Set the time circuit for December 8, 2009.

Klepsacovic over at Troll Racials are Overpowered has a post up about Buying Classic Content.  The post is a continuation of a prior discussion dealing with idea that Blizzard could offer some way for players to experience older content with the original game system intact, instead of using Blizzard’s current model, where any older content (that has not already been removed from the game) may only be experienced via the current game system.

Klepsacovic’s musings as to the challenges of implementing such an approach, and the economic viability of doing so mirrored some of my recent thoughts with respect to WoW creating retro-servers.  Although Klepsacovic ultimately concludes that the challenges and economics make it highly unlikely that Blizzard would allow buying classic content, I am not sure that my idea for a retro-server suffers the same fate.

In order to be successful, I believe that a retro-server would need to have the following features:

• Patch 3.3.0 game system.  Keeping a single version of the game operating at all times would limit the developer resources needed to keep the game running, at the cost of some authenticity in the experience.  Also critical for add-on support.  Patch 3.3.0 would incorporate all the advancements to the game through the opening of Icecrown Citadel.
• One server only.  Community and player volume would be critical features for this type of server to work, so you would need to pack people in.  The server would probably be a PVP server.
• No inbound server transfers; all toons start at level one.  Even playing field helps people build relationships since you won’t have a flush main sending you gold and supplies.
• Original experience point progression.  Most of the people playing on such a server would be familiar with the old world, and aren’t playing to skip to level cap.
• Level cap is 60 for first four months, 70 for 2^nd four months, 80 for last four months.  Time pressure of content only being open for a short window before becoming obsolete keeps people engaged and moving through the game.
• After 1 year, the server closes.  All good things must come to an end.
• Static Pricing.  One time fee for the entire year of gameplay on that server: $100.

I think a retro-server with these features could be easy enough for Blizzard to maintain while providing players with the ability to relive what many consider to be the best years of WoW over the course of a single year.

Are there any features I missed?  Are there any major issues with the approach?  Will Blizzard pay me a percentage of each subscription for coming up with such a FTD idea?

Vess

As you may know, my WoW playing days ended back in February of this year for a large number of reasons having mostly to do with gameplay.  Given the information that has been released regarding the next Warcraft expansion, it seems highly likely that I will not set foot on Azeroth again.  (Unless Blizzard decides to implement BC and/or Wrath gameplay servers, in which case I probably would resub.)

Since my departure from WoW, I have dabbled with a few other games.  I played DCUO for a couple of weeks, but never was comfortable with the awful targeting system and confusing maps.  After that, I gave RIFT a try.  While I enjoyed RIFT quite a bit, my friends eventually abandoned the game, and I followed suit.

So now, the wait is on for Star Wars: The Old Republic.  And the release date for SW:ToR can’t get here soon enough in my opinion.

Although I have high hopes for the game, I think it will be enough if it can deliver a WoW-like experience without repeating the missteps that Blizzard has made over the past couple years.  Things like:

• Redesigning the game system every two years;
• Implementing cross server grouping tools that enable ass-hattery and destroy the community;
• Eliminating the challenge in the game to encourage new subscriptions;
• Phasing the majority of the game world which severely limits cooperative play;
• Making quests follow a linear progression that removes any type of exploration from the game;
• Streamlining the leveling process so that players immediately reach endgame;
• Not separating PVE and PVP abilities when necessary to balance the game system;
• Rewarding players for time spent playing instead of playing well; and
• Forcibly congregating the entire playerbase in one location.

That may be a pretty tall order for any new MMO, but hope springs eternal as they say.

As the launch date for SW:ToR gets closer, I will be transitioning this blog from a WoW blog to a SW:ToR blog.

Until then, may the force be with you.

Vess

In short, WoW 5.0 is going to be all about kung-fu pandas and Pokemon.

I am just at a complete loss as to how Blizzard thinks that this new content will be of interest to gamers from Generation X.

Kung-fu pandas and Pokemon are not going to keep the vast majority of WoW playing Gen X-ers subscribing, and they sure as hell aren’t going to entice ex-WoW playing Gen X-ers to resub after quitting in droves during Cataclysm.

I am not sure what those of us born between the years 1965 and 1980 did to offend, but I can’t help but feel that Blizzard’s decision to forsake this demographic will significantly hasten the demise of WoW.

Vess

A collection of opinions by other WoW bloggers can be found here.

BG scoreboards that reflect shield absorbs.

I could go on and on about other things I want to see change, or stay the way they are now, but make this one adjustment, and I will give you a pass on the rest.

I am so sick and tired of busting my ass on the front lines keeping my teammates alive only to see my healing done below other healers’ numbers when the scoreboard pops up. 

Yeah I’m looking at you, you frackin tree.  Double my healing done in furious gear.  Bullshit!

The scoreboard is supposed to give you an idea of how you compare to the other players in the battleground.  It’s not a perfect system, and as Cynwise points out it could be a hell of a lot better, but at a bare minimum it needs to be able to count healing numbers correctly.

Currently, shields are not counted as healing on the battleground scoreboard.  And for a Disc Priest, that means that a very significant portion of the effective healing done isn’t being recorded.

As a result, it is not possible to use the battleground scoreboard to compare a Disc Priest to any other healer in the same battleground, other than another Disc Priest.

I don’t heal for the glory, or for the meters, but I do like to look at the board at the end of a battleground and see a quantification of the contribution I made.

I also really like to be able to tell the bg chat ranters to check the board and see who is at the top for healing done before they start criticising the heals.  (On the rare occasions that someone actually criticises the bg healers.)

Healers win bgs, and healing is often a thankless job.  The last thing that PVP Disc Priests need is for the scoreboard to misrepresent their contribution.

Fix this Blizz.

Vess

Lolwut?

Nightfall has always been a fairly balanced battelgroup to me.  Although I feel like the Horde win some BGs slightly more often than the Alliance do, I felt the OP’s estimate of a 70-80% win ratio for the Horde was complete nonsense. 

Several people who play Alliance on Nightfall disputed this claim, which I would also have done had I the privilege of posting there, but it got me thinking about how the difference between how succesful we are, and our perception of how successful we are.

So I decide to record my perception of each BG, and then compare that perception to the actual performance numbers for Vesserion, Bhender and Sparrowset from the armory.  (Virtually all of the BGs were played in the Nightfall Battlegroup, and the records only reflect data captured by the armory.)

Alterac Valley – The Horde are pretty bad at AV compared to the Alliance on Nightfall.  The Alli manage to recap towers and even defend Vann in most battles, whereas the Horde just zerg their way to the end and then suck their thumbs because they don’t have a tank and 4 marshals are still up.  Victories happen, but not very often.

The actual numbers:

Conclusion – My perception of AV might be slightly worse than the numbers show, but not by much.  All of my toons have losing records in AV, with Sparrowset only winning 1 in 5 matches.  The numbers on each side in AV make it very difficult for a player to influence the outcome, and PVP skill has little utility in the timed PVE raid event that AV has become.  This helplessness definitely contributes to the negative perception of AV.

Arathi Basin – AB is one of my favorites, and I think that the Horde does fairly well.  On Nightfall, the Allis tend to zerg LM and GM, with the Horde grabbing Farm, BS and Stabs as the game begins.  Most of the time, the Horde grabs an early lead, and then keeps it if the talent levels are somewhat even.  The design of the BG minimizes the adverse effects of stupid or inexperienced players, and individual effort can often turn the tide of a match.

The actual numbers:

Conclusion – My perception of AB seems to be spot on.  All three of my toons have winning records, with my best results occurring on my healer.

Eye of the Storm – Although I was not a fan of EotS at first, I have slowly warmed up to it.  I really enjoy the concentrated PVP-ness of the fights, even though it is very easy to lose a match when people fail at the basic strategies of the BG.  While the Horde on Nightfall don’t excel at BG strategy, they normally make up for it in ferocity on the frontlines, which carries the day slightly more often than not in EotS.  Victories are hard-fought and very close, while losses are often blowouts due to fail strats. 

The actual numbers:

Conclusion – My perception of success seems to be somewhat below the actual success I have enjoyed in EotS.  Strategy failures tend to be far more frustrating to me than performance failures, which probably explains some of my perception.  The rest probably has to do with the fact that my dps toons have better records in EotS than my healer.  EotS seems to defy the principal that healers win BGS, and that clearly affects my perception of the BG.

For those keeping score at home, I am slightly more negative on a losing BG than I should be, on the money on a winning BG, and less optimistic than I should be on another winning BG.  (Which seems to make me more a pessimist than a realist at the moment.) 

In the next installment, we will take a look at Strand, Warsong Gulch and the Isle. 

Vess

It all started with a For The Horde raid that was forming up.  I whispered the Raid Leader for a slot, since I have never actually killed the four Alliance leaders on Vess, but they apparently were full.  Having nothing better to do at the time, I decided to tag along with the raid, in case a slot opened (someone is always afk or offline).  I also thought that it was possible to get credit for the kill even though I wasn’t in the raid, by dpsing the bosses.

I am sure some of you can see where this is going, but I will continue.

The raid finds me out on the docks in Darkshore, and proceeds to the Exodar in orderly fashion.  I bebop along with the pack and head down into the belly of the ship where the raid engages the NPCs that chill with Prophet Velen.

Being a good Disc Priest, I lob a couple of dots at Velen before I start healing people.  A minute or two later, the boss goes down, my achievement pops, and the raid takes a mage portal to somewhere, leaving me to hop a boat back to civilization.

As I head out of the Exodar on my mount, I get a whisper informing me that I have achieved hated status with the For The Horde raid. 

Huh?

Apparently world raid bosses, contrary to my earlier belief, act just like normal mobs, in that only one person, party, or raid group can get credit for killing them. 

And apparently, no one in the raid actually pulled Velen during the opening 10 seconds of the fight, when the Wanted Priest decided to dot up the Prophet.

And apparently the entire raid didn’t recognize during the couple of minutes it took to kill the Prophet that the Prophet was grayed out for them, having been tagged by another player.

The end result was that none of the members of the raid got credit for the Prophet Velen kill.  But I did.

So yeah, I totally ninja’d a Prophet Velen kill from 40 players on my home realm.

(And you wondered why I am a Wanted Priest.)

Seriously?

Let’s start with the good news: Power Infusion is back.  Well it wasn’t really completely gone in the first Cata talent tree, as Aspiration still reduced its cooldown by 20%, but the actual talent was either missing or hidden.  Apparently Blizz likes PI so much, that they decided to make it both a third and fourth tier talent in the most recent tree.  (The fourth tier talent with three ranks that currently sports the PI description should probably be Borrowed Time.  Nice typo Blizz.)

And now for the bad news:

Absent from the new tree is our old friend: Renewed Hope.  You remember Renewed Hope, it was the talent that improved your crit rating by up to 4% when healing a target with the Weakened Soul debuff.  (It also provided 3% raid-wide damage reduction, but that feature had been stripped from the talent in the first Cata build.)

The watered down version of Renewed Hope was a third tier talent in the first Cata talent tree, but has been removed from the tree in the most recent build. 

For the majority of Disc Priests in WotLK (not me, but the majority nonetheless) Renewed Hope was an absolutely essential component of your healing spec.  Disc Priests had major throughput issues, and the only thing that kept them close to being viable healers was their crit bubbles.  Having an extra 4% chance to crit a heal on someone who had already been bubbled was a very very useful thing.

If this were still WotLK, the removal of Renewed Hope would be a pretty serious nerf to our already miserable throughput.  But this is a change for Cata, not WotLK.  Blizz has said that they are going to fix Disc’s throughput issues in Cata so we can actually, you know, heal, instead of just bubbling people.

Even if they do fix our throughput, though, I still can’t see how this change doesn’t hurt us in the long run.  Disc Priests are all about bubbles.  And the removal of Renewed Hope means less bubbles.  Period.

Apparently Blizz no longer wants Disc Priests to be all about bubbles, but instead be all about Smite.  Bubbles will henceforth be just for flavor, not the defining ability of the spec.  That is the only way I can make sense of this change.

If that wasn’t enough to really piss you off this morning, chew on this: Inner Focus has also been removed from the talent tree.  I heard plenty of Holy and Shadow Priests complain about how Inner Focus would be inaccessible to them, since it was in the third tier of the first Cata talent tree, and how it was going to have a major impact on the usage of high mana cost spells like Divine Hymn.  Now it looks like Disc Priests won’t get it either.

I seriously hope that they have reduced, or better yet completely eliminated, the mana cost of Divine Hymn to counter the loss of Inner Focus from every Priests’ talent build.  Even if they do, however, we lose the option to use Inner Focus with a spell other than Divine Hymn.   

Lastly, as noted above, Borrowed Time is currently missing in action from the newest Cata talent tree.  In the first Cata talent tree, BT was a three point talent in the fourth tier just to the right of Rapture, which gives you 15% spell haste after casting Powerword: Shield and improves the absorption of you shields by 40%.  In the newest Cata tree, there is a three point duplicate of Power Infusion sitting in the exact same position. 

I strongly suspect that Borrowed Time belongs there, and that Blizz inadvertently inserted the PI icon on the BT talent.  The alternative, that Blizz is actually removing BT from our tree, is just too much for me to process at the moment.

Is anyone else contemplating not installing Cata?  I am having serious doubts about the next expansion, and although WotLK is not utopia, it is looking like a far far better place to be right now.

Vess

Here is my first attempt at a PVP build under the new system:  CATA Disc PVP Build.  ***UPDATE – With the new Beta build 12539 release July 21, 2010, the link above does not work.  I am going to leave the description of the build up, however, as a reference point to discuss future changes to the talent trees.

All this is subject to change since we are only in Beta, yadda yadda yadda.  Also note that somehow Blizz misplaced my Beta invite, so I am just working off of publicly available information, and not first had experience.  (psst, Blizz, call me if you are reading this.)

My general impression of the talent tree revamp is that it removes a lot of choice and individuality from the process of selecting your talents.  

Under the current system, you have the ability to tailor your talent tree to your particular playstyle.  (More so for Disc PVP than for Disc PVE.)  If you primarily play dispel cleave, your spec will look very different than if you focus on the 2s bracket with a rogue partner.  Likewise if you are a raid healer vs. a tank healer.

There is so much potential for customization in the current system, in fact, that you will rarely find two PVP Disc Priests that are running the exact same build.  That goes for Shadow PVP as well.  (And we all know that no one plays Holy PVP.)

With the slimmed down 31 point talent tree, however, there is very little room for customizing your build to suit your playstyle.  Welcome to World of Cookie Cutter. 

/makes saving throw vs. rant

So lets look at the tiers shall we.

Tier 1:

2/2 Improved Power Word: Shield - Bread and butter Disc talent, don’t leave home without it.

3/3 Twin Disciplines – Down from 5 points to 3, it also now increases the absorption on your shields.  Instant casts are critically important in PVP, and the extra oomph really helps.

3/3 Mental Agility – 10% mana savings on your instant casts, down from 15%.  PVP Disc has major regen issues as it is, and unless that changes in Cata, you are going to need every bit of regen/mana savings help you can get.  Despite the nerf, you still need to fully talent this one.

Tier 2:

2/2 Evangelism – DPS boost and mana savings if you chain cast Smite.  This, along with the Archangel talent (discussed below), are two of the very few optional talents in the build.  Disc Priests are by far the most offensive healers in PVP currently, and the revamp seems to be encouraging us to continue to blend both healing and DPSing.  Like it or not, Lolsmite has become almost as central to our PVP class identity as Power Word Shield.  As such, I fear that skipping this talent would gimp your offensive burst potential, which is often a game changer in the arena.  Considering the alternative talents to Evangelism+Archangel in my spec (Renewed Hope, Reflective Shield and Borrowed Time) I think you are better off with the DPS boost.

1/1 Archangel – Useless without also taking Evangelism, this talent lets you nom nom nom your Evangelism stacks for mana and a boost to your healing.  This talent really excites me.  If you play 2v2 arena, you know that getting a kill often requires you to apply some pressure at the right times to assist your partner.  Many times, doing so means watching your partner’s health get precariously low while you whittle down your blue bar casting mana inefficient DPS spells.  Enter Archangel, which will give you back a nice chunk of mana and boost your healing throughput for that post kill moment when you really really need to heal your partner. 

With only a 15 second cooldown, it may be possible to improve mana efficiency via Archangel by weaving in a Smite here and there and regularly consuming less than a full stack of Evangelism.  We’ll have to wait and see how this one works in practice.

3/3 Improved Inner Fire – Same as it ever was, so don’t make any changes here.

2/2 Improved Mana Burn – No change here either.  I am a big fan of Mana Burn, but I would like to see it be slightly more mana efficient.  I feel like I can spend a huge portion of my mana draining another healer of his/hers, only to then get out regened.  Still, shaving 1 sec off of the cast time is well worth 2 talent points, not to mention the satisfaction of watching an opposing healer run for the safety of a pillar whenever I let loose with this spell.

Tier 3:

0/2 Renewed Hope – Bonus crit if your heal target has the Weakened Soul debuff, but our beloved 3% raid-wide damage reduction is gone.  Crit talents are not feasible for PVP Disc Priests, who currently have to forgo crit in favor of spirit to make up for our craptacular regen.  If we don’t have to choose between crit and regen in Cata, then we might be able to look at crit based talents again.  Put this one on the back burner for now.

1/1 Inner Focus – You need this spell for when you are OOM and have to get off that Divine Hymn, or Power Word: Barrier.  Just do it.

3/3 Atonement – Another talent that enhances Smite (noticing a pattern yet?) by converting a portion of the damage done to healing on allies within 8 yards of the Smite target.  A great talent if you play offensively with a melee dps partner.  Less so if you don’t.

Tier 4:

0/2 Reflective Shield – I like this talent, but it needs to reflect more damage in order to be viable and/or apply to every shield I cast, not just the shield I cast on myself.  With the giant increase in health pools in Cata, I just don’t see 45% of my shield’s absorption being meaningful damage in arena or bgs.

3/3 Rapture – Our regen sucks, therefore you must Rapture.

3/3 Borrowed Time – Nerfed from 25% haste to 15% haste, but still improving your PW:S absorption.  Still worth all three talent points, but less bang for the buck.  BT plays less of a role in arenas, since we have fewer partners to bubble and the same Weakened Soul debuff to deal with, but the loss of 10% haste post bubble will be felt.

Tier 5:

2/2 Aspiration – Cooldown reduction for your awesome abilities – priceless.

1/3 Divine Aegis – PVP Disc does not crit, so we only want to put the absolute minimum talent points here to get to PW:B in rank 7.  I would not be surprised if we had to go the full 3/3 in order to get to PW:B, but as it is written now, we can get by with only 1/3.

1/1 Pain Suppression – If I need to explain this to you, get the fcuk out.

0/3 Focused Will – A solid defensive talent for those times when you are the burst target.  Larger health pools in Cata will make defensive talents like Focused Will slightly less useful, and often come at the expense of dps boosting talents.  Take Focused Will if you are just getting started in PVP, and then replaces it when your gear and skill levels improve.

Tier 6:

3/3 Soul Warding – 15% mana reduction on PW:S, and 3 second lower cooldown (up from 4 seconds).  Blizzards attempt to limit bubble spam doesn’t really bother us in PVP, and we really were just taking this for the mana savings anyways. 

2/2 Grace – Damage reduction and improved healing, but only stacks to 2 (8%) instead of 3(12%).  Once again, less goodness than before, but still too good to pass up.

Tier 7:

1/1 Power Word: Barrier – Our long-awaited, shiny new toy.  If you play Disc and don’t have this ability talented, you will no doubt be subject to unimaginable levels of ridicule and humiliation.

Holy Tier 1:

2/2 Improved Renew – 10% better healing on an instant cast, heal and forget spell.  What’s not to love.

0/3 Empowered Healing – Although throughput is good, we generally try to avoid long cast heals in PVP like the spells covered by this talent.  Getting a GHeal off in the arena should have its own achievement.  Just not worth 3 points.

3/3 Divine Fury - Decreased cast time on big heals is meh, but the reduction on Smite and Holy fire is absolutely essential if you are going to be able to DPS effectively.

Conclusion:

Only time will tell whether the new talent tree is good for PVP Disc or not.  I like the fact that they are adding some more firepower to our tree, but I worry that some of the throughput nerfs are going to weaken us significantly without fixing our regen issues.  

If Evangelism and Archangel are tuned correctly, they have the potential to solve our regen problems in bgs and the arena.  The fact that our regen fix is tied to a dps boosting talent terrifies me from an ability-to-balance-the-game perspective though.  

With the exception of those two weeks between the resilience buff and the PVP healing nerf, Disc Priests have had a fairly rough time in WotLK PVP.  Hopefully Cata will change things for us.

Vess

Do you think your name will be on that plaque?

What a difference a battlegroup can make. 

In three months on the Retaliation Battlegroup, I managed to pick up a little over 3,000 honorable kills. 

In one week back on the Nightfall Battlegroup, I picked up 2,000 honorable kills.

My PVP spree this week saw me cross the 30,000 HK threshhold, and earn the following PVP achievements:

Me and the Cappin’ Makin’ it Happen;

Territorial Dominance;

City Defender; and

Not Even a Scratch.

This week also marked my best friend Chris’ return to the game after a month-long hiatus.  (Although Karinthanis and Wrathien haven’t made the jump from Retaliation back to Nightfall just yet, Chris still has a few level 80s on Undermine that he can play.)

I spent a good chunk of the week just running bgs on Vess with Fayé and Mistrunner (Chris’ Ele Shaman of low resilience), and it was an absolute blast. 

I also want to say thank you, thank you, thank you to my 2s partner Fayé for coming over to Undermine with me when I decided to leave Area-52.  PVPing just wouldn’t be quite the same without you. 

All in all it was a freakin awesome week for me in the World of Warcraft.

I also got confirmation that my decision to leave my raiding guild was the right choice for me.  My ex-guildies spent several nights in the Ruby Sanctum on both 10 and 25 man (RealID stalking ftw!), and the fact that I wasn’t there really didn’t bother me.  Truth be told, I was actually happy that I wasn’t there banging my head against the new bosses.

(I did jump in a 10-man pug on Undermine just to see the new raid though.  We managed to clear all of the mini bosses, but called it after about 4 attempts on the big boss.  Having seen the fights, I strongly suspect that I won’t be going back there again.)

For the next 10 days however, I am going to be AFK while on vacation in the foothills of Southwestern Pennsylvania.  I am looking forward to spending a week with my best friends, and enjoying some good food, good beer, good conversation, and some good cigars too.  Rest assured, when I get back from vacation, I will be very very ready to get back in the game.

Vess

And damn are those guys good!

I think four of them (Grafarion, Kalanii, and two others whose names I missed) managed to hold off almost half of our team at the Fel Reaver ruins for close to 5 minutes.  (It took 4 minutes for me to explain, and my teammates to comprehend, that they needed to go after the Resto Shaman and the Holy Paladin hanging in the back, and not try to kill the Warrior up front that was leveling everything in sight.)  ((I think my teammates figured it out after I asked them to watch which player on our team got targeted and killed first everytime we rezed.  Hint: it starts with V and ends with esserion.))

In any event, the Vodka crew put on quite a show at Fel Reaver.  I think my average life expectancy in those fights was about 5 globals after I was first targeted.  (Although I didn’t have a chance to look at the time, it wouldn’t surprise me to find out that they were wearing a lot of PVE gear in that battleground, especially since they have full sets of ilevel 277s.)

I hope that the next time we meet, I will have a few of my crew along with me, instead of just some random BG players.  Not that I expect a different result; I would just like to put up a better fight than I was able to this time around.

Vess