In a move that should shock nobody, Blizzard has modified the trial accounts to make them last forever but have a hard cap of level 20. To avoid abuse of this program by current players, many other restrictions are also placed on the trial accounts such as a limit of 10 gold, no mail or auction house functionality, limited communication use, and no guild membership. However, this modifies the 14 day trial into a trial that more casual players can partake in fully to see if they would like to play the game more regularly. Additionally, it also gives new players a chance to try out a bunch of different class and race combinations and not start paying for the game until they find the best combinations for them. After all, not everybody can be as lucky as me and pick a true favorite class on the first try.
The most interesting part of this move is that this could mean a significant way to enjoy the game (twinking or playing battlegrounds at level 19) is totally free to play now. Of course most of the accepted twinking gear is hard to obtain without boatloads of money, which these accounts have no access to. Nonetheless, there have to be some happy players out there willing to make this happen somehow with the restrictions.
So what are the prospects in this bracket for those who like to heal? Perhaps it will take some time to catch on as former players not willing to pay for the game come back, but the level 19 queues should once again become a hot place to be. Although low level characters can struggle with mana management in instances and battlegrounds, this is a good challenge to have in the player-vs-player context. Effectively unlimited mana pools at that level does not teach players how to play the game well. And after all, Blizzard wants to encourage even some of these twink players to pay up for full time accounts and continue their WoW experience. The bottom line is that this free to play bracket will mean faster queue times for healers in the brackets, whether twinking or just passing through.
After the Cataclysm era is over and a new expansion comes out, it will not surprise me if classic WoW up to level 60 goes free to play. Blizzard is quite likely moving to the free to play model with Titan and needs to train their MMO profit-making skills using their current MMO before the company profits are reliant on micro-transactions. Furthermore, while some players will take advantage of a free game, others will appreciate the amount of content put out there for free and will be more willing to take Blizzard up on its $15 per month system on the basis of how much free content was provided. Of course, Titan may not be free to play, in which case this is just an attempt to shore up Warcraft's subscriber numbers.
Patch 4.2 has dropped and a new set of raid bosses is ready to be figured out. If you have any thoughts on how healing is going in the Tier 12 raids, please send them over to the blog e-mail and I may collect these comments for next time. Until then, happy trails in Azeroth.
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
Call To Arms: Will This Ever Benefit Healers?
An interesting development tonight was enough to bring me out of hiding right away again! Blizzard has finally announced an attempt to fix the ridiculously long DPS queues in heroic dungeons at maximum level. Playing nothing but healers, I personally never have a queue of more than 12-13 minutes, but some DPS I know have reported waiting up to 45-50 minutes or worse. And they also suffer from rage-quitting tanks that make them drop group and wait for a long time once more. Just when it seemed like this was just the way it was going to be, Patch 4.1 will now include a new feature called Call to Arms Tanks and Healers. Here's the important part of the announcement:
In patch 4.1 we'll be introducing Dungeon Finder: Call to Arms, a new system intended to lower queue times. Call to Arms will automatically detect which class role is currently the least represented in the queue, and offer them additional rewards for entering the Dungeon Finder queue and completing a random level-85 Heroic dungeon.
Any time the Dungeon Finder queue is longer than a few minutes for level-85 Heroics, the Call to Arms system kicks in and determines which role is the least represented. In the case of tanking being the least represented role, the "Call to Arms: Tanks" icon will display in the Dungeon Finder UI menu where class roles are selected, and will also display on the UI when the queue pops and you are selected to enter a dungeon. Regardless of your role, you'll always be able to see which role currently has been Called to Arms, if any.
Call to Arms is meant to lower wait times by offering additional rewards for queuing as the currently least represented role. To be eligible for the additional rewards you must solo queue for a random level-85 Heroic in the role that is currently being Called to Arms, and complete the dungeon by killing the final boss. Every time you hit these requirements (there is no daily limit) you'll receive a goodie bag that will contain some gold, a chance at a rare gem, a chance at a flask/elixir (determined by spec), a good chance of receiving a non-combat pet (including cross faction pets), and a very rare chance at receiving a mount. The pets offered come from a wide variety of sources, and include companions like the Razzashi Hatchling, Cockatiel, and Tiny Sporebat, but the mounts are those specifically only available through dungeons (not raids), like the Reins of the Raven Lord from Sethekk Halls, Swift White Hawkstrider from Magister's Terrace, and Deathcharger's Reins from Stratholme.
Did you see that...rare mounts only available from dungeons will now rarely drop when your role is needed in the Looking For Group queues! The gold and gems and such are nice, but the cross-faction pets and the rare dungeon mounts are the real story here. Blizzard has found something that is not terribly easy or even possible to get, and something that DPS players will not cry too much foul on missing out on. But the real question is, as much as Blizzard says this applies to healers and tanks, will this ever pop for healers on your realm?
In the entire lifetime of the Looking For Group system (now pushing 2 years old), I have received an instant queue 3 times. The wait sometimes is relatively short and lasts 2-4 minutes, but there are always fewer tanks in the queue. Will that change with extra benefits offered potentially to both healers and tanks? I highly doubt it. The sheer fact of the matter is that playing a tank is a huge responsibility and takes a lot of skill. Jumping into tanking at the heroics level is not a recipe for success and even these rewards may not be enough if other players are not patient and courteous with new tanks. Not to completely sell into the internet anonymity jerk theory, but patience is a virtue lacking in LFG and that will not change, thereby running more potential tanks away. At the same time more healer hybrids will queue up as well and will still outnumber tanks. If there were 2 healer slots in a group to every tank, this Call to Arms may work for healers. But on most realms, expect this to be as empty a promise for healers as it is for DPS. Cross your fingers folks, let's hope this works for the DPS sake.
Here's a sinister thought: will this make the LFG system even worse than before because of a high influx of poor tanks and healers? It's common knowledge in Cataclysm that success in LFG is far less certain than just putting together a group in trade chat or in your guild. Bad tanks and healers will likely become better with practice, but the problem of low quality groups may be exacerbated by this change as an unintended side effect. Once again, healers keep your fingers crossed.
Congratulations tank classes on your new bounty. Perhaps someday it will be shared with the other type of group members taking on added responsibility in a dungeon run.
In patch 4.1 we'll be introducing Dungeon Finder: Call to Arms, a new system intended to lower queue times. Call to Arms will automatically detect which class role is currently the least represented in the queue, and offer them additional rewards for entering the Dungeon Finder queue and completing a random level-85 Heroic dungeon.
Any time the Dungeon Finder queue is longer than a few minutes for level-85 Heroics, the Call to Arms system kicks in and determines which role is the least represented. In the case of tanking being the least represented role, the "Call to Arms: Tanks" icon will display in the Dungeon Finder UI menu where class roles are selected, and will also display on the UI when the queue pops and you are selected to enter a dungeon. Regardless of your role, you'll always be able to see which role currently has been Called to Arms, if any.
Call to Arms is meant to lower wait times by offering additional rewards for queuing as the currently least represented role. To be eligible for the additional rewards you must solo queue for a random level-85 Heroic in the role that is currently being Called to Arms, and complete the dungeon by killing the final boss. Every time you hit these requirements (there is no daily limit) you'll receive a goodie bag that will contain some gold, a chance at a rare gem, a chance at a flask/elixir (determined by spec), a good chance of receiving a non-combat pet (including cross faction pets), and a very rare chance at receiving a mount. The pets offered come from a wide variety of sources, and include companions like the Razzashi Hatchling, Cockatiel, and Tiny Sporebat, but the mounts are those specifically only available through dungeons (not raids), like the Reins of the Raven Lord from Sethekk Halls, Swift White Hawkstrider from Magister's Terrace, and Deathcharger's Reins from Stratholme.
Did you see that...rare mounts only available from dungeons will now rarely drop when your role is needed in the Looking For Group queues! The gold and gems and such are nice, but the cross-faction pets and the rare dungeon mounts are the real story here. Blizzard has found something that is not terribly easy or even possible to get, and something that DPS players will not cry too much foul on missing out on. But the real question is, as much as Blizzard says this applies to healers and tanks, will this ever pop for healers on your realm?
In the entire lifetime of the Looking For Group system (now pushing 2 years old), I have received an instant queue 3 times. The wait sometimes is relatively short and lasts 2-4 minutes, but there are always fewer tanks in the queue. Will that change with extra benefits offered potentially to both healers and tanks? I highly doubt it. The sheer fact of the matter is that playing a tank is a huge responsibility and takes a lot of skill. Jumping into tanking at the heroics level is not a recipe for success and even these rewards may not be enough if other players are not patient and courteous with new tanks. Not to completely sell into the internet anonymity jerk theory, but patience is a virtue lacking in LFG and that will not change, thereby running more potential tanks away. At the same time more healer hybrids will queue up as well and will still outnumber tanks. If there were 2 healer slots in a group to every tank, this Call to Arms may work for healers. But on most realms, expect this to be as empty a promise for healers as it is for DPS. Cross your fingers folks, let's hope this works for the DPS sake.
Here's a sinister thought: will this make the LFG system even worse than before because of a high influx of poor tanks and healers? It's common knowledge in Cataclysm that success in LFG is far less certain than just putting together a group in trade chat or in your guild. Bad tanks and healers will likely become better with practice, but the problem of low quality groups may be exacerbated by this change as an unintended side effect. Once again, healers keep your fingers crossed.
Congratulations tank classes on your new bounty. Perhaps someday it will be shared with the other type of group members taking on added responsibility in a dungeon run.
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
Hiatus, or how I learned to cheat on wow
Hello everyone, and my apologies to all my followers on the lengthy delay between posting. However, anybody who has followed this blog for a long time knows this happens from time to time as life gets busy and wow and/or wow blogging goes to the background. There has actually been a fair bit of news and patch notes regarding big news for healers in the past month, but today I just want to say hello and let everyone know what's going on.
Three things other than the birth of daughter number two have contributed to my lack of playing time in world of warcraft and therefore my blogging about world of warcraft. The first thing is...well it's kind of hard to do this to you Blizzard...but I've been cheating on you.
Yes indeed, I've finally decided to use my Playstation 3 for something other than sports games and music rhythm games! Literally the only game I owned for PS3 in the first 2 years outside those categories was Lost Via Domus. That game S-U-C-K-S. I finished it, but it was terrible like many TV and movie games. I decided to make the console more than a blu-ray player and bought a couple games of the year in Little Big Planet, which I play with Kelley, and Bioshock 2, which I play late at night after the two year old heads to bed. First person shooters have not been my thing outside of an obsession with Goldeneye and then Halo 1 and 2, but Bioshock 2 has really captured me in the first few levels. The story is compelling and I certainly want to save all the little girls I can find in the underwater Atlantis-esque environment. The game is a bit dark like most modern FPS, but that does not dissuade me as I continue to shoot my way to victory. That and the platforming in Little Big Planet have been a nice change of pace.
Furthermore, my time for raiding has been pretty much cut to nil thanks to work busyness (hooray to being an attorney at a busy law firm, but I've got excellent job security so I'll take it) and taking care of the kids when I can. Raiding is the only way Ekaterinae can really progress, as she's grabbed one or two pieces of gear in her one-off runs of Blackwing Depths and Bastion of Twilight to go with heroic and reputation epics in all other slots. I'm geared enough to raid when I have the time, which is exactly where I want the main character to be. I also made it through Vashjir questing and am mostly through Deepholm, so the Cataclysm loremaster achievement will be done eventually on her.
However, if I want to quest sometimes I've been going back to the three leveling characters to make it more meaningful than just experiencing all the content Blizzard has to offer. The shaman blitzed to nearly level 40 as a result of these urges and dual wielding is some fun. The druid (Horde main) also dinged 83 this week and is beginning to be my main focus to get her to 85 and have two good mains at 85. However, my time with Big Daddy inevitably cuts down on the leveling. Furthermore, this week I got some interesting news that further dampens my wow spirit for the moment. More on that later.
As many of you know from my linked blogs, I am a writer in all aspects of my life. I am a patent attorney by day, drafting legal arguments and patent applications to win the day for our clients. Then my favorite hobbies are sportswriting (mostly about college football) and gaming, including this blog about my number one gaming habit WoW. Well I have been sportswriting for a little independent website called Southern College Sports for 6 years and decided to test the waters of moving forward with this hobby to something a bit more serious. I was accepted on as a writer for Bleacher Report and received well over 3000 reads for a throw away article about March Madness. I am terribly excited about the possibilities and the editors I am working with there are giving me a lot of positive feedback for moving into a featured columnist role there. It's a start up the ladder of sportswriting, and so that has grabbed my attention despite college football being in the off season.
At the same time I approached B/R, I also decided to maybe change my sportswriting to a different hobby of game review writing. I have been following Gameshark.com for over a year thanks to knowing the editor in chief personally and given my writing itch, I want to try that type of critical writing out. So I sent in a writing sample to that editor and he also approved me to do some more work for Gameshark to see if I have what it takes to be a regular contributor there. All of a sudden, I went from one hobby at a non-serious website to two relatively serious hobby writing gigs. Both may not work out, but the possibilities for either is highly exciting. If you have any interest in following me on those websites, I would appreciate any feedback you have on either subject going forward.
The last and only time I linked this photograph in this blog, I was talking about how bittersweet it was when I got knighted as a long-term quality member of The Illuminati on the same night I found out about my grandfather's cancer, which quickly finished him. And just like that sad event, I have been hit with a double-whammy of two out of three of my close friends who brought me into wow leaving the game and letting their subscriptions lapse the first week of April, perhaps permanently. When I was brought into the game, all 5 of us on the daily e-mail string (former Magic players, blowing time on work breaks) were in Wrath of the Lich King at the same time. The closest of those friends leveled with me and it was a real bummer when he quickly got back out of the game. However, the other three friends had persisted for the 2.5 years I had played the game.
Now it will be down to two of us, and the other friend left The Illuminati ages ago for his own reasons. One of the primary reasons for me to log into WoW night after night (even if I was not actively playing) was to use it as a chat channel with all four of these guys, as the one who quit wow plays Starcraft 2. The guild friends I have made in AIE and in the Illuminati are great people and I value those friendships, but they are digital. I know none of them outside the context of the game or guild planning, and so it is just different. I re-upped my 6 month subscription in March so it's not like I'm ready to move on, but this troublesome development takes some of the joy and some of the reason I play this particular game away.
That being said, I understand that people come and go in this game and life moves on just like in real life. But just like our Magic playing days, it feels like a golden era in Azeroth for me has passed. It was a great 2.5 years, and I hope whatever our next hobby is, we can continue our close friendship among the five of us while also gaming together.
So that explains why I've been a bit more hesitant to say much around these parts, but I know I'll get this particular writing bug again and will be back in stride. It just may take a while. To end on a good note, I'd like to welcome Rawrcast back as hosts Stumpalina and Hafrot have obtained new jobs and are back to a steady podcasting schedule. Their first regular episode back showed they will not miss a beat as some of the jokes and interplay between spouses who play wow is spectacular. In a week where the Instance took their first week off since Dils and Turpster joined the crew, it was a welcome sight to see Rawrcast back in the weekly podcast rotation. Also big props to Scott Johnson for The Morning Stream, which is getting national and international attention as a great general morning show. Give it a listen if you have not already, and see how well you can do against the Stump a Trek Nerd questions!
Until next time, may your quivers be full of arrows and your bags be full of gold.
Three things other than the birth of daughter number two have contributed to my lack of playing time in world of warcraft and therefore my blogging about world of warcraft. The first thing is...well it's kind of hard to do this to you Blizzard...but I've been cheating on you.
Yes indeed, I've finally decided to use my Playstation 3 for something other than sports games and music rhythm games! Literally the only game I owned for PS3 in the first 2 years outside those categories was Lost Via Domus. That game S-U-C-K-S. I finished it, but it was terrible like many TV and movie games. I decided to make the console more than a blu-ray player and bought a couple games of the year in Little Big Planet, which I play with Kelley, and Bioshock 2, which I play late at night after the two year old heads to bed. First person shooters have not been my thing outside of an obsession with Goldeneye and then Halo 1 and 2, but Bioshock 2 has really captured me in the first few levels. The story is compelling and I certainly want to save all the little girls I can find in the underwater Atlantis-esque environment. The game is a bit dark like most modern FPS, but that does not dissuade me as I continue to shoot my way to victory. That and the platforming in Little Big Planet have been a nice change of pace.
Furthermore, my time for raiding has been pretty much cut to nil thanks to work busyness (hooray to being an attorney at a busy law firm, but I've got excellent job security so I'll take it) and taking care of the kids when I can. Raiding is the only way Ekaterinae can really progress, as she's grabbed one or two pieces of gear in her one-off runs of Blackwing Depths and Bastion of Twilight to go with heroic and reputation epics in all other slots. I'm geared enough to raid when I have the time, which is exactly where I want the main character to be. I also made it through Vashjir questing and am mostly through Deepholm, so the Cataclysm loremaster achievement will be done eventually on her.
However, if I want to quest sometimes I've been going back to the three leveling characters to make it more meaningful than just experiencing all the content Blizzard has to offer. The shaman blitzed to nearly level 40 as a result of these urges and dual wielding is some fun. The druid (Horde main) also dinged 83 this week and is beginning to be my main focus to get her to 85 and have two good mains at 85. However, my time with Big Daddy inevitably cuts down on the leveling. Furthermore, this week I got some interesting news that further dampens my wow spirit for the moment. More on that later.
As many of you know from my linked blogs, I am a writer in all aspects of my life. I am a patent attorney by day, drafting legal arguments and patent applications to win the day for our clients. Then my favorite hobbies are sportswriting (mostly about college football) and gaming, including this blog about my number one gaming habit WoW. Well I have been sportswriting for a little independent website called Southern College Sports for 6 years and decided to test the waters of moving forward with this hobby to something a bit more serious. I was accepted on as a writer for Bleacher Report and received well over 3000 reads for a throw away article about March Madness. I am terribly excited about the possibilities and the editors I am working with there are giving me a lot of positive feedback for moving into a featured columnist role there. It's a start up the ladder of sportswriting, and so that has grabbed my attention despite college football being in the off season.
At the same time I approached B/R, I also decided to maybe change my sportswriting to a different hobby of game review writing. I have been following Gameshark.com for over a year thanks to knowing the editor in chief personally and given my writing itch, I want to try that type of critical writing out. So I sent in a writing sample to that editor and he also approved me to do some more work for Gameshark to see if I have what it takes to be a regular contributor there. All of a sudden, I went from one hobby at a non-serious website to two relatively serious hobby writing gigs. Both may not work out, but the possibilities for either is highly exciting. If you have any interest in following me on those websites, I would appreciate any feedback you have on either subject going forward.
The last and only time I linked this photograph in this blog, I was talking about how bittersweet it was when I got knighted as a long-term quality member of The Illuminati on the same night I found out about my grandfather's cancer, which quickly finished him. And just like that sad event, I have been hit with a double-whammy of two out of three of my close friends who brought me into wow leaving the game and letting their subscriptions lapse the first week of April, perhaps permanently. When I was brought into the game, all 5 of us on the daily e-mail string (former Magic players, blowing time on work breaks) were in Wrath of the Lich King at the same time. The closest of those friends leveled with me and it was a real bummer when he quickly got back out of the game. However, the other three friends had persisted for the 2.5 years I had played the game.
Now it will be down to two of us, and the other friend left The Illuminati ages ago for his own reasons. One of the primary reasons for me to log into WoW night after night (even if I was not actively playing) was to use it as a chat channel with all four of these guys, as the one who quit wow plays Starcraft 2. The guild friends I have made in AIE and in the Illuminati are great people and I value those friendships, but they are digital. I know none of them outside the context of the game or guild planning, and so it is just different. I re-upped my 6 month subscription in March so it's not like I'm ready to move on, but this troublesome development takes some of the joy and some of the reason I play this particular game away.
That being said, I understand that people come and go in this game and life moves on just like in real life. But just like our Magic playing days, it feels like a golden era in Azeroth for me has passed. It was a great 2.5 years, and I hope whatever our next hobby is, we can continue our close friendship among the five of us while also gaming together.
So that explains why I've been a bit more hesitant to say much around these parts, but I know I'll get this particular writing bug again and will be back in stride. It just may take a while. To end on a good note, I'd like to welcome Rawrcast back as hosts Stumpalina and Hafrot have obtained new jobs and are back to a steady podcasting schedule. Their first regular episode back showed they will not miss a beat as some of the jokes and interplay between spouses who play wow is spectacular. In a week where the Instance took their first week off since Dils and Turpster joined the crew, it was a welcome sight to see Rawrcast back in the weekly podcast rotation. Also big props to Scott Johnson for The Morning Stream, which is getting national and international attention as a great general morning show. Give it a listen if you have not already, and see how well you can do against the Stump a Trek Nerd questions!
Until next time, may your quivers be full of arrows and your bags be full of gold.
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
Review Time: Cataclysm Reboots the 500 Pound Gorilla of MMORPGs
A little something different today: a game review of Cataclysm. Back to regularly scheduled entries later this week.
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Since its launch in 2004, World of Warcraft has established the gold standard for the MMO market. However, with the first 60 levels of content becoming ancient by computer gaming and graphical standards, Blizzard decided to boldly revamp all of the old content in their third expansion: Cataclysm. But has World of Warcraft cemented continued dominance of the genre for another half decade, or has the magic been lost forever?
(As a brief editorial note, this review of Cataclysm is considering all aspects of the game live after Patch 4.0.6, the first major fix patch of the expansion. While the questing content is largely unchanged, the player-versus-player content and the dungeon content have significantly changed since launch.)
The backbone of every MMO is the questing and leveling experience, and the world of Azeroth has undergone radical changes. The visual quality of the old world has been brought up to a graphics level that is respectable for current computer games. The highlights of the graphical changes are the nearly-lifelike water effects and the cities of Stormwind and Orgrimmar, the hubs for the Alliance and Horde factions in this expansion. The old world leveling zones have also been brought up to date and made truly three-dimensional with the new ability to fly through these zones. On the whole, Cataclysm is graphically appealing enough to add more life to this old game.
The old world zones have also changed dramatically in many places with the changing storylines. For questing, every quest hub has 2-4 quests and then sends you immediately to the next hub, and then the process repeats ad nauseam. While this structure removes some of the frustration with running out of things to do and not knowing where to go next, the game feels a bit more like a moving walkway now than a place to explore. This will certainly help hasten the ridiculously long grind to endgame at level 85, but perhaps at the cost of the spirit of exploring and questing on your own. The good news is that the questing is completely different in these zones from the pre-Cataclysm versions of these zones, so even long time or returning players will find the leveling experience refreshed and new.
The truly new content for leveling from level 80 to level 85 resides in five new zones. Three of these zones stand out as dramatically different from what has been seen before in World of Warcraft. One of the first new zones is Vash’jir, a completely underwater zone that displays the improved underwater mechanics in the game. While the zone is a bit longer than it needs to be, Vash’jir is exciting because it forces players to be aware of everything in three dimensions rather than two. Although it does become easy to forget that everything is underwater at times, this zone stands out as the best Cataclysm has to offer.
The next leveling zone is Deepholm, which has an otherworldly and primal feel to it. The storyline of fixing a world pillar in another world to prevent Azeroth from falling through the maelstrom in the middle of the world map is compelling enough to follow all the way through.
The final new zone that stands out is Uldum, which includes a ton of cut scenes and Indiana Jones parody. In that regard, Uldum does feel a bit like a major motion picture, but the gaffe is on Blizzard by the end of the zone as the parody becomes overdone and tedious. In sum, the new leveling zones each tell great stories and are developed well, despite the feeling once again that characters are on a moving walkway with no real option to do things out of order.
Two new races join the mix in this expansion: Goblins for the Horde and Worgen for the Alliance. The two original races that did not have their own starting leveling zones (Trolls and Gnomes) now also have new starting zones. Although each of these starting zones was terribly overcrowded in the first three months of the expansion, Blizzard has redesigned the respawn rate to correspond to active players in these zones. Thus, a lot of the waiting for respawned enemies has been removed from the game.
Each of the new starter zones tells a compelling story, but the highlight is certainly Gilneas, the worgen starting zone. Gilneas features a Victorian style and is always shrouded in fog and mist, which fits the storyline of a spreading werewolf curse well. Although the kingdom of Gilneas has long isolated itself from the problems of the rest of the world, the quests do a superb job of telling how the worgen curse spreads and why Gilneas is now rejoined with the Alliance. The “moving walkway” phenomenon of Cataclysm questing is still ever present, but it becomes acceptable in Gilneas where the quests are primarily telling a story.
In player-versus-player (PvP) content, Cataclysm offers two new battlegrounds and one outdoor battleground area with battles every two hours called Tol Barad. Despite recent changes to the mechanics of Tol Barad, the battleground is a design disaster. To capture Tol Barad and open up a number of daily quests and a single-boss raid, an attacking faction must capture three buildings simultaneously by having more live players in the area than the defending faction. The more imbalance in number of players, the faster a building is captured. However, even with some design adjustments this cat-and-mouse game is unfulfilling because it rewards numbers instead of good PvP combat. To avoid imbalances, the battleground is instanced to only allow in the same number of players from each faction, but this makes late-night or low-population server battles boring with fewer than ten people on each side.
Furthermore, World of Warcraft is always balanced around the latest raid content, and PvP class balance is clearly on the backburner for Blizzard. Thus, radical imbalances in PvP class playability still exist in a game six years old. The other two battlegrounds Battle for Gilneas and Twin Peaks are nice looking alternatives to previous battlegrounds, but the design is nothing new to World of Warcraft or any first-person shooter since Halo. As such, the PvP content of Cataclysm is perhaps the worst that has been seen over the six year lifespan of the game.
Finally, Cataclysm offers seven new 5-man dungeons, two revised old world 5-man dungeons, and three raids having a total of 13 bosses. The best of the 5-man content appears to be an instance in UIdum called Halls of Origination. Again, the Indiana Jones theme is persistent throughout the instance, but the dungeon offers eight very different bosses and a fast pace throughout. Similar to previous “Halls of” instances in World of Warcraft, the visual scenery in Halls of Origination is stunning if time is taken to admire the surroundings.
On the other side of the spectrum, Stonecore is an instance in Deepholm that offers nothing substantial beyond what is discovered while questing in that zone. Furthermore, the boss mechanics are designed poorly and have a tendency to not work as intended. For a company that does not release many things in an unpolished state, Stonecore is a surprising departure from the norm.
The raid content in this expansion will be split into two or three raids per major content patch, as opposed to having a single epic raid instance with 12-15 bosses. This configuration allows Blizzard to tell more varied stories in the raid instances and offers players the chance to easily move onto another raid if they become stuck on a certain boss. None of the particular boss fights stand out as anything not seen before in six years of content, but the raids are well tuned and beautifully designed. For those players who live for “the endgame,” Cataclysm will not disappoint.
On the whole, Blizzard has done a nice job breathing life back into a six year old game, both graphically and in design terms. However, Blizzard missed a golden opportunity to re-invent the wheel for fantasy-based MMORPGs. World of Warcraft is still in the old fantasy mode of cast a spell and wait for that spell to come off of a cool down, rinse and repeat. As such, the core game play is no different than what was originally offered to players six years ago. For players that enjoy that design or have never experienced it, Cataclysm is probably worth a play through. But for those who have stepped out of Azeroth before, this expansion promises true change, yet delivers lipstick on a pig. Or a 500 pound gorilla, depending on your perspective.
Grade: B-
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Since its launch in 2004, World of Warcraft has established the gold standard for the MMO market. However, with the first 60 levels of content becoming ancient by computer gaming and graphical standards, Blizzard decided to boldly revamp all of the old content in their third expansion: Cataclysm. But has World of Warcraft cemented continued dominance of the genre for another half decade, or has the magic been lost forever?
(As a brief editorial note, this review of Cataclysm is considering all aspects of the game live after Patch 4.0.6, the first major fix patch of the expansion. While the questing content is largely unchanged, the player-versus-player content and the dungeon content have significantly changed since launch.)
The backbone of every MMO is the questing and leveling experience, and the world of Azeroth has undergone radical changes. The visual quality of the old world has been brought up to a graphics level that is respectable for current computer games. The highlights of the graphical changes are the nearly-lifelike water effects and the cities of Stormwind and Orgrimmar, the hubs for the Alliance and Horde factions in this expansion. The old world leveling zones have also been brought up to date and made truly three-dimensional with the new ability to fly through these zones. On the whole, Cataclysm is graphically appealing enough to add more life to this old game.
The old world zones have also changed dramatically in many places with the changing storylines. For questing, every quest hub has 2-4 quests and then sends you immediately to the next hub, and then the process repeats ad nauseam. While this structure removes some of the frustration with running out of things to do and not knowing where to go next, the game feels a bit more like a moving walkway now than a place to explore. This will certainly help hasten the ridiculously long grind to endgame at level 85, but perhaps at the cost of the spirit of exploring and questing on your own. The good news is that the questing is completely different in these zones from the pre-Cataclysm versions of these zones, so even long time or returning players will find the leveling experience refreshed and new.
The truly new content for leveling from level 80 to level 85 resides in five new zones. Three of these zones stand out as dramatically different from what has been seen before in World of Warcraft. One of the first new zones is Vash’jir, a completely underwater zone that displays the improved underwater mechanics in the game. While the zone is a bit longer than it needs to be, Vash’jir is exciting because it forces players to be aware of everything in three dimensions rather than two. Although it does become easy to forget that everything is underwater at times, this zone stands out as the best Cataclysm has to offer.
The next leveling zone is Deepholm, which has an otherworldly and primal feel to it. The storyline of fixing a world pillar in another world to prevent Azeroth from falling through the maelstrom in the middle of the world map is compelling enough to follow all the way through.
The final new zone that stands out is Uldum, which includes a ton of cut scenes and Indiana Jones parody. In that regard, Uldum does feel a bit like a major motion picture, but the gaffe is on Blizzard by the end of the zone as the parody becomes overdone and tedious. In sum, the new leveling zones each tell great stories and are developed well, despite the feeling once again that characters are on a moving walkway with no real option to do things out of order.
Two new races join the mix in this expansion: Goblins for the Horde and Worgen for the Alliance. The two original races that did not have their own starting leveling zones (Trolls and Gnomes) now also have new starting zones. Although each of these starting zones was terribly overcrowded in the first three months of the expansion, Blizzard has redesigned the respawn rate to correspond to active players in these zones. Thus, a lot of the waiting for respawned enemies has been removed from the game.
Each of the new starter zones tells a compelling story, but the highlight is certainly Gilneas, the worgen starting zone. Gilneas features a Victorian style and is always shrouded in fog and mist, which fits the storyline of a spreading werewolf curse well. Although the kingdom of Gilneas has long isolated itself from the problems of the rest of the world, the quests do a superb job of telling how the worgen curse spreads and why Gilneas is now rejoined with the Alliance. The “moving walkway” phenomenon of Cataclysm questing is still ever present, but it becomes acceptable in Gilneas where the quests are primarily telling a story.
In player-versus-player (PvP) content, Cataclysm offers two new battlegrounds and one outdoor battleground area with battles every two hours called Tol Barad. Despite recent changes to the mechanics of Tol Barad, the battleground is a design disaster. To capture Tol Barad and open up a number of daily quests and a single-boss raid, an attacking faction must capture three buildings simultaneously by having more live players in the area than the defending faction. The more imbalance in number of players, the faster a building is captured. However, even with some design adjustments this cat-and-mouse game is unfulfilling because it rewards numbers instead of good PvP combat. To avoid imbalances, the battleground is instanced to only allow in the same number of players from each faction, but this makes late-night or low-population server battles boring with fewer than ten people on each side.
Furthermore, World of Warcraft is always balanced around the latest raid content, and PvP class balance is clearly on the backburner for Blizzard. Thus, radical imbalances in PvP class playability still exist in a game six years old. The other two battlegrounds Battle for Gilneas and Twin Peaks are nice looking alternatives to previous battlegrounds, but the design is nothing new to World of Warcraft or any first-person shooter since Halo. As such, the PvP content of Cataclysm is perhaps the worst that has been seen over the six year lifespan of the game.
Finally, Cataclysm offers seven new 5-man dungeons, two revised old world 5-man dungeons, and three raids having a total of 13 bosses. The best of the 5-man content appears to be an instance in UIdum called Halls of Origination. Again, the Indiana Jones theme is persistent throughout the instance, but the dungeon offers eight very different bosses and a fast pace throughout. Similar to previous “Halls of” instances in World of Warcraft, the visual scenery in Halls of Origination is stunning if time is taken to admire the surroundings.
On the other side of the spectrum, Stonecore is an instance in Deepholm that offers nothing substantial beyond what is discovered while questing in that zone. Furthermore, the boss mechanics are designed poorly and have a tendency to not work as intended. For a company that does not release many things in an unpolished state, Stonecore is a surprising departure from the norm.
The raid content in this expansion will be split into two or three raids per major content patch, as opposed to having a single epic raid instance with 12-15 bosses. This configuration allows Blizzard to tell more varied stories in the raid instances and offers players the chance to easily move onto another raid if they become stuck on a certain boss. None of the particular boss fights stand out as anything not seen before in six years of content, but the raids are well tuned and beautifully designed. For those players who live for “the endgame,” Cataclysm will not disappoint.
On the whole, Blizzard has done a nice job breathing life back into a six year old game, both graphically and in design terms. However, Blizzard missed a golden opportunity to re-invent the wheel for fantasy-based MMORPGs. World of Warcraft is still in the old fantasy mode of cast a spell and wait for that spell to come off of a cool down, rinse and repeat. As such, the core game play is no different than what was originally offered to players six years ago. For players that enjoy that design or have never experienced it, Cataclysm is probably worth a play through. But for those who have stepped out of Azeroth before, this expansion promises true change, yet delivers lipstick on a pig. Or a 500 pound gorilla, depending on your perspective.
Grade: B-
Saturday, February 26, 2011
Conflict of Interest?
As anybody who has the ability to read the banner on this blog knows, my Horde side characters are members of the largest "guild" in the game: AIE. We have nine co-guilds with countless raid teams and countless officers and countless great people. But who is the man behind this community, the man who is the guild leader of every one of these co-guilds? That would be Randy Jordan a.k.a. RandyDeluxe on the Instance a.k.a. Maui. And because the hot tub Instance picture is too good to pass up, here he is in all his real life glory:
So our fearless guild leader has left the Instance as of two episodes ago because he is taking a dream job in the video game industry, and this creates a conflict of interest with his commentary on World of Warcraft on that podcast. This is what his family needs him to do and I applaud him for both finding a way into his dream job industry and putting family first. Also, as an attorney in my free time away from azeroth, I know all about conflict of interest. You just have to avoid them for the betterment of all involved.
But there was a major question looming in the air, and that was whether his role as a guild leader would also be a conflict of interest. Randy avoided dropping the name of his new employer, but the AIE community meeting last weekend dropped more than enough hints to indicate that Irvine might be where Randy was headed. And that would make the most sense, since he is already friends or acquaintances with many Blizzard employees and has worked with Blizzard on many issues that unexpectedly come up when you run a guild as large as AIE. Today it appears that the news is confirmed: Randy is a Blizzard employee.
So now the interesting conundrum all AIE guild members wondered about has come to pass. Will Randy still be able to lead the guild if it is publicly known he works for Blizzard? His characters in game will be badgered even more than they already are with whispers, and I don't know that this is a healthy situation for Blizzard. Thus, I can only speculate that one of our fine longterm officers will be appointed to take over in Randy's stead if this is indeed as big a conflict as it appears on paper. This is unfortunate as Randy is always fun to be around whether in green wall chat or in instances. And those roles might be taken away.
However, the guild will be fine, as it always is. We will just have a different voice of reason at the top to calm all the chicken littles down when something doesn't go our way like the guild cap. But that doesn't change the fact that this would be a transfer of leadership, something that is tough for every guild to undertake. I can't imagine what would happen to The Illuminati if Jeff (guild leader) left the game, but thankfully we are not dealing with that issue on Alliance side. However, with many AIE guild members fleeing to Rift, Eve, and other games and the change in the air with The Instance and the guild leadership, it's hard to avoid wondering if the golden era of AIE has passed us by.
At the end of the day, change is always hard. My law firm is considering moving from a building that was built 75 years ago and of which we are original tenants. Despite the long history and the sweetheart lease deal, there are so many problems with the water and the HVAC and being spread out over six floors that we have been considering other spaces to settle. It's kind of scary moving an office the size of ours, but if we do, I'm sure it will work out for the better. And who knows, maybe these changes to the best podcast in the community and one of the best guilds in the game will end up for the better as well. Dare to dream!
Monday, February 21, 2011
A Brief Moment of Glory Atop The World
So it just happened that my first opportunity to run a heroic since the birth of my second daughter came this past weekend and I grabbed my favorite DK tank and mage DPS couple from the Illuminati along with one other guild member for a mostly guild run. As I pressed the queue button, I of course only had healer clicked by habit. The death knight picks tank, and the druid picks healer/tank. Oops. I asked the druid what they would prefer to do and they wanted to heal, so I swapped over to my shadow for my first heroic in DPS form. I warned the group that this was not my normal, but I've been soloing with shadow for a couple months and am confident that I can do fine without great hit cap gear. I'd never walk into a raid like this as shadow, but it's OK for a one-off guild run.
We ended up with Lost City and as the dungeon wore on, I realized that my DPS was roughly keeping up with or exceeding the mage in the group. This is unusual because this mage is a very good player on his main. I'm not pulling great DPS by any stretch of the imagination, but it is ranking a close second to a rogue and sometimes even more than the rogue. I couldn't figure it out because I was making silly mistakes like casting Mind Spike with damage over time spells active (which clears all DoT spells), and the gear was far form hit capped. Nevertheless, Ekaterinae to the top of the charts. And I'm not going to lie, it felt awesome.
Looking into this a bit further, it turns out that in the top 200 players in the world, the best DPS over the weekend was shadow priest. This is probably the first time since I started playing warcraft that a shadow priest was overpowered to the point of leading all DPS potential. Of course, this should not come as much of a surprise as shadow priests received three major buffs in Patch 4.0.6 without any corresponding nerfs. Mind Blast damage was increased by around 50%, which again establishes that spell as a primary nuke cast on cooldown. Mind Sear had damage increased by 15% and could now be channeled on friendly targets, which allows a shadow priest to actually AoE nuke all enemy mobs at once instead of all mobs not targeted by Mind Sear (a long overdue change to this spell). Shadow Orbs were also buffed about 16%, which affects most of the shadow priest's primary damage spells.
All this with no nerfs pushed shadow DPS to the top of the charts, and for once, I got to experience how broken it could be to be the top DPS class. With my gear and experience, I had no business beating two DPS only classes, one of which being played by a better geared and more experienced player. But of course priests are not supposed to be top of the DPS heap, so the hotfix nerf came down swiftly: a 10% reduction of the Shadow Power passive damage buff from 25% to 15%, which theorycrafters have calculated as an 8% damage loss overall. So the next time I walk into a DPS role in a heroic, overpowered will not be the order of the day. It was fun while it lasted, all ten days of it.
In other community news, the Instance podcast is entering a new era with Willy Gregory "Dils" from the AIE Podcast and Mark Turpin "Turpster" joining Scott Johnson. Their first episode was a good one, and I'm happy they kept the theme song opening even though all the segment bumpers have changed. That opening intro music is the best podcast opening music in the community. It looks like the future remains bright for the premiere wow podcast.
It looks like there will be opportunities for me to raid this weekend both nights, so hopefully I can get in to see at least one of Bastion of Twilight or Blackwing Descent. Both have more beatable bosses overall than Throne, so I'm happy this is our weekend off the Winds. Anyway, I hope to report back a bit more about the content of Cataclysm and the health of discipline healing post 4.0.6 next week. As always, leave questions or comments! Cheers.
Thursday, February 17, 2011
Will Hotfix Bring Patience?
If you have been a frequent visitor of the Looking For Group LFG system, then you may be familiar with the above image. Sure, normally little dead bird is smaller on your screen, but the 30 minute debuff is something that is very hard to ignore. Now that Blizzard has taken the big revision pen to Cataclysm and fixed everything for the time being, some minor hotfixes have trickled through to further correct issues remaining with the content currently available. Although one set of hotfixes this week dealt primarily with healer balance (discussed below), the more interesting change was for the LFG system. Here's the rundown:
1. Players who are outside a dungeon for more than a few minutes are now immediately able to be kicked.
2. If queuing as a group with a tank or healer, and the tank or healer drops group (or is kicked) soon after joining, those that queued with them will also be removed from the dungeon.
3. If three or more players group queue, it will require an additional vote for them to kick anyone they did not group queue with.
4. If a group queue of 4 players kicks the one person that they did not group queue with, they will each receive a more severe penalty to their ability to initiate future kicks.
5. If someone initiates a vote kick for someone they group queued with, they will not incur a penalty to their ability to initiate future kicks.
On the whole, Blizzard is hoping these changes will reduce the annoying behaviors that currently plague the LFG system. Although the biggest problems are encountered by DPS players that must wait 30-60 minutes per queue, healers also lose significant time on some servers re-queuing and waiting for tanks. There's nothing more annoying than what I currently call "the one wipe LFG tank." You know, the tank that is too good to wipe more than once with you because he can immediately find another group.
If you jump into a heroic LFG queue and are not ready to struggle a bit, you are missing the entire point of why Blizzard made this game challenging and fun. Although the challenge level is dropping significantly as players become more geared and dungeons receive their 4.0.6 fixes, heroics are still not at the facerolling point. Healers and DPS and tanks must do their jobs and do it reasonably well to pass through the 5-man content. And if there's one thing LFG players seem to lack...it's P-A-T-I-E-N-C-E.
So will these changes make a difference? Number two makes me worry a slight bit. Every once in a while, my real life will have an emergency within the first five minutes of starting a LFG group with a couple of guild members. Although in AIE I am usually with 4 other guild members, in The Illuminati that is simply not the case. So since I always heal, now I must feel even worse if real life kicks me out. Despite this minor and rare possible annoyance for me, this will possibly cut down on the drama king/queen "one wipe LFG tanks" and "one wipe LFG healers". However, in my experience, the best tanks always queue with their guild members and having a guild member makes them way more patient. So this new rule probably will not make much of a difference.
Numbers three and four are changes that are likely overdue. Nobody seems to know for sure the exact formula for the penalty inflicted that prevents you from chain kicking group members, but it is clearly increases with that behavior. I have only been kicked a couple of times since LFG entered the game over a year ago, but both times it was hugely annoying. The one time in Cataclysm it was when a group refused to use CC and just expected their rent a healer to be overgeared enough to heal through the damage. That's not how Cataclysm was designed, and so they probably kicked numerous healers that night. This needs to be nipped in the bud, and hopefully this will help.
Number one does not make much sense, as I believe that the wait time for a disconnected player is only 10 minutes already. So that change is pretty meaningless. As is the number five. I suppose in the scenario I laid out above I could get my guild mate to kick me out and nobody would be worse for wear. Although here's a paradox...if I get kicked in the first five minutes of the dungeon by a guild mate, do they automatically kick themselves too? Well at least there would be no penalty, except for a requeue. Which is probably a worse penalty than the kick initiation penalty. Go figure.
Pro tip: you need to have way more patience if you are running into that penalty.
For the healer changes, the Patch 4.0.6 changes did not quite do the trick so one week later, restoration shamans are getting a 25% bonus to healing effects from Purification instead of 10%. Meanwhile, discipline priests were shield spamming too much with the better Power Word Shield and so the mana cost is up nearly 40%. Kudos to healing shamans as this extra buff should bring them back in line with the other three healing classes. It is also comforting to know that Blizzard wants all four healing classes to be truly viable. I also think they are making interesting changes which will keep priest heads spinning as we try to catch up with whether we should be casting PWS, Renew, or Heal to any great extent. So far, I believe after Patch 4.0.6 Blizzard has been incredibly fair to the healing classes, if nothing else.
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Sorry for my delay, but I have good reason. A deer came into the picture and decided that my car is not going to commute me to work anymore.
So car shopping the week before our second baby arrived, and then my recent sleep deprived state while trying to stay caught up at work. Yeah real life. But I hope to see some more questions from the readers and I will get back on the writing horse now that I'm in game more. Well at least fishing with baby on board if nothing else! Cheers!
And here's my beautiful daughters...woot!
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