Gamers Anonymous

This week Blizzard revealed they were implementing a new system whereby in the future posting on the Official WoW forums would show the battlenet account holders name and not a character’s name from the player’s portfolio. This has followed the RealID friends system which was implemented in the last patch.

Much wailing, gnashing of teeth and threats to cancel everything from accounts to Christmas and Blizzard have changed their collective minds and decided it’s not such a good idea to have people posting under their real names. It was mana from heaven to Bloggers and various worded the pros and cons far better than I ever could. The most interesting find I managed was this one. My first thought on this is one less gnome in WoW can only be classed as progress and hopefully others would follow suit. But there is more to this case than meets the eye… (even if the eyes are standing at waist-height to a normal character….)

The real thing for me here is the claims of persecution at work for being a WoW gamer.  In particular these caught my eye:

“Now when I am sick I either need to go to work, or provide a doctors certificate (even though that is not the company policy), because as a known WoW player it is assumed that I at at home playing WoW.

When I work from home (as my role permits) I am required to provide an detailed timeline of my activities (unlike other non-WoW (or declared WoW) players.”

This spawned a debate at the Noisy Rogue. I don’t know what the laws are like in Australia but in the UK no company could get away treating two employees in the same role differently – providing the performance level is the same. Any that tried could easily be taken to an Industrial Tribunal and duly slapped down with a sizable payment going to the claimant on the basis of such behaviour being Constructive Dismissal. That suggests there may be more to the gnome’s situation than first meets the eye, but that’s just speculation.

What also came out of this was a whole bunch of people saying they would not admit to being a gamer if applying for a job or if  already in a job they would be keeping their nasty little gaming habit secret from their boss or co-workers so it couldn’t be used against them.

Its confession time: I’m a gamer and have been playing wow for years. My boss knows, the guys I work with know. I don’t advertise it but if someone asks what I was doing at the weekend and the answer is playing WoW then that’s what I tell them. I’d be shocked if it made a difference to how I was treated at work, and to be honest I’ve never seen any evidence to suggest it has caused me problems at work. I can accept there are people who don’t see the attraction to playing computer games, but then I don’t see the attraction to nightclubs with dance music or going hill walking which some of my colleagues do. I don’t think less of them for their hobbies so why would they think less of me for mine? I’ve always found in the workplace you get judged more by your performance than anything else.

In my job I manage a team of about 12 people. If one doesn’t show on a Monday because he went to the pub the previous day after the football and now has ‘food poisoning’, then I’m pissed off. Not because he went to the pub, but because he can’t perform his duties the following day as a result. The reason doesn’t matter, just the problems that it causes that the rest of the team and I have to pick up because s/he is too hungover to work. If some one arrives late on a regular basis and is too tired to work properly because they have stayed up late raiding then I don’t have a problem with them raiding, but I do have a problem with them not being able to do what they are paid to the following day. It would be completely wrong in this last example for the raider to claim he was getting a hard time at work because he was a gamer,  s/he is getting a hard time due to poor performance.

I’m really curious to find out what other people think on this subject. Are you a closet gamer, who keeps their gaming hidden from those you work with? Why, what do you think will happen if you admit it? If you are putting in a good performance at work do you believe this will be overshadowed simply by being a gamer? I’d welcome any opinions on this one.

PS. The final score on the gnome is he has resubscribed due to Blizzard backing down on the RealID thing.  Just when we thought we had got rid of one of the critters too.

Cataclysm Preparation and Caprioskas

Damn, 2 weeks since my last post. Work is taking its toll on my free time. May-June is always a particularly hectic time for me (budgets – oh the joy!). Combined with the new role and more away from home time is not making posting easy. Hell, it’s not even making playing easy. However, I have found time to think about my favourite subject when it comes to idle WoW speculation “What should I do next?”

Up to recently, I had a Rogue and a Shadow Priest as the main characters, supported by a second rogue and a DK at level 80 and a hunter, druid and paladin who are between 60-70. Between the lot of them there are different servers, different guilds, some duplicated professions and a general lack of organisation. It’s really time to get things tidied up so:

• Level hunter and paladin to 80 and max out professions.
• Decide on a home server and guild. Transfer the characters to there and operate with a base of 5 different classes and professions.
• Once the above, is completed add in the druid and re-do his professions, as those are the duplicated ones (skinning and LW, same as hunter).
• Decide on a ‘Main’ character between them all once they are together. When the expansion arrives the new level cap will make such changes easier as they will all need geared up anyway.

There has been some progress. Hunter is at 76 and Paladin at 67, which isn’t bad considering lack of playing time. Did some research on servers, so I’m not far from a final decision on that front, but I’ll confirm that once I’m 100% sure.

So that’s the master plan and Expansion route map for me. Which has absolutely nothing to do with the fair one and I deciding to go out last night, in theory to celebrate the new job, but any excuse really. We decided to do cocktails, which up till now has been something we have pretty much avoided (Unless you include Black Russians served in half pint glasses in student union bars many years ago). Nice Italian restaurant, arrived 45 mins before our table would be free to give ample time to peruse the cocktail menu. I went for a Strawberry Caprioska (I’d never heard of this before). Despite being someone who doesn’t even particularly like vodka, this is one of the nicest drink I have ever tasted. It was purchased in true amateur style. I saw the barman making a couple for some other patrons and promptly decided to have what they were having based on looks alone.  Crushed ice, strawberry, lime with vodka – absolutely delicious although does have a bit of a kick. As stated, nothing to do with WoW, but if you are ever looking for a cocktail its a fine starting point!

How to Opt in Like a Pro

While idly perusing MMO-Champion I came across this and promptly succumbed to dilemma overload. When TBC and WotLK beta options came out, I just ignored them. I decided to wait and just see the new content with everyone else. Turned out it wasn’t ‘everyone else’ though. Just about everyone and their dog had a beta key – well it felt like that anyway. I promptly got fed up hearing about how good the new content was from those who got the beta keys – “I’ll send you some screenshots too”. Oh yes, please do, I’d be lost without knowing how much fun you are having in every last graphic and pixellated detail….

The other side of it was people I was playing online with at the time (especially TBC) disappeared from the usual server we played on to the Hip-Kid Club server where only the Chosen Few (well it seemed like Chosen Many to me) were allowed to go. So the social side of idly chatting while playing died a bit too. Of course when they did show up it was ‘you wouldn’t believe how good the new zones are, let me tell you about…..’ Well that’s great, I’m really happy for you, would you now just please shut the f*ck up about the new expansion. How do you tell a friend, who is obviously excited and very positive about something, that you are tired of hearing about it? The answer has to be extremely bluntly or not at all. I’m pretty sure I did both at times.

Once the expansions shipped, those who had the beta keys became gurus. “Oh the quest  item? Yeah, its round about X,Y next to the dead ice wombat. (Thanks) And watch out for the ice wombats (Its fine, co-ords were great) they have this really nasty attack that paralyses you with tedium (OK, I’ll find the rest out when I get there) but they drop good amounts of gold (That’s enough now) and have a 4.75% chance to drop a green (Shut Up), a 0.35% chance to drop a blue (Please shut up) and a 1% chance to drop Eternal Components  (I hate you) and they’re skinnable (arghhhhhhh, what’s that f*cker’s home address, where is my axe and how soon can I get there?) Every last detail given in a helpful manner, whether you wanted it or not. Scratch that, especially when you did not want it.

Third time round and its the Cataclysm beta. Send in your details to Blizzard and if you are lucky a beta key will be yours. So along with getting access to the shiny new content first, the real deal about having a beta key is the ability to show off.  You also  have the chance to ostracize your close friends in the short-term and seriously piss off what remaining friends you have further down the line when you decide to be helpful. This should be and can be avoided. It just needs to be managed properly.

There is no point in having a beta key if no one else knows how you are one of the privileged and select few, elevated by Blizzard to a lofty position above the common masses. To be fair you probably already suspected this was the case, but its nice to see it finally confirmed by Blizzard.

First thing is immediately place a post on your guild forums giving your name on the hip-kid server, so you can ‘meet up with friends who are also there’. This ensures the common masses in the guild immediately appreciate your lofty new position.

Second up is reinforcement. When someone asks you if you want to join for any sort of group, do point out how you were just about to go off to the beta servers, but you don’t mind helping out, you’ll just go to the beta servers later. This reminds them of your lofty position, demonstrates you remain a benevolent type offering help and guidance when you would rather be doing something else and allows you store a favour in the bank for later manipulation.

Thirdly, when absent for a while log back on and announce in guild chat how you are sorry you haven’t been about much, but you have been busy with the beta and ask what’s been happening, ignore the answers,  what you are looking for is some poor schmuck to ask you “So what’s it like?” You can now hold court while they hang onto to your every word, grateful for the scraps of knowledge you generously bestow.

Next is keep them hanging on. Don’t give out all the info at once, milk the situation for all you can. Maintain an air of mystery, be the enigma. If anyone asks you something you don’t know or can’t be bothered explaining, just remind them under the terms of the NDA you aren’t allowed to tell. Make sure you say NDA a few times, it always sounds cool and professional.

Lastly is bow out like a pro. When the game does ship to the masses its time to prepare your exit. You will have a couple of  weeks while the rank and file play catch up, but catch up they will. You will need to compose an air of boredom. You’ve been there, seen that, done it all already and having done so its time to move onto the next big thing. Complain about the servers being too busy, and all these people in the same zones causing lag, no one can play properly like that. Besides, you can mention you have just received a key to the new LOTRO expansion beta so you’ll do that while things calm down with the noobs in the new zones and you’ll let people know how its going.

So in the face of all this, there is only really one question: Did I sign up for the beta key? Of course I did, I’m just not proud of it.

PS Work intervenes again, wont be about much for most of the next week.

That ain’t no rogue, boy…

For a few years my main was a Shadowpriest and he’s been getting ignored a bit for the past few months while I have been rogue-ing it. I decided to dust him off and take him out for a spin. Lets have a look at the purple one. Note firstly how he is not purple. I took a few pictures with him in shadowform and  they all looked awful. So here we have a shadowpriest ‘sans shadow’. I have always liked shadowpriests, but no matter what, they always look terrible. And as soon as you get a great looking mount (no matter which one it is) it looks awful too.

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The mounts in order were: Polar Bear, Cenarion War Hippogryph and Frostwolf Howler (just in case all you saw were three variations of the random purple blob mount). The Polar Bear was a particular woe of mine. Three  months doing crappy daily quests in Storm Peaks for a random quets reward, when I finally get it… its a purple Polar Bear. Lets get one thing straight, I don’t mind the colour purple. In fact I actually quite like it (especially for gear if you get my meaning), but it would be nice to have something that wasn’t turned entirely purple the minute I get it. Anyway I digress…

Having dusted down the Shadow Priest I tried an heroic or two and while I thoroughly enjoyed it, it was fair to say my gear sucked mightily. So I have embarked on a bit of a crusade to get him some better gear. If you look at the RSS feed from my Armory its all Tarsis this and Tarsis that. That’s likely to be the way of things for the next couple of weeks while I try for badge gear. I’m not giving up on the rogues, but they will be taking a back seat for a short while.

Last week, I was hanging around waiting for the dungeon finder to inflict me on some poor souls who deserved better when some one in the Guild decided to organise an Onyxia 10 player. I haven’t done Onyxia since it was a 40 player event so I decided to give it a go. I know this is a bit close to raiding, but hey ho, sometimes I do give it a shot. Having dealt with Onyxia (after a few silly wipes and lots of cries of ‘more dots’ and ‘-50 dkp’ (a bit close to the bone when you remeber this)) I decided I was on a roll and when they said lets go for a Trial of the Crusader 10 player event I agreed to tag along. “Tarsis, can you switch to healing spec for this one?” ehmmm that would be a ‘no’ – I haven’t healed since pre-TBC and have very much adopted the atitude of can’t heal, won’t heal and don’t heal since then. If its a question of me healing or you dying I just hope you have exalted rep with the repair merchant of your choice. Anyway, we tracked down a real healer and went for ToC(10). We struggled on the beasts and were all set to call it a night when we managed to down them. We 2 shottled the worms and one shotted everything else.I bagged a few upgrades seeing as nobody else would sully themselves with mere i232 gear and besides, we were somewhat caster light that night.

The main reason I got fed up with the Shadow Priest was that for a dps class the dps was kind of low. That’s been addressed to a fair bit and Mind Sear makes the class a lot more fun to play on trash mobs too. In the past I got somewhat fed up with having low dps as the mobs were dead by the time I’d finished casting my dots and they had hardly ticked at all. That seems to have much improved by having Mind Sear for multiple trash and a proper rotation for boss fights, With a few improvements in gear I should be verging on reasonable.

I’ll probably add some Shadow Priest flavour to the blog on an ongoing basis (unless I get bored with the class again!) and we’ll see how it goes from there. So meantime it will be Rogues and Shadow Priests. For any purists out there…. tough!

Spring Cleaning

I hoard all kinds of rubbish in my bank slots. ‘Its bound to be useful at some point, better hold onto it’ is my mantra, resulting in finding 3 characters and a bank alt all had full banks and full bags. I went over it last week and finally admitted it was probably in all likelihood just crap. I was carefully holding onto such useful things as a stack of Peacebloom, 1 Nightmare vine, 3 motes of Earth, 1 mote of Water, 7 linen cloth etc etc. With Cataclysm on the horizon it really was time for a clean out. I started listing it in the AH last week and I’m about 1k gold up already. Turns out there are people out there prepared to buy up rubbish. The big gain isn’t so much the extra gold, but the freed up bag space. I’ll be able to start off Cataclysm with the plenty of space and I’ll just have to make sure I don’t fill it up with more rubbish. Although I’m sure I remember saying the same thing when both BC and WotLK came out too. But I’ll stick to it this time, I promise. Honestly. Well, possibly anyway.

My rule on this kind of transaction is sell it off cheap. There aren’t going to be that many people out looking for motes of Earth so I try to make sure mine is the one that sells. If something hasn’t sold in 3 listings its time to vendor it. So there are people out there who can probably sell for more if they persevere long enough, but my aim is more about clearing off bag space than anything else. If I make a small profit at the same time that all to the good. I’m also not an AH Goblin so the time spent listing and relisting has more value to me than the few extra gold I could make by hanging out a bit longer before vendoring. I’m sitting with about 50k currently between my 3 main characters so that should be plenty going into the expansion. I may try to push it a bit more closer to the time but just now I’m happy where I am.

I’d recommend others start clearing out the bags too. Other people will have accumulated equivalent rubbish over the time and will probably try to AH dump in the near future which will drive the prices down lower. So if you need to clear the bank space I’d recommend now being a good time to sell. Good luck with it!

And now a Troll, mon

Before I converted to Horde I was of course an Alliance player through and through. As I have said elsewhere, my first ever character was a Paladin called Arleff (now deleted), my first ever alt was a druid called Tarsis and he is still level 33 and lounging in front of the fire in a Stormwind inn. My second alt was a Night Elf rogue called Albanas. The name coming from the old Gaelic word for Scotland (Alba) and a pseudo Elven suffix of -nas to give the whole thing an Elf-like feel. I levelled Albanas sporadically and when I went server wandering he went to Eonar for a while and got up to level 66 in TBC and thereafter did very little else as I had gone Horde. A few months ago I went back to visit him and transferred him back to Runetotem under the name of Brutaldeluxe (homage to the old Amiga game of my formative years) and got him up to level 80. But work changed and there was no way I’d be able to raid in my old Alliance guild due to time constraints so that fell apart. Aside from that I just was not comfortable playing Alliance again. There was the real danger half way through a raid I’d be targeting the gnomes instead of the mobs.

Looking for a change, I have moved him to Saurfang server and faction changed him too. Say ‘hello’ to Cimetiere the Troll rogue. Naming the Troll was always going to be hard, so I looked up some voodoo stuff on t’internet and found that Cimetiere is an alternative name for Baron Samedi, a loa of the dead. That sounds suitable for a troll rogue methinks. Having just turned 80 before I transferred him I’ve had to spend the last couple of weeks running lots of instances for badge gear, still got a bit to go, but gradually improving. I have added him to the cast and we shall see where his adventures take him.

Here we see him “hangin’ wi da Voodoo Priest mon” in his quest for spiritual enlightenment.

Celestial bankroll?

For a long time Blizzard took the Moral High Ground with the view that anything a player wanted was available in the game at some level or another. Want a 310% mount? Go get that achievement done. But nothing stays the same does it? Enter the frame the Celestial Steed and Lil’XT. The only achievement required is hitting your credit card to the tune of $25 or 20 Euros depending on location, and that’s each. They look like this:

Very pretty indeed.  But I wouldn’t buy them. In fact I didn’t think many people would. So I have been a bit surprised to see the number of characters sitting around Dalaran on their Celestial Steeds. Dozens of them! I did a little looking and it turns out Blizzard have hit a gold mine. I found this article 140,000 people queuing for the damned things! There were even worries they would sell out! How the hell could they sell out? I’m sure Blizzard have one for every schmuck in the queue and can get a few spares pretttty quickly if they need to as well. ‘Quick lads, getting those Celestial mares back to the breeding pens – we need more steeds!’ Well, it’s not quite like that. This is an infinite resource, just change the number in the quantity field in the coding and Voila: more steeds. No need to panic buy, I promise.

So onto the morals of this. $3.5m – that’s a shed load lot of morals right there. I’m with the accountants on this one, if the customer is prepared to buy it then by all means let them have it. Adam makes a nice point about the people who buy these items help keep the subscription down for the rest of us. I’d like to believe that, but I reckon it wont happen that way, or not for long anyway. Instead Blizz will be looking for maximum revenue from both income streams – subscription and purchasable in-game items. I just can’t see the latter reducing the former.

But the issue isn’t really about a mount or a pet, which despite looking different have exactly the same function as any other pet or mount available in the game without having to reach for the credit card. They may look different but there is no playing advantage to having them. The issue is how much could they make selling armor or weapons? That’s the real market, but if not handled properly they could upset the players and risk seriously reducing the player base. I’ll bet market research is underway even as I write to determine capital gained against reduced player base.

Picture the scene. Six weeks after the first kill of the Lich King on 25 man, you were able to buy any of the 10-man  loot he has for $49.99 each.  Blizzard could still claim they were not ruining the game because only the 10 man drops were being made available, and players have had ample time to kill the boss. The top raiding guilds would be OK because they won’t be focusing on 10 man raids anyway. Hell, the top raiding guilds could even claim moral high ground by killing the bosses so you other guys who don’t have the time to raid like us can get good loot too… That only 10 man loot is available, means the big raiding guilds still have the impetus to carry on and will still have some ability to score on the epeen points by having items which even money can’t buy. Now whether you agree with this scenario or not, can you try to convince me that Blizzard are not thinking along these lines in some respect? If something like this was implemented, would you really be THAT surprised?

So who would buy the epic items with real money? Those with the financial resources, but its a matter of carefully pitching the price to ensure you don’t rule out too many people by the item being cost-prohibitive for them whilst still trying to get as much as possible for it at the same time. But we create the market conditions here ourselves. Anyone who even wants to join a lowish-end raiding guild is going to get gear checked before taken into raid instances. At the lower end of the raiding guild hierarchy, they may be more relaxed but some level of gear will be required, if not no raiding for you. So the would-be raider spends time grinding through heroics and trading in badges, or he gets his credit card out and buys a couple of items which save him that time.

I’m fairly neutral on the whole thing, but having had such a big result on the current items I have no doubt these will not be the last of the purchasable items. Wouldn’t surprise me to see us practically at monthly released items in the future. For usable in-game items as opposed to Vanity only items, I think that day will come too. But probably not until after release of Cataclysm, maybe 6-9 months after that when things have died down a bit on the content front and people are focussing on raiding rather than levelling.

I can accept the moral argument for not buying usable items: ‘You didn’t put the effort in so you shouldn’t have the reward’. But the counter argument is ‘I don’t have time to put the effort in due to my work, so by buying an item all I am really doing is offsetting my lack of time by having a little more disposable income’. There’s no real ‘Right’ answer to this one. I can easily accept buying items is cheaper than grinding them if you put a value on your free time, but I’m personally not prepared to spend my hard-earned Real Life rewards on Virtual goods. 140,000 Celestial Steeds may however suggest I am in a minority.

Rogue Changes

Well now that every other rogue has given their thoughts on the new changes announced I thought I’d give mine too. Shamelessly lifted the factual bits from MMO-Champion.

New Rogue Abilities

Redirect (available at level 81): Rogues will be getting a new ability to help them deal with changing targets. Redirect will transfer any active combo points to the rogue’s current target, helping to ensure combo points aren’t wasted when swapping targets or when targets die. In addition, self-buff abilities like Slice and Dice will no longer require a target, so rogues can spend extra combo points on those types of abilities (more on this below). Redirect will have a 1-minute cooldown and no other costs.

This makes a lot of sense to me. I don’t know how often I have used a 2 or 3 combo point finisher as the mob was about to go down and its very much a case of  ‘Use them or lose them’. I think the smart rogues will be the ones who quickly learn when to store the points and when to spend them. I’m very much looking forward to this change.

Combat Readiness (level 83): Combat Readiness is a new ability that we intend rogues to trigger defensively. While this ability is active, whenever the rogue is struck by a melee or ranged attack, he or she will gain a stacking buff called Combat Insight that results in a 10% reduction in damage taken. Combat Insight will stack up to 5 times and the timer will be refreshed whenever a new stack is applied. Our goal is to make rogues better equipped to go toe-to-toe with other melee classes when Evasion or stuns are not in play. This ability lasts 6 seconds and has a 2-minute cooldown.
Everyone else has said it, and I’m no different  – this is very much a pvp ability.

“Go toe-to-toe with other melee classes” – Seriously, are you mad? I’m a rogue! The last thing I want is a fair fight. I have no interest in going toe-to-toe with anyone (unless they are several levels weaker!). Sneak up and butcher them from behind, whilst emptying their pockets at the same time – that’s my kind of rogue. If I wanted to fight fair I’d be a paladin.

I think Arena junkies will be a fan of this, I can also see it as a ‘oh shit’ button for pve when soloing. I think Blizz have given what a number of people who play Rogues want with this ability, it’s just not something I think I will have a big use for.
Smoke Bomb (level 85): The rogue drops a Smoke Bomb, creating a cloud that interferes with enemy targeting. Enemies who are outside the cloud will find themselves unable to target units inside the cloud with single-target abilities. Enemies can move inside the cloud to attack, or they can use area-of-effect (AoE) abilities at any time to attack opponents in a cloud. In PvP, this will open up new dimensions of tactical positional gameplay, as the ability offers a variety of offensive and defensive uses. In PvE, Smoke Cloud can serve to shield your group from hostile ranged attacks, while also drawing enemies closer without the need to rely on conventional line-of-sight obstructions. Smoke Cloud lasts 10 seconds and has a 3-minute cooldown.
Now this is the really curious one, and I don’t think many people will have anticipated it. Firstly, even the most hardened cynic who plays a rogue will think Smoke Bombs are cool. I’ll really be looking forward to seeing just how this looks in game. It’s just soooo Rogue-ish. It’s bad ’70s Ninja movies all over again. Smoke Bomb – Vanish – Guards taken out by Shuriken from no-one knows where….But ahem, back to the WoW version, 10 second use with a 3 minute CD means it wont be getting overly used and frankly without seeing it in-game its open to all sorts of presumptive comment. My gut feeling is it will look great and be so situational it will hardly ever get used in PvE. In PvP I’m slightly concerned about a bunch of players grouping together for an ability, it just seems to open the AoE fest for the opposition.

Overall I still like the Smoke Bomb and not be there when the smoke clears idea. Which is why I am not a games designer but have watched some very bad movies in my formative years.

Changes to Abilities and Mechanics

We’re also planning to make changes to some of the other abilities and mechanics you’re already familiar with. This list and the summary of talent changes below it are by no means comprehensive, but they should give you a good sense of what we want for each spec.

• In PvP, we want to reduce the rogue’s dependency on binary cooldowns and “stun-locks,” and give them more passive survivability in return. One major change is that we’ll put Cheap Shot on the same diminishing return as other stuns. The increase to Armor and Stamina on cloth, leather, and mail gear will help with this goal as well. The Rogue community have been crying out for reduced dependency on CDs for some time so in line with the other changes this looks like it as addressing the request – to some extent anyway. The devil will be in the detail, so again wait and see on this one.
  
• In PvE, even accounting for active modifiers like Slice and Dice and Envenom, a very large portion of the rogue’s damage is attributable to passive sources of damage. Yes, they are using abilities for the entire duration of a fight, but we want to reduce the percentage of rogue damage that comes from auto-attacks and poisons. More of their damage will be coming from active abilities and special attacks. This doesn’t actually tell us anything other than a pretty vague idea of where they see the class going. So they want less auto damage and us actually having to do a bit more? The main issue I have as a Mutilate rogue is waiting for the energy bar to fill up, so unless they reduce the energy costs of abilities then I’m not going to be able to do much different. There has been discussion (I’m not sure how official) about Haste allowing for faster energy regen, now that would certainly help, but I can see a damage per attack nerf coming in on the back of that one. Not enough detail to go on here at all.
• We would like to improve the rogue leveling experience. Positional attacks and DoT-ramping mechanics will be de-emphasized at low levels and then re-introduced at higher levels for group gameplay. We are also providing rogues with a new low-level ability, Recuperate, to convert combo points into a small heal-over-time (HoT). Well large chunks of the Rogue blogging community have really thrown the toys out of the pram with this one! We is Rogues, we DPS – not healz! Personally, I think it’s a good idea. The key here is the use of the word “leveling”. Lots of people have commented that levelling a rogue is a lot harder and more time-consuming the either say a paladin, hunter or DK. This ability I do not believe is aimed at the experienced player who already knows the class mechanics and is using BoA gear to help him. Think of the new guy to the game who has never really played before. For him/her this talent should be a Godsend.
  
• To complement the change to combo points, non-damage abilities such as Recuperate and Slice and Dice will no longer have target requirements and can be used with any of the rogue’s existing combo points, including combo points remaining on recently killed targets. This will not affect damage abilities, which will still require combo points to be present on the specific target you want to damage. To coincide with this, the UI will be updated so that rogues know how many combo points they have active. All sounds good, just need to see the exact detail.
  
• Ambush will now work with all weapons, but will have a reduced coefficient when not using a dagger. When opening from Stealth, all rogues will be able to choose from burst damage, DoT abilities, or a stun. I’m  a mixed bag on this one. Makes sense to avoid having to carry the weapons caddy around (‘Pass me the no.4 sword for this one please, my good man…’). But I’m wondering if it is too over simplified. Perhaps I just have an unhealthy liking for daggers?
  
• As we’ve done recently with some of the Subtlety abilities, we want to make sure more rogue abilities aren’t overly penalized by weapon choice. With a few exceptions (like Backstab), you should be able to use a dagger, axe, mace, sword, or fist weapon without being penalized for most attacks. A mace is never subtle, that’s always puzzled me. But pretty much as above here.
  
• Deadly Throw and Fan of Knives will now use the weapon in the ranged slot. In addition, we hope to allow rogues to apply poisons to their throwing weapons. I like this, its my kind of flavour. But I do wonder about poison procs and throwing weapons. I suspect that’s why the word ‘hope’ features there. I suspect they will want to do it and then find it doesn’t translate as well.
  
• We are very happy with Tricks of the Trade as a general mechanic and as a way to give rogues more group utility, but we don’t want it to account for as much threat transfer as it does now. It’s fine! Leave it alone 🙂

New Talents and Talent Changes

In Cataclysm, the overall feel of each of the rogue’s talent trees will change, as we would like each tree to have a clearly defined niche and purpose. The talent details below are meant to give you an idea of what we’re going for.

• Assassination will be more about daggers, poisons, and burst damage.
• Combat will be all about swords, maces, fist weapons, axes, and being engaged toe-to-toe with your enemies. A Combat rogue will be able to survive longer without needing to rely on Stealth and evasion mechanics.
• The Subtlety tree will primarily be based around utilizing Stealth, openers, finishers, and survivability. It’ll be about daggers, too, but less so than Assassination.
• In general, Subtlety rogues needs to do more damage than they do today, and the other trees need to have more tools.
• Weapon-specialization talents (for all classes, not just rogues) are going away. We do not want you to have to respec when you get a different weapon. Interesting talents, such as Hack and Slash, will work with all weapons. Boring talents, such as Mace Specialization and Close Quarters Combat, will be going away.
• The Assassination and Combat talent trees currently have a lot of passive bonuses. We plan to dial back the amount of Critical Strike Rating provided by these trees so that rogues still want it on their gear. Ah the language of the Games Designer… You say Dial Back and I say Nerf…. That said, all the above make reasonable sense.

Mastery Passive Talent Tree Bonuses

Assassination

• Melee damage
• Melee critical damage
• Poison damage

Combat

• Melee damage
• Melee Haste
• Harder-hitting combo-point generators

Subtlety

• Melee damage
• Armor Penetration
• Harder-hitting finishers

The initial tier of rogue Mastery bonuses will be very similar between the trees. However, the deeper that a player goes into any tree, the more specialized and beneficial the Masteries will be to the play style for that spec. Assassination will have better poisons than the other two specs. Combat will have very steady and consistent overall damage. Subtlety will have strong finishers.

Meh – it’s all a bit vague isn’t it? Sort of stating the obvious which will attract little criticism but doesn’t really tell us much. Keeping us hanging on for the next installment.

Overall I’m slightly disappointed with the whole bunch. They have addressed a number of concerns of the class and tried to make the class more attractive to new players as well, so that’s all good. But aside from the Smoke Bomb (which you only get at level cap) I don’t see much new in there other than tweaking the mechanics (and by the sounds of things doing it well). I was looking for something a bit more flashy as well as the tweaks. It’s all just a bit too much ‘sensible’ and not enough ‘fun’ factor.

WoW – MMORPG or just MMO?

Most Tuesday nights I meet up with a few friends and we play Role Playing Games. There’s about 4 of us and we have been doing this for several years. The evening is  more about banter and humour than serious role-playing, but that’s the way we like it. We have also all played WoW to some degree or another.  With my look at a RP server, I can safely conclude that’s nothing like what we do on a Tuesday night. WoW RPers are into free style RP and make it up as they go along with no end in sight. We use bought scenarios and there is usually a goal to be reached – sometimes we even reach it.

We are currently playing Pathfinder, which is a system I have begun to really like. Seeing as it’s a fantasy based game its hard not to draw comparisons with WoW (seeing that is my other major time-sink). A tabletop RPG is only as good as the people playing it and especially the person running it. But I have noticed there is a flavour to our Tuesday night games which just doesn’t appear in WoW.

Currently our Tuesday night game has our low-level characters (mixture of 3 x lvl 3 and a lvl 2) infiltrating (read hack, slash, kill and burn anything in our way) a goblin camp in an old fort in order to discover the nefarious plans of the as yet unseen bad guy who has been using these Goblins to create problems for the locals. Its standard plot stuff but no less fun for it. But here are some samples of the sort of thing you just don’t get in WoW:

• We take out the goblin sentries in the tower from range with bows. As we approach the tower we notice a strong smell of some kind of preservative, a bit like vinegar. What diabolic deeds have we intruded upon? As we make our way cautiously  into the tower the smell only gets stronger. When we get to the upper level we find a goblin with an arrow through his head and broken jar of pickles lying at his feet.  You just don’t get flavour (sorry!) like that in WoW. Its entirely visual, nothing to do with the other senses.
• As we continue through the fort we stumble into a patrol, 3 more goblins and two goblin hound/mastiff type creatures. One of the Goblins is holding a string with a seagull flying about 4 feet above his head flapping rather angrily. The two other Goblins are carrying several stones each. Turns out we have interrupted a game where the goblins take it in turn to throw stones at the seagull, the one that kills the seagull gets to eat it. The Goblin with the string jerks violently on the string to make aiming harder for the other two, if they run out of stones, the Goblin with the string gets to eat the seagull! It’s just fantastic! And we never see anything like that in WoW, we are too busy killing ten kobolds on order to loot the candles.
• We meet the caster boss, being the fighter I charge in 2h sword swinging and with a simple spell my sword is obliterated from the Shatter spell cast on it (I’m onto my third 2h sword now….). Imagine if when squaring off to the Lich King the first thing he did was destroy the tank’s sword? Talk about an agro reset? Imagine the whining from the players when their high ilvl epics were turned into dust on the first encounter? The forums would be ablaze with “WTF Blizz?????”

All the above work really well in a table top environment and ensure laughs a plenty. They could not translate into WoW, not without horrendous (and prohibitive) cost. I still rate WoW as the best online game out there, but it’s not a RPG, it’s just a fantasy MMO with all its limitations. I can accept some players are happy to free-form RP a bit, but standing around in Silvermoon trying to come up with another way of doing /angst is not for me. Give me the Goblins any time!

The Great DKP Debate

I’m (surprisingly enough) not in a raiding guild. Instead my mains hang around a guild which is generally a casual/social guild but is also big enough to cater for all types and they do raid from time to time. Not seriously, but that doesn’t mean they are complacent about it when they do and they like to down bosses. The times and days of raids don’t suit me so I can’t see my participation (or lack thereof) changing.

Prior to new content being released and not a lot happening, all there really is to do for the typical player is grind through raid bosses. It can all be a bit tedious at times so people look for other things to do. One other thing to do in a casual/social guild is bitch about the loot and suggest the introduction of a dkp system. Our guild seems to go through a cyclical approach to dkp.  We don’t use it and never have any problems, we get bored, we have a minority push for introduction of dkp, we have lots of debate about it, introduce it anyway, get new content and stop being bored, drop the dkp system because we are all focussing on the new content, then we get bored again etc etc. Somewhere in there the minority who insisted on having the dkp system leave for a more progression orientated guild and we end up with new recruits who missed the whole thing but some of whom when they get a bit bored suggest perhaps we should implement a dkp system. So that’s what happened at the start of last week, someone started a ‘change the looting system’ thread on the guild boards. This quickly turned into how DKP was much fairer and in his old guild he ran a system which much superior to our current system which is basically giving the loot to who ever needs it while its shared as evenly as possible.

In a raiding guild I can see why DKP is a requirement, but in a casual guild it’s so much of a minefield. On our forum boards we had 6 pages of comments on the DKP thread, anything else never gets beyond about 2, maybe 3 at a push. One thing led to another and we ended up having a vote where 11% said they wanted the current system overhauled, 20% said they would like to see some changes made to the current system and 63% said they would like the system left as is and 6% didn’t raid therefore did not express a preference. My view was the matter was therefore dealt with. The majority had spoken. But no, the instigator (now an officer for about a week) behind the push for DKP was not to be deterred. That such a significant percentage wanted the system changed obviously indicated we had a serious problem and needed to spend more time finding alternatives…. This was then followed with a request that anyone concerned about the system should speak up and those who were content with the current system please remain quiet  – their views were “less important” – I kid you not.

Fool that I am I called him on it. I should just have kept quiet, it’s not like I raid anyway, they can divide their loot up any way they want without it affecting me.  But there is nothing like someone trying to manipulate figures and push a personal agenda to really piss me off. I also hate being told my opinion is less important than others! I waded in and next thing we are up to 10 pages of comments and the other officers are pleading for a cooling off period and no more posts till things settle. It’s a sensible request too. It’s also a pretty typical reaction to whenever the dkp subject gets raised too. I have no excuses on this one, I have seen the subject and the resultant drama before, yet I still went ahead and fired it up some more rather than have some buffoon ensure he gets his ‘lewtz’ faster. I may have stuck to my guns and explained why I believe the buffoon is not only wrong but trying to manipulate others, but did it actually help anyone?

I’m left questioning my membership of the guild. Firstly, if the buffoon is a the kind of person who gets made an officer, perhaps its time I accepted the guild and I no longer have so much in common and its time to find pastures new.  That leads into the ‘ok, but what….?’ situation. I don’t have any immediate answers to that one. Although I did see that I’m not the only one going through such thoughts (nothing to do with my guild here, just another blogger pondering his next moves).

Secondly, I’m not sure why I got so riled by the buffoon’s machinations. It’s not like he has any real bearing on my normal gameplay. Perhaps I just need a new challenge in the game and this was just something to divert my energies into.

None of this has me feeling it was wrong to call the buffoon on what he was up to – I just wish it had been someone else. That way I could have agreed with them without becoming embroiled in the drama myself.

I’ll be curious to see how the whole thing ends (this time).

To finish on a lighter note, bonus points if anyone can guess the class of the buffoon’s main.