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Thoughts on Icecrown Citadel and gating
A month after patch 3.3 and Icecrown Citadel dropped, Lume the Mad weighs in on its raid content with mixed feelings. Icecrown's story, art, music, and general encounter design are all fantastic, he observes, but Blizzard's approach to "gating" content is having an ugly effect on raids. When you've only got 10-15 shots at killing specific bosses, small issues rarely stay that way for long. "I have to pressure people with lag to sit so as not to potentially lose a shot at killing the boss," he writes. "And when someone makes the most innocent of mistakes, people get pissed off. It's not fun for them. And it's not fun for me as a result." That's the part of the gating system -- "Raiders (having) the fear of God struck into them for wiping just once," as Lume puts it -- of which I'm not overly fond myself. A key raider lagging or disconnecting can result in a wipe on much of this content, and more particularly on the two bosses (Putricide and Lana'thel) for whom limited attempts currently exist. Both command very high DPS requirements, so even if you can easily afford the loss of a laggy DPS or two on something like Festergut (which is pretty baldly a DPS check in its own right), a single person going offline on Lana'thel-25 can wreck both the attempt and peoples' nerves. Losing 4 Blood-Queen Lana'thel attempts last week due to the bug with Kinetic Bombs aggroing her through the ceiling during the Council fight was equally frustrating.
A critical look at WoW's zombie issues
In a move driven in part by frustration, Lume the Mad recently outlined his specific beefs with Blizzard's pre-Wrath zombie event for World of Warcraft. We've seen in the past that some people weren't enjoying the event whatsoever, but Lume has gone the distance and outlined exactly what's wrong and how massive frustration could have been avoided.It's very unfortunate that greifers are ruining the event for everyone, but then again nobody should be surprised. Everyone should be familiar with John Gabriel's Greater Internet D*ckwad Theory by now. We're all for events that shake up player expectations but Lume makes a very strong point by point argument that's hard to argue with in any sort of rational way. Hopefully, Blizzard will learn from this experience and put in a few more safeguards next time around. That is unless they've simply become unscrupulous evil men and women, corrupted by nerd money and power.
Breakfast Topic: Dialing back your game
Ever since the whole 10-man/25-raiding split for Wrath was announced, there's been murmurs of fear from many raiders that the large scale raid will become a thing of the past, as people decide that they can see content just fine in 10-man groups. I noticed the subject come up again today over on Lume the Mad's blog (not to be confused with the awesomer Lum the Mad's blog): A guild on Proudmoore, Renaissance, has decided to scale back to 10 man raiding for Wrath of the Lich King. They have why, but Lume opines a bit on why: easier bosses, less hassle herding 10 people than 25 people, and stuff such as that. The reminder of the debate actually sort of got me thinking in a less controversial vein. I myself scaled back my game a bit from original WoW to the Burning Crusade expansion. In the original game, I was a relatively dedicated raider. Not the most uber, and probably still more casual than most, but I did regularly participate in 40-mans and tried to bring my consumables and my resist gear and be on time most nights. However, with Burning Crusade, I decided to retire from the raid game. I felt I was just spending too much time farming stuff to raid, I had more real world obligations to deal with, and I felt that spending 2-3 hours in Ahn'Qiraj or Blackwing Lair 2-3 days a week just wasn't how I wanted to spend my playtime. So, come BC, I decided to stick to 10-mans. Not that there were many, but I figured Karazhan would be about the pinnacle of my game for BC, and that was just fine. So, anyway, here's my question: Are you or your guild planning to scale back your game for Wrath? Are you dropping 25-mans for 10-mans? Retiring from Arena play? Dropping out of raiding altogether? What reasons have made you decide to try a new slower paced playstyle in Northrend?
Lume the Mad tackles Wrath of the Lich King (all of it)
World of Warcraft blogger Lume the Mad wrote up a massive post describing the most important changes in the Wrath of the Lich King expansion which will be released on November 13th. He lists just about everything, and even provides analysis of the expansion's implications.It's a must-read for WoW players, especially those unfamiliar with the breadth of the changes occuring in the expansion. And for those who already know their stuff, there's some good commentary on the consequences of Blizzard's choices. It'll especially be useful to guild leaders who want to be prepared.He had some particularly harsh words to say about the changes ("homogenization") to buffs in some classes. He argued that the changes will render some players' characters undesirable to raid leaders. But it's not all high-brow theoretical talk; there are bits about vehicles, siege warfare, and even the barber shop in there. One of Azeroth's millions of citizens? Check out our ongoing coverage of the World of Warcraft, and be sure to touch base with our sister site WoW Insider for all your Lich King needs!
Lume the Mad reviews WotLK and its changes
MMO Blogger Lume the Mad has a nice in-depth review of all the changes coming to World of Warcraft in the form of the game's second expansion, Wrath of the Lich King. If you're a regular reader of WoW Insider, there's nothing really new here -- odds are you already know about all the changes (and have a strong opinion of some of them). But as a nice wide general overview of what's going on with the game, Lume's little writeup is very thorough.It is pretty amazing to think that before Burning Crusade released, there were no such things as Blood Elves or Draenei, the only Arena in the game was Gurubashi, and only the Horde ever had Shamans in their raids. But nowadays all of those things are commonplace, and odds are that the game will change just as much with Wrath -- siege vehicles will be a huge part of the game, Death Knights will be everywhere, achievements will be just as big a goal as any other part of the game, and phasing will be the norm (you'll never be sure that the player next to you is seeing exactly what you're seeing in the game world).Lume doesn't go so far as to call it a new game (though Blizzard may want to), but there's no question that even though the most basic game mechanics stay in place (you still use abilities on action bars to kill creatures and gain experience), the quests, graphics, and storylines will look very different. BC changed our game once, and Wrath is set to change it yet again.[via Massively]
Why PvE to PvP transfers are a good thing for World of Warcraft
Lume the Mad has constructed a deep look at Blizzard's decision to allow transfers from PvE to PvP servers and why it's good for World of Warcraft players. For those who'd rather not read the whole thing, here's a summarized version: There are going to be some economic and social hiccups, yes, but the bonuses will far outweigh the minuses. The whole thing allows for bigger recruitment pool, more friends playing with friends and an overall improved ability for everyone to take risks.We're inclined to agree with Mr. Mad's take on the whole situation. It'll be an interesting stretch into 2009 for World of Warcraft players between this change and the upcoming Wrath of the Lich King expansion. At least everyone should be able to play with all their friends for Wrath and something like that is always a very good thing.
No threat for Lifebloom
Lume the Mad has done the math (very thoroughly), and he's got the answer for Druids: the end healing burst of Lifebloom doesn't cause any threat at all, either for the caster or the recipient. He first pared the entire situation of casting Lifebloom down to its basic elements -- you've got a player who body pulls a mob, and a Druid healing them. He took out all possible reactive abilities that might cause threat, and then set up a situation where the Druid obtained threat, and cast LIfebloom on another player, with an opposing faction Shaman purging the spell early (so it could jump straight to the end heal), and the mob stayed on the Druid -- the big heal didn't cause threat for the recipient at all. Finally, Lum tested if the Druid was recieving aggro, and as you can see above, neither the Druid caster or the Warlock is affected by the end heal of Lifebloom -- just one point of damage can still pull the mob around.There's been a lot of discussion about this already -- the HoT aspect of Lifebloom still does cause threat (for the Druid), and so you combine that with the fact that lots of people were testing under "unsecure" situations, and the whole thing got very confusing. But Lum's tests seem very clear: Druids can cast away knowing that they won't pull aggro with that burst of healing at the end of the spell.[Thanks, Matticus!]
