Mists of Pandaria

[Kail]

I dunno, as a noobish and horrible player, I wouldn't mind some more of Rokal's type of description.  At least as an option, like "keep rupture up at all times [click here to find out why]" or something.  Generally, hard and fast rules don't work in MMOs.  Maybe this is just my extreme noobitude showing up, but it's rare that I have a 5 point rupture up at all times, because there's always some attack I gotta dodge or fire I gotta not stand in or he's not attackable in this phase or he's dead before I can get in my full combo or something.  I get that it's important, but for times when it's not just 111211121112 all fight long, I gotta know why I'm doing this stuff so I can know what to change. 

I know that this info is probably available online, but there's a huge amount of disinformation out there, between people not really knowing what they're talking about, or guides which were written for the class as it was a few years ago, or people who are advancing some kind of personal theory as a widely established fact, and that kind of thing, it's a lot of crap to wade through to find reliable info.

[Sjofn]

Yeah I never kept a 5 point rupture up that I recall unless I just happened to hit 5 points when I needed to refresh it or whatever. But this is deeper wankery that the person who is reading the "how u play" stuff provided by Blizzard just isn't going to give much of a shit about (or if they do, they will find out why on their own). Remember, it's not supposed to be the definitive "THIS IS HOW YOU PLAY" thing, it's just there to make sure a person knows the absolute bare minimum they should know to not 100% blow ass at their class.

[luckton]

New beta patch out.  Regarding account-wide mounts, it looks like they've decided to limit some of them to character-only.


tl;dr - Class-mounts, Arena-mounts, extra-special-event mounts, and mammoths are now character only.

[Sjofn]

Huh, I would've just stuck with class-specific mounts being non-shared and nothing else.

[luckton]

I agree with the mammoth restriction.  God knows every jerk out there (even me  ) would be riding around on them exclusively at the low-level just for the lulz

[Rendakor]

Bleh. I was really hoping to be able to use the profession-based mounts on other characters (since I don't have tailoring or engineering on my main); as it stands this will help my alts but only get me 1-2 new mounts on my main. Way to ruin a feature I was really excited about before it even goes live.

[Ingmar]

Doesn't look like the original flying carpet(s) are on there? Nor is the engineering flying machine.

EDIT: Those are just the old legacy flying carpets it looks like, that were all converted to the Frosty Flying Carpet in a patch a ways back. Which I don't remember but that is what the internet tells me.

[luckton]

Doesn't look like the original flying carpet(s) are on there? Nor is the engineering flying machine.

...yet 

[Merusk]

Bleh. I was really hoping to be able to use the profession-based mounts on other characters (since I don't have tailoring or engineering on my main); as it stands this will help my alts but only get me 1-2 new mounts on my main. Way to ruin a feature I was really excited about before it even goes live.

Profession mounts are flagged as "must have <profession> <rating>" so all you would have gotten is mount-count... which is now account wide anyway.

[Rendakor]

Ingmar gets my hopes up then Merusk crushes them. Alas, F13.

There's no reward for getting 125 mounts is there? Nor any higher achievements? I stopped really grinding them at 100 since that was the last unlock.

[luckton]

Ingmar gets my hopes up then Merusk crushes them. Alas, F13.

There's no reward for getting 125 mounts is there? Nor any higher achievements? I stopped really grinding them at 100 since that was the last unlock.

No, and they don't appear to have added one with MoP (...yet  ).  I'm at 88 right now, and in my search to get the rest, I don't expect to reach 100 before the expansion gets here.

[Simond]

I think I read somewhere that the various "# of mounts" achievements are going away with MoP.

[luckton]

I think I read somewhere that the various "# of mounts" achievements are going away with MoP.

I still have it on my copied characters in beta.  It's the vanity pet ones that are going away.

[Simond]

Ah, that was probably it then. 

[Rendakor]

Why would they remove those? I thought "Gotta catch 'em all" was the whole point of pokemon vanity pets.

[SurfD]

Why would they remove those? I thought "Gotta catch 'em all" was the whole point of pokemon vanity pets.

They removed the basic "Get 10, 50, 100 mini pets" etc achives, and replaced them with like 40 different assorted achieves all based around the Pet Battle system.  Things like "Get X number of Pets to level 10" and such.

[Rendakor]

I understand the addition of the new ones, I just don't see why they had to take the old ones out. Did they at least make them feats of strength for those that already earned them? Did they take out the rewards associated with earning them?

[SurfD]

Yeah, I was kind of wondering about that myself, I mean, what happens to the pets you have earned through the collection achieves?

[luckton]

I understand the addition of the new ones, I just don't see why they had to take the old ones out. Did they at least make them feats of strength for those that already earned them? Did they take out the rewards associated with earning them?

Yes to the first and no to the second.  Presumably, they tied the pets from the previous "collect X pets" to the new pet combat "train X pets".

The pet combat thing is gonna be huge, a bigger undertaking than Archy and Inscription ever were.  It's going to be the new "oh, you're 90 and your bored?  Go pet hunting and have internet cock fights with them."

Having a wide collection of them now will certainly put you ahead of the game.  Can't wait to unleash my vanilla collector's edition team 

[Simond]

Onyxian Whelping used Deep Breath!
It's Super-Frequent!

 

[Azazel]

Well that pisses me off. Sandstone Drake no longer account-wide? Same with the engineering mounts? I wonder if that's to "protect" the professions? Can't see the logic of nixing the Argent mounts, either. I guess they want us to grind more.

[Ingmar]

Those Argent mounts on the list are the special Paladin-only Argent mounts, not the regular ones.

[Simond]

I guess they want us to grind more.

I've got something north of 50K gold on my main server just by selling stuff on a AH/bank alt with Auctionator runnning, and that's with applying no effort and effectively taking a six month plus break from the game. Gold is not hard to come by.

[Margalis]

The "give a shit" factor in learning the ins and outs of games also decreases exponentially with age for most people.

It's probably because you gain this magical thing called "perspective" as you get older.

This strikes me as shades of the same argument hardcore inux users have with, oh, everyone else on the planet.

Peoples lives are complicated enough they don't really give two rat fucks about the WHY of a computer game.  There's more important shit to deal with.

If someone cares why the game is telling them to use rupture, they can look at their shit to figure out why, ask a guildie, whatever. If someone does not care why, only that it "works," putting too much crap in the "how u play" tab will just make them go "ugh, too much wank" and ignore it.

You can go all sarcasto-snob about the 'dumb' people all you want, but she's right. Part of my job involves occasionally writing instructions for people on how to use new IT systems at our company and I have seen this in action. If you give the general user base anything more than "do this, then this, then this" they will get it wrong, break something, or just give up on it before getting to the end - and these are not dumb users, these are engineers, people with advanced college degrees, etc.

Man...do you guys even like games?

What the fuck? User manuals? Linux users? Technical documentation?

Yes, if you bought a new coffee maker and you want to make a cup of coffee it's cool if there is a big button that says "MAKE COFFEE", because your goal is just to make a cup of coffee.

Learning and mastery are not core components of using a coffee maker - that isn't why coffee makers exist. Learning and mastery are core components of games. If you get older and you gain "perspective" and that means you don't give a shit about game systems, learning or mastery, and just want to press what buttons someone tells you to press so stuff on your screen can blow up real good that doesn't sound like perspective to me, especially when tied to a game that you are going to spend hundreds of hours playing. That sounds like the opposite of perspective - as you get older you really want to invest a ton of time into something completely mindless? It honestly sounds like you just want to watch a movie. "Just tell me what to press to be good" seems like not even gaming any more, it's just pressing buttons to get some audio-visual response.

There is absolutely nothing condescending about expecting people playing a game to explore, learn and enjoy the game systems. That is what games are about. Full stop.

To me it's fine, good even, to help people understand game systems and strategy. Maybe what the different abilities do is documented but someone never thought about how they interact, and if they want to get better or understand more you can shine some light on more advanced stuff. But that's very different from "do A then do B." Who does that cater to? The person who wants to be good but without investing any thought or energy? If it's possible for someone to be good by doing that doesn't that imply that the game is trivial? It's like...be good at Tic-Tac-Toe by putting your X in the center - yeah that works, which is why Tic-Tac-Toe is a game for kids only.

Edit:

If someone cares why the game is telling them to use rupture, they can look at their shit to figure out why, ask a guildie, whatever. If someone does not care why, only that it "works," putting too much crap in the "how u play" tab will just make them go "ugh, too much wank" and ignore it.

This one in particular is profoundly saddening. That someone can play a "game" where the game just tells them exactly what to do and they do that and it works says to me that that person has very little interest in playing a game and the game has very little interest in providing one. At that point it's just an "interactive experience" / chat room with graphics. Which I suppose is fine if that's what people want, but personally I am not really on board the whole "press buttons and win game roller coaster ride" approach to "gaming."

Edit2: To be clear, the idea of the game providing a basic set of instruction on how not to be terrible is not a bad idea, especially in a multiplayer game where terrible players can make for a terrible shared experience. What bothers me is more the attitude that people playing a game can't and shouldn't be bothered to learn gameplay systems. At some point "suck it up - learn to play" is a fine attitude when talking about a game. Maybe not the most popular, and maybe not a good attitude to introduce in a game that caters to the lowest common denominator, but in general asking players to come up with strategies for playing a game is appropriate.

If someone said "just tell me how to be good at Ticket to Ride, I don't really want to be arsed to figure out strats" you would probably tell them to just go play with an EZ Bake Oven instead.

[Sjofn]

Yes, I like games. In fact, I am even one of those people who will pay attention to why she should, say, keep rupture up as much as possible. But I am also aware that dropping a whole bunch of crap onto someone at once will immediately make them tune out or feel overwhelmed.

It's more like someone asking "Tell me how to play Ticket to Ride" and having someone else vomit forth the different schools of thought of how to win (assuming there even are such things) before the person even understands what the hell the game is. If, once they get the basics of the game, they are interested in improving, they will do so however they feel fit. They'll read the manual deeper, they'll ask their friends, they'll look up strategies on the numerous "Ticket to Ride" forums on the internet. If they aren't but are still cool being the fourth player or whatever in your game, they're going to be pretty content knowing just the basics. And yeah, believe it or not, some people do not play games only to win, they play them because they think the act of playing is fun and/or just like having an excuse to socialize with people.


EDIT: Felt like expanding that second paragraph.

[Merusk]

There is absolutely nothing condescending about expecting people playing a game to explore, learn and enjoy the game systems. That is what games are about. Full stop.

No, this is what games are about to you.  A very specific personality and intellectual type.  If it were universal then Angry Birds, Tetris, Farmville and hundreds of other games would never have become popular.  More popular, in fact, than those with deeper systems you have to explore.

[Azazel]

Those Argent mounts on the list are the special Paladin-only Argent mounts, not the regular ones.

No, I checked. Argent Warhorse is the one my mage has. Argent Charger is the Pally-only one.

I guess they want us to grind more.

I've got something north of 50K gold on my main server just by selling stuff on a AH/bank alt with Auctionator runnning, and that's with applying no effort and effectively taking a six month plus break from the game. Gold is not hard to come by.

 

[Rokal]

Monks are in much better shape than when I last played them in April. Lightwell mechanics have been removed from statues, animations and icons have been implemented, mechanics seem better thought out.

They still aren't allowing you to enable addons on the beta server though. 

[luckton]

Monks are in much better shape than when I last played them in April. Lightwell mechanics have been removed from statues, animations and icons have been implemented, mechanics seem better thought out.

They still aren't allowing you to enable addons on the beta server though. 

There's a hijack around this.  Obviously against Bliz's ToS, but it works.

[Margalis]

No, this is what games are about to you.  A very specific personality and intellectual type.  If it were universal then Angry Birds, Tetris, Farmville and hundreds of other games would never have become popular.  More popular, in fact, than those with deeper systems you have to explore.

Angry Birds and Tetris both have strong mastery elements to them. Tetris is one of the purest examples of a game centered around mastery. Yes, Farmville can be approached more as a toy than a game, but if you want to say that WoW should take it's design philosophy from Farmville well let's just agree to disagree on that.

[Sheepherder]

We're not talking about mastery elements.  We're talking "wat buttons do push to not maek 4k DPS?" and "I can put poisons on my thrown weapon now?"

[Fordel]

Telling someone which buttons to push and when doesn't mean they'll actually be good at it.

If that were the case no one would stand in the fucking fire ever again! 

[Setanta]

That someone can play a "game" where the game just tells them exactly what to do and they do that and it works says to me that that person has very little interest in playing a game and the game has very little interest in providing one.

This screams out "Guitar Hero" to me

As I understand it (don't play it myself), it's pretty popular :D

[luckton]

This screams out "Guitar Hero" to me

As I understand it (don't play it myself), it was pretty popular :D

Fixed.

[Sjofn]

Now it's Rock Band, baby, Rock Band.