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World of Warcraft opens the doors of Highmaul
The raid cycle of World of Warcraft's endgame begins anew today with the advent of Highmaul. While this raid did not go live with Warlords of Draenor's release, Blizzard is now opening the doors a crack to let in players for their first taste of epic combat. Highmaul is a seven-boss raid, although only two of those bosses are mandatory for players to down (but c'mon, only cowards tiptoe by the big baddies). Even though the raid is open for business today, it will feature only normal and heroic difficulties and will not be listed on the raid finder. In the coming weeks, mythic difficulty and raid finder functionality will be added to the instance.
Molten Core LFR may test your patience, but look at this mount
WoW's 10th anniversary celebration started today, and with it came what is now my favorite mount in the game. This Core Hound one of those mounts you have to see to believe. There's something incredibly cool about stomping around on one of these bad boys, especially with my matching hunter pet and battle pet in tow. I also snagged a ilvl 640 epic helm out of it. Everyone who kills Ragnaros will be guaranteed the helm and the mount. The rest of the bosses simply drop gold for everyone (around 25g each) which should hopefully pay for the repair bill you will rack up doing this right now. In order to queue for Molten Core LFR you must have an item level of at least 615. If you're not level 100 yet, don't fret. This event is ongoing until January 5, 2015 and I suspect many will continue to farm it for chances at Hatespark the Tiny and Flames of Ragnaros, both of which are not guaranteed drops. I'll admit that when I first went in, I expected this to be a complete pushover. However, I forgot how hard it is to organize a group of 40 people. Almost everyone inside is just barely making the ilvl 615 requirement to boot. People are used to soloing this for transmog gear and it can result in many wipes. It took my group nearly 2 hours to clear the whole raid. My first group didn't even make it past the first boss.
Warlords of Draenor: LFR gear to have unique set bonuses
Traditional class tier sets will no longer be available in LFR difficulty in Warlords of Draenor. You'll need to run normal, heroic, or mythic to get your hands on tier 17 gear. That doesn't mean LFR-exclusive raiders will be entirely without set bonuses. In the latest beta build, Blizzard has added some new set bonuses which are exclusive to LFR gear. These bonuses are not class specific, but are instead armor class and role specific. For example, enhancement shamans and hunters share the same set bonuses. Like traditional armor sets, there are 2-piece and 4-piece bonuses. The 2-piece bonuses are all simple stat increases, but the 4-piece bonuses are a little more interesting. All of the LFR set items are item level 655, which is slightly higher than non-set LFR loot. These armor sets also have different artwork from the class tier sets. You can view the artwork by using Wowhead's model viewer at the below links: Cloth: Ebonflame Raiment Leather: Sootfur Garb Mail: Ashlink Armor Plate: Blacksteel Battleplate After the break we've also got the full list of set bonuses.
Do certain roles encourage bad behavior?
I still like tanking and healing more than anything else in the game, but they have their deficiencies while you're trying to smash Hexos into a well-deserved stain on the floor. In order to finish off Brawler's Guild achievements, I went DPS for the first time in 6 years and then thought, "This is actually kind of fun. Let's try some LFR and see what this puppy does in a raid." In a matter of days, I and my hapless raid-mates encountered the following: A tank who RP-walked to everything. (Spoils took forever.) A tank who posted the meters after each trash pull and boss to make fun of the least well-geared DPS. Tanks who couldn't be persuaded to kill the blademasters in Gates of Retributon, trapping the entire raid in perma-combat. Tanks who kept taunting Thok back and forth to alternately breathe on or tail-swipe the raid. Notice a pattern?
LFR, Warlords of Draenor, and you
I've been thinking about the changes coming to LFR ever since yesterday's big post about raiding in Warlords. One of the things that seems really clear about the changes is that LFR is now seen as part of a progression path for raiding - at least some players are expected to go from LFR to normal raiding in the expansion. With the removal of shared set bonuses and even tier gear from LFR being entirely gone, LFR feels to a degree like it's being downshifted in difficulty and placed in a different position for player use than how it is currently employed. Right now, for many players, LFR is their raiding. They don't run flex or normal, much less heroic. And with dungeons basically only for valor farming, LFR has become an important part of people's endgame. The idea of making LFR a stepping stone to normal raiding via the incoming group finder is interesting to me. Since you won't be able to get tier gear, or scaled down versions of the same loot as in normal/heroic/mythic, LFR feels like it will simultaneously have less and more importance. The effort to elevate dungeons to a much more prominent role in endgame (especially challenge modes, which will actually reward gear) and make it so players have an incentive to try and make the jump from LFR to normal/heroic raids. It's an interesting shift in priorities, but what will it mean for players who currently use LFR as their endgame?
Raid design evolution and Warlords of Draenor
Blizzard has posted parts one and two of a series of Dev Watercoolers, discussing raid design over the course of World of Warcraft. Now part three is live, highlighting and explaining where raiding is going in Warlords of Draenor. The post covers new systems like the Group Finder (basically integrating the OQueue style functionality), buffs to LFR, explains the new Mythic difficulty and flexible group system for normal/heroic, and discusses how raid lockouts will work in Warlords, with each raiding difficulty (Raid Finder, Normal, Heroic and Mythic) having its own lockout, and how valor points will be scaled back to prevent players feeling like they have to clear each raid difficulty each week. If you raid, you should probably check it out. The full text is reproduced behind the break.
Raid design evolution from Cataclysm to now
Yesterday Lead Game Designer Ion "Watcher" Hazzikostas published a fascinating Dev Watercooler blog that discussed the history and evolution of raid design in World of Warcraft. That article was part one of a three-part series, and looked into the way that raiding developed from WoW's original release through to Wrath of the Lich King. In part two, published today, Watcher discusses the ways raid design has changed, and stayed the same, through Cataclysm and Mists of Pandaria. The article focuses primarily on difficulty levels and raiding. Watcher discusses in detail the problems inherent in the "10-man is easier, 25-man is harder" approach, as well as the ways that making 10- and 25-man raiding more equivalent in difficulty led to new problems that hadn't existed before. From there we learn about the origin of both the LFR and Flex raiding options from the perspective of how different raiding difficulties serve different portions of the WoW player population. If you've ever wondered about the thought processes that went into developing the different types of raid systems we see in the game today, this is an excellent article on exactly that. Check out the full blue post after the break.
The Daily Grind: Have you made any friends via groupfinder mechanics?
Raid finders, dungeon finders, and various LFG mechanics are becoming a modern MMO staple, but apart from throwing together five or six strangers and hustling them through a piece of content, they don't strike me as being particularly social. I do use them to clear content I otherwise can't do, of course, but whenever I've attempted small talk I've been met with indifference. On one occasion I even got some outright hostility! "Less talking, more DPS," was the family-friendly gist of it. What about you, Massively readers? Have you made any MMO friends via group finder mechanics, or are they simply a means to an end? [Image source: EQ2Wire] 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!
Warlords of Draenor: Proving Grounds will be required for Heroic Dungeon random queues
Ion "Watcher" Hazzikostas, the Lead Encounter Designer for World of Warcraft, has already told us that proving grounds will be updated for Warlords of Draenor. In a move that helps explain why, he dropped some late night news yesterday in the form of dungeon progression information. In short, if you want to join the dungeon finder queue for level 100 heroic dungeons, you will need to get a silver medal in the proving grounds for the role you want to queue for. That means if you want to heal, your DPS silver medal isn't good enough. You'll need to go back and get it for healing as well. This applies only to the random queue. If you're going straight in with friends, no medal is required. Normal dungeons will not require any proving grounds experience at all, and normal dungeon and scenario gear should be enough to let you queue for the raid finder.
Oops, I queued as tank again
I've tanked a few LFR's lately. The thing is, I didn't mean to. I don't mean I pulled aggro. I mean that when I queued, I forgot that I had tank selected alongside DPS. I do this in five man heroics I'm running for justice points as well. When I find myself selected to tank the dungeon (often only noticing after I get in and no one else is the tank) I usually shrug and put on my tank set and do it. It's not the group's fault I keep forgetting to uncheck that box, after all. And there's a bit of an up side. The other day my wife and I were talking in game and I said "I think I'm going to ride my blue dragonhawk" which surprised her, because I am not a mount collector. "Wait, you have a blue dragonhawk?" Well, yes I do, and I can thank forgetting to uncheck that tanking box for it. I'm under the impression that I'm fairly rare in this regard. I don't know how true that is, because I've really only talked to a few people about it, and some of them don't play hybrids, so there is no other box for them to check. I'm sure all the warlocks I know would select tank if they could, for instance. But at least some folks seem to do this from time to time. Being an opinionated cuss, I have some thoughts on this whole phenomenon I'd like to share.
Tanks, healers, and the most dangerous LFR bosses
Recently I wrote a small article wondering whether the fabled Monday night Raid Finder festival of ugly death was just an urban legend. Opinions in the comment section were mixed, so I wanted to do a little ingame research to figure out whether the conventional wisdom was right and Mondays are an unusually deadly day for LFR runs. While I'm nowhere close to being done with that little project, my first venture into the numbers in Siege of Orgrimmar and the Raid Finder did turn up some interesting results with my characters. The deadliest Raid Finder boss of tier 16 was not who I thought it was, the safest Raid Finder boss was really not who I thought it was, and there are some eye-raising numbers on the fights where a well-geared tank or healer was disproportionately likely to swing the odds in the raid's favor. Also, the Gates of Retribution wing sucks. But you knew that already.
The dangers of Monday night LFR
After my guild finished raid on Monday, we voted to do the fourth wing of Siege of Orgrimmar in flex for another shot at Garrosh's heirlooms. Before queuing for flex, people took a break to let their dogs out, get something to drink, or jump on alts to do their farming. My fellow tank hopped to his alt warrior and wondered aloud over the wisdom of doing an LFR on him later that night. "Don't do it," was the universal consensus. "Monday night LFR is just asking for trouble. The only winning move is not to play." That got me thinking about the weirder aspects of the game's culture, in which a single day and a raid lockout divides an alleged nightmare (Raid Finder on Mondays) from a safe bet (Raid Finder on Tuesdays). The usual story is that people run their better-geared mains through Raid Finder soon after the weekly lockout finishes, but come Sunday and Monday they're running their less-geared alts, and usually on classes with which they're less familiar. There's got to be more to it than this, but it's a narrative that most players are probably aware of by now. Out of morbid curiosity, I've occasionally taken my main or alt shaman through Sunday and Monday LFRs but can't say I've noticed a massive difference. There are definitely more times late in the week where I've zoned into a squabbling raid with a two-stack of Determination, but most runs are fairly uneventful. However, one player's experiences are rarely representative, and your own gear and experience play a role as well. A well-geared toon, especially if it's a tank or healer, is at least marginally more likely to contribute a successful raid, and vice versa. I'm tempted to do a series of LFRs and measure overall raid DPS and number of deaths by day. I'm genuinely curious whether the conventional wisdom is right, and late-week Raid Finders are more likely to encounter trouble than their early-week counterparts.
Warlords of Draenor: Flex, Group Finder and Raid Finder's roles
Blizzard Community Manager Lore has been posting about the future roles of Flex, the new Group Finder, and Raid Finder in Warlords of Draenor. You can, as usual, see Lore's full post after the break, but what he's talking about is how, thanks to the success of Flex as a raid system and the resultant awkward position of LFR, a reshuffle needs to happen. LFR has been wearing too many hats. It's been end-game progression for some, a gear grind for others, and a way to see the sights of a raid for even more, as well as everything in between. That's a hard act for one difficulty, that is simultaneously too hard and too easy. But thanks to the runaway success of Flex, due in no small part to group-finding systems like OpenRaid or oQueue, the devs think they can make some changes to the tuning of LFR. The idea, it seems, is that the new Group Finder will make it just as easy to find a Flex group as it currently is to find an LFR one. Then, LFR tuning can be altered, allowing Blizz to "better provide for both the "busy raider" and "sightseer" styles of gameplay as a result." So it seems likely that, if this remains the case (we're not even in beta after all) LFR will become the tourist difficulty. Flex via the Group Finder, and with friends, will become the new way to get meaningful progression encounters. And that makes sense, given how it'll be renamed to "Normal" come WoD. Hit the break for Lore's full post.
Weekly news roundup with Panser of TradeChat
Panser of TradeChat is back with this week's WoW Insider Weekly News Recap. We take a look at last week's most interesting news and tidbits of information including WoW's 9th anniversary and some new features available on the PTR such as cross-realm mailing. The full list of topics covered this week include: World of Warcraft turns 9 Enchanted Fey Dragon and Alterac Brew Pup Karazhan lore Karazhan revamp Cross-server mail for account-bound items Improved raid finder Blizzard's answer to oQueue If you like the show, make sure to subscribe to TradeChat, leave comments, and tune in next week for a new episode!
Patch 5.4.2: Blizzard's answer to oQueue enters testing [Updated]
It was announced at BlizzCon that Blizzard would be launching a revamped raid finding system, potentially in response to oQueue's huge popularity in finding groups for Flex and for things like the Celestial bosses required for the Legendary cloak. Lead Encounter Designer Ion "Watcher" Hazzikostas has posted today about the first tentative steps towards realizing this goal launch of said group finder, namely a rework of the existing Raid Finding tool. The one you haven't ever used. His full posts are, as ever, after the break. At first, it will just work for Flex raids and World Bosses, meaning that it won't oust oQueue from the game, but it seems likely that Blizzard will expand this technology to the new raids and perhaps even to PvP in 6.0. Right now, on the PTR, there have not been a lot of changes to the existing system. It's still really hard to find -- open up your social pane, then go over to raid, then go to Other Raids, then select the raids you want to do. Celestials, Ordos and Flex are all cross-realm, but the others are not. Hit the break for Ion's full posts.
Breakfast Topic: Does LFR impact raid design?
A few days ago, the player Camaranth started a thread on the tank forums examining the number of tank swap mechanics in raids. While the discussion is a good one, there's a reply written by Snuzzle not far down the thread with an interesting observation. "I think the reason we are seeing so many encounters designed with tank swaps in Mists," he/she writes, "is that fights are being designed with Raid Finder in mind ... They need both tanks to have a job to do. Tank swaps are the way to do that (because) most everyone can instantly understand (them)." LFR might not be the only reason for that, but I think Snuzzle has a point. Encounters have to be programmed with the knowledge that Raid Finder groups will always have two tanks, 6 healers, and 17 DPS, no guarantees on class composition, and the knowledge that coordination will realistically be minimal. I don't think it necessarily reflects on the skill of the players concerned so much as the inherent disorganization. Under the circumstances, it would be extremely difficult to program an encounter like, say, Kael'thas or Teron Gorefiend or High King Maulgar, and have it remain somewhat close to the normal and heroic versions. I don't know whether LFR actually does have a serious impact on raid design, but it's certainly an interesting question. In related news, the LFR version of Siege of Orgrimmar was nerfed recently for reasons I think all of us can guess.
World of Warcraft's 5.4 trailer features Orc on Panda violence, boats
It's been a long road for the Alliance and Horde, the perennially at-war factions that fuel much of World of Warcraft's lore (and PvP). Over the last few years, players waved the Alliance or Horde banner as they conquered old gods, dispatched massive dragons, toppled titans, and even crushed a walking constellation. But perhaps none of those battles will compare to the final showdown with the power-thirsty madmanorc Garrosh Hellscream, who seems to have angered pretty much everyone on both sides of the fence with his latest plans for world domination. Mists of Pandaria's patch 5.4, titled Siege of Ogrimmar, is almost here. With it comes new content, flexible raiding, a solo pet battle scenario, proving grounds, and one more raid to clear featuring the final showdown between Hellscream and those who would challenge him. Blizzard marked the approaching cataclysm (get it!?) with an all-new trailer, which you can watch after the break.
Breakfast Topic: Love 'em or hate 'em, do you use random group tools?
Buried beneath proclamations of love or hate for WoW's group and raid finding tools lurks a common contradiction I find most players don't like to discuss: Do they use or not use these features despite their feelings? I'm a put-your-money-where-your-mouth-is kind of person, so when I hear players fuming that they believe random group tools have played a large role in the downfall of realm communities (a common line of thinking among players who are not fans of the dungeon finder and raid finder), I often wonder if they then turn around and use the very tool they rail against. There's a simple solution to this sort of conundrum, I've found –- a reader poll! %Poll-83600% Why do you use or not use the group finder and the raid finder? If you don't use these features, do you run with guildmates or friends instead, or do you avoid groups and raiding altogether?
Patch 5.4 PTR: First Raid Finder wing of Siege of Orgrimmar Available
Patch 5.4's Siege of Orgrimmar is available for testing on the PTR raid finder for the weekend of July 19 - 22. If you're looking for something to do this weekend, why not head over to the PTR and check it out? The first part of Siege of Orgrimmar involves the first four bosses. This is another big indicator of how close we're getting to a patch 5.4 drop on live servers. Perhaps another month and a half or two? Vale of Eternal Sorrows (Part 1) Immerseus The Fallen Protectors Norushen Sha of Pride Weekend LFR Testing - July 19-22 The first LFR wing of the Siege of Orgrimmar raid is currently open for testing, and will likely remain so throughout the weekend. Please feel free to check it out and share your feedback. source
Flexible Raids come to World of Warcraft with patch 5.4
In the olden days of World of Warcraft, it took 40 dedicated people to down some of the game's toughest content. It wasn't easy to keep a guild stocked with the necessary number of people to make these raids possible, and Blizzard reduced raid sizes to 10- and 25-man encounters starting with the Burning Crusade expansion in the hopes of making raiding more accessible for smaller guilds and raid leaders working with busy real-life humans. It is with this same accessibility in mind that Blizzard has just announced Flexible Raids, a new form of raid content that will debut with the game's upcoming 5.4 patch. In the simplest terms, these raids automatically adjust their difficulty based on how many players are present, supporting any number between 10 and 25. The difficulty resets week-to-week; if 22 people come one week and 13 the next, the new raiders won't be locked into last week's numbers. A new tier of item that falls between the Raid Finder and Normal difficulties is being introduced for Flexible Raiders, and Flexible Raid lockouts will be separate from those of Normal and Heroic attempts. Blizzard has also promised additional rewards for those who participate in Flexible, Normal, and Heroic raids -- rewards that will be unavailable to Raid Finder groups. Flexible Raiding will be made available piece by piece as Blizzard tweaks the formula. It should be launching on the test realm Soon™.
