f13.net

http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3147617&did=1

Here is a sneak peek type of thingy, and an interview.

Level 60 quests for new armor suits is pretty damn cool. As long as there is no rep grind for it.

Wanna bet on it?  :|

Supposedly a good portion of the upgrades can be done in solo and 5-man groups, with a small portion requiring like a UBRS size run. I'm pretty damn casual and I've done UBRS, so this is good news for me...provided I fill out the rest of my Tier 1 set. I was kind of ignoring it since in comparison to a lot of other gear (especially Dire Maul stuff) most of the Tier 1 set is just not as good for the trouble it takes getting it.

Are we talking about Tier 1 as in the Cenarion, Arcanist etc sets. Or are you americans calling Shadowcraft etc. Tier 1 theese days?

Tier 1 is the MC stuff.  Tier 2: Rags, Ony, BWL.  Some use the term Tier 0 for Shadowcrap and the like.  This is just common terminology, not a slam.

Everywhere I've been the Valor/Shadowcraft/etc. set is called Tier 1, but I don't read the WoW boards.

Good, then things are the same as always.

Good start on the patch, but I see nowhere any Mage changes. I can hope...

I really hope they make mages uber again.

Then I can finally get my shaman on.

This patch is the Priest patch.  Mages wont get their changes for another few patchs.  I believe in the order of things, mages are going to be the last class that is overhauled.  Warriors, Warlocks, Hunters, Druids, and Paladins have been done so far.  So it has to be within 3 patchs after this one, heh.

Warriors were overhauled???

Man we're gonna suck for years.

Warriors don't suck. -_-

Yeah... good thing I vendored all my dreadmist and valor to make space in my bank.

10000 ubrs/strat/scholo runs, here I come!!111 ... again.

BTW, the deathmist gloves look kinda meh. The hit and crit are nice, and the stats are uberrific, but where's the spell damage? Oh yeah, the 6-set bonus is going to be broken in pvp. (proccing a deathcoil with a snare? Didn't they just nerf green whelp armor?)


-- Z.

I dont think people will be afraid of a 1/50 chance of being feared per hit.  Most warriors just need to get a few swings in to to destroy a warlock.  The armor sets look very good considering you dont have to raid to get them.  This is the type of shit you people have been begging for.

I'm not complaining, and will probably end up getting the improved valor and improved dm (maybe even the improved sc on my rogue -- he has 8/8 SC 'cos I never ran DM enough to get better gear). Just saying that it's not strictly better than select pieces of current DM/UBRS gear. Instead of those gloves I can wear felcloth, take a hit in crit% (doesn't matter, dots can't crit) and hit% (I have the Suppression talent so it's not as useful as it could be) and gain 33 shadow damage to all spells. Still, it's a good set for PvP and such, but for PvE, you're better off with a +damage set.

Though, admittedly this is more of a problem with blizz not recognizing what people want from a warlock armor set... we want stamina, sure, but +damage > almost everything else. Also, +crit is for mages. :P


-- Z.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH..

wow thanks man.. that hurt I laughed so much.. I owe ya one, today was looking shitty too, you rock!

I have an alt of every class except Hunter.

Every class sucks except Hunter!

The blue sets stopped being tier 1 around the time people realized random blues where better in most slots.

The dragon welp stuff was a 5% chance to proc a 30 second sleep. That is just dirty the proc on the warlock armor is just a little bit dirty. It only lasts a couple seconds basically just long enough to maybe get a bit of distance and have them detarget you.

kaid

I think Paelos is protection specced, which explains some of his confusion.

Ya in the protection tree the final ability received what many see as a small nerf.  Otherwise, the class is in pretty good shape (played protection to 40 then switched to fury to 49).

Looking forward to weather effects - I always loved weather in EQ (snow in halas; storms in butcherblock - cool).  It will add to atmosphere - actually - this excites me the  most.

Laughing as I type this - once again I recall something in EQ that I enjoyed that they never retained for EQ2.

I have to admit, that a small non-cynical part of me is thinking it would be pretty damn nifty to duke it out in AB under the rain.. I just think that would be cool for some reason.. I hope that AB can have weather..

That one teaser CGI video has an orc vs. human I think, and it's all stormy.

That was the first thing I thought of too Cevik.

* raises his hand *

Hmm.. no zone lines, does this mean it is possible to find the "edge" of a rainstorm?  How are they going to do that I wonder lol.

I would really like to see phsyics added with whether.  I like how COH/V added some elements to the terrain (ICE) and it increasing the difficulty due to randomness like sliding or falling down.

That's a tall order imo - outside character creation - the physics model in CoH is the best I have ever seen in a MMORPG.  The only game to make my hands sweat while traveling lol.

Poorly.

OK, that was unfair.  Call me bitter.

EQ had slippery ice effects (e.g. Velketor's Labyrinth).

I LOVED that zone.  I would pull from the top - jump down - and let our party deal with entire train.  Grinding can be fun if the risk of death is 50/50 :)  Ya the ice effects were neat.  WoW has something similar already I think - in the dwarven zone - in one of the caves - I seem to remember sliding on ice fighting a Yeti.

WoW could handle slippery ice, but true/ragdoll physics are a bit tougher.

But I agree with Fargull. CoH had some of the best pow/zam action in their physics. Flight, of course, but also the many forms and interesting results of knockbacks and falldowns. Not exactly Havok, but not only close enough, better in some ways. There are some other really cool things in CoH I wish others would pick up (customization for one, cloaks, flight, open teleporting, superjumping, for others). Alas, the game hasn't done well enough to have its ideas ripped off I guess.

Finally, I used to love what was possible in EQ1, particularly with Lev (Safe fall) and ultra-super Bard speed. With how contrived these worlds have become as they migrated more over to "games", I feel the freedoms of old that add "toyetic" value to the virtual lifestyle are getting lost.

My favorite part of the last question is when the interviewer whines about PvP and the dev essentially responds: "lern2 get friends nub".  Five or six years ago in the pvp trauma atmosphere, that question always would have been answered with hand-wringing supplication and promises to revamp the system to make everyone feel better. 

MMMM, Physics.

Remember when they first released standalone dedicated 3d accelerator chips, and what they did to gameing?

I cant wait till more games (especially MMOGS) start takeing advantage of these babies  (http://www.ageia.com/)

Yeah while I haven't ever been a "omfg every game they make is perfect, they are gods!!!" fanboi of Blizzard I respect them for being the only company that would take a stance like this:

Blizz:  Camping Darkshire from the roof eh?  Can't you get up there?
Carebear:  Yeah but they are high level and they kill us while I'm trying to buy flowers from the guest giver!!!"
Blizz:  If you can get up there and kill them it can't be an exploit, l2p newb

There have been tons of instances where Blizzard has gone on record with basically saying: stop crying so fucking much about pvp, go play on a pve server and keep your flag off if you can't handle it.  I have to always respect that in them.

Yeah, Blizz PVP has been pretty good in what they do and do not allow as far as "blatantly uncompedative" stuff goes.  Especially on a PVP server.   Rooftop camping was only considered an exploit if the NPC guards could not retaliate against you (blizz does consider it unfair if the guards can not deffend the players.  They dont care if the players cant figure out how to get where you are)

Now, if only they would introduce a worth while solution to the Hunter-feighndeath free kill ganking in the Goblin Cities, I would be a happy camper.

Nothing like getting killed over and over and over again by some jackoff hunter who just feighns when the guards get on him, and you cant retailiate because if you do, the guards kill you, and you have no "get out of jail free" card (unless you are a rogue i suppose).

Yea, aggroing neutral guards needs to put a criminal debuff on you for a couple minutes or something, so you can't just run around and do as you please just cause you can FD.

EDIT: It could either make you KOS from guards, or just make you freely attackable without guard interference.

Although not as extreme as your solution, in Cenarion Hold in Silithus, the guards do an AoE slow debuff whenever someone starts pvp in the town. It hits everyone in range, whether they started the fight or not. It is really hard to get away from those guards. The effect is similar to what the Fallen Heroes do when you loot Blood of the Heroes.

True, but that doesent in any way alleviate the fact that a hunter can whail away on you with impunity, collect up 5 or 6 guards while you run abouts helplessly, unable to fight back (cause if you do, you get guard aggro) and then feighn's death and loses all aggro.

The AoE slow thing is also griefable, for 2 reasons. 1 It effects everyone in range, regardless of who attacked first.  2 The guards Cleave, and the Cleave hits everyone in range, regardless of who started the fight.  So all some griefing warrior has to do is rack up a biunch of stamina gear, go deffensive stance, and then go attack some clothie in town.  Chances are if the clothie isnt paying attention, that 3 or 4 guards cleaving near him will kill him before it kills the warrior.

At least they threw in the Nets to catch the rogues who like to hit you and then sprint to safety.

Personally i think what they need to do is impliment some kind of "Desturber of the Peace" debuff that functions similar to a hunters mark.  You attack someone in a Neutral town, and if that gets guard aggro, the guards debuff you with Desturber of the Peace, makeing you KoS to all guards for 1 minute.  DotP also prevents stealthing, and if you feighn death, you drop aggro, but they can re aggro you imediately if standing close enough.

The proper way to handle the hunter griefing is to put him on a list and harass him constantly, every time you see him on.  Even assholes do something else eventually.  Gank him, camp his corpse, train him, it's all good.  Learn his guild and friends and kill them as much as possible.  Make life a living hell for him and his associates.  Don't forget to /spit.

The "rules" for PvP have been argued to and fro for years, and it still always come down to one core truth: you either accept other people doing stuff to you that you don't like and didn't predict happening, or you avoid PvP games/servers.

More so than in any other format, PvP+ games/servers are where players make the rules. Game balance can only go so far in class-based systems. It's a constant state of imbalance with any game that offers more than one class, partly because of the game, and partly because of player perception.

It's why I avoid them in RPG extensions. I am not interested in playing by those rules. But there's thousands (maybe millions) of others who do, so it's all good. I'd rather Blizzard continue doing what they're doing and make players decide for themselves.

If there were no guards or the guards did nothing I wouldn't really care. But if you're gonna have guards to protect players at certain points it's kinda shitty that 2 classes can do whatever they want when every other class generally gets wtfpwned when trying to gank in cities. It gets even shittier when you can't attack the hunter cause the guards will pwn you. Tell me a PVP solution to where they can attack you with impunity but you get NPC guards all over you if you defend yourself. There isn't one beyond getting what you need to do done ASAP and moving out of the guards where you are safe to retaliate if they should follow (funny that, you're actually safer from hunter gankers OUTSIDE of Tanaris).

In WoW, the PvP solution is to have a 60 rogue or hunter alt or friends. The latter is recommended in any MMOG.

The point I was making is that it's currently a scewed mechanic. I don't really mind hunters being able to FD guards off them, what gets me is that once they do that you can't retaliate. UO made people flag grey, WoW needs something similar.

I know, but there's always screwed mechanics and wankers to exploit them. That's why you need exploiting wankers that you can call on.

I still dont see what would be so hard about making guards in neutral cities able to see completly through stealth like it was nothing, and to not be affected by feign death.  It cant be that hard to code it in on them.

Oh, and maybe make them hit harder than Rag, with a similar knock back effect to his.

I just want to say that I disagree with the calls for nerf.  As a warrior, this is the world I live in, fearing sneaky types, but it is pretty nice when you occasionally catch one with his pants down.  Not all of them know how to play.  If rogues and hunters weren't so bothersome, it would take away the challenge; also I don't want to be one of those people who whine about how some class has an unfair advantage over mine, true or not.  Yes, I avoid Gadget when I can but I am not walking to the racetrack from 10k Needles.  I fly into Gadget like a man -- er, mangina.

What's that racetrack about anyway ? I never found out.

Other then having a bunch of quests and stuff there, not a whole lot.  Its more thre for entertainment value.

Relatively easy mithril over in the bug hole, assuming you can kill the bugs.  I was just using what I considered a more widely-known landmark.  The Flats do have some nice solo XP spots at the right level due to sparse population.  It's also a great place to get an arrow over your head.

They have races there between the goblin and gnome teams too. No reason or utility beyond flavour from what I can tell though.

There is a quest (possibly repeatable) from one of the Dwarves at the track that sends you into STV to try to find a way to sabotage one of the pit crews (dwarf is looking for ways to cheat while betting at the races).

Never tried the repeatable part, maybe you can repeatedly run it to make a small amount of silver per race?

You can bet on them against other players who don't know the sequence, and win valuable prizes.