Project Lore

Yesterday I mentioned that most of my Thanksgiving was spent trying to convince people to join me in Azeroth, rather than playing myself. It isn't that I didn't want to play, I did my best to find the time, but living far away from my family forces me to obligate the little time I have with them to them. I blame society and quality parenting (don't ever tell my parents I said that).

While I was busy chastising my brother for his disinterest in Wrath and cursing my cousin's friends for ruining a raiding buddy, Ghostcrawler was busy on the official forums discussing the intricacies of World of Warcraft. Seeing as we have extended maintenance this fine Tuesday, I thought we could dive into his numerous posts and do some light theory discussing today.

The first meaty post I noticed from Mr. Crabbie was a discussion on the upcoming dual spec feature. Healers and tanks have been looking forward to this feature more than anyone, as it will allow them to tank or heal when needed, and revert to a better talent build for solo leveling. Sadly, if the feature doesn't make it into the game soon then most of us will be level 80, and it will lose he majority of its impact. Blizzard realizes this, and even though they won't put an ETA on it, they are trying to get the feature in for patch 3.1.

After reading that over, I noticed another post of interest to PvEers. I have been following the discussion of Wrath's difficulty ever since Ensidia (then TwentyFifthNovember) crushed the end game content. GC mentions that Blizzard is happy with the way PvE is going. Specifically, the developers want players to run the lower level dungeons at the appropriate levels, and make sure they do not “hit the introductory raid content like a brick wall.”

One of the most interesting posts to players of all flavors will be the discussion on itemization. Greg Street gives some background into how Blizzard wants you to feel when you have to decide between items. Back in the day, and after The Burning Crusade's launch, it was pretty obvious that one piece was vastly superior to another. Blizzard is now creating gear that doesn't lend itself to clearcut answers.

Shall I take a bit of haste or a large amount of attack power? These are the kind of questions Blizzard wants you to ask when looking at your gear options. I guess that explains why I have five trinkets that are almost equal. I went with the one with the lowest cooldown and best static stat.

Last but not least, Ghostcrawler spread tanking posts all over the holiday period. The pre-Thanksgiving post is the most interesting (and possess the least QQing by the OP) as it discusses core mechanics behind tanking. The OP asks what the point of the defense mechanism is, to which Street replies to, some 20 posts later. The interesting part is that the tanking mechanics that have been a staple in World of Warcraft since the days of Onyxia, may have just been added to the crustacean's whiteboard. The pincher possessor is not happy with the fact that the mechanic pulls “double duty.” In the future we may see the stat split up into multiple pieces, as the current incarnation “might eventually be a problem.” Topics such as easy tanking and tanking scalability – needing two or three tanks for 10- and 25-man raids – were also brought up.

The decapods dedication to World of Warcraft, the world he has helped to create, is astounding. Being in California one would assume that he celebrated Thanksgiving, yet he managed to post a horde of responses on that day alone. Seems that he took off Wednesday and Friday for travel days thought. The sheer volume of informative posts from Saturday makes me feel inadequate.

Here's to hoping that dual spec is implemented before I turn my focus back on my priest.

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