Warhammer Online: Public Quests

Many people are touting Public Quests as one of Warhammer Online's killer features. However, so far, I'm not very impressed with Public Quests.

A Public Quest is an area of the game in the open world which goes through a multi-stage fight. Everyone in the area can participate and work together to finish the battle. The first stages usually go through killing increasingly more difficult minions and the last stage is a boss. At the end, loot is distributed by a Random roll + Modifiers. You get a modifier based on how much you contributed to the fight.

The problem with Public Quests is that you need a minimum number of people. You also need a tank and healer. If you play at odd times, or stumble upon a PQ when no one is around, it's pretty much pointless. As well, the Empire and Dark Elves don't have a tank class, which makes PQs in their territory frustrating. Seriously, Witch Elves don't wear enough armour to tank a teddy bear. Perhaps this aspect will get better in later chapters.

Then, if you have too many people, the PQ devolves into a zerg, with everyone running around and spamming spells. There's no strategy or elegance. I don't really find that fun.

I think PQs will work nicely if you start with a good group. But starting with a proper group negates the entire "public" aspect of it, and it becomes just another dungeon fight.

Public Quests remind me of Alterac Valley (before the reinforcement timer) only without any PvP.* It's like a giant zerg. When you hit Drek'thar or Vannadar you hope to God that you have a half-way capable tank and some healers, and dps that doesn't react to getting aggro by running out of the room like a chicken with its head cut off. At least AV ensures that you have 20-40 people. Imagine showing up in AV with only 5 people, no tanks, and no healers. That's pretty much been my PQ experience.

*Let me preempt the wags: "So, just like normal AV, then?"

Finally, I hate the loot system. It's very annoying if you have a high contribution and roll low. If you have a low contribution and you roll high, it feels like you don't deserve the loot. If there are a lot of people in the PQ, only the first 10 or so will get a reward. This is a terrible design decision. Everyone should at least get the smallest loot bag. It's not your fault that a lot of other people decided to show up today. At least the loot bags offer you a nice choice of loot. You usually get to choose between an item for your class, some crafting components, or some gold.

It's a bit odd that I don't like the loot system, given that I don't mind rolling for loot in a normal dungeon. What really makes the difference for me is that PQs explicitly call out your contribution and give you modifiers to your roll. In a normal dungeon, there's a polite fiction that everyone in the group contributed equally, and so gets to roll on equal terms. It really sucks to be first or second on the contribution list, and yet end up with a white loot bag. Random + Modifier is more annoying than Random alone. Honestly, I'd probably prefer if the PQs didn't count your contribution, and just rolled equally for everyone in the group. Or even if everyone got the same loot bag, but the quality of the loot inside was randomly determined.

So those are my thoughts on Public Quests. It's an interesting idea, but being utterly dependent on other people showing up hurts. Also, Random + Modifier is a terrible loot system.

Blizzard's Vision of the Paladin

At long last, Blizzard has set out what they expect the paladin to be. Ghostcrawler posted on the Beta forums:

I actually think you know what direction the class is moving towards, because you know your class. But I'll try and pontificate here for a moment if that's helpful.

Protection -- We want more tanks in the game. Main tanks. We think it's fun to have a diversity of players and see how different spells, abilities and class mechanics get used to solve problems. A Protadin with the right skill and gear should be able to tank any fight in the game. Previously, we tried to push Prot into the offtank and AE tank roles. While your abilities are still really well suited for AE in particular, overall our philosophy has changed and we want you to be able to do anything the other tanks do. Note that this means other tanks will get better at AE tanking though. Prot represents a special challenge when not tanking because you can both heal and do dps and some players want to do either. Or both. One final comment, that you have already seen, is we want you to gear like a warrior: collect Strengh and Stam and use tanking weapons instead of caster weapons.

Retribution -- You're a melee dps class, and one of only a handful of classes that can fill the "mana battery" role. With the changes to the way raid buffs work, we are blurring the lines a lot more between "pure" dps classes and hybrids that have the potential to respec if their dps doesn't work out. But we don't penalize classes for having awesome buffs the way we used to. Also remember that one of Ret's big limitations before was just getting in the group with the good melee buffs. That problem is solved. If you're good and know your stuff cold, you should be able to be up there with the rogues and hunters. Maybe not every fight, but not 500 dps below them either.

Holy -- You're still the best high-throughput, single target healer in the game. I suspect you're still going to get called on to heal the tank a lot. Holy was in a really good place in BC, so much so that other healers (probably priests more than anyone else) began to get overshadowed. To shift things back a little, as well to just challenge the player base, we introduced a lot more fights with AE damage and movement. Unfortunately, those mechanics hit Holy. Hard. At the same time, CoH and CH seemed to be able to handle any encounter. Beacon of Light isn't a panacea to solve all of those problems, but it is designed to help. It still needs a little work, but I think the basic spell design is sound.

One thing that has been mentioned is that the three paladin trees feel pretty separated from each other. We've gotten better in some other classes of making it a valid choice to go deeper into a second tree, and not just to get a single, incredible talent, but because there is some legitimate synergy there. It's going to be harder to get that feeling for the paladin than it is for the mage, but it is something we want to mess with some more after Lich King.

Obviously beyond the individual trees, we completely redid the whole seal and judgment system. We think it works pretty well, but we're just going to have to play with it some more to find the rough spots.

Well, that's the plan. Now we'll see how well Blizzard executes it.

Warhammer Online: First Impressions

First off, to placate the WO fanbois, WO is a very good game. My following comments will seem very nit-picky. But to me, the small stuff is very important, and mistakes are often more interesting than successes.

WO looks very good at first glance. The servers were stable and running. I didn't encounter any major bugs, only one graphical anomaly when a PvP scenario (battleground) popped right after a public quest finished. But that cleared itself up when I died.

I really wish Mythic had feature-locked, and just spent two weeks cleaning up the little things. There's lots of little things that are annoying just because they're so small and yet so obvious. For example, when you start the game, it doesn't give focus to the username or password field. So you launch the game, start typing your password, realize that the text field doesn't have focus, and have to manually click the field with the mouse.

Anyways, there's lots of little things like that. In the great scheme of things they're trivial, but it would have been really nice if Mythic had made the effort to fix them. Streamlining your entry into the game, so that you don't have to click through several movies. Not popping the EULA every single time. When you get a new title, clicking the Tome of Knowledge pop up should actually take you to the description of the title, rather to some other random page.

Now there's a lot of things that the game does well. The quest integration with the map is superb. I adore the way you can queue up for scenarios, continue questing, scenario pops, you go fight, and you return right back to your questing spot, and you can queue again. If there is one thing Blizzard should steal from WO, it's this queuing for scenarios. It even makes being on the popular side bearable.

In the end I rolled a Witch Elf on Thorgrim. I did try some other characters, but I didn't like the look, so I deleted them. I'll have to look at options more thoroughly later. The witch elf is pretty much a WoW rogue so far, but with far less clothing. One interesting thing was that you start with a combo-point generating ability at level 1, but you don't get a finisher until level 2. I'm not sure this was a good decision. In WoW, a level 1 rogue starts with a standard move, and a finisher, so the playstyle is obvious from the start. I also kind of see why Blizzard limits combo points per mob. It was very common for me to build to 5 points and then unload burst damage onto a new target.

I got up to about Rank (level) 5, and Renown (PvP level) 4. I do like how you get rewards from both questing and PvP as you level up.

PvP is interesting. In general, the Witch Elf is a decent character. I get a fair number of kills, killing blows and even solo kills. The only problem is that sometimes everyone clumps up into two ranged groups firing at each other. You can't really pick off anyone when this happens, as the group will nuke you as you approach.

I did get to try a Public Quest, and it's kind of cool. I even won the roll! I got some nice armor that revealed even more skin than my previous rags. However, I'm not really sure it's as revolutionary as everyone claims. WO doesn't seem to have "tagging mobs" as a mechanic, and that is a good change.

One thing about WO is that it does really expect you to be somewhat familar with MMOs. WoW had a much more gentle introduction into the genre, but the experienced player ends up modding the UI a fair bit. At points in WO, I was suffering from information overload, and I'm an experienced player.

Also, maybe I'm missing something, but wouldn't it be an obvious move to have the same keybinds as WoW whenever possible? Things like C for Character, etc. A lot of the keybinds are the same already, it just seems odd to me that they didn't copy the others. It would make it even easier to steal WoW players. It's like Microsoft Excel, when they were first entering the market, went to great lengths to ensure that the Lotus 1-2-3 "slash command" system was duplicated exactly in Excel. That made it a lot easier for Lotus 1-2-3 users to switch, as they could use all the commands they were accustomed to.

Graphically, the game is pretty good. The animations aren't quite as smooth as they should be, but it's pretty decent.

All in all, Warhammer Online looks like a solid, stable game. I still don't think I've found the class I want to level up to the cap though. I'll probably end up trying a few more classes on the weekend.

Finally, if someone could tell me where I learn professions, that would be great. I'm looting all sorts of stuff that are for professions, but I'm just vendoring it at the moment.

Warhammer Online: What to Play?

So Warhammer Online launches tomorrow. I'll probably pick up the game and give it a whirl. Some of the mechanics being described sound pretty interesting.

The real question is what class to play. The Warrior Priest is probably the closest analog to the paladin. But even though it's a melee-character, it's still a healer, and I don't really want to get stuck in the whole healer cycle again.

Already, if you watch the Warhammer Online blogs, you'll see the subtle bias against the healers doing damage. I was reading a a description of scenario scoreboards at Book of Grudges, when I came across the line:

"Next down is a Zealot, and if he’d been healing more and nuking less Destruction would probably have won this match."

Back to blaming the healers. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

So I'm really wary about rolling a class that has any capability of healing whatsoever. I envy the freedom of the DPS classes to just have fun. Plus, Warhammer seems to be big on the whole pick-up group PvP thing, so rolling a DPS doesn't look as limiting as in WoW.

The thing about healing is that it is usually very powerful and scarce. And I don't *hate* playing a healer. So I could go healer, and my group or side would probably be more successful. Or I could go DPS, and my group or side would probably be less successful, but I would have more fun. But losing is not fun and winning is. So round and round in circles I go.

It's odd that this is coming up in a post about another game, but that's the way I look at healers (and tanks). The healers are the ones being responsible, letting the DPS have fun. When I'm DPS in a group, I feel bad that I'm making the healers work, while I'm having fun. Which is a bit odd, because I don't mind being the healer. It is fun and challenging, but it's a different sort of fun than what the DPS is experiencing. Maybe it's about creating or sustaining versus destroying.

Anyways, long story short, I have no idea what class to roll in Warhammer. Maybe I'll just try a Witch Elf. They don't seem to believe in clothing, and it's always amusing to see how low the gaming industry can sink. Though, kind of honestly, I think a male version of the Witch Elf (with the same disdain for clothing) would be hilarious. The reactions from the playerbase would be priceless.

Months Behind

I finally got my epic flying mount. It's amazingly fast. Now to work on getting a netherdrake.

I had a lot of stuff on the AH, and was hoping enough of it had sold to put me over 5200g. I logged in, picked up my gold from the AH, and realized I had 5198g. Sigh. One daily quest later, I had enough gold.

WotLK Beta - Ret, Prot Updates

I don't really have a coherent post, so here's some general thoughts from Beta:

• Retribution and Protection have been slimmed down and cleaned up. They're really nice trees now, with a fair amount of free talent points to dip into the other trees. As well, the first tiers of each tree are very attractive now.


• Blessing of Kings got changed into a 5-point talent in Tier 1 Protection. While this makes it cost more for Prot, it's much easier for Ret and Holy to pick Kings up. I can make builds that include Kings for all three specs, and which I'd be happy to play.


• Art of War got redesigned yet again. It increases crit damage on Judgement, CS, and Divine Storm, and also gives you instant Flash of Lights when you get a melee crit! Unfortunately, at the moment the instant FoLs still reset your swing timer, but as soon as that is fixed, the talent will rock. It's really nice to see Ret be able to heal--if only a little bit--and not be punished for it. Also AoW's damage increase is bugged at 2% instead of 20%.


• Judgements of the Wise gives 20% of your total mana back. Essentially, Retribution doesn't need to worry about mana anymore. Ret is now limited more by cooldowns than by mana.


• Judgement of Command was changed. It no longer does double damage when hitting a stunned target. Instead, it's a guaranteed critical when you Judge a stunned target. It's a reduction in burst damage, but hopefully allows our sustained damage to keep pace.


• To be honest, Retribution is in really good shape at the moment. It plays well and is a lot of fun. It does solid damage. You press several buttons, but there's still room in the rotation to toss out Flash of Lights, Exorcism, Consecrates, Cleanses as you need to. It's quite possible that this is the best shape that any paladin spec has ever been in.


• There's some concern about JotW and Holy. At 20% total mana, it's really attractive for Holy to go 38/0/33 and pick up JotW. Part of the issue is that so much of the Holy tree centers around mana reduction, but getting back 20% of your total mana every 8-10s swamps all of those talents. It is expected that JotW will change to 20% of base mana, reducing its value for Holy, but keeping it the same for Ret as Ret base mana is roughly equal to Ret total mana.


• Protection is also in really good shape. It's doing a lot of damage, and is also fun. It's still missing an 11-point talent, so we'll see what Blizzard comes up with.


• Speaking of tanks, Blizzard appears to be changing course on general tank design. They seem to be doing away with extra threat on abilities, but increasing the damage to compensate. For example, Hammer of the Righteous used to do 100% weapon damage + 30% increased threat. It's been changed to 120% damage, but no extra threat. I think this is a great change in design philosophy, and will make playing a tank much more fun.


• Holy still needs some work. Kind of honestly, the biggest problem with the Holy tree is that it is very boring. Holy Shock is really the only talent that's remotely exciting. I think the new Infusion of Light, where you get instant Holy Lights after critical Holy Shocks has potential, but we'll have to see how it performs in instances.


• Beacon of Light is a weird talent. Part of the issue with Beacon is that it only works on effective healing, not raw healing. In a raid situation, this could cause problems, because if your heal target gets sniped by another healer before your heal lands, the Beacon target won't get healed. As the Beacon target is probably the tank, this will cause problems. On the other hand, if Beacon worked off raw healing, you would never ever heal the Beacon target. You'd spray overheals around like crazy, because the Beacon target would soak it all up.
  
  I'm not sure what's going to happen with Beacon. A healer needs to heal the people who are hurt, not healthy people. At the same time, there's no sense in punishing the paladin because another healer got to her target half a second before her heal landed.

Anyways, that's a round-up of what's up with Paladins in Beta. Retribution and Protection are in good shape, have solid talent trees, and are fun to play. Holy needs some work.

Paid PvE to PvP Server Transfers

Today, Blizzard introduced paid PvE to PvP server transfers. Previously, if you had a character on a PvE server, you could not transfer that character to a PvP server. A character on a PvP server could transfer to PvE, but it was a one-way trip.

I am oddly mixed about this development. On the one hand, I've levelled a character on both server types, and the experience on a PvP server is very different. Unleashing hordes of carebears who think they're something special onto a PvP server, and letting them gank without having had the experience of being the gankee ... well, something inside me rebels at that thought.

There is a certain type of player on PvE servers who is very boastful about PvP prowess. The type of person who'll kill a lowbie Horde who's flagged accidentally, or gank an obviously-AFK Alliance Holy Priest sitting outside a raid instance*, and then start to brag about how "leet" they are. And you sit there and think, "So why aren't you on a PvP server? Oh, that's right, because you'd get beaten into the ground by people who know how to play." The PvP realms are going to plagued by this type of player.

*This was quite funny when three minutes later the entire Alliance raid boiled out of the instance, fully flagged, and proceeded to wipe out every flagged Horde who had hurt their priest. As I was not flagged, this brand of karma amused me greatly.

But on the flip side, the division was really hurting the raiding guilds on the PvE servers. For some reason--probably because Achiever/Killers tend to be very good players--the best raiding guilds have always been found on PvP servers. This has made it very hard for PvE guilds to recruit, as PvP people will not transfer, not even for a trial, because it's a one-way trip. More and more, high end raiding is coalescing around the PvP servers, and that is hurting the PvE servers.

I think the turning point came with the guild Juggernaut of Doomhammer. Juggernaut was one of the premier guilds on a PvE server, but they were having serious trouble recruiting for Sunwell. They managed to get Kil'Jaeden down to 30% before giving up. The entire guild rerolled on the PvP server Mal'Ganis as Juggernaut II. Juggernaut II blew through the raiding scene and downed Kil'Jaeden four months after rerolling.

Maybe if the high end hadn't been so slanted towards PvP, things would have worked out. If the best guilds were distributed evenly between server types, maybe the wall could have been preserved. But this change was probably necessary in order for high-end raiding to survive on PvE servers.

On a personal level, this change has affected me. Three months ago, I was invited to join a raiding guild on a PvP server. I liked the guild, but as it was a PvP server, I ended up making another paladin on that server. I've tried to level it, but my heart really wasn't in it. I managed to make it to 55.

The thing was that this new paladin wasn't my main, and that turned out to be really important to me. It wasn't the paladin I killed Ragnaros and Nefarian with, the character that I've been playing for multiple years, wasn't the character I played back when we had Seal of Fury, the character that was in Defender of the Crown, the character with all my keys and attunements and my Knight-Captain title, my 8/8 Lightforge, and the character I learned to raid with. Yeah, they're not exactly impressive achievements, but still, it was my main, and that ended up meaning a lot to me.

So I've been levelling this new paladin desultorily (also, paladin levelling is extremely boring, which didn't help) and had been slowly realizing that I didn't really want to play a new paladin. That I wanted to play Coriel. Then this change was announced. The first thing I did upon coming home was to delete the new paladin and transfer Coriel to the PvP server.

So in the end I'm not sure what to think about PvE to PvP transfers. I somehow don't think it was a good change, but it may have been a necessary change. And it has allowed me to continue to play my main into Wrath of the Lich King, for which I am very grateful.

Ask Coriel: Low Population Servers

Brad asks:

Hello, I have always played Horde characters but am looking to try Alliance for the first time. I really enjoy your blog and rolled a character on Skywall, but I noticed on the offical WOW site that it is listed as a Low population server. Before I spend too much time leveling, do you have any regrets playing on a low pop server? Are the auction house prices too low/high, is it too hard to find pick up groups, etc? I appreciate any feedback you have!

Honestly, I don't think it makes that much difference while levelling. If you catch the main wave when most people are levelling, it's pretty easy to find groups. Right now, when everyone has finished levelling, it's a lot harder, but it's harder even on a full server. Auction House, it's pretty much the same. It's harder to find rare items, like patterns, but price-wise it's more or less the same. If anything, prices may be lower, as full servers usually have a lot more people with lots of gold. Also, if you're looking for specific crafted materials, you may have to look outside trade chat. There are usually people who can make the item, but they aren't readily available. If I'm looking for something rare, I tend to whisper someone in a high-end guild, and they will pass me a name.

The big difference is if you want to raid at endgame. Full servers offer a lot more choice and variety of guilds. They also tend to have more advanced guilds in endgame. As well, low-pop servers tend to have raid guilds that concentrate around a specific time. You need to make sure you are able to make that timeslot. Even being an hour or so off can cause issues. There are also much fewer raid PuGs. You really need to be in a guild if you want to raid on a low-pop server.

I personally like Skywall a lot. It's a very laid-back server, with a nice community, and is not overly gear-focused. But if you're really intent on raiding at the very highest level, it's not the server for you. It's a very casual, very carebear server.

Anyone else have comments on high and low pop servers?

The End of Mana

It seems like the MMO industry is moving away from mana as a resource. Warhammer Online has completely done away with mana, opting for an Energy-like regen system. Warriors and Rogues in WoW use Rage and Energy respectively, and the new Death Knights uses Runes/Runic Power. Even if you look at the mana-using classes, more and more of them are moving away from the tradition version of mana.

The tradition definition of mana is a resource which powers your abilities that starts at full, is slowly depleted, and can only be regenerated out-of-combat or through long periods of inactivity.

If you look at the current WoW mana classes, many of them are moving towards a self-contained cycle for their main resource. For example:

Warlocks: Cast Spells -> Lifetap -> Drain/Heal
Enhance Shamans: Use Abilities -> Shamanistic Rage
Protection Paladins: Use Abilities -> Regain mana through Spiritual Attunement

In WotLK, more classes will join the new model:

Hunters: Full Damage with Aspect of the Hawk -> Mana Regen with Aspect of the Viper
Ret Paladins: (hopefully) Use Abilities -> Judgements of the Wise

The two categories left which use the traditional mana model are mages/boomkins/elemental shamans and healers.

So why are more and more classes shifting away from the traditional mana model? I think the main reason is that mana does not really handle fights of varying length well, especially for DPS classes. If the fight is too long, you run out of mana. If the fight is too short, you have mana left unspent. Indeed, this was part of the reason chaining mana potions was so powerful, as it allowed you to tailor your mana pool to the length of the fight.

As well, in theory the traditional mana model is supposed to make you trade-off longevity for damage. In practice, most people just blasted away with their main nuke, and didn't really adjust tactics in-game to compensate for fight length. The only class which really considered longevity are classes with a 2-cycle spell rotation. And a 2-cycle rotation is perhaps overly sensitive to fight length.

The self-contained model, on the other hand, scales to any arbitrary fight length. The length of the fight is no longer restricted by the mana of the players, it can be as long or as short as desired.

This didn't matter as much in 5-mans, as 5-man fights have an implicit timer: the healer's mana bar. When the healer's mana bar runs out, the fight usually ends. As well, unlike DPS which has very little "over-damage", healers can extend their mana bar by playing smarter and avoiding overheal. Wasted mana is very important for a healer, unlike DPS. However, once you have more than one healer, a healer's mana bar can last a lot longer through efficiencies and trading off regen time, or even just reducing the damage done. Unlike DPS, the rate at which healers spend mana is very dependent on the specifics of the encounter.

I think time has shown that the traditional mana model is not the best resource for an MMO. In a lot of ways, it is either too constraining, or ends up not mattering at all. I think that more and more MMOs will move towards self-contained resource cycles to power abilities.

On Redoubt

Modulok writes in the comments to the last post:

Redoubt is not a fun talent at all. All it does it make Shield Spec worth 8 points instead of 3. Remember that there are no crushing blows in wrath so your whole reasoning for taking it is moot. This is the definition of bloat. If you really like it don't make it mandatory for tanks to take it for shield spec. Alternatively make it worth one talent point or something. Prot forums have been whining about this for ages.

I think a lot of paladins are looking at Redoubt through the lens of TBC, and not WotLK. In TBC, because we had to reach uncrushable, paladins piled on lots and lots of Avoidance. This greatly reduced--and eventually obsoleted--the value of Redoubt.

WotLK looks to be different. There seems to be a lot less Avoidance gear. There's even a rumor that dodge and parry rating will see non-linear scaling, like Armor. If you have a lot less Avoidance, then Redoubt still does a lot for you, increasing your block rating significantly. As well, with the new focus on Strength, and the fact that 2 Str = 1 Block Value, we have the potential to mitigate significant amounts of damage through blocking.

Now, I don't know how useful Redoubt will be. It might turn out to be useless. It all depends on how much Avoidance is available in raid content. If Sunwell is any guide--remember that Blizzard had to introduce Sunwell Radiance to keep Avoidance in check--Blizzard will be looking to significantly reduce the amount of Avoidance raid tanks possess.

Blizzard Requests Feedback on Protection

On the Beta forums, Ghostcrawler has requested feedback about the Protection tree. Here is my response (also posted to the thread).

Which talents are fun vs. which ones aren't

Talents which are fun:

Reckoning - flurry of numbers is always cool ... plus it has History with Kazzak :)
Holy Shield
Avenger's Shield
Hammer of the Righteous
Ardent Defender - solo play only ... you really notice it in solo play and leveling, coming to the edge of death. It's not fun in group play, as you really can't tell if it is kicking in or not.

Talents which are not fun:

I wouldn't say there's any talents I dislike having to take. Even Redoubt is useful when leveling or when you are still crushable. It was just annoying when it become redundant after we became Holy Shield-uncrushable.

Oh, one talent I dislike is Deflection in the Retribution tree. I keep wanting to make a Protection/Holy build, but I have to dip into Retribution for Deflection.

Areas in the tree that tie up too many talent points vs. areas that feel barren

Pretty much everything from Tier 6 upwards is mandatory. Very top-heavy.

Tier 3 has a lot of nice talents, but Tier 4 is barren (for PvE usually). I usually skip Tier 4. As well, Tier 3 is awkward, because you have to get Kings and Improved Righteous Fury, leaving you with 1 point. So you end up putting a single point in something and leaving a talent unfilled.

Talents that feel mandatory vs. talents that feel fun but optional vs. talents you'd never get

Mandatory - Everything from Tier 6 up (maybe excepting Guarded by the Light), Kings, Imp RF
Fun but optional - Reckoning
Never Get - I don't think there's any talent I would never get. The old Sanctuary came closest to that, but the new one looks quite good.

One last thing about Protection. You have the main chain at the heart of the tree (BoSanc-HS-AS, and supporting talents), which you pretty much have to pick up, as that's the "engine" which drives the tree. All around that main chain are nice talents, but they all cost 5 points. That's where the bulk of the "bloat" comes in. The main chain is mandatory, and to get any of the surrounding talents costs a lot of points.

Wizard 101 Review

Wizard 101 is a new MMO aimed at kids. In it, you play a young wizard going to a magic school and having adventures. The basic mechanics are based on collectible card games, where each card represents a spell, though the game itself is a subscription game. You don't buy cards, you get new cards as you level. Each wizard specializes in a specific school of magic, such as Fire or Ice, but can also get cards in a secondary school.

It costs $10 / month, but you can try it out for free. There's also the standard price cuts if you subscribe for a longer period of time.



Positives

• Gameplay: The basic mechanic of combat in Wizard 101 is elegant. Your spells cost Power Points. The more powerful the spell, the more Power Points it consumes. You build up Power Points at the rate of 1 per turn. However, buffing and debuffing spells cost zero Power Points. So the game revolves around casting buffs and debuffs to build up Power Points, and then choosing an appropriate damage spell. There is some beautiful tension involved, and getting the right mix of buff/debuff spells and damage spells of appropriate cost is a lot of fun.
  
  Basic gameplay is turn based, with up to four players on each side. Other people can join your battles, and other monsters will also join (if there are more players than monsters).



• Graphics: The graphics in Wizard 101 are crisp, clean, cartoony, and colorful. It's a kids game, so it's not cutting edge graphics, but the art style more than makes up for it. Gear looks nice, and the monsters and card animations are very well done. I'm a big fan of the art style of this game, but your mileage may vary. In particular, the word "realism" has no place here.



• Polish: Wizard 101 is nicely polished. It's stable and there were very few bugs when I played it.



• Character Creation: The character creation system is a series of Ultima-style questions. I kept getting Fire mage, even when I was trying for something different. I'm not sure what that says about me. The naming system is also cool. You choose a first name, and two parts of a last name. My character in beta was a Fire/Myth (primary school/secondary school) mage named Richard Sunweaver. After the wipe, I made a Death/Balance mage named Valerian Ravencaller. I liked the character creation system and naming system a lot.

Negatives

• Communication: I never thought I'd see the day when I missed Barrens Chat. Because Wizard 101 is aimed at kids (have to Protect The Children™), it's somewhat hard to communicate with people. Nintendo does very much the same thing in their multi-player games. There's no guilds, no parties. Most communication is done through a menu system which I found awkward to use. As well, since all the barriers are so obviously aimed at protecting young kids, as an adult I found myself uneasy at the thought of approaching people for help with tough battles. There's no general chat channel, where you can send requests for help out into the void.
  
  The closest WoW analogy to this is doing quests with the opposite faction. If you're Alliance, and you come across a Horde working on the same quest, sometimes the two of you will work together to complete it. You can't talk to each other, so there's this odd dance of gestures and inferring meaning (and the dance takes on extra weight on a PvP server). That's what playing with strangers in Wizard 101 feels like.
  
  I'm a quiet player, but I like seeing guild chat or general chat scroll by. Wizard 101 just felt very lonely to me, even though I was surrounded by other players.
  
  Obviously, this may not matter to you if you play with friends, or it may even be a positive if you have young children you are concerned about.

Conclusion

Wizard 101 is a great game. It has many good qualities, and is worth trying out even for the jaded adult gamer, just to see the basic gameplay. It is a children's game, so it is cute. It isn't amazingly deep and doesn't have many sub-games like crafting or raiding or PvP (though there are some arcade games and an arena where you can duel). But Wizard 101 focuses on its core gameplay, and that core is executed cleanly and polished to a shine.

On "First to 80" Achievements and Rewards

RJ posts a comment:

Why not reward them? These people still do it as a race, to try and get a world first. What's the problem with having some official recognition of this?

Because having official recognition means that more people will do it, that Blizzard is explicitly approving of this behaviour.

A lot of behaviour is not healthy, but is really hard to prevent without hurting people who are playing properly. Blizzard uses rewards to try and channel people into more appropriate behavior patterns.

For example, consider ganking. There is zero reward for ganking lowbies. No honor, no xp, nothing. Yet people still gank. Now imagine what the game would be like if Blizzard added a title ("the Exterminator") for killing 1000 people who are gray to you. Life on a PvP server would seriously suck.

With rewards, you have to be very careful to only reward the specific behavior you deem good. It's very easy to accidently end up rewarding negative behavior. WoW has had a lot of problems with this in the past. Old PvP system, afking in AV, running Karazhan over and over instead of progressing, etc.

In this case, Blizzard wants to reward efficient levelling. I don't see anything wrong with this goal. But their implementation will reward marathon gaming (aka Catassing) and multiple people playing the same character in shifts, instead of the behavior which is worth rewarding.

Update (reposted from comments because I think it sums up my issue well):

Finally, what the reward is does not matter. The basic problem is the same. Blizzard wishes to reward some facet of gameplay which requires skill. However, the method they choose to measure that skill actually measures a different variable. People obtain the reward by maximizing the measured variable, not the variable that Blizzard wants to measure.

It's that difference which I think is important, and which Blizzard needs to pay more attention to.

WotLK Beta - First to 80 Achievements

Blizzard is adding a number of Achievements or titles for the first people to reach level 80. For example:

The Supreme - First player on the realm to achieve level 80.
Assassin - First rogue on the realm to achieve level 80.
Warbringer - First warrior on the realm to achieve level 80.
Archmage - First mage on the realm to achieve level 80.
Of The Ebon Blade - First death knight on the realm to achieve level 80.
Stalker - First hunter on the realm to achieve level 80.
etc.

I'm not sure that these titles are a good idea. Levelling quickly is an impressive feat, but the people who earn these titles are going to be people who take the week off work when WotLK comes out, play 24/7 hours without sleep, or share accounts and power-level up to the cap. I think this behavior is negative, and I don't think that rewarding this type of behavior is a good idea.

As well, there's the potential for a very negative outcome. Imagine if some kid hurts herself in a marathon gaming session in an attempt to get one of these titles. That would be serious negative publicity, precisely when WoW players should be celebrating the release of the expansion.

In a lot of ways, it's like the Grand Marshal fiasco of the old PvP system. That system should have measured who the best PvPers were, but instead it measured who played the most. Ideally, this system rewards those who level the fastest, but it really measures who can devote the largest percentage of the total time to WoW in the first three days.

Finally, it's a lot of titles that are being given out only once, over a time span that is under a week. To me, it seems like a poor use of title resources.

I'm not against a single person being the only person to have a specific title. But I think that such a title should be encompass a large amount of work. For example, the Scarab Lord title (given out during the Ahn'Qiraj event) is appropriately impressive. Weeks of farming bugs, multiple 40-man raids, and ringing the gong for the entire server. That was pretty impressive, and pretty much every Scarab Lord earned her title, and indeed involved her entire server.

To me, the "First to 80" people will not have accomplished anything on the level of the Scarab Lord, and I'm not sure they really meet the standard set for a unique title.

What I'd suggest is that instead of doing "First to 80" titles, and rewarding negative behavior, Blizzard rewards efficient levelling instead. Blizzard already measures how long it takes to level in-game (i.e. the /played command). So pick an aggressive levelling time target, and give a title if the character manages to hit 80 before the deadline. For example, if you went from 70 to 80 in 48 hours /played, you get the title like "Coriel the Quick".

This has several advantages. It's repeatable, so you get multiple uses out of it. It rewards the people who level efficiently, not those who can play the most. If the target is set aggressively enough, people can actually come up with strategies to achieve it. As well, people don't have to kill themselves to get this title. The title would be achievable by someone who plays a couple hours a week, so long as they are super-efficient. Of course, you'd have to figure out how rested XP would interact with this.

An extension of this idea might be to give a unique title to the person who leveled the fastest. But this person could lose their title if someone beats their record. You could do something similar with Grand Master profession titles. Rather than seeing who is the first to 450, give the title to the person who knows the most recipes. If someone else comes along and learns more recipes, the Grandmaster title should change hands. I think these unique titles would be impressive, and more worthy than unique titles for just "the first to X" achievements.

WotLK Beta - New Aspect of the Viper

New Aspect of the Viper for Hunters:

Aspect of the Viper
The hunter takes on the aspect of the viper, instantly regenerating mana equal to 100% of the damage done by any ranged attack or ability, but reduces your total damage done by 50%. Only one Aspect can be active at a time.

It's sick. My hunter can go from empty to full mana in 5s with 50% damage and 2 GCDs. I should make a Viper/Hawk castsequence macro.

In other news, both Judgement of Wisdom and Judgements of the Wise were nerfed into the ground, pretty much eliminating Retribution mana regen. Hopefully, Blizzard has something similar to the new Aspect of the Viper up their sleeves.

Buffs and Debuffs Changes

Major Blizzard post on the future of buffs and debuffs. A snippet:

For the most part, what this change means is that many buffs and debuffs which were previously allowed to stack together no longer can, and that many buffs and debuffs which only a single talent specialization could bring can now be brought by multiple different specializations.

Essentially, there are about 30 categories of group buffs and debuffs. The buff/debuff in each category can be provided by different classes, making raid construction much more flexible.

For example, Devotion Aura will now provide the same healing bonus as a Druid's Tree of Life Aura. So if you don't have a Resto druid, you can still get the same effect with a paladin. This change also extends to mana batteries, with Shadow Priests, Retribution Paladins, and Survival Hunters providing a similar mana regen buff to the raid.

I think that, on the whole, this will be a good change for the game. There are some posters at EJ however, who feel that this will lead to a new form of raid stacking. Essentially, you figure out the minimum number of characters to cover all the buffs and debuffs, and then stack the rest of the raid with the flavour-of-the-month DPS class.

This is a possibility. However, in my view, there are essentially two types of raiding guilds: guilds which have access to multiple characters of every class and spec; and guilds which don't. Maybe the first type of guild will stack, but they would have stacked anyways. But this change will make life a lot easier for the second type of guild, allowing much more leeway in recruitment and raid make-up.

There are still some issues to be resolved, including mana regen for Retribution paladins, Blessing of Wisdom, and how Judgements (especially Judgement of Wisdom) will be affected.

Edit: Also, just eyeballing the list, Blizzard might want to consider baselining Blessing of Kings. It looks like the only category with a single buff that is a talent.

WotLK Beta - 68 Hunter Experience

Wrath has been interesting, but it is a little weird to be testing with an epic-geared character. I decided to see what it would be like with a lower level character. I had a 68 hunter, in mostly quest greens, that I transferred over and started doing questing.

So far on Beta, it's been pretty smooth. The quests are all doable for a character of that gear level, and it's very nice getting quest rewards and equipping them right away. The low level gear also looks pretty decent, even the Elemental Shaman chestpiece I accidently picked up and equipped. (I'm looking at the stats on my gear: AP, haste, crit, more AP, spellpower ... what the?)

Corissa and her pet ravager, Fluffy

My hunter is normally Beastmaster, but I tried out Survival. I love Explosive Shot. It's like a shot that hits the mob three times for significant damage each time (shares a cooldown with Arcane Shot) I have the suspicion that it's doing excessive damage, but it's awesome. First off, there's a bug with pets and Growl (or maybe Cower) and they can't hold aggro very well. So I mark the mob, Serpent Sting them, and auto-shot until they start running to me, then Explosive Shot them and let them die as they reach me. Hilarious, especially combined with the Lock and Load talent that gives me free Explosive Shots 30% of the time when I sting the mob.

The only thing is that Survival is a little mana-intensive at the moment. Part of that is that I can't use Steady Shot and gain mana back from Hunting Party as it will rip the mob off my pet and I'll end up having to melee. It's too bad, as Steady Shot has been unlinked from Auto-shot, and is now very easy to use. No more weaving or macroing. I'd love to see what sort of damage I could get from a rotation like Mark, Serpent Sting, Explosive Shot, Steady Shot x2-3, Explosive Shot, etc. Just need an actual tank.

Still, it's fun, and is pretty smooth for a character not decked out in epics. As well, levels 68-70 go by pretty fast. I hit 70 while still in the middle of the first zone.

Targeting

Introduction

Warhammer Online introduces a new system for targeting creatures and players for spells and abilities. It is interesting to compare the Warhammer Online system to World of Warcraft. WoW actually has multiple targeting systems, each serving a slightly different purpose.

World of Warcraft Basic - Primary Mode

In the default UI (no mods, no macros), there is one target frame. You choose your target, and press the ability, and the game tries to cast it on the current target. So to cast a spell on a new target generally requires 2 operations:

1. Select new target
2. Press spell button - Spell is cast on current target

This method has the advantage that it is very obvious and intuitive. It has the disadvantage that changing targets is fairly costly in terms of operations. Additionally, switching between a hostile and a friendly target will turn off your auto-attack.

World of Warcraft Basic - Secondary Mode

In the default UI, there is a secondary targeting mode. If you have a hostile target selected, and you cast a friendly spell such as a heal, the cursor will change to a glowing hand. You can then click the frame of a friendly player, and the spell will be cast on that player without changing your target.

1. Press spell button
2. Select friendly frame - Spell is cast on friend, target is not changed

The advantage here is that your current target never changes, your auto-attack does not turn off. Offensive actions don't require a target switch, and only cost 1 operation. However, this method does not seem that popular among players, and is probably not very intuitive. Additionally, even Blizzard occasionally forgets about this mode. For example, spells that can affect both allies and enemies, such as Holy Shock, will not work properly, automatically defaulting to hitting the hostile target. Another annoyance is that all your friendly spells get "greyed out" as unusable, even though you can still cast them.

Warhammer Online

Warhammer Online seems to have two targets: an offensive target and a defensive target. Selecting a friendly player changes your defensive target, and selecting a hostile changes your offensive target. If you cast a hostile spell, it hits the offensive target. A friendly spell hits the defensive target.

In terms of operations, this is slightly different depending on what you are doing. If you are mostly attacking creature or mostly healing friendlies, then it effectively costs 2 operations or so per target switch. However, when you alternate between healing and attacking, it only requires 1 operation. In the best case scenario, you only have yourself and one enemy, and you never need to switch targets. I would imagine that this targeting system promotes attacking and defending at the same time. If there's no extra cost, you might as well throw out a DoT if you have time.

As well, this system is pretty intuitive, while only being slightly more complex than WoW Basic - Primary. The idea that offensive spells are cast on your offensive target, and defensive spells are cast on your defensive target just makes sense.

World of Warcraft Advanced - Focus

In WoW, you can declare one target your "focus" with the /focus command. Right now, you generally need macros or mods to work with the focus target properly, but in WotLK the focus target is being built into the default UI.

Having a focus target allows you to cast certain spells at your focus, instead of your main target. This is especially useful for crowd control, as you can automatically renew a crowd control spell without switching targets. Essentially, casting a spell on the focus target only costs 1 operation, while other targets cost 2 operations.

The focus target is also open-ended. A DPS can juggle two hostile targets. A healer can juggle two friendly targets. However, one of the targets is fixed, as it takes a bit of effort to switch focuses.

Focus, while very powerful, is not exactly intuitive, and takes some getting used to.

World of Warcraft Advanced - Mouseover/Click-casting

In WoW, you can also macro your spells to target the frame or mob that your mouse is hovering over. This essentially reduces the cost of all your spells to 1 operation. This is primarily used by healers, as they have to switch targets often. However, DPS and tanks do occasionally have uses for mouseover targeting. In particular, warriors will use a mouseover Sunder macro to build threat on crowd-controlled mobs. (Sunder doesn't do damage to mobs, and using mouseover ensures that you don't auto-attack the sheep.)

Click-casting is where you automatically cast a spell without changing targets if you right-click a frame. You generally need a mod such as Clique. Click-casting is pretty similar to mouseover targeting in effect, but you're limited by the number of mouse buttons you have.

These techniques reduces operation cost to the minimum. However, they are fairly unintuitive, and require extra setup on the part of the player.

Conclusion

In a lot of ways, the basic WoW targeting system promotes focusing on one activity at a time. If you're healing, you switch between friendly targets and heal. If you're dealing damage, you stay on your target and burn them down.

Warhammer Online seems to promote both offensive and defense. The dual-targeting system promotes using both abilities that help your allies and hurt your enemies. This doesn't just apply to healers. Any class could get and use helpful abilities, and still be able to concentrate on the hostile mob. Additionally, it's still very user-friendly and easy to understand.

However, both Focus and mouseover targeting offer much more control, and reduces the cost in operations, to the experienced WoW player. Mouseover targeting effectively obsoletes the dual-targeting system for healing, and Focus allows you to alternate between two hostile targets. Still, these techniques are not exactly user-friendly, and generally require the player to have a fair bit of experience in the game before she can master them.

Ask Coriel: Healing Paladin Questions

Aizell asks:

My current stats:

9.8k mana
84 MP5
22% holy crit
1850 Bonus heal

Have only been doing Kara for about a month up to Aran/Chess.

Questions.

In post Kara raids, are healadins MT healers? Raid healers? Either?

Main tank healers. We can raid heal in a pinch, but as we can only heal one person at a time, the other classes are better choices for raid healing.

How important is spell haste? I currently have Scarab of the Infinite Cycle with a chance of 320 spell haste for 6 secs. Noticed an imba healadin is also still using this at Sunwell. Perhaps he hasn’t found an upgrade (seems very unlikely!) or is spell haste a great way to increase your heal per second in addition to Healing bonus?

Spell Haste is very powerful, but it comes with a cost. Haste increases your heal per second, but it also increases the amount of mana you spend per second. So if you start using Haste too early, you'll find that you are running out of mana too soon. Sunwell paladins have lots of mana regen, so they can afford to use lots of Haste. You may find it a little harder at your current gear level.

So the question to ask is if are you running out of mana? If you are not, you can pack on the Haste. If you are, bank your Haste gear, and get some more regen gear for the time being.

Currently using purple & orange gems with some + healing and +intellect or + MP5. I believe you get better value for gold from these as opposed to purely +healing. How high should I get my spell crit and MP5 before I start only increasing healing bonus? Vague reading suggests 30% and 100 MP5. Or does this depend on whether you are MT healer or raid healer?

You should probably use red +healing gems for red slots (but purple is okay for now, I wouldn't change unless you have lots of gold). The purple gems are fine for blue slots.

However, the orange +heal/+int gems are a poor choice for yellow slots. Int provides a very small amount of crit and +heal. I would go with pure Spell Crit gems for yellow slots.

Would you ever take an armour piece which is not plate but has better stats? If so would you go to mail only? Or all the way to cloth? There does appear to be a number of pieces like this that have the same investment cost, say number of badges but where the non plate option has better healing stats.

In general, plate that comes from tokens or badges is optimized for paladins. So I would recommend sticking with plate for badge or vendor gear.

For drops, I would take a non-plate item if no other healers wanted it. If a nice mail healing piece dropped, I would let the shamans have first shot at it. I would take it if it was going to be sharded. Cloth and leather healing pieces tend to have Spirit, which is a useless stat for paladins. So I would usually only downgrade to mail. But if it's better than what you are currently wearing, and it's going to be sharded, pick it up.

Which craft would you recommend? Enchanting gives you 2*+20 healing on rings. Alchemy allows you to craft some amazing mana saving/+MP5 trinkets. Blacksmithing for Dawnsteel or Sunblessed armour, though you would need to have a lot of gold for these.

I would recommend Enchanting, Alchemy or Jewelcrafting. Also remember that there's a new profession, Inscription, coming in Wrath of the Lich King, and that may also be a good choice. I wouldn't really recommend Blacksmithing for a pure Holy paladin.

WotLK Beta - Vengeance Nerf, Part II

Ghostcrawler is on the paladin forums, trying to spin the Vengeance nerf as an "unsanctioned" change. Kind of honestly, the fact that it made the patch notes indicates that it was an intended change. It's also amusing to note that we never seen Blue posters on the paladin forums except as a last-ditch attempt at damage control.

Sometimes I think that no one at Blizzard plays a paladin on a regular basis. How do you miss the fact that Judgements stopped working?

In any case, I acknowledge the fact that Retribution paladins are doing too much damage in Beta at the moment. However, Blizzard's reaction to this reminds me of the Illumination nerf. We have a core talent that works pretty well. Blizzard introduces some poorly thought-out changes that--combined with the core talent--breaks the class. Rather than reverting the changes, Blizzard nerfs the core talent.

There are 4 issues with Retribution DPS at the moment:

1. The new scaling Judgements are doing a crazy amount of damage. No one knows if this is intended, because as normal Blizzard refuses to convey their vision (if it even exists) of the Paladin class to us. It might be intended, because Judgements of the Wise needs a powerful Judgement in order to return non-trivial amounts of mana to the group.



2. Judgement of Command does double damage on a stunned target. Combined with Point 1 above, we see 8-9K crits on people.



3. Seals currently proc off special attacks. Previously, they would only proc off auto-attacks. Cathela at Elitist Jerks has calculated that this change has increased Seal DPS by 85%.



4. Seal of Vengeance is broken, and is scaling too well with AP. This is an issue with brackets in the SoV equation, because apparently the Paladin designer does not understand BEDMAS.

All of these problems have solutions, none of which involve touching Vengeance:

1. Tone down Judgement damage, and increase the mana returned by JotW by the equivalent amount.



2. Change JoC to have 100% crit chance on a stunned target. That's pretty solid guaranteed burst, without getting into crazy territory.



3. Change Seals back to only proc off white attacks. This also fixes a normalization concern for SoR/SoB, where slow weapons would become greatly favoured over faster ones.



4. Fix the SoV equation so that it falls back in line with SoR.

Not exactly hard. But then again, I don't think any of the designers actually play a Paladin, so they don't understand what is important to the class and what is not.