Making Patch 3.2 Amazing: Azjol-Nerub!

Sure, 3.1 isn’t even out yet and everyone else is simply excited about what Ulduar will have to offer. Me? I’m already looking to what’s ahead.

Here’s what we know:

• Blizzard has said Icecrown wont be until Patch 3.3. The content raid presented in 3.2 is a mystery.
• Azjol-Nerub was originally planned to be both a 5-man and a raid instance. This was scrapped and the remnants of the raid zone was turned into the Ahn’Kahet 5-man instance.
• Yogg-Saron was almost assuredly originally intended to be the boss of Azjol-Nerub. The storyline with the iron constructs, the Watchers, and Ulduar was originally separate and various changes to quest text and the overall storyline were made very late in development to fit him into Ulduar.
• This means that it is dangerously likely that we will not be seeing an Azjol-Nerub raid instance despite the fact that thousands of players are clamoring for it.

Blizzard: we need Azjol-Nerub. Not only would it be amazing content visually (Ahn’Kahet is the coolest looking instance in WotLK), there are various storyline developments and loose ends that could be tied up with the zone.

Azjol-Nerub - worthy of more than two mere 5-mans.

Patch 3.2 should be set up like the Sunwell patch. New quests and dailies with a new badge vendor, a new 5-man, and the new raid instance. Here’s how to do it:

Quests and Dailies

A new questhub will open up in a location called the Upper Kingdom, a part of Azjol-Nerub that is largely controlled by the Scourge. A small encampment called the Doorward is located here, led by Baelgun and his dwarves. This area will allow players to undertake a series of phasing quests, similar to those in Icecrown, where they aid the dwarves in reclaiming some of the tunnels from the grip of the Scourge.

Doing so earns the players the favor of a neutral faction of Nerubians (including Killix the Unraveler from earlier quests, perhaps?) who seek to drive out the scourge as well as the Faceless Ones even further in the depths. Players can perform daily quests for this Nerubian faction that involve further fortifying their new position in the city. Two new vendors will open up with various Nerubian artifacts available. One will have rewards purchasable via existing badges, while the other vendor will be specifically for badges and tokens found in the new raid instance.

Aside from the immediate Scourge threat in the Upper Kingdom, players will learn that an opposing faction of Nerubians exists deep in the Old Kingdom. These Nerubians revere the Faceless Ones and worship the Old God Yogg-Saron, who they believed would deliver them from the Scourge. Anguished at his defeat in Ulduar, they have allied themselves with the Twilight Cult and plot to ressurect Yogg-Saron from his remnants deep within Azjol-Nerub.

5-Man

The new 5-man would be a Scarlet Monastery-style winged instance, with 3 small wings representing various parts of the Inner Kingdom. The storyline started by the quests and dailies in Upper Kingdom will advance here.

Wing 1 – Scourge: The players have discovered that one of Arthas’ lieutenants, a powerful lich, makes its base in a nearby chamber. Any rebel nerubians that fall against the Scourge are being raised by this lich and added to their numbers. In effort to stop this, or at least slow it, the players delve deeper into Azjol-Nerub. Fighting through hordes of Scourge, they reach the lich and find him being confronted by uncorrupted Crypt Lord (whatever the living version of those would be called, that is), Anub’arahm! The lich is close to defeating Anub’arahm, intending to raise him to serve as he has the others. The players engage the lich and help Anub’arahm destroy him. Completing this instance phases Anub’arahm into the Upper Kingdom for the player, where he will offer a later quest.

Wing 2 – Twilight: In wing 2, a large gathering of Twilight’s Hammer cultists can be found making their way deeper into Azjol-Nerub. This would be an instance similar to CoT: Stratholme where you are moving alongside Anub’arahm fighting the cultists and their leaders. You will meet the head of this particular sect of the cult in this instance, but he will escape for now.

Wing 3 – Naz’anak, the Forgotten Depths: Wing 3 sees players venturing even deeper, discovering Naz’anak. Players have likely seen a portion of this before beneath Icecrown, but found themselves cut off from the main area of the city. Here players face off against Faceless Ones and Nerubian Viziers who want to see Yogg-Saron restored to power. Darkspeaker Rh’kem would make a reappearance as one of the bosses here, taunting the players that by freeing him they have sealed their fate. The final boss of this wing would be a faceless one general similar to General Vezax in Ulduar, revealing that there must be more of such creatures in Yogg-Saron’s service. Anub’arahm will once again show himself during this fight, burrowing up from beneath the ground to aid the players. Here he will declare himself as the new king of Azjol-Nerub, and claims he will defend it with his life.

Raid

The new raid entrance would lie behind the blood red door guarded by Baelgun, who holds the Blood Key that can unlock it. Completing the main storyline quest involing the 5-man dungeon will cause Baelgun to turn over the key to you.

The early portions of the raid would resemble the rest of the Inner Kingdom in architecture and design, but steadily become more organic as the players descend, as Naz’anak was. In these portions, a few more encounters with the Twilight Cultists, Nerubian Viziers, and Faceless Ones could be implemented where we learn how they plan to resurrect Yogg-Saron’s “mind” and more about their motives on Azeroth. Good lore stuff.

Continuing deeper, the depths would slowly start to change in appearance. As the players descend, they would wonder if they are indeed still inside Azjol-Nerub at all, as the walls themselves seem alive…pulsing, breathing? At this point, various fun plays on insanity could begin: strange apparitions, tilting of the screen, eerie sounds and whispers.

A Forgotten One, as seen in Warcraft 3: The Frozen Throne

The players will soon realize that even though they managed to destroy a part of Yogg-Saron in Ulduar, the creature had become so entrenched in the core of Northrend itself that it is still very much alive in some way. By this point, the zone should look horrifying, like the inside of a grotesque, living thing. Think Dead Space. The creatures here should also get really crazy. Mutated aberrations of creatures we’ve seen before, utterly warped by being in such close proximity to Yogg-Saron. REALLY play on the horror theme here.

Final Boss: The boss of this area MUST be a Forgotten One. Many players are confused as to whether or not the Forgotten One in Warcraft 3 was an Old God or not, considering its resemblance to C’thun. Now is the time to clear this up. Forgotten Ones should be immensely powerful servants of the Old Gods, but are not Old Gods themselves.

The setup should be that the players finally reach the center of Yogg-Saron’s “body” under Northrend, where a giant, bulbous, pulsing core is suspended within a large chamber. Beneath it lies the guardian of the core, a great and terrible Forgotten One. This fight should be NUTS. Have the players fight the Forgotten One and deal with all the crazy tentacles, including some that come from the living walls themselves. Bring in Anub’arahm and some other key nerubians from the Upper Kingdom to aid. At various points in the fight, the “core” should become vulnerable to attack. Repeat until the Forgotten One dies and the core bursts. Yogg-Saron is now truly dead, and Northrend can begin to mend.

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So, beyond just being awesome and satisfying tons of player’s desire to see more of Azjol-Nerub, what does the instance accomplish?

• It cleans up the 70-80 Northrend questlines and ties everything together nicely. Let’s face it, it’s really obvious that more was intended to become of Azjol-Nerub and Yogg-Saron. Saronite Ore, the corruption of Vordrassil, and various other things indicate widespread corruption from Yogg-Saron. This is not something an imprisoned being should be able to do, even if it is an Old God. By adding this raid, it explains that even if Yogg-Saron was successfully imprisoned by the titans, he remained there for so long that he was able to literally spread through the ground and become part of the continent of Northrend itself, corrupting it from within.
• In the same vein, it can answer a lot of questions. What are the Twilight Cultists doing in Old Kingdom? What are Forgotten Ones? Why are some nerubians friendly, while others are hostile and seem allied with the Faceless Ones? How did Yogg-Saron’s corruption reach so far if he was imprisoned in Ulduar? Did we REALLY kill Yogg-Saron, or for that matter, C’thun (dun dun dun)? It would clear all of this up pretty well.
• Because of the Isle of Quel’danas style setup, it would give all types of players something new and fun to do. Even casual players get to see a huge part of Azjol-Nerub through the 5-man wings.
• Because the patch both perfectly resolves a huge part of Northrend’s story and also satisfies player’s desire to see Azjol, we’re more prepared to focus on Icecrown and the threat of the Scourge come 3.3. No distractions.

I can’t think of any reason NOT to do this!

Problem: Shrinking the Game World by Making Content Obsolete

I’ve cooled off a bit after my previous rant regarding WotLK and thought I would take a more calculated look at my issue with the expansion: the amount of content offered in the end-game.

The root of the problem, I have decided, is the cannibilization of content that occurs whenever a WoW expansion is released. The fact that all other previous raids and dungeons are completely meaningless after the release of a new expansion. The game world literally shrinks every time.

Back in the days of EverQuest, a new expansion never meant the death of an old one. The new additions might allow struggling guilds to progress further than they had before, but the content was still important and therefore still enjoyable to do. Planes of Power, one of the best expansions the game ever saw, was released in 2002 yet the content lasted guilds for years and expansions to come after that. The gear mattered, the progression mattered. One of the main reasons this remained possible was that not every EQ expansion offered a level cap increase. That, and, many encounters were gear checks, therefore you needed previous raid gear to progress into new content. Blizzard clearly seems to disagree with this design, but I think the game would benefit greatly overall if they gave it another look.

Consider the Sunwell instance, which Blizzard has  said a minuscule portion of the playerbase ever saw. Would it really have been a bad thing if the level cap had only been raised to, say, 75, and the completion of Sunwell was necessary before moving on to WotLK raids? I think not. If most of your playerbase hasn’t seen content yet, then there’s nothing wrong with giving them a chance to do so. You aren’t forcing them to hang back while others get to play with new toys because that content is still new to them if they didn’t finish it. Tone the content down if you want (as Blizzard did with Sunwell, but most people still never saw it) so the casuals can get through it, but USE the content and make it matter. I would much rather do the content as it was intended than see it rehashed a la the new Naxxramas.

Consider this, for example:

Let’s say the next WoW expansion is a mini-expansion that does not raise the level cap, but adds a new, small talent tree in which points are earned through Achievements, and adds only a small continent featuring some new dailies and tradeskill quests, a few 5-man dungeons, and two new raid dungeons – one unlocking the next. The 5-mans would be immediately accessible and contain loot on par with current heroics, but with better stat allocation, as well as various flavor items such as illusion items and mounts to make it fun for those who do not need the gear. The raids would be difficult enough to require a guild to have previously farmed Icecrown Citadel (assuming it is the last WotLK raid instance) to proceed.

What this would do is add new content without making the previous content completely obsolete.

• Casual Non-Raiders could get new loot from the 5-mans, enjoy the new quests, and would become more interested in Achievements they may not have considered doing previously because it would now earn them the special talent points. This extends to all players really, as there are a huge number of people who simply don’t care that much about earning achievements currently. The points would give them something more desirable than mounts or titles to strive for. This would breathe new life into ALL content in the game, for any Achievement deemed worthy of earning these new points.
• Casual Raiders would have a better shot at clearing previous raid content they had struggled with such as Ulduar or Icecrown Citadel thanks to loot from the 5-mans as well as the new talent points. The excitement of reaching the new raid content would give them a tangible goal to work towards and the old content doesn’t have to go to waste.
• Hardcores would feel rewarded for the Achievements they already worked hard to earn, and would enjoy the headstart with the new raids since they have already cleared the previous content. They would still enjoy the new 5-mans for the flavor items and the daily quests for gold. The first raid would be a race to see who could unlock the second one first, but that raid would be difficult enough that the first dungeon must be farmed for gear in order to truly succeed. This would bring us back to an era where we actually cared about who got world first or server first kills.

In other words, essentially what I’m saying is that I think the free content updates such as the Isle of Quel’danas and Sunwell have been better for the game than the actual expansions themselves. When the new badge vendor opened up on the Isle along with the nerfs to Kael’thas and Vashj, that was one of the greatest times to be playing TBC as a lower-end raider and the hardcores were pretty happy too.

My biggest complaint was how fast the raid content was completed in WotLK, but If I had had to gear up in Sunwell to do Naxx, gear up in Naxx to do Sartharion, and so on, I’d probably still be working my way up and enjoying myself. Maybe this is just my old EQ self resurfacing, but it sounds more fun that way to me.

So, I guess my question is, why does Blizzard feel each expansion has to hit such a hard reset button? The content updates are hugely popular with the playerbase, why not follow that model more closely?

Do people really like leveling up that much? I’m going to say no, and that an expansion that was just full of end-game content (of all kinds, not just raiding) would be hugely welcomed by the WoW community. Then again, I am a raider and maybe I’m just looking at it from my own perspective too much. I’d love to get other people’s thoughts on this.

Mana as a Resource

I’ve been spending a little more time on my Mage lately, leveling him a bit more casually in between raids. The class is great fun and benefited greatly from recent changes, as I’ve said in previous posts, but I found myself looking more closely at mana as a resource mechanic.

I thought about other classes that I had the most fun DPSing on: they were the Rogue, Warrior, and Death Knight. What do all of these have in common? An indefinite resource pool.

With the Mage, the class is great fun in groups as long as I was able to keep up on mana, which thankfully isn’t overly difficult as a Frost Mage. But, if a boss fight carries over longer than normal or the group wants to move quickly, I found myself in situations where I could literally do nothing but fire my wand while I waited for mana. While soloing, this problem was even more troublesome compared to those other classes I had enjoyed, as I found myself needing to stop and drink every few kills. This wouldn’t bother me if there was some benefit I gained for having to do so, but in fact the Death Knight killed things more easily and with less downtime than my Mage.

In other words, once my mana was depleted, I was no longer having fun. This is, of course, a painfully obvious observation that everyone knows, but the point of the post is to suggest alternatives.

I think every class should be able to indefinitely sustain themselves. Games like Warhammer Online use the AP system, which is very good, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be the same as that. Even traditional mana can be sustained in this way as long as the class has abilities that allow them to do so. Take the Warlock for example, who is capable of trading health for mana, and then draining health from enemies to repelenish. The old Retribution Paladin, before nerfs, also had nearly infinite mana thanks to Judgements of the Wise. This is good class design, yet Blizzard seems afraid to give it to all classes. They shouldn’t be.

Thinking of my ideal MMO, I think I would give every class two resource pools, both replenishable. The first would be mana/energy, constantly regenerating like the WoW Rogue or Warhammer’s AP. The 2nd would be class-specific, gained by doing certain class abilities similar to Rogue combo points or various class mechanics in Warhammer.

Mana as a resource just seems like an outdated mechanic that occasionally needlessly forces a player into a position where they are no longer having fun, and not always because they did something wrong. It’s time to do away with it!

Problems with WotLK

So, I never got around to writing up my thoughts on each leveling zone in WotLK, but I don’t know that many people would be interested in that anyway. Instead, I thought I’d share some of my issues with the game as it currently stands. My last post was mostly nothing but praise, riding the high that always occurs when a new expansion is released. Now that I’ve had more time with it, my opinion of the expansion has changed slightly.

Leveling up was fun. There’s no denying that. The quests were mostly the same things we’ve seen before, but the zones were interesting and there was the occasional innovative quest from time to time that kept things interesting. The issue for me is not with the leveling game, but the end game.

It may seem strange to say this, as from a game design perspective I am generally in favor of ensuring every player can experience content, but I think WotLK has indeed made things too accessible, too early. The result is players are burning through all the content Wrath has to offer in record time.

Take Heroics, for instance. In TBC, you actually had to gear up to be able to do them. I’m glad WotLK Heroics do not have a rep requirement, but they don’t have much of a gear requirement either. They’re an absolute joke, every one of them, for even semi-competent players. They feel about as difficult as normal level dungeons were in TBC.  This results in players consuming the content at a much faster pace and moving on to the next challenge: raids. Raids that, unfortunately, suffer from the same problem.

I’d like to keep from throwing “it’s just too easy” out there, but it’s hard not to. A lot of players have been complaining about it, so I’m sure people are tired of hearing it, but it’s simply the truth. The expansion hasn’t even been out 2 months yet, and even most casual raiders have finished the content (barring multi-drake Sartharion, which I don’t even count).

Part of the appeal of MMOs is the sense of progression. I think this is a core design element. You desire a certain level of gear so that you can move on to a more difficult zone to acquire that gear so you can continue on. Making this as fun as possible is important, but I think the overall chain needs to remain intact. It gives you something to work towards, something to chase.

I don’t feel this from WotLK. I didn’t need good dungeon gear to do heroics, I just went with mostly quest gear and blew through them without a hitch. Jumping into Naxx still wearing a smattering of blues and greens was no problem at all for anyone in the raid.

Now I come to the issue of not really caring about the loot in Naxxramas either, because it feels like a “gearing up” zone, but there’s nothing to gear up for. Ulduar is some months away, and who knows how difficult it will be. If the current content is any indication, I’m probably already overgeared for it in my Tier 7/Heroic gear.

The crazy thing is that Blizzard was really great at handling this in the past. Badge loot, removing attunements after awhile, etc. There’s nothing wrong with letting casuals see the content, but when even they are blazing through it at lightning speed, you have a problem. I’m baffled at why they went so far in the other direction as to make things almost meaningless.

Speaking of Ulduar, it should have been in for release. I’m just going to say that. Naxxramas was a recycled dungeon, and while I realize they needed to retune all of the encounters for 10/25 man raids, the fact remains that it was mostly completed as far as what would normally be involved in creating a new dungeon. Eye of Eternity and Obsidian Sanctum are smaller raids. With 2 years of development time, would it have been so much to ask for raid content at least on par with TBC at launch? Naxx, Sarth, and Malygos feel about like Karazhan, Gruul and Magtheridon from TBC, only there’s no TK or SSC waiting for me. I’m waiting 6 months for Ulduar and probably another 6+ for Icecrown Citadel. I don’t see why there wasn’t time for more raid content at launch. Probably because they spent most of it designing vehicle quests.
Last minor rant: Achievements are great Blizzard, but you can’t use them as an excuse for lack of content. Many players don’t care if they earn all of the Naxxramas achievements, it’s not going to keep them going back time and time again after they’ve gotten the loot they want out of the place. 3-Drake Sartharion is not the way to answer your player’s complaints that the game seems too easy, that’s just one optional encounter that doesn’t matter much in the end anyway. Stick a legendary on the loot table next time and maybe you’ll have something.  It needs to matter more than some cosmetic reward like a mount or a title.

To sum up what I’m trying to say: when you give everyone everything, it will very quickly mean nothing to anyone.

WotLK & Death Knight Impressions

Well, Wrath has been out for a little over a week now and I’ve finally decided to take a break from playing and post some thoughts.

Short version: the expansion is absolutely amazing. The art, the music, the quests and dungeons, they’ve all improved a great deal.

Many of the things I’ve talked about previously on my blog have been realized in WotLK at least somewhat, especially when it comes to making a player feel heroic and giving them the ability to seemingly change the world around them. If you’ve played through the Death Knight starting experience or zones like Dragonblight, you’ll know what I mean. There are some truly epic quests in WotLK that are unlike anything I’ve seen in previous games, and this is with me only at level 76 and thus having not yet experienced Storm Peaks or Icecrown, the final leveling zones of the expansion. I particularly love the new “phasing” technology which allows Blizzard to create content that changes for individual players based on certain factors, such as what stage of a quest they are on. This has limitless potential for making real, substantial changes to the world for a player and I hope they use it a great deal in the future. I’ve already been very pleased with the usage of it that I have seen.

Speaking of leveling, I’ve done quite a bit of it in the past week. You might recall my last post where I talked about my experience with different classes after the 3.0.2 patch, and how I was struggling with which to choose for my journey through Northrend once the expansion hit. It turns out I chose none of them, instead giving in to the allure of the Death Knight, something I wasn’t even considering before. Thus, I went 55-70 faster than I ever have before and fast enough that I considered going for server first 80 DK, as I was certainly in contention for it by the time I landed on the shores of Northrend. In the end, I decided this was not important enough to me to sacrifice my enjoyment of the new content. I wanted to be able to stop and breathe and enjoy the zones and quests, not to mention actually eat, sleep, and go to my classes. Still, you could say the new class along with the new zones have really revitalized WoW for me, it feels like a new game and one I enjoy much more than I did previously.

I’ll be giving more detailed impressions of the expansion and each zone I adventure in sometime soon, so for now I’ll focus on my opinion of the Death Knight.

First of all, I love the complexity of the class. You have multiple resources to manage: runes, runic power, and time, the last of which is more important than you may realize when first looking at the class. It can be incredibly important to grasp how much time is left on the cooldown of your runes or other abilities, and being mindful of it can actually make a huge difference in your DPS. it’s a class that I feel rewards skilled play and mastery of the class. For me, the complexity in turn makes the game more fun. I often find WoW to be somewhat dull when I’m playing a class that is very repetitive and relatively simple to play, as there isn’t much to keep my attention, especially if I’m doing content I’ve seen multiple times as was the case in TBC raiding. With the Death Knight however, there’s enough going on and I care enough about my performance that I’m always engaged in the fight and what I’m doing. I think it’s just the right fit for me and I’m really glad that Blizzard has crafted such an amazing class for us.

Secondly, I love the talent trees. People keep asking me, “Which tree is the Death Knight tanking tree? Which tree is the DPS tree?” And the answer is always, “All of them.” This is the kind of class design I really love. Give us a role or two that we can do, and make it so that we can do it regardless of our spec. A talent spec should simply enhance which abilities you like the most, or which playstyle you favor. The Death Knight trees do exactly that. I personally went with an Unholy spec because I liked the AE capability and thought it would be most adept at switching between tanking and dps roles. So far, it seems to shine in both areas. WotLK is very AE heavy anyway, so it’s nice to be able to keep up in that area, and absolutely invaluable to have while tanking since you need to be able to hold threat on any number of mobs. I’d like to try out the other specs some time, but as of right now I think my choice of Unholy will last for some time to come.

Then, of course, there was the Death Knight starting experience. What a ride. This is the thing I’m trying to push all the time on my blog! Making the player feel like they are a major character, an important character, involved in the storyline – the starting experience pulls this off flawlessly. I can see why so many people ended up sticking with their DK when they only intended to check out the starting experience. Being so entrenched in the story like that makes you feel an attachment to your character very early on that you might not normally have. It’s really quite powerful.

It makes me wish they’d do similar things for all the other classes. Maybe some kind of new starting experience that took each class to level 60, since right now anyone wanting to roll an alt is automatically going to be turned to DK just to skip some of those levels. If they had the option of any class at 60, we’d be a lot better off. I really don’t see a downside to it, especially with RAF making 1-60 nearly effortless anyway. Who would complain? Make it happen, Blizzard!

Anyway, just wanted to give a quick update on what I’ve been doing. Four more levels to go, hopefully Storm Peaks and Icecrown are even more epic than what came before them. Like I said, I’ll be giving more opinions based on each individual zone in my next few posts, and not all of it is praise. Check back soon for those, and see you at 80!

What am I up to?

It’s a tough time of the year to be a gamer! Or a great one, depending on how you look at it. Dead Space, Fable 2, Fallout 3, and then Wrath of the Lich King all dropping within weeks of each other is almost overwhelming. I’ve decided I’ll have to push a couple of the console titles back awhile in order to make room for Wrath. Hopefully, I’ll at least finish Dead Space before the 13th.

But anyway, this blog is about MMOs moreso than console games.

Warhammer: I broke down and bought WAR despite having earlier decided not to play it. I was mostly bored with WoW at the time and wanted to see if the game was more fun with a larger crowd than that which I played with on the beta realms. Ultimately, while it is a good game, it just isn’t for me. It’s obvious to me even moreso now that I’m a PVE guy through and through. I can PVP and enjoy it, but I’m mostly more interested in exploring, questing, and dungeon crawling. While WAR obviously has all of these things, I feel they are not as well implemented or fun as they are in WoW, thus I was pulled back in that direction. Speaking of which . . .

WoW: Patch 3.0.2 is amazing. Yes, there are server stability issues, instances are broken half the time, and the lag is atrocious, but I can forgive it considering the sheer magnitude of the patch and all of the good things it has done for the game.

It took a little time to get used to classes and specs changing so drastically for me (someone who is not in the WotLK beta), but once I did I found them all so much more fun than previous incarnations. The synergy between talents and abilities has increased, the simple “flow” of combat and how the classes handle themselves improving as a result. I found myself having so much fun on all of my characters that I couldn’t decide which one to take to 80 first once Wrath came out.

Thoughts on some of my classes:

Warrior: Absolutely amazing prot changes. Prot is actually “fun” now in all aspects of the game, not just tanking groups or raids. I find it just as easy to solo on my prot Warrior as it is on my DPS classes. AE tanking ability has increased, overall threat and damage increased greatly. Like I said before, the flow of combat feels much better now with a variety of tools to use and fun talents like Sword and Board creating links between your commonly used attacks. Awesome stuff all around.

Mage: I was slightly disappointed in my Mage at first. Sure, there was a gain in power and overall effectiveness, but it didn’t have that new and exciting feeling that some other classes had for me after the changes. After playing around for awhile though, I came to appreciate some of the new talents. Brain Freeze giving me free instant cast Fireballs, or when Fire-spec Hot Streak giving me the instant Pyros was always great fun. Overall mana efficiency seemed much better for my poorly geared mage, and the class felt more complete and combat was a little more varied than the previous FB-spam.

Warlock: I only played Warlock a little bit, but I am glad to see affliction is making as comeback as a top DPS spec. I’ve always preferred playing my Lock as affliction. Haunt seems solid, and I really dig Everlasting Affliction refreshing my Corruption ticks. While I’m not destro, I think they’ve made some interesting changes there too, pushing them towards fire spells and the awesome Chaos Bolt.

Paladin: And of course, the Paladin. I picked up my Blood Elf Paladin I created for the Refer-A-Friend promotion (posted about him a few months ago) at level 60 and have been playing him the most out of all of my characters. I realize Ret is overpowered right now, but I think even after the tweaks I will still love the class and spec. The new Judgement system is great and works so much better than the previous one. Judgements of the Wise ensures my mana is almost more like energy in that I’m always regenerating huge chunks of it. It’s really night and day between the old ret Paladin where I was drinking constantly. Divine Storm is great, though I wish they could find a way to make it do physical damage in PVP and holy damage in PVE, I think that would be a fair enough trade-off rather than making it physical all the time. I really dig the aura talents as well, both the +healing from Devotion Aura talent and my own Swift Retribution talent which grants haste. This type of design where almost class-defining buffs are added on to pre-existing spells/abilities is fantastic, as I’ve said before on my blog, so it’s nice to see a lot of that in this patch. I’ll also mention Art of War, a talent similar to the Mage talents that grants an instant cast Flash of Light, as being a great boon. It encourages ret Paladins to heal their group-mates when in a party and otherwise simply eases soloing. Combined with the obviously great Sheath of Light, a ret Paladin can actually function as a viable off-healer while still maintaining his DPS. Great design overall, and I hope they don’t nerf the class so much that public opinion of them falls back down to what it once was.

Other than that, school has been fairly busy for me and I’ve unfortunately neglected my blog because of it, instead spending my free time actually playing games rather than blogging about them. I hope to restore some balance soon, and finish up my Ideal MMO posts as well as make a few more class design posts.

Also, once Wrath launches next month, expect to see constant updates on my adventures through Northrend!

Social Networking meets LOTRO

Eurogamer is reporting that Turbine will be pushing out a fully-functional social networking website tied to Lord of the Rings Online, with Asheron’s Call and D&D Online versions coming soon after.

Seeing as this concept something I just blogged about awhile back, I’m obviously very excited to see how this turns out.

Hopefully it works out well and inspires other development studios to follow suit!

Rethinking Weapon Skill

One negative to leveling so quickly with the refer a friend program on WoW is that your character’s skills are absolutely laughable once you reach 60, particularly weapon skills, since you probably only use a few weapons on the journey up. Even for characters leveled normally though, there’s a chance that the player simply didn’t use a specific weapon type much. If they receive a weapon of that type later in their character’s life, they’re forced to go and smack around trivial creatures until the skill is caught up. Trying to skill up as you quest and go about your other business is nearly impossible because weapon skill is so important in your chance to hit a mob. Thus, you are reduced to a meaningless waste of time simply to get your skill to where it needs to be and resume playing.

Building a Better Tutorial

I read an interesting article on Gamasutra yesterday that discussed the various ways people learn and how this effects a person trying an MMO for the first time. It got me thinking on what I, as both a player and armchair designer, would want out of a tutorial experience.

Social Networking in MMOs

This is a concept that has been bouncing around my head for awhile now. Social networking websites are huge, and hand-held devices are becoming more and more popular, allowing people to access the web from any location. Seeing that the social aspect of MMOs is one of the largest draws for people, it seems to me that integrating a social networking component to the game would be a natural fit.