Posted by Spooner | 5 Comments

What do you guys think about 4 Raid Lockouts?

I like that Blizzard is willing to experiment with different ideas for their end game content. I’m not exactly sure how this whole new system is going to pan out, it seems a little crowded on paper but still a novel concept. If this new system of raid difficulties becomes popular and viable from a design standpoint then does that mean they’ll go back and rehash old content with the new system? Doubtful.

As for the option of extending your lockout period, I’m on the fence with that one. It has potential for dedicated raid groups to make some headway without having to go through the first bunch of wings and bosses, but in the same hand I worry about the possible abuse that can come from this system.

No, this does not mean that Eye of Eternity or Naxxramas will have the same difficulty layout as the new upcoming Crusaders’ Coliseum. The new format will only be applied to this particular tier of content.

This is sort of a test run for this format, so we will be watching the situation very carefully to see how the reaction to the new raid modes lean.

More lockouts means more opportunities for gear upgrades and the ability for our development team to really make seamless and difficult encounters without having a gimmicky activation component. We can do that and still offer a very friendly environment to players who still want to move up in gear, but don’t have the time to dedicate to the more extreme content.

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Posted by Spooner | 2 Comments

3.2 PTR Raid Testing: Valkyr Twins

So the PTR servers were classified SNAFU and the Jaraxxus testing was rescheduled. (Testing for the Lord Jaraxxus raid encounter on PTR has been cancelled tonight due to technical difficulty. I’ll reschedule this for a later time.) On the plus side we got to see some testing done by the EU folks on what appears to be a very laughably easy boss fight, and it’s one of the later boss fights with better loot.

Here’s the gist of the fight with a little video:

• You’ll have to tank both sisters pretty far apart from each other.
• There will be light and dark “wells” that your character can run through and touch to gain either a light or a dark aura buff thing.
• One sister is dark the other is light. Having the aura/buff thing for the opposite energy than that of the sister you are fighting is key.
• If you’re charged with darkness then you take next to no damage from dark attacks, deal extra damage to light, and can absorb dark  attacks to gain a speed buff. Same concept for light power. After a while the sister will do a dark or light vortex aoe attack, make sure you are changed with her same energy type (light or dark) so that her attack won’t kill you, when it’s done, switch back to her opposite type so you can keep dealing mega damage to her.
• Killing one of the sisters wins the fight according to the video.

I can only imagine in 25man mode there are more little light/dark orbs flying around,t he damage is ramped up, and you have less time to move or possibly the buffs fade over time. Perhaps even having to kill both sisters. Whatever the case, the fundamentals of this fight are really pretty simple. It’s not intimidating at all and feels like a loot piñata from everything I have read and seen of the 25man and 10man kills on the PTR.

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Posted by Spooner | 2 Comments

Sunwell 2.0? New raid in 3.2 looks familiar…

Now all of this is purely speculation but hear me out and either agree or disagree in the comments, I’d really like to get a good discussion going for this from all points of view.

You notice how similar the Argent Tournament and the Isel of Quel’danas are? Sure it’s not a constantly growing phasing kind of place like the sunwell Isle was where the more quests you completed the closer you got to facilities and such, (and there isn’t awesome balls deep PvP everywhere) but the parallels are very close. Anyway, I’m writing this in particular because looking at the encounter and boss stuff (achievements) recently uncovered through datamining the PTR, it looks a lot like Sunwell 2.0.

I’ll go through them one by one here:

• New quest hubs are opening up for two separate areas (like they did for SW).
• Badges are being pretty much normalized across the board and granting hardmode loot to keep the extra hardcore player base a slight step above the rest.
• There’s a dungeon for 5man groups (casuals?) and a raid (average player?) and heroic hardmode raid (for hardcores?)
• The bosses are… throwbacks.
• There are characters and elements from the Manga comic books (SWP was pretty much completely and uteerly centered around the characters Kalecgos and Anveena which were created in the WoW Manga Sunwell Trilogy comic books by Richard Knaak). Looking at the tournament you see a Tauren DK straight from the warcraft legends series of Manga, his character specifically created by Knaak.

Here are the bosses and you’ll understand why I say “throwbacks”:

• There are Valkyr twins instead of Eredar twins.
• There are two worms, possibly double phase fight who knows. Notice that the 2nd model (the Acidmaw one) is the type that’s sticking out of the ground not showing his butt, like the crust bursters from BC or the quest one in the Storm peaks.
• There are also nods to the introductory mobs for Northrend and a big ass red demon… like KJ.
• Finally and most importantly is ANUB’ARAK THE TRAITOR KING! Achievements point to him being the guy and I guess “AZJOL’NERUB WAS JUST A SETBACK!“

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