f13.net

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/underdev/

You know, it's not the raid content for me. I actually enjoy raids. It's the fact that they keep churning them out with no way to laterally move from one to the next. You HAVE to do MC to do BWL to do AQ to do Naxx. Christ in a can, don't make them like levels in a video game with a linear progression. Even the most hardcore of the raiders only have so many days in a week and if you must do one to death in order to move up to the next you're going to run out of fucking days.

The opposite side is to run out of content, which people complain about even more (and with more justification).

Which one do you want?

We owned fankriss good last night but we are still stuck at the gigantic cockblock of the princess. NO CLUE how to kill her, she owns us even with the 15 people's NR around 200i-250sh, barely got her to 20% on our best try... a new dungeon will be nice to work on until they fix the shitty NR itemization.

I want them to release content (raid or otherwise is irrelevant to my argument) that doesn't require me to run through a gauntlet of other content to get to. MC is a cockblock to BWL. How hard would it have been for them to release a dungeon which was tougher than MC because of complexity alone instead of gearing issues?

When I log in I want to be able to choose where I go based on my mood not play "The Princess is in another castle!" for two years.

Princess was a cupcake compared to Twin Emps, who we just downed last night. I was in the 15 folks for our last princess kill and I only had 162 NR unbuffed (only one person died).  Still, she takes a few attempts because it can really fall apart at the end.  Once you've got a strat that can consistantly take her to sub 10% you've got her down.  Then it just becomes a matter of keeping everyone alive until she frenzies and then powering through that.  Alas my guild is moving to Black Dragonflight.  Not a happy raider, atm. 

New raid content is good, but there's just too much on anyone's plate right now.  If you're on BWL farm status, then you've got 1 day for MC (some people still need T2 pants), 1 day BWL, and 2 days on AQ to get through Emps (if you've got them on farm, and people still haven't downed C'thun or Ouro). On a 5 day a week raid calendar, you've got an entire 1 day for Naxx. 

Of course, this is Blizz, who knows when 1.11 is coming out.

Have they even said yet if Naxx is an upgrade to BWL?  Is it "tier 3"?

Technically new guilds can do some of AQ before BWL.  I imagine it'd be easier to do Skeram and the Bug trio than Razergore.

Not sure how good Naxx loot is, but a lot of raiders are anticipating it as the next big itemization lift and are throwing all kinds of annoying ultimatums around it.  Not sure how much choice Blizz has in the matter.

Meh, the rumor is that it is upgraded gear. Most of us don't want anything from AQ, really, it's more of a sidegrade, and we're doing THAT so even if it's another sidegrade we'll probably just do it for the challenge.

We've dropped MC from the rotation every other week to focus on AQ, we're just a bit behind you, I think, farm status on BWL, MC, ONY, so by time that comes out in a month hopefully we'll be just frustrated enough with slamming our heads on the C'Thun wall that we'll want something else. The guild is getting touchy and beigining to show signs of burnout (low turnouts on the 'new content days', things like that, so a change of pace will be good.

Any hints for princess? Is there a trick we're missing? Right now our "best strat" it's just groups 1-4 NR gear, two MTs in normal gear for the pre-30, get her to 30, then NR takes over and burns her down while priests in each of those groups are spamming prayer of healing. We're just SUCKY in full NR, can barely get her to 30 before she enrages on her own.

Meh, we STILL wipe on fucking prophet if/when he stacks all 3 on the same platform half the time... they get loose and we die. I don't see how people think AQ is easier than BWL, frankly, we took vael down with none of the real problems that everyone else seemed to have. Of course, we wiped on rag/domo for around 2 months beforehand so our entire guild was DECKED OUT in FR gear, and we still have problems with trio control and generally wipe once or twice on that, too.

My guild is hoping that we can get BWL close to farm before Naxx comes out. Right now we are working on Chromaggus, but advancing fast. We will try and do MC 1 night, BWL 1 night, and Naxx 2 nights. I think for the majority of the guild AQ40 is a small upgrade, where as Naxx will be a big upgrade. As long as tghere isnt a huge resist cockblock in naxx, I think we will be able to do OK.

I'm not sure about how my tanks set themselves up for Huhu, but I believe they were full NR for the entire fight.  The main source of Huhu's damage to the tank is her stackable NR DoT.  It's best to rotate the tanks after they get one or two of these debuffs, because you don't want healers running out of mana before 30%.

30% depends a lot on your healers.  You should have a couple free ones assigned to pick up slack from PoH that develops from differences in NR and priests getting silenced.  Shield wall rotations can take a lot pressure off of the tank damage, which is very harsh after 30.  PoH can sometimes be difficult to time since it has a long cast.  You can either practice it, or assign one healer to two or three targets each; this works too.

The general feeling is that there won't be a massive resist cockblock in Naxx but we'll see. As far as AQ goes I just want that staff from Skeram for my mage and the rest of the place can fuck itself.

Twin Emps put us in serious burnout mode.  Serious enough that we're moving to a PVP server as a "change of pace".  We beat Twin Emps on our last night on the server. I shouldn't be saying "our", I'm likely staying put and just taking another 6 months off the game.  I'll cut myself off here, but the discussion for moving made me want to vomit.  If you're not on a PVP server, pray Blizzard never tosses that apple of discord your way.


We've got all tanks in NR.  All of them.  All rogues in NR gear.  We're usually bringing 6 warriors to this fight.   We've been farming the green dragons for a while, so people aren't exactly going in with shitty NR gear from mauradon (well not all of it).  We've got priests in each group that's staying close so they can fire off group heals at 30%. They are in NR gear.  There's likely one shaman and a couple hunters in NR gear in range also (some of our high NR warlocks have also stayed in range at times).  Shaman/druid keep the tanks up and unslept (still important to do this at this point) while the group priests fire off group heals like they're fighting vael.

Some key points for this:
*Remove sleep from your two MTs ASAP and from other tanks as soon as you can.  All tanks being slept, will likely result in a ranged DPS getting aggro and proper fucking your raid. Our best attempts are when the sleep is handled well.  Don't remove sleep on rogues. 
*Tank transitioning is key. The ST needs to pick up aggro to avoid you dumping too much mana on the tank that starts the fight.
*Start your mages wanding, then let them into the fight after you've beaten her down some and then them and everyone else goes batshit on the DPS at the 30% mark.  You'll need to pick a point where your mages/warlocks can start blasting away.  You just can't go too slow on the DPS.  Remember, if you bring enough tanks, execute range is what you're shooting for.

The imporant thing is to really make to the 30% mark with no deaths and enough mana to power you through to the end.  Early deaths will lead to 1% wipes.

I think the linear progression thing is a bad idea.

I am growing tired.  I want to have a nice farm somewhere, or become a lady merchant or trader.

The whole killing monsters thing is getting old, especially when it's built upon progression where one needs 39 other people in order to proceed.  (And most especially when I can't even log in in a reasonable amount of time).

I quit DAOC over ToA (which became necessary for the pvp).  I'm hoping there will be enough casual stuff to do in WoW to tide me over until the expansion.  Or maybe I should take Schild's advice and go back to single player games.

Unfortunately we couldn't even keep our tanks up in full NR gear long enough to get her to 30, so we had to back down and let two of them wear normal tanking gear. We have no ability to kill any world spawn as two other uberguilds have them completely locked down and most of our guild works and can't log in at 11am every other weds anyway. We've got the warrior rotation down, but healers/mages have around half mana by time we get to 30%. That stun sting is a real bitch to our DPS and the fact all our DPS has nothing but maurdon and chimera gear really fucking sucks. We're pretty much boned it looks like.

http://www.eve-online.com

I am getting tired of the idea of having to have completely different resistance sets for different encounters.

I like to see more challenge in terms of scripted encounters and variable powers than having an instance for each resistance type.

Although, a frost instance would be very cool.  :-D

AQ isn't really required, it's just sort of a 'get-neat-loots-for-nonstandard-specs' instance with some nice bonuses for others. On the other hand, Naxxramas I believe will contain Tier 3 armor sets. *Prays to God the hunter set doesn't look stupid*

Sigh, more content for the minority of players.

Bonus: You won't be able to walk in the door and even try it if you're not in an uberguild that's well into BWL. You'll have to do fucking MC/Ony, then BWL, then maybe AQ, with a bit of ZG sprinkled in here and there for filler or fun.

EXACTLY. New raid, fine. Not everyone's cup of tea but whatever.

Hey, that Naxxraboobis thing sounds cool... wait, what? What do you mean that I have to go run MC and BWL for a year before I can go see it? Yeah, we're running Molten Co... what? Everyone should be in roughly 6 of 8 Tier 2 to go there? We just spent four months beating Ragnaros...

LATERAL FUCKING CONTENT BLIZZARD!

Lateral content is usually equated with loot sidegrades.   If they can avoid fucking up the itemization the current raiders *might* go for it.  If not.. well, you'll have a repeat of the AQ40 gripes.  Of course, those people griping are still for the most part continueing to hammer away at C'thun/Ouro. 

But yah, I feel you for MC being a stepping stone.  It's a big ball of boring suck once you've got it on farm and it aint exactly a rivetting experience while you're learning it. It would be pretty damn cool if it was an alternative to MC.

Anyhow, I'm going to reserve my Naxx bitching until I hear details.  It would be nice to get a useful upgrade to Earthfury for a shaman.   Course, who knows when I'm going to be raiding again.

If it ends up being an alternative to MC I'll be a happy man. Never going to happen, though.

I'd like to see an end to the Tier $FOO variety of armor myself and just see all the pieces in a dungeon sport similiar themes so they work reasonably well together visually. This Tier shit is just another cockblock and it's about the worst kind of mudflation there is since you can't get a mix of individual pieces that really compare or even share a good look.

"Man, you're still in Tier 3? Only fucking n00bs have that, real hardc0re people have Tier 5!"

Since you look like a salvation army hobo past level 20, I'm pretty sure blizzard isn't concerned about the look all that much. You can't really mix and match different pieces of armor so they look good visually without some sort of dye system.. and that ain't happening. As for the tiered system, there really isn't any other option; each dungeon gets harder and you need better and better loot to take it on and/or get from the monsters you kill. Half the people do it for the challenge, and that's great, but what about those who are doing it for the phat lewts? you have to throw them a bone.

Then throw them a bone. Just stop making it so gear is the only stopping me from waltzing into BWL.

You can make it sort of about gear if you want (my priest needs more mana to heal for five minutes!) but Jin'Do isn't tough because of gearing issues.

Have they ever made uber-content that offered no reward whatsoever, that people simply attempted because it was actually fun of its own accord?

Is it fucking 1997 where you live? Where you get to do ARR PEE for the sake of doing whatever hammy little queer jig in front of the Brittania bank? No? Because I know exactly where you're going to go with this fucking thing just like everywhere you post.

Interesting that people are having their priests PoH on Huhu. We abandoned that very quickly in favor of assigned 1 to 1 or 1 to 2 healing, and had little difficulty (barring lag) with her thereafter.

AQ's just been an exercise in cockblockage for us. Six weeks of farming to get the gates open. Twin emps down one week after opening. Six weeks (so far) of banging our heads against C'Thun.


Loot is irrelevant to me. Making shit dead, preferably first, is the only reason I bother. And yes, while that is what constitutes fun for me, it's hard to find 39 others who share the same sentiments.

I couldn't agree more with this,  and I'm only just getting through MC with my group in the last month.  (No Rag attempt last week.. Friday had the "B" team to 'give people a chance' and there were just too many of them.)   Rumors I've heard, tho, is that Nax is going to be shadow-resist heavy.  Makes sense, since all the undead effects are shadow-based.

Fucking resist design.. learn a new tune! I'd bitch about it more, but I know that given Blizzard's glacial pace (When they released DM they said it'd been started prior to Beta) any instances using lessons learned now won't be out for 18-20 months.

What's the deal with resist, exactly?  Does it basically make the certain gear that provides the resists highly in-demand / a prerequisite?  Can buff mages just cast all the resists on you, so you don't need gear for them?

There are more recent offerings (http://www.elderscrolls.com) which offer content for it's own sake. Granted, there's no multiplayer component, but depending on your point of view that can be a very good thing.

Oh, no surprise on Naxxramas, of course. I was hoping it'd be 20-man, but of course Kel'Thuzad gets to be the next Big Evil Guy in WoW's single-player plotline. Should be the Dream after that, maybe one or two more BGs, and the current-time World Tree as a very big maybe (I rather suspect they'll tie in access to the "current" World Tree with the "past" World Tree event in the Caverns of Time in the expansion), and then a content freeze until the expansion.

You could probably get by with just some smaller handfuls of resist gear + aura/cast resists, but that wouldn't make the poopsockers happy or promote their kind of strategies, which mostly involve 1-3 tanks with utterly obscene resists so healers don't really have to pay attention outside of crits or burst damage.

If Blizzard didn't actually put in some scripted events and require at least a brain stem on some bosses the catasses would be perfectly happy grinding out all the best resist gear for tanks and doing the old "Okay, pull here, build aggro. Priests heal and decurse. Oh darn, some totally retarded wipe-causing debuff, you run over here and die so the rest of us may live. Alright, DPS squad come in. *Lag*. Hey, we win!" routine.

The first time I got a nice shiny purple text weapon I was like "WOW! Look at that Brutality Blade! Fucking SWEET!"

By the seventh it was a means to an end to see new content.

Which is not to say my old guild was uber; eight months to clear MC is most assuredly not fucking uber. Rather I LIKE Blizzard's content as a general rule and if I have to jump through a few of the A to B to C gearing hoops to get there, cool. I wish there were less of them and it will eventually drive me into the arms of another but for now, fine. Most people never get past the PURPLE ZOMG stage, though.

Your casual angst is showing.  Again. 

I'll let you in on a little secret: raiders hate resist based encounters too.  Resist gear takes up bag space (lots of it). Tanks don't like tanking in paper mache because it helps them resist *stupid breath attack*.  Healers don't like playing with shitty mana pools because they've got on their depends of shadow resist on. No one likes farming for or spending DKP on crappy gear just because it has 15 nature resist on it. No one wants to complete that stupid fire resist libram or spend mats on resist enchants.  Resist based encounters are lazy design due to being artificial cockblocks that have nothing to do with skill. It dumbs down the encounter and adds an element that can't be bipassed through any other means but gathering the gear.

People that think getting resist gear is fun are probably frothing at the mouth waiting for Vanguard.

And yah, Emeriss is a dumb encounter, but no one should ever die on it if people know what the fuck they're doing even if they get the corruption. (Assuming that's what you're using as an example.)

Well, there are bosses with disaster causing debuffs/DOT's/bizzaro curses in all of the raid instances.

I'm just getting more and more uninterested in progression in the game since it's like Blizzard is flat out not interested in making content the majority of players can see without having to go through horribly uninteresting/unfun content like MC and spending so much time gearing up they get sick of the content that provides it.

I haven't even gotten to see hardly any of MC, and that's the only 20+ raid instance I've been in. I think about that. If I want to see any of it, my small guild can go around begging to try and get an alliance and pray for the other people not to be functionally retarded (provided we can even find an alliance), recruit like mad and spend a LOT of time weeding out the people who never log on afterwards or are retarded/cockholes, or I can leave my guild behind (basically leaving behind a lot of people I really enjoy playing/talking with) and try to get into a raiding guild.

And that's just to get started. Then I have to spend weeks gearing up in MC provided it's even on farm status yet, then it's on to BWL with maybe some sidetrips to AQ/ZG, and maybe, just maybe, after a good 2-3 months of plugging away, I can walk in the door of this new instance and experience the new content/story, see the zone's design, and ooh and ahh at everything in general. Nevermind the loot even.

Fuck raiders. Fuck them, and fuck whoever thinks it's a good idea to keep making content for them that requires gearing up so you can get geared up to get geared up for the current "hardest" instance.

Yah, but most you can deal with through ways other than collecting 8 new pieces of equipment. You know, use the tools available.  I'm not sure what's exactly wrong with this. 

Question about "hardness" that occurred to me while reading the exchange between Fabricated and Rasix:  Do you guys think hardness is being overvalued by current dev teams, or perhaps relied upon as a crutch where other forms of handcrafted content would take more effort to produce?

I ask because I think back to most of the Single-player games I played - everything from Metroid to Zelda to Mario and Sonic - and the parts of the game that took me a million tries to perfect my strategy weren't by any means the most fun or the most rewarding.

Edit: Explicitly keeping the comparisons limited to between WoW and singleplayer games so as not to hijack the thread off of WoW.

Well, I think the matter at hand is the manner in which they are making these difficult by requiring a certain level or a certain type of equipment to even have a possible shot at beating these encounters.  Quite often the baseline requirement for these encounters is derived through being part of the game and partaking in the raiding portion of the game for a rather long time.  You can't throw 40 joes together just because they're all the same level and expect to beat encounter x. 

This sort of difficulty is over-valued.  Problem is, WoW is what it is. It's game that has a set raid progression where diffculty not only takes into account execution and strategy, but what equipment you're bringing to the table.  I don't see this changing due to a lot of reasons.

Agreed.  The question is:  If it could change, would you want it to?  And if the raids didn't have the progression, but mastering the tactics required to defeat a difficult raid was still the 'endgame', would it be to your liking?

In other words, what proportion of your total WoW enjoyment comes from mastering a challenge over time via repeated attempts?

I'd argue that it doesn't seem possible to accomodate or satisfy the cravings of the PvE diku playerbase without some sort of gear progression.  So, fuck raiders and all that, but I don't think WoW of all MMOs is going to depart overmuch from this model. 

In fact, in my experience, WoW seems to have more of an incidental progression rather than an overly forced one.  Consumables can make up a lot of the difference until gear gets to where it has to be.  The larger problem is usually getting enough skilled and dedicated people to do encounters with.  Indeed, what does gathering enough good people have to do with item progression at all?  The skills you develop in MC/ZG/AQ20 are skills that are put to the test and expanded on in BWL and AQ40.  Incidentally, the three former instances all reward gear at about the same level.

To answer your question Tele, I don't think the gulf between gear and mastering challenges is as large as some would say.  There are some resistance and health "blocks", but there are a lot of ways to overcome many of them in a fairly short period of time.

Depends on how repeated.  Similar to single player games in that respect. 

I'm too tired to discuss theorycraft at the moment. Interesting question(s) might be, how to you set an attainable baseline that everyone from the casual to the catass can obtain to try these encounters?  Do you have difficulty sliders, do you have auto-adjusting encounters that calculate item and personnel levels and spit out a baddie based on that?  How do you reward people that beat these encounters? Do you scale the rewards based on difficulty? How do you wrap your brain around this given that WoW is  doing as well as it is?

Ya. AQ40 for hunters.

There's a bunch of comical Engrish babelfish-translated 1.11 Chinese test realm patch notes floating around out there, apparently.
I'd link, but most threads on it are being deleted as soon as they're posted.

Here goes the cut and pasted translation:

All new 40-men instance
 In EPL…after Baron Rivendare in Strat Dead Side is the gate into Naxx, which is the floating necropolis.
 Description: Four areas, which are Hate Area, Necromancer Area, Deathknight Area and Spider Area. In the end, you will face Kel' Thuzad. There are 18 bosses, be ready for some frost damage.
 All new class sets: Higher than any from before, gotta finish a series of quests, and you will get 8 epics. All classes have their own.
…… (Skip boring general changes)
PvP
 Battleground winning and losing honor points reward has been decreased a lot. Every time you cap flags, the honor points reward has been increased. If before battle starts, one side didn't have enough people, this match would not give any rep and honor.
Druids-
 Cure poison- mana cost decreased, but can not cure poison higher than level 50.
 Destruction?- fixed the bug where if it was parried, dodged or resist, the skill would still hit (I could not find which skill this was talking about)
Hunters-
 Feign Death- fixed that if you had a DOT on the target, you could not get out of combat by using feign death.
 Distracting Shot- Will have a taunt effect instead of causing huge amount of threat like before.
 Serpent Sting- now correctly deal more damage due to certain spell damage buffs.
 Multi-shot- now correctly deal more damage due to certain spell damage buffs.
 Scatter shot- now all hunters can train this skill at level 30, replaced the talent (OMFGWTFBBQ, thank you Blizzard, I will never forget your mercy to stop nerfing hunters)
 New talent- Stabilize- replace scatter shot, when used, can end the cooldown on aim shot, multi-shot, and arcane shot. The cooldown of this skill is 10 minues.
Mages-
 Talent re-spent due to talent changes, and all talent respec costs has been reduced.
 Evocation- all mages can learn this skill at level 20. (Buff)
 Arcane explosion- instant cast no matter what, the talent has been removed. (Buff)
 Mana shield- redesign, lowers all damage input, 30 charges. When mana shield is on, mages will not be affected by burning and drain mana effects, but burning and mana draining effects can destroy the shield really fast.
 Frost magic will now receive a 15 second diminishing return effect, and they will now correctly receive curse of elements’ effects.
 Polymorph- lower ranks will not sheep higher level targets.
 Counter-spell- decrease cooldown.
 Flamestrike- direct damage increased, DOT decreased, the overall damage isn’t changed. (buff)
 Arcane Power- cause a cooldown when used on some trinkets, can not be used with trinkets to wtfpwn people (I added the last part)
 Dampen Magic- redesign, now a percentage of spell damage and heals will be decreased.
 Amp Magic- redesign, now a percentage of spell damage and heals will be increased.
 Detect magic- longer duration.
 Frost armor- redesign, decrease all physical damage on mage, increase frost resistance, lowers all frost spells used on mage. When having frost armor, the frosting slowing effects used on the mage will be on a diminishing return. Also, all melee attacker’s attack speed and movement speed are decreased. (small buff)
 Mage Armor- redesign, lowers all magic damage on the mage, all school resist are increased. When mage armor is on, there’s a small chance to reflect magic back. Can not be purged, dispelled, and cleansed. (small buff)
 Fire ward- absorbs more fire damage. When on, will not be affected by fire stunning effects and flame shock’s effects. ( I guess this is taking about that new debuff flame shock gets)
 Frost bolt- slowing effects decrease in effect, but increase in duration
 Frostbite- lower rank frost spells will not proc this as often, and frost armor will not proc this ever again.
 New spell- magic steal- when used (I guess a self buff), the next non-aoe spell can be stolen, canceling its effect. If the spell was resisted, you can not steal the spell. After stealing the spell, you can release this spell, which deals the same damage it would have dealt at the mage, but will not be affected by spell damage increase buffs and trinket effects, but can be increased by Arcane Power. Holy spells can not be stolen. (Wow, nice, very nice spell, skipped the example part) (Hardcore buff)
 Um… the last skill, I did not know which spell it was, but it said that now it is fixed so you can correctly remove it, and now it can not be dispelled, purged, or cleansed.
 This is my personal note: please, no more combustion, more decrease its cooldown. Please some good talent revamp…
Paladin-
 Holy shock- effects increased, can not be resisted. (buff)
 This spell I did not know what it was- it said it is fixed that it can be correctly removed, and it can not be dispelled, purged, or cleansed.
 Judgment of crusader- now it doesn’t just increase holy damage taken, it also increase the amount healed slightly. (wtf?)
 Judgment- can not re-stealth after being judged (gg rogues…)
 Redemption- can not used lower ranks after learning higher ranks.
 Divine Intervention- can not be used on mind controlled targets.
Priests-
 Touch of Weakness (Undead) - can not stack the different ranks.
 Um… did not know which spell this was, it says the effects will now be 5/10/15% instead of the original 8/16/25%
 Feedback (Human) - shadow damage increased.
 Desperate Prayer (Human, Dwarfs) – will now correctly be affected by talents and spell increasing effects.
 Revive- can not use lower ranks after learning higher ranks.
 Mind Control- if you deal damage to the target of mind control, the target have additional chance to get out of the effect.
Rogues-
 Slice and Dice- fixed so this skill can not be blocked, dodged, parried, or missed. (??)
 Sap- lightning shield will not get you out of stealth.
 Blind- can be correctly resisted.
 Adrenaline Rush- the energy recover method is now changed, but the recover speed did not change. (I guess its that Adrenaline rush will half the time it takes to get 20 energy, but not normal time with 40 energy.)
Shaman-
 Talent re-spent due to talent change, and all talent repec costs has been lowered.
 Now all totems will not create hate with neutral targets, but wont have any effects either.
 All earth totems… didn’t understand this one.
 Stormstrike- (please buff this…) will not be affected by Lightning shield and windfury effects. (ha, no more 6 hits in a row :)
 Mana spring totem- area of effect increased, mana recovered increased.
 Healing spring toem- area of effect increased, health recovered increased.
 Flurry- will be in effect for the next three landed hits. (buff)
 Fire nova totem- damage increased, cooldown increased.
 Magma totem- will now correctly be affected by fire damage increase effects.
 Stoneskin- (please buff this…) area of effect increased, effect increased as well.
 Flame Shock- redesign, after you get shocked, you get a DOT effect, and the next 4 fire spells and damage will be increased by 10%. (buff I guess)
 This is my personal note, please have a good talent revamp, no more elemental mastery, or decrease its cooldown. And please, please, Please!! Let us have Bloodlust…
Warlock-
 Summoning- if your target is too close, you may not summon.
 Shadow burn- if the target took too much effect and the shadow burn’s effect disappears, you will not get a soul shard. (kinda confused)
 Soul-link- when the pet gets damage, you share the damage as well.
Warrior-
 Flurry- only affects next three landed hits. (buff)
 Two-hand specialization- you get 1/1/2/2/3% to improve hit, and you get 1/2/3/4/5% extra damage. (hardcore buff)
 Enrage- redesigned, now when you get crit, you get 8/16/24/32/40% increase in melee damage, whenever you landed hit, this effect will decrease in 1/2/3/4/5%. Lasts for 12 seconds. (can be considered a buff base on the situation, if you get crit again in four afters going into enrage, it will be a buff. Also, Blizzard, mind changing this to be fair to dual wielders? We attack very face, and the hits will be wasted away, this will only benefit the two-hand users…)
 Blood Craze- redesign, now after a crit, you get 2/4/6% of your health back. (I do not know if its instantly gain those points back, but if it is, then OMFGWTFBBQ, because if you have 5k health, which is easy to do, every time you get crit, you instantly get 300hp back.)
 Dual-wield specialization- not only do you get offhand damage increase, you also get 1/2/3/4/5% improve chance to hit.
 Charge- fixed a bug where you can charge too far. Now charge gets rid of all slowing effects.
 Intercept- Fixed a bug where you can intercept too far. Now intercept gets rid of all slowing effects.
 Berserker rage- you are immune to death coil, but still take damage.
 Death Wish- you are immune to death coil, but still take damage.
 Did not know which skill this was- you are immune to death coil, but still take damage.
 Mortal Strike- now correctly decreases the effects of certain healing skills like vampric embrace. (I didn’t want to look up the other skills)
(Didn’t bother to translate the changes in items, quests, reputation, and dungeons, it is basically which boss got buff, whic got nerfed, etc)

Grain of salt. Apparently came from a site called wow.1713.com or something like that. Completely unsure of what that site is but it's very much in Chinese.

BWAAAAAAAAAAA HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!

You do realize this mantra is on a plaque in the Blizzard office of Furor and Tigole. Both masturbate to it daily before beginning their work.

And don't forget that Rob "Ariel" Pardo, WoW's Lead Designer, was guild leader of Legacy of Steel before Tigole took over (since Rob was too busy at Blizzard).
 

This direction of content is most likely going to make me try out EQII.  It sounds like they learned their lesson on several aspects and turned it into a more casual game.  I might be fooled, but worth a shot.

I still have weeks of Oblivion cravings to get over though.  It has taken all my desire for MMOG's away, which hasn't happened for a very long time.

Reduce cooldown on CS and a "steal spell" skill that basically acts as a hyperadiant flame deflector?  Even with a 60 mage waiting in the wings for this patch, that sounds crazy overpowered if the cooldown on the second is anything less than a couple minutes.

Hey, other games did it.  White Bunny Rabbit in AC1 springs to mind - I think DAoC had something similar?  And wasn't there some uber dragon in EQ that dropped a hat or a loaf of bread or something if you killed it?

The white rabbit in AC was more of a joke/homage, than content.  Plus, he could be solo'd by life mages when the game first came out.  He was killed all the time for the experience, and I think he had a chance to drop high level loot, too.

Then they buffed him a little bit, and put an item on him that gave you unique shoes.

Then they buffed him even more, and made him drop a unique, and very noticable wand.

Anyone melee with item magic cold solo the rabbit.  My gimp staffer did it early on.  Just buff your shield so he can barely hurt you and wait for him to run out of stamina.  Just keeping the tangent alive.

The original Engrish version of the patch notes (http://www.wowguru.com/articles/13136/111-translated-patch-notes.html).

How so?  He was an uber-mob in a cave that took a while to kill.  Also, with enough time and effort and corpses, you could lure him into town to destroy the local populace.


True, but for 90% of the game's life he's been seen in his more buffed form - where he casts unique spells such as Bunny Smite that can whack you for 350+ damage.  Also, he drops no loot worth mentioning.


Neither of which provided any stat bonuses - in gear terms, they'd make you no more powerful than a level 1.  That's nothing like WoW, where the different tiers of raid loot form prerequisites for content.  If anything, wading into combat wearing bunny slippers and the Orb Of Bunny Booty as your caster would make life much more of a challenge.

There's been a lot of content like that in AC1 recently - a very difficult temple on the 'hardest' island in the game, that when defeated simply gives you new dye colors for your armor.

Why couldn't WoW do this?  Why not make every level 60 raid a 'sidegrade' to one another, so that there's no 'tiers' of level 60 loot - what you can get solo is the same power as what you'd get in a raid?  And instead, simply make the raid loot more visually interesting or otherwise 'fun' somehow?

Again, I'm only bringing up AC1 to the extent that it could be prescriptive for WoW (feasibility wise, not necessarily would-the-devs-do-it wise).  Why not have this new guy, Naxx, drop armor dyes instead of uber loot, or special particle effects that you can apply to your weapon and make it glow differently?

If they really want to make people grind it over and over, they can make it so you only get a drop of dye each time, and 20 drops equals a full vial, heh.


I do think it's really interesting, though, that someone implied the White Bunny 'wasn't really content'.  What makes him more or less 'content' than a dragon in WoW?  Time it takes to kill him?  If he had 100x the HP's, or hit twice as hard, would he magically become 'content' whereas otherwise he is not?

In the context of WoW, this makes the discussion more interesting.  If every raid in WoW was re-designed around single groups and on average a decent team would win (As in DDO), would there be a bunch of people on the boards complaining about how the game didn't have enough content?

I think I'm seeing an odd assumption here - that if you take the exact same dungeon/quest/encounter and make it more difficult to beat or otherwise increase the length of time a player spends on it, that's the same as having 'more' content.

Because many of the people developing it are uber-raid loving douchebags like Furor and Tigole.

Oh, and 6.5 million people are paying to play it the way it is.

Personally, if they're gonna do raids it would be nice if there were 3 or more for each difficulty level progressing up, so while people who want bigger badder harder content and scaling loot don't HAVE to grind a SINGLE raid over and over and over and over and over before they can grind the next.

Like, if they reitemized/rebalanced AQ and MC so their gear compliments eachother, and released one more equal toughness/gear level raid (like a raid in the Caverns of Time, which is slated to have multiple instances in it for all group sizes, including possibly more than one raid).

That way you'd have a shitload less burnout. "MC tonight?" "Nah, we've done that shit 3 times in a row. We're doing AQ or COT tonight." "Thank god, I was getting disgusted with killing Rag over and over. Maybe we'll be geared for BWL and Raxx after this."

Of course, this requires more content.

I've never understood the WoW team's slowness of content creation.  They have a much bigger team, I presume, than pretty much any other game on the market - and yet their content comes along so slowly.

Burning Crusade.

That, and their entire original art team apparently bailed on them after finishing AQ.

Well this just sucks for those realms with more of one side than the other.  This is a crappy change that's only necessary due to their crappy queue system. Whee.


GLEEE.. this looks like fun, and I was wondering if we'd ever get something like this.



The first spell is Blessed Recovery, the holy talent that restores 8/16/25% of your health over 6 seconds if you're the victim of a critical strike.  I didn't think it was very useful, as it doesn't stack. (Get 2 critical strikes inside of 6 seconds, and you've only restarted the regen ticks, not doubled them.)  I dunno why they'd nerf it.

Desperate prayer keeps getting better. Not using lower ranks of revive will suck for rezzing large raids, and yeah Mind Control was strong, but the aggro it generated in PvE and that you were defenseless in PvP kinda balanced it.  Then again, MCing 3 mobs at a time in a group of 5 /is/ a bit overpowered.

Edit: Pwned by a 5 hour drive and UBB code.

Guys at FoH rant endlessly that AQ is not a significant upgrade over BWL.

And you know what is Blizzard target. You know the background of their devs.

The game is about "loot whoring", if they cut out the upgrades it's like shooting themselves in the feet.

P.S.
Everyone hates raids. Even the raiders. They are there for the loot. If you remove the loot you bare the suck.

Meh, some of the new stuff is very entertaining to do.  The lack of loot progression is a downer though.  See, there are those who raid for loot, and those who raid for the challenge.  Lots are a mix, but you're going to hear more whines about loot when there are still challenges in AQ40. (Several bosses not downed; lots of strategies are unrefined)

EDIT

Could you not split the 40 man raid in half and do ZG/AQ20?

Everything is about challenge/reward balance in MMOGs. If the quest is too hard yielding little reward, people will skip it. I know I did on several quests, Heroes of Darrowshire for example. Sure it would be nice to do, and maybe fun, but the fact is that assembling a bunch of idiots to do something makes people automatically balk at doing it. Add in the fact that you won't get much out of assembling those idiots, and people get extra pissy. Add to that the fact that it's extra hard for those idiots, and they just say fuck it.

No, not in MMOGs.  In the MMOGs you play.  "That's just how it is" is the biggest copout on this, and it's inaccurate to boot.

I like instanced the first few times I do them most of the time. Once you get past a certain point... they are not so much fun anymore.  That goes for singleplayer campaigns too, I onlu ever completed BG2 once, even though I love it. I just don't see the need to do it all over again. Thing is, no way in hell can a game company come out with enough content to satisfy players if people only go through it once. So you gotta repeat. Raids then become social experiences where you get your loot, talk some shit, and get the hell out. Without the loot carrot you don't do them after a couple times. Once there's nothing else to do... you get bored and quit. That's why WoW raiding is like it is.

Paelos is correct.  Reward doesn't mean just lewtz.  People won't do something that is more difficult than the "reward" they get from it.  If they made you collect 40 people to work on an instance for 7 days just so that at the end you get a screen that says, "Congratulations, you've beaten Nastocon! Print this screen and send to Blizzard for a free Diablo eraser to put on your pencil!" not very many people would do it.  Some.  Not many.

For some, the reward is the raiding itself.  They like it.  Grape jelly versus strawberry, whatever.

Notes were confirmed as fake.

All early release notes Blizzard claims are fake no matter whether they turn out to be true or not.

Yeah but these were cut and pasted from a few "wishlists" on gamefaqs and other places by some chinese players and then put up on their site. The 11713 or what the fuck ever it's called looks exactly like the WoW site so I can see some confusion arising due to the language barrier.

BS. I was a PVPer, a big time one, but the current system is just not very interesting for very long, so I have devoted my time to raiding, and leading raids. I really enjoy it now that the raids are more challanging than MC. I have a blast in AQ and BWL (We just downed Chromaggus last night on our second night of tries). Yeah, I like the loot, but I get more satisfaction from watching my guys learn an encounter and then executing the stratgy and finally killing a hard boss. I honestly cant wait for Naxx. I think it will be great fun, and it probably wont be red or green or yellow in color. Which reminds me, I WISH they would mix up the colors in their raids a bit. I never want to go in a dungeon with a red undertone ever again after MC and BWL. Hell, when ZG came out, a bunch of guys wanted to run it solely for the fact it wasnt red.

The problem is, you're painting yourself into a box by assuming that the hard content isn't fun, in and of itself.  Some games (perhaps not WoW, but some games) actually have fun content.

I re-played Zelda 64 on the equivalent of 'hard' mode by only using the original 3 hearts the game starts with - never expanding my health bar.  By about halfway through the game, pretty much anything that could touch me would one-hit kill me, making the game more difficult and adding absolutely no reward in the process.  I still played it, because the game itself was fun.

Christ, it's like people are so used to MMOGs not being fun for their own sake that they've forgotten what that feels like.

I think you're on drugs.  I'd say that 75% of the people that play MMO games play until it's not fun, then move on.  20% stay awhile longer cause they are attached to their characters, they start bitching on the boards about how the game isn't fun.  4.99% are/were/always will be in it for the sense of accomplishment they get from having/being uber and will stay as long as it's "the" game to be uber in.

The other 0.01% are the damned souls that end up here.

Welcome.  Please, more screaming, less babbling.

Whatever - I was talking about people here, not MMOGers in general.  Forum monkeys are a different breed.

You keep equating PSW's to single player console games.  In Zelda, (and note my avatar, I love me some Zelda) all you can do, is play Zelda.  You've got a much wider range of choice in most MMO/PSWs.  You usually do not have to do x quest to continue advancing.  If another route of advancing is available, for less hassle, most players are going to go that route.  Zelda, you have to beat Ganon to win the game.  To get to Ganon, you have to do the quests in the progression the game allows you to.

You can handicap yourself to make the game more challenging all you want, there's still ultimately only one way to play the game to completion.  Hell, I used to play the original Zelda as far as I could without taking a single heart worth of damage.  It's just a fun game.  It also helped that I was 15 and had no money, so that and Mario were really the only games I had to play.  Maybe you need some money?

I fucking knew it.