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World of Warcraft 3.1 Patch Brings Dual-Specs, New Raid
On Tuesday Blizzard rolled out the first major content patch for World of Warcraft since the launch of Wrath of the Lich King last November. The 3.1 patch includes the long-awaited dual-specialization feature, which allows players to quickly and easily switch from one set of talent choices to another. Action bars and glyph choices change as well. The patch also includes a new end-game raid dungeon, Ulduar, which expands upon the variable difficulty modes Blizzard has recently experimented with. The instance contains 14 bosses, 10 of which have an optional "hard mode" that players can attempt for better rewards. In addition, the patch contains a host of class balance changes, bug fixes, and UI improvements. You can see the full patch notes at Blizzard's website, and a brief trailer is also available.
1000 gold for dual spec. Don't need quivers or ammo pouches any more.
This is certainly going to have an adverse affect on exam scores around the world.
This isn't news. Real news goes like this:
"World of Warcraft introduces variable difficulties to their in game dungeons."
Advernews goes like this:
"WoW patch 3.1 released with 14 new bosses, dual spec, new GUI choices, and game balancing!"
One key difference, Advernews doesn't make sense to anyone outside of the game's target market.
Sorry for the made-up word.
I suspect there's quite a lot riding for Blizzard on the quality (and challenge level) of this new raid instance. A lot of people are starting to notice that Blizzard seems to have stripped WoW of development resource to focus on other projects. While the Wrath of the Lich King expansion got a lot of positive press for the "oooh, pretty" factor, the simple fact is that it is desperately short on level 80 content (and with WoW levelling being as fast as it is, most players are level 80).
When the previous expansion, The Burning Crusade, came out, it contained quite a few raid instances. These were, Karazhan (11 bosses), Gruul's Lair (2 bosses), Magtheridon's Lair (1 boss), Serpentshrine Cavern (6 bosses), The Eye (4 bosses) and Mount Hyjal (5 bosses). A few months after release, Black Temple (9 bosses) was added. All of these were brand new encounters. By contrast, with WotLK, we got a recylced instance from before the first expansion and just 3 new bosses in other mini instances. Only now, months after release, are we actually getting a sizeable new instance with a reasonable number of bosses. Instead of developing significant amounts of new content, Blizzard have just had the office temps think up some new Achievements - basically requirements to kill bosses in really silly ways - to act as timesinks.
If these new bosses in Ulduar are the kind of thing that can be breezed through in a week or two, even on easy mode, then I suspect that a lot of players, like me, will be leaving the game. The thought of spending the next 5 months farming Ulduar, as we've just spent 5 months farming the pitiful content that was in the game at release and redoing it in an attempt to get some dumb achievements is not pleasant.
Don't get me wrong, it's a fun game, but I'm not an undergraduate in college anymore, and after spending 8+ hours at work sitting on my butt in front of a computer, coming home and sitting on my butt for 4 more hours for a Nax raid or whatever doesn't sound like fun. It just seems like such a waste of time. Gah, I must have grown up a little when I wasn't looking :)
So now WoW supports dual core specs, but what RAID modes, 0, 1, or 5? Can I buy this new WoW mobo at newegg.com?
While I am happy that you have some reserves left in your overall caring potential, me, I'm out, I simply could NOT care any less than what I do now.
Finally, I got sick of wondering that World of Warcraft was all about. I downloaded the free trial. It actually ran in Linux under Wine. I was impressed.
That was about all I was impressed with.
The updates took about 10 hours to fully complete, with each new patch leading to yet another. When the game finally started, I was required to "roll" my character. Having absolutely no idea what I was doing, I selected a Bull, and made it a druid, to get in tune with nature.
The game began. My first mission was to fetch a few feathers "the tribe". A fairly standard tutorial. But it proved tedious. You needed 7 feathers which had to be harvested from these bird creatures which you "fought" by clicking on them and waiting for your characters continuous and slow attacks to finally bring them down(Did I mention that it plays like an RTS). The trouble was that when you killed one of these birds it wouldn't necessarily drop one of these feathers, and even when it did, it could have been a ruined feather. The whole process took around a quarter of a hour. Still I assumed, it was just a tutorial. Things must get better later on.
I was wrong.
Mission after mission ensued. Collect 8 hides. Kill five cats. Harvest 8 tooths. Eventually moved on to the second town where new mission could be had. Now I had to collect 9 hides and 8 claws. etc, etc. But I was a patient man. Surely, I thought, after this drudgery is over, I will do something exciting, something that will explain the allure of the title. In the meantime, I competed with other players for the privilege of slaying a few anti-climactic "bosses", again by clicking once on them and waiting, who respawned at lengthy intervals. There were also "skills" to learn, but each needed items to be of use. Items which were only dropped, on occasion, by slow spawing monsters other players were also trying to kill.
Finally after 6 boring hours of pointless mission after pointless mission, I was approaching my goal. I proceeded towards the "capital", ascending slowly up a large basket elevator to a city on a mountain. My expectation peaked. Finally I thought, finally I will get to see what WoW is all about.
I went into the city, and up to the quest giver. The outlook was good. "We need you to fight for the Horde", they said. Finally! But then he went on. "But first we need supplies. We need you to collect 6 of this and 7 of that and..."
But it was too late. I had logged off World of Warcraft, never to return, and the Horde would never get their supplies, at least until the next poor sap came along, willing to waste another 6 hours of their life on pointless and demeaning chores. I went back to other games, and had some fun. To the end of my days I will never understand how people can pay 15 euros a month for the privilege of playing a handyman sim.
On the plus side this comic makes so much sense to me now.
May the Maths Be with you!
When I want things to look like actual things, I'll go outside. That may sound strange to you, but people do go outside you know.
Blazing Spiders
There's a simple reason why "refurbishing" the old dungeons would be a really bad idea from the perspective of Blizzard: The fastpass for new players would go away, increasing the time to the top.
Most MMOs fail after a while for a simple reason: Starting anew is pointless. A game that has been around for 2+ years makes a new player uneasy. Should I start? Everyone has 2 years on me, so I'd have to play 2 years to be where they are today. And they'll yet again be 2 years ahead (or only one, if it takes another year to the expansion). Why the heck should I start?
WoW (and some others) solved this by upping the levelcap every so often. The point is that first you have, say, 60 levels. After you reach 60, you can't "level" anymore. You go grind equipment.
Then, a year later, levelcap increase. And along with it you get new equipment, common items (of level 60something) that make the ultrasuperspecialawesomerarestoftherarest raid superoverthetoppowersword you pulled out after months of grinding like your mom's cooking spoon.
Now, no new player will go into that level 60 dungeon. Why should he? The weapon he could get out of there will drop, more likely and maybe even as a better one, from any random trashmob he kicks while heading for a quest.
But it served its mission. The players that were there from the start had something to do 'til levelcap up, they grinded that superawesome...youknowit for months. And new players don't have to do that. They basically get the fastpass past this grinding, thus starting on roughly equal footing.
Starting a new character, or starting the game as a new player altogether, actually makes sense this way!
Grinding and raiding is, essentially, busywork. To keep you playing and paying.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
News about patches to a game belong on the game's RSS feed, not a tech news site.
If the latest version comes with new AI so that NPCs happen to tell you about their dreams last night, and how they plan to put them into action today by building putting wheels on a board, adding an engine, and calling this new invention of theirs a "car", then it's worth seeing here.
"trade chat completely not working" Woot! Now there's a good reason to download the patch!
I logged in after the update to find that me pet had wandered outside (I was at an inn). I whistled and it came back saying that it had lost a bunch of skills.
Is that a bug, or do I just need to get a life?
So, you can have a second build for your character now? Way to catch up with City of Heroes, Blizzard!
I'm only wearing black until they come out with something darker.
I still love video games, just hit 30. My problem now is finding time and money to afford playing them. Between church commitments, honey do lists, hobby activities with the wife, soon time with children, and of course the ever present job that pays for everything I can get in maybe an average of two hours a day.