Tag: levelling

The Back Seat Guild Leader

Posted on by Gazimoff

Ever get the feeling that you’re standing at a crossroads, looking down at the various prongs of a Morton’s Fork? It’s a position that an increasing number of players are finding themselves in during the run up to Cataclysm, and I don’t think I’m an exception to that. And like many people, my thoughts at the moment run to guilds, friends and forward planning.

Like all decisions of this ilk, it’s long and complicated and involved. So rather than doing my usual stint of dispensing advice, I’ve decided to post this to solicit some instead. I’d like to hear your thoughts on this conundrum – maybe you can help me work out how to tackle it or have experiences of your own that can help.

Anyhow, pull up a chair. This may take some time…

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A Socially Aware Warcraft?

Posted on by Gazimoff

When I think of MMOs, I generally think of games that are rick in social interaction. Alongside the gigantic world and the rich environments are dedicated tools specifically designed to help players interact with each other.

But although Warcraft has developed socially with the inclusion of Real ID and Facebook integration, it’s mainly designed to connect networks together. And while the new Guild Management interfaces provide even greater control, they only enhance the existing social experiences. The in-game Calendar has helped, but only as far as co-ordinating events.

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Polymorph or Polydeath?

Posted on by Gazimoff

Spoiler Alert: Discussion of Mage talents in Cataclysm, focusing on one new talent in particular.

I feel like I’m almost betraying my class by raising this discussion. We’ve been handed a gift almost, a rare glimmering tool that would be oh-so-nice to have. But I don’t like it and really hope that it doesn’t make it out of beta in it’s current form. From what I’ve managed to read on it so far, this new talent could have far-reaching ramifications.

Since Vanilla, us mages have been complaining about  Polymorph. One of the most versatile forms of crowd-control, it suffers from a single flaw – any damage done to the target breaks the spell. There are tools like Glyph of Polymorph that can make maintaining crowd-control a little easier, but in the main it takes a mix of practice and luck to get it right.

Classic situations like a sheep wandering into a Consecrate used to be a big deal back in the original game and even for part of Burning Crusade. Nowadays though, heroic dungeons and raiding are largely an AoE affair. Simply round up the trash, heal the tank and drop Blizzard on the pack of mobs underneath. I don’t think I’ve needed to use Polymorph at all during this expansion, save a few trips into battlegrounds and some dicey solo questing situations while levelling.

Blizzard’s already announced that crowd control will play a bigger part in dungeons and raids in Cataclysm, and I’m looking forward to dusting off my old macros as a result. But they’ve also added a new talent, Improved Polymorph, to help make things a little easier:

When a target you've polymorphed is damaged, that damage is delayed for 3.0 secs.

This talent is right at the top of the Arcane tree – you can have it maxed out at level 11. On the face of it, it looks fantastic – we’ll get a bit of a safety net from all the crazy AoE damage flying around. But what happens if we take it out of the dungeon environment and use it elsewhere?

For solo and questing PvE it still sounds great. I’ll be able to pull a mob using Polymorph, blitz it with a ton of damage over the following 3 secs then finish it off if it doesn’t die from all the damage I’ve dealt it. By having it from such an early level it should also be something I can get into the habit of using, right?

Wrong. Crowd-control is exactly that – controlling a crowd of mobs to make them more manageable. There are snares like Frost Nova and slows like… well Slow, that can help out with single target mob management. But using Polymorph as a three second stun? That just feels like you’re encouraging Mages to learn bad habits.

There’s also the huge PvP issue as well. If I go into a battleground, use Improved Polymoph on a player then burst them down in an Arcane spec, I can probably get close to killing them outright for very little effort. If other people gang up on the target as well, they’re toast. It’s not clear if they get dealt all the damage at once or if it’s only delayed by 3 sec, but either way that’s going to get messy. Considering this is going to be available at early stages, imagine what it’ll do to the twink setup? I know Blizzard don’t balance around early-level battlegrounds, but this does feel excessive.

There’s also the overall battleground and arena fight style to consider. I’m fairly certain that Blizzard wanted to remove the reliance on burst damage in PvP situation. This talent seems to encourage it though – can you make the weasel pop before the polymorph breaks? I know that plate-plate-plate teams have been emerging to counter the rogue-mage-priest team, but still.

That’s not to say all is lost. I’d suggest an easy change to this talent to make it much more balanced and not nearly as obscene:

When a target you’ve polymorphed is damaged, that damage is delayed for 3.0 secs, up to a maximum of x% of the target’s health.

I prefer this as it allows the total amount of damage to be fine tuned, but still handles accidental damage from multiple sources. We’d still get our new toy, but it wouldn’t be completely overpowering.

Why suggest it? I like the concept of the talent and it’s cheapness, so I want it to make it into live. But I’m also aware of how other classes will react to the talent, and want to address that with a suggestion. The last thing I want is for this shiny new toy to be taken away before all mages get a chance to play with it.

Under the Hood

Posted on by Gazimoff

Spoiler alert: In-depth discussion of the planned changes to Cataclysm, primarily focusing on mechanics and core engine changes, leveling experience and endgame experience. All information here is public knowledge unless specified.

Over the weekend an avalanche of news came out about how development on Cataclysm is progressing. In an interesting change the majority of information was shared through a series of interviews rather than through blue posts on the official Blizzard forums (although there are some follow-ups). The removal of Path of the Titans and Guild talent trees are the two big items, along with the changes to Inscription and Archaeology.

What’s interesting is the overhaul the core game engine is receiving in order to make the overall experience better. One of the Ghostcrawler interviews mentions that the game was only expected to last for two or three years. Now they’re not just looking at the capability they need for Cataclysm but also for future expansions and development. In another interview he mentions that the revised game engine will have a number of hooks that can be adjusted, allowing for individual spells and abilities to be fine-tuned much more precisely.

What does this mean? Hopefully it’ll get classes to the stage where individual talent trees will be on an even level, so for example Fire, Frost and Arcane mages should be very close together. You’ll probably still get an “optimal” spec, but the differences between the three should be much smaller. It should also mean there’s less reliance on random-number-generation – something that the Fire tree suffers from immensely.

The problem with building a game engine is that it takes a lot of time and careful planning to pull it all together – especially something as complex as Warcraft. It’s also a problem that doesn’t scale well as you throw additional resources at it – as you scale up a programming team you can easily lose focus on the goal unless you have very tight project management. Having to put a large amount of your coding and design effort into bringing an old, creaking engine up to date is also going to pull them away from generating new content for the expansion.

The end result though is that most of the hard work won’t be visible to the player, at least not initially. It’s like changing stuff under the hood of a car, replacing the engine and upgrading the shock absorbers. It’s still the same car and works in the same way, it just remains unseen unless you flip the lid open and take a look inside.

It should however creep into the game through subtle ways, one of which being the revamped glyph system. In essence, being able to provide additional hooks into the spellcasting (or perform ability) process means that you have greater control over how they can be adjusted. Part of the change to glyphs includes providing a “middle tier” between powerful spell changes and basic cosmetic or remove reagent requirement ones. This middle tier is going to rely on the additional hooks to perform the subtle tweaks to abilities, so that the situational stuff can truly be situational and not incredibly overpowered or ridiculously weak.

There’s also scope for more interesting racial abilities, item bonuses and so on. You might find that items have properties that would work like a glyph, providing unique interactions with the spell casting pipeline in ways we haven’t seen before. It also means that we could get to the stage where an item does different things depending on the class or spec of the character using it.

Of course this additional complexity is going to be a nightmare for one team of people – the theorycrafters. As spells become tweakable in more ways, so the models used to predict their behaviour become more complex. if you think the guys with their spreadsheets and simulators have it bad now, imagine how bad things could get for them in the expansion?

In essence though it feels that in order to get at all the expansion’s content, you’re going to need to roll alts. Both Cory Stockton and Tom Chilton have commented on the amount of new quests that are being sunk into the game in order to sort out the level kinks. Improved crafting profession itemisation should also help, particularly around Inscription. If you’ve ever leveled a mage you’ll understand the frustrations around getting offhand items, rings and trinkets at the lower levels.

What does all this mean for me as a player? Larisa says that all she wants from Cataclysm is good raiding and a good guild, and I can appreciate that. But a hangover from my single-player days is that I want stuff to do in the game – zones to explore, quests to complete and characters to progress. I currently don’t feel that I’ll get that on my main character, and will have to roll an alt if I’m going to truly explore all the changes that have been brought in. Whether it’s a Worgen Mage or a Gnome Priest, I feel it’s going to be restarting that gets me the most out of this impending expansion.

Getting The Most from Refer-A-Friend

Posted on by Gazimoff

If you’re a heavy raider or arena junkie there’s a fair chance that you’ve hit burnout at least once since you started playing Warcraft. Playing the same character, doing the same content week in and week out can make the game feel repetitive and stale. Boredom sets in and enthusiasm wanes. Luckily help is at hand in the form of Blizzard’s Refer-a-Friend system. If you’ve ever fancied having an army of alts, trying out different classes or creating new roleplay characters, RaF might be ideal for you. But when should you use it and how do you get the most out of it?

First, a bit of background. The Refer-a-Friend or RaF system is designed for players to get their friends to try out the game. It offers a range of perks to make the levelling process easier and a couple of bonuses if the friend sticks to the game for a while. Simple enough so far, right? The other great thing is that it’s a great way for players to “buddy up” and work on new alts together. This does mean that either you or your friend will need to open a second Warcraft account, but you may find that the bonuses outweigh the costs.

So what are these bonuses?

  • 300% XP bonus for everything including mob kills, quest completion and even zone discovery. The bonus lasts until you both hit level 60, plus you both have to be grouped and “in range” (about 40 yards or so) for the bonus to be applied.
  • Summon Friend ability – this is great if you’re playing characters of different races, or if one of you wants to sell up junk or get training. Once per hour you can summon your friend (or they can summon you).
  • Bonus Levels – the player on the new account can gift levels to the player that reffered him. Those levels must be to a character on the same realm and in the same faction. You accumulate one gift-able level for every two that you gain normally. It means that if you level a character to 60, you get 30 levels to gift. The character receiving the levels must be a lower level than the one giving them.
  • Free Gametime – if your friend buys the game and pays for a month of play, you get a month’s play free of charge.
  • Bonus Mount – when your friend has paid for two months of gametime, you get a free mount. This mount recently changed to the only two-seater flying mount currently in-game – the X-53 Touring Rocket!

Know The Limits

There are some limitations to the Refer-a-Friend system. It’s worth keeping these in mind, as it’ll have an affect on how you plan to use it and potentially on how you spend your time in-game.

The big one is that it’s only good for getting characters to 60 – after then you’re running on your own steam. This isn’t as bad as it sounds as the quest hubs and paths in both Outland and Northrend are much tighter. There are also many more opportunities to PuG instances when you hit Outland, as you’ll not only find players who’ve emerged from RaF but you’ll also have Deathknights to lend a hand.

The second issue is that the RaF process only lasts for three months. After the time is up, the bonuses vanish. As a result, it’s probably best to avoid starting a RaF account until after any major holidays or other plans that are going to take you offline for more than a week.

The third is that it requires someone to create a new Warcraft account from the RaF invite, upgrade it to a standard account through buying another copy of the game and buy two additional months of gametime once the first month runs out. Keep an eye out for copies of the game being sold off cheaply in your local videogame store, particularly if it’s the Battlechest that also contains the Burning Crusade expansion. For the gametime you might want to pick up a 60-day gametime voucher, and while you can buy this on the Blizzard store you can sometimes find them for sale cheaper at places like Wootloots.

Choose Your Friends Carefully

If you’re still contemplating setting up a RaF partnership, make sure that you choose who you do it with carefully. You’re after someone who will stick with it for the three months that you’re going to be tied together. You also want someone who’s online at the same times that you are and has the same level of commitment to other in-game stuff that you do. The last thing you want is to set up a partnership with a hardcore raider that can’t play with you because he’s in Icecrown 25 every night.

A great way to test it is set up a 10-day free trial. See how your partnership fares over a short time period and get a feel for levelling with someone again. If it all works out then go ahead and shell out for the upgrades. If not you might want to contemplate looking around again.

Real-life friends, family members and so on make a great RaF partner because of the mutual friendship that you have. Just be sure to keep the friendship going when you’re not logged into Warcraft, otherwise the friend might feel that you only want them for their XP bonus.

Plan Your Characters

The RaF system is a great chance for you to try out a new class that you’ve never played before. It also provides a great way of getting around server transfer fees – if you’re thinking of trying out a new server then roll an alt there with a friend.

Before starting your RaF partnership, it’s worth planning out what characters you want to have, and which faction and server you want them in. Try to create a priority list – you might really want to try out a Troll Shaman but aren’t really fussed about another Gnomish Mage. Make sure your friend can work with your list as well – levelling two warrior tanks or holy priests side by side is going to be tricky.

Aim to have about three or four pairs planned when you start to give you plenty to do. Although it only takes about two days of gametime to get to 60 with the bonuses, you want to allow enough time to do your other ingame activities like raiding. You also need to think about who you’re going to give your donated levels to, with four pairs giving you two extra characters that you can get to 60 instantly.

Map Your Routes

If you’re going to be doing a lot of levelling, it’s important to make sure that you mix things up sufficiently. The last thing you need is to be swapping repetitive raiding for repetitive questing, as it’s just swapping out one boredom for another. Try and choose different zones to quest in so that you avoid duplication as much as possible. Swapping factions is also possible, although you’ll find that some quests are repeated on both Horde and Alliance side.

It’s also important to be fairly ruthless with your quest log. You will munch through quests at an incredible rate, with quests dropping from red through to green very quickly. If a quest goes grey and you haven’t completed it, drop it from your log. If there aren’t many quests for your level in an area then look at moving on. You want to make sure you’re in places where there are large amounts of closely packed quests that you can chomp through quickly.

Getting the Gear

A side-effect from the fast pace of levelling is that your characters will rapidly outstrip any gear that they accumulate. Heirloom gear is an option, but it’s not available to the person that created the new account. Plus, because of the XP bonuses on some heirloom gear you’ll end up levelling at slightly different rates.

If you can, try to plan ahead by obtaining gear beforehand. If you can craft suitable gear-sets for certain level milestones then go for it. If not, try to periodically run the larger instances such as Scarlet Monastery and Blackrock Depths in order to pick up new gear. A third person to help boost you through these instances is invaluble, particularly if you plan ahead and pick up all the instance quests beforehand. BRD itself is worth about four levels from both the mob XP and the available quests.

A great way of getting a good gear baseline is to do the last few levels (58-60) in Outland. The quest rewards there are fairly substantial upgrades on the stuff available in Vanilla WoW and should provide you with a solid starting point for life after RaF.

Still Interested?

I’ve used the RaF system a couple of times, and love the freedom it’s given me. I’m pleased with the range of characters I’ve got, especially considering that I’d have really struggled to motivate myself to getting some of them past level 20. I’m now in the position where I have lots of options going into Cataclysm and have characters that can fulfil any role. If you’ve struggled with levelling alts in the past you might find this is the boost you need.

The Composer and the Engineer

Posted on by Gazimoff

Hail to the Chief chorus music

Cataclysm

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.

Nostalgia Is A Double Edged Sword

Posted on by Gazimoff

Two of my characters have been trekking though Thousand needles recently. Jupplar has been going back to the Old World to grind some gathering skills, while my Blood Elf mage has been finishing the quests at Freewind Post and the Mirage Raceway. All the while this nagging reminder kept on creeping up in the back of my mind. All this is going to change.

Don’t get me wrong though – change is not always a bad thing. The planned Gnomeregan Offensive is something I’m looking forward to enormously, partly because it closes a storyline that’s been left hanging since I first rolled my Gnome mage five years ago.

At level five you get a class quest to introduce you to your trainer. All the Gnomish ones have a similar feel to them – they talk about either preparing for an impending offensive to take back Gnomeregan or helping to resettle the evacuated population. The mage one – Glyphic Memorandum – starts with a letter.

To: New Students of the Arcane Arts:
You are required to seek out and study under the gnome Marryk Nurribit until such time comes that you are called upon to aid your people in re-establishing themselves in a new habitation. Please, without trepidation, prepare yourself for rigorous testing procedures and a difficult acclimation process as you find a domicile and/or any form of companionship with the local denizens.

Questions regarding your duties and abilities should be directed to Marrek Nurribit.

From a roleplay point of view, every Gnome’s life has been building up to the Offensive. It’ll be the most exciting thing to happen to the race, with the possible exception of Gnome priests becoming playable in Cataclysm. While I’m expecting the landscape and questing around Gnomeregan to change and become some kind of starter area, I’m not worried about it. For me it feels like the end of a chapter rather than the end of a story.

Nostalgia can cut both ways though. A fond memory of mine is when the guild I was in took a break from running dungeons to pay a visit to the Mirage Raceway. I remember watching the races and cheering on the Gnomish rocket-car, eating ice-cream and buying a chicken. Being there again on new characters reminded me of the good times we had, but then up crept the reminder that the entire zone will change.

Outside of Warcraft, I sometimes visit places that I haven’t been to for a time. They remind me of events that happened in my past, both the good and the bad. Places like where I grew up, where I used to meet up with friends as a kid. Places like where I heard the news my grandfather died, or where I struggled through difficult times in my life. Sometimes when I return to a place the entire landscape has changed; the buildings have been bulldozed or the green fields have turned to office blocks. It’s weird and possibly a touch melodramatic, but it feels like the memory I have no longer has an anchor – that the reality of it has started to fade.

The crazy thing is that I feel the same thing about some locations in-game as well. I know that Cataclysm is coming and that with it large changes will be made to the game world. I also know that logically it’s a great thing – quest hubs that have been problematic for years will get remade, huge unused locations will be brought to life and we’ll finally be able to use flying mounts everywhere. But at the same time I won’t be able to go back to the races, sit on the benches and cheer on the rocket cars.

Now I know I should get over myself – after all, it’s just a game. None of it is real – it’s all just bits and bytes, people and pixels. Then again, just because the environment is virtual doesn’t make the emotion any less real. The pride in getting a strong arena ranking, the cheer of taking down a new raid boss – they’re still real emotions that shouldn’t feel any less valid because they’re in a virtual setting. The fun we have with others, either as silliness in guildchat or testing new skills in dungeons, is just as authentic.

I’m still looking forward to Cataclysm and the changes it’ll bring. Being part of an evolving and changing world is more than I was hoping for when I started playing, even though I surprise myself when I realise I’ve been playing this for five years. The bittersweet taste is something that will fade in time, as new experiences flood in and push the old ones into the dusty corners at the back of my mind. For now, I’m making sure that my screenshots folder is backed up.

See you at the races.

Charting the Curve of Awesome

Posted on by Gazimoff

I’ve been levelling up a newbie mage using the Refer-a-Friend feature, and it’s been a slog. We’ve gone Hordeside and have no heirloom gear, so we’re relying on instance gear, random greenies and quest rewards to gear up. The slog is worth it though – I’m now getting to the stage where the new spells remind me how cool the class is. I even reckon that this coolness gets better as you level up, like mages have some kind of awesomeness amplifier built-in.

Let’s compare it with deathknights. With these guys it feels like all the awesomeness is blown in the first five minutes. It’s similar to a fireworks display – great to look at, but you’re picking up crap from the floor for weeks afterwards.

This is probably a symptom of what happens when you have a Bored Mage with PowerPoint. But it also reminds me of how things might change in Cataclysm. Will the Curve of Awesome look the same, or will the reshaping of the game world change how we feel about our favourite classes?

Honestly, I don’t have a clue. I just like graphs.