There’s a lot going on in and around the World of Warcraft today and it seems like a news round-up is in order.
Firstly, how was your Pre-Expansion Patch Day experience? If you’re based somewhere outside of the West Coast of the USA, I’m going to guess that yesterday was somewhat disappointing. Server downtime was extended from 3PM PDT to 5PM. And then to 7PM. And then to 9PM. I checked in multiple times throughout the evening and was finally able to login around 8:45PM PDT. Blizzard just made the actual Patch Day on the East Coast without slipping into the next.
The connection was quick to load when servers were finally up and as I caught a first look at four of my characters hanging out around the campfire together, I must admit I felt a little surge of emotion. The team is together at last! Warbands really is a very cool feature and was such a longtime in arriving. I’m glad it’s here.
Achievement and reputation consolidation seemed to be working as promised and Skyriding was available for all of my flying mounts. It felt great to hit “Random Mount” and have a large variety of mounts popping up again. I missed you guys!
Beyond that though, some hiccups remained. Warband Banks were down, most of my action bars were missing and had to be manually reset, and I got disconnected a few times. I’m sure everything will settle into place as we roll into the coming days but the initial arrival was a bit rough.
Now, onto some WoW News:
The Hollywood Reporter brings word that the: ‘World of Warcraft’ Development Team Unionizes In Notable Step for Game Worker Organizing Efforts.’
Quote:
” ‘I think this is one of those big [moments] like, hey, boom, you see this? This is a full dev team that joined.’ Kinema continues, ‘I think when people look back on the history of the game union movement, they will look at this as a massive turning point.’ “
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PC Gamer says: “WoW’s The War Within pre-expansion patch has already made the 20-year-old MMO so much better.“
Quote:
“Several major, long-awaited features have been bundled into the patch. These aren’t specific to The War Within, but rather enhancements that impact the entire MMO. To the uninitiated, they might seem like minor improvements, but to those of us shackled to Azeroth they represent substantial quality-of-life buffs that excise some extremely annoying sources of friction that have been plaguing WoW, in some cases, since its earliest days.“
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PC Gamer also has a good article on: How Warbands work in World of Warcraft
Quote:
“Perhaps even more excitingly, you can choose transmog on gear rolls in group content if you haven’t already learned the appearance. This will score higher than a greed roll, and higher still if your character can equip the item.“
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Polygon says: World of Warcraft’s new character-select screen made me emotional
Quote:
“It’s hard to explain to someone who hasn’t been playing the same video game for 20 years, but getting to pose four of your alt characters — any of your alt characters — next to each other in this way is quite a big deal. It made me emotional. These are avatars I’ve spent years of my life with, but I’ve never been able to put them in the same space together before. Because they’re all on the same account, and to play one, I have to log out of the others, they’ve never actually met. Now I can watch them chilling together around that little campfire, and imagine them telling each other stories about their adventures.“
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And, lastly, Games Industry.biz reports: Blizzard’s John Hight and former Bungie COO Holly Barbacovi join Hasbro
Quote:
“…Hight – who served as SVP and general manager of the World of Warcraft franchise during his 12-year tenure at Blizzard – will join as president of Wizards of the Coast and digital gaming.
As president of Wizards of the Coast, Hight will oversee Hasbro’s ‘network of gaming studios and digital licensing agreements’, as well as strategy for its Dungeons and Dragons and Magic: The Gathering franchises.“