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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The inability to launch instances this late in Wrath of the Lich King has always been odd to me.  Like many of the people in my guild, and likely a large part of the WoW populace, there is almost no reason for me to enter any 5-man dungeons.  That isn't to say that I don't do it here and there, but my frequency in no way compares to Solidsamm's marathon sessions during the early days of level 80.  I am sure many of you agree (that is until Call of the Crusade drops with its Emblem changes), and yet, just as many of us continue to get the dreaded "Additional instances cannot be launched" when trying to open an instance.  This is an especially painful message after having just attacked a raid full of Horde. Logic would state that if less people are running dungeons there should be more "room" on the instance servers.  According to Vrakthris it isn't that cut and dry.  But one should never apply logic to system architecture and computer programming.  There are a numbers of reasons why this isn't a one-to-one situation.  For example, if instances are given some sort of weight (5-man = one, 10-man = 2, 25-man = four) depending on how stressful they are on the hosting machine, then the server could theoretically be just as full as ever. Whatever the real design flaw is, it appears that Blizzard's architecture people have found a solution.  According to Wryxian, over on the EU forums, the recent extended maintenance and server restarts are directly related to fixing the instance problem.  Wryxian explains that "each group", presumably each Battlegroup, has to come down not once, but twice for the fix, and that things do not always go smoothly. I haven't located a post that mirrors the undead crocodile's statements on the North American forums, but it's probably safe to assume the same thing is happening here.  After all, my server was down for some extra time this morning, including a reboot during my Drakuru battle (I died!).  With Call of the Crusade's background downloading initiated, the fix may come just in time. I've had to deal with it more and more recently, but the wait hasn't broken my spirits.  Getting a group still remains far more difficult.  How bad has the stubbornness of the instance server been on your realm?

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In late March it was revealed that Blizzard is hard at work on a new Battleground for an upcoming patch.  Just shy of a month later and not one, not two, but three separate blues announced plans for a new 5-man dungeon.  Being Blizzard employees, there wasn't much to the announcements.  All that we know for sure is that the dungeon will be part of an upcoming patch - you'd be insane to think the BG and instance will come in the same patch - and that it "can be compared to what we saw with Magister's Terrace."  Naturally, we have no idea if the comparison that can be made refers to the scope, size, difficulty or a combination of the three. New content is fantastic, and I can't wait to see what direction they take the instance.  Will it be released alongside a raid?  Will it have anything to do with the growing Arthas storyline?  Is it going to contain machinima like MgT?  An endless amount of questions, with a catch.  Sadly, the announcement of the new 5-man content has shined a light on the current crop of 5-man instances and their heroic alter egos.  Frankly, they are beginning to feel incredibly stale. It is this very reason that I bring up a topic as old as heroics themselves, heroic Old World instances.  Blizzard, if you can't get new content out fast enough, I am sure that many of your subscribers wouldn't mind revisiting some retuned old content.  Just think of the advantages of doing so.

• A large percentage of the players joined World of Warcraft after the launch of The Burning Crusade.  Therefore, a good amount of the old world instances - especially the mid-range instances - were ignored by the playerbase.
• Retuning is far less time consuming/costly than creating a new instance.
• Trickling out retuned old world instances would keep players busy between major content updates.
• Many old world 5-mans are far longer - and larger - than the current crop of dungeons.  The varied length would likely cater to the hardcore audience who tend to be fond of more diverse and deeper offerings.  There's no reason to expect that the casual players wouldn't enjoy it either.
• You've already recycled content in the past (Naxxramas , Caverns of Time) and that was accepted.  No need to worry about that stigma.
• The old world would see a (small) population increase, rather than its current state of being largely abandoned.  Essentially, more than just Northrend would be relevant.
• Come the next expansion, you could sprinkle retuned TBC instances amoung the content patches.
• Being "old school" is still hip...or so I tell myself.
• You'd shut me up.

Just think of the possibilities.  LFM Heroic UBRS - Rend Run.  The return of Dire Maul ledge walking.  More Barman Shanker grinding.  Discovering the secret boss in Blackfathom Deeps.   Getting lost outside of Maraudon, only to be farted on when you finally get inside.  Van Cleef.  I'm giddy over the prospects already. Many of us have run Wrath's heroics dozens, perhaps even a hundreds times.  The question is, would you have the any interest in the four year old content or are you content waiting long periods of time for all-new encounters?

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It's been a solid eight months since Blizzard introduced its Recruit-a-Friend system and this week, I know of at least two more accounts they've roped in. One is legitimately one of my RL friends from college who finally caved to playing WoW for the first time out of general boredom. I'm hoping it keeps him entertained enough to get a paid account. And the other is my husband, determined to take advantage of the triple XP to get at least two new level 60 characters - a druid on his new account (which he then plans to transfer), and a shaman on his main account. Now how am I affected by that? Well, it's my DK who is running his new shenanigans through dungeon after dungeon. So he rolled his two Taurens and had one /follow as they leveled to 10 within an hour - triple xp for both the new account and the one its linked to (only up to level 60) is grand. Meanwhile, I quickly leveled my DK (who I had not really touched since completing my initial quests in The Ebon Hold and getting in good graces again with Thrall) to 60, so I could get Death and Decay and some AoE power. Now, I'm certain there are more efficient methods to achieving the quickest-as-possible leveling results. But I'm going to share how we've been going about it. We started off with running the Wailing Caverns to level 20, then Scarlet Monastery to level 40. Pull a group of mobs, bring them back within xp range of the alts, Death and Decay and spam a few spells - mainly Icy Touch, Plague Strike, Blood Strike, Corpse Explosion, and Unholy Blight. I'm not a DK expert, but it gets the job done. And despite the difference between the DK and the alts' levels, the triple xp (which unfortunately doesn't seem to stack with rested xp) more than makes up for it. He's actually been doing the bulk of the work - we're on different work schedules, so when I'm not around, he's multi-boxing with his two accounts and my one. It's quite a site. Four days in, and he's got both alts to level 40. Once they're to the level 60 cap for the xp, perhaps we'll start a new pair. The levels come so fast that it seems a waste not to! Now, there is a cost. In order for the characters to be transferable, you have to buy the game and upgrade to a paid account (however, your main account gets a free month for this, so the account costs basically cancel each other out). Then there's the transfer fee. But even if you decide not to transfer, the characters you level up on your main account still get to keep their levels. I guess it could be a game killer for some, but for people who cringe at the leveling process and just want to get to end-game, I say it's a fun and productive way to pass the time in those long hours when we were waiting for 3.1. And although I'm not much of a mount collector, I really want that damn Zhevra! I know a bunch of us here at Project Lore already have taken advantage of the Recruit-a-Friend bonuses - who else has? And how do you view the system - as a game promoter or destroyer?

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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.

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Via Washington Interscholastic Activities Association (WIAA)

Championing, all the kids are doing it now, so why aren't you?  Championing is the fun way to gain reputation with a few select factions in Wrath of the Lich King.  With Championing, you can go from Friendly to Exalted in a matter of minutes, instead of weeks.  No longer will you have to wait for mobs to respawn or fight with other aggressive characters when you wish to mind your own business.  Yes folks, Championing is the way of the future, the easiest, most convenient way to become best friends with a faction that previously despised the ground you walked on.  Championing - the new hotness. Championing offers players an easier way to farm reputation, but you can only Champion certain classes.  However, every player who wishes to have the best head enchant available needs to Champion at least one faction.  Before we get into those factions, allow me to explain the process before I drop the C-word for the tenth time.  The new reputation mechanic enables players to run any level 80 dungeon while still gaining reputation for a chosen faction.  This is accomplished by wearing a faction-specific tabard that can be acquired when your toon reaches Friendly with the select Northrend posse.  Mages get it a tad easier, the wielders of physics breaking magic can obtain the Kirin Tor Tabard at the incredibly low rank of Level 1. Four Champion-able factions and their associated head enchantment: The Argent Crusade - Stamina & Defense Rating Kirin Tor - Spell Power & Critical Strike Rating Knights of the Ebon Blade - Attack Power & Critical Strike Rating The Wyrmrest Accord - Spell Power & Mana Per 5 Seconds Blizzard's mechanic allows players to break the monotonous cycle of grinding dailies for every faction, but we can't escape it completely.  Aside from a new way to gain status among our peers, the hidden benefit is that Championing will - at least theoretically - open up more people to a selection of instances.  The ability to gain Ebon Blade rep in any Heroic means that SolidSamm won't have to grind the same instance like he did in The Burning Crusade's day.  This opens up the possibility of my rogue joining any instance group that is looking for DPS (read: none).  Choice is good. The above aside, there really is no "guide" to Championing.  Simply hit Friendly with whatever faction you need, grab the tabard from their vendor and you are on your way.  As a side note, if you fail to don one of the faction tabards, your toon's Northrend rep (Alliance Vanguard/Horde Expedition) will be raised instead. SolidSamm is working on his AP/Crit Arcanum as you read this, but don't forget to look at the other items the factions of to offer.  The little ankle biter will replace his Ebon Blade tabard with the Kirin Tor's in an effort to lower the high price of their sexy ring.  Who's colors are you sporting? On a more hardcore note, how many of you have taken the time to score the Championing achievement?  Serious props if you have.

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I didn't have the heart to crop out the skull.

Blizzard Entertainment seems to be on a warpath with Wrath of the Lich King's first content patch.  The developer has promised players an insane amount of content including the addition of the largest instance to date, Ulduar, the Dual Spec mechanic, a built-in Gear Manager, and the Argent Tournament, just to name a few.  Not everything coming in v3.1 has been given the bullet point treatment however. The bloggers on Project Lore have found a few under-the-radar type of additions that we have clung to like a dork to his unopened figures.  Heartbourne gave us the Hearthstone cooldown reduction and Dual Spec price.  The first change was likely made to stop "ghetto hearthing" - the art of abusing an instance for a free hearth.  Juggynaut got hooked on his Legendary mace and the modifications to the Dual Spec feature before hitting us with the removal of the Black and Plagued Proto-Drake meta-achievement rewards.  Myself, well, I covered the Argent Tournament and the patches upcoming gear additions.  Which no one cared about apparently, or just didn't want to spoil themselves. Following in the footsteps of the Hearthstone's nerf and the additional of the Gear Manager, comes another quality of life change to World of Warcraft, the modification to the RaidID system. Blizzard announced their intentions to overhaul the archaic system a few weeks ago, but I don't think anyone, including Blizzard, expected it to be done for Patch 3.1's testing on the PTR. The RaidID system is Blizzard's internal way of tracking which instance a toon should be connected to.  The main problem that arose with the system was the lockout period.  Should a player that has cleared a raid or heroic enter into the instance first, followed by the other members of the party or raid, the unsaved players can get linked to the cleared instance.  This would then blow their lockout period.  Needless to say, this small issue pissed people off. A lot.  Zarhym's promise of "a better interface to warn players" has come to light on the PTR, but not as elegant as he hoped. BigRedKitty's screenshot shows us a dialogue box with a warning on it.  Basically, we have 15 seconds to get out of dodge if the instance is not what we expected, that is it.  The box does not appear to give you any details on the instance itself, so the "better interface" has yet to come to fruition by my standards.  Hopefully further upgrades to the system will be coming in the near future. Many of you probably never experienced this issue, or don't even care about the "fix", but you should.  In my opinion, it is Blizzard's application of these little tweaks that helps make them one of the premiere developers in the industry.  The company should be applauded for their attention to detail and willingness to correct their mistakes, especially when the issue only effects a small amount of the populace under certain circumstances.  Even if Blizzard does it in an iterative fashion when a more drastic change is called for, at least the ball is rolling.  Right?

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While spending my days gearing a level 80 toon, it is pretty easy to get a bit of tunnel vision. Some days it feels like my whole world consists of the inside of Naxxramas, The Obsidian Sanctum, and the walls of Dalaran. It is very easy to take for granted the enormous amount of content that Blizzard has already created. It is largely ignored because it is not all geared towards players at the level cap. I really started to appreciate this recently as I have been helping a friend earn her Classic Dungeonmaster achievement. While I had done all these dungeons before, for some of them it had been a long, long time. This is especially true of the instances that are more accessible to horde, or were simply so long or difficult the first time around I had little desire to go back. Given, there is no longer any challenge in these instances, I can take a step back and enjoy them from an aesthetic or even design perspective. Blizzard has done some really cool stuff that is all but forgotten. Remember the temple stair event in Zul'Farak? The giant waterfall in Maraudon? Or tracking down the Archmage in Shadowfang Keep? Neither did I. Furthermore, taking the time to go back and check out these instances really gives you the opportunity to witness the evolution of Blizzard's game design. “They sure don’t build 'em like they used to.” Now if this is a good or bad thing is debatable, but the way instances flow is very different now. Instances seem much more linear, you really don’t get lost in them very often, and I’ll tell you, I got lost in Dire Maul. The events in instances also seem to flow differently. You don’t see things like the druid event in Wailing Caverns very often anymore. Given, I hate the druid event in Wailing Caverns, but it is interesting to see the path that Blizzard has ultimately chosen. What do you guys think? Are there any old instances that hold a special place in your heart? Or are you more content with the way things are now? I’d like to hear your thoughts on the old world. And if you haven’t seen all these places, go check them out! There’s even an achievement in it for you.

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Way back when I started here at ProjectLore.com I was all giddy over a new engineering pattern that showed up on the Wrath of the Lich King Beta. The Mechano-hog (Horde) or Mekineer's Chopper (Alliance) infatuated me with its ridiculous clunkiness , gnomish features and lifelong dream to be part of a biker gang.  We should also factor in the hilarious Predator reference that comes via the accompanying achievement, Get to the Choppa!

I had been waiting to get on this bike since Wrath launched, but its insanely steep price and my incredibly slow grind to level 80 have delayed me severely. I am underselling the price when I say steep though. The bike is on the Auction House for downright ludicrous prices, well over 10,000 gold the last few times I have checked.  I am not poor but in this economy I find it difficult to even spend virtual money.

Being an engie, Solidsamm has an alternate route, making it himself. This would require a crapload of money spent to level the profession (see link above), then a boatload of time spent getting the required materials. Lastly, a small purse full of money and time spent rep-grinding to pick up the pattern itself. All of this to ride around in a spiffy hog, that can't fly.  At the moment my time is better spent on other things, causing me to go with option three, the passenger's seat. Shotgun!

While participating in yesterday's Heroic Daily, I noticed my tank had pulled out his shiny new Hog, complete with PWN license plate. As I ran up to him to get a free ride click the green arrow, a party member dove in before me. Being the little knee biter that I am, I harassed the paladin until he got out of the sidecar and allowed me to navigate. After all, I did call shotgun.

To my surprise, Blizzard actually intended the person in the sidecar to navigate. Once belted in, I noticed a scroll of parchment placed in front of my character. On it was a map of Kalimdor. The map wouldn't help in Stratholme (Lordaeron is part of the Eastern Kingdoms) but I loved the small detail nonetheless. It is the little things Blizzard adds that make their titles more enjoyable.

Although we didn't succeed in completing the timed event (I blame Arthas and his snail pace), I did score some loot. Sadly, it was two new pairs of gloves, but they may both be used. Until I can get my hit rating up to something respectable, the Handwraps of Preserved History are my new gloves. Bile-Cured Gloves should make an appearance when I begin to approach the the hit cap. This is all assuming both pairs aren't replaced by then.

I would say that Solidsamm had quite a productive weekend. Scored a few pieces of new loot, got more than a dozen Emblems of Heroism, over twenty Stone Keeper's Shards, a good amount of reputation and his first ride in Wrath's version of the ROFLCopter.  He also got a sad reminder of his sister's lack of playtime. According to the returned mail he received from Solidsagart, I haven't paid much attention to her in 30 days!

The irony of the whole situation was that as I oogled that glorious chopper, my buddy went on to explain that he wanted my Mechanostrider...Anyone else manage to have a productive weekend in Azeroth?

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Unless you are living under a rock, you are undoubtedly familiar with the new achievement system Blizzard added with the latest expansion. I’ve touched on how much I enjoy the new system before, but I wanted to take a moment and dive a little deeper into it. I think it is no secret how much I like achievements, a lot. I am currently sitting at #2 in our guild for overall achievement points behind a certain draenei shaman who will remain nameless. During the lull between 3.0.2 and Wrath I really dove deep into these achievements, exploring the lands, running lowbie dungeons, and doing everything I could to knock them off my list while there was nothing better to do. Now that I have progressed past the initial stages of Wrath I am finding that they are filling a new void and giving me something else to go after. Now that I have finished all of the level 80 dungeons on regular and heroic, other than farming badges, there would typically be little reason to go back. Now I am finding myself wanting to run them over and over again, hoping that I can knock off some of those special achievements off the list during the boss achievements. I am finding myself responding to people asking me to tank with “only if we go after all the achievements.” Typically the response is “of course!” Some of the achievements I have recently knocked of are Lodi Dodi We Loves the Skadi, Intense Cold, and Chaos Theory. I am trying to figure out where to go next, to me the achievements in AzN seem tough, but I like a challenge and think I will be trying for those next! It seems lots of people are really digging these new goals inside of our heroics. I know I can list a few personal faves. What about you, are you enjoying the new carrots? Or do you see them as just another time sink? Which ones have you got, and which ones seem impossible?

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