26 August 2008

One Final Patch Day

All I heard about today from random scrubs on the server was how the patch was coming, like it was some kind of digital messiah. While I'm as excited as anyone to have a new hairstyle (OH, and a 51-point talent), is this the kind of thing that really warrants incessant chatter in trade?

As I stated before, I'm really looking forward to the new Prot Warrior and Resto Druid trees. This patch will also include the ability to level inscriptions to 375, and a few other random (but appreciated) changes. But what's the big deal? Blizzard hasn't even set an approximate date for the patch to go live. Or patch notes, for that matter. I'm not enough of an optimist to think that this will solve all the problems that exist. I'm tentatively hopeful that it will treat some of the symptoms that WoW has, but a complete cure is probably too much to ask.

At any rate, I'm looking forward to having new toys to play with. I just don't expect a godsend.


21 August 2008

Low Population Servers: Pros and Cons

I decided last night to level engineering on my warrior. I know - I must be mad to level engineering, especially this close to an expansion release. The truth is that it's an upgrade to him. His professions before were skinning/herbalism and I don't have a leatherworker, so I figured that dropping skinning for something productive couldn't hurt.

I already have a miner (well, one maxed, and one in the 250ish range) so getting the materials to level it isn't that big of a pain.

I didn't last too long before that idea was thoroughly purged from my mind. I was at about 200 engineering when I couldn't find enough stone from the minerals I was getting to make the blasting powder in the quantity I need. So I went to the auction house to just buy the extra I needed. This is when I started cursing my lower population server. There were exactly 0 of the stones I needed up for sale.

Now don't get me wrong - normally I love not having to fight over every single herb and mineral. I love being able to complete quests without having to push and shove my way to the front of the line to talk to a quest giver, or wait for hours to kill X of a particular thing in an area.

But when I can't get something on the auction house because there just aren't any, or I can't find someone to craft something because the person who got that rare drop recipe hasn't been on in a couple weeks, it makes me feel helpless about the situation. Sure, I can go farm up the stuff I need to level engineering; that isn't a big problem. But what about when I want someone to make me a meta gem that's only a world drop? How do I get something that I can't go out and farm myself? A more ethereal quality to the problem is getting groups. There are times I feel like pugging (I know, but I consider it my charity work for the year) and I can't get a group. Even on my tank or healer.

The whole point of having a MMORPG is the MMO part of that. Massively Multiplayer Online. So supposedly, I should be able to play with hundreds or thousands (or more!) people at once. And they can be across the world from me. But low population servers, whether they serve multiple nations or not, don't deliver on the most important part of the title: Massively. We can tell it's the most important because it's the first word of the genre. And because it's the only thing that makes it different than, oh, Final Fantasy XXVII or whatever the next big console RPG is.

I'm not sure how to combat this. Do you trade the convenience of being able to do what you want when you want for the ease of obtaining tradeskills? This isn't a problem for me most of the time, but when it is a problem, it gets severely frustrating very fast.

I'm hoping we can see some improvements to this with WotLK with people returning to the game for ZOMG NEW CONTENTS AND STUFF, but what's the sustainable answer to low population servers? The current band-aid of high server->low server transfers apparently isn't working, and I don't think I can afford hundreds of dollars to transfer all my siblings characters somewhere else.

17 August 2008

AHH I'm Squishy now!

So I took the plunge and spent the 15g (I know, qq) to respec my druid to resto. All of a sudden, I'm so fragile! It is nice to be able to pull off 3500+ Regrowth crits, while keeping 2 or 3 people topped off with Lifeblooms. I especially like Tree of Life form for the increased healing aura, and huge mana discount on spells.

The reasoning behind doing all this was to have one tank, one healer, and one dps. Since I already had decent gear for druid healing (and it's the only kind that really appeals to me) that's the character I chose. For my tank, I still have my warrior, and for dps, I have my Enhancement shaman (whee! Windfury crits!). 

As WotLK comes closer and closer, I'm thinking that this is a good way to go. The new feral talents look a little weak compared to the coolness that is Shockwave, whereas Flourish seems to be the new ZOMG LOTS OF BIG HEALZ spell. I am a little worried about Enhancement as a spec, because the 51-point talent of summoning a pair of spirit wolves seems. . . . lame. Balance druids already have this spell, except it summons three treants and is only a 41-point talent. I just can't see a reason to justify not getting even the base talents in Elemental instead. Unless, of course, the spirit wolves do awesome damage and have a short cooldown. Not something I really expect.

I really hope that the 51-point talent gets replaced with something flashy, or at least useable. The reason I don't play my shaman anymore is mostly that he's a one button machine. Stormstrike. . . .wait. . . wait. . . shock. . . wait . . . wait. . . Stormstrike, and wash, rinse, repeat. I'd like to see some more active abilities rather than passive talents that you just build in, and afk through a battle with.

At any rate, both Protection for warriors and Restoration for druids look really strong. That'll make leveling through Northrend very easy for two out of three of my characters, and anywhere from pleasant to aggravating for the third. All-in-all, not a bad way to start an expansion.

11 August 2008

The Problem with Random Drops. . .

is that they're random. But sometimes it doesn't seem that way.

For instance, my guild is comprised of my two brothers, my girlfriend's two sisters, and a couple of friends. This leaves us with at least one spot on our Kara runs that we need to fill every Sunday. Well, I say "need" but we really can 9-man it. It's just a good way to keep the pace and get it done in a reasonable amount of time. We have all the tanks and healers, so we just need one little dps to come along. Three of the last 4 weeks, however, when we pug we end up with someone so horrible that the healers out dps them on some fights. 

This in and of itself isn't as bad as the fact that the loot table seems to sense this and want to improve them somehow. Every boss drops something this 10th can use. We even had a hunter rolling on resto shammy gear because "I can wear it, too."

Even this last week, when we had to pug 3 and actually got people who know what they're doing, we ended up giving everything to an elemental shaman.

I guess I wouldn't care as much if we weren't trying to gear up a couple of alts. All of the mains in the guild are in full badge and/or PvP gear, so we don't need anything that Kara can drop (except those damn enchanting formulas!). But to go in every week and have gear drop that nobody can use except the 150 dps hunter is just frustrating.

09 August 2008

ZOMG NEW SHINEYS!

So. . . .the new tabard and pet available to anyone (who participates in PvP) that Blizzard released today. On the one hand, I think that it's a good idea to make exclusive content for different aspects of the game. Like the achievements that are being instituted in WotLK. But on the other hand, I HATE RANDOMNESS.

Just in case that wasn't clear, the pet is only obtained on a *chance* every time you win a battleground. So far, it seems that it doesn't take any other factors into account; just if you won the battleground. I've heard of a lot of people who got it on their first win, and others who are going on 20+ wins in the struggle for the [Gold Medallion].

This is something that has bothered me about the game from my first days playing. I'd run an instance hoping for a particular drop and by the time I get it, I've picked up something better from a quest reward or a vendor. It never fails that on all of my 70s, I've gotten no more than 2 pieces of my Dungeon Set 3 before I start getting random bits of armor that are twice as good from rep grinds or whatnot.

I think there are two viable solutions to this problem.
1. Make the drops better.
If the dungeon drops (or random chance items like the dragon pet from PvP) are good enough, then it will be worth winning enough battlegrounds or completing enough instance runs to get it.
2. Increase the drop rate.
This can be done by making tokens similar to the tier piece tokens that drop 100% of the time for multiple classes, or simply by increasing the drop rate of the items themselves. This way, the items are of some use when they drop other than being turned into shards for the auction house.

How does this pertain to the PvP Chinese dragon pet? Well, it's hard to get. And by hard, I really just mean unpredictable. This means that someone with no PvP skill at all (myself included in that very large group) can simply walk into a winning battleground, beat on some things, heal some people, and walk away with a bright new pet. Admittedly, this is how I came away with my [Reins of the Raven Lord], but I like to think that I had to have at least some skill to survive the heroic, even if the skill wasn't that much.

I guess this is all just a frustrated outburst about how I can't get my pet, even though I've won a total of 12 AB matches since the release of the tabard and pet. I haven't done any PvP before this, and don't intend to after, but I'm doing it now for the pet. Similarly, I did Slave Pens for the [Deathfrost] enchant and [Frostscythe of Lord Ahune], but don't really plan on going back until another special occasion. 

So if you want to think about the Olympic pet as a rare drop in an instance then, compared to similar seasonal bosses, I've more than paid my dues.

07 August 2008

The Secret of Not Wiping

Going through heroics this last week (and possibly the week before) with my warrior tanking has given me huge amounts of perspective on the game in general. Last time I leveled through heroics it was on my druid tank, and I thought that they were incredibly difficult at that level of gear. I felt that I was stuck between Kara and heroics, and neither one was really doable with the gear I had.

Looking back, though, I realize that I was fine gear-wise. It's very possible that I could have been so horrible that I just didn't have the skill to do things without being overgeared for them, or I could have just been running with completely hopeless groups. I prefer to think that it's the latter, just because I would hate to have been that bad.

I think the big motivator in the change has been my brother, a holy pally, who is more than willing to try anything, regardless of level. Of course now he has 2000 or so healing, so it makes it much easier for me to survive where I'm not supposed to be. :P

Just tonight I got my [Sun Eater] from heroic Mech to replace my [Inuuro's Blade], and we breezed through the instance -- even the fire lady boss we normally have a 50ish% success rate with. Now, my warrior is decked out in mostly blues so I'm not going to say that my tanking made all the difference, but at the same level of gear with my druid I was struggling to find decent tanking leather and running the same normal instance over and over for the one drop from the final boss that was a slight upgrade. Heroics were out of the question.

So either my skills have become so great that I should just start tanking Sunwell on my druid, or I've started running with better groups. We'll see what turns up from here.