f13.net

1) NPC mail telling me the reclamation of Gnomeregan has begun! Oh boy, new content!

2) Go to Ironforge, do a few simple quests that lead me to meeting the gnome leader in the field.

3) The gnome leader isn't here right now, please wait for this giant scripted event ala the final battle of the DK starter zone to end and reset.

4) Wait.

5) Wait.

6) Wait.

7) /abandon

8) /hearth

Not gonna lie, I'm considering a re-sub.

5min timers, oh god the humanity.

Sort of dissapointed, was hopeing for the rumored Overcloak reward, just got a shittyass common type cloak with 48 armor and no stats that has a nifty looking model.  Nice little rp event though (similar to the Battle for Undercity).

Got dragged back to it by a guildie a little later. Gnome king dude was there this time.

Ten minutes of zero-consquence combat with god mode turned on, in an event scripted to function perfectly well even without any players helping. Exactly like the DK questline finale and the Battle for Undercity, minus any meaningful quest rewards or lore/story impact anyone might possibly ever care about.

"Hey let's take back Gnomer! Whoops we failed, here's a cloak you'll never wear! (Psst, we were establishing a new starter area for gnomes in Cata here, not a new capital. We were never really gonna reclaim the whole place!) Yeah enjoy the cloak!"

I mean it's nice that they took the time, I guess. I hope they put at least as much effort into explaining why everyone goes back in time to fight Illidan and then the Lich King from levels 58-80 in their new post-Arthas cataclysm world.

Trolls > gnomes


fuck gnomes.

Did they really spend more effort hyping it than they put in to the actual quests?

I dunno. I mean, it feels that way -- but if you think about what they had to do....they probably had to do a lot of single-use only work to get the flying part to work (fucking with skyboxes, mostly) since 'it looks right from the air' doesn't work in the Old World. I don't know if any work had to go in to get vehicles to work, but I'd imagine they had to basically redo the depot area to handle it and skybox in the flight path.

Other than that, no, not a lot of work. :)

There is a decent amount of phazing going on during the Troll event.  Since all that stuff that is happening on the islands is phazed for each step, as well as being seperated entirely from the normal quests the level 5-10's are running.

Saw this last night. Some guildies had actually stayed up until the wee hours  to do it. Never got around to it myself (Lair of the Shadowbroker had a singulairity grade attraction to me after dailys were done). Perhaps tonight or tomorrow I'll get my DK and shaman through it.

I figure I've got a month or two to get my 80s through it. Considering the antipathy draenei have towards gnomes, no one is in any hurry to help out. My night elf warrior hates Gnomer. Bigtime. Spent way too much time in that hellhole back in the day.

The gnome event has some phasing too. If you're just looking at the surface level of quest writing, etc., no, it doesn't seem like these were a big effort, but once you factor in adding the phasing, flight paths, etc., that they're just going to turn around and throw out when Cataclysm hits, I think there was a fair amount of technical whatnot going on behind the scenes. Plus it is the sort of non-reusable content that the people in charge of the purse strings tend to hate at most companies.

I would guess it was probably a fair sight more work to implement than any of the prior pre-expansion events overall, and this is allegedly just the first of a few that Cataclysm is going to have.

As far as nobody caring about the lore side of it, eh. I know some gnomes who are pretty happy.

Does this end with the new capital cities unlocked, or is that still to come?

That won't come until the expansion, and calling them capital cities is a bit of an exaggeration. They're not going to be full Ironforge-style affairs. More like just new starter towns.

From what I've seen the troll village will be pretty impressive but it all depends on if they add banks/ah to them.

Oh, they don't have banks and auction houses? I was under the impression that they were going to be full featured cities ala Org, UC, etc. and not just glorified starting zones.

It doesn't sound any more or less impressive than the other pre-expansion events.

Opening of the dark portal was utterly dull, although the doom lord in Stormwind was  :why_so_serious:

The scourge invasion was just fucking annoying

I was excited when I saw that in my mailbox. This is all good to know. Not gonna bother with it then.

The gnomes and trolls are getting their own Northshire Abbey, not their own Stormwind, if you get the idea.

Anyway, the zombie event prior to WOTLK was fucking awesome. The way it, the recycled "necropoli over random zones" event, and the Halloween stuff all ran at once and blended together was brilliant. Nothing like leaving zombie-infested Stormwind to find the Headless Horseman burning down Goldshire. Really gave the impression that shit was hitting the fan.

Hey, you get an awesome-but-useless cloak and an item that turns you into a gnome-in-a-diving-helmet for 30 minutes, with a 4 hour cooldown. Plus, all told, about 50 gold. :)

Although it was amusing to ride out of Ironforge with 5 gnomes on mechanical chickens riding with me.

Is this how the world ends?

It is too late for the pebbles to vote.

I took back Gnomer 6 years ago at level 30 or something.

Nah, that was a coconut
Wait, that's the troll storyline.  :awesome_for_real:

tl;dr version - do you have half an hour to kill before Cataclysm hits and want a shapeshift trinket, useless but pretty cloak and a feat of strength while watching Vol'jin, a troll druid and Baron Samedi kick the shit out of Zalazane/watching Mekkatorque get chased out of Gnomeregan again?

Then do the event. If not, don't.

Gnomeregan event is bugged to fuckery btw. High Tinker Twatatorque routinely just stops at the top of the tunnel into Gnomeregan and does nothing... for about 5 minutes and then it resets and loads of 80 elites spawn and kill everyone there, all of whom no longer have the LOLInvincible buff.

Waste of time, x100.

I saw it running yesterday, but I'll wait until the weekend to do it. Clearly my gnomes need to be able to shapeshift into gnomes!

 :awesome_for_real:

Fuck a cloak, it should have been a tabard.

Ooo. Feat of strength? k, DAMMIT.

I did the run up quests to the taking back of Gnomeregan on my level 44 gnome rogue, it was nice XP.  :awesome_for_real:  She can't do the actually taking back part though, which made me a little sad. Part of me feels like if they're going to do the lolinvincible buff, why NOT let the little guys do it too?

It was supposed to be an overcloak, but Blizz has unceremoniously scrapped that idea because any sort of appearance customization is bad. (Link) (http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=26726064848&pageNo=1&sid=1#13)


Cue page after page of "WTF we can already HIDE our cloaks totally!" met by silence. I feel another bout of UO coming on.

I killed Zalazane when I was level 8. I got access to the magical world of Witch Doctor Bombay.The cloak sounds less impressive.

Blizzard clueless about customization of appearances? Color me shocked!  If only LOTRO wasn't so goddamned boring... And visually bland.  And a different game. 

Meh! Fucking half-baked half-assed halfwit industry.

Seriously, their art people have got to be the biggest fucking crybaby prima donnas in the industry for Blizzard to be so constantly idiotic in this area.

It is half they don't want people to ignore the new art and half we-want-people-to-be-able-to-visually-ID-someone's-awesomeness-level, I think.

Oh well, that's what City of Heroes is for.

I don't need to have this argument again, but let us just say I find both of those reasons to be weak. More like excuses.

We don't need to have that argument again because Ingmar lost it last time. :oh_i_see:

Eh, the closest I think I've ever come to supporting Blizzard's customization position is that I'd rather not be able to customize my armor than have to see people tanking PUG heroics in a lovely black dress, and that remains true. They could fix that pretty easily though.

I prefer to save my Blizzard-rage for things like what they're doing to Staghelm.  :angryfist:

The Staghelm thing makes me so mad.  :heartbreak:

He's an elf. They suck.

Fucking deal.

Yeah, all they'd have to do is "you can wear any piece of that particular sort of armor you've ever found." Plate is plate, cloth is cloth, leather is leather. You'll still get the occasional jackass who dresses up in garish colors to look like a clown, but frankly he'd have a hard time competing with the folks leveling from 30-50 right this moment.

Had this happen to me just now. Apparently it bugs out if any players grab aggro from the waves of mobs that appear, before the gnome king does, or some such. There's at least a ton of "DON'T STAND IN FRONT OF THE KING! GET BACK!"-screaming going on. :P

Hey, don't sell the Outland levels short. I still have nightmares about what my priest was wearing on the way out of Hellfire.  :cry2:

All you need to do is make sure the King can see the big boss trogg. That is the event trigger for the next step. If idiots are keeping it inside the tunnel, taunt/grip/drag it to the king and/or dot it and run to the king to force him to the trogg.

Look, they've said many times in the past that they want people to be able to visually identify the class of players from a distance/silhouette. That's why all casters look the same now, as do pretty much all the other armour classes.
 :oh_i_see:

The most disappointing part of this event was the lack of phasing at the end.  At least on the horde side of things after completing this you can run to where the level 10 Zalazane once was and... he's still there, complete with his horde of hostile trolls.

I was expecting them to do it isle of quel'danas unlock style, where the whole faction would do daily quests to unlock part of the area at a time (along with more daily quests).  It may have been slightly grindy but I just think it would have worked better.

Blizzard is still sticking to that silly line and probably pulled the one thing about it a lot of people were looking forward to?  That's a laugh.

EQ2 Extended lets you do appearance items from LEVEL ONE now.  You can even choose a different weapon and off-hand than what you're really using.

And it's free.

It's also failing miserably.

Yes, but not because they let you customize appearances.

Is it?  It's seemed packed to me.  And I've seen as many Cloud mounts as I ever saw Star Ponies.

If only I still didn't feel EQ2 looked like ass in the Armor/ Equipment department.  The "everyone is a scaled humanoid" thing really shouldn't mean all armor looks like crap.

People have different definitions for "failing miserably". Even though EQ2/COH/LOTRO/etc don't have anywhere near WOW subscriber levels by an order of magnitude or two, I'm sure they're generating an ok profit. Otherwise what'd be the point in maintaining them?

If they were making a sustainable profit, why would they be going F2P?

The thread in question for the "Hiding your cloak with an overcloak would be overpowered!" debacle:

Link (http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=26726064848&pageNo=1&sid=1#13)

The blues have steadfastly refused to explain themselves or post again at all in the face of 50 pages of "WTF we can already hide our cloaks though!" but unsurprisingly there's several of those blue-posted "What's your favorite spell/class/whatever?" fluff threads they throw out there whenever they want to distract the plebes.

It would be swell if someone could post once in a while and keep it on the front page. Sadly however I got myself banned from the forums years ago for a bunch of "Look at this sweet PVP video! (Youtube link to fat guy in spandex shitting himself)" grief posts.

Don't be dim.

I'm pretty sure LoTRO at least was already profitable. Their reason for going F2P is more along the lines of "holy shit look how much money we're making with F2P DDO," I suspect.

Short answer?  They are going to put overcloaks and other appearance related things in the battle/net store and charge a small fee for them.

You know, I honestly don't think it's even that. I think they're honestly just being stubborn and butthurt that people don't instantly love every armor set they design and want more control over how they look. They've certainly been fussy and footstampy about "uh, that armor set is really ugly" feedback in the past.

EQ2 had been on life support for a while, and EQ2E is clearly an act of desperation. Not sure about LOTRO.

I thought there was a chart or report somewhere regarding D&D f2p that showed people were actually paying more per person than they ever did on subs.  There were more players, but the top end were paying something ridiculous like $40 a month.  That would be why LOTRO went the same route.

It could have been a fever dream, too.  I won't rule that out as I only tangentially follow cash shop game news.

EQ2's move is entirely about keeping someone, anyone, invested in a game post-EQ3. It wasn't some amazing accident that the f2p move came in the same general time frame as the EQ3 announcement.

LOTRO's been in secondish place as far as games by a Western developer since its launch. It's never closed a server, never done a merge. Best estimates have had them pegged at 300-500k for years now. The notion that they had to do this to keep the lights on is ludicrous; as stated above, they see insane amounts of money in this because people went retarded on buying DDO stuff.

Are they trying to wring money from older games? Of course. Is that an indication the older games are on life support? Christ, no. Do you *really* think EQ2's operating costs after six years are that high? You don't need a million subscribers to be successful; you only need enough to cover your initial costs, get your investors/suits off your ass by year two and then cruise into profit mode. I imagine either of these games could churn along indefinitely with 75k subs; they both have more than that already.

Is this why shaman are still stuck with chainmail ballgowns? Elemental and resto I can kinda see; they stand still for the most part. Enhance is highly mobile and we still get stuck with a dress. One that usually looks like hell (T8 being a rare exception to that rule). I generally grab hunter offset legs, but still. Would a chainmail tunic be too much to ask for the enhance subclass? Draenai have the pins for that (screw those dorfs).

Gah. I'd be satisfied if they limited it to can look like a same armor type. Go farm a Defias set for your leather if you're a Rogue, or a lesser tier set if you prefer it.

But these are the people who were shocked that players wanted haircuts.  :oh_i_see:

Yeah exactly, that's why I don't think it's some sort of nefarious plot to get us to pay for an appearance tab but instead clueless dipshittery.

Finally did this; glad to see Blizzard is true to form and slaps a 4 hour cooldown on an entirely fun and cosmetic item.

I actually just AFKed through the event and came back to find the quest complete.

The troll trinket is awesome; the gnome trinket less so.

Wth is with having a 4 hour cooldown?  Freakin' Blizz morons.  Can you imagine an AV filled with gnomes vs. trolls?  Esp. if it was oldstyle AV with all the fighting in the Field of Strife. 

(I am apparently in the tiny minority of WoW players who looks back fondly upon 4 hour AV battles - I would play oldstyle AV even if it didn't grant honor.)

This event is pretty meh.  Did Blizz put all their talent on WoW v.2 or something?  Can I blame Bobby Kotick for this?

Our level 29/30 blood elves didn't get any "come help the trolls" letters in the mail. My level 1 alliance mules even got letters on Ally side.

That's odd.  I have a level 15 BE paladin mule who got one.

This would be funny exactly once, after which it would become incredibly annoying, just like fighting 10 noggenfoggered people in WSG is.

I tried this damn thing four times on my pally before I finally got it because it bugged at the tunnel each time.  Now I just tried with my hunter and it bugged again first time.  WTF.

I hear there's lots of this scripted stuff in Cata... this actually has me concerned.  If I have to sit through these events multiple times I'm going to get peeved. 

Second attempt bugged at the tunnel.  This time I watched and not a single person or mob even came close to the tunnel entrance.  The big trogg never spawned.  I'm starting to think it has less to do with the tunnel entrance and more to simply being a broken pos.

From what I've seen there is a ton of scripted stuff.  Lots of it even has voice overs.  But, in the beta, lots of it is kind of iffy.  Fairly often the voice overs run over themselves.  Getting into Vashj'ir is a really neat scripted event, but it never fired off for my warrior so I got stuck swimming around because I didn't know what was supposed to happen.

I kind of like the troll one because it explains how the they will have their own starting area and why you will be able to make a troll druid after Cata releases.

Look at the new armors, some are just recolors. You really think they are going to go back through and add in real variant armors and textures to replace the ones currently using color as rarity cue?


 :awesome_for_real:

I dont get it. They did that all through t10 also.

You really don't know what you're talking about, do you?

edit: What the hell is this even a response to?

That is the dumbest quote I have ever heard from any MMO developer.

It used to annoy me.  Now I accept that their fans will either defend or forgive them for it, and that's okay, because it will keep us playing separate games.

 :oh_i_see:

I've mellowed on the idea of letting players put together their own outfits, if only because Blizzard has failed so many times in a row to come up with Tier Sets that I can remotely cool if you're not a warlock.