[WOW] With my [CHAT] and your Patch Notes, we are Captain Azeroth!

Henroid

So every once in a while I jump onto Moon Guard to watch the craziness unfold. Today, something really bizarre caught my attention. I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me, but I looked up at the chandelier, and...


There's a gnome corpse hanging by its feet from the damn thing. That is frightening, considering what happens here on this server.

Henroid

... And now another gnome is hanging from the other chandelier in the exact same way. o.o

Edit -

His name is indeed Mario. No umlauts or anything, just straight up Mario.

Monsty

Grundlestiltskin wrote: »

Is anyone having problems clicking things in chat? For the past week or so I've been unable to click on item links, names to send tells, anything. This is only a very recent problem and I deactivated my one chat mod, so I have no idea what could be causing it. It's irritating.

Right click the chat tab and click "Make Interactive". If that's not it, I have no idea.

Calixtus

shryke wrote: »

Spoiler:

Calixtus wrote: »

shryke wrote: »

forty wrote: »

shryke wrote: »

forty wrote: »

And? It's still something a lot of players want, and the game isn't hurt by opening up options and giving people more to do.

Actually it is. Balance goes all to shit the more respeccing options you get and the easier you make it. The more specs you introduce, the more specialized for a very specific task each spec gets because you can pick and choose for each specific scenario without penalty. And that goes against the entire idea of specialization in the first place and makes choices and tradeoffs even more meaningless.

Specifics? What balance goes all to shit with three specs? Or four specs? At which point does this nebulous scenario kick in? Has it already come into play with two specs? Shit, our OT can go DPS on Atramedes because we only need one tank!

The more specs you have, the more specialized each one can be. That means taking the specific combination of talents that make me best at my roll in this encounter, and then switching to another for the next encounter. (Hey this boss has alot of adds, lemme switch to this spec that has all the AoE boosts. Oh, next boss has no adds, let me switch out of all my AoE talents and grab other ones instead) So if I have, say, infinite specs, I can do this in any combination I can imagine. And once you can reasonably do it, the game has to be balanced on the assumption that you WILL do it.

It also makes choices in spec even less meaningful. I'm only making a choice for a specific fight and not for how my character plays in general. The trade-off nature of talents becomes even more of a joke.

And it has, I'm sure with some hardcore types, already come into play with 2 specs. And with every spec you add, it comes more and more into play. Which is, you know, why they are so reluctant to add additional ones. Each additional spec is another step in that direction and they want to discourage that behavior as much as possible. There's a balance between offering versatility and giving too much versatility so that specialization becomes more meaningless and the game has to be balanced around assuming you have the exact perfect talent spec for every encounter. It's a sliding scale.

They seem to feel 2 is a good balance. I could see 3 personally (tank or heal/DPS/PVP) as a good place to be, but 2 works fine as well. This is compounded also by the fact that some specs only do 2 roles (PvE/PvP) and some can do like 8 (druids).

It's not a nebulous scenario just because you don't understand the idea.

Well...

There is no limit on the number of respecs you can do at a trainer. I mean, what's the argument here, you have never and no one you know has ever respecced for that one specific fight? It's already - and has been for years - a convenience tax, not the pillars keeping the balance-sky in place. The "hardcore" has been able to adapt to specific encounters since vanilla, and we havn't fallen down the slippery slope of changing classes yet.

Secondly, we're already pretty specialized. It's not about being "dedicated" to PvE and PvP at the same time, it's about being able to meaningfully contribute to one without excluding oneself from participation in the other. I think we're already at the point were you can either show up in a PvE spec or you can GTFO the raid, because the encounters aren't - have they ever been since maybe parts of vanilla? - balanced around the idea that you're in your PvP spec. Or some JOAT spec. Is there actually room to make the game more spec tuned than it already is?

I love how you brush over the "convenience tax" as if it's nothing.

By this logic, we've had infinite specs since basically launch when you could respec as many times as you wanted. So why do you even need dual spec, let alone more?

Oh right, because that "convenience tax" is fucking HUGE.

So you have never respecced for a specific encounter then? Your friends have never respecced for a specific encounter? No one has ever respecced for a specific encounter, a specific raid, a specific instance rune, the next-half-hours-worth-of-10-arena games?
When was the last time you heard "Sorry guys, spending 10-15 minutes getting 100g for two respecs is too much, I'm not gonna be able to make tonights raid, so we'll be down one healer, so I guess we have to cancel"?

I'm not saying the convenience tax is "nothing", but I'm just not seeing how this supposed pillar of encounter balance actually meshes with reality. Seriously, does anyone here actually play with people who will wipe for weeks on end on a difficult encounter, think "okay, we're dying to adds" or "if our warlocks were affliction, they'd do more damage because this entire shit is a running multi-target battle followed by an execute phase" (you know the fight :winky: ) and then not respec because 'pretend-monies'?

I'm not trying to be an ass here, but the argument that respec costs lets them tune encounter "less tightly" because people come at them with less than optimal specs is so far afield of my observed reality that it just doesn't mesh. From Twin Emps, to Leotheras and Vashj, to Yogg-Saron and beyond, the people I've played with have respecced whenever it is clear that a different spec provides a needed edge. Once the encounter is on farm, once we've got the gear/practice to not make us get every edge we can, we'll drop that, but... For everything else, this huge inconvenience tax manages to be less of an obstacle than repair costs.

Grundlestiltskin

Monsty wrote: »

Grundlestiltskin wrote: »

Is anyone having problems clicking things in chat? For the past week or so I've been unable to click on item links, names to send tells, anything. This is only a very recent problem and I deactivated my one chat mod, so I have no idea what could be causing it. It's irritating.

Right click the chat tab and click "Make Interactive". If that's not it, I have no idea.

That did it. Not sure how that got turned off, thanks.

forty

Henroid, those Moon Guard pics/stories are awesome and hilarious.

Opty

Calixtus wrote: »

So you have never respecced for a specific encounter then? Your friends have never respecced for a specific encounter? No one has ever respecced for a specific encounter, a specific raid, a specific instance rune, the next-half-hours-worth-of-10-arena games?
When was the last time you heard "Sorry guys, spending 10-15 minutes getting 100g for two respecs is too much, I'm not gonna be able to make tonights raid, so we'll be down one healer, so I guess we have to cancel"?

I'm not saying the convenience tax is "nothing", but I'm just not seeing how this supposed pillar of encounter balance actually meshes with reality. Seriously, does anyone here actually play with people who will wipe for weeks on end on a difficult encounter, think "okay, we're dying to adds" or "if our warlocks were affliction, they'd do more damage because this entire shit is a running multi-target battle followed by an execute phase" (you know the fight :winky: ) and then not respec because 'pretend-monies'?

I'm not trying to be an ass here, but the argument that respec costs lets them tune encounter "less tightly" because people come at them with less than optimal specs is so far afield of my observed reality that it just doesn't mesh. From Twin Emps, to Leotheras and Vashj, to Yogg-Saron and beyond, the people I've played with have respecced whenever it is clear that a different spec provides a needed edge. Once the encounter is on farm, once we've got the gear/practice to not make us get every edge we can, we'll drop that, but... For everything else, this huge inconvenience tax manages to be less of an obstacle than repair costs.

Why are you and forty using examples with people who make up .1% of the playerbase as why this needs to be changed? By you admittance that it only matters to these people doesn't that destroy your argument that it absolutely needs to be done?

TheCrumblyCracker

If 99.9 percent of the playerbase played their spec because they thought it was the coolest and mostest funnest spec in the whole wide world I would be very surprised.

People generally play the best spec for whatever it is they want/NEED to do.

Henroid

forty wrote: »

Henroid, those Moon Guard pics/stories are awesome and hilarious.

I just got a guild invite to join Definitely Not A Dragon, which I was so tempted to accept because that guild name rules the day when it comes to RP servers.

Henroid

Damn, I lost track of the person who had an RP profile written to note that she's pregnant.

ToddJewell

What class are you? I ask because as a resto shaman, there are epic quality boots from Earthern ring that are nearly on par with the BoE valor boots (I think all that I've written there is correct) provided you get the rep.

Holy Paladin


Anyone here familiar with the Hyjal server? I was looking around and they seem to have a handful of horde guilds that make progress while raiding only two nights a week at a time that doesn't suck for me. Every horde guild on my server [suramar] raids an hour before it is reasonable for me to or raid 3-5 days or on weekends.

Rizzi

D:
That server sounds terrifying.

forty

Opty wrote: »

Why are you and forty using examples with people who make up .1% of the playerbase as why this needs to be changed? By you admittance that it only matters to these people doesn't that destroy your argument that it absolutely needs to be done?

It's definitely more than .1% of players who would appreciate or enjoy the game more if they could buy another spec slot. The examples given were specific counter-arguments to a misunderstanding of the game.

Henroid

Unfortunately, I couldn't stick around to see his shtick (he marched his way in proudly and got up on the table to face the masses) because I'm on my way out the door to work. But bonus points to him anyway.

I think I'm gonna spend more time on Moon Guard to watch the ongoings for the next week or so. I've been fairly bored of WoW again and this was mildly entertaining.

Henroid

Rizzi wrote: »

D:
That server sounds terrifying.

I'm not even posting up the MyRolePlay profiles I read. I could start though!

Edit - Oh I almost forgot, just before I left a couple dudes marched in with chained infernals and unleashed them on the Lion's Pride. It's an old trick but I haven't seen it in a while and I was amused as my character was cleansed along with all the other fuckalts. It's inspired me to roll a lock to bring doom to Goldshire now and then.

Halfmex

Does anyone have a link to/copy of the supposedly "leaked" release schedule specifically for WoW? Not the one that was posted on MMO-Champ last month, the one I'm referring to was supposedly leaked sometime mid-late Vanilla. I'm just curious as to where we are on that schedule and if there's any more reason to give it credibility.