I just saw the new Worgen gameplay videos posted on MMO-Champion, and I have to say, I'm far from impressed. While I understand that Gilneas is a human kingdom, the design and texturing are so blatantly similar to the ones currently in-game that one would almost think themselves in Darkshire if they didn't know better. The castle in the distance is somewhat interesting, but otherwise the land is rather dull.
The model animations are the worst part, though. The animation for transforming into a worgen was revealed at Blizzcon earlier this year, and it hasn't changed a bit, it's still over-the-top in terms of graphics and yet somehow still astoundingly so basic and crude. The walking animation for the worgen is my largest complaint, though. They look awkward and uncoordinated, something wolves and especially the werewolves of legend are most certainly not known for. Despite having arms that hang down past their knees, they only go down on all fours as a random idle animation (and sadly this is really the only time they look cool). Even when their racial sprint is popped, the only change in animation is a trailing white flag identical to the animation present on a rogue's Sprint.
The worgen present in Grizzly Hills have one of the single coolest-looking run animations in the game right now. They get down on all fours and literally claw their way over the ground. They seriously look neigh-unstoppable while barreling after you, and that's precisely the animation that the worgen player race should have had. Standing bipedally is a fairly common piece of werewolf lore, but running on all fours is almost universal, and looks far better than a gorilla-proportioned creature swinging its strung-out forelimbs back and forth in a crude attempt to maintain balance.
On the whole, I can honestly say that at this point I'm frighteningly disappointed with the feature that I was most looking forward to out of Cataclysm.
Sunday, November 29, 2009
Sunday, November 15, 2009
Pet Peeve of the Day: Gear Scaling
Something I've been thinking about a great deal lately is how Blizzard decided to have gear scale with raid difficulty and size, and I believe they've designed the system entirely incorrectly. Currently, 10-man Heroic instances have little to no incentive behind them other than progression, as 25-man Normal drops the same itemlevel gear and can be PuGed, and is a virtually guaranteed clear. 10H has an advantage of having slightly better itemized 245 gear, a higher loot to raider ratio, and only requires keeping 10 people focused rather than 25 (but actually requires said focus, unlike 25N), but otherwise has no true advantages over simply PuGing 25N each week.
Nothing burns quite as much as knowing I'm on one of the best progression teams on the server, yet looking around and seeing people within a couple hundred gear-score of me (or even almost equal to me) that are in some little-known guild that never raids, yet that player PuGs 25N each week and therefore has nearly the same or higher average itemlevel as me. Thus I propose the system which Blizzard should have used for the ilevel progression:
10 Normal
The easiest of the easy, 10N will have the lowest itemlevel items: 232 for ToC and 251 for IC.
25 Normal
Given it's PuGable nature and lack of true difficulty (other than keeping 25 people focused and doing what they need to), 25N will have an IL half a teir above 10N: 239 for ToC and 258 for IC.
10 Heroic
Befitting it's significant jump in difficulty over 25N, yet it's smaller group size, 10H will have an IL a full tier above 25N: 251 for ToC and 271 for IC.
25 Heroic
As difficult as it gets, 25H will have the highest IL available, half a tier above 10N: 258 for ToC and 277 for IC.
The blatant advantage of this design is that it immediately separates heroic (ie. 'hardcore') raiders from casual ones, while still allowing casual raiders to experience the content and get gear that, while not bleeding-edge good, it still quite solid. It does, however, also allow the hardcore raiders to retain the gear advantage that was the trademark of hardcore raiding for the first 4 years of the game.
Another distinct advantage of this system is that it puts 10-man Heroic forward as a viable gear progression option, as it has a noticeable gear advantage over 25N, and is only half a tier below 25H. This would serve to inspire 25H guilds to run 10H as their auxiliary raid rather than 25N, cutting down on some of their boredom (and likely complaints of the game's lack of difficulty).
The last advantage evolved from this new system is that gear progression would be a relatively smoother curve, with 4 distinct IL gear sets rather than 3, yet it would still only take up 2 tiers worth of IL. Assuming the 10N IL was placed equal to the 10H IL of the prior raiding tier, gear would show precisely a 1.5 tier upgrade per raiding tier, the exact jump currently displayed between ToC and IC. In addition, it would show a full 1.5 tier upgrade between difficulties (befitting the significant increase in the difficulty of the encounters), and only a half-tier between raiding sizes (since handing 2.5 times as many people, while definitely something worth rewarding, isn't nearly as impressive as the Heroic modes).
As a raid leader that regularly runs 10H and partially PuGs what I can't guild-fill in my 25N each week, I can honestly say that the implication that 10H requires the same effort as PuGing a 25N is a fairly potent insult to 10H teams. Given the fact that Blizzard seems a lot more interested in making sure both raid sizes are valid options for raiding then they do making sure PuG raids are as rewarding as possible, this change would alleviate much of the frustration and complaining by the more hardcore raiders (who strongly dislike seeing the visible marks of their progress become next to meaningless to the casual observer), yet still allow the more casual raiders access to the upper-end content.
Nothing burns quite as much as knowing I'm on one of the best progression teams on the server, yet looking around and seeing people within a couple hundred gear-score of me (or even almost equal to me) that are in some little-known guild that never raids, yet that player PuGs 25N each week and therefore has nearly the same or higher average itemlevel as me. Thus I propose the system which Blizzard should have used for the ilevel progression:
10 Normal
The easiest of the easy, 10N will have the lowest itemlevel items: 232 for ToC and 251 for IC.
25 Normal
Given it's PuGable nature and lack of true difficulty (other than keeping 25 people focused and doing what they need to), 25N will have an IL half a teir above 10N: 239 for ToC and 258 for IC.
10 Heroic
Befitting it's significant jump in difficulty over 25N, yet it's smaller group size, 10H will have an IL a full tier above 25N: 251 for ToC and 271 for IC.
25 Heroic
As difficult as it gets, 25H will have the highest IL available, half a tier above 10N: 258 for ToC and 277 for IC.
The blatant advantage of this design is that it immediately separates heroic (ie. 'hardcore') raiders from casual ones, while still allowing casual raiders to experience the content and get gear that, while not bleeding-edge good, it still quite solid. It does, however, also allow the hardcore raiders to retain the gear advantage that was the trademark of hardcore raiding for the first 4 years of the game.
Another distinct advantage of this system is that it puts 10-man Heroic forward as a viable gear progression option, as it has a noticeable gear advantage over 25N, and is only half a tier below 25H. This would serve to inspire 25H guilds to run 10H as their auxiliary raid rather than 25N, cutting down on some of their boredom (and likely complaints of the game's lack of difficulty).
The last advantage evolved from this new system is that gear progression would be a relatively smoother curve, with 4 distinct IL gear sets rather than 3, yet it would still only take up 2 tiers worth of IL. Assuming the 10N IL was placed equal to the 10H IL of the prior raiding tier, gear would show precisely a 1.5 tier upgrade per raiding tier, the exact jump currently displayed between ToC and IC. In addition, it would show a full 1.5 tier upgrade between difficulties (befitting the significant increase in the difficulty of the encounters), and only a half-tier between raiding sizes (since handing 2.5 times as many people, while definitely something worth rewarding, isn't nearly as impressive as the Heroic modes).
As a raid leader that regularly runs 10H and partially PuGs what I can't guild-fill in my 25N each week, I can honestly say that the implication that 10H requires the same effort as PuGing a 25N is a fairly potent insult to 10H teams. Given the fact that Blizzard seems a lot more interested in making sure both raid sizes are valid options for raiding then they do making sure PuG raids are as rewarding as possible, this change would alleviate much of the frustration and complaining by the more hardcore raiders (who strongly dislike seeing the visible marks of their progress become next to meaningless to the casual observer), yet still allow the more casual raiders access to the upper-end content.
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
Blizzard Pet Store
So I was surfing MMO-Champion and up on the front page pops a message about a Blizzard Pet Store. My first thought was that the current in-game pet store run by Breanni, the NPC avatar dedicated to the creator and administrator of WarcraftPets.com, would be expanded to include new purchasable pets, perhaps with a new token system.
Instead what I found was the most blatant and pitiable attempt to wrest more money from their customers that I've ever seen. It's bad enough that they are effectively charging us (and charging us exorbitantly!) for services like name, faction, server, or race changes, but now they want us to dump the equivalent of 2/3rds of a month's subscription fee for some of the more desirable pet models they've ever implemented, after taunting us with them for a month via MMO-C's data mining.
Honestly, this is a whole new level of disrespect to customers. I can see charging minor amounts for certain services to cover the expense of performing them, but charging for an in-game item, especially one with a purely aesthetic purpose? This seems remarkably hypocritical after their efforts to eradicate gold-selling. Is purchasing in-game items with real-world currency somehow suddenly acceptable so long as it's Blizz that gets to sleep on the bed stuffed with bills?
Instead what I found was the most blatant and pitiable attempt to wrest more money from their customers that I've ever seen. It's bad enough that they are effectively charging us (and charging us exorbitantly!) for services like name, faction, server, or race changes, but now they want us to dump the equivalent of 2/3rds of a month's subscription fee for some of the more desirable pet models they've ever implemented, after taunting us with them for a month via MMO-C's data mining.
Honestly, this is a whole new level of disrespect to customers. I can see charging minor amounts for certain services to cover the expense of performing them, but charging for an in-game item, especially one with a purely aesthetic purpose? This seems remarkably hypocritical after their efforts to eradicate gold-selling. Is purchasing in-game items with real-world currency somehow suddenly acceptable so long as it's Blizz that gets to sleep on the bed stuffed with bills?
TSO
Last night I was fortunate enough to find myself with a ticket to the TSO show here in Denver. It was a nightmare getting down, and the show started late due to some technically issues with the rigging, but it was well worth the hassle. Amazing show musically, pyrotechnically, and choreographically, I highly recommend it to anyone living near one of their tour show stops. Hit up their tour page for details.
Monday, November 2, 2009
Icecrown, Part 2
Now for the Valithria Dreamwalker fight. When I first read of this fight, I thought it was an extremely cool concept. Put the healers in the role of dps, put them in charge of the pace of the fight. It sounded like an exceptionally innovative idea for an encounter.
Then I saw the video of it...and realized that the implementation they chose makes the entire fight essentially into a long drawn-out KT phase 1. The raid still takes damage, though, so the healers are basically all on raid healing + a giant dragon, and the rest of the raid is just fighting off endless waves of undead until the healers get around to topping off said dragon. Booooring.
Then I saw the video of it...and realized that the implementation they chose makes the entire fight essentially into a long drawn-out KT phase 1. The raid still takes damage, though, so the healers are basically all on raid healing + a giant dragon, and the rest of the raid is just fighting off endless waves of undead until the healers get around to topping off said dragon. Booooring.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
