Studying the WoW Tribe: Gamasutra asks "Is there life after World of Warcraft?"

Gamasutra has an in-depth interview with several academics asking "Is there life after World of Warcraft?" Neils Clark suggests that the majority of of MMO players don't spread themselves out over multiple MMO games, but instead migrate like a flock of birds or a "gamer tribe".

I do think that the same chunk of players went from EQ to Galaxies to WoW with some dabbling in games like AO, DAOC and CoH inbetween. Obviously, Blizzard attracted about 8 million extra people to our "tribe", however, so I wonder if our tribe just got a lot bigger or if we are now just one tribe of many.

Clark interviews 5 academics about how gamers will move from WoW to other games and what what has made WoW the powerhouse that it is. The discussions of social networks, lures of new fantasies and the ramifications of a WoW collapse are very interesting.

Clark also says that he thinks WoW is the "king of the mountain" not because it is the best game out there but because it attracted the "right people". I say the "right people" are playing because it's currently the best game out there. What do you think?

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Bigger backpacks (and more) coming soon

Gaslaw asks on the forums whether backpacks will be bigger in Wrath of the Lich King, and (kind of surprisingly) Drysc says it's not beyond the realm of possibility.

I guess it's not that surprising-- it does seem like we are carrying more stuff around lately, in terms of quest and rep items, if not just plain old extra gear sets. We've already had lots of ideas on how to fix things, from creating more keychain setups, to just plain coming up with more bag space. But fortunately, Drysc doesn't seem to have just bigger bags in mind-- he seems to have "better stuff in the works."

What that could be, we have no idea. Pack mules? Dimensional suitcases (made, naturally, of sapient pearwood)? Finally, player housing? Drysc says we'll find out soon.

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A'dal is prepared

Some of you longtime readers may remember a while back when we posted video of A'dal (the big floaty Naaru in Shattrath's center) getting the crap beat out of him. In fact, that was the post where I coined the Lord British Postulate, which stated that if anything existed as a live creature in an MMO, someone, somewhere would try to kill it. Why hasn't that caught on by now?

But apparently A'dal is a pushover no more. When someone kited a Fel Reaver into Shattrath (that's the big tangle of lifeless metal in the upper left of the picture above), A'dal laid the smack down with a 114,952 hit. Naaru please! He ain't playin', son.

A sharp increase in the strength of the Naaru, or just a sign that Blizzard really doesn't want anyone messing around with beings made of energy? You decide.

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Heroic 3-year old arises to save Azeroth [Updated]

juBBjuBB is the proud father of one very charismatic girl who, aside from being absolutely adorable, is also able to play WoW! As he says in his forum post "YOU may have been GANKED by our 3yr old!", Charisma was captivated with her parents gaming activities and started out playing WoW at 1 and a half years old, doing very basic things like running and jumping and chasing bunnies, but since then has actually gotten the hang of some of the basic mechanics of the game. She has learned that you don't want that green bar to get empty or you'll "fall down," as well as the fact that the alliance ("blue") is good and the ugly ones ("red") are bad -- or enemies in PvP anyway. She knows to cap a flag and grind her way up in levels, too apparently.

Some people who read this story cry foul. How can a 3 year-old level to 20 "by herself" (as her myspace page claims) without being able to read? Also, it certainly does seem a bit much to say that she can "gank" people. I also doubt that she can play at the same level as, say, the proverbial 12 year-old WoW player could. My bet is that when the father says "level to 20 by herself" he probably means "without doing any quests and with me watching and talking her through things." And when he says "gank," he means "overpower a level 30ish opponent with a level 60ish rogue alt of her parents using very basic play tactics," which, hello gankers everywhere, even a 3 year-old can do by pressing just a few buttons! Good for her, I say, but shame on anyone over 9.

But I digress. Playing three to four hours per week maxiumum, juBBjuBB says, is helping Charisma get excited to learn the alphabet and cooperative teamplay. Fatherly love and pride in such progress may be leading him to exaggerate a little bit about her gameplay skill, or maybe leave certain details about it to our own common sense -- but can you blame him? If I had a little kid who showed a strong aptitude in any area, from computers to cartoons, I might need to rein in my superlative praise too. She may or may not be the one heroine destined to be the best gamer in the world, but she's the pride of her father's life, and in his Azerothian sky there's no star shining brighter than her.

Update: More from Charisma's father after the jump! You may find it hard to believe...

Hello!

I am Charisma's 'Papi.'

I have appreciated reading so many constructive comments and points of view on this topic! She will be thrilled to see her picture on WoW Insider!

It seems some information was left to speculation regarding her ability: She CAN perform a class role in a group with minimal direction. She has learned through initial guidance & trial and error the complexities of the game, it's interface, PvP, quests, world navigation, etc.

She will need some development before she can go 1 vs 1 with an opponent of a similar level. The original topic on the official forums was "YOU may have been ganked by our 3yr old." IE: your lowbie may have been steamrolled as she passed by ;]

Her teamplay is spot on....we have tried her out in a few instances and she understands different classes have different jobs. She prefers to play more hack n' slash as a melee class (Feral Druid, Rogue, Warrior), but she can show a group full support as a healing class.

As a priest, she knows to sit and drink between pulls, that she needs to fill up everyone's green bar, and whoever is in front gets a bubble. She knows healer stay in the back and don't poke their heads around corners till the tank does.

Once she got started, she watched those healthbars like a hawk!

I hope you enjoyed reading her profile and seeing what she can do.

I say give him the benefit of the doubt. It's true that some kids are gifted in special ways. If one child can play WoW at three, perhaps another is making her own music, or else making up simple stories. Who knows? I'm not a father yet, so I'm still looking forward to having my own little genius -- and I have absolutely no real clear idea what little children this age are capable of. Maybe I just like believing in massive potential.

Many of you addressed the question: How young is too young to start playing WoW? For me, the greater question is, if a 3 year-old can do it (or as some parents have said, 4 year-olds), why is it still so much fun for us as adults? Is it nothing short of miraculous that a game could entertain the very young, the very old, and everyone in between?

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The BBC examines love in Azeroth

There's an interesting piece up over at the BBC's State of Play blog about how online games are becoming more and more social places, not just for friendly relationships, but for romantic ones as well. While meeting online used to be an embarassing thing for couples, nowadays it's much, much more common, and what better place to meet online than in a social MMORPG like World of Warcraft?

Unfortunately, the idea doesn't quite fly with me. In an online situation like, say Facebook, you're more or less playing yourself-- odds are you've posted your own picture, your own opinions, and your own favorite music. But in World of Warcraft, you're playing a character. And even if that character isn't completely different from your real-life persona (most people actually are themselves in the game, unlike hardcore roleplayers), it's still different enough, in my opinion, to be a significant barrier to actually judging someone as a relationship partner.

But that's just me-- lots of people have found significant others in online games, and even more have met lots of people in MMOs, and then actually become better friends or partners after meeting them in real life. But while an online space like Myspace or Facebook might be very conducive to getting a real sense of new people, an online game set in a fictional universe like WoW is still too separate from the real world to allow for a real love connection on its own.

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Two Bosses Enter: Illidan Stormrage vs. Kael'thas Sunstrider

A new week means it's time for a new edition of Two Bosses Enter, WoW Insider's series of fantasy deathmatches where we pit two raid bosses against each other – and you get to tell us who emerges victorious. Two bosses will enter our arena, but only one will get to leave! We're going to keep pitting boss against boss until we finally emerge with a single victor. This week we'll be judging a fight between two powerful Outland bosses: Illidan Stormrage, the final boss in the Black Temple, and Kael'thas Sunstrider, the final boss in the Eye of Tempest Keep. Curious about what might happen if these two bosses met up? Keep reading!

Illidan has a wide array of abilities at his disposal to wipe out any opposition. He's capable of heavy melee damage, high fire and shadow damage, and can summon a variety of minions to keep you occupied. Illidan's abilities at the start of the fight are as follows:

• Shear reduces the health of his main target by 60%
• Illidan will occasionally jump into the air and land in a patch of highly damaging blue flame
• Illidan will randomly target players to cast a parasites debuff on, which does shadow damage over time and then summons two parasites to attack the target
• Draw soul does heavy fire damage to targets in front of Illidan and heals Illidan

For phase 2, Illidan offers a different range of ways to kill you:

• Illidan will summon two massive fire elementals, the Flames of Azzinoth
• Every 30 seconds, Illidan will sweep an eye beam across the platform, doing heavy fire damage and leaving a trail of damaging fire behind it
• Illidan shoots fireballs that do splash damage
  
• Dark Barrage does heavy shadow damage to a random target, though it's rarely cast

For phase 3, Illidan acts nearly the same as phase 1, only with the addition of agonizing flames, a fire spell that does damage on initial impact and damage over time afterwards.

For phase 4 (a quick phase, at 30 seconds long), Illidan will unleash the demon within. He turns into a black demon with powerful abilities, but is unable to move. During this phase, he'll cast:

• Shadow blast, a high damage shadow attack with splash damage
• Flame burst, an AoE fire-based DoT that does splash damage
• Aura of dread does a high amount of shadow damage over time as well as increasing the damage taken by shadow spells (stacks)

Phase 5 is like phase 3, only with the addition of the following:

• Maiev Shadowsong joins the fight -- and though we usually don't consider adds for fights, I'm keeping Maiev in this fight because Illidan is just incredibly powerful. (And Maiev would be hunting him down whether he was in the Black Temple or dueling with Kael'thas outside of Orgrimmar.)
• Illidan can enrage, randomly.

For those of you familiar with the fight, you'll notice something missing -- this is because we aren't considering instant-kill abilities. In a one-on-one encounter, they make the fight predictable and dull. However, if you're still curious for the full details of the fight, check Bosskillers.

Despite what you may have been lead to believe by repeated viewings of Azerothian Super Villains, Kael'thas is no pushover. However, for the purposes of this fight he's certainly more so than he is in the game -- in order to make these fights as fair as possible, we try to consider the bosses on their own, without any adds that might be in the room at the start of the fight. This means Kael'thas doesn't get the aid of his advisors, and we skip straight into phase four of the encounter, where you first trade blows with Kael'thas himself. The skills Kael'thas has at his disposal are as follows:

• Mind control, though in a one-on-one fight this would do little but bore the audience
• An arcane explosion (arcane AOE) that disorients anyone hit by it
• Can summon a Pheonix which will hellfire (fire AOE that damages the Pheonix) and spawns an egg on death. If the egg isn't destroyed quickly, another Pheonix will spawn.
• A high-damage fireballs and pyroblasts (fire attacks)

After 50%, Kael'thas will stop using mind control and pyroblast, and start using nether beam (a chain lightning-esque ability), nether vapor (clouds that give a stacking HP-reducing debuff to anyone who enters them), and gravity lapse (which causes everyone to levitate for 30s).

And that's all there is for Kael'thas -- full details of the fight, for the curious, are gone over at MMO Champion.

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