It means 'nothing'
WoW
Something You Probably Don’t Know
Jan 22nd
I’ve always wanted the ability to track information about my character in WoW and the Armory has mostly served this purpose in a limited fashion. The reason is because despite the significant strides Blizzard go to to expose data it is still housed in its own little silo. The fact that the Armory is there is great, but what if information about your character could come to you instead of you needing to go to it?
If there is one thing that I usually want to know it is events on my calendar and little did I know that it is indeed possible to pull your calendar data out of the armory into calendar software such as Outlook or Google Calendar. This was such a huge revelation to me that I absolutely had to write about it here.
After logging into the armory and loading up the desired character, visit the calendar and you will see the following:
Clicking on it will display the screen where you can select the types of events you want to appear on the calendar feed and it is also possible to add the events of your other characters (a maximum of 5).
After selecting the options you desire and copying the feed address to your clipboard, you can then follow the instructions on the Calendar Feed FAQ for how to add to either Outlook or Google Calendar.
The beauty of it is that because it’s a feed it will be automatically updated, so once added it will always be as up-to-date as the armory calendar (which I assume is very up-to-date since it is possible to accept or decline invitations through it).
Unfortunately this probably won’t work for anyone thinking of setting this up on their office PC if they already can’t access the armory, but I’d be happy to hear if it does.
Is there convenient, time-saving thing you know about that you’d like to share? Let me know!
Send in the Penguins
Jan 10th
When succesive raids have failed, the only remaining option is penguins.
Gaming Galore
Dec 14th
In my WoW hiatus I’ve been playing Lotro and since I purchased the Mines of Moria expansion but never actually got to see any of it due to my bad habit of deleting toons because I got bored with them I was determined this time.
The good news is that I hit level 50 this week and headed into the gates to Moria only to be presented with a string of quests all not-in-Moria and then given a quest that forced me to level a legendary weapon (something unique to Lotro) before I can consider getting past the Watcher in the Water and finally getting into Moria.
Another thing unique to Lotro is session play which lets you assume the role of an NPC to experience either a part of the story from a different perspective or even life as a chicken (which probably sounds ridiculous but it’s incredibly fun). Anyway, there is a session play quest as part of the quests I’ve done so far that shows the fall of the Mines of Moria. At least it would have if Turbine had the story-telling and technical ability with which to do so. The quest was supposed to be the fall of Moria, but it was actually the unveiling of the (a?) Balrog. It’s also worth mentioning that the Balrog looked bloody horrible, but I’m a bit spoiled after seeing one portayed in the films. Would it have hurt to use a few more polygons though? Anything with wings needs a lot of care!
As far as introductions go, Mines of Moria so far sucks. Developer Tip: Get people into the content as quickly as possible!
Contrast that with the latest WoW patch and it’s night and day. Lotro’s strength has historically been in story telling, but WoW is a serious challenger and with the phasing being improved in the future it will be even better. My guild was doing Ice-Crown Citadel on the weekend and managed to get the first three bosses down. The third boss, which is a battle between the alliance and horde gunships, is just about the most fun I think I’ve ever had in WoW. Now if only they’d let us keep the jump packs…
Moments of Cleverness
Dec 5th
I’ve recently implemented a small change I’m rather proud of to our company website that will automatically display any recipes we have on file that make use of a product you’re viewing. At the moment I’ve only got Texturas recipes so that’s the only thing that will show them, but in time more recipes will mean it slowly spreads to all products.
While I’m on the topic of Texturas, they are an amazing product that I never knew about which allows you to some quite creative things with food that as a food consumer I always took for granted. No more though!
Anyway, the display of recipes is all done using the magic and power of the Views module for Drupal. Quite amazing really and perhaps I will come back to this post when my brother isn’t waiting for me in WoW to detail exactly how I did it.
Ok, Who’s Already Done It?
Nov 5th
Fight!
I know a couple guildies I’m certain will have already jumped on this. Addicts, I tell you! Now if only I could get Oui to say yes…
Guild Homes
Nov 4th
When guilds advertise for new members one of the things they invariably mention they have, other than a tabard, is forums. Such forums are usually run on phpbb, free php-based message board software, and while the formation of a hub through which a community might be built seems like a good idea there are realities which clash with such attempts.
Playing WoW With and Without Family
Oct 21st
My brother and his kids are still chugging along on WoW and I put in the occasional few hours with them, but I still find playing with them incredibly dull.
Just last Monday Oui and I were helping my brother with some group quests in Icecrown and the results were not exactly what we had hoped for. Firstly, roll call:
- Ferag – 80 Fury Warrior (my brother)
- Tardin – 80 Shadow Priest (Me)
- Udmarge – 80 Discipline Priest (Oui)
Despite having Oui on his Horde toon, because none of his alliance toons were high enough, I wasn’t expecting any trouble, but my brother surprised us once more by dying about 3 seconds into each fight (I had been trying to heal him) after which Oui would pick them up and tank while I dps’ed.
So to summarise:
- Warrior dies near-instantly
- Discipline priest tanks
- Shadow Priest DPS’s
I was the only person filling their traditional role!
Nice Try…
Sep 30th
In my junk mail yesterday:
From: wowaccountadmin@blizzard.com <wowaccountadmin@blizzard.com>
Subject: World of Warcraft Account Management
Greetings!
It has come to our attention that you are trying to sell/trade your personal World of Warcraft account(s).
As you may or may not be aware of, this conflicts with the EULA and Terms of Agreement.
If this proves to be true, your account can and will be disabled. It will be ongoing for further investigation by Blizzard Entertainment’s employees.
If you wish to not get your account suspended you should immediately verify your account ownership. If the information is deemed accurate, the investigation will be dropped.
This action is taken because we at Blizzard Entertainment take these sales quite seriouly. We need to confirm you are the original owner of the account.
This is easiet done by confirmung your person information along with concealed information about your account.
You can confirm you are the original owner of the account by replying to this email with:
Use the following template below to verify your account and information via email.
* First and Surname
* Date of birth
* Address
* Zip code
* Phone number
* Country
* Account e-mail
* Account name
* Account password
* Secret Question and Answer
-Or-
WoW CD-Key
Show * Please enter the correct information
If you ignore this mail your account can and will be closed permanently. Once we verify your account, we will reply to your e-mail informing you that we have dropped the investigation.
We ask you to NOT change password until the investigation is fully completed.
Blizzard Entertainment Inc
Account Administration Team
P.O. Box 18979, Irvine, CA 92623
Regards,
Account Administration Team
Blizzard Entertainment
Mistake #1
The reply-to address is wowaccountadmin@accountadmin-blizzard.com.
Mistake #2
The mailed-by is hotmail.com.
Mistake #3
Lesson #1 for a WoW player who wants to avoid having their account compromised: A Blizzard representative will never ask for your password.
External Factors Destroying Experience
Sep 6th
For the past two weeks Oui and I have been experiencing higher than usual latency in WoW making the game practically unplayable and in a moment of weakness we tried out Smoothping. While it did seem to stabilise our latency it didn’t provide anywhere near the benefit advertised and most importantly it didn’t give us latency similar to what we had before our problems started. It did provide some benefit when soloing or during 5-mans, but everything else was impossible.
Talking to our ISP is bad enough, but communicating with Blizzard via email is an exercise in frustration because they suffer from what I like to call email lag. Email lag is the inability to send more than one email a day, so when you send them anything you want to give them as much information as possible to cut down on wasted time. Of course they don’t work weekends either.
Friday night I’d logged off after send my alt some money to watch the first three episodes of Torchwood: Children of Earth (which was awesome), followed by the final two the next morning, so when I logged on in the afternoon I was surprised to find I wasn’t where I’d logged off. I thought perhaps Oui had logged me on after I went to bed, but he hadn’t, so I logged on again to find that I was again not in the same place I’d been the previous logon. My heart was racing and I quickly opened the account management page (which seemed to take forever) and changed my password because it was obvious that my account had been accessed by someone other than me.
I’ll save you the long story of what followed and just say that everything is in the process of being restored but I am now extremely paranoid about how they got in. That is, how did they find out my password and what else do they know. I’ve thought about it and come to the conclusion that it was either a Flash trojan, or Smoothping as I run nothing else. Obviously I don’t want smoothping anymore (especially as its benefits seem to have disappeared). My system has been reformatted back to Vista and two authenticators are making their way to us, much to Oui’s chagrin.
These two things have made us question if we really want to play WoW anymore. Latency frustrations are not fun and while it’s no fault of WoW (I think) Oui is completely uninterested in playing while the problems persist. Having my account compromised has made me extremely paranoid and it’s a shame that this feeling all stems from a game that is supposed to be fun. Worse is the knowledge that in the past when I’ve heard of other peope in situations such as the one I’m in right now I’ve always considered them to be a right idiot, so that must make me an idiot too.
Oui was talking with me tonight that he would post on the forums to tell everyone he’s taking a break because of the latency, so how ironic was it that I logged on and everything was back to normal. No latency problems whatsoever (well, the latency was back to ‘normal’). He’s sceptical that it will still be bad tomorrow so I’ll check in the morning, but we’re riding the thin edge of quitting here.
Recent Comments