92 – The Instance: "All your RP are belong to us"

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All Your BG Honor Are Belong To Us
With a sudden flurry of interest yesterday, Blizzard community managers announced even more changes coming to the relatively new system for eliminating players from joining battlegrounds and *not* participating in the PvP that earns them rewards. We call them AFK Honor Farmers, since traditionally some players would enter a battleground and then walk away from their PC, allowing the rest of us to do the fighting while they earn some of the rewards. In patch 2.2, Blizzard implemented an AFK reporting system. In a BG, if you notice a player standing idle in a starting spot for several minutes, you can now right-click on them in the raid and report them for it. Enough reports and a player gets a debuff that prevents them from earning any honor. But it may not have gone far enough. Rather than deter those sorts of players from joining BGs, it seemed to some to make the AFK Honor Farmers more determined to avoid being reported only. - Yesterday, CM Bornakk announced “Starting immediately, we will be issuing warnings and penalties, including suspensions and the removal of Honor points and recently acquired Honor rewards, for non-participation in Battleground games. We are taking action against thousands of accounts immediately, and will continue to monitor these situations and regularly take action against violators. If you encounter a player in a Battleground who is intentionally not participating in the battle for an extended period of time, please help us track the situation and report the player as AFK. All reports will be thoroughly investigated, and corrective action will only be taken if the violation is confirmed.”

Where Did Everybody Go?
Yesterday, Blizzard CM Drysc announced free character transfers for 15 highly populated North American realms. The transfers began yesterday at 3:00 PM PST, and will run until Thursday, January 17, or until sum totals on the destination realms are met. That means you should transfer ASAP if you know you want to switch servers. Group A: From: Illidan, Sargeras, Kel’Thuzad, Mannoroth To: Anatheron Group B: From: Jubei’Thos, Frostmourne, Barthilas To: Thaurissan Group C: From: Aman’Thul, Khaz’goroth, Dath’Remar, Nagrand To: Caelestrasz Group D: From: Emerald Dream, Destromath, Tichondrius, Stormreaver To: The Underbog

It’s An All Audio Town Cryer
Can we keep this up? Only if you send your best questions to The Instance by e-mail attachment, or by calling the WoW line.

The Wandering Goblin
The Wandering Goblin staffers got together and, after drinking far more than was reasonable, made their “psychic” predictions for the top MMO events of 2008. Like everything else on the site, it got pretty snarky. Here’s a snippet: - In an effort to solve world hunger, MMOs will be introduced to countries currently experiencing famine. They will become wildly popular, immediately causing an obesity problem in the entire population of the heretofore starving nation. - An extremely bad MMO entitled The Pyramid Builders of Ancient Egypt will be launched by developer Boring Academic Games (BAG). It will have a terrible launch, punctuated by server crashes nearly every half hour. Nearly every MMO blogger and journalist in the business will decry the clunky framerate, the offensive mini game in which Hebrew slaves are beaten, and the tedious but necessary mining of huge slabs of rock. Gamespot will give the game a very surprising 9.5/10 however. Gamespot spokesmen will reassure everyone that the score reflects an honest evaluation of the game, and not the fact that developer BAG spent millions advertising Pyramid Builders on the Gamespot website. - A full dozen MMOs for gamers 12-and-under will be published. Each will feature raising animals, befriending animals, riding animals, finding new animals, rescuing animals, or actually being an animal. - Anyway, you can find the entire article 28 Predictions for MMOs in 2008 at their site.