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The Daily Grind: Are you sick of gear resets?
Earlier this week, Massively RIFT columnist Karen Bryan expressed frustration over the seemingly inevitable MMO expansion problem: gear resets. We expect new gear along with our new content, but a complete gear reset, she argued, "renders all previous raid content irrelevant." Everything you earned before an expansion may as well never have happened because you can top that gear with a new crop of easymode quests. And the realization that a gear-grind is mostly for naught can have a ripple effect on a game as disillusioned players give up on acquiring it (or bail out of the game completely). The Daily Grind crew has discussed gear resets in relation to raid progression before, but even games without raiding face this problem. If a game has any kind of scaling gear or levels, then the addition of new content, like an expansion, is bound to generate growing pains. So where do you stand? Are you sick of gear resets, of having to effectively start over at the dawn of every expansion? Or do you see gear resets as a good thing, as a way to bridge the gear divide between players and re-experience what you loved about the game originally? And since you're going to tell us anyway, here's a bonus question: Which MMOs have successfully avoided this problem and how? 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!
The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Reset/Packrat
When expansions come to World of Warcraft (well, at least when the last expansion did) people either get Beta invites or they don't, people start fretting about gear resets, new abilities get discussed, alternating doom and gloom and wild, frenzied excitement over new talents rages... but while all that is going on, the game is still being played. My own guild has marched firmly into BT and Hyjal, and we're one boss away from clearing the later, ol' Archie himself. In the process of clearing the other four bosses, gear has started trickling in and with it comes the realization that sometimes, higher tier gear is optimized for the places it drops.I've been using Shield Block Value as my primary threat stat on my armor. As time has gone on, without really realizing it, I've been moving to a more hit/expertise system which relies less on big shield slams and more on consistent white damage and specials that don't miss and are not dodged or parried. While this has been occurring, armor with higher dodge rating has been steadily dropping, meaning that my avoidance goes up and my rage generation is more and more dependent on not missing or being dodged or parried. T5 content, with the reliance on SBV, allowed me to stack stamina and block value in a way that T6 content does not. I've dropped my block value from around 800 to a little more than 600 lately, while looking to increase my hit and dodge for bosses like Azgalor, who doesn't crush. (He's a nice little preview of the future in that regard.)My point is two fold: one, especially for a warrior (be he a tank or DPS, I'm just using tanking as my example because it's what I primarily do) gear obsolescence is constant. You're always changing and upgrading your gear as you go through content. (This is true for just about every class, mind you, but I'm talking to warriors.) Furthermore, however, you also become a bit of a packrat, holding on to outdated gear because it has a stat that may be desirable for a specific fight. I still use The Sun Eater if I feel dodge is absolutely essential for a fight, despite having overall better weapons now.
Breakfast Topic: WoTLK: The perfect time to switch mains?
It's an exciting time to be playing WoW, what with the WoTLK alpha information leaking out (Thanks for risking your eternal soul to break the NDA, anonymous screenshotter!) and 2.4 being pretty much a roaring success. By now, I'm sure everyone has settled in and is making plans for WoTLK, figuring out which zone they'll go to first, maybe setting aside a bit of money from all those dailies to powerlevel a trade skill. So, I was thinking the other day of one more thing I was planning: switching mains. We've discussed the art of switching mains a bit before, but there's always a lot of hassles to it: there's the concern that you'll fall behind your friends, the concern that your gear won't be good enough, the concern that you'll have to grind your reputation up for certain keys and essential reputation rewards all over again. A new expansion is just the ticket for getting rid of most of those problems. As long as your character is max level at the start of WoTLK, they can catch up on gear pretty quickly just from level 71 greens and quest rewards. Everyone's starting out grinding all the new WoTLK reputation grinds, so no worries that you're behind on those either. Despite being on a relatively "new" character, you'll be able to join your friends in Utgarde Keep right away. So the reasons not to switch mains mostly manage to resolve themselves when a new expansion hits, and the question becomes, do you want to switch mains, and why?
Gear transition between BC and WoTLK should be smoother, says Bornakk
We've known for a while that we've been getting a gear reset in WoTLK, and just this morning, we've discussed and speculated on how it will affect people as they transition into the 70-80 game, especially alt-o-holics. Here's some news that should strike a lot of people as good: Bornakk confirmed in a thread yesterday that we really won't be seeing quite as large a gear gap in the jump from Burning Crusade to Wrath of the Lich King as we did in the past: No more doubling of stamina values this time, guys. This should be good news for raiders who feel like their epics don't mean that much anymore (although to be honest, I was using a few of my BWL and AQ40 drops well into my late 60s, so I don't think the gear reset was that bad after all). If the gear jump isn't that bad, your shiny new epics should still work pretty well. Heck, same goes for badge runners. I've suspected for a while that the new Badge of Justice gear was meant to be a partial preliminary gear rest ahead of time, and I'd bet this more or less confirms it: If there's not going to be as much as a jump, these Tameless Breeches might last my druid longer than one might think. I think it's definitely a good middle road to take. We'll get a gear reset so alt-o-holics and casuals can jump right into the Howling Fjord, but the gap won't be quite as great, meaning that raiders and badge gear savers won't need to feel like they're watching months of work go down the drain when that first level 71 green drops.
WoW Insider Show episode 21: War on Staghelm
Episode 21 of our official podcast is now online and ready for your ears to take it all in. We finally lay to rest one of the biggest debates on the show-- yes, we finally pick an Alliance cry (and you can probably guess what it is). Also, we answers lots of viewer email, and: Talked about David's great post about the AV imbalance And the ghost wolf debacle Chatted about the unwritten rules of raiding and where they come from And we had two good conversations about overhealing and the coming gear reset in the next expansion And we also declared war against Fandral Staghelm in Darnassus-- if you kill the guy (and you should), be sure to post your killshot over in the WoW Insider Show forums. When we get a bunch of them together, we'll roll them all up into a gallery on the site here.If you've got feedback on the show, feel free to drop us an email at theshow@wow.com. And don't forget that we do this every week-- we'll be back on the air this coming Saturday afternoon at 3:30pm EST. Mark your calendars and enjoy the show!
