I'm surprised people have stuck with raiding Siege this long even. I couldn't imagine keeping at it until December or whenever WoD actually launches. Heck, I bailed around New Years as it was already old then.
Everyone cringed about Icecrowne being around for a year, this looks to be around for 15 months... How did Blizzard fuck this up so badly after talking about how they were speeding up development and getting it done in 18 months?
As far as being anti-social in MMOs: Blizzard is the biggest offender in orchestrating the mentality of people playing an MMO in their own personal reality bubble that nobody can interfere with. Now they want to say they're concerned about people being solo? A bit late for that. It's even spilled over into other games. You try to play TEAM Fortress2 these days, and everyone fucks around doing whatever the hell they want, ignores objectives, etc.
"I paid for the game, so I can do what I want." is the cancer killing gaming atm.
The advent of LFR the way servers interact...I'd say blizzard is doing more then anyone else to bring players together.
Not going for objectives in pvp situations has nothing to do with blizzard. It's been a thing since doom custom maps.
Yeah I wouldn't argue that Blizzard is actively doing things that make people act like asshats or anti-social; I would just argue that they're actively not doing obvious things they could to mitigate it. Tagging being one of those things. I can't think of an instance of a modern MMO that has open tagging that doesn't improve the situation immensely. And I can't think of an instance where said MMO's have open tagging where it makes anything worse.
As my usual go-to example, FFXIV shows even playing for a few minutes that open tagging does nothing but make the game play better, people less shitty to each other, and just improves the feel of the game. In WoW, if someone accidentally pulled extra enemies (or in active areas, had them spawn on top of you), there is absolutely no reason for any other player to help out. They're not going to get loot, not going to get quest credit, quest drops, etc. In fact ignoring the player in danger means they can probably move to their objective faster. In FFXIV if you see such a situation there's a good chance that you're probably passing through the area for the same reason anyone else is there, dailies, hunts, hunting logs, etc; and you know you're going to get credit for your goals by helping out and given the nature of not needing alts and individual characters being more persistent/known, it is universally in your best interest to help out. There is absolutely zero drawbacks. Even in the current clusterfuck of Elite Hunts in XIV, there's a lot of selfishness going on with people not waiting for the spawns however there's still reason to try to get to them before they die because you'll at least get some reward. Without open tagging once one person tagged the boss, there's no reason at all for anyone to lift a damn finger, and that person will just get blacklisted.
Aaaaanyway; yeah. Blizzard didn't make players assholes. But they're not lifting a finger to make it better (in many cases), and seem to be making anachronistic decisions on new content as if a decade of MMO genre changes and improvements have never occurred.
I'm surprised people have stuck with raiding Siege this long even. I couldn't imagine keeping at it until December or whenever WoD actually launches. Heck, I bailed around New Years as it was already old then.
Everyone cringed about Icecrowne being around for a year, this looks to be around for 15 months... How did Blizzard fuck this up so badly after talking about how they were speeding up development and getting it done in 18 months?
As far as being anti-social in MMOs: Blizzard is the biggest offender in orchestrating the mentality of people playing an MMO in their own personal reality bubble that nobody can interfere with. Now they want to say they're concerned about people being solo? A bit late for that. It's even spilled over into other games. You try to play TEAM Fortress2 these days, and everyone fucks around doing whatever the hell they want, ignores objectives, etc.
"I paid for the game, so I can do what I want." is the cancer killing gaming atm.
The advent of LFR the way servers interact...I'd say blizzard is doing more then anyone else to bring players together.
Not going for objectives in pvp situations has nothing to do with blizzard. It's been a thing since doom custom maps.
Yeah I wouldn't argue that Blizzard is actively doing things that make people act like asshats or anti-social; I would just argue that they're actively not doing obvious things they could to mitigate it. Tagging being one of those things. I can't think of an instance of a modern MMO that has open tagging that doesn't improve the situation immensely. And I can't think of an instance where said MMO's have open tagging where it makes anything worse.
As my usual go-to example, FFXIV shows even playing for a few minutes that open tagging does nothing but make the game play better, people less shitty to each other, and just improves the feel of the game. In WoW, if someone accidentally pulled extra enemies (or in active areas, had them spawn on top of you), there is absolutely no reason for any other player to help out. They're not going to get loot, not going to get quest credit, quest drops, etc. In fact ignoring the player in danger means they can probably move to their objective faster. In FFXIV if you see such a situation there's a good chance that you're probably passing through the area for the same reason anyone else is there, dailies, hunts, hunting logs, etc; and you know you're going to get credit for your goals by helping out and given the nature of not needing alts and individual characters being more persistent/known, it is universally in your best interest to help out. There is absolutely zero drawbacks. Even in the current clusterfuck of Elite Hunts in XIV, there's a lot of selfishness going on with people not waiting for the spawns however there's still reason to try to get to them before they die because you'll at least get some reward. Without open tagging once one person tagged the boss, there's no reason at all for anyone to lift a damn finger, and that person will just get blacklisted.
Aaaaanyway; yeah. Blizzard didn't make players assholes. But they're not lifting a finger to make it better (in many cases), and seem to be making anachronistic decisions on new content as if a decade of MMO genre changes and improvements have never occurred.
I'm not in anyway arguing against open tagging. Just pointing out how ridiculous it was to imply player behavior is all on blizzard.
The fact that you can group with someone on a different server and play with them is a pretty huge obvious thing they've done to mitigate it in my book though.
On the topic of the Alliance chopper cost - It's going to need to be cheap to not get a huge, immediate amount of backlash at Blizzard "showing Horde favoritism" again by just giving them a free mount. As someone that hasn't had an issue with gold since Vanilla's AQ gates event, I can count on one hand the number of people in any of the guilds I've been an active member of that -didn't- have an issue with gold cost being prohibitive. I've probably spent upwards of 300k on buying people epic flying over the years since it's debut, and other random shit just because gold is a non-issue for me. 1000 gold is a Big Deal to a great number of people, especially those that don't spent a lot of time in-game due to RL obligations.
For many players 5k is a hefty sum of gold. Not all players play the AH or run with the best min/max approach for making gold. For the player that primarily makes gold off of questing, dungeons and/or raiding, 5k takes quite a bit of time to gather. I'm also guessing they might do the same with the horde mount, once players can no longer claim it for free.
As for tagging, they might as well do away with it. There is a certain point where dynamic spawning become detrimental. I can't tell you how often I felt bad when I hit an area that was a bottleneck and I had to kill shit that I didn't need for a quest because it spawned on top of me, after I either finished the quest or killed enough of them. Sometimes people will wise up and release that the guy running away from the full health mobs is down with the quest and that they might as well grab them, but more often than not, they either assume the mobs are tagged and/or that the player running pull too much shit. So the opt to do nothing because they figure if the person dies, that'll speed up their questing experience.
Plus, people can using the tagging feature to grief other players. So someone can deny other players a quick progression on quest completion or slow or completely neuter their ability to get exp and rep. Sure I've never had someone do it to me (I did have the shithead alliance player that killed an escort NPC near ratchet on me because he could one shot it), but I've had a couple of friends who have run into players that employ such behavior.
Finally, the whole, "but players will treat each other like NPCs and we feel that is anti-social in itself." That tells me they aren't paying attention to the playerbase enough, people already do that. Hell, I'd argue anytime a pre-made queued into a BG with the intent purpose of farming their fellow players for easy honor, that that is a case of players treating their fellow players like NPCs. Hell, the whole faction setup, along with tagging, encourages far, far more anti-social behavior than open tagging could ever achieve.
I wouldn't have nearly as much gold if I didn't have a 90 of every class.
For people with just one or two characters and/or who don't actively play the AH, I can imagine 5k would still be something to think twice about before plopping down on a mount.
I've been averaging about 1k/hour, just doing quests at a normal pace.
Bonus objectives net between 50-80, and quests that also offer equipment rewards that you vendor usually end up about another 50. That's not counting vendor trash, that is about 1g per item, and cash drops, which end up about 1-2g per mob.
Yeah, that's the other thing. Plenty of players that only really play one toon, in addition to not playing the AH. These are also likely the players that don't exceed more than 10 daily quests, when they do log on. Having been a miner/blacksmith in TBC, that only really played one toon, I can affirm that grinding gold, while more or less capping dailies, vendoring all trash drops (got quite a bit since I farmed clefthoof for cooking mats and elementals for motes) and limited AH play (came in towards the the last 3rd of the expansion, so it was hard to move ore on my server), takes a while in that kind of scenario.
If you actively play the AH with a profession like jewelcrafting, got lucky with some big payday drops (greater chance the longer and more often one has plays the game) do all possible daily quests on multiple characters a day or some other activity that is good for quick gold making. Then you're going to have a skewed view of gold making, that doesn't mesh with the majority of players. Trust me, a fair number of players don't play the AH, even if they have a moneymaker like JC or get the drop that can earn them thousands upon thousands of gold.
It can also not be understated what a money-sink garrisons are. Most blueprints costs between 500-1k gold, with a lot of level 2-3 blueprints costing a rare "book" that is basically a currency token, but as far as I can tell, is rare, and also not soulbound, which means huge gouging of prices on the AH.
EDIT: Also, based on flavor text of the books, may be only obtainable in Ashran!
Okay, if they have garrison stuff that is only obtainable from Ashran, then that is going to end up being one more reason I'm not touching WoD (other being that they are currently slotted to fuck over the LFR crowd). Fuck the devs on their team, that have such a hardon for PvP, that they feel insecure when players choose to not take part in it. I don't like WoW's PvP and having PvP requirements attached to stuff that shouldn't be purely PvP and is considered core to the game (like the legendary quest line). Only makes me even more disdainful of WoW PvP and less inclined to try it. If I want to fucking PvP, then I'll fucking PvP. If they feel it needs some goddamn carrots, then use non-essential shit like achievements, mounts, transmogs, toys and pets (just make sure the pet isn't the best in pet battles aka it's on par with a pet outside of PvP with a different skin). If the carrots don't rope someone in, than just fucking accept that PvP isn't their thing or they have zero fucking interest in WoW PvP and move on, instead of opting for shit that just pisses people off.
Okay, if they have garrison stuff that is only obtainable from Ashran, then that is going to end up being one more reason I'm not touching WoD (other being that they are currently slotted to fuck over the LFR crowd). Fuck the devs on their team, that have such a hardon for PvP, that they feel insecure when players choose to not take part in it. I don't like WoW's PvP and having PvP requirements attached to stuff that shouldn't be purely PvP and is considered core to the game (like the legendary quest line). Only makes me even more disdainful of WoW PvP and less inclined to try it. If I want to fucking PvP, then I'll fucking PvP. If they feel it needs some goddamn carrots, then use non-essential shit like achievements, mounts, transmogs, toys and pets (just make sure the pet isn't the best in pet battles aka it's on par with a pet outside of PvP with a different skin). If the carrots don't rope someone in, than just fucking accept that PvP isn't their thing or they have zero fucking interest in WoW PvP and move on, instead of opting for shit that just pisses people off.
I don't have any proof of this, other than the tooltips mentioning that the books are 'sought by architects and engineers in Ashran' or something like that. That, and I've gone through four zones so far and haven't come across any. But if I had to guess, it's mostly going to be level 100 fare either way, in dungeons, level 100 areas, and Ashran.
Yea, taking a character from 1 to 90 will net enough gold to pay for all flying minus the top most speed level, which includes all the expac specific stuff as well. You'll end up with about 1k extra at the end of the leveling process, with most of it coming from Cata questing and MoP questing with the rapid rate of vendoring weapons from quests, especially if you have an heirloom or one of the blue MoP treasure weapons. The best way to make gold is to really just level up a character, if that's all you're going to spend your time on. Especially if you do a class that's fun for you, since it won't be as much of a grind that way. A friend of mine has like 12 level 90 hunters and just got gold cap on one toon the other day, he was super excited because he was always one of the "poor ones" that I'd buy shit for, and now he can go buy whatever mounts he wants or battle pets, or crafted gear.
Shaman
Tremor Totem is no longer usable while under the effects of Fear, Charm, or Sleep, but its duration has been increased to 10 seconds (up from 6 seconds).
I checked out Mistweaver on the beta, and holy god do they need some changes. Apart from just a basic tuning run (Renewing Mist is currently ticking for 500ish health. Not a typo, 500.) the spec is chi starved for days. You basically have no choice but to spend the entire fight channeling soothing and hitting Surging whenever they take damage. You never have any chi for Enveloping, and there's no point in using Uplift since it heals for less than a tick of Renewing Mist.
On the other hand, the Fistweaver stance is rather nicely set up. It'll be nice to Fistweave without using shitty keybinds because my heals take up the good ones. I'm also hoping they do something to fix Zen Sphere because it's laughably bad at the moment, on beta and live.
Healing in general can only be described as rough in the beta now. It's making testing dungeons really difficult, as most of these encounters wouldn't be horrible if it weren't for healing
It can also not be understated what a money-sink garrisons are. Most blueprints costs between 500-1k gold, with a lot of level 2-3 blueprints costing a rare "book" that is basically a currency token, but as far as I can tell, is rare, and also not soulbound, which means huge gouging of prices on the AH.
EDIT: Also, based on flavor text of the books, may be only obtainable in Ashran!
Not exactly. There are two books, I've gotten two ashram ones and one Garrison one, all three as rewards at end of long quest chains in Terrokar and Arak. The ashram one turns in to a vendor at ashram (which I have not visited yet), while the Garrison one turns into a vendor in your Garrison. I don't know if they sell the same stuff or what.
You get at least one design per zone, and many times it's a choice from two. The other design you didn't get you can buy for 500g from Garrison vendor. A handful of building are free with upgrade of town hall (minimum level power upgrade plus a bunch of Garrison resources which you get from killing rates, finding some doodads in the environment, and completing missions with your followers). A few big buildings you have to buy plan for 1000g but it's possessible you get them free elsewhere (I still have much of Arak, all of Nagrand, all of Ashram, and all of Frostfire to explore). To upgrade buildings past that you need those books plus Garrison resources, each building has 3 levels.
Some of the buildings have a quest to unlock them after they are built, like the fishing building seems you to talk to a fisherman and catch some fish, and the pet one wants you to beat three really hard pet battles.
Yeah healing's fucked right now in the beta. If I remember correctly all healers are having mana problems but currently Holy Priests are handling it the best right now. Part of that is because Renew has a higher HPM than Rejuv now somehow and their AoE spells--while having a lower HPM than other AoE spells--have low enough mana so they can actually be cast. Wild Growth in contrast has such a high mana cost that casting it without a guarantee that every tick will heal is a waste of mana. They also made OoC procs only work on Regrowth now for some reason, basically making Wild Growth the very definition of a newbie trap.
It just seems like every time they want to mix up the healing model all that happens is we get heals that do barely anything and cost shitloads of mana. It's like they only change the way healing works without changing the way they do raid damage.
Yeah, there's a conflagrate in one of the instances that regular does 10-15 percent health, every second, for 5 seconds, and there is no way in hell the healers could keep up with that
Do you have any warning it's coming? Can you step out of it to stop it ticking?
There is warning it's coming, but it's a UBRS style conflagrate, so doubles as a physical effect blind-type mechanic, so you run around in random directions like a goon
It's also not a ground effect, it's an aura that an add has that effects anyone who gets into melee range. And the add has to be burned down. Which sucks if you happen to be running 2 melee in a 5 man dungeon!
The problem they have is that they always decide to fuck with healing when it's already fun and in a good spot. I don't get it, it's like they want healing to be un-fun.
Is any of the Garrison stuff account-wide, or will it require unlocking the plans on every character? I know the free resources every day will feel required for certain people, and I currently make stupid money on multiple farms per day putting out flasks, so I'm curious.
My understanding is that there is no account wide aspect of Garrisons planned; in fact one of the main features seems to be access to other tradeskills without having to have alts.
Which isn't a bad thing, it just severely limits the usefulness of many of the buildings for people who have most, or all, of the tradeskills leveled.
The problem they have is that they always decide to fuck with healing when it's already fun and in a good spot. I don't get it, it's like they want healing to be un-fun.
As far as I can tell it's the only way they can figure out to make healing have a sense of 'progression'. I.E. they make it ass at the top of each xpack and by the end it feels good, then back in the dumpster for the next xpack. It's just as much of a victim of their role design as it is their encounter design.
It's also, as far as I'm concerned, pretty emblematic of them designing WoW in a bubble where no other MMO's have come out with newer, better, or just different, ideas. Every time they come up with a feature that another MMO has, or has already had, they seem so pleased with themselves; and every time someone suggests a feature that works well in other games (i.e. anything to do with making the game better support alts) they act like none of those games exist and speculate based on what they think is pure conjecture...instead of actually just looking at the fucking games.
AO, before WoW, proved that healing can be a fucking blast, and healers don't have to just sit back and heal, they can be actively involved in the runs.
FFXI, before WoW, proved that healing can be thoughtful and proactive, not reactive and constant triage.
CoX, before WoW (and moreso later with improvments), like AO, showed that healing and support didn't mean inactive backseats that existed purely for the keeping up of a tank, who if died, would wipe everything.
TF2, while not an MMO, showed that healing could be a blast, and that the trinity wasn't necessary and a healer could turn any class into a powerhouse.
GW/GW2 proved you don't need a trinity. And not in a "well, fuck it, no strategy involved whatsoever" Scenario sort of way.
FFXIV proved that Healing can feel good and satisfying out of the gate, that you can scale healing with gear to maintain its satisfaction, while providing encounter roles specific for healers, and making going back and healing old content feel really good.
among other examples.
The irony is that if there's one single thing Blizzard has never been good at, it's innovation. They built their business on the idea that they could take something someone else did and do it better. In fact, their two other major franchises still prove this frequently (though it took a major management change and an xpack for D3 to remember this). However, somewhere along the line WoW became so successful, so dominate, that they convinced themselves seemingly that it was all their own doing, all their own ideas, and that other games were so lowly as to not have to be considered. No one there seems to recall that nothing about what made WoW popular and successful was Blizzards innovation...it was their renowned refinement and polish, along with a heaping of the right game at the right time.
They need to eat some damn humble pie and take a look around them again. Though, with the sub losses between Cata, and what I'm sure will be even lower by the time WoD goes live, nothing seems to faze them anymore.
I read that line about how Blizzard has never been good at innovation, only improving existing ideas, thought about it, and realized that's Apple's exact business model.
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SmasherStarting to get dizzyRegistered Userregular
The bad thing is acting like it's impossible to produce content that is still interesting or challenging without relying on it.
EDIT: Dreamwalker was the last raid fight I remember that was actually somewhat interesting for all roles, but particularly healers. Blizzards problem is that they're so hellbent on relying purely on the trinity that content is stagnating to a really depressing degree, and encounter design is forced to adhere to the rules of tanks must always be on the verge of death, raids can't recover without them, and if healers are to be distracted from nothing but triage healing, the other roles must suddenly stop their actions in order to facilitate it.
10 years of trying to produce slight variations on the exact same formula, relentlessly, is bound to cause burn out faster and faster each new tier. The fault of this isn't inherently Blizzards, but their lack of flexibility on the formula isn't helping.
Garrisons at level 3 once you unlock it all have:
A fishing building that gives out fishing dailies. I haven't done it yet because it's a Frostfire one and has yet to change each time I looked.
A pet building which I don't know what it does because I'm not good enough at pets to unlock it fully.
A mine which is currently buggy so I can't finish unlocking it, but I assume provides ore.
A garden which provides free random herbs and you don't even have to seed it. I got almost a stack of golden lotus equivalent so far plus other random herbs.
Beyond that you can have 3 of any of the following (and switching out to a different one takes one hour plus some Garrison resources I talked about earlier):
Blacksmith which has a blacksmith trainer, gives out blacksmith dailies, and I think can make some blacksmith stuff for you even without having the skill, except it's bugged ATM and not loading just like the actual bs skill.
Engineering which works along the same lines and is likewise bugged.
Alchemy which works similarly and actually let me access some of the skill without having it at all myself. Was able to make each of the flasks and each primary combat potion (I.e. no funky potions like invis or whatever but yes to virmen bite equivalent), provided I had the mats which I did not. I had herbs from the garden but it wanted other stuff too like animal meat which I didn't have. I don't know if that's specific to the building or general alchemy.
JC building I didn't try.
Tailoring building I didn't try.
Leatherworking/skinning building I didn't try.
Inscription building I didn't try.
Enchanting building I didn't try, bit description says it let's you de stuff without the skill.
A salvage yard building that gets you scrap when your followers do missions, whatever that is. I just built this so I'll know soon.
A storage building that makes your other profession buildings give you more dailies, from what I interpret in the description.
The medium and big buildings are not profession related but random perks of which you have to pick a subset.
Like one is a building that unlocks mount taming, whatever that is.
Another unlocks a faction you can rep up with.
Another recruits random extra followers for you.
Another makes you heal and get mana back each time you kill a mob.
Etc...
The bad thing is acting like it's impossible to produce content that is still interesting or challenging without relying on it.
EDIT: Dreamwalker was the last raid fight I remember that was actually somewhat interesting for all roles, but particularly healers. Blizzards problem is that they're so hellbent on relying purely on the trinity that content is stagnating to a really depressing degree, and encounter design is forced to adhere to the rules of tanks must always be on the verge of death, raids can't recover without them, and if healers are to be distracted from nothing but triage healing, the other roles must suddenly stop their actions in order to facilitate it.
10 years of trying to produce slight variations on the exact same formula, relentlessly, is bound to cause burn out faster and faster each new tier. The fault of this isn't inherently Blizzards, but their lack of flexibility on the formula isn't helping.
You. You are literally saying the trinity is a bad thing by saying Blizzard relies on one of the foundations of their group gameplay "too much." Players can switch roles when they feel like it: if anything you are liable to breed more resentment by telling players "Hey, you geared and practiced for this role, now do something else."
Dreamwalker was an interested fight, but it didn't change the trinity. DPS still had to dps, tanks had to tank, and healers had to heal. The only difference is that healers had one extra target that was the main goal of the fight.
The bad thing is acting like it's impossible to produce content that is still interesting or challenging without relying on it.
EDIT: Dreamwalker was the last raid fight I remember that was actually somewhat interesting for all roles, but particularly healers. Blizzards problem is that they're so hellbent on relying purely on the trinity that content is stagnating to a really depressing degree, and encounter design is forced to adhere to the rules of tanks must always be on the verge of death, raids can't recover without them, and if healers are to be distracted from nothing but triage healing, the other roles must suddenly stop their actions in order to facilitate it.
10 years of trying to produce slight variations on the exact same formula, relentlessly, is bound to cause burn out faster and faster each new tier. The fault of this isn't inherently Blizzards, but their lack of flexibility on the formula isn't helping.
You. You are literally saying the trinity is a bad thing by saying Blizzard relies on one of the foundations of their group gameplay "too much." Players can switch roles when they feel like it: if anything you are liable to breed more resentment by telling players "Hey, you geared and practiced for this role, now do something else."
Dreamwalker was an interested fight, but it didn't change the trinity. DPS still had to dps, tanks had to tank, and healers had to heal. The only difference is that healers had one extra target that was the main goal of the fight.
You're using literally incorrectly. I never said the trinity is a bad thing, I said that relying purely on it and not doing anything different is a bad thing. And the only thing different they've produced that doesn't require the trinity is worthless mindless garbage (scenarios), yet there's plenty of other MMO's that show this doesn't have to be.
I'm not exactly sure what you're getting worked up over. The trinity isn't a sacred cow in video games, it's just a design decision, which isn't inherently bad or flawed; but that we're hitting a decade of nothing but is clearly a problem in content and encounter design.
Feel free to show where I said the trinity was a bad thing though, maybe I said it and didn't realize it, but I'm pretty sure I didn't.
Posts
Yeah I wouldn't argue that Blizzard is actively doing things that make people act like asshats or anti-social; I would just argue that they're actively not doing obvious things they could to mitigate it. Tagging being one of those things. I can't think of an instance of a modern MMO that has open tagging that doesn't improve the situation immensely. And I can't think of an instance where said MMO's have open tagging where it makes anything worse.
As my usual go-to example, FFXIV shows even playing for a few minutes that open tagging does nothing but make the game play better, people less shitty to each other, and just improves the feel of the game. In WoW, if someone accidentally pulled extra enemies (or in active areas, had them spawn on top of you), there is absolutely no reason for any other player to help out. They're not going to get loot, not going to get quest credit, quest drops, etc. In fact ignoring the player in danger means they can probably move to their objective faster. In FFXIV if you see such a situation there's a good chance that you're probably passing through the area for the same reason anyone else is there, dailies, hunts, hunting logs, etc; and you know you're going to get credit for your goals by helping out and given the nature of not needing alts and individual characters being more persistent/known, it is universally in your best interest to help out. There is absolutely zero drawbacks. Even in the current clusterfuck of Elite Hunts in XIV, there's a lot of selfishness going on with people not waiting for the spawns however there's still reason to try to get to them before they die because you'll at least get some reward. Without open tagging once one person tagged the boss, there's no reason at all for anyone to lift a damn finger, and that person will just get blacklisted.
Aaaaanyway; yeah. Blizzard didn't make players assholes. But they're not lifting a finger to make it better (in many cases), and seem to be making anachronistic decisions on new content as if a decade of MMO genre changes and improvements have never occurred.
Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
Blizzard: Galedrid#1367 - FFXIV: Galedrid Kingshand
It really is for a lot of people. I remember the forum backlash when pet battle training was unveiled at 100 gold, and they scaled it down to 10.
I'm not in anyway arguing against open tagging. Just pointing out how ridiculous it was to imply player behavior is all on blizzard.
The fact that you can group with someone on a different server and play with them is a pretty huge obvious thing they've done to mitigate it in my book though.
R*SC: BladeCruiser
Check out my GTAV-PC custom race tracks inspired by real life racing circuits!
As for tagging, they might as well do away with it. There is a certain point where dynamic spawning become detrimental. I can't tell you how often I felt bad when I hit an area that was a bottleneck and I had to kill shit that I didn't need for a quest because it spawned on top of me, after I either finished the quest or killed enough of them. Sometimes people will wise up and release that the guy running away from the full health mobs is down with the quest and that they might as well grab them, but more often than not, they either assume the mobs are tagged and/or that the player running pull too much shit. So the opt to do nothing because they figure if the person dies, that'll speed up their questing experience.
Plus, people can using the tagging feature to grief other players. So someone can deny other players a quick progression on quest completion or slow or completely neuter their ability to get exp and rep. Sure I've never had someone do it to me (I did have the shithead alliance player that killed an escort NPC near ratchet on me because he could one shot it), but I've had a couple of friends who have run into players that employ such behavior.
Finally, the whole, "but players will treat each other like NPCs and we feel that is anti-social in itself." That tells me they aren't paying attention to the playerbase enough, people already do that. Hell, I'd argue anytime a pre-made queued into a BG with the intent purpose of farming their fellow players for easy honor, that that is a case of players treating their fellow players like NPCs. Hell, the whole faction setup, along with tagging, encourages far, far more anti-social behavior than open tagging could ever achieve.
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
For people with just one or two characters and/or who don't actively play the AH, I can imagine 5k would still be something to think twice about before plopping down on a mount.
Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
Blizzard: Galedrid#1367 - FFXIV: Galedrid Kingshand
http://gnomophobia.com
Right.
Which for many more casual players, that's likely much of the gold they'll earn this xpack, so yeah, that would be a really large chunk.
Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
Blizzard: Galedrid#1367 - FFXIV: Galedrid Kingshand
Bonus objectives net between 50-80, and quests that also offer equipment rewards that you vendor usually end up about another 50. That's not counting vendor trash, that is about 1g per item, and cash drops, which end up about 1-2g per mob.
If you actively play the AH with a profession like jewelcrafting, got lucky with some big payday drops (greater chance the longer and more often one has plays the game) do all possible daily quests on multiple characters a day or some other activity that is good for quick gold making. Then you're going to have a skewed view of gold making, that doesn't mesh with the majority of players. Trust me, a fair number of players don't play the AH, even if they have a moneymaker like JC or get the drop that can earn them thousands upon thousands of gold.
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
EDIT: Also, based on flavor text of the books, may be only obtainable in Ashran!
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
I don't have any proof of this, other than the tooltips mentioning that the books are 'sought by architects and engineers in Ashran' or something like that. That, and I've gone through four zones so far and haven't come across any. But if I had to guess, it's mostly going to be level 100 fare either way, in dungeons, level 100 areas, and Ashran.
R*SC: BladeCruiser
Check out my GTAV-PC custom race tracks inspired by real life racing circuits!
Ouch.
Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
Blizzard: Galedrid#1367 - FFXIV: Galedrid Kingshand
On the other hand, the Fistweaver stance is rather nicely set up. It'll be nice to Fistweave without using shitty keybinds because my heals take up the good ones. I'm also hoping they do something to fix Zen Sphere because it's laughably bad at the moment, on beta and live.
Not exactly. There are two books, I've gotten two ashram ones and one Garrison one, all three as rewards at end of long quest chains in Terrokar and Arak. The ashram one turns in to a vendor at ashram (which I have not visited yet), while the Garrison one turns into a vendor in your Garrison. I don't know if they sell the same stuff or what.
You get at least one design per zone, and many times it's a choice from two. The other design you didn't get you can buy for 500g from Garrison vendor. A handful of building are free with upgrade of town hall (minimum level power upgrade plus a bunch of Garrison resources which you get from killing rates, finding some doodads in the environment, and completing missions with your followers). A few big buildings you have to buy plan for 1000g but it's possessible you get them free elsewhere (I still have much of Arak, all of Nagrand, all of Ashram, and all of Frostfire to explore). To upgrade buildings past that you need those books plus Garrison resources, each building has 3 levels.
Some of the buildings have a quest to unlock them after they are built, like the fishing building seems you to talk to a fisherman and catch some fish, and the pet one wants you to beat three really hard pet battles.
There is warning it's coming, but it's a UBRS style conflagrate, so doubles as a physical effect blind-type mechanic, so you run around in random directions like a goon
It's also not a ground effect, it's an aura that an add has that effects anyone who gets into melee range. And the add has to be burned down. Which sucks if you happen to be running 2 melee in a 5 man dungeon!
Unless it requires warriors to spell reflect back onto the add, and then it's bring warriors and no other melee.
Which isn't a bad thing, it just severely limits the usefulness of many of the buildings for people who have most, or all, of the tradeskills leveled.
As far as I can tell it's the only way they can figure out to make healing have a sense of 'progression'. I.E. they make it ass at the top of each xpack and by the end it feels good, then back in the dumpster for the next xpack. It's just as much of a victim of their role design as it is their encounter design.
It's also, as far as I'm concerned, pretty emblematic of them designing WoW in a bubble where no other MMO's have come out with newer, better, or just different, ideas. Every time they come up with a feature that another MMO has, or has already had, they seem so pleased with themselves; and every time someone suggests a feature that works well in other games (i.e. anything to do with making the game better support alts) they act like none of those games exist and speculate based on what they think is pure conjecture...instead of actually just looking at the fucking games.
AO, before WoW, proved that healing can be a fucking blast, and healers don't have to just sit back and heal, they can be actively involved in the runs.
FFXI, before WoW, proved that healing can be thoughtful and proactive, not reactive and constant triage.
CoX, before WoW (and moreso later with improvments), like AO, showed that healing and support didn't mean inactive backseats that existed purely for the keeping up of a tank, who if died, would wipe everything.
TF2, while not an MMO, showed that healing could be a blast, and that the trinity wasn't necessary and a healer could turn any class into a powerhouse.
GW/GW2 proved you don't need a trinity. And not in a "well, fuck it, no strategy involved whatsoever" Scenario sort of way.
FFXIV proved that Healing can feel good and satisfying out of the gate, that you can scale healing with gear to maintain its satisfaction, while providing encounter roles specific for healers, and making going back and healing old content feel really good.
among other examples.
The irony is that if there's one single thing Blizzard has never been good at, it's innovation. They built their business on the idea that they could take something someone else did and do it better. In fact, their two other major franchises still prove this frequently (though it took a major management change and an xpack for D3 to remember this). However, somewhere along the line WoW became so successful, so dominate, that they convinced themselves seemingly that it was all their own doing, all their own ideas, and that other games were so lowly as to not have to be considered. No one there seems to recall that nothing about what made WoW popular and successful was Blizzards innovation...it was their renowned refinement and polish, along with a heaping of the right game at the right time.
They need to eat some damn humble pie and take a look around them again. Though, with the sub losses between Cata, and what I'm sure will be even lower by the time WoD goes live, nothing seems to faze them anymore.
Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
Blizzard: Galedrid#1367 - FFXIV: Galedrid Kingshand
???
I know, I still don't know how he could stand to do it. He likes collecting the rare pets and skins and stuff I guess.
R*SC: BladeCruiser
Check out my GTAV-PC custom race tracks inspired by real life racing circuits!
The bad thing is acting like it's impossible to produce content that is still interesting or challenging without relying on it.
EDIT: Dreamwalker was the last raid fight I remember that was actually somewhat interesting for all roles, but particularly healers. Blizzards problem is that they're so hellbent on relying purely on the trinity that content is stagnating to a really depressing degree, and encounter design is forced to adhere to the rules of tanks must always be on the verge of death, raids can't recover without them, and if healers are to be distracted from nothing but triage healing, the other roles must suddenly stop their actions in order to facilitate it.
10 years of trying to produce slight variations on the exact same formula, relentlessly, is bound to cause burn out faster and faster each new tier. The fault of this isn't inherently Blizzards, but their lack of flexibility on the formula isn't helping.
Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
Blizzard: Galedrid#1367 - FFXIV: Galedrid Kingshand
A fishing building that gives out fishing dailies. I haven't done it yet because it's a Frostfire one and has yet to change each time I looked.
A pet building which I don't know what it does because I'm not good enough at pets to unlock it fully.
A mine which is currently buggy so I can't finish unlocking it, but I assume provides ore.
A garden which provides free random herbs and you don't even have to seed it. I got almost a stack of golden lotus equivalent so far plus other random herbs.
Beyond that you can have 3 of any of the following (and switching out to a different one takes one hour plus some Garrison resources I talked about earlier):
Blacksmith which has a blacksmith trainer, gives out blacksmith dailies, and I think can make some blacksmith stuff for you even without having the skill, except it's bugged ATM and not loading just like the actual bs skill.
Engineering which works along the same lines and is likewise bugged.
Alchemy which works similarly and actually let me access some of the skill without having it at all myself. Was able to make each of the flasks and each primary combat potion (I.e. no funky potions like invis or whatever but yes to virmen bite equivalent), provided I had the mats which I did not. I had herbs from the garden but it wanted other stuff too like animal meat which I didn't have. I don't know if that's specific to the building or general alchemy.
JC building I didn't try.
Tailoring building I didn't try.
Leatherworking/skinning building I didn't try.
Inscription building I didn't try.
Enchanting building I didn't try, bit description says it let's you de stuff without the skill.
A salvage yard building that gets you scrap when your followers do missions, whatever that is. I just built this so I'll know soon.
A storage building that makes your other profession buildings give you more dailies, from what I interpret in the description.
The medium and big buildings are not profession related but random perks of which you have to pick a subset.
Like one is a building that unlocks mount taming, whatever that is.
Another unlocks a faction you can rep up with.
Another recruits random extra followers for you.
Another makes you heal and get mana back each time you kill a mob.
Etc...
Dreamwalker was an interested fight, but it didn't change the trinity. DPS still had to dps, tanks had to tank, and healers had to heal. The only difference is that healers had one extra target that was the main goal of the fight.
You're using literally incorrectly. I never said the trinity is a bad thing, I said that relying purely on it and not doing anything different is a bad thing. And the only thing different they've produced that doesn't require the trinity is worthless mindless garbage (scenarios), yet there's plenty of other MMO's that show this doesn't have to be.
I'm not exactly sure what you're getting worked up over. The trinity isn't a sacred cow in video games, it's just a design decision, which isn't inherently bad or flawed; but that we're hitting a decade of nothing but is clearly a problem in content and encounter design.
Feel free to show where I said the trinity was a bad thing though, maybe I said it and didn't realize it, but I'm pretty sure I didn't.
Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
Blizzard: Galedrid#1367 - FFXIV: Galedrid Kingshand