Well, most of you will have known this already, but yesterday Mike Morhaime, CEO of Blizzard Entertainment confirmed what we suspected: World of Warcraft lost a number of subscribers due to the launch of Warhammer Online, but already players who canceled their subscription are flocking back to WoW
"To date, 68% of the players who listed Age of Conan as their reason for cancellation and 46% of the players who listed Warhammer as their reason for cancellation have reactivated their subscriptions to World of Warcraft."(source)
Almost half of the players who left WoW, returned less than 1.5 months after Warhammer Online has been released. Quite interesting.
Now, apparently Warhammer is still doing well, with the one million active subscribers mark close on the horizon. This can only mean that Warhammer is either gaining a lot of subscribers from other games, or that it's actually expanding the market. But it's not the World of Warcraft killer some people thought or hoped it would be.
Thursday 6 November 2008
Tuesday 21 October 2008
Warhammer Online redux
Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning was released last month and I feel I've now had a fair period of time to play the game. But to be fair, it seems that the game world itself is really empty. You very rarely meet people in the open, which makes it very hard to get a couple of people together for a Public Quest.
Apparently everyone is hiding in the so-called Scenarios, WAR's version of WoW battlegrounds. And it seems they are there for a reason: leveling in scenarios is a lot quicker than regular WoW-style questing. Which is a shame, because it's obvious that Mythic spent a lot of time polishing the outside world and dedicating a lot of time coming up with a good story for the many many quests, public and otherwise, in the game.
For the moment it seems I'm just playing a glorified version of Guild Wars. I'm sure most of you who actually play the game would excuse for thinking Tobold's post about WAR Light was real at first.
Anyway, the scenarios themselves are fun enough for a while. But unfortunately it seems that there's always one scenario at each tier that pops all the time, while the other two get played very rarely. So it does get boring after an hour or two.
I hope Mythic can address these issues, because there are a lot of nice features in the game and it shows a lot of promise. I'd hate for it to go down the same way as Age of Conan.
Apparently everyone is hiding in the so-called Scenarios, WAR's version of WoW battlegrounds. And it seems they are there for a reason: leveling in scenarios is a lot quicker than regular WoW-style questing. Which is a shame, because it's obvious that Mythic spent a lot of time polishing the outside world and dedicating a lot of time coming up with a good story for the many many quests, public and otherwise, in the game.
For the moment it seems I'm just playing a glorified version of Guild Wars. I'm sure most of you who actually play the game would excuse for thinking Tobold's post about WAR Light was real at first.
Anyway, the scenarios themselves are fun enough for a while. But unfortunately it seems that there's always one scenario at each tier that pops all the time, while the other two get played very rarely. So it does get boring after an hour or two.
I hope Mythic can address these issues, because there are a lot of nice features in the game and it shows a lot of promise. I'd hate for it to go down the same way as Age of Conan.
WoW patch 3.02 love
Preparation for the Wrath of the Lich King expansion has began for real now, with the arrival of patch 3.02 on the live servers. While I'm mostly joining my fellow warlocks in crying over the changes which hit the class quite hard, at least the patch brought something I really enjoy: achievements.
In an earlier post, I already commented that this new system would probably feed my OCD, and I was right. I especially enjoyed completing my "Classic Raider" achievement. Revisiting old instances is always nice, as long as it's a one-off. And for me personally, it was the first time I ever got past The Prophet Skeram in AQ40 and the first time I killed Nefarian. Nostalgia was never this good.
And of course completing achievements is a nice way of killing some time when you got nothing better to do. Obviously it's not going to last very long. I'm already running out of "easily achievable" achievements, but I'm having fun while it lasts.
In an earlier post, I already commented that this new system would probably feed my OCD, and I was right. I especially enjoyed completing my "Classic Raider" achievement. Revisiting old instances is always nice, as long as it's a one-off. And for me personally, it was the first time I ever got past The Prophet Skeram in AQ40 and the first time I killed Nefarian. Nostalgia was never this good.
And of course completing achievements is a nice way of killing some time when you got nothing better to do. Obviously it's not going to last very long. I'm already running out of "easily achievable" achievements, but I'm having fun while it lasts.
Wednesday 6 August 2008
Will Age of Conan's failure influence Warhammer Online sales?
Failure is relative of course, but according to Mike Morhaime, president of Blizzard, 40% of the people that left WoW for AoC, returned later on. As some people have remarked, if the president of Blizzard mentions it, it must have meant that they lost a significant amount of subscribers to Age of Conan. Which means there's a market out there for a good title. And Warhammer Online could fill that hole.
But, 40% of the leavers returned, which means those people gave something else a try, didn't like it and came back to WoW. Will this impact sales of the next new title to come along? After all, they're leaving a perfectly stable game without too many bugs, which, apparently, they still enjoy. Otherwise they wouldn't have come back. And chances are you won't really find what you're looking for in that new game either. Why take the risk, go through the whole "I'm a newbie" experience, waste time on the levelling grind again, and leave all your friends in WoW, if you already have a maxed out character and loads of friends in a game you still play with passion?
Well, some people enjoy levelling and exploring new stuff. My guess is those people would have tried Warhammer Online regardless, because it's new content. But end-game players that tried out AoC and came back, possibly won't be as inclined to give WAR a try after their AoC experience.
But, 40% of the leavers returned, which means those people gave something else a try, didn't like it and came back to WoW. Will this impact sales of the next new title to come along? After all, they're leaving a perfectly stable game without too many bugs, which, apparently, they still enjoy. Otherwise they wouldn't have come back. And chances are you won't really find what you're looking for in that new game either. Why take the risk, go through the whole "I'm a newbie" experience, waste time on the levelling grind again, and leave all your friends in WoW, if you already have a maxed out character and loads of friends in a game you still play with passion?
Well, some people enjoy levelling and exploring new stuff. My guess is those people would have tried Warhammer Online regardless, because it's new content. But end-game players that tried out AoC and came back, possibly won't be as inclined to give WAR a try after their AoC experience.
WoW Recruit a Friend program
Today's top headline on the World of Warcraft main page is their updated "Recruit a Friend" program. Previously, if you referred a friend, they started playing World of Warcraft and paid their first month's subscription fee, you would get 30 days free game time. The new program awards you with:
This new scheme limits the time you have to play apart from each other, and you can easily level up an alt in the process. If your friend gets ahead of your new alt, because you were raiding or whatever, he can easily allow you to catch up by awarding your character extra levels. Your friend will be level 70 in no time, at which point you can truely start playing together with your "mains". In the past, I've had a couple of friends who gave WoW a try. But the game was already mature at that point, I was max level and my friends got bored having to play alone most of the time and gave up. This is an excellent counter to that.
And of course the free zhevra mount will motivate existing players to actively start recruiting friends. As a matter of fact, it wouldn't surprise me if a substantial number of these "friends who start playing" will be secondary accounts of existing players who are only after the exclusive mount. If people are willing to spend more than $200 on an in-game social pet, they won't think twice about shelling out for an extra account for two months so they can get their hands on a new mount.
- As it was previously, 30 days of free play time if your friend pays for 30 days game time.
- An exclusive zhevra in-game mount when your friend pays for 60 days of game time.
- If you and your friend are grouped together, you'll both earn triple experience.
- For every two levels your friend earns, he can grant one of your characters that's lower level than your friend's character, an extra level.
- You and your friend can summon each other once every hour.
This new scheme limits the time you have to play apart from each other, and you can easily level up an alt in the process. If your friend gets ahead of your new alt, because you were raiding or whatever, he can easily allow you to catch up by awarding your character extra levels. Your friend will be level 70 in no time, at which point you can truely start playing together with your "mains". In the past, I've had a couple of friends who gave WoW a try. But the game was already mature at that point, I was max level and my friends got bored having to play alone most of the time and gave up. This is an excellent counter to that.
And of course the free zhevra mount will motivate existing players to actively start recruiting friends. As a matter of fact, it wouldn't surprise me if a substantial number of these "friends who start playing" will be secondary accounts of existing players who are only after the exclusive mount. If people are willing to spend more than $200 on an in-game social pet, they won't think twice about shelling out for an extra account for two months so they can get their hands on a new mount.
Sunday 3 August 2008
WotLK Beta - Built-in threat meters and more stable slots
This morning I had to download a new patch before I was able to log in to the beta. It wasn't too big, about 22.5MB in size, but it still contained a few things that'll make people excited.
The first highlight is the fact that stable masters now have an additional two slots, for a total of four slots for hunter pets. The first new slot costs 50 gold, the second 150g. I have a level 70 hunter myself, and personally, I think this is long overdue. I always suffered from not having enough pet storage room while levelling up, especially when training new pet skills. Currently you have to tame a certain beast in the wild before you can learn a spell. This means that you have to stable your regular pet if you want to get a new skill or the next rank of a skill for your companion.
Ironically enough, they're doing away with this system in the expansion, all skills are now learned via visiting an NPC trainer or via the new pet talent system. So I guess the extra stable room is actually a little less needed in the expansion than it is right now on live servers. Oh well… Better late than never I guess.
A second important addition in the patch was Blizzard's own "threat meters" system. There have been third party addons that measure the amount of threat you have on a mob for quite some time now, pretty much ever since certain bosses in Blackwing Lair, in pre-TBC WoW, made them a virtual necessity.
And now Blizzard is coming with their own implementation, but contrary to what they usually do when incorporating popular addon functionality, they went for a totally different approach. Instead of a separate window, showing a list of players with the most threat on a particular mob, they now only show each player how much threat only they themselves have, as a percentage. It's added to the combat text, so for each of the mobs you're fighting, you'll see these numbers popping up each time you do damage to them or if you heal someone or…
The problem with this is, it makes it very unreadable, and sometimes you don't know what your actual threat is, because the numbers keep popping up constantly. Especially when you have a lot of DoTs on the target, you see lots of numbers on screen at the same time (see screenshot). I don't know about the rest of you, but it sure confuses me.
A very different approach and certainly not what I was expecting. We'll see if it catches on, but for now I prefer the system the third party addons use.
The first highlight is the fact that stable masters now have an additional two slots, for a total of four slots for hunter pets. The first new slot costs 50 gold, the second 150g. I have a level 70 hunter myself, and personally, I think this is long overdue. I always suffered from not having enough pet storage room while levelling up, especially when training new pet skills. Currently you have to tame a certain beast in the wild before you can learn a spell. This means that you have to stable your regular pet if you want to get a new skill or the next rank of a skill for your companion.
Ironically enough, they're doing away with this system in the expansion, all skills are now learned via visiting an NPC trainer or via the new pet talent system. So I guess the extra stable room is actually a little less needed in the expansion than it is right now on live servers. Oh well… Better late than never I guess.
A second important addition in the patch was Blizzard's own "threat meters" system. There have been third party addons that measure the amount of threat you have on a mob for quite some time now, pretty much ever since certain bosses in Blackwing Lair, in pre-TBC WoW, made them a virtual necessity.
And now Blizzard is coming with their own implementation, but contrary to what they usually do when incorporating popular addon functionality, they went for a totally different approach. Instead of a separate window, showing a list of players with the most threat on a particular mob, they now only show each player how much threat only they themselves have, as a percentage. It's added to the combat text, so for each of the mobs you're fighting, you'll see these numbers popping up each time you do damage to them or if you heal someone or…
The problem with this is, it makes it very unreadable, and sometimes you don't know what your actual threat is, because the numbers keep popping up constantly. Especially when you have a lot of DoTs on the target, you see lots of numbers on screen at the same time (see screenshot). I don't know about the rest of you, but it sure confuses me.
A very different approach and certainly not what I was expecting. We'll see if it catches on, but for now I prefer the system the third party addons use.
Thursday 31 July 2008
WotLK Beta - Borean Tundra and The Nexus
Today, I managed to unlock two new achievements
This means I've now officially "completed" Borean Tundra, one of the two starting zones in Wrath of the Lich King, the other being Howling Fjord. Or near enough anyway. Apparently you don't need to complete every single quest in the zone, because I still completed four more quests there after I already got the achievement unlocked. Furthermore I've also managed to clear the only non level-80 dungeon, The Nexus. At the end of the zone, I was level 73 and 30% into the next level, with minimal rest XP.
I have to say, without spoiling too much of the zone, that I thouroughly enjoyed my adventures here. There are a lot more storylines in this zone, compared to for example Hellfire Peninsula, the starting zone of The Burning Crusade. There's also a little more variety in the quest types, although obviously the vast majority of quests still has you collecting X number of enemies of a certain type, collecting Y number of drops from mobs or picking them up from the floor, or a delivery quest that sends you to the next quest hub. The zone also introduces you to a few new major races, each one having their own interesting storyline. You also have to help an old enemy race, including one very enjoyable quest, which will probably become an instant favourite of most players.
All in all a very enjoyable zone, it rates much higher than Hellfire Peninsula in my opinion, and most of the quests seem bug-free at the moment. The one thing that The Burning Crusade did better was, when you first enter the new zone, you immediately see Alliance and Horde forces, battling it out with huge demons, which made for a very impressive opening of the expansion. This is somewhat lacking. Although you are immediately dropped in the middle of a siege, it misses the same epic feeling.
The Nexus itself is a very atmospheric dungeon, although it remains a conventional dungeon crawl. It has four bosses and the two last bosses have an interesting mechanic to them that I hadn't seen before. Especially the last one has a nasty trick up her sleeve that might not get noticed in the heat of the battle. At least 3 out of 5 people in my party didn't notice it, and we only just managed to kill the boss.
All in all, it took us about one hour to clear the dungeon, but my group kind of overgeared the instance. It's a level 71-73 instance, and I was the lowest level player there at 73. The tank and another warlock were level 75 and all of us had tier 6 or season 3 gear, so it went quite smoothly.
Well, this zone sure wet my appetite for the remainder of the expansion. Hopefully the rest of the game is as enjoyable as Borean Tundra.
This means I've now officially "completed" Borean Tundra, one of the two starting zones in Wrath of the Lich King, the other being Howling Fjord. Or near enough anyway. Apparently you don't need to complete every single quest in the zone, because I still completed four more quests there after I already got the achievement unlocked. Furthermore I've also managed to clear the only non level-80 dungeon, The Nexus. At the end of the zone, I was level 73 and 30% into the next level, with minimal rest XP.
I have to say, without spoiling too much of the zone, that I thouroughly enjoyed my adventures here. There are a lot more storylines in this zone, compared to for example Hellfire Peninsula, the starting zone of The Burning Crusade. There's also a little more variety in the quest types, although obviously the vast majority of quests still has you collecting X number of enemies of a certain type, collecting Y number of drops from mobs or picking them up from the floor, or a delivery quest that sends you to the next quest hub. The zone also introduces you to a few new major races, each one having their own interesting storyline. You also have to help an old enemy race, including one very enjoyable quest, which will probably become an instant favourite of most players.
All in all a very enjoyable zone, it rates much higher than Hellfire Peninsula in my opinion, and most of the quests seem bug-free at the moment. The one thing that The Burning Crusade did better was, when you first enter the new zone, you immediately see Alliance and Horde forces, battling it out with huge demons, which made for a very impressive opening of the expansion. This is somewhat lacking. Although you are immediately dropped in the middle of a siege, it misses the same epic feeling.
The Nexus itself is a very atmospheric dungeon, although it remains a conventional dungeon crawl. It has four bosses and the two last bosses have an interesting mechanic to them that I hadn't seen before. Especially the last one has a nasty trick up her sleeve that might not get noticed in the heat of the battle. At least 3 out of 5 people in my party didn't notice it, and we only just managed to kill the boss.
All in all, it took us about one hour to clear the dungeon, but my group kind of overgeared the instance. It's a level 71-73 instance, and I was the lowest level player there at 73. The tank and another warlock were level 75 and all of us had tier 6 or season 3 gear, so it went quite smoothly.
Well, this zone sure wet my appetite for the remainder of the expansion. Hopefully the rest of the game is as enjoyable as Borean Tundra.
Wednesday 30 July 2008
WotLK Beta - New titles!
I quickly logged onto the Wrath of the Lich King beta after our guild raid last night, and spotted an alliance character who had a new title I hadn't seen before: Elder! I asked around but nobody seemed to know where it came from and since the character in question was alliance, I couldn't even ask him.
Well, today I found the answer. Apparently the Elder title is a reward from visiting every single Elder during the Lunar Festival world event, which is one of the achievements of the new Achievement system Blizzard is going to add in the expansion. And there are more of those. For example completing all quests related to Midsummer gives you the Flame Keeper title for Horde, Flame Warden for Alliance.
Hurray, more fluff! The completionist in me really likes these little rewards for achievements and they're exactly how they're supposed to be. Give the character some bragging rights for doing something out of the ordinary, but don't make it something you have to do to stay competitive.
Well, today I found the answer. Apparently the Elder title is a reward from visiting every single Elder during the Lunar Festival world event, which is one of the achievements of the new Achievement system Blizzard is going to add in the expansion. And there are more of those. For example completing all quests related to Midsummer gives you the Flame Keeper title for Horde, Flame Warden for Alliance.
Hurray, more fluff! The completionist in me really likes these little rewards for achievements and they're exactly how they're supposed to be. Give the character some bragging rights for doing something out of the ordinary, but don't make it something you have to do to stay competitive.
Is Age of Conan slowly dying?
It's been a very quiet year so far in MMO-land as far as I'm concerned. Very few new and upcoming games really managed to grab my attention, with the notable exception of Warhammer Online and Age of Conan.
Warhammer Online is still in development, but Age of Conan was released in May. The initial hype the game managed to generate at launch was amazing. The game attracted loads of players, entire guilds in World of Warcraft migrated to the new game, while other guilds had a hard time getting enough members online to keep their raids going. Within a couple of weeks, the game's developer, Funcom, reported sales of over one million units, making it one of the fastest selling MMORPGs ever. It was obvious that loads of people were getting tired of WoW and were looking for something new. I gave it a try as well, playing the game when I wasn't raiding in World of Warcraft.
However, the bubble burst quite early after. Reports of bad performance on reasonably recent PCs, frequent crashes, numerous bugs, missing end-game content and features that were promised on release that either weren't in-game yet or totally unplayable were a bad blow to the game. There even was a bug were female melee characters attacked about 30% slower than their male counterparts! That must be the weirdest bug ever in any online game and Funcom reported it would take several weeks to fix it.
Personally, this was the bug that sealed the deal for me. I didn't care much about missing end-game content and bugged boss fights, because I wasn't levelling up all that fast anyway. But the fact that my character was only playing at 70% of her abilities, was too much. Apart from that, I still experienced frequent crashes to desktop and sluggish performance, even on a recent system, so I cancelled my subscription.
Apparently, I was not alone. People left the game in droves. From the players who gave it a try that I know, which would be about 20 players, none of them are still playing at the moment. Even the most avid fans of AoC are now back in World of Warcraft, either playing their old character again or levelling up an alt. Obviously the game was released too soon, with too many bugs still left to be ironed out and content to be added. My guess is that Funcom's cash supply ran out and investors started demanding some returns on their money. The result: an unfinished game with very few people renewing their subscription after the initial first free month was up.
It's a shame to be honest, AoC has a lot of potential and I really wanted this game to succeed. One of the very first MMORPGs I played was Anarchy Online, Funcom's previous MMORPG. AO itself is notorious for having the worst MMORPG launch in history. But when I started playing the game, most bugs were already gone and it was a very enjoyable title at the time. It's my hope that Funcom will manage to do the same again, add all the missing content and get rid of all the bugs and make the game the class A title it deserves to be.
It'll probably be too late to attract the big numbers again though. But if we can learn anything from the AoC story, it's the fact that there's a real demand for a new MMORPG and lots of money to be made if someone manages to release a good game with lots of content and a minimal amount of bugs. I hope the guys over at Mythic are listening.
Warhammer Online is still in development, but Age of Conan was released in May. The initial hype the game managed to generate at launch was amazing. The game attracted loads of players, entire guilds in World of Warcraft migrated to the new game, while other guilds had a hard time getting enough members online to keep their raids going. Within a couple of weeks, the game's developer, Funcom, reported sales of over one million units, making it one of the fastest selling MMORPGs ever. It was obvious that loads of people were getting tired of WoW and were looking for something new. I gave it a try as well, playing the game when I wasn't raiding in World of Warcraft.
However, the bubble burst quite early after. Reports of bad performance on reasonably recent PCs, frequent crashes, numerous bugs, missing end-game content and features that were promised on release that either weren't in-game yet or totally unplayable were a bad blow to the game. There even was a bug were female melee characters attacked about 30% slower than their male counterparts! That must be the weirdest bug ever in any online game and Funcom reported it would take several weeks to fix it.
Personally, this was the bug that sealed the deal for me. I didn't care much about missing end-game content and bugged boss fights, because I wasn't levelling up all that fast anyway. But the fact that my character was only playing at 70% of her abilities, was too much. Apart from that, I still experienced frequent crashes to desktop and sluggish performance, even on a recent system, so I cancelled my subscription.
Apparently, I was not alone. People left the game in droves. From the players who gave it a try that I know, which would be about 20 players, none of them are still playing at the moment. Even the most avid fans of AoC are now back in World of Warcraft, either playing their old character again or levelling up an alt. Obviously the game was released too soon, with too many bugs still left to be ironed out and content to be added. My guess is that Funcom's cash supply ran out and investors started demanding some returns on their money. The result: an unfinished game with very few people renewing their subscription after the initial first free month was up.
It's a shame to be honest, AoC has a lot of potential and I really wanted this game to succeed. One of the very first MMORPGs I played was Anarchy Online, Funcom's previous MMORPG. AO itself is notorious for having the worst MMORPG launch in history. But when I started playing the game, most bugs were already gone and it was a very enjoyable title at the time. It's my hope that Funcom will manage to do the same again, add all the missing content and get rid of all the bugs and make the game the class A title it deserves to be.
It'll probably be too late to attract the big numbers again though. But if we can learn anything from the AoC story, it's the fact that there's a real demand for a new MMORPG and lots of money to be made if someone manages to release a good game with lots of content and a minimal amount of bugs. I hope the guys over at Mythic are listening.
Tuesday 29 July 2008
WotLK Beta - The in-game calendar
Another feature added with the latest build on the beta servers, is a calendar for organizing your in-game events. A useful addition, considering the fact that third party addons like this have been around since pretty much the beginning of the game.
You access the calender by clicking the huge button on the top right of your screen, near the mini-map. This gives you a month-by-month overview, which already has all the Blizzard-organized events in it, such as the weekly Stranglethorn Vale Fishing Extravaganza and Brewfest for example. Right-clicking on a particular day allows you to create an event. You can give it a name, a description and pick from 5 different categories: Raid, Dungeon, PvP, Meeting or Other. Choosing either Raid or Dungeon then allows you to pick the instance you wish to go to. You can set a time and invite other players.
When these players then hover over the calendar button, they'll see they have been invited to an event and haven't responded yet. When they then open the calendar, they can either accept, decline or remove the raid from their calendar. At the bottom of the screen you can see an overview of the players that are connected to this event and their status.
Looks remarkably similar to Guild Event Manager, doesn't it? It seems like Blizzard is keeping the tradition of "borrowing" the ideas of third party addons and implementing them in their main game. Which is perfectly fine by me, the more people get access to good functionality, the better.
Anyway, this seems like a very useful tool, especially for the more casual guilds who don't have a dedicated website with their own planner or for non-guild groups who do events on an irregular basis. As for the raiding guilds, they'll probably want to stick to their website, because it's a lot easier being able to sign up for something without being in the game.
You access the calender by clicking the huge button on the top right of your screen, near the mini-map. This gives you a month-by-month overview, which already has all the Blizzard-organized events in it, such as the weekly Stranglethorn Vale Fishing Extravaganza and Brewfest for example. Right-clicking on a particular day allows you to create an event. You can give it a name, a description and pick from 5 different categories: Raid, Dungeon, PvP, Meeting or Other. Choosing either Raid or Dungeon then allows you to pick the instance you wish to go to. You can set a time and invite other players.
When these players then hover over the calendar button, they'll see they have been invited to an event and haven't responded yet. When they then open the calendar, they can either accept, decline or remove the raid from their calendar. At the bottom of the screen you can see an overview of the players that are connected to this event and their status.
Looks remarkably similar to Guild Event Manager, doesn't it? It seems like Blizzard is keeping the tradition of "borrowing" the ideas of third party addons and implementing them in their main game. Which is perfectly fine by me, the more people get access to good functionality, the better.
Anyway, this seems like a very useful tool, especially for the more casual guilds who don't have a dedicated website with their own planner or for non-guild groups who do events on an irregular basis. As for the raiding guilds, they'll probably want to stick to their website, because it's a lot easier being able to sign up for something without being in the game.
WotLK Beta - The barber shop
Last night, Blizzard patched the Wrath of the Lich King beta servers with a new version of the build. Among the changes are the fact that you can now learn your mounts and social pets as spells, so they don't take anymore bagspace. Another eye-catching feature that was added, was the barber shop.
I gave it a brief try, and apparently it's only possible to pick a different hair style, hair colour and facial feature. What's more, it looks like the styles etc. you can choose from, are the same old ones who have been in the game since release.
That's a bit underwhelming to be honest. Hopefully they'll add more and new styles before release, because if it stays like this, a lot of people will be disappointed.
I gave it a brief try, and apparently it's only possible to pick a different hair style, hair colour and facial feature. What's more, it looks like the styles etc. you can choose from, are the same old ones who have been in the game since release.
That's a bit underwhelming to be honest. Hopefully they'll add more and new styles before release, because if it stays like this, a lot of people will be disappointed.
Edit: Apparently they are going to introduce more styles later on, but they aren't finished yet. I'm looking forward to seeing those!
Monday 28 July 2008
WotLK beta - Warlock demonology tree
Over the weekend, I spent some time on my level 70 warlock in the Wrath of the Lich King beta, exploring one of the two "starting" zones in Northrend, Borean Tundra, and doing some quests there. For the occasion I respecced from my cookiecutter raiding spec, destruction/demonic sacrifice, to a build that has most talents in the demonology tree. I've always liked the pet aspect of warlocks, and I've always leveled mainly as demonology, both pre-TBC, going from level 1 to 60, and in the first expansion from 60 to 70.
And I must say, I like the changes to the tree. First key change for me is Fel Synergy, finally something that can keep your pet alive without having to micro-manage it with Health Funnel. It should also help greatly when grouping/raiding, in situations when there's a lot of damage on the whole raid. It's not always easy to keep your pet alive in those cases and you lose a lot of damage doing so. In a lot of bossfights, demonology warlocks put their pet on the side, out of harms way, which makes you lose some of your abilities and hopefully thanks to this talent, you won't need to anymore.
Second highlight is Mana Feed, again a very nice talent that will keep your pet supplied with mana, preventing it to be OOM half of the fight.
A third talent that caught my eye is Demonic Pact, which is basically a spellcaster's version of the hunter Survival talent Expose Weakness, although it depends on the damage your pet is doing, rather than its owner. It's also a five point talent right now, compared to only three points needed for Expose Weakness, so we'll have to see if Blizzard changes it for release. But still, an excellent idea which increases the utility of a demonology warlock in raids and this should be a core talent in any raiding demonology build.
The icing on the cake is of course the 51-point talent Metamorphosis, the already-famous warlock "demon form". I'm not entirely sold on the usefulness of the talent yet, but it just looks too cool not to pick it up.
The only thing that got changed for the worse is Demonic Sacrifice, compared to the version that is now on live. As you can see it got changed from a 30 minute buff, depending on the type of pet you sacrifice, to a 20 second spell haste ability. It is very doubtful that this will be used a lot, and a Blizzard respresentative has already stated on the official forums that they are going to revert the changes, but will probably make the effect a little bit less powerful. Apparently, they want warlocks to use their pet wherever it's possible, as it wasn't their intension that warlocks sacrificed their sidekick for a buff as the best option everywhere. The idea behind Demonic Sacrifice, according to Blizzard, is to give warlocks something when it's not possible to use their pet. More information on a thread on the official beta forums. Fair enough I guess.
All in all I'm really fond of the changes to the tree, it looks like there's hope for a viable demonology spec that's also useful in raids.
And I must say, I like the changes to the tree. First key change for me is Fel Synergy, finally something that can keep your pet alive without having to micro-manage it with Health Funnel. It should also help greatly when grouping/raiding, in situations when there's a lot of damage on the whole raid. It's not always easy to keep your pet alive in those cases and you lose a lot of damage doing so. In a lot of bossfights, demonology warlocks put their pet on the side, out of harms way, which makes you lose some of your abilities and hopefully thanks to this talent, you won't need to anymore.
Second highlight is Mana Feed, again a very nice talent that will keep your pet supplied with mana, preventing it to be OOM half of the fight.
A third talent that caught my eye is Demonic Pact, which is basically a spellcaster's version of the hunter Survival talent Expose Weakness, although it depends on the damage your pet is doing, rather than its owner. It's also a five point talent right now, compared to only three points needed for Expose Weakness, so we'll have to see if Blizzard changes it for release. But still, an excellent idea which increases the utility of a demonology warlock in raids and this should be a core talent in any raiding demonology build.
The icing on the cake is of course the 51-point talent Metamorphosis, the already-famous warlock "demon form". I'm not entirely sold on the usefulness of the talent yet, but it just looks too cool not to pick it up.
The only thing that got changed for the worse is Demonic Sacrifice, compared to the version that is now on live. As you can see it got changed from a 30 minute buff, depending on the type of pet you sacrifice, to a 20 second spell haste ability. It is very doubtful that this will be used a lot, and a Blizzard respresentative has already stated on the official forums that they are going to revert the changes, but will probably make the effect a little bit less powerful. Apparently, they want warlocks to use their pet wherever it's possible, as it wasn't their intension that warlocks sacrificed their sidekick for a buff as the best option everywhere. The idea behind Demonic Sacrifice, according to Blizzard, is to give warlocks something when it's not possible to use their pet. More information on a thread on the official beta forums. Fair enough I guess.
All in all I'm really fond of the changes to the tree, it looks like there's hope for a viable demonology spec that's also useful in raids.
Saturday 26 July 2008
WotLK beta - Death knight starting area
After I managed to install the Wrath of the Lich King beta client, one of the first things I did was of course check out the starting area of the expansion's new hero class, the death knight. They have an instanced zone just for them, as the setting is in the past, somewhere during the original Scourge invasion. You, a former Alliance or Horde hero, was taken and "converted" by the Scourge and are now a fearsome death knight, in the service of the Lich King, ready to wreak havoc on the helpless, and sometimes not so helpless, population of Azeroth.
You start at level 55, without any talent points, on a floating necropolis, somewhat like Naxxramas, that's hovering above the town of New Avalon, in the area that is now the Eastern Plaguelands. The idea is that you progress through this starting area by doing the quests the, sometimes familiar, NPCs give you. As a reward you get money, talent points and sometimes a piece of rare, blue, equipment. You also get a quest chain which rewards you with a summoned epic riding mount, the deathcharger, which works exactly like the warlock's summoned mount, the dreadsteed.
I personally completed the starting area quests in a couple of hours. At the end of the ride, you're level 57, in full blue equipment, got all your talent points appropriate for that level and with an epic ground mount. Not too shabby at all. The quests themselves are mostly the trusted old kill this many mobs of type A and collect that many items of type B. There are a couple of somewhat unique quests though that bring some variety to the old concept, although I wouldn't exactly call them revolutionary. A couple of them even got a bit tedious after a while, because of the sheer number of objectives you have to complete. But all in all an enjoyable experience, mostly because of the story and how it unfolds. A special note should go to the big finale of the whole chain, which is really well-done and I would guess of particular interest to lore fanatics.
I guess the whole area is probably best compaired to the Tortage destiny quest line of Age of Conan, and apparently I'm not the only one who got that idea. Although you don't have a private instance, you share it with the other players that have also just started a death knight.
I would say that it's definitely worth it to at least play through the death knight starting zone, even if you're not interested in leveling one up all the way to level 80, because of the well-crafted starting zone and, if you're interested in the Warcraft universe, the interesting story line.
You start at level 55, without any talent points, on a floating necropolis, somewhat like Naxxramas, that's hovering above the town of New Avalon, in the area that is now the Eastern Plaguelands. The idea is that you progress through this starting area by doing the quests the, sometimes familiar, NPCs give you. As a reward you get money, talent points and sometimes a piece of rare, blue, equipment. You also get a quest chain which rewards you with a summoned epic riding mount, the deathcharger, which works exactly like the warlock's summoned mount, the dreadsteed.
I personally completed the starting area quests in a couple of hours. At the end of the ride, you're level 57, in full blue equipment, got all your talent points appropriate for that level and with an epic ground mount. Not too shabby at all. The quests themselves are mostly the trusted old kill this many mobs of type A and collect that many items of type B. There are a couple of somewhat unique quests though that bring some variety to the old concept, although I wouldn't exactly call them revolutionary. A couple of them even got a bit tedious after a while, because of the sheer number of objectives you have to complete. But all in all an enjoyable experience, mostly because of the story and how it unfolds. A special note should go to the big finale of the whole chain, which is really well-done and I would guess of particular interest to lore fanatics.
I guess the whole area is probably best compaired to the Tortage destiny quest line of Age of Conan, and apparently I'm not the only one who got that idea. Although you don't have a private instance, you share it with the other players that have also just started a death knight.
I would say that it's definitely worth it to at least play through the death knight starting zone, even if you're not interested in leveling one up all the way to level 80, because of the well-crafted starting zone and, if you're interested in the Warcraft universe, the interesting story line.
Wednesday 23 July 2008
Wrath of the Lich King beta invite
Just a little notice to say that it was recently announced that the beta key that was given out at the Worldwide Invitational in Paris was for the Wrath of the Lich King beta test. There was a code waiting for me when I opened my mailbox this morning, so right now I'm downloading the beta and I hope to be playing soon.
Monday 14 July 2008
Illidan down! Now what?
Last Tuesday my guild finally managed to bring down the last boss in Black Temple: Illidan Stormrage, the Betrayer. We since killed him once more, on Thursday, and the fight felt really repeatable as well so I'm pretty sure it wasn't a fluke. With one more raid evening left this reset, on Tuesday, I guess it's time for us to start the last raid instance in the game, Sunwell Plateau. Though I have to admit, I'm not excited as I was when we first started Mount Hyjal and Black Temple.
Probably this is because I've always considered Illidan to be the last boss of The Burning Crusade expansion. He was the guy that was featured on the intro movie, he was the main baddy all through the content while leveling up. I guess for me the expansion pretty much ended, at least in my mind, with Illidan. I think Blizzard pretty much added Sunwell as extra content because development of Wrath of the Lich King was taking longer than expected. A little something extra to keep the subscribers happy, if you will. It does feel somewhat detached from the main storyline of The Burning Crusade, in my opinion.
Probably this is because I've always considered Illidan to be the last boss of The Burning Crusade expansion. He was the guy that was featured on the intro movie, he was the main baddy all through the content while leveling up. I guess for me the expansion pretty much ended, at least in my mind, with Illidan. I think Blizzard pretty much added Sunwell as extra content because development of Wrath of the Lich King was taking longer than expected. A little something extra to keep the subscribers happy, if you will. It does feel somewhat detached from the main storyline of The Burning Crusade, in my opinion.
Monday 7 July 2008
Weekend battleground PvP
On my WoW account, I have an old level 70 warrior who I haven't played in ages. He used to be protection specced, but ever since I discovered the wonders of paladin tanking, he has been pretty much demoted to mining and blacksmithing slave.
So over the weekend, I decided to dust him off and spec him for PvP. I got him a more PvP-friendly arms/fury spec, and crafted him a Stormherald from materials I had gathered on Saturday afternoon and from turning in some badges for Primal Nethers and Nether Vortexes.
And while PvPing on my warlock is an often frustrating experience of being shot into oblivion within seconds, mostly because of being PvE-specced, having a dedicated PvP character does bring its fun moments. And of course the obvious advantage is that you're collecting honour, which can be turned in for armour and other equipment right away. You can plan ahead and know exactly when you'll get your next upgrade, as opposed to most loot that comes from raiding, which still has some luck of the drop involved and of course also the competition from people in the raid. Collecting gear in PvP suffers from none of these drawbacks.
Of course collecting gear isn't everything. Doing the same 4 battlegrounds all the time gets really repetitive after a while, although you could argue that doing the same instance clears to get to a new boss each week is also repetitive and boring. Also, unless you manage to make a full premade group, you're kind of stuck with a collection of random people, so you miss the fun of playing with your friends and of course the cooperation isn't always as great as it should be. And finally, although battleground PvP can get quite exciting especially in close games, you don't really experience the real adrenaline rushes you get from a first boss kill. Or maybe I haven't played the right games yet.
I guess I'll have to play some arenas later on.
So over the weekend, I decided to dust him off and spec him for PvP. I got him a more PvP-friendly arms/fury spec, and crafted him a Stormherald from materials I had gathered on Saturday afternoon and from turning in some badges for Primal Nethers and Nether Vortexes.
And while PvPing on my warlock is an often frustrating experience of being shot into oblivion within seconds, mostly because of being PvE-specced, having a dedicated PvP character does bring its fun moments. And of course the obvious advantage is that you're collecting honour, which can be turned in for armour and other equipment right away. You can plan ahead and know exactly when you'll get your next upgrade, as opposed to most loot that comes from raiding, which still has some luck of the drop involved and of course also the competition from people in the raid. Collecting gear in PvP suffers from none of these drawbacks.
Of course collecting gear isn't everything. Doing the same 4 battlegrounds all the time gets really repetitive after a while, although you could argue that doing the same instance clears to get to a new boss each week is also repetitive and boring. Also, unless you manage to make a full premade group, you're kind of stuck with a collection of random people, so you miss the fun of playing with your friends and of course the cooperation isn't always as great as it should be. And finally, although battleground PvP can get quite exciting especially in close games, you don't really experience the real adrenaline rushes you get from a first boss kill. Or maybe I haven't played the right games yet.
I guess I'll have to play some arenas later on.
Friday 4 July 2008
A new secondary market
Last week, Blizzard revealed their Blizzard Authenticator, a new hardware device which can be tied to your World of Warcraft account as an extra security measure. The principle is simple: when you use the Authenticator, it generates a unique number that's different each time and you need to input this number along with your user name and password when you log in to your account. Some users of online banking application may recognize this system, as it is similar to what some of these tools use to authenticate their users.
The idea behind this is that while it's relatively "easy" to get someone's user name and password when you have some sort of keylogger on their computer, it's virtually impossible to get access to this unique number, since you need physical access to the Authenticator device.
Anyway, the little gadget seems to be a success, even though it's completely optional. As you can see when you click the link, the Blizzard online store already ran out of them. The device was also for sale at the Blizzard Worldwide Invitational, but after only a couple of hours on Saturday, they were sold out. It seems Blizzard was just testing to water and they were not prepared for the demand. If nothing else, it proves there's a secondary market for anything that has to do with account security and it wouldn't surprise me if other MMOG publishers or even third party manufacturers are going to announce their own version of the Authenticator soon. And they'll be a success.
The idea behind this is that while it's relatively "easy" to get someone's user name and password when you have some sort of keylogger on their computer, it's virtually impossible to get access to this unique number, since you need physical access to the Authenticator device.
Anyway, the little gadget seems to be a success, even though it's completely optional. As you can see when you click the link, the Blizzard online store already ran out of them. The device was also for sale at the Blizzard Worldwide Invitational, but after only a couple of hours on Saturday, they were sold out. It seems Blizzard was just testing to water and they were not prepared for the demand. If nothing else, it proves there's a secondary market for anything that has to do with account security and it wouldn't surprise me if other MMOG publishers or even third party manufacturers are going to announce their own version of the Authenticator soon. And they'll be a success.
Thursday 3 July 2008
The price of in-game fluff
The goody bag we got at the Blizzard Worldwide Invitational in Paris contained a special unique code for an exclusive in-game pet in World of Warcraft. Obviously this being an exclusive pet and all, there's a secondary market for it and some people have decided to put their code on eBay rather than using them on their own character.
One such seller managed to score an amazing $800 for their pet. Other stuff like for example the Spectral Tiger mount or a rocket flying mount that are only obtainable through special so-called loot cards in the World of Warcraft card game are selling for $1000 and more.
Am I the only one who thinks these prices are totally crazy? Well, obviously the laws of economics and supply and demand play here, but $1000 dollars for fluff which don't really have a noticeable impact on your characters seems like a lot! Somehow I can understand someone buying an account with a maxed out character in full endgame gear for that amount, but the same amount for a pretty visual which essentially does nothing for you… Nuts.
One such seller managed to score an amazing $800 for their pet. Other stuff like for example the Spectral Tiger mount or a rocket flying mount that are only obtainable through special so-called loot cards in the World of Warcraft card game are selling for $1000 and more.
Am I the only one who thinks these prices are totally crazy? Well, obviously the laws of economics and supply and demand play here, but $1000 dollars for fluff which don't really have a noticeable impact on your characters seems like a lot! Somehow I can understand someone buying an account with a maxed out character in full endgame gear for that amount, but the same amount for a pretty visual which essentially does nothing for you… Nuts.
Blizzard Worldwide Invitational Summary
I have been back from the Blizzard Worldwide Invitational for a few days now, and had a chance to digest all the information that was presented there.
First of all, and the most important part for most people, was the announcement that Blizzard is working on Diablo 3 and we were also presented with some in-game footage of the game. I was never a huge fan of the Diablo franchise, although I did buy and enjoy the second game in the series. And the demo of this third incarnation impressed me. The characters in the game are intentionally overpowered, they showed a barbarian fighting hordes of enemies at the same time, all the while jumping in the middle of the fight, knocking back his enemies and even smashing down walls, burying the mobs under them. Looks like Blizzard will get more of my money when that game is released.
Of course the most important part for me was the different panels containing information about Wrath of the Lich King. There was a presentation about the classes and the new abilities and talents they will have, including the new Death Knight class, one about dungeons and raids and one about PvP. Finally there was a generic Q&A session where anyone could ask any question they wanted about the game.
There were some interesting changes to the classes, I'm sure most of you have already seen 'em on the different WoW fansites. Highlights for me including talent trees for hunter pets, combined Frostfire Bolt for mages, Hex for shamans, Titan's Grip (dual wielding 2H weapons) for warriors and of course the totally awesome demon form for warlocks. Especially the story behind Titan's Grip is interesting, because that talent was originally included by a fan in fake patch notes for the previous expansion, The Burning Crusade. Apparently Blizzard liked it so much, that they included in Wrath of the Lich King.
Blizzard also presented 3 new dungeons in the expansion. One max-level dungeon called The Oculus looked pretty impressive. It'll have mounted combat, on dragons, with each dragon fulfulling a particular role in a team. So you'll have tank dragons, healer dragons and damage dealing dragons. It's perfectly possible for the healer to pick the tank dragon or vice versa, so they'll be able to experience the game from another viewpoint.
The second dungeon was called The Halls of Stone, which is a level 77-79 dungeon, the first one of the Ulduar set of dungeons. This one is more conventional, but lore fans more particularly fans of Ulduman will be excited to learn that the story about the stone discs is continued here.
The last dungeon they presented was another Caverns of Time instance, namely The Culling of Stratholme. Fans of Warcraft 3 will recognize this as the scene where Arthas kills all the citizens of Stratholme after they've eaten poisoned grain, infected with the Scourge disease. The player will get to fight alongside Arthas as things go wrong in the doomed city. I've always been a fan of Caverns of Time instances, so I'm pretty excited to see how this one pans out.
Blizzard also revealed some of their more high-level plans for the expansion, such as dungeon implementation strategy and priorities for the future. A few keywords include more non-linear content, you'll be able to go to the third boss before the second one etc., tighter level ranges for the different dungeons, such as for example the Halls of Stone instance which is aimed at levels 77-79, so they can create their content more specifically aimed at certain levels which should improve the experience. They also want to aim content updates more specifically at what the players want. As an example, they said that in retrospect, they would have preferred to release Zul'Aman before Mount Hyjal/Black Temple as it is content that is accessible to more players. How the hardcore guilds are going to react to that, is a different matter of course.
Furthermore they confirmed that they thought heroic versions of the dungeons were a success and they are going to keep the concept for the expansion, with the one difference that you won't need a certain reputation level, heroics will be available right away for everyone. They wanted to make rep grinds less hard though, so they're introducing a "championing" system through tabards. So for example by wearing a Cenarion Expedition tabard, you get a small amount of CE rep from killing mobs in a dungeon, even if it's a Sha'tar dungeon.
I personally got to play an alpha version of the expansion, and so far it looks like it's more of the same. Which of course isn't as bad as it sounds. WoW is a great game and it will appeal to a lot of people who just want some new content to explore. I played around a bit with the warlock demon form, which looks just like demon form Illidan, and it was really fun, even though it seemed like it was a little overpowered. We'll see if Blizzard introduces some fixes to balance them out more. Though I have to say, I played with an enhancement shaman for a bit as well, and she was taking down mobs in a couple of hits too, so… I did get a sneak peak at a potential new fan favourite mob of Northrend, the Gorlocs, which seem like a distant cousin of the Murlocs except they have big heads, no neck, and they hop around like frogs instead of running.
I also very briefly played StarCraft 2. Not so excited about this game yet, it looks like it plays just like the original game, except with updated graphics. But I guess that's probably just what the fans want.
Of special interest is of course the goody bag, which contained among other things a very nice Diablo 3 hardcover notebook, a WoW Card Game Starter Kit and of course a card which contains a beta key for an upcoming new Blizzard title (we don't know which one yet) and a key for an in-game pet. The pet has been revealed as a miniature version of the Archangel Tyrael from Diablo 3. The bag itself was also pretty impressive, a stylish black canvas shoulder bag.
All in all a very fun event, and certainly worthy of another visit should they decide to have the WWI in Europe again.
First of all, and the most important part for most people, was the announcement that Blizzard is working on Diablo 3 and we were also presented with some in-game footage of the game. I was never a huge fan of the Diablo franchise, although I did buy and enjoy the second game in the series. And the demo of this third incarnation impressed me. The characters in the game are intentionally overpowered, they showed a barbarian fighting hordes of enemies at the same time, all the while jumping in the middle of the fight, knocking back his enemies and even smashing down walls, burying the mobs under them. Looks like Blizzard will get more of my money when that game is released.
Of course the most important part for me was the different panels containing information about Wrath of the Lich King. There was a presentation about the classes and the new abilities and talents they will have, including the new Death Knight class, one about dungeons and raids and one about PvP. Finally there was a generic Q&A session where anyone could ask any question they wanted about the game.
There were some interesting changes to the classes, I'm sure most of you have already seen 'em on the different WoW fansites. Highlights for me including talent trees for hunter pets, combined Frostfire Bolt for mages, Hex for shamans, Titan's Grip (dual wielding 2H weapons) for warriors and of course the totally awesome demon form for warlocks. Especially the story behind Titan's Grip is interesting, because that talent was originally included by a fan in fake patch notes for the previous expansion, The Burning Crusade. Apparently Blizzard liked it so much, that they included in Wrath of the Lich King.
Blizzard also presented 3 new dungeons in the expansion. One max-level dungeon called The Oculus looked pretty impressive. It'll have mounted combat, on dragons, with each dragon fulfulling a particular role in a team. So you'll have tank dragons, healer dragons and damage dealing dragons. It's perfectly possible for the healer to pick the tank dragon or vice versa, so they'll be able to experience the game from another viewpoint.
The second dungeon was called The Halls of Stone, which is a level 77-79 dungeon, the first one of the Ulduar set of dungeons. This one is more conventional, but lore fans more particularly fans of Ulduman will be excited to learn that the story about the stone discs is continued here.
The last dungeon they presented was another Caverns of Time instance, namely The Culling of Stratholme. Fans of Warcraft 3 will recognize this as the scene where Arthas kills all the citizens of Stratholme after they've eaten poisoned grain, infected with the Scourge disease. The player will get to fight alongside Arthas as things go wrong in the doomed city. I've always been a fan of Caverns of Time instances, so I'm pretty excited to see how this one pans out.
Blizzard also revealed some of their more high-level plans for the expansion, such as dungeon implementation strategy and priorities for the future. A few keywords include more non-linear content, you'll be able to go to the third boss before the second one etc., tighter level ranges for the different dungeons, such as for example the Halls of Stone instance which is aimed at levels 77-79, so they can create their content more specifically aimed at certain levels which should improve the experience. They also want to aim content updates more specifically at what the players want. As an example, they said that in retrospect, they would have preferred to release Zul'Aman before Mount Hyjal/Black Temple as it is content that is accessible to more players. How the hardcore guilds are going to react to that, is a different matter of course.
Furthermore they confirmed that they thought heroic versions of the dungeons were a success and they are going to keep the concept for the expansion, with the one difference that you won't need a certain reputation level, heroics will be available right away for everyone. They wanted to make rep grinds less hard though, so they're introducing a "championing" system through tabards. So for example by wearing a Cenarion Expedition tabard, you get a small amount of CE rep from killing mobs in a dungeon, even if it's a Sha'tar dungeon.
I personally got to play an alpha version of the expansion, and so far it looks like it's more of the same. Which of course isn't as bad as it sounds. WoW is a great game and it will appeal to a lot of people who just want some new content to explore. I played around a bit with the warlock demon form, which looks just like demon form Illidan, and it was really fun, even though it seemed like it was a little overpowered. We'll see if Blizzard introduces some fixes to balance them out more. Though I have to say, I played with an enhancement shaman for a bit as well, and she was taking down mobs in a couple of hits too, so… I did get a sneak peak at a potential new fan favourite mob of Northrend, the Gorlocs, which seem like a distant cousin of the Murlocs except they have big heads, no neck, and they hop around like frogs instead of running.
I also very briefly played StarCraft 2. Not so excited about this game yet, it looks like it plays just like the original game, except with updated graphics. But I guess that's probably just what the fans want.
Of special interest is of course the goody bag, which contained among other things a very nice Diablo 3 hardcover notebook, a WoW Card Game Starter Kit and of course a card which contains a beta key for an upcoming new Blizzard title (we don't know which one yet) and a key for an in-game pet. The pet has been revealed as a miniature version of the Archangel Tyrael from Diablo 3. The bag itself was also pretty impressive, a stylish black canvas shoulder bag.
All in all a very fun event, and certainly worthy of another visit should they decide to have the WWI in Europe again.
Monday 23 June 2008
Hacker scare
My guild in World of Warcraft has been hit hard by a number of people who got their accounts hacked in the last few days. Luckily the damage was pretty minor, only one person has had his main character deleted and even then Blizzard managed to bring back the character after only a few days.
But still… The part that worried me most was the fact that the people who got hacked weren't your typical "getting hacked" victims. They don't share their account with their friends, don't play from internet cafés or install a lot of strange stuff. No, these guys are the serious raider type who take pride in their character and their account, always on the top of their game during raids etc. If you were to ask me last week to pick 5 people in the guild who I think would never get hacked, some of the guys that did get hacked would've made that list.
Now I know it's only a game, but when you risk to lose everything you have accumulated over the last couple of months or even years… Scary.
As a result, I'm getting more and more paranoid about links on games site and I more regularly check to see if my firewall and anti-virus software is up to date. Our guild has also started to collect phone numbers of people so we can warn the victims if a hack is in progress. But since all of these hacks have occured in the middle of the night, and since a lot of our members have families, I wonder how they're going to react if they get called in the middle of the night because of a game.
But still… The part that worried me most was the fact that the people who got hacked weren't your typical "getting hacked" victims. They don't share their account with their friends, don't play from internet cafés or install a lot of strange stuff. No, these guys are the serious raider type who take pride in their character and their account, always on the top of their game during raids etc. If you were to ask me last week to pick 5 people in the guild who I think would never get hacked, some of the guys that did get hacked would've made that list.
Now I know it's only a game, but when you risk to lose everything you have accumulated over the last couple of months or even years… Scary.
As a result, I'm getting more and more paranoid about links on games site and I more regularly check to see if my firewall and anti-virus software is up to date. Our guild has also started to collect phone numbers of people so we can warn the victims if a hack is in progress. But since all of these hacks have occured in the middle of the night, and since a lot of our members have families, I wonder how they're going to react if they get called in the middle of the night because of a game.
Sunday 22 June 2008
Blizzard Worldwide Invitational!
Tension is rising as next weekend me and a couple of friends are going to be at the 2008 Blizzard Entertainment Worldwide Invitational in Paris. We'll try our best to see as much as possible of the upcoming expansion, Wrath of the Lich King. Obviously us being there has nothing to do with the blonde Blood Elf on the site.
Anyway, I've managed to borrow a digital camera from a relative, so I'll be making lots of pictures, most of them game-related and not so much of said blonde Blood Elf. My laptop's ready to go and the hotel we're staying in is supposed to have wireless internet in the room, so I'll try to update the blog with some pictures and my comments over the course of the weekend.
So, if you're there and you see a guy running around taking lots of pictures with a girly camera, chances are it's me. Oh, and I wonder what'll be inside the goody bag.
Anyway, I've managed to borrow a digital camera from a relative, so I'll be making lots of pictures, most of them game-related and not so much of said blonde Blood Elf. My laptop's ready to go and the hotel we're staying in is supposed to have wireless internet in the room, so I'll try to update the blog with some pictures and my comments over the course of the weekend.
So, if you're there and you see a guy running around taking lots of pictures with a girly camera, chances are it's me. Oh, and I wonder what'll be inside the goody bag.
Friday 23 May 2008
Go Kill Kael!
A month or two ago, with patch 2.4, Blizzard removed all attunements for all raid dungeons in TBC. The only thing you still need is someone that has the key to open the gate at Karazhan, ironically enough the entry level raid dungeon. Nevertheless, a great idea, since it gives everyone a chance to experience all raiding content that was added in the expansion.
One of the side effects of this is though, that raiding guilds seem less inclined to tackle the so-called "gateway" bosses, the ones that used to give access to the next tier of raiding instances. The most striking examples are Lady Vashj and Kael'thas Sunstrider, the end bosses in the two tier 5 instances and the ones you previously had to kill before you got access to tier 6 content. Since they are quite hard in execution and require a full raid of adequately-geared characters, it can take a guild a couple of weeks before they're able to kill these bosses. And for this reason, a lot of guilds just seem to avoid these bosses and just skip straight to the next raid tier. The bosses aren't as hard to learn and the loot they drop is in most cases better or at least on par with the loot that drops from the end bosses.
I understand the lure of the loot and not wanting to spend lots and lots of time learning a hard encounter when you could spend time learning easier bosses in a couple of hours, who drop better loot to boot. But it's a shame, cause the fights they're skipping are some of the most challenging, exciting and rewarding encounters in the game. Especially Kael'thas Sunstrider, which I consider one of the best fights I have experienced in the game at the moment.
So my advice to these guilds is: even if you're skipping them for now, at least go back and try them when you think you're ready for em. You won't regret it. They might seem hard, but when you kill them, it's so much more rewarding in non-loot terms than the easy-mode bosses in the beginning of Mount Hyjal and Black Temple.
One of the side effects of this is though, that raiding guilds seem less inclined to tackle the so-called "gateway" bosses, the ones that used to give access to the next tier of raiding instances. The most striking examples are Lady Vashj and Kael'thas Sunstrider, the end bosses in the two tier 5 instances and the ones you previously had to kill before you got access to tier 6 content. Since they are quite hard in execution and require a full raid of adequately-geared characters, it can take a guild a couple of weeks before they're able to kill these bosses. And for this reason, a lot of guilds just seem to avoid these bosses and just skip straight to the next raid tier. The bosses aren't as hard to learn and the loot they drop is in most cases better or at least on par with the loot that drops from the end bosses.
I understand the lure of the loot and not wanting to spend lots and lots of time learning a hard encounter when you could spend time learning easier bosses in a couple of hours, who drop better loot to boot. But it's a shame, cause the fights they're skipping are some of the most challenging, exciting and rewarding encounters in the game. Especially Kael'thas Sunstrider, which I consider one of the best fights I have experienced in the game at the moment.
So my advice to these guilds is: even if you're skipping them for now, at least go back and try them when you think you're ready for em. You won't regret it. They might seem hard, but when you kill them, it's so much more rewarding in non-loot terms than the easy-mode bosses in the beginning of Mount Hyjal and Black Temple.
Wrath of the Lich King raiding - part 2
One of the main problems raiding guilds faced with The Burning Crusade expansion of World of Warcraft, was the step from the 10-man Karazhan dungeon to Gruul's Lair, which requires 25 people. For Wrath of the Lich King however, as you could already read in my previous entry, Blizzard has announced that all raid dungeons will have a 10 and 25-person version. Now, what are the consequences of that?
For the truly hardcore raiding guilds, not much will change hopefully. Their members will rush to level 80 as fast as possible, maybe they'll dabble in the 10-man version for a little while, but then they'll probably hit the 25-man content, never to touch the 10-man raids again, except maybe when they're bored or want to gear up an alt or something.
However, for the not-so-hardcore guilds, I predict it will be quite different. My guild for example, had a few fast levelers who, in TBC, hit level 70 after a week or two and were ready to go to Karazhan. When the more slower levelers caught up, we were ready to form a second raid, cleared Karazhan with both groups, recruited a couple more people and we were ready to tackle the big raid dungeons again.
My guess is, we were lucky to be in an established guild where most people who already knew each other for a while though. I've heared lots of accounts of newer guilds that fell apart, because they had a so-called A and B-team for Karazhan. Where the best team easily cleared Karazhan in a couple of nights, the lesser geared team still struggled on the later bosses. And now comes the challenge for these guilds in WotLK. Given the same scenario with the 10-man raids in the next expansion, will the more advanced group just move on to the next 10-man dungeon, or wait for their slower guildies to catch up and tackle the 25-man version? How many guilds will still be raiding the larger dungeons, especially a couple of months into the expansion, when there already have been a few guilds who split up due to internal drama or something similar.
All I can hope for is that Blizzard will make the larger version of the raid instances appealing enough so that there's still a real incentive to run these, rather than just sticking to the smaller instances. After all, the scale of these raids makes them so much more interesting and exciting in my opinion.
For the truly hardcore raiding guilds, not much will change hopefully. Their members will rush to level 80 as fast as possible, maybe they'll dabble in the 10-man version for a little while, but then they'll probably hit the 25-man content, never to touch the 10-man raids again, except maybe when they're bored or want to gear up an alt or something.
However, for the not-so-hardcore guilds, I predict it will be quite different. My guild for example, had a few fast levelers who, in TBC, hit level 70 after a week or two and were ready to go to Karazhan. When the more slower levelers caught up, we were ready to form a second raid, cleared Karazhan with both groups, recruited a couple more people and we were ready to tackle the big raid dungeons again.
My guess is, we were lucky to be in an established guild where most people who already knew each other for a while though. I've heared lots of accounts of newer guilds that fell apart, because they had a so-called A and B-team for Karazhan. Where the best team easily cleared Karazhan in a couple of nights, the lesser geared team still struggled on the later bosses. And now comes the challenge for these guilds in WotLK. Given the same scenario with the 10-man raids in the next expansion, will the more advanced group just move on to the next 10-man dungeon, or wait for their slower guildies to catch up and tackle the 25-man version? How many guilds will still be raiding the larger dungeons, especially a couple of months into the expansion, when there already have been a few guilds who split up due to internal drama or something similar.
All I can hope for is that Blizzard will make the larger version of the raid instances appealing enough so that there's still a real incentive to run these, rather than just sticking to the smaller instances. After all, the scale of these raids makes them so much more interesting and exciting in my opinion.
Wednesday 21 May 2008
Wrath of the Lich King raiding
For an online game to retain its customers, it's important that they release frequent content updates to keep the players happy. Otherwise they might get bored, and stop paying the monthly fee. Some of these updates are free in the form of patches to the game. They are usually a bit smaller and only contain minor updates, like a single new raid instance, quest zone or PvP area. Other updates are larger and come in the form of an expansion pack that you pay for. Usually you have to go to your local store and buy a new box. These expansions add a new level cap, new races and/or new classes, a multitude of new zones and new group and raid instances.
World of Warcraft has announced it second expansion pack, Wrath of the Lich King, a while ago, but so far information has been scarse. We know about the main new additions, such as the new continent Northrend, the new Death Knight class etcetera, but detailed information has been hard to come by. Although we now know the "friends and family alpha" phase has started and unofficial info starts to leak through, one of the few officialy confirmed bits of info, is the fact that Blizzard is planning to make both a 10-person and 25-person version of every raid instance.
At first I thought this was an excellent idea. Everyone pays the same price for the expansion pack, so it would only be fair that as many people as possible get to see all of the content. Getting 25 people together at the same time for an extended period of time and on a frequent basis has always been difficult if not impossible for the casual players, and this way they have a better shot at seeing a lot more of the raiding game.
But a comment a guild mate of mine made, got me thinking. Can 10-person encounters still be as diverse and challenging as the old 25-person raids? Well, this might sound familiar to those of you who were playing WoW when the first bits of information of the current expansion, The Burning Crusade, became known. Back then, the typical raid size was 40 players, and a lot of people were concerned that the boss fights would become a lot more simple. Luckily, I'm happy to say that those fears were unfounded. Raiding in TBC is a lot more challenging and enjoyable than before as far as I'm concerned, although I didn't experience all of the previous raid instances in full.
But will it be workable when the raid size goes down to 10 man? Now, as you may know, Blizzard intends to recycle Naxxramas, an old raid instance from before the first expansion, as the first instance in the new expansion Wrath of the Lich King. Obviously, they'll have to retune some of the fights, both because of the fact that players will be a lot more powerful and have more spells and abilities available to them at level 80 as opposed to level 60 in the old version, and because of the new raid size, down from 40 to 25 players now.
Some of the veterans from WoW before the expansion were already doubting that Naxx would be able to retain its epic feeling, especially the more complex encounters such as 4 Horsemen. Considering that Blizzard stated they'll make a 10-person version of every raid instance, I can only assume that this will be valid for Naxxramas as well. How will this play out when you're tuning that specific encounter for a 10-player raid? Obviously, some of the complexity will have to go. The old version of 4 Horsemen required you to have 8 protection specced warriors in your raid, obviously in this new version for 25 this will not be possible, let alone for 10 raiders.
Hopefully, Blizzard will add special mechanics to the 25-person version of every boss fight. And I think we've had a little preview in patch 2.4, where Blizzard introduced Kael'thas Sunstrider, an old boss from a 25-person raid instance, as the end boss in a 5-person dungeon. Although the encounter was totally dumbed down, lacked pretty much all of the epic atmosphere and was missing the parts of the fight that made the raid version challenging and one of the best fights in the game so far, you can still fight Kael when you're a more casual player.
So my guess is that Blizzard will tune down the raid instances for 10 players, removing abilities and maybe even parts of the fight. If they go the other way, and just add more hitpoints to the bosses and make them hit harder like some other people have suggested, the real raiders will grow bored quite quickly and will be looking for a game that can actually give them a proper challenge before long.
World of Warcraft has announced it second expansion pack, Wrath of the Lich King, a while ago, but so far information has been scarse. We know about the main new additions, such as the new continent Northrend, the new Death Knight class etcetera, but detailed information has been hard to come by. Although we now know the "friends and family alpha" phase has started and unofficial info starts to leak through, one of the few officialy confirmed bits of info, is the fact that Blizzard is planning to make both a 10-person and 25-person version of every raid instance.
At first I thought this was an excellent idea. Everyone pays the same price for the expansion pack, so it would only be fair that as many people as possible get to see all of the content. Getting 25 people together at the same time for an extended period of time and on a frequent basis has always been difficult if not impossible for the casual players, and this way they have a better shot at seeing a lot more of the raiding game.
But a comment a guild mate of mine made, got me thinking. Can 10-person encounters still be as diverse and challenging as the old 25-person raids? Well, this might sound familiar to those of you who were playing WoW when the first bits of information of the current expansion, The Burning Crusade, became known. Back then, the typical raid size was 40 players, and a lot of people were concerned that the boss fights would become a lot more simple. Luckily, I'm happy to say that those fears were unfounded. Raiding in TBC is a lot more challenging and enjoyable than before as far as I'm concerned, although I didn't experience all of the previous raid instances in full.
But will it be workable when the raid size goes down to 10 man? Now, as you may know, Blizzard intends to recycle Naxxramas, an old raid instance from before the first expansion, as the first instance in the new expansion Wrath of the Lich King. Obviously, they'll have to retune some of the fights, both because of the fact that players will be a lot more powerful and have more spells and abilities available to them at level 80 as opposed to level 60 in the old version, and because of the new raid size, down from 40 to 25 players now.
Some of the veterans from WoW before the expansion were already doubting that Naxx would be able to retain its epic feeling, especially the more complex encounters such as 4 Horsemen. Considering that Blizzard stated they'll make a 10-person version of every raid instance, I can only assume that this will be valid for Naxxramas as well. How will this play out when you're tuning that specific encounter for a 10-player raid? Obviously, some of the complexity will have to go. The old version of 4 Horsemen required you to have 8 protection specced warriors in your raid, obviously in this new version for 25 this will not be possible, let alone for 10 raiders.
Hopefully, Blizzard will add special mechanics to the 25-person version of every boss fight. And I think we've had a little preview in patch 2.4, where Blizzard introduced Kael'thas Sunstrider, an old boss from a 25-person raid instance, as the end boss in a 5-person dungeon. Although the encounter was totally dumbed down, lacked pretty much all of the epic atmosphere and was missing the parts of the fight that made the raid version challenging and one of the best fights in the game so far, you can still fight Kael when you're a more casual player.
So my guess is that Blizzard will tune down the raid instances for 10 players, removing abilities and maybe even parts of the fight. If they go the other way, and just add more hitpoints to the bosses and make them hit harder like some other people have suggested, the real raiders will grow bored quite quickly and will be looking for a game that can actually give them a proper challenge before long.
Those 1% wipes
Tuesday we had another one of those nights that are really the highlight of a raider, well for me at least. The first night of tries on a new boss. Although in this case "boss encounter" would be a more fitting name, since the fight consisted of us facing off against 4 enemies at the same time, the infamous Illidari Council. I had already read a multitude of strategy guides (some might call them "spoilers"), prepared fully with flasks, potions, and food and weapon buffs. As we had more signups than usual, it's safe to say that the whole raid was anxious with anticipation for the fight. Probably the fact that if we beat these guys, we would have our first glimpse of Illidan Stormrage, the last boss in Black Temple, had something to do with it as well.
Unfortunately, the guild I'm in has a reputation of struggling with this type of fight, where you fight multiple enemies at the same time. It took us a whole evening before we were able to nail the High King Maulgar encounter, despite having cleared Karazhan multiple times with 2 raid groups at the same time. And it took us several weeks before we managed to kill Fathom-Lord Karathress.
But this time, things went a lot better. Although we had a slow start since we had a lot more people than are allowed to go inside the raid instance and we lost some time deciding who got to raid, we made steady progress and even managed to bring them down to 7% on what looked like it would have been our penultimate try. So everyone was really pumped for that last try, 10 minutes before our usual end time of the raid. All soulstones were used, the druids all had their battle rezzes ready, all important cooldowns could be used.
And the attempt went really well. Everyone did their job flawlessly, although we did have a few deaths. But anyone who knows the encounter, knows that sometimes a death is unavoidable in this fight. They went down really nicely - 10%, 5%, 3%… almost there … I was just in the middle of recasting a curse on one of the off-tanked mobs when the dreaded sound of the boss mod informing you of a tank death came. Aaargh. Since all the other tanks were already fighting the other enemies, there was no way they could pick up the loose mob and it went on a killing spree, one-shotting players left and right. Those that were still alive gave it their all to finish the fight anyway, but to no avail. The boss went down as far as 1% health, but we didn't manage to kill it.
What a horrible feeling, to come so very very close, but to ultimately fail anyway. I bet a lot other players in my guild were swearing just as hard as I was at that point.
At this time, it was already 10 minutes past our usual end time, so what to do? Usually we would just end the raid here, but damn… this is a new boss and we were so close. We can certainly beat the encounter, that much was clear, but we are a more casual guild and lots of us have jobs and classes to go to in the morning. I know the vast majority of the raid wanted to keep on going for one more attempt, but in the end we held a vote and it wasn't unanimous. Some people wanted to go. So the raid went to bed and we all went to bed frustrated.
Was this the right decision? Although at the time I was quite disappointed that we didn't go for that last attempt, in retrospect I have to say that this probably was the right decision. We can beat the encounter, we know that, and although it didn't happen this week, it'll certainly happen next week. We still are a more casual raiding guild, and it was past the official end time of the raid. I think it's a still fair to ask the raid if they want to go for another try, and if everyone agrees then go for it.
But if someone, just one person, can't make it, then the raid should be stopped, without any hard feelings. After all, the schedule was agreed on and while you agreed to commit to these raiding hours, anything extra should be entirely optional.
Anyway, in the mean time we had another reclear of the instance and we're all ready to go again on Tuesday, so hopefully we'll manage to kill the boss then. Stay tuned for more info next week for sure!
Unfortunately, the guild I'm in has a reputation of struggling with this type of fight, where you fight multiple enemies at the same time. It took us a whole evening before we were able to nail the High King Maulgar encounter, despite having cleared Karazhan multiple times with 2 raid groups at the same time. And it took us several weeks before we managed to kill Fathom-Lord Karathress.
But this time, things went a lot better. Although we had a slow start since we had a lot more people than are allowed to go inside the raid instance and we lost some time deciding who got to raid, we made steady progress and even managed to bring them down to 7% on what looked like it would have been our penultimate try. So everyone was really pumped for that last try, 10 minutes before our usual end time of the raid. All soulstones were used, the druids all had their battle rezzes ready, all important cooldowns could be used.
And the attempt went really well. Everyone did their job flawlessly, although we did have a few deaths. But anyone who knows the encounter, knows that sometimes a death is unavoidable in this fight. They went down really nicely - 10%, 5%, 3%… almost there … I was just in the middle of recasting a curse on one of the off-tanked mobs when the dreaded sound of the boss mod informing you of a tank death came. Aaargh. Since all the other tanks were already fighting the other enemies, there was no way they could pick up the loose mob and it went on a killing spree, one-shotting players left and right. Those that were still alive gave it their all to finish the fight anyway, but to no avail. The boss went down as far as 1% health, but we didn't manage to kill it.
What a horrible feeling, to come so very very close, but to ultimately fail anyway. I bet a lot other players in my guild were swearing just as hard as I was at that point.
At this time, it was already 10 minutes past our usual end time, so what to do? Usually we would just end the raid here, but damn… this is a new boss and we were so close. We can certainly beat the encounter, that much was clear, but we are a more casual guild and lots of us have jobs and classes to go to in the morning. I know the vast majority of the raid wanted to keep on going for one more attempt, but in the end we held a vote and it wasn't unanimous. Some people wanted to go. So the raid went to bed and we all went to bed frustrated.
Was this the right decision? Although at the time I was quite disappointed that we didn't go for that last attempt, in retrospect I have to say that this probably was the right decision. We can beat the encounter, we know that, and although it didn't happen this week, it'll certainly happen next week. We still are a more casual raiding guild, and it was past the official end time of the raid. I think it's a still fair to ask the raid if they want to go for another try, and if everyone agrees then go for it.
But if someone, just one person, can't make it, then the raid should be stopped, without any hard feelings. After all, the schedule was agreed on and while you agreed to commit to these raiding hours, anything extra should be entirely optional.
Anyway, in the mean time we had another reclear of the instance and we're all ready to go again on Tuesday, so hopefully we'll manage to kill the boss then. Stay tuned for more info next week for sure!
My state in the game - World of Warcraft
As mentioned previously, one of the games I'm playing the most at the moment is World of Warcraft, also known as WoW. It's a game I've been playing for a very long time now, ever since Blizzard, the creators of WoW, started their cycle of open and closed betas in the different regions. That must be about 4 years now, almost.
When I play a game like this, I do tend to get quite competitive about it. Although I never took the so-called Bartle test, I expect I'm more of an Achiever than anything else. I do have a full-time job though, so I don't really have time to be in a guild that goes for "server-first" kills. But I do want to progress as far as possible. Luckily I've found a guild of like-minded people who are mostly in the same situation as I am, and we manage to beat the content at our own pace, currently reaching the end of Black Temple, while having already defeated all the bosses in Mount Hyjal, some of the hardest raid instances in the game.
Due to its composition of mostly people with full-time jobs and students who actually attend most classes, my guild has a more "casual" raiding schedule, where we're only raiding 3 days per week, for 4 hours each raiding night. Well I guess that's still a lot compared to how much time the average WoW player can spend on the game. Compared to the most progressed guilds in the world, that's still not much.
The problem for me is that after almost four years of World of Warcraft, I'm finding myself a little bored when we're not raiding. I have a lot of free time during weekends, when we're not raiding, and when I'm logging on nothing much is happening. I did the whole alt-thing, leveled up a few other characters, but there's only so much replayability left in the game for me and doing all those quests yet again isn't very appealing anymore.
I guess I could do some PvP, but the Player versus Player system in WoW is not really my cup of tea. I prefer the impact PvP that some other games have over the battlegrounds and arenas of WoW. Especially in the battlegrounds, the positive-sum PvP system brings out the worst in people. They just care about the fastest way to their epics, just follow their own instincts or just plain sit there, idle and collect points. I want to win, dammit! And I want to have the impression that our achievements actually made a difference in the game world. Not just collect my "honour" and tokens after a win, and have a full reset 1 minute after, when the next battleground starts.
Well, I'm not going to quit WoW any time soon, I'm too much of an achiever to stop now and leave Illidan sitting pretty on his throne in the Black Temple. That guy just has to die. And if possible, I'd like to advance as far as possible in Sunwell Plateau, currently the hardest raid instance in the game, as well. But on non-raiding nights, I'm starting to explore other games. And that's where Lord of the Rings Online and Age of Conan fit in.
When I play a game like this, I do tend to get quite competitive about it. Although I never took the so-called Bartle test, I expect I'm more of an Achiever than anything else. I do have a full-time job though, so I don't really have time to be in a guild that goes for "server-first" kills. But I do want to progress as far as possible. Luckily I've found a guild of like-minded people who are mostly in the same situation as I am, and we manage to beat the content at our own pace, currently reaching the end of Black Temple, while having already defeated all the bosses in Mount Hyjal, some of the hardest raid instances in the game.
Due to its composition of mostly people with full-time jobs and students who actually attend most classes, my guild has a more "casual" raiding schedule, where we're only raiding 3 days per week, for 4 hours each raiding night. Well I guess that's still a lot compared to how much time the average WoW player can spend on the game. Compared to the most progressed guilds in the world, that's still not much.
The problem for me is that after almost four years of World of Warcraft, I'm finding myself a little bored when we're not raiding. I have a lot of free time during weekends, when we're not raiding, and when I'm logging on nothing much is happening. I did the whole alt-thing, leveled up a few other characters, but there's only so much replayability left in the game for me and doing all those quests yet again isn't very appealing anymore.
I guess I could do some PvP, but the Player versus Player system in WoW is not really my cup of tea. I prefer the impact PvP that some other games have over the battlegrounds and arenas of WoW. Especially in the battlegrounds, the positive-sum PvP system brings out the worst in people. They just care about the fastest way to their epics, just follow their own instincts or just plain sit there, idle and collect points. I want to win, dammit! And I want to have the impression that our achievements actually made a difference in the game world. Not just collect my "honour" and tokens after a win, and have a full reset 1 minute after, when the next battleground starts.
Well, I'm not going to quit WoW any time soon, I'm too much of an achiever to stop now and leave Illidan sitting pretty on his throne in the Black Temple. That guy just has to die. And if possible, I'd like to advance as far as possible in Sunwell Plateau, currently the hardest raid instance in the game, as well. But on non-raiding nights, I'm starting to explore other games. And that's where Lord of the Rings Online and Age of Conan fit in.
Welcome!
Hi and welcome! Before diving right in, I'd like to post a little introductionary post about this weblog and its author (me!).
I'm a thirtysomething IT professional, living in Belgium, whose main hobby is computer games. Which means I spend a significant amount of time in front of the computer screen. I guess that can't be good for my eyes, but I hear they're making good progress on creating prosthetic ones, so hopefully they'll be all set by the time I need them.
Anyway, the main subject of this blog will be the games I am currently playing and will be playing in the future. At the moment this is mostly massive multiplayer online roleplaying games (MMORPGs), and more specifically World of Warcraft and Lord of the Rings Online. I have also pre-ordered Age of Conan, although I'm not in the early access for the game. Hopefully the box will be in the mail soon, in time for the weekend launch over here in Europe *crosses fingers*.
Unsurprisingly, WoW was also the inspiration for the name of the blog, as my main character in that game is actually an undead warlock, who uses the spell Life Tap to get back mana at the expensive of his own life to keep on casting spells. I found it quite fitting, since games and especially MMORPGs have an addictive side to them and tend to tap the life from the person playing.
Well, I hope anyone reading this blog will enjoy it and don't hesitate to submit a comment if you want to.
I'm a thirtysomething IT professional, living in Belgium, whose main hobby is computer games. Which means I spend a significant amount of time in front of the computer screen. I guess that can't be good for my eyes, but I hear they're making good progress on creating prosthetic ones, so hopefully they'll be all set by the time I need them.
Anyway, the main subject of this blog will be the games I am currently playing and will be playing in the future. At the moment this is mostly massive multiplayer online roleplaying games (MMORPGs), and more specifically World of Warcraft and Lord of the Rings Online. I have also pre-ordered Age of Conan, although I'm not in the early access for the game. Hopefully the box will be in the mail soon, in time for the weekend launch over here in Europe *crosses fingers*.
Unsurprisingly, WoW was also the inspiration for the name of the blog, as my main character in that game is actually an undead warlock, who uses the spell Life Tap to get back mana at the expensive of his own life to keep on casting spells. I found it quite fitting, since games and especially MMORPGs have an addictive side to them and tend to tap the life from the person playing.
Well, I hope anyone reading this blog will enjoy it and don't hesitate to submit a comment if you want to.
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