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Guildwatch: Unannounced visitors? Preparations must be made...
Let's face it-- anybody can down Attumen. A Karazhan PUG can drop Attumen in their sleep. But Moroes is the first real boss of Karazhan. If you can get him down, you're ready to roll all the way up to Curator. Finishing that undead steward off for the first time just feels so good.News of Moroes downings and more in this week's GW, which starts right after the jump. Send us you drama, downed, and recruiting tips, as always, at wowguildwatch@gmail.com. Click the link below to read on!
The PvE + PvP instance
"Lowlifescum" over on the official WoW forums has had an interesting idea, to combine PvE instances and Battleground instances into a kind of "race-to-the-boss" PvP and PvE experience combined. According to his idea, players would queue up for the instance, and when both 5-man teams are ready, begin on opposite ends of a dungeon. From there, they have to fight their way through normal monsters and 1 or 2 regular bosses before finally reaching the final boss in the middle. They would have to choose between rushing through as quickly as possible in order to reach the final boss first, or else moving slowly and steadily enough that they can avoid setbacks along the way, and arrive at the last boss fully prepared for the other team to attack in the middle of the fight. The first existing instance your mind jumps to is likely Alterac Valley, but this new instance would be different in that the players are not marching towards two separate goals, split up into two offensive and defensive groups, but rather going after the very same bosses and getting in each others way to a certain extent. Obviously it would also be a lot smaller than AV too, and, like Arenas, based from the beginning on teamwork with your friends rather than random groupings of strangers. Obviously balancing such a battle would be very difficult, and the losers should feel as though they gain something of value even if they don't beat the other team. When I imagine this sort of instance, I envision something like a maze where players can not only meet up at the last boss, but also sneak around and PvP with each other the whole way through. Different sections of the instance could be designed to provide advantages to different sorts of classes, whether melee or ranged, damage or healing, and monsters could be designed to interact with the two groups of players in some very dynamic ways. Perhaps the bosses and maps could even vary a bit from battle to battle to keep everything fresh.A Blizzard representative showed up in the original thread to say that he liked the idea too, and hopes that someday we might be able to see something like it. What do you think about it, and what elements would you pay special attention to in order to make it work?
Alliance leaders slaughtered on Moon Guard
Good news from Moon Guard-- despite a despicable assault by the Alliance on the Horde outpost of Orgrimmar, the valiant Horde there have grabbed their sword and fought the.. Alliance, taking the battle straight to their capital cities. Ok, "factionalism" aside, what the Horde on Moon Guard did is pretty impressive. They downed Velen, Bolvar, Mekkatorque, Magni, Staghelm (yay!), Tyrande, and Jaina. I'm surprised they didn't storm into Northshire Abbey and down Paxton, just for completeness' sake.And just like we said on last week's podcast, it's a shame that they didn't get much for their trouble. High level faction targets give a little honor, and they give some money, but other than that, there are no major rewards for the downings. A special title or a factionwide buff would be great, and wouldn't cause overfarming chaos in these cities, which we believe is Blizzard's main reason for keeping these bosses lootless.At any rate, grats to all the guilds on Moon Guard (the Horde guilds, and the Alliance guilds that killed Thrall and brought on this slaughter) for making this happen. Blizzard won't give you much but a little honor and some change, but we'll give you our gratitude for making sure there is war in Warcraft.Thanks, Paul!
Leading casual raids, and doing it well
This must be the season for casual raiding leaders to get their tips-- both Clockwork Gamer and Sanya Weathers at Guildcafe recently posted some great tips for raidleaders in charge of making sure that dragon ends up dead at the end of the night. If you've found yourself in charge of a large group of MMO characters recently, both writeups are worth a read for sure-- the tips range from the practical (start earlier than you plan, because things will take longer to get started than you think) to the emotional (keep it fun, address drama when it happens, and make sure everyone remembers that these are not the only epic drops they'll ever see).Raidleading is a tough little pasttime, and casual raidleading more than anything-- people are on your raid with all kinds of different reasons and a larger variation of abilities and gear. I especially like Clockwork Gamer's mantra: "raiding is dying," and that's truer with casual raiding than anything else, in any MMO you play in. It's not easy to be a casual raidleader, but these tips will definitely help you get to where it's worth it: a big down on a progression night.
New Sunwell details from Swedish mag Level
Acacia sent a tip that Swedish magazine Level has released their annual WoW issue, and there are some juicy tidbits in there about patch 2.4, which as you probably know will feature the last expected instance before the next expansion, the Sunwell. Jeff Kaplan did the deed in an interview, and let us know that: Sunwell Isle will be off the north coast of Silvermoon. Magister's Terrace will be the 5-man instance, and the Sunwell Plateau will be the 25-man raid, designed to close off the Burning Crusade storyline (although Kaplan admits there are a few more stories in progress in case they need to delay Wrath at all) There will be quests outside the dungeons, too, and they will tell the story of Tempest Keep And with those quests, there will be a new faction, called the "Shattered Sun Offensive." Finally, the limit of daily quests will raise in 2.4, from 10 to a whopping 25 (which is all the quests in your log. Money money money!) There are a few more good story notes, but those are spoilers, so we'll put them after the break. If you don't want to know what you'll find in the Sunwell, don't click the link below. But if you're fine with hearing about it ahead of time, feel free to hit the link and move on.
Breakfast Topic: Best boss fight
Straight from the forums: What's the best boss fight in the game?Personally, having been up through Gruul, I remain a big fan of Jeklik in Zul'Gurub-- it's got just the right mix of old fashioned tanking, AoE, and (eventually) all-out chaos that a great boss battle should have. People are saying that C'thun is a classic, but like most players, I've never had the chance to see him. In terms of five-man bosses, the quality on those really jumped up in Outland. I'd say Heroic Capacitus is fun, with the positive/negative mechanic borrowed from Thaddius. And Sepethrea's little Tron room in the Mechanar is a good time, too.But I'm probably forgetting quite a few good ones. What is the best boss fight in the game?
Guildwatch: Inspiring action in all the wrong places
Pretty amazing Kael down seen above-- the server was going offline, and as you can see, with just a scant 15 seconds left, Reforged on Runetotem was able to grab all their loot. Whew!Right after the jump, you'll find this week's Guildwatch, your weekly look at all the drama, downed, and recruiting news you send us. The email address is wowguildwatch@gmail.com-- send us your tips there (anonymous or otherwise), and see them here next week. Click the link to read on.
Behind the Curtain: Save our bosses
Without lore, MMOs as we know them wouldn't exist. Lore means different things to different people. Some of us embrace it, some of us let it define who we are and what we do in-game, and some of us ignore it as best we can. Lore plays an important, central part to any MMO. Central to that lore is the creation of solid, entertaining bad guys – evil, despicable, wicked bad guys that we all take for granted, call out as 'on notice', and sweat blood to chalk up world-first kills for. But you've all been so busy running around taking down bosses left, right and center that it probably never occurred to you that if you're not careful, there's every chance we could run out of bosses to kill.There's a reason that Blizzard aren't removing old world content from WoW, and it's not because they feel bad that the old bosses don't have anything to do with their time it's because they're scared. Scared of what might happen if there were no more bad guys for us to kill. New content only lasts so long when we've got guilds like Nihilum burning through new content in a matter of days (attracting controversy as they go), and as good as the Blizzard developers are, it's not like they're churning out patch-worthy content every week, is it?
Guildwatch: The march of war
Warning: The recruitment video above, for Rogues Take Zero Skill on Arthas-H, contains at least one bad word, and may also contain simulated illegal and immoral activity. Those under the age of 18 or with strong sensibilities need not watch it. Everyone else can watch a great guild recruitment video and laugh.This week's Guildwatch contains your weekly dose of drama, downed news, and recruiting notices, and starts right after the jump. Send tips to wowguildwatch@gmail.com. Just like RTZS, we're taking over the world!
Phat Loot Phriday: Amani Divining Staff
If you're as excited about 2.3 as we are, you'll love this spiffy new staff from Zul'Aman.Name: Amani Divining StaffType: Epic Two-hand StaffDamage / Speed: 144-304 / 3.20 (69.9 DPS)Abilities: +58 Stamina, +47 Intellect. That's hot. Red, Yellow, and Blue sockets-- socket bonus of +5 spell damage Equip: Improves spell crit rating by 31. Equip: +217 spell damage and healing. Very nice. And plus, it's all troll-looking. Personally, I love the look of the Zul'Aman stuff. I know everyone doesn't share my tribal tastes, but I think it's a great move by Blizzard to lighten up the look of the Outland gear a bit. How to Get It: Ah, yes-- the tough part. First, you have to get in to Zul'Aman, and then you probably want to make sure you can clear it first. This staff actually drops from the timed event in that instance. Just like the Baron Run in Stratholme, when you first zone in, you'll have 20 minutes to kill the first boss. If you kill that boss in time, an NPC will come out with a chest, open up the chest for you, and give you your loot. The loot table for that chest includes this staff, so you have to be lucky enough to see it.From there, things are still a little fuzzy. We know it's 20 minutes to the first boss, but after that, I haven't seen exact timer numbers (this EJ thread has a lot of good tactics for all the bosses, however). It might be twenty minutes for each boss, or it might not. Some guilds on the PTR have completed the timed quests, but there's not a lot of documentation around on the instance. Yet, that is-- pay attention to the WoW Wiki page, and I'm sure details will show up soon after Tuesday. I do know that Blizzard has it out for you-- the next boss' timer starts when you down the last boss, not when you get the loot. So the timer runs while you wait for the NPC to come out and open the chest. Awkward much?I should mention, also, that it's not entirely clear whether this staff is part of one big loot table for the timed event chests, or whether it only drops on a certain boss' chest. At any rate, it does appear in those chests at some point, so just complete the entire timed event quest (which Blizzard claims is very, very hard), and you'll be fine!Getting Rid of It: Disenchants to a Void Crystal, and sells to vendors for 16g 85s 85c. Which I usually say would never happen, but then again, remember that Zul'Aman, and especially those finishing the timed quests, is going to be full of bored Mount Hyjal guilds looking for new content. So there may be a few of these things disenchanted and sold off. Bummer.
Officers' Quarters: Sweet victory
Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership. Back in September, I talked about how to manage the raid after a wipe. So I thought it would be helpful to follow up on that column and talk about the opposite. Specifically, I want to talk about guild-first kills. Guild-first kills are among some of my favorite moments playing Warcraft. I'll never forget my guild's first Ragnaros kill, way back when. It's a huge shot of adrenaline to see that big baddie finally topple over into a motionless, sparkly pile of purple and gold. You've worked hard, you've persevered through any number of failed attempts, and it has all paid off. It's an amazing feeling, isn't it? But as an officer, your work is not yet done!
Leveling improvements for Patch 2.3
Are you in the midst of leveling a character between 20 and 60? Well right now is the time to stop everything, rush over to this forum post from Blizzard, and sing a happy song while you hurry up and wait! That's right, in answer to the crying pleas of casual alt-oholics everywhere, Blizzard is finally speeding up the tedious leveling curve for old world content in patch 2.3, adding in a bunch of new quests, nerfing a lot of the nastiest bad guys, and buffing a whole bunch of the items they drop.Here's a summarized list of the changes, with the full post by Vaneras copied for you beyond the link below. Amount of experience needed to level reduced by 15% per level between 20 and 60. Experience gained from completing quests increased between levels 30 and 60. Outdoor elite quests will now now be soloable, with the same (or better) rewards. About 60 new quests and a new goblin town based in Dustwallow Marsh (levels 30 to 40) Level ranges for old dungeons to be narrowed down a bit (so that if you are high enough to start them, you are high enough to finish them too) Increased questing experience for dungeon quests. Buffed up item drops from dungeon bosses. As Vaneras says, "Though we've given you a few examples of the things to come, we think everyone will pleasantly surprised when they see the full extent of the changes discussed above." Keep reading to see all the juicy details.
The pros and cons of set loot tables
Hardcore Casual has a short but interesting piece up comparing EVE's loot system to that of WoW and EQ. WoW uses what's called a fixed loot table system, which means that everything you kill in game has a set list of loot that drops from it, in varying degrees. If you kill Illidan, you know exactly what he might drop, even if you don't know exactly which piece on that list will drop. But EVE Online apparently uses a much more random loot system-- when you loot, you might get anything.A better comparison (especially for Blizzard fans) might be Diablo, where almost anything can drop almost anywhere. The problem with a random loot system like this, however, is exactly what I ran into in Titan Quest (a pretty darn good Diablo clone): halfway through the game, a great item will randomly drop, and you'll get a thrill from getting a sweet weapon. However, because you randomly hit it big, you'll have the problem of nothing better ever dropping again, and the game is pretty much over. Diablo fixed this by having separate areas to go through (and I believe TQ got patched in the expansion to fix this a little bit). But in WoW, you don't have that problem-- every new instance you go into will have better gear than the one before it, guaranteed. You can look it up on WoW Wiki, or look at the loot lists, and know exactly what's there.In fact, some say WoW's loot tables are too random-- I always see Paladin loot drop whenever there's no Paladin in the group. But it does take a little bit of fun out of the game world when everyone is huddled around the Curator saying "cmon staff, cmon staff, cmon staff!" Giving us a boss or two where the loot is totally and completely random (out of almost any item in the game) could actually be fun.
Old raids for new raiders
Rog on MMOROG has an interesting discussion of World of Warcraft's old raid content. Some of the original Azeroth raid content has excellent encounters and interesting story-lines, but adding another ten levels to the game hasn't made them any more accessible to more casual players. "But Elizabeth," I hear you say, "I'm level 70 now! Surely Ragnaros, in his puny level 60 dungeon, holds no real challenge!" But that, dear readers, is where you go wrong, because raid bosses do not have set levels -- all of them have a skull displayed where their level should be, which means that their level is 3 levels above the highest level player in the instance, and that no matter how many levels are added to the game, they'll always be tough fights. While this adds some sense of realism to the world (from a lore point of view, Nefarian, son of Deathwing, should never be soloable, duoable, or even 5-man-able -- though his smaller sister Onyxia is getting there), it also means that more casual players will never be able to check out some of the game's coolest content. Any above-your-level boss requires some decent +hit gear for you to be able to touch them, and if you're geared out well enough to tumble with level 73 monsters, why not just do existing raid content?From my perspective, the old Azeroth raid content was great fun and should be as accessible to players as possible. It's not like a level 70, even wearing only quest rewards and green drops, is going to be getting any gear upgrades from Molten Core or Blackwing Lair, so why not let them have the chance to experience the content for fun?
Calling the wipe... and what happens next
World of Matticus has an interesting piece up about a touchy subject in raidleading: calling the wipe. It's a tough job leading the raid. Everyone's there to down the boss, yes, but especially when learning a fight, a raidleader has to balance a lot of different priorities-- are potions used or not? Who rezzes after a wipe? How are the healers balanced? And when things go really bad, they have to decide, sometimes on a moment's notice, whether to call a wipe and reset the encounter, or try to push onward. Everyone knows what's possible-- everyone's seen a fight where the last Mage left is able to get one last fireball off and finish off the boss-- but the raidleader has to look at reality and make that call.Now, Matticus is actually pretty gung-ho about things-- he says not to wipe unless you're down to your last healer and you've only got one rez left. I agree that there are times when soulstones should be popped (if we have enough locks, we'll usually soulstone our main healer, and so if aggro ever gets lost, he pops right back up again), but if you're on the first attempt of the day, there's nothing wrong with saving a few rezzes and repair payments. Especially in a place like Gruul's Lair on High King Maulgar, where it's easy to get out when things go south, there's no reason to fight when two tanks drop on a bad pull. Just run, save the money, and come back when HKM has reset.But Matticus is dead on about what happens after a wipe is actually called.
Should Oceanic realms get their own progression?
MMO Champion's got the tip on the Oceanic first kill of Illidan by a guild called Not Steamboat on Aman'thul. I'd actually call Archimonde the last boss in the game right now, although for the current Burning Crusade storyline, Bou is right-- Illidan is it, at least until the Sunwell.But the kill brings up another interesting point with regards to Oceanic players. While they're often grouped with the US servers (unlike the EU or Asian servers, Oceanic and US servers are in the same place and subject to the same maintenance), are Oceanic servers that different that we should acknowledge a kill like this? This isn't like in China, where Burning Crusade just released. These Oceanic players have had access to Illidan just as long as an EU guild like Nihilum has. Why should we care if they kill Illidan? Sure, it's an accomplishment (just like every boss kill is, no matter how small or big), but is there even such a thing as "Oceanic first"?Sanctus emailed Boubouille to argue just that and say that Oceanic servers should be considered separate, in terms of progression, from US and EU servers. He says that Oceanic players have to deal with the aforementioned maintenance schedule problems, as well as huge lag. So what do you think? If this issue of Oceanic progression as compared to the rest of the world hadn't come up, I wouldn't have mentioned this Illidan kill at all-- in my opinion, there is no such thing as "Oceanic first," because Oceanic players play on, more or less, the same realms that US players do. So should Oceanic realms be considered separately when comparing guild progression? Or should they be held to the same schedule and timeline for "first kills" as the rest of us?
Breakfast topic: Read the strat!
"Read the strat!" It's in every raiding guild's Guild Message of the Day at some point. There's nothing more annoying to raid leaders than to have one person wipe the group because "I didn't know the boss was going to do that." But there are different ways to prepare for a boss fight. When I'm told to read the strat, I usually head over to WoWWiki for a basic overview of the phases and abilities, and then to Bosskillers to figure out what I actually need to do as a rogue (or, on some fights, whether I should actually show up.) A lot of people swear by video strategies, as they can offer an unparalleled view of what the actual fight is like, but I never liked them that much. With everyone else's addons and stuff clogging up the screen, plus the myriad of different perspectives, it can be tough to figure out what the boss is actually doing. One guild I know used the somewhat unusual strategy of getting people from the opposite faction who had killed the boss they were working on to come into their Vent during the raid and talk them through it. When you have to "read the strat", where do you go? What do you think is the best method to learn a new boss fight?
Guildwatch: How casual is casual?
Do you consider your guild to be a casual one? If so, how often do you raid? Today in Guildwatch, we've got news of a guild that considers themselves casual, but has downed 3 bosses in Serpentshrine, and raids three nights a week, four hours a raid. Is that casual or hardcore? What is casual raiding, exactly? And have you ever heard of a guild that's working through Black Temple while only raiding once a week? Is that even possible?Along with all those questions, we've got your weekly dose of guild drama, downed, and recruiting notices, as we do every week on Tuesday (and feel free to send us your own for next week, at wowguildwatch@gmail.com). Hit the link to check out this week's GW!
Curse joins up with MYM, in both PvP and PvE
Curse has announced that they're throwing their hat in the professional gaming arena with Meet Your Makers, a group that both sponsors and supports PvE and PvP teams. The PvP part of the team, called MYM.PvP, is the "Log" arena team (and they're part of the tourney at BlizzCon later this week), while the "MYM.PvE" group will consist of the Curse guild and their ingame progression.Now, the PvP side of it is hardly new-- we've already seen quite a few teams get picked up by sponsors, and since Blizzard implemented the arena system, we've seen a few teams, most notably Team Pandemic, rise to the top. But the PvE side is very interesting. Curse says that they're going to get a "significant boost to our PR and Administrative capabilities" from the partnership. On first thought, it doesn't seem very profitable to support guilds making progress in-game-- unlike tournaments, there's no monetary prize awarded for being the first guild to down Illidan.But in point of fact, there is a lot of mindshare out there to be grabbed by being the first guild to drop a boss-- players are interested in the kills, and therefore sites like ours are definitely interested in reporting them. Seeing a PvE boss kill "sponsored" by an eSports company like Meet Your Makers might not be that far off.[ via MMO Champion ]
The least visited instance... and why
Overpowered on the forums wonders what the least popular instance is, and I'd say his guess of Blackfathom Deeps is probably pretty close-- it's a long run away for pretty much everyone but Night Elves, and at 25-30, there's so many more quests and things to do that BFD usually gets passed up. The other good guesses, I'd say, are the "old" late game instances like Naxx and LBRS. Unfortunately, while Blizzard tells us all about the most popular stuff in the game, they are pretty mum on what players don't like, for obvious reasons.So how do you make an instance that makes players want to visit? Relmstein walks us through his idea of what makes a perfect instance ambiance: music, visuals, interactive features (the Chess Event is one of my favorite dungeon features, although almost all the dungeon dialogue "cut scenes" are fun for me), and memorable boss encounters.But then again, BFD seems to have all of them-- it's a very pretty dungeon (I especially like the temple at the end), and while it might be a little short on interactive features, I really like the lore and the unleashing of the monster at the end. The last ingredient, I think, to a good dungeon, is just a storyline that drives you there. I'm sure Scarlet Monastery (except the Graveyard), and Deadmines are definitely among the most popular instances, and both of those have huge amounts of lore and mystery to make them interesting. Maybe if more players realized that Aku'mai was actually a pet of the Old Gods (or, you know, if there was a quest to kill him that explained that), BFD would see more traffic.
