66 - The Instance: These Are Not The Druids You're Looking For

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Makers Of World Of Warcraft To Make Other Game. Claim To Have Done So Before.
This past Saturday in Seoul, Blizzard used the Worldwide Invitational, which is basically a Starcraft tournament, to officially announce the imminent arrival of Starcraft 2. There were fireworks, and loud music, and a big non-gameplay video, and screenshots from the game, which is not yet ready enough for a firm release date. Best estimates put the game a year away from general release, and those are completely speculative estimates.

Blizzard’s First Stratics Chat With The WoW Lead Developers and Community Managers
In classic Blizzard fashion, the company announced that they would hold a chat session where anyone could interact with two of the WoW lead devs, only to have a hard time making the thing work, then ended up postponing the affair. At first, they announced that they would hold it the next day, but it was then put off until today. Randydeluxe was there.

Farewell to Tseric, Latest Victim Of CM Burnout
Blizzard is advertising an open position for Community Manager, following the fiery re-entry of Tseric back into our atmosphere a few days ago. Tseric posted a now-famous response to a thread called “Where can I report CMs?” that didn’t cross the line for customer support, so much as tell it like it is on the WoW forums:

“When you can understand how a group of beligerent and angry posters can drive away people from this game with an uncrafted and improvisational campaign of misery and spin-doctoring, then perhaps, you can understand the decisions I make. Until you face mobs of psychology, you will not see my side.

Until you see some bright-eyed player coming onto the forums wanting to know what they should spec as this class, and see them shat on and driven away by petty and selfish people who are simply leveraging for game buffs, you will not understand.

You will not understand until you have to see it daily, for years…

Until you understand that many people will trod over you to get where they’re going, or to get what they want.

Until you understand that so many people will agree, completely, 100% with a loud, vulgar and assertive individual, not because he is right, but because he is making a stand against “the Man”; to take no critical thought in what they say, but simply to hop on board.

Until you actually try to acknowledge those who do not speak on the forums, for whatever reason they have, you will not understand.

If you think an archaic business formula like “the customer is always right” works, you fail to understand customers, not a customer. It is a collective. No one person, even myself, is truly above the whole.

I simply have the unfortunate quality of being easily singled out.”

Late Changes In Version 2.1 Arrive On The Public Test Realms
This last tester patch was posted Thursday, and there was quite a bit to it. That is the reason why people running the background downloader saw some additional megs being retrieved over the weekend. Here are some of the highlights:

-Cauldron recipes! Alchemists will now occasionally discover potions called cauldrons that, when consumed, affect an entire raid. -The 1-hour cooldown was removed from diamond cutting. -Get this: Stackable items will now auto-stack in your inventory when you retrieve your mail. -Serpentshrine Cavern and Mount Hyjal just got a little easier to acheive attunement for. -Strange one: Warlock’s Soulstones will never again be used by people outside of the warlock’s party or raid. Can’t put ‘em on, and if you can and you leave, bye bye soulstone.

All Earthen Rings Considered
NPR traveled to China, talked to actual Chinese gold farmers, and came to the conclusion that… it’s no different than Nike’s shoe factories.

But it’s a fascinating piece. Did you know that gold farmers raid in 40-man groups? They’ve got a sound clip of the Chinese raid leader commanding a hunter to feign death!