Tuesday, July 12, 2005

Guild Wars flop in Korea?

Seems like SirBruce has some reports that Guild Wars has flopped in Korea selling only 27,000 copies. A sharp contrast to North American sales of 650,000 copies.

This falls in line with bad beta reports and previews that littered Korea. It seems Korean gamers just weren't into the massive PvP concept of a free MMO.

SirBruce further explains that this spells trouble for Arena.net because of operating costs and the fact they are not going to have an expansion out this year to bring in revenue.

Guild Wars was great in concept, but is hindered by a laundry list of mistakes in its gameplay mechanics.

World of Warcraft 1.6 Patch

Since the Blizzard downloader works as well as a fat chick, with emphysema, trying to suck a golf ball through a straw...

Update: 8 Jul, 2007 - Edited post. This will be kept as a placeholder for historical value.
Originally, this post contained links to various World of Warcraft patch download websites.

WoW Patch 1.6

Link to the notes.

My thoughts...

"There is now a progress bar on the Honor tab of your character window that displays how close you are to your next rank."
-Experience bar 2.0

"Players rank 11 or higher can now chat in the WorldDefense channel."
-Anyone say "WorldDefense: WTS [Wang]"

"Frost Shock - Targets that are immune to movement slowing effects will no longer be affected by Frost Shock's movement slowing effect. Damage will still be caused."
-First the nerf and then the fix! Woot!

"Due to significant talent changes, Warriors/Warlocks will have all talent points refunded and can be respent."
-Nice to know they get do-overs... because we all know changes and nerfs don't affect other classes talent builds.

"Fixed some typos in Gilnid's text in The Deadmines."
-Man that was pissing me off!

Monday, July 11, 2005

Fix WoW Battle Grounds!

Read this over at Grimwell.com and then consider the following...

Why is WoW's system so dramatically different between PvP and PvE? Beta PvP had item damage upon death which proved to work very well to deter zergs and promote good PvP. The only problem was that people didn't fight unless they outnumbered their opponent and could ensure an easy victory.

WoW has quickly taken a change for the worse. The battlegrounds(BGs) are a rampant mass of people spawn charging every 30 seconds from graveyard to graveyard. There is relatively no PvP outside of the BGs now. The BGs themselves are all about one huge penelty.... lost time. You wait 30 minutes or more now to get into them only to have one side dominate the map in the first 15 minutes and then its back to waiting.

The few times you get into the 40 vs 40 BG it closes way to fast. When you get into capture the flag you are doomed without a good group. And watch out if you play during the off hours... the BGs will rarely be open for you to enjoy due to a huge lack of players.

Not to mention that PvP ranks seem impossible to maintain anymore with most people slipping way down in the ranks because there is no longer a surge of people to kill.

WoW's PvP is fast and fun... I am not arguing that it is not. But the system as a whole is horribly ineffecient and results in a net loss for everyone.

Fixing the system is another post in itself. This was meant more to make people think. USE THAT BRAIN!

Top 10 things I learned on summer vacation!

10. Teaching a girlfriend how to fish is infinately easier than teaching her to golf.

9. Thirteen hour car trips are fun... even better when followed by three hour trips back to your own house.

8. There is enough dead bugs on my car for me to officially nickname it RAID.

7. Sun Drop is better in the glass bottle.

6. Sun tans are great... the pasty white area left where your shorts were is not.

5. Farting in church is wrong.

4. Slowly passing cops near the speed limit and then accelerating when they are well behind you will still get you pulled over.

3. When the sign says "Lane ends, merge" don't try to skip ahead down the open lane that is about to end... merging later just slows down everyone else.

2. One million people attending the "Taste of Chicago"... and I was damn glad not to be one of them.

1. Wisconsin > *