Over the last several months, BossBlueprint has grown steadily in popularity and has become a staple tool for many serious raiding guilds within World of Warcraft. As is noted over on Matt Mehlhope’s personal blog:

…we’re thrilled that so many users have been utilizing the tool and if anything, our delay in creating something more suitable for the public has allowed us to gather plenty of data about what we can do to make the tool better and bring it to a broader audience.

The site refresh for BossBlueprint includes an updated interface, several infrastructure changes for increased speed, as well as the announcement that support for new games is on the horizon with Counter Strike: Global Offensive being the first new title.

Head on over to BossBlueprint.com to check out the new site.

If you’ve not played Realm of the Mad God yet, then you’re seriously missing out. A retro dual-stick-style shooter featuring warriors, necromancers, rogues and other classes, it at first seems as though this wouldn’t be something you’d classify as an MMORPG.

But you’d be wrong.

The recent popularity surge in roguelikes, roleplaying games that are harsh and unforgiving, have certainly influenced the way in which Realm of the Mad God works. No longer do you simply rez at a graveyard – if you die, you die. That’s it. Your character is consigned to the bin of oblivion, and you must begin again. This isn’t World of Warcraft. This is hardcore.

Then again, it only takes an hour to hit max level (20), if you know what to do, and truly, this is a community MMO in which “knowing what to do” means finding the biggest group of players in a 85-player-max instance and using the power of the horde to crush the many mobs and minibosses storming around, leaving perma-dead players in their wake.

However, every so often, you’ll find that Oryx, the Mad God himself, will teleport you to his dungeon, and you and everyone else will have the chance to kill him to grab some sweet loot. It’s exciting, and those of you who raid will know the satisfaction of watching Oryx drop after you and many others throw your tiny little spells and attacks his way.

It’s also browser based and free, so a great way to keep you entertained during those slow days at the office like Partypoker.es does. Investing some change in game currency is helpful in order to purchase pets and other special items to give you something of an edge, in addition to – and this is important – extra character slots, as you only start with one. Want to roll an alt and keep your level 20 rogue safe? Well, it’s to the currency system with you.

Check it out at realmofthemadgod.com. You may find that it’s just the quick-fire MMORPG you’ve been looking for.

There’s a great deal of news floating around for Diablo 3 as Blizzard’s latest press event has unveiled some enlightening information amongst contentious design decisions. You can read the full gamut of information here.

What is the Diablo III auction house system?

Acquiring epic new gear for your characters has always been a big part of the Diablo experience. Because of this, players have found a number of different ways to trade and otherwise obtain items both within and outside of the game. Many of these methods were inconvenient and either tedious (for example, repeatedly advertising for a desired trade in Battle.net chat channels and waiting for responses) or unsafe (e.g., giving credit card information to third-party trading sites). With Diablo III, we’re introducing a powerful auction house system that will provide a safe, fun, and easy-to-use way for players to buy and sell the loot they find in the game, such as weapons, armor, and runes. Two different versions of the auction house will be available in Diablo III: one based on in-game gold, which players acquire through their adventures, and one based on real-world currency.

What’s the difference between the gold-based auction house and the currency-based auction house?

The gold-based auction house uses in-game gold for purchases and sales. With the currency-based auction house, players will be able to conduct these transactions using actual currency from an authorized payment method or from funds that have been added to their Battle.net account. Players can choose to participate in whichever version of the auction house they prefer, on a per-transaction basis.

How does the auction house system work?

Players can open the auction house interface from anywhere in the game to make purchases or list items for sale. Items can be sold from the shared stash (storage shared among all the characters on your Battle.net account) or from any individual character’s inventory. When posting the item, the seller picks whether it will be sold in the gold-based auction house or the currency-based auction house. The item is then held by the auction house system until the listing expires or a purchase is made. Items that are not sold are returned to the seller’s shared stash, and items that are sold are delivered to the winning bidder’s shared stash. In either case, the auction house system will deduct a nominal fixed transaction fee from the seller, the amount of which is determined by whether or not the item was sold (see below). For the currency-based auction house, players will have a few different options for how to pay for item purchases and receive funds for item sales, as discussed elsewhere in this FAQ. There may be differences in how this system will work in different regions of the world. We’ll provide further details at a later date.

How is the transaction fee determined?

A nominal fixed transaction fee will be deducted from the seller for each item listed in the auction house. This fee consists of a fixed charge to list the item, which is assessed whether or not the item is successfully sold, and an additional fixed charge that is assessed only if the item is sold. Because the listing portion of the fee is charged even if the item doesn’t sell, it will be in the seller’s interest to list items he or she believes other players will be interested in, and to do so at a competitive price. Specific details related to the transaction fee for the currency-based auction house will vary by region and will be announced at a later date.

Please note that we plan to waive the listing portion of the fee for a limited number of transactions per account. In other words, for these transactions, the seller will only pay a transaction fee if the item is successfully sold, and that fee will not include the listing charge. We’ll have further details on this as well at a later date.

Why are you creating a currency-based version of the auction house?

Our goal with all of our games is to ensure players have a highly enjoyable, rewarding, and secure experience. Acquiring items has always been an important part of the Diablo series, but the previous games have not had a robust, centralized system for facilitating trades, and as a result players have turned to inconvenient and potentially unsafe alternatives, such as third-party real-money-trading organizations. Many of the transactions between players and these organizations led to a poor player experience and countless customer-service issues involving scams and item/account theft, to name a few. To that end, we wanted to create a convenient, powerful, and fully integrated tool to meet the demand of players who wished to purchase or sell items for real-world currency, and who would likely have turned to a less-secure third-party service for this convenience.

How will the currency-based auction house work?

Players will be able to make purchases in the currency-based auction house using a registered form of payment attached to their Battle.net account. As with other popular online-purchase services, players will also have the option to charge up their Battle.net account with a balance of funds that can be drawn from for purchases of any digital product available through Battle.net — this includes not only auction house items but also things like World of Warcraft subscription time and paid services, to name a few examples. On the flipside, when players sell an item in the currency-based auction house, the proceeds of the sale are deposited into their Battle.net account and can then be used as described above. Note that this process might be different for certain regions; we’ll provide further region-specific details as we get closer to launch.

Can players choose to get cash from currency-based auction house sales, instead of having the proceeds deposited into their Battle.net account?

Yes, as an advanced feature, players will have the option of attaching an account with an approved third-party payment service to their Battle.net account. Once this has been completed, proceeds from the sale of items in the currency-based auction house can be deposited into their third-party payment service account. “Cashing out” would then be handled through the third-party payment service. Note that this process will be subject to applicable fees charged by Blizzard and the third-party payment service. Also, any proceeds from the sale of items in the currency-based auction house that have been deposited into the Battle.net account will not be transferrable to the third-party payment service account. Not all regions will support this advanced feature at launch. Region-specific details, as well as details regarding which third-party payment services will be supported and the fee that Blizzard will charge for the cash-out process, will all be provided at a later date.

Is the currency-based version of the auction house optional?

Yes, the currency-based auction house is available as an option for players who wish to purchase or sell Diablo III items for real money. Players are also able to buy and sell items through the gold-based auction house, and they can trade items with each other as well through direct character-to-character in-game trading.

Why would I want to pay real money to buy or sell in-game items?

Acquiring items has always been a core part of the Diablo series’ appeal. With the previous Diablo games, many players have shown a great interest in buying, selling, or exchanging items for their characters using real-world currency, turning to potentially unsafe avenues to accomplish this goal. The currency-based version of the auction house provides players with an easy-to-use, Blizzard-sanctioned way to collect money for items obtained while playing Diablo III. In addition, it helps protect players from scams and disreputable third-party sites by providing a secure, in-game method to search for and purchase items posted by other players that are a perfect fit for their character and play style.

The currency-based auction house is completely optional. Players who aren’t interested in paying real money for items will still be able to rely on items they acquire through their own adventures, and they’ll also be able to trade with friends and use the full-featured gold-based auction house.

Can I play on a server without a currency-based version of the auction house?

We want to provide a secure, fun environment for our players to purchase and sell in-game items using gold or real money and have no plans to divide the community. Players are free to participate in the gold-based auction house or the currency-based auction house, or to opt out of using any of the auction houses at all, progressing through Diablo III using only the items they obtain through their own adventures or direct trade with other players.

Does Blizzard plan to post weapons, armor, and other such items for sale in the currency-based version of the auction house?

The currency-based auction house is a place for players to purchase or sell items they’ve obtained within the game. Blizzard does not plan to post items that affect gameplay, such as gear or character-enhancing runes, for sale in the auction house.

Will Blizzard sell anything directly through the auction house?

We don’t have any plans at this time to post items for sale in the auction house.

Does the currency-based auction house signify a shift in Blizzard’s business and revenue model?

We’ve always tailored our business models to match what we’ve felt would be most appropriate and effective for each game and in each region, and that’s the case with Diablo III as well. The item-based nature of Diablo gameplay has always lent itself to an active trade-based ecosystem, and a significant part of this trade has been conducted through unsecure third-party organizations. This has led to numerous customer-service and game-experience issues that we’ve needed to account for. Our primary goal with the Diablo III auction house system is for it to serve as the foundation for a player-driven economy that’s safe, fun, and accessible for everyone.

What’s Blizzard’s cut?

As with other online auction sites and real-world auction houses, our fee structure will vary by region. However, we plan to collect a nominal fixed transaction fee for each item listed in the auction house. This fee consists of a fixed charge to list the item, which is assessed whether or not the item is successfully sold, and an additional fixed charge that is assessed only if the item is sold. The listing portion of the fee, which helps encourage sensible listing prices and discourage the mass posting of items that are very low quality or would be of little interest to other players, will be waived for a limited number of transactions per account. For players who opt to have the proceeds of their auction house sales go to their third-party payment service account instead of to their Battle.net account, Blizzard will collect a separate “cash-out” fee. Specific details regarding these fees will be announced at a later date.

Why would I even want to use the gold-based auction house?

We recognize that not all players would prefer or have the means to participate in the currency-based auction house, and it was important to us to provide these players with a full-featured alternative.

Can we buy gold from the currency-based auction house?

Players will be able to buy and sell gold through the currency-based auction house at whatever the current market price is, as established by the player community.

If I no longer need an item I bought in the auction house, can I relist it in the auction house?

Yes. Once you’ve purchased an item you can do anything with it that you could if you had acquired it through your own adventures, whether that be using it yourself, or, after a cool-down period, trading it to another character or relisting it on either the gold-based or currency-based auction house. In fact, you can generally do any combination of these things — for example, you can purchase an item in the auction house, use it for a while, and then relist it or trade it to another character. Aside from certain quest items, there will be very few (if any) items that will be “soulbound” to your character and therefore untradable. Please note that the duration of the cool-down period mentioned above will be discussed at a later date.

With Patch 4.2 hot-in-progress on the PTR, Boss Blueprint now has all 8 boss encounter areas supported for guilds to use to create their strategies. Firelands is easily one of the most visually impressive raids to be released by Blizzard to date, accompanied with completely unique raid encounters, mechanics, and boss models.

While you’re making strategies, don’t forget to test out the new Drag & Drop feature by simply dragging the icons on to the encounter area!

Head over to Boss Blueprint to check it out!

Richmond, VA (PRWEB) April 18, 2011

Guild Launch, a leading provider of guild hosting services, announced today that it has signed a sponsorship agreement with BossBlueprint.com. Through the sponsorship Guild Launch will provide infrastructure resources and visibility to BossBlueprint.com while gaining additional brand recognition and the ability to leverage Boss Blueprint’s tool for Guild Launch members.

“Guild Launch’s goal is to help gamers to Slay More Dragons and Boss Blueprint has a fantastic, easy-to-use tool that helps gamers do just that. We’re proud to assist Boss Blueprint with their growth and to be able to integrate the tool into Guild Launch,” said Stephen Johnston, founder of Guild Launch.

The Boss Blueprint service has already proven to be popular and now with exposure to the vast Guild Launch user base it is critical that the tool continues to perform optimally. Guild Launch will be providing Boss Blueprint access to its lightning-fast Content Delivery Network to alleviate one of the primary growing pains of any web tool.

“We’re incredibly pleased to be partnered with Guild Launch to help bring our tool to a larger audience and ensure the demands of our increased growth are met,” said Matt Mehlhope, co-creator of Boss Blueprint. “Scalability is a primary concern for any developer and leveraging Guild Launch’s Content Delivery Network (CDN) assists us greatly. We look forward to working closely with Stephen and the Guild Launch team to improve the tool and better serve the MMO community.”

About Guild Launch:
Founded in 2006, Guild Launch, http://www.GuildLaunch.com/, was formed to help gamers to Slay More Dragons. Whatever form those dragons take in a given game Guild Launch builds tools to help gamers overcome them. With a registered member base of more than 2.5 million, Guild Launch provides core community, social networking, team building, recruiting, voice communication and planning tools to online gamers of all types via a user-friendly yet powerful platform.

About Boss Blueprint:
Launched in January of 2011, Boss Blueprint, was developed so MMO players can create visual boss strategies and share them with anyone. An alternative to hand-drawn strategies, Boss Blueprint provides clutter-free, birds-eye-view images accompanied with a palette of familiar icons for maximum ease of use.

Given the past few years’ history of MMO releases, most people fall prey to the hype machine and become ridden with promises and implanted with high expectations, only to be let down come a lackluster-at-best release. With the hype-and-fail cycle repeating itself so often, it’s no wonder that MMO players have become pessimistic of any new game.

Surprisingly, RIFT has had one of the most polished, stable pre-order launches in the recent years, if not ever. What’s more, is RIFT has had one of the best Beta experiences too. As the game went from Beta 4-5-6 and eventually to Open Beta, players had to work increasingly more to actually find bugs to report and things to complain about. TRION was clearly privy to how solid their product was, as they confidently opened the doors wider and wider with every release, leading to an extremely polished open beta — a treacherous time for previous MMOs.

While many developers are often fearful of the open beta as they are essentially letting the world know that their product has run out of money and they need to release to continue, the open beta for RIFT was just TRION saying, “Give it a spin, you won’t be disappointed” — and the players weren’t. To loosely quote Lore from Gamebreaker.tv, “Yeah uh, this is good, just release it, I’m ready to give you my money.”

Come the pre-release launch, many veteran MMO players anticipated downtimes, lag, malfunctioning software, and a plethora of other issues that are known to plague retail MMO releases. Once again, surprisingly, the issues were few. Come the 1pm EST start, the worst issue was the long queues to get in as the 32 available servers became jam-packed near instantly. However, as time progressed and the number of players allowed into the server was increased, along with new servers being constantly created, the numbers dwindled to more acceptable ranges.

Once the queue was surmounted and players were able to login to RIFT, the servers were remarkably lag free, stable, and the client did not crash to a horrible, fiery, death — nor have any of these issues surfaced in the past 24 hours.

While RIFT itself borrows much from its predecessors and isn’t particularly groundbreaking, the initial experience has been one of the most promising of any MMO to date. With large pre-order numbers and a smashing success of a launch, we can only hope that someone finally got it right. However, even if the game were to not last and the crowds flock back to EVE or WoW or wherever they came from, the bar has been raised for launch, and it’s a high one at that.

Having worked diligently on this boss for several hours, we not only welcomed the very clean and smooth kill that resulted, but were impressed with the difficulty of our first heroic encounter. Considering that as of the time of this post 1 more heroic boss kill would put us as a Top 10 10-Man guild in the US, we are very much looking forward to the challenges ahead.

Great work all!

Being a proponent of a clean, functional UI, I am always on the lookout for new addons that help me to reduce clutter, while adding core functionality — WhisperWhisper by Blacksen is just such an addon.

WhisperWhisper is a World of Warcraft add-on that helps players keep track of private conversations. Inspired by two popular add-ons, SLDataText and Whisperfu, this add-on creates an extremely lightweight frame that acts as a mouse-over portal to whisper conversations. More importantly, the add-on can be significantly customized to aesthetically match any UI by customizing colors, fonts, font sizes, and alerts. Additionally, WhisperWhisper uses the LibDataBroker library to directly integrate with several popular display add-ons such as ChocolateBar or Titan Panel.

Features

• Flash Alerts that can be customized with color, flash duration, textures, and combat status.
• Import fonts using SharedMedia
• Change the add-ons size and color to better “match” your UI.
• Conversations saved between sessions
• Completely functional with Battle.net/RealID
• Alternate Display mode for people with several whisper conversations

Your chat pane is usually flooded by general chat, guild chat, raid chat, random Blizzard notifications, and a plethora of other lines of text that do nothing but make you quickly lose track of who says what. WhisperWhisper allows you to easily move your whispers to its own dedicated area that is there when you need it, not when you don’t, and clearly lets you know when your whispers need attention.

Blacksen was also kind enough to create an introductory video that shows you how you can utilize and customize WhisperWhisper – enjoy!

Over the past few weeks I (Krg) have been working on a free World of Warcraft boss strategy creation tool that allows players to visually show their strategies for an encounter to anyone they want. As of today, BossBlueprint is now live!

How To Use It:

• Press “Create” and select from any currently available raid encounter.
• Add, move, and resize Blizzard’s or other custom raid icons to the encounter area.
• Press “save” to get the jpeg, or simply embed it into your website or forum. It’s that easy!

Create a Strategy Now!

Our “What it Takes to be a Nub at irnub” series highlights each member of the irnub roster and asks questions about the person behind the character. Interested in more? Check out the others.

Name: Progar
Armory: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/bleeding-hollow/progar/advanced
Class: Druid
Main Spec: All of them!

If you would, please tell us a little bit about yourself and your role at irnub.

My name is Matt and I raid on Progar in game. Currently, the nature of this expansion has shattered the very meaning of a main spec role for me as I am currently gearing and raiding in three of the four specs available for the class. The first part of the expansion however has been spent versing myself in the new battle that is healing.

What got you sucked into WoW initially?

Not gonna lie, I initially had the same reaction I am sure most did and hated it just because others hated it and the rep it got of consuming your life. I already had a very addictive personality towards computers and video games so once I tried it there was no going back. The real reason why I started playing though was because the girl that I liked at the time had a brother that played an undead rogue on Malfurion during BWL times. He was pretty cool and I spent enough time over there to pick up an interest to start a rogue, thus Rohgar (my old Rogue) was born.

So how did you get into progression-oriented raiding?

Progression oriented raiding didn’t start for me until the Burning Crusade hit. I hit level 60 on my rogue roughly a week after BC went live. From this point on I stepped up my game and became interested in the raiding scene. It wasn’t long before I was guilded and raiding Karazhan. I brushed up against extremely hardcore raiding when I joined a top 150 guild but lost interest in WoW shortly after acceptance.

What are your greatest strengths and weaknesses as a WoW player?

Probably my single greatest strength in a raid is my raid awareness. At any given time as a healer, taking in your surroundings and anticipating damage can make the difference in a mediocre healer and a stellar healer. Having the right equipment for the job helps too, such as a nice big monitor and a clean UI, but raid awareness is key in any encounter.

My greatest weakness is healing Pokeadot when I don’t want to. He is mean.

What are your most and least favorite parts about raiding?

My most favorite part is everyone’s favorite part … the adrenaline after a first kill — it’s addicting.

Least favorite part is probably everything that doesn’t have me in an instanced zone killing bosses.

If you could give one “pro tip” to other players, what would it be?

Power Auras, Cooldown/Buff/Debuff Timers, Boss Mods (BigWigs or DBM), Keybindings, Mouse with lots of buttons … that counts as one tip aye?!