So yesterday I decide to take a stroll through the guild forums to see what's new and lo and behold what do I see?
"Bank tabs 2 and 3 are now closed. Contact an officer if you need anything from them." (*not an exact quote)
I wasn't really surprised. Previously someone had snagged a stack of void crystals from bank tab3 before leaving resulting in anyone but officers being kicked out of accessing it.
And apparantly the day before yesterday the GL found out someone that was stealing from tab2 resulting in the immediate closure of the tab.
But in both scenarios it was never adressed how the problem would be solved or if it would even be looked at beyond closing the tabs. So in my infinite stupidity I decided to start discussing the topic on the forums indicating potential solutions and that long term-members should be exempt from being treated like children because new guild members steal from the bank.
Suffice to say that drama ensued. Requesting for some form of clarity wasn't really appreciated and all of a sudden my posts get twisted into being offensive, hostile and even caustic which they were never intended as.
To top things off I get the classical GL private message stating: "If you don't like how I run the guild, get out."
So I did. There's completely no point in being in a guild that doesn't accept constructive criticism and where the leadership isn't willing to discuss anything and especially not their decisions.
The banking matter is closed. The GL issued the all-mighty: Here's a tip, if you want to be able to take things out of the bank don't put them in tab2 or 3. I don't know how this solves the issue beyond inviting people to steal from tab1 but one thing is certain, officers and their cronies don't have any problems because they still have full access. This in essence reduces the lower ranks to nothing but bank feeders who can put stuff in but can't take stuff out unless an officer is online and deems them worthy.
What irks me the most is that there was absolutely no platform to discuss anything in the guild. Decisions were made and we could either accept them or get the hell out. Discussing them constructively or not on the forums was simply not an option. People left continually but no explanation was ever given beyond whatever the guild leader 'thought' why people left.
Unfortunately I do have an opinion... and as such me and my guild were simply mismatched.
I wish them well, although I have a sneaking suspicion that the guild will last exactly until the GL burns out. If you control everything, including the flow of information you end up with a bunch of sheep in your guild. People that are more than willing to follow a strong leader but become incapable of holding a guild together without their mighty leader.
Maybe I am wrong, maybe I am hopelessly misguided... maybe, maybe... Still, it was an interesting 4 months being guilded. I am sure my alts will appreciate the extra attention (and gold) and I look forward to picking things up from a solo perspective.
Friday, May 30, 2008
Thursday, May 22, 2008
On guilds
It's been a turbulent month for the guild. With my latency being stuck in the upper echelons of 2000ms I have effectively purged myself from any raid group and had the opportunity to return to my usual observant nature.
And I don't like what I see. One of our generals recently decided that he no longer wanted to be a general, one of our raid leaders decided that he no longer wanted to lead raids, a few members left for their various reasons...
But in all that I never heard a 'why'. No indication of why people were unhappy with their role, why they would choose to leave the guild (well that one chap who ran off with a stack of void crystals didn't need to explain really).
All this isn't new to me. It wasn't any different in ultima online or everquest or any of the other games I played and had the unfortunate role of leadership in.
I know the signs of a burnout, the frustration of having to deal with people that don't want to conform to your idea of how things should be done, the frustration of people outright stealing from you and then running off or people that were previously extremely active all of a sudden dropping from the radar.
Sadly a lot of times it stems from an inability to delegate. Every guild in every game anywhere runs on the back of not 1 but multiple people. There has to be a core to each guild, a core that is willing to pick up the lousy chores that need to be done, a core that is willing to deal with infinite cycles of people leaving and new recruits coming in.
This is not something that can be handled by one person over an extended period of time without that person burning out on the game.
You can't lead a guild, run the raid, do the recruitment, do the farming for raid materials, lead 5-mans and do all the planning surrounding these things yourself without running into the inevitable burnout.
I've been down that road. I learned the hard way that you need to assemble people around you that you can delegate things to. You need to have people around that will put forth the effort and get things done. You need to realize that you can be in control without micro-managing everything that goes on.
Maybe my guild is fine, maybe there are no problems and it's just a temporary hickup that doesn't affect anything... but I don't know... there is no information to be had about things, it's an uphill struggle to get any form of information and any attempt to suggest a little structure is often met by 'why didn't you discuss this first in a whisper to me?'
In the meantime most of the guild lives under the assumption that raid consumables just spawn in the bank rather than costing (probably our gm) a day a week to get it replenished.
I have always run my guilds under an open information policy. Tell your guild what's going on, why people leave, where there's problems. Set out a structure and then actively motivate people to pick up tasks.
As a guild leader you should be 'able' to do anything that's needed but only rarely required to do so because you should actively delegate responsibility to the people that _want_ to do specific things like lead 5-mans or grind mats (yes there are people that enjoy that).
If you don't set out the necessary structure in a guild and reward people for their efforts (especially for shitty tasks like raid consumable grinding) then people will fall away from you and you will end up with a guild full of people that can't be arsed to pickup anything (there's no fun in having 80 people in your guild when you're doing all the work).
Delegating responsibility has it's risks and drawbacks and drama may ensue but that's no reason for anyone to turn a game into a job.
And I don't like what I see. One of our generals recently decided that he no longer wanted to be a general, one of our raid leaders decided that he no longer wanted to lead raids, a few members left for their various reasons...
But in all that I never heard a 'why'. No indication of why people were unhappy with their role, why they would choose to leave the guild (well that one chap who ran off with a stack of void crystals didn't need to explain really).
All this isn't new to me. It wasn't any different in ultima online or everquest or any of the other games I played and had the unfortunate role of leadership in.
I know the signs of a burnout, the frustration of having to deal with people that don't want to conform to your idea of how things should be done, the frustration of people outright stealing from you and then running off or people that were previously extremely active all of a sudden dropping from the radar.
Sadly a lot of times it stems from an inability to delegate. Every guild in every game anywhere runs on the back of not 1 but multiple people. There has to be a core to each guild, a core that is willing to pick up the lousy chores that need to be done, a core that is willing to deal with infinite cycles of people leaving and new recruits coming in.
This is not something that can be handled by one person over an extended period of time without that person burning out on the game.
You can't lead a guild, run the raid, do the recruitment, do the farming for raid materials, lead 5-mans and do all the planning surrounding these things yourself without running into the inevitable burnout.
I've been down that road. I learned the hard way that you need to assemble people around you that you can delegate things to. You need to have people around that will put forth the effort and get things done. You need to realize that you can be in control without micro-managing everything that goes on.
Maybe my guild is fine, maybe there are no problems and it's just a temporary hickup that doesn't affect anything... but I don't know... there is no information to be had about things, it's an uphill struggle to get any form of information and any attempt to suggest a little structure is often met by 'why didn't you discuss this first in a whisper to me?'
In the meantime most of the guild lives under the assumption that raid consumables just spawn in the bank rather than costing (probably our gm) a day a week to get it replenished.
I have always run my guilds under an open information policy. Tell your guild what's going on, why people leave, where there's problems. Set out a structure and then actively motivate people to pick up tasks.
As a guild leader you should be 'able' to do anything that's needed but only rarely required to do so because you should actively delegate responsibility to the people that _want_ to do specific things like lead 5-mans or grind mats (yes there are people that enjoy that).
If you don't set out the necessary structure in a guild and reward people for their efforts (especially for shitty tasks like raid consumable grinding) then people will fall away from you and you will end up with a guild full of people that can't be arsed to pickup anything (there's no fun in having 80 people in your guild when you're doing all the work).
Delegating responsibility has it's risks and drawbacks and drama may ensue but that's no reason for anyone to turn a game into a job.
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
Instance Reputation
Every now and then I actually try to post something useful so that the bookmark to my own blog has some use beyond giving me the option to instantly vent on whatever is bothering me at the time.
To this end I have spent a little time mapping out what instances give rep for what faction simply for reference purposes. I for one can never remember which faction requires what instances to be run.
The sources are various but in the end I was able to filch most things from wowwiki in combination with wowhead and a few others. So yes the list exists, probably in a 1000 different places but for my own searching pleasures it can now be found here as well.
Non-horde factions have been conveniently left out because... well... I am lazy and I don't have any alliance characters. Additionally I might've forgotten some factions because I am disorganized too.
Undercity, Orgrimmar, Thunder Bluff, Silvermoon, Darkspear Trolls
No instances to run for these I am afraid. You will however be able to do some repeatable turn in quests for most of these and a lot of quests in Azeroth will boost reputation for these factions.
Shattered Sun Offensive
Large amounts of dailies can give SSO rep. However all instances on the island of quel'danas give SSO rep as well.
Cenarion Expedition
Visit the coilfang reservoir. Any Coilfang instance will do just fine.
The Consortium
The consortium has quest hubs all over outland. The instance to go for rep is Mana Tombs.
Thrallmar
Hellfire citadel instances will all give Thrallmar rep.
Lower City
Lower city rep can be gained in Auchenai crypts, sethekk halls or shadow labyrinth. (terokkar).
The Sha'tar
Anything in Tempest keep will do for Sha'tar rep.
Ashtongue Deathsworn
Faction rep can be gained in the black temple
Keepers of Time
Old Hillsbrad and Black morass are your friends if KoT faction is what you need.
Zandalar Tribe
Zul'Gurub is the place to gain faction rep.
Argent Dawn
Hand in scourgestones or kill mobs in the plaguelands for reputation gain with this faction. No instance runes available.
Aldor / Scryer
Each faction has turn in items to gain rep. There are no instance runs available. Slay demons or blood elves for the required turn in items.
Sha'tari Skyguard
Kill mobs around skettis and do the sha'tari quests. There is no instance to run to gain skyguard rep with.
Mag'har
No instance runs available for rep. Quests in Nagrand and whacking ogres / orcs should gain you some Mag'har rep.
Ogri'la
Another faction you can't gain rep with through instances. There are however (daily) quests that will help with gaining Ogri'la reputation.
Sporeggar
These chaps have a few repeatable quests. Most noteworthy is the collection of plants from the underbog instance which is repeatable.
Cenarion Circle
The lunar festival quests and whacking twilight mobs in silithus will gain you CC rep. There are no instances to run.
Frostwolf Clan, Defilers, Warsong Outriders
These are PVP factions. If you want reputation for these your best bet is to run BattleGrounds. A lot of BGs. Frostwolf clan offers some extra quests and repeatable quests based in or around alterac valley.
Ratchet, Booty Bay, Gadgetzan, Everlook
Neutral factions that have banded together under the name steamwheedle cartel. There's no instance runs available for these. Go to the neutral cities and pick up quests to gain reputation. These factions are tied together, if you cause problems with one of them you will end up having issues with all of them.
To this end I have spent a little time mapping out what instances give rep for what faction simply for reference purposes. I for one can never remember which faction requires what instances to be run.
The sources are various but in the end I was able to filch most things from wowwiki in combination with wowhead and a few others. So yes the list exists, probably in a 1000 different places but for my own searching pleasures it can now be found here as well.
Non-horde factions have been conveniently left out because... well... I am lazy and I don't have any alliance characters. Additionally I might've forgotten some factions because I am disorganized too.
Undercity, Orgrimmar, Thunder Bluff, Silvermoon, Darkspear Trolls
No instances to run for these I am afraid. You will however be able to do some repeatable turn in quests for most of these and a lot of quests in Azeroth will boost reputation for these factions.
Shattered Sun Offensive
Large amounts of dailies can give SSO rep. However all instances on the island of quel'danas give SSO rep as well.
Cenarion Expedition
Visit the coilfang reservoir. Any Coilfang instance will do just fine.
The Consortium
The consortium has quest hubs all over outland. The instance to go for rep is Mana Tombs.
Thrallmar
Hellfire citadel instances will all give Thrallmar rep.
Lower City
Lower city rep can be gained in Auchenai crypts, sethekk halls or shadow labyrinth. (terokkar).
The Sha'tar
Anything in Tempest keep will do for Sha'tar rep.
Ashtongue Deathsworn
Faction rep can be gained in the black temple
Keepers of Time
Old Hillsbrad and Black morass are your friends if KoT faction is what you need.
Zandalar Tribe
Zul'Gurub is the place to gain faction rep.
Argent Dawn
Hand in scourgestones or kill mobs in the plaguelands for reputation gain with this faction. No instance runes available.
Aldor / Scryer
Each faction has turn in items to gain rep. There are no instance runs available. Slay demons or blood elves for the required turn in items.
Sha'tari Skyguard
Kill mobs around skettis and do the sha'tari quests. There is no instance to run to gain skyguard rep with.
Mag'har
No instance runs available for rep. Quests in Nagrand and whacking ogres / orcs should gain you some Mag'har rep.
Ogri'la
Another faction you can't gain rep with through instances. There are however (daily) quests that will help with gaining Ogri'la reputation.
Sporeggar
These chaps have a few repeatable quests. Most noteworthy is the collection of plants from the underbog instance which is repeatable.
Cenarion Circle
The lunar festival quests and whacking twilight mobs in silithus will gain you CC rep. There are no instances to run.
Frostwolf Clan, Defilers, Warsong Outriders
These are PVP factions. If you want reputation for these your best bet is to run BattleGrounds. A lot of BGs. Frostwolf clan offers some extra quests and repeatable quests based in or around alterac valley.
Ratchet, Booty Bay, Gadgetzan, Everlook
Neutral factions that have banded together under the name steamwheedle cartel. There's no instance runs available for these. Go to the neutral cities and pick up quests to gain reputation. These factions are tied together, if you cause problems with one of them you will end up having issues with all of them.
Alpha trees for WotLK leaked
Just a little heads up for those future concious wow-players amongst you. The alpha versions of the new talent trees for Wrath of the Lich King have been leaked and as a result have been splattered all over the place.
Check War Tools and filter on your desired class to get an indication of what's to come.
Mind you the site will be terribly slow for a while until everyone is done staring at the new talent trees.
I leave it up to you to decide whether or not you will enjoy the new talents but personally I am quite excited to see so much movement on the trees including some rather radical re-designs.
As usual I will reserve my commentary for when things are no longer alpha, beta... but fact.
Check War Tools and filter on your desired class to get an indication of what's to come.
Mind you the site will be terribly slow for a while until everyone is done staring at the new talent trees.
I leave it up to you to decide whether or not you will enjoy the new talents but personally I am quite excited to see so much movement on the trees including some rather radical re-designs.
As usual I will reserve my commentary for when things are no longer alpha, beta... but fact.
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
The required Death Knight post
Well it looks like a lot of bloggers have taken a leap of faith into the whole death knight subject. With some preliminary information about skills / talents released there is a lot of speculation going on... on... well pretty much everything.
Will the DK improve the tanking situation?
will everyone roll a death knight on the first day or level a pre-existing char to 80?
Will the death knight make specific classes obsolete?
I am not going to indulge in any speculation. Blizzard will take care that the new class 'fits' into the scheme or over a few dozen patches will fix what they perceive is wrong.
A word of advice to anyone who cares little about speculation and more about the reality of things:
Before the release of the expansion get your characters off of servers that run Northrend and the DK starting zone if you actually want to be able to play at all.
Whether or not people will play the DK extensively and how this affects class balance remains to be seen. One thing however is sure: The day the Death Knight becomes available a lot of people will roll the Death Knight or start their invasion of Northrend.
And wherever there are a lot of people grouped together there will be... you guessed it: oodles of latency.
People will be climbing all over each other to get their quests done, people will be standing around like idiots waiting for mobs to respawn and it'll be one big huge clump of death knights at any potential point of intrest.
The technical aspect of things suggest that where there's too many players there's also bound to be performance issues for the server and potentially crashes.
So unless you don't want to play at all come the expansion, make sure at least some of your characters are safely parked in now outdated and soon to be abandoned zones like outland.
From what I read Azeroth doesn't have a dynamic spawn system either (one that adjust to player density) which will make for even more standing around.
So there we have it, my evaluation of the Death Knight... and I think I'll leave it at that until there's actually something more to report than ZOMG RUNES.
Will the DK improve the tanking situation?
will everyone roll a death knight on the first day or level a pre-existing char to 80?
Will the death knight make specific classes obsolete?
I am not going to indulge in any speculation. Blizzard will take care that the new class 'fits' into the scheme or over a few dozen patches will fix what they perceive is wrong.
A word of advice to anyone who cares little about speculation and more about the reality of things:
Before the release of the expansion get your characters off of servers that run Northrend and the DK starting zone if you actually want to be able to play at all.
Whether or not people will play the DK extensively and how this affects class balance remains to be seen. One thing however is sure: The day the Death Knight becomes available a lot of people will roll the Death Knight or start their invasion of Northrend.
And wherever there are a lot of people grouped together there will be... you guessed it: oodles of latency.
People will be climbing all over each other to get their quests done, people will be standing around like idiots waiting for mobs to respawn and it'll be one big huge clump of death knights at any potential point of intrest.
The technical aspect of things suggest that where there's too many players there's also bound to be performance issues for the server and potentially crashes.
So unless you don't want to play at all come the expansion, make sure at least some of your characters are safely parked in now outdated and soon to be abandoned zones like outland.
From what I read Azeroth doesn't have a dynamic spawn system either (one that adjust to player density) which will make for even more standing around.
So there we have it, my evaluation of the Death Knight... and I think I'll leave it at that until there's actually something more to report than ZOMG RUNES.
Monday, May 19, 2008
Things I thought I'd get
Coming from a long line of games and having seen the advent of some truly great games you tend to build up expectations towards future games.
WoW for me was no different, I had expectations and for the most part these expectations were satisfied by WoW but as always the devil is in the detail. It's the small things that you've seen elsewhere or always dreamed about that simply never made it into wow.
Here's a shortlist of some things I thought I'd get, but never really got:
1. Customization. The character creation screen was the first and last thing that was customizeable on your character. I had expected armor dyes, haircuts, the ability to somehow customize weapons and armor as well as a general feel that your character could change over the time you played it. In truth you can't really afford to sacrifice your gear bonuses to look good, it's not an option for anything but a bank toon.
2. Languages: They're there, there's common, there's orcish, there's gutter speak. There even is a language barrier between factions, and yet I can't go and learn tauren and even if I could it would make no difference.
3. Epic PVP: PVP on a large scale, large NPC + player armies beating the snot out of each other right there, in the middle of all the people doing their daily quests, mining or whatever they choose to do. I wanted a balcony seat, something to watch while I was idling away my time or fishing. World PVP is about as epic as a nubless pacifier as it is now.
4. Progression paths for single player. Yes this is a mmorpg, but from a developer perspective it's really easy to build a few ladders to climb for single player. Single player instances (or two player instances just the same), quest lines that can only be done as a single player (reset if someone else helps) and similar things can really help to tie someone to your game who simply doesn't have the time (or willpower) to sit in queues or have to deal with guilds waiting for pugs.
5. Collectibles: Really, how come there's not more to collect? Why aren't there epic cool looking armor sets that are worth collecting (give them a box so they fit in 1 bank slot)? They don't have to add anything to your character, but who wouldn't want to dress up as Uther lightbringer or a real orcish grunt. Where's our costumes, our collectible coin set? So far you get to collect pets and that's pretty much it unless you want to start setting goals for yourself (collecting mounts for example).
6. A proper crafting system: Something component based so that you can actually manually put together a gun that actually differs depending on the components you use. It's possible, I've written one for Ultima online back in the days so it's not rocket science. A solid component based crafting system can do wonders and will attract the non-fighting people too.
7. Non-combat activities: How come everything I can do at some point requires me to be lvl 35, 50 or 70? There's no way to get experience without fighting (discovery xp doesn't really help) and as a result there's nothing to do for people who don't like to slice & dice monsters. Also the most notable reason why my gf never made it to wow, she doesn't like killing.
8. Re-integration of older content. There's no excuse for azeroth sitting there and rotting away. A good crafting system could bring live back to the old world and the old world instances. There is no one there except bots and people that are levelling. Why not toss some crafting recipes down there with components that can only be gotten there?
9. Ingame games: Where's the ingame games? Can I play a game of chess with other people? (yes bad example)? Can I turn monsters into cards so I can have them fight each other in a virtual game of cards? A few ingame games tied to some collectible items can go a long way to tying players to your game. If they just want to log in for 10 minutes realistically what are they going to do? Fish? Give them something they can play for those 10 minutes.
10. Loot that makes sense: It's one thing finding a club on an orc, it's something entirely different finding a polearm on a buzzard. Loot tables should make sense, if I whack a buzzard I should expect feathers, a beak and maybe something it might've accidentally eaten. If I find a super healing potion and a polearm this kills immersion. You can drop realistic items that can be useful.
That's 10, that's enough (we don't want to sound whiny). There's so many more so feel free to add your own.
WoW for me was no different, I had expectations and for the most part these expectations were satisfied by WoW but as always the devil is in the detail. It's the small things that you've seen elsewhere or always dreamed about that simply never made it into wow.
Here's a shortlist of some things I thought I'd get, but never really got:
1. Customization. The character creation screen was the first and last thing that was customizeable on your character. I had expected armor dyes, haircuts, the ability to somehow customize weapons and armor as well as a general feel that your character could change over the time you played it. In truth you can't really afford to sacrifice your gear bonuses to look good, it's not an option for anything but a bank toon.
2. Languages: They're there, there's common, there's orcish, there's gutter speak. There even is a language barrier between factions, and yet I can't go and learn tauren and even if I could it would make no difference.
3. Epic PVP: PVP on a large scale, large NPC + player armies beating the snot out of each other right there, in the middle of all the people doing their daily quests, mining or whatever they choose to do. I wanted a balcony seat, something to watch while I was idling away my time or fishing. World PVP is about as epic as a nubless pacifier as it is now.
4. Progression paths for single player. Yes this is a mmorpg, but from a developer perspective it's really easy to build a few ladders to climb for single player. Single player instances (or two player instances just the same), quest lines that can only be done as a single player (reset if someone else helps) and similar things can really help to tie someone to your game who simply doesn't have the time (or willpower) to sit in queues or have to deal with guilds waiting for pugs.
5. Collectibles: Really, how come there's not more to collect? Why aren't there epic cool looking armor sets that are worth collecting (give them a box so they fit in 1 bank slot)? They don't have to add anything to your character, but who wouldn't want to dress up as Uther lightbringer or a real orcish grunt. Where's our costumes, our collectible coin set? So far you get to collect pets and that's pretty much it unless you want to start setting goals for yourself (collecting mounts for example).
6. A proper crafting system: Something component based so that you can actually manually put together a gun that actually differs depending on the components you use. It's possible, I've written one for Ultima online back in the days so it's not rocket science. A solid component based crafting system can do wonders and will attract the non-fighting people too.
7. Non-combat activities: How come everything I can do at some point requires me to be lvl 35, 50 or 70? There's no way to get experience without fighting (discovery xp doesn't really help) and as a result there's nothing to do for people who don't like to slice & dice monsters. Also the most notable reason why my gf never made it to wow, she doesn't like killing.
8. Re-integration of older content. There's no excuse for azeroth sitting there and rotting away. A good crafting system could bring live back to the old world and the old world instances. There is no one there except bots and people that are levelling. Why not toss some crafting recipes down there with components that can only be gotten there?
9. Ingame games: Where's the ingame games? Can I play a game of chess with other people? (yes bad example)? Can I turn monsters into cards so I can have them fight each other in a virtual game of cards? A few ingame games tied to some collectible items can go a long way to tying players to your game. If they just want to log in for 10 minutes realistically what are they going to do? Fish? Give them something they can play for those 10 minutes.
10. Loot that makes sense: It's one thing finding a club on an orc, it's something entirely different finding a polearm on a buzzard. Loot tables should make sense, if I whack a buzzard I should expect feathers, a beak and maybe something it might've accidentally eaten. If I find a super healing potion and a polearm this kills immersion. You can drop realistic items that can be useful.
That's 10, that's enough (we don't want to sound whiny). There's so many more so feel free to add your own.
Friday, May 9, 2008
The Art of Warlock
warlock
O.E. wærloga "traitor, liar, enemy," from wær "faith, a compact" (cf. O.H.G. wara "truth," O.N. varar "solemn promise, vow;" see very; cf. also Varangian) + agent noun related to leogan "to lie" (see lie (v.1)). Original primary sense seems to have been "oath-breaker;" given special application to the devil (c.1000), but also used of giants and cannibals. Meaning "one in league with the devil" is recorded from c.1300. Ending in -ck and meaning "male equivalent of witch" (1568) are from Scottish.
I used to be a Roleplayer (RP) in days long past and a lot of times playing games these days that are completely devoid of RP the urge often strikes me to give a little bit more depth to the characters I play.
So I looked up the definition of a warlock, took another look at the options I have in WoW and decided to 'amplify' the RP aspect of my warlock a bit.
Of course as in all things I had to strike a balance between 'evil warlockness' and earning myself a swift /gkick.
So here it is, the compendium of warlockness. The art of being a miserable creature of evil in the wonderful world of warlocks euh... warcraft.
Premise
These people are not your friends. In fact they hate you. They hate the fact that you drain souls, drain life, drain mana, cast fear, dots and do more damage than a mage without even as much as breaking a sweat. They hate the fact that your DPSness can be self-sufficient and they have been crying to nerf you since the advent of time itself.
And yet they force you into their pitiful alliances to exploit our ability to summon, enslave and banish. These people are not your friends, at best they are cumbersome tools present only to serve you... the warlock.
General Behaviour guidelines
1. Every kill is worth it. Be it rat, monster, elite, boss or guild member every kill is good and the gorier the better. A warlock should never pass up the opportunity to inflict a random death upon some unsuspecting stranger. Souls power our dark arts and there is no finer glove than that made out of fluffy bunnies. When in doubt: eat babies.
2. Never quite do exactly what someone wants. Someone needs a healthstone? Rank 1 will do just fine. Someone needs a summon? Only over a lava pit. You are not a vending machine... your powers are far more precious than to waste on some silly party member who thinks he's entitled to some buff. If something needs done then it deserves to be done badly.
3. Talk to yourself or your imp. No one else is really worthy of your time nor will ever understand the infinite wisdom that is the warlock mind. All whispers should be treated like email, read, but only answered when you feel like it. Questions are preferably answered with questions and any whisper that can't be warped into something completely off-topic is most likely not worth answering.
4. Never do nothing. Die running, annoy people with your eye of kilrogg, send your imp packing to the very end of the instance... do something, anything. Lesser being sit and drink, warlocks have better things to do.
5. There is no shame in death. You're a warlock, death is part of life. Seek out death in creative ways. The more you die the more you will come to understand life.
Spells & Talents
There's a wide variety of spells available to the warlock. Each with their unique ability but while most are quite clearly used to smite unsuspecting foes or infect passer-by's with a nifty affliction some have hidden utility.
Healthstone: Max rank healthstones should be reserved for personal use. If other people were meant to have healthstones then they would be able to create them themselves. Rival DPS should always be given a rank 1 healthstone to maximize their deaths and minimize their competition on the damage charts. Other ranks of healthstones should simply be distributed according to your whim. Reward those that serve you well, downgrade or even simply forget the ones that are more interested in their own goals or god-forbid work for the good of the guild.
Soulstones: Generally soulstones should be reserved for yourself. Your soulstone ideally should be on cooldown or on pretend cooldown whenever someone asks for it. When in doubt sell your soulstone to the highest bidder outside your raid group / party.
When forced to apply a soulstone because the RL has determined that it's obviously off cooldown 'accidentally' target the person that requested it rather than the target that was supposed to get the soulstone. Pretend you didn't notice.
Hellfire: When there is even the slightest indication that your group may die (usually indicated by the MT falling on his/her face) run out of range of your healers whilst lifetapping and then commit suicide via hellfire. Due to the nature of the spell a death by hellfire counts as a death by player and does not incur a durability penalty. Should your group happen to win despite your estimation you will still be able to loot the enemy, should your group fail miserably then you just saved yourself a repair bill.
Rain of fire: Whenever your group is fighting enemies that can cast rain of fire you should remember your own rain of fire spell. Cast a rank 1 rain of fire on your healers or DPS to demonstrate the superiority of DoT based combat. Leave no chance un-taken to disturb DPSers that rely on casting time.
Ritual of Summoning: Some uncreative warlocks consider this the bane of their existance. Requests for summons come frequently but will subside following these simple rules: A ritual of summoning portal should always appear over a cliff, a large pool of lava, within aggro range of at least 1 high level elite, at least 1000 yards underwater or some other undesireable / remote location. Always reject a request for a summon and never supply a reason that makes sense ("I am sorry, I can't summon you since you don't have a translocator beacon"). When a warlock is treated as a cab service the trip should always cost the customer it's life.
Eye of Kilrogg: A vastly underestimated warlock tool. Use it to peek up lady's dresses, jump it up and down in front of the maintank to disturb his vision and as an indication that he's not fast enough. And with enough patience and practice it can even be used to pull elites. Of course when pulling monsters pull them 'away' from the party so that when the eye finally does disappear the pulled mob will leesh back to it's original position hopefully just as the unsuspecting main tank pulls the next squad of mobs.
Summon Imp: There is no greater ally in your endevours than your pet imp. Nothing can touch a phased imp and in combination with the eye of kilrogg it is a tool that can wipe even the best of parties. Send your eye past the next room, target a mob and send your imp to attack. The imp, phased as he is, will run past a whole bunch of mobs without aggroing them, finally die to the target it was supposed to attack thus resulting in a chain reaction of mobs heading your way.
The imps fire shield can also be used to endlessly annoy a specific party member. With no cooldown and a very low mana cost it can be recast ad-infinitum on the same target resulting in a large fiery shield appearing above their head time and time again. Ideal timing (for example just before a pull) often results in a party member with severely frayed nerve endings exposed.
Fear: Fear instills fear in even the best of groups. Fear is seen as the universal uncontrollable CC, hated in pvp for it's utility and shunned in instances for it's tendency to send a mob packing into other mobs. What few people other than warlocks know is that fear can indeed be cancelled by a swift curse of recklessness. As a result a warlock should fear hard and fear often creating as much chaos as possible. Most classes are not equipped to deal with feared targets very well, a warlock whose practiced in the arts on the other hand can easily juggle 2 or 3 feared targets in a very controlled manner. Don't let the elitists tell you what to do, fear is the panultimate CC and not using it is a crime.
Howl of Terror: Hit it, hit it often, call it an accident if you will or blame the priest. Howl of terror is ideal in situations where you are under attack, it sends the mobs packing and gives you valuable time to commit a hellfire suicide. Just because the tank died doesn't mean you have to be killed by some stupid monster. Avoid repair bills at all cost, there's no shame in using abilities you have.
Searing pain: A spell with surprising utility. Not only is it fairly well spammable it also leaves no trace in the air of it's origin. Stand in a ditch and spam dots and searing pain all day on unsuspecting passer's by without the to-be-lamented trace of dirt in the air that shadow bolts and other spells leave. Also highly useful in situations where people claim that their threat is far superior to yours... Frustrate the main tank to no end who will forever wonder why in the blazes he can't create enough threat to hold aggro away from you.
Unending breath: Yet another spell with surprising utility. Encourage your party members to swim in the ocean. Hand out unending breath, liberally... but only once. Lesser beings will forget that the buff has a duration or will expect you to rebuff when it runs out. This of course will never happen.
... To be continued.
O.E. wærloga "traitor, liar, enemy," from wær "faith, a compact" (cf. O.H.G. wara "truth," O.N. varar "solemn promise, vow;" see very; cf. also Varangian) + agent noun related to leogan "to lie" (see lie (v.1)). Original primary sense seems to have been "oath-breaker;" given special application to the devil (c.1000), but also used of giants and cannibals. Meaning "one in league with the devil" is recorded from c.1300. Ending in -ck and meaning "male equivalent of witch" (1568) are from Scottish.
I used to be a Roleplayer (RP) in days long past and a lot of times playing games these days that are completely devoid of RP the urge often strikes me to give a little bit more depth to the characters I play.
So I looked up the definition of a warlock, took another look at the options I have in WoW and decided to 'amplify' the RP aspect of my warlock a bit.
Of course as in all things I had to strike a balance between 'evil warlockness' and earning myself a swift /gkick.
So here it is, the compendium of warlockness. The art of being a miserable creature of evil in the wonderful world of warlocks euh... warcraft.
Premise
These people are not your friends. In fact they hate you. They hate the fact that you drain souls, drain life, drain mana, cast fear, dots and do more damage than a mage without even as much as breaking a sweat. They hate the fact that your DPSness can be self-sufficient and they have been crying to nerf you since the advent of time itself.
And yet they force you into their pitiful alliances to exploit our ability to summon, enslave and banish. These people are not your friends, at best they are cumbersome tools present only to serve you... the warlock.
General Behaviour guidelines
1. Every kill is worth it. Be it rat, monster, elite, boss or guild member every kill is good and the gorier the better. A warlock should never pass up the opportunity to inflict a random death upon some unsuspecting stranger. Souls power our dark arts and there is no finer glove than that made out of fluffy bunnies. When in doubt: eat babies.
2. Never quite do exactly what someone wants. Someone needs a healthstone? Rank 1 will do just fine. Someone needs a summon? Only over a lava pit. You are not a vending machine... your powers are far more precious than to waste on some silly party member who thinks he's entitled to some buff. If something needs done then it deserves to be done badly.
3. Talk to yourself or your imp. No one else is really worthy of your time nor will ever understand the infinite wisdom that is the warlock mind. All whispers should be treated like email, read, but only answered when you feel like it. Questions are preferably answered with questions and any whisper that can't be warped into something completely off-topic is most likely not worth answering.
4. Never do nothing. Die running, annoy people with your eye of kilrogg, send your imp packing to the very end of the instance... do something, anything. Lesser being sit and drink, warlocks have better things to do.
5. There is no shame in death. You're a warlock, death is part of life. Seek out death in creative ways. The more you die the more you will come to understand life.
Spells & Talents
There's a wide variety of spells available to the warlock. Each with their unique ability but while most are quite clearly used to smite unsuspecting foes or infect passer-by's with a nifty affliction some have hidden utility.
Healthstone: Max rank healthstones should be reserved for personal use. If other people were meant to have healthstones then they would be able to create them themselves. Rival DPS should always be given a rank 1 healthstone to maximize their deaths and minimize their competition on the damage charts. Other ranks of healthstones should simply be distributed according to your whim. Reward those that serve you well, downgrade or even simply forget the ones that are more interested in their own goals or god-forbid work for the good of the guild.
Soulstones: Generally soulstones should be reserved for yourself. Your soulstone ideally should be on cooldown or on pretend cooldown whenever someone asks for it. When in doubt sell your soulstone to the highest bidder outside your raid group / party.
When forced to apply a soulstone because the RL has determined that it's obviously off cooldown 'accidentally' target the person that requested it rather than the target that was supposed to get the soulstone. Pretend you didn't notice.
Hellfire: When there is even the slightest indication that your group may die (usually indicated by the MT falling on his/her face) run out of range of your healers whilst lifetapping and then commit suicide via hellfire. Due to the nature of the spell a death by hellfire counts as a death by player and does not incur a durability penalty. Should your group happen to win despite your estimation you will still be able to loot the enemy, should your group fail miserably then you just saved yourself a repair bill.
Rain of fire: Whenever your group is fighting enemies that can cast rain of fire you should remember your own rain of fire spell. Cast a rank 1 rain of fire on your healers or DPS to demonstrate the superiority of DoT based combat. Leave no chance un-taken to disturb DPSers that rely on casting time.
Ritual of Summoning: Some uncreative warlocks consider this the bane of their existance. Requests for summons come frequently but will subside following these simple rules: A ritual of summoning portal should always appear over a cliff, a large pool of lava, within aggro range of at least 1 high level elite, at least 1000 yards underwater or some other undesireable / remote location. Always reject a request for a summon and never supply a reason that makes sense ("I am sorry, I can't summon you since you don't have a translocator beacon"). When a warlock is treated as a cab service the trip should always cost the customer it's life.
Eye of Kilrogg: A vastly underestimated warlock tool. Use it to peek up lady's dresses, jump it up and down in front of the maintank to disturb his vision and as an indication that he's not fast enough. And with enough patience and practice it can even be used to pull elites. Of course when pulling monsters pull them 'away' from the party so that when the eye finally does disappear the pulled mob will leesh back to it's original position hopefully just as the unsuspecting main tank pulls the next squad of mobs.
Summon Imp: There is no greater ally in your endevours than your pet imp. Nothing can touch a phased imp and in combination with the eye of kilrogg it is a tool that can wipe even the best of parties. Send your eye past the next room, target a mob and send your imp to attack. The imp, phased as he is, will run past a whole bunch of mobs without aggroing them, finally die to the target it was supposed to attack thus resulting in a chain reaction of mobs heading your way.
The imps fire shield can also be used to endlessly annoy a specific party member. With no cooldown and a very low mana cost it can be recast ad-infinitum on the same target resulting in a large fiery shield appearing above their head time and time again. Ideal timing (for example just before a pull) often results in a party member with severely frayed nerve endings exposed.
Fear: Fear instills fear in even the best of groups. Fear is seen as the universal uncontrollable CC, hated in pvp for it's utility and shunned in instances for it's tendency to send a mob packing into other mobs. What few people other than warlocks know is that fear can indeed be cancelled by a swift curse of recklessness. As a result a warlock should fear hard and fear often creating as much chaos as possible. Most classes are not equipped to deal with feared targets very well, a warlock whose practiced in the arts on the other hand can easily juggle 2 or 3 feared targets in a very controlled manner. Don't let the elitists tell you what to do, fear is the panultimate CC and not using it is a crime.
Howl of Terror: Hit it, hit it often, call it an accident if you will or blame the priest. Howl of terror is ideal in situations where you are under attack, it sends the mobs packing and gives you valuable time to commit a hellfire suicide. Just because the tank died doesn't mean you have to be killed by some stupid monster. Avoid repair bills at all cost, there's no shame in using abilities you have.
Searing pain: A spell with surprising utility. Not only is it fairly well spammable it also leaves no trace in the air of it's origin. Stand in a ditch and spam dots and searing pain all day on unsuspecting passer's by without the to-be-lamented trace of dirt in the air that shadow bolts and other spells leave. Also highly useful in situations where people claim that their threat is far superior to yours... Frustrate the main tank to no end who will forever wonder why in the blazes he can't create enough threat to hold aggro away from you.
Unending breath: Yet another spell with surprising utility. Encourage your party members to swim in the ocean. Hand out unending breath, liberally... but only once. Lesser beings will forget that the buff has a duration or will expect you to rebuff when it runs out. This of course will never happen.
... To be continued.
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
Season 4 projected impact
Lets start this month off with an article on the much discussed changes for wow PVP season 4 and lets see if we can't predict how these changes will affect the general playing populace.
Let me begin by saying: I suck at PVP. I do battlegrounds for fun and use the arena merely to scrounge up some of these so called wellfare epics. Team compositions are completely random (whomever feels like playing) and none of us have decent gear or a pvp oriented spec...
In short, we're raiders at a 1200 - 1500 rating doing arena's for a good laugh and about 250-300 arena points a week.
Which means there's limits to what we can achieve. Let me also state that this is fine. I have no sense of entitlement when it comes to gear. I take what I can get and beyond that I don't worry too much.
So lets recap a few blue posts and see what is actually going to change:
"When Season 4 begins, Season 3 items will be reduced in personal and team arena rating requirement to:
Shoulders: 1950
Weapon: 1800
The new Season 4 items will have the below personal and team arena rating requirements:
Shoulders: 2200
Weapon: 2050
Head: 1700
Chest: 1600
Legs: 1550
Gloves: none
Off-hand: none
In addition, some of the Season 4 quality items that will be purchasable with honor will also carry a personal and team arena rating requirement:
Boots: 1700
Ring: 1650
Bracers: 1575
Belt: none
Necklace: none
Trinket: none
The Season 2 items, which will move to the honor system when Season 4 begins, will continue to have no rating requirement."
So nothing really unusual on the top end of things. Season 4 comes in with high-ish rating requirements, pushing the rating requirements for season 3 down. On the bottom end of things however there is a significant change. A new set of quality items (like the vindicator items ) will be introduced to the honor / token vendors but these will in part also require ratings.
Looking back at my arena team I can pretty confidently say that we will never go past 1500 since our team composition changes regularly and without a proper team you really don't have much chance in the arena.
We all know BG items can be ground out in a matter of days, the quality items will exceed the average team rating so will be unobtainable for us So from an arena perspective that leaves us looking at full S3 minus the weapon and the shoulders, as well as the gloves from S4 (and off-hand if you are so inclined).
That comes down to approximately 6k arena points needed (probably less) to get everything that's obtainable depending on your needs / desires.
Which means for the first couple of months really nothing will change. The grind for points will continue as normal. But as my team and many other casual teams ( /leechers for you hardcore pvp'ers) get their S4 gloves, have what they need from the S3 section their desire to arena will start to crack.
They're at the point where they can only purchase more items if their personal / team rating is high enough and since their team make-up is more often than not far from ideal and regularly includes members that don't want to respec to a pvp build teams will start falling apart.
After all, why play something which doesn't have any rewards? If you can't hit the rating needed for the item then you can have 5k arena points, 75k honor and 100 marks of each bg and they still won't do you any good.
At that point a lot of teams will simply give up. There's nothing to be gotten from pvp anymore until the next season begins and the only sympathy casual teams can expect from hardcore pvp players is 'l2play' because according to them it is 'easy' to get a rating of around 1800.
The true nature of the beast however is that there are a lot of teams that don't even break 1500, let alone 1800 and these teams will simply stop pvp-ing.
Arena's however are a lot like a ladder... if you take out the secion rated 1200 or lower the people at rating 1200 - 1500 will have a harder time winning matches because all the sucky teams are already gone.
They will become the new 1200 rated teams... briefly wondering what the hell happened and then simply stop playing because well... they already have their S4 gloves and their rating is now permanently stuck at 1200 - 1400.
With the lower teams now either forced to play arena for the heck of it (because it's so much fun *caughyeahrightcaugh*) or forced to look elsewhere for progress the lower end of the arena ladder will completely unravel.
And as lower rated teams start leaving the higher rated teams will slowly drop down the ladder because simply put: without losers there can be no winners. Resulting in overall lower ratings (except maybe for the top 5%).
Much like the combat table this means that high rating teams will be actively pushing lower teams down (by winning) and the lowest rated teams will eventually be pushed off the ladder entirely because there's nothing for them to get anymore.
This means that the actual arena system will be dependant on the amount of time people need to get the items they can get before falling off the ladder. If there's enough items to 'grind out' so that people don't finish grinding before the next season comes the system will work.
If the players run out of things to get before the next season starts the entire system will literally collapse on top of itself.
Lets hope big blue is capable of handling the timing on this one, because the whole thing just got a lot more time dependant than it was before.
Let me begin by saying: I suck at PVP. I do battlegrounds for fun and use the arena merely to scrounge up some of these so called wellfare epics. Team compositions are completely random (whomever feels like playing) and none of us have decent gear or a pvp oriented spec...
In short, we're raiders at a 1200 - 1500 rating doing arena's for a good laugh and about 250-300 arena points a week.
Which means there's limits to what we can achieve. Let me also state that this is fine. I have no sense of entitlement when it comes to gear. I take what I can get and beyond that I don't worry too much.
So lets recap a few blue posts and see what is actually going to change:
"When Season 4 begins, Season 3 items will be reduced in personal and team arena rating requirement to:
Shoulders: 1950
Weapon: 1800
The new Season 4 items will have the below personal and team arena rating requirements:
Shoulders: 2200
Weapon: 2050
Head: 1700
Chest: 1600
Legs: 1550
Gloves: none
Off-hand: none
In addition, some of the Season 4 quality items that will be purchasable with honor will also carry a personal and team arena rating requirement:
Boots: 1700
Ring: 1650
Bracers: 1575
Belt: none
Necklace: none
Trinket: none
The Season 2 items, which will move to the honor system when Season 4 begins, will continue to have no rating requirement."
So nothing really unusual on the top end of things. Season 4 comes in with high-ish rating requirements, pushing the rating requirements for season 3 down. On the bottom end of things however there is a significant change. A new set of quality items (like the vindicator items ) will be introduced to the honor / token vendors but these will in part also require ratings.
Looking back at my arena team I can pretty confidently say that we will never go past 1500 since our team composition changes regularly and without a proper team you really don't have much chance in the arena.
We all know BG items can be ground out in a matter of days, the quality items will exceed the average team rating so will be unobtainable for us So from an arena perspective that leaves us looking at full S3 minus the weapon and the shoulders, as well as the gloves from S4 (and off-hand if you are so inclined).
That comes down to approximately 6k arena points needed (probably less) to get everything that's obtainable depending on your needs / desires.
Which means for the first couple of months really nothing will change. The grind for points will continue as normal. But as my team and many other casual teams ( /leechers for you hardcore pvp'ers) get their S4 gloves, have what they need from the S3 section their desire to arena will start to crack.
They're at the point where they can only purchase more items if their personal / team rating is high enough and since their team make-up is more often than not far from ideal and regularly includes members that don't want to respec to a pvp build teams will start falling apart.
After all, why play something which doesn't have any rewards? If you can't hit the rating needed for the item then you can have 5k arena points, 75k honor and 100 marks of each bg and they still won't do you any good.
At that point a lot of teams will simply give up. There's nothing to be gotten from pvp anymore until the next season begins and the only sympathy casual teams can expect from hardcore pvp players is 'l2play' because according to them it is 'easy' to get a rating of around 1800.
The true nature of the beast however is that there are a lot of teams that don't even break 1500, let alone 1800 and these teams will simply stop pvp-ing.
Arena's however are a lot like a ladder... if you take out the secion rated 1200 or lower the people at rating 1200 - 1500 will have a harder time winning matches because all the sucky teams are already gone.
They will become the new 1200 rated teams... briefly wondering what the hell happened and then simply stop playing because well... they already have their S4 gloves and their rating is now permanently stuck at 1200 - 1400.
With the lower teams now either forced to play arena for the heck of it (because it's so much fun *caughyeahrightcaugh*) or forced to look elsewhere for progress the lower end of the arena ladder will completely unravel.
And as lower rated teams start leaving the higher rated teams will slowly drop down the ladder because simply put: without losers there can be no winners. Resulting in overall lower ratings (except maybe for the top 5%).
Much like the combat table this means that high rating teams will be actively pushing lower teams down (by winning) and the lowest rated teams will eventually be pushed off the ladder entirely because there's nothing for them to get anymore.
This means that the actual arena system will be dependant on the amount of time people need to get the items they can get before falling off the ladder. If there's enough items to 'grind out' so that people don't finish grinding before the next season comes the system will work.
If the players run out of things to get before the next season starts the entire system will literally collapse on top of itself.
Lets hope big blue is capable of handling the timing on this one, because the whole thing just got a lot more time dependant than it was before.
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