Rather than answer a dozen emails, let me do a kind of announcement roundup thing. And now that I think of it, I should make that the title to this post.
1) Our very own Mumbles has begun a blog, which she has thoughtfully placed on the internet where people can read it. People such as yourself. This means that 75% of the Spoiler Warning crew is now enbloggened. Mumbles does it. Rutskarn does it. I does it. But I have it on good authority that Josh will not be joining our proud cult of rambling blog-makers. But if he does start one, I strongly encourage him to name it “STOP SHOOTING ME DOT COM”. Just saying.
2) Gratitude and thanks to the benefactor who provided a graphics card for me. It’s a Radeon HD 5670. And for those of you who like the acronym stuff: 1GB 128-bit DDR5 PCIE 2.0 x16 HDCP with Crossfire who am I kidding nobody reads this crap. I was going to take some pictures of it, but I had work that needed to get done, and so I put it to work straight away. However, the card is red, which is what counts.
3) Stolen Pixels is on hiatus. This might be a long-ish one. I’ll come back to it when I can.
4) Work stopped on Project Hex while I worked on Drawn to Knowledge. We’ll hopefully get back to that after the holidays. For the last three years I’ve worked huge overtime over the holidays, and so I mean to make the most of this one.
5) Not so much an announcement as a question: I have discovered the fun of playing Horde side in WoW. I had the idea of leveling an Orc in the Blood Elf area, because that would be funny. But I couldn’t for the life of me figure out how to get there. I thought I’d go take a zeppelin, but none seem to go to Silvermoon. I thought to run there, but the Western Plaguelands are basically impassible at level 1. I’m sure you can get there, but it would be hours of corpse-running. Now that I think of it, I hardly ever see any non-elves in Eversong Woods. I’m guessing that you just can’t get there until you’ve got the levels to make the run? Or am I missing some alternate route?
The Best of 2011
My picks for what was important, awesome, or worth talking about in 2011.
Programming Vexations
Here is a 13 part series where I talk about programming games, programming languages, and programming problems.
TitleWhat’s Inside Skinner’s Box?
What is a skinner box, how does it interact with neurotransmitters, and what does it have to do with shooting people in the face for rare loot?
A Star is Born
Remember the superhero MMO from 2009? Neither does anyone else. It was dumb. So dumb I was compelled to write this.
Mass Effect Retrospective
A novel-sized analysis of the Mass Effect series that explains where it all went wrong. Spoiler: It was long before the ending.
You can take the zeppelin to Undercity. In the ruins of Lordaeron (the surface part of the Undercity) there is a teleportation orb that takes you to Silvermoon.
If you enter the Undercity area you first enter a courtyard. If you go to the right there you will encounter the “Orb of Translocation”.
I did the opposite recently after the shattering. I made a blood elf and ran immediately to Silvermoon, took the portal to Lordearon, hopped a zep to Og, then ran all the way down to the Orc starting area. I have since been playing all the quests from the orc view. My hope is to have my Blood Elf on a wolf some day instead of the chicken.
I can’t remember doing it, but my level 7 bank alt has the “Explore Mulgore” achievement. And I’m playing Alliance. What?!
Yeah, my moo cow bank alt has the “Explore Elwynn Forest” achievement. She is also level 7 and hasn’t gone anywhere outside of Mulgore and Orgrimmar (the only running through Durotar that she did was going back into Orgrimmar after the Shattering kicked her out of the city). She hasn’t even gone to the Eastern Kingdoms.
I don’t get it.
I think a lot of areas got “auto explored” when The Shattering hit, based on criteria I don’t understand. I have a number of characters that have explored areas that I most certainly never brought them to.
Now that I think about it, perhaps I should recommend against going to the blood elf starting zone. I haven’t tried all starting zones post-shattering, but the consensus seems to be that the blood elf starting zone is now one of least interesting starting zones. It used to be one of the best ones but unlike the others it hasn’t been changed with the shattering. It’s not too big of a deal, but unless you have already done the other starting zones it might be a good idea to start somewhere else. If you want a “wrong race” you could try the undead one, I hear it’s pretty good now.
The night elf starting zone does not seem to have changed very much, and unlike the blood elf zone it was not very interesting to begin with. I thought the other night elves would make a huge deal of the reintroduced mages but they seem pretty cool about it.
The night elf one uses many of the same quests, but now they actually have some measure of order and progression, as well as much easier travel to/from them. It’s actually enjoyable to do now, as opposed to a massive chore like it used to be.
That, and the ending quest is kinda neat :)
Also the cave is 100% less murderous since you get an NPC to help you with the furbolgs. It was nice to reach level 10 on a night elf without dying for a change.
I agree with this–however, the very first few orc levels are the same as they always were, with a couple of changes to make things less runny-around-y. Pardon the technical jargon, there. But as soon as you get past the “pick up cactus apples, club lazy peons, kill scorpids and demons” area, the other quests are new and interesting, whereas the blood elf area hasn’t changed. It’s not bad, though, being the most interesting when it came out, and if Shamus hasn’t done it, I say feel free.
Two comments:
a) The Hawkstrider is awesome, it’s basically a Chocobo, why would you ever not want to ride it?
b) You can get city reputation tabards now, so if you pick up an Orgrimmar tabard and run some dungeons you’ll be wolf-bound before you know it.
When I was playing, I LOVED my chocobo. Well, at least until I got my pink elefant :D
Female dwarf paladin on strange mounts FTW!
Everyone playing WoW again etc… makes me want to start again, too.
But I have to resist it. I’m already wasting my time with other stuff and it is soooooo hard to stop playing WoW :(
You lie. There are no female dwarves in WoW :P
Related to the topic, I tend to dislike the chocobo mostly due to how much better other mounts seem to me…and I’ve ridden too many of them in FF games as it is.
This I don’t understand. I have a night elf tabard on my draenei main, and I’ve run like 20 dungeons with it on, and my reputation increase has been nil.
If you’re running Outland dungeons, no rep is given for wearing city tabards, and my impression is that Blizzard won’t fix that. But there should be rep gains for Northrend dungeons, and my baby paladin has only gotten 500 Darnassus rep from killing one boss (not even an end boss) in two dungeons. And her Gilneas tabard isn’t working at all. Maybe the tabards work in heroic mode? or in classic dungeons? It’s a bug worth fixing.
I figured it out. Apparently I was wearing the COMPLETELY WRONG tabard and didn’t even know it. I’m not high enough level to get to Outland yet. Apparently not just any tabard you get will work for farming reputation. Only the tabards that specifically mention the city in the name will gain you any reputation. That raises the question, “What are those other tabards for?” Answer: Nothing.
TL;DR: Unless you by the tabard directly from the city quartermaster, its worse than useless.
Be warned that you can’t complete the first quests in the BE starting zones, only the quests after level 6 should be available to non BE characters.
Why? Is that the same true for the other starting zones? I seem to remember doing the night elf one with my human, but I can’t remember what quests for avalible.
As far as I’m aware that’s a limitation of all BC starting areas (BE and Draenei), other zones work fine.
Yeah, those two areas seem completely untouched. You can’t even fly in them, I’m so disapointed by that, I really wanted to see Silvermoon from the sky!
Well, I certainly did the starting quests with my Dwarf pally to get my pink elephant. I think there is one quest you don’t get because you are no draenei and one quest that you can’t complete because you have to heal someone with that draenei heal racial thingy.
It used to be that you could do all of the 1-5 zones of your side, except the BE/Draenei ones, but now each of the 1-5 zones is reserved for its given race alone (and for the worgen and goblins, of course, the reserved area is somewhat longer).
Typo: Change “Mumbes” to “Mumbles” after 1).
Unless you meant “Mum-bees”.
I think “Mum-bees” are called “Queens”.
–killing joy since 1985–
If Josh does register StopShootingMe.com, and then only puts a picture of Reginald Cuftbert up there and nothing else, I will visit that site every day.
That is all.
P.S. Shamus, you should play the Undead starting area with your Orc. It’s fun, you get to create poisons and diseases that horribly kill everything! And it makes so much sense to do that as a non-Undead.
That’s what I ended up doing, it was pretty cool. Actually, I did 1-5 in the Orc playpen, and then headed for Brill, or whatever the Undead Goldshire is called. I loved how everyone conspired with me against the living.
Good times.
I will say that the little Troll village they send you to after the playpen was horrible – no profession trainers! There’ a freaking copper node RIGHT HERE and I’m supposed to hike a couple km up the road just so someone can teach me to swing a pickaxe? Not even a fishing trainer, and it’s a coastal town. Boo. I doubt I’ll ever level an Orc in the Orc area.
On the other hand, the countryside is quite beautiful, don’t you think?
… what? I’m an orc with a soft side.
…
Yes, I was playing a fearsome Orc Warrior Berserker who went to pick flowers, SO WHAT?!
Real men knit.
“What’s this? An orcish warrior picking flowers?”
“Not flowers. Herbs. Grognok gather HERBS.”
“What for?”
“For, you know . . . ‘for the Horde.'”
“So the Horde needs potpourri?”
“Grognok stab you as soon as he done picking flowers.”
Hey, you want to sit in a hut that smells like tanned leather all day?
As of now, all the starting villages are supposed to have a single “profession trainer” who can get you started on any of the professions, but can’t give you advanced training in any of them. The worgen one is named something like Jack “Alltrades,” not sure about any of the others.
You mean Sen’jin village? There’s a couple profession trainers right there, including a fishing trainer standing off the coast.
No skinning trainer, though; you’d have to walk all the way to Orgrimmar for that.
Also DEATH TO THE LIVING
Just wait until you do the Wrathgate quests in Dragonblight. The undead did a bang-up job of convincing me they are evil, and nothing I’ve seen since then has demonstrated that they’ve seen the error of their actions there.
[bows humbly]
Mumbles has gone Digital with matters cool and musical
Rutskarn does Oblivion and fantasy most cynical
Shamus has his Twenty Sided Spoiler Warning audience
With Josh controlling Sheppard spamming eloquent-al violence
Stop Shooting Me, his battle cry, his mantra most unusual
Mumbles has gone Digital with matters cool and musical
[hands the Spoiler Warning crew a shot of whiskey]
Cheers! I’ll drink to that as well!
This is awesome! :)
Funny: you mention WoW and get an horde of comments about it. An useful distraction to let you get away with this:
“3) Stolen Pixels is on hiatus. This might be a long-ish one. I'll come back to it when I can.”
But i saw right through your deception, now you’ll have to explain :P
WHYYYYYYYY???
Because he’s busy playing WoW, duh. =p
Throm-ka, Shamus! Welcome to the awesome side. :D
Here’s a breakdown of the paths between the Horde cities:
-There is a zeppelin going between Thunder Bluff and Orgrimmar. On the Thunder Bluff side, the zeppelin docks at the Spirit Rise and at Orgrimmar it docks near the flight point (souther tower, if I remember correctly).
-A zeppelin travels between Orgrimmar and to Trisfal Glades, just outside of Brill. I believe this is on the northern tower in Orgrimmar and is on the eastern one in Trisfal Glades (the zeppelin leading to Orgrimmar is the lower one on the tower).
-There are two zeppelins that go to Grom’gal Base Camp in Stranglethorn Vale. The zeppelins are located in Orgrimmar on the northern tower and in Trisfal Glades, on top of the eastern tower. Grom’gal has one zeppelin tower, so always make sure that you’re getting on the right boat.
-There is a zeppelin connecting Orgrimmar with Warsong Hold in the Borean Tundra. This is located on the southern zeppelin tower.
-Another zeppelin connects Trisfal Glades with Vengeance Landing in the Howling Fjord. This is in the western zeppelin tower.
-An orb of translocation is located when you cross into the gates of the Undercity, up the stairs and into the room on your right. This takes you into Sunfury Spire, inside of Silvermoon City and vice versa.
-There are portals from all of the major city to the Dark Portal, to provide easy access to Outland. In addition, there is a portal to Orgrimmar (but not the other cities) at the Dark Portal. I believe the portals to Orgrimmar and Stormwind are just inside of the portal, so you’ll have to be level 57 or better to access them.
-And, of course, there are portals to and from all of the new Cataclysm zones, just north of the flight point.
I think that should cover it. Hope this helps!
LOK’TAR OGAR
I got axe for joo.
Heads-up about the Radeon: http://www.tomshardware.com/news/ATI-Radeon-Gray-Screen-Crash,9529.html
I got the grey screen several times after my computer was put together this summer, but it hasn’t happened again for months. I don’t think it was updating the drivers that helped, although I don’t remember exactly (I seem to recall getting hanged after doing so). It just seems to have stopped on its own. Mysterious.
Edit: Looking at the article again, yours doesn’t seem to be one of the ones that “crop up again and again” (at the bottom), but it’s unclear whether that means that those are the only ones that have problems or that they’re the ones that have the most problems.
I just put together a new comp this past June, but it was with an nVidia card in it. The first ten times I booted the computer, it would blue screen within the hour. I didn’t do a thing to fix it, and after the tenth time, it hasn’t blue screened since then, six months later. Yay for computer problems fixing themselves?
Actually that convinced me that my computer had gained sentience and is secretly planning to kill me unless I treat it nice. So I give it regular work outs by running through Crysis in high settings to keep it in shape. I’m not the only person who does that right? RIGHT???
Hey Shamus, you ignoring me? :)
Oh, gaddammit, fine! I’ll reinstall WoW this weekend.
A guy only has so much self-control, you know?
I hate all of you.
But we love having you with us.
Also, it may be worth your time (especially if you have spare bandwidth) to download WoW and install it online. It only has to download ~200 mb to be playable. There’s another 8 gb chunk of “important” data after that, and another 8 gb of other dataz. You can log in after the first 200 and it’ll stream the rest.
Streaming is kinda neat, though moreso in lands with unlimited internet.
@Veloxyll
You’re really not helping :)
Shamus and this blog broke me about two weeks ago.
I began regretting it the last couple days though. So if you still can resist! Resist you fool!
No – I didn’t resist. I reinstalled WoW and re-upped on the monthly. Was somewhat surprised to see all of my chars still intact (I think it’s been over three years since last I played). Of course, it has been so long since I played that I have largely forgotten how to manage my high-level chars. So, I started a new character.
It’s been fun visiting Azeroth again, but all-in-all I remembered almost instantly why I stopped playing all those years ago. I may stick it out for the month, but the grind doesn’t seem to have changed and neither have the asshats (that doesn’t include any of the fine folks here, of course!).
I am told time and time again that you have to stick it out to the highest levels before the game “really gets fun”, but then on the next page I see people bitching that there isn’t anything to do at the high levels except raiding.
Maybe I’m just hopelessly waiting for Morrowind in WoW clothing?
For the sake of hilarity, I decided to attempt to play on my laptop before the game was done downloading the “absolutely required” data when 4.0 hit.
It’s kind of funny. Despite what the launcher tells you, the game actually is playable! You just wind up running into solid, glowing walls while the zones load, chunk by chunk. :)
I’ve been planning on giving the trial another change next year (so the Cataclysm flood will pass). I’ll have to remember to try and do that. Sounds like the most fun I’ll with it too.
“I’ll have with it too.”
The really funny part is, that I felt there was something wrong with that sentence when I was posting it, but thought I was imagining things. Well, that’s what happens when I get complacent.
Thanks for that link to your blog, Shamus. I’ll try to get round to looking at it as soon as I can.
This comment wins. Have 500 internets. :-)
Since this is a news post I’ll go ahead and say this: you forgot to link this week’s Shamus Play’s again…
Holy crap that’s the exact same video card I got, it’s not the top but it’s rather good for how cheap it is.
That’s good to hear! Newegg only had a few reviews, but they were all positive.
I saw “Announcements”, and was hoping against hope you had insider knowledge about the release date of Episode 3. I’m crushed. :)
Stolen Pixels did not survive the Cataclysm
You should probably add Mumbles blog to your blogroll. I mean she’s added you. Also I don’t want to scroll to this post everytime I want to find it.
And I’m to lazy to favourite it. But I will say that I hate the blood elf area (pre-‘clysm) Don’t know why. They just rub me up the wrong way those elves.