Where have all the CC’ers gone?

Crowd Control.

For some, it is a necessary part of life.  The solo artist, travelling the realm of Azeroth on their lonesome, understands the true value of keeping extra mobs at bay.  The adventurous soul who solos instances knows that one or two less in a pack of mobs means more health at the end of the pull.  The PVPer knows that when a healer can’t heal, the DPS go down quickly.

For others, sadly, it’s a blast from the past. 

Wrath of the Lich King taught many up-and-coming raiders that crowd control is little more than an extra button on your toolbar, one that could just as easily be replaced with an AoE ability.  And, really, that’s what most of them did.  Volley replaced Freezing Trap.  Fan of Knives replaced Sap.  The abilities that we were once an inherent part of our classes, our instancing, our very raiding environments, were pushed aside when AoE became the weapon of choice.

After all, why bother with all the coordination of trapping and sapping and polymorphing when you can just gather all the mobs together, throw a handful of heals on the tank, and spam-AoE to victory?  After all, AoE is super powerful!  It does tons of damage!  It’s not horribly outbalanced, no, why on earth would Blizzard even dream of nerfing such a thing, you must be a total noob if you think AoE will ever get nerfed!!!!!11!!1!one!

Wait, what’s that?

AoE got nerfed?

Well.  Damn.

And not only did AoE get nerfed, but other important mechanics were changed for the introduction of the “new and improved” instancing environment.  Nothing serious, you know.  Just, oh, mana regen. 

I watched a healer try to spam-heal through an “AoE” pull in Stonecore not too long ago.  The Earthshaper, left uncontrolled and not interrupted, started spamming it’s own AoE, and within seconds our healer was OOM.  It was a combination of many things that led to that wipe – the general Wrath mentality of “AOE TILL IT DIES BITCHES”, the melee Wrath mentality of “STAND IN THE MOBS BEACUSE THE HEALER WILL HEAL ME”, and the ranged Wrath mentality of “DOESN’T MATTER IF I PULL AGGRO WHILE I AOE CUZ I CAN KILL IT BEFORE IT GETS TO ME!”

Um.  No.

This huge, necessary shift in our manner of thinking has brought back valuable lessons from old school raiding, and not all players are adjusting gracefully.  That’s not to say that only the old school raiders know anything about crowd control, because I can assure you, I did a double-take when a PuG tank asked me to trap a mob in Vortex Pinnacle last weekend.  (Wait, wut?)  But there’s something strangely depressing about having to hold up a group while the Mage pulls their Polymorph out of their spellbook because, “LAWL I NEVER PVP I DON’T USE TIHS.”

There is hope, though.  During our morning WoW discussions on the way to work, Jeff mentioned that while herbing in Uldum, he’d seen a Human Death Knight kite-kill a quest elite.  It involved dropping Death and Decay, throwing diseases on the target, and then using their slowing ability to bait the mob around in a circle through the D&D while it slowly died.  The DK even used terrain to their advantage by running up to a small nearby platform and then jumping off, forcing the mob to take the long way back around to come after him.  And while it took a long time, it worked, and the DK took practically no damage through the whole fight.  Jeff went on his way, and when he came around again, he saw a Shadow Priest kite-killing the same mob.  Again, took forever, but he did it, with little damage.

Last night, in Grim Batol, I watched a Rogue effectively control three targets – a Sap on a marked mob, Kicks on the main target, and a Blind on the errant spellcaster who was just outside the tank’s range and merrily throwing shadowbolts at our healer.

Class and raid leaders – as your guilds gear themselves through heroics, professions, and reputation, I have just one request.  Yes, DPS is important, yes, situational awareness is important, but I implore you, do not overlook this vital skill in your guildmates.  The Rogue who must effectively control three targets is not necessarily going to be highest in DPS that pull.  The Mage or Hunter or Shaman kiting things away from the healer may take a little more damage than anticipated.  The Death Knight that switches presences on the fly to off-tank and kite a hard-hitting mob in the interest of easing the necessary healing on the tank will not be your top performer.  But without them, that pull is unsuccessful. 

I’m not being obtuse.  I’ve seen some incredibly negative responses to party members who have sacrificed their damage in the interest of protecting the party.  Tanks who are butthurt at the insinuation that they can’t hold a group of mobs, healers that are insulted at the possibility they may not be able to heal through it, DPS who are pissed they can’t AoE because of the giant frost trap.

And on a less polite note… to the rest of you, the instancers, the PuG’ers, the random players – LEARN YOUR DAMN CLASSES!  THOSE BUTTONS WERE PUT THERE FOR A REASON, LEARN HOW TO USE THEM!  *glares*  I’m talking to you, Rogues that don’t know how to Sap, Hunters that don’t have the first clue how to trap, and especially you, Mr. Mage that Doesn’t Use Polymorph because “I Don’t PVP LAWL”!

Or, you know, you could just sit back, and watch what happens when the Plaguebringers in Tol’vir go nuts on your party.  Or let the Earthshapers in Stonecore switch forms and AoE the tank and melee, or the Rift Conjurers summon to their heart’s content until your healer is swimming in imps a la Illhoof.  Or leave any number of mobs in Grim Batol to do their preprogrammed nastiness while you’re trying to fight in cramped spaces.  Because until we learn these places like the back of our hands, until we can run them in our sleep like with Wrath, and until we’re geared enough that CC once again becomes a thing of the past…

AoE ain’t saving your asses. 

(and if I hear one more “OMFG WUT R U TALKIN ABOUT WE’VE ALWAYS HAD TRAP LAUNCHER” I’m going to fucking murder someone)

Saelym out.

Happy Shattering, Everyone! (And Happy Anniversary!)

Today is November 23, 2010.  To some, it’s just another day.  To some, it means getting out of bed, going to work, following the routine.  To my friends south of the border, it’s another day in the countdown to the long weekend.  To my shopping fanatic buddies, it’s one more day toward Black Friday.

To the geeks, however, today is a special day.  Because today is World of Warcraft’s 6th Anniversary.

Today is also the end of the world.

Yes, Patch 4.0.3a goes live today, and that little “a” at the end means that the Shattering has occurred.  We bunked down in the various inns and taverns of Azeroth and Outland last night, content in our belief that we’d fended off yet another elemental invasion, that we’d done our part to secure the safety of our homeland, that the world was protected for one more day.

Oh, we were so wrong.

Today Deathwing has taken to the skies of Azeroth, sundering our beloved world in ways that we cannot even begin to fathom.  Today the tsunamis have drowned Thousand Needles, earthquakes have rocked Darkshore, and mighty caverns have split the Barrens clean down the middle.

Today we log in, and the world as we know it has changed forever.

It’s been an incredible haul the last six years.  Blizzard has given us an experience like no other – a magnificant magic carpet ride through lore and sunderings, through Dark Portals and frozen wastes, and today, another chapter is added in the saga that has gripped the enthralled millions across the globe.

So here’s to you, Blizzard.  Another year, another expansion, another invasion.  Another tier of content, another tier of gear, another notch in your belt.  Thank you for giving us what is arguably the best video game to ever smash through our screens, an experience that has shaped friendships and rivalries across the world, a profound love of babbling fish people, and a true understanding of the might of Chuck Norris.

Who are you, and what have you done with my MMO?

Once upon a time, there was an Undead Warrior named Lethality.  He was a hot shit Warrior – top DPS in the guild, successful Gladiator, all that fun stuff.  When it came to duelling, he was undefeated against almost every player he touched, except for one – a little Undead Rogue named Fallapart.  At first he chalked it up to fluke, but eventually Lethality realized that 9 times out of 10, Fallapart bested him despite inferior gear and little PVP experience.

How is this possible? Lethality wondered.  How can a noob be better than me?  I MUST BE UNDERPOWERED!

He haunted Warrior forums, downloaded every stat addon he could find.  Recount became his new best friend.  He obsessed over DPS, over latency, over swing timers.  But still, he could never beat Fallapart.  The Rogue became his “unicorn” - destroying them in a 1v1 became a near-unobtainable quest for him…

Until he gave up and said “WARRIORS ARE BROKED” and stopped playing.  Eventually, he transferred his Orc Warrior, Blades, to the same server and played him instead.  Fallapart’s owner eventually dropped her for a Death Knight named Eternalash, and soon, the problem became not that Lethality couldn’t beat Fallapart, but that Blades couldn’t beat Eternalash.

The cycle continues.  To my ex-guildie, D, his Warriors will always be broken, Rogues and Death Knights will always be overpowered, and Blizzard should just fix their damn class imbalances. 

Funny how that works.

This post isn’t without reason, actually.  As much as I love to rag on D and the fact that he could never beat Jeff in a duel, D’s attitude actually stands as a shining example of what’s happening on servers all over WoW right now.  Why?  Because a few days ago, Patch 4.0.1 came rolling off the test realm like a freight train out of hell, dumping 4.7 GB of sucker-punching, nut-kicking goodness on devoted WoW players across the land.  And the first thing out of their mouths?

WTF DID YOU DO TO MY CLASS?!

Don’t get me wrong, I’m as in shock at the changes as anybody else.  Well, okay, maybe not as much, because I’m taking more time out of my day to make fun of it rather than actually complain about it.  But in my quick login to peek at my 72 Shaman, I did an astounding double-take.  If I bothered to reactivate my main account and look at my Hunter and Druid, I would most likely faint.

I’m what most people would call a near 6-year veteran noob.  I’m not a theorycrafter, forumstalker, elite raider, gladiatorial PVPer, or anything kind of in between.  I’m just a casual gamer who has a love for lore, for RP, for questing, for alt-itis, for instancing, and for the aesthetics of the pretty, pretty game I’ve come to love.  So if you’re expecting me to spaz out over the fact that Hunters have switched from mana to focus, you are definitely looking at the wrong blog.

I’ve no doubt that the changes have come as a huge shock to most anybody who’s been playing the game for any length of time.  The World of Warcraft, as we know it, has completely and utterly changed.  Our talents have dropped to 31 points, our stat system has been overhauled, and even the world our characters inhabit will be permanently scarred and shaken in less than two month’s time. 

However, there’s something that people may be missing – the old adage that says, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”  In this case it is better translated as, “If a large portion of your company’s profit is dependent on it, don’t mess with it”, but clearly, Blizzard has seen something worth fixing.  I’m not saying there was anything terribly wrong with the game, but if the people who created it feel that some large changes are necessary, well, then they are.  You don’t risk pissing off your entire player base for crits and lawls.  You just don’t.

I could be wrong, though.  The sudden flurry of forum, blog, and social media posts from distgruntled players bluntly stating that they are going to look elsewhere for their MMO fix indicate a certain amount of anger at Blizzard’s overhaul of the system.  Sure, there are those who embrance the changes and look forward to a completely new gaming experience after having things relatively the same all these years – myself included - but the angry certainly overwhelm the content.

I play in a small group, freestyle LARP called Meteora.  Our GM is just about the most awesome person on the planet, and she and I developed the majority of the game together – she the gameplay and technical stuff, me the world and lore.  Since it’s inception almost 7 years ago, Meteora has seen almost 5 complete overhauls of the system, in which our beloved GM has reset our characters to Level 1.  Yes, it caused a lot of tears and ranting, especially when we were in the middle of a great campaign, or a particularly awesome storyline.  Her reasoning, however, was that the game had gotten to the point that she could no longer control it – characters had gotten too powerful, weapons were too extravagant, everyone had too much money, that sort of thing.  She reset us to the beginning and overhauled the system so that we could start over in a more controlled environment.  Was the game completely different each time?  Yes.  But it was still the game we loved.

World of Warcraft has just been overhauled.  In a way, we have all been reset to zero.  The revamp of the game as we know it means that everyone is literally starting from the same point – learning the game again, learning their class again, experiencing the content again from a fresh perspective.  The skilled players – the Rabid Raiders, the Princes of PVP – will rebound quickly, and will go back to being exceptional at what they do.  They will dominate the DPS meters, and they will rack up the honor kills, as if none of this ever happened.  They will be the first to 85, the first to crack new content, they will still be the slick bastards hanging out outside the auction house in their super uber epic whatevers.

WoW will recover, and whether it will do that with a significantly reduced playerbase has yet to be seen.  Maybe the changes are severe enough to drive a large amount of the players away, and maybe they aren’t.  I suppose that remains to be seen.

But either way, it’s going to be one hell of an epic ride.

Cataclysm.  Best Buy Langley.  I’ll be the one singing and dancing and eating Timbits.

See you in December, geeks.

Because I can’t think of anything better to do on a cold December night than standing outside the local brick and mortar for a midnight release…

DECEMBER 7.

CATACLYSM.

CATACLYYYYYYYSSSSSSSSSMMMMMMMMM.

CAT-A-CLY-SM.

Not only am I marking my calendar, I’m telling Mr. Long Suffering (also known as Jeff, the better half) that I don’t want to go to work on December 7.  This isn’t as easy as it sounds.  My better half also happens to be my boss.

I plan to hit up midnight release at Best Buy Langley, which is just down the hill from my house and, last year, was home to WoW Jeopardy (which I lost by 2 points), Monty Python-esque duelling matching, and copious amount of coffee, Timbits, and Pepsi.  Oh, and oogling of my Hunter’s Mark tattoo, which I proudly showed off after my friend Darryl told everyone in earshot about it.

It was also colder than an Eskimo’s nutsack, but hey, it’s all good.  I can suck it up for one night.

We waited 5 hours in the November cold (which, in BC, is nothing compared to you folks back East… I applaud your dedication) for our Collector’s Editions of Wrath of the Lich King, and I fully intend to do the same for Cataclysm, if only because Best Buy won’t open until 9:00 Tuesday morning and I want to have 9 hours of bleeding-eyeball goodness on those who actually decided to go to bed on Monday night.

I’m serious.  Look at me.  This is my serious face.

December 7, boys and girls.  When the clock strikes midnight, you’ll know where to find me.  And, if all goes well, I’ll still be parked at my computer when I should be getting up to go to work.  I have 2 vacation days left this year, and I know exactly how I want to use them!

Cataclysm vs. The Way We Raid

Umpteen million years ago, I was a raider.

Okay, maybe not that long ago.  Honestly, the last time I raided WotLK content was back in January, on my Druid.  But as far as WoW is concerned, that most definitely was a lifetime ago.  Since my last days of raiding, people I know have not only cleared ICC, but put it on farm status, when all I ever saw of the Lich King’s kingdom was what was on Jeff’s screen when he ran it with our guild a couple times.

It’s an interesting thing, raiding.  I have a very love-hate relationship with it, as do many people I know.  It’s one of the reasons I just don’t do it anymore.  For the longest time I tried very hard to build a 10-man group of close friends and excellent raiders who wanted to run on a more casual schedule than a 25-man progression-based raiding guild, but had little success because, well, the temptations of the “better” epics tend to pull people away.

Blizzard, in a rather surprising move, is actually doing something about that by gear-balancing raids. 

We know there are a lot of players who want to run 10s who feel compelled to run 25s for the better loot. We know there are a lot of players who want to run 25s and feel like they still have to do 10s as well. We know both groups of players are getting frustrated and burning out — not because they don’t like raiding, but because they don’t like raiding the same content twice a week, particularly when the 10 version tends to not even be challenging since their 25 participation ensures they overgear it.

One raid lockout with same item levels for 10 and 25 and a weekly cap on badge income solves all of those problems for us. It does creates two potential new problems. One, players may gravitate towards 10s because the logistics are easier. We intend to handle that by making 25s more efficient at earning gear. Two, players who really like to run both a 10 and 25 every week lose that opportunity. Sorry. If it’s any consolation, because the bosses are divided among multiple raid zones you can still do some in a 10 and some in a 25 or have an alt that only does a couple of those zones a week without the full commitment of two complete boss kill cycles every week.

Wow.  Here’s the source, straight from Ghostcrawler’s fingers, if you don’t believe me.  Now, of course, this is just beta information and we have no way of knowing if this is definitely going to go live, but still.

Yes, 25-mans will get more badges, more gear drops.  But there will be single achievements, single tier pieces.  Casual gamers who run 10-mans with their friends-and-family guilds will be able to get the same gear as the hardcore progression gamers, and there won’t be any of that smug gear-bashing going on because someone is “lesser” for having 10-man epics. 

Don’t give me that look.  You know it happens.  The only thing people have called more welfare is the very badge gear people grind to be able to raid these instances.

Does it mean I’ll go back to raiding?  Not really sure.  But I do think that, overall, this is going to have a very positive impact on the raiding environment, will allow gamers in smaller guilds to see the best gear available… and honestly, I think it will tone down some of the epeen associated with item levels.

Now, if we can just get rid of GS…