The Thunder King Comes, The Thunder King Comes - Is the Hibernation of the Alts Over Yet?

With MMO-Champion calling it, and WoW Insider agreeing, and given the deluge of previews we've been getting from Blizzard, it's a pretty safe bet that tomorrow is when 5.2 drops.

I've already gone over a lot of the new content in previous articles, though I will point you to this official preview of the Isle of Thunder itself. It seems to me that Blizzard is trying very hard to create new world content that's different from what we've seen before.

I'm excited about the summonable bosses and such, though I hope there will be rewards compelling enough to do them.

The other thing I am excited for is the prospect of better drop rates in LFR for the 5.0 raids and the VP cost reduction for 5.0 and 5.1 gear (50% and 25%, respectively). While Oterro and Jarsus are at 484 and 481, respectively (and as soon as I get a new Valor piece on Jarsus, I'm sure he'll jump considerably, especially since I believe there are some VP pieces to get from the Shado-Pan Assault that are available at neutral,) everyone else is considerably lower. Only Ardten is geared to queue for MSV, and he's cheating a point with a piece of tanking gear in his inventory.

Mists is not as alt-friendly an expansion as previous ones have been, but I think a big part of that is simply the huge amount of work you need to put in just to qualify to spend your VP on something. Blizzard slowed down gains on VP (remember that by the end of Cataclysm, we were getting 140 VP every time we ran a random dungeon.) The weekly cap is the same, but the amount of content you need to run to hit that cap is pretty heavy, meaning alts get left by the wayside. Even when focusing on a single character, it's pretty hard to cap. Then again, it's called a cap because it's the maximum, not the minimum.

Still, the reduction of price for VP gear will make things a great deal easier, and the Grand Commendations introduced in 5.1 make getting up to revered with the various factions a somewhat less painful experience (especially as the one-off quests for those factions usually provide a pretty nice chunk of XP, which means fewer days doing dailies - this is why in some ways I REALLY wish I had waited on all my alts until 5.1, or at least held off on taking them through Townlong and Dread Wastes, which are awash in Shado-Pan and Klaxxi rep.)

The thing one can often forget is that the life of an altoholic (remember, that's the name of the blog!) gets easier the longer the expansion goes on. We can likely expect that with the drop rate changes and VP price reductions, getting a toon outfitted in such a way to not embarrass him or herself will be a far quicker process. If the usual pattern holds (and I know Blizzard would prefer that it did not) we will probably hit the final raid patch some time in the late fall or winter, and then we will likely have roughly a year before the next expansion comes out. During this latter-day part of the Mists life-cycle, I expect that the VP will be flowing freely, and the drop rates in Throne of Thunder will likely also have been enhanced.

It will still probably be unlikely that you'll have an easy time getting all of your toons geared up in tier 16 stuff, but I am cautiously optimistic that before too long, we're going to see a lot more people decked out in tier 14 sets with Sha-Touched weapons, ready to charge into Lei Shen's house.

The Next Transitional Patch: 5.3

In the deluge of Blizzard interviews in the run-up to 5.2 (which I am pretty confident we'll see on Tuesday) there was a little talk about the remaining patches for Mists of Pandaria.

It's not like we're deep into the expansion at this point, but typically the final patch cycle tends to last a very long time - it was practically half the expansion's life cycle for the past two, after all.

5.2 will be bringing the final major threat discovered on Pandaria to a close. With the fall of Lei Shen and the Mogu, the story will turn more dramatically toward the Alliance and the Horde.

5.3 will be somewhat similar to 5.1 - a patch focusing on story, presumably with a new daily quest faction. There has not been talk about new 5-man dungeons, but it seems as if Blizzard is cutting down on 5-mans as a way to gear up. Grumble grumble, etc., but let's see where they go with the concept.

I have not yet done the Dominance Offensive grind (at least not the whole thing) but I do know that there's some serious stuff going down with the Horde at the moment. Garrosh has been using more and more brutal tactics against his enemies and in order to keep his people in line. Even Thrall, who held so much faith in the younger Hellscream, has realized he's gone too far. Vol'jin barely escaped an assassination attempt with his life, and Lor'themar was nearly ready to leave the Horde in favor of the Alliance, if it had not been for the affair with the Sunreavers and Dalaran.

As of yet, though, the Horde is still pretty much operating under Garrosh's direction. Some are too frightened to disobey, some are still inspired by his brash, might-makes-right philosophy. We don't know exactly how the Sunreaver Onslaught is going to go down (and it appears it will not have quite the same storytelling style as the 5.1 factions, which is a shame.) It's clear that the Horde is near a tipping point, and if there's one place for the Resistance to start up, it's 5.3. I expect we're going to see a lot of Vol'jin and Lor'themar, and hopefully see Baine get in on it too. Sylvanas even might play a role, though she's always acted somewhat independent of the Horde anyway.

The Alliance is not without its problems, either, even if the external Horde threat far overshadows the problems from within. The biggest new concern is that Jaina is off the chain. It's true that Jaina always had a little independence from the Alliance during her reign in Theramore. But in the past, she used that independence to seek some degree of peace with the Horde. Now, it's Varian who wants to deal with the Horde in a careful manner, to fight them in such a way that the war might end one day. Just as Varian is finally coming around, Jaina's gotten tired of waiting for a lasting peace that never seems to come, and she has become dedicated to devastating the Horde.

I don't know what is going to happen to Jaina, ultimately. While I doubt that she's going to sink to the depths that Garrosh has, I do think she needs to go take a trip to the Caverns of Time and see how horrified she was when Arthas started to go crazy.

The internal politics of the Alliance have not been touched on nearly as much this expansion, but I think 5.3 is an opportunity to get a good luck at all of it. Varian is attempting to become the High King of the Alliance, but I've got to imagine that would ruffle a few feathers. Tyrande's been leading her people for ten thousand years, and Genn Greymane is king of an entirely different nation (albeit one in exile.) Jaina could prove a rallying point for the more frustrated and angry leaders of the Alliance, and I could definitely see a political crisis if Varian is not able to rally the whole of the Alliance to his way of doing things.

Still, I'm not entirely sure what this will mean for the Alliance from a player's perspective. Horde players might have content where they work on an underground movement within Orgrimmar or the other capitals. If that's how the Horde goes down, I could see Alliance players trying to convince the various leaders of the Alliance to stand behind Varian and let him bring the hammer down.

These "story patches" could be a great tradition to continue for the rest of the game, coming out in between raid patches, to bring more variety to the game at a faster pace. I would love to see some big story moments covered in patches like this. Let me liberate Gilneas over the course of a faction grind, or let me help Sylvanas purge the Kor'kron from the Undercity. Engaging in the game is far more fun when you can feel part of the story.

Hints in Pandaria of What's Happening in Expansion 5

We're now a few months in to Mists of Pandaria. Generally, the reception for the expansion has been good - there's a whole big continent to explore, satisfyingly large raid tiers, and a ton more story to sink our teeth into - story that we get to actually experience instead of hearing that it had been established in a tie-in book.

The Legendary quest chain throughout Mists of Pandaria is focused on Wrathion, the Black Prince, choosing you to serve as his champion as he attempts to create a united Azeroth. His methods are suspicious, and his ultimate vision for what this united Azeroth would look like are hazy, but nevertheless, I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt and say that he probably does, legitimately want to save the world.

One of the constant themes of WoW is that Azeroth would be in amazingly better shape if the Horde and the Alliance buried the hatchet once and for all, but that the old wounds of past conflicts have, so far, made any coalition between the two a temporary affair at best.

The vision that Wrathion shows us of a destroyed Azeroth clearly implies that he thinks the Legion is coming to invade. It's not exactly a shocker - the Legion has been trying to invade for tens of thousands of years.

Mists of Pandaria is all about the Allliance/Horde conflict. Sure, Pandaria has a lot of its own identity, but after dealing with the Mantid and the Sha (though the Sha will probably never go away completely - especially as Garrosh attempts to weaponize it) and seeing as we're about to put down the Mogu threat in the next patch, the real focus and climax of the expansion will be the fall of Garrosh.

Blizzard people in various interviews have referred to a Horde coup d'etat. I expect we'll get a build-up to this in 5.3, and then 5.4's raid will of course make it official. The Alliance will of course also get in on the defeat of Garrosh, but this leaves an interesting question open - and one that will have huge ramifications for WoW going forward.

The question is whether the Alliance and the Horde Resistance work together to topple Garrosh, or simply come at him from different angles.

If it's the latter, then we will probably not see the status quo all that upset: the Alliance celebrates a victory against the Garrosh, but the conflict with the Horde could continue much as it had. The Horde would be in a weakened position, dealing with the aftermath of regime change - presumably needing to sort through the Kor'kron and figure out who was just loyally serving the office of the Warchief and who was a crazy evil bastard, all while trying to determine who, if anyone, should be Warchief now (and there's a whole other article right there.)

If it's the former, though, we might actually see a return to the uneasy cooperation between the factions we haven't seen since the Wrathgate. Before you scoff at this, think about something that Velen has been talking about: the Army of the Light. Velen (and really, it wouldn't hurt to give the Draenei some screen time) knows the Legion is destroying worlds constantly, but that we could stand up to them if we all formed one giant coalition (I'm avoiding the word alliance for reasons that I think should be obvious.) If we are going to face down the Legion, there could be some serious shift in 6.0.

With the full might of the Alliance storming Orgrimmar, it's hard to imagine the war as it is currently going will be able to just keep going.

I doubt we'll ever seen the two factions totally merge - the way that PvP and even just questing work would make that unfeasible - but I definitely think we'll see a cool-down in the conflict between the two sides and, if Blizzard wants to really play around with the fundamentals of the game, we could even see a relaxation of the restrictions against cross-faction cooperation in-game.

So, the expansion itself: I doubt we'll see another "remaking of Azeroth" expansion after Cataclysm taxed their resources so heavily. What that means is that we're probably going to have something like the Scourge Invasion that occurred pre-Wrath (and pre-Naxxramas 40, but that's beside the point.) We'll have an attack that really makes it clear we need to act. To do so, I expect we'll travel to the stars once more.

Will there be another fragment of Outland to explore? Perhaps. Or we might travel to other worlds.

In the faction leader short stories, we discovered that the Draenei have fixed the Exodar. Imagine, then, that Velen gets the thing flying and says "Alliance and Horde, all aboard, let's take out the Legion!" Most expansions have had a fairly epic introduction to bring you into the new world - I think taking off in the Exodar would qualify.

Assuming there is a Burning Legion expansion, we could also probably guess that we'd be seeing some kind of return of Illidan. Blizz has talked about bringing him back in some way or another to redeem him. In fairness, we don't know if they're just talking about redeeming him in the eyes of history (though the guy was far from blameless.) If Illidan does return, the manner of his return I would hope for would be as the new sort of class leader for Demon Hunters, which would be an awesome addition to the class roster (I'd make a Worgen Demon Hunter. Please let me make a Worgen Demon Hunter.)

Blizzcon is several months away still, but I'm confident we will find out about the next expansion there. Not that I'm tired of this one yet, mind you, but given how well the story is integrated into Mists, I'm extremely excited about where the game is going in the future.

Patch 5.2 Trailer Up

Well, the Thunder King trailer is out, which would seem to suggest the patch is imminent. Historically, these trailers are usually out the week before a patch or so, so I'd expect we'll be heading into the Throne of Thunder very soon.

It's nice to have a well-produced patch trailer again. 4.3's dinky montage and 5.1's utter lack of a trailer were a bit disappointing. I realize these things aren't all that important in the long run, but it's little things like this that can drum up excitement for the game.

I get the impression that Blizzard has put a lot of effort into making the Throne of Thunder an epic raid. We haven't really had a huge raid since Icecrown Citadel, and I've always found those to be more exciting than the smaller, broken up raid tiers.

Aesthetically the Throne of Thunder looks to be quite cool as well. We get plenty of Troll stuff (armored dinosaurs!) but it's not overwhelming, so we also get to experience some cool Mogu stuff.

While I would certainly like to see new 5-man content, I get the impression that Blizzard is de-emphasizing them as a progression path, other than a source of Valor.

Justice Points are also fading into irrelevancy, with old Valor gear remaining purchasable for Valor, albeit at a discounted price.

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We have three new factions, though per-character you'll only see two, as two of them are faction-bound.

The Shado-Pan Assault:

This faction is the raid faction, and will be the new source for Valor gear. You will be able to earn up to Friendly rep simply by clearing trash in the raid, but in order to earn beyond that, you need to down bosses. Luckily, beating them in LFR will also count toward your rep, though you only get one reputation boost per boss per week, meaning you can't run LFR and Normal to double your rep. There will be some items to purchase at Neutral, though, so even if you get off to a slow start, you'll be able to spend your valor.

The Kirin Tor Offensive:

Jaina has mobilized the Kirin Tor and reestablished the organization as a strictly Alliance faction. Alliance players will fight alongside Jaina as they take the isle of the Thunder King, fighting the Zandalari and Mogu, as well as the Horde forces there, the Sunreaver Onslaught.

The Sunreaver Onslaught:

Lor'Themar Theron has taken direct control of the Sunreavers after their expulsion from Dalaran. Horde players will aid the Sunreavers in fighting the forces of the Thunder King while also grappling with the Kirin Tor Offensive.

Both faction-specific reputations will give you the option of PvE-oriented quests, sending you against the Zandalari and Mogu, or PvP-oriented quests, which have you fighting the other side. As I understand, you make the choice at the beginning of the day, and thus PvPers can stick to PvP and PvEers can stick to PvE.

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Wrathion continues his chain, sending you into the Throne of Thunder to eventually put together the pieces for a Legendary Meta Gem, and an extra socket to put it in.

Warlocks will finally get their Green Fire quest chain. The chain begins, I believe, with a drop (though I do not know off of whom) and leads them eventually to a separately instanced Black Temple. After completing the quest, Warlocks can switch the color of their fire spells back and forth by talking to an NPC (in case they aren't crazy about the new look.) Hopefully this will herald in a new era of epic class quests.

Transmogrification restrictions will be eased considerably: Main hand and one-hand weapons are now inter-transmogrifiable, and any weapons that share an animation (such as two handed swords and two handed axes) can also be transmogged to one another. Vagaries of Time, here I come!

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All in all, it looks to be quite the exciting patch. I expect we're going to spend the better part of 2013 with this one, perhaps with a smaller, 5.1-style patch a few months down the line (perhaps adding 5-mans?)

Of course, we don't know how many tiers we'll have this expansion, but if it holds to the pattern most expansions have, we'll likely see the Siege of Orgrimmar near the end of this year. And we can expect to hear about the next expansion at Blizzcon this year.

New Super Mario Bros. U

The "U" suffix is an interesting thing to get used to, though I suppose in the long run it's not that must stranger than "64" was.

So obviously, the first game I got for the Wii U was New Super Mario Bros. U. There are only two Nintendo-made launch titles, and Nintendo Land comes with the Deluxe box (which I got.)

The New Super Mario Bros. series is something I had been clamoring for for years. When the N64 came out and demonstrated that yes, you can have a 3d game world that does not suck, most gamemakers took that to mean that we had been broken free of the shackles of 2d gaming, never to return. Nintendo seems to have realized that actually, the old-fashioned Mario games were damned fun, and just because the system is more powerful now doesn't mean that you shouldn't hold on to  your roots.

That said, I must say, Mario Bros. U does not feel like much of a step up from Mario Bros. Wii. Technically, it's nearly indistinguishable (though in HD... I think.) Even some of the music is the same. Is it a good game? Absolutely - this is a Mario Bros. platformer we're talking about.

I've only played the single-player mode of this, which means that the dual-screen functionality of the Wii U pretty much just means that if someone else wants to use the TV I can still play.

It also seems oddly easy. Mario Bros. Wii took a lot out of me to get to the end. Granted, it had been a lot longer since I had played a sidescroller when I took up that game, but in the space of a couple days, I've gotten all the way to the last area. Granted, that doesn't count getting all the star coins or whatnot.

The thing about these games is that you go in for the fantastic, unparalleled polish that Nintendo brings to its absolute core franchise. The control is tight and the design is glorious, but the depth and scope is somewhat limited.

The Wii U is meant to signal Nintendo's return to the main stage of the Video Game world, after the clunky days of the Gamecube and the (profitable) sabbatical in crazy-land that was the Wii, the Wii U actually has a number of launch titles that bring it back into the fold - like Mass Effect and Assassin's Creed (never mind that those games had already come out for the previous generation.)

It might have been a better call to come out with something a little more hardware-demanding as their first outing, but I think it's a good sign that, for example, Watch Dogs is planned for a Wii U release. This being a game that is likely to hit the AAA stage big time (and will hopefully deserve that place - Ubisoft has a pretty good record, so I'll keep up with it,) I have hopes that Nintendo will truly make its return.

I have to imagine that the new Zelda and the new Smash Bros. games will push the system a little harder. The Wii U has been out for about three months now, and it's on the vanguard of the next generation of consoles (or is it technically the current generation, technically?)

The nightmare scenario, of course, is that Nintendo will have a Dreamcast on its hands, but I'm cautiously optimistic that that will not happen, given that the PS4 is on its way (though admittedly, not for almost a year,) meaning 3rd party developers will likely start getting to work on the big titles. Nintendo can always squeeze by on its first-party titles, but I really hope I don't have to play the more mature titles on my roommate's 360 (or 720, though I don't know for a fact that he'll be getting one.)

So it's a strange grade I give Nintendo for its newest New Super Mario Bros. The game in a vacuum is blameless, save for maybe a little underwhelming in innovations (though with a formula like this, do you want to mess with it all that much?) But as the marquee launch title, I think a more ambitious game would have probably been warranted.

The Library Issue

So here's what's going to happen, probably today, and if not, then probably tomorrow: I'm going to go out to the store and buy a Wii U. The thing costs 350 bucks (there's a cheaper one, but I think it's missing a lot of components,) and that doesn't include the 50 for the first game (Mario Bros. U, obviously.)

There was a time when Nintendo systems had most of the AAA titles. In fact, up through the Gamecube, most big non-exclusives were released on all three platforms. With the Wii, given the very different control scheme and the fact that it was almost a full generation behind in terms of power, the AAA games started going only to Microsoft and Sony.

Nintendo wants the Wii U to re-enter that arena, bolstered by the financial success of the Wii.

The thing about the Wii is that in some ways, I think it was a great system, and in some ways, I think it was awful:

Nintendo really opened up a new market of casual gaming. Combined with the lowered price tag, the Wii was the designated "second system" for most hardcore gamers, and the only one for a lot of casuals. The odd result is that even though the Wii was not taken as seriously by both the industry and the core demographic, it managed to sell really well.

On the other hand, take a look at the Wii section of a store: 95% of that stuff is utter crap, compared to about 75% for the other systems. There are so many cash-in tie-ins, cheap-looking gimmick games, and thrown-together pieces of crap that it makes you wonder why you own the system in the first place. That's when you see the first party titles: Zelda, Mario, Smash Bros. Then you sigh a relief and say: yes, ok, this was a good idea after all.

Being the guy with just a Wii was tough, but luckily, after two years I moved with my friend Tim to California, and he has a 360. Having access to the 360 has let me experience the AAA world I was missing: Assassin's Creed, Bioshock, Mass Effect, Skyrim.

Here's why I've convinced myself that getting a Wii U is a good idea: I'm going to need it anyway when there's a new Zelda game or a new Smash Bros. or a new Metroid (can we get the people who did the Prime trilogy back? Those were awesome.) Best case scenario, the buffed-up Wii U is going to also get the major AAA games, and I can just get those games for the Nintendo system. Worst case scenario, I'll still get all the great Nintendo stuff.

Just to be sure, I'm going to research the difference between the expensive one and the cheap one (other than hard drive space.)

In the words of a mustachioed Italian plumber, Here we go!

The Frustration of Wanting to Play a Game that Doesn't Exist

You know when there's a game that you're super excited for, and you really want to rush out to your local store and pick it up and spend the next two days straight playing through it, preferably with friends there (who for some reason don't mind just watching you play) and a giant pizza?

But sometimes you can't do that. Sometimes there's a roadblock. Maybe the game hasn't come out yet. Maybe you're a little strapped for cash, and the 60 bucks that game would cost should probably stick around for more practical purposes. Or, maybe the game doesn't exist anywhere but within your mind.

If there is one thing I can safely boast about myself, it's that I'm creative. I have had many, many ideas for games that have, of course, never gone anywhere because, damn it, I don't even known anyone in the game industry, and I don't really know the first thing about making them myself (also, the ideas tend to be the kind of game that would need a big studio behind them.)

Back when I was in High School - freshman year, spring of 2001 - I got a game called Escape Velocity Nova. It was one of the first games I ever just downloaded and paid for online.

Anyway, for those of you who are unfamiliar, EVN was kind of an open-world sandbox game, with very simple storylines (that were told purely through text.) The gameplay had you, as a spaceship captain, slowly build up your power and wealth. You would start with a very simple shuttle that had no weapons and a small cargo hold. After a bit of buying and selling of goods,  you could start to climb the rungs, getting access to bigger ships, then armed ships, and by the end of it, you could be flying around with a 15-ship fleet of massive dreadnoughts spitting out hundreds of Hellhound Missiles as you took entire planets over.

That game is twelve years old now, and was built on a pre-existing game. It was also a kind of cheap shareware piece.

I've been on a bit of a sci-fi kick lately (I'm writing a TV pilot that is in a Sci-Fi setting) and I was thinking that I'd really love to get my hands on an awesome planet-hopping action/adventure game with RPG elements, but alas, as I look through the various games available, nothing quite matches my cravings.

Here's what I'd like to see in a game:

- An open galaxy, free for the player to explore

- But with serious set-pieces to make it feel like your story matters

- A customizable character, with the ability to choose different character classes

- A combination of on-the-ground shooting action, like a more open-world version of Mass Effect 2/3's style, and deep space flight, allowing for big ship-to-ship combat that could be the primary type of gameplay if the player chose

- Lots of space stations and derelict starships for the player to discover and explore.

- Really spiffy graphics

That last one is usually not what I focus on, but I'm having a craving, so damn it, just...  you know?

Anyway, the core engagement of this game would be the sense that you could be just about any kind of person you wanted in this world - from a freight captain who has to fend off pirates to a salvage ship that must brave the dangers of a dark and mysterious ship any time you want to get paid, to a soldier fighting in massive space battles, to a pirate, who tries to take the stuff from that first guy's ship. And otherwise, you might just use your ship as a means to an end - maybe you're a mercenary who has a small ship with a team that travels between stations and offer your deadly services?

Anyway, I've been trying to find something akin to that in the current lineup of games, but there's really not much that I see that fits the mold. The closest I can come to is Eve Online, but I don't want to take on the subscription fee, and I also understand that the economics in that game are ridiculous and silly. Not to mention that I kind of want a solo adventure at the moment.