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| 1999, Carnage becomes name of past as Wolfpack announces development of Shadowbane. |
| 2003, Mutable Realms and Themis Group announce partnership for "Wish" beta, where Dave "Mahrin Skel" Rickey formerly of Mythic's Dark Age of Camelot is spotted as the Lead Designer. |
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Previews: World of Warcraft
World of Warcraft, the MMO Game being developed by Blizzard Entertainment and published by Vivendi, building upon the past experiences of the Warcraft games, mixing RTS and RPG for what will no doubt be a game that stands alone.
Olaf tells us why, in his continued journies from deep within the closed beta! Be sure to check out the first part's of his continued adventures!
World of Warcraft pt5 - Eric "Olaf" Hasselfeld (10-15-04)
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Finally
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| New death effects!
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When last I reported on the World of Warcraft beta I was a bit jaded because of recent changes to my class of choice, the Warlock, and the global item wipe. My Warlock did not play the same as pre-patch, and my Rogue needed to go shopping for gear with money he didn't have. So, I sat on the sidelines for a bit while my wife gleefully took up the slack. She got her Druid to 50, the current cap, before I decided that it was unconscionable for her to have a 50 and me to be lagging behind at 41. So, I decided to start playing again but…where to start? The two biggest additions in the last patch were Talents for Warriors and Mages and the PvP server. I am not big on PvP, despite having spent a good bit of time with DAoC. One shot kills, griefers and having to look over my shoulder while trying to xp just is not my idea of fun. Not to mention I couldn't raid a certain level 50 Druid's bank account from a different server…so the PvP server was out. That left exploring Talents with one of the two classes that had them. I immediately chose Warrior because I am not big on nukers. I am also obligated to say that at this point in the game, Mages are the most powerful class in WoW and are surely headed for a big nerf beat down. I don't like being nerfed (beta or not, deserved or not) so that helped steer me to Warrior as well. Finally, there has been some concern about the leveling speed in WoW. For your reference, my playing time to 50 was 8 days and 20 hours. Along the way I also became an Artisan Blacksmith and Miner. Contrasting that, my EQ main, a Necromancer, reached level 50 pre-Kunark in just about 19 days played with a focus purely on leveling.
The Crying Game
Before we start, let's clear the air and do something I don't have the luxury of gracefully doing in game each time my Warrior meets and groups with new players. You might have noticed from the screenshots that my Warrior is a female. Olaf is not. Confused? I hope not. I had never started a female character to play before in an MMO, so this was a first for me. Originally my wife and I were going to split time with her, so that was one reason I made her a female. Another reason I wanted to play a female is because the human female character models in WoW are kind of, well…hot. Let me say that looking at her for hours on end sure beats staring at my grave worn Warlock or my weather-beaten Rogue, both of whom are males. I am not sure I would do it again though. People are nicer to me in general than they were with Sayleth or Vil, the other two characters I mention. And I can't help but feeling it's because they have some misguided notion that I am a female in real life, one who likes wearing metal thongs, and that they'd like to get to know me better. Yikes. In groups I try to nonchalantly mention my wife as much as possible to dispel any musings that may be going on across the ether. I am not sure if I would play a female character again or not. Despite the issues above, she is hot and nice to look at and that counts for something.
The Warrior Class
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| The Truesilver Champion!
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Alright so with that off my proverbial chest I can get started talking about Talents. But I want to give a brief overview of the Warrior class as it exists in WoW before doing that, as I think it will allow the reader to more fully appreciate the guns or butter decisions behind choosing talents.
Warriors in World of Warcraft are the tank class, an MMO standard. They are gear dependent and their primary job in a group is to hold the attention of the target and soak up damage, jobs at which they perform better than any class. They are in the middle of the spectrum in terms of damage dealing and this would be a secondary role for them in a group.
Before going into battle a Warrior must choose a stance to fight from. There are three, learned at levels 1, 10 and 30. Battle stance is the one you are introduced to first. It's an offensive stance with a variety of handy abilities learned over the course of your career. It's the solo stance, or the stance you take when you are the second Warrior in a group even though that is a rare occurrence. At level 10 you learn the Defensive stance. This stance gives a small passive defense bonus and has abilities geared towards taking less damage and reducing your target's ability to do damage. This is the stance you will be in most of the time when grouped because it has the taunt ability which allows you to attempt to force a target to change its focus from its current target to you. This is indispensable in groups as healers and overzealous god-mode enabled characters (Mages) will become targets lest you use this ability liberally. Finally at 30 the Warrior learns the Berserker stance. This stance has a passive 10% offensive haste but also a 20% melee damage taken penalty. This stance can best be described as incomplete as it only has two abilities so far. It was conceived as a stance to take when grouped, but not the primary tank.
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| A new fad!
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Although the abilities available to you in the different stances are usually exclusive to a particular stance their 'fuel' is not. As a Warrior your currency is Rage. Rage is to Warriors as Mana is to Mages or Energy is to Rogues. Rage is acquired by doing damage and taking damage. While the exact formulas change depending on the stance, more is better. If you land a big crit, you get a nice rage boost, enough to power any of your abilities. A glancing blow on the other hand, might only add 1 Rage not even enough to execute the cheapest of abilities. Similarly, with just one enemy attacking and damaging you Rage builds slowly. But if you have a pack of foes teeing off on you, your Rage bar will fill quickly regardless of the damage you are doing to them. Managing Rage is a very important aspect of playing a Warrior. It helps to enter a fight with at least a partially filled Rage bar, but it diminishes rapidly outside of combat so you are encouraged to keep the pulls coming.
Warriors are a must have for any serious group. No other class can grab and hold aggro like a Warrior and this is their must have ability for a group. You don't need a Warrior in your group to succeed, but you do need a Warrior in your group if you are going to maximize the performance of a group and take on the more challenging content as soon as possible. WoW has evolved into a game with almost no crowd control in the classical EQ-Enchanter sense and so the Warrior has become even more important. In a sort of reverse crowd control, your job is to grab aggro and hold onto it like a bum fighting for a bottle of Thunderbird. I find it entertaining and fun and it makes combat very engaging as to be a good Warrior you are constantly switching targets and firing off abilities. It's tough to converse with your group, but it's never boring.
The Talented Ms. Laseen
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Please observe the five
foot rule at all times!
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If you are familiar with EQ Talents can best be likened to the Alternate Advancement (AAs) system in that game. They are points that you earn and then spend towards making your character better or different. The difference here is that unlike EQ, Talents are earned at a fixed and finite rate. One per level, and that's it. In EQ there was no limit to the number of AA points you could earn and so given enough time, all characters had the same abilities. In WoW you must make choices as to how you want to develop your character. The available talents are separated into three trees. For Warriors these are Fury, Protection and Arms. Fury talents tend to boost the prowess of the Berserker stance and offensive capability. Protection talents are things that help you tank, mostly working in conjunction with a shield and the Defensive stance. Arms talents are offensive boosts tied to specific weapon types and the Battle stance.
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| Nice doggy!
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All talent trees are progressive flow chart-like affairs. The early talents are small passive bonuses, things like a 1% increase in your chance to land a critical hit or a 1 point increase to your defensive skill. These increases are small, but they add up over time. I would add here that Blizzard should rethink flat bonuses in favor of percentages though. A 1 point increase to defense is huge at level 2. At level 50 it's miniscule. Delving deeper into each tree and you find all new abilities available to you. Things like Concussion Blow, a targeted five second stun with a one minute cool down. Or the currently overpowered because of its lack of cool down Mortal Strike which does 150% damage after adjustments like critical hits and bestows an anti-healing debuff on the target. In order to access the powerful abilities of a given tree, you must meet pre-requisites in the form of having specific talents and X number of total talent points spent in that tree. Each tree has at least one ability that is not available until you spend 30 points in that tree. Doing some quick math you can see that with a level cap of 60, and a talent point for every level except the first…it's impossible to access more than one of these per character. This is a good thing and will result in diversity among the classes, assuming the balance issues get hammered out with the various trees. Right now there is much concern that since a Warrior's primary role is to tank, that all Warriors will end up sinking the majority of their points into the Protection tree. There is some validity to that, but as long as you are using a shield and in the defensive stance you are can effectively tank. Unlike those two criteria, points in Protection are not required to be a group's main tank. Similarly, Fury being tied to the Berserker stance makes those talents less effective currently as the Berserker stance is incomplete.
Eye Candy
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| Some specular lighting at work!
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I have included some screen shots of Laseen proudly displaying her armor. You might notice how revealing it is. Yum. Thankfully for heterosexual males everywhere these same pieces of armor are nowhere near as revealing when placed on a male avatar. I also included some shots of her on her prized possession. The wolf is supposed to be Horde only currently, but with some patience and a friendly priest you can get another factions mount. It costs the same amount of gold (100) as any other mount, but the skill point charge to learn to ride any mount other than your own race's is steep, a charge going from 400 up to 1000. They are going to disable this 'feature' in the next patch and possibly repo all cross-faction mounts. This will make Laseen sad as Alliance mounts are bland compared to Raptors and Wolves.
The next patch is imminent and I hope to be have another column written within two weeks of its release. As always, feel free to post questions and comments on the forums here.
Discuss: But, When is open Beta?
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