Spared Expense
If you have not seen it yet, the 4.3 Patch trailer is one of the worst trailers Blizzard has ever made. Why? No voice over. I was originally sympathetic to the argument that “Hey, they’re just patch trailers.” But after watching this week’s episode of Legendary, I was inspired to see if Youtube had a collection of the old ones. As it turns out, they do.
- Patch 1.11 – Shadow of the Necropolis
- Patch 2.1 – The Black Temple
- Patch 2.3 – The Gods of Zul’Aman “We gonna bury you here.”
- Patch 2.4 – Fury of the Sunwell
- Patch 3.1 – Secrets of Ulduar “May this death-god… take you all.”
- Patch 3.2 – Call of the Crusade (phoning it in)
- Patch 3.3 – Fall of the Lich King
- Patch 4.1 – Rise of the Zandalari “Da Horde is my people.”
- Patch 4.2 – Rage of the Firelands
- Patch 4.3 – Hour of Twilight
To be clear, not all of them are good. Most of them seemed way cooler at the time. But out of all of them, the only other patch trailer with no voice over was 3.2, Call of the Crusade. As in the most phoned-in raiding content patch in the history of the game. Is that really the comparison Blizzard should be going for, nearly two million subscribers down, with the LAST patch of an expansion and ultimate show-down with Deathwing, aka “I am the Cataclysm?”
It becomes even worse when you consider this fan-made revision:
This is what the fan says in the Youtube description:
After seeing the slightly disappointing 4.3 trailer from Blizzard I had a thought that it was simply lacking voiceovers, so I downloaded their trailer and voiceovers from the Dragon Soul raid and played around with it in iMovie for about an hour and this is the result.
Do note I have almost no video editing experience.
You know that tingling sensation, accompanied by your nipples getting hard? That’s (probably) due to proper voice work. And the goddamn height of Blizzard’s absurdity in this is that these voice clips already exist in the game files. It is not as though they can even hide behind the “expense” of getting Metzen to read the inactive ingredients label on a bottle of shampoo over Skype, or whatever passes as content creation in Blizzard offices these days. They had all the pieces already, but chose NOT to spend the one extra hour making a presentably badass trailer for the ultimate, world-destroying boss. Instead, they chose to dust off the 3.2 trailer generator, and cut & paste new video while changing the text in the “delayed left-to-right lens flare” field.
If Titan does not end up being the best videogame in the history of the medium, I hope to god that we see a VH1 Behind the Scenes special, five years down the road, detailing the descent into drugs and madness that was the dev team during this time period. I would rather know that they were booting black tar heroin than to accept that a team of gamer designers sat around a table and approved garbage like the original trailer. I would rather them say “let the casuals eat cake” and return to TBC 2.0, than to know they said “good enough” while rubber-stamping an inferior product. Design directions, even if I disagree with them, at least indicate a modicum of seriousness. This shit… if they stop caring, why should I? Or anyone?
The little things matter.
Reviews: Shadowgrounds, Anomaly Warzone Earth, NightSky, ARES
Game: Shadowgrounds
Recommended price: bundle
Metacritic Score: 74
Completion Time: ~6 hours
Buy If You Like: Atmospheric, top-down shooters
Burn them with fire.
Shadowgrounds is one of those indie games you wish received the polish of a full budget. The premise is an alien invasion of the human colony on Ganymede, one of Jupiter’s moons. What is great about Shadowgrounds is the atmospheric top-down shooting which combines elements of Smash TV/Binding of Isaac with survival horror. What this means is that you will frequently face hordes of aliens, but you lack the infinite ammo that would typically reduce the experience to holding down the fire button. There is also a strong sense that the game started out as a “shadow simulator” given the uncharacteristically amazing dynamic shadows generated by your flashlight.
With a dozen weapons with differing upgrade options and a good mix of alien types that never become trivial, Shadowgrounds makes a surprisingly strong entry in its own hybrid genre. It is just a shame that the designers felt it necessary to close up every loose end in the game’s conclusion.
Game: Shadowgrounds: Survivor
Recommended price: bundle
Metacritic Score: 79
Completion Time: ~5 hours
Buy If You Like: Even more atmospheric, top-down shooters
Seriously though, make these "real" games.
With Shadowgrounds: Survivor, Frozen Byte took the formula of the original and tweaked it in some of the right ways, and some of the wrong ways. As a prequel to the original, Survivor follows the paths of three separate survivors of the original attack on their way to evacuation. Each of the three characters is essentially their own “class,” with access to only a handful of the weapons of the original game. It makes for a more focused experience when you don’t have to choose between 12 weapons to exterminate an incoming enemy horde, so that actually works out. What also works out is the inclusion of a lot more human blood and body parts in the background, cementing my belief that this franchise could possibly see success remade as a perhaps B-level game.
What I felt didn’t work though, was the inclusion of experience points. While the original game had an upgrade system based on drops from enemies, I never really felt the need to kill every alien around. With XP though, the entire tone of the game changes to where you find yourself hunting down every last straggler to make sure you hit the XP cap for each level. Instead of “surviving,” it felt a lot more like “hunting.” Aside from that, the game really does feel like an improvement on the original.
Game: Anomaly Warzone Earth
Recommended price: $5
Metacritic Score: 80
Completion Time: ~5 hours
Buy If You Like: Slick, tower defense on wheels
If only a game was as fun as it looked.
The big buzz surrounding this indie title was the term “reverse tower defense.” While it is technically accurate that the enemy is the one with towers in a maze of city streets, Anomaly plays a lot closer to “tower defense on wheels” than anything else. You control an immortal commander that runs around on the ground, capable of placing one of four different types of effects on the battlefield to support your convoy: repair zones, smoke screens, decoys, and airstrike zones. A press of the button will bring up your map screen where you can change the route of your convoy, buy or upgrade units, or switch their order. The game itself is one of the slickest I have ever seen, as far as graphics and interface goes.
While there are varied alien tower types and plenty of tactical placement of your special powers, Anomaly suffers immensely from the fact that there is an optimal convoy configuration that never makes sense to deviate from. Basically: tank, shield, missile, missile. While some of the alien towers will force you to move away from your convoy and still others will force you to drop powers in only a few areas, the banality of the convoy configuration itself makes the destruction of the alien towers a forgone conclusion. I almost think the game would be a lot deeper if you had no control over the convoy composition – it would change how you deploy the special powers, at a minimum.
Game: NightSky
Recommended price: bundle
Metacritic Score: 78
Completion Time: ~4 hours
Buy If You Like: 2D physics indie puzzle games + jazz
Only thing more elegant than the visuals is the soundtrack.
In NightSky you control a metal sphere that has to roll its way past a number of 3-screen sets of physics-based puzzles. On some screens you have abilities like a super-speed up, a super-friction move, and even reverse gravity. These powers come and go, along with some more esoteric ones like being placed inside of a hollow-out RC car, or not being able to move at all while controlling the release of wheels, hammers, and other physics-based items as your only source of motive force.
There is nothing too groundbreaking going on in NightSky, but I must say it has one of the best jazz/environmental music in any indie game I have ever played. Combined with the gorgeous artwork that makes us each level, NightSky actually made for an amazingly relaxing game experience in the hour or so before going to sleep. There is a little bit of depth with some secret areas and hidden stars to collect, but this game is just long enough on its own to whet your appetite for more of what these designers are cooking.
Game: A.R.E.S.: Extinction Agenda
Recommended price: nothing
Metacritic Score: 68
Completion Time: ~2 hours
Buy If You Like: Bad side-scrolling shooters
Like spiderweb-flavored cotton candy.
What a terrible game. ARES is a side-scrolling shooter in the vein of Megaman, but anyone who actually played Megaman (or any side-scrolling shooter) will immediately recognize how utterly vapid the gameplay ends up being. Most enemies die without even doing anything that needs avoiding, and the boss encounters require no real strategy. It is almost as if the designers looked at an ingredient list of classic NES games, and then just tossed them all in a pot and called it a day. Pro-tip: if you want platformer-esque gameplay, you might want to ensure that your game includes jumping mechanics that don’t rely on a non-renewable resource, i.e. grenades.
What makes things worse to me, is how obvious the designers were in trying to pad the game. Each robot you destroy leaves behind a smattering of three different types of parts. Collecting these parts enable you to make health packs, grenade types, and upgrades to your weapons. Thing is, enemies will literally respawn two feet to the left or right of off-screen territory, giving you a not-so-subtle indication to go ahead and farm them for parts. Which might be fine if A) they didn’t essentially self-destruct once coming into view, B) they had attacks you needed to avoid, or C) bosses didn’t roll over and die without you ever really knowing what you were supposed to be doing, even on Hard mode. Graded performance *might* get perfectionists back again, but the lack of any compelling gameplay whatsoever limits that particular population to the most extreme of the OCD. And even then, they would probably have more fun counting toothpicks.
Factionally Imbalanced
I typically feel assuaged when reading the Dev Watercoolers, because they represent both that players have a legitimate grievance, and that the designers are on the case. With the latest Dev Watercooler entitled Faction Favoritism though, not only am I appalled by the lack of understanding, but I am beginning to lose faith in Blizzard’s ability to craft narratives worth experiencing.
So when it comes to the game’s ongoing story developments, it’s no surprise that Alliance and Horde fans are “keeping score.” Maps and charts of territory gained and lost started showing up around the time the Cataclysm shook the world to its foundations. Southshore plagued? Taurajo burned? Oh no they didn’t!
Implicit amidst most of the grumbling from either side is the assumption that Blizzard should be fairly treating both factions. Then there’s the more explicit assumption: if one faction is losing ground, then Blizzard must be biased.
Are we?
What is this I don’t even
Dave “Fargo” Kosak painfully goes on to talk about how it is precisely because of unfairness that “Hero Factories” get built. In the process of the explanation, it fully dawned on me how much Blizzard has no goddamn idea what the problem even is.
The Widening Narrative Gap
Claims about faction favoritism have never been (or should not have ever been) about the lack of tit-for-tat in territory gains/losses. Perfectly even exchanges are formulaic, boring, and have no place in stories worth experiencing. For Blizzard to address the fact that Horde gained more territory than Alliance in Cataclysm – or even to try and justify it with events that took place in the RTS games – is to miss the point entirely.
The fundamental issue vis-a-vis Horde bias is that Horde have the lion’s share of inter-faction narrative drama. Sylvannas is pulling a Lich King, the Tauren are reeling from the inadvertent loss of their beloved leader in a duel, there is deep divisions amongst the trolls, the orcs are going xenophobic, and the goblin starting experience cements the fact that your own faction leader betrayed you for profit. Meanwhile… what? Malfurion woke up, Audiun grew up, Gnomergan is still irradiated, Magni turned to diamond, and Prophet Velan has neither made any prophecies nor repaired the Naaru ship since it crash landed “two months ago.”
If the two factions represented two different creative writing papers for English 101, which would receive the higher grade? Where is the conflict between gnomes, dwarves, elves, humans, and draenei? Why aren’t the Night Elves complaining about humans cutting down trees to fuel war machines? Or Draenei starting to distrust the growing number of Alliance warlocks? Perhaps the new dwarven council decides it would be better to go isolationist, especially after a particularly disastrous gnome experiment caves-in part of Ironforge?
Bottom line: the Horde interaction is multifaceted with many conflicting goals and desires among the groups. Alliance interaction is one-dimensional, for basically no reason. Horde has Wheel of Time meets Dune whereas Alliance has goddamn Jack and Jill meets See Spot Run.
And so when Fargo says:
In the midst of this crisis, the Alliance is going to need to pull together like never before. At the BlizzCon lore panel we promised that key Alliance characters are going to get more time in the spotlight throughout Mists and the subsequent patches, and I wanted to reiterate that here. They’re going to come out of this stronger than ever, but the road ahead won’t be easy.
…I die a little on the inside. Alliance “pulling together” presumes a division that doesn’t exist, leaving the implication that Alliance will simply see some territory gains and some more Jaina/Varian screen-time. Wrathgate was the closest the Alliance has ever come in actually being angry with each other, and it was simply between Varian and Jaina, the latter of which has never been presented as even being part of the Alliance in any meaningful way.
All the while Horde will continue getting all the interesting narrative, what with Garrosh’s overreach, the growing problem with Silvannis’ blatant disregard for the use of plague and desecration of the dead, and the brilliantly implicit tension from the widening gulf between the Horde that Tauren and the Trolls pledged to so many years ago and the monster it has become. If Baine Bloodhoof doesn’t liken Garrosh’s militaristic Horde with the violent centaurs that Thrall helped Cairen defeat so many years prior, Blizzard will have left the ripest, low-hanging fruit in the history of narrative fiction to wither on the tree.
I wish I could say I have faith in Blizzard’s ability to do a narrative course correction. And I would… if I thought they understood why the present heading was wrong in the first place. Instead, the best any Alliance player can hope out of the lore team is summed up in the Alliance battlecry:
We’ll Keep Trying!
The Pre-4.3 Numbers
As I did back in June – has it really only been five months? – for posterity’s sake here is a screenshot of WoWProgress’s Firelands numbers as they stood on Tuesday, November 29th, at around 2am:
Since there is no 100% boss (but Shannox gets close), a little reverse-engineering results in a total of 45,839 guilds having killed at least 1 boss this tier. I would do a further breakdown as I did last time, but what’s the point? About 71% of every guild that started Firelands in some fashion finished it. Unlike last time around, Blizzard rolled out the content nerf before the patch hit, which obviously influences the completion rates in this bizarre way.
Speaking of last time, there were 62,405 guilds that downed at least one 1 boss in T11 content. Compared with today, that is a drop in activity of 26.55%, or 16,566 guilds that fell off the grid.
As always, the numbers get a little fuzzy if you want to look at the number of players instead of guilds. If we assume a generous 18 raiders per guild, 825,102 players have killed 1 boss in Firelands, down from 1,123,290 killing 1 boss in T11. Back in June I had what I assumed was a reasonably accurate count of all non-Chinese subs (i.e. all guilds WoWProgress tracks) at 6.5 million, but obviously that has changed in the midterm. Back then, it meant only 17.28% of players raided. Today that would be just 12.69%, but only if the overall population had not decreased as well.
To understand exactly how generous I am being vis-a-vis the 18 people per guild estimate, WoWProgress says that only 4934 guilds killed Shannox on 25m, compared with 39,861 10m kills. In other words, there are over eight (8) times as many 10m kills of Shannox than 25m of the same. That 8x figure is fairly consistent across all bosses until you hit Ragnaros, interestingly enough. In fact:
| Boss | 10m guilds | 25m guilds | Difference |
| Beth’tilac | 39,165 | 4,821 | 8.12x |
| Lord Rhyolith | 38,122 | 4,704 | 8.10x |
| Alysrazor | 37,086 | 4,467 | 8.30x |
| Shannox | 39,861 | 4,934 | 8.07x |
| Baleroc | 38,320 | 4,574 | 8.37x |
| Majordomo | 37,619 | 4,516 | 8.33x |
| Ragnaros | 27,595 | 3,991 | 6.91x |
If those 25m numbers don’t seem jarring to you, perhaps this will illustrate it better:
| Boss | 10m guilds | 25m guilds | Difference |
| The Siege of Ulduar | ??? | 31,993 | n/a |
| Beasts of Northrend | 86,187 | 58,801 | 1.46x |
| Anub’arak | 84,044 | 52,903 | 1.58x |
| Lord Marrowgar | 84,136 | 59,356 | 1.41x |
| Lich King | 48,523 | 11,567 | 4.19x |
| Magmaw | 60,390 | 4,395 | 13.74x |
| Nefarion | 39,390 | 4,580 | 8.60x |
I was not actually aware of the Magmaw discrepancy until just now, but… wow. Assuming that Blizzard making it difficult to differentiate between 10m and 25m kills achievement-wise doesn’t impact the accuracy of WoWProgress, this seems an armor-piercing argument that the merging of lock-outs (and possibly of gear) is not just killing 25m raiding, but driving it before us, while we hear the lamentation of its women.
While I understand the LFR system may address the casual PuG content gap, these numbers cannot bode well for the future of 25m raiding. Less than 5k guilds running normal 25m content means all that content is being made/balanced/tuned for the entertainment of less than 90,000 150,000 people. There will likely be three two times that number of players engaging in Pet Battles at any given time of day, let alone overall.
Hmm, perhaps the decision to include that as a major feature is not so incongruous after all.
So, In A Nutshell
From what I played over the weekend, Star Wars: The Old Republic is probably worth the $60.
This is not to say there were no pressing issues afoot. Light/Dark side issues aside, some of the game mechanics feel they came out of a time capsule buried when Gary Gygax was still alive. Talent trees? How quaint. But seriously, there was another matter which was important enough to submit proper beta feedback about:
For serious.
I am not sure who was the first game designer who thought it would be fun to present players with the dilemma of stopping mid-quest/dungeon to trek all the way back to their trainer to get Rank 3 of Explosive Shell for it’s increased damage, or simply Troopering (*rimshot*) on without it, but they deserve a Rank VII Punch to the face. If there was some kind of RP scene showing you how to get a little more juice out of your grenade shots or whatever, I could understand and appreciate that. But if I can level up in the field and magically grow stronger and tougher to kill from one moment to the next, I should be able to get that +10-20 damage in those same moments. Even Gygax let our Fireballs deal 8d6 damage when we went from 7th to 8th level!
Also, this isn’t a complaint per se, but if you roll a female anything, hope you like butts.
Mind the gap.
The SWTOR Ass Cam© is not over-utilized, but is something I don’t remember during my Jedi “Why so serious” Knight playthrough.
Trapeeze accident, thanks for asking.
Finally, Bieber done grew up on Korriban:
Lucas::Jar-Jar as Bioware::???
That about sums up my Star Wars shenanigans. I won’t see anyone at release, but definitely at the first price drop and/or after we see how the endgame shakes out and/or after we learn by what voodoo magicks Bioware plans to use in rolling out timely content patches. Even a phoned-in Molten Front daily hub would likely be over three hours of voiced work for 8 different classes.
I do wish SWTOR the best of luck. The better they do, the more likely Blizzard gets off their lazy “$1 billion in cash we don’t know what to do with” asses, and the more gamers win.
P.S. I hope there is an achievement for getting to level 50 with zero Social Points.
Ye Olde Republica
After spending roughly 15-20 hours with the Star Wars beta this weekend, I am telling my financial advisers to upgrade The Old Republic from “junk status” to “maybe after the first few patches.” There have no doubt been hundreds of beta impressions out there, so allow me to skip the foreplay and write the impression that I wanted to read on Friday.
Actually, let’s have some foreplay first, so we all start on the same “lights on or off” page.
Preface: Lights On
I am not that much of a Star Wars “fan.” I very much enjoy the setting and general zeitgeist, but I feel its true conflict and drama potential is irreparably crippled by the inane, one-dimensional Good vs Evil aspects of the mythology. As someone commented in SWTOR General Chat on Saturday, “Jedi strive to be as Data in all things.” Perhaps the monastic order bit makes Jedi less of the Lawful Good cliche hero, but in many ways this is worse because they do not go far enough. Going all dojo as the only means of controlling an inherently corrupting Force… now that would interesting. What is orders of magnitude less interesting are do-gooders who strive to have no relationship with any they save, and otherwise go out of their way to be as forgettable as possible. Makes for some compelling stories, let me tell you. Oh wait, you probably already know since none of the movies involved Jedi actually behaving Jedi-ish.
The above is important to know precisely because, having played KOTOR previously, I believed the talent at Bioware was criminally underutilized in making yet another Star Wars game. I was more than fine with having “good or evil” consequences for certain dialog options, but when “good” is being defined so… brainlessly, it snaps my suspension of disbelief. And on this front, I want to report two things: A) the Light side is indeed being as inanely adjudicated as ever, and B) Bioware is doing the best they can anyway.
For example (I wouldn’t consider these spoilers, but whatever):
In #5, refusing to have sex with the guy gives you Dark Side points. No, seriously.
I numbered those pictures so I could provide additional context into how monstrously dumb they are, but you know what? They speak for themselves. Well, except for #5, which still boggles my mind. In what universe does it make sense for an Imperial Agent to get Light Side points for sleeping with a guy threatening to blow her cover? And to get Dark Side points for refusing?! Now, I did [Flirt] with the guy a few times, but does that somehow justify what would amount to rape in several States (since coercion was involved)? And keep in mind that this is the same game where Jedi kissing is the inevitable path to the Dark Side.
Clearly the Light Side is in favor of prostitution and no-strings-attached casual sex.
In which case… Light Side it is.
Jedi Knight, Level 7.
This is probably everyone’s default choice, so I figured it would be as good a place as any. I did not get a chance to play every class’s starting area, but out of the ones I did, this one was the absolute worst. I almost uninstalled by the time level 5 rolled around.
It has been said by others before, but you never quite realize how unbelievably polished and solid WoW’s combat system feels until you try other games. I played in both Warhammer Online’s and Aion’s beta, and all of them (SWTOR included) feel ever so slightly off. This game is a lot closer than the others however. Indeed, by the end of my total experience I could probably accept this sort of combat as a new Normal.
There is no auto-attack, and you don’t miss it. As a melee, the time inbetween the 1.5 second GCD is filled with parries and sparks and other exciting things. Some people have pooh-poohed the fact that you will be taking point-blank blaster fire and lightsaber hits until your HP reaches zero, as if 30 years of RPGs with exactly the same goddamn thing never happened. In fact, I remember whacking on a droid in KOTOR for 5 solid minutes, because my dual-bladed lightsaber had trouble with his 20/– DR.
Combat is exciting as a Jedi Knight, and in general, for several reasons. One, you get Force Leap early, which means you are constantly flying towards mobs ala warriors in WoW. Two, and in somewhat of an innovation on the MMO formula, mobs actually hang out in logical groups, typically in 3s and 4s. Since you get cool AoE moves early as well, my Jedi was flying into groups of Flesh Raiders, stunning the weak ones with a spin attack, using a reactive off-the-GCD move when I parried something, and then working a rotation otherwise. Not as solid as WoW, but close. Then again, Force Leap (aka Charge) does actually work off/up ledges, across obstacles, and otherwise doesn’t fail because a pebble or twig was in the way.
Storywise though, I am not a fan of the Jedi Knight. No hooks to keep me interested, no interesting choices; basically a snooze-fest.
Sith Inquisitor, level 11
Now here we go. Beginning area is basically cut & paste from the Korriban area of KOTOR, including plumbing the depths of the tombs. I wouldn’t be surprised if the layouts are the exact same. Story is a lot more interesting, good dialog choices, nice conflict options. The Inquisitor plays a lot like an old-school Shadow priest, what with the 10-yard channeled snare spell and such. It felt nice shooting Lightning, but I cannot help but wonder how fun it will be doing it ad infinitum. The last two levels before I got my tank companion were brutal though, like playing a mage without Frost Nova.
One thing I haven’t mentioned is that each class has a channeled ability to recharge health/mana (etc). Jedi Knight has Introspection or whatever, while the Inquisitor has Seethe. Seethe. You literally pace with your hands behind your back, back and forth, as darkness falls around you. Way better than pushing a stein with a bread roll stuff in the top through your face ala WoW.
Also, there was a section where I could use a knockback to knock mobs off the ledge and into the abyss. They died, and I got full XP.
Trooper, level 10
This was the class experience that immediately gripped me by the balls, and threatened to never let go. You barely have time for 2-3 dialog choices before your ship gets blown up, and you stumble out into a heavy fighting zone with blasters and explosions going off every which way. My two buttons at level 1 is a stream of blaster rifle fire (i.e. Strike in WoW) and a Concussive Grenade (i.e. lol level 1); both are instant-cast, and the latter knocks mobs every which way. I’m running around, helping people under fire, getting additional objectives in the field, and suddenly realize… I want this as a game. Not as an MMO, but as a game.
True, some of the Light/Dark side choices break the immersion (recovering stolen medicine for hurt soldiers = Dark, giving medicine to the thieves = Light), but there is a lot of drama potential here. Plot hooks are planted, primed, and fired. And as a Trooper, I feel a lot more freedom to make decisions the way I would want them to be made. Hey, the ends sometimes justify the means, know what I’m saying?
Also, I feel kinda bad for having the prior impression that the Trooper was going to be like those faceless Rebel mooks in the dumb helmets from the original trilogy. I sometimes wonder if Bioware spent a lot more developer resources making them extra badass to dispel that very notion. You’ve seen the cinematic, right? When a trooper tries to take out a Sith with a goddamn knife? That’s how badass playing a Trooper feels like.
Imperial Agent, level 5
Time was running out on the beta, so I didn’t get as far as I liked. Much like the Trooper experience though, the Imperial Agent felt like it was, is, and should be its own separate game. I basically randomized the character and name, but my lithe, biracial cyborg may almost be my favorite character. It is just too bad that I don’t think the Imperial Agent playstyle – cover mechanics are kinda lame when you get accidental aggro – is going to be my cup of tea. What little of the story I have seen, I like. A lot.
In any event, this is running long. Further musings will need to wait.
Re: PC Shopping
Thanks everyone who commented earlier about the 5 Stages of PC Shopping, as I have officially broke the cycle. Le specs:
- i5-2500K Processor (4x 3.30GHz/6MB L3 Cache)
- 8 GB [4 GB X2] DDR3-1600
- NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 Ti – 1GB – EVGA Superclocked – Core: 900MHz
- 64 GB ADATA S596 Turbo SSD (for Windows, games)
- 500 GB HARD DRIVE — 16M Cache, 7200 RPM, 6.0Gb/s (for data)
The rig came to $1260 when the $75 (!) shipping was added in, all via iBuyPower.com. If you’re interested, their Black Friday sale has morphed into a Weekend Sale that will undoubtedly segue into a Cyber Monday sale, so you probably have some time.
I suppose the “cycle” is not permanently broken until I start buying and assembling the computer myself, but given I haven’t had a computer tower in years I figure I’ll be more comfortable next time around. When I priced the components individually on Newegg, it came to ~$818 before shipping and without certain features like liquid cooling and such. I paid a premium, but it’s an okay premium. For now.
In unrelated, albeit possibly interesting news, I will be playing the SWTOR beta starting in the afternoon.
Warlocks as the MoP Baseline
If you look at nothing else regarding the Mists of Pandaria Talent Calculator, browse the warlock section. Having looked at all the classes, it is pretty clear which among them have received the most designer attention. Which is not to suggest this pre-alpha build indicates which classes will be screwed or whatever. I’m simply saying that if the warlock design can be considered a baseline, Blizzard has a very real chance at blowing everyone’s fucking minds.
Demonic Portal alone… here, just let me show you again:
*cue the sound of one jaw dropping*
The sheer number of potential shenanigans boggles the mind. Set this up in a WSG flag room. Set this up in an AV tower. Set this up for your raid team as a handicap accessible ramp for those that struggle moving out of the fire fast enough. Set this up between the goddamn mailbox and AH. Five charges is not a lot, but I bet there will be a Glyph for more.
I don’t want to call a spell like this a “game-changer,” but I am finding it difficult to express what it does in any other terms. So many “new” spells and abilities in WoW are iterations of what came before. Malefic Grasp is the Affliction filler and acts as equal parts Drain Life and Shadow Bolt, with a speeding up of DoT damage innovation. Refreshing, and feels like something Affliction should do. Demonic Portal though is so out of the box that it feels like I have to approach the game in a fundamentally different way, even though it technically is an iteration too (“What if everyone could use a warlock’s Demonic Circle?”).
The rest of the warlock spells/talents show a similar level of left-field thinking. Look at the T3 talent line-up:
- Spell Drain: Next single-target spell/ability focused at you deals no damage and heals you for half of what it would have dealt. Lasts 4 seconds, 15 second cooldown.
- Soul Link: Probably same ~X% damage reduction.
- Sacrificial Pact: Demon sacrifices 50% of its HP to make you immune to damage for 10 seconds. 3 minute cooldown.
I think Spell Drain is going to be redesigned completely by the time Blizzard is through – no way it lasts with a 15 second cooldown – but all three of those are really, really hard choices. Yeah, raiders will probably stick with Soul Link unless the boss has an uber-move you can cheese with Sacrificial Pact, but I’m looking at this from more of a PvP standpoint. Or, hell, what about leveling/soloing old instances/running heroics/etc? Tough choices.
Now, look at T4:
- Blood Fear: Your Fear is instant, but costs 10% of your maximum health.
- Burning Rush: Your Life Tap causes you to move 25% faster for 8 seconds.
- Dark Bargain: Absorbs damage equal to 20% of your maximum health, lasts 30 seconds. Any shield remaining when the spell expires is dealt to you in damage. 30 second cooldown.
When I read this tier, I forgot these talents were from WoW; it felt like I was reading off some Dragon Age: Origin interpretation of a warlock. In a good way. These choices are more… warlock-y than warlocks have been in WoW since their inception. Before this, there was what? DoTs and Life Tap? Outside of the class quest to unlock the Succubus, I felt there was always a bit of weird, thin line between mages and warlocks. DoTs + pets vs nukes, sure, but once DoTs are up the warlock simply nukes too. And there never seemed to be much conceptual distance between Destruction warlocks and Fire mages. Now, with this kind of flavor and direction? Much, much better.
Everything can change between now and the Beta, let alone between the Beta and release (and the hotfixes, and mid-expansion overhauls, etc). But if the remaining classes can siphon off even a fraction of the creative juices oozing from these pre-alpha warlocks, MoP could end up making WoW feel like an entirely new, high fidelity experience to even the most bitter of veterans. I am indeed that impressed.
Thoughts on MoP Paladins
General:
- Judgement has a 6 second cooldown, 30 yard range baseline. At level 5. Cool.
- No Auras anymore. Crusader Aura is passive, self-only.
- Well, Holy paladins get a ridiculous cooldown version of the missing Auras.
- Blinding Shield has returned as Blinding Light.
- It will surf through beta, then hotfix-nerfed Day 1.
- Seriously, Hungering Cold gets a cast time, and another instant mass-AoE spell is designed?
- Plus, paladins. What’s not to nerf?
Talents:
- T1 – Speed of Light is a real oddball cooldown here. Consider that it is another 20% DR on a 1 minute cooldown for Holy, on top of Divine Protection, on top of Divine Shield, on top of Hand of Protection, on top of Devotion Aura (20% less Fire/Frost/Shadow damage, immune to interrupts/Silence for 6 seconds), on top of potentially Ardent Defender*. And you move faster with it up. The Prot version of Speed of Light increases damage done by 10% and is thus the more “raid tank” choice, but what does extra damage and moving faster have in common really? And Ret will skip it to grab the somewhat clunkier Long Arm of the Law. Or potentially Pursuit of Justice depending on how quickly Holy Power expires.
- T2 – We already tried the 6 second stun on a 30 second cooldown, Blizz. You said it didn’t work. As excited I am about Burden of Guilt, Repentance is really the only logical choice.
- T3 – /yawn. I want Sacred Shield as a tank, assuming the boosted healing doesn’t evaporate when the bubble pops, but I’m pretty sure Blessed Life will be required all the time, by every spec, everywhere. Constant raid damage, anyone?
- T4 – Selfless Healer is P-I-M-P. Thank you for bringing back my Ret from Wrath. Besides, it was getting a little dumb that warriors and rogues could heal themselves better/faster than my paladin while leveling.
- T5 – This whole row needs redesigned.
- T6 – Ditto this row. Boring.
- Misc – Blessed Life + Pursuit of Justice is actually a pretty funny talent “combo.” The more you damage a paladin, the faster they run around. Wish they would turn that more into a paladin kit.
Specs:
- [Ret] Nothing too terribly different than what we have now, aside from extra polish. For example, Inquisition now lasts 10 seconds per Holy Power, up from 4, making it more Slice n’ Dicey. Exorcism is Ret-only, instant-cast baseline, has no cooldown (!), generates Holy Power, and automatically fires ala DK’s old-school Sudden Doom talent (before it got moved to Unholy). Hrm… they might be intending for Ret to not be able to push the button until it lights up ala Arcane Missiles. Actually, yeah, both say “activate.” Lame.
- [Prot] /yawn. Could we have a few more passive abilities, Blizzard? Getting activated abilities at 10, 20, and 40 is too much. I might actually have to use a second row of my action bar.
- [Holy] I don’t roll Holy, but I find those rolling damage reduction cooldowns to be a tad of the ridiculous side.
Overall, I may have gotten a little too excited yesterday over the legitimate 50% snare thing. Especially considering the absolutely batshit crazy insane shenanigans going on in the Warlock department.
Consider yourself foreshadowed.
P.S. Did anyone else notice that mages no longer have Teleport/Portal: Theramore, but Stonard is still on the roster? Blatant Horde favoritism! Unless… unless… Alliance mages can send careless raid/random BG members to Stonard too. In which case: well played, Blizzard. Well played.
*Obviously not all at once, or in that sequence. However… 10 second DivPro, 12 second SoL, 10 second ArdentD, 6 second DevoAura, 8 second DivShield… which leaves you with 14 seconds until DivPro comes back off cooldown. Which you can fill with a 20 second Avenging Wrath, Guardian of Ancient Kings, or you know, actually healing through normal damage.
In An Age 
32GB At A Time
Dec 8
Posted by Azuriel
The new computer has arrived.
Remember that photo from the 5 Stages of PC Shopping? Yeah, that basically showed up.
Asian (unfortunately) not included.
Although I have technically had this rig – and it physically qualifies as a “rig” – for a day and a half, I have not actually played any games on it. As it turns out, somewhere inbetween the last time I bought a new computer and this one, I have accumulated a lot of shit that does not like being moved around. iTunes, for instance, was an adventure; you can’t just copy the iTunes folder over and be done with it. It’s fickle. So fickle, in fact, that I ended up having to change the way iTunes was stored on my laptop (moving everything to D:/), then renaming my hard drive on the new machine from E:/ to D:/ (for some reason the Blu-Ray drive was D:/), copying it all onto a 32GB thumb drive I bought today for this express purpose, and then finally shifting it to the new machine.
The whole operation felt like a Kidney transplant, complete with a fear of rejection by the host. And now that I looked it up on Wikipedia, it took around the same amount of time. My Steam transplant, by comparison, was more akin to a vasectomy: just a little snip-snip, followed by recovery.
Hopefully I will be back up and running at full steam (oh ho ho) by the weekend at the latest. Although I had half a mind to chase the Skyrim bandwagon before it completely faded from view, Deus Ex: HR was technically here first in the “I wish my computer could play this” category. And screw being topical anyway (when you are already so far behind the curve)!
Posted in Commentary
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Tags: iTunes, PC Shopping, Steam