I thought the worgen sounded pretty badass =p they can go down on all fours and run at mount speed! that's awesome imo. I think of goblins like gnomes: stubby little things that hardly anyone would want to play.
<!--quoteo(post=1814353:date=Dec 8 2010, 08:03 AM:name=DiscoZombie)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (DiscoZombie @ Dec 8 2010, 08:03 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1814353"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I thought the worgen sounded pretty badass =p they can go down on all fours and run at mount speed! that's awesome imo. I think of goblins like gnomes: stubby little things that hardly anyone would want to play.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
The concept is badass. I've been hoping for Worgen as a playable race since back before The Burning Crusade released and blizzard was being coy about the Alliance race, however the implementation is just.. lazy.
For one thing, they have no racial mount, which goes against the design put in place with the last expansion that pushed for mount-parity between races/factions. Furthermore it detracts from racial identity and, well, makes them feel boring. Yes, Running Wild is a cool bonus, but it shouldn't have been the only thing. Currently there is no real reason for the Gilneas faction to even exist, sure you can get a 16 slot bag and a level 35 blue cloak, but those are identical to the ones offered by every other race.
Second of all, the Worgen really have no presence in the world. They have the starting zone they can never go back to, and a small town in a level 55+ zone, which they will probably skip in favor of outland. They 'live' in Darnassus, but you don't see a single Worgen or Gilnean Human outside of their tree, which, it should be mentioned is copied and pasted from earlier content. The few places where an Alliance worgen does show up, they can easily be replaced with either a Human or a Night Elf, without any real change.
Goblins on the other hand get an immediate follow up with an entire zone dedicated to them, along with numerous new outposts across the world for both the traditional, neutral Steamwheedle Cartel and the new, Horde-Friendly Bilgewarter Cartel. They get a spot in the horde main city and are even seen in other parts of the city. They have their own 'Micro-city' in the form of Bilgewater Harbor, complete with trainers for all the various goblin classes. You may even run into some of the characters from the goblin starting area later in the leveling experience.
If a Worgen character wants to follow up their starting story though they need to roll a horde character, get to level 10 and then do Silverpine Forest, which is only the case because the Gilneas storyline itself was mostly a follow up to the original Silverpine Forest which had a decent focus on Worgen.
Third, their racial abilities. When the abilities for the two races were first announced Goblins were ridiculously overpowered, with worgen being a close second. Blizzard claimed they would be modifying the goblin racials for balance and bringing everything else in line. Goblins are pretty much exactly the same, Worgen are worse and everyone else is the same as they have always been, or worse (with small exceptions for Dwarves and Gnomes).
TL;DR The worgen feel pretty bland and boring. Their story is lackluster at best, and frustratingly divided. They lack racial identity or world presence and their one redeeming quality, their architecture, feels like its been swept under a rug.
ThansalThe New ScumJoin Date: 2002-08-22Member: 1215Members, Constellation
Preface: I spent just about all of yesterday leveling my Cow Druid to 84 via Hyjal -> Deepholm -> Uldum and doing the dungeons in those zones.
I have to admit, I find all the 'blizz favors the horde' stuff amusing. I think the Worgen starter area is better than the goblin one (I don't go in for gimmicky stuff), I agree that the goblin racials are OP, and hope that the other races get brought in line with them.
IF you want a tacked on dumb race look at the space goats, there is a good example of why alliance should complain at blizz. Worgen have had a decent chunk of lore from the get go of WoW, admitedly, all of it was in the horde's hands, though it made sense (SFK was in hord territory, Dalaran was mostly against the Horde, etc etc).
All told, I'm rather happy with this expac.
I look forward to being amongst the legion of goblin rogues. I really enjoyed the new troll startign area, I look forward to doing the UD starting area, I liked (to a degree) the changes in horde areas 1-40 (thoguh I missed out on thousand needles and tanaris, I will try to hit em with the next character), and I really am looking forward to rolling a Worgen and the updated Alliance leveling areas (I always like alliance 1-60 more than horde).
I also really like the new 80-85 content.
Vash: I did most of it in the beta and don't like it that much. I will drag my tanks through it if for nothing else than the tanking arcanum being from a faction there.
Hyjal is beautiful, has a wonderful story, lots of good quests (I think I want to kill them for the Joust quests though), etc etc.
Deepholm, if coming from Hyjal, works great. It is also really a great looking zone and lots of good quests/stories.
Uldum, if coming from Vash seems ok. I'm not too big of a fan of the 'hey! look! EGYPT!' stuff, thoguh Harrison Jones making another appearance is great, and I will say that the exterior for Vortex Pinnacle is wonderfully done.
That's as far as I got yesterday, but it brings me nicely to dungeons:
The first few are dead easy as you are running them with people in t10+ gear. Once you level up a time or 2 your combat ratings drop like a stone, and it all becomes a challenge. I'm not sure, but I also think that Blackrock Caverns and the Throne of Tides are flat out easier than the latter ones.
Stonecore will kill unprepared parties and will REALLY reward working together and CC. I had a group that wiped about 5 times on the 2nd serious pull of the dungeon due to hideous amounts of preventable AoE. We then sheep pulled the next couple packs and it was back to being end of expac wrath difficulty.
Vortex has some simply insane AoE sections that I haven't figured out yet and I simply burned my mana bar keeping people up in (I know there has to be a trick to them, but I can't figure it out yet).
As for bosses? I like them. All of them. They have (for now) interesting tactics that require you to master them, however they aren't unfair. If you know what you are doing they are all very doable, however if you just try to power through it you are going to end up dead. They tend to be very binary fights, either you master the mechanics or you die. I suspect we will see a bit more lenience as we gear up, however the mechanics are still very much 'if you don't do this, you can't heal your tank, and thus he dies' type things.
Well, that's my take on it. Yes, it's more of the same, only prettier and all the lessons they have learned in the past 6 years of making WoW applied.
I will probably try to hit 85 with my druid today and then bounce around alts leveling people gradually through other paths (not to say that I didn't sit back and enjoy the ride on the druid, I just played for a day straight).
Actually, my one big gripe is the the change to cinematics. I like the wrathgate cinematic, and I like the LK end cinematic. I'm fine with that being all of them. In Cata they have put in a LOT of real time cinematics where they simply use the engine to run the NPCs through a script and control your camera. They tend to not have voice acting, and instead you are relying on word bubbles, which doesn't work when you give some one a huge speech and then cut away right as it shows up. It also doesn't work when you give people 60 seconds to read 2 lines. Most of them don't look that polished and are, in general, meh. Whoever was in charge of Uldum is horribly in love with these things. I didn't like most of the Uldum ones (some flat out didn't work) with the exception of the Harrison Jones ones. Those were generally well done, and fun.
Ultimatly it felt like programmers were making movies instead of the art department.
The argument is that, since worgen are uncommon in the lore, that means they're a race that's unloved by blizzard? If anything, that should make them feel MORE special. Just because you can't spit without hitting a human doesn't make humans feel more like a cool race that's worth playing to me - I prefer the rare and exotic.
Less attention is more attention. Now THAT is 1984-style doublethink if I ever saw it. I applaud your ability to fashion your brain into a Möbius strip.
Is it really doublethink to not agree with the argument that "There are not a lot of NPCs of this race, therefore it is ungood to play this race"? And to think that it's neat to play as something that's rare? Of course, I was never into lore very much, so I don't really care if I don't have my race's plight shoved in my face all the way to level 85.
That's not an argument anyone made. Play it all you like. The argument is that the race is underdeveloped and neglected, not that you shouldn't play it.
ThansalThe New ScumJoin Date: 2002-08-22Member: 1215Members, Constellation
The arguments about worgens being unfinished are: 1) No mount. This is only really an issue to mount collectors, I sympathize with them, but only a little, there are about 100 mounts available to each faction (I think it's like 150ish). 5, or so, less is not that big of a deal. The running animation is damn sweet btw.
2) Lack of further plot progression. That you have to roll an UD newb (or go back and do silverpine as horde) to see the rest of their story is a viable gripe, and I agree with it. Worgens HAVE been integrated into the new content though. There are a number of worgen NPCs in 1-60 and in 80-85, about as well represented as Kezan Goblins (baring those that have swarmed over Org, gods how I hate org now). I also like the lore and flavor you get in the worgen startign area MUCH more than the goblin starting area. The goblin one just feels like one giant gimmick, ending with an earth shattering kaboom.
3) Racials. Ok, yah. Goblin racial are the best there are. As thaldy said, OP, but fun. I hope that we see new racials along the lines of goblin ones for the rest of the races this expac (I doubt it). That said, worgen racials are still better than the vanilla racials, and at least on par with BC ones (I happen to love having another interrupt for my belf, and the entire 1% hit rating this is awesome for space goats).
As I said, I think Worgen and Goblins got equal amounts of attention this time around. I know everyone thinks blizz favors horde, but I always preferred the alliance zones/quests lines in general.
ShockehIf a packet drops on the web and nobody's near to see it...Join Date: 2002-11-19Member: 9336NS1 Playtester, Forum Moderators, Constellation
New expansion, new posts....
I wonder how viable it would be this time round to try & identify a UWE US & EU server this time around, as so many people are being drawn back to the game now it's all 'new' again?
Not viable I think. I for one would roll a new character if I played again, but you can bet it'd be on my old server where I have other characters with plenty of gold saved up. There's NO WAY I'm starting over completely from scratch, and I'm not ponying up large amount of moneycash to transfer my characters somewhere else, either. And that'd be fine and dandy if I was the only one who though like that, since you could just come play on my server. But I'm willing to bet that I'm not.
Yeah and with guild reputation/achievements now we've all assigned everything and we're hitting max rep per day so far. So it's a bit harder to do that these days Shockeh!
I don't get that whole guild level thing actually. I wasn't in one in beta and documentation on it was non-existant. Is that ###### actually REQUIRED now?
It's not required however, if you contribute towards guild achievements you earn reputation.
I'm not 100% how individual character reputation works, although I know if you get an achievement or part of one towards a guild achievement the guild gets guild reputation. When the guild reputation hits a level, you can get inert abilities. For example, we've hit level 3 and now have 10% extra mount speed, level 2 gave us 5% XP on quests and monsters, so we now take advantage of both things without doing anything but being in the guild.
Being in a guild has been made a better experience for the guild and the game.
I've <a href="http://www.wowwiki.com/Guild_advancement" target="_blank">had a look.</a> That is some bull###### alright. Bonuses for being in a guild are one thing - people who habitually don't join a guild won't like it, but it has been made abundantly clear over the years that they're not wanted in WoW anyway if they don't join a guild, so that's merely true to form. But basing those bonuses on the age of the guild, with the best bonuses only available to the oldest guilds, that sounds like nobody will ever be willing to join a new guild. I mean, if you join a new guild you get nothing, whereas you get bonuses thrown after you if you join an old one. It also sounds like punishment for people who want to keep their guild small and manageable rather than just fill it up with randoms who will ramp up the daily experience grind.
ThansalThe New ScumJoin Date: 2002-08-22Member: 1215Members, Constellation
this looks a bit more up to date: <a href="http://www.wowpedia.org/Guild_advancement" target="_blank">http://www.wowpedia.org/Guild_advancement</a>
If the info is correct there is no reward for large guilds (baring that it is easier to do guild run of stuff if you have more players) as guild XP is capped at something that a single dedicated player can do in a day, and if you have even just 3 or 4 players you are set.
It will take about a minimum of about 5 months to cap a guild's level, but after that there is no change.
It takes a minimum of about 3 months to max your guild rep (per character).
So, they are really focusing on long term guilds, which makes sense I guess, and (if this info is correct) they are not punishing small guilds at all. Even one man guilds would not take that much longer than a 500 person guild (Assuming the 1 man was fairly dedicated to playing).
That said, these are all really small things, they are all very much "Nice to have"s but none of them are really "Need to have"s.
10% more reputation is hardly a small thing. It's one of the best racials actually. Makes every rep grind 10% faster. Same for 10% tradeskill gain or 10% experience. But the biggest one is 15% more crafting materials. THAT'S going to matter, especially for the more expensive stuff like enchanting.
ThansalThe New ScumJoin Date: 2002-08-22Member: 1215Members, Constellation
edited December 2010
<!--quoteo(post=1814631:date=Dec 9 2010, 05:32 PM:name=lolfighter)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (lolfighter @ Dec 9 2010, 05:32 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1814631"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->10% more reputation is hardly a small thing. It's one of the best racials actually. Makes every rep grind 10% faster. Same for 10% tradeskill gain or 10% experience. But the biggest one is 15% more crafting materials. THAT'S going to matter, especially for the more expensive stuff like enchanting.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> It depends on how some of those work. Yes, the 10% rep grind reduction is awesome, that said, all of the Cata repgrinds have tabards now (even Therezine, the new SoH), and it's great if you want The Insane, but it isn't something you must have.
The XP ones are awesome, if you are leveling alts (I have a feeling that they will be deactivate for 85-90, much like our BoAs don't work for for 80-85), and even there I'm almost thinking of parking my alts OUT of my guild so they don't grind through 1-60 faster than I can see content (come 60+ the BoAs and guild perks go on).
As for the crafting mats one, that one is the one I want (assuming it works like a chance to proc extra mats, instead of a flat 15% increase for each node, as a 15% increase of 1 shard is still one shard). Actually, I want that, Chugalug and happy hour. Happy Hour suddenly makes cauldrons worth it (seriously, small one gives you 7, big one gives 17? wth?), and chugalug is just really nice. Aside from those, I'm kinda meh about them.
Err, right, what I was trying to say:
Yes, the perks are really nice to have, but I still don't think they are really "have this or your guild sucks" type things.
Oh? They're going that route huh? Well, there goes any chance of me checking out WoW again.
I hate guilds... so much XD
I want to play massively multiplayer online games, not many guilds online games. Let me play with everyone instead of partitioning people into silly little cliques. Silly MMO developers :/
Yeah but you can do that with all multiplayer games. MMOs have a potential "friends group" size that is magnitudes greater. Of course, most people won't have social groups that big (monkeysphere, yadda yadda), but there's still something to it: Guilds tend to function as closed "country clubs," with members having nothing but scorn and derision for anyone not part of their in-group.
But yeah. Like I said a few posts ago, it's not like the writing wasn't on the wall from the beginning. Once you get to level 80 (edit: er, 85 now), you either raid or you level another character. And raiding requires a guild. There has never been any real top tier content for people who weren't in a guild, and that's that. Considering they've had six years and three expansions to do something about that, it's quite obvious that it's not something they consider an issue. "Guild up or gtfo" has been the mantra since day 1 in World of Warcraft, and it can hardly come as a surprise to anyone <i>now.</i>
Guild levels are definitely a strong incentive to guild up, but imo, WoW moved AWAY from forcing you to guild in WotLK. Almost all the raids I did were pugs for the last several months; you can do random instances with anyone, even people from other servers, etc. Honestly, if you hate guilds but want the benefits of guild levels, just join a zerg guild and then mute the guild channel, problem solved =p
PUG raids will always be lagging one or two raid tiers behind the current one though. At least that has been my experience. The earliest I saw Ulduar PUGs on my server was around Oktober 2009, when 3.2 had been out for two months.
Sure, eventually you'll get to kill the Lich King in a PUG, but that'll be months after all the guild groups did it. You're never going to be competitive with guild groups - even less so now that guilds have nice utility skills like quick summons and wipe recovery. And what's the response to that? "Well just join a guild then if you don't like it." EXACTLY! Which brings us full circle to my original point: WoW's mantra is "guild up or gtfo." Always has been, always will be.
The only thing that has changed over the years is the SIZE of guild required, due to the requirements for raid group sizes. Used to be 40. Fell to 25 in Burning Crusade. Fell further to 10 in WotLK (though you were still getting shafted on gear). Last I heard (and I hope they didn't cave to elitist pressure on that) was that in Cataclysm there's parity between 10- and 25-man raids, with both sizes drawing from the same loot pools but 25-man raids getting more quantity/man. Now THAT'S something I applaud. 25-man raids killed Burning Crusade for me after the fun that was Karazhan (and I shudder to think what the bad old days of 40-man raids were like), and 10-man Naxx was much more fun than 25-man Naxx. With parity in terms of loot quality now, hopefully more people will find 10-man raids attractive.
<!--quoteo(post=1814720:date=Dec 10 2010, 05:00 AM:name=lolfighter)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (lolfighter @ Dec 10 2010, 05:00 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1814720"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->But yeah. Like I said a few posts ago, it's not like the writing wasn't on the wall from the beginning. Once you get to level 80 (edit: er, 85 now), you either raid or you level another character. And raiding requires a guild.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
You can always PVP, you don't need to be organised but obviously there is an advantage to organising a PVP group with guild or friends.
I do think it should still be perfectly viable to play WoW without a guild. Yeah, a PUG is not going to get as far as fast as a good guild in raids, but PuGs still regularly cleared the hardest instance in WotLK regularly. Maybe not on heroic mode, but they still saw all the content. So they got the benefits of raiding without the responsibility of having to log in on designated guild raid nights. I don't know why it's such a crazy concept that guilds progress faster than PuGs. Let's say guilds didn't exist. Who would progress faster - a group of friends who always play together and rely on each other and know each other's play style, or a group of completely random people who may or may not know what they're doing and where the worst thing that can happen if they screw up is they get kicked out of the group?
ThansalThe New ScumJoin Date: 2002-08-22Member: 1215Members, Constellation
edited December 2010
While I don't agree with Gem's point of view I do get it.
She is mostly a product of the original MMOs. It took forever to reach level cap (if it was even possible), it was all bout the journey, guilds existed, but generally you just hung out with the people who were around, whoever they were. Raids existed, but they were much larger affairs then they are now. Etc etc etc.
The games were really different from the mass market appeal of modern MMOs. WoW is obviously the leader of the modern MMOs, however most of these shifts started in EQ and it's brethren, however the shifts took place later into their lives, thus they were never as drastic as what WoW has done.
That all said: I like mass appeal, it means I get to see end game content (hell, I co-led a pug that could get to LK, admitedly it was because we horribly out geared the content and people could fail horribly and not die). Sure, it sucks for your uber hardcore who down heroics as soon as they are out, but they are a small percentage, and well, sucks to be them (though I honestly think they like it). It also isn't good for the types like Gem who's goal isn't raiding per-say, but much more the experience of existing in a massive world etc etc (if I understand her correctly). The players like Gem can work around the system to some degree, unlike the people that eat content. There are RP servers out there that tend to focus on the more social aspects of the server as a whole (or so I'm told), and there are also the mega guilds that have most of the faction for a server in them, though they would likely not fit Gem's view either, as all too often (or so I'm told, again) they end up acting like 'normal' guilds, eg, bickering, in fighting, cliques.
As a side note: I'm not sure how pugable Raids will be this xpac. Last time around it worked because we could easily out gear content fairly quickly, especially with people in non-strict guilds pugging what their guild didn't do (either 10 man guild members doing 25s, or reversed). Now I expect it to take us longer to gear up characters (the prices for items is a bit higher, and the speed that we get currency is lower). With the shared raid lockouts serious raiders will virtually NEVER play with pugs. On top of all of that, if the 5 mans are any example of what is to come, raids are going to kill pugs. My DF ventures have been about 50/50 on good groups and idiots, fairly similar to how it was in wrath. The only problem is that idiots can't clear content now.
I don't know if this will change as raid tiers progress or not. When we can buy t11 pieces with JPs, maybe it will become possible to start steam rolling the dungeons, but I'm not convinced. Too many of the mechanics feel binary, ie, 'do this or the tank dies', for them to be over geared. But then, I saw cloth wearers eat Necrotic plague at the end of wrath, so who knows?
ShockehIf a packet drops on the web and nobody's near to see it...Join Date: 2002-11-19Member: 9336NS1 Playtester, Forum Moderators, Constellation
You know lolfighter, I'm not so bothered? This expansion is all about new characters anyway, so if we could compile a list of UWE OT folk, and see where the majority were, I'd have no problem playing there. I know there's a few on <b>EU Outland</b> as Alliance, but I've no idea where everyone else is.
Comments
The concept is badass. I've been hoping for Worgen as a playable race since back before The Burning Crusade released and blizzard was being coy about the Alliance race, however the implementation is just.. lazy.
For one thing, they have no racial mount, which goes against the design put in place with the last expansion that pushed for mount-parity between races/factions. Furthermore it detracts from racial identity and, well, makes them feel boring. Yes, Running Wild is a cool bonus, but it shouldn't have been the only thing. Currently there is no real reason for the Gilneas faction to even exist, sure you can get a 16 slot bag and a level 35 blue cloak, but those are identical to the ones offered by every other race.
Second of all, the Worgen really have no presence in the world. They have the starting zone they can never go back to, and a small town in a level 55+ zone, which they will probably skip in favor of outland. They 'live' in Darnassus, but you don't see a single Worgen or Gilnean Human outside of their tree, which, it should be mentioned is copied and pasted from earlier content. The few places where an Alliance worgen does show up, they can easily be replaced with either a Human or a Night Elf, without any real change.
Goblins on the other hand get an immediate follow up with an entire zone dedicated to them, along with numerous new outposts across the world for both the traditional, neutral Steamwheedle Cartel and the new, Horde-Friendly Bilgewarter Cartel. They get a spot in the horde main city and are even seen in other parts of the city. They have their own 'Micro-city' in the form of Bilgewater Harbor, complete with trainers for all the various goblin classes. You may even run into some of the characters from the goblin starting area later in the leveling experience.
If a Worgen character wants to follow up their starting story though they need to roll a horde character, get to level 10 and then do Silverpine Forest, which is only the case because the Gilneas storyline itself was mostly a follow up to the original Silverpine Forest which had a decent focus on Worgen.
Third, their racial abilities. When the abilities for the two races were first announced Goblins were ridiculously overpowered, with worgen being a close second. Blizzard claimed they would be modifying the goblin racials for balance and bringing everything else in line. Goblins are pretty much exactly the same, Worgen are worse and everyone else is the same as they have always been, or worse (with small exceptions for Dwarves and Gnomes).
TL;DR The worgen feel pretty bland and boring. Their story is lackluster at best, and frustratingly divided. They lack racial identity or world presence and their one redeeming quality, their architecture, feels like its been swept under a rug.
I spent just about all of yesterday leveling my Cow Druid to 84 via Hyjal -> Deepholm -> Uldum and doing the dungeons in those zones.
I have to admit, I find all the 'blizz favors the horde' stuff amusing. I think the Worgen starter area is better than the goblin one (I don't go in for gimmicky stuff), I agree that the goblin racials are OP, and hope that the other races get brought in line with them.
IF you want a tacked on dumb race look at the space goats, there is a good example of why alliance should complain at blizz. Worgen have had a decent chunk of lore from the get go of WoW, admitedly, all of it was in the horde's hands, though it made sense (SFK was in hord territory, Dalaran was mostly against the Horde, etc etc).
All told, I'm rather happy with this expac.
I look forward to being amongst the legion of goblin rogues. I really enjoyed the new troll startign area, I look forward to doing the UD starting area, I liked (to a degree) the changes in horde areas 1-40 (thoguh I missed out on thousand needles and tanaris, I will try to hit em with the next character), and I really am looking forward to rolling a Worgen and the updated Alliance leveling areas (I always like alliance 1-60 more than horde).
I also really like the new 80-85 content.
Vash: I did most of it in the beta and don't like it that much. I will drag my tanks through it if for nothing else than the tanking arcanum being from a faction there.
Hyjal is beautiful, has a wonderful story, lots of good quests (I think I want to kill them for the Joust quests though), etc etc.
Deepholm, if coming from Hyjal, works great. It is also really a great looking zone and lots of good quests/stories.
Uldum, if coming from Vash seems ok. I'm not too big of a fan of the 'hey! look! EGYPT!' stuff, thoguh Harrison Jones making another appearance is great, and I will say that the exterior for Vortex Pinnacle is wonderfully done.
That's as far as I got yesterday, but it brings me nicely to dungeons:
The first few are dead easy as you are running them with people in t10+ gear. Once you level up a time or 2 your combat ratings drop like a stone, and it all becomes a challenge. I'm not sure, but I also think that Blackrock Caverns and the Throne of Tides are flat out easier than the latter ones.
Stonecore will kill unprepared parties and will REALLY reward working together and CC. I had a group that wiped about 5 times on the 2nd serious pull of the dungeon due to hideous amounts of preventable AoE. We then sheep pulled the next couple packs and it was back to being end of expac wrath difficulty.
Vortex has some simply insane AoE sections that I haven't figured out yet and I simply burned my mana bar keeping people up in (I know there has to be a trick to them, but I can't figure it out yet).
As for bosses?
I like them. All of them. They have (for now) interesting tactics that require you to master them, however they aren't unfair. If you know what you are doing they are all very doable, however if you just try to power through it you are going to end up dead. They tend to be very binary fights, either you master the mechanics or you die. I suspect we will see a bit more lenience as we gear up, however the mechanics are still very much 'if you don't do this, you can't heal your tank, and thus he dies' type things.
Well, that's my take on it. Yes, it's more of the same, only prettier and all the lessons they have learned in the past 6 years of making WoW applied.
I will probably try to hit 85 with my druid today and then bounce around alts leveling people gradually through other paths (not to say that I didn't sit back and enjoy the ride on the druid, I just played for a day straight).
Actually, my one big gripe is the the change to cinematics. I like the wrathgate cinematic, and I like the LK end cinematic. I'm fine with that being all of them. In Cata they have put in a LOT of real time cinematics where they simply use the engine to run the NPCs through a script and control your camera. They tend to not have voice acting, and instead you are relying on word bubbles, which doesn't work when you give some one a huge speech and then cut away right as it shows up. It also doesn't work when you give people 60 seconds to read 2 lines. Most of them don't look that polished and are, in general, meh. Whoever was in charge of Uldum is horribly in love with these things. I didn't like most of the Uldum ones (some flat out didn't work) with the exception of the Harrison Jones ones. Those were generally well done, and fun.
Ultimatly it felt like programmers were making movies instead of the art department.
</nerd>
Not giving them a mount is a ###### move though.
Yet neat.
1) No mount.
This is only really an issue to mount collectors, I sympathize with them, but only a little, there are about 100 mounts available to each faction (I think it's like 150ish). 5, or so, less is not that big of a deal.
The running animation is damn sweet btw.
2) Lack of further plot progression.
That you have to roll an UD newb (or go back and do silverpine as horde) to see the rest of their story is a viable gripe, and I agree with it.
Worgens HAVE been integrated into the new content though. There are a number of worgen NPCs in 1-60 and in 80-85, about as well represented as Kezan Goblins (baring those that have swarmed over Org, gods how I hate org now).
I also like the lore and flavor you get in the worgen startign area MUCH more than the goblin starting area. The goblin one just feels like one giant gimmick, ending with an earth shattering kaboom.
3) Racials.
Ok, yah. Goblin racial are the best there are. As thaldy said, OP, but fun. I hope that we see new racials along the lines of goblin ones for the rest of the races this expac (I doubt it).
That said, worgen racials are still better than the vanilla racials, and at least on par with BC ones (I happen to love having another interrupt for my belf, and the entire 1% hit rating this is awesome for space goats).
As I said, I think Worgen and Goblins got equal amounts of attention this time around. I know everyone thinks blizz favors horde, but I always preferred the alliance zones/quests lines in general.
I wonder how viable it would be this time round to try & identify a UWE US & EU server this time around, as so many people are being drawn back to the game now it's all 'new' again?
I'm not 100% how individual character reputation works, although I know if you get an achievement or part of one towards a guild achievement the guild gets guild reputation. When the guild reputation hits a level, you can get inert abilities. For example, we've hit level 3 and now have 10% extra mount speed, level 2 gave us 5% XP on quests and monsters, so we now take advantage of both things without doing anything but being in the guild.
Being in a guild has been made a better experience for the guild and the game.
<a href="http://www.wowpedia.org/Guild_advancement" target="_blank">http://www.wowpedia.org/Guild_advancement</a>
If the info is correct there is no reward for large guilds (baring that it is easier to do guild run of stuff if you have more players) as guild XP is capped at something that a single dedicated player can do in a day, and if you have even just 3 or 4 players you are set.
It will take about a minimum of about 5 months to cap a guild's level, but after that there is no change.
It takes a minimum of about 3 months to max your guild rep (per character).
So, they are really focusing on long term guilds, which makes sense I guess, and (if this info is correct) they are not punishing small guilds at all. Even one man guilds would not take that much longer than a 500 person guild (Assuming the 1 man was fairly dedicated to playing).
That said, these are all really small things, they are all very much "Nice to have"s but none of them are really "Need to have"s.
It depends on how some of those work. Yes, the 10% rep grind reduction is awesome, that said, all of the Cata repgrinds have tabards now (even Therezine, the new SoH), and it's great if you want The Insane, but it isn't something you must have.
The XP ones are awesome, if you are leveling alts (I have a feeling that they will be deactivate for 85-90, much like our BoAs don't work for for 80-85), and even there I'm almost thinking of parking my alts OUT of my guild so they don't grind through 1-60 faster than I can see content (come 60+ the BoAs and guild perks go on).
As for the crafting mats one, that one is the one I want (assuming it works like a chance to proc extra mats, instead of a flat 15% increase for each node, as a 15% increase of 1 shard is still one shard). Actually, I want that, Chugalug and happy hour. Happy Hour suddenly makes cauldrons worth it (seriously, small one gives you 7, big one gives 17? wth?), and chugalug is just really nice. Aside from those, I'm kinda meh about them.
Err, right, what I was trying to say:
Yes, the perks are really nice to have, but I still don't think they are really "have this or your guild sucks" type things.
I hate guilds... so much XD
I want to play massively multiplayer online games, not many guilds online games. Let me play with everyone instead of partitioning people into silly little cliques. Silly MMO developers :/
But yeah. Like I said a few posts ago, it's not like the writing wasn't on the wall from the beginning. Once you get to level 80 (edit: er, 85 now), you either raid or you level another character. And raiding requires a guild. There has never been any real top tier content for people who weren't in a guild, and that's that. Considering they've had six years and three expansions to do something about that, it's quite obvious that it's not something they consider an issue. "Guild up or gtfo" has been the mantra since day 1 in World of Warcraft, and it can hardly come as a surprise to anyone <i>now.</i>
Sure, eventually you'll get to kill the Lich King in a PUG, but that'll be months after all the guild groups did it. You're never going to be competitive with guild groups - even less so now that guilds have nice utility skills like quick summons and wipe recovery. And what's the response to that? "Well just join a guild then if you don't like it." EXACTLY! Which brings us full circle to my original point: WoW's mantra is "guild up or gtfo." Always has been, always will be.
The only thing that has changed over the years is the SIZE of guild required, due to the requirements for raid group sizes. Used to be 40. Fell to 25 in Burning Crusade. Fell further to 10 in WotLK (though you were still getting shafted on gear). Last I heard (and I hope they didn't cave to elitist pressure on that) was that in Cataclysm there's parity between 10- and 25-man raids, with both sizes drawing from the same loot pools but 25-man raids getting more quantity/man. Now THAT'S something I applaud. 25-man raids killed Burning Crusade for me after the fun that was Karazhan (and I shudder to think what the bad old days of 40-man raids were like), and 10-man Naxx was much more fun than 25-man Naxx. With parity in terms of loot quality now, hopefully more people will find 10-man raids attractive.
You can always PVP, you don't need to be organised but obviously there is an advantage to organising a PVP group with guild or friends.
She is mostly a product of the original MMOs. It took forever to reach level cap (if it was even possible), it was all bout the journey, guilds existed, but generally you just hung out with the people who were around, whoever they were. Raids existed, but they were much larger affairs then they are now. Etc etc etc.
The games were really different from the mass market appeal of modern MMOs. WoW is obviously the leader of the modern MMOs, however most of these shifts started in EQ and it's brethren, however the shifts took place later into their lives, thus they were never as drastic as what WoW has done.
That all said:
I like mass appeal, it means I get to see end game content (hell, I co-led a pug that could get to LK, admitedly it was because we horribly out geared the content and people could fail horribly and not die). Sure, it sucks for your uber hardcore who down heroics as soon as they are out, but they are a small percentage, and well, sucks to be them (though I honestly think they like it). It also isn't good for the types like Gem who's goal isn't raiding per-say, but much more the experience of existing in a massive world etc etc (if I understand her correctly). The players like Gem can work around the system to some degree, unlike the people that eat content. There are RP servers out there that tend to focus on the more social aspects of the server as a whole (or so I'm told), and there are also the mega guilds that have most of the faction for a server in them, though they would likely not fit Gem's view either, as all too often (or so I'm told, again) they end up acting like 'normal' guilds, eg, bickering, in fighting, cliques.
As a side note:
I'm not sure how pugable Raids will be this xpac.
Last time around it worked because we could easily out gear content fairly quickly, especially with people in non-strict guilds pugging what their guild didn't do (either 10 man guild members doing 25s, or reversed). Now I expect it to take us longer to gear up characters (the prices for items is a bit higher, and the speed that we get currency is lower). With the shared raid lockouts serious raiders will virtually NEVER play with pugs. On top of all of that, if the 5 mans are any example of what is to come, raids are going to kill pugs. My DF ventures have been about 50/50 on good groups and idiots, fairly similar to how it was in wrath. The only problem is that idiots can't clear content now.
I don't know if this will change as raid tiers progress or not. When we can buy t11 pieces with JPs, maybe it will become possible to start steam rolling the dungeons, but I'm not convinced. Too many of the mechanics feel binary, ie, 'do this or the tank dies', for them to be over geared. But then, I saw cloth wearers eat Necrotic plague at the end of wrath, so who knows?
</rambling>