According to the latest blue posts, Valor points will be getting downgraded to justice points in 5.2, meaning that you'll have to get shiny new Valor points to buy the new gear.
There is a very serious problem with this, philosophically, which is that Justice Points are utterly worthless.
For anyone who has run a significant amount of LFR, or built up an epic set via reputations (or more likely, both,) it's likely that most players have replaced their blue gear, or at least they have replaced anything below a 463, heroic 5-man level blue piece.
Justice Points are only used to purchase 458 blues. In the post 5.1 world, JP got a little more relevant by allowing you to do a one-time upgrade on blue pieces to raise them 8 iLevels. It did not do much for them, because JP could only be used to upgrade blue pieces, and once you started decking yourself in epics, JP lost any use whatsoever.
In Cataclysm, Valor was downgraded to Justice every raid tier, but this corresponded with a downgrade in cost for the previous tier's Valor gear. Thus, if you had 2000 VP, and you didn't quite make it before the downgrade, there was no problem, because that VP would become JP, and the 2200 VP item you wanted to buy would now cost 2200 JP.
But current valor gear is not getting downgraded in cost. Thus, players who do not jump to buy their 5.0 or 5.1 VP gear are going to now lose progress toward those items.
The whole point of the VP/JP dichotomy was to have a "current" currency to correspond with "current" gear, and to have an "old" currency for "old" gear.
If these changes go live, our VP will become "old" currency, but the actual old gear will remain with a "current," if discounted price.
There are two options here. One is to not downgrade the currency and effectively create a single-currency system. The other is to downgrade 5.0 and 5.1 gear to JP.
As it stands, the only thing that this will accomplish is to set people back from goals they were approaching.
Wednesday, February 6, 2013
Sunday, February 3, 2013
Customization and Consoles
The PA Report had an interesting article about "The Minecraft Problem," which got me thinking about the future of video games.
Several months ago, I discovered some YouTube channel with a weekly "Top 5 Skyrim mods" series. It was actually quite amazing to see - hundreds, if not thousands of people were tweaking the game in various ways, from tweaking lighting effects to introducing hilarious new abilities (such as a shout that called down a "Rain of Trains," which does exactly what it sounds like it does) to adding entire new game areas with their own quest chains and looks.
There's a granularity of customization to modern video games that's kind of amazing - far from limited to a couple of 15-dollar DLC packages.
Here's the thing: I play Skyrim on an XBox 360. I use a Mac computer, which shuts me out of a lot of games, but even if I had a PC, I certainly can't afford to spend a thousand dollars to put together a fancy gaming PC, and a thousand bucks is probably a very conservative estimate of what I'd need.
Console makers have begun to realize that they have a disadvantage over PCs. Consoles were conceived, I think, to originally be basically home arcade units. But once people figured out how to create save files, they blossomed into something that even the most sophisticated arcade cabinets could never really be. In more recent generations, console makers started to take the idea of data storage seriously, eventually just throwing an actual, legitimate hard drive onto their consoles.
PCs (and for the record, I'm referring to both Windows machines and Macs) never really had to work on this as a "new" thing, because unless you're talking about the era of the Apple II, home computers have almost always had some kind of storage. That's why games like Civilization could work, allowing you to save as many times as you'd like in as many different copies as you might like.
Yet PCs still have an advantage (again, let us never forget that the off-set disadvantage is much higher cost) which is the ability to look at the nuts and bolts of the game. Controls aren't really an issue, because if you want to play a game with a controller, you can easily get one that plugs into a USB port. But the environment of a PC, where it's not just "play this game" but "here's the game and all its files" allows you to do all those awesome things like give Tamriel a Death Star or a Tardis.
I imagine some consoles will try to become more PC-like in this regard, opening up customization, but it will probably require that they let you interface your PC more directly with the inner workings of your console. It'll also probably require you to start installing games on the console, rather than popping the disk in.
There are two things they would also need to fix: one is making switching out hard drives easy, which in fairness, is probably already not too hard - we'd just need to make it so that a PC-formatted hard drive was compatible with the consoles.
Next, we'd have to rework any download service. I'd recommend that games create a bank of user-generated DLC and that the people who operate the online services of the consoles make that stuff free. One should not have to pay a red cent if the maker of the content is giving it out for free.
It's a complex issue, and I'll be very curious to see how this develops over the next generation or two of game consoles, but I think customization is going to be the most important development in the evolution of video games as we head into the future.
Several months ago, I discovered some YouTube channel with a weekly "Top 5 Skyrim mods" series. It was actually quite amazing to see - hundreds, if not thousands of people were tweaking the game in various ways, from tweaking lighting effects to introducing hilarious new abilities (such as a shout that called down a "Rain of Trains," which does exactly what it sounds like it does) to adding entire new game areas with their own quest chains and looks.
There's a granularity of customization to modern video games that's kind of amazing - far from limited to a couple of 15-dollar DLC packages.
Here's the thing: I play Skyrim on an XBox 360. I use a Mac computer, which shuts me out of a lot of games, but even if I had a PC, I certainly can't afford to spend a thousand dollars to put together a fancy gaming PC, and a thousand bucks is probably a very conservative estimate of what I'd need.
Console makers have begun to realize that they have a disadvantage over PCs. Consoles were conceived, I think, to originally be basically home arcade units. But once people figured out how to create save files, they blossomed into something that even the most sophisticated arcade cabinets could never really be. In more recent generations, console makers started to take the idea of data storage seriously, eventually just throwing an actual, legitimate hard drive onto their consoles.
PCs (and for the record, I'm referring to both Windows machines and Macs) never really had to work on this as a "new" thing, because unless you're talking about the era of the Apple II, home computers have almost always had some kind of storage. That's why games like Civilization could work, allowing you to save as many times as you'd like in as many different copies as you might like.
Yet PCs still have an advantage (again, let us never forget that the off-set disadvantage is much higher cost) which is the ability to look at the nuts and bolts of the game. Controls aren't really an issue, because if you want to play a game with a controller, you can easily get one that plugs into a USB port. But the environment of a PC, where it's not just "play this game" but "here's the game and all its files" allows you to do all those awesome things like give Tamriel a Death Star or a Tardis.
I imagine some consoles will try to become more PC-like in this regard, opening up customization, but it will probably require that they let you interface your PC more directly with the inner workings of your console. It'll also probably require you to start installing games on the console, rather than popping the disk in.
There are two things they would also need to fix: one is making switching out hard drives easy, which in fairness, is probably already not too hard - we'd just need to make it so that a PC-formatted hard drive was compatible with the consoles.
Next, we'd have to rework any download service. I'd recommend that games create a bank of user-generated DLC and that the people who operate the online services of the consoles make that stuff free. One should not have to pay a red cent if the maker of the content is giving it out for free.
It's a complex issue, and I'll be very curious to see how this develops over the next generation or two of game consoles, but I think customization is going to be the most important development in the evolution of video games as we head into the future.
Friday, February 1, 2013
Still trying to do that WoW movie
After years of Sam Raimi as the chosen Warcraft movie director, there was a lull where he had quit but there was no replacement, and the project looked like it had died. However, recently Duncan Jones was announced as the new director, so it looks like the project is back on.
I've only seen one of Duncan Jones' movies, which was Moon. I actually thought the film was quite good, and had the feel of old-school science fiction that you never seem to see anymore - specifically that it was a science-fiction film and not a sci-fi action film. Mind you, I don't mind the latter category (I did watch the Star Wars movies an absurd number of times as a kid) but I appreciate that this is a director that can handle otherworldly subjects without needing to make everything an explosion.
That said, the Warcraft film is going to be super action-heavy. There is a lot of interesting intrigue going on between the various factions in the Warcraft universe, but this is definitely a world where violence solves problems, and even if there are many conflicting interests between the various factions (and sub-factions,) Warcraft's always been fairly straightforward in its characters' motivations (as much as I'd personally hate him in real life, I think that Garrosh is actually one of the most complicated characters they've come up with - a man who struggles to embody honor without having any idea what honor is.)
So there are a couple hurdles to making the Warcraft film that they'd have to leap. Mind you, as much as I like Jones and the Warcraft setting, let's not fool ourselves - this movie is going to be a disappointment. Video game movies have, at their very best, only ever ascended to guilty-pleasures. And for every Tomb Raider or Prince of Persia (haven't seen either, but I understand them to be "not as terrible as you'd think') there's an Alone in the Dark or In the Name of the King, or a Resident Evil movie where most of the cast gets killed by freaking lasers before the zombies even show up.
Don't expect an epic of deeply nuanced characters here. If you don't, you'll only get a nice surprise if they manage to pull it off.
Ok, so with that sad caveat out of the way, here's the major hurdles:
1. Races!
Warcraft is a setting with many different races. Depending on when they set the movie in the series' timeline, they might be able to keep things limited, but at the absolute least we're going to have Humans (easy enough) and Orcs.
That said, I'd appreciate it if they put in a little effort to show the less traditional races in Warcraft. If they want to distinguish the setting from the generic fantasy setting, then getting the Gnomes, Trolls (dial down the racism a bit, if you can) Tauren, Draenei, Goblins or Worgen in there would do a lot (particularly the Gnomes and Goblins - nothing says "not your average fantasy world" by throwing in 20th century technology.)
How they do these races is another challenge. They're all humanoid, so if you get a Westmore-style makeup team (they did the aliens on Star Trek) you'd probably be able to pull them off decently. If you make them CGI, it could look kind of crappy, but this is also going to be a 100 million dollar movie, so let's hope any CGI characters are more Gollum than Jar-Jar.
However, the absolute most important thing I think they need to make it truly feel like Warcraft and not like generic fantasy is that they need to show how the "monstrous" races are just as human-like as the humans. If the movie's about humans fighting orcs, let's see the Orcs raising their children and practicing shamanism, and show that they're not just berserkers.
2. Story!
The World of Warcraft is a HUGE fantasy world. It's got to be one of the most detailed fictional worlds out there, with tons of books and the absurdly huge amount of story content contained within the games. This is all very good, and will certainly help the art department flesh out the world, but it also means they've got to figure out what story they want to tell.
Probably the most film-ready story in Warcraft is the Tragedy of Arthas. You could do a movie about Arthas' downfall and it'd make for quite the experience. That said, as awesome as the Scourge is, Arthas' story is limited to one corner of Azeroth. You wouldn't be able to see Kalimdor in that story, and you'd limit your exposure to the non-human races.
If they choose to create new characters and just set it roughly where the game is at (which means that by the time the film comes out, it will be an expansion or two behind) you'd have to strike a delicate balance between showing off people like Varian or Thrall and fleshing out your dudes. Plus, if you were creating new villains for those people to fight, you'd be passing up a lot of pre-existing stuff.
3. Scope!
This ties into the story, but the thing about WoW is that there are a lot of major plots going on and not everyone gets to participate in all of them. If they use the pre-existing bad guys in the movie, will that suggest to the non-WoW audience that the main bad guys of WoW are the Scourge, the Old Gods, the Burning Legion?
4. Staying True!
Warcraft is very different from the Tolkien standard. The demons are not from hell, they're from a magical version of hyperspace. The undead are not standard zombies, they're an army organized with a single leader.
It would be a shame to have Warcraft generic-i-sized so that audiences could follow along. We need airships and nuclear-powered submarines along with our wizards and swordsmen. We need lanky green dudes in loincloths successfully fighting bulky blue guys with spaceships. That's just how Warcraft rolls.
If it winds up looking like a standard medieval setting, it won't be worth the trouble.
IN CONCLUSION
The movie's still a long way off, and could return to development hell. But if they do wind up making it, I genuinely hope they do pull it off. I've grown to like the setting quite a lot over the last six years, and with the talent they've got behind it, we could, theoretically, get a good film out of it.
But this is a video game adaptation, and there are going to be a whole lot of cooks in the kitchen. So if it winds up not-so-good, let's not take it too hard.
I've only seen one of Duncan Jones' movies, which was Moon. I actually thought the film was quite good, and had the feel of old-school science fiction that you never seem to see anymore - specifically that it was a science-fiction film and not a sci-fi action film. Mind you, I don't mind the latter category (I did watch the Star Wars movies an absurd number of times as a kid) but I appreciate that this is a director that can handle otherworldly subjects without needing to make everything an explosion.
That said, the Warcraft film is going to be super action-heavy. There is a lot of interesting intrigue going on between the various factions in the Warcraft universe, but this is definitely a world where violence solves problems, and even if there are many conflicting interests between the various factions (and sub-factions,) Warcraft's always been fairly straightforward in its characters' motivations (as much as I'd personally hate him in real life, I think that Garrosh is actually one of the most complicated characters they've come up with - a man who struggles to embody honor without having any idea what honor is.)
So there are a couple hurdles to making the Warcraft film that they'd have to leap. Mind you, as much as I like Jones and the Warcraft setting, let's not fool ourselves - this movie is going to be a disappointment. Video game movies have, at their very best, only ever ascended to guilty-pleasures. And for every Tomb Raider or Prince of Persia (haven't seen either, but I understand them to be "not as terrible as you'd think') there's an Alone in the Dark or In the Name of the King, or a Resident Evil movie where most of the cast gets killed by freaking lasers before the zombies even show up.
Don't expect an epic of deeply nuanced characters here. If you don't, you'll only get a nice surprise if they manage to pull it off.
Ok, so with that sad caveat out of the way, here's the major hurdles:
1. Races!
Warcraft is a setting with many different races. Depending on when they set the movie in the series' timeline, they might be able to keep things limited, but at the absolute least we're going to have Humans (easy enough) and Orcs.
That said, I'd appreciate it if they put in a little effort to show the less traditional races in Warcraft. If they want to distinguish the setting from the generic fantasy setting, then getting the Gnomes, Trolls (dial down the racism a bit, if you can) Tauren, Draenei, Goblins or Worgen in there would do a lot (particularly the Gnomes and Goblins - nothing says "not your average fantasy world" by throwing in 20th century technology.)
How they do these races is another challenge. They're all humanoid, so if you get a Westmore-style makeup team (they did the aliens on Star Trek) you'd probably be able to pull them off decently. If you make them CGI, it could look kind of crappy, but this is also going to be a 100 million dollar movie, so let's hope any CGI characters are more Gollum than Jar-Jar.
However, the absolute most important thing I think they need to make it truly feel like Warcraft and not like generic fantasy is that they need to show how the "monstrous" races are just as human-like as the humans. If the movie's about humans fighting orcs, let's see the Orcs raising their children and practicing shamanism, and show that they're not just berserkers.
2. Story!
The World of Warcraft is a HUGE fantasy world. It's got to be one of the most detailed fictional worlds out there, with tons of books and the absurdly huge amount of story content contained within the games. This is all very good, and will certainly help the art department flesh out the world, but it also means they've got to figure out what story they want to tell.
Probably the most film-ready story in Warcraft is the Tragedy of Arthas. You could do a movie about Arthas' downfall and it'd make for quite the experience. That said, as awesome as the Scourge is, Arthas' story is limited to one corner of Azeroth. You wouldn't be able to see Kalimdor in that story, and you'd limit your exposure to the non-human races.
If they choose to create new characters and just set it roughly where the game is at (which means that by the time the film comes out, it will be an expansion or two behind) you'd have to strike a delicate balance between showing off people like Varian or Thrall and fleshing out your dudes. Plus, if you were creating new villains for those people to fight, you'd be passing up a lot of pre-existing stuff.
3. Scope!
This ties into the story, but the thing about WoW is that there are a lot of major plots going on and not everyone gets to participate in all of them. If they use the pre-existing bad guys in the movie, will that suggest to the non-WoW audience that the main bad guys of WoW are the Scourge, the Old Gods, the Burning Legion?
4. Staying True!
Warcraft is very different from the Tolkien standard. The demons are not from hell, they're from a magical version of hyperspace. The undead are not standard zombies, they're an army organized with a single leader.
It would be a shame to have Warcraft generic-i-sized so that audiences could follow along. We need airships and nuclear-powered submarines along with our wizards and swordsmen. We need lanky green dudes in loincloths successfully fighting bulky blue guys with spaceships. That's just how Warcraft rolls.
If it winds up looking like a standard medieval setting, it won't be worth the trouble.
IN CONCLUSION
The movie's still a long way off, and could return to development hell. But if they do wind up making it, I genuinely hope they do pull it off. I've grown to like the setting quite a lot over the last six years, and with the talent they've got behind it, we could, theoretically, get a good film out of it.
But this is a video game adaptation, and there are going to be a whole lot of cooks in the kitchen. So if it winds up not-so-good, let's not take it too hard.
Tuesday, January 29, 2013
Getting ready for Da Thunda King!
This article is less of a philosophical rant and more of an update on how my play is going, so if you come here for the grand idea stuff, feel free to skip this article.
I've basically come to the conclusion that until we actually get our raiding going (and that's partially my responsibility, as a guild officer,) I've got to use LFR as my main progression path. As I've said before, tanking for LFR can be a pain.
This expansion, I fairly quickly switched Oterro from being a tank back to being dps. I actually originally created him to be my plate dps character to counter Jarsus as my plate tank, but tanking in Wrath was so fun that I wound up making not only my Death Knight, but also my Druid and Warrior (the Orc one - this was before Worgen) into tanks, such that I had a tank of every class.
Oterro was originally Blood DPS, which was the best leveling spec the game's ever seen. This was back in the day when the general impression was that Frost would be the tank spec, based on the original announcement of the DK class. As you may or may not know (I tend to assume everyone played during Wrath at least, but I realize that could be false,) when the DK was first announced, people were still very much in the Burning Crusade mindset, where specific specs would serve specific functions. Back then, Warriors were main-tanks (boss tanks,) Paladins were AoE tanks, and Druids were off-tanks. Death Knights were announced as the "magic tanks," being adept at tanking casters. In addition, the specs had specific functions as well. Blood was the PvE DPS spec, focusing on sustained damage. Frost was the tank spec (with various anti-magic bonuses in addition to higher armor.) Unholy was the PvP Utility spec, with lots of tricks to compete on the battlegrounds. Shortly into the development of Wrath (pre-Beta) they decided to make every spec for Death Knights capable of tanking and doing DPS, the way that Feral Druids worked (in the days before the Guardian spec and the whole talent revamp, Feral druids could assign their talent points differently to serve as better tanks or better melee dps.)
Over the course of Wrath, Blood and Frost tended to be the stronger tank specs while Frost and Unholy tended to be better at DPS. Cataclysm reworked the specs so that Blood became the tank spec, and the others were DPS. At that point, I didn't mind, because I'd already made the switch to tanking (when they introduced dual-spec, I went with Blood tank/Blood dps.)
Anyway, after having about ten decently geared characters by the end of Cataclysm, it's been a bit of a shock to the system to only have really two (I keep telling myself I'm going to gear up my Rogue so that I have someone competent Horde-side.) I wish it were easier to gear up alts, but then again, it might just take waiting for future patches.
Today I got my LFR tier shoulders for Oterro (and a second Shin'ka, which is fine for his tank set but makes me feel like a bad person) bringing him up to iLevel 480, which is the same as Jarsus (Jar has fewer raid drops but more VP gear. He still has a blue sword and shield, but it's not like there are a ton of those in LFR.)
So on one hand, they're both ready to queue for Throne of Thunder when it comes out, but both still have a lot to work on for the Legendary chain.
As I've said, I've been more reluctant to run Jarsus through LFR (he actually still needs the Protectors of the Endless for the Terrace of Endless Spring achievement,) which means that Oterro's actually much farther along his Sigil hunt than Jarsus, needing only 6 sigils of Wisdom (if I get super-lucky, I could technically get them all this week, if I got one from every boss in Heart of Fear.)
I've never actually done a Legendary chain before - I started raiding in Wrath, and back then Legendaries only came in 25-man raids - not to mention that Shadowmourne was a dps weapon, and while technically I could argue that Oterro could use it as a tank, it's a moot point, because we're a 10-man guild (I actually miss 25-man being tuned harder and granting better gear, because it meant that 10-man was easier.) Even if we had been seriously raiding in Cataclysm (we did finish BWD, to be fair) the Legendaries there were for Casters and Rogues, and as cool as Darsino is, he's Horde, and thus is strictly LFR-only.)
So currently what I've got to do is religiously run Heart of Fear on LFR (and Terrace, of course) every week. Then there's the issue of reputation. I waited to grind reps on Oterro mostly until after getting the Grand Commendations. The result is that I actually wasn't quite honored when I was done with them and started on Shieldwall. Oterro's already revered with them, so when I do actually get to the second stage of the Legendary quests, I'll presumably have to grind rep by killing Horde in Krasarang. Oh well, at least there's no daily limit on that.
Last bit of news: I finally got into the Brawler's Guild (on Oterro - I'd originally meant to do so on Ardten, but I don't think he's geared enough for it, and I just happened to get the invitation while on Oterro.)
Bizmo's Brawlpub is, of course, a really cool location (SO much better than the Brawl'gar Arena) and the fights in the pit are pretty cool - really designed as solo boss fights. I'm sure some classes have an easier time on them than others, but there's some fun little strategies.
You do get a fair amount of gold for a short amount of time down there, but gold is of course not a huge incentive these days. It would be cool to get a set of transmog gear or a title, or even get some kind of power-level reward. I'm currently rank 3, so I'm not sure what happens when you finish all the fights. It is a pretty small feature, for all the hype that it got, and while it's enjoyable, I think they're going to need to do some serious re-working to keep it as a relevant feature in future expansions.
I've basically come to the conclusion that until we actually get our raiding going (and that's partially my responsibility, as a guild officer,) I've got to use LFR as my main progression path. As I've said before, tanking for LFR can be a pain.
This expansion, I fairly quickly switched Oterro from being a tank back to being dps. I actually originally created him to be my plate dps character to counter Jarsus as my plate tank, but tanking in Wrath was so fun that I wound up making not only my Death Knight, but also my Druid and Warrior (the Orc one - this was before Worgen) into tanks, such that I had a tank of every class.
Oterro was originally Blood DPS, which was the best leveling spec the game's ever seen. This was back in the day when the general impression was that Frost would be the tank spec, based on the original announcement of the DK class. As you may or may not know (I tend to assume everyone played during Wrath at least, but I realize that could be false,) when the DK was first announced, people were still very much in the Burning Crusade mindset, where specific specs would serve specific functions. Back then, Warriors were main-tanks (boss tanks,) Paladins were AoE tanks, and Druids were off-tanks. Death Knights were announced as the "magic tanks," being adept at tanking casters. In addition, the specs had specific functions as well. Blood was the PvE DPS spec, focusing on sustained damage. Frost was the tank spec (with various anti-magic bonuses in addition to higher armor.) Unholy was the PvP Utility spec, with lots of tricks to compete on the battlegrounds. Shortly into the development of Wrath (pre-Beta) they decided to make every spec for Death Knights capable of tanking and doing DPS, the way that Feral Druids worked (in the days before the Guardian spec and the whole talent revamp, Feral druids could assign their talent points differently to serve as better tanks or better melee dps.)
Over the course of Wrath, Blood and Frost tended to be the stronger tank specs while Frost and Unholy tended to be better at DPS. Cataclysm reworked the specs so that Blood became the tank spec, and the others were DPS. At that point, I didn't mind, because I'd already made the switch to tanking (when they introduced dual-spec, I went with Blood tank/Blood dps.)
Anyway, after having about ten decently geared characters by the end of Cataclysm, it's been a bit of a shock to the system to only have really two (I keep telling myself I'm going to gear up my Rogue so that I have someone competent Horde-side.) I wish it were easier to gear up alts, but then again, it might just take waiting for future patches.
Today I got my LFR tier shoulders for Oterro (and a second Shin'ka, which is fine for his tank set but makes me feel like a bad person) bringing him up to iLevel 480, which is the same as Jarsus (Jar has fewer raid drops but more VP gear. He still has a blue sword and shield, but it's not like there are a ton of those in LFR.)
So on one hand, they're both ready to queue for Throne of Thunder when it comes out, but both still have a lot to work on for the Legendary chain.
As I've said, I've been more reluctant to run Jarsus through LFR (he actually still needs the Protectors of the Endless for the Terrace of Endless Spring achievement,) which means that Oterro's actually much farther along his Sigil hunt than Jarsus, needing only 6 sigils of Wisdom (if I get super-lucky, I could technically get them all this week, if I got one from every boss in Heart of Fear.)
I've never actually done a Legendary chain before - I started raiding in Wrath, and back then Legendaries only came in 25-man raids - not to mention that Shadowmourne was a dps weapon, and while technically I could argue that Oterro could use it as a tank, it's a moot point, because we're a 10-man guild (I actually miss 25-man being tuned harder and granting better gear, because it meant that 10-man was easier.) Even if we had been seriously raiding in Cataclysm (we did finish BWD, to be fair) the Legendaries there were for Casters and Rogues, and as cool as Darsino is, he's Horde, and thus is strictly LFR-only.)
So currently what I've got to do is religiously run Heart of Fear on LFR (and Terrace, of course) every week. Then there's the issue of reputation. I waited to grind reps on Oterro mostly until after getting the Grand Commendations. The result is that I actually wasn't quite honored when I was done with them and started on Shieldwall. Oterro's already revered with them, so when I do actually get to the second stage of the Legendary quests, I'll presumably have to grind rep by killing Horde in Krasarang. Oh well, at least there's no daily limit on that.
Last bit of news: I finally got into the Brawler's Guild (on Oterro - I'd originally meant to do so on Ardten, but I don't think he's geared enough for it, and I just happened to get the invitation while on Oterro.)
Bizmo's Brawlpub is, of course, a really cool location (SO much better than the Brawl'gar Arena) and the fights in the pit are pretty cool - really designed as solo boss fights. I'm sure some classes have an easier time on them than others, but there's some fun little strategies.
You do get a fair amount of gold for a short amount of time down there, but gold is of course not a huge incentive these days. It would be cool to get a set of transmog gear or a title, or even get some kind of power-level reward. I'm currently rank 3, so I'm not sure what happens when you finish all the fights. It is a pretty small feature, for all the hype that it got, and while it's enjoyable, I think they're going to need to do some serious re-working to keep it as a relevant feature in future expansions.
Monday, January 28, 2013
Justice for... Justice!
The very first PvE currency WoW introduced was the Badge of Justice. At first, only heroic 5-man bosses would drop these during Burning Crusade. PvE currencies have evolved considerably since then - with Wrath's introduction of tiered currencies and then Cataclysm's simplification of Wrath's system by making two tiers of currency: Current (Valor) and Old (Justice.)
Justice Points were basically the main catch-up mechanic. The idea was that every 5-man boss would drop Justice Points, and you could easily get a lot of JP from running random dungeons. At the expansion's launch, this would provide decent heroic-dungeon-level blue items, and as the expansion went on, the gear that used to sell for Valor Points would be downgraded to sell for JP. Because a player running old dungeons could acquire JP with relative ease, if you needed to catch up, you could run dungeons until you had enough of last patch's gear to enter the current content.
The entire premise of JP as a useful currency is based on the idea that it's easy to acquire, and easy to acquire quickly.
The irony in Mists is that JP is actually kind of hard to come by.
The acquisition of both Valor and Justice has been considerably slowed this time around, not to mention the fact that Valor gear has been locked behind reputations requiring weeks to grind (on a per-character basis, though I don't want to get too far into that.)
While Valor isn't exactly flooding us, the methods of acquiring it are myriad. One gets VP from dungeons, scenarios, raids and raid finder, and even daily quests. JP is only acquired through dungeons, and recently, scenarios. Therefore, it's actually easier to come by VP than JP these days, which raises the question: why have JP?
The culprit here, I think, is Raid Finder, and specifically Blizzard's decision to push Raid Finder as the main PvE activity. One does not gain JP through LFR.
Also, JP gear is not even up to the same level as heroic dungeon gear. It seems as if JP gear is meant to get you into heroics, rather than past them.
The thing is, we're still in the early phase of the expansion. We may be past the first patch, but we're still on the first raiding tier. I don't know what the intention for the various points is, though what I've heard is that they intend to reduce the VP cost for the current stuff. This seems to suggest that it will still be VP.
Truthfully, it looks as if we're returning to a one-currency system, which we have not had since BC. The irony is that this will likely make catching up more difficult, as they will keep that one relevant currency hard to acquire.
And if this is the path they take, it means we'll probably hit a point where we've got tons of JP and absolutely nothing to spend it on.
Justice Points were basically the main catch-up mechanic. The idea was that every 5-man boss would drop Justice Points, and you could easily get a lot of JP from running random dungeons. At the expansion's launch, this would provide decent heroic-dungeon-level blue items, and as the expansion went on, the gear that used to sell for Valor Points would be downgraded to sell for JP. Because a player running old dungeons could acquire JP with relative ease, if you needed to catch up, you could run dungeons until you had enough of last patch's gear to enter the current content.
The entire premise of JP as a useful currency is based on the idea that it's easy to acquire, and easy to acquire quickly.
The irony in Mists is that JP is actually kind of hard to come by.
The acquisition of both Valor and Justice has been considerably slowed this time around, not to mention the fact that Valor gear has been locked behind reputations requiring weeks to grind (on a per-character basis, though I don't want to get too far into that.)
While Valor isn't exactly flooding us, the methods of acquiring it are myriad. One gets VP from dungeons, scenarios, raids and raid finder, and even daily quests. JP is only acquired through dungeons, and recently, scenarios. Therefore, it's actually easier to come by VP than JP these days, which raises the question: why have JP?
The culprit here, I think, is Raid Finder, and specifically Blizzard's decision to push Raid Finder as the main PvE activity. One does not gain JP through LFR.
Also, JP gear is not even up to the same level as heroic dungeon gear. It seems as if JP gear is meant to get you into heroics, rather than past them.
The thing is, we're still in the early phase of the expansion. We may be past the first patch, but we're still on the first raiding tier. I don't know what the intention for the various points is, though what I've heard is that they intend to reduce the VP cost for the current stuff. This seems to suggest that it will still be VP.
Truthfully, it looks as if we're returning to a one-currency system, which we have not had since BC. The irony is that this will likely make catching up more difficult, as they will keep that one relevant currency hard to acquire.
And if this is the path they take, it means we'll probably hit a point where we've got tons of JP and absolutely nothing to spend it on.
Friday, January 25, 2013
Legendary Redefined: Wrathion's Pandarian Tour
Legendaries have been a part of the game since the first raid (though they might have been added in a patch - I wasn't playing at launch.) Historically, Legendaries have always been weapons. Molten Core introduced Sulfuras, Hand of Ragnaros, and everyone's favorite Trade Chat spam: Thunderfury, Blessed Blade of the Windseeker. Later on, Atiesh, Greatstaff of the Guardian was made available to casters after battling through the original Naxxramas (again, if there are errors here, it's because I don't remember this era very well.)
Burning Crusade changed Legendaries to simply be ultra-rare drops off of very difficult end-game bosses - the Twinblades of Azzinoth and Thor'idal, the Stars' Fury (at the time, Thor'idal's self-generated ammo was what made it truly Legendary, which seems quaint now.)
Wrath brought back the epic Legendary quest chains with Val'anyr, Hammer of Ancient Kings and Shadowmourne (the closest we were allowed to get to wielding Frostmourne.) Likewise, Cataclysm's Legendaries involved very elaborate quest chains with many unique experiences and plot developments, granting casters of all sorts Dragonswrath, Tarecgosa's Rest and the Blades of the Father, the latter of which of course introduced us to Wrathion.
Legendaries varied in accessibility. Wrath limited them to 25-man mode (which was tuned harder those days and rewarded better gear) while Cataclysm made starting the chains relatively easy (as long as one was working on normal-mode raids at least) but required diligent clearing of the raids with great frequency.
The thing is that Legendaries have always been for specific classes or roles, and they've always been a single item (or dual-wielded set.) Admittedly, some of these items take on different forms, growing more powerful as you progress through the chain, but it was always focused on that one, shiny weapon.
Mists has absolutely redefined what Legendary means. For one, it is far more accessible. Legendaries in Mists are for everyone, and starting the quest chain requires only that you hit 90 and speak with Wrathion.
The rewards are also quite different. Completing the first leg of the chain grants you your first item - a Sha-Touched gem, for use in specific weapons that drop from Heart of Fear and Terrace of Eternal Spring. We've never had a Legendary gem before, but there you have it. Likewise, 5.2 will be bringing us Legendary Meta Gems, with the ability to give your helmet a socket to hold it (not tied to a specific helmet the way it is for weapons.)
While there has not been, so far, the kind of world-trekking story-based quest chain one sees with some of the older quests, the theme of Wrathion's chain is about exploring Pandaria and basically participating in all aspects of the expansion.
As of yet, we don't really know what the subsequent parts of the chain will involve. Will we get super-fancy weapons, like the Legendaries of old? How will it all come to a head?
The other interesting question is this: how many of us are expected to complete the chain? Currently, you can get the Sigils for the first part even from LFR, and while the droprate is very low, many have been able to get all 20 (on Oterro, who's farthest along, I've got 8 Power and 2 Wisdom.) Other requirements have tended to require diligence more than anything else, like gaining rep while working on daily quests or gaining a certain amount of Valor.
Legendaries used to be a sign of being one of the elite, but perhaps the goal of the Legendary has shifted. Rather than simply showing who's in a top raiding guild, now the Legendary quest chain is about telling the story of the expansion.
I'm still far away from finishing even the first part of the chain (I think I need to make peace with the fact that I need to spend more time in the Raid Finder than the Dungeon Finder,) but it would be quite awesome indeed to be able to complete a Legendary quest.
Burning Crusade changed Legendaries to simply be ultra-rare drops off of very difficult end-game bosses - the Twinblades of Azzinoth and Thor'idal, the Stars' Fury (at the time, Thor'idal's self-generated ammo was what made it truly Legendary, which seems quaint now.)
Wrath brought back the epic Legendary quest chains with Val'anyr, Hammer of Ancient Kings and Shadowmourne (the closest we were allowed to get to wielding Frostmourne.) Likewise, Cataclysm's Legendaries involved very elaborate quest chains with many unique experiences and plot developments, granting casters of all sorts Dragonswrath, Tarecgosa's Rest and the Blades of the Father, the latter of which of course introduced us to Wrathion.
Legendaries varied in accessibility. Wrath limited them to 25-man mode (which was tuned harder those days and rewarded better gear) while Cataclysm made starting the chains relatively easy (as long as one was working on normal-mode raids at least) but required diligent clearing of the raids with great frequency.
The thing is that Legendaries have always been for specific classes or roles, and they've always been a single item (or dual-wielded set.) Admittedly, some of these items take on different forms, growing more powerful as you progress through the chain, but it was always focused on that one, shiny weapon.
Mists has absolutely redefined what Legendary means. For one, it is far more accessible. Legendaries in Mists are for everyone, and starting the quest chain requires only that you hit 90 and speak with Wrathion.
The rewards are also quite different. Completing the first leg of the chain grants you your first item - a Sha-Touched gem, for use in specific weapons that drop from Heart of Fear and Terrace of Eternal Spring. We've never had a Legendary gem before, but there you have it. Likewise, 5.2 will be bringing us Legendary Meta Gems, with the ability to give your helmet a socket to hold it (not tied to a specific helmet the way it is for weapons.)
While there has not been, so far, the kind of world-trekking story-based quest chain one sees with some of the older quests, the theme of Wrathion's chain is about exploring Pandaria and basically participating in all aspects of the expansion.
As of yet, we don't really know what the subsequent parts of the chain will involve. Will we get super-fancy weapons, like the Legendaries of old? How will it all come to a head?
The other interesting question is this: how many of us are expected to complete the chain? Currently, you can get the Sigils for the first part even from LFR, and while the droprate is very low, many have been able to get all 20 (on Oterro, who's farthest along, I've got 8 Power and 2 Wisdom.) Other requirements have tended to require diligence more than anything else, like gaining rep while working on daily quests or gaining a certain amount of Valor.
Legendaries used to be a sign of being one of the elite, but perhaps the goal of the Legendary has shifted. Rather than simply showing who's in a top raiding guild, now the Legendary quest chain is about telling the story of the expansion.
I'm still far away from finishing even the first part of the chain (I think I need to make peace with the fact that I need to spend more time in the Raid Finder than the Dungeon Finder,) but it would be quite awesome indeed to be able to complete a Legendary quest.
Thursday, January 24, 2013
Thank the Light: Ghostcrawler on Prot Paladin Haste
Recent blue posts have acknowledged the problem I've had with Prot Paladin gearing this expansion.
This is some fairly esoteric stuff, and even though Paladins are probably the most popular tank class (well, them or DKs,) most people don't tank, so I'll give some background:
Mists gave Prot Paladins a passive that Ret has had since Cataclysm: Sanctity of Battle. Because Paladins are a long-term resource class, nearly all our abilities have cooldowns - using the CD to keep us from casting or striking every global CD. Sanctity of Battle shortens the cooldowns of those important abilities relative to our haste, mirroring the way that a Rogue, for example, gets extra energy with more haste (a Cataclysm change.) With ability cooldowns as our "resource," haste lets us fit more button-presses in a minute, just as it does for those with short-term resources.
The weird thing, then, is that because of the change to "Active Mitigation" tanking, Prot's need to generate Holy Power so we can cast Shield of the Righteous more often becomes paramount to survival.
The odd consequence of this is that after hit and hard-capping expertise (to make sure our abilities connect and thus grant our Power,) Mastery and Haste share our third priority spot for secondary stats. With role-neutral Mastery and Haste as our chief uncapped stats, we actually wind up preferring what would usually be considered DPS pieces instead of "tanking pieces," which have the two stats that are strictly for tanks: dodge and parry.
I have a necklace, for instance, from hitting exalted with the Klaxxi, that is expertise and haste. I passed up a dodge/parry one to get it, and that seems super wrong. Worse still, with the current gearing system, there are plenty of pieces in LFR that would be upgrades but that I'll never see because they're not "tank" pieces.
Ghostcrawler has seen this, and help is on the way: They're going to reevaluate some of the systems, likely nerfing Shield of the Righteous (and compensating elsewhere) to encourage dodge and parry over haste. They still want haste to be useful, but they don't want us wishing for DPS gear and sighing at all the useless dodge and parry on our tier sets.
I appreciate the desire to make non-traditional tank stats viable, but stacking haste on a tank - and a plate one, no less - is just plain wrong. Bring on the changes, hopefully as of 5.2.
This is some fairly esoteric stuff, and even though Paladins are probably the most popular tank class (well, them or DKs,) most people don't tank, so I'll give some background:
Mists gave Prot Paladins a passive that Ret has had since Cataclysm: Sanctity of Battle. Because Paladins are a long-term resource class, nearly all our abilities have cooldowns - using the CD to keep us from casting or striking every global CD. Sanctity of Battle shortens the cooldowns of those important abilities relative to our haste, mirroring the way that a Rogue, for example, gets extra energy with more haste (a Cataclysm change.) With ability cooldowns as our "resource," haste lets us fit more button-presses in a minute, just as it does for those with short-term resources.
The weird thing, then, is that because of the change to "Active Mitigation" tanking, Prot's need to generate Holy Power so we can cast Shield of the Righteous more often becomes paramount to survival.
The odd consequence of this is that after hit and hard-capping expertise (to make sure our abilities connect and thus grant our Power,) Mastery and Haste share our third priority spot for secondary stats. With role-neutral Mastery and Haste as our chief uncapped stats, we actually wind up preferring what would usually be considered DPS pieces instead of "tanking pieces," which have the two stats that are strictly for tanks: dodge and parry.
I have a necklace, for instance, from hitting exalted with the Klaxxi, that is expertise and haste. I passed up a dodge/parry one to get it, and that seems super wrong. Worse still, with the current gearing system, there are plenty of pieces in LFR that would be upgrades but that I'll never see because they're not "tank" pieces.
Ghostcrawler has seen this, and help is on the way: They're going to reevaluate some of the systems, likely nerfing Shield of the Righteous (and compensating elsewhere) to encourage dodge and parry over haste. They still want haste to be useful, but they don't want us wishing for DPS gear and sighing at all the useless dodge and parry on our tier sets.
I appreciate the desire to make non-traditional tank stats viable, but stacking haste on a tank - and a plate one, no less - is just plain wrong. Bring on the changes, hopefully as of 5.2.
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