News and Opinion

General news and opinion about WoW.

Goblins and Worgen – Neutral Faction (or a Third?)

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We’ve got the Alliance and we’ve got the Horde. Recent information from the latest PTR suggests that there may be two additional races that we’ll be able to play. Granted there isn’t a whole lot of solid stuff out there about this. The entire premise is based off the simple fact that new Halloween masks are being added.

It feels like a red herring. Or a decoy.

But all the same, I can’t help but wonder. I’m trying to remember as much of the history and lore as I can from way back in vanilla. The Alliance first saw signs of the Worgen in Duskwood. Someone summoned them. They’re supposedly from a different planet or plane of existence (not Azeroth). Was it Arugal that summoned it first? Or was it that Night Elf chick with the Scythe (Can’t remember the name, I know someone who reads will know more)?

Then we have the Goblins. Very mercenary. Counterparts to the Gnomes in terms of engineering and ingenuity. They remind me of the Ferengi from Star Trek. Already thought of an interesting racial for them.

Obtain 0.5% additional gold from all sources

Daresay it fits the theme quite well. I don’t quite see these guys as a one side or the other deal. I don’t see the Goblins teaming up with the Alliance or with the Horde. I’m not sure if there’s enough lore or background on the Worgen to determine which side they’d join either. One theory I’ve read is that the Greymane wall wasn’t enough to contain the plague (or some sort of mutational virus). Gilneas is now infested with Worgen as a result. Gilneas wasn’t exactly friendly to the Alliance either. Come to think of it, I don’t recall them ever joining the Alliance. Their King said they’d fight it out on their own without getting involved with the other Alliance nations.

Which then leads me to wonder that if these two races are indeed a part of the next expansion, I suspect the players who roll these races may get a chance to choose which side they wish to join at a certain time or level. Or they could simply not join at all and remain their own faction. So a Goblin Priest (which just sounds really damn unlikely) could join either Horde or Alliance or fly solo. Maybe a player can choose to be neutral the lifespan. Another idea is that these two races could switch allegiances – at will. Now that’d be an interesting twist to add to the game. We know Blizzard’s planning on introducing faction changes anyway.

Some crazy stuff here. It’s all a bunch of speculation. All from the fact that new Halloween masks were introduced. It could be nothing, it could be something.

Blizzcon approaches. We’ll see if this means anything.

Of Heroes and Villains Part 2

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killingjoke

Last time we talked about the hero classes of Warcraft 3 and the build up to wrath where we got our first hero class, and I would like to thank everyone that chimed in. Today I’ll talk a little bit about implementation of the hero class.

Let’s face it, Death Knights set the bar pretty high. When you first start a Death Knight a few things happen. First of all you are in your own little corner of the old Eastern Kingdoms map, and in this corner you’re given a multi-phase instance to learn about your class. This in and of itself is pretty amazing. Think back to when you first started your character as a level 1 freshly born into the world. Your area was open to the world, at level one you could in theory run your brand new human all the way to Iron Forge if you felt so inclined.

With wrath, the Death Knights were born into servitude of the Lich King himself, already having established themselves as heroes of the horde / alliance but falling only to be returned in undeath. Being under the Lich King’s thumb you are forced to do things rather then given options, you can’t choose to skip the entry quests and just run to Iron Forge, instead you’re given a story to play out. You’re forced to do tasks for NPC’s that you’ve tried to kill in the halls of Naxxramas.

This feels like a rail shooter to some people and I have heard a fair share of complaints about it, but I personally love it. It forces you to immerse yourself into the character. You’re given beautifully crafted quests to give you gear and talents and a mount and most importantly, a foundation of skills for your character. The quests also give you the foundation of a story and they have a weight of lore about them.

To me that might be the most important thing about these quests, the lore. I’m a lore junkie. I love quests that just drip with story or dialogue with an NPC from the previous Warcraft games. When the Caverns of Time instances and Karazhan were released I was quite giddy (still waiting on the bottom half of kara there blizz! *shakes fist*) and they still remain among my favorite instances. Here we get the story of one of the branches of the Death Knights. We get to interact with Darion Morgraine a character who is at the center of an amazing selection of lore. Go ahead and give it a read http://www.wowwiki.com/Darion I’ll wait, it’s worth it.

When you’re done with all the quests you are treated to an amazing battle between the forces of Ebon Hold and those of Light’s Hope Chapel. When the dust settles you are welcomed to the site of Darion’s redemption and the cleansing of the Ashbringer. He breaks the bonds of the Lich King and swears to bring him down. The Death Knights are then required to purge the Ebon Hold of the forces loyal to the Lich King and then are sent to seek forgiveness with the leader of their faction before the game begins as normal.

What This Means

Even when Burning Crusade was released, both new races were given staring areas that you could skip if you wanted to. You didn’t have to learn anything about them really except that the Blood Elves were emo and the Dranaei were high and mighty hoof people.

Here you were forced to interact with and further along the lore of the game.  The entire starting package for the Death Knights set the bar very very high. Your introduced into a multi phase instanced area were layers are placed and removed to create a seamless environment.  You further along the plot of the entire game, you get to interact with Boss mobs in a way that is new and entertaining (Listening to Noth complain was hilarious) and you get to watch the story of the world change in a way it hasn’t in several years. I mean toppling the plot of Kil’jaden and besting Illidan was fun, but it doesn’t have quite the feel of watching the Lich King lose one of his greatest commanders or the Ashbringer placed in the hands of Tirion Fordring and cleansed or an entire new faction be born on the spot knowing that you’re going to be coming for Arthas in his place of power. Those just feel epic.

Any new hero class introduced into the game from now on will have large shoes to fill. Their introduction into the world will have to be something special and captivating as well as potentially innovative. This is arguably the most important point for a player with the class as often times it will be the deciding factor as to whether or not they keep playing the class. Personally I think the next best bet would be Keepers of the Grove and the Emerald Dream, because I can’t really think of anything else at the moment that would seem quite so epic or immersive.

I give Blizzard big kudos for doing the starting zone of Death Knights incredibly well.
What do you guys think? Did you enjoy the starting zone? Do you think any other hero class could make a comparable introduction?

Until next time,

Sig

Image courtesy of DC Comics

The Northrend Beasts Encounter

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Here’s a video of the fight courtesy of WoWRaid (and Irae). Check out the different abilities and the loot table.

European players get a treat as they got to check out an encounter on the EU PTR (unannounced I might add).

This appears to be one of the first encounters you’ll find entering raid aspect of the coliseum. The sequence here is that it’s 3 sets of mobs that come in one after the other. A Hunter provides the video perspective here (and wow, I’ve never seen those kinds of numbers before but then again, I’ve never played a Hunter). It looks to be an encounter that’ll take a little under 9 minutes or so give or take.

Gormok

Seems like a straightforward tank and spank. I noticed the Hunter had to switch fire periodically. Looked like he was targeting members of the raid and trying to shoot something off. That’s some serious precision right there.

Acidmaw and Dreadscale

These damned Storm Peaks snakes again. I thought I had seen the last of them in the cavern when I was getting all the Oil and stuff out of there. Figures they’d be back again.

Icehowl

The first thing I noticed about his abilities is that he does a ~70000 damage headbutt followed by a stun. Oi vey.

Looks like you’ll be engaging all of these bosses one after the other with little to no reprieve. I can’t wait!

Of Heroes and Villains part 1

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BatmanSpiderman2

Unless you’ve been under a rock for the last few weeks you’ve likely heard about Blizzard obtaining and copyrighting domains and trademarks surround the name Cataclysm. wow.com has been doing a great job keeping up on it .
The registering of the domain and copyrighting the name has sprung all sorts of speculation in the community. Some are calling it the name of the next expansion and a reference to the Maelstrom, the aftermath of the Well of Eternity exploding. Others speculate that it is the name of the next MMO that Blizzard has been working on (I have my own theories on what that one is, but that’s another post). All the buzz has produced one important truth. With Ulduar here and Yoggy being trampled, and with the tournament around the corner we are definitely getting ready for the announcement of the next expansion. Regardless of where the expansion takes us, one of the most talked about things has been what the next hero class will be. Today I’d like to talk about hero classes for a bit, this is the first in a series of three posts.

Back in the days of Warcraft 3: Reign of Chaos many of us were marveling at our new hero units. Some of us lucky enough to be in beta got to experience them before they were level capped (A lvl 14 mountain king > scourge fyi). It added a new depth of strategy to the game we all loved. This solidified even more as we got into The Frozen Throne and saw the story unfold.

When World of Warcraft came out there were many of us that were disappointed to not see hero classes present in the game (hell, we had to wait until patch 0.6 to be able to play Druids!), but we did ok and trudged along. When the announcement for The Burning Crusade came, the community was full of speculation and hopeful murmurs that hero classes would be in the game finally! Again we were let down, but we sucked it up and kept trucking. Then came the announcement for Wrath of the Lich King, and with it the announcement of our first hero class, the Death Knight. I’ll be honest I was giddy and eagerly followed their development. When I got to play around in the beta I was not disappointed. The way they were packaged and presented to us was amazing and it had a way to immerse you into the story line. The way your character broke out from under Arthas and went back to their faction was great. The entire story surrounding them was amazing and most importantly, their arrival signified two things. Hero classes were indeed real, and their arrival has changed the story of the world we play in.

Now that we are looking for the next hero class, lets take a quick gander at the actual list of Hero units from WC3.

Alliance

Horde

Scourge

Night Elf

Neutral

Quite a few of them right? Some of these are already in the game in the shape of NPC’s or bosses, and a few are already playable. Looking at the list above you can figure some of them out see Paladin’s are already a playable character, as is Death Knight. Archmage abilities can be found on regular mages now (with mass teleport being replaced by portals in a way). Lots of the Shadow Hunter abilities found their way over to Shaman, and various others are represented by NPC’s strewn about the dungeons and cities of Warcraft. Take a look around and see who is where.

So what do you think the next hero class will be? Do you think it’s one of the ones on the list? What do you think of hero classes in general?

Be sure to check back for part 2 of Heroes and Villains,

Until next time

Sig

Image courtesy of www.comicbookmovie.com

How do You Ask Mages for Water?

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Water. Without it, all raids would become excruciatingly longer as healers would have to halt and gas up after every attempt. I don’t know about you, buy the raids I’m in tend to have a lot of biscuit-hungry players. They just devour the entire table. Sometimes we have to ask for single conjures.

And let’s not begin to even talk about that guy.

Oh yes. You know who I’m talking about.

He’s that guy who always accepts that summon late.
He’s that guy who never realizes there’s a table (or a fish feast) on the ground and asks for one after it’s completely disappeared.

Or he just plain forgot to loot the table. In the past, I’ve always found the raid I was in to be under the Bystander effect.

…social psychological phenomenon in which individuals are less likely to offer help in an emergency situation when other people are present. The probability of help is inversely proportional to the number of bystanders. In other words, the greater the number of bystanders, the less likely it is that any one of them will help.

Ever get in a raid with like 5 Priests and wonder why the raid hasn’t gotten Fortitude yet? Because each Priest expects one of the other Priests to do it, thereby saving them precious candles. I noticed its the same thing with mages and any other player with biscuits. Some of them conveniently AFK or spin around in their chair not sharing.

So instead of asking Mages for Water, I simply walk up to the closest Mage and pop open trade while saying "Need gas!”. Most of them usually figure out what I’m after. I trained the guild mages well after all!

Here’s another thing. How many biscuits do you really need? Do you really need four stacks of biscuits? You’re telling me you go through that many in a single raid? I go through 1 stack usually. On serious wipe nights, it’ll hit the tail end of 2 stacks.

If every raider took 2 sacks of biscuits instead of 4 stacks, then we’d have enough stacks of food to go around. Don’t be so greedy! Eat what you take! Stop burning through Mage reagents to conjure that stuff!

And don’t get me started on the players out there that have almost no bag room and choose to throw away perfectly conjured biscuits just so they can loot some random trash loot to vendor later. At least pass it on to someone else.

Oh yes. I know you exist.

Anyway, enough with that rant.

How do you ask Mages for water?