So yesterday I talked about the mechanical changes that we might expect in expansion 5. This time, I'm going to talk about the potential story, as well as content changes we might see. I realize "content" is a very vague word, but what I mean is greater specificity than simple mechanical changes. You'll understand when I get to it. I also will be throwing in things that I want to happen, regardless of whether I think they will happen.
1. Demons! Outer Space! The Burning Legion!
Blizzard could, admittedly, pull the rug out from under us and give us that Emerald Dream expansion we've been expecting forever, but given Wrathion's chain in Mists, I think it's a pretty decent bet that we're going to have our next showdown with the Burning Legion once we've finished off all our Szechuan Chicken and Mushu Pork.
Will this be the final confrontation? Probably not. Frankly, as cool as it would be to fight Sargeras, I think they're still going to hold on to that bullet.
If we wind up going to Argus, I could see Kil'jaeden being the final boss of the expansion, only this time we're going to fight him at full power and actually kill him.
Argus is not particularly well-defined, but the very fact that it was once the Draenei (then called Eredar) homeworld means that there would be potential for stuff that isn't just a demon-blasted ruin. Sure, the Legion has a tendency to destroy entire worlds, but perhaps if they want to keep a planet they might not be able to ruin everything, so you could have wild areas that are only partially corrupted.
2. Illidan's Return
Illidan is kind of a fascinating character because in Warcraft 3, he was more of an anti-hero. In Burning Crusade, he was a straight-up villain (some described him as being like a mob boss) and yet, we've seen a bit of character reconstruction since then, such as the awesome quest chain in Felwood where a fellow Demon Hunter shows how, really, Illidan was always working to protect Azeroth. It was only his willingness to tap into forbidden power that got him exiled.
This is a fantasy game, so bringing people back from the dead is not a terribly difficult thing to do. Plus, it would frankly be awesome to have a faction leader who is kind of bitter with us for killing him a few years ago.
3. With Illidan, we get Demon Hunters as a Hero Class
There are two really iconic characters from Warcraft 3 - Arthas and Illidan. Both of them are badass anti-hero/villains, and have incredibly well-realized, cool classes that aren't really represented by anything else in game (Mountain Kings and Tauren Chieftains are already Warriors, for example.)
We got Death Knights in Wrath of the Lich King, and they are probably one of the most popular classes in the game.
Now, with Monks, Blizzard decided to make them a regular class - starting at level 1, without any fancy bells and whistles (unless you count how they hold their weapons.) One could take this to mean that Blizzard had abandoned the idea of a hero class, but I think it made more sense to simply work on a class-by-class basis. Having a young and inexperienced Monk made sense. Having a Death Knight struggling to fight off Kobolds in the mines of Elwynn? Not so much.
A Demon Hunter would have a similar "minimum badass quotient," and thus ought to start at a higher level. I think 55 could be established as the standard Hero Class level, and the Demon Hunter starting experience would take place in either Felwood or the Black Temple, but in either case, the end result would be resurrecting Illidan. They should also get a similar "class home base," and potentially one of the new factions would be affiliated with them, à la Knights of the Ebon Blade.
Also, like Death Knights, we could get unique character looks, such as tattoos and possibly having all Demon Hunters blinded and wearing blindfolds.
The Demon Hunter would be a melee/tank/caster, with the melee specs dual-wielding. Effectively, they would be like Warlocks the way that Paladins are like Priests - a kind of melee representation of the same concepts, with slightly different flavor. Just as a Paladin is more about Law and Justice while Priests are about affecting the mind and spirit, Demon Hunters would be more about the primal, feral rage of demons as opposed to the Warlocks' more academic understanding of them.
4. A Return to Karazhan
Karazhan is one of the most popular raids ever - not only because it was a relatively easy raid to step into, and because it was the first 10-man raid, but also because the tone and mood of the place was excellent.
There's always been an in-universe rumor of a Lower Karazhan, that is like an upside-down version of the tower below it. A Burning Legion expansion would be a great excuse to create that area as a new raid. I'm always more in favor of "sequel" raids over revamps, so that we can still go back to the old ones for nostalgia and picking up transmog gear. The great thing is that there's an obvious entry for the new raid already - the Karazhan Crypts. (Truth be told, I've actually written out a little outline of how such a raid could work, just for fun.)
5. The Draenei will play a key role
Until the Worgen, the Draenei were always seen as the odd man out when it came to lore. While Blood Elves had a key role to play in BC and Wrath, the Draenei got to host people in BC and then haven't really done anything else.
However, if we go to Argus, I would be shocked and appalled if we didn't get a huge amount of Draenei lore. Imagine, for example, if there are still uncorrupted Eredar living on Argus, fighting a guerrilla war against the demonic occupiers? Might they be bitter toward the Draenei, who abandoned them there?
6. The Horde will struggle to pull itself back together
We shouldn't ignore that there is going to be some serious fallout from Hellscream's fall. The Horde is going to need time to readjust, not only to the change in leadership, but potentially to the fundamental change in the style of leadership. Consider how even 150 years later, there's still bitterness in the US about the outcome of the Civil War. Sure, the Horde will have to regroup and move forward together, but don't expect everyone to be happy that it was Vol'jin who won.
7. The Alliance will realize that they've come out on top and need to figure out what to do with that position.
The Alliance only really decisively won the Second War. Since then, it's either been devastated by the Scourge or seen its long-held lands slowly eroded away. Sure, we beat the Lich King. We stopped Deathwing. But the Alliance has been struggling to fight a decline.
Yet after Garrosh is deposed, the Alliance will find that, in fact, it has actually won the day. When a war ends with your side still standing and the other losing its leader, we call that a victory.
So how to move forward? Is the Alliance going to use the proven muscle to pressure the Horde in certain ways? Not only will the Alliance come out of the Siege of Orgrimmar with fewer injuries, but whoever is in charge of the Horde after that will owe the Alliance his or her position.
I think we could see a cockier, more aggressive Alliance in the future, and if there's any believable reason that tensions could, once again, rise between the factions, it would be the Alliance overstepping its rights as victors.
8. The Council of the Black Harvest could be a real thing
So far, the Black Harvest only serves as backstory for the Green Fire quest chain. Yet it stands to reason that a Demon-focused expansion would bring in a faction of Warlocks.
9. More Daily-Quest Based Factions as well as More Raid Factions
Ok, some people hate dailies, and I can understand that. Frankly, for anyone who plays a non-Dps character, they can get pretty frustrating. But there is a huge advantage to dailies, which is that they let you feel like you truly are helping that actual faction. Running Throne of the Tides with a Ramkahen tabard didn't really make me feel like I was helping the Tol'vir.
Anyway, with stuff like the farm work orders and the little bonus rep for doing your random dungeon/scenario, I think we can expect most factions to work like this.
The Shado-Pan Assault works pretty effectively as a source of Valor gear. Blizzard can make sure that the older factions are still relevant to those who are still gearing up, because they won't be able to run ToT until they're ready to start earning 522 gear.
So here's my partial list of new factions:
Velen's Army of the Light
Illidan's Order of the Betrayer
The Council of the Black Harvest
The Argus Resistance
10. Wrathion will play a part, and we'll see a similar Legendary chain to Mists'
Wrathion's been gearing up (and gearing us up) for a fight with the Legion. I can't imagine he's going to sit on the sidelines.
Now, I doubt that he'll be the Legendary guy again, if only because he's already been the central figure in two Legendary chains.
I expect that we'll see a similar, expansion-spanning chain like the one in Mists, rather than those that are specific to certain classes and roles.
11. More class quests
Even though very few have completed it (damn Chaos Bolts!) the Warlock Green Fire chain was a triumph. While not every class has a thing like Green fire they've been clamoring for for years, I think we're likely to see some new class quests coming in the next expansion.
I don't think every class will get one, though. Part of what made the Green Fire quest so cool was its specificity. That was a quest for Warlocks. Period. The consequence here is that they can't devote all the resources to make a unique quest for every class every expansion.
The uniqueness of it is what makes it so cool, so I'd rather see one or two classes get an epic quest like this each expansion than see everyone get a slightly modified version of the same "go into Sunken Temple and do this thing" quest.
Tuesday, April 30, 2013
Speculations on the Mechanics and Gameplay of the Next Expansion
If you're a regular reader of mine, you know that I tend to focus on the story and the feel of the game rather than the nitty-gritty of the mechanics (except, perhaps, my ongoing crusade against Vengeance.) I'm a story-driven guy, generally speaking, and to me, the whole point of an RPG is to get invested in the lore, as it makes every fight that much more exciting.
But to give things a little twist, I thought I'd talk about what we're likely to see in the next expansion in terms of structure and gameplay.
1. Blizzard is going to have to decide how to fit dungeons and scenarios together.
Scenarios have the great appeal of not requiring any healers or tanks, but dungeons are the meat and potatoes of WoW. New tanks and healers need 5-man dungeons to learn how to do what they do before they head into raids.
Ghostcrawler has actually said he wishes they had put more 5-man dungeons into later Mists, so I expect that next time around, we're going to be seeing those coming either with each raid tier or on the in-between patches.
Heroic scenarios could become something like Challenge Modes - tough, small-group content that is aimed more at the hardcore players, while dungeons could make up the main PvE alternative to raiding. Either that, or the other way around.
2. We're going to continue to see "story" in-between patches.
Even though theoretically it brought very little to the game, 5.1 was very well received. Because of the great speed with which it arrived, no one felt cheated out of a raid tier. Instead, we all simply got to enjoy additional story development and a daily quest grind that was far more enjoyable and rewarded better gear. Obviously, 5.3 has yet to come out, but given that it seems to be adding outdoor stuff as well as some new story-based scenarios, and Throne of Thunder is still relatively new (though shockingly I'm pretty close to being fully LFR-ToT-geared on my main) I doubt people are going to complain about it much (except that the Alliance is once again being marginalized.)
Blizzard is very happy with the pacing of Mists so far, and the story patches allow them to put out content faster while still taking the time to perfect their grand raids (seriously, I know some people will complain about anything they're currently doing, but look at Throne of Thunder and tell me that's not an awesome raid.)
3. We might get something resembling player housing.
You want to know a secret? We already have player housing. It's called Sunsong Ranch. Sure, we can't really "customize" it so much as we can upgrade it by befriending various members of the Tillers, but it's not only a place all to ourselves, but also a functional area that makes gathering resources for professions far easier. Now if only I had more stuff to make with engineering...
The only step I think you need to take with player housing is some sort of "trophy" system, where things symbolizing your greatest achievements get to sit there and look pretty. An idea that my friend had that I would love is if your alts could chill out there as NPCs when you're not playing them. I'd love to see Oterro and Ardten sharing a drink - or really, I'd like it if any of my toons could actually interact with each other without using mail. Actually, this would be a great thing for alt inventory management, if you could dig around in an alt's bags and move things back and forth (other than soulbound stuff, of course.)
4. There could be some sort of re-think regarding raid difficulties.
LFR is clearly working well to get people to see the raids, and even though getting a bag of gold (which is pretty worthless now given how inflationary the massive number of gold sources have been) instead of precious loot is pretty frustrating, the new loot system is a massive improvement over the old Need+ system, where guild groups would all need on a piece to give to one of their friends, or someone would need a piece they already had and then hold it ransom for something else they might want.
Anyway, the thing I don't know is how many people, proportionally, are completing normal-mode raiding. The way I see it is that Normal modes should be for just about everyone who's in a guild. Sure, it's a challenge and you shouldn't be able to knock out the whole tier in a single night, but it should be accessible. Not having the numbers in front of me, I can't really say whether Mists' raiding scene is working out well on normal-mode, but from my limited, subjective perspective, it seems a little too tightly tuned.
5. Another shot at Path of the Titans
We never really knew what the hell Path of the Titans was going to actually look like or how it was going to work. The only thing that we knew was it was somehow going to be a way to increase player power in a manner that did not involve leveling or gear (of course, leveling always becomes irrelevant once you hit the cap.)
It's an idea that Blizzard representatives have always talked about as something they want to revisit, but I don't know why it wasn't working or how it could work.
6. A slight talent reshuffling.
Overall I think the new talent system is working well. Sure, there are some "right" choices (don't know if anyone takes Light's Prism. Is that a Holy thing?) but a decent number of them really do feel like personal style choices.
Still, with a level cap rising to either 95 or 100 (if we're facing down the Burning Legion, I could see them doing another 10-level expansion so that we do that at 100) it means that they'll need to switch things up a bit if they want us to choose another talent at the new level cap.
We can also expect, of course, the usual rebalancing, adding and cutting of stuff.
7. Some sort of "new toon incentive."
Every expansion has given us a reason to roll up a new character. BC gave us two new races (each capable of being the class that was previously limited to the other faction,) Wrath gave us the first new class (and as a Hero class, you got a serious head start on leveling, not to mention a million other "cool-factor" things like the voice or the glowing blue eyes.) Cataclysm not only gave us new races, but also a ton of new race-class combinations, plus a totally-redone 1-58 questing experience that encouraged creating a whole fleet of alts to explore them. Mists then brought us a new race (the first race available to both sides) and a whole new class.
So there's a precedent. I said before that they might avoid doing a new race in order to focus on new models for the Vanilla and BC races, but given that we just got three new races in the past two expansions, I think the art team could afford to take their time on these.
I'd love a new class, of course (cough, Demon Hunter as a Hero class, cough, mine would be a Worgen, cough) though I could imagine them being afraid of throwing yet another class into the mix, especially this soon after the Monk. Then again, they seem to have been far more successful in balancing Monks with the established classes than they were when Death Knights were first introduced.
So far, those have really been the only ways to incentivize a new character. The class really defines how the character plays.
One possibility could be adding a 4th spec to each class (except Druids,) though this would probably do more to encourage people to simply switch specs on existing characters.
One of the problems of the "new toon incentive" is that there's an ever-growing barrier to getting that new character up to speed. Sure, they can cut the required XP per level (at some point, you'll be heading off to Outland after finishing Westfall) but there's also Professions to think of, and all the other little things you have to do with your character.
8. Probably not any more primary professions.
As cool as woodworking would be, I don't really see any more primary professions getting thrown into the mix. Hell, this time around we didn't even get a secondary profession, though Pet Battles sort of filled that slot of non-central gameplay.
I could imagine us getting access to a third profession though. Blizzard seems to not like people to feel they need to roll alts just to cover their professional bases (and also doesn't like that that kills the server economy system.)
I do think that they will come up with something to fill that gap, though, like they did with Pet Battles.
9. More solo scenarios.
Scenarios are a perhaps more elegant solution than phasing to have huge moments play out without worrying about affecting the whole world. Sure, in some places phasing worked tremendously (if, for some insane reason, you haven't ever rolled a Death Knight, play through that starting area at least. Best use of phasing ever,) but for things like the lost lamented Battle of Undercity, a Scenario is a far more ideal format.
When Wrath had just come out, doing the Battle of Undercity was a fantastic, epic adventure, where you and a huge number of fellow players charged through the place, tearing up the traitorous Varimathras' forces. The problem was that on characters who got to the party late, some of the "boss" fights there would take ages. On the Alliance side of things, you, Varian and Jaina attacked through the Sewer entrance (the old favorite from the days of city-wide raids.) After descending the sewer, you'd face off against a giant burrower worm. The worm would pick a player at random and swallow them, preventing any action for something like 30 seconds. You didn't die, because Jaina's healing buff would keep you up, but it did mean you couldn't do much. After the worm spit you out, it would choose another player and swallow them. The problem was that when you were the only player doing the battle, it would always choose you, so you'd have to rely on that one DoT you stuck on the thing and the damage done by friendly NPCs to kill it.
It was balanced around having a lot of players, as it would when most people took their mains through, but for latecomers, it was horrendous.
The other reason why something like this would have been great as a scenario is that you wouldn't have to get rid of it if you did some kind of alteration to the zone itself. Sure, Undercity looks pretty much identical to how it did back then, but in fact a lot of gaps have been sealed up, and the overall structure of the zone is very different. While Scenarios do take locations from the open world, they are truly instanced versions of them, and so if the Battle had been a scenario, it would probably still be playable now.
10. A revamp of the Charm system.
Love them or hate them, the Charm system in Mists has had a big impact on the game. Not only does it change how likely you are to get loot you want, but it also allows fighting the same raid boss multiple times in a week to still be potentially profitable.
However, a quick glance reveals that the Charms have the same problem that Emblems did in Wrath. Every tier has a new type of Charm, and pretty soon we're going to have a million lines on our currency page.
The solution is easy - just do what they did with Emblems/Badges in Cataclysm - make an "old Charm" and "new Charm" version of each. Sure, they've kind of abandoned Justice Points in Mists (though this does mean that picking up old JP rewards for transmog purposes is far easier) but I think they're going to have to simplify this system before we find ourselves juggling Elder Charms of Good Fortune, Mogu Runes of Fate, Siegey Charms of Sieging Orgrimmar, or whatever comes next.
But to give things a little twist, I thought I'd talk about what we're likely to see in the next expansion in terms of structure and gameplay.
1. Blizzard is going to have to decide how to fit dungeons and scenarios together.
Scenarios have the great appeal of not requiring any healers or tanks, but dungeons are the meat and potatoes of WoW. New tanks and healers need 5-man dungeons to learn how to do what they do before they head into raids.
Ghostcrawler has actually said he wishes they had put more 5-man dungeons into later Mists, so I expect that next time around, we're going to be seeing those coming either with each raid tier or on the in-between patches.
Heroic scenarios could become something like Challenge Modes - tough, small-group content that is aimed more at the hardcore players, while dungeons could make up the main PvE alternative to raiding. Either that, or the other way around.
2. We're going to continue to see "story" in-between patches.
Even though theoretically it brought very little to the game, 5.1 was very well received. Because of the great speed with which it arrived, no one felt cheated out of a raid tier. Instead, we all simply got to enjoy additional story development and a daily quest grind that was far more enjoyable and rewarded better gear. Obviously, 5.3 has yet to come out, but given that it seems to be adding outdoor stuff as well as some new story-based scenarios, and Throne of Thunder is still relatively new (though shockingly I'm pretty close to being fully LFR-ToT-geared on my main) I doubt people are going to complain about it much (except that the Alliance is once again being marginalized.)
Blizzard is very happy with the pacing of Mists so far, and the story patches allow them to put out content faster while still taking the time to perfect their grand raids (seriously, I know some people will complain about anything they're currently doing, but look at Throne of Thunder and tell me that's not an awesome raid.)
3. We might get something resembling player housing.
You want to know a secret? We already have player housing. It's called Sunsong Ranch. Sure, we can't really "customize" it so much as we can upgrade it by befriending various members of the Tillers, but it's not only a place all to ourselves, but also a functional area that makes gathering resources for professions far easier. Now if only I had more stuff to make with engineering...
The only step I think you need to take with player housing is some sort of "trophy" system, where things symbolizing your greatest achievements get to sit there and look pretty. An idea that my friend had that I would love is if your alts could chill out there as NPCs when you're not playing them. I'd love to see Oterro and Ardten sharing a drink - or really, I'd like it if any of my toons could actually interact with each other without using mail. Actually, this would be a great thing for alt inventory management, if you could dig around in an alt's bags and move things back and forth (other than soulbound stuff, of course.)
4. There could be some sort of re-think regarding raid difficulties.
LFR is clearly working well to get people to see the raids, and even though getting a bag of gold (which is pretty worthless now given how inflationary the massive number of gold sources have been) instead of precious loot is pretty frustrating, the new loot system is a massive improvement over the old Need+ system, where guild groups would all need on a piece to give to one of their friends, or someone would need a piece they already had and then hold it ransom for something else they might want.
Anyway, the thing I don't know is how many people, proportionally, are completing normal-mode raiding. The way I see it is that Normal modes should be for just about everyone who's in a guild. Sure, it's a challenge and you shouldn't be able to knock out the whole tier in a single night, but it should be accessible. Not having the numbers in front of me, I can't really say whether Mists' raiding scene is working out well on normal-mode, but from my limited, subjective perspective, it seems a little too tightly tuned.
5. Another shot at Path of the Titans
We never really knew what the hell Path of the Titans was going to actually look like or how it was going to work. The only thing that we knew was it was somehow going to be a way to increase player power in a manner that did not involve leveling or gear (of course, leveling always becomes irrelevant once you hit the cap.)
It's an idea that Blizzard representatives have always talked about as something they want to revisit, but I don't know why it wasn't working or how it could work.
6. A slight talent reshuffling.
Overall I think the new talent system is working well. Sure, there are some "right" choices (don't know if anyone takes Light's Prism. Is that a Holy thing?) but a decent number of them really do feel like personal style choices.
Still, with a level cap rising to either 95 or 100 (if we're facing down the Burning Legion, I could see them doing another 10-level expansion so that we do that at 100) it means that they'll need to switch things up a bit if they want us to choose another talent at the new level cap.
We can also expect, of course, the usual rebalancing, adding and cutting of stuff.
7. Some sort of "new toon incentive."
Every expansion has given us a reason to roll up a new character. BC gave us two new races (each capable of being the class that was previously limited to the other faction,) Wrath gave us the first new class (and as a Hero class, you got a serious head start on leveling, not to mention a million other "cool-factor" things like the voice or the glowing blue eyes.) Cataclysm not only gave us new races, but also a ton of new race-class combinations, plus a totally-redone 1-58 questing experience that encouraged creating a whole fleet of alts to explore them. Mists then brought us a new race (the first race available to both sides) and a whole new class.
So there's a precedent. I said before that they might avoid doing a new race in order to focus on new models for the Vanilla and BC races, but given that we just got three new races in the past two expansions, I think the art team could afford to take their time on these.
I'd love a new class, of course (cough, Demon Hunter as a Hero class, cough, mine would be a Worgen, cough) though I could imagine them being afraid of throwing yet another class into the mix, especially this soon after the Monk. Then again, they seem to have been far more successful in balancing Monks with the established classes than they were when Death Knights were first introduced.
So far, those have really been the only ways to incentivize a new character. The class really defines how the character plays.
One possibility could be adding a 4th spec to each class (except Druids,) though this would probably do more to encourage people to simply switch specs on existing characters.
One of the problems of the "new toon incentive" is that there's an ever-growing barrier to getting that new character up to speed. Sure, they can cut the required XP per level (at some point, you'll be heading off to Outland after finishing Westfall) but there's also Professions to think of, and all the other little things you have to do with your character.
8. Probably not any more primary professions.
As cool as woodworking would be, I don't really see any more primary professions getting thrown into the mix. Hell, this time around we didn't even get a secondary profession, though Pet Battles sort of filled that slot of non-central gameplay.
I could imagine us getting access to a third profession though. Blizzard seems to not like people to feel they need to roll alts just to cover their professional bases (and also doesn't like that that kills the server economy system.)
I do think that they will come up with something to fill that gap, though, like they did with Pet Battles.
9. More solo scenarios.
Scenarios are a perhaps more elegant solution than phasing to have huge moments play out without worrying about affecting the whole world. Sure, in some places phasing worked tremendously (if, for some insane reason, you haven't ever rolled a Death Knight, play through that starting area at least. Best use of phasing ever,) but for things like the lost lamented Battle of Undercity, a Scenario is a far more ideal format.
When Wrath had just come out, doing the Battle of Undercity was a fantastic, epic adventure, where you and a huge number of fellow players charged through the place, tearing up the traitorous Varimathras' forces. The problem was that on characters who got to the party late, some of the "boss" fights there would take ages. On the Alliance side of things, you, Varian and Jaina attacked through the Sewer entrance (the old favorite from the days of city-wide raids.) After descending the sewer, you'd face off against a giant burrower worm. The worm would pick a player at random and swallow them, preventing any action for something like 30 seconds. You didn't die, because Jaina's healing buff would keep you up, but it did mean you couldn't do much. After the worm spit you out, it would choose another player and swallow them. The problem was that when you were the only player doing the battle, it would always choose you, so you'd have to rely on that one DoT you stuck on the thing and the damage done by friendly NPCs to kill it.
It was balanced around having a lot of players, as it would when most people took their mains through, but for latecomers, it was horrendous.
The other reason why something like this would have been great as a scenario is that you wouldn't have to get rid of it if you did some kind of alteration to the zone itself. Sure, Undercity looks pretty much identical to how it did back then, but in fact a lot of gaps have been sealed up, and the overall structure of the zone is very different. While Scenarios do take locations from the open world, they are truly instanced versions of them, and so if the Battle had been a scenario, it would probably still be playable now.
10. A revamp of the Charm system.
Love them or hate them, the Charm system in Mists has had a big impact on the game. Not only does it change how likely you are to get loot you want, but it also allows fighting the same raid boss multiple times in a week to still be potentially profitable.
However, a quick glance reveals that the Charms have the same problem that Emblems did in Wrath. Every tier has a new type of Charm, and pretty soon we're going to have a million lines on our currency page.
The solution is easy - just do what they did with Emblems/Badges in Cataclysm - make an "old Charm" and "new Charm" version of each. Sure, they've kind of abandoned Justice Points in Mists (though this does mean that picking up old JP rewards for transmog purposes is far easier) but I think they're going to have to simplify this system before we find ourselves juggling Elder Charms of Good Fortune, Mogu Runes of Fate, Siegey Charms of Sieging Orgrimmar, or whatever comes next.
Thursday, April 25, 2013
The Lessons of Ghostcrawler
He gets a lot of hate, but I love Ghostcrawler. It's a tough thing to be the lead systems designer of a game that people play with such passion as WoW. Any time I find myself upset with something he or his team have changed, I remember that before them, the guys in charge didn't even want every spec to be playable. Ret Paladins? Balance Druids? The actual, real philosophy of the designers in the days before GC was that people should just learn to shut up and re-roll a Rogue if they wanted to be melee dps. (Disclaimer: ok, it wasn't quite like that during BC, but still pretty darned close.)
Anyway, the guy (and his team - we should emphasize that he's in charge, but not the only one there) has done great things for the game, but not everything has been perfect and flawless. (Cough, Vengeance, cough.)
Anyway, it was nice to see Ghostcrawler do a little post-mortem (mid-mortem?) analysis of what they should have done differently in Mists.
The first point, about the Golden Lotus gating, was a fairly simple one. Golden Lotus was probably the longest daily grind (KTO/SO might be the same) but was required in order to even start on August Celestials or Shado-Pan. I totally understand the logic behind gating - make sure that people don't feel they have to grind every faction at once. I wonder, however, if GL had been as it was first described - or, more accurately, as I understood it when it was first described - where a different part of the Vale would be under attack each day and we'd get a standard 5-6 dailies in that area and that would be it per day, if the gating would have been less painful.
Still, the real point was that double-gating (needing to get rep to get rep to get what you want) is kind of a pain in the ass. And it doesn't make things feel "optional."
The second point is the number of difficulty options, and how those options are too few.
My thoughts on this might be skewed by the disintegration of the raiding contingent within my guild, but the common criticism of raiding in Mists is that Normal Mode is too hard. Frankly, I have nothing against Heroic raiding being just as ball-crushingly difficult as Sunwell Plateau or Naxxramas-40. If you want to go in for that, that's you thing. But it seems to me that if you're a normal-mode raider, there's no better model for difficulty than Icecrown Citadel in terms of difficulty. The place wasn't easy, exactly, (Naxxramas 10/25 would probably fit that description,) but a dedicated group would eventually clear the place, or at least be able to progress through about half of it.
Right now, the Normal-Mode raids seems to have such high damage and dps requirements that fairly few people are completing it.
The super-easy solution I see is that the LFR difficulty should become an option for those who are not using LFR. Sure, you'd have to scale some of those fights down to 10-man-size, but it would mean that those who hate LFR but don't have a raiding team that can handle normal modes would be able to run that place in a guild group. The gear would be the same as LFR, but you could run it like an actual raid, with your guild's loot system and the joy of not having a bunch of douches who want to kick the tank every time anything whatsoever goes wrong.
Likewise, with "heroic dungeon" coming to simply mean "level cap dungeon," we've effectively lost a difficulty of 5-man content. Challenge Modes don't give anything new, loot-wise. But we'll address that later.
The third comment talks about "direction." I actually don't think this was such a failure. It's pretty clear that when you hit the level cap you can start running heroics or dailies, and the clear direction is to gear up there and then get into LFR (or real raids.)
However, the side comment there is that Ghostcrawler admits he wishes that they could add more 5-man dungeons.
I couldn't agree more.
It's not that I dislike LFR. Frankly, it's awesome to be able to take alts into raids who would never be able to come in a guild group, and to see raid content that my guild might never get up to. But I also think that sometimes, a 5-man is just more fun. Tanking a 5-man makes you feel far more in control of a situation, and every person there knows that they are providing a serious contribution to what's going on.
There are only two strikes against 5-mans as continuous content. One is that it's difficult to produce, and takes resources away from raid design. That's totally fair, but at the same time, Blizzard is always talking about how they're expanding their team. My hope is that they can divide the PvE instance team (or whatever it's called) into dungeons and raids, so that there's always raid content being developed and always 5-man content being developed. Sure, you'd need someone to coordinate the two (for one thing, you don't want two fights that are pretty much the same) but if you throw more bodies into the mix, which they say they are doing, there's no reason I can think of that we can't just get big, ToT-sized raids on top of new 5-man content. (Hell, the best content in 4.3, other than the artwork on Vagaries of Time and the Time Lord mage tier set was End Time and Well of Eternity.)
The other strike against 5-mans is the trickiness of gearing. In 3.2, 3.3, and 4.3, the new dungeons brought gear that was equivalent to the previous raiding tier. Blizzard was upset that this allowed people to skip the raids. Here's my counterpoint: With LFR, anyone who wants to see the raids will see them. Sure, you might only run through a thing once, but it's always there for you to check it out.
Blizzard wants us to have options, so give us options. You can either run the new 5-man dungeons in order to gear up for the new LFR raid, or you can run the previous tier of LFR.
So, using a hypothetical alternate-universe Mists, 5.2 would have brought in a couple dungeons with 483 iLevel gear - so that you can either run Heart of Fear/Terrace of Endless Spring in order to gear up for Throne of Thunder, or you can run the new dungeons. When 5.4 comes out, you'd get new dungeons with iLevel 502 gear, allowing you to either run ToT or the new dungeons.
You could maintain the requirement of beating each raid segment to get to the next one if you really want to make sure that anyone who steps into Siege of Orgrimmar has at least seen what the older raids look like.
Hell, you could even revitalize Justice Points by letting you purchase items corresponding to the dungeon-level loot. Not quite Shado-Pan Assault-quality gear, but enough to protect against lousy loot drops in those dungeons.
Personally, even if there were 5-man dungeons to gear up, I'd still hit up Raid Finder regularly - to get tier sets, and to have the fun of taking down those massive bosses.
This is getting to be a fairly long and out-of-control article, but let me leave with this one final thought:
One of the biggest problems in Mists is that the gating makes life hard on alts. Grand Commendations were a great help (especially since new alts will get to Honored with SP and Revered with Klaxxi just by questing in the high 80s) but I think the biggest problem is the way that Blizzard thinks players use alts. The philosophy seems to be that they think people only run alts because they've run out of things to do on their mains.
For us, the altoholics, this is far from the truth. We roll alts because we want to see things from a different perspective. For example, I adore the Worgen. They are my favorite race (though Draenei take a close second,) but Paladins can't be Worgen, and even if they could, I'm too invested in my character to get a race change (though since Worgen are technically also humans, I might bend that rule. It would just be weird for a guy born in Stormwind to have a Gilnean accent.)
This is a role-playing game, and even if I don't hold in-world events or even talk to fellow players in-character, I still feel a great sense of connection with the world by seeing it through different eyes. A fun-loving alcoholic Panda-man doesn't feel the same furious rage at the Horde that a 25,000-year-old undead alien whose daughter was murdered by Orcs does.
And even beyond the roleplaying aspect, there's the mechanical aspect. I love tanking. But I also like to do melee dps. I also like to do ranged dps. I like to play classes that have fast-paced, proc-based rotations, but I also like to play classes with a lot of little things that you have to keep track of and maintain (ok, less so. But I do like Demonology Warlocks.)
Anyway, there might be some people who roll alts because they're bored, but I imagine the vast majority of people just want a chance to see other facets of the game. Don't punish those people.
Anyway, the guy (and his team - we should emphasize that he's in charge, but not the only one there) has done great things for the game, but not everything has been perfect and flawless. (Cough, Vengeance, cough.)
Anyway, it was nice to see Ghostcrawler do a little post-mortem (mid-mortem?) analysis of what they should have done differently in Mists.
The first point, about the Golden Lotus gating, was a fairly simple one. Golden Lotus was probably the longest daily grind (KTO/SO might be the same) but was required in order to even start on August Celestials or Shado-Pan. I totally understand the logic behind gating - make sure that people don't feel they have to grind every faction at once. I wonder, however, if GL had been as it was first described - or, more accurately, as I understood it when it was first described - where a different part of the Vale would be under attack each day and we'd get a standard 5-6 dailies in that area and that would be it per day, if the gating would have been less painful.
Still, the real point was that double-gating (needing to get rep to get rep to get what you want) is kind of a pain in the ass. And it doesn't make things feel "optional."
The second point is the number of difficulty options, and how those options are too few.
My thoughts on this might be skewed by the disintegration of the raiding contingent within my guild, but the common criticism of raiding in Mists is that Normal Mode is too hard. Frankly, I have nothing against Heroic raiding being just as ball-crushingly difficult as Sunwell Plateau or Naxxramas-40. If you want to go in for that, that's you thing. But it seems to me that if you're a normal-mode raider, there's no better model for difficulty than Icecrown Citadel in terms of difficulty. The place wasn't easy, exactly, (Naxxramas 10/25 would probably fit that description,) but a dedicated group would eventually clear the place, or at least be able to progress through about half of it.
Right now, the Normal-Mode raids seems to have such high damage and dps requirements that fairly few people are completing it.
The super-easy solution I see is that the LFR difficulty should become an option for those who are not using LFR. Sure, you'd have to scale some of those fights down to 10-man-size, but it would mean that those who hate LFR but don't have a raiding team that can handle normal modes would be able to run that place in a guild group. The gear would be the same as LFR, but you could run it like an actual raid, with your guild's loot system and the joy of not having a bunch of douches who want to kick the tank every time anything whatsoever goes wrong.
Likewise, with "heroic dungeon" coming to simply mean "level cap dungeon," we've effectively lost a difficulty of 5-man content. Challenge Modes don't give anything new, loot-wise. But we'll address that later.
The third comment talks about "direction." I actually don't think this was such a failure. It's pretty clear that when you hit the level cap you can start running heroics or dailies, and the clear direction is to gear up there and then get into LFR (or real raids.)
However, the side comment there is that Ghostcrawler admits he wishes that they could add more 5-man dungeons.
I couldn't agree more.
It's not that I dislike LFR. Frankly, it's awesome to be able to take alts into raids who would never be able to come in a guild group, and to see raid content that my guild might never get up to. But I also think that sometimes, a 5-man is just more fun. Tanking a 5-man makes you feel far more in control of a situation, and every person there knows that they are providing a serious contribution to what's going on.
There are only two strikes against 5-mans as continuous content. One is that it's difficult to produce, and takes resources away from raid design. That's totally fair, but at the same time, Blizzard is always talking about how they're expanding their team. My hope is that they can divide the PvE instance team (or whatever it's called) into dungeons and raids, so that there's always raid content being developed and always 5-man content being developed. Sure, you'd need someone to coordinate the two (for one thing, you don't want two fights that are pretty much the same) but if you throw more bodies into the mix, which they say they are doing, there's no reason I can think of that we can't just get big, ToT-sized raids on top of new 5-man content. (Hell, the best content in 4.3, other than the artwork on Vagaries of Time and the Time Lord mage tier set was End Time and Well of Eternity.)
The other strike against 5-mans is the trickiness of gearing. In 3.2, 3.3, and 4.3, the new dungeons brought gear that was equivalent to the previous raiding tier. Blizzard was upset that this allowed people to skip the raids. Here's my counterpoint: With LFR, anyone who wants to see the raids will see them. Sure, you might only run through a thing once, but it's always there for you to check it out.
Blizzard wants us to have options, so give us options. You can either run the new 5-man dungeons in order to gear up for the new LFR raid, or you can run the previous tier of LFR.
So, using a hypothetical alternate-universe Mists, 5.2 would have brought in a couple dungeons with 483 iLevel gear - so that you can either run Heart of Fear/Terrace of Endless Spring in order to gear up for Throne of Thunder, or you can run the new dungeons. When 5.4 comes out, you'd get new dungeons with iLevel 502 gear, allowing you to either run ToT or the new dungeons.
You could maintain the requirement of beating each raid segment to get to the next one if you really want to make sure that anyone who steps into Siege of Orgrimmar has at least seen what the older raids look like.
Hell, you could even revitalize Justice Points by letting you purchase items corresponding to the dungeon-level loot. Not quite Shado-Pan Assault-quality gear, but enough to protect against lousy loot drops in those dungeons.
Personally, even if there were 5-man dungeons to gear up, I'd still hit up Raid Finder regularly - to get tier sets, and to have the fun of taking down those massive bosses.
This is getting to be a fairly long and out-of-control article, but let me leave with this one final thought:
One of the biggest problems in Mists is that the gating makes life hard on alts. Grand Commendations were a great help (especially since new alts will get to Honored with SP and Revered with Klaxxi just by questing in the high 80s) but I think the biggest problem is the way that Blizzard thinks players use alts. The philosophy seems to be that they think people only run alts because they've run out of things to do on their mains.
For us, the altoholics, this is far from the truth. We roll alts because we want to see things from a different perspective. For example, I adore the Worgen. They are my favorite race (though Draenei take a close second,) but Paladins can't be Worgen, and even if they could, I'm too invested in my character to get a race change (though since Worgen are technically also humans, I might bend that rule. It would just be weird for a guy born in Stormwind to have a Gilnean accent.)
This is a role-playing game, and even if I don't hold in-world events or even talk to fellow players in-character, I still feel a great sense of connection with the world by seeing it through different eyes. A fun-loving alcoholic Panda-man doesn't feel the same furious rage at the Horde that a 25,000-year-old undead alien whose daughter was murdered by Orcs does.
And even beyond the roleplaying aspect, there's the mechanical aspect. I love tanking. But I also like to do melee dps. I also like to do ranged dps. I like to play classes that have fast-paced, proc-based rotations, but I also like to play classes with a lot of little things that you have to keep track of and maintain (ok, less so. But I do like Demonology Warlocks.)
Anyway, there might be some people who roll alts because they're bored, but I imagine the vast majority of people just want a chance to see other facets of the game. Don't punish those people.
Wednesday, April 24, 2013
Pinnacle of Storms For Real This Time
Yesterday I was able to do the full Pinnacle of Storms (and was crazy lucky with loot - tier shoulders and helmet as well as the shield off Lei Shen!) and not only was I able to see the first two bosses but I also got a much better handle on the Lei Shen fight (which is still nutbags.)
Trash before Iron Quon:
The trash leading up to Iron Quon is pretty simple - mostly pack of things that just need to be AoE'd down. There are two elite quilen trainers that I imagine require some degree of strategy on normal, but you can pull them and kill them easily enough. Each of these guys has a huge group of untrained quillen that will have similar abilities to their trainers, but are more of an AoE burn fest.
Iron Quon:
This guy seems a lot more complicated than he is, and is actually possibly the simplest fight in the raid (save Jin'rokh, perhaps.) Iron Quon (or maybe just Qon?) rides on a different quillen mount for the first three phases. Essentially, for each of these, there is a tank swap mechanic and a similar ability for each of these phases where he throws his spear, creating lines of damaging fire/frost/electricity. Each of these lines has different effects, but the basic premise is that you should not stand in them.
The first phase, I don't remember exactly what the special ability is, but in the second phase, you need to take the boss out of the big windstorm in the center of the arena, dodging whirlwinds that will stun you. In the third phase, he will occasionally shield two of his sides - left, right, back and front, requiring you to reposition yourself to hit him where he's vulnerable (he does not turn during this time, so tanks can do so too.)
Once his three mounts are dead, you fight him, bringing back the various spear abilities and the whirlwinds, and possibly some other abilities. Frankly, I didn't pay huge attention to it, as few of these are all that threatening.
Trash before Twin Mogu:
The trash before the twin mogu is pretty simple, involving just a couple of somewhat tough elite mogu mobs. You may be able to use some of the celestial powers here, but as a tank, I could not really tell you much about them.
Twin Mogu:
This fight was actually not too hard, but involves a fair amount of raid damage. In phase one, you'll be fighting Lu'en, the who represents the night. The tank-swap mechanic here is fairly unusual, in that an add gets summoned, fixated on the current tank. Only that tank can damage it, and any healing on them will do bad things, so the other tank needs to take the boss while tank one kills off his or her add.
During the night phase, Su'en (I could totally have the name wrong, but it starts with an S) will blast people with fire damage and zip around leaving fire on the ground. When Lu'en (again, not sure on the name, but think "lunar" as in the moon, as in night) gets down to a certain percentage, she'll switch out, and Su'en becomes the active boss. The tank swap here is simpler - a standard stacking dot. Lu'en will similarly jump in to toss abilities at the raid, mainly by throwing comets, which stick in the ground and possibly radiate frost damage. Tanking Su'en near the comet will melt it, so do that.
Eventually, both bosses will come out. Have one tank on each, and I think it's generally easier to kill Su'en first, as her raid damage is much higher. Once one is dead, kill the other, and Bob's your uncle.
The one really weird mechanic in this fight that I never got to use is calling the celestials. For a limited number of times, you can have one raid member enter some kind of other phase, where there will be a bunch of stars floating in the room. By making a certain pattern in those stars, you will call on one of the four celestials. I know Xuen slows down time (presumably slowing down the bosses' attacks) and that Chi-ji summons a flock of cranes that damage anything hostile that's in the room. I don't really know when to use each ability, but I think they can make a big difference.
Trash before Lei Shen:
The trash here is two pulls of a Mogu sorcerer and a Mogu warrior. I did not tank the sorcerer, but it seems the warrior has the far more dangerous abilities. His shield will cause any strike against him to cause damage to anyone near the person who attacked (plus that person) and he also slams the ground in front of him, also doing a lot of damage.
Lei Shen:
I won't go through all of this, because I've already done it and it's insanely complicated. The main thing I wanted to add was what the four pillars do.
The eastern pillar will cast chain lightning on the raid, growing in intensity with each new target, so spread out. The other reason to spread out? Every time the lightning jumps after the first target, a new add will spawn, which needs to be tanked and killed. Save a raid! Spread the hell out! This, like the western pillar, is an easily avoidably complication, and a good candidate for the first pillar to get destroyed.
The southern pillar (and I could have this confused with the north) causes Static Discharge. A random player will be singled out for massive nature damage after a set amount of time. However, this damage is split between anyone within 8 yards, so stack up on the target and share the love.
The western pillar will do Bouncing Bolts. Little swirls will appear where the bolt is going to land. Intercepting it will cause some damage to you, but if you do not intercept it, an add (much tougher than the ones from the eastern pillar) will spawn, and the bolt will continue bouncing. The only reason you might keep this pillar up instead of the eastern one is that it's actually a little easier to catch the bolts than to spread out, at least in 25-man (on 10 man, the reverse could be true.)
The northern pillar causes overload. Like Static Discharge, this singles out a random person for Overcharge, who will grow in size. After a few seconds, they'll erupt, causing a ring of electricity to emanate from them, stunning and damaging anyone it hits. The good news is that the target and anyone stacked on them will not get hit by the ring. On its own, this is not too difficult to deal with, but during the transition phases, when multiple people are targeted, the ring can overlap between the quadrants of the fight. So if you get overcharged, run to the corner.
There - more freaking Lei Shen.
The guy's nutbags, I tell you. Nutbags!
Trash before Iron Quon:
The trash leading up to Iron Quon is pretty simple - mostly pack of things that just need to be AoE'd down. There are two elite quilen trainers that I imagine require some degree of strategy on normal, but you can pull them and kill them easily enough. Each of these guys has a huge group of untrained quillen that will have similar abilities to their trainers, but are more of an AoE burn fest.
Iron Quon:
This guy seems a lot more complicated than he is, and is actually possibly the simplest fight in the raid (save Jin'rokh, perhaps.) Iron Quon (or maybe just Qon?) rides on a different quillen mount for the first three phases. Essentially, for each of these, there is a tank swap mechanic and a similar ability for each of these phases where he throws his spear, creating lines of damaging fire/frost/electricity. Each of these lines has different effects, but the basic premise is that you should not stand in them.
The first phase, I don't remember exactly what the special ability is, but in the second phase, you need to take the boss out of the big windstorm in the center of the arena, dodging whirlwinds that will stun you. In the third phase, he will occasionally shield two of his sides - left, right, back and front, requiring you to reposition yourself to hit him where he's vulnerable (he does not turn during this time, so tanks can do so too.)
Once his three mounts are dead, you fight him, bringing back the various spear abilities and the whirlwinds, and possibly some other abilities. Frankly, I didn't pay huge attention to it, as few of these are all that threatening.
Trash before Twin Mogu:
The trash before the twin mogu is pretty simple, involving just a couple of somewhat tough elite mogu mobs. You may be able to use some of the celestial powers here, but as a tank, I could not really tell you much about them.
Twin Mogu:
This fight was actually not too hard, but involves a fair amount of raid damage. In phase one, you'll be fighting Lu'en, the who represents the night. The tank-swap mechanic here is fairly unusual, in that an add gets summoned, fixated on the current tank. Only that tank can damage it, and any healing on them will do bad things, so the other tank needs to take the boss while tank one kills off his or her add.
During the night phase, Su'en (I could totally have the name wrong, but it starts with an S) will blast people with fire damage and zip around leaving fire on the ground. When Lu'en (again, not sure on the name, but think "lunar" as in the moon, as in night) gets down to a certain percentage, she'll switch out, and Su'en becomes the active boss. The tank swap here is simpler - a standard stacking dot. Lu'en will similarly jump in to toss abilities at the raid, mainly by throwing comets, which stick in the ground and possibly radiate frost damage. Tanking Su'en near the comet will melt it, so do that.
Eventually, both bosses will come out. Have one tank on each, and I think it's generally easier to kill Su'en first, as her raid damage is much higher. Once one is dead, kill the other, and Bob's your uncle.
The one really weird mechanic in this fight that I never got to use is calling the celestials. For a limited number of times, you can have one raid member enter some kind of other phase, where there will be a bunch of stars floating in the room. By making a certain pattern in those stars, you will call on one of the four celestials. I know Xuen slows down time (presumably slowing down the bosses' attacks) and that Chi-ji summons a flock of cranes that damage anything hostile that's in the room. I don't really know when to use each ability, but I think they can make a big difference.
Trash before Lei Shen:
The trash here is two pulls of a Mogu sorcerer and a Mogu warrior. I did not tank the sorcerer, but it seems the warrior has the far more dangerous abilities. His shield will cause any strike against him to cause damage to anyone near the person who attacked (plus that person) and he also slams the ground in front of him, also doing a lot of damage.
Lei Shen:
I won't go through all of this, because I've already done it and it's insanely complicated. The main thing I wanted to add was what the four pillars do.
The eastern pillar will cast chain lightning on the raid, growing in intensity with each new target, so spread out. The other reason to spread out? Every time the lightning jumps after the first target, a new add will spawn, which needs to be tanked and killed. Save a raid! Spread the hell out! This, like the western pillar, is an easily avoidably complication, and a good candidate for the first pillar to get destroyed.
The southern pillar (and I could have this confused with the north) causes Static Discharge. A random player will be singled out for massive nature damage after a set amount of time. However, this damage is split between anyone within 8 yards, so stack up on the target and share the love.
The western pillar will do Bouncing Bolts. Little swirls will appear where the bolt is going to land. Intercepting it will cause some damage to you, but if you do not intercept it, an add (much tougher than the ones from the eastern pillar) will spawn, and the bolt will continue bouncing. The only reason you might keep this pillar up instead of the eastern one is that it's actually a little easier to catch the bolts than to spread out, at least in 25-man (on 10 man, the reverse could be true.)
The northern pillar causes overload. Like Static Discharge, this singles out a random person for Overcharge, who will grow in size. After a few seconds, they'll erupt, causing a ring of electricity to emanate from them, stunning and damaging anyone it hits. The good news is that the target and anyone stacked on them will not get hit by the ring. On its own, this is not too difficult to deal with, but during the transition phases, when multiple people are targeted, the ring can overlap between the quadrants of the fight. So if you get overcharged, run to the corner.
There - more freaking Lei Shen.
The guy's nutbags, I tell you. Nutbags!
Sunday, April 21, 2013
Fourth Spec - An Intriguing Possibility
While Cataclysm dramatically changed the way that the talent system worked, it was Mists of Pandaria that truly took a wrecking ball and built up something new. If you're a very new player, you might not know how the old system worked. Talents were very different. There were far more of them (most of them passive effects,) many had multiple ranks, for you to invest multiple points into them, and all talents were considered part of a particular talent tree. Essentially, you had three big trees (corresponding to each spec.) Every level (or in Cataclysm, every other level) you would get a new talent point to invest in the various talents in the tree. The more points you put into a particular tree, the more talents would become available there, so in order to get the spec-defining talents, one had to invest the majority of their points into the corresponding tree.
Back then, Druids had only three specs: Balance, Feral, and Restoration. Both tanks and melee dps would go into Feral. The only thing that differentiated the two was on which talents within the Feral tree one spent their points. For instance, a Bear druid would invest in talents that granted dodge and armor, while a Cat druid would invest in things that increased damage done.
With the Mists redesign, it would be impossible to have Feral druids distinguish themselves as tanks or dps. So rather than simply making Feral Druids equally capable tanks and melee dps, they simply put together a new spec, recreating the Feral Tank spec and renaming it Guardian.
However, this fourth spec for Druids has been the inspiration for much speculation and wishful thinking. Why could the other classes not have a fourth spec?
Introducing new specs to existing classes would be an interesting challenge. On one hand, creating a new class from scratch requires a great deal of iteration and development - not only to figure out the basic mechanics and then to differentiate three specs from that basic design, but also to figure out the lore and aesthetic of the class. By sticking to existing classes, you would still be able to keep them looking like the classes you already made, but just find a different way for them to embody that look.
On the other hand, giving a new spec to all the existing classes (save Druids, probably, who got there first and frankly don't really have much of a new place to go - they have all the bases covered) would mean far more new specs than the three that would come with a new class. Additionally, while there are some classes just begging for a new spec (Death Knights could get a ranged caster spec) others might need some serious thought (Monks, for example.)
Still, if Blizzard could pull this off, it would be quite cool, and possibly shake things up in a really fun way. So without further ado, let's speculate! (Wait, one more ado. I'm going to limit myself to a single new spec per class, just to keep this from becoming a George R. R. Martin-sized saga. I'm sure there are some ideas that would be good - such as Rogue Tanks - that I won't be able to touch on.)
Priests:
Exorcist - a Holy Damage caster spec, Exorcists would be more about direct damage than Shadow, but might have a mirror-image version of Shadow's Orbs. There are a bunch of abilities that are only really used by healers with Atonement that could easily be repurposed as the central nukes of the Exorcist spec, like Smite and Holy Fire.
Mage:
Battlemage - an intellect-based melee spec, Battlemages would have a passive armor buff and would still mostly be casting spells, but they would be instant-cast and they would have a SP to AP conversion passive, similar to what Mistweavers have, I believe.
Warlock:
Demon Hunter - I know, I know, I'd rather have a fully-fledged Demon Hunter class, but barring that, a Demon Hunter spec could take the idea of Dark Apotheosis and run with it, making it a fully-functional tank spec. Demon Hunter could gain useful bonuses from their pets similarly to how a Brewmaster has the Ox statue. Void Walkers could grant protective abilities or Imps might help round up adds.
Druid:
Don't need one, they already have Guardians.
Rogue:
Shadow Hunter - I know, lots of "something Hunters," but bear with me. Shadow Hunters would use ranged weapons, but still function similarly to melee rogues, using various CP-builders and finishing moves. The distinction would be a greater use of Shadow abilities, perhaps using their distance to dip in and out of Stealth easily (though that does kind of tread on Subtlety's turf.)
Monk:
Lorewalker - some kind of ranged caster spec. The aesthetic here is actually the easy part, as you could use the Red Crane as your main motif. Lorewalkers would have a fast-paced rotation.
Hunter:
Warden - Wardens would gain many melee abilities, attacking with their polearm or staff.
Shaman:
Primal - a tanking spec, using a lot of pre-existing abilities that Shamans already have, like Rockbiter weapon, and using shields (not sure how we'd deal with the fact that tanking shields have strength on them.)
Warrior:
Commander - a spec that involved humanoid pets or something... I don't really know. One could do a ranged warrior spec, but most of the bases are covered here already.
Paladin
Authority - a ranged spec using intellect plate. Much of the groundwork has been laid in Holy's damage abilities.
Death Knight
Necromancy - I realize that Death Knights' aesthetic is totally built around their three spec, and that Unholy is already the pet-centric spec, but you could have a ranged caster spec (again, using that pesky spellpower plate) that focuses on summoning multiple types of undead - perhaps sharing Unholy's permanent ghoul, but mixing in skeletal warriors that would be temporary and perhaps bringing forth a bunch of banshees as well - essentially, it would be the spec that has constantly got an army of the undead around them.
This could be a nice complement to new character models if that's what we get in the next expansion. As I've never designed a video game before, I can't really say how difficult it would be to implement a fourth spec across the board. Nonetheless, it could be great fun.
Back then, Druids had only three specs: Balance, Feral, and Restoration. Both tanks and melee dps would go into Feral. The only thing that differentiated the two was on which talents within the Feral tree one spent their points. For instance, a Bear druid would invest in talents that granted dodge and armor, while a Cat druid would invest in things that increased damage done.
With the Mists redesign, it would be impossible to have Feral druids distinguish themselves as tanks or dps. So rather than simply making Feral Druids equally capable tanks and melee dps, they simply put together a new spec, recreating the Feral Tank spec and renaming it Guardian.
However, this fourth spec for Druids has been the inspiration for much speculation and wishful thinking. Why could the other classes not have a fourth spec?
Introducing new specs to existing classes would be an interesting challenge. On one hand, creating a new class from scratch requires a great deal of iteration and development - not only to figure out the basic mechanics and then to differentiate three specs from that basic design, but also to figure out the lore and aesthetic of the class. By sticking to existing classes, you would still be able to keep them looking like the classes you already made, but just find a different way for them to embody that look.
On the other hand, giving a new spec to all the existing classes (save Druids, probably, who got there first and frankly don't really have much of a new place to go - they have all the bases covered) would mean far more new specs than the three that would come with a new class. Additionally, while there are some classes just begging for a new spec (Death Knights could get a ranged caster spec) others might need some serious thought (Monks, for example.)
Still, if Blizzard could pull this off, it would be quite cool, and possibly shake things up in a really fun way. So without further ado, let's speculate! (Wait, one more ado. I'm going to limit myself to a single new spec per class, just to keep this from becoming a George R. R. Martin-sized saga. I'm sure there are some ideas that would be good - such as Rogue Tanks - that I won't be able to touch on.)
Priests:
Exorcist - a Holy Damage caster spec, Exorcists would be more about direct damage than Shadow, but might have a mirror-image version of Shadow's Orbs. There are a bunch of abilities that are only really used by healers with Atonement that could easily be repurposed as the central nukes of the Exorcist spec, like Smite and Holy Fire.
Mage:
Battlemage - an intellect-based melee spec, Battlemages would have a passive armor buff and would still mostly be casting spells, but they would be instant-cast and they would have a SP to AP conversion passive, similar to what Mistweavers have, I believe.
Warlock:
Demon Hunter - I know, I know, I'd rather have a fully-fledged Demon Hunter class, but barring that, a Demon Hunter spec could take the idea of Dark Apotheosis and run with it, making it a fully-functional tank spec. Demon Hunter could gain useful bonuses from their pets similarly to how a Brewmaster has the Ox statue. Void Walkers could grant protective abilities or Imps might help round up adds.
Druid:
Don't need one, they already have Guardians.
Rogue:
Shadow Hunter - I know, lots of "something Hunters," but bear with me. Shadow Hunters would use ranged weapons, but still function similarly to melee rogues, using various CP-builders and finishing moves. The distinction would be a greater use of Shadow abilities, perhaps using their distance to dip in and out of Stealth easily (though that does kind of tread on Subtlety's turf.)
Monk:
Lorewalker - some kind of ranged caster spec. The aesthetic here is actually the easy part, as you could use the Red Crane as your main motif. Lorewalkers would have a fast-paced rotation.
Hunter:
Warden - Wardens would gain many melee abilities, attacking with their polearm or staff.
Shaman:
Primal - a tanking spec, using a lot of pre-existing abilities that Shamans already have, like Rockbiter weapon, and using shields (not sure how we'd deal with the fact that tanking shields have strength on them.)
Warrior:
Commander - a spec that involved humanoid pets or something... I don't really know. One could do a ranged warrior spec, but most of the bases are covered here already.
Paladin
Authority - a ranged spec using intellect plate. Much of the groundwork has been laid in Holy's damage abilities.
Death Knight
Necromancy - I realize that Death Knights' aesthetic is totally built around their three spec, and that Unholy is already the pet-centric spec, but you could have a ranged caster spec (again, using that pesky spellpower plate) that focuses on summoning multiple types of undead - perhaps sharing Unholy's permanent ghoul, but mixing in skeletal warriors that would be temporary and perhaps bringing forth a bunch of banshees as well - essentially, it would be the spec that has constantly got an army of the undead around them.
This could be a nice complement to new character models if that's what we get in the next expansion. As I've never designed a video game before, I can't really say how difficult it would be to implement a fourth spec across the board. Nonetheless, it could be great fun.
Thursday, April 18, 2013
Lei Shen, the Thunder King
Well, this would usually be when I'd write about the new wing of the current raid and go over the trash pulls and bosses. However, since I was thrown into a group already in the middle of the last trash pack before Lei Shen, I guess my subject will be more focused.
That's probably all right, though, because this fight is absolutely nutbags. We finished it on our 5th attempt, which a helpful and more experienced mage said was actually quite good. It didn't help that my Recount was screwing things up tremendously.
Because there were so many things going on in this fight all at once, I'm sure some of my details will be wrong here. If you've read these raid reports, this is more of an embedded journalist-style than a real raid guide. If you want one of those, I highly recommend Icy Veins, which is an all-around great resource for bosses, gearing, talents, stat-weights, and rotations.
Anyway, though it was a little anti-climactic to show up right at Lei Shen, I have to commend Blizzard for doing a decent job building up this new villain. We know a lot about him, and I felt pretty motivated to fight him. Serving as the middle-boss of the expansion can make the stakes seem a little less heightened - we're no longer awed by this new land, and this isn't really the fight we've been building up to all along.
Though actually, in a way it is. In many ways, Lei Shen is the boss of Pandaria. If this were a more typical expansion, Lei Shen would be the final boss, but the upcoming Horde Revolution is going to throw a monkey-wrench into that.
Ok, so the fight:
You fight Lei Shen on a giant square-shaped platform, with the corners pointing in each of the cardinal directions. Lei Shen is basically a giant ball of electricity, and he uses this to power the four towers at each corner. Each tower has a different ability, some of which spawn adds and some of which do other things, but honestly I was concentrating too much on moving him around and not getting killed to really think much about those.
As he stands near the towers, they gain energy slowly. If one gains full power, it levels up, making its ability cause more damage. As a result, you're going to have to drag him from tower to tower. When he's not near a tower (look for the expanded parts of the corner as a guide to how close he needs to be) he'll deal raid-wide AoE. It's not huge, but it'll kill your raid if you don't get him to a tower.
Pick whichever tower whose abilities you do not want to deal with and let the energy get to 85-90%. After that, move him to the next tower, and don't let any other towers get more than what the first got.
During this phase, tanks will need to swap on Decapitate, and the one targeted by it should run away and pick up adds while the other taunts. The farther they are from Lei Shen when it goes off, the less damage they'll take.
When you get him to 67% or so, he will go to the center of the room, where he becomes invulnerable. You then want to spread out the raid to the various corners of the platform. You'll want to absorb bouncing bolts, or whatever they're called, which will create a swirly thing on the ground for you to see where they're coming. If you don't, these will generate an add, which will need to be tanked and killed.
Also during this phase, random people will get Overcharged, growing huge. This person should try to be in the far corner and everyone in their quarter of the platform should group up on them. When Overcharge goes off, a ring of lightning will shoot out from them, stunning anyone it hits, but leaving a little grace area for those who are stacked on the person. If you stand in the corner, this ring will expire before it gets to the other quadrants, so do that.
When the transition phase ends, Lei Shen will shatter the tower with the current highest energy, making that quadrant flooded with electricity. Don't go in there anymore.
The second phase is very similar to the first, but instead of Decapitate, there is an ability called Fusion Slash, which is a more standard tank-swap mechanic, but also has a knock back. So don't stand right on the edge (in LFR at least, it doesn't send you all that far, but you do want to give yourself a little space.) The other major thing is that one of his abilities spawns Ball Lightning, which are little adds that I do not think need to be tanked and should just be AoE'd down. Also, he will do Lightning Whip, which will leave some AoE on the ground... I think.
Anyway, at 33%, he'll do another transition phase, which works pretty much the same, I think, only you have one fewer quadrant to cover.
In the final phase, we either ignored the tower mechanic or it gets shut down, so we just dealt with the AoE instead, and just burned him. As far as I could tell, his abilities are the same as they are in phase two - so you still have adds to burn and you still need to tank-swap, but at this point it's really just a hard burn.
Now, look at that explanation. That is an already admittedly abbreviated version of the fight. I didn't even go into what the towers do (one or two of them spawn adds, I know that!) Anyway, this is a bit of a step up from the other fights on LFR, and probably the most complicated boss since LFR's inception (Madness of Deathwing had a lot of phases, but all but the last were pretty much the same one.)
People will learn this fight. I actually don't think the damage is even that much, but mechanically it's insane. Expect it to take a while for everyone to get the fight down. This is really an execution fight instead of a gear-check.
Later, I'll try to touch on the other Pinnacle of Storms bosses.
That's probably all right, though, because this fight is absolutely nutbags. We finished it on our 5th attempt, which a helpful and more experienced mage said was actually quite good. It didn't help that my Recount was screwing things up tremendously.
Because there were so many things going on in this fight all at once, I'm sure some of my details will be wrong here. If you've read these raid reports, this is more of an embedded journalist-style than a real raid guide. If you want one of those, I highly recommend Icy Veins, which is an all-around great resource for bosses, gearing, talents, stat-weights, and rotations.
Anyway, though it was a little anti-climactic to show up right at Lei Shen, I have to commend Blizzard for doing a decent job building up this new villain. We know a lot about him, and I felt pretty motivated to fight him. Serving as the middle-boss of the expansion can make the stakes seem a little less heightened - we're no longer awed by this new land, and this isn't really the fight we've been building up to all along.
Though actually, in a way it is. In many ways, Lei Shen is the boss of Pandaria. If this were a more typical expansion, Lei Shen would be the final boss, but the upcoming Horde Revolution is going to throw a monkey-wrench into that.
Ok, so the fight:
You fight Lei Shen on a giant square-shaped platform, with the corners pointing in each of the cardinal directions. Lei Shen is basically a giant ball of electricity, and he uses this to power the four towers at each corner. Each tower has a different ability, some of which spawn adds and some of which do other things, but honestly I was concentrating too much on moving him around and not getting killed to really think much about those.
As he stands near the towers, they gain energy slowly. If one gains full power, it levels up, making its ability cause more damage. As a result, you're going to have to drag him from tower to tower. When he's not near a tower (look for the expanded parts of the corner as a guide to how close he needs to be) he'll deal raid-wide AoE. It's not huge, but it'll kill your raid if you don't get him to a tower.
Pick whichever tower whose abilities you do not want to deal with and let the energy get to 85-90%. After that, move him to the next tower, and don't let any other towers get more than what the first got.
During this phase, tanks will need to swap on Decapitate, and the one targeted by it should run away and pick up adds while the other taunts. The farther they are from Lei Shen when it goes off, the less damage they'll take.
When you get him to 67% or so, he will go to the center of the room, where he becomes invulnerable. You then want to spread out the raid to the various corners of the platform. You'll want to absorb bouncing bolts, or whatever they're called, which will create a swirly thing on the ground for you to see where they're coming. If you don't, these will generate an add, which will need to be tanked and killed.
Also during this phase, random people will get Overcharged, growing huge. This person should try to be in the far corner and everyone in their quarter of the platform should group up on them. When Overcharge goes off, a ring of lightning will shoot out from them, stunning anyone it hits, but leaving a little grace area for those who are stacked on the person. If you stand in the corner, this ring will expire before it gets to the other quadrants, so do that.
When the transition phase ends, Lei Shen will shatter the tower with the current highest energy, making that quadrant flooded with electricity. Don't go in there anymore.
The second phase is very similar to the first, but instead of Decapitate, there is an ability called Fusion Slash, which is a more standard tank-swap mechanic, but also has a knock back. So don't stand right on the edge (in LFR at least, it doesn't send you all that far, but you do want to give yourself a little space.) The other major thing is that one of his abilities spawns Ball Lightning, which are little adds that I do not think need to be tanked and should just be AoE'd down. Also, he will do Lightning Whip, which will leave some AoE on the ground... I think.
Anyway, at 33%, he'll do another transition phase, which works pretty much the same, I think, only you have one fewer quadrant to cover.
In the final phase, we either ignored the tower mechanic or it gets shut down, so we just dealt with the AoE instead, and just burned him. As far as I could tell, his abilities are the same as they are in phase two - so you still have adds to burn and you still need to tank-swap, but at this point it's really just a hard burn.
Now, look at that explanation. That is an already admittedly abbreviated version of the fight. I didn't even go into what the towers do (one or two of them spawn adds, I know that!) Anyway, this is a bit of a step up from the other fights on LFR, and probably the most complicated boss since LFR's inception (Madness of Deathwing had a lot of phases, but all but the last were pretty much the same one.)
People will learn this fight. I actually don't think the damage is even that much, but mechanically it's insane. Expect it to take a while for everyone to get the fight down. This is really an execution fight instead of a gear-check.
Later, I'll try to touch on the other Pinnacle of Storms bosses.
Sunday, April 14, 2013
Blood and Vengeance for the Alliance
Well, looks like WoWInsider has put together a fairly comprehensive indictment of the treatment of Alliance lore in WoW, and it makes for a pretty compelling argument even if I think there are other conclusions to draw on how to revitalize the faction's story.
I'm not going to go into Horde lore here, because I actually think they're doing a great job with it at the moment. It's not that the Horde should lose what it's getting, it's that the Alliance should be getting equally compelling stuff to deal with.
The first problem that I think the article identifies is that all of Alliance lore rests squarely on the shoulders of Varian. Varian's a decent character, but even Hamlet needed supporting parts to be a compelling story. It's not simply a matter of how the other races are not given enough exposure (though that is totally true,) but everything seems to relate back to Varian. Now, Jaina's response to the operation in Darnassus was a nice little curveball, but we never really got to see how this would screw up talks with the Blood Elves. Varian's overtures to Silvermoon were only mentioned after the fact.
The most frustrating thing, I think, is that there are actually quite a few really great potential stories there within the Alliance, but after one expansion that involved pretty much only working with neutral factions (the biggest being led by a former Horde Warchief) and another that was supposed to be about how both sides have recklessly brought destruction to a basically innocent land, but has really turned out to be about how the Horde brought that destruction and the Alliance is simply doing what anyone would do, it seems as if the Alliance is a background player in the Horde's story.
The article suggested that what the Alliance needs is to be able to act proactively. The last time the Alliance did anything particularly exciting was the invasion of Undercity. Sure, back when Wrath first came out, we had been playing a game where the Horde was basically good guys, and Thrall was perhaps the most admirable person in the world. To see Varian get so pissed off that he decides to carve his way through the Undercity, and then declares his intention to destroy the Horde entirely gave a lot of us pause. It seemed that we had, all of a sudden, a warmonger for a leader.
In retrospect, Varian was probably right in his intentions. When Sylvanas retook her city, we gave her the benefit of the doubt, accepting that the plague research had been meant as a weapon against the Scourge, and that Varimathras' coup was meant to make the Forsaken out to be just as evil as people suspected. Yet in Cataclysm, we discovered that, actually, the Undercity should have been burned to the ground, and that the Horde would be turned against the Alliance in earnest soon after.
The invasion of Orgrimmar should be the Alliance finally rising to the challenge, to prove that they are strong enough to take on the Horde. The Alliance needs to push back, to really rain destruction down on the Horde. There have been more than enough Pearl Harbor moments: the Wrath Gate, Southshore, Gilneas, Theramore. Yet the giant that is the Alliance remains asleep.
So here's what we need first:
A major offensive against the Horde, without any sort of cooperation or intention to leave their takings in Horde hands. I'm ok with SI:7 propping up Vol'jin, but when we hit the city, I want to see the Alliance betraying Vol'jin's trust somehow, showing that they aren't there to bring stability to the Horde. They are here for blood.
But Orgrimmar is going to be a joint victory, no matter how it plays out. This is required mechanically, and because Horde players should not be denied a victory (as I said before, the Horde lore is on the right track - we just need to bring the Alliance up to their level.)
No, Kalimdor is still going to be the territory of the Horde for the most part. But the place where the Horde is vulnerable most is not at the heart of their territory - it's Lordaeron.
Among the many missed opportunities for the Alliance to feel awesome was the way in which the Worgen storyline dried up. The Forsaken kicked the hornet's nest, but the hornets mostly just flew away.
I want to see an entire fleet of Alliance ships sail up Baradin Bay and land in the Hillsbrad Foothills and Gilneas. I want to see Sylvanas' empire crumble around her. Up until now, her trump card has been the possession of Val'kyr, stolen from the Scourge to serve her and raise the dead. Without the Val'kyr, she could never have taken Silverpine, and her battle for Andorhol would have been a total quagmire, if not an outright loss.
I want to see an army of wolf-men tear their way across the continent of Lordaeron, burning the Forsaken infrastructure the ground, and I want to charge through there and slaughter Sylvanas' Val'kyr. The Blood Elves may or may not enter the fray, but it strikes me that they would be ill-advised to do so.
And this would lead to the second thing we need:
The Alliance needs to have and deal with an identity crisis.
So I realize I'm focusing on the Worgen a lot here, but there's a reason why: the Worgen are an enormous ball of unrealized potential. This was supposed to be the race that could darken the Alliance, to bring a degree of moral ambiguity to what they were doing.
The Worgen are obviously the most motivated to defeat the Forsaken, particularly in reclaiming their country. But even if their feral nature is actually born out of a benevolent Ancient, the fact is that they are bloodthirsty and vicious. Even those that are good at heart must fight those strong instincts. The Forsaken have pretty much spent all the sympathy we might have had for them, and frankly I'm not sure if it would even feel that bad to see the Sepulcher or Brill put to the torch. If the Blood Elves did join the fight, though, that would give some potential to see the Alliance begin to question what they had done.
Graymane, remember, advocated the eradication of the Orcs following the Second War. He's a very sad and regretful person after losing his country and his son, but that could easily translate into a merciless bloodthirstiness. To Graymane, as well as some of the human or other forces assaulting Lordaeron, there may be no limit to what they could do against the Forsaken. Yet to an Alliance that values restraint (to an absurd degree) it might be very troubling to see their own people implementing a scorched-Earth policy.
Does Sylvanas have to die for this victory to feel sufficient? No. In fact, the campaign should be filled with problems, because...
The Alliance needs inner conflict.
The reason that it seems the Dwarves, Gnomes, Worgen, Night Elves, and Draenei have no personality right now is because they don't get to voice their opinions. Varian speaks for the Alliance, and the only time there was any conflict whatsoever between its members was because Varian didn't let Jaina know about his overtures to Silvermoon until it was too late. Now it seems that the one leader who could have caused trouble, namely Moira, is now towing the Alliance line.
That's bullshit, people!
I want arguments, I want fighting. We don't necessarily need two racial leaders who are actively trying to kill each other, but... wait, no, that would be awesome!
Though I don't want to bring power-level into this too much, part of the reason the Alliance feels weak is that the Horde, which is tearing itself apart, is still evenly matched for a perfectly unified Alliance. That makes Alliance players feel like chumps.
I want Velen threatening to leave the planet if they don't drop things to fight the Burning Legion. I want Tyrande to try to take over as the most powerful leader of the Alliance, believing herself far more wise and experienced than these short-lived humans. If we want Moira to try to redeem her Dark Iron brethren, then I want some other Dwarf to try to kill her (I'm thinking the Wildhammers. I don't think Muradin wants to murder his niece.) Gnomes! Gnomes should have something to do! And I think Genn Graymane should be making a list of how many hundreds of barrels of flaming oil he wants to use to burn the Undercity to the ground.
The Simple and Easy Way to Make a Course Correction:
It may seem daunting to try to create all this conflict from a point when the Alliance is blandly singing kumbaya together, but there's an easy solution. We just need to see the various leaders (or, what would be more exciting, new, rising voices in the populations) reflect the problems that we players are seeing. Players are pissed off that all we're doing is helping Vol'jin fight Garrosh? Have someone-in game say that. The thing is, we don't want Varian as a perfect leader guy. The whole "trials of the High King" narrative that we never really got anyway was invented as a way to make Varian the undisputed leader of the Alliance. I think Chris Metzen even said that the other leaders would "bow down" to him after he proved how badass he was.
Don't do that.
What's a more interesting story? A guy leads his people successfully and everyone gets along? Or a guy desperately struggles to keep a bunch of discontented people who have suffered a long and traumatic war unified while he faces accusations of weakness from ambitious rivals?
Hint: it's the second one.
Lastly, there's the problem of people wanting revenge. For a long time now, Alliance players have been strung along, suffering incident after incident, each of which seemed like the dark nadir out of which we would climb to take brutal retribution (there's even a spec of the class that was originally alliance-only called that!) on the people who wronged us. Yet we never get to. Helping Vol'jin take over isn't going to cut it. We need to strike at the Horde and leave them devastated. None of this equivocating or having "a little patience" (a scenario whose mechanics I enjoy, but whose message is kind of indicative of all these problems in the story.) I don't care if Prince Anduin is horrified by what we're doing. In fact, I hope he is.
Because if we can make such an earnest, genuinely good guy horrified by what his own people are doing, that's DRAMA.
And drama is all we want.
I'm not going to go into Horde lore here, because I actually think they're doing a great job with it at the moment. It's not that the Horde should lose what it's getting, it's that the Alliance should be getting equally compelling stuff to deal with.
The first problem that I think the article identifies is that all of Alliance lore rests squarely on the shoulders of Varian. Varian's a decent character, but even Hamlet needed supporting parts to be a compelling story. It's not simply a matter of how the other races are not given enough exposure (though that is totally true,) but everything seems to relate back to Varian. Now, Jaina's response to the operation in Darnassus was a nice little curveball, but we never really got to see how this would screw up talks with the Blood Elves. Varian's overtures to Silvermoon were only mentioned after the fact.
The most frustrating thing, I think, is that there are actually quite a few really great potential stories there within the Alliance, but after one expansion that involved pretty much only working with neutral factions (the biggest being led by a former Horde Warchief) and another that was supposed to be about how both sides have recklessly brought destruction to a basically innocent land, but has really turned out to be about how the Horde brought that destruction and the Alliance is simply doing what anyone would do, it seems as if the Alliance is a background player in the Horde's story.
The article suggested that what the Alliance needs is to be able to act proactively. The last time the Alliance did anything particularly exciting was the invasion of Undercity. Sure, back when Wrath first came out, we had been playing a game where the Horde was basically good guys, and Thrall was perhaps the most admirable person in the world. To see Varian get so pissed off that he decides to carve his way through the Undercity, and then declares his intention to destroy the Horde entirely gave a lot of us pause. It seemed that we had, all of a sudden, a warmonger for a leader.
In retrospect, Varian was probably right in his intentions. When Sylvanas retook her city, we gave her the benefit of the doubt, accepting that the plague research had been meant as a weapon against the Scourge, and that Varimathras' coup was meant to make the Forsaken out to be just as evil as people suspected. Yet in Cataclysm, we discovered that, actually, the Undercity should have been burned to the ground, and that the Horde would be turned against the Alliance in earnest soon after.
The invasion of Orgrimmar should be the Alliance finally rising to the challenge, to prove that they are strong enough to take on the Horde. The Alliance needs to push back, to really rain destruction down on the Horde. There have been more than enough Pearl Harbor moments: the Wrath Gate, Southshore, Gilneas, Theramore. Yet the giant that is the Alliance remains asleep.
So here's what we need first:
A major offensive against the Horde, without any sort of cooperation or intention to leave their takings in Horde hands. I'm ok with SI:7 propping up Vol'jin, but when we hit the city, I want to see the Alliance betraying Vol'jin's trust somehow, showing that they aren't there to bring stability to the Horde. They are here for blood.
But Orgrimmar is going to be a joint victory, no matter how it plays out. This is required mechanically, and because Horde players should not be denied a victory (as I said before, the Horde lore is on the right track - we just need to bring the Alliance up to their level.)
No, Kalimdor is still going to be the territory of the Horde for the most part. But the place where the Horde is vulnerable most is not at the heart of their territory - it's Lordaeron.
Among the many missed opportunities for the Alliance to feel awesome was the way in which the Worgen storyline dried up. The Forsaken kicked the hornet's nest, but the hornets mostly just flew away.
I want to see an entire fleet of Alliance ships sail up Baradin Bay and land in the Hillsbrad Foothills and Gilneas. I want to see Sylvanas' empire crumble around her. Up until now, her trump card has been the possession of Val'kyr, stolen from the Scourge to serve her and raise the dead. Without the Val'kyr, she could never have taken Silverpine, and her battle for Andorhol would have been a total quagmire, if not an outright loss.
I want to see an army of wolf-men tear their way across the continent of Lordaeron, burning the Forsaken infrastructure the ground, and I want to charge through there and slaughter Sylvanas' Val'kyr. The Blood Elves may or may not enter the fray, but it strikes me that they would be ill-advised to do so.
And this would lead to the second thing we need:
The Alliance needs to have and deal with an identity crisis.
So I realize I'm focusing on the Worgen a lot here, but there's a reason why: the Worgen are an enormous ball of unrealized potential. This was supposed to be the race that could darken the Alliance, to bring a degree of moral ambiguity to what they were doing.
The Worgen are obviously the most motivated to defeat the Forsaken, particularly in reclaiming their country. But even if their feral nature is actually born out of a benevolent Ancient, the fact is that they are bloodthirsty and vicious. Even those that are good at heart must fight those strong instincts. The Forsaken have pretty much spent all the sympathy we might have had for them, and frankly I'm not sure if it would even feel that bad to see the Sepulcher or Brill put to the torch. If the Blood Elves did join the fight, though, that would give some potential to see the Alliance begin to question what they had done.
Graymane, remember, advocated the eradication of the Orcs following the Second War. He's a very sad and regretful person after losing his country and his son, but that could easily translate into a merciless bloodthirstiness. To Graymane, as well as some of the human or other forces assaulting Lordaeron, there may be no limit to what they could do against the Forsaken. Yet to an Alliance that values restraint (to an absurd degree) it might be very troubling to see their own people implementing a scorched-Earth policy.
Does Sylvanas have to die for this victory to feel sufficient? No. In fact, the campaign should be filled with problems, because...
The Alliance needs inner conflict.
The reason that it seems the Dwarves, Gnomes, Worgen, Night Elves, and Draenei have no personality right now is because they don't get to voice their opinions. Varian speaks for the Alliance, and the only time there was any conflict whatsoever between its members was because Varian didn't let Jaina know about his overtures to Silvermoon until it was too late. Now it seems that the one leader who could have caused trouble, namely Moira, is now towing the Alliance line.
That's bullshit, people!
I want arguments, I want fighting. We don't necessarily need two racial leaders who are actively trying to kill each other, but... wait, no, that would be awesome!
Though I don't want to bring power-level into this too much, part of the reason the Alliance feels weak is that the Horde, which is tearing itself apart, is still evenly matched for a perfectly unified Alliance. That makes Alliance players feel like chumps.
I want Velen threatening to leave the planet if they don't drop things to fight the Burning Legion. I want Tyrande to try to take over as the most powerful leader of the Alliance, believing herself far more wise and experienced than these short-lived humans. If we want Moira to try to redeem her Dark Iron brethren, then I want some other Dwarf to try to kill her (I'm thinking the Wildhammers. I don't think Muradin wants to murder his niece.) Gnomes! Gnomes should have something to do! And I think Genn Graymane should be making a list of how many hundreds of barrels of flaming oil he wants to use to burn the Undercity to the ground.
The Simple and Easy Way to Make a Course Correction:
It may seem daunting to try to create all this conflict from a point when the Alliance is blandly singing kumbaya together, but there's an easy solution. We just need to see the various leaders (or, what would be more exciting, new, rising voices in the populations) reflect the problems that we players are seeing. Players are pissed off that all we're doing is helping Vol'jin fight Garrosh? Have someone-in game say that. The thing is, we don't want Varian as a perfect leader guy. The whole "trials of the High King" narrative that we never really got anyway was invented as a way to make Varian the undisputed leader of the Alliance. I think Chris Metzen even said that the other leaders would "bow down" to him after he proved how badass he was.
Don't do that.
What's a more interesting story? A guy leads his people successfully and everyone gets along? Or a guy desperately struggles to keep a bunch of discontented people who have suffered a long and traumatic war unified while he faces accusations of weakness from ambitious rivals?
Hint: it's the second one.
Lastly, there's the problem of people wanting revenge. For a long time now, Alliance players have been strung along, suffering incident after incident, each of which seemed like the dark nadir out of which we would climb to take brutal retribution (there's even a spec of the class that was originally alliance-only called that!) on the people who wronged us. Yet we never get to. Helping Vol'jin take over isn't going to cut it. We need to strike at the Horde and leave them devastated. None of this equivocating or having "a little patience" (a scenario whose mechanics I enjoy, but whose message is kind of indicative of all these problems in the story.) I don't care if Prince Anduin is horrified by what we're doing. In fact, I hope he is.
Because if we can make such an earnest, genuinely good guy horrified by what his own people are doing, that's DRAMA.
And drama is all we want.
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