Project Lore

Blue Stew is a new daily column bringing you a delicious concoction of developer news, thoughts, and opinions straight from the boiling pot that is the official World of Warcraft forums. The highlights of each day include additional commentary by Project Lore staff. It's a surprisingly tame day on the forums, folks. Well, of course there's the usual whining, and some questions about the Paid Faction Change, but if you want to find answers to those or discuss the new service, Project Lore's coverage is a really good place to start (I even wrote it myself!). With that said, I've still managed to cherry-pick a few things that I think are worth looking at: So Explain To Me Again... Weapon Skill: Quite possibly the most useless skill in the game! Wait, wasn't that supposed to be Spirit? Nerthuz must be suffering from Memory Gremlins in her brain again, because she can't remember what she was told last time she asked about Weapon Skill. It must be hard with those nasty little critter eatin' up your thoughts and all. But, hey, she has a point. What is up with Weapon Skill, anyway? This is an issue we've covered here at Project Lore before. Why iTZKoopA posted something about it just one month ago, and he came to the conclusion that it was a sloppy, poorly-implemented stat, though it may have simply been used as a limiter to keep people from tackling mobs way above their current level. But, then, couldn't weapon proficiency simply be built into levels instead of being something you need to raise? Why not just tack on an extra five points every time you ding and automatically pro-rate new skills you learn from Weapon Trainers? Lore-wise, I suppose there is some sort of justification. Ancilorn points out, in accordance with the theme of Nerthuz's original post: "The worlds most skilled swordsman are not so skilled when it comes to wielding axes in combat. They would have to hone their skill to become competent at wielding axes in combat effectively." Indeed, it makes sense that while just about anybody should be able to theoretically wield any weapon, Weapon Skill is associated with how well they can actually do it. In real life, anyone can learn to shoot a gun, but not everybody can be a Bob Munden. Still, I think it's an iffy stat. It's not terribly inconvenient to max out, but it does feel kind of useless. Even if its inclusion can be justified, maybe it should've been tossed out like all those other stats were at BlizzCon. Cataclysm Compilation Nothing snarky to say about Frejya, the kind of person that everyone on the official forums should strive to be. And it seems that Blizzard approves, as well, as they've given her the hallowed green text of a V.I.P. (Very Important Poster). Now that the Cataclysm section has been opened, Nethaera thought it was high time to move Frejya's extensive and resourceful thread on the next expansion to the new forum. The only flaw with it, of course, is the lack of back-linking to Project Lore! Be sure to check it out if you need to know something about Cataclysm on the fly! Two Minute Buffs Need [To Be] Changed! It just wouldn't be a normal day on the forums without Ghostcrawler addressing a little bit of QQ. This time, 'letter Z' fanatic Bearlizion wantz to know why Blizzard dizcriminatez againzt all of hiz two-minute buffz. This is where I bring up something we talked about yesterday, namely people who don't play the game as it is and rather desire to play it the way they want it to be. Usually, this means ignoring basic play mechanics in favor of unrestricted convenience. Why can't people realize that without limiters placed on your class, it wouldn't be fun to play at all? Ghostcrawler's sage advice shines like a light from the heavens once again: "With warrior shouts, the intent is that the resources do matter. You might not have enough rage at any given moment and part of the skill required in playing a warrior is making sure you have enough resources to both shout and do your other damage." The fun in playing the game comes from strategizing in combat and figuring out how to manage your resources and when to use your skills. As I see it, most Warriors (especially tanks), already deal with a rather bland experience and the best thing to do would be to make them more complex, not easier to play. GC goes on to detail a couple of ways in which that could be accomplished, but the common theme seems to be restructuring rage so that a Warrior tank would have to pay attention to it throughout an encounter and not just at the beginning of it. You guys do remember the old days, right? When threat was actually something people had to worry about? I know I can recall the days of having to strategically limit my DPS and make alternate use of Feint and Vanish to clear my aggro on the target. His other core idea is perhaps putting key Warrior buffs on CDs: "Imagine (I am arm waving for a moment) that Battle Shout and Commanding Shout didn't cost any rage and in fact gave you rage, but were on a cooldown. Then using the shouts might become a more interesting choice -- you'd want to use them at moments when you're rage-starved and generally not when you have a full bar. However, you'd also want to keep them going because of their buff so you couldn't neglect to use them too often either. A challenge of playing the class / a test of your skill would be to shout at the right moment to keep the buff up but also make sure you earn the rage when you most needed it." Sure sounds more interesting to me! But I don't play a Warrior as my main, so I'd like to hear what you more experienced players think of this sort of change. Keep in mind that they're only ideas and this is not an indication that the development team is going to suddenly change the class' mechanics. I just happen to believe that making any class more strategic to play can only be a good thing!

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Up until recently, most of my questing was done in pairs. My rogue teamed up with my husband's warrior for a while as we leveled together. And when he out-leveled me, I started questing with his DK. Either way, I essentially had a tank as we took on quests and easily progressed through the game. But over the past few weeks as I ventured through Dragonblight and now in Zul'Drak, Locomomo has gone solo. So now I've got no tank. Combine to that the fact that many areas within this zone have a high concentration of mobs that like to attack you in twos and threes, and I was in a heap of trouble. But it's been a good learning experience; I've adapted my play style a bit, and that alone has been a fun challenge. Being a rogue, I've been able to escape the multiple mobs with Vanish, and when that's on cooldown, a combination of Sprint and Evasion paired with some strategic weaving through mobs so I don't draw more fire. When I have multiple mobs I can handle, Adrenaline Rush and Blade Fury work nicely together. But there's still the problem of the sheer amount of damage I've been taking. I'm running low on Frostweave needed to make bandages, and also need to restock on foods - both for the buffs they give and for their healing properties. What's been saving me there is the Medallion of Heroism trinket I picked up as a quest reward from the Battle for the Undercity. I love the critical strike bonus, but more importantly at this point is the healing capacity. I've been hitting that trinket as soon as it goes off cooldown. As I said, it's been a fun challenge and really reminds me of some of the awesome rogue abilities that I wasn't using as much when leveling in pairs, simply because I didn't need to. As for the healing issue - I look at this as a good reason to go for that Stocking Up achievement! So have any of you found a reason to alter your play styles recently? Do you prefer soloing or questing in pairs? More importantly, anyone have some Frostweave to spare? :)

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Everyone's favorite class designer hit the official forums during maintenance day to inform us that class changes for Patch 3.1 would be announced soon.  For those who don't already know it, Patch v3.1 will be Wrath's first content patch, with the main feature being the addition of an all-new raid known as Ulduar.  Popular speculation has Yogg-Saron - the second known "Old God" - or parts of him as the final boss.  Piggy-backing on the big content patch are numerous other tweaks, such as the classes changes discussed below. Making good on Ghostcrawler's promise, Eyonix threw up Part 1 of the upcoming changes.  However, only Rogues (yahoo), Priests and Shamans currently have a short-list of changes, every other class is "coming soon."  I am no Shaman, nor am I an expert Priest, but it seems pretty obvious that both classes have been buffed overall in the listed changes.  As for what my lovable little gnome thinks about his upcoming changes?  Awesome. PvP, that is the big change for Priests.  The notes specifically state that Shadow PvPers will see increased survivability thanks to a buff to Shadow Form which reduces magic damage along with physical damage.  Although no specific modifications were detailed, Eyonix notes that the developers are looking into making Holy have "additional PvP utility."  All the Discipline Priests shouldn't feel left out though, they get an entirely new ability, Power Word: Barrier, which is essentially a PW:S for their group.  Blizzard even through in some love for the whole class, adding Divine Spirit as a core ability. Shamans of the Elemental and Enhancement varieties also scored some additional, although undefined, PvP utility.  Following that, Dalaran's lag should be slightly lower come v3.1 thanks to the streamlining of Totems.  Mana Spring / Healing Stream Totems and Disease Cleansing / Poison Cleansing Totems have been combined. They are now two totems rather than four separate lag-inducing pillars of doom.  The nature-friendly class has received one modification that might be viewed as a nerf, Chain Lightning will jump to four targets, but do less damage.  The less damage could mean for the fourth jump or that the overall DPS output by CL will be lowered The number one change I was looking forward to for Rogues was how Blizzard planned to tackle the annoyance of keeping Hunger for Blood active.  For the none rogues out there, the spell had to be spammed three times, wasting two extra global cooldowns and 60 energy, to max it out.  Then it had to be refreshed every 30 seconds to keep it up.  While refreshing didn't break stealth - you could refresh while creeping to the next mob - it was incredibly annoying to worry about an ability with such a short duration that was so desperately needed.  The new HfB is a self-buff that can only be used when a bleed effect (anyone's bleed) is active.  While the need for a bleed is indeed a nerf, the 6% damage increase - from 9% with three stacks to 15% with no need for stacking - should help soothe that irritated skin. Like the other classes, rogues have also seen a selection of buffs beyond the HfB change.  Added haste, lower cooldowns and additional damage to various talents and abilities should make every rogue happy.  However, we do not know the exact amount these favorable changes will impact us, due to the numbers on a few of tweaks not being unveiled. The rest of the classes will be revealed in the upcoming parts of Eyonix's post.  Please hold off on the complaints until you see your own buffs.  Remember, these notes are not comprehensive and therefore do not list all the changes.  On the flip side, they can also be thrown out the window at a moment's notice. All of the changes do seem to be buffs, so perhaps Blizzard is saving all the nerfs for one giant post to get all the QQ out at once...Sly devils. In other news, numerous bugs have been found in WoW recently, but the developers are already hard at work on hotfixes. Update: Eyonix has posted more class changes.  Warriors, Warlocks and Druids should check out the post covering Part 2 of the changes.

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Whenever I'm running around IF or Shatt or Dalaran, going from mailbox to bank or Cooking trainer to cheese shop, I always pop an Arcane Intellect on anyone I can. Whatever their level or whatever guild they are in, I just top them off with a little AI, and hope they have a nice day. I'd even give it to horde players if I could. And really, what does it cost me? Not much. I'm gonna be in town for a bit anyway, or even if I'm out and about doing dailies, what's a little mana here or there? I regen it so quick or maybe I have to eat a Conjured Mana Strudel, but that's nothing really in the grand scheme of things. What is something is that 9 times out of ten, that person buffs me right back. I can't tell you how many pink paws or BoW that I have gotten just because I buffed them. And it all adds up. Over the course of doing my favorite dailies, that pink paw and BoW help quite a bit, And I'm sure they appreciate the extra mana and chance to crit. All and all, everyone wins when you just buff people. Now the same is true in RL. Randomly buff people. Go ahead. Do it and see how your day goes. What? You don't think you have buffs for people? Oh come on, yeah you do. Here's just a few: • A Friendly Smile - Places a blessing on a friendly target, increasing their Spirit by 50 for 15 min. • A Kind Word - Places a blessing on a friendly or unfriendly target, increasing their Spirit by 20 and reducing their chance to harm others by 20% for 10 min. • Compassion - Infuses the friendly or unfriendly target with a sense of connection thereby significantly reducing their aggro and increasing their ability to cast beneficial buffs for 30 min. • Understanding - Places a blessing on a friendly or unfriendly target reducing their chance to attack by 15% and increasing you reputation with their faction by 1000. • Listening - Increases you reputation with targets faction by 200% and increases the targets health and mana regen by 20% while spell is in effect. And those are only a few of your RL buffs you can give people. So go out and use them, and see what buffs you get in return. I am certain that you will be surprised with the buffs that you get. And if you know of any other RL buffs you can give out, or that were given to you, write them in the comments. It's always nice to know what buffs are out there.

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Homogenization:  the act of making something homogeneous, or the same throughout; or the tendency of something to be come homogeneous (Wiktionary) A vocal group of players have been pretty miffed about the homogenization of World of Warcraft's classes.  While a collection have been barking about the issue for some time, the group grew substantially after changes to the way raid buffs work were announced as part of the Echoes of Doom patch. The late-August decision was made to allow Raid Leaders to bring the people they want to play with, rather than having to fill cookie-cutter configurations for bosses, trash mobs or the raid as a whole.  In doing so, Blizzard Entertainment drastically changed the current buffing system, including some of the buffs themselves.  I already did a summation of the changes, or if you prefer, here is the lengthy full post. Adding more fuel to the fire this past weekend, was the revelation that the class forums would be abolished in favor of role forums, Damage Dealing, Tank and Healing.  Personally, I would like the Damage Dealing section split into Ranged and Melee, but I digress.  After the aforementioned group became even more vocal, Blizzard backtracked and decided to keep both the class forums and role forums. The idea of WoW's classes becoming homogeneous has me a bit torn.  As a prospective raid leader for Wrath of the Lich King, being able to bring people I can trust, rather than the “right” classes, is certainly a boon.  Another personal point, is that my main is a Rogue, a class that should benefit from the situation.  My Priest...still no problem getting into groups there. On the flip side, doesn't everyone like feeling special?  Feeling needed?  Feeling that if, you specifically, weren't available everything would crumble?  Over dramatic you say?  Heavens no. In the end I am going to have to go with Blizzard on this one, and say the path they seem to be going down is probably for the best.  Many of my friends were burned out from raiding due to thinking there were always needed.  I hold the belief that the modifications will cause less guild QQ and more pewpew.  Which is best for everyone. Well, not Arthas, but he deserves to die after that whole plague fiasco.

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