To the dungeons with you!

Over a year ago, during the era of Wrath of the Lich King, I wrote a post about how to get exalted with every faction in the expansion (minus the Ashen Verdict, of course) without championing. In other words, this was a post about how to hit exalted on every faction by yourself, without needing to enter an instance. I was pretty proud of it, if only for the idea, and was looking forward to writing a similar post for Cataclysm's factions. Then Cataclysm came out, and as I plodded my way through the new zones' quests, I was hit by a sad realization: there would be no Cataclysm version of that post, because some factions are impossible to reach exalted with without donning their tabard and entering a 5-man instance. As such, if I should desire to obtain the Wrap of the Great Turtle to tank 5-mans, or if I want the Signet of the Elder Council to boost my stats while I'm out solo-ing, I can't get them by solely by solo-ing. And this doesn't sit right with me. Why, after letting us get exalted with every faction in Wrath of the Lich King by solo-ing, would Blizzard regress in its accommodation of us solo players?

Now, this is nothing new. Many of the factions in Burning Crusade required players to enter dungeons in order to earn reputation with them beyond a certain point (Honor Hold/Thrallmar come to mind), as did many of the factions in vanilla WoW. Wrath of the Lich King, however, moved away from this model by giving every one of its factions (minus one that was clearly designed around a specific raid) a way for players to earn reputation with that faction on their own. This was a good move on their part, in my opinion, for though those ways of earning reputation on one's own were often slower than championing, they gave solo players something to work for, as well as something to do, and they gave players a way to earn faction reputation that wasn't dependent on the competence of other players.

But there is one other major difference between the two expansion packs, one which may explain Blizzard's shift in design philosophy. In Wrath of the Lich King, the gear earned through reputation was the same ilevel as the gear earned through heroics, the primary source of reputation. The gear dropped by the last boss in all of the pre-3.2 heroics and the gear awarded at exalted status with Wrath-era factions were both ilevel-200 epics, and the gear dropped by all other heroic bosses and awarded at revered with the factions were ilevel-200 rare gear. In other words, factions awarded gear that was on par with what was awarded by heroics at the time, so by running heroics to earn reputation with various factions, players would be getting gear that was just as good as the gear they were trying to earn. What this meant was that it was quite possible for players, in the process of trying to earn one specific piece of gear, to earn another piece of gear that would render the reputation-awarded piece unneeded.

This has changed between Wrath of the Lich King and Cataclysm, and in my mind, that change justifies some factions requiring dungeon runs if we wish to reach exalted with them. It is this one change that prevents this post from being one in which I merely complain about how this change to the faction design philosophy is unfair to those who don't wish to run dungeons. You see, heroics no longer drop epics. Heroics in Cataclysm drop ilevel 346 rare gear, while reaching exalted with a Cataclysm faction gives you access to ilevel 359 epics. This means that running heroics doesn't give you better gear than the gear you are trying to earn by hitting exalted with whatever faction you are trying to get exalted with. In fact, outside of crafted epics, the epics awarded by reaching exalted with a faction are currently the best gear one can get outside of raids. (With the exception of the epics that you can get if you save up enough valor points doing your daily random heroic, but it takes a couple of weeks of running a random heroic each day in order to earn enough points for just one piece of gear, so that's by no means a practical way to deck yourself out in epics.)

What this all means is that in order to obtain the best gear you can obtain outside of a raid, you will have to do the hardest thing you can do outside of a raid, i.e. running dungeons. This wasn't the case in Wrath of the Lich King, where gear awarded by factions wasn't the best gear available outside of a raid: you had the drops from the last bosses of each heroic, the emblem of heroism gear, and the crafted gear. But those first two sources of epics outside of a raid no longer award epics, so we players are left with factions and professions as avenues to earn epics without raiding. And since ilevel 359 epics are the best gear one can earn outside of a raid, it makes sense that to earn them, you should need to do the hardest thing you can do outside of a raid: running dungeons. (And the fact that crafted epics require Chaos Orbs, which are bind-on-pick-up and are dropped by the last bosses in heroics, further fits this trend.) To me, that seems like a fair trade.

Failure to adjust: whose fault is it?

Being that I am still level 84, I have not yet had the "pleasure" of stepping into Cataclysm's heroics, but if Allison Robert's look at the unbearable suckhood of pugging is anything to go on, I'm not missing much. I can't say I'm all that surprised that in the wake of Blizzard making some pretty significant changes to heroics in Cataclysm--crowd control is necessary, DPS can't be healed through avoidable damage, triage is more important that fast healing, kill order and interrupts are important again--it seems the playerbase has been less than willing to adapt to these changes. Now, we are still in the first few weeks of the expansion's life time, and given time, players might learn and change their ways (especially when their current ways deny them their epic loot). But if Allison's post and other horror stories I have heard from other players and other bloggers are anything to go on, people really aren't do well in adapting to the changes made to heroics in Cataclysm. But does the fault really lie with those who "refuse" to adapt to the times and the demands of a new era? Or might the fault lie elsewhere?

When heroics were introduced in Burning Crusade, they were difficult, and wiping was common. When Wrath of the Lich King came out, that changed. Heroics were not all that difficult, especially as the expansion wore on, and the fact that we kept running heroics long after we outgeared them lead to players developing some pretty bad habits for running them. It was bad enough when Wrath heroics allowed us to ignore kill orders, not interrupt spells, and AoE down trash at the beginning of the expansion; once the emblem system allowed us to get amazing gear without leaving heroics, it was all downhill from there. Runing heroics took the same amount of skill as doing old-world quests for Loremaster; that is to say, it took none, but people still did it, and as a result, they developed some pretty low expectations for how difficult heroics should be. Players who try to run heroics now using the strategies that they used in latter Lich King era heroics are like level-80 players who try doing Cataclysm quest content using the strategies they use to do low-level quests for Loremaster (which, if you've ever killed low level enemies for any reason, you know would end in disaster). I don't know for a fact that those players exist, but if they did, they'd be comparable to today's heroic runners.

But let's look at Wrath's heroic dungeons more closely. You had heroics, which took almost zero effort and a minimal investment of time and awarded great gear, and raiding, which took a great deal of time and effort and award superb gear. Considering that heroics took infinitely less ability and commitment to run and awarded gear that wasn't much worse than what raids awarded, it's no wonder players flocked to them, even those without the skills that are usually necessary to succeed in group content. And when they went there, they obtained gear that trivialized the very content that awarded it, but they kept playing because they liked these shiny epics they could earn. Because of this design, players associated heroics with zero-effort rewards and started playing under the assumption if their zero-effort approach did not yield victory, it meant someone was playing badly, an assumption which hampers their ability to adapt to today's heroics. The expectation of reward for zero effort also keeps players in heroics who have no business expecting to succeed in a cooperative environment, further hindering our efforts. And whose decision was it to design Wrath's heroics to start out easy, become even easier when the gear they awarded trivialized them, and thus create this mess in the first place? Blizzard.

Now let's fast forward to the development stages of Cataclysm. Wrath of the Lich King is coming to a close, and many non-raiders (a category which includes a startlingly large players, if a poll I ran a while ago on my blog is anything to go by) continue running heroics because that is the only thing they have left to entertain themselves, thus further cementing the bad habits they have developed over the course of the expansion pack. Meanwhile, in all of their interviews and press releases, Blizzard makes clear their intention to make heroics challenging again, to make them require crowd control, kill order, interrupts, strategy, etc. They make this clear at BlizzCon, in miscellaneous interviews, and as a result, us players who keep up with WoW news online are well aware going into Cataclysm that things are going to be different, that the strategies we used for old heroics won't work in this new expansion, and that we're going to have to change the way we do things. We knew this, but the players who don't follow WoW news online didn't.

I don't know exactly when I started following WoW news online, but if I had to put a guess to it, the earliest I would be willing to guess is November of 2008. Now, I started playing WoW in September of 2005. That's sixty three months I have been playing, and I have only been following WoW news online for, at the most, twenty five of them. That's less than half of my time spent playing WoW, and it means it took me more than three years to realize that WoW had an online community. Now, I'm sure the community has grown more robust as the game's popularity has grown, meaning someone who started playing after I did would probably have an easier time discovering WoW's online community than I did. But I bring up the duration of the time during which I was oblivious of WoW's online community to illustrate that not every player is privy to the information we often take for granted. For anyone who did not keep track of news about Cataclysm, the sudden rise of difficulty in heroics is something they had no way of anticipating.

So, we have Blizzard creating a situation that leads to players developing really bad habits in heroics, and then doing nothing to convey to players who don't follow news about WoW online that they are increasing the difficulty of heroics come Cataclysm. It's beginning to look like the fault for these players who didn't adjust to Cataclysm's heroics is resting on Blizzard's shoulders. The question is, was it Blizzard's responsibility to prepare players for this change?

Blizzard hasn't exactly been transparent when it comes to information about their game. When they expanded the armory to include a wowhead-like database of items, it was a big break from convention, to say the least. They have put other detailed information, like boss strategies or walkthroughs, on the official website, the kind of thing you would get on other sites. Sure, they'll release general information about the game, like overall descriptions of the classes and zones, but they've never been one for revealing specifics. This is especially the case in-game, where we go into most situations blind without any of the information we take for granted because we know so much information about the game that we acquire online. We may pick up on general patterns that can help us in entirely new situations (such as, one should generally not stand in the fire), but those assumptions are formed in response to general patterns of game design; they do not influence the game design itself. In other words, we know not to stand in the fire because developers usually make fire harmful; they don't make fire harmful because we usually don't stand in it.

What this means for heroics is that just because we players grow accustomed to certain facts in game (fire is bad, heroics don't require strategy) doesn't mean Blizzard owes it to us to keep those facts consistent or to warn us when they change. They can design the game however they like--within reason, of course, or else they'll lose subscribers--and its our responsibility to adapt. Part of that adaptation process is assembling information in online databases with boss strategies, item statistics, etc., which results in websites like wowhead and WoWWiki, as well as blogs that detail changes to the game, like heroics being made more difficult) This is all part of the process of adapting to changes made to the game, and knowing heroics were going to become more difficult by following Cataclysm news was part of that adaptation process. By taking that knowledge for granted, we took our adaptive abilities for granted, but some players haven't learned the process of adaptation as well as others. Those are the players who struggle in heroics now, and while it might not seem fair that we have to suffer for their inability to adapt, that's just the nature of group content.

How linear is Cataclysm, really?

Larisa has a post over on her blog in which she remarks on how linear Cataclysm's quest design is. Rather than allowing movement between the various parts of the zones, we are restricted to a set path by which we can progress through the quests. She compares it to "the moving walkway in the room where they keep the royal jewels at The Tower of London. The only way you can see them is by standing on that walkway, and it passes those jewels at set, nonnegotiable pace." And though I have only just completed the quests in Mount Hyjal and am thus ill-equipped to judge the expansion as a whole, I have to agree that the quest design in that zone was indeed very linear. It could have been worse, though; there were sometimes two quest hubs one could choose to go to, and you could choose which order you did the quests in each "round" of quests at each hub. Yes, it could have been a lot more linear, but for an MMO, a genre supposedly defined by an open world, it was indeed pretty straightforward.

Why did it take me so long to get through one zone, you might ask? As I mentioned in Friday's post, questing is not the only thing I have been doing since Cataclysm came out. I have done the fishing and cooking dailies every day, fished in Hyjal's lakes and rivers, searched the world for archeological fragments, and even taken some time just to fly around the old world (oh the flying, oh how I love it) and see the changes wrought by Deathwing's return. After all, questing isn't the only thing that has been changed or added in this expansion, and it would be a pretty poor way to experience it to focus solely on that aspect of this new Azeroth. But what's this? Choice in what I play when I play WoW? But I thought this game was supposed to be linear? (That's not a personal jab at you, Larisa; just a jab at the idea of WoW being linear.)

This is where I take issue with the idea that WoW has become "too linear", an idea I have heard elsewhere, aside from Larisa's blog. Yes, the questing has become more linear, but as the commenters on Larisa's post that I linked to earlier have pointed out, that's a necessity for phasing to be as prevalent as it is, and phasing is a necessity for us to think that our changes are having any effect on the world around us. But questing isn't all there is to World of Warcraft. There's PvP, dungeons, professions, secondary professions, and even just exploring the world to see what can be found. And even if some of these things themselves are pretty linear (professions especially; gone are the days of searching the AH for recipes or the world for vendors who sell them in a limited stock; we get our recipes from a pretty limited selection of sources these days), we are completely free to choose which ones we engage in and when. There's no "negligence punishment" mechanic put in to keep you in one part of the game when you'd rather be doing something else, outside of the fear of falling behind your guild.

Now, this does mean that in order to experience the true non-linearity of WoW, you need to take the initiative to do something other than what the game will direct you to do; the quests won't tell you to take a break and go try out archeology or PvP or fishing. The best you'll get is an occasional quest that will direct you to a dungeon of the appropriate level. I bring up this little detail because, in the past, I talked about the decline of Wrath of the Lich King heroics and the players' reacting to this decline by being more creative about how they ran heroics. In that post, I concluded that the player's running the heroics in unconventional ways was indeed a sign that the heroics had gone into decline, because players were running them in ways they weren't intended to be run. The implication of the conclusions I came to in that post was that if the game doesn't tell you specifically to do something, and you have to do that something to make the game interesting, then the game is a failure. If we apply this logic to Cataclysm's design, then that would mean that the fact that game can only be non-linear if players do something of their own accord to make it so--rather than because the game told them to--then the game fails at being nonlinear.

But the reason I concluded that players doing things in Wrath's heroics to spice up their heroic runs was a sign that heroics had declined was that the heroics weren't designed for that kind of play. Wrath's heroics were designed to be run in particular ways, and that fact that players weren't running them in those ways meant that they had failed. Cataclysm, however, is designed to support players doing things other than questing. If it weren't designed that way, archeology and all of the other things we can do aside from questing wouldn't be in the game. Cataclysm-era WoW is designed so that it can be played in a non-linear way, if the player chooses to do so. And therein lies the crux of the problem: WoW's linearity is inversely proportional to how much initiative you take to seek out other things to do within the game. Someone without that initiative will probably limit themselves to questing and the occasional dungeon run, and in doing so, they'll find WoW to be a very straight-forward game.

But in a way, I don't mind WoW being designed this way. It reminds me of the way that the story was told in the GameCube game Metroid Prime. In that game, you collected bits of the story (similar to the way we collect bits of lore through archeology) with your scan visor, including logs by space pirates and stories told by those who inhabited the planet where the game takes place before they were wiped out. You can also find vanity text aplenty by scanning various things in the environment, which adds even more to the atmosphere of the game. The beauty of this system was that it allowed players to experience exactly as much of the story as they wanted to. If they wanted a straight shoot-em-up, they could eschew the scan visor completely and just go in with gun ablazing. If they just wanted the background story but didn't want to hear all of the little details about the world itself, they could keep an eye out for the red scan nodes which would indicate a lore entry that would reveal the background of the world, while ignoring the other ones that just added to the atmosphere of the present situation. And if they wanted as many details as they could sink their teeth into, they could scan everything, which would tell them a lot about the story and about the world itself.

In a way, the non-linearity of WoW's design is like the depth of the story in Metroid Prime; both are at the control of the player. Just as players of Metroid Prime chose how much of the story they cared to experience, players of WoW choose how linear they want their experience to be. Are you looking for a game with a wide variety of things to do? Go out and find them; they're there for you. Are you just looking for a straightforward quest-based adventure? Fine, just follow the quests and do what they tell you. You'll miss out on a lot, but if that's how you want to play, who are we to say no? And if you don't want a linear experience, but you haven't taken the initiative to check out the other things there are to do in WoW? If that's the case, then who's really to blame?

Scattered thoughts on Cataclysm's coming

It finally hit me this weekend that this is the last post I will write during the age of Wrath of the Lich King. Come Wednesday, when my next post will go up, we will official be in the era of World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, and the era of Wrath of the Lich King will finally be over. There are probably some who, in response to this realization, would write a nostalgic post about their memories from Wrath and what they will miss, but I can't count myself among them. In fact, before the Shattering came, I took no screenshots of the old world, did no final tours or looks around of Azeroth before it was changed forever, did no rushed leveling of any new alts to see the world one last time, because it has simply become stale. Wrath is also something I have put behind me, as evidenced by the fact that at this point, all I do in WoW is the Stormwind cooking and fishing dailies. The cookies dailies I do to earn recipies in preparation for Cataclysm, and the fishing dailies... well, I might not need any of the loot from those bags, but I like fishing, and the quests are new, so that's good enough for me. The point is, I could not be happier to be getting new content, for I lost interest in Wrath's content long ago.

You see, I'm a soloist. I play the game for the solo endeavors, and the last time WoW received an injection of good solo content was two years ago, when Wrath of the Lich King was released. Patch 3.3 brought no new solo content, and patch 3.1 and 3.2 brought with them the Argent Tournament in various stages, which I felt did not live up to the first round of solo content brought about by Wrath of the Lich King. Two years is a long time to play the same content, so I grew bored and started leveling alts, but that too soon turned stale as I realized just how far behind the old world had fallen in terms of quest design. It just wasn't as fluid or fun as Northrend or Outland, and the classes themselves evolved in very strange ways at lower levels. patch 4.0.1. did much to address the latter point, but the fact is that we alt-aholics have been playing the same content for a very long time. Given all of these facts, is it any wonder I'm ready to embrace WoW 2.0? Is it at all surprising that I have no nostalgia for the old world and no wistful longings for the glory days of Wrath? I'm ready for the new content, both in the lower levels and the higher ones.

You'll notice I referred to Cataclysm as "WoW 2.0" in that last paragraph. It's a nickname the expansion has picked-up due to just how much it is changing the game. Come Cataclysm, many claim, the game will have changed enough that it will practically be a brand new WoW, not just an expanded version of an old one. And the nice thing about it is that we don't have to lose all of our progress we have made on our current characters. If Blizzard were to release a proper World of Warcraft 2, a different game from the current one, I'd be hesitant to leave my pets, my mounts, my achievements, my trophies from conquests past, and start from scratch in a new universe. With the way things are, everything we have already earned carries over into this new WoW and can remain with us a few more years, while we still get to experience an almost brand new game.

But does Cataclysm really deserve the title of WoW 2.0? I hit upon this question as I was walking through Stormwind the other day and realized that, though the world has changed, it is not a new world. All of the old zones remain, even if they have returned in new forms, and though there are new zones and new content being added, they are simply par for the course in an expansion pack. The fact is that we are still playing on Azeroth, just Azeroth realized in a different light. We are still playing the same 10 classes; yes, those classes have evolved in some significant ways, but those evolutions are, again, par for the course in an expansion pack. Any significant change to class design I can think of that has come with Cataclysm is just a response to the necessity of adding a new expansion pack or a logical evolution of the class as the game and the expectations of its players continue to evolve. Not to marginalize Blizzard's efforts--far from it, I imagine it must have taken them a lot of effort to get to this point--but might Cataclysm be WoW 1.5 moreso than WoW 2.0?

If it is, then I'm ok with that, because WoW is a great game. We don't need a completely new game to entertain us, because WoW has a lot of longevity. As long as it can keep evolving to continue to satisfy the players and let us have fun, I'm ok with not getting a completely new WoW. Why demand something new if the old is still just as good?

So on this, the eve of Wrath of the Lich King, I say goodbye and good riddance to WoW 1.0 and and welcome in WoW 1.5, or WoW 2.0, whatever you want to call it. Tonight, I can go to bed with the knowledge that when I wake up, a game I have been looking forward to for a very long time will be waiting for me (I preordered the expansion digitally), and though I can see us players needing to wait for some sort of server maintenance or emergency patches before we can actually play, it's good to know that Cataclysm is almost here, and I'm willing to wait that time if we need to. After all, Cataclysm was officially announced more than a year ago; what's one more day to wait? Either way, I shall see you all on the other side.

Why I'm excited for the difficulty spike in Cataclysm

One of the biggest consistencies thus far in Cataclysm's development is that parts of the game that are currently simplistic are going to become more complex and difficult. We won't be able to AoE our way through heroics, where crowd control will be necessary again, and it looks like solo questing is going to become more difficult, as well. Raid healing is going to become more about using the right spell at the right time, rather than using our strongest heals on everyone because we have the mana to do so. Things are going to require more thought and strategy when Cataclysm comes out, rather than being the way they are now, where the game design allows us to brute-force our way through content. Rather than using strategy and kill orders on trash in heroics, we AoE it down because the tank won't take unhealable damage if the group does so, and the healers have the mana to heal through that damage. Rather than healers using many different heals for each situation, they use their strongest spells because they have the mana to do so. Come Cataclysm, this will be different, and as you could probably tell from the title of this post, I am looking forward to that fact, and here's why.

As it is now, in the age of Wrath of the Lich King, the game starts out easy. 5-mans may have been more difficult back in the beginning of Wrath than they are now, but let's be honest, they were still pretty easy back then compared to Burning Crusade's heroics. Anyone who did heroics back in the days of Burning Crusade remembers that we used normal dungeons and faction rewards to gear up for heroics. You Wrath of the Lich King babies (I don't use that term derisively, mind you; I, for example, and a Burning Crusade baby) might need to read that again. We didn't just jump right into heroics to gear up for raids; we first geared up for heroics, then we used the gear we got there to gear up for raids. I'm not saying this as any sort of "back in my day... you kids have it too easy" speech; I bring that up only to prove how difficult heroics were back then. And, of course, we used crowd control. Extensively. A group without any viable crowd control probably couldn't complete a heroic, and victory was far from guaranteed, like it is now. (Has anyone been unable to complete a heroic since patch 3.3? And, before patch 3.3, did you ever go longer than a few days in a row without being able to complete the daily heroic? Didn't think so.)

And as for soloing? Judging by the fact that my level 69 shaman, decked out in nothing but green-quality quest rewards, was able to take down, on his own, a level 72 elite, soloing is pretty easy now, too. In fact, I've always been disappointed by just how easily my priest and shaman have been able to decimate anything in their path as they go through Outland and Northrend. Now, truth be told, I don't remember what it was like to level through Outland back when it was the final continent, and I'm not going to pretend I remember, so let's just say that leveling now is a very easy activity in which you must engage two mobs at once to make it at all interesting or challenging.

But the ways we play through solo content, dungeon trash, and raid healing now all have one thing in common; they are the kind of play-styles that, in expansions past, were only possible by over-gearing the content in question. When yo look at it, there's a certain natural flow to the way things are going to work in Cataclysm. Soloing will start out difficult, but as we get heirlooms to put on our alts, and as we get better gear at the level cap, it will become easier, and we'll be able to take on more than one mob at once. Heroics will require kill orders and crowd control at first, but once we out-gear them, we'll be able to use AoE instead. Raid healing will require strategy at first, but once we out-gear the read, we'll be able to just use our strongest spells. In other words, what is now the default behavior will become a reward for out-gearing the content you are doing. Rather than brute-force being the main way we play, it will only be the way we play through content we have long surpassed.

In addition to the natural flow it creates, I like the fact that brute-force will become the privilege of those with better gear because the progression of complex/difficult to simple/easy allows the simplistic ways of tackling content to act as a sort of consolation prize for players who want to run content they outgear. If someone decked out in raid gear needs to do some dailies for gold for the repair bills, the fact that the enemies are now easier to kill makes the experience different from how it was as he was leveling up. The enemies are dying faster, and he can take on a few at once, so it becomes more fun. If a cutting-edge progression raider wants to run a heroic for extra valor points, the fact that he out-gears the dungeon will allow him to AoE his way through it, providing a nice contrast and a nice break from the progression content he is used to, where he has to use crowd control and kill order. Healers will see a similar benefit; if they decided to run content they outgear, either for the valor points or to help out a less geared guildmate or friend, they'll be able to just spam their most efficient heal since they'll have enough mana regeneration and healing output to do so.

This will be especially nice in contrast to the current way the game progresses as we get better gear. As it is now, all three of the areas of gameplay that I mentioned start out simple yet intense (except with leveling, which is just simple), and then get simple and boring when we outgear the content. Heroics started out as an AoE spam fest, and became a faster AoE spam fest when everyone got better gear. Raid healing started with us using our strongest spells to maximize our healing output, then devolves to us continuing to use those spells--but using the less often--when we get better gear. In other words, the way we play when we out-gear content and the way we play when we don't are very similar, but the former is less interesting, so your reward for getting better gear is that old content becomes more boring. With Cataclysm, this will not be a problem, for the playstyle difference between content we out-gear and content we don't will make doing content we out-gear a change of pace, and thus make it enjoyable.

Expand your horrizons to conquer the slump

Wrath of the Lich King is in its twilight hours, and many players are feeling bored with the game as a result. There are no new raids to run if one has already completed or given up on Icecrown Citadel, no new heroics or factions to grind reputation with, no new battlegrounds to fight in, etc. There's a real feeling of repetition that seems to permeate our play. At this point, it seems as if there is nothing for us to do aside from all of the things we have already done many times over.

There are, I'm sure, many who would suggest we break up the boredom by preparing for Cataclysm, but the things we do to prepare for Cataclysm are really the same activities we have done many times over dressed up with different goals. Making money for the new money sink? How do you propose to do that? Whatever method you choose, being it grinding, dailies, or playing the auction house, players have been doing it to pay for their repair bills since the expansion debuted. The last time new content was added that enabled players to make money in new ways was patch 3.2, which brought us the Argent Tournament. There's also the option to try to gear up to make leveling through Cataclysm faster, but that must also be done through the same avenues we have already used: heroics, raids, PvP perhaps, the occasional crafted piece, etc. Point is, anything we do in the name of preparing for Cataclysm will likely not relieve the doldrums we feel now.

So how to busy ourselves while we wait for the new content, while there's nothing else to do? Well, therein lies the problem: there is plenty to do; most players suffering from inter-expansion boredom have just dismissed the the things they could be doing to pass the time. And because those players have dismissed these activities, the idea of doing them doesn't even pop into their heads when they log in and ask, "What should I do today?" They are blind to any in-game reminder that these activities exist because those activities aren't within their realm of possibility. They skim past the relevant achievements, forget about players they see bearing the rewards of these activities, all because they once decided, "Nah, not worth it."

Let me ask you something: have you completed WoW? Because unless you are that Taiwanese man who earned every achievement, I doubt that is the case. There's plenty to do in this game, and you know that content is there. Some of it is obvious to you: leveling alts, fighting in battlegrounds, fighting in arenas, raiding, the kinds of things that likely take up most of your time now. But what about the other things you don't think about? What about farming old-world bosses for their rare-drop mounts? What about getting exalted with old-world factions? What about farming for rare pets? What about doing old-world quests? What about just going for achievements? These are all viable options of things to do to pass the time while we wait for Cataclysm to come out, things most people suffering from burnout have probably never gone for and can thus do to pass the time, yet I imagine many players dismiss these options. In other words, there are plenty of things out there for players to do while waiting for Catalcysm, and yet they aren't out doing them.

This probably seems natural to you. After all, who would bother with the activities I mentioned above when raiding can give better gear, dailies can give better money, and the rewards of all of the things I mentioned above are all cosmetic? That's the kind of thinking that keeps people from realizing all of the content that is available to them. But allow me to propose a potentially radical idea: raiding for high end gear and grinding for money through the dailies that reward the most of it is no more productive than any of the activities I listed above, and thus there is no reason for you be dismissive of the aforementioned activities as things to do while playing WoW.

Let me ask you something about that gear you get from raiding: what is it for? The only practical purpose gear serves is to allow you to beat more challenging content, so gear only allows you to move on to beat harder raiders, which allows you to get better gear, allowing you to beat harder raids, etc. I'm not saying that trying to get good gear is a waste of time; what I am saying is that getting better gear through raiding doesn't provide any permanent practical reward at all. The benefit provided by that gear is fleeting, temporary, and only as good as it compares to the current best gear. So why go for the gear? Because raiding is fun (at least, it's supposed to be). The gear we get through raiding is simply a tangible motivating factor to get you to raid if the fun of doing it isn't enough to motivate you to start. Once you do start, that fun should be enough to keep you raiding, since, as I mentioned, gear only provides a benefit for so long. In short, the only reason to try to get gear from raids is to have fun in the process of acquiring it.

And as for money? With each expansion, money has become progressively easier to earn; that's why the gold sinks keep getting more expensive. That has the added benefit of each expansion putting wealthy established players and poorer new players on more equal footing than they would be otherwise. But where exactly do we get all of this money? From the things we would do otherwise: daily quests that award reputation with a certain faction, one-time quests that we do to see the evolving story of WoW, the selling of materials that we enjoy collecting, the selling of items we enjoy grinding, etc. All of the in-game activities that reward money are things that are supposed to be enjoyable in their own right; the money is just a nice byproduct. Now, would there be fewer people putting up ore, herbs, and fish for others to use in their crafting if doing so didn't pay money? Maybe. But the point is that gold is just the reward for accomplishing our in-game goals and activities, not a goal itself. Those money sinks may be nice to have (I can tell you from personal experience that epic flying is a big time saver, and that the Traveler's Tundra Mammoth is quite convenient), but the fun is supposed to be had in earning the gold to buy them, moreso than in having them. It will be more fun to earn them after Cataclysm (more money earned for your effort; newer, more enjoyable content to earn that money from; etc.) than to collect that money before.

The point is, while there are activities in WoW that we view as "productive", they are no more productive than activities we dismiss for their perceived lack of productivity. Their only real purpose is to allow us to have fun, and if that is the only benefit we get out of them, then why limit what we do between now and the Cataclysm to things we consider "productive" and thus rule out other activities that may be fun? The fruits of our labor will only last so long, so the enjoyment of that labor is the only goal worth pursuing. If you are suffering from the pre-expansion slump, I invite you to try some part of the game you had previously dismissed as unproductive or pointless. Go for an achievement. Grind out a mount or a pet. Do some old-world quests. Get exalted with that faction you never got exalted with. Or try leveling an alt or hitting up some battlegrounds if you had previously dismissed those activities without trying them. As long as what you do is fun, then whatever you do in-game is time well spent.

How to solo Northrend group quests as an enhancement shaman

My long-suffering shaman alt (which I rolled at the beginning of Burning Crusade) finally hit level 68 a while back and headed for the frozen wastes of Northrend, and I have been enjoying leveling through the new continent significantly more than I enjoyed Outland. Of course, my shaman is late to the game, and is usually one of only two or three Alliance players in the Borean Tundra, unless Blood is Thicker is the fishing daily. This becomes problematic when I need to complete quests like Last Rites and The Assassination of Harold Lane, group quests that involve killing elite enemies. However, in a fit of potential madness, and inspired by my success with solo-ing The Ultimate Bloodsport, I decided to give Last Rites, the first group quest I was charged with when I came to Northrend, a try. So I went in, with only my wits and my quest-reward gear to help me, and after a very tense battle, Valanar lay dead at my feet. It didn't hit me how impressive this feat was, though, until I took a look at my quest log and saw that this quest was orange. Yep, I, a level 69 shaman in nothing but gear rewarded by quests had killed a level 72 elite, alone. This gave me a whole new respect for the shaman class, especially enhancement shamans.

Now, this success had nothing to do with my skills and everything to do with the sheer solo-ing power of the enhancement shaman. What that means is that any enhancement shaman leveling his/her way through Northrend can do what I did with the right instruction. It is that instruction which I aim to provide today.

Before we go into that, though, let's look at the key abilities that will help you while solo-ing elites as an enhancement shaman. You will want all of these abilities to be within easy reach before you try to solo any elites; if not hot-keyed, at least somewhere on your bars.

Earth Elemental Totem: This ability will change your shaman's life when you get it at level 66 and is your main asset while solo-ing a group quest. Dropping this totem releases a greater earth elemental to attack your enemies. He causes a fair amount of threat, and can take quite a beating before crumbling into gravel. The key to successfully solo-ing an elite is to let this guy take damage for you, like a tank.

However, to describe the greater earth elemental as a tank-in-a-totem (tank-in-a-bottle sounds just demeaning) would be a gross over-statement of its power. The Earth Elemental Totem isn't just a set-it-and-forget-it tank. A typical elite can kill your greater earth elemental in much less time than it will take you and him to kill the elite, Also, the amount of threat he causes is very low compared to most player tanks you run dungeons with, and you'll easily cause more threat than him if you aren't careful. However, there is one bright side to this totem that should not be overlooked: you can heal your greater earth elemental. Thus, the key to successfully using the Earth Elemental Totem is to heal him when he needs it and to watch your threat so you don't attract your target's attention. If you don't have an addon to display your threat and the threat of your greater earth elemental, activate the in-game threat display by going to the main menu (escape key), then going to Display and checking off "Show Aggro Percentages". I also recommend you set Display Aggro Warning to "Always", so you'll be able to know immediately if you pulled aggro off of your greater earth elemental.

Wind Shear: Of course, you will sometimes pull aggro from your Earth elemental, no matter how careful you are. An unlucky string of crits will do that to you, and it's when that happens that you'll want to have Wind Shear handy, since it lowers your current threat on your target. Of course, Wind Shear coupled with a ceasing of all of your attacks can only do so much, so it's still important to watch your threat.

Healing Wave: You should have this spell handy while solo-ing, anyways, since being able to heal yourself while leveling is one of the enhancement shaman's greatest strengths. You'll be using this ability to heal your greater earth elemental, and you will make great use of it for that purpose. You might also want to have Lesser Healing Wave handy, in case you space out and forget about your greater earth elemental, then realize you haven't healed him in a while, only to target him and see that his health is low.

Maelstrom Weapon: While this isn't technically an ability, and thus you can't link to it on your action bar, I wanted to bring it up anyways because it makes using Healing Wave on your greater earth elemental much easier. It also serves as a nice reminder to check on your greater earth elemental; any time you hit five stacks of Maelstrom Weapon, check to see if your greater earth elemental is in need of some healing.

Shamanistic Rage: You should keep Shamanistic Rage within easy reach while leveling anyways, but you'll especially want to keep it within reach while fighting an elite because you'll be using more mana. When you fight typical enemies, you usually spend some time out of combat, i.e. not using mana, in addition to the time you spend in combat, i.e. using mana. Thus you don't use mana very quickly while fighting regular enemies. While fighting an elite, however, you are always casting (or at least casting more time per minute than you would be otherwise), so using this ability to get your mana back is critical.

Fire Elemental Totem: The fact is, you will sometimes fight enemies that will outlast your greater earth elemental. He only has a two-minute duration, after all, and what to do when that runs out? Why, bring out this guy, of course. The Fire Elemental Totems summons a greater fire elemental to fight for you, but unlike the greater earth elemental, the greater fire elemental is focused on doing damage, not taking it. Thus, you will be the tank when you take him out, but how will you survive that onslaught of damage in just mail armor with no shield?

Feral Spirit: Why, with your wolves, of course! One of the best benefits of the ghost wolves summoned by Feral Spirit, aside from their taunt, which you will make liberal use of, is that they heal you when they do damage. The healing they do is so significant that combined with a few Maelstrom'ed Healing Waves, you can survive the onslaught of damage brought about by an elite. What could be better?

Bloodlust/Heroism: Ah, yes; this could be better. While you are alone, Bloodlust and Heroism will increase your melee haste, but also the melee haste of your spirit wolves if and only if they are out when you cast it. That means more healing done to you, more damage done by them, and a better chance of successfully killing your elite.

So, now that you have all of the necessary abilities within easy reach (as well as your normal damaging abilities like Stormstrike, Flame and Earth Shock, Lightning Shield--which is a damaging ability with the Static Shock talent--, etc.), you are ready to take down your first elite.

Get ready to fight your opponent by laying down your fire, water, and air totem of choice, leaving your earth totem slot reserved for your Earth Elemental Totem (yes, it actually counts as an earth totem, so you can't have your earth elemental totem and Strength of Earth Totem active at the same time. It sucks, I know.) I use the Flametongue, Mana Spring, and Windfury totem, respectively. I know Magma Totem would probably lead to a greater DPS output, but I personally prefer a totem I can set and forget to one I need to cast every twenty seconds. And did I mention that the one that needs to be re-cast every twenty seconds costs two and half times more mana than the one you can set and forget? Still, if you just want to cause as much damage as possible, then it's your prerogative to go with Magma Totem. I'm not here to tell you how to play, just to give you advice that you can decide whether to follow or not. If you do go with Magma totem, don't drop it until your enemy is in range, so you won't waste any mana on a blast of fire that doesn't damage your enemy.

So, you have your totems ready. Now just wait some time to regenerate your mana, and once it's back at 100%, it's time to fight. Open with a Flame Shock to bring your enemy into range, then cast Earth Elemental Totem. Your greater earth elemental should start attacking your target quickly, but be ready to heal yourself if you do take some damage before your elemental gains control. Now, you want to give your elemental some time to build up threat before you start attacking; think raiding pre-Burning Crusade. While waiting, you might do well to click on your greater earth elemental, then right-click his portrait and set him as your focus so you can always see how much health he has.

Now, once your elemental has established threat, start attacking your target. In these early stages of the fight, you'll probably shoot up from zero percent threat to almost pulling aggro rather quickly if you blow all of your short-term cooldowns, so just be careful. Since you have an effective cap on how much damage you can do (since you don't want to out-aggro your greater earth elemental), you'll want to focus on causing your damage in a way that is as mana-efficient as possible. Assuming you aren't at 95% threat (compared to your elemental), always auto-attack your target so that you can build up charges of Maelstrom weapon to allow you to quickly heal your greater earth elemental. However, don't use your damaging abilities unless you are around 80% threat or below, so that you can cease your attacks if you get a huge crit and get a lot of aggro.

If you are at that magic 80% mark, use your special abilities with the following priorities, stopping if you reach or pass 90% threat. If you have Improved Stormstrike, then use Stormstrike, since it will give you mana back. Then use Lightning Shield if you have the talent Static Shock, since it's free damage. If you don't have Improved Stormstrike, but you do have Static Shock, prioritize Lightning Shield over Stormstrike. If you don't have Static Shock, then don't bother with Lightning Shield. If you still have threat to spare, use Flame Shock, since it's more efficient than Earth Shock. You probably won't use Earth Shock much, since you should use the more efficient Flame Shock if it has run its duration, and you might cause too much threat if you use a shock more than once every 20 seconds or so. You'll probably never use Lava Lash. If you do cause too much damage, use Wind Shear and then stop attacking your target, even auto-attacking, until you greater earth elemental gets its attention again.

As you are doing all of this, you'll want to keep an eye on two things: the threat you have on your target, and your greater earth elemental's health. If your threat falls below 80%, use a damaging ability. If your elemental's health falls below 50%, heal it. Heal it sooner if you don't have many stacks of Maelstrom, and it will thus take you longer to cast the heal. When your mana starts to dip below 50%, check to make sure you aren't approaching dangerously high levels of threat, then use Shamanistic Rage while auto-attacking. I wouldn't recommend doing much else during this time unless you are sure you have threat and mana to spare, since using damaging abilities always poses the risk of out-aggro-ing your greater earth elemental, meaning you'll need to stop attacking, and you'll thus lose mana you could be gaining by attacking.

This strategy alone should be enough to help you with elites that a quest says only require two people to take down, but sometimes you'll need an extra "umph". Sometimes those two minutes won't be enough, and you'll find yourself with an angry elite looking at you and no earth elemental to help you. That's when you pull out the big guns: Feral Spirit, Fire Elemental Totem, and Heroism, in that order. The spirit wolves will heal you with their attacks, the greater fire elemental will damage your target, and Heroism will increase the damage you do, the damage your wolves do, and the healing your wolves do to you. This phase gives you about a minute to finish off your target, since your wolves only last 45 seconds, and you probably won't last longer than 15 seconds against an enemy you couldn't kill in two minutes.

So what to do in that minute? First of all, save your Shamanistic Rage cooldown unless you run desperately low on mana, since that 30% damage reduction could give you the extra time you need to finish your target off after your wolves die and aren't healing you anymore. Until then, make sure your wolves are attacking your target, make sure they use Twin Howl whenever it is off of its cooldown (to divert some damage away from you), and heal yourself if you find yourself below 50% health. Assuming you have taken care of all that, then just unload on your target with all that you have. Since you are now the tank, you don't have to watch your threat anymore. Thus, unload with Stormstrike, Flame and Earth Shock, Lightning Shield, and Lava Lash per usual.

If your wolves disappear and your target is still alive, then pop Shamanistic Rage and hope you can heal yourself and finish him off before he destroys you. Otherwise, you may have to try this whole performance again, or even worse... try to form a group. *shudder*

Of course, pulling this off method of killing an elite off by yourslef is an extremely satisfying exercise, so take what you now know and try it yourself if you are leveling a shaman through Northrend and are skipping the group quests because you can't or don't want to find anyone to help you with them. You don't need anyone to help you with them; you are a shaman.

Lessons to learn from Wrath's heroics, Part 2

Now that the Real ID fiasco is over, we can all breath a collective sigh of relief, and I can get this post out on time, rather than needing to delay it while I write another post about whether I will continue to play the game after the news of the Real ID change (the answer now is a resounding yes). A week ago, I went over lessons to learn from the various heroic dungeons of Wrath of the Lich King, and two things became clear to me: I noticed that everything I had written was negative and critical, and my commenters pointed out that the post was mostly me complaining about elements of heroics that I didn't like. Well, this week, I hope to change at least one of those, as I'll be going over more positive lessons to learn from Wrath's heroic dungeons, elements that Blizzard should emulate when they design Cataclysm's heroics. Whether this will be constructive positive criticism or just me gushing about game elements I like, you be the judge. (I would put a smiley face here if I didn't have the integrity to not use smiley faces in the main body of my posts.)

Pit of Saron, Forge of Souls, and Utgarde Keep

As much as I criticized about the amount of trash in Pit of Saron, it contains what are without a doubt my favorite boss fights in Wrath of the Lich; a shorter version would have been my favorite heroic of the expansion, bar none. As I said in my post "My Warcraft Year in Review", I love the boss fights in Pit of Saron (and Forge of Souls, to a lesser extent) because they require proactive movement. I was pretty disappointed by the encounters in Trial of the Champion because they were just damage and healing races. In fact, they were pretty much tank-and-spanks. I enjoyed fighting Eardic the Pure the most out of all of the bosses in Trial of the Champion because you actually need to move in that fight. The FoS and PoS fights all involve movement, and if you move correctly, the fights are not all that difficult. Sure, they do require a pretty high level of gear, but then again, The Frozen halls is like the Ulduar of the 5-man world, in terms of skill and gear required.

Still, you may say, other fights in other heroics also require movement, so what makes Pit of Saron and Forge of Souls special? What makes them special is that the movement involved is proactive, not reactive. There's little satisfaction in moving out of an area spell when a boss casts it out of nowhere, such as the Maiden of Grief's Storm of Grief; it's more of a nuisance than anything, especially since those spells don't do much damage (they can't, since you need time to move out of them without dying instantly), and thus moving out of them doesn't seem so urgent. However, when a boss is about to cast a spell or use an ability, and you move to avoid it, or you just move to avoid something before it happens, rather than because of something that just happened, you avoided that damage outright. Your skill and foreknowledge just made the fight easier, and that makes it much more satisfying.

In a similar vein to the fights in Pit of Saron, Ingvar the Plunderer is probably one of my favorite bosses from the first ten heroics of Wrath because the fight necessitated hiding behind the columns when he used his Smash or Dark Smash ability (granted, few people seem to do that these days, but I still do it, if only for nostalgia's sake). This was fun for me for the same reasons the fights in Pit of Saron are fun; it was proactive movement that was satisfying, rather than reactive movement that was annoyance.

Halls of Stone and Halls of Lightning

Remember when I said that grandiosity in 5-man design was to be avoided? I would like to clarify that when I said that, I only meant that grandiosity is to be avoided in the layout of the instance, in terms of the ground we need to walk on. When it comes to the art design, I love grandiosity, and the Halls of Ulduar are a great example of that grandiosity in action. I don't think any instances wowed me as much when I first stepped through their doors as these two. In fact, my first foray into the Halls of Stone was lamentably short because the tank was a speed runner, and while I did appreciate the fast emblems, I ended up walking through the now-cleared instance on my own, just to admire the artwork inside (I didn't do the same for Halls of Lightning because the my first run though that instance was slower and more methodical, giving me time to admire the artwork.) It's hard to say what made me like those two dungeons as much as I did, but the lines of un-animated earthen below your feet when you first enter Halls of Lightning and the paintings in Halls of Stone stand out in my memory.

The Violet Hold

I know we can't give The Violet Hold credit for this particular element which I am about to discuss--that credit goes to Black Morass was back in Burning Crusade--but we can give The Violet Hold credit for keeping the tradition of the gauntlet-type dungeon going. I enjoy the rush of needing to run from portal to portal as new enemies appear, of needing to know when to use Dash and when to save it, and of knowing where I'll have to go if I can't get there on time so I don't lose control of the mobs. I especially like the fact that even as our gear gets better, this particular element of the instance does not change or get any easier, keeping Violet Hold interesting.

Now, with all that said, I think it would have been a wise design choice for Blizzard to make the amount of time between when a portal appears and when the enemies spawn from it vary based on how far apart the last portal and the current portal are. When a portal spawns on the far right, I know that if another portal spawns on the upper left side, on the second level, I'll need to use Dash to get there in time without the monsters parting ways and mayhem ensuing. And if Dash is on its cooldown, then I have to hope I can get close enough before they spawn to use Feral Charge. Meanwhile, when two portals spawn close to each other, we rush to the second portal and twiddle our thumbs waiting for the monsters to come out. This inconsistency is a relatively minor flaw, but if it disappears in Cataclysm's equivalent to Violet Hold (which I hope they add), then I'll be a happy Druid.

What elements would you have added to this list? Were any of the elements I mentioned things you didn't like about Wrath's heroics.

Lessons to learn from Wrath's heroics, Part 1

Warning: This post contains two instances of PG-13 language (for those outside of the US, that means vulgar language that is fine for most teens, but may be inappropriate for younger children). Hide your infants and tweens.

With the Cataclysm beta starting and the Ruby Sanctum finally released, it's safe to say that Wrath of the Lich King is coming to a close as an expansion. Thus it's a good time to look back and reflect, to reflect on both mistakes and good decisions made. It is with that lens that I look at heroics today. Heroics will probably play a big roll in Cataclysm, as they did in Wrath of the Lich King, and though Blizzard seems to be designing their expansion to get more of those people who spend most of their time running heroics into raids, heroics are not to be ignored. They will be the first foray into group content for quite a few players, and they deserve a good amount of design attention for that reason. So, let's look back at what Wrath's heroics can teach us:

Forge of Souls/Pit of Saron/Nexus

Now, everyone loves a little bit of grandiosity from time to time, but these heroics show that in high doses, it isn't a good thing. Each of these heroics has its own unique issue with grandiosity. Forge of Souls is too big for the number of enemies it has. The long walks between packs of trash kills the suspense for me while I'm in there. Pit of Saron simply has an absurdly large amount of trash, especially between the Krick and Ick encounter and Scourgelord Tyrannus. Nexus suffers from a similar problem, although the instance itself is really just huge for a heroic. Sure, it gives five emblems, but I'd rather work harder for more emblems per instance than work longer. Put simply, heroics are not raids, and do not need to match them in scale and size.

Trial of the Champion

I don't really enjoy the bosses in Trial of the Champion all that much. With the exception of Eadric the Pure, who is the one boss in that instance whom I enjoy fighting, all of the other bosses have abilities that cause high damage, but can't be mitigated in any way. That instance simply expects you to heal through that damage, with no way for skilled players to avoid it (again, with the exception of Eadric). Not only is that lazy instance design, but it also makes the heroic unengaging and annoying when players don't out-gear it and simply boring when they do.

Oculus

Oh Oculus; how I love thee, and yet how the playerbase does not. If any instance is rife with lessons to be learned about the design of heroics, it is this poor sap.

Let's start with the good points... er, point. Flying in an instance has been one of my dreams since I first bought Flight Form. I longed for an instance where flying was an integral part of its execution, where you would fly from platform to platform on your own flying mounts. I guess you can see that Oculus didn't fit this vision very well. Not only were we unable to fly around on our own mounts, but the instance was so unintuitive designed that trying to get anywhere was a nightmare. Flying in an instance can work, but the instances need to be designed so that the path you take through them is more intuitive than it was in Oculus.

And about those mounts. Let's get one thing straight; I enjoy vehicular combat, but only during quests (where the vehicle in question is simple to operate and often grossly overpowered) and PvP (where there is plenty of room for trial and error to get used to the vehicle). In Oculus, none of these luxuries were given to us players: the drakes were hardly overpowered, complex to maneuver and fight with, and mistakes lead to death, which is par for the course in PvP, but a huge inconvenience in PvE. Vehicles in an instance can be a good thing, but they need to either be simple, or there needs to be a way for players to get used to them, something like the daily Aces High! and how it related to the Malygos encounter.

Forge of Souls

I have one gripe specific to the Forge of Souls, a gripe relating to those packs of casters who don't like to move when they are aggro-ed. They are far apart from each other, too far apart for a tank's AoE attacks to hit them all, and there is no way to set up an LoS pull to bring them closer together. This creates a very difficult situation for us tanks, and I implore Blizzard, when they design trash packs with casters, that they add one of the following elements to those packs: the casters actually move, they are placed close together, or there be a way to LoS pull them.

Halls of Reflection

While I'm discussing specific gripes with specific trash enemies in specific instances, allow me to discuss the gauntlet in the beginning of Halls of Reflection. Now, I have no problem with trash that is actually difficult; it makes what is normally a boring part of the instance more interesting. And I have no problem with trash that required crown control; it's my understanding that we'll be seeing more of that in Cataclysm, so we may as well just accept it. And I have no problem with gauntlet type events where enemies spawn automatically; Violet Hold and Black Morass were two of my favorite heroics back when they were a challenge. Each of these distinct elements, I have no problem with individually, or even in pairs. However, put all three together, and you have a clusterfuck of epic proportions.

"Clusterfuck" really is the best was to describe the trash in Halls of Reflection. When I looked up the definition of that word to make sure I was using it correctly, I found this: "Its more precise usage describes a particular kind of Catch-22, in which multiple complicated problems mutually interfere with each other's solution." That describes the trash in Halls of Reflection perfectly: the enemies do a lot of damage and have many abilities that make fighting them a royal pain, so crowd control is necessary. However, crowd control is difficult to pull off because the enemies spawn sporadically thanks to their gauntlet-style setup, so pulls and the crowd control used to make them manageable can't be planned out beforehand. In short, it's a mess, a huge mess.

So, for future reference: difficult trash that requires crowd control? Fine, just give us the time we need to mark the enemies and set up the pull. Difficult trash in a gauntlet-style event? Fine, just don't require us to use crowd control. Trash that requires crowd control in a gauntlet-style event? We'll begrudgingly accept it; just don't give it insanely high damage, so we actually have time to get it under control

I know that most of the things on this list were things that I felt Wrath's heroics did wrong, so next week, I'll be going over what certain heroics did right and what is worthy of being copied by Cataclysm's heroics. Until then, what heroics will you be happy to leave behind when Cataclysm launches, and why?

Why should the final boss of an expansion drop gear?

One of the things that continues to amaze me is the vast variety of places that I can find inspiration for my posts. For example, I was browsing TV Tropes a few days ago and came across an article entitled "Bragging Rights Reward", which describes any practical reward in a video game that takes immense effort to acquire, such that by the time you acquire it, you have already proved you don't need it. It's a fairly frequently used trope, and it got me thinking: are there any such rewards in WoW? One example immediately popped into my mind: any loot that drops from heroic Lich King (or Kil'jaeden in Burning Crusade, or Kel'thuzad in vanilla WoW). After all, those bosses were/are the last boss in their respective expansion, so once you defeat them, you don't need better gear. This, to me, begs the question: why should these bosses drop gear?

The Lich King in an interested exception to this case, because with the Ruby Sanctum being released in patch 3.3.5, the gear that he drops on heroic mode will give players a better chance at defeating the foes in the Ruby Sanctum, and considering that everything in the Ruby Sanctum will be side-grades, rather than upgrades to the things dropped in Icecrown Citadel, they won't be bragging rights rewards either. After all, players could go for Halion first and heroic Lich King after that, or they could have already defeated heroic Lich King and will now be trying to best the Ruby Sanctum. Either way, the rewards from one fight will make the other easier, making neither a clear case of bragging rights rewards. That is, unless Halion isn't a comparable fight to heroic Lich King, and is a good deal easier. in which case the Lich King's heroic drops will still be bragging rights rewards. After all, if he is, by far, the hardest fight in the expansion so far, so by the time you defeat him, you have proven you don't need better gear.

For now, I'm going to write under the assumption that heroic Lich King will remain the hardest fight in the game, even after 3.3.5 is released, for this will not only make writing about the subject more interesting, but will also allow me to consider whether there was any point in Kil'jaeden and Kel'thuzad dropping gear. Now, I'm sure one of the first justifications for them dropping gear that one would point out is that their gear helps people level more quickly through the new content released with each expansion, but if your gear is good enough that you can beat the final boss of an expansion, it's probably good enough that you won't notice the difference between having gear that drops off of that final boss and not having gear that drops off of that final boss; you'll probably be mowing through enemies too quickly to notice the time you save. One could also argue that the gear they drop would give one an advantage when one starts the new expansion's raid content, but considering the rate at which gear has steadily gotten better, the difference between top-end gear and second-best gear becomes even less significant when you enter a new expansion's raids.

So where does that leave us in terms of uses for gear that drops off of the final boss of an expansion? I once said in one of my other posts that gear really serves two purposes: helping you advance through an expansion's content, and serving as a representation of your achievements. The real question is, if gear isn't serving one of those purposes, is it fair that it exist only to serve the other, less practical one? Making the models for that gear takes time away from the design team, time they could be spending on other things, like the gear for the new content. More importantly, though, it reinforces the idea that the main goal of playing WoW is to get better gear, and though that is often an important step in accomplishing other goals, it isn't the reason most of us play. Most of us play for the experience, whether that experience is downing a raid boss, winning a battleground, or just getting exalted with a faction; gear just happens to be a nice consolation that also makes future experiences go more smoothly.

But, you may ask, are there any alternatives? Plenty, actually: mounts, titles, vanity pets (granted, people would probably only be excited about receiving one of the first two of those three), all of which serve the purpose of representing a person's achievements without existing solely as a bragging right reward (by the definition above). And truth be told, I think that rewarding regular old gear for defeating the final boss of an expansion is a bit... underwhelming. Gear was just a necessity to get to that point, and to reward more gear almost seems like mockery to me. Think about it: by beating heroic Lich King, a raid has beaten Wrath of the Lich King. They have overcome the greatest challenge off the expansion, and the reward is just more gear? Just more of the same? Now, granted, beating the Lich King on heroic mode does also grant special titles, depending on which mode you beat him on, as well as a mount for one member of the raid, but rather than giving some other members of the raid gear as a reward, why not give everyone the mount? It seems to me a more fitting reward for what is, in essence, beating Wrath of the Lich King, at least more fitting than just more gear. Maybe that's just me, though.

Will I really want to be a part of the beta?

As of Thursday, it is now possible to opt in to the Cataclysm beta test, and though I jumped at the opportunity to do so, I have to wonder whether I really should. You see, I was involved in the Wrath of the Lich King beta, and though it was an enjoyable experience and I was glad to provide feedback before the expansion was released, after some time, I stopped playing on the beta servers. After some time in the Borean Tundra, I realized that I was really spoiling the leveling experience for myself, in more than one sense of the word: I was both showing myself content I wold rather have waited to see, and I was ruining my future enjoyment of the content by making it so that I would need to run it again once the expansion came out. As such, I quit leveling through Northrend, rolled a Death Knight to try them out (and decided against making one my main character when the expansion came out), and then ended my beta career.

Once Wrath of the Lich King came out, my predictions turned out to be true. I enjoyed the earlier quests in Borean Tundra significantly less than I enjoyed the later quests, and once I reached the point where I had stopped during the beta, my enjoyment of the expansion greatly increased. As such, I think you can see why I am hesitant to participate in the Cataclysm beta. As much as I would like to assist the developers of this amazing game and help make the expansion better, the allure of seeing the content before everyone else just doesn't do anything for me, and actually makes me less enthusiastic to participate.

Now, why would I write about these experiences, you may ask? I write about these experiences because I realized today that there is a middle-ground, a way that I can help the Cataclysm beta without spoiling content I will eventually see and ruining the experience for myself. You see, I play Alliance, and my plans for the expansion are two-fold: explore the new end-game zones and content with my Druid, and role a Worgen... something (I still haven't decided what class he'll be; I am leaning towards a priest or a warrior. I know I have a priest already, but hey, why not do it again?) to experience the newly revamped old-world with. This seems to negate all options I have for ways to participate in the Cataclysm beta, but there is another option: Goblins. After all, I have no plans to level a Horde alt any time in the future, so an easy way for me to help the Cataclysm beta without spoiling too much for myself is to roll a Goblin and level him. Sure, I may spoil any changes to the faction-neutral quests, but that's better than spoiling everything.

So let me leave you with this: If you want to take part in the Cataclysm beta but don't want to spoil the new content for yourself, consider rolling an alt of the opposite faction you usually play. And if you play both? Well, sorry, but I guess you're out of luck; maybe roll an alt of the faction you play less?

What improvements might Blizzard make to the badge/emblem system?

Edit: Blizzard recently announced exactly what changes they will be making to the badge system, so we no longer need to wonder what they will do. Though I didn't anticipate them changing it to a point-based system, they will be implementing a system where there are two types of gear currency, and when a new tier of gear is released, the better type is converted to the lesser type. All I can say is, called it!

The addition of the Emblematic feat of strength in the last patch, sent people into a flurry of speculation about the fate of the emblem system in Cataclysm, but there's one thing we know: it's not likely that Blizzard will simply do away with the emblem system. Instead, they are probably going to change it; after all, we know they didn't like certain aspects of the Badge of Justice system, and we know they don't like certain aspects of the emblem system, so the question is, how can they change gear currency in the next expansion to address the issues that badges and emblems had?

One of the things Blizzard didn't like about the Badge of Justice system was that people could stock-pile badges and buy gear the day it was released. This was not their intention, so they put in emblems with the tiered system we know today. That way, people couldn't run heroics before a patch to stock up on emblems and buy gear the next day; they would have to run heroics after the patch, which was much closer to Blizzard's intentions. Problem is, with five tiers of emblems, things get confusing. Needing to trade down your emblems three or four times to buy heirloom gear is tedious, and it can be annoying to need to talk to multiple vendors just to see what gear you can buy with your emblems. Whatever changes Blizzards makes to the emblems system will need to address these issues.

I have seen suggestions before as to ways to improve the emblem system, but many of these have issues of their own. Some have suggested automatically upgrading emblems to the next tier when a patch hits, but this creates the same issue that Badges of Justice had in that you can stockpile emblems for the next patch. Some have also suggested making old gear be exchanged for the new emblems when a patch drops, but this would prevent your from using the emblems you had stockpiled to buy it. One simple solution is to allow higher-tier emblems to automatically downgrade when you buy something, but this would create issues of its own. People would probably accidentally spend emblems they didn't mean to spend, and imagine the horror of trying to refund them automatically.

Whatever new system is put in place, it would need to motivate people to run heroics all the way through Cataclysm's duration (like Wrath's system), rather than encouraging people to run heroics in bulk to save up emblems to buy gear immediately after the patch drops. One option is to use a system similar to Badges of Justice, but to inflate the cost of gear much more dramatically as the expansion goes on while also increasing the amount of emblems that drop from bosses. This would discourage people from running heroics in advance while still keeping things simple, but the cost of gear would probably reach absurd levels, and people would still farm heroics to get gear the minute it is released. It would also mean emblem achievements be worth less as the expansion wears on.

Perhaps emblems could be demoted as patches went on and be given better gear they can buy. Let me explain what I mean. Suppose that emblems are replaced with a currency we'll call seals. When Cataclysm launches, there would be two kinds of seals: Gleaming Seals of Justice, and Seals of Justice. Heroics (and ten-mans, if Blizzard wants 25-man raids to drop better gear currency) would drop Seals of Justice, while 25-mans and your first daily heroic would drop Gleaming Seals of Justice. GSoJs would be used to buy gear equivalent to 25-man drops, while SoJs would be used to buy gear equivalent to 10-man drops. Now, when a new patch with a new round of gear is released, all of your GSoJs would be demoted to regular SoJs (the idea being that time has made them lose their sheen), but all of the gear that had previously been bought with GSoJs will instead be bought with regular SoJs. Only the latest round of gear would be bought with GSoJs. And, of course, GSoJs could be traded down for regular SoJs.

This kind of system is not without its flaws. One could easily chain-run heroics early in the expansion to save up regular SoJs, then use those SoJs to buy the second best gear later in the expansion. However, the best gear would still only be available to those who continue to run heroics, and someone who is the kind of person to run heroics to save up seals for new gear is probably the kind of person who would want the best gear and would keep running heroics to get it. Players may also feel indignant about their "good" seals being transformed into "bad" seals, even though the "bad" seals would be capable of everything the "good" seals had been capable of before the patch was released. Players may also feel that it isn't worth it to spend their regular seals now when they can get better gear with them later, but if today's system didn't evoke feelings of, "Why run heroics now when running them later will give me better badges?" then I doubt seals will evoke a similar feeling.

Sadly, I cannot come up with some magic system that can solve all of the issues emblems have (if I could, I'd be writing up my resumé to submit to Blizzard, not writing up this blog post.). Considering that the Cataclysm press beta-invites have already gone out, perhaps we'll soon have some idea of just what Cataclysm has in store for us and our emblems. I am quite eager to see what Blizzard decides to do.

Why have solo content in a Massively Multiplayer Online Game?

Whenever I talk about solo content in WoW, if I ever lament the sad state of it these days (whether it be on this blog, in the comments section of WoW.com, or anywhere else), I frequently get reactions that sound something like this: "WoW is a massively multiplayer online RPG. Why worry about the solo content?" I think we can all agree that WoW needs some solo content. The question is, how extensive should that solo content be? Should we expect Blizzard to deliver engaging solo content to us players on a regular basis, or should we greet extensive solo content with a surprised, "Solo content? In my MMO?"

Picture is unrelated.

It's pretty obvious why an MMO needs any solo content at all: when players are just starting out, it's a pretty big challenge for them to try to get a hold of all the new game mechanics that WoW throws at them; needing to learn group mechanics would make it even more difficult. Solo content allows people to become familiar with the game and get a feeling for the way their class plays. It allows them to push their class to its limits without the risk of letting other people down if the fail. Solo content is, if nothing else, a training ground for new players to get them comfortable with the game before they enter group play. There is a risk in that set-up, though. Blizzard could, if they so desired, make sub-par solo content to try to motivate people to move into group play, but if they did that, no one would stick around to see the group content, no matter how awesome it may be. Blizzard needs to make WoW's solo content fun and engaging to draw players in, so they do. This is where the trouble starts.

Though WoW may be a MMO, it is really the solo content that gets people hooked. However, people respond differently to the solo content: some say, "If playing alone is this fun, I bet playing with other people must be even more fun!" These people end up being raiders. Some say, "If the game is this fun fighting computer-controlled enemies, fighting other players must be even more fun!" These people end up fighting in battlegrounds or competing in the arena. Then you have the players like me. Players like me go into raids and say, "Ack, this is too much of a time commitment/too much pressure/etc." Players like me go into battlegrounds and say, "Ack, this is too much of a variable experience, and I play this game to relax. " Or maybe we just don't PvP as a matter of principle. Either way, we don't enjoy the group content that WoW seems to be geared towards getting us to play, so we are quite content with playing the part of the game we enjoy, the part that drew us in in the first place: the solo content.

This leaves Blizzard in a tight spot. They designed WoW to be, at its core, a group game. Ghostcrawler has even said explicitly that their goal is to get PvE'ers into raids. The solo content was meant to draw us in so we could move on to bigger and supposedly better things; to paraphrase one of my commenters, "If I want to play a solo-RPG, I'll play Dragon Age or Mass Effect." However, if the poll on the side of my blog is anything to go on, a fair amount of us prefer to stick with the solo content, in spite of the greater challenges to be had by grouping up.

It seems Blizzard doesn't mind that fact, though, or if they do, they have at least resigned themselves to designing solo content in spite of their larger goals for WoW players. Why else would they release solo content with each expansions pack and with many of the patches? In spite of Ghostcrawler's statement, it seems Blizzard has made it their goal to satisfy all WoW player, including those of us who are quite happy to chuckle at Ghostcrawler's sentiment and keep on solo-ing.

Why is he smiling? That can't be a good sign.

That could, however, all be an illusion. As I said in my post on the homogenization of Wrath of the Lich King solo content, solo content in Wrath of the Lich King has been streamlined to make it more straightforward and make the road from solo-ing to heroics to raiding a smoother one, and the road is only going to become smoother. One of the major promises of Cataclysm is that the old world will be made over to make leveling from 1 to 60 more fun and more like leveling through Outland or Northrend, i.e., smoother. After all, one of the biggest obstacles to getting to level 80 is vanilla Azeroth, which wasn't designed for fast leveling, but that's going to change. Come Cataclysm, the road to the level cap will have even fewer roadblocks than it does now, and the road to raiding will be similarly affected, assuming Blizzard sticks with their current design for solo content. What am I trying to get at here? It seems to me that Blizzard is designing their solo content to make it easier for people to get into heroics and raids, rather than as its own stand-alone content. Solo content in WoW is merely a stepping stone to bigger things, and they are making those steps even smaller.

I know that's a tough contention to prove. After all, why would Blizzard add two extra zones (Icecrown and Storm Peaks) of quests to do after hitting level 80 if they wanted to get us into raids as soon as possible? Well, those quests certainly provided a large chunk of cash, cash we needed to get some basic gear upgrades before starting heroics. (Hell, if you put in enough gold and effort, you could get your gear to the point where it was good enough for starting Naxx-10 without ever entering a heroic; I did. It wasn't advisable, but it was possible.) They also provided the back-story and starting points to the plots of the various heroics and raids those zones contained or would eventually contain, plots we could only see the conclusions of by running those heroics and raids. I think you get what I'm trying to say.

Now, I'm not saying that this design is a bad thing. There are plenty of people who just want to get into the group play, but without solo content, those heroics and raids would have no back story, and there would be no motivation to run them. Solo content also allows those who didn't get good gear in the last expansion to get on even ground with those who did, which prevents people from being locked out of raiding because they arrived at the party late (metaphorically speaking). Solo content is a good thing, even for people who prefer group content. The question is, how far should this smoothing of the path from solo-ing to heroics and raids go? When solo content is designed for the people who hope to surpass it, those who are quite content to stay within it are left behind.

I think Blizzard owes it to us soloists to not leave us out in the dust with their solo content. They drew us in with the solo content, and though they might want us to move on to bigger and supposedly better things, we would rather not. We like where we are, and that isn't going to change any time soon without a big change to the way raiding or PvP works. Now, granted, solo content shouldn't hinder people who want to go right into raiding or PvP, so where can a happy medium be found? Long-term goals. Burning Crusade had reputations like the Consortium and Sporeggar that gave solo-ists something they could work for that couldn't be steam-roled by grouping. The closest thing we have to them in Wrath of the Lich King is the Kalu'ak, and I hit exalted with them a week after hitting 80. What we need is more solo content that takes a large commitment of time to complete and provides appropriate rewards for that commitment. Supposedly, the Path of the Titans will be along the lines of what I am thinking of; let's hope Blizzard does it well.

The inherent risk of replenishment

Replenishment is an interesting little buff. It has been added to a variety of talent trees over the course of Wrath of the Lich King, from the most overpowered to the ones in greatest need of a buff. The first three trees it was added to (Survival (Hunter), Shadow (Priest), and Retribution (Paladin)) were all less than popular during the Burning Crusade, and I suppose part of Replenishment's raison detre was to increase interest in these trees. Replenishment was later added to the Destruction tree and the Frost tree (Warlocks and Mages, respectively), and though I can't speak about the state of Warlock balance when Replenishment was added to Destruction without risking saying something horribly incorrect, I know that Frost has been falling behind the other Mage trees in terms of DPS and is only now coming to the forefront on the PTR. It seems to me that Replenishment was just a band-aid to make Frost seem more raid-viable while Blizzard worked on an actual fix to Frost's DPS, just like how Replenishment was likely added to it's original three sources in case Blizzard wasn't able to make them viable by the time Wrath of the Lich King came out.

There is a risk in using Replenishment in such a way, though. That risk is that replenishment may let Blizzard off the hook when it comes to fixing specs. We saw that risk manifested in Frost Mages, who are still falling behind on the PTR, though not as much as previously. Though I can't say for certain that Survival wasn't as attractive as Marksmanship when Wrath began, I do know there were few talents in the tree that actually boosted ranged damage, and I know that Black Arrow was originally slated to be included in Burning Crusade, but was scrapped because it was too powerful. The fact that Blizzard added a spell to the Survival tree that they once considered too powerful says a lot about how Survival was matching up against the other specs.

Far be it from me to criticize Blizzard's balancing efforts, for they have a lot of things to consider when tweaking the numbers behind class balance. That said, Replenishment seems to me to act as no more than a consolation until Blizzard can come around to fixing a spec. After all, most raids already had a source of Replenishment in the form of a Retribution Paladin, considering their massive popularity during most of Wrath, and considering the prevalence of Replenishment when it was added to Improved Water Elemental (now Enduring Winter), most 25-man raids (the only place where Replenishment was considered a necessity, rather than a bonus) had some source of it already. Point is, giving Replenishment to Frost Mages didn't really mean much in the grand scheme of things; it was little more than a symbolic affirmation that Blizzard recognized that Frost Mages were falling behind and wanted to improve them.

Blizzard could have accomplished the same thing with an actual buff, however; something like adding Glyph of Eternal Water earlier. Now, I don't know the logistics of how Blizzard goes about buffing and nerfing classes, but it seems to me like giving a minor buff to a class would be a better option than adding Replenishment. It would allow Blizzard to dip their feet, so to speak, in the buffing pool and get an idea of how much buffing the class needs to be even with everyone else, it would actually improve the class in a tangible way, and it would give the same affirmation that adding Replenishment to a class gives.

Of course, Blizzard probably would have buffed Frost Mages if they thought they really needed to be buffed. Perhaps Frost Mages weren't falling behind at that point in time, or perhaps Blizzard didn't see keeping them competitive as a necessity, considering their survivability and thus viability as a solo-ing and PvP spec. (Perhaps one of the commenters could enlighten me on the state of Frost Mages around the time when patch 3.1 was released.)

Regardless, the fact that Frost Mages fell so far behind shows that adding Replenishment or a similar effect to a spec isn't enough to make that spec worthwhile. Many people think Rogues should get an effect similar to Bloodlust/Heroism in order to make them more popular, but considering how many shamans there are in the world, how much would that really help? After all, like Replenishment, the Rogue version of Bloodlust would need to be subject to the same cooldown as the Shaman's Bloodlust, meaning if there were already a shaman in the raid, the Rogue's Bloodlust would be a pointless addition. The key to making classes and specs attractive is not adding homogeneous buffs, but to either bring the class up to speed with everyone else or add something that makes the class unique (or both). Adding a carbon-copy of another class's buff to an underpowered class is nothing more than pointless consolation, an easy way out for Blizzard.