Posted on July 30th, 2009 by admin
Blessing of Kings asks an excellent question: how often should we be running repeatable content? Certainly Blizzard has considered this issue before — they’ve gone with daily quests in the first expansion, and recently they’ve been rethinking just how often we’ll be rerunning dungeons, too. But both of those time periods are fairly arbitrary to us: is it possible that we should start running things twice a week (once during and once on the weekend), or maybe do weekly quests instead of daily?
BoK says: possibly. Rohan suggests a weekly quest that rewarded 70g instead of the daily 10g reward we usually get (not including the XP bonus which kicks it up to 13g). Players who don’t have time to run every day, but do have the weekly availability (like me — I play mostly on the weekends), would be able to still pick up the reward. I’ll go one step further, in fact: what if we had an option? What if we could choose to run a quest daily (and get a bigger reward overall), or run it once per week, using up all of our daily chances for that week, and getting a smaller total reward? That seems to be the best way — those who could log in every day would get a larger reward, while those who couldn’t could still get more than just the
Filed under: World of Warcraft | No Comments »
Posted on July 27th, 2009 by admin
Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers’ Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership.
How many members should your raiding guild have? It’s a simple question with a complex answer. This week, one reader wonders whether his guild simply has too many people.
Hi, Scott.I’d like to first mention that I’m a big fan of your column, Officers’ Quarters. Rock on! And today, I’d like to ask you for advice on the problem that my guild is facing. I’m a member of a raiding guild, one that hovers just below the best guilds of our realm. We have cleared 10man Ulduar, and I was lucky enough be there as I’m a member of our 10man progression team, which is now doing hard modes. Our 25man . . . well, thats where the problem comes in. Back in May, we didn’t have enough strong players to really progress past antechamber. Then things started coming up for our raiders — we couldn’t do a 25man guild run for whole 3 weeks in May-June due to lack of people! So our officers aggressively recruited people, some of them geared members of a reputable guild that recently went down and some of them friends transferred in from other servers, and our new recruits recommended us with their friends who were also
Filed under: World of Warcraft | No Comments »
Posted on July 23rd, 2009 by admin
Two Bosses Enter … but only One Boss Leaves, in WoW.com’s series of fantasy death matches. This season’s bosses come from the five-man instances of Wrath of the Lich King.
The winners of Round One of Two Bosses Enter, One Boss Leaves have the week off this week, nursing their wounds in preparation for their second bracket of bouts. We have 13 fresh matches on the table for this bracket, as we move closer to finding out who rocks Wrath’s five-man world.
Let’s take a look at who’ll be fighting who in the upcoming matches. Click on combatants’ names to review their performance in their initial battles.
Round Two
Mal’Ganis (The Culling of Stratholme) vs. Ormorok the Tree-Shaper (The Nexus)
Prince Taldaram (Ahn’Kahet: The Old Kingdom) vs. Chrono-Lord Epoch (The Culling of Stratholme)
Moorabi (Gundrak) vs. Gal’darah (Gundrak)
Keristrasza (The Nexus) vs. Zuramat the Obliterator (Violet Hold)
Krik’thir the Gatewatcher (Azjol-Nerub) vs. Commander Kolurg/Commander Stoutbeard (Horde/Alliance) (The Nexus)
Lavanthor (Violet Hold) vs. Gortok Palehoof (Utgarde Pinnacle)
Svala Sorrowgrave (Utgarde Pinnacle) vs. Salramm the Fleshcrafter (The Culling of Stratholme)
King Ymiron (Utgarde Pinnacle) vs. King Dred
Filed under: World of Warcraft | No Comments »
Posted on July 20th, 2009 by admin
Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers’ Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership.
A few weeks ago, I talked about the difficulty of maintaining an active raiding schedule all summer long — and what you can do about it. This week’s e-mail is from yet another victim of the summer raiding slump, but his guild has some other issues going on here, too.
Hey Scott,I’m an officer of a relatively new raiding guild (3-4 months old). We formed a few weeks before 3.1 and built the guild up from almost nothing besides the group of friends we had. The core group started out almost in Best in Slot gear but most of the people we recruited were undergeared so we ended up having to run Naxx for almost a month after 3.1 before we had the gear to really push Ulduar. That being said we have done phenomenally well in the time we have spent in Ulduar. We have downed all the watchers[. . . .] We consider ourselves way ahead of where we should be for such a young guild.However we seem to have numerous problems.
We can never field full raids for 3 days a week and often have to go with offspec healers and 22-23 people one night of the week. This leads to times when we have to call raids on raid nights because not enough people show up. Some other
Filed under: World of Warcraft | No Comments »
Posted on July 16th, 2009 by admin
Two Bosses Enter … but only One Boss Leaves, in WoW.com’s series of fantasy death matches. This season’s bosses come from the five-man instances of Wrath of the Lich King.
We’ve witnessed some pretty strange matchups during the first round of the Wrath five-man boss season of Two Bosses Enter, One Boss Leaves. We think the first bracket has successfully set the baseline: it’s not who wins or loses – it’s how they play the game. You folks out there in the stands have been great. We’ve evolved beyond lame comments droning on about “X is a boss?!? HAHAHA Y wins, my group beats X every time,” to recent battles, with truly captivating scenarios such as Bobobe’s ironic twist at the end of last week’s Anub’Arak versus Elder Nadox battle.
For the final match of this season’s first bracket of battles, we present to you another unusual (even in TBE’s terms) scenario featuring two bosses that are probably among players most dreaded bosses: Ley-Guardian Eregos of The Oculus versus Loken from the Halls of Lightning. Yeah, yeah, we know … the Drakes … Come on, you didn’t really think we were going to perch Loken atop one Super-Drake with all the abilities, did you? It’s a fantasy
Filed under: World of Warcraft | No Comments »
Posted on July 13th, 2009 by admin
All the World’s a Stage. It really is. All the World of Warcraft is a actually a stage — and all its orcs and humans merely players, each one with a role to play.
When people hear about roleplayers in WoW for the first time, some get the impression that we take our little game of “let’s pretend” way too seriously, that everything we do in the game has to be some sort of mind-blowing expression of our innermost true feelings. But the truth of the matter is that only a portion of what we do in the game involves stories and character — a lot of what we do and say to other players is not “in character” at all. In fact, our out-of-character (OOC) communication is essential in order to properly enjoy the in-character (IC) elements, and good roleplayers do a lot of cool things to help make both sides complement each other.
Much of what roleplayer does is out of character, and rightly so. Even just pushing buttons in order to activate abilities could be considered “OOC” — in a way, the only character you can ever totally immerse yourself in is… yourself. Any time you play a role that isn’t yourself, there’s always some part you which is there in the background, knowing that it’s all just a
Filed under: World of Warcraft | No Comments »
Posted on July 10th, 2009 by admin
Two Bosses Enter … but only One Boss Leaves, in WoW.com’s series of fantasy death matches. This season’s bosses come from the five-man instances of Wrath of the Lich King.
King Dred demonstrated how he earned his title in this week’s Two Bosses Enter, One Boss Leaves, shredding Jedoga Shadowseeker with nearly three-fourths of the reader vote. Delightfully, quite a few fans stepped up to the plate this week with their own versions of how this deathmatch would go down. Let’s look at a few of the more entertaining narratives.
Blasterion: The face-off: Jedoga calls for her minions, while Dred calls one raptor to combat. Dred Grievous Bites Jedoga, as well as puts up his other debuffs. Jedoga calls for her first minion to be sacrificed. Dred uses his fear; the minion runs around while the raptor minion and Dred pick him off. DELICIOUS.
Jedoga comes down, irritated how her minions were weak. She casts Thundershock and kills the raptor. The minions to their masters are different; to Jedoga, her minions are tools, but to Dred, his raptors are loyal subjects. Enraged, Dred savagely destroys Jedoga and the rest of her minions. DELICIOUS.
Saravok: King Dred and his raptors are charging through Zul’Drak, when violent quakes split the earth. Dred
Filed under: World of Warcraft | No Comments »
Posted on July 7th, 2009 by admin
Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers’ Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership.
Last week, our very own Michael Sacco broke the news that raid lockouts will be extendable after Patch 3.2. Reading through forum comments about this exciting new feature, I found the varied reactions quite amusing.
Hardcore raiders seem to think that Blizzard is catering to casuals with this change. They think you should have to earn your kills by reclearing bosses if you can’t make it all the way through a raid zone in one week. On the other hand, casual players seem to think that Blizzard is catering to the hardcore, since it’s so much easier now to work on hard modes and other achievements without the threat of a looming reset. Casuals need as much loot as possible, they say, so why would they ever want to extend a lockout?
Despite the hardcore/casual debate reaching a new all-time low, the good news is that, in a sense, they’re both right. Blizzard is catering to all of us. Regardless of playstyle or progression, all guilds will benefit from having this option.
However, there are decisions and tradeoffs to be made. Let’s examine this new feature in more detail.
Nothing is certain yet, but the most logical way this extension will
Filed under: World of Warcraft | No Comments »
Posted on July 2nd, 2009 by admin
Blizzard just released their Warlock Q&A with Ghostcrawler and pals. This follows in the series of many others, which you can find in WoW.com’s Guide to Patch 3.2.
Some of the highlights of this Q&A session include:
Blizzard is considering giving different models to Warlock pets.
Blizzard wants to make the Warlock experience more different from that of a Mage.
Affliction and Destruction are doing good damage, Demonology is lagging behind.
Warlocks are underrepresented in PvP currently, this needs to be fixed.
Basic idea for the new Soul Shard system: Soul Shards will provide a combat (damage) boost, but should not be something Locks need to farm. This change will be beyond Patch 3.2., with more information ideally at BlizzCon 2009. A new Soul Shard system sure would be a Cataclysmic event, right?
Soulshatter cooldown is going to be lowered to 3 minutes.
Read the full Q&A after the break.
Warlock Q&A with Ghostcrawler and the World of Warcraft Community Team
Community Team: We’d like start this Q&A off by asking a question that players of all classes often ask in regard to the very purpose of their class. In this case, we’re looking specifically at the warlock.
Q. Where do warlocks fit into the larger scope of things currently and
Filed under: World of Warcraft | No Comments »