Hey, like the Brontosaurus sometimes, but better late than never. WotLK info from Bliz, via WoW Insider :
- All 5-man dungeons will have a Heroic mode
- Heroic dungeons will have a separate loot table than non-Heroics
- A new token system will be used, similar to the Badge of Justice one used now (*)
- The 5-man instances are designed to not take more than an hour (*)
- All raid dungeons will have both 10-man and 25-man versions (*)
- The 10 and 25-man progressions will not depend on each other (*)
- There will be no attunements or keys necessary for any raid (*)
- The 25-man loot will be a tier higher than the 10-man loot
- The 10 and 25-man versions of the same raid will be on different timers so that each can be attempted on the same day by the same people (*)
I know a couple hundred people that will be happy.
(*): A lot of people (myself included) have been asking for something like this - or very, very similar - for two years now. This is Bliz, opening the cage of raiding and letting it out to play with everybody. Designing for the 1% was, and is, just bull. Grats on this one go to Irvine.
P.S.: Tempted to explain why each of those points is a very good thing, but I trust our readers don’t really need any explanation. Plus, people always tell me I type and talk too much.
A WoW guildie of mine organized a pretty awesome druid flash mob earlier this week. The concept: Get a bunch of druids together, fly around Nagrand as a flock (in bird form) and find an unsuspecting Horde, swoop down to the ground, surround him, and stare at him until he cracks, a la Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Birds”.
WoW Insider has a pretty great writeup of the event, which included druid skywriting, mobs of cheetahs running down Horde on Quel’Danas, and other craziness. There must be other cool possibilities here. I think it would be fun to get a lot of hunters to hide inside of a building near a questing area, then when a horde approaches, use Eyes of the Beast to send out a ton of turtle pets to swarm him.
I’m a little surprised fun events like this don’t happen more often in virtual worlds, given how much easier it is to execute creative, crazy ideas. But I guess you still have the burden of actually organizing a lot of people to do something, which is a non-trivial task in the virtual world, too.
Tobold posted some musings about what Blizzard will eventually do with their next MMO that got me thinking.
Tycho over at Penny Arcade speculated a few weeks back that Blizzard’s new MMO project will simply be an engine update for WoW, but I don’t think this will be the case. It seems inevitable that someone will eventually come out with something better designed, more accessible, more fun than WoW, just as WoW did the same for Everquest. And of course Blizzard would like that “someone” to be them.
I’m also not convinced that “the next big game” will be significantly more advanced than WoW, graphically. When you get into the sort of subscriber numbers that WoW has, you’re reaching far beyond the market segment of hardcore gamers, which means you’re targeting people that don’t make a point of upgrading their PC every 2-3 years. So you’ve got hardware limitations to deal with.
I’m also of the opinion that graphics technology today is already “good enough.” It can (and will) continue to get better, sure, but the main thing that distinguishes WoW for me visually is not the graphics technology, it’s the aesthetic. The art, the architecture, the style and spirit that goes into the world is something I find beautiful. I think it’s wonderful that graphics technology is advanced enough so that artistic beauty is finally the biggest differentiator in terms of a game’s visual impact.
- James
We’ve all heard grumbling here and there about the latest WoW patch’s new high-end loot. The new loot can be obtained much more easily than before the patch, when you had to complete high-end raids to get gear of this caliber. The grumbling generally revolves around the idea that it’s unfair and demoralizing to raiders who obtained similar gear when it was more difficult to do so.
My feeling on this is, so what? The change is not massive, and there are good reasons for it — it will help more people see high-end content before the expansion comes out. But more importantly, there’s more to WoW than gear. What about the experience of learning to work as a team? What about the satisfaction of overcoming a really tough boss fight? What about the aesthetic beauty of seeing a new dungeon? What about meeting new people and making new friends as you play together?
Being overly-focused on gear is simply materialism brought to the virtual world. It’s not a very fulfilling path. I’m not saying gear is bad, or material goods are bad, just that treating them with the proper priority is an important part of having a fulfilling life in a virtual world as well as the physical one.
Recent changes in my Real Life have forced my Online Life to pretty much be non-existent. A full time job and full time college will do that to you, plus lots of other personal obligations, such as helping my wife study for her classes - which she passed, with flying red, white, and blue colors and became an American Citizen just yesterday - but I do miss being able to pass my days away in Warcraft. Especially now that we have ‘the new shiney’ of patch 2.4.
Continue reading ‘Two Point Four aka The Last Freebie’
Lately, I’ve been reading Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely, a book on the relatively new science of behavioral economics. Classical economics states that, given all necessary information, people and therefore markets will behave rationally and in their own best interests. However, behavioral economics states that people will very often behave irrationally, and that we must modify economic theory based on that irrationality. The most interesting point, to me, and the one that the book takes its name from, is that, while people may behave irrationally in regards to economic choices, they do so in a predictable fashion. Okay, it’s interesting, but what does it have to do with MMOs? A lot, as it turns out.
Continue reading ‘Behavioral Economics in MMOs, Part 1′
Zubon’s post reminded me that I’d meant to write this up a few weeks back: Why are mobs so blind and stupid?
Continue reading ‘The Internal Lives of Mobs’
As you read this, I am at a library conference, so it is apt that my friend Shaaarii pointed out this video. She’s no Shatner, but I’ve seen worse fan videos.
: Zubon
Yeah, I know. I’ll deliver teh funnay another day.
