Faction Champions, Blizzcon Musings, and the Aion Spiritmaster
Posted August 25, 2009 at 10:38 AM by Tragik
Well our new guild is going pretty well. We downed the Faction Champions last night in 25 man. What insanity that is.
I basically respecced and resigned myself to being a fear bot.
Whatever, it worked. A mage and I just kept bouncing off DR's on our respective CC's. I remember why I don't enjoy arenas........
I, like most of you, followed the Blizzcon announcements. I am less than thrilled with the further separation from BC, which, to me, remains the pinnacle of WoW's existence. But I guess to appeal to more 12 year olds it's important to provide massive amounts of instant gratification as easily accessible as possible.
Additionally, we keep losing aspects of the game that I think rock:
In Wrath we lost having to strategize our raid compositions with the homogenization of buffs.
Now we're losing theorycrafting.
See, Blizzard doesn't like you knowing that 3/13/55 is the top DPS build. There's this idealistic belief somewhere that they can equalize builds. But they can't. There will always be a build that outperforms others.....even with this Titan's Path thing......
So, anyway, I've been poking around Aion since those announcements.
The graphics are better, and the Spiritmaster (and ranged in general) is better that what we have in WoW right now. At least from what I've read. I plan on getting a trial on the 23rd or 24th.
I basically respecced and resigned myself to being a fear bot.
Whatever, it worked. A mage and I just kept bouncing off DR's on our respective CC's. I remember why I don't enjoy arenas........
I, like most of you, followed the Blizzcon announcements. I am less than thrilled with the further separation from BC, which, to me, remains the pinnacle of WoW's existence. But I guess to appeal to more 12 year olds it's important to provide massive amounts of instant gratification as easily accessible as possible.
Additionally, we keep losing aspects of the game that I think rock:
In Wrath we lost having to strategize our raid compositions with the homogenization of buffs.
Now we're losing theorycrafting.
See, Blizzard doesn't like you knowing that 3/13/55 is the top DPS build. There's this idealistic belief somewhere that they can equalize builds. But they can't. There will always be a build that outperforms others.....even with this Titan's Path thing......
So, anyway, I've been poking around Aion since those announcements.
The graphics are better, and the Spiritmaster (and ranged in general) is better that what we have in WoW right now. At least from what I've read. I plan on getting a trial on the 23rd or 24th.
Total Comments 3
Comments
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Theorycrafting isn't going anywhere: they're changing stats, not getting rid of them altogether. And the new talents will alter performance in other ways that people will argue endlessly about.
Homogenization of buffs doesn't mean you no longer have to strategise raid composition, it just means that you are no longer screwed if you can't get a certain spec into your raid. Have fun raiding with no mage, one pally, eight druids and a bunch of melee and then tell me you don't have to worry about your raid composition. I spent soooo much time in the past trying to get a viable 25 or 40 man raid together, it's not really fun doing that. It's not hard either, it just takes more time.
Blizzard wants to make it easier for them to make all three trees viable for dps while differentiating them more by their special abilities, I don't know why that's seen as an attempt to dumb things down. The idea of three different destruction warlocks who can do basically the same dps given the same gear but each having several completely different talents that can raid buff, replenish, heal, CC or maybe something else doesn't appeal to you just a little?
You can't please everyone and if Cataclysm turns you off then that's fine with me, but the constant drone of "catering to the casuals/idiots/12 year olds" is tiring. It's different, not less difficult. Wow was NEVER "difficult", and endless number-scratching and using a cookie-cutter spec does not make the game more difficult. Making some things more convenient is not making it less difficult, especially if being free of the garbage you had to do before allows you to be more productive at something that is actually fun. Making things less tedious, less cumbersome is not making it less difficult. There has always been and will still be exclusive rewards for people who like to waste a lot more time playing the game than others, and, when it comes down to it, the amount of time invested is usually the only thing that seperates people with the best gear and achievements from those without. It's not necessarily "skill".
The "pinnacle of wow" for you was Burning Crusade, have you any idea of the number of Vanilla players who said the exact same things about BC as you're saying about Cataclysm?Posted August 26, 2009 at 03:49 PM by Cursalock
Updated August 26, 2009 at 03:54 PM by Cursalock -
hey man ive been playying scine wow came out so im 16 is all lol im into 25 man ToC right now so please dont rank on young ones lol
there aint to many annoying ones anymore esides beggers of course but what are ya gonna do
and even if there is a so called "best" build i still dont use it i do better dps with demonology then i ever have with destro
blizz will try to balence um but thats not gonna change a thing there will always be a so called "best" but it mainly comes down to what your good at and enjoyPosted August 27, 2009 at 01:55 PM by Kraosis
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Well I like linear progression. I don't like voluntary progression. I think you should have to kill Mag, Gruul, Kael, and Vashj before you can kill Illidan. I also don't like being merged with healers for the same gear. I think itemization in BC was much more engaging than it is now.
On the flip side, I see no reason why you need a Sunwell out there to completely ruin it for certain classes. They should be adjusted. I mean if it's designer intent to stack a raid with Warlocks and Shadow Priests, there's something massively flawed with the design of the instance. At the same time it was cool to have synergy like there was back then between Spriests and locks.....or Mages and Locks.
It doesn't seem right or logical with so much that has been done in this expac and is going to further continue happening. Druids should not be as good at things as Warlocks or Mages, it marginalizes the time invested by those players. The gaps and margins are too thin now, while the buffs are too wide-spread.
I don't know, I hear what you are saying Cursalock, but I can't say I agree. Part of the beauty of BC was how well-designed and the amount of coordination encounters took, not glorified tank and spanks like Vanilla.Posted August 27, 2009 at 05:58 PM by Tragik
