World of Warcraft

Imagine stomping through the Deadmines at level 80, defeating Van Cleef in a challenging and interesting fight, nothing like the time you breezed through the place at level 20. Heroic versions of old dungeons are something the playerbase has been looking for a long time, and expansion development has renewed hopes that maybe we’d see them in Wrath of the Lich King. Unfortunately that possibility has once again been struck down by a recent post by a Blizzard CM, Bornakk:

” We have stated in the past that while this is a fun idea, we don’t currently have any plans to do this. As much as going back and seeing good ol’ Scholomance sounds like a expedition, it is still a dungeon that a lot of people have already run a lot of times. We are focused on bringing brand new dungeons to players that are also more epic and exciting than what we have done in the past.”

So as you can see, Blizzard has decided to develop new content as opposed to focusing on rehashing old dungeons. One could make the argument that development time for rehashed dungeons are likely a fraction of the time and effort required to build a new one from scratch, but its likely falling on deaf ears. Maybe by next expansion we’ll be able to stomp through Gnomeregan and liberate the place from our fallen brethren once and for all. Or not, which seems to be the more likely scenario. Personally I’d love the opportunity to adventure through old hunting grounds once again, but its on the back burner for now!

There’s certainly a sense of accomplishment derived from clearing an entire raid instance. Much like when you complete a tough heroic for the first time, it’s just plain fun. Having killed Zul’jin about a month ago, I worried that we wouldn’t have enough 10-man content to keep us busy while waiting for the expansion.

I was wrong.

While we’ve begun to dabble in racing to complete all of the chests in the instance, in search of the elusive bear mount. If you’re not familiar, as soon as you enter the instance a timer begins. You’re given a finite amount of time to kill up to 4 bosses. For each boss that you kill in time, you get an extra piece of loot as a reward. If you manage to get all 4, then you get a very cool looking bear mount. Last night we had our best attempt ever, hitting 3 of 4 chests. Here’s how we did it:

Eagle Boss first - Kill the patrol and immediately head up and run the gauntlet leading to Akil’zon. Once he’s defeated, have everyone roll need (you’ll need to trust your group) or greed and immediately head to..

The Bear Boss! - Don’t worry about the chest from the eagle, it isn’t going anywhere! Fight your way through the bear boss. Once defeated rinse, repeat and…

Dragonhawk! - One of my favorite fights in a 10-man, we just barely managed to get him down in time due to losing a few people on the way and having a couple accidental scout pulls. Theoretically from here you’d head to lynx, but we have to go a bit faster to make it in time!

That’s a very brief overview, but it’s an interesting concept that I hope they revisit in the future. Pushing the limit on how fast you can do the content really drives players to pay attention and kill with ruthless efficiency. We had the entire instance cleared out in about 3 hours. That’s what I like to see!

It’s true, after quite a number of guilds vying for the very first killing of Kil’jaeden, SK-Gaming has managed to bring him down. I tend to have a rather distanced view of such events, much like someone says a huge earthquake in China caused all sorts of damage and misery, and you respond with “oh.” I can somewhat respect the accomplishment, but it’s so out of my scope that I can’t really gage the effort or time needed to do it. That content is beyond my time schedule, and likely will continue to be until the next expansion, but I do hope to see it at some point.

If you’re curious, here’s the link!

It’s almost a shame that MMO companies are faced with the fact that a lot of players put so much time into their game that they have to constantly create content for them to churn through, while the vast majority of players barely scratch the surface. Such design tends to perpetuate the treadmill feeling that many players complain about in “I quit!” posts. After a few weeks of chewing glass you move on to a more challenging boss, where you’ll chew glass until you get them, get their gear to move on to a….see where I’m going with this? It tends to inflate item power too fast, or force game developers to make content so insanely hard that no one can beat a boss until they’re good and ready to let them.

As a rather casual player myself, I think I’d get quite bored with the schedule that SK-gaming, Nihlium, or any other “hardcore” guild mandates. I like to spread my time around various activities, WoW being one of many. On one hand I admire their dedication, but on the other I have to believe there’s more to life than downing bosses in a video game. Such is the conundrum for game designers and not me to consider, I suppose.

Regardless congratulations are in order for SK-Gaming!

Upon reading the title of this post, you might actually think it cause for celebration. No more death and/or Uncle Sam eating my paycheck? This is a glorious day! I hate to disappoint and all, but that’s not what I’m referring to. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, that’s ok too, because up until a few days ago, I didn’t know who Death and Taxes was in relation to Warcraft, either.

To illustrate my point, see exhibit A.

A lot of forum chicken littles like to point to things like this and say “SEE! The hardcore riaders are leaving!” That’s all well and good.. except they didn’t leave, they re-rolled to hordeside. Also, what people don’t seem to understand is that these things can and do happen all the time in any game. I can’t really wrap my brain around those who try to grab at any straw they can get their hands on that might hint on a failure on Blizzard’s part. They want to see the game fail just to post an “I told you so” on the forums. Seriously, find something better to do with your time. Go outside.

It still does open an interesting avenue for discussion, however. Given the new-found accessibility of content and the expectation of this to continue (10-man versions of every raid instance in the expansion), many “hardcore” players have decided to head to greener pastures. I’m not convinced this is a bad thing. Being the largest MMO ever created in this history of the genre, Blizzard has the awkward position of trying to make large groups of different players happy. They want the average player to be able to login for an hour a day and accomplish something, but they also want mr. 6 hours of raiding a day to have something to do as well. So they develop dual content like Magister’s Terrace and Sunwell Plateau, which as you probably know, the average player will never even set foot inside the new 25-man instance.

Personally I think this comes down to pride and PvP. Many players raided so that they would have the best gear to go kill other players with. It didn’t make sense and it was a horrible system for anyone below the curve, but when they changed it, a lot of raiders felt like they got a playing point taken away from them. Now they were on equal footing with anyone with the inclination to pvp, and that was a bitter pill to swallow. So raiding is now what it always should have been about: progression and content.

There seems to be an endless debate as to what constitutes a “raider” or someone that raids on a regular basis, and a “casual” player, who can’t really dedicate the time required to complete end game content. The problem, as I see it, is that it terribly oversimplifies why a player does what he or she does. I know a lot of guild mates that raid end game instances, but they’re not all about the loot, they just like meeting up with friends and heading through a challenging dungeon. Conversely there are plenty of players out there who put a lot of hours in each week but simply don’t raid and focus on other in game endeavors. We all fall into our own playstyle, whatever that may be, and they’re all equal when you break it down to the bottom line, which is that we all pay our subscription costs!

Some players, however, would like the challenge of raiding without the rough scheduling involved (usually 3-5 days a week at 3-6 hour goes). Instead they’d like to see some end game content but not necessarily all. They want to progress but not really go all out. They’re willing to come prepared to a raid, consumables in hand and strategies in head, but not for 4-6 nights a week, maybe one or 2.

I tend to fall into this category as well, though I prefer smaller man content. I’m happily chugging through Zul’Aman, but I also like to hit up SSC on occasion too! For me, I don’t mind scheduling some things around raiding, but if I happen to want to head out to dinner or go out with friends, I’ll be sure to let our raid leader know in advance. I could never be in a guild that “required” attendance or a 75% of all raids requirement, because I like to keep my schedule flexible enough to make those changes.

If you’re looking to get into raiding but on a casual basis, check out http://sasu-er.org for a look at what’s possible. Or you can start a group on your own using the guide over at wowinsider.

If you’ve ever perused the warcraft forums, it’s entirely likely that you’ve come across a number of posts complaining about the effectiveness of pickup groups for dungeons (Or PuGs, for short, we’ll be using this term for the rest of the article). What defines a pug is that it’s a random conglomeration of players who have never had previous contact before come together to complete an instance run. Given the random nature of a pug, there is a very wide variety in how much success these groups have. Some will go off without a hitch, while others will end up making you feel like you are chewing glass after the sixth wipe. How to get through relatively unscathed? Here are some tips:

1. Have a strong core: It’s just the nature of the game that certain roles are more important than others. The fact of the matter is that being a tank or healer is a bit more stressful than say, being a mage (and this is coming from a mage) who’s sole role is to burn down monsters with a little crowd control mixed in. Always keep this in mind when creating a pickup group. Make sure your tank/healer is properly geared for the difficulty of the dungeon you are entering. A tank in greens cannot tank heroic shattered halls without a fantastic healer.

2. Be a leader, but not a jerk: If you are the creator of the pug, it’s generally your role to keep the group going and mark appropriate targets for crowd control/killing. Always utilize the marking feature and let group members know what they should be doing in advance (Mage, you have to Sheep star, for example). This helps keep things running smoothly. If something does go wrong, don’t fly off the handle. Bringing anger and attitude to a pug only diminishes your chances for success. If you are convinced your group is simply not going to make it through the instance, just accept it, apologize, and graciously leave.

3. Come Prepared: You don’t have very much control over what other players bring to the table, but you can do everything you can to make sure you are prepped for an instance run. This is especially true if you know your gear is lacking for an instance. Load up on elixirs, wizard/mana oil or sharpening stones as appropriate, and stat food. The better you do at your particular role in a group, the better your chances of success are.

So I logged on for about a half hour last night (I recently got a number of books for Christmas, which cuts into WoW time!), and was headed to do my dailies for my elusive epic flying mount. I usually get there by hitting up my engineered teleporter to Toshley’s Station.

When I got there, thanks to the new basic UI changes implemented by Blizzard, I noticed a number of “!” in the area. Apparently, there were a number of quests I never got around to accomplishing when leveling. It should be noted that I’ve never really accepted the concept of “grinding” an in MMO. Grinding (the act of repeatedly killing the same monster or doing the same task over and over and over ad nauseum for long periods of time) has a negative connotation because it isn’t fun..and I play games to have fun! As such, rather than head over to do my dailies, I decided to opt for a change of pace and picked up the remaining quests in the area.

Shockingly, not only did these long forgotten quests pay just as much (some more) than my dailies, but they also rewarded me with valuable green quest items that could be sold to vendors for even more profit! Elated, I went on to finish every quest there was in Toshley’s Station. Tonight I hope to head to Shadowmoon Valley, where I have never taken my mage before even though he is now 70.

As always do what works for you. It’s easy to get caught up in the timesink aspect of MMO games, but remember if you’re in it for the phat lewtz, you’re really just spending time not having fun for shiny pixels so you can…continue to not have fun? MMORPGS have evolved quite a bit from the days of games like Everquest (I’ll leave UO out of that category, that was a blast!), and you don’t have to grind/raid/pvp/farm if you don’t enjoy doing so, progress your character at your own pace and have fun while doing it? Otherwise the only thing waiting for you at the end of the road is burnout, not an enjoyable experience you can joke with your friends (who play!) about.

Well for the first time since the patch I was able to enter the gates of Zul’Aman and see for myself what was really going on in there. So far I must say I’m impressed, especially with the starting area. Graveyard placement, flight points right near the entrance, and the meeting stone there to summon your comrades as well was a breath of fresh air. We were able to leave Karazahn, fly there, get the flight point, and summon everyone and were ready to go within 10-15 minutes.

The area leading up to ZA is interesting, and in stark contrast to the typical rigid, militaristic assault outposts setup by the various factions. Rather, we were met with a ragtag group of ruffians and criminals set to stake their claim to the city’s treasures. This reminded be quite from a historical perspective of exploration groups such as The Donner Party who left for the frontier seeking their claim to fame ill-equipped and full of hope rather than experience.

The Trolls waste no time in realizing your intrusion, and you are immediately ambushed at the gates by a number of elite and non-elite soldiers. I thought the atmosphere, music, and armored look of the trolls made for an awe-inspiring instance. The bear mounts in particular are fierce fighters and very cool to see in action (shame they aren’t tameable!). I’ve only been up to the first official boss of the place, but the experience made me eager to return the following week. More details as I progress, but be sure to check the place out if given the chance!

There’s been widespread speculation on how tough the new 10-man dungeon, Zul’aman, is really going to get. Seeing it as a progression past Karazahn for those who shy away from the larger, more intensely administrative raids like Gruul’s Lair, Serpentshrine Cavens, and so forth. That appears to be the case, according to one of Blizzard’s community monitors and news from the Public Test Realm. Here’s what Bornakk (A Blizzard CM) had to say:

“Assuming you are doing well in Karazhan, you should be able to go right into Zul’Aman. It shouldn’t be easy, but progress always takes time.”

As it stands, it appears that the first boss in Zul’Aman will be on par with the Prince from Karazahn. There is also no attunement process for the instance, allowing those with less-forgiving play schedules to see some new content. If you’re a player that leans towards the casual style, this should be great news.

All in all it appears that ZA will appeal to a wide-variety of players, and the bosses will continually become more difficult and complicated as you progress, along with the rewards. So grab your friends, bring your gear, and have fun! (Once 2.3 hits, of course)