Intro

News

• Video Game Downloads on FileFront
  FileFront is suspending operations on March 30, 2009.
• 65% fewer Arena teams in Season 5
  Drastic reductions in the number of people playing arenas.
• So...Arena's Failed...Not Surpisingly
  Ghostcrawler responds to some of the criticisms surrounding arenas.
• Making flasks in Patch 3.1 to give double the reward
  In a recent build of the PTR, flask recipes will create 2 flasks for the same amount of ingredients, but will only last half the amount of time.
• Lead Blizzard Dev Outlines 9 WoW Quest Problems, Admits to Designing Stranglethorn Quest
  Jeff "Tigole" Kaplan (because you can't use his name without his character name) talks about some of the issues he had with quest design in World of Warcraft.
• World of Warcraft Forums -> Mage questions answered
  Major mage feedback from the blues.
• World of Warcraft User Interface Add-On Development Policy
  New add-on development policy "promotes an enjoyable gaming environment for [...] players," but could have done so much more.
• If You Die, Who Will Tell Your WoW Guild Friends?
  Sites can automatically inform your guildmates if you unexpectedly drop your... um, connection.
• Battle.net Mobile Authenticator
  Blizzard will be offering a phone-based authenticator solution for Battle.net that will also run on iPhone and iPod touch.
• New add-on policy makes selling add-ons against the rules
  "Premium" addons to become extinct.
• Chinese World of Warcraft Operator Faces Bankruptcy
  Issues with Chinese standards may cause distributor to go bankrupt.
• Blizzard's new raid model and why it works
  Essay on the raid model in 3.0 makes Chris think.
• Will 3.1 be a success?
  Interesting quote from Ghostcrawler: "While I'm sure some players would love for us to deliver an instance with that level of content every month or so (and throw in a 5-player run to boot!), it's not in the cards, at least not for the next couple of years." Which suggests to me that they're working on SOMETHING that will allow them to churn out content more quickly in the future.
• Does anyone find it funny that...
  Lots of interesting perspective on healing in 3.1 versus 3.0 from Ghostcrawler.
• Utah Game Bill Defeated

Listener Mail

Does Dave really hate World of Warcraft? Why do you play?