Good weekend

I was able to finish up the Worgen starting area this weekend and I believe I am almost through all of the Goblin starting area.

Also my two mains are 84/85 and 82/85 respectively, so that's going well.

After that, I just need two Horde tourists to 60 and two Alliance tourists to 60.  Of those, I am at:
20/60
24/60
8/60
8/60

What Blizz should have done

re: all the angry folk, is just to lay out their timetable for things in the future.

The way I see it, there are two things that they will roll out:
Double JP:  This action gears people up
Raid Buff:  This action gets people through current content

They could have just done a schedule like:

3 months out: +10% raid buff (gets 60-99 percentile through current content)
4 months out: +20% raid buff (gets 30-59 percentile through current content)
5 months out: double JP from bosses (gears up folks for next raid content)
6 months out: +30% raid buff (gets 1-29 percentile through current content)
7 months out: triple JP from bosses (gears up last folks for next raid content)
8 months: Release 4.1

Monkey angry!

"Monkeys Show Sense Of Fairness, Study Says"

You remember this study. The researchers charged one monkey six rocks for a banana, and then charged the second monkey three rocks for a banana. Monkey one was pissed. He screamed. He raved. He probably flung poo. Apparently, even the most basic primate has a sense of fairness.

Blizzard basically did this except backwards. In one expansion (LK), they charged one epic for one heroic dungeon run. In the second expansion (Cata), they charged one epic for five heroic dungeon runs. The price of everything went up.

Is it really surprising that people would react to the current end game the way they have?

FPS WOW?

Is WOW becoming a FPS?  Since its inception, it's been advertised as a RPG.  Choose a warrior, and you become a meatbag to be wailed on.  Choose a mage, you get to drop huge nukes on creeps.  What is so FPS about this?  Well, the newest trend ever since the end of ICC, is that the gear (not the class) has begun to define who and what you can do.  Sure, you picked mage... you can cast spells.. but it's not mage worthy without your i3000 epic robe.  Similarly, your "tank" hp is just a laugh until you get an epic +2000 stam  chest and can withstand a 100k hit from Arthas himself.  This is where we join the ranks of FPS, just running around and shooting things and the gun/sword/armor defines what a person is.  The line between it got even grayer in Cataclysm when the designers homogenized the classes to all have nearly the same health and starting stats. Aside, do the starting stats even matter anymore... sure you start with 30 int but those end game epics are giving +300 int minimum. This is all just part of the balancing they have been struggling with lately.  Ultimately, they reached a point where they removed all the different threat generating talents, and gave each class one buff (pretty much like devotion aura = defensive stance = bear form = blood presence) which generates a blanket 10% threat. It's only a hairline away from having no classes, just a option at startup for dps, heal or tank, or just have to select gear that gives the bonuses.

Personally, I don't know which way to lean on it.  On one hand, I truly do like the differentiation but on the other hand, its nice to know that my paladin is basically equal to a druid so that's one less class to roll.

Which sort of brings me to my final thoughts, what my wish list for this expansion would have been:
1. Instead of doing 1-60, 81 unlocks new phased areas of Durotar, Crossroads, Azshara (basically the entire world) and the quests go from 81-100.
2. At level 100, players pick new "mastery" of PVE (+100% bonus xp for alts), PVP (+resilience or something), or raids (+hit).
3. Isolate the playstyle masteries, ie buffs in PVP for each class to balance those out, so deathcoil might be 5 secs in PVE but 3 secs in PVP.
4. Attunement for raids (either keys or rep to revered)
5. Some sort of scaling raids, or dynamic raids.  Scaling raids could be either buffs, or weaker creeps for casuals.  Dynamic raids could substitute harder bosses/hp (and better loot) for hardcore raiders.
6. Easier/shorter raids for casuals (please note the epics should be lower than hardcore raids)
7. Guild rep needs to be easier to obtain, and this capped stuff is stupid.  If you can get all the achievements in three days, then it should just be available.
8. Ease the crafting professions. 1-375 should be orange all the way on common patterns (like rough grinding stone/coarse grinding stone/etc).  common+uncommon patterns should give +1 skill as usual. rare patterns give +2 skills. very rare pattern give +3 skill.  The last two should be hard to find/learn obviously. I think this breaks down to 50% of the skill is easy to obtain, 25% of the skill is moderate to obtain, 15% of the skill is difficult to maintain, 10% of the skill is very difficult to maintain (requires orbs for example).

That's all I can think of for now.

Something I hadn't thought of

4 million boxes of WOW sold is 160 million of income. Let's say half goes to the retailer, so 80 million for Blizzard.  Not bad for five levels and four raids of work.

What is wrong and the cure..

A major design flaw with WOW right now is what everyone else has said... it tries to be too many things to different people.  I call it schizophrenia, and see three main things:

1. Casual gamers (the 1-84 folk)
2. The hardcore/raiders
3. PVP people

It's already been admitted that the developers have a huge problem with balancing casual/raids with the PVP.  You can imagine what happens. "Well, we've finished the raids and everything works fine!  Except our design broke PVP. Okay, let's nerf this class and make damage equal. Okay, that broke raids. Let's balance this. Oh, it broke PVP. Oh wait..."  The cycle continues forever and ever until the end result is some kind of wierd FPS game where everyone does the same damage, just has a different gun.

I wonder if they could just have three teams at Blizzard, and make skills activate differently at 85.  So once you enter arena, you get a class buff or special set of class skills and if you enter a dungeon/raid, different things activate (or just work differently).  It would really stop them having to change class/spell dynamics (ie rotations)... every.. bloody.. patch.

They'll say its not about rotations, but rotations go with min/max.  Otherwise, just make it a FPS game.

And to quote something I wrote yesterday:

Cataclysm for the first time ever gives negative feedback to players (before, everything was positive):
1. Heroics too hard/long = Casuals go home!
2. Guilds/guild rewards only for elites = Casuals go home!
3. Redoing 1-60 instead of 81-140 = No benefit to your characters/redundant/pointless = Casuals go home!

TLDR; Ghostcrawler said CASUALS GO HOME!!

I know, I for one..
1. Do not want to do heroics/don't have the time
2. Will not ever get to take advantage of a 400 member guild
3. Will do 1-60 but in the back of my mind, already have 6+ 80's and need less, not more.

Which lends me to wonder if they would have just kept more subscribers with new 81-110 level zones and then a picker (like instead of talent trees, you have game trees for casual/raid/pvp which give you special abilities, say bonus xp, +hit or +resilience).

Newsflash

Casuals are dead!!

Go home casuals! WOW is for l33t players!

Response to: http://www.ectmmo.com/2011/01/pondering-end-game-motivation-wow.html

Cata questing path

80-81 Mount Hyjal
81-82 Vash'jir
82-83 Deepholm
83-84 Uldum
84-85 Twilight Highlands

Well I hate to but I have to

Ten things I hate about Cataclysm:

1. Heroics are too hard/take too long (bad for casuals like me).
2. Forced to do 1-80 again.
3. Class mechanics are woefully incomplete and unstable. People have to relearn new rotations every patch.
4. There should be dungeons for casuals and raids for hardcore raiders (which need to be unlocked).
5. Some revamped dungeons are still maddeningly confusing (Dire Maul).
6. Professions need to be tuned down (ie leatherworking 225-300 still impossible).
7. Gear from crafting professions is still hit or miss. I'm thinking of you, blacksmithing.
8. Weapons are still hard to come by for gear dependent classes (warrior, rogue, paladin, hunter).
9. AOE skills are gone, yet they still put tons of trash creeps all over.
10. Uldum is pretty but doesn't feel like WOW.  And BTW, you always hear about Deathwing but I've never once seen him.

Ugh

Is the sound you make when you stayed up to 12am because Uldum sucked you in.  I think I must have done 30 quests or so... mostly the easy ones (deliver stuff, find things, etc).  Picked up about four i312 items.

I love the Uldum graphics and quests. I just really think this is soooo outside World of Warcraft.  I mean in one original game, 2 expansions, and the RTS game and expansion there is no inkling of this stuff whatsoever.  I guess closest is the ruins in Tanaris, but those always seemed like Troll ruins to me (I guess because of Zulfurrak).  Then you get to this zone and bam... Egyptians!  Kinda wierd.

I also tried the new undead zone from 1-7.  Pretty decent.

Guild Reputation

BTW, as far as I can tell, gaining guild reputation sucks.  You gain them by doing quests.  As such, once you get to 85, YOU HAVE TO KEEP QUESTING.  And there's a daily cap?!  WORST.  SYSTEM.  EVER.

I will not be wasting my time with that crap.  Actually, I will be leveling up a paladin from scratch, so we'll see what kind of guild rep you can get from 1-85.

The plan comes together!

I am rolling warlocks for alliance (dwarf gnome human worgen) and hunters for horde (orc tauren undead troll).  I don't need a night elf or a blood elf as I have tons of them already.  And I think I will be taking two paladins to 60 on horde and a worgen and human warlock to 60 for the alliance.  Then just work on the 80s.

Roster update

BDF

P-80

P-32

P-24

P-20

FC

P-80

P-80

P-15

P-10

P-10

My new crazy

My new crazy challenge is to have 12 L80 paladins by the time X4 comes out.

I am 3/12 so only nine more to go...

And a L85 priest (and possibly L85 warlock).

Level 90

I checked again and the next expansion pack doesn't come out til Q2-2012, so let's say June 2012.

At this point, I kind of feel like, I should try and pace myself to 85 so when X4 comes out, I can just level straight to 90 without doing endless raids.

As I mused elsewhere, I imagine a new season will be release in 6-9 months and coincide with new raid dungeons (so they can release gear together).  To get people geared up, they will just use the regular instances (instead of TOC which people hated) and give a 30% buff so things are easy.  I guess another model for that is just to give out 10 times as many Justice Points so people can gear up 4 pieces per run and be ready for 4.1 dungeons. 

One thing I wonder about is the progression.  In a regular expansion, it looks like this:

Run dungeons for blues
Run heroic dungeons for elite blues (i333 required)
Run raids for epics (i349 required?)
Run heroic raids for elite epics (i365 required?)

But in Lich King 3.1+ it seemed to be:

Get blue i200 from dungeons
Get epic i200 from heroic dungeons
Get epic i232 from dungeons/heroic dungeons (ICC)
Get epic i251 from heroic dungeons
Get epic i264 from heroic raids (ICC)

I guess its better now, because they have gearscore to lock people out.  It still remains to be seen if they will add new dungeons, or just add new raids.  Or perhaps they will keep the old dungeons and make them drop the new basic loot (which they've never done/changed the loot table before) and have the new raids drop the epic stuff.

Rise Paladins!

At level 22, Warchief's Command Board commanded me to go to Kadrak's outpost in northern barrens, and then fed me several quests to get to STP.  What was nice is a few quest have rides that you just ride on a kodo and see the battle unfold.

I think my 32 paladin was commanded to go to Ashenvale, and if I look at the map, I think its going to lead me through Stonetalon Vale > Desolace > Feralas.

On the other continent, 25 unlocks Hinterlands, Arathi Highlands and Northern Stranglethorn. Ugh. So much to do.

Grok

The daily review of what I am working on:

# 83 Blood elf warlock (Black Dragonflight raider)
# 80 Blood elf priest (Fizzcrank raider)
# 20 Blood elf paladin (Kalimdor tourist)
# 15 Blood elf paladin (Azeroth tourist)
# 1 Goblin warlock (Goblin tourist)

# 10 Human warlock (Alliance raider)
# 10 Night elf druid (Kalimdor tourist)
# 10 Human paladin (Azeroth tourist)
# 10 Worgen mage (Worgen tourist)

I finally understand

What it means when I ask paladins how they like the paladin class now, and they answer ... "about the same."

It means THEY DIDN'T KNOW WHAT THEY WERE DOING THE FIRST TIME.

Which means YOU WEREN'T DOING IT RIGHT.

Doesn't matter I guess, since the loser is me... take a great instant damage/AOE class and turn it into yuck. I might as well be a cat druid.

Bad Blizzard Bad

# More patches and hotfixes, specifically class balance.  There was a day when all this was done on the test server. Now the live realm is the test server while they "get things right"

# It's occurred to me of late (and of the patch notes that)... this spell has been reduced so it is equivalent to wild growth.  Happened a few times in the notes.  Well, if you think about it... all the tank classes have a aggro buff, and a shield slam, and an AOE.  Eventually, you get to the point where, they are all the same, just different names.  Is this really what is intended?  Or what the players want?  Personally, I don't care.  I just want to do my super-AOE grinding on paladin.  If a warrior or druid can do it too, then good for them.

Does anyone else hate..

how the game seems so trial and error now.  That is... you get used to your spell rotations and then blizz comes and says... oh wait that's broken, let's totally rework it.  And then you have to learn it all over again.

Game Design... how I predict Cata to roll out

Release 4.0
Everything is super hard mode.

Release 4.1+
New raids are released.  To get people up to speed for the new raids, they want the old raids (and rewards) to be slightly easier without changing the game mechanics so... raid buff of 10/20/30% depending how things go.  The new raids will be like i373 gear.  The question is... how do you do gear progression at this point.  In ICC, the new raids just dropped epics, but the new system is dungeon < heroic < raid < hraid.  Will they have new dungeons for us, or just keep it as old raid < raid < hraid.

TODO List

I need a todo list, since there are so many things to do:

# Get an 85

# Roll a goblin

# See Azshara

# Roll a worgen

# See Crossroads, Barrens

# See Stranglethorn Vale, Booty Bay

# See Desolace

# See Feralas

# See Auberdine

# See Westfall, Redridge Mountains (Human Leveling path)

# See Loch Modan (Dwarf Leveling path)

# Run a dungeon

# See the new battleground

Ding 80

Last night, I had the pleasure of adding a priest to my 80 collection.  I have to say though, I'm tired of Northrend.

Heirlooms surrendered:
# Tattered Dreadmist Mantle
# Tattered Dreadmist Robe
# Grand Staff of Jordan
# Discerning Eye of the Beast
# Discerning Eye of the Beast

Replaced with:
# i132 Frostwoven Shoulders
# i172 Robes of Novos
# i172 staff (+308 damage)
# i172 trinket (+51 spirit)
# i172 trinket (+33 spirit)

Don't care about item level right now as Mount Hyjal is going to drop me some i272 gear, including the +807 dmg Repurposed Twilight Staff.

I'm ready for heroics! RAWR!!!

Did Blizzard Mess Up?

After seeing so many ragequit/I'm bored posts on various message boards, I'm left to wonder if Blizzard messed up.

Ordinarily, you produce a new xpack, ten levels and lock people in to a solid 3 months of play at the highest level you can.  Here, they went back and redid old content trying to make people reroll.  But if you're at level 80, some people have no incentive to do 1-60 all over again.  And if they don't want to do the new old content, then that's just a loss of subscribers.

I wonder how many people quit because they just wanted to get to 85 and raid, but now are bored.