WoW blog

The legal battle between Blizzard and the guy who wrote WoW Glider has escalated. Blizzard claim that usage of the WoW Glider (and bots in general) is prohibited under their Terms and Conditions.

Moreover, Blizzard claim that a big part of the WoW gold is actually acquired by means of a botting software like WoW Glider.

If you ask me, even if they kill this guy, there will be another ten minutes later. No one wants to powerlevel all the way to 70!

BBC examines the gold buying phenomenon (short though).

WoW Gold sellers have been doing extraordinary feats to attract players’ attention. Check out this video. I love the Benny Hill music - it makes all the gold spam worth it!

Just imagine if Diablo 2 item sellers decided to spam by arranging their wares (swords, wands, and runes) as URLs.

This time, it’s the New York Times who goes to China in order to report on WoW gold farming.

Here’s the part that interests me: how much for 100G?

At the end of each shift, Li reports the night’s haul to his supervisor, and at the end of the week, he, like his nine co-workers, will be paid in full. For every 100 gold coins he gathers, Li makes 10 yuan, or about $1.25, earning an effective wage of 30 cents an hour, more or less.

The boss, in turn, receives $3 or more when he sells those same coins to an online retailer, who will sell them to the final customer (an American or European player) for as much as $20

Now, the $20 is definitely an exaggeration from the comparisons on cheap WoW gold that I have seen. There are some vendors who sell it for about $10 per 100 gold.

This guy clearly had it when it comes to bots. Even the most sophisticated bots (like WoW Glider) use a pre-scripted routine that’s easy to spot.

I know some of you are interested in purchasing WoW gold. I haven’t seen a reliable comparison of prices between vendors so far but this one seems pretty close.

Maybe someone could do a similar price comparison for powerleveling.

Heres the basics of Arena Point Distribution:

Each week, during tuesday maint, your team is awarded a point value based on its rating.

Example: Your 5v5 has 1400 rating. Lets say hypothetically this gives 350 points. Each member of your arena team gets 350 points if they played at least 30% of the total amount of games the team played.

5v5 teams get 100% of the available points per team.
3v3 teams get slightly less per team.
2v2 teams get further point reductions.

I have no idea why 3v3 and 2v2 teams do not get as many points as 5v5. It probably has something to do with 5v5 requires more people to do, so thats the bonus. Either which way dont feel you need to do 5v5 to get ahead. You can still progress with 3v3 and 2v2 to get items.

All teams need to play at least 10 games a week in order to be rated.

How long:

This depends on your skill, and the skill of your team mates. I dont wana say “sub par” however teams bellow 1501 (1500 or less) have to wait a much longer time to get points then those at 1501 or higher. Once your team reaches 1501 the mathmatical formula to get points becomes exponential. This means a very large increase in the amount of points you get.

A team with around 1600 rating can expect to get an item every month or so if they are 2v2. If you are in 3v3 its similar but more expedient, and 5v5 you have more points so you would most definatly be getting 1 piece in a month at the least.

You only can get points from one team per week.

If you have many teams, the team with the highest number of points awarded to it, will be where you get your arena points for that week. Even if your 2v2 was 1900 rated, and your 5v5 was 1850, your 5v5 would give you more points. So you would gain from the 1850 rated 5v5 team.

For Starcraft fans, the wait is OVER.

Starcraft 2 has been announced in Korea. Blizzard have released a Starcraft 2 trailer and I managed to find some gameplay videos (in amazing detail - 1280×768) from the WWI. The game doesn’t look much different in terms of gameplay but the graphics definitely ROCK!

I’ll be tracking Starcraft 2’s progress over at my Starcraft 2 blog.

NRP has a report on gold farming in China.

Playing online games for 12 hours is a fulltime job for thousands of Chinese workers. They’re accumulating virtual money — or “gold” — which they can sell for real cash. But it’s a dull and labor-intensive job with limited payoffs.

According to the interview, there’s a gap between what you get paid if your farm gold in the US or in China. If you do it in China, you expect at most $4 for 12 hours of work. In the US, the same gold gets you $13. I’m not sure the economics work like that but that’s what they said.

So if you want to buy cheap WoW gold, go to Shanghai!

Blizzard are done with the patch it seems. You can view the Black Temple trailer below:

There’s also an HD version of it here.