The issue with new maps is mostly making sure people can't glitch themselves placing they aren't supposed to be and ruin everyone's fun by being dicks. If people weren't stupid assholes, making maps would be easier.
If developers delayed a product every time a bug was found, they'd never publish anything. The same principle applies here. The correct design decision is to pump out the content and tweak it afterwards. You don't withhold content because it's not perfect; that's a terrible practice in an MMORPG. It's something Blizzard keeps trying to do, time and again, apparently without realizing that good design practices in other game types are not necessarily good design practices here.
Saeris on
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HalfmexI mock your value systemYou also appear foolish in the eyes of othersRegistered Userregular
in regard to the leveling discussion, i actually forced myself to stay in Pre-BC areas til 60 just so i wouldnt throw off my grove
i *LIKED* WPL/EPL/Winterspring
i did skip felwood this time... always hated that area
anyway, hit 62 in Hellfire and now im actually not looking forward to zangar for some reason O-o... i guess leveling warriors is the suck?
the gear wall came down after i got a few hellfire runs, but dear god did i hate and i mean HATE having to power through some of those quests as a melee
am i alone in this?
I actually had a blast leveling my warrior. Went Arms to 61, then specced DW Fury to 70 (then went back to Arms for PvP).
To your point though, I had a harder time of it on my rogue because I just didn't know what to expect. Rolling in there with my old pre-BC gear was tough. I wised up and bought lots of 57-60 TBC greens and blues for my warrior, which made it far more tolerable.
The worst part in Hellfire for melee are those damned 'kill x cannons and demons' quests. I fucking hate those cannons and the little grunty mobs that are near them.
The question is, am I gay because I'm right, or am I right because I'm gay?
/deepthoughts
I keep thinking about double penetration today. Ended up deriving a variable named P(So, dP/dT), and instead of being normal and just doing the problem, I took a good 30 seconds to think of how dp could stand for double penetration.
The question is, am I gay because I'm right, or am I right because I'm gay?
/deepthoughts
I keep thinking about double penetration today. Ended up deriving a variable named P(So, dP/dT), and instead of being normal and just doing the problem, I took a good 30 seconds to think of how dp could stand for double penetration.
So you're right because you're gay.
What the fuck, dude.
In all honesty, I think it's because of a DotA game I was in where people kept talking about the term. Then people on vent started talking about it. It was a very weird game.
RE: Leveling. Personally I took my shadowpriest/alchemy alt straight to Outlands at 58. Yes, I know I'm going to be straight-out grinding for the next 3-4 levels (I'm resolved to doing no more HH quests until I'm friendly, the better not to have to suffer with it on this character). It's not that I dislike W/EPL, it's that I grinded there so often on my main that I'm burnt on both zones. And while Silithus was tempting, the fact is I'm getting better green drops off the boars.
As for Felwood? It's not too bad these days, and come patch 2.4 cooks in particular will want to run through there (the recipes that correct the problems with 240-300 cooking are sold there, and require meat that drops there).
The issue with new maps is mostly making sure people can't glitch themselves placing they aren't supposed to be and ruin everyone's fun by being dicks. If people weren't stupid assholes, making maps would be easier.
Don't people do that on the existing maps already?
The issue with new maps is mostly making sure people can't glitch themselves placing they aren't supposed to be and ruin everyone's fun by being dicks. If people weren't stupid assholes, making maps would be easier.
If developers delayed a product every time a bug was found, they'd never publish anything. The same principle applies here. The correct design decision is to pump out the content and tweak it afterwards. You don't withhold content because it's not perfect; that's a terrible practice in an MMORPG. It's something Blizzard keeps trying to do, time and again, apparently without realizing that good design practices in other game types are not necessarily good design practices here.
In all fairness, that design practice has allowed them to cause what would have been solid MMOs before WoW to come out stillborn. But two things have to be considered with new maps:
1. Any map released will have bugs no matter how much they tune it. Attempts to tune it after the fact will break it. Look at the damn AV map. How much tweaking has it gotten over the years? It's had more time spent on it then any two raid instances and it's still a massive point of debate if it's a "fair" map. So adding a new map is going to take a disproportionate amount of resources to maintain.
2. There are no whiners louder then PvP whiners. Any exploit is going to put a large amount of stress on the community team. So either the S/N gets worse on the forums or they have to fix it. It's a loud, vocal community of mouth breathers. And if you're trying to push WoW PvP as an e-sport and looking for sponsors...that group being riled up isn't going to help.
AV is a clusterfuck (imo) mainly because it's not even a vague mirror.
AB, WSG and even EOTS they have no such excuse to fall back on. Pumping out maps for 'mirrored' areas (with minor tweaks, if just graphically, in order to make them look somewhat distinct) cannot seriously be THAT hard.
WSG is a giant open field! There's 2 bases and a bunch of open space with a few objects in the way.
Forar on
First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKER!
Newb question but do you receive experience for honor kills in battlegrounds? Is there a way to "level" while PvPing?
Not that I know of.
When you used to be able to turn in 3 of a BG mark for honour / rep, I think you got exp too if you needed it (or was that just the first turn in?) you could advance some at least, but then they killed that a long time ago.
Also, the rep requirements for AB and WSG are fucking insane in order to get the justicar title due to this.
Forar on
First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKER!
Out of curiosity, if all you want is a palette swap, what does it matter? Something prettier to look at while you grab a flag?
edit: The point being fps maps vary a great deal. But asking for a simple palette swap seems silly.
edit2: Also pointing out that the current maps still have bugs after being available for a long time doesn't generate positive thought on putting out new maps that need to be debugged.
AV is a clusterfuck (imo) mainly because it's not even a vague mirror.
AB, WSG and even EOTS they have no such excuse to fall back on. Pumping out maps for 'mirrored' areas (with minor tweaks, if just graphically, in order to make them look somewhat distinct) cannot seriously be THAT hard.
WSG is a giant open field! There's 2 bases and a bunch of open space with a few objects in the way.
Uh-huh. And yet that map has had what, half a dozen spots in which a person could stand and never be hit? Or places in which one could hide without being able to be seen? Or my current favorite the "Druid magically falls halfway across the map without being able to be touched" exploit I saw this weekend?
Out of curiosity, if all you want is a palette swap, what does it matter? Something prettier to look at while you grab a flag?
I'm not advocating a palette swap, I'm advocating that making a new "2 base CTF" map can't be that fucking hard if there are like 9,000 of them for Unreal Tournament alone.
Considering the vast swathes of ground they have to make for the world in general, I have a hard time believing that making a new map in an area that size is so daunting that they haven't been able to do it over the past few years. AV I can somewhat understand, they still haven't balanced the original map to their liking, but the other 3 are nigh-mirrors. Make half a map, mirror it, tweak to liking in minor adjustments and add art.
Hell, look at EOTS: it's not like they spent a lot of time on brand new art for it or anything, it just reuses things we see in the rest of the world anyway.
Forar on
First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKER!
Out of curiosity, if all you want is a palette swap, what does it matter? Something prettier to look at while you grab a flag?
I'm not advocating a palette swap, I'm advocating that making a new "2 base CTF" map can't be that fucking hard if there are like 9,000 of them for Unreal Tournament alone.
Considering the vast swathes of ground they have to make for the world in general, I have a hard time believing that making a new map in an area that size is so daunting that they haven't been able to do it over the past few years. AV I can somewhat understand, they still haven't balanced the original map to their liking, but the other 3 are nigh-mirrors. Make half a map, mirror it, tweak to liking in minor adjustments and add art.
Hell, look at EOTS: it's not like they spent a lot of time on brand new art for it or anything, it just reuses things we see in the rest of the world anyway.
RE: Leveling. Personally I took my shadowpriest/alchemy alt straight to Outlands at 58. Yes, I know I'm going to be straight-out grinding for the next 3-4 levels (I'm resolved to doing no more HH quests until I'm friendly, the better not to have to suffer with it on this character). It's not that I dislike W/EPL, it's that I grinded there so often on my main that I'm burnt on both zones. And while Silithus was tempting, the fact is I'm getting better green drops off the boars.
As for Felwood? It's not too bad these days, and come patch 2.4 cooks in particular will want to run through there (the recipes that correct the problems with 240-300 cooking are sold there, and require meat that drops there).
I went to outland at like 59 on my druid alt, then I went back and did silithus at like 63. the quests were simple and were a ton of xp, and when I returned to outland, I hit 70 before I even set foot in blade's edge, leaving me a ton of quests to run for money.
that was one good thing about not passing up pre-outland quests, anyway.
AV is a clusterfuck (imo) mainly because it's not even a vague mirror.
AB, WSG and even EOTS they have no such excuse to fall back on. Pumping out maps for 'mirrored' areas (with minor tweaks, if just graphically, in order to make them look somewhat distinct) cannot seriously be THAT hard.
WSG is a giant open field! There's 2 bases and a bunch of open space with a few objects in the way.
Uh-huh. And yet that map has had what, half a dozen spots in which a person could stand and never be hit? Or places in which one could hide without being able to be seen? Or my current favorite the "Druid magically falls halfway across the map without being able to be touched" exploit I saw this weekend?
Y'know, I suspect they have more than one crew working on things. So, give a couple guys cash, and make them work out some new maps, and then have the art guys plop a bunch of reused artwork (possibly some 2 headed dog statues) and ship it off to QA to make sure that it's unlikely for people to fall or get feared through the world.
Sure there are flaws in the current maps, but I doubt the guys that created the maps are the ones fixing them, which implies that those guys should be off making MORE maps, and Blizzard needs more or better QA people.
Is it wrong that I sort of wish I was qualified for that and/or willing to move to California?
That's very cool. The Warcraft universe has a such a well developed world compared to other games, and it must be interesting to be (What seems to be) "The guy" that creates all of it. A part of me wants to apply, but uh, not having any of the pluses seems like it'd be a bit of a problem, or work experience.
also I checked the desert eagle custom models and now there's an old west six shooter replacement, complete with fanning style (hitting the hammer repeatedly with your hand) animations so I'm compelled to install CS again.
now I just need a winchester rifle replacement for the m3, complete with army of the dead one handed chambering. which I have not seen since the old days of pre 1.6
also I checked the desert eagle custom models and now there's an old west six shooter replacement, complete with fanning style animations so I'm compelled to install CS again.
Um, that CS is nothing like WoW, so why would twinks necessarily want to play it instead?
Newb question but do you receive experience for honor kills in battlegrounds? Is there a way to "level" while PvPing?
negative
the only pvp leveling you can do is grinding non faction npcs in AV
Those NPCs only give about 19 xp per kill too.
Speaking of the NPCs in AV...
A while ago, I logged into a pre-made character on the PTR just to screw around, and I saw a mage doing all sorts of shenanigans in one of the mines. I investigated, and realized that he was using spellsteal to take the "Fire Shield" buff from the caster troggs. We both realized that spellsteal's cooldown was shorter than the duration of the buff, and the buff stacked indefinitely depending on the number of mobs you could find to steal it from. (It had a 10 minute cooldown, where spellsteal only had a 2 minute cooldown, iirc). The fire shield did 400-500 damage every 3 seconds to every target around the person buffed per fire shield buff applied. He managed to get a total of 4 shields stacked on him.
Now, this particular mage was a frost mage (when ice block was a talent), and there was a clusterfuck of ~30 enemies happening at the iceblood flag... We rode up, and the kicker was that we realized that the fire shields applied their fire damage through ice block, and with 4 shields applied, he was doing 1600-2000 damage every 3 seconds to every target around him. Between ice block, ice barrier, my power word: shield, mana shield, and arcane explosion, we literally killed all 30 people in a manner of seconds.
rehtonAesoohC on
Was wowed by Rift so I'm trying that now.
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ThomamelasOnly one man can kill this many Russians. Bring his guitar to me! Registered Userregular
AV is a clusterfuck (imo) mainly because it's not even a vague mirror.
AB, WSG and even EOTS they have no such excuse to fall back on. Pumping out maps for 'mirrored' areas (with minor tweaks, if just graphically, in order to make them look somewhat distinct) cannot seriously be THAT hard.
WSG is a giant open field! There's 2 bases and a bunch of open space with a few objects in the way.
Uh-huh. And yet that map has had what, half a dozen spots in which a person could stand and never be hit? Or places in which one could hide without being able to be seen? Or my current favorite the "Druid magically falls halfway across the map without being able to be touched" exploit I saw this weekend?
Y'know, I suspect they have more than one crew working on things. So, give a couple guys cash, and make them work out some new maps, and then have the art guys plop a bunch of reused artwork (possibly some 2 headed dog statues) and ship it off to QA to make sure that it's unlikely for people to fall or get feared through the world.
Sure there are flaws in the current maps, but I doubt the guys that created the maps are the ones fixing them, which implies that those guys should be off making MORE maps, and Blizzard needs more or better QA people.
No, but that doesn't mean that they should stop trying. Hell, in the case of EOTS itself, it's not like they can do much worse.
I know they have more then one crew working on things, but some skill sets aren't transferable. You don't ask a coder who specializes in networking code to go do maps. You're going to have a finite amount of people with that skill set. If the map is broken, it's going to be one of those guys who has to fix it. Which can mean you have a prioritizing conflict between "New 5 man/raid instances and PvP maps". And while you can do a bunch of QA tests to try to prevent things....players will always do something weird to cause that "1 in a 1,000,000" event.
I do QA work (among other things) at my job. And you'll always run into people doing weird things. We had a zoom feature that would throw up an error at 138 button presses. (or the point in which a single pixel excceed the standard resolution we were working with). The test case called for 125 button presses as a test. (The point in which one pixel equaled standard resolution). For the error to be triggered it needed to be pressed 13 times more to pull it off. A customer went and did it. It was a non-fatal error that caused no harm.
But any error like that on a PvP map will trigger a shit storm of "How did you not realize that a druid shape shifting with noggenfogger while a mage blinks and a shaman does a /moon emote would cause them to evade under the light of a quarter moon"? Is it a minor bug? Yep. Does it happen with PvE maps? Yep. Which group is going to bitch more about it? The PvP group because those bugs almost always benefit the players.
Is it wrong that I sort of wish I was qualified for that and/or willing to move to California?
Awesome.
Bob: We need to give Arthas a new look, something hip, something cool. How about a runeclub instead of a runesword? Focus tests show us that kids like weed and they like blunts, we think that will translate into greater appeal for blunt instruments.
John: I disagree, I think we should stick with the tried and true formula. Elric is classic for a reason. If anything, we need to make Arthas a weak drug-dependant emo whiner, since we all know emo is the new trend sweeping the nation.
Michael: You're both wrong, let's not change anything, and furthermore I think the lore doesn't support the change. Riz, care to enlighten these folks?
Riz: Yes. You see gentlemen, Kil'Jaeden the Deceiver himself oversaw the construction of the weapon and as we know, the Burning Legion abhors blunt weapons as we saw with the case of the flaying of Forge-smith Kraal. The only possible form that the weapon can take is that of a blade. And please forgive me for being candid, but one cannot pander to whatever current pop trend dominates, when dealing with the surperb lore of World of Warcaft.
A while ago, I logged into a pre-made character on the PTR just to screw around, and I saw a mage doing all sorts of shenanigans in one of the mines. I investigated, and realized that he was using spellsteal to take the "Fire Shield" buff from the caster troggs. We both realized that spellsteal's cooldown was shorter than the duration of the buff, and the buff stacked indefinitely depending on the number of mobs you could find to steal it from. (It had a 10 minute cooldown, where spellsteal only had a 2 minute cooldown, iirc). The fire shield did 400-500 damage every 3 seconds to every target around the person buffed per fire shield buff applied. He managed to get a total of 4 shields stacked on him.
Now, this particular mage was a frost mage (when ice block was a talent), and there was a clusterfuck of ~30 enemies happening at the iceblood flag... We rode up, and the kicker was that we realized that the fire shields applied their fire damage through ice block, and with 4 shields applied, he was doing 1600-2000 damage every 3 seconds to every target around him. Between ice block, ice barrier, my power word: shield, mana shield, and arcane explosion, we literally killed all 30 people in a manner of seconds.
dood, that sounds almost as powerful an AoE as Seed of Corruption!
Posts
If developers delayed a product every time a bug was found, they'd never publish anything. The same principle applies here. The correct design decision is to pump out the content and tweak it afterwards. You don't withhold content because it's not perfect; that's a terrible practice in an MMORPG. It's something Blizzard keeps trying to do, time and again, apparently without realizing that good design practices in other game types are not necessarily good design practices here.
To your point though, I had a harder time of it on my rogue because I just didn't know what to expect. Rolling in there with my old pre-BC gear was tough. I wised up and bought lots of 57-60 TBC greens and blues for my warrior, which made it far more tolerable.
The worst part in Hellfire for melee are those damned 'kill x cannons and demons' quests. I fucking hate those cannons and the little grunty mobs that are near them.
What the fuck, dude.
In all honesty, I think it's because of a DotA game I was in where people kept talking about the term. Then people on vent started talking about it. It was a very weird game.
As for Felwood? It's not too bad these days, and come patch 2.4 cooks in particular will want to run through there (the recipes that correct the problems with 240-300 cooking are sold there, and require meat that drops there).
GAH!
First time I read that, it said /deepthroats.
So you're gay and contagious.
http://videogames.yahoo.com/feature/seven-ways-to-win-back-your-gaming-spouse/1194632
Fake a power outage to save your marriage!
But in secret, I'm not gay, so I'm merely spreading a contagion that will reduce my competition, making me one day "Forar: The Last Man".
(apparently, also bad at keeping secrets. This super-villain thing is hard)
In all fairness, that design practice has allowed them to cause what would have been solid MMOs before WoW to come out stillborn. But two things have to be considered with new maps:
1. Any map released will have bugs no matter how much they tune it. Attempts to tune it after the fact will break it. Look at the damn AV map. How much tweaking has it gotten over the years? It's had more time spent on it then any two raid instances and it's still a massive point of debate if it's a "fair" map. So adding a new map is going to take a disproportionate amount of resources to maintain.
2. There are no whiners louder then PvP whiners. Any exploit is going to put a large amount of stress on the community team. So either the S/N gets worse on the forums or they have to fix it. It's a loud, vocal community of mouth breathers. And if you're trying to push WoW PvP as an e-sport and looking for sponsors...that group being riled up isn't going to help.
AB, WSG and even EOTS they have no such excuse to fall back on. Pumping out maps for 'mirrored' areas (with minor tweaks, if just graphically, in order to make them look somewhat distinct) cannot seriously be THAT hard.
WSG is a giant open field! There's 2 bases and a bunch of open space with a few objects in the way.
Not that I know of.
When you used to be able to turn in 3 of a BG mark for honour / rep, I think you got exp too if you needed it (or was that just the first turn in?) you could advance some at least, but then they killed that a long time ago.
Also, the rep requirements for AB and WSG are fucking insane in order to get the justicar title due to this.
negative
the only pvp leveling you can do is grinding non faction npcs in AV
No. Twinks would hate this so much.
edit: The point being fps maps vary a great deal. But asking for a simple palette swap seems silly.
edit2: Also pointing out that the current maps still have bugs after being available for a long time doesn't generate positive thought on putting out new maps that need to be debugged.
they're 'tards
Uh-huh. And yet that map has had what, half a dozen spots in which a person could stand and never be hit? Or places in which one could hide without being able to be seen? Or my current favorite the "Druid magically falls halfway across the map without being able to be touched" exploit I saw this weekend?
I'm not advocating a palette swap, I'm advocating that making a new "2 base CTF" map can't be that fucking hard if there are like 9,000 of them for Unreal Tournament alone.
Considering the vast swathes of ground they have to make for the world in general, I have a hard time believing that making a new map in an area that size is so daunting that they haven't been able to do it over the past few years. AV I can somewhat understand, they still haven't balanced the original map to their liking, but the other 3 are nigh-mirrors. Make half a map, mirror it, tweak to liking in minor adjustments and add art.
Hell, look at EOTS: it's not like they spent a lot of time on brand new art for it or anything, it just reuses things we see in the rest of the world anyway.
Yeah but does anyone actually enjoy that map?
I went to outland at like 59 on my druid alt, then I went back and did silithus at like 63. the quests were simple and were a ton of xp, and when I returned to outland, I hit 70 before I even set foot in blade's edge, leaving me a ton of quests to run for money.
that was one good thing about not passing up pre-outland quests, anyway.
Is it wrong that I sort of wish I was qualified for that and/or willing to move to California?
Y'know, I suspect they have more than one crew working on things. So, give a couple guys cash, and make them work out some new maps, and then have the art guys plop a bunch of reused artwork (possibly some 2 headed dog statues) and ship it off to QA to make sure that it's unlikely for people to fall or get feared through the world.
Sure there are flaws in the current maps, but I doubt the guys that created the maps are the ones fixing them, which implies that those guys should be off making MORE maps, and Blizzard needs more or better QA people.
No, but that doesn't mean that they should stop trying. Hell, in the case of EOTS itself, it's not like they can do much worse.
Because its not as fun?
Because CS is a first person shooter, not a third person action-rpg? Because CS doesn't have two handed swords and greataxes?
That's very cool. The Warcraft universe has a such a well developed world compared to other games, and it must be interesting to be (What seems to be) "The guy" that creates all of it. A part of me wants to apply, but uh, not having any of the pluses seems like it'd be a bit of a problem, or work experience.
Also California is cool.
also I checked the desert eagle custom models and now there's an old west six shooter replacement, complete with fanning style (hitting the hammer repeatedly with your hand) animations so I'm compelled to install CS again.
now I just need a winchester rifle replacement for the m3, complete with army of the dead one handed chambering. which I have not seen since the old days of pre 1.6
if they make it better it'll be a blast though
Um, that CS is nothing like WoW, so why would twinks necessarily want to play it instead?
you smell like butts
I'm trying not to be as stupid as I was last page.
but you know you like it or else you would stop smelling me.
Those NPCs only give about 19 xp per kill too.
Speaking of the NPCs in AV...
A while ago, I logged into a pre-made character on the PTR just to screw around, and I saw a mage doing all sorts of shenanigans in one of the mines. I investigated, and realized that he was using spellsteal to take the "Fire Shield" buff from the caster troggs. We both realized that spellsteal's cooldown was shorter than the duration of the buff, and the buff stacked indefinitely depending on the number of mobs you could find to steal it from. (It had a 10 minute cooldown, where spellsteal only had a 2 minute cooldown, iirc). The fire shield did 400-500 damage every 3 seconds to every target around the person buffed per fire shield buff applied. He managed to get a total of 4 shields stacked on him.
Now, this particular mage was a frost mage (when ice block was a talent), and there was a clusterfuck of ~30 enemies happening at the iceblood flag... We rode up, and the kicker was that we realized that the fire shields applied their fire damage through ice block, and with 4 shields applied, he was doing 1600-2000 damage every 3 seconds to every target around him. Between ice block, ice barrier, my power word: shield, mana shield, and arcane explosion, we literally killed all 30 people in a manner of seconds.
I know they have more then one crew working on things, but some skill sets aren't transferable. You don't ask a coder who specializes in networking code to go do maps. You're going to have a finite amount of people with that skill set. If the map is broken, it's going to be one of those guys who has to fix it. Which can mean you have a prioritizing conflict between "New 5 man/raid instances and PvP maps". And while you can do a bunch of QA tests to try to prevent things....players will always do something weird to cause that "1 in a 1,000,000" event.
I do QA work (among other things) at my job. And you'll always run into people doing weird things. We had a zoom feature that would throw up an error at 138 button presses. (or the point in which a single pixel excceed the standard resolution we were working with). The test case called for 125 button presses as a test. (The point in which one pixel equaled standard resolution). For the error to be triggered it needed to be pressed 13 times more to pull it off. A customer went and did it. It was a non-fatal error that caused no harm.
But any error like that on a PvP map will trigger a shit storm of "How did you not realize that a druid shape shifting with noggenfogger while a mage blinks and a shaman does a /moon emote would cause them to evade under the light of a quarter moon"? Is it a minor bug? Yep. Does it happen with PvE maps? Yep. Which group is going to bitch more about it? The PvP group because those bugs almost always benefit the players.
Awesome.
Bob: We need to give Arthas a new look, something hip, something cool. How about a runeclub instead of a runesword? Focus tests show us that kids like weed and they like blunts, we think that will translate into greater appeal for blunt instruments.
John: I disagree, I think we should stick with the tried and true formula. Elric is classic for a reason. If anything, we need to make Arthas a weak drug-dependant emo whiner, since we all know emo is the new trend sweeping the nation.
Michael: You're both wrong, let's not change anything, and furthermore I think the lore doesn't support the change. Riz, care to enlighten these folks?
Riz: Yes. You see gentlemen, Kil'Jaeden the Deceiver himself oversaw the construction of the weapon and as we know, the Burning Legion abhors blunt weapons as we saw with the case of the flaying of Forge-smith Kraal. The only possible form that the weapon can take is that of a blade. And please forgive me for being candid, but one cannot pander to whatever current pop trend dominates, when dealing with the surperb lore of World of Warcaft.
dood, that sounds almost as powerful an AoE as Seed of Corruption!