Primal News Transmute [30/10/2007](You must gather your party before venturing forth)

Eej · 10/30/07, 1:32 PM

Quick and dirty because I have a midterm to study for.

As always, if you want to know every single new change on the PTRs, feel free to visit MMO-Champion. They're probably a lot less biased too.

Blizzard temporarily makes BGs fun

In a stunning display of temporary intelligence, Blizzard made the daily quests on PTR give 4000 honour per completion. Then they became stupid again and made honour stupidly annoying to grind (see, it's called a grind because PvP in BGs isn't fun).

4000 honor from Daily BG Quests? Confirm?

Hunters Have Been Lied To

Turns out ranged abilities are supposed to have a minimum of 5 yard range. Oh well.

Uhh...

Yeah...

The Chinese Have Beaten The Game In 51 Days

Man, how come T3 still looks better than most gear in TBC?

Remember Those Fake Patch Notes About Alliance-Horde Raiding?

Clearly they've been testing it on live realms.

WoW Forums Post

Blizzard Brown-Nosing Contest Officially Begins

WoW Forums Post

Blizzard's Arena Set Naming Hat

Implacable. Remorseless. Angry. Relentless. Unrelenting. Unyielding. Spectacular. Inexorable. Ferocious. Savage. Pitiless. Mean. Heartless. Ruthless. Uncouth. Cruel. Barbarous. Inexorable. Unbending. Delicious. Tenacious. Pernicious. Vicious. Horrendous. Stupendous. Reckless. Impetuous. Insidious.

*guitar riff*

Despite all the complaints about battle mode, the real glaring problem with GH3 is that they actually put a Slipknot song in it. It's okay, though, because they have Cult of Personality, 3's and 7's and Knights of Cydonia to balance out that set.

Obligatory Anime Blurb

Apparently they have a site that lets you know how much time you've wasted watching terrible Japanese shows aimed for children and manchildren aged 19-40.

It's depressing how many bad shows I've seen.

Amusing Armoury Link of the Week

Here.

This one's pretty self explanatory.

Thanks to the people who have been submitting links in, by the way.

Natural · 10/30/07, 1:36 PM

For those wondering, the China guild The7 did not actually wear that much T3 on their Illidan kill. They put them on for the screenshot =)

Edit: Here is my interview from Page 2. I'm bringing it here for more exposure:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I might post this somewhere else later... but for now here my interview with Himeko, GM of The Seven (Guild with first Chinese Illidan kill).

Note: I'm filling in the factual responses with complete English sentences for your beneift.

Q: Were the Draenei Shaman affected by China leveling limits? I have heard there is a 3 hour XP limit before the character stops leveling.
A: These limits only affect people under 18 years old(registration needs personal id). It doesn't matter to their guild, since they have registered with an Adult.

Q: How many times did you clear Karazhan?
A: 5-6 times before Illidan

Q: How many times did you kill Vashj?
A: 3 times. We skipped Vashj on Illidan progression week.

Q: How many times did you kill Kael'thas? How many attempts did it take to learn the encounter?
A: We killed him 2 times. It took 3 nights to learn p2-p4 and killed him at 4th night, a total of 30 hours. At this time, some healers and mages were still using some T3.

Q) How many people actually wore T3 to kill Illidan? How many pieces did they wear?
A: Only a few. Some people wore t3 just for the pictures.

Q) Do you have a list of dates when you killed each boss from Karazhan->Illidan?
A: (With break points for instance resets)
9/15 Karazhan Cleared
9/16 Gruul, Void Reaver
9/16 Magtheridon
9/17 Lurker Below
[INSTANCE RESET]
9/21 Fathom Lord Karathress
9/22 Tidewalker
9/22 Hydross
9/24 Leotharas
[INSTANCE RESET]
9/26 Al'ar
9/29 Vashj
10/1 Solarian
[INSTANCE RESET]
10/7 0:29 Kael'thas
10/7 19:54 Rage Winterchill
10/7 22:26 Anetheron
[INSTANCE RESET]
10/12 20:27 High Warlord Najentus
10/12 21:12 Supremus
10/12 23:00 Shade of Akama
10/14 Kazrogal
10/14 Gorefiend
10/15 Az'galor chinese 2nd (stars got first kill, but they used the log on/log off trick to replace people who were doomed, so the Chinese community is still judging how to handle it)
[INSTANCE RESET]
10/21 3:30 Essence of Souls
[Waited to kill Bloodboil, farmed for HoD]
10/22 20:30 Bloodboil
[INSTANCE RESET]
10/25 20:30 Mother Shahraz
10/26 2:30 Illdari Council
10/28 3:40 Illidan

Q: How many nights did you raid per week? How many hours per night?
A: 7 days per week from 7pm-2am. Additional hours during a national holiday week.

Q) How many days /played do they have at level 70? (Not total # of days played... only # of days played at "this" level, 70).
A: The guild master is around 24days, and other raiders are at around 15 days.
NOTE: This does not include time to level from 60-70. Considering they had 52 days IRL, you can estimate the % of playtime these guys had. Roughly 8 hours per day for the average raider, 12 hours per day for the Guild leader. It's high, but not insane.

Q: Were any of your players also in US BT/Hyjal guilds?
A: No.

Q) Did you read boss strategies from US websites?
A: Yeah, from bosskillers.com

There you have it.

Eekpaladin · 10/30/07, 1:53 PM

Originally Posted by Natural

For those wondering, the China guild The7 did not actually wear that much T3 on their Illidan kill. They put them on for the screenshot =)

I'm still undecided about which is more impressive: that the guild killed Illidan Stormrage in 52 days since the release of TBC in China or that there were 2 Draenei there for the kill.

Natural · 10/30/07, 2:04 PM

Originally Posted by Eekpaladin

I'm still undecided about which is more impressive: that the guild killed Illidan Stormrage in 52 days since the release of TBC in China or that there were 2 Draenei there for the kill.

It makes sense to level the shaman. In terms of play time, leveling from 1-60 can be done in 3 or 4 days played with some serious assistance and tap leveling. It takes a lot of work but these guys were playing practically as full time jobs. In a 52 day window for TBC, 4 days to level a Draenei isn't a huge chunk of the time

Malan · 10/30/07, 2:08 PM

Originally Posted by Natural

For those wondering, the China guild The7 did not actually wear that much T3 on their Illidan kill. They put them on for the screenshot =)

Reference for that?

Vectivus · 10/30/07, 2:09 PM

Originally Posted by Natural

It makes sense to level the shaman. In terms of play time, leveling from 1-60 can be done in 3 or 4 days played with some serious assistance and tap leveling. It takes a lot of work but these guys were playing practically as full time jobs. In a 52 day window for TBC, 4 days to level a Draenei isn't a huge chunk of the time

Who would be tap leveling or assisting them, though? Those players all had to get 60-70, acquire keys, and start working on gear.

I would be very, very interested to see what their 'actual' gear (presuming the T3/TF, etc. is screenshot material) was like. At that kind of speed, I sincerely doubt they cleared the tier 5 content more than 3 times (if that), and maybe got a maximum of a month in Hyjal/BT. Both visible Prot Warriors are wearing the Nightbane shield, which is either impressive or terrifying - I haven't decided which, yet.

Natural · 10/30/07, 2:11 PM

Originally Posted by Malan

Reference for that?

A guildie of mine is Chinese and is friends with one of their raiders.

Edit: I'll ask him a few questions about their progression for you guys if you are interested. Both The7 and Stars were progressing at the same rate, fyi. The7 got the Illidan kill while Stars had Illidan to around 50%.

Ghando · 10/30/07, 2:13 PM

1) The Warrior set looks amazing. It's like a Murloc at an Insane Clown Posse concert. Maybe ZA bosses will drop cases of Faygo.
2) As for the Chinese guild, is this really surprising? Everyone's said so much about the lack of gear scaling...it's absolutely not out of the question that a skilled and devoted guild could clear T6 in that kind of time.

Natural · 10/30/07, 2:13 PM

Originally Posted by Vectivus

Who would be tap leveling or assisting them, though? Those players all had to get 60-70, acquire keys, and start working on gear.

You can use level 29/39 twinks to help with the mid levels. When you get to 48/49 you can tap level off of the level 52/53 elite ogres in dire maul with a level 60 helping. All you need is a level 60 alt. I used a fury warrior to help level my wife (paladin) in expansion and we went from 48 to 55 or 56 very quickly. After that, you move to the bug hive outside of cenarion circle in Silithus. (Sorry for derail)

Malan · 10/30/07, 2:19 PM

Are these so-called "sets" comprised of both drops from ZA plus the Badge gear? Because if you just tally up all the Mail gear (for example) that drops inside Zul'Aman only, it would have to include resto, enhance, and elemental stats and would not be a "set" at all.

Vectivus · 10/30/07, 2:25 PM

Originally Posted by Malan

Are these so-called "sets" comprised of both drops from ZA plus the Badge gear? Because if you just tally up all the Mail gear (for example) that drops inside Zul'Aman only, it would have to include resto, enhance, and elemental stats and would not be a "set" at all.

Does that make them less ugly?

Malan · 10/30/07, 2:28 PM

They'll grow on people. I thought the AQ40 sets were horrendously ugly at release, but over time I really grew to enjoy how my shaman T2.5 looked.

Enova · 10/30/07, 2:34 PM

Again, the Armory link manages to make me feel good about the resident noobs of Moonglade EU. This time, i've got the definitive proof that getting arena gear is NOT rocket surgery, despite what everyone is bragging about on Trade Channel.

The Chinese do it again and prove me right when i say they're crazy (either that or there's really nothing else remotely fun to do in China).

Blizz manages to keep battlegrounds boring, despite everything they claimed, no surprise here.

Did you really think hunters would ever get buffed into something remotely useful? Again, no surprise here, good luck taking a guarded horde tower in AV.

Bogeywoman · 10/30/07, 2:39 PM

Wait. Don't the Chinese servers have a cap on play time? Like, 3 hours per day?

Malan · 10/30/07, 2:40 PM

Its an XP cap. After 3 hours your XP gain is cut in half. At 5 hours the XP gain turns off, and you have to be offline a certain amount of time before it resets. If you're already level 70 though, it doesn't matter.

Nayt · 10/30/07, 2:48 PM

Someone posted that China kill on our forums 2 days ago, doesn't it stick out to anyone that most strategies were out there to help them kill these bosses? Aside from still learning the fights and getting a feel for it, everything else was handed to them...Still impressive and time consuming none the less.

Malan · 10/30/07, 2:53 PM

I'm not going to make that level of assumption. Handed to them? They blew past content that folks in the US have been still chugging through for months. There are guilds in the US that have a culture where they don't read strats, don't watch kill movies, and go into fights fresh and totally unaware of how it works. I can't say that's how they did it, but I'm not going to accuse them of just 'skating by'.

Jeffrey · 10/30/07, 2:56 PM

Originally Posted by NateDawg1021

Someone posted that China kill on our forums 2 days ago, doesn't it stick out to anyone that most strategies were out there to help them kill these bosses? Aside from still learning the fights and getting a feel for it, everything else was handed to them...Still impressive and time consuming none the less.

Most guilds spend 51 days on Vashj+Kael combined. In the same amount of time, they did: levelling shamans 1-70, a bit of pre-Kara gearing, gemming, getting enchant mats, getting reputation, getting potions, getting resist gear sets together etc. Altough their guild bank surely had a crapload of money from pre-BC, this stuff is limited in supply when everyone needs it.

Vectivus · 10/30/07, 3:15 PM

Originally Posted by Jeffrey

Most guilds spend 51 days on Vashj+Kael combined. In the same amount of time, they did: levelling shamans 1-70, a bit of pre-Kara gearing, gemming, getting enchant mats, getting reputation, getting potions, getting resist gear sets together etc. Altough their guild bank surely had a crapload of money from pre-BC, this stuff is limited in supply when everyone needs it.

Exactly.

Grab your tier 3 pre-BC Naxx alt (for argument's sake), and go from 60 to Illidan down in ~7 weeks.

There are plenty of guilds right now that, even with all the strategies out there, at level 70, in Kara (for example), will not get Illidan down ever, much less in 7 weeks.

• Fogbug · 10/30/07, 3:33 PM

Originally Posted by Vectivus

Exactly.

Grab your tier 3 pre-BC Naxx alt (for argument's sake), and go from 60 to Illidan down in ~7 weeks.

There are plenty of guilds right now that, even with all the strategies out there, at level 70, in Kara (for example), will not get Illidan down ever, much less in 7 weeks.

Well it's a lot more than just knowing the strategies; if you took EJ right now and put us in level 60 blues and released MC as a brand new instance none of us were familiar with, I'm confident we could clear it in a 4 night raid week and have plenty of time to farm honor in Searing Gorge. The difficulty of newer fights is on a whole different level, but experienced raiding guilds can clear them quickly, because everyone in the guild has learned to play, and gaps are filled with people from slightly less accomplished guilds who have also learned to play, as it were.

Nayt · 10/30/07, 3:36 PM

It's also been stated (don't have the link at work) that some of these players had already played on US servers (and downed a lot of this content).

Again, still an amazing feat. They weren't spoon fed, but they did get everything at once. All the Top (World Guilds) got BT later where China had the full current version released. (Correct?)

Liryn · 10/30/07, 3:37 PM

Originally Posted by Malan

Its an XP cap. After 3 hours your XP gain is cut in half. At 5 hours the XP gain turns off, and you have to be offline a certain amount of time before it resets. If you're already level 70 though, it doesn't matter.

Well that's kind of ridiculous. Sort of defeats the purpose... "Hey guys, if you're addicted to leveling, you have to take breaks, but once you're addicted to raiding you're fine to play 24/7!"

Jugalub · 10/30/07, 3:54 PM

Isn't that Armory link a link to a multi-boxer? One priest with a totally different name from the four hunters all with rhyming names makes me think so.

Lookit · 10/30/07, 4:28 PM

Originally Posted by Malan

Its an XP cap. After 3 hours your XP gain is cut in half. At 5 hours the XP gain turns off, and you have to be offline a certain amount of time before it resets. If you're already level 70 though, it doesn't matter.

This is only partially correct. The anti-fatigue system does indeed affect the gain of items, XP, honor and gold, but it only applies to users under the age of 18. My guess would be that The7 consists mainly (if not entirely) of players over the age of 18.

English translation of China's anti-fatigue system:
http://www.playnoevil.com/serendipit...em_English.pdf

Something interesting I saw while poking around for that was this excerpt from The9's 2006 annual report (The9 is the company licensed by Blizzard to oversee WoW's implementation in China):

http://www.the9.com/en/IR/Form%2020-F_2006.pdf

We face the risks of changing consumer preferences and uncertainty of market acceptance of our new products.
Online games are a new and evolving entertainment concept in Asia, particularly in China. The level of demand and market acceptance of
our online games are subject to a high degree of uncertainty. This uncertainty is particularly relevant in our current situation because we are
relying on a single MMORPG for substantially all of our revenues. Our future operating results will depend on numerous factors beyond our
control. These factors include:
• the popularity of WoW and other new online games operated by us;
• Blizzard’s timely upgrades of WoW to extend WoW’s life span and to maintain WoW’s competitive position in the online game
market in China;
• the introduction of new online games, competing with or replacing our existing online games;
• general economic conditions, particularly economic conditions adversely affecting discretionary consumer spending;
• changes in customer tastes and preferences;
• the availability of other forms of entertainment;
• critical reviews and public tastes and preferences, all of which change rapidly and cannot be predicted; and
• the acceptance by customers of the purchase of in-game items.

It would seem they would like very much to begin selling in-game items in China, as long as the customer base is accepting of the practice. If it went over well there, I wouldn't be surprised to see Blizzard test the waters over here by offering in-game items similar to the TCG items (i.e. flavor items only) for direct purchase. And then if that goes well... it remains to be seen.

Astiron · 10/30/07, 5:36 PM

Originally Posted by Liryn

Well that's kind of ridiculous. Sort of defeats the purpose... "Hey guys, if you're addicted to leveling, you have to take breaks, but once you're addicted to raiding you're fine to play 24/7!"

I think a lot of reason for this change was also to cull the practice of gold selling, not necessarily to just fight off addiction.