hero-classes
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The Road to Mordor: Three ways LotRO could encourge rerolls
You're either an altoholic or you're not, and if you're not, then you're probably not too concerned about what your next journey will look like. For those of us who love to fill up our character screens to the max and have rarely gone a week without thinking of sampling a new class, race, or approach we haven't tried before, then a game that provides excellent reasons to do so is essential to our long-term interest. I've made many a new alt in Lord of the Rings Online over the years, and some of those alts even survived the reality show-like elimination process to make it to high levels. Well, at least until Moria, after which the Balrog probably got them. In 2013 alone I've made good attempts at three alts, the highest of which is level 51. However, my enthusiasm for alting in LotRO is on the wane. I feel as though I've seen and done everything in those low levels to death, and Turbine isn't giving me good enough reasons to go back through it again. That's unfortunate because alting extends our interest in a title and gives us something to do once we've run out of new content to devour. So here are three ways that Turbine could encourage players to reroll more often in the future.
Lichborne: 3 popular death knight requests that won't (or shouldn't) be fulfilled
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Lichborne for blood, frost, and unholy death knights. In the post-Cataclysm era, death knights are no longer the new kids on the block. Let's show the other classes how a hero class gets things done. Death knight complaints and requests can change with patches, dealing with current issues or balance problems, but there are other death knight requests that come up time and time again, and will probably be asked about until the day they finally shut down the servers for good. This week, we're going to look at three requests that probably will be around that long, just because it seems very unlikely Blizzard will ever fulfill them. The power of the hero class The "hero class" moniker has a long and storied history. It comes from Warcraft III, where hero units like paladins and death knights towered over the rest. By design, you only had a few of these every game, and they had more powerful skills that allowed them to dominate the battlefield when deployed. When WoW came around, rumors of the hero classes spread throughout beta, but in the end, Blizzard went away from the model. Paladins, a hero class in WCIII, were made a regular class, for example, while other hero class mechanics, such as the Far Seer's Chain Lightning, went to regular classes.
The Queue: Hard mode is hard
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW Insider's daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Mat McCurley will be your host today. Ow. Ow, ow, ow. The pain, oh, the pain of it all. Heroics, my friends, are hard. Trash is hard, the bosses are hard, and my spirit was jostled from its happy Wrath of the Lich King foundations. Images of Shadow Labs darted through my mind. Heroic Mechanar called to me. Remember me, it spoke, remember me and weep the tears of a thousand failed runs. You are mine, it would proclaim. You have returned to the unhappy peninsula of the soul. No, really, heroics are hard. I expect some tuning, but on the whole, there are challenges ahead for us in Cataclysm. On the one hand, I'm excited. I like challenge! On the other hand, I will never use the dungeon finder tool again. No offense.
The Queue: Puppies
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com's daily Q&A column where the WoW.com team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Mike Sacco will be your host today. Puppies. Puppies. Aliceness asked ... "Where might Blizzard go in terms of (maybe) implementing a new class for the next expansion? What kind of class haven't we seen?"
Breakfast Topic: Great expectations
So as BlizzCon fades further and further from view in the rear window, I'm getting more and more excited and impatient for news of Cataclysm, so much so that I've sort of forgotten to get excited about Patch 3.3. I want Worgen, and new conflicts, and new lore, and a redesigned old world that offers a massive leap forward in the story as things change forever and the Horde and Alliance finally shrug off all pretense of peace and rush headlong into a war that has really never truly ended. But then I start thinking. The combo I really wanted to play, Worgen Paladin, looks like it won't make it in. It seems like Worgen may not get their own capital city (instead, said city will become a battleground under siege by the Forsaken), which may put a damper on how much their awesome quasi-Victorian scenery and architecture actually features in game. While some zones are getting complete revamps, others are only getting minor tweaks, which makes me fear there may be some zones that still feel out of place and some old lore story lines that still remain unresolved or out of place.
Breakfast Topic: Don't you mean the *healer* shortage?
I wrote a Breakfast Topic recently concerning the somewhat ambivalent effect that Death Knights were having on the usual tanking shortage, but wasn't too surprised to see a lot of people (perhaps most) write in to note that the healer shortage on their realms was even worse. Leveling as a healer -- even with all the changes to spellpower and shared gear -- is an unattractive proposition for most, and a lot of people who healed at 70 want the chance to do something different. Past a certain point you'd give anything to be doing something that doesn't involve staring at a series of dropping health bars, and that doesn't lend itself to a large and willing population of healers cheerfully offering their services for 5-man use in LFG.My main's a Druid and I PuG a lot, so I have the luxury of being able to observe which spec is the most wanted for 5-mans (at least on my realm). As soon as dual specs become available, I'm going to have a PvE tanking and PvE healing spec set up and ready to go -- and after that, I'm going to keep a little notebook and tally how many times I get asked by a group to heal, and how many times I'm asked to tank ("But what if someone wants you to DPS?" you ask. What is this "dee pee ess" you speak of, strange one?). With an increasing number of Death Knights reaching 80, I'm willing to bet that the demand for healers is going to be even greater than it is right now, and that increasing pressure is going to be exerted on hybrid tanks (i.e. Druids and Paladins) to maintain a healing spec and gear in order to ensure that groups get off the ground faster than they do right now. I could be wrong, but I'd also be lying if that wasn't the dominant trend back on Wrath's beta with respec costs at 1c and a ton of Death Knights at 80.
WoW Insider interviews Tom Chilton
A couple of days ago at the midnight release of Wrath of the Lich King in Anaheim, CA, our very own Dan O'Halloran had an opportunity speak with Tom Chilton (also known as Kalgan), Lead Game Designer of World of Warcraft. They spoke on a wide variety of topics, from raid philosophy to the growth of the game in North America and many things in between. Read on to see what Kalgan had to say!WoW Insider: What did Blizzard think was the most surprising class development of The Burning Crusade? Did you think Paladin tanks would be as popular as they were, did you anticipate the Druid supremacy in the arena?
Controlling multiple minions and how it might work
We were lucky enough to get an Azerothian ton (they're like twice the weight of normal tons, don't you know) of news about Wrath of the Lich King at Blizzard's Worldwide Invitational this weekend, and hidden in the Death Knight hands on, there's a ton of great information about the way the class' summons will work. Most of the summons seem to be in the Unholy tree -- Death Knights will not only be able to summon the ghouls we heard about earlier, but will also be able to bring down a gargoyle and summon an insect swarm. But the ghouls are what we're most interested in -- Army of the Dead is a level 80 spell (with a 10 minute cooldown!) that will summon a "legion of your best ghouls to fight by your side."And our question is: how is this going to work? Obviously the ghouls won't actually work as pets as in the way Hunter or Warlock pets work, but surely they'll have a little more control implemented than the Druid's treants or the Priest's shadowfiends, right? As far as I can remember, we've never actually controlled multiple pets before -- are we going to have one bar to control all three with, or will we mark a target as they're summoned? It would seem that with a tanking class like the Death Knight, more focused pets would be a necessity in some cases.Or maybe our ghouls will be as mindless as ever, and after we hit a button to summon, they'll just head for the closest thing that looks like it might have brains to eat. Hopefully the Death Knight's ghouls will be a bit more interesting than that (there was a rumor a while back that you'd be able to raise your fallen group members as ghouls, though I don't see that spell in the hands on), and if not, I guess there's always other Hero classes to improve upon the pet mechanics.
World of Warcraft's J. Allen Brack interviewed
Ah, Paris – the romance, the exquisite food, all the latest World of Warcraft information from the 2008 Blizzard Entertainment World Wide Invitational. WoW Insider is there, and are reporting back every snippet about class change and renovations, world-PvP, developer panels, and everything there is to know about Wrath of the Lich King. Tobold, an astute MMOG blogger with some Blizzard PR clout, was also in attendance, and with press badge in hand grabbed a short interview with World of Warcraft's Lead Producer, J. Allen Brack. In the interview they discuss hero classes, WoW's expansion schedule, the shortage of tankers and healers players encounter when putting a pug together, and more. No earth-shattering revelation is exposed but it is a worthy effort at picking one of the top brains working on World of Warcraft.
Starcraft II WWI '08 panel part 3: Terran
The Terrans and their BFG's Pardo then moved on to the final Starcraft race, the Terrans. The theme here they wanted to push was guns, guns and more guns. No Queen or Mothership here, just lots of units with lots of firepower.The first unit Pardo talked about was the Jackal. It's a fast, mobile firebat that spits out fire lots of splash damage. With its speed and mobility it has the potential to take a big chunk out of your opponent's forces.The next unit was The Thor. It's a large ground assault unit with two abilities. In addition to its anti-air flak cannons, it can self-repair. And if it is destroyed, its wreckage stays on the battlefield and can rebuild itself. No Hero for you!Finally, Pardo talked about some larger issues about the game they were working with. They didn't want the game to too heavily emphasize micromanaging units. They want players to have time to deal with the macro issues of resources, expansion and strategy. So they designed most units to be simple movers and shooters, not like the more complex units of Warcraft 3. They also de-emphasized Hero classes for the same reason. Hero characters will mostly be met in the single player story mode and even then, as characters to talk to instead of taking control of them in battles.In terms of development, the team is focusing currently on spell casters and special abilities that come later in the game as well as upgrades for base units. The story campaign is about one-third done.The last point Pardo wanted to make before the panel was open to questions was about the evolution of Battle.net. With the release of SC2, Battle.net will be transformed to become what they hope is the premiere gaming platform for PC online play. NEXT: Q&A with Rob Pardo ===>
Neth on Death Knights being the only new class
We all know by now that Death Knights are the new class being added with Wrath of the Lich King. And, what's more, they're the only class being added with the new expansion. Skudo (Altar of Storms) doesn't like that much, and would rather see Shadow Hunters or Demon Hunters added. Posts like these are common enough, but Nethaera showed up to add some clarifying candlelight. First, she reiterated that Blizzard isn't closed to the idea of adding more classes in the future. But what she really seems to strive to get across is that adding a class isn't easy. There's a lot that goes into creating a new archetype for players to operate, play, defeat, vanquish, and exploit for every bit of Warcraft goodness. There's balance to consider, and the need to make each class play in unique ways. Heck, we all spend enough time arguing now about whether the existing classes are even balanced. Can you imagine what it's going to be like with a brand new class added? So these things take time. Assuming that Blizzard's team pulls off Death Knights well, I'm pretty sure we'll see more new classes in later expansions. Let's see how the first new class goes, before we put our eggs in new baskets.
Breakfast Topic: Should Death Knights get unique racial abilities?
So with WoTLK fast approaching, there's still plenty of discussion and debate about that whole Death Knights being all races thing. We've already covered the lore aspect, but another thing lot of people have been discussion is how Racial abilities will work with Death Knights. Some people are concerned that abilities like Gift of the Naaru aren't something a Death Knight steeped in shadow should be able to use. Now me, I think that if the Naaru can forgive the Blood Elves for M'uru, they can forgive Draenei Death Knights and give them back Gift of the Naaru. Still, commenter Clayton sent an intriguing thought into WoW Insider's secret headquarters the other day: Who says Death Knights have to use racials? When you consider what a Death Knight is, there's at least some measure of sense to it. Death Knights have undergone a radical change. They're suffused with dark energies, they have forsaken what they knew of love and life and light, they have forsaken whatever skills they knew in the past, all to take up the Runeblade. It is true that not all Death Knights become actual undead, but the total control the Lich King exerts over them leeches away much of their former identity. Because of this, it seems possible that Death Knights could have lost their connection with their racial identities, and through that, their racial abilities. This could also be a quick and easy way to ensure a bit of balance between the various races. There's a whole lot of considerations to made with racials and Death Knight abilities. Will Arcane Torrent combined with anti-magic tanking abilities just make Blood Elf Death Knights too powerful against casters in PvP? Giving Death Knights their own unique set of "racials" based around their class would be an easy way to sidestep this, and probably justifiable since Death Knights are their own seperate "hero" class category. Then again, it might put them under undue pressure to make special racials for all other hero classes as well, so they might want to stay more flexible. Which side of the issue do you fall on? Should they keep it simple and just keep the racials like they always have? Or do the Death Knights need a whole new set of racial abilities, and if so, what?
Tigole talks about Inscription and Hero Classes in Wrath
In an interview at Computer and Videogames, Tigole mostly discusses some things we've already heard about, such as the Lake Wintergrasp PvP zone and the process to unlock the Death Knight class, but also reveals a few very tasty little morsels of new information as well.First, he tells us a little bit more about Blizzard's philosophy behind Inscription, the new trade skill slated to be released with the expansion. While it appears that only one inscription will be allowed to be on a spell at one time, their goal is not to create one or two all-powerful inscriptions that will be used above all others, but to give players a variety of valid choices as to how to modify their spells. The example he gives is that of Frost Nova. One player might choose an inscription that gave their nova a longer range, while another might choose one that would lengthen the duration of the root associated with it. And what's this? More hero classes?
Will we ever see more hero classes?
I'm pretty sure we've all heard about the Death Knight by now and know that it is going to be the game's first "hero" class -- unlocked by a level 80 quest and starting at a higher level than a non-hero character. But I'm not really wondering about Death Knights right now, but instead about other hero classes that might be in our future. It struck me as an odd move to release an expansion with a single hero class purely for practical reasons -- as soon as people start hitting level 80 with their mains, we're going to see a swarm of new baby Death Knight alts. (That Death Knight Spree isn't just a joke!) The best counter to this, in my opinion, would be more than one hero class in the expansion. Of course we'd still wind up with a lot of new hero class players, but at least there would be a variety of them. And on the forums Nethaera gives a bit of hope for future hero classes, though not in this expansion:We are thinking at current that any future hero class additions will be made in expansions further along the line so that we can control just how many classes the game has and continue to work on attaining balance as we add them.I'm still hoping they'll come around to the idea of more hero classes sooner, rather than later.
Officers' Quarters: My personal errata
Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership.What is "errata'? It's a fancy word, taken from Latin, that basically means "errors" or "mistakes." As much as I'd like it to, running a guild doesn't pay enough to make it my full-time job. So I work in publishing. Whenever we publish a book, before the pages even begin churning off the press, we're already hard at work looking for any mistakes that we need to correct in the next printing. Like most media companies, we call these mistakes "errata," probably because by giving them a fancy name it doesn't sound quite so horrible that we printed a book with a picture of Cookie Monster above the caption "Vladimir Putin." (Just a hypothetical example . . .)With 15 columns under my belt, I thought it would be a fine time to look back and, in the tradition of publishing, point out some of my errata for our readers' benefit and amusement.
Paladins and Death Knights
Now that Wrath of the Lich King and its first hero class is in the works, I've been thinking on the shifts the paladin has made in Warcraft of late. I'm not so much talking about how the class plays, but more what the class is about, its roots and changing story. Originally paladins are the holy warriors of Azeroth, wielding the power of the light of some divine entity, able to heal and to harm with its touch. When The Burning Crusade was released, the paladin class was added to the Horde faction, and we learned that this type of Paladin was a very different breed. The Blood Elf pally was a warrior who drew on the light as well, but funneled from a holy being. This parasitic nature of the paladin was definitely a dark twist on what was considered a decidedly good-goody class. Now the paladin was sucking the power they used from a captive Naaru.
