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Second World of Warcraft Expansion Launched, Conquered
Posted by
Soulskill
on Sun Nov 16, 2008 12:46 PM
from the worldwide-caffeine-shortage dept.
from the worldwide-caffeine-shortage dept.
The much-anticipated second expansion to World of Warcraft, entitled Wrath of the Lich King, launched on Thursday, introducing a new continent, raising the level cap to 80, and bringing a wealth of new items, spells, dungeons, and monsters to the popular MMO. Crowds gathered and lines formed outside stores around the world leading up to the release. Massively has put together a series of articles for players wishing to familiarize themselves with the expansion, and CVG has a piece discussing the basics as well. It didn't take long for the first person to reach level 80; a French player called "Nymh" reached the level cap on his Warlock only 27 hours after the expansion went live. Not to be outdone, a guild named "TwentyFifthNovember" managed to get at least 25 raiders to 80 and then cleared all of the current expansion raid content less than three days after the launch. Fortunately for them, the next three content patches are each expected to contain new, more difficult raids.
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Review: <em>Wrath of the Lich King</em> 545 comments
Since shortly after its release in late 2004, World of Warcraft has held the position of the most popular MMO, quickly outstripping predecessors such as Everquest and Ultima Online, and continuing to hold the lead despite competition from contemporaries and newer offerings, like Warhammer Online. When World of Warcraft's first expansion, The Burning Crusade, was released, it built on an already rich world by using feedback from players and two extra years of design experience to work on condensing the game to focus more on the best parts. Now, with the release of Wrath of the Lich King, Blizzard seems to have gotten themselves ahead of the curve; in addition to the many changes intended to remove the "grind" aspect that is so prevalent in this genre, they've gone on to effectively put themselves in the player's shoes and ask, "What would make this more fun? Wouldn't it be cool if..?" Read on for the rest of my thoughts.
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Everyone who cares.... (Score:5, Funny)
...is in Northrend.
Re:Everyone who cares.... (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't care about you... therefore you aren't anything that matters either. See how I got that twisted around?
But you did touch on why it does matter -- it's a [sub-]cultural phenomenon. Increasingly, things that exist only in a virtual sense matters more an more. Increasingly, the virtual world and its economy has affects in this real world... at least I think it's the real world.
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Re:Everyone who cares.... (Score:4, Funny)
you are erroneus...
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Re:Everyone who cares.... (Score:4, Funny)
No, I'm Night Elf Erroneus.
He's Blood Elf Magratheus.
Sheesh!
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Re:Everyone who cares.... (Score:5, Interesting)
really, how is this stuff that matters?
If the game play doesn't interest you any more, then consider an IT client-server delivery system that manages 11 million customers on a daily basis, each of whom have up to 9 entities per x servers (I don't know how many there are now, but their are 3 major groupings of them) each entity with up to a hundred objects or so each with their own attributes, with those objects involved with a number of transfers, creations and disposals per hours-long encounters, and a similar number of entities living on the server (as PvE mobs).
Think of 11 million customers and the absolutely monsterous OLTP system that allows for all that database management with a surprisingly small amount of lag overall.
If the computer system that supports all that isn't "stuff that matters" then I suspect you may find spending your time on a different forum more profitable.
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Re:Everyone who cares.... (Score:5, Interesting)
The day someone throws up an article on this, I will be more than just interested, it will be a fantastic read I'm sure! That wasn't today though was it?
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Re:Everyone who cares.... (Score:5, Insightful)
The most popular game of all time is going to get written about. I don't care either, but I'm not bitching that the news isn't exactly tailored to my interests.
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Re:Everyone who cares.... (Score:5, Insightful)
The most popular game of all time is going to get written about. I don't care either, but I'm not bitching that the news isn't exactly tailored to my interests.
By that logic we should see a lot more stories about The Sims, which contrary to your suggestion is actually more popular than WoW...
This story would be fairly pointless no matter which game it was about. "Game player beats expansion pack for game" is not exactly news no matter how you look at it.
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Re:Everyone who cares.... (Score:5, Interesting)
So would I. Large IT structures interest me. Huge computer installations fascinate me. Seeing how information structures interrelate and the ebb and flow of cache management gives me a silvery tingle in my eyeballs* (*that's poetry, I'm too old for drugs) and an itch to connect wires to see what they do.
Whenever my character on WoW gets hung in loot-lag I wonder -- did they run out of journal space (they must use journals, I've seen compelling game-play evidence) or did one of their load balancers chuck a reggie?** (**Australian cultural isomorphism, no apologies). That little moment of invisibility when I log in to Orgrimmar, but can still play -- how much parallelism is going on? How do they link those little conversation bubbles with the chat so quickly - is that my client or the server coordinating that?
Really, it's like another internal game, second-guessing how they move so many chess pieces around. But geez I would SO love to see a network layout.
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Re:Everyone who cares.... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Everyone who cares.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Myth 1. WoW is a diabolical money sink
Untrue. At its most expensive, factoring in the initial cost and its expansions to date, WoW averages to about US$18 a month (conservative estimate). I'm not too familiar with costs in America but two trips to the movies and you're spending more. A gourmet pie a week and you're spending more. A few drinks with friends once a month and you're spending more. These activites are once-off entertainment and I highly doubt a pie a week is the extent of one's monthly entertainment bill.
In addition, there are hundreds of servers, each servicing tens of thousands of players and all of the maintainence, hardware and bandwidth costs that come with it. There's a huge development team fixing the most trivial of bugs and developing new content every couple of months. There's a huge support team consisting of the usual helpdesk drones as well as in-game game masters (who aren't just any old gamer off the street; they're veritable WoW gurus). All of this isn't cheap. All of this isn't possible with a standard once-off $40 game. On the side, a once-off $40 game that captures my attention for more than a month is a rare thing these days.
Myth 2. WoW is a giant grind
While this is subjective, I have to argue against it. It is true that the first 50-60 levels of WoW are definitely repetative and while I'm sure Blizzard are aware of this, I don't think their steps to fix it are the right ones (they're just making it faster). However, once past this hurdle you are in the clear. BC raised the bar with quests that capture your interest. Wrath has redefined the bar with some extremely fun quests; they appear to have redesigned their whole philosophy on questing for the latest expansion.
But that's quests. You can grind if you want, nothing is stopping you, but there are all sorts of things you can do -- especially with the new achievements. There are battlegrounds. There is exploration. There are dungeons. In the middle of doing anything, world PvP can erupt - my favourite kind. At end game you don't need to worry about quests if you don't want to. It's an MMO; there's more things to do than you can shake a stick at. But I do agree on the repetativeness of questing pre-50's before your character has a chance to gain most of its class-defining abilities and gear.
Myth 3. There is not enough content
This should probably get merged into #2 but whatever. I was standing outside a fort the other day wondering what I should do. It was Hallow's End, a halloween event that adds a swathe of seasonal content to the game, and I was struck by a thought: if I were to roll a brand new character, I would have more things to do than I could fathom. The achievements system ensures that there's an extra layer to everything you do. The dungeons and reputations and achievements and pvp and large number of unique class/talent combinations would keep you busy for years. The true scope of the game, pre-wrath, suddenly hit me like a stapler hitting the balding head of an IT consultant as he enshrined the virtues of domain-centric networking infrastructure to a technical executive in a large services corporation that delivers banking and financial services to leading institutions across the globe.
Myth 4. If you play WoW you have no life
A catch-all argument that can encapsulate any game or non-mainstream entertainment activity on the planet. If you watch anime you have no life. If you collect stamps you have no life. If you go tramping you have no life. It's fun. It's social. It's not getting tanked in a bar at 2am. Get over it. As an aside, I'm a
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Re:Everyone who cares.... (Score:5, Informative)
The raids aren't anywhere near as big a part of WoW as you make it seem. The reason they get so much attention, I think, is because Blizzard's done them so completely and well, unlike other mmorpgs.
New Quests: there's about 1000 across Northrend. (and fyi, the last big patch before WotLK content - 2.4 - added about 50, 30 of which were repeatable every day.)
New Mechanics: that's an incredibly vague term, but there are the new phasing and knockback systems, and the new inscription profession. Also, Blizzard doesn't have a design philosophy that lends itself to including large amounts of whatever to the game. They add in consistent stuff that works with the rest of the game.
The new expansion also adds a new class, revamps two others, adds ten more levels (and corresponding new abilities) for all characters, an entire new continent to explore and see new things in, more crafting options.
And the design on all of this blows away what's come before. The new zones feel really alive - they look fantastic, sound wonderful, and offer interesting and new ways to get around them. Everyone who got off the boat or zeppelin just stopped and went "Wow." for a few minutes. And then we hit the dungeons - the third of the starter dungeons, Azjol-Nerub, has to be played to be believed. It's half an hour of terrifying beauty, of wriggling mummified *things* laying between two golden mushrooms in caverns man was never meant to see, had never seen. You look down vistas swarming with spiders crawling over the most beautiful architecture yet - and then you jump down to join them. It's lovecraftian and slasher-esque and Indiana Jones all at the same time. It's fantastic, and probably the best experience I've had ever in WoW, and one of the best in a game, period.
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Re:Everyone who cares.... (Score:5, Informative)
The second, which I forget the name of, is some sort of deep "open air" city with a babylonian flavour to it, inside a gigantic abyssal cavern. Within 10 seconds of walking in you can see the entire thing. Everyone on ventrilo simultaneously went "whoa."
Blizzard has really delivered.
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Re:Everyone who cares.... (Score:5, Funny)
Everyone who got off the boat or zeppelin just stopped and went "Wow." for a few minutes. And then we hit the dungeons - the third of the starter dungeons, Azjol-Nerub, has to be played to be believed. It's half an hour of terrifying beauty, of wriggling mummified *things* laying between two golden mushrooms in caverns man was never meant to see, had never seen. You look down vistas swarming with spiders crawling over the most beautiful architecture yet.
Visit the nearest botanic garden in your city, you'll see that caverns, spiders and ants are much more detailed than that. And there are no dragons.
And real water bump mapping? Oh.. such a beautiful thing.
And real women? They cast lots of invisible spells. And are much more beautiful and detailed than ever.
Oh, that and you need to get laid.
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Please keep me informed (Score:4, Insightful)
whenever anyone else makes it to level 80, I really don't want to miss any of their important in game breakthroughs.
Stuff that matters, indeed.
Re:Please keep me informed (Score:5, Funny)
The only thing better than grinding to 80 is vicariously experiencing the grind through the achievements of strangers.
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Re:Please keep me informed (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously - how many areas are just the same area over and over again with different graphics? The towns and mountains and such are in different places, but by level 10 you've pretty much seen all the gameplay there is to see.
I predict Northrend will have individual monsters slowly roaming back and forth over small areas of ground. Occasionally there will be a few monsters standing together. Virtually every quest will involve killing X of them. To step things up, you can kill difficult elite monsters while in a group. The combat will be so simple that an 8-line perl script can do it.
When you try to imagine the game without the graphics, you realize how little gameplay there actually is. It might be feasible to make a nethack-style game that captures every element of WoW gameplay, but that would be a very dull game indeed.
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Re:Please keep me informed (Score:5, Funny)
The combat will be so simple that an 8-line perl script can do it.
Considering you could write an operating system in five, I guess that's pretty complex.
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Re:Please keep me informed (Score:4, Interesting)
I predict Northrend will have individual monsters slowly roaming back and forth over small areas of ground. Occasionally there will be a few monsters standing together. Virtually every quest will involve killing X of them. To step things up, you can kill difficult elite monsters while in a group. The combat will be so simple that an 8-line perl script can do it.
Yes, yes. And every computer game can be reduced to punching a few buttons and / or clicking on the mouse in a repetitive fashion. Yet despite this simplification, they have always been fun.
More on this later.
And that's selling the graphics really short. Sure the graphics are a big part of WoW. Blizzard does a really nice job with it. Some people don't care. My group runs around sight-seeing.
I'm not saying that something more wouldn't be great. I miss a lot of UO and various MUDs I've played in the past. Indeed - WoW is much simpler than these environments. And much more restricted. But again - it doesn't mean it's not fun.
So why is it fun? Well - to begin with there's nothing wrong with traditional escort, FedEx, or even kill quests. If they're done right. WoW's quests usually have some reasoning behind it. They work to expand the storyline if that's what you want to get in to (I do). They put you in to the content and give you a reason to interact with your environment. Nothing wrong with it.
But yeah - kill quests alone have limits. This expansion pack is introducing new elements such as vehicles that you get to toy with fairly soon in to the content. There ARE different aspects being rolled in to the quests. My group is still pretty early in to the content and we've gotten to experience some of it already. And we're having fun.
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Re:Please keep me informed (Score:4, Interesting)
When you try to imagine the game without the graphics, you realize how little gameplay there actually is. It might be feasible to make a nethack-style game that captures every element of WoW gameplay, but that would be a very dull game indeed.
The one thing that Nethack lacks, that would make it an instant WoW-Killer, is multiplayer.
Seriously. Multiplayer-Nethack? That's 10 times the gameplay, depth and challenge of WoW right there.
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Re:Please keep me informed (Score:5, Interesting)
You sure? One of the great things about NetHack is that you have all the time you want before doing anything. Fall down a hole and get surrounded by 'H's, take a break, read up on what you can do, decide the best way to continue. None of this "I must act as soon as possible" stuff.
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Re:Please keep me informed (Score:4, Interesting)
When you try to imagine the game without the graphics, you realize how little gameplay there actually is.
As opposed to say first-person shooters, you remove the graphics from that game, and your left with what?
You are in a room with 3 first-aid kits, a player Zero is camping the Quad power up and has spotted you entering the room
Quake> Kill Zero
Zero was killed by Bazar, your score is now 5
Quake> Camp Quad
Ultimately most people play games to have fun. Not everyone appreciates a game where to kill a target you have to have done computations in calculus to plot the best path of attack, or in the case of nethack, play such a perfect game as a tiny screwup can result in death.
Some people want to just be able to run up to something and press the kill button.
For those seeking a greater challenge, they can do PvP or raids.
PvP is where your fighting another player, its as complex as it can get as its a game of attacks and counters. Success is usually a mixture of gear and skill.
Or you could raid with other players, the encounters are more challenging and require things like good timing. You could also pick up a leadership, helping coordinate members of the team. Someone needs to lead the raid, the tanks, the healers, and the dps.
Ultimately what I'm trying to say is there is there IS a rich tapestry of gameplay. But if your just out killing stuff by yourself, you not likely to see much of it.
Do some raiding, or enter some battlegrounds for pvp.
Most of all MMORPG games are a social game, make/get some friends and/or join a guild, and you'll be having far more fun.
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Re:Please keep me informed (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Please keep me informed (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Please keep me informed (Score:5, Funny)
+7 Charisma
-100 Social Life
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Re:Please keep me informed (Score:4, Insightful)
Disclaimer: I used to play WoW.
This is still interesting news to anyone that follows games. World of Warcraft is one of the most popular video games ever. I know several people who don't play video games, but they do play WoW. To hear about how some people absolutely demolished the new content is pretty cool. Blizzard spent how much time making this expansion, and then it all got run through in less than 30 hours? That's nuts.
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Re:Please keep me informed (Score:5, Insightful)
Blizzard spent how much time making this expansion, and then it all got run through in less than 30 hours? That's nuts.
Nobody "ran it through" in under 30 hours. What some people did was say "we beat what we consider the important bits, so we call the game beat". A good analogy would perhaps be completing the Terran campaign in Starcraft and saying "I beat the game, because what matters to me is the Terran campaign". SK/Nihilum probably skipped much of the "leveling" content, decidedly skipped most instances, and rushed straight into the raid game.
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Re:Please keep me informed (Score:5, Informative)
They didn't demolish new content. They demolished content they've been playing for months on the beta server.
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Re:Please keep me informed (Score:5, Informative)
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Addicts indeed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Addicts indeed (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Addicts indeed (Score:4, Insightful)
In my experience--based solely on the people I know that play WoW, not necessarily on the stories you read online--the likelihood of Wow at least *interfering* with your social life is pretty high. You might decide not to go out with some friends one night because you're just so close to leveling up or completing a quest. That might sound like a really minor problem, but it adds up. The probability of it interfering increasing significantly if you are a member of a raiding guild. Since raiders are the people mentioned in the blurb, I think the OP's point was valid. He didn't even seem to be criticizing all WoW players, just those who rush out to "beat" the expansion quicker than anyone else.
Remember, there are exceptions to every rule. Some people that use cocaine do so without any noticeable negative side effects on their lives. A lot of the time, however, there are very bad, very noticeable side effects socially, physically, and financially. I know that's an over the top example, but I think the same is true of WoW. You might be an exception, and if so, that's great. But just because you continue to thrive despite playing WoW doesn't mean others are as lucky. Something to keep in mind, that's all...
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Re:Addicts indeed (Score:5, Funny)
Amen. To all you wow players: Shut that computer down and go out get some fresh air. Life is much too short to waste it on playing a bloody game.
And this comes from someone who is posting to slashdot on his laptop as he is skiing down K2 being chased by ninjas while nailing the new Bond chick.
Fixed that little bit of hypocrisy there for you.
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Re:Addicts indeed (Score:4, Insightful)
*Sigh*
The expression "life" has gotten some funny co-notations these days.
Today, it is possible to not have a "life" actually, and being judged to "waste" it by doing something someone infected with clichés and stereotypes doesn't understand.
I'm not really referring to the OP here, as it looks like his post is something that should have been modded "Funny", but was modded "Insightful" by people who misunderstand what he was saying. But to you who are so stuck up in your romantic ideas that you believe that what you define as "fresh air" holds some sort of magical spell that makes everything so much better and morally "correct", let me tell you something:
Life is not short, life is not long. Life is life, and everyone, wether they never go out of their basement, or got a nobel price, are equally successful at it. In the end were all corpses, and all the memes and ideas we thought were so meaningful disappear with the rest of your consciousness.
Now, stop looking down at people, any people, and especially wow players. By many of the ways that you think you can measure success, they are more successful then you. They socialize more then you do, albeit in a different environment, they have more of what you define as "fun" then you do, although some are more or less mentally addicted to some of the notions with the game. Your narrow minded definition of what is good and what is bad is simply wrong, and just because you don't understand that socialization is not something that disappears just because one does not only do it in what you and others paradoxically termed "Real Life", you are not in any measure generally more successful then those who do play an MMORPG. You are as little and as much meaningful as everyone else, and you are by no means justified in judging others as "wasting" what you call "Life".
*Sigh of relief*
Now that that is out of the way, let me say that i do not hate you, the person to which i reply. I hate the mindset of which that statement generally belongs. Although what i am saying is somewhat paradoxical as i am actually judging people when expressing my emotions about one type of judgement, i felt that this approach was best to get my feelings about that statement across.
And for the record, i played WoW since launch, quitting a year ago. When the last of my IRL friends decided to quit i quit as well, and left an avatar to which i had devoted much time, some of the nicest people i had ever met, and an universe in which i had had a much more rewarding experience than i ever would have had if i never would have played at all. During my WoW playing period, i still went out with my friends, i did not fail at school, and i still went to and arranged parties, even though i didn't find them very fun. However I recognized that i wanted to expand my social network, and socializing "IRL" was by no means something that i was bad at.
Please, abandon the idea that playing WoW equates to the lack of "Life", and that "life" can in fact be lacked. Throw it in a dumpster, smash it with a spade and please set it on fire, and while your at it, throw some of the ideas that that meme brings with as well, especially the idea that fresh air is and has been better then it's opposite (whatever that is).
Such ideas just make me so angry, and forces me to post long inflammatory and self righteous posts on a comment section that would otherwise be filled with WoW speak, which is really quite embarrassing.
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Eventually (Score:5, Insightful)
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65 hours... (Score:5, Interesting)
Not to be outdone, a guild named "TwentyFifthNovember" managed to get at least 25 raiders to 80 and then cleared all of the current expansion raid content less than three days after the launch
They should make them twice as strong as they're "supposed to" be, and drop them say 5% each day. I'd make that competition last so much longer and frustrate these raidoholics, lol.
Re:65 hours... (Score:5, Interesting)
That's actually an idea I've been campaigning for. These raiding guilds like to show off how great they are, yet they're just incredibly dedicated. Your average guild can't even get people to log in for scheduled events on time.
So up the ante, make the raids insanely hard even for pro's. Make them unfair (like Naxx), require a distorted balance of classes, designed to engender social infighting. Give them some really hard problems to overcome inside and outside the game. Plant a few CSR "reps" in these guilds, have them create chaos, fan the flames of egos. Basically get them to play the game like normal people so the dev's can focus on the 99%, not the 1%.
Then gradually ease up as your main player base starts to reach the top. "Patch" content that was "harder than anticipated", etc.
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Rush to completion (Score:5, Insightful)
I've never understood people who feel the need to rush to complete game content. After paying for a game, I like to take my time and enjoy it. I guess maybe people see it as another way of competing with each other? Or is it just obsession?
Maybe I have a slightly different perspective than most. I'm a game developer, so I guess I'm slightly more aware than most of how much work goes into every single game. It's slightly depressing sometimes, because you've put a year or more of work into a product, and you've still only produced enough content to last a long weekend.
Re:Rush to completion (Score:5, Insightful)
I've never understood people who feel the need to rush to complete game content. After paying for a game, I like to take my time and enjoy it. I guess maybe people see it as another way of competing with each other? Or is it just obsession?
If you're this good at warcraft, lording your level above more casual plays is all you've got. You're going to want to reach the top fast!
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Re:Rush to completion (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a sad day when maxing out your character is considered "conquering" the game.
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Re:Rush to completion (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:Rush to completion (Score:5, Funny)
The dating scene?
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I really enjoyed WoW when it launched... (Score:4, Insightful)
...and I really enjoyed BC when it launched, but not as much as I first enjoyed the launch. I thought about getting The Frozen Throne, but this kind of behavior on my server, which I'm expected to emulate in order to enjoy 80% of Blizzard's 'Content', has made me realize this generation of MMOs is not for me.
MMO developers cite limited budgets as their reason for not being able to make "better MMOs." Blizzard, however makes approx $15 a month from each of its 10 Million players. Effectively, their revenues are higher than most MMO's entire budget, every month. The truth is, MMO publishers *cough vivendi cough* have come to realize that MMOs make the most money when they emulate casinos. A pleasant, polished atmosphere with lots of slot machines where someone is "winning" every second, and there's constant reminders of that. Who'd ever want to leave?
So please, if you ever meet me, and I say that I don't think WoW is a "good game," please keep in mind that Jackpot machines are also "good games."
Speedruns And Completion (Score:5, Insightful)
If you look at the speedrun subculture, people can "complete" most classic, deeply loved, games in ridiculously short amounts of time.
Does it devalue Doom to tens of millions of players, many of whom logged hundreds or thousands of hours in it, knowing that someone's managed a speedrun in an hour or two?
Besides, modern MMOs are about a huge number of things interacting:
Have they looted enough of the highest level drops that their players are now fully kitted out in the best gear available? Or did they just scrape by with enough to claim they could do it, only to get slapped down in PvP, next week, by a guild that didn't claim "completion" and is now better equipped?
Have they collected everything they need for their crafters to make the highest end items they also had opened up to them?
Have they gained the new mounts?
How about PvP specific loot? Have they gained the full sets of that stuff that were put there for the huge number of players that don't consider level 80 and a few raids to be the pinacle of the game?
And that's all before you get in to the broader culture of a game like that... mapping things out, raising interesting alts, side quests, etc.
A junior high bully gets to claim he's the most awesomest by having no one who can beat him in a fight. Yet the kids who're on dates, getting in to bands, on the sports teams, even nerdier stuff like winning science olympiads or actually understanding their classes so they'll get great grades in highschool, a great college place and be much better off in life... they're probably not all that impressed that, yes, he got to the top on a single axis. Did he really "complete" junior high as he likes to tell himself?
As someone who's taking his time with WoW... (Score:5, Insightful)
...I just gotta say they missed most of the fun of the game.
Granted, I have one character, a level 36 Warlock, that's taken me something like 3 months to get up to. But you know what? I'm probably having a bit more fun and getting more for my money than the people who have to powerlevel to 80 as fast as possible.
It makes PvP harder for me (as I can't compete with people who twink their guys out with the best gear), and I generally don't go into the instances/raids (I solo most of the time, and my guild is more social than goal-driven), but I get to actually enjoy the art, the people, the economy, and the experience.
Getting to 80 as fast as possible is like trying to ride every single ride at Cedar Point as fast and as efficiently as possible, as opposed to a group of friends who go on what they want when they want.
Which group has more "fun"?
Closed Beta Raiders kill Live content? No wai... (Score:5, Informative)
This story is not news.
TwentyFifthNovember is a guild made up of Nihilum and SK-Gaming (aka Curse). Both guilds had members that experienced Naxxramas at level 60 (when it was originally released), and most of the bosses in Naxxramas (retuned and re-released for level 80) are largely unchanged since that time. Both of these guilds had very significant presences in the Closed Beta, where this raid content was available for anyone who could gather enough players. Many of them killed these bosses for weeks and months, before the game went live. The slight differences between these bosses at level 60 versus these bosses at level 80 is minor enough that even those who DIDN'T see the retuned content would still know how to get past it.
Raiding in World of Warcraft is more about skill than gear (although there are a few hard gear checks, such as needing 8.5k HP to survive Naj'entus area-effect nuke). These guys certainly are skillful, but there was never any doubt that they would steamroll all of this content as soon as they hit 80. The slightly bigger concern is that they managed to get 25 members to level 80 in ~65 hours of gameplay. Still, with the first 80 after 27 hours, it wasn't unexpected. People were hitting level 70 in Burning Crusade in about the same amount of time, and once the strategy for doing so was optimized, anyone (with a lot of time, and/or friends) could grind out the levels.
One thing to note is that these guys don't yet have the ultra-rare achievement awards, for example:
http://www.wowhead.com/?achievement=2138 [wowhead.com]
Heroic Glory of the Raider involves a series of moderate to very hard challenges in Naxx, with the reward being an exclusive Proto-Drake mount. Until they get that, it's not news.. and even if they do get that, they've STILL got the qualifiers mentioned earlier.
Re:Athene (Score:4, Interesting)
Athene got to 80 in 13 hours..
But not 13 consecutive hours, since Athene was banned at level 79 for - as far as I can tell - playing the game too well.
Getting your account suspended for doing something which does not involve hacking, require any 3rd party software, or cause grief for other players is frankly ridiculous.
It's even worse given that he'd been good enough to ask a GM for permission to play the game that way, and got an affirmitive.
Parent
Re:Athene (Score:4, Interesting)
And he got all of it.
Anyone who doesn't call it cheating has a pretty conservative definition of the term.
Parent
Re:Athene (Score:5, Insightful)
He went into instances with friends, left group, tagged all the mobs, then let them do all the damage. since those mobs were designed to be taken down by a group, they gave lots of experience. And he got all of it. Anyone who doesn't call it cheating has a pretty conservative definition of the term.
I know what he did, and what he did not do. He did not hack the game. He DID ask permission to play in that way, and was granted it.
That's why it's not cheating. Call it something else - gaming the system, powerlevelling, exploiting even. But since it's not against the rules of the game, as set out in software, and it's not against the rules of the game as set out by the GMs - remember, he asked! - it's frankly not cheating by any definition, other than possibly a stupid and jealous definition.
Parent
Re:Athene (Score:5, Interesting)
To be precise, it was Darus, another Paladin, that they were power leveling. Athene and the other people in the group didn't get any XP at all during the experiment.
Athene did a full half hour video report on it on his website [worldofathene.com], including the part where his whole party were disconnected by Blizzard GMs and got their accounts suspended temporarily.
It seems to me that Blizzard were monitoring the attempt throughout, and in the end decided that the game wasn't meant to be played this way after all and decided to break up the party. Maybe they were afraid of the publicity that would come out if Athenes group claimed the record. Perhaps they thought it would look bad, that the game that they had spent years to produce was demonstrated to be beatable in less than a day.
Parent