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WoW Archivist: More beta surprises
WoW Archivist explores the secrets of World of Warcraft's past. What did the game look like years ago? Who is etched into WoW's history? What secrets does the game still hold? As the Warlords of Draenor beta rolls onward, Blizzard keeps managing to surprise us. Recently we've learned about a huge overhaul to guild systems, random upgrades for quest rewards, and an extra-awesome core hound mount. In the last WoW Archivist column, we looked at the surprises from the original beta and the betas of The Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King expansions. This time, we continue with Wrath and also look at the surprises during the Cataclysm and Mists of Pandaria betas. (As before, I won't go into storyline surprises here. And I won't cover surprises announced at BlizzCon outside of a beta. BlizzCon already has its own feature for controversial surprises.) Beta of the Lich King (continued) Goodbye, night elf Sylvanas. Through vanilla and TBC, the Sylvanas model looked like a night elf rather than an undead high elf. With Sylvanas poised to play a big role in Northrend, Blizzard clearly needed to revamp her model. Players worried that they would have to look at the old night elf model through all her lore moments in Wrath. A build in August 2008 gave her an initial makeover (middle image above) and lore-focused players breathed a sigh of relief. Clearly she still needed some work, but at least she wasn't a night elf anymore. A later build in September gave her the fantastic model we see today. The same build also updated the models for Varian Wrynn and Alexstraza.
Mists of Pandaria Beta: Enrage graphic rolled back
This is one of those situations where I didn't even know this was an attempt to update the graphic; I just thought the beta was buggy. There was a recent change on the beta that altered the way warriors perceive the world when they entered an Enrage. Specifically, the world goes gray and a red tinge appears around the edge of the screen. It's so easy to miss, I just figured my computer didn't want to render something. But no, it was a deliberate change. Thankfully, it's not going to make it to live. Ghostcrawler - [Warrior] New Enrage Graphic It was an experiment. We're not crazy about it and the player response has been negative overall, so we're going to revert it. source This is a good example of a very small change that added really nothing (the grayed-out world didn't make it seem as if you were angry), but a beta is the perfect place to make that kind of experiment. I'm much happier that they tried it out there instead of on live. Now we all know it's terrible, bland and awful, and we can move on. To me, this is the beta working exactly as it is supposed to work. Had the change been awesome, yay new graphic. Since it wasn't, yay beta testers for getting it pulled. The system worked. And yes, I hit several other cooldowns in that screenshot because the Enrage change was just that boring. It was just light gray over everything; it was as if I had pulled a stocking over my head. It's open warfare between Alliance and Horde in Mists of Pandaria, World of Warcraft's next expansion. Jump into five new levels with new talents and class mechanics, try the new monk class, and create a pandaren character to ally with either Horde or Alliance. Look for expansion basics in our Mists FAQ, or dig into our spring press event coverage for more details!
Is it time to kill mana?
In your heart, you always knew we were coming here. Mana is one of WoW's biggest sacred cows. Paladins, shaman, druids, mages, warlocks, priests all make use of it, and hunters were once also on the mana teat, as it were. Every healer uses it, and when the monk class is introduced, they'll heal with mana as well. Every ranged caster uses it. It's the resource system the majority of WoW players are most familiar with, a pool that starts at full and empties as you use it. Over the course of its existence, stats like spirit and MP5 have filled it back up during combat, keeping those classes that rely on it supplied. Since it's the lifeblood for all healers, it effectively is the same for all tanks, even though only one tanking class actually tanks with it. Two classes use it to melee DPS, both hybrids, and these two classes effectively ignore the regeneration of the mana pool via talents and class abilities that make mana regeneration a non-issue. Mana is fairly easy to understand. You have it, you use it. There are various systems built in to make regenerating it easier. With the addition of runes and runic power for death knights and holy power for paladins, secondary resource systems (similar to the combo point system of rogues) have also been introduced to the game. Holy p-ower in particular is interesting to this discussion because it is a secondary resource added to a mana class and one that works for healing, tanking and melee DPS. (Everyone has their own opinion of how well it does so.) This leads us to the subject of this post. Do we need mana at all? As my intrepid coworker Michael Gray pointed out to me when discussing this article, mana serves many uses. It's not just that it's a resource for healing and DPSing, but the finite nature of the mana system serves to limit encounters in both PvP and PvE. Doing away with mana could have as many negative effects as positive ones.
Behind the Mask: You wouldn't like me when I'm angry
There are quite a few controversial powers in Champions Online, such as Inertial Dampening Field or Dragon's Wrath, but there are no more controversial mechanics in CO than the Enrage and Focus mechanics. Both of these buffs provide tremendous bonuses to offense for very little opportunity cost. Focus provides a damage bonus to melee attacks which scales with DEX, while Enrage provides a damage bonus to all attacks which scales with STR. Focus is often scrutinized more heavily than Enrage, simply because DEX is a better stat than STR. However, because Enrage can be applied to ranged attacks, it has more potential for abuse. Focus is limited to melee attacks -- although some builds use ranged attacks to build Focus with Form of the Tempest, these builds inevitably close distance and strike with Dragon's Wrath, Dragon's Claws, or Ego Blade Breach. This week, we're going to look at Enrage -- ways to build and maintain it, and ideal ways to use it.
Encrypted Text: Lifestyle of the Northrend Rogue
Every Wednesday, Chase Christian of Encrypted Text invites you to enter the world of shadows, as we explore the secrets and mechanics of the Rogue class. This week, we explore quality of life changes for Rogues in the upcoming expansion.After playing The Burning Crusade for nearly two years now, most Rogues have gotten into their level 70 groove. They know where the poison vendors are in Shattrath and where to acquire some good leather gear. They know where to level up their lockpicking and the best way to organize reagents in their bags. However, all that is about to change.Blizzard is implementing a ton of new simple changes to the Rogue class that are guaranteed to have many of us confused at first. I've tried to make this transition a little bit easier by outlining some of the differences between your time at 70 and the upcoming road to 80. Read on to find out what these changes mean to your daily Rogue lifestyle.
Hunter Beta News: Tranquilizing Shot explained, pet focus system adjusted
Good old Tranquilizing Shot seems to be getting a lot of attention in the beta world yesterday. Ever since it was bought back to prominence when it inherited Arcane Shot's old dispel mechanic and the ability to dispel PvP enrage mechanics, people have been wondering what exactly it will be able to do in PvE. Lead encounter designer Daelo clarified the other day with some information on how enrage type effects will work in Wrath:
Scattered Shots: The dev team takes on PvP
Welcome once again to Scattered Shots, WoW Insider's spot for all things Hunter, except for the stuff Big Red Kitty covers. Daniel Whitcomb will be your host today (a day late, for which he apologizes) as David Bowers tries to shake off some extra aggro. The state of Hunters in PvP is perhaps one of the most debated subjects in WoW PvP. Some call Hunters overpowered for their dispelling Arcane Shot (which is going away in Wrath, to be sent to the non-damaging Tranquilizing Shot), while others point to their low Arena representation and the ease of using line of sight to negate most of their DPS and Abolish Poison to get rid of their main PvP utility as proof that they need buffs. Regardless, even the devs acknowledge that Hunters probably need some help in PvP, and class designer Koraa recently spoke on the subject on the Beta forums. In his post, he covered the problems he sees Hunters having, and how Blizzard will be helping with those moving forward into Wrath. Unfortunately, his solutions seem confused in and of themselves. They involve giving Hunters more melee attack power (instead of more way to break from melee so they can use their ranged weapon) and a variety of talents scattered around many trees in such a way that it will be difficult for a solid PvP build to get them all. And, as I mentioned in a post yesterday, they still aren't giving pets resilience. Other Hunters such as Megatf have done an excellent job responding to some of Koraa's points in the thread itself, but I'd like to address and respond to the post myself in this week's column, and see how they stack up to the problems Hunters face in small scale Arena PvP.
Breakfast topic: Most hated mob abilities
I have previous expressed my burning hatred for whirlwinding mobs, and very few people are fans of getting feared into a nearby group of enemies.. But while leveling my pally, I've rediscovered my least favorite mob action of all time -- enemies that heal themselves when they're at about 20 percent health. These mobs also seem to conspire and wait until my Hammer of Justice in on cooldown, so all I can do is flail impotently with my big axe as they heal to 80 percent and laugh at me. I can also do a quick mana tap and arcane torrent, but by the time I think of that they're usually healed already. As I write this, I'm fighting caster murlocs who are underwater, heal themselves, and run away when they're low on HP, which has got to be some kind of record for most annoying mob abilities combined in one. What is your most hated mob ability -- healing, fear, daze, or something even more sinister?
