Which Forest Are we Seeing?

By Malchome | Published: December 8, 2011

So I just finished reading the latest blog post by GC on WoW’s website.

As much as I rant and complain about things in WoW and the developers in general, I have always had professional respect for them.  Hell if I was in California you can bet I would have applied to every position I thought I could perform to get my foot in the door.

Anyway back to the topic in GC’s Blog, when they unveiled the talent trees at Blizzcon, being in there in the crowd you could feel that the audience had been crit and stunned by the information.  It was actually quite amusing in some ways, well at least I was.  While they were discussing in general how it would basically work I was already building models in my head on how this would all interact.  During and after conferring with some other bloggers and guild members that we were hanging out with, I had made up my mind then that even though this was a radical approach the potential it represented was well worth the shocking news.

I have to agree with GC’s comment, when he mentioned that they were initially thinking about going that route with Cataclysm and then decided on the current system.  Going from the Wrath model to the Mists one would have been completely overwhelming and it literally would have made Cataclysm WoW 2.0.  Looking back and forward, Cataclysm is definitely WoW 1.5 and Mists will become the fully implemented WoW 2.0.  Well at lest I hope it will be 2.0 fully implemented.  Looking at raid design of bosses and that they want to stick with the LFR/Normal/Heroic setup may make it more 1.75-1.95 and not a full 2.0 in some ways.

Well GC’s post just reaffirms in my mind that I will definitely find MoP interesting, in the beginning anyway.

Posted in Mists of Pandaria | Comments closed

MoP: A few Druid Comments

By Malchome | Published: December 5, 2011

I have held this opinion since Blizzcon after they announced the new class/spec/talent system for Mists of Pandaria.  If the Druid class is going to have 4 specs, which it needs then the talent tree needs to have 4 talents per tier. The more I have thought about it and the more Lissanna and I have discussed/argued/theorized about how the system will work and how the talents are broken down I am convinced to do the class justice there needs to be 4 talents per tier.

One key guideline iff (if and only if) it is followed I think could make everything work out.  Any new ability added needs to be usable in what ever form the druid is in.  With the caveat that it may have different effects based upon form and or specialization.  The current 3 per tier could work if the previous guideline is always followed but I given the history of the class developers it will not be until 5.1 at the earliest before all the druid class specializations are playable in end game content or at least be on par with the other classes regardless of role.  So because of this putting 4 talents per tier would work better because it give the developers more fiddly points to play with to tune and keep any one talent from becoming too over powered.

So why is it that I think 4 talents are needed.  Well there are 2 sides of the game, PvE and PvP.  If the “Trinity” of PvE content was a Trinity then everything would be fine, however it is not really a trinity when you look at it realistically.  There are at least 4 roles, Tank, Heals, Ranged DPS and Melee DPS.  In general given how most classes play Ranged DPS and Heals are similar and Tank and Melee DPS have similar issues.  So 4 types of play and 2 environments of play gives us a total of 8 combinations when you select one from each.  Due to having 8 types of play and only 3 choices per tier there will be no variety.  Once the numbers are crunched there will almost always be 1 talent of each tier that you will want to take given the 8 types of play.  There will also be a lot of overlap.  However with 4 choices and 2 choices at each tier designed with 4 of the types of play taken into consideration you increase the likelihood of actually given the players of Druids a choice of what to pick at each tier.

In most cases you would pair up Tank/Melee and Range/Heals when choosing talent design because they ham similar issues to deal with in each environment.  Now given the type of talent i.e. healing, survivability, damage increase, crowd control or some other ability you may change-up the pairings.  Maybe 2 PvE and 2 PvP talents that are usable in all forms so you don’t favor 1 particular spec.

Anyway I think it has been mentioned before but I wanted to reiterate the concept of changing the Druid talent tree in MoP while there is still time, one would hope.

Posted in Mists of Pandaria, World of Warcraft | Comments closed

Top Guilds Exploit? May the Ban Hammer Cometh

By Malchome | Published: December 2, 2011

So I found a thread on the WoW Forums discussing how some of the top-tier guilds in the world are exploiting the loot rules or at least spirit of the loot rules implemented in the LFR.

Blizzard needs to make a very very public announcement about this behavior and fast.  There are only 2 options.

1 – They are not exploiting the system and are just being creative

The result will lead to Hundreds of guilds then doing this, and hopefully Blizzard will come up with something else in MoP.  I actually hope this is the path they take.  Just let those play how they want to play.

2 – They are exploiting the system and will be punished

This is the result that will most likely happen or at least that it will be deemed an exploit.  Additionally something a lot more punishing than just removal of all newly acquired gear will need to be done.  I would hope a 2-4 week ban.  If they want to make sure it will not be done again then a perma-ban.

In a MMO exploiting needs to be punished and severely enough that the majority of the playerbase will not even consider thinking outside the box for an advantage.  That is what is really the root of this problem, the 1 loot attempt per boss per week in the LFR.  If the LFR were to be treated like the normal dungeon finder and have not loot restrictions then no one would have a problem with this behavior.  It is only a problem because Blizzard has made it one.

Posted in World of Warcraft | Comments closed