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.

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.

Because I have been waiting for 3.3 and the joy of the new LFG tool to finally be able to get random groups when ever I have time I have mostly stopped playing my level 80s except when raiding.  I have farmed some more badges and stone keeper shards for my new time filler.  Leveling several new alts.  I am currently working on a Mage, Rogue and Druid.  The cool thing that is keeping most of the mind-numbing bordom at bay when leveling the umpteenth toon through the lower levels is now I am skipping large blocks of zones especially in the 14-20 segment.

The reason I am able to do this and doing this is that I can now get XP in the Battlegrounds.  I use to hate battlegrounds while leveling before because they always seemed to be a waste of time and then there were the twinks.  Now my Mage and Druid with 2 Heirloom pieces of gear are a quasi Twink but no where as bad as they use to be.  With the turn XP off feature all of the serious Twinks have been moved to their own little bracket.  This means that the battlegrounds are now full of people just wanting to play a game or few to either level through BGs or just to get a break from the normal quest grinds.  Before getting to one of the more serious points and improvements that needs to be made to Battlegrounds I have to say playing a Rogue with 2 Heirloom daggers enchanted with Life-stealing is fun as hell.

Bracket Restructure

As the section title directly above states Bracket Restructure is one of the main things that needs to be done now that we have XP in Battlegrounds.  All BGs need to run from X0-X9.  Let the level cap players always be in their own separate bracket.

The reason for this is the end result of several previous PvP changes.  Lissanna, a mutual friend and I got into an argument about this on Sunday over vent.  Because it is player behavior Lissanna is of the opinion that no blame can be placed on Blizzard.  Ok so what is the combination of issues that is causing a problem?   It is a mix of XP in BGs bringing players of All Levels into a BG instance and the level capped 80s only wanting 80s in their game using the AFK reporting tool to “kick” anyone of a significantly lower level out of the instance.  Because there are no repercussions for reporting someone AFK you can just do it to anyone for no particular reason.  This then causes the person to get the debuff and if they don’t do a certain action within a time frame they will be kicked and given the Deserter Debuff.  This occurred to our mutual friend in AV when they were killed and were running back to meet up with the group.  While they were dead they were reported and kicked while running back.  This type of crap can not be tolerated.  If a person is active and attempting to participate they deserve to be there unfortunately even if their performance sucks.

The report AFK tool has now become kick those that don’t agree with us and is now a device for griefing.  There needs to be a mechanism put in place that allows one to defend themselves from being wrongfully labeled.  Because there are legitimate reasons in battlegrounds to remain stationary to either defend or gather surveillance.    Especially if you are a Rogue or Druid since you can stealth and remain mostly hidden.

Yes as Lissanna pointed out this is a player behavior issue especially since the player base asked for such a system to be implemented.  However since we own nothing in the game it all belongs to Blizzard then they are also to blame.  The created the system and implemented it, and like many things they implement they don’t seem to stop and figure out all of the ways the system could and will be abused so that there are counter mechanisms in place to enforce better behavior or more fair play.  As in if you falsely report someone AFK then you are the one booted.  There should at least be a Query system to the player so that they can respond to their accusers directly.

Anyway I look forward to the PVP XP through level 70.  Afterward, looks like it will be impossible with the level cap Twinks behaving badly either because they don’t know better or are bored.  I suspect the later but ya never know.

I admit I don’t like seeing a non 80 in the BG when I run BGs on my 80s but I realize that the system allows them there and as long as they try I don’t have a problem with them being there.  I would prefer to see the level cap become it’s own bracket for just this reason.

Blue Posts from the Forums Here.

Whenever we see comments like this, we immediately assume that you have a different vision for class / spec / whatever than we do. If that is the case, you are likely to find yourself frustrated and scratching your head a lot when our changes never make the design converge on what you think it should be.

Now, we do want Subtlety to be more attractive. All of the pure dps classes have a spec that isn’t as popular as the others. Mages may be the closest because at least Frost has a viable PvP use, but there are also plenty of mages who want to be able to use Frost in end-game PvE too.

Subtlety (and Frost for that matter) are specs focused around utility. The problem is that players understandably nearly always choose damage over utility for raiding and often choose utility over damage for PvP, unless the damage is really high or the utility just doesn’t cut it for some reason.

What we are talking about doing is sharing more of the utility among other specs, or the core class, so that there aren’t “utility trees.” To do that though, we have to make the way the different specs do damage different enough so that players might choose a play-style preference over highest damage. This is particularly challenging for rogues, who have a history of giving up a preferred spec or play style for one with a sub 1% dps increase.

I think we are closest with the Arcane vs. Fire mage specs at the moment. They play a little differently, which goes beyond just the type of magic damage they do. While Fire might still do the highest damage overall, Arcane is close enough and plays different enough that even competitive players don’t feel stupid for playing that spec. There are a lot more Arcane mages out there than I think a lot of players assume.

That is harder with rogues. “I’m the sneaky one” doesn’t translate into sustained raid dps. Assassination feels like it emphasizes poisons more and Combat feels like it emphasizes weapons more, so we’re a little closer there. Subtelty needs a stronger yet damage-oriented niche.

HaT, sadly, is not a niche. HaT has scaling problems. It’s appropriate for a 5-player group, but gets too in larger groups with all of their raid buffs. We don’t want HaT to be the one talent that pushes players into Subtlety.

Now my Opinions of Rogue Gameplay

I find the rogue class in general to be somewhat schizophrenic in tree and abilities.  Before the rogue lovers lynch me on this one let me explain more fully.

The three trees are Assassination/Combat/Subtlety and at least when I want to think of archetypes for these I would select Assassin/Swashbuckler/Street Thug.  The problem with these archtypes which the lore and theme of the trees seem to suggest is that the skill and weapon implementation don’t match up.

Assassin - Poisons, Bleeds with a nasty finisher are what this spec is suppose to bring to mind.  However when I am soloing or even in groups when playing assassination I end up putting my bleeds on to get Hunger for Blood and then just go into a Eviscerate and Rupture rotation of finishers to keep up Slice and Dice.  Now I admit to not being the best rogue out there.  Hell I am lucky to be an average Rogue but , I seem to do acceptable damage for my gear, which is all I really strive for on any of my DPS classes.  The image to the right is of the miniature of Artemis Entreri from the Forgotten Realms setting of Dungeons and Dragons.

Combat - Swashbuckler so Swords and now Axes.  So essentially the dual wielding, one handed, melee monster.  The picture I selected for this is from the movie The Princess Bride, which I am sure most reading this post will be familiar with.  Now both the Dread Pirate and Inigo both really fit into the archetype for swashbuckler.  I will get into my issues with Rogue mechanics after highlighting the theme of each tree.

Subtlety - This tree is really about getting the drop on your target.  Which is why it is one of the harder trees to get a focus on for PvE.  It is really hard to get a drop on the boss, especially when they are pretty much immune to all of your lock down abilities.  Also given all the new amounts of AoE that bosses and their minions throw around being reliant on openers is a bit of a weak spot.  Now the image icon that I immediately think of when someone say stealthy and rogue one image comes to mind.  I don’t think I need to explain the image either.

Issues with Gameplay

My first and foremost complaint about Rogue mechanics from the perspective of actually playing one, not QQing about them on the forums after getting ganked by one, deals with the their specs and abilities interact with the weapons they use or lack thereof.  To put it simply too many of their abilities are weapon specific or have multiple caveats based on weapon.

Lets look at the other melee classes.  This gives us Druids, Shaman, Paladins, Warriors and Deathknights, now I am going to ignore Druids in this exercise, sorry those coming from Restokin because Druid feral weapon mechanics make it a moot point.  The other 4 classes that use melee weapons with a very few exceptions do not have their specs and abilities drastically changing based on the weapon they have equipped.  For all intents and purposes an Axe = Sword = Mace = Dagger for one handed weapons and 2H-Sword = 2H-Mace = 2H-Axe = Pole-arm for calculating damage.  Now I know there are some weapon specializations in the Warrior Arms tree but in all of the other trees the specific type of weapon in irrelevant and only the broad category matters, 1H versus 2H.

After looking at some of the source code for Rawr, which is a very useful dps/tanking modeling program, from the equations these differences especially for the Rogue are because they use Average Weapon damage to calculate the damage value of special abilities.  This is why certain classes want a slow main hand weapon, because as damage output for such abilities increases as the time between swings increases.  This is because to maintain a consistent DPS for a tier of weapons if the swing timer goes up so must the average damage per swing.

Now when I first started looking into this I went to WoWhead and copied the names of about 30 1 handed and 2 handed weapons.  I then looked at the min damage and max damage that each weapon would do before taking anything else into consideration.  The really cool thing was that on average over all any weapon’s min and max damage when compared to the average of the 2 values is +/- 30%.  The gambit of values were between at 28.9 – 31.1 so a quick eye balling of the numbers tells you it hovers around 30%.  So what this means is that if we want all special abilities to scale equally based on the DPS of the weapon.  Then we just need to take the DPS * (.7 – 1.3) + all other modifiers.  This then removes the weapon speed component from the formula directly as it is an intrinsic part of the DPS.

If we were to base special ability damage off of DPS and not weapon damage.  Then this means that Back-stab, Mutilate and any other abilities that may have a limit placed on them because of previous weapon speed dependency can have it removed.

This was very annoying when leveling Assassination because there were so few Dagger upgrades while leveling.  Ya there are a good amount at 80 but you can get a good pair late 60s/early 70s and then one more set at 76 then nothing until you get the crafted epic or run dungeons at 80.  If you go combat then you loose several of your abilities because they are dagger restricted.  Also as a side note it is really stupid conceptually to have Dagger Main hand and  something else much larger off hand.  When ever I have been fencing with 2 weapons you almost always put the heavier weapon in your main/stronger hand.  Now you may lead with the dagger based on stance and positioning but saying you can’t backstab because your dagger is in your “off” hand is kinda dumb.   It should be as long as a dagger is equipped you can backstab.  The code just checks for first available Dagger.  If you are dual wielding daggers it goes from the main hand otherwise it uses the off hand.

Now the one thing this modification would not affect would be the benefit of a fast off hand for rogues when it comes to energy regen.  I really don’t have a problem with this, however I would say for modeling and balancing purposes that ability should go to a Procs per Minute system.  Similar to the HaT and or the Feral Druid leader of the pack restriction.

All I can say is that I hope that in the 4.0 changes Rogues get an overhaul so that each tree is focused on a couple of weapons each.  The close quarters combat daggers should be merged into the assassination tree because you almost always would go deep in Assassination then go into combat for those first 15-18 talents.  This is where with the new talent allocation screen where you see all 3 trees at once you could start putting interesting talents in the first few tiers of each tree that require talents in 2 trees.  Keep them on the edge with the associated tree.  Assume that to the left of Assassination was Subtlety and the opposite for Subtlety.

Tol Barad
We’re also adding a new zone that combines elements of Wintergrasp with the Isle of Quel’danas. During PvP battles, players will fight to take control points across the island. In between PvP battles, the zone serves as a daily quest hub for both factions, while the winning faction will have access to a raid area.

The previous paragraph was from Blizzard’s write up of the a panel at Blizzcon 2009 covering the initial concepts of the zone.

Concerns

• Tenacity
• Dailies and PvP

Tenacity

This image here sums up all of my concerns when the thought of Tenacity is added to the new PvP zone.

The BS Mechanic

My sub-title The BS Mechanic is in my opinion accurate.  Yes it would suck to be on the side that has fewer players however this is not the answer.  Essentially the Horde won last night when the alliance must have had either 70 or 110 people and the horde seemed to have about 30 or less than 1 raid.  It has been a while since I have seen that many stacks of Tenacity.

I have no problems with the total health increase.  It is everything else that is buffed that gets out of hand.

So a Players with 3K dps with this buff now does 11K dps, I thought we wanted to get the 1-shot and 2-shots out of PvP, nope sorry only if the numbers are about equal.

Here is the deal, now that faction changes are implemented it is time to have server faction population balancing drives.  No more of this 3-1 ratio on a server.  Offer free faction changes, usually from Alliance -> Horde on most servers until the  ratio hits 1-1.5/1.25.

I can see a maximum dps increase form Tenacity of about 100% or double your damage but anything else just makes pvp a joke.  It is ok for NPCs to hit that hard because there are these abilities that Tanks get that are called Taunt and they work.  When facing PCs these abilities do nothing and therefore it is a joke.  What this says is ok Side that wants to keep wintergrasp if you really want it don’t play.  Let your side get so much Tenacity that you are all walking raid bosses that can 1 shot everything and have fun.  Oh and all of your vehicles get your buff so you only really need  2-5 of them to take the keep.

Tenacity should be tied to the number of something you control in a zone.  So that if these mini-raid bosses want to keep being mini-raid bosses they have to defend their workshops.  The Horde won when we controlled everything but 1 work shop.  I am sorry but that is so much complete bloody bull shit that it really pisses me off.

The final reason that this mechanic has to be in the game is the worst one of all.  Because stone-keeper shared are one of the token currencies  in the game there needs to be a way for the population disadvantaged to get them some times.  Well this would not be a problem if it was not a binary option.  What I mean is that all bosses in dungeons should drop them all of the time.  You just get bonus ones if you control winter grasp.  Then the low population side can still progress and obtain them even if they don’t control and or always loose the event.  Additionally the vendors for the gear should also be in Dalaran so that they can spend then as well.

Dailies and PvP

Ok I play on PVE or RP servers for a reason.  I hate PvP at all times, except when I actually want to PvP.  I hate quests that make you flag for no reason.  The quests in Grizzly hills I am fine with.  Why because they tell you that you will be flagged.  I do not want to see the major hub for dailies in the next expansion be in a PvP only zone.  That is piss poor design and only caters to the bottom feeders out there.  Look if you are confused by what some of the ramifications of mandatory PvP can have on a mostly PvE game.  Read Bartle’s research on why people play and some of the results of game servers that went PvP.  The short answer is that those that became PvP games eventually died out.  Now I don’t think that this would kill WoW, but I think it would have a chilling effect on the dialy quest system in the expansion if the zone where almost all of the quests were held was a pvp only environment.

The panel mentioned that they heard that some people missed the impromtu PvP that would happen while questing on the Isle during Burning Crusade.  My question that for them would be, are the people that are reminicing about this from a PvP server or a PvE server.  If the former then it does not really matter as they picked to play on a PvP server.  I would also bet for every 1 person that actually likes that type of PvP there are many more who just get pissed off about it.  I would fall under this later category.  When I am playing and trying to get A,B,C done I do not what to have to deal with Dipshit 1,2, and 3 that are flagged and want to cause problems.  Hence why I am on a PvE server.

The best solution for Tol Borad if they want to capture the essence of Wintergrasp and IoQD would be to have it such that when the event is taking place it is a PvP zone.  When the event is over on a PvE server it is enforced neutrality like Shattrath for 10 minutes after every event.  Then the zone reverts to a normal PvE server zone until the next PvP event.  This leaves it open to those that do not want to PvP a viable option to go there get the non-pvp dailies done and leave.

The areas in Grizzly hills that have PvP quests in essence already respond this way, which works.

I started to dive into raiding in September/October of 07 so tBC have been out for 7-8 months, I also had taken a little time off from WoW that August and played Vanguard a little bit.  I will save my rant about crafting profession for a full crafting profession post because it would derail what I want to talk about here.

I have listened to a some commentary from others around the inter-web about raiding comparing and contrasting Vanilla, tBC and WotLK instances.  Even though I did not get farther than Lootreaver before getting burned out of raiding due to guild drama and other things, from what I can tell raiding was at it best in tBC.

I am certainly not going to say raiding has failed in WotLK but it almost seems that Blizzard learned form some mistakes last time around with removing some of the inane barriers to entry that made recruitment hell in the mid-later stages of tBC raiding.  However this time they went back and made the same mistakes that were in the Vanilla.

The problem is sprawling single instance raids.

Now when I ask people tell me their favorite 2-3 instances, especially if I limit it to Vanilla wow the instance that is almost always on that list is Scarlet Monastery.  When I ask why the reason in the end boils down to the wings.  You could run any of them at any time after you get the key from the library.  Why if this instance has been around for so long has the structure not been reused?  Naxx could have been retooled into 5 instances with 5 separate raid IDs  at the end of each wing you get a fragment of the key to unlock the last 2 bosses.  So once you accomplish each wing and get a key to unlock the last the next week you could start with Kel if you wanted to.  I think if there had been 5 discrete entry points each week it could have helped some of the burn out.  Then each wing/part would be just a little bit longer than the OS and eventually EoE raids.  This would have been 7 small discrete raiding opportunities, rather than the 1 monolithic and 2-3 short runs if you also include VoA.

Patch 3.1 comes out and we get the next big installment of raiding Ulduar.  Yay another 10-14 bosses of linear hell that has no breaks or true wings.

In the future especially for Icecrown citadel what we need are 2-4 discreet raiding opportunities per raid tier, like how TK and SSC were in tBC.  Hell as with the description of an improvement for Naxx would be acceptable.  Make it so that to attack the Keep you have to raid first the Dungeons to get the first half of the Gate Key, then you have to Raid the wall/towers to get the second half.  Finally you have to raid the courtyard to get at the Keep.  Now at the end of each of these you find/attune to a phased secret passage so that next week you can get to the Keep without having to repeat the previous wings to take on Arthas eventually.  Now what this also means is that each layer can get progressively harder.  Even though you can continue on it is not always the wisest decision.

The more discreet the raid instance the greater opportunity for more styles of play to partake of the content.  In the end I really think Raid IDs are the source of the problem.  I have suggested ways to improve them in the past and I will again here on this blog at some point or at least my spin on the issue.

In the end PUG-able and or Casual accessible does not need to mean easy and or face-roll wins.  It just means that the content must be designed intelligently so that it can be attempted in more discreet elements.  I do not use small because that is not necessarily the case, I use discreet to imply time rather than size.  Karazahn needed to be a winged instance as well.  It felt like 2-3 instances in one.  From the map Blizzard has for Ulduar it as well should have been 2-3 winged instances.

All I can say is that at least I have had much more fun running VoA and OS in one night than to run and grind away at Naxx.  Even if we wiped a few times in both it was less soul crushing than wiping half-way through Naxx.  Because in Naxx after a wipe you think: “oh god what have I got myself into we are only X bosses in out of 14 what the hell are the rest going to be like?  Well shit there goes my raid ID for the week.”.

I apologize for the somewhat broken stream of thought here. I may come back and re-edit it a few times.  There has not been any new posts for a few days and I wanted to get something out.