AQ opened on Medivh

[Soukyan]

Apparently, it is open on Medivh. I saw it on a /. article (http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/01/23/1244201), but the site they linked is just getting destroyed from the hits so I know nothing more. GG catasses of the world!


Edit: <blizzardbash>I just wanted to point out that this has looked like a ripoff of the Olthoi in Asheron's Call since they first mentioned it. While I realize this is a new instanced raid dungeon, the "insectoid race invading the world" bit has been done. I'm sure someone probably did it before AC also, so I'm not suggesting that it is the originator, just pointing out that AQ didn't really seem all that impressive since it's old hat (Go on. Tell me how all MMOGs are old hat. Duh.). I guess if you didn't experience the cool AC events surrounding the Olthoi invasion, then this is new for a lot of people. Anyhow... after watching a video of the event, I can see how the comment was made that it was a ripoff of DAoC: Trials of Atlantis. Those mobs do look like they came right out of that egyptian lore based zone.</blizzardbash> They usually have a high production value on their games, so I imagine Blizzard made the event pretty damn neat to experience. It will be interesting to see more information as it trickles out.

[Trippy]

When has Blizzard *not* ripped off somebody else's idea? Seriously.

[heck]

I think this happened in Battle of the Planets too.  Princess was in one of those egg things, I was traumatized.

[Ironwood]

This is a ridiculous Blizzard bash.

If anything, they've done the insect thingy ages ago and the egyptian thingy was lore in WC3.

So, in closing and to sum up the argument, stfu noob.

[Merusk]

The Egyptian thingy was in WC3?  It's been years and I forget it all. Where?

Edit: Just read the /. link. So being able to write in English isn't a requisite for posting on this large uber-geek newsite, huh, because that "article" made me want to stab the writer in the eye.  The sideline about server crashing and 'just throwing a few ram chips' was particularly irksome.

vvv  Soukyan, my server was #5 last I checked.  I haven't cared enough to keep-up with it beyond when the turn-ins I could do were no longer available.

[Soukyan]

So aside from the aside of my post, any new news on the AQ opening? Are any of your servers close to unlocking it? I watched a video someone had linked on /. and it looks neat.

[Yegolev]

Not sure that Crushridge has the farmer population necessary to get this done anytime soon.  However I have not been too successful in logging in lately.

[Ironwood]

The Egyptian thingy was in WC3?  It's been years and I forget it all. Where?

The Frozen Throne used extensive Egyptian decor and whatnot on the Nerhzul insect thingys.  The Big-Bum hero was called 'I'm an Insect Imotehp' or summat too.  They had crazy names.  Combine that with the Destroyers/statues which were basically Sphinx and, well, sarcophagus and you may as well have thrown some pharoahs in there.  And then mummified them.

[Zetor]

Not sure that Crushridge has the farmer population necessary to get this done anytime soon.  However I have not been too successful in logging in lately.

Are you alliance or horde? Though it does seem like only two guilds are getting crap done -- Equinoctis on horde side, and Contingency on alliance.
800000 linen bandages on the wall, take a stack down, turn it in, 799980 linen bandages on the wall!

Edit: We're like #97, which is pretty sad when you consider the fact that CR opened in december 2004.


-- Z.

[Ironwood]

800000 linen bandages on the wall, take a stack down, turn it in, 799980 linen bandages on the wall!

That song really doesn't scan all that well.

[Yegolev]

Not sure that Crushridge has the farmer population necessary to get this done anytime soon.  However I have not been too successful in logging in lately.

Are you alliance or horde? Though it does seem like only two guilds are getting crap done -- Equinoctis on horde side, and Contingency on alliance.
800000 linen bandages on the wall, take a stack down, turn it in, 799980 linen bandages on the wall!

Edit: We're like #97, which is pretty sad when you consider the fact that CR opened in december 2004.


-- Z.

Horde.  My guild doesn't seem to log in these days, and I have a hard time with that myself (Thanks, EVE!).  Veroline, undead warrior.  I usually pair up with Killjoy or one of his alts for various things, mostly pestering Alliance jackoffs.  Right now I have five stacks of iron my my mailbox I need to turn into pants, but if you see me, say hello.

[Rasix]

Sentient insects are somewhat of a fantasy/sci-fi cliche, so is any type of Egyptian theme.   Might as well save yourself some time and have them occupy your same cliche.  Anyhow, having played both games in question: it's not a rip off.  It's a similar theme, but that's really as far as it goes.  It'd be like calling all anime the same because of the giant robot motif*.

My server's doing a pretty poor job on the collection effort. There's really only one guild spearheading the effort (with a FOH style contest) with other major guilds making a casual swipe at it. Some guilds seems to be actively obstaining due to various issues.  By the time our war effort is ready, my guild might even have the scepter completed.  I'm guessing a certain guild will go the petty route and try to ninja the gong.

The quest line for the scepter is fairly neat also.  There's a decent chunk of content that has been enabled for it.  For instance, you get to fight "Dr Weavil" and his henchman #2.  The fight with Dr. Weavil is actually somewhat challenging since he mind controls (and super buffs the MC'd person) and has an AOE that does like 1k damage and stuns you for about 5 seconds.  It has a fairly large radius and where you fight him is in a fairly small room (probably should have pulled him outside). 

Edit: Where the hell has Lantien been lately.  I need another Shadowsong presence here :)

Looking forward to AQ opening.  But the armor that has been showed so far makes me think that the challenge will be more rewarding than the reward.  Shaman armor looks like reject paladin gear and has stats idea for someone grinding the battlegrounds.  AQ gear turns us into a critadin and makes us look like one too. Joy.

* I don't watch anime. It might all be the same. In that case, I apologize.

[Zetor]

Horde.  My guild doesn't seem to log in these days, and I have a hard time with that myself (Thanks, EVE!).  Veroline, undead warrior.  I usually pair up with Killjoy or one of his alts for various things, mostly pestering Alliance jackoffs.  Right now I have five stacks of iron my my mailbox I need to turn into pants, but if you see me, say hello.

Sure thing. I'll make sure other alliance don't gank you. 

Zaphir (gnome lock) and Contraption (gnome warrior), btw.

Ontopic: We do have a FOH-style contest too on alliance, but most people just don't bother. Still, with 1% getting auto-completed each day, we'll probably have the gates open in 50 days or so (the scepter was assembled yesterday in an orgy of crossteaming, forum drama and griefing.. sometimes I'm glad I miss these things due to my timezone. kek)


-- Z.

[Merusk]

The Egyptian thingy was in WC3?  It's been years and I forget it all. Where?

The Frozen Throne used extensive Egyptian decor and whatnot on the Nerhzul insect thingys.  The Big-Bum hero was called 'I'm an Insect Imotehp' or summat too.  They had crazy names.  Combine that with the Destroyers/statues which were basically Sphinx and, well, sarcophagus and you may as well have thrown some pharoahs in there.  And then mummified them.

Hm I'll have to load it up again and check that out.  I was pretty bored with the game by the time I got to the TFT stuff, so I just raced through it for the (dissapointing in comparison to the base game) cutscenes and the story completion.  I missed some of the big details apparently.

[Yegolev]

Sure thing. I'll make sure other alliance don't gank you. 

Zaphir (gnome lock) and Contraption (gnome warrior), btw.

Ha, you have your work cut out for you.  I am like sugar to Alliance.  Once I am out of Undercity, I will be hanging out around Hammerfall.  I will try to remember your names but... you know... gnomes.  They make great snacks.  If Killjoy is giving you trouble, I can mention your names to him but no guarantees.  Believe it or not, he will usually leave Alliance alone if they are not dicks, which is hardly ever.  If you wave at him you will probably be OK.

[Mesozoic]

A large part of the reason that the server was having issues was that there were a lot of level 1 alts from other servers that were created just to watch things happen.  In response, BLizzard started kicking the alts off the server, which resulted in an army of angry threads on the official boards about how OMG IM a custumer I pay money and want to see gates WTF BLizzard!!

So, yeah  - surprise, WoW players unhappy, news at 11.

[Righ]

No surprise there. BTW, Mannoroth finished the resource requirements yesterday, so expect their gates open soon.

[Xanthippe]

Would be so cool if Blizzard could "broadcast" the event to other servers so that people not there could watch it.

I have no idea how hard such a thing would be to program, but wouldn't it be a trip?

[Morfiend]

Would be so cool if Blizzard could "broadcast" the event to other servers so that people not there could watch it.

I have no idea how hard such a thing would be to program, but wouldn't it be a trip?

They are actually doing the oppisite. They are making so that around event time, you cannot create new characters on that server.

[Tale]

Posts from level 60s on Medivh:

A lot of players put a lot of work into getting the AQ gates open. The big raiding guilds, guilds at various stages of progression, and even unguilded individuals all chipped in. Horde and Alliance learned to cooperate on a massive scale. In the case of Medivh, we did it quickly, and in spite of legions of inconsiderate players from other servers and a few outright griefers flooding our server and our message board. The responsible gamers on our server even selflessly decided to leave Silithus when you failed to provide adequate hardware for hosting the opening so that we'd see the benefits eventually.

And what do we get?

First off, seven world crashes of Kalimdor. I, for one, tried to hearth out between crashes 5 and 6 and was so lagged it didn't complete before the next crash. And after enough people did get out, what was our incredible experience shared server-wide to acknowledge a worldwide effort? A realm-wide yell.

Now how about the long term benefits? Now we've got a few big, very nasty monsters roaming around in most of the 40-50 levelling grounds, and a crystal in Gadgetzan that mind-controls people. And admission into a pair of new instances. Ones that may have new gear, but are essentially designed to be the difficulty level of two existing instances.

You can do better.

You've known since you came up with this scheme that Kalimdor would need to be beefed up to handle 90% of a realm's population being on it at once, let alone trying to fight. You've known since Medivh got to about 75% that we'd be first to complete the opening. You've known that since then, we've had large amounts of non-server players flocking in to see what happens. Closing character generation and teleporting low level characters was a good start, but was too little and too late. And what do you think I saw, just before I managed to eventually get out of Silithus tonight? A naked level 2 Tauren running by.

A realm-wide yell? What were you thinking? If you're going to allow a situation where most of the people who contributed to a successful endeavor will not witness it's fruition, at least set up a cutscene, whether cinematic like the WoW opener, or graphic, like the new character creation "flyby." I'm sure it'd take some effort to set something like that up, but I doubt it will come close to equalling the man-hours players will be putting into the war effort alone when you figure it'll be done on each server.

And the "dramatic world-wide events" we were lead to expect from this opening all took place on the same overloaded world server that the main event was happening on. Good thing you told us to spread out a bit. It might have helped with individual graphic lag, but poor Kalimdor of Medivh still had to deal with most of the population of our full realm standing on it's southern half.

I'll go ahead and assume that the mind-controlling shard in Gadg. and continuously spawning, elite mobs that are way too high for their zone's levels aren't permanent additons to our world, but something we can remove with a quest. I'm hoping Bliz is smart enough to not make instancing manditory for levelling 40-50 because they've put raid mobs in the middle of some of the best grinding/questing territory in the game.

Ooh, but we've got two new instances! One of which is said to be the difficulty of BWL (grats to the high-end guilds, I'll give them that), which the vast majority of the player base hasn't even seen yet. The other is supposed to be about the same as Zul Gurub, an instance that came out, what? Two patches ago? And yet the gap between being able to complete ZG and MC has more to do with the number of people you can field than it does in difficulty. Granted, ZG is supposed to take a hit from the nerf bat next patch, which is good considering you needed MC gear to complete it. And what of the glorious loot available from AQ 20? We get to grind for most of it, just like ZG. And item sets that are the ugliest of a rapidly degenerating series of artistic failures.

Now I'm not gonna threaten to cancel. For my dissapointment over the last week, WoW is still the best game in town and my friends are here. But I'll sure as hell take my time the next time Blizzard says there's something cool coming up, but you've got to farm millions of items to get it. I just wish Blizzard had put the same epic effort into the results from AQ that players have to put in to see it.

If you're not on Medivh and reading this... Don't bother farming, just wait for the ZG nerf and the expansion.

A couple of folks were discussing this on the pain-laden general chat last night as we watched Kalimdor drop over and over and over...

It was generally agreed that all of us would have taken a harder tac than Blizz, we all felt they were AMAZINGLY soft on the folks who cruised to this server to crash the event.

Players/guilds such as "Crashmedivh" and "Icrashmedivh".... "AQopening"... these were all players who were logging on with the intent of crashing an event and sabotaging it for other legitimate participants...

... and Blizz ports them out of the zone?

That's a punishment?

Had the folks on general had their way, anyone joining these guilds or thick-headed enough to name themselves "Icrashmedivh" or the like would have been banned, period. Gone. Done.

A couple, and I supported this, would have taken it a step further: posting on the medivh server that you would be crashing the evtent would get you banned as well. Expressing intent to bring down a server? *boot from game*

Seems like a no-brainer to me.

I thought Blizz had hard-asses in it....

Lord knows an all-caps post won't last a NY minute around here... but an alt made to crash a server?

It never truly dies.

[Fabricated]

Sigh.

Why can't Blizzard just make more 5-man instances? I'd farm stuff to get 2-3 new 5-manner only (not even 10-man twink raids) instances instead of this shit.

[Xanthippe]

Would be so cool if Blizzard could "broadcast" the event to other servers so that people not there could watch it.

I have no idea how hard such a thing would be to program, but wouldn't it be a trip?

They are actually doing the oppisite. They are making so that around event time, you cannot create new characters on that server.

Just as they should, I think. 

What I had in mind was a cut-scene or the ability to look through the eyes of someone there.  It would help if Blizzard hosted SSs of the event.

What happened sounds rather disappointing.  Time will tell.

[Trippy]

Would be so cool if Blizzard could "broadcast" the event to other servers so that people not there could watch it.

I have no idea how hard such a thing would be to program, but wouldn't it be a trip?

They are actually doing the oppisite. They are making so that around event time, you cannot create new characters on that server.

Just as they should, I think. 

What I had in mind was a cut-scene or the ability to look through the eyes of someone there.  It would help if Blizzard hosted SSs of the event.

What happened sounds rather disappointing.  Time will tell.

The easiest thing would be to take a video of the "event" (such as it were) and make that available (through BitTorrent of course, *cough*).

[angry.bob]

Why can't Blizzard just make more 5-man instances? I'd farm stuff to get 2-3 new 5-manner only (not even 10-man twink raids) instances instead of this shit.

I totally agree. I absolutely loved the game level 1 to 60, but once you hit 60 the entire game morphs into the exact opposite of what it was up to that point. Infinite grinding and cockblocks to content that exist for absolutely no reason other than to force you to join a raiding guild or start over again with an alt. The current endgame sucks such horrible, catass shit that even rolling an alt would be a waste of time. They need to stop the fucking superguild shit for a long while and work on stuff for 3 to 5 man PUGs. You know, the sort of shit that most of their players will actually be able to do.

Besides, it's getting to the point where you have have to have MC level gear to be able to do any of this shit, and you need to be in a guild to do MC, but the guilds able to do MC/BWL have had recruiting freezes on for a while and on my server are even starting to boot people who don't have at least XX% of MC/BWL/epic PvP gear. Honestly, it seems that if you're not doing the high level raiding you never will, which is just plain shit game design.

[Trippy]

Would be so cool if Blizzard could "broadcast" the event to other servers so that people not there could watch it.

I have no idea how hard such a thing would be to program, but wouldn't it be a trip?

I don't know how hard it would be to program into WoW but the technology in general exists and has since the QuakeWorld era and these days is popularized by Half-Life TV. The basic idea is that the server "echoes" all its outgoing network traffic in the surrounding area to one or more proxies and the viewers connect their clients to the proxies and can watch the action as its happening on the server.

[Righ]

Somebody put up a 250MB movie if you want to spend an hour or two downloading a movie of a server crashing and a login queue.

http://download.filefront.com/4656641;8bdee6b1cc4f988f03b294d6ba239fbb31f3cfe747dae882c8a6d73a16b7f1380c4049d43f07269f

[Hoax]

I dont here any mention of world pvp, blizzard fails at life...

Boring these diku-clones are.

[angry.bob]

Somebody put up a 250MB movie if you want to spend an hour or two downloading a movie of a server crashing and a login queue.

Holy God, that was the most boring shit ever. When the most interesting thing about your grand world event is the completely innappropriate, faggy drama queen music one of your players puts 45 minutes of surveying a sandy landscape and trying to reconnect, you've failed as a game designer.

[Ironwood]

Why can't Blizzard just make more 5-man instances? I'd farm stuff to get 2-3 new 5-manner only (not even 10-man twink raids) instances instead of this shit.

I totally agree. I absolutely loved the game level 1 to 60, but once you hit 60 the entire game morphs into the exact opposite of what it was up to that point. Infinite grinding and cockblocks to content that exist for absolutely no reason other than to force you to join a raiding guild or start over again with an alt. The current endgame sucks such horrible, catass shit that even rolling an alt would be a waste of time. They need to stop the fucking superguild shit for a long while and work on stuff for 3 to 5 man PUGs. You know, the sort of shit that most of their players will actually be able to do.

Besides, it's getting to the point where you have have to have MC level gear to be able to do any of this shit, and you need to be in a guild to do MC, but the guilds able to do MC/BWL have had recruiting freezes on for a while and on my server are even starting to boot people who don't have at least XX% of MC/BWL/epic PvP gear. Honestly, it seems that if you're not doing the high level raiding you never will, which is just plain shit game design.

WHAT

HE

SAID.

[Phred]

Sigh.

Why can't Blizzard just make more 5-man instances? I'd farm stuff to get 2-3 new 5-manner only (not even 10-man twink raids) instances instead of this shit.

The problem with this, IMO, is that more 5 man instances now makes no sense long term. What use will they be once the expansion comes out? Unless they scale the level on them, they'll be left by the wayside once everyone starts heading to L70 and new players won't even take the time to stop at 60 to do the content. Blizzard has dug themselves into a hole with the timing of the Expansion and the upping of the level cap to 70. Existing raid instances will probably still be done by up and coming 70's with fewer people, making them slightly more accessable, but 5 man instances tuned to L60 will be abandoned.

[Phred]

Why can't Blizzard just make more 5-man instances? I'd farm stuff to get 2-3 new 5-manner only (not even 10-man twink raids) instances instead of this shit.

Besides, it's getting to the point where you have have to have MC level gear to be able to do any of this shit, and you need to be in a guild to do MC, but the guilds able to do MC/BWL have had recruiting freezes on for a while and on my server are even starting to boot people who don't have at least XX% of MC/BWL/epic PvP gear. Honestly, it seems that if you're not doing the high level raiding you never will, which is just plain shit game design.

In EQ, and in WoW, it seems new raiding guilds are forming all the time so just because you can't get into a guild that has the end game instances on farm status doesn't mean you can't hook up with some people and do them. My guild didn't enter MC until June of last year, when half a dozen guilds on my server already had most of MC cleared weekly, and we killed Nefarion last week, so it's quite possible to find a decent late blooming guild and raid this stuff.

[Kageru]

The fires of heaven website (www.fohguild.org) has the quest logs for the scepter part. They're quite strange, but
a sizeable amount of effort on blizzards part for something few people will ever see. The descriptions of the actual
event sound quite cool, but they run into exactly the same problem all world events have. Massive lag, people trying
to spoil it and an inability to target the content. The mind boggles to imagine what its going to be like on the PvP servers.

[Simond]

The sceptre quest will be doable even after the gates are open, so that quest line isn't as much of a waste as you might think.

[Dren]

Sigh.

Why can't Blizzard just make more 5-man instances? I'd farm stuff to get 2-3 new 5-manner only (not even 10-man twink raids) instances instead of this shit.

The problem with this, IMO, is that more 5 man instances now makes no sense long term. What use will they be once the expansion comes out? Unless they scale the level on them, they'll be left by the wayside once everyone starts heading to L70 and new players won't even take the time to stop at 60 to do the content. Blizzard has dug themselves into a hole with the timing of the Expansion and the upping of the level cap to 70. Existing raid instances will probably still be done by up and coming 70's with fewer people, making them slightly more accessable, but 5 man instances tuned to L60 will be abandoned.

I completely disagree with what you said.  Not all of us want it all and want it now.  Plus, nobody has told us what it will take to get to 70.  I highly doubt it will just be the same grind as before.  I can imagine there will first be some epic quest to unlock 65, then the exp curve will be wicked steep.  Then at 65 you can do another even more epic quest to unlock 70.  The last 5 levels will take a casual player 6 months to complete.  That's my prediction.

As a casual player, I don't mind.  I don't NEED to get to 70 and I'm still trying to get into even a fraction of the uber content now.  I've played the game since release and never even set foot in MC.  I'm only 3 quests into the Onyxia quest line. Etc.  Hell, I haven't even had a chance to use this key I finally got for Scholomance.

I believe there are plenty of us casual 60's that will still be around even after the expansion for a long time.  Casuals that aren't even at 60 now will want something to do too.  Hell, I have been having fun running alts up the ladder and wouldn't mind more content for those too.

More 5-man instances that are broken up like DM please.

[Ironwood]

You know what ?  I don't mind raids.  Really, I don't.

What I mind is how bloody hard they are to organise and how much fucking time is required to participate.  I think that breaking up the high level instances into more easily manageable chunks is the way to go.  You see it all through the game, in the Scarlet Monastry and at Mauradon and then, suddenly, at lvl 60, they say 'Hardcore Catasses only'.

What I would like to see is more 'save point' mechanics such as that sceptre you get in Mauradon or the four mini instances in SM.  I did LBRS the other day and five manning it from start to finish (ALL the quests) took five fucking hours.  And we went through most of it quite quickly, I thought.  That's ridiculous and a serious cockblock to  Sky the casual player.

They Need to address this.  NEED.