A new kind of hard mode?

This post over on Restokin brings up an interesting point, especially in the comment section. It says that hard modes are uninteresting for players because they don't actually provide any kind of challenge to the players' skill; players like Lissanna feel that they are just running the same old content, but now its arbitrarily harder. Although I have defended hard modes in the past, I agree with Lissanna that they are basically a lazy rehash of the same content that players are forced to run over and over again. (Although that's another issue, entirely.) She complains that her guild thinks there is no real reason to run hard modes other than the achievements, and thus they don't want to run them.

So what's the alternative? Currently, most hard modes (as far as I understand it) pretty much involve more damage and more sources for that damage. What I think would be a better idea is hard modes that actually changed the fight. After all, I think Blizzard implemented hard modes to allow casual players to see the content while still giving hard core players a challenge, so rather than just adding more damage to the fight, why not make it require more skill? I'll give some examples bellow to illustrate my point. Because of my limited experience with raids, these examples will be from basic Northrend 5-mans rather than raids. These are just ideas, and I'm sure Blizzard could probably come up with ones that would be even more interesting and be enjoyable to play.

Imagine Ingvar the Plunderer in Utgarde Keep as a raid boss. His smash/dark smash ability could extend to the entire arena, and thus all players would need to run behind a column to avoid it. However, on hard mode, every time he does it, he could destroy the column he is closest to. If you didn't have a column to hide behind, the dark smash would probably kill your raid. In order to prevent people from just healing through it, each smash that hits could also apply a debuff that increases the damage of the next smash by 25%, stacking until the player dies. Now imagine Prince Keleseth from the same instance as a raid boss. What if, on hard mode, before casting frost tomb, he used an spell that pushed all of the players away from him and put a snare on them, so that they would need to bunch up on each other so that they could be close to whoever got frost tombed and they could free that person. Imagine a fight like Xevozz in Violet Hold. In VH, the orbs he summons just take the shortest path to you, following you wherever you go, making this basically a kiting fight. That would be fine on normal mode, but what if, on hard mode, they took different paths and tried to flank your raid, and you needed to be careful to make sure they don't? That would make an interesting fight, me thinks.

These are just some example, and my limited raid experience makes coming up with more example difficult, but I think you get the idea. What are some similar hard-mode fight-mechanic changers that you think would be fun to play?

The case for solo raid instances

Back when I started playing WoW and began to understand what raiding was, I came to grips with the fact that I would never be able raid seriously. I just don't have the time to dedicate to it, and as much as I would love to be able to see the new content that Blizzard puts so much time into making, I probably never will. It's a shame, because the vast majority of Blizzard's development time for patches is spent developing raid content, and yet so many players like me will never be able to see it. Then the idea hit me: what if each raid dungeon had a version where all of the trash and bosses were non-elite, regular level 80-something enemies? That way, players who don't have the time to raid with others could still experience the same content and do so on their own time.

I know many people's knee-jerk reaction to that suggestion will be that it is a bad idea, but maybe the details of my idea will placate them a bit. Let me start by explaining the lore behind my idea. The gnomes and goblins are known for their engineering marvels, so they would make virtual reality machines to match the raid experience, though toned down to make it accessible to single adventurers. Their practical reason for doing so would be to allow the adventurers of the world to be more prepared when they enter a raid instance. However, because these engineers would need to gather information from people who actually enter the raid in order to make their simulations accurate, each solo raid would not become available until some time after the actual raid has been implemented. Perhaps they would have weekly quests that would ask players to finish the actual raid itself and report back with their findings. When enough people have completed these weekly quests, the solo raid would be unlocked.

Because these solo raids would be virtual reality, they would not award any money, gear, or tangible rewards of any kind. Let me reiterate that, since I feel it is one of my most important points: there would be no real reward for running these raids, so people would still be motivated to run actual raids. The solo raids would probably not cause any durability damage to gear either, since the player won't be taking any actual damage. The trash enemies would range from level 79 to 82, depending on how tough they are in the actual raid. The bosses themselves would range from level 81 to 83, with earlier bosses being 81 and later ones being 83, in order to make them suitably challenging for players. Obviously, some boss fights would loose much of their challenge due to the fact that the player is alone, but perhaps the engineers running the simulation would chime in with quips about how being in a raid would affect the boss fight.

I'm sure one of the first objections people will have against this idea is that it would remove one motivating factor that keeps people raiding: seeing the content. If solo raids were implemented in the way I am suggesting then players will still definitely want to run regular raids, for if a player didn't go into actual raids, he'd be forced to see the content later than everyone else (I think a one to two month delay is sufficient), he wouldn't get any gear to show for his efforts, and his only reward would be seeing the lore behind these instances, meaning people probably wouldn't take advantage of them more than once. If players need even more motivation to run actual raids in lieu of running these replications, we could add durability damage to them, meaning the player would actually lose money by running them. Still, I don't think we need to revert to such drastic measures.

Some may also say that they would rather Blizzard spend their time balancing the actual raid content than spend any of it balancing some bootleg solo content, but how long would it really take to balance the solo content? Even if, in their first iteration, the raids were too difficult or just unbalanced, the fact that players are going in on their own means that problems with the fights would become apparent very quickly and fixes could be implemented just as quickly. Because players will be fighting alone, Blizzard will know that any problems players have will not be due to lack of raid synergy or raids not bringing the right combination of classes. If 1v1 arenas were possible, it would bring the state of PvP class balance into sharp focus. Why? Because so few people are involved. Thus, if you only have one person involved in a situation, any balancing issues with the solo raids should be clear as day and easy to fix, thus won't take up much of the developers' time.

Considering how much time Blizzard spends on developing raid content and how much they have been catering to the casuals recently, I find it surprising that they haven't mentioned any ideas like this yet. I hope they do implement something like this, for I am just as eager to see the end of the Lich King storyline when patch 3.3 comes out as everyone else is. If you have any other objections to my idea that I haven't brought up, leave them in the comment section and I'll give you my response.

How to gear up for two roles at once

As a druid who is both a tank and a healer (I gave up on being competitive at DPS a long time ago), I know how difficult it is to keep an adequate set of gear for two roles. By trying to stay competitive at two roles at once, you need to dedicate more time to gearing up just because you are keeping two sets of gear updated at once, whereas people who focus on one role don't need to do that. When your resources are spread that thin, you need to make ends meet however you can. That is what this post is about: tips to help you keep two sets of gear updated at once.

1. Take advantage of unneeded epics
This piece of advice applies more to people who are trying to start a second set of gear, but rolling on gear that drops in raids that other people don't need is a great way to keep two sets of gear up-to-date. This may be difficult if you guild uses a loot system that doesn't allow for people to role on gear for offsets without serious detriments to themselves, but if you take advantage of both sets of gear in raids, they'll probably understand and make some sort of accommodation.

2. Use your emblems intelligently
The various emblems that drop from instances are a great way to upgrade your gear when you may not be able to otherwise, but don't spend you emblems on something you may be able to get an upgrade for in an instance. If you are running 10-man Trial of the Crusader and you need a healing offhand item, you should spend your emblems on that since none drop in there, but if you need a DPS offhand, you may want to wait for the one that drops in there. Likewise, if you are a Death Knight, Druid, Shaman, or Paladin, you should focus on upgrading the item in your relic slot first, since no relics drop from TotC. More generally, you should look on wowhead to see what gear the raid your are running drops so that you know which items you won't be able to get. Those are the slots you should get gear for first using emblems. Aside from that, if you are interested in keeping both sets up-to-date, just update whichever item is in most dire need of an update, no matter which set it is from.

3. BoE/crafted items are your friend
No one said keeping two sets updated was easy, or cheap. Because you will need to split your drops/emblems between your two sets, anything you can do outside of an instance to make gearing up easier is a good thing. If you are starting a new set from scratch, use a combination of reputation rewards, BoE drops, items from the Argent Tournament, and crafted items to get yourself started. That should get you geared enough to do the daily heroic quests, which will be a good source of emblems.

4. Consider taking up enchanting
As an enchanter, I can't lie to you; if you aren't leveling it up as you yourself level up, enchanting is a pain and a half to level, and incredibly expensive too. It's not as lucrative as it used to be ever since rare enchants like crusader went the way of the shaman tank, so what's the main draw of it? Mainly, you can enchant your own gear the minute you get it. If you win an item in an instance, just put an enchant on it right there. It takes the hassle out of getting new gear enchanted (which you will need to do a lot if you don't have it, considering you will be going after twice as much gear) and gives you that much of an edge if you have difficulty staying ahead when it comes to gear.

Keeping two sets of gear is difficult, but the reward is that you will be able to fill two roles in any groups you join and any raids you do with your guild, making you a more flexible player and increasing the chance that you will get an instance group. I can tell you from personal experience that it is incredibly rewarding, so go to it!

What I would like to see in Cataclysm. Part 3: Grinding

I'm not going to lie: I miss grinding. I'm talking about the kind of grinding where you kill a bunch of enemies over and over again for some end, either a rare drop of to grind a reputation. Remember grinding? It seems to have gone the way of the shaman tank with Wrath of the Lich King: it does still exist, but its really difficult to find, existing only as a remnant of the past. Sure, you can grind for relics of ulduar to increase your Sons of Hodir reputation, but that's pretty much it. I would call the daily quests a new type of grinding (the "daily grind," if you will), but that's another story.

I understand why Blizzard got rid of grinding: most players hated it. Grinding is, by its nature, repetitive, and most players don't enjoy such repetitive activities. (And yet they tolerate doing the same dailies day after day and the same raids week after week. I never understood players.) Grinding can be especially grating if the player is grinding for a low-drop-chance item, since they can be screwed over by the RNG and end up spending days on something that someone else got after two kills, as anyone who has ground for a pet can tell you. Thus the only "good grinding" (some will argue there is no such thing) is the kind with either consistent rewards or where the target item has a high enough drop rate that it feels consistent. Grinding enemies for reputation (as in a direct, rep-for-kill kind of thing) is a good example of this. Perhaps Blizzard could give the factions of Cataclysm both dailies and enemies that can be ground for rep, allowing players to grind for rep as they see fit. This would satisfy both us odd players who enjoy grind and the majority (I think) of players who don't.

Blizzard could also add more pets to the game that are obtained by grinding. I know many players don't like low-drop-chance grind for the reason stated above, but pet collectors are used to that kind of thing, and even embrace it. Perhaps certain enemies could be made to drop crafting recipes as well, with a high enough drop rate that players wouldn't get bored to tears farming them. You could have NPCs in the same zone that would point players out to where the recipes can be farmed; perhaps trade suppliers would fill that role. That way players wouldn't need to depend on wowhead or other such sites to tell them what enemies they need to grind for recipes.

I know this is a short post, but as I have said, I am competing in NaNoWriMo, so that is eating up a lot of my time.

New professions as the embodiments of each expansion pack

One thing I have noticed about both Jewelcrafting and Inscription is that they both embodied significant aspects of their respective expansion pack. I will go over each one in time, but this got me thinking: if this is true of the previous professions, then what can we gleam about Cataclysm from the new profession that is slated to be included, Archaeology? Let's find out.

Burning Crusade was a partial deviation from many of the ways Blizzard did things. Factions were emphasized much more, and Jewelcrafting reflected this by having many of its patterns for gem cuts (of which there were many) come from reputations. Burning Crusade also brought the advent of heroics, many of which dropped Jewelcrafting plans, encouraging jewelcrafters to run them. BC also had something for both new players and players at the level cap (with the inclusion of two new races and the new continent, respectively), but it was mostly focused on the level cap. This was reflected in jewelcrafting, which finally allowed for the creation of useful BoE jewelry for people who were still leveling up, but mostly found its niche in the the creation of gems to put in high-level players' gear. Because of all of these facets (pun not intended) of Jewelcrafting, Jewelcrafting reflected the spirit of BC: varied and with something for everyone.

Inscription, of the other hand, really reflected Blizzard's push for homogenization in Wrath of the Lich King (see my post on the homogenization of Wrath of the Lich King solo content if you haven't already). Blizzard pushed for a more straight forward way of players acquiring their recipes for professions, which Inscription definitely reflects, for all of Inscription's recipes are gained from either trainers or discovery, with the one exception of Technique: Rituals of the New Moon (seriously, that is the only exception). Wrath also made it much easier to level up professions, as anyone who leveled a profession to Grand Master level can attest. Inscription followed this pattern, with all herbs the scribe found being turned into ink, meaning that it didn't matter what herbs you found; as long as they were the right level, you would get the ink you needed to level the profession. Inscription also focused mostly on high-end content, since that is when the profession is at its most useful (with the third major glyph slot being unlocked at 80) and glyphs were really expensive when the profession was first implemented, so they couldn't be accessed by low level players. Thus the products in inscription were only available to those close to the level cap, like all of the new content in Wrath. Of course, glyphs have since come down to a reasonable price now that everyone has glyphs and the demand has shrunk.

So, what can we infer about Cataclysm by looking at Archeology? Let's take a look, going point by point on all of the information WoWWiki has on the new secondary skill.

-It will be a secondary profession.
This means it will be available to everyone. Considering that Cataclysm will change Azeroth to make leveling easier and also include new end-game content, it really will be an expansion for everyone, so this fits.

-Focused on locating artifacts unearthed by the cataclysm.
So the cataclysm itself will be an important part of the expansion pack. No surprises there. Perhaps Cataclysm will also result in us finding out something about Warcraft's past that we had no idea of before.

-Artifacts will go into a new artifact journal instead of your inventory.
Blizzard has put more emphasis on clearing bag space by making more things not take up space in bags (pets, mounts, emblems, non-monetary currency, etc.), so this is no surprise either. Perhaps Cataclysm will result in even more things going somewhere aside from our bags. Tabards, please?

-Placing an artifact in your journal will allow you to "study" it and progressively unlock new rewards.
Perhaps this points to a larger theme of going back to the same place multiple times. Obviously we will be doing that by going back to Azeroth, but perhaps Blizzard will also have us running dungeons multiple times in order to advance the dungeon's story, getting better rewards each time.

-Unlocks unique rewards such as vanity pets.
If Archaeology will not be just about the epic loot and the "useful" rewards, perhaps Cataclysm will be the same way. As a pet collector and a casual player, this pleases me.

-Unlocks paths in the Paths of the Titans system. This will give players a tool to change their characters even more than regular talents.
Path of the Titans, as far as I know, is slated to be a way for player to improve their character at the level cap without raiding or PvP'ing. It's basically end-game for solo-ers. We know that Azeroth's make-over will certainly be something for the solo-ers, but perhaps Cataclysm's end-game will also be more geared towards solo-ers.

If these predictions are accurate, they certainly make me excited for Cataclysm. Let's hope they are.

How to make fishing in Wintergrasp waters worthwhile

Normally I would keep something like this to myself, but I'm sure anyone can figure it out who really wants to, so I may as well put this out there for those of you who don't know about it.

Wintergrasp is a great place to fish. You can fish up Musselback Sculpin and Glacial Salmon, both very valuable on the auction house, without needing to go looking for pools. The problem, though, is that Wintergrasp is a PvP area, and if you want to fish while doing something else, that makes it difficult to do. You can't fish in Wintergrasp for more than five minutes without someone of the opposite faction attacking you, as anyone who has tried to do Dangerously Delicious can attest. Going into Wintergrasp flags you for PvP, and if a battle starts, you'll need to queue for the battle to stay in there. The key then, is to be able to fish in Wintergrasp waters without being in Wintergrasp. This, surprisingly, is possible.

The key is to stand on the edge of Wintergrasp by where the air elementals are. You can stand there and fish in Wintergrasp waters while being in Dragonblight, thus not flagging you for PvP (that won't work on a PvP server, though, but when you rolled your character on a PvP server, you knew what you were getting into) and allowing you to fish in peace, even where there is a battle going on (I have done this before). Unfortunately, those air elementals will attack you in most spots you try to stand, but there is one spot where they won't attack you, pictured bellow. The coordinates are 24, 35 in Dragonblight.











































In those pictures I am standing as close as you can stand to the water without being in Wintergrasp. The spot is in the lower-right (south-east) corner of Wintergrasp. Don't worry about needing to stand really close to the water. Your bobber with go through the rock, as you can see bellow, and you can still click it through the rock.















That said, you'll still want to get as close to the water as possible without being in Wintergrasp. My advice on how to do this is to walk towards the water bit by bit until you enter Wintergrasp and are flagged for PvP. Then walk backwards inch by inch until you are in Dragonblight again. Now mount up and fly directly upwards (space bar) without moving in any other direction. Stay up there so that the members of the opposite faction cannot attack you while you wait for your PvP flag to disappear. Once it is gone, fly back down (x key) without moving in any other direction. You can now fish in peace.

So there you go. Now go enjoy your new-found cash cow!

As a note, this post was pretty short, and all of my posts this month may be the same way, since I am participating in NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). Wish me luck!

What I would like to see in Cataclysm. Part 2: Quests

If you read my post on the homogenization of Wrath of the Lich King solo content, you'll know I am not a fan of the way Blizzard does solo content right now. Quests, an intrinsic part of solo-ing, have become repetitive, trite, and boring. Although I frequently do the Argent Tournament dailies, the only thing that keeps me doing them are the pets. Although I think Blizzard had an interesting idea with the jousting mini-game, it isn't that great. The rest is basically kill stuff or collect stuff. Like the profession design, the current quest design in boring, lazy, and unenjoyable. This needs to change.

Now I personally have nothing against dailies; I just think that Blizzard needs to put a bit of effort into inventing creative ones. I have fond memories of Bomb Them Again!, Disrupt the Greengill Coast, and The Booterang: A Cure For The Common Worthless Peon, specifically. I looked forward to doing these dailies, since they were fun, really and truly fun. I think Blizzard can take some valuable lessons away form these dailies.

I may be looking back on the past through rose-tinted glasses when I look at Bomb Them Again!, since it made extensive use of flying mounts, something that was very exciting in the Burning Crusade, but I think there is something to be said for quests involving flying. They were exhilarating, and they actually took skill. The closest thing we have right now is Get Kraken!, and it's a horrible replacement. Flight-path-based quests will never be as fun as genuine flying quests since they take away the element that makes the quests fun: control. They also sometimes force the player to take the flight path multiple times if they don't complete the quest the first time around, which can be really inconvenient if the area of the quest is far away from the spot where you mount (Distraction at the Dead Scar, I am looking at you).

That said, even Distraction at the Dead Scar had something that made it redeemable, something that Disrupt the Greengill Coast especially displayed: skill made the quest easier. The quests these days hardly reward skillful playing. There is little dexterity required, and little motivation to put in any sort of effort to doing the quest well. Why did this not apply to Disrupt the Greengill Coast? Because you needed to use fewer Orbs of Murloc Control if you could get more murlocs in the area of effect of your orb. Thus you needed to kill fewer Darkspine Sirens, since you needed fewer orbs. Most people probably needed four orbs their first time around, but with a bit of practice, you could free ten Murlocs with three orbs easily. Distraction at the Dead Scar was especially like this, since you needed to be quick with the bombs to kills all of the enemies you needed on the first trip. Most people needed two trips when they first did that quest, and it was a very long trip. With practice, though, we could get all of our enemies in one trip. That was the key, though: we needed practice in order to get to that level of skill. These dailies directly rewarded skilled playing, something that is lacking in today's dailies.

So what can be learned from The Booterang? Mainly, quests don't need to involve killing or collecting. Slaves to Saranite is one quest that comes to mind that breaks out of this mold, but its still a far cry from the fun that was Booterang. The Booterang was a great example of creative quest design because it involved no collection and next to no chance of engaging in combat. It could also be macro'd, making the whole experience very simple and enjoyable. Still, the creativity is the most important part, and I wish we could have some more creativity in daily design.

What do I want to see in the future? I was to see quests that involve us flying into areas on our own mounts to do them, quests that actually provide a challenge. I'd also like to see these quests be more challenging for people with epic flying, since an epic flying mount made Bomb Them Again! a joke. I want to see more quests that take less time if you actually think about what you are doing, like trying to aim a bomb strategically. I want to see quests that don't involve killing or collecting. Perhaps these quests could involve giving aid to people in distress or rescuing people, or just throwing things at them. Truth be told, the current quest design is quite lacking, and anything short of a complete reversion to quests that only involve killing will be an improvement.

Finally, as a personal note, I really wish Blizzard would change the cooking quests to what they were like in the days of Burning Crusade, when each one required different meat that needed to be farmed on the day of the quest and cooked close by where they were farmed, and also rewards meat and fish, not just spices and recipes or tokens for them. The way cooking quests are now, the challenge is in collecting the non-meat ingredients, not the meat itself. This is fine if they ingredients are collected by a spot where meat can be farmed, but they aren't. Please, Blizzard, make the cooking dailies like they were before.