Let me begin with this rather obvious line. WoW is a very linear game. Level 2 comes after level 1, and is then followed by levels 3, 4 and 5 in that order, and so on. The methods of gaining these levels are usually very similar, just in different locations. It’s pretty much the same all the way up to max level. But that is what is usually expected. If you were to suddenly jump from level 5 to 34 you would be at least a little perplexed I would think. But the path of raiding is, and always was meant to be linear. You start off at the entry level raid, do the bosses, learn the skills and gear up until you are good enough to get to the next raid, and so forth. As Blizzard have stated on many occasions “We want all players to be able to see the content”. Not a statement I particularly agree with, but that’s for another post. However, here comes the self induced spanner in the works…
Trial of the Champion normal mode drops item level 200 epics, 5 of them in total. Heroic mode drops 5 item level 219 epics. Item level 200 epics can also be found on the last boss of a standard heroic and predominantly in Naxxramas 10 man, with item level 219 epics from Naxxramas 25 man. That’s the same quality epics for a 15 minute 5 man dungeon as in a 25 man raid that can take anywhere usually between 4 and 8 hours, depending on raid skill, experience and gear. I have an elemental shaman who, before the patch had a mixture of level 80 and levelling rare quality gear (blues). One week later, after a few heroic runs and some normal mode farming of said new dungeon, he was fully kitted out in epics. So that leaves me with the question, who needs Naxx when you can get all the gear you need from farming a quick dungeon? Not that I’m against the idea of skipping Naxx, but it sort of ruins the “content for all” message a bit.
I mentioned in the last post about the key issue of progression and how the badge change spoils it. So does this. Just as badly. They both boil down to the same debate. Time versus Effort. It seems like the new statement is “Time spent playing should be rewarded in the same way that effort is” and this doesn’t work. Consider the same statement as used in an FPS game.
“There are 10 levels, each one harder than the next, culminating in a big, tough boss battle. However, if you don’t feel up to completing the game that way you can always do the first level, where they teach you how to move and shoot a few pathetically weak enemies, thirty times and that’ll count as completion too.”
Of course, you may argue that completion is different depending on who is playing. One of the key reasons why MMOs are played for so long is that completion never really comes. You would have to do a hell of a lot to say that you’ve completed the entire game, however completion is what you make it. For me, completion is beating all of the raid encounters, while for others it may be getting a high PvP rating. But the point of my analogy is that spending time repeatedly doing the same easy content doesn’t not equal the effort required for beating endgame raid bosses. Time and effort are two completely different concepts in gaming and I wish this could be better understood.
Anyway, that’s enough about the free shinies, how about the part that makes them free. Let’s go from the beginning with everyone’s favourite pastime, jousting (technically speaking the first part is the intro that makes Illidan Stormrage or Kael’Thas “merely a setback” Sunstrider’s intros look short and sweet).
I don’t mind the jousting part. Yes, it isn’t that complex, or challenging…and it isn’t made any better by the equally dull intro, but I can see why it’s there. And anyway, trampling the other faction does give a slight sense of satisfaction, even if it is then ruined by having all three of them turn on the healer as soon as you dismount (and mostly, when I’m there, the healer is me…). In all the time I’ve been there, on normal and heroic, I’ve experienced one good tank pickup, a handful of shoddy pickups, and all the rest have left me a bit transparent. But after that, the rest is easy, just like a small pack of trash mobs really. Eadric is painless and Paletress can be a little tricky at times, but usually quite straight-forward. And then the Black Knight, like Paletress, if you’re not totally clued up about it then wipes are possible, but generally not that tough. But the fact I’m stating here is this, while some of the bosses have slightly tricky moments, it is still not more challenging (even less so in some cases) then previous heroics, yet offers significantly better gear.
Best move on to the raid then. Doubt I’ll have much to say about this, since it isn’t actually all released yet… Not a decision I agree with either. It seems that they are going more and more in the direction of releasing the content bit by ever smaller bit. In TBC we had most of the raids in one go, in Wrath they released the raids one at a time, now it’s one boss at a time. I’m starting to think that in Icecrown Citadel there’ll be bosses that’ll only allow you to do 10% of it per week. But to be honest that’s a minor whinge at the moment. The 25 man is definitely where the challenge lies for progressive raiders, the 10 man is ridiculously easy at the moment. Starting with the Northrend Beasts, this is clearly not a dps test, this is an intelligence test. Bring the brains, not the failures. A cavalcade of “Don’t stand in crap”. If you have 25 smart, experienced raiders who can do as they are directed and realise that if their feet feel a bit on the abnormally warm side then they might want to consider moving a little, then this encounter is easy. Nevertheless, silly mistakes are still made regularly by players not concentrating or those who appear to have left a Drinking Bird over their Nuke button and gone to sleep. Other than that, I find it to be a reasonable first boss. I’ll probably give some more feelings once the other bosses are released and I can try them on proper 25 man mode.
I think that pretty much sums up my feelings on the PvE content in the new patch. For me, the rest of the stuff is pretty inconsequential. Yay, I can mount faster and buy items for the alts I don’t use from someone who I don’t have the reputation to talk to. The new daily quests are pretty standard, a good source of money when I’m bored but I don’t do them regularly anymore since I have enough cash and Champions Seals drop from the new dungeon. Best bit of the new patch’s extras for me include being able to fly over Dalaran and Wintergrasp and the new Wintergrasp queuing system. Much better to leave the grouping in the hands of the game than the players in this case. There is also the new battleground, but I haven’t experienced that properly since when I PvP I PvP boomkin, therefore PvP is just too depressing.
That’s it for the moment I think, please do post comments so I know that at least someone is having a look at this.
Tuesday, 18 August 2009
Monday, 17 August 2009
Patch 3.2 - Part 1: It's Raining Badges
Before I begin on the topic of Patch 3.2 and the badge change, I’d like to first give a massive middle finger to Blizz and Direct TV for their middle finger to the fansites. For those who aren’t aware, Blizz announced (10 days before Blizzcon…) that Direct TV effectively had been granted a monopoly on all coverage of Blizzcon, screwing over the fansites that had been preparing to give their own (and from what I’ve heard, better) coverage. I understand that, yes, they are a company and that they’re there to make money, but ten days notice for something that has been allowed up until now is just ridiculous.
Speaking of ridiculous, I’ll get to the main topic. Patch 3.2 was released a few weeks back and now I’m going to give you my perspective on what we have so far. Let’s begin with one of the major factors; the badge change.
Progression, wonderful is it not? Apparently it isn’t. Let me begin by saying this, in this game, there are many types of players, from the almost 24/7 players to the ‘couple of hours a week’ players. If you wish to have such a wide playerbase you need to cater for all of them. This patch sees Emblems of Conquest dropping from all bosses outside of the Argent Tournament raids, and Emblems of Triumph from the new raids and from the daily heroic quest. Let me also remind you that the only way of getting any sort of tier 9 gear through tokens is 25 man hard mode, all the rest is bought with Emblems of Triumph. So, to purchase tier 9 gear you have to get badges from both the highest level raid content and the lowest level endgame content. I don’t know about you, but that seems like a pretty crazy concept to me. This gives the opposite effect to what I said earlier, instead of catering to all, this shoehorns all the players back into heroics. And we already know the sort of conflict between the playing styles, ‘casual vs hardcore’ anyone? Almost forcing the progressive raiders back into the land of the more casual players is going to cause trouble. If the aim was to get players back into heroics, it certainly worked, but not in the most desirable way. Most raiders see heroics as an early step up the ladder of progression, methods of gearing up for the starter raids. And now we have to step back down again to progress at the top. This is creating a rift of so called ‘elitism’ between not-so-well-geared players and the high end raiders because of a gear and possibly skill deficiency. Raiders just want to get it out of the way in a short period of time so they will only take players geared as well as they are to achieve this. This benefits casual players about as well as before the patch, instead of not being able to find a group, now there are loads of groups but no-one will let you join.
The next issue is aimed more at the casuals, and is the eternal debate of lesser geared players getting easier access to higher level gear. The progressive raiders complain about this and the casuals complain that all the change does is ruin the epeen of the hardcore. You can probably guess by now where I stand. A player who comes online to do only the heroic daily every day can expect to be able to purchase the cheapest piece of tier 9 gear in 15 days. That is very little work for such a large upgrade. But the question is, why? Why do you need top level raiding gear if your schedule restricts you from raiding? Do you really want to make the only content available to your time ridiculously trivial? Ok, so maybe you’re a new 80, in the position a lot of us were late last year, a fresh 80 looking forward to the raid content ahead. This really leads onto the matter of progression. To save myself from repetition I’ll save this for the new dungeon segment, since it is more prevalent there.
So far, all I’ve said has been directed at the Emblems of Triumph. And now here’s the Conquest side. Now these drop from most raids, heroics, the sky, everywhere really. Admittedly there are only two pieces of Tier 8 that can be purchased with these, but they also give access to non set waist, leg, hand and neck items of a similar quality, not too mention runed orbs for sometimes best in slot crafted items, and the huge quantity of high level PvP gear available. Of course to get all these you would need a hell of a lot of badges, to totally gear up this way would require more time than the average casual could put in. But this is more of a skill issue. Heroics don’t require much effort really; the hardest part is finding a group to go there. But if you farm these easy places, then the badges can pour in thick and fast. And this is what people complain about. Again, I’ll cover this in more detail in the next post about 3.2 and the dungeons.
So, to conclude the badge topic, I do not believe this is a good change since it ruins the natural progression of the game and grants players running low level endgame content to those who really don’t need it. The standard progression path was good enough, why change it so drastically?
Speaking of ridiculous, I’ll get to the main topic. Patch 3.2 was released a few weeks back and now I’m going to give you my perspective on what we have so far. Let’s begin with one of the major factors; the badge change.
Progression, wonderful is it not? Apparently it isn’t. Let me begin by saying this, in this game, there are many types of players, from the almost 24/7 players to the ‘couple of hours a week’ players. If you wish to have such a wide playerbase you need to cater for all of them. This patch sees Emblems of Conquest dropping from all bosses outside of the Argent Tournament raids, and Emblems of Triumph from the new raids and from the daily heroic quest. Let me also remind you that the only way of getting any sort of tier 9 gear through tokens is 25 man hard mode, all the rest is bought with Emblems of Triumph. So, to purchase tier 9 gear you have to get badges from both the highest level raid content and the lowest level endgame content. I don’t know about you, but that seems like a pretty crazy concept to me. This gives the opposite effect to what I said earlier, instead of catering to all, this shoehorns all the players back into heroics. And we already know the sort of conflict between the playing styles, ‘casual vs hardcore’ anyone? Almost forcing the progressive raiders back into the land of the more casual players is going to cause trouble. If the aim was to get players back into heroics, it certainly worked, but not in the most desirable way. Most raiders see heroics as an early step up the ladder of progression, methods of gearing up for the starter raids. And now we have to step back down again to progress at the top. This is creating a rift of so called ‘elitism’ between not-so-well-geared players and the high end raiders because of a gear and possibly skill deficiency. Raiders just want to get it out of the way in a short period of time so they will only take players geared as well as they are to achieve this. This benefits casual players about as well as before the patch, instead of not being able to find a group, now there are loads of groups but no-one will let you join.
The next issue is aimed more at the casuals, and is the eternal debate of lesser geared players getting easier access to higher level gear. The progressive raiders complain about this and the casuals complain that all the change does is ruin the epeen of the hardcore. You can probably guess by now where I stand. A player who comes online to do only the heroic daily every day can expect to be able to purchase the cheapest piece of tier 9 gear in 15 days. That is very little work for such a large upgrade. But the question is, why? Why do you need top level raiding gear if your schedule restricts you from raiding? Do you really want to make the only content available to your time ridiculously trivial? Ok, so maybe you’re a new 80, in the position a lot of us were late last year, a fresh 80 looking forward to the raid content ahead. This really leads onto the matter of progression. To save myself from repetition I’ll save this for the new dungeon segment, since it is more prevalent there.
So far, all I’ve said has been directed at the Emblems of Triumph. And now here’s the Conquest side. Now these drop from most raids, heroics, the sky, everywhere really. Admittedly there are only two pieces of Tier 8 that can be purchased with these, but they also give access to non set waist, leg, hand and neck items of a similar quality, not too mention runed orbs for sometimes best in slot crafted items, and the huge quantity of high level PvP gear available. Of course to get all these you would need a hell of a lot of badges, to totally gear up this way would require more time than the average casual could put in. But this is more of a skill issue. Heroics don’t require much effort really; the hardest part is finding a group to go there. But if you farm these easy places, then the badges can pour in thick and fast. And this is what people complain about. Again, I’ll cover this in more detail in the next post about 3.2 and the dungeons.
So, to conclude the badge topic, I do not believe this is a good change since it ruins the natural progression of the game and grants players running low level endgame content to those who really don’t need it. The standard progression path was good enough, why change it so drastically?
Sunday, 9 August 2009
Raid Structure
You may have noticed that the only other blog I follow at the moment is Totalbiscuit’s Blog Plz. You may also have noticed, if you’re incredibly observant, that he also has a post about Raid Structure. Well I was the one who inspired him to write that, so here’s my very own post about said topic.
You can’t deny that there is a difference. Admittedly Classic WoW had a lot of long raids too, however since I missed out on of those, I am completely unqualified to talk about their length and structure. A quick blast through for achievements doesn’t count, that took barely any time at all. However, in the Burning Crusade, each tier of raiding was broken up into at least two raids. Tier 4 was dominated by Karazhan, but there was of course Gruul’s Lair and Magtheridon’s Lair as well. Tiers 5 and 6 demonstrate what I’m on about better, each tier contains two full length raids. Compare that to now. Tier 7 is similar to Tier 4; one dominating full length raid with two single boss raids in the form of Malygos and Sartharion. Tier 8, however, is completely dominated with the colossal Ulduar. Strangely, when you look back on it, the structure of each tier is quite varied, yet the Wrath raiding content lost all of my interest way before most of TBC’s, with the obvious exception of Karazhan; I was glad to get out of there. So, why is this so? I visited Serpentshrine Caverns and Tempest Keep quite often during the time between Mount Hyjal and Black Temple, yet I don’t believe I’ve had a desire to set foot in Naxxramas on my main since Ulduar’s release.
There are plenty of potential reasons for this, however in this post I will focus on what I feel are the main possibilities, and I will go about this by comparing Wrath raids with the time I felt the happiest in raiding, Tiers 5 and 6. The first possibility in this case is the subject of variation.
Going to the same raid dungeon, every week, to do the same bosses. Five months of that can get a bit taxing really. The only variation inside the dungeon itself is the winged structure. However, due to its incredibly dumbed down nature, it took no time at all to get through it all in a week, and eventually it could all be done in one raid night. Ok, it does mix things up slightly, but as for proper variation? That’d be like saying that a restaurant with one set menu is varied since they allow you to have the dessert first. Yes, it’s slightly different to normal, but in the end it’s still just the same stuff round the wrong way. If you want to get to Kel’Thuzard you still have to do all the other wings first. Ulduar is different, yet still strangely similar. There are optional bosses, and you can choose which order to take down the Keepers in, but it still isn’t properly varied; and generally you’ll end up defeating the optional bosses anyway since someone is bound to moan if you don’t. It’s like the set menu again, only you can choose to skip the garlic bread even though it’s thrown in for free. It’s varied to a degree but you’ll still end up doing everything anyway. But you could say that raiding has always been this way, there’s never been a truly non-linear raid, but it’s only now that I’m noticing that. For me it’s probably only come to light because of it being mixed up with all the other factors.
One of those other factors is the much debated 10 and 25 mans. The option to go to the same place, not once but twice a week, just with a few less mates. Sticking with the menu analogy, it’s like having lunch and dinner from the same set menu, except the lunch is a little bit smaller. Evidently if you do what is virtually the same place twice as often, you will burn out twice as fast; and after you are burnt out and ready to move on, there’s nowhere else to go. It’s the choice between farming the same place or doing without. And judging by the sheer number of ‘goodbye’ threads on the forums I believe that’s what a lot of players did. The same happened with Ulduar. Four months of that place appears to have been enough for some players too. It pretty much is for me anyway.
Another issue that I will cover is the length of Ulduar. It’s long, very long, and I don’t see why it needed to be. The sheer number of unavoidable bosses makes reaching the end a very lengthy and tedious affair, particularly when the first bosses have been nerfed into the ground; it might save a bit of time but it all feels so dreary. I’m sure that the devs at Blizzard could have been a little more inventive with the structure. One thought I had about how it could have been done bears some resemblance to Maraudon’s structure. Why not separate the first twelve bosses into two separate raid dungeons, next to each other, then using either an attunement quest similar to the one to gain access to Mount Hyjal or the one for Malygos to grant access to a smaller dungeon comprising of the last bosses. This way you gain the two split raid style of TBC, allowing raiders to work on one location at a time, essentially increasing the number of ‘set menus’ to two. I feel that this would grant a lot more variation than currently exists.
There are a large number of other possible methods of making raids more interesting, and I hope Blizz are utilising some of them in the coming raids. It’s in their best interests to make their content last as long as possible to give themselves more time to develop the next lot. A quick for instance, how about a Karazhan Opera event style boss? Maybe not with the separate loot tables, but a randomised encounter would add extra variation to a raid dungeon. It worked for daily quests, and is even in the new 5 man, so maybe something for raids?
I’m sure that there are a number of other issues relating to the situation that I could bring up, but thus far I haven’t thought of them and anyway this post has gone on long enough. Maybe I’ll make a part two if I think of enough to mention. In the meantime, if anyone is actually reading this, feel free to post some comments about how you feel about the comparison between TBC and Wrath raiding and if there’s enough good stuff I might write a response to them later.
You can’t deny that there is a difference. Admittedly Classic WoW had a lot of long raids too, however since I missed out on of those, I am completely unqualified to talk about their length and structure. A quick blast through for achievements doesn’t count, that took barely any time at all. However, in the Burning Crusade, each tier of raiding was broken up into at least two raids. Tier 4 was dominated by Karazhan, but there was of course Gruul’s Lair and Magtheridon’s Lair as well. Tiers 5 and 6 demonstrate what I’m on about better, each tier contains two full length raids. Compare that to now. Tier 7 is similar to Tier 4; one dominating full length raid with two single boss raids in the form of Malygos and Sartharion. Tier 8, however, is completely dominated with the colossal Ulduar. Strangely, when you look back on it, the structure of each tier is quite varied, yet the Wrath raiding content lost all of my interest way before most of TBC’s, with the obvious exception of Karazhan; I was glad to get out of there. So, why is this so? I visited Serpentshrine Caverns and Tempest Keep quite often during the time between Mount Hyjal and Black Temple, yet I don’t believe I’ve had a desire to set foot in Naxxramas on my main since Ulduar’s release.
There are plenty of potential reasons for this, however in this post I will focus on what I feel are the main possibilities, and I will go about this by comparing Wrath raids with the time I felt the happiest in raiding, Tiers 5 and 6. The first possibility in this case is the subject of variation.
Going to the same raid dungeon, every week, to do the same bosses. Five months of that can get a bit taxing really. The only variation inside the dungeon itself is the winged structure. However, due to its incredibly dumbed down nature, it took no time at all to get through it all in a week, and eventually it could all be done in one raid night. Ok, it does mix things up slightly, but as for proper variation? That’d be like saying that a restaurant with one set menu is varied since they allow you to have the dessert first. Yes, it’s slightly different to normal, but in the end it’s still just the same stuff round the wrong way. If you want to get to Kel’Thuzard you still have to do all the other wings first. Ulduar is different, yet still strangely similar. There are optional bosses, and you can choose which order to take down the Keepers in, but it still isn’t properly varied; and generally you’ll end up defeating the optional bosses anyway since someone is bound to moan if you don’t. It’s like the set menu again, only you can choose to skip the garlic bread even though it’s thrown in for free. It’s varied to a degree but you’ll still end up doing everything anyway. But you could say that raiding has always been this way, there’s never been a truly non-linear raid, but it’s only now that I’m noticing that. For me it’s probably only come to light because of it being mixed up with all the other factors.
One of those other factors is the much debated 10 and 25 mans. The option to go to the same place, not once but twice a week, just with a few less mates. Sticking with the menu analogy, it’s like having lunch and dinner from the same set menu, except the lunch is a little bit smaller. Evidently if you do what is virtually the same place twice as often, you will burn out twice as fast; and after you are burnt out and ready to move on, there’s nowhere else to go. It’s the choice between farming the same place or doing without. And judging by the sheer number of ‘goodbye’ threads on the forums I believe that’s what a lot of players did. The same happened with Ulduar. Four months of that place appears to have been enough for some players too. It pretty much is for me anyway.
Another issue that I will cover is the length of Ulduar. It’s long, very long, and I don’t see why it needed to be. The sheer number of unavoidable bosses makes reaching the end a very lengthy and tedious affair, particularly when the first bosses have been nerfed into the ground; it might save a bit of time but it all feels so dreary. I’m sure that the devs at Blizzard could have been a little more inventive with the structure. One thought I had about how it could have been done bears some resemblance to Maraudon’s structure. Why not separate the first twelve bosses into two separate raid dungeons, next to each other, then using either an attunement quest similar to the one to gain access to Mount Hyjal or the one for Malygos to grant access to a smaller dungeon comprising of the last bosses. This way you gain the two split raid style of TBC, allowing raiders to work on one location at a time, essentially increasing the number of ‘set menus’ to two. I feel that this would grant a lot more variation than currently exists.
There are a large number of other possible methods of making raids more interesting, and I hope Blizz are utilising some of them in the coming raids. It’s in their best interests to make their content last as long as possible to give themselves more time to develop the next lot. A quick for instance, how about a Karazhan Opera event style boss? Maybe not with the separate loot tables, but a randomised encounter would add extra variation to a raid dungeon. It worked for daily quests, and is even in the new 5 man, so maybe something for raids?
I’m sure that there are a number of other issues relating to the situation that I could bring up, but thus far I haven’t thought of them and anyway this post has gone on long enough. Maybe I’ll make a part two if I think of enough to mention. In the meantime, if anyone is actually reading this, feel free to post some comments about how you feel about the comparison between TBC and Wrath raiding and if there’s enough good stuff I might write a response to them later.
Saturday, 8 August 2009
The Opening Post
Greetings to the few citizens of the interwebs who are currently reading this, of course implying that people are actually reading the random gathering of words that somehow attempt to portray my thoughts. I am Hornshade, faithful celery stick of the guild Synergie on Quel’Thalas EU. I’ve played WoW for about three and a half years and while it is not the only thing in my life, it is an important one. I’ve never been compelled to write anything online about any other game before but I’ve always maintained that this game isn’t just any other game. MMOs in generally have a habit of being this way, so many connections with others can lead to vast opinions and the internet is a great tool for emptying the contents of your brain onto a virtual page and watching everyone ignore it. Or, in the case of the WoW forums, pouring no more than a shot glass full of personal views onto a page and watching everyone troll it. Which is precisely why I’m not posting anything I have to say here on the WoW forums, that would be like dipping my head in a pool of particularly vicious piranha and hoping that the most they do is complement my choice of shampoo. So this blog will contain my random musings on particular subjects usually relating to WoW that I feel that I can write enough about. It’s not trying to say that that is what I believe and everyone else is wrong. This is just my view from my particular background and playstyle; everyone else has their own style and feelings, but sometimes it’s good to see another perspective. Comments are appreciated, so long as they are constructive. Anything that closely resembles rudeness or trolling will be ignored. So, have a look round and attempt to enjoy reading my horrendous walls of text.
Also, if you have any more spare time (since if you’re reading this I guess you probably have a lot of at the moment) check out my videos at www.wegame.com/users/hornshade if you happen to enjoy watching some amateur footage of boss kills.
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