We’re continuing to refine the raid progression paths in Cataclysm, and we’d like to share some of those changes with you today. Please enjoy!

The first of the refinements being made is that we’re combining all raid sizes and difficulties into a single lockout. Unlike today, 10- and 25-player modes of a single raid will share the same lockout. You can defeat each raid boss once per week per character. In other words, if you wanted to do both a 10- and 25-person raid in a single week, you’d need to do so on two different characters. Normal versus Heroic mode will be chosen on a per-boss basis in Cataclysm raids, the same way it works in Icecrown Citadel. Obviously the raid lockout change doesn’t apply in pure Icecrown terms though, as this change goes hand-in-hand with a few other changes to raid progression in Cataclysm.

We’re designing and balancing raids so that the difficulty between 10- and 25-player versions of each difficulty will be as close as possible to each other as we can achieve. That closeness in difficulty also means that we’ll have bosses dropping the same items in 10- and 25-player raids of each difficulty. They’ll have the same name and same stats; they are in fact the exact same items. Choosing Heroic mode will drop a scaled-up version of those items. Our hope is that players will be able to associate bosses with their loot tables and even associate specific artwork with specific item names to a far greater extent than today.

Dungeon Difficulty and Rewards
10- and 25-player (normal difficulty) — Very similar to one another in difficulty; drop the exact same items as each other.
10- and 25-player (Heroic difficulty) — Very similar to one another in difficulty; drop more powerful versions of the normal-difficulty items.

We of course recognize the logistical realities of organizing larger groups of people, so while the loot quality will not change, 25-player versions will drop a higher quantity of loot per player (items, but also badges, and even gold), making it a more efficient route if you’re able to gather the people. The raid designers are designing encounters with these changes in mind, and the class designers are making class changes to help make 10-person groups easier to build. Running 25-player raids will be a bit more lucrative, as should be expected, but if for a week or two you need to do 10s because half the guild is away on vacation, you can do that and not suffer a dramatic loss to your ability to get the items you want.

We recognize that very long raids can be a barrier for some players, but we also want to provide enough encounters for the experience to feel epic. For the first few raid tiers, our plan is to provide multiple smaller raids. Instead of one raid with eleven bosses, you might have a five-boss raid as well as a six-boss raid. All of these bosses would drop the same item level gear, but the dungeons themselves being different environments will provide some variety in location and visual style, as well as separate raid lockouts. Think of how you could raid Serpentshrine Cavern and Tempest Keep separately, but you might still want to hit both every week.

We do like how gating bosses over time allows the community to focus on individual encounters instead of just racing to the end boss, so we’re likely to keep that design moving forward. We don’t plan to impose attempt limitations again though, except maybe in cases of rare optional bosses (like Algalon). Heroic mode may not be open from day one, but will become available after defeating normal mode perhaps as little as once or twice.

In terms of tuning, we want groups to be able to jump into the first raids pretty quickly, but we also don’t want them to overshadow the Heroic 5-player dungeons and more powerful quest rewards. We’ll be designing the first few raid zones assuming that players have accumulated some blue gear from dungeons, crafted equipment, or quest rewards. In general, we want you and your guild members to participate in and enjoy the level up experience.

We design our raids to be accessible to a broad spectrum of players, so we want groups to be able to make the decision about whether to attempt the normal or Heroic versions of raids pretty quickly. The goal with all of these changes is to make it as much of a choice or effect of circumstance whether you raid as a group of 10 or as a group of 25 as possible. Whether you’re a big guild or a small guild the choice won’t be dependent on what items drop, but instead on what you enjoy the most.

We realize that with any changes to progression pathways there are going to be questions. We’re eagerly awaiting any that we may have left unanswered. To the comments!

In all honesty most of these changes I have been hoping for for a very long time. I have one very important problem with these changes however.

10 and 25 should not have the same lock out if not then lockouts need to change and not be tied to a particular character. This change totally screws over anyone not able to or chosen to go in the main guild run. It is a giant FU to the entire concept of having a flexible gaming environment. No 25 man guilds can no longer have the “main run” and have several 10 man runs for alts and gearing up under geared members.

This is just one more piss poor implementation on a design of failure that is the raid lock out system. I say let the people that can not pace themselves burn themselves out. Let us play and run the content on our terms not yours.

Additionally hard modes should be available from day one, not after any or the first clear.

Also make sure there is scaling in the hard modes and not the pathetic binary difficulty bullshit that has been a plague on the content after Ulduar. OS and Ulduar were the best designs for hard modes in how they worked, not necessarily how to activate them.

I am sure I will have more to say on this at some point. The only other thing I can say is the Rated BGs are looking better and better all the time if they don’t screw up the “time risk” versus “reward” there. I have a separate post that I have been working about my concerns for the future of PvP, it is not done yet however.

So here is what happened I am already in the SC2 beta from Blizzcon 08. I pre-ordered SC2 from Amazon.com and received an email from Amazon with a Beta key in it from pre-ordering the collector’s edition. I wanted the Thor in game WoW pet. But I now have a Beta key and no one to give it to.

For a chance at the key post in the comments section of this post your idea/opinion/concept of one way to improve the economy in World of Warcraft. Oh and getting rid of gold selling spam which should already be done does not count. Out of the acceptable ideas I will enter the email addresses into a spread sheet and either /roll in game or roll some actual dice to randomize it. So please enter a valid email address that will reach you when the form asks for an email address. This will run until Midnight Friday 4/23 as in 00:00 4/24 EST.

Combo points need to stack on the Rogue or Druid and not their target. I realize for PvP purposes this will need to be looked at closely but the new ability of Rogues Redirect (81) looks really cool but lets be honest this is an ability that should not even need to exist and if it is needed then it is something that rogues should have from about level 10/20 on.  It is something that should be available for use while leveling.  Furthermore no Cat equivalent was mentioned, however this is another area where it could simplify the “John Madden” effect that was mentioned when dealing with the Feral Cat rotation or should I say management system.

If we are worried about having too much burst from having combo points stack on the Rogue/Cat then also change combo points to stack from 1-5 to 1-10.  This will add additional tweak points and granularity for damage and buffs.  You could have points 1-5 scale linearly and 6-8 by powers and for real fun and burst 9-10 exponential.  But the time required to get 9-10 combo points will be about 2X if we keep the current combo point generation rate.  But even if 1-9 was linear with an extra boost at 10 for flair would not be uncalled for.

Now if Druids get another ability to equal Redirect for Rogues then that would be acceptable, not ideal but necessary.  The real problem with the Druid class as a whole with the exception of Resto is all 3 other spec flavors directly parallel another class.  This is actually OK because it is the nature of the Druid to be able to shift and therefore change what they are emulating relatively easily.  This is less the case with Bears.  Unless you time something perfectly you are not going to be able to shift out of Bear while a boss is wailing on you to do something in Caster or Cat form.

However here is the thing if Blizzard does not want the paralleled classes to play like their brethren then they need to create completely unique mechanics and resources for each flavor of Druid.  This in the end is insane from a development standpoint let alone class balance.  So in the end Cat and Bear need to have at least 50% of the tools that Protection Warriors and Rogues have access to including fundamental role and mechanical abilities, just not the flavor abilities.

Things not to copy:

• Vanish, even though we want it.
• Cloak of Shadows
• Shadow Dance
• Essentially most 41 and 51 point abilities.

Things that are copied or need to be:

• Last Stand
• Shield Wall
• Hunger for Blood
• Redirect(81), if it is implemented.

Anyway I will beat the horse one more time, to sum this all up, since combo points are here to stay then they need to be on the player and not the target.

Getting it at level 11 was just outside the scope of my normal expectations that I decided to post about it with screen shot of course or it did not happen.

Now I have read the Stormrage book and one of the pivotal moments described a really cool concept for future druid possibilities.  I would call this ability Dream Cast, I don’t think they named it in the book if they did, I missed it.  Now that I have seen the Shaman preview, all I can say is well crap.  I initially envisioned an effect that is now very similar to the Elemental Overlord effect from the elemental tree, which is currently a talent Lightning Overlord.

So what I was initially envisioning would be a talent that when activated for the next  say 12 seconds every spell you cast a dream version of yourself would also casts it at the same time with the same buffs ect, and deals x% of damage of the base cast regardless of whether you normally hit or miss.  The lore perspective would be your dream version in the Emerald dream is casting at the same target as you are.  It would be a mix of Elemental Overlord/ and Mirror Image.

Ways to tweak this further would be to change duration and what spells it effects.  Initially I thought all spells would be duplicated but upon thinking about it further I think it should be like the old Elemental shaman talent Lightning Overlord.  It would only affect Wrath and other Nature based Damage spells maybe even including Dream Treants, which would look cool.  The dream form should show up as an effect but not be targetable given the short duration.  But the benefits and considerations are all tweak points.

Well given the release of the Druid information coming Friday this idea/concept is probably a bit too late but I thought still worth mentioning and maybe starting some discussion somewhere.

As Daelo says on the forums the strategy that most raids are implementing is not how Blizzard wants us to play.  Ok the strategy with letting the first and or second person to get the Mark of the Fallen champion dying is not an exploit.  Blizzard can say it is but all in all it is just understanding how numbers work and resetting the counter at the expense of letting a member die, bet it a healer or dps, which can really hurt.

Now I started to write this post prior to the hot-fix.  But this is not something to let drop.  Especially since the hot fix was pushed out in prime time and caused a bit of server lag.  Yay Blizz screws up an encounter and then makes the server unplayable but still live to push out the hot fix, yes it only lasted for about 15 minutes the lag that is but still it would have been better to just give a 15 minute warning and do rolling restarts.  so that you don’t get penalized yet again in another fight.

All of this could have been avoided if 1 of the following things had happened.

1. There was a PTR build with the fight change and the difficulty and blood power gains could have been evaluated.
2. Blizzard quit acting like a kindergartner out on the playgrounds changing the rules every time they see something they don’t like.
3. If you are going to changes the rules you had better damn well make sure it is conveyed to the public i.e. PATCH NOTES PEOPLE PATCH NOTES!

If you don’t like how people are adapting to the mechanics/rules you put in place then be more careful next time but completely changing the dynamics of a fight after it has gone live, other than a simple bug fix, is complete BS.  If you want encounters to adjust to how players are adapting to the mechanics then the mechanics need to be more dynamic in the first place.  But then every fight would become like the Faction Champions and that would just be annoying as hell.

Also since initially starting this post when I was pissed off in raid last night due to the Saurfang fight.  I recently saw that Ensidia’s 25 man kill has been retconned because they were using items that bugged the fight.

Now for the most part I hate Ensidia and the like.  I don’t really give a damn about World/Country/Server firsts.  However if combat log parses show that as they claim some of their dps use the bombs in question regularly as part of their rotation then the action Blizzard has taken against them is BS.  I have used BS a lot in this post but I am refraining from using stronger expletives to express my dissatisfaction and disbelief at the pathetic actions Blizzard is taking in these instances.

The bomb bug is inexcusable in reaching live.  To put it simply Blizzard has all the information and the ability to test everything in their game.  They have logs of information raid leaders could only dream about.   Well I hope they do anyway.  In a test instance they could set a players life to 10M and let the mob hit the player forever and a day if need be they could then go through a list of every expected item that could be used in the encounter and check to makes sure it performs as expected.  Any Engineering item created in this expansion should be well within the expected bounds of items to be used by min/max twinks like the top end raiding guilds.

But then again we really should not be surprised.  Blizzard has a track record of punishing players for creativity and using the tools given to them.

So in the end my only suggestion on how to avoid this in the future is if Blizzard is going to punish us for creativity and adapting to the mechanics of the fight then they need to release an Official strategy to be used with each fight so we know what we are allowed to do in each instance.

I apologize for some of the negativity that is contained in this post, I usually try to look for ways to improve things and not just bitch and moan in general.  However changing the rules of how something works once it goes live regardless of whether some or all of the changes are then rolled back is inexcusable in a production environment.

I think this is a really cool idea, I won’t be using this feature most of the time, but definitely something I will be using at other times. Especially since theoretically you could be on 1 character of the account and check the AH on other servers and or the Bank Alt of the same account. But they may put something in place such that is that account is logged into the game no character on that account could be checked. We will have to see.

Over all I like this idea but lets be serious the current AH in game feels like a quick fix that was added at the last moment to at least have some sort of an in-game economy going. The default interface is a pain in the ass and even with Auctioneer and other Add-ons it is still extremely tedious and a bitch to find stuff if you are just browsing. If you know exactly what you want it works otherwise it fails.

Out of the 4 in game AH like interfaces I have dealt with directly and several, more than 3, others I have heard about only 1 stands out as actually being something different, robust and useful.  EVE-Online is the only MMO I have seen that actually has a robust and useful economic interface.  I believe it is this way because, crafting and the economic game are actually acceptable play styles in EVE.  Whereas in all of the other MMOs I have dealt with and heard about those systems, crafting and trading, seem to be a quick fix to add features.

So what am I suggesting or IMO is needed. A complete overhaul of the AH. Yes our bag space may be limited by stack size but why the hell should the AH. The AH like everything in the game is ultimately a series of entries in a Database. Currently it seems like 1 entry in said DB has a stack size limitation. This is insane.

The following are IMO the way to make the AH sing.

• 1 entry in the AH per Item of unlimited quantity (ultimately an unsigned Int of either 8/16/32bit in size. 16 would be the best since dust and some rep items could get into the hundreds easily.)
• The biggest and most important one,  list Buy Orders
• Fully customizable search for gear.
• Wild Card Search-able for Name Text
• iLvL
• eLvL
• Quality(Pick-able, not Lowest filter.) If I want to find a green item I want to see green, not green, blue, and purple.
• Stat Search X [<|>|=] of Y Stat [Str|Agil|Stam|Int|Spr|SP|AP|Armor|Crit|Hit|Haste|ect....] Repeatable so add additional filters.
• Price History (at least past week) so we can in game see the price trends over the past week. (Min, Max, Avg) of both Price listed and Price Sold. Maybe a separate graph showing # sold at what price through Bid and Buyout.

Essentially look at what EVE-Online has for an in game economic interface and make something similar with the Blizzard polish, because I really can’t think of any way to really improve the EVE interface, I just know that I like it and it would be great to have something similar in WoW. Unfortunately for EVE it is about the only thing I really like in the game but I will save my dislikes of EVE for another post sometime.

If a Starcraft 2 beta ever begins I may mess around with that or give my beta access to friends that like RTS games more than I do.  I just don’t like that with the exception of the highest skilled players he who mobilizes a medium size strike force wins it seems in most RTS games.  In Civ III parlance I end up being an Industrious/Commercial leader and specialize in perfecting my resources and scientific research.  In MOO2 I would end up with the species that was creative and end the game with Millennium Falcon size ships with the Death Star weapon.  I loved destroying planets with small frigates.   So In RTS games I hate micro managing individual units and thereby leaving other units quasi vulnerable.  It is a shame that turn based strategy games have seemed to stop evolving other than with better graphics.

Anyway back from that tangent.  The one aspect of RTS games that I do like are Tower Defense scenarios.  In a LAN game a long time ago in Red Alert I won the game by building out a web of Tesla Coil Towers across the map.  I had wiped out the other player’s base but they had 1 unit hiding somewhere on the map….  So rather than scour the map looking I just let automated defenses do the killing.

So the game that brought me back to this style of play was the South Park Tower Defense game that is on XBox Live for download.

How would it all work I really have no idea.  I just think that the concept would be interesting and I am sure Blizzard or some other gaming company will figure out a cool way to incorporate something like it into a raid and or dungeon scenario.

LFG System

I hope by now we all know what this system is or at least to what it references. Put simply it is a dynamic automatic group building tool that will match players across servers within a given battle group.

Is it good? Yes.

Is it great? Some would say, I put it somewhere between good and great.

Could it be better? Like all programs, yes.

The caveat with the last one, could it be better, is to do this additional metrics or parameters would be needed. Some of these metrics could come from the Battle.Net upgrade that is going on behind the scenes. When we can start to communicate with friends across realms and maybe even battle groups the social networking aspects of Battle.Net could be leveraged to refine the matching system.

Social Metrics

Currently mods like Elitist Group can do this a limited extent, however it is all client side and is limited. If new social metrics are included in the Battle.Net part of the client for use with the LFG system it opens up possibilities beyond the just queue and hope for the best. If we are able to rate people both for a personal rating and a global performance (thumbs up)/(thumbs down) on both the character/player/guild level it could lead to a better LFG experience overall. Additionally the system should also track how many times a player quits a dungeon half way through or gets vote kicked. However like the star rating system in Ebay there should be a way for a person to defend themselves from undo elitist idiots and the occasional ISP hiccup which is not the fault of Blizz or the player.

Actually I hope when the next full version of Battle.Net is released that it becomes a separate client than the WoW or Starcraft Client. That then has the ability to launch or call the other individual clients with a hand off of credentials so those of us that multi-box or may have a Startcraft and a WoW running at the same time don’t have to constantly re-authenticate each time we close the client.

Personal Metrics and Preferences

5-Mans and Raids

The ideas options I am going to list here are the ones that I think would be best to implement as they are impartial and are not directly abusable as some of the social networking system could. Performance recaps after each instance run. We all know how WoW Web Stats and other logging mechanisms work for raiding. Just extend this to 5 mans except where it is a client side action the recap information would be server side with summary information displayed to the client. The player specific performance summary would then be stored and compiled/updated daily and weekly like the pvp honor gains and kills.

• Deaths/Instance
• If not Tank Role # of times pulled Threat
• DPS in Combat
• DPS inside 5 second rule. So if not casting dps is not calculated.
• Damage Taken
• Total Damage Taken by Party
• Total Damage Healed by Character
• TPS
• % of Total Damage dealt by Party in Instance on KoS mobs not critters.
• # times went AFK
• # times went idle for more than 30 seconds.

I realize this is a lot of extra information and if something like this was ever implemented there would have to be a lot of considerations as to where to put and store the massive amount of data that is generated by WoW.

Additionally this should be extended to logs from raid IDs. Accessible when logged into the armory. Go to the character view the Raid IDs they are associated with and get a direct download CVS/XML or some other format. This will then remove the out of range issues that arise with current client side information gathering tools. This would also allow players to track who is using the IDs that they are associated, which would also help with some of the drama that has occurred with raid ID stealing in the past.

Training Quests – Rated Performance Quests

I thought of this concept when I was talking on Ventrilo with other members of Conspiracy .   We were discussing at the time the fail dps, tank, or healers that we sometimes encounter in groups. There needs to be a way to evaluate people that is not tied to gear or the groups of people they associate with. You can be pulled through almost any and all content if the people you are with have enough gear.

During the discussion we talked about the Argent Dailies, yes they got repetitive but they taught you how to joust. So for sake of brevity what we need are a series of repeatable quests that train and rate our ability performing different tasks related to the roles that we can perform. These quests would be repeatable and not just daily. They can be a good way to practice group mechanics while solo playing so you don’t have to rely on others to practice. Matticus made a post about things he learned about group healing while doing a quest.

On a separate note if we are going to continue to use vehicles in quests, dungeons and raids, we need a sandbox area where we can practice how to use the vehicle. NPCs to use other parts of a multiple seat vehicle would be useful if the other positions have something to do as well. The abilities of the practice vehicle need to be the same as the abilities of the ones we use when it matters. To do otherwise robs us of the ability to know what we are doing and are not just thrust into something and say do it. We play the game hopefully because we like playing our chosen class not some vehicle.

Oh the rating we gain from the quests would also need to show up based on our Battle.net account. So that even if we see the lvl 30 or freshly hit level cap n00b we can see if they are truly new or have done something on another character.

Now this system would be completely optional but giving more neutral metrics to use when evaluating people when we get randomly thrown together is always appreciated and really needed. Most the add-ons that do this for us now are resource hogs and contribute more to the Lag we all experience than most people realize.

Personal Preferences

This last one could be problematic but something needs to be implemented that allows us when we random queue to have a little more control over where we end up. In the simplest of implementations it would be that as long as more than 5 dungeons are selected it will count as a random for purposes of daily rewards and such. As a tank there are some dungeons that I just won’t tank. That really only leaves H-HoR but at least one of my tanks is getting to the point of being geared enough to get thrown into queue for it and I just don’t want to tank it. I don’t mind tanking any other instance but I completely despise that dungeon. There are only 2 ways that it is a viable dungeon. Either have good enough gear to survive it while “cheating” by hiding in a corner. Or to completely over gear it to the point that there is no reason to run the damn thing. I think that is my real problem with the dungeon. It is tuned such that the only time it is manageable is when you have such a level of gear that you don’t need anything out of it. It is tuned like the damn heroic instances in Burning Crusade. They were a waste of time and not worth the repair bill for the amount of time and frustration that came with running them.

Another metric that would add a nice dimension is if we can’t rule out what dungeons we want to have the possibility of running at least let us put a weighting rank on each dungeon.

Anyway I could get more in detail on these and take another month to write this post however I want to get these memes out there now and someday hopefully something in some game will come of it. Who knows someday if I ever get involved in working on or creating a game I will push for this type of freedom in similar systems.

This match occurred 1/4/2010 around 9PM in the Ruin battle group.  If anyone sees this player before then beware and report them if anything funky happens.  I hope to hell they get a perma-ban for this.  Doing it once I would allow as a tester but 3 times in 2 minutes to win the match is unacceptable.  I hope the GMs check the logs on this one.  I submitted a ticket from my level 19 Draenei hunter.

Sorry for this slim and not informative blog post.  Other than to report there is now a definite hack or exploit still around for WSG.