3681

I did it, and it was sorta fun nod to Joust but damn was it a pain to control that mount. Once I got the pet it seemed all worth it!

3682

Chumly, we miss you! <sniff>

3683

What’s sad, if predictable for my lame self, is that my hard-won Sun-whatever purples purchased with those tokens/emblems/badges whatever from WotLK are now sitting in my bank vault as I not-so-proudly wear my quest greens and blues from Cata–which are all like 272 or 283 rated instead of 232 or whatever. Heh.

On the bright side, leveling 1-60 is so quick now…I can actually think about getting my Troll Warrior and my Tauren Druid up in my lifetime…

3684

Two PVP rants:

Blizzard’s New Deal: 1:1 PvP Ratios

In Blizzard’s infinite wisdom, outdoor world-battlegrounds (Wintergrasp, Tol Barad) were changed to require an exact 1:1 ratio of Alliance:Horde. This frequently leads to “epic” 5v5 fights due to gross population imbalances on several realms, and further, greatly favors defenders, (in WG’s case, there simply aren’t enough targets to kill in order to get siege) and greatly favors the underpopulated side (where only the elite, 1000-resilience players queue up, while the overpopulated side has 0-resil players queuing just because they want to play the damn game).

I play Horde on Cho’gall, the worst Ally:Horde ratio server in the game. Our ratio? 0.05 Alliance for every 1 Horde. The server is 95% Horde.

Let’s say every single person on the server queues up for Tol Barad, the brand new content in the brand new expansion we just paid $40 for. What does this mean? 85% of the entire server’s population would be denied the right even to see the new content just because no one plays Alliance.

Or, in plainer terms, “fairness” goes hand in hand with fucking over the vast majority of your paying customers. Tol Barad is reportedly massively epic fights of 8v8, maybe 12v12 at peak hours.

Tenacity was the old system of dealing with population imbalances. Despite multiplying an Alliance player’s statistics by 10x in most matches, it just didn’t work. If you’re perma-CC’d, you never get to abuse those stats, and so the Horde still ended up owning Wintergrasp 95% of the time (which, hmm, was in sync with the server’s population). So yeah, the Alliance needed more help. But 1:1 was not the way to do it.

When the change was made, Blizzard said each side was supposed to have 20 players allowed in at very least, even if that resulted in 20v5. That somehow vanished. At first it was thought to be a bug with the queuing system, now it’s just assumed it’s a ninja-change and thus by design.

Then they said something like “We will look into alternate solutions for grossly imbalanced realms.” There’s not been a whisper about it since. It’s extremely frustrating because the majority of the Horde would actually like to see the new stuff and not be held hostage by less than 5% of the server population. But that’s how it goes, I guess.

3685

Vashj’ir is a much better zone if you have a nice (or relatively new) computer. Without shadows on high and water at least at fair, it can be pretty hard to navigate as it lacks a lot of the necessary queues to create the illusion of depth. It becomes a flat sea of color thrown up on your screen.

I can see someone being really unimpressed with what they did here, compared to say the howling fjord which was just astounding in its design aesthetics and detail, because they lack the proper bells and whistles.

Normally I keep the water at low. My modest computer is capped at fair and fair makes it difficult to parse small puddles because of the way it renders, plus it costs me 10 frames per second at least. I usually keep shadows at fair or low as well for performance reasons.

So anyway, I really wasn’t expecting WoW to be the game that killed my machine so to speak. My frame rate in Vashj’ir at high shadows and fair water is like 15-18 frames per second and that’s not in combat. : /

3686

Rant the Second: Lol Barad, as the kids are calling it.

So apparently Tol Barad is a total failure of design.

It’s a capture-and-hold type of place (think Arathi Basin or Eye of the Storm – so we’re already off on the wrong foot). The objective for the offense is to capture and hold three forts at the same time. The objective of the defense is to not allow this to happen.

Obviously you see where this is going. The defense only has to defend one base to win. The offense has to attack and hold all three bases, simultaneously, to win. Swapping ownership is a pretty quick affair as well.

The offense spawns at their closest owned property, making it easy to defend a recent capture. The defense, on the other hand, always spawns in the middle of the three forts, providing maximum mobility and making re-capture utterly trivial the second the offense moves on to another base.

So already we have a fundamentally broken design in a raw sense of the battleground rules. If the defense stacks a single base, and the offense sends 1/3rd to each, the defense will win almost every single time thanks to sheer numerical advantage. And if the offense throws everything they have against everything the defense has, the defense just moves to a different unoccupied base and starts over.

Now, combine it with the 1:1 ratio, and it really seals the offense’s fate.

The best illustration of the problem I’ve read is as follows: Imagine Arathi Basin where one side starts with everything capped except for Blacksmith, which is no longer an objective – however, this side always spawns at the Blacksmith graveyard.

The other side, starting in their base, has to capture and hold everything at the same time to win. They otherwise follow the standard AB rules.

Premades are not allowed.

If the stars align, due to a pug that will actually pull off a strategy, or the RNG gods’ favor, or just massive outgearing, the offense can win. All things being equal – skill, gear, appropriate tactics – it cannot, short of some sort of divine intervention by the RNG, win.

3687

The problems for PvP servers either can’t be solved, or Blizzard doesn’t think it is worth the bother since most of the player base is on PvE realms.

No matter what you do, if either side is perceived to have an advantage, it will come to dominate the server. Nobody likes to take a beating, and everybody likes to have an advantage, so eventually players gravitate to the advantageous side. Blizzard has talked about this in relation to class choice in PvE - if they give one class what is perceived as an advantage in DPS, it creates pressure to change to that class, even if the “advantage” doesn’t actually cause a substantive change in the numbers. Go to warcraftrealms.com and look a the server populations (which is still the best info players have, despite accuracy criticisms). Any PvP server more than a couple years old is imbalanced - at least 2:1, and several over 6:1.

Long story short: I think PvP realms will always be imbalanced because people are dicks.

3688

100% agree, but it’s not because people are dicks. It’s because it’s just illogical to join the grossly outnumbered side unless the populations are healthy on both sides – 10k versus 20k and I wouldn’t have an issue joining the 10k side. A totally dead economy and group/guild/raid scene is just completely illogical to jump into, be it PvE or PvP.

I just don’t like the cater-to-minority crap. Again, 10k versus 20k, this probably makes sense, as, say, 80 underdogs queuing against 800 at least results in a balanced 80v80 match.

When it’s 350 versus 8100 as it is on my server, things get much worse. Right now the Alliance sit in our forums and brag about how they’ll be making sure Tol Barad is kept under 5v5 at all times, and how if we gank them in the overworld they’ll make extra sure we never get to see Tol Barad.

I just wish Blizzard had stuck to the “20 person guaranteed minimum” promise. If you’re on offense against an entrenched enemy, you simply can’t win maps designed for 40 people when all you’re allowed to field is 4.

In cases like Cho’gall’s, the change has allowed the underpopulated side to, quite simply, grief the other side. Did the 95% Horde grief the 5% Alliance? Oh, I’m sure (but in my experience, nowhere near as much as you’d think – often the really nasty, exploiting-terrain griefers were Ally).

The difference is, the Ally who rolled on this server knew full well what they were getting into. They were going to get owned by virtue of numbers alone. Now a foolish change to make things “fair” actually resulted in the underpopulated side getting the power to totally deny the vast majority of the server access to content. Not only is that not fair on a PvP level, it’s not fair on a game-at-large level.

3689

Personally I think the 1:1 ratio requirement is awesome and I can’t believe they haven’t done it earlier. I’ve been in way too many 8 vs 15 matches and so forth that I just quit out of since they’re pointless. The way I see it, it’s good to give the high pop realm incentive to switch sides, as opposed to give the loser incentive to switch to the winning team.

3690

I just did the Worgen stuff today and had exactly the same issues you describe with these quests. Between that and being dumped to the Nelf area afterwards, my appreciation for Worgens has vanished. Thank god for the goblins.

3691

Yeah, on my server there’s a broken quest in Vash that stops me from progressing in the storyline. They over did it on the phasing, imo.

3692

My wife went through the Worgen stuff today and also had the same problems. OTOH, some people are getting through it with no problems at all, so who knows. But it definitely needed more time with QA. I can’t tell whether the problem is the game misfiring or just that it’s very easy to break the quest scripts (like when I walked in the wrong gate of Gilneas), but either way it’s a problem.

3693

The worgen thing is this…
What they should have done at the begining of the battle is say STAY HERE TIL LIAM SHOWS UP…

then another screen pop with STAY WITH LIAM for the battle.

Waiting for him to come back and then staying with him by passes most, if not all the problems in the battle area. However it just dumps you there and unless you have done it before you don’t know to just wait (the timer for the battle or something, give us a bone bliz…even the dks had a timer on the battle)

I do dislike being dumped into the tree. Worgens deserved something better. Still I am enjoying them , their broke animations and all.

On another note, I was doing quests in Bloodmyst and found that you cannot do Kessel run as a worgen. I could wait til I had my own running wild mountishness or try to do it on foot. I knew the route and did it on foot. I did bug it.

If you put BUG-TYPE OF BUG (like Quest so on)-then where why and how it is horribly broke it does get escalated. I got what was the nicest letter ever from a GM. I also listed no contact needed so they shoved it into escalation. Now to see if they manage to fix it.

I would like to feel like they are paying attention but I am also on one of the higher population servers, they kinda have to pay attention to us.

3694

The Vortex Pinnacle and Stonecore are two pretty awesome dungeons. The bit where you have to stand downwind of the dragon was awesome, topped only by the boss with the whirlwinds that condense on his position.

I got to use my new Paladin heal there too! Holy Radiance. It. Is. Awesome.

3695

It turns out that my initial impressions of the new content were wrong. The game actually IS more immersive than before and the story is much more involving.

My initial impressions were from Azshara which is full of gimmick quests and is such a theme park that it even has its own zone-wide roller coaster. Even the quests that weren’t gimmicks were overly goofy (stone giant laxative?). I had the mistaken impression that that is the new WoW.

Then I got to Ashenvale and Stonetalon. The phasing and gimmicks were more tasteful. The story was centered around the conflict in the zone. It has been much closer to an epic high fantasy story than Azshara, which was really just a slapstick goblin comedy.

My only disappointment now is how empty all this new content is. I am lucky to see one other person in a zone besides my wife. I get the impression that a world reboot like this isn’t bringing it too many new players.

3696

So they made the Singing Sunflower Cataclysm exclusive. My 10-year-old daughter, who has no need for Cata, is very disappointed. She was halfway through the questline last weekend when it was time to go.

I’ve decided I don’t like the Worgen. I don’t like their appearance, and they sound exactly like ghouls from Fallout:NV (at least the females do). I’m undecided on the animations. They’re certainly more complex and interesting, but I’m not sure I like them.

3697

I haven’t played since just after Burning Crusade came out, and I had no intention of coming back. But back on December 1st someone hacked my account and got banned for spamming. I was shocked and horrified, and I did my best to figure out how it had happened, but I still don’t know how they did it. But after scanning my drive for worms/trojans/whatever, I contacted Blizzard and they put my account back in order, and I changed up all my passwords and added an authenticator. I still had 8 days left on the trial account the hacker had signed up for, so I rolled up a character on Moonrunner and started looking around.

The game is so much better than I remember! Someone mentioned that the game is now friendlier to the player who wants to play for an hour and get something done, and I love this. I particularly liked the changes to questing and to the talent tree. I did Westfall with my brother and it was a blast following the quests as they told a story, with very few long runs or much busy work. I had no idea what phasing was until yesterday. And the talent tree, with the specialization and the big ability being rewarded immediately is fantastic.

So, I signed back up. I owe my hacker/gold farmer a big thank you. I wish there were a few more people running around in the low level areas, but perhaps more people like me will be frightened into coming back for a look around and stay to see the cool new changes.

3698

The goblin related stuff has always been silly, over the top, comedy. This expansion just brings in far more of it than there was before.

My only disappointment now is how empty all this new content is. I am lucky to see one other person in a zone besides my wife. I get the impression that a world reboot like this isn’t bringing it too many new players.

Considering the barrier to entry is now the original game plus three expansion packs I’m not surprised. Those expansions don’t really bring much to the table anymore either, the majority of their content will be completely forgotten.

I’m pretty much done with WoW, I was a while ago though. I played again for a bit but my characters were all 70 or under and the people I’ve always played with just have way more time than I do. They’re already 85 and their alts have all surpassed mine and I’m just not having much fun going at it solo with PUG dungeon runs. Also everyone has heirloom gear and I’m pretty much useless on my characters in comparison. Even my 60 Deathknight gets two shotted in Outland by same level characters in heirloom gear. I think the game has just completely passed me by (along with anyone else who’s new or returning). I don’t have the time to keep up let alone catch up.

3699

I’m a new player. Or at least I hadn’t played since before BC and never switched over my old account to the Blizzard.com login so I had to buy everything new and start over from scratch. Which I never would have done if they hadn’t had that Thanksgiving sale.

As for how WoW is working for me? Started with a gnome warrior a few weeks before Cata went live. Even though I hadn’t played in ages, I have alt-itis bad enough that I’d run all the newb areas to death and the gnome area was new. Had fun and made it to 17 before I was able to start a new Worgen which was going to be my main. Gnome land was humorous enough and the Very Light Saber was awesome. But, like anything else you equip, the leveling pace is so insane I only got to use it for about an hour of real time before it was close to useless.

Inflation is high enough that level 10 equipment can run close to 100 gold or more for blue stuff. I had a friend loan me 100 gold and I was able to find some bargains at the AH. Again though, the level progression was fast enough that I was always equipped a few levels below what I was. Luckily, I realized that this didn’t matter because the mobs I was fighting went down very easily. Only by making a huge mistake was I in any danger. I also started using the inflation for me by mining and herbing my brains out. So, I’m doing ok in the gold department at this point even if I’m finding that keeping equipment up to level isn’t really necessary at this point.

So Cata releases and I roll up a Worgan Warrior. Like the looks though I’d prefer it a little less bulky. And it’s running is pretty goofy. Anyway, I run through the Gilneaus stuff, having fun with the vehicle quests especially. Its a bit too much ‘on rails’ for my tastes, but it move quickly. Then I hit the City Battle bug that means I can’t do anything. No way around it. I wait out launch day and can finally get going again about 10 hours later. Not a big deal, it is launch day after all, but annoying since it is quest that can’t be avoided and all Worgen on servers that had this problem were unable to progress much of launch day.

Once past this things went pretty quickly. I finished up Gilneaus (I’m sure this is spelled wrong) and made it to Darkshore. This opened things up quite a bit and Darkshore post-Cata is pretty damned awesome looking. Still, quests and levels fly by for the most part. There are a decent number of players so I don’t feel lonely, but there are few enough that I’ve only had problems with quest competition once. And that was as much due to poor quest directions as anything.

Oh, somewhere along the way I received a tree thing as a pet. This is a brilliant hook for me (the only thing I ever grinded in the past was red whelps for the red whelp pet…which I never got).

The expansion doesn’t seem as polished as I’d expect. Quest directions are ambiguous at times, and I’ve had quest completion ?s show on my mini-map in the wrong place on more than a few occasions. The equipment is as goofy looking as always all too often, but you rarely have anything for more than a couple of hours realtime so no biggie. Which brings up the insane pace of the game. Things fly by so fast that there is little exploration at all. And while this is a complaint of mine, it’s obviously what they’re aiming for so the rest of the world doesn’t have a problem with it. Just a different strokes kind of thing, really.

In the end, I’ll hang around a while since I have friends that play all the time. If I didn’t have a guild I’m not sure how long I’d last. It’s different enough from LotRO that I can bounce back and forth between them and keep them both ‘fresh’ and interesting for me.

3700

Weird, I have seen a ton of other new players when I’ve been playing my Worgen alts.

Trunk, you should probably try a non pvp server. Questing on a Pvp server is never fun, especially with a population or gear imbalance. I used to get 2-shotted by players my level in Vanilla Wow on a Pvp server, so imo that’s not really a change.

The impression I’ve been getting from a lot of the returning people is that the game has never been more fun.