WoW Patch...

[MrHat]

So taunt is now just like EQ? And corpse runs are really the way to go for death now?

Same as it ever was.

Yup.

It seems like they are moving more and more towards the formula the closer we get.

Fucking Stupid.  God I hope they put in Battlegrounds ASAP, I need to vent.

[Soukyan]

Ain't it funny how EQ2 is now further removed from EQ1 than WoW is? O, the irony!

The funny thing is, WoW will probably end up with more players even if they keep harsh penalties intact. Apparently the game industry managed to attract masochists to the MMOG genre.

[Signe]

MrHat's recent penchant towards aggression makes me hot.

[Rasix]

Ain't it funny how EQ2 is now further removed from EQ1 than WoW is? O, the irony!

Not really when the point of EQ2 was. "We're completely different from EQ, we promise, no really, WE ARE. COMMON, BELIEVE US DAMNIT. Pinky swear!"

The funny thing is, WoW will probably end up with more players even if they keep harsh penalties intact. Apparently the game industry managed to attract masochists to the MMOG genre.

EQ2's death system isn't any walk in the park.  If you want your soul shard back, you're still going to have to trek back to your stinking corpse.  If not, you're welcome to eat that stat hit until the thing rots away (isn't it like 3 days?), and it is a significant stat hit (affects your HP heavily from what I saw). Plus, you get EXP debt, which will likely be a lovely footlong zucchini in the ass come later levels.

Both death penalties suck complete goat.  The 100% thing is probably the more masochistic of the two but it's for a somewhat rare (but at times needed) occurance.  

Attracts masochists? This isn't a new relevation.  We all played EQ (or SWG, AC1, AC2 (looking at you, Alizee), etc etc).

[Ardent]

Yes. Hopefully that will make more groups want Druids.

Not really. Upon further research, the druid rez has a 30 minute cooldown timer.

Plus, you get EXP debt, which will likely be a lovely footlong zucchini in the ass come later levels.

Thanks for the funny. Hee.

[Ardent]

Anyone remember the Doug and Wendy Whiner sketch that Joe Piscopo used to do on Saturday Night Live? (Yes, I'm old, piss off.)

Seems like that's the general mood of the closed beta folks about the addition of reagents. People are saying that they are spending more on buffs for instances than they earn doing the instances. Any feedback on whether the whining is justified?

[Soukyan]

...AC2 (looking at you, Alizee)...

That was below the belt. But she is hawt, no? ;)

AC2's death penalty was actually one of the lightest ones. Vitae loss earned back by gaining experience. Of course, vitae loss did hurt the stats, so one was smart to avoid fighting anything too difficult until back at 100%, which usually meant killing several easy-ish mobs. Annoying? Yes. Frustrating to the point of logging off? No.

[Rasix]

...AC2 (looking at you, Alizee)...

That was below the belt. But she is hawt, no? ;)

AC2's death penalty was actually one of the lightest ones. Vitae loss earned back by gaining experience. Of course, vitae loss did hurt the stats, so one was smart to avoid fighting anything too difficult until back at 100%, which usually meant killing several easy-ish mobs. Annoying? Yes. Frustrating to the point of logging off? No.

Ohh, I wasn't necessarily talking about the death penalty.  AC2's, while a pain in the ass if you die multiple times, is really a cakewalk compared to most.  The game itself, especially early on, was the exercise in masochism.  Some may disagree of course, but the point I think I was making is that playing games with painful inducing features is nothing new, hell, it's a staple of the genre.

Edit: And yes, she is the hotness.

[Dren]

I finally got into the game last night and played for 45 minutes.  I don't see what everyone is complaining about.  I didn't die once and had fun leveling to 5.

Really the solution is to just not die.  Pretty simple.  Or is there something past lvl 5 in this game?  Ok, nevermind.

[Ardent]

You pretty much have to make a conscious effort to die in the first 10 levels or so. Same with EQ2.

It's all fun at first ... but before you know it, you are Bubs from "The Wire" trying to sell t-shirts to drug addicts to earn enough for your next spike.

[Dren]

You pretty much have to make a conscious effort to die in the first 10 levels or so. Same with EQ2.

It's all fun at first ... but before you know it, you are Bubs from "The Wire" trying to sell t-shirts to drug addicts to earn enough for your next spike.

I can't wait.  

It's all fun and games until Dren catasses his way to the point where death is a chore and he ends up yelling at his kids for bothering him with filling "sippy cups" and made him die, because now he'll have to spend the next few nights getting back to where he was for equipment, money, and courage.

This game is going to cause such turmoil in my soul.  

I can't wait?

[Morfiend]

because now he'll have to spend the next few nights getting back to where he was for equipment, money, and courage.

It never gets that bad. At most I would say a few really bad deaths can put you back an hour or so. And that would be pushing it.

[Resvrgam]

I got a chance to experience WoW's new Death Penalty today and discovered how bad things can get when the developers don't actually play their games:

"Gee, let's punish our players when they die...it'll be fun!"

Due to the monopolistic ass-ram which is the Cable company around my parts, my ISP went down more than an Atlantic City Hooker today and caused me to go Link Dead while I was playing.

The bad news, I went link dead in some Firbolg Cave (I'm a Night Elfin Hunter) while questing for this dead druid's possessed corpse.  The world kept going but I noticed that chat was dead and NPC/object interaction was non existent and when I tried to Quit/Logout...it wouldn't respond.

After Alt-Tabbing the game and killing it manually, I restarted and logged back into a: "You have died, Release Spirit?" response.

Not wanting to experience the crap so many have complained about, I opted to hoof it back to my corpse.....15 minutes later....I arrive in the cave and ressurect myself (directly in the middle of a swarm of pissed off Furbolgs who, despite me running to get away, killed me within a few seconds of my return because my stats were all weakened [death sickness] and my pet died).

My Armour warnings were yellow across the board (The little decay warnings that appear when your stuff starts to become useless) due to losing 10% just because I died and NOT because of the Spirit Healer.  I knew I had enough loot to sell to get it all repaired so I bit the bullet and finally used the Spirit Healer...bad move.

I ressurrected directly at the Graveyard and ALL of the items I had were completely decayed and useless (including the unequipped gear/loot I was hoping to sell for cash to repair my stuff).  All those lovely suits of armour and weapons I didn't need or couldn't use and other "Decayable" items within my baggage were reduced to "0" condition and "1c" value.  When I tried to sell the decayed crap, the words "This vendor doesn't want that item" flashed across my screen in red text.

 This essentially means, I had to summon my pet and have him attack a few critters/weak enemies for an hour or so to grant me enough gear/skins for me to be able to sell for cash so I can slowly replenish my lost equipment (that would allow me to attack bigger things so I could spend all my time and money just trying to return to square one...before I even entered the cave and went link dead).

How did that even remotely register into the dev's minds that that was even fun?  A penalty is one thing but this felt like a punishment for something I had no control over.

I sure hope Blizzard rethinks this approach or I know I'm going to place this game in the same category LevelQuest 2 was chucked into:  NOT WORTH PLAYING, BUYING or TALKING ABOUT.

[HaemishM]

I ressurrected directly at the Graveyard and ALL of the items I had were completely decayed and useless (including the unequipped gear/loot I was hoping to sell for cash to repair my stuff).  All those lovely suits of armour and weapons I didn't need or couldn't use and other "Decayable" items within my baggage were reduced to "0" condition and "1c" value.  When I tried to sell the decayed crap, the words "This vendor doesn't want that item" flashed across my screen in red text.

I was willing to accept that the 100% durability loss on items was a minor annoyance. But to actually make everything in your inventory, including items you aren't using decay on death is beyond retarded.

[Ardent]

When I tried to sell the decayed crap, the words "This vendor doesn't want that item" flashed across my screen in red text.

Hopefully this situation is corrected, or else Blizzard is going to be getting This customer doesn't want this game flashed across their subscription statistics.

[sidereal]

But to actually make everything in your inventory, including items you aren't using decay on death is beyond retarded.

True, but otherwise you might have problems with people sheathing their good sword right before they die (Disclaimer: I have no idea whether this is possible in WoW).  Whole mechanic is dumb.

As far as I understand it, the point of a death mechanic is to a) prevent zergrushing everything with no fear of consequences and b) disallow churning armies in pvp.  Why dicking your equipment and moving you all over the place must necessarily be included is beyond me.  It's some kind of neverending Diablo hangover.

They should use the Nintendo death mechanic.  You have X # of lives.  Call it 3.  If you have less than 3 lives you acquire them slowly.  Maybe another one every day of realtime or something.  Maybe more slowly if you use them up a lot.  After death, if you have a spare life, you have to sit there for a while (assuming no resurrection), then you respawn all blinky and you have 30 seconds before you can be attacked again. . maybe enough to run away, run away.  Or if you're disconnected, you get the blinky next time you log on.  If you're out of lives, you get sent back home and maybe get your ritual equipment dicking or whatever.

It saves you from the occasional disconnect, but the limited # of lives keeps you from going kamikaze.

[Riggswolfe]

I haven't tried the death penalty yet, but honestly, in the time I leveled my main to 51 I can count on 1 hand the number of times I had to use the spirit healer. Even if I died deep in some dungeon it was usually possible to rez somewhere relatively safe and patiently work my way back out.

I expect the death penalty will be tweaked some over the coming days.

[Jamiko]

As far as I understand it, the point of a death mechanic is to a) prevent zergrushing everything with no fear of consequences and b) disallow churning armies in pvp.

b) makes no sense as they have already have removed the durability loss from PvP deaths.

Hotfix notes: Players will no longer receive a durability penalty for PvP deaths. If you get killed by another player, you will not take durability damage on resurrection.

[Viin]

As far as I understand it, the point of a death mechanic is to a) prevent zergrushing everything with no fear of consequences and b) disallow churning armies in pvp.

b) makes no sense as they have already have removed the durability loss from PvP deaths.

Hotfix notes: Players will no longer receive a durability penalty for PvP deaths. If you get killed by another player, you will not take durability damage on resurrection.

Thats what I said... but apparently that is just for normal run-to-corpse-and-auto-rez deaths. If you rez with the spirit healer you would still get the 100% durability loss.

[Kageru]

Some very strange things in that patch. Smells a bit like panic. The death penalty seems excessive to me. That's < 10 deaths in an instance and you've got to leave on account of suddently being naked? On the other hand at least it affects everyone. The addition of heavy component costs on the buffing classes, who will be expected to pay that fee on behalf of the recipient, seems worse because it hits only certain classes for regular gameplay.

As I understand it the agro generated from all warrior actions increased. So the idea is the warrior generates substantial agro and can do occasional `saves' when he loses agro. So it's partly a fix for the `mash taunt' syndrome and partly to make it harder for the warrior to hold agro on large pulls. No idea how its working in game of course.

And my suspicion the paladin was a supportive caster in plate, rather than a main tank, seems to have been supported in the revamp.

[MrHat]

The addition of heavy component costs on the buffing classes, who will be expected to pay that fee on behalf of the recipient, seems worse because it hits only certain classes for regular gameplay.

Actually, I was thinking about it today while playing on my paladin.  My bud has a mage and he had easily twice the cash I had at L12 because of not needed to buy any equipment whatsoever (I had bought a pretty bitching two handed axe).  Maybe the theory is to match the money use on casters with those of the melee classes?

And my suspicion the paladin was a supportive caster in plate, rather than a main tank, seems to have been supported in the revamp.

I've been playing the paladin.  The role has been completely changed from what it was.  I actually like the way it is now.  But not having any expections over what the play should be like might effect that in some way.  It seems they are melee with support casting.  Most of their direct melee skills seem to be stun styles.  And most of their casting is buffage.

[Kageru]

I would imagine so. Perhaps to balance repair costs which hit melee hardest? Although having to keep stacks full of components, and the current costs, sound a little punitive. Then again if there isn't gear for casters to spend money on that's another problem that needs addressing.

[Fargull]

Don't know if this was part of the new patch or not, but I died twice and only equiped items lost durability, nothing in the backpack did...

[Resvrgam]

Don't know if this was part of the new patch or not, but I died twice and only equiped items lost durability, nothing in the backpack did...

There's a newer patch than the one that was instated just a few days ago already?  If that's correct: good news.  The act of having all that unequipped gear in my ruck-sack decay to 0 was downright punishing.

[MrHat]

To clarify:


When you die you appear in ghost form at the nearest graveyard.

All your EQUIPPED items lose 10% durability which is not a big deal.  You then have to option to run back to your corpse in ghost form in order to ressurect yourself.  You will ressurect near your corpse in an area of your choosing.

You have the option while at the graveyard to instead just ressurect there via the Spirit Healer.  The penalty used to be about 10% of your exp to next level to use this method.  In order to increase potential money sinks, Blizzard changed this penalty to instead make all your items (equipped and in bags) reduce to 0% durability - essentially making all these items unusable and unsellable.

Hope that cleared it up a bit.

Edit for Dren:  When you get ressurected by a player, you still receive the 10% degradation to your equipped items.  Currently you also receive I believe 5 mins (maybe 2 mins) of ressurection sickness which effects your stats.  You also take a ressurection sickness when using the Spirit Healer.

[Fargull]

Ahh Ha.  Wow, that is harsh.  Course, the corpse runs took all of like a minute... but I can see deep in a dungeon that would be severe.

[Dren]

Question:

What if you get ressed by a player at the town you went to as a ghost?  Any degradation?  Do you get your stuff back or still have to go retrieve your body?

Heck if it is just 10% degrade and you get your stuff back, I can see town ressers being a huge income for those that can do it.  It will be like the days of SB for summoners at the safeholds. 50 characters just sitting around waiting for a /tell.  Now it will just be 50 healer types standing around the graveyards, lol.

[Viin]

You actually have to be at the corpse to rez someone, so, while your idea is cool, the healer has to run around and find the body first. Also, once you click the button that makes you a spirit I don't think you can be rezzed at your corpse anymore.. at that point you have to either walk to your corpse or use a spirit healer. (Disclaimer: I haven't died yet since starting the open beta, so this might be different).

It would be cool if they did a 'corpse pull' spell that allowed healers in town to pull a corpse and rez the ghost.

[Signe]

Strangely, you can retrieve your corpse from a mine by standing on top of the place you died, without having to enter it.  I'm pretty sure this must be a bug but it's ripe for exploitation.

[HaemishM]

Played last night, and died A LOT. Part of it was my own bull-headedness, but I R not uber.

One time, just once, I did the spirit healer thing, just to see what it was like.

FUCKING RETARDED.

Let's be clear. I have NO problem, ZERO PROBLEM, with taking durability loss on items I have equipped. None. That is a good system. However, the spirit healer's 100% durability on items you have NEVER equipped is just stupidily punitive. I ended up with not enough money to repair everything I had, because I had stuff that had dropped from mobs I'd killed just sitting in my bags, and I couldn't even sell it because it was damaged to 0. How does this make sense? How is this fun? Sure, I can repair that item, THEN sell it. But even with that, I still couldn't even repair all my equipped stuff.

If they do not remove this penalty from the non-equipped items, no one will ever use it except in dire emergencies. Which means it might as well not be there. I'd have preferred exp. loss to this kind of damage. Again, if it was just equipped items, I have no issues with it whatsoever. As it is now, it's fucking stupid.

[Signe]

I absolutely agree.  I can't even find the sense in non-equipped items taking any sort of damage.  People are now complaining that their items in the AH and bank are also being affected.  I don't know if that's accurate but, if it is, it BETTER be a bug.

[Soukyan]

I absolutely agree.  I can't even find the sense in non-equipped items taking any sort of damage.  People are now complaining that their items in the AH and bank are also being affected.  I don't know if that's accurate but, if it is, it BETTER be a bug.

Ahahahahaha!

I have a question. Is this supposed to simulate death by combat ruining your armor and thus add more realism? If so, ever notice how battlefields would be pillaged for usable armor and weaponry? Yeah... 100% decay. I don't fucking think so. It's too bad no large numbers of people would back me on a boycott of the game.

[MrHat]

Strangely, you can retrieve your corpse from a mine by standing on top of the place you died, without having to enter it.  I'm pretty sure this must be a bug but it's ripe for exploitation.

It's a bug.  You couldn't do this before the current patch.  I tried, believe me I tried, but it always made you go inside.  Strange that this works now.  I would suggest /bug.

Also, once you click the button that makes you a spirit I don't think you can be rezzed at your corpse anymore.. at that point you have to either walk to your corpse or use a spirit healer. (Disclaimer: I haven't died yet since starting the open beta, so this might be different).

Actually, you can still be ressurected up to the time you do it yourself.

[Signe]

I haven't actually experienced it, only read about it.  Of course, most people are claiming it's working as intended... they're just sure of it!  Servers are down, I think, and I won't play today.  I would post it on the official boards, but their login server is also down and those boards are deathly slow, at best.  I would bug it, if I could prove it was true.

[Riggswolfe]

Strangely, you can retrieve your corpse from a mine by standing on top of the place you died, without having to enter it.  I'm pretty sure this must be a bug but it's ripe for exploitation.

It's a bug.  You couldn't do this before the current patch.  I tried, believe me I tried, but it always made you go inside.  Strange that this works now.  I would suggest /bug.

You mean standing above ground but close to your body and rezzing there? You've been able to do this since I started playing (April.). My theory is that the rez distance is a sphere and not just a fat plane, so if you can get close enough above ground you can rez your body. Sometimes it's a pain to find the right spot but it can be better than rezzing deep in some mine or something.