Like Butter Scraped Over Too Much Bread

If you are anything like me, you have probably been playing the last few months in World of Warcraft bored and annoyed with Blizzard's decisions but didn't stop playing because there was a shimmer of hope in Icecrown Citadel at the horizon. The issue with horizons is that, the more you travel towards them, the faster they move away from you.
The lead encounter designer for World of Warcraft, Scott "Daelo" Mercer, posted yesterday on the topic of Icecrown Citadel access progression.
And, merlin's beard, it sucks.

Downloadable Cashcow

A grand day in early 1999 - Tales of the Sword Coast was released, the addon to Bioware's hit RPG Baldur's Gate. Obviously I got it as fast I could, installed it and added 20-30 hours of game play to the already fantastic Baldur's Gate. That was the common way back then to milk your customers for more money for an old game. Er, I mean to provide your fans with an extended and enhanced game experience. Today, things work differently - at least in part. Sure there are still expansion packs, be it Wrath of the Lich King or Shivering Isles, but broadband internet has enabled game companies to provide additions to their game in the form of downloads.
It's common for game companies to provide fixes for their games through downloads, and sometimes they are so kind to actually add some new content as well. The more common form of dowloadable content is paid for, however. Just how much downloadable bang do you get for your buck?

Real Life Goblins

Yes it's a weekend post, just because I'm so annoyed.
My headset broke the other day. Well, it's been breaking for a couple of weeks now but tape could keep it together somehow. On Wednesday it completely stopped working and it was again that time of the year in which I buy a new headset. Some research later, I decide that the Logitech G35 is a decent choice, closely followed by the (cheaper but unpronounceable) Razer Carcharias. With a raid coming up on Sunday it seemed better to just go to a store and buy it instead of ordering it online. Online is usually cheaper, but how much of a difference could it be?

Forty fracking Euro is how much. Amazon will ship me the G35 on Tuesday or Wednesday for €89,97 while my local electronics discounter wants a whopping €129,99. That's $132.50 and $191.50 respectively. Naturally I went to the next sales clerk and tried to get him to drop the price to an acceptable level. I understand all the stuff of retail stores having higher running costs than online businesses but he seriously tried to explain a €40 difference with that.

Well, long story short I'll have to raid without a microphone for a bit and I'll never buy electronics in retail ever again without checking prices first.

Defining Content

There's been a lot of talk on the optimal difficulty level for raids, I even had my own post about it a few days ago. One argument on the pro-easy side is "everybody should be able to see the content." I've countered this in the past with the question of why you would need to see new content while there is so much old content you haven't seen yet. Maybe it's the definition of content that's actually the core issue here.

Blizzcon Dissected - Part 2: Dumbification

Welcome to the second part of my Blizzcon series. You can find the first part here. Today I will look into various bits and pieces that we got from day one and then go deeply into the itemization disaster they announced. No, it won't be pretty.

Patch 3.2 - Halfassing Deluxe

So patch 3.2 hit and I can't say I'm disappointed with the new 5,10 and 25 men content.
I would like to, really, but my expectations were so low that Blizzard has pretty much managed to hit the nail on the head. The Coliseum, as far as it's accessible, is terribad. And here's why.

Piracy - is it really a problem?

There has been a discussion over in the wcradio.com forums about piracy that I found very thought provoking. Personally I haven't pirated a game in years and refuse to do so because I believe in supporting development studios. That doesn't mean, however, that I think piracy is a problem at all.