Blizzard finally made an official announcement about what will be happening in 4.0.3 regarding those unique ZG mounts and items.
However, Blizzard also added "Although we have no current plans to introduce new ways to obtain the Zul'Gurub mounts, pets, and the tribute mounts, they may return should we find a place where they fit in the future."
While everyone on the WoW forums and websites were claiming that the mounts would be "gone for good" (and to farm ZG as soon as possible), I heard information to the contrary from my inside sources. I had actually predicted this in a post I made last month. =]
Also, although their statement says "no current plans", Blizzard actually does have plans (or should I say "options that they are considering"). The "original mounts" with their "original achievements" will be gone but the mounts will be making a reappearance (as explained earlier) either through drops, rewards (eg Archaeology), the Pet Store, or other ways.
The Pet Store definitely has a very high probability. =]
Also, a little birdie tells me that a mount similar to the [Black Qiraji Battle Tank] will be making an appearance in Cataclysm as well. My sources weren't as certain on the new scarab mount as they were on the ZG mounts, however.
So I spent the last couple days selling Glyphs and re-selling [Vanishing Powder].
Trade Chat was filled with players asking, "where do i buy vanishing powder????" so I simply purchased stacks from the Scribe Vendor, directed Trade Chat users to the AH, and re-sold to them for 30G per stack. =]
I probably made about 3k gold just reselling cheap [Vanishing Powder] to people who didn't read the patch notes. From my Glyph selling, I gold capped one of my characters and the other is 50% capped. I had a lot of competition too unfortunately, but all-in-all it was a good day. Mat and ink prices sky-rocketed, so it was a good thing that I had made all of the glyphs (40 of each) during the weeks before. (Since ink requirements for Glyphs went from 1 ink to 3.)
All of the new 4.0.1 Glyphs can be learned from the trainer, 1 x Northrend Research (Living Bomb), and 1 x Book of Glyph Mastery (Colossus Smash). Don't waste any more than that, you won't learn anything new.
So here's an interesting gold tip:
[Glyph of Vanish] is currently bugged and no one is able to craft it. It will be hot-fixed eventually, so most players won't know when it will be available. But if you check the Trainer after each server restart, you'll be able to get and sell the Glyph before anyone else. For atleast the first few hours, you'll be able to sell it for 100-200G each.
Other broken Glyphs (not available YET) include [Glyph of Mage Armor], [Glyph of Armors], and [Glyph of the Long Word].
Mage Armor still might be available from your old crafted glyphs, but there's no way to make new ones - so they're very pricey at the moment and you should buy out all competition.
Don't advertise sales of these Glyphs in Trade Chat either, otherwise other Scribes will clue in.
I'll make this quick and summarize some news items. I'm exhausted and about to get some shut-eye. =]
- Forbes recently had an article about WoW's "12 million" subscribers announcement where they talked briefly about Blizzard's Next Gen MMO. Basically, the size of the team working on their Next Gen MMO is now more than 140 employees (which is close to the size of the team currently working on WoW.) It's a sign that project development is "in full swing", but it's still actually pretty new (ie, the team) and they're actually very far behind in development. The basic idea/story is ready, and content is still being developed - but it's still several years away.
- The Blizzcon Schedule makes no references to their Next Gen MMO.. I'm hoping they might show _something_ in the closing ceremonies though, even though game development is still early they still have some graphics content that they can show off. If there is no information released though, I'll have to go back to my sources and see if they're taking a different direction for the game. I'm still looking forwards to their "HUGE" Diablo 3 announcement though. D3 isn't supposed to be ready for public beta testing until late 2011, though, so the release date will probably be Christmas 2011 or very early in 2012 meaning that the release date announcement will happen around next years Blizzcon. I have strong feelings that this "HUGE" announcement will be silly.
- Regarding Blizzard's "12 million subscribers" announcement, it's funny how people never read the fine print on those posts. Active subscriptions in China (where a large chunk of their players are located) provide Blizzard a completely different calculation system used in their "total subscriber" figures. Keep in mind that in China, WoW and all of the expansion packs are completely free, and they don't pay monthly subscriptions. Instead, they buy time cards and can add time/points to them. The average player typically has multiple cards and they never expire until they reach 0. By purchasing these cards, they count towards an "active subscription" even though the time card isn't being used.
If you want to see real Census information, go here. During peak hours, there are about 2.6 million players online. You can't get accurate information like this from EU/NA realms though, Blizzard doesn't allow it. I have two CWOW accounts by the way, and can attest to the Chinese census information. =]
The thing is, that 12 million subscriber announcement doesn't fit in at all with Blizzard's revenue statements for EU/NA and NetEase's revenue statements for China. It also doesn't match up with each country's realm counts and sizes, software sales figures, and live census information. It does work, however, when special exceptions are made for active accounts (that can't be played or aren't being played), when you tweak numbers for China's special timecard system, and when you adjust the definition of what an "Active Subscriber" actually is.
- For those that didn't know (or forget), the next SC2 expansion pack release date is due in 2012 (Heart of the Swarm) and following in 2014 (Legacy of the Void). That's right - a 2 year gap between each Starcraft 2 Expansion Pack. Bah.
- Many online sources have been claiming Guild Wars 2 to be the next panacea for all MMO problems. Although I'm very much looking forwards to trying out GW2, I wish they wouldn't specifically focus on the problems of other MMOs. WoW, for example, has done a lot of things the RIGHT WAY and GW2 should be taking the same approach and simply improve proven concepts or working ideas. And don't forget that because GW2 will be doing a lot of cool new stuff, they'll be having a lot of cool new problems. =] I'll write up more on this though when I have some free time.
It's funny how just the other day I was posting about how Blizzard can (and will) ban you for any reason or for no reason at all.
Coincidentally, I just learned that Blizzard banned possibly thousands of players for using Single-Player trainers and cheats.
Check out this very interesting post from Cheathappens.com.
Here's my favorite bit:
Still though, some question Blizzard’s motives. “I’m surprised they took such a blind step without doing some research into the games played,” gm0ney added. The user has been through a similar situation before, with another game -- where he suspects the company had monetary motivations for the bans, “A bunch of people’s accounts got hacked and used cheats, so we all got banned. The company already had our money so they didn’t care about our accounts.” Many people, including Cheat Happens’ Business Operations Manager and Content Editor Chris O’Rorke, believe that Blizzard is also thinking monetarily, and points to the company’s blockbuster MMO World of Warcraft as evidence. In WoW, which (unlike Starcraft 2) carries with it a monthly fee, users who are found to be cheating are only handed temporary bans as to not interrupt the monthly flow of cash coming from those users.It echoes a lot of concerns and supporting evidence that I've been posting about. Many of Blizzard's activities seem to be motivated by monetary purposes (especially when there are so many alternative methods available that are more customer centric rather than profit centric.)
Blizzard's official announcement, however, made it sound like the users were cheating on Battle.net or during live competition with other players:
We recently took action, including suspensions and bans, on over 5,000 StarCraft II players who were in violation of the Battle.net Terms of Use for cheating and/or using hack programs while playing. In addition to undermining the spirit of fair competition that’s essential to play on Battle.net, cheating and hacking can lead to stability and performance issues with the service. Maintaining a stable, safe, and secure online-gaming experience for legitimate players is a top priority for us, and we'll be continuing to keep watch on Battle.net and take action as needed.I especially like the part about how cheating and hacking affects the stability and performance of their Battle.net service, hence the reason for the ban even though the single-player cheats were used offline. That's some deceptive wording.
Those banned players were also questioning the "legality" of Blizzard's actions. But, Blizzard's EULA and TOU documents are worded very carefully. Players don't actually own any of their games, they are merely "renting" the service from Blizzard who can terminate said service at any time, without notice, and for absolutely no reason at all.
Note: Even though I have a 100% clean account (I know a lot about bots and exploits for example, but I've never actually used them on my WoW), I'm pretty sure my account will get banned one day. It will probably be this Blizzard employee too.. he still regularly checks the blog, but has kept quiet with his comments since I called him out on it. He'll find SOME reason to ban me. =]
The timing of this SC2 ban-wave is definitely "coincidental" for other reasons as well. It happened on the first day (Oct 1) of the new Q4. It could have been done a few days earlier, so that it was reflected in Q3.. but no, Blizzard waited until the same Quarter as when Cataclysm would be released. This specific date was actually quite a strategic move and will pad Blizzard's profits (users need to purchase new licenses) for the same Quarter when Cataclysm is released. After all, they need to show a large profit to their investors during this time.
I had talked about this before, and how Blizzard can make these types of strategic actions to pad their numbers (especially during months when they are showing lower than expected profits.)
Here's the link where I noted an "interesting trend" about how new services, content or game releases, or bans will happen in quarters when sales are hurting.
If Blizzard's profits from WOTLK China Launch are lower than expected (Q3 statements not released yet) or Blizzard is really worried about about Cataclysm sales performance, we might see another WoW (or other BNET games) banwave during the next couple months. So if the banhammer drops before mid-December or you see new services (or paid pets for example) introduced - it means that Blizzard has some very strong doubts about Cataclysm. Blizzcon revenue (whose ticket prices keep increasing mind you) should help significantly improve their profits for Q4 however.
On another related note, the reason you haven't seen any in-game advertisements yet in Starcraft 2 is because Microsoft's Massive Inc. is closing their doors. This announcement was made to their clients (Blizzard being one of them) before the Blizzard SC2 banhammer dropped and before their public announcement was made. I'm thinking that's probably a real coincidence, but the timing (ie, Oct 1) of the banwave was definitely not a coincidence in my opinion. It fits in perfectly with what I've been writing about these past few months.