Posts with tag queue

Oh boy. Most of us are the walking dead after BlizzCon, but let's get back to something resembling normalcy with a Queue. We're going to start off today with an important matter concerning authenticators and account security, then move on to a bit of WoW.com business and Onyxia. I'd also like to direct attention to two really good comments from the last column re: technical issues, Shadow's and Logarth's.

Zerounit asks...

I recently got an Authenticator in the mail and I noticed something while I was inspecting it: there appears to be no way to open it short of cracking it open with large objects. Is there a battery life on these? If it stops giving me my magic codes, will I have to get a new one?

I got an authenticator for my own use recently and have to admit I hadn't thought to look into the battery life, which is a very good question indeed. A dead authenticator means you have no way of getting into the game (or even into your online account) without official help from Blizzard.

Turns out the little security doodads are manufactured by a company named Vasco, and after poking around their website, I'm reasonably certain that Blizzard authenticators are a variant of Vasco's DIGIPASS GO 6 model. What makes me so sure? The GO 6 model page is the only one accompanied by an article on fraud and hacking in online gaming. They don't come right out and say that Blizzard is a customer, but unless Hello Kitty Online is a bigger hive of scum and villainy than even we gave it credit for, you don't have to be a genius to figure out that World of Warcraft figures prominently in MMORPG account theft.

Good BlizzCon eve everybody! While Schramm was able to sneak in and get the inside scoop on the goody bag, some of us are still sitting out in here in line waiting patiently for our turn. While we were waiting, I grabbed my somewhat low quality woot purchased camera, had Michael Gray save me a place in line, and got some photos of the line. It's pretty long at the moment. At the least, it's snaked around the convention center. Check out our gallery below.

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BlizzCon 2009 is here! WoW.com has continuing coverage, bringing you the latest in Cataclysm news, live blogs, galleries, and reports right from the convention floor. Check out WoW.com's Guide to BlizzCon for the latest!

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Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com's daily Q&A column where the WoW.com team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Allison Robert will be your hostess today.

Adam and Alex are busy packing for BlizzCon, so I've sneaked into the Queue offices to answer some questions this evening. There's no consistent theme here, folks; we're all over the map today with BlizzCon, lore, and player textures. If you don't see your question here, I still have a few in mind from the last post to answer tomorrow.

Smapdor asks...

There are 3 historical scenarios that can be found in Yogg-Saron's "brain room"...What is the Shadow Vault event? I would guess that it is something as important lore-wise as the (other) two, but I have no idea.

It's widely believed that the Shadow Vault "memory" depicts a very recent and very unfortunate occurrence that took place (without player knowledge) after the Wrath Gate event. The NPCs in question are thought to be the souls/spirits/incorporeal whatsamajiggies of Saurfang the Younger and Bolvar Fordragon, who perished in the fight, victim to the Lich King and the Royal Apothecary Society respectively. The Wrath Gate cinematic implies that the Arthas has at least Saurfang's soul to toy with (which would explain the Orcish Turned Champion), but the identity of the Immolated Champion is less clear. Bolvar is by far the most likely possibility -- after all, the Immolated Champion is wearing the same armor Bolvar wore going to his death -- but nothing's been confirmed. Bottom line? Expect to see both Saurfang and Bolvar show up in the Icecrown Citadel raid in some capacity.

Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com's daily Q&A column where the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Mike Sacco will be your host today.

Queue, queue, queue. Everyone must be really excited for the eventual 3.3 patch, because we've got a ton of questions about Arthas and Icecrown today. What the heck, guys! BUT YEA, I SHALL ANSWER THINE PLEAS.


m_rydelis asked:
I have a question here, so as I remember from Warcraft TFT, Lich King was left to freeze on Frozen Throne, and in WotLK cinematic we see him on it, so did it just melt down, or something happend, because there is no such thing as Warcraft as Frozen throne now.

Icecrown Citadel was built over the Frozen Throne, and Arthas has apparently done a lot of construction on Icecrown Glacier since TFT and especially since the opening cinematic. The Frozen Throne likely still remains inside of the fully-constructed Icecrown Citadel, but we'll definitely see when 3.3 launches.

Cyrus asked:
Do we even know if there's going to be a 3.4? Has Blizzard announced it, or are people assuming it just based on the number of content patches in BC? Maybe progression will just go OS, Naxx, EoE, Ulduar, Argent Coliseum and Icecrown.

The plan is for there not to be a 3.4. Blizzard has stated time and time again that the plan is for Arthas to be the final boss of the Wrath cycle and for Icecrown Citadel to be the final content patch of the Wrath cycle. The next expansion should be approaching much sooner than the wait between vanilla and BC (and BC and Wrath) as well, so this timeline could work out fine provided that the 4.0 train keeps rolling as it should. Blizzcon should clue us in as to how things are progressing in that regard, so keep your eyes open.

Here's a change that will probably be by turns amusing, exasperating, or a relief, depending on who you are and how you play: In a new section recently slipped into the official 3.2 PTR patch notes, Blizzard revealed that they plan to add a queue to Wintergrasp in Patch 3.2.

In short, you can queue up by visiting a Battlemaster or entering the zone within 15 minutes of the game start. Only 100 people will be allowed to fight on each side of the battle, to be chosen randomly from the battlemaster and from the zone, with level 80s receiving highest priority.

When Wintergrasp was first introduced, even people who otherwise disliked PvP found it fun, and some old-timers found it be about the closest thing to the fabled world PvP battles of old in Hillsbrad, Ashenvale, and other such places.

BlizzCon 2009 tickets went on sale for the last time on Saturday at 10am PST, and were reported as sold out less than 30 minutes later. As expected, there were lots of disappointed Blizzard fans, but compared to the way things worked last year, this year's system was much more fair and much less frustrating. Unfortunately, you had to be quick -- while the sellout time was actually around 10:24, tickets really sold out in a matter of seconds, because if you clicked the buy button even 30 seconds to a minute after it went live, you were too far back in the queue to buy tickets at all. But even though it was a very small window of chance, it was at least a fair chance -- Blizzard's meter for tickets left on Saturday started at around 50%, which indicates that they split the two days of sales right down the middle. As long as you showed up and clicked at the right time, you had as much chance as anyone else. At least we got a great game out of it.

If you have tickets, enjoy the show (and don't forget: our meetup will be on Thursday night!). But if you don't, what now? The DirecTV stream will be available both via their service and on the Internet. And even if you don't jump in on that deal, we'll of course have plenty of up-to-date coverage, as will lots of folks in the community. And if you want to go a little black market, tickets will probably be available online in a few different places. We've already heard that Blizzard is starting to crack down on eBay, but certainly there are other places tickets will appear for sale. And as time goes on, we're sure people who were planning to go won't be able to make it, contests will be held in various places, and a few more tickets will free up.

So all hope may not be lost. But unless you want to call in a favor or pay a premium, BlizzCon tickets are sold. We say: the fourth weekend in August can't come soon enough.

Playing the role of Adam Zibbert tonight will be the Michael Sacco. There will be a brief intermission between acts.

Welcome back to The Queue, WoW Insider's daily Q&A column where the WoW.com team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Adam Zibbert will be your host today.

You know the drill! LET'S GET US SOME QUESTIONS ANSWERED.

Bearkub asked...

My main is a lvl 80 paladin (holy/prot), gold is not an issue, and I have everything I could want off the Wintergrasp PVP vendor/npc. My alt is a level 70 hunter (hilarity ensues). Is it worth it to spend 200 stonekeeper's shards to buy the +10% XP bonus shoulders? Or would those shards be better spent on something I can sell for gold (the non-bound pvp meta-gems, for example)? Is there something to spend the shards on that I'm unaware of? I imagine they're worth it on a lvl 58 DK alt, but I'm not sure what the "cost/benefit" cut-off is.

Heirloom items are pretty great, in my experience, especially the shoulders. With 3.1, they also grant 10% extra quest experience on top of mob XP, which is a lot -- especially given that most of your XP earned while going from 70-80 is going to be quest XP. It, essentially, takes a flat 10% off of your leveling time, sometimes more. And, when you're done with it, you can send it to another alt, even if they can't wear that specific armor type, because the item will automatically become the highest possible armor type for that specific character.

I'd say it's worth the purchase, but it's a personal choice. Just remember you can get gold back at any time, but leveling time isn't something you can recoup.

Out of the blue tonight, the blustering Blizzard Blue bard Eyonix, came out and let us know about a few things that'll be happening with the Patch 3.1 battleground queue (see what queuing will be like now):

• Players will not be able to queue while dead.
• If you queue and accept to enter a battleground while in flight, you'll be returned to a designated destination.
  

Now the first point is clearly to prevent dodging of corpse runs or mess around with corpse camping.

As far as the second point, this is interesting and pretty much provides another way of ghetto hearthing in some circumstances (remember, ghetto hearthing is being removed in patch 3.1). Not that you should take advantage of this or anything, and chances are it'll be hotfixed relatively quickly upon release of patch 3.1.

The above picture took me all of five minutes to put together. Super Troopers is a great movie, and I encourage you all to go watch it today. But finish reading WoW Insider first, and in particular finish reading The Queue to understand the reference. How many times can Alex say Mountain Dew? The answer is a lot. Update: Go and read Massively's take on the coming Mountain Dew. It's quite good.

037 asked...

"Now that you can queue for battlegrounds from anywhere, are we looking at the new ghetto hearth?"

Welcome back to The Queue, WoW Insider's daily Q&A column where the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Adam Holisky will be your host today.

Sometimes late at night when the sun is down and the moon is up, the writers at WoW Insider sit around the campfire and talk about things. Weird things. Like owning a pet snake and cat at the same time (Sacco), or how putting together a desk can be a pain (Alex). More and more often these days there has been a little friendly feud going on between Alex and Sacco. You can read their little quips at each other over a few posts. So today in the Queue I want to ask you: who would win in a writer cage match? Alex Ziebart or Mike Sacco?


Also, I'd like to thank all of you who left questions not about the crazy delicious Hawaiian Pizza yesterday. You gave me something to work with!

Blinger asked...

"Will the emblems of Heroism be really useless now? If there is no more badge gear I need, have plenty of Frozen Orbs I can throw a stick at, is there going to be any point in me ever doing the current Wrath heroics again other than just to help out mates all of which are in the same boat anyway? Or will it be likely that there will be some form of Heroism to Valor exchange?"

Many people are reporting now that the PTR character copy queue is quickly shortening. Earlier today it was up around a 24 day wait for characters to be copied over, now I've seen it reported that it's down around 7 days (and shrinking). The reports are mainly for the US PTR, and not the EU.

The queue was very high because Blizzard was letting everyone line up to get their characters copied, and not actually doing any of the copying yet. However now that they're copying the actual characters over to the PTR, the queue is diminishing fast.

You can get in line to copy your character over via the "PTR Character Copy" link on your account management page. Please note however, that at this time Blizzard is not allowing any more characters to be queued for copying, but that can change at any minute.

This is a good indication that the PTR will be up very soon. We're fully staffed here at WoW Insider HQ and will be bringing you the latest as soon as the PTR goes up. Hopefully including some juicy patch notes, screenshots and detailed information on Ulduar, and our first glimpse at how exactly dual specs will work.

This post brought to you by the word soon™!

It's 10:40 p.m. EST on my server and there is a 30 minute wait to login with a queue of over 300. Oh me oh my, time to get out my BlizzCon goodie bag and head for the QQ n00b tissues.

Many users across most of the servers, both in the U.S. and E.U., are reporting long queues again. While the population always seems to uptick around this time of year, one has to raise an eyebrow at this happening a second time in as many months.

November was understandable. Wrath was a big deal. But after a week or so the queues died down. Is this just the second insurgent of Wrath's wrath?

One can surmise that a large number of people received Wrath as a Christmas gift. The assumption is probably correct. Another popular theory is that with all the vacation time on folk's plate right now, people are using it to log into the game and enjoy a bit of Northrend adventuring.

Wrath has been out for about a month now. We were excited about the game, but boy were we angry. We had restarts, extended maintenance, server queues, and whole host of other anomalies. Blizzard's solution was to address as many issues as they could and give us each three days of credit. There are still problems with random disconnects, server lag, and some other bugs. There's still work to be done, but it's getting better.

The one thing that I'm still very frustrated with is the evade issue. This seems to happen to me far more frequently than it did pre-Wrath. I hate it when a mob resets just as it would die, particularly when it's an elite. It always reminds me of Jester diving below the hard deck. I have nothing to do but try to kill the mob again or move on to another one that's (hopefully) not evading.

Over all though, I'm happy with Wrath of the Lich King. There are some dreadful quests, but some awesome ones as well. A lot of things are reused, but many are new as well. I'm over being mad and back to enjoying the game. But Blizz, if you're reading: please stop the mobs from bugging out and going home.

Now readers, it's your turn: Do you forgive Blizzard yet? What will it take to make you happy with WoW?

In general I've been pleasantly surprised at how stable my own realm has been since the launch. Yes, we've had queues, restarts, lag, and yes, we've also had an insanely annoying subgroup of people with absolutely no scruples over stealing quest spawns (to be fair, this isn't Blizzard's fault, unless you count their refusal to allow us to kill members of our own faction. I have been sorely tempted over the last few days). But in general, play has been pretty trouble-free apart from the crowds you'd expect at all the usual quest hubs, and the response to the expansion has been universally positive from everyone to whom I've spoken. Wrath, at least on my own realm, has gone live to a very happy and excited bunch of players.

But with a look at WoW Insider's inbox, I'm not sure it's worked out that way for everyone. We've seen a spate of recent complaints about server crashes and giant queues, and this weekend we've gotten a lot of them from people playing on Oceanic servers particularly (one of our readers, James Flannery, wrote in to tell us about an Oceanic server queue that went from 86 to 161 minutes during the half hour that he'd already been waiting). While in general I think it's safe to say that Wrath's launch went much more smoothly than Burning Crusade's did, I'm not sure everyone's benefited despite Blizzard's efforts. Possibly it's a function of Wrath being even more popular than anticipated in certain regions. If you play on multiple servers, which realm(s) seem to be doing best and worst? Have queue times (if they existed) and server lag improved for you?

Queues are the highest most of us have ever seen tonight. On my home server of Eldre'Thalas I was behind over 850 people at one point, and have had over an hour wait be estimated for me more often than not. I maxed out at 115 minutes.

The estimated wait time will fluctuate back and forth depending on the frequency in which players log off or leave the queue in frustration.

Perhaps the biggest thing we need to worry about this expansion is not server down time, but the phenomenal amount of players wanting to get in the game.

If Blizzard has any announcement about this, or solutions (other than transferring realms) we'll keep you updated here. Other than that... good luck getting in.