Tournament Of Ages Draws Thousands To 'World of Warcraft' Role-Playing

Today wraps up one of the largest community events in World of Warcraft, a gathering that has drawn thousands of people together over the past four years and will raise more than a thousand dollars for charity this year.
                                             

The Tournament of Ages runs on Warcraft’s Moon Guard role-playing server, providing gamers there with a week of events ranging from booth sales to arena battles to fireworks and performances.

During the closing ceremony today, players will pack the stands of the Tournament grounds in such numbers that no seats will be available, forcing some to hover or to perch on the roof. They will watch the fireworks before gathering for the Wonderlight Ball.

The dance gives participants the chance to show off their characters’ best collected finery and virtually dance the night away, ending the weeklong series of dozens of events.

Earlier happenings included a dueling tournament for different in-game classes, sparring, Hearthstone digital card game play, racing, stage performances, rhyme battles, date auctions, mechanical pet battles, drinking contests, jousting, marmotball and pet battles.

“Sometimes the best parts are the simplest,” said Judith Pedersen of Ontario, one of the Tournament participants. “Just people gathering en masse to have fun for a week, to forget any stress their characters may have or they might have in real life.”

The Tournament is popular; so much so that at one point this week, three of the top four threads in the World of Warcraft subreddit related to it.

Moon Guard is widely known for its R-rated role-playing areas. To be fair, once that reputation was established, it has frequently been perpetuated by other players coming in from off-server to make new characters in those areas and see what the fuss is about.

Elsewhere in the game world, the role-playing is of the more traditional variety, with players creating back stories for their characters and interacting with other players individually and in groups.

New World of Warcraft fan server recreates The Burning Crusade

Did you play The Burning Crusade when the World fo Warcraft expansion launched back in January 2007? I did. I remember the queues, the slow grind to level 70 and the soul-destroying progression. But I also remember the first time I walked through the Dark Portal to Outland. It was a wondrous moment and it looked a bit like this.
                                                 

Development has gone on for some time as the people behind the project worked to get their private server up to Blizzard's retail standards. The video, below, from developer "Gummy", goes into great detail on the work done to make Felmyst as accurate a representation of The Burning Crusade as possible. This involved everything from painstakingly recreating environments to tweaking AI behaviour and boss battles.

Development took immense amounts of work, as Dev “Gummy” details in the video how accurately the Felmyst server plans to recreate the Vanilla and TBC WoW experience. Tending to the environment, AI behavior as well as boss fights, the people behind this project have worked  diligently to make their private server up to “retail standards”

Surely vanilla players remember logging in and going through the Dark Portal and seeing this–then on to that slow grind to level 70 back in January 2007 when TBC launched.

There is a high demand for WoW to be played as it was a decade ago, but sadly, Blizzard has refused to add Legacy servers, for reasons unknown. Blizzards lawyers will most likely be on this too as they shut down Nostalrius in 2016 so let’s hope this one stays for Vanilla fans!

Gul’dan and Helya Achievements Will Be Removed

Working towards the Ahead of the Curve achievements? You better do it fast.
                                           

With the release of The Tomb of Sargeras, two achievements (Ahead of the Curve: Helya and Ahead of the Curve: Gul’dan) will be removed from the game forever on June 20 (U.S.) and June 21 (EU).

The Ahead of the Curve: Helya achievement requires you to defeat Helya in Trial of Valor on Heroic difficulty or higher. Located in Helheim, she is found only after defeating the previous two bosses: Odyn and Guarm. Odyn is located in the Hall of Glory. He is a three-stage boss which requires a good balance of damage and communication to effectively take him down.

The Ahead of the Curve: Gul’dan achievement requires you to defeat Gul’dan in The Nighthold on Heroic difficulty or higher. With there being ten bosses in this raid, we won’t go too in depth on each one, though we’ll quickly explain them. Skorpyron has a constant Skorpid spawn-rate, Chronomatic Anomaly changes the speed of time,Trilliax changes his abilities constantly. Spellblade Aluriel cycles between three enchantments and Star Argur Etraeus collects energy to power his abilities. High Botanist Telarn splits up to use multiple magic types. Krosus breaks the ground you fight on, Tichondrius captures you in an illusion, and Elisande rewinds time to gain health. Finally, Gul’dan increases damage output over health loss.

Video games can be fun and grand adventures, or enlightening things that make you smarter, or something that you do just to get moving in some cases, just depends on the game and the intent. But one thing every video game has is commitment. Every game requires that time be put into it for enjoyment, and that can add up. For genres like MMORPGs, a lot of time has to be put into it for full enjoyment to be reached. That can weigh on some players. And for some World of Warcraft players, it’s getting to be too much.

Details About A Supposed Expansion Have Emerged Online

"World of Warcraft" was changed significantly last year, as the "Legion" expansion brought numerous additions and adjustments to the game. And now, a new rumor is hinting at the next expansion that may be released for this MMORPG.
                                               

The latest lore article on the World of Warcraft community site has been published, this time centered around the new king of Stormwind, Anduin Wrynn. It does contain a number of spoilers, most especially for Alliance characters, but also features some developer commentary about the creation of the story line as well as some profiles of notable Alliance leaders.

According to the post, the Horde and the Alliance will need to join forces in order to fend off the attacks of the surging Naga Empire. The post adds that Azshara and N'zoth will be the main villains featured in this expansion.

Notable additions that may come from this supposed expansion include a new race known as the Naga as well as the Tinker class. Boats are also apparently set to be introduced as mounts, according to the post, and a new neutral city known as Undermine may be included.

As interesting as the contents of this rumored "Rise of the Naga Empire" expansion may be, there are some "World of Warcraft" players that are casting doubt on the legitimacy of the post, while others are hoping that it is detailing a real thing.

While players wait to see if the "Rise of the Naga Empire" will turn out to be real, they can still take part in the many events that are going on right now and that are still set to happen later this month.

For instance, players can still participate in the Pet Battle Bonus event and the "Deepwind Dunk" PvP brawl that are expected to remain live until May 22. The Cataclysm Timewalking Dungeon event will then begin on May 23, while the "Glowcap Festival" is set for May 27. The last event of May is the Arena Skirmish that will start on the 30th.

Is World Of Warcraft Not A “Game” Anymore?

One of the hardest things to do in an MMORPG like World of Warcraft is to keep the player base happy. It’s not enough to just release new content, new expansions, and new events, the developers have to keep the quality of the game up. If the quality doesn’t match the content, then why should people play it? This is a growing question that fans are asking themselves because although World of Warcraft Legion has been good (certainly better than the last major expansion, Warlords of Draenor), some people are noticing continually bad things happening.

One of the hardest things to do in an MMORPG like World of Warcraft is to keep the player base happy. It’s not enough to just release new content, new expansions, and new events, the developers have to keep the quality of the game up. If the quality doesn’t match the content, then why should people play it? This is a growing question that fans are asking themselves because although World of Warcraft Legion has been good (certainly better than the last major expansion, Warlords of Draenor), some people are noticing continually bad things happening.

For them, the last straw was patch 7.2, which has been getting a lot of flak from fans since release. In their opinion, there’s nothing significant in the patch, mainly because a lot of it is time-gated. “There is nothing.  Alts are locked inside of Dalaran, otherwise you want to use hours of the same storyline you have already completed.”

Watchmeheal went on to note about how the main PVP content just isn’t appealing in any facet and PVE isn’t doing much better. Thus, they’re unsubscribing and again, hate doing it as they love World of Warcraft but hate what it’s become. They feel they might come back, but it’s not going to be right now, and they fear where the game could be headed in the future.