the opposite faction from camping the summoning stone and preventing parties from meeting up. It’s sparked some interesting discussions, with players violently for and against the idea.

If meeting-stone battles are really that much of a problem, just play on a non-PvP server. Screwing with the other faction is why we play PvP games!

Fire Mage Tragedy

A Chinese WoW player lost his temper — and possibly his mind — and burned a classmate, beleiving he had fire mage powers.

After losing a schoolyard fight, a 17-year-old boy in Beijing recently covered a classmate with gasoline and lit him on fire, claiming he “had lost himself in World of Warcraft and when he committed the crime he had transformed into a Fire Mage.”

The boy has been sentenced to 8 years in prison and ordered to pay the victim and his family a restitution of 760,000 RMB (approximately $103,140 USD).

In light of the recent “Mortal Kombat killings,” we’re hesitant to believe the claims of any youth who says they have been influenced by a video game into violence. In this case, though, we believe him simply because China lacks our American legal system that allows people to claim “games made me do it,” and subsequently shift all blame to the game’s creators.

This is a tragedy, and I’m sorry to see the “playing games made me do it” defense is spreading.

Via Wired

WarCraft Access in China

Foreign WarCraft servers are blocked or down or just plain grumpy in China. They’ve been on the blink since this weekend. I don’t know any official reason (Blizzard’s main site is also unavailable) but at least there’s a workaround that will let China-based WarCraft players get online on.

Go to your World Of WarCraft directory on your computer. In this directory, there’s a WTF file called Realmlist. [Not the WTF folder] Open this up using Notepad. Change the text to say:

set realmlist 12.129.232.112
set patchlist 66.45.252.236

Save the file, and don’t do anything zany like change the name, even if Windows prompts you to do it.

(Instructions are also on Violet Eclipse)

Blizzard’s Seeking WoW Feedback

WoW Insider says that Blizzard is looking for feedback from players.

With Wrath of the Lich King looming on the (far) horizon, it turns out that Blizzard may actually care what you want in it! They’ve just opened feedback threads for every class on the official forums, asking players to list one or two sentences about their top three problem areas, and their top five problem talents/spells/abilities for their class, along with what talent trees you tend to invest in and what sort of content you play most (PvP, raid, solo, etc.). It’s a highly structured format, and you’re also instructed not to engage in discussion with other posters or put suggestions on how things should be improved. Just point out what you have a problem with.

Head over to the forums and let Blizzard know what you think! The rules are:

We’re currently gathering class feedback from players for Wrath of the Lich King concerning thoughts on the areas of each class that is perceived to be most in need of improvement. This thread is not intended for discussion purposes and we ask that you please review the below format before presenting your feedback. It’s very important for us to be able to review all provided feedback and as a result, not following the required format will very likely result in your post being removed.

List your primary talent tree(s), i.e. Holy/Disc.

List the content you’re primarily pursuing or most enjoy, i.e. Raiding, PvP, Solo, etc…

Provide a brief description of the areas you feel are most in need of improvement (you may list a maximum of three issues and each issue should be described in one or two sentences).

List up to five specific spells/abilities/talents you feel most need change, redesign or improvement in the order you feel each is most in need of attention. (MOST to LESS)

WarCraft Maintainance

WoW maintainance drives me crazy. Yes, I realize that they do try to pick an off-peak time for the weekly shut down. I’m definately in the minority, as a resident of China playing on the American (English) servers, who has Wednesday mornings off… but the early-morning (in the US) shutdowns are prime WoW-playing time for me.

BestOfWarCraft has a post explaining why the weekly maintainance is neccessary:

The reason why we take down all realms at the same time is because it’s quicker, it doesn’t restrict some realms more than others, and it doesn’t force players to swamp other realms that are up. If anyone remembers some of the larger issues we had back a couple years ago or so, when a realm or group of realms go down, everyone on those realms would converge on a single realm and more or less grief the entire population of that realm. Not fun for the original players of that realm. It’s quicker because the maintenance can take a while, and doing one group of realms at a time would mean some group of realms, or multiple groups, would not be available near or during prime time, and we like to avoid that whenever possible of course.

Accordian Hero 2

The geniuses at Schedenfreude Interactive, who brought you Hannibal Crossing and Grand Theft Ottoman, have a brand new Accordian Hero.

Hit all the right notes and get the crowd on their feet waving their beer steins in unison - you are an accordion hero! Includes all the great accordion melodies you’ve ever gotten really, really drunk to…from Ein Munchen Steht Ein Hofbrauhaus to Rock You Like A Hurricane.

(Just kidding. But check out the page anyway.)

WarCraft Laptop

Dell’s new laptop is just for WarCraft players. ExtremeTech offers the basic stats:

Intel Core 2 Extreme X7900 CPU at 2.8GHz
2GB dual channel DDR-667 memory
2 x 200GB hard drives, set up as a 400GB RAID 0 array
2 x Nvidia 8700M GT GPUs in SLI configuration (each with 512MB of video memory)
AGEIA PhysX 100M physics processor
Integrated HD audio with Creative Labs Audigy software stack
Intel 802.11 a/g/n wireless networking plus integrated gigabit Ethernet for wired connections
Windows Vista Ultimate Edition preinstalled

More importantly for WoW fans, the laptop comes with World Of WarCraft, and the expansion Burning Crusade, along with other WoW spinoffs like a DVD, Azeroth novels and a soundtrack. The laptop itself is customizable for Alliance or Horde. The kayboard is WoW-friendly, and it offers some pretty WarCraft backgrounds (in case you can’t download one or use your own screenshot).

And it includes (from ExtremeTech again):

You also get something called a “Quest Envelope.” This includes a Blizzard beta key card with five keys that can be used in upcoming WoW betas, plus an upgrade certificate that upgrades accounts to the “Collector’s Edition” level, and gives the player a special in-game pet.