Dynamic World State
Posted by Jay | Filed under Game Industry, World of Warcraft
DISCLAIMER: Let’s leave Muds out of the equation. We know MMOs as a genre are catching up to MUD in tech.
DISCLAIMER: DK spoilers
Dynamic character state, or RPG, is easier then dynamic world state. Historically, looking at the amount of MMOs with dynamic character progression is par for the course. World events, that actually change the world, ala Final Fantasy 3, are extremely rare. In addition to rare, they almost never affect the game world in a permanent way.
Imagine my surprise, while firing up a Death Knight that the new phasing technology actually creates the impression of “affect” on the game world. Progressing through the story line began with a town being scouted byt he scourge. Continuing to the final conflict where the town is burned to the ground. This happened while I was playing. Yes, it happened LIVE!
This is fairly significant. And I also realise this happened COMPLETELY under the radar for the average player. No one knows and very few people are talking about it. I wanted to point out that Blizzard has some interesting technology that has the potential to put the player in control of their world.
With a new blizzard MMO around the corner(3-5 years), my hope is that they created a fully character and world dynamic MMO for all to enjoy. Maybe this once, they’ll lead the industry instead of borrowing innovation.
Importance of consent in World Events
Posted by Jay | Filed under Game Industry, World of Warcraft
With the Hallow’s Eve event in World of Warcraft, players abound are becoming infected, turining into zombies and in general having a hoot! Or are they?
There is a facination social phenomenon occurring. Many players ask for a way to “change” the world. The zombie event provides an opportunity to do just that. Why then would so many players be upset with the zombie event. One word: consent.
Historically, the opening of the gates of AQ40 participation in the global world changing event lead to rewards for all, riches and titles for some and unique equip for a select few, one per server to be exact. Players felt like they were joining a global effort! Contributing much needed resources to the war effort. If you didn’t play original vanilla WoW, this was a great event. Let’s move on.
Conversely, the recent zombie event is non consental. You’re participation in the zombie event is at the whim of other players. Much like truly open world PVP, Your experience may change due to online play. Your enjoyment of the zombie event is dependent on whether:
- You enjoy being a zombie, unable to perform regular tasks in the game world.
- You enjoy griefing to an extent. All friendly entities become hostile and all hostile entities become friendly. This is almost the definition of grief play.
- You don’t mind leaving a negative impact on the game world.
Of the above three distinctions, I argue the primary reason the zombie event is failing is due to the negative impact a player has on the game world. The majority of players want to positively impact the game world. They want their name sung to the high heavens. They want to save the day. They want to belong.
Contributing, as with the opening of the AQ40 gates, versus griefing, as with the current zombie event, are two distinct activities for any human. You’ll find in most psychology document that the need to contribute to the greater whole is intrinsically built into the human species.
The majority of players in the World of Warcraft game space would GLADLY join the fight to repel the zombie invasion, provided the zombie invasion was NPC based.
If I were a historian of MMO design, I would strongly discourage the griefing nature of the zombie world event in favor of world events where the player can positively impact the game environment.
Why I’m not playing Disc until 80.
Posted by Jay | Filed under PvP, World of Warcraft
I’m not playing discipline again until 80. I’ve had it! Gone are the days for me where I will happily sit behing the front line of various DPS and keep people alive ( healing ) or try to get everyones attention so my buddies can do their stuff ( priest tanking ). Each of these actions are gone for the priest for many reasons.
PVP players are already used to stacking 2-3 dps on a discipline priest to take em down. Pre-3.02 a D priest could certainyl live with that and excel! Since we’ve trained the player base to do this, post-3.02 2-3 dps on a tanking discipline priest takes me down in 5 seconds. I don’t even get to heal myself most of the time.
Yes. I am whining about priest tanking!
On the other hand! Shadow is WAY fun. 4 dots, dispel still works and as long as I’m on my game, a longer mass dispel is no longer detrimental. Haha, get it?
Overall, I applaud Blizzard for the change. From what I can see, they’re pushing raiding and pvp to be more frenetic, more decisive and more open ended. Everyone has a little bit of everything with one or two specialties. Enough ball pading, here’s some pointers since most of Discipline will play the same.
- Mana drain is less important because fights will be over quicker.
- Fear bomb is a potent weapon. 3 seconds is HUGE in pvp right now. Like 12k HP to dead huge.
- Learn how to pillar dance. Put your left hand on WASD and learn to turn and camera pivot with your right hand. Reverse that if you’re left handed.
- DO NOT MOUSE CLICK. Learn to use the key binding menu to create SHIFT + AlphaNumeric and CTRL + Alphanumeric to cast spells.
- Throw shield around.. like a bad analogy that I can’t think of right now.
- Target health can be displayed as a number now. When you’re target is at 4k life, queue up mind blast + Shadow Word: Death. Bring that target DOWN!
- Discipline priests are great for single target healing, but you HAVE to learn to play offensively to survive. The best defense ( YOU! ) is to have a strong offense ( situation awareness ).
That’s all I have to say until I start arenaing at 80. Enjoy the freebies, raid where you can. Go kill Illidan. Just go!
Rerollmuch - 70 doesn’t work, and waiting till 80.
Disc Priest 3.02 Build - First impressions
Posted by Jay | Filed under PvP, World of Warcraft
There’s a lot of subtle differences when it comes to the new discipline.
- You’ll spend the majority of your time at 35% mana. Its wierd but it happens.
- You MUST live through the opening burst. If you can survive for 5-7 seconds you’ll live through the encounter.
- Mana burn is much more important.
- Shield + Aegis + Many damage reductions = Your heal target will not die if you chain flash heal. This in itself is a HUGE change.
- Range and pillar dancing is even more important then it was before.
I really want to be fair to you guys and give you a full review of the new talents and changes to Disc Priest PVP. I’ll need to run more BGs and more Arena matches to get a true(er) feel for the changes. Next week I’ll have a full talent run down. Stay tuned.
This is what I’m running right now. Be wary of disc priest tanking. Offense overall for everyone, including YOU, has increased.
Hard core gaming this past weekend!
Posted by Jay | Filed under World of Warcraft
When the lady leaves town this is what happens. 4 straight days of World of Warcraft. From 46 to 60, an epic tale. Fully cleared BRD and BRS to go from 57 - 60. Time for a short break!
