Ask a Beta Tester: Factions and reputation
by Alex Ziebart 
Oct 22nd 2008 at 5:00PM
Welcome back to Ask a Beta Tester, wherein I sigh at names like fungus and then answer their question anyway. Questions such as:
Will we be able to do the BC heroics for the achievements after Wrath comes out?
Yep! Just like you can still earn achievements for the Classic dungeons in The Burning Crusade, you'll be able to do the BC dungeon achievements in Wrath.
Beath asked...
Does Culling of Stratholme grant Keepers of Time reputation? If not, is there a new faction associated with this instance?
Last time I ran this dungeon, it wasn't awarding any reputation at all. That may have changed since then, but a peek at Wowhead and Wowwiki doesn't show any associated reputations.
Carney00 asked...
Here's a question for ya; Are the pvp items for the different factions (Horde, Alliance) going to look different again or are we all going to be wearing the same duds? The current "Various pieces of Arena gear for all..." system kinda blows the whole Armies at war feel for me.
The two factions do indeed still share Arena sets. Sorry to disappoint!
Kiukiu asked...
How soon into Northrend can we start getting rep for the endgame factions such as the Knights of the Ebon Blade or the Argent Crusade? Do they have fairly early quest areas or do we have to wait for higher up dungeons to get any rep for them?
It largely depends on the faction. They're spread out a bit, like the Burning Crusade factions. The two you mentioned are primarily later in the leveling cycle, though. You start seeing them in force in the upper 70s. You'll see a few Argent Crusaders before that, but not a ton.
Scarcheek asked...
Will Outland and Shattrath become obsolete for level 70+ once the expansion is released? Or will there be something required in Shattrath forcing us to return there, similar to how the Auction Houses are only in pre-BC content.
Aside from a few quests that take you back to Shattrath, I haven't seen any major reasons to return to Outland. I guess you might be going back there to finish up achievements if you haven't done so yet, and I have the Blessed Medallion of Karabor from killing Illidan so I use it from time to time to get at Shattrath's portals if my Dalaran hearth is down. I can't go straight to Dalaran from Shattrath, but I can get to the Stormwind Harbor at least. That's really it for Outland, though.
Andrew asked...
Are endgame raids/instances in Wrath really that easy? I've been hearing from numerous beta testers and other bloggers that everything is just so darn easy. Any testers have any input on this? If this is the direction Blizzard is going with WoW, I'm not seeing any reason to stick around.
So far things are pretty easy, but remember that only the first 'tier' of raiding is in the game, more or less. What we have now is essentially Wrath's equivalents of Gruul, Magtheridon, and Karazhan. Only difference being they're appropriately tuned as entry-level raids unlike early iterations of Magtheridon.
As we get deeper into the expansion, things will surely get harder. We don't have Ulduar yet, and there will be
another raid between Ulduar and Icecrown, if not more than one. Things will get harder, though perhaps not Sunwell Plateau harder. That was a bit much.
And fungus, buddy? I was just kidding, I promise! Will you be my valentine?
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Expansions, Factions, Wrath of the Lich King, Achievements
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Nathral Oct 22nd 2008 5:10PM
Are raid bosses moving away from the randomness of wiping like people went thru with the Prince fight. It got to a point where your gear/planning/skill didn't mean a thing if you got a couple bad infernal drops you were wiping. How are the raid boss fights looking, coordination and skill based, or random luck?
Typhun Oct 22nd 2008 5:21PM
i hope not. part of the challenge of these encounters was working through the unexpected. if it becomes predictable, then there is no reason to do any of it.
Nathral Oct 22nd 2008 5:23PM
I don't want to eliminate the bosses tricks, but making it completely random like the prince fight, or in ZA if your main tank is the one who get's MC'ed there's no recovering from it no matter what a players skill or gear is.
Heilig Oct 22nd 2008 5:59PM
I agree completely. Nothing beats riding up to kara on your bears for a quick badge run and wiping on Prince because the damn infernals keep falling right on top of you.
That sort of complete randomness needs to go away. it would have been very easy to write a script that told the infernals to land at least X yards away from the last one instead of creating an entire field of fire on one side (where you happen to be tanking) and leaving the other side wide open.
matt Oct 22nd 2008 7:12PM
smart raids = no wipes
where prince's infernals land had nothing to do with that. You just needed to have someone who is the 40 yard "do not stand closer than:" person, and rotate around whenever needed.
Was it that difficult for people to learn this?
Typhun Oct 23rd 2008 9:36AM
exactly, paying attention is completely necessary. i learned how much more important it was to be completely aware of my surroundings when i maintanked the twin emperors. those exploding bugs were the end of a lot of tanks. it is called being proactive. you do not allow for yourself to get boxed in by infernals. sure, there were days tanking prince where i was pulling my hair out because it seemed like every time i moved, he had more infernals for me, but those kills were a bit more satisfying because he was dead and we weren't. i dunno, i think the game needs a bit of the random element. some of the RNGs had to go, mace stun was OP as shit. others needed to stay, to retain the randomness that we had to overcome like a crushing blow.
email Oct 23rd 2008 4:03PM
But the big problem with prince was an infernal might drop on top of you just as his debuff hits you. So you and half your melee or casters has 1 hit point and suddenly an infernal is at your feet. You can't recover. There is no amount of skill that prevents that wipe.
That randomness needs to be removed.
Brady Oct 22nd 2008 5:11PM
I have a question for you...Has there been any information in the Beta about how level 80 PvP gear will be purchased? Will they still require WSG/AB/AV marks of honor to buy? Or should I just spend the ones I have now?
VSUReaper Oct 22nd 2008 5:22PM
Entry lvl gear with resil will be attained from a crafter (tailor, leatherworker, blacksmith). You can start to equip this gear around lvl 76-78.
The next tier up will be bought with honor.
The next tier up will be the epics that are bought with a combination of honor and badge tokens and arena points.
The final tier will be gear bought strictly arena with an insane rating requirement (like 2k+)
Hobbes Oct 22nd 2008 5:15PM
Hey, maybe he's just a fun guy. Or he didn't want his name to take up too mush room.
Nathral Oct 22nd 2008 5:20PM
Someone must pun-ish you for that one!
roa Oct 23rd 2008 2:35AM
Question:
What's with the limited talent points upon creating a new DK? How can you get hold of all talent points up to level 55?
Strahl Oct 23rd 2008 9:11AM
From what I've read (on this site), the quests that you do in Ebon Hold award talent points as part of the quest rewards. By the time you leave Ebon Hold, you'll have your talent points as if you leveled from 1-55 normally.
Neodarkmatter Oct 22nd 2008 5:23PM
One of the developers also described a boss as impossible right now unless you kill at least 1 of the 3 Netherwing Dragons that surround him. Dungeons give you the ability to choose your difficulty.
szander Oct 23rd 2008 2:58AM
Will you get xp for dailies with the expansion?
Chamual Oct 22nd 2008 5:27PM
Are you sure Sunwell was a bit to hard? For the guilds that progressed that far it was the perfect challenge, all the bosses are doable with the right tactics (kalegcos was more tactics than gear, and brutallus while a gearcheck, was a test of your guilds ability to put together the perfect raid group).
I will be disappointed if there isn't something meaty to put your teeth into in WotLK.
Also, it should be remembered that while kara\gruul\maggy\za are cakewalks now that everyone is geared well past them and knows the encounters (and post several nerfs), they were challenging and interesting when people first started hitting them.
Raids shouldn't be glorified heroics.
Aldheim Oct 23rd 2008 1:04PM
Yeah, for the guilds who could make it that far, SWP is pretty much perfect... But those guilds are few and far between. On my server we have exactly one guild in SWP, and I'm not sure they've made it past the Eredar Twins... We will probably not get a Kil'Jaeden kill before Wrath. Maybe that means we're a scrub server that means we need to L2P or something, but the fact remains that SWP is functionally wasted space for us.
As far as my medium population server goes, SWP is a set of content designed for the 25 people that happen to be able to able to go in there. Is it cool? Of course- it contains the finale to the Burning Crusade and some great lore along with great fights. (I find it ironic that my server, which follows the RP ruleset, will not get to see the awesome lore ending of SWP.) I would much rather have a progression of "easier" raids that more people can experience than a hard cap on raids so that only the hardcore can succeed.
Warcloud Oct 22nd 2008 5:51PM
You're right that Kara/Gruul/Mag were quite challenging when released. Blizzard's take is that Kara/Gruul/Mag were too hard to be the introductory raids. They're intentionally tuning the first tier of raids to be easier.
Hopefully subsequent tiers will be sufficiently challenging.
Eternauta Oct 22nd 2008 6:00PM
..."was a test of your guilds ability to put together the perfect raid group"...
Perfect Raid Group = FAIL
They said they don't want to force players to bring specific classes for specific encounters, just the basic roles (tank-heal-dps).
In Blizzards words: "Bring the player, not the class".
chamual Oct 25th 2008 10:20AM
@Aldheim
That's all well and good, and you can make all raids easier to make them more accessable (which they are already doing by making them all doable in 10man mode), but wouldn't you like the last one to offer some real challenge?
That's all SWP is, a challenge, you have to have a raid with 25 players who all know what to do and can do it without messing up to much. There isn't a single thing in SWP that is in itself hard, its just that it requires co-ordination across the whole raid with nobody messing up.
If the final raid of TBC, or even WotLK, just let you bludgeon your way through the encounters with people dying left right and centre I would say whats the point.