Please vote for The Instance in the Gaming category in the 2008 Podcast Awards here. You can vote every day through November 6th!
Big News Of The WEEK
Blizzard Gives Out Tricks And Treats
Difficulties with the Echoes Of Doom patch marked the first week after it went live, and Blizzard seemed to be in a poor position with only three weeks to go until the 2nd expansion to the game, when suddenly this last weekend, they pulled a world event that either vastly improved or injured the image of the game, depending upon your opinion. What will forever be known as The Zombie Invasion started about a week ago, and unbeknownst to players, it came in stages that just got progressively… zombier… as the weekend went on.
Blizzard announced passing the 11-million subscriber count yesterday.
Just this afternoon, Blizzard came around with an appropriate and well-timed response to the chorus of complaints about the lag, connection issues and unavailability of instances just after the launch of the new patch: Three days free for subscribers!
Rumors And Scuttlebutt
Will You Stay Up Past Midnight?
All of Azeroth will feel the Wrath of the Lich King in just a couple of weeks, when the second World of Warcraft expansion officially launches. If you want to be among the first to get your hands on the game, thousands of retailers around the world are hosting special midnight store openings to celebrate the release, and will start selling the game at 12:00 a.m. (local time) on November 13. In addition, Blizzard Entertainment developers and executives will be on hand to sign copies and meet players at four locations throughout the United States: Fry’s Electronics in Anaheim, CA; Best Buy in New York City; and GameStop in San Francisco, CA and Austin, TX.
Don’t Be Frightened By Strangers
On this Saturday, Nov. 1, Randy is having the 2nd Annual Central Texas Deluxe Meet-up at Plucker’s Wing Factory in Round Rock Texas. Randy is going to have some special guests, prizes for a lucky few; Official start time is 7PM, if you’re coming and you haven’t yet e-mailed Randy to RSVP, you need to do so, and you can find more in the thread on this subject here in our forums.
Slash-massage Makes Me Slash-nervous
Did you notice? The introduction of patch 3.0.2, aka Echoes Of Doom, brought a host of new emotes to the game.
Drop Of The Week
The Drums Are Scary
The new TCG expansion called Drums Of War went on sale Tuesday, October 28. We know what you want to know…
- Slashdance, the Drums of War super common Loot card, gives players a stack of Party G.R.E.N.A.D.Es. Everyone in the target circle will receive a one minute buff that causes them to dance and enjoy some streamers and confetti.
- The uncommon Loot card in Drums of War, Owned!, offers the newest in victory flaunting. Used in-game, this card gives you The Flag of Ownership, and will tell everyone that you just bested your opponent. In addition to a special emote, you will literally plant a flag in the corpse of your fallen enemy. As if that wasn’t enough, the flag flies a giant thumbs down, the ultimate in humiliation.
- The rare card is The Red Bearon: an epic mount. This Battle Bear is the fourth exclusive mount from the World of Warcraft TCG.
Additional show content provided by Mean Gene, Patrick from France, Shawn Basic, Darrell the Tipgiver, Steve “Buxley” Pietrowicz and the outstanding Instance Community.
Special thanks to TypeFrag and Godaddy, and DogHouse Systems for sponsoring this episode.
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Please vote for The Instance in the Gaming category in the 2008 Podcast Awards here. You can vote every day through November 6th!
zombies were pain in the but,
but people complaining are a bunch of babies
Think about the lore…
Think it was convenient when the first plague came thru? Least we can rez!
I’m a casual player on an RP server and don’t engage in pvp very much. That being said, I LOVED the zombie invasion. I had such a great time trying to figure out what was going on. The unexpected nature of the entire event piqued my curiosity and had me completely engaged even through the minor annoyances of having certain NPCs unavailable or not being able to use the AH without becoming zombified. And I’m so glad that it happened for a few days rather than just a few hours because I’m not able to get in game every day and I might have missed it otherwise. Cheers to Blizzard for this creative event and for keeping it a surprise. Those people who are complaining about it need to take a deep breath and remember that it’s a game.
the show was….. Awesome, you know what I mean…
if we listened to everyone who thought whining about the zombies was a good thing, blizzard would never do anything fun, or add anything to the game.
shame on them.
I think much of the whining stemmed from people believing it was going to last for weeks not just a few days, at least I hope if they knew if was only going to be for a few days they would have just had fun with it… as for me when it ended was perfect, I was just starting to get tired of it when it stopped. But when it was going on I had a lot of fun trying to infect/kill Thrall in Org (infected him once but he got cured by one of his companions, the plague wiped out everyone in his chamber for a while though, lol) I took the plague to Gromgol when it was not infected and destroyed that town… perhaps people who don’t play priests and spend a good portion of their “in game” experience healing all the tanks and DPS classes sorry butts cant understand the immense joy I got out of killing all of you just for a little while
well i had kinda been grounded for about 3 weeks and my punishment is upo this sunday but unfortunately i m issed the ENTIRE event. i didn’t even know about it until about 2-3 days after it had finished
You mentioned in the show that the math on the 3 free days was $1.50 and seemed little dismissive of it. You had also just mentioned the 11 million subscribers. It seem worth mentioning that if all of those people received the 3 days (which I know is not the case) it would be 16.5 million dollars in subscription fees rebated. I think Blizzard deserves some kind of award for that kind of action, based upon something that could only be termed a minor inconvenience because some people actually enjoyed it. George Lucas and Steven Spielberg did nothing to placate the millions of Indiana Jones and Star Wars fans after the latests movies, and I assure you, that depression lives on. At least with Blizzard we know they are going to respond and change things to suit the audience instead of just plopping a turd and letting it steam. They bring their plastic gloves to the doggie park.
What a bunch of whiny twats, maybe its time to play hello kitty online.