Month: April 2010

An Interlude, with Music and Ice-Cream

Posted on by Gazimoff

There’s going to be an intermission at The Mana Obscura over the next week or so. Don’t worry though, normal service will resume on roughly 9th May give or take a few days either way. And to put your minds at ease, I’m not having surgery or real-life problems or anything of that nature.

You see, I’m getting married. More specifically, I’m marrying the lady who plays the gnome in the picture above.

We’ve been together for six years and living together for just over four. When we started dating we lived at other ends of the country, so we used MMOs as a cheap way of keeping in touch. We started with Horizons, but moved on to Warcraft on the day of release. I bought a copy for her as a Valentine’s Day present back in 2005 just so we could enjoy it with eachother.

Since then we’ve been playing together, questing together and raiding together. We’ve shared the highs and lows of guild achievements and guild drama, boss kills and burnouts.

Not a day goes by that I don’t think how lucky I am to be loved by the girl that I love, but who is also into gaming and geek culture. I couldn’t ask for a better friend, guildmate and wife.

So while I work on the last few stages of the “Getting Married” achievement, I’ll leave you with “Geek Like Me” by The Wonderstrucks.

See you all in a few weeks!

Getting Time To React

Posted on by Gazimoff

One of the things that I’ve seen thrown around lately is how reaction times are going to become important in Cataclysm. It’s not enough to have phased fights where a boss might require you to change tactics three or four times in order to defeat it. In the new expansion I’ve heard that we’ll need to pull off Nintendo-kid button-taps with incredible precision if we’re going to get near the top grade content.

One of the things I like about MMOs, particularly Warcarft, is that I don’t need some ninja-keyboard skills in order to play well. My reaction times aren’t nearly as great as when I was a d-pad wielding kid on Sonic the Hedgehog, and I like a game that respects it. Not only that, I like that the game runs on a variety of connections and doesn’t expect you to have the purest broadband money can buy. You don’t have to be lightning-fast in order to play, just reasonably stable.

The other thing that gets me is how reaction time is relative to what you’re doing. If you’re expecting something to happen, you can react to it quickly If you’re not expecting it or you’re focused on something else (like mashing your buttons as hard as you can or playing Grid whack-a-mole), then your reaction time is much worse.

Reaction times also change according to the role your playing. I know that I’m much better doing some things on my priest than I am doing them on my mage.

Besides, it’s not like tanks don’t have their own set of problems during boss fights. Their ordeals even extend into trash pulls.

It’s not like I don’t want there to be some challenge to game content – I want to face struggles and difficulties in-game as it makes the taste of victory so much sweeter. By the same token I don’t want an army of middle-aged geek gamers to feel that they suddenly can’t keep up because they don’t have the reflexes they had when they were 10 years old.
Warcraft rocks because it’s attractive to a wide demographic, not in spite of it.

The Dying High Street Retailer

Posted on by Gazimoff

Back when I was a kid, my dad used to take me shopping for videogames. I can only half-remember the store – a brightly lit and almost empty room with shelving lining the walls and and a small island with a till in the centre. We’d go and spend maybe £3 on a cassette tape game, take it home and try it out. Sometimes the game was good, sometimes it was bad, but the journey itself was enough for me back then.

Fast forward to today and the world has changed. Independent videogame stores have now been replaced with common retail chains in almost every town. But now, even this role of a high street videogames retailer is being called into question.

Earlier in the week the retailer Game Group announced that profits had dropped by a third since last year. At the same time the CEO and COO of the firm have both decided to leave the business. It’s like they can both sense the writing on the wall and have decided to leave before things get really bad.

Thinking about it, the market that they’re in these days is hugely different from how it was even five years ago. I’ve cut down dramatically on the amount of games I buy every year. I have XBox games that I’ve not even opened because I’ve been spending so much time playing Warcraft.

The places I can buy games from has exploded as well. Supermarkets, music and DVD stores are all stocking the latest titles. The internet poses it’s own problems, with cheap prices and home delivery slicing away at the market. Services like Steam make the high street pretty much redundant – Valve have managed to build up an online gaming service with an extensive catalogue and a solid community in a way that’s almost self-sustaining.

What gets me is the complete blunder that the high street seems to be making at the moment. They’re selling a commodity product, but instead of rattling off a list of why people should buy from them instead of their local supermarket or online store, they seem to be in retreat. There doesn’t seem to be any strategy beyond relying on new games and consoles in order to have something customers want to buy. This is flawed – if you set yourself up so that I only want to buy from you when a new console is released you’re setting yourself up for a fall.

It’s not that I’m opposed to buying from the high street – I just want a compelling reason to do so. If I can get better service from an online retailer I’ll use them. If I can get a better returns policy from a supermarket, I’ll buy my games with my groceries.

By contrast , earlier this month I was in Cardiff. One of the things I always try to do when visiting the city is visit Cardiff Games – a small shop that sold a range of tabletop RPG and board games. When I went there last, the shop had closed down completely – I’m not sure why, but I can’t help but feel that it’s part of a change in geek culture. Where once we’d meet up at game stores, chat and share what we thought about the latest games it’s now all done online through messageboards, forums and blogposts. we can make our purchasing decisions based on a Google search, with a skip over to someone like Amazon or Spirit Games to place an order.

I wonder that since so much geek life is now carried out online, are the physical representations of them in forms like high street stores set to fade away? Not because we don’t want to use the store, but because we actively embrace an online existence?

Will there always be a place for geekdom in the real world?

The Final Night Raiders Club

Posted on by Gazimoff

I’ve been neglecting my guild over the last month, only managing to sign up for a couple of raids. I don’t know what my schedule’s going to be like from one day to the next, which makes it planning pretty impossible. It means that I end up scratching around for raids whenever I’m online instead of planning my week in advance. It also means that I’m spending a lot of time in pugs.

Don’t get me wrong, pugs can be fine. For a lot of content like your standard 5-mans and VoA, a pug is pretty much all you need. Even completing things like the weekly raid quest are easily handled in a pug. I’s only when you start getting into places like Icecrown where things start to fall down.

The spooky thing is, I think I’m starting to see a trend. There’s a pattern or cycle that seems to be going on every single week, starting once the servers are up from maintenance. I don’t think that I’m the only person – the messages I see on Twitter usually say the same thing. Let me describe it to you and see if you recognise any of this.

  • The evening after server maintenance (Tuesday in US, Wednesday in EU), you usually see a flood of pugs forming. They’re crying out to form ICC raids, with the full gearscore and achievement checks involved. They’ll usually get going, wipe a lot and maybe take down Lord Marrowgar. As soon as the first boss is down, the group dissolves. You’ve just wasted your lockout getting two frost badges. Yay.
  • Once the raidgroups and raidguilds know that the servers are stable, they start their runs. Most of the raiding population is either with their group or on standby. The few pugs that start to form are usually looking for people for three or four hours. If you manage to fill your group and get to the instance, you’re doing well. That said, you’ll probably wipe a few times then fall apart. But hey, at least you’re not saved!
  • Later on in the week the guilds are on progression runs. Now’s the time when players start hiding from their guilds on alts. The idea of an evening of repair bills fills them with dread, so they go looking for fun elsewhere. Pugs start to fill up better, and at least these guys know the fights, but the lack of gear is a handicap. You might get the chance to say Hi to Saurfang, but that’ll be where your evening ends.
  • On the last night before reset the raiders emerge. Those who focus on 25-man content but want to pick up some frost badges from 10-man. Those who’ve been benched all week and are desperate to use their lockout. Those who’ve suddenly realised the server resets tomorrow. Find one of these groups and you’ll be getting between 4 and 8 bosses down, a couple of hardmodes and a sackful of loot.

Despite this being what I see, I can’t be sure that my ideas for what causes it are the right ones. I mean, it might be that there’s something else that makes mid-week pug raids an absolute abomination. All I do know is that at the end of the week, if I can find a group to Icecrown it’ll usually be a great raid.

This is where you come in. Does my pug experience match yours, or have you seen something else entirely? Do you have your own theories about why this phenomenon? Have you ever been part of the Final Night Raiders Club, playing alongside people who don’t know eachother but who can just click and pull it through?

As always, feel free to share in the comments.

A Snipe at the Socials

Posted on by Gazimoff

I was out at a bar recently with a few friends, discussing the many trials and difficulties endured by Warcraft players today… Heck, who am I trying to kid – my fiancee and her sister were trying to tie fairy lights to each other, while I tried to work out if a Havana Zombie wanted to be friends with me. All in all the night was a bit of a blur, punctuated by aggressive singing in Welsh and mourning over the lack of a kebab.

In one of those rare moments of clarity that you get when drinking heavily in a strange location, I remember realising that there were different types of groups there. You had the guys at the bar who were trying to drink as much cheap stuff as possible before heading on to a nightclub. You had a small group round a table, trying to make their rum and Coke last as long as humanly possible. And you had us lot, being as rowdy as hell and making sure we had fun whatever we were doing.

Fast-forward 24 hours and I’m nursing the hangover from hell. I’m drinking coffee and Mountain Dew Throwback in order to persuade some neurons in my skull to get off their arses and start firing. I’m eating fried everything between two slices of bread because my stomach didn’t get it’s promised kebab the night before and it’s sure as hell going to remind me about it now. I’m fidgeting with a biro like it’s a cigarette, subconsciously forgetting that I quit four years ago and that sucking on a pen lid isn’t going to help.

I fire up my laptop, click away and find myself on one of the Realm Forums. My eyes are immediately drawn to the top post of the day. “Get rid of RP Guilds” it proclaims. I’m thinking that maybe it’s one of those ‘strong headline to make a point’ kind of posts. I’m wrong.

It goes on to say how we should get rid of all guilds unless they’re dedicated to PvE or PvP progression. After all, the new Guild Levelling system means that unless you’ve got twenty raiders earning points for your guild every night, you’re just going to be left behind. Progress or die, that’s what the new system means.

Only it doesn’t.

I do some digging to see if I can validate this forum poster’s point and I find this excellent series of articles on what guild levelling will involve. There’s surprisingly little that actually involves endgame raiding. I can gain XP for my guild from a number of different sources including daily quests, battlegrounds and regular dungeons. Even levelling my professions helps out!

Now I might be a little slow here, but I thought that there were a number of reasons that you might join a guild. It might be because of the endgame raiding they offer you, or because they help put together arena or battleground teams. It might even be because you’ve played with them in other games or know them from other places and appreciate their company. It might even be because you like to just hang out and have fun, and it beats trekking across the country to see them.

I mean, imagine if someone came up to you in a bar and told you that your group were drinking wrong. That you should be in a larger group in order to take full advantage of the discounts on offer. That you should only drink certain spirits so that you spend as little as possible before you get plastered? If it were me, I’d try to strangle them with a strand of twinkly fairy lights.

The point is that just like with bars, we all play Warcraft for different reasons and get different things out of it. Some of us want to ensure that we don’t waste any time, that we go in there to do what we want to do as quickly as possible then leave. Some want to use it to meet new people, while others just want to kick back, relax and have a bit of fun with friends. It’s different strokes for different folks, with no right or wrong way about it.

The social players might not have a level-capped guild immediately, but they’ll get one in their own time. And they’ll be sure to have a ton of fun on the way.

The Colour of Money

Posted on by Gazimoff

During the weekend the Celestial Steed appeared on the Blizzard store. I’m not against the idea of paying real cash for in-game stuff as long as they’re “fluff items” that don’t give any real benefit. I’m floored by the  reaction the Celestial Steed got – by most accounts the digital horse made Blizzard millions of dollars in sales. I’m also surprised by the spectrum of reactions, from those who love the sparkly to those who think it’s a replacement for GearScore. It’s like the Marmite of products – people either love it or loathe it.

I love the reaction it’s been getting in-game as well:

“Are we still slapping and laughing at people on that stupid horse?”

“I don’t know, why?”

“Because it’s a stupid horse”

“So say the horse was a rare drop from some endgame raid boss in hard mode, would you still do it?”

“Nope”

“Right, so you basically slap people who spend money on something?”

“Yep”

Now call me strange, but you don’t see me hanging around outside a Ferrari showroom slapping people who buy a new car. I mean, why bother? You can get a perfectly good car for a fraction of the price, why pay for something that’s just cosmetically different? It’s just stupid, right?

Likewise you don’t see people who’ve picked up items from the Trading Card Game loot cards getting slapped. Some people have sunk hundreds of dollars into picking these cards up from eBay or dedicated retailers like Wootloots. Yet it’s almost seen like a status symbol – an accolade that you’re either damned lucky or deeply committed to the game to want to buy such a thing.

I wonder what the reaction would have been if it had been priced differently. Imagine if Blizzard stuck a $100 tag on the shiny horse. They’d have still shifted a few, sure. There would also have been outcry on the forums from people who couldn’t afford it. I can see the wails now.

The Price effect causes far too much aggro from the Wife boss. Standard distraction techniques like Flowers and Chocolates are having no effect. Misdirect isn’t working either – the Shoestore target dummy isn’t holding threat. I demand that Price is nerfed in order to make the encounter playable.

I think in this case Blizzard got it spot on. They set the price at a level that made it clear hat it was something special, yet was within the reach of most of the playerbase. The ability to gift redemption codes to others was also a smart move – you can always choose to give a mount or pet to a guildmate or fellow player as a special reward or token of thanks.

The fiancee also really loves the plushies that come with an in-game pet. For her the plushies are something she can add to her collection, while the in-game pet is a nice bonus. I’ve seem something similar being done with the Warhammer Online steins, where your character gets an in-game stein to use alongside your Real Life one. This kind of dual-world merchandising, where you get an in-game and physical item that are somehow related, really appeals to me.

That’s not to say I’m cool with all forms of exchanging real cash for virtual items. My line in the sand is with game-changing shortcuts that can be paid for with cash. If you’ve ever played a game fron Zynga like Farmville or Mafia Wars you’ll know what I’m talking about – being able spend real cash on gold or credits ange for cash which you can then use to buy in-game items that improve how the game plays. To me these games aren’t about fun – in fact I’ve seen barriers to fun that exist soley to make you spend money. It’s like a comedian setting up a joke, only to charge you fifty bucks to hear the punchline.

Don’t get me started on the Lil’XT pet though – the loud yells you can here from the other side of Dalaran are enough to put me right off getting it. Nothing so far has made me reach for the mute button faster than that infernal contraption. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great pet, but you know you got something wrong when addons like this one start coming out. It’s the in-game equivalent of driving around town with your car stereo on full blast just to show to everyone how crap your taste in music is.

Mage Playstyles in Cataclysm

Posted on by Gazimoff

The dust is beginning to settle following the almighty stack of class changes that came out last week. While Paladins are still waiting for theirs, the rest of the Warcraft population has been trying to work out what the changes mean for them. Mages are no exception – I wrote up an initial assesment shortly after the changes came out. There are a whole bucketload of opinions out there though that are worth digging through.

  • Euripedes starts off with a squee over the changes, following it up with a rant about the loss of Wards, the crappiness of Mana Shield and the Shaman hate.
  • Arioch has a desire to dance the Time Warp everywhere, but hates the Arcane Missiles changes.
  • Gnomeageddon is trying to be inspired by the changes, but struggling.
  • Krizzlybear is also doing the Time Warp and savouring the flavour of the changes.
  • Tarinae thinks the gains are pretty positive for mages.
  • Aurdon got crit by the wall of text and is still trying to recover.
  • ArcaneTinkerTank says the changes make him go hmmmmm.
  • Archaius thinks it’s Christmas with all the presents mages are getting.
  • Empowered Fire are excited by the changes.
  • WoW.Com has some initial reactions from their resident mage.
  • River is still waiting for more teleports. Oh, and he wants Blink fixed.

Now that the changes are out and the initial analysis done, what do the they actually mean? Can we start to work out how the typical mage will play, how the talent trees will play out and what each spec will bring to the table? Based on the information we currently have, I’ve done a rough sketch-out of how the three mage types will work.

Frost

The Deathfrost mechanic is probably the most interesting – cast Frostbolt on a mob and gain a damage buff. Now you could just carry on spamming Frostbolt, but then you wouldn’t take advantage of the Deathfrost bonus. Remember though that you’ll get random free Arcane Missiles procs, which will take advantage of Deathfrost.

But hang on – we’ve already got a spell that will make use of most of our Frost talents and it’ll take advantage of the Deathfrost bonus. Yes, Frostfire Bolt will live again in endgame raiding. In fact, as you gain more gear with the Mastery stat, this spell will do even more damage. Add into the mix talents like Brain Freeze and you have a setup that will allow you to cast high-damage spells that are instant cast, have no mana cost and benefit from Mastery.

The crucial bit is how Deathfrost will work. Is it a stacking buff that you ramp up, or a buff that sticks at the same level after you’ve cast Frostbolt once? Either way, you’ll end up with a rotation that has Frostbolt, Frostfire Bolt and the occasional Arcane Missiles proc. As the Deathfrost mastery bonus ramps up, you might even switch from one rotation to another, depending on how much bonus Frostfire Bolt gets. It could easily come out on top as the raiding spec of choice purely on the strength of Mastery

PVP as a Frost mage will be similar, except I’m expecting a lot more battleground play. There are bound to be talents that give you a boost to Wall of Fog, which are going to be incredible in rated battlegrounds. What I’d like to see though are two Wall of Fog bonuses – one in Fire and the other in Frost. The Frost one increases snaring duration, while the Fire one would increase the damage component of the Wall. Freezing Fog/Choking Fog.

I think there’s also a lot of chance for elemental mages to double-team as Frost and Fire, the Frost mage uses Wall of Fog, while the Fire mage uses Flame Orbs to send fiery death down the line from one end to the other. Depending on setup, it could easily hurt a whole group of players depending on how many get snared by the wall. A couple of classical AoEs and it’s all over.

Fire

It’s already been said that Fire Mages will play like Affliction Warlocks in Cataclysm, and the Ignite Mastery mechanic will make this even moreso. A Fire mage’s rotation is likely to shift from Living-Bomb-Scorch-Fireball then Pyroblast on Hot Streak, and change into something that focuses on maintaining DoTs and only casting Fireball or Pyroblast when you’re not reapplying a DoT or a debuff. Again, I think we’ll see a shift from one rotation to another as you accumulate Mastery bonus and the DoT element of the spell becomes more significant.

Burnout’s going to be a boon for Fire mages in raiding scenarios, as it’ll mean that they can continue casting even when out of mana. I’d like to see how this dynamic works – will it be a Life-tap style health to mana conversion, or will spells start consuming HP instead of MP? It’s also another way Mages can kill themselves, as if spell reflection and standing in the bad weren’t enough.

A Fire mage in PvP will be largely the same as it is now – great in battlegrounds where there is a chance to ramp up some serious damage against a single target or small groups. There’s also going to be comedy gold available when applying Living Bomb to multiple targets, triggering the haste buff from Pyromaniac and laying down some very quck cast Flamestrikes. I would like to see some kind of talent that will either cause Living Bomb to infect nearby targets, or that pushes all fire DoTs on additional targets.

In Arenas I expect the Fire mage to struggle. There’s no burst damage and little utility there, areas that the Arcane and Frost trees have always been good at. Let’s be honest though – Fire mages will play fine, I’d just be surprised to see them in the very top brackets of PvP. I don’t think the new Playing with Fire mechanic will help that much either – with Rogues able to stunlock a player completely, being able to AoE knockback, snare and get away is going to be tough to perform.

Arcane

I think that the Arcane spec is going to be possibly the only one that gets more annoying to play as the Mastery bonus becomes more relevant. The Mana Adept bonus basically means that in order to do the most damage you need a full mana pool. Great if you only need a short burst of damage to nuke someone down (arenas) or where you’re doing relatively short fights (solo or 5-man work). As soon as you have fights that stretch out and require you to start playing around with Mana gems and similar, it’s going to become more of a pain. Trying to keep your mana pool as full as possible when you’re in the last 30% of a bossfight is going to become a pain.

In fact, the only time I think Arcane is going to be reasonable is when you’re still gearing up at 85 and you still miss regularly in boss fights. A miss means that Arcane Focus triggers and you’ll get a small amount of mana back. With this mechanic it might make the mana management game easier, but it’s only going to be until you have enough good quality gear to hit bosses on a regular basis.

The other loss is in the three different rotations that Arcane has in Wrath. Currently there are three traditional rotations that are swapped when mana conservation, overall DPS or burst damage are required. I think that the Mana Adept bonus will upset this balance, meaning that just a single rotation becomes usable.

That said they may yet pull it back, particularly if there are talents that adjust the new Time Warp spell in some way. Currently the Exhaustion debuf lasts 10 minutes, meaning that you can’t fire off both a Heroism and a Time Warp in the same fight. If the Arcane mage is able to talent a way around this, either by reducing the duration of Exhaustion or increasing the duration of the warp, they may become much more useful.

The final kick-them-when-they’re-down for Arcane Mages is the final nerf of Incanter’s Absorption with the removal of the fire and frost wards. Euripedes pointed out on his rant (see link at the top) that Mana Shield is just not useful to mages at the moment – we have other ways of getting out of the bad stuff or avoiding damage. I agree that it really needs serious work to become useful again in order for this mechanic to become useful.

PvP as Arcane will still be doable – all the burst damage you know and love will still be there. As that fuel gauge moves from Full to Empty though the damage output will drop. It goes back to the old Three Minute Mage back from vanilla, where an arcane mage would pop Zandalarian Hero Charm and Talisman of Ephemereal Power along with your other cooldowns to do an obscene amount of damage for a whole fifteen seconds. They might rock in Arenas, but battlegrounds might be more of a sniper rather than Gatling gun affair.

Overall

If there’s one thing that’s clear from this arrangement of talents, it’s that mages will need to work with eachother and other classes moreso than ever in order to optimise their abilities. This isn’t just the Focus Magic round-robin that we currently have going, this is about syncing our crowd control and AoE together in order to deliver the best result. It’s about making sure that there’s a Scorch on the boss so that the Frostfire-bolt casting frostmage can take advantage of it as well as the fire mage. It’s about hitting Time Warp when it’s needed for the raid, and not when you need the 40% speed boost to Get Out Of The Bad.

It’s going to take some raw numbers to see how these stack up, followed by a bunch of people coding some spreadsheets, but you can see how the principles will pan out. It’s also early, but my feel is that it’ll be a close battle between Fire and Frost, with Arcane losing out as the spec of choice. It’s partly because of the mastery bonus being hard to take advantage of, but also because of the change to Arcane Missiles and how it’ll affect the spec’s rotation.

I’m also struggling to see how Time Warp will help that much. Don’t get me wrong, it means that a Shaman no longer has an automatic spot in a raid, but it also means that you’ll have a lot of Heroism shaped abilities and a huge cooldown in which to use them. Without reducing the duration of Exhaustion or allowing more than one to be used during a boss fight, there seems to be little practical purpose in spreading the ability around more.

For now though it’s a case of pulling up a chair and waiting until Beta is announced. When it opens, you can be sure that a lot of questions about the Mage mechanics will be answered by those with access to it. I think there’s something for all mages to look forward to, either in terms of how the Mastery bonuses will actually play out or in terms of how the new rotations will shape up. Either way, it’s a good time to be playing.

In the meantime, if you have your own insight into how the mechanics will play out, or want to share your own insights, feel free to sound off in the comments.

(Image Source: Poster for the stage magician Alexander Conlin)

Injecting Chaos

Posted on by Gazimoff

I’m a big fan of Lego. I like to buy the big Technic sets – the ones with pneumatics and gears and motors and so on. When I buy a set, I open the box and meticulously follow the instructions, sorting the pieces by size and colour before assembling whatever was on the front of the box. It gives me a sense of satisfaction, building a machine that does something.

Point is though, it’d probably be a bit boring to blog about. You can imagine what it would be like – going through the same motions and doing the same kind of things week in, week out. It would get old, fast.

It becomes much more fun when you throw away the instruction book, take a hammer to the car or whatever it was you made and inject a little bit of chaos. Doesn’t matter what it is. Just the mere act of playing around and making something new from the pile of bricks you have is enough. It’s a lot more fun as well – the challenge moves from being “what set of bricks do I buy next” to “what do I want to make that’s fun?”

It’s even better when you get feedback. Other ideas pop up – people suggest ways of improving the model, of other things that you could build, or share what they did that was similar. It’s also a bit of a loop – ideas create ideas.

So why am I talking about Lego on this blog? Well, it comes from Anea’s idea for this week’s Shared Topic. Would having no comments at all make us better bloggers? Would it leave us free to pursue our whimsies and desires? Or do we rely on the comments and feedback – are they integral to the creative process?

Just like buying a box of Lego, I could write about Warcraft in exactly the same way. But wouldn’t it be a boring, just reading about what quests I’d done or how my raidgroup was doing? Wouldn’t it be better if I talked about the quirky things I’d got up to with other people, what opinions I held about aspects of the game and where I’m heading next? Wouldn’t it be even cooler if it started a discussion, where we bounced ideas and thoughts around, and I used them as the basis for new topics every so often?

It’s why I write – I like to think that a new post that I write is the start of a discussion, not the end of it. I don’t like to provide the definitive answer or the conclusive proof in a blogpost, just an opinion of what’s worked for me.

For me, getting feedback on what I write is essential to this process. It might be about a problem that I’m facing, in which case I might be given a solution. It might be about an idea, in which which case others might chime in with theirs. It might be about something I’ve experienced, which might encourage people to share theirs. All of this creates positive responses, which in turn generate new posts, which generate new responses, and so on.

Besides, a little bit of chaos is a good thing.

Where Videogames Go To Die

Posted on by Gazimoff

Back when I was a kid, one of the first videogames I remember playing was Horace Goes Skiing. I was about three years old, playing this basic Frogger clone on a computer with a dead-flesh keyboard. It was great, even though it was frustrating trying to steer this character down a virtual slalom course. There were a number of other games that hallmarked my youth, from Fantasy World Dizzy through to Shenmue, stopping off at Sonic the Hedgehog, Doom, Unreal and Half-Life on the way.

It’s awe-inspiring in a way – as I’ve grown up over the last thirty years this whole new form of entertainment has grown up with me. It’s something that simply didn’t exist before my generation, yet it’s something I’ve lived with all my life.

And yet I can’t help but feel that somehow videogames are the only form of entertainment that has a built in shelf-life. I’m not talking about things like DRM or anything as draconian. It’s much more fundamental. Videogames are the only form of entertainment that is almost welded to the hardware it was created for. We expect that in time to come we will move on to better hardware, and with it newer videogames. Those older ones, the classics of forgotten generations of hardware, are abandoned and rarely see the light of day again.

Let me try and give a clumsy analogy. I have a bookshelf, on which lie a collection of books. Most of them I’ve read, some of them I’ve yet to start. But I’m in no rush – a book is a book is a book. I won’t open it one day to find the book technology has changed, or the book server has been shut down and my book service closed. It’s a kind of comfort, knowing that they will still be there and that I can get round to them, some day.

It’s the same with music – I listen to music every single day. Sometimes it’s on CD, sometimes it’s on my iPhone, sometimes it’s on computer. Sometimes I make my own music, cranking out badly plucked half-tunes on my cheap Squier Strat. But music is transient in nature, being easily movable from one medium to another. Notation on paper to bytes on a magnetic platter, it’s all the same. But I can still dig out the music I was listening to ten or twenty years ago and pull it forward, making it play on my latest gadget or gizmo. It never goes out of date.

I think it’s my fast-approaching wedding that’s thrown this into the forefront for me. One of the biggest joys in my life is being able to play videogames with other people, be they in the same living room or a different continent. I want to be able to share and pass on those experiences, and I don’t know why but I feel it all the more as I grow older. But although I can share the stories that shaped my youth and the music that inspired me as a teenager, the videogames that defined my gaming life will probably stay in the past.

Think about the games you’ve played, the characters you’ve created and the experiences you’ve had. In the case of Warcraft, you might have characters that you’ve been playing for five years or more. They have their own stories, their own paths. Even if you’ve never roleplayed, you’ve still fought battles and overcome the horrors of the world. There’s a history there full of memories.

One day the game will end. The servers will shut down and the hard drives scrubbed. Our characters will probably be long gone by then, probably only recorded in blogs like this one or merchandise like the plastic figurines or posters. And unlike a book that you can pull of a shelf and pass on to the next generation, a videogame is like a fixed point in time that we cluster around for a brief moment before moving on to the next one. Then the next one. Again, and again.

Consider that the creative endeavours of a single person might last for over four thousand years, it seems such a waste of effort that something touched by several hundred people might only live for a few years. For some reason it feels broken, as if a videogame is like a Nexus-6 replicant trying to live out beyond it’s dedicated lifespan.

In the meantime, I can only imagine that one day there’ll be a time when I’m asked about the Big Daddy figurine or the Wind-Rider plushie, and where these creatures came from. And I’ll reply:

“From worlds that once existed, but that exist no more.”

See you in-game.

Mage Cataclysm Preview

Posted on by Gazimoff

On the early hours of Saturday Morning, Bashiok unveilled the planned changes for Mages in Cataclysm. Some of them represent light touch changes, while others are fundamental changes to the way the class will work. As a response, I’ve stepped through each of the key changes and highlighted the changes that they’ll bring to the class.

New Spells:

Flame Orb (available at level 81): Inspired by Prince Taldaram’s abilities in Ahn’kahet and Icecrown Citadel, this spell allows the mage to cast a flaming orb that travels in front in a straight line, sending beams that cause fire damage to passing targets. Once it’s cast, the mage is free to begin casting other spells as the Flame Orb travels. While the spell will be useful to any spec, Fire mages will have talents that improve it, possibly causing the Flame Orb to explode when it reaches its destination.

In this copy of a raid boss mechanic, I’m hoping that this will be a targetable spell. I’m also hoping that the augmenting targets will increase the damage it causes while passing as well as the final damage it does when it arrives. I’d also really like to see some interaction between this and Living Bomb.

Time Warp (level 83): Grants a passive Haste effect much like Bloodlust or Heroism to party or raid members. It also temporarily increases the mage’s own movement speed. Time Warp will be exclusive with Bloodlust and Heroism, meaning you can’t benefit from both if you’ve got the Exhaustion debuff, though the movement-speed increase will still work even when under the effects of Exhaustion.

Although this initially feels useful, it’s essentially a tweaked copy of a Shaman’s Heroism or Bloodlust abilities. It’s also a copy of the Chrono Lord Deja’s ability in Culling of Stratholme. It’s unfortunate that it’s further ability homogenisation – unless there’s a reduction to the duration of Exhaustion we’re unlikely to see both Time Warp and Heroism being used at the same time.

Wall of Fog (level 85): Creates a line of frost in front of the mage, 30 yards from end to end. Enemies who cross the line are snared and take damage. The mana cost will be designed to make Wall of Fog efficient against groups, not individuals. This spell is intended to give mages a way to help control the battlefield, whether the mage is damaging incoming enemies (Blizzard can be channeled on top of Wall of Fog) or protecting a flag in a Battleground. 10-second duration. 30-second cooldown.

This feels like a situational spell more than anything else. I can see this being used heavily in battleground PVP (as will Fire Orb), but the raid uses aren’t as clear at present. If anything I feel that it brings back an old Mage role of add management – snaring, kiting and bringing errant adds back to the main or offtank. These old-school skills used by Hunters and Mages seem to have been dropped in favour of off-tanking.

Changes to Abilities:

Arcane Missiles is being redesigned to become a proc-based spell. Whenever the mage does damage with any spell, there is a chance for Arcane Missiles to become available, similar to how the warrior’s Overpower works. The damage and mana cost of this spell will be reworked to make it very desirable to use when available. This change should make gameplay more dynamic for the mage, particularly at low levels.

This is an interesting standout – in essence it’s extending the arcane endgame raiding rotation. It also means that there will need to be a replacement for the primary Arcane nuke for mages to use as they level up. If anything I think that this will make playing a mage more entertaining – having this mechanic interact with a Fire Hot Streak spec or Frost Deathfrost spec (I’ll touch on this later). I’m also expecting the Arcane Tree to act as a modifier on this proc chance.

We are planning to remove spells that don’t have a clear purpose. Amplify Magic, Dampen Magic, Fire Ward, and Frost Ward are being removed from the game, and we may remove more.

This seems a little dissapointing – I’d prefer to have more buttons than less, and have an increased use for this. The biggest knock-on effect for this will be Incanter’s Absorption, which will struggle to remain viable. I’m also dissapointed to see Amplify/Dampen Magic go – in pure physical fights Amplify Magic was a huge boost to healing, while Dampen Magic was a great help to the solo mage farming spellcaster mobs. The biggest resistance to using these was the duration and application of the buff – if it was party or raid-wide I think it would have seen a much higher use.

The ability to conjure food and water will not become available until higher levels (likely around level 40), as we’re making changes to ensure mages generally won’t run out of mana at lower levels. Once mages learn how to conjure food and water, the conjured item will restore both health and mana.

This is another dissapointing touch – seeing a core mage mechanic being pushed out to the middle levels. One of the appealing aspects of playing a mage is the strong level of self-sufficiency, and this changes push this aspect to one side. I’ll wait to see how a new mage levels before making a final judgement, but I’m not convinced by the mention of mana regen at low levels.

Scorch will provide a damage bonus to the mage’s fire spells. Our goal is for Scorch to be part of the mage’s rotation and a useful damage-dealing ability, even if someone else is supplying the group with the spell Critical Strike debuff. Scorch will provide the mage with more specific benefits, which can also be improved through talents.

This seems to be a hark back to the original scorch mechanic, where you had multiple Fire mages ramping up the Scorch debuff on a target. I’m also hoping for some use of this by Destro warlocks as well. The two specs used to complement eachother well, and I’d like to see a return to it. I’m hoping that it’ll work by applying a debuff to the target, rather than the debuff on the player that Arcane Blast creates.

New Talents & Talent Changes:

Arcane Focus will now return mana for each spell that fails to hit your target, including Arcane Missiles that fail to launch. We want Arcane mages to have several talents that play off of how much mana the character has and give the player enough tools to manage mana.

I like this change, mainy because it ditches the +hit component of the original. I’m hoping that we’ll see Precision go the same way, either by being modified or removed completely. Depending on it’s location in the Arcane Tree, it might be something that mages with other specs will pick up.

The talent Playing with Fire will reduce the cooldown of Blast Wave when hit by a melee attack, instead of its current effect.

Blast Wave is currently one of the spells that tanks hate mages using, mainly because of the knockback effect. Having said that, it’ll be great in PVP. It’ll also be great to augment with a Frost Nova->Blink, particularly by players with an elementalist spec.

Pyromaniac will grant Haste when three or more targets are getting damaged by the effects of your damage-over-time (DoT) fire spells.

This is a really interesting mechanic change. Currently Blizzard rules the roost when it comes to applying AoE to packs of targets. This will bring the Living Bomb Tab Flamestrike back into play, with multiple targets being dotted up before dropping the big AoE. I’m also hoping that mages will benefit from haste on DoTs in the same way that Warlocks and Shadowpriests will.

The Burnout talent will allow mages to cast spells using health when they run out of mana.

This is another steal, this time from the Warlock Lifetap. It’s going to be interesting to see how the health-mana conversion works. It’ll probably best be used while waiting for an evocation or mana gem cooldown to pop, but it also presents Mages with a new way to kill themselves. As if Spell Reflection and Standing In The Bad wasn’t enough to worry about…

Mastery Bonuses:

Mana Adept: Arcane will deal damage based how much mana the mage has. For example, Arcane mages will do much more damage at 100% mana than at 50% mana. If they begin to get low on mana, they will likely want to use an ability or mechanic to bring their mana up to increase their damage.

This is going to hit Arcane Mages hard, and probably push them back into the Arena PVP role of burst damage. In a raiding situation the Arcane Mage is going to be running out of mana towards the end of a fight, and with that drop in mana we’ll see a drop in damage. When you have players warming the floor and only a few left standing, this will not help.

Ignite: All direct-damage fire spells will add a damage-over-time (DoT) component when cast. The flavor will be similar to how Fireball works; however, the DoT component will be much stronger.

This will work brilliantly with the Pyromaniac change. I’m hoping for some stacking DoTs, so that we won’t see clashes between more than one mage. I’d also like to see these interact positively with other DoT enhancing abilities.

Deathfrost: Casting Frostbolt places a buff on the mage that increases the damage for all frost, fire, and arcane spells. The only damage spell that won’t be affected by this buff is Frostbolt.

Again, this looks like an interesting spec. I’m hoping that this will play well with Brain Freeze and Master of Elements, and that the new Arcane Missiles proc will work well with this. I’m also hoping this will encourage more Elementalist specs, bringing Frostfire Blot back into play. Having a spell that would benefit from Frost talents as well as being affected by Deathfrost will be incredibly useful.

All in, it’s a mixed bag for mages. Some good, some bad, but mostly a step in the good direction. As always though, the devil is in the detail, and we won’t see that until Beta. Till then, it’s all theory, guesswork and conjecture.