Posts with tag blackmorass

Pretty incredible. Xetrov on Farstriders took a few friends (and a pretty good Pally tank-- never thought I'd say those words) into Black Morass, and trashed all the trash. At once. With AoE. Good lord, look at all those numbers. He says he cracked 20,000 DPS, which is pretty jaw dropping.

And this is also a really good example of how Blizzard has more or less crushed AoE when you're taking on more than ten mobs-- Xetrov has almost 800 spell damage, and yet his crits are hitting at around 150-200, because with so many targets, his spell damage is pretty much negated. He's still pulling down tons of DPS (and when are you really taking on more than 10 mobs, except in wacky situations like this?). But showing numbers like 150 and 160 coming off of a Mage with 800 spell damage show pretty clearly how weak AoE can get with this many targets.

It's a fact that the majority of what we do in World of Warcraft is kill things. Nearly all the supplementary activities we engage in, from shopping to crafting, are all basically to help us improve the effectiveness of our violent capabilities. Many players have noted that if WoW were at all real, then nearly every one of our characters would be considered a genocidal maniac for all the people and creatures we have killed, and yet we view ourselves as heroes.

The idea is, of course, that most of the lives we take are really evil anyway, so we're actually doing the real good guys a favor. We kill tons of demons, ghosts, zombies, dragonkin, giants, and rabid beasts -- even most of the humanoids we kill are bandits or wicked cultists of one sort or another. This way we do lots of killing, but still feel as though we are heroes.

There are some situations in the game, however, that turn things around for us, in which our character is not the hero. While there are some higher-level instances such as the Black Morass, or the new Caverns of Time: Stratholme, in which one could argue either way whether what we're doing is good or evil, most of situations in which you are clearly the bad guy, as far as I am aware, have to do with the undead, and to a lesser extent the blood elves as well. Of course, you can argue that in general, undead are just misunderstood, and the blood elves are just tragically misled, but as in the case of quests in Hillsbrad that ask you to go slaughter human farmers, or help develop a new plague, there's really no denying that your character is doing something "morally wrong."

Savur from Gurubashi asks, like an Azerothian Jerry Seinfeld: what's the deal with Mount Hyjal? Escape from Durnholde and the Black Morass, the first two Caverns of Time instances, have to do with players attempting to stop the Infinite Dragonflight from completely messing up the Warcraft continuity. In both of those instances, you work both for the events of history, and against the Infinite Dragonflight, in order to make sure that what really happened in Azeroth actually happens.

But in Mount Hyjal, the Infinite Dragonflight is nowhere to be seen. There's no reason for the players to be there, as even without them, Archimonde was defeated by all the exploding wisps. Now, the Bronze dragonflight does apparently claim that they suspect the Infinites are there, but from all player reports (disclaimer: I haven't played the instance myself), the Inifinite Dragonflight is MIA, so there's no reason for the players to stick around and fight.

Drysc wimps out, and basically says that players are there because it's cool to see past events of Warcraft history (and that Archimonde apparently drops the Professor Plums). But that's weak-- if the Bronze Dragonflight really cared about protecting the continuum, they wouldn't just let a few punk heroes go sightseeing throughout time. Sure, there doesn't need to be a "lorelol" reason to fight the people (and Orcs, and Scourge, and the demons) that we fight, but there should be.

So we'll wait patiently and see what happens in the next CoT instance. Are you content with just seeing the sights of Old Azeroth, or would you prefer there be a reason that you're going there in the first place?

Congrats to my favorite WoW online comic, Dark Legacy-- they just recently posted their 100th comic! If you haven't been reading (and shame on you), the characters all just quaffed from the Fountain of Youth with some unexpected consequences. And yes, the punchline quirk has actually been fixed in the game, but we'll give them a break on this one-- it's their 100th comic.

Congrats again, DL-- here's to 100 more!

Ok, I think it's been long enough-- we've all sat here talking about how great all the new content is and how thrilled we all are to have new 5mans to run and new items to collect for a few months now, so it's time to move away from the good and start getting into the bad.

Awakener on Demon Soul says Shattered Halls is definitely the worst instance of the expansion. I have to completely disagree-- I think Shattered Halls is fun and simple once you've got it down, and the Gauntlet of Flame is one of the best 5man experiences in the game. Then again, not all long experiences are fun-- my pick for worst instance is The Black Morass in the Caverns of Time. Escape from Durnholde was brilliant fun, but BM is just (literally) a swamp-- there's no variety in the spawns, and no story to the event. Either you kill the nondescript bad guys or you don't, and I think it's a waste to be "fighting alongside" Medivh when really he's just standing there yelling at you.

But that's just me. What's the worst instance you've seen in the expansion?