Let’s say there are these five hateful sisters in the Shard of Hate.

Now, let’s say that if you happen to wipe while killing these sisters, all five of the sisters respawn.  Obviously, this is to prevent you from putting your entire raid force’s resources into killing one sister at a time, wiping, then trying again on the next sister.

Let’s say that when you kill one of these hateful sisters, you can potentially loot an item from their corpse (not chest loot, mind you, but just a body drop) that triggers a one step quest that provides you with a choice of really nice fabled items.

Now, let’s say - just for the sake of argument - that you can kill one or two of these sisters and then wipe, which resets all five of the sisters, but now you have bodies on the ground from the previous kills.  Let’s say these bodies have body drops on them which starts the one step quest which provides you with a choice of really nice fabled items.

Now, let’s say those quests are repeatable.

See the problem?  Several guilds are already exploiting this little loophole to stock up on quested fabled items (which can then be munged, donated, vendored, etc).

The only real question is whether or not it’s an “exploit”, just shady, or perfectly acceptable.  What do you think?

I’m about to make a post which is not likely to earn me any favor with a majority of guilds out there, but I think the early stages of Shard of Hate is too easy for the loot which is dropping.

Don’t get me wrong.  I’m not heading up some 5 night a week ubermetaraid guild here.  We’re a second tier T8 raid guild right now - we haven’t even made it to Veeshan’s Peak yet.  So I’m not coming down on the Shard of Hate from some sort of elitist ivory tower, condescending my considerable opinion upon the rabble.  No, we’re fairly typical of what many players might consider the more casual of the raid guild spectrum.

I’m also very much in favor of better content for beginning raid guilds. I’m a huge fan of zones which have easier starting content that scales up to more difficult content.  I don’t think the Shard of Hate should be built around ridiculous entry requirements, either (you must be THIS uber to raid this zone).

That said, the initial stages of the Shard of Hate are practically a gimme.  If you don’t believe me, here’s a quick guide to the first two named of the Shard of Hate…

(more…)

Browsing through the morning news sites, I was surprised to find this headline posted on the front page of CNN.com:  Thousands fight closing of online game

“More than 11,000 people have signed a petition to save Disney’s Virtual Magic Kingdom massively multiplayer online game (MMOG) after an announcement was made that the site will be closing.” -WKMG

Some of the most heart wrenching stories are coming out of this one.  Children and parents are angered - ANGERED - by Disney’s decision to close this online world.  Disney’s not only missing the boat on another opportunity to nab kids, but this type of action is exactly the sort of thing parents will remember when they look for other online worlds for their children to participate in. 

Visit http://www.savevmktoday.com/ for more details.