So I couldn’t stay away from blogging about World of Warcraft, especially after I took a short break from it.  What with all the new announcements about the expansion, I had to start up a blog.

“Hooved Vengeance with Elder Igorek” is mostly about my exploits as Igorek, my Draenei Death Knight on Cenarion Circle.  I’ll talk about runs, pets, achievements, the return of Holiday guides, etc etc.

Just figured I’d let some of you guys know! Hope to see you over there.

This isn’t a real post. In fact, as you all probably assumed, thebirdnest is dead. I bought a domain name for a new site, but never merged the two. Then I stopped playing new games. I had no desire to write about the same things, had no passion for rehashing other blog posts, and had no time to find breaking news on my own. So, for now, until the world settles down a bit, The Bird Nest in this shape and form is effectively over. You can call it a hiatus if you want to get cheeky about it, but in reality, and what everyone already knew, the site is shut down. I don’t even really think anyone will read this, because what readers we might have had at one point have long stopped caring and I can’t blame them. So without further ado, peace out. (Picture the end of Old Yeller for reference)

Videos, pictures, reports are flying in. We are heading back down to that city under the sea, Rapture.  Bioshock 2 is coming, so get FUCKING PUMPED.Let’s go over some bullet points about this sequel, shall we?

1. This takes place several years after the first Bioshock.  Rapture is falling apart before your eyes.
2. You play as a Big Daddy.  Not just any Mr. B, but the first.  Which means you have access to guns, plasmid powers and that badass drill.  From the footage I’ve seen, this shit is gonna be bloody.
3. We have a major villain – the Big Sister.  Rumor has it she’s a little sister from the first game, and she’s been stealing little girls from the surface world to turn them into her own twisted little sisters. The scary part about her? She’s fucking fast.
4. We’re going to be traversing the ocean floor!  With Mr. B’s breathing apparatus, we’ll be able to take short cuts through the city by using the bottom of the Atlantic.
5. DUEL WIELDING. That’s right ladies and gents, we’re going to be able to shoot guns and use plasmids at the same time.  Why are we going to need this? Well, picture Splicers coming at you in large waves…
6. If you recall in the first game, we could either Save or Farm ADAM from Little Sisters, and the similar choice is found in this one. But you don’t just save, you can adopt.  You put the little sister onto your shoulder and go about your business, but when you come across a body on the floor, you can have your Little Sister farm the corpse for more ADAM. The downside? Well, when she farms corpses, Splicers tend to want to hurt her. Save her, Mr. Bubbles!

I’m pretty excited about this sequel.  Granted, I haven’t finished the first one (I just got my “shoot bees at people” power) but I plan on finishing it before the second one rears it’s head.  You can find a ton of videos over at Gametrailers.com.

What are your thoughts about this?

Well it’s happened.

I tanked a Heroic Instance.

In fact, I’ve tanked at least five by now.  I’m slowly getting the hang of it, but I wanted to talk about some tips, tricks and strategies I’ve found along the way.

First off, this is my spec.  I really have to go and buy some glyphs, but I was saving my money for my sweet Wyrmrest Accord Red Drake flying mount (which I have now and can only be purchased with Exalted reputation!).  I’m still working towards the Defense cap, which is 540 Defense for a Death Knight. Just some regemming/gear upgrades will fix that.

If you clicked my spec, you’ll see I’m a frost tank, mostly because that seems to be the best AOE tanking choice out there.  I’ve been having a blast learning my new powers and when to use what, and it’s been an interesting experience.  Here is some stuff I”ve learned along the way.

1. Do not pull with Death Grip. Seriously.  Yes, it forces the mob to attack you, but it doesn’t genereate enough threat to keep him there, especially since every mob in instances have at least two other friends to tag along.  Instead, save the DG in case a mob b-lines it for your healer.  Then you can “scorpion” his ass over to you and impress everyone!

2. When pulling, I use a combination of Death and Decay (an AOE high threat power) with Dark Command to keep threat up. Dark Command is a warrior-like taunt.  You should most definitely lay your diseases down and spread them around, which will keep all three fighting you.  If you can see you’re losing threat on one of the other mobs (not your main focus), tab over and Dark Command him, or toss out a multiple mob attack, like Howling Blast or Blood Boil.

3. Talk to your group. This is kind of obvious, but as a DPS major (with a tanking minor) I’m used to just letting the tank take lead and murdering whatever I can quickly and efficiently. As a tank, I realized, yes, I need to talk to everyone and keep everyone going. You’re the defacto leader now!  People might get frustrated if you wipe but keep a sense of humor, thank the healer, and continue.

4. Keep a weather eye on your buffs.  I’m not just talking about your own ones, but your procs too.  I have an talent ability called “Killing Machine” which will give me a critical hit for any of my frost abillities if I use it within 30 seconds of proc. This is a great way to keep threat up while doing your damage, but those 30 seconds could go by without you even looking up at your bar.  I’m looking into some addons that will give me notification of said proccing, and you should to!

5. Go for the caster first.  Every goddamn time. Explain this to your group. Mark the caster. Take them down.

6. Know which mobs will wipe threat.  I’ve run into two mobs in two different instances (Skirmishers in Azjol-Nerub and Gorlocs, including Eck  in Zul’Drak) where the mobs will suddenly jump to the next person on the threat table. This is why you should keep Dark Command and Death’s Grip at the ready.  Throwing down another Death and Decay won’t give you the immediate threat regain you require for these kinds of mobs, so just know what abillities you’ll need when.

7. READ BOSS STRATEGIES. I almost always keep wowwiki up on my monitor when I tank instances, just to have the bosses down pat.  For the most part, if you’ve done them before, you’ll know what to do, but sometimes you’ll have to explain the boss to others and already knowing what to expect will do wonders.  Watch videos on youtube!  I found this FANTASTIC channel by Cinderhelm of Tankspot that puts up boss fights all the time, complete with strategies.  Granted these videos are geared towards raiders venturing into Ulduar (see: not me), but hearing how the pros do it does instill confidence.

8. Don’t be afraid to throw down your defensive abillities.  I’ll be honest, coming from straight DPS, I only worried about damage.  If my ability didn’t help me kill the mob, then I almost always didn’t use it (unless it was an “OH SHIT” moment).  Abilities like Unbreakable Armor, Icebound Fortitude, etc, these are things you need to have hotkeyed.  Bosses will suddenly throw down hard hitting attacks, 1-hit wonders, and you need to be ready to take it. This goes for Empower Rune Weapon and Blood tap – you need to have your runes refreshed if you’re running out of abilities. Don’t be afraid to use these.

9. Take your time and talk to the healer.  I’ve seen way too many tanks running from mob to mob, not worrying about the rest of the group.  It’s immensely frustrating on the healer, who might need a minute to regain mana. If it’s a timed run, let everyone know ahead of time so you can keep a weather eye on mobs.  If not, there’s never really a rush and if there is, let your group know!  Most instances don’t take THAT long to complete now, and with a well-tuned group, it’ll take even less time.

10. Have fun. No fucking duh.

That’s all I’ve got for now.  I’m still learning to tank, but it’s been a lot of fun leading the group through instances.  Frustrating at times, but still fun.

Oh and a quick note to you DK DPS guys out there. I like to think that you’re automatically an offtank. If you see that one mob running off while the tank is attempting to keep aggro, death grip him back to the tank! I’ve done it more than once and it’s been helpful – just throw it out that you’re doing it.

Good luck!

The second I got home last night, I jumped into WoW to check out 3.1.  First of all, despite the ramant explosions of world servers, the game seems to upload faster.  Maybe I’m crazy.

I was given back all my talent points, so I quickly respecced back into Unholy (my main DPS of choice).  I tried out the “preview talents” option that can be found in Interface>Display, which allows you to mess around with talent points before you save them.  I didn’t experiment much further, but it was a neat new addition. I also didn’t have enough cash to purchase duel spec (since I was about 300g short), I jumped onto my bank alt to sell off my glyphs.

Guys, if you’re an inscriptionists, sell off stuff NOW.  I made over 400g in less than 2 hours.  Do this before the weekend while it’s hot!

While my glyphs were making money for me, I was off to test the new Argent Tournament.  I did a few of the daily quests (don’t worry guys, I’ll throw down some guides later on) and they were really fun.  The new mounted combat was really a blast, and getting to know the strategies for it was a nice change of pace.  It felt sort of like a fast of Pokemon; throw down defense? Or move straight to offense?  In any case, I know I’ll be spending most of my time there.  My only complaint is that the reputation isn’t for Argent Crusade (yet), but rather one of two factions that can be found in Dalaran (Silver Covenent for Alliance or Sunreavers for Horde).  Minor complaint, but the quests were pretty fun and quick to do.  I ran all five of them within 20-30 minutes (mostly due to fly time).

No, I didn’t not run Ulduar.  I don’t really think I’ll have a lot of time for that, I don’t like raiding when Shannon’s around because I’ll be so focused on the game for long periods of time.  But I love that they gave us PVE’rs so much to do.  The small changes to the map, icons, stuff like that are all welcome.  Next I plan on messing around with fishing (maybe getting it up past 75).

Later that evening, with 400g in my pocket, I went to buy my second spec.  I am now an Unholy DPS/Frost Tank.  The playstyle of Frost kinda scares me, it’s so foreign!  But the new powers seem cool.  I’ll definitely have to head over to Elitist Jerks to get their take on it.  But the Duel Spec thing is pretty badass – switching over is awesome as a Death Knight because you don’t spend any mana to do so.  So switching from DPS to Tank based on the situation will be a shit load of fun.  I’ll need to go collect some Tank gear from my various reputations in the meantime, along with requisite Gems and such.

So besides the world server going belly-up every once in awhile, 3.1 is a lot of fun.  The cosmetic changes are once again, cool, Argent Tournament will be a lot of fun to continue to run (in the effort to collect new titles, mounts and the like), and I’m seriously hoping I get a chance to at least check out the first boss of Ulduar.

I got a question asking what/where I play in WoW, so I figured I’d just throw up a post in case other people care to jump in game to hit up some quests.  My main is Igorek, a Draenei Death Knight on Cenarion Circle in the guild Northrend Commonwealth.

Here is my armory page, if you are at all curious about my gear/achievements.

3.1 looks like it’s going to be hitting servers this Tuesday (or next Tuesday).  I better get my money together so I can purchase a dual spec.  You’re looking at a future Unholy DPS/Frost Tank Death Knight!  I shall report my findings as I find them.

Feel free to throw down your name/class/race/realm in the comments!

3.1 is coming extremely quickly, so I figured this might be a great time to talk about all the cool new changes and updates.  This might be one of the biggest patches to hit, giving everyone, hardcore, casual and hasual something new to do.  So let’s get to it.

RAIDS

Ulduar

We’ll hit the raids first, because, well, this is the biggest addition.  The raid of Ulduar is coming in this patch, which brings you 14 all new bosses for both 10 man and 25 man raids. On top of this, 10 of the 14 bosses will have “hard modes” that, when triggered, will give you better loot.

The lore of the zone is quite simple – Ulduar is an undiscovered vault of the Titans (large, powerful beings that shaped Azeroth) and we are going in to investigate.  Upon further investigation, we realize that the Titan vault is not holding vast treasures or superior knowledge, but rather the Old God Yogg-Saron, a ruthlessly evil entity whose vile influence has infected not only those who guard Ulduar, but a fair amount of Northrend (which we, the players, have come into contact with in various zones).  Because Yogg-Saron has broken free, Algalon the Observer is attempting to contact the Titans about his lack of imprisonment, which could cause Azeroth to be destroyed in order to save others.  The quest line has us going after Algalon to stop the transmission, and can only be completed when defeating most of the boss modes in their various hard modes.  Sound pretty badass, right?

From what I’ve read, these boss fights sound absolutely fantastic.  The first fight you come across is actually a large vehicle war outside the main gates – all players jump into various siege engines and attempt to break through the full scale war that has taken place.  From then on you venture deeper and deeper into Ulduar, defeating the guardians of the vault and finally coming face-to-face with the Old God, Yogg Saron.  I don’t think I’ll ever witness this content, though I’m sure videos will pop up.

For those of you keeping track, we’ve faced an Old God in the past, C’thun in Silithis’ Temple of Ahn’Qiraj.  I had the oppurtunity to face this baddy and while I died almost immediately, it was great to take part in this old school dungeon.

Oh and the bosses of Ulduar will drop some Tier 8 gear as well and there are plenty of achievements to complete, awarding you new rare titles and mounts.

Emalon the Stone Watcher

Along with the massive PVE raid, another wing will be added to Wintergrasp’s raid instance.  Emalon the Storm Watcher will be available to both 10 man and 25 man raids, and will give you Tier 8 tokens and PVP gear for your trouble. Similar to Archevon (and located in the same place), he might also drop a rare Mammoth mount.  Don’t forget, you have to have control of Wintergrasp to fight him.  I’m really excited for this!

THE ARGENT TOURNAMENT

Think that’s enough to keep you guys busy?  Well how about this lil’ addition – The Argent Tournament, a new PVE permenant event that takes place in Icecrown.  The Argent Crusade is starting a tournament, similar to medevil times, in Northern Icecrown to bolster the troops before our inevitable march to Icecrown Citadel to face Arthas.  Here you’ll rally with your faction, gain access to new mounts and pets, and even have a new way to gain reputation.  It’s a long grind to get there, but with the prospect of cool new mounts/items/tabards/pets in exchange for tokens, it should be a lot of fun.  I’ll probably be hitting this first.  There will be an abundance of quests and daily quests to sink your teeth into.

What you spend most of your time here doing is building the tournament and becoming a “Champion” for your faction, the actual tournament won’t hit until 3.2.  But still, it’ll be a great way to get some of those difficult Achievements.

DUAL SPECS

I mentioned this before, but the official deets on this have hit.  Anyone over level 40 can purchase dual specialization for 1000g and you can access it anywhere you want.  That price point is a one time purchase, you can switch specs as many times as you want.  Your glyphs, talents, and (in a future patch) gear will switch over as well, so don’t worry about having to respec any longer!

Unfortunately, you hunters will have to respec your pets every time you do this, though i don’ tknow why you’d want to purchase this anyway unless you want a Raid spec and a grind spec.

In any case, I’ll be getting this for my Death Knight so I can finally tank for some groups!

NOBLEGARDEN

The once “single day” holiday is now going to be a whole week, and some of the stuff you do for it sounds so much fun.  They’ve delayed the holiday to be after Easter (not all the bugs are out of it) but I’ll do a run-through the achievements when we get closer to it landing. You’ll need to complete all the Noblegarden achievements to get one step closer to riding that sweet epic Proto-drake.

OTHER GREAT NEW STUFF

That’s not all!

• Ground mounts will now swim!  Flying mounts will not.
• On a related note, you have a chance to fish up a CoralShell Turtle mount, which is a ground and SWIMMING MOUNT. Do I smell a reference to the next Expansion? Or do I just smell fish.
• While we’re talking about fishing, they’ve changed the way you fish a bit.  Fish no longer “get away,” but now you can fish up “junk fish” which are not usable for cooking recipes but do award you fishing skillups!  Which means you can now SKILL UP ANYWHERE.
• New Fishing Daily Quests!  Similar to the ones given in Shattrath, you have a chance to get a small pet or rare items for handing them in.
• Glyphs no longer need the Lexicon of Power to be used.  They’ve added 50 new Glyphs to the game as well. Inscriptionists, get to work!
• TONS OF CHANGES TO CLASSES.  I’m not going to go through all of them here, obviously, but they are making lots of changes to the way classes work.  We will be awarded a free respec.
• Three new racial mounts (wolf, skeletel horse and kodo) are available to the Horde, to even out the number of mounts the Horde has versus alliance.
• The hearthstone cooldown has been dropped from one hour to one half hour!  This is kind of a big deal, no more waiting around for it to reset.
• The Glory of the Raider Achivements will no longer award you ProtoDrakes.  This kinda stinks, but if you get the new gear from Ulduar and attempt this, those mounts will no longer be rare.
• You can now Preview Talent Changes!  No longer will you accidentally pick a talent you didn’t want, forcing you to respec and spend that gold.  Now you can try out the talents, see what combinations you like, then cement them for use. Pretty cool.
• Looking for group has gotten a few new upgrades (thank god). Now you can select roles (healer, tank, dps) so people know what you can bring to the group.  A perfect addition with the new Dual Specs.
• Now this is awesome – Dungeons maps!  Now, when you’re in an instance and hit the “map” you’ll see a layout of the dungeon.  You can finally figure out where other people are! Unfortunately these are only for Wrath of the Lich King instances and raids, hopefully they will implement them into the older ones…
• With the Argent Tournament, you can purchase Commendation badges for Alliance and Horde factions, which, when turned into said factions, award you 250 rep.  This’ll help you get your main factions up to exalted with ease.
• There is a new Legendary healing mace that can be put together using drops from Ulduar bosses.

There’s a ton more, but I can’t really remember it right now.  In any case, it seems as this might be the largest patch they’ve put in a long time, color me excited!  What are your thoughts?

I know, I know. I’ve been a bad blogger. Sorry guys, I’ve been busy with my comic and other real life things. I’ve also slowed down my playtime in WoW; I’ve ceased to play during weekdays and now I play exclusively on the weekend for a few hours in the morning.

But what have I been doing?

WELL. I’ve mostly spent my time getting my gear up.  I’ve been running a shit load of Heroic Dungeons, along with the occasional raid if I find a good group.  I’ve been focused on getting my DPS to the top of the charts when possible, and most of the time that’s where I find myself.  I’m proud to say I was #3 in the damage meter for Sartharion 25man Raid, which I’m extremely proud of, and got a “Bag of Spoils” off the boss for my trouble.  I also received my first purple Raid drop of Archevon (purple DPS PVP pants, but still an upgrade) which made me smile with glee.

In the reputation end, I’ve gotten three important reputations up to Exalted (Wyrmrest Accord, which gives me a Red Dragon Mount that I’m 700g away from purchasing and Knights of the Ebon Blade, which gives me new Purple shoes for kickin’ ass) and I’ve just been whittling away at things.

While hitting some of the Heroics, I’ve had a chance to do a few of the fun achievements.  Man are they hard.  Most of the time I get them by accident and a few we’ve attempted and succeeded at, but most of the time we just murder the boss, collect our Emblems of Heroism and move on.  I’ve had enough badges to get two blue upgrades and I’m one log-in away to purchase my Tier 6 gloves!  I’ve never had any Tier Anything, so this prospect really excites me.  Do the heroic dailies, guys, you never have to wait long to find a group and you get extra gold/emblems for your trouble. For serious.

Other than that, I’ve just been whittling away at things.  Getting my Netherwing reputation up to get my cool smokey dragon mount, getting the other reputations up in preperation for 3.1, getting my gear solidified so I might be able to take part in Ulduar when that hits (apparently next week, but who knows).

Anyway, sorry for my absense!  I promise I will post more often.

A few things I want to cover before I get to the point of this post. One, yesterday was a crazy day here at the Nest, with my take on Fifa UT getting lots of traffic from the EA Forums and we broke all the single-day records here in our little spot. Two, my apologies to regular Nesters, who had noticed that I had taken an unannounced sebatical for a few weeks where there was no new content. I know Pat’s review of MLB 2k9 was excellent, but I’m sure you’re sick of the mullet after a week or two. Third, a friend and co-worker has a pretty funny sports blog that you might want to check out. It’s called The Dome Factor and for a Syracuse fan, he’s got some really good stuff up there. Check it out when you are bored and/or there’s nothing going on over here. It’s over on the blog roll for future reference.

Ahh, that felt good to get out of the way. Now, there’s something way more important to be discussed. You may know that two of the favorite games here are Fifa and Fallout 3, both of which had DLC released within a week of each other. The Pitt, which has been covered in several different posts over the last few months, was finally released today. Now, first reports are that there are so many glitches and bugs in this DLC that it is unplayable. There are missing textures, sudden crashes, and is a general disaster.

Add this to the server and database debacle found in FIFA’s Ultimate Team launch last week and we have two immensely popular games dropping the ball on what should be momentous releases for each of them. I’ve been looking forward to both the Pitt and FIFA UT for quite some time, and after spending 1600 Microsoft Points on them, you’d expect them to work. Alas, both companies have disapointed their legions of hardcore fans who downloaded the DLC as soon as they could, only to find it completely worthless.

I’m not here to flame the companies or place any blame. I’m not writing this because I want my money back. If I wanted my money back every time I bought a glitchy, unplayable game, I’d have to start another blog. This happens all the time; in order to get the DLC/game out to their audience, game companies seem to taking shortcuts in order to meet their advertised release dates, instead of focusing on putting out a polished and stable piece of software.

This HAS to change. I know EA could hardly have anticipated the server and database needs for Fifa UT, and I’m sure that Bethesda didn’t plan on releasing just half of the DLC file today, but it happened, and now gamers will always remember how much of a hassle it’s been. They are a fickle bunch and deciding who gets their hard earned skrilla is a pretty involved process. Reviews, message boards, previews, trailers and gamer discussions are all factors that lead up to a purchase, but when deciding to buy an add-on for a game that you already dropped sixty bucks on is an ever tougher decision.

Sure, what’s another ten bucks compared to the thousands already spent on games in my career? However, every time a release hiccups like this, another moment of hesitation is added to the decision making process. And moments of hesitation will eventually build up into passing on certain companies releases all together. I obviously will buy Fifa 10, and every piece of Fallout DLC. But those two games are my bread and butter. If NHL 09 had a DLC, I certainly would not be queing it up at work, eager to download when I got home.

My advice to you, EA, Bethesda, and any other company that hypes up it’s releases and DLCs: TAKE YOUR TIME. The backlash felt from pushing back a release by a week to get the kinks worked out vs. having to shut down the release after 4 hours will be much more managable. If you were upfront, saying “I know we said we would release this on Tuesday, but we’re running into some issues and it won’t be ready until Friday,” people will understand. Rather then release an unfinished or untested product, give yourself a few extra days to make sure everything is in order.

I recognize all the hard work and effort that go into all aspects of Game Developement. But if this keeps happening, the big game developers and distributors are going to start to see the effect, in the place where it hurts the most. I don’t mean 22 pages of message board threads, they don’t give a shit about that. But when their bottom line is affected, they might start giving a shit.

For any sports gamer, there has always been one company worth a damn. Electronic Arts has been both the prime example and biggest failure in all aspects of sports gaming over the past 2 decades. We’ve all made our friends heads bleed in NHL 95, and have all thrown controllers in frustration at the 7th drop of our stud receiver in Madden. And as frequent Birdnesters know, the most played game at The Nest is FIFA 09. And since the Ultimate Team DLC was released last week for it, it’s been an exciting time here.

But not really exciting in a good way. Granted the mode itself is set up beautifully. A quick recap for those not in the loop: Ultimate Team combines Collectable Card Game elements with traditional Manager Mode style of gameplay. Starting with a basic Bronze pack of cards, players create their “Ultimate Team” buy purchasing packs of cards that contain players, tactics, managers, training options, kits, shields, and contracts.

By using these cards, you work to assemble your best squad to be put to the test in either online or offline tournaments and single matches. After every game you get awarded an amount of coins, which are then used to buy more cards. The three levels of packs contain increasingly better cards, ranging from Bronze to Gold (with Silver in between, obviously.) Bronze packs cost about one win’s worth of coins, with silver being about 4-5, and gold being even more expensive.

What’s really cool about this mode is the secondary market that EA is creating, allowing gamers to trade their unused cards for more useful ones. Your entire midfield is Spanish but you just picked up Stephen Gerrard in your first gold pack? Sure you can play him, but if you want, try to trade for Cesc Fabregas and give yourself the morale bonus that comes with having players from the same country. The options are endless and EA is really trying to let the gamers develop their own market. Without setting prices, there is a real feel of the invisible hand in pricing trades. EA has been devoting message board threads to trading giving users a chance for negotiations and Craigs List-esque advertisements.

Now you know what Ultimate Team “is” and is “supposed to be,” here’s what’s been happening since it dropped on Thursday morning. It can be summed up in two words: SERVER FAILURES. As can be expected in any major upgrade, especially something as popular as FIFA, there were major server failures in the first 48 hours of release. I’d like to say that this ended after the initial night, but alas even when I logged in yesterday to check out my team after a weekend at my parent’s house, there was nothing but a frozen menu.

Now EA is as big as they come. The epitome of super-conglomerate, EA has been criticized in the past for being lazy and uncaring towards its fan base. Anyone who played NBA 08 will agree that they sometimes ship games 3 weeks before they are ready. But for once, EA came through in the clutch. Don’t get me wrong, they certainly dropped the ball in the first few days, but that’s almost expected with the number of users and the rush to play this new mode. The server needs for something like this must have been underestimated, and since I have no technical information to the problem, I am going to assume that it had something to do with that.

But what impressed me most was how the fine folks over there handled the crisis. There is literally nothing worse then thousands of English teenagers bitching on a message board that the mode isn’t working and they want their money back. This was about 12 hours after release, and people were expecting it to work flawlessly. But in the era of instant communication, EA did everything in their power to keep their rabidly loyal fans in the loop at all times. Especially utilizing social media tools like Twitter and the EA forums, they were upfront and transparent to anyone who asked throughout the whole “disaster.” Case in point, the development team released this today on the FIFA Forums.

Major props goes out to FIFA’s community manager, Romily Broad, who aside from being a really nice guy, was constantly updating his twitter feed with news and updates from the server migration. Especially over the weekend when user numbers were probably the highest and the IT and Comm. Managers didn’t want to be working any longer, they were working around the clock to fix the problem. Put it this way: EA launched a sport MMO and they needed to figure out what was going wrong. They asked for feedback, developers were in the forums assuaging fears and giving updates, and there was a “tweet” during every major milestone and server reset.

At the risk of losing any shred of remaining street cred, I have been seriously impressed by the efforts of all the community mangers in regards to their twitter presence. The Madden guys are constantly asking for feedback on the positives and negatives, what players look for in their gameplay, who they want to see on the cover, and many other issues that I hope actually make it to the development teams. .

They give away free SWAG all the time, and have been hosting community days which give members of the EA gaming community a chance to get some real time with games before they came out. Apparently, the NCAA Football 10 community day was so successful that gamers didn’t want to leave, logging over 10 hours with the game. The Fight Night CD was so popular that actual boxers showed up and went at it for a few rounds with some of the folks at EA, much to the delight of us cubicle dwellers across the globe.

If you are on Twitter and have any interest at all in the EA sports games, I implore you to follow some of the CM’s over there. The aforementioned FIFA guru, Romily, as well as Raczilla, and sk88z. There are more, but these three are the most active and informative. And if you ask them who else to follow, they will gladly tell you.