Yeah, I’m going to pick on warriors. I’ve been running instances from the teens up through the high 20s on Rhododendron and Brynhild, and while occasionally you’ll get something like Softi’s hunter with a growling, aggressive pet, or someone DPSing in Ragefire Chasm in bearform (because they don’t have cat yet, and evidently missed that part of the pesky tooltip for Maul (Rank 1) that says it causes high amounts of threat), the biggest issue I’ve had has been with warriors. Absolutely. Idiotic. Warriors.

Our latest shining winner, Darca of Drak’thul, ended up in a Stockades run with us after one of our DPS unexpectedly had to go, shortly before fighting Bazil. No, not Basil, Bazil. (Side note: Stocks sucks as Horde. The only thing I get out of it? Lots of wool.) Shoulda known something was up when as soon as she zoned in, she ran directly to the first mob in front of her, hit it with her sword, and Thunderstomped. Pardon me… what? Feral Faerie Fire, Growl, quit stealin’ mah mobs.

So we got to the three-way room before Bazil, and I couldn’t remember if it was him or Dextren Ward that has the fear (spoiler: it’s Dextren), so we went to clear the side rooms. I had no more than turned my fat furry bear ass to face the room before Darca … once again pulled. The entire room. My only response was "you know you’re not the tank, right?" No response. Once again, I grabbed threat back, we beat up all the inmates, we beat up Bazil Thredd, and we got our goodie bag. Our mage goes, "Requeue?" To which I have no objections; I figure if Darca keeps misbehaving, we can always boot her.

Unrelated: I wonder if the Alliance are ever confused about why their prison riot started? One minute they’re having a prison riot, next thing you know, a bunch of Horde warriors teleport in, smack down all the prisoners, and teleport out.

Also unrelated: I have to give credit to the Defias Convicts, for having the balls to backhand a bear.

We requeue, and huzzah, Stockades! Because the RNG has a horrible sense of humor. Darca immediately pulls; we finish and I say politely, "Darca, please let me pull."

Darca promptly runs into the room to our left, aggros everything in the room, and dies.

Then spirit rezzes outside.

And hearths to Tarren Mill.

So we four-man the rest of Stocks, with me periodically checking if we can boot Darca (I could’ve sworn they got rid of the minimum time to kick; if it was in the patch notes, it’s a lie), and manage to finish before the cooldown because this time we just went straight to Bazil Thredd. Beat him down, requeued, and… Darca picks no role.

Requeue. Darca picks no role. Requeue. Darca picks no role.

Vote to Kick Darca? You can’t kick people after the instance is over. What kind of idiocy is that?

So you might be asking, "what’s so unique about this story?" Nothing. If I had 50g for every arms or fury warrior wielding sword-and-board and trying to tank an instance when they queued as DPS, I’d have two damned mammoths. Does anyone have any idea why this happens? What is it about this particular class that seems to be attracting all the derp derp derp members of WoW society?

Thanks for reading this post from: The Stoppable Force.

What is it with warriors?

A while ago, in a post on my new UI, I posted this screenshot, which includes a little peek into my wallet. See 353 gold shown in that bar in Fortress? That’s basically what I have on my toon at all times.

Let that sink in, because as far as I can tell, no one really understands that. "Oh, well you can just pick up blahblahblah for cheap." No I fucking can’t, pardon my French.

I’m in a near-permanent state where single epic gems are expensive, some enchants are unbuyable, the craftables from Crusader’s Orbs are out of reach even after getting emblems to get the orbs (and even one piece of Primal Saronite is way beyond my budget). Darkmoon Cards are unpurchasable. Essentially I manage to keep enough to repair after raids or astoundingly bad heroics, stock up on consumables again, and then that’s it.

I have neither the patience nor the intelligence to play the Auction House. I’ve tried it – I’ve followed the advice of Arthas-damned Auctioneer geniuses and I lose money, every single time. I don’t know what to farm because I have no idea what I should be farming. I can’t fund myself entirely through dailies like I used to in TBC (this is not a new problem, in case it wasn’t obvious – I had to borrow 500g to even get epic flying for my DK, and that was the most gold I’d ever had, at any one point, ever.)

Essentially, readers, despite how good I am at everything else, I am an abysmal failure at making money in WoW and I don’t know how to improve that.

I need your help. Badly. Leave comments below.

Thanks for reading this post from: The Stoppable Force.

Let’s play money making game.

TheMightyGresh: do you really want to huuuurt me? Do you really want to make me cryyyy?

Yes. Warlocks are some of my favorite PvP targets, mostly because I still remember how warlocks work. Other classes might have tricks up their sleeves, but I know your arsenal pretty well. Plus affliction warlocks are a pretty good challenge, since unlike many casters – who I can lock out with my eight billion interrupts – affliction has a ton of instant casts, so I have to settle for a general silence and a beating with a sack of quarters.

Oh, and Fear? So underpowered. Hello, diminishing returns; hello, Every Man for Himself.

Trizophenie: Cloud or Squall? And why?

Neither. I haven’t actually liked a Square-Enix hero since the days of FF6. Cloud’s a doofus who’s too wrapped up in himself to see the bigger picture of "hey dummy save the world," while Squall is a whiny emo boy– wait a sec, I’m seeing a trend here. To contrast, I did kind of like Tidus, I just wish his dialogue writer hadn’t made a concerted effort to make him sound like an idiot. Then again, Tidus kind of was an idiot, wasn’t he? "Durrrr what do you mean Zanarkand’s destroyed? Why is Auron sparkling? Durrrrrrrr."

Sabiba: here’s a question for you: Why does blizzard hate hunters in PVP?

I’m going to assume this is an arena question, because hunters seem to be doing fine in Battlegrounds. Here’s your answer: they hate everyone, at different times, in arenas. Reason being, as they stated in an interview a while ago, arenas were basically shoved clumsily into the game and it’s been hell for balance ever since. Frankly, I’d be just as happy if Cataclysm brought with it the removal of arenas.

Llanion: What toppings go on a correct pizza?

Anything except anchovies. The last pizza I had was the Socrates’ Revenge from Dewey’s Pizza: olive oil, minced garlic, Mozzarella-Fontina blend, spinach, black olives, green olives, Feta cheese, red Onions, tomatoes. Fantastic!

Krizzlybear: I have excellent rhythm, but I can’t get the crossfader to work properly. Any suggestions? Oh right, WoW questions only…

Heck if I know, man, you’re a full two difficulties above me. It would help if the crossfader locked a little more solidly into the ‘center’ position; as it is I tend to swing too far back when I hit a crossfade spike (I spike left, then accidentally go all the way right instead of back to center). I found that rather than trying to use it the way the tutorial shows, I positioned it between two of my fingers with my hand laying flat on the turntable controller – I tend to get better control that way.

Sleepyrabite: As I have nothing to ask about for WoW… What’s your current favourite offline game?

Funny you should ask – I just recently moved the rather clumsy "Hey Phil Whatcha Playin’" feature to a site I recently found that is designed for exactly this kind of thing – here’s my Backloggery! I’m currently dividing my attention between Half-Minute Hero, the Persona PSP remake, Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box, and (as you may have surmised from my answer to Krizz) DJ Hero. When my girlfriend is in town, we also play some co-op Dynasty Warriors 6 Empires. I also admit curiosity about Dragon Age: Origins; however, I may be the only gamer alive who didn’t really like Torchlight.

Ladygypsy: how is mana pronounced? MAN-a or MAHHHN-a? (srsly, I can’t pronounce squat in WoW.)

Well, I know how I pronounce it, but I wasn’t sure it’s correct, so I asked an authority. Apparently "mah-nah" – your second pronunciation – not "man-uh" is the correct pronunciation. It’s apparently a Maori word! I’ve learned something new today.

Lightning Round! Nibuca asks 12 million questions!

• If you were trapped on a "Lost" isle.. and had access to only one game/console/pc which would you choose? WoW. Surely no one expected that, but look at it this way: I can try and get my guildies to send a helicopter to get me off this stupid island!
• If a boss falls in the game.. and the last of the raid members dies at the same time.. is it a wipe? Nope. Sure, you have to get back up and repair and heal, but you still get phat lewtz, making it not-a-wipe.
• What pie is best for T-day? Pumpkin.
• Should all pie be topped with whipped cream? No – apple pies, or other warm fruit pies, deserve ice cream. Any pie with a meringue doesn’t need whipped cream – it brought its own topping to the table.
• Is ice cream optional? For most pies, yes. I really only prefer it with fruit pies. It’ll do for whipped cream in a pinch. Again, though, not really necessary for meringue pies at all.
• Boxers briefs or commando.. which do you think @brigwyn chooses… {evil grin} I refuse to consider Brigwyn’s undies or lack thereof; the fact that he showed up in my dreams on tour with Daft Punk was bad enough (at least he was fully clothed).
• Harvest festival overview.. Grinding reputation with the "running circles in Dalaran" faction… RP for the uninitiated… That’s not a question, but lucky for you, I’m nice. I know as much about the Harvest Festival as you, I’m not sure what the second one is, and I’m not on an RP server anymore and never RP’d when I was on one. NEXT!
• How is the "Mr T hand grenade" better/worse than the zombie infestation from last year?
• Better, for people who didn’t enjoy the zombie infestation: you can click off the Mohawked buff instead of hoping for a healer to pass by, or waiting to zombify then exploding.
• Worse, for people who did enjoy the zombie infestation: sorry, you don’t get to fight your own faction and infect them with zombiedom.
• Better, for everyone all around: the Mohawked buff isn’t going to stop you from going about your business.
• Worse, period: it doesn’t really lead up to anything. Unless… Mr. T is the final boss of Cataclysm?! So now we know where Deathwing’s been hiding all these long years: the A-Team van.

There, I think I won! Now if only there was a prize.

Thanks for reading this post from: The Stoppable Force.

Ask a reasonable question … get a stupid answer.

Anybody else find it a little weird that some of the tier 10 armor kind of looks like you took a random Scourge into a back alley and beat the crap out of them for their gear? Blizzard is definitely getting pretty wild with some of the armor designs, and they’re hit-or-miss – there’s a lot of people who love one or two classes, but hate another (and rarely does anyone love their own). Here’s my thoughts (starting with the classes I consider my “mains” at the moment):

Scourgelord’s Battlegear/Plate (Death Knight): Before the preview I was finished, I was pretty unimpressed with this set. It had the same old “put a few spikes here, put a glowing skull there, voila, Death Knight tier gear.” However, the helmet kind of ties it all together. I love the appearance of this faceplate, and feel it’s a natural revolution from the T8 helm (we’re ignoring T9 here, since its design was wildly divergent – and I loved the fact that, on Alliance side at least, it looked like a darker paladin set).

Frost Witch’s Garb/Regalia/Battlegear (Shaman): Phantom shoveltusks! As Jezriyah pointed out, they’re clearly wearing an entire shoveltusk head on their head, and those are definitely phantom shoveltusks sticking out of the side. Also, it doesn’t appear to be quite done yet – the icicles on the horns are untextured, mostly. Was it worth the wait? In my opinion, yes. This really makes me want to push to get my shaman up to 80 so I can start working on this awesome set. (No offense to Nobundo, of course, but my elemental shaman is not a ninja. He is a pew pew lightning master.) Oh – and those phantom shoveltusks better pop out of the shoulders occasionally; rogues and warlocks can’t have all the fun.

Shadowblade’s Battlegear (Rogue): Ah, the rogue T10. I would say it’s divisive except that it’s pretty much all the rogues on one side, and me on the other. No, it’s not the most attractive set of armor in the world (frankly, I still like the face-on-your-head of the rogue T8. However, this does have an obvious awesome side to it: the Shadowblade’s Battlegear is very obviously a geist outfit. Compare it to our old friend The Leaper:

Sewn together bag-of-rags look? Check. One-eyed helmet? Check. Noose around the neck? Check. Strappy gloves? Check. Rogues, it’s time to start bounding around like it was going out of style, pushing gargoyles off of ledges with wild abandon.

Now, on to the others…

Lasherweave Garb/Regalia/Battlegear (Druid): Okay, so, I really don’t recall ever seeing any lashers that looked like a combination of a moose, a piece of wood, and the segmented eyeball of a bee. Frankly, the face scares the crap out of me. I guess the only comfort is that I’m rarely if ever going to see it.

Ahn’kahar Blood Hunter’s Battlegear (Hunter): What? Just to refresh everyone’s memories, this is what the Ahn’kahar look like. Spiders. Big ugly spiders. The hunter armor? Again with the wood. In fact, they kind of look like wooden moose (mooses? meese?).

Bloodmage’s Regalia (Mage): Well, the teeth kind of make me giggle, but I have to admit I like the look of this set. It has a very generic look to it, though. I don’t know if I could tell the mage T7-10 apart, to be honest with you. It’s also more obvious Scourge fashion: the mage gear is definitely an upgraded (fancier and less faded) version of the outfits worn by the San’layn.

Lightsworn Garb/Regalia/Battlegear (Paladin): Hey look, the paladins are cribbing from the Death Knights for ideas. And the shamans & warriors from a few tiers back. And – wuh oh, a plate skirt. Let the QQ begin… again.

Crimson Acolyte’s Raiment/Regalia (Priest): Not sure what Crimson Acolyte they’re talking about. Pretty generic, though. These (at least, the versions other than the white ones) kind of remind me of collarless Scourge necromancer duds. If only priests had gotten the dead-cow-skull helmet that seems to be a feature among the Scourge. Speaking of dead cow skulls…

Dark Coven’s Regalia (Warlock): Also nice! But unfortunately I don’t think anything will top the pseudo-Putress look of T8, at least in my mind. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen this look on a Cult of the Damned member somewhere, but it escapes me at the moment.

And last but not least, Ymirjar Lord’s Battlegear/Plate (Warrior): A pretty awesome-looking tribute to all those ymirjar who’re now dead in our wake. Probably the closest anyone will get to looking like the king. I anticipate several screenshots of warriors in their T10 sitting on his throne just because they can.

And no, ladies, I haven’t forgotten about you. The T10 on females: death knight, rogue, druid, hunter, mage, paladin, priest, warlock, and warrior. As for the shaman T10… well, we only have a picture of it on a male human, so we don’t even have pictures of it on races that can actually be shamans yet, much less women. (An orc would totally rock the hell out of a shoveltusk helmet, and you know it.)

Thanks for reading this post from: The Stoppable Force.

Scourge fashion

So instead, I’ll just quote Palehoof from a post on the forums (via MMO-Champion’s Bluetracker):

Wow has been "ruined" according to people unhappy with one or two aspects of the game since its inception. Since it began, it’s been ruined by rooftop camping, the removal of rooftop camping, the lack of honor, the implementation of honor, the lack of dishonor, the implementation of dishonor, the removal of dishonor, the removal of wall walking, rank rewards, decaying rank, the removal of rank decay, the removal of PVP titles, Ahn’Qiraj, Scourge Invasion, Zul’Gurub, the cost of mounts, the lack of information about TBC, all information released about TBC, playable Blood Elves, playable Draenei, Horde Paladins, Alliance Shamans, flying mounts, the timing of the release of TBC, the cost of flight, Jewelcrafting, the LFG channel, holding people accountable to the Terms of Use, meeting stones, arenas, the number of arena teams one player can have, arena-based gear rewards, the lack of battlegrounds, the addition of battlegrounds, everything about battlegrounds, Illidan being killable, Daily quests, instance-based reputations, the Darkmoon Faire, /pizza, playable wisps, Tinfoil Hat, the Armory, Warden, the lack of information about Wrath, all information about Wrath, a failure to revamp old world areas, the inability to transfer from PVE to PVP servers, hero classes, siege engines, cold weather flying, Wintergrasp being a PVP zone, death knights, the inability to start a new character of any class at 55 or higher, the lack of a dance studio, character recustomization, the inability to change race or faction, the cost of mammoths and motorcycles, the fall damage negation of mammoths and motorcycles, the removal of fall damage negation from mammoths and motorcycles, the ability to transfer from PVE to PVP servers, dual specs, Achievements, holiday events, Mountain Dew Game Fuel, streaming Blizzcon ’09 on pay per view, the revamping of Onyxia’s Lair, Worgen for the Alliance, Goblins for the Horde, revamped old world areas, the ability to change faction, the ability to change race, new race/class combinations, purchasable vanity pets, as well as weekly maintenance and patches 1.1 through the current one inclusive.

In that time, while WoW was being ruined by all of the above, WoW has quintupled its subscriber base. So don’ t be disappointed if Blizzard doesn’t leap to change whatever you say is killing the game.

That pretty much sums up most of my thoughts on the “ZOMG UR RUININ THE GAEM” mindset. My only other reactions to the whole minipets-for-money fiasco can be summed up as follows.

1. This is basically the same as paying money for a loot card, only it cuts out the middleman, so it’s kind of got a weird feeling to it – but deep down, I know it’s really not that different. It’s just who I’m buying it from.
2. I sincerely believe Blizzard knows the line between selling vanity items like minipets and mounts, and selling actual content like impactful loot.
3. I love Lil’ K.T. to death, and his ability to frostbolt critters to death is fantastic. The Pandaren monk, however, never fails to make me jump like a shot when he starts abruptly making his kung-fu noises in an otherwise-quiet zone.

Keep the comments civil, because I know a lot of people have very strong opinions on this, or I’ll shut them right the heck off.

(pic of Lil’ K.T. courtesy of MMO-Champion, because I forgot to take a screenshot, too. Sighhhhh.)

Thanks for reading this post from: The Stoppable Force.

Vanity pets are ruining the game (too)

1) Hold off on that AOE for just a second if you would. Death and Decay is less like a Thunder Clap and more like a Consecration: a pulsing mass of energy on the ground that steadily builds threat. It is not a huge spike of threat, and it will not build threat if an enemy dashes into it and you immediately shoot them, causing them to run back out. Sure, its puny-looking damage is amplified by our talents and AP and whatnot (plus diseases, for Unholy DKs with Ebon Plaguebringer), and it has an enormous threat component when combined with Frost Presence (something ludicrous like 250 Threat per point of damage), but here’s the part a lot of AOE happy boomkeks and volley launchers don’t seem to get: it isn’t going to build any threat if you don’t for Heaven’s sake let me hit it first. Let me put down my D&D and spread my diseases – my other quick method of building constantly ticking threat, and you’ll know when it’s down because you’ll see black lines briefly connect through all the trash – and look at Omen, and then go ahead and unleash your great thundercloud of lightning-y doom.

One thing a lot of people are not aware of is that most of the DK specs are relying entirely on D&D for AOE threat. Unholy tanks used to be able to count on Unholy Blight as well, but our giant cloud of buzzy fleas is now simply a DOT applied when we cast Death Coil. Frost tanks can use Howling Blast, but that’s got its own cooldown on top of our normal rune cooldown; they’ve probably got it easiest. Blood tanks are a lot like warriors using Cleave, only they can’t add an extra target via glyphs – Blood AOE consists of tab, Heart Strike, tab, Heart Strike, tab, Heart Strike. It’s kind of hectic.

In short: if I see one more hunter target an enemy on the other side of D&D and expect a simple run through the red glowy circle to out-threat their shots, or a druid who pops a thundercloud before Death and Decay has ticked once, and then bitches at me because they’re getting their face beaten in, I am going to scream. No lie.

2) If we are silenced, please dispel it. This is something a lot of DKs are not aware of, as well as a lot of people around them – hell, I didn’t figure it out until I started tanking. If we are fighting a mob who is capable of silencing us, and you notice we’re silenced, please do something to get rid of it if we can’t do it ourselves. When silenced, we lose access to:

• Icy Touch
• Howling Blast
• Death Coil
• Death and Decay
• Dark Command
• Blood Boil
• Pestilence
• Icebound Fortitude
• Bone Shield
• Death Grip
• possibly Strangulate
• possibly Mind Freeze
• Anti-Magic Shield
• Anti-Magic Zone
• possibly Rune Tap
• Hungering Cold
• possible Vampiric Blood

The list goes on and on. Essentially any spell-like ability is affected by silence. In short, if a DK is silenced, our list of threat and survivability tools is reduced to Plague Strike, Scourge Strike (unholy only), Blood Strike, Frost Strike (frost only), Obliterate, Death Strike, and Heart Strike (blood only). We lose the ability to lay down an AOE (any of them at all), we lose the ability to taunt, and we lose our biggest source of magical protection and free runic power.

So please, if you see your DK tank get silenced, and it’s a kind of silence you can dispel, please do!

(P.S. Casters with silence and hunters with silencing shot, if you really want to shut a death knight down in PvP, I guess now you know what to do.)

Thanks for reading this post from: The Stoppable Force.

Two things your DK tank wants to tell you

Places to be

A trend I’ve noticed on my shaman as I’ve been leveling him up through the old world is that many of the old-world instances felt like places to be. It’s hit or miss, but it seems to be a largely “vanilla WoW” tendency that’s gone away over the years. Some examples:

Blackrock Depths. This is one of my favorite instances to run, ever. It’s a bit convoluted in places, and sometimes even an old hand at it like me has problems getting around, but BRD is the perfect example of feeling like a real place. A trip into Blackrock Depths really feels like you’re a visitor to a city full of hostiles, and are basically in there to bust some heads. It’s got barracks, it’s got bars (well, one anyway), it’s got forges and anvils and other dwarven trappings, and it’s got a king and his pregnant, maybe-she’s-kidnapped-maybe-she’s-not wife. It’s got love stories, it’s got an arena, and periodically it has a very angry dwarf who really just wants to enter the brewing competition, dagnabbit. And it’s got an entrance into the Dark Iron Dwarves’ biggest mistake: the home of the unleashed Ragnaros.

That’s not saying BRD doesn’t have its problems. It’s got a lot of the amateur mistakes you see in old instances; namely, quest lines that require multiple trips in and out just to complete something. It also is really confusing to get around in, and has tons and tons of trash. Tons of it. Tons. But BRD is hands down just about my #1 winner in terms of feeling like a real living, breathing place inside an instance portal. Stratholme (the level 60 version) is also on this list, for many of the same reasons.

Troll instances. The old-world troll instances are very good at creating this kind of place-ness feeling – Zul’farrak and Zul’gurub feel like actual places that trolls would hang out and do their thing, like summoning old gods into the world. (Sunken Temple is notoriously not on this list.) Some of the trolls are just chilling in their tents, joking with other trolls; some of the more important ones, like Bloodlord Mando’kir, are accepting important visitors when you show up. In Zul’farrak, the sheer number of trolls milling around is kind of outrageously high, but the city itself does a good job of giving that “trolls live here” feel – scattered tents and huts everywhere, little sanctums for some of the bosses, a party that got there before you and got caged after a wipe, and so on. There’s a few shortcomings (for example, I have no idea where the Sandfury were stashing that many slaves), but ZF and ZG are definitely on my list.

Karazhan. For a long stretch of instances in TBC, you lose the “place” feel – until you get to the raiding level, and set foot into Karazhan. From the moment you start going through Karazhan, you realize this is a place designed for people to inhabit, and it shows. Of course, it makes sense – Magus Medivh did live here, for quite a while, as did a few others – but it’s got a certain aura around it that other raids and instances in TBC definitely don’t have. It really feels like if you cleared out all the crap, and figured out exactly why the top of your tower is sticking into the Twisting Nether, you could move your guild in and call Karazhan your extremely spacious home.

Naxxramas. Now, I know, Naxxramas is probably an odd addition to this list, but Naxxramas really fits its purpose. The place is supposed to be a floating war fortress, where the forces of the Scourge are assembled and ready to attack. Granted, most of what they seem to be doing is milling around, but the place that I think exemplifies this the most is Instructor Razuvious. Since abdicating his position as head instructor aboard Acherus due to a hostile takeover, he’s actively tutoring a new generation of Death Knights, just like he always did. There are, however, a few bosses that throw off this image – Heigan, anyone? Or Loatheb? But Naxx actively feels like a fortress preparing for war, as soon as Arthas delivers the word.

Places to die

The number of instances that fall into this category are many and varied, and the vanilla instances aren’t exempt from this at all – Wailing Caverns, I’m looking at you. Instances that don’t have a sense of “place-ness” generally give the feeling of a straight line between the goal and the finish, in between which there are enemies roaming around whose only purpose in “life” is to roam around and wait to be killed. They’re linear, they’re generally short on story, and they make up most of the instances between 60 and 80.

Hellfire Ramparts. This is the worst offender, and the first one that jumps to mind when I try to come up with examples of linear instances. This is pretty much because other than a few negligible turns, Hellfire Ramparts is almost literally a straight line from start to finish, with trash and bosses scattered along the line. Oh, sure, there’s a little bit of choice at the end – do we kill Omor first, or the other guy? – but it still gives none of the feeling of a place to exist that the others do. Maybe it’s just a place for them to patrol? Well, sure, but where do they go from there? No one’s hanging out in Shattered Halls or Blood Furnace, that’s for sure. Ramparts always gives me the impression of fel orcs milling around, waiting on you to wander by and kill them.

Wailing Caverns. Can we buy the Fanglords a chair? What’re they eating, snakes? Why hasn’t Mutanus already wandered out and killed Naralex? How did Verdan the Everliving even get into that room? All these mysteries and more, in the linear craphole that is Wailing Caverns. Of course, WC also has the side benefit of also being fairly confusing to get around your first time in.

The Nexus. Parts of this have a certain veracity to them – namely, the wandering wildlife in the crystallized section, and the blue dragons fighting an ongoing fight against malevolent magical oddities. (Although, in that case, why haven’t they formed a raid and gone to fight Anomalus themselves? I guess no one wanted to heal.) But other areas… especially the parts all around Grand Magus Telestra. Why are the humans all just hanging out in the Nexus? Yeah, I know they’ve sided with Malygos against the world, but why are they hanging out in the Nexus of all places? It’s a cold, unfeeling shell of a place, apparently built to service the scale and needs of dragonkin (and serve as a prison for Malygos’ mind-controlled mate), and yet these humans are all just standing around. Maybe they’re waiting on a delivery from Ikea, or for the mage who went for takeout to get back. Even Telestra herself is kind of oddly placed: she has a giant featureless glass bubble. Talk about sparse accommodations.

What difference does it make?

I won’t lie to you – I’m whitewashing the old-world instances a little. They tend to be immense, have poorly thought-out questlines in terms of travel time (why does everyone in Feralas want something from the Hinterlands?!), and have way too much trash. But the linear instances, well, they get pretty boring after a run or two. In Cataclysm, how about some instances with some thought and attention put into it? Maybe the Lost City of Tol’vir really will feel like a City – the place-ness feel of older instances and raids, but with the design lessons of the new (less trash, more interesting fight mechanics, questlines that all can be gathered and then end in the 5-man).

Thanks for reading this post from: The Stoppable Force.

Places to be, versus places to die

Vaguely spurred on by Faulsey, boredom, and nostalgia, and not finding the inspiration to rejoin WoW (seriously, I’ve been following all the news about WoW closely… and still have no urge to re-up my account, in case someone was hoping), I decided to head back to my first MMO love: Final Fantasy XI. I’m playing at a casual (some would say ‘glacial’) pace, and a number of things have changed since I last played (two years ago!), but here we are.

Let’s take a little retrospective into my history with this game, along with a list of things it does very, very right, and a list of things it does very, very wrong (that hopefully they’ll fix up in Final Fantasy XIV). Just as a warning, this post turned out a lot more enormous than I anticipated.

They Always Come Back (In This Case, ‘They’ Means ‘I’)

“But Stop,” asked Shopshopshop, “Don’t you hate that game? Why did you go back?” Nope, I don’t hate it – in fact, it’s exactly the opposite. Let’s take a little trip down memory lane, shall we?

I first started playing Final Fantasy XI in college – to be exact, March 23rd, 2004, which would’ve been the end of my sophomore year. This, for those of you keeping track, was the US PS2 version’s release date. I bugged the living shit out of Gamestop that day, because I’d had it pre-ordered for some time. I still fondly remember installing the included hard drive and network adapter onto my PS2 (side note: they’re still there).

I played for, oh, probably 2 or 3 straight years. My only real character of any note was a hume red mage named Severus. Now, I know what you’re thinking, and let me tell you now – no, he was not named after Severus Snape. In fact, while the Harry Potter series was in full swing at that time, I hadn’t read a single one of them. In fact, I had absolutely no idea where the hell the name came from – it just popped into my head during Chemistry class. Still, I had to put up with a lot of ‘lol like snape’ tells. Ugh. (Of course, now that I have read the series, I’m okay with this.)

In that 2-3 year period, I never managed to hit the level cap. Ever. Why? Simple. You know how I have alt-itis? Well, I guess I had an inkling of an idea about this going in, because I made Severus a hume specifically so that I could switch jobs whenever I liked… and I did so, frequently. (For those of you unfamiliar with FFXI, any character can switch to any job at any time, and retains those job levels. After hitting level 18, you can do a quest to get a subjob, where you essentially have two jobs at a time – one at its full level, and the subjob at half level – and can access most of the benefits of that job. More on that later.) My highest job was red mage, as I mentioned, which I got to 50 or so, but I had attained level 37 in at least every caster class (I justified it as “leveling my subjobs”) and several of the melee classes, as well as the game’s only (at that time) solo class, Beastmaster.

I had a great linkshell (WoW people: read “guild”) at the time, RedCrossSociety, and I made some good friends in that before the inevitable drama caused it to explode. Elamie, Zhandal, if you read this, say hi.   Sadly, I think the implosion of RCS was what caused my enthusiasm to go downhill – without the support network that such a huge social linkshell provided, I didn’t have a lot of motivation to keep leveling; after a year-long absence, in 2005 I finally closed my account.

Then I re-opened it in 2006, at the urging of a friend from a MUSH. Go figure, eh? However, at the time, the only way to even create characters on a separate server was either a World Pass, or deleting all your alts and going with the random shuffle approach. (Square Enix hadn’t implemented server transfers yet.) So, with only the slightest hint of sadness, I deleted Severus and his mules (WoW people: read “bank toons”) on Titan and rerolled on Midgardsormr, I wasn’t too sad to leave Titan: Titan had the single most fucked-up economy of any FFXI realm at the time, and Square Enix had only just begun their massive hate-on for gilsellers (WoW people: read “goldsellers”). So, I arrived on Midgardsormr as an Elvaan named Socrates. Yes, Socrates. Shut up. I ran out of names and I picked something off the book that was holding up my monitor, which happened to be titled “Socrates to Sartre.”

Socrates fared about as well as Severus, but in a lot less time. It didn’t help that the second and third expansions came out just before and in the middle of this period respectively, so I immediately got distracted by the new Blue Mage, Corsair, Puppetmaster, Scholar, and Dancer jobs. Also, with Socrates I took an approach I hadn’t with Severus: planning. Oh, and melee jobs. That was my first time tanking in FFXI (as a Ninja; yes, Ninja’s a tank job), and I loved it. Couldn’t get enough of it. If I had actually had a reliable source of money, I probably would’ve gladly taken Ninja to the level cap. However, this time around, after a stint as an elvaan dancer (shut up) I finally retired Socrates, too, and deactivated my account for the second time. Once again, I can chalk this up to the deterioration of my linkshell. I had a small social LS named TheCorleones, with probably my two closest friends in there being Skaphia and Wendell. I still remember how, after I decided I wanted to level summoner, Wendell and I visited each of the Prime Avatars and I hung back as he soloed them, one by one. Wendell was everything Severus should have been, but I digress. In the end, there wasn’t any drama; TheCorleones just kind of… dissolved. Wendell and Skaphia, probably the two most active people besides me, had moved on to bigger and better things (Dynamis, Limbus, and Salvage to be exact [WoW people: read "endgame raiding"]), and so I was mostly talking to myself. I wasn’t surprised to find one day when I logged in that the linkshell had been deleted. And so, I moved on… this time, to WoW.

Well, you all know what happened there.

So I guess it’s not terribly surprising, given my on-again off-again going-on-five-years relationship with FFXI, that I find myself back there now. I moved to yet another new server, this time Ifrit at Faulsey‘s urging, but since he mostly logs on to snark and to get me killed by ghosts, I’m pretty much going it solo again. I got through 12 levels of Monk before I remembered that melee bores me silly (again, more on that in a minute), so I’ve spent a couple nights on and off leveling black mage between doing loads of laundry, and have very nearly caught up to Monk in levels – level 9, when I logged off last night. And, well, this time I did what I hadn’t done before: I actually rolled her as a mithra (WoW people, and everyone else: read ‘catgirl’) named Rowena. There, now you know.

That turned out way longer than I hoped. Let’s get on with the rest.

The Good: What FFXI Did Right

Keep in mind that like everything else, this is opinion – specifically, mine.

Job Variety

To say that FFXI has “a variety of jobs” (WoW people: read ‘classes’) would be like saying the sun is “a little bit bright” or Monty Python were “slightly cheeky lads.” Every expansion pack, save one (and the more recent mini-expansions), has introduced 2-3 new jobs. Furthermore, Square has done a great job of making all of them feel and play differently. The list, as of now, is:

• The six basic jobs: These are the jobs that, as a freshly-rolled level 1, you can choose from. Furthermore, these jobs remain useful up to level 75, although maybe in different roles than Square Enix originally intended them for… If you’ve played Final Fantasy Tactics or its derivates, these should sound pretty familiar.
  • Warrior: At low levels (pre-30 or so), Warrior is a meatshield, on par with Paladins and Ninjas (and sometimes Dancers…). The others pull ahead a bit after that point, but that’s okay: by then, Warriors are swinging big axes and being DD (WoW people: read ‘DPS’).
  • Thief: The name of the game with thieves is threat control. Sure, Thief does get a few thief-like abilities – Sneak Attack, Mug, Steal, Hide – but the majority of a thief’s abilities, and the ones they’re primarily known for, are designed to not just do massive damage, but to then transfer that threat to someone else (Trick Attack, Accomplice, Collaborator). Thieves keep the bad guys hitting the right people.
  • Monk: Monks are the other physical DD class available from the start, and they’re pretty straightforward: they punch things. Hard. At later levels they kick things. Monks are pretty “Final Fantasy traditional,” in that they don’t wear heavy armor but they do have a boatload of HP. Unfortunately, for the first 20 levels or so, they’re pretty Godawful boring.
  • White Mage: Healplz. White Mage’s are the game’s premier healers, and they do it well. They also have a small assortment of holy attack spells (which for the most part are not worth it, unless something’s changed lately), and are the only ones capable of casting the group Teleport spells to move entire groups to the game’s teleportation crags (huge teleporter endpoints in strategic locations throughout Vana’diel).
  • Black Mage: Damage, pure and simple. Black mages zap things really hard with elemental damage spells, some enfeebling spells to weaken the enemy (WoW people: read ‘DoTs’), and a small smattering of utility spells that most other classes don’t get (like Warp and Retrace, to return to a homepoint, and Tractor, which drags dead bodies to you). Black Mages can learn the most powerful elemental damage spells the game has to offer.
  • Red Mage: In previous games, they’ve just been a combination of black mage and white mag with a little swordfighting thrown in for good effect. Well, true to form, FFXI red mages are jacks of all those trades, but they actually have one area they can call their own: Red Mages are the masters of enfeebling and enhancing magic. They also get a few powerful spells no other class gets, like the ridiculously good damage-reducer Phalanx, the ability to Refresh other people’s MP (WoW people: read that as ‘Red mages can hand out Replenish effects’), and the ability to swap their HP and MP totals to keep on rolling. If red mages sound super-versatile, you’d be right: with the right subjob (namely Ninja), a red mage can solo nearly anything in the game.

    Also, their class-specific hat is a pimp hat.

• The advanced jobs: Once you get a job to level 30, you can start unlocking advanced jobs. Each one has a quest, some easier than others (some of the jobs from the 3rd expansion can be ludicrously hard to unlock with Sneak and Invisible, for avoiding aggro, and Dragoon is just absurd at the end), but once you do it, you get a new job you can switch to. Oh yeah, I guess I forgot to mention that until now: you can switch to any job at any time, just by going to your Mog House (WoW people: read ‘player housing,’ nyah nyah).
  • Paladin: The epitome of meatshield. Paladins take a licking and keep on ticking. This is pretty much their purpose in life. They also have some white magic.
  • Dark Knight: Sort of the exact opposite of a paladin, Dark Knights wield big, heavy weapons and do big, heavy damage – sometimes at the cost of their own life. They also cast some black magic, and have their own special line of dark magic that lets them absorb an enemy’s statistics.
  • Beastmaster: Widely regarded as the premier solo job (because for a long time, they were the only legitimately soloable job), beastmasters are a lot like warriors – they specialize in one-handed axes, they wear decently heavy armor, and so on. Where beastmasters differ is their pets – they can charm the beasts of Vana’diel for a period of time and turn them on each other (thus the soloability), or call pets that won’t turn on you when charm runs out (commonly referred to as ‘jug pets’ after the item used to summon them). Beastmasters love soloing stuff. Love it.
  • Bard: Support job extraordinaire, bards play various melodies to make people better at what they do. They also can lay down some debuffs, like a DoT or making an enemy weaker to certain elements. Outside of that… well, let’s just say bards don’t do a lot of solo work. They’re super-squishy. Bard songs have the neat effect of being based on a radius, so if they’re far enough apart you can give two songs to the melee and two different ones to the mages.
  • Ranger: Hey, guess what? They shoot things. They’re also expensive, because they require a crapton of ammo. I never played ranger for any period of time for pretty much that reason, but boy was it fun to watch them do one weaponskill and BAM the tank loses hate because of the enormous damage output of your average ranger.
  • Summoner: If you played any Final Fantasy game outside XI, you might expect summoners to be avatar-summoning badasses. Well… not quite. Summoners, at least last time I was up in the level range where you saw lots of summoners, were largely backup or main healers, and the only use for their avatars was adding their unique group-wide buffs to their party.
  • Samurai: Much like how thieves were the masters of threat control, samurais are the master of TP, or technique points. (Sorry, WoW people, I don’t have a convenient analogy for you this time. Basically, as you hit (and get hit), you build TP, and at 100%+ TP (it goes up to 300%), you can unleash a weaponskill. These can be chained together, and the resulting skillchain can be hit with an elemental spell (even the non-damaging kind: every spell has en element) to cause a magic burst.) They build it, they use it, they can skillchain off of themselves. There’s some evidence that Square Enix originally intended for them to be a new tank class, but they have a tendency to introduce a class with a scattershot array of abilities and see what people do with it.
  • Dragoon: Initially, dragoon was just another DD class, and they were a lot like their earlier-FF counterparts – they hit things with spears and jump really high. They also have an adorable pet dragon. their wyvern. Eventually, the wyvern changed so that if the dragoon had certain mage subjobs set instead of the more traditional melee subjobs, the wyvern would breathe healing breaths when the dragoon was below a certain hit point percentage and cure bad status effects. And so, dragoons became a second (mostly-high-level) solo job, as well. They ended up being pretty versatile.
  • Ninja: This is the number one case where I can point at a job and note how the community ended up using it totally different. Ninja was originally intended as a fast, dual-wielding DD (Ninjas are actually the only class that can Dual Wield, though other classes can use ninja as a subjob to dual-wield from level 20 on). They also have a ‘wheel’ of elemental spells at higher levels. So, of course, people decided to focus entirely on one spell to the exclusion of all others and, well, now ninja is a tanking job. (Utsusemi, which ninjas learn pretty early on, lets them completely avoid a single physical attack. Ninja tanking is basically evasion tanking.) Square Enix is finally supporting this with a new job ability, as well adding a second one that might make DD viable for them again (of course, first you have to get over everyone’s opinion of what a ninja should do.) Ninja also has a reputation for being ungodly expensive, because their ninja spells each require a use of a consumable component – a ninja tool. (Because they’re not really casting magic: they’re using ninjitsu training!)
  • Blue Mage: Blue mages take their enemies’ skills and turn them against them. While the actual acquisition of these skills can be super-annoying, especially at low levels, blue mage is easily the most flexible job in the game, hands down. They can set different arrangements of spells to give themselves different job traits, prepare for different situations, and – oh yeah – utilize pretty much every subjob in the game effectively. They usually DD, but they can heal in a pinch, and at low levels (like sub-20), a BLU/WAR (that’s a blue mage with a warrior subjob, natch) can even theoretically tank effectively.
  • Corsair: First, you take the bard. Make it slightly less squishy, take away that flute, and give them a freakin’ rifle. Now, instead of songs, give them dice rolls, each of which has a lucky number for stronger effect, an unlucky number for weaker effect, the ability to double-up or bust (which takes away the roll and gives the corsair a negative penalty), and is amplified by the class in each roll’s name. Oh, and make them frigging pirates. That’s the corsair.
  • Puppetmaster: The job no one knows what to do with! Puppetmasters have a little dude that follows them around, the automaton, who can be customized with parts and maneuvers and can melee, shoot a crossbow, deal magical damage or heal. But puppetmasters themselves are weird: their highest weapon skill is…not that great, and it’s hand-to-hand, but puppetmasters don’t get anything heavier than medium-weight armor (usually not even as good as a monk). However, interestingly, Square finally came right out and said that they intended for Puppetmaster to be the solo job from Treasures of Aht Urhgan, and the skies opened up, and the angels sang. Puppetmasters who solo either tend to let their automaton tank, which is difficult, or they evasion tank while the puppet heals them. It’s sort of a fascinating little job, really.

The Storyline

Have you found yourself skipping quest text in WoW? Who hasn’t? While quests in FFXI are usually laughable wastes of time unless the rewards are actually good for once, the missions are brilliant. The difference between the two is simple: quests are side quests, while missions are the main storyline arcs. There’s a ton of them, too – one for each starter nation (Bastok, San d’Oria, and Windurst), one for each expansion (Rise of the Zilart, Chains of Promathia, and Treasures of Aht Urhgan), and one for each of the mini-expansions (A Crystalline Prophecy, A Moogle Kupo d’Etat, and the upcoming A Shantotto Ascension). They’re probably the most vastly entertaining part of the ongoing story.

The Music

… is brilliant. Not a lot to say here, but there is a reason why I own every soundtrack CD related to FFXI. No offense to Russell Brower, but none of the music from WoW ever really sticks out in my head other than The Tower of Karazhan.

No nerfing PvE in the name of PvP

‘Nuff said. For one thing, FFXI’s PvP system is kind of retarded, it’s basically a tacked-on set of sporting events. Neat in concept, but not super in execution. However, they also haven’t ever rebalanced PvE abilities because someone was dominating in Ballista (hint: because no one ever does).

However, it’s not all sunshine, daisies, and puppies in the magical land of Vana’diel. Let’s talk turkey for a second.

The Bad: What FFXI Did Wrong

Oh boy, where do I begin?

Biting it, buying the farm, shuffling off the mortal coil, becoming an ex-parrot

Bullet points, whee!

• Exp loss on death. I know this was pretty much par for the course when FFXI came out, but I think it’s time to drop this old dead system. If they’re determined to have a penalty for death, may I suggest (1) equipment breakage or (2) Experience Debt?
• Homepoints suuuuuuuck. They’re great for Warp, of course, but when your options on death are “warp back to your homepoint, which may be halfway across the world, or wait for a raise, or hope you cast reraise"? Not so much!
• Losing key items needed to even start fights to begin with. Did you just drop 60 Kindred Seals to get a key item to get into an NM fight? You didn’t all get rezzed in time? Suck it.

The economy

I’m not even sure this one is their fault.

Basically, FFXI’s economy was ruled for years by gilsellers. They finally started making advanced to block them around the time I left, though Titan’s economy is still fucked up from what I hear. However, essentially, the economy problems boil down to these two simple points.

1. Gil is difficult to earn and impossible to find, and
2. Everything is expensive.

Everything. Ever. Starting equipment by level, oh, 8 can cost roughly 2000 gil a piece from vendors or more from the auction house. Quested gear is few and far between. WoW players: imagine if instead of getting quest gear while leveling, you got pretty much nothing, and had to buy your armor – but it all cost 2000 silver per piece, at level 8.

I rest my case.

Leveling: I get by with a little help from my friends these random idiots

Hey, so, you know how in WoW you can level up at your own pace, on your own, without relying on a party (because in most cases a party is detrimental)?

Yeah, unless you’re playing a Beastmaster, a Puppetmaster, or (reportedly) a Dancer, that ain’t gonna cut it here.

FFXI doesn’t award XP for quests or missions (well, not all of them: some have an XP award, but I can literally count the number of them on my hands). Furthermore, by about level 10, monsters that grant any significant amount of XP take an absurd amount of time and resources to beat, slowing soloing to a glacial crawl. So what’re you gonna do?

The answer: XP parties, from 10 to 75. Suck it. Sure, they’ve made some minor effects to help with this (Fields of Valor certainly speeds up those first few levels – kill a certain number of a certain kind or kinds of enemies, get bonus XP), but even that isn’t an answer. Plus, a lot of parties are just plain incompetent.

Mentioning the name “Valkurm Dunes” will send some veteran FFXI players into catatonic shock. It’s terrible. And it’s the first place you party (because, sure, why would anyone want to go to the other level-equivalent area, Buburimu Peninsula?).

Minor quibbles that don’t deserve their own heading

• The skill system is abysmally slow (though it’s definitely been sped up at lower levels these days). The crafting system is terrible.
• The default walk speed is kinda slow, though you can start raising a chocobo as early as 15 (yes, before you can even get a chocobo license [that's level 20], you can raise a rideable chocobo. You just can’t wear the whistle to summon it yet). Unless you’ve raised a chocobo, also, transportation is entirely from cities and teleportation points. Didn’t raise a chocobo yet? Stuck in the middle of nowhere? Suck it.
• Remember those storyline missions I mentioned above? Good luck seeing most of them if you’re not at the level cap. The Chains of Promathia storyline is a great example: to even get started on it, you have to convince 5 other people to hike with you through an area where you’re capped at level 30 (thank goodness gear scales to level these days: you used to have to have a set of level 30 armor…), three areas to be precise, which consist of an absurdly laid out area in the middle of literally Nowhere with progressively harder enemies, randomly organized teleports, and a final boss who is, quite frankly, a bitch (at least in 2/3 of the spires). These are the Promyvions, and they are the source of a lot of hatred. (Me? I love Promyvion. It was all I got to see of Chains of Promathia until I was playing Socrates.)
• The playerbase. You know how in WoW, you’re expected by a lot of people to have a cookie-cutter spec, and any deviation from it will earn you weird looks and cost you raid spots? Yeah, now imagine that instead of raid spots, I actually mean ‘spots in parties to level up, which as I mentioned earlier are required’. That’s the playerbase. Sometimes it’s rejection of something that is blatantly stupid (sorry, WAR/WHM is just dumb), but it also takes them a really long time to adjust to new concepts that do work, like the idea that summoners might want to do something besides heal or that puppetmasters can do anything at all, or that beastmasters might want to actually join a party. Judging by the rate of change of FFXI’s playerbase, by the time ninja (with its new job ability) is accepted as a DD again, we will be playing FFXIV already and laughing at the people still playing FFXI.
• The real game is at level cap, but hey, that happens in every MMO, doesn’t it?
• Dear God, the interface.

So why do I keep playing?

For a variety of reasons. For starters, it’s kind of like coming back home – I started with FFXI, I started blogging about MMOs with FFXI, and despite all its shortcomings, it’s just comfortable. I’m at home in FFXI. Even if it does occasionally frustrate the crap out of me.

Plus, honestly, there’s so much I haven’t done in the game, that no matter how long I play, I seriously doubt I’m going to even be able to do it before FFXIV comes out and everyone starts playing that instead. Speaking of which, any linkshells on Ifrit want a new person?

For Hope, We Look To The Future: Final Fantasy XIV Online

So at E3, Square Enix announced their next stab into the MMO Space, Final Fantasy XIV Online, coming in 2010 to the PS3(!), then PC and optionally (probably) Xbox 360.

So, what do we know so far?

• The setting is changing from Vana’diel to Eorzea, thus making a near-total break with FFXI. It’s not a sequel. It does, however, have the same races but with different names, simply for familiarity’s sake. Furthermore, Eorzea’s just a region, not the name of the world, so presumably they’re leaving themselves lots of room to expand. The planet, apparently, is Haiderin (I had not seen this previously; here’s where I found it).
• Nobuo Uematsu is back to score the music, ensuring that I’ll be expanding my list of soundtracks.
• Hiromichi Tanaka (FF I, II, III, and XI) is producing FFXIV. Nobuaki Komoto (FFIX, XI) is the director. The art director, interestingly, is Akihiko Yoshida, whose only notable credit is apparently Vagrant Story.
• Here, watch this trailer from E3:

  That was made almost entirely with the in-game graphics engine. Clearly this is a big upgrade over FFXI’s now-admittedly-dated-looking graphics (though pumping the settings up to max helps…), and the game itself looks to be faster-paced.

• It finally drops the abysmal PlayOnline service that FFXI is tied to.
• Multiple servers in the ballpark of 5000-6000 people each (right now most realms seem to cap out at 1500-2000 people).
• Utilizes the new Square Enix Accounts and security tokens (WoW people: like Blizzard Authenticators, only your inventory store doubles in size if you’re using one).
• High technology, but not like FFVIII – think somewhere below FFX and you’ve got the right idea. Sort of semi-steampunk, in my opinion – it reminds me of Final Fantasy XII.
• Combat is supposed to be more “strategic,” which I guess means warriors and monks will have to do more than hit auto-attack and go make a sandwich. It’s also going to have a learning curve – no problem here, says I.
• And this is the one that’s intriguing me: growth is not tied to experience points; the developers have hinted that growth is tied, instead, to weapon usage. I am pretty sure that having someone from FFII as producer has led them to go in that direction, which anyone familiar with FFII or any of the Final Fantasy Legend series on the original Gameboy should be familiar with. You can bet I’ll be watching this closely.

There’s probably more, but right now, holy crap do I want this. Granted, I can’t transfer Rowena over (they’ve stated that characters will not transfer due to pretty much everything you just read, but that linkshells, friends lists, and potentially even names would possibly be transferable), but it’s great to see where the future is going.

Thanks for reading this post from: The Stoppable Force.

Not Terribly Final

How do you (or your raid group) deal with hot-tempered folks in raids? Sure, in progression, there’s bound to be some level of irritation as your raid throws themselves against bosses and endures huge repair bills, but I’m talking about those people who’re blowing up every week on any person for the tiniest thing wrong, even when it doesn’t affect what you’re doing because hey, you’ve got this boss on farm. The ones who raise their voices over trivial matters, and who – heaven forbid – can never be corrected on anything.

Thanks for reading this post from: The Stoppable Force.

How do you deal with “exploders”?

I’m not entirely able to explain why I hate this, but I think it’s the same thing as why I don’t play on PvP servers: if I want to PvP, I’ll go PvP. If I don’t, I don’t. By throwing in these achievements, in order to receive two tangible in-game rewards (the title and, eventually, the mount), Blizzard is essentially saying “suck it up: you have to go do PvP, no matter how much you hate it.” Yeah, I know, no one is forced to do them, but no one is forced to get a 2200 arena rating either: arena people arena because they enjoy that, and I hunt achievements because I enjoy that, but when my achievements force me to do meaningless PvP-based sub-achievements? Screw it. Holidays can piss off.

On top of that, I don’t even think Blizzard has completely thought through how these holiday PvP achievements work. I wouldn’t want to be a battleground-runner this week. I had a feeling that hundreds of non-PvPers struggling to complete objectives that more or less pit them against their own team and the other team would be an… inhospitable environment. Apparently I was right. Euripedes has a plea from the PvP side of the fence for Blizzard to please, stop this nonsense:

So here’s a suggestion, Blizzard:

Stop it.

Seriously.

Nobody likes it this way.

The people who want to PvP are frustrated because their battlegrounds are filling up with these incompetent morons who haven’t the slightest idea what to do and have absolutely no will to change that.

The people who don’t want to PvP are frustrated because they have to participate in something that, at best, has no interest to them and, at worst, is akin to smashing their face into mirrors and then stabbing themselves in the legs with the shards.

You want to have these people participate in PvP for an achievement? Fine. Then do it this way:

• Win all five battlegrounds with your orphan out!

Shazam. You still force them to do something they don’t want to do, but at least this time they don’t have to completely screw up the battleground to do so.

Let me clarify: I’m not totally against PvP achievements. I think forcing them into the meta-achievement is a stupid idea, but I can understand maybe they’re there to give the event a more well-rounded flavor. Fine. What I am against is poorly-designed PvP achievements. Here’s a few examples of what I consider good and bad PvP achievement design:

• Well-Designed
• G.N.E.R.D. Rage. Neither side is negatively-impacted by the G.N.E.R.D.S. buff. If you die, applying the G.N.E.R.D.s buff is super-easy, because you get them out of every damn candy bucket in Azeroth, and you can trade them between people – so if you’re out, but your buddy has a ton, just let him give you some before you queue up. In fact, this one has the bonus that you can do it anywhere – world PvP, Wintergrasp, Battlegrounds, maybe Arenas even. You name it, if you can get an HK, you can finish G.N.E.R.D. Rage.
• Rotten Hallow (H). This is the Horde PvP Hallows’ End achievement, and it’s really only PvP in the loosest sense of the term. It’s quick, it’s fun, and on some servers (Feathermoon, looking at you) it’s not even going to get you flagged or attacked.
• Elders of the Alliance / Elders of the Horde. It might not be the easiest achievement for some people (heck, you might have spent some time running around the city as a ghost looking for the elder), but at the very least, you could strip naked and corpse-run your way to victory. It may not be easy or enjoyable, but it’s sure as hell not going to run anyone else’s day.
• All the Midsummer events: Desecration of the Horde / Desecration of the Alliance and King of the Fire Festival. I did these before there was an achievement for them on Queklain (well, I think I missed a few fires in Outland), and I look forward to doing them again as Zulfon. Stomping out fires is quick and easy and earns you a skirmish here and there from dedicated defenders (unlike Rotten Hallow, stomping out the fires does flag you), and as for the city fire retrieval… these things are a lot easier to find than the elders (well, except for Orgrimmar’s, because we have bonfires everywhere all the time – but in, say, Stormwind, a bonfire in the park really sticks out), and sneaking from spot to spot as a non-stealth class? Hell, it was like Metal Gear Solid meets World of Warcraft. One of my fondest memories was riding into Stormwind on my dreadsteed, stealing the fire of Stormwind, sprinting north, and jumping into the canals; the guards gave up, though an intrepid hunter didn’t. Deep underwater, I died, then self-rezzed… then, sneaking through the canal system of an unfamiliar city, I made my way nearly all the way to the castle itself without ever drowning. Finally, I found a boat next to a low section of the wall… leaping out, I mounted up my dreadsteed again and rode like a bat out of Hell to the tram, /cackle’ing all the way IRL. It was awesome, and I look forward to doing it again (and finishing it as Queklain – Flame Keeper Queklain seems apropos for a warlock!).
• Poorly-Designed
• Rotten Hallow (A). The Alliance side of the Rotten Hallow achievement is at least partially like the Horde one, in that they have a “crash the party” achievement, and the wickerman area well outside of Undercity is arguably even easier to get to than the Southshore Inn. The issue is the other half of the achievement: the Alliance is relying on being around the Inn when someone from the Horde does their Hallows’ End thing to get this finished. This is ultimately unfair, and if this is the design Blizzard truly wanted, than the Horde should have been forced to clean up the mess at the wickerman as well.
• With a Little Helper from My Friends. This would have been a lot better if there was a Winter Wondervolt machine in the battlegrounds and in Wintergrasp, or if the buff didn’t wear off after death. I tried doing this one: tons of gnomes show up, swarm out, get a few HKs, die, lose the buff, and /afk out to get a new one rather than wasting their time. Great job on this one, Blizzard. </sarcasm>
• And lastly, the inspiration for this, School of Hard Knocks. I don’t curse often, so when I do, you know I mean it: Blizzard Entertainment World Event Designers, what the fuck were you thinking? I entirely agree with ‘rip: if this had been “win once in each Battleground with your orphan out,” this would have been (1) entertaining, (2) possibly enjoyable, and (3) at least contributing to the point of the battleground, i.e., to win. As it is? Let’s take Eye of the Storm: not only does your average PvE achievement hunter not bother taking any towers this week, you also end up with a giant clusterfuck around the center flag, with no one doing any kind of D and eventually a win is achieved (for the other team, of course) via the towers because there were only 2 people on your team who weren’t chasing the flag and only the flag. Alterac Valley and Arathi Basin are even worse, I’m sure: I don’t dare poke my head in to find out.

So no, you won’t see me in Alterac Valley with an orcish orphan trying to keep up, or letting the Alliance cap farm so I can take it back and get a quarter of an achievement. That’s not my style. Brewfest? Midsummer Fire Festival? I’m all over those. But as for my orphan… all he gets is a day away from the orphanage, and I get a pig and a beholder.

Sorry Blizzard: maybe next year, if you’ve started thinking these things through.

Thanks for reading this post from: The Stoppable Force.

Orphans? Bah