Showing posts with label World of Warcraft. Show all posts
Showing posts with label World of Warcraft. Show all posts
Thursday, July 31, 2008
Farewell to Warcraft
This post is actually several weeks late, as I canceled my World of Warcraft account last month and the subscription expired on July 11th. So, I will likely have very little, if nothing to post about WoW in the foreseeable future, which is a bit unfortunate as my posts about the interface and Heroic Mechanar are the most popular ones on this site. However, in replacement I hope to have an ongoing series about my very casual foray into Age of Conan, and I am in the Guild Beta for Warhammer Online and plan on creating a number of posts about my experiences that will be seen here as soon as the NDA drops!
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Burning down Ahune
Last night I gathered together four guildmates to head into Heroic Slave Pens and take on the new seasonal boss, Ahune. Getting to him was easy enough, though he appears towards the middle of the first large cavern, which meant that we had to clear out a couple of extra mob groups.
I won't delve into his abilities too much since that's already covered elsewhere, but I will say that we had several wipes as we tried to figure out the encounter, each time getting him slightly closer to death, but the sheer number of little water elementals he spawns kept overwhelming us (and the ice spikes certainly didn't help). After seeing how little damage and hit points these little guys did, we decided to go all out offense. I switched out my tanking gear for my epic PvP suit, wielded a two-hander and spent most of the fight in fury stance (as the main tank). It was a hectic fight, and I had a couple of close calls (the damaging debuff that the main add puts on you is pretty rough), but we emerged victorious! The smaller adds only have 2000 hit points, so it was pretty easy to bring them down with all of us targeting them. With both myself and another warrior using whirlwind, we were able to work over the elite rock elemental at the same time. Then, when Ahune was vulnerable, we were already in the proper stance for damage. Couple fury stance with Blood Fury and Death Wish and you have some serious damage output! Our group makeup was two arms warriors, one elemental shaman, one beastmaster hunter and one holy priest.
Overall a fun fight, though expect to have a few wipes when you're first learning the encounter.
I won't delve into his abilities too much since that's already covered elsewhere, but I will say that we had several wipes as we tried to figure out the encounter, each time getting him slightly closer to death, but the sheer number of little water elementals he spawns kept overwhelming us (and the ice spikes certainly didn't help). After seeing how little damage and hit points these little guys did, we decided to go all out offense. I switched out my tanking gear for my epic PvP suit, wielded a two-hander and spent most of the fight in fury stance (as the main tank). It was a hectic fight, and I had a couple of close calls (the damaging debuff that the main add puts on you is pretty rough), but we emerged victorious! The smaller adds only have 2000 hit points, so it was pretty easy to bring them down with all of us targeting them. With both myself and another warrior using whirlwind, we were able to work over the elite rock elemental at the same time. Then, when Ahune was vulnerable, we were already in the proper stance for damage. Couple fury stance with Blood Fury and Death Wish and you have some serious damage output! Our group makeup was two arms warriors, one elemental shaman, one beastmaster hunter and one holy priest.
Overall a fun fight, though expect to have a few wipes when you're first learning the encounter.
Bartle and WoW
So there's been some buzz going around lately about Richard Bartle's latest interview. Most of it coming from enraged Warhammer fans who take umbrage at his comment that he wont play WAR because he already played it and it was called WoW. I think that statement is fair enough, and in fact, I hope that WAR is similar to WoW in many ways, because WoW does do a lot of things right. Anyway, there has already been a lot of talk about that on other blogs and Bartle has even responded on some of them.
But, I'm going to skip commenting further on that bit and instead focus on the rest of the interview, because I found a lot of his comments about WoW exceedingly odd.
My first impression on reading the transcript is that Bartle seems to have some trouble voicing his thoughts. Some of his responses are pretty jumbled and they all kind of ramble. My second impression is that the title is very misleading as he really says very little about how he would change WoW. He has one comment asking why the WoW auction interface doesn't accept buy orders, and another about the limitations of the LFG tool. Both good points, but the rest is a semi-coherent ramble.
As far as I know, Bartle hasn't done any active MMO development in years, and from some of his responses, that's probably a good thing. He says that he has played WoW to the point of having three level 70s (which is about all I can understand from his disjointed mutterings about his character progression). But, it also seems that he wanted to play WoW as a solo game almost entirely (and I also don't understand the part where he bitches about being 'required' to farm Stranglethorn Vale if he chose leatherworking? You know, there are plenty of skinnable creatures in other zones and also a little something called the auction house).
He has a very odd comment about having trouble getting a group together to get his last 0.5 Tier armor piece for one of his level 70 characters!! I don't know why he's so focused and upset about trying to get a level 60 blue armor piece for a level 70 character, but I doubt anyone will argue that the LFG interface in WoW is subpar. I've managed to get into a couple of instance groups using it, but, for the most part, the only reason the LFG tool ever sees any use in-game is so that players can get access to the LFG channel and manually assemble groups themselves.
Then he goes off on a rant about Karazhan and mentions several times about how its impossible to go into with PUG. Maybe Bartle should have tried harder, because I see Karazhan PUGs forming all the time. The process for acquiring a key to Karazhan is pretty painful, and the fact that they used to require EVERYONE to have the key was just plain dumb, but I'm really not sure why he calls it a "guild breaker". Karazhan was the first epic-level raid zone that Blizzard created that could be easily explored by even the most casual of guilds.
It seems as if he really had little idea what he was doing in WoW (or he's just really, really, really bad at explaining himself). Now granted, I have had my own share of complaints about WoW, but I have also played for 3 years and delved into every aspect of the game; crafting, soloing, raiding, PvP of all sorts, and even roleplaying, so I feel I have a pretty solid base from which to throw out my complaints, suggestions and applause as warranted. But from reading this interview, I have to wonder if Bartle should have had his daughter show him how to play the game.
But, I'm going to skip commenting further on that bit and instead focus on the rest of the interview, because I found a lot of his comments about WoW exceedingly odd.
My first impression on reading the transcript is that Bartle seems to have some trouble voicing his thoughts. Some of his responses are pretty jumbled and they all kind of ramble. My second impression is that the title is very misleading as he really says very little about how he would change WoW. He has one comment asking why the WoW auction interface doesn't accept buy orders, and another about the limitations of the LFG tool. Both good points, but the rest is a semi-coherent ramble.
As far as I know, Bartle hasn't done any active MMO development in years, and from some of his responses, that's probably a good thing. He says that he has played WoW to the point of having three level 70s (which is about all I can understand from his disjointed mutterings about his character progression). But, it also seems that he wanted to play WoW as a solo game almost entirely (and I also don't understand the part where he bitches about being 'required' to farm Stranglethorn Vale if he chose leatherworking? You know, there are plenty of skinnable creatures in other zones and also a little something called the auction house).
He has a very odd comment about having trouble getting a group together to get his last 0.5 Tier armor piece for one of his level 70 characters!! I don't know why he's so focused and upset about trying to get a level 60 blue armor piece for a level 70 character, but I doubt anyone will argue that the LFG interface in WoW is subpar. I've managed to get into a couple of instance groups using it, but, for the most part, the only reason the LFG tool ever sees any use in-game is so that players can get access to the LFG channel and manually assemble groups themselves.
Then he goes off on a rant about Karazhan and mentions several times about how its impossible to go into with PUG. Maybe Bartle should have tried harder, because I see Karazhan PUGs forming all the time. The process for acquiring a key to Karazhan is pretty painful, and the fact that they used to require EVERYONE to have the key was just plain dumb, but I'm really not sure why he calls it a "guild breaker". Karazhan was the first epic-level raid zone that Blizzard created that could be easily explored by even the most casual of guilds.
It seems as if he really had little idea what he was doing in WoW (or he's just really, really, really bad at explaining himself). Now granted, I have had my own share of complaints about WoW, but I have also played for 3 years and delved into every aspect of the game; crafting, soloing, raiding, PvP of all sorts, and even roleplaying, so I feel I have a pretty solid base from which to throw out my complaints, suggestions and applause as warranted. But from reading this interview, I have to wonder if Bartle should have had his daughter show him how to play the game.
Monday, May 12, 2008
To Twink or not to Twink?
Not, its not really a question. At least not for me.
I've thought about this a couple of times in the past but then I always come back to the fact that the whole process of 'twinking' is specifically to unbalance the competition and make the game easier for the 'twink'. Before video games, this was usually the other way around. In order to make the game more fun and engaging, the experienced player would give the newer player some leeway or a small advantage to try and balance out the skill discrepancy. Twinking is the complete anithesis to the concept of fun and fair gaming.
And to top it off, its pretty sad to see that Blizzard is considering adding extra support to the twinking process in WoW...
That being said, I see no problem with having characters who don't level so that they specifically can stay in a certain bracket for the battlegrounds. But when these characters start sporting level 70 enchants and enhancements, its gone way over the edge in my opinion.
I've thought about this a couple of times in the past but then I always come back to the fact that the whole process of 'twinking' is specifically to unbalance the competition and make the game easier for the 'twink'. Before video games, this was usually the other way around. In order to make the game more fun and engaging, the experienced player would give the newer player some leeway or a small advantage to try and balance out the skill discrepancy. Twinking is the complete anithesis to the concept of fun and fair gaming.
And to top it off, its pretty sad to see that Blizzard is considering adding extra support to the twinking process in WoW...
Tom Chilton: Potentially legacy items, haven’t really talked about those in the past.
We are planning to do certain types of items that essentially bind to your account, so they are deliberately created as twink items. You might be able to find one of these items when you’re doing an end-game instance or raid, something like that.
You might be able to get an item that binds to your account so you are then able to hand it off to your other characters, but, it does have to stay within your account. They can be deliberately overpowered for a low-level character to help level up, or whatever. link
That being said, I see no problem with having characters who don't level so that they specifically can stay in a certain bracket for the battlegrounds. But when these characters start sporting level 70 enchants and enhancements, its gone way over the edge in my opinion.
Friday, April 18, 2008
The Next WoW-Killer will be...
Age of Conan? Nope. AoC will be a niche game. Heavy graphics requirements, its mature rating and its attempt to have a PvP-focused game while still appealing to the raid AND the 'casual' crowd at the same time will keep its population low.
Warhammer Online? Nope, though I expect WAR to be in 2nd place in number of subscribers for a Western MMO unless they just really drop the ball or lose focus on what their game should be.
Some other game? Nope
What will kill WoW is WoW itself. It's inevitable, and expected. The game gets stale, players get bored, move on to other activities (be it MMOs, other games or real life events), sever populations begin to fall, servers get merged, devs start working on other games, etc etc.
WoW will follow in the footsteps of other successful MMOs and have a long, long slow descent into the twilight realm, joining its forefathers such as Ultima Online and Everquest in semi-obscurity.
So all the talk about such-and-such game being a WoW-killer is just dumb and a waste of energy. Nothing short of a nuclear holocaust is going to cause World of Warcraft to suddenly lose millions of subscribers.
Warhammer Online? Nope, though I expect WAR to be in 2nd place in number of subscribers for a Western MMO unless they just really drop the ball or lose focus on what their game should be.
Some other game? Nope
What will kill WoW is WoW itself. It's inevitable, and expected. The game gets stale, players get bored, move on to other activities (be it MMOs, other games or real life events), sever populations begin to fall, servers get merged, devs start working on other games, etc etc.
WoW will follow in the footsteps of other successful MMOs and have a long, long slow descent into the twilight realm, joining its forefathers such as Ultima Online and Everquest in semi-obscurity.
So all the talk about such-and-such game being a WoW-killer is just dumb and a waste of energy. Nothing short of a nuclear holocaust is going to cause World of Warcraft to suddenly lose millions of subscribers.
Tuesday, April 08, 2008
WoW Patch 2.4 Impressions
Note: The initial draft of this was written a week ago
Not a whole lot in this patch that affects a blacksmithing warrior directly, so I'll mainly focus on the new quests and the Shattered Sun Offensive.
First off, the new 'World PvP' quests are a bust. Especially the one for the Spirit Towers in the Bone Wastes. That quest tasks you with the incredibly difficult job of taking one, thats right one, of the spirit towers. Now anyone who actually knows anything about this PvP objective knows that taking just one tower is really a nonsensical task. Usually all of the towers change hands at least once during the period that they're open. Sow how does this play out in reality? Everyone runs out, groups at one tower, captures it, then rides off to turn in their quest, completely ignoring the rest of the towers, leaving it up to a handful of players (usually less than five for each side) to actually work on achieving the objective. The quest for Halaa is slightly better, but not by much. For this one you have to kill 10 players near Halaa. Oh great! Killing players near Halaa! I never thought of doing that before! *sarcasm off* Finding players to kill near Halaa has always been difficult. Either one side or the other almost always has a significant numerical advantage, making actual combat pretty rare. The best chance you have is by camping the fly point. This quest does nothing to change the interest in Halaa.
How about something meaningful, like actually holding the damn town for a period of time opens up new vendors and quests? Or a mailbox or bank? Or anything worthwhile!
Failure on both counts.
There are a number of new daily quests available in Shatrath. They are all pretty simple and one is even related to resource gathering so it can be done in the normal course of harvesting raw materials. The others have you searching for items amongst the Ethereals of Blade's Edge, the Blood Elves in Netherstorm and taking readings in Nagrand. All pretty easy, though the Blood Elf one can sometimes take a while depending on your luck.
One good thing about some of these new quests is that they reward you with a care package. These packages always contain a useless green item but also sometimes have a Badge of Justice! I found two badges in a total of 10 or so packages. Bonus for me since I was just doing the jobs for cash.
The change that has directly affected me the most is the unbinding of Primal Nether and Nether Vortex. I spent all my gold on hand plus everything I've made from the new dailies to upgrade my epic, blacksmithed axes. Both my two-handed and one-handed axes have now been upgraded to their full potential. Only a year after the raiding players were able to do so! Initial prices for the Nethers were ~250 gold for a Vortex and ~50 gold for a Primal. Prices have steadily dropped since then, and with the plethora of new daily quests, getting gold to purchase these items is extremely easy.
The new 5-man instance, Magister's Terrace is fun, and somewhat of a challenge. It's very magic heavy and the magisters and warlocks hit like a two-ton Tauren, but with spells. You definitely need to make good use of corners to draw them in and spell reflection is extremely important for the tank. I've only been in once and we made it through to the end with only one wipe, but then had trouble with Kael'thas. The final battle with Kael'thas is very melee-unfriendly (but thats nothing new for WoW). Trying to avoid the balls of arcane energy that spurt out of his head while also not touching the floor but getting into melee range while 'swimming' through the air at extremely fast speeds just isn't a whole lot of fun. It's very doable, just annoying.
The Shattered Sun Offensive quest progression on the Isle of Qeul'danas is very well done. There are always a couple of daily quests that aid in the progression of the Offensive as they are completed. So the more players that are on your server doing these quests every day, the faster the Shattered Sun will improve its foothold on the island. As the advance reaches a new phase, new quests are opened up and the old ones are deprecated so that they still give cash and reputation rewards, but they no longer directly help the Shattered Sun in their efforts.
I appreciate how the Shattered Sun actually takes over buildings and kicks out the mob spawns as the battle progresses. The quests are pretty quick and mostly painless, though on a PvP server you always have to deal with the jerks who have nothing better to do except run around looking for players to kill who are low on health.
Now on to the bad. Mainly, BUGS! Several extremely annoying ones in fact. First off, our guild bank is unusable. The number of allowed withdrawals never resets, meaning that once you hit your limit for withdrawals from the clan bank, thats it... forever! Or at least until they fix the bug, but who knows when that will be. The issue doesnt seem to be getting any attention at all on the bug report forums thought the GMs have given out some rather dumb suggestions for fixing it such as 'Delete your WTF folder' (isnt this their answer for everything? It doesnt work by the way) and the oh-so-interesting 'Have you entire guild stay logged off for 10 minutes!. What?! How will that fix anything. And anyway, my guild isnt that active. I know there are plenty of times during the day when noone is online.
Note: The Guild Bank issue has been taken care of since I initially drafted this post
Secondly, my computer locks up when I try to teleport to/from Quel'danas. Sometimes I can simply close out WoW and login again, but most of the time a full reset of my machine is required! I can fly back to the Undercity and return to normal space/time that way, but using any sort of time-saving travel method just doesn't work. Again, the usual GM answer is to delete your WTF folder. But you know what? Everything I've changed about my interface, from addons to video settings, resides in there. Forcing the user to re-jigger their entire interface from scratch is not a valid solution. And why would any of the files in there have such a debilitating effect that my system is locked up!? This is definitely a client issue, not an addon issue.
Overall, Patch 2.4 is a good addition to the game. Lots of new content, especially for enchanters and jewelcrafters. Tons of shiny new items to buy for the PvE crowd (including the arena armor sets, which is a bit odd, but I've given up trying to guess where Blizzard comes up with some of their decisions).
Not a whole lot in this patch that affects a blacksmithing warrior directly, so I'll mainly focus on the new quests and the Shattered Sun Offensive.
First off, the new 'World PvP' quests are a bust. Especially the one for the Spirit Towers in the Bone Wastes. That quest tasks you with the incredibly difficult job of taking one, thats right one, of the spirit towers. Now anyone who actually knows anything about this PvP objective knows that taking just one tower is really a nonsensical task. Usually all of the towers change hands at least once during the period that they're open. Sow how does this play out in reality? Everyone runs out, groups at one tower, captures it, then rides off to turn in their quest, completely ignoring the rest of the towers, leaving it up to a handful of players (usually less than five for each side) to actually work on achieving the objective. The quest for Halaa is slightly better, but not by much. For this one you have to kill 10 players near Halaa. Oh great! Killing players near Halaa! I never thought of doing that before! *sarcasm off* Finding players to kill near Halaa has always been difficult. Either one side or the other almost always has a significant numerical advantage, making actual combat pretty rare. The best chance you have is by camping the fly point. This quest does nothing to change the interest in Halaa.
How about something meaningful, like actually holding the damn town for a period of time opens up new vendors and quests? Or a mailbox or bank? Or anything worthwhile!
Failure on both counts.
There are a number of new daily quests available in Shatrath. They are all pretty simple and one is even related to resource gathering so it can be done in the normal course of harvesting raw materials. The others have you searching for items amongst the Ethereals of Blade's Edge, the Blood Elves in Netherstorm and taking readings in Nagrand. All pretty easy, though the Blood Elf one can sometimes take a while depending on your luck.
One good thing about some of these new quests is that they reward you with a care package. These packages always contain a useless green item but also sometimes have a Badge of Justice! I found two badges in a total of 10 or so packages. Bonus for me since I was just doing the jobs for cash.
The change that has directly affected me the most is the unbinding of Primal Nether and Nether Vortex. I spent all my gold on hand plus everything I've made from the new dailies to upgrade my epic, blacksmithed axes. Both my two-handed and one-handed axes have now been upgraded to their full potential. Only a year after the raiding players were able to do so! Initial prices for the Nethers were ~250 gold for a Vortex and ~50 gold for a Primal. Prices have steadily dropped since then, and with the plethora of new daily quests, getting gold to purchase these items is extremely easy.
The new 5-man instance, Magister's Terrace is fun, and somewhat of a challenge. It's very magic heavy and the magisters and warlocks hit like a two-ton Tauren, but with spells. You definitely need to make good use of corners to draw them in and spell reflection is extremely important for the tank. I've only been in once and we made it through to the end with only one wipe, but then had trouble with Kael'thas. The final battle with Kael'thas is very melee-unfriendly (but thats nothing new for WoW). Trying to avoid the balls of arcane energy that spurt out of his head while also not touching the floor but getting into melee range while 'swimming' through the air at extremely fast speeds just isn't a whole lot of fun. It's very doable, just annoying.
The Shattered Sun Offensive quest progression on the Isle of Qeul'danas is very well done. There are always a couple of daily quests that aid in the progression of the Offensive as they are completed. So the more players that are on your server doing these quests every day, the faster the Shattered Sun will improve its foothold on the island. As the advance reaches a new phase, new quests are opened up and the old ones are deprecated so that they still give cash and reputation rewards, but they no longer directly help the Shattered Sun in their efforts.
I appreciate how the Shattered Sun actually takes over buildings and kicks out the mob spawns as the battle progresses. The quests are pretty quick and mostly painless, though on a PvP server you always have to deal with the jerks who have nothing better to do except run around looking for players to kill who are low on health.
Now on to the bad. Mainly, BUGS! Several extremely annoying ones in fact. First off, our guild bank is unusable. The number of allowed withdrawals never resets, meaning that once you hit your limit for withdrawals from the clan bank, thats it... forever! Or at least until they fix the bug, but who knows when that will be. The issue doesnt seem to be getting any attention at all on the bug report forums thought the GMs have given out some rather dumb suggestions for fixing it such as 'Delete your WTF folder' (isnt this their answer for everything? It doesnt work by the way) and the oh-so-interesting 'Have you entire guild stay logged off for 10 minutes!. What?! How will that fix anything. And anyway, my guild isnt that active. I know there are plenty of times during the day when noone is online.
Note: The Guild Bank issue has been taken care of since I initially drafted this post
Secondly, my computer locks up when I try to teleport to/from Quel'danas. Sometimes I can simply close out WoW and login again, but most of the time a full reset of my machine is required! I can fly back to the Undercity and return to normal space/time that way, but using any sort of time-saving travel method just doesn't work. Again, the usual GM answer is to delete your WTF folder. But you know what? Everything I've changed about my interface, from addons to video settings, resides in there. Forcing the user to re-jigger their entire interface from scratch is not a valid solution. And why would any of the files in there have such a debilitating effect that my system is locked up!? This is definitely a client issue, not an addon issue.
Overall, Patch 2.4 is a good addition to the game. Lots of new content, especially for enchanters and jewelcrafters. Tons of shiny new items to buy for the PvE crowd (including the arena armor sets, which is a bit odd, but I've given up trying to guess where Blizzard comes up with some of their decisions).
Friday, March 07, 2008
Blizzard Still Clueless on How to Make World PvP Interesting
So this recent quote from Blizzard once again proves to me how little they understand the concept of meaningful PvP:
"Based on the information we already know, I think Lake Wintergrasp will be more active than Halaa because one of the things that hurt Halaa was the Diminishing Returns on honor points. With this removed in patch 2.4 people will be able to continue piling up honor points until they've had enough. I know rewards play a huge factor, so with the knowledge that people have now of items we've made available through honor points, I think it will continue to be a busy place for a long time."
Blizzard seems to somehow think this lack of interest in their oh-so-cleverly-designed World PvP Objectives is directly related to diminishing returns on honor gains for killing other players! Obviously, it has nothing at all to do with how worthless Halaa is as an objective. There is nothing there worth fighting over! A couple of vendors selling mostly junk and two quests involving gathering tokens/dust for items that are only interesting to a handful of players in the 66-67 level range.
How about making something worth fighting over for a change!? If they really wanted Halaa to be a point of contention they should have made it THE town in Nagrand. Give both sides small encampments with flightpaths where the current towns are, but move a majority of the quests and vendors into Halaa so there is a genuine reason to want to capture it. As it is, Halaa is just a novelty that quickly wears thin for all players, and thus, completely fails as a PvP objective. Give me a chance to actually make a difference or have an effect on the gameworld! Removing the diminishing returns on honor for killing other players will have no effect at all on the action around Halaa. And if Lake Winterspring is nothing more than a glorified battleground, well, hopefully by then I'll have better options for MMO PvP.
Halaa is by far the most active of their six outdoor PvP objectives, and even then its mostly just one side overpowering the two to three players on the other side. That should be a clear warning that something is seriously wrong with your world PvP designs. And let me give out a little hint: It's not due to diminishing honor returns!
The WoW Battlegrounds are popular due to the carrots available at the end of the racetrack. A lot of those carrots are rather nice and tasty. But the carrot rewards for World PvP are small, stringy things with no tastiness or lasting value, and for some of them (I'm looking at you Zangarmarsh and Hellfire towers), the measly little carrot can be taken away in mere minutes, before you even get a chance to take a bite. Even worse are the towers in Terrokar Forest. It's nice that the bonus from them last for several hours, but, someone then decided that you would also have to run through the local dungeons again, and again, and again, ad nauseum, to gather enough tokens (which are only available while your side controls the towers) to buy items that are also only useful to a very small percentage of players in a very strict, sub-70 level range! Insanity and stupidity all rolled into one!
So Blizzard either needs to come up with some better veggies for rewards from their World PvP Objectives, or completely retool the impact these objectives have on the game. I doubt that either will happen and battlegrounds and arena will remain the only semi-interesting points of PvP in WoW.
"Based on the information we already know, I think Lake Wintergrasp will be more active than Halaa because one of the things that hurt Halaa was the Diminishing Returns on honor points. With this removed in patch 2.4 people will be able to continue piling up honor points until they've had enough. I know rewards play a huge factor, so with the knowledge that people have now of items we've made available through honor points, I think it will continue to be a busy place for a long time."
Blizzard seems to somehow think this lack of interest in their oh-so-cleverly-designed World PvP Objectives is directly related to diminishing returns on honor gains for killing other players! Obviously, it has nothing at all to do with how worthless Halaa is as an objective. There is nothing there worth fighting over! A couple of vendors selling mostly junk and two quests involving gathering tokens/dust for items that are only interesting to a handful of players in the 66-67 level range.
How about making something worth fighting over for a change!? If they really wanted Halaa to be a point of contention they should have made it THE town in Nagrand. Give both sides small encampments with flightpaths where the current towns are, but move a majority of the quests and vendors into Halaa so there is a genuine reason to want to capture it. As it is, Halaa is just a novelty that quickly wears thin for all players, and thus, completely fails as a PvP objective. Give me a chance to actually make a difference or have an effect on the gameworld! Removing the diminishing returns on honor for killing other players will have no effect at all on the action around Halaa. And if Lake Winterspring is nothing more than a glorified battleground, well, hopefully by then I'll have better options for MMO PvP.
Halaa is by far the most active of their six outdoor PvP objectives, and even then its mostly just one side overpowering the two to three players on the other side. That should be a clear warning that something is seriously wrong with your world PvP designs. And let me give out a little hint: It's not due to diminishing honor returns!
The WoW Battlegrounds are popular due to the carrots available at the end of the racetrack. A lot of those carrots are rather nice and tasty. But the carrot rewards for World PvP are small, stringy things with no tastiness or lasting value, and for some of them (I'm looking at you Zangarmarsh and Hellfire towers), the measly little carrot can be taken away in mere minutes, before you even get a chance to take a bite. Even worse are the towers in Terrokar Forest. It's nice that the bonus from them last for several hours, but, someone then decided that you would also have to run through the local dungeons again, and again, and again, ad nauseum, to gather enough tokens (which are only available while your side controls the towers) to buy items that are also only useful to a very small percentage of players in a very strict, sub-70 level range! Insanity and stupidity all rolled into one!
So Blizzard either needs to come up with some better veggies for rewards from their World PvP Objectives, or completely retool the impact these objectives have on the game. I doubt that either will happen and battlegrounds and arena will remain the only semi-interesting points of PvP in WoW.
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
Azh's Quick Tips: Heroic Mechanar: Part II
Made a guild run through Heroic Mechanar last night and defeated all the bosses, including Sepethrea, which is a first for me. And we did it with one healer (restoration shaman) and four melee (protection warrior, arms warrior (me) and two rogues), which is really surprising given how much AoE is in that instance. So I thought I would follow up my initial Quick Tips for Heroic Mechanar with some further thoughts about the three most annoying mobs in the instance; Mechanar Tinkerer, Nethermancer Sepethrea and Pathaleon the Calculator.
Mechanar Tinkerer - Not only is arcane resistance useful when fighting these guys, but it also helps if you can have them going after multiple targets. Having 3 or 4 of them focus fire someone generally just causes trouble, even with lots of resistance. However, we seemed to have more success when we broke them up. Each rogue would stunlock one while beating them down and I would take on the others with my Enchanted Admantine Plate set. They go down pretty quickly. But with all melee, we couldn't take the concentrated AoE damage from standing together.
Nethermancer Sepethrea - The bane of many an adventuring group, especially in heroic mode. The real trick to defeating her is to not panic. She doesn't have a lot of hit points and she also doesn't do a ton of heavy damage like most bosses do. The real thing to worry about are her elementals. Everyone needs to be aware when the elementals are coming for them and get moving. If you let them get too close, they'll daze you, you get caught in the fire and then things go south from there. Draw them away from the main tank as far as you can. Then, when they stop to do their AoE attack, run back and get in as much damage as you can. If you notice one or more coming at you, start moving again. If you cant tell whether they're coming after you or not, move anyway and see if they follow. It's very important to NOT lure the elementals back to where Sepethrea is fighting. Hide your damage meters because that is really unimportant in this fight and will just distract you. Keep yourself alive, don't draw the elementals near other party members and do damage when you can. Also, its a good idea to spread out in a semi-circle in front of her before engaging so you can tell immediately which players the elementals are focusing on.
Pathaleon the Calculator - Similar to Sepethrea in that he doesnt do a lot of damage himself and is relatively fragile. The problems stem from his arcane elementals he summons and from his mind control ability. If he mind-controls a DPS player, you will probably want to try and fear, blind or otherwise temporarily incapacitate them so that they don't kill your tank or healer. It actually seemed to work better for us when he controlled our healer, since the healer wasn't going to kill anyone, and, as long as noone was near death, we could all survive for the 5 or so seconds it takes before the mind control wears off, leaving us free to dish out the damage. By the time we finished tearing up his first wave of elementals he was already at ~30% health and fell not long after.
Mechanar Tinkerer - Not only is arcane resistance useful when fighting these guys, but it also helps if you can have them going after multiple targets. Having 3 or 4 of them focus fire someone generally just causes trouble, even with lots of resistance. However, we seemed to have more success when we broke them up. Each rogue would stunlock one while beating them down and I would take on the others with my Enchanted Admantine Plate set. They go down pretty quickly. But with all melee, we couldn't take the concentrated AoE damage from standing together.
Nethermancer Sepethrea - The bane of many an adventuring group, especially in heroic mode. The real trick to defeating her is to not panic. She doesn't have a lot of hit points and she also doesn't do a ton of heavy damage like most bosses do. The real thing to worry about are her elementals. Everyone needs to be aware when the elementals are coming for them and get moving. If you let them get too close, they'll daze you, you get caught in the fire and then things go south from there. Draw them away from the main tank as far as you can. Then, when they stop to do their AoE attack, run back and get in as much damage as you can. If you notice one or more coming at you, start moving again. If you cant tell whether they're coming after you or not, move anyway and see if they follow. It's very important to NOT lure the elementals back to where Sepethrea is fighting. Hide your damage meters because that is really unimportant in this fight and will just distract you. Keep yourself alive, don't draw the elementals near other party members and do damage when you can. Also, its a good idea to spread out in a semi-circle in front of her before engaging so you can tell immediately which players the elementals are focusing on.
Pathaleon the Calculator - Similar to Sepethrea in that he doesnt do a lot of damage himself and is relatively fragile. The problems stem from his arcane elementals he summons and from his mind control ability. If he mind-controls a DPS player, you will probably want to try and fear, blind or otherwise temporarily incapacitate them so that they don't kill your tank or healer. It actually seemed to work better for us when he controlled our healer, since the healer wasn't going to kill anyone, and, as long as noone was near death, we could all survive for the 5 or so seconds it takes before the mind control wears off, leaving us free to dish out the damage. By the time we finished tearing up his first wave of elementals he was already at ~30% health and fell not long after.
Saturday, December 15, 2007
Alterac Valley: The More It Changes, the More It Stays the Same
So it's been several weeks since the much lauded patch to fix Alterac Valley, and once again, we're back to the same old, zerg-the-enemy-base-ignore-opposing-players strategy. I blame both the developers for creating a crappy setup that promotes that sort of strategy, and the players who are too scared to actually engage the enemy in what is supposed to be a PvP instance!
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
Azh's WoW Adventures: Karazhan
My guild is pretty casual overall. And relatively small. So while we do a lot of 5-mans and PvP and other various events, we haven't experienced any of the Outlands raid content until we hit Zul'aman a week ago. We went to Zul'aman mainly because it didn't have any prerequisites for entry. We knew that Karazhan was officially the entry-level raid instance, but making sure that everyone did the 12-step quest that involves no less than three 5-man instances to get their key (which for some unknown reason, everyone needs), had been problematic.
However, we were emboldened by the turnout and tenacity displayed in our Zul'aman trip, so we got things together, ran those without keys through the required instances and made plans for a journey into Karazhan.
I've read a little about Karazhan, and I had stepped inside previously just to take a look, but we were basically walking into this adventure blind, which is really a lot more fun. I knew that Attumen was in the stables and that he appeared with his horse, and I also knew that a less-powerful boss-type creature lay in the cellars, but beyond that, it was new for everyone involved.
Unfortunately, there were only eight of us. We had a couple of friends of the guild who expressed interest in joining us, but I really wanted to do an all-guild run for the first time through. So we stuck with what we had. Our group consisted of two arms warriors, one restoration shaman, one holy/discipline priest, one beastmaster hunter, one rogue and two warlocks.
Both of the warriors were functioning as tanks (without a respec). Since pretty much everything we encountered was a ghost or a creature, our crowd control was limited to the priest's Shackle spell and the hunter's Ice Trap.
We decided to head into the stables first. The horses and the stablehands proved to be pretty easy to tackle. Shackle, trap and tank the others. We even had a point where we pulled the patrol along with the static mobs and still emerged victorious. The only tricky part was having the Chargers charge and fear the healers. But that didn't seem to really cause too much trouble.
When we got to Midnight, the plan was for the other warrior to take her and I would grab Attumen when he appeared. We would try and damage them both equally so that when Attumen hopped on Midnight, he would hopefully be almost dead. This didn't work out so well. We just weren't able to damage them quickly enough. Also, I hadn't realized that Attumen had an aura that decreases hit chance, so we were keeping them grouped near each other, which likely decreased our damage output quite a bit.
Lesson One: Keep Attumen away from the rest of the raid.
Wipe, soulstone, ressurect and we're ready to try again. A couple of party members had already run back in the front door and discovered that the spectral horses were respawning. No problem, we simply summoned them over and prepared to engage again. As soon as Midnight entered combat, ALL of the other horses ran over to help. Needless to say, it was a quick death for us all.
Lesson Two: The stables need to be clear before engaging Midnight.
Humbled and more experienced, we ran back and decided to check out the cellars. The creatures here consisted of spiders who would spawn spiderlings and large numbers of bats. These were all defeated easily and we came to what was looking like a dead-end in the back of the cellars. I was wondering where the boss was as I pulled the final group, and almost immediately found myself near death! Luckily, the other warrior was on the ball and grabbed the attention of Rokad the Ravager, who was with this final pull. He looked just like his demon-dog companions so I hadn't even noticed he was there! After recovering from that near fiasco, we easily defeated him and found some bracers for our enchanter to melt.
Having passed a narrow staircase on the way to the back of the cellars, we returned to it and made our way upstairs to the marbles halls filled with ghostly citizens. Took out a couple of the groups in the hallway then turned right into a large open space. The large groups of ghostly citizens weren't too tough, there were just lots of them to control. One of our warlocks seemed to draw a lot of aggro and went down a couple of times.
Then we hit the Skeletal Ushers who wiped us a couple of times. Their immunity to taunt was an unexpected discovery that led to one wipe, and then another as we accidentally pulled a patrol and had three of the Ushers on us at once! But once we figured that out, defeating them was easy enough and we cleared the entire room in front of the opera stage. We then talked to the organ player but nothing seemed to happen. Someone in our group pointed out that there was a passage behind the stage, so in we went right into a large number of ghostly actors. We were approaching the two hour mark at this point and one of our warlocks had to leave. But luckily we had another shaman login so we decided to make another attempt at Attumen.
Since we now knew about that Midnight would call for help if there were any other horses around, we really only had one shot before the respawns would start. We cleared the stables easily and quickly enough and then faced our nemesis. The plan this time was for me to keep Attumen occupied while the other warrior would keep Midnight focused on him and everyone would work on bringing the horse down. This has to be done carefully as both Midnight and Attumen are immune to Taunt. Things went pretty well, though slowly, since we were still short two players. Attumen mounted his horse and the second phase began. The other warrior ended up being the one grabbing aggro and seemed to be doing an excellent job of keeping his attention so I pulled out my two-hander and switched to fury stance. I was still wearing my tanking gear, so my damage was greatly reduced, but it was still a significant improvement. This phase also went slowly, and I was starting to get worried near the end that we would have respawns before we were done. But luckily, that didn't happen, Attumen fell and we searched his corpse to find a piece of paladin plate armor (no paladins with us) and leather gloves that our rogue didn't want! Alas, our enchanter had been the one who had to leave earlier so were left with taking the items to sell for a small pittance of gold. But we did all get two Badges of Justice (one from Attumen and one from Rokad, though somehow our rogue manged to get three total!) and enough Violet Eye reputation to get the first version of the Violet Eye rings.
All in all it was a fun and educational trip. I had no idea how big the place was. For some reason I thought it was a lot smaller but we have obviously only seen the very beginning of this instance. But our success with a short-handed raid was inspiring and gives us hope for further progression.
However, we were emboldened by the turnout and tenacity displayed in our Zul'aman trip, so we got things together, ran those without keys through the required instances and made plans for a journey into Karazhan.
I've read a little about Karazhan, and I had stepped inside previously just to take a look, but we were basically walking into this adventure blind, which is really a lot more fun. I knew that Attumen was in the stables and that he appeared with his horse, and I also knew that a less-powerful boss-type creature lay in the cellars, but beyond that, it was new for everyone involved.
Unfortunately, there were only eight of us. We had a couple of friends of the guild who expressed interest in joining us, but I really wanted to do an all-guild run for the first time through. So we stuck with what we had. Our group consisted of two arms warriors, one restoration shaman, one holy/discipline priest, one beastmaster hunter, one rogue and two warlocks.
Both of the warriors were functioning as tanks (without a respec). Since pretty much everything we encountered was a ghost or a creature, our crowd control was limited to the priest's Shackle spell and the hunter's Ice Trap.
We decided to head into the stables first. The horses and the stablehands proved to be pretty easy to tackle. Shackle, trap and tank the others. We even had a point where we pulled the patrol along with the static mobs and still emerged victorious. The only tricky part was having the Chargers charge and fear the healers. But that didn't seem to really cause too much trouble.
When we got to Midnight, the plan was for the other warrior to take her and I would grab Attumen when he appeared. We would try and damage them both equally so that when Attumen hopped on Midnight, he would hopefully be almost dead. This didn't work out so well. We just weren't able to damage them quickly enough. Also, I hadn't realized that Attumen had an aura that decreases hit chance, so we were keeping them grouped near each other, which likely decreased our damage output quite a bit.
Lesson One: Keep Attumen away from the rest of the raid.
Wipe, soulstone, ressurect and we're ready to try again. A couple of party members had already run back in the front door and discovered that the spectral horses were respawning. No problem, we simply summoned them over and prepared to engage again. As soon as Midnight entered combat, ALL of the other horses ran over to help. Needless to say, it was a quick death for us all.
Lesson Two: The stables need to be clear before engaging Midnight.
Humbled and more experienced, we ran back and decided to check out the cellars. The creatures here consisted of spiders who would spawn spiderlings and large numbers of bats. These were all defeated easily and we came to what was looking like a dead-end in the back of the cellars. I was wondering where the boss was as I pulled the final group, and almost immediately found myself near death! Luckily, the other warrior was on the ball and grabbed the attention of Rokad the Ravager, who was with this final pull. He looked just like his demon-dog companions so I hadn't even noticed he was there! After recovering from that near fiasco, we easily defeated him and found some bracers for our enchanter to melt.
Having passed a narrow staircase on the way to the back of the cellars, we returned to it and made our way upstairs to the marbles halls filled with ghostly citizens. Took out a couple of the groups in the hallway then turned right into a large open space. The large groups of ghostly citizens weren't too tough, there were just lots of them to control. One of our warlocks seemed to draw a lot of aggro and went down a couple of times.
Then we hit the Skeletal Ushers who wiped us a couple of times. Their immunity to taunt was an unexpected discovery that led to one wipe, and then another as we accidentally pulled a patrol and had three of the Ushers on us at once! But once we figured that out, defeating them was easy enough and we cleared the entire room in front of the opera stage. We then talked to the organ player but nothing seemed to happen. Someone in our group pointed out that there was a passage behind the stage, so in we went right into a large number of ghostly actors. We were approaching the two hour mark at this point and one of our warlocks had to leave. But luckily we had another shaman login so we decided to make another attempt at Attumen.
Since we now knew about that Midnight would call for help if there were any other horses around, we really only had one shot before the respawns would start. We cleared the stables easily and quickly enough and then faced our nemesis. The plan this time was for me to keep Attumen occupied while the other warrior would keep Midnight focused on him and everyone would work on bringing the horse down. This has to be done carefully as both Midnight and Attumen are immune to Taunt. Things went pretty well, though slowly, since we were still short two players. Attumen mounted his horse and the second phase began. The other warrior ended up being the one grabbing aggro and seemed to be doing an excellent job of keeping his attention so I pulled out my two-hander and switched to fury stance. I was still wearing my tanking gear, so my damage was greatly reduced, but it was still a significant improvement. This phase also went slowly, and I was starting to get worried near the end that we would have respawns before we were done. But luckily, that didn't happen, Attumen fell and we searched his corpse to find a piece of paladin plate armor (no paladins with us) and leather gloves that our rogue didn't want! Alas, our enchanter had been the one who had to leave earlier so were left with taking the items to sell for a small pittance of gold. But we did all get two Badges of Justice (one from Attumen and one from Rokad, though somehow our rogue manged to get three total!) and enough Violet Eye reputation to get the first version of the Violet Eye rings.
All in all it was a fun and educational trip. I had no idea how big the place was. For some reason I thought it was a lot smaller but we have obviously only seen the very beginning of this instance. But our success with a short-handed raid was inspiring and gives us hope for further progression.
Monday, November 19, 2007
Azh's WoW Adventures: Zul'aman
With the recent release of patch 2.3 comes the first raid content since Upper Blackrock Spire that doesn't require crazy attunement/key quests.
Since out guild is very casual, we've never been to Karazhan and have only done a handful of heroics. So this was our first chance to try out a raiding instance in the Outlands. I'm speaking of the troll-infested Zul'man of course.
We knew going into it that Zul'aman was supposed to be the next progression after Karazhan, but I wanted to try it anyway, both as a guild bonding experience and simply to see some new content that none of us had seen before. It was an exploratory expedition of sorts.
So we gathered up: eight level 70s and one level 69. Two warriors, one priest, two shamans, one hunter, one rogue and two warlocks. We have a decent amount of epic PvP and arena gear, but given our lack of high-end PvE experience, no tanking epics. Both of our warriors were not protection specced and we both were wearing various blue items as defensive gear.
The first thing that happens inside is that you talk to an NPC who tells you to bang on a gong to open the gate. You need several people to bang on it at the same time and it takes a good 30 seconds or more of doing so before the gate will open. The NPC immediately runs through the gate, gets killed and aggros the first guards onto your party! This first group seemed to consist of two elite trolls and a number of non-elites. Nothing too troublesome, though we weren't expecting it.
And in fact, that is a big theme in this instance... triggered events. It seemed that around almost every turn we were hitting some invisible marker that called down the troll forces on us. Which is probably a lot of fun once you know what you're doing, but for first-timers it was hectic and crazy.
After that initial battle, you come out onto the grand staircase and get a nice panoramic view of the instance as well as plenty of space for resting. A patrol of two trolls is at the bottom of the stairs, one of them a 'Medicine Man' who drops totems. Kill the totems first! Especially the Protective Wards! They make the trolls invulnerable, which makes it a little tougher to kill them.
Turning right at the bottom of the stairs we see the bear boss, Nalorakk, up on a nearby ledge. At this point you have to start being careful about moving up before your party is ready. If you approach he calls out and sends his three guards after you as he moves farther back into the instance. This is a bit tricky as its hard to mark these trolls before they reach your party. And, as an undergeared tank with almost no protection talents, I couldn't take the hits from more than one of them at a time. Both times we fought this encounter I died before I could even get off an Intimidating Shout! Luckily, the second time around, the warlocks and priest managed to keep two of them feared while the second warrior occupied the third and the rest of our party took care of business.
Next up were the Amani Bears. These beasts came in pairs and hit like a two-ton bear (which they were!) After the first encounter with them we worked out a method of keeping one feared constantly while everyone chopped up the second for dinner and easily defeated the second group of bears without any losses.
Up some more stairs to confront Nalorakk again. And again, you have to watch where you step. As you approach the steps he sends more guards after you, this time it's four trolls of various kinds. We managed to defeat them by mind-controlling the Medicine Man, fearing one and tanking the other two. Then things got tough...
Up some more stairs and you have to face two Amani Warbringers. These are the Amani bears with trolls mounted on them. They hit extremely hard and have a roar that both increases their damage dealt and increases the damage taken by those affected. And, to top it off, they can both stack this debuff on you! Needless to say, they need to be tanked away from each other, but that's easier said than done. They both will aggro on the first person they see.
So after several unsuccessful tries we decided to see what lay in the other direction. We took a left at the bottom of the main stairs and saw a 'lookout' waiting up the slope. We figured he would call for some kind of help, so the plan was to charge in, hamstring him and try to take him out quickly. Unfortunately, we discovered that he is invulnerable and away he ran up the ramp. Two guards stood ahead of us. But as we prepared for the encounter, a wave of eagles flew down and assaulted our position. They were all non-elite, but their numbers made them hard to control. And, to top it off, two elite warrior trolls came up from behind us. We got things under control and took all of our foes out, but before we could rest another wave was arriving, and another and another... We must have defeated four or five waves before we were finally exhausted and overwhelmed. Apparently we needed to push forward through the attacks.
Back again we went, though this time we tried sapping the lookout, which actually worked! Sort of. He still ran up the ramp to summon the eagles and warriors, but it did buy us a few seconds with which to engage the first pair of guards. Unfortunately, we just didn't seem to have the firepower to defeat them fast enough and were again overwhelmed by the unrelenting assault from the trolls and their animal companions.
At this point we had been at it a little under 2 hours and decided to call it a night.
All in all, a very interesting instance. It's almost all scripted encounters, so if you're visiting for the first time, be prepared for lots of confusion and a steep learning curve. Though we ultimately met with defeat without even getting a shot at any of the bosses, it was great to have some 10-person content that was immediately accessible without having to jump through a lot of hoops.
I suspect that we will try to get some gear improvements before heading back, but I also think that simply having the experience and knowing what to expect next time would make a big difference as well.
Since out guild is very casual, we've never been to Karazhan and have only done a handful of heroics. So this was our first chance to try out a raiding instance in the Outlands. I'm speaking of the troll-infested Zul'man of course.
We knew going into it that Zul'aman was supposed to be the next progression after Karazhan, but I wanted to try it anyway, both as a guild bonding experience and simply to see some new content that none of us had seen before. It was an exploratory expedition of sorts.
So we gathered up: eight level 70s and one level 69. Two warriors, one priest, two shamans, one hunter, one rogue and two warlocks. We have a decent amount of epic PvP and arena gear, but given our lack of high-end PvE experience, no tanking epics. Both of our warriors were not protection specced and we both were wearing various blue items as defensive gear.
The first thing that happens inside is that you talk to an NPC who tells you to bang on a gong to open the gate. You need several people to bang on it at the same time and it takes a good 30 seconds or more of doing so before the gate will open. The NPC immediately runs through the gate, gets killed and aggros the first guards onto your party! This first group seemed to consist of two elite trolls and a number of non-elites. Nothing too troublesome, though we weren't expecting it.
And in fact, that is a big theme in this instance... triggered events. It seemed that around almost every turn we were hitting some invisible marker that called down the troll forces on us. Which is probably a lot of fun once you know what you're doing, but for first-timers it was hectic and crazy.
After that initial battle, you come out onto the grand staircase and get a nice panoramic view of the instance as well as plenty of space for resting. A patrol of two trolls is at the bottom of the stairs, one of them a 'Medicine Man' who drops totems. Kill the totems first! Especially the Protective Wards! They make the trolls invulnerable, which makes it a little tougher to kill them.
Turning right at the bottom of the stairs we see the bear boss, Nalorakk, up on a nearby ledge. At this point you have to start being careful about moving up before your party is ready. If you approach he calls out and sends his three guards after you as he moves farther back into the instance. This is a bit tricky as its hard to mark these trolls before they reach your party. And, as an undergeared tank with almost no protection talents, I couldn't take the hits from more than one of them at a time. Both times we fought this encounter I died before I could even get off an Intimidating Shout! Luckily, the second time around, the warlocks and priest managed to keep two of them feared while the second warrior occupied the third and the rest of our party took care of business.
Next up were the Amani Bears. These beasts came in pairs and hit like a two-ton bear (which they were!) After the first encounter with them we worked out a method of keeping one feared constantly while everyone chopped up the second for dinner and easily defeated the second group of bears without any losses.
Up some more stairs to confront Nalorakk again. And again, you have to watch where you step. As you approach the steps he sends more guards after you, this time it's four trolls of various kinds. We managed to defeat them by mind-controlling the Medicine Man, fearing one and tanking the other two. Then things got tough...
Up some more stairs and you have to face two Amani Warbringers. These are the Amani bears with trolls mounted on them. They hit extremely hard and have a roar that both increases their damage dealt and increases the damage taken by those affected. And, to top it off, they can both stack this debuff on you! Needless to say, they need to be tanked away from each other, but that's easier said than done. They both will aggro on the first person they see.
So after several unsuccessful tries we decided to see what lay in the other direction. We took a left at the bottom of the main stairs and saw a 'lookout' waiting up the slope. We figured he would call for some kind of help, so the plan was to charge in, hamstring him and try to take him out quickly. Unfortunately, we discovered that he is invulnerable and away he ran up the ramp. Two guards stood ahead of us. But as we prepared for the encounter, a wave of eagles flew down and assaulted our position. They were all non-elite, but their numbers made them hard to control. And, to top it off, two elite warrior trolls came up from behind us. We got things under control and took all of our foes out, but before we could rest another wave was arriving, and another and another... We must have defeated four or five waves before we were finally exhausted and overwhelmed. Apparently we needed to push forward through the attacks.
Back again we went, though this time we tried sapping the lookout, which actually worked! Sort of. He still ran up the ramp to summon the eagles and warriors, but it did buy us a few seconds with which to engage the first pair of guards. Unfortunately, we just didn't seem to have the firepower to defeat them fast enough and were again overwhelmed by the unrelenting assault from the trolls and their animal companions.
At this point we had been at it a little under 2 hours and decided to call it a night.
All in all, a very interesting instance. It's almost all scripted encounters, so if you're visiting for the first time, be prepared for lots of confusion and a steep learning curve. Though we ultimately met with defeat without even getting a shot at any of the bosses, it was great to have some 10-person content that was immediately accessible without having to jump through a lot of hoops.
I suspect that we will try to get some gear improvements before heading back, but I also think that simply having the experience and knowing what to expect next time would make a big difference as well.
Thursday, November 15, 2007
WoW Patch 2.3: First Impressions
So the new patch has now been out for two days and I wanted to give my initial impressions.
A lot of the class changes I wont have any comments on since 90% of my WoW play time is spent on my level 70 orc warrior. But I have had a chance to investigate the new Daily Quests, the Guild Bank, the changes to Alterac Valley and more! Keep reading for details.
The Daily Battleground quests are great! A couple of guildmates and I picked up the Arathi Basin quest on Tuesday, fought and won, and I had over 1200 honor from that victory alone plus the bonus honor from the quest. And getting paid for it was just icing on the cake! This also helps to promote the various battlegrounds on days other than the bonus weekends, which is nice for those of us who like to PvP.
I also discovered that you can hold on to your daily quest and complete it at a later time. I did this last night with the Shattered Halls daily quest that I picked up on Tuesday. However, once completed, you can't get another until the next day. But it's still something useful to know.
I noticed that the Heroic versions of the daily quests give 2 Badges of Justice on completion, which is a nice bonus, especially for those of us who don't do a lot of dungeon runs. Getting three badges a week makes for a really long trek to acquire the Badges of Justice items! And the reduction of reputation requirements for entering heroic dungeons has dramatically increased the number of groups looking for heroic adventures!
The warrior changes are just all around good for me. I was already a nearly pure Arms warrior (46 points in that tree). Death Wish is pretty sweet, I just need to remember to use it more often. But then change that I really, really like is having access to improved intercept! With the additional cooldown bonus from my gladiator gear, I find that I almost always have intercept available when I need it. I'm eager to try it out in the Arena!
Alterac Valley is pretty sweet at the moment. It's almost all PvP now and Horde has won 3 out of 4 matches that I've played. Bonus honor total at the end can be as much as 500-600 if you keep your opponents from razing any towers. Unfortunately, losing an AV match that way can result in very little honor gain, which would be pretty frustrating. But the changes seem good at the moment. We'll have to see how things play out as different strategies develop. In the meantime it's nice to see towers and graveyards actually being defended!
The experience gains for under-60 quests have increased significantly. I've only played a little of that part, but easily gained most of a level by completing a handful of quests. I was also able to go back to Silithus and solo the Emissary quest that I had been carrying around in my quest log for eons since his difficulty had been significantly reduced (it was now listed as a two-player group quest rather than a raid quest).
The Guild Bank is awesome. This is a great guild tool and a useful community feature that should have been available two years ago!
There are quite a few UI changes. For example, when you mouseover an NPC, the icon will change to reflect what they can do for you. It changes to a question mark for quest givers, an anvil icon for those who can repair, etc. Also, questgivers are now marked on the minimap for you. Another change is that interactive quest objects have little sparkly glows around them. While not very immersive, it does make it a lot easier to find that elusive lost backpack or chest without having to run the mouse over everything. Since so much of the WoW world is non-interactive and simply just there for show, I have to give this change a thumbs-up.
Overall, I have no complaints at all, though several of my addons have been throwing errors due to changes with the User Interface API. Hopefully the mod authors will fix those soon.
A lot of the class changes I wont have any comments on since 90% of my WoW play time is spent on my level 70 orc warrior. But I have had a chance to investigate the new Daily Quests, the Guild Bank, the changes to Alterac Valley and more! Keep reading for details.
The Daily Battleground quests are great! A couple of guildmates and I picked up the Arathi Basin quest on Tuesday, fought and won, and I had over 1200 honor from that victory alone plus the bonus honor from the quest. And getting paid for it was just icing on the cake! This also helps to promote the various battlegrounds on days other than the bonus weekends, which is nice for those of us who like to PvP.
I also discovered that you can hold on to your daily quest and complete it at a later time. I did this last night with the Shattered Halls daily quest that I picked up on Tuesday. However, once completed, you can't get another until the next day. But it's still something useful to know.
I noticed that the Heroic versions of the daily quests give 2 Badges of Justice on completion, which is a nice bonus, especially for those of us who don't do a lot of dungeon runs. Getting three badges a week makes for a really long trek to acquire the Badges of Justice items! And the reduction of reputation requirements for entering heroic dungeons has dramatically increased the number of groups looking for heroic adventures!
The warrior changes are just all around good for me. I was already a nearly pure Arms warrior (46 points in that tree). Death Wish is pretty sweet, I just need to remember to use it more often. But then change that I really, really like is having access to improved intercept! With the additional cooldown bonus from my gladiator gear, I find that I almost always have intercept available when I need it. I'm eager to try it out in the Arena!
Alterac Valley is pretty sweet at the moment. It's almost all PvP now and Horde has won 3 out of 4 matches that I've played. Bonus honor total at the end can be as much as 500-600 if you keep your opponents from razing any towers. Unfortunately, losing an AV match that way can result in very little honor gain, which would be pretty frustrating. But the changes seem good at the moment. We'll have to see how things play out as different strategies develop. In the meantime it's nice to see towers and graveyards actually being defended!
The experience gains for under-60 quests have increased significantly. I've only played a little of that part, but easily gained most of a level by completing a handful of quests. I was also able to go back to Silithus and solo the Emissary quest that I had been carrying around in my quest log for eons since his difficulty had been significantly reduced (it was now listed as a two-player group quest rather than a raid quest).
The Guild Bank is awesome. This is a great guild tool and a useful community feature that should have been available two years ago!
There are quite a few UI changes. For example, when you mouseover an NPC, the icon will change to reflect what they can do for you. It changes to a question mark for quest givers, an anvil icon for those who can repair, etc. Also, questgivers are now marked on the minimap for you. Another change is that interactive quest objects have little sparkly glows around them. While not very immersive, it does make it a lot easier to find that elusive lost backpack or chest without having to run the mouse over everything. Since so much of the WoW world is non-interactive and simply just there for show, I have to give this change a thumbs-up.
Overall, I have no complaints at all, though several of my addons have been throwing errors due to changes with the User Interface API. Hopefully the mod authors will fix those soon.
Monday, November 05, 2007
Minor MMO Idea #4: Meaningful Quest Text
One of the common occurrences in online, quest-based games, and WoW especially, is the fact that veteran players tend to skip reading the quest text, instead simply focusing on the pertinent parts, ie, who do I kill and what rewards do I get! I find myself even doing this with new quests that I haven't seen before. Just a quick skim to see who needs to be eviscerated and where they live and what my phat loot will be when I return with a bloody head as a trophy.
But why does this happen? Why is some quest designer's hard work ignored? Well, because its mostly just fluff! The details of the quest text have little to no impact on your character and oftentimes, don't even correspond to gameworld events!
A prime example is one of the early Blood Elf quests in WoW which is designed to teach you how to use the special racial abilities. It's called Thirst Unending.
Part of the quest text reads:
But is any of this true? Not at all! I can spend my entire WoW lifetime without ever using Mana Tap a single time. And if I do use it, I can release it whenever I want. There is no side-effect. I don't have to ever worry about becoming "one of the Wretched". All of the quest text above, while suitably ominous, is completely irrelevant to any actual in-game occurrence.
So why would should I want to read fluffy quest text that isn't even consistent with the virtual world. If it gave me some new insight into the land, that would be something. But, as it is, I, like most other players, simply scan for location, required objectives and the available rewards. Anything further is just a waste of time.
And this reminds me of Shadowbane. During development Shadowbane hired a writer to create incredibly engaging and detailed lore for the background of the game. But, when it came to actual gameplay, the lore was nowhere to be seen. This was a disappointment to a lot of players and left the game feeling extremely shallow (which it was).
It's kind of like the whole anti-drug propaganda that talks about the evils of marijuana. I bought into it when I was young. But then I met people who smoked casually, and I tried it myself, only to discover that all of those crazy tales my PE teachers related to me (why we were taught about drugs by the PE teachers I have no idea) were completely false! If you want to tell me about the dangers of inhaling super-heated smoke into your lungs, or the propensity for glassy-eyed TV viewing while under the influence, then I can accept that. But marijuana stories about friends trying to crack open car-sized rocks with their heads is just ludicrous. Are we still buying into Reefer Madness? But I digress.
My point is, if you're going to go to the trouble of creating interesting lore or NPC speech, tie it to your gameworld!
But why does this happen? Why is some quest designer's hard work ignored? Well, because its mostly just fluff! The details of the quest text have little to no impact on your character and oftentimes, don't even correspond to gameworld events!
A prime example is one of the early Blood Elf quests in WoW which is designed to teach you how to use the special racial abilities. It's called Thirst Unending.
Part of the quest text reads:
"If there is only one lesson you deign to remember from your time on Sunstrider Isle, let it be this - control your thirst for magic. It is a thirst unending, - you must absorb energy to survive via Mana Tap, and you must control how you release it via Arcane Torrent. Failure is to become one of the Wretched... hopelessly addicted and insane."
But is any of this true? Not at all! I can spend my entire WoW lifetime without ever using Mana Tap a single time. And if I do use it, I can release it whenever I want. There is no side-effect. I don't have to ever worry about becoming "one of the Wretched". All of the quest text above, while suitably ominous, is completely irrelevant to any actual in-game occurrence.
So why would should I want to read fluffy quest text that isn't even consistent with the virtual world. If it gave me some new insight into the land, that would be something. But, as it is, I, like most other players, simply scan for location, required objectives and the available rewards. Anything further is just a waste of time.
And this reminds me of Shadowbane. During development Shadowbane hired a writer to create incredibly engaging and detailed lore for the background of the game. But, when it came to actual gameplay, the lore was nowhere to be seen. This was a disappointment to a lot of players and left the game feeling extremely shallow (which it was).
It's kind of like the whole anti-drug propaganda that talks about the evils of marijuana. I bought into it when I was young. But then I met people who smoked casually, and I tried it myself, only to discover that all of those crazy tales my PE teachers related to me (why we were taught about drugs by the PE teachers I have no idea) were completely false! If you want to tell me about the dangers of inhaling super-heated smoke into your lungs, or the propensity for glassy-eyed TV viewing while under the influence, then I can accept that. But marijuana stories about friends trying to crack open car-sized rocks with their heads is just ludicrous. Are we still buying into Reefer Madness? But I digress.
My point is, if you're going to go to the trouble of creating interesting lore or NPC speech, tie it to your gameworld!
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
Alterac Valley Redux: Can I get more 'v' in my PvP?
So my previous post about the Resurrection of Alterac Valley seems to have been a bit premature. Sure, there are more AV matches running now than there were before, but the PvP has quickly vanished in the wake of honor farming.
Alterac Valley has returned to how it was a year ago, both sides rushing the enemy base, with little to no contact between the 'warring' players. In fact, the players work so hard to avoid actual PvP, that finishing at the top of the scoreboard with a mere five killing blows is a common occurrence!
If I try to actually do something useful PvP-wise, such as defending Iceblood or slow down those who are riding past to Frostwolf graveyard, I invariably find myself alone and outnumbered.
Reports from the Test Server say that actual PvP has returned to the Valley with the upcoming 2.3 patch changes, but I'll reserve judgment for the moment. I've learned my lesson (at least until the next time) about making snap judgments on PvP features. Players tend to flow to the path of least resistance, so its probably best to let things settle out before claiming a 'resurrection' or some similarly profound statement!
Alterac Valley has returned to how it was a year ago, both sides rushing the enemy base, with little to no contact between the 'warring' players. In fact, the players work so hard to avoid actual PvP, that finishing at the top of the scoreboard with a mere five killing blows is a common occurrence!
If I try to actually do something useful PvP-wise, such as defending Iceblood or slow down those who are riding past to Frostwolf graveyard, I invariably find myself alone and outnumbered.
Reports from the Test Server say that actual PvP has returned to the Valley with the upcoming 2.3 patch changes, but I'll reserve judgment for the moment. I've learned my lesson (at least until the next time) about making snap judgments on PvP features. Players tend to flow to the path of least resistance, so its probably best to let things settle out before claiming a 'resurrection' or some similarly profound statement!
Saturday, October 13, 2007
WoW's 'Matchmaking' System is a Joke!
So a while back, Blizzard introduced a 'matchmaking' system for determining who you would fight against in the battlegrounds. This system was supposed to weigh your gear and whether or not you were joining in a group to determine the matchups.
I played some Arathi Basin today, joining by myself, and six out of six times, I was placed into a battleground with a bunch of random Horde from various servers against a full Alliance guild team!
More weight needs to be given to organized groups. That is much more valuable than gear! Blizzard really needs to pull their heads out of their asses in regards to understanding PvP.
I played some Arathi Basin today, joining by myself, and six out of six times, I was placed into a battleground with a bunch of random Horde from various servers against a full Alliance guild team!
More weight needs to be given to organized groups. That is much more valuable than gear! Blizzard really needs to pull their heads out of their asses in regards to understanding PvP.
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
The Resurrection of Alterac Valley
So Patch 2.2 for World of Warcraft is finally here, and with it the addition of the ability to report AFKers in the Battlegrounds. And I have to say, the immediate impact is pretty amazing!
I played seven matches last night, and there wasn't a single character idling in the cave. There were a couple of AFKers who tried to hide in other parts of the map, but they were quickly identified and marked so that they didn't receive any honor. I had thought they would be booted from the game as well, but that didn't seem to happen.
I've read some complaints on the forums about getting labeled AFK unfairly, though I havent seen that happen myself. But, I also tend to seek out the PvP, either rabidly defending an attack point or pushing the front line troops forward with charges into the midst of our foes.
I played defense mostly last night, focusing on killing wounded players at Galv (and thus sending them back to Stonehearth, or hopefully their cave), and falling back as slowly as possible. If there weren't enough defenders, or we pushed the Alliance completely out of the mid-map, or there were too many defenders (which actually happened in one match), I would switch to offense, taking point in the assault on the graveyards and base, trying to make sure that we kept our offensive momentum going.
The most obvious change is that now the Horde generally has some defenders at Galv/Iceblood. This seems to cause some turmoil with the Alliance attack, and numerous times we were able to fight them back with only a handful of defenders. Horde has been dealing with Alliance defense for the past year, so we have come to expect it, but until Tuesday, the defense for the Horde never amounted to more than one or two people, which just doesn't cut it. Conversely, the Alliance defense seems to wither away once the Horde assaults the Stonehearth graveyard. They used to be pretty tenacious in holding Stormpike and their base, but maybe that's also a side effect of more warm bodies on the Horde offense. Eventually, the Alliance players will develop some new strategies to counter the suddenly active Horde population, but for the moment, revenge is sweet! And both sides are reporting shorter queue times, which is a win-win situation for everyone.
But I have to wonder how we ever got in this situation to begin with. How did this state of affairs come to be so out of whack that Blizzard had to hardcode a AFK-Stick into the game that we can beat other players with it? Obviously, it's a self-perpetuating issue that has been growing over time. The more players that sit in the cave, the worse your team does, which becomes very frustrating and prompts even more to sit in the cave, etc etc. But, as seems obvious with the amount of player participation in the Valleys now, players are interested in actually playing the game rather than spending the whole match doing nothing. So where was the turning point? When did things get so bad that the Do-Nothing strategy became the preferred method of playing in AV matches? And why was it more of a problem for the Horde? What sort of infectious mob mentality resulted in as many as 20 of the 40 players on the Horde side doing nothing whatsoever to help their team!? I don't have the answers to these questions, but I'm sure there's some sort of sociology paper waiting to be written on the subject!
I played seven matches last night, and there wasn't a single character idling in the cave. There were a couple of AFKers who tried to hide in other parts of the map, but they were quickly identified and marked so that they didn't receive any honor. I had thought they would be booted from the game as well, but that didn't seem to happen.
I've read some complaints on the forums about getting labeled AFK unfairly, though I havent seen that happen myself. But, I also tend to seek out the PvP, either rabidly defending an attack point or pushing the front line troops forward with charges into the midst of our foes.
I played defense mostly last night, focusing on killing wounded players at Galv (and thus sending them back to Stonehearth, or hopefully their cave), and falling back as slowly as possible. If there weren't enough defenders, or we pushed the Alliance completely out of the mid-map, or there were too many defenders (which actually happened in one match), I would switch to offense, taking point in the assault on the graveyards and base, trying to make sure that we kept our offensive momentum going.
The most obvious change is that now the Horde generally has some defenders at Galv/Iceblood. This seems to cause some turmoil with the Alliance attack, and numerous times we were able to fight them back with only a handful of defenders. Horde has been dealing with Alliance defense for the past year, so we have come to expect it, but until Tuesday, the defense for the Horde never amounted to more than one or two people, which just doesn't cut it. Conversely, the Alliance defense seems to wither away once the Horde assaults the Stonehearth graveyard. They used to be pretty tenacious in holding Stormpike and their base, but maybe that's also a side effect of more warm bodies on the Horde offense. Eventually, the Alliance players will develop some new strategies to counter the suddenly active Horde population, but for the moment, revenge is sweet! And both sides are reporting shorter queue times, which is a win-win situation for everyone.
But I have to wonder how we ever got in this situation to begin with. How did this state of affairs come to be so out of whack that Blizzard had to hardcode a AFK-Stick into the game that we can beat other players with it? Obviously, it's a self-perpetuating issue that has been growing over time. The more players that sit in the cave, the worse your team does, which becomes very frustrating and prompts even more to sit in the cave, etc etc. But, as seems obvious with the amount of player participation in the Valleys now, players are interested in actually playing the game rather than spending the whole match doing nothing. So where was the turning point? When did things get so bad that the Do-Nothing strategy became the preferred method of playing in AV matches? And why was it more of a problem for the Horde? What sort of infectious mob mentality resulted in as many as 20 of the 40 players on the Horde side doing nothing whatsoever to help their team!? I don't have the answers to these questions, but I'm sure there's some sort of sociology paper waiting to be written on the subject!
Thursday, August 30, 2007
Warhammer vs Warcraft: A Pre-Beta Comparison
So I talked a bit yesterday about things that WoW has done right. And I'm still playing and enjoying the game to this day. However, I fully expect that my WoW days will come to an abrupt ending when Warhammer is released. So I thought I'd talk a bit about why I would be giving up one addiction for a new one. Well obviously, simply the idea of a new experience has some draw, as well as the fact that I'm not at all excited about Blizzard's next WoW Expansion. But let's talk about some specific areas that I hope will have more interesting implementation than their counterparts in WoW.
Note: I'm not in the beta (yet), so these are just my expectations based on the info that Mythic has given us.
Graphics: This is something that I think will be similar between the two games. Though I expect Warhammer to be a bit darker, both in coloration and theme, they also have the same tendency for over-the-top armor with spikes and skulls and Chaos Cuisinarts and such. I expect everything to be big and gaudy and fun to look at to the point that I wish I could play with no distracting interface whatsoever.
User Interface: Speaking of UI, I actually don't expect the Warhammer interface to be as developed and malleable as WoW's is, but they have said that everything will be movable in the basic UI, something that Blizzard still hasn't implemented themselves for WoW (though there are plenty of addons that open up such possibilities). Otherwise, they look to be following what has become the standard setup these days.
Heavy Lore-Oriented Content: Certainly Warcraft has its lore, but you don't really feel it while playing WoW. Perhaps if you're a Warcraft fanatic and are already familiar with the previous lore, but coming into it with no real knowledge, you're mostly left in the dark... unless you happen to memorize everything any NPC ever says to you. Certainly I've picked up some bits and pieces over the past three years, but none of it really affects me besides knowing the name of the next boss I'm going to kill. And a lot of WoW's best lore is just shuffled into the dungeons, making these ultra-powerful, god-type beings who had a fundamental impact on the world into loot pinatas for the playerbase to smack around on a weekly basis.
The whole Tome of Knowledge concept sounds extremely interesting. I've lamented before over the fact that previous quest text is just discarded after you finish a quest in WoW. After all, you're usually doing a half dozen quests at a time, many of which are completely unrelated, and many of which have no real story beyond the immediate one, so keeping track of who did what to who is a non-fun, and unessential, task. Those quest chains that do have continuing, involved plotlines are generally spread out over such a period of time that you forget how the whole thing started anyway! After a while, many people just ignore the quest text for the most part beyond figuring out who you need to kill for your rewards.
So I'm hoping that Warhammer Online will be able to do a better job with bringing the lore to life for the average gamer. They certainly have a lot of amazing background material to work with!
PvP: I expect the PvP will be very similar to WoW. At least I hope it has a similar fluidity to the action, though of course, the big prayer is that combat is not so gear-oriented. It looks like Mythic is trying to get away from the standard archetypes which should make combat more interesting. Also, as someone who typically plays the warrior types, I'm overjoyed that they're planning to have some sort of taunt-type ability that is actually useful in PvP! But where Warhammer will really strut its stuff is in RvR...
RvR: Really a no-brainer here, as WoW's faction conflicts are all sanitized and saran-wrapped to the point that it feels like a friendly match of flag football rather than actual conflict! Mythic has already proven that they have some clue about how to handle factional player conflict with their highly successful Dark Ages of Camelot MMO. But it looks like they're taking it to a new level with WAR and I'm looking forward to being part of a larger conflict that actually has consequences and an effect on the game world. Even if the war progression does get 'reset' after someone 'wins', it should be a lot more fun and engaging than the static, ineffective world PvP in WoW. And I'm hoping that they scale the overarching conflict in such a way that it becomes more and more difficult to make progress the closer you get to an enemy's capital city, making the actual sacking of a capital a major (and rare) event.
Note: I'm not in the beta (yet), so these are just my expectations based on the info that Mythic has given us.
Graphics: This is something that I think will be similar between the two games. Though I expect Warhammer to be a bit darker, both in coloration and theme, they also have the same tendency for over-the-top armor with spikes and skulls and Chaos Cuisinarts and such. I expect everything to be big and gaudy and fun to look at to the point that I wish I could play with no distracting interface whatsoever.
User Interface: Speaking of UI, I actually don't expect the Warhammer interface to be as developed and malleable as WoW's is, but they have said that everything will be movable in the basic UI, something that Blizzard still hasn't implemented themselves for WoW (though there are plenty of addons that open up such possibilities). Otherwise, they look to be following what has become the standard setup these days.
Heavy Lore-Oriented Content: Certainly Warcraft has its lore, but you don't really feel it while playing WoW. Perhaps if you're a Warcraft fanatic and are already familiar with the previous lore, but coming into it with no real knowledge, you're mostly left in the dark... unless you happen to memorize everything any NPC ever says to you. Certainly I've picked up some bits and pieces over the past three years, but none of it really affects me besides knowing the name of the next boss I'm going to kill. And a lot of WoW's best lore is just shuffled into the dungeons, making these ultra-powerful, god-type beings who had a fundamental impact on the world into loot pinatas for the playerbase to smack around on a weekly basis.
The whole Tome of Knowledge concept sounds extremely interesting. I've lamented before over the fact that previous quest text is just discarded after you finish a quest in WoW. After all, you're usually doing a half dozen quests at a time, many of which are completely unrelated, and many of which have no real story beyond the immediate one, so keeping track of who did what to who is a non-fun, and unessential, task. Those quest chains that do have continuing, involved plotlines are generally spread out over such a period of time that you forget how the whole thing started anyway! After a while, many people just ignore the quest text for the most part beyond figuring out who you need to kill for your rewards.
So I'm hoping that Warhammer Online will be able to do a better job with bringing the lore to life for the average gamer. They certainly have a lot of amazing background material to work with!
PvP: I expect the PvP will be very similar to WoW. At least I hope it has a similar fluidity to the action, though of course, the big prayer is that combat is not so gear-oriented. It looks like Mythic is trying to get away from the standard archetypes which should make combat more interesting. Also, as someone who typically plays the warrior types, I'm overjoyed that they're planning to have some sort of taunt-type ability that is actually useful in PvP! But where Warhammer will really strut its stuff is in RvR...
RvR: Really a no-brainer here, as WoW's faction conflicts are all sanitized and saran-wrapped to the point that it feels like a friendly match of flag football rather than actual conflict! Mythic has already proven that they have some clue about how to handle factional player conflict with their highly successful Dark Ages of Camelot MMO. But it looks like they're taking it to a new level with WAR and I'm looking forward to being part of a larger conflict that actually has consequences and an effect on the game world. Even if the war progression does get 'reset' after someone 'wins', it should be a lot more fun and engaging than the static, ineffective world PvP in WoW. And I'm hoping that they scale the overarching conflict in such a way that it becomes more and more difficult to make progress the closer you get to an enemy's capital city, making the actual sacking of a capital a major (and rare) event.
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
The Praising of Virtues: World of Warcraft
I've written quite a few rants, complaints and suggestions regarding World of Warcraft, so I decided to take a step back and praise its good points. After all, I have been playing it for all but a few months out of the past three years, so something must be right!
1. Flexible Interface. This is by far my favorite part of WoW. Unfortunately, a lot of the flexibility requires third-party addons, but Blizzard has done an outstanding job of making it easy for these mods to be created and giving support to those programmers via built-in hooks to the client, a forum devoted to interface and customization and continuing development of their API. I'll have a post soon about some nice mods that I've installed recently.
2. PvP. That's right, I said it. And as unbelievable as it may be, I think WoW PvP is actually a lot of fun... as long as you have decent gear. That last part is an important caveat. And I would definitely say that a Medallion of the Horde (and its Alliance equivalent) is pretty much required. Otherwise you'll just be crowd controlled all the time with no way to counter it. Getting ganked by higher levels or by five to one odds isn't much fun, of course. And neither is trying to win a battleground when the rest of your 'team' doesn't understand the concept of holding objectives or taking the flag. But, if you're on relatively equal strength and relatively equal numbers, the PvP can be very engaging and exciting. The wide variety of abilities and tactics make every encounter different and when you have three or four players on each side battling it out, strategy does play a big part. It does suck that 99% of the PvP occurs in the same four instanced battlegrounds and that PvP has no effect at all on the world. But, once you accept that fact, it can be very entertaining, sort of a Counterstrike meets MMO type concept.
I wouldn't say that WoW does PvP right, but what they do have has turned out to be enjoyable after almost three years of tweaking. And one last thing, the changes to the honor system that were implemented last December (so that honor points accumulate over time and never decay) were a godsend!
3. Graphics. A lot of people complain about the cartoonish look, but personally, I think it looks a lot better than all of these games that go for a more 'realistic' look. Character and camera movement is very fluid and simple. The loud colors and larger than life adornments give everything a nice fantasy feel and make the game visually entertaining. There are times were I like to hide my entire interface just so I can immerse myself in the graphics. And I think everyone had a moment of amazement the first time they saw inside of Blackrock Mountain or flew against the sky backdrop of colored streamers in the Outlands. Everything is big and identifiable and only occasionally do I have camera issues due to being in a tight, constricted space.
4. Accessibility. Even my girlfriend, who generally doesn't play anything more complex that Jewel Quest was able to get into the game and play by herself with minimal basic instructions. This is probably one of the main reasons that Wow has become so popular.
1. Flexible Interface. This is by far my favorite part of WoW. Unfortunately, a lot of the flexibility requires third-party addons, but Blizzard has done an outstanding job of making it easy for these mods to be created and giving support to those programmers via built-in hooks to the client, a forum devoted to interface and customization and continuing development of their API. I'll have a post soon about some nice mods that I've installed recently.
2. PvP. That's right, I said it. And as unbelievable as it may be, I think WoW PvP is actually a lot of fun... as long as you have decent gear. That last part is an important caveat. And I would definitely say that a Medallion of the Horde (and its Alliance equivalent) is pretty much required. Otherwise you'll just be crowd controlled all the time with no way to counter it. Getting ganked by higher levels or by five to one odds isn't much fun, of course. And neither is trying to win a battleground when the rest of your 'team' doesn't understand the concept of holding objectives or taking the flag. But, if you're on relatively equal strength and relatively equal numbers, the PvP can be very engaging and exciting. The wide variety of abilities and tactics make every encounter different and when you have three or four players on each side battling it out, strategy does play a big part. It does suck that 99% of the PvP occurs in the same four instanced battlegrounds and that PvP has no effect at all on the world. But, once you accept that fact, it can be very entertaining, sort of a Counterstrike meets MMO type concept.
I wouldn't say that WoW does PvP right, but what they do have has turned out to be enjoyable after almost three years of tweaking. And one last thing, the changes to the honor system that were implemented last December (so that honor points accumulate over time and never decay) were a godsend!
3. Graphics. A lot of people complain about the cartoonish look, but personally, I think it looks a lot better than all of these games that go for a more 'realistic' look. Character and camera movement is very fluid and simple. The loud colors and larger than life adornments give everything a nice fantasy feel and make the game visually entertaining. There are times were I like to hide my entire interface just so I can immerse myself in the graphics. And I think everyone had a moment of amazement the first time they saw inside of Blackrock Mountain or flew against the sky backdrop of colored streamers in the Outlands. Everything is big and identifiable and only occasionally do I have camera issues due to being in a tight, constricted space.
4. Accessibility. Even my girlfriend, who generally doesn't play anything more complex that Jewel Quest was able to get into the game and play by herself with minimal basic instructions. This is probably one of the main reasons that Wow has become so popular.
Monday, August 27, 2007
WoW Concept: A Different Way to make 'Heroes'
This post is in response to Blizzard's press release about their next expansion which includes the first (and only) hero class, the infamous Death Knight. While many are excited to see Blizzard finally getting around to implementing something that has been hinted at since launch, I find their design idea for heroes pretty, damn, lame.
Note: This is not a full-fledged design idea, nor is it balanced or even fully thought out. It is simply meant to provide a sample of an alternate method for implementing Hero Classes that I think would be a lot more fun and interesting than what Blizzard proposes.
Anytime after level 60, players are given the option to take on the hero class quest. The initial phase will be relatively simple, though before they complete it, players would be given a warning stating that completing the quest will permanently change their character class, after which they can never change their mind or go back.
After accepting their new class, the player would lose certain abilities and talents of their base class, but would get access to the Death Knight specific abilities as well as some from the other allowed base for the Hero class. For example, Paladin-base Death Knights might be able to learn how to cast Shadowbolt while Warlock-base Death Knights might get to use maces, two-handed swords and shields.
The hero classes would have restrictions based on race and class. For the Death Knight example, it would be limited to Horde-only, Paladin or Warlock.
This system would be a bit similar to how Shadowbane handled classes. By having two different options for a base class, you give extra variety and personalization to the Hero classes rather than just making them all similar. Also, in order to cover all the race and class combos while still providing a choice, some lore-bending would be required (but hey, if you're allowing Tauren Death Knights, then a little lore-bending shouldn't be too hard).
Perhaps Paladins would lose all of their shield and blessing spells while having their Holy talent tree removed, and Warlocks would lose their pets and the Demonology tree (just an example off the top of my head. I'm not overly familiar with Paladins or Warlocks).
Though I'm not completely sold on the functionality of this concept, I really like the idea that all the Death Knight specific spells and abilities would be acquired by completing various steps of a super-epic quest line rather than simply going to a trainer. The quest line would have a number of parallel branches that can be completed in any order, allowing players to choose which abilities they are most interested in learning and focusing on those first.
In addition to making the hero class interesting and diverse, this method would also allow those who have neither the time, energy and/or inclination to deal with the hero quests, to still have their own niche. Death Knights will have a lot in common with their base classes, but they won't be replacing their base classes. A level 60+ Paladin will still have lots of abilities and options that a Death Knight wouldn't.
Each race/class combo should have two options for Hero class progression, though obviously, there would be a lot of overlap (ie, options aren't unique to a particular combo). Those who choose not to follow the Hero path can still explore their possibilities of their class while having access to abilities and talents that no other class has.
Hero classes shouldn't just be flat-out more powerful via more hit points or more powerful spells, but rather should provide increased and varied options for those who want to experience something different without starting from scratch. And of course, those who do devote their time to playing the hero classes will likely find certain combinations of powers whose synergy gives them an advantage, but with proper design and tweaking, those scenarios should never be completely overpowering.
So there you have it. That's my basic idea for how to handle hero classes in WoW. Making the heroes just an extra unlockable class that you only have to partly grind seems very blase and unimaginative. Though the downside of my concept is that it would require lots of design and additional tweaking and balancing after release. But hey, they're going to be doing all of that anyway...
Note: This is not a full-fledged design idea, nor is it balanced or even fully thought out. It is simply meant to provide a sample of an alternate method for implementing Hero Classes that I think would be a lot more fun and interesting than what Blizzard proposes.
Anytime after level 60, players are given the option to take on the hero class quest. The initial phase will be relatively simple, though before they complete it, players would be given a warning stating that completing the quest will permanently change their character class, after which they can never change their mind or go back.
After accepting their new class, the player would lose certain abilities and talents of their base class, but would get access to the Death Knight specific abilities as well as some from the other allowed base for the Hero class. For example, Paladin-base Death Knights might be able to learn how to cast Shadowbolt while Warlock-base Death Knights might get to use maces, two-handed swords and shields.
The hero classes would have restrictions based on race and class. For the Death Knight example, it would be limited to Horde-only, Paladin or Warlock.
This system would be a bit similar to how Shadowbane handled classes. By having two different options for a base class, you give extra variety and personalization to the Hero classes rather than just making them all similar. Also, in order to cover all the race and class combos while still providing a choice, some lore-bending would be required (but hey, if you're allowing Tauren Death Knights, then a little lore-bending shouldn't be too hard).
Perhaps Paladins would lose all of their shield and blessing spells while having their Holy talent tree removed, and Warlocks would lose their pets and the Demonology tree (just an example off the top of my head. I'm not overly familiar with Paladins or Warlocks).
Though I'm not completely sold on the functionality of this concept, I really like the idea that all the Death Knight specific spells and abilities would be acquired by completing various steps of a super-epic quest line rather than simply going to a trainer. The quest line would have a number of parallel branches that can be completed in any order, allowing players to choose which abilities they are most interested in learning and focusing on those first.
In addition to making the hero class interesting and diverse, this method would also allow those who have neither the time, energy and/or inclination to deal with the hero quests, to still have their own niche. Death Knights will have a lot in common with their base classes, but they won't be replacing their base classes. A level 60+ Paladin will still have lots of abilities and options that a Death Knight wouldn't.
Each race/class combo should have two options for Hero class progression, though obviously, there would be a lot of overlap (ie, options aren't unique to a particular combo). Those who choose not to follow the Hero path can still explore their possibilities of their class while having access to abilities and talents that no other class has.
Hero classes shouldn't just be flat-out more powerful via more hit points or more powerful spells, but rather should provide increased and varied options for those who want to experience something different without starting from scratch. And of course, those who do devote their time to playing the hero classes will likely find certain combinations of powers whose synergy gives them an advantage, but with proper design and tweaking, those scenarios should never be completely overpowering.
So there you have it. That's my basic idea for how to handle hero classes in WoW. Making the heroes just an extra unlockable class that you only have to partly grind seems very blase and unimaginative. Though the downside of my concept is that it would require lots of design and additional tweaking and balancing after release. But hey, they're going to be doing all of that anyway...
Monday, August 13, 2007
Azh's Quick Tips: Heroic Slave Pens
As a followup to my post with a few tips on Heroic Mechanar, here are some tips for Heroic Slave Pens.
Coilfang Defenders - These guys are immune to all forms of crowd control. However, they can be snared. They hit extremely hard, so it's best to kite one around (mages and hunters are the best choices) while killing the other.
Mennu - Pretty easy fight. Just make sure to kill all of his totems, except for the Corrupted Nova totem! It explodes when destroyed, so it's best to simply move the whole group away from it.
Rokmar - Very difficult in heroic mode. He's hard enough in regular mode! If you have just one healer, they should be doing nothing besides healing the main tank (unless they have some quick cast area or group heals). Running out of mana during this combat is definitely a possibility. Really just need to unload on him and the tank needs to work hard on maintaining aggro. He will very quickly tear through your party if he gets loose or the tank dies.
Quagmirran - Nature resistance certainly helps. And you want to get the buff from the imprisoned druid if you can, but the real kicker of this encounter is his acid breath attack. This is a frontal area attack, so you need to keep him facing away from the rest of the party. The only problem is that it also causes him to lose aggro on his target, which generally results in him turning around and spraying all the soft targets (or even worse, directly targeting one). So the tank will need to taunt, and the other players will need to use aggro-reducing abilities or just stop attacking for the duration of the breath attack. Improved taunt would probably help here as well.
Coilfang Defenders - These guys are immune to all forms of crowd control. However, they can be snared. They hit extremely hard, so it's best to kite one around (mages and hunters are the best choices) while killing the other.
Mennu - Pretty easy fight. Just make sure to kill all of his totems, except for the Corrupted Nova totem! It explodes when destroyed, so it's best to simply move the whole group away from it.
Rokmar - Very difficult in heroic mode. He's hard enough in regular mode! If you have just one healer, they should be doing nothing besides healing the main tank (unless they have some quick cast area or group heals). Running out of mana during this combat is definitely a possibility. Really just need to unload on him and the tank needs to work hard on maintaining aggro. He will very quickly tear through your party if he gets loose or the tank dies.
Quagmirran - Nature resistance certainly helps. And you want to get the buff from the imprisoned druid if you can, but the real kicker of this encounter is his acid breath attack. This is a frontal area attack, so you need to keep him facing away from the rest of the party. The only problem is that it also causes him to lose aggro on his target, which generally results in him turning around and spraying all the soft targets (or even worse, directly targeting one). So the tank will need to taunt, and the other players will need to use aggro-reducing abilities or just stop attacking for the duration of the breath attack. Improved taunt would probably help here as well.
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