We Fly Spitfires – MMORPG Blog

Timezones. Designed specifically to shatter your fragile mind.

Ha, take that, Yanks! After years of being treated like the red-headed step children of the MMORPG family, something has finally swung in favour of us Euros. Turns out official release times for Cataclysm are as follows:

Q. In what regions is the Cataclysm pre-sale available? What day/time is Cataclysm launching in my region?

A. The pre-sale is available in the following regions, with realms scheduled to launch at the following times:

Americas, Australia, New Zealand, and Southeast Asia – December 7 at 12:01 a.m. PST Europe and Russia – December 7 at 12:01 a.m. CET

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It's amazing what lengths people will go to to get a $2 discount coupon

Another exciting week has come and gone, this time seeing the celebration of Thanksgiving for my American cousins, the Black Friday sales (Amazon UK did it for the first time this year but I gotta say I was quite disappointed with their selection) and of course the big ol’ shattering patch 4.0.3a for Warcraft that has got just about everyone talking. Exciting stuff, for sure.

The past seven days have also seen some excellent articles grace the MMO blogosphere. Here’s my pick of the week:

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Blizzard's new ploy to solve WoW's community issues: create AI NPCs to play with instead

Although I plan on starting a Worgen Priest when Cataclysm hits I couldn’t resist checking out all of the new changes that were implemented in WoW with the shattering patch a few days ago. Having avoided the beta completely, I was incredibly curious to see how the original zones had been overhauled so I figured I’d start a new alt and take a peak. Thus Gourkil (yeah, I know it sounds like something out of He-Man) the Undead Hunter was born. Or unborn. Or died. Or whatever.

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"Peekaboo"

Queues. Downtime. Lag. Slow downloads. Bloodcurdling cries of venom and hatred. All of these things are synonymous with MMO launches, expansion releases and big patches. A lot of us have come to accept this from our MMOs and live with it as an inevitable side affect of the hobby. Today’s a special day though because today (in Europe anyway, yesterday in the States) marked the release of probably Blizzard’s most epic patch, the complete and utter shattering of Azeroth. I’m slightly ashamed to admit that I’m as a giddy as a teenage boy discovering his dad’s secret stash of Playboys but, still, in the back of my mind I can’t help by wonder if Blizzard are going to be able to handle the huge demand that’s posed to pounce on their servers?

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I don't want to be a capitalist but I do want to be rich

I read an interesting post over at Tobold’s today about how Final Fantasy XIV is now entering it’s third free month of play. Apparently it’s not sold tremendously well and has had some bad press, so much so that Square Enix are visibly concerned about the future of the game. We know from past experiences that the first free month of any MMO is vital is generating momentum and sustaining a healthy player base so it’s no surprise that FFIX’s developers are crapping themselves at the prospect of a mass exodus of subscribers. Still, Tobold wonders Square Enix didn’t pick up on all of the problems earlier and try and do something about it before launch.

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The most vicious Mech ever assembled: WALL-E 2.

I can’t say that it’s been a hugely exciting week for MMO this past seven days and probably the most interesting things we’ve seen has been the start of the Prepetuum early access and the, um, “Pilgrim” event in World of Warcraft. Now, I could launch into a big diatribe about how MMOs shouldn’t be subjecting us to real life holidays in game, especially when they make no sense in regards other current in-game events (so Deathwing is shattering the planet yet peeps still want to celebrate Thanksgiving? Riiight). Plus, shouldn’t us Europeans get to celebrate our own special holidays like Sinterklaas and the Queen’s birthday instead of the American ones? Yeah, I could say all of that stuff but being the eternal diplomat I am, I won’t.

And so, without further adue, I give you the best of I what I call the rest. Link loveth engage.

• Pete has a first impressions write-up of Perpetuum. I enjoyed Pete’s article because it gave me a good, open insight into the game and the opinions and impressions of someone I respect. Although I was invited into the early access event myself, problems with Interweb prevented me from downloading the client so I’ve been relegated to sitting on the sidelines this weekend. Still, this MMO does hold a lot of appeal and will certainly be one I’m going to check out.
• Scott breaks the new that Second Life is going browser based. Not much information is out at this point in time but moving to a client-less mode seems like a really exciting move for Second Life. I’m a big fan of making MMOs more accessible and removing all of these hugely shackling constraints we have to suffer by (like, y’know, requiring a PC and an Internet connection). Oh and the title of the article made me chuckle.
• Gnomeaggedon has a touching article explaining his reasons for participating in Movember. It’s always a pleasure to read about the lives of MMOs players (or bloggers) because I think we all too easily forget that the people we encounter throughout the cyber world are actually living and breathing individuals. Plus moustaches rock even though I’m still battling with my insecurities about not being able to grow a proper one yet. And has anyone else noticed that the real Gnomeaggedon looks uncannily like his avatar?
• And finally the Ancient Gaming Noob exposes some more WoW phishing attempts.  “This isn’t a phishing attempt.  This is some sort of calculated insult to my intelligence.” Absolute genius.

-Gordon

I suppose I could make a pun about Worgen Freeman but that would just be silly

Aside from being a MMO addict I’m also a bit of a comics connoisseur and thus decided to combine both hobbies together and pick up the first issue of Curse of the Worgen which was released in the US yesterday and the UK today. In the interest of brevity for all you busy city slicker lawyer readers out there, I shall summarise the book in a mere single word: meh.

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