f13.net

For a 5-on-5 team you could have 10 people on a roster. You can have your substitutes, your benchwarmers, etc. And that should make it interesting

Can someone maybe explain to me what this means:


Substitues?  Benchwarmers?  What is this?  In case your team captain comes down with a crippling typing injury, or what?

Like EQ - I am concerned that hybrid classes like Paladins could interfere with the tanking abilities of warriors.

Some information coming from Gencon about the Burning Crusade. Not all is new.

New profession level cap is 375 and called Master
Alchemy specialties called Potion and Elixir Alchemy
Tailoring specialties called Shadoweave, Divine and Arcane Tailoring
In the expansion they will be many more useful high level recipes. Along the lines of sageblade or robe of the archmage and better.
Each race/class combination will receive one new racial spell, much like Priests already do.
The example they give is Blood Elf Paladins getting a spell called Blood Debt which amplifies the power of your next judgement at the cost of health. All racial spells will be released when public beta starts.
They're aiming for Q4 2006 release.
Public beta will begin not too long after 1.12 goes live.
Patch 1.13 will be primarily a bug fix patch, but will introduce the Dark Portal opening world event.
They learned from their mistakes from the pvp system in the original game. They will completely revamp the honor system and make it complement PvE, rather than be dependent on it.
They have ideas to make PvP more skill based than time based. 1.12 is just a temporary fix.
Cross realm battlegrounds makes it possible for them to make many new battlegrounds without thinning the pvp population.
Gladiator Arenas will be introduced in the expansion. Some will be deathmatches (which is something players requested but weren't appropriate for a battleground), some will be survival against increasingly powerful monsters.
World pvp objectives will probably not give physical rewards. It's just something for fun that players requested. Think SS Tarren mill battles.
Guild rating and ladder will be introduced as part of honor system changes
They will focus on smaller group content, but that doesn't mean theyre forgetting about raiders. An example is there are 4 full raid dungeons not including onyxia in game currently. They will have at least as many in the expansion.
They really liked stuff like DM tribute and 45 minute baron. As a result all new BC dungeons will have difficulty levels.

Regardless, between this, the Shaman/Paladin change, and level 70 class development, WoW endgame raiding will be completely different with The Burning Crusade.

Instead you earn honor much the same as you do now, but spend it as a kind of currency instead of dealing with the ranking system.

Basically, fistfuls of awesome.

That's not "awesome", that's quite disappointing, in fact. And those responsible of that shitty design shouldn't be brought in triumph because they finally gave up at their incompetence.

Yes, because making a design decision for the betterment of the game is Bad Fucking News and the important thing is HRose having something to gripe about in overly long broken English. You dizzy fucking bitch.

http://www.1up.com/do/previewPage?cId=3152830
- Honor is going away as we know. Instead you earn honor much the same as you do now, but spend it as a kind of currency instead of dealing with the ranking system.

Basically, fistfuls of awesome.

Killing guilds is a good thing I guess?

PVP changes look good.

It'll be painful, but it won't kill them. Guilds will be the same, while trimming off some, and the some that are trimmed will find it easy to get together in new guilds due to the low numbers required.

Yes, because making a design decision for the betterment of the game is Bad Fucking News and the important thing is HRose having something to gripe about in overly long broken English. You dizzy fucking bitch.

Yeah it probably is better to go with 25 than 40. That's something that should have been thought of before release though. -_- Now I'm looking at a guild we put a lot of blood, sweat, and tears into making it a tight raid of skilled people. All the recruiting and cutting the fat. What was it for? Meh.

Oh and the change wont help casuals. You'll still need to be able to devote a big chunk of time regardless of size of the guild. It also wont make recruiting any easier because the excess people will be taken up the extra guilds that will pop up. 25 people will make it easier to get along with all 25 and get to know them well, will probably make the encounters tighter, and will reduce officer overhead. Good to be sure, but its not the silver bullet people are after. Raiding will be raiding, just less people required.

Also it's not just about guilds surviving, im sure people who end up having to be cut or sat our forever wont be impressed regardless of whether their guild survives.

Thank you. I'll put it in my ass since that's the only appropriate hole.

Is there a certain threshold of invective which is frowned upon or is it the HRose/Borat fan club?

Yes, because making a design decision for the betterment of the game is Bad Fucking News and the important thing is HRose having something to gripe about in overly long broken English. You dizzy fucking bitch.

Yes, but I remember when HRose was a fanboi for WoW, back in beta days. 

At least my brain won't get fat and lazy while I'm sitting at my computer trying to figure out what the hell you people are on about!

And, yes, I have a personal interest.  That Righ makes my heart go boom boom.   :-)  Poor heavily bearded HRose... not so much.   :-P  (though he does seem to have a pretty face under that massive mess)

I thought we'd established in some other ten page thread that most people were raiding and loved raiding, and that the people who wanted smaller groups were an irritating vocal minority? In theory this change should start a popular revolution against the developers for attempting to destroy the game.

The current pvp system was very obviously designed by someone who has a passionate hatred for the gamers who would participate in it.

So here I am, once again, hijacking our front page for my own personal soapbox. As we know, there was a recent announcement regarding the size of raids in BC, and I've spent the last few days trying to quantify in words why it bothers me so much, why I am so disapointed by the change. Eventually I came to realize that what really bothered me about it was the people. The people are the reason I log in every day, the reason I'm willing to throw myself against impossible odds, to do things as mindnumbing as farming potions for hours. Loot will come and go, and be outdated by the evolution of the game, world firsts will come to be long forgotten in the sands of time, but the people we play with, the people we experienced the game with, will we ever really forget them.

Raiding guilds were designed around 40 people, plain and simple. It's been that way for 2 years, and to change it now is so ridiculously shortsighted. I've been raiding with the same core for nearly 2 years, the same core of people necessary to facilitate 40 man raiding, and now I'm supposed to tell a good portion of them to what, fuck off, get on the bench because you pompous pricks arbitrarily decided to change the fucking rules.

Tigole, you say that with the entrance of BC there will be a high turnover on raid guilds. What the fuck do you know. You expect me to believe that the same people who poured hours of time and effort through your arrogant fucking cockblocks at Ragnaros, at Chromaggus, at Nefarion, and at the mother of all fuck ups C'thun, will suddenly turn their backs on us because it's a convenient time to bow out of the game. Suddenly people who devoted the time to the rest of us to throw themselves multiple days a week at a C'thun we didn't have a fucking prayer of beating are going to say, sorry I have better things to do just because the expansion comes out?

So what the fuck are we supposed to do now. How do we look at our guildmates, our friends, the people we've known for a year, two years, maybe longer and tell them, "Sorry, you aren't good enough", or "Sorry we don't have room for you". It's not about raids being 40% smaller, it's about us having to tell 40% more people sorry, you're going to have to sit outside and hold your dick every night.

Now you'd say, well why not use 2 raids. Who decides who goes in each raid, who leads the raids, how many people do we need on standby for each raid, what kind of class stack do we need for the encounters, how many people do we recruit to deal with the challenges ahead, what happens when group B's tanks are online, but they don't have enough priests, and A has priests, but no tanks. And by the time we're done separating people into 2 categories, we might as well be 2 completely fucking separate guilds. Why the fuck should we have to endure this bullshit because you decided you wanted to change the rules halfway through.

Let me leave you with a final thought, one you may see repeated in the upcoming days, because it was included in an article I was asked to contribute to. When Death and Taxes kills Illidan, and we stand over his corpse for our screenshot, will our first thought be: Where are the other 15 people who stood together with us for Onyxia, for Ragnaros, for Nefarion, for C'thun, and finally for Kel'Thuzad.

These are my thoughts, for now.

Tigole, you say that with the entrance of BC there will be a high turnover on raid guilds. What the fuck do you know. You expect me to believe that the same people who poured hours of time and effort through your arrogant fucking cockblocks at Ragnaros, at Chromaggus, at Nefarion, and at the mother of all fuck ups C'thun, will suddenly turn their backs on us because it's a convenient time to bow out of the game. Suddenly people who devoted the time to the rest of us to throw themselves multiple days a week at a C'thun we didn't have a fucking prayer of beating are going to say, sorry I have better things to do just because the expansion comes out?

They make it seem like it's this unholy impossible task to set up two raids, when in reality it's not at all. Sure, it's difficult and it requires some more effort, but we've done it in my raiding group to support two seperate 40 man runs. When you get to that high level there are certain people who like playing with each other inside the 40 man raid, and those people will split off into the 25 man raids. My guess is you'd need a group of 60-65 people to operate two independant 25 man raids with the correct standbys. There are people who have alts who can play two characters on two different raid timers. If you really enjoy the people you game with, there are solutions to the problem. Thing is, I think a few of the raiding guilds know that it's people don't enjoy them, and that's cause for concern.

You know, i understand where hes coming from but i still think hes full of shit.  I seriously doubt the 40 people DnT is taking through naxx right now are the same 40 they took through ony 2 years ago.  Lowering guild size is as simple as cutting off recruitment for a while, say a month before the expansion.  By the time you have everyone at lvl 70 your raid force will be down to a manageable size and you can start recruitment once again with the new numbers in mind.

I'm not even really sure why people think this will open raids to people who can't raid now.  People who want to, but can't, raid in WoW now seem to fall into two categories:
1.  People who can't say "OK, I'll be at raids from 8-12 on Tuesday and Thursday, and from 12-4 on Saturday" for whatever reason.
2.  People who can't or won't play as a member of a tightly coordinated unit.

I'm not even really sure why people think this will open raids to people who can't raid now.  People who want to, but can't, raid in WoW now seem to fall into two categories:
1.  People who can't say "OK, I'll be at raids from 8-12 on Tuesday and Thursday, and from 12-4 on Saturday" for whatever reason.
2.  People who can't or won't play as a member of a tightly coordinated unit.

You are right that I hadn't thought about that (I can't speak for my folks), but now that I have I'm not sure it holds true.  Repetition is only indirectly related to raid size.  It's directly related to the #drops/#players ratio.  That ratio, in turn, is related directly to Blizzard's content-creation rate.  I don't think Blizzard wants people to farm shit to the point they hate the zone, Blizzard just wants people to farm shit until they can get the next piece of farmland out the door (it is just a sad coincidence that Blizzard can't generate more farmland until long after you are sick to death of the current one).

Unless Blizzard can make 25-man raids much faster than they can make 40-mans (possible, but it doesn't seem obvious to me and it certainly won't be nearly twice as fast), they will still need each 25 man to hold their playerbase's attention for the same amount of time a 40-man holds their attention now.  That means the same amount of repetition, which could be accomplished by decreasing the number of drops or (even better) increasing the number of required drops.  It just so happens that they are introducing socketed items with TBC, which makes me suspect you'll need to farm your tier x items AND your tier x sockets for each new raid dungeon to give Blizz the time to make new ones.

Now, I hope they can up the content creation rate without sacrificing too much quality, but that's a separate issue.  I also don't care about the change in raid sizes, as it won't affect me personally.  I think they may actually make raids a bit more fun.  But I remain convinced that about 49.9% of the cheering for this change comes from "wow, this means every TBC encounter will be as easy as UBRS" people, who I think will be unhappy when they see the actual results, and 49.9% comes from from "this makes people I don't like sad, and I love that" people, who are just disgusting.

But I remain convinced that about 49.9% of the cheering for this change comes from "wow, this means every TBC encounter will be as easy as UBRS" people, who I think will be unhappy when they see the actual results, and 49.9% comes from from "this makes people I don't like sad, and I love that" people, who are just disgusting.

No, to Righ.

3. People who feel like doing things in big groups is boring and unfun!

25 is still big, yes, but it's not as boringly big as 40.

Here's all I know, there are 6277 level 60 alliance on my server.

I like the sound of all the proposed changes, but I do have to say it won't affect me much.  I still can only spend time on 5-10 man content, so 25 still does nothing for me.  However, the chance that I'll EVER get into some of that contect, at least for one night, is way higher now.  I mean, I actually experienced AQ20 two times.  I didn't get anywhere, but at least I can say I was there.

I can see this change really affecting those that had marginally enough time to spend on 40-man instances.  Now, they'll have time on their hands and still get into instances for the phat lewts.  That is a good thing.  My prediction is that this will help WoW retain/regain subs.

I'm really curious to know if they were seeing a plateau in their sub numbers or some far-off predictor in the behaviour or the data that suggested a drastic change was in order.  Typically businesses never make huge swings in their product lines or services unless they foresee a problem that will harm their momentum in the market.

Now you'd say, well why not use 2 raids. Who decides who goes in each raid, who leads the raids, how many people do we need on standby for each raid, what kind of class stack do we need for the encounters, how many people do we recruit to deal with the challenges ahead, what happens when group B's tanks are online, but they don't have enough priests, and A has priests, but no tanks

I appreciate that these changes will screw with a lot of established paths to catassery, but man, that post from Xi kills me:

Hey, I have a thought: how about the people who decided the last time?

I swear, the fear for change is directly inversely proportional to the amount of time a person spends each day in a game. Look, it's nice you've mastered the old game rules, but this ain't Monopoly(tm). It's a living breathing world looking to retain as well as attract. I guarantee you'll adapt.

*phew*

Anywho, the changes look pretty good on paper, except the Honor thing. But that only doesn't look as shiny because it hasn't really been defined much yet, beyond the impressions that they're replacing one grind with another.

Does this account for alts? I'm on a original, day 1 server, and a ton of people have multiple L60 alts. Some even have one of each class.

I've been gone since the 3rd of this month visiting my brother, but having just gotten back to hear this I am blown away. Who the hell figured that Blizzard would actually look at their numbers and side with the more casual players and guilds?

It does leave the current 40 man instances in a weird position though. I mean, why bother with Naxx when you can just get geared up with decent gear from 5/10 mans and get the best loot from the 25-man raids? I'm sure challenge and fun and all that are great but not everyone can/will herd 40 cats when they don't have to.

I've been gone since the 3rd of this month visiting my brother, but having just gotten back to hear this I am blown away. Who the hell figured that Blizzard would actually look at their numbers and side with the more casual players and guilds?

It does leave the current 40 man instances in a weird position though. I mean, why bother with Naxx when you can just get geared up with decent gear from 5/10 mans and get the best loot from the 25-man raids? I'm sure challenge and fun and all that are great but not everyone can/will herd 40 cats when they don't have to.

It will be interesting to see if Naxx can be done with 25 L70's. That'd be quite an increase in player power, IMO. Much more than you got from 50-60.

If they retrofit existing instances for the reduced player limit, they will also adjust their difficulty, just like they did in ubrs, strath, etc.

Theres just no way something like that would ever work, you'd simply have two different guilds using the same guild chat and what exactly would be the point of that?

Oh, the irony. The point would be that guilds should be, and originally were, about associating with people who's company you enjoy. It wasn't until cunty, shit-ass, "raids" for worthless pieces of shit came along that the concept was perverted into the 'We're hardcore Task Force Alpha" shit that abounds today where most people in a guild hate each other but they need the organization to get raid loot. If you don't want to listen to what they have to say in guildchat because they're in a different raid than you are, either they're in the wrong guild, or you are.

Here's my point condensed down to a single piece of indisputable wisdom. Guilds are about the other people themselves, not what fucking raid they're on that day.

Not really.  Go back and run ZF/ ST/ Early BRD sometime with a group of 60s who know what they're doing.  I've done the Jailbreak loops before with just 3 people.  55 priest, 60 war in blues, 60 rogue in blue/greens.  It took a long time because of the # of mobs, but it was nowhere near difficult. (Came close to dying once, because the priest just lacked the healing power of a 60.)

I thought the "just make two raids" solution was pretty retarded myself. Theres just no way something like that would ever work, you'd simply have two different guilds using the same guild chat and what exactly would be the point of that?

I don't consider people friends just because they wear the same guildtag, and i don't consider them not friends because they don't.  Every guild ive been in on my time in wow has been based around PLAYSTYLE, and ive been in every single kind of guild there is.  I did the casual thing where we scrambled several nights a week to put together a 5 person group, i did the pvp guild thing and fought with the same people for hours each day and im doing the raiding thing now.  I'm friends with people in all three guilds, i was friends before i joined them and ill be friends after i leave, people who stay in a guild that does not fit their playstyle simply end up frustrated and quit.  Maybe for you a guild is simply another chat channel, but thats not the case for me or most other people.

I think only those who are in really good friendly guilds have a real reason to complain about this, and even then it'll pass within a while once new game dynamic works itself out.

Well, you have nearly 40% less people in a maximum sized raid. That should be good for cutting out a decent proportion of witless imbeciles. Or were you planning to raid the endgame instances with a pickup group?

What I meant was what I said - expanding the aggro control abiliites of paladins will bring them into conflict with warriors in exactly the same way that happend in EQ.  The devs will deny this of course - as they did in EQ - but lead to endless drama over it.

Good warriors aren't going to be hurt by opening up the tanking job. It's not all about gear and button smashing. It's about leading, timing, keeping up the pace, and learning how to control each encounter the best way you can. They have the past experience in the role that others don't have, and i doubt pallies would be given huge buffs that would suddenly make them the new FOTM tanks in raids.

I see it as they would be fun in 5 man encounters where you're not shoehorned into ALWAYS taking a warrior just to get it off the ground.

Good warriors aren't going to be hurt by opening up the tanking job. It's not all about gear and button smashing. It's about leading, timing, keeping up the pace, and learning how to control each encounter the best way you can. They have the past experience in the role that others don't have, and i doubt pallies would be given huge buffs that would suddenly make them the new FOTM tanks in raids.

I see it as they would be fun in 5 man encounters where you're not shoehorned into ALWAYS taking a warrior just to get it off the ground.

Yeah, paladin's current role is heal/ buff/ cleansebot.  It's boring as hell and I don't blame the Pallies for trying to break out of that role, but right now it's all they're good for.  Divine Fury seems to hold aggro pretty well when combined with seal of Retribution, but that's from experience only at L31. I know things tend to go pear-shaped in the high 50's.

It's amusing in a sad sort of way to watch so many of them try to be critadins and talk about how much damage they do when you just /know/ it's not the case. (unless there's undead.) At the 30s I can already see how inferior the damage is to any of the other 3 classes I've leveled-up (Priest, Hunter, War) and I've been spending good cash on Blue weaps whereas the Hunter & warrior always had greens. 

 I know it's going to be a slog if I continue and I just don't understand why anyone would push through as their first char.  For the love of mud pally combat is less interactive than EQ combat.  Seal-judge (autoattack engages on its own) -seal *pause 30 seconds*  re-seal.  Repeat until it's dead.  :-P

Everyone wants good loot so the best way to manage it without drama is just to give everyone equal shot at it. Certain gear might be alittle better in the hands of other classes but its better to let people have the gear they want if they do the work for it to manage moral and keep people playing so you can raid. And in the end its all about just having fun and there is no sense in this 'best for the guild' shit if it causes problems with people.

Yeah... I don't agree with paladins taking the TF. Violently disagree infact. And I've never played a rogue/warrior to 60. I guess that's coming from someone where raiding and progression come first though, if you guys are casual or family orientated then it probably doesn't matter who it goes to.

Yeah... I don't agree with paladins taking the TF. Violently disagree infact. And I've never played a rogue/warrior to 60. I guess that's coming from someone where raiding and progression come first though, if you guys are casual or family orientated then it probably doesn't matter who it goes to.

There isn't one because TF has no real stats that HELP a paladin. Just to completely derail the original topic. :)

If your guild made it work, great. From the outside I just figure that the first thing officers should be concerned about is advancing the guild. TF in the hands of a pally and Medivh's staff in the hands of a druid definitely don't do that. That's removing all interpersonal stuff from the equation and just looking at the math behind those items.

The particulars of what any given person takes is up to them.  People like to play the guild progression card (especially DPS classes) because it lets them corner the loot they want and reduce competition, and even some healers/tanks because all they do is raid and/or part of the pleasure of the gaming experience is forcing their paradigm on others.

OK well, we weren't in Naxx when the TF got allocated; We hadn't become nearly as 'hardcore' as we are now. We're still a family friendly raiding guild, but we were *really* friendly back then, such as having no rules for attendance/inactivity. There were some grumblings about it but as I said he pretty much wanted it, won the items (bindings) fair in our DKP system without pulling rank, agreed with the rule of 'guild specials', which is basically that you aren't allowed to main switch, ever, and also agreed to foot the (not insubstantial) cost of getting the materials.

A lot of people seemed outraged outside our guild, and I'm sure a few grumbled about it internally (I was actually still an app at that point so I missed a lot of it), but in the end our DKP system says anyone can get anything if they're willing to spend the DKP and can win. You can argue it's really no different than someone getting a weapon that can be better utilized by a different class (hunter weapon!), and I'd agree with you. But those weren't the rules that were in place at the time, and they aren't the rules we work with now. We don't have people who decide who can use what better, because that's a receipe for disaster. We have a straight DKP system -- you bid on it, and if you have higher DKP than they do, you win. Period. There's backroom negotiation and deals and requests to pass it to someone lower, but that's done outside the system.

Now, on the druid medivh's staff front, that's a bit different. A resto druid can utilize that staff just as well as any of the other characters. Again, the druid in question has the highest attendance and the highst DKP out of the guiild. He also works his ass off doing guild-related crap, manages the raids, reimbursment programs, codes helper addons, develops the general strategies we use. I simply can't see a problem with this.