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Sounds an awful lot like the way rogues (combo points)/warriors (rage) work in WoW.

And I'm sure WoW borrowed those mechanics from another game as well. There's an awful lot of "borrowing" in the MMO industry.

Except in your WoW examples the combo points and rage are applied to a mode which you used to gain them in the first place. It sounds like WarHammer is applying them orthogonal to your usage mode. i.e, you get heal points when you attack, and attack points when you heal.

This difference sounds like it could provide a very different gameplay experience to standard WoW party roles.

I wanted to talk for a second about some of the unique mechanics I noticed, which you might have already heard about before. The archmage I'm playing has a mechanic known as high magic, which the shaman also has, but it's called Waagh!. Basically, how it works is like this: If you cast damage spells, your healing counter goes up from 1 to 5, by a point for each damage spell you cast. If you cast healing spells, your damage counter goes up from 1 to 5, by a point for each healing spell you cast. This counter is like a charge that can be saved, but if you stop casting spells for 10 or 15 seconds you lose all the charges you have. If you cast a bunch of damage spells and build your counter up to 5, your next healing spell that normally would take 3 seconds to cast will be instant, and will heal for more. Likewise, if you build your healing counter up to 5, your next damage spell will hit harder. This unique dynamic encourages people to not just be healbots, but to be in the fray of battle, dishing out damage, and tossing out heals constantly. Every class has a similar unique mechanic, which will be refreshing for those of you used to filling a simple role (like healbot).

Sounds an awful lot like the way rogues (combo points)/warriors (rage) work in WoW.

And I'm sure WoW borrowed those mechanics from another game as well. There's an awful lot of "borrowing" in the MMO industry.

I wanted to talk for a second about some of the unique mechanics I noticed, which you might have already heard about before. The archmage I'm playing has a mechanic known as high magic, which the shaman also has, but it's called Waagh!. Basically, how it works is like this: If you cast damage spells, your healing counter goes up from 1 to 5, by a point for each damage spell you cast. If you cast healing spells, your damage counter goes up from 1 to 5, by a point for each healing spell you cast. This counter is like a charge that can be saved, but if you stop casting spells for 10 or 15 seconds you lose all the charges you have. If you cast a bunch of damage spells and build your counter up to 5, your next healing spell that normally would take 3 seconds to cast will be instant, and will heal for more. Likewise, if you build your healing counter up to 5, your next damage spell will hit harder. This unique dynamic encourages people to not just be healbots, but to be in the fray of battle, dishing out damage, and tossing out heals constantly. Every class has a similar unique mechanic, which will be refreshing for those of you used to filling a simple role (like healbot).

Sounds an awful lot like the way rogues (combo points)/warriors (rage) work in WoW.

And I'm sure WoW borrowed those mechanics from another game as well. There's an awful lot of "borrowing" in the MMO industry.

and a multitude of other CRPGs I simply was trying create that feeling again. Let alone the challenge required. It requires an very in depth knowledge of how the macro language works, addons, and how each class plays.

However I did find out quickly that balanced groups are far less efficient than optimized groups. One of the best sites dedicated to dual boxing is http://www.dual-boxing.com/forums/index.php?page=Portal You can also choose read articles about it on WOWWIKI starting with http://www.wowwiki.com/Dual_box // disclaimer is that I wrote the bulk of those wowwiki articles.

The primary use I have for dual boxing now is that it makes annoying classes bearable when you always have backup. Just tow a high level healer out of group for timely heals and even warriors (no healing ability and very few if any escape possibilities) become simple to do.

WoW is not all that repetitive

lolwut
I'm in a mid-level guild on the last phase of Illidan, and a Duelist (in-game definition), and I can say with certainty that the entire game -- PvP, PvE, Tradeskills, all of it -- is a grind.

You old-timers might remember the Rank 14 grind. A Field Marshall friend of mine played from 7am-8pm all summer long to get Rank 14. If that isn't a grind, I don't know what is.

Now, we grind BGs for honor gear. Same thing. It's something like just under 80k honor for the full offset, and a 20 minute AV win will net you 500 honor if you're lucky (and MAYBE 200 for a loss). Do the math.

Even if the only raid you've done is KZ, I can confirm that it doesn't get any better for progression. I think Hyjal is still around a 3-hour clear for us, despite being on Illidan.

I still dig it -- it's a social thing for me. My irl brother lives 5 hours away and we hang out and level new toons, play BGs, and just chat in-game. I have a few IRL friends I do the same with. Look, life is a grind -- go to work, make money, spend money, start over. We still (generally) enjoy that.

Maura

Hmmm, what zone would that instance be located in?

Or perhaps you were referring to Maraudon.

I'm more about the storyline and I can't muster the manpower or the time for raids, so one of the things that my friends and I have been doing is going back to older dungeons and raids. For example, the content in the Scholomance instance hasn't changed much since Burning Crusade, so 3 of us go into it playing as level 70s just to experience the content.

Blizzard probably doesn't have the manpower but what I think would be exciting would be to refresh some of the content in Scholomance and link it back to (new?) quests that occur or overlap in the Outlands. Perhaps a book is on a shelf in Scholomance or a portal to a plane where you have to collect an item of power through a previously inert portion of Dire Maul. This idea would allow them to reuse (and refresh) existing content.

Currently this still sort of happens with class-specific quests, like the Paladin or Warlock epic mounts.

I'm more about the storyline and I can't muster the manpower or the time for raids, so one of the things that my friends and I have been doing is going back to older dungeons and raids. For example, the content in the Scholomance instance hasn't changed much since Burning Crusade, so 3 of us go into it playing as level 70s just to experience the content.

Blizzard probably doesn't have the manpower but what I think would be exciting would be to refresh some of the content in Scholomance and link it back to (new?) quests that occur or overlap in the Outlands. Perhaps a book is on a shelf in Scholomance or a portal to a plane where you have to collect an item of power through a previously inert portion of Dire Maul. This idea would allow them to reuse (and refresh) existing content.

Currently this still sort of happens with class-specific quests, like the Paladin or Warlock epic mounts.

Probably one of the easiest places to get info about the upcoming expansion is WoWWiki's Wrath of the Lich King page.

Since I'm not in the alpha testing, I can't comment to the veracity of what is on WoWWiki's site, but the editors over there seem to be fairly good.

Patch 2.4 just went live, after patching you must agree to a new EULA not sure of the wording but I'll bet there is something in there that deals with glider. I know that the interface add-ons certainly needed updating, I wonder how glider faired under the patch. In game I have seen players mindlessly running against objects and wondered if they were bots. Interestingly enough WoW has nothing against multiboxing, http://www.wowwiki.com/Dual_box So as long as you are actually playing they are fairly liberal allowing interface ad-dons, macros, lua programming ,so I say power to them, jack the glider guy up to the sky.

Are you multiboxing, playing 5 or 10 World of Warcraft accounts at the same time? My new quad-core flies with five instances of WOW running. My AMD dual-core was faster, but could only handle three sessions at a time before starting to get choppy.

http://wowwiki.com/Formulas:XP_To_Level

check this out. http://www.wowwiki.com/Theorycraft

People who are *really* into MMO's spend tons of time doing analysis of game mechanics. It's not uncommon to find discussions in the EverQuest2 class forums go straight to calculus.

no monthly fee!
My mortgage company would like a word with you...

massive world to explore
But the attunement requirements are an immense and intrusive bother

incredible NPC AI
Sorry to disappoint you, that's not artificial intelligence, that's natural stupidity

over 56,400 character archetypes
And about 56,300 of them are ovine

fully PvP
Sadly, yes, too true

highest resolution graphics
Not for everyone; my OEM graphics hardware needs some aftermarket help

FSF decided to hold a Q&S in....IRC?

Actually, it was worse than that.

The actual Q&S session was in World of Warcraft.
In Barrens general chat, in fact.

On the upside, who knew Stallman knew so much about Chuck Norris?

http://www.wowwiki.com/Lore

Have fun.

The primary sound issue that I found is that Wine runs using OSS. Which only allows 1 program to access the sound system.

So if I'm running Rhythmbox, or I have a web page showing a flash movie, then when I start WoW it will not have any sound.

If I close out of those first, and then start WoW, I get sound.

This page:
http://www.wowwiki.com/Linux/Wine#Voice_Chat

Talks about it a bit, and suggests possibly trying alsa-oss, which is a program which redirects the OSS calls into Alsa calls.

It isn't something I've tried yet, but it might be worthwhile.

For those Blizzards fans smart enough to stay away from WoW, I'll let you know that they also appear in the Uldaman dungeon as dwarves.

Baelog, Olaf, and Eric the Swift are all in the game. If you are Alliance you can talk to them and if you are Horde you can kill them and loot interesting things like Olaf's shield that gives you the ability to slow your fall.

For those Blizzards fans smart enough to stay away from WoW, I'll let you know that they also appear in the Uldaman dungeon as dwarves.

Baelog, Olaf, and Eric the Swift are all in the game. If you are Alliance you can talk to them and if you are Horde you can kill them and loot interesting things like Olaf's shield that gives you the ability to slow your fall.

For those Blizzards fans smart enough to stay away from WoW, I'll let you know that they also appear in the Uldaman dungeon as dwarves.

Baelog, Olaf, and Eric the Swift are all in the game. If you are Alliance you can talk to them and if you are Horde you can kill them and loot interesting things like Olaf's shield that gives you the ability to slow your fall.

It's probably more like 9 million accounts and 3 million users.

Apparently there's this fad called "dual boxing". This guy has 50 computers on WoW at a time between him and his gf.

And you thought your buddy was addicted with his ONE measly account.

I will tell you, from first hand experience of playing WoW exclusively under linux (ubuntu 7.04) with a nvidia 5800 and the latest release of wine, following the guide at http://wowwiki.com/Linux/Wine it works flawlessly.
The only caveat is the patch downloader doesn't work most of the time for me, but I also haven't opened up the ports on my router yet. It is easy enough to go to one of the many patch mirrors ( http://wowwiki.com/Patch_mirrors ) to pull the latest one when needed.

I will tell you, from first hand experience of playing WoW exclusively under linux (ubuntu 7.04) with a nvidia 5800 and the latest release of wine, following the guide at http://wowwiki.com/Linux/Wine it works flawlessly.
The only caveat is the patch downloader doesn't work most of the time for me, but I also haven't opened up the ports on my router yet. It is easy enough to go to one of the many patch mirrors ( http://wowwiki.com/Patch_mirrors ) to pull the latest one when needed.

Go out in flames!

You can read all about it here: http://www.wowwiki.com/Tseric

Here's the web site i followed to set it up.

Ever hear of "honor decay"? There's one very concrete example of a "feature" designed specifically to encourage addiction.

Yes actually, I have. In fact, I wrote most of the wowwiki article on the subject.

For those of you who don't know... The honor system in WOW was a competitive ranking system. In order to advance, you had to maintain your place at the top of the pile for weeks and weeks on end. Bare minimum to go from Rank 0 to Rank 14 was 12 weeks at the number one spot, and longer for lower spots. Skipping a week completely would cost you multiple weeks to recover if you already Rank 12 or 13.

I honestly believe that Blizzard underestimated the tenacity of its hardest-core players when it designed this system. What should have been measure of skill versus skill quickly degenerated to the point where the top players were those that could stay in game, playing PVP matches for 80-120 hours per week. You could be good, and score lots of points in a short time, but you'd still lose to an average player (or pool of players) who could play 24x6.5 days/week.

Blizzard realized this too. That's why the old honor system is gone, since the 2.0 patch.

Fraps seems to be a capture tool for 3D animated video on Windows, and Shattrath City is an important location in World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade which requires rendering a large crowd of high-level characters wearing elaborate equipment (often glowing and/or animated). The poster's video card can accomplish all this at over thirty frames per second.

it was metamatic who first brought up the subject of non-violent coop games; i merely commented that i was aware that they existed. rest assured that i haven't forgotten about the violent games that are out there.

i'm not sure how much more value you're getting in a true AI that has the ability to learn over a "fake" AI that is merely comprised of a simple set of heuristics. taking onyxia as an example, i doubt that pve guilds would welcome the possibility of having to relearn content every week, since most pve guilds i've seen are filled with people who like to learn content once, then show up in subsequent weeks, mash a few buttons (NWS), pick up loot, and log out until the next raid. in addition, once a computer opponent has had a chance to learn and improve against players who are also learning and improving, any newbies who show up later with little skill and/or gear will be severely outmatched by this "super computer player". so, balancing this kind of situation could be tricky.

my impression is that "fake" AIs provide pretty good gaming experiences, already. thus, instead of having to deal with all the extra trouble and work that writing a true AI entails, i'd rather see a game developer write decent heuristics, then move on to content and other features.

anyways, my original position was that real players provide plenty of challenge and entertainment, and a true computer AI isn't really needed. i'm just writing this for kicks.

...I'm a bit addicted to LOTRO (their acronym, not mine). I've never played WoW or EverQuest, so I can't compare it to them. But I like the sense of freedom on a known (Middle Earth) map.

I haven't seen LOTRO, but I have been playing WoW for the last year. There are two main reasons why I could see someone might play LOTRO in preference to WoW:-

1) The backstory. WoW's lore is the proverbial mulligan stew; a whole heap of disparate elements thrown together. This is reflected in the number of retcons Blizzard have had to perform in order to get it to fit together. Although it's difficult to put my finger on exactly what I mean here, WoW is not a virtual world in the same sense Ultima Online was. It's a lot closer to being an online form of Disneyland with the lore bolted on. You can especially see that by looking at how clearly petitioned off from each other each geographical zone in the game is. Blizz would probably argue that they needed to do that in order to make the game mainstream, and I'd agree with them. However, in gaining mainstream appeal, it also loses the sense of being as organic as UO was.

2) The elves. If I was going to write this anywhere else, people would call me a freak for caring, but seeing as this is Slashdot and I'm among other such freaks, I can do so with impunity. ;-)
I've read a number of other depictions of elves besides Tolkien, (Dragonlance, AD&D, Shadowrun, and Feist also mentions them at times in passing) and I've always felt that Tolkien was the only author who ever truly grokked the elves. WoW is no exception, although I think in WoW's case this is a problem of taking about the single most non-mainstream element of fantasy in existence and trying to render it mainstream. Peter Jackson more or less managed to pull it off, but I haven't seen anyone else who has.

I realise with the above two points that I'm talking about some very slippery, subjective intangibles; but to me that's also the point. Tolkien's material (to me anywayz) had a very distinctive vibe, and despite some valiant efforts at times I haven't seen anyone who's been able to entirely reproduce that.

I play WoW purely for action. It's a game (think an expanded/more complex version of Diablo 2, for the most part) first and foremost, and any consideration of it as either a virtual or fictional environment comes a fairly distant second. I was actually starting to feel somewhat differently just before the release of the expansion, but with the expansion I feel that Blizzard have wanted to put the "game" element firmly back as the main focus, and so I've done the same.

Some have accused Blizzard of outright McDonaldisation with WoW. I feel that to a degree that is unfair, in that even though they've certainly done that to an extent, it's not so blatant that it prevent genuine enjoyment of the game.

Wine handles Wow just as good as Cedega. If you're paying for Cedega just for WoW, stop... there's no benefit. If you use it for other games as well, then it's probably worth it. Just MHO.

Check here:
http://www.wowwiki.com/Linux/Wine
and here:
http://appdb.winehq.org/appview.php?iVersionId=648 2

While I've liked both starting areas, I have quite enjoyed the Draenei starting quests. It's true that the architecture in the Blood Elf region is more complex, but that's consistent with the game in my opinion - the Blood Elfs are starting in their recently wrecked city, the Draenei start stranded on a remote island. The starting quests on the Draenei side are quite good - in fact, the "Medal Ceremony" at the end of the final elite quest is very cool. And then there's the Kessell Run.

However, I can see how someone might prefer the flavor of the Blood Elf starting area to the Draenei area. To me, that difference in flavor shows how much thought Blizzard put into each area.

There's a difference between learning what does what and learning how to use every skill you have effectively. A lot of players fail at the first step, only learning what 5-6 skills they'll use the most and ignoring the rest. The result is Paladins who don't heal others, Warriors who tank in Berzerker Stance with a 2H, and Druids who aren't aware they're different from Rogues.

...and also, voicing some rather old concerns (I'm sure it was around a year ago that PC Gamer in the UK covered the whole issue of the never-changing status quo with your quests never having an effect on your surroundings). It's true that WoW could benefit from a more 'interactive' world, where the boundaries and territories of your particular faction could change, but then other games do this - see EVE Online for instance; if you want to play a game where you have truly dynamic borders and power struggles, there's your candidate.

I think the biggest worry for me with WoW is one I've never seen discussed; the economy. Since each sharded server will eventually mature into a well-populated realm containing a large number of high-level characters, the value of certain commodities and equippable items will change. Eventually, as enough high-level players reach a certain state of wealthiness, you'll see the emergence of a large number of Twinks. As soon as this takes hold, items which are useful to Twinks shoot up in value and price out legitimate players. Rarer equipment which would normally only command a moderately expensive fee suddenly become beyond the reach of anyone except those who already have wealthy high-level characters.

The resale market isn't the only area affected. Tradeskills which would normally consume certain commodities and produce items of use to low to mid-level characters become irrelevent as the produce no longer has the demand, and so the trade goods used to make them also diminish in value. All the while, the few tradeskills of relevence in the endgame (such as enchanting) continue to become increasingly profitable (individuals charging a fee for the mere privilege of having an enchant performed, even if you provide the raw materials). As the status quo gradually shifts, so do the attitudes of the populace, who effectively all shrug their shoulders in resignation, saying "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em".

Other games (well, my only experience is with EVE Online) work by ensuring that the market is self-replenishing; goods are produced from raw materials but ships can be destroyed in combat, meaning that there will always be demand for further production. By not having any kind of 'release valve', the economy of WoW is in perpetual inflation, and eventually it has to break.

"There is no overarching story to WoW. Or at least not a long, drawn-out historical one"

Wow I warrant has more drawn out historical story line than both EQ and EQ2. There are books all over the place in Wow that tell parts of the history. Any room full of books usually has one or two to click on.

There have been one time events in world of warcraft. The scourge invasion and the opening of AQ. I imagine there will continue to be more as time goes on.

There are many quest line stories, The onxyia chain, the plagueland brothers who are out set on revenge against each other (one side being a horde npc, one brother an alliance npc), some of the plaguelands quests in general are all connected with plenty of story and dialog. Also see the whole store behind Black Rock Mountain the interplay between Vaelastrasz and Nefarion through all three Black Rock instances (lbrs, ubrs, bwl).

Perhaps you should check out.
http://www.wowwiki.com/Lore

And especially
http://www.wowwiki.com/Timeline

"There is no overarching story to WoW. Or at least not a long, drawn-out historical one"

Wow I warrant has more drawn out historical story line than both EQ and EQ2. There are books all over the place in Wow that tell parts of the history. Any room full of books usually has one or two to click on.

There have been one time events in world of warcraft. The scourge invasion and the opening of AQ. I imagine there will continue to be more as time goes on.

There are many quest line stories, The onxyia chain, the plagueland brothers who are out set on revenge against each other (one side being a horde npc, one brother an alliance npc), some of the plaguelands quests in general are all connected with plenty of story and dialog. Also see the whole store behind Black Rock Mountain the interplay between Vaelastrasz and Nefarion through all three Black Rock instances (lbrs, ubrs, bwl).

Perhaps you should check out.
http://www.wowwiki.com/Lore

And especially
http://www.wowwiki.com/Timeline

There a lot of well writen quests in the game. One of the quests, made for the openning of AQ gates, is really good, with lots of characters interaction, action, huge epic-quests and adventure. See http://www.wowwiki.com/Scepter_of_the_Shifting_San ds

And on storytelling ... yeah. There is no overarching story to WoW. Or at least not a long, drawn-out historical one. Like EQ or EQ2. Not sure about Vanguard. EQ had tomes and books found in libraries, spawn points and dropped off of mobs that painted a clear picture of the historical timeline and the relevance of various events.

DKP = dragon kill points

The quote 50 dkp minus is a reference to numerous ytmnd sites featuring a sound sample captured from Teamspeak/Ventrillo (two popular voice chat programs WoW-ers use) where the leader of a Raid (40 people running through a dungeon to kill bosses/enemies) yells at his players. The yeller of "50 DKP Minus!" is a player named Dives from a guild named Wipe Club (the term wipe means to have all your party members die, ie: wipe-out). It other words, it's a quote-joke.

The term DKP is from the EQ days (so I've heard). Because items (loot) are rare and hard to get, people work for them. In a group of 40 people that run (go) a lot, people develop these kinds of systems to keep things fair. In the DKP system, you kill bosses for points and turn them in for items. This might sound ridiculous but it's similar to reward-points on your credit card. The more you use/play, the more stuff you get and you thereby have helped the group grow.

Dives talks with a very excited accent and sounds like a crazed Indian general yelling out spastic orders. His voice is easily impersonated and his quotes work as a faux-penalty. For example, if someone kicked you in the shin, you might quote Seinfeld and say "no soup for you", even though they don't want soup. So in this way, some guild say "50 DKP MINUS!" when someone screws up even though they don't use the DKP system.

All in all, it's all complicated to the outsider because it's a deep hobby. Personally I think DKP is overly-complex and I like Suicide Kings better. It's simple, you suicide to get an item and fall to the end of the line. If you don't suicide, you stay at the front of the line and the next person chooses whether to suicide or not. Much better imo, but I'm sure others would argue that it's too simple and it has problems.

the Blood Elves' frailty was used (in part) to justify why Blood Elf characters could not play as Warriors (See WoWWiki for further details). Now that they're being "pumped up" to look stronger, maybe Blizzard revert their class-restrictions and make it possible for players to roll Blood Elf Warriors again..

You should install the DurabilityStatus addon for her. (part of Cosmos) http://www.wowwiki.com/DurabilityStatus

Neither of these are the political entity "the humans" which is a member of "the Alliance". Its actual name is Kingdom of Stormwind, comprising the capital city, the surrounding forest territory and nearby vassal powers and territories. Calling them "the Humans" is just an alias, as much as talking about "the Night Elves" is more directly understood than saying "Darnassus", etc.

In reality, according to the lore nothing prevents a character from being a Darnassian Human or a Stormwindian Night Elf. The game mechanic is what requires all Human characters to be Stormwindian, all Night Elves to be Darnassian, all Dwarves to be Ironforgian, all Gnomes to be Gnomeragan Exiles etc.

MC = Molten Core. The first serious 40-player raid instance which marks the beginning of WoW's endgame progression. And generally takes several hours or even 10s of hours for an inexperienced raid group, hence the request for food.

One of the things I particularly enjoy about the Warcraft lore is that while the story is often told from one side or the other, there is not necessarily any absolute good or evil. Characters you'd assume were actually 'good' often are forced to ally with races or beings you'd assume were 'evil'. Some beings in the warcraft universe believe in order (alliance AND most of the horde), while others believe in chaos (the burning legion, et al). Some characters, e.g. http://www.wowwiki.com/Illidan seem to be in a purposefully ambivalent position on this 'line'. In some situations, he's undeniably evil incarnate, but he still shows surprising compassion for the non-demonic at various points in the back-story.

Another interesting point is that while the forsaken do kinda want to wipe out all life, that is for two main reasons: it's their only method of reproduction, so to speak - i.e. kill something and raise it from the dead. Also, most living things want to kill all the undead, as they view them as an abomination of nature. Nothing quite makes you want to kill something like being hunted down for genocidal reasons by them. Whether it's preferable to be alive or undead presumably hinges on what state of 'living' you are currently in.