On the horizon!

"So" you say. "Kaziel, what's up? What's going on. ¿Qué Pasa?"

Well, my friends, it seems like the next expansion is finally set to be revealed. In about 2 days hence, on the opening day of BlizzCon, you can expect to hear more details about the second WoW expansion. The only thing that has been confirmed is it's title: Wrath of the Lich King.

This title confirms a number of things, foremost of which is that the expansion will add the continent of Northrend as a playable zone. While it was highly likely in light of the folder named "Expansion2" with Northrend textures in it, that wasn't confirmation. With the name of the expansion confirmed, it's pretty much set in stone.

Other rumors abound, the biggest of which is a new class: Death Knight. A plate wearing melee/caster-tanking/DPS hybrid class. Sorta like a paladin, only without the healy-bits. Now, the details on this class are really up in the air. Most sources are claiming that Death Knights will be a Heroic Class (or some variant of that name), and will only be opened up by doing a quest chain or something like that. My views on that can be summed up with a quote of a post of mine:

I find the idea of the Death Knight being a hero class a really annoying idea on multiple fronts:

First off is the idea of having to do stuff to open up the class. This makes me doubt it a bit. On the one hand, the event chain could be easily soloed, at which point one has to ask: Why bother? Why go to such great lengths to open up something that will be available to pretty much anyone anyways? On the other hand, if the chain of events requires doing group quests, 5-mans, and possibly even raids, they will end up excluding people from accessing an entire class, which is just bad business. I would really doubt they would do the latter.

Next, experience. If you take someone who's played their class from level 1 to level 70, and at the same time, take someone who's never played this class before and put them in the same situation, the player who has never played before will obviously be far worse off than the person who leveled the entire way up. Dropping people into the game at level 70 (which is probably where they would "start") would be a nightmare as players tried to figure out how to play their new class, use all the new abilities.

Related to them starting at a higher level is professions. Whether you like it or not, professions are directly tied to where you can go and survive, or more commonly, your level. The higher level you are, the greater quality materials you have access to. So in order to level up their professions, the player basically needs to spend the next 2-3 weeks going back to old zones and leveling up their professions, or spending through the nose to level up their skills. Not fun.

Finally, the most minor note would be gear. How are you going to start them out? They can't pop into the game fully formed, but only wearing cloth or even plate white gear and a crappy white weapon (like a level 1 does). They would summarily be devastated. And obviously you can't expect them to send money from an alt. What if they completed the quest to open up Death Knights on their Alliance character and roll a Blood Elf Death Knight. Now they are 70, and pretty much naked, with no ability to get access to their gear. And they can't drop them into the game with a ton of money or normal green or blues... just sell them and make a small fortune. This one's minor because I can see a semi-easy fix: Bring them into existence with Blue quality gear that can't be sold.

Anyway, I digress. Even if the Death Knight is a hero class, if it's a tanking class that can cast without healing, I'm so very very there. I don't care what I have to do, I will do it. I will sell my soul to the Lich King if need be! If I'm really lucky, Death Knights will also be able to dual wield. Even without that, I will finally get the class I wanted: Paladins who can't heal. *glee*

Either way, we can expect more details in about a day and a half, when BlizzCon starts on Friday.

Side note: For details on this, check out both http://mmo-champion.com and my post over at Subcreation forums.

Saying "Share" is not the way to ask...

So this weekend we didn't raid. Certain key people weren't going to be there, so we called it. So when I wasn't working on keeping Heroic Pandemonius on farm status trying to get the Balance Druid robe, I was leveling Deis.

On Saturday night, I decided I'd hit up the Deadmines. So I do the prequests, get all the quests and go in to the outside "dungeon" (not actually in the instance, but still underground). I'm wandering around killing stuff waiting for my escort (lvl 70 mage = EZ mode!) when I get to a Tin Vein. Hey, cool, I need more tin to feed my pretty, pretty princess jewelery-making habit. So I mine it once, twice, and during my third mining attempt this little gnome runs up to me and says "Share". Not "Share?" or something like a question. And then he starts mining the vein!

Now, if he had said "Share?" and waited, I might have stopped and let him have it. I mean, it's not like I won't find more Tin as time goes on, or I can stop and hunt for Tin if I need it. But he just tells me "Share" (lack of a question mark makes a huge difference) and starts mining the vein I had gotten to first. Grrrrrr.

Class descriptions and their aptness (or lack thereof)

So I'm over posting on one of my gaming forums (for some reason they've made me a Mod for the Warhammer Online forum... don't ask me...) and we're talking about getting into the WAR beta. So I reply to one question with this:

Also, I'd like to play WAR to get a real feel for it as it grows, and get a good look at it. Yes, I can read about it all I want, but there's a huge difference between reading about it and playing it. Esp. from just the class descriptions.

To this post I get an agreeing reply of:

Yep. Look back at the class diescriptions blizzard gave when the game was released. They describe mages as 'glass cannons.' When in reality, we ended up being something like a 'glass musket?'

My immediate thought was "Yeah, but 'glass musket' isn't nearly as appealing." And that's when something clicked. I'd always been of the opinion that you shouldn't take the class descriptions from gaming websites at face value but that was more of a "what is" than a "why".

The "why" is that the purpose of a class description is to give a general overview of the class while making it look appealing. That second part is where the problem crops up. Every class has it's undesirable aspects. Whether those are due to a player's interpretation ("I don't like this, so it's bad!") or a lack of vision on the dev's part (pally tanking pre-expansion), something will be considered bad. That is a fact.

The problem is that they can't put stuff like "while this class does not put out the most DPS, it makes up for it in utility". Players don't want to read that. They want words like "Master of (insert damage type here)" or "Glass cannon" or other good descriptive terms. Some of the fault lies in the players, as terms like "Glass cannon" are interpreted to mean "Does the most damage."

In the end, the fact is you should take the class descriptions you see on the main site of the game or in the manual with a grain of salt.

The Libram of Repentance is mine!

It seems kinda minor since technically I could do it in three nights if we did entire Mechanar runs, but I finally got my 15 Badges of Justice last night and went and bought myself my Libram of Repentance. With MotW, BoK and Holy Shield this puts me at 99.29% uncrushable. Almost there. About the only thing that would really be an upgrade to me now would be the Faceguard of Determination.

It always kinda floors me that people say that the LoR sucks. Of course they are comparing it to things like the Boomstick from Anzu the Raven God (Heroic Sethekk Halls) which has lots of stamina. Now I take a look at the equipment of high level warriors and most of them are using trinkets that give either dodge, defense, or block value. Here we have an item that fills only one slot that gives more crush avoidance that two trinkets of approximately equal iLVL value. Tell me, where are you going to find 5% and change crush avoidance in one slot?

While I will admit that as I get more and more crush avoidance gear it will become less valuable, I know, for a fact that I can replace some of my gear and enchants with +damage or +stamina equivalents.

And this applies to gear in general. It seems like people focus too much on individual slots, instead of looking at the greater whole of all gear. They need to realize that you can essentially consider all gear one giant pool of iLVL points that are assigned to certain positions. Having one slot cover 5~% of the required crush avoidance is a very efficient way to spend those iLVL points.

Also, by spending iLVL points from your total pool on trinkets with a "Use" ability, a lot of those points are going to waste. While I'll be the first to admit that "Use" abilities are quite handy, even the shortest ones I've seen are on a 1 minute, 30 second cooldown, which means that you can't rely on them to keep you alive. Just help you out in a pinch.

Until I reach the point where I cannot find something that I can swap out, instead of the LoR and lower my crush resistance to 102.4% or a little above it, I'm going to hold onto it. Plus I know I'm going to lose some of the uncrushability I get from the early Karazhan tanking gear, as I slowly gather my tiered gear. I still think too many people dismiss the value of spell damage gear. But that's just me.

WoW Journal 2007-07-23

This weekend was very atypical for me.

Friday was an easy night, and Saturday I didn't play much because I actually went out to a party that night. *gasp* Yeah, my comic book store owner has an annual party (the "Tenleytown Throwdown"), and despite him being the owner of a comic book store it's a genuine party, not a geek gathering. You know... drinks, music, dancing, chatting, etc. Had a good time.

Sunday began with us taking a stab at Heroic Mana-Tombs. Without a CCer, it was really hard. We got to Pandemonious (which is really all we wanted) and dropped him, still no Balance Druid robe. :(

I logged out then, and came back around 7 for the weekend raid. Since I wasn't available on Saturday which left us mostly tankless, we moved the raid ahead one night. So we hit up Attumen and knocked him over like the loot piñata he is. Then went up to Moroes and one shotted him, albeit with a bit of difficulty (survivors = paladin x2, mage, druidx2) so we still have a bit of work to do on fine tuning that fight. Didn't help that we had the Shadow Priest and the MS warrior, nor that the off-tank for Moroes died early in the fight. But hey, a win is a win. Then moved onto Maiden of Virtue. Bad news is that it's really just not viable for me to tank her with my guild's current gear quality. Good news is we have a warrior tank who's available (swap out Shadow Priest for a Prot Warrior) and we brought him in and got her down on our second try, ever. :D After that we cleared to the journal for the quest and called it a night. I expect pretty soon we'll be adding a second night to our weekly raiding, once we smooth out the bumps on Moroes (damn butler!).

Well that was a let down...

So one of my druid guildies finally got the 5,000 gold to buy her 300 riding skill and on Monday night she did all the quests in prep for her epic flight form. By the time I was called in, it was 11:30, so we planned on doing it tonight.

This was my second run through Heroic Sethekk Halls, so I kinda knew what was coming. When we got to the second to last room (where the Saga of Terokk is) that's where we fought Anzu the Raven God. While certainly not raid level difficulty, it was a fair bit easier than I expected (hence the title). The only parts that really made me struggle was when he banished himself and summoned the adds, and that was only because they randomly aggroed people. Best plan for that with a paladin tank is to have everyone stand right next to the paladin as he or she hits Consecration to pull the birds off of everyone else.

Finishing the entire heroic puts me at 9 of 15 badges of justice needed to get my Libram of Repentance, and got my guildie her epic flight form. Woot!

WoW Journal 2007-07-16

This weekend was fairly tame. Farted around a bit on Friday night. Saturday did a Heroic Sethekk Halls run, completed the entire thing, got two BoJs and a Primal Nether for one of the guildies.

Saturday night's raid went decently I guess. We took down Attumen again, no problem. Had a lot of trouble on Moroes. I'm not sure if it was not having a Shadow Priest (had one last week but he seems to have gquit) or if it was having our second paladin not in the fight (he was sitting out this week so we only had one set of pally buffs) but we couldn't bring him down. Spent I'd guess around 2-3 hours fighting Moroes, to no avail. We'll see how much of a difference it makes next week since I'm sure we'll have the second paladin that time.

Sunday I resubscribed to SWG (I know... I know... but I've been on this huge Star Wars kick lately) and played it a bit. Interesting changes for the little I played, but I also picked up Lego Star Wars 1 & 2 on PS2 and wanted to play that so I did. LSW is awesome BTW. If you haven't played it, check it out. They have a demos for the PC available over at download.com for both LSW and LSW2.

No hot Chaos Chosen babes in plate bikinis!?

So apparently there's some hubbub going on concerning a decision by EAMythic. The Chaos Chosen class is being limited to only male characters. For those that are unaware, the Chaos Chosen is the tanking class for Warhammer Online (WAR), and since so far the Order side tanking classes bore me, I'm looking towards Disorder, of which Chaos Chosen look the best so far (but the Black Orc looks pretty cool too). Anyway, the lack of female Chosen didn't come as much of a surprise to me, since the class page only showed male characters, and other ones like the Warrior Priest or the Chaos Magus clearly shows both male and female characters.

Of course this won't be the first time there have been limited choices in gender as far as an MMO goes. FFXI had two races that were single gender, the Galka which is an asexual race (despite having all the appearance of very muscular males) that reproduce via reincarnation, and the Mithra who technically have two sexes but the males are so rare they are kept away primarily for breeding to ensure that the race does not become extinct, so the only playable gender is female. Also in LOTRO, the Dwarves are male only, but based upon your views you could say that you can play female dwarves since it was written that female dwarves were audibly and visually so similar to male dwarves that many could not tell the difference.

As for my view... I could really care less. From a personal stand point it doesn't bother me, since I would be playing a male Chaos Chosen anyway, and I had really wanted to play a class that's only available to certain genders, I wouldn't let the fact that I couldn't play as the gender I prefer stop me. Of course it's easy to say that when it's the gender I want to play anyway...

Finally, I wouldn't be surprised if we see another class that's gender specific. In this case I could very well see the Dark Elf Witches, which was what was shown in the intro video (IMO) and are canonically female. It's one thing to be surprised by the addition of female Warrior Priests or the like, but I think there have been references to Warrior Priestesses in various books, but the Witch Elves are the "Brides of Khaine" which is pretty obviously female. Let's see the hubbub over that!

So... who's exalted with The Scryers?

Oh yeah, I remember, I am.

BOO-YAH!

Last night after getting home a bit late (was at the bookstore) I did my daily quests for money, then followed up with getting the 30 Sunfury Signets I needed to reach Exalted. Oh hell yes!

That's about the only thing to report. Toodles!

Rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated...

So I haven't posted in almost two weeks. *le gasp*

Just been in a non-WoW-y rut. More Star Wars-y. I still play WoW when I'm needed (still only 70 tank in the guild), and enjoying it, been playing a fair amount of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II and just this week began reading the Legacy of the Force series. Finished Betrayal last night. So good!

Anyway, two weekends ago we killed Attumen again. This was... how to phrase it... not a very smooth kill. We won first time, but it really could have gone better. But all things considered it showed us something very important. Anyway, it went something like this:

• Balance Druid in bear form and tanking gear goes in and starts to beat on.
• I go in after her and drop JoW on Midnight for Retribution Paladin to keep up.
• I miss Attumen spawning at 95% and he two shots the warlock.
• I grab Attumen before he can do any more damage and start to tank him.
• Not sure what happened right about here, but all I do know is bear off-tank goes down and Midnight proceeds to devastate Retribution Paladin, Rogue, and the Mage in under 10 seconds.
• Before the wipe is called I quickly grab Midnight and attempt to start tanking both. I succeed.
• Raid currently contains: Protection Paladin (me), Holy Priest, Holy Priest, Balance Druid who's healing, and a Hunter.
• In what has got to be one of the longest Attumen kills ever, we slowly ping him down. Battle lasts so long I need to reapply 15 minute Blessings to remaining members.

So, while it was a ridiculous but amazing kill, it showed that I can solo tank Attumen, so for future fights against Attumen I just solo tank both Midnight and Attumen.

Afterwards we fought our way up towards Moroes and threw ourselves at him repeatedly, but to no avail. We did learn a lot though.

This weekend we easily took down Attumen, and I have declared him on farm status officially, and afterwards we took down Moroes in two tries. Considering that our two off-tanks are the Balance Druid in bear form and a Retribution Paladin with sword and board that's pretty damn good. After that we went and killed us some

On a related note we really need another tank. We have one warrior who's prot specced, but he's currently unable to login (his computer is borked), so right now we'd take about anyone else as long as they wanted to tank.

In other news, I'm less than 1000 rep away from exalted with both Cenarion Expedition and the Scryers. That will only leave me with needing to get exalted with the Consortium, getting my Netherdrake, and doing some heroics for BoJs for things I can do solo. Woot!