Big News Of The Week
Armory Goes Invasive
The new WoW Armory went online on November 26th, leading to a storm of outcry over the level of character detail now being publicly published by Blizzard. Yesterday, Blizzard pulled back in response, taking out the wealth category from the armory, so that people cannot see how much gold your character has and has ever had.
Rumors And Scuttlebutt
Arena Season 5 Is Coming
We touched on it in the last episode of The Instance, and want to take a minute to talk about it now – Arena Season 4 is totally closed in-game (the team creation vendors are even mute) and Season 5 starts on December 17. That’s exactly two weeks from today. There are, however, skirmish brackets available (71-75 and 76-80). Also, the rumor is that those of you who are getting Season 4 rewards will be getting them on Tuesday during maintenance. That’s Tuesday, December 9th.
More Dots. More Dots. Come On Dots.
Blizzard Lead Encounter Designer Daelo posted an announcement yesterday on the official forums that the debuff limit on mobs has been removed. In case you never counted the dots, there was previously a limit of 40 debuffs that you could put on a single mob. Now, you could have thousands.
The Richard Bartle ‘Torture’ Kerfuffle
IncGamers ran a story last week that Bartle posted on his blog, youhaventlived.com, that he was upset by a quest in the Wrath Of The Lich King expansion. This caused all manner of debate online over the Thanksgiving holiday, and Bartle decided to post a follow-up to all of the opinion that he received because of the original post.
Town Cryer
Ferras writes:
Why is WoW so hot? I don’t get why WoW is so big. I am thinking about playing but i don’t understand what is so good about WoW.
Drop Of The Week
Coverville Goes For The Cash Value
We interview Brian and Tristan Ibbott, and find this useful website.
And this week, we award the winner of the Hippogryph Hatchling Card , provided by Tracielynn. Thanks, Tracielynn! Listen next week to to win another cool prize!!
Additional show content provided by Mean Gene, Patrick from France, Shawn Basic, Darrell the Tipgiver, and the outstanding Instance Community.
Special thanks to TypeFrag and Godaddy for sponsoring this episode.
I didn’t like the crit vs haste segment. Just fyi this is still rather heavily debated, but I think that for anyone that asks you should direct them to the forums at elitistjerks.com This is where much of the discussion and number crunching for classes happens.
Without going into specifics, I will say that talents and skills must be considered when choosing stats.
For instance, do you get any procs from crits? more mana? free spell cast? instant spell cast? reduced spell cast? atk power buff? etc…
Another thing to consider is your current gear lvl. Are you running out of mana? If so haste is probably a bad choice and you’d do much better off stacking crit. Especially if you have any kind of mana restoration abilities based on crit.
I also think that its a preference. Play the game for whatever reasons you choose. If you like seeing bigger numbers, go crit. If you like seeing more numbers, go haste.
And @ the guy crying about the torture in the game… get off it! You do realize that you’re killing creatures and people (pvp) in the game right? ITS NOT REAL! You’re like the guy who watches the science fiction movie with flying cars and says “cars don’t have metal tires!” In the realm of fantasy its hard to argue anything but fantasy.
Anyway, I enjoy the show, keep it up.
Regarding the upgrading from regular Wrath to Wrath CE.
CALL BLIZZARD BILLING!!!
Sorry to yell that, but I got my CE box, called them and what they can do is replace your regular Wrath CD key with your CE Wrath CD key during the “30 day return policy” period.
So if you upgrade within 30 days of Wrath coming out (or can prove you bought Wrath later than that) you have 30 days to upgrade and get the original CD key back to use on, say, your dualbox account.
Have both CD keys ready and handy for verification purposes and also be ready to answer some account secret questions but they will then e-mail you a brand new CD key. Got mine about 30 minutes after the phone call ended.
Confused why the show was introduced as 129 and the wrong date also.
You had the torture all wrong. Thankfully Randy corrected you. Bartle had a problem with the Borean Tundra one.
Oddly, I never have a problem hurting humanoids, carrying around their heads, or any other body parts. But when it came to collecting animals parts, I get grossed out and feel bad.
“Len has been playing with himself since he was 11″. LOL – thank you so much for that.
I was so close to doing a spit take on that comment. Well done
If nothing else Scott, you can take solace in the fact that my Death Knight dinged 61 before moving on to the second quest hub in Hellfire Peninsula, in less time than it takes to start hating the zone. She’ll be in Fungalmarsh very soon.
And OMG! You got 200g for 6 Arctic Fur?!? On Stormrage they go for 80-90g each!
Torture (whether right or wrong) can be beneficial. It yields both correct and incorrect information. Those that have utilized it realize this. Yes, sometimes it helps, but we have to decide whether that help is worth it. To say that it is all bad is not much different than saying that honesty is the best policy. Remember that each situation nearly always dictates itself differently.
nice show, that torture guy is off his nut. But i’d like to say in regarding the womans perspective at the end of the show, its Wrath of the lich king, what the hell is Wroth of the lich king?
!!
AWESOME show and I agree with lmmo “that torture guy is off his nut.” I admit that I don’t have a DK and I suspect I am in the minority that I have no intention of ever having a DK, but in leveling there have been several times that I have used my Holy Priest to pound the truth out of various individuals, (I’m Alliance, the big chain that pops into mind is the one that had me beating up some guy outside the Inn in Menethil Harbor.) so it seems rather arbitrary to me where this guy has chosen to draw the line…it’s okay to beat the truth out of someone, but it’s not okay to use other methods?
As for his “I’m not growing a vagina (I checked)” – he can be senstive to gamers that may have had life experiences that are so painful that I don’t want to think about it but he can be disparaging to all of us gamer girls? (Okay, just kidding there.) I have a vagina, a sense of humor, and a grip on reality – this guy apparently needs to go play Sims.
Hmm…The torture segment is interesting. I think that guy went wayyyy too far. Obviously the torture segment along with killing one of your own race is supposed to depict the distance that your post DK quest line death knight has come from his former evil ways. That’s my bit. : )
Thanks for another great episode guys!
You asked on the show why people would ever use some of those statistics on the Armory. I know back in TBC that my raiding-focused guild already used the armory to take a peek at applicants to determine how seriously they took the end game. If a person had a weird spec, gemmed suboptimally, or was still in greens they’d probably get passed up for someone who looked like they knew what they were doing and had invested time in their character. Some of the new Armory information gives you an even further look at characters so you can determine whether they’re guild worthy and can back up any claims they make about experience… and I imagine many other guilds being picky about who comes in the door might benefit similarly from that info. (You know, like the, uhhh, “Fish and other things caught Guild”….
–Leifo, US-Kargath server
Where are the links to Patricks mods?
I don’t think Richard Bartle, “the torture guy” is “off his nuts” at all. We play sports that injure us (football, soccer, lacrosse, etc), and others, we play fight, we wrestle, etc, we run around in a game “killing” imaginary mobs, killing animals, skinning them, sifting through their poo. In some instinctive way this prepares us in life — makes us stronger, faster, more dexterous, smarter, keeps us alive. These are games that I am comfortable with. What is to be gained by practicing torture? Or by condoning the idea? People can argue that torture is a necessary evil, and they can argue that it’s not. Randy you said that in this game what is causing the issue is words. I totally agree. The words matter. I personally felt very uncomfortable role-playing a character that tortured another character. Maybe it’s silly, but whatever, I don’t want to think of myself as a torturer, but there I was, forced to do so (even so briefly as to not read the text) in order to unlock a quest chain. Personally, I don’t think that has any place in a game I want to play.
2nd slazareth’s comment on crit & haste. You guys do an excellent podcast, and one thing you don’t do is discuss the minutia of how to best play your class. You never talk specs, gear, class mechanics, balance, any of that — and that’s part of the reason I like to listen. Anyone who asks “should I get crit or haste” to a podcast, quite simply, wouldn’t notice the difference. Indeed, the answer could have been “well neither if you’re not hit capped … are you hit capped?” Send these folks to EJ!
Scott, you answered a question during this show about who created the opening theme song. You said it was Casting Crowns, which is a Christian band that I am a big fan of. However, Randy corrected you and said it was by Zach Brown. I am curious as to what made you say Casting Crowns…from what I can tell Zach is not and has never been in Casting Crowns. I was surprised when you said their name because it sounds nothing like their music. Anyway, great music Zach and great show Scott and Randy!
^.^
It’s called the English accent. Sorta like on the version of Jingle Bells that I heard yesterday where the singer talked about a “one-hoss open sleigh”.
I like hearing the female perspective, as we have so little of it in the gaming community in general.
John B.
Laramie, WY
As far as Bartle is concerned, he’s a little into the out there zone. I had the same feeling when I hit that torture quest, especially being the wife of a veteran and with our current situation (ie. breaking the Geneva convention) it hit a sore spot. But over time (a few hours), I realize that it is part of the “DK becoming his own person, getting away from LK, torture, etc.” story line. Blizzard has been forgiven, for now.
However, Bartle’s “growing a vagina” comment was completely uncalled for and shouldn’t have been repeated. You two know better. Yes, the show is fun, jokes are told, etc. but really, you have to draw the line somewhere. As a female player with 4 yrs of Wow xp, I get really tired of the whole “girl players are on wow because of the social aspects”, “girls can’t play”, and the general extreme sexism that a few players cling to. I can put those players on ignore. I could do that with you (never listen again) but I don’t want to. I really enjoy your show. It gets me through my boring workouts every week so I would appreciate it if you’d watch the major sexism in the future. Unless of course some penis commentary makes it way into the notes. Fairs fair. Something along the lines of, “He’s got a penis so clearly he’s a douche” or comparing a quest to a prostate exam.
For Indy, I can tell you, without any question, that torture has never, ever granted any useful information that couldn’t have been garnered by lawful and/or ethical means. Go read what Sen. McCain used to say about it before he became Bush’s lapdog and check out Matthew Alexander’s new book. Also, read about the history of the Geneva Convention and why it exists in the first place. I think you’ll find it enlightening.
Apologies for the no paragraphs post. They were there when I typed it, sigh.
Regarding the torture quest… I don’t have a problem with it, as in the case it is a means to an end. Just as in the real world, there are consequences, but sometimes it is necessary.
However, I do have a quest I have a problem with. In Zul’Darak (I think) there is a quest to go take an offering item that is a drop from mobs, and offer those items as an offering to the troll gods to get a buff.
As a person of faith, I have a problem with this. This is the first time in WoW that a quest really directs you to “worship” a god in the WoW world. There have been many times in the game where we have summoned these “gods”, fought with them, and done things that are in “service” of them, but this one pushes the limit for me.
Luckily, the quest appears to be just there for the buff, so there is no required chain needed, so I can easily ignore the quest.
But the context of the quest bugs me. I hope it bugs some others as well. (This is the same reason that I will not play a Warlock or DK, or Shadowpriest for that matter).
For the guy looking for a mod to track who drops what, MobInfo2 does it all. It tracks a lot of info about mobs including what you loot, skin, or otherwise obtain from each mob you interact with is shown in the tooltip when you mouseover.
I’m getting caught up on my podcasts and I’m just listening to this episode now. In response to the hunter pet skill question. (hopefully it’s not answered later in the podcast.)
Pet skills that are set to auto-cast will work just fine if they are not on the pet action bar. Obviously skills you want to manually trigger would need to be on the action bar to be used.
Sorry about leaving a comment so late on this but I’m just catching up on my Instance listening.
I, along with Mr. Bartle, have noticed an increase in quests that don’t seem to fit within the moral framework that Blizzard has set out for WoW in the past. I would exclude the starting DK quests from the discussion except for the fact that they are a good example of how past moral questions have been brought up through quests.
Northrend appears to be filled with quests to torture enemies, kill prisoners, steal babies, and more. I find it odd that anyone who believes that Blizzard’s attention to detail is their biggest strength would also dismiss this as the same as what has come before. The quests have certainly become darker, and morally gray (at best). Unlike Bartle, I don’t think this is such a shocking change to the game. The theme of the new expansion is corruption and presumably redemption. We just haven’t gotten to the redemption part yet. From the Horde perspective, Garrosh (the war leader of the Horde in Northrend for those of you playing alliance) is doing quite a few questionable things in order to win this war. I don’t want to spoil anything, but I highly recommend reading the discussions between Garrosh and Saurfang as they show the tension between the new methods of the Horde and their traditional methods.
I have noticed that a lot of people have been missing the new darker turn to the quests in the expansion. Granted, this is anecdotal evidence and I hope not an accurate account of the player base. But I expect that most players are blowing through quests without thinking about them. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t expect deep discussions about the ethical consequences of WoW plots. The game certainly has its moments of brilliance, but it is an MMO and has to appeal to a broad spectrum of people.
My first impression of the theme of the expansion was that it was simply poor storytelling. Many of the quests come across as being dark for the sake of being dark. I’ve got no problem with morally questionable actions being taken in games, but many of the quests (especially in Dragonblight) force the characters to act in some evil (or at least questionable) manner but don’t acknowledge that this is happening. I’ve become less disappointed, as it appears that the overall story does acknowledge that these quests are darker than before, but the quests still strike me as a bit immature. I guess I’ve just come to expect more from WoW.
With all that said, I’m still playing and I’m still having fun. I’d insert more praise of Blizzard here to make up for saying they fell short on some parts of their new expansion while still providing a great game, but I think I’ve rambled on for more than long enough.
On a related, but more amusing note:
The Kalu’ak quest in Dragonblight to go and kill members of a nearby tribe and steal their babies is easily the most amusing quest to discuss both sides of:
So, you want me to go and steal a dozen babies from this other tribe? No, no, I believe you, they’re bad people. I run into that a lot, no worries. What are you planning on doing with these babies? Oh, raising them to be more friendly? That doesn’t sound so bad at all. So, I’m getting a cool looking fishing pole at the end of all this right? Alrighty then, I’ll be right back with a sack full of puppies.
And the other side sitting around a campfire telling stories to their fellow guards:
The demons come at any time of day. They’ll swoop down on their dragons or flying carpets and jump down in the middle of our huts. They slaughter our den mothers and steal our children. They raise our pups to be more docile as slaves. They won’t stop until they all get their damn fishing poles.