Blizzard has put out a call for an Online Community Representative. This is not surprising considering Tseric's departure from modding the World of Warcraft forums partially due to the amount of hate posts he received.

It's understandable how some people would be rather hesitant about getting this job considering what happened to Tseric.

The job posting outlined the responsibilities: regular viewing of and responding to posts in the WoW forums, conducting investigations regarding open subjects with other teams at Blizzard, and participating in fairs and events. Those are a lot of responsibilities, but one thing Blizzard should have added to the requirements is "thick skin" to handle the slings and arrows one will undoubtedly receive when giving out news about nerfing or rollbacks.

Hopefully, the people involved in the entire Tseric incident will have calmed down by now considering that he was only a messenger for some of the bad news that the community received. If you're interested in the job, you can go to the Blizzard site via our read link to get more details on it.

Since Eyonix's confirmation that Blizzard Community Manager Tseric did indeed move on to other opportunities, here's a look at what happened to him. Thanks to WoWWiki and WoW BlueTracker - which is handy when you're looking for deleted threads - we know that on March 13th 2007, Community Manager Tseric posted this about his job and the challenges that he deals with in a daily basis (it's not the complete post, but you can catch the rest of it via our "read" link below):

...Until you actually try to acknowledge those who do not speak on the forums, for whatever reason they have, you will not understand.

If you think an archaic business formula like "the customer is always right" works, you fail to understand customers, not a customer. It is a collective. No one person, even myself, is truly above the whole.

I simply have the unfortunate quality of being easily singled out.

To this day, we do not know exactly when and if Tseric put in a resignation, if he asked to leave or if he was asked to leave. However, we do know, from the many anti-Tseric posts, that he did go against a sizable group (the use of the term "mob" would be very much politically incorrect) of angry players.

Tseric was known for being one of the most "interactive" CMs on the Blizzard Forums. Some of the more famous quotes from him include the now internet meme: "IM IN UR AKOUNT SHARDING UR PURPLZ."

Of his last posts the more memorable ones included this gem:

Can't help it.
Posting impassionately, they say you don't care.
Posting nothing, they say you ignore.
Posting with passion, you incite trolls.
Posting fluff, you say nonsense.
Post with what facts you have, they whittle down with rationale.
There is no win.
There is only slow degradation.
Take note. It is the first and only time you'll see someone in my position make that position.
You can be me when I'm gone.

And also the very apt, "THANK YOU, GOOD NIGHT!"

People have been noticing that Blizzard CM Tseric hasn't been posting in the World of Warcraft Forums. Several members of the WoW community, dubious that he'll pursue opportunities other than WoW, speculated that he's probably just shifted jobs.

WoW Forums member Treacherous notes this job listing he saw in the Blizzard.com site that says that there's a job opportunity for Online Community Representative.

CM Eyonix immediately answered Trecherous' speculation. "Tseric is now pursuing other opportunities and we wish him the best in his future endeavors," says the Blizzard Poster.

As expected, community reaction has been humorous. Replies range from "oh noes, he got canned!", to "He stole the printer on his way out", all the way to " He didn't quit, he spontaneously exploded. Big difference. They're still cleaning Tseric off the walls, it's gonna be a few days before they even look at applications."

So what exactly happened to Tseric? Officially, we'd have to go with Eyonix's response to Treacherous. Forum member Crick, though, seems to have a decent grasp of the situation. Crick writes:

He didn't "go postal". There were a bunch of Tseric hate-threads one night, and after responding/locking/deleting most of them he posted a very accurate statement about the jackasses who troll these forums and how they treat the CM's. That, combined with the fact that most of his responses that night weren't very delicate (not obscene or insulting or anything, just not delicate) had a bunch of the aforementioned trolls screaming and sobbing about how he wasn't fit to be a CM and deserved to be fired immediately. Basically, his actions were grossly exaggerated by a few people who didn't like him to begin with. You know, pretty much what you'd expect from these forums.

Here's forum member Kezul's take on the matter:

So, how did you want him to deal with the mob which he created?

He tried to help the shaman. His ideas were not accepted by the development team. He had the balls to post what he did, and tell everyone "Look, I tried my best for you all, but theres nothing I can do". Is that a good enough reason for everyone to turn on him?

Everyone knows for a fact, T-boy was one of the most interactive CMs around. When he posted, it usually had meaning to it. He listened to a lot of us, and responded to us. Not always a positive, but at least we knew we had a voice.

After seeing what the Shaman community did to one CM, do you think others are going to be brave enough to post the truth?

Whatever actually happened, hate him or love him, community response is sure: Tseric will be missed.

World of Warcraft players have had some problems with their Arena points showing incorrect values, hence they couldn't purchase the Arena gear they wanted.

Worry not. Blizzard poster Tseric has finally given the latest update on the said problems. According to him, the "calculations have completed tallying." He noted that there will be a momentary discrepancy between the points displayed and the actual points awarded but it will all be fine in a bit. He added:

We are currently in the process of addressing Arena Point calculations for a number of realms. We appreciate those who have contacted support and/or posted on the Bug Report forum with this issue and are working to resolve this matter as soon as possible. Thank you for your patience and we will provide an update when we have made further progress on the matter.

We can only hope the bug will get quashed for good. Some players are curious about whether the points they were supposed to get (but didn't) would be returned. So far, the World of Warcraft Forums thread in question has been locked, maybe because they are still working on the problem. We'll keep you posted on this one, as always.

 

Tseric gave out a few details on changes in the newest patch in a recent WoW Forums post. One of the topics he covered was regarding the Enhancement Shaman and the complaints some World of Warcraft players have been fielding.

It's a known fact that this branch of Shaman has not been known to be a solid contender on the PvP circuit. A lot of people still choose to spec this way because it is extremely efficient when soloing. The main problem, as Tseric pointed out, is that once these players reach higher levels, they'll have a harder time on the PVP circuit. Respeccing is a valid choice for those who want to compete. More often than not though, the gear they've gathered all support their current spec.

The developers from Blizzard don't consider the class as broken but they do admit that certain changes will have to be implemented...in a future patch. In other words, they're not going to be doing any major changes on it for now.

Tseric said that "the changes going in to 2.1 don't show signs of being altered and are seen to place the class in a reasonable performance category." He also gave some details on the other changes that were discussed by the developers.

• Counterspell locking out a primary source of damage, nature. Paladins are in the same boat and this is deliberate.
  
• Along with that, nature immune creatures. The devs do see this as an issue and are being more relaxed with immune mobs. While these immune mobs may crop up from time to time, it isn't in such a way as to block progress.
  
• Mana Tide has been considered for trainability, but it is not seen as a candidate. I'm sure this will come up again at some point, but it has been acknowledged before and the answer doesn't seem to be changing for now or the foreseeable future.
  
• Threat generation, or more particularly, the ability to remove threat has been considered, but as shaman, for the most part, share standard 10% threat reduction with other casters, the devs don't see it as a pressing issue.
  
• Weapon itemization for healing or damage spec'ced shaman not comparing to wands. The point has been brought up and acknowledged, but there isn't anything to say beyond that at this time.
  
• Windfury buff scaling with weapons better than other weapon buffs, making it the obvious choice, which also seems to exacerbate people's concern over the upcoming off-hand buff change. Yes, windfury does scale better and that's fine, however the devs don't see a necessity for buffing the other buffs to make them "more desirable".

After all is said and done, Shamans are really going to have to wait for the full-release of the patch before they can tell if the changes are really for the betterment of the class in general. Still, a lot of players would really want to see the 10% threat reduction on the Shaman gone (thus giving them an easier time in tanking), hopefully it'll happen in the next patch.

 

The Essence of Eranikus quest in Blizzard's World of Warcraft is one of the better known quests because of the amount of history behind it. However, it has been noted that its quest chain ends rather abruptly and a lot of people have been waiting for a possible continuation.

Tseric from the official WoW forums gave word on this quest and others like it (ie. The Missing Diplomat). He said that "there are no immediate plans to continue these [questlines]". The guys at Blizzard admitted that the storylines of the given quests are interesting and digs into the lore but it can be implemented elsewhere. Then, he proceeded to justify their actions by saying that players will have to backtrack if they wanted to continue it.

The level disparity would diminish any sort of actual challenge the quest-line might have. If it is continued for a level-capped player, there is now a large gap between where the quest takes you for the first leg and when you can continue it on the second leg, from a leveling perspective.

I don't know about you, but in my opinion removing this is will dumb down the RPG part in MMORPG. One of the reasons why the game became popular in the first place is the rich history of the game. Blizzard should realize that a lot of players aren't playing to simply level-up their characters. They are playing because they want to know more about Warcraft, and following the storylines in chain quests is one solid and fun way to do it. 

Modguy says it best with this quote: "I could be soloing Illidan all week long, five years from now, and i would GLADLY give it all back just to finish some of those excellent quest lines."

 

There are certain rites of passage in life such as your first kiss, getting married, and your first kid. Blizzard's World of Warcraft is no different. Unfortunately, in the game, the Scholomance run to use the lab is one of the requisites for getting a mount (at least for some characters). It's been said that there is another lab you can use in Shatt city. To clarify things: yes, said lab exists but it's not one you can use for the purposes of the quest. Thus the need for the Scholo run.

This poor chap by the handle Tseric (we're not sure on the identity of this one whether he/she's the famous Tseric or not) has gotten to the point where a Scholomance run is needed. Now if you find yourself in the same position, there are two things you can do. First, simply level up till you can solo it (my personal choice) or (second) ask help from your guildmates since it's a pretty simple thing to accomplish.

Now, a few people have said that this is not even the hard part of the quest yet. We have to agree with them on this one. Good luck to those questing for mounts and have to do the Scholo run.

Who said Blizzard GMs can't have fun? Boubouille from MMO-Champion got some screenshots of the GMs wreaking havoc - err... having fun on the World of Warcraft Public Test Realm (PTR).

Included in the posse of GMs is Tseric (as an oversized peon in one of the screens), Drysc (as a Tauren Druid), Eyonix (as a Gnome from The Brothers McWeaksauce), and many others. They found a spot and summoned bosses left and right. We see El Pollo Grande - The Black Chicken of Death, Onyxia, the Lurker Below, Nefarian, Gruul, Magtheridon, Ragnaros, and Kel'Thuzad. There's also a video of the exploit, though it was a bit blurry.

It would seem that the GMs are getting more people interested to visit the PTR. We wonder though how the battlegrounds gear system check-slash-challenge Blizzard GMs turned out. Anyway, you can check out the screens and see if you can spot Tseric carrying a load of wood.

Check out the rest screenshots after the jump!

We know how you guys hate off topic posts but some guys at the QJ offices found this topic *cough*... interesting. The World of Warcraft Forums are clamoring for answers to various questions of importance, though this one from poster Docholphus caught our eyes along with so many others. His question?

Why do Draenei have such big butts?

Yup, you read it right. We're sure a lot of toilet humor has come into the minds of some but it made us a bit curious. Aside from being from outer space and all, we really haven't thought about why their behinds are gigantinourmous. A lot of players tried to answer the question -

• Pibroch (cosplaying as Tseric perhaps): Because we enjoy massive posteriors and we find it difficult to prevaricate.
• Dynamiterave (a female Draenei):  Bipedal + hooves = less surface area with which to support your upper body. Thus, you need stronger butt muscles to stand and move properly. That and I work out on a StairMaster for 2 hours each day. *flex*

Now Blizzard poster Drysc, who happens to have an Draenei NPC at Exodar named after him, had this to say, " As you can see walking around the Exodar the Draenei almost always prefer to sit on the ground. They've simply adapted to this type of reclination and have developed adequate padding to cope."

Well, Olafbloodaxe had other interesting questions.

• Why do female Draenei have bent backs?
• Why are Orc males 5 times the size of Orc females?
• Why do Dwarf Woman have such huge hips?
• Why do Dwarves have larger and more muscle-Bound arms than their legs?
• Why are the tentacles on Male Draenei considered "Facial (hair)?"
• Why are Blood elves constantly leaning to the side from the waist?
• Why can't Undead find clothes that cover their arms?
• Why aren't armour and weapons much more expensive and use more resources for Tauren in reference to Gnomes?
• Why are Troll males constantly slouching, but not the females?
• Why can't Undead find a good comb?
• Why can't undead wear a shirt over them to conceal their Spine?
• Why are none of the Gnome classes rely on Engineering?
• Why can't LW BM ENGIES and tailors repair their armour (with the exception of Engies Repair bots)?

Stay tuned for the answers - or perhaps you'd like to supply them yourself.

A new message is brewing at the World of Warcraft forums, with this latest topic tackling the game's Alchemy profession. As Blizzard spokesman Tseric explains, the devs have decided to disable new recipe discoveries for the time being:

We have been working on the resolution of a serious exploit in game which has led to certain consequences that we wanted everyone to be aware of. A hot fix has been recently applied to the alchemy profession, with regards to discoveries. For the time being, we have disabled all chance of a discovery, until we can implement the proper fix through a patch , as we can not resolve this matter solely with hot fixes. We apologize for the necessary but temporary removal of discoveries, and are working to have them re-implemented with an upcoming content patch.

For the guys wondering (or those who never took alchemy), the "discovery" feature for the alchemy profession allows users making potion, elixirs, or transmutes top "discover" new recipes during their attempt. Although discoveries rarely kick in (the success rate is pegged at 0.01%), the recipes that pop up are often among the more sought-after commodities in WoW. Stay posted on case the WoW devs decide to announce when they plan to reactivate this game perk.