Posted by Spooner | 6 Comments

The MMO Royal Rumble

It’s been a while since brought up this subject but I find myself inspired to talk about it for a moment, I wanna see your feedback maybe even get some insight. There are 4 major MMO franchises in the field right now that all bring something to the table that I believe has the potential (if not squandered) to make a big splash in the market and the genre.

I’ve never been much of an MMO player truth be told until FFXI and then WoW, so I find it somewhat interesting that I’ve not only met my wife through an MMO, found a job through an MMO, and have made lifelong friends I work with pseudo-professionally through an MMO. So here’s the scoop:

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Posted by Spooner | 5 Comments

Blizzard’s Official Mastery System Preview

Here’s how the system works: As you spend points in a given talent tree, you’ll receive three different passive bonuses specific to that tree. The first bonus will increase your damage, healing, or survivability, depending on the intended role of the tree. The second bonus will be related to a stat commonly found on gear desirable to you, such as Haste or Crit. The third bonus will be the most interesting, as it will provide an effect completely unique to that tree — meaning there will be 30 different bonuses of this nature in the game. This third bonus is the one that will benefit from the Mastery rating found on high-level (level 80 to 85) gear. More after the break.

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Posted by Spooner | 3 Comments

Why I think Cataclysm will make WoW better…

I had a math teacher in High School named Mr. Wilder. The guy was the biggest douchebag who frequently cursed at us and made us laugh. He knew math was boring as piss and over complicated and downright a pain in the taint and we loved him for that brute honesty. He taught me one thing that year above all else, the KIS method to life. Keep It Simple (stupid).

Keep it simple (stupid) is an amazing philosophy that I feel can benefit WoW tremendously. Cataclysm isn’t just revisiting the old world and making it brand new, it’s also streamlining the aspects of this game I despise. A lot of stats are going bye bye which means less stupid loot drama, less spreadsheet what-the-fuckery, and hopefully less emphasis on the ePeen “Best in Slot suck my Cock” mentality that seems to be the only thing I ever see in raid groups:

Stats changes in Cataclysm
Agility, Strength and Intellect all need to be of about the same value for their respective target classes.

I don’t want to shut down all speculation on the topic, because it’s interesting stuff, but do keep in mind that if you think you’ve noticed a horrible, glaring flaw based on the limited info we’ve released, chances are it’s something we’ve already discovered and / or discussed.

We already know as I reported back in August that there will no longer be spell power, attack power, defense rating, MP5, or armor penetration (thank god) in Cataclysm at least on the gear. Defense is also being completely removed and Stamina is being inflated on gear to compensate for a lot of these stats. Essentially you’re going to need hit rating, haste (which is going to affect resource generation as well now such as energy and focus), expertise, and mastery (which will affect your talents and your role).

Getting rid of Defense in Cataclysm
The reason we want to do away with defense isn’t because it is a “cappable” stat. Hit is interesting in that you need a certain amount but no more and have to make gear choices accordingly rather than just gemming and enchanting your best stat everywhere and using the highest item level piece that drops without other considerations.

There are several reasons to get rid of defense:

1) It’s a confusing stat with its “cap” that isn’t really a cap.
2) It contributes to avoidance inflation.
3) It’s not of the same value for all 4 tank classes.
4) If you have a bunch of dps that can’t hit, you’ll probably just progress more slowly. If you have a tank that can be crit there’s a chance you can’t progress at all.
5) It contributes to tank scarcity. Ideally an Arms warrior should be able to go Defensive Stance and grab a shield to tank a 5-player dungeon (though not a raid). When every dps warrior (though the same is true of all tank classes) needs a full set of tank gear to tank even easy heroic content, it’s harder to fill your Dungeon Finder groups.

I’m just happy that it’s still going to be interesting to pick and choose and solve the puzzle of gear options but at the same time it’s going to do away with the overbearing push of “YOU MUST GEAR THIS WAY OR QUIT THE GAME BADDIE” that most elitist jerks swear by. The folks that started elitist jerks were a bunch of adults with lives that had very limited time to play the game due to a lucrative career in law (courtroom). So they wanted to maximize their success with what little time they had to play – now, it’s become nothing more than a cudgel the assholes of the game use to swing around and belittle those that they feel most threatened by. The original noble ideal of just being good at a game by using your brain has fallen to the wayside and that is pretty damn sad.

With this mild simplification of the stats I feel a lot of the math is being replaced by an actual game again, and I love it.

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More hints of Worgen Lore?

It was mentioned at Blizzcon (and this one really rang in my ears) that the Worgen may not exactly be from a different world, but a different time – and that the Night Elves bringing them into the Alliance as ancient allies might be a little deeper than most would think.

A very profound theory is that of the Worgen being a reclusive sect of Night Elf Druids from either the deep forgotten past or distant future, something akin to the SI:7 organization of Stormwind or even the Grimtotem Clan of Tauren. These druids transcended shapeshifting and became or evolved into beastmen and women. Somehow the curse or what have you has affected humanity but its still really interesting to delve into.

I bring this up simply because there is so much that is still very unknown and open ended with Night Elves. There’s a lot of history involved over the past millennium that can be tapped for great lore and story. And then there’s Elune. The dichotomy of Elune seems to be in direct opposition to the concept of Titans being the originators of life on Azeroth – and what of the Naruu?

Anyway I did a quest recently that I have never done before (which is pretty damn astounding to me in my 5 years on WoW). You do a bunch of crazy manic shit in Feralas for some Night Elves, they send you to Darnassus to speak with Tyrande, then it ends. But not really. You can opt to go back to Feralas and meet the two crazy chicks and take an egg they saved (yes this is the sprite darter dragon quest chain). Sprite Dragons or Faerie dragons are friendly to the Night Elves and were units used in the 3rd war by the sentinels. Cutting to the chase, you end up having to take the egg to a Dwarf in the Aerie peak at which point he helps you finally hatch and raise the dragonling. His exact words:

Sprite darters are omnivores–that means they eat both meat and vegetation. If your egg here’s gonna hatch, we best be prepared. Some good eats for these little guys are flanks of meat, raw and juicy, believe it or not. I was never able to find out why, but it has somethin’ to do with Elune’s plan for the elves… maybe they were to be protectors or somethin’, I don’t know.

I’ll take care of the egg for now, why don’t you get me some good Silvermane stalker flanks for ‘em to eat when he’s hatched.

So you tell me. Raw and juicy flesh sound like something a wolf would find to be the perfect dish right?

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More on Talents in WoW Cataclysm

It’s obviously pretty early to be getting too deep into these kinds of discussions, but it’s damn interesting all the same. Ghostcrawler had this to say on the forums recently (source):

We’re not going to be able to get all damage out of the trees. For example, Improved Frostbolt, a talent that makes Frostbolt cast faster is essentially a passive damage increase, but it does it in a more interesting way than a talent like Arctic Winds, which grants +Frost damage to keep it from being a PvP only talent.

See I can understand that, not every talent is going to be interesting and dynamic. But that doesn’t mean you can’t get rid of the no brainers. A perfect example would be Cruelty for Warriors. There isn’t a single build at all across the board that DOES NOT have that added 5% to crit. That’s 5 whole points that an be better spent in other places no? The same can be said for Rogues with the 5 point talents that add flat crit/hit/offhand damage and such. There isn’t a single build that doesn’t want these talents.

I don’t know that Improved Overpower will make the cut, since you pretty much always want to Overpower when you can so it isn’t that interesting a talent. Taste for Blood is an interesting talent even though it’s pretty much just more damage at the end of the day. Trauma is not particularly interesting, but it’s an important group buff which makes it marginally more interesting that a talent that just passively improves your own damage. Something like Deep Wounds is tough. It’s pretty passive but it’s also pretty iconic for the Arms tree. If crit chances are lower in Cataclysm, and they will be, then it’s not the no-brainer it is today, but I still can’t imagine an Arms build without it.

This reiterates the fact that talents you feel that you must have regardless of your spec are counter intuitive. We as players want to find the best way to DPS right (or heal or tank) and so everybody ends up following the cookie cutter which defeats the entire purpose in my eyes of 3 different specs. The word spec itself refers to specialization, so what should each tree be specialized in?

Ultimately, what we want to do is just give players a lot more flexibility in how they talent. Some of the trees currently have a “cookie cutter” spec that says something like “Spend the last 3 points wherever you want.” We want to get that feel in all the trees, and hopefully with more like 5-8 points spent wherever you want. We also want to make sure you aren’t able / forced to skip over the utility talents just to get the +damage, healing or survival talents.

So Beast Master, Marksman, and Survival Hunters should all be able to deal mad DPS. The perfect world, BM does all their damage with their pet and their pets should be just unbelievable. Marks should be the mack daddy sniper. Survival should have traps and tools falling off the cart to manipulate and control the environment. Makes sense?

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