Caster Legendary Staff: The Lowdown

Posted on by Gazimoff

UPDATE: I’ve done a big roundup of all the most important news relating to Dragonwrath, along with a guide on how to make sure you get one as quickly as possible. You can find all this and more here!

It’s only recently emerged in the Public Test Realm datafiles, but the internet is already rife with speculation about the new Legendary Caster Staff. The dataminers over at MMO-Champion have been diligently hard at work, while the folks over at WoW Insider have been putting their theories to the test. But if you’re looking at putting your hands on one of these incredibly desirable staves how would you go about it?

Possible Caster Legendary Staff (from MMO-Champion.com)

Much like a visit to your local Ikea, this new piece of raiding equipment will come with some assembly required. You’re going to need to do a lot of raiding in order to collect all the materials needed, as well as deep pockets to pick up all those vendor-only items. You’ll also need to work with your guild or raid team in order to ensure success, just as with Shadowmourne. At the moment though we don’t know the whole picture, so a lot of this is conjecture.

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What Cataclysm Means to World PVP

Posted on by moguestposter

This guest post is from Bordy, a longtime friend who doesn’t have a blog of his own and so decided to use mine. You can find him on Twitter @snuffleorc.

Who among us Vanilla Veterans does not look fondly back to the mass battles between Southshore and Tarren Mill? Cataclysm wasn’t what ended these, but it certainly prevented it ever recurring, with the loss of Southshore as an Alliance town.

Southshore and Tarren Mill were roughly equidistant from faction cities (Ironforge and Undercity respectively). The geography of the land was suitable to mass PvP too: No town walls, roughly flat (albeit with a small slope), mostly open ground with minor cover/obstacles and a small tower in the middle. Designers of battlegrounds should take note!

Of course what actually put an end to the SS vs. TM battles was the creation of battlegrounds. These could be instanced and thus enabled Blizzard to spread the server load of all those wanting to participate. The old SS/TM battles could get very laggy, as fun as they were. Battlegrounds though do not, for the most part, offer mass PvP in open ground. Warsong Gulch is just too small (in as far as combatants go), Arathi Basin has a few more combatants and of very uneven terrain. Eye of the Storm again splits forces up. Alterac Valley comes close at times, but is spread out and more recently simply involves a chase to kill NPCs. Strand of the Ancients, Wintergrasp, and Tol Barad all involve assaulting and defending.

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One Year Old!

Posted on by Gazimoff

I’m not usually one to celebrate milestones, but I think this one is worth sharing – Mana Obscura has made it to it’s first anniversary! It’s taken a fair bit of work to get this far, but it’s also been a lot of fun and incredibly worthwhile.

The blog started off on March 1st 2010 with this post. That initial scrawl set the scene for what has been a strange and often chaotic journey through Warcraft and gaming culture. My discussion on Escaping the Vortex of Suck was probably the most memorable from the early days, and was one of those times where I was cackling like an evil henchman while clacking away at the keyboard. Shortly after that I moved the blog to it’s own domain.

Of course, I couldn’t resist doing an April fool joke last year (although some people thought I was serious!). I’ve done my fair share of other silly stuff, including a lighthearted look at the fish you can find in Vashj’ir. I also listed my three Christmas wishes, hoping for an amusing end to some of those in-game narks we all face.

I’ve also had a few rants as well. There’s been the infamous one about TERA, the one about Authenticators and the one about ‘casual’ not being a derogatory term. It’s been interesting to see the discussions these posts have kicked off.

We also kicked off The Obscurecast back in May. Still going strong and now at 33 episodes its now all grown up and at it’s own home at obscurecast.com. If you’re quick you can still enter the Talk Like A Gilnean competition running over there!

Real-life does sometimes cause a break in blogging, but last year I had the best reason ever for some time away. We had a fantastic day that still brings a smile to my face when I remember it, and some fantastic photos to boot!

So, what of the future? I’m still blogging and podcasting, although an ever-changing workload means I don’t get as much time to write these days. Still, it’s good to be able to get in front of the keyboard and put my thoughts down on paper. Even if the paper’s some kind of digital representation riddled with metaphor. Or something.

It’s likely that Mana Obscura will contain ongoing references to spellcasters in other games. I’ll still be writing about Warcraft (I’m still playing it after all!) but I’ll also occasionally talk about other games I’m playing (currently Rift, Minecraft and Dragon Age: Origins). I hope this’ll still be appealing to you, although feel free to shout if there’s something in particular you’d like to hear more of!

Before I finish up I’d like to thank everyone that’s given me help over the year. A huge amount of thanks go to the community over at BlogAzeroth for helping me with so many things. I’d like to also thank Stu, Pewter and Medros for helping with the podcast. I’m hugely grateful to Windsoar and the Mage Forum moderators for keeping things tidy there as well.

Finally, I’d like to thank everyone who’s visited the blog, posted a comment, subscribed to the feed, sent me an email or grabbed me on Twitter. You’ve helped me to keep writing even when it’s been tough and challenging, or when I’ve been running short of time and thought about throwing in the towel, and I owe you all a huge debt of gratitude.

Anyway, enough from me. Here’s to a year that’s done and many more to come!

Looking For Dramatic Change

Posted on by Gazimoff

If you ever wanted a minute by minute reading of why tanks and healers feel special, you need look no further than the infamous Looking for Dungeon tool. It’s a bit radical to see tanks get insta-pop dungeons and healers have maybe five minutes while DPS are left to sit around for maybe an hour or more.

Ever wanted to feel third-class? Just roll a pure-class DPS and watch as the queue mocks you, again and again.

But why is this? Surely if we got more people to play tanks or healers then we’d all win from shorter queues? I’m not sure. We’ve had two major tanking changes, firstly to make non-Warrior tanks much more viable and secondly to introduce a whole new class to persuade people to tank. I’ll admit that the LFD tool was introduced after these changes, but still – that means that either nothing has got better or (shudder) things were actually worse than I remember.

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The Last MMO on the Street

Posted on by Gazimoff

It’s difficult to argue against the hype that a strong retail release can generate. Pictures of gamers lining up in the cold and the dark to be the first to get their hands on a new game make for great newspaper articles and TV features.

There’s also the social part of being one of these gatherings. There’s a feeling of being a band of brothers in arms, as if we’re all members of some secret club sharing knowing winks and inside jokes.

But is it, when all is said and done, actually needed?

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Comparing Mages: Warcraft Vs. Rift

Posted on by Gazimoff

There’s a common theme among fantasy MMOs. It doesn’t matter what game it is, you can expect to find the same three character classes. There’ll always be a plate wearing warrior type that’s ready to soak up the damage and a cleric or priest (or even minstrel) type that throws out healing.

Then there’s the spellcaster. Mage, warlock or elementalist, there’s always someone throwing around balls of some description. They also tend to have similar mechanics for casting spells and so on. How can a new MMO make itself feel any different?

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Managing Limited Game Time

Posted on by Gazimoff

There are times when I miss my youth. Back when I was a student I’d be free to play the night away, blasting cyborgs in Quake 2 or bludgeoning head-crabs in Half-Life. I’d blitz through a game in four days straight, chomping through single player content like a man possessed.

The other thing was that back then I’d play through a lot of games. I’d consider buying a new title once or twice a month to give me something new to play. I’d adventure across a multitude of worlds, shooting my way to liberty, freedom or glory.

Warcraft has changed this. In the time I’ve been subscribing I’ve bought maybe a handful of other games for the PC. Gordon from We Fly Spitfires asked a great question recently about what the gaming landscape would be like without the game. For me and probably a fair few others we would never have entered the MMO genre.

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The Incredible Shrinking Raidgroup

Posted on by Gazimoff

I wanted to focus on a particular experiment that Blizzard’s been working on over the years – that of the optimum raid size.  We’ve seen raid sizes start at 40 players in Vanilla, but slowly drop to 25 in Burning Crusade and then 10 players in Wrath. With the new lockout system in Cataclysm, 10-player raiding seems to be becoming the default.

Is smaller raiding the best result through? From a content standpoint Blizzard certainly seems to think so – more groups are running 10-player dungeons than ever before, defeating more bosses and getting more loot from it. Don’t trust me – Lissanna  from Restokin did an excellent analysis of the available stats. The stats might encourage Blizzard to go further down this route by either dropping 25-player raiding entirely or producing 10-player exclusive content. After all, it’s easier to balance for ten players than both ten and 25.

Hang on a minute though – weren’t we raiding dungeons with 8 or 15 people back in Vanilla? And didn’t we think back then that they were just dungeons but nothing special? Sure, they might take an evening to clear but that was the same 5 years ago.

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Magic Mondays

Posted on by Gazimoff

Dalaran City concept art

This is a bit of an idea. You see, I’m notoriously poor at doing two things: keeping lists updated and sharing some of the great stuff I’ve found that’s been created by others. I’m told that routine helps – put together a plan of what you want to do, then do it on a regular basis. Et voilà, the routine becomes clockwork and you solve the problem. Répétez, as my French teacher used to say.

So what’s the plan? The idea is that I’ll make a post on Mondays with a list of all the new mage resources I’ve managed to find and all the cool stuff I’d like to share. No promises that it’ll be every Monday, but if I have something to share then it’ll be here.

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Encounters That Rock!

Posted on by Gazimoff

Earthen Pantheon after their first Lich King 10-man kill

There’s a great shared topic over at BlogAzeroth right now: Naithin asks what causes an encounter to ‘click’ in our minds. When do we reach that point when a boss fight switches from being a difficult challenge to possible, then to trivial? It’s a good question, but I don’t think it’s just down to preparation, planning and persistence. There’s something else besides.

For me it’s the music.

I’m not talking about the melodies playing in the background, serenading us from the moment we’re greeted with the login page to the point we click the Exit button.  I’m talking about the soundtrack that plays in my head.

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