Project Lore

Wishful Thinking is a column for the theorycrafting behind World of Warcraft.  No, not the number crunching madness perfected by the folks at ElitistJerks, but the features, abilities, and design ideas that the Project Lore writers conjure from their squishy pink stuff. Is Violet Hold The Bastion Of Wrath's 5-Man Content? I love WoW's PvE content, but there's no denying that it can get boring.  Doing the same runs over and over for weeks on end do nothing but show us how repetitive things can become.   After the first few virgin runs we fight through the monotony mainly for a chance at some glorious rewards.  Thanks to hard and heroic modes, and quick content patches, raiding has become less repetitive, but our heroic dungeon farming is no less mind numbing than ever.  Considering how much time we now spend in heroics, thanks to the vastly improved badge system, don't you think party-based PvE deserves content diversification?  What to do... We already have heroic and non-heroic versions, so that's out of the picture.  Hard modes could be done, but would be placed on farm by anyone who raids in a matter of weeks.  Not the best return on one's development investment there.  That's out.  What else can be done to make five man dungeons a little less stale, a little more enjoyable? Ignoring our insatiable desire for loot and badges, one way to keep an instance fresh is already implemented by Blizzard in Violet Hold (and later ToC).  Boss mob rotation.  In VH the party is given a random chance to encounter three of six possible bosses before they tackle Cyanigosa.  It's a small change, but the randomness forces players to stay on their toes even after they start to outgear the dungeon.  Extend this idea further, apply it to multiple dungeons, and it'd give us a little boost in content. For the lore and item junkies out there, new bosses can offer both.  Many instances can simply have lieutenants written in as taking over a former leaders' position, or perhaps the vacuum left by a leader's demise allows a new faction, race or species to subjugate the rest of the instance's denizens to their will.  It's true that in the long run the change would be like Diablo II's "dynamic" map system, where you could easily remember all the map layouts, but the longer we can extend that notion the better. I've mulled over the problem of the lack of 5-man heterogeneity for ages, with multiple audiences, and outside of making entirely new dungeons more frequently, a dynamic encounter assignment has been the best thing I've come up with.  Does anyone have any other bright ideas to make five man content less repetitive likes their big brothers? Do you agree that that VH offers a bit more play before it becomes repetitive?  Everyone likes new encounters right?

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Wings.  What did you think I was getting at?

Malygos, being a Dragon Aspect, is a fight that I would expect to be quite epic.  Not only in its general gameplay design, but its overall presentation.  After running it for the first time last night, I can say that it largely lived up to my expectations.  As soon as you zone into the Eye of Eternity the Lord of Magic begins taunting, teasing and harassing you for being one of the lesser beings.  He also alludes to interference from the other flights, namely Alexstraza and her red brood , which comes into play later.  My big knock against the presentation is his voice.  The dialogue and taunts he tosses at us are well-written, but the vocals just aren't epic enough for me.  They do not command my respect or grab my attention as other dragons have.  In short, Malygos' voice makes me picture a nerd puffing out his chest in a vain attempt to look larger and more confident than he really is. Visually, we are placed on what may be the least laggy battlefield in all of Azeroth, a platform with four pillars that looks out at the vastness of space and a collection of celestial bodies.  Why Malygos would chose to live surrounded by heavenly objects I do not know - seems more like a Nozdormu thing to me - but it looks freaking awesome.  Though, I do love space, so I could be slightly biased in this department.  Blizzard selected the final frontier to enable their designers to go nuts with spell effects and abilities during Malygos' three phases.  And go nuts they did. The humble casual guild I am a part of did not manage to get the Steward of Magic to drop any riches, but we did experience all three of his phases.  The first phase is a glorified tank-n-spank battle with a small twist.  Should one of the summoned sparks get to Malygos, they will grant him a debuff that is almost guaranteed to wipe the raid due to 50% more damage on the tank.  The object is to pop the sparks where the DPS can sit in its debuff pool to receive their own damage increasing debuff.  Like Onyxia, Malygos doesn't just let you smash his face ass during this phase.  Every so often he will rise up and flap his wings, causing a huge tornado which turns all players into a flying cow, albeit one that takes a hefty amount of DoT damage.  The effect is awesome, pushing your camera way out so you can grasp the full size of the twister created by Malygos' wrath. Once the raid burns the blue down to 50% he will lift off, sending a collection of adds on floating discs to destroy you.  During this phase Malygos is untargetable, although he continues to rain destruction upon you.  The floating guys, and the vehicular combat they bring to the table are nice, but the combination of the anti-magic shells and the leviathan's (take that Knaak) Deep Breath collide for some awesome spell effects.  Phase 2 is the coolest phase, but it ends quickly, thanks to the squishiness of the adds.  Upon killing the final add, the floor gives way and the raid falls into the abyss.  As alluded, each player is rescued by a minion of Alexstraza for a last bout of rather boring vehicular combat. As far as raid encounters go, I very much enjoy the overall design and presentation of the Eye of Eternity.  Although his character isn't given the epic treatment that I think he deserves, the encounter is well crafted and fine tuned overall.  At the same time, the fight doesn't feel gimmicky or leave a class or role out of the equation.  To me, the sign of good encounter design is when the success of the encounter hinges on the collective skill of the raid, not an overpowered member or two. Initially, we are hit with something akin to all the previous dragon battles, then we see Malygos' full magical wrath before being tossed into more mundane vehicular combat.  Our night of attempts failed because of poor spark pool placement, 26% was our best attempt thanks to the enrage timer.  I'll be happy to participate in this fun encounter again, even though there is no loot in it for Solidsamm. With Malygos attempted, I only have a single Wrath boss left, Sapphiron.  How'd you like Malygos?

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