Relmstein Slaughters the Slave Pens

The Slave Pens is the first instance of Coilfang Reservoir and is located to the far left if you are facing the meeting stone. They are a lot of hard pulls in the Slave Pens so crowd control is a must have for your group. All of the mobs are humanoid so rogues and mages are going to be very useful. The instance requires less clearing then the Blood Furnace but the groups of mobs and bosses are much harder. Upon entering the Slave Pens you'll have to fight a couple groups of wandering crab people or as they are called in Illegal Danish, "Sand Lobsters". They move fast and wander all over the first cave room so its best to take them out first.

Afterwards you'll have a few stationary groups of "Broken" slaves and Naga Slavemasters. Its here where you will have to make the choice of killing the slaves or not because once the Slavemaster dies they will be become non-targetable. If you kill the slaves first you get Cenarion Expedition reputation so if you don't mind being cruel, go for it. As you clear to the tunnel at the end of the first cave beware of a patrol of two Naga warriors. After dealing with them make your way to the second cave which is much larger then the first area.

Here you will find groups of Naga and groups of Sand Lobsters. You can head to the first boss by either going left and clearing through groups of Sand Lobsters or straight ahead and clearing through the Naga. The Naga are a pain with Warriors that can fear and Enchantresses that can charm/root. The Sand Lobsters are in large clumps of five but have no real special abilities. A chest sometimes spawns to the left so I usually use that to make the decision for my group. Either way you will eventually find yourself at a building on the left side of the cave. Its guarded by two Naga Defenders which are basically warriors with spell reflect. Don't warn your mage and get a good laugh when he nukes himself for 3k.

Once in the building you will find yourself fighting elite "Broken" shadowcasters and Naga Slavemasters. These groups are a lot easier then the pure Naga ones and you should have no problem clearing them. The first boss Mennu the Betrayer walks up and down a long ramp inside the building which has several groups of mobs at its base. Every time Mennu walks up the ramp pull a group away from the base. Eventually you'll have a nice area clear for your battle with Mennu. Mennu is a shaman who lays down three types of totems. All of them are bad but the healing and fire nova ones are the worst. Have a rogue or dps warrior be on totem duty and hit them as they spawn. Everyone else can stay on Mennu who only auto-attacks and occasionally uses a shock spell. If your main tank has spell deflect the fight is very easy.

Afterwards head up the ramp onto a catwalk that reaches over into the next room. They are two patrols of Naga that wander the catwalk so take care of them first before moving into the next room. Once you get to where the catwalk reaches into the next room you'll find some patrols of Naga and Broken. Take care of them and then you can follow the catwalk until it drops down into a pool of water. Right outside of the pool you will notice another ramp with three groups of Naga around it. One group is on the ramp and two are on the sides. They all path towards the pool and then away in a short cycle. Use this timing to isolate and attack one of the groups on the side. After killing both groups on the sides you can then clear the ramp since a quest objective is at the top of it.

On the left side of the ramp with the quest objective you'll find the tunnel entrance that leads to the second boss. Take care of the two Naga Defenders by it and then proceed cautiously into the next room. The second boss Rokmar the Crackler is a giant sand lobster and has a couple groups of mobs near the area where you fight him. Pull these groups of Sand Lobsters and Naga into the tunnel so you can clear out some room. Rokmar paths back and forth on a long cycle so its easy to time the pulls not to aggro him. The Spore Bat pet and Naga Warrior will fear so its best to pull far away so a feared party member doesn't start the fight early.

Rokmar is a hard fight for this level and can quickly wipe a group. He hits hard and uses an AoE ice bolt which does around 1500 damage. He also infrequently uses a single-target damage debuff that will make the tank's life go down quick. On the good side his hitpoints are only moderate so if you can keep the dps and tank alive he will go down. If your group is only around 63-64 its best to make heavy use of healing potions so a well timed icebolt doesn't kill your casters. After Lobsterfest be prepared for the hardest pulls in the dungeon which all involve four or five Naga with special abilities.

To beat these groups of Naga without dying you'll need to have at least two forms of crowd control. Also if you have a druid healer they can sleep the Spore Bat pet which allows you to even the odds a bit more. The Naga Enchantress at this point tend to charm more often so they should be top priority. My groups usually sheep and sap the Tempest Nagas and try to burn the Healer and Enchantress down. The attack power bonus of a charmed party member is huge so beware if any dps classes get charmed.

After the four groups of annoying Naga pulls you'll find yourself in the last chamber of the instance. The first order of business here will be to take care of the two groups of wandering Sand Lobsters. They move very fast and have a weird path that makes it so that both groups will sometimes rush to the entrance of the chamber. Learn the timing then pull when a single group is near and you should have no problems. Afterwards you'll see another small group of Naga and a Night Elf in a cage to the left.

After killing the Naga you can release the Night Elf from her cage which will trigger an ambush attack. With her help the ambush is easy to win as long as your casters have mana at the start of the fight. The former prisoner will give you a Nature Resistance buff and fulfill a quest objective when you talk to her. The buff is useful for winning the final boss fight but she is usually killed if you wipe on him. So don't mess it up. Have everyone talk to her and if you have a hunter have him turn on his nature aspect.

Quagmirran is a beast who doesn't hit as hard as Rokmar but has a more damaging AoE attack. Luckily his poison based AoE is a cone spell so if the tank can keep the boss 180 degrees from the rest of your party you'll be fine. Beware that Quagmirran likes to knock his target back a little bit so be careful that your healers don't lose line of sight if the tank gets knocked into the water. Also he will spit a poison out randomly at people but it can be dispelled. This fight is easy as long as the tank can hold aggro and Quagmirran doesn't spew his bad breath on everyone. Believe me, it stinks.

The Instances of the Burning Crusade

The new instances in the Burning Crusade have kept me so entertain that I have found a couple of my last posts basically turn into walkthroughs for them. To get this out of my system so I can talk about other topics and perhaps even a MMO besides World of Warcraft I've decided to post the basic order of all the new instances in World of Warcraft. I am going to structure it on recommended level from WoWwiki starting with the five man instances. I've also done the Slave Pens and Underbog a couple of times since hitting 65 so don't be too suprised to see walkthroughs appear for them also.

Hellfire Citadel: Hellfire Ramparts.com (60-62 mobs, 5 player groups)
Bosses: Watchkeeper Gargolmar - Vazruden & Nazan - Omor the Unscarred

Hellfire Citadel: Blood Furnace (61-63 mobs, 5 player groups)
Bosses: The Maker - Broggok - Keli'dan the Breaker

Coilfang Reservoir: The Slave Pens (62-64 mobs, 5 player groups)
Bosses: Mennu the Betrayer - Rokmar the Crackler - Quagmirran

Coilfang Reservoir: The Underbog (63-65 mobs, 5 player groups)
Bosses: Hungarfen - Ghaz'an - Swamplord Musel'ek - The Black Stalker

Auchindoun: Mana Tombs (64-66 mobs, 5 player groups)
Bosses: Pandemonius - Tavarok - Nexus-Prince Shaffar

Auchindoun: Auchenai Crypts (65-67 mobs, 5 player groups)
Bosses: Shirrak the Dead Watcher - Exarch Maladaar

Caverns of Time: Escape from Durnholde (66–68 mobs, 5 player groups)
Bosses: Lieutenant Drake - Captain Skarloc - The Epoch Hunter

Auchindoun: Sethekk Halls (67-69 mobs, 5 player groups)
Bosses: Darkweaver Syth - Talon King Ikiss

Caverns of Time: Opening the Dark Portal - (70 mobs, 5 player groups)
Bosses: Chrono Lord Deja - Temporus - Aeonus

Tempest Keep: The Mechanar (69-72 mobs, 5 player groups)
Bosses: First Layer: Gatewatcher Gyro-Kill - Gatewatcher Iron-Hand - Mechano-Lord Capacitus - Nethermancer Sepethrea - Pathaleon the Calculator

Hellfire Citadel: The Shattered Halls (70-72 mobs, 5 player groups)
Bosses: Grand Warlock Nethekurse - Warbringer O'mrogg - Kargath Bladefist

Coilfang Reservoir: The Steamvault (70-72 mobs, 5 player groups)
Bosses: Hydromacer Thespia - Mekgineer Steamrigger - Warlord Kalithresh

Auchindoun: Shadow Labyrinth (70-72 mobs, 5 player groups)
Bosses: Ambassador Hellmaw - Blackheart the Inciter - Grandmaster Vorpil - Murmur

Tempest Keep: The Botanica (70-72 mobs, 5 player groups)
Bosses: Commander Sarannis - High Botanist Freywinn - Thorngrin the Tender - Laj - Warp Splinter

Tempest Keep: The Arcatraz (70-72 mobs, 5 player groups)
Bosses: Zereketh the Unbound - Wrath-Scryer Soccothrates - Dalliah the Doomsayer - Warden Mellichar Event

Karazhan: (Key Quest Requires Shadow Labyrinth/Steamvault/Arcatraz, 10 player raid)
Final Bosses: Nightbane

Zul'Aman: (TBA, 10 player raid)

Gruul's Lair (No Key, 25 player raid)
Bosses: High King Maulgar - Kiggler the Crazed - Blindeye the Seer - Olm the Summoner - Krosh Firehand - Gruul

Magtheridon's Lair (No Key, 25 player raid)
Final Boss: Magtheridon

Serpentshrine Cavern (Key Quest, 25 player raid)
Final Boss: Lady Vashj

Tempest Keep: The Eye (Key Quest Chain, 25 player raid)
Final Boss: Prince Kael'thas Sunstrider

Caverns of Time: Battle on Mount Hyjal (Long Quest Chain, 25 player raid)

The Black Temple: (TBA, Full 25 player raid zone)

Burning Crusade Dungeon Key Guide

Turbine Tries something New

Turbine the maker of the new upcoming Lord of the Rings MMO is offering some surprise subscription offers for those who sign up early with their game. One of their options is a 9.99$ a month subscription plan which is the lowest MMO rate I've seen since about 2000. The other plan is even more mind boggling since its a lifetime subscription for just 199$. Both offers require you to sign up and probably pay before release but guarantee you a spot in their open beta in March. Also noteworthy is that they will move your beta characters to the live server in April when the game is released.

I don't like the idea of beta characters getting a head start over everyone else but with Turbine wanting a monetary commitment before release I can see a need for the punch and pie. And believe me, when you start doing the math of how much your spend on an average MMO their offers start to sound really good. Especially, the lifetime subscription offer which could allow you to move from new game to new game while still maintaining a presence in Lord of the Rings. Most casual gamers aren't going to pick up on this offer but I think every hardcore gamer who tends to stick with a MMO for over a year just had an epiphany.

Turbine is thinking smart with this lifetime subscription plan since it basically guarantees a constant population of hardcore gamers in Lord of the Rings. Most big subscription MMO games charge around 15$ a month which puts a yearly charge of around 180 for playing. Hardcore gamers are going to see that the game will keep them entertained for at least a year and drop the dough for the plan. Then as expansions and new patches are released for the game they will keep coming back since their is no barrier of having to re-subscribe.

So why is that important? Well the hardcore might not make the most amount of money for MMO companies but they have a habit of making or breaking any game release. Their reviews and word of mouth tends to spread through most internet forums and gathers huge anticipation for games from the general gamer population. If enough hardcore gamers become lifetime residents then Turbine can see this digital word of mouth spread very fast for their game and any future content for it. Of course this could be a bad thing if they start turning out less then stellar content but so far reviews for the initial game look good.

Of course Turbine has had some rocky history in the MMO world and has never really seen the wild success of a games such as DAoC, Everquest, or Final Fantasy XI. Their most popular release to date was the original Asheron's Call which hit its peak of around 125,000 subscriptions back in 2001. Since then they have had the lackluster launch of Asheron's Call 2 and the slow growth of Dungeons and Dragons Online. Still the company does have at least three MMO games under its belt and every one of them went over 45,000 subscribers. No Auto Assaults in their history. If practice makes perfect then maybe Turbine might finally be ready to really grab a large share of the MMO market.

What Controls the Nerf Bat?

A few thread discussions have sprung up on the World of Warcraft forums talking about what the most nerfed class is in the game. Every poster has their own reasons why they think a specific class is the most nerfed and surprisingly enough its not always because they play that class. A few point to the warriors which have been the most consistently nerfed since the beginning of the game. Still others point to classes that have received fewer nerfs but ones they argue were more devastating to damage output and survivability.

All the arguing and trolling made me stop and think about what probably directs the nerf bat to hit a class in a MMO. Despite what most players think its not that the developers have their favorite classes or that they listen to whoever whines the most on the interweb. Instead its most likely a combination of statistics, abilities, and flexibility which determines where the feared foam covered instrument strikes. Thinking about the current class checks and balances I came up with six categories where I see developers introducing nerfs and on rare occasions, buffs.

The Balance Categories

Burst Damage: How much damage can the class deal quickly in a short amount of time?

Damage Mitigation: How much melee and spell damage can the class receive and still survive?

Crowd Control: How effective are crowd control against the class and how effective are their own?

Casting Times: How many instant cast abilities and spells does the class have?

Range Damage: How damaging are the range attacks of a class?

Hybrid Viability: Can the class assume more then one role in the trinity of Tank/Healer/DPS?

Making a decision to nerf a class ability often revolves around balancing the power of these six categories so that if one is high another is low. The developers want classes which play very different from one another but still have the same power.

Burst Damage is very effective in PvP since its hard for a players to react to suddenly losing most of their life. Also its effective on boss mobs since they have a habit of using enrage or other special abilities near death.

Damage Mitigation is important since the longer the class can stay alive the more effect they have on the battle. The type of armor a player is allowed to wear plays an important part in damage mitigation along with base hit points. Also healers are treated as having slightly more mitigation then non-healers.

Crowd Control is important since it allows increases the likelihood of getting spells and abilities off on a target. Also the ability to escape crowd control abilities plays an important role when fighting certain classes since its almost as good as having damage mitigation.

Casting Times determine how often a spell or ability can be interrupted or stopped. The longer the casting time the higher the chance for the spell or ability to be interrupted. Instant spells or abilities are often of lower power or require a sacrifice in one of the other categories.

Range Damage effectively lowers the amount of movement a player is forced to worry about to keep his target within damage range. It also can be combine with surprise attack or crowd control abilities to create a huge advantage.

Hybrid Viability is the category that causes all of the problems when balancing classes. Certain classes can choose talents or gear that changes their role in the holy trinity and allows them to have greater flexibility in combat. This greater flexibility often causes hybrid classes to be gently tap by the nerf bat every patch as developers try to balance their power with their flexibility.

Some Class examples of the Balance Act

Paladin
Burst Damage: Bad
Damage Mitigation: Good
Crowd Control: Medium
Casting Times: Good
Range Damage: Bad
Hybrid Viability: Good

Rogue
Burst Damage: Good
Damage Mitigation: Medium
Crowd Control: Good
Casting Times: Good
Range Damage: Bad
Hybrid Viability: Bad

The exact effectiveness of each class in the six categories can change depending on how their talent points are spent but developers make sure there are trade-offs. For example a paladin can chose talents all the way into the retribution tree and gain crusader strike but will lose either the quicker casting of the holy tree or the added mitigation of the protection tree. The categories can even be broken down into sub-categories. Priests trade the damage mitigation of being able to heal themselves for mitigation against melee attacks in shadow form.

Since this is just a quick run through of what directs the nerf bat I am sure I missed a category or two. Feel free to make any suggestions in the comments.

Relmstein blows through the Blood Furnace

My Blood Furnace Walkthrough

The Blood Furnace is the opposite of the Ramparts in that the bosses are easy but clearing through it can be a pain. The instance takes about half an hour longer as there is also a lot more trash to kill. Before heading there you should have the quests to explore the Blood Furnace and the quest to collect 10 vials of Fel Orc Blood. Both result in good blue rewards for level 60 players. The majority of the boss drops are healer items though a couple assorted other items can be found.

At the start of the Blood Furnace are a couple of pulls of standard warrior mobs without any special abilities. Right behind them are groups of warlocks complete with non elite imp pets. Take care of the imps first since they have a quick cast fire spell that does around 1200 dmg. Behind these warlock groups you'll notice a closed off tunnel entrance which will open when you defeat the final boss. After taking care of the first group of warlocks turn left and clear your way up a huge ornate ramp. Be prepared for surprise attacks by pathing Fel Orc Rogues which are impossible to spot when your in the low sixties.

At the top of the ramp is a glass corridor filled with several groups of warlocks with imp pets. Use line of sight or silence to pull one of the groups unto the ramp way to avoid the single pathing warlock. Keep in mind that if a warlock is pathing and doesn't have a pet then most likely he will summon a succubus that will seduce someone right away. So its in your best interest to disrupt their summon spells. You can now go into the corridor and look down to get a view of Magtheridon and the final instance boss in the center of a pentagram.

Continue clearing the corridor making sure to kill imp pets first until you get to the room at the other side. At this point you will be introduced to the pain in the ass of the instance, the Fel Orc Technician. These mobs throw dynamite and set down mines which are very reminiscent of Gnomeregan. In the following room you should use what crowd control you have so you only have to fight one Technician at a time. When they lay a mine down back up a good 10 yards since they explode for 1800 dmg and silence. The only way I have found to clear the mines so far is to set them off with full health or have a rogue disarm them.

Once the room has been cleared its time to engage the first boss the Maker. Its a fairly simple fight with the boss using basic melee attacks. About once per fight he will charm a party member so be prepared to have someone grab aggro if the tank goes AWOL. The charm only lasts for a few seconds so a short term crowd control ability is the best way to counter the renegade. After the fight you can look forward to another hallway filled with Technicians, Rogues, and brand new Fel Orcs. These non-elite Fel Orcs don't have the hit points of their experienced cousins but still hit just as hard so target them first.

At the end of the hallway you'll find yourself in a room similar to the one where you fought the Maker. Use the same techniques to clear it of mobs until you are at the lever in the center of the room. Make sure to have full mana and hit points then pull the lever which will start the second boss encounter. The second boss Broggok is easier then the Maker but you have to fight all the captive Fel Orcs in the cages around you first. A total of four cages will open one after the other and spit out quite a large amount of orcs. They are mixture of elite and non-elite orcs so make sure to use your crowd control on the elite ones since they take longer to kill.

After the hard part of the fight when the last orc is dead Broggok comes out of the main cage. He looks like a mix between a Beholder and a Metroid but has only a few special abilities. If you are familiar with the snake priest in Zul'gurub then you'll recognize his AoE poison and keep out of it. He's goes down fairly quick which is nice since killing all those orcs beforehand has probably depleted your mana. A trick some people make use of is to keep the last orc of the fourth cage crowd controlled while everyone regains mana/bandages in combat.

After Brogguk you'll have to clear through a room filled with more warlocks with imp and fel reaver pets. The Fel Reavers hit hard and have a nasty habit of ignoring standard aggro gaining abilities. Especially watch out for Fel Annihilators since they tend to live up to their name. Once through the room you will see a hallway that leads down to the pit you saw from the upper glass corridor. At the beginning of this hallway is a nasty group of 6 imps and a warlock. Use line of sight so that all the imps charge through the doorway then start nuking. This will group them up so that you can make use of any AoE spells you might have. One mage should be able to kill them fairly quickly.

Continue down the hallway dispatching a couple more fel reavers and warlocks until you get to the final boss room. Keli'dan the Breaker is another easy boss who just happens to have a lot of friends. His five friends who make up a pentagram prison for Magtheridon are all shadowcasters. They have a nasty debuff which greatly increases shadow damage and they all love casting shadowbolt. Open the fight up with your crowd control abilities and have anyone who can dispel, concentrate on getting rid of the debuff. Once all five casters are dead Keli'dan will attack.

He's a very simple boss with only one deadly ability that is a point blank AoE. When he shouts out "Come Closer" run away since he's about to use a 2,000 fire dmg spell. Other then that the fight is fairly simple and goes quickly. Afterwards thankfully Magtheridon does not reach up through the floor and kill you. However, a the tunnel to the instance entrance does open up allowing you to easily reset and try again for the loot that didn't drop for you. Its nice to see Blizzard designing better dungeons and no longer leaving people trapped after a boss fight like in the popular Marudon instance.

Relmstein rocks the Hellfire Ramparts

My Hellfire Ramparts Walkthrough

The first instance in the Burning Crusade is a short one and only contains three boss fights. Its about as challenging as Dire Maul North with the mobs hitting about as hard as the Ogre Reavers there. The big difference you notice in the dungeon is that the boss fights are a bit more challenging then the ones commonly found in Azerothian (yes its a word) dungeons. Before going in make sure to do the quests from your faction's respective tower/base near Hellfire Citadel. This will eventually lead to the quest "Weaken the Ramparts" which has good blue rewards. For the Alliance do "illfire Omens" then go to the castle in Honor Hold to talk to the lieutenent in there for the quest.

The path to the first boss (Watchkeeper Gargolmar) is paved with small groups of fel orc hunters, warlocks and reavers. Also present are non-elite dogs which don't hit very hard but stack a bleed effect much like the infamous hounds of Molten Core. While clearing through these small groups make sure to kill the dogs first since a fully stacked bleed effect does over 700dmg a tick. At one point while clearing groups, a small pack of 3 dogs will be sent against you so be on the lookout for them. When you get to the Watchkeeper be relieved that he is not as nasty as he looks. Simply make sure to kill his two gurards first as your tank keeps the Watchkeeper busy. His special ability is a charge so keep everyone close to the tank during the fight. The boss also has a reduce healing effect so its in everyone's best interest to burn him down quickly.

After the Watchkeeper you have a fun group to kill at the top of a spiral rampway. Its comprised of 4 warlocks and a warrior and is situated so that its easy for the warlocks to fear you into the next group of mobs. To avoid this use line of sight to pull most of the warlocks onto the spiral rampway. Make use of any crowd control and interrupts your party has to stop the Warlocks from casting Rain of Fire. After that fight clear your way to the open area ahead and turn right. You can see the final boss flying on his mount at this time but you'll want to kill Omor the Unscarred first.

If you have silent shot or another way of pulling casters then the two orc warlocks in front of the Unscarred can be pulled first. The Unscarred himself is probably the toughest boss of the instance but has no range attacks which makes the fight fairly easy if you have non melee dps. His special abilities are: a gravity flux which will send one member of the party high into the sky, a DoT life drain, and felhound summoning. He also hits especially hard and almost always uses the gravity flux on the tank. Get ready for someone to grab aggro when the tank all of sudden finds himself with a good view of Citadel.

After providing Omor with some battlewounds go back to the open area and get ready for the final boss. The two guards in front of the bosses Vazruden and Nazan trigger them to attack when they die, so be ready. One is a fairly simple warrior boss without many hitpoints who will attack from the ground. While doing this his dragon looking mount will throw fireballs that explode and burn on the ground. This is very similar to the the Bat Priestess encounter in Zul'gurub so simply avoid stepping onto the patches of fire.

You'll want to quickly kill the warrior boss since eventually his mount will land and start using a cone of fire attack which hits for around 1500. Its quite common for the mount to land and catch everyone in the cone of fire and wipe the party. To avoid this have someone run down to meet the dragon mount and turn him away from the rest of the party when he lands. Once the mount dies a chest will spawn after a couple of seconds with two blue items in it. Also an Ominous Letter can be found on one of the bosses which provides a nice quest for the next instance, The Blood Furnace.

My First Day in the Burning Crusade

9:00am-5:30pm: Work

5:30-6:30pm: Eat and Drive at the same time on way to Best Buy

6:30pm: Find a million copies of TBC at Best Buy and feel foolish for rushing

7:00pm: Scream at 2.82mb patch stuck at 89%.

7:02pm: Download patch from a mirror and feel foolish again for not trying a mirror first

7:04pm: Make way through the portal and fly to Honor Hold

7:08pm: Make friends go to the first instance since the lag in Hellfire Pennisula is bad

7:10pm-12:00am: Run Hellfire Ramparts over and over again trying for Warrior/Paladin loots

12:01am-1:00pm: Try to Figure out how to get the Weaken the Ramparts quest.

1:00 am: Go to Bed, have dreams of red orcs who continually deny me plate gear

Things to do this Weekend

In an attempt to stop the madness and try to regain some order I decided to share Relmstein's list of things to do before the Burning Crusade. Most of these items are centered around improving your financial situation and preparedness (probably a word) for the expansion. I hope that I can a lead a few of you bored souls away from the path of ganking and onto something more helpful to society, like AH price gouging. Anyways here's what I'm going to be doing this weekend. You can ignore it, copy it, or canonize it and make it your religious text. Just don't complain of boredom and kill low level alts. I've got a hunter I need to get to 58 by Tuesday.

1) Clean out your Bank - you don't need your old resistance gear or the hundreds of items being saved for quests you are never going to do. Also get rid of items for faction grinds that don't matter anymore like scourgestones and cenarion badges.
You are about to get all new faction grinds and believe me there will be new resistance gear that will be much better.

2) Liquidize your Armor and Weapons - the expansion will eat up your gold very quickly as you try a new tradeskill or buy that awesome new armor at an inflated price. Sell any non soulbound weapons/armor quickly before the economy becomes unstable with the new expansion. You don't want to be bankrupt when you see an upgrade or when it comes time to buy new spells. Chances are that very few people will be buying any level 50-60 items until the new crop of Drenai and Blood Elves get that high.

3) Save your Tradeskill Materials and Low Level Items - A lot of trade materials are expected to jump in price with the expansion especially those connected with jewelcrafting. Save up the stuff that you think will sell well to people in the future. Remember that currency drop rates increase at higher levels so expect the prices of most items to go up. Also expect a billion low level alts to soon appear as both the horde and alliance get to try out a new class.

4) Visit the Old 60 Dungeons - This might be the last time you can ever find a group to do them. If you can manage to find someone who needs an upgrade from the dungeon, bring them along. The more friends you have who are well equipped the better your chances are in the first couple of instances in the expansion. Do not camp lower level dungeon entrances to try to find some PvP action. Instead go to the dark portal for that kinda of stuff.

5) Find a Leveling Buddy - With the concentration of horde and alliance in the new zones and their linear nature of leveling you can expect to be running into the opposite faction constantly. A lot of quests are going to require PvP objectives and some of the towns will switch factions depending on those objectives. After the first batch of people have hit level 70 things might get less crowded but if you are going to be playing the expansion any time this month expect to be ganked and have your mobs stolen.

6) Research the New Dungeons - Try to find out which instances are keyed and which ones are especially hard in the expansion. Believe me no matter what information you find the dungeon will still seem brand new compared to Stratholm or Scholomance. Loot tables are especially nice to look at since they make you yearn for that one drop that would complete your character. Of course it wll never drop for you but its dreams that keep us going. WoWwiki and the Warcry sites are pretty good for information along with assorted forums. Note: Not the WoW forums.

TBC Anticipation Leads to General Craziness

I've been busy at work this week and my blog posts suffered as a result. Luckily from what I have been reading I didn't miss much. The Dark Portal event is a huge dissapointment and is only memorable in that the horde and alliance are both trying to hold it for bragging rights. On servers with horrible alliance queue times this is quickly becoming the PvP hot spot. Other goodies from the last patch include warlocks getting hit with the nerf bat and a bunch of annoying little bugs with game textures and sounds. My favorite is the battleground bug which causes the ding sound to go off every 2 minutes when you're in a queue.

With the expansion still a couple days away I know most World of Warcraft players are going stir crazy from the waiting. I've seen some weird things lately as the anticipation for the expansion is drawing more players to return to the game early. Just look at the new milestone of 8 million players and you know the population flood is starting. However, it seems that once in the game these returning players are having trouble finding any real goals they can accomplish before the expansion. As a result they are falling back on the time honored goal of annoying other people.


Some Signs that Azeroth has gone Crazy:

1) VanCleef has apparently hired groups of Tier-3 horde to guard his not very secret base. Reports are in that the Fanglords have a similar aggreement with the alliance.

2) An enchantment link which disconnects players the first time they click on it is making the rounds of every chat channel in the game. Avoid unfamiliar links and never, ever, get into a car with one.

3) For the first time ever the alliance Arathi Baisin queue was seen to be longer then the Alterac Valley one. Relmstein upon logging in and discovering this decided to take up an employment opportunity with the Fanglords.

4) Highlord Kruul can be regularly found outside Stormwind eating millions of alliance newbies. The only guilds that have managed beat him have had to distract his fuel source (newbs) with promises of a free Hogger raid.

5) The Mr. Smith Effect: Because of the unequal battleground queue times large groups of identically geared horde now patrol Azeroth. The only way to tell them apart is to closely inspect the different Smith's belts which are an eclectic collection of crappy greens.

6) The chances of being randomly mind controlled while roaming the countryside is now much more common. Make sure to learn what the word defenestration means since bored priests seem eager to explain.

Expect a short list of real goals you can accomplish before the expansion comes out to be posted soon.

How High will WoW's numbers go with the expansion?

The time is growing near for the first expansion of World of Warcraft to be released and most fans are holding their breath in anticipation. Many people have grown overly familiar with the current content in the game but stuck it out since the expansion was just around the corner. But for every person who stayed with the game, another left and vowed not to return until there was new content. Now a lot of people are starting to wonder, "Just how many players will come back?"

Its an important question since a high amount of returning players could effect server stability. Around the time of patch 1.9 Blizzard announced 7 million subscribers with about 2 million of them being in North America. Since no new milestone markers have been announced since then, we can assume that the numbers have probably fallen or stayed the same. With the release of the expansion though a good majority of ex-WoW players are expected to return. After all no new games are scheduled to be released until Vanguard in Febuary. This leaves a good period of time for the temptation of new MMORPG content to work its magic.

With the upgrades in game servers, patching, and account management Blizzard seems confident they are ready for the increase the expansion will bring. Sources from the WoW forums give information that Blizzard is preparing to handle up to a 25% increase in traffic. Of course the problem is that not only will the server traffic increase but that it will all be concentrated in the new Burning Crusade zones. Hopefully, this trend has been taken into effect and Blizzard has special ways of dealing with said population concentration without zone crashes and crushing latency.

Based on previous trends in the subscriber base I'm predicting sometime in March that Blizzard will anounce the 10 million milestone for World of Warcraft.

Most Horde are Done with PvP for Now

For the last week or two I noticed that the queue times have worked their way slowly back up to pre patch 2.0.1 numbers. There still seems to be a million alliance players wanting to earn the pvp rewards but they seem to be having trouble finding opponents. The near instant queue times for the majority of horde players has quickly gotten them all the rewards. In fact from my horde character's experience the major roadblock to earning equipment was not honor but Alterac Valley tokens. Luckily most of the epic armor only requires Arathi Baisin tokens which are easy for my orc warrior to earn.

However, the majority of horde players have already completed their epic sets and stopped participating in battlegrounds. This is bad for most Alliance players since some servers now have 17-25 minute queue times for AB and WSG. This makes it harder to form PUG premade teams. Plus long queue times guarantee that some people will be AFK and not join a battleground when it starts. Arathi Baisin is especially terrible since some games will start with only 7-9 alliance and a full 15 horde. WSG and AV are less effected by this since the first few minutes of the game does not effect the outcome as much as it does in AB.

The only good thing about most of the horde population having already earned their rewards is that it has significantly reduced the number of well equipped horde playing. I see end game items on my opponents a lot less often now then I did a few weeks ago. Though yesterday I did run into three tauren warriors with Askandi, Dark Edge of Insanity, and Thunderyfury. Still for the most part the remainder of the horde seem to be those with blue and tier-1 who missed out on the pre-nerf honor rush. So my pvp forecast for the future until January 16th is:

Alliance: Queue times back to normal but with a better chance of winning battlegrounds. Chance of raiding guild pre-mades around 20% for the most part. Expect queue times to increase as more horde complete their pvp sets.

Horde: Queue times down from a couple of minutes to instant. Chance of raiding guild pre-mades around 40%. Expect a large range of gear quality in your opponents since many hardcore alliance have yet to save up to the 75,000 honor point limit.

New Year's Resolutions from the MMO Industry

Our massive amount of subscribers will no longer prevent our patches and expansions from being playable the week they come out. Also the honor nerf is being rescinded.
-Blizzard

We will try to to retrict some of the general sleeziness of our user base and prevent press conferences from being invaded by flying genitalia.
-Linden Labs

This Lord of the Rings liscense cost us a fortune, please play our game and we promise not to suck.
-Turbine

We promise that we ignored most of our hardcore crazy beta testers and that our game will not require degrees in catassing and spawn camping.
-Sigil

We swear to god that we can handle having Vanguard and EQ2 on our all access pass. Heck, EQ3 will probably join them in a couple years.
-SOE

We promise that we are not just making the PvP game that World of Warcraft left out.
-EA Mythic

Tabula Rasa will not be the next Planetside. We have Lord British and a way cooler name.
-NCSoft

I know Spore is an icky name but I promise I'm a fun-guy.
-Will Wright

Areae is not Neopets with the Star Wars Galaxies crafting system
-Raph Koster



Found the idea of MMO resolutions from a couple of places like Amber Night and Penny-Arcade. Note that these are fake New Year's resolutions so yes the WoW honor nerf is still in effect and Areae could indeed have the SWG crafting system.

What determines Skillz in MMORPGs?

When you defeat someone in online player vs. player combat just how rewarding do you find it? In Real Time Strategy games those who can multitask and click fast seem to have the advantage. In First Person Shooters the players with good hand-eye coordination and knowledge of the maps dominate. It seems that depending on the genre of online gameplay different traits come into play for determining the better player. So what traits define "Skillz" in Massive Multiplayer Online games?

The number one trait that seems to give an advantage in MMO combat seems to be time spent playing. Unlike the other genres its not just that players learn the subtle nuances of combat by practicing. Players also attain statistical advantages to combat by increasing both their level and the equipment on their characters over time. As a general rule characters that have been played more often are going to beat players that have been played less.

Some roadblocks are thrown in during the end game of most MMOs to try to slow down those with large amounts of free time. But they never seem to work. Despite the ridiculously high time cost of end game items many players will eventually pay it. After all MMOs are popular since they are relatively cheap for the hundreds of hours of entertainment they provide. However, players with the less time intensive gear are forced to work on improving other traits to be competive in PvP.

1) Time Spent Playing: Time played = Quality of Gear, and better gear provides the statistical advantage in almost every aspect of combat. A tier-3 equipped player can be half asleep and playing against good players and still win if they are only wearing blues. In my opinion the gear advantage from having a high /played time will offset two of any other traits I've listed.

2) Timing: Patience is a virtue and being able to know the cooldowns of your spells and abilities keeps you one major step ahead of your button mashing opponents. Know which spells take too long to cast and aren't likely to go off during combat. Plan your crowd control abilities around your other spells. Rogues aren't the only ones who can time abilities to lock down a player.

3) Teamwork: Combat is almost never 1v1 and being able to integrate your character's abilities with another makes you both stronger. I'm not just talking about having a healer following you around. Knowing when to leave an enemy alone cause they have been crowd controlled or already about to die because of dots can be crucial. Having a chat channel can artificially boost teamwork but people truly skilled in this area will know what to expect from good players and be prepared to react to their abilities.

4) Preparation: For player vs. environment combat this mostly means researching information to know the outline of a quest or raid boss before you begin the fight. In player vs. player combat this generally means having the consumables and trinkets to break out of someone else's good timing. Fear, root, snare, and critical strikes can all be offset off by consumables and trinkets. Its amazing how many times a cheap pvp healing potion from the AV vendors will save your life in the battlegrounds.

5) Interface: Old MMO games had interfaces set in stone which often required players to use special programs to modify. But newer games often include macro and scripting languages which allow players to reduce the amount of keys they need to press. Thus a player's favorite combo attack or complex spell sequence can be put into a single key. Then it just becomes an issue of reaction time since the computer is really doing all the timing. And I hate to say it but a computer is always going to win in a contest of timing abilities.

Five Things You Didn't Know About Me

So I take a nice vacation from work for two weeks and what do I find when I get back? Apparently I've been called out by a chain post that has been making the rounds of MMO bloggers. So thanks to Tobold on my first day back I got to come up with weird facts about myself. Oh well if anyone else has noticed I have a natural tendency to make lists on this blog anyways.

1) I was the world's youngest poolman.
My dad ran a pool cleaning business in Florida and thought that doing chores around the house wasn't enough for an allowance. Thus as far back as age seven I have memories of cleaning pool filters and testing water samples. It was kind of a drag and convinced me that working outside in the sun was deffinitely not for me. On the other hand I did learn cool things like mixing Cholrine and Muratic Acid makes mustard gas. Kids don't try it at home.

2) I earned a sports varsity letter in high school.
Despite being a hardcore nerd now, I used to play sports in High School well enough to make it on Varsity. Of course by sports I am talking about bowling which qualifies as a sport as much as synchronized swimming. But then again you do compete against other people by doing a physical activity. So it has all the technical qualifications of a sport. You just have to ignore the french fries and beers that always seem to be in our hands.

3) I've almost been eaten by water beast.
On a canoe trip off a tributary of the St. John's River me and my brother managed to piss off a 16 foot alligator. We hit him pretty hard when we were paddling and to return the favor he decided to almost tip our canoe. Luckily he decided from all the screaming and cursing that he had evened the score and left. The thing that really sucked was that my brother lost his paddle in the commotion so I was stuck paddling solo. After going upstream for a mile I wish the gator had bitten my arm off.

4) I got through undergrad and grad school debt free.
I know I suprised myself also by doing it. I had been saving up money in high school forever and instead of getting a car decided to keep on saving. My savings combined with a good part time job actually allowed me to get a Masters without the indenture servitude of student loans. Of course I did eat ramen and macroni for 6 years straight but I make it up to myself by having steak at least once a week now. Hmmm steak.

5) I'm at war with wasps and bees
Its not that I'm afraid of them but they tend to really piss me off. Like waving red in front of a bull, every time I see a wasp nest I search for the biggest bottle of Raid and go to town. Apparently, I was stung once when I was a toddler and instead of crying, I spent the next 10 minutes stomping the little bugger to death. Since then I swear the little monsters seek me out for revenge. I hate needles and it goes double when they are attached to insect ass.

I am calling out Saylah, Kinless, and the KTR Guys to continue this post or beware the curse.

Chat or Die

I've been enjoying my vacation recently and venturing into that fabled instance, the real world, for the majority of it. However, after about a week of enjoying the fresh mountain air and now the white sandy beaches I'm ready for some more inside activities. Plus its very embarressing to have a sunburn in December. You have to have to be practically an albino and fall asleep in a hammock reading the newest R.A. Salvatore but it can be done. So while I'm hiding out to avoid being compared to a lobster I thought I would try to get back on track posting on my blog. Not much has changed since the last patch in World of Warcraft to write about though. Guild raiding is still at a low, Tier 3 pre-mades are still hording honor, and most people are still complaining about maxing out on marks of honor. I know I've started to use mine to collect epic mounts.

I think the new PvP system is still at the front of everyone's mind until the expansion comes out next month. Most people are hoping to collect at least part of the pvp armor set since doing the first Hellfire Citadel instance in epic gear has got to be a lot easier then Scholo/Strat tier-0 gear. Plus from the layout of the zones in the Burning Crusade you can be sure that questing is going to involve defending yourself from the opposite faction at every turn. With the world objectives and conquerable neutral towns it seems like there is going to be a lot more PvP in the expansion then in the old world. Thus if your planning on questing in the first zone in the Burning Crusade its looking like you might want to at least have the full epic pvp set.

So to speed you on your course to epic pvp gear I decide to post a small hint that helps me a lot when I go into the battlegrounds. I usually play with a group of friends from real life but we don't number enough to make a full pre-made group. Usually its just 5-7 of us going into WSG and AB together. What makes a difference of course is a chat channel. Now I know a lot of people use chat software like Xfire or Teamspeak already but from what I've seen a decent percentage of people still have no idea how to set up any kind of chat software.

The free ventrilo server offered at ventrilo.org is good for learning how client/server chat works. It's limited to only allowing 8 people onto the server but its easily hosted on the same computer you play games on. Plus since your running the server you can simply turn it off when you don't want to host it. Thus it really does become the disposable chat server.

Steps for Free Ventrilo Server

1) Download the Client and Server from http://www.ventrilo.com/download.php

2) Get your IP address from http://www.ventrilo.com/myip.php or use the ipconfig command

3) Click on the Server Icon to start it. Then Downsize it.

4) Click on the Client Icon and put the IP address into the Client. If you have a router look in the forums to learn how to setup port forwarding.

5) Chose a Hotkey under Setup that you will hold down to talk. I like to use the ~(tilde) key.


Voice communication is the number one advantage in battlegrounds that pre-mades have over teams of random people. Its easy to coordinate flag running in WSG when you can call out crowd control and when not to break out. Nothing is more frustrating then watching someone break that sheeped warlock so he can fear your flag runner backwards into a tide of red names. In Arathi Baisin players at the lumber mills can quickly call out incomings for both the blacksmith and the farm with a chat channel. Its also much easier for people to break up evenly so that you don't get huge clumps of defenders at one resource node.

If your goal is to collect the pvp gear then you are going to have to get some sort of chat capability to be functional. Else always expect to lose to pre-made groups even if they are just wearing greens and blues. Don't depend on others to make a chat channel for you, be proactive and figure out the software for one of them.

Honor Nerf destroys Alliance PvP

With the recent pvp revamp it became quite possible for many casual players to partake in the battlegrounds and gain epic rewards equal to about the Tier-2 raid set. However, the rate at which these rewards were being earned was very high for some individuals. As a result the developers decided to implement a hotfix into the game which reduced the honor rate for players by about 30%. While a change was needed to maintain the value of the pvp rewards this change has had major consequences for some players.

The population imbalance between horde and alliance makes pvp changes especially difficult to balance because of the difference in queue times. Since I have several level 60 characters on both factions and they just happen to be in the same battlegroup I was able to collect some data on the rates of honor gain. Most horde players were earning about 18-25k honor for playing about 7 hours with queue times that were at most a couple of minutes. The alliance who were running into average queue times of 11-16 minutes for AB/WSG and 35-45 minutes for AV were earning about 10k honor for playing 7 hours. These numbers were based on non-premade teams and reflect last weekend on Lightnings Blade and Shadowmoon servers.

The main problem with the honor nerf is that while it lowers the rate at which pvp epic items can be earned for both sides it still gears the horde players up faster. Normally this wouldn't be a problem since players would get their rewards and then leave to raid or continue doing instance runs. However, it seems that almost all raiding has been put on hold by high level guilds in effort to gain the max amount of honor and tokens that can be held in reserve. This strategy is in preparation for the Burning Crusade introducing new level 70 pvp rewards.

You can already see the problem that the alliance players are running into. As more and more horde earn their pvp rewards the average amount of honor gained per game for the alliance is reduced since they are fighting against better geared players. However, just applying the nerf to the horde would be unfair since they shouldn't be punished for their choice of race. Some better ideas have been introduced on the forums but it looks like most of the developers are too busy with the expansion to implement any of them.

Options instead of Honor Nerf:
1) Cap the amount of Honor that could be earned per day.

2) Implement a rest system for honor.

3) Implement the matching system which would make better geared players wait in the queue longer until they could be matched against players with similar gear.

4) Just let people get the current pvp rewards and reset honor and marks with the expansion.


Some Honor Calculations:
Entire Honor Set
Boots: ~12k, Shoulders: ~12k, Gloves: ~12k
Helm: ~20k, Chest: ~20k, Legs: ~20k
Two 1-hand weapons or One 2-hand weapon: 45k
Total: 141k Honor

Last week I gained 25k honor which allowed me to buy two pieces of the pvp armor set. My friend who played horde on my battlegroup last week gained 54k honor for playing about the same time as me.

Playing with a small group of friends and keeping constantly queued for AV which provides the most honor for the alliance I gained me about 9K honor in 7 hours last week. Now technically with the honor nerf I should now gain 6k honor in 7 hours but last night I only got about 2k honor for playing 5 hours since the queue times for AB and WSG had gone up considerably. I have a horrible sinking feeling that if I play for 5 hours on my horde character tonight that I will gain the 6k honor I calculated. Its simply a matter of the queue time imbalance combined with the honor nerf which is really hurting the rate at which alliance can gain honor.

Original Thread discussing the Honor Nerf and some misleading done by Drysc
http://blue.cardplace.com/newcache/us/54922884.htm

What happened to the Matching System?

The last patch has been bugtastic for most raiders out there and they seem to be the ones experiencing the most pain from the new patch. This seems to have caused a large number of players to put raiding on the back burner and adopt the new PvP system as their new favorite pasttime. Now admittingly people might get bored with the same three battlegrounds over the next month so raiding isn't over by a far shot. Plus with the stacking of Heal over Time spells and new healing talents a lot of old encounters might have easier strategies. And honestly learning how to kill Baron Geddon without Decursive might be easier then winning against a pre-made team in Arathi Baisin.

Those of you who have been following the promises of the CM's remember that a matching system was in the works for the battlegrounds. The system supposedly assigned points based on the quality of the gear in a player's inventory and bank slots. These point totals for each player would then be used to assign them to a battleground against opponents with similar totals. Pre-made teams with high quality gear would then be quickly assigned to fight other asshats with Tier-3. (Jealous much?) This would basically allow players in Blue and Tier-1 armor to have a fighting chance of earning enough honor points to gain PvP rewards.

However, it seems with all the problems in implementing patch 2.0.1 the developers have decided to hold off on the matching system until the expansion. Of course when the expansion comes out most of us are going be busy questing and running dungeons so I'm not sure how useful it will be then. Yet if the system is not working then there is not much that Blizzard can do except spend more hours trying to get it working. A similar matching system will be put into place for the Arenas except it will be based on Arena rankings instead of gear quality.

Matching System Scheduled for Expansion
http://blue.cardplace.com/newcache/us/53515524.htm

Random Quote copying the Princess Bride
http://blue.cardplace.com/newcache/us/54066844.htm

WoW Patch 2.0.1: A Breath of New Life

Well I must say that for a patch that didn't introduce any new content it sure seemed to breathe some life into a game that had been on standby till the expansion. The delay of the expansion had caused some major repercussions within World of Warcraft which effected both players and guilds. Most high end raiding guilds were having problems fielding raids when the expansion would make a majority of their effort wasted in a couple months. Others who were simply hanging onto the game until new content were disappointed they would have to wait for another two months and decided to quit until January.

However, the numbers I've seen in my battlegroup and server seem point to a trend that this patch brought a lot of people back to the game before the expansion. I've spent the last couple of days playing in a small 5 man premade group and doing Arathi Baisin and Warsong Gulch. When the cross realm queue was working I've seen close to 160 games for each of these battlegrounds. Alterac Valley games were also decently high in number since a majority of the epic PVP gear requires marks of honor from there.

My guild has almost become a PvP guild overnight with a majority of our healers choosing the highest damage specs over the standard raid healing. It seems very few people were that interested in sacrificing 20gp a night to learn the Vael encounter when they can simple wait a month for better gear. Now everyone has a chance to earn the epic PvP gear sets which are quite honestly equal to Tier-2. The amount of honor per piece is a bit high but seems doable to even casual players which were turned off to Battleground PvP by the ranking system. I had about 190 kills last night and my honor total for this morning was around 3,000. Most epic pieces cost betwen 13,000-20,000 honor with the epic weapons being about double that.

I know a lot of PvE and casual guilds are now PvPing because I'm seeing a lot of new trends in the battleground.

1) A lot of pre-made guild teams who seem to be inexperienced at PvP

2) Most people playing now seem to be wearing mixtures of the Tier-1/Tier-2 set instead of the blue PvP set.

3) A lot of pre-made teams are ignoring some of the well-known strategies for battlegrounds
- No one guarding flags in Arathi Baisin
- Zerging into the opposite faction's base without trying to control the center in Warsong Gulch.

4) People spamming general chat in Ironforge/Ogrimmar advertising their PvP group.


I'm also seeing a lot of talent experimentation going on and I am noticing that PvP seems a bit more on equal grounds with the new talents. Some classes are still overpowered in certain regards but it honestly seems that the talent changes have made it so everyone is on equal footing when fighting.

1) Paladins can now do damage like a decently equipped warrior if they are retribution spec. Combined this with their stuns and shields and you have a deadly combo. Number one thing I saw in battleground that surprised me was that most paladins can now kill a warlock in the time of their divine shield. 12 seconds of invulnerable allows them to crusader strike twice and judge seal of command twice while being immune to all damage.

2) Hunters are now powerful against casters and melee classes. Silence Shot and Scatter Shot combined together are deadly when timed against casters correctly. Freezing Trap is no longer a real factor with its long arm time. Some smart alec hunters were already using Zulgurub snakes since they are now tamable. The seem to have a poison spit ability but I am not 100% sure on this. All I know is "Snakes, I hate Snakes?"

3) Mages have gotten a huge boost to the fire tree. Every time I died suddenly in a battleground with no idea what happened there was a mage behind me. Fireballs now seem to hit for above 1500 even if the Mage is only moderately well equipped.

4) Feral Druids are now a bit dangerous. Their damage in cat form is higher and their damage mitigation in bear form is also very nice. A lot of my teammates were noticing that they were doing more damage meleeing against tier-2 warriors then a druid in bear form. Also the new Tree of Life form has a nice healing bonus but cannot be realistically used in PvP.

5) Most warriors I saw were now immune to disarm and now gained rage/hitpoints whenever they were stunned. This basically just makes it even harder for rogues to fight them though I was surprised to see a couple side effects. One fight I saw a warrior with barely any life get hit with scatter shot which gained him rage and life enough to intercept the hunter and execute. Also warriors with the Endless Rage talent really seemed to constantly have rage.

6) Warlocks still pwn people with their fears and dots. I noticed that the rate which dots appeared on my characters was still a bit slow. I'm surprised to see no one has used the new cast sequence command yet to link all their instant cast dots to one key. Oh well I am sure it will happen pretty soon. The new doomguard pet was around in force and I got to experience its intercept ability first hand.... multiple times. It now seems to be a tie between the succubus and doomguard for most dangerous pet.

7) Duel-wielding Shamans took some getting used to but it didn't seem as overpowering as I first thought. I know a lot of shamans will like the build for grinding but it seems only moderately dangerous in PvP. Getting hit by high damaging shocks still seems the better way of delivering the burst damage necessary to kill people.

8) I didn't really notice many changes fighting against priests and rogues though it did seem that rogues were getting perfectly timed stunlocks more often. Any rogues out there can tell me if the new talents make it easier to keep people stun locked?

All in all this patch really did more for PvP then the last patch with its world PvP objectives. It seems the developers are learning that while some people enjoy PvP most people are going to ignore it unless there are good rewards or no risk. With the old ranking system players had almost no chance of getting anything beyond the blue pvp armor set unless they spent more then 6 hours a day winning battlegrounds. This effectively blocked the awards for any players that had PvE raid obligations or a real life. With the new patch the PvP rewards became available to all players which effectively unlocked new content.

Top Ten Tips you won't see on the Loading Screen

No time for a real update so once again here is a list, enjoy.


10) Since everyone needs money, yes you can in fact always roll Need.

9) If you are new and need insightful advice about the game try the official WoW forums.

8) Always give your password out to anyone claiming to be a Blizzard employee else you might get banned.

7) The Cow Level is what the Alliance now call Tauren Bluff since DKs have been removed.

6) If you ever see a link for a lengendary item you are obligated by law to link it in general chat 1,000 times.

5) Remember that Aspect of the Pact can also be used in dungeons to stop cowardly teammates.

4) Vowels are not allowed in W()rld ()f W<:rcr<:ft instead use numbers and special characters

3) /spit is a sign of Pirate respect.

2) Carefully watch the Succubus pet, hehe did you see that? We are such pervs.

1) Quest givers of the opposite faction refuse to give you quests because they are dicks, you know what to do.

Short Update on WoW's new dungeons

The last raid dungeon in the expansion, the Black Temple, will not be ready for the release of the Burning Crusade but should have minimal impact on the game. Even the most hardcore player is going to take at least a few weeks to get to level 70 and farm the gear for fighting against Illidian. Veteren MMORPG players will recognize that this is standard fare for most expansions and that end game raid content always takes a little bit longer to finish. Lets just hope we don't see the same mistakes that SOE made with Everquest expansions and find unfinished raid zones two months after the release date. However, with Blizzard being opened about the status of the dungeons in the expansion I really don't see any surprises being sprung on us.

The other dungeon that will be patched in after the release of the Burning Crusade will be Zul'Aman. This is another 10 man instance like Karazhan but with a troll theme. It has been remarked upon before that the 10 man dungeons in the Burning Crusade should play the same role that Zul'Gurub and AQ20 now hold. However, with the new policy on gear distribution both these dungeons should have items close in power to those gained from full 25 man raids. One other item to note is that the Caverns of Time could have multipled dungeons patched into it at later dates because of its unique lore in World of Warcraft.

Confirmed Dungeons that will be ready for TBC realease date are:
Hellfire Citadel
Coilfang Reservoir
Auchindoun
Gruul's Lair
The Caverns of Time in Tanaris
Karazhan in Deadwind Pass
Tempest Keep

Zones/Dungeons we are still left wondering about:
Hyjal next to Felwood
Uldum inside of Tanaris
Gilineas next to Silverpine Forrest
Nessy's Zone between Ironforge and Stormwind
Island in the Middle of the Map
Grim Batol
Emerald Dream

http://blue.cardplace.com/newcache/beta/1700281.htm

Heroic Difficulty and the New Tiers

Scanning through bluetracker is a great way to catch little tidbits from the CM's and developers about upcoming changes to World of Warcraft. Since the expansion is on the horizon I pay special attention to anything that might be related to the latest push onto the beta server. Recently I stumbled across some information on the boards about the new Heroic Difficulty option that will be include in all the 5 man dungeons. Selecting this option will turn an instance into a harder version of itself by adjusting mob density and levels. However, the rewards also increase so that much better level 70 rewards can be gotten from any dungeon in the Burning Crusade.

Tigole explains further by saying that the epic set tokens will drop only from Heroic Difficulty instances and that the last boss will always drop an epic. This really proves that the Blizzard development team has put a lot of thought into making all content viable for the end game. In the old world once someone hit level 60 only the three highest level instances were done with any regularity because they had the best non raid loot. With the Heroic Difficulty being in the expansion it looks like level 70s can visit any dungeon to receive level appropriate loot.

My guess on how the gear structure will work in the TBC:

Battleground (non-epic set): Buyable rewards from farming BG honor

Dungeon Loot 60-70 (non-epic): Dropped from normal difficulty bosses in dungeons

Battleground (epic set): Buyable rewards from farming BG honor. Tobold estimates 100-200hrs for complete set.

Tier-4 (epic): Tokens dropped from Heroic difficulty bosses in dungeons

Kharzhan (epic): At least equal to the Tier-4 set since its also level 70 but requires 10 people

Arena (epic set): Several Blue posts put this set equal to the highest raid instance gear

Tier-5 (epic): Raid Instances like the Black Temple should have slightly better gear then the Heroic Difficulty set


This is just a estimation of the gear tiers and I'm sure I'm not 100% correct. A lot of changes for Kharzhan and the Heroic Difficulty option are just about to be pushed so I know we'll see more information about the new Tiers soon. Still one has to be excited that you can basically choose your favorite dungeon and continue to do it for gear upgrades at level 70. I certainly hope that the old raid content will one day have this option added when the developers have some free time.

http://blue.cardplace.com/newcache/beta/1520314.htm

http://tobolds.blogspot.com/2006/11/world-of-warcraft-pvp-v20-new-honor.html

The Stranglethorn Hell

I had a wide selection of gaming options open to me this Thanksgiving holiday but somehow I still ended up playing World of Warcraft the most. I had recently become addicted to my beastmaster specced hunter and was having fun blowing through the early levels. Unfortunately late Thursday night I hit level 36 with her and entered what is one of the few dead areas in the game. I had done the few quests for the Alliance in Desolace, Arathi Highlands, Hillsbrad and I was left with only one more zone to visit. Every character come to a point in their life where they make the decision to head to Stranglethorn Vale or just grind world mobs. On a PvE server this choice is less relevant but to those of us who play PvP its a major virtual life decision.

Stranglethorn Vale is a questing bonanza with over 30 quests for both the horde and the alliance. They start around level 33 and slowly increase to about level 44. A lot of them are simple kill ten rats quests which can be grouped together by a enterprising individual so they are working on several at the same time. Most of the mobs in the zone are either beasts with no casting abilities or trolls with very low hit points. Both are great for grinding against and can easily help a player to finish up a level between quests. So if this zone is such a nice place to level why is it referred to as the Stranglethorn Hell?

1) The Gank Factor:
The high amount of quests in the zone is like a giant fly zapper. People can't resist the thought of all that easily earned experience just waiting there softly glowing. They forget about the last time they went into the Stranglethorn Hell and being camped at Nessingway's for two hours. The ease and multitude of the quests in STV guarantee a constant stream of players entering the zone and as a result gankers know they can always find victims there.

2) Zul'Gurub
ZG is probably one of the easiest raid zones to do and Pick-Up-Raids for both factions form all the time. As a result there is a lot of level sixty foot traffic heading to the entrance of this zone. This wouldn't be so bad if the entrance was away from any of the questing areas but no Blizzard decide in true cutthroat fashion to place it in the middle. Thus as a raid moves in you can pretty much count out finishing a Nessingway's or Venture Co. quest.

3) The Fishing Extravaganza
Starting every Sunday at 2pm you can expect the coastline of STV to fill up with both Horde and Alliance as they quickly try to fish up 40 tasty fish to win a tournament. Even after the tournament ends the special fishing spots continue to exist for a few more hours and they will continue to be in use. Several nice items with high stamina can be earned by fishing there so often times people will bring a 19 twink to fish and a level 60 to kill everything in sight.

4) The Gurabashi Arena
The loot isn't really that good but it has a habit of getting out of hand with different groups and guilds calling in reinforcements whenever the chest is dropped off. Thus basically you get a lot of people looking for some hardcore PvP flying into the zone and traveling to the exact center where the arena is located. On their way in they have a habit of killing everything of the opposite faction. Its good practice and gets the blood flowing.

5) It's a Jungle In There
STV is designed with a very high mob density so much so that there really only two routes from the south to the north. One is the coastline which has level 40 pirates and Naga and the other is the main road. This basically means that if you're under level 40 you have to take the main road to move between Nessingway's and Booty Bay. Thus every time you have to turn in a quest you are forced to travel the same path as every other character in the zone. As you have learned by now the chance of a level 60 letting a lower level person pass by them is only about 25%. There not even real gankers at heart they just remember all the times they were killed by a high level and blackout into a murderous rage.

So now that you know why people love to hate Stranglethorn Vale you have to wonder, "Is it worth visiting?" The short answer is yes since you can really move fast through the mid thirties if you quest here. However, you have to follow certain conditions when questing here or you are going to spend more time running back to your body then doing actual quests.

Condition 1)
Know the quests and group them together for maximum efficiency. Remember every time you travel to Booty Bay/ Nessgingway/ Gromgol/ Kurzen Camp you have a very high chance of being ganked. Thus the less time spent traveling on the main road the better.

Condition 2)
Do not play in STV during primetime, it is death incarnate.

Condition 3)
Do not bring weak PvP classes to the STV. The entire zone is practically a free for all battleground. If you have no escape abilities then you should not come here. This is mostly talking to warriors and paladins who are basically like turtles without shells before level 40.

Condition 4)
Always approach Nessingway's Camp with utmost caution since usually sixties from one faction or another will be killing someone there. Try to get a look to see if anyone is in the camp before even getting close since people will mount up and chase you.

Condition 5)
Bring friends to quest in Stranglethorn Vale. Yes we all know that grouping actually hurts the experience you can gain in World of Warcraft but the added protection enables you to quickly go through the quests.

The danger of visiting STV depends on the server. The older a server gets the less traffic you see in the zone for questing and raids going to ZulGurub. Also on servers with highly unbalanced faction populations the zone can be quite safe for those of the more populous faction.

Can the Current Level 60 Dungeons be Saved?

With the release of the Burning Crusade a lot of the current end game dungeons will become deserted as people migrate to the better risk vs. reward instances. Stratholm and Scholomance can be expected to become true ghost towns filled with only the undead that make their homes there. Sure an occasional tourist will stick his head in the zone and check it out but the days of a real group of players entering will be over. Thinking about it though there are already several dungeon instances which barely ever see groups.

As World of Warcraft has become more top heavy with level 60 characters most people find it easier to be run through a dungeon with a higher level character then actually build a group of appropriate level people. And yet if a dungeon has a good set of droppable items and a rewarding main quest then it will still most likely see groups of adventurers. For example the dungeons Maradon and ZulFarrak still experience a decent amount of group traffic and will probably continue to receive visitors even after the release of the expansion. Both have good quests that give rare items and a decent array of drops for casters and melees.

On the opposite side of the spectrum are two dungeons designed for players in their twenties. Both Black Fathom Deeps and Shadowfang Keep have limited droppable items and so-so quest rewards for the Alliance. SFK actually has no general quests for the Alliance but makes up for it by having some nice caster loot. Unfortunately the dungeon is not kind to most melees since most of the items for them are very rare drops off the bosses. BFD has one good quest for the Alliance but it only gives a blue shield or wand. The droppable items are poor with only the bosses at the end having a chance to drop good blue items. Just like SFK too many bosses drop green items with bad stats which are easily beaten by gear bought from the auction house.

The current level 60 dungeons are set to soon have the same problem since players in their high 50s will have the same difficulty doing Scholomance as doing Hellfire Citadel. Plus chances are that the bind on equipped items that drop from the Outlands will be better then the rares that drop from current level 60 dungeons. Blizzard really has four options they could choose to try to alleviate this issue.

1) Increase the Item Power in the current Level 60 Dungeons
This option isn't too likely since it could detract from the allure of the new dungeons. Plus modifying and rebalancing old content is much harder then doing the same for new content. Just look at the boss fights for the Tier 0.5 armor set which the developers seem to think are balanced for a group of non raiders.

2) Decrease the Item Power in the new Level 60 Dungeons
This option would go against their philosophy of basically fixing the gear imbalance between raiders and non-raiders. Also if the new items were only slightly better there wouldn't be as much demand to get the expansion right away.

3) Ignore the old content
This looks like the current option Blizzard is going with. It costs them no money and encourages people to concentrate on the new expansion. However, this really increases the rate at which the new content will be consumed since new people will skip all the current level 60 content when leveling and go straight to the Hellfire Citadel

4) Decrease the levels and difficulty of the current Level 60 Dungeons.
I really think this would be the best move for Blizzard since they could put more of a gap between the old content and the new content in the expansion. At the moment the Sunken temple is around level 50 and is the dungeon right before the current level 60 dungeons. Blizzard could easily adjust the item and boss levels of the current level 60 dungeons so that a group of level 54 players without raid gear could beat them.

Shifting the difficulty of the current end game dungeons might be the only way to prevent them from becoming a higher level version of Black Fathom Deeps. With no level gap between them and Hellfire Citadel then the rule of risk vs. reward dictates that almost all players will head straight to the outlands at 58-59. The Blizzard developers might think rebalancing the older dungeons again might not be worth the money but honestly it will help them if new characters can be persuaded to still go there. Basically its the difference between still getting some use out of the content and totally writing it off. The level 60 dungeons can be saved unlike their counterparts the level 60 raid instances which are just plain screwed over by the expansion.

Avatar Customization

World of Warcraft took a great many steps forward by including a plethora of popular features from previous MMORPGS and fine tuning them so they would have mass appeal. One area of the game though that always seemed to go against this philosophy was their character creation process. Only having about six different customizable options was a real step back when compared to other games out at the time. Even classic Everquest technically had more options since they had practically double the amount of playable races. Still with WoW's success one has to wonder if Blizzard did their research and found out that money was better spent on game content then more varied hair styles.

Still, the reason I'm revisiting this topic once again is that I finally got a certain Beta program working on my computer late last night and had time to mess around with the character creation process. I must say I am impressed with the amount of choices Vanguard allows for changing the body structure of your characters. Now I am not quite sure how a NDA works cause frankly when I finished college I swore I was never reading anything over 1200 pages again. Still I am pretty sure without giving specifics I can talk about features.

The number one thing that impresses me is they made use of the same sliding bar for customization that you find in City of Heroes. For an example think of a bar named Height which you can slide and watch as your avatar grows or shrinks in size. Now picture about 50 such options from eye slant to head size. It may not have the outrageous costumes of the super hero MMO but it still allows an impressive ability to differentiate yourself from other players. Quite frankly, in World of Warcraft the amount of evil twins I have run across is ridiculous.

Players like to be able to distinguish themselves from others usually in order to prove their superiority. Equipment plays an important part in this since it directly effects your ability to kick ass but image also plays a part. How many low level rogues do you see wearing a full set of defias even though the stats aren't that good? A lot. How many paladins do you see wearing a dress even though raids force them to heal from a distance? None. What good is kicking ass if you look like a bum while doing it?

I'm not sure if good character creation options are the key ingredient in making a successful MMO but I do know its a good start. Most likely half the fans of City of Heroes/Villains simply liked playing because of the amazing costumes you could put together. I wasn't really a fan of the gameplay but it seem like every other day I was creating a new character with a name and history to match his costume. In comparison WoW's character creation looks simplistic to City of Heroes and quaint to Vanguard. However, the decision to cut back on avatar customization in return for more game content might be smart. After all if people just wanted good looking avatars at the cost of gameplay then Second Life would have more concurrent users.

No Ninja's Need Apply

Recently my guild had been dealing with a serious drop in attendance due in part to the delay of the Burning Crusade expansion. Some people took a break, some just decided to quit, and others like me are just doing a lot of overtime at work. Having only thirty people show up for our raids was starting to hurt our Rag and BWL attempts so the guild finally decided to start heavily recruiting. Which leads us to our last run where we only had Domo and Ragnaros left to clear. Those of you who are experienced in the ways of WoW already know where this story is going. Basically one of our recruits managed to use feign death to ensure his survival in the Domo fight right at the place where the chest spawns. The quick fingered thief then popped right up when Domo went down and grabbed the chest contents.

Our ventrilo channel lighted up like the National Lampoon Christmas tree since one of the rare +46 healing bands was in there. Most of the other gear was substandard for us so outrage was a bit lower then it would have been say two months ago. Still most people were shocked to learn that there is no penalty for ninja looting an item in a raid. A lot of our newer members thought surely a warning or temporary banning would result. But in the end the only thing the guild could do was post about the ninja in the forums. However, the thief delighted in informing general chat in Ironforge that he was soon transferring servers and that his name would be changed also in the process.

For as many steps Blizzard took to prevent ninja looting in the game it still occasionally makes itself known. The need/greed rolling system helps prevent a lot of group looting hijinks but still leaves room for some manipulation. A group leader could switch to master looter right before a boss or a person could simply roll need on armor and weapons they can't use. Especially sneaky ninja looters will often wait for everyone else to select greed roll before they choose need. However, when you have a situation like a chest then it doesn't matter what the loot settings are since the first person to open it can loot all the items. I guess Blizzard thought a MC raid would know each other well enough that ninja looting wouldn't be a problem.

A lot of other games had much worse systems for managing ninja looting. Early Everquest simply allowed the person or group who dealt the most damage to loot items from the mob. Thus often when a rare mob would spawn several people would start wailing away each hoping they could out damage the other and gain the xp and loot. Other games like City of Heroes simply decided to do away with the idea of having equipment for players. Still others made it so the game always divides items based on some sort of system like round-robin.

All these systems were invented in part because digital property is not protected under any sort of real law. In a MMORPG the only laws are those that control how a player interacts with the game. The EULA for most games try to set additional laws that are really only enforceable by direct GM intervention. And to be honest GM intervention becomes unrealistic when the player population is so much higher then the GM population. The current GM to player ratio for World of Warcraft has to be somewhat like having one police officer for all of New York City. So when you think about it the only real way to enforce digital laws is to program them into the game.

Short Summary: I'm pissed that someone stole from our guild but I am more pissed at Blizzard for not putting chests and vaults into the loot rolling system.

Note: A song a dwarven rogue was spamming in IF one day, yes he did have the devout set.

I am a little ninja, short and stout,
I'll steal your gear and hearth on out.
Everyone on teamspeak will curse and shout,
Cause I am the rogue in full devout.

Top 10 Things Not to do in WoW until Jan 16th

10) Make a NE Hunter and go to the horde newbie area with a level one pet. Stay in shadowmeld until a low level attacks your pet then Aim Shot them for +1,000 dmg. Later on brag about how good you are at fishing for newbs to your guild. Post pictures of all the level one characters you have killed this way. Make sure to photoshop black X's over their eyes.

9) Give your raid leader a hug when you're the bomb in the Baron Geddon fight. When everyone yells at you sigh heavily into your microphone and say "I guess I'm just not leet enough for Molten Core."

8) Using lots of patience and dots train King Mosh from Ungoro Crater to the Crossroads. On your way there brag in general chat that the stink of the Crossroads offends you and your having your pet wipe it out. Since no horde could understand you include the words KeK KeK so they know bad shit is going down.

7) Spell out "Janury 16th is too far" in front of your race's city using level 1 corpses. Start over again when someone calls you a moron for misspelling January.

6) Have your NE priest shadowmeld near the main entrance to BRM. Whenever a single character runs by use mind control to throw them into the lava. Before each mind control announce that you are making another sacrifice to Ragnaros in hopes he makes the TBC release date sooner.

5) Stake out the Gadgetzan Gnomish Transporter and watch for mechanical failures. Try to get a series of screenshots when people appear 10,000 feet above the tranporter then turn it into an animted gif. Include it in a forum's post about why goblin engineering is better then gnomish.

4) Hide near the pyramid transporter that leads to Naxx. When guilds approach jump out and point to the pile of level 1 corpses that you have cleverly spelled out to say "The End". When someone remarks that the one in front of Ironforge was better tell them to STFU.

3) Go to a newbie area and ride your epic mount backwards in front of them to show that yes you are in fact Uber. If they doubt you make sure to pull out glowing weapons. If they still doubt you challenge them to a duel. They didn't accept did they? Cowards.

2) Go outside and play in the park ..... Hahaha I kid. What would you rather be outside throwing a frisbee around all day or on your computer doing something that really matters?

1) Collect as much purple cloth gear as possible and get the Crisom Hat from Stratholm. Get a group of friends to follow you around as naked female characters. Walk around Ironforge and introduce yourself as Pimpmaster Pimpalicous Smakabeotch. Use the /slap command on any friends who talk out of character. Threaten to use the /beotchslap command if they continue to get out of line.

Hopefully, work will settle down and I can actually write a real post next week. I remind people that most of these things are annoying and I don't recommend them as actual ways to pass time. Unless your really, really bored.

What Class Would you Like to See in WoW?

As we all disappointingly know there will be no new classes in the Burning Crusade expansion for World of Warcraft. But for the longest time before we got this information people loved to theorycraft on what classes might make an appearance in the game. Everything had been suggested from old Everquest favorites to even more exotic classes from rare DnD manuals. After fighting Lefty the monk in the Tier 0.5 Arena event I've been thinking about how I missed new classes. Blizzard has stately numerous times they don't wish to create any overlap by introducing new classes that have the same roles as current ones. Dealing with that that limitation what do you think will be the most likely new class?

Here are some suggestions which I faintly remember from discussions of theory craft, forums posts, and even some barrens chat (god help us all).

Ninja:
One of the more talked about choices since the costume was provided by use of the Orb of Deception. Originally suggested as the Hero class for rogues it could also be playable as a separate class though it would probably have a lot of overlap with the current backstab professionals. The main thought would be that a ninja would be a cloth wearing dps class that would have very powerful initial attacks and finishing attacks like execute but be lacking in stable dps. Basically a rogue without sinister strikes but an ambush and eviscerate to die for. Because of their lack of armor the class would have to be much more careful at pulling aggro then rogues.

Pirate:
Another obvious choice because of the Orb of Deception and the general internet rivalry with ninjas. Pirates would also be a cloth wearing dps class but would use swashbuckling to avoid taking damage. Thus they would have skills and abilities for parrying and blocking but would take heavy damage from attacks that got through. They could also have the auto shoot ability but be limited to using guns. Also many suggest that they should have parrot companions like the mobs in the Deadmines which are very weak pets.

Necromancer:
World of Warcraft already has an evil caster class but a lot of people still miss the standard Necromancer. Plus its not like the lore of the game doesn't support the class since several dungeon bosses are Necromancers. Basically if this class was ever implemented it would have to have something to greatly distinguish itself from warlocks. One suggestion was to make their damage spells cold and disease based and really make their pets unique. Perhaps enable them to have multiple pets but only be able to summon them around recently defeated foes. Or make them sort of like hunters where they have to track down and kill certain mobs to be able to raise them as different types of undead. Thus if they wanted to summon a skeleton they would have to kill a human but if they wanted a ghost they would have to kill an elf.

Enchanter/Mesmer:
Since World of Warcraft tries to balance itself on PvP combat as well as PvE combat they have given almost every class a means of crowd control. This has really defused the need to have a pure crowd control class like an Enchanter in the game. Yet an Enchanter would open up a entirely new type of class since their sole purpose would be to crowd control. They could have minor arcane damage abilities like a mage but their greatest benefit would be able to crowd control more then one mob at a time. Also allow them the ability to mind control like a priest but with more control of their targets.

Templar/Zealot
Basically this would be a class set up just like the Enchanter but instead of having damage spells like a mage they would have healing spells like a paladin. The Templar would be like a preacher or religious zealot whose crowd control stems more from his ability to brainwash then cast spells. The class would be harder to solo then an Enchanter since they would have no offensive spells. To compensate they could wear plate armor just like a paladin. I mainly think of this class whenever someone mentions the mobs of the Scarlet Crusade. Plus in my opinion more classes that can heal need to be put into the game.

Bard:
A mild dps class that would be able to use AoE songs to cast buffs or debuffs. Unlike casters the singing ability would be able to be used while attacking but just like channeling would be interrupted when attacked. Thus the key to using a bard would be knowing when to stay in combat range and when to back off. The class should probably be able to wear at least mail armor since AoE debuffs will probably pull aggro one or twice no matter what the player does. The song ability would work a lot like totems but the Bard would be more melee oriented then the Shaman. Also limiting the bard to only one handed weapons would further separate them from the other hybrid classes.

Monks:
The bare fist fighter. Monks would be limited to only fist weapons and leather armor but would have a natural high armor class. Monks should be thought of as rogues with perhaps a bit of healer thrown in. I would like to see monks as a class that could heal and dispel themselves. Perhaps tie their heals and dispels to a combo point system like the rogue class. To make them wanted in groups and raids have them able to get out of almost every type of crowd control so that they would be useful for powerful debuff fights. To limit them from being overpowered in PvP make sure they have almost no form of crowd control ability themselves. The class would be like a hunter in that it would be very good at soloing but would also be useful in dungeons for getting aggro off the healers and not requiring much healing in return. Basically a dps class that doesn't subtract healing from the tank if he mismanages aggro.

I am sure there a million other classes from all the theory craft posts I have missed. If anyone wants to add one or points a forum threat discussing the topic feel free to list it in a comment.

A Warlock's Defense

The last post was not a general call to nerf the warlock class but a examination of the Fear spell's reputation for being overpowered. Since I have never played a warlock to sixty I have had more experience being on the recieving end of fear then the casting side. Thus every time I tried to write a point to argue for fear not being overpowered I might have been thinking more about being one shot fear killed then thinking about a good arguement.

Luckily using blue tracker I found a decent forum post (yeah I was surprised too) which defended the Warlock's use of the deadly duo (fear and deathcoil) . The format of the post is done in a humorous manner but the summary had several good points.


http://blue.cardplace.com/newcache/en/77977968.htm

Fear: the King of Crowd Control?

Me and my friends were going through a low level WSG battleground when we ran into the problem of a flag carrier being escorted by two warlocks. As any of the melees on our side got close to the carrier they were feared which effectively kept them from ever catching back up to the flag carrier. We did have one hunter on our side and his concussion shot did slow them down a bit but he could never get in range to use wing clip. As our enemies returned the flag for the third time using this method my teamspeak channel broke out into a ton of complaints about how overpowering fear is at the moment. Usually not one to call for nerfs I got into a discussion about just how effective fear was as crowd control.

There are several types of fear spells but the ones most often complained about are the Warlock's deadly duo of fear and deathcoil. Warlock's have the standard fear spell which on average always seems to last longer then ten seconds. This time can effectively be extended with the use of deathcoil which is a shorter but irremovable version of fear. This makes warlock fear one of the longest lasting crowd control abilities in the game with only sap and polymorph lasting longer. However, both of those abilities automatically break when the target takes damage.

The crux of the complaints about fear stem from the change made with the way it interacts with Damage over Time spells. It used to be that every time damage was dealt to a feared target there was a chance to break the spell. This made the spell fairly balanced except that warlocks who were the main users of fear were very dependent on DoT spells. Plus there were rumors that people used low level DoTs on themselves to beat raid bosses that feared. Thus the rules were eventually changed so that only the initial damage of a spell had a chance to break fear. Thus DoT spells went from having a very high chance to break fear to a very low chance. This change combined with fear's effectiveness in PvP is why many claim that spell is overpowered.

Liability in PvE but Benefit in PvP
1) Aggro Management: Fear in PvE has to be used carefully so that the feared target doesn't aggro more mobs which will then attack you. Yet in PvP combat the feared target is the one who is attacked by any added mobs. Thus fear gains an added boost to its effectiveness during world combat and battlegrounds with mobs.

2) Range Control: Fear is the perfect ability to gain range on your target. While in PvE it can be annoying to have to chase your target to recast your DoTs it becomes quite beneficial in some forms of PvP. Mainly any type of PvP that involves flag capture or running since the crowd control spell effectively allows the claiming of the flag without having to kill your target.

If you look at how Fear works you can see that by its very nature its not an effective PvE crowd control method. In fact the only time Warlocks are in demand for a raid or group instance is when their banish ability is needed. Inside a dungeon you are almost never going to see anyone use fear since it is too chaotic and unpredictable. Yet this becomes its strength in PvP combat where your opponents can be controlled for a long time and perhaps even killed by one spell alone. Thus Fear is the ultimate PvP crowd control ability but is balanced by its uselessness in most PvE instances. Still since players compete directly in PvP most only ever see the overpowering side of Fear.