Saturday, January 23, 2010

Badlands


Badlands
Originally uploaded by alachia

Today's photowalk was in Badlands. I can't say it's that exciting of a zone. In fact, the rest of the Eastern Kingdom doesn't seem all that interesting until we hit Ghostlands. Kalimdor is where it's at I think.

I did manage to take some nice desert shots though throughout the Badlands. All I can think of in this zone is mining tin. lol. It's also one of the first places you get a trinket, [Nifty Stopwatch].

This is another zone that we all agree we won't mind if they completely overhaul. Sure would be nice to see an alliance town in this area as well.

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Reply to: Simplification of Stats is NOT a bad thing

I was trying to catch up on the Warcast forums today and was reading some commentary (http://www.worldofwarcast.com/forum/showthread.php?p=15872&posted=1#post15872) on the homogenization controversy we keep bringing up on Warcast. I keep getting the feeling after reading a lot of emails and comments that people just think I'm qq-ing over a feeling and not a fact. So anyhow here was my reply to the forum posts. I hope it brings to light more of the point I keep trying to get across. I also had an example about priests I wanted to use to directly speak about stat changes but left it out because the reply was getting too long. This one deals more with class homogenization.

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I think it's really important to look at the over-all picture. I'm not qq-ing because of a few changes over the past months. I'm making an observation over the last five years. And while I have come to terms with these changes (it does take old dogs longer :)), I know for a fact that the homogenization is real. It does make the game simpler but it doesn't mean it hasn't made the game more fun... for some.

A lot of people point to the example of mages when they try to make this argument that the homogenization = more complexity in class play. "back in vanilla wow, all mages did was spam fireball or frost bolt" and now with wotlk, you're seeing mages use mods to monitor arc missile procs from arcane blasts assuming you don't have your four set bonus yet. They have to be careful with their timing and not waste procs. It's more fun for sure. It's more complex than spamming frostbolts for sure and you do amazing pew pew.

However, that's not the whole story. Five years ago, shamans could not decurse and resto tree druids couldn't do it in form. This left the duty mainly to mages who had decurse assignments. In addition to that, mages were always in charge of crowd control. Setting up focus macros to maintain your cc'd target was huge. Counterspell was also very common in a lot of the boss fights which were directly assigned to mages as well. In addition, there were a lot of really fun nova rotations you had to factor in and as well as a few really nifty aoe blizzard or flame strike combos with a mixture of frost and fire mages.

Homogenization has made it less critical for cc, aoe, counterspell, and decurse specializations from mages. Now they are pretty much prue dps soldiers. Shamans do the the decursing and can also counterspell, everyone and their mother can aoe effectively, and CC is almost an urban legend. These used to be part of the arsenal of a certain class and they are all but gone. You can ask almost any mage now that played in vanilla and they'll say, "yeah, it's a little bit more work than spamming one button but we sure as hell have far less buttons to worry about."

It's the tiny nuances that I struggled with losing. I'm not saying it's not for the best as I have submitted that this game isn't designed for the likes of me anymore. I had a great love/hate relationship with unbalanced chaos of class warfare.

And that's fine but I'm not just lamenting over some grand lie about how WoW is shifting to simplifying roles and gear. They are and their blue posts don't try to deny it. Does this free the devs up to create more balanced and fun gameplay for each class? Maybe. But I think the reality is that it's just creating more accessibility of gameplay for a wider audience who just don't give a crap about that stuff and just wanna pew pew and get phat lootz and play with their friends.

Monday, January 18, 2010

Shaman in 3D

I'm guessing the purpose of the new armory feature is to post your character in your blogs and be able to link what your toon looks like in full 3D model? Avatar Na'vi peeps eat your heart out! This chic is the KING of the floating islands of Nagrand. lol.


I'm a little confused at the new armory change, particularly the select stance style which requires you to log into battlenet to save. There have been so many reports of scams and recent account hacks. Why add a superfluous little item like this that you know people are going to have to do. Everyone loves to customize. I don't know many players who don't. This just seems irresponsible on Blizz's part. It's like giving teens the option of sex and then not making sure they have protection. That being said, check your HTML address like 10 times before you enter your full account info to customize your armory 3D toon.

Sunday, January 10, 2010

ICC cont’d

"ROTFACE"

Well we’re still going with raiding and are currently in ICC. The second wing has opened this past week. Three new bosses. yadayadyada. I’m not that impressed. Why I stopped writing so frequently in this blog is that I’m afraid of coming across exactly how I feel. JADED.


So the videos I’ve seen so far for downing Professor Putricide show three healers and a shadow priest. While we got to the final boss of the new wing this week, we didn’t down him. I get really annoyed when we have to move beyond two healers in our ten man. I consider it like riding without hands but you have training wheels on…not all that challenging.


"FESTERGUT"

I don’t know why I should care too much though considering, I’ve resolved to just see this expansion through to the Lich King and then be done with it (raiding for a bit). I’ll give you a good example as to why I’m a bit jaded by the lack of commitment on Blizzard’s part. Just take the two new bosses before Professor Putrice, Rotface and Festergut. They used the same fucking model to build the bosses. And two of the major trash pulls before the guys include dog like creatures which not only resemble Gluth from Naxarammas but contain his same mechanics like [Decimate] and Zombie spawn.


This is a company that was supposed to pride itself on creativity and surely must have the resources to make things a bit more spectacular for those who continue to work towards the gaming portion of the mmo.


I kind of find myself going through the motions now and I’m really just numb. I can’t decide if I’ve allowed myself to raid too long without a break or if this game is just getting too boring for my particular tastes in gaming? I guess time will tell. My ongoing love for the “game” portion of this WoW is waning but I still think it’s the best MMO out there at the moment.

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