Posts with tag end-game

There's an excellent interview with Tom Chilton, the World of Warcraft lead game designer, up on GameInformer. Lots of stuff we've heard before, but there are some interesting talking points. For example:

• They are looking into extending the dungeon finder to 10-man content.
• Chilton hinted that we may see a new boss in the Ruby Sanctum before Cataclysm launches
• They have a "general philosophical approach of getting the hybrids to where they're close to the DPS classes when it comes to DPS roles. Otherwise, those specs just turn into joke specs."
• They feel warlocks could use a boost to their DPS.
• Tol Barad, the Cataclysm equivalent to Wintergrasp, will be more of a Isle of Quel'Danas style daily quest hub instead of a farming zone.
• Before settling on death knights for Wrath of the Lich King's hero class, they specifically debated necromancers and rune-masters.
• They feel that with all the accessibility work they did on end game PvE in Wrath, end game PvP has become harder to get into by comparison.

It's a three page interview, so click through to read the whole thing! What really struck me reading this was that comment about hybrid DPS compared to pure. This "hybrid tax" concept has been harped on by posters on the official forums for a long time now, and this is a fairly straightforward way of putting it.

Want to get Gold Capped? This column will show you how, and is written by Basil "Euripides" Berntsen, also of outdps.com, the hunting party podcast, and the call to auction podcast.

Hi folks! Welcome to Gold Capped. There are many games to play in World of Warcraft: PvE, PvP, achievements, and today I'm going to introduce you to the one that people overlook-- gold making. Not just making enough to cover your expenses, but making unimaginably large quantities of gold. Making it easily, and enjoying the process.

Before I jump in, I want to introduce myself and learn a little about you guys. I have a gut feeling that the majority of players are living "paycheck to paycheck" and treat the auction house as an expensive vending machine where they can spend their hard earned dailies money. Am I right? Please select one of the options on my embedded poll!

Some of the best rewards in WoW can only be achieved if you have the appropriate level of reputation with a specific faction. Whether you're a brand new WoW player or a freshly-minted level 70 dipping your first toe into the endgame, you need to educate yourself about reputation (or "rep" as it's usually called). Fortunately, here at WoW Insider, we have a lot of tools that can help you find your way through the rep maze to the piece of loot you desire.

For new players

WoW Rookie: Introduction to Reputation
New players should start with this article to learn what all the terminology means and how rep affects your gameplay.

WoW Rookie: Azeroth Reputations
This article is the next step in understanding rep and how it works for the world of Azeroth. Since you should start worrying about rep long before you hit level 40, this article shows you how to start preparing for getting your first mount -- especially if the one you hunger for is not your toon's racial mount.

Breakfast Topic: Reputation grinding
Here you can see what your fellow players have to say about what it's like to grind rep after level 60.

For new level 70s

Ask WoW Insider: Do you optimize your rep grinds?
Advice from us and other readers on how to streamline your rep grinds in Outland.

Faction frustrations eased in Wrath
A preview of how rep may change in the Wrath of the Lich King expansion.

Rep calculators

Here are a couple of rep calculators we've reviewed.

• Liquidor's rep calculator
• WoW Reputation Calculator

For extra credit

WoW Rookie: Pre-Burning Crusade engame reputations
This is a good primer on how rep worked prior to the release of The Burning Crusade expansion. Rep grinding in Azeroth after level 60 is not overly relevant now, but you may still be curious as to how it worked.

Today on the WoW Insider Show Mike Schramm, Turpster, Daniel Whitcomb, and BigBearButt were talking about the number of times the game has been beaten. This got me thinking, what exactly is that number? Off the top of his head Mike said 5 or 6 times, and I think that sounds about right. Let's take a closer look though at how many times the game has been beaten, and who's claimed the top spot.

Molten Core – The first end game instance. For a while this was truly the end game. The first guild that beat Ragnaros was Ascent on the Medivh server.

Blackwing Lair – Added in patch 1.6, it existed for a short time as the pinnacle of end game raiding. Drama of the Shattered Hand server was the first guild to kill Nefarian, the end boss of BWL.

Temple of Ahn'Qiraj – Added in patch 1.9, and was opened up after the server completed the opening of the gates of Ahn'Qiraj. C'Thun is the end boss of AQ 40, and was first killed by Nihilum.

I was having a discussion with my brother yesterday, and he was telling me that he really doesn't pay attention much to the raid game anymore. Back in Everquest, he used to be a pretty hardcore raider, part of a giant guild that could field raids of 100 or more people, ready to track down and kill bosses the minute they spawned (since they were never instanced, you only got kill each boss around once per a week on each server). Because so many people were needed, and you might not even get to kill some bosses some weeks because other groups would beat you, you might go months without loot.

Because of this, he says, he doesn't really care any more about server firsts or world firsts. The 25 man raids don't really interest him, and he doesn't feel like 25-man raiders are worthy of respect. They get loot at a much faster rate than he ever did, and even if they don't get the drop they want, they still get badges. There's probably other people like him. There's also other people who may ignore 25-mans because it really doesn't affect them. They run their 5 mans, maybe an occasional Karazhan, and they really don't care what people do beyond that.

My internet browsings brought me upon this YTMND page, and I thought it was funny enough to share with you all.

Endgame raiding, for those of you who don't know, can get a little predictable at times. Each class has their pre-defined roles, and each has their own unique style to them. Each raider usually carries with him or her (possibly ill) conceived notions of what players of each class are like.

For instance in my guild we usually poke fun at our Mages as being "emo mages," since they like to die a lot. Another one has lately been that I AFK tank, since when I get above 50k threat on the top DPS, there's very little chance they'll catch up to me (and on that note, they joke is on them, because as the main tank I often times do go AFK during phase two of Illidan.)

Take a look at this moderately funny YTMND take on WoW Endgame raiding. And have your volume up a little, because as my girlfriend explained, "That's Little Spanish Flea! You know, Homer sings that all the time."

There have been lots of little bits of news and information coming out about Wrath of the Lich King lately. With the World Wide Invitational 2008 just around the corner where WotLK will be playable again for us all, and the news that Wrath is in alpha, we can expect to see more and more come out about the game.

With this expectation of the beta and eventual release building, a lot of people are getting excited about different things. So I want to know, what are you most excited about?

For me, I'm most excited about seeing the new end game raid content. I'm with a very dedicated group of raiders right now who do about 20 hours a week of raiding, and it's a lot of fun. Hopefully we'll all still be around in WotLK and get to push into the new content quickly and with a lot of zeal.

Then there is the Death Knight. Who isn't thrilled at the chance to play a new class? We haven't ever seen a new class in WoW, and it's bound to throw a wrench in the way a lot of folks play the game. Seeing the Death Knight get integrated into raiding will be a very interesting thing to watch.

So, you've finally gotten to level 60.  Now what?  Well, there are some resources to guide you along, but whatever your direction, be prepared for a grind.  Rewards for gaining reputation with the game's factions can be high, but the process for getting them tends to involve the tedium of killing the same monsters or doing the same repeatable quest for days or weeks on end.  Collecting a new piece of powerful gear is always a thrill, but you may find yourself running through Upper Blackrock Spire a hundred times without winning a roll on the item you seek.  Even if you're in an end-game raiding guild, the game can be a grind - running through Molten Core again and again for the low chance of a specific item drop.  And I can certainly say that after defeating Ragnaros a few dozen times it becomes less of an epic struggle and more of an issue of "Drop my Choker of the Fire Lord already!"  Have you reached the point where the game is nothing but a grind yet, or do you still feel the magic?