During the recent Real ID catastrophe on the forums, many players decided to appeal to an industry source that might have been able to sway Blizzard to change its mind. These players contacted the ESRB (Entertainment Software Rating Board) as a Better Business Bureau-type middleman in this situation with their concerns. The ESRB itself has championed such causes in the past with its Privacy Online program, which is designed to help companies meet various privacy laws like the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA).

Since Blizzard recanted its decision about the forums, the ESRB faithfully followed up with those concerned.

Unfortunately, in that followup email, the ESRB exposed individuals to a new set of privacy concerns.

The letter and more information after the break.

Continue reading ESRB unintentionally exposes email addresses of people who filed complaints over Blizzard’s Real ID system

Filed under: News items, Account Security

ESRB unintentionally exposes email addresses of people who filed complaints over Blizzard’s Real ID system originally appeared on WoW.com on Mon, 12 Jul 2010 21:55:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Want to crush your enemies, see them driven before you and hear the lamentation of their women? Blood Sport investigates the entirety of all things arena for gladiators and challengers alike. C. Christian Moore, multiple rank 1 gladiator, examines the latest arena strategy, trends, compositions and more in WoW.com’s arena column. Also, apparently, arena history is discussed as well, as evidenced by these last two articles. Mhmmm arena history — the best kind.

Listening Music: ELO with “Don’t Bring me Down.” Alright, my bad for not dropping some Elo in the last article. I felt the wrath of my readers. I offer a humble sacrifice.

Last Week: We talked about the beginning of arena and how the old rating system differed so dramatically than the one we have today. The Elo system was implemented on a firm foundation, but quickly eroded due to…

This week: Personal ratings and why we have them!

Season 3 and season 4.

While the old system was grand in many respects, it had flaws. The biggest flaws with an Elo rating system which only had one rating (team rating) were point-selling and win-trading. Both of which are virtually non-existent in today’s arena world. Personal rating was created in season 3 to end both of these problems. Even though many arena-boosting groups tried to duplicate their success before season 3, it was much harder, and therefore, much more rare.

If you aren’t familiar with point-selling, it was a pretty big deal early in WoW‘s arena history. Essentially, a high-rolling exceptionally good PvP team would level up a 3v3 or 5v5 team to around 2100 or 2200 rating (at the time, these ratings were unbelievably good — think 2700 or 2800 in today’s arena world). Then, they would sell spots on the team for gold. Individuals would buy 1000+ arena points for 500-1000g. It would usually be advertised through trade and it would be assumed that the individuals would be entering three to four losing arena games. The team rating would suffer as a result, but they’d still get the points advertised.

Continue reading Blood Sport: Personal ratings fixes the Elo rating system

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, PvP, Blood Sport (Arena PvP)

Blood Sport: Personal ratings fixes the Elo rating system originally appeared on WoW.com on Mon, 14 Jun 2010 23:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Blizzard has released a rather detailed look into a new feature coming in Cataclysm that we first heard about at BlizzCon 2009 — the mastery system. The system will “allow players to become better at what makes their chosen talent tree cool or unique.” Mastery bonuses are passive and are tied to each talent tree for every class. The more talent points you put in the tree, the more your mastery for that tree will increase. Each talent tree will have three mastery bonuses:

• Bonus 1: Increase to damage, healing, or survivability
• Bonus 2: Increase to a stat that’s relevant to the given talent tree
• Bonus 3: A completely unique effect to the given talent tree

The mastery statistic on gear you’ll get from 80 to 85 will increase the effect of bonus #3. Mechanically, the point of the mastery system is to remove talents like “6% more damage” and regulate those effects into the entire tree.

The entire announcement from Blizzard after the break. This includes some examples of the mastery bonuses for a few talent trees.

Continue reading Mastery System Preview

Filed under: News items, Cataclysm

Mastery System Preview originally appeared on WoW.com on Mon, 08 Mar 2010 21:18:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Fire! Brimstone! Dragons! Heroic Van Cleef! The world is going to get turned upside down when Cataclysm hits, and the shadow priest spec is going to get turned upside down right along with it.

You’ve no doubt already read a bit about the upcoming stats changes with Cataclysm. As you can guess, a lot of these changes are going to hit shadow priests like a hammer to the face. The conventional wisdom of holding spell power in higher regard than all other stats is out the window, along with the spell power stat itself. And we may be facing a serious nerf to our legendary survivability.

Blizzard’s given us a delicious sneak peak into the future of shadow priesting — there’s some good stuff, some bad stuff, and some who-the-hell-knows-yet stuff. Follow me after the break to get a glimpse of “Shadow Priesting 4.0.”

Continue reading Cataclysm: Stat and system changes for shadow priests

Filed under: Priest, Cataclysm

Cataclysm: Stat and system changes for shadow priests originally appeared on WoW.com on Tue, 02 Mar 2010 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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