Balandar

This was posted on the blizzard forums today by TehSuq. I went to Gen Con today. To those of you who weren’t there, let me give you a feel for the event: Think of the geekiest person you ever met, in your entire life. Let’s call him “Brian.” Now, picture a giant room filled with hundreds of people that Brian would never have hung out with on account of not being THAT much of a geek. Consider the bell curve that defines humanity’s traits. You know how much higher on the “coolness” curve Al Pacino is relative to the typical fairly-cool high school sophomore? That’s how much lower the average Gen Con attendee is on that same scale than your friend Brian. Mind you, there were fairly normal looking folks there (I’d like to pretend I fall into that category), but some people…Jumpin’ Jesus on a pogo stick, they SCARED me. (Note to the 300 pound guy dressed as Liam Neeson’s character from Star Wars Episode I: please don’t breed.) For these people, Gen Con is like Christmas, Halloween, and Mardi Gras all rolled into one: it is a paradise for the dork’s dork. Trading card games. Video games. Swords and medieval weaponry. LAPR – that’s (L)ive (A)ction ®ole(P)laying, for those of you unfamiliar with the lingo (and a more geekified activity has yet to be invented by the mind of man). Miniatures. Anime DVD for sale. People in costume – including Boba Fett, Darth Vader, and a gaggle of Storm Troopers, all moving as a pseudo-combat team. Roleplaying game events. The nerd role-call continues. Indefinitely. All the areas on the main floor (the only floor I visited – apparently, the other floors were for the REALLY dorky events, and I didn’t even want to know what THAT meant) were fairly sparsely populated by visitors, except two: the line to see William Shatner and the Nvidia booth’s World of Warcraft display. Yes, my friends, even the presence of no less a legend than T. J. Hooker himself was insufficient to thin the crowd waiting to glimpse (and play! Ten minute limit, keep the line moving) WoW. I circled around and looked at various booths and found some pretty nifty looking things. To my mind, the niftiest looking items were Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and these headphones that vibrated to simulate extreme bass response. I even spotted T. J. while he sipped coffee and waited for the next star-struck weenie to come stuttering with awe as he scrawled his name for them (for free! What an honor!). Personally, I didn’t wait to talk to him – I always like MacGuyver better, personally. The gates opened at 10am. At 10:05am, I had buttonholed a WoW dev. Over the next five hours (yes, five hours), I peppered the poor guy with question after question after question. If he wasn’t in the bathroom, at lunch, or helping some other person, he was answering questions for me. (To Josh Kurtz: You played Virgil to my Dante for FIVE HOURS, and I can’t adequately express how grateful I am for all your help. You are truly a scholar and a gentleman. Without your help, I would have next to nothing to say in this post.) What follows is cribbed from the 13 pages of notes I took during my stay at booth 223. Any errors in this text belong to ME, not the wonderful and hard-working Blizzard employees frantically scrambling to help the forty-odd visitors learn as much about what was happening on the two demo computers as possible. On a side note, George was kind enough to give me a press kit CD; I haven’t looked it over yet, but I was promised that it had “Gen Con exclusive screen shots.” Does anybody know where I can host those screenies on the web? ................... To read more click on the comments link.

I don't know if they will have orcs in dungeons. They haven't released information where monsters will spawn at. I don’t even know if they will have orc monsters.

Most of the orcish words should be simple and short.. unless it's really hard to communicate something without that word. It shouldn't be too much of a problem for you, orcish is mostly distorted (badly spelled) English that has an orcish feel and look.

I don't understand. Since we do not have anyone in beta, we can't write any stories about it. We could make up stuff like, "had a battle, etc" , but it would have to be very generic and contain no information that could be considered against the NDA.

Considering we only have a few limited members that are not involved in other MMORPGs, it is quiet. It will pick up once we get more recruits and the beta starts.

heheh, nobody understands Chris when he speaks orc!! >:]

Except we all play on US East

Servers. They may or may not be located in different places. Many of the newer MMORPGs have all server located in one location.

If there is an NDA then they will not be allowed to leak any information to us. And I will delete any topics that contain that information since it would be a breach of a signed contract and legal action could be taken against that person and might give our guild a bad rap.

Yes. There will be a guild symbol that will show up on what you wear.

Warcraft 3, SWGB, Starcraft, UT, Quake, etc, were never meant to be guild games but just games for members of T.H.E. to use as breaks from the major MMORPG guilds we host. The only reason I wish to form a clan on Warcraft 3 is for T.H.E. members to play and get away from their respective MMORPGs. And the reason why we will go with Orc, etc, will be for advertisement for our WoW guild. People can play humans, NE, undead, etc in Warcraft, but I also want it to be a way to advertise our WoW clan.

You will need to host it on another server, like free.prohosting.com or geocities.com. Some might not let you link to the image itself. You may need to hunt around some for free web space. Check your own ISP to see if you have any webspace. For taking screenshots, look for a program called UOSU. Ultima Online Screenshot Utility. I think this website has it. http://www.hh.iij4u.or.jp/~kmatuoka/uosu/indexe.html

Another update from Blizzard! You can read about the World dungeons here.

SWG would be like DAoC then. There is no interaction. See rebel, kill rebel. As to WoW, we do not have enough information yet as to how PvP will work. Warcraft history is now saying that the Orcs are becoming good and humans evil. But it will still be Alliance vs. Horde, like rebels vs imps, or midies vs albies vs hibies. And guild warfare (as to how that will work... no info on it yet). Shadowbane is like UO Fel. Anyone can kill anybody else. So when you come across someone, you do not know if they will flee, attack, or talk. That would be the closest to what you are talking about. But.... it's pretty unbalanced. I think you can download it and play for 15 days or something. Not sure if any of that would help. I am not playing any MMORPGs as of right now. Mostly just Warcraft 3 with some UT on the side.

Huh? Where have you been? "Good guy"? UO = good guys EQ = good guys Star Wars we are Imperial. World of Warcraft we are Orcs.

Yes, but if you are the only one to gruk it, kinda pointless don't you think? >

Thanks for posting this Chris. The Clan will most likely be the Skullcrusher "Orc" Clan. However, since this is not a true MMORPG, it will be there just for fun and for a break from the games that we do play. Well, except for me since I am in between games right now. So it will be my main game. But you do not need to have a certain amount of wins, yada yada. We need 9 people to form the clan. Also, if you do not have WC3, think about getting the "battle chest" version. It contains the first WC3, the expansion TFT, and strategy guides, which I should read > I'm Grulg on battle.net. P.S. We will need to think of a clan abbr. since SoC was taken. I am pretty sure the guild name itself is free. Orc is taken as well. We could try Urk, Uruk (it can have 4 letters), 0rc (with the number 0), Or(, etc. Post any ideas you have.

Easier to gruk now. >:]

Nothing will change with beta. Most, if not all, of us will not even get into the beta. Your position in the guild before WoW comes out will be based upon the content of your posts on these forums and stories you write about your character.

No

No idea what they mean. The only one I know for sure is Dabu.

Vradish, try this, spell the words as they sound. For example: Eat - eet even - evun, eben, etc ashes - ashez, ashiz,... not sure of another good way of saying ashes. hungry - hungri, or hungry even. It makes things easier. They sound more or less like English, but have that orcish look and feel to them.

Not at this time. We are currently in contact with some guilds that wish to form a horde alliance. But that is still in the process of formation.

It's for any story you write about your character and for screenshots from in game, like from a hunting trip the guild goes on, etc.

Again, no. Warcraft has nothing to do with how WoW will work. The only thing they have in common is the same lands and history. Being good in a RTS game or any game for that matter does not make you a good leader.