We've had a few builds' worth of the new 31-point talent trees released so far, so I'm going to offer some brief comments on the Fire tree and mage talents in general. In a word?
Awkward!
Most of the talents which remain are those which I expected to hang around. Master of Elements, Incineration, Ignite, Fire Power, Improved Scorch, Hot Streak, Molten Fury, Critical Mass . . . these are all recognisably similar to existing talents in the Fire tree, which fit with the schema of "something that changes the way you play" rather than "something which passively increases your damage" that Blizzard is openly aiming for. Then there are the four "new ability" talents, which are much the same as they always were - Blast Wave, Dragon's Breath, Combustion (albeit altered, and I'll come back to that), and Living Bomb.
The problem, as I see it, is that once I have taken all of the obvious PvE talents that I'd like to have as a raider, I'm left with cruft which is either obviously PvP-oriented, or involve making changes that probably won't show up at all in 90% of my gameplay. After taking Master of Elements, Incineration, and Ignite, I have to put a point in something I have almost no use for in order to advance.
Burning Soul is a PvP talent - it has its uses in PvE, but even with increased health pools in Cataclysm I doubt I'll want to stand around getting beat up enough to make investing a talent point in making my spells faster while it's happening. The priority will always be to get out of that situation. Likewise Blazing Speed and Molten Shields. Therefore all I have left is Improved Fire Blast, reducing the cooldown and increasing the range on a spell I almost never use.
The next tier is fine - Fire Power, Blast Wave, and Improved Scorch are all welcome. Well, technically, I don't have Blast Wave in my raiding spec at the moment, but it's a fun talent and it will presumably have its uses if Cataclysm succeeds in making crowd-control a more important part of gameplay. Knocking loose adds away from the healer and back towards the tank is always a good time.
In the next tier, Hot Streak, Combustion, and Pyromaniac are all interesting enough. Combustion's changes make it a very different spell, but I can see that it will be very useful for lining up multiple damage-over-time effects on a target, then popping Combustion and nailing it with a Fireball or even a Pyroblast made instant-cast by Hot Streak. Speaking of the latter, the change from "2 consecutive critical strikes" to "3 consecutive strikes within 6 seconds of each other" is fine with me.
But then in the next tier we get Dragon's Breath - again, welcome, and making a return to my spec where I skip it now - and Molten Fury, which I've found very useful for raiding . . . but there isn't enough in this tier to get me anywhere. So I have to go back and put another point in Improved Fire Blast.
Critical Mass is great, but all by itself in the second-to-last tier it's just frustrating. So what else have I got to go back and get? Impact is a PvP talent - the chances are that a 7% chance to proc a stun from a Fire Blast is going to come up at a time which is useful are pretty damn small. A stun is always welcome in PvP but will more often than not be wasted in PvE.
Improved Flamestrike is not awesome, but it's the best of a bad lot of choices - more damage and a reduced cast time can be useful when dealing with packs of trash, and it might well count towards the various effects that key off damage-over-time effects on enemies. I'll take it, but again I feel like I'm using up talent points on stuff I'll rarely if ever use, just to reach what I really want to take - and that's not supposed to happen in these new trees.
Now I can finally have Living Bomb, hooray!
My options outside of the Fire tree are actually a little complex. Do I focus, for instance, in the Arcane tree, picking up Arcane Concentration for Clearcasting, Netherwind Presence for haste, and Arcane Potency for improved crits after Clearcasting procs? In this instance, I still have to decide between Frost's mana-reduction from Frost Channeling and increased crit chance from Piercing Ice. Or do I skip Arcane Potency and instead fill out both of the Frost options, leaving Arcane Concentration at 2 points?
Obviously final decisions won't be made until I'm level 85, and no-one knows what the trees will look like now. My final conclusion on the talents as they stand, however, is that Fire still has a few places where I'm required to choose talents I don't care about at all, and ironically the interesting choices lie in what I'll choose from the other trees. Hopefully Blizzard is still tweaking Fire, and I'll feel more positively about it in the future.
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Saturday, July 10, 2010
In Hindsight . . .
. . . my decision not to write a post about Blizzard's announcement that they would implement the use of Real ID on the official forums was a prescient choice that avoided wasted effort.
Thursday, July 8, 2010
Cataclysmic Talent Changes
It's time to talk about the redesign of talent trees coming with Cataclysm.
Radical!
Frankly I think it looks like a great new design if they can get it working as intended. Obviously we don't have specific details on the new trees and class abilities - and I'll post again when we do, of course - but I think it's worth thinking about the intent here.
Talent trees have always undergone changes. Back in the classic era, they were a late-breaking design element in the first place, and at the level 60 endgame there were classes which only had one or two viable trees - especially any class which could heal.
Later in classic and during The Burning Crusade, we saw an effort to make each tree viable for at least one aspect of the game. It was accepted, for instance, that Frost was the tree mages used to be viable in PvP, and it wasn't considered important that they be competitive with Fire mages (and, later, Arcane mages) in PvE. Wrath of the Lich King evolved talents to the point where it was intended that each tree be useful in all areas of the game: dungeons, raids, arenas, battlegrounds, and solo questing. Blizzard never found the perfect balance - and they have admittedly basically abandoned fixing up our current talent trees in favour of working on making Cataclysm better - but each patch brought new tweaks that didn't presume that Subtlety should be outright weak in raids, even if they never made it competitive at the high end.
In principle, then, even this very different approach to the talent trees is not much of a departure from the general history of change and flux around talents over the last five years. If you accept Blizzard's stated goals as valid and worthwhile, and I do, then the new design promises to be very interesting and a lot of fun.
First and foremost, I love the idea that the players of new characters will be presented at level 10 with a choice to make between each talent tree, and the information necessary to make the right choice for how they want to play. If Cataclysm represents a concerted effort by Blizzard to bring new players into the game, and (on the evidence of all of the quality of life and newbie-friendly changes they've made recently) I think it does, this is probably one of the best they could have made. Why not tell new players - or players new to a class - what they're in for when they specialise their character? Let people know that Subtlety rogues rely more on stealth and tricks, Assassination rogues more on poisons, and Combat rogues on straight-up viciousness.
Second, and following on from that last, it's a great idea to give each specialisation a defining ability right off the bat at level 10. I'm anxious to see the full list, but what we already know suggests that Blizzard is thinking in the right direction. Divine Storm for Retribution paladins, Mind Flay for Shadow priests, Mortal Strike for Arms warriors . . . all iconic choices.
Some people have suggested that Pyroblast might end up as the iconic Fire mage ability, but I wouldn't be surprised if it were something more flashy like Dragon's Breath. I suspect that the new Fire tree will see Pyroblast remain a talented spell but immediately open up and lead into the talent for Hot Streak.
In passing, I note with interest the idea that Frost mages will have the Water Elemental as their iconic level 10 ability. It will be interesting to see if this becomes something of a mage's equivalent to Spirit Wolves for Enhancement shamans, or if it's going to be more like the death knight's Ghoul with an option to make it permanent, perhaps via a talent point like Unholy death knights rather than through a glyph as it now stands.
Obviously there will be more to say when we learn more. Hopefully the next week or two will see the announcement of the whole enchilada, as Ghostcrawler put it.
Radical!
Frankly I think it looks like a great new design if they can get it working as intended. Obviously we don't have specific details on the new trees and class abilities - and I'll post again when we do, of course - but I think it's worth thinking about the intent here.
Talent trees have always undergone changes. Back in the classic era, they were a late-breaking design element in the first place, and at the level 60 endgame there were classes which only had one or two viable trees - especially any class which could heal.
Later in classic and during The Burning Crusade, we saw an effort to make each tree viable for at least one aspect of the game. It was accepted, for instance, that Frost was the tree mages used to be viable in PvP, and it wasn't considered important that they be competitive with Fire mages (and, later, Arcane mages) in PvE. Wrath of the Lich King evolved talents to the point where it was intended that each tree be useful in all areas of the game: dungeons, raids, arenas, battlegrounds, and solo questing. Blizzard never found the perfect balance - and they have admittedly basically abandoned fixing up our current talent trees in favour of working on making Cataclysm better - but each patch brought new tweaks that didn't presume that Subtlety should be outright weak in raids, even if they never made it competitive at the high end.
In principle, then, even this very different approach to the talent trees is not much of a departure from the general history of change and flux around talents over the last five years. If you accept Blizzard's stated goals as valid and worthwhile, and I do, then the new design promises to be very interesting and a lot of fun.
First and foremost, I love the idea that the players of new characters will be presented at level 10 with a choice to make between each talent tree, and the information necessary to make the right choice for how they want to play. If Cataclysm represents a concerted effort by Blizzard to bring new players into the game, and (on the evidence of all of the quality of life and newbie-friendly changes they've made recently) I think it does, this is probably one of the best they could have made. Why not tell new players - or players new to a class - what they're in for when they specialise their character? Let people know that Subtlety rogues rely more on stealth and tricks, Assassination rogues more on poisons, and Combat rogues on straight-up viciousness.
Second, and following on from that last, it's a great idea to give each specialisation a defining ability right off the bat at level 10. I'm anxious to see the full list, but what we already know suggests that Blizzard is thinking in the right direction. Divine Storm for Retribution paladins, Mind Flay for Shadow priests, Mortal Strike for Arms warriors . . . all iconic choices.
Some people have suggested that Pyroblast might end up as the iconic Fire mage ability, but I wouldn't be surprised if it were something more flashy like Dragon's Breath. I suspect that the new Fire tree will see Pyroblast remain a talented spell but immediately open up and lead into the talent for Hot Streak.
In passing, I note with interest the idea that Frost mages will have the Water Elemental as their iconic level 10 ability. It will be interesting to see if this becomes something of a mage's equivalent to Spirit Wolves for Enhancement shamans, or if it's going to be more like the death knight's Ghoul with an option to make it permanent, perhaps via a talent point like Unholy death knights rather than through a glyph as it now stands.
Obviously there will be more to say when we learn more. Hopefully the next week or two will see the announcement of the whole enchilada, as Ghostcrawler put it.
Tuesday, July 6, 2010
Achievements
Instead of discussing the little information we have at this time about changes to the mage class or the Engineering profession in Cataclysm, I've decided to write about what I've been doing in the game recently: namely, earning achievements.
Diverting!
This past weekend, I finally completed the Loremaster achievement.
The real challenge was, of course, Loremaster of Kalimdor. I have to say that, despite some issues, the EveryQuest addon was really helpful in tracking down quests I still needed to do.
In the course of this achievement, I naturally earned the Seeker title for 3000 quests complete. That happened somewhere in Tanaris, I think; it's all a blur to me now.
The final leg of my journey was Loremaster of Eastern Kingdoms. I actually started with a higher EK total than Kalimdor, which is natural for a human character who avoided night elf zones back in the original game, but I figured it'd be easier to complete the whole achievement if I finished off the harder part first. It also really, really helped that I was earning the achievement on a mage who is also an Engineer; being able to teleport all over the world, including to Everlook, was a blessing.
Ascanius's final quest turn-in to earn the achievement was for killing Araj the Summoner, which I dimly and possibly inaccurately recall was a Raid quest back in the day when I first encountered it while levelling in the Plaguelands. I could never find a group to help me back then, especially since I was playing in my original California-based guild; naturally, at level 80 in Icecrown Citadel raid gear it wasn't much of a challenge.
The reason I chose Araj the Summoner actually relates to another personal feeling about the game. As I mentioned, I levelled to 60 in the Plaguelands back in the pre-Burning Crusade days. This was around the time that the original Naxxramas preparation grind was patched into the game, and Light's Hope Chapel was suddenly surrounded by dozens of NPCs from the Argent Dawn and even the Scarlet Crusade. I became very interested in the Argent Dawn and its anti-undead mission; I remember discussing how cool it would be if you could actually join in-game factions in a meaningful way, leading to exclusive quest chains and the like.
That never quite happened, although in a way the Argent Tournament works by unlocking extra daily quests once you've achieved the Crusader title is kind of like a pale shadow of it. Still, I never lost my fondness for the Argent Dawn, so a couple of months ago I went through Stratholme over and over, farming reputation with them, until I finally earned the Argent Champion title (Ascanius and my paladin Concepción have been Crusaders for a long time).
The same day that I earned Loremaster, I looked over my achievements, and realised that I was one heroic Oculus run away from earning five achievements: The Oculus, Heroic: The Oculus, Northrend Dungeonmaster, Northrend Dungeon Hero, and Champion of the Frozen Wastes. Yes, it turned out that I had never even run The Oculus on normal mode, let alone heroic, despite earning all sorts of raid achievements.
I queued myself up, and surprisingly only had to wait about three minutes. As it turned out, I earned six achievements with that single run, because my group also got the Make It Count! speed-run achievement. I did have to endure a comment of "eBay IMO" from one of my group members when I announced at the beginning of the run that I'd never been to the dungeon, given my Icecrown Citadel-10-level gear score.
Finally, after a bout of sickness yesterday, I managed to finish another achievement on my orc shaman this morning:
Yes, Mithridates is now the proud owner and rider of a Venomhide Ravasaur. The twenty-day daily quest process to earn the mount took me about a month, since I kept missing days here and there, but in the end I'm happy to have done it - and, once I inevitably transfer Mithridates to the Alliance and turn him into a dwarf or draenei, he'll have a Wintersaber without having gone through that much more tedious grind. Of course, I expect Blizzard to replace the Wintersaber grind with something much more palatable in Cataclysm, but still.
Future achievements I'm planning to earn are mostly related to raiding. Last night our guild attempted Algalon the Observer for the second time; we didn't really come close to success, but I feel like we'll get it either next time or the time after that. Starcaller Ascanius has a nice ring to it.
Once he's done, we're planning to finish off Glory of the Ulduar Raider; Ascanius only needs I Love The Smell Of Saronite In The Morning and One Light In The Darkness to earn his lovely Rusted Proto-Drake. I actually think it's the best-looking of all the raid reward mounts in the game, so I'm delighted that my preferred raid size matches up with my preferred reward in this instance! Of course, not everyone has earned the same achievements as I have; unfortunately our guild leader wasn't there when we finally earned Firefighter, so getting him that will be painful.
Then, of course, there's the Lich King. I honestly have no sense of how long it will take us to finally knock him down; even once they patch in the final 30% Strength of Wrynn buff, I expect we have a lot of work to do to nail the execution. Still, again, Ascanius the Kingslayer has a nice ring to it too!
I guess I'm fortunate that I have plenty of things left to do in the game. I still haven't been to the Ruby Sanctum, since I didn't raid last week. I'm really looking forward to the Operation: Gnomeregan and Zalazane's Fall events, whenever they become active (and I hope to have Mithridates to level 80 by that time). Then, of course, there's also the actual pre-Cataclysm events, which promise to outdo the excellent zombie plague event that preceded Wrath of the Lich King. I have my alts to work on - Mithridates is at level 74, my gnome warlock Burnadotte is at level 42, and I have my dwarf hunter Sigehelm at level 74 waiting for my wife to feel like playing her human mage again. I even have a dumbass night elf death knight bank alt, Khasemekhwy, if I feel like fucking around with a death knight some more.
Next time I post, I hope to have more to say about the information coming from Cataclysm testers. Let's hope Blizzard pushes some updates for mages or Engineering in the next beta patch!
Diverting!
This past weekend, I finally completed the Loremaster achievement.
The real challenge was, of course, Loremaster of Kalimdor. I have to say that, despite some issues, the EveryQuest addon was really helpful in tracking down quests I still needed to do.
In the course of this achievement, I naturally earned the Seeker title for 3000 quests complete. That happened somewhere in Tanaris, I think; it's all a blur to me now.
The final leg of my journey was Loremaster of Eastern Kingdoms. I actually started with a higher EK total than Kalimdor, which is natural for a human character who avoided night elf zones back in the original game, but I figured it'd be easier to complete the whole achievement if I finished off the harder part first. It also really, really helped that I was earning the achievement on a mage who is also an Engineer; being able to teleport all over the world, including to Everlook, was a blessing.
Ascanius's final quest turn-in to earn the achievement was for killing Araj the Summoner, which I dimly and possibly inaccurately recall was a Raid quest back in the day when I first encountered it while levelling in the Plaguelands. I could never find a group to help me back then, especially since I was playing in my original California-based guild; naturally, at level 80 in Icecrown Citadel raid gear it wasn't much of a challenge.
The reason I chose Araj the Summoner actually relates to another personal feeling about the game. As I mentioned, I levelled to 60 in the Plaguelands back in the pre-Burning Crusade days. This was around the time that the original Naxxramas preparation grind was patched into the game, and Light's Hope Chapel was suddenly surrounded by dozens of NPCs from the Argent Dawn and even the Scarlet Crusade. I became very interested in the Argent Dawn and its anti-undead mission; I remember discussing how cool it would be if you could actually join in-game factions in a meaningful way, leading to exclusive quest chains and the like.
That never quite happened, although in a way the Argent Tournament works by unlocking extra daily quests once you've achieved the Crusader title is kind of like a pale shadow of it. Still, I never lost my fondness for the Argent Dawn, so a couple of months ago I went through Stratholme over and over, farming reputation with them, until I finally earned the Argent Champion title (Ascanius and my paladin Concepción have been Crusaders for a long time).
The same day that I earned Loremaster, I looked over my achievements, and realised that I was one heroic Oculus run away from earning five achievements: The Oculus, Heroic: The Oculus, Northrend Dungeonmaster, Northrend Dungeon Hero, and Champion of the Frozen Wastes. Yes, it turned out that I had never even run The Oculus on normal mode, let alone heroic, despite earning all sorts of raid achievements.
I queued myself up, and surprisingly only had to wait about three minutes. As it turned out, I earned six achievements with that single run, because my group also got the Make It Count! speed-run achievement. I did have to endure a comment of "eBay IMO" from one of my group members when I announced at the beginning of the run that I'd never been to the dungeon, given my Icecrown Citadel-10-level gear score.
Finally, after a bout of sickness yesterday, I managed to finish another achievement on my orc shaman this morning:
Yes, Mithridates is now the proud owner and rider of a Venomhide Ravasaur. The twenty-day daily quest process to earn the mount took me about a month, since I kept missing days here and there, but in the end I'm happy to have done it - and, once I inevitably transfer Mithridates to the Alliance and turn him into a dwarf or draenei, he'll have a Wintersaber without having gone through that much more tedious grind. Of course, I expect Blizzard to replace the Wintersaber grind with something much more palatable in Cataclysm, but still.
Future achievements I'm planning to earn are mostly related to raiding. Last night our guild attempted Algalon the Observer for the second time; we didn't really come close to success, but I feel like we'll get it either next time or the time after that. Starcaller Ascanius has a nice ring to it.
Once he's done, we're planning to finish off Glory of the Ulduar Raider; Ascanius only needs I Love The Smell Of Saronite In The Morning and One Light In The Darkness to earn his lovely Rusted Proto-Drake. I actually think it's the best-looking of all the raid reward mounts in the game, so I'm delighted that my preferred raid size matches up with my preferred reward in this instance! Of course, not everyone has earned the same achievements as I have; unfortunately our guild leader wasn't there when we finally earned Firefighter, so getting him that will be painful.
Then, of course, there's the Lich King. I honestly have no sense of how long it will take us to finally knock him down; even once they patch in the final 30% Strength of Wrynn buff, I expect we have a lot of work to do to nail the execution. Still, again, Ascanius the Kingslayer has a nice ring to it too!
I guess I'm fortunate that I have plenty of things left to do in the game. I still haven't been to the Ruby Sanctum, since I didn't raid last week. I'm really looking forward to the Operation: Gnomeregan and Zalazane's Fall events, whenever they become active (and I hope to have Mithridates to level 80 by that time). Then, of course, there's also the actual pre-Cataclysm events, which promise to outdo the excellent zombie plague event that preceded Wrath of the Lich King. I have my alts to work on - Mithridates is at level 74, my gnome warlock Burnadotte is at level 42, and I have my dwarf hunter Sigehelm at level 74 waiting for my wife to feel like playing her human mage again. I even have a dumbass night elf death knight bank alt, Khasemekhwy, if I feel like fucking around with a death knight some more.
Next time I post, I hope to have more to say about the information coming from Cataclysm testers. Let's hope Blizzard pushes some updates for mages or Engineering in the next beta patch!
Monday, June 14, 2010
Cataclysm Changes
After a recent press tour, we have some new information about some of the features that we were told about at BlizzCon 2009.
Disappointing!
No, let's be fair. I am disappointed that the Path of the Titans mechanic is being taken out of the game, to be replaced by "medium glyphs" presumably created through the existing Incription profession. I was very interested in the "Titan cult" lore behind the Path of the Titans, and in the link with the Archaeology profession.
On the other hand, I can see why they took it out. Tying a mechanic which Blizzard themselves compared to a replacement for the 5 levels of questing content Cataclysm is "missing" compared to The Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King to a secondary profession which everyone will be working on would be like tying it to fishing pools and daily quests: a veritable cock-block for 98% of the playerbase. Gating that content by making it rely upon the progressive release of raids and dungeons in each patch cycle creates further balance issues between patch cycles. It's a complicated prospect.
Still, I hope something remains of the "Titan cult" story in the game. Since they plan to include Archaeology and make it a lore-focused sideline endeavour, perhaps Blizzard can keep the Titan cults in the game and tie it to the minor items and whatnot that we're supposed to still be getting through Archaeology.
On the other hand . . .
. . . I'm pleased by the news that the guild talent system is being dropped. Even a small, coherent guild like has members with very different focuses from each other; some of us care about raid progression, some of us care about PvP achievements, some of us like creating a million alts (guilty), et cetera. Having to make choices about what the guild's talents would focus on would be difficult for us, and not make the game any more enjoyable.
I like the idea of earning "reputation" with your guild, and buying fun things like mounts that can display the guild crest and whatnot. I hope some of the mooted "talents" still make it into the game, though, like raid-wide resurrections or cheaper repair bills.
The other news is all pretty interesting but less relevant to me. I don't care about the new battlegrounds or battleground modes, for instance, nor does it matter that guilds can split one 25-player raid into three 10-player raids, since I'll never be participating in the former.
I'm looking forward to fighting Cho'gall at the end of the Bastion of Twilight raid, and Al'Akir at the end of the raid in Skywall - and in very minor news, the addition of a second "marketplace" area in Stormwind with a bank and auction house in the Dwarven District is good news.
Hopefully the general NDA on the Cataclysm testing period will be lifted before too long! I imagine I'll have more to say when it is.
Disappointing!
No, let's be fair. I am disappointed that the Path of the Titans mechanic is being taken out of the game, to be replaced by "medium glyphs" presumably created through the existing Incription profession. I was very interested in the "Titan cult" lore behind the Path of the Titans, and in the link with the Archaeology profession.
On the other hand, I can see why they took it out. Tying a mechanic which Blizzard themselves compared to a replacement for the 5 levels of questing content Cataclysm is "missing" compared to The Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King to a secondary profession which everyone will be working on would be like tying it to fishing pools and daily quests: a veritable cock-block for 98% of the playerbase. Gating that content by making it rely upon the progressive release of raids and dungeons in each patch cycle creates further balance issues between patch cycles. It's a complicated prospect.
Still, I hope something remains of the "Titan cult" story in the game. Since they plan to include Archaeology and make it a lore-focused sideline endeavour, perhaps Blizzard can keep the Titan cults in the game and tie it to the minor items and whatnot that we're supposed to still be getting through Archaeology.
On the other hand . . .
. . . I'm pleased by the news that the guild talent system is being dropped. Even a small, coherent guild like
I like the idea of earning "reputation" with your guild, and buying fun things like mounts that can display the guild crest and whatnot. I hope some of the mooted "talents" still make it into the game, though, like raid-wide resurrections or cheaper repair bills.
The other news is all pretty interesting but less relevant to me. I don't care about the new battlegrounds or battleground modes, for instance, nor does it matter that guilds can split one 25-player raid into three 10-player raids, since I'll never be participating in the former.
I'm looking forward to fighting Cho'gall at the end of the Bastion of Twilight raid, and Al'Akir at the end of the raid in Skywall - and in very minor news, the addition of a second "marketplace" area in Stormwind with a bank and auction house in the Dwarven District is good news.
Hopefully the general NDA on the Cataclysm testing period will be lifted before too long! I imagine I'll have more to say when it is.
Monday, May 24, 2010
Beta Testing
Everyone and their surprisingly computer-savvy dog knows that the public testing phase for Cataclysm is starting in the near future.
Imminent!
I am very interested in news about and previews of the expansion. When MMO-Champion had leaked screenshots, models, and information from the pirated friends-and-family test client available, I spent a lot of time looking over it all. I'll be following all the news that comes out before the launch of the expansion, eager to hear about cool new places to see, things to do, and people to set on fire.
One thing I won't be doing, however, is playing the beta test myself.
Even I think it's a bit of a strange dichotomy. On the one hand, I enthusiastically seek out spoilers and previews, and I get excited to see screenshots of radical changes to the world I've been playing in for five years, or models of the new creatures and zones. On the other, I have exactly zero interest in actually seeing any of this stuff for myself in game before the official launch.
I think, for me, it's similar to the difference between a trailer for a film and the film itself. No matter how many trailers a film studio releases to get the prospective audience excited to see their movie, they never show you everything (even when it seems like they're trying to!), The experience of sitting down in the cinema, or in your living room with a DVD, and actually watching a film is very different from watching a trailer even a dozen times (and there are some movies, like The Dark Knight, where I probably watched the trailers three or four dozen times).
Likewise, as exciting as it is to see the new look for Orgrimmar or the ruined portions of Stormwind, it's just a teaser. It gets me excited to see it for myself. The difference, however, is that the beta test for Cataclysm, as close to final as it might be, is not going to be the "real deal".
I had some experience of this when my wife, Lexa, acquired an invite to the beta test for Wrath of the Lich King. Of course, I was excited to watch her explore Northrend, and even tried out a death knight for myself - but that quickly made the downside of beta testing evident. Not everything worked as it was intended to. When it did, every quest popped up a feedback form that seriously interfered with my experience of the game. I'm not the kind of person who gets "immersed" in my character even at the table for a face-to-face game of Dungeons & Dragons, much less in an MMORPG like World of Warcraft, but I do like the experience of the game to be interrupted by "outside" things only when I choose.
The other reason I'm not interested in the beta test is that, frankly, I want what I do to count. When I create my worgen rogue, I'm not just doing it to experience the new starting zones and then put that character on a shelf or even delete him; I'm doing it because the new starting zones and race give me an opportunity to level a character of a class I haven't successfully played before. I don't want to do all that and then have the character wiped away at the end of the beta test! Likewise, I don't want to explore all the new zones with my mage and then have him reset to level 80.
To return to my film analogy, playing in a beta test is like watching a "screener" cut of a film before all of the visual effects have been completed. Yes, it's 90% of the final film, but I'll never feel like I've actually seen the film properly until I've seen the final version - but, having seen the "screener", my experience of watching the release version of the movie will never be as satisfying. So it is with Cataclysm; I want to know what to expect and will be following all the spoilers and previews as they come out, but for me that's about building anticipation and excitement for the day when I can play the finished version of the expansion for myself.
Thursday, May 6, 2010
Raiding in Cataclysm
I'm sure that we've all seen the announcements from Blizzard regarding the changes to raid sizes, lockouts, and rewards in Cataclysm.
Different!
From my personal perspective, I welcome the changes wholeheartedly.
I'm not interested in 25-player raiding. I've done my fair share of it, during The Burning Crusade and even up through Ulduar in Wrath of the Lich King. My preference, though, is strongly for 10-player raiding; I prefer the camaraderie of a smaller group anyway, and since I don't really enjoy playing with strangers all that much - there's a reason I've barely taken advantage of the Dungeon Finder - the fact that my guild isn't large enough to run 25-player raids suits me very well.
In all honestly, although I said that I welcome the changes, they're not going to make very much of an impact on me at all. If the current system continued, I still wouldn't be raiding 25s, and therefore I wouldn't care that the people who did were getting better gear than me. The fact that Cataclysm raiding will give me the same rewards as people who raids 25s is a nice bonus - I'm not being "penalised" for my preference for 10-player raiding.
If Blizzard can get the difficulty tuned to the same level between 10- and 25-player raids, I think this is eminently reasonable. It's clearly part of their recent "play the way you want to play" philosophy.
The other side of the coin is the change from the current emblems/honour points/arena points system to the new system of PvE and PvP rewards.
I really like these changes too. Maintaining the same two-tiered system throughout every new . . . tier . . . of raiding and PvP content makes a lot of sense, and certainly avoids the problems of the current system where we have five different kinds of badges, three of which only still exist in the game for legacy reasons - they don't drop, and you can only acquire them in order to spend them by going to an NPC. True, it's not exactly hard, but what it is is unnecessary.
I also approve of the weekly cap on Valour and Conquest points. Anyone who has given it any thought at all will realise that when you can earn rewards for logging in every day and doing a random heroic, that becomes a strong pressure on players until they feel like they must do so in order to "keep up". Now, as I alluded to before, I'm not one of those players; you can count the number of random heroics I've done without taking off your shoes and socks. I do, however, have friends whose desire to be "competitive" means that they end up running dungeons every single day, even when they don't want to be doing that.
In Cataclysm, these friends of mine might end up just doing their normal weekly raiding, the weekly raid quest, and a couple of heroics - leaving them more time for other hobbies, or (more importantly from Blizzard's point of view) giving them an incentive to devote time in World of Warcraft to other forms of content, like rated battlegrounds. Many of my raiding friends are also interested in PvP, and I predict that my guild is probably going to have a regular rated battleground night just as we have a regular raiding night today.
In other news, I think my next post will probably talk about what I'm specifically up to in the game these days. Hopefully it won't be delayed too long.
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