Spugnort's

Archive for May, 2009

This summer Blizzard and Mountain Dew are teaming up to bring WoW-themed Game Fuel to stores all across the US.  To celebrate this, the Game Fuel website is giving away a prize every 15 minutes starting today (May 29, 2009) and running through August 20!  These prizes include all kinds of nifty things from free game time to Alienware PC’s!  For your chance to win all you have to do is visit the site, earn tokens and then use the tokens to enter the sweepstakes of your choice.  A 14-day free trial of WoW is also available through the site which would be perfect for a friend who wants to try out this incredible game!  So, here are all the links you will need to get started earning tokens and winning prizes: they have a FAQ, the Official Rules and the Game Fuel Website where you can register and start bidding on prizes.  Also be sure to check your favorite stores beginning on Monday for the WoW Mountain Dew official Game Fuel!

Blizzard has announced that the second and final round of BlizzCon ‘09 tickets will go on sale tomorrow (Saturday May 30th) at 10 AM PST.  The sale of these tickets will be handled exactly the same as the ticket sales two weeks ago.  For those of you not familiar with the proceedure for ticket purchases this year you can click here to be taken to the official BlizzCon site for a full explanation.

BlizzCon ‘09 will take place at the Anaheim Convention Center on August 21st and 22nd, 2009 and the cost per ticket is $125.

If you hope to get your hands on the hottest tickets in MMO gaming then you will have to be logged in and ready on the ticket page at exactly the right time and then hope they don’t sell out before you get your turn to purchase.   The good news here is that things will likely go off without a hitch again this week and there will be no terrible fiascos like last year, the bad news is that with 11 million players worldwide not everyone will get their shot at tickets.

If you miss out on tickets, Direct TV will be happy to take some of your hard-earned money in exchange for live streaming video directly from the Anaheim Convention Center while the event is going on.

We will see you at the Blizzard store tomorrow at 10 AM PST and good luck to you all!!

Well, last week we saw several servers down for an extra long time so they could receive hardware upgrades.  This week it’s the same song and dance, just different servers.

For realms that are not receiving equipment upgrades the downtime will run from 3am PDT to 11am PDT just like any other week…nothing special.  For the realms getting upgrades, the maintenance will run from 3am PDT to 1pm PDT.  Last week this upgrade maintenance went a little longer than scheduled and I wouldn’t be surprised if that was the case for this week as well.

The list of realms getting their upgrades this week is below:

Area 52                                    Galakrond

Auchindoun                          Ghostlands

Azuremyst                             Grizzly Hills

Blade’s Edge                          Shattered Halls

Blood Furnace                     Terokkar

Coilfang                                  The Scryers

Dawnbringer                        The Underbog

Exodar                                    Velen

Fizzcrank                               Zangarmarsh

So, what are you going to do during maintenance today?  Why not check out the brand new Spugnort’s World Website, our Facebook Page or even our E-Bay Store that is filled with great discounted WoW-related products?!

That’s right, folks! Ensidia claimed another mega milestone with the world first Algalon kill in Ulduar 10!  The European super-guild which formed as a result of the merger of SK-Gaming and Nihilum last year has added another world first to their extensive repertoire.  Algalon, the true final boss in Ulduar who is only available for one hour each week and only after all other bosses have been defeated on hard mode has been a bit of a challenge for any guilds skilled enough to even get to him.

Mek, from Ensidia, had this to say about the fight: “It’s a pretty intense fight but not quite as hard as Blizzard made it out to be.  The 1 hour timer is the real challenge since you must do a perfect attempt within it.”  Of course, I think “not quite as hard” for Ensidia is probably a damn good challenge for the rest of us meer mortals.

For details on the loot, you can see the announcement on Ensidia’s site and let me tell you there is some great stuff there!!

Congratulations, Ensidia!

There is a guy out there who has set out on a mission to level 62 WoW characters to level 80 by Christmas ‘09! This will give him one character of each race and class for both Horde and Alliance sitting at level 80 by the end of this project.  Now, I think this sounds pretty insane, but he has a definite plan and a method all figured out for how he will accomplish this incredibly daunting task.

He’s not just grinding away on it — he’s chosen to do some multiboxing, and plans to level three characters at a time up to 60, and then three to five characters per group from 60 to 80, so if he can move four characters up five levels each a day, he’ll be pretty close to his goal rate.  And he’s using recruit-a-friend, so the triple XP will make things even easier on him. It definitely seems like he can do it if he stays committed.  More power to him…I know I could not do it!

We will be watching this story as it unfolds, but in the meantime you can also check out his personal blog of the experience so far.  Is there anything at all that WoW players will not think of??

Well I must say, I didn’t see this one coming (likely because I was not wearing my goggles).  Blizzard has nerfed items which grant stealth detection as they felt they were becoming too mandatory in arenas, “forcing” players to use lower level equipment even when more powerful items were available to them.  The biggest change is that the Ultra-Spectropic Detection Goggles can no longer be used in arenas AT ALL!  Also, all epic engineering goggles have had the stealth detection completely removed from them.  The full list of items effected is available in this blue post by Bornakk.  These changes are already in place, however tool tips and item descriptions will not update until the next minor patch.

Some players complain that this gives the already overpowered Rogue class an even greater advantage in arena play, I think that players should be left with the choice of wearing the lower level items for stealth detection or putting on the higher level items with better stats…I just don’t like the fact that this is one more example of taking the choice away from players, but hey what do I know?? Tell me what YOU think!

World of Warcraft PTR Patch 3.1.2 Patch Notes:

General

Equipment Manager

• When enabled from the Interface Options menu, this feature will allow players to store sets of equipment, easily swap between saved sets using hotkeys, and pull items directly from backpacks or bank slots (must be at the bank to equip inventory from the bank).
• New art textures have been added for Argent Tournament mounts. Any mounts already purchased from the Argent Tournament vendors will be updated automatically. Argent Tournament mounts with the old textures will still be available for purchase from the Argent Tournament vendors for a small Champion’s Seal and gold cost (standard faction requirements apply).
• Copied Test Realm characters will no longer be copied with their achievement history in order to better facilitate the character copy process.

PVP

• Vehicle health and damage output in Strand of the Ancients and Lake Wintergrasp now scale with the item level of the operator’s gear. Power scaling is now 1% damage and 1% health per average item level.
• All Lake Wintergrasp daily quests have been changed to a weekly format. The honor and Stone Keeper’s Shards rewarded for completing these quests have been increased to compensate.

Read the rest of this entry »

Blizzard has announced that tickets for Blizzcon ‘09 will go on sale May 16th with a second batch going on sale May 30th. Ticket prices are set at $125. The convention will be held at the Anaheim Convention Center on August 21 and 22. For those unable to make it, DirecTV is once again selling a pay-per-view of the event for $40.

This year they are making some real changes to how the ticket sales will work in order to avoid the horrid experience customers had last year attempting to purchase tickets. This year, a new queue system will be used to purchase tickets. This system functions much like the dreaded login queues seen when attempting to log into WoW during heavy usage periods. The basic purchase process will be as follows:

1. Create a battle.net account. This should be done ahead of time to avoid having to spend the time doing so while “competing” for tickets.

2. You will enter a queue and taken to a page that will display your position in the queue and the estimated amount of time before you will be able to make your purchase.

3. If you make it to the front of the queue before tickets are sold out, you will have a limited amount of time to complete your purchase. Once at the head of the queue, you will have 15 minutes to complete your purchase.

Hopefully the new queue system and major upgrades to their online store will allow for a much less stressful process of trying to get Blizzcon tickets. The official page detailing the new purchase queue system is available here.

Blizzard is testing  a series of nerfs which will be applied to Ulduar which fit in with their philosophy on raiding in World of Warcraft. I have to say that I have mixed feelings about this set of changes. Our guild has cleared the majority of Ulduar 25 so far and we are hardly one of the world’s “elite” guilds. While I can understand their desire to allow the majority of the players to experience the game content, it is going to turn Ulduar into the gear-fest that Naxx had become prior to the 3.1 patch.

While I’m all for getting new gear, I’m not sure I am willing to obtain it at the cost of becoming sick of the new game content. With the Wrath of the Lich King expansion only 6 months old and Uldar considerably younger; will Blizzard have time to develop and release new content before a very large number of us get tired of having the latest raid instance on “farm”?  At this point, I can only hope that the never-ending loot train that is Ulduar will keep us entertained until Blizzard gives us another set of instances to beat our heads against.

To read more about the philosophies behind the incoming nerfs, you can visit the WoW Insider post about the topic or the original Blizzard forum post.