How to drive your Healers away to another MMO

Step 1: Make sure that only specialized healing sub-classes can heal end-game content.
Check: Have you met a shadow priest/retribution paladin/feral druid who could heal black morass or arcatraz?

Step 2: Make sure these same specialized healing sub-classes can't solo.
Check: Being a healing specced class is like being in Kintergarden again, your not allow to do anything or go anywhere unless you have a buddy.

Step 3: Make sure healers have to constantly watch health bars because of insane burst damage.
Check: In Heroics/Raids just pretend every class's health bar has only two states: full life and almost dead.

Step 4: Make sure end-game healing requires intense concentration and provides no graphical stimuli to the player.
Check: Yup, still just looking at health bars in raids. Maybe I should reroll a dps class so I can actually see content while in a raid.

Step 5: Buff a healing class while ignoring the crappy holy priest talent tree.
Check: Well priests have lightwell so lets give paladins something just as good, "How about free mana on all crits?"

Step 6: Nerf the same healing class a few months later while ignoring the crappy holy priest talent tree.
Check: The priests have all been forced to specced shadow to feed paladins mana and now they can't use lightwell. Well we know what to do.

Step 7: Issue a major nerf patch to your now primary raid healers right before the release of a new PvE centric MMO.
Check: Hey where they hell did all our healers go and how did LOTR get 1 million people into their open beta?

While I don't believe Lord of the Rings is that much better then World of Warcraft it has a couple of things going for it which are going to make it stand out. The first thing is that because of its focus on PvE its classes are going to be a lot more stable. As it stands now each set of WoW patch notes oftens causes a class to have to change their primary raid role or start collecting a new primary stat.

While change is good, it shouldn't affect the current work a player has put into their character. Frankly at this moment Blizzard depends too heavily on releasing content way overpowered then nerfing it until it fits the current game balance. This "we can nerf it later" methodology is getting old and isn't a good idea when decent competition exists. Every nerf causes resentment against Blizzard and makes a fresh, new game look more and more likea good idea.

Upcoming Casual Content probably not instance based

The In-Development page for World of Warcraft was updated recently to reflect some previously unknown content in the next major patch. The update also gave some new details on the druid epic flight form and the netherwing drake mount. These have been hinted at previously but very little information had actually been revealed. The surprise content on the update page is definitely the addition of three new areas which are being advertised as solo and small group content. The descriptions on the webpage for the three areas make them sound more like quest hubs then new instances but interpretations differ.

The Three New Areas:

Ogri'la: An ogre based area with new quests and a new faction based in Blade's Edge Mountains. Supposedly has epic and rare item rewards though details are scarce on how you earn them. Since this is a confirmed new faction I'm going to guess that you have to do repeatable quests and perhaps an instance to grind to get your reputation with them to exalted.

The Etherium Prison: A prison for one of the outcast ethereal clans which is apparently owned by the Consortium faction. Since this is already an established faction with many quests I think this one has the highest chance of being a world dungeon filled with elite mobs.

Skettis: The resident bird people of the Outlands have a grand city in the mountains of Terrokar Forrest which is already in the game sans quests. Apparently the area is somehow associated with the yet unrevealed flying mount which is looking more and more like it will be the owl/crow model the Arrokoa use for pets.

The descriptions for all three state themselves as content for solo and small groups. The Skettis and Ogri'la areas state that they have new 5-man bosses while that part is missing in the Etherium Prison description. Its very doubtful that any of the new areas are complete dungeons like the ones that currently exist in the Outlands especially since those take awhile to develop. I'm guessing because of the time factor that the developers most likely implemented these new areas according to number 1 below though I like to dream that three new group instances were about to be put into the game.

Most likely ways the new areas will be implemented:

1) Quest Hubs with new chain quests which eventually result in having to fight a 5-man boss. This would be very similar to the way most quests are structured in Netherstorm and Shadowmoon valley. I would expect Ogri'la quests to give reputation while quests for the other two areas might give tokens in a manner similar to Halaa. This is because Ogri'la is the only confirmed new faction thus the epic rewards can be locked behind exalted status.

2) Quest Hubs which require you to go to a non instanced area filled with elite mobs. In a couple places in the old world a cave or a dwarven fortress would be filled with elite mobs with several quests requiring you to go into them. Since the rewards for these areas were usually sub par people ignored them. However, if good up to date rewards were given then I can see these being popular except on PvP servers where the most populous faction will constantly hold them.

3) The least likely but one I hope for the most is that each area has a single small instance which has group content inside but single person quest objectives outside. Think of the way the Wailing Caverns is set up in the barrens and you can picture how such an area would work.

Blizzard cuts upgrades on Heroic Instances short

If you are familiar with Heroic Instances in World of Warcraft then you know the main concept behind them is one of Risk vs. Reward. Choosing to do an instance on Heroic mode raises the risk since it makes the mobs hit insanely hard and often gives the bosses extra abilities. The room for error in such places tends to be close to zero since most mobs can kill anyone not wearing plate gear in one or two hits. However, the rewards for a heroic instance are on par with items from Kharazhan so they tend to be very popular.

Normal bosses in heroic instances drop improved level 70 blue items while the final boss also drops one epic item. This makes heroic dungeons a nice way to gear up which is equivalent to raiding Kharazhan. The only difference being that Kharazhan requires twice as many people and is perhaps a bit easier then some of the heroic instances. However, as casual players slowly started completing all of the heroic instances reports came in about non-improved loot tables. Its seems if the level 70 instances do not improve in loot on heroic mode except for the final boss which drops one epic. Of course all the trash mobs and bosses in the heroic version still have their difficulty increased.

This means that these instances still require a group to make almost no mistakes but don't reward players until the final boss. This can be especially frustrating since the one epic drop from the final boss can be of a type that no one in the party can use. Even the blue drops off the final boss in these instances are from the old loot table and have very little chance of being an upgrade for anyone. The logic behind this is so mysterious that some speculate that Blizzard simply hasn't created the upgraded blue items for these instances yet. Some however think that the old loot tables were left in on purpose to keep non-raiders from gearing up as quickly as raiders.

If you look as the epic items from most of the Heroic dungeons its easy to see they are equivalent to most of the low end raid gear from Kharazhan and Gruul's Lair. However, raiders are starting to conquer Magtheridon and Serpentshrine Caverns where the gear upgrades increase exponentially in quality. While Blizzard never hid the fact that raiding would get a player the best gear in the game, they did promise us less of an inequality between raiding and non-raiding gear. By not including upgraded blue items in the 8 highest heroic instances they increase the time for non-raiders to gear up.

At the very least Blizzard could have included blue items from the earlier Heroic instances that way players would have a chance to get items they might have missed. I know I've killed the Heroic version of the dragon in Hellfire Ramparts a million times and have yet to get the blue item I need from the chest. Instead the developers at Blizzard decided to provide basically no reward unless a group could clear the entire dungeon. This makes no sense in some instances like heroic mechanar where the Nethermancer boss is much harder but provides no upgraded items. As result people often simply skip her since a single badge of justice is not worth the effort of the fight.

Farming the higher end dungeons for the reward of a single epic item that according to Murphey's Law will probably be for the one class you didn't bring, is not my idea of fun. In fact its such a slap in the face to non-raiders that it makes the tier 0.5 questline look like free epics. I wouldn't be surprised if the same developer responsible for the 0.5 money sink I mean questline is the same idiot who told everyone "Ok, No more new blue items after Old Hillsbrad". I even have my suspicions who this person is .... cough Tigole. Still I can't think of a quicker way to alienate your hardcore audience who has limited time to raid. I truly hope that Blizzard patches in some improvement in the high end heroic reward system otherwise people could interpret it as a "Go Raid" message.

Heroic Instances with non-upgraded loot tables:

Setthek Halls
The Steamvaults
Shadow Labs
Shattered Halls
Black Morass
The Mechanar
The Botanica
The Arcatraz


Update: The Addition of casual content and new quest hubs might do a little bit to offset heroic instances running dry on loot at the higher levels. Check the In-Development page.

The Most Hated Class in WoW

Everyone has their own prejudices about that one class in World of Warcraft that they don't particularly like. Before the expansion this prejudice was concentrated on the shaman and paladin classes since both could only be played by opposing factions. This allowed the strengths of both classes to be viewed as overpowering by the faction who couldn't use them. However, now that we have the new races the horde knows paladins shields only extend the inevitable and the alliance knows that shamans leak mana like spaghetti strainer.

Thus the calls for nerfs on these classes have decreased and the title of most hated class should now swing evenly between everyone. However, this is not the case since there are still classes that receive more nerf calls then others. The main driving force behind these calls seems to be the different experiences a player has with a class in PvE and PvP. In general players tend to like classes that are bad at PvP but perform well in PvE. The forums often reflects that since certain class and talent combinations can severely limit a class's utility in a dungeon while granting them the extra burst damage which turns the tide in PvP.

Based on these trends I tried to highlight what I believe the five most hated classes are in World of Warcraft. Remember that I'm treating each talent tree as a separate class and that these are just generalizations. Also some of you might be wondering why feral druids and retribution paladins aren't on this list. The last patch chased away most of the PvP feral druids and most people feel they have been "balanced". Retribution paladins can still heal non-heroic dungeons and continue to not kill people fast enough in PvP to be hated. In fact the only reason paladins might be on the list right below arms warriors is because of bubble hearth.

5) The Arms Warrior: A very old target of the nerfbat and now left mostly alone in the forums this class dominated the most hated class title for a long time. The reason behind this was warriors received the most benefit from gear upgrades so there was often a huge boost in power gained from end-game content. Combined with the ease in getting a high base damage 2-hander the warrior became the most played class for quite awhile. However, a string of nerfs targeting rage generation and secondary abilities reduced their numbers till by the time the expansion came out the main tank class was actually rare.

4) The Elemental Shaman: Elemental shamans are not thought to be as overpowered but they still get some attention from the nerf threads. This is mostly because of the utility of their totems in PvP combined with instant shocks that do high damage. Shocks while slightly mana inefficient in PvE are devastating when used correctly in PvP. In particular earthshock can destroy most healing classes while frostshock is particularly useful on melees. Shamans also have a harder time trying to heal while not healing spec then the paladin class so often receive more complaints. In general though nerf threads tend to target their lightning bolts and shock spells.

3) The Fire Mage: A newer target of nerf calls but now approaching a moderate level of unpopularity. Fire mages sacrifice the ice block ability which groups love so well in favor of squeezing some more fire based damage out. In general non-experienced mages already have a problem controlling aggro and the thought of a mage gaining more damage just makes most tanks cringe in terror. Plus add in the new Dragon's Breath talent which seems to be the only true AoE crowd control ability with high damage and you got a class that earns many an enemy on the battlegrounds.

2) The Rogue (aka The Rouge): No matter how a rogue chooses their talents they are still pretty good at dealing damage. However, some recent changes have raised the hatred for the class more then all the lame stealth ganking on boats. One change is cloak of shadows which has created a situation where rogues can still win a battle against casters without having to get a successful ambush. Warlocks and Priests are particularly mad since they are the most common targets of rogues in world and instance PvP. Add to this the overwhelming use of Cleave and AoE spell damage in the Outlands and the overall PvE usefulness of a rogue has been seen as dropping. The next patch's change to cleave better guarantee rogues take less damage in dungeons or else they might start to get warlocks a run for their money.

1) The Warlock: The class has consistently been the most targeted by players for nerfs since the beginning of the game but has always managed to dodge the nerfbat for a majority of reasons. One reason is that fear's utility in PvE can't really be increased so the developers feel okay in letting it be overpowered a bit in PvP. Warlocks are perhaps one of the rarest classes so Blizzard will always be slightly cautious about nerfing them. They do have great PvE utility with banish and charm but most players trying out the class tend to stick with the PvP side of the game. When a new warlock who has been focused only on PvP crosses over into a PvE group it can often be a disaster on scale with Chernobyl. Unfortunately this is how they tend to be remembered and the stereotypes becomes reinforced.

http://blogs.parc.com/playon/archives/2005/06/server_sample_r.html

Do Heroics Hit Melees too Hard?

Based on a series of posts I've seen on blogs and the WoW Forums I sensing that a lot of people agree with my take on Heroic dungeons. Namely that melee dps classes are being overly penalize by the heavy use of area of effect abilities. These abilities while annoying on normal mode can become instant death in the majority of heroics. It's especially dangerous on boss mobs who have had their damage increased 5-10 times on AoE attacks. This is in stark contrast to the boost on their normal single target attacks which are often only 2-4 times as damaging.

I believe that mobs were redesigned in the Outlands to have more area of effect abilities to compensate for the increased availability and improvement of healing gear. It was quite easy for healers to gather Physician and other types of green healing gear that made healing one target in a dungeon easy. Thus I think the developers decided to make more use of area of effect abilities so that healing was a more appropriate challenge. This is especially seen in Hellfire Citadel by the heavy use of Rain of Fire and Cleave. In fact Cleave has become a staple of all warrior based dungeon trash.

Clearing trash on a Heroic dungeon is supposed to be dangerous and wipes are too be expected. But I'm noticing that a lot more partial wipes occur because melee dps classes are getting hit by a lucky string of area of effects. The 360 cleave is perhaps the worst but spell based AoE still serves up a large amount of damage. This is very noticeable on the boss fights: Omor from the Ramparts and the Hydromancer from the Steamvaults. Both do a high damage AoE that requires quick movement on the part of melee dps. Still no matter how fast their reflexes, chances are they will get hit by one tick of the spell. This one tick on Heroics usually does around 5k damage.

Changes are in the works to change mob Cleave, which is the most common overpowered AoE. The current mob version of the ability has a 360 radius and about a 5-8 yard range. Tseric has confirmed that both the radius and range will be changed to something more similar to the player version of the ability. This should allow melee dps classes to stand behind mobs and avoid getting hit. This will greatly improve the survival rate of rogues who were suffering the most from Cleave in the Heroic dungeons. Other melee dps classes with higher ac gear were having better luck against a critical strike on Cleave.

Still all four melee classes have the problem of massive AoE spell damage which occurs in Heroics. These abilities are usually centered around the very target they have to be near which makes melee dps basically stop. This allows range classes to really outshine melee dps since they continue to do damage while melees are doing the hokie pokie. It wouldn't matter so much except that Heroics often come down to the wire and you need to squeeze out as much dps as you can on some fights. Hopefully, Blizzard will realize this and retune some of the Heroics so that melee classes are just as useful as their range counterparts. In general it has been hinted that many of the Heroic dungeons are going to have their difficulty nerfed in the future.

Upcoming Cleave Changes
http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=263836810&sid=1

MMO Math Madness

If you've read my blog before then you know I tend to gravitate to lists and logical explanations about game mechanics in MMOs. I enjoy the min/max challenge of a MMO and gaining new equipment to change my stats to see the result in combat. However, even people who aren't necessarily number or logic oriented also seem to get a kick out of the mathematical emphasis most MMOs have built into them. Discussions between players always seem to be about stamina, crit ratios and the most efficient use of talent points. Its like every player of a MMO is a fanatical expert at statistics.

The best comparison I have for this trend is how sports fans memorize the stats of their favorite teams and players. Some of them even play games like fantasy football which are based on the stats of the dream teams they choose. It seems the trick to turning anyone into a expert at number crunching is simply to attach the numbers to something they enjoy. A pure numerical algorithm by itself is too abstract for most people to get excited about. But if that algorithm is about how to best maximize spell damage or calculate a batting average then you got an audience.

The positive side of this is that in general a person's math skills tend to pick up once they start playing a MMO. Every time you get an upgrade you have to compare all the numbers to your old equipment and make sure its better. You also learn a bit of subjective reasoning during the process since different stats have different values. Thus even though +5 str is less then +8 attack power the str is still better since it provides more then +8 attack power.

Pretty much all the lessons you learn in college statistics/algebra are included in the background of most MMOs. The best part is that since its entertainment to the people playing, the math just sort of seeps in. People tend to scoff at the use of virtual worlds for teaching children but some visionary educators see the potential. After all how many times are kids told that learning is fun then been forced to read the same type of textbooks that have existed since the 1950's. The truth is that the best way to make learning fun is to put it into a game.

Mysterious Opt-Out Option for the Armory

There's been rumours going around that certain guilds were being exempted from the armory and that their talents and gear profiles were being hidden. Most accusations revolve around the guild Fires of Heaven which was the old stomping ground for Furor and Tigole back in the EQ days. This connection to the lead developers is always used whenever a really juicy conspiracy theory is posted. Though the guild did do some beta testing for WoW a while ago they really aren't that involved in testing cutting edge content anymore. There is a lot of hate for the guild though because of the guild's status of a cross-game hardcore guild and the tendency of their members to be outspoken aka assholes.

Investigating the claim I was able to find the guild roster of Fires of Heaven in the armory and inspect their member profiles. Some people suggested that the armory had just been buggy and someone mistook poor Ajax programming for an in-game conspiracy. Still there has been some fanning of the rumours spawned by cryptic forum moderator responses. Netherea is on record as saying no one is exempt from the armory but that some options might be included later on due to player suggestions. The exact meaning of this is a mystery but a lot of theorycrafting has suggested that guild rosters and talent builds might soon be able to be hidden.

While most people are happy with the armory it seems that people are still coming up with really wild scenarios to sway Blizzard to do away with it. I just heard someone recently complaining about factions being visible in the armory. They were apparently afraid that someone could see that they were scryer faction and be asked not to roll for the Fel Armaments that drop from the Shadow Labs. This situation is unlikely for a number of reasons especially since high selling items like armaments and tomes are almost always treated as vendor trash with everyone rolling. Still it seems as if the paranoid can't help but think of the worst case.

Adding another member to the Class Trinity

If you are familiar with a MMORPG then chances are that you're familiar with the idea of the class trinity. Back in the 70's when the creators of D&D were laying down the framework for pretty much all fantasy based RPGs they originally came up with only three roles. These were the infamous tank, damage, and healing roles that are still used today as the basis of any class oriented MMO. Over time more classes that fulfill these rolls have been created but very few improvements or differences in the classic roles have been made.

Current MMOs have been using the class trinity system for so long that things have become a bit stagnant. Numerous attempts have been made to abandon it and go with something a bit more free form like a skill based system. However, games based on free form skills usually come across as unnecessarily complex to average gamers and have limited appeal. Most MMO companies have instead adopted several ideas over the years to modernize the class system and try to add some freshness to the fantasy combat genre.


Ideas that have been added to the Class Trinity

Hybrid Classes:
Hybrids were created to try to blur the roles and allow players to be able to fulfill more then one role in a group. However, developers quickly found out that idea of hybrids didn't really work out as intended because of the imbalance in class popularity. Hybrids that could deal damage would often stick with that role over their other options simply because most people found it more fun. Hybrids that could heal were often pigeonholed into that role since the pure healer role was so unpopular.

Crowd Control Classes:
MMO developers have always had a problem designing complex encounters and usually fell back on just including more mobs to make a fight more interesting. A couple games introduced crowd control classes like bards or psionists in an attempt to give groups a chance at these harder encounters. This slowly caused crowd control classes to be required by groups at the higher levels and caused group formation times to increase. One of the best design decisions World of Warcraft made was to give every class a limited amount of crowd control.

Buffing/Debuffing Classes:
The idea of the buff class was to provide an additional role to the class trinity which would augment the abilities of fellow players while limiting the abilities of their foes. Classes meant for this role were usually given a wide assortment of spells but had limited survivability (armor and hp). Often the class was given a pet to allow some solo utility when not in a group. Most modern MMO's have since turned this idea into a pure damage class with some limited abilities to buff or crowd control.

You can see how these three ideas have changed the class system since the early days of table top gaming and early text based computer games. However, within the last five years not much has been added to the class system. World of Warcraft has introduced perhaps the biggest change by allowing almost all of its classes some hybrid and crowd control functionality. This was done more as an attempt to achieve a fair pvp system then to increase popularity of the class system but has seemed to pay off for the company.

My own ideas for introducing something fresh into the class system revolves around a class which would handle threat or aggro. Basically they could produce some threat themselves but their main area of expertise would be taking it from others and giving it to the tank. This would allow a unskilled group a chance at higher end encounters as long as their Threatmaster was skilled at partitioning off the aggro produced by heals and damage. Plus if the game allowed the class to view how much threat he was moving in numeric format it would give much the same sense of accomplishment as causing giant damaging crits.

While the class would have some greifing potential it would be a great boon to a casual oriented MMO where players often find themselves grouping with people of differing skill levels. How many times has a group you've been in had its damage classes pull mob aggro by either accident or through bad luck? In such a situation the mob usually ping pongs back and forth and settles on the healer if not taunted off. A threat based class would be able to prevent such situations and thus could guarantee large groups of mobs would stick on the tank. Tanks might not losing the threat management aspect of their class but at least this is not a class that would compete directly with them.

Anyways I'm sure there are many other ideas out there for making a completely new class or even introducing a new role into the class trinity. Either way leave your suggestions in the comments and try not to include any ideas that might have been used in EQ, AC, DAOC, DnD, or VG.

Why would anyone want to play Vanguard?

I started to see a couple blogs and forums referring to a incident in Vanguard where characters were losing experience when they crossed into a different zone server. The bug was rare but rumours started circling that a couple of bans were passed out when players discovered they could regain the lost xp by re-zoning back. Apparently a GM simply noticed the 9% jump in experience and thought it best to simply ban the player for cheating. Some are using this incident to try convince the few people who play Vanguard to abandon ship. One post I read asked with all the bugs, errors, and lag why anyone would even want to play Vanguard?

It made me think a lot about what reasons I might have for picking up the game. While I did beta test Vanguard for awhile, I have yet to pick up a copy. This is mostly because I saw how unfinished the game was three months ago and doubted they would have it ready in time for January. Despite this the game does have some things going for it which have definitely peaked my interest more then the other MMORPGs which are releasing this year.

4 Reasons Vanguard Peaks my Interest:

1) Its Large
Vanguard is huge from what I have seen and has more square footage in it then any game I've played since classic Everquest. Now while most of this area is bland wilderness it at least allows room for the developers to expand. In the future they could allow player towns, new dungeons, or farms to be placed in these areas. A lot of MMO's don't like to plan ahead by including areas for future growth which is why they are always having to introduce newly discovered continents.

2) It has a higher Barrier of Entry then WoW
While I'm not a hardcore player I do miss the playerbase of classic Everquest sometimes. The barrier of entry for World of Warcraft is so low that anyone can cross on over. This has had a profound effect on player skill levels, guild loyalty, begging, and the general stupidity that is general chat. A lot of players think they are entitled to being run through a dungeon, given money, or given information for free. Basically, they treat everyone else as a NPC and themselves as the only "real" player in the game.

3) Its focused on PvE
Too many developers think they need to implement a PvP system but underestimate the amount of work it takes to integrated it with the rest of the game. Often this causes a near constant state of nerfs and buffs based on issues where the PvE and PvP side of the game overlap. A MMORPG needs to be balanced for one or the other and not yanked back and forth depending on who whines the most in your forums.

4) It has more Classes and Customization
The nature of class based games is that the complexity of group interaction depends on the variety of classes. A lot of the newer games such as Lord of the Rings and Warhammer are trying to stick with a small amount of classes in hopes it makes balance easier to achieve. However, I believe this will have the effect of squeezing too many players into classes they might not like. I predict much higher burnout in any game with under 7 classes to play as players might have problems finding one that fits their particular playstyle.

Honestly, at the moment I'm simply waiting for the developers to finish debugging Vanguard and fill in some of the empty spaces. I still have a lot on my plate with the Burning Crusade which has a decent amount of content left for me to play through. The way things currently stand I see myself being done with the Heroics and Kharzhan around the beginning of the summer. Since I don't plan on rejoining the full time raiding circuit I will probably pick up another MMO then. Here's crossing my fingers that Vanguard becomes a game worth playing by then.

Difficulty Ranking of the Level 70 Instances

I had a comment on my last post asking about the relative difficulty of the level 70 dungeons and it got me thinking about making a list. In general its easy to follow the order of the earlier Outland dungeons since the levels of the mobs tell you if its easier or harder then the last one you ran. However, once the mobs start being around level 70 the difficulty is set more by bosses and the size of the pulls in the dungeon. As a result people can often set their sights a little high and end up getting stressed out by repeated wipes.

My ranking of the 70 dungeons is based on the number of mobs in each pull and how hard hitting the boss fights are. Some boss fights have a trick to them that might cause you to wipe until you learn it but aren't actually that hard. Without providing too many spoilers I am including a single sentence explaining why the dungeon got the rating I gave it. If you check out the raid and instances forums you'll see that there are most people agree with the relative ordering.

Easiest

Old Hillsbrad Foothills: Very easy to run if you just heal Thrall who is basically an extra warrior for your group.

Steamvaults: The first boss has a very damaging and sudden AoE which is wipe-tastic. The other bosses are easy though there is a trick to the last one.

The Mechanaar: Very short and easy dungeon, just use polymorph or mind control in the final hallway and avoid the elevator bugging on your group.

Botanica: Almost all of the bosses summon adds. Most of the larger pulls were recently nerfed so the death and decay ability shouldn't wipe groups as often.

Shadow Labs: T pulls start to get tough here with a couple of 5 mob pulls. Bring 2 CC classes and watch out for a assassins who love to spawn at the beginning of a pull.

The Arcatraz: Most pulls are a single mob but have abilities like a mini boss. Watch out for AoE Gouge, Meteor and Incubate. Take two healers for the final boss.

Shattered Halls: Pulls are insane with many of them numbering around 6 all of which can hit hard. The 2nd boss can't be taunted and he aggro dumps so have a strategy to keep your healers and dps alive.

The Black Morass: Constant fighting where one death can often force you to reset the instance. The second boss needs to be dispelled or your tank needs to be able to block all special attacks until the healing debuff wears off.

Hardest


While the 70 instances are difficult they are not impossible for most groups. Just make sure you have an advantage in one of three areas: gear, PvE talents, or vent coordination. You don't even need to have all your group members have the same advantage since different classes work better in the three areas.

Tanks tend to profit the most with a gear advantage allowing them to survive longer and handle the bosses that love to throw on burst damage. Guarantee your tank a gear advantage by running the highest level instance you can until some defensive plate gear drops.

Healers tend to profit the most from having PvE talents which allows them to conserve mana better and produce less threat. Asking your healers spend their talents only on PvE usually keeps them from being able to quest effectively though. As a result you might want to make sure that your healers know they can call on you to help for their questing or grinding.

DPS and crowd control classes tend to gain the most benefit from having a leader call out targets over a voice server. Coordination is usually good at making sure that dps classes only take damage from AoE effects and avoid aggro. Having your main tank use the raid markers is almost as good as a voice server though it does add extra effort on his part. Doing damage is perhaps the easiest role in WoW but doing damage without pulling aggro is perhaps one of the hardest.

Relmstein graduates BC Dungeon Running 101

This weekend was big for me in that I finally beat the last couple of level 70 instances with my small guild. We've been farming The Mechanar and Shadow Labs for about two weeks now and managed to get some serious upgrades for our main tank. The two zones we've been having problems with before (Shattered Halls, Black Morass) have become relatively easy with a tank whose defense rating is fast approaching our druid's +healing. Also being full protection has enabled him to get several tricks that work well against multiple mobs and getting rid of the -healing debuff used by Temporus.

Besides the tank being upgraded our other players have learned to play their classes much better. Our mage uses frost nova to stop our healers from dying and ice blocks regularly when he has aggro. Our shadow priest is ungodly and often keeps us all healed with just vampiric embrace while doing massive damage. Also his mind controlling of mobs tends to make him the highest on our damage meter. Our paladin while retribution has a large enough mana pool to assist the healing of vampiric embrace and clear most dungeons. Our rogue always has some blinding powder ready and has become a master of kicking casters in the shin when they try to cast.

Its a combination of everyone improving and gear upgrades that allowed us to finally beat Shattered Halls. The dungeon had been taunting us with constant wipes ever since we tried it soon after hitting 70. Thinking back, it really was a poor choice for our first level 70 instance but we had just stumbled upon the key quest and were cocky from clearing Setthek Halls repeatedly. We would have avoided if we knew what it was like inside but we had no idea of the relative dungeon difficulties. Anyways we'll be doing a lot more runs of Arcatraz and Shattered Halls to gear out our people but we are already eyeing Heroic Ramparts. If we recruit a few more people I'm sure we'll even be seeing the inside of Kharzhan since about 7 of us are attuned already.

How will the Armory change WoW?

The recent outcry over privacy violations about Blizzards new character information tool are slowly starting to be outpaced by praises for its utility. Not all the suggested uses for the tool's utility are positive though since the information provided could be used against players in certain situations. However, most of these situations are rare and actually only involve revealing when a player might be lying about their spec or gear. The positive uses for the Armory far outnumber the negative and could go a long way to providing guidance on gear and talents to newer players.

The Main Arguments against the Armory

1) Increases Guild Control:

The main and most powerful argument against the armory is that it allows guilds to know the talent builds and gear quality of their members. A lot of the more hardcore guilds have policies which limit members to only having talents points spent to fulfill their raid role. These policies usually aren't enforced too much and oftentimes guild members can simply lie to avoid being harassed by guild officers. However, with the addition of the armory it would be very easy for officers to track member talent points and make sure they follow policies. Hybrids and healing classes would suffer the most since they often take damage talents to help in solo fighting but are expected to have only have tanking or healing talents.


2) Prevents Casual Gamers from getting into Groups:

The next most common complaint with the Armory is that allows players to very quickly check a player's gear and could effect invite decisions. For example when a Pick-Up-Group is forming the leader could easily check a player's gear to determine if they would be owned by a dungeon. So if a 70 warrior wanted into a Shadow Labs run the leader could bring up their gear and find out they were wearing mostly level 66 greens and only had 10pts in protection. What do you think the leader would do? If you said not invite the warrior then you get a cookie. (mmm cookies)

Now that I described the situation I need to clarify that there are two groups of thought about it. One group thinks that this is a bad situation and that the warrior could be a very skilled player who would miss out on an invite. The other group thinks that this helps prevent wasting two hours of your life finding out that even outland greens can't keep a noob alive in the Shadow Labs. And lets be honest here the average PUG player in WoW breaks out into something like the following.

50% chance of being undergeared
20% of not understanding basic tenets of their class
20% of being both
10% of being omg you rock, have my babies

So if I can have a tool that makes my PUG sessions have a 70% better chance of success by early filtering of the severely undergeared then I'm all for it. Even if it means I might skip over the rare gamer who kicks ass but is geared like your retard cousin who wears herod's helm despite being level 60.


3) Allows Spying on Super Secret Specs:

The third most common complaint is that talent point combinations are unique enough that people want to protect their own spec. Some people honestly think they might be copied and their talent selection could become a new cookie cutter build. Realistically the only ones at risk of this happening are the top leaders in arena brackets and raiding guilds but most of them are going to be using cookie cutter builds anyways. The only valid worry is that arena teams gain a slight advantage by studying the talent builds of their opponents. Though as long as their is no opt out option for the armory then the advantage is shared among all the players with enough smarts to plan ahead.


These are the major arguments against the armory I found on the forums though I'm sure they're numerous variations of the three. All of them are knee jerk reactions to worst case scenarios in the three areas of World of Warcraft: raiding, grouping, and pvping. This means this is one of the few issues that won't simply turn into a hardcore vs. casual argument though casual raiders might be the most anti-armory. Still I hope this doesn't force Blizzard to include an opt-out option since I think that would slowly force most players into removing their profiles. After all if people can hide their profile then allowing yours to show would just be a weakness if you ever seriously started pvping. This would destroy a lot of the actual utility of the armory and would just make it into the new pvp ranking page.

Blizzard Backs Off: Riots Die Down

The negative feedback on the priests forums increased into such epic levels that the developers at Blizzard took notice and have pulled back on some of the priest nerfs. The riots that made their way through several servers also might have had something to do with it as customers gathered in large groups of level 1 alts and attempted to crash major zones while protesting. At least three reported servers apparently had large scale protests by priests which required GM intervention. The riots themselves did little to sway Blizzard in the matter but did draw the attention of many game blogs and news sites which may have had an effect.

Druids who were the major target of the nerfs have put up considerably less negative feedback perhaps because only their tanking ability was affected. Also the druid changes are mostly seen as a necessary balance nerf by the other classes. The fact that the WoW community recognizes a needed nerf does a lot to fight the notion that MMO customers don't understand the idea of game balance. Community Managers in WoW are often influenced by the many trolls on the forums and often get in the mindset to ignore any feedback on nerfs. Unfortunately, the trolls win at causing frustration in this case because forum posters often boil over into in game shenanigans when they think they are being ignored.

The paladin nerfs which were undocumented in the patch notes have been confirmed as being dropped for the next patch. However, Eyonix has been quoted as saying that a nerf for pally burst damage is being planned in the future even though complaints about paladin burst damage are almost non-existent. Paladins are even more confused when they look at the canceled nerfs which actually increase burst damage but made their shields have some greifing utility. As one poster summed up "It seems as if they simply want to nerf the paladin class in general but haven't quite decided how they are going to do it or justify it." On a side note paladins and druids are both classes that received large increases in dps which might be the major influence on the decision to nerf them.

Despite some mishandling on the part of Blizzard it looks like the spikes of tension about the last patch have been smoothed over. The problem is of course that it just takes one misunderstood and not well documented nerf to drive the WoW community nutty again. When you have around 8 million people playing your game, news travels fast and your customers can quickly become your worst enemy. Blizzard needs to stop taking lessons in community management from SOE and learn to gently manage their customers. This means explaining the reasoning and logic behind every nerf and buff they are making. Sure it takes longer and the min/maxers will try try to disapprove you but it prevents forum meltdowns

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=79669544&pageNo=3&sid=1#40

Making Money in MMOs

No matter what type of massive multiplayer online game you are playing there are certain rules which effect the value of that game's currency. Good old fashion economics implies that if demand is high and supply is low then the price of something goes up. Developers can set an artificial value for virtual items by having NPCs buy them at a set price but its almost always going to be worth more to a player. Why is this? Well most games use a spawning system to generate currency for their game which has to be offset by charging players for items, skills and equipment. When these money sinks don't match up evenly to the currency generated then the value of the game's currency drops.

Thus NPCs in most games are set to buy items based on the currency value at the start of the game. This means that eventually most game currencies become inflated enough that selling items to NPCs is almost worthless. Its at this point that the player economy starts to form since most items can be used by players in some form or another. In fact in a lot of games the best way to make money is to target a mob which may drop little actual currency but has a chance of dropping an item in high demand.

In World of Warcraft I'm currently saving up for an epic flying mount mostly so that I can quickly get around the Outlands without being dependent on crazy flight paths. If I just went and farmed mobs that drop cash and vendor trash I would have a long way to go. So instead I copied most professional farmers and head out to areas with mobs that drop items with high player demand and have a low cost to put up in the auction house. If you play WoW then you know about the primal essences which are the arcane crystals of the expansion. Because these essences are used in almost every tradeskill the demand is constantly high and they sell very quickly in the auction house.

If you really wanted to make money quick then you could also pick up two gathering tradeskills which could work in conjunction with your farming. For my main character I chose enchanting and mining. Enchanting allows me to turn green items into enchanting materials which are in high demand and have no deposit to put in the AH. Mining allows me to scour the landscape with track minerals while farming. While not as profitable as enchanting it does allow me the chance to mine ore which still sells well. Plus while mining there is a random chance to gain motes of a primal essence and perhaps even get a rare jewel.

Other people I know use leatherworking and herbalism since areas that have skinable mobs usually also have herbs. Rare herbs sell much faster then ore though they often have negative debuffs associated with picking them. Whatever your professions the real way to make money is good timing. Just like playing the stockmarket you don't want to sell until the price is at the highest point. In WoW this means saving your merchandise until none are up in the auction house which allows you to charge top dollar or price gouge if you feel lucky. If you make your price too high though you will attract people with auctioneer who will quickly undercut you by a few silver and steal your customers. Its a fine balance that constantly changes every few hours depending on how many people are watching the auction house.

Conclusion:
Every scammer, begger, and account hacker knows the quickest way to make money is from other players and not grinding hours against mobs. If you play smart and track the prices of items and make sure you get top dollar then the money should roll in at a steady rate. Just remember that unlike the scum mentioned earlier your reputation plays a big part in affecting your profits. If you overcharge and haggle over prices all the time then you'll eventually find people less likely to buy your goods when people match your price. Just look at the problems farmers have when they put a bunch of items up under one character.

The Nerf Bat Cometh

The first major patch after the Burning Crusade is getting ready to hit the servers in a week or two and with it comes the first round of dreaded class nerfs. Druids are getting hit the hardest which isn't too much of a surprise since every class has been calling out for druid nerfs. Its not just the bear-bomb maneuver either as tanking, healing, and dps classes have all felt threatened by the druid's recent improvement in tanking and healing. Also up to bat are priest and paladin nerfs which destroy some pvp utility but generally leave pve abilities alone. Its fun to see that the major influence on this patch seems to be the arena which is creating havoc in class balancing with its 2v2 and 3v3 brackets.

Nerfs for Druids: The druids are getting hit hard with Bear and Dire Bear only granting 25% bonus to stamina instead of overall health. Also armor class bonuses and damage abilities like mangle are getting reduced. Most people agree the damage the bears were outputting was ridiculous when the health and armor class bonuses were added in. Druids having been limited to healing for so long are sad to see a lot of their pwnage ability going bye-bye but hopefully they will still be able to put up a decent fight.

Nerfs for Priests: Priests are getting a 5% reduction to vampiric embrace which should make their shadowform healing a little less powerful especially since it will longer crit. Prayer of Mending got zapped with a 20 second cooldown which as Tobold mentioned makes it useless for soloing.

Nerfs for Paladins: The Avengers Shield snare component can now be removed with dispel. Priest's mass dispel now targets and removes Divine Shield first. *Stealth Nerf Alert* Testers are reporting that Avenging Wrath and Divine Shield now share the same 5 minute cooldown and that all paladin shields give forbearance which reduces the target's damage output by 15% for an entire minute. This is specifically made to address paladins throwing blessing of protection on warlocks and mages in arenas. Drysc will neither confirm or deny if its a bug but it is currently on the test server.

Small Buffs for Shamans: Shamans are getting some of their spells adjusted to generate less threat when used. Also their stoneclaw totem now has a chance to stun and clearcasting will now go off more often since it procs off every spell crit.

Big Buffs for Warriors: Rage normalization is up by 15% - 20% for warriors along with an overall increase of 1% to their critical strike rating. Thunderclap is now usable in defensive stance and generates rage allowing warrior tanks to compete with the paladin's consecrate aggro. Also planned to be hotfixed in when they get the code right: charge, intercept and intervene will remove snare effects.

Second Life Strife

Seems that all the media attention Linden Labs has generated for itself is starting to boost their user base higher then they can actually support. Huge amounts of latency during the weekends and other prime timeslots has forced a policy change for the free to play game. Now during times of high latency the game becomes restricted and only players who have actually payed for land or currency can login. For those of you unfamiliar with Second Life, the sims like game is free to play but uses micro-transactions to support itself.

The use of micro-transactions in Second Life combined with accusations of exaggerating its user numbers has offended many fans of more game like MMOs. Despite this negative publicity in the gamer community, a large following of journalists and academics have adopted the game and created great word of mouth for it. As a result Linden Labs has received a decent increase in concurrent users over the last few months. This apparently has created friction between established players within the game and those who are just playing tourist because of the publicity.

The established players have started to organize and use some of the unique features of Second Life to make it difficult for anyone just starting to learn the game. Second Life has a large amount of tools which allow the creation of objects which can have all kinds of different effects in the game. Usually these objects are just virtual merchandise or seedy toys but they can also result in greifing tools. Items can replicate to trap and confuse players, explode and create chaos, or even teleport and knock back player avatars. Recently items that create the game effects of a nuclear bomb are being used to disrupt the land of new players and corporations that have opened up virtual item shops.

The root of all this angst seems to stem from Linden Lab's lack of revenue for upgrading hardware to support more concurrent users. After all most people who try out Second Life only explore the different islands and don't actually spend any real world money on the game. This is why a policy of restricting access to paying members was established during peak latency spikes. However, even with the policy change Second Life is still gaining more users and players are still going to feel more crowded. It seems like a game which used to be just a small time town is slowly starting to grow into a mid-size city.

http://gamepolitics.com/2007/02/26/nuke-sl/

Arena Point Calculation and Team Brackets

Just a small update about the WoW arenas. Blizzard took a surprising step recently and released the formula used to convert team ratings into points each week. While most players were ecstatic about knowing the specifics of the math some grew bitter. It was quickly realized that the ratings for 5v5 teams convert into more points then the 3v3 and 2v2 teams. As one person pointed out on the forums losing 10 matches as a new 5v5 team actually gained you more points then wining 10 matches as a 2v2 team.

The forum moderators were quick to point out that this was true for the first week but that the scaling became different as team ratings change. This would mean that the following week the 5v5 team would not earn more points then a 2v2 team if they lost every match. While this helped alleviate some pains it still points out a obvious advantage to the 5v5 team bracket. Blizzard defends the position by citing the domination of crowd control in smaller team brackets. The developers feel that having 5 people on a team gives a chance to offset the advantage of crowd control spells and abilities.

Despite the developer's logic there is still some animosity about the team rating inequality. Issues such as the cost of the 5v5 charter and the higher membership requirement doesn't sit well with some players. A lot of couples and small groups of friends are annoyed since they basically need a small guild to guarantee always having 5 people on to fight in a arena. On the other side it seems like guilds are embracing the idea of arena teams and are often fielding multiple teams at the same time. Also if there is one thing that the arena point system shows is that its quite easy to earn epic rewards in the space of 5-6 weeks without putting in hours and hours of grinding. You don't even need that high of a win average.

Rating to Arena Point Calculator
http://www.boxspherical.com/arena/index.php

Group Instance Bosses Gain Some Smarts

I'm coming back from a nice long weekend today in which I probably spent way too much time playing WoW. However, I did use the time to my advantage and managed to beat several level 70 instances which had earlier kicked my ass. This time around though me and my friends came armed with better knowledge and some of our own homebrewed strategies. Its necessary to have a specific strategy since a lot of the boss fights in the Burning Crusade aren't simple tank and spank fights. Instead the developers took the tricks and annoying abilities of the old world raid instances and spread them around generously in the 5-man instances of the Outlands. Heck, they even came up with some new tricks.

As I noted in a earlier post about PvP, the MMO industry has a real problem with simply increasing boss stats to increase difficulty. In the original game the developers usually saved the clever boss fights that required coordination and communication for raid content only. This could have been an early design decision or simply the result of most of the raid content being patched in after launch. Whichever the case, with the coming of the Outlands the decision was made to include more complex fights in the 5-man content.

This increased complexity can be annoying sometimes when your group is facing something new and you die very surprisingly. (Hungerfen's exploding mushrooms) Yet the encounter is more like a puzzle and less like a grind when the developers put some thought behind it. Even if you look a strategy up online it still takes some practice and good timing to put it into execution. Plus while a strategy might work for one party it might not work for another that has a different class composition. All of these factors come into effect to make the average 5-man instance in the Burning Crusade a lot more fun then their Azeroth counterparts.

The majority of this fun factor comes from bosses having a lot more help during encounters. After all adventurers are showing up in groups to kill them so why shouldn't dungeon bosses also have a group of compadres to help defend themselves. A lot of the hard encounters involve minions which can heal, do damage, explode or even lay down blazing trails of fire you can't cross. If you're an old time gamer then the Nethermancer Spethra fight has to remind you a bit of the Tron motorcycle game. In Shadow Labs there's even a Ogre mage who mind controls your entire party and makes you duke it out against one another for 15 seconds. As I said before, "Fun".

As more dungeons are introduced to extend the life of the game it will be interesting to see if the developers can pull more challenging encounters out of their skulls without going to far. There is already some negative posts on the scripted encounters in Kharzhan which complain about the difficulty when compared to the Heroic mode dungeons. Basically the Kharzhan encounters are longer and harder but don't really give much better loot. With the quality of rewards being so close between raid and group instances developers are going to have to walk a thin line when designing encounters or risk making the 10 man raid instances as empty as AQ40.

Does PvP hold a MMO back?

One of the most controversial choices developers have to make when designing a MMO is determining what type of PvP game play to include. If they avoid any type of player vs. player combat a sizable amount of online gamers will avoid the game because they see it as having little challenge. After all artificial intelligence in games is very hit or miss especially in MMO design where it is common for developers to increase difficulty by simply increasing mob stats. Most players enjoy the challenge of fighting against a human opponent but want rules which set up a fair competition. However, if the combat is constant or non-consensual then the game starts to get a bad reputation.

Once the mechanics are laid down for the game's PvP combat there is still the issue of making it a viable source of character advancement. Do the developers wish to give items for achieving PvP goals or simply award empty accolades like character titles. If PvP has no rewards then it will only be used sparingly and most of the hardcore will leave the game quickly. Yet the instant character advancement is made available through player killing you have intensified the balance issues the game will have. This is why so many early MMORPGs like Everquest, Final Fantasy, and Asheron's Call had very little support for PvP.

Balance is something that is usually maintained on the class scale and is done to ensure fairness in the character progression portion of the game. If a class is imbalanced this usually means they can attain experience and items quicker then other player classes. This almost always leads to an increasing spike in the numbers of this class as players try to gain an edge in the game by switching to the more powerful class. Even if players are not directly fighting each other there is still an indirect competition to accumulate items, power and fame which encourages this min/maxing.

Additionally the standard group mechanic in MMORPGs is very sensitive to player distribution. Since the early days of fantasy games the idea of the tank, damage and healer trinity has been used to organize classes into specific roles for group encounters. However, if PvP progression favors a class too much they tend to spend less time in group combat and their spot in the trinity becomes harder to fill. This effects everyone in the game especially if one of the rare trinity roles becomes a favored PvP class.

Its because of this that MMO's which support PvP tend to resolve balance issues by using three methods:

1) Severely limit the number of classes which reduces the amount of balancing they have to do between PvP and PvE.

2) Make PvP rewards which affect character power (stats) very rare or non-existent which decreases the viability of anyone doing PvP full time for character advancement.

3) Avoid the use of experience points or alternative advancement options at the max level to place a ceiling on character power. This prevents huge differences in character power at the max level which would destroy any concept of fair combat.


So how has the developers use of these methods affected World of Warcraft?

1) New classes have been desired greatly but have yet to be introduced into the game because of the time cost of balancing them with the current classes. New classes would have to fulfill one of the three trinity roles and not be a carbon copy of any of the existing classes in the same role. So if a monk dps class was added it would have to play differently from a rogue and have its damage on par with all the other dps classes. Yet it would have to look exciting enough to entice people to play the class.

2) No PvP rewards at first then a ranking system which only allowed a few people each week to gain items that weren't quite as good as the high end PvE raid items. As the new expansion was being prepared the PvE side of the game became stagnant so the developers made it easier to earn rewards on the PvP side. Now that dungeon crawling and raiding are back the PvP rewards are seeing more of a lock down. The arena PvP rewards will be controlled by a rating system which will probably set a much slower accumulation of items then PvE. Still at least now its viable to do both raiding and arenas since only 10 matches are required a week.

3) Options for increasing character stats or abilities through continued experience gain at the max level are going to be forever denied in World of Warcraft. The use of Hero classes also fits into this category since most likely they were going to be a special class choice that opened up at the max level after accomplishing some goal. Blizzard controls the current advancement of max level characters with raid reset timers and the arena rating system. Having a third method of advancement might be too much especially if it was something as complex as extra class abilities. Think of what could happen if a rogue could use 2 handers and you get the idea.


While PvP combat has set boundaries on World of Warcraft it has also intensified the competitive nature of its players by having two factions. Things would definitely be much more boring if combat between the Horde and Alliance was sparse and granted no rewards. Some future MMORPGs are set to capitalize on this excitement and intensified player competition by making PvP combat the main focus of their game play. Both Warhammer Online and Age of Conan will have more PvP combat then any previous fantasy MMORPG and will hearken back to the days of Ultima Online. It will be fun to see what issues these games might have especially in comparison to the mostly PvE centric titles that are currently out.

Enter into the Arena and let the Games begin

Its a little early to be talking about the official Arena season which doesn't start until this Friday (Feb 16th). However, based on the volume of traffic I'm getting to my Arena posts I'm guessing its on a lot of people's mind. A couple of months ago someone linked my posts about the Arena rules onto WowWiki and I've been getting increasing traffic since then. Recently I've gotten a couple emails reminding me about the season kickoff and asking some general questions about what to expect.

Scoring Structure

Well on Friday we should be able to start participating in official arena matches instead of just using the practice option that is currently available. Your team's arena rating should change immediately after any official match since the calculations are based only on you and your opponent's rating. At the end of each week your team's rating is used to award a specific amount of arena points. At the end of an arena season the ratings are reset and the process starts all over again. A season is supposed to last 3 months but expect the developers to change it at their discretion.

Your team is matched against other teams that have a similar rating on your server's battlegroup. If the queue is taking too long the computer might allow a opponent with a higher or lower rating but you will earn more or less points as appropriate to your opponent’s difficulty. Winning against opponents with a higher rating will advance your rating much quicker then fighting a lower ranking team. Losing against a lower rank team will hurt your rating greatly. Remember you could find yourself fighting horde or alliance but will be prevented from communicating with them regardless of your faction to prevent throwing matches.

Arena Team Structure

Arena Teams are formed like guilds except instead of a tabard you get a banner which you carry around during matches. Teams are composed of 3, 4, or 5 people and can have double the players for alternates. This means a 5 man team can have 10 people in it so you don't have to worry if someone is out sick one week. To get your teams rating turned into points you have to fight at least 10 matches a week. For a member of your team to get points they must have participated in 30% of the matches. Points are awarded equally to all members of the team that meet the 30% participation rule. If you are in more then one type of arena team you only receive points from the team that did the best that week.

Arenas have very specific rules that you can fully explore in the practice rounds. Before the start of the match all buffs are removed but you are given full mana to recast and prepare any spells. Potions and most disposable items can not be used during a match. Most cooldowns on a long timer can not be used so you don't have to worry about Paladins using lay on hands during the match. If the match goes on too long items will start spawning that allow players to view stealthed opponents at the cost of a small debuff.

The Rewards

Arena points are awarded each week and can be used to buy items from the Arena quartermaster. Just like honor points there is a maximum amount which a player can hold to prevent hording. Expect items that are available from the quartermaster to change from season to season as the developers try to match pvp rewards to the current raid awards. Seasonal awards are also expect to be award to the top teams in each arena team category. Its been confirmed that one of the awards for the first season will be a the netherwind drake mount.

Predictions

Expect most teams to play a lot of games in the beginning of the season often going over 10 games each week. As the season starts to get close to the end expect the queues to get longer as teams try to hang onto their rankings.

Expect most of the members of the best 5 man team to also be in the best 3 and 4 man teams.

Expect very fast queue times since the horde and alliance imbalance will not come into play.

Expect a very low chance of running into better geared players as they should quickly increase in rating.

Expect the battlegroup forums to get a lot more popular

The Level 70 Instance Spike

As me and a couple of my friends had just recently hit level 70 we thought we would try some of the harder 5-man instances in the game. The healers we group with were running a little bit behind 70 but it was mostly because none of them were mains. In our little dungeon crawling group those of us with the most free time on our hand play a secondary character who is a healer so we can trade off on healing duties. No one really likes playing the healer so round robin helps minimize the pain. Unfortunately with our priests and druids at level 67 we ran into problems in most of the level 70 instances we tried.


The Black Morass

The Black Morass was our first stop on our quest for better loot and we had done some actual research on the event so we knew basically what to do. Our first attempt was jinxed since we had forgotten to clear out some sheathed jaguars who of course aggrod our healer on the second riftkeeper. For those of you unfamiliar with the Black Morass you basically have to kill dragonkin of the infinite dragon flight as they pop from void rifts that form around Midevh. The area around Midevh also has regular animals such as spiders, crocs, and jaguars which will aggro if you don't clear them out before approaching Medivh.

Our second attempt went better since we used our time-beacons to help take down the void rift keepers. However, we noticed that if we didn't use a time-beacon it took us too long to close the rift and another one would form. We got at a point where the next rift was already releasing dragonkin and we wiped it up. On our third try we spaced out the beacons and quickly got to the first boss. Unfortunately the bosses had the ability to auto kill the guardian from the time-beacons and we wasted two of them. We almost had him down but then he got a lucky string of crits on our tank. Needless to say we were fed up at this point and headed over to Shattered Halls where we wouldn't have to reclear every time after wiping.

Shattered Halls

Shattered Halls was easier then the Black Morass even though we had to handle large groups of elite mobs. It starts off in a long hallway filled with about 7 groups of elite fel orcs. In each group is a Legionnaire who auto revives his buddies if you don't kill him first. Guess which mob has the most hitpoints and armor class? Also sometimes you could get stuck with 3 hunters in the groups who would all use scatter shot. A lot of fun and death followed but we made it to the first boss who was actually a piece of cake. He's a warlock and would create small puddles of voidstuff which would do damage if you were near them. We just used the Hungerfen strategy and kept the tank moving around. At 25% he surprised us and started spinning around throwing shadowbolts non-stop. Luckily we had enough mana to burn him down because it was a very damaging attack.

After the first boss we got cocky and decided to keep going. The next hallway was straight from BWL and copied the suppression room. Only one of us had gotten that far into BWL so it was a learning experience. The respawning non-elites surprised us a couple of times and the fire arrows being shot at us were very annoying. After that fun hallway we were rewarded with yet another one. Only this hallway had groups of Orcish Gladiators along the side who were engaged in a Battle Royal. Its very easy to aggro the Gladiators while pulling the groups from the center of the hallway. So easy that even a orc hunter using scatter shot and running slightly out of range can cause aggro. After a couple pulls of 9 mobs we decided to try our luck in the Shadow Labs.

The Shadow Labs

The Shadow Labs started out the most promising out of all the level 70 instances. The pulls were easy and the mobs didn't seem to hit too hard. Then as we started to approach the first boss we ran into some Fel Overseers which are almost like mini bosses since they can take a hit like a Fel Reaver and fear every 30 seconds. Finally after clearing them and then some groups of channeling warlocks we got to the first boss with no wipes. Ambassador Hellmaw was a pushover just like the Grand Warlock in the Shattered Halls. He came close to killing us once since he had eliminated the majority of our warrior's armor class but we had plenty of mana to keep up the healing.

Right after this fight was probably the hardest pulls I've seen in the game. These pulls were composed of 5-6 cultists and casters and came complete with some warlock pets. That wouldn't be so bad accept that the malicious developers decided to make it so that assassins spawn and wander around the room your pulling from every 10 minutes. Thus when the assassins first appeared they cause a partial wipe and then ten minutes later the respawn caught us even more by surprised and caused a wipe. At this point we realize that even with our hunter using flare the assassins were always going to cause a wipe since we couldn't kill the groups fast enough. We decided at this point that our tank still required too much healing which was causing our healers to get aggro.

Looking back, these three instances really remind me of our early attempts at Scholomance and Stratholm. Both of them caused us numerous headaches and at the time we thought pulls of four mobs were especially difficult. They had just been revamped at that point so we thought the two instances were too hard for a single group to finish. We eventually got our warrior some better gear by doing DM and BRD and were able to handle the two undead instances much better. Of course having everyone level 60 at the time also helped and we soon picked up our Tier-0 pants and helm. Its funny that about a year from then we find ourselves in a very similar situation. It just goes to prove that no matter how new the content is in a expansion certain truths about the game tend to stay the same.

The Cost of Leveling in the Burning Crusade

If your anything like me then you've probably been on a slow but steady pace to reach level 70 since the Burning Crusade came out last month. Most people don't seem to be in that much of a rush to get a flying mount and are happy exploring the new zones and quests. However, as my character has added notches to his leveling belt I've started to notice a heart breaking trend. My critical strike and hit ratings are suffering huge drops every time I reach a new level. Its really taken some of the anticipation out of leveling since it seems I am getting a ridiculous amount of hitpoints at the cost of being attacked by the nerf bat.

Even my warrior friends are complaining. Well okay they are always complaining but this time they have a valid reason. Out of all the classes in World of Warcraft they seem to depend the most on the non-attribute stats of Dodge, Parry, Block, Crit, Hit, and Resilience. These are the bread and butter of a tank's ability to mitigate physical damage and they are basically being nerfed each level. Before level 60 the nerf is small and hardly noticeable to the average player. However, in the expansion because of the way the gear scales up so quickly Blizzard decided to multiply this penalty. Now some classes are seeing almost a half percent decrease in the non-attribute stats each level.

All in all this penalty is just a good trick to fight the mudflation of items in the expansion. Blizzard introduces these new items with much higher stats and power in an attempt to get players to buy the expansion and invest more time in their game. Yet Blizzard is a bit smarter then the average MMO company and they know that mudflation can quickly result in ridiculous numbers and overpowered players. So they make the impact of these stats mean less at the new levels in the game. Thus a warrior might squeal when they get a +45 critical strike sword without realizing that at level 70 this is only about 1%.

Now while I don't necessarily like to see my combat stats drop I do realize that Blizzard has a reason behind their madness. Basically they increased the amount of hitpoint/stamina itemization while decreasing the critical strike and hit ratings at each level for one important reason. They want to slow combat down. Previously in PvP combat it was very easy for classes with high burst damage to kill others without even giving the victim a chance to respond. By slowing down combat and giving more hitpoints to each class they are trying to prevent this scenario. After all every time someone is attacked without any chance to respond they go straight to the forums and start a nerf thread.

Still an enterprising individual can see a couple of loopholes in the current system. One of the major ones would be to equip level 57-60 characters with the green drops that come from the level 60 mobs in the Outlands. These items have the increased stat itemization and can be equipped by characters without any major penalties. Not only would a character in such armor rock through the old world content but they would also get quite the advantage in PvP combat.

Still despite the loopholes and overbearing penalties the new system might be beneficial in the long run especially if Blizzard starts releasing an expansion each year. Several games like Everquest and Dark Age of Camelot have already killed the ability of new players to join by letting expansion mudflation go unchecked. At least Blizzard is trying something proactive. And truthfully as long as the new items have higher numbers and better graphics I doubt most players will care about the penalties.

Vanguard: Example of why modern MMOs need an IP?

Vanguard launched last week much to chagrin of its beta testers who have repeatedly been on record as saying the game was not yet ready. Reviews for Vanguard invariably mention its empty locations and half implemented combat/diplomacy systems. Its not that the vision behind Vanguard was bad just that it was never really defined well enough for Sigil to deliver on. The constant rehauling of its design is what chased away its original investor and forced the company to come back to SOE, who they didn't really leave on good turns with. Now, despite being in development for five years the game still has an unfinished feel to it. Well as Tommy Boy would say "A lot of MMO's are in development for five years." And as Richard would responded "Yeah, They're called World of Warcraft."

All joking aside my horribly butchered movie quote puts a big glowing arrow directly on Vanguard's major dysfunction. It has spent way too much time in development for what they have to show. Other fantasy based MMORPGs have produced a much more polished product for far less money and in far shorter time then Vanguard. This by itself wouldn't hurt Vanguard's chances at getting fixed in production except that most of these other fantasy MMORPGs are coming out this year! As a result Vanguard's chances of pulling a Everquest 2 and slowing fixing itself in patches becomes highly unlikely. Sigil most likely won't get enough initial subscriptions and cash to fix things fast enough before the average player quits.

But why does Vanguard need so much fixing and content addition? Well to answer that question you need to know about the evolution of modern MMO games. The first generation ones that came out right after the Multi-User-Dungeons of the early nineties were unique fantasy worlds based on their own mythos. Both Ultima Online and Everquest lore were originally written as the games were being built from the ground up. Game designers had to depend on their own imaginations and what they could successful steal from D&D to create a framework for a virtual world. The art and storyline could sometimes be harder to create then the actually game mechanics.

Eventually game developers realized that buying the rights to publish an existing IP as a MMO was fairly cheap for the benefit it provided. Movies, books, and even existing console games were all turned into MMOs with varying degrees of success. Despite having different financial results these games all tended to go through production much quicker then the ones created from scratch. Only in a few cases where the developer didn't have creative control was the IP a liability rather then an asset. If you look at the line up for MMO releases this year you can see the point I am trying to make.

The Burning Crusade: Video Game IP
Vanguard: Original IP
Lord of the Rings Online: Book IP
Age of Conan: Book IP
Warhammer Online: Game IP

Vanguard is one of the few MMO releases this year not to be based on a pre-existing IP and I'm sure this has slowed down their development. Admittedly Vanguard had other factors which affected the amount of money and time they spent developing their game. However, for a game with a nebulous vision which was not well defined an IP could have provided some well needed direction. Now just because a game is based on a IP doesn't mean it will be as good as its parent. However, to be truthful game designers aren't always the best storytellers as seen in the overuse of the kill ten rat quests. Yet to hire professional writers and artists and create a virtual world from scratch costs a lot of money and time. In fact I would guess that probably the first two years of Vanguard development was spent on this process.

The only other MMO release I can come up with off the top of my head which is also a original virtual world is Tabula Rasa which shares some eerie similarities with Vanguard. Its also being headed by a lead developer of a first generation MMO and being plagued with a long development cycle. However, in the case of Tabula Rasa the funding is probably secured until the end of time due to the financial muscle EA is providing to Richard Garriott. Still one has to wonder if in the future all modern MMOs will have to either be based on a pre-existing IP or backed by an overly wealthy benefactor.