More about 3.02

Well, a few observations about 3.02. First of all, looks like XP to go from 60-70 is about half what it used to be. Thats goodness for me in my preparations for northrend. Now I won't feel bad about my 30 alts.

I noticed something in going through the auction house. Some gear which added damage to certain spell types changed, but some retained it's bonus. I saw a mantle of Arcane which still had it's + damage to Arcane, not spell power, however in checking my lowbie mage, my azure silk pants had been changed over to spell power. I believe if it was a white bonus to a school, it retained that coding, but anything that was "on equip" or yellow text seems to have changed to spellpower.

I tanked an instance for the first time after the patch, I enjoy the changed wholeheartedly. Besides the warrior charging in after my shield throw (I told him repeatedly not to do it, I know they take longer to get here, seriously, if you want to fight everything first, roll prot and tank yourself). I really like the improvement to Righteous Fury where we generate 90% more threat from holy (up from 30%). I settled into a pretty stable rotation of holy shield, Consecrate, and the 51-point prot talent (I forget the name). I had no problem holding all mobs, save when I was feared, and usually when I got feared, they chased after me. I actually lost my shield during the run (poor planning on my part) and was still able to hold aggro just through the use of consecrate and the final talent.

And yes, I now have a second shield in my bag at all times, lesson learned.

3.02: The good, the bad, the indifferent. . .

OMFG PATCH 3.02 IS HERE!!!!!

Ok, now that I've gotten that out of my system, I'd like to give my views on the updates with the patch.. Mostly good, some bad, some as the title says indifferent.

The Good:
Tanking awesomeness! My two highest level characters that I currently play are a protection warrior and a protection paladin. I had intended to leave the warrior a tank, and take the paladin holy at 70, but with things in our guild being semi up in the air as far as tanks are concerned, I'm leaving both of them protection. After the re-spec, OMG! Finally, burst damage. And not like a small amount of burst damage, 1700 pnts on Avenger's shield, AWESOME. The new pally ability that does damage to target and additional targets, ALSO AWESOME. I actually felt like I was able do what I did before the patch, but more efficiently and more fun as well. If they come through with dual spec and allow me to have a holy build as well, that will be PERFECT. Oh, not to say I'm not excited about the new warrior goodies, I am. Being able to AOE with my warrior is AWESOME and the cone of cold-y ability they get is pretty sweet, as well as the damaging stun and improved heroic strike. I just don't have enough good things to say about the improvements to tanking DPS. Anyone complaining either A) is asking for too much, B) doesnt play a tank so their comments can't be taken seriously, or B) hasnt actually tried out the new abilities. I am super super happy what they've done with tanks from a solo standpoint.

INSCRIPTION!!! Ok, I am kind of a trade skills whore, so any new crafting is good for me. This one is pretty good. I like the functional boost to talents and the variety that it gives. The scrolls for armor and weapon enchants are AWESOME. I love having the utility to enchant things for my alts, especially BoP equipment without having to get a guildy to do it (granted they all have better enchants than me, but thats not the point)

The Bad:
MY ADD-ONS ARE BROKE!!! Cartographer, I am looking squarly at you. I use a host of different add ons: Cartographer, quest helper, gatherer, titan panel and auctioneer are the main ones. Cartographer is broken to the point where if I open a map with it, the map won't close and I have to shut the game down. QH seems to work ok, but I get a warning that says it is broken. Titan panel won't work, and the link in wow-matrix says their site is down. This is to be expected and within a few days all will be well, but damn it is annoying.

PEOPLE ARE GANKING WITH THEIR NEW TOYS!! Also to be expected, I had to bubble/hearth last night when a mage (human btw, not a gnome) decided to guinea pig his new abilities on me. He was frost, I was less than impressed, but I'll get to that.

WHY THE $#%^ IS THERE A PINK PIGTAILED GNOME WARRIOR ON THE LOAD SCREEN!?!?!? Maybe it was there all along and I never noticed it, but with the new art style, it is un-mistakable. Why Blizzard? Why?

The Indifferent:

Mage and Warlocks seem mostly unchanged: I have a frost mage and an affliction warlock. I decided to stick with those specs (I'm not high enough level as a lock to get the ability where you change into the demon, and even if I was, although its cool, I've adapted to drain tanking and enjoy it too much). I really notice no difference pre-patch to post-patch.

+dam & +heal replaced with spellpower: for my paladin this is super uber huge awesome amazing. For everyone else, I can see why they did it, but I think it makes caster gear lose a lot of flavor. The shadowcloth set used to be warlock and shadow priest only (why would a mage use +shadow damage). Things with extra frost damage were amazing. Now with spellpower, any caster can use any +damage gear. I should have picked up the cheap +arcane gear that was cheap in AH. While I think it will make leveling easier, I wish they wouldnt have done it. It just FEELS wrong.

Those are my initial impressions from a few hours last night. . .

Frost vs Fire vs Arcane

Its like Spy vs Spy. . .except in color, kind of like an orange spy vs a blue spy vs a pink spy.

I will be the first to admit, I am utterly un-qualified to pronounce a winner, but it definately has me thinking. Sorry Gnomeageddon, I've never been a fan of fire, its not you, its your spec. Frost is seen as the ultimate in AOE grinding, there is probably a reason for that. Oh, but there is also the power of the Arcane Explosion spam. This is seriously my favorite non-paladin related blog content. Many thanks to Larisa, Gnomeageddon, and Krizzlybear.

I can breath again!

I havent been able to blog for about a week, we here in the US were in the midst of what experts like to call a "market correction" or as a coworker put it, ANARCHY! Ok, not really anarchy, but people are concerned, scared, and may have over-reacted which may itself have worsened the situation.

Anyways, Wow is having its own "correction": patch day! I am pretty excited about the whole thing. This will be my first major patch in Wow (I started when BC was relatively new, but everything had been implemented). I am VERY excited to see how Ret paladins end up, although I will probably stay Prot (while big damage numbers are fun, killing 5 mobs at once is MORE fun). I'm also excited to see the changes to Prot warriors and how their DPS improves (I have a prot warrior, and although I find warrior tanking easier on single mobs, they just arent as fun in general to me). Mages and Warlocks look unchanged, so nothing else really on the class front for another month.

And a yay for Inscription, I've been gathering and hitting Dark moon Faire, and getting herbs every way I know how to prepare. I am looking forward to more crafting goodness :)

Part 2: System

Most mmos focus on 2 aspects of a character: race and class. I see race as primarily window dressing, having racial abilities that vary greatly, although often providing flavor, are inherently disbalancing and I disagree with including them in a game. Class is another thing that I disagree strongly with. I feel that pushing people into pre-defined classes is very limiting, but at the same time makes game balance difficult. "classes" are already just a combination of various skills and talents, why not allow players more freedom to choose the combinations they get?

I've already laid out the player races are based on 4 elements: air, earth, fire and water. Each element has a magical skill line and a non-magical skill line. The race that corresponds to each element receives the skill line within that element for a slight discount. The elements and skills are: Air; Marksmanship & Arcane; Fire: Arms & Summoning; Water: Subtlety & Healing; Earth: Survival & Evocation. There would be certain "generic" skills that everyone had access to: ability to wear certain types of armor, riding, cooking, first aid, etc.

Characters would get a number of points to buy basic abilities in the various skills, but if they wanted to select "template" classes, there would be some of the more classic ones for quicker entry into the game. Starting stats would be determined by which skills the character selected. This would give a much greater depth of possible character types. Want to be a classic warrior? Put all your points into Arms. Ranger? Marksmanship and survival. Granted, humans would make better warriors than dwarves, but not to a disbalancing level.

I think this would give a greater depth of characters, but also allow things to be more balanced. Anyone with a decent level in Arms and with ability to wear plate could tank. Anyone with a decent Healing could heal. Each race has some manner of doing DPS, be it magical or non magical.

It is also a departure from the traditional "this race can be X, Y, and Z class" of previous games.

Section 1: Setting

The most important part of any game is the setting, why should we play? Mmo's are unique from single player games in that content is generally less story based & cinematic, but generally offers much wider choices.

My game would be high fantasy, yes there are a number of other games in this genre but it works. Magic, swords, knights on horseback, the whole bit, no reason to change it.

Most of the world history would be based on the four elements: Air, Earth, Fire and Water. When the gods of this world created the planet, they created a sovereign race to embody each element: Elves for air, Humans for fire, Terzak (a lizard-like humanoid race) for water, and Dwarves for earth. The gods did not reveal the existance of a fifth element: Void.

Each race has its own lands, and rulers. They are sovereign independant states which conduct trade with each other as well as battle for territory. After centuries of status quo, the forces of void invade the land. I see the forces of void being the classic undead, skeletal in nature.

The primary struggle in the world is the forces of void versus the other four elements, but there are sub-struggles. Elves and dwarves, being polar elemental opposites frequently fight with each other, as do humans and terzak. Since this is also a fantasy game, there would also be various wandering monsters, pirates, marauders, things of that nature.

My hypothetical MMO. . .

I have to preface this series of posts with the expectation that this is an intellectual exercise only. I have no experience at game design apart from some work on various pen and paper games and this wouldn't be an in depth look at anything mechanical anyways. My intent is to set forth a framework of what I would consider a superior MMO. Not perfect, I don't believe you can ever please everyone. I also wanted to use mostly my own concepts without borrowing any lore and borrowing very minimally from other games. I will be breaking it down into 5 sections: setting, system, trade skills, PvE, and PvP. I believe these are the core mmo elements.