Friday, December 12, 2014

Miscellaneous Friday Ponderings

After having seen the trailer for Star Wars Episode 7: The Force Awakens, I wonder how long it'll be before we see cross bladed lightsabers in SWTOR. My guess is that it will make an appearance sometime next year in the Cartel Store.


Yeah... This.


Or maybe this one. (From Dorkly.)


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From what I can tell, the WoW version of housing, Garrisons, is the pet battles of Warlords of Draenor. From what a local friend tells me, it's required if you want to do any crafting, but not as much for raiding at the moment. (She doesn't PvP, so that's an unknown for her there.) You set up shop in Draenor, and you pretty much go to town.

Does that mean that you'll have to start over in a new location with a new Garrison for the next expac, does the Garrison just migrate to the next expac's location (whatever it ends up being) like a gypsy caravan, or does it stay put, permanently set in Draenor?

By integrating Garrisons directly into Draenor, it seems that Blizzard is grounding them in such a way as to make them a permanent fixture of this expac.

Now, add the full Warlords leveling experience + one new expac, L1-105(or 110), and what becomes of the Warlords Garrison? Does Blizz move it out of Warlords entirely, like what they did with most of the Wrathgate event, or do they allow you to have a double dose of Garrison leveling (one in Warlords, one in the new expac)?

Yeah, it's nitpicking, but the design decisions do have a cost, and I would hope that Blizz didn't back themselves into a corner like they did with some design decisions with Cataclysm.

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What happens in Gen Chat, stays in.... um.... nevermind.

This must have been one of the weirder weeks for Gen Chat topics.  Among the highlights were:


  • Which Spice Girl was the best one overall (don't look at me; I actively avoided the Spice Girls in the 90s).
  • Will "Han Shot First" be referenced as a joke in the new Star Wars movie?
  • Who was a better band: Doro or Rammstein?
  • What song had the most annoying lyrics?  (My vote: Careless Whisper, by Wham, although I could be talked into Girl You Know Its True by Milli Vanilli.)
Just when people thought Gen Chat was only good for racist and middle grade humor...

4 comments:

  1. I'm pretty sure that Blizzard will just abandon garrisons and replace them with something else in whatever the next expac is.

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    1. Given how popular they seem to be, I suspect not. But what they're going to do, I've no idea.

      Regular housing in MMOs is essentially "off the grid", with the exception of the guild capital ship in SWTOR. That means that no matter what expacs come along, be it in SWTOR, LOTRO, or whatever, the housing itself won't be affected.

      With WoW's Garrisons, however, it's integrated so tightly into the expac that I'm not sure what they'll do once the next expac drops.

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  2. Is that SWTOR general chat? Much more interesting than WoW unless it gets better at night when I'm not around.

    I'm wondering what they'll do with Garrisons too, I think there would be a lot of unhappy people if they took them away. After taking flying taking away Garrisons too might tip some people over the edge.

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    Replies
    1. The first three were SWTOR, the last one was Age of Conan.

      Since SWTOR doesn't have a central chat channel for the main areas like WoW has with Trade Chat (or Age of Conan with the NPH Chat), each location develops its own personality. About the closest you'll find to Barrens Chat in SWTOR is (Taris[Republic]/Balmorra[Empire]), which are the planets you go to after the capital worlds of Coruscant and Dromund Kass. I'm sure there's something to that, given that the old Barrens was the place you went to after you got done with Durotan.

      As for Garrisons, my best guess is that they'll go ahead and create a new Garrison from scratch for the next expac. They might keep the old Garrison alive if it is so integrated into the story that they have no choice, but my guess is that the server load won't permit it.

      (IIRC, that was one of the reasons why the Wrathgate Event was shortened to just a cutscene.)

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