Corking the Bottle

So the latest WOW expac is likely to be Dragonflight, apologies to Anne McCaffrey I suppose. 

Want to discuss The Dragonriders of Pern?
I'm ready.

 

I am conflicted about this, but not likely for the reasons that you might expect.

You see, having been reintroduced to the dragonflights by way of Classic, I miss how they were presented there, and I long for a return to that level of storytelling in WoW, where the Dragon Aspects were these remote beings that were simply not seen or heard from directly.

Even in Burning Crusade, the dragons you met operated as their own agents, and always undercover, posing mostly as humans or elves. (Chromie is not seen in BC, although her flight did have a significant part to play.) At best, in Classic and TBC you met the prime mate or the matron protectorate of a flight, not the Aspects themselves. Even then, it was pretty explicitly stated that the flights were not to interfere with the affairs of mortals, and was only the depradations of the Black Flight (and the Gronn) that forced their hand. The best they did was provide some guidance and support; anything more direct seemed doomed to failure (see Sunken Temple and Blackwing Lair for example).

Even though I did like a lot of Wrath –it was my introduction to the game, after all—that expac began the shift in how the dragonflights and the Aspects were presented. The result was to make them more familiar and mundane, which kind of ruined them as a part of Azeroth.

It can be hard to express my sentiment here without an analogy, so let me put it this way. If you are an average French citizen circa 1700, King Louis XIV is some remote figure that you knew of but didn’t have a personal relationship with. The Sun King was no Prince Hal out of Henry IV. But if he did start hanging out with you, having you over for dinner and asking your opinion on the politics of the day (and not threatening to have to imprisoned if he didn’t like what you had to say) he would cease to be the Sun King and instead just be closer to “Lou the Baker” who lives next door. The mystique would be gone, and with it the familiarity that replaced it would make the storytelling less by comparison.

Which is what happened in Wrath and Cataclysm.

I will freely admit that the first time I was summoned to Wyrmrest Temple and flown up top was kind of daunting. 

Ever had that feeling you're in over
your head? Yeah, like right about now.

 

I just didn’t know how daunting that would have been to someone who’d been playing since 2004 (or earlier), seeing Alexstraza and company for the first time. Of course, the members of the Accord being 15 feet tall* didn’t exactly make them feel all that chummy either...

You were always the smarter sibling,
Neve. Kneeling is a damn good idea.

 

...but by the end of that entire expac you were on a somewhat first name** basis with the entire Wyrmrest Accord. Which when you think about it, is rather…. Odd.

You started off your career killing some imps in Durotan or Defias in Northshire Abbey, and now you’re talking to the most powerful beings on Azeroth as if you’re on equal footing with them.

Go figure.

Then Cataclysm came along, and while it is very much the Thrall story***, it is also the story of the dragonflights and their Aspects. Over the course of the expac you end up being very chummy with the Aspects, as in “we’ll have you over to dinner and gaming next week” sort of chummy.

I do have to admit there are a few nice
perks being friends with dragons.

 

Set piece-wise, very cool. But story-wise from a logical standpoint, that makes no sense at all. You are not one of the most powerful people on the planet; there’s a ton of others hanging around Dalaran or Stormwind or Orgrimmar right then and there, so either you’re far more powerful than you thought or the Aspects are far less powerful than you thought. Either way, this serves to completely undermine all of the storytelling that went on in Vanilla and TBC.

And I’m pretty sure that the WoW story team doesn’t see the problems inherent in that, but once you uncork that bottle, you can’t stuff the genie back in.

***

Heading back to Wrath, the entire subplot about Malygos going crazy was completely lost on me at the time, because I didn’t have the backstory or the weight of in-game history. But now I do, and I can now say with a degree of certainty…

WHAT THE FUCK, BLIZZARD?

You really took one of the four most powerful beings on Azeroth and just up and had him decide to go bonkers one day and decide to kill all of the arcane wielders just because? Except for those who hung out with Malygos, of course, because that was what he did: he wanted all the magic for him and his entourage. Hardly any explanation, and he was given an Onyxia-style one shot raid that was hardly worth it when compared to Discount Naxx, Ulduar, and ICC. Hell, Wintergrasp’s raid was more well attended in the guilds I was a member of than Malygos’.

So what was the point? That Malygos was out of the way so that Jaina could be making out with Kalecgos, the Aspect-in-absentia?

/sigh

Anyway, I’m aware that in Legion (or thereabouts) Ysera dies too, so I guess I should be glad I didn’t play that expac. It certainly seems that the in-game lifespan of a Dragon Aspect throughout WoW isn’t exactly very long. At times it feels like the Roman Emperor Commodus lived longer than some WoW leaders. Or the average Doctor Who companion in the New Who era. And yes, that’s a snap at the WoW story team; I didn’t sign up to watch leaders go crazy or die or whatever just because you needed a good dramatic setpiece. Work harder at crafting a plausible, well told story and you won’t have to rely upon a virtual bloodbath whenever you want drama.

***

But in the end the familiarity, the deaths, the inconsistent story, and a lot of other small things add up to the dragonflights not being a big deal compared to what they once were. And while I should be excited that the dragons will take center stage, I don’t know if there’s anything you can do to give them back their majesty and remoteness that they once had.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to get the grill started. We’re having Alexstraza and her Consort over for steak and roasted vegetables, and we’ll be playing Concept afterward.

"The easiest route is to take I-75 north
across the bridge and get onto I-74..."

 

 

*I presume they could be any height they wanted to be, since dragons were master manipulators of the arcane even before the Highborne. It’s just that they chose to be gigantic to intimidate the lesser races. But as I’ve pointed out before, I suspect that at least someone on the WOW dev team had a thing for giantesses.

**When I was first typing this post out this little section autocorrected to “you were on a somewhat first base basis”. I snickered, because Jaina certainly was during the events in at least one of the books. 

"So you're the one that Jaina is shacking
up with? You know, you ought to do more
to disguise yourself. The super size
look and blue hair kind of gives you away."

 

And for people unfamiliar with the baseball analogy, each base corresponds to a certain level of physical intimacy. First base is kissing/french kissing. Go look up the rest in urban dictionary if you’re curious, because the quickest way to get me to blush and stammer is to have to explain to a girl/woman what second base and third base are, let alone a home run.

***I’m calling it here now, that if part of the expansion is the restoration of the Aspects and selection of new flight leaders, then Jaina will end up leading the Blue Flight. Because that’s a natural yang to the ying of Thrall being whatever the hell he is these days. And that Blizzard can’t seem to help themselves with the Mary Sue and Marty Stu that are Jaina and Thrall.

Where Have You Gone, Svala Sorrowgrave?

The news that Blizzard is going to stop putting out new 5-man instances for Mists seems to have caused a bit of a stir.

Those people who gear up using LFR kind of shrugged and said "no big deal".  So did those who like the new Scenario concept.  And the "I love dailies" crowd chuckled and continued muttering to themselves in a corner.

But for me, I see this as the continuation of what started in Cataclysm.

Cataclysm began the deviation from the standard Warcraft pattern by instituting Heroic-only 5-mans, and then segregated them further by separating them out in the LFG queue.  I can presume this was done so that those who wanted to either gear up to the latest tier or max their VP acquisition could do so in the most efficient manner, but as in all things there were unintended consequences.

By subdividing 5-mans like that, the queue times soared to levels only previously seen in obsolete 5-man end game instances.*  Starting with the Zuls --Zul'Aman and Zul'Gurub-- people began to complain about a lack of variety in their instance runs.  Finally, the new Heroics created an "asshat divide" within 5-mans:  asshats flooded the 5-man Heroics, particularly the latest ones, while people who simply enjoyed running instances gravitated toward the baseline 5-man Normal instances.

However, those who enjoyed 5-man Normals found their options sadly lacking as compared to their Heroic brethren.  Unlike Wrath, which had the same number of Normal 5-mans as their Heroic version --16, if you were curious-- there were only 7 Normals vs. 14 Heroics in Cataclysm.**  Perhaps the statistical data for Wrath showed that not a lot of people ran the ICC Normals, but instead of making the last patch's instances Heroic-only, Blizz took their solution a step further in Cata and eliminated the Normal option entirely from all major patch instances.  It wouldn't be so drastic a step if it weren't that Cata dropped with only 7 Normal instances as opposed to 12 in Wrath.

And now we come to Mists.

Mists shipped with 4 Normal 5-mans (9 Heroic), and that's going to be it.  If you're an instance runner, you're out of luck.

While Blizzard will point out the Scenario model that is new to Mists, they are all tuned for max level and are designed for a "dungeon-lite" experience.  I look on them as the equivalent of a multi-player Daily that you can queue for, not a traditional instanced dungeon.

So what happened to the slate of instances we are used to seeing in an expac?

LFR.

Blizzard has decided to use LFR for mid-expac progression, and as a consequence instances have drawn the short end of the stick.  To be fair there were only 4 new instances post-release in Wrath versus 5 in Cataclysm, but those 4 represented only 25% of the overall total of Wrath instances as opposed to 36% in Cata.  Think about it:  Wrath shipped with 12 instances, while Cata had 9 (7 normal).  If you look at Normal instances alone, this is a further erosion from the Wrath model:  12 -> 7 -> 4.

If you only ran Normals, Blizzard didn't design any new instances for you at all once Cataclysm dropped, so this erosion isn't new behavior to you.  What is new, however, are how few Normal instances are now available and the lack of future prospects for those instances.

As much as Dave Kosak Twittered that there will be more 5-mans in future expacs, the numbers don't lie.  Instances are less important to Blizzard moving forward.  Scenarios and LFR will get the development time previously allocated to instances, and the expectation is that you will use instances to assist you in getting that initial "raid ready", but instances as a viable max level activity will be phased out.

Before someone says that Blizzard is swimming in money given the number of subs that WoW has, remember that profit doesn't translate into more development staff.  Even if there were more development staff around, items such as Pet Battles have taken up significant development time, further eroding the time to devote to 5-man instances.

Finally, let's not forget the elephant in the room:  Titan.  It could also be that Blizzard is shifting priorities to their next gen MMO.  Any low hanging fruit, such as instance development, will get put on the back burner.

I think we can safely say that the BC/Wrath era of instances is now over.  I'll miss having a lot of instances to run, as my limited playing time prohibits even LFR from being an option, and Scenarios are of little use to someone still leveling a toon in Pandaria.  But I also thought it a mistake by Blizzard in Cataclysm to not pair up Normal instances with the latter Heroics, as those Normals became a refuge from the drama that so often infected Cata Heroics.

But hey, popularity doesn't lie, right?




*I once waited 2 hours for the queue to pop for a 5-man Heroic Tempest Keep/MgT run back in Cata.  Amazing how much farming you can get done in that time.

**Since BC instituted the Heroic we can't count Vanilla, but in BC there were 16 instances and all had Normal and Heroic settings.

On Mists and 'The Smart Kids'

Anne Stickney stirred up a bit of a hornets nest with her post on WoW Insider The Smart Kids -- Or Why Cataclysm Failed to Impress.  Her points about the complaints with Cataclysm --that it was not what we thought we wanted-- struck a bit of a nerve with people.

I can't say I disagree with her assessment that people thought they wanted one thing, such as a revamped Old World, and it turned out that they really wanted was something new and innovative.  However, her assertions that Mists has what will cure the complainers' ills has me raising an eyebrow in skepticism.

One thing that I have to point out is that the beta people say the stuff about Mists that they were saying about Cata:  how great, new, and interesting it is.  Remember how people got excited about having to work in the new instances, and how they made you use CC, etc. etc?  Well, that excitement didn't last long in Cata, and I don't expect it to last long in Mists either.

Blizz doesn't want to sit on its laurels, because pleasing only the complainers is a reactionary thing.  They want to grow beyond 10 mil subs, but the problem is that gaining new subs is becoming more and more difficult.  To a new sub, Pandaria is all about the endgame, because they have to go from L1-L85 just to get to Pandaria.  Want to start as a new sub with a Pandaren?  It's going to cost you, because you have to buy the whole shebang.  (Yes, Blizz does specials, but if you don't know someone who plays, then Blizz' specials are an unknown item.)

If Blizz pleases only a portion of the playerbase --like they did in Cata-- they'll be hard pressed to stand still.  The race to L90 is already being plotted out, and the talent changes haven't exactly put the theorycrafters out of business, either.  Pet Battles will keep theorycrafters busy as well; anybody who watches games of MtG in action knows that Magic players (and their Pokemon kin) are out for blood.  Before I hear someone tell me that "Oh, but it's all about FUN!", I'll say this:  are you nuts?  Don't people remember the Beanie Baby craze, where collectors when absolutely bananas over those stuffed animals?  I've seen how obsessive collectors can be --just go to a flea market and watch the sideshow-- and Blizz could be unleashing something they did not intend by mixing theorycrafting with pet collecting.

What I'm saying is that Mists isn't going to be a panacea.  It's going to have good points and bad points, and there will be unintended consequences of actions.  Take LFR for instance.  LFR is going to have a much larger impact on Mists than it did on Cata, and its mere presence will cause people to burn through endgame content more quickly than ever before.  So, while there may be more endgame content at launch, Blizz may find people complaining that they're bored just as quickly as with Cata.

Blizz is also a business, so they're going to make some decisions on economics rather than pleasing the player base.  Just because WoW is raking in cash doesn't mean that Blizz is not under pressure from Activision to increase profits.  If there's one rule of today's Wall Street, it's what have you done for me lately.  "Oh, that's great, you brought in $XXX this year.  But that's the same as last year.  Where's the growth potential?  Why haven't you increased subscriptions?  What is your plan to expand into the high growth Asian market?  How are you keeping your costs down?"

When viewed through the lens of the 'smart kids', as Anne did, I really don't see any other MMO that would cause the 'smart kids' to leave and stick with, because the EQ/WoW/standard MMO model is still the dominant form out there.  Perhaps if they wanted a true challenge, there's EVE Online*, but really, it's easier to complain than to actually try something different.



*The Secret World holds some promise of breaking the traditional mold, but it's still too early to tell.

The Elekk in the Room

Remember how busy the Old World was when the Shattering happened?

Toons swarmed over the Vanilla zones like ants on a picnic, investigating the new quest lines and the leveling experience.  Many new alts were created, and a plethora of blog posts were written about the new zones.  This fed into the excitement surrounding Cataclysm’s release and for the first few months after, keeping Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms busy.  Blizzard’s gambit to revamp the Vanilla zones paid off in spades.

Or did it?

I’ve spent the spare time I’ve had in between battlegrounds catching up on my Eastern Kingdoms’ questlines, and what I’ve noticed more than anything else is how empty the zones are.  There are a few farmers around and maybe one other leveling toon out there.  Some zones, such as Arathi Highlands or the Hinterlands, are completely empty.  In fact, it seems like the only busy zones in the entire Eastern Kingdoms are the starter zones.  I’ve cruised up and down the Ghostlands right before Christmas, and there was nary a Horde toon around.  You’d think the sight of a Draenei riding on a blasted Elekk around the Dead Scar would bring some L85s out of the woodwork, but that didn’t happen.

Is it possible that all that work to revamp the Old World was wasted?

Think about it:  we’re back to where we were in terms of leveling zone population from mid-2010 in a bit over a year since 4.0.3b dropped.  It’s the equivalent of a kid ripping open Christmas presents, playing with them, and declaring “I’m bored!” an hour later.

Are there no players leveling toons?

Well, there might be toons being leveled, but there are LFD and BGs as alternate routes to max level.  Additionally, we can’t simply state that there aren’t any new players, either, because new players are typically shunted into the new, empty servers.  However, on servers that have been around for a while, there are definitely very few players leveling toons through questing.

Which again begs the question:  was the revamp worth it if very few of the existing player base take advantage of the options presented?

Now Mist of Pandaria is on the horizon, and without a further update –aka more money spent on these zones that have seen little long term interest— the Vanilla zones will be once again out of date.  A new player to WoW will end up scratching their heads if they try to level via questing.  (“I thought Mists of Pandaria was about Pandas!  All I see are all these Deathwing references!  And who’s Illidan and that Lich King guy?”)

I believe that the revamp was a bold move, but incomplete in execution.  Furthermore, by performing the revamp Blizzard set itself on a course where the story of Azeroth is told in a jumble, not in a series of sequential chapters.  A revamp is pretty much an all-or-nothing scenario, especially when you mix the expansion’s new zones in with the original Vanilla zones.  No amount of hand waving can make a new player forget about Outland and Northrend --especially when you have to pay for them!

Just Like Old World Azshara

Back in April, I compared Burning Crusade with Cataclysm and hit upon what I felt was a weakness with Cata:  the lack of a continuing story for Goblins and Worgen.  I've spent the months since then exploring the Old World under the guise of leveling herbalism, and stopping for quest lines along the way.  The more I've explored the Old World, the more I've become convinced that those new races have been my biggest disappointment with the expansion.

The starting zones held so much promise, as did Silverpine and Azshara.  But outside of those zones, there's the occasional bone but nothing really meaty to dig into. 

From the starter zone, the next logical location for a newly minted Worgen was Darkshore.  And there was nothing there for the Worgen.  Oh, there was plenty going on --hey there, Malfurion-- but nothing much Worgen-centric.  Ashenvale, the center of so much old Worgen lore, only has a couple of Worgen present, who are completely interchangeable with any other race.  If you make it all the way down to Feralas, for a few brief moments it looks like the Worgen are going to have a lot to do with zone.  But the three Worgen there, just like in Ashenvale, could be substituted for Night Elves or another race entirely.  The fight with Cho'gall?  That was all Night Elf.

Ironically enough, if you want Worgen lore in Alliance heavy zones, you have to go to Duskwood and Raven Hill.  Or you could visit the contested Blasted Lands, where there's a Worgen encampment in the butt-end of the Azerothian universe.

The Goblins fare little better, but that's also due to having to share Azeroth with the Steamwheedle Cartel.  There's only so many places you can stick more goblins, although Blizz's love of Trolls seems to dispute that phenomenon.  Blizz seems to have solved some of the Bilgewater Cartel Goblin issues by getting rid of some of the Venture Company spots and replacing them with Bilgewater Cartel instead (like, say, Stonetalon).  But the Horde Goblins end up with only a few bones, and they get the "they're the Horde's Gnomes" treatment instead.

Both races have such great and complete beginnings that it's a real shame to see them so utterly forgotten once you leave the starting zones.  It's like seeing the Draenei and Blood Elves' treatment in the Old World (pre-Cata) only to reach Outland and....  there's nothing for them there.  Can you imagine Burning Crusade without those two races at the forefront of Outland, or the Death Knights (and Knights of the Ebon Blade) missing from Wrath?  Well, I can sure imagine Cata without either Worgen or Goblins, and it wouldn't be very different from what we have now at all.

Cata was ambitious, no doubt about it.  Reworking the Old World, adding two new races, incorporating new zones/storylines, and hefty rewrites of a lot of the class mechanics were a tall order.  And I'm not even counting the things that were left on the cutting room floor, such as releveling (aka grouping with lower level toons), the Path of the Titans, and Arathi Highlands.  But the Goblins and Worgen are a lot like the post-Cata Arathi Highlands; they're incomplete. 

New races are one of those core features of an expansion that once announced, you can't back out of.  While Path of the Titans and some other areas (flying in the BC starting areas) were on the optional side of things, once you say "we're going to have two new playable races!" you can't really backtrack without a sizable portion of the player base revolting.  A playable race becomes --by its very nature-- a core feature of an expansion. 

The least Blizz could have done is add more Worgen/Goblin content in the expansions to continue the story.  They certainly seem to have no trouble doing that with Trolls, so why not with the pride and joy of Cataclysm?

You Never Forget Your First Time

As much as I would like to remain objective, I suppose that I'll always look at WoW through Wrath-tainted lenses.

I guess that a certain subset of people just threw up their hands and said "Oh crap, here comes another 'heroics are too hard' or 'why can progression be the same as in Wrath' topic," but that's not really the case.  For one thing, I've yet to actually set foot in a Cata Heroic.  It's kind of hard to compare Heroics if you don't queue up for them, you know.  The other big reason why it's not the post you thought it was is that I don't raid.  (Running AQ40 when you're L80 or L85 doesn't count in my book.)

No, what's really on my mind is how I approach WoW, how I think about WoW, and how I describe WoW to people.  Because I started playing mid-way through Wrath, I can't really internalize how different things were in Vanilla or BC.  Sure, I can appreciate on an intellectual level the all-day Alterac Valley fights back in Vanilla, but since I never really lived it I can't think in terms of those BG runs.

In a way, it's akin to learning a new language.  You learn basics of grammar, memorize words, and practice conjugating verbs, but until you actually learn to think in that language, you're still merely translating what's in your head.  The new language could be a cipher for all that's worth, because your brain still uses your native language as a primary reference.  Once you reach a critical point and the switch is flipped inside your head, then you can actually say 'I get this now.  This makes sense to me.'

I understand WoW through Wrath's eyes because I can't comprehend the BC way (or the Vanilla way) of doing things.  Sure, I ran instances throughout the pre-Cata Vanilla and BC zones, but I ran them with the Wrath toolkit.  I can't understand how it was to run Magister's Terrace back in the day, because the BC toolset was so radically different than it is now.*  Even if you eschewed the L68 Wrath gear and ran with BC L70 gear, you truly won't get it because everything that comprises a toon --Talents, Spells, Attacks, Glyphs, etc.-- has completely changed since then.

This isn't a bad thing or a good thing, but just, well, how it is.

When I think about Halls of Origination, I say to myself "imagine running Halls of Stone and Halls of Lightning back-to-back, and that's what HOO is like."

When I try to describe Tol'vir to people, I tell them "it runs about as quick as Utgarde Keep, although the bosses remind me more of Ahn'kahet and Forge of Souls."

When I look at the Therazane quest chain in Deepholm, I compare it to the Sons of Hodir quest chain in Storm Peaks.

I'm sure that people new to WoW in this post-4.0.1 age will have trouble understanding things like the 'Thrall goes to Outland' quest chain, how Hillsbrad can make Hordies on PvP servers twitch, or how the simple words "attunement chain" can start a fight.  They'll be Cata babies, and you know what?  That's okay with me.

What's really important to take away from this is that we all started out in WoW differently, and we approach the game differently.  Nobody really forgets what it was like to install the software, login, and create your first toon.  We all start from the same beginning, but we take different paths along the way.


*Right about now some smart-ass will say "you hit stuff, you kill stuff, how hard can that be?"  But that's life, man.

Gotta Keep 'em Separated

I've been reading some blog posts recently about player advancement, 5-man heroics, and progression raiding.

Priest With a Cause: An Annotated History of the Badge System
Blessing of Kings: The Root Problem
Blessing of Kings: Blocked Player Advancement

I've found the discussion interesting, particularly when you combine these articles with numerous PUG stories out there about overgeared toons behaving badly in Heroics.*

Now, I like Rohan's idea of removing Valor Points from the game, but the problem of overgeared toons running Heroics would still exist.  There is no need to run them from a gear standpoint, but that doesn't mean that you can't film an episode of Overgeared Toons Behaving Badly on a regular basis.  I can think of a few reasons why an overgeared toon would want to enter a 5-man Heroic anyway:  guild runs with guildies who aren't raid ready; mat runs farming DC-able gear and Chaos Orbs; and Justice Point farming runs, where a toon is farming JP to purchase heirlooms or convert the JP to Conquest Points (for PvP gear).

If the goal is to discourage badly behaving raiders from running random Heroics, isn't there a more direct method:  expanding the raid lockout to include heroics?  I'm not talking a daily lockout, but a weekly one.  Or better yet, if you enter a Cata raid, the lockout will include 5-man Heroics via the Dungeon Finder.  (Toons could still group up and enter a Heroic the old fashioned way via the meeting stone and instance entrance, however.)

Either suggestion is a very draconian method to keep the overgeared raiders away from the properly geared Heroic runners, but it does force one problem with this entire exercise into the limelight:  issue prioritization.

Which is the greater problem:

• Keeping bad apples out of 5-man Heroics
• Reducing wait times in 5-man Heroics

While some of us may see the former as the problem, Blizzard has voted with the latter and instituted the Call to Arms to encourage people (*cough* tanks and healers *cough*) to jump into randoms to alleviate long wait times.  But I'd argue that long wait times would discourage the asshats from queuing for instances in the first place, so why "fix" one problem when it exacerbates another?

Perhaps the solution to keeping the bad apples out is to increase the wait times for a random out of the Dungeon Finder, not reduce them.  If you queue for an instance run via the LFD tool, you have a minimum 30-45 minute wait.  No exceptions.  You end up getting the people who really want to be there, who will want to work out issues and setbacks in an instance run, while discouraging the jerks from entering.  The poorly behaved toons can still join groups, but their best chance of instance running is with a guild/friend group.

But what about the rewards for a guild runs?  Who'd want to have a guild run via the LFD with a wait like that?

Well, why restrict the daily LFD rewards to the LFD tool?  How about allowing a party to reap the same rewards via the traditional route:  entering via the meeting stone and traditional instance location.  Getting to an instance will be much quicker than the wait involved via the LFD tool, but would yield the same amount of rewards.  It also means that people will get out in the world a bit more, rather than loitering around Org or Stormwind.  Finally, it also means that people might just group up within the same server a bit more often, which isn't necessarily a bad thing.  (Okay, Rhii might have a different opinion on that, given her disastrous encounter with some puggees from her own server, but those asshats will eventually get their comeuppance.  Karma is a real bitch that way.)




*Of course, there are plenty of toons that behave badly no matter their gear.


EtA:  Yes,  I like The Offspring.  I couldn't justify using "Hit That" or "Pretty Fly" as the title of the post, tho.

A Tale of Two Expansions

Cataclysm is the first WoW expansion since The Burning Crusade to get a pair of new playable races.  This isn't exactly news*, since Cata has been out for almost half a year.  Since that time, however, we've had plenty of opportunity to get used to Goblins and Worgen out there in the field, so I thought I'd do a bit of compare/contrast with Blood Elves and Draenei, and how their introduction was handled.

The Burning Crusade - Shoehorning Made Perfect

When BC came out, Vanilla was still fresh.  The old content wasn't quite so old or creaky, but Blizzard did learn quite a bit about how to pace content.  Outland's instances and questlines were more streamlined than Vanilla, and nowhere was this new approach more apparent than the new BC races.  The Blood Elf and Draenei starting areas had a better flow to them than the old Vanilla ones, and when you finished the Ghostlands or Bloodmyst Isle you were well indoctrinated into each race's viewpoint.

Then you left those starting areas, and returned to the world of Vanilla.

Vanilla was almost exactly the same as before, with the exception of the lone Blood Elf or Draenei in a quest hub.  Occasionally, that NPC would have an actual quest chain attached --the Blood Elf at Freewind Post or the Draenei at Forest Song, for example-- but mostly the NPC was a reminder that yeah, there were a couple of extra races in Azeroth.  The anachronisms of the Blood Elves in Azshara remained, causing no small amount of confusion to people joining WoW in BC or Wrath.  "How come the Orc is so upset about trusting them?" I once asked Soul.  "Aren't we all part of the same Horde?"

"That was a Vanilla quest chain," he replied, "and it was never updated or removed."

Vanilla was --by and large-- not well integrated with the two new races, but Blizz compensated for it once you reached Outland. 

BC wasn't entirely about the Sindorei or Draenei, but there are plenty of times when it sure seems that way.  The new races weren't there for decoration, they were an vital part of the entire story.  After spending most of your leveling time in Vanilla forgetting the lore of the starting areas, Outland was almost an overdose on the stuff.  While the Orc lore took center stage in Nagrand, Hellfire Peninsula, and Blade's Edge Mountains, were it not for Kael and the Blood Elves, the Horde probably wouldn't even be there.  The same goes for the Sons of Lothar and the Alliance:  nice, but not necessary.  The arrival of the Draenei aboard The Exodar made it necessary.

Cataclysm - Well, That's One Way of Integrating Things:  Blow it all up!

After passing on Wrath, Blizz added two races into the fold for Cataclysm:  Goblins and Worgen.  The reworking of the Old World afforded Blizz the rare chance to seamlessly integrate the two new races into Azeroth, and they ran with it.  They did a great job of fixing the problems with plopping new races into an unchanged basic game, and they are to be commended for completing the unfinished backstory on the Worgen.

Once you reach the Cata zones, however, the two new races simply become invisible.

Sure, there's Goldmine the NPC and the Goblin outpost in Twilight Highlands, but outside of that, where are the two new races given any significant face time?  I think there was one --one!-- Worgen questgiver in Vashj'ir, but that was it.

Okay, I understand that the emphasis in this expansion is on the Earthen Ring, the Guardians of Hyjal, and some of the original races, but come on.  Draenei (and the Taunka Shaman, Toshe Chaosrender) get more face time as members of the Earthen Ring than Worgen do in the entire set of Cata zones.  And the Krazzworks in Twilight Highlands could easily have been a neutral Goblin outpost under attack by Twilight Drakes.  The new races are merely there in the new Cata zones; the main storylines in Cataclysm have passed them by.

This begs the question:  were the two new races even necessary for Cataclysm?  After all, the reworking of Vanilla WoW, which was so vital to incorporating the Goblins and Worgen into each faction, is available to anyone who plays only the basic game.  There is no Cata-specific content that emphasizes their racial story, despite the obvious potential lead-ins the Worgen could have had in Hyjal (or the Goblins in Vashj'ir, who could have had some of their shipping fleets sunk by the kraken).  Instead, the new races come off as being the Scrappy Doo of Cataclysm, which is a shame.



*Yep, and my nickname is Sherlock, too!  Okay, not really.  Anyhoo....

Thank You, WOWCrendor

About those the 4.1 Patch Notes

I found this little line very interesting in the patch notes:

Blizzard damage has been increased by 70%.

I've noticed a decrease in utility for Blizzard the deeper I've gone into Cata.  For what it does --and AoE attack that will proc Fingers of Frost and other goodies-- the damage has been really lagging behind most of a Frost Mage's other attacks.  The only times I've used it in instances I've done it more for the procs than anything else.  And now, Blizz seems to be putting some of the damage back in.

Finally.

Another big impression is that Arcane Mages are getting some good buffs to bring them more in line with Fire and Frost.  Based on the DPS charts I've seen, Arcane has been lagging behind Fire and Frost in raids, and Blizz is moving to correct that.

As for Paladins, not that much is in the PTR, other than Illuminated Shield getting a longer duration.  I'm sorry, but Righteous Fury persisting after toon death isn't anything to cheer wildly about.

Now this little note about the LFD tool is very interesting:

The Dungeon Finder now attempts to avoid putting damage-dealing classes with the same armor type in a group.

Apparently that wasn't always the case, but I guess that means that DKs, Warriors, and Pallys will be more rarely grouped together as DPS.  Same goes for the cloth armored Warlocks, Mages, and Shadow Priests, and for leather/mail armored Rogues, Hunters, and Druids.   Of course, "try" != "will", as I've been on a four Pally run through Gnomer before.

One final note:  I found this entry in the Hunter section truly amusing:

Glyph of Mend Pet is now Glyph of Greater Proportion, which increases the size of the pet slightly.

All I could think of when I saw that was the line in Blazing Saddles:  "Excuse me while I whip this out!"


EtA:  One huge win for the leveling crowd:  BC Instance maps are now in the 4.1 patch!!  Woo!!

It Takes Diff'rent Strokes

Well...  Two down, one to go.

Both Tomakan and Neve dinged last week.  For the record, Tom crept ahead of Neve the past few weeks while she spent some of her time farming for Frostweave, but I didn't really look at it as an Alliance v. Horde competition.

The primary concern I had with this experiment --could a toon go straight into Cata without stopping to farm Northrend Heroics-- was answered well over a month ago.  Of secondary importance was the amount of difficulty melee DPS and ranged DPS would have in making it through Cata, and after that how different the stories each faction would tell.  Now, I'm not completely finished with Twilight Highlands, but I'm far enough along that I can draw some conclusions.


Melee or Ranged DPS:  Who's got the harder time?

The answer for that is that it depends on the zone.

Some people love Vashj'ir, some people hate it.  But for ranged DPS, it's possibly the best zone out there.  The added third dimension to the zone means that ranged DPS can zoom in and attack at odd angles, negating the advantage that melee DPS would get having to grind their way through a particular area.  Sure, your average toon will have a flying mount by then --and zones such as Deepholm and Twilight Highlands pretty much demand one if you want to get to certain areas-- but with a flying mount you still have to land to attack.  in Vashj'ir, the underwater vertical dimension effectively allows ranged DPS to attack from the air.  You don't have to clear out all of the nearby enemy to prevent from being caught from behind, but instead you can use the WoW equivalent of surgical strikes to take out the enemy.

For melee DPS, there's a lot that Vashj'ir has going for it as well.  Plate DPS will find a lot more useful drops in Vashj than in Hyjal, which can be vital in getting your toon Cata-geared.  At the same time, Deepholm seemed more tailor made for melee than ranged DPS.  For a Ret Spec Pally with the Holy Wrath Glyph active, any place with boatloads of elementals on it is a real bonus, and Deepholm was filled with them.  By comparison, Hyjal, Vashj'ir, and Uldum didn't have nearly as many elementals to work with.

After having read the above, you'd think that by omission I must be ragging on Hyjal and Uldum, but that's not the case.  Both zones were pretty much DPS-neutral, not favoring either one.  Hyjal had more tank Plate drops than Vashj, so if a tanking offspec were of vital importance to you, Hyjal is the place to go.  Uldum had one or two quests that were much easier on Plate DPS than on a squishy Mage --The Pit of Scales being the biggest offender, particularly if it's bugged*-- but in general I felt that Uldum was pretty much DPS-neutral in terms of difficulty.

Now Twilight Highlands, that's another story entirely.

If you leveled through Northrend back in the Wrath days, you know that once you dinged L80 --typically in The Storm Peaks-- things weren't bad at all in Icecrown.  Quest greens didn't hold you back much, and the real difficulty came in trying to solo the mulit-person quests.  That was when you needed the T9 set.

Therefore, if you were expecting history to repeat itself upon venturing to Twilight Highlands, you were disabused of that opinion almost immediately.  It was more along the lines of:  "Ding!  You're L85!  Now go to back and start over!"

For people who never experienced what it was like to start the Cata leveling process with Northrend green gear, this had to be a kick in the nuts.  And the Horde's initial Naga quests are particularly brutal to squishy mages, as the waves of them come in so damn fast that you can get completely overwhelmed before you knew what was going on.  Once you get past the initial quest chains, however, the zone becomes pretty DPS-neutral.  Where Twilight Highlands shines, however, is in the story.


"Thundermar ale is 220 proof; I don't know how that's possible."

The story is similar for both factions throughout Vashj'ir, Hyjal, Deepholm, and Uldum.  With Vashj, the story is the same, but the quest givers are Horde or Alliance.  The other three have the faction neutral questgivers, so the story is almost exactly the same.  Then you get to Twilight Highlands, and things suddenly diverge.


The Horde and Alliance stories emphasize dealing with the new additions to each faction --Dragonmaw and Wildhammer-- and the struggles each leader has in exerting control.  The Dragonmaw are initially run by Mor'ghor, last seen on the Netherwing Ledge, and the younger Dragonmaw under the direction of Zaela chafe under his demon-tainted rule.  Once Zaela leads a successful revolt, she then has to consolidate power against the drake riders who think the Wildhammer are the greater threat.  On top of that, the Horde has big issues --as in Wyrmrest type issues-- by aligning with the Dragonmaw.

The Alliance, by comparison, has a slightly more mellow route through the Twilight Highlands.  First, you have to fight off a Horde attack --thanks, Garrosh!-- and then you settle into trying to unite the independent Wildhammer clans.  I know that Blizz basically lifted the stereotypical Scottish blueprint and stuck them on the Dwarves, but after a while the quests devolved into something like having Robin Williams describe golf.  You go rally the clans, but then everything falls apart because the clans can't stand each other.  So you try to arrange a political marriage, and you can guess where this whole thing is going.

Well, the divergent paths of each faction really brings Twilight Highlands to life.  And I haven't even gotten through the Red Dragonflight portion of the program yet!

***

Heard around Azeroth:

Warrior:  LF Port to Dal
Neve (Me):  I can do that.
[Warrior invites Neve]
Neve (Me):  Um, you're in Dal.
Warrior:  Oh.

Tomakan (Me, during the Cursed Landing quests):  There's something incredibly satisfying about killing 1000 Gnomes.

[Quintalan is helping a couple of people look for a rare spawn in Deepholm while he's finishing up the questlines]
Priest:  Did you find anything yet?
Quintalan (Me):  No.
[Quintalan pauses to acquire another quest]
Priest:  Did you find it?
Quintalan:  No.
[Q completes quest, gets another quest]
Priest:  Did you find it?
Quintalan: Look, you don't have to ask each time I pause.
Priest:  kk.  [10 seconds pass]  Did you find it?
Quintalan: /facepalm

Warrior:  LFM Ring of Blood
Priest:  Wrong location.  You want Outland.
Warrior:  LFM Ring of Blood
Priest:  What level are you?
Warrior:  L84
Tomakan (Me):  You can solo Ring of Blood at L80, much less 84
Warrior:  Tried it.  Didn't work.
Priest:  Just what did you try?
Warrior:  The one here.  The Ring of Blood.
Priest:  That's not the Ring of Blood; that's the Crucible of Carnage.
[One minute passes]
Warrior:  LFM Ring of Blood
Priest: ...

***

Convoy to L85 Update:

Tomakan:  L85 and in Twilight Highlands
Nevelanthana:  L85 and in Twilight Highlands
Quintalan:  L84 and in Uldum


*You know you've got a bugged quest event when you're out of the Pit and taking damage for no visible reason whatsoever while you're still drinking.

Oh, This is going to be good

I'd known that the Horde was going to partner with the Dragonmaw Clan in the Twilight Highlands, but while Neve was waiting on the platform for the arrival of the zeppelin, I wondered exactly how the intro was going to pan out.  Would Hellscream act like a doofus?  What exactly would the dragonflights think of this deal with the devil?  And were the Dragonmaw worth saving?

Well, at the moment the answers are:  yes, I don't know yet, and yes.

For a change, the Goblin in charge of the skyfleet had the right idea:  "What kind of madman orders away his close air support?"

Um, that guy.

/points at Hellscream

***

I kind of expected that both the Horde and Alliance lead in quests to the Twilight Highlands would be similar:  find a Twilight spy, reveal him/her, and basically look good for your faction's boss.  That followed the plan to the letter on the Alliance side, but the Horde side was, well, disappointing.  Greedy goblins and troops on shore leave in a town that would make Vegas or Bangkok look tame kind of took the edge off of the Horde's lead in quests.  If I want to watch greed like that, I'll turn on the news.

There's DPS, and then there's DPS

When I go through new content on one of my toons, I have a habit of evaluating the content with an eye toward the other toons.

Take for example the Ragnaros fight, which is the climax of the Hyjal quest chain.

Q completed that quest last week, which is an "assist XXX in defeating YYY" type of quest.  I know some bloggers kind of pooh-pooh those quests because they feel they have no impact on the result, but I enjoy them.  In this quest, you're not the focus, but that's okay.  After all, you're not Warchief, but someone else is*.

In the quest The Firelord, you're providing support in Cenarius' fight against Ragnaros, along with Malfurion and Hamuul, the two Arch Druids.  Basically, you're there to keep the adds off of Hamuul and Malfurion while they blast Mr. By-Fire-Be-Purged with massive debuffs.  Not a hard thing there to do if you're a Ret Spec Pally, but when I saw the healing requests go by, my first thought was "Holy crap!  There's no way in hell Neve could do that!"

From what I've read online, I think that the heal requests will only show if your class can actually heal.  Otherwise, your job is straight DPS.  After finding that out, I let out a huge sigh of relief.

On the flip side, when I was questing on Neve through Vashj'ir, I thought that the zone was ideally suited to ranged DPS.  She could stand back and hit from distance, and so long as she obeyed the cardinal rule of engaging in one enemy at a time, she could handle Vashj'ir quite well.  I was certain that melee DPS would not only get hit harder, but have a more difficult time of surviving through the first several sections of Vashj.  Melee DPS would be under-armored as well as under-powered, while ranged DPS could reduce the enemy's health significantly before the enemy could close.

As it turns out, the result was a wash.  Whether ranged or melee, each DPS had could handle what was thrown at them. 

***

One thing I've never been able to figure out is why some people take such perverse delight in griefing and corpse camping on PvE servers. It's not like they're not going to get caught, because all it takes is someone with the fortitude to hang around long enough, luring the griefer on, while one of two things happens:  the toon being griefed gets friends and/or guildies to show up, or an Admin responds to the ticket request.  Either way, the griefer loses.

So why bother?  What do you get out of thwacking toons in Goldshire or Tranquillien that you can't settle in a Battleground or an Arena?

***

Having completed three of the Cataclysm zones so far --Vashj'ir, Hyjal, and Deepholm-- I have a set of likes and dislikes.  Vashj is the zone with the biggest downer, leading straight into the Throne of the Tides instance.  (The other two instances, Blackrock Caverns and Stonecore, are more of a sidelight on the main quest chain.)  The Hyjal zone has the happiest ending, with Deepholm close behind.

As for the quest chains themselves...  For a quest whore like myself, I really did enjoy them.  And yes, I did go through Vashj'ir twice, so the undersea environment didn't bother me at all.

Having now seen both Ysera and Alexstrasza, I guess the formal uniform of a female Dragon Aspect includes a bikini.  I'm not exactly sure why, but then again, I'm not planning on asking either of them.  I guess it goes to prove the answer to the old question as to what a dragon wears:  anything they want.

The Earthen Ring and the Guardians of Hyjal (and the Cenarion Circle) are this expansion's version of the Argent Crusade:  a cross faction organization that brings all of Azeroth together to fight the enemy.  With all of that going on, it makes me wonder why there isn't more emphasis placed upon the attitude of the grunts who fight alongside their "enemies" on the other faction.  Perhaps I'll find more of that later on, but so far I haven't seen anything to demonstrate otherwise.

I've read some posts out there in the WoW blogosphere about how Therazane is a great character, and I can't disagree.  She is a strong female character who isn't clad in a skimpy outfit, she has her own agenda that has nothing to do with any other faction, and she's just as likely to kill you as welcome you to her throne room.  The strange thing is that I want to check out the quest line for Maraudon again, just to see if there have been any tweaks to accomodate Therazane's presence in Deepholm.

***

And before I forget, Happy Valentine's Day to all of you out in the blogosphere!

***

Convoy to 85 Update

Tomakan:  L84 in Uldum

Nevelanthana:  L83 in Deepholm

Quintalan:  L82 in Deepholm

*Although if you could toss Garrosh out of the Warchief's seat, I'd bet boatloads of Hordies would do so in an instant.