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Shifting Perspectives: The best and the worst of patch 4.3
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat, bear, restoration and balance druids. This Tuesday, we chortle our way through 5-man trash. Oh, patch 4.3. I didn't know what to expect from you after so many bad, ugly, or just plain bizarre PUGs on the public test realm, but you turned out to be pretty cool. I don't have to wear ugly gear anymore, the Dragon Soul raid is live, Vengeance blows up like a grade school volcano science experiment, and Deathwing no longer roasts all my archaeology dig sites with the sadistic glee of an NPC who knows that I will never get the Crawling Claw if I am dead. On the downside, I have to deal with Echo of Tyrande trash ("Hey, where'd the healer go?"), and Thrall still does not seem to have realized that the rest of the world moved on to epic mounts several years ago. You win some, you lose some.
Tips for great success in the Raid Finder
The Raid Finder is now live and active. This tool is probably the single greatest boon to casual and solo players added to WoW since ... well, I'd have to struggle to think of something more exciting. If you can't commit to a raid night or more than one raid night in a single week, the Raid Finder means you can still participate in the raiding game. Sure, your item level may be a few steps behind players involved in traditional 10-man and 25-man raiding. But now with the glorious Raid Finder, you can actually take part in the story. Of course, for newer players, using the Raid Finder can be intimidating, especially if you've never spent any time in PUG raids before now. Grouping up at random with 24 other players is intimidating. You can't just ignore that; jumping into a raid group that has expectations and demands about you can be a scary thing. With that in mind, here's a handful of tips to make sure your Raid Finder experience goes as smoothly as possible.
Global Chat: September 12-18, 2011
Welcome to this week's Global Chat! We love hearing what you have to say at Massively, and we love it even more when we can share the best comments with all of our readers. Massively staffers will be contributing some of their favorite comments every week, so keep an eye out every Sunday for more Global Chat! This week our readers had some things to say about both sides of the gaming fence: the development side and the player side. Follow along after the jump to see what we talked about and contribute your own thoughts!
Flameseeker Chronicles: The care and feeding of your PUG
As I joined the rest of you in anxiously awaiting the beginning of Asura Week, I thought over what to discuss in this week's Flameseeker Chronicles. Last week was the usual calm before the storm, so I was a little stuck for a topic. As is often the way, some quality time with Guild Wars and my alliance solved that problem! While I was playing last week, I was keeping an eye on a discussion in alliance chat regarding PUG groups and the frustration that some of my allies were experiencing at their virtual hands. It set me to thinking about the unusual situation PUGs find themselves in in Guild Wars, so follow along after the jump and let's talk about it!
Enter at Your Own Rift: One-point-four
Last week, Karen provided an excellent analysis on Trion Worlds' broad, eight-page State of the Game address as the company outlined its plans for the game's long-term future. This week, we're still going to cast our eyes to the present. As we wrap up the final phase of RIFT's Waves of Madness (how much fun is water bladder throwing, huh?) and raid guilds bang their way through Hammerknell, it's the time to revel in a brand-new content update: patch 1.4. Yes, another patch. I think people are still in disbelief that Trion is able to pump out updates as rapidly as it has, and the current naysayer theory is that the company is merely polishing up content it wanted to get for launch but had to hold back for whatever reason. There's probably a kernel of truth to that, but it doesn't hold up from what we know. We know that Trion has parallel teams -- up to six of them -- working on live development, which includes world events and content updates. We know that some of the features we've seen in previous patches were a direct result of post-launch player feedback, so it can't all be capping off unfinished projects. Say what you will, but from where I'm standing, Trion's putting its actions where its mouth is by continuing a hot-and-heavy updating streak without showing any signs of slowing down. It's smart, too; by providing faster updates than most MMOs on the market and giving players incentive to stay, return, and try the game for the first time, Trion's firming up its position as an MMO that's here to stay -- not one that's going to fold up shop when future titles hit. So let's take a peek through the highlights of patch 1.4 as I offer my award-winning commentary on each of the points!
Captain's Log: Hailing frequencies were, are, and will be open
Captain's Log, Stardate 65018.1... Hello, computer (and players)! While we have all been out and about gallivanting across the galaxy, the development team for Star Trek Online has been busy working on getting Season Four: Crossfire from Tribble test server to the Holodeck live sever, and it looks like the mission was a success as it was finally patched into the game this morning. In between all the bug-squashing, feedback-gathering, and sleepless nights, Executive Producer Dan Stahl found time to sit down and answer some of his players' burning questions about the future of STO. Toward the end of every month, a Cryptic Community Manager creates a new thread in the forums where players can submit questions. While it seems that the policy is "no question is too out there," only a select few are chosen and personally responded to. Whether you are interested in the future of Klingons, wondering when Starfleet Academy will make its debut, or curious to learn if the Romulans will become a playable faction, this month's Ask Cryptic is sure to leave you wanting more. While Dan seems to jump from topic to topic, I thought it would be handy if I put it all together for you in this week's Captain's Log entry. Ensign, warp 11! Yeah, that's right! This is for all the readers who thought we couldn't even go warp 10...
Previous tier of raid content is meant to be pugged, says Bashiok
After patch 4.2 released, the previous tier of raiding content was hit with a huge swathe of nerfs and changes designed to make the content that much easier for raiders now just able to experience it. With tier 11 valor point gear now purchasable with justice points, Blizzard fully intends for the previous tier of content to be pugged by server populations. Blizzard's Bashiok took to the forums to discuss just that intention. Bashiok does say that servers will take a bit to gain the momentum and general fluency with the encounters, but that it is entirely able to be pugged. Further, he says that from here on out, Blizzard has adopted the mantra of one cutting-edge tier, with the previous raids nerfed to allow players an easier time to complete them. Personally, I am a huge fan of this type of content shift, and I think we've reached a pretty good compromise with regards to content accessibility and raid design. Raiders get their challenge while the content is relevant, hard modes are still skill-based encounters that do not get the nerf bat, and the previous tier of normal mode content is much more accessible to more casual raiders. Much as Ulduar drakes still presented a challenge in execution during Wrath even though we outgeared them, hard modes in Cataclysm are the execution challenges that will still prove to be tricky for meta achievements. Count me in.
Lost Pages of Taborea: The poor, lonely looking-for-group tool
Karen's recent article about RIFT's new looking-for-group tool got me thinking about Runes of Magic's own LFG tool. It seems like such a nifty function, but it hardly ever gets used in RoM. It's such an interesting tool that I'm happy to see in the game, but it also seems to be better on paper than in practice. Part of the reason might be that it's slightly clumsy to use for the first time, which I'll get to a little later. LFG tools are one of those things that a lot of players ask for nowadays, but they only ever seem to be used minimally unless the devs attach incentives. Let's turn caps-lock off, stop shouting in world chat, and take a closer look at RoM's LFG tool.
Addon Spotlight: Better PUGs with RobBossMods
Each week, WoW Insider brings you a fresh look at reader-submitted UIs as well as Addon Spotlight, which focuses on the backbone of the WoW gameplay experience: the user interface. Everything from bags to bars, buttons to DPS meters and beyond -- your addons folder will never be the same. This week, RobBossMods helps new players get the dungeon information that they need. Rob Boss Mods was brought to my attention during a quick PUG run of Zul'Aman that I wanted to get out of the way on then-main, now-alt paladin. I've had notoriously bad luck with items dropping in ZA for my paladin, but with the new changes, healing the place has not been too bad. However, there are still players out there who have not fully completed runs of the place, and I've seen tanks, healers, and even DPSers drop group when someone expresses the simple notion that they might not have been to this particular dungeon before. Enter RobBossMods. Think of this addon as reporting Recount to your group, except with boss strategies. Hopefully, the proliferation of addons such as RobBossMods will rip the stigma away from being new to instances and facilitate easier grouping. In my opinion, anything that makes players feel more comfortable in the content is a good thing.
Enter at Your Own Rift: 'Role' play
In retrospect, it was all my fault. I had gotten too used to just throwing RIFT dungeon groups together and assuming that with the flexible soul system we'd be able to provide everything necessary no matter what archetype mixup we had. I suppose it's a testament to Trion Worlds' design that an exact group composition wasn't a top concern -- the goal is just getting five willing players together for a fun run. We were running Darkening Deeps, and I decided to start a group so that I could show off the dungeon to Rubi. We had two Rogues, two Mages and a Warrior, and I felt pretty confident going in that we would prevail. And while the Warrior stepped up and said he would tank -- taking the burden off of my Riftstalker build -- everyone else was curiously quiet when I asked if there was another healer who could back up my Bard heals for boss fights. Nothing. Not a peep. The other Rogue didn't have a Bard spec, and the Mages were whistling innocently when I asked if they happened to have a Chloromancer role tucked in their back pocket. Oh crud. This was going to hurt. Six trash pulls into the dungeon later, I called it and said that we simply didn't have enough healing power to make it through the bosses. My bad, I said, thanks for playing!
Breakfast Topic: How was your first Cataclysm heroic group?
This Breakfast Topic has been brought to you by Seed, the Aol guest writer program that brings your words to WoW Insider's pages. My grinding had finally paid off: i329, and I was ready. With a trembling hand, I moused over "Random Cataclysm Heroic." I clicked. I had heard the rumors and the tales of woe. Guildies had warned us all of the terrors that lie in the heroic PUG. I gulped and settled in for my long DPS queue. In the middle of killing some Cultists in Twilight Highlands, the dungeon popped. My heart rate doubled. I zoned in to Blackrock Caverns. I knew right away that we were in trouble. The DPS consisted of two mages and a hunter. We wiped on the first pull. Slowly, we made it to Rom'ogg. We cleared the first part of the room, and the tank pulled Rom'ogg. And the healer pulled the rest of the trash. We wiped. We came back to try it again ... and the other mage's Mirror Image pulled the rest of the trash. The tank dropped group. The next tank joined us, announced, "I hate coming in on a wipe," and then called me a Very, Very Bad Name (not to be confused with your Average Garden Variety Bad Name). I determined that I paid my $15 a month to have fun -- and split. What was your first Cataclysm heroic experience? Was it a complete disaster, or did you miraculously pull an awesome group?
Wings Over Atreia: Solo vs. group
OK, now get your collective minds all out of the gutter! There we go. Of course, the title speaks to gaming styles and preferences in Aion. Lately, I've had the topic of grouping crop up in different discussions, from the trend of decreasing group sizes (Star Wars Galaxies had groups of 20, then Lineage II had groups of nine, followed by other games with a maximum group size of six) to questioning the need to group at all. To group, or not to group: Is that really the question? I touched on this topic a bit a few weeks ago, but an adventure this past week brought my attention back to it; I discovered that you no longer need a full group for one of the more frustrating quests in the game (once you factor in trying to get a group when the rift is up and not have it camped on the other side by the enemy!). Instead, you can complete the quest with just two or three Daevas, a feat unheard of previously due to the difficult dungeon in enemy territory. Granted, we completed our quest, which would have been impossible otherwise given the circumstances. But on a broader scale, what's with the trend of phasing out group content in MMOs and catering to the solo crowd? This phenomenon puzzles me. When a game is an MMO (read "massively multiplayer"), why discourage grouping by making almost all content accessible to the solo crowd -- especially in Aion (where learning good group dynamics can be crucial in large scale warfare)? In a time when social skills seem to be struggling to survive, why open yet another opportunity for people to avoid interaction? Type /Invite and join me past the cut to examine this phenomenon and weigh in with your preferred gaming style in our comments.
The Queue: The one with a bird on it
Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Your host for today is the newly pierced Fox Van Allen. For those of you who don't know, I live in Somerville, Massachusetts. It's an urban hipster oasis immediately west of Boston. We have stores that specialize in selling cheese. We have a coffee shop where you get served inside an abandoned bank vault. We've converted every inch of abandoned factory space into million-dollar lofts. And yes, we have lots and lots of craft stores where you can buy ridiculous crap with birds on it. Why birds? Well, according to the above clip from IFC's Portlandia, everything's better (and carries more hipster cred) when you put a bird on it. We'll test out that theory in today's The Queue. Tee asked: Is Blizzard planning on doing anything for leveling scribes to address the current situation with Books of Glyph Mastery? Since most people have moved on from Northrend content, the books are in short supply ... there are only a few on the auction house at any given time and they're ridiculously expensive. Is Blizzard really going to make me spend tens of thousands of gold to buy 54 books to get access to those glyphs? I thought I remembered someone saying during a BlizzCon panel that they were going to make those glyphs available in a different way for Cataclysm, but I may have been dreaming that.
EVE Evolved: Incursion in progress
In a blaze of fire and glory, Sansha Kuvakei's fleet clashed with players in a major offensive in Yulai. Although his AI-controlled Sansha battleships numbered in the hundreds, the sheer force of capsuleer defense initiatives was brought down on Kuvakei's fleet like a hammer. With the Sansha ships under heavy fire, the fleet opened additional wormholes to call in reinforcements. Amidst the busy buzz of lasers scorching hulls, capsuleers hurling missiles, and CONCORD rescue operations, space itself warped as several massive Sansha supercarriers emerged from the incoming wormholes. Sansha Kuvakei played his biggest and most fearsome card as a show of the incredible forces he now commands. And capsuleers burned them to ashes in defiance. Since the battle in Yulai, Sansha's Nation has begun launching full-scale occupations of constellations across New Eden. Many players dove straight into the fray without adequate preparation, and Sansha's forces were not forgiving. While most NPC pirate ships found in EVE Online are weak with a very basic AI, the new Sansha ships are both smart and deadly. They use everything from ECM and energy neutralisers to stealth bomber technology and logistic support. Thousands of player ships were destroyed in the first day of fighting as people worked out, through a system of trial and error, how best to tackle EVE's latest supervillain. As the dust settled, I began to get a solid impression of how well the feature is working and whether it really is the breath of fresh air EVE's PvE has been sorely lacking all these years. In this week's EVE Evolved, I give my first impressions of the Sansha incursions in an attempt to demystify some of the discussion surrounding them and share some basic tips for getting involved.
Breakfast Topic: Do you actually enjoy PUGs?
This Breakfast Topic has been brought to you by Seed, the Aol guest writer program that brings your words to WoW Insider's pages. We have all heard a friend or a guild member share a PUG horror story. Most of us even have one or two of our own. Prior to Wrath of the Lich King, WoW was not very PUG-friendly. There was no random dungeon tool, trash was not the AoE-fest it was in Wrath, raids didn't have normal and heroic modes, there wasn't a lot of 10-player content -- the list goes on and on. However, unless you have had a truly sheltered existence in WoW, you have joined a PUG. Surprisingly enough, sometimes PUGs can even be fun and rewarding. I have my fair share of PUG horror stories, but I have had a couple of great moments in PUGs. In BC, I joined a PUG Mag's Lair and ended up meeting members of a new raiding guild I got invited to after I saved the raid from wiping. I met numerous friends while tanking dungeons, both in the leveling process and heroics. I even started using the random dungeon tool again since 4.03 so I could get exalted with Gilneas prior to the Cata launch. With some of the AoE tanking nerfs and the tanking changes, I was actually enjoying tanking heroics wearing complete DPS gear. I even did a couple of successful PUG achievement runs to try and finish off a few remaining things, so I could focus entirely on new content. Most importantly, I was having fun while pugging. Do you have good PUG stories? Do you actually like or even prefer to PUG? Or do you avoid PUGs like the plague?
Knowledge, newbies, and why kindness pays off
I played WoW on dial-up for a while, and during that time, it was close to impossible for me to raid anything but add-light 10-man content. So I did the only thing that seemed doable: leveled alts. A lot of them. While previously I had vowed to only level my rogue (my original main) to max level in any given expansion, I was suddenly the proud owner of six level 80 characters. Even after I got back on actual broadband internet, Cataclysm's introduction of new races (especially Races That Are Worgen) gave me some more incentive to bring my number of max-level characters up to, well, its maximum level. So I finally listened to Matt Rossi and made a worgen warrior. He's awesome. And he tanks, a first for me. I've been leveling him almost exclusively through the dungeon finder, taking advantage of the instant queues for a dog what wears plate armor. I'm still pretty new to tanking, but between new talent trees, heirlooms, and questing/dungeon gear with better stat balance, most low-level instances are a breeze. So I move fast. Sometimes a little faster than other people. The same kinds of people who attack from the front as a melee class or hit "need" on spirit weapons as a mage. And I would make snide remarks to those kinds of people. Then I realized something. I was being kind of a jackass.
The Soapbox: Playing alone together
Disclaimer: The Soapbox column is entirely the opinion of this week's writer and does not necessarily reflect that of Massively as a whole. If you're afraid of opinions other than your own, you might want to skip this column. It's sitting there in my quest log, frustrating me with its presence and quite possibly calling me names when I'm not around. "It" is a fellowship (group) quest for Lord of the Rings Online that I need to complete to continue Volume 2 of the epic storyline. This particular quest has been moldering in my log for over two weeks now, and I'm starting to think I'll never get it done. I hate it. Oh, sure, I know that there's plenty of other things to do, I know that if I'm diligent I'll find a group sooner or later, and I know that eventually enough of my kinship will need to do it and we'll throw together a "help each other out" posse. But I absolutely, completely hate being dependent on others for my gaming, and it always grates when I hit a wall that cannot be passed unless I gather a few friends -- or, more likely, a motley crew of puggers -- to get around it all. Yup, that's right, I'm a solo MMO player. I'm the very oxymoron of what some consider to be the quintessential MMO experience, which is to play an online game together with thousands of others. I like to do my own thing, go my own way, and 95% of the time, chew through content as a one-man act. I don't mind being with other people for fun and adventures, but I don't want to need them to progress. And I'm part of a growing majority of MMO gamers.
Wings Over Atreia: Making the cut
"What position are you applying for?" The interviewer listens and nods. "Mmhmm. Thank you. Now, what special skills can you bring to the team?" "Please list all previous experience and describe your major accomplishments." A pause. "Have you the required equipment to adequately perform your duties?" The interviewer is quiet while sizing up the applicant. "I'm sorry, but you just don't quite have what we are looking for. Next!" Sound familiar? No, this isn't a job interview -- this is the rigmarole many players experience simply to get into a group in NCsoft's Aion. You might think that time of day or availability of people in the right level range would have the most affect on forming up a group, whether in a legion or a PUG. Instead, players often must contend with an entirely different beast before even stepping foot into an instance: group elitism. Unless you have a regular group of friends with identical play times or a very supportive legion, you are apt to occasionally find yourself in the situation of seeking a group while traipsing about Atreia. Even with a regular group, there are going to be times you are left more-or-less on your own and just want to get something done. Thus begins the (oft times unpleasant) task of creating or finding a group. Like a microcosm of drama played out in short spurts, group formation showcases a variety of less-than-desirable attributes: greed; envy; lust; selfishness; and inflated egos. Just how exclusive can this process become? Your inclusion could ride solely on your class, equipment, or skill set, and have nothing to do with your ability and skill as a player. Heck, even your name may keep you out of groups. Join me past the cut to explore elitism in group dynamics in Aion.
The Game Archaeologist and the Girdle of Anarchy: Your stories
I have to admit that I have a particular soft spot for Anarchy Online. It was, for better and worse, my first MMO -- on launch day, no less. That experience terrified me so much that I became convinced my machine could never run an online game, and so it wasn't until Shadowlands released that I returned to Rubi-Ka for another go. Fortunately, that time things went more smoothly, and I cut my teeth on that content. Sure, it was mostly over my head, and I'm pretty sure I gimped my character by level 3, but the otherworldly atmosphere and giddy newness of MMOs in general more than made up for it. After last week's brief overview of the many years of Anarchy Online's operation, vets poured out of the grid to share their own screenshots and stories. It may not be the hip new thing these days -- more like, it needs a hip replacement -- but to hear these players tell it, AO isn't as washed up as you may think. Read on for sordid tales that would make any of the Game Archaeologist's own adventures look like a dip in the kiddie pool!
The Daily Grind: Bow to the RNG
If you were ever pressed to come up with three letters that defined MMORPGs more than anything else (other than, y'know, "MMO"... or "RPG"), chances are you'd be dithering between "PUG" and "RNG." Man, we gamers like our acronyms, don't we? Just one more step toward that militaristic online state! The RNG -- random number generator -- is that tiny unseen subroutine that basically decides whether you're going to get phat lewts or not, whether you're going to hit a mob or miss, and whether the game will have downtime on the one day that week during which you have free to play. Some people swear fealty to the RNG, bowing to it above all. Some curse its very existence, for it has driven lesser people mad from its fickle nature. So when have you been royally worked over by the random number generator, even though statistically you should have succeeded long before? When did the RNG gods favor you by dropping a major blessing in your lap on the very first try? And what games are you certain have a mean-spirited RNG that try to do everything in its power to drive players insane?
