Blizzard Announces Plans To Just Fucking Release A Goddamn Difficulty Slider Already

In a press conference held earlier today, Blizzard President Mike Morhaime announced their latest plans to “just fucking release a goddamn difficulty slider already” for their popular online video game, The World of Warcraft.

We’re tired of this shit. Half of you fuckers are like “this is too easy” and the other half of you are saying “this shit’s too hard” and we’re just standing here looking like a bunch of goddamn assholes because you fuckers can’t make up your minds. We’re tired of it. We’re fucking done with it.

Later that day, the latest patch for the beta version of their next expansion, The Mists of Pandaria, included an early prototype of the difficulty adjustment option.

So we’re gonna test some shit out on the beta where you can pick from ten different difficulties. It’s not enough. We know it’s not, that would just be retarded. You know how many people play this game? I don’t have the numbers here but it’s probably more than the population of the fucking city you live in. You think ten difficulty settings is enough for that many assholes? We’re just gonna test this shit out with ten and then if it works we’re gonna throw in a percentage slider thingy so you can pick from a hundred difficulty settings.

Morhaime explained that they receive fan criticism on a daily basis and that they’re hoping this new system will quell some of the most common complaints directed at raid difficulty.

Not a single one of you fuckers is gonna be able to say shit. You want easy? You got easy. You want hard? You got hard. You want something in between? You got something in between. YOU. CAN’T. SAY. SHIT. FUCKERS.

The Blizzard president went on to explain that each level of difficulty would result in players being able to obtain progressively better levels of gear. For example, difficulty level 5 would drop items of level 485, difficulty 15 would drop 495, difficulty 40 would drop 520, and so on and so forth.

That oughta keep you twats busy. And you know what? We’re gonna make level 100 so goddamn impossible that not a single one of you sponsored fuckers is gonna be able to beat it. Actually, check this shit out: if you can beat level 100 then you get to be Blizzard president. What? Yeah, I just fucking did that. Come at me.

When asked if Blizzard had any plans to change the “Raid Finder” version introduced in their previous expansion, Morhaime responded:

LFR is a bag of dicks. And if you’re doing nothing but LFR… well, quite frankly, a bag of dicks is where you belong. We’re just gonna take out the item level restrictions and the “once a week” loot limit and make it a shitty cesspit where you go to drown in buckets of green quality gear and semen. We’re hoping this will result in making the system as big a bag of dicks as we originally intended it to be.

Probably Not How Any Real Blizzard Meetings Work

Morhaime: Okay everybody, we’re good to go with the WoW Annual Pass. The web team has assured us that we’ll be good to go for Blizzcon so we’re still on track to announce it there. We’re definitely gonna do the free copy of Diablo but we need a few more perks for our subscribers who might not care about D3. So let’s start brainstorming. Who’s got some ideas?

Stockton: What about an exclusive pet? I mean, we’re doing the whole pet battle thing so maybe that would be a nice way to…

Chilton: No, no, no. We agreed that the pet battle thing is gonna be pretty controversial for the more hardcore crowd. This would just be more fuel for their fire. We need to do something different with this.

Street: How about an extra talent point for every…

Metzen: Shut up, Greg. Sorry I’m late everybody, just had to fire our valet guy. He was about to get mud all over my carpeting. Did I miss anything?

Morhaime: Hey Chris. No, we’re just getting started. Cory, I really like that idea but I agree with Tom. We don’t want to do a pet overload.

Stockton: Okay, how about a mount then? It’s cosmetic but we could still make it cool enough that people will want it.

Chilton: I could get behind that. It would definitely have to be appealing enough to sway people who might be on the fence.

Street: Ooh, I know. We could make it a giant crab that walks sideways and it has a…

Metzen: Shut up, Greg.

Morhaime: Guys, guys. Blizzcon is only a month away. There’s no way the art team is going to be able to get a mount ready that quickly.

Metzen: So? We just recycle somethink they’re already working on. Can we just take something from D3? I mean, yeah, we still have to animate it into WoW but who says we have to have it ready at Blizzcon? Just throw up a picture and tell them they’ll get it in the next patch. Done.

Stockton: That’s actually not a bad idea. Maybe some sort of monstrous creature from D3’s bestiary would work.

Morhaime: Well let’s not get ahead of ourselves here. We’ll get with the art teams and see what they have and if we can get that going quickly enough then we go with a mount. Otherwise, we nix it. I’ll write it up on the board here for now.

Street: Don’t forget to write down the crab thing, too.

Metzen: Shut up, Greg.

Morhaime: Okay what else? That’s good but it’s still not enough.

Metzen: Not enough? It’s a damn mount. They love that shit, they don’t need anything else.

Morhaime. But what if the mounts don’t work out, Chris? Come on. Let’s get serious here. We need more. Tom? Cory? Any ideas?

Chilton: I don’t know. This is really tough. I want to give them a lot of cool things but we can’t really do anything game-breaking or anything where people absolutely have to have the pass.

Stockton: I was thinking some sort of priority registration or something for Blizzcon next year.

Metzen: Oh, I can’t do Blizzcon next year. I’ve got a thing.

Morhaime: Okay, let me just make a quick note here… cancel… blizzcon… okay got it.

Stockton: You know what? That actually made me think of something. What if we gave them priority something else? Like they can get Mists before everyone else or something?

Chilton: That wouldn’t really be fair, you’d still be forcing people to get the annual pass if they want realm first or anything like that. Races for achievements would be completely broken.

Street: We could remove achievements.

Metzen: YES!

Morhaime: Wait what? You’re agreeing with that?

Metzen: Oh sorry, I just beat my high score on Bejeweled.

Street: So does that mean we’re removing achievements? I’ll start writing a dev watercooler about it.

All: Shut up, Greg.

Metzen: Alright, so you need something that lets people be feel like they’re important and first but doesn’t actually mean shit? Beta access. Done.

Chilton: Hmm…

Morhaime: Actually, I like that a lot. Tom? Cory? Thoughts?

Stockton: No objections from me.

Chilton: That actually might be a good way to find more bugs in the beta. To really flood it with people but still make them feel like they’re getting something special. I like it.

Street: Whoa whoa whoa whoa whaaaaaaat? You guys that’s crazy. No way the beta servers are gonna be able to accommodate that many people.

Metzen: Seriously, why do we keep inviting this guy to meetings?

Morhaime: Greg. Don’t be stupid. With that many people, nobody’s going to expect to be able to play all at once. The betas are there to help us test stuff out. People know that and they know that crashing the servers isn’t gonna let us test anything.

Street: So… queue times to get onto the servers?

All: *groan*

Stockton: I really think we need to get him some help. Like, I’m not even joking here. Greg might have some sort of serious problem. Did he seriously just suggest going back to LK-era queue times to get onto servers? That shit completely blew up in our face. I don’t want to go back to that, even if it is just for the beta.

Chilton: You guys already know how I feel about this guy. I’m not even gonna waste my breath repeating it.

Metzen: So are we done here? D3, Mount, Beta. We good?

Chilton: Oh, you know what? Let’s just make sure the legal team works with the web team to make sure we word all this stuff correctly. Mount in the next patch, D3 when it releases, beta when it’s available. Otherwise the crazier ones are gonna whine all over the forums about how they didn’t get this stuff instantly.

Stockton: Oh my god, you’re right. You know, it’s funny… as long as we’ve been doing this, I never remember that we have to plan this stuff out for the lowest common denominator of our fanbase. Could you just imagine people on the forums going apeshit about the beta not being available for them yet?

Metzen: Wait, are you kidding me? We gotta deal with bullshit like that? It’s ready when it’s ready. Tough titties.

Morhaime: Yeah, but some people just don’t get that. We’ll make sure to add that into the legalese. Good catch, Tom. We really dodged a bullet there.

Metzen: Who wants to hear some Thrall lines?

All: *cheer*

I don't know where I found this picture but it's a pretty good cap for this post. The end.

Pandanalysis: What’s a panda do, probably?

I mean we can only theorize.

My assertion is that probably they will be big and fluffy I think.

Obviously eucalyptus will also most likely be involved. They gonna eats it. Oh they’ll cook too and could potentially use it as an ingredient? That would be a good idea. Somebody page Blizzard to this thread cause I’ve got some ideas and theories that they really need to hear. But like, only if they don’t have better ideas, right?

The storyline would be cool if it started with an act of kindness from Garrosh to the pandas.

I know what you’re thinking here. You’re all like “kindness from grosh whaaaaat lmao” but actually it will be an attempt at him trying to better himself. That would be a cool storyline.

But so like… so, umm the… wait hold on, let me think how this is gonna work.

So the pandas are also really good people. Like super good. And also not people, you know, they’re pandas. But then instead of being nice back to Thrall they… wait, I mean Garrosh. Instead of being nice back to Garrosh they accidentally have a miscommunication or something and they think Thrall is… wait, I did it again. They think Garrosh is posing an immediate threat so they kick his butt and throw him out.

So Thrall…

Gimme a second, I need to stop doing that.

…

Okay.

So Garrosh feels all rejected and he tries to make up for it by being an even gooder person. But it’s like, both sides keep misconstruing his actions and he just goes further and further into this massive downward spiral. Then it just drives him so crazy that he decides to be the best person he can be and that he should do the best thing possible to make people love him the most. So he decides he’s gonna love all the pandas. He’s just gonna love them all so so much and he’s gonna be basically kidnapping them and keeping them as slaves but in his head he’ll be thinking “these pandas are totally the luckiest to have me keeping them because I love these pandas so much and now they’re safe and they’ll have me forever.” That kind of sounds like The Ice King from Adventure Time and yeah it’s basically that same archetype. So the Horde and the Alliance are like “oh man, that Garrosh has gone BONKERS dudes, we need to shut down his crib and save all those panda girls he’s been holding up in there.”

They didn’t say it all at once and in unison. That would be weird. I was just giving you a quick little synopsis of the general conclusion that they reached at the end of some discussion.

Oh man though, can we just picture that for a second. Everyone in the Horde and Alliance stops what they’re doing for 5 seconds, and all at once they read that line out loud. How crazyballs would that be?

Anyways, that’s my theory/hope/suggestion/pandanalysis of the SHOCKING news we received about the Thrall ra… about the GARROSH raid.

Damn it.

A List of Words You Can Use For Bad Pandaren Puns

You’re welcome

pandemic
pangea
pancakes
pants
pan-fried
panera bread
panacea
pansies
panama
pandemonium
panamerican highway
pancho
panzer
pancreatic cancer
pandering
pantomime
pandora’s box
panel lighting
panettone
panhandling
morgan freeman
panic attack
pansexual
pangs of hunger
panjabi
panoramic
panflute
penis, lol
pantry
pantaloons
panther
panties
pantyhose
mandarin
land a pin
hand a win
sand a twin
man or shim?
tampa swim
balls on chin
hannah slim
fanta whim
sandworms

Mists of Pandaria Press Tour Secrets Revealed!

Chen Stormsnout presents exciting new Mists of Pandaria information to the press at Blizzard Headquarters.

Last Wednesday, I was lucky enough to attend a press conference hosted by Chen Stormsout (I think that was his name) in which he discussed some new information about the upcoming expansion. We weren’t supposed to reveal any information until Monday, but I’m a loner Dottie, a rebel.

I’m certain that Blizzard will be triangulating on my position very shortly… perhaps even as I type these words. Hopefully I can spread this information to as many people as possible before the assholes at Blizz take away my right to freedom of speech.

The Lore

-The story of the expansion will start with the pandaren arriving in Orgrimmar. The head panda, named Dirty Pete, will challenge Garrosh to a duel in which the winner will gain control of Orgrimmar. Baine will attempt to get revenge by putting poison on Dirty Pete’s bullets but will then feel foolish when he realizes that the bullets would kill Garrosh regardless. Anyways, Dirty Pete wins and he becomes leader of the Horde.

-Simultaneously, Dirty Pete’s cohort, Calamity Anne, arrives in whatever the Alliance’s main city is and she does some stuff to take over there too. Alliance stuff is pretty boring so I fell asleep here, but I know she has a gunfight with somebody.

-Dirty Pete and Calamity Anne turn both cities into saloons and the Alliance and Horde freely travel between the two cities in order to sate their appetites for booze and gambling. Both sides fall so far into their downward spirals and when they’re all drunk and asleep at night, the rest of the pandaren ride in and steal all of their belongings and take them back to Pandaria. They also kidnap Jaina and that one girl who’s pregnant with Thrall’s baby.

-Players must travel to the mysterious island of Pandaria to retrieve all of their faction’s loot as well as to rescue Jaina and the pregnant one all while thwarting the nefarious plots of Dirty Pete and Calamity Anne. Pandaria will have a very Western feel.

Concept art which is probably from Blizzard that I found by googling "cowboy panda."

Gameplay

-Players will have the opportunity to experience some really new and unique types of gameplay.

-At level 87, they will be able to gain an Apprentice that travels alongside the player and will also gain levels in order to lead to perks for the player. This apprentice will carry your spare horseshoes, clean your musket, and cook your beans when you sit down at the end of a long day to rest around the campfire. This will lead to buffs like faster mounted speed, reduced durability loss, and increased duration of food buffs.

-In order to gain access to mounts in Pandaria, players will first have to complete a special Stampede Challenge in which bulls are rampaging through a town. Players will have to halt and tame one of the bulls and will then be able to mount in Pandaria.

-In order to make the game feel more “western” all classes will be renamed. There will be Gunfighers, Ruffians, Roustabouts, Hobos, Floozies, Injuns, Outlaws, Renegades, Vaqueros, and Paladins.

-At level 90, players will gain access to Dusty Air Flying which will allow them to fly through the zones of Pandaria.

-Players will be able to participate in exciting gunfight duels with NPCs or other players. If you ever played Kirby’s Super Star, there was a part where you had to press SHOOT right when it was time to shoot and if you did it too early then you lost. It’s basically exactly like that. Also you can eat the other player and steal all of their class abilities.

total DSL

Dungeons and Raids

-The first dungeon players will encounter is Sheriff Hickock’s Jail in which players will first meet and free an NPC named Willy the Kid. This is a young pandaren who supports the Horde and Alliance and will also occasionally appear through dungeons to aid the players.

-In a future patch, they’re planning for Willy the Kid to start his own settlement which will be a daily quest hub full of outlaws and ne’er-do-wells. Completing these daily quests will give characters access to several new panchos which will be ideal for transmogrification.

-They toyed with the idea of making Willy the Kid a kangaroo but then realized that the joke was kinda lame and that kangaroos didn’t really fit into the game.

-The final raid of the expansion will feature a fight in which you are riding on the back of a train and you have to detonate bombs in order to knock cars off of the engine, ultimately weakening the train down to just one single car.

-Players will engage Dirty Pete and Calamity Anne as they race a train towards the tied up Jaina and pregnant orc. It’s gonna be so badass you don’t even know.

It'll probably be something like this.

Other Stuff

-Cross Faction Raiding was just a stupid April Fool’s Day joke and Blizzard is tired of people requesting it.

-The game will be linked through your Battle.net account to both Starcraft II and Diablo III. When you play one of the games, you will gain a buff to one of the other games. The longer you play one game, the better the buff. So for example, if you play Diablo for four hours, you’ll get a buff to your Warcraft character like 5% stats for 1 hour (or something similar, numbers not final yet).

-Yes, there’s gonna be a hella ton of sombreros for you to wear.

-RP servers will not have access to Pandaria as there’s just way too much potential to make the saloons really terrible.

-The game is releasing with this Tuesday’s patch. Blizzard realized that hardcore raiders will take time off to ensure that they can be the best players and have the most time to raid. By using the element of surprise, Blizzard ensured that all players are on a relatively even playing field.

Have fun!

Min-Maxing in action. (Yet another picture I shamelessly stole from the internet).

A Guide to Druid Bear Tanking in 5.0

There’s been a lot of stirring around the internet regarding the talent changes for Druids in Mists of Pandaria and how we’re going to turn into a class that shapeshifts a lot but can’t really do anything well. But people, DON’T WORRY! Druids are going to be just fine. As proof, I am going to show you exactly how bear tanking is going to work in the next expansion.

Put your minds at ease.

Blizzcon 2011 Live: Impressions From the Pre-Alpha

Yesterday we got a chance to play the pre-alpha version of Mists of Pandaria. No screenshots were able to be taken of course, so I spent about 16 hours going over every detail just so that I could make sure to give you the most accurate information.

The first thing you notice on the character select screen is that Blizzard has apparently decided to add a new race to the game. Not sure why we haven’t heard much of this from other sources, but this new race looks like an unusually larger scale version of the existing Pandaren Monk model (having trouble linking here, but you can search my older post regarding these tiny Pandaren).

Anyways, I started up the pre-alpha and in order to give you the most accurate update on all the changes, I chose to play a Tauren Druid. Since that is the class I’m most familiar with, it would give me a great chance to keep you informed on every single detail that has changed.

I’m very disappointed to say that so far, Druids are seeing little to no change in this version of the game. I replayed the starting zone over and over and over just to make sure I wasn’t missing something, each time with more and more tears welled up in my eyes. This is how a heart breaks.

All the exciting new talents we’ve heard about for 5.0? None, no new talents for us. All the crazy screenshots we’ve seen of the new Pandarian environments? Nope, we still start in Thunder Bluff. Exciting new features we’ve heard about in 5.0 like the raid finder and transmogrification? Druids appear to have no access to these amazing gameplay changes.

Please Blizzard, don’t let us lag behind all of the other classes. We deserve these new features as much as everyone else!

Blizzcon 2011 Live: Expansion Revealed

Sorry if there’s bad syntax here folks, wanted to get this info out ASAP. I’m live here at Blizzcon and they’ve just announced the new expansion at the opening ceremonies here.

World of Warcraft: Tides Of War

Lots of interesting stuff going on in this expansion. It seems to definitely be centered around the Alliance this time. It starts with Jaina going overseas to find her family. Chris Metzen said:

We’ve been building up to this for a long while now. It’s time to put Jaina in the spotlight and the best way to do that is to return her too her roots.

With Jaina out searching, Varian takes the opportunity to start a campaign to retake some of their lost land.

But Sylvanas has plans of her own…. With the lack of leadership in Stormwind, the Forsaken easily take the city and leave Lordaeron, completely destroying their former city and leaving no trace behind.

Jaina finds her brother and together they begin to rebuild Lordaeron.

This expansion really seems to be centered around shifts in leadership.

The Goblins overthrow Gallywix and move into Gnomeregan using their superior technology to cleanse the area.

Gallywix finds solace in flooding Dalaran Crater and building an island casino in the center. (Looks like the insider info I tweeted during the line earlier was accurate!)

But like I said, this is expansion is more Alliance based. We get lots of deep introspection from Tyrande where we see her troubled by these changes. She forms the Cenarion Reclamation to try and enter the Emerald Dream.

The dwarf leader (I don’t remember his name, I’ve already finished one flask of whiskey) begins using the resources of Ironforge to attempt to reawaken the Titans.

The Tauren and Trolls don’t like either of these plans so they form the Bloodtotems to try and take Teldrassil.

Meanwhile, the Horde is having an internal power struggle. Thrall returns and wants to retake leadership. Garrosh doesn’t want to give it up so Thrall starts a campaign asking Garrosh “Where’s the birth certificate?”

Worgen find a cure and turn into humans.

Draenei get tired of being dicked around all the time so they move back to Outlands and take over Shattrath.

The Blood Elves are cool with this, it was kinda weird out there. The leader of the blood elves (again, don’t remember who) throws his hat into the race for Orgrimmar.

Sounds really exciting overall, looks like we were all wrong about Mists of Pandaria. Can’t wait for Tides Of War! Stay tuned for more gameplay info as the day continues.