ZAM News (preview)

ZAM News (preview) http://www.zam.com/ ZAM gaming news rss feed Announcing Allakhazam Featured Blogs [World of Warcraft] http://www.zam.com/story.html?story=23147   <a href="http://www.zam.com/story.html?story=23147">View in full...</a> Azshara : New and Goblin Improved! [World of Warcraft] http://www.zam.com/story.html?story=23124 Recently <a href="http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/cataclysm/features/azshara.html">Blizzard gave us more information</a> on changes in the upcoming Cataclysm expansion; Game designers Craig Amai and Dave Kosak give us some inside views on the overall design and  revamping  of Azshara. It's great to see that no zone is safe. In other interviews we saw that quests and pieces of a zone change, a typhoon or vortex here, new quests sprinkled about, or new story lines.  But here, we see Blizzard isn't afraid to completely wipe the zone and start fresh. They've choosen to keep a few things familiar so it still feels like the old zone, using the same color palette and a few choice landmarks. The familiarity is comforting amidst the massive amount of new content. <a href="http://www.zam.com/story.html?story=23124">View in full...</a> BlizzCon 2010 In-Game Items Revealed [World of Warcraft] http://www.zam.com/story.html?story=23088 Ok, <a href="http://us.blizzard.com/en-us/news/?d=2010-8#251130">Blizzard</a> fans, now we're getting somewhere. If you attend BlizzCon or buy a BlizzCon virtual ticket you will unlock a couple murloc themed prizes to use in World of Warcraft and StarCraft II. World of Warcraft players will unlock Deathy, a debatably cute murloc companion dressed up like the dragon Deathwing. StarCraft II players will unlock a Murloc marine portrait as well as a pair of "deep sea decals" to put on your units, each with a different design from the 3 playable races: terran, protoss and zerg. So what do you think about all this Murloc madness? Go <a href="http://us.blizzard.com/blizzcon/">here</a> to see a picture of Deathy. Icecrown Citadel cleared with blue-quality gear. [World of Warcraft] http://www.zam.com/story.html?story=23056 For those who may not know Gevlon, creator of the <a href="http://greedygoblin.blogspot.com/">Greedy Goblin blog</a>, has taken on the challenge of trying to clear as much WotLK raid content in possible while only wearing blue (rare) armor, with minor exceptions. His guild “Undergeared” of EU-Arathor spent much of the spring and summer clearing content despite the self-imposed handicap. However as the summer has dragged on the group has fizzled somewhat, as many guilds do. They are planning one last attempt to clear some additional content this coming week, but other than that it appears this great experiment is coming to a close. So what is the end result? The guild ended up clearing a large portion of the game’s 10-man content. Barring some additional success in the coming week; the group ended up clearing 8 out of the 12 bosses in Icecrown Citadel, including the first wing, plus Rotface, Festergut, Valithria Dreamwalker and Blood Princes. All of Trial of the Crusader and Naxxramas encounters were cleared, and all but two bosses in Ulduar (Yogg-Saron and Assembly of Iron). In addition they also cleared all of the 5-man heroic content. Interestingly enough the group found the Trial of the Crusader (ToC) raid to be easier than Ulduar wearing the same gear, despite the fact that ToC was released later in the expansion. Whether or not they clear any additional content, the guild went a long way toward showing what a sufficiently skilled group can accomplish; kudos to them. -- <a href="http://wow.allakhazam.com/users/someproteinguy">someproteinguy</a> WoW: Cataclysm Collector's Edition Unveiled [World of Warcraft] http://www.zam.com/story.html?story=23042 Read the full Cataclysm collector's edition press release after the jump. Be sure to check out ZAM and Wowhead's <a href="http://www.wowhead.com/contest=wow-haiku-contest" target="_blank">Cataclysm Beta Key Contest</a> for your chance to preview the upcoming expansion before it hits store shelves, and visit our <a href="http://wow.allakhazam.com/" target="_blank">World of Warcraft portal site</a> for more Cataclysm news and information. <a href="http://www.zam.com/story.html?story=23042">View in full...</a> Private Servers, MMO Piracy and the Future of DRM [World of Warcraft] http://www.zam.com/story.html?story=23033 The recent lawsuit is one of the most extreme cases of piracy in the MMO industry; Scapegaming hosted 427,393 total users, with 32,000 to 40,000 players online each day, according to the <a href="http://reporter.blogs.com/files/blizzard---order-on-damages1.pdf" target="_blank">court order</a> [via <a href="http://thresq.hollywoodreporter.com/" target="_blank">THR, Esq.</a>]. But is piracy in MMOs a widespread problem for most of today's publishers? Or is online gaming, by nature, more prohibitive to "digital theft" than traditional video games? Some publishers are taking cues from the cloud-based nature of online gaming, adopting new forms of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_rights_management" target="_blank">digital rights management</a> (DRM) for single-player or "offline" games that rely on users' Internet connections to constantly validate their usage rights. <a href="http://www.zam.com/story.html?story=23033">View in full...</a> Blizzard Announces Blizzcon Contests [World of Warcraft] http://www.zam.com/story.html?story=23019 <a href="http://us.blizzard.com/blizzcon/">Blizzcon</a> might still seem very far off, but that doesn't mean that the excitement has to wait.  <a href="http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=14332966923&sid=1">Blizzard just announced the start of the Blizzcon contests!</a> There are several categories to choose from: <ul> <li><a href="http://eu.blizzard.com/en-gb/community/contests/blizzcon10-fanart/index.html">unique fan art contest</a></li> <li><a href="http://eu.blizzard.com/en-gb/community/contests/blizzcon10-song/index.html">song contest</a></li> <li><a href="http://eu.blizzard.com/en-gb/community/contests/blizzcon10-movie/index.html">movie contest </a></li> </ul> We have some talented people at <a href="http://www.zam.com/">ZAM.com</a> so put your creative caps on and go win some prizes. Be sure to come here afterwards and share your work with us; we'd all love to see it. Sadly Blizzard does not, at the moment, have a writing contest specifically for Blizzcon, however, if you have a short story you'd like to share with people <a href="http://wow.allakhazam.com/forum.html?forum=21&mid=124522844824185623&page=1">we have a story thread</a> in the WoW general forums, and it'd be great to get more people involved. - <a href="http://wow.allakhazam.com/users/Xsarus" target="_self">Xsarus</a> Reviving Screenshot and Thought for the Day! [World of Warcraft] http://www.zam.com/story.html?story=22980 Put on your rose tinted glasses for a moment and travel back with us to an older, gentler time.  This was a time when men were real men, women were real women, class balance was perfect and Allakhazam proudly sported new screenshots and thoughts every day. While I am afraid we cannot travel back to that time, we can bring back the screenshots and thoughts.  The key to this, of course, is you. Without you, our fantastic and loyal reader, we cannot possibly harness the sheer potential of this project. If you feel inspired by a quest, a spectacular view or if you took a screenshot and thought of the most hilarious caption, you have what we need! There are a couple of categories you can submit pictures under: <ul> <li>You have a cool picture and a story behind it, please submit it. Maybe someone else will submit a follow up picture and story to continue the experience!</li> <li>You found a really unique area, place or item. Send us the screenshot and all the information and we can post it to see who else will recognize it.</li> <li>You have a great screenshot, but think it needs a caption.  We can show it and see what other people think the perfect caption should be.</li> <li>You heard a cool joke in general chat and want to share with the world.</li> <li>You are bored and have a witty thought. We will accept those also!</li> </ul> Images do not have to be a screenshot from WoW. If you want to submit your own artwork, or just a cool picture that you can, through some twisted logic link to WoW, we will happily accept them.  We will be posting these at least once a week, and scaling up depending on submissions. Please send your submissions to zampics@gmail.com and we will post them for everyone to enjoy. -<a href="http://wow.allakhazam.com/users/Xsarus">Xsarus</a> Darkshore: Cataclysm Edition [World of Warcraft] http://www.zam.com/story.html?story=22979 It's great to see the challenges and hard work Blizzard is putting into even the smallest zones, not just the world reskinned, but a complete changing of the zones and storylines. It's interesting how they pull the lore into the remade zones, and how they pointed out the destruction of entire 'species' in this area. Allowing us, the players, much more immersion into our leveling experience, and the gigantic vortex at the center of the zone, which strikes me as rather epic. Even causing me to consider leveling an Alliance toon! <a href="http://www.zam.com/story.html?story=22979">View in full...</a> Large-scale Study of MMO Player Interactions [World of Warcraft] http://www.zam.com/story.html?story=22978 This is just the case in a recently published article (<a href="http://www.pnas.org/content/107/31/13636.full.pdf+html" target="_blank">http://www.pnas.org/content/107/31/13636.full.pdf+html</a>) in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS). The study involved the space-age browser based MMO Pardus (<a href="http://www.pardus.at/" target="_blank">http://www.pardus.at/</a>), and dove deeper into the interactions between players than previous studies, by recording a number of different player interactions. <a href="http://www.zam.com/story.html?story=22978">View in full...</a>