Server Rankings

It isn’t 100% precise and not automatically updated, but it seems pretty much reliable. If you click on the server name you also get the details. It’s neat.

There’s another shared tracker here. I’ve downloaded the code and using it locally for the Mannoroth server. Sadly I cannot manage to turn on the php directive “allow_url_fopen”, so the drop down menu is broken.

EDIT: I’m so l33t. I hacked the script to use the cURL library and bypass the flag. There’s a nifty tutorial in the Dreamhost wiki. I’ll have to mail the author for this.

EDIT2: Blizzard has also started an official one. It seems updating only once a day, though.

My server is third at the moment (Mannoroth, one with the most balanced horde/alliance ratio), yesterday there was a huge (player-created) event in Silithus with both Horde and Alliance getting faction to trigger something else. Zerging one against the other in the most lagged environment ever. Lots of rooftop camping and the taurens with Kodos cockblocking the NPCs. I really don’t know the details and was busy with the guild in MC. I just know that it was probably the biggest PvP event ever. And it ended badly.

The server crashed more than 15 times (not a joke) before just dying completely for more than an hour (then I stopped checking).

We were digging a really big hole under the wall, and it happened to crash the server 10 times and have 2 GMs come and stop by to say hi.

Quoting from F13:

The REAL Catassery is from the poor top end raiding guilds who are competing to be the first ones to open the Gates.

The raiding guilds trying to open the gate must first earn (on ONE character) Friendly reputation with the Bronze Brood. You start out at FULL HATED. You get 1 reputation point for every turnin of an item (only able to be seen by characters deputized to help) which drops off of the elite Silithids in Silithus (think of it as similar to a Scourge stone). Since they drop at around 1-4 per mob, that means you have to kill 30-40 THOUSAND of them, all the while makeing sure someone who can loot the item is there to pick them up and pass them to your Rep Bitch.

And you thought Timbermaw faction was a cockblock.

And after you hit friendly, they smack you with a string of 10-15 raid level quests that will require you do do MC, BWL, Darnassus, Stormwind, and god knows what else raids. Sometimes on timers (one, i think, requires a Broodlord – Neff kill in under 5 hours).

On the ranting side:

Well, I’m disappointed to report that the catass who told me to stop levelling and farm linen is tacitly supported by the guild officers. It seems that while I was gone (6 months) the guild underwent a rather interesting metamorphosis from people who had played one game together well to a completely catassed-out-the-ass guild. In other words, I am a very small minority. (I even got booted today briefly for daring to tell the catass to stop telling me how to play – the guy’s not even an officer).

Ah well.

I fail to understand why Blizzard is falling into the trap that has snagged others – providing elite content for the 5% of ubers who don’t have jobs or families. Why why why? The disparity in equipment between those without jobs or other rl commitments and those with is just silly. Who designs these things anyway?

I want to play a game that’s designed by a 30- or 40-something person with a couple of kids and a job, not a 20 something person with neither.

Actually that’s one reason why most of the developers don’t play their games.

About the rant on guilds: as I said when discussing the voice chat, the content shapes the community and the guilds shape themselves around the content. It only seem just a responsibility of the players, when it’s actually a responsibility of the developers. It’s the game to dictate the way you play after the initial pact is made.

It was linked by Cosmik in the digest. Someone noticed?

We still have to see if this was before or after the decision to not do them to not risk to have problems in China.

The Giant Fucking Grind:

After a short series of initial quests, players will get a quest from an NPC in either Orgrimaar or Ironforge. The NPC tells them that opening the AQ gates is a realm-wide task of accumulated turn-ins across both factions. The NPCs will also tell you how many more of each item still must be turned in whenever you check in with them.

Full List of turn-in requirements for both factions:

MINERS:
90,000 Copper Bars – BOTH SIDES
22,000 Tin Bars – HORDE ONLY
28,000 Iron Bars – ALLIANCE ONLY
18,000 Mithril Bars – HORDE ONLY
24,000 Thorium Bars – ALLIANCE ONLY

HERBALISTS:
96,000 Peacebloom – HORDE ONLY
19,000 Firebloom – HORDE ONLY
26,000 Purple Lotus – BOTH SIDES
20,000 Arthas Tears – ALLIANCE ONLY
33.000 Stranglekelp – ALLIANCE ONLY

SKINNERS:
180,000 Light Leather – ALLIANCE ONLY
110,000 Medium Leather – ALLIANCE ONLY
60,000 Heavy Leather – HORDE ONLY
80,000 Thick Leather – BOTH SIDES
60,000 Rugged Leather – HORDE ONLY

COOKS:
10,000 Lean Wolf Steaks – HORDE ONLY
20,000 Roast Raptor – ALLIANCE ONLY
14,000 Rainbow Fin Albacore – ALLIANCE ONLY
17,000 Spotted Yellowtail – BOTH SIDES
10,000 Baked Salmon – HORDE ONLY

ANYONE:
800,000 Linen Bandages – ALLIANCE ONLY
600,000 Silk Bandages – ALLIANCE ONLY
250,000 Wool Bandages – HORDE ONLY
250,000 Mageweave Bandages – HORDE ONLY
400,000 Runecloth Bandages – BOTH SIDES

Each turn-in gets rep with every race of your faction; each turn-in of 10 or more gets extra rep.

When done the Scepter quest is activated. I believe this is the quest that finally opens the gates.

Some funny comments after the patch:

Frott:
I heard a rumor that the next world event is a factionwide push to paypal enough money to a gold farmer in order to “Expand the Bottomline.” Is bottomline some sort of new faction?

Menion:
Seriously fuck you Blizzard. This has got to be one of the stupidest things I have ever seen in an MMO. If they think I am going to help collect 800,000 Runecloth and just dump it all on an NPC, they can suck a big fat dick.

Borzak:
Did blizzard say earlier that the gates would open eventually on their own? Word around my server today was screw it let it happen in a month or two it’s not worth it.

Pity the new person who wants to level stuff such as tailoring or skinning now.

Typhon:
Artificial, cockblocky bullshit as a way to encourage force me to appreciate the “world changing” content more doesn’t make that artificial, cockblocky bullshit fun for me.

Gloating about how artificial and cockblocky it is, now that’s fun!

Haemish:
WoW, taking poopsock grinding catassing to all new levels!

ZERG AHOY GATES OPEN SESAME NIGGAS

This is probably the biggest grind ever designed.

Only a genius could have imagined something like this. I want a medal for him. I also heard that the mats will be used to build a Babel Tower shaped as a dick right in the middle of Stromwind. The server that will open the gates first will have the biggest one and it will go up till above the clouds.

Seriously, I really don’t see how someone who isn’t completely ill could be interested in this sort of thing. Design-wise it’s probably the most retarted idea ever. Ingenuous, considering that the “cool factor” is completely about the scale and nothing else. It’s big, huge. But it’s empty. The true meaning of “inflated”. The design naiveness of a total noob. Like the multimillion scores on a pingball. The sense of greed just because of it. A big, fat dick.

But then I also have no faith in the humanity and predict that the gates will open on the first server in less than a week.

Factional rewards, extra loot, and the opening of Ahn’Quiraj.

I don’t believe the extra loot would be motivating enough or this would turn into a massive dupe when it is instead mostly aimed to remove “leftovers” from the economy. If you are cashing more than what you are spending, and if every player is in the same situation, this event would be enough to break the game. So I consider it more like a lottery, where there’s a minority that will receive some good loot and make some cash, while most of the players will waste more than what is returning back to them.

People still have the old habit to confuse the journey with the destination and here the journey pretty much sucks if it isn’t for the reward. This just doesn’t add anything worthwhile to the game that isn’t self-motivated.

I don’t find a “massive farming event” something that motivates me to play or make me enjoy doing it. So I avoid it.

I will be damned if I put even a copper bar into that :)

The only *valuable* element in the whole mechanic is the server participation that builds identity. But there were many better ways to implement something similar and still add something worthwhile to the game instead of an inflated, exalted grind.

And this is not even all because the grind seems to not stop with the opening of the gates. It seems that most of the loot in the two raid dungeons is also attached to a massive factional grind. Instead of starting from “Neutral” as it happened for example with Zul’Gurub, this time you start from “Hated”:

Brood of Nozdormu 0/36000 Hated

Long way to climb up till “exalted”.

As I said, an exalted grind. They polished it nicely but this doesn’t change what it is.

On the other side, this is what I read from the other forum:

There is a HUGEASS laundry list of quests and the like that must be done for the Brood of Noztdramu (sp?) (Bronze Dragon Flight) in order to open the gates, many of which require retrieving items from such places as BWL, MC, the Stormwind Royal Library (thats right, Horde Raids on Stormwind). and other things, as well as insane grindage to faction up your reputation with the Brood.

I tried to think about something barely interesting released by Blizzard in this last year. But I really couldn’t find anything. Some encounters in Zul-Gurub, maybe. Imho the game has started going downhill since E3 2004. What made it successful was already there before that date.

Can you think of a moderately significant feature that actually offered something worthwhile to the game? I’m asking seriously.

Beside this, there are enough bad bugs to make everyone happy. In short, the mail system is broken (cannot retrieve items), the auction house is broken (disconnecting people and crashing), the BattleGrounds are broken (mass crashing people out of the game and flagging them as ‘deserter’ when they are back, stuns not working, high level players in low-level BGs due to queues inconsistences between the alts, ‘deserted’ flag applied to all the players if an instance ends without a winner), the guilds are broken (cannot invite) and some raid encounters in Molten Core (banish doesn’t work anymore, traps don’t work) and Zul’Gurub (the stuns crash the client) are broken too.

Your lovely UI mods are also broken, but that’s a given. (mine included, they disabled it. I have kind words for you today)

The low level players are enjoying the new influx of high levels mass-farming their stuff. With the prices in the AH skyrocketing it’s a nice day for them.

EDIT- There’s a list of bugs about the patch here. Fun.

I was also pleased to experience this one:

# Warriors once again have a huge problem that causes them to go out-of-synch with the server. When you charge, or basically use any other skills, your computer goes out of synch with the server. For instance, causing you to have a breath meter and continue losing breath long after you have exited the water.

I was in the water for two seconds for a pull and the breath meter didn’t stop till I died. Repair fun.

I also confirm that the Warrior sword specialization (talent) is still broken and that the “Retaliation” skill had a HUGE UNDOCUMENTED PvP NERF. It was the most powerful skill available (30 min cooldown) and now basically useless in PvP because they added to it a GARISH graphical effect, making it simply too evident to not detect and easily avoid.

If you are looking for a patch mirror (WoW 1.9) go here or here.

That’s from where I’m getting it.