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Goblinworks illuminates Pathfinder's spellcasting system
Thinking about becoming a Wizard or Sorcerer in Pathfinder Online? It's not going to be like rolling a mage in another MMO, where you'll instantly have access to infinite firebolt and ice shard spells that are conveniently located on your hotbar. No, it's going to be complex and deep because this is Pathfinder and that is what Pathfinder does. In a new dev blog, Designer Stephen Cheney spells out (har) the approach the team is currently taking with arcane casters (i.e., Wizards and Sorcerers). While these classes will get a huge reservoir of basic cantrips to fling out during normal combat, their actual spells will be difficult to acquire, powerful to perform, and limited in number of uses. Cheney talks about how wizards will put together spellbooks, why it's important to have a pouch full of spell components, and what keywords you're going to want to collect in order to build the type of caster you envision. It's a lengthy read, but as a wizard apprentice, you're already used to that, aren't you? [Thanks to Matixzun for the tip!]
The Daily Grind: What's your favorite long-cooldown skill?
In Guild Wars 2, one of my favorite skills to use is the ability to unleash a cranky mechanical golem upon my foes. It only lasts for 40 seconds and has (I think) an 180-second cooldown, which means I don't get to use it as often as I'd like. However, it always makes me absurdly happy to pull it out, and I wonder if the long cooldown is one of the reasons I appreciate it so much. It's pretty common for developers to balance powerful skills with a lengthy cooldown, leaving the choice up to the player as to when and where it's best to unleash hell. It's not uncommon to be in a dungeon run and have the leader instruct players to pop their cooldowns on difficult fights; sometimes that long-cooldown skill is what makes the difference between victory and defeat. So what's your favorite long-cooldown skill? When do you tend to use it? 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!
PBS draws link between digital music ethics and magic spells, somehow makes it look simple (video)
AAC files and the arcane don't have much in common on the surface. After some digging, however, PBS' Idea Channel has found that magic is an uncannily good analogy for digital music rights and explaining the thorny ethical issues that come with them. Both music and spells stem from grassroots cultures that give away their content for free, but (at least until an anti-magic clampdown at eBay) have since become businesses. That nature poses a key ethical question: when we're used to a free experience and can copy songs or spells as much as we like, what does it take to keep us as honest customers? As show host Mike Rugnetta suggests, it's a matter of personal responsibility -- if we want more of either, we have to think of the commerce as showing support for future work. You can catch Mike's clever train of thought after the break, and ponder what constitutes DRM for a potion while you're at it.
Breakfast Topic: What WoW spell would you most like in real life?
We recently tackled the Blog Azeroth Shared Topic: What spell would you most want? The question was meant for your class in game, but reader Andrew wanted it to be about having spells in the physical world. So here we are. For my part, my answer would be exactly the same: Zen Flight. This minor monk glyph won't be released until Mists of Pandaria, so you can't find it in game yet. But you can see my monk Krikkit above being all zen-like in the beta. Wouldn't it be great to float in line at the grocery store, looking all relaxed and glowy? Sure, people would look at me funny, but they do that already -- I have shocking pink hair. Oooh the Zen Flight colors would look great with pink, wouldn't they? Hmmm ... maybe a bit too 80s. Anyway, I could use it everywhere. Waiting for mass transit? Yes. Crossing the street? Yes. Disneyland? Yes, please. What spell would you most want in the physical world and why?
Incantor brings World of Warcraft to real life (hands-on)
There's plenty of cool stuff to see on the floor of this year's TechCrunch Disrupt, but nothing's likely quite so eye-catching as Incantor, a mobile game that utilizes your smartphone and, naturally, a magic wand, to bring fantasy-style action to the real world -- or as the game's creators put it, to "bring World of Warcraft to real life." The wand speaks to your handset via Bluetooth, detecting your gestures and generating "spells." Hold your phone in portrait, and you'll get personal information, including your character level, spell bag, etc. Flip it to landscape, and you'll get a Google Map overlay, showing you other players in your area. There are 13 different game play modes in all, and you can play as a group or solo. Moveable Code was only showing off one wand at the show, but the company expects to make 10 available in all, representing different classes. Interested parties can find out more at the Kickstarter link in the source below. Beta testing will begin in early Q4, with widespread availability coming by year's end. The wand, which offers up feedback based on gameplay (including interactions with other players), should run you around $60 when it hits the market. You can play the game sans phone, but we're told its not quite as fun. Either way, sparring, quests and games capture the flag should get people outside a bit more than PC-based MMORPGs. Sunscreen, however, is not included. Check out a video of Incantor's creators demonstrating the game after the break.%Gallery-155977%
Warlock green fire spells spotted in MoP beta files
Green fire is coming, again! Maybe. Side effects of speculation may vary. Not only has the Codex shown up in recent datamining, but curiously also warlock spells with green fire as icons. Conflagrate, Fel Hellfire, Rain of Chaos, and Fel Immolate all have minimal descriptions and could very well be just creature or boss spells. But Fel Incinerate gives me hope, for it has not only the range and cast time, but the base mana that the real warlock Incinerate does. What boss would need to know the base mana cost, hmm? After the original flurry of excitement, Wryxian noted in the subsequent denial of green fire implementation that the devs wanted green fire "to be an epic accomplishment" for players. With the beta appearance of The Legacy of the Masters (Part 1), players are speculating among other things about a Quel'Delar-like quest line again. In the end, nothing might happen and green fire will stay unfulfilled on our warlock wish lists. But I for one haven't been so excited since I got my Dreadsteed the old way. 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!
ArcheAge caster class detailed
AAportal has published another review of the recently concluded ArcheAge CBT3 event, this time focusing on the game's Mage class. The reviewer leveled his Mage to 21 and came away with a better understanding of the pre-defined spell schools (in this case illusion, death, and magic) as well as the corresponding special abilities. While most MMO mages are on the squishy side, we suspect that ArcheAge will buck that trend a bit, given the reviewer's observations that his Mage had a lot of hitpoints as well as a significant shield buff. Offense is, of course, the Mage's raison d'etre, and ArcheAge casters apparently pack a wallop (as well as two- to three- second cast times). It's not all wham-spam-thank-you-ma'am, though, as there is some strategy involved. Read all about it at AAportal, and check out the gameplay video after the cut.
The Queue: You can't take Spell Power away from me
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com's daily Q&A column where the WoW.com team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Adam Holisky will be your host today. There's a great question about the mechanics of spell casting when a proc / buff is or is not active. It's a very fine point that most people don't consider, and it's a mechanic that has been reiterated by Ghostcrawler and company recently. Take a few minutes to read it, you'll be glad you did.Today's reading music is Frank Sinatra and Natalie Cole singing They Can't Take That Away From Me.I love the way we dance 'till three.Mortur asked... "Now that the Battle.net conversion has been released for a while and bugs have been being dealt with, do you feel that there is much reason anymore for holding off on converting your account to Battle.net? Have the authentication issues after a patch been going away?"
Phat Loot Phriday: Black Ice
Today's item comes to us from the wild and strange land of Twitter, where Jezriyah suggested this might be the prettiest item in the game. Maybe -- but only if you don't count characters, as my Night Elf Hunter is pretty hot. Also, if you're not following WoW Insider on Twitter yet, now's the chance to do so -- you get to suggest items like this!Name: Black Ice (Wowhead, Thottbot, Wowdigger)Type: Epic PolearmDamage/Speed: 570 - 856 / 3.50 (203.7 DPS)Attributes: +108 Agility, +88 Stamina 2084 Feral Attack Power, if you're into that sort of thing, and you probably are -- this is one of the best cat DPS weapons for Feral Druids %Gallery-33600%
Spiritual Guidance: 4 different ways to diagnose your healer
Every Sunday (usually), Spiritual Guidance will offer practical insight for priests of the holy profession. Your host is Matt Low, the grand poobah of World of Matticus and a founder of PlusHeal, a new healing community for all restorative classes. Today Matticus checks out common problems healers run into that stall them from being effective. Every healer in their life time will experience a situation gone bad where they try to figure out what went wrong. It usually goes something like this: "What's the problem?" "Lack of heals." "Okay, more heals please!" If I had a copper every time I heard that phrase, I would have enough for a mammoth by now. After every wipe or death, the first person that gets blamed is the healer. Big props to all of you right now no matter what class you are for sticking through it and helping your friends, guilds and raids out. I know I put up with a lot of stuff when crap hits the fan.
Spiritual Guidance: What each type of Priest can do and arena musings
Every Sunday (usually), Spiritual Guidance will offer practical insight for priests of the holy profession. Your host is Matt Low, the grand poobah of World of Matticus and a founder of PlusHeal, a new healing community for all restorative classes. This week, Matticus looks at what a Priest can do and reflects on his experience so far in arena. I managed to get myself into a pickup heroic Naxx group the other day. No, it wasn't on my Priest. The Priest is my baby and I can't lock him into such raids while we're still raiding. It was my Shaman that I took into heroic Naxx. After Flame Shocking and Lava Bursting my way through both Spider and Plague Wings and the first two bosses of the Military Quarter, we came across the Four Horsemen. (Yes, there is a point to this, keep reading!)
Blizzard misspells "Arthus" in Wrath's box
In the product catalog that comes with Wrath of the Lich King, Blizzard misspells Arthas as "Arthus" on page six. It's pictured above for those of you not digging through your stuff to grab the catalog and see for yourself.I'm not going to criticize the folks at Blizzard for making a spelling mistake. God only knows that I've made a number of them myself. But usually I do them without an editor or reviewer. But that's just me. I don't know enough about the situation at Blizzard to really comment otherwise.None the less there it is, and you're free to make whatever assumptions you may make about it.Thanks to Knuxx and Taeous for the picture and tip.
New EQ2 abilities for levels 71 to 80
TenTonHammer has updated their list of Everquest II spells to include new abilities that will be earned along the way to level 80. Each of the game's 24 classes has a full list of skills, and if you scroll to the bottom, you will be able to see what's in store for your character when Rise of Kunark is released. Some of these spells will undoubtedly just be upgrades to existing lines, but there are some new ones in there too, so poke around your class list and find out which levels you should be particularly excited about. You may also notice that the spell-list page includes a link to the racial traditions in EQ2, however, the information for the new Sarnak race has not yet been added. We plan to put up some details ourselves about the Sarnak's racials, so check back later for that, as well as other RoK coverage prior to launch.
Chronicles of Spellborn CM interview
We haven't heard much here at Massively about The Chronicles of Spellborn, but what we have heard has been interesting. It's definitely a lesser-known MMORPG, and doesn't have the promotional power of Warhammer or some other MMOs currently in beta, but the dev team over there is definitely throwing around some interesting ideas. Want to play a fantasy MMO where gear doesn't matter, or where player skill is supposed to trump dicerolls? Then if this interview over at TenTonHammer is any indication, Spellborn might be your new favorite upcoming game.TTH talks with Community Manager Pierre-Yves Deslandes about a game that seems to be aiming to break every MMO convention out there. Gear has no stats on it, so you can wear whatever you like anytime you want. Skills are layered, and meant to be used in conjunction with combos. And there is no auto-lock-- while Deslandes strays away from the "twitch" idea, they instead want to call it "focus." Instead of mindlessly clicking, you've got to be involved in the game.Not all of it sounds completely new-- NPCs still give quests, and their big innovation in that area is that it's a book floating over their head rather than an exclamation mark. But Spellborn might be an interesting outing, especially if you're looking for something new in MMORPGs.
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Breakfast Topic: What one buff would you give your class?
Dolarhyde of the Boulderfist server posed a simple, but interesting question on the official forums today: what one buff would you give your class? The reason I almost always choose druids in the multitude of MMORPGs I play has less to do with RP and more to do with versatility. I love hybrid classes, especially the more offensive ones that can still heal (hello shammie alt!) So when it comes to what's missing from my class, it's hard for me to put my finger on it. Hybrids tend to do so well, but to give them another major ability could water down other classes. Many fellow druids believe this class is missing some serious crowd control ability, though we have it in limited forms through Cyclone, Entangling Roots, Force of Nature (aka treant pets), Hibernate (beast and dragonkin only) and off tanking in bear form. I'm not sure we need a Priest level AE fear or a Rogue sap. Other players have called for more aggro tools for druids, especially Balance druids. But the class is built to survive a beating and isn't as squishy as those with better aggro management abilities.I'm stumped on what buff I would give druids, but I'm interested to see what our readers would give their own class. Let's hear it.
PTR Notes: Kill command bugged
This is a weird, weird bug. Over on the PTRs, Tig has found that every time he tells his pet to drop the Kill Command, the mob attacked also executes the spell on its target. For example, if Tig is shooting a murloc, and his pet Ganjii is in melee with that murloc, Ganjii's Kill Command will attack the murloc, and then the murloc will somehow also drop a Kill Command attack on its target (in this case Ganjii).That's a big bug, because if you move it to, say, a boss, a Hunter could drop the Kill Command on the boss while the main tank's health is low, which would cause the boss to instantly attack the main tank, in effect wiping the raid. Not cool.Hortus wonders if it's just against specific mobs, but that's the last we hear of Blue-- there's no confirmation that it's a known bug and that they're planning a fix. Of course, it is the test realm, so let's not get too excited-- chances are that by the time this big patch reaches the live servers, this won't still be happening. But if you happen to be hitting the Kill Command with your pet on the test realms, watch out for that extra attack.Thanks, Colin!
Arcane Brilliance: Armor does matter, part 2
Welcome back to another installment of Arcane Brilliance, an homage to the mages we are, and hopefully a place where we can learn a few things that will help us along the way towards becoming the mages we want to be. When we last sat down together, we went through the different types of mage armor, their stats and uses. As a result of the comments on last week's article, I tried a little variation in the use of the three armor types in my gameplay. You were right when you said that Mage Armor can actually give more punch than Molten Armor in instances; my addiction to crit was blinding me to the amazing damage that can be done when you don't run out of mana half-way through a fight. See, that's exactly what this column is all about, learning from each other how to become better mages.
Druid epic flight form is live with patch 2.1
Patch 2.1 brought many treats to the adventurers of Azeroth, but one of the sweetest is the Epic Druid Flight Form quest. Unlike its predecessor, Flight Form, this ability isn't handed out to every high level shape shifter with the appropriate riding skill. The quest to fly at epic speed is long and complex. Revered reputation grinding, Heroic instance running, escort quests, exploding foliage and much more await the intrepid druid. Oh, and they have to pay the 5000g riding skill upgrade before they can even start the quest. When they finish, druids not only get the Swift Flight Form ability, but also a relic that works for any druid spec: Idol of the Raven Goddess - Increases the healing granted by the Tree of Life form aura by 20, adds 9 critical strike rating to the Leader of the Pack aura, and adds 9 spell critical strike rating to the Moonkin form aura.An excellent walkthrough, Wiki style, can be found here at the Servants of Seagis guild site.EDIT: Another reward received in the quest chain: Charm of Swift Flight, Trinket, Equip: Increases speed in Flight Form and Swift Flight Form by 10%. Thanks to Felixia from the Uldum Server for the heads up!
I have portals, I know things
The other day I was helping a guildie with their mage as they reached 20. Thus began the long journey to collect teleportation training from around Azeroth. Something he said along the way stuck with me though. He mentioned that he hardly sees people asking for portals to Darnassus now. I thought about it, and would have to agree. I seem to sell as many ports to Darnassus as I sell to the Exodar. The cities are so closely linked, it's fairly easy to hop on a boat and be anywhere on Kalimdor that you need to be. Why then the great level difference in the training? The portal to Darnassus still remains a spell you can train in at level 50, while the portal to the Exodar is a level 40 spell. This goes for the teleport spells as well, since the level for Darnassus is 30, while all the others are available at level 20. So in essence, all that bouncing around the continent starts ten levels sooner. I imagine that initially the portal to Darnassus was level 50 because it represents a greater magical achievement. You are now transporting a group across the ocean. Does the Exodar require less skill to use? You are still transporting people across the Great Sea. Wouldn't it in fact require more skill, seeing as how we have had a longer history with the Night Elves than we have with the Draenei? I am thinking that the developers might want to take a look at the level requirements for the portals. The initial level requirements seemed to support the lore. The training, as it stands currently, does not. A possible explanation is that Night Elves shun arcane magic. However, they do accept the portal trainer within their city, so this argument doesn't seem to work for me. If they let that first mage in there to create the portals in the first place, why would it be more difficult for other mages to do so? Is there some sort of other explanation that I'm missing as to why there is such a level discrepancy with both the teleport and the portal spells to Darnassus?
Breakfast Topic: Priest racials
One unique thing about the Priest class is racial spells. Every race has their own traits for all classes, like Dwarves' Stoneskin and the Undead's Cannibalize. However, Priests also have special spells that are only available to certain races (each race gets two of the racial spells). Fear Ward is probably the most infamous; it's a 10-minute duration targetable buff that absorbs one fear effect, and is available only to dwarves and draenei. This leads to the common contention that the best race to roll for an Alliance Priest is dwarf, because Fear Ward is far better than all the other racial spells. Some racials are obviously trash -- my own Priest, being a human, has Desperate Prayer, which is a free instant self-heal on a 10 minute cooldown, and Feedback, a sort of very expensive mana-burning aura. Desperate Prayer is pretty decent, but Feedback is such utter rubbish that I can't even bring myself to spend the money on training it.As you may imagine, this is perceived as a sub-optimal situation by many Priests, including this blogger. However, it's not immediately obvious what the best way to fix it is. Remove racials entirely, possibly making some of them baseline abilities trainable by all races? Keep the lower-powered racials and baseline/remove the high-powered ones? Eyonix recently said it's likely that at some point in the future, you'll see additional improvements to priest racials -- what improvements would you like to see?
