Project Lore

Patches mean different things to different players. For some, it is looking forward to more adventure and exciting things to do. Others might be anticipating changes to their class or getting their hands on a new vanity pet. As GM of a raiding guild, I find it necessary to scrutinize patch notes in search of changes that may impact the way my guild operates. For example, in patch 3.1, they introduced dual specialization. This had an immediate impact in our raids. If we're facing a boss that only requires one tank, then we'll have the other tanks swap to their DPS specs. If we're short a healer, one of our DPS can swap over. Having raid members with well-geared secondary specs became important. In order to encourage our raid members to have well geared offsets, we changed our loot policies to offer gear for offsets at a discount DKP price, assuming no one needed the item for their main spec. Another smaller change in 3.1 was the duration change on flasks from two hours to one. As a result, we now make sure everyone is using their flasks in unison so we can time our breaks for when the flasks run out. As I peruse the patch notes for patch 3.2, there are a few line items that could impact the logistics of raiding. It will be interesting to see how guild officers respond to these changes. One of the first decisions guilds need to make is how will the new raid instance, Crusader's Coliseum, fit into their raiding schedule. While the new dungeon is technically a new tier of raiding, guilds may not remove Ulduar off their schedules immediately, like they did to Naxxramas when 3.1 hit. While the details aren't solid at the moment, it has been posted that the encounters in the Coliseum will be unlocked one at a time at the rate of one per week. Many guilds will still spend a lot of time in Ulduar while the bosses are slowly introduced in the Coliseum. Once all of the tier 9 encounters are open, there are more scheduling decisions to make. The Crusader's Coliseum (aka The Argent Coliseum) has both a normal and heroic version for both 10 and 25 players. The heroic versions of the instance limit players to a number of attempts each week, but open up greater rewards for those who succeed. With that in mind, do you try and take out Ulduar quickly and then spend the remaining time working on the normal version of the new instance? Or do you skip the gobs of easy loot from Ulduar in favor of the new content? How do you balance time spent in normal vs. heroic Coliseum? Interesting questions, indeed. Perhaps the biggest raiding change to be introduced in 3.2 is the extend raid lockout feature. When 3.2 hits, guilds will be able to decide if they want to prevent a raid instance from resetting on a weekly basis. Raid lockouts can be extended for up to an additional week to allow players more time to work on and clear boss encounters. With instances as big as Ulduar, many guilds begin to struggle towards the end of the instance because they run out of time to work on bosses like General Vezax and Yogg-Saron. How will your guild use this exciting feature? Players in 3.2 will have the ability to trade soulbound items with other raid members that are eligible for the loot. This feature grants you a two-hour grace period before the item is permanently bound and will save Blizzard GMs from throngs of in-game tickets from items that are distributed incorrectly. Guilds may decide, however, to use this feature as a time saver during raids. Instead of spending precious flask time distributing loot after each boss kill, the master looter can grab everything and hand it out at specified break periods. Obviously, this is more beneficial when you're clearing a lot of bosses in a night and can get complicated if you frequently have raid members leaving and joining throughout the night, but it is still a nice option to explore. The Call of the Crusade patch will change the way a lot of guild approach raiding. It will be interesting to see how it all plays out. Which raiding features are you most excited about in 3.2? How is your guild going to approach some of these changes? Share your thoughts and ideas with us.

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Master these bad habits, and you too can be a Lord of Time like Nozdormu! Despite how stressful it can get sometimes, I'm a multi-tasker at heart. When I'm doing one thing, I generally have to be doing two or three others. Got to keep that brain entertained! Though WoW is far from being the worst offender where downtime is concerned (go play Final Fantasy XI!), there are nonetheless those times when waiting on things to happen is just too much to bear, and your mind begins to wander... As I've already established, I'm especially bad about this. When my guild wipes on a boss, it generally takes anywhere from five to ten minutes to rebuff and get set up for the next attempt, and that's more than enough time for me to begin losing interest. I mean, as a rogue, there's not a whole lot I have to prepare before a fight. Often, I'll just tab out and start reading something on the internet while I wait, and it takes a fellow officer barking at me over Ventrilo about missing the Ready Check to get back into the game. I'm sorry, it's a habit! I have the attention span of an excited puppy on speed! It gets so bad at times, that I'll be multi-tasking right in the middle of an intense fight. Regardless of whether I'm just killing some time, or yawning in the middle of a stationary boss battle (hello, Patchwerk!), here are a few of my favorite ADD-friendly activities:

1. Watch TV - Television is traditonally a passive medium, and as long as you've got the muscle memory down for a particular encounter, turning your eyes towards the boob tube for a little while probably won't impact your game much. I'm guilty of watching such thought-intensive shows as LOST while raiding, which isn't the best of ideas (hey, not my fault my favorite shows come on during raid nights!), but trash television is absolutely perfect. Turn on a reality show or set your receiver to just about any Discovery Channel network and you're good to go! It'll give you something vaguely interesting to look at when you're bored without having to spare too many synapses. Optionally, movies you've seen before work, too (I'm watching The Last Action Hero while typing this article, in fact)!
2. Personal Grooming - We all play Warcraft, sometimes a lot more than we should. And, on some days, this means we may skip the shower or sit around in our dirty boxers all day. Contrary to popular belief, taking care of yourself doesn't need to be hassle, so when you're waiting for a fellow raider to come back from their smoke break or kid aggro, why not pick up a pair of nail clippers and trim those claws of yours? Try brushing your hair or your teeth. I don't think I'd recommend anything too crazy, like shaving or waxing your chest (imagine the yelps of pain over voice chat), but there are plenty of little things you can do to make yourself a tad more acceptable when you crawl out of your cave to grab some midnight burritos.
3. Eat! - Feed your face! I can't count the number of times I've come home from work, hungry as a bear in Spring, right around the time a raid starts. Grab whatever deliciously greasy snack you can and pound it down your gullet during or between attempts. Make a little game of it to see how many french fries you can consume while healing through Hard Mode Iron Council!
4. Play With Your Dog - Or cat. Or guinea pig. Or whatever. If you've got a pet, force it to entertain you! Got your face smashed in on a fight and staring at the release button? Pick up a damn tennis ball and throw it down the hallway for Fido. Guaranteed to be more fun than waiting for a battle rez! Cats will probably still ignore you, though.
5. Play Another Game - Go on. What's stopping you from loading up old classics like Minesweeper and Solitaire. I prefer console games, myself, and usually have one running in the background when there's nothing on TV. Honestly, it's even easier to ignore the raid now that semi-official Peggle and Bejeweled add-ons are available (and you can even set them to pop up when you die, too!).

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Now that 3.1 has been out for a while, and the dust is at least starting to settle, I think its time to take a step back and discuss how much impact the patch has really made on the game.

While the introduction of the Ulduar raid was obviously a big deal, I want to take a moment to examine how dual-specs has changed the way that we play. This feature, after all, changes the basic mechanics of how we play and will affect the game well past Ulduar and into future expansions.

At this point, I feel many of us have seen both the advantages and the pitfalls of this is action.

First the good, the increase is raid utility is undeniable. Instead of needing to sub people out for encounters because we need more heals, DPS, tanks or whatever we now just need to ask people to switch specs. I have found this to be particularly useful in 10 mans, where we can balance for 2 or 3 healers depending on the encounter.

Beyond that there are some unexpected advantages. For example the shaman who dual spec’d enhancement/elemental. While initially I thought this was the worst idea ever (great you can be DPS or DPS), it has turned out to be incredibly useful on several occasions. Sometimes having DPS at range vs melee, or having an extra buff can make all the difference in a close encounter.

There have been drawbacks too. As I think we all expected loot has been an issue. There are some players that are legitimately splitting their time between two specs. But does that mean they have a right to accumulate two sets of tier pieces while everyone else is working on their first? I certainly don’t think so, but they can make some convincing arguments. Additionally this added flexibility leaves some of the “bubble” players out of raids. Players that are used to being number 1 on the standby list are getting used less and less, as more people can fill more roles.

Personally I find myself changing specs much less often than I expected. While I can now go ret at anytime, I still find I am a tank 99% of the time, and often forget I can switch if need be. Although, being able to PvP whenever I want is certainly nice.

What do you guys think? Have dual specs been working out they way you imagined? Or are you using them much less or more than you expected?

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The difficulty of World of Warcraft has been a hot topic since Wrath of the Lich King released last November.  The second expansion brought players three raids (four if you include Vault), raids that were conquered in only three days.  Most of us wanted to reserve judgment on the latest expansion until the "normal" players had a crack at the high end content.  I would wager that we can call it now, the raids are indeed incredibly easy.  My evidence?  The fact that completely random PUGs are able to tackle all the raids.  Back in The Burning Crusade I considered Karazhan a challenging PUG, constantly dreading the raid when it wasn't a full guild run. World of Warcraft's upcoming content patch hopes to change the issue of difficulty, if only a little bit.  Ghostcrawler stated on the boards that the encounters in Ulduar - there are fourteen of them - have been designed to be more difficult from the get go.  However, everyone is hung up on the announcement of the upcoming mana regeneration nerf.  If you missed that bit of news, Blizzard will be nerfing base mana regeneration by 40%, forcing users to conserve and use mana regenerating abilities properly.  Paladins will have a different set of buffs due to the way they regen, but the nerfs will effectively match other healers' pain. At first glance, the nerfs seemed to be an artificial way to make the game hardier.  Rather than designing some difficult encounters, Blizzard simply nerfed healers.  On the surface, this would only make WoW more difficult for the nurturers out there.  It is really so much more than that.  Ghostcrawler defended the move, giving a soon to be classic example of why healers needed to be nerfed. The decision came down to the fact that raiders could simply "stand in the fire" and be carried through the damage by healers that wouldn't run out of mana.  This is obviously a bad way to play the game, taking easily avoidable damage just because it can be outhealed .  Blizzard wanted to make this kind of boss burning strategy obsolete in Ulduar, hence the mana nerf.  Off the bat, I expect most raids to use the age old scapegoat of blaming the healers for the raid dieing.  Until players actually learn the encounters, get out of the AoE or avoid any damage that can be nullified by player abilities, Ulduar should be a step up in difficulty.  Which will make PUGing it more challenging. If the raid is managing to play the encounter correctly, but healers run OOM, then Ghostcrawler has two points for those players.  You either don't have the correct gear for Ulduar, or you are playing the encounter incorrectly.  Oh, and by no means is Mr. Street attacking the priestly classes, "if the idiots stand in the fire, guild kick them." So yea, Ulduar should be more difficult, due to design and a retooling of the various healing classes.  All that being said, Ulduar is no Sunwell, "it is not a huge leap up in difficulty from Naxx, but it is a step up."  Before you start complaining that Ulduar is two easy, be sure to have all 11 of hardmodes comepleted.

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A long, long time ago, in Stranglethorn Vale, our guild started Zul'Gurub. At the same time, the elite guilds had finished ZG, Molten Core, Black Wing Lair, and were doing AQ20, AQ40 and Naxxramas. We had Dungeon Set 0 and epic PvP gear, they were decked out in Tier 3. There was a huge chasm of raiding experience and gear-level between us and them. A long time ago, in the Caverns of Time, our guild finished Mount Hyjal. At the same time, the elite guilds had completed Black Temple and Sunwell. We had 4/5 Tier 5 and they were decked out in Tier 6. There was a significant difference in gear-level and raiding experience between us and them. As of this week, our guild has completed all 10- and 25-man raiding content in WotLK. The only challenges left in front of us are Sartharion with two and three drakes up, and some raiding achievements. The elite guilds have finished the "hard modes," but there is no raid-boss they've seen that we haven't. We are 13/15ths of the way to being totally decked-out in Tier 7.5 gear - they have a better necklace and trinket than we do. They also have the gun from Kel'Thuzad, those rotten {expletive (plural) deleted}. There is no real difference in gear-level, and while they have many more years of end-game content raiding experience than we do, we’ve walked where they've walked in the new expansion, and not years after they have. So what’s the deal? We've heard over and over that the content is easier. Bullpucky. We remember our first kills in Karazhan. We remember going to Maiden and being sure it was going to take many hours to kill her. We remember warning the guild that wipes were the price of success. Then, we one-shot her. /kapow! "Don't move when Flame Wreath is cast!" And if you didn't move, and you had the DPS, you'd beat Shade of Aran. Learning the skill took time, as did getting a high enough raid-DPS, but once the skill was learned, never again did a movement fight cause as much fear. Thaddius in Naxxramas is a movement fight, and people don't freak out about that guy nearly as much as they did about Shade of Aran. The problem with Karazhan was two-fold: First, an entirely new population of WoW-players suddenly had access to raiding content, and they weren't used to it. Second, in a 40-person raid, you can have a screw-up. In a 10-person raid, a single person could easily wipe everything. So in old-school raiding, the old-school raiders learned to raid as they were "carried" through Molten Core. They made mistakes, they were mostly hidden, and the raid kept on trucking. By the time they got to Karazhan, they knew how to raid and thus breezed through it. In contrast, a new generation of players learned to raid in 10-man Karazhan, and they learned to raid as they wiped. Karazhan was hard, not because of the difficulty of the content, but because individual mistakes were magnified and the results were much more severe. Was Gruul or Magtheridon much harder than Karazhan? No, because these 25-person raids required Karazhan-geared people to attempt them. And once you've gotten gear from Karazhan, you probably knew how to behave in a raid. The difference between 10- and 25-person raiding isn't much, the only difference is in specific people learning their specific roles. Once the trick of the boss is mastered, the basic raid skills needed are already known. (i.e. don't stand in the fire or the black circle, don't take aggro from the tank, etc.) Then we get to WotLK and the new Naxxramas. Is 10-person Naxx easier than Kara was? Yes. Is it because the content is easier? We say No. We say that people crushed Naxx with such relative ease because there were no new skills needed to defeat the place. If you raided Kara, you could raid Naxx. There is no skill needed for Naxx that was not taught in Kara. And who didn't raid Kara? What percentage of people who are raiding Naxx do you think didn't step foot in Kara? Five percent? That means ninety-five percent of the people with their eyes set on Naxxramas just had to level to 80, then they'd have the gear and the Kara-learned raiding knowledge to defeat the place. And they did, foshizzle. So now we have the promise of Ulduar. What's the big scary thing there? Vehicle-mounts for combat. /shudder What fight do we have right now with something like vehicle-mounts? Malygos. What raid boss do people dislike the most? Malygos. Why? Phase three - The drakes. People dislike the drakes because they don't get to play their own class, and because it's a new mechanic. We love Naxx because it's just an extension of Kara. We've mastered Kara, so Naxx is easy. We have never had a vehicle-mount boss before, so people hate learning Malygos. Defeating one, two, and three drakes-up Sartharion is a matter of gear, positioning, and DPS. All three of these things are easily comprehended by Kara-experienced raiders, and thus three drakes-up Sartharion, while technically a much greater challenge than Malygos, does not inspire the same dread and hostility as Malygos does. Ulduar is bringing vehicle-mount boss fights to an entire new level, like it or not. What are you going to do about it? Are you going to farm Naxx for fun and profit? Are you going to go for the hard-mode achievements and beat 10-person Sartharion with three drakes up? Or are you going to practice your vehicle-mount combat skills in Malygos? Just as the Aces High! daily is practice for Malygos, so is Malygos himself practice for Ulduar. If you have the choice, we recommend you get your happy little tuckus out to Borean Tundrea every week, do both 10- and 25-person Malygos, not so much for the gear, but to get used to the dynamic. The skills you learn in Malygos are going to prepare you Ulduar, just like Kara prepared you for Naxx.

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We all knew that there would be plenty of people out their racing to hit level 80 as soon as possible. Not you racing against your friend or guildmate. I mean someone who would take vacation, go without sleep, eat dry packets of Ramen (hey, the saliva will hydrate it) and pee in empty bottles of energy drinks, until they finally dinged level 80. As Juggynaut mentioned, this happened less than two days after Wrath went live on the European realms.

Since then, I am sure many of us have witnessed server wide messages proclaiming the first of this class or race to hit 80. Even the North American realms, which are a bit behind due to timezones, have plenty of 80s roaming Northrend. It was only a matter of time before people began taking on the 10-man and 25-man raid content.

For TwentyFifthNovember, that time was under two days after Nymh hit level 80. TFN is the General Electric of World of Warcraft. A guild conglomerate put together by SK-Gaming (Curse) and Nihilum to achieve world first kills and to create “one of the best World of Warcraft community sites.” Their fancy new site is set to launch on November 25^th, well after they started putting up new content. If you head over there now, you will be informed that they have beaten all of the raid content that Wrath of the Lich King has to offer.

Getting a group of players together that fast is an achievement of itself. The guild took it one step further by beating the re-tuned Naxxramas and swiftly moving onto Malygos, the hardest boss currently in Wrath. 68 hours and 30 minutes later, and TFN is standing on top, waiting for Patch 3.1 and Ulduar.

These guys are obviously good at WoW, but damn that was fast. TFN's announcement post wasn't entirely self-congratulatory though. The team questioned Blizzard's tuning of the raids, even suggesting that Blizzard may have made them easier to put the “large casual player base...on equal footing with end-game raiders?”

What do you guys think? Are they just too good, or is Blizzard trying to appease the larger audience? Hitting 80 inside two days is one thing, beating Wrath inside a month, let alone three days is another. Comparatively, it took almost five months for Nihilum to beat The Burning Crusade's PvE content.  Of course, if I mention TBC had more raid content, it isn't really defending Blizzard...Seems like Ulduar cannot come soon enough.

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I've been playing WoW for sometime now and I have been fortunate to have been in a very good guild. I say have because they disbanded months and months ago and I'm still looking for another one that raids later on my server Frostmane. We raided everything up to BT/Hyjal and then it fell apart one weekend over... well... over some real BS that I won't go into detail about here. All I will say is that I'm not in either of the two or three pick-up guilds that formed out of respect for some of the people I know who joined 'opposing' guilds. Here's a couple rants for this post, in no particular order: 1. Why can't I see what time it is on a server compared to my local RL time zone before I make a character? Did I miss something? Is there some place that Blizzard tells you what time zone each server is in? Why is this so frustrating? Because, even though I have the gear and even though I have the experience in Hyjal and BT and even though there are some guilds that I could apply for, they all raid too early for me and my RL job here at Project Lore. Of course, later I found this fantastic link which would have saved me hours in-game looking for progression guilds because at least I would have known what RL time zone my server was in before I made my toon. I'm in LA on a Chicago-time server that used to have a guild that raided midnight NY time. Ugh! And I can hear the crys now, 'Just switch servers.' No. Sorry. I do have loyalty. That and about five alts that make up my grinding / AH income that keeps me in money to raid... if I ever do again. Damn I want to kill Vashj and Keal'thas. I was there so many freakin' times but damn if the guild didn't destruct probably a week before it would have happened. 2. What is it with the emos in WoW? For me, an emo is an emotional person who /gquits if they don't get a raid invite or, worse, when they don't get to need on a blue drop that's five levels below their gear just so they can DE it for them self and end's up leaving party after the first boss kill. Really? WTF? I'm here to play and play well. I'm here for PvP and PvE and progression raiding. I know my class. I know my roles in raid. And I know WTF to do and not do and when to do and not do it. Btw - I'm cool with Loot by Need and maybe DKP if it's done right, but what gets me is the emo baby BS that turns ppl against each other over some f'kn drop that we'll all probably see in the next week or two. Okay, okay... rares like Ashes of A'lar or Fiery Warhorse's Reins might cause a stir, but really, what's the deal with /gquitting over a Primal Nether. Yes it happened and it was before you could buy them with badges. So if you were ever in a guild that completely fell apart, what happened? How did it go down? And what was the real cause? Was it drama or just RL invading playtime? Let me know 'cause I'm sure you have some horror stories that absolutely top mine. And if your on Frostmane and are looking for a well-geared, experienced raiding mage to raid late server time, let me know. I just want to kick Vashj and Keal'thas' ass.

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Hooray! Blizzard officially announced that Wrath of the Lich King will have Achievements. These will work in a similar fashion to Achievements in other games and on other systems, such as the Xbox 360. So, you can perform a task and get credit towards an achievement. While all achievements will grant meaningless points towards a score for comparison between players, some will also give fun or cosmetic rewards, like many of the seasonal quest rewards. The achievements will be separated into categories of PvP, Dungeons and Raids, Professions, Quests, Events, World Exploration, Reputation, and General. A couple of the examples listed for achievements are Shave and a Haircut and Fo Grizzle My Shizzle. Hopefully the second one has something to do with skinning a bear and having it aggro all bears in the zone. These things are going to do wonders for Blizzard, and will probably keep level 80s interested even more, causing players to spend lots of time and money getting just one more achievement.

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