Tag: wow

Epic Maelstrom

A week or so ago, someone on the Cataclysm beta forums complained that the Maelstrom’s appearance in the upcoming expansion just wasn’t epic enough. It’s a pretty silly thing to say. Valnoth, aka WoW Lead World Designer Alex Afrasiabi, apparently agreed and responded with the following: Re: The Maelstrom? Maybe I missed the memo on levels of “epicosity” or something, but I’m pretty sure the Maelstrom is a CLASS 10 epic zone. Though I guess it is missing sharks with laser beams patrolling the waters and Arthur Fonzarelli jumping across it with water skis. And dinosaurs. After reading this post I called for a meeting with TOP TOP MEN (that’s 2 tops) in order to figure out a solution to the problem at hand. Frankly, I think we hit a home run. The next 4.0 build (or the one after) should have a Maelstrom that’s between 10 – 50x more epic than what currently exists. Buckle yourselves into your computer chairs or face being blown away!

losers complain, wow world designer adds flying shark with laser.

Warcraft Sequel

i LOLd

WoW eliza

someone has written a mod for world of warcraft where you can basically have someone who is private messaging you talk to an Eliza bot, without their knowledge. turing test?

World of Warcraft Epidemiology

The particular features of the game, such as the many hours players around the world dedicate to it and the emotional investment they put into their online alter egos, offer scientists a tantalisingly close match to real social conditions.

Joi Ito on World of Warcraft

Back in the early days of MMORPGs, you met people online who you would play with and they were your friends, but it was cyberspace and real life. Sometimes you had crossovers, but generally you didn’t run into people walking down the street who also played. The difference is with almost 9M players (although 6M are in China) you can now go to a dinner in Silicon Valley or in Berlin and you’ll often find somebody else who plays World of Warcraft. Families play. If you look at the statistics, a huge number of people play who are real-life friends, which is a different than it used to be. So I think that World of Warcraft is similar to what we’ve have been working on for a long time, but it’s a big jump and it’s growing very, very fast. And I think it’s going to grow faster.