TwentyFifthNovember and Professional Gaming

As of last night(ish) all of the current content is cleared for WotLK. Assuming that all of the members leveled in 36 hours, that's one raid tier cleared fully in less than 8 days of progression attempts. To me, this highlights the cutthroat capitalism that permeates people everywhere. No matter what the activity is, someone will turn it into a business.

Part of me is saddened by this, since it's a game and should be fun. But most of me is just jealous. If I could describe my perfect day, it would be just sitting around gaming. Not just WoW, but all kinds of RTS, RPG, FPS, TCG (and other TLAs), puzzle, and board games. While my education (for the most part) has been in mechanical engineering, my passion (somewhat obviously) is for playing games. Sometimes I even dabble in the underlying mechanincs of what makes great games great. Dabble. Dabble. I'll try not to splash too much.

But even with all this, I'm not being paid for it. The players of TwentyFifthNovember, from what I understand, are. They get equipment and salaries for being the best gamers out there - at least at WoW. I guess the next best thing to simply playing games all day is to design and build them. Maybe once I'm 80 and raiding I can pull back the throttle on the playtime and shift more towards thinktime.

So while I'm entirely too jealous of their ability to do this with their lives, I still have a great amount of respect for their gaming prowess. Grats on the world first clear of content, TwentyFifthNovember!

Northrend! It's here! And it's . . . already populated with 80s?!

I've been working at leveling my druid since the release. I quest with my girlfriend (a hunter), and we've been breezing through zones. Borean Tundra? Check. Dragonblight? Check. Grizzly Hills? Check. . . well, almost. We hit 75 tonight, but I can't help but feel that we're still falling behind. The big horde guild on our server whacked out Naxx this afternoon (the "big" alliance guild is a joke comparitively. . . it makes me a little sad), and I can't help but feel that I'm missing the leveling curve and won't even have the chance at 25 mans. Not that I'll be doing a lot of them, but I would like to have the opportunity there to not take if I choose. I don't want to be locked out of them because I was just too late.

But then again, as I look around at everyone else leveling, I don't see many people over 73 or so. Tons of people in Borean Tundra and Howling Fjord. Not so many in Icecrown and Zul'Drak. So maybe there is hope after all. I see bloggers posting about hitting 71 and 72. I see lots of tips on how to make enough money to afford training - which at 15-20g per spell per level isn't cheap, but not outrageous - and I see gearing guids for leveling. In my mind though, whatever gear you had on you when your soft little feet hit the beaches of Normand. . . I mean Northrend is plenty to carry you through until the quest rewards replace them. Instances drop ludicrously powered gear for how hard they are to do. Quests give 5-10g per, and that's more than enough to cover repairs and training. Hell, I even got myself a genuine [Repair-o-Mount] almost right off the bat and I haven't really missed the cold, hard cash.

I guess the best I can hope for is to just level through Northrend at the pace that I want to, and see what's waiting for me when I hit the level cap (again :) ). I've been getting enough cobalt to fuel a small army, so that's exactly what I'm doing with it. I've hit the point where I need saronite with both engineering and blacksmithing, used the crappy green armor from the blacksmithing to fuel my enchanting, and sent the extra ore off the be prospected into shiny new gems that get sold on the auction house for obscene amounts of gold.

All-in-all, I'm very happy with how things are going. I just don't want to get to the end of leveling and find out that if I had taken my time and leveled all my characters together I would have been just as well off. So here's to you, Blizzard. For another great piece of interactive video entertainment. And if you ever have a job opening, I'm very good at fetching coffee. . . .

The Big Ten

In just a few short days, 10-man raids will no longer be the place that "real raiders" get stuck before getting the gear to allow them into the "real raids." This is a huge boost for my guild - a purely 10-man guild who managed 3 timed chests in ZA before 3.0.2 after only about 2 months of raiding. By the end of next week, saying things like this won't get you looked down on by 25-man raiders.

I'm very excited to see how our little guild progresses. In the last month, we've jumped from 134th(ish) to 43rd ranked guild on our server according to WoWjutsu. To me, this change really allows people to show off their skill instead of just seeing who can gather up enough people to tromp around endgame. Homoginization of both gear and roles encourages the acquisition of skill over gear as well, and encourages more small runs in addition to the raids that currently happen.

I'd like to see this trend continue and have more questlines like the ones for the level 60 warlock and paladin mounts, and the druid swift flight form. Epic, single person quests that can rank you on your skill if they get progressively harder - like the racing quests on Netherwing Ledge. If the quests are restricted to a single player, even with some group parts, then you can't "fake" your way through by buying a group of people to carry you.

This is one of my biggest pet peeves in WoW. I hate seeing people who have either eBayed their account and so have no idea how to play, or who have PvPed their way to ZOMG EPIXX0RZ and think that qualifies them to raid endgame. So implementing a system that combats this would be a dream come true.

At any rate, smaller groups put more dependence on the individual raider which in turn shows off skill more than larger groups. Hooray for expansions!

What the PuG!?

In the last couple weeks, I've been in PuGs for just about every raid, except Sunwell. Some have been successful, some haven't. But it's still amazing to me that they exist. On a server where the top Alliance guild was selling chances at tier pieces mere weeks after first downing the bosses themselves, and most of the inhabitants are just looking to get "epicced out" - regardless of the stats on the gear, it's somewhat refreshing to see people have complete PuG runs where rolls are simply mainspec first, then offspec.

All this freely available gear has set rumblings in the foundations of some guilds. I've seen a few 25-mans break into 10-mans, 10-man guilds split into arena teams, and arena teams disintegrate into individual battlegrounders. Of course, this might just be the result of pre-expansion restlessness spreading wanderlust that makes people test the waters of what they can accomplish on their own.

I have some very mixed feelings about these PuGs. On one hand, they get the bosses down (sometimes), and that's where the phat lootz come from. On the other hand, they're terrible players who are so sub-optimal at their roles that even after the patch boss nerfs, wipes are vastly more common than boss kills. So while I enjoy reaping the benefits of killing bosses in Black Temple, it helps to have a movie to watch during downtime, and maybe a game of solitaire going to keep my clicking finger from locking up.

On the whole, I think that more PuGs can only be good. They stimulate the interest in raids and heroics, and keep the game from becoming stale. But I'd like to see a return of attunements with the increase in PuGs. As easy as this game is, some people just aren't good enough at it to perform at the level required to do high-level content. To me, this is the challenge of game design: invent a natural content progression that cultivates building skills that will help you later in the game. Of course, this would effectively "lock out" some people from the end of progression, but I'm conceited enough to believe that I can perform well enough to make it to the "end."

This ties in to how I think that progression should depend on skill intead of raid size, but that's a whole different post. Perhaps later this week.

In the mean time, enjoy the free PHAT EPIXX L00TZ0RZ flowing out of PuGs.

[Enhancement Shaman Semi-Spoiler]

Since my last statement that enhancement shaman wouldn't make the exceptional list, I've played a bit on the beta with mine. He hasn't suddenly become über-awesome, but I think I missed a couple things, or they have been added.

There's a huge synergy between melee and spell damage now. Maelstrom Weapons encourages the use of heals when needed and offensive spells otherwise by making them instant. The new Flametongue Weapon gives bonus spell damage in addition to the on hit effect of fire damage each swing, and using Flametongue on your offhand weapon is hugely encouraged by a new spell (Lava Burst? I can't recall at the moment, and the realm is down) that deals instant offhand weapon damage as fire, and deals 25% more if the weapon is enchanted with Flametongue.

Couple this with the new Stormstrike that is only useable by the shaman who put it there, but also increases frost and fire damage in addition to nature, and suddenly my want to not be able to afk through a fight is fulfilled. I have totems every 5 minutes to place, and Stormstirke, Lava offhand, and Shocks every 8, 15?, and 6 seconds respectively.

A side benefit (or maybe hugely intentional) is that if you're using Flametongue on your offhand and Windfury on your mainhand, then you can follow the fury warrior/rogue model of having as slow of mainhand as you can get and as fast of offhand as you can get, which in turn reduces the number of weapon sets that have to drop, so everyone can get their gear faster.

As a side note, I think that having fewer pieces of gear drop, while hugely beneficial to raid progression, is a bad thing. No, I don't like waiting in Kara 8 months to get my last two enchants. But I think that it takes the uniqueness away from your character. There's no way to differentiate between Paladin and Warrior tanks just by seeing them from across the field, except if they have tier sets on. Rogues and feral Druids are the same, as well as enhancement Shaman and Hunters; Mages and Warlocks. Of course, resto and balance Druids get leather, resto Shaman and holy Paladins get mail and plate respectively, and holy Priests get cloth. So at least the healing classes will have different armor models. Maybe.

The collapsing of damage and healing to spellpower means that resto and balance Druids get basically the same stats. This goes for holy and shadow Priests, and elemental and resto Shaman. So now you won't be able to tell what spec someone is, either. I know that it's a small thing, but I liked being recognizable by what I was wearing. I like having [The Sun Eater] on my Warrior. I like having antlers and a [Squid Stick] on my Druid. (I have the [Wildlife Royalty Staff] now, but I'm trying to make a point ;))

Anyway, I think the change is good (for now). We'll see how it plays out on the live servers, and with raids and WotLK endgame.

The State of the Game Address

Hmmm. . . where to begin? The beta is shiny. And I mean very shiny. I think the graphics have been souped up a ton. But the really exciting thing to me is that the patch is coming! I want to share the shiny with my friends. 

The new talents are promised to make content super easy, and I think that ZA won't be challenging at all, except to learn the dance of the new fights. We still have some time to get a bear mount or two if we hurry, but honestly, I'm not too wound up about them. Might and Aeon (as well as a couple other guilds) have been selling bear mounts forever, so every dumbass who can scrape together 10k gold can get one. I much prefer my Raven Lord.

This isn't to say that I won't enjoy ZA. I want to get in there and just destroy Zul'jin. The fight seems interesting, Hex Lord's fight is complicated (which means fun!), and if I can get another potential "achievement" before the patch comes, I love it. I think the guild is plenty geared, and we just need practice at taking down the trash before the dragonhawk and lynx bosses. The bosses themselves we one-shot on their respective first attempts.

Without going into any detail about the new talents or abilities or anything, I think that feral is weak, and resto is strong. Balance is strong like a bodybuilder at Venice Beach. I love the conversion of damage/healing to a single stat, and have long thought that it should be that way. It means that healers can actually solo without taking a year to kill something, and that the caster specs (elemental, balance, shadow) of those classes can toss around heals in need without being at half-power.

Sadly, I don't see my shaman making the list of exceptional specs. He's enhancement, and I really have no desire to play as elemental (since balance is so good) or resto (since resto druids are so good). Fury is making awesome headway due to their 51-point talent, so melee dps will probably be my warrior. Rogues are reported to be zomgsupergood with assassination, while combat is decent and subtlety is still PvP only. So I might try to level my rogue (currently 12, lol) and see what happens there. And it's not that enhancement will be bad, it just won't be good, either. Just sort of hanging out until a future patch.

But here's to new content, new abilities, and sharing them with friends!