Project Lore

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?

Click to read more ...

Seen this kind of image?  Then you aren't casual -via ElitistJerks

Recruiting issues promoted me to write the latest in the line of DPS guides.  By the end of the day, the guild's officers and GM had tossed in their towels and canceled raiding for the foreseeable future.  For most of us the news wasn't exactly shocking.  Over the past few weeks the mighty force in Naxxramas known as the Warriors of Faith had degraded into Warriors of Whenitseemsnecessary.  Sign-ups remained incomplete, those that did lend their John Hancock were no where to be found for invites, and players began disappearing earlier in the night than normal. It isn't that the guild is dead, far from it.  The former trio of raid leaders simply got fed up with all the extra work they were putting into the guild, with little to show for it besides stress.  After all their recruiting, hand holding and calming efforts, raids failed to materialize.  Rather than continue their struggles, they have put the pressure on the rest of the guild to step up and form raids ourselves.  The irony is that this is exactly what many of the newer members were doing rather than joining the guild runs. I think that the current raids have harmed casual guilds.  Being a group of older players, our time is often limited by other obligations (family, friends, work, this blog).  This in turn means that many of us have unexpected things come up fairly often, causing us to miss invites, sign-ups or raids altogether.  Who cares when you can PUG all of the available instances?  My point is this, since you don't need a guild to get through the content, most players feel less inclined to actually support their guilds.  This is especially the case if they have no other reason, like long standing friendships, to guilt trip them. At first, I simply thought that it was just our little guild that was having issues.  But if my other WoW playing comrades are anything to go by, that isn't the case.  According to them, their guilds are also struggling to get guild runs together.  Their plight is for the same reason, many members are running PUGs on their own time.  Hopefully, most of you will read this post through before commenting, because here's the kicker.  It isn't a big deal.  Yea, there are some hiccups to scare out, but casual guilds won't be going anywhere, ever.  The early raid content has shaken things up a bit, but as Wrath of the Lich King matures and Blizzard ramps up the difficulty - we are looking at you, Ulduar - the guilds, all guilds, will collapse back into themselves. It's just interesting to see how fleeting these online relationships can be.  One minute you are joking about this druid's mom or laughing about how the RL proposed that all Gnomes are drunkards IRL.  Then a freeze on raid leader lead raids is handed down, and boom, a fistful of long standing members gquit.  It's fine that they are leaving to pursue what they want from the game, but I have never been one to guild hop.  How are the more casual, small scale guilds doing for the greater ProjectLore Society?  Possibly more importantly, how goes those Heroic Naxx/Malygos PUGs?  I have been somewhat successful in my PUG attempts, still haven't managed to take on the Eye though.

Click to read more ...