WotLK

[Mazakiel]

The first time we ran Old Kingdom, we did it blind, figuring it out as we went.  That tunnel after the Prince that looked collapsed, looked like scenery, so some of us started back tracking until the rest poked our heads in and realized the tunnel went down.  The design of the dungeons and the encounters is pretty much top notch throughout, but Old Kingdom is one of the ones so far that stand out really well. 

[Tale]

queue queue QQ

[Venkman]

Yea. The rule used to be never try to play an MMO on patch day. With WoW it's you not wanting to try to play in patch week 

[DraconianOne]

My server is always horrible. Every time something new comes out there is always so many people trying to do it that it takes forever to get anything done.

That's nice.  Now fuck off.

[Reg]

You first.

edit: Oops. Didn't catch the gold seller link. The nastiness was well deserved then. Sorry about that Draconian and thanks for pointing it out WUA.

[WindupAtheist]

You first.

Goldseller link in the newb's sig. I'm with Draconian, he can fuck right off.

[K9]

I can report that Draktharon Keep is another fun instance, the last boss is entertaining. Really the only dull instance so far for me was Utgarde.

[Rasix]

You first.

Goldseller link in the newb's sig. I'm with Draconian, he can fuck right off.

Post soon to be deleted.

[Calantus]

nvm then

5 lines is too much

[Tale]

I have a story to share!

That's nice. We might read it if you add line breaks.

[Draegan]

So I finally hit 70 with my DK and I've been running around Borean Tundra.  I have to say that this expansion is awesome.  I've been saving the awesome as I was leveling through the Outlands.  The mob models and the item textures all look badass.  Shiny and awesome.

I love those Mist creatures and the Mist effects in that one area.  I can't wait for the instances.  I have a bunch of quests for the Nexus.

Still guildless on Mal'Ganis.  I need to make some friends.

[Venkman]

nvm then

5 lines is too much

Oh come on it wasn't that bad. I was impressed you guys got him done with only three left in the group. And if you can't share personal stories in a sub-forum, then what the heck is it here for! 

[Zetor]

Yeah, I liked that one. Interesting that they'd change Loatheb from his pre-BC incarnation, though I have to say this one sounds better, especially since it's more about squeezing as much healing out as possible and not [just] spamming consumables. My favorite DK story so far was an utgarde run, second boss (or bosses).

Our healer [shaman] died halfway through the fight due to uncontrolled aggro (a few seconds after we killed the caster boss), leaving the warrior tank, a ret pally, a demo warlock and me. Instinctively I hit raise dead on the shaman, not thinking much of it at the time (hey, it's a wipe, might as well make it fun!). The fight went on and we tried to ping pong aggro between the 4 of us (warlock was in demon form). Eventually the others all died, leaving only me, the boss... and the ghoul. I used every trick in the book and got him to 2%, then I died. 3 seconds later, the boss died too, and the ghoul was happily jumping up and down on the corpse.

Who needs healers when you have player-controllable ghouls?! 


-- Z.

[MrHat]

Wait.

The shaman could control the ghoul?

[Zetor]

Yup. If you cast 'Raise Dead' at a dead party member, they get to control a 14k hp ghoul as a "pet" for the duration.
It is made of equal parts win and awesome.


-- Z.

[Merusk]

Wait.

The shaman could control the ghoul?

If you hit a player with your summon ghoul spell, the player is rezzed as and can control the ghoul.  It's much fun to slap it on a healer after they've bitten it. (Fake ed: Zetor beat me!)

So far my favorite mechanic of the expanion has been the NPCs helping you out after you rescue and/ or heal them instead of running off like bitches.

[MrHat]

Yup. If you cast 'Raise Dead' at a dead party member, they get to control a 14k hp ghoul as a "pet" for the duration.
It is made of equal parts win and awesome.


-- Z.

I never noticed cuz of the permanent ghoul thing.  This is awesome to know.

[Calantus]

nvm then

5 lines is too much

Oh come on it wasn't that bad. I was impressed you guys got him done with only three left in the group. And if you can't share personal stories in a sub-forum, then what the heck is it here for! 

Yeah I was just overreacting because of a bad day at work. I realised after that my monitor is huge so what seems like a few lines to me would have been quite a bit longer for someone else.

Anyway here's the story again in line break form (though longer I think, more explanation of the mechanics):

First a quick rundown on the situation. We're fighting Loatheb in the 10man, which is a boss who puts a debuff on the raid that reduces all healing by 100% for roughly 20 seconds, with 3 seconds between the debuff ending and being put back up. He also puts up a nature damage dot on the raid and periodically does a shadow AoE. Basically you have a 3 second window every 20 seconds to heal up the raid and the tank.

We have 2 holy paladins as our only healers and they aren't known for their AoE healing so it's not proving to be easy. Luckily I do happen to have the only 2 abilities a paladin can have to multi-target heal: Glyph of Holy Light which makes my holy light heal 5 other targets within 5 yards for 10% of the healing, and Beacon of Light which clones all of my heals done on the group and gives them to the target of the beacon, essentially letting me heal 2 people at a time. I get the raid to stack up on eachother behind the boss so they get the holy light AoE and put beacon on the tank so I can concentrate on healing the raid.

The fight starts off okay with everybody being kept up until we reach the point where he does his shadow AoE twice as often. The other paladin dies and the rest of the raid soon follows until we're down to just me, my brother (prot specced warrior in DPS gear), and the MT (prot warrior). Loatheb is still at 18% or roughly 600k HP so the raid leader calls the wipe, but the 3 of us keep going. With beacon on the tank I can Holy Light myself or my brother, then Holy Shock the other one, and the tank gets both of those heals. This is enough to keep all 3 of us up every time the 3 second window comes around and we manage to 3man him for the 10 minutes it takes for our crappy DPS to burn him down.

It was probably the most fun I've ever had raiding in WoW and cemented Beacon of Light into my talent selection. Since then I've found it so goddamn useful to either heal 2 tanks in a double-tanking situation or healing the tank through raid healing on an AoE encounter. I actually hardly heal the tank directly anymore unless nobody else is taking damage.


And nice story Zetor. You should try army of the dead as well for more ghouly fun. On a tauntable boss you get to watch the boss spin around like crazy as they ping-pong between all of them until they die.

[Azaroth]

Is it just me, or is the seemingly incredible amount of reused graphics getting on anyone elses nerves?

I mean, my two main characters are plate wearers. It seems like they flat out made ONE set of plate for 70-80, and reused it about six times with slightly different colouring.

I have no idea if they've reused it at 80. I assume they have. Twice.

[Mazakiel]

I'm finding the armor to get bulkier overall as I level, but otherwise looking the same, and honestly, I don't mind at all.  It beats looking like a circus clown with all the mismatched quest rewards that used to be the norm.  And really, it's not like it's a bad looking 'look' to the quest reward armor. 

[Driakos]

I've seen like two cloth robes, and a ton of re-hues.  I've seen a bit more variety in cloth shoulders. 

I don't mind though, as it's leaps and bounds better than the clown suit I wore while leveling in Outlands.

[Venkman]

I actually have been a bit curious about the reused assets. And I was completely underwhelmed by the CGI (the one that launched with WAR is hella better). However, if that was a result of them putting more creativity into some of the quests/storylines and the use of that phasing system, it's all good.

[Merusk]

It was a deliberate choice to avoid the "clown suit" look that folks complained about for the last 3 1/2 years on the forums.  Squeaky wheel gets the grease, and while I always lliked the varieity and ability to put-together 2 different suits (one for looks one for usefulness) this expansion threw the first option out.  Booo.

The 80s raid and pvp armor both look different from each other and the quest/ leveling sets.  However, the armor for 10 and 25 man encounters look the same (and reuses the original Naxx armor models), just a retinting between the two.  (The DK armor @ 80 looks badass, however.)

[Sjofn]

I'm finding the armor to get bulkier overall as I level, but otherwise looking the same, and honestly, I don't mind at all.  It beats looking like a circus clown with all the mismatched quest rewards that used to be the norm.  And really, it's not like it's a bad looking 'look' to the quest reward armor. 

This.

[Koyasha]

I think making most of the as-you-level upgrades use the same texture, recolored, was a stroke of genius.  Being able to upgrade without worrying about how hideous X piece of armor looks, or how it breaks my outfit, is awesome.

(Of course this would all be solved by an 'Appearance' tab like some games, but whatever).

It also hopefully means they used most of the art budget on level 80 stuff.

[Azaroth]

Creating different sets of art that look good together would be smart and creative.

Slightly recolouring the same textures/models a million times is being cheap.

I mean, they're reusing Pre-BC sets. So I'm just saying.

[Merusk]

Where'd you get a pre-bc texture/ model?  All I've gotten are the spiky shoulders look so far and I'm 79.

[Azaroth]

My weapon right now, a level 78 blue, is Pre-BC. As well, the Scourge event armour I just replaced was recoloured T2. Also, one of the raid sets is recoloured T3.

That's what I know of. I guarantee there's more.

[Fordel]

The Scourge event armor is Recolored Judgement, only the most popular and frequently requested armor set in the game.

I wish my Druid had the same model reused "problem" ...

[Azaroth]

Hey, not saying I don't *LIKE* the stuff that's being reused.

Just saying it's being/been reused TOO MUCH.

I mean, the plate set that I keep getting from 70-80 looks great. Really. But EVERY SINGLE FUCKING PAIR OF SHOULDERS I GET LOOKS THE EXACT SAME.

It's cheap. It's lazy (considering the money they have). It's annoying. It's boring.

[Azaroth]

By the way, I see you're in Zul'Drak.

Leave ASAP.

Possibly the worst zone in the expansion.

I specifically remember someone making a remark about one of the early Zul'Drak Scourge quests being bugged in /1.

Immediately, I jokingly quipped something along the lines of "abandon the quest line now and save your own sanity".

I was greeted by about ten lines of "WTF NOOB that quest line is E-Z".

Well, yes. It's easy to do the same thing over and over again, kill 60 of the same mob with an annoying-assed scourge pet that you need to constantly run and replace, constantly job around at run speed in a scourge costume, work a bunch of boring quests against a depressing and uninspired background, and teleport back and forth many more times than is necessary. However, that doesn't make it anything anywhere near good design.

But it's certainly E-Z, NOOB. It's XP without any difficulty. So, I mean, as long as everyone is more concerned overall with getting their XP, bad game design doesn't seem to matter.

The average MMO player never ceases to amaze me.

[Fordel]

But I liked blowing up trolls with my fat abomination 

[Koyasha]

All the sets from the new Naxxramas are the same, just recolored, as the old ones from Naxxramas.  I think they said they were going to use the same graphics like a year ago, because they thought the sets were cool and very few people got them/got to use/see them in the past.

If they could make different but still matching outfits, I wouldn't mind that.  But I prefer this to the completely different and therefore totally mismatched outfits we've always had up to now.

Personally, I don't mind not having different looking armor every few levels.  One set of armor that looks good is better than a dozen that look meh to horrible.

[Azaroth]

I think they said they were going to use the same graphics like a year ago

Well, as long as they said it a year ago - then I'm just a noob who should be listening better to their random posts on their shitstain-infested forums.

Personally, I don't mind not having different looking armor every few levels.  One set of armor that looks good is better than a dozen that look meh to horrible.

See, again, the point is being missed here.

If the sets look like shit or don't match well for one reason or another, this is the fault of designers/art designers/possibly artists.

Not the fault of the idea of diversity itself.

Picture yourself an an Art Lead, designing armour sets. Is it SO hard to deliver a couple of different sets from 70-80 that don't look like a clownsuit when intermingled?

Come on, not really.

With the amount of money Blizzard rakes in, there's no excuse for constantly recolouring (or not even) art assets to the degree that they do. IMO.

[Merusk]

By the way, I see you're in Zul'Drak.

Leave ASAP.

Possibly the worst zone in the expansion.

I specifically remember someone making a remark about one of the early Zul'Drak Scourge quests being bugged in /1.

Immediately, I jokingly quipped something along the lines of "abandon the quest line now and save your own sanity".

I was greeted by about ten lines of "WTF NOOB that quest line is E-Z".

Well, yes. It's easy to do the same thing over and over again, kill 60 of the same mob with an annoying-assed scourge pet that you need to constantly run and replace, constantly job around at run speed in a scourge costume, work a bunch of boring quests against a depressing and uninspired background, and teleport back and forth many more times than is necessary. However, that doesn't make it anything anywhere near good design.

But it's certainly E-Z, NOOB. It's XP without any difficulty. So, I mean, as long as everyone is more concerned overall with getting their XP, bad game design doesn't seem to matter.

The average MMO player never ceases to amaze me.

You were doing it wrong.

You don't fight the mobs with the abom. That way lies MADNESS.  You tag mobs, round them up in groups of 6-10 and then explode.  The explode oneshots all the trolls.   Then go tag another abom and repeat.  I had it done in 5 mins.

The 'bugged' quest isn't actually bugged.  There's UI add-ons that interfere with the charm for some reason. Disabling add-ons lets you tame the ghyst, but I had to google that after being unable to collect a crystal for a good 10 mins.