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I read a magazine article about the WotLK and they mentioned something called 'phasing' in it. If I understood correctly it's like semi-instancing, where each player has their own representation of the game world (graphics change as you do quests etc) but all the players are still visible to each other. Can anyone comment how it actually works in practice?

I can't imagine any big changes to the game world as it is still shared by all players, so I guess anything that would affect movement (new obstacles, terrain changes) are out of the question? Is it just limited to visual appearance or do you get your own NPC spawns (maybe quest givers)?

Also since this is Blizzard, what games have done this before? I don't remember seeing it before myself.

If you've ever played with invis as a mage, done the Dranei starting quest where you go all Ghost wolf, seen the monument in the Barrens to one of the designer's deceased brothers, watched folks running around when dead or done the Linken quest in UnGoro or the Gorefiend quests in Shadowmoon you've seen part of this at work.

Now, granted, in most of those you dont see other players or mobs unless they're also dead.  At the same time they don't see you (unless you're grouped).  I think the best example ofhow it works is the Gorefiend quest in SMV.  However, In Lich King it's completing quests that gives you the "aura" 'to see or not see certain things, rather than an equipped item.

In the Shadow Knight area, for example, you're fighting among the Scarlet Crusade area that got patched in behind Tyr's Hand in EPL.  If you ride there as a player right now it's a barren, destroyed village.  A fresh DK noob, however, will see lots of Scarlet Crusade fighters, elites and pesants running around ready to eat their face off.   As you progress through the starter quests you'll take over areas and new Scorge mobs appear in your questing area as the village is destroyed.

There's a daily quest in Blade's Edge Mountains that uses it. You get the quest in Shatt (its for Shattered Sun Offensive rep) and you need to go to the Ethereal area on top of the Ogri-la plateau. You start killing ethereals until you get a phasing device. You use the device and you're taken to a different "phase" which happens to have a purplish tint. Since the ethereals (and most everything else) is in another phase, you can't see/interact/hurt them and they can't do anything to you. However, there are some mana worm things in this phase that can hurt you. They don't appear in normal phase. There's also mana cells which you need to gather for the quest. Once you leave the ethereal area, you fade back into normal phase.

The BEM ethereal thing isn't the same phasing that they use in WotLK, exactly, though it is probably the same underlying system.

Here's an example of how it works in Wrath:

Let's say there's a zone with a big tower in it. When you get there, the tower is under siege by group A. You then do a quest series that results in group A being driven away from the tower. After you do that quest, you will no longer see any group A npcs around that tower. They're still there for other people who haven't done that quest yet. Instead, you might see new NPCs from inside the tower gathering bodies up or something, etc.

There is one big Spoilertastic Awesome Event that uses this sort of thing to good effect, which you will know when you get to it.  :grin:

There's been something similar to this, which was probably the base this design was worked from, since the beginning of the game.  There's always been a few things around the world which are only visible to people who have completed certain quests, or to certain races/classes.  The druids in the Dor'danil Barrow Dens are one example.  As Alliance (possibly only after completing the diseases quest) alliance sees the undead druids in that place.  Horde never sees them at all.

The primary difference (I think) now, is that there's going to be multiple stages and it not only affects NPC's but terrain and buildings as well, making it possible to phase from intact to destroyed buildings.

The main weakness of this system that irritates me is that there is apparently no way to bring another player into your phase.  They've said this isn't an issue because the phasing quests are designed to be soloable, but I disagree since sometimes people like playing together even when they don't strictly need each others' help.  It should be set up so that all players in the group see whatever phase the group leader is in, so that I can bring friends along and go help them regardless of whether we're on or have done the same quests already or not.

If phasing is tied to quests, then what happens if a player which can see special phased NPCs brings a non grouped friend along that heals him? Will the friend be hit by invisble mobs if the heals gain aggro?

I don't think so.  In the few occasions I've seen this sort of thing with the current game (spectrecles, for example) the person who cannot see the mobs also cannot be attacked by them.

Also, before they changed Zuluhed the Whacked, anyone who had already completed the Dragonmaw quest was friendly to him, and could heal the group...and if the group wiped, Zuluhed would just reset, ignoring the 'friendly' character that had been healing.

My Brewfest goggles zey do nothing!

I'm waiting to see how it's handled in WOTLK, but it doesn't sound very cool. Like everyone is going to wind up in their own soloable instance of WoW. Except more confusing if you group up.

I can see why they're doing this because one of the big criticisms of persistent worlds is that they're too, well, persistent. One of the things I was most looking forward to in AC2 was the promise of a changing world, shame the general shittyness of AC2 defeated that aim really.

I'm sure Blizzard will do what they usually do with this - polish it over time until it works really well.

One of the best examples of the use of phasing is the entire DK starting questline. As you go back to Ebon Hold and come back down to earth the terrain doesnt change but the timeline advances. Its very immersive to be honest, and isnt used to keep people seperated but rather to be able to move the timeline forward (Buildings get burned down, the front lines advance). For people who were in beta they will know how it worked, and it was pretty slick. For those that werent, youll see it in action next week. All this is done with no loading bars or anything like that, its seamless for the most part.

Phasing is used extensively in WotLK areas as you move foward from the Fjords/Borean Tundra. In Zul'Drak you do a quest where you ride around on the back of a giant slaughtering hundreds of enemies. No one else can see you while you do that and you can't see anyone else as you do it. Lets Blizzard put in more crazy stuff like that without fucking with everyone else's gameplay or setting up 'lines' to get the quest done when a lot of people are in the area.

a) I wish you hadn't spoiled things for me
b) I so can't wait to get to Zul'Drak so thanks for giving me this to look foward to. I hope it's as epicly cool as it sounds.

That quest is a drop in the bucket compared to some of the shit elsewhere. Wait until you do the 'hookshot' quest in Storm Peaks or uh, anything in Icecrown. It gets better.

It sounds like a really nice way to handle things to me.  It reminds me a bit of the cut scenes you would get in FFXI.  Only you would see them.

This takes it a big step forward in immersing you into that "cut scene" completely.  To me, this starts to solve that age ole MMO issue of being the hero.  With this technique, you CAN be the hero, if not just for a few hours. 

I suppose the issue with groups doing the quests will be worked out somehow.  My thought is that somebody that has already done it, just gets to do it again if grouped with somebody that hasn't.  They just won't get any quest exp from it again.

I'd love to see this work with some of the old world areas to bring new life to them.  Phase in either historic lore or higher level content to those areas depending on where you are with a quest, level, etc.  They could take this many different ways succesfully.

There are cutscenes in WotLK as well.

I think it has a huge potential, and it sounded like Blizzard (I was at a panel where they discussed this at Blizzcon) thought so too.

I am hopeful that this is what lets them finally do the Emerald Dream, since it solves the big questions about how that could be implemented without making a whole 'nother Azeroth. So maybe we'll finally get the damned thing.   :rock_hard:

Actually, you're dead-on.  I'd wager the next xpac does exactly that.  Lots of opportunities for it. 

According to an old leaked list of expansion stuff that has so far proven pretty accurate, next expansion is the Maelstrom (Gilneas, Undermarket, Queen Azshara who is easily more powerful than Arthas).

If that's true that awesome news.  I was half-joking to myself that I want them to do Undermine or whatever the goblin home city is called.  I was also thinking of more persistent underwater action and I've always wanted them to add Gilneas.  Always liked them from WC2 days.

Would also be cool if they made Goblins a playable race.  First race that can play both factions!  That would be interesting.  Either declare faction at char creation OR you can swap factions in game!  Of course, a lot of restrictions would apply there as the potential for mischief would be great.

And maybe a new Hero class tied to the goblin race. Hmm.  OK I'll stop there but now my mind is  :drill:

They've got Azshara to do and Deathwing is still out there as well. Guess they'll do a Maelstrom expansion that leads to a raid against Azshara then an Emerald Dream/Nightmare expansion that might lead to Deathwing.  Unless the rumours of a Grim Batol raid in one of the 3.x patches are true and he becomes a raid boss before the final patch featuring Arthas.  That would suck.  He deserves more than that.

It's been hinted at a whole lot that Archimonde is poisoning the Emerald Dream, even though he's dead (or something).  We'll likely see him as one of the bosses.  Blizzard also hinted at Deathwing being in the lore again in the future.  Maybe they'll play out together. 

So we have an Emerald Dream xpac and a Maelstrom xpac.  Past that, what's left?

Deathwing has apparently resurfaced in the new novel by Richard A. Hack - Night of the Dragon or something? It's meant to be based on some events leading up to WOTLK.  As and when he'll feature in game is anyone's guess.

Forgot about Sargeras too - he's still around I think.

There is an AWFUL lot of Titan-based lore in Storm Peaks.

I would not be at all surprised if Sargeras pokes his head around in this expansion.

Actually not to give TOO much away but I think yogg saron will be the prominant figure, imo they did a much better job of building him up than c'thun at least.

And then suddenly an expansion on the moon!

As long as they add furries.

There is definitely someone out there that smells like a Titan, acts like a Titan, but is working against the Pantheon.  This I've gathered from just a few quests.  Who that'll lead to is anyone's guess, but Sargeras could be a possibility.  However, I doubt we will fight him if they do have him be involved.  He's a character important enough to deserve an entire expansion of lead-in, and they're probably saving him for later.  Especially since we're shifting focus away from the Burning Legion for a while.

Well, if you ever did the followup quest from the Discs of Norganon in Uldaman (for horde at least) you are sent to Uldum (i think) in southern tanaris, where you first learn that there are a number of Titan Vaults scattered around the world, and that supposedly, the titans HAVE been alerted to potential problems with one of their Petri Dishes, and that Azeroth has possibly been scheduled for a "Visitation", in witch the titans may take steps to "correct" the desired development path of their errant experiment.

Yeah, I forgot about that until you mentioned it.  Lots of cool lore in Uldaman, I forgot.  It's what, Uldaman, Ulduar and Uldum I think... all on separate continents. 

I would love to see that line of lore from Uldaman continued. I was so frustrated after methodically working through all those quests and the story just fucking stopped!

Glad there are other Titan lovers out there.  Yes, very interested in the Titan lore and LOVE Uldaman.  I wonder who are stronger, the Titans or the Naaru?  I would say the Titans, maybe the Naaru are their guardians of Azeroth and Draenor.

Titans.  Easily (http://www.googlefight.com/index.php?lang=en_GB&word1=Titan&word2=Naaru).

Actually, it isn't a good way to implement the Emerald Dream.  Everything you see in the phased location which is different from the original in some way has to be flagged as being such, for phasing Azeroth to work you would have to modify the properties of almost every single NPC and doodad in Azeroth.  Comparatively speaking just copying it all and making the modifications is far easier.

I don't see this at all.  The only things active in the Emerald Dream, are supernatural beings and folks who are asleep (see: druids).  Since no NPC in this game ever sleeps, you don't have to flag them.  Supernatural beings that are in the dream, don't often seem to have a presence in the waking world.  Again, I don't see the problem, or how this experience wouldn't be much more tough then the "I'm dead" experience.

The flag is either positive or negative and either defaults to on or off.

Positive + on = everything flagged at the beginning, everything not wanted needs to be unflagged.
Positive + off = everything flagged at the beginning, everything wanted in the dream needs to be flagged.
Negative + on = nothing flagged at the beginning, everything wanted in the dream needs to be flagged.
Negative + off = nothing flagged at the beginning, everything not wanted needs to be unflagged.

All ways lead to a lot of goddamn work.  Because of the nature of this there is also a high chance that things that are not wanted in the dream will be included/excluded.  If Blizzard gets clever and attaches the flags to the parent objects then Blizzard will have to create a new set of objects which are excluded from the dream zone and remove the object references they do not want in the dream and replace them with the unflagged version.  Added to this is the fact that if the Blizzard editor cannot filter phasing flags it will be a royal pain in the ass to work with once they start adding content which will only be in one phase or the other.

"Where did you put that NPC Ted?"
"In the rock next to the inn."
"What the hell?"
"The rock doesn't actually appear in the dream."

It would make more sense for any Emerald Dream realm of sizable magnitude to simply copy assets and be a 'separate' location.  Phasing could be used within it to mimic the fluid nature of dreams, but the designers wouldn't have to worry about weird overlappings with the real virtual world.

As far as I can recall, the Emerald Dream is supposed to be, like, a dream of a world unchanged by human habitation or something weird like that.  So, they'd have to remove every building, every town, every road, all the elevators and harbors, everything.  Also, I think it's supposed to be all one landmass, like what Kalimdor and The Eastern Miscellaneous Crap would have looked like if there was no sundering.  At that point, may as well just make it from scratch.

Assuming they don't re-write the lore again.

 :awesome_for_real:

"Guys, we said before that this was one big landmass with no buildings on it? How are we going to explain the gigantic city of leper gnomes inside the Emerald Dream?"
"Whose idea was it to put the Leper Gnome city there?"
"I think it was Jeff."
"Why haven't we fired him yet?"
"No idea, should we delete the city and start over?"
"No, no, we'll just say the Titans put it there. Titans solve everything."

There are going to be a LOT of nightmares in the emerald dream. Leper gnomes? Possibly.

I see now.  I thought the "Dream" part meant everybodies dreams, not just "Dream's for tree huggers only!"... thus the "Emerald" part.

Oh, that's very different.  Nevermind.

The Emerald Dream is where everyone goes to dream when they are asleep. It's just only the druids and their special friends were able to actually do anything tangible in there, or something.

I would like to see any memory of Uldaman erased from my skull.

Hate that place more than just about anywhere. I think even wailing caverns is more enjoyable to me.

If you'd said Maraudon I'd agree, but I did actually enjoy Uldaman. Of course my perspective is a bit twisted - I have never been a regular dungeon-runner in WoW, just done a few here and there, mostly in PUGs, but Uldaman was one of the ones I did with friends and thus it was a lot more fun.

Maraudon still made me want to stab my brain to death though.

The last boss of uldaman was very overtuned for the target demographic; it had adds that had to be controlled, plus adds you had to kill and a boss that could have been high enough level to be landing crushing blows on the tank.  When they did the big pre-BC retune, his level (45) was brought into line with the rest of the instance.

Mara's really goddamn long.  That's about it, really.

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The only phasing that really irritates me is in Icecrown.  I've been holding off on completing some of my group quests there because once I complete them I can't help my friends complete them anymore.  I would not want to unnecessarily inflict pug tanks on my friends.

I remember them specifically stating that phased quests were going to all be soloable.  They backed out on that, and don't provide any way to help your friends on group-required phased quests?  Ugh.

I dunno about Icecrown as I've been backfilling other zones for the achievements, however, none of the phased quests I've encountered have been unsoloable.

After playing though 99% of quests in every zone (only 50% through Icecrown) I can say that Phasing is amazing, and Blikzzard did it REALLY well. This is the new thing. I am surprised we havent heard more about it.

Fantastic questing and leveling experience. Hats off to Blizzard.

Your opinion will change once you are doing your hodir dailies and start having the goddamn out of phase scrap metal EAT YOUR FUCKING ELEMENTAL ICE.

Eh, big deal, go kill another revenant and grab another piece of ice.

Phasing is awesome.  It's the best new thing out of an MMO in years.

Blizzard's raised the bar.

Again.

Agreed.  I finally got to the Hordir quests and they are amazing.  The use of phasing was literally confusing me because things were actually changing depending on where I was in the storyline.  Normally in anything non-MMO that would be standard.  I'm so hardwired as an MMO player to not expect it, I was taken aback.  I finally broke through my MMO-rut and really got into the lore.  For me, that is a pretty tough thing to do, so Blizzards new phasing system has accomplished a lot with me.

Also, grappling spear and hopping from drake to drake to kill warrior maidens while flying 1000 feet up around an ice mountain....  I just don't have words for how awesome that was.  Please tell me that is a daily!

Im not sure if you can repeat that one (it might be one of the random daily quests that you get from them).

The Sons of Hodir however, DO have a daily, accessable at honored, that has you hanging from the bottom of a dragon, stabbing it with a spear, dodging its claws when it attacks, only to finally have it grab you in its mouth and try to crush you as you pry its jaws open to and go for the down the throat kill shot!

I think it is.. but I haven't done any dailys since I hit 80 so I can't be certain.   Instead I've gone back and finished-out the few zones I didn't for the achievements and I'm now working on Icecrown.  If you thought SoH had some awesome phasing, Icecrown is even better so far. (About 25 quests completed in zone.)

You know this is the first time in an MMO that I've felt I HAVE to go back and do all of the quests past max level.  Between the simple fact of getting achievements to the excellent little jewels of quests talked about here, I've found questing to be a major reason I log on each night.  Then with the added enjoyment of group instances of all different kinds, I really can't complain.

Raised the bar indeed.

It would be interesting to see them use phasing as a way to make PvP dying mean something, yet not force players that died to sit with their thumbs up their asses for an extended period of time.  I'm thinking in terms of adding the 'war of attrition' mechanic and defensive positions that were difficult to tak that DAOC had and bring them to WoW, without an arbitrary 15 min wait till you could get back in the action.

I did an absolutely awesome quest in Icecrown yesterday where I was Arthas.  It involved Phasing only for the duration of the quest but it was fantastic.

btw that kids name is an anagram.  :drill:

This game in general is about a billion times better than it was at launch, and for once regarding an MMO there's no "but of course their launch was shit" attached to that.

Honestly this is pretty surprising to me. DAOC after 4 years felt practically like I was playing something on my Commodore 64 compared to the new games that were coming out. I don't get that feeling from WoW, and I figured by now I would have.

WoW is responsive is why. Walking in DaoC was more akin to skating half the time, and the interface lagged behind user input.

Visually, its the whole style vs realism thing that has been harped on for the jillionth time.


Someone spent a LOT of time with WoW, making sure that when you pressed a button, your character animates and preforms the skill instantaneously and in perfect sync. That shit matters, a lot.

Immersion doesn't come from quests or great storylines, it doesn't come from stunning bosses or dazzling weapons. It comes from this, the ability to have your character act and move in a way that feels natural, that lets you lose yourself in the experience.