Primal News Transmute [20/11/2007] (Wormsign detected.)

Eej · 11/20/07, 11:14 AM

So my midterms are over, thus the two week hiatus on PNT is similarly over.

Also, who cares if the quote in the title wasn't actually a sound file. Go away.

Patch 2.3 Change List

Now with more undocumented changes!

Having trouble talking in Arenas? Whispers are blocked and /say commands are filtered into you emoting jibba-jabba. The fine art of trash talking must be taken to IRC fully now.

MMO Champion

Patch 2.4 and 2.3 Bug Fix info

They're actually really long, but here's an important tidbit.

Originally Posted by Hortus

Vengeful Gladiator's Mooncloth Hood and Vengeful Gladiator's Satin Hood do not display Troll Tusks.

Your days of hiding are coming to an end, Troll Priests. Bear your marks of shame like the rest of us.

MMO Champion

Season 3 Delayed Again

Originally Posted by Drysc

Everyone is preparing for the start of the third arena season and we’re excited to get new items, rewards, and fresh competition going for everyone participating in the arenas.

As we approach the previously announced start date we’ve had growing concerns of what the new season requires of us to actually launch, and its proximity to the Thanksgiving holiday. Everyone wants the launch go as smoothly as possible, and in order to have resources available to tend to any issues as soon as they may spring up, we’ve decided to delay the Season 3 start date to November 27. One week after the previously announced date.

This allows us to have the quickest response time to any issues should they occur, and allows everyone to enjoy the holiday and the days leading up to it. While making everyone wait another week obviously isn’t the optimal outcome, in the end we decided it would be much worse to start Season 3 so close to the holiday and potentially make players wait longer until a problem can be resolved. Ultimately it allows us to provide the best possible service for everyone as we launch the new season.

That's another week for you guys to grind honour on your alts for ez season 1 gear. Get to it.

Blizzard Euro Scam Policy Changed

Basically, if you scam people you'll probably get in trouble the first time. No more blacksmith hammers COD for 1g I suppose. This is pretty much the complete opposite of the cut-throat wild west atmosphere of EVE online, as highlighted by the EIB Scam. Coincidentally, this leads to the next news item...

WoW-Europe Forums

Nine million suckers bagged and tagged

World of Warcraft Subscriber Count Tops Nine Million | Game | Life from Wired.com

Blizzard decides that grinding is more fun than easy access to gold

Skald fire elementals have been hotfixed and no longer instantly respawn on death. Poor Primal Fire market.

How to make (or spend) lots of gold on [Preserved Holly]

Image courtesy of MMO-Champion, like I'd ever take pictures wearing Dragonstalker.

Tigole Bitties interview

tl;dr version:

They're going to try to make raiding feel more competitive between guilds and have reiterated their stance on nerfing content over time so anyone with the hand-eye coordination of a nine year old can look up boss strategies and make painfully slow progress in previously top-tier instances.
Death Knight tanks are supposed to be like Feral Druid tanks. I don't know if they mean like amazingly awesome like they were in 2.0 or what.
Blizzard loves reputation. They also love dailies. Therefore, in Northrend, your reputation grind will consist mostly of dailies, limiting how fast your reputation gain can be per day. I suppose that's not too bad since you can just log in an hour or two a day and get like five bajllion reputation right now for Netherwing and then log off to do something worthwhile with your life for the rest of the day.
Apparently there will be primarily Human, Dwarf, Tauren and Troll lore in Northrend. That's right, Tauren lore. In Northrend.

Warcry Interview

Blizzard's Arena Set Naming Hat

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

It is like a thousand wallets cry out in pain

Dawn of War, not Star Wars.

Anyways. So Super Mario Galaxy is good clean fun and is probably one of the highest rated games ever. I don't know what else to say about it. If you have a Wii, there's no reason to not get it, it's a must-have just like SSBB. If you can get a Wii for cheap, might as well get SMG!

Mass Effect comes out today. Hopefully my pre-order comes in the mail. Apparently the Achievements in the game actually unlock bonus skills you can use on later playthroughs, which should really crank up the replayability.

Rock Band comes out today in the US, or December 17th here in Canada. I hate you all. Sure, the guitar parts might only be roughly GH2 difficulty, but the drumming, singing and overall presentation make a compelling case for buying the instrument bundle.

Also, I've been told that Assassin's Creed is bad. Looks good but the gameplay is far too easy, especially considering they don't even give you a hard mode. I couldn't care less, that's one less game to waste money on.

Obligatory Anime Blurb

So this ef - a tale of memories is pretty good, assuming you don't mind drama/romance series and excessive artistic symbolism in the first two episodes.

Amusing Armoury Link of the Week

Here, here and finally here.

There's like some sort of contest to see how low your team rating can possibly go. The most amusing thing to me, personally, is that I know the two guys in Monkey Banana Raffle.

I know a lot of you have sent in armoury links, but some of them didn't quite pass my quality filter. Some of them were fairly obscure or just someone still leveling their character and being generally stupid. There's also the problem of stupid people realizing their mistakes when people start linking their armouries on the wow forum so by the time tuesday rolls around, their talents/gear is relatively normal.

Lokthra · 11/20/07, 11:30 AM

I have to say, those EVE scams are some of the greatest things i have read about in gaming. The people behind those have to be brilliant to make them work in the first place, and have balls to actually pull it off. Props to them, although I do feel sorry for the people who got scammed. My introduction to scamming was learning that /split 10000000 was not a good thing to type.

Nite_Moogle · 11/20/07, 12:07 PM

Also, I've been told that Assassin's Creed is bad.

Strongly disagree. It's not Ninja Gaiden hard nor should it be, but it is damn fun and a good game.

zirky · 11/20/07, 1:08 PM

The biggest complaint I've heard aboutt Assassin's Creed is that its very sandboxy. If you don't like exploring and just poking around (one of the best features of Crackdown by the way) it seems its not the game for you.

Apparently, also watch the credits for the full ending.

Humbaba · 11/20/07, 4:52 PM

Originally Posted by Lokthra

My introduction to scamming was learning that /split 10000000 was not a good thing to type.

So what does this do?

Shaker · 11/20/07, 4:55 PM

Originally Posted by Humbaba

So what does this do?

I did a google search to try and find more information out, and the only relevant result was a link to this thread.

Eej · 11/20/07, 5:36 PM

/split 10000000 causes you to divide 10,000,000 copper (or 1000g) equally amongst the party with no confirmation dialog!

Rane · 11/20/07, 8:58 PM

You listed "Inexorable" twice. At least you made me look it up on Dictionary.com!

♦ Kurisu · 11/21/07, 2:51 AM

Assassin's Creed is very refreshing as a game.

Eej · 11/21/07, 3:00 AM

I have come to the conclusion that Mass Effect is amazing and people who think that Assassin's Creed is actually any good should play Mass Effect because that will make them weep for having wasted money.

zirky · 11/21/07, 8:41 AM

Originally Posted by Eej

/split 10000000 causes you to divide 10,000,000 copper (or 1000g) equally amongst the party with no confirmation dialog!

It also hilariously could instagib your monk tank!

Eej, I don't think anyone is arguing that Mass Effect is not truly fucking amazing. I think its more that Assassin's Creed isn't necessarily the steaming pile of crap that the reviewers say.

Lokthra · 11/21/07, 11:30 AM

Originally Posted by Eej

/split 10000000 causes you to divide 10,000,000 copper (or 1000g) equally amongst the party with no confirmation dialog!

The beautiful thing is, the original macro was /SplitMoney (#), but to make it easier for people to split massive numbers of copper among their party, blizzard removed the money part.

The only problem was, people who had never heard of /splitmoney had no idea what what the macro was in the first place, and therefor never heard of the /split macro. I got caught by this big time.

MeCh · 11/21/07, 2:31 PM

I demand Orinthopter mounts.

Opioid · 11/22/07, 12:19 AM

Originally Posted by Eej

I have come to the conclusion that Mass Effect is amazing and people who think that Assassin's Creed is actually any good should play Mass Effect because that will make them weep for having wasted money.

Multiple fun good quality things = multiple sources of enjoyment?

I've never understood gamers' need to do this, to insist on one thing at a time as the best and everything else as not worth your time. It doesn't matter if the first 9.8 game in 3 years debuts, if a 9.9 game comes out a week later that game is all that is worth playing and everything else is shit

Eej · 11/22/07, 11:13 AM

9.8 more like 7.8. I'm just railing against the hype machine because AC isn't all that, plus games are rather expensive nowadays and if one game lasts 7 hours versus another game that lasts 30 hours (with more replayability) for the same price point, I think it's a better idea to go for the latter. Especially if the latter is just a better game overall.

Especially considering how much money I've spent this month on games already, I'd like to not spend on games that just aren't worth anything beyond a rental.