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Officers' Quarters: Loot system for mounts
Every Monday, Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership. He is the author of The Guild Leader's Handbook. One situation that officers and raid leaders are frequently unprepared for is a rare mount dropping from a boss. Many times, players aren't even aware that specific bosses drop mounts, because they drop so rarely. Without a specific policy in place, you have to make one up on the spot -- which is not a great idea. One guild just ran into this problem, and they want to know the best system for mounts. Hi Scott, Last night the officers of our 25-man raid group encountered a bit of a dilemma. Heroic Ji-Kun dropped the Clutch of Ji-Kun mount and we, the officers, had to decide how to deal with it. We use the EPGP lootmaster system, but didn't have any rules in place for how our raiders should roll on the mount. After a brief discussion we decided that we would just put a free roll for all players of Raider status and it would go to the highest roller. Other officers began to bring up valid points for the future, the next time a rare mount drops. What sort of requirements should we put on who is allowed to roll on mounts the next time one drops from a boss? Most of the other officers are saying "Raider" status, at least 1 month with the guild, and 90% attendance should be required before we roll. I felt the attendance clause was a bit strict, because it's not a combat item and it doesn't enhance the raid's performance in any way. The others feel that we should be rewarding people for having good attendance, which I feel is a valid point.
A look at the current endgame for Blade & Soul
If you're looking forward to playing Blade & Soul when it finally comes to this side of the pond, you probably want to know what to expect from the endgame mechanics. Fortunately for you, the game has just released its newest endgame dungeon, and a preview is available of the final boss fight within that dungeon as well as the process for gaining and powering up loot from bosses. Which is... ornate, for lack of a better term. The short version is that everyone present for the kill gets a loot box containing a weapon. You can either pay money to ensure that the weapon is right for your class, or you can buy an ordinary key and take your chances. Once you've gotten the right weapon (with the right stats) after however many trips, you can start leveling it up... but in order to really advance it, you'll need to get two more weapons and level those up. Take a look at the full preview for details on boss mechanics and the weapon upgrade process. [Thanks to Steparu for the tip!]
Flameseeker Chronicles: Revamping rewards in Guild Wars 2
ArenaNet has improved the reward systems in Guild Wars 2 this year by adding new features such as world vs. world skill trees, laurel and guild merit vendors, and better loot for world boss encounters. However, many players still feel that there should be more tangible incentives urging them to log in each day and engage in the content that they enjoy. Fortunately, Colin Johanson agrees and has taken to the forums several times to tease an upcoming reward revamp for all areas of the game. This redesign involves adding rewards for hitting certain thresholds of achievement points, creating more uses for blue and green items, and making fighting champion-level creatures more worthwhile. This month, we should expect to hear more about ArenaNet's plans for the second half of 2013, akin to the road map laid out back in January. While we wait for the official word, check out the video edition of the Flameseeker Chronicles for some loot-themed speculation.
Director's letter for Age of Conan talks loot, merges, and dungeons
If you've not been happy with loot rewards in Age of Conan, you can take some succor in the fact that the designers aren't happy with them either. The latest director's letter discusses the problem of rewards in the first Dragon's Spine dungeon and explains that the team is trying to create interesting loot without creating a huge power imbalance between new and veteran characters at the cap. While the next few dungeons will fill out the loot sets that have been established, the team is actively working on long-term solutions. Beyond that, the game remains on-track for server merges in the summer, with older unplayed characters moving into "archival" status to make database merges less onerous. The tradeskill revamp and further dungeons are also in the works; Coils of Ubah Khan is nearing launch as the next dungeon. For more details on the updates and discussion of achievements, take a look at the full letter.
WoW TCG introduces Timewalkers: Reign of Fire and more loot cards
Mourning that you never got some of the great loot cards of earlier WoW TCG sets? Well, you're in luck, because the latest expansion to the World of Warcraft Trading Card Game, Timewalkers: Reign of Fire, is all about time travel, which means loot cards long gone are back again. That's right: this expansion features every loot card that we've seen in the game to date. We're sure this is going to make it a hit with WoW players looking for swag, but if you're more interested in the TCG itself, Timewalkers: Reign of Fire sends TCG players back to the era of Warcraft 3 to fight -- or aid -- the Burning Legion. Have we piqued your interest? Timewalkers: Reign of Fire will be available in stores on July 23rd. Let the loot card wars begin! Thanks Lenny for the tip
EVE Evolved: First impressions of Odyssey
The Odyssey expansion has been live for a couple of days now, but it's already starting to have a massive impact on EVE Online. Traffic through low-security space has increased significantly for the first time in years thanks to explorers hunting data and relic sites, and some players are even hunting asteroid belt NPCs in lowsec for the new security tags. New wars have erupted in nullsec following the redistribution of moon wealth, mining has become a more valuable profession, and the rebalanced battleships feel powerful again. Unfortunately, Odyssey has seen its fair share of problems too. The new jump effect looks spectacular the first few times you see it, but long-term play is reportedly causing motion sickness in some players. Some players have also been objecting to the ice mining changes, and the revamped radial UI menu hasn't done much to fix the game's usability problems. Explorers in low-security space and nullsec are reporting incomes in the billions of ISK per day range thanks to the scan probe changes and new hacking minigame, but not everyone is happy with the new loot-scattering mechanic. In this week's EVE Evolved, I look at the early impact of Odyssey on the EVE Online universe and discover the secrets behind collecting all the valuable loot when hacking.
Rock on with Kang's Bindstone
I'm going to have to humbly beg everyone for their forgiveness for my terrible title pun. Get it?! Okay, but seriously. We know we've got Phat Loot Friday and all that, but Kang's Bindstone is such a neat item that it deserves its own post. The Bindstone is an item that buffs you with a chance to turn an enemy to stone upon delivering a killing blow instead of triggering the normal death effect. Loot and such is unaffected - this is a purely cosmetic item. The buff lasts ten minutes and works against critters, mobs, enemy players, and even bosses. Kang's Bindstone drops from Kang the Soul Thief, a rare mogu elite in the Vale of Eternal Blossoms. He can be found in the far west of the zone, on Autumnshade Ridge north of the Five Sisters site on the map. He's a mogu sorcerer and does some nasty shadow-based attacks, but he should be soloable for a level 90 character. Happy hunting!
The Daily Grind: What was the best random drop you ever got?
The Skinner Box design to MMOs and the random nature of loot tables means that an absolutely epic piece of gear could conceivably drop with the next kill. Or the kill after that! Or after that! Or... yeah, you know the drill. The unpredictability of corpse looting is like a little slot machine built into our games, mostly giving us trash while once in a while paying off in incredible dividends. It's the latter that I'd like us to discuss today. Every once in a while I do a double-take when I see that I just looted an ultra-rare item. I didn't even know text that color existed in the chat window, to be honest! And getting that incredible drop can make my evening (not to mention give me bragging rights to my guild). So what was the best random drop you ever got in an MMO -- and what did you do when it happened? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
Breakfast Topic: All that you can't leave behind
I am a total WoW packrat. It's a little embarrassing. My void storage has been full for ages; stuffed with transmog gear, rare and epic archaeology items, and, in particular, old quest rewards or dungeon keys. Those last two, I realize, are kind of ridiculous to keep, but I worked so hard getting that Seal of Ascention! And completing the Scepter of the Shifting Sands is one of my most prized achievements in the game, don't you dare tell me to throw it, or any of the items I got along the way, in the trash! "But you can't even use rings or necklaces in transmog!" my friends remind me. I know, I know, but guys, that's not the point! The point is... the point is... I just can't let go, okay?! Are you a WoW packrat? What items do you hoard, beyond all logic or good reason? With bag and bank slots becoming ever more precious commodities, how do you decide what to keep and what to get rid of?
Navigating the loot
While perusing Wowhead's blue tracker the other day I stumbled across this thread on the EU forums about the LFR loot system, its frustrations, and potential alternatives. Community manager Draztal is pretty active in the thread, which is nice to see -- there is plenty of back-and-forth and, despite player accusations of just parroting Blizzard policy, Draztal has a lot of good points to make about the nature of effort and reward. The truth is that WoW has never consistently rewarded players for running dungeons or raids. I still get a little involuntary curl to my lip anytime I think about Burning Crusade-era heroics, particularly Magister's Terrace, and how often I ran them trying to get some piece of gear, and how often my groups wiped and nothing I needed dropped anyway (and all those useless PvP gems). I agree it's frustrating to run LFR and only get gold, though I did have to sit down and think about why, in particular. After all, I killed Saurfang in Icecrown for probably upwards of three months before I finally got the Mag'hari Chieftain's Staff. During all that time it never occurred to me that my failure to receive loot was an indication that the entire system needed an overhaul. After a couple minutes ruminating, though, I think the answer is pretty obvious: loot is the only real reason to run LFR (with the exception of just experiencing content, for those who may not have the opportunity to raid otherwise).
Patch 5.3 PTR: Pick your loot for every occasion
Blizzard posted yesterday about patch 5.3's aforementioned introduction of off-spec rolls, and it's now in the PTR, so, of course, WoW Insider had to go check it out. Our first observation is that it's slightly oddly positioned, as you can see in the image above, it's in the right-click drop-down menu that comes off the character pane. Once you've located it, it's simply, as you can see, a matter of picking your spec and heading into your chosen content. As you can see above, I'm on a shaman, and so can choose to gear any of my three specs. The "Default" option, as the name would suggest, is the standard behavior of the system: the loot will be for the spec you have entered the instance in. This system is active wherever the new loot priority system is, so, Raid Finder loot, including Bonus Rolls, and, as the Blizzard post says, Heroic Scenarios and Mists of Pandaria quests. At the moment on the PTR, it is not working for normal scenario loot, I went and did a few scenarios as Elemental with Enhancement loot selected, and got intellect mail every time, which is not a huge surprise given that the Blizzard post doesn't specify non-heroic scenarios. It is a little odd, though, given that many people will start off in normal scenarios, particularly DPS hoping to gear a tank or heal spec, as the queue times are so much shorter. Of course, this system is not relevant for 5-man dungeons, where you can already roll need on off-spec gear with no detriment to your chances apart from the anger of four other people. Alas, thanks to a mixture of very long queue times and woefully bad luck, I was unable to test this system in the Raid Finder. Hit the break for the full Blizzard post.
Breakfast Topic: Drops vs. tokens or points
I'm a fairly methodical player. I dodge entire swaths of the game (pet battles and holiday events, I'm looking at you) because I don't have time to get sucked into the inevitable completionism. But despite a fondness for checklists and planning, I'm dissatisfied in a system centered on buying gear with tokens, points, or other currency systems. I'm a fan of throwing my fates to the wind and diving into an instance to see what luck may bring me. I like not knowing if or when a particular piece might come my way, and I'm fully open to the possibility that it might not ever come at all. (Although I reserve the right to grouse about it. That's part of the fun.) For me, this bit of RNG design is part of what keeps the parameters of a game world feeling larger than the sum of my ambitions. The envy of seeing someone in town stroll by wielding the massive two-handed staff that I've always admired, the unchecked line item on my gear list ... I like knowing that there exist parts of this world that I can't manhandle into submission. After all, my dream gear list wouldn't be very dreamy if it were merely a shopping list. We do need alternatives. We need ways to fill in holes for things that never drop, and we need drops for players who prefer not to run dungeons and raid content. (I wish more of that were based on player-made items, frankly -- but that's another Breakfast Topic.) Most assuredly, we need a selection of rewards for players whose souls crave predictable, regular infusions of upgrade juju. I appreciate WoW's current mix of methods, although for my own tastes, things have slid a little too far to the predictable side of the equation. Knowing what my upgrades will be and when I will get them feels dully inevitable. I'd welcome a little more reliance on the RNG, with the opportunity for a little more chaos surrounding any given drop (and therefore a little more passionate hope beforehand and a little more unbridled joy afterwards). As Matt Rossi puts it, "loot is the carrot; not getting loot is the stick." Open country vs. mapped road -- where do you stand? Do you prefer plotting your path to purple glory with gear that lies reliably in your path, or do you wish there were a little more crazy RNG splashed into the mix? Should the mix of gear acquisition methods balance differently in different areas of the game, and if so, do you think the game already does so with success? And most importantly, how has the mix of predictable vs. unpredictable gear upgrades worked out for you?
What's the purpose of a heroic dungeon?
One of the more volatile announcements that we've heard so far from Blizzard regarding Mists of Pandaria is the fact that Mists will not include any more 5-man dungeons. In an expansion where new content seems to be rolling out on a much faster, tighter basis than any expansion prior this seems a little bizarre to players, particularly those that enjoy dungeon-based content. Yet one of the things Mists has been doing consistently throughout the expansion is delivering a wider array of things to do. In fact, there's such a variety in endgame content that players sometimes feel legitimately overwhelmed by the sheer amount of it. But just because we aren't getting any new dungeons doesn't mean we aren't getting alternate ways to obtain all that sweet, sweet gear we know and love. Patch 5.3 will see the introduction of heroic scenarios, slightly tougher versions of the scenarios we've already seen this expansion. In addition to valor, the heroic scenarios will offer raid-finder level rewards for players that choose to participate in them -- better than any gear you'll find in a heroic dungeon at this point. While this may seem pretty cool for some people, it does make one wonder -- what's the purpose of heroic dungeons?
25-mans have higher Thunderforged drop rate than 10-mans
The new Thunderforged loot designation -- much like the affix Raid Finder -- was introduced into Patch 5.2 for a number of reasons by Blizzard. While the affix does stay certain pieces from disenchantable execution on farm bosses, players largely regarded Thunderforged items as another attempt to help 25-man raiding guilds stay afloat. The developers didn't want to go back to late Wrath of the Lich King model of completely higher loot in 25mans, so instead Thunderforged items can drop in both sized raids. However, the drop rate in 25-mans would be higher than that of 10-mans. "How frequent is more frequent?" players would ask, especially when given the chance to chat with the developers about patch 5.2. Ghostcrawler deflected the question on TotemSpot's interview, preferring to let players figure out the drop rates themselves. Fortunately for us, WoWProgress has analyzed the loot drops using its database of characters, guilds, and bosses killed this first week of Patch 5.2. Looking at loot gains from Jin'rokh the Breaker, specifically: 11.7% of the 10-man loot equipped by characters was Thunderforged 25.7% of the 25-man loot equipped by characters was Thunderforged Even figuring in disenchanted items, WoWProgress figures the drop rates to be approximately 10% for 10-man and 25% for 25-man. From personal anecdote, my 25-man raiding guild saw usually one but sometimes two Thunderforged drops per boss in addition to four to five regular mode drops. Tier pieces, of course, will never drop as Thunderforged. Mists of Pandaria is here! The level cap has been raised to 90, many players have returned to Azeroth, and pet battles are taking the world by storm. Keep an eye out for all of the latest news, and check out our comprehensive guide to Mists of Pandaria for everything you'll ever need to know.
The Daily Grind: Can crafted gear coexist with loot drops?
Recently we asked whether you prefer RNG or tokens when it comes to MMORPG loot. There's a third option, though, and that option is player-crafted gear. Games that focus on crafted materials over loot have fallen out of favor in recent years, but they may see something resembling a comeback thanks to the new generation of sandboxes and sandparks currently in development. So, assuming that you don't curl into the fetal position at the thought of needing player-crafted gear, do you think it's possible for it to coexist with loot drops or are the two mutually exclusive in your ideal MMORPG? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
The Daily Grind: Is loot better with an RNG or token system?
Oh the random number generator, how we love to hate thee. And yet you're so very addictive; with the roll of some virtual dice, we could win big-time on any given kill. Sure, you're often very stingy, but that makes the payoff so much more sweet. With MMOs, the house doesn't win if you play long enough -- you do. Then again, there's the "sure bet" of tokens. Maybe we won't have a shot at uber-loot for every kill, but slowly and surely we can collect enough currency to barter for what we do want. Token systems are the assurance of eventual payouts. Which do you prefer when it comes to acquiring gear in MMOs -- the random number generator or tokens? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
Gear up in 5.2 with these awesome guides
The release of a new raid tier means new challenges to face, new bosses to crush, and of course, new loot to covet. If you weren't already familiar with it, Wowhead user Hhalle567 has a brilliant guide to the PvE gear of Mists of Pandaria, including tier 15 iLevel 522 drops. You can sort by slot, boss, class, and spec so that you know exactly what you're looking for -- and where to use a Mogu Rune of Fate. Note that the guide doesn't yet seem to include all the loot from world bosses Oondasta and Nalak. Oondasta, at least, is known to drop items that are unobtainable in the Throne of Thunder itself. Until those bosses get added in, you can check out other Wowhead guides for the missing pieces. Hats off to Hhalle567 and Perculia for these great references!
Oondasta has the best loot table in the entire universe
Therapsid Scale Gloves. With this one drop, Blizzard has found a way to get me to level my shaman again. This and much, much more have been found by the fine folks at Wowhead on the mighty Oondasta's loot table, much of which has similarly interesting names. There's the Overcompensating Chain of the Alpha Male, the Carnotaur Battlegloves, the Breastplate of the Iguanocolossus and more. There's also the Reins of the Cobalt Primordial Direhorn, for those of us who like riding in style. If you know me, you know I love all things paleontological, but especially therapsids. I'm so excited that I would go camp Oondasta right now if I could. Well, okay, I would badger my guild to go camp him. So go over to Wowhead and check out the full list of Oondasta's goodies. Mists of Pandaria is here! The level cap has been raised to 90, many players have returned to Azeroth, and pet battles are taking the world by storm. Keep an eye out for all of the latest news, and check out our comprehensive guide to Mists of Pandaria for everything you'll ever need to know.
LOTRO's Update 10 revamps loot systems and gear set bonuses
Lord of the Rings Online is getting some pretty major itemization updates with Update 10. Specifically, the patch will be affecting the loot in scaling instances and the way set bonuses work. Bosses in three- and six-player spaces will have a chance to drop equipment, and raids will have equipment hooked up to each boss chest. Challenge modes will now come with a complimentary challenge chest. Moreover, the types of gear you'll find have been massaged a bit: Instance clusters will focus on a handful of gear types, so a DPS character will likely be running different instances than a tank in order to grab the appropriate gear. Players will be able to mix and match their set bonuses more after the update. Sets will have either stat bonuses or skill modifying effects, in contrast to the recent trend to have sets that do both. Additionally, skill-modifying effects will on the two- and four-set bonuses, giving players more customization options. As a final treat, each class will have access to two new Erebor sets for all three of their trait lines.
Guild Wars 2's February update gives players a bit more loot
Guild Wars 2 might sell itself as not being a loot-focused game, but let's face it: No one wants to pound on a giant for five straight minutes without getting a new sword. So players were more than a little annoyed when exactly that was happening. After extensive investigation, director Colin Johanson posted to the forums confirming that the team believes it's found the problem and will be fixing it with the large patch later this month. The short version is that the game has a set of criteria to determine whether or not a player gets credit for killing an enemy and whether or not said player gets loot. Unfortunately, the conditions for getting loot from a target, especially high-health targets like most Champions, were extremely restrictive and could easily result in players deserving of loot winding up empty-handed. The next major patch will correct this issue, with better criteria for determining loot drops and an assured blue drop from any Champion killed.
