You can now of some of the developer panels from the 2008 Blizzard Entertainment Worldwide Invitational. Visit our WWI Videos page to see Blizzard developers discuss the evolving design process of StarCraft II, the world lore and environment of Diablo III, and the present and future of the classes in World of Warcraft.

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Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Odds and ends, Instances, Leveling, Arena

Last time around, Massively introduced us WoW players to Age of Conan, and today they’ve posted a guide to Guild Wars for us World of Warcraft players. Unlike AoC, I have actually played Guild Wars, and they’ve hit the nail on the head here: for two of the most popular MMOs, Guild Wars is very different from our experience in Azeroth. From a completely instanced overworld (everything outside the cities is instanced, so you won’t see anyone else out there questing with you unless they’re in your group) to a much more streamlined leveling system and a completely different PvP game (you actually create different characters for PvP, something WoW players have actually been asking for), Guild Wars is a very different game, and definitely an experience worth trying for those of us ingrained with the way they do things in Azeroth.

However, one thing Massively missed was the community of Guild Wars — because the game doesn’t have a monthly fee at all, there seems to be a very different audience playing it, and the feel of the chat channels and city general channels is very different. If you thought the trade channel was chaotic in Ironforge, just wait until you get into the starter area of Guild Wars — because the game has no AH, not only is there more crazy business to be done, but people playing the game for free seem to have even less of a conviction towards making it a good experience for everyone else. WoW‘s community is a little crazy, but at least there are a few good people out there who’ll group up or give you a port to Shattrath. In Guild Wars (in my experience), maybe it’s a combination of the instanced world and the free-to-play quality, but it’s very much an every-man-for-himself game unless you’re playing with friends you know.

Not that GW is a bad game — I enjoyed it, and still jump in occasionally to do some questing. But it’s very different from World of Warcraft and many other MMOs.

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Project Lore encounters a tough boss in Heroic Mechanar . The guys come face to face with Nethermancer Sepethrea. Will they extinguish those dastardly flames of hers or get burned to a crisp by her flaming dragon breath? Watch and see the strat on how to deal with this hot headed red head as Project Lore takes on the second boss in Heroic Mechanar.

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Filed under: Horde, Dwarves, Tauren, Hunter, Blood Elves, Comics, Barrens Chat

Welcome back for another Barrens Chat comic. I would up front like to say that I am very excited about exotic pets. So excited, I had to poke fun at fellow blogger Daniel Howell for his post last week on the topic of exotic pets. Although I think I might have been a little misleading when I first ran the idea of what I wanted to do past him.

Either way, I’m still playing with a few drawing and coloring changes here and there. I didn’t darken the outlines this time around, but I think it makes it a bit harder to see in places.

Thank you, Daniel, for pointing me towards your banner for a reference, even if I didn’t specify what it was I was referencing exactly.

See you next week!

Gallery: Barrens Chat

Barrens Chat is a weekly comic installment created on caffeine and pixy sticks. Although we’ve yet again decided to abuse Hunters in any way we can find, sometimes we go after the tankier players, too. Stop by every week to see a new comic, and hope that the sugar stash has run out by then.

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Filed under: Items, Analysis / Opinion, Fan stuff, Virtual selves, Factions, Classes, Talents, Galleries

Finally, we’ve got a WoW app for the iPhone, but it’s not quite what we’d expected. Apparently tired of waiting for Blizzard to release an official app, Rudi has taken things into his own hands and released Characters for the iPhone, a slim little app that lets you pull up your characters (or anyone elses), and browse through their Armory stats.

I installed the app (it’s free), and took a look at it — unfortunately it’s not very robust, as there’s no way to see gear (unlike Omen of Clarity’s iArmory web app), but it does run great and look shiny. Upon running the app, you can just punch in your character’s info (or anyone else’s — all you need is a name and realm), and it’ll get added to your list. Choosing one sends you to screens where you can see information about professions and talents, ability stats, or combat stats.

And that’s pretty much it — more is planned, including reputation, talents, and items panes. EU and China support should be up in a few days (right now, it only works on US characters, and of course it depends on the Armory being up to update). Very nice for a first try, but we still can’t wait until we see something a little more in-depth, or, dare we ask whoever’s working in Blizzard’s mobile division, even official.

Note: This writeup is current as of version 1.0. Later versions of the app will likely include added functionality.

Update: Good news from OOC: he and Rudi are planning to work together on the Characters app, which means it should soon have all the functionality of the iArmory web application, and then some. Saved characters? Character compare? Guild progression and be.imba integration? Yes please!

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