The latest big controversy (and wouldn't it be funny if this was engineered just to divert attention away from dailies, LFR, and CRZ?) is the Brawler's Guild. I talked about it a couple days ago (just scroll down,) and my opinions have not really changed. What I think has changed is that I see what Blizzard is trying to do. It's an interesting experiment, but it is one that I am very skeptical will produce the results that they are looking for.
Blizzard is trying to create a sense of an underground.
The ultimate goal of the MMO genre is to have a game world where people really feel that there is stuff going on. Yes, most players focus on the race of getting phat loot so we can fight tougher guys for more phat loot, but at least part of what draws a lot of people to the game (before they know anything about endgame content) is the sense of a world to explore - that feeling of a living world.
One of their stated goals in Mists was to encourage more "out in the world" content - stuff that wasn't there to make you a more effective raider, but was instead to make you feel more like an intrepid adventurer, meeting new people.
Sure, if you want to be the big hero fighting the big bad, that's where Raiding (and to a lesser extent, dungeons) comes in. Historically, if you wanted to do anything at the level cap, you basically had that or PvP. PvPers have their own line of progression and do not have to focus on raiding to excel. The in-world personalities of these types of characters could be quite different - the Raider is a champion who wishes to fight against the biggest supernatural threats to Azeroth. The PvPer is either a loyal Alliance or Horde soldier, trying to get an edge against the other faction wherever they can, or they might just be a gladiator, in it for the riches and the glory. And of course, everyone could be a bit of a blend of these.
Guilds form around these sorts of interests. You might have a guild that is focused on raiding, or one that is focused on PvP (as a non-PvPer, do people actually do rated battlegrounds?)
And the player populace has different demographics defined by these interests. While many do a little (or a lot) of both, the populace is mostly the PvEers and the PvPers, two very large groups.
So, in creating a super-exclusive club that lets a single person (well, one per faction) on each server fight at a time, Blizzard is actually trying to create a small minority. They are trying to create a smaller demographic that cares about something that the rest of the players ignore.
They are trying to create an underground.
It's an interesting goal, but I'm not convinced that it will work out as they hope.
The first thing, and this would have been very strange indeed, but would have probably served the feel of the fight club better, is that they should not have announced it. The Brawler's guild was one of the big, headliner features of the new patch. While I realize not everyone delves into the patch notes every time there's an announcement, it means that a huge portion of the players are now excited to take part in it.
If, on the other hand, this had been something you literally just had to stumble across or hear about by word of mouth, it would reinforce that "underground" feeling far more, and I actually think players would love to discover that there is such a huge hidden feature in the game.
That said - and this may contradict what I just said - there's not really any way to keep a secret on an MMO. Take the hidden Klaxxi dailies, for example. Within days, general chat in the Dread Wastes is awash in people asking "how do I do the hidden daily today?" MMOs are naturally products of the internet era, and in the internet era, there's very little that can be "hidden."
Using the Black Market to limit membership to the Brawler's Guild (man, I hope we can at least go inside to take a look, even if we can't queue up) will keep people out of it, certainly. But as I see it, there are only a few possibilities for what would happen next:
1. After a while, as more people get their invitations, the numbers get out of control and the queues become absurd.
2. A cartel of players tries to keep total control of invites, meaning that only a few players ever get to experience it.
3. The content is too dull for anyone to want to do for more than a week, and so everyone gets to experience it for a while.
That's what's bizarre about this: Number 3, the one in which the content is boring enough to keep people from crowding in there week after week? That's the best option.
Here's the thing: Engineering an underground is not going to work in this genre. You either find yourself dedicating lots of resources (we can't have class quests but we can have this?) to something very few people will see, or you create something that everyone is going to try, and those who find it fun are going to keep doing it.
I would probably be one of them. I always wish I had some cool thing to fight without worrying about queueing up for an instance.
The thing is: you can achieve that underground feel with the use of gameplay and story segregation. Sure, everyone and their moonkin might know about the Brawler's Guild, but you give that place a cool, David Fincher/Chuck Palahniuk vibe, and we'll still feel like it's a cool underground club.
Blizzard is great at atmosphere - look at Darkmoon Isle.
But as it stands, the intended implementation of Brawler's Guild (and probably the way it's going to have to come out, given how far the patch is in its development) is going to just lead to frustration. It's sad to say this about a feature that hasn't even hit live servers yet, but I really look forward to the revamp.
One last thing: Blizzard, I love that you are a company that is in constant communication with its players. 99% of the time, I agree with your reasonings and usually your decisions. But the recent posts in which you have tried to backpedal, saying Brawler's Guild was not intended to be a major feature? Those just ring false. While the lore developments are certainly the focus of the patch, this thing has been billed as being just as big a feature as the Argent Tournament Daily hub or the revamped Darkmoon Faire. This thing has the potential to be awesome - if it didn't, you wouldn't be hearing so many complaints.
Thursday, November 8, 2012
Wednesday, November 7, 2012
The Problem with Boss Loot
One of the most important features in WoW is actually one that most of us who have been playing the game for a while don't even think about. In PVE, the way in which you get the majority of your gear, and indeed, the only way to get the very best gear, is to kill bosses and hope that A: the piece from their loot table that you want drops and B: that another player does not win the roll for it.
This has been the case for the game's entire history, but I am not so sure that it makes the game better.
RNGs control the game. Everything has a bit of randomness built into the system - whether your attack hits or not, if a talent proc goes off, or whether that bear you just killed dropped one of the pelts you need for your quest. When the RNG gods favor you, it's great. The one time I pugged ICC on my Horde Shaman, I walked away with five pieces of gear. When they do not favor you, it's awful. I similarly spent an entire month running heroic Forge of Souls before I got its pair of tanking boots - one run, every single day.
While one could cite the random boss loot as a way to extend the lifetime of content, it's also possible that it could be shortening the lifetime of the content - in those cases where people get what they want early on, they will feel held back if their guild is not moving on or if there is nothing ahead of them.
Blizzard has attempted to make the loot drama over drops in LFR less severe by giving everyone their own, individual roll - you either get something your spec can use or you don't. This certainly does a great deal to help with interpersonal loot drama ("You shouldn't get that staff! I did way more dps!" - a comment I despise because often it is coming from someone far better geared, who thus, of course, needs the piece less.)
But the frustration of the random loot drop is still there. Mind you, it's nowhere near as bad as it is in Diablo, where not only is there no guarantee of bosses dropping high-quality loot after the first difficulty, but also every single piece of gear has randomized (and thus, probably pretty bad) stats.
Here's what I like about the WoW loot system: The table of loot a boss has can have some character. Even if the pieces of armor simply look like tier gear, the names can have a degree of flavor. It makes a lot of sense that the axe off of Marrowgar (25) looks like the axe that he uses. It also means that you know where to go and who to fight when you want that specific item.
But beyond that, it's mainly a source of frustration.
In Burning Crusade, Badges of Justice were introduced to give long-term rewards for people who wanted to focus on heroics. Later, they decided to make raid bosses drop these, transforming them into a means to smooth out the ill effects of RNG. By 2.4, you could actually get some very high-quality weapons for Badges. This pattern was continued and refined through Wrath and Cataclysm, with Wrath introducing tiered currencies, and then in 3.2 simplifying things by making all non-cutting edge content drop the next best currency. Cataclysm merely formalized things by creating Justice and Valor Points, which would always be the 2nd best and the best PvE currency, respectively.
Blizzard claims that they felt that these currencies were allowed to run a little to rampant in Wrath and Cataclysm, overtaking the importance of boss drops.
My reply is: so? Yes, people will argue that the RNG of loot drops is what makes killing a boss exciting, but after killing a boss for the 20th time and still not seeing that sword you want, I don't think it's really excitement that you're describing.
On one hand, experimentally I'd like to see a game like WoW in which every single piece of gear was currency-based, and not random drops. You'd pick up what you needed, paying for it with the VP you got from fighting bosses. Harder bosses and later tiers would give more currency, so you'd still be encouraged to push yourself.
This being WoW, and having a history, however, means that I would not do something so radical. Instead, as in most things, my solution would be a hybrid system.
We like the personality of having pieces of gear dropped from particular bosses. You should not be able to get, say, the Claws of Shek'zeer without having killed her. But we would still have a way to combat RNG:
Items off a boss (perhaps only particular ones, if normal VP rewards cover the slots filled by certain drops) become unlocked to buy with Valor points when you defeat a boss (or perhaps after you beat it a certain number of times, like 4 or 5.) The price for these items in VP would be quite high - higher than the current max price of 2250. They would still have a chance to drop off the boss, but if there was that one piece that you really needed, you had a way around the RNG gods that wasn't just praying to them again (which is what the Elder Charm of Good Fortune is.)
So you would still likely be getting most of your gear through loot drops. The difference is that while you would be very happy to see your piece dropping, you would not be discouraged if you saw a string of kills without the drop.
The major point of all of this is that it makes things fair. Anyone who manages to down a boss is going to have equal chances at getting what they want from it. With a system like this, they will eventually get it. And at something like 3k VP a pop, it's not like people are just going to buy out all the gear they need out of the raid in a month.
This has been the case for the game's entire history, but I am not so sure that it makes the game better.
RNGs control the game. Everything has a bit of randomness built into the system - whether your attack hits or not, if a talent proc goes off, or whether that bear you just killed dropped one of the pelts you need for your quest. When the RNG gods favor you, it's great. The one time I pugged ICC on my Horde Shaman, I walked away with five pieces of gear. When they do not favor you, it's awful. I similarly spent an entire month running heroic Forge of Souls before I got its pair of tanking boots - one run, every single day.
While one could cite the random boss loot as a way to extend the lifetime of content, it's also possible that it could be shortening the lifetime of the content - in those cases where people get what they want early on, they will feel held back if their guild is not moving on or if there is nothing ahead of them.
Blizzard has attempted to make the loot drama over drops in LFR less severe by giving everyone their own, individual roll - you either get something your spec can use or you don't. This certainly does a great deal to help with interpersonal loot drama ("You shouldn't get that staff! I did way more dps!" - a comment I despise because often it is coming from someone far better geared, who thus, of course, needs the piece less.)
But the frustration of the random loot drop is still there. Mind you, it's nowhere near as bad as it is in Diablo, where not only is there no guarantee of bosses dropping high-quality loot after the first difficulty, but also every single piece of gear has randomized (and thus, probably pretty bad) stats.
Here's what I like about the WoW loot system: The table of loot a boss has can have some character. Even if the pieces of armor simply look like tier gear, the names can have a degree of flavor. It makes a lot of sense that the axe off of Marrowgar (25) looks like the axe that he uses. It also means that you know where to go and who to fight when you want that specific item.
But beyond that, it's mainly a source of frustration.
In Burning Crusade, Badges of Justice were introduced to give long-term rewards for people who wanted to focus on heroics. Later, they decided to make raid bosses drop these, transforming them into a means to smooth out the ill effects of RNG. By 2.4, you could actually get some very high-quality weapons for Badges. This pattern was continued and refined through Wrath and Cataclysm, with Wrath introducing tiered currencies, and then in 3.2 simplifying things by making all non-cutting edge content drop the next best currency. Cataclysm merely formalized things by creating Justice and Valor Points, which would always be the 2nd best and the best PvE currency, respectively.
Blizzard claims that they felt that these currencies were allowed to run a little to rampant in Wrath and Cataclysm, overtaking the importance of boss drops.
My reply is: so? Yes, people will argue that the RNG of loot drops is what makes killing a boss exciting, but after killing a boss for the 20th time and still not seeing that sword you want, I don't think it's really excitement that you're describing.
On one hand, experimentally I'd like to see a game like WoW in which every single piece of gear was currency-based, and not random drops. You'd pick up what you needed, paying for it with the VP you got from fighting bosses. Harder bosses and later tiers would give more currency, so you'd still be encouraged to push yourself.
This being WoW, and having a history, however, means that I would not do something so radical. Instead, as in most things, my solution would be a hybrid system.
We like the personality of having pieces of gear dropped from particular bosses. You should not be able to get, say, the Claws of Shek'zeer without having killed her. But we would still have a way to combat RNG:
Items off a boss (perhaps only particular ones, if normal VP rewards cover the slots filled by certain drops) become unlocked to buy with Valor points when you defeat a boss (or perhaps after you beat it a certain number of times, like 4 or 5.) The price for these items in VP would be quite high - higher than the current max price of 2250. They would still have a chance to drop off the boss, but if there was that one piece that you really needed, you had a way around the RNG gods that wasn't just praying to them again (which is what the Elder Charm of Good Fortune is.)
So you would still likely be getting most of your gear through loot drops. The difference is that while you would be very happy to see your piece dropping, you would not be discouraged if you saw a string of kills without the drop.
The major point of all of this is that it makes things fair. Anyone who manages to down a boss is going to have equal chances at getting what they want from it. With a system like this, they will eventually get it. And at something like 3k VP a pop, it's not like people are just going to buy out all the gear they need out of the raid in a month.
Tuesday, November 6, 2012
The Evolution of Heroic Dungeons
Back in Burning Crusade, I remember hitting level 70 relatively late - about eleven months into the expansion. When BC came out, my shaman, Tarbhad, was only level 30, and at the time he was my main. This was due to a combination of factors: leveling in Vanilla was quite slow, I was still quite new at the game (I thought spirit would be great regardless of spec as it would limit downtime! And that one should not focus too much on one particular talent tree, lest you neglect some of your other abilities,) and I had fairly early on discovered the joy of making alts.
It took until October or November (after a January release) for me to get my rogue, Darsino, to 70. Later, I decided to level up Jarsus, my Paladin, thanks to my discovery of how awesome it feels to tank. So by the time I hit 70 on what would become my main, many players had been at level 70 for nearly a year. This was back in the days when threat was a serious issue - the definition of good dps was one that would never pull off the tank. People would compliment good tanks by saying "wow, I can't pull off of you," as if this is something that should be regularly possible.
The concept for heroics in Burning Crusade was that they should be quite difficult indeed. In fact, the general consensus was that heroic 5-man dungeons were more difficult than Karazhan, the "big raid" of tier 4. (Karazhan was extremely popular for this reason, as well as the fact that it was the only 10-man raid, and was also goddamn cool - seriously, while they should never change Karazhan in a revamp, I would be absolutely overjoyed to see them make a "sequel raid" à la Blackwing Descent. I would be lying if I said I hadn't idly written ideas for a "Lower Karazhan" raid.)
Anyway, the point is that the barrier to entry for heroic dungeons was pretty intense, especially for tanks, though the need for good crowd control options and top-notch performance by dps and healers meant everyone really had to push to get into them. With no dungeon finder, you had to convince people that you were worth taking, and of course most people hold others to higher standards than themselves. Thankfully, there were seven normal-mode level 70 dungeons (and in fact, they rewarded the same gear on normal and heroic mode, only with extra epic loot off the final boss) so you still had stuff to do if you weren't going into heroics.
Wrath of the Lich King dialed down the difficulty to a fair degree. While you were still likely to wipe on occasion, and even hit a wall at times (Loken in Heroic Halls of Lightning was one of the most infamous) and you did need to gear up to a degree in the four normal-mode level 80 dungeons, there was less coordination required and by the time people had Naxxramas-level gear, heroics could be cleared with ease. (By the end of the expansion, most heroics were completed at breakneck speeds, often lasting a mere 10-15 minutes or so.)
While Wrath was a very popular expansion (frankly, it was my favorite,) there was a very, very vocal minority that complained it was too easy. Admittedly, the ease of the heroics led to a certain intolerance of slower runs or players with low dps, but for the most part it was fun. Blizzard attempted to fix this in Cataclysm by returning to the Burning Crusade-difficutly of heroics (and also got rid of epic rewards in heroics, a decision I find sad as it was always fun to get that super piece of gear on the final boss.) The result was that many of these dungeons were fairly brutal, and in fact I think a very large number of people quit the game because of it. Eventually, the 4.3 Hour of Twilight heroics brought things back down to Wrath levels, or possibly easier.
So now we come to Mists. The definition of a heroic dungeon has changed. Oddly, it has actually become what I originally thought it would be when leveling up in Burning Crusade. There are no "level cap dungeons," like Arcatraz, Utgarde Pinnacle, or Grim Batol anymore. Instead, upon hitting level 90, and assuming you've at least done a fair amount of Townlong Steppes and Dread Wastes for quest rewards, you are more than geared enough for these dungeons.
We are, in greens and quest blues, at a place where we had been with Wrath heroics when dressed in tier 9 or 10 epics.
At least for now, the only seriously challenging 5-man content is, appropriately enough, Challenge Mode. This new feature is not exactly "double heroic mode," though it is more difficult. It does not reward gear (other than stat-less but very cool-looking transmog sets) and also does not reward you for being well-geared, as your iLevel is downgraded to the maximum. I do not know how popular this feature is, and while I'm sure I'd like to try it out at some point, the lack of gear rewards and the hardcore bent of the feature mean it's probably not for me. Anyway, the point is that for most people, there's basically no barrier to entry for 5-man content.
Blizzard has claimed that they want to focus people on the LFR side of things in order to progress through content (assuming they aren't raiding normal or heroic modes,) as they feel that it was too easy to skip raid content in the past thanks to the very high-quality epics gained from new dungeons, such as the 232 (equivalent to Trial of the Crusader) gear coming out of the Frozen Halls dungeons in 3.3, or the 378 (equivalent to Firelands) gear coming out of the Hour of Twilight dungeons in 4.3.
On one hand, I get their reasoning. Ulduar was famous for being both one of, if not the best raid ever made, and also being too-quickly pushed aside in favor of the far inferior Trial of the Crusader. There was far less incentive to run the epic, 13 + 1 boss raid (the +1 being Algalon) with gorgeous environments and awesome-looking gear when the 5-boss raid almost entirely taking place in the same room and with no trash whatsoever was giving out far superior gear. The 5-man added with Trial of the Crusader awarded 219 epics, which is what 10-man Ulduar gave out, so you could, after running Trial of the Champion enough and gearing up with Emblems of Conquest (which were the 1-per heroic dungeon boss in patch 3.2) just head directly into Trial of the Crusader without ever touching Ulduar.
A similar thing happened in Cataclysm, with the Hour of Twilight dungeons granting perfectly good gear to get started in Dragon Soul, which meant you could pretty much ignore Firelands.
So the intention, apparently, with Mists, is that they want non-regular raiders to use LFR in order to gear up for the next tier, rather than running 5-mans. This way, you'll see the raid content leading up to the final raid.
The problem I have is that LFR, perhaps inevitably, sucks. Oh, as a way to see the content you would not otherwise, I am fully in favor of it. After banging my head up against tier 11 and finally only downing a single boss in Firelands, I all but gave up hope that I would ever fight Deathwing, yet only a couple weeks after 4.3 was released, I got to destroy the destroyer and see the epic conclusion to the expansion.
The point of LFR, as it was originally introduced, was to let non-raiders see the big moments previously only available to raiders, and I think it does that fine. But as a way to gear up?
I am not suggesting that they get rid of gear from LFR - this will keep people incentivized to run it and thus provide groups for those who have not yet seen the content. But I also think that a robust stepping-stone system in the form of new heroics with every raid patch has been a very welcome and enjoyable addition to the game. Sure, the Zuls were a pain in the ass, but I thought (and I think a lot of people would agree) that the Frozen Halls and the Hour of Twilight heroics were great (ok, Hour of Twilight itself was a bit bland, but still good! An escort where the dude you're escorting holds his own!)
The mere existence of LFR means that people who want to see the raid content will see it. In the months and months that a raid will be out (and even after, because presumably we will still be able to queue for Mogu'shan Vaults when the Orgrimmar raid is out) people will certainly be able to see it, and be able to appreciate the work that was done. Frankly, even if we wind up outgearing the old LFR raids, I imagine anyone who is curious will at least check them out.
In all honesty, I think that heroics should continue to serve the function that they have in Wrath and Cataclysm - providing something that can be done many times a week for a chance at decent gear and valor points to potentially buy better gear. We're still very early in Mists, so we'll have to wait and see what Blizzard winds up doing.
It took until October or November (after a January release) for me to get my rogue, Darsino, to 70. Later, I decided to level up Jarsus, my Paladin, thanks to my discovery of how awesome it feels to tank. So by the time I hit 70 on what would become my main, many players had been at level 70 for nearly a year. This was back in the days when threat was a serious issue - the definition of good dps was one that would never pull off the tank. People would compliment good tanks by saying "wow, I can't pull off of you," as if this is something that should be regularly possible.
The concept for heroics in Burning Crusade was that they should be quite difficult indeed. In fact, the general consensus was that heroic 5-man dungeons were more difficult than Karazhan, the "big raid" of tier 4. (Karazhan was extremely popular for this reason, as well as the fact that it was the only 10-man raid, and was also goddamn cool - seriously, while they should never change Karazhan in a revamp, I would be absolutely overjoyed to see them make a "sequel raid" à la Blackwing Descent. I would be lying if I said I hadn't idly written ideas for a "Lower Karazhan" raid.)
Anyway, the point is that the barrier to entry for heroic dungeons was pretty intense, especially for tanks, though the need for good crowd control options and top-notch performance by dps and healers meant everyone really had to push to get into them. With no dungeon finder, you had to convince people that you were worth taking, and of course most people hold others to higher standards than themselves. Thankfully, there were seven normal-mode level 70 dungeons (and in fact, they rewarded the same gear on normal and heroic mode, only with extra epic loot off the final boss) so you still had stuff to do if you weren't going into heroics.
Wrath of the Lich King dialed down the difficulty to a fair degree. While you were still likely to wipe on occasion, and even hit a wall at times (Loken in Heroic Halls of Lightning was one of the most infamous) and you did need to gear up to a degree in the four normal-mode level 80 dungeons, there was less coordination required and by the time people had Naxxramas-level gear, heroics could be cleared with ease. (By the end of the expansion, most heroics were completed at breakneck speeds, often lasting a mere 10-15 minutes or so.)
While Wrath was a very popular expansion (frankly, it was my favorite,) there was a very, very vocal minority that complained it was too easy. Admittedly, the ease of the heroics led to a certain intolerance of slower runs or players with low dps, but for the most part it was fun. Blizzard attempted to fix this in Cataclysm by returning to the Burning Crusade-difficutly of heroics (and also got rid of epic rewards in heroics, a decision I find sad as it was always fun to get that super piece of gear on the final boss.) The result was that many of these dungeons were fairly brutal, and in fact I think a very large number of people quit the game because of it. Eventually, the 4.3 Hour of Twilight heroics brought things back down to Wrath levels, or possibly easier.
So now we come to Mists. The definition of a heroic dungeon has changed. Oddly, it has actually become what I originally thought it would be when leveling up in Burning Crusade. There are no "level cap dungeons," like Arcatraz, Utgarde Pinnacle, or Grim Batol anymore. Instead, upon hitting level 90, and assuming you've at least done a fair amount of Townlong Steppes and Dread Wastes for quest rewards, you are more than geared enough for these dungeons.
We are, in greens and quest blues, at a place where we had been with Wrath heroics when dressed in tier 9 or 10 epics.
At least for now, the only seriously challenging 5-man content is, appropriately enough, Challenge Mode. This new feature is not exactly "double heroic mode," though it is more difficult. It does not reward gear (other than stat-less but very cool-looking transmog sets) and also does not reward you for being well-geared, as your iLevel is downgraded to the maximum. I do not know how popular this feature is, and while I'm sure I'd like to try it out at some point, the lack of gear rewards and the hardcore bent of the feature mean it's probably not for me. Anyway, the point is that for most people, there's basically no barrier to entry for 5-man content.
Blizzard has claimed that they want to focus people on the LFR side of things in order to progress through content (assuming they aren't raiding normal or heroic modes,) as they feel that it was too easy to skip raid content in the past thanks to the very high-quality epics gained from new dungeons, such as the 232 (equivalent to Trial of the Crusader) gear coming out of the Frozen Halls dungeons in 3.3, or the 378 (equivalent to Firelands) gear coming out of the Hour of Twilight dungeons in 4.3.
On one hand, I get their reasoning. Ulduar was famous for being both one of, if not the best raid ever made, and also being too-quickly pushed aside in favor of the far inferior Trial of the Crusader. There was far less incentive to run the epic, 13 + 1 boss raid (the +1 being Algalon) with gorgeous environments and awesome-looking gear when the 5-boss raid almost entirely taking place in the same room and with no trash whatsoever was giving out far superior gear. The 5-man added with Trial of the Crusader awarded 219 epics, which is what 10-man Ulduar gave out, so you could, after running Trial of the Champion enough and gearing up with Emblems of Conquest (which were the 1-per heroic dungeon boss in patch 3.2) just head directly into Trial of the Crusader without ever touching Ulduar.
A similar thing happened in Cataclysm, with the Hour of Twilight dungeons granting perfectly good gear to get started in Dragon Soul, which meant you could pretty much ignore Firelands.
So the intention, apparently, with Mists, is that they want non-regular raiders to use LFR in order to gear up for the next tier, rather than running 5-mans. This way, you'll see the raid content leading up to the final raid.
The problem I have is that LFR, perhaps inevitably, sucks. Oh, as a way to see the content you would not otherwise, I am fully in favor of it. After banging my head up against tier 11 and finally only downing a single boss in Firelands, I all but gave up hope that I would ever fight Deathwing, yet only a couple weeks after 4.3 was released, I got to destroy the destroyer and see the epic conclusion to the expansion.
The point of LFR, as it was originally introduced, was to let non-raiders see the big moments previously only available to raiders, and I think it does that fine. But as a way to gear up?
I am not suggesting that they get rid of gear from LFR - this will keep people incentivized to run it and thus provide groups for those who have not yet seen the content. But I also think that a robust stepping-stone system in the form of new heroics with every raid patch has been a very welcome and enjoyable addition to the game. Sure, the Zuls were a pain in the ass, but I thought (and I think a lot of people would agree) that the Frozen Halls and the Hour of Twilight heroics were great (ok, Hour of Twilight itself was a bit bland, but still good! An escort where the dude you're escorting holds his own!)
The mere existence of LFR means that people who want to see the raid content will see it. In the months and months that a raid will be out (and even after, because presumably we will still be able to queue for Mogu'shan Vaults when the Orgrimmar raid is out) people will certainly be able to see it, and be able to appreciate the work that was done. Frankly, even if we wind up outgearing the old LFR raids, I imagine anyone who is curious will at least check them out.
In all honesty, I think that heroics should continue to serve the function that they have in Wrath and Cataclysm - providing something that can be done many times a week for a chance at decent gear and valor points to potentially buy better gear. We're still very early in Mists, so we'll have to wait and see what Blizzard winds up doing.
Monday, November 5, 2012
The Brawler's Guild - Expectations versus Surprising Reality
When 5.1 was first announced (very soon after the launch of the expansion,) the previously-mentioned arrival of Horde and Alliance forces in Pandaria was to be expected, but the Brawler's Guild came as something of a surprise.
I actually love the idea of an underground, seedy fight club (which admittedly only really applies to the Alliance version) hidden in the cities. It's something Ardten, my Worgen Warrior, would be totally at home in. Likewise, I love the idea of epic solo content - a place where you can find something cool to do on your own that isn't a daily quest. Much like Pet Battles, it gives the game a certain degree of fun solo content, only in this case, it's really your character doing something badass.
So my initial conception was that you Brawler's Guild would work a bit like Sunsong Ranch - a one-player phase that gave you a different version of the arena than everyone else. You could sign up for a fight and go beat the crap out of something, maybe getting some kind of cosmetic reward (I would love to see Blizzard's art department churn out transmog armor sets. For Brawler's Guild, I'd suggest something like weapons that look improvised and cobbled together from various machine parts and the like.)
However, it appears that the Brawler's Guild is something very different indeed: It is not actually instanced at all. Only one person will be fighting at a time. Blizzard's attempt to keep this from leading to extraordinarily long queue times is to gate the feature by requiring invitations to be bought off the Black Market Auction House.
It's flavorful, yes, but damn if that doesn't mean the feature is basically not going to see use except by a small minority of players.
There will be ten invitations per server, and members of the Brawler's Guild will be able to invite ten additional people. Now, what this means is that either the guild will be dominated by a cartel of super gold-rich players, or it means that the exponential growth of the guild will make the gating absolutely useless and lead to 12-hour-long queue times for anyone who actually wants to get in there and fight.
Honestly, I don't know what Blizzard is thinking here. Yes, having spectators as real players fight their foes sounds cool on paper, but this is a video game. We're here to be the heroes, not the audience. Sure, if my buddy is down in the pit, giving some swamp monster the beating of a lifetime, I might cheer him on, but the way it seems designed is that the vast majority of people will be stuck watching from above (or possibly not even getting in the door, which would be ridiculous.)
The way it stands now, the Brawler's Guild areas, Bisto's Brawlpub (or whatever the gnome's name is) and Brawl'gar Arena will be, at best, a cool RP location for those of you who are into it.
To save this thing, I think they really need to take it back to the drawing board and make it something people can actually enjoy, and not just hear about.
All that said: I LOVE that there is now a reason to hang out in the Deeprun Tram area. Oh, the memories, when I used to save the like 50 copper or whatever it was on flight paths by using the Deeprun Tram. Even low-level characters don't need it anymore, now that you get all your EK and Kalimdor Flight Paths automatically.
I actually love the idea of an underground, seedy fight club (which admittedly only really applies to the Alliance version) hidden in the cities. It's something Ardten, my Worgen Warrior, would be totally at home in. Likewise, I love the idea of epic solo content - a place where you can find something cool to do on your own that isn't a daily quest. Much like Pet Battles, it gives the game a certain degree of fun solo content, only in this case, it's really your character doing something badass.
So my initial conception was that you Brawler's Guild would work a bit like Sunsong Ranch - a one-player phase that gave you a different version of the arena than everyone else. You could sign up for a fight and go beat the crap out of something, maybe getting some kind of cosmetic reward (I would love to see Blizzard's art department churn out transmog armor sets. For Brawler's Guild, I'd suggest something like weapons that look improvised and cobbled together from various machine parts and the like.)
However, it appears that the Brawler's Guild is something very different indeed: It is not actually instanced at all. Only one person will be fighting at a time. Blizzard's attempt to keep this from leading to extraordinarily long queue times is to gate the feature by requiring invitations to be bought off the Black Market Auction House.
It's flavorful, yes, but damn if that doesn't mean the feature is basically not going to see use except by a small minority of players.
There will be ten invitations per server, and members of the Brawler's Guild will be able to invite ten additional people. Now, what this means is that either the guild will be dominated by a cartel of super gold-rich players, or it means that the exponential growth of the guild will make the gating absolutely useless and lead to 12-hour-long queue times for anyone who actually wants to get in there and fight.
Honestly, I don't know what Blizzard is thinking here. Yes, having spectators as real players fight their foes sounds cool on paper, but this is a video game. We're here to be the heroes, not the audience. Sure, if my buddy is down in the pit, giving some swamp monster the beating of a lifetime, I might cheer him on, but the way it seems designed is that the vast majority of people will be stuck watching from above (or possibly not even getting in the door, which would be ridiculous.)
The way it stands now, the Brawler's Guild areas, Bisto's Brawlpub (or whatever the gnome's name is) and Brawl'gar Arena will be, at best, a cool RP location for those of you who are into it.
To save this thing, I think they really need to take it back to the drawing board and make it something people can actually enjoy, and not just hear about.
All that said: I LOVE that there is now a reason to hang out in the Deeprun Tram area. Oh, the memories, when I used to save the like 50 copper or whatever it was on flight paths by using the Deeprun Tram. Even low-level characters don't need it anymore, now that you get all your EK and Kalimdor Flight Paths automatically.
Sunday, November 4, 2012
The Painful Process of Gearing the Dual-Spec
My main, Jarsus, is a Protection Paladin. I leveled him up from 1 (well, ok, 10, because he had no talents before then) to 80 as Protection, and he always tanks. Going Retribution on him is always weird, and it feels wrong to see him on the log-in screen without his good old sword and board (or mace and board,) so I'll sometimes switch specs and gear before logging out even if the next thing I intend to do with him is run some dailies.
With Jarsus, there's never a question when it comes to gearing. Do I prioritize tank gear or dps gear? Always Tank. If I ain't tanking, I ain't on Jarsus.
However, my "Vice Main," or "Primary Alt" or whatever, the Death Knight, Oterro, is a somewhat different story. I leveled up Oterro as Blood dps originally (best leveling spec the game has ever seen, by the way) and liked it so much that I actually hit 80 on him an hour before I did on Jarsus. Over the course of Wrath, though, I became interested in trying out tanking on other classes. Wrath was kind of a golden age of tanking in my (admittedly rose-tinted) eyes. Tanking was fast-paced and demanded a lot of attention to maximize threat on lots of targets. Without reliance on Crowd Control, and without the enormous band-aid of Vengeance, you had to fight your dps tooth and nail to keep up in threat (with none of this "Active Mitigation.") So Oterro became the first tank convert. It was actually quite useful, because I settled on Blood as my tanking spec shortly before they announced that Blood was going to be the tanking spec.
The elimination of Blood dps forced me to look into the other specs for Oterro's soloing spec, and so I got into Frost (I'd originally created Oterro as a lookalike of Uterro, my Draenei Shaman, and in terms of role-play, I consider them to be the same person, especially given that Uterro was deleted to make room for Oterro - so being a master of at least one element seemed thematically appropriate. I also just prefer the reactive gameplay of Frost over Unholy.)
Cut to today. While tanking is still fun, and it's actually a lot easier to adjust to Mists-era Blood than Mists-era Protection, I am finding myself drawn to Frost dps more and more. (It doesn't hurt that apparently dps doesn't have to wait through the hour-long queue for Raid Finder that I encounter when queueing on Jarsus.) Blood is still a lot of fun (again, I prefer "reactive" over "active" mitigation) but it's also not hard to like gigantic Obliterate crits and the huge explosion of damage caused by Howling Blast.
So, I'm currently in the process of re-alligning Oterro to be primarily Frost. This is proving somewhat slow.
Part of it is just unlucky drops. I ran four dungeons on him today (I rarely do more than one) and saw only one drop (ironically, I actually wound up getting two pieces of tank gear, owing to well-geared or leather-wearing tanks.) Oterro's dps gear is actually pretty crappy, most of it left over from Townlong Steppes, as I prioritized tank gear in Dread Wastes. While I'm doing fine damage in the 40k range (I think Frost might be a little overpowered at the moment, given my mix of gear,) the barrier to Raid Finder is still quite far away.
I should say now that I'm not really offering many suggestions, but here's one: Blacksmiths can currently make iLevel 450 tanking gear. They can also make both Strength and Intellect PvP plate at the same iLevel (the recipes cost Spirits of Harmony, so it's not super easy to get them all.) I realize that this does kind of complete the plate trifecta, but it seems to me that it might have been nice to provide PvE Blacksmith gear for level 90 people that isn't some reputation-bound epic piece. Blacksmithing, and indeed all the armor professions, are fairly limited in scope at the moment. They can make 384 greens (useless once you're out of Jade Forest) that sometimes grant 414 blues (that get outdated once you're out of Kun Lai.) Leveling the professions is somewhat easier than it has been in the past, but there's really nothing useful from the trainers at level 90.
Given that you may have used up your Dread Wastes quest rewards on tanking gear, it does make the transition a little bumpier. Granted, there is JP gear, but this requires quite the grind, and of course only satisfies certain slots.
Frankly, I think the real blame for this issue (and yes, I realize I very well may be making a mountain of a mole hill here. Forgive the rant. This is the internet, after all) is the new quest reward system. Before Mists, each quest had an odd assortment of items - a hunter weapon, a priest belt, a rogue chest piece, and a tanking shield, for example. Enough quests would offer rewards that you would often be able to, in each zone, get a nearly-full set of tanking and dps plate (the two were often not rewarded by the same quests) at that zone's iLevel.
Actually, this also lends some support to the notion of getting rid of tank gear altogether. Guardian Druids and Brewmaster Monks, after all, can use their gear as quite decent Feral or Windwalker sets. While they may have different stat priorities, for the most part they're using the same stuff. If this were true of plate tanks, all they would need to collect for a separate dps set would be a two-handed weapon (Blood would already be there. And if it was a Warrior, they could just use two tanking weapons, given that we don't seem to be seeing any dodge or parry on 1-handers anymore.)
Oddly, the shift in Mists has been somewhat toward greater specialization, via quest rewards and the LFR loot system, all at a time when tank dps while soloing out in the world is back to Burning Crusade-level wimpiness. (I miss my Sacred Duty, damn it!)
So, it will be an interesting process. The challenge, of course, will be to maintain the Blood set after I start building up the Frost.
/End Rant
With Jarsus, there's never a question when it comes to gearing. Do I prioritize tank gear or dps gear? Always Tank. If I ain't tanking, I ain't on Jarsus.
However, my "Vice Main," or "Primary Alt" or whatever, the Death Knight, Oterro, is a somewhat different story. I leveled up Oterro as Blood dps originally (best leveling spec the game has ever seen, by the way) and liked it so much that I actually hit 80 on him an hour before I did on Jarsus. Over the course of Wrath, though, I became interested in trying out tanking on other classes. Wrath was kind of a golden age of tanking in my (admittedly rose-tinted) eyes. Tanking was fast-paced and demanded a lot of attention to maximize threat on lots of targets. Without reliance on Crowd Control, and without the enormous band-aid of Vengeance, you had to fight your dps tooth and nail to keep up in threat (with none of this "Active Mitigation.") So Oterro became the first tank convert. It was actually quite useful, because I settled on Blood as my tanking spec shortly before they announced that Blood was going to be the tanking spec.
The elimination of Blood dps forced me to look into the other specs for Oterro's soloing spec, and so I got into Frost (I'd originally created Oterro as a lookalike of Uterro, my Draenei Shaman, and in terms of role-play, I consider them to be the same person, especially given that Uterro was deleted to make room for Oterro - so being a master of at least one element seemed thematically appropriate. I also just prefer the reactive gameplay of Frost over Unholy.)
Cut to today. While tanking is still fun, and it's actually a lot easier to adjust to Mists-era Blood than Mists-era Protection, I am finding myself drawn to Frost dps more and more. (It doesn't hurt that apparently dps doesn't have to wait through the hour-long queue for Raid Finder that I encounter when queueing on Jarsus.) Blood is still a lot of fun (again, I prefer "reactive" over "active" mitigation) but it's also not hard to like gigantic Obliterate crits and the huge explosion of damage caused by Howling Blast.
So, I'm currently in the process of re-alligning Oterro to be primarily Frost. This is proving somewhat slow.
Part of it is just unlucky drops. I ran four dungeons on him today (I rarely do more than one) and saw only one drop (ironically, I actually wound up getting two pieces of tank gear, owing to well-geared or leather-wearing tanks.) Oterro's dps gear is actually pretty crappy, most of it left over from Townlong Steppes, as I prioritized tank gear in Dread Wastes. While I'm doing fine damage in the 40k range (I think Frost might be a little overpowered at the moment, given my mix of gear,) the barrier to Raid Finder is still quite far away.
I should say now that I'm not really offering many suggestions, but here's one: Blacksmiths can currently make iLevel 450 tanking gear. They can also make both Strength and Intellect PvP plate at the same iLevel (the recipes cost Spirits of Harmony, so it's not super easy to get them all.) I realize that this does kind of complete the plate trifecta, but it seems to me that it might have been nice to provide PvE Blacksmith gear for level 90 people that isn't some reputation-bound epic piece. Blacksmithing, and indeed all the armor professions, are fairly limited in scope at the moment. They can make 384 greens (useless once you're out of Jade Forest) that sometimes grant 414 blues (that get outdated once you're out of Kun Lai.) Leveling the professions is somewhat easier than it has been in the past, but there's really nothing useful from the trainers at level 90.
Given that you may have used up your Dread Wastes quest rewards on tanking gear, it does make the transition a little bumpier. Granted, there is JP gear, but this requires quite the grind, and of course only satisfies certain slots.
Frankly, I think the real blame for this issue (and yes, I realize I very well may be making a mountain of a mole hill here. Forgive the rant. This is the internet, after all) is the new quest reward system. Before Mists, each quest had an odd assortment of items - a hunter weapon, a priest belt, a rogue chest piece, and a tanking shield, for example. Enough quests would offer rewards that you would often be able to, in each zone, get a nearly-full set of tanking and dps plate (the two were often not rewarded by the same quests) at that zone's iLevel.
Actually, this also lends some support to the notion of getting rid of tank gear altogether. Guardian Druids and Brewmaster Monks, after all, can use their gear as quite decent Feral or Windwalker sets. While they may have different stat priorities, for the most part they're using the same stuff. If this were true of plate tanks, all they would need to collect for a separate dps set would be a two-handed weapon (Blood would already be there. And if it was a Warrior, they could just use two tanking weapons, given that we don't seem to be seeing any dodge or parry on 1-handers anymore.)
Oddly, the shift in Mists has been somewhat toward greater specialization, via quest rewards and the LFR loot system, all at a time when tank dps while soloing out in the world is back to Burning Crusade-level wimpiness. (I miss my Sacred Duty, damn it!)
So, it will be an interesting process. The challenge, of course, will be to maintain the Blood set after I start building up the Frost.
/End Rant
Saturday, November 3, 2012
Memory Lane: Reagents
Mists of Pandaria brought a lot of changes to the way our classes worked - the old talent trees were totally eliminated, divorcing your specialization from your talent choices, with the (fairly successful, I'd say) goal of truly making talents choices, and not simply having a "right way" and a "wrong way" to assign talent points. This change simplified things quite a bit, getting rid of any of the "10% more haste" and that sort of thing.
Another change was that it finally put the last nail in coffin for reagents. Today, the only things Reagent vendors sell are the Glyph/Talent reassignment items. So, in the interest of nostalgia, I figured I'd look at all the crap that we had to carry in our bags to function back in the day.
Priests: Honestly, here's where my memory's going to be murkiest, because my Priest only reached 85 when patch 5.0 was already out. He had been the only class I'd never gotten to the level cap (I plan to get at least one of each class to 90 this time around, and while it saddens me to have a level 90 Blood Elf but not an Orc or Goblin, so be it - then again, the Orc Warrior could very well be one of the first "class duplicates" to hit 90, though that will probably not happen for many months.) What I do remember is that they had to buy Holy Candles and Sacred Candles. As I recall, these were used to cast Prayer of Fortitude and Prayer of Spirit, and probably also Prayer of Shadow Protection. Something you'll notice a lot here is that most classes used to have a separate, individual-person buff that was reagent-free, and a raid-wide (or class-wide) buff that cost something other than mana. Today of course, these buffs are always raid-wide.
Warlocks: Warlocks had a ton of stuff. Primarily, they had to keep a whole separate bag for Soul Shards. Soul Shards used to be used for a lot of spells, including summoning your demons. They also did not stack, so you really did want a dedicated bag for them. Indeed, many of the old Warlock class quests, where you would learn to summon a new demon, would grant you a bigger soul bag. Additionally, Warlocks conjured Fire Stones and... there was another one, but I can't remember what it's called. Anyway, they were temporary weapon imbues that would give you a slight buff. Also, Warlocks had to carry around Infernal Stones and Demonic Runes in order to cast the spells that would call down Infernals and Doomguards. In the case of Inferno, to learn it, you had to do a somewhat out-of-the-way quest in Felwood that I had to look up at level 80. Soulstones were also a conjured item, and for a long time could only be cast preemptively.
Mages: Beyond Conjured Food and Conjured Water (and they used to be separate things,) Mages had to carry Arcane Powder in order to cast Arcane Brilliance (the single-person version was called Arcane Intellect) and to conjure Mage Tables. They also needed Runes of Teleportation and Runes of Portal to use their travel spells. This was all true fairly recently, so not much shock to be had, I'd guess.
Druids: Druids only had a couple reagents. In order to cast Gift of the Wild (the raid-wide version of Mark of the Wild) they would need to carry around some sort of store-bought herb (can't recall the name.) In order to use Rebirth, which was at one time the only Druid resurrection spell, you needed to buy various seeds - back when abilities had ranks, you'd need a new seed for each new rank.
Rogues: Oh boy. Not only did Rogues have to carry their poisons on them, they also had to make their own poisons! Rogues actually had two quasi-professions in addition to their other skills. Poisons was a bit like alchemy, requiring you to blend herbs in a vial. However, the herbs were all available from Poison vendors (you might still be able to hear them talking about those herbs in the poison store in Stormwind's Old Town.) These herbs could be found in pickpocketed junk boxes as well. Additionally, in order to pick locks, Rogues needed to have Thieves' Tools, which you'd get for doing one of the class quests or you could just buy them off poison vendors. Additionally, Rogues had to carry Blinding Powder to use Blind and Vanishing Powder to use Vanish. The former was made with the Poison skill while the latter was simply bought. Rogues were always dealing with Poison Vendors.
Shamans: The biggest burden on Shaman inventory space was, of course, their totems. Up to level 30, you'd get a quest at every tenth level to get another totem. This was an actual, physical thing to stick in your backpack that was required to cast totem spells. It was less of a reagent than a tool, as the totems would of course never be consumed, but it did mean that four inventory slots were locked down on Totem duty (though Ancestral Recall meant you could get rid of your Hearthstone if you so wished.) Reincarnation used to cost an Ankh, which was simply bought from Reagent vendors. Now, Water Walking and Water Breathing (the latter now dearly departed) took Fish Oil and Shiny Fish Scales. If you don't play a shaman, you might have wondered why the hell you kept finding those things at every damn level. These otherwise vendor trash-like items were actually used as reagents for these spells. If a shaman wanted to cast them, they had to farm them (or buy them from other players.) Good riddance, I say.
Hunters: Much as Warlocks had to dedicate a bag slot to Soul Shards, Hunters used to have to carry around quivers and ammo pouches for their ammunition. While a Warlock who was very good at keeping their pets alive could potentially get away with no soul bag, Hunters absolutely needed their ammo bags. The bags themselves actually provided a 15% haste buff, and provided a very generous amount of space for ammo, which we should remind you, was consumed by every single attack. It did stack to 100 (or maybe 200...) but you would definitely need to keep your arsenal full, especially before a big raid. Ammo would also vary in strength, so you'd want to upgrade it as you leveled up or went from tier to tier. Additionally, this made switching from Guns to Bows or Crossbows a bigger burden, because they used totally different ammo that required totally different bags. And that's before we even talk about the Pet leveling and ability-learning system. I won't go into that much, but one aspect was that you had to keep your pet happy in order for them to do their maximum damage. To do this, you had to carry around food that they would like. For example, Wolves only like meat and fish. Bears will eat nearly anything.
Warriors: Warriors didn't have to carry a god damned thing. Screw those guys.
Paladins: The Blessing System, as recently as Wrath of the Lich King (though far more so earlier) was batshit insane. Paladins used to have far more blessings that did much more specific things. Starting I believe in BC, they were given "Greater Blessings," which would affect the target and everyone of the same class that was in the Raid. Combining this with the fact that there were far more blessings to give out (four in Wrath of the Lich King, and many more earlier, though some of those were situational blessings that became Hands) meant that A: you had to coordinate big time between the Paladins in the raid, and B: You had to carry a whole lot of Symbols of Kings, which were required for each cast of a Greater Blessing. Additionally, Paladins had to carry around Symbols of Divinity. Paladins used to have an ability called Divine Intervention. What this did was the Paladin would sacrifice him or herself (though this did not incur durability damage, which was a big incentive to use it) to remove the targeted ally from combat, preventing them from moving or using any abilities for three minutes. This was a wipe-recovery move. If a fight was going south fast, you'd cast this on a healer and let everyone die. Because the target was forced out of combat, the boss would reset, and if the target was not too close, you could immediately begin resurrecting people. Obviously you never wanted to use this if there was a chance you could actually beat the boss, but it was a nice way to save two raid members their repair costs and get people off the ground quicker.
Death Knights: Yes, even Death Knights used to have reagents to carry around. They only had one, which was Corpse Dust. Corpse Dust was only situationally required, and if you did not use Raise Dead very often, you did not need it. Corpse Dust was only required if you wanted to raise a ghoul but had no humanoid corpses nearby to do so. Actually, Raise Dead used to be a weird and cool ability. If cast on a humanoid npc corpse, you'd simply get a normal ghoul. But if you cast it on a fellow player (there was not Raise Ally back then,) the player would actually become a ghoul, getting totally different abilities to use. There was even an Unholy talent back in Wrath that caused the Death Knight to come back as one of these ghouls for 30 seconds or so after they were killed.
So: Reagents. We used to carry a lot of crap around with us just in order to function. Inventory space has always been at a bit of a premium in WoW, but you can be very thankful that at least we don't have to lug all this stuff with us.
Another change was that it finally put the last nail in coffin for reagents. Today, the only things Reagent vendors sell are the Glyph/Talent reassignment items. So, in the interest of nostalgia, I figured I'd look at all the crap that we had to carry in our bags to function back in the day.
Priests: Honestly, here's where my memory's going to be murkiest, because my Priest only reached 85 when patch 5.0 was already out. He had been the only class I'd never gotten to the level cap (I plan to get at least one of each class to 90 this time around, and while it saddens me to have a level 90 Blood Elf but not an Orc or Goblin, so be it - then again, the Orc Warrior could very well be one of the first "class duplicates" to hit 90, though that will probably not happen for many months.) What I do remember is that they had to buy Holy Candles and Sacred Candles. As I recall, these were used to cast Prayer of Fortitude and Prayer of Spirit, and probably also Prayer of Shadow Protection. Something you'll notice a lot here is that most classes used to have a separate, individual-person buff that was reagent-free, and a raid-wide (or class-wide) buff that cost something other than mana. Today of course, these buffs are always raid-wide.
Warlocks: Warlocks had a ton of stuff. Primarily, they had to keep a whole separate bag for Soul Shards. Soul Shards used to be used for a lot of spells, including summoning your demons. They also did not stack, so you really did want a dedicated bag for them. Indeed, many of the old Warlock class quests, where you would learn to summon a new demon, would grant you a bigger soul bag. Additionally, Warlocks conjured Fire Stones and... there was another one, but I can't remember what it's called. Anyway, they were temporary weapon imbues that would give you a slight buff. Also, Warlocks had to carry around Infernal Stones and Demonic Runes in order to cast the spells that would call down Infernals and Doomguards. In the case of Inferno, to learn it, you had to do a somewhat out-of-the-way quest in Felwood that I had to look up at level 80. Soulstones were also a conjured item, and for a long time could only be cast preemptively.
Mages: Beyond Conjured Food and Conjured Water (and they used to be separate things,) Mages had to carry Arcane Powder in order to cast Arcane Brilliance (the single-person version was called Arcane Intellect) and to conjure Mage Tables. They also needed Runes of Teleportation and Runes of Portal to use their travel spells. This was all true fairly recently, so not much shock to be had, I'd guess.
Druids: Druids only had a couple reagents. In order to cast Gift of the Wild (the raid-wide version of Mark of the Wild) they would need to carry around some sort of store-bought herb (can't recall the name.) In order to use Rebirth, which was at one time the only Druid resurrection spell, you needed to buy various seeds - back when abilities had ranks, you'd need a new seed for each new rank.
Rogues: Oh boy. Not only did Rogues have to carry their poisons on them, they also had to make their own poisons! Rogues actually had two quasi-professions in addition to their other skills. Poisons was a bit like alchemy, requiring you to blend herbs in a vial. However, the herbs were all available from Poison vendors (you might still be able to hear them talking about those herbs in the poison store in Stormwind's Old Town.) These herbs could be found in pickpocketed junk boxes as well. Additionally, in order to pick locks, Rogues needed to have Thieves' Tools, which you'd get for doing one of the class quests or you could just buy them off poison vendors. Additionally, Rogues had to carry Blinding Powder to use Blind and Vanishing Powder to use Vanish. The former was made with the Poison skill while the latter was simply bought. Rogues were always dealing with Poison Vendors.
Shamans: The biggest burden on Shaman inventory space was, of course, their totems. Up to level 30, you'd get a quest at every tenth level to get another totem. This was an actual, physical thing to stick in your backpack that was required to cast totem spells. It was less of a reagent than a tool, as the totems would of course never be consumed, but it did mean that four inventory slots were locked down on Totem duty (though Ancestral Recall meant you could get rid of your Hearthstone if you so wished.) Reincarnation used to cost an Ankh, which was simply bought from Reagent vendors. Now, Water Walking and Water Breathing (the latter now dearly departed) took Fish Oil and Shiny Fish Scales. If you don't play a shaman, you might have wondered why the hell you kept finding those things at every damn level. These otherwise vendor trash-like items were actually used as reagents for these spells. If a shaman wanted to cast them, they had to farm them (or buy them from other players.) Good riddance, I say.
Hunters: Much as Warlocks had to dedicate a bag slot to Soul Shards, Hunters used to have to carry around quivers and ammo pouches for their ammunition. While a Warlock who was very good at keeping their pets alive could potentially get away with no soul bag, Hunters absolutely needed their ammo bags. The bags themselves actually provided a 15% haste buff, and provided a very generous amount of space for ammo, which we should remind you, was consumed by every single attack. It did stack to 100 (or maybe 200...) but you would definitely need to keep your arsenal full, especially before a big raid. Ammo would also vary in strength, so you'd want to upgrade it as you leveled up or went from tier to tier. Additionally, this made switching from Guns to Bows or Crossbows a bigger burden, because they used totally different ammo that required totally different bags. And that's before we even talk about the Pet leveling and ability-learning system. I won't go into that much, but one aspect was that you had to keep your pet happy in order for them to do their maximum damage. To do this, you had to carry around food that they would like. For example, Wolves only like meat and fish. Bears will eat nearly anything.
Warriors: Warriors didn't have to carry a god damned thing. Screw those guys.
Paladins: The Blessing System, as recently as Wrath of the Lich King (though far more so earlier) was batshit insane. Paladins used to have far more blessings that did much more specific things. Starting I believe in BC, they were given "Greater Blessings," which would affect the target and everyone of the same class that was in the Raid. Combining this with the fact that there were far more blessings to give out (four in Wrath of the Lich King, and many more earlier, though some of those were situational blessings that became Hands) meant that A: you had to coordinate big time between the Paladins in the raid, and B: You had to carry a whole lot of Symbols of Kings, which were required for each cast of a Greater Blessing. Additionally, Paladins had to carry around Symbols of Divinity. Paladins used to have an ability called Divine Intervention. What this did was the Paladin would sacrifice him or herself (though this did not incur durability damage, which was a big incentive to use it) to remove the targeted ally from combat, preventing them from moving or using any abilities for three minutes. This was a wipe-recovery move. If a fight was going south fast, you'd cast this on a healer and let everyone die. Because the target was forced out of combat, the boss would reset, and if the target was not too close, you could immediately begin resurrecting people. Obviously you never wanted to use this if there was a chance you could actually beat the boss, but it was a nice way to save two raid members their repair costs and get people off the ground quicker.
Death Knights: Yes, even Death Knights used to have reagents to carry around. They only had one, which was Corpse Dust. Corpse Dust was only situationally required, and if you did not use Raise Dead very often, you did not need it. Corpse Dust was only required if you wanted to raise a ghoul but had no humanoid corpses nearby to do so. Actually, Raise Dead used to be a weird and cool ability. If cast on a humanoid npc corpse, you'd simply get a normal ghoul. But if you cast it on a fellow player (there was not Raise Ally back then,) the player would actually become a ghoul, getting totally different abilities to use. There was even an Unholy talent back in Wrath that caused the Death Knight to come back as one of these ghouls for 30 seconds or so after they were killed.
So: Reagents. We used to carry a lot of crap around with us just in order to function. Inventory space has always been at a bit of a premium in WoW, but you can be very thankful that at least we don't have to lug all this stuff with us.
5.x Speculation: What is the Trajectory of Mists?
5.1 is on the PTR. While this is the first major content patch for Mists of Pandaria, it will not include any new dungeons or raids. Instead, what we are seeing is mainly a progression of story, going from 5.0, in which we are one of the very few Horde/Alliance representatives who have arrived on this mysterious continent, to a point where the full force of the two sides' war machines are coming to do battle.
As it stands right now, the Alliance forces are represented by us, the survivors of Admiral Taylor's Fleet (including Aduin Wrynn,) the survivors of the SI:7 mission to bring the prince home (once could arguably count us among them) and a separate expedition of Night Elves who had been searching for the Pools of Youth, as well as the Vale of Eternal Blossoms. On the Horde side, we've got the very small group of survivors from the initial attack force led by General Nazgrim (which we count as,) and the Dawnchasers led by Sunwalker Dezco. That's all going to change when the beaches of Krasarang become home to two major outposts of the battling sides.
So 5.1 is going to be largely about story, told through quests and scenarios, as well as... another daily quest rep grind (yeah, not sure if that's what most players are clamoring for.) Given the various audio files that have been leaked, it looks like we're going to get a good look at how Pandaria manages to really drive Garrosh over the edge into "we actually have to kill him now" territory as well as showing us how Theramore leaves Jaina so distrusting of the Horde that she actually winds up unintentionally ruining Varian's attempt to reach some reconciliation (wow, quite a role-reversal there, am I right?) Not to mention, it appears that Vol'jin will begin to emerge as the leader of the Horde Resistance against Garrosh.
So it's not a small patch, by any stretch.
Still, I am left wondering how the evolution of the expansion is going to work. In each expansion (plus Vanilla) there have been three raiding tiers (other than Wrath, which had four.) In practice, both Burning Crusade and Vanilla can be said to have three and a half, as Ahn-Qiraj and Sunwell Plateau were not really considered to be within the "official" tiers. (Frankly, we could probably just start calling Ahn-Qiraj tier 3 now that Naxxramas-40 no longer exists.)
Cataclysm only had three tiers, but I think Blizzard would agree with most of the playerbase that Cataclysm's end-game content was underwhelming.
So I expect that we will, at the very least, get another large raid tier between now and the Orgrimmar raid. That leaves us with the question: what will it be?
Now, granted, I think very few of us were expecting Trial of the Crusader when we first started playing Wrath of the Lich King, so it's certainly possible we'll get something out of left field. The obvious raid concepts that I can see coming in future would involve the Mogu and the Zandalari. Now, admittedly, we already have a Mogu raid in Mogu'shan Vaults. That said, MSV is both the super-starter raid (it's arguably tier not-quite-14) and deals more with the ancient Mogu and their connection to the Titans (though with tantalizingly little in terms of concrete answers regarding whether they are really Titan constructs - though maybe I'm just looking for a revelation that isn't there.)
We've been dealing with the major Sha throughout questing and dungeons, and we've got the Sha of Anger out in the world as well as the Sha of Fear as the final boss of Tier 14. Might we come across more Sha? Certainly possible, but I doubt we're going to learn much more about them.
The Mogu raid would, of course, have us confront and defeat Lei Shen, the Thunder King. If you haven't done Lorewalker Cho's quests in Kun Lai (and don't mind a bit of SPOILER,) I'll sum it up: You go to investigate the ancient tombs of the Mogu Emperors up in the mountains of Kun-Lai. When you come to that actual Tomb of the Emperors, you are ambushed by the Zandalari trolls, who, according to ancient prophecy and arriving just in time, come take the Thunder King's body away. You follow them north, where they are attacking a village, but by the time you save the village, it's too late. The Thunder King is alive and kicking. It seems inevitable that we're going to have to fight this guy, as well as his armies. If that means more ornate Mogu buildings, I am totally in favor of that.
The Zandalari could be a major recurring villain for future expansions, but one gets the impression (in those same quests in Kun Lai) that they are becoming a bit desperate. One of the major enemies claims that the Cataclysm destroyed their home. Is Zandalar no more? Could this be why they turned so aggressive? It would explain the face-heel turn of the Zandalari if they are now acting out of desperation, and of course it somewhat mirrors Garrosh with the Horde - using this disaster to gain support for military aggression. We still haven't even seen this "Zul" guy who is apparently leading the Zandalari to war, nor have we seen in-game King Rakhastan (or whatever his name is.) It's not unthinkable that we'd have a raid to take down the Zandalari, and given their presence in Pandaria, it gives us a reason.
Dungeons, I would say, would probably simply relate to the various raids. I know they are pushing Raid Finder as the way to "catch up" now, but I love 5-man content, and eagerly anticipate new ones (more Hour of Twilight than Rise of the Zandalari, please.)
Now, that's all fine and dandy, but what about the 5.1 patch? Might we see more of these "moving the story along" patches? I don't know when we're going to see 5.1 hit (I'm guessing in a month, maybe a bit more) but we know Blizzard wants a faster schedule of new content to ship out. Adding in new features (like Brawler's Guild and item upgrading) and alternating with new raid content would be a good way to keep a constant flow of new stuff.
I could imagine a 5.3 or something in which we get to start really working on the Horde Resistance (the Free Horde? The Horde Underground?) and perhaps get the Trials of the High King (glad they're making Varian a more likable leader - still think the Alliance should be less monolithic in its rulers. We don't need a Warchief here, guys.)
We could easily have up to 5.4 then during the expansion's life cycle, and that's assuming only three raid tiers.
As it stands right now, the Alliance forces are represented by us, the survivors of Admiral Taylor's Fleet (including Aduin Wrynn,) the survivors of the SI:7 mission to bring the prince home (once could arguably count us among them) and a separate expedition of Night Elves who had been searching for the Pools of Youth, as well as the Vale of Eternal Blossoms. On the Horde side, we've got the very small group of survivors from the initial attack force led by General Nazgrim (which we count as,) and the Dawnchasers led by Sunwalker Dezco. That's all going to change when the beaches of Krasarang become home to two major outposts of the battling sides.
So 5.1 is going to be largely about story, told through quests and scenarios, as well as... another daily quest rep grind (yeah, not sure if that's what most players are clamoring for.) Given the various audio files that have been leaked, it looks like we're going to get a good look at how Pandaria manages to really drive Garrosh over the edge into "we actually have to kill him now" territory as well as showing us how Theramore leaves Jaina so distrusting of the Horde that she actually winds up unintentionally ruining Varian's attempt to reach some reconciliation (wow, quite a role-reversal there, am I right?) Not to mention, it appears that Vol'jin will begin to emerge as the leader of the Horde Resistance against Garrosh.
So it's not a small patch, by any stretch.
Still, I am left wondering how the evolution of the expansion is going to work. In each expansion (plus Vanilla) there have been three raiding tiers (other than Wrath, which had four.) In practice, both Burning Crusade and Vanilla can be said to have three and a half, as Ahn-Qiraj and Sunwell Plateau were not really considered to be within the "official" tiers. (Frankly, we could probably just start calling Ahn-Qiraj tier 3 now that Naxxramas-40 no longer exists.)
Cataclysm only had three tiers, but I think Blizzard would agree with most of the playerbase that Cataclysm's end-game content was underwhelming.
So I expect that we will, at the very least, get another large raid tier between now and the Orgrimmar raid. That leaves us with the question: what will it be?
Now, granted, I think very few of us were expecting Trial of the Crusader when we first started playing Wrath of the Lich King, so it's certainly possible we'll get something out of left field. The obvious raid concepts that I can see coming in future would involve the Mogu and the Zandalari. Now, admittedly, we already have a Mogu raid in Mogu'shan Vaults. That said, MSV is both the super-starter raid (it's arguably tier not-quite-14) and deals more with the ancient Mogu and their connection to the Titans (though with tantalizingly little in terms of concrete answers regarding whether they are really Titan constructs - though maybe I'm just looking for a revelation that isn't there.)
We've been dealing with the major Sha throughout questing and dungeons, and we've got the Sha of Anger out in the world as well as the Sha of Fear as the final boss of Tier 14. Might we come across more Sha? Certainly possible, but I doubt we're going to learn much more about them.
The Mogu raid would, of course, have us confront and defeat Lei Shen, the Thunder King. If you haven't done Lorewalker Cho's quests in Kun Lai (and don't mind a bit of SPOILER,) I'll sum it up: You go to investigate the ancient tombs of the Mogu Emperors up in the mountains of Kun-Lai. When you come to that actual Tomb of the Emperors, you are ambushed by the Zandalari trolls, who, according to ancient prophecy and arriving just in time, come take the Thunder King's body away. You follow them north, where they are attacking a village, but by the time you save the village, it's too late. The Thunder King is alive and kicking. It seems inevitable that we're going to have to fight this guy, as well as his armies. If that means more ornate Mogu buildings, I am totally in favor of that.
The Zandalari could be a major recurring villain for future expansions, but one gets the impression (in those same quests in Kun Lai) that they are becoming a bit desperate. One of the major enemies claims that the Cataclysm destroyed their home. Is Zandalar no more? Could this be why they turned so aggressive? It would explain the face-heel turn of the Zandalari if they are now acting out of desperation, and of course it somewhat mirrors Garrosh with the Horde - using this disaster to gain support for military aggression. We still haven't even seen this "Zul" guy who is apparently leading the Zandalari to war, nor have we seen in-game King Rakhastan (or whatever his name is.) It's not unthinkable that we'd have a raid to take down the Zandalari, and given their presence in Pandaria, it gives us a reason.
Dungeons, I would say, would probably simply relate to the various raids. I know they are pushing Raid Finder as the way to "catch up" now, but I love 5-man content, and eagerly anticipate new ones (more Hour of Twilight than Rise of the Zandalari, please.)
Now, that's all fine and dandy, but what about the 5.1 patch? Might we see more of these "moving the story along" patches? I don't know when we're going to see 5.1 hit (I'm guessing in a month, maybe a bit more) but we know Blizzard wants a faster schedule of new content to ship out. Adding in new features (like Brawler's Guild and item upgrading) and alternating with new raid content would be a good way to keep a constant flow of new stuff.
I could imagine a 5.3 or something in which we get to start really working on the Horde Resistance (the Free Horde? The Horde Underground?) and perhaps get the Trials of the High King (glad they're making Varian a more likable leader - still think the Alliance should be less monolithic in its rulers. We don't need a Warchief here, guys.)
We could easily have up to 5.4 then during the expansion's life cycle, and that's assuming only three raid tiers.
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