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The Agency's game designer speaks
Sometimes we like to sit back and dream of what it might be like to design an MMO. We'd put together some fiendishly difficult boss battles, or plot some intensely engaging storylines ... or maybe just throw in a ton of Fury jokes. And then we snap out of it and get back to work.Tracy Seamster is a game designer for SOE's The Agency, to which she transitioned after writing for Everquest II for some years. If you've ever wondered what the day-to-day job of a game designer might be like, you can look for the answers in this interview. Covering such topics as finding inspiration, the tools used by a designer, and the particular challenges in writing for an MMO, this interview gives a behind-the-scenes look into one of the industry's more coveted positions.[Thanks, Beth!]
Build Shop: Warrior 31/27/3 for Season 4
Every Tuesday, Chris Jahosky contributes Build Shop, which takes a look into one of the many talent specs available to players. This week, Michael Gray guest writes to talk about the perennial Warrior build for the upcoming Season 4. If you're like me, you're looking forward to June 24th with almost breathless anticipation. New season, new ratings, new competition. And like hundreds (thousands?) of others, we have a Warrior sitting patiently at the stables, prepping for the gates to open. He sits there, foaming at the mouth, smiling nervously at his partner Druid or Priest, with Mortal Strike almost literally visible in his pixellated eyes.Build Shop has discussed Warrior hybrid builds previously, but that 28/33 build was focused on actual hybrid play - a mix of PvP and PvE. The classic Arena-based "Mortal Strike Hybrid" starts off with at least 31 points sitting in the Arms tree -- you can't have a "Mortal Strike Hybrid" without Mortal Strike. Mortal Strike is a foundation of the Arena build. While there's leeway earlier in the Arms and Fury trees for this build, the deeper in the trees you get, the more certain talents become "mandatory."After the break, let's talk about the talents and whirligigs that make the Mortal Strike Hybrid so popular and powerful in the Arena.
Tank Talk: Do you feel lucky, punk?
Tank Talk is WoW Insider's new raid-tanking column, promising you an exciting and educational look at the world of getting the stuffing thrashed out of you in a 10- or 25-man raid. The column will be rotated amongst Matthew Rossi (Warrior/Paladin), Adam Holisky (Warrior), Michael Gray (Paladin), and myself (Druid). Our aim is to use this column to debate and discuss class differences, raid-tanking strategies, tips, tricks, and news concerning all things meatshieldish. At least, that's what the others said they were doing. I intend to use it mostly as a soapbox to complain. Absolute power tends to......something something.Welcome to Tank Talk. I am your bear Druid hostess for this week, with a topic that occurred to me while reading a recent article here on the site. Eliah Hecht wrote that his guild is facing a not-uncommon tank shortage and that he has considered the possibility of leveling a tanking class to 70 before Wrath, or tanking on a Death Knight afterwards. A number of people on my server and in my guild have talked about doing the same thing, or switching mains once Wrath hits. With so many people playing Death Knights, I think it's very possible that more people will discover they enjoy -- or at least, don't mind -- tanking, and may seek to do so in a raid environment without necessarily knowing what they've really signed up for. From those of us who have tanked raid content in vanilla WoW or BC, here are the 10 questions you'll want to ask yourself if you're considering the possibility of tanking serious raid content:
Warrior Talents in Wrath of the Lich King
Warriors can rejoice today, basking in their newly leaked talents from Wrath of the Lich King. This information has been first obtained through a [redacted] but has since been independently confirmed by WoW Insider staff. Note that the information you're seeing here is correct, while the wiki page you're seeing now could be updated with false information. However, that's where our confirmation of the data comes into play.Read on after the break for the full list we have so far. This is a spoiler, so don't look unless you want to!Update: At Blizzard's request, we have removed the information from our site.Update: Please don't post notes or references to notes in the comments. We're just going to remove them. Thanks.
Brilliant flora to permeate Earthrise
Masthead Studios has licensed SpeedTree modeling software to add a higher degree of realism to their upcoming MMO Earthrise. The software suite is now used extensively in the game industry for foliage modeling. What, you've never heard of SpeedTree? Well you've almost certainly seen it before. You're not likely to stop and notice the trees and shrubs as the FBI and military are trying to cut you down with automatic weapons in GTA IV. You probably won't admire the indigenous plantlife while you're trying to frag your opponents in Unreal Tournament III either. But the unnoticed backdrop for your carnage in these games was built with SpeedTree. While we may not pay attention to them directly, these details that permeate our virtual environments can have a big impact on our immersion in those settings. Neverwinter Nights 2, Crackdown and Viking: Battle for Asgard are other prominent titles enhanced by SpeedTree. Earthrise is in good company on the MMO front with Masthead's decision to use SpeedTree, joining the ranks of Stargate Worlds, Fury, and Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures. If the actual game environments can live up to the screenshots Masthead Studios has released, Earthrise stands to be one gorgeous MMO.
You know you work for a company destined for failure when...
In a recent blog post, Elder Game's Eric Heimburg takes a sardonic look at some of the more heavily worn bumps on the road that is MMO development. Without naming any names, Heimburg suggests developers conduct an intervention if their company meets a certain number of the criteria, lest their game join the cavalcade of mediocre to crappy MMO releases on the market.Among the more prescient of the criteria in this blogger's mind is the one where instead of having a lead designer, companies design by committee, or the one where the publisher imposes changes to the core game from outside. If only fans had a clearer picture of the way their favorite developers were structured, they could apply these criteria beforehand and weigh the odds of a stinker before sinking their hard-earned cash on it. Makes you wonder how many of these criteria Auran met before Fury fell flat on its face.
CoX Issue 12 starts work on improving PvP
City of Heroes Issue 12: Midnight Hour, now in Open Beta, brings with it a vast assortment of Quality of Life fixes and tweaks. One small but highly significant fix slipped through the net and missed appearing in the first round of patch notes: the buildup of Brute Fury in PvP and against Archvillain and Giant Monster class enemies has finally been persuaded to work the way it should have. Brutes gain an additional 5 points of Fury when attacking these targets, which more than doubles their Fury building rate. The short version: a Brute can now kill you far faster than you'd expect, and can contribute more to drawn-out fights against the game's toughest enemies.The Brute community has anticipated this change for a long time now. Without the fix, their viability in PvP was not much to write home about. Now, Castle the Powers Guy has made a lot of Brutes very happy. Kaiserin tells the story best, with a one-shot painted comic strip.
The Care and Feeding of Warriors: To Gear A Fury
The Care and Feeding of Warriors takes a look at gear and the fury warrior this week. Matthew Rossi has been playing with fury on his tauren this week, when not forgetting to re-equip his shield on Kael'thas while playing his human. Sure, the Phaseshift Bulwark is nice, but if you leave the instance it goes away, which I really should have paid attention to. On the up side, it's hilarious to go down in two seconds to a trash mob because you forgot which button is your shield macro. Well, hilarious now. With distance. At the time it was less hilarious and more smashing my face into the keyboard.Before we get rolling, you should take a look at this thread from the Elitist Jerks forums that gathers up a lot of information on warrior DPS specs and what to look for when gearing. One of the things to keep in mind is that it's not as straightforward as just piling on the stats that help you do damage... much like tanking, where you first stack defense until you reach the target (in the case of tanking you want 490 defense) when assembling fury gear you prioritize hit until you reach 9% chance to hit, and then start stacking crit, attack power and armor penetration.So what's the hit cap? Well, in general a fury warrior with full precision should look to accumulate hit gear until roughly 96 hit rating, which should put you at about 9% actual bonus hit. Up until 9%, it's generally accepted that hit provides the greatest boost to your damage both from the damage that you actually do with your white hits and from the rage you generate by them, as well as reducing the chance of special attacks like Bloodthirst (not Bloodlust, you can tell I play my shammy too much) and Whirlwind to be missed, which is not only annoying but amazingly does not seem to hurt monsters. Not even their feelings.
Fury set to make a comeback with FuryLeague
Fury, the maligned combat MMO by Auran Games, has had a pretty rough history. Despite the critical drubbing, the low player numbers, and the loss of a huge portion of its development crew, Auran has managed to stay together with a skeleton crew, working on the problems that made Fury such a target for ridicule.Well, according to an interview with CEO Tony Hilliam, conducted by australiangamer.com, they've made significant changes to the title and renamed it FuryLeague, which will focus more on the competitive aspects, and less on the MMO features. Additionally, there is the prospect of winning game gold that can be converted to real money, which, because the game is skill-based instead of luck-based, means that it's not gambling and is therefore legal.The full interview is available, and the Qualifying Season has already begun. Admit it: you're just as curious as we are. Give it a spin and let us know what you think![Via Kotaku]
The Daily Grind: Which MMO has the best combat?
The upcoming release of Age of Conan has brought this question farther into the light, with its foray into real-time battle. Sure, there have been others -- the late, not-so-lamented Fury being a great example -- that have tried to redefine what MMO combat can be like, but many games are content to offer the tried-and-true click to attack model, with slight variations.When it comes to fighting in games, surely the biggest defining factor is, or should be, "Is it exciting?" Given that singular criterion, then, which game has the best combat? Which one gets your blood racing? Which MMO really lets you, as the kids used to say, throw down?
The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Are warriors underpowered?
The Care and Feeding of Warriors knew that there would be discussion of whether or not warriors are broken, and so decided to provide picture evidence that at least one warrior is broken indeed! Matthew Rossi apologizes for that pun. Really, he couldn't be expected to resist it, now could he? Look, mob violence never solved anything.I have in the past written about what's not broken in the warrior class. So you might think that a column entitled "Are warriors underpowered?" would be easily answered with a no, and then we could move on.And so it is. See you next week!Oh, right. I still have to write a column. Also, to be fair, the answer is more complicated than no, although it ultimately works out to a no by means of averages. Warriors in the whole are not underpowered or broken, but they have some issues. Some aspects that have always annoyed me. It's too bad I don't have a weekly column about warriors so I can talk about that, isn't it?
First impressions of the Arena Tournament Server
Last night Amanda Dean, Amanda Miller, and I got together and fought a few arena battles. We were online and fighting between 10:00 p.m. CST and midnight (timed so I could watch the first showing of Battlestar Galactica, and Amanda D. could watch the second – we write for a computer game website, what do you expect?). The server itself was interesting, and the matches were a blast.We've been at this before on the Tournament Test Realm server, which was the "beta" version of the Arena Server. There was only one server and everyone could make a character, so it was often crowded and slow. On the Arena Server, you have to register to enter the Arena Tournament, which costs $20. Only then can you get on the Arena Server. This makes things a bit more manageable in terms of population and server stability. There wasn't much lag or other issues.One thing that I found was the queue times were very fast. We didn't have to wait more than 10 seconds to get in a game. We were playing 3v3 matches, so this might have had something to do with it; as I'm sure the queue times were higher for 5v5 or 2v2.If you're wondering, and I'm sure you are, our team name is "WoW Insider" on server one, and we're named "insideradam", etc... How many matches did we win?
Hybrid Theory: Brutallus and You
Every week, Alex Ziebart comes to you with Hybrid Theory. A column with... theories about hybrids, I guess. I mean, that's what it says at least. I guess it could be something else, but probably not. Honestly, you should probably just read it and find out for yourself. In the past here on Hybrid Theory, we've discussed what Hybrids are capable of doing in a raid, as far as beneficial talents and utilities. We talked about the fact that a few well-placed hybrids in your raid can take your DPS from 'good' to 'horrifyingly good.' All of this comes to the front again in a boss that many high-end raid groups are clashing against right now: Brutallus.If you haven't read anything on this boss yet, it's the single largest gear check in WoW yet. It's Burning Crusade's Patchwerk, mostly. To beat Brutallus, you need roughly 29,000 sustained DPS across your entire raid. If you don't pull that off, you hit his enrage timer and he destroys all of you. Simple as that! If you're lucky you can burn off a final two or three percent of his health after the enrage, but that's about as far as you go. That three percent is about 300,000 health, so don't get too confident.
WoW Moviewatch: Assassine
When we showed you the Assassine trailer last month, your consensus was that it attempted to knock off the Fury trailer. Now, DTB Productions has released the full version of Assassine, which is about a female rogue that avenges the death of her husband. Using no voice acting, he tells the story through music and actions.I enjoyed the way that DTB used the sound effects and music intensity to signify that something was going to happen. For a first effort, this is really good! In the constructive feedback department, some commenters on Warcraftmovies felt that the perspective and shadows were off, while others felt that the action scenes were too slow. If those are his worst problems, when he improves upon it in the next film, he'll be golden![Via Warcraftmovies.com]If you have any suggestions for WoW Moviewatch, you can mail them to us at machinima AT wowinsider DOT com.Previously on Moviewatch ...
Build Shop: Warrior 17/44
Every Tuesday (and sometimes Wednesday, when dealing with broken computers), Chris Jahosky contributes Build Shop, which takes a look into one of the many talent specs available to players.I'm sure some of you noticed that Build Shop went on an unscheduled vacation -- this was unfortunately due to the death of my old computer. My new computer is all set up and ready to go (and plays WoW better than ever), and so I'm now officially back on the scene. There was a lot of talk in the comments from last time about the RiP (Rogue in Plate) build, so this week I'm taking a look at it for those who are interested.RiPper builds (like 17/44, the one I'm examining) are so named because their DPS potential is quite close to rogues (hence, Rogue in Plate). It's a sustained damage build, similar to a combat spec Rogue, but because of their ability to wear plate (and a shield) have more survivability and off-tank potential. They're quite capable of inflicting incredible damage, and can be especially nasty when paired with a Shaman's Windfury totem.The Fury tree is utilized extensively for this build -- points are mostly put into Arms in order to grab Impale, which increases critical damage, but it also picks up a few nice talents for tanking and utility.
WoW Moviewatch: Assassine trailer
Some have accused this trailer of being a blatant ripoff of Fury. But I have to be honest with you, I don't mind if it is. I love me some action-based World of Warcraft machinima. The author said his longer piece will be available in April and when it is, I'll be there to check it out.[via WarcraftMovies]Previously on Moviewatch...
Games that shouldn't be MMOs
Here's a corollary post to an earlier story. Our cousin site, Cinematical, has brought teh funneh with a post about which board games would make awful movies. In that spirit, we now present to you a list of games that would make terrible MMOs, in no particular order.Please note that these are merely our particular opinions, and we're not saying that a cleverer-than-thou developer couldn't make a great MMO out of these games ... but for reasons we'll state here, it's highly unlikely. Then again, sometimes the best-sounding ideas turn out some awful games themselves (*cough* Fury *cough*), so it all evens out. Excelsior!
Build Shop: Warrior 28/33/0
Every Tuesday, Chris Jahosky contributes Build Shop, which takes a look into one of the many talent specs available to players.This week's build comes to you courtesy of reader James (who put this together anticipating the changes to the Fury tree coming in 2.4), so today I'm going to dissect his build. Fury heavy builds are quite strong and very popular for PvE encounters through the end game (the most famous perhaps being a variant of 17/44, sometimes called a RiP (Rogue in Plate), which is desirable for the high damage output).However, this kind of hybrid build has started to see more use in other areas. While not as effective as a RiP build in PvE, these hybrid builds often pick up a weapon specialization from the Arms tree in addition to some utility talents, making them more adaptable in PvP and solo play. James' build is 28/33, and seems to be based off of the standard Fury/Weapon Spec build of 26/35. They have a good bit of variation, though -- James' focus seems to be on PvP, with talents like Iron Will and Improved Intercept, whereas the standard build focuses on damage output.After the break, I'm diving into my thoughts on the build, but make sure to share your experience and suggestions with James in the comments!
GDC08: Raph Koster's 'Reinventing MMOs, a Metaplace 'antemortem''
Raph Koster, president of Areae, and Sean Riley, Lead Programmer, held a panel the final day of GDC '08 called 'Reinventing MMOs: a Metaplace 'antemortem'', which was all about dissecting why the concept of MMOs needs updating. Going in, I was hoping for insight, which I got, but wasn't expecting a lot of technical talk, which I also got.And the takeaway I got from this session is this: Koster's doing some good, forward-thinking work, but Metaplace doesn't really shine for me just yet. Details on both after the break.
The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Unleash the fury
The Care and Feeding of Warriors burns from within this week. Matthew Rossi has played a lot of warriors, and this week he dedicates the column to fury warriors, the spec which seems the most basic to the rage concept, really. It's a rage bar, after all. No, not a place you go to drink rage. How would that even work, rage potion cordials? It doesn't bear thinking about.My first warrior leveled as arms, back in the dim past before patch 1.2. It's hard to explain to people just how bad playing a warrior was back then. We didn't generate rage on blocks, parries or dodges, executes took all of your rage even if they missed, and there was a bug that caused attacks that were dodges to be calculated as misses, causing you to miss out on a ton of overpowers. Berseker stance used to grant 10% melee haste, but no one really knew what that meant. (I wonder if warriors today would trade 3% crit for 10% faster attacks?) I managed to get him to 60 mainly through instancing with friends/guildmates. (To be fair, I was ahead of most of my guild, with the exception of a couple of hunters who'd started playing before I did.) So when I created a new warrior on a new server to play with some real life friends, I wanted to do things differently.And so I went fury. Being the stubborn cuss I am, though, I didn't level fury with a dual wield build... I didn't like the way I'd miss so many attacks and at that early stage of the game there wasn't much I could do to prevent them, so I stayed with my beloved 2h weapons. I still remember when I got the Relentless Scythe and started to really understand how to output DPS with it. While most warriors were carrying Arcanite Reapers around, I was tweaking my gear for AP and crit and trying to figure out how to squeeze the most DPS out of a two hand weapon (although I also had a pair of Bone Slicing Hatchets enchanted with +15 agility to annoy my wife... as a hunter, she found it irritating that I got them before she did, and I did enjoy using them) - amusingly, just as dual-wield specialization was coming into the game, I was getting into raiding and the guild I was in didn't need a prot warrior, just an off-tank for various MC mobs. I picked up a Draconian Deflector cheap off of Drakkisath (he was very slightly dead at the time, he got better) and headed into Molten Core - you could tank as fury in those days, and I did.
