Showing posts with label Warcraft. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Warcraft. Show all posts

Thursday, April 7, 2011

WoW - Plants vs Zombies

The recent changes in the World of Warcraft include a lot of new innovative segments. I was pleasantly surprise to see a mini-game of a Plants vs Zombies in the Hillsbrad Foothills. The mini-game is the quest given by Brazie the Botanist.


Seems like PopCap had consented, or even helped Blizzard with this mini-game. There are multiple parts to this mini-game.


Oh, for those who have difficulty completing the quest - try having two rows of sunflowers, it would help.

Monday, August 24, 2009

World of Warcraft Expansion 3: Cataclysm

World of Warcraft 3rd Expansion: Cataclysm was announced last week at BlizzCon 2009. The official website could be found here. Of course, the huge number of hits by fans all over the world means that you could experience slowness in accessing the site. The details of this new expansion seem interesting.



There is also this slashdot discussion about this new Cataclysm expansion with all the funny / insightful comments as usual.

Basically there is a new level cap of 85 (yeah just 5 levels instead of 10 levels as before), and the world of Azeroth has been (will be) changed cos' of Deathwing the Destroyer. There are also two new classes, Horde Goblin and Alliance Worgen. Not sure how they will look like but I can't think well of a goblin player. I am sure the voice will sound funny. Not sure how this goblin player's stats stacked with the existing game materials, especially the existing Booty Bay related reputation. Will they have special race stats bonus on engineering? Hmm.

Further descriptions of the changes can be found on the WoW site. Somehow I am not as excited about the new classes, but rather I am more intrigued by the new profession of Archaeology. Hopefully it will not be too difficult to level up (remember jewel crafting anyone?). The description on the new mastery system is interesting, but let's see how it actually turn out in game play.

Actually I am not sure if I will continue to be so interested in WoW. WoW has been great. However, when there are too many end game players focusing on the end game materials, the game sort of get boring after a while. I'm not those who spend many hours per day to play WoW, and so it is quite hard to find that many casual players in towns, and yes the guild I once belonged to is also no longer around. Going into BGs and pitting yourselve against the fully geared enemies seem demoralising.

Hmm perhaps I should look forward to the Diablo III instead. Here's the Diablo III monk trailer. Impressive right?

Saturday, February 28, 2009

imeem Soundtracks from the World of Warcraft

Recent months I've spent more time playing games than updating my blogs. One big attractive point of playing online games, especially the good ones, are the soundtracks. Other than Cabal Online and Granado Espada, the other online game with great soundtracks is the World of Warcraft.

Yeah, some would say that World of Warcraft (魔兽世界) offers even better soundtracks, simply for the many variety of music. Each home city, each scene, each dungeon, will have its own unique ambient music. Completing some quests, e.g. Lament of the Highborne, will also result in unique music being played.

Here's a playlist of some of the World of Warcraft music that I compiled from imeem. Have fun.

World of Warcraft
Here's the link to the Lament of the Highborne (track number 8) movie from Blizzard, for those WoW players who are interested. Quite touching.

Related Post
- Cabal Online and Granado Espada Soundtracks

Saturday, December 20, 2008

Death Knight in Wrath of the Lich King

There are many discussions and blog posts about the new hero class - Death Knight (DK), released in the latest WoW expansion "Wrath of the Lich King" (魔兽世界:巫妖王之怒). Instead of launching into the merits or a guide of how to play the DK, let me show a few screen shots I took of the initial quests of DK. These initial quests provide talent points for the level 55 DK, and give an introductory story to guide DK into the WoW (魔兽世界) .



The conversations in the screen shots above and below hinted at the life of the player before he/she turned into a DK, and alluded to the possibility of a DK to turn 'good' again in WoW.



Here's the other screen shots of the 'final battle' at Eastern Plagueland between Arthas (i.e. Lich King)'s forces and the Scarlet / Argent Dawn armies. It is this battle where the DK forces 'turned' good when the commander of the DK forces awakened from the dark side.





Again the conversations are pretty interesting. The entire 'introductory' quest and story of DK are well planned, and I think this is what sets WoW apart from many other 'hack and slash' MMORPG with little storyline to offer.



Wednesday, November 12, 2008

1 more day to the Wrath of the Lich King launch

One more day to a new cap level of 80...

One more day to new maps / continent of Northrend...

One more day to a new character class...

I bet after 13 November where the Wrath of the Lich King is launched, there will again be WoW players who take leave and race each other to reach the new max. level of 80. In the mean time, here's the trailer (which you can also obtain from the WoW page) and enjoy!

Wednesday, October 15, 2008

New login page graphic for World of Warcraft

The latest patch for World of Warcraft (14 Oct 08) has installed a new login page graphic. I think with each major patch / version they do change the login layout. I think they changed the background music too if I'm not wrong. Here's 2 screenshots.





Afternote: The changes from this patch are very interesting, especially the achievements. Lolz, 'love the critters' as an achievements, really?? I've 'loved' some toads, snakes, and squirrels. Here's the screenshots while the game loads.

Friday, July 4, 2008

Lunar Festival, Haris Pilton & Zangramash in WoW

There are lot of blogs and websites on World of Warcraft (魔兽世界) with reviews, guides, discussions ... etc and I shall not add to the information abundance. Instead, let me just put a few pictures of the interesting (I feel) events of the game.

One such event is the Lunar Festival, where players in WoW can celebrate by doing simple quests. One of the quests requires the players to shoot fireworks into the air. The fireworks are quite pretty actually. Here's two screenshots of the event, where the heart shape fireworks could be seen in the lower picture.





Blizzard is always very creative when it comes to the naming of NPC and quests. We know the tribute to Zelda, King Kong & Mario in the crafting of Un'goro Crater quests. There is also the 'Haris Pilton' NPC in Shattrath City tavern, with an affiliation of 'Socialite'. She has a pet (of course) named Tinkerbell. Click on the picture to see a larger version.



It is always fun playing WoW, not just for the fantastic gameplay, but also for these little humour along the way. Let me end this blog with a beautiful picture of a sunset taken while I was flying over Zangramash.


Thursday, June 12, 2008

World of World of Warcraft?!

Saw this in the news and I wonder if it's real? Anyone knows? Afternote: Ok, just found out that these folks are satirists. Well, guess I didn't know that earlier. Sorry.

World of World of Warcraft allows Warcraft gamers to do what they like to do more than anything else in life, which is, play Warcraft.




'Warcraft' Sequel Lets Gamers Play A Character Playing 'Warcraft'

Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Blizzard versu Botters - Who is right?

Just read the news on Virtually Blind about the court case between Blizzard and the botters, i.e. WoWGliders. What is most interesting is the enclosed Castronova's expert report on botters.

Firstly I must say that I dislike botters, and secondly, I like and I play World of Warcraft (without use of any bot programs!).

However, there are many parts of Castronova's arguments that I disagree with. He argues that there is unfairness felt by players when other players use the bots. Unfairness stemmed from two perspectives, i.e. that the botters level much faster which makes others feel inferior, and the botters can farm for gold and items that cause inflation to the in-world economy. This unfairness then cause damages for Blizzard. The actual arguments are longer and worth a read.

Sure, the botters can level faster and farm much more effectively compared to real players. However, this does not in itself necessarily cause unhappiness among players. WoW is not a game with an end goal such that the first player who reaches level 70 wins and everyone else loses. People play WoW cos' of the immersive environment (mentioned in his arguments) which includes graphics, design of quests, music...etc etc. So what if there are many botters who reached level 70? The people simply missed out the fun of the journey, i.e. the quests and quest rewards along the way. There are many other games who provide the legitimate options of letting players having 2x experience or 2x gold, e.g. MapleStory, in recognition of such a demand from players with limited game time.

maple cash shop

Level 70 onwards for WoW is a different game-play where the focus is on raids, and bots can't participate in raids. Let me know if you are aware of bots in raids, the details would be interesting.

Thus the only issue is about the grinding in-between level 1 and level 70. Quests helps, and Blizzard can definitely do more to cut down the grinding time. Have more interactive quests that give good experience points, rather than those 'get 10 stone slabs' types of quests that do nothing but require players to grind! Reduce the disincentive of grinding, and players will not have the need to pay separately for bot programs. It is the grinding portion, that makes players feel unhappy when they see the botters in the game. It's a case of "I'm suffering from the grind, why aren't you?". But why the need to suffer in the first instance? Personally I find the grinding from level 40 to 50ish especially tedious.

I think Blizzard knows that, thus the reward experience and items for Burning Crusade reflect it (I think). Quests in Burning Crusade gives much better items compared to general mob drops. Generally bots don't do quests, and so would miss out on the items. So I guess they are already fixing that in the game.

The second portion of in-game inflation is also something I disagree with. So bots cause inflation? Lolz, step into the Auction House (AH) and take a look. When bots are around, the prices deflate! This is a case of supply and demand. When there is a huge supply of goods from bots, the prices of these goods fall in the AH, especially for those craft related items like gems. Picture of a AH below. For non-WoW readers, AH is an auction mechanism that allows trade among players.



Sure, gold buyers can have access to a lot of gold from the botters using real cash. Then gold buyers use their large supply of gold to buy items / enchantments...etc. Isn't this good for the actual players, i.e. those normal players who then have a ready supply of clients for enchantments, jewel-making ... etc etc? Worried about gold buyers' demand that cause a price increase for armours, weapons...etc? Just make the better items 'bind on pick-up', i.e. can't sell these items in AH. Gold buyers would be stupid to pay lot of gold for a more inferior item. For non-WoW readers, here's a pic of what you see when you click on the auctioneer in AH.



So, it's a matter of incentive again much like the 'grinding' case above. Reduce the incentive for gold buyers, i.e. give better items for quests which gold cannot buy, and the demand for these quick gold would drop.

I think Blizzard is smart enough to understand these since the dynamics for Burning Crusade, i.e. items drops versus quests or 'bind on pick-up' are different from pre Burning Crusade game-play. Blizzard can sue the bot software developers whatever ways it wants, but let's have even better game dynamics for the next game expansion ok?