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Next World of Warcraft Patch Review
Via Penny Arcade, a review of the next patch for World of Warcraft on Blizzplanet. The author takes a look at some of the new art being added to the game and examines details of the new honor system. From the article: "The horde slowly started to show up in the area to attempt to protect their territory. I joined a raid group to counterattack, and noticed that each kill where my Priest character helped with fear, word: pain, or healing counted toward my Honorable Kills, even if I didn't directly caused damage or killed. Healing and Fear count toward your kill points."
Is games.slashdot.org going to report everytime a new patch comes out for a game? Do we live such pathetic lives that this is really News for Nerds, stuff that matters?
-Dipster
This is a pretty big chance of pace for Blizzard. It took 90 days for their first content patch to come out - they had originally promised new content every month.
Additionally, up until now, WoW's PvP system was seen as largely pointless. This provides tangible benefits (and not just OMG POINTS!) to succesful PvP ventures. It should be exciting. Anyone who plays now can test this patch out a bit by copying a character over to the (grossly over-populated) test server. The disadvantage, as I stated, is that there are way too many people on it, and can get very laggy if you're in the wrong place at the wrong time. This isn't a major concern for me, though, because the server population is immense compared to an average server, and they've already made another sub-patch to improve performance, with noticable improvement. There's still a LOT of room for more improvement. For example, player corpses should disappear after a certain point, or you should have the ability to not display them. Without that ability, you can run across a field that is just littered with corpses of dead players, and while it's a visceral joy to look at, it's also a huge network performance hit.
Moo
I wish they would just release it already, I'm so bored with my lvl 60 hunter I don't even play anymore. The end-game has very serious hangups. I hope this patch addresses them. If not, I'm probably cancelling.
The government has a defect: it's potentially democratic. Corporations have no defect: they're pure tyrannies. -Chomsky
Is it still $50 + $15/month? Oh well, still not gonna play it then... ;P
"A truly wise man realizes he knows nothing."
1. Blizzard has always been slow with new content. Even if it's released every month, you can lvl to 60 in 2-3 weeks. Although it may be Blizzard, that so many people love blindly, WoW is a fun and short term designed MMO.
2. Don't like the small monthly fee or have a commitment problem with reoccurring costs? Don't play the game.
3. What will it take you to realize this isn't the ultimate game you had hoped for and move on? Or have you sunk so much expectation into this, that you can't?
This is going to be great, this patch will turn PvP servers into roaming gank sqauds looking for players to wreck to increase their honor points.
I expect it will take about 48 hours from the start of the patch for every instance to be camped and the entrances to every contested zone.
On the PvP servers, maybe. But if you are wandering around without backup on one of those, then you really are asking for a ganking anyway. And remember that Blizzard has implemented diminishing returns on the points you get for killing the same person over and over again. For the RP and PvE servers, I only see good. Remember, except for certain areas, you aren't forced to PvP unless you want to. Ganking a person is hard when they have the ability not to consent to it.
On the PvP servers, maybe. But if you are wandering around without backup on one of those, then you really are asking for a ganking anyway.
Nah, I'm on a PvP server and I run around alone all the time. There isn't as much ganking as you think. Certain zones are more prone to it (ie Strangethorne vale) while others aren't because they are less populated (Swamp of Sorrows). I think after this patch, there will be a lot more ganking. I'm not complaining, I joined a PvP server for this sort of thing.
And remember that Blizzard has implemented diminishing returns on the points you get for killing the same person over and over again.
Sure, but if you are camping a certain point of interest, why not corpse camp the guy and get the diminished points, while you wait for the next one to fall into your trap? If you are attacking 5-10 levels below you, this is the way to go.
It's going to be a lot of fun to see if the factions work together with in themselves to protect their towns, and points of interest so their lowbies can level up.
They should have named the game "World of Diablo". That would have saved me from disappointment.
The PvP servers actually have a minimal amount of ganking. I personally found that once I hit about 30 the gankings by people 10+ levels higher then me almost stopped. Generally, the only time I get ganked by a level ?? alliance is when I kill people my level too much at one location and they call in for guild support.
Sure, ganking is going to go up, but I have a feeling most the increased ganking will come from people that are roughly the same level. It doesn't bother me much if I get to a dungeon and find alliance waiting if they are my level. In fact, that sounds like a merry old time with hours of PvP goodness as we struggle to control the area.
I joined the PvP server for a reason. Sure, I don't level up as fast because I spent time fighting over hunting areas, but who in the hell wants to hunt mindless NPCs 24/7?
"The fipside of this coin for a game designed to take awhile is that it takes awhile to occomplish things."
Translation: You know all that shit that made you leave EverTreadmill and go to WoW for? We have.
I've seen so many posts (even articles) about how WoW is going to fail because you can get to level 60 in 2-3 weeks, and then you've done all there is to do. As others have said, while doable, this requires some serious power-gaming. First of all, I get the impression that there's a lot more gaming to be gained by playing alternate characters and Horde instead of Alliance, not to mention PVP, but more importantly, I think 90% of the people who play will not be doing this kind of power-gaming. Rather I suspect a major portion of their player base is a much more casual gamer, and in my opinion, the game caters to them for the very reason that it is not an incredibly long process to reach level 60.
In other words, the fact that you can log in for an hour or two and make some notable progress, makes it much more likely that the non power-gamers will stick around as opposed to games like EQ where I could log in for 2 hours and not see a change worth mentioning in my exp bar.
So the power gamers (smaller percentage of player base) get bored and move on to other games, while the casual players (larger percentage) have their interest held and continue playing. I think a year from now, those saying WoW will fail because it's 'too easy' are going to be surprised.
Of course, I don't see numbers, so maybe I'm wrong and everyone but me and my three buddies play 10 hours a day. Could be.
Blizzard does a lousy job of communicating with their player base.
I used to have a paladin (I suppose he's still there with my other characters, but I no longer subscribe and don't plan on reactivating). Paladins got almost completely changed something like one week before the game went retail. They had literally no wide scale testing of the mechanics or balance of their new paladin before the game went retail - just something like a week or two of open beta and however much internal testing they did. That's also when paladins got their talent system (they didn't have one at all through the entire closed beta) - the only part of your character that you can customize, other than armour and appearance.
Paladins have had next to no developer posts in their community forum. No solicitations for feedback about the class at all, nothing about the direction the devs plan on taking the class. Nothing of any substance - nothing for more than four and a half months.
The class is very poorly designed. I've played a high level warrior, and it was quite fun, and always involved. On the other hand, the paladin plays almost the exact same way in nearly every situation in solo (or pvp, but different tactics) with generally very slight variations depending on build... you might press one or two more buttons in a minute of fighting (that doesn't sound like much, but with a paladin that's at least 50% more). It's also quite slow. The entire class is generic and very un-polished. There is no tactical depth.
Now the devs are adding paladin and warlock epic mounts (no other class has their own, unique epic mount). Epic mounts are just faster mounts. The paladin and warlock epic mounts will end up costing in gold and materials from very slightly less than normal epics to slightly more. There is no advantage to them, other than their look. Paladins and warlocks are not restricted from buying the normal epic mounts. And yet... they'll both cost mana to cast. For a paladin, about a quarter to a sixth of their entire mana pool. What a fucking waste of the devs time. Not that I value a retards time at much.
That'll probably end up being the last time I ever bought a Blizzard game. Too bad... they used to be a good company.
Apparently you are young and single. It shows pretty clearly in your reply. When you get married, have children, pay a mortgage and have to start thinking about college savings, car payments, mortgage, repairing the roof, insurance and even retirement accounts, your priorities changes out of necessity. $15 over the course of a month, regardless of your earnings is a number you pay attention to. You can't just throw money at things anymore, because you want to. You start making educated choices about where to spend your disposable dollars, because you realize they are not infinate.
Perhaps I am jaded by my lifes experiences, but I don't think I am alone nor do I believe I am in a minority. The vast majority of the people in this country earn a middle class to lower class income and hence must watch their dollars pretty closely, simply to survive. To get above that middle class income, you have to cut out 80% of the country's population. US Census numbers confirm this solidly. I would not bank on that 20% having an online rpg as their priority in life. Until those numbers reconcile with each other, the case can't be made for wide spread acceptance of monthly subscription models. 1 million people is extremely small segment of this nations population remember. Once you start dividing that number up amongst a larger pool of available monthly subscription services, diminishing returns kicks in pretty severely and the model collapses. Facts are facts and hard to argue against. Failure to recognize reality is what caused the dot com collapse and the same will happen here unless the model changes and/or growth in the industry stops (which it won't).
I'm sorry but I'll take my reviews from people who don't use words like 'dramatical'
Pretty widgets? What pretty widgets?
If you are attacking 5-10 levels below you, this is the way to go. Aren't chars 10 levels below gray? If so, doesn't that mean they would be dishonorable kills?
Exactly 10, yes. -3 to -9 levels are green, and are (apparently) considered honorable for some brain-dead reason. Especially because resists against a +3 player are so high as to basically make the loss inevitable.
Aren't chars 10 levels below gray? If so, doesn't that mean they would be dishonorable kills?
It scales as you go up in levels, I think a level 50 isn't gray to a level 60, but a level 30 would be to a level 40.
Dishonor points are only going to apply to NPC kills at first If I read the patch notes correctly.
"So, yes, MMORPG players are almost all young and single. The fee has nothing to do with that. The design of the "game" does, because it requires so much dedication to playing it that everything else in life has to suffer."
I think that is a pretty jaded view of the world and the people that occupy it. I would seriously question your viewpoint that 'almost all' of the MMORPG players are young and single. I think there was a study done by PEW or one of those major research groups that recently showed that on-line game players average age is in the mid-thirties. I would call that approaching middle aged rather than young and single. As far as having to spend an inordinate amount of time to be able to play MMORPG's, that's just not true. I play on-line games almost constantly when I have free time. I make free ttime to do it. It's no different than the guy who goes out of his way to fish all of the time. When it's your passion, it will be serviced and you can still get life's requirements satisfied. I shudder at people's comments that suggest on-line game players are not productive members of society. It's simply not true. I am sure there are some out there, just like there are some who have gambling problems. But the vast majority are able to juggle life just fine. The point is really how much those same people value their cash. There is a limited supply of that available to each person and choices are forced in many areas in that regard, leaving a small percentage of dollars in the disposable column. My point was that the young and single have a much greater percentage of those dollars available to them and tend to make judgements in that regard based on perception rather than fact.
I believe the majority of the people playing MMORPGs are also responsible people too. To paint them as irresponsible people who can't prioritze their activities without causing life problems is very biased and nearly bigotrous. Most of the people who gamble do not have a problem with it, only a very small percentage can't stop when they reach their preset limits. Same goes for game players. Unfortunately the steriotype seems to persist. Don't believe it, it's not true.
I bought the game at the end of January. I've built my Paladin up to 34 or 35. No alts except a very low-level gnome Mage I use as my auction house/additional storage mule. Although I'm single my job requires crazy hours so I don't get to play much; maybe two hours all this week. Some weekends I get to play more.
(Parenthetical comment to those who gripe that they were able to get to 60 in WoW in two weeks: Don't assume you represent most, or even many, of WoW's 1.5M subscribers. Most people in real life aren't unemployed, or perpetually hunkered down in their dorm rooms.)
My plan is to get to 60 while questing in just a few zones. Then I'll repeat with other characters, then I'll switch factions, until I finally see all of Azeroth. I figure it'll take me a couple of years, and by that time there will be even more content to work through.
As such, what's the point? There's functionally no difference between a char 9 levels lower than you and a char 40 levels below you. Hell, not much difference between -9 and -3, other than just mana/hp usage.
I guess they justify this as a community-building feature. Makes sense, assuming you are constantly part of a group in non-aligned zones.
All I know is I'm ganking everything I see once they put the stats in. I know they have said there would be no negative effects for having dishonor points too, so I figure I might as well rake those in one way or another.
I'm in pretty much the same situation. Currently I'm at level 39 and I hardly ever get ganked anymore. It's worst when you're in the 20s, because you're in places (for Alliance) like Redridge Mountains, Duskwood, Wetlands, Hillsbrad or (god forbid!) Ashenvale, which just attract lamers looking for easy PVP kills. Now that I've moved on to areas like Desolace, Thousand Needles, Dustwallow Marsh and Arathi Highlands, the ganking has gone down significantly.
/wave when you see the horde person. It'll be interesting to see how this changes when the Honor system comes in. I guess introducing a benefit for PVP means I'll probably fight a lot more often.
I encounter horde constantly, we just leave each other alone. Essentially, you're both there for questing, and if you leave each other alone you get the quests done without frustration. Easiest thing to do is just