Project Lore

Blizzard released some more information on the new battleground that will be coming out in the 3.2. The first thing to really notice is that it is a return to form, of sorts, to the 'bigger' battles. With the release of WotLK we saw the release of Wintergrasp which is only held back by how many players the server can handle (which had a recent change to hopefully alleviate that), alongside the new battleground Strand of the Ancients which was a departure from the typical BG with the inclusion of vehicles. With Isle of Conquest Blizzard is opening a battleground that will support 40 on 40 player battles (the same as Alterac Valley holds). Siege weapons will make an appearance of course (SotA, Wintergrasp), alongside capturable locations (AB, EotS, SotA) which will open access to bigger and better siege weapons. One of the more interesting new vehicles is the Glaive Thrower which sounds as if you can assault the keep walls with it, or load up some friends and shoot them over the walls to engage the enemy directly! The system overall for this battleground seems to be very similar to the new design of AV in that the reinforcements are tied to how many people have died on your side in the battleground. I'm sure this is to prevent those epic seven hour AV sessions that were had before many of the initial changes (oh the good old days). But enough of me talking about the new battleground, why not check out the details Vaneras over at the WoW Europe Forums posted:

An island somewhere off the shores of Northrend. A rock, hardly worth a second look. But as insignificant as it may seem, this is no ordinary place. A sound of thunder as waves crash endlessly against rocky cliffs; a sound of fury as swords clash on the blood-stained fields of this island on the edge of forever. Welcome to the Isle of Conquest. The ongoing struggle between Horde and Alliance has turned many once peaceful (and some not-so peaceful) places into theaters of constant war. The Isle of Conquest is the latest such place, set to be the location of a battle of epic proportions over the island's precious resources. An Alliance and a Horde general are fighting for dominance, overseeing the action from the safety of their keeps. Whichever side manages to eliminate the enemy general first will triumph on the island; failure to protect your leader will bring shame, dishonor, and defeat. There is no peace accord here, and it’s an all-out war between the factions. Once More into the breach... Isle of Conquest, a new battleground scheduled to make its debut in the upcoming content patch, Call of the Crusade, will pitch teams of up to 40 players against each other in a massive battle over this small island off Northrend's northern coast. To win, your team will need to make use of the island's unique strategic locations including an oil derrick, a siege workshop, and a fully equipped airship hangar. You will deploy devastating siege weaponry on the field; Light have mercy on anyone caught between you and your ultimate target, the general holed up in the enemy keep. There are five points of interest on the Isle of Conquest for the factions to battle over. Each one offers its own benefits and strategic value. Which one will you claim for your side, and will it be enough to ensure victory? Capture Locations Consider your options before storming out of your keep to confront the enemy head-on. Spread throughout the Isle of Conquest are several capturable locations (as seen on the map), each granting a unique strategic advantage to your team. The Oil Derrick: Located on the northwestern end of the island, this smudge in the Frozen Sea produces enough black gold to run a thousand siege engines. Taking this resource garners precious reinforcements and a continuous flow of honor to the side that controls it. The Cobalt Mine: This snow-covered assembly, located on the southeastern end of the island, hides untapped supplies that must be harvested. Taking this resource grants reinforcements and a continuous flow of honor to the side that controls it. The Docks: The western shore's docks will further expand your selection of siege weapons with the devastating new Glaive Thrower and the Catapult. Unleash the destruction of the Glaive Thrower upon the walls of the keep, or launch your invading party over the walls to assault the keep from within. The Airship Hangar: This sturdy steel structure stands on the peak of Mt. Conquest overlooking the eastern side of the island, allowing players to board the airship docked there. This devastating weapon of war is capable of raining death upon the heads of your enemies and destroying enemy defenses. Once onboard the airship, players will find it comes equipped with parachutes enabling a strike team to drop into the enemy keep from above. The Siege Workshop: Situated right between the Alliance base and the Horde base, this siege workshop occupies a strategic hot spot. Seizing it grants the controlling party the ability to utilize an arsenal of siege vehicles perfectly suited to reducing the enemy keep’s walls to dust and ashes. Graveyards: There are five graveyards in the Isle of Conquest that are attached to different points of interest on the map: the Horde base, the Alliance base, an oil spill island in the center of the map (attached to the siege workshop), the northeast corner (attached to the airship hangar), and the southwest corner (attached to the docks). Main Objectives The Keeps: The Horde and Alliance keeps sit at opposite ends of the island. These citadels host four easily accessible defensive cannons set on the ramparts, capable of unleashing hot fury onto oncoming attackers. Additional explosives sit safely stowed in the base of the keep along the back wall. At least, they’re safe as long as they don’t fall into enemy hands. If they do, though, they can be employed to bring the stone walls down from within. The General: Holed up behind the keeps' massive walls, the generals command their forces from a position of relative safety. Should the keep fall and the general be slain, the Isle of Conquest will fall to the victor. Reinforcements: Isle of Conquest uses a reinforcements system similar to that of Alterac Valley. The clock is ticking and every individual counts. If too many of your comrades fall to the enemy the battle will end in defeat. Killing enemy players will reduce their reinforcements by one for each kill, Once your faction’s reinforcements reach their limit, so too does your bid for control of the island and the wealth of resources you’ve fought so hard over. An island somewhere off the shores of Northrend. A rock, hardly worth a second look. A test of strength. A chance to prove your might, to crush your enemies, to make a difference, a chance for endless glory and conquest. Will you seize it?

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So by now we have all heard about the great stuff coming in patch 3.2. While mount changes, battlegrounds, and dailies are fun and all… I wanted to take a second to talk about what, to me, is the most exciting thing about any content patch. The new raid!

As many of you have figured out by now, raiding is really what I play this game for so naturally I want as many details on the new Crusaders Colosseum as possible. Unfortunately at this point, details are a bit lacking. So that just leaves me to do one thing: make wild assumptions based on too little information and discuss possibilities that may have no basis in fact!

So let me first say this. I am a bit skeptical about this whole “ring of blood, but more epic” thing. When we first heard about Ulduar the possibilities seemed limitless. It was a huge dungeon with a great story 14 bosses tons of hard modes. Sounded great! This on the other hand sounds like it could very well be a hole in the wall that bosses come out of.

Perhaps that is what some people want. No trash, no dungeons to walk through, just one room where bosses come and drop their loot. I honestly hope this isn’t the case. To me raiding a new dungeon is more about the experience than just the bosses. It’s no wonder some of my favorite raids of all time are the ones with story and tons of design like Karazhan, Black Temple, and even Ulduar.

In my mind the only basis for comparison I can even think for the new Colloseum would maybe be Violet Hold, or perhaps on a bigger scale Mount Hyjal. Those were both dungeons when the mobs and bosses came to you. But if Blizzard is comparing this to Ring of Blood (which we have already done 3 times by the way), then it makes me question if trash will even be in the equation. Seems a bit lazy from a design perspective.

I guess we can only hope for some really interesting boss fights to hold us over until Icecrown. While I’m not totally discouraged just yet, let me say I can only hope that Blizzard has some good tricks up their sleeve.

Until we get more details all we can do is wonder. So what do you guys think?

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I hate to be the bringer of bad news, but it looks like one of the greatest points of contention regarding the recently announced mount changes for 3.2 will continue to upset players of WoW. In comments both on my post here at Project Lore and on the official WoW forums, posters have begrudged the major price dips for mounts because they had to pay so much more when they bought their mounts. Some have gone so far as to suggest (or demand, in some cases) that Blizzard refund their in-game gold. Not surprisingly, blue poster Zarhym has responded to these requests in a couple of different places in the forums. After the complaints started rolling in Wednesday, he said:

"We have no plans of offering in-game gold refunds on item costs to compensate for this content change, as has always been our policy."

Later on,  in an individual thread asking for refunds, he expanded on that point:

"It's truly a great thing that online gaming has expanded to the point where a game can grow and evolve over time with new content. As a gaming company, we can look back with hind sight and make changes to update older content within the context of everything that has come since. Several times over this has led to price adjustments in a number of areas, and we do not reimburse items or money due to changes in content. There are simply too many variables and too many changes each content patch to attempt to compensate anyone who's been negatively affected by a change."

Now this doesn't seem like a hugely unexpected revelation. As he said, I can't think of any other time that Blizzard has made any overarching gold refunds for in-game price adjustments. I'm also not sure that anything has ever decreased in price across-the-board this drastically before, but I can't say for sure. But still, this has been a major point that has players up in arms, and it probably will continue to be controversial. I predict that all the hoopla will die down once patch 3.2 comes out (whenever that is - it may still be awhile), and people start getting cheap-ass mounts for their level 20 alts. Plus, all those other changes that also are planned for 3.2! Personally, I can't wait. One thing I'm still undecided on - what's the verdict for all of you who are on the verge of buying your mount? Do you wait for the patch, however long that may be? Or do you shovel out the cash so you can get the benefit of faster travel now? And if you do, will you QQ about it?

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I admit that little of Blizzard's new raiding philosophy has sat well with me, so when details started trickling in about the next major content patch, you can imagine that I had a few beefs. Most notably, this little nugget:

Crusaders' Coliseum: In order to prepare for a siege on Icecrown Citadel, players will be called by the Argent Crusade to test their mettle in the Coliseum. 5-player, 10-player, and 25-player challenges await inside.

With the wealth of raiding content added in Burning Crusade, am I the only one that feels like Blizz has been sort of phoning it in? Sure, Ulduar's a fantastic instance, but Naxxramas really did feel like recycled content. Remarkably few people experienced its first iteration, and it was nice to smash Kel'Thuzad's face in, but the feel and design screamed "hand-me-down." Likewise, before Wrath hit the market, we knew Ulduar was on the horizon and were told that the doors to Icecrown Citadel would creak open with the release of 3.3, but Blizzard also hinted at a mystery raid that would appear sometime in-between. Now they're telling us it's the Argent Coliseum, a raid instance that Blue Zarhym describes as "Ring of Blood or Amphitheater of Anguish, but more epic" is the only bone being thrown? You call that a raid dungeon?! A raider's appetite is voracious (just ask Ensidia), and the meatier the content, the happier we're going to be! I hate to take a Blue's words at face value -- after all, they're just trying to help and don't necessarily represent the company as a whole -- but "another Ring of Blood" doesn't exactly inspire. You've already got three of those in various areas of Northrend! Coliseum-style quest lines are all fine and dandy for a few extra boxcars on the leveling train (as I sometimes describe my experience bar), but as a raid instance? I'm not so sure. Those raid designers are going to have to work some juju to convince me. Really, though, it just feels symptomatic of a greater malady. Hard modes? Who wouldn't want to see whole new encounters as opposed to a few over-charged bosses? It smacks of the same sort of lazy design most developers use to "enhance replayability" in their games by juicing the enemies and nerfing the player. A true Hard Mode works great with well-coded AI that becomes more and more devious as the difficulty scales higher, but the structure of WoW's PvE gameplay doesn't lend itself to those sorts of augmentations. Bosses are clockwork machines that work either on strict timers or random number generators. It's easy to strategize for them, and from there it's mere player execution. The path is not that hard to follow: a raid group encounters a boss for a first time, wipes and wipes to the point of frustration, finally kills that boss, then has it on farm. The "freshness" of any given in encounter doesn't last very long, and Hard modes, at least in my eyes, do very little to lengthen it. Despite my problems, I feel like i'm peeing on the wrong hydrant here. Blizzard's put a crazy amount of effort into this expansion and it shows in the cohesiveness of Northrend. I think it's great that the community can have differing opinions and honest debate about this topic with those that actually have to create the game. It shows a great amount of love and investment on all sides. Perhaps that's why their new raiding philosophy feels do damning to long-time players like myself. The focus has been on expanding the casual content, providing a wealth of quests to work through on the path to 80, dailies galore once you get there, and the opportunity to traverse content you never would have had a chance to in Burning Crusade. But in doing so, it seems to rob successive content (and the lore associated with it) of its impact.  Once terrible fiends in the WarCraft universe have had their rears thoroughly kicked in 5-mans, and as I've discussed here, the raid bosses haven't had it much better. This philosophy would've worked fine if it had been implemented from the ground up, but two expansions in, broadening the base of the content makes for an increasingly flat experience. Perhaps I'm belly-aching too much, though. I do find it weird to make a post like this on a night spent entirely having my face cratered by Mimiron, but it's also strange to know that by this time next week, yet another Titan will no doubt have been toppled. So you, dear readers, does WoW's new raid direction feel like a sweet deal to you, or does it leave a faint, sour taste in your mouth? Will 3.2 serve as a sufficient stop-gap between Ulduar and Icecrown, or is it just another bump in the road for the hardcore set?

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So you're a hunter. Done. As a hunter you have one job, (unless you are spec'd survival, in which case you still really only have one job) you shoot shit. Since all you do is shoot shit, it becomes of paramount importance that you shoot shit correctly. Okay so how do you do that? Well I don't f***ing know, that's why I look to other people to tell me, specifically http://www.bigredkitty.net/. Bigredkitty has spent lots of time creating and compiling info for the betterment of huntards everywhere. And if you dig into his forums a bit you will find a (not-so-secret anymore) secret. A brave, Tauren hunter by the name of Manito has perfected the Beast Master's 3:2 shot rotation macro. And he has graciously shared it for all the world...of warcraft, to see. You will find all the info you need if you follow this link. Follow the instructions carefully and in no time you will be shooting shit about as good as you can shoot shit. By the way this is the macro I was speaking of in Episode 2.4

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