Posts with tag cataclysm

You're going to want to read this post from the forums discussing the rogue class and the design process for classes in general. It is, in my opinion, one of the more interesting posts Ghostcrawler has made on the forums. There's a lot to discuss, so let's break down some bullet points before reproducing the whole thing.

• "Rogues are in a good place in Cataclysm in both PvE and PvP. We don't see a lot of huge, glaring problems that need to be fixed."
• The dev team understands that sometimes people want change simply to freshen up their playstyle, but the danger there is alienating players. Both the Cataclysm redesign of paladins and the Mists redesign of warlocks are offered as changes the dev team felt were necessary but that absolutely alienated some players.
• Rogues haven't seen a lot of change in part because the rogue has it pretty good and is potentially the best-designed class with the best resource system, strong class abilities and an easy-to-understand role in PvE and PvP.
• Even fixing broken mechanics risks turning off players because they have to relearn the class.

We'll take a look at the whole post and then discuss it.

Remember this guy?

As we prepare for Mists of Pandaria, it's beneficial to look back and capture the good memories of raids past. After some hard thinking, I've compiled a list of the five Cataclysm raid encounters that were, in my opinion, the best and most memorable of the expansion. While it's difficult to get the same experience today, due to gear scaling and difficulty nerfs, these encounters represent examples of things that Blizzard got right and we'd like to see more of.

5. Halfus Wyrmbreaker, Bastion of Twilight

OK, so the trash clear wasn't the most entertaining experience ever, but this opening boss in Bastion of Twilight hit all the right notes. His companions rotated on a weekly basis, forcing your raid to adapt just a little bit every time, but not so much to significantly alter the encounter. The intense healing requirement at the beginning of the fight provided a good challenge for healers, the add swaps kept the tanks busy, and the enrage timer was well-tuned for DPS.

Most importantly, though, all of that stuff happened at an unusual time in the fight -- the beginning. Most typical raid encounters increase in difficulty late in the fight, leading to a tedious learning process where bored raiders sleepwalk through the learned early minutes before reaching a point where they can challenge themselves and learn. Not this encounter; the majority of the time, you were heading for a win or a wipe within the first minute.

Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Elizabeth Wachowski will be your host today.

Since we'll be discussing female villains, I figured that Betty Draper, the most hated woman on basic cable other than Lori from The Walking Dead, would be an appropriate illustration. I used to think that Betty was the absolute worst, but a few conversations with coworkers made me realize that she's really no worse of a human being than Don. So she's cold and manipulative? Well, she's an isolated housewife married to a philandering, lying workaholic. Do we tend to forgive Don more than Betty because he's the hero of Mad Men? Or does Don Draper's handsomeness erase all sins for many fans? Yes, Mom, I'm talking to you.

sergel92 asked:

What major female baddies are there in WoW? There's Azshara, obviously, and Onyxia too, I guess. But who else could be major enough to get her own expansion, or at least her own patch?

We saw a whole lot of Thrall, and Deathwing set us and almost everything else on fire. We got to meet legends and become The Dark Lady's favorite hero. We fled from both Kezan and Gilneas. Cataclysm was a busy expansion, but did the stories disappoint you in anyway?

Rades recently posted about his lore disappointments. He particularly goes on about Deathwing's lack of character development. I can see his point; Deathwing turned out to be somewhat of a cardboard character. He used to be a bit more subtle and sneaky -- subtlety is no longer his strong point. That having been said, dragons are cool.

My lore disappointment has to do with the goblins. I don't get why Thrall kept that betrayer of goblinkind, Gallywix, as the trade prince when he welcomed goblins to the Horde. He's evil, conniving ... OK, that could describe most of his race. But he's a traitor and an incompetent businessgoblin, no matter what he claims. Sassy Hardwrench was the obvious choice for the job, since [insert goblin player name here] was obviously too busy being a hero to take it. Also, what's with the completely unused (except for parties and roleplay) Pleasure Palace? Hmmph.

Were you bothered by any Cataclysm lore you felt was missing or otherwise disappointing? Or do you just play the game and ignore the lore?

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I know what you're thinking: What's the Raid Finder got to do with Warcraft lore, of all things? I hadn't really given it much thought, either. Generally speaking, Warcraft lore is a wholly separate animal from game mechanics. After all, the endless carrying of flags in Warsong Gulch doesn't exactly tell a compelling story, and returning to the same dungeon repeatedly to kill the same bosses over and over doesn't really make sense from a lore perspective, either.

When the Raid Finder was introduced, there were plenty of people curious about how it would turn out and far more who were excited about the possibilities of the feature. Along with cross-realm raiding, the Raid Finder has entirely changed the face of raiding as we know it. Much like the downsize from 40-man to 25-man with the release of The Burning Crusade expansion, the Raid Finder revolutionized raiding and changed it into something that far more easily accessible for players who don't necessarily have the time to dedicate to regular raiding.

This isn't to say that the Raid Finder is a magical solution to everything, however.

The World of Warcraft is an expansive universe. You're playing the game, you're fighting the bosses, you know the how -- but do you know the why? Each week, Matthew Rossi and Anne Stickney make sure you Know Your Lore by covering the history of the story behind World of Warcraft.

It has never been harder to be Alliance. Throughout the years of war brought about by the orcish invasion of Azeroth, the Alliance has seen its ups and downs. During that first assault, Stormwind was destroyed, its king assassinated. However, the direct result of this was an Alliance of kingdoms that paved the way for the Alliance as we know it today -- a smart, level-headed group of races focused on survival. The survival of each race individually, and the survival of the world as we know it. A noble cause, and the Alliance is well-known for its nobility.

Yet despite bouncing back from that original, horrific assault, the Alliance seems to be in a downward spiral in the days of Cataclysm, one which is spinning horrifically out of control. And despite the best efforts of Alliance leaders, trying to staunch the flow of death and despair is becoming increasingly more difficult. This has much to do with the effects of the Shattering, and even more to do with those enemies of old; the orcs and their united allies in the Horde. Even though the Alliance has come back before, the question of whether or not they can do it again is a heavy one that weighs on the minds of all. It has never been so hard to be Alliance, it has never been this dark.

Or so popular opinion states.

You know how raid nights go. Sometimes you have the bare minimum of people showing up, and you're desperately trying to fill spots. And on some occasions, everyone inexplicably shows up at the same time. When you go from barely scraping by with eight or 22 to suddenly dealing with a glut of 15 to 25, obviously somebody's not making it into the mix. So how do you decide who?

Some guilds simply go by attendance numbers; if you've shown up consistently, you're in. If you just happen to be making an appearance for farm night, you're out. Some guilds pick based solely on performance in the raid itself; if you're consistently pulling high DPS and not standing in fire, you're in. If you can't find your way out of a poison cloud with a map and GPS system showing you the way, you're out.

But what do you do when you're the one being sat?

I've been known to wax poetic about the good old days of vanilla World of Warcraft from time to time. I have lots of crazy good memories about the early days of the game -- exploring the world, playing through quests that are now long gone, raiding old content when it was current, that sort of thing. And I've followed the story of Warcraft along the way, delighting the various ways its changed and shifted over the years. It's no secret that I loved the early days of WoW -- heck, I've been playing this game for seven years now. Something's kept me sticking around, right?

Every now and again, I'll have a conversation with a friend that starts with said friend asking, "Hey, Anne! You like vanilla WoW. If they ever released a server that was just vanilla WoW with nothing else on it, would you play it?" And then there's a moment where I think about that. I think about the first day I was presented with the character selection screen, going over my choices with wide-eyed delight. I think about the night elf druid I made, and the months spent exploring this shiny new world. I think of my Forsaken priest and the hours of fun I had raiding with 39 other people.

And then I say to my friend, "No. Oh, no no no. Heck no."

Some time last month, I was chatting with a friend about various story bits in WoW when we wandered onto the subject of the blood elves and what they're up to in the story. I pointed out the short story In the Shadow of the Sun for more recent sin'dorei lore, adding that of course the story took place prior to Wrath in the time line, so it really wasn't the most up-to-date bit of lore, although it was a wonderful read. My friend asked if I thought we'd see anything with the blood elves in Mists, and I replied that I didn't think so, but then we didn't really know that much about storylines in Pandaria yet.

"Well, yeah," they replied. "But what about Rommath? I mean, he's part of the Twilight Cult and all." I paused for a moment, confused, and then realized what they were referring to. "That was a set of datamined voice files that never made it to game," I clarified. "Well yeah, but he's evil," they insisted. "No, he's not -- as far as the game and the lore is concerned, that conversation never happened, and Rommath is still the same old Rommath. A little cranky and snooty, but definitely not evil. Until proven otherwise." They pondered this, and the conversation moved on from there.

I've had this conversation again and again -- in game, on Twitter. And this, my friends, is just one example of the many dangers of datamining.

I'm 5 feet 3 inches tall. When I wear heels, I call them my tall shoes because they make me tall. Not taller, because that would indicate that there were some degree of tallness to begin with. Trying on platform shoes is an exercise in seeing the world through the eyes of someone tall enough to see all the things without standing on their tiptoes. My kitchen is organized by "things I need", "things I don't use often," and "things I put on the top shelf because I'll never use them anyway." There is an upper third of my closet that is nothing but stuff I should save but will never pull out and look at in at least five years.

That said, it's not bad being short, either. I never hit my head on door frames or overhead lights. Low ceilings don't particularly bother me, aside from design aesthetic. I can fit into literally any car on the market; there's never a problem having to squish my legs under a steering wheel. Plane seats have plenty of room for my legs, which is great on long flights. I have smaller hands, so my dad constantly asks me to pull things out of tight spaces, thread needles, or mess around with teeny-tiny wires and screws.

That said, it's continually kind of weird to look at all the short races in video games and see characters that aren't taken particularly seriously.