 Guild Wars 2 is an upcoming MMO which I’ve been keeping my eye on for a while. They’ve released a video of the game now, and OMFG it looks awesome. One of the earliest announcements that got my attention is their incredibly clever idea (and execution) of a game world in which you make a difference. They call it Dynamic Events. Below, described by their Lead Content Designer (source). » continue reading On the train this morning I read Everblue’s blog on the coming raid changes, and he pointed out a factor I hadn’t thought of yet: the varying healing requirements of 10 and 25 man. I quickly checked plusheal.com and wom, no comments there. Whilst Everblue’s a clever chap, surely one of the thousands of noisy bloggers has talked about this already? He points out that tanks will have the same stamina in 10 and 25 man raids, unlike now, April 28th, 2010 | 17 comments |
 From: Cataclysm speculation before Beta |  Tags: balance, healers, mmorpg design, raid, tank Yesterdays post asking ‘whether DKs are being benched’ appears to have two root causes:
If you haven’t looked over the discussion, it’s a good read; and Honor’s comment could have been a post in its own right. Encounters which favour one tank over anotherDKs did have their time in the limelight with Sarth3D, where the (now defunct) Unholy-Vot3W spec reigned supreme. That spec has been ‘balanced’ away to obscure memory, so it doesn’t work anymore, but looked a bit like this. Block-tanks have theirs on Anub. I’d forgotten about Vezax, but Honors hadn’t and nor had Ghostcrawler. November 19th, 2009 | 13 comments |
From: Cataclysm speculation before Beta, Raid leadership in general | Tags: Cataclysm speculation before Beta, mmorpg design, raid, tank On PTR tank forums, that question was asked. Players scale up, why not bosses too? Ghostcrawler’s response: It’s something we actually talk about quite a bit. We won’t do it for Icecrown, but it could happen in the future. The basic problem is that bosses don’t scale with gear. Their health and damage go up. That’s it. You might avoid a first tier boss 30% of the time and a final tier boss 60% of the time. That means October 23rd, 2009 | 2 comments |
From: Cataclysm speculation before Beta | Tags: Cataclysm speculation before Beta, expertise, healers, mmorpg design, tank Sometimes the quest storyline really makes me smile. Just completed the Hemet series in the Basin, and he’s out bragging to the guy by the campfire. Have a read. One of my favourite things about World of Warcraft. One of the reasons I came back to WoW for it, after a brief hiatus in Eve (wrote a guide, needs a maintainer btw). Something that makes me smile while doing old content. Two things actually. (1) Blizzard’s 3D model movements, graphic design quality, attention to detail and creativity, and (2) their sense of humour. The Marmot quest was one example, I mentioned in the opener on levelling spec post, but the other day this really made me grin. You get to wear a costume. Look at the design detail and thought put into this element of the game which occupies just a tiny corner of the world, and earns you 20K exp, and is then over. You do keep a smile and the memory of it, but yet what a lot of effort Blizzard put into such a passing thing. Apparently, it was originally a Blizzcon goodie, so sure, the investment of 3D time was for a greater purpose than this quest, but they used it nevertheless and makes this quest really shine. It truly is a great example of one reason I enjoy WoW. Have a close look. They have even a custom animation for its movement, including the eye boggling about. |
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