[1.Local]: What alliances we have

Is it Warcraft, or is it Avatar?
Discussion about plans for the upcoming Warcraft movie inevitably turned back to movie behemoth Avatar.

Aldarion: Nay, Avatar was -- at least story-wise -- a rip-off off Pocahontas (just think about it, you'll see). But yeah, those blue boys and girls sure have a touch of Draenei in them ... Sans cranial plates or whatever.

subtotal: Nah, not spacegoat. IMO, the aliens in Avatar were much closer to night Nlves. That's not just looks, that's also philosophy, outlook, and the scene where the heroine was riding that tiger-lizard thing.

ash: I can see it already. A young misbegotten squire is magically transformed into a wild and feral Orc to learn their ways and make way for the conquering Human nations. But this transformed Human/Orc falls under the sway of the noble yet savage Orcs and through perseverance and courage makes a name for himself as Dances With Worgs. Dances With Worgs' heroism wins the heart of the fierce and wild princess Fiona and together they rally the Orcs to fight off the Humans and preserve their lands and sacred shamanistic ways.

Kvothe: 1. Floating mountains with waterfalls pouring off.
2. Giant bioluminescent mushrooms.
3. Blue, tailed people.
4. Rideable flying dragon creatures.
5. Fiery invaders from another world come to wreak destruction.
6. Fauna with altogether unnecessary and improbable evolutionary adaptations.

I just got confused ... Am I describing Pandora or Outland?

snowleopard233: Floating landmasses?
Dragons you can ride on?
Mushrooms of improbable size covering the world?
Exotic plant-life?
Indigenous animal people that want to kill humans?

Did you just describe Pandora or Super Mario World?

Helloo, it's-a meee ...

Drop chance probability
We've all read our share of posts, threads, debates and downright brawlfests over drop rates and probability. Finally, fresh news for the grinder. This just in from the Department of Things Many Players Didn't Seem to Know:

Barinthos: I wish the percentage would actually increase per X number of kills for quest drops. For instance, Barrens quests that require the ever-elusive Zhevra hoof. Even though they have four hooves, it is not a 100% chance ... But anyway. Say the chance to drop is 2% on the first kill. Every three/four/five kills, the actual percentage goes up a certain amount, therefore reducing the time it takes to complete gopher/completion quests. I mean, if Blizzard is all gung-ho about minimizing the "grind" to 80, then why not do this? I can't remember the amount of times I had to kill countless mobs just to get that last damn quest item that clearly should be 100% from the start.

Sagretti: In fact, I believe Blizzard did implement such an increasing chance, at least with Northrend quests. It's why you see so few Northrend quests receive the infamy for drop rates that vanilla and Burning Crusade quests had.

And you read it here first! (And second, too!)

Nerf versus convenience
Players continue to be of divided opinion over the changing face of five-mans. Do the updates to scripted events and introductions, trash pulls and other mechanics represent nerfs, conveniences – or both?

curtisrutland: Does anyone remember when these Heroics were real prerequisites to raids? Not (just) for their badges, but for the loot that they dropped? I remember running several of these heroics daily, hoping for a specific piece of loot, even after I joined a raiding guild and started raiding Naxx and OS.

Remember how we cleared them just fine? Back when 2k DPS was overkill for Heroics? Back when it was ok if your tank only had 23k HP? Back when iLevel 226 was the very best available, only obtainable from Maly and Kel'Thuzzad? Before there was five pieces of tier 9 loot available just from running these Heroics, not counting trinkets, rings, and sigils/librams/thrown?

I'm not complaining about the badge gear, not at all. I have lots of alts that are benefiting greatly from this. What I am complaining about is that we managed just fine, before nerfs, in much lower gear. We did just fine. And yet, somehow, with the abundance of practically free high level TIER gear, these instances are now too hard and must be nerfed?

I guess it doesn't hurt me, other than making them more boring than before, but it saddens me that the community as a whole seems to need these nerfs. Northrend Heroics were never overly challenging compared to BC. But it seems like we're going backwards rather than forwards. Like I said, all it does is give me my frost badges quicker, but I just can't understand how these dungeons were ok when they were the second best thing around, and now that they're bottom of the barrel, they're too hard.

MightyMuffin: From article: "He (Zarhym) stressed that these changes are not meant to make the dungeon easier, but rather to make it a slightly quicker run, more in line with other Heroics." It looks like they aren't "nerfs."

We live in a different era of WoW. Pre-3.3, we had to summon to instances, fly all the way to UK/UP and Nex/OC (both of which were the complete eyesore for anyone to fly to), did not have a chance to repeat said instance, and finding a PUG was dependent on your server's PUG community. Now, the PUG communities we live in are larger, and they move quicker. We now have a 15-minute debuff that disallows us to go into another random. Beforehand, the gear and emblems were what mattered. Now, only emblems matter, with ToC and ICC 5-mans being the gear hotspots. Blizzard just doesn't want people dropping groups all the time, because they know DPS wait in God-forbidden queues while healers and tanks go in all the time. Because of this, if tanks and healers just leave to increase their emblem count, then the DPS suffer. It's an attempt to try and make people do the random, get done with it, so that everyone doesn't get affected.

The mechanics of the fight just made them so they didn't last as long. Everyone is still killing them, everyone is doing enough DPS, healing is still good, tanking is still good, but the gimmicks that made the fights interesting in early Wrath are now just time constraints, when everyone knows the boss is dying.

These aren't "nerfs" but updating old instances to new standards of play. They would be nerfs if it said "Bosses now deal no damage and hand out Frost emblems and ilvl 9000 gear, then shower the group with bunnies to make everyone feel happy." That isn't ever going to happen. The no damage, Frost emblems, ilvl gear, or the bunnies...*tear* No bunnies...

And yes, some what I said and you said are "QQ look what we did in the past, things weren't hard then, why are people QQing?" But, again, new era of WoW. They're adjusting old Heroics for new era.

chevykidferlife: Since the newer iLvl bloat has hit, I can get careless with pulls when tanking Heroics and not worry about turning ghost ... Kinda takes the thrill out of it all. I spent a whole day chaining Heroics and got my entire gear set for my off-spec from fast and hard chain pulls.

I do enjoy CoS and Nexus, especially since they drop five emblems, but OK is one that I would normally skip at least one boss. I really don't think they should change anything in there. If they do make these changes, then I probably can just tank everything with my eyes closed and run around being a n00b, which does not make me better as a tank. Where's the skill/tactics?

Warcloud: It was a big mistake to make the badge items better than the actual drops in the Heroics. That's just backwards game design. We're now seeing the result.

Are you enjoying quicker runs, or do you think the updates are going too far?

Required reading for PUGgers
The approval rating was unanimous for this must-read post on group tactics in five-mans.

Gasman: THIS SHOULD BE STICKIED TO EVERY DPS'S FOREHEAD!

Shivåya: I wish this were required reading for DPS. Everything mentioned is something I have to deal with daily ...

pcj: This post = so much win.

dcostantini: Bestest post evah.

Behold: Go read, be useful and PUGgify ...