Archive for July, 2009
July 31st, 2009
Congratulations! You’ve bested the bosses in 25-man Naxx and Kel’Thuzad is dead. You have one last trial to deal with: distributing loot. He drops Cape of the Unworthy Wizard, Betrayer of Humanity, Crown of the Lost Protector, and Crown of the Lost Vanquisher- and everybody wants a piece.
There’s something “Lord of the Flies”-esque about the way that Blizzard drops loot and then allows players to decide who gets it. DKP, Loot Council, Biggest Upgrade, Two Token, simple rolls. Every system is flawed. Someone is going to walk away unhappy. For GMs/RLs I give you this advice: be fair, be consistent, and brace yourselves. Odds are good, someone is going to be unhappy and you’re going to have to deal with it.
But this column isn’t for GMs/RLs. Jealousy, the green eyed monster is one of the worst adversaries in WoW. Guilds have fallen apart over loot decisions and overall loot practices. In most cases leadership tries to be fair- with an eye on progression. A good GM doesn’t play favorites when it comes to loot. With good leadership, you can count on decisions that strengthen the team as a whole.
Continue reading We Have a Tabard: The green-eyed monster
Filed under: Ranking, Guilds, Features, Raiding, (Guild Leadership) We Have a Tabard
We Have a Tabard: The green-eyed monster originally appeared on WoW.com on Fri, 31 Jul 2009 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
July 31st, 2009
Note: This post is from a high-level perspective of what is “fun”. I fully admit that I am not an experienced PvP player, and am just going by what is fun or not for myself. I am not calling for any specific class to be nerfed and/or buffed in a vacuum.
Crowd Control–by which I mean effects that cause a player to temporarily lose control of her character–is an important part of PvP. It adds a second layer of strategy over just inflicting and healing damage. To make an analogy, Crowd Control is like executing a pin in chess. You prevent a piece from being used, without actually needing to capture it.
But Crowd Control is also very frustrating to play against. No one likes losing control of their character, even if only for a short while. So Crowd Control is in somewhat of an awkward position. It needs to exist, to add that extra level of complexity, but it also needs to be kept in check or games become miserable.
There are two situations where Crowd Control in WoW goes over the boundary, in my opinion. The first situation is being able to lock down a character for an excessively long time with multiple abilities. At this point, you are simply not being allowed to play, which is extremely frustrating.
The second situation is being killed while being affected by Crowd Control. The primary culprits here are Stuns and Fears. No one likes being stunned and then blown up. It feels very unfair, like the player is unable to even try to defend themselves.
I would offer two suggestions for WoW PvP:
- All abilities which cause a player to lose control of her character share diminishing returns. No more categories for different types of Crowd Control. Treat them all equally.
- In PvP, all abilities which cause a player to lose control of her character break on receiving damage. This includes Stuns and Fears.
The first change already somewhat exists in WoW. Most abilities are separated into categories, and abilities in each category share diminishing returns. This just removes distinctions between different types of Crowd Control.
The second change is the bigger one, and would probably require balance adjustments. If necessary, glyphs or talents like [Glyph of Polymorph] could be added to make Stuns or Fears more usable.
Crowd Control is necessary in PvP, but it can also be overused and make the game less fun. Separating out Crowd Control from dealing damage lessens the frustration in PvP, and would remove a major source of irritation between classes.
July 31st, 2009
World of Warcraft is finally getting back up on its feet in China, but it seems that it didn’t do so without making some concessions to China’s censorship. We know that when The9 was still in charge, they had to make multiple graphical edits to the game to avoid showing off exposed bones, such as altering the Forsaken models and turning player corpses into gravestones, rather than a skeleton heap.
Now that NetEase is in charge, they’ve had to make some changes to the game as well, though perhaps not as substantial. Potentially funnier, though. According to this Chinese website, severed heads and skulls have been covered up. Literally. Item icons that would show heads or skulls in other regions of the world are now bags, chests and crates in China. This includes things like Van Cleef’s Head, and even spell icons like the ones used by Ruin and Improved Corruption have been replaced by bags.
Continue reading WoW China hit with more censorship upon relaunch
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Blizzard, News items
WoW China hit with more censorship upon relaunch originally appeared on WoW.com on Thu, 30 Jul 2009 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
July 30th, 2009
We here at WoW.com are on a Daily Quest to bring you interesting, informative and entertaining WoW-related links from around the blogosphere.
- Skeleton Jack covers a pair of dual wield builds for Death Knights in Patch 3.2, when dual wielding will make a comeback for the class.
- Nourish has yet another tasty treat for us: Broken Isles Iced Tea. I’m a little confused, though. I think they forgot the booze!
- Runeforge Gossip thinks that WoW’s PvP could learn a few things from DotA.
- This link has absolutely nothing to do with WoW whatsoever, but it has inspired me to make a few strips of bacon with whatever I decide to have for dinner tonight.
Filed under: The Daily Quest
The Daily Quest: Booze and bacon originally appeared on WoW.com on Wed, 29 Jul 2009 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
July 30th, 2009
What is the ideal period for content that is meant to be repeated?
For example, WoW has quests which you can do once per day. Raid dungeons, on the other hand, can be done once per week. Is one time interval better than the other?
Part of the issue is that rewards tend to map towards how often the content can be repeated. The shorter the period, the smaller the reward is. Dailies in WoW tend to reward about 10 gold. Rewards are balanced assuming that people will do the content as often as possible. This is because there are people who will do the content as much as humanly possible.
Instead of having a daily quest which rewards 10g, would it be better to have a weekly quest that rewarded 70g?
I think it comes back to how people play. Are people (who are working on repeatable content) more likely to log in every day for small amounts of time, or do they log in less often but for longer play sessions? My personal thought is that the second alternative is a better fit for most lifestyles. Balancing around a period of a week might be better than balancing around a day. You could even make the quests a bit more involved.
However, there are two repeatable quests which I think are good as dailies: The daily Heroic Dungeon and the daily Battleground. These quests work best when there is a large pool of potential players, and having a fresh quest each day means that it will be easier to find a group.
To sum up, repeatable solo content and fixed group content are better off on a weekly basis, as this allows players to better make use of the time they have available, without being pushed to play every day. However, repeatable ad hoc group content is best on a daily basis, to make forming groups as easy as possible.
July 30th, 2009
Last night the Red Devils actually managed to put together a 25-man raid and even had a few people on the wait list! This was a big change from our latest experiences where we wait until 7:30 or 8:00 (our raid time is supposed to start at 7:00) and then have to call the raid due to a lack of numbers. We have been recruiting heavily and our Guild Leader (Aniraa) has done a yeoman’s job of scouring recruitment sites looking for suitable new members. Her efforts appear to be paying off and I give her a big Red Devils salute. Thank you, Aniraa!
So, we now have some new members that are learning how the Red Devils work together. Given our performance last night, things are looking up for us. We were able to clear Vault of Archavon, then headed to Ulduar and successfully downed Flame Leviathan, XT-002, Razorscale, Ignis, the Iron Council and Kologarn before calling it a night. Not too bad! We only wiped while attempting to do the Iron Council in a hard mode. We made a few attempts, then fell back to the standard approach and easily downed all three Councilmen.
But, that’s not to say we didn’t have some close calls. In particular, we very nearly wiped on Ignis. Fortunately, we had one very savvy shadow priest (Hunterpayne) that was able to keep himself alive long enough to give the finishing blow to Ignis. Everyone else was face down on the floor! Take a look at the screen shot. There’s Hunterpayne in the lower left with his battle bot winding up for another cast just in case Ignis decides to get back up again. The raid frames tell the story… we are all dead. Nice save, Hunterpayne and congratulations on soloing Ignis the Furnace Master!
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July 29th, 2009
Recently, I decided to do something with all those Emblems of Heroism/Valor that were clogging up my currency tag, and so bought myself the heirloom shoulders and Bloodied Arcanite Reaper. I soon found myself in possession of a level 80 death knight (messing about with Frost and Blood specs, waiting for 3.2 to see if Dual Wielding becomes viable again) and thus, had a dilemma. There’s only three classes that can wear the Polished Spaulders of Valor and I have two of them at 80 now. So what to do?
Rather than bank them in the hopes that they’ll work in the expansion (I don’t think they will, because it’s not like Blizzard to put out an expansion and then let you cheat your way through it the first time) I decided I’d try another paladin. The last one was horde side, and my burning vitriolic hatred of blood elves made him very, very hard to level. I mean, they twirl around when you jump! I hate that!
Continue reading Breakfast Topic: Is this too easy?
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Virtual selves, Odds and ends, Breakfast topics, Classes, Alts
Breakfast Topic: Is this too easy? originally appeared on WoW.com on Wed, 29 Jul 2009 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
July 28th, 2009
It’s the middle of the week again and once more unto the breach, my friends. Yes, tomorrow is maintenance Wednesday for European players. Fortunately, we told you this morning how EU Blue Wryxian had spilled the beans on the reason for all the recent rolling restarts and weeks of extended maintenance for a few select realms. I always find it’s easier to exercise more patience once someone proffers a reason.
So, this week it’s time for some rolling restarts. These will take place on all realms between 5:00am and 7:00am CEST, with the usual fifteen minute warning. The following realms (the same will be undergoing an extended maintenance from 3:00am until 11:00 am CEST.
Continue reading European weekly maintenance: 29th July 2009
Filed under: Realm News, Realm Status, Blizzard, News items, Europe
European weekly maintenance: 29th July 2009 originally appeared on WoW.com on Tue, 28 Jul 2009 14:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
July 28th, 2009
Earlier today, emails started going out to those who were interested in an opportunity to attend the Laguna Art Museum’s VIP Benefit Dinner, sponsored by Blizzard themselves. The benefit will take place the night before BlizzCon, at a to-be-determined location near the convention center.
For the curious, tickets are $500 each and include the meal, a BlizzCon ticket, a signed print of Blizzard artwork, two-for-one admission to Laguna Art Museum’s current WoW-themed exhibition, and “an opportunity to converse with executives, artists, developers, and community managers from Blizzard Entertainment as well as Laguna Art Museum’s curator.” If you signed up to win a chance at buying tickets, you might want to make sure you check your email sometime soon. You’ll only have a 48 hour period to buy your tickets (limit two), so if you don’t get it done soon you’ll miss your chance.
If you’re in the area but can’t attend the benefit, don’t feel too bad. It just so happens that WoW.com is doing something around the same time and we’d love to see you there.
Laguna Art Museum releases VIP dinner details originally appeared on WoW.com on Mon, 27 Jul 2009 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
July 27th, 2009
In what appears to be an attempt to put an end to scams capitalizing on the vanity mounts found in Upper Deck’s popular World of Warcraft trading card game, the latest Patch 3.2 PTR build seems to have removed the Bind-on-Pickup restriction on the loot mounts. Originally unearthed by Boubouille on MMO Champion, the removal seems to be intended, and includes new methods for obtaining the loot items from Landro Longshot in Booty Bay (with the exception of the Riding Turtle, which reportedly remains BoP).
This means it should be easier to obtain these special mounts if players are indeed selling them for copious amounts of gold – conceivably setting record amounts at the auction house. This effectively kills the scamming method of supposedly selling desireable items like the Spectral Tiger mount. On the other hand, someone with real world cash who gets one of those mounts off eBay can theoretically trade it in game for some whopper gold. That’s kind of like they’re selling gold in some roundabout way. Either way, score one for Blizzard. It looks like it might be time to start earning a bit of money… think anyone will sell the tiger for 500 Gold? No? Drat.
Patch 3.2 will bring about a new 5, 10, and 25 man instance to WoW, and usher in a new 40-man battleground called the Isle of Conquest. WoW.com will have you covered every step of the way, from extensive PTR coverage through the official live release. Check out WoW.com’s Guide to Patch 3.2 for all the latest!Filed under: Patches, Odds and ends, Mounts
Trading card mounts no longer BoP originally appeared on WoW.com on Sun, 26 Jul 2009 22:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.