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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.
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?
It's a shame that in the ten hours you were waiting for it to patch you didn't spend two minutes discovering that there's a lot more to combat than "click once and wait", which is the almost useless whack-it-with-your-crappy-weapon autoattack.
Cress, cress, lovely lovely cress
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!
Not to defend the game's legitimate drawbacks (I gave it up a while back as well), but the fact that you wrote that lengthy and smug criticism without even progressing past auto-attack says less about the game's limitations than it does about your predisposition. It's akin to someone judging and dismissing a windowed interface, happily saying they will never understand how someone can use it when there are single-frame CLIs available, when that person never realized that you can click the mouse, not just wiggle the pointer around on the screen for show and use tab to switch fields.
Warcaft has major shortcomings, but you not only didn't approach them, you didn't even step onto the threshold.
Rather than fighting other players for spawns you could have teamed-up with them to complete the goal cooperatively, an essential part of what makes the game appealing.
You also make it sound like combat never changes, which suggests you didn't train new abilities as you gained levels. Combat is quite simplistic at lower levels because, as you say, the game is training you. When you progress you get stronger and more diverse abilities that lead to more subtle combinations of attacks.
But, really, don't look at other players as the enemy, but allies to be made for now and for the future.