Warcraft – Page 14 – Mana Obscura

Mixing Mage Mechanics

Posted on May 24, 2010 by Gazimoff

One of the frequent accusations a Mage suffers from in Warcraft is about our buttons. Apparently we have two of them and we spam them repeatedly. We ignore everything else on the screen – for all we care we could just have a couple of small icons at the bottom, with large yellow numbers appearing when we press them.

As mages we all know there’s more to our class than the robe and the pointy hat. If there wasn’t we’d be little different to Warlocks, except maybe with a better education and less irrational fear of sunlight. But how often have we peeled back the robe and looked at how our class works? When it gets down to fundamentals, do we really have the best game in the world?

The Gatling Gun Mage

If you think of a Warcraft Mage, you’re thinking of this guy. He spends his time casting spells as frequently and as potently as possible. The player can frequently be found mashing buttons, frothing at the mouth and cackling wildly. It’s one of those very pure and raw mechanics that instantly provides you with feedback on how you’re doing. Push Button, Receive Bacon.

It also means that being a mage is directly linked to your performance. If you’re the top of the damage meters you’re good. If you’re somewhere in the middle you need to push your buttons harder. If you’re at the bottom you’re a Warlock. It doesn’t matter what spec you play or what gear you have. If you’re pro it will show.

The Spellweaver

For some mages, a thirst emerged for something more cerebral and involved than just mashing buttons. A further concept emerged, where a mage would start by casting one spell, but would then elaborate on it further by drawing on additional components to make something truly special. Age of Conan was a game that demonstrated this, although it began to become more of a caster version of Dance Dance Revolution than anything else.

There is still this unmet dream of a mage pulling off some incredible spell, the skies going dark and the boss being hit with a column of fire as a devastating finishing move is unleashed. It feels counter-intuitive that the most devastating mage a spell has in his arsenal is the same one he’s been using for the last seventy four levels but just hits harder.

The Master of Buffs

For the real back-seat mage, the concept of dishing out short duration buffs and debuffs is a possibility. Working in a similar way to a healbot, your sole purpose would be to apply damage buffs to your party members and vulnerability debuffs to their target. Your job is then managing and juggling all those buffs to make sure the rest of the group still does shedloads of damage.

The problem with this model is that you become a passive and boring symbiote that cannot exist without a group to support you. You give them buffs, they give you loot.

Besides, there are no big yellow numbers. Well, none that you’ll see anyway. And life’s all about big yellow numbers.

The Ritualist

You remember those Warlocks? They have a collection of spells that require others to help them – the common ones being Summoning party members and Soulwells. To be fair though they also have a couple of other tricks up their sleeve – have you ever played Doomguard Roulette for example?

The basic mechanic is that a cluster of mages group together to cast spells in the midst of battle, pooling their power to launch a powerful attack at the enemy. Trouble is it means you’d need to take more than one mage with you into battle. It would also mean that as your mages died (from standing in the bad stuff of course), the amount of power in the pot would drop.

So if you were to build your own mage from scratch which bits would you pick? What would you choose from the jumbled box of parts in order to make the ultimate wielder of spells? What would you avoid completely – what would be the last chocolate left in the box? As always, leave your ideas in the comments.

The Spark of Excitement

Posted on May 21, 2010 by Gazimoff

Hype is a wonderful thing. It serves to promote new products and bring them to our attention. It’s also there to help build up excitement; to get us thinking about what fun we’ll be able to have when we’re finally able to get our hands on whatever it is that’s being promoted.

The problem I have with hype is that by making tomorrow look so incredibly exciting, it makes today feel positively mundane. It’s like I’m being reminded constantly about the boring drudgery of my boring life. It’s the kind of thing that makes me want to take a holiday. Fly south for the winter, do something interesting, that kind of thing. Wait for the snow to blow over and come back home when everything is shiny again.

I think Larisa mentions the same thing – we’re all beginning to feel a bit down at the moment. It’s like we’re being sent picture postcards from Cataclysm saying “Wish You Were Here”, yet we can’t fly out there for another 6 months or so when the ash cloud finally moves.

But hang on a minute – our lives aren’t dull and boring. We do exciting things on a daily basis, they’ve just become a little jaded and tarnished over time. If there’s anything that’s making us feel run down, it’s the routine and repetition we end up in. The boredom of repetition though is self-inflicted – we can choose to break that repetition if we desire.

So I’m making a commitment to myself. I reckon that I only play about a quarter of all the game has to offer. I normally do endgame raiding, heroic dungeons and some light RP. I always play spellcasters, moving them in the same direction and clicking the same hotkeys. Considering how much of the game there is available, that’s pretty feeble.

It’s time to mix it up a little. Time to make my own excitement.

I’m going to try and get my rogue up from level 50 to level 80. I’m going to learn the mechanics of the class, find the parts that entertain me and make me smile, and make him my own.

I’m going to get to grips with PvP in earnest. I’m going to get a full set of PvP-ready gear on my mage, kit him out properly, learn the ropes and get an arena team going. I’m going to try and find Gnomageddon’s desire to set things on fire.

I’m going to work on some roleplay themes that have been bubbling away for a while, and stop being a passive consumer of roleplay. I’m going to try and present more of a story to those I play with in order to generate in-game excitement and interest for them today.

There’s also another side to this. It means that I’m not going to be moaning at how boring things are at present and how there’s nothing for me to do, because it simply isn’t true. There are stacks of easy achievements that I don’t have, there are tons of quests that I’ve never done. I’ve not even begun to exhaust the range of content there is in the game.

This spark of excitement is something that’s inside all of us. We had it when we first started playing the game, and it’s still with us now. We’ve just grown used to it, forgotten that it’s there gathering dust in some corner of our being. It just needs to be pulled out and cleaned up a little.

Blizzcon? I’m Virtually There

Posted on May 18, 2010 by Gazimoff

The date for this year’s Blizzcon has been known for a while, but we’ve all been wondering when we’ll be able to lay our hands on some tickets. The great news is that tickets go on sale on June 2nd and 5th at $150 each. There’s more information about what you get for your bucks on the official Blizzcon site.

I’ll be watching it myself through the DirectTV feed. This year it’ll be multi-channel, so I can skip the PVP yawnathon and focus on the panels instead. Yay for choice!

As always though, the big question is what the in-game pet will be? In previous years the ‘con attendees and livestream subscribers have been given a small present, with last year’s being Grunty. Already the interwebs are rife with speculation on what this year’s will be.

Fortunately I can exclusively reveal that those of us attending Blizzcon (either in-person or virtually) will receive a Mini-Deathwing! As is traditional in these situations, there’s the obligatory screenshot below.

I think you’ll agree this is definitely a pet worth getting, and easily beats any panel or new announcement that might come out during the weekend.

The Composer and the Engineer

Posted on May 16, 2010 by Gazimoff

Hail to the Chief chorus music

Note: Minor mention about revised levelling system. Nothing that isn’t common knowledge already.

Over the last few months I’ve been using the Refer-a-Friend system to level up some new alts. It’s been a bit of a struggle – even with the perks and bonuses I’d forgotten how much of a grind the experience can be. More to the point though, it’s made me pay much more attention to the process behind gaining new skills and abilities, and how those abilities are then put to use.

Looking at it one way, learning how to play a class could be a bit like learning music. For a mage, you would start off with your basic nuking spell like Fireball, learning the rhythm of the class. You’d then build upon that with other spells, such as Scorch and Hot Streak, in order to create a rotation. The way that your fingers beat out a patern on your hotkeys is a similar pattern to a pianist – there’s a melody there that becomes increasingly complex as you gain levels. I think that it’s also true for Affliction Warlocks, learning how to weave their spells together in a well rehearsed pattern.

Looking at it a different way, you could treat it as an engineering problem, with each ability seen as part of an engine. To start off with you have a pretty basic engine that grunts along, but as you collect more engine parts you can start building some really fancy stuff. Of course if you put the parts together in the wrong way you get something that misfires horribly. Arrange the parts well and you have an engine that purrs, delivering meaty performance and incredible efficiency.

The trouble starts creeping in when you look at how you introduce new abilities to a player. Currently you hop along to your trainer, who teaches you both new skills and existing ranks of old skills at the appropriate level. And that’s it. There’s no real advice about when the new skill you’ve just learned is worth using, or if it’s helpful to your playstyle at all. Some of the best in-game resources for helping with this are other players, while Psynister’s Guides are a great “missing manual” for players levelling a new class.

But should we need these guides at all, or is this something that the game itself should do? Should the game be teaching this stuff to players instead, either through interactions with class trainers or by an extended tooltip method? Should we have to rely on the goodwill of other players in order to help us?

I think that Blizzard understand some of this problem by removing spell ranks in Cataclysm. It removes “trainer blindness” – that bit where you’re spam-learning a ton of skills. Most of the time they’ll be new ranks of spells you already know, with the occasional new one sneaking in. The idea is that by focusing your attention purely on skills that are new you’ll be much faster at incorporating them into your routine. I’m not sure if it’s sufficient to provide all the help a player needs, but I think it’s a welcome step in the right direction.

More fundamentally than this, I think that it’s a ripe time to have a look at how classes treat their skills. Do you want to treat players as composers, starting them off with the simple things and giving them a rhythm to build upon? Or do you want to treat them as engineers, handing them a Lego bucket of abilities with which to build an engine that roars? After all, the two different approaches require a different mindset and a different approach to how they are taught.

Personally I think that both are valid approaches, as players in general are a varied bunch. Some will prefer one style over another while a few will be able to handle both. By being upfront and helping to start that process, I think that players are much more likely to find a class that grips them to the end.

Maybe, just maybe, they’ll make an engine that sings.

Getting Real About Idents

Posted on May 11, 2010 by Gazimoff

Battle.Net Real ID Logo

Social gaming has been kicking around for a while. Anyone with a Facebook account knows what it’s like to be flooded with requests to join some game or another. Usually these games are joy-stealing fun vampires, purely designed to drain away any thought you had that they’re designed to entertain you. They thrive on being able to render players into such a catatonic stupor that they’ll pay real cash just to be able to press their buttons more often.

I’d lay odds that one of the big reasons people are turning off from Facebook in their droves (apart from the privacy concerns) is because they’ve had enough of being spammed by a horde of grovelling farmhands or inept Mafioso. The players themselves probably mean well, but finding hundreds of Xeroxed pleas for help is enough to try the patience of a saint. And even though you can ignore everything from one application, there’s soon another that springs up to spew forth a torrent of spam from its drooling mouth. It’s like playing whack-a-mole just to keep on top of it.

There are other ways to pull together a social gaming experience. Both the Xbox and Playstation networks use an ID that you can link to friends with and share messages. You can even use voice chat, see what your friends are playing and team up in games together. It’s a pretty slick experience and one that most gamers seem comfortable with. The key thing though about the setup on consoles is that it’s usually about playing single-player or basic team games. If I share my Xbox Live details with a friend, I’m not sharing details on all the characters I have in Dragon Age: Origins, just the games that I play and the achievements I’ve earned. I’m also using a nickname, not my email address or other information.

So why the big deal about Blizzard’s new RealID system? It initially feels like a good idea, providing players with a way to communicate with each-other no matter what realm, faction or even game you’re playing. Say you’re working on a refer-a-friend alt but a guild needs your help with a raid, it’s now possible for them to get you a message without having to resort to SMS messaging or ventrilo camping.

It’s also a big tool for Blizzard in order to encourage players to subscribe to both Warcraft and their next-gen MMO. One of my own experiences with dabbling in games like Lord of the Rings Online and Age of Conan is that I tended to miss out on things happening in Warcraft. Sometimes this is a good thing, such as when you’re after a break or suffering from burnout. Other times it can be a real hindrance – you become scared to try out your new game in case you miss something in your old one. By having a messaging system that works in both, Blizzard ensures that players can feel comfortably contactable whatever game they choose to play.

The difficulty comes with trying to match up a messaging system with more esoteric concepts, such as how gamers view themselves and their relationships with other gamers. There’s also the problems that arise from how you uniquely identify each player on the network, and how that player shares their identity with others. There are also issues with how gamers view their activities in-game and whether they feel comfortable disclosing those activities.

Gamers have traditionally given themselves aliases for use in the online world. Nicknames like my own are in common use, readily shared and exchanged. It’s how we identify ourselves and how we share that identity with others. The trouble is there are quite often several people who share the same nickname, resulting in names like switchblade6764. Blizzard’s solution was to use the only piece of information they have that’s different for each individual – our email address. In many ways it makes sense – it’s a logical identifier to build a system around. In other ways it’s a nightmare – we might use the same email address for our billing information, or for PayPal, or any one of a number of other systems. It pushes players into a situation where they have to think very carefully about who they would link up with over RealID, which in turn reduces the usefulness of the system as a whole.

As an example, I use a different email address for my guild’s website and other WoW stuff than the one I have linked to my Battle.net account. While my open email address gets tons of Warcraft related phishing emails, I know they’re fake by default because they’re in the wrong inbox. Tying my identity and my email address together removes this security. Personally, I would rather have seen a push towards nicknames instead of the current solution.

The other issue is related to presence and how that presence is handled. To give an example, when I fire up my desktop I’m automatically logged into Messenger. Across the world various people receive little alerts that I’ve come online. What they don’t get is status updates to say I’m checking my email, surfing the net, coding in Visual Studio or doing any of a hundred other activities that I can use my PC for. All they know is that I’m either online or not. And if I choose, I can set myself to “appear offline” and vanish.

The problem with RealID is that it overestimates how much of a social experience gaming really is. It’s true that MMO gamers like to talk to each other and have shared experiences. But it’s also true that sometimes a gamer just seeks peace and solace in a fantasy world, away from other people. By automatically linking a RealID to every character on every server in every game that you have, you remove that opportunity for gamers to have a solo experience in your game. You force gamers to go elsewhere and off your network if they want to play a game without being disturbed, without being watched or followed. It’s this aspect that doesn’t make sense to me, and feels like a strong oversight.

Gaming is evolving into a shared experience because players prefer them and developers want to provide them. It makes sense to try and stretch those shared experiences beyond a single game and into an entire fleet for players to meet and team up in. But it has to be done in the right way, understanding the social nuances and conventions that gamers have established and working with them. By going against these norms, developers risk alienating the very people they hope to bring together.

The Fresh 80 Mage: An Arcane Raiding Guide

Posted on May 10, 2010 by Gazimoff

Levelling a mage to 80 is no mean feat – it takes dedication, patience and practice to pull it off. This is especially true for the last twenty levels in Outland and Northrend, as instance groups are a rarity and solo questing is pretty much all that’s available. But once you’re at level cap there’s nowhere else to go except heroics and raids. This guide is intended to help you get ready to raid as quickly as possible.

Before We Begin

This guide assumes that you’re already a level 80 mage. If you’re currently looking to roll a new mage and level up to 80, I suggest you check out Psynister’s excellent levelling guides. Using these you should get to 80, but you’ll also pick up guidance on how the class works and how the mage talents contribute to the class mechanics.

This guide also focuses exclusively on the Arcane raiding spec. For other raiding specs I’d suggest checking out Empowered Fire’s guide to raiding in 3.3.3, or the info at Frost is the New Black or Spicytunas. Although Arcane is currently Flavour Of The Month, it’s worth being aware of other specs so that you can swap to them as the buffs and nerfs change things.

The final thing I should mention is that this guide is designed to get you started as a raiding Arcane mage. It doesn’t cover individual raid tactics or advanced strategies. For those, I’d reccomend the resources avaiable at the Elitist Jerks mage forums or the mage section of Epic Answers.

Playstyle

Mages are the typical glass cannon. They do a high amount of damage, but can only take very little punishment before falling over dead. As a result, your job is focused on doing two really simple tasks:

Doing as much damage as you can, over as long a time as you can. As a raiding mage, you’re looking for consistency – there’s no point to being able to frontload your damage in the first ten seconds of a fight. Having a consistent DPS rate from the start to the end of the bossfight is what you’re looking for here. You also want to stretch your mana as far as it will go – this means that you need to have a healthy mana pool and know how to keep it topped up.
Taking as little damage as possible. This means moving out of the bad stuff quickly and being very aware of what’s going on around you – dead mages don’t DPS. It also means knowing what spells you can use while you’re moving so that your DPS doesn’t plummet as soon as you start running around screaming. I’d also suggest having a good read of the healing tips for DPS, as we’re so fragile that getting on the good side of healers is strongly encouraged.

Setting Up

When getting any new character ready to raid, it’s worth spending time to freshen up the talent spec and glyphs. I’ve included a basic Arcane raiding talent spec below that’ll be useful for most fights. You might also want to have a look at it on the armoury.

From this baseline, there’s a couple of things that you can play around with if you’re feeling adventurous. Incanter’s Absorption can be a little situational, but allows you to use Mana Shield, Fire Ward and Frost Ward to boost your DPS. By dropping the points in Student of the Mind and Slow, you can throw a point in Magic Attunement to get a bit of extra range and throw the rest in Incanter’s Absorption. You can even take the points out of Ice Shards and put them in Frost Warding if you want to make this mechanism even more useful. It’s worth noting though that both wards are being removed in Cataclysm, so this additional technique might not be as viable. Experiment with it though and see how you get on.

For Glyphs, it’s again a bit of a mixed bag. There are four absolute must-haves, but the two leftovers are pretty much up for debate.

Glyph of Molten Armor is worth having as it makes all that surplus spirit on your gear more useful. Although crit rating isn’t as useful as haste rating to an arcane mage, the increase to your damage output is still significant.
Combining with the Molten Armor boost, the Glyph of Arcane Missiles will increase the damage your missiles do when they crit. It’s a win-win situation.
The last major one to go for is Glyph of Arcane Blast, as it works to improve the bonus you get from your spell rotation.
If you’re fed up of buying Light Feathers from the Auction House, it’s worth going for Glyph of Slow Fall to remove the annoying reagent requirement.
The two remaining minor slots are flexible. Most people tend to use Glyph of Fire Ward and Glyph of Frost Ward, but they’re not essential and depend on your playstyle.

Rotations

Arcane has three basic rotations: a standard one that provides the best balance between DPS and mana consumption, a light one that reduces your DPS but stretches your mana out for long fights, and an all out nuke that ramps up your DPS but drains your mana quickly.

Spam until you have four stacks of buff and procs , then cast

Your standard rotation involves casting Arcane Blast a minimum of four times. You’re trying to get Missile Barrage to proc, but you’re also wanting to make sure that you get the full boost that Arcane Blast gives. If Missile Barrage hasn’t proc’ed by the time you’ve cast Arcane Blast four times, just keep on casting it.

Spam until you have four stacks of buff and procs, up to five times maximum, then cast

This rotation is a halfway-house between doing solid DPS and having your mana stretch out over the duration of a bossfight. In fact, considerign the downtime that you get from Evocation, it can sometimes result in higher DPS. The rule with this rotation is to only cast Arcane Blast a maximum of five times. If Missile Barrage hasn’t proc’ed by your fifth Arcane Blast cast, use Arcane Missiles anyway. The casting time is longer and it’ll cost mana to cast, but it’ll also eat up the Arcane Blast stack and reset it for you.

Spam until procs , then cast straight away

If you’re trying to conserve mana, just cast Arcane Blast until Missile Barrage procs. As soon as it does, cast Arcane Missiles. You’ll lose out on DPS as you’re not get the full benefit of stacking up the Arcane Blast buff, but your mana will stretch much further.

Spam until you run out of mana

You can perform burst damage just by spamming Arcane Blast. This will suck through your mana incredibly quickly though, so only use it when you absolutely have to.

You can also boost your DPS through the use of long-cooldown spells. The key ones for an arcane mage are Mirror Image, Icy Veins and Arcane Power. Use them as soon as they become available on trash and general boss fights, or at the same time for a significant boost in DPS when you need it. Sync their use up with Heroism/Bloodlust for even greater effects.

There are times when you need to move around, like getting out of the Bad Stuff or changing fight phase. During these times, switch to using Arcane Barrage instead of Arcane Blast as it’s an instant cast that you can use while moving. You can also use Presence of Mind to make an Arcane Blast instant cast if you’re doing a lot of dancing.

It’s worth going to a target dummy and practicing all of these rotations so that you can get a feel for their nuances and build up some muscle memory. Being able to switch gears during a fight is incredibly useful, especially if several people are floor-tanking and you have a healthy mana pool to give you options.

Gearing Up

At this late stage in the expansion, your quickest way of gearing up is running heroics till you’re blue in the face. Get as many Emblems of Triumph as you can from running heroic instances and pick up the five pieces of Tier 9 gear. You’re going to need 220 emblems for the full set, needing roughly 37 instance runs to collect so it’ll take anything between three days and a week to complete. Surplus badges will end up going towards gap items (belts, rings, trinkets etc) or gems, so every extra badge is worth getting.

It’s also worth keeping a careful eye out for any other gear upgrades that might come your way. Chances are that any loot that drops will be yours if it’s an upgrade. The RatingBuster addon does help, but in order to do a quick comparison, there’s a couple of simple rules to follow:

Spell power is the most important stat, with haste rating being a very close second. If an item has less spellpower but much more haste, grab it. point for point they work out very similar.
Crit rating is the third stat to look out for, but each point of critrating is only worth about half a point of spellpower. It’s usually not worth going for if you’re going to lose a lot of spellpower or haste.
Reaching the hit cap is important for raiding, but don’t downgrade gear purely for the sake of getting more hit. You already get 6% hit through your talents, meaning that in order to be self-reliant you’ll need about 289 hit rating to be capped. Depending on the raid composition though, you might be able to increase it to as much as 10%. You might find you can get away with as little as 184. There’s a good comparison table on Wowwiki’s Spell Hit page.

When gemming your gear, there’s only four to consider. For your headpiece the Chaotic Skyflare Diamond is undoubtedly the best choice. Red or no-colour (belt buckle) sockets are best suited to using a Runed Cardinal Ruby. The orange Reckless Ametrine is the best one for your yellow sockets, while the Purified Dreadstone is the best for your blue sockets.

It’s also important to keep your gear enchanted, particularly when you pick up an epic quality item. It’s worth having an Arcanum of Burning Mysteries, a Greater Inscription of the Storm and a Brilliant Spellthread ready for any outstanding gear that you pick up. You might also want to do the same with enchanting scrolls – spellpower boosts, hit/crit boosts or overall stat boosts are the ones to look for here.

Managing Consumables

Apart from the obvious need for a large stack of Arcane Powder, you’re going to need to bring a hefty amount of consumables. As you start out raiding your performance won’t be as good as that of more seasoned mages, it’s very important to make sure that you’re prepared for the raid. Part of this is making sure that the gear you have is optimised, but part of it means that you have the right consumables with you.

Fish Feasts are pretty much the standard buff food, but a cheaper alternative might be Firecracker Salmon, particularly if you’re in a PuG. Either way, you can’t guarantee that there will always be a fish feast for you to use, so it’s worth keeping a stack of these in your bag.

Make sure you have a stack of Runic Mana and Runic Health potions, as you never know when you’ll need them. To avoid using mana potions, make sure you create a Mana Sapphire at the start of every raid, and replace it if you think you’ll exhaust the charges. Also make frequent use of Evocation to keep your mana topped up.

A good number of Flask of the Frost Wyrm are essential for raiding. There’s no need to drink a flask at the start of the raid, but make sure that you’re under the effects of one during every boss fight.

Cataclysm: My Rules of Engagement

Posted on May 8, 2010 by Gazimoff

As the new expansion approaches, there’s going to be a huge amount of information released. Blogs and websites will go crazy, posting update after update on every single detail. The web will be awash with screenshots covering every single detail.

Some readers don’t really want to be presented with news on Cataclysm, and I can appreciate that. In order to be as fair as possible, I’ve listed what I will and won’t write about as far as this expansion is concerned. This will hopefully mean that those readers hoping for a spoiler-free experience should know what to expect.

I should point out that at this point I do not have access to the beta, and I’ve not tried sandboxing the alpha client. Until further notice, what I write about will be inferred from other sources of information. UPDATE: I’m now in the Beta, so I should be able to describe content first-hand.

What I will write about:

I’ll cover class mechanics in detail, particularly for mages. This includes what spells are available and how the talent trees affect those spells.
I’ll also touch loosely on professions, where the profession has a direct impact on the class. I’ll try to keep this as generic as possible.

What I won’t write about:

I’m not going to write about specific quests, even if those quests are significantly important. I want the stories they unveil to be fresh to people
I won’t be covering particular areas of zones where there’s been a radical change in Cataclysm. Again, I want players to be able to experience that “wow” factor for themselves.

What I’ll commit to doing:

Any post that might contain Cataclysm spoilers I’ll tag with [Spoiler] in the post title. If it’s a particular type of spoiler, I’ll add that too.
Anything that I link to that might contain spoilers, I’ll also label as such.

What I ask of you:

Please don’t post comments that include quest or lore spoilers, as I’ll probably delete them. If you must, please include a link and a tag instead.
Please feel free to chime in with your own thoughts and opinions. If you’re not talking about class specifics though, please try to be as generic as possible.

I hope all this makes sense, and is as fair to as many people as possible. With a bit of luck, this will mean those who want will get to experience the expansion as a fresh and new experience. If you have any questions, please feel free to add them in the comments!

The Business with Bank Alts

Posted on May 7, 2010 by Gazimoff

We love our bank alts. We give them funny names and place them in vanity guilds. We kit them out in fine clothing, almost treating them as digital dolls. But have you ever wondered what it would be like if your bank alt took on a personality? It’s something I decided to try out with mine, with unexpected results. I introduce to you Sir Roffles Roundshield!

Yes, I am sure that you have travelled a terribly long way today. I appreciate that my Secret underground Lair here in the Swamp of Sorrows can be ghastly to get to, despite the signposts I’ve arranged to be erected outside. You see, good business is hard to come by these days. What with the ooze shortage and every local dinghy commandeered we seem to be in quite a pickle these days.

Quite a pickle.

Anyhow, allow me to introduce myself. I am Sir Roffles Roundshield, erstwhile proprietor of the Roundshield Fiscal Management Service, Murloc Express Delivery (We deliver before you can say Glaargblarrgblargh) and the long-term storage business My Big Box Is Holy. Quite a portfolio, don’t you think? I agree, being a Paladin in Lord Uther’s service was quite something, but after the terrible accident and medical discharge, the call of industry was too strong to ignore!

What, you’re not here for this? Well, let’s see what else I can interest you in…

How about the hire of my Private Murloc Army? A team of highly skilled Murlocs, trained in everything from high-impact parcel ballistics through to cave excavations and management. I even have a platoon kitted out in the latest Goblin steam-armours and weapons. I’m promised they’ll be able to hit a target from ten paces any week now!

Not the Murloc Army? Hrm…

How about my Cheese Sculpting Correspondence Course? It’ll train you how to carve everything from the humblest of truckles up to a scale model of Dalaran itself! If you’ve ever fancied yourself as a bit of an Archimonde just pull on your boots and jump right in! Of course, I can’t guarantee that you’ll have any effect on the fair city itself, but the momentary delusion can be quite satisfying. Yours in monthly installments for only fifty gold pieces.

Not the Cheese either? Well, what else could it be?

Wait… you’re not here about the Marmalade… are you?

You mean you haven’t heard?

Well, you my friend are in luck! A chance to invest at the ground floor, so to speak!

You see, I’d sent my team of Surveying Murlocs out to investigate nearby Elwyn for resources. Running a Private Murloc Army isn’t cheap you know, so we were looking for ways to supplement our income. I remember that it was just after breakfast when Lurky came up to me with a map of Stormwind. The information that he showed me was startling. A seam of Marmalade, running right under the Cathedral! Of course I need to secure a few mining permits, but I’m sure that the Archbishop will be only to happy to let me dig a few holes underneath. Besides, it could provide a surplus of catacombs!

You’re not interested? Sure I can’t tempt you?

So what did bring you here, exactly?

You wanted directions to Nethergarde Keep? Really, my good man, you waste my precious time! Holding me to account, only to squander my company like this! Good day, SIR!

Lurky, show this ruffian out! And don’t roll your eyes at me like that!

An Interlude, with Music and Ice-Cream

Posted on April 26, 2010 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 April 25, 2010 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.

Category: Warcraft