As I read the blogosphere and watch many of my guildmates race their main characters to 85 within 5 days of the expansion release, I wonder if the leveling curve was too short for this expansion. Don't get me wrong, I think it's perfectly fine to lower requirements for getting through non-current levels 1-80, but this expansion seems even faster than Wrath leveling was. In my own personal experience, I received about 20% of a level for doing daily SW cooking and fishing dailies, 50% more for a first run through Blackrock Caverns with all the quests that pop up, and another 30% quickly gained in maybe an hour of questing in Hyjal. I barely scratched the surface of Hyjal, with 20 quests out of 125+ done. Yet there I sit at 81 already. Of course Ekat is my loremaster and will come back, but she's off the Vash'jir to see the sea zone before she outlevels it...which just seems sad. Most people don't go back and see the quest content like I do, and that's so much game that Blizzard leaves on the table by enabling such quick leveling via dailies and 5-man instances.
Also, as much as I enjoy reading World of Matticus, I cannot fathom having a raiding guild where it is normal and expected for everyone to be 85 and ready to raid by the Monday following an expansion. Didn't you guys just clear ICC 7 days ago? I know I'm also jaded by the fact that here we sit on the 12th day of December and I have worked more than 8 hours 11 of those days. So even if I wanted to geek out for hours on end, it's just not going to happen right now. Kind of sucks, but my take on the expansion is to sort of take my time and enjoy it. Who knows, I might change my mind if I feel guilty about being the last raider at 85!
The conversion to AIE sub-guilds was incredibly seamless, as a side note. The officers did an amazing job getting programming ready to both make a green wall of chat across guilds automatic and division into subguilds also simple and easy. Two quick steps and you were in! I still eagerly await the opening for alts as do many others, as my main is still stuck in a AIE alt holidng guild until they open alt applications again. Looks like my subguild at the moment has about 200 fewer characters than The Illuminati, but that number will probably equalize with alts and raid teams moving around soon. Kudos once more to AIE.
My initial take on Hyjal is that the zone clearly has a story I want to follow. You've got a forest at risk and big bad elementals all over the place, but druids from the Earthen Ring to help you out and make you powerful enough to make a difference. So far, the mobs respawn a bit quickly but perhaps that will be tuned back down once people quickly move through the content. My ICC gear more than has Ekat easily surviving encounters in these zones, but I'm close to replacing gear already with greens in the initial quests. It will not be very long at all, and I replaced my cloak and my wand already in BRC, but at least those are blue items!
My really preliminary initial take on Vash'jir is that I wish there were an easier way to transport to and from the zone at least at the beginning like the hearthstone portal trick in SW to Hyjal. The underwater zone is not bad after the first quest thanks to the permanent swim speed boost and underwater breathing you get as a reward for the first quest. In fact, the three-dimensional nature of the zone is incredibly well managed nearby the initial ship you start at. Hopefully that design continues as I explore farther into the zone. And I know there's a seahorse on the way!
I do have to commend Blizzard on improving from their past two expansions for starter zones. Hellfire is hell on the eyes for as long as you spend there and the mobs are still so closely packed that it is difficult years later. No alternatives there. In Wrath the two zones were so similarly drab and alike at points that the choices were not compelling. At least Borean Tundra had a fair amount of variety in backgrounds, but the zone felt totally disjointed and the story of both zones was totally not interesting. Now we have two zones that grab you with a story right away and thanks to Vash'jir being underwater, they are so vastly different that you can thoroughly enjoy your options. So far, so good.
Blackrock Caverns was nothing special, although the fight with the lava flow in the center is a fun mechanic (stay in as long as you dare...). A solid instance but not one I'm jumping for joy about. We'll see how the next ones pan out.
so what did you do first in Cataclysm? I haven't even touched my old world alts or the goblin/worgen starting zones. So much to do, and in my case, so little time.
Sunday, December 12, 2010
Saturday, December 4, 2010
A Whole New World
We are now just over two days away from the release date of World of Warcraft Cataclysm. Deathwing has been killing entire zones of characters and the world has been shattered. Indeed, this is a whole new world, at least except for Northrend. It is invigorating exploring zones that are nothing like what you remember. In order to explore a bit with purpose, I took Biancae around to up her mining skill to an appropriate level before heading to Outland. There are definitely things that will keep surprising me for a long time as these zones are nothing like they used to be. Of course there will be a lot of time spent in the new 80-85 zones over the next few weeks, but for now taking a swim across Thousand Needles and mining nodes well underneath the water is a highlight I won't soon forget.
I debated the issue with some friends, never got the chance to bring it up with some guild members, and finally came to the decision that it was stupid to not faction transfer a character I would gladly make my Horde main over paladin. Holy power is awesome, but for a healer nothing seems to beat Druid and Priest for varied gameplay (at least for me, although I know I will love paladin and shaman more at endgame). Plus this allows me to set up the uber-team of professions right away on both sides of the Horde-Alliance ledger and participate more fully with my AIE sub-guild and The Illuminati. I briefly thought about naming my main Ekaterin and making her a male troll, but the female troll hairstyles are too funny to pass up. So the button was pressed, Ariel went to sleep in Stormwind with bags full of bags (for Biancae and goblin bank alt to be), ore for jewelcrafting, and some northrend herbs just in case.
*She wakes up in a whole different place...the smells, the sounds, everything is unfamiliar. Her hair stands on end as she realizes she is surrounded by trolls, and as she grabs her staff to fight, she realizes that these hands are a much different shade than before. Instead of pink, the fingers are a shade of emerald green. And what are these tusks? It is at this point that Arielae realizes something life-changing has happened. At that point, a blood elf walks up and offers her a hand. She introduces herself as Biancae of Alea Iacta Est, and welcomes Arielae to the family. Perhaps things will not be so bad after all...*
So just like that, the AE Team has also undergone a dramatic change for the better. I know some of my guild mates in The Illuminati will not be happy to see me pull a level 80 out of the guild, but Ekat and Navar will be joined at endgame in a few months by Clara, and things will be about how they were before. Speaking of, I now have some guild business to take care of as Clara was kicked for inactivity a while back and Ariel will need to join Bianca after the new sub guilds are split up Sunday evening and Monday in AIE.
So what's left "for the Horde" going into cataclysm?
Main - Arielae, 80 druid, alchemy/herbalism/fishing/cooking/archaeology
Alt - Biancae, 54 paladin, jewelcrafting/mining
And "for the Alliance" in Cataclysm?
Main - Ekaterinae, 80 priest, enchanting/tailoring/fishing/cooking/archaeology
Alt - Clarissae, 31 shaman, alchemy/herbalism
Alt - Navarionae, 80 death knight, jewelcrafting/mining
So now I will hit the ground running for Garrosh and for Varian. It will be exciting to see all of the new content right away instead of waiting months or years or never seeing it at all. I look forward to building lots of guild rep with The Illuminati and the AIE subguild I get placed into. Now, I am officially ready for Cataclysm. Tick tick tick...
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
GeekyLeaks - Not Nearly As Compelling as WikiLeaks
So Larisa found someone who called the leaked Blizzard document from this week a "Geeky Leak." Nice. But the internal memorandum for officers of Activision (in all likelihood) really only said three things of note. Absolutely none of them are a surprise to anyone who has followed either Blizzard or Activision for some period of time. Reviewing them in order of interest...
3. World of Warcraft will be released in Portugese - There is a budding market for video games and similar consumables in Brazil and surrounding countries, so why wouldn't a company get more of the action? If you view Activision as a company that cares about the bottom line more than anything else in the world, then this decision is a no-brainer. The game is at all time highs for subscriptions and the cash cow must grow to new markets to continue growing in the long term.
2. The next two WoW expansions are set for release in 1.5 year intervals from Cataclysm. Anybody who has followed Blizzard since the release of vanilla knows that they repeatedly say their goal is one expansion a year. While I think the quality would suffer in the face of the bottom line, the fact that the level cap only goes up 5 in Cataclysm is perhaps a sign that new expansions will be a little smaller on the whole and come in quicker intervals. One year is the goal, two years is where they are at, so of course 1.5 years is a reasonable goal if they are serious about getting this done. With Cataclysm revamping the game entirely, perhaps new continents and new revamped zones will not be necessary to enjoy the game for the next few years, which frees up development time.
1. The new MMO is slated for a late 2013 release. Again, this makes perfect sense coupled with the announcement that the next two expansions are supposed to be at 1.5 year intervals. WoW will likely be in decline no matter what Activision and Blizzard do after two more full expansions, so before the tide stems too much, better give the playerbase something better. Everything at Blizzard gets pushed back, so targeting late 2013 is really a signal that 2014 is the goal, allowing the fifth expansion to wow to have some "last hurrah" moments before a lot of the playerbase moves or splits time with the new intellectual property. WoW will not die, but it will not always pay the bills as well as it does. Activision again is all about the bottom line, so a new cash cow has to be made in a few years.
So all things told, there is absolutely nothing surprising about this leak other than it happened. As an attorney working in intellectual property every day, sometimes my livelihood depends on how good our NDA (non-disclosure agreements) are. Businesses can be gutted if patent protection is lost due to a leak, and so this violation of the Blizzard employee policies is not something I am happy to see. What if we learned something more shocking or important? Let's hope the loops close and the leaks stop.
I have the same opinion about WikiLeaks. While the people do have a right to know some things their government is doing, nobody needs to see internal e-mails and memos between friends and coworkers where people always tend to say things they never would publicly. It's the same in every work force, but when you are a representative of the United States government, your words can carry a lot of weight as far as radicals around the world are concerned. With instability in Korea reaching levels that are similar to the 1960's and China forcing its way into a top world power, these are uncomfortable times and such careless comments seeing the light of day may only pour fuel on a fire that is not necessary.
We are now t-minus 6 days until Cataclysm. Get ready, there's a real nasty dragon to slay!
3. World of Warcraft will be released in Portugese - There is a budding market for video games and similar consumables in Brazil and surrounding countries, so why wouldn't a company get more of the action? If you view Activision as a company that cares about the bottom line more than anything else in the world, then this decision is a no-brainer. The game is at all time highs for subscriptions and the cash cow must grow to new markets to continue growing in the long term.
2. The next two WoW expansions are set for release in 1.5 year intervals from Cataclysm. Anybody who has followed Blizzard since the release of vanilla knows that they repeatedly say their goal is one expansion a year. While I think the quality would suffer in the face of the bottom line, the fact that the level cap only goes up 5 in Cataclysm is perhaps a sign that new expansions will be a little smaller on the whole and come in quicker intervals. One year is the goal, two years is where they are at, so of course 1.5 years is a reasonable goal if they are serious about getting this done. With Cataclysm revamping the game entirely, perhaps new continents and new revamped zones will not be necessary to enjoy the game for the next few years, which frees up development time.
1. The new MMO is slated for a late 2013 release. Again, this makes perfect sense coupled with the announcement that the next two expansions are supposed to be at 1.5 year intervals. WoW will likely be in decline no matter what Activision and Blizzard do after two more full expansions, so before the tide stems too much, better give the playerbase something better. Everything at Blizzard gets pushed back, so targeting late 2013 is really a signal that 2014 is the goal, allowing the fifth expansion to wow to have some "last hurrah" moments before a lot of the playerbase moves or splits time with the new intellectual property. WoW will not die, but it will not always pay the bills as well as it does. Activision again is all about the bottom line, so a new cash cow has to be made in a few years.
So all things told, there is absolutely nothing surprising about this leak other than it happened. As an attorney working in intellectual property every day, sometimes my livelihood depends on how good our NDA (non-disclosure agreements) are. Businesses can be gutted if patent protection is lost due to a leak, and so this violation of the Blizzard employee policies is not something I am happy to see. What if we learned something more shocking or important? Let's hope the loops close and the leaks stop.
I have the same opinion about WikiLeaks. While the people do have a right to know some things their government is doing, nobody needs to see internal e-mails and memos between friends and coworkers where people always tend to say things they never would publicly. It's the same in every work force, but when you are a representative of the United States government, your words can carry a lot of weight as far as radicals around the world are concerned. With instability in Korea reaching levels that are similar to the 1960's and China forcing its way into a top world power, these are uncomfortable times and such careless comments seeing the light of day may only pour fuel on a fire that is not necessary.
We are now t-minus 6 days until Cataclysm. Get ready, there's a real nasty dragon to slay!
Thursday, November 25, 2010
A Thanksgiving Conundrum
Happy Thanksgiving to everyone (at least in America where it is celebrated this month)! I hope there is a turkey or ham and other feast items cooking up for all of you on this fine day, along with some football and family. This morning I've got a conundrum on my hands (see below), and despite taking a minor break from most things WoW, we are now two weeks away from the cataclysm content opening up in full glory. This week we received the shattering with all the old zone changes, and wow are Stormwind and Orgrimmar different (and beautiful). I have not even done much exploring outside of flying over Thousand Needles on my way to the revamped Ungoro Crater and the capital cities. There will be plenty of time to enjoy all the new zones though, so I'm not rushing through it.
So for a while I've been planning on either rerolling shaman as an Orc to have two healing classes on either side of the ledger. One main and one alt on each side for cataclysm, that was the goal. Right now I have the following setup including professions which are important:
Human Priest, 80, tailoring/enchanting/fishing/cooking (Alliance main)
Night Elf Druid, 80, alchemy/herbalism
Night Elf Death Knight, 80, jewelcrafting/mining
Blood Elf Paladin, 52, jewelcrafting/mining
Draenei Shaman, 31, herbalism/alchemy
I've tread this ground before, but my best moneymaking in the easiest way possible is bag making and transmuting/cutting gems. These markets never go away, nor would I expect them to. So my little slow money making group of three level 80's has made enough money for me to have a nice bankroll heading into cataclysm. Although there will not be a bag maker on the Horde side, I had always planned to stick with the self-sustaining JC/herbalism/mining/alchemy combo on both sides. I have really fallen in love with paladin as a leveling character, but I have started to heal some instances post 4.0.1 and all I have to say is, meh. I know there are a few more tools at endgame, but it definitely feels like I am a priest packing only greater heal and flash heal and a couple oh crap buttons with nothing else. No heal over time, no diversity, no real excitement. And while the character is a blast to play, I'm beginning to realize it is just not a main.
At the same time, I'd fallen completely in love with druid healing. The class does not have as many tools as priest, but it is very close. Plus the healing is just simply fun. I actually briefly considered making Ariel my main for cataclysm.
And then this morning it struck me straight in the face. Why be stuck with two classes that heal so similarly on both sides of the ledger? If I move the druid to be my Horde main instead of shaman, there are numerous benefits. For starters, I will have a character I am truly passionate about on both sides so I can really fire up my relationships with the guildies in both The Illuminati and AIE. I will also have a Horde 80 at cataclysm launch which means I can see all of the new 80-85 content on both factions, while I have still never even seen Outland or Northrend on the Horde side. And then there's the picture above. That's the troll druid flight form. How epic is that? Troll druids have awesome forms that outshine the night elf counterparts, although as a healer the night elf looks slightly better. Troll druids will be all over the place, but that's because they really are fresh and new and awesome. I would not want to be a tauren main, so this new race possibility is way more exciting than the orc shaman I was planning.
The downside is of course that I never want to spend actual cash on something I could avoid. However, I think the $30 investment will make cataclysm a way better game for me than it would be otherwise. I can then continue at my own pace with the paladin and shaman alts on their way to 85, and the teams will have the same professions I planned before. Plus Biancae can get a huge boost to her pursuit of jewelcrafting once Ariel comes over with bookoo bucks (probably would transfer with lots of ore, gems, and 15k gold). I am not rolling a worgen or goblin to be a main or a primary alt, so this could be how I maximize the value of cataclysm. What do you think?
Friday, October 29, 2010
Good, Bad, and Ugly: Halloween Edition
Some changes were announced and implemented in the Cataclysm beta, and some late week happenings in both of my pursuits of relaxation highlight an interesting week in the life. As it turns out, it fits as the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.
The Good - Although beta changes are never for sure, they at least show what direction the developers are willing to experiment or go back to. Battle resurrection (Rebirth) for druids was increased to a 30 minute cooldown without a reagent needed in Patch 4.0.1. This has been terribly annoying to those of us used to having it as an option every 1-2 attempts on a boss depending on fight length. It definitely stinks to have to wait 30 minutes if you pick an inopportune Lich King attempt to use the battle rez. Well now it looks like the cooldown is going back to 10 minutes. A welcome and good change for Ariel and all druids out there.
The Bad - And beta changes are not always nice. The only form of Chakra I have found terribly useful on Ekat is renew, which ups the HoT effects by 10% and can be extended another 3 seconds nearly indefinitely for every renew cast. While I have not played with the damage version too much, I am not impressed by the Prayer of Healing version, even for Holy. At best, it means you get one more Circle of Healing off in 30 seconds and improve your AoE heals slightly, but AoE spells are not supposed to be the huge focus in cataclysm fights. So I do not know what is meant by removing Chakra Renew, but it does not look good for Chakra.
The Ugly - Although I'm not connected in any meaningful way with either young man, a guild member of fellow blogger Aurdon committed suicide, leaving behind two kids and a wife. Meanwhile the college football world reels from the death of a Notre Dame student who was taping football practice up on a hydraulic scissor lift in high winds despite not thinking it was safe and not wanting to go up. Both of these stories rip my heart out as there's just no excuse for either death. A young man who was passionate about football and passionate about film is gone forever because someone made poor judgment and ordered him to go up on that lift in unsafe conditions. No matter how hard life gets, abandoning two little innocent children you brought into the world by taking your own life is completely senseless, no matter how hopeless you think you are. I know these words ring hollow to those actually dealing with depression and poor work environments, but there's just no reason for these deaths and the long weeks, months, years of suffering that the families will now go through. I have nothing to offer but my thoughts and prayers to both families, but remember when you are having fun raiding or watching college football this weekend...you have it a lot better than a lot of folks in the world and you shouldn't lose sight of that.
Whether you are partying, staying at home, or trick or treating this weekend, I hope it is a good one.
The Good - Although beta changes are never for sure, they at least show what direction the developers are willing to experiment or go back to. Battle resurrection (Rebirth) for druids was increased to a 30 minute cooldown without a reagent needed in Patch 4.0.1. This has been terribly annoying to those of us used to having it as an option every 1-2 attempts on a boss depending on fight length. It definitely stinks to have to wait 30 minutes if you pick an inopportune Lich King attempt to use the battle rez. Well now it looks like the cooldown is going back to 10 minutes. A welcome and good change for Ariel and all druids out there.
The Bad - And beta changes are not always nice. The only form of Chakra I have found terribly useful on Ekat is renew, which ups the HoT effects by 10% and can be extended another 3 seconds nearly indefinitely for every renew cast. While I have not played with the damage version too much, I am not impressed by the Prayer of Healing version, even for Holy. At best, it means you get one more Circle of Healing off in 30 seconds and improve your AoE heals slightly, but AoE spells are not supposed to be the huge focus in cataclysm fights. So I do not know what is meant by removing Chakra Renew, but it does not look good for Chakra.
The Ugly - Although I'm not connected in any meaningful way with either young man, a guild member of fellow blogger Aurdon committed suicide, leaving behind two kids and a wife. Meanwhile the college football world reels from the death of a Notre Dame student who was taping football practice up on a hydraulic scissor lift in high winds despite not thinking it was safe and not wanting to go up. Both of these stories rip my heart out as there's just no excuse for either death. A young man who was passionate about football and passionate about film is gone forever because someone made poor judgment and ordered him to go up on that lift in unsafe conditions. No matter how hard life gets, abandoning two little innocent children you brought into the world by taking your own life is completely senseless, no matter how hopeless you think you are. I know these words ring hollow to those actually dealing with depression and poor work environments, but there's just no reason for these deaths and the long weeks, months, years of suffering that the families will now go through. I have nothing to offer but my thoughts and prayers to both families, but remember when you are having fun raiding or watching college football this weekend...you have it a lot better than a lot of folks in the world and you shouldn't lose sight of that.
Whether you are partying, staying at home, or trick or treating this weekend, I hope it is a good one.
Sunday, October 24, 2010
Kingslayer and Other Goodies
Sorry for the infrequent posting friends, but what can you do? Life is busy and fun! The days are ticking down towards Cataclysm, and I've managed to get a lot of stuff done in game that I was hoping for. Navarionae got his What a Long Strange Trip achievement done for the 310% speed drake (now granting Master Flying). Doubt I'll do the grind on any other alliance characters, but I've had fun running Headless Horseman the past week on all characters. On the whole, the holidays have been redesigned to be a lot better than they used to be. The RNG nature of Hallow's End and especially Love is in The Air have been pretty much removed, and there really is no excuse to not have that faster flying speed if you put the time into it. Of course with that much time, you could farm 5000 gold, but that probably would not be as fun and varied as the time you spend on holidays.
The last entry I had was the breaking news of the guild size limit. Well Patch 4.0.1 dropped and the guild interface has not broken AIE. Thankfully that gives the guild a few weeks to get the addons and workarounds going. Alea Iacta Est, Taint, and Goon Squad are working together on addon software to allow guild alliance gchat basically so that when we split into 6, 10, however many sub guilds, we still have the community of gchat. This will be slightly more difficult to manage on the wow side, but the guild leadership took it in stride like everything else and are moving forward gracefully. AIE will not die in the face of Blizzard, and that's a good thing!
A while back I had a goal list for Cataclysm. Now that we have a solid release date a few weeks away, now is a good time to check in on how we are doing. Here's the bucket list...
1. Finish It's Been A Long Strange Journey on Navarionae (FINISHED)
2. Defeat Algalon the Observer in Ulduar-10 (not attempted)
3. Defeat Yogg-Saron in Ulduar-10 (failed twice more)
4. Defeat The Lich King in Icecrown Citadel (FINISHED - see below)
5. Reach level 80 on Arielae the druid (FINISHED)
6. Reach level 75 on Biancae the paladin (level 48)
7. Reach level 70 on Clarissae the shaman (level 30)
8. Buy epic flight on the final three leveling characters and have about 10k gold left (FINISHED, although Biancae needs it. 24k gold in bank)
9. Do the Linken Nintendo homage quest chain in case it goes away (FINISHED)
10. Classic Raider (FINISHED)
So all things considered, I have really hammered on that bucket list, especially recently. Last weekend, Ariel hit 80, Navar finished Long Strange Trip, and Ekat finished 3 raids for Classic Raider as well as Kingslayer. Probably the best weekend of wow I've ever played. I realize the more I play shamans, the more I feel "meh" about it. And I don't pay and spend all this time to feel meh. I love druid healing and priest healing and adore my leveling paladin, so I'll stick with them and Navar for the time being. Thus, other than downing the Ulduar final boss and getting Biancae into Northrend, my goals have been met. I hope your bucket list is progressing well too, but it's not too late!
Speaking of Arielae, like I said, she hit 80 last weekend. I already have ground up a 264 idol and 3 pieces of tier 10, plus the rest of the slots filled with ilvl 200 healing gear from heroics. It is incredibly easy to run through heroics for quick justice points now, and druid healing at 80 is incredibly fun. They almost have as many toys as priests, although only one talent spec to choose. I don't know how it will work with mana shortages, but right now, I keep 3 stacks of Lifebloom up on the tank and ticking, maybe add a Rejuvenation, and Wild Growth when the group needs healing. Healers are very overpowered right now, and mana is unlimited so it is hard to tell how things are going to work in Cataclysm. All that said, Arielae has come a long way in the week since hitting 80 and 2-healed Trial of the Crusader today. Therefore, if I have time to get her in ICC before Cataclysm, I might try it out just to see it.
And then there's Ekaterinae. On day one of last weekend's ICC raids, both of the guild groups got 11 bosses down, leaving Sunday night for Lich King only. The top raid team got him down quickly, but I was in group 2. Three of us had never seen the fight before and 3 more did not have their Kingslayer title. We started the night with a disc priest, a holy priest (me), and a resto shaman on heals. We found that we were really struggling with getting the val'kyr down in phase 2, so we swapped to a 6 DPS and 2 priest configuration. I stayed holy for a couple attempts and then I realized...having one disco priest waste all his mana bubbling everyone to negate infest was not good while I sat around with mana...and chakra was not doing much for us, as well as Guardian Spirit being useless pretty much. So I went disco to give us the double disco priest party. And all of a sudden, the attempts got into phase 3. Our closest attempt yet had us wipe at 14% (Lich King dies at 10%, for those not in the know) to Defile, the first time all night the "stupid" on the floor wiped us. We then had a couple of wipes in phase 1, showing our disgust with the near miss. Although we had reached the end of the raid period, we knew we could do it and we knew we were close. So we tried again...and sure enough, everything went right and we earned Kingslayer! I know I'm late to this proverbial party, but I'm happy to show off my own main sporting the Kingslayer title and defeating the last boss of an expansion before the new expansion!
Congrats to all of "team two" who persevered for over four hours and got Arthas down. This is either the first or second time we've had two Lich King kills as a guild in one week, so a momentous time. Cheers again to the guild and bring on Cataclysm!
The last entry I had was the breaking news of the guild size limit. Well Patch 4.0.1 dropped and the guild interface has not broken AIE. Thankfully that gives the guild a few weeks to get the addons and workarounds going. Alea Iacta Est, Taint, and Goon Squad are working together on addon software to allow guild alliance gchat basically so that when we split into 6, 10, however many sub guilds, we still have the community of gchat. This will be slightly more difficult to manage on the wow side, but the guild leadership took it in stride like everything else and are moving forward gracefully. AIE will not die in the face of Blizzard, and that's a good thing!
A while back I had a goal list for Cataclysm. Now that we have a solid release date a few weeks away, now is a good time to check in on how we are doing. Here's the bucket list...
1. Finish It's Been A Long Strange Journey on Navarionae (FINISHED)
2. Defeat Algalon the Observer in Ulduar-10 (not attempted)
3. Defeat Yogg-Saron in Ulduar-10 (failed twice more)
4. Defeat The Lich King in Icecrown Citadel (FINISHED - see below)
5. Reach level 80 on Arielae the druid (FINISHED)
6. Reach level 75 on Biancae the paladin (level 48)
7. Reach level 70 on Clarissae the shaman (level 30)
8. Buy epic flight on the final three leveling characters and have about 10k gold left (FINISHED, although Biancae needs it. 24k gold in bank)
9. Do the Linken Nintendo homage quest chain in case it goes away (FINISHED)
10. Classic Raider (FINISHED)
So all things considered, I have really hammered on that bucket list, especially recently. Last weekend, Ariel hit 80, Navar finished Long Strange Trip, and Ekat finished 3 raids for Classic Raider as well as Kingslayer. Probably the best weekend of wow I've ever played. I realize the more I play shamans, the more I feel "meh" about it. And I don't pay and spend all this time to feel meh. I love druid healing and priest healing and adore my leveling paladin, so I'll stick with them and Navar for the time being. Thus, other than downing the Ulduar final boss and getting Biancae into Northrend, my goals have been met. I hope your bucket list is progressing well too, but it's not too late!
Speaking of Arielae, like I said, she hit 80 last weekend. I already have ground up a 264 idol and 3 pieces of tier 10, plus the rest of the slots filled with ilvl 200 healing gear from heroics. It is incredibly easy to run through heroics for quick justice points now, and druid healing at 80 is incredibly fun. They almost have as many toys as priests, although only one talent spec to choose. I don't know how it will work with mana shortages, but right now, I keep 3 stacks of Lifebloom up on the tank and ticking, maybe add a Rejuvenation, and Wild Growth when the group needs healing. Healers are very overpowered right now, and mana is unlimited so it is hard to tell how things are going to work in Cataclysm. All that said, Arielae has come a long way in the week since hitting 80 and 2-healed Trial of the Crusader today. Therefore, if I have time to get her in ICC before Cataclysm, I might try it out just to see it.
And then there's Ekaterinae. On day one of last weekend's ICC raids, both of the guild groups got 11 bosses down, leaving Sunday night for Lich King only. The top raid team got him down quickly, but I was in group 2. Three of us had never seen the fight before and 3 more did not have their Kingslayer title. We started the night with a disc priest, a holy priest (me), and a resto shaman on heals. We found that we were really struggling with getting the val'kyr down in phase 2, so we swapped to a 6 DPS and 2 priest configuration. I stayed holy for a couple attempts and then I realized...having one disco priest waste all his mana bubbling everyone to negate infest was not good while I sat around with mana...and chakra was not doing much for us, as well as Guardian Spirit being useless pretty much. So I went disco to give us the double disco priest party. And all of a sudden, the attempts got into phase 3. Our closest attempt yet had us wipe at 14% (Lich King dies at 10%, for those not in the know) to Defile, the first time all night the "stupid" on the floor wiped us. We then had a couple of wipes in phase 1, showing our disgust with the near miss. Although we had reached the end of the raid period, we knew we could do it and we knew we were close. So we tried again...and sure enough, everything went right and we earned Kingslayer! I know I'm late to this proverbial party, but I'm happy to show off my own main sporting the Kingslayer title and defeating the last boss of an expansion before the new expansion!
Congrats to all of "team two" who persevered for over four hours and got Arthas down. This is either the first or second time we've had two Lich King kills as a guild in one week, so a momentous time. Cheers again to the guild and bring on Cataclysm!
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
Guild Achievement System Brings the Ban-Hammer on AIE
As you will recall from my earlier series of articles on how to build a successful guild, I am a member of two very large guilds on Earthen Ring - US. My first guild on Alliance side is The Illuminati, which has 396 characters as of this writing. A very big guild, to be sure. But The Illuminati is dwarfed of course by Alea Iacta Est, my horde side guild better known as the largest guild in the game across all servers. AIE has 6792 characters right now and is a fantastic community of gamers who are a great resource for leveling, professions, grouping, and anything else you want to do in the game. There has always been some problems with AIE and the guild interface, which is only designed to handle 500 characters. Nevertheless, AIE got along just fine and nicely asked Blizzard to fix the problem if they could, despite it being very low priority.
However, a blue post yesterday shattered AIE and fellow mega-guilds like Taint, Goon Squad, and others. As of patch 4.0.1, which looks like it will be next Tuesday, all guilds will have a hard cap of 600 members. You will not be able to add more characters unless you are below 600. Which means AIE, as of next week, will not add another new character ever again. No alts, no rerolls, no friends and no players that have been removed for being inactive for a few months. Not one more player, unless AIE gets below 600 members, which will not happen until the servers stop running in all likelihood. So while AIE and other mega-guilds will not have their rosters fractured or culled through at this time, they also will stagnate from here on out in the existence of Azeroth.
While I disagree with blizzard on disallowing mega guilds after 6 years of setting a precedent with them in the game, the real problem is how they've brought this change about. There was literally no warning, and AIE is thrown into absolute chaos right now as the officers deal with another big challenge. I'm sure they will step up to the task and keep the guild moving on, but that's no excuse. The stated reason is actually that Blizzard cannot or does not want to handle the additional work of tracking individual statistics for more than 600 characters when figuring out guild achievements. Reading between the lines, they don't want to make people flock to mega-guilds who will earn guild achievements faster. Or if you take a pessimistic view, this is just a lame excuse for them to do something they have wanted to do for years, which is kill the mega guild.
However, AIE is one of the most active communities of WoW players because many of them listen to The Instance and talk actively about wow to their friends, more so probably than non-listeners of the major wow podcasts. While they throw around server load like it is a major concern, they are allowing AIE and other mega guilds to continue existing while fixing the guild interface and achievement problems for everyone, mega guilds included. So they fixed the problem, but undercut our guild at the same time. And make no mistake about it, there will be some kind of backlash, whether it be at Blizzcon where 300 AIE guildies or more are planning to attend, or in public forums such as blogs and podcasts. There will be public comment on this, even if it does only affect 0.1% of guilds (a misleading number because there are a massive amount of players in those guilds compared to the many bankalt guilds and personal guilds).
The real fix to the problem is good game design, and specifically good achievement and guild perk design. Guild perks from achievements should not be major draws for people to a guild, they should just be time savers and nifty other benefits that allow you to make the game slightly easier. Think of these like heirlooms, not talents that must be had by everyone. The achievements should be designed so all serious guilds including small raiding guilds can get all the available perks within a few months of cataclysm's release. Sure, the large guilds will get these perks a bit quicker, but that will not matter as long as the perks are not must-have items. The simple solution would have been to remove all mega guilds (defined as guilds with more than 600 members) from getting any realm-first type guild achievements. This levels the playing field for those with fewer members, and stops the world from becoming a bunch of mega guilds.
In reality, Blizzard has the power to make the guild interface work, as proven by their assertion that it will now work for guilds of all sizes post-cataclysm. However, this decision is a result of plain lazy achievement design. Remember, achievements were added to the game in WOTLK to give people something else to play for, something else to enjoy. Now achievements are being used as a pitiful excuse to slam some of the best communities in Azeroth. AIE has recently transcended warcraft and is moving into other games such as Eve online, and it's all because the community is supportive and great. Taint is a wonderful community of gay, lesbian, transgender players who support each other in game and out. And all the new players who come into cataclysm as wow 2.0 will never get to experience either of these communities. Now I understand there will be sister guilds and networked chat and people will prevail with workarounds, but it will not be the same as having one guild for all your members.
So lazy design in a relatively unimportant aspect of the game (achievements) now leads to the death of growth forever in AIE and other mega guilds. I was planning to move either my shaman or my druid over to Horde side with the paladin to join AIE and have two main healers on either side of the fence in cataclysm. However, I wanted to wait for the new race/class combos to make the switch and it is easier to level on the alliance side with the sugar momma Ekat and the sugar Daddy Navar paying for everything the alts need. However, if I cannot join AIE, I will not transfer that character. So that's $25 out of Blizzard's bank account. And who knows, my limited interaction with AIE may eventually drive me away from the game. I know I'm not alone in that sentiment, and this comes at a terrible time as people come back for cataclysm after the usual doldrums breaks and they will not have that community to return to. In fact, most people server transfer or faction transfer to get into AIe with their favorite characters, but that will not happen anymore. That's money out of the bank account for Blizzard. Plus, even guilds like The Illuminati will likely start putting limits on people to 1-2 characters maximum, which stinks when you want to participate in a lively guild chat.
In fact, that brings up another possibility. Perhaps Blizzard wants to limit guild size to limit the usefulness of guild chat access in the mobile auction house application. Perhaps they do not want to enable a facebook-or-AIM like instant messaging service for the mega guilds most likely to use the service for that purpose alone. Again, this looks like they are willing to give up moderate cash gains to remove the major users from loading a service and making them design servers and systems well.
Again, I do not want to paint this like they are making AIE shatter immediately. But this is a ridiculous and unwarranted decision that has been made for all the wrong reasons, and Blizzard is simply not being honest with their consumers. That's just not right. And while we may be a small percentage of the playerbase, hopefully we are vocal enough to let Blizzard know that this action is in poor judgment, much like the idea to force forum users to use only real ID's was. Life will go on, but this blindside tactic by Blizzard is shocking to those of us affected and will not be forgotten when we are making the all-important decision on whether the good outweighs the bad in this game to keep on paying that monthly subscription.
If I'm in a particularly grumpy mood, my apologies. My favorite guild member in my alliance guild quit the guild for reasons I'm none too thrilled with. I'm certainly not going to take it out on guild leadership because they are not slighting me at this point, but my sense of community in that guild has also been seriously shaken this week. So it's a real shame, but both my guilds are currently leaving me disappointed, despite all that is good about them. Until next time, don't let bad judgment happen to you, at least not without a fight.
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