f13.net

BOFH (http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?fn=wow-general&t=746186)

I'm not exactly clear on what happened there but it looks like GFrazier aka Geoff Frazier aka Nebu in Kali Compton either himself abused his board moderating privileges or got another moderator to ban people/delete threads etc. Rumor has it that GFrazier was fired from Blizzard (hence the immediate opening for a Web designer) over this incident.

For all of the new people:  I am not nor have I ever been affiliated with Blizzard.  I am not Geoff Frazier.  Please DO NOT SEND ME ANY PM's.

That is all.

We would have banned you if you were. I'm surprised anyone thought that, anyway.

Dude, that's lame how you made a clan that clearly broke the naming guidlines then closed a bunch of threads when people called you on it.
...

Did anyone actually send you PMs or is it just a pre-emptive strike?

Technically, Bat Country shouldn't have been allowed. Particularly on an RP server I guess.

But then, the only thing Blizzard reps seem to be good for is ridiculous bannings and procrastinating on the reply. This however, stems back through the history of Blizzard. They've always had, quite possibly, the worst customer service in the industry. Perhaps behind Interplay - but that's a personal story and sample size of 1 on my part.

I will always stand by my original assumption that their inability to handle customers and their abysmally slow patch speed will be WoW's downfall. At the rate most people are going, any numbers blizzard releases after 6 months from release, that are anywhere near half the original boxes sold will be highly suspect. Whatwith Guild Wars coming out and all.

My god, something I actually agree with you on. I've said the same thing for a while.  It's the more 'fun' of the current MMOs and the reduction of catassery is a real kick in the pants, but I can't stand the update schedule.  Ditto on their apparent lack of any real communication with their customer base or understanding of what makes a successful MMO.

Top that off with a healthy dose of, "Bots? It's your job to let us know if they're out there," and a zone where mobs have low HPs and High Cash drops and WoW is all set to be a short-term game.

I keep watching and thinking, "It's just like SOE circa Abashi."  I can only wonder how long the Bliz' fanbase's forgiveness can last.


That web designer position was advertised at least as far back as December.  GF may or may not have been fired, but they've been looking for a web designer for a while.  Ever since the Korean WoW site (http://www.worldofwarcraft.co.kr/main.html) went live there's been a complaint that the US site (http://www.worldofwarcraft.com) sucks.  Comparing the two sites, I think it's a pretty valid complaint.

I've always liked the name Geoff.

I believe HRose thinks he is the same Nebu as GFrazier.

It was this Nebu (http://www.expectnothing.com/)

This time it was preemptive.  I had gotten a few during the WoW beta period here and even more on other forums.  Most of them were kiss asses attempting to sweet talk me out of beta keys.



HRose knows who I am from the Wish beta.  I actually appreciate the time and thought the guy takes in analyzing games.  If he could learn to tame the anger and be concise in his analyses, he'd probably have a few fans.

Good. They need to clean house a little. They also need to put distance between themselves and Kali Compton, who are some of the biggest griefer gank assholes in the game.

Now if they could just respond to support tickets faster then 2 days, or even never, then they might be going in the right direction.

I find WoW fairly amusing to play at the moment but I have to agree with schild that the glacial rate of patchs is likely going to be its downfall. EQ2 already has a clear roadmap of where they are going and what they intend to do expansion wise.  They also seem to have the willpower and programers to actually produce those on the time table they are dicussing.

Love it or hate it content is a huge deal in mmrpg and I simply do not think WoW will be able to keep up. Given the number of level 60s I see on one of the most recent low pop servers I would guess in another 2 to 3 months anybody who wants to be maxed level likely will be. If you let the game lead you by the nose and follow the quest paths laid out for you leveling goes by very very very rapidly.

Also I am still just baffled that blizzard released their game with the shittastic patching scheme it has. My god even a small company like cryptic managed to make a professional patching scheme for their game why the hell can't blizzard.


kaid

Because Blizzard are newbs to the MMOG realm. Not newbs to game making or even online, but the patches for Diablo 2 didnt exactly have as hot a timeline. Its a new ballgame for them.

EQ on the other hand has really fine tuned their patching and information process over the past year and a half. Like the game or not, their patch info and patch process has been solid.

EQ's design changes have been interesting and professionally thought out, even if you dont like a particular design decision. They have become good at the live game aspect.

Blizzard are showing some growing pains in support, patching, other areas. They will eventually get it together. Hopefully the success wont go to their heads.

Diablo II 1.10.

That is all.

Alkiera

(http://home.att.ne.jp/gold/jj/EQ/troll.gif)

Yes, I know they have done online games before. This is why I pointed out that an MMOG game is a different sort of beast. They are new to that TYPE of online game. It really is not quite the same thing.

They do have a few things to learn, or at least modify in their process.

I think the point was that DII 1.10 took SO long to come out that it was barely relevant. At least that is my recolllection of it.

I think the point was more along the lines of a vault-esque provoking of fans of World of Warcraft. Regarding Diablo 1.1: what kind of resources are you going to commit to patching and updating an online game that generates no revenues?

That being said, slow patch rate combined with fast levelling curve is definitely cause for concern. But, mainly it will only be powergamers who are impacted. They are vocal but a minority. Most casual players (like me) would be happy with some new instances, some pvp, and maybe a raid or two.

Slow to patch? They fixed Scarlet Monastary farming pretty swiftly, after they realized it happened.

Actually, common knowledge DOESN'T know that it's been fixed. You're a rogue, you stealth to Doan, you kill him, you stealth, sap, and loot that chest, then exit the instance. Repeat. You take your 7 staves and 10 daggers to brill and sell, each one shows up as 1.6g or 1.8g in the trade window.

You're only getting 40s for each one, though, if you actually check yourself.

No high end content? Please. Shit just isn't in the game yet, but it's sitting there. And if you look around on other forums, you can find screenshots of places that have been "explored" but are "closed". Let me run through a list, off the top of my head, of places I've been that aren't "open" yet.

Caverns of time, Tanarais. Level 60-61 dragons all over here. Looks like a high end 5  man instance.
Uldamn, Tanaris. No idea what's going here. Perhaps another RAID place.
Silithius, south of Tanaris. Hive-mind colony of crazy ants. No idea what's happening in here.
Dune Maul, Feralas - Supposedly another 50-55 instance for 5 man groups.
The Emerald Dream - Feralas again, covered in 60-61 dragonkin. RAID place, I'm guessing
Medivh's tower - Deadwind pass no clue on this one
Hyjal, the entire zone - nobody knows.
Strange looking closed off areas near Furbolgs in Felwood and Azshara - these will probably lead to all kinds of new shit, considering these furbolgs have their own faction, and control the path to Winterspring.
Molten core - this place was open the last month(?) or so of beta, yet the first time it was accessed was last week. This shit is in the game, yet nobody really knows what is in there. It's not been documented and Thott'd out yet.

What it boils down to is that people have spent 50-100 hours "farming" Blackrock Spire and they're not even done "farming it out". That's one place.

I guess I could add Scholomance to my list, since it's so fucking buggy it's not really that accessable yet.

Also, have people already forgot that they added Maraudon in a patch? A single dungeon that's bigger than every single dungeon in AC2 combined, released in a 26 meg patch.

DIZ GAME SUX I WISH IT HAD CONTENT LIKE THAT AC2 GAME AND STUFF, PLUS THE GFX SUX I WISH IT LOOKED LIKE EQ2 SO I COULD SEE DOUBLE DIGIT FPS ONCE PER DAY.

OTOH, lag has been awful lately. I don't see 'patch speed' as being a problem. Lag might lead to bad things, though. I've not seen an insta cast spell that has taken less than 2 seconds in the last 2-3 weeks.  Queue isn't that bad, even with 300 in line. Hell, increase it again if it'll fix the lag. (I have no idea why login processing lags looting/spell casting)

My rant for the day.

PS: don't nerf paladins.

EDIT: Also, if you want to be a l33t haxx0r, open up some of your local .mpq files with WinMPQ and look over the overhead map of the entire continent of Northrend. Sitting right there in your data files which came from your retail CD, or open beta client. I'm guessing that when EQ2 announces it's first pay-to-play expansion, Blizzard is going to drop the Northrend bomb on them. I've not found much more than the graphical maps, but I've not spent much time looking at it.

Fixing game-breaking exploits does not equal patching. And comparing WoW to AC2 is TOTALLY UNFAIR.

Heh, yah. Instacasts haven't been insta for a week or two and that's on a low pop server.

We should set you up for the blog.  But I think it might stunt your otherwise great bursts of common sense beat downs.

Hit 60 yet? I think I saw on wowrankings that you're close.

What is it then?  Hell, you look at most companies and they patched at what we'd consider a glacial pace.  I don't remember Dark Age doing interesting in the brief amount of time it took me to quit their game. When I came back, they kept adding things, THEY PROMISED WOULD BE IN BETA.   What game has an acceptable patching rate that hasn't been out for a while or is just adding shit they listed on the box? (HINT: don't bring up CoH)

He's comparing it to AC2 because I believe it's the last game FPDoMs played as a group.  It was a good PVP experience but the game was so goddamn buggy and hacked together, getting huffy about WoW patching and state of game seems laughable.

Nah, i've not hit 60 quite yet. I've saving up rested exp for that and helping people do wailing caverns and scarlet monastary runs.

And Maraudon every now and then, even though i've been through there 23432433333333333 times.

I think I might sit down for 5 or 6 hours with my tree friends in Felwood and hit 60 tonight. Depends on who is doing what, though.

Rogues being able to do SM runs wasn't a game breaking bug. Who else will pay 300g for a shitty bow that gives +14 agi?

Azshara is probably the most 'gamebreaking' thing going on now. They have already done one stealth fix to those birds though (lowered the item drop rate by probably 500%) and I'm sure they'll add more soon.

edit: i also added in the ac2 refrence because I find it quite funny (note: if you dont find it funny, remove stick from ass) that wow has more dungeon content in a single patch than AC2 has overall.

Most of the exploit fixes that they have done are back end patchs to the servers that do not require going through the hell that is their patching.

I shit you not the first time I tried to patch the game I had to put a bogus password in at the log in prompt before it put me correctly to download the patch. My valid password simply would not work. Once I patched it my real password now works fine.

Yes compared to eq2 they are noobs and eq2 should deffinatly and does have a better patcher scheme. I however compared them to cryptic makers of COH who are also mmrpg noobs of a much smaller dev house and they managed to make a very good patcher that does not make me swear violently or use fake passwords to trick it into working.


kaid

The farmers will always pwn the players for drops, cash, et al. Reducing the drop rate only increases the resale value to non-farmers, who now are very unlikely to see the drop outside of a trade. Game breaking by design. The sky really is falling in this case.

No they won't.

Here's why -

I play on a PVP server, and I've been playing these games since the dawn of time. I've met many people through the years. A few I know happen to be on alliance, on the same server on which I'm horde.

So we crossteamed in Azshara - two horde shamans, upper 50s. Two alliance players, upper 50s, a mage and a warrior. We ran around together slaughtering farmers from each side. So much in fact they started grouping up together and completely stopped farming birds, and started camping our corpses. We made /trade "playername" macros so when our alliance friends were killing horde farmers, we'd spam the horde guys with trade requests.

It's great fun and I'll start doing it "fulltime" once I'm 60.

PS: it's easy to tell who is a farmer and who isn't. If the character is a level 60 rogue using a 28 dps sword, unguilded, CHANCES ARE he's in a basement in Shanghai working for $1/hr.

Doing anything "full time" in an MMOG is the first and only necessary sign that says "put down the keyboard, back away from the monitor, go the hell outside and seek a support group."

Couldn't happen to more deserving guy.

But the light, she burns!

"full time" in quotes, means that "whenever i'm playing, i'll probably be doing this."

NS captain anal.

Frustrating people for fun... where have I seen threads about this before?

<sighs>

It's frustrating EBAY farmers.  No harm in that.

The crap we did in UO was downright sinister compared to that.

Are you proud that you spent your time in UO annoying people?  I mean damn Rasix, you're a mature, intelligent, and very articulate person.  I'm sorry, but being an ass is never ok.  Your fun comes at the expense of a real person.  Yes, this is a carebear attitude... but I struggle to understand how anyone could think that their fun is more important than the fun of another.  We're all responsible for our own behavior.  

As for the EBAY farmer part... isn't that up to Blizzard to handle?  They do have legal and in-game mechanisms to handle these people.  

This vigilante shit really pisses me off.

He's mature, intelligent and articulate NOW, but  UO was EONS ago.  He's soft and mushy these days and wouldn't hurt a fly, I'm sure.  I bet he even shed a tear for his poor, dead camels.

I was bad in UO, too, but now I'm very, very sweet.  

Really.

I was 19. Killing someone and then putting flour sacks around their corpse (when ghosts were solid) was comedy gold at the time. You don't see me doing that anymore, but I'm not about to be ashamed of what I did or feel bad for having fun at the time. It was fun, it was funny, too bad Spleen doesn't have his archive up anymore.

Back on topic, stuff like cash farmers and game breaking exploits can alter the delicate balance of a game.  This becomes more magnified in a pvp environment.  It's not just a matter of annoyance at the idiot spamming his crap for sale and then throwing the gold he gets on ebay.  It's a shift in balance that could mean life or death in the battlefield.  You can't get the dagger you need because some keke la~ cash farmer has been sitting there for the past 24 hours.  

AND IT'S BLOODY ANNOYING.  Ebay cash farmers annoy me more than elves. If I could kill them on my server, I would. I would sell them out to the other side given the other chance.

This is the age of Jackass, so it only gets worse.

Not that anyone here is an actual Jackass, I refer to the show and that sort of mentality. I had my fun in UO too.

But this is why these online games have to design for this sort of thing. This is why you remove factions from being able to smack talk each other. This is why WoW's PVP blows, because it is all too easy to prey upon lowbies for sport all day and be a general asshole. It was easier in UO, I will point out.

For no other reason, then "I can". That is why they do it.

This is why the old mentality of "players policing themselves" doesnt work in an MMOG. It is an outdated thought process carried over from when online games were just MUDs, 50 people max in size and everyone knew each other very well. That age is dead to the average gamer.

I agree completely.  The problem needs to be dealt with at the source.  What can be done?  Here are some very fundamental suggestions, many of which have been posted here and on other boards for years.

1) Make a game that is so fun and compelling that people won't want to buy their way out of parts of it.  This is by far the hardest... and seems damn near impossible with the current iteration of mmogs.  If the game were fun and engaging, people would be much less likely to want to avoid parts.  This eliminates the need for farmers to get items for cash sale to those that don't want to spend the time getting them for themselves.

2) Offer the items direct from the developer.  This is starting to be more common.  I don't like this idea, but it does have a more controlled effect on the economy and the game balance.  Particularly on a pvp server as you have described.  

3) Find a way to discourage farming: Hit it hard and hit it often.  This is difficult at best.  It requires a lot of resources and has the potential to produce instances of punishing the innocent.  Also (as we've seen in so many cases) legal action in these matters is still an ill defined area.    

4) Others.  I'm not all that creative, so I'm sure that I'm forgetting something.

Of course #1 would be the best solution.  When designers invest this kind of money in development, they are aiming at a large target market.  This demographic will encompass a great variety of playstyles and there will be many many aspects of the game that will be unfun to varying individuals.  This being the case, there will always be a demand for farmed items.  Demand begets supply.

I'd say if you filter out everybody with a playtime of under 12 hours a day, that's a good start to finding your hardcore farmers and bots. Then check the locales. Do they spend 75% or more in one zone? Hmmm, are they making frequent mailings of rare items, HMMMMMM?

My idea for bots:

WoW already has an occasional unexpected mob wandering a wider circle in an area. This can kill a bot. Basically do more monster roaming that is difficult to make a script against. Eventually the bot dies.

So on to the bot getting ressed. You know those protection pictures when signing up to some forums? It is a pic of some squiggly random numbers / letters, maybe with a wavey line through it.

Use that at the exit to the graveyard. You want out? Type that in. As soon as the bot dies, his XP farming is over for that day.

Captcha.  That's a fucking gold idea.  Please call someone at Blizzard with it.

Only downside. . if you send the text down and expect the client to obfuscate it they can just pull it out of memory, so you have to send the image down whole.  Bit of a bandwidth hog.  Probably worth it.

People aren't using actual "bots" yet, they are just using slave labor southeast asians on Cyrix machines.

I'm not griefing lowbies, although I could do that, I guess. Griefing level 60 farmers is much, much more entertaining.

oh yeah, check out notsecret dot spleens dot net

Where about are these spots? I would love to partake of the merriment w/ my Rogue.

Forgive the very politically incorrect picture.

http://nija.r33t.org/wow/final/Aszhara.jpg

Another spot to check is Deadwind Pass (between duskwood and swamp of sorrows) and also, level 60 farmers like to prey on the lowly Venture Co lumbermill near the lake in Stranglethorn. Those lanters that they drop (often) will sell for like 16s.

In deadwind, they'll be going after some ogres - I forget the name of the sub-zone, but it's right on the road, can't miss it.

I guess I do not understand this thread - so no offense will be taken when holes in my logic may be highlighted:

Farming.  This will only break the game for non-instanced drops and the value of currency.  Rampant inflation EQ style will occur but raid drops will continue to be rare - as they are difficult for solo farmers to tackle.  I see a two teir economy - common drops will be trash - raid instanced drops will hold their value.

Ebay.  I don't have a problem if folks buy stuff off of ebay.  If you have a problem with this and want barriers against it - then put barriers against the unemployed or those that forfeit sex - so they can be online to farm at any time for any length of time.  If I can't spend 10 bucks on ebay to get my jboots - then penalize Johnny so can't just drop 12 hours into the game to get the good that real life prevents me from getting.  Equalize.

Gankers.  You guys don't talk about it much:  reputation.  Ganking in Shadowbane was easy, since by catass or macro - you could level a new character in about 2 weeks.  In a game like WoW - while leveling is easy - it is not as bad as shadowbane.  It takes time to build a character.  This is the advantage of a treadmill - investment in an avatar - makes it difficult to be an ass - since the getting help for instanced encounters will be less available.

Gankers - this is why I play a healer.  In most games my skills will be very needed - and I keep a little list of assholes.  And sooner or later *rubs hands* they fall into my political cross hairs.  Now that is fun.  Fuck quests - I enjoy revenge and retribution.

So I miss the point of the discussion here - I see no real issues so far as WoW is concerned.  What am I missing?

Raid and instance drops have jack all to do with the economy since not one of them is droppable though.

I made a "post" on a way to stop ebaying one day and haven't bothered to post it up, but I'l summarize it here since it's relevant.

Right now, WoW is setup such that all transfer of items can be monitored by blizzard. That is, you can't just drop something on the floor and have someone pick it up. You can only use the AH, trade window, or mail system to move items between players. If blizzard had a database of all item types on the server with min-max estimates of worth they could check the balance of every transfer made in the game.

Once they establish that a trade is unbalanced then they can flag the trade as suspect. After a number of suspect trades the account is flagged as suspect and then someone goes through logs of the character activity (logs made either before or after the account is flagged suspect). That way they can see if the trades are still suspect while looking at the logs "Hi I'm Mr X from Ebay I want my sword" would be a good one, but multiple trades just happening for no reason might be another.

I'm sure there will be workarounds possible, but it would make it a pain in the ass for everyone invilved to do them, and cut alot of casual gamers out of the market.

Naturally guildies and friends would have to be immune/resistant to these checks after a certain time of being in the guild/friend list.

Anyway, what do people think? Big pain in the ass and alot of work, but I think it's the only way to do it properly if serious about it.

There is always the familiar police trick - Blizzard buys something on eBay themselves and "arrests" the fence during trade. Costs money, but so does dedicating any staff time to the matter.

I would like to note, only on PvP servers.  And there, you (and me) are asking for it.  Some people like the danger of possibly being ganked.  Others don't.  Que sera sera, c'est la vie, and viva la revolucion.



I really can't see that the market for WoW items and gold is that much.  I'm the very definition of casual, and I'm level 27 with enough gold to buy what I want.  You really have to be the type that opens Christmas presents on Dec 1 to want to buy your way through this game.

I'm sure the market will be there, but much reduced compared to grinds like DAOC, EQ1/2, Lineage, etc.  I think we will see a reduction as the farmers realize that WoW is too actually fun to be that lucrative a market.  Especially if Blizzard turns the screw some also.

If Blizzard successfully implements the battlegrounds for PvP as they have promised, it will be then that the market will show the greatest growth.  Battlegrounds will provide a competitive reason to drive the endgame and thus create a market for those that want to enjoy the endgame without the grind to get there.

Considering the number of PvP enthusiasts that left DAoC to play WoW, you can expect that level 60, coveted template items, and min/maxxer gear will soon generate a market.  I'll also bet that you start seeing more sites that will PL toons to 60 for people as well as EBAY auctions for level 60 characters.  

I tested the game. While I'll agree that Blizzard has done well to provide fun in an mmog, the treadmill to the endgame is still quite noticable.

I guess some people will always see it that way. With WoW, it's too bad, because it's a great ride to the endgame. I'd hate to have missed it trying to PL up or buying a maxed out character. Different strokes, I guess.

Exactly what endgame are you treadmilling to?

Not having an endgame to race to is actually relaxing.  I'm having a good time with the quests and dungeons, and the occasional pvp 'throwdowns' that happen on pvp servers.

Disclaimer: We all like what we like.  If you find my views differing with yours, it may be because we have a different definition of "fun".  Don't be alarmed, this is a perfectly healthy thing.  

In answer to your question: None.  After my beta experience there wasn't a reason to buy the game.  So I didn't.  I've whacked foozles and run FedEX quests in every mmog that I can think of.  While Blizzard has succeeded in making a game that sucks less than its predecessors, it's still the same horse and pony show I've done before.  

Now, on the slim chance that I were to come back to play WoW,  it would be for their implementation of a PvP system.  The proposed Battlegrounds looks intriguing and may be worthy of extracting some cash from me.  Of course, the fun in this system will likely be a part of the endgame requiring significant foozle whacking to reach level 60.  Since it's the game at 60 that I wish to play for my "fun", the stuff along the way appears as a treadmill to me.  

I hope this covers it.

Huh? You arent the same Nebu as the guy/Blizzard employee in the Kali Campton outrage?

lol?

(http://www.wrybread.com/gammablablog/images/5-03/5-29/no-attention.jpg)

Clearly...

Poor Nebu.  :(

You know... I started using this handle about 11 years ago when I was an area designer for a semi-obscure mud.  I always knew one day that it would slap me in the face.

That day is today.

My typing fingers are crying harder than they have ever cried before.

Wow, thanks for that picture i went there tonight with my lvl 50 rogue and damn is that a nice leveling spot.  Shit load of level 50-52 mobs with what appeared to me to be less than normal AC and HPs, i was tearing through them at an alarming rate and i was sharing the spawn with around 10 other people.  Good loot was extremely rare, two greens in a couple hours, but their regular loot sold pretty well not to mention they are all skinnable so i left with 130 thick leathers and about 30 rugged ones.