Arena!

Posted by earthwormgem on October 6, 2011
Posted in: PVP. Tagged: , , , , , . Leave a comment

I love PvP. I love battlegrounds. I love watching Blizzcon’s arena tournaments! All that being said, I’m never really enthusiastic about entering the arena myself. I get overly nervous, and I realize what I should be doing a half-second too late!

Anyway, Devee’s always asking me to arena with him for Conquest points, and after a few rounds, I’m usually a shaky wreck. Last Wednesday, however, I found myself with a spare hour (too short for a heroic or dailies), so I offered to play in the arenas.

This week was really amazing! We had great communication, and I was able to keep calm (most of the time). I felt like I had much more control when my emotions were in check, and it really shows! We were able to get all our conquest points for 2v2 arena! Yay!

Raid, 10/4/11

Posted by Peter (Devee) on October 5, 2011
Posted in: Devee, Journal, PVP, Raiding. Tagged: , , , , . Leave a comment

Another night in the Firelands!

Our finest moment!

What are we doing in that screenshot? I’ll get to that! The raid went very well. I decided to just start showing up with both holy and disc PVE specs. Yes, it means I’ll spend gold on dropping my PVP spec every week, but it’s not that much, and it’s fun to play both. I ended up using disc the entire night. It’s so much more mana efficient! I don’t have mana problems at all with it!

Harley switched to her shadow priest this week because Craca switched to his bear to tank. She’s always willing to play whichever character is needed for the raid. That’s just one of the things that makes her a great guild leader! I really hope she enjoys playing all her characters though; I’d hate to find out that she really dislikes certain roles but does them just because she feels she must.

And guess what?! I feel like I truly comprehend Baleroc! Hooray! I also managed to score a ring and a wand!

However, the best part of the night was after the raid was over. One member decided to play guess-where-I’ll-end-up, and he ended up on top of the mountain seen in the screenshot above. And then he summoned us. The fun part was a minute later, right before we were all about to hearth, an alliance suddenly teleported right next to us. Well, what could we do? Shame the Horde? No, no. We killed him. And then we laughed, realizing he’d have to spirit rez. Sorry Mr. Alliance. I usually don’t attack unprovoked, so I hope you enjoy PVP. For those wondering, he was from Huge in Japan, a very good Alliance guild!

Hopes for the Next Expansion

Posted by Peter (Devee) on October 4, 2011
Posted in: Lore, Mists of Pandaria, World of Warcraft. Tagged: , , , , . Leave a comment

With the last content patch of Cataclysm landing soon, I’ve spent some time pondering the next expansion. Unlike a lot of others, I’m not predicting what it will be. I don’t think there’s enough evidence at all to accurately predict anything. That doesn’t stop me from imagining what I’d like to do or where I’d like to visit though!

First off, can I just say that I do not want to visit Panderia or see any damn Pandaren. No thank you, Blizzard. Please continue to keep your joke race a joke.  I  think it’d be interesting to make contact with Kul Tiras though! I suppose it wouldn’t be very interesting for me exactly as a Horde player, but an entire faction of humans has been missing in World of Warcraft that should be there according to lore. Let’s see them!

I think it would be fun to leave Azeroth again. We could go back to Outlands in a couple different ways. First, Blizzard could revamp Outland like they did Azeroth. They could revise some zones to be “low level zones” designed for players between 60 and 70 while revamping the remaining and adding additional zones for players who are over level 85. Even without revamping any of the previous zones, Draenor was likely much larger than Outland, so I’m sure there are more places for us to play there.

We could also travel to new planet altogether. Maybe there were more portals still operational in Outland somewhere. Perhaps we’ll make our own portals to new locations. The naaru might direct us somewhere to help another race or planet. Wouldn’t that be cool? We also know that the draenei have settled on many planets before Draenor. There could be a reason to return to one of those planets. Velen seems very open to helping and working with the Horde, so it would seem plausible that if there was somewhere the draenei has been that needed our help, Velen would direct the Horde there as well.

There’s another race that isn’t native to Azeroth or Outland yet is friendly with us – the consortium’s ethereals. Because they travel to many different worlds in search of profits, it’s conceivable that they could get involved somewhere and want help. Their homeworld of K’aresh is now under control of void lord Dimensius. Time to liberate it?

While most of these topics have regarded leaving Azeroth, I’d also love to deal with the Infinite Dragonflight. What the expansion only features one new zone? No, wait, hear me out! Right now we have portals to all of the level 80-85 zones. What if the portals we used weren’t just jumps through space but through time also? The expansion features one physical location, but in terms of game mechanics there could be five zones, each a different time period of the exact same physical location. Maybe you don’t even complete one of these zones in whole before moving on to the next. You could jump around as the quests dictate. What bosses  could we fight? Anything we’ve already fought could be fair game!

Chances are the next expansion will have nothing to do with anything I’ve mentioned. I’m sure I’ll be excited about whatever Blizzard reveals!

Weekend Journal

Posted by Peter (Devee) on October 3, 2011
Posted in: Devee, Journal. Tagged: , , , , , , , . Leave a comment

I had an absolutely terrific World of Warcraft weekend! I got a bunch of new achievements, did some raiding, and found a nice new mount!

Cataclysmically Epic

First, I earned Cataclysmically Epic! Sadly it was with my PVP set though. Still, I’m happy for the achievement and for the progress with my PVP set!

Nat Pagle

Next up, Mooglegem and I ran into Nat Pagle while working on our Molten Front dailies. He has a cute little turtle mount! We have turtle mounts too, so of course we had to mount up with him for a photo shoot. We look good together, don’t we?

Icecrown Citadel 25 Heroic and Achievements

I found a group doing Icecrown Citadel 25-man in trade this weekend. It was advertised as a heroic run, but we ended up doing some bosses on heroic and some on normal depending on the requirements of each fight’s achievement. I got a bunch of achievements, but I’m a little sad that we couldn’t have picked one route or the other. It would have been nice to either complete the meta, complete the raid on heroic, or at least get the title for heroic Lich King 25-man. I don’t mean to sound ungrateful though; it was a fantastic run, and I got a ton of achievements.

The only boss in 25-man that I had already done on heroic was the Gunship Battle. This run, we did Lord Marrowgar, the Gunship Battle, Deathbringer Saurfang, Festergut, Rotface, Blood-Queen Lana’thel, and Valithria Dreamwalker all on heroic. You’ll notice that no entire wing was one on heroic, haha. Still, that’s a lot of progress! We also earned the situational achievementw on Lord Marrowgar, Lady Deathwhisper, the Gunship Battle, Deathbringer Saurfang, which I already had, Festergut, Rotface, Professor Putricide, Sindragosa, and one, Been Waiting a Long Time For This, from the Lich King. We only missed the one on Valithria Dreamwalker and the second Lich King achievements.

Terrible Tirion

We also discovered that Tirion is a terrible raider. He doesn’t listen to directions. We realized we had screwed up the achievement after dropping Arthas to 10%. The raid leader instructed us to rez when the RP was finished and promptly jump off the side so we can wipe and reset the encounter. Now Tirion, when a raid leader calls for a wipe, you’re supposed to wipe! He just kept hacking away at Mr. Arthas. While we all knew that Arthas was powerless to fight back and that Tirion attacks him continually, we assumed that with the entire raid dead, the encounter would reset. Not so. How hilarious would it be for a raid group to wipe, and then come back 20 minutes later to an empty encounter room because Tirion finished off Arthas? In my screenshot, you can just barely make out the spirits surrounding Arthas after I’ve flown far from the Frozen Thrown. As you know, I already mentioned that we did earn one achievement on the Lich King, so you know it ended alright. Our raid leader opened a ticket, and the GM reset the encounter for us. I have no idea how the ticket got answered so quickly. It was at most two or three minutes. He mentioned earlier getting a ticket escalated. Again, no idea.

Swift Brewfest Ram

To round out the weekend, I managed  to win a Swift Brewfest Ram! I was pretty lucky! Now, just a couple more days available to try for the Swift Brewfest Kodo!

The Kor’kron 501st

Posted by Peter (Devee) on October 2, 2011
Posted in: Blog. Tagged: , , , . Leave a comment

Along with the registration of a domain name, we’ve had a name change as well! I really liked the name Leap of Faith, but we’ve settled on the Kor’kron 501st as the new name for the site! The Kor’kron Guard are the elite fighting force of the Horde. The 501st are the last defense of the Horde, doing whatever they can for the good of the Horde and all of Azeroth!

Also, the Kor’kron 501st is just a sweet name.

Swimming in the Sky

Posted by Peter (Devee) on September 30, 2011
Posted in: Devee, Journal. Tagged: , , , , . Leave a comment

The ends of Azeroth

The strangest thing happened to me recently, and it seems like it’s not all that uncommon. I could tell I was disconnected, but I was still able to move. Fairly normal so far. But then when I jumped my character just started swimming through the air. This happened in the middle of Hyjal, so I decided to “swim” west over Darkshore.

Hyjal

I flew over the eerie Night Elf territory and proceeded to continue flying/swimming over the ocean before deciding to drop straight down. Because I didn’t have a breath status bar, I wanted to see the seafloor. For some reason, I hit some invisible floor or something. I know there are upper limits and edge limits, but I wasn’t expecting a lower limit. I swam out of the water, flew back to the shore, and then tried again. This time, I stayed near the seafloor the entire time. When I got to the edge where you’d normally enter the sea, I have to say, I was kind of creeped out.

It’s a dark zone to begin with, but I’m deep in the ocean, swimming along the seafloor, knowing that I am the only person in existence in this virtual world at the moment. While I knew I’d most likely find nothing, there’s always a chance I’ll stumble across something that I wasn’t supposed to see. Hidden areas are a lot less common in Cataclysm than they were before the Shattering, but  there are still things to see off the normal path. Oh, and it was dark in my room while I was playing.

Azuremyst Island

Eventually I swam so far out that the world map showed me under Azuremyst Island, which I know is on a different server. I swam into the wall, which wasn’t invisible as I was suspecting. It was rather pretty actually! Swimming up, I popped out of the water and flew into the invisible barrier above me. At this point I accidentally right clicked on my unit frame causing me to attempt to cast Penance. Now it looked like my character was desperately swimming through the air with a stolen manifestation of the Holy Light. I began to fly north until the zone widened when it became Teldrassil. I decided to explore Darnassus, curious if the NPCs would be there, but they were not. And then I promptly got bored.

I hope that bear doesn't steal my Holy Light.

I didn’t shut down the computer though. I went to bed. In the morning, I was greeted with a message in my chat about being inactive and getting disconnected. It was from six and a half hours earlier. I had to leave for work, so I aimed by character southeast, set him flying/swimming, and left for work. We’ll see what happens.

Priest Set Bonuses in Cataclysm

Posted by Peter (Devee) on September 29, 2011
Posted in: Priest, Raiding. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , . Leave a comment

Set bonuses were just updated a couple minutes ago! I’ve been sitting on this draft, but I’ll go ahead and post it before it gets more dated!

As with all tier gear, the priest tiers this expansion have both good and not-so-good set bonuses. With the T13 bonuses revealed recently, I thought I’d take a chance to offer my opinions. However, keep in mind I haven’t actually acquired 4-piece  of either T11 or T12.

Tier 11

(2 Set): Increases the critical strike chance of your Heal spell by 5%.

Considering where they intended priest healing to be when Cataclysm was being planned, the two-piece made sense. However, Heal just doesn’t work as a spell. It heals a sliver of health on tanks. It’s true that I do use it if the person needing healing isn’t taking much damage, but quite often other heals work better. If someone’s in immediate danger and likely to receive more damage, he’ll get a Power Word: Shield and Flash Heal. If the tank is taking prolonged heavy damage, he’ll get Greater Heals. If a DPS takes damage but isn’t standing in fire or doing something else stupid, a Renew and possibly Power Word: Shield will take care of him. Heal’s just not a good spell right now.

(4 Set): When your Penance spell heals a target you gain 540 Spirit for 10 sec, and being in a Chakra state grants you 540 Spirit for the duration of the Chakra.

The four-piece is nice, but it’s always up for Holy priests and usually up for Discipline priests. Seems unfair.

Tier 12

(2 Set): Casting your Flash Heal, Heal, Greater Heal, and Prayer of Mending spells cause you to regenerate 2% of your base mana every 5 sec for 15 sec.

Pretty much every spell I cast causes me to regenerate mana? Yes please!

(4 Set): You have a chance when you cast a helpful spell to summon a Cauterizing Flame at the target’s location. Each sec the Cauterizing Flame will heal an injured party member within 20 yards for 9250 to 10750. Lasts 5 sec.

As I don’t have four pieces of T12 yet, I don’t know just how smart this smart heal is. It sounds good though!

Tier 13

(2 Set): After using Power Infusion or Lightwell, the mana cost of your healing spells is reduced by 25% for [10|15] sec. (10 sec for Discipline, 15 for non-Discipline.)

This seems disappointing to me even though I know other bloggers have praised it. As Discipline, I use Power Infusion in two situations – whenever it’s up for the mana or during “oh shit” situations. This new two-piece set bonus works for both of those I believe. However, as Holy, I put down Lightwell whenever it’s off cooldown. Okay, that works. Except for the initial cast. Lightwell lasts for the same amount of time that it’s on CD. Because of this, I always cast it before the pull. This way we can use as many of its charges as we need (all of them if the need be) in a shorter amount of time, and then I can recast it. I don’t really need cheap heals before we pull, but the earlier I put it down the better in my opinion. Ten seconds before the pull doesn’t help that much, but a minute and a half before the pull means a minute and a half into the fight I can put down a new one.

(2 Set): After using Power Infusion or Divine Hymn, the mana cost of your healing spells is reduced by 25% for [10|23] sec. (10 sec for Discipline, 23 for non-Discipline.)

You did it! Thanks, Blizzard! Now it’ll do what you intended it to do. I like it.

(4 Set): Your Power Word: Shield has a 10% chance to absorb 100% additional damage, and the cooldown of your Holy Word abilities is reduced by 20%.

(4 Set): Your Power Word: Shield has a 10% chance to absorb 100% additional damage and increase the mana granted by Rapture by 100%, and the duration of your Holy Word abilities is increased by 20%.

This seems really awesome for both healing specs. Power Word: Shield is a fantastic spells for Discipline priests, and I’m sure they’ll get a ton of use out of it. As for Holy, both Holy Word heals are great. I’ve heard the single-target heal referred to as the tank heal and the ground-based AOE one a raid heal, but I don’t think it’s neccessarily like that. I’ve learned to switch Chakras depending on the mobility of the fight at that time (some fights lend themselves to one or the other, and some require me to switch). In any case, a shortned cooldown on these abilities is a welcome addition!

In all, I’m excited about the T13 set bonuses. The two-piece is underwhelming to be sure, but it is a two-piece after all. And after that terrible set “bonus” that was two-piece T11, this is quite welcome! Now we’ll have to wait and see if they get changed before 4.3 goes live.

Ragnaros Attempts

Posted by Peter (Devee) on September 29, 2011
Posted in: Devee, Journal, Raiding. Tagged: , , , . Leave a comment

Wednesday night was a continuation of our raid from the previous night. I wasn’t expecting to come, but we didn’t have enough healers. Hooray for me then! We were a DPS short for a while because he was stuck in traffic, so we cleared up to old Ragz and discussed strategy. A little over an hour later our DPS made it home, so it was off we went!

Things went decently enough, and we changed things up a few times to see if we could improve. Harley would call out when to set off traps, but we realized that sometimes she’d call it out when DBM gave the announcement, a few seconds later it would actually spawn on the floor, people would have taken damage, and then Moogle would hit it. At first I started interjecting to let Moogle know current conditions. Easy for us to communicate when we’re playing next to each other. Then I told Harley what I was doing, and I just took over for her. That was fun!

There were multiple times in which a tank fell over, and I feel terrible about that. I guess my throughput still sucks sometimes! I was asked to go Discipline, so I hearth’ed to Orgrimmar and respec’d. I think I’ll start doing that before every raid. It’s only 66 gold to respec, so 132 gold per week to bring Holy and Discipline to my raids, assuming I don’t want to PVP between the two raid nights. As long as the raid nights are adjacent, I can’t imagine wanting to PVP after the first night when I’m sure I’ll just be wanting to sleep. Still – feel bad about the tank deaths!

We struggled a couple times with downing adds before they got to the hammer, and we also struggled with the stacking phases. At firsts we tried stacking in the middle, but we swapped strategies to the switching sides method. At the end of the night I realized that we’d spread on the right and stack on the left every time. I wonder if it’d be better if we just stayed on the side we were? Spread on the right, stack on the left, stay on the left and spread, stack on the right. I don’t know if that’s viable. There might be aspects of the fight I don’t fully grasp.

Leap of Faith! I used it correctly! On the trash pull someone shot into the air from the lava, and I pulled him back down. Amazing! I love finding uses for it!

I could tell poor Harley was stressed out. I feel bad for her because I can only imagine how much work it is to lead a guild. Hopefully she knows how much we appreciate what she does. She even gave me BoE wrists that are BiS! I’m not even sure why, but it was super nice.

Anyways, we didn’t down Ragnaros, but we got some good practice done. I’m sure we’ll down him soon!

Firelands Complete!

Posted by Peter (Devee) on September 28, 2011
Posted in: Devee, Journal, Raiding. Tagged: , , , , , . Leave a comment

Achievement Earned: Firelands

Last night I killed the last of the Firelands bosses! I went about my progression strangely this patch; first I killed Ragnaros, and then I made my way in order through the first six. It’s odd to get the completion achievement on a boss that’s not the final. On my first night in Firelands, I did attempts on Alysrazor but didn’t down her. On my second night, which was the next week, I put in attempts only on Ragnaros. Again, no kill. Later that week I joined a PUG for Ragnaros and killed him. And this week, my third week in the Firelands, I saw the other five bosses for the first time and killed the six bosses besides Ragnaros for  the first time!

Shannox

Shannox

We started with Shannox. He puts has two adds, flame-dog-things, and throws down a bunch of traps. It was interesting fighting a boss that’s clearly a hunter. As most people know, you have to avoid the traps and get the dogs to hit them. We did wipe once because people pushed him into his enrage, but it was easy fight. Luckily I didn’t hit any traps!

He dropped the Crystal Prison Band, a ring that is technically an upgrade for me. However, our mage needed it, and it didn’t have spirit on it. I didn’t really want the spirit drop, plus my best-in-slot rings are from the Valor Point vendor and the Avengers of Hyjal quartermaster. I didn’t roll on it.

Beth’tilac

Next up we did Beth’tilac, the spider boss. I hated this fight. Terrible. Some people have to go up into her web to engage her while others stay below, fighting adds. Nothing complicated really. Why do I hate it? The people in the above area are within my healing range, so they are not grayed out on Grid. However, I can’t heal them due to line of sight. Most my clicks on Grid were on players I couldn’t actually heal! Angry! He dropped cloth chest armor, but my T12 chest from Valor Points is non-heroic BiS.

Baleroc

Third on the list – Baleroc! More interesting mechanics. Baleroc summons crystals. Each time a crystal appears, two DPS are assigned to standing near it. First one, for half of the time, then the second DPS. The next time a shard comes, it’ll be a second pair. These two pairs of DPS continually swap. The person near the crystal needs to be healed by a designated healer, and we had three healers swapping. What happens if no one stacks near a shard? I have no idea. But I guess I got some buff that’s good from healing them while they were there.

Lord Rhyolith

Rhyolith in Second Phase

Image from Me and My Epic Wood.

This boss doesn’t know how to turn, and we can’t hurt him. He summons volcanoes, and we DPS attack his legs to cause him to turn. They use this mechanic to get him to walk over volcanoes. The volcanoes do occassionally erupt, shooting five lines of lava out. Luckily, the game has been out for years, so the idea of “don’t stand in the fire” is pretty simple. When he walks into enough of them, he enters a second phase where he looks like a magma version of Megaman’s Yellow Devil.

Yellow Devil

Image from Mega Man Knowledge Base.

Alysrazor

Moving on to Alysrazor, I got to come back to a boss that I had actually attempted previously. This is a very fun fight except it ruins the rest of the game. It sure feels great to cast while moving!

Two stupid birds.

Also, does anyone else think that watching the two fire-birds spit at each other is hilarious?

Majordomo Staghelm

Finally we reached what was the last boss for me. Incredibly easy fight at this point. I wonder what it was like before the nerf. Stack up and heal. Spread out and heal. Repeat. Oh, sometimes I get a debuff, and when it reaches 5 seconds remaining, I run out. Not very complicated.

He dropped a shoulder token, and I won the roll. He also dropped wrists that I wanted, but of course I didn’t roll on them because I won the token. But then I was asked to let someone else have the shoulders. We ended up discussing it, and I decided it was better for him to have the shoulders anyways (mainly because I haven’t put much time into this tier). However, I would have rolled on the damn wrists if I had known I wasn’t going to keep the shoulders! My BiS wrists are from the Valor Point vendor anyways, so in the long run, it won’t matter.

Achievement Earned: Firelands

And that’s my tale of the Firelands! It was a cool raid, and I look forward to farming the place and hopefully moving on to heroic mode and achievements. That’s not usually how we do things in my guild, because it prefers to gear up other people and our alts (of which I have none!), but I still hope to get some more progression done. The game’s all about progression! I’m still pretty sad I didn’t get into the Firelands earlier, pre-nerf. I’m just happy I have enough free time to raid again!

Patch 4.3 PTR: New valor point weekly caps, dungeon point rewards

Posted by Peter (Devee) on September 28, 2011
Posted in: Game Mechanics. Tagged: , , , , , . Leave a comment

The new 5-man instances, End Time, Well of Eternity, and Hour of Twilight, now award 150 valor points for each random completed, up to seven per week.

via Patch 4.3 PTR: New valor point weekly caps, dungeon point rewards, WoW Insider.

The new instances reward Valor Points, and the cap has been changed. You’ll get the reward seven times. Okay, no news there really. What’s interesting to me is the mention that that the first heroic, End Time, took 20 to 25 minutes to complete. The author hadn’t yet tried the other two, but seven half hour heroics per week is a welcome change. Yes, it means I’ll still have to go through content I’ve already completed each week, but now it’ll be less painful. It’s hard to fit in seven heroics every week currently. I’m doing it, but I’m doing nothing but heroics and Firelands. I’d like to have some free time!

Edit: Rise of the Zandalari heroics  will no longer have their own tier in the Dungeon Finder, and all heroics will now award 150 Valor Points. Hooray!

Priest Tier 13 Art!

Posted by Peter (Devee) on September 27, 2011
Posted in: Priest. Tagged: , , , , . Leave a comment

Strange Titan construct Tier 13

Hunter and Priest tier 13 art revealed from MMO-Champion via Wow Insider.

Well, my T13 was finally revealed. Ihonestly don’t know what to think about it. It’s exciting, and I’m happy about that. I’m glad it’s not something boring. I just don’t know if I like it.

Its base reminds me of Wrath. The belt looks similar to a belt I had at the end of Wrath except recolored, and the robes remind of the Argent Crusade’s tabard. The headpiece and shoulders… wow. It looks like priests are going to be walking constructs of the titans. I suppose that’s cool!

I was hoping for a set that I want to continue using in the future – something looks appropriate for a priest for me to use in the future for RP purposes. Still, it could have been worse, and I’m looking forward to seeing it in higher quality!

Oh, and hunter T13 was revealed. *shrug*

Update: Okay, it’s really grown on me already! It has this proud, ancient, powerful vibe that might be hurt when displayed on a hunched over troll, though.

Thrall: Hour of Twilight

Posted by Peter (Devee) on September 27, 2011
Posted in: Novels. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , . Leave a comment

Thrall: Hour of Twilight by Christie Golden is an exciting addition to the World of Warcraft story. I recently finished it and found it pretty exciting. In it we see Thrall grow as a person, the ascension of a new Aspect, an important battle with the Twilight Flight, the return of Nozdormu, and an interesting reveal about the various enemies of Azeroth. Previously I read The Shattering, also by Golden, which I enjoyed much more, but I still found Hour of Twilight to be a good read. The ending, while not a cliffhanger, didn’t seem quite right to me, but this might be due to what I know or think is to come in the next patch.

The question now is, which book do I read next? Do I read a Hugo award winner, Agent to the Stars, which I’ve been wanting to read for a while, or another World of Warcraft novel? I’m leaning towards another World of Warcraft novel – Rise of the Horde, Stormrage, or Wolfheart! Rise of the Horde would let me continue reading Golden and learning of the glorious Horde, but the either two would let me try Richard A. Knaak and get a glimpse of  the Alliance.

Playing How I Want

Posted by Peter (Devee) on September 26, 2011
Posted in: Game Mechanics, Raiding. Tagged: , , , , , , , , . 1 Comment

World of Warcraft should eliminate grinds. I should be able to enjoy whatever content I please. No repeating content I don’t want to do just to be able to do the content I do enjoy. And no forgetting about the old content because I want to keep up with the current.

WoW is a game, and the goal is to have fun. I should be able to play the content that I find enjoyable. I don’t really want to run a set number of heroics each week to earn points so I can get new gear. I don’t want to be forced to run raids over and over for the chance of a drop. Sometimes I feel like participating in some older content, but I don’t have the time. Currently, I need to do seven Rise of the Zandalari heroics every week. It’s a welcome change to the one-per-day model, but it’s still troublesome and boring. What I want to do most of all right now is complete the Firelands. Of course, in order to do that I need to run my heroics so I earn Valor Points for gear. I also need some gear from the previous raid tier still. And once I complete Firelands, I’ll need to run it over and over for more  gear so that I’m prepared for the next tier.

One barrier to enjoying content is lockouts. You can only do each raid once per week. Lockouts should be removed from the game. If I want to play through the Firelands twice this week, why shouldn’t I? On top of that, if everyone in the  raid group has already downed a particular boss, the group should be able to skip it. Unless players want to fight that boss because they enjoy it or want to see it for some other reason, skipping it would allow people to get right to the content they want to see. Making everyone kill each boss at least once before moving on to the next also guarentees that they understand the mechanics of that fight, allowing the proceeding bosses to include mechanics that build upon those of the previous. Of course the problem with all this skipping is that people can’t skip if they need the gear. Similarly, removing lockouts means people can gear up by running something over and over. Remove the Valor Points / Justice Points system entirely, and do away with loot – problem solved.

I realize that people like tangible goals that can be reached and that Blizzard likes money. Without a reason to keep playing, people could finish a raid and then cancel their accounts, waiting for the next content patch. WoW should encourage new trials with current encounters – not grinding. For example, all raids bosses should have multiple achievements associated with them. After you complete a boss the normal way, maybe you’ll want to go back and try it a new and fun way. There could also be timed runs of entire raid instances. More than just an achievement for doing it in a certain amount of time, there could be leaderboards for how fast particular raids had been done. Without loot, you don’t have to worry about people overgearing it! This would appeal to the strive for a high score. Certain difficult achievements could still award loot, because of course, WoW is a role-playing game, and people like having status symbols, but the loot wouldn’t have stats. Awesome designs and interesting on-use effects could take the place of ever-increasing numbers.

Content should be challenging yet still accessible. When content is released, it should have a normal and heroic mode. The difference should be similar to the existing differences between normal and heroic (with the exception that heroic mode can’t require better gear!), and achievements and leaderboards would be separate. Raids should also have an easy mode for those who want to see what it’s like but lack the skill to truly succeed in normal. When I firsts outlined this post, there was no announcement yet of the Looking For Raid tool that uses raids tuned easier, so it seems Blizzard agrees with me on this point (and half-heartedly on the no lockouts point too). New raids should still come out at the same rate, but an interesting side effect of not having increasingly more powerful gear is that all the old raids are still relevant. To keep players engaged in the game, there could be a new achievement every two weeks and a new featured raid time-to-beat on the alternating weeks. Long time players might cringe at the thought of going back to some places right now, but under the system I’m proposing, you wouldn’t have had to slam your face into the keyboard in frustration for months in one particular raid, so maybe those players wouldn’t be so tired of particular encounters!

I know this system could never hold. Most people don’t agree with me, and many gamers really subscribe to that carrot-on-a-stick game design philosophy. However, I just want to have fun. I want to enjoy WoW without feeling forced to do particular content. I want to do the content that seems fun to me. Getting rid of lockouts eliminates a barrier to doing the content that I want to do, and getting rid of new gear frees me from being forced to do content that I don’t want to do. Additionally, introducing leaderboards for times through instances/raids and new achievements would continually breathe new life into old content. Using this system would not only allow players more flexibility but it would create a game were more content (all of it) was current and relevant.

I know I’ll never see it, but a priest can dream!

Great Week

Posted by Peter (Devee) on September 25, 2011
Posted in: Devee, Journal. Tagged: , , , , , , , , . Leave a comment

In place of writing some of the actual content that I’ve been outlining and brainstorming, I’d like to mention what an awesome week this has been. Boss kills, loot, and new mounts!

Wednesday Mooglegem and I were needed for our guild run. Unfortunately, we’ve only been needed on the progression nights, so we got to try Ragnaros (after trying and not killing Alysrazor the previous week). It was a fun fight, and I love Ragnaros’ model, but we were unable to down him. It seemed like we’d get him soon, and I still had fun. Still, how can we gear if we haven’t been able to get in the farm night and PUGs won’t take us?

After the Ragnaros attempts, we did a Baradin Hold run. While I didn’t win any PVE gear, I did manage to get a new cloak for PVP! Later I saved enough Valor Points to buy by T12 chest piece, which is BiS non-heroic. That same day I found a trash run and spent a couple hours clearing Firelands trash. I made it to friendly with the Avengers of Hyjal and purchased my BiS cloak. So far, so good – for me anyways. Another small thing we managed to get done was something that’s almost embarrassing. We finally won Tol Barad. Alliance are definitely in control of that damn prison more than the Horde on our server!

Mooglegem hadn’t been so lucky this week. We also missed our Coren Direbrew run one day, which definitely made me angry. However, the next morning Mooglegem won the Brewfest Ram! We were both pretty excited. I managed to snag a new mount as well – the Amani Battle Bear! I can tell you, I’m pretty thrilled to finally get it. At first I didn’t like it as much as the classic Zul’Aman bear, but it really grew on me.

There was one other bit of awesomeness this week: I killed Ragnaros! A guildie asked me I wanted in on a Ragnaros kill because his PUG was looking for someone with experience downing him. Of course, I didn’t have that, and I was honest. I explained that I had done attempts, but I hadn’t killed any Firelands boss nor the final bosses of any T11 raid. He talked with the raid, and they let me in anyways. After four attempts, he went down. And I won the T12 headpiece! Stupidly, I forgot to take a screenshot, but trust me, it happened. Now I have two-piece T12 and two-piece T11!

Here’s hoping next week is as satisfying.

Take the Leap!

Posted by Peter (Devee) on September 25, 2011
Posted in: Blog. Tagged: , , . Leave a comment

What is a Leap of Faith?

Is it trying something even though you’re not sure how it will work out, just because you have faith that it will?

Is it trusting in a priest to pull you to safety?

Is it annoyingly getting pulled into something harmful from a jerky priest? (Yes.)

Or, is it a blog to discuss World of Warcraft from the point of view of a priest and a mage who enjoy casual raiding, achievement hunting, and PVPing?

It’s the last one!

After realizing that a catch-all blog wasn’t the place to go into in-depth commenting on World of Warcraft, I decided to create Leap of Faith. A dedicated WoW blog also makes sense for me because I want to collaborate with Mooglegem also! Thank you to the one or two people who notice and read this!