MMO10 Community backlash heads to Global Agenda review score being pulled GameSpot was not so nice to Global Agenda -- a 5.5 out of 10 was fired against the game earlier by the gaming website. However, that didn't stop the Global Agenda community from doing some digging and turning up the reviewer's in-game character. A toonthat only had six hours of play time attached to it, no alliance, and no agency for conquest matches. The effecting evidence was provided by Global Agenda's gamer statistics system -- a pretty robust system that allows anyone to pull up a character's statistics simply by typing in their toonname. Once this evidence came to light, the community began to send e-mails to both the reviewer and GameSpot's Justin Calvert, who has since removed the review. Calvert has apologized (post confirmed by Hi-Rez Studio's Michal Adam) to the Global Agenda community and Hi-Rez Studios, and has reassigned the review to a new writer. GameSpot's internal policy is to spend 30 hours on an MMORPG before publishing a review.
Episode 108: Don’t get your hopes up
We taped our podcast a little early this week, on Wednesday night, and rather than having you wait all the way until Monday for it (not to mention that Pirates' Day will gone by then), we figured we'd post it up for you today). Matt "Matticus" Low was kind enough to join us (he writes the Spiritual Guidance and Raid Rx columns), and while Turpster was on a business trip, he did end up making it to provide us with his usual sparkling insight. We talked about that wacky 2v2 team rating and what it means for Blizzard's Arena system, the Abyssal Maw and what else we've heard about Cataclysm's dungeons and raids, and whether being in a guild really can calm you down (Matt, our only guildleader on the show, says no). has been criticized in the past for some of their design ideas (the work they do, just in terms of an art and gameplay sense, does tend to borrow a lot from what's come before it), but Afrasiabi does the right thing in the end: he lets the work talk for itself. Blizzard may have borrowed the MMO form from a lot of different places, but no one can argue that what they've done with it hasn't turned out to be extremely impressive. Next week, hopefully I will have been able to sit in front of my computer for more than 20 minutes without hurling so that I can ...
Wherein we learn new slang
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com's (almost) daily Q&A column where the WoW.com team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today. Today we're going to hit a bunch of quick, short questions, which means today's edition of The Queue might be a wee bit short compared to some of Allison's epics. Picture above completely unrelated to anything written below. It just looks pretty freaking sweet, doesn't it? ikandiman asked... "I have been trying to get the last Brewfest achievement for my Warlock, but every time I get smashed and jump off the elevator in Shattrath (with my Skyguard's Drape to slow fall) I never get the bloody Drunken Stupor achievement. Had no problem with my mage and paladin. What gives?" I could be mistaken, but I'm pretty sure the source of the problem is the Skyguard's Drape. You can't use any Slow Fall effects when trying to get that achievement, you need to simply fall. You can use immunities such as Ice Block and Divine Shield, but you can't use things like Levitate, Slow Fall, or items like the Skyguard's Drape. To get that achievement done, I just took all of my characters to the Scryer elevator in Shattrath, not the Aldor elevator. The Scryer elevator is the perfect height so you can basically just walk off the edge, get the achievement, and not even worry about dying. Easy peasy, lemon squeezey. For another really simple location, ...
Ghostcrawler discuss the Lich King
The latest edition of Blizzard Insider, Blizzard's very sporadic email newsletter (and no relation to our old name, WoW Insider) has been released. Issue 32 features a note that the Starcraft II: WIngs of Liberty site has been revamped, blurbs about the mobile Authenticator and the Armory app, and some calls to buy their merchandise. More interesting for WoW fans, though, is an interview with Scott Mercer (Daelo), WoW's lead encounter designer, and Greg Street (Ghostcrawler), a crab who needs no introduction. They discussed the arc of Arthas and the Lich King from Warcraft II through World of Warcraft (congratulations again to Blood Legion on their 10-man world-first). Please note that here there be spoilers for some details about the Arthas fight, so stay away if you want it all to be a surprise. The interview is fairly short, and a nice read if you have a few minutes. Here are my summary notes, though: In Warcraft III, a big part of Arthas's role (design-wise) was to be the bridge between the human and undead campaigns. However, they didn't always know how big a deal he was going to be in the ongoing story of the Warcraft universe. If you were around for the beginning of Wrath, you likely remember the developers talking about how they wanted Arthas to be a very real, direct presence for all players in this expansion, as opposed to Illidan's remoteness in Burning Crusade. Well, apparently they think it "worked ...
New Tauren skins found
Handclaw of the Scrolls of Lore Forums has uncovered something very intriguing in the Patch 3.3 PTR data files: New Tauren skins. Specifically, it looks like tribal war paint covering the face, arms, and chest, taking the form of bleeding wings on the chest. There's red, white, and blue color versions for both males and females. There's quite a few Tauren fans on the WoW.com staff, and we've been having quite a few conversations about the new Tauren lore and their place in Cataclysm, so you can bet this new discovery has us all atwitter. What could it mean though? There's a few possibilities. For starters, there's the introduction of the Sunwalkers, the Tauren Paladins and Priests, coming with Cataclysm. We've been getting progressive story bits about many of the new class and race combos as the patches progress, so it seems very possible that we could see Aponi and Tahu begin their training, with these new skins being tribal warpaint, a sign of their devotion to the sun. Could the wings be the Sunwalker version of Avenging Wrath? The other possibility (which is strongly suggested by the black fur of the Taurens in the data mined picture) is that these could be Grimtotems. Rumors strongly state that Garrosh is killing Cairne in Cataclysm (or perhaps even sooner, especially since Baine looks like he may be making an appearance in Patch 3.3). I'm not so sure it'll go down that simply, and I'm ...