WoTLK’s bestiary: Deep Analysis (II)

Maybe it’s not that brilliant, after all. But the analysis is not so deep either, so we won’t complain. Let’s continue:

Iron Dwarf

The Iron Dwarf. I picture him like the Tony Stark version of dwarves. Or the kind of dwarf who wears dark Iron Maiden T-Shirts, old school heavy metal midgets. Hell yeah!

But they are just plain evil dwarves, instead. Judging by the pictures that Blizzard has published, they look like dwarves with a skin of stone, electrified eyes and pretty pissed off. It is not easy to be electrified all day long, I take it.

Well, I can’t go fundamentalist on Blizzard, if you give a convincing story to these creatures, the idea might work. Better than big blue snakes, anyway. All we know is that these creatures might be the missing link to understand dwarves and their evolution from the titans of myth (honest to God, this starts to sound like a Manowar song to me). We’ll see.

Taunka

These look cute. However, I fail to see any imagination involved in the designing process: they are white taurens, taurens in the snow. Give them a pair of skies and you’ll believe you’re in Alberta. According to Blizzard: “many believe the taunka to be ancestral cousins of the tauren”. Really? I wouldn’t have said so. 😛

Aside from this, the brief description provided say that they are “tenacious”, “stoic” and they have a “unshakable resolve”. So, they are stubborn, aren’t they?

Well, I can’t say this is going to change WoW as we know it. Murlocs were pure genius, by comparison.

Flesh Giants

Well, they have gone nuts with these: flesh giants. They have summon every bit of imagination in the world to create this new race. Could they have come up with a better name? Strong, mighty and above all… self descriptive.

Flesh Giants are some kind of zombies made with dead body parts from different corpses. I admit this looks actually evil, however, if you decide to hang around the Plaguelands sometimes, you’ll see plenty of similar creatures all around the place. Again, we will fight flesh giants because they are mobs and surely someone wants to have their ribs or lungs to do something, and he will reward us with XP points and stuff. However, I can’t say flesh giants are the most amazing creature ever designed.

WoTLK’s bestiary: Deep Analysis (I)

Not so long ago, Blizzard have unveiled the bestiary for WoTLK. Brilliant stuff.  Let’s take a deep look:

Nerubian Vizier

Half-spider, half-humanoid creatures corrupted after the (beware the imaginative name) War of the Spider. Now, surviving as soldiers of fortune, they wander the frozen lands in look of World of Warcraft players to play “touch and hide” with. And cook them. Probably not in that order.

It is rumored that the viziers themselves may serve an unseen emperor, one who is destined to lead the ancient spider-people to a final victory over the Scourge. In Brilliant Stuff we’ve managed to get a pic of the unseen emperor:

Now, he is the almost-unseen emperor. At most.

Plague Eruptor

According to Blizzard’s Bestiary: “Plague eruptors are the latest experiment of the Lich King, designed to spread horror and chaos across the world of the living”. Well, aside from being creatures of the Lich King… isn’t every enemy in Wow designed to do the very same things?

Again quoting from the bestiary: “The most terrifying weapons in the eruptors’ arsenal are the myriad pulsing nodules that dominate their rotting skin”. I have to admit that my cousin was a plague eruptor when he was fourteen, he had pulsing nodules all over his face. And yes, they were sort of a weapon, especially scary for women.

Jormungar

“The fiercely aggressive jormungar are a marvel of evolution, possessing rows of chisel-like teeth capable of boring through solid rock, as well as muscular, flattened bodies well adapted to rapid underground navigation.”

My good Lord, this is a snake. Don’t lie to me, it’s a big blue snake, nothing fancy about it. Apparently, Blizzard ran out of ideas with the Death Knight, because these creatures looks like combinations of many others that we have already seen in Azeroth.

I know, I know, it is not easy to summon inspiration after two new continents added to the original game, but hey, you’re paid for it, guys!!

Wait for the next part of this deep analysis!!

Keep in shape and play World of Warcraft

Combining sport and WoW. Brilliant stuff.

Who said it was not healthy to play WoW? In fact, these two dudes have proven that you can work out while playing your favorite mmorpg game. Forget the gym and start wandering Azeroth… now!!

If you’re raiding in a daily basis, in two weeks you will be the last action hero. Bad side of the story, if you keep raiding, you’ll collapse from a heart attack.

Enjoy!!

McDonalds hires The Joker

I couldn’t resist, just take a look, brilliant stuff…

Pretty good. 🙂

The Death Knight is coming…

The death knight. Brilliant stuff. (I guess)

He is coming, and I bet that there will be more death knights in Azeroth than gamblers in Vegas. Scott Johnson knows that, and he keeps kicking ass with his Extralife web-comic (where he also delivers podcasts, his personal blog and much, much more).

Here you’ve got the Death Knight, Scott’s version:

(Click to see the entire comic)

If you want to visit Scott’s realm, just click in here.

World of Warcraft is a crazy place

We’ve hired a psychoatrist (that’s how he introduced himself) in order to answer all those questions related to the World of Warcraft. Having received some e-mails containing deep-brilliant stuff, we needed someone capable of providing an intelligent response to them. We just found him available, so… here he is!!

Hi, there
My name is PrettyEyes and I’m in a relationship since 2001. My boyfriend and I were a happy couple until World of Warcraft came out. We started playing together, that brought us closer to each other, it was great. I played a hot holy paladin and he went for a strong night elf warrior who looked like someone who spends too much time at the gym. Now, he has decided to change his main char for an alt, and that was where our relationship changed. He is a powerful level 70 mage female gnome named “Pinky_Blue” who happened to kick ass… but I can’t look at him the same way anymore. It is as if we’ve lost the spark. What can I do?

Well, first off, you could change your name. No woman on Earth respects herself when using the name “PrettyEyes”. Now, knowing that I hang around as a psychoatrist, I won’t insist on the matter.

Secondly, you should play an undead rogue and cannibalize him, just to make a point. If that doesn’t work, you should log in with his account, get to any major city in the immediate surroundings, and start screaming: “I really believe that The Dark Knight was the worst Batman flick ever, we should honor that other “Batman & Robin” wonderful moving picture, Chris O’Donell is a real actor. Fuck Heath Ledger (but let him rest in peace)”. Then, he will KNOW for sure that there’s something that seriously bothers you.

Then, do what any other normal people would do and TALK to him. Do NOT WHISPER him, nor SEND a message in the guild’s board, just approach yourself to his physicial REAL body and articulate understandable sounds in order to establish old fashioned communication. Speak out, woman.

If that doesn’t work… just go and play Guild Wars, losers have their second chance. 😉

World of Warcraft Addiction

World of Warcraft addictions. Brilliant stuff.

This kid will go nuts when trying to level up his new death knight, that is for sure.

Well, again we’re on with this “videogames are the root of all evil” topic. Let’s put it the right way: videogames might be dangerous, so is eating too much or crossing the highway naked and covered in pink cream at rush hour.

If we take it from the theory that society can’t self-regulate, it is indeed a problem, we’re enslaved by external stimuli and certain influences should be strongly regulated, since nobody is responsible for actions unavoidably triggered.

However, this is not true. Or better said: it is half-true. We are dominated by external influences because we are not trained for it, we are not well educated. We can certainly control those influences, we can look for what is best for us, but often we choose the easy way instead. Human nature bends us that way and we have the power to resist. We’re not talking Kirk Cameron stuff here, it’s just called responsibility and self-control..

Of course, this must be learned. I’ve seen it million of times in very different backgrounds: children who are taught to brush their teeth from an early age, keep the habit. It is not a matter of doing what you’re told, but learning how to choose the right path to live, learning to live. This requires intelligent individuals capable of understanding and deciding between the options available.

Difference between the kid in the video and a normal healthy kid is that he’s probably been misguided by their parents, who failed to give him a proper education. Otherwise, he would have picked up that spending 16 hours playing WoW would not do much for his future (professional players get out of my way on this!).

As a World of Warcraft player myself, I know how time consuming it might become. Again, I see how my life goes and when I had to devote some time to my personal projects, I just stopped playing. When I had some time to spare, I enjoyed Azeroth and magic flying carpet mounts as usual.

The Brilliant Poll of The Day

Welcome to… the brilliant poll of the day!! Brilliant stuff, no doubt.

With WoTLK approaching, people has stopped the infuriated race to obtain better gear. Now, what the hell do they? In order to answer that question, here it goes the poll of the day (that is… today and the time being):

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And here you can find some more brilliantness with the Superboy video:

WoTLK: What would you add?

WoTLK new features. Brilliant Stuff.

Even when the vast majority of people have not even entered Sunwell Plateau, and they probably associate Black Temple to the term “wipe”, the Lych King is around the corner, sitting in his frozen throne and enjoying the summer.

He is about to make his appearance in our lives, and eagerness eats us alive. Death Knight, 10 new levels, more dungeons, gear, bosses, new cities… everything that the BC brought us when we crossed the portal… and more, much more.

But if we can ask for something, what would we ask for? We got an e-mail with two wishes that we would love to see coming true:

Hi, there

(bla, bla… some introduction words in here) (…) for the forthcoming WoTLK expansion I would ask for two important improvements:

1) An evolving environment where your activity matters over time. This is the real challenge.

2) An line of action not consisting in endless repetition. It kills as a full epic level 70 warlock to be sent to “kill 20 goretusks” (I don’t care if they are demonic goretusks). Having to repeat the same dungeon over and over also turns the fun of entering new places into painful work.

A possible solution for this would be World of Warcraft going actually social. Facing automated elements (aka NPC or mobs) limits seriously the range of possibilties for detaching the game from the repetitive schema aforementioned. So, it is people deciding the line of action which would do the trick.

We are talking virtual reality here, a world unfolding itself by the action of its inhabitants, which is a giant leap from the World of Warcraft as we know it. However, it would be the real success on Blizzard’s behalf.

Heading in this direction would present some serious difficulties, since it would mean giving some control to the players, or said the other way around: losing control of the game.

It would require:

– Reforcing control from in-game laws, not from stablished and unavoidable guidelines (quest-lines).

– Stimulation of activity: one can’t rely on users to develop the whole game, so it would be precise to count on some system adding natural interaction between players. An idea would be counting on Blizzard’s employees interacting with players.

It would achieve:

– No more grinding to spend time, when players are involved in the line of action, the game doesn’t need to keep you busy, other players do.

– Higher monthly fees due to all the staff
required to sustain the new WoW environment. (Look on the bright side:
less people looking for a job)

Thanks for listening to my rant,

/Dana

It would be nice leaving massive goretusk genocides behind and having the chance to take WoW as a means of breaking reality laws, no limits aside from the interaction rules, instead of just changing the real world limits for the WoW ones.

And you, what would you add?

Guild Conflicts

Managing a mmorpg online’s guild. Brilliant stuff.

I’ve got this from a friend not so long ago:

We’ve been experiencing some internal problems in our WoW guild since it was created 3 years ago, up to the point that we barely resemble the social group that we were back then. Those problems have not disappeared, nor solved, and I wonder if it is strictly particular to our guild.

Our guild was formed by friends who knew each other in real life, it was the dawn of our little brotherhood. I was slightly detached from the group, since I was still leveling up and the rest had reached lvl 60 (before BC) a while ago, so I was just a young night elf priest wandering around and killing murlocs here and there, knowing nothing about the life of a level 60 and the need of better gear.

However, every now and then there was someone who complained about something in the guild’s board. As a rule, the complaint often generated a big turmoil, pages and pages of discussing and arguing, and many times it ended with someone leaving the guild.

Nowadays, it keeps happening, and I believe it is on the guild’s leaders fault, or ultimately, it is their responsibility to solve it… or see the guild agonize or even die. “

Well, in my opinion, the guy is right. It doesn’t matter who’s fault it is, there is someone who decided to take the reins and lead the social group to certain goals. He and those designed by him are the ones in charge to solve anything that might prevent the group from reaching those goals, and there are many ways to do it.

This raises a common question for guilds: how should they be ruled in order to obtain the best results?

Well, as a matter of fact, there is not just one way to operate and obtain best results, but there is one that will allow the guild to exist as a healthy environment to evolve and obtain those results, eventually.

No matter how many (awful) wrong decisions you might take, they will be worth trying and people will be at your side if you have got the needed charisma in you. (Note: Yes, you will need a great load of charisma if you keep on making the wrong decisions, but still, you can overcompensate).

Knowing how to confront situations will help the leader to… lead, which in the end is what the job is about. Confronting people instead of situations will difficult the task and won’t really help anyone. This is what I would do, as a leader:

MANUAL FOR THE GOOD LEADERS

1) Find reliable people as officers, raid leaders and class leaders. You’re about to create a social structure, so you better find solid pillars to sustain your hierarchy.

2) Structure the work and share the weight with your men. Because even with solid pillars, the weight should be sustained equally or someone’s head is going to explode (probably yours).

3) Create an atmosphere of confidence, seed illusion in the hearts of your fellow guild members!! People want to believe that they are going somewhere in the same proportion that they want to be part of it, but they do not know how. The leader is responsible for this, you must give them illusion and make them move to your goals. Or that was what you stepped up for, in case that you didn’t know, pal.

4) Keep following rule 3 when things make a turn for the bad. Wipes and wrong tactics will come and then you’ll be asked for direction, but maybe they won’t be that polite in expressing themselves and will say something like: “did you really think that this would work, you asshole?”.

Don’t lose your temper, you’re the righteous hand of justice, the wise brain of… brainland, you can’t be disturbed by that, can you? Explain yourself calmly, try to learn from the experience and above all: show a detailed analysis of what happened and how to solve it. If you show intelligence and serenity, they will try to play along and discuss things in the same vein.

5) Sometimes people get pissed off no matter what. Take that as a critic, that’s brilliant stuff to improve.

Speak your mind intelligently, be fair, let them express themselves in an opinionated way, and stress out (politely) the fact that there’s no room for offensive language, in case that there is.

If you keep being calm, explaining yourself in a keen way, and they keep being pissed off in a destructive way, they will discredit themselves and no one will stick with them.

6) Accept constructive criticism, use other people’s ideas and take it in your own benefit. It helps your politics to accept other people’s ideas, they might be great ideas and you just have to use them to make your people feel that they are part of the success.

That’s pretty much it. Then, we can get down to particulars, but everything gravitates around these points. If you can’t manage to do this, maybe you have not what it takes to lead properly, and fights will arise every now and then.

It will be hard anyway, because it requires hard work and dedication, and you’re not paid for it.  So even if you’re doing great with the basics, you can get pissed off more often than you think. But once again, it was you who decided to step up and lead some people to conquer Azeroth.

Any other suggestions will be considered and discussed. Go ahead, people.