General: June 2008 Archives

Ok, so mere minutes after I finished writing my opening ceremonies lament, I surfed to some of the news sites, and lo and behold, we have a smattering of class info from the Developer Panel. We also have a mixed bag of humorous and disappointing answers from the Q&A Panel that followed the Developers Panel. Let us now go into the highlights and low lights of these two panels.

Developers Panel - Mostly a class based presentation with questions
Death Knight
 -They don't want the Death Knight's to be pigeon-hole like other classes have been
 -runes have a 10 second cooldown currently
 -The spell Armies of Undead are meant to call masses of undead, like how Arthas can as king
Hunter
 -Steady will not clip Auto
 -Pets will get their own talent trees, losing the point system they have now
 -Cornered - Your pet does an additional 20% damage when they are at 20% health
Mage
 -Frostfire Bolt will make elementalists more viable
 -they will compensate for the loss of CC exclusivity by ramping up Mage damage output
Priest
 -Divine Hymn - cast on party members, if anyone strikes a person with this spell on, they enter a trance
 -Dispersion - Reduces damage 90%, regens 6% of mana per second, 51 point shadow for turtling.
 -Guardian Spirit - castable pet that will follow the target and absorb the next killing blow the target would have died to.
Druid
 -indoor roots confirmed, druid was left out of too many instances for lack of CC, but...
 -no removal of Cyclone diminishing returns due cast length and duration
 -HoT dependent buff call Flourish
Shaman
 -have too many totems
 -totems will become raid effect, not just party
 -Strength of Earth and Grace of Air will be combined
 -new spell Hex, short duration emergency cc. half second cast, 8-10 second duration
Rogue
 -Fan of Knives, a WC3 retro ability, will be a short AoE damage burst
 -Sap will be usable on "Pretty much anything with a skull and brain inside of it."
 -Sap can be used on Humanoids, beasts, dragonkin, demons.
Paladin
 -Hand of Purity - reactive healing spell, a PoM style 'healbomb'
 -more blessings like Freedom and Protection
Warrior
 -want to make it more like WC3
 -added Bladestorm Shockwave which will help prot with damage
 -Titan's Grip confirmed, duel wielding of 2h weapons
Warlock
 -Demonic Circle - mark a spot on the ground to teleport back to
 -51 point demonology is an Illidan like Demon Form with AoE shadow bolts
General Q&A
 -We have to work on the specs that haven't worked well enough
 -windfury is no longer going to be WEAPON and going to be BUFF for your PC. Windfury is a buff, not a weapon enchant. It works with forms and poisons and weapon buffs
 -Totems and Unleashed Rage from Shaman, and Battle Shout for Warriors will br raid wide


Q&A Panel
-no gnome paladins
-gnomes are too short to have been in cinematic
-Sunwell confirmed as final pre Wrath content patch
-Inscription is intended for melee or casters and there will be major and minor inscriptions. Herbalism will be the primary gathering skill.
-the new class will change the format of a 25 man raid, but they want to make it in a good way
-DKs should be the best at tanking against casters. Shouldn't be far behind on other encounters.
-flying mounts will have an attunement, hints at defrosting, and possible level 80 mount with passengers.
-Ret Paladins will share itemization with DPS warriors and DK
-new dire bear model, and dire cat coming
-Stormwind Harbor will connect to Northwind
-DK will have a newly cleared area of north PL for their starter
-LOS in PvP in wrath will be more dynamic, with moving and shifting objects
-no plans to nerf Sunwell KJ fight, as he is the Naxx of TBC and hard to beat.
-character order and display settings is interesting, but not implemented yet
-dagger spec for rogues will be very powerful in wrath
-no epic ground form for druids
-clown look to amour may return in wrath, but slightly improved looks
-We are working on a plan to give players access to two Talent specs.
-soul shard farming is not expected to go away, but may get a little easier
-Kara animal boss was meant as an easy sub 10 man group method to get rep


Quotable
-Even though there will be a new tank class, all tank classes tank differently.

You may have noticed, perhaps, that there was a small gathering of gamers, 8,000 or so in number, in Paris, France this morning. There has been speculation and coverage leading up to this Invitational for days now, so much so that any reasonable player would be sick of hearing about it by now. Of course, I am not reasonable, sane, or anything of the sort, because I was one of many who were up at the ungodly hour of 4:30 AM central time to tune into the stream.

Diablo 3? Wrath Beta? Release dates for either Wrath or Starcraft 2? Both maybe? The splash screen on the Blizzard.com web site has been hinting at something, and even before the opening ceremonies began the word had leaked about the biggest announcement of the event, but as I said earlier, I really did not feel that one big announcement would be all we would get from the ceremony. If Apple can do several products in one keynote, Mike Morhaim can!

The Big News
As I was downing Coke Zero by the can to wake up enough to actually report on what we heard, what we were all excited about, when BA chat saw a pointer to MMO Champion, who had a leak from the big screen at the Invitational that showed the new title would be Diablo 3. Being that this was not overly surprising news, I hunkered down and waited for the announcements to start. Once the high res stream began working, missing little of importance, the stream stuttered and buffered it's way to the end.

Mike Morhaim proudly announced Diablo 3, an amazing teaser for the upcoming title showing a totally awesome cinematic with voice over. While I only caught part of it, I am sure that Blizzard's web site will have a copy of that video later today. Mike then introduced the Diablo 3 Lead Developer, who went into a couple of the classes, showed some of the improvements since Diablo 2, and showed a few fights.

Expecting that Mike would come back and begin the process of announcing the Wrath stuff, I was cursing when my stream kept stopping for minutes at a time. isheepthings, who was in BA chat at the time, was kind enough to give a description of the stuff, since apparently the stream wasn't crappy for all of the users, just most. I was saddened, though, to hear they went back to thanking folks in the audience and then moved onto some fire dancers to close out the opening ceremony.

While we will undoubtedly see a nice amount of information out of the unlabeled discussion panels, at least some of which will have WoW content as wrath draws near, it is not the level of information I was hoping for. Discussion panels will not have release dates, cinematic, or other Wrath information that many of us want so bad. I will report again when we have more information on whatever they decide to tell us about the Wrath expansion and current game. 

Going to be cross posting this on the Blog and the Podcast site between twitters as the Invitational news rolls in.

4:45 AM CST - Event begins
5:06 AM CST - Mike Morhaim takes the stage as the High Res audio and video begins working
5:20 AM CST - Diablo 3 is revealed as the next title from Blizzard Entertainment
5:45 AM CST - Dancers closing out ceremonies

Ok, so no Starcraft 2 news. No Wrath of the Lich King News. But we have Barbarians! And Witch Doctors! *yawn* What a waste of an hour's sleep.

I honestly do know what brought this post to mind, but I have always wondered at the many varieties of the lauded end game. We each have our own form of end game, of that there can be no doubt. For some it's pure, for others it is a mix of little bits of different styles. So, before I get down to the question at hand, let me define for you a few of the main styles of what we can do when we hit the level cap.

Player Killer - Living for the thrill of the next elite player he can take down, and occasionally lowering himself to camping lower level players for varying reasons, the Player Killer lives off his honor kills and Arena ranking. Happy to use anything he can to get more kills, the PK spends his time at the generals, does each PvP daily on first login, and had a mailbox full of Battle Ground marks. Exemplified by the screaming all caps 'leader' of a Battle Ground, the PK can easily break under the slightest hint of failure in Battlegrounds.

Progress Seeker - The player aimed at progresion is likely the one who had their Karazhan key quest as soon as they could after level 69, and was LFG Shadow Labrynth minutes after their digned 70. They usually have a clear line set for their progression from ding to the 25 man raids, frequently doing the best quests for the gear they want for the end game spec, which they have outlined and planned weeks or months in advance. This player does dailies and other money making things purely to make the gold needed for reagents and respeccing as needed.

Badge Collector - Another thing that Burning Crusade brought to us was the Heroic mode of dungeons. Only affecting the Outlands 5 man dungeons, Heroic mode is one of the best ways to get rep with various factions, and with the dungeon dailies, also get extra cash and extra badges as well. Those are one of the biggest reason to do Heroic dungeons, though, is Badge of Justice. Badges can be used to purchase varying levels of gear, from Tier 6 equivalent to lower Tier 4 equivalent gear.

This is one of the more niche play styles in end game, but with the availability of Primal Nether and the epic quality gems through badge turn ins, it is an increasingly popular way to spend your time at level 70, at least in so far as the heroic daily goes at the least. Finding heroics beyond the daily can be a bit of a hassle, but like Arenas and Raiding, a good solid team can be invaluable to making the work a lot easier. Also, pugging heroics can be very, very painful.

Master Crafter - Also known as the Recipe Completist, the Master Crafter spends their time and money at 70, gained from dailies and quests at max level, working diligently on their professions. They run dungeons and work reputation to maximize their professions and abilities. The golden ticker for the crafter is finding that once in a lifetime item they can make that few if any have and everyone wants. The Master Crafter things nothing of killing thousands of a type of mob in order to get their desired recipe.

Mass Murderer - The Mass Murderer is someone who just goes out and kills everything in his or her path, not caring how long it takes. This could be best described as a Grinder, who only starts out with the barest reagents and food required, and just kills and loots mindlessly. This person has no specific goals other than to kill, kill, and kill some more. There is no rep or item they seek, just to see the trail of bodies behind them.

Multiple Personality - Suffering from a varying degree of Altitis, this player can occasionally get through the quests at max level before relegating the character to farm status or maybe filler raiding, but they then move onto a new alt or leveling one they already have in the works. This type of end gamer finds the shear idea of a cap of 10 characters per realm to be ludicrous, and often plot out which character will get the big old DELETE next to make room for another.


So, now the we know a few of the main types of end gamers, I ask you my readers, What is your end game? A mix of a few? A pure version of one of the above possibilities? Or are you one of the niche options apart from above? For me, I am a mix of a bunch. I do light raiding when needed and time allows, I have many alts, 5 played characters at this point, but I also farm and am a hardcore recipe completist. My end game is so varied that it easily keeps me interested. Is this why so many raiders are giving up and moving to other games? How about your end game? Is it keeping you happy and your attention in the game?

I set forth a goal for myself. My Draenei Paladin Telaan was at about 67.3 at the start of my 4 days off. For those who don't know, I work long shifts(10-12 hours) and therefore have a 4 on, 4 off rotation. Well, on the first day of my 4, I dinged 68. No big, just finished up quests in Nagrand including a bunch of painfully hard to solo group quests and even helped some finish quests I had already completed. I guess that's why they call them group quests.

As I was riding back to Telaar from around the space ship that Durn pats around, I decided to stop and take care of the fire stuff just outside. I had already dinged, which brought me in line with my 2 levels a zone plan, so I wasn't concerned with spoiling it. 6,000 experience later, I was running over to WoW Insider to see if they had a list of how many of these xp rich fires there were to hit up for a good solid chunk of XP.

I ran over to the one at Garadar, and hit up for a grintastic 12.000 experience. It was hovering around 7 or 8 PM, and I decided to see how many I could hit. By the time I logged off at 5 AM, I had hit all of the old world fires, including the well camped ones in the major horder cities to get the Crown of the Fire Festival(45,000 xp from those turned in) and I dragged myself tiredly to bed.

I cleaned up the ones in Outlands except the 2 I am saving for when I ding(Netherstorm and Shadowmoon) and now sit a mere 2 bubbles(or 80,000 xp) from leveling and I have yet to turn in any quests in Blade's Edge Mountains. A couple in my guild dinged twice of the fires bringing their warlocks both up to 58, without doing any other quests for their levels. They got about 1 and a half levels from the Fire Festival. Have you used the new format of the Fire Festival to push a lower level character significantly higher in their leveling? Do you like when they bring such experience heavy quests intot he game? Let me know in the comments!

As we are beginning to see the news and blog posts of people making preparations for the upcoming expansion, I felt it time to begin working on this planned series of articles. When you look down the path and see change coming, it is natural for us to look back on what has been, and to look forward to what will come. That is the plan for this series of articles of indeterminate length.

Let me take you back, friends, to January 15th, 2007. About 10 pm server time on Argent Dawn people started congregating around the dark portal which was now clear of the demons that flooded from the portal in the weeks leading up to the opening of the big black wormhole to the heroes of Azeroth. If you recall the events, you will know that Kazzak, a troublesome relic of the Burning Legion on Azeroth, found an artifact that allowed him to open the portal again, flooding Azeroth with demons. You may also recall his reward was a promotion to Doom Lord Kazzak, and he was made larger and more powerful. his worldly possesions also gained a few levels.

As the heroes of Azeroth began to collect by the portal, we eagerly waited and talked about what we would do first. I had to wait until the following morning to pass through the Dark Portal, but the first thing I did was look around and admire the sheer awesomeness of the zone in front of me, and even more so when I looked at the world map and found I had only discovered a small fragment of the entirety of Outlands, and there was more to do and alts to do it on as well as my main, Medros.

Some of the things people talked about was that they were going to check out the new Battle ground, some were going to start Draenei or Blood Elves, just to admire these new playable races and admire the look of them. Others just spent the first few weeks of the expansion leveling lower level alts, knowing that the opening zones of Outlands would be swamped with players. There were also the few, the insane, who were looking to race to be their realms first 70, first Horde Paladin/Alliance Shaman to 70, and so on. Then there were the ironic ones, who just wanted to go back to Ironforge and enjoy the lack of lag in the city.

We have a lot of stuff we can do first thing after upgrading to the Wrath of the Lich King. We could hurry to the opening zones of Northrend, Borean Tundra and Howling Fjord. We can rush to the barbershop and get our first haircut in up to 4 years. We could create our very own Death Knight. We could go learn some new dances. Or we could just enjoy the pleasure of not having to compete for mobs, for gathering, or anything else that annoys. What will you do first when Wrath of the Lich King hits? 

As we are beginning to see the news and blog posts of people making preparations for the upcoming expansion, I felt it time to begin working on this planned series of articles. When you look down the path and see change coming, it is natural for us to look back on what has been, and to look forward to what will come. That is the plan for this series of articles of indeterminate length.

Wrath of the Lich King is being lauded as having a lot of new features, from the mundane to the long overdue. This post will look at some of the more popular ones and we will talk about a few of the leaked features that may or may not be coming in 3.0. Overall this expansion is aiming to be more feature rich and view changing than the Burning Crusade was, but in the end the launch day will tell us if Blizzard can hit the mark that their customers expect.

The first feature coming is something that is an idea a couple of years old. Originally the Alterac Valley was planned to be an open air PvP zone that players would be flagged for PvP with objectives that could be fought over. Lake Wintergrasp will be that and more, with not only an entire open PvP zone, but destructible buildings and siege weapon warfare. For the PvP set this is no doubt one of the coolest features coming in the expansion.

The next features I will sum up as instance changes. From the 5 man regular and heroic dungeons having different loot tables, to the sheer idea of raid dungeons having both 10 and 25 person versions, there is a lot more changes coming to this next expansion than we had come in Burning Crusade. I am sure the coming boss fights and raid mechanics that we do not know about will be huge as well and will only add to the excitement many of us feel as wrath approaches.

On the game play side of things we have a lot of changes and new stuff coming. We have 10 more levels and the accompanying addition to all of our 27 talent trees for the classes in the game now. We will have new gear and a whole new look to weapons and gear, moving from a sci fi look on to a raw and rough look to the new items. We know now that there will be new changes to current zones, no longer in the realm of leak and now more fully in the realm of changes, like the Stormwind Harbor addition to the human city.

As for the new stuff, the big news is that druids will now get a out of combat resurrection spell. Ok, all kidding aside, the really big stuff is the upcoming Death Knight hero class, which will be a massive change to the game. Add to that the forthcoming Inscription profession and all the new gathered materials in Skinning, Mining, and Herbalism, and you quickly see there is a lot of game play stuff that doesn't lie inside of an instance.

Beyond the changes coming to Stormwind, we of course have the expansive continent of Northrend, with almost a dozen zones and quests galore. The floating city of Dalaran on the newly accessible content in Wrath will also be a really cool addition, and the two chosen factions in that city are really intriguing to anyone used to the current Scryer and Aldor faction disputes.

Then we have the fluff features coming in the expansion. New hair styles will allow players to customize their characters in ways they haven't been able to before, even though the dreaded ugly faces will not be changing. We have new dances, so that your character will not /dance like every other character of the same race and gender combination. No doubt that will be a boon to the mailbox dancers everywhere. The last of the big fluff features is dozens of new emotes coming in the expansion including /facepalm and .


With all of these and more features coming in the expansion, I wonder what feature are you the most excited about? What feature are you just bright eyed and eagerly anticipating from Wrath? Are you a hardcore raider looking forward to standing over the corpse of the Lich King? Will you do it as a Death Knight? Or are you looking forward to progression of lore and the stories that are the foundation of World of Warcraft? 

As we are beginning to see the news and blog posts of people making preparations for the upcoming expansion, I felt it time to begin working on this planned series of articles. When you look down the path and see change coming, it is natural for us to look back on what has been, and to look forward to what will come. That is the plan for this series of articles of indeterminate length.

In our next aspect of looking ahead, I wanted to take a bit of time to look to what is coming in the end game for Wrath of the Lich King. So far what we know is both significant but lacking details. There are a few general bits of information we know, but as of the last time we heard anything we had nothing about specific dungeon bosses.

The first part of the End Game we have is Lake Wintergrasp, a full PvP enabled zone that will cause anyone on any realm who enters the zone to be PvP flagged. Undoubtedly there will be a new Battleground, likely revolving around the Wintergrasp zone, and a slew of Arena seasons including seasonal gear and other rewards.

The second part is 5 mans and heroics. While we do not know what the majority of the 5 mans will be, we do know that they will be itemized completely separately from the normal mode 5 man dungeons, so it should be a little easier to find a group for a dungeon to fill the needs of those who want gear from the regular version of the dungeons. The big question will be whether the daily drops will also be kept to only the specific level they are meant to be in.

The final part of the End game by most standards is the raiding end game. Again, we do not have much information regarding raid bosses, other than the previously mentioned basics like Malygos in the Nexus and Arthas in the Ice Crown, but we do have a fair bit of info to mull over at this point. First, the split between 10 and 25 mans of the same dungeon. Like the 5 man and their Heroic counterparts, the 10 and 25 man dungeons will have separate loot tables, so the 25 man will have an additional tier of gear higher than the 10 man dungeons.

For the other possible end games I have another piece coming in a few days, but I do wonder what part of the end game we know about are you most looking forward to? Will you be making use of the 10 and 25 man raids being on separate lock outs? Will your guild even bother with the 10 man versions of the dungeons? Will you look forward to or dread hearing of the first 10 person kill of Arthas? Or are you one of the many who feels that someone like Arthas needs 25 people to be a decent fight? Think they will make his 10 person defeat be a token defeat instead of a full kill? Let me know in the comments!

As we are beginning to see the news and blog posts of people making preparations for the upcoming expansion, I felt it time to begin working on this planned series of articles. When you look down the path and see change coming, it is natural for us to look back on what has been, and to look forward to what will come. That is the plan for this series of articles of indeterminate length.

The first part I want to look at is looking back. First thing I would like to know is what your favorite part of Burning Crusade was. Was it flying mounts? Daily quests? The Isle of Quel'Danas? Becoming Ogre royalty? Or was it the end game? Did Karazhan give you the thrill of your raiding career or was it pushing into Black Temple and Sunwell? The improved leveling and Dustwallow Marsh revamp?

For me, it is a hard thing to answer. I have enjoyed making money at my professions. I always enjoy the feeling of flying from the most northern tip of Netherstorm to the Netherwing Ledge in under 5 minutes. I love the collection of flying mounts I have, and the soon to be 4 level 70s I have. I love the dailies, though to be honest after a month or so of doing each of the new ones, they can get boring unless combined with something I do already like the Nether Residue one.

The second part of this is what you liked least about the Burning Crusade expansion. Was it welfare epics? The constant first kills? Lackluster patching? Did Blizzard not take the game in the direction you wanted? Did you find a disparity between casual end game like the 10 person dungeons and the higher end 25 person raids like Magtheridon and Gruul's Lair? Do yuo not like how hard it is to get through the end game? Is your class not useful in raiding or PvP?

For me, I guess the one biggest annoyance is the duration of TBC. I have never denied that I thought we would have Wrath go gold by now with a July or August release date, not just at about the halfway point in development at this point. Another thing I didn't like about TBC was the utterly useless and wasted time spent on the in game Voice Chat feature.

With Blizzard's need to make their games available to as many people as possible this feature was doomed from the start, because accessible and high quality audio are not possible. Blizzard spent months on that patch when they could have put time and effort into other things like housing and more stable servers.


Overall, I give the first expansion to the game a 4/5 rating, or a B+ grade. The expansion brought a lot of content to the game and really changed a number of aspects of the game. From PvP to raiding, Low level to end level, the World of Warcraft changed drastically in the 2.x version, and I think overall it was a positive change to the game that has only increased it's popularity.

Next up, we will look ahead to a variety of aspects of Wrath of the Lich King that we know about before the big Worldwide Invitational. 

We have received a lot of cool info and screenshots from Blizzard and other sources since the Death knight was announced at Blizzcon 2007. Part leaks, part official, but the information is pretty cool, from spells to history and the mechanics for creating them. Even after all of this, I am sure I am not the only one who has more questions to replace the few we have had answered. If you want to read over some of my other thoughts on the upcoming death knight, I direct you to my thoughts on race, name, and back story of my eventual Death Knight.

Now, that aside, here are just a few of the questions I still have and look forward to hearing about from Blizzard:

• How will they be welcomed by their home faction/cities?
• How will their reputations be worked?
• How will their professions work?
• Will they have special words from the scourge, like the rogue's do with the defias?
• Will they get the same racials as the race you choose?
• Would factions like the Naaru or Forsaken take back their connected races of Death Knight upon their regaining self control?
• Will the Knights of the Ebon Blade be in control of the necropolis? Did they commandeer it? Will it replace Naxx in the sky of Eastern Plaguelands?
• Will the Death Knight have a full 61 talent points to choose, or will it be limited?
• How long will the Death Knight spend int he Necropolis? Will it be measured in a planned amount of XP or time?
• How will the epic Death Charger quest compare in complexity and cost to the Paladin and Warlock ones?
• How will the cost of spells be worked for the Death Knight, as Eastern Plaguelands is not the most profitable place
• Will Death Knight DPS be spell or melee based?

Like I said, these are but a few of my questions surrounding the Death Knight hero class in Wrath of the Lich King.