Tank in Order, Heal if destruction, Rant if player
Posted by Jay | Filed under Game Industry
I just hit 14 on my swordmaster and 13 on my zealot. Going from tier to tier is a lot of fun except a few minor issues.
First, where are my flight paths? Seriously, there’s like 1 per region, what’s that shit about? What it does is penalize me the player for wanting to experience new content. Let me illustrate an example:
Last night, my guild wanted to get together for some early tier 2 PQ action. So, I flew out to Shadowlands in the dark elf territory to start gathering the troops. My guildies had the option of travelling to two points; (1) the first war camp which is a 10 minute run from the previous tier and (2) the mid point war camp in the Shadowlands which was again a 10 minute walk to the location. Royal pain in the butt. Total tiem to get the group together, 30 minutes! 30 minutes of travel time! Pitiful.
Second, is class disparity. DPS classes in War are REALLY fun. By their nature DPS is more fun than the support. Missing a healer means you can’t complete PQs at all. Missing a Tank means you can’t complete 50% of all PQs. That’s 50% of regular leveling content that cannot be experienced without a tank. That sucks. Mind you, I play a tank on the order side and I never have this problem.
Third, and this is more minor. Apparently alot of people queue into scenarios. I don’t buy it. I agree that many people do queue into them except that when I queue for an evening I will see the same names. So I imagine the overall population is roughly 100 folks queueing scenarios. Of course, Warhammer doesn’t show how many scenarios are actually running, so its impossible to tell.
Third and a half? Please for the love of gawd, add some randomness to the scenarios. Whatever the algorithm is, change it! I’m tired of Nordenwatch and I’m tired of Mourkain Temple. 60% of all scenario content is never experienced. Any company would find that poor practice.
I’m having a great time. I just wish it were easier. And don’t think that its any easier to have said good time in World of Warcraft. These same issues are even more excaserbated in WoW.
Importance of consent in World Events
Posted by Jay | Filed under Game Industry, World of Warcraft
With the Hallow’s Eve event in World of Warcraft, players abound are becoming infected, turining into zombies and in general having a hoot! Or are they?
There is a facination social phenomenon occurring. Many players ask for a way to “change” the world. The zombie event provides an opportunity to do just that. Why then would so many players be upset with the zombie event. One word: consent.
Historically, the opening of the gates of AQ40 participation in the global world changing event lead to rewards for all, riches and titles for some and unique equip for a select few, one per server to be exact. Players felt like they were joining a global effort! Contributing much needed resources to the war effort. If you didn’t play original vanilla WoW, this was a great event. Let’s move on.
Conversely, the recent zombie event is non consental. You’re participation in the zombie event is at the whim of other players. Much like truly open world PVP, Your experience may change due to online play. Your enjoyment of the zombie event is dependent on whether:
- You enjoy being a zombie, unable to perform regular tasks in the game world.
- You enjoy griefing to an extent. All friendly entities become hostile and all hostile entities become friendly. This is almost the definition of grief play.
- You don’t mind leaving a negative impact on the game world.
Of the above three distinctions, I argue the primary reason the zombie event is failing is due to the negative impact a player has on the game world. The majority of players want to positively impact the game world. They want their name sung to the high heavens. They want to save the day. They want to belong.
Contributing, as with the opening of the AQ40 gates, versus griefing, as with the current zombie event, are two distinct activities for any human. You’ll find in most psychology document that the need to contribute to the greater whole is intrinsically built into the human species.
The majority of players in the World of Warcraft game space would GLADLY join the fight to repel the zombie invasion, provided the zombie invasion was NPC based.
If I were a historian of MMO design, I would strongly discourage the griefing nature of the zombie world event in favor of world events where the player can positively impact the game environment.
Why I’m not playing Disc until 80.
Posted by Jay | Filed under PvP, World of Warcraft
I’m not playing discipline again until 80. I’ve had it! Gone are the days for me where I will happily sit behing the front line of various DPS and keep people alive ( healing ) or try to get everyones attention so my buddies can do their stuff ( priest tanking ). Each of these actions are gone for the priest for many reasons.
PVP players are already used to stacking 2-3 dps on a discipline priest to take em down. Pre-3.02 a D priest could certainyl live with that and excel! Since we’ve trained the player base to do this, post-3.02 2-3 dps on a tanking discipline priest takes me down in 5 seconds. I don’t even get to heal myself most of the time.
Yes. I am whining about priest tanking!
On the other hand! Shadow is WAY fun. 4 dots, dispel still works and as long as I’m on my game, a longer mass dispel is no longer detrimental. Haha, get it?
Overall, I applaud Blizzard for the change. From what I can see, they’re pushing raiding and pvp to be more frenetic, more decisive and more open ended. Everyone has a little bit of everything with one or two specialties. Enough ball pading, here’s some pointers since most of Discipline will play the same.
- Mana drain is less important because fights will be over quicker.
- Fear bomb is a potent weapon. 3 seconds is HUGE in pvp right now. Like 12k HP to dead huge.
- Learn how to pillar dance. Put your left hand on WASD and learn to turn and camera pivot with your right hand. Reverse that if you’re left handed.
- DO NOT MOUSE CLICK. Learn to use the key binding menu to create SHIFT + AlphaNumeric and CTRL + Alphanumeric to cast spells.
- Throw shield around.. like a bad analogy that I can’t think of right now.
- Target health can be displayed as a number now. When you’re target is at 4k life, queue up mind blast + Shadow Word: Death. Bring that target DOWN!
- Discipline priests are great for single target healing, but you HAVE to learn to play offensively to survive. The best defense ( YOU! ) is to have a strong offense ( situation awareness ).
That’s all I have to say until I start arenaing at 80. Enjoy the freebies, raid where you can. Go kill Illidan. Just go!
Rerollmuch - 70 doesn’t work, and waiting till 80.
Disc Priest 3.02 Build - First impressions
Posted by Jay | Filed under PvP, World of Warcraft
There’s a lot of subtle differences when it comes to the new discipline.
- You’ll spend the majority of your time at 35% mana. Its wierd but it happens.
- You MUST live through the opening burst. If you can survive for 5-7 seconds you’ll live through the encounter.
- Mana burn is much more important.
- Shield + Aegis + Many damage reductions = Your heal target will not die if you chain flash heal. This in itself is a HUGE change.
- Range and pillar dancing is even more important then it was before.
I really want to be fair to you guys and give you a full review of the new talents and changes to Disc Priest PVP. I’ll need to run more BGs and more Arena matches to get a true(er) feel for the changes. Next week I’ll have a full talent run down. Stay tuned.
This is what I’m running right now. Be wary of disc priest tanking. Offense overall for everyone, including YOU, has increased.
The truth about War and WoW IMHO
Posted by Jay | Filed under Game Industry, PvP
I’ve been struggling since release to communicate anything revolving a comparison between these two games. Is it the game mechanics? Maybe. Is it the newness of Warhammer? I doubt it. Here’s my take.
The pure game mechanics of Warhammer Online as a healer are more fun than WoW. I always feel tough. I always have 4 or more abilities to use during an encounter. I can help out during any situation, offensively, defensively and support. War doesn’t need to do an itemization change (spell damage/healing to spellpower) to make items work for healers. Each stat provides both an offensive and defensive boost. For example, Willpower increase my healing output and increases the chance that all my attacks will interrupt a spell caster. Since character damage or healing output is linked to a stat and not an item, doesn’t prevent nor encourage any specific play style. That’s a breath of fresh air.
In addition to the game mechanics, I also have the freedom to level however I want. And the best part is that I can join a scenario (BGs in War) and will have my level adjusted to 3 levels below the max for that tier. This means I can ALWAYS PVP COMPETITIVELY. I am never limited by my level to participate in any activity Warhammer has to offer. My survivability increases as I get better gear, that has stayed the same, but overall I can enjoy and level while playing the game that I choose, pvp or pve. Now that’s a great feature.
So the last two points are REALLY great for Warhammer. Let’s talk about WoW, because no matter what, I just spent 4 days playing World of Warcraft. More then 30 hours since last Thursday to get my toons to 60. And I’ll keep coming back for more. Here’s what WoW does awesomely.
WoW has 24 different classes. Yes, there’s only 8 when you make a character. As you level there is a distinct difference as you spend talents points. I recently changed my paladin from prot to ret at level 60. They play completely different.
WoW looks better, period. There’s more to see in WoW. The environment design, from a landmark and viewing distance stand point, is years ahead of Warhammer. Every new area feels like a different experience. If you don’t believe me travel from Hellfire Peninsula to Zangarmarsh to Terrokar Forest. Notice how your screen went from Red to Blue to Green? Yeah well your brain noticed! In War, I’m tired of looking at forests and trees. Really tired.
WoW gets the community. Having years more experience then Mythic, Blizzard is standing on the shoulders of Battlenet, Online Diablo, Starcraft and Warcraft play experienced professionals to create the community of World of Warcraft. When Mythic fixes the community and social mechanics of Warhammer Online, then we’ll start to see some really interesting cross over.
Finally some quick notes about character development and customization. Being a purchaser of Collector’s Edition versions of MMO I play here’s the different between the two.
WoW gives me a title and a non combat pet. The title isn’t even in the game yet. Tomorrow it will be!
Warhammer gives me 3 titles to choose from, a unique head for my character based on gender and race, unique trophies to attach to my armor that SHOW UP IN GAME and… a 3 day head start.
Winnar Warhammer for collector’s edition.
Summary:
I’ll be playing World of Warcraft as my main mmo of choice. No matter what Warhammer does, it cannot compete with playing World of Warcraft with 15 of my closest friends.
I’ll be maintaining and playing Warhammer Online because it really IS a step up in MMOs. I want to follow it because I want to see what happens in the end game and how the community works together. I believe Warhammer created the next iteration on PVP design in a traditional MMORPGs. I just know, and it breaks my heart, that it takes competitors and a competitors compelling feature set to force Blizzard to innovate on its flagship title. If Blizzard ever decided to light the fire under its own butt and truly force itself to innovate, it would… what? Dominate more? LAWL!
