I can't believe I'm reaching 2,000 subscribers, and at an alarmingly hastened rate. Thank you all so much for this, it has been such an amazing ride thus far and I cannot wait to see where we go in the future. I started this channel with no idea where it would go, and this past year has led me towards finally feeling like I've found a spot in the YouTube community.
The ride with TGN over these past few months has been interesting. Being an extremely motivated director who was absolutely thrilled to gain exposure from having a segment worthy of being uploaded to central, I started crazily filming content and planning future ideas to really get my name out there and help the gaming community on a much larger scale. I was extremely surprised at the desire TGN had to make me a director, but unfortunately once I started, talking to more people from Central was a disaster. Suddenly all of the videos I had put sweat into were being ignored, and apparently "lost" by the big guys in charge of uploading them. At one point, it was stated that Next-Gen content was far more important and my videos just couldn't be uploaded. I also begged to be in charge of the TGN WoW Channel, which has been inactive for more than half a year, and yet I couldn't, because there was no "need" for coverage on a dying game. That was such a stab to me that I questioned why I even decided to join. There was so much potential that was wasted away with bad management, and it really discouraged me.
All in all, it has been a learning curve though, and has just showed me how situations like this really can show you what kind of management you'll stand for, and how much it says about a company. One day I hope to be partnered with a company that is not so superficial and actually cares about the people they hire onto their team.
On another note, this has led me to really focus on my own channel and what I'm doing there. I will hopefully be committing to posting 1 video per month, and 2-3 blog posts per month, and as my subscriber rate increases, so will this number! With Warlords of Draenor coming out soon, WoW content will be picked back up, and piano tutorials will be continued. I have a great lineup for 1337 Eats as well, so it's time to get cracking. I also intend on doing more "craftsy" gaming things, but this will most likely be blog exclusive.
Thank you all for sticking with me even though it's been a hectic ride. I know videos can take a while to pump out, and it means so much that you still stay tuned and give me so much support that really keeps me going and inspires me to make videos. Please always remember, even if we hit a big subscriber rate, you are never just a number.
I look forward to the future, and thank you for this.
It's not recent news to WoW players that glitches, or malfunctions, happen in the World of Warcraft. In fact, many of these glitches have paved their way forever into the history of the game. Players reminisce back to the days where major cities were filled with corpses, as players essentially "one-shotted" every lowbie in the game. Other glitches, such as wall-jumping and casting manipulation, have served another role, simply allowing players to skip content, and maybe even explore a new zone that they didn't even know existed. In the realm of Communication and Media, these glitches actually follow the theoretical guidelines of Michel de Certeau, a French scholar, who stated that media paradigms work off of strategical input that consumers can manipulate in tactical ways. In World of Warcraft, we see that Blizzard is the main source of incorporated strategy, where as we, the gamers, find tactical ways to take advantage of all of the content that they throw at us through the use of glitches. Let's look at some of the common occurrences of glitches in the game.
Corrupted Blood
“Corrupted Blood”
was a glitch that may be one of the most popular glitches in World of
Warcraft history. With the
release of a 40-man raid titled “Zul' Gurub”, there was a boss
fight which would bestow players within the raid group with a very
potent boon effect, titled Corrupted Blood. This Corrupted Blood
would cause massive damage, often causing online players to die
within a few seconds unless removed by another player.
In addition, the
effect acted like a plague, spreading to other characters within the
general vicinity. This “Corrupted Blood” effect could only live
within the raid since it was tied specifically to the boss Hakkar
the Soulflayer,so as soon as players were back in the outside world,
there was no way to be inflicted with the corrupted blood. Players
soon figured out however (and this is where tactics come in), that there was a defect in which a hunter's
pet could be inflicted with the corrupted blood, and summoned in the
outside world to spread the plague, resulting in massive deaths of
innocent online players who possibly never even had met with Hakkar
before. Furthermore, other online players discovered ways to quickly
teleport out of the raid zone while still being able to bestow the
corrupted blood to other online players. Many, many skeletons were seen throughout
major cities at this time. Many actually took on serious roles, attempting to heal other players in order to form quarantine zones and help effected
characters survive the duration of their Corrupted Blood.
This glitch was
shockingly so wide-spread within the game that The Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention actually studied the player
pandemonium as well as the effects of the Corrupted Blood in order to
expand their knowledge on the ways in which diseases spread in real
life (Staff, 2005). Later on in 2007, epidemiologist physician, Ran
Balicer, actually published an article in the journal Epidemiology
which compared the Corrupted Blood against avian influenza outbreaks
(Balicer, 2007). In fact, Corrupted Blood received so much
feedback, that Blizzard actually tried to refine the epidemic into an
event that was more manageable for players, while also providing a
way for institutions to study real life epidemic effects in a virtual
world. This, my friends, was the Zombie Infestation that took place just before the release of Wrath of the Lich King in 2008. This was one of my favorite events, and there actually was a glitch to close the door to the Champion's Hall, the PvP rewards center in Stormwind. I would know...I closed that door and saw everyone freaking out. Still makes me laugh thinking back to it ("HELLPPPPP"). But ANYWAYS....
Casting
Manipulation, Old Ironforge:
World of Warcraft is a game that truly relies on players casting
“spells”, or abilities, in order to perform a large variety of
functions. Players have used the action of spell-casting to glitch the game in order to gain
entry to an assortment of places in the game. Various
casting manipulations have helped players to skip content in the
game, such as difficult bosses in dungeons and raids. Other uses have
been to access “secret” content, two of the most popular in the
game being Old Ironforge and below Stormwind.
Ironforge is a city, sculpted by the Dwarves, that has always been
inhabited by many online players. The city of Ironforge has a rich
history in the lore of World of Warcraft, and players were extremely
excited to hear that there was an “Old Ironforge”, a section of the city that existed "underneath" that was not supposed to be accessible to characters. This content
was first hidden by Blizzard when added to the game, but once players
had found the “secret spot” for Old Ironforge, people were
exploring this zone more frequently, which was not what Blizzard had
originally intended. After hiding a functioning door behind a throne
in the original Ironforge, Blizzard realized that more players were
finding this area than they had liked, and removed the door from the
game. Why it was added in the first place is unknown, but players
utilized the function to access content that the game developers did
not necessarily want to be revealed on a large scale. In fact, it has
been said for years that Blizzard had added Old Ironforge to the game
only to be used/revealed in later expansions, although it is unclear
whether this is the true intention or not.
Old Ironforge does, in fact, still exist and is still accessible to
characters via casting manipulation. Blizzard has tried various times
to stop players from entering this zone by fixing various glitching
possibilities, but has never been able to stop the accessibility
entirely since players keep finding new tactical ways to get into Old
Ironforge. The current tactic that players use is a form of casting
manipulation combined with the previously mentioned wall jumping
tactic. There is a very distinct location in which characters must
cast a spell which summons their mount, or steed, and quickly walk
forward while jumping at just the right time. It may sound confusing,
and it is. Getting the
timing right is not an easy task, and is frustrating to many players. The exploration of this content, may be well worth it though! "Look Ma, I've been to Old Ironforge!" BRAGGING RIGHTS!
Martin Fury
Soooo...Many of us have probably been hacked over the course of this decade of playing WoW, right? Well, one character had a very awesome, WoW-changing experience after finally receiving his character(s) back. This is one of my favorite "glitches", if it can even be considered a glitch...It's kind of more of a hiccup from the Game Masters...But, regardless, let's call it a glitch for our own sake. One character, named Leroyspeltz, had found a surprise in his in-game mail after having had all of his characters restored to their former glory. On his level 13 Gnome Warlock was the chest-piece called, "Martin's Fury". Leroyspeltz and his buddy, Karatechop, had used the item 14 times, mainly in conjunction with clearing the Ulduar raid. Upon claiming "world's first" titles, Blizzard caught on to what was happening and banned the accounts for their use of an item that caused them to "cheat" the system. Both players saw nothing wrong since the item was sent by Blizzard, and were unaware of the all of the titles they were claiming. So after having an account restored, Leroyspeltz was banned, as well as his partner in crime (if you can call it that), Karatechop. The whole malfunction of strategy is actually quite comical...But really, how can one be banned for Blizzard's mistake? Unfortunately, these accounts were not restored.
There are so many other glitches that have occurred in this game that it would take pagessss and pagessss to talk about them all, but these bugs are a great way to understand de Certeau's theory about the ways in which strategy and tactics run hand in hand. Hopefully I brought back some memories...I know for me this article made me feel an overwhelming sense of nostalgia! What were some of your favorite glitches in World of Warcraft history?
