WOW Obsessed » wow

Future Armory Features discovered?

Angelo Fernandez — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 09:54:45 +0000

The World of Warcraft Armory has been very useful for a lot of people and used for a variety of purposes. While not just about character profiles, that’s a big part of why it’s so useful and even that has a variety of uses for a lot of people. People use the Armory for checking out talent builds, gear choices and stats of other players or used to ask for the help in the forums or a means to check how geared a person is for a raid. These are only some of the things that make the Armory useful and interesting.

As much as all these things are useful already, it seems like the Armory is stepping up a notch with some cool new features coming our way soon. I can’t find the announcement anymore but MMO Champion caught it before it was taken down. According to them, the announcement was dated January 1, 2010 so that’s probably when we should expect to see them out. Below are the features listed in the announcement caught by MMO Champion:

3D Model Viewer

Players will be able to view 3D Models of their characters on the WoW Armory and even play around with the camera view, play animations and for people logged in to the Armory account, even save a pose that visitors will be able to see. At least now we can not only display our gear for people to see but also what our characters look like!

Character Activity Feeds

The Character Activity feed will show a character’s most recent in-game actions in their Armory profile. This includes things like Achievements and item acquisitions. These feeds can also be used with any RSS reader you want to use.

Game Calendar Feeds

This new feature will allow players to export their in-game calendar to calendar applications like Google Calendar. This tool will be able to take up to 5 characters and will be synched automatically with the in-game calendar.

I guess we have to wait until these new features are officially announced to know more details but they look pretty good, don’t they?

Post from: WOW Obsessed

Mr. Chilly is in the Mail!

Angelo Fernandez — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 11:54:59 +0000

The other day, Blizzard announced that they will be requiring players to merge their WoW accounts with Battle.net accounts. They said players will not be able to log in by November 11 unless they do so. To give more incentive for players to do this, they are giving out for only a certain amount of time an in-game non combat pet which will be available to all players who go through the merging process.

Mr. Chilly

This pet has already arrived in the mailboxes (courtesy of Breanni the Dalaran Pet Supplies vendor) of all players who merged their accounts. We now know this pet to be a penguin pet called Mr. Chilly and he’s really cute as you can see from the image above! For people like me who are too lazy to get exalted with the Kalu’ak to get Pengu, this is a great way to get your own penguin pet with no effort at all.

So if you haven’t done this yet, you really should go ahead and do it already! Follow this link for US accounts and this link for EU accounts to do the merging.

Post from: WOW Obsessed

Battle.net Conversion Coming Soon

Angelo Fernandez — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 13:07:59 +0000

Blizzard will launching the new Battle.net features that will allow players access to things like a real life friends list, cross realm chat, cross game chat and a lot of others. To prepare for this launching, Blizzard is requiring all World of Warcraft players to merge their accounts to Battle.net accounts. We’ll be given a grace period until November 11 this year, which is the date when you will no longer be able to log into your account unless the merging is made.

I suggest that everyone does this as early as now if you guys haven’t done it yet. You guys wouldn’t want to be surprised on November 11 wouldn’t you? There’s absolutely no reason not to do it since this is totally free and easy to do. All you have to do is go here if you have a US account and here if you have an EU account and just follow the steps. The best part is that Blizzard will be rewarding all of us players with existing WoW accounts with an in game pet Penguin for going through the trouble. Existing WoW accounts that are merged after November 11 will still get the pet but note that they will only make this available for a certain amount of time.

You can check here for the Battle.net Account FAQ.

Post from: WOW Obsessed

First time I see my WoW toon in Youtube

Angelo Fernandez — Thu, 21 May 2009 14:01:18 +0000

Being a blogger it’s nice to see that I’ve left some kind of mark in the vast sea of information that is the Internet. Something that I’ve been quite fascinated about all these years is Youtube and the kind of finger print I can leave behind through that magnificent site if ever i had a video camera. My guess is that I probably won’t do much since I’m a shy type person but who knows.

Over the years I’ve been with several guilds, running all kinds of raids and I know of only one group of people that recorded some of the runs but to my knowledge I never was in any of them. If ever i was, it probably back in the days of the 40 man raids when we were doing Molten Core and who knows if I could even find myself in that kind of crowd.

my tree druid talks about his Youtube appearance

Then just yesterday I was surprised to finally see myself in Youtube! Well it wasn’t really me but my druid running 25 man Naxx. The scene that was recorded was our attempt for the Four Horsemen encounter that eventually led to the successful kill (since we wiped once because we had new guys learning the fight). I’m the sexy tree druid running around healing!

Thanks to my guildmate Bloodemyth from Casus Belli – Bronzebeard for recording and posting this video!

Post from: WOW Obsessed

Things to do during Server Maintenance

Angelo Fernandez — Tue, 12 May 2009 09:07:53 +0000

As I’m writing this a lot of the World of Warcraft servers are undergoing a very extended maintenance that’s going to last for 12 hours. We’ve had a lot of scheduled maintenance before that would be longer than usual but as far as I know, this is the first time we’re having a scheduled one for this long. Since it really is maintenance day today, the other servers are going offline eventually but for the unfortunate, this is a major bummer.

mage with nothing to do

Some guilds probably had to call off or at least cut short their raids today, especially those that run at a later time. After playing this game for so long, I’ve noticed that there are a lot of people who play really strange hours and there are also some people outside the US who play in US servers like myself, so the time zone can be different. I did notice that all the Oceanic servers are on the list for really extended maintenance so this can really be disappointing for them. For those people who would usually be awake at this time for whatever reason and playing WoW, there are other things you can do to pass the time instead of playing WoW.

Things you can do during server maintenance, extended or not:

1. Visit the official WoW forums. While it may be frustrating, please avoid complaining about the downtime. It’s happening for our own good.

2. Log on to your Facebook and/or Twitter account and complain about the downtime to your friends.

3. Log on to your Facebook/Myspace/Friendster or whatever social networking site you use and start reading up on all your friends’ latest happenings.

4. Facebook has some cool stuff to do for downtime and I’m not talking about just quizzes. You can super poke all your friends or even play some cool games like Scramble.

5. Take out that console and start playing your favorite console game.

6. If it’s not so late, go out and maybe have a relaxing jog/walk.

7. Watch that DVD you’ve been trying to find time to watch.

8. Read that book you’ve been trying to find time to read.

9. Read WoW Obsessed!

10. If you’re staying up for the sake of staying up, then go to bed early!

Post from: WOW Obsessed

A personal glimpse at WoW Miniatures

Angelo Fernandez — Mon, 04 May 2009 12:29:09 +0000

Last Friday I had the opportunity to see something interesting as my cousin and some of his friends dropped by for the May 1 holiday. I was out of the house when they came but my older brother was there to see to them. When I arrived I saw them playing (or at least learning to play) the World of Warcraft Miniatures game.

Draenei paladin fights Orc warrior

I didn’t get to play it myself but I preferred to watch anyway. What I saw seems like a very good adaptation of the real game for something that’s not a video game. Basically it’s a table top game with cool looking figurines used to represent characters and even mobs. You have a figurine for your class and cards to represent abilities that you can use, which are actual in game spells that are tweaked for board game play. The game seems to have different terrains or maps associated with your choice of play. There’s a PvE game where players get to fight mobs like worgen and storm ragers and a PvP game which looks like an arena tournament/battlegrounds hybrid match from what I’ve seen. I say this because what I saw looked like warsong gulch without any flag capturing!

Somehow I wish I learned more about this game when it was right in front of me but what I can say is that it’s a pretty good way to keep WoW in your life without having to spend so much time online. You can play this in your own time with friends and even have a nice bonding session together. The nice part is that these games don’t seem to take very long unlike the WoW trading card game which I heard can take hours and hours like a real raiding night in game. Sure it can be pricey to collect the cards and the figurines but if you’re into this type of thing and a WoW fan, it’s probably worth it.

Photo taken by my brother Jayvee Fernandez

Post from: WOW Obsessed

Answering Crygil’s “Test”

Angelo Fernandez — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 02:43:45 +0000

Just yesterday Blizzard poster Crygil posted a series of questions for the World of Warcraft community to answer. It’s an interesting way to get some feedback about what people think of the game straight from the people who play it. It’s become quite popular already with pages and pages of responses. The question posted is as follows:

crygil's test

It’s commonly held that there are three or four main segments of the game: Ranged/Melee DPS, Tanking and Healing. What does that mean to you and what defines each role in your mind? If you had to break down each class, and section it into its most appropriate area, where would you place them? After hashing that out, which segment do you fall into and why do you enjoy playing in that segment?

It’s actually not very clear exactly what kind of answer he wants from us even if he expounded on it later in the thread. Anyway, I’ll try my best to give a good answer for my case.

What each role means to me

DPS

To me the essence of the dps role is fairly simple. It means putting out the most damage you can possibly can without pulling threat from the tank. Whether you’re melee or ranged, this is your job. Now generally being ranged dps means you’re more squishy than melee dps. This is the balancing factor since you have the luxury of being away from your target. While there are some fights in the game that can very well be done with just a tank and a healer keeping him alive, it becomes evident that the dps role is also very important. Not having your dps or even not having enough dps could mean disaster since not only will the fight take too long but this length could be taxing on the healers and their mana. DPS makes the fight faster and in the case of bosses with enrage timers, we know that faster is good!

Tank

For me the tanking role has been something I’m not very familiar with. I have always wanted to have a tank but I found out the hard way that tanking doesn’t love me. So what I know about tanking is purely from reading and watching other people do it. The essence of tanking is to keep his/her target(s) away from the rest of the group. That’s really all there is to it. He does this by generating more threat than everyone else. there’s another aspect to tanking but to me it’s not it the essence of the role but a consequence. Mitigation only important for tanks because a dead tank cannot hold threat and taking too much damage can be taxing to the healers. But there’s something else to tanks that separates good tanks from bad ones – mastery of the fight. Knowing that you need to kite a boss to an area of the room, knowing that you need interrupt something, knowing that you need to pop a cooldown to survive that attack – these are things that not all tanks really know how to do but when you see a tank do these things it makes the job easier.

Healer

The essence of healing is to keep everyone alive especially the tank. The healer has to manage his/her mana to make sure that a heal can be cast when its needed. It’s an art of anticipation and reaction and knowing which heal is best for a certain situation. There isn’t much more to it but it’s more complicated than it sounds.

Breakdown of classes

In today’s WoW it difficult to pigeon hole all classes to a certain role since all specs are viable. The only way to do this would be to go back in time to the days of vanilla WoW and see how the devs designed each class for the raiding environment. For example, all druids were pretty much forced to go restoration and heal if they wanted to raid. I would have to make an exception for the paladin. While paladins were pretty much healers in vanilla wow, their emergence into tanking now really fits my view of them. While DK’s can tank just as well as others, my primary view of them are as DPS especially when seeing their ghoul companion and their big two-hander.

Tank – Warrior, Paladin
Healer – Shaman, Priest, Druid
DPS – everyone else

What role do I fit into?

I used to think I was dps all the way, with my mage being my main from vanilla wow to mid-TBC. But after trying out healing, it’s become a sort of obsession. I actually found that healing can actually be a relaxing change of pace at times. I also have this feeling that I’m helping out more when I’m healing. It seems to me like even if you’re not the best healer in the raid, your presence actually helps someone more than if you were dps and didn’t do much damage. Of course being a healer gets you into groups more and that’s definitely a great plus.

Post from: WOW Obsessed

Noblegarden To Be Delayed This Year

Angelo Fernandez — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 17:32:48 +0000

I’m really happy that Noblegarden is getting much more attention this year than in the past. I was really excited when Blizzard announced that they were extending the event to a whole week instead of just a day. I never used to catch Noblegarden before due to the timing and the shortness of duration so this is really nice.

wow calendar

For those scouting the WoW calendar, you might have noticed that Noblegarden was removed from its schedule of April 12. CM Nethaera announced that it’s merely being delayed a bit and not being removed from the game. This delay is a bit telling though of how things are going. This year’s Noblegarden will have new things to look forward to and I guess that’s why they extended the event to a whole week. These changes need to patch to be released because of the size of the new art and such. Right now the new date for Noblegarden is still unknown but this should give us a clue on when patch 3.1 is coming out. So all you guys out there predicting the release of patch 3.1, you have another clue!

Post from: WOW Obsessed

Inspired To Make WoW Haikus

Angelo Fernandez — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 17:29:13 +0000

if you’ve been reading the forums, you probably saw that blue poster Crygil was very much in the mood for replying haiku style. The only problem was that his were written the “wrong” way since he used a 5-8-5 meter instead of the traditional 5-7-5. Still all these haikus inspired me to make a few of my own about WoW. I say they’re not bad considering i don’t have much training in making this stuff and it only took me an hour to compose all of them. Tell me what you think!

haiku kitty

April Fools

The day of Fools’ near
It’s just a day away now
What is Blizzard’s joke?

Chromie The Gnomie

Chromie is a gnome
A very cool gnome dragon
We love you Chromie!

Heigan Dance

Do the Heigan dance
Move your butt, avoid green slime
If you don’t, crossbones

Merely A Setback

Kael’thas – Tempest Keep
It was merely a setback!
MgT was not…

Sapphiron’s Air Phase

Sapphiron’s iceblock
Get behind it now you noob!
*Running, running… dead*

Sartharion’s Fire Wall

The fire wall’s coming
Sartharion wants to kill us.
Find the gap and live.

Post from: WOW Obsessed

Filefront To Suspend Operations

Angelo Fernandez — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 13:44:17 +0000

While it’s not connected to the game itself, a lot of World of Warcraft users have relied on Filefront for a lot of game related things. A lot of things like videos, machinimas, images and even patches have been stored in Filefront.

WoW players and everyone else who have been using Filefront all these years will have to look elsewhere very very soon since it will soon be yet another victim of these hard times. According to their front page they have decided to suspend their operations indefinitely on March 30, 2009 so they urge everyone who wants to download their files to do so before they close. Another one bites the dust and this time it’s something a bit closer to our hearts as gamers. Filefront, thanks for being there for us all these years!

update: Apparently Filefront isn’t closing after all. The original founders reacquired it so operations will not be suspended. Yay!

Post from: WOW Obsessed