Be the game of his/her dreams!
Posted by Jay | Filed under Game Industry, World of Warcraft
I read an article over at Wolfshead Online. Go ahead and read that then come back.
One can’t ignore the key points in that article when it comes to WoW. WoW is a niche MMO. Its primary market is everyone! How is that possible. Simple. This game isn’t for just one set of customers(hardcore, casual, pvp, raid) its for each and every one of them. This stance is definitely commendable. Financially it is the most successful, it is the bar with which to judge all future projects. But who cares?
The MMO community, and more specifically is gamer base, is used to niche games. We’ve just never seen this niche. This market, the mass market has never been targeted. Take the following 4 mmos(there are 100s, these are examples I’m familiar with that you the reader may not know about) City of Heroes, Lord of the Rings Online, Maple Story and Everquest. Each of these was a niche product. Each dev house internally(this can never be verified) that sometimes and with some gamers, this game might not be for you.
Risen from Alleria made this statement. Here is a link to the coverage on Wow Insider.
Most MMO gamers have that standby game. They’ll go dabble with this game over here, that game over there. Get a real taste of PVP, go play Shadowbane or Dark Age of Camelot. Want something more casual, try Maple Story or Puzzle Pirates. Wow is that sexy standby. That girl you always come back to. The one girl you end up settling down with. Why? Because WoW has everything you want. It doesn’t do anything in what I consider the “best”. What it does do is accomplish everything with a very high, professional level of polish.
That’s why I keep playing. And that’s why I’m interested in seeing where my experience in WoW take me as well as how the community reacts to the game in the coming months/years.
Starcraft AI - A Case Study
Posted by Jay | Filed under Game Industry, World of Warcraft
I’m a big fan of the balancing of Starcraft. The asymetrical warfare. The absolute efficiency and synergy of each races units was amazing.
Starcraft historically is the best RTS ever made. Something that always nibbled at the back of my mind was the lack of assymetry in WoW. Vanilla wow had an attempt at assymetry with the Shaman/Paladin classes but forsake that route and gave both classes to either side with its first expansion. The purposeful choice on the part of Blizzard to equalize both sides has merit from a business stand point. Attract the most amount of customers and alienate non of them.
World PVP - Nagrand
Posted by Jay | Filed under PvP, World of Warcraft
I was really excited by the prospect of the Nagrand PVP daily. I tried it out and was sorely disappointed.
Pretend La la land!
Defeat ten baddies, not too bad eh? Earn a wee bit of honor, 200ish and a couple gold. What do you have to do? Defeat 10 enemies in Halaa. Super easy!
Actual Result
Unlike BGs where players consent to PvP, in the open world players rarely commit 100% to pvp. That is an issue in and of itself, perhaps another post in the future. On to Nagrand! Here are the problems with Halaa:
- Grave yards are not close if you don’t hold Halaa. Considering the defense spawns directly in town(which is a huge benefit), the distance of the graveyards on the attack are a huge deal.
- Players are accepting this quest with the mentality that it is a quest and is easy to accomplish. The issue here is player expectation versus perception.
- The open world pvp quests are competing with the new dailies. Why bother spending 15-45 minutes getting ten kills when you can spend that exact amount of time earning 150 gold. Risk versus reward isn’t a good way to describe that behavior. Value judgement is a better term. Players value 150 gold and there is more return on their time then 10 gold and 200 honor.
- If you are attacking Halaa, you aren’t just fighting other players, you are also fighting NPCs. Should the killing blow come from an NPC, you now have to pay repair costs.
- Finally, and here is the biggest one of them all: Holding Halaa gives no team any actual benefit, horde or alliance. The rewards suck. The quest rewards suck.
Considering these observations, I’m sure its just my server. I play on Destromath, horde pvp.
Possible solutions:
- Create lvl 70 rewards that are worthwhile from the halaa vendor. Blizzard just made honor rewards available from badges, maybe make them available from combat tokens. That would totally bring back large scale world PVP in a large way.
- Combat tokens are a cool idea, but I’m already trying to earn honor, why should I gather an additional resource for a crappy reward? Yes 10 resilience gem is really cool! 100 kills for the gem is actually a small price. See above for why I think the reward is hard to earn.
- Move the attacking graveyard closer to Halaa. In fact make 4 of them, and only allow characters to spawn there, if they died in Halaa. Can’t be too hard to code in.
- Put defending guards by the defenders graveyard. This will give the defenders time to regroup. Make those guards respawn.
- Make the reward for holding Halaa more worthwhile. Perhaps earn double combat tokens. Maybe increase the xp zone wide like in Terokkar. The idea is make it contested. Make the reward worth getting. Both Terokkar and Nagrand are huge stopping grounds for any player, horde or alliance, on their trek to 70. XP modifiers are really cool.
I want to state that I don’t think the new pvp daily quests are a complete failure. I think they are a great idea and have the possibility of introducing more players to the wonders that are pvp. The core issue that the above bandades are attempting to address is that pvp is player based. Give the players a reason to pvp and they will come. That means give the players more shinies.
Arena 0.5 Sets - How to get your head start in PvP
Posted by Jay | Filed under Arena, PvP, World of Warcraft
Braids over at Out of Mana beat me to the punch. Here is an excellent article on how to gear up to be competitive in PvP.
PWM - Week 1 - 3v3
Posted by Jay | Filed under Arena, PvP, World of Warcraft
Last week with much debating, we reformed our 3v3. PWM is our latest foray and we loved it. I found the class composition to be very complementary. We went 11-6. Very successful week. Here are my observations.
Kill the hunter.
Just do it. Our first match we went after another target first, lock and pet I believe to lock down the fears. The hunter own’d me in about 5 seconds. There was nothing I could do, I even pillar danced fairly well. From this point forward we destroyed every hunter first. When we killed the hunter, we won. A common group was hunter/lock/X. We killed then in this order.
I’m at my best when I can perform at my best.
We won every match when my team mates protected me from nasties. Those nasties include: Hunters, Warlocks, Rogues and Warrior. In that order. Every other class I can 1v1 effectively while they take out a target. Of particular note, Frost Nova > Warrior. This is the single best priest defense. I know alot of magesmage, use frost mage to protect your team against warriors.
already know this. If you are a new
Gear makes such a huge difference.
Duh! We already know this. There were multiple wins where I barely healed my warrior. Mages are thought of to be traditional squishies. Our mage happened to be the best equipped out of the three of us and held his own quite well.
Don’t be afraid to Binding Heal.
Its uber expensive in the arena, but I’ve found it crits more then not. Its basically a 1.5 flash heal on two targets. Egotistical Priest has a great break down of priest ablities for raids. All that information is useful. Besides, she’s got a pic of a Draenai at the top of the site!
Don’t be afraid to Prayer of Mending.
I’ve told my friends there’s nothing more rewarding then being in the arena and watching where the PoMs are coming from. #1 It let’s me know who’s being hit. #2 I don’t care about Locks with it on, it mitigates SL/SL locks. There’s a slight difference with an affliction lock(more damaging dots), but those are pretty rare and they go down like chumps. #3 It let’s me know who’s being hit. Situational awareness is key in arena.
Save your cooldowns.
This is totally counter intuitive but save your cool downs. Only use them when they are most effective! This comes with knowing general arena strats. I’ve had many times where a warrior will charge at me once, hit me then run back to the foray. They are trying to pull my cool down from me. Believe me, with the appropriate gear, save the cool downs for killing blows or ZOMG he’ll die.
Get Hit but stay away.
Arena opponents are going to want to engage you at some level. Make that which is targetting you (TWITY) get between you and the rest of your team. No, don’t let the entire other team get between you and your teammates, that means your death. Make TWITY get between you and your teammates. Most importantly, make sure your teammates know you are doing this. Being aware of what classes will engage you and what classes will ignore you is important.
Finally - Use in game Voice chat, Vent, Teamspeak etc.
If you want to win, instant communication is key.
