Opinion: June 2008 Archives

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. 

'Tis the season for predictions, and boy are there some good ones. We sit at day 5 of the progressive splash screen on Blizzard's site, which has many interesting possibilities and ideas that could be hidden within, and of course breeding much speculation. Having read several of the varied perspectives online, I can tell you I have seen all kinds of theories and ideas for what might be coming when the Invitational starts at 11:45 AM in Paris on Saturday.

A few of the more thoughtful and educated predictions I have read made me think back. The 'Jobs' section of the Blizzard web site has had a lot of interesting entries over the last few years. The employment section of the Blizzard site has long been the fuel to launch rumors, and I think that what we hear from Mike Morhaim and company on Saturday will have at least something to do with those numerous and widely varying job postings.

The job postings I recall at the time of this writing are for a mobile game developer and a next gen MMO developer/designer. While it is possible that the next gen MMO spot(s) were for Wrath or the following expansion, I think they have at least some small thing to do with the bigger announcement we will see in the Worldwide Invitational, the one hinted by Rob Pardo, though by far not the only big announcement.

The mobile developer, I think, will be the mentioned-as-possible Mobile version of WoW, allowing us to chat, check mail, and other low resource functions. What platforms and devices this will work on, I do not know, but I would say that WoW Mobile for the iPhone is an obvious choice with the App Store coming to iTunes. I sadly do not know the other devices and platforms well enough to actually speak to what else might be possible, though feel free to comment your opinions and possible devices.

The second position could be a fit for the more common predictions. These seem to take one of two lies of thought. Thought number one is 'no brainer, it's Diablo 3'. This is the only major property of Blizzards without something in the production or release phase right now, so this is a decent guess. I do not recall much ice in the Diablo universe, but I am told Diablo 2 had an ice zone. This means that it could be Diablo or a Diablo universe title in the splash screen, which is now progressed to the point of five runes and a pair of glowing eyes.

Add onto this theory that the 8th anniversary of Diablo 2 is on the Sunday of the Invitational and it gets to be an interesting theory, gaining a bit more credibility. At least one of the runes in the ice is also said to be from the earlier Diablo games, though there is also a theory that compares other runes to the 2 other known Blizzard titles.

The other line of thought is the 'D3 would be too obvious!'. These people have a few reasons, such as the one I mention above about Diablo 3 being the only franchise not in the works or released at this point. With Rob Pardo pretty much telling the press that there will be a game announced, it is only a logical conclusion that Diablo would be the title, which is a conclusion Blizzard could expect and prey upon.

Blizzard knows their customers and their fans quite well, so it is not hard for them to lead them down the path of thinking that they want them to. This could be an entirely new title, or as one person put it, the eyes could just by the Lich King Arthas, perhaps heralding the much anticipated teaser or even the cinematic being released at the invitational. What do you think is coming? What juicy Wrath news, smoking Starcraft 2 tidbits, and Diablo 3 revelations will we see?

Stay tuned to my twitter and this blog for the news from the Invitational, which I will be paying great attention to for you all. 

[Note: As this was being written, it was revealed that a secure authentication tool will be made available. A pseudo random code generator, the authenticator will be associated with your account and the code it generates will be connected to the account once registered. Priced at roughly $7, it is a small pittance to pay to prevent the loss of years of work. I know I will be finding some way to buy one of these. Good though this is, it is unlikely to be the big news of the Invitational.]

I was reading this WoW Insider piece talking about 2.4.3 being the author's savior, as it gives them something fun to do while they wait, currently bored, for the expansion to hit. Zach Yonzon suggests that it is quite possible this will not be the last patch of this kind, and this got me thinking. Is it realistic to think we can go for the oft predicted 5-6 months with no change to the 'no 2.5' stance that Blizzard is still sticking to?

I think that, like the author, we just might see some filler patches if the next expansion does take longer than my current prediction of late September. As I had previously explained my now horribly wrong summer prediction for Wrath, let me take a moment or twenty to explain my current thinking behind that guess, cause I tell ya, it's a doozy!

Fist point: Blizzcon in early October. Second point: No Blizzcon has been held without the announcement of an expansion for the game. Third: There is no bigger sign that your next expansion will be a flop than announcing it's predecessor before it even hits store shelves. I had a fourth point until recently, the Brewfest/Hallow's End factor, but both now seem somehow less pertinent now that 2.4.3 has much of that content from the alpha test.

If we look at the lead up to Burning Crusade, we never really had the precursor stuff to that expansion that we are seeing beginning in 2.4.3, which has at least the Stormwind Harbor under construction. While it is entirely possible this could be the only lead up bit, I somehow doubt it since no construction project goes from blasting supplies to a fully completed section overnight.

In the end, what we will see likely depends a great deal on how long the expansion takes to be completed in Alpha and possibly Beta. I don't think it will last more than another 3 months, but I may be wrong. We might see a Blizzcon without a new expansion announcement. We might see WoW 4.0 announced. Such an announcement may also include a release date for Wrath, which would take some of the surprise out of the occasion. We also should see some new info that could hint as to what we might expect from the expansion at the Worldwide Invitational in a few days.

As I have said before, I think we just might have a clearer picture of what we can expect in Wrath and it's release at the worldwide invitational. I think that with around 10 million players in the game, it would be surprising to not see something about the expansion mentioned at the Invitational in Paris. I suspect the amount of content that is playable at the Invitational will also be a telling note for how far into the development they are.

As for my thoughts on the prospect of truly progressive content, I would simply say "YES!!!!!!!". As a long time leveler in Westfall and other human lands, I would love to see something like the Westfall inn repaired fully, the bridge in Lakeshire rebuilt, and all of the 'work in progress' in the game actually get finished. Now, I am told this has changed, but I am fully against the way content progression worked in LOTRO when I beta tested it, cause once you completed an instance you could not return, and the entire world, including who you could talk to and play alongside, had changed. Progressive, not exclusionary content, rocks!

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!

So I was surfing through the WoW fan sites and noticed a decent amount of coverage of the revelation that Jennifer Leigh plays WoW, and WoW Insider mentioned that this adds to the many we knew about before, from politicians to athletes. I then thought back, long time ago, to the story about WoW being the new Golf. My mind, while questing my Paladin Telaan to 65(ding!), churned on these two things, and my mind wandered back.

A few years ago I won a contest on the radio when I called in after a Super Bowl and made the comment that I felt that 'I want to thank God' had become a cliche, the expected line to please the religious in the crowd, and felt empty after you heard the 10th person say it that night. So I guess my question, my concern, is what if 'I play WoW' is the new 'I want to thank God'?

No, folks, I am not equating WoW with God, I am simply wondering if the potential for the person to be accepted readily into the community, in this case WoW players, is what is causing all these 'revelations' of WoW playing. Think about it for a second. 10 million people worldwide, 3 or more million in the US. That is a very tempting and potentially profitable base of people whose ears will perk up at the mention of 'their game'.

I have no doubt Curt Schilling plays WoW, hell he is making his own MMO so we know he is a gamer on the couch as well as on the field. But the more I hear about stars looking to brighten their shine a bit, or attract a new kind of audience, they tell people they play WoW, but of course they would rather not say where, because of the stalker aspect. I know it is entirely possible that these people are part of the 10 million world wide, but it just seems coincidental.

What do you think? Do you think William Shatner, Jennifer Leigh, and all these public personalities actually play World of Warcraft? Or are they just hoping on the bandwagon of the runaway hit? Are You a famous person who plays WoW? Let me see it. 

I consider my guild, the Shadow Walkers, my in game family. I have not always been this lucky with guilds in the World of Warcraft. This post was brought about as I thought about some of the guilds I have been a part of.

• Family will run you through Durnholde 40 times to get boots you want. Guildies will log as soon as you say 'Hey, guys?'
• Family will take the time to help you pick out the perfect RP outfit to match your hair. Guildies will tell you how to use the Dressing Room.
• Family stands with you as you stand on your principles. Guildies will tell you that you are
  
• eing silly.
• Family will help you with game time, even if all you do is chat. Guildies will ask you to commnit to a raid schedule.
• Family will ask if you can spare the mats. A guildie will demand payment.
• Family will listen to words of wisdom. Guildies will change the subject.
• Family will do all they can to help and support each other. Guildies will show you the LFG tool.
• Finally, Family will accept you for who and what you are. Guildies will accept you for what they can many you into.
  

Can you give me some of your own comparisons? Raiders and Arena players? PvP and PvE? Please be kind.

-Med

I tell you, this is not a story I ever thought I would have to give this much thought to. Having done audio and written toils for years now in promotion of World of Warcraft without the slightest hint of recognition or thanks on the part of Blizzard. Hell, I don't know any independent bloggers or podcasters who have seen any recognition of their work done to support this game, promote it, and help those who play it.

Then came GM Zevaryn. Last night I put a ticket in about a horde player who had a horribly non RP name and had tried to ninja an ore vein I was mining. I hoped from Medros to Arita shortly after, but GM Zevaryn messaged me a few minutes into that character and expressed sadness that both of these problems had come up. While I had the GM, I asked a couple of questions. The first being whether the Outlands uncommon quality gems had been removed from the loot tables of the ore veins, as I haven't seen a single green, and over a dozen blue gems since 2.4.

Zevaryn went out of their way to research this and find me as conclusive an answer as they could. They said that the drops had not been removed, but could not give numbers on rate. While I think this person is incorrect or mis informed, they still did try to research my question. They worked for it, and did their best.

My next question was if they had read this blog or listened to the All Things Azeroth podcast, which they hadn't but I hope they will. I gave links and encouraged the GM to drop by and give me their thoughts, even if it was in private. Then, just as the discussion was about to wrap up with the let us know what you think spam, I decided to throw out one last bit to see if I could get a conversation out of this.

"I tell ya, I am trying really hard to not cover all this Alpha leaks stuff, especially when I see your bosses doing nothing to help the little guys out" was my opening, and it led to a good conversation of the reasons why we should not report this stuff, and why so many sites are reporting it. I made the point that when sites like Gamespy and other's get in person reports from Blizzard, a beta or alpha leak for a small blogger is like manna from heaven.

Zevaryn was understanding and conciliatory about the complaints I made and advised me where I can go as a writer and podcaster to get my plight in the hands of those who can actually do something about it.

So here is my decision on leaked news. I will report it in part, but not explicitly. I will not report 'this is happening in alpha' as my post, but I will mention and link to the Alpha wiki in posts that are connected or related to the alpha leaks. Just please keep in mind, folks, that any and all of the content from the alpha which is being leaked can and may well change 5 minutes after it's posted there.

I assure you, my readers and anyone from Blizzard who has stopped by, that this is far better than the original plan I had which took more of a scorched earth approach since I see this leaked info as news. There is a lot of exciting stuff on the wiki, and every time I stop by I am reminded how excited I am to see all of the incredible stuff coming in Wrath of the Lich King.

So as I was preparing for work this morning, I noticed WoW Insider had an interesting post about a change in the descriptions of the three different Death Knight talent trees, Blood, Frost, and Unholy. The changes are interesting, moving away from stereotyped roles of a spec(tank, DPS, PvP, etc) to a more tagged type of description, as well as removing the description about what the presence does from that tree.

WoW Insider suggested a pretty decent guess from my perspective of why this might have been done. One of the reasons that we have the current tank shortage in the game is perspective. We have Warriors not wanting to lose the loot priority value of being the main tank in raids, and thus have complained at any improvements that could potentially see them replaced in that role, such as buff to Paladins or Druids as tanks.

Blizzard being attentive to warriors has led to a deep tank shortage, because no one wants to spec their character in a way that will make them less effective or desirable to the overall gaming population. WoW Insider points out that the change to the trees could be a lead up to a change in thinking from Blizzard. If the company stops referring to trees by the stereotypical terms, DPS, Heal, Tank, PvP, Raid, etc, we just might see players change their thinking.

I have to agree with the writer of the piece in that we could just as easily see the terms to describe something, for example Tank, change to be the new terms, control, counters, and combos. We could see 'LFC(control) DK for Naxx' instead of 'LF Tank for Naxx'. Of course, there is something to be said for the stereotypes. Which is nicer to see: 1) 'LF AoE Pal, Threat War, Swipe Druid, Control DK for <instance>' or 2) 'LF Tank for <instance>'? I think 2 will be it.

In the end, this still has the ring of a move away from the age old stereotypes and to a new way of thinking about how characters are designed and planned, as well I would think in how they are evolved as the future expansions hit. As Blizzard brings more Hero classes into the game in those expansions to be named, this will undoubtedly help them broaden the classes beyond the narrow stereotypes that have plagued them since the game was in beta.

Will changing the descriptions of the classes in the game and in the future change how you think about them? Or will it just be a matter of same crap, different pile? Do you think this will even have any effect on the game and it's instance and raid aspects? Let me know what you think in the comments!