Category: World of Warcraft

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Information Overload

Leukos comments:

for someone completely new to MMORPGs, picking up the game and getting through all the new customizations is a bigger issue. I have many first time players in my guild, and as they leveled up there was a clear knowledge gap apparent between what they knew from learning in game, and what I knew from my outside reading even about classes I had never played. Increasingly complex customizations are required to be successful in the game, especially if you are looking at the pvp game.

I have no idea how a casual City of Heroes player would know to look for all the task forces or hidden contacts. As an experienced gamer, I no longer expect the game to guide me much beyond a basic tutorial, and I do not trust the tutorial to guide me towards good decisions because of the gap between the designers’ original vision and what is actually effective in the game.

In our guild, you ask Adam or I about rules specifics, and you ask whoever specializes in that class for guidance on big decisions. If you are not tapped into the information network, how very lost are you?

: Zubon

MMOs as casual games

Bejeweled 2There’s a lot of push lately in the casual game market. Initiatives such as Xbox Live Arcade are pushing casual gaming, commonly defined as games that are accessible by a wide audience and require little time to get in, have fun, and get out. In the last few years, we’ve even seen many MMOs trying to add a casual experience to their game.

A few months ago, I wrote about how addicted I was to World of Warcraft. As is often the case with me, my addiction has faded and been replaced by other games and interests. I do still have the desire to play with my friends there and so I still maintain my subscription and load up from time to time. This has caused me to look more closely at the aspects of the game intended for casual gamers.

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In the Valley, Fer Sure

So, having wrapped up my affairs in Middle Earth, I’ve returned when possible to Azeroth. Sadly, my life schedule continues to allow me little time for playing, but two forced weeks of staying at home let me get into it fairly deeply. I’ve always been more of a social player, and so returning to guildmates and friends was nice. I managed to run the Headless Horseman event a few hundred times to ensure everyone had what they needed (sans a pet for me, or any guildmate *sigh), but what I’ve been doing mostly is PvP, specifically, Alterac Valley by the truckload. Because that’s where honor grinders come when honor grinding is needed. I’ll explain that in a minute, but the wierd part is I’m actually enjoying it.

Ya, I know, right?

Continue reading In the Valley, Fer Sure

Holidays

One feature I have always enjoyed about online games ever since my first MMO, Earth & Beyond, are the live holiday events. Back on E&B, the Halloween event consisted of receiving special pumpkin-launching cannons for your ship, resulting in the areas around space stations becoming large messes of splattered pumpkin bits. These days I play WoW, and it looks like Blizzard is getting better at its holiday events.

WoW has seen two back-to-back holidays in recent weeks. First up was the all-new event, Brewfest. Themed to match the real-world equivalent, Beerfest, Brewfest included some hilarious moments. In the Brewfest main event areas outside Ironforge and Orgrimmar, tents and vendors were all set up, offering quests and, of course, alcoholic beverages to keep your character wasted. Music in this area consisted of an upbeat fanfare overlaid with either Dwarves or Goblins, depending on where you were, getting drunk and joking around like madmen. One of the funniest moments I found was on the Horde side, where the Goblins were making a mockery of the Dwarven version of the event by wearing horribly cheesy Dwarf masks and calling themselves by Dwarven names.

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Low Level Changes Coming to WoW

The 2.3.0 patch notes have gone up for the test realm and there’s some doozies in there.  Of particular note:

  • Experience: The amount of experience needed to gain a level has been decreased between levels 20 and 60. In addition, the amount of experience granted by quests has been increased between levels 30 and 60.
  • All old world dungeons have had their loot revisited. Players will now find that all loot dropped inside instances will be of Superior quality.
  • Elite mobs outside of pre-Burning Crusade dungeons have been changed to non-elite.
  • The level ranges of pre-Burning Crusade dungeons have been adjusted to a narrower range.
  • Dustwallow Marsh
    • Many new quests have been added to the zone.
    • The Steamwheedle Cartel have just completed building the new town of Mudsprocket in south west Dustwallow Marsh.
  • Level 1-60 dungeon quests have had their experience and faction rewards increased.
  • Many elite creatures and quests in the level 1-60 experience have been changed to accommodate solo play.

    • It looks like they’re gearing up to make it easier for folks to get to the 60+ content in time for them to grind to level 70 for the beginning of the new expansion, and also answering people’s complaints about alt leveling.  So, how long until the first, “I made 60 when it meant something” elitism posts start?

    Residual self-image

    An old WoW partner of mine was thinking about getting back into the game, and soon we were talking about playing together again. We both had level 49 Night Elves on Dark Iron which we naturally figured we’d take out of retirement. This 49 is the most advanced character I have. My main had recently been a level 25 Blood Elf on Sargeras. (I couldn’t transfer the 49 over since he’s Alliance, and my Sargeras crew was Horde.)

    Now, my life has been crazy for the past several weeks, with lots of travel, an unexpected move out-of-state, and my computer out of commission for a week to boot. With free time being scarce, and my ambitions about actually experincing the endgame one of these days, I was really looking forward to the 24-level boost.

    So last week, we brought out the old guns — our 49’s. I logged in and materialized in Ironforge, which I hadn’t seen in years. Spent a while re-speccing our talent trees and re-organizing our action bars, since we hadn’t logged in since the talent wipe. Then it was a quick griffin ride to Burning Steppes, and there we were, ready to go.

    We picked a quest and started marching across the map, dodging elementals and worgs on our way. And after about a minute, something strange happened.
    Continue reading Residual self-image

    Repaving the Road

    Nostalgia is great. There is nothing like the rose-colored glasses of memory to make you feel glad. And, if you’re trying to show off your MMORPG cred, to show off how much you, personally, rock. Any time an instance, event, or even crafting gets changed in an online game, you have people that crawl out from the woodwork to explain that while sure, you can do it now, THEY did it when it was really tough, not this carebear version you have. Nope, uphill both ways, carrying their guild master on their back, blindfolded, wearing their newbie tunic and with only a rusty sword. And they liked it. It’s fun to mock those people, but let’s not talk about them anymore. What I do want to talk about is what was done in EQ1 often enough that I think WoW may want to look into: Revamping Zones.

    Continue reading Repaving the Road

    Still here.. still hopelessly addicted..

    I’ve been silent lately.  It’s been partially due to personal concerns and partially due to my inability to turn off this WoW thing that keeps running on my computer.  I’d like to pose a question to the community in the meantime while I try to work up a decent posting:  Blizzard has mentioned an interest in upgrading the World of Warcraft engine.  Assuming this would be part of the update for Wrath of the Lich King, how do you believe this would affect the game’s community both from a technical standpoint and a general one?

    My thoughts coming soon.