The Zen: Philosophy and WoW

A Whole New World (of Warcraft) - Overview

Crusnik02 — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 07:10:10 GMT

Well, I've been MIA for the last month, which consisted of surgeries, constant nausea, and incessant tardies to class. But I think the thing that kept me from writing the most was my beta invite.

Yes, I got a beta invite. And what did I do with it, I didn't go "ooh" and "ahh" at the new stuff, I went online, talked to people, tested with some dummies, copied over characters I didn't even have, and really got a feel of what was coming.

First of all, my prediction was wrong, Blizzard didn't push the date back. A lot of that seems to be around Warhammer's release (at least, that's the popular explanation) and the fact that it already has 500,000 accounts in a matter of weeks. That's a huge turn out. I'll admit, I was tempted, but I knew I would be testing Wrath too much to get involved with the new game.

But I'm writing now to tell you something amazing. This a new World of Warcraft. No, it isn't Warhammer, and no it isn't perfect, but it's a new world, with new changes that are really good, and some that aren't so good. But for the most part, there are a lot to look forward to. Once again I will bring to you an intellectual look at the whole new World (of Warcraft).

If the song from Aladdin is playing in your head now, good. Because that means I'm doing my job. This world includes a lot of lore, most of which is thrown right in your face rather than in between the lines. One of the major flaws to Burning Crusade was that everything was either skippable or you weren't looking through the quest text with a magnifying glass. Thanks to the daily quest system and quest helping mods, we barely read the quest text before jumping into the game. Blizzard first alerts us that it's a bad idea right when you start a Death Knight.

As you start the Death Knight, you stand before Arthas himself, and he gives you a quest. I read through the text simply because he was Arthas. But when I accepted, I heard a booming voice overpower the background noise in my room, as Arthas spoke the quest text to me! It was amazing. Of course, not all the NPCs will speak the quests to you, but this is just one reason to start reading the quest text. There is quite a bit of lore, and honestly we need to start looking at the "why" for doing quests rather than the "how". That's part of the game; it's story.

Also, there are mechanics they added, such as the phasing environments. "Phasing" was first introduced in TBC via the flying quest "Maintaining the Sunwell Portal". You picked up the quest item and became invisible, only seeing those invisible as well, and only fighting mobs that were invisible. Blizzard took this and made it wide-scale. As you progress through the Death Knight starting zones, you don't go through instances. You "phase" through each scene. (Spoilers incoming, if you don't want to look, go to the next paragraph.) For example, one quest requires you to kill the villagers running away from the new hold floating above their town of Havenshire. After you finish the quest and turn it in, the area changes as you begin a new quest. Now, when you go back outside, the undead have taken it over, cauldrons have been established, etc. But the people who haven't done it yet are still seeing villagers, and cannot even see you, nor the mobs you must fight on the next set of quests.

The game is pretty well done, and there are definitely some changes that people need to see. So consider this the overview for the new series, "A Whole New World (of Warcraft)". Part 1 will cover one of our greatest concerns, PvP! It's had one of the biggest changes in the expansion, so I want to get it out of the way so we can get to the good stuff. Later.

Disparate World (of Warcraft) Part 3 - Epic Myths

Crusnik02 — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 03:43:41 GMT

“Epic Myths”

Welcome to the 3rd part of the Disparate World of Warcraft series, hosted by “The Zen”. It took a while, but I’m back once again with a little bit of wisdom to our newer players and even some old. There are a lot of myths to WoW, a lot of legends. These may impact the game you play, this may not. However, it lets me sleep better at night that I’m able to spread some of this knowledge to people who have been misinformed by the World (of Warcraft) and the players within it.

The first and most important one is the myth of instances and raids. First and foremost, the days of Molten Core and Blackwing Lair are over. Blizzard originally expressed a need for making instances shorter, especially after runs such as Sunken Temple and Blackrock Depths extended from 2-4 hours long, sometimes longer. The first instance, Ramparts, can be easily run by a mediocre group in about an hour. Later on other instances existed that took 45 minutes or less to clear, such as Auchenai Crypts, Sethekk Halls. These instances had limited numbers of bosses to make the instance fulfilling while making it as short as possible. Instances no longer take long to complete (though they might take a while to group for them). Raids were built almost the same, and some hardcore players were upset at it (asking for the Naxxramas feel again), but Karazhan was easy enough to be broken into parts. Zul’Aman was made to be small and short, and even gave the challenge of trying to finish it within 45 minutes for players in BT and MH. With a reset timer of 3 days, it was more like a casual instance than a raid for most players in the PvE game. The fact is…IT DOES NOT take forever to do instances or raids. Find a guild that works with your schedule. You may not get to Illidan/Kil’jaeden (or Arthas), but you will be able to enjoy the encounters.

With Wrath of the Lich King’s arrival, instances will be tuned to be less than an hour run for the average group (it was mentioned in the interview). So if you have a discipline priest or resto druid doing DPS, you can still finish the run in less than an hour. It was designed so that people who believed Battlegrounds were more time efficient would take a second look at instances. However, not everyone is open minded to change, and it will take a while for everyone to want to PvE again. And Blizzard is pulling out all of the PvP cards early, so there might already be a completely separated community of PvErs and PvPers early into Wrath.

Another myth is that PvP is the “best way to go“. The fact is, it isn’t. PvP is good for PvP, but as I mentioned in a comment in Part 2, PvP did not give out epic gear to begin with. If you went to Karazhan and downed 4 bosses and got something out of it 6 months into BC, you were epic. If you beat Kael’thas before Season 1 went to honor, you were amazing. Everyone who was in the arena brackets before Season 2 came out were PvErs and PvP gear did drop in 25 mans. I’m not saying PvP is bad, but one must realize that the reason why people are PvPing is not because of time or being “casual”. It’s about getting “epic” gear in the least amount of time. Anyone would do that, casual or hardcore. I put the word “epic” in quotation marks because the effort put into getting them is hardly “epic”, but arena gear is somewhat earned. (Some PvErs argue that Arena players should get a box that randomly decides their gear to emulate boss loot, but that’s just spite.) PvE is worth it, and I hope that if you get the chance in Wrath to participate in raids, please do so. Right now the people doing heroics recruit people within the guild, which is why you don’t see a lot of groups forming. Tanks and healers like to be with DPS they trust, and they should probably start trusting people more…they believe in the myth that most DPS are retards in PvP gear. Which is likely true about some, but not all. See, it goes both ways.

Another thing to add...Blizzard did say the reason there is a separation of gear is to make battles last longer in PvP, to give a better feel of battle, strategy, use of skill. So enjoy the resilience, because Arenas do give a sense of strategy and skill, and that's what the purpose of high stamina and resilience gear is. Just an extra note.

Instances were harder to get done AFTER Season 1 came out, never before. When people started to separate into PvPers and PvErs, the tanks got absorbed into guilds that raided. Less tanks mean more gear for those tanks, which means less instances they needed to get done to get what they wanted. Two to three tanks in a guild meant they were always doing instances with those guildies, so they never bothered for PuGs, and quickly started not to trust PuGs.

But don’t give up on BC just because Wrath is coming out. One of the biggest myths I believe out there is that Wrath will be coming out in November. Going by the time table that BC was on, I don’t believe November will be the release. It will probably be January. The end-game raids haven’t been fully tested yet, the pre-Wrath content patch notes are not out, and the patch would come out about 2 months before Wrath comes out, so given that the notes won’t be out until at least mid-to-late September, the patch will be out in October or early November (they always give us a month or so to sweat the notes and test the PTR), and Wrath will be pushed to January, the release date probably being announced late September.

I figure it’d be fun to look at some detailed stuff going on in our game, so I’m not sure what the next chapter is, but it’ll probably be about tanks, grouping, classes, and maybe some interesting information that I’ve dug up on Wrath.

A Disparate World (of Warcraft) - Part 2

Crusnik02 — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 11:21:42 GMT

PVP: Player vs. PvE.

Maybe a lot of you don't remember the original honor system. To understand what I'm talking about, I'll give you a bit of background.

The old honor system had ranks. Honor points went towards your rank. If you had enough honor points to put you higher than someone else that week, your rank would go up. Essentially, you had to continuously PvP to be high-ranked, and to keep it. You only got gear when you reached a certain set of ranks, Long story short, you had to PvP for a good month straight before you reached high enough to get gear.

Now, with a different honor system, everyone has an equal chance of getting gear, whether they only PvP when they're bored or if they're hardcore. That wasn't a problem when the new honor system came out. When it came out, my guild still did MCs. As a matter of fact, that PvP gear helped push people out of greens and into the blues needed to surpass that horrible raid known as MC. That was helpful.

PvP used to be about being the strongest player, with most efficient quick-kill strategy. The game pretty much, before resilience, was a rock-paper-scissors game.

"Rock" (Plate Wearers) beat "Scissors" (Leather/Mail Wearers), "Paper" (Cloth Wearers) beat "Rock", "Scissors" beat "Paper". There were a few exceptions, as far as the hybrids went, and certain specs. But in the long run, that was the balance of PvP. Resilience broke the table, making Warriors more dangerous to casters with dot damage reduction, casters were outliving Hunters and Rogues, and things started falling apart. Classes needed to be rebalanced to be fair to all classes, and the Arena system began.

Season 1 was a fun time. People who were already clearing Karazhan were taking those drops and duking it out against people still in Dungeon Set 3. Season 2 followed, being about the same, with some people moving into SSC. People were still doing dungeons, with Shadow Labs and Shattered Halls leading the way as the most annoying instances in Burning Crusade, followed by Arcatraz and Black Morass. Things seemed more challenging.

Then Season 3's arrival caused a shockwave that still affects us now. Season 1, the epic PvP gear, became available through honor. Since Season 1 was a recolor of Tier 4, it looked really good compared to the High Warlord Gear, a rehash of the old PvP gear. Also, it was epic. Most people didn't see epics unless they made it through heroics, Kara, or crafted it themselves. But now...epic gear was available from Orgrimmar/Stormwind.

The problem wasn't the BGs, or how the honor system worked. It was the GEAR. PvP gear worked for PvP, and wasn't so good for PvE. If you wanted to PvE, you couldn’t PvP for it, and if you PvE’d, you could still get owned by someone in S1 just because they outlived you. The fact that you can’t miss an attack, or that you crit higher than them didn’t matter. PvPers negated crit, and had double your stamina.

Dungeons became empty quickly. Heroics halted, raids even stopped. Epic gear at a significantly easier difficulty? "Just hit other players, or just pretend like you are", was what a friend described it. PvE literally slowed to almost a complete halt. When this happened, people who were just reaching 70 found themselves at a fork. Work really hard at PvE and wait 2 hours to get an instance group together before the actual run, OR join the PvP wagon to "easy epics". Quickly even the new 70s abandoned PvE, and those not 70 yet trucked along.

In between Season 3 and 4's release, there became a widespread cult towards PvP, guilds of the such sprouted up, people began to turn PvP into the new "epic" measurement. Legendary glaives from Illidan weren't impressive anymore. Guilds who were doing raids, and were struggling through Karazhan, dropped all progression and went to PvP. PvE was finally casual enough for some people, and yet PvP destroyed that.

There are some myths and lies out there. Part 3 is about that…

“Epic Myths”

A Disparate World (of Warcraft) - Part 1

Crusnik02 — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 18:29:19 GMT

I could barely sleep last night, thinking about all of the things I wanted to write here in this first part. I'm guessing this will consist of at least 3 parts, so I'll start with Part 1...

POWER RUSH.

Everyone wants to be 70. That's the new thing. Being 70, taking on whatever course you want, getting the flying mount, doing dailies, etc. But what's the rush? People are rushing to 70 for multiple reasons:

-Because they're new and want to catch up with what seems to be the rest of the server.

-They've done it once and they want another 70 as soon as possible.

-The belief that the game is all about end-game.

I have 3 70s currently, so I understand those beliefs. I have a Rogue, Priest, and Druid. My Hunter is 66, ready to hit 70 whenever I decide, while I work on my 45 Pally.

Originally, after BC had came out, the players who hit 70 first were mainly those in Tier 3, which was "lower" Kara-equivalent (Attument to Opera) when you compared stats and set bonuses. Those who hit 70 afterwards were the ones who sampled every bit of content, doing every instance at least twice, grabbing every quest they could get for money and greens, and ended up at 70 with full Superior (Blue) gear. Soon after that it was one of the 3 grinds. The profession grind (since BC made professions more necessary than ever before), the reputation grind (you needed revered then to do heroics), and the gear grind, getting your D3, or T3.5 as it was called. Things were fine. They progressed into heroics and soon into Karazhan.

But shortly after Season 3 came out, things started getting grim. Details in Part 2, but long story short, people stopped doing the little instances like Auchenai Crypts, Durnholde, and Sethekk Halls. Just months before S3, I was doing 2-3 Shadow Lab runs a day for Aldor rep. But now people were rushing to 70 and hopping on the BG train.

There would normally be nothing wrong with a rush to 70 if there weren't so many negative effects.

-Players who don't do BC instances don't learn basic raid strategies (Blizzard designed the BC instances to help teach raid strategies to newbies).

-Players who rush to 70 normally don't level their professions, or don't get the "harder to get" recipes for them, causing a lack of capable enchanters, LWers, BSers, etc.

-Players who rush to 70 can be hard to group with, since they either soloed most of the game or had someone run them through every instance.

-Rushing to 70 impairs a player's experience with their character. Rushing to 70 with a DPS spec in certain classes normally means they have never tried tanking or healing, and become either a full DPS at 70 or an incapable tank/healer, either of which don't help in putting groups together.

Thinking back on these things, I'm sure there are a lot of instances where you could remember someone who rushed to 70 and didn't have their epic riding mount yet, or didn't have the reputation to do a heroic even after Blizzard made the keys Honored. These things hurt the game and player experience, and interestingly enough, it hurts PvE more than anything. And when you fail at PvE, PvP comes to save the day.

That's our next part in our tour through A Disparate World (of Warcraft).

PvP: Player vs PvE.

Realization - Overview

Crusnik02 — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 13:45:30 GMT

This would normally be where I start off introducing myself and saying how this is my first blog post...skipping that. You don't need to know my name nor where I'm from. What you should know is that I have played WoW for 3 years...the information I relay or discuss is 90% first-hand, the rest is research or discussions with friends.

I came to a realization today...the World (of Warcraft) is no longer the same game it was not even a year ago. Back when I first played the game, it wasn't about reaching 60, it was about enjoying the ride there. There were a few people who skipped and the such, but for those who took their time, it would take months to reach 60, sometimes a year. It took me approximately 4 months on my first character, my Discipline priest (back then it wasn't PvP-esque).

During the time I leveled him I had tons of moments, a lot of experiences that I still can recall even today, despite first hitting 60 in June of '06. The path to 60 was amazing. After 60, it was okay, but it wasn't the same. With BC out people had fun leveling again, it was like being level 20 again, trying to get through the Barrens quests with a bunch of friends.

But now the game is different. Everyone is rushing to 70, buying powerleveling services, gold, honor, arena points. There are so few lowbies, and most of them are either new players with very little knowledge of how the game works, or alts of experienced players who refuse to group, getting runs from guildies or buying them. It's a hard time for lowbies who need to know the game, but lack the ability to group with people and learn through experience.

Even before the PvP side of the game took over, there were level 70s who didn't know how to Freeze Trap, or played a Warlock with full Whale/+heal gear, or trying to tank as Fury and popping Death Wish on bosses. But now it's just horrible. Very few people do PvE instances, and even fewer search outside their own guilds for players, because it's not easy to find "good enough" players.

The game is no longer friendly. The game no longer binds people together. Even within guilds arguments come and go like daily rituals, and events such as guild bank robberies are common play, more so in larger servers.

What happened to the game?

Over the next week I will be calling upon all of my wisdom and memory to help answer this question. Everything from PvP to the "Uber Nub".