And the Warlocks Wept

If I still was a PVPing shadow priest, or if I had ever been a PVPing warlock, I would not be happy about this change at all:

In the next major content patch, the combat rating, resilience, will also reduce the damage dealt by damage over time (DoT) effects. As it currently stands, each new tier of equipment adds to the amount of damage DoT abilities have, yet that damage is not mitigated through combat ratings found on typical equipment. This change will help ensure that DoT effects do not scale too well compared to other damage mechanics.

The amount of damage reduced will be equal to the critical chance reduction effect that resilience grants. Love, Eyonix

(I added the Love signature because that’s what the World of Warcraft needs now.)

While the warlock and shadow priest tears sustain us, I’m wondering: what can be done to revitalize a mature game?

Let’s be blunt, Warcraft PVE is aging like a president, and no matter how anyone spins the subscription numbers, players and guilds are losing interest. PVP, for many players, is a pleasant diversion from the grindiness of PVE, and, I’d wager, fixing/changing/adding PVP is a helluva lot cheaper than any PVE changes. I’d PVP more myself, but it’s too damn expensive to swap between a PVP and PVE talent spec every few days — not to mention the paperwork involved.

I’m just thinking out loud in e-print, but this game needs something. Well-spun subscription numbers aside, we can all see the attrition around us, and even though there’s lots of interesting ideas on how to energize this game … my opinion, Blizzard is too plodding and too stubborn to try those interesting ideas any time soon.

So choose your poison, Warcraft player: PVP, Raiding PVE, Heroics x 1 billion, or the alt lifestyle. It’s a long wait until the next expansion … or Warhammer Online.

Week of Fives: Gaming Wishes

A few years from now, maybe a few more, probably never, these are the top five things we’d like to see in online gaming, three from me, two from Raster:

1. Let’s rethink this whole healing gig. Personally, I’d like to see the primary healer role eliminated completely. I realize there must be some people who enjoy the primary healer role, the pure defense character, but crimony, every goddamn game it’s the same issues … faster burnout, repetitive play, short supply, limited solo’ing options. I’d like to see multi-player gaming either move to a model where every class has minimal healing/recovery abilities or, at least, something like Guild Wars with a primary/secondary class choice system. I realize this would homogenize classes somewhat, but surely someone, somewhere, can figure out a better system than the current one. (Foton)

2. Let’s rethink travel. Guild Wars did this quite well and I’d love to see instant travel moved over to more games. EverQuest provided portals to a majority of zones with the Planes of Power expansion, which was better than nothing. Sixty minute hearthstones are not the answer, Blizzard. Neither are slow ass griffins which usually take the longest possible route to get anywhere. If I’m not in combat, I should be able to port myself to any major city on the continent, and there should also be an “express airlines” to cut down on unwanted travel time. There are enough time sinks in games already, and travel needs to be done away with as one. Don’t even get me started on bag space and inventory space … (Raster)

3. Let’s rethink loot. MMO loot is a lot of the fun of gaming, but it’s a lot of the pain as well. Two things I’d like fixed: randomness that bites you in the ass and worthless trash mobs. There’s a few ways to fix the wonky randomness, maybe a self-correcting behind-the-scenes randomizer that just gives you the damn loot you’ve been farming for 290,348 hours; or, how about meaningful faction systems? High-factioned players can just buy from NPC vendors what they didn’t loot. (Similar to EverQuest’s Lost Dungeons of Norrath and Warcraft’s Blood Elf Ghostlands area — an idea I LOVED in the beta, by the way.) And trash mobs, either they should drop useable items or equipment FAR more often, or once a group or raid of players have bested a dungeon, they should never have to clear the trash again. I know that’s unreasonable, but goddamn, I hate trash — there’s got to be more interesting, or less annoying, barriers to boss fights. (Foton)

4. Let’s rethink play styles. I don’t care if a game is classified as Massively Multiplayer, sometimes I just want to solo or do something with a friend. Forced grouping to get any worthwhile equipment is ridiculous. Raiding especially is a chore — with EQ forcing 72 people to show up (later 48) and WoW going the 40 man route (25 in the expansion). Add in PvP, and the gear difference from raiders and non raiders is just magnified. Please don’t take this as me advocating people should just be able to go kill some random easy monster and get the best gear in the game, I don’t. I just feel every style of play should be offered worthwhile rewards (no, reputation grinding to be able to purchase maybe one or two decent things does not count) and there may be hope on the horizon. The Burning Crusade promises much 5 and 10 man content with ample rewards, here’s to hoping. (Raster)

5. Let’s rethink play sessions. Sometimes I wonder if what we really need in MMO gaming is a pause button. Those of us with discretionary income have jobs, and families and mortagages and other obligations … we need fast travel and fast recoveries and fast groups and fast fun. The days of multi-hour LFGs and multi-hour experience groups and multi-hour corpse runs are over. I’d like to see better chunking of the content into shorter play sessions. Quests are ideal for that, of course, but we need raid content with easy entry and exit points. I think two hours or so should be the most time required to complete an instance. Add in group/raid formation, travel time, yap yap about loot time and that’s a solid three hours. Naturally, the first few times attempting a dungeon/instance will add to that, which is fine. Games shouldn’t require lenghthy time commitments to accomplish something. (Ya, SHOULDN’T.) (Foton)

Thursday, Five Assholes from 2006 We Want to Remember FOREVER.

Week of Fives: World of Warcraft Excellence

This week is AFK Gamer’s annual look back at Ye Olde Year, 2006 –The Week of Fives.

Today, Five Things that World of Warcraft Does Really Well.

I spend most of the blog space discussing the stupid and absurd of World of Warcraft, both the game and the players. That’s not the entire story, of course. There’s alot about World of Warcraft, and its players, that’s wonderful. Here’s our top five — three from me, and two from Raster.

1. The music and the sounds. I mentioned a while ago that I haven’t played with music or sound in World of Warcraft since December 2004. Since I wrote that, I’ve made an effort to turn on the music and sounds when I’m solo’ing and not in the guild’s Ventrilo. I have to say, it’s as immersive and rich as I remembered. The swoosh of the stealthed rogues in the PVP battlegrounds, the “To Arms!” music when riding into Ironforge or Orgrimmar, the heightened suspense in Duskwood, the booming NPC taunts in Blackwing Lair … all superbly done. And until I was driven to madness by the mournful cello music of the Burning Crusade’s Blood Elf noob area, I thought it was beautiful. (Foton)

2. The noob levels. WoW does an excellent job introducing newer players to the game. Plentiful spawn areas full of beasts which are not aggro and extremely fast repop help get the initial levels down in no time. Mobs also drop starter gear for all classes and the quests in the area give you just enough money to buy all of your newly trained abilities as well as some slightly higher quality equipment. The quests are relatively easy and teach you the basics of your characters abilities, preparing you for the major area of the game. It’s not difficult to get to level 10 in an hour or two, removing some of the tedium especially if it’s not the first character you’re leveling. Alliance are also treated to their first “epic” dungeon, the Deadmines, around level 20, giving you a nice taste of things to come. (Raster)

3. The sly humor. This, more than any other aspect of WoW, proves that once upon a time, designers, writers, artists loved this game. Well, I’m sure they still do, but some day, the cash cow may become just a cow and there won’t be much time (or budget) to lovingly craft anything. Back to the now, I’ve always appreciated and enjoyed Warcraft’s sly humor … no one has ever done it better. The pop culture references, the play on words, Madonna on the loading screen (goddamit, I know that’s her!), even the corny, all of it so cleverly done — Warcraft is without peer on this. (Foton)

4. The quest system. Rather than follow in EverQuest’s footsteps, WoW made the quests in game an essential part of the game and leveling process. In EQ, quests were usually tedious and the only reward was some item you would receive. There was very little in the way of experience or money rewards, and most of the rewards made you want to throw a brick through your monitor. WoW made quests integral to leveling to 60 and to obtain decent gear along the way. Quests are plentiful and give large experience rewards upon completion, making it much quicker to get to 60 than previous games. Each zone is populated with any number of quests based upon the in-game lore, and after exhausting them, you were sent off to the next one. Most newer players appreciate the streamlined and relatively easy curve to 60 and I’m sure it’s a large part of WoW’s success. Well done Blizzard. (Raster)

5. The fluff. I haven’t written, directly, about Warcraft’s fluff in almost two years, but I’ve been enjoying it all along. (Fluff) There’s a lot of fluff and nonsense (the fun nonsense, not the nerf nonsense) in Warcraft and in many ways, we as players work harder for the fluff than the daily gaming basics — because we want to, not because we have to. We’re talking non-combat pets, enchant glows (the enchants could just add stats, but oh so much better that they have a glow), the additional game events, the quest rewards with an illusion effect, and hundreds of others. I don’t know if there’s one guy at Blizzard in charge of game fluff or an entire team. Either way, he/they have the best job in the whole organization. (Foton)

Wednesday, Five Things We Wish for Future Games.

See Also

2005’s Week of Fives: Day One, Day Two, Day Three, The Finale