Many goblin auctioneers have been aware of The Undermine Journal for a few months now. The site scans and compiles auction house data from the remote auction house on many different servers. Users then can search the data for current and historical values of items, and even determine the AH activity of their competitors. This has been useful to determine market trends, ideal times to post and ideal times to buy.
Now, the Undermine Journal has released a new tool that will alert users via e-mail or RSS feed when an item is available on the AH at a certain price. Wow. This system, combined with the ability to buy items from nearly anywhere through using the remote auction house, will make cheap materials or rare items last for an even shorter period of time.
Without having to constantly look at many different markets of interest and simply waiting for an alert, gold for those hardcore auction house junkies will be even easier to come by. I still haven’t subscribed to a single month of the remote auction house service, but this automated out-of-game alert system could make me take the plunge. Anyone else see the huge potential of this service?
Like pixiestixy, I have had to put some real effort into getting into the Final Fantasy XIV Open Beta. There have been some trials and tribulations that I’ve had to go through to get a beta key, download the beta client, patch the game, and log into the servers. And with those issues finally behind me, I have been able to spend a nice chunk of time playing the actual game. Unfortunately, the actual game has its own issues.
The very first thing you’ll notice, beyond the installation and patching woes, is the user interface. The developers haven’t looked at other MMORPGs in the current and upcoming market to learn things, but have instead made another attempt at creating a Final Fantasy game that takes place online. Like Final Fantasy XI, the game controls like a console based single player RPG that has been adapted for the PC. Every other Final Fantasy game requires you to open a menu before you can access your inventory, change your equipment, or look at your character’s abilities – why shouldn’t this one? There are very few things that can be accessed in a single key press, and that’s a bad thing. I don’t like having to turn on auto-run just to check my friends list while on the move. Currently there is no official support for a hardware mouse, and the software option is quite laggy. The good news is that the option exists in a hidden location, and there’s a fix that enables the hardware mouse if you’re willing to alter the game client slightly. The bad news is there’s no word from Square Enix on an official implenetation of the option.
TechCrunch is reporting that Curse, popular for its WoW addon and StarCraft II map hosting, has acquired MMO-Champion from Major League Gaming under undisclosed terms. One thing they’re willing to tell us is that Favien Bonte, aka Boubouille, will be joining the Curse team.
Another thing that Curse’s CEO, Hubert Thieblot, has said is that the company plans on updating the site with a new design along with improving the forums, both of which have been pretty unreliable over the past few months.
Boubouille has issued his own statement regarding the purchase:
NEW OWNERS! WE’RE ALL GOING TO DIE!
No, seriously. This change will hardly affect the users, we will see a lot of improvements on the site over the next few months (not immediately, we still have to move to new servers) and a lot of people will be working hard to make MMO-Champion a wonderful place filled with love and gnomes. Our first goal is obviously to stabilize the current site and fix all the minor bugs you’ve been experiencing since the migration, then we’ll work on the big stuff and eventually come up with a shiny new design and more features.
I would also like to thank Major League Gaming for the 3 years I spent with them. They’re the one who gave me a chance to bring MMO-Champion to a much higher level and even if it isn’t obvious to everyone, the site probably wouldn’t exist today without them. MLG’s management and tech teams went through a lot of efforts to keep the site alive during its ridiculously fast growth, we’re here today because of them. Curse and Major League Gaming will definitely keep working together in the future and great things will come out of this partnership.
MMO-Champion has been around for 3 years, 4 months, and 19 days. Let’s see how much further we can go.
Curse looks forward to gaining MMO-Champion’s 80 million monthly page views, half of which I estimate to come from my constant refreshing of the blue tracker on multiple computers. Hopefully the operation of the site isn’t affected in any negative ways, as Boubouille has been great at finding and putting together Cataclysm information!
Over the weekend, I had the pleasure of hanging out digitally with the great guys who put together the Raid Warning podcast to record a segment on their Shaman Roundtable. I, along with a ton of big names in the shaman community, answered a bunch of questions about Cataclysm, ICC, gear, PvP, and other miscellaneous topics. If you’re a shaman, or just a fan of people who indulge in the Shamanistic arts, then you should definitely lend an ear to the ‘cast because the whole thing is a great listen.
Just click below to hear the podcast in full stereo sound. The complete list of contributors as well as a chance to win a couple of prizes can be found over at Raid Warning’s site.
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Blizzard released a new Cataclysm Beta Build and along with Deepholm now being available for testing, the previously announced pared down talent trees and spec bonuses are available for viewing. The newest addition to the patch notes is as follows:
A first pass on new talent trees has been implemented.
Each specialization has been reduced to a 31-point talent tree.
Players will now get a total of 41 talent points to spend.
31 points must be spent in the primary specialization tree before any points can be placed in additional trees.
Players will be asked to choose a specialization at level 10. Doing so will result in the unlocking of a spell or ability unique to that specialization, as well as one or more passive bonuses.
While this is a first pass on all of the talent trees, death knight, druid, paladin, warlock, Arcane mage, and Assassination rogue trees are not as far along as other specializations.
More information regarding our plans for talent trees can be found on our Cataclysm forum.
The new trees include some very interesting talents, combined talents, and most multi point talents requiring fewer points for full benefit. MMO-Champion has a talent calculator available with the new, and in my opinion improved, talent trees, so take a look at your favorite class and see what will be changing. Each tree’s passive bonuses are also listed there, so what are you waiting for? Let us know how you feel about these streamlined talent trees. I for one am looking forward to their implementation.
Talent trees in Cataclysm, though already partially previewed, are once again getting a complete overhaul. This time, it will be an even more drastic change with a plethora of talents being trimmed and total talent points allotted will be cut nearly in half. Here’s the gist of the long announcement that Blizzard has released:
At level 10, players will have to choose their spec before spending any talent points. This will unlock certain passive bonuses such as dual wielding for enhancement Shaman, along with the other passive bonuses that previously scaled with the number of points spent in that tree.
Talent points will be granted around every two levels up to 41 points at level 85.
Talent trees will include around 20 talents per spec instead of the 30 they include today.
A player must spend at least 31 points in his chosen specialization’s tree before he is able to spend them in any other tree.
The unique third mastery for each spec will still be gained from the mastery stat on gear, but in order to gain that bonus, the mastery skill will need to be trained by a class trainer.
Simple enough, right? Check out the full announcement after the break. It’s a good read!
In a somewhat controversial move, Blizzard opted to activate the new Ruby Sanctum raid yesterday afternoon for North American realms. Not only was this before EU realms received patch 3.3.5, it was also during a 24-hour maintenance period for 74 North American realms. This act was somewhat contrary to an earlier announcement that seemed to express the desire by Blizzard for more parity when it comes to world and region availability of new end-game encounters. It also allowed guilds on roughly one-third of worldwide servers to have a head start on defeating Halion, both normal and heroic, before the other two-thirds of the servers were even accessible.
Premonition of Sen’jin-US, the guild that happened to be featured at the Live Raid event during 2009’s BlizzCon, managed to get the first kill of heroic Halion in both the 10- and 25-man versions last night. Since then, according to wowprogress.com, there have still only been a few guilds that have downed either version of the heroic mode.
While it’s easy to claim that this kill is not a major deal due to the short instance length and relatively low difficulty when compared to Heroic Lich King, Cataclysm’s trend towards shorter and more accessible raids, along with the combining of 10- and 25-man lockouts, may end up stopping EU realms from garnering as many world-first boss kills as they have in the past. In addition, there are some players who are extremely upset with Blizzard for releasing the new raid during the 24-hour maintenance period, effectively blocking that large handful of realms from even attempting the instance.
I heard from a few players who were on the realms that were down during last night’s Ruby Sanctum Heroic 10-man stream, but I want to hear from more of you. Are you upset about how Blizzard handled Ruby Sanctum? Do you pay attention to world firsts? Do you think it’s all just a bunch of QQ? I really believe all of this will blow over pretty quickly, but I also hope dropping short instances for North American realms to get world firsts doesn’t become a habit for Blizzard.
In this episode of Lore Hound’s StarCraft 2 UMS feature, I’m trying out the Lunar Lander map. This is an adaptation of the old arcade Lunar Lander game, so if you’re into classic gaming you should give it a try.
You can download the map at Curse or SC2Mapster. If you have any maps that you think deserve a feature or are looking for a particularly good UMS of a certain genre, drop a line in the comments.
Many goblin auctioneers have been aware of The Undermine Journal for a few months now. The site scans and compiles auction house data from the remote auction house on many different servers. Users then can search the data for current and historical values of items, and even determine the AH activity of their competitors. This has been useful to determine market trends, ideal times to post and ideal times to buy.
