Any poster that leads off talking about how Feralas is her favorite zone is a friend of mine. Cuppycake (great name there as well) has an excellent post up about questing in WoW (warning: some NSFW language). On the one hand, WoW quests are repetitive -- most of them are either "kill 10 rats" or "be my FedEx guy" -- and they don't tend to tie in to or have lasting effects on the broader story of the game (the current Shattered Sun story excepted).
But on the other hand, it's very fun (Cuppycake uses a different word than "very"). It's a bit hard to put my finger on it, but WoW quests (most of them, anyway) have that little extra something that makes for a very satisfying gaming experience. It's like getting a star in Super Mario Galaxy. A small fragment of lasting achievement is enough to make it feel worth doing to me -- as the post says, an objective is what I need. Give me something to work for and I'll do it, as long as it feels like I'm making progress, and it isn't too slow (I'm not the best at rep grinds).
This thread over on the forums starts off a little silly (it's a complaint about Kael'thas being both in Tempest Keep and Magisters' Terrace at the same time), but later on gets into some really interesting commentary and thinking about just how the lore and story in this game works. Obviously, there are no problems with having Kael in two places at once (as Bornakk says with an epic burn, a character can be alive on page 1 and dead on page 10 at the same time), but it's interesting that that's not always what happens in the game. Griftah, for example, was never in two places at once, and neither was Hemet Nesingwary -- both of those characters had progressive lore storylines. But Kael, like Thrall, has a storyline that evolves as a character moves forward in their own storyline, and so Blizzard has placed him in two different places at once, and asked players to move their own characters to see the storyline in order.
Interesting stuff. Scuzz makes a particularly interesting point in the thread -- the World of Warcraft really does revolve around player characters, not NPCs. If you discover through quests that Onyxia is actually pretending to be a woman in Stormwind, all of the NPCs your character meets will be shocked. It's a sign of Blizzard's talent at game creation that something can be both known by most players and discovered by one player almost every single day.
Of course there's no problem with Kael being in two places -- I would rather have my character move through a changing world than have Blizzard worry about making sure "reality" was kept correctly. But it's an interesting line being walked very well -- if you do the two instances in order, you get a much better story than if we were simply fighting a generic third boss in Magisters' Terrace.
Two new improvements to announce on this, your favorite site about World of Warcraft. First of all, iPhone and iPod touch users will likely be happy to see that this site, along with all the others in the Joystiq network, are now equipped with Webclip icons (these are epic icons with a +15 to stamina, which any iPhone user will appreciate). Just make a Webclip with the browser on your iPhone or iPod touch, and our shiny icon will automatically appear on your home screen.
Think it's "ridiculous" that you need exactly 10 or 25 (or 40-- or 3) people to raid? Beefpile does. He wants a World of Warcraft that conforms to his wishes-- if he's got seven players, they should have an instance to go without grabbing three more or leaving two behind.
And there is such a game-- it's called Dungeon Runners, or Diablo II, or any other game that scales itself to match the players in it. But there are, of course, tradeoffs to such a system. If you have scalable instances (or a scalable overworld, or anything else that scales according to the people playing it), then you start to miss out on some of the development choices you can make. Many of the best bosses in the game don't work unless you have a certain number and a certain mix of characters involved, and any scalable instances would miss out on that design choice.
It's the same reason we haven't seen single-player instances yet-- because making things scalable would mean that developers would have to make everything accessible for all classes, and therefore they would lose the design that made the game so popular in the first place. If you want to play a game that scales to as many players as you have, you're welcome to play something else. But if you want to experience the content designed by the WoW programmers the way they intended, you've got to log in with what each instance requires.
Allow me to state the obvious; raiding is an integral part of WoW's design. A lot of people think that's a bad thing. They'll say raiding is only for the elite hardcore, and that it alienates everyone else. Here's a shocker; Damion Schubert -- a renown MMO designer whosegames have historically been pretty much the opposite of raider-friendly -- is not one of those naysayers.
He recently updated his blog with a strong defense of Blizzard's decision to emphasize raiding. You should read it for yourself, but the gist of it is that there are more raiders than you think, that players of a PvE game want a PvE endgame (as opposed to a PvP one like the Battlegrounds), and that because raids are re-playable content, Blizzard gets more bang for its development buck.
His ultimate point, though, is that Blizzard focuses on raiding content because that's what players want. But I wonder if a lot of those players, especially the more casual types, would want something different if they were aware of other options. And Schubert suggested that there are alternatives. What are they, and do you want them, or are you perfectly happy with working your way up to Black Temple?
The Feast of Winter Veil will be upon us in less than a week and we already know that there will be new elements added to WoW's biggest holiday. Item database and news sites have been publishing information about this year's festivities for quite awhile now, but nonetheless there are still two mysteries that are pestering me.
First of all, as you are probably aware, there is a Winter Veil quest to kill the Abominable Greench and retrieve the stolen Smokywood Pastures' treats in the Alterac Mountains. Upon completion of the quest, you're rewarded with a box that can contain a special profession recipe. Alchemy, Engineering, Enchanting, Leatherworking, Blacksmithing and Tailoring have all been represented in the possible rewards. This brings us down to my burning question: Will jewelcrafters have a new design added to the gift box this year? If so, what could it possibly be?
One of the most sought-after items in the latest patch is undoubtedly the design for the new meta gem, the Chaotic Skyfire Diamond. On my server, the Coilskar Sirens who drop the item in question have been camped incessantly since players were able to log into the game yesterday afternoon. This is understandable, since the gem is now the best of its type for most raiding DPS casters and is in high demand.
Unfortunately the recipe may be bugged. Most patterns that drop off of specific creatures are bind-on-pickup and can only be farmed by those characters that actually have the profession required to learn the recipe. For instance, the pattern for Ragesteel Shoulders can only be looted by blacksmiths. Recipes that can be looted by any character tend to be world drops and do not bind-on-pickup. The plans for the Eternium Runed Blade is an example of this type of item. On the other hand, the design for the Chaotic Skyfire Diamond lives up to its name and doesn't follow the trends already set in WoW. It is not bind-on-pickup, but it drops from specific creatures and only seems to be appearing for jewelcrafters, at least according to the data and comments on Wowhead.
What have your experiences with this pattern been like? I wasn't able to farm it up on any of my characters aside from my jewelcrafter, even after spending quite awhile killing Sirens. Did you experience something similar?
Nearly every patch includes new items for players to farm up. While these additions are typically new tradeskill recipes, occasionally other goodies are thrown into the mix. The upcoming patch 2.3 contains both of these types of items for your farming pleasure (or annoyance). I'll quickly cover the items, where they're dropping and the creatures that drop them in order to create a consolidated resource to help plan your farming once the patch hits the live realms.
First off is the new leatherworking bag. The pattern for the Bag of Many Hides can be found through the mass slaughter of the Gordunni ogres in the Barrier Hills above Aldor Rise in Shattrath. This recipe will allow a leatherworker to create a 24 slot bag to hold the essential tools and materials of their trade.
World of Raids and MMO Champion both have lists of new gear on sale, come patch 2.3, in exchange for Badges of Justice from the heroic instances, and now Karazhan and Zul'Aman raid instances as well. That's exciting, of course, but let's stop and look at these pics of the new gear for a moment, shall we?
Now, naturally, this gear is designed to fit with the general trollish theme of the patch, which lots of people are understandably excited about. The armor looks pretty good as armor goes, and it definitely brings some new visual design elements to the game that haven't been represented in any previous armor sets. But, let's stop and consider for a moment just where this armor is coming from. It looks like trollish Zul'Aman armor, but do we find it in Zul'Aman? No, it's up for sale by the only known Naaru retailer, G'eras. Does its method of acquisition have anything to do with Zul'Aman whatsoever? Well... it might if your guild has finished raiding Karazhan and gathers the heroic badges in Zul'Aman soon, then yes; but if you still focus mostly on Karazhan or heroic instances, then you might very well acquire some of these armor pieces without ever visiting those Amani trolls even once.
What we have here, ladies and gentlemen, is the appropriation of the Amani clothing design brand by the Shat'ari Naaru in Shattrath, copied illegally by G'eras, and put on sale with no proprietary settlement with trolls they are mimicking. Who knew that the Naaru could be capable of copyright infringement? If the trolls were down with that whole "I'll see you in court!" thing, their lawyers would be all over this right now.
Seriously, why is a being of pure holy light selling trollish armor with skulls and tusks and voodoo dolls on it? -- or does nobody care?
I've been doing the daily quests a lot lately (for time invested vs. reward received, they are great), but I kind of agree with a comment one of you readers made earlier this week-- sooner or later, they just feel like a job you're doing. I'm still glad Blizzard is down with the idea-- patch 2.3 is going to bring cooking and PvP daily quests to do.
But I still the idea is missing something. So this morning, we're giving the mic to you-- what would your perfect Daily Quest be? It has to be interesting enough and varied enough to keep doing day after day, and yet it has to be simple enough to do in a short amount of time. A good daily quest can't be anything that epic, either-- a daily quest to kill just one guy over and over would be a little strange, but it has to be epic enough that you want to keep doing it every 24 hours. Taking out the trash is too boring for us adventurers to call a "quest."
So if you were designing the perfect daily quest, what would it be? What day-to-day jobs in Azeroth would make for a good task for players to do for a reward every day?
Astela on Maelstrom sent us this shot of the floor in Morogrim Tidewalker's room in Serpentshrine Cavern. It took me a second to see it, but right there in the designs on the floor, you can see a Panda, calling card of one Samwise Didier, one of Blizzard's lead developers (and lead singer of L70ETC).
He's also the creators of the fan favorite Azerothian race we haven't seen in Azeroth yet, the Pandaren (I'm a little disappointed that they didn't show up during Brewfest, actually). Obviously, this is just a hidden Easter Egg done by one of the artists, right? Clearly, this isn't proof that the Pandaren helped build the Coilfang Reservoir or anything like that. Right?
It's way too soon, of course, to know exactly what powers and abilities the death knights will have; the developers themselves haven't entirely decided. Only they know exactly what stage of the design process they're in, but today let's pretend that we ourselves are the designers, and now we're in the brainstorming stage of what the death knights are going to be like, how they're going to play, and how they're going to be different from other classes. What abilities would you give them and how would you balance them against the classes already available in the game?
While brainstorming ideas, keep in mind that players want the death knights to feel fresh and interesting, so they'll be wanting unique abilities other classes don't already have. At the same time, you can't make the death knight class overpowered in relation to all those other classes -- they will want to keep having fun, too, after all. So every ability you give the death knights has to have its counter in something other classes can do, like rock-scissors-paper. If you're feeling particularly professional this morning, you can go into detail about all these balance issues, or else you can just write the idea you think would be cool.
See anything familiar about this website for a Malaysian online game called Perfect World? Yeah, so did Aerandul, and anyone else who's been to the official World of Warcraft site. They've got it all, from the feminine figure up top, right down to the menus on the side (although WoW's menus are collapsible, and this site's are not.
The game itself even looks pretty close (ok, well, not that close), although stealing WoW's look and feel are a little more common than stealing its actual website design. As for what will happen to these guys, EU CM Aeus doesn't have specifics (or maybe just doesn't know), but my guess is that Blizzard might drop them a C&D, and then either hire someone in Malaysia to see the case through, or just forget about the whole thing. As he says, we'll have to watch the website-- if it goes down or changes, then we'll know Blizzard was successful.
Overpowered on the forums wonders what the least popular instance is, and I'd say his guess of Blackfathom Deeps is probably pretty close-- it's a long run away for pretty much everyone but Night Elves, and at 25-30, there's so many more quests and things to do that BFD usually gets passed up. The other good guesses, I'd say, are the "old" late game instances like Naxx and LBRS. Unfortunately, while Blizzard tells us all about the most popular stuff in the game, they are pretty mum on what players don't like, for obvious reasons.
So how do you make an instance that makes players want to visit? Relmstein walks us through his idea of what makes a perfect instance ambiance: music, visuals, interactive features (the Chess Event is one of my favorite dungeon features, although almost all the dungeon dialogue "cut scenes" are fun for me), and memorable boss encounters.
But then again, BFD seems to have all of them-- it's a very pretty dungeon (I especially like the temple at the end), and while it might be a little short on interactive features, I really like the lore and the unleashing of the monster at the end. The last ingredient, I think, to a good dungeon, is just a storyline that drives you there. I'm sure Scarlet Monastery (except the Graveyard), and Deadmines are definitely among the most popular instances, and both of those have huge amounts of lore and mystery to make them interesting. Maybe if more players realized that Aku'mai was actually a pet of the Old Gods (or, you know, if there was a quest to kill him that explained that), BFD would see more traffic.
Gamasutra has a few Father's Day week tidbits up about game designers who are also fathers, and how that affects their work. One of their interviews today is with Rob Pardo, who is VP of Game Design with Blizzard. He talks about how he plays with his daughter, who apparently plays a mean 54 warlock. Maybe that's why they're overpowered? I'm joking, I'm joking!
Seriously, he says that watching his 5-year-old daughter play lets him in on what's "fundamentally fun" about the game-- he and his team may be working hard to tune raid encounters, but when he sees that his daughter is jumping around buildings or trying on outfits, he's inspired to put a little more flavor into those seemingly mundane experiences as well (I'm a huge fan of putting on items in the dressing room, so I know right where she's coming from on that one). WoW has always been a game that balances the hardcore with the casual very well (in the early and mid-game, if not in the endgame), and apparently the way Rob Pardo makes that happen is by playing with his daughter. Neat.
Any poster that leads off talking about how Feralas is her favorite zone is a friend of mine. Cuppycake (great name there as well) has an excellent post up about questing in WoW (warning: some NSFW language). On the one hand, WoW quests are repetitive -- most of them are either "kill 10 rats" or "be my FedEx guy" -- and they don't tend to tie in to or have lasting effects on the broader story of the game (the current Shattered Sun story excepted).
This thread over on the forums
Think it's "ridiculous" that you need exactly 10 or 25 (or 40-- 
One of the most sought-after items in the 
Nearly every patch includes new items for players to 
.jpg)
I've been doing the 
Overpowered on the forums 
Gamasutra has a few Father's Day week tidbits up about game designers who are also fathers, and how that affects their work. 
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