Life’s A Lich And Then You Die (And Respawn)
The new WoW parch came out yesterday, in anticipation for the Wrath of the Lich King, the second expansion for the massively popular MMORPG. There have been a few bumps along the way, and as my first patch experience, I think I handled it pretty well… kind of.
courtesy Blizzard
The realms (servers) all went down for a few hours, and there was a new patch to install. That was to be expected, but what I didn’t expect were all the fun little glitches. For instance, once the game went back up, with a brand new log in screen and load screens, the characters were inaccessible. This scared me, and concerned, I asked some of my friends what was going on - they told me that sometimes during updates whole servers are deleted. After my heart attack subsided, they told me they were joking, that this was my first patch experience and that these things take time.
Once I did access my characters, after 15 minute load screens, I first noticed my and my friends’ characters were out of breath. Apparently while in digital purgatory, there was no air for them to breathe? That was weird, but my favorite part was learning that my pet wouldn’t move. As soon as I found that out, all of the NPCs (Non Player Characters) in the city of Ironforge, and I’m told, the entire game, vanished. With portals between locations down, as well as no flight masters, I was stuck in an empty city. Other players and I could talk on the city’s chat feature, but we couldn’t see each other.
Then we noticed some of the intended effects of the patch, like new or removed abilities. Apparently my close range melee attacks were axed (pun intended), as was one player’s 9800 player kills. Yikes. All I really wanted to do was get a new haircut for my characters, which I eventually did at midnight, when everyone was on playing. It was cool rediscovering the game, but I don’t think Blizzard needed to remove or add stuff as much as they did. The entire game has been altered for some people, and while I appreciate more pet slots in the stable, or the ability to redistribute my talent points, I think knowing in 6 months those parts of the game may be once again amended is a bit disconcerting.
The game as it is was pretty good, but Blizzard wants to proactively make the game more good. They could in fact make the game worse if they keep altering what they have shown to be a winning formula. In the next week or so, all the above player problems will be fixed hopefully, but the big test will be to see how Lich King changes the game, especially when 8,000,000 Death Knights start running around.
Matt Knicl: My name is Matt Knicl. I'm a U of I alumn and one of those unemployed English majors Garrison Keillor likes to make fun of. I've been reading comics since high school and one day I would like to write them. My goal is to expose readers to what is out there in the world of comics and using my English powers, show what is worth reading or not. I can be reached at buzz.comics@gmail.com.
Comments
There are no comments yet. Be the first to comment on this post...
Add your comment
the217
Sections
Buzz Magazine
Matt Knicl
My name is Matt Knicl. I'm a U of I alumn and one of those unemployed English majors Garrison Keillor likes to make fun of. I've been reading comics since high school and one day I would like to write them. My goal is to expose readers to what is out there in the world of comics and using my English powers, show what is worth reading or not. I can be reached at buzz.comics@gmail.com.