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The Nexus Telegraph: Talking tasks with WildStar's PvE
At a glance, there are far fewer problems when dealing with PvE content compared to PvP content. WildStar's PvE options are a bit better established, and besides, all you need to do is provide the enemies and a reason to fight them. It's not as if you have to deal with all of the differences that you find in PvP, after all. Toss out some dungeons, give players a daily hub, and everything will work out perfectly, right? The answer is no. Not even a little bit. Just as you need a variety of different things in PvP to serve a multitude of playstyles, you need a variety of different opportunities for PvE players. It's still a header that covers a broad field of different playstyles and preferences, and that means there are a lot of different things that the game needs to offer. Bearing in mind that we're talking about the level cap here, let's take a look at what areas the game needs to support.
Breakfast Topic: Do you play solo or in groups?
Certainly at the highest levels, WoW is designed to favor group play in dungeons, raids, and arenas. This can be a big change of pace for the new player since up to level 90, you can get through most of the game solo. But even then, players who would rather be lone wolves in a sea of group content can find new quests to work on and plenty of older content can now be solo'd for fun and challenge. In fact, my schedule means I primarily play on my own, carving out little chunks of game time here and there -- and while it's still plenty of fun, I'm not sure it's exactly the game Blizzard intended... and I definitely miss the fun of grouping with friends when my schedule doesn't match theirs. So tell us, readers, how do you game? Do you play on your own, rely on a few gaming buddies, or work with even larger groups -- be it a guild or LFR -- to conquer raid-sized content? Is your gameplay style by choice or because of limited time or difficulty scheduling with your friends?
SOE Live 2013: DCUO's Sons of Trigon DLC and beyond
Just before the events of SOE Live actually got rolling, DC Universe Online's next DLC was announced. But that little bit of foreknowledge certainly didn't mean that folks had heard everything; it was, in fact, quite the opposite. Attendees were treated to an eye-ful and earful of Sons of Trigon goodness as well as some other non-DLC 8 related tidbits. We were on the scene to catch these announcements in the various panels for you, and we also got to speak with Design Director Jesse Benjamin, Producer Larry Liberty, and Creative Director Jens Andersen to hear their thoughts on DCL 8, see a preview of the new areas, and get a hint of what's coming in the future.
The Nexus Telegraph: What WildStar isn't revealing
We now know about the last two races coming to WildStar. We don't yet know about the last two classes, but that's pretty much assured for release in the near future. (I'm betting on PAX Prime, based on nothing more than speculation.) In fact, we're getting plenty of interesting and deep reveals... as well as a few things that the developers aren't talking about, things that are mentioned in passing and then allowed to just go unaddressed. Some of this doesn't really matter one way or the other, but there are some places where these unreveals are pretty worrisome. I'm not sure how much of this comes down to limited time for reveals and how much is actually shady, but in lieu of more information, I think some questions should be asked about why we've heard nothing regarding some stuff that, logically, should have gotten its own day in the revelation sunlight.
Breakfast Topic: Would you play WoW in an offline mode?
Azeroth is filled with players who rarely interact with their fellow citizens. Perfectly content to mind their own business and their own goals, they group infrequently and socialize rarely. Sometimes their introverted ways are dictated by personal scheduling or other playstyle constraints. Often, it's a matter of personal choice. So it stands to reason that some solo players might actually prefer to play the game in a setting removed from other players –- an offline mode, so to speak. Me, I would miss the living, breathing world around me if Azeroth were offline. Even when I don't choose to group up or converse with others, I enjoy seeing other players going about their own business and watching guildchat burble across my chat box. I'll occasionally refresh a character that's been stranded on a realm my friends have moved away from, but I never last long before I drift back to a realm with friends. Would you leap at the chance to play WoW in isolation with an offline mode? What if you couldn't switch back and forth, so that once you began playing offline, that character had to stay offline?
Path of Exile introduces Descent Events
Path of Exile, despite not actually being out yet, has a reputation for holding special events that challenge its most loyal and hardcore players and offer them a slight break from the normal day-to-day of killing monsters in dungeons. They're called Signature Events, and participants receive community rewards and other perks for participating. Next week, Grinding Gear Games is set to announce the next series of events for Path of Exile players and an all-new mode known as Descent Events. Descent Events are completed alone and boast a unique array of monsters and loot. When the event ends, the characters and items are deleted. The idea to create a host of solo, standalone experiences that give players a chance to play with builds and step outside of regular Path of Exile gameplay. Descent Events will last one hour, with roughly 50 of them being scheduled for the duration of season three.
Solo the Chess Event with Tikari's Tricks of the Trade
As an obsessive a big fan of battle pets, I was looking forward to everything patch 5.3 had to offer. Tons of battle pet changes, and the slew of new pets for the Raiding With Leashes II: Attunement Edition all had me especially excited. I zipped through The Eye and Serpentshrine Cavern hunting for the new pets, and emerged victorious with one. Huzzah! But on my way to Karazhan, I realized I'd need to solo the Chess Event to get to Prince Malchezaar, who also drops a pet. I wiped a few times, but things turned around once I read through an excellent Chess Event soloing guide from WoW blogger Tikari of Tikari's Tricks of the Trade. Keep in mind that even with a great plan, the Chess Event is still plagued with RNG issues. But knowing what to expect will hopefully keep your rage at bay. Tikari lays out a simple set of moves -- with diagrams -- and priorities to give your king the best chance of surviving, which is the main goal. The event was nerfed to increase the delay between enemy moves, but keep a few tips in mind. Move your king, and queen if you can, out of the fire immediately. Fire isn't a buff! Attack the enemy king with your queen, using the Rain of Fire/Poison Cloud ability. Be sure to target the enemy king with the queen's main attack. The Clerics seem to heal the enemy king more than I remember, but I kept them distracted with other pieces. Medivh doesn't cheat as quickly as he did before, so you'll have time for about four moves before he does so the first time around. Be sure to at least give your king, ideally your queen as well, space to move. I was able to win in the end by moving backward out of fire, drawing the enemy king into it. Good luck and be sure to check out Tikari's guide for all the details!
Kill dragons solo to ride more dragons
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology, and destruction warlocks. This week, Megan O'Neill beats up internet dragons for fun, for mounts, and maybe as a little catharsis. I've already done some Raiding with Leashes vanilla raid posts. The next logical step would be Burning Crusade soloing, but I've tried and failed to make a glorified loot list more interesting to read, since BC content tends to be more "walk in and win" nowadays than an actual soloing contest. So, while I wrangle out an adventure in tiers four to six, I will talk about killing dragons solo as a warlock in order to grab dragon mounts. I'm not talking about dragons that require friends by your side to complete: e.g., Deathwing's two dragon mounts, Ultraxion's mount, completing a dragonstick, or Al'Akir's dragon drop. Al'Akir has actually been soloed before by a warlock, but you'll need friends in order to clear his genie council first. I'm talking dragons you can go beat up by yourself.
Leaderboard: Yay or nay on NPC mercenaries
I recently returned to EverQuest II, and while I'm fortunate to have an active guild already in place, true newbs may find that grouping prior to the level cap is quite challenging. The game's population is pretty top heavy, and though veteran players do roll a lot of alts (there are 25 classes to choose from!), they typically use power-leveling strategies or NPC mercenaries to solo themselves to max level. For today's Leaderboard, I'd like to focus on these NPC bots, not just in EverQuest II but as an MMO design concept in general. On the one hand, they're clearly a boon to solo players. On the other, they do discourage grouping and could possibly be seen as a detriment to newer players checking out an older game. What do you think? Vote after the cut! Ever wish that you could put to rest a long-standing MMO debate once and for all? Then welcome to the battle royal of Massively's Leaderboard, where two sides enter the pit o' judgment -- and only one leaves. Vote to make your opinion known, and see whether your choice tops the Leaderboard!
Level 80 paladin solos some Mogu'shan Vaults bosses, gets Vengeance hotfixed
A great video is making the rounds right now of an exceptional player using some unintended consequences to solo multiple bosses in Mogu'shan Vaults -- and as a protection-specced paladin no less! He apparently downed Stone Guard, Feng, and Elegon before Blizzard caught wind of the escapade. You can see a video of the Elegon kill above. How he pulled this off was by taking advantage of a series of design choices that Blizzard made, combining them all into a hilarious example of the law of unintended consequences in action. To reach a decent item level, the paladin equipped various bind on equip rares that drop in Mists zones which all had a required character level of only 80. And because he was only level 80, he was avoiding the combat ratings drop-offs for levels 81 and 86 that a normal character wearing those pieces would be subjected too. This would allow him to get an insane amount of secondary stats like haste (I've seen that he had 95%!) and mastery (88%, apparently).
Blood Pact: Speccing for old world raids
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology, and destruction warlocks. This week, Megan O'Neill harvests all the songbells ever in the search for more Imperial Silk, but slaughtering masses of Horde NPCs for reputation also works. Patch 5.1 introduced pets to the vanilla-era raids. Patch 4.3 introduced transmogrification, which brought old raids back. Before that, some players would solo or duo old raids just for the challenge giggles. Every new expansion has raised the level cap and opened another expansion to soloing. Whether you're soloing for a look, for improved familiarity with your spell toolbox, or for bragging rights, warlock is definitely a great class to jump into soloing old raids. At level 90, even before you're decked out in tier 14, most of the Wrath of the Lich King raids are fairly easy. But let's start with the basics -- speccing and playstyle.
Death knight Mionee solos Madness of Deathwing
Proving once again that there is just about nothing that can stop the former servants of the Lich King, level 90 death knight Mionee from the Auchindoun server (EU-H) has managed to solo Madness of Deathwing. Although the kill was done on 10 man difficulty it didn't really make the fight any easier -- Mionee hit the enrage timer and lived just long enough past it to happily murder the giant metal-jawed dragon seconds before taking a dirt nap of his own. Death knights have long been amazing at soloing content -- earlier this week, we featured a video of Aelobin, a level 80 death knight who soloed 25m heroic Baelroc. But it's absolutely mind-boggling to think that a player can gain a mere five levels and solo the final boss of the expansion prior, mere months after the new expansion launched. And it's even more entertaining watching a dragon being smacked around by a character who is smaller than even one of said dragon's teeth. Check out the video above for the full fight and a jaw-dropping look at the capabilities of a death knight. And just because I'm curious ... what's the hardest thing you've soloed in game, past or present day?
Level 80 Death Knight solos Baleroc 25-man heroic
Raegwyn has previously held the crown of death knight soloing, but from the ashes of the Firelands, a new pretender to the throne has arisen. In the header video, you can watch Aelobin, a solitary blood death knight, take down the Firelands gatekeeper, Baleroc, on 25-man heroic difficulty by himself. And no, that's not a typo in the title, he really is level 80. You can check his armory if you like, as a link is provided in his channel. Aelobin has a mixture of Cataclysm blues and Wrath purples equipped, and as you can see one minute and 30 seconds into the video when the boss hits his enrage, he has managed to hit the avoidance cap. Thanks to the changes to vengeance, Aelobin's attack power is also rather high, 1.5 million when he brings up his character pane at 1:59, awarding him a melee damage increase of 109,766 damage per second. It climbs still higher after that, peaking at almost 1.9 million attack power, and his damage meter reports his DPS as 275,715 for the entire fight! It's very entertaining viewing, and congratulations to Aelobin on the kill, and on getting Share the Pain at the same time! A cursory check of his raiding achievements indicates that this isn't his first trip into the Firelands at level 80, either. Cutaia noted that, actually, this is the first boss he's killed in Firelands. Thanks, Cutaia!
Patch 5.1, old raids and soloing
So, since Patch 5.1 dropped, I've been gleefully running old raids with the group of me, myself and I, seeing how far I could get solo. I've found myself able to solo up to Gunship in ICC 10, which has been great for me from a purely transmog perspective as I eagerly love the WoW equivalent of clothes shopping. Now, I know a lot of people are interested in this as well, in part because of the pets that drop from the original four classic WoW raids. So I was interested to see this post on the forums and community manager Brennvin's response on the matter. Are all old bosses intended to be soloable by all classes and specs? The answer seems to be no. 5.1 Thought we could solo old content now? We believe there was a lot of confusion when we originally announced this change and we're certainly at fault for said confusion. The original patch note was very vague to the point of being misleading. It was never our intent to weaken old raid boss encounters to allow anyone to have a chance to solo them, regardless of class, spec, or skill. What we did change were encounters that were mechanically impossible for one person to accomplish, solely for the purpose of ensuring players have easier access to the hunt for the new rare companion pets -- the drop rates of which are actually set to account for a group of three players, not one. Moving forward, though, we do not plan to adjust encounters for tougher raid bosses to be solo'able by all classes and specs. source So while you can zone in to any pre-Mists raid now (and I have been) you still can't solo Vicidus if you have no frost attacks (and I don't). However, the Twin Emps I did solo. It's possible at level 90 to simply overpower the healing they do. What's harder is to get kill credit for both, since I have no attacks that can damage Vek'lor. Every time I kill Vek'nilash, his brother simply despawns. 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.
Playnomics puts gamers into eight categories
Forget the Bartle Test -- there's a whole new chart for player behavior. Playnomics, a predicative gaming analytics company, has crunched a lot of numbers to neatly segment players into eight categories depending on the player's motivation and behavior. Combining behavioral science and in-game data, the company created a neat infographic that attempts to sell you on the concept of these eight categories, which uses the axes of intuitive/diligent, social/solus, and proactive/reactive. The end result of these fundamental types is composed of scientists, politicians, collectivists, soloists, habitualists, socialites, strategists, and competitors. When applied to the population of the UK, the study showed that strategists (32%) and politicians (22%) are dominant, while soloists (5%) and habitualists (5%) are the minority.
Choose My Adventure: Chasing TERA's BAMs with Rielene
Higiri will be delving further into the depths, seeking that fundamental alchemy that separates a generic implementation of mechanics from a standout one. I wish her luck, but this week doesn't focus on her adventures. No, it's time for Rielene to once more take center stage, complete with her twin blades and her dangerous game. Rielene's destiny was to hunt the great beasts of TERA, the monsters whose colossal stature relegates them to assault by groups or fearless individuals. I speak, of course, of BAMs. OK, for the epic names that could have been chosen for these creatures, that's probably not one of the better ones. But they're still pretty distinctive. They're these roaming monsters that don't just wing you a bit if they connect with a hit; they shred you to pieces. They're bosses that roam around, daring you to try and take them on alone. And I did just that, and I emerged victorious, and it was undeniably worth the price of admission.
The Soapbox: Meaningful solo play
Disclaimer: The Soapbox column is entirely the opinion of this week's writer and does not necessarily reflect the views of Massively as a whole. If you're afraid of opinions other than your own, you might want to skip this column. I'm going to open this piece off by laying my cards on the table: If you read my last Soapbox two weeks ago about why solo players choose to play solo and you absolutely hated it, then honestly, I have to tell you that this installment isn't for you. You aren't going to like it. Go read a book or play a game or something else because there's no reason for you to read something that I can promise you straight-up you won't like. I spent that entire column talking about why people might play solo, but I spent absolutely no time discussing what players are supposed to do solo or how games can handle the dichotomy between solo and grouped players. There does need to be some parity between the two, and that works both ways. Solo players need content and rewards, but group players need to have something to work toward as well, and you need to have the feeling of an overall shared world. So how do you mix a solid solo experience with a solid MMO?
The Soapbox: Why solo players don't just play a single-player game
Disclaimer: The Soapbox column is entirely the opinion of this week's writer and does not necessarily reflect the views of Massively as a whole. If you're afraid of opinions other than your own, you might want to skip this column. When I play an MMO, I tend to play solo. This isn't because I outright dislike grouping -- I've said exactly the opposite before -- but when given the choice, I'll default to solo. I don't always have a reliable play schedule, I like having the freedom to start and stop projects at my whim, and most importantly, I like the option of just tuning out a bit and losing myself in a solitary romp every now and again. Some people get very bothered by this, though, and they really dislike the fact that there are solo players asking for more solo content. Sometimes it's rooted in a fear that solo content will interfere with group content, and sometimes it's because of the fear that no one will group if there's plenty to do solo, but the same argument gets brought up every time: "If you want to play solo, you should be playing a single-player game." Except they're not the same thing. Not by far. There are distinct benefits to playing in an MMO even if you prefer doing most content solo instead of in a group.
The Elder Scrolls Online main story will be '100 percent solo'
The main story in The Elder Scrolls Online will be a solitary experience, game director Matt Firor revealed in a video interview with Game Informer."In the Elder Scrolls games you're always the hero, whether you want to be or not," Firor said. "You go out there and you kill the dragons. You kill Mehrunes Dagon in Oblivion. In Morrowind, you're up there fighting the Tribunal - those are huge, global, epic things that you don't want to stand in line to do in an MMO. The last thing you want to do is have the final confrontation with Mehrunes Dagon as he's stomping across the Imperial City, and you see like 15 guys behind you waiting to kill him because they're on the same quest."We have a whole part of the game that is 100 per cent solo, which is the main story, where the world focuses on you. You are the hero, everything you do is solo and the world reacts to you that way," Firor said.Previous details do include PvP matches of up to 200 players, but those are obviously separate from the main quest. The Elder Scrolls Online will be played in a third-person perspective and is attempting to be a "modern" MMO, blending The Elder Scrolls features into this new genre. Not all Elder Scrolls fans are happy with the new title's angle, but Firor said that's just fine."The worst situation for a game community to be in is where no one posts on the boards because they don't care," he said. "If they post on the boards, they care, even if they're not being so polite about it. But that's a fact of life: You're an Internet game, you're on the Internet, you have an Internet community. And the Internet community is always very vocal."So what you do is learn from it. You make sure you do the best job to deliver the best game that you can and they you go from there."
Matt Firor on The Elder Scrolls Online's '100% solo' personal story
Games in the Elder Scrolls series have always been about giving players the opportunity to become the game's hero, and it looks like The Elder Scrolls Online will be no different. The title's game director, Matt Firor, has announced that each character's main storyline in the game will be "100% solo." Firor points back to the previous entries in the series, stating that "in The Elder Scrolls games, you're always the hero... The last thing you want to do is have the final confrontation with Mehrunes Dagon as he's stomping across the Imperial City, and you see like 15 guys behind you waiting to kill him." While it's a good point, we can't help but wonder what kind of an impact this design will have on the social aspect of the MMO, but at this point all we can do is wait and see. Firor's full interview over on Game Informer has plenty of extra information as well, so if you're jonesing for more details, just head on over and check it out for yourself.
