n3rfed

CZ QUITS AS ANARCHY ONLINE COMMUNITY MANAGER. BE ON THE LOOKOUT FOR IMPENDING NEW RANT SITE.

Yup. That's the story.

And really, that's about all there is to say right now until I know more.

Ok. I lie. I can say a little and trip the keyboard fantastic.

You know, Cz has done some great work on the Anarchy Online community. I know. I saw it. I was there, bucko. But lately it seems to me as if he was bogged down with anything and everything. And then some. The forums, when graced with The Official Word, were palmed off with a standard "Email your opinions to [email protected]", and the only original responses evolved out of patch issues from the 1-every-3-months patch or bulletin board bannings. The Professional program was at a standstill for a record time, and after only just showing some signs of life with a feeble kick, this outcome certainly doesn't look to get the pulse doing those fancy spikes on the beep! beep! machine.

But there's only so much one man can do. And the rolling snowball, gathering bigger and bigger these past months with Cz firmly planted inside, his beanie and mittens thrown off long ago, has finally come to rest.

And naturally, the Anarchy Online community is left with semi-constructed sentences of "Wha..?", "Huh..?" and "Er...". Where is Cz heading off to? Where is this exiting future for Funcom that Cz mentions? Is Cz going to work with Marius within the company he left Funcom for? Who is the new Community Manager, and is he/she up to speed? Does anybody eat lutefisk?

Rest easy, little bookworms. I have scoured the Inter-Net thingy to bring you a scoop. Yes, a scoop. No one else has this, because no one else is the fine home of investigative journalism that I is. Er. Am.

Commence the scoopment;

I am heading back to Funcom as the new Community Manager, whose identity is a pleasant surprise.

Oh, come on. You didn't really believe that, did you?

BLIZZARD TAKES THE FUN OUT OF RANTING

For a day at least. From the offical boards;

Since its release two and a half days ago, World of Warcraft has already seen incredible concurrency numbers across all active game servers. To keep up with the demand from our players, 47 new servers were made available, increasing the total number of servers to 88. Doubling our server capacity in such a short period of time created issues in existing servers. We immediately recognized the issues and began implementing fixes. However, some players were unable to log in and enjoy the game during this period.

We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience and are dedicated to providing World of Warcraft players with the best play experience possible. Therefore we'll be adding a small trial-period extension for players who created accounts before or during the downtime. In the days ahead, we'll provide additional details on how the trial-period extension will be determined. As always, we appreciate your continued patience and support; we're still monitoring the servers very closely and making adjustments as needed in order to ensure that World of Warcraft continues to run smoothly for everyone playing.

As a side note, still getting myself set up, so stories/updates will continue to arrive as regularly as a senior citizen on a prune-less diet. Enjoy your dinner.

WOW. THAT'S A WHOLE LOT OF WOW.

So. Well then. I go away for a few days and miss out on all the fun. Did you even try and call me to invite me along? Nooooo. Just another cheap floosie for you, aren't I?

By many accounts it seems we may soon have our first non-Asian bred MMORPG to hit the 1 million subscriber mark (for any non-marketing types amongst you, 1 million can be likened to eating Big Bubba's Bigass Country Beefsteak without puking). And with World of Warcraft reportedly acheiving first-day figures of 250,000 box sales, 200,000 accounts, 100,000 simultaneous users, and, as I write, having 88 servers open for players to zerg rush on, who in their right mind would second guess it?

Well, I for one. Or at least I'll take a stab at it.

There was no doubt WoW would sell quick. Fanbois and fangoils (not being derogatory here - they truely are fanbois) have been salivating at the sides of their mouths for this game to hit retail. Weekend Warriors have been setting aside time in their working week to play this game. People who have never played a MMORPG before due to the monthly fee have been searching under the couch cushions for the odd coinage so they can pick up this game.

Yet, there are still many, many people that won't touch it. My fake crystal ball tells me WoW will have one of the biggest, if not the biggest, North American subscription numbers. But I just don't see it taking Asia by storm like Starcraft did. And we're still yet to see how Europeans will react to the localized servers.

But hey! If they indeed do hit the huge time with 1 million, I'll be right here, applauding the Worldcraft franchise (credit where credit is due. Worldcraft 1-3 will play a big part in the success of WoW) and printing out this page so I can eat my words.

Nevertheless, props to WoW on it's first-day sales that no doubt make EQ2 weep. But you know, it hasn't been all sunshine and lollipops in the land of Azeroth.

Apart from your standard fare of crashing and lag, many players were not able to install WoW due to a conflict between the copy protection on the CDs and certain operating system configurations. Why copy protection is on a CD for a game that requires an account to play, I do not know. For instance, we've seen some MMORPG companies encourage the copy of CDs (even if not explicitly) in an effort to generate more account revenue. Oh wait. Vivendi published the game. Now I do know.

Some servers have also been taken down for a number of days. Yes, days. Not hours. This left some customers wondering;

I hope we will be compensated for this loss of time.

Don't bet your Sword of Uberness on it, buddy.

In closing, before I run off and go AWOL for another few days while I try to find out where the hell my home computer is, I leave you with this little ditty I stumbled across while reading the Terranova thread.

Full disclosure here -- I work for Vivendi Universal Games -- Blizzard's corporate parent. I went to the WOW midnight launch earlier this morning in Orange County and it was absolutely incredible. An estimated 8,000 people were in the parking lot by 11 PM -- many times more than the 500 people that a similar event for WarCraft III attracted in 2002.

This was a launch that was done right

Hmmm. So the success of a MMOG launch is based upon how many people line up in a parking lot before the servers are open, rather than the "smoothness" (server stability, lack of bugs, ease of installation, absence of whining) or, as some like Ubiq would say, the status of the game over the first month?

This explains so much.

GONE FISHING

Just a quick word to inform all of n3rfed's readers (yes, that's all three of you) that not much will be appearing on the site over the next couple of days. Yeah, I'm real sure that made you go "Awww".

The time has come to move cities for my new job, and no internet connection kinda makes it hard to connect to the internet. Or so I hear.

Yeah, I know WoW is released this week, so expect some late-breaking (i.e. stale) news once I'm back online. And who knows? Maybe when I'm back, a new color scheme or site layout will follow. Vomit green is sooooo 2004.

Until then, feel free to tell me how much I suck in the comments section. Oh, and decorating tips are welcome too. I know you're dying to tell me why a pastel-toned website pwns my feng shui menu bar.

WHAT DO WE WANT? LESS SUCKAGE! WHEN DO WE WANT IT? ER, HOW ABOUT NEXT PATCH?

Um, yeah. Right. Because petitions such as this and this were really successful.

JUST WHEN YOU THOUGHT IT WAS SAFE TO GO BACK INTO THE SUPERMARKET...

Saw this teh funney over at J's neck of the woods. For those wanting to play along at home, you can buy the DVD.

I'm hanging out for a Grand Theft Auto video myself. Let's see what tomfoolery happens there. Well, up until the cops start busting heads.

WOW BETA ENDS THURSDAY. TESTERS TO SEE STRANGE PHENOMENON CALLED SUNLIGHT.

Yes, that's right. The WoW servers will be verboten come Thursday in preparation for next Tuesday's release. Hordes of lost kiddiez to be roaming the streets Thursday night, trying to find a quick Tauren fix off Mrs O'Grady's cows.

In preparation for the upcoming retail launch of World of Warcraft, we will be taking the North American open beta servers offline on Thursday, November 18. While this will mark the end of the open beta test, there will still be some work left for us to do. To provide the best experience possible at launch, we will be making numerous final optimizations to our hardware based on the data we've acquired during the open beta test. During our closed and open beta test phases, thousands of improvements were made to World of Warcraft. Those changes were made through game-client patches and updates to the game's server and database infrastructure.

As we moved closer to retail, we continued to make changes and optimize all of the code that makes up World of Warcraft until we reached the point where we felt we could create a gold master -- the version of the game that's currently being pressed onto the discs which will be available for purchase at retail.

Likewise, these processes must also take place on the server side to ensure that no out-of-date code, which could corrupt the retail version of the game, still exists. Before the retail version of the code can be installed, the current hardware must be wiped clean. This also includes the information on current accounts and characters that are being played on our test servers. So that all World of Warcraft players will be able to make a fresh start on our community site at launch, the same procedure will be taking place for the North American beta forums when the open beta test ends.

We realize that you've grown attached to your characters, and we're sorry that the end of the open beta test will require you to part ways with them. However, with the retail launch of World of Warcraft on November 23 comes the opportunity to begin a new adventure in Azeroth on fresh, untouched servers. Along with that, you'll have the knowledge that you played an instrumental role in the creation of a game of epic proportions that players will enjoy for many years to come.

We greatly appreciate all the time you've spent with us testing World of Warcraft, and we look forward to seeing you in-game!

Please note that this does not affect the ongoing European closed beta test. Further details regarding our plans for the closed and final beta tests in Europe will be announced on the European community sites next week.

So Blizzard has, finally I might add, confirmed that there will be a character wipe. It only took fourteen 30-page threads and a whole lot of whining and bitching amongst the community for that answer to eventuate.

Still, who could blame them? There was never a doubt that it would happen, but if it was mentioned a month or two ago that the database would be wiped, 1/4 of the tester population would have packed up, posted their "skrew u bliz" threads, and waited it out until release.

I'm also hearing rumors about posts on the WoW boards being hacked. Currently I can't verify this because the boards are down, so either that was one hell of a hack, or the boards couldn't handle the deluge of unhappy players crying over spilt beta.

More news as it comes to me. Or as I make it up. Whichever comes first.

UPDATE

The Corp is on the ball, and has screenshots of the hacked Blizzard employee posts. More screenshots and theories about who is behind the hacking at the home of everybody's favorite uber guild.

FO' SHIZZLE, AND THE WIZZLE IZZLE...

Spike TV is once again running their Video Games Awards, this year hosted by Snoop Dogg, and voting is now open.

In the MMOG category we have the choices of City of Heroes, Everquest 2, and Final Fantasy XI (is that all that came out this year? I seem to remember a game called Lineage 2, and if Everquest 2 can make the cut, surely World of Warcraft or Guild Wars could as well - we've been able to see how they run. Can expansion packs help kick a MMOG back into the limelight as a contender?). But with 3 places, I guess everybody is teh winnar!

Now, while I feel FFXI and COH should take the top spots, EQ2 is probably in with a pretty good chance. Because when games and Hollywood meet, it's not what you know, but who you know.

Keep an eye out for n3rfed being nominated in 2005 for Best Gaming Website. You know that's what I'm aiming for.

THIS CLEARLY SHOWS A CORRELATION BETWEEN SUCCESS AND ASIAN BOOBIES ON BOX COVERS

For those of you interested in the subscription numbers of MMOGs, SirBruce has updated his chart. Grains of salt available on the left as you enter.

FROM THE OBVIOUS DEPARTMENT

Breaking news! This just in! Shock! And a bit of awe too!

You can still use basic speed hacks in WoW.

Ya know, I'm just musing aloud here, but it would have been nice if something was learnt from the Diablo client hack shamozzle.