The Warlocks Den - WoW Warlock Discussions - Blogs - Need More DPS! by Warpy

All Good Things Must Come to an End

Warpy — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 15:12:30 GMT

It's time for me to move on past the World of Warcraft. I sat down just a little over three years ago and created my warlock with no idea that he'd last this long, let alone that he'd get exalted reputation with 29 factions, be part of a raid that killed Illidan, or spend about 7,500 gold on a fancy ring.

The Warlock's Den has been a big part of what's made the game fun, providing me with up-to-date information on the latest raiding builds and rotations, demented warlock humor, and an opportunity to blog. I've always like makin' stuff, from avatars and sigs to guides, so writing has been fun, and the weekly deadline (usually) worked well for me. Thanks to all of you guys for the great discussions in forums and for reading and commenting on this blog!

I've canceled my account, but still have a little over a week before it closes, so I'm trying to figure out what Warpy has left to do before I retire him. I've explored the whole world and done all but a few quests. Should he:

Level all his tradeskills to 450?
Collect 5000 achievement points, since that's a nice, round number?
Finish grinding the Oracles to exalted because they are so much less obnoxious than the Frenzyheart?
Sell off all the junk in my bags/banks/alts' bags and banks?
Go get that darned spiderling pet out of LBRS?

Turns out that none of that really matters to me. If any of it happens, it happens.

I'm more concerned about where to retire him. Other warlocks in the Den have stressed the importance of this decision. So I've got a lot of options for Warpy:

Back at Northshire Abbey where he got started (although he was in a terrible hurry to leave)?
In Stormwind, to be ready for the next expansion if I come back for ten more levels?
Or in one of his favorite zones: Zangarmarsh, Duskwood, Ungoro Crater, Icecrown?
In the Cantrips & Crows Tavern, where I wanted to move him once I'd pried the Delicious Chocolate Cake recipe from the Kirin Tor?
In some spot off the beaten path like the Shatterspear Village between Darkshore and Felwood?

I'm not sure if I'll ever come back to WoW on my own. If real-world friends want to get a group going, I'll resubscribe. But in the meantime, there are other virtual worlds to explore, and plenty to do in the real world.

Just Sayin' Some More

Warpy — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 15:02:46 GMT

I've been having one of those days which makes me despair of humankind. It's only fair that you should despair as well. Feast your eyes upon the following screenshots.

Not sure this counts, because it's from the Blizzard forums and it didn't happen to me, but it rings of truth:

And people wonder why I dread pugging. :Angry!:

Bruckner is not alone; here's a supporting anecdote from Pern's favorite comic.

I've suspected some characters of being E-bayed, but I got proof of one for the first time a few weeks ago:

It's best not to reveal too many details about the following:

Needless to say, I have no room-mates. Jubham is bad enough!

Love is in the Air

Warpy — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 17:11:06 GMT

So we've come to the time of the year when Alliance warlocks are reduced to molesting gnomes for achievement points! No one posts about what Horde warlocks do; it's just too gruesome.

Believe it or not, some of us, even me, did get involved in this event before there were achievements. It has less to offer the practical player than many of the other holiday events: no rep, no experience, no gold, no raid-quality epic drops, none of that. It's just good, silly fun. For those who want the details on the achievements, check out Oliselia's Love is in the Air - Achievement Guide.

I've been pretty serious about the holiday achievements, in part because they give me another excuse to group with my guildies. But if the RNG (random number generator) plays a big part in a given achievement, there's a good chance I won't get it, at least for Warpy. Bad luck runs in my family, and somehow has been passed on to my unfortunate imaginary warlock in spades!

For the Hallowed achievements, he couldn't get a Sinister Squashling to save his life, not with frequent visits to the Headless Horsemen or more frequent ones to Innkeepers. This holiday, it's the dreaded Bag of Candies. With a roughly average droprate of 1 in 6, my warlock hasn't gotten one.

Just a zillion Silver Shafted Arrows
ten zillion Love Fools,
three Romantic Picnic Baskets,
and a Truesilver Shafted Arrow twice!
He even got a Lovely Black Dress, and, I assure you that he looks terrible in it.

So I don't know if I'll keep being aggressive about these holiday achievements.

Gender Bending?

This being the first year people were doing these achievements, trade chat was full of people asking questions about how to do the various tasks. I wish I had screenshot of the chat window when this one kid started protesting that his character was being made to be "gay".

For that matter, I wish I could remember why I had the trade channel turned on. :confuse:

At least the kid had stopped to think about the whole event, instead of mindlessly grinding out the achievements. For the ruthless pursuers of the Violet Proto-Drake, the gender of the hapless NPC from whom they plan to wring a gift for their next achievement is irrelevant! But for a role-player, it may be a more serious matter, even (perhaps especially) if the character is gay or lesbian.

For the last few days, my death knight has been wandering around with perfume in his backpack. Is he gay, fond of perfume, or just too cheap to buy cologne as well? ^_o-

As it turns out, for all but maybe one achievement (which I mention later), your toon is not obliged to court one gender rather than another for an achievement. Since all the guards in Ironforge are male and all of those in Darnassus are female, any toon relying on guards to get the gifts to finish achievements on their own is going to end up pursuing NPCs of the same gender in one city, and of the opposite gender in another. If you really want guard's cards, group with someone else to collect and exchange stacks of them.

One of the achievements requires a Gift of Adoration, which has to be given by a townsperson, not a guard, and townspeople everywhere come in both genders. There is no achievement for getting a Pledge of Adoration from a guard, or for an Alliance Gift Collection (or its Horde Equivalent). Of course, you will have to look around to find a love-lorn townsperson of the appropriate gender for your toon and maybe even go into buildings.

The one achievement which may require courtship of a particular gender, in fact of a particular toon, is Flirt with Disaster (or its Horde equivalent). In this case, however, role-players might have bigger problems with their characters getting smashed on alcohol than about the other details. Believe you me, after 5 Jugs of Bourbon, your toon won't be sure what Sraaz is, let alone what gender he is.

There are, as always, far more bizarre doings in Ironforge than guys giving Valentine cards to other guys. It turns out Alexander Calder, already the most unpredictable warlock in Azeroth, gets pretty hostile with non-warlocks, but still expects love tokens from them!

Love is not always a pretty thing. :confuse:

What is Love?

So what is going on during this event? Are the Love Tokens simply the goblin equivalent of cheezy Hallmark cards? Or is the whole token/gift exchange a symbol for something more that Blizzard doesn't necessarily need to animate (in much the same way that none of the major cities have bathroom facilities)?

My guess is... it depends on the character, and one is expected to use one's imagination. If one is a simple achievement-grinder, one may not even have an imagination.

My warlock seems unlikely to get seriously physical with some Sentinel who won't even tell him her name, but might well buy her (or in the case of a pushy dwarf guard, him) a drink and flirt a little. The death knight... well, I'm not sure and I don't think I want to know. If Alexander Calder or Sraaz are involved, perhaps the less said, the better.

Love Is In the Air comes to the Undercity as well, and given the state of deterioration of most of the Forsaken, I suspect a lot the romance is actually Platonic. It sort of adds to the tragic atmosphere of the place. I also don't see a lot of baby undead being wheeled or carried about the Undercity, and a good thing too.

Baby, Don't Hurt Me

I had a crisis on my hands. I'd assembled an Alliance Gift Collection, I was voting for my favorite leader if I turned it in. Last year, no problem, I voted for Bolvar Fordragon, but he's no longer around. I was tempted to go turn it in at Orgrimmar and vote for Thrall, but the last time I went there, the local Horde attacked me and had to be killed.

I find the new King of Stormwind too insipid for words, and Magni has been all about bad decisions from day one: the Trogg situation in the gnome/dwarf starting area, the Alterac Valley invasion, the Blackrock problem, etc. I'd consider Tyrande (this year's front runner on Kul Tiras), except she's leaving most of her governing to Fandral Staghelm. I guess I'll hope that recent events in WotLK and the restoration of two brothers and his daughter, all of whom have more sense than he has, help straighten Magni out.

A Beginner's Guide to PvP

Warpy — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 00:59:36 GMT

The place to start with inter-player combat (PvP), in my opinion, is in a battleground (BG): Warsong Gulch, Alterac Valley, Arathi Basin, Eye of the Storm, Strand of the Ancients, and, for all practical purposes, Wintergrasp.

Dueling and arenas tend to involve experienced opponents in good PvP gear. It�s hard to learn from your mistakes when you are dead before you can do anything. :cry:
Also, BGs involve new scenery, lore, strategies, and sometimes quests, which makes them more interesting to players motivated by more than killer instinct.
PvP realms are even worse for beginners, because the experienced, overgeared opponents you face often outlevel you as well.

I haven�t tried the Grizzly Hills dailies, but on some realms, those may be fun too. I understand Halaa is generally dead. Raids against enemy towns/cities are fun, but often hard to organize.

Battlegrounds will contain a lot of well-geared, experienced PvPers, sometimes in pre-made groups that actually communicate with each other, but these groups are now limited to five people. However, most BGers are either not very experienced, or not too keen on learning from experience. They don�t communicate effectively and PvP in ordinary questing gear. You may be able to kill many of these even more easily than they can kill you, and it will be fun! ^_^

You can start PvPing pretty early as you level, but don�t. Battlegrounds become are separated by level brackets: i.e. 50-60, 61-69, and 71-80 for Alterac Valley, but unless you are close to the top of a bracket, you are a liability for your team:

Your health will be relatively low, so you are an easy kill.
Your attacks are likely to miss high-level opponents.
Between your relatively weaker gear and your lack of trained abilities, you just aren�t going to be as effective as you will if you level up.

Outside of Dalaran, you click on an appropriate battlemaster (the city guards can tell you where to find these) to join. Your faction has a hall in Dalaran with portals to the BG�s and to Wintergrasp when it�s time for the battle.

Learn about each Battleground and its Objectives

A word to the wise: Winning a battleground is not about killing the greatest number of enemy players. It�s about achieving the objectives, which depend on the battleground, and generally involve controlling bases and/or capturing flags. You often have to kill other player characters (PCs) to accomplish this, but it matters greatly where and when they die. If you can heal, do it, again, strategically! Healing is often as important as DPS in accomplishing objectives.

Blizzard offers descriptive summaries of each of the actual battlefields
WoWInsider�s Zach Yonzen has a summary of Wintergrasp

Even once you know where everything is, how to cap flags, take bases, and/or operate vehicles, there are going to be finer points of strategy that take time to learn. Just because you�ve got the flag in Eye of the Storm, it�s not always good strategy to �cap� it immediately. There are lots of strategy guides out there, your teammates will type advice in chat (not always right, but worth listening to), and you�ll learn from experience.

Casual's Guide to Winning BGs (Casual�s the name of Digo�s guild; they�re actually hardcore PVE)
Very user-friendly guides from WoWInsider include:
Alterac Valley has changed a great deal recently � make sure any guide you find includes at least the patch 2.4 changes.
Also, check your favorite forums and blogs.

Strength in Numbers

Find a group of teammates (especially ones who look like they know what they�re doing) and follow them. Help them achieve objectives and kill enemy players. Experienced players will sometimes solo objectives or guard bases, but there�s not much you could do if attacked except to tell your team in chat where the enemy is attacking you� and then it�s usually too late to matter.

If you are alone, and a group of the enemy catches you,

The enemy will focus-fire you � that is, all attack you, and you die fast!
You are unlikely to be able to defend yourself from more than one opponent at a time: crowd-control (CC), counter-spell, parry, etc. are generally most useful against a single opponent.
One of them is likely to CC you so you can�t even run.

If you are with a group,

The enemy is unlikely to focus-fire anyone. Remember, it�s a BG and people don�t communicate much.
If they do focus-fire, and they target you, keep them busy while your friends kill them, or better yet while they rescue the flag or complete some other BG objective
If you are not focus-fired or CCed, you can CC/damage/focus on BG objectives.

Gear for Stamina and Resilience if Possible

Most PCs can do a great deal more damage than non-elite monsters. Surviving long enough to actually make progress on objectives is the tough part. Stamina gives you more health, resilience reduces some of the worst damage you�ll be taking (from crits and DoTs).

If you are past level 70, you can buy tolerable PvP gear from faction quartermasters. These are five-piece rare (blue) battlegear sets (i.e. Dreadweave Battlegear). You need to be honored with the faction to buy the piece it sells:

Gloves � Keepers of Time
Helm � Cenarion Expedition
Chest � Thrallmar/Honor Hold
Legs � Sha�tar
Shoulders � Lower City

Once you get to level 80, you can craft or have crafted up to eight pieces (i.e. Frostsavage) of gear with resilience and other decent stats. You can also buy the Savage Gladiator Gear with Emblems of Heroism. Participating in BG�s will allow your character to earn honor, which you can spend on all kinds of PvP in Stormwind or Orgrimmar.

Keep Moving

This is the biggest difference between PvP and PvP (normal questing and monster-killing): you need to be moving whenever possible. On my warlock, I could never quite understand why experienced players kept strafing around enemy, but when I started PvP on my rogue I realized why, it�s very hard to melee PCs who aren�t immediately in front of you. If you�re a caster, you should use rather different spells than usual, especially instant-casts that allow you to move.

Eventually, you�ll want to learn to strafe (move left and right) rather than turn, to turn with the mouse rather than with keyboard keys, and to gradually bind PvP-oriented abilities, like instant-casts and crowd-control measures to your keyboard, so that it�s easy to move and fight at the same time. There are a lot of great guides on hotkeys, turning with the mouse, and so forth, but I recommend shifting gradually.

Check out Thralock�s Movement, Hotkeys, Keybinds, Click and Control guide.

You�ll want to look at class guides and forums to see which abilities are recommended for PvP and for ideas on how to use them.

Best Quests of Northrend?

Warpy — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 00:46:42 GMT

I finally completed my Loremaster project in December (then they nerfed the requirements!).

I ended up doing a lot of great quests. Northrend has 875 that have to be done for the achievement. The only one I haven't gotten around to yet is the fighter-plane one in Icecrown (buggy when I tried it). Still not sure which is my favorite, but I'm working on criteria for a great quest. Not all quests will meet these:

Cool scenery/effects: A really good one for this was the baby-murloc quest in the Borean Tundra. Another would be the slay-the-evil-eyeball quest in Icecrown.
Great story: THere were several of these, including the Wrathgate series, and the very sinister Matthias Lehner series in Icecrown. The Bridenbrad series left me cold; too insipid for me. :Angry!:
Interesting challenge: Most quests involve clicking on so many things, looting so many things, or killing so many beasties. The vehicle quests offer some alternatives, and there are some that are just plain amazing, like Army of the Damned, which also shows you just how pointless a dungeon-crawl approach is in a war like this one. There are a few fun timed quests like the first Kungaloosh quest in Sholazar, where you actually have to focus!

I've been grinding a ton of dailies lately and have developed some preferences there.

Variety: Thank heavens the Dalaran cooking quest changes... most days, or I'd be totally insane by now. I'm learning to hate the Sons of Hodir more with every Brittle Earth Elemental I kill.
Challenge: Doing the Troll Patrol in less than 20 min. was a fun challenge at first, especially before I'd done most of the component quests! I had to be careful to learn where all the questgivers were and to deal with the challenging timed potion-component quest. But today, I did the whole sequence in ten minutes, and it was no longer as much fun. :cry:
Scenery/Story: These still matter some how. I still like that darned Rescue the Baby Wolvar quest from the walruses in South Dragonblight. The song quests from the Oracles are kind of nifty too.

Is Raiding too Easy in Wrath?

Warpy — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 04:34:57 GMT

There's been a lot of fuss about Ensidia's 2-Day Waltz through every boss in Wrath of the Lich King's initial release. Two months in, some of my guildies are starting to complain that the raid content is not challenging for them. I'm afraid I'm solidly on the side of accessible content, even if �bads� and �scrubs� are being allowed to PuG the once-hallowed halls of Naxxramas, formerly restricted to the elite of raiding guilds.

I remember how shrill the complaints were when attunements were lifted for the first time in the Burning Crusade and Tempest Keep: the Eye and Serpentshrine Cavern were open to all level-70 raiding guilds. But those instances were in danger of going the same way Naxxramas did before the expansion: unseen by the customers who had paid for them. And that's just plain bad business.

Remember that only 5% of all raiding guilds had collected loot from Sunwell before patch 3.0 (according to WoWJutsu). The numbers may have been even worse for Naxxramas, and I have no idea how many thousands of hours it took highly-trained computer professionals to design it in terms of story, construct the three-dimensional models, create the artwork, animate the elements, and then to finally test it. Strictly speaking, Blizzard probably lost money on Naxx before the expansion, because it only kept a handful of subscribers interested in the game. Molten Core, ZG, and AQ20 were probably far better investments in terms of maintaining happy subscribers.

There are those who feel entitled to enjoy nearly-exclusive content that has to be paid for by their fellow gamers. None of the arguments I've read make me sympathetic to the would-be elitists. I've heard some insist that only 5% of all raiders �deserve� to raid Sunwell, because they put in the �work� that casual raiders often do not: farming for consumables, gear, repair gold, and then reading up on all the strats and repeatedly wiping on the trash on the way to the first boss and on Kalecgos himself. Unless the players are working for Blizzard or a game-review publisher, that's not work, it's just play that they may not enjoy very much. Work produces or protects real-world value. The only way to justify exclusive content, in my opinion, is to pay for it with real-world money or real work. I keep hearing that �Raiders are the core� of the WoW subscription base, and it would not surprise me if hard-core raiders kept their subscriptions longer than most casuals, but are they keeping them 20 times longer on the average? In fact, given the disparity of numbers, it would take an even bigger difference than that.

The other argument I'm hearing is that people are getting bored farming the content. I'm not having this problem, but I haven't done that much raiding. When the Burning Crusade was released, Gruul's and Magtheridon's lairs were extremely difficult for the top guilds and inaccessible to the rest of us. So, once enough of us got attuned (the Master's Key), we ran Karazhan once a week, generally spending three or four nights on it and really struggling until we'd collected a lot of gear from there. This expansion is very different; you can run six raids/week without attunement, and two more once you've cleared Naxx: a veritable purple rain. Purples drop in heroics now too (well, one/instance). No wonder hard-core raiders were able to gear up so quickly, and no wonder they've started to burn out so fast. The content is definitely easier, we haven't had to wipe a hundred times on any of these bosses, but Blizzard's in the game business, and games need to be fun for all of their customers.

A Brave New World: Phasing

Warpy — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 00:24:11 GMT

My character has been questing like crazy for almost 3 years now, and for most of it, I�ve had to accept that unlike most fictional heroes, he cannot change the world. How many of you others have dispatched some nasty mini-boss or thinned the numbers of worgen, helboar, Scourge, etc. only to have them back to full strength and ready to attack you the next time you cut through their zone? Anyone else bring Bolvar Fordragon the Head of Onyxia and see Lady Prestor (Ony in disguise) standing right next to him, the next time you cut through the throne room?

Warning: WotLK Spoilers Ahead!

Once per server, some amazing player (thanks to his equally amazing guild) would complete the quest to open the Gates of Ahn�Qiraj and Silithus would change completely. It was also fun to watch the Isle of Quel�Danas being taken over by the Shattered Sun Offensive, but in both cases, my character could only be a minor player, contributing fish to the AQ War Effort for the first and killing a few Blood Elves for the second.

The first phased quests in the Wrath of the Lich King are part of the Wrathgate questline. I didn�t realize I was on it until after the fifth quest in the chain. I�d made it to Wintergarde Keep and decided to set my hearth there, but I couldn�t find the innkeeper! I asked in guild chat, and they assured me that the inn was full of NPC�s and to make sure and pick up the quest on the wanted poster. But I was standing right there and the inn was empty.

So I went off to get started on the quest I could find, to rescue villagers from Wintergarde Village with a gryphon. Fun, quick quest, and as soon as I turned it in, I checked the inn and lo and behold it was full of NPCs who looked exactly like the villagers that I had just rescued!

Normally, WoW servers load the same zone for all players, including NPCs, objects, etc. Depending on which quests you are doing or have done, you may or may not be able to get certain dialogs or reactions from NPCs or interact with certain objects. In an unphased area, NPCs can be set to be hostile to some players, or neutral or friendly to others, but they are present for all players. In a phased setting, however, the NPCs, objects, and even landscape that the server loads to your computer depend on what your character has done in the past (generally relating to quests). There�s more info available at wowwiki.

Warpy was still a minor player in the Wrathgate storyline, but more pivotal than in the Quel�Danas quests because the cast was smaller. However, by the time he got to Icecrown, there were many more phased quests and he got to be the principal actor in some of them. He got to single-handedly turn the tide of multiple major battles in the giant ground war between the Scourge and the Good Guys.

Once again, I didn�t work out what was happening until Warpy was done with his first major questline in Icecrown. Warpy�s old buddy Thassarian had sent him off to help another Ebon Blade death knight who was working undercover at the Scourge base at Shadow Hold. Quest turn-ins and pick-ups were a little dicey because of the number of Scourge mobs all over the place (cool quests, though). After he�d done a bunch, Warpy got sent to report back to Thassarian, who handed him yet another Shadow Hold quest to talk to yet another death knight. So Warpy flew back to the corner where the first quest giver had been hiding out and came face to face with� the Ebon Blade flight master. All those quests had set the Ebon Blade up to walk in to Shadow Hold, wipe out the resident Scourge, and to make it their new headquarters, complete with quartermaster, rune forge, etc. By the time Warpy was done with solo quests in Icecrown, he�d helped the Ebon Blade and Argent Dawn retake two more sites (Valley of Echoes and Crusader�s Pinnacle) and make visible progress on another front (the Fleshwerks).

Warning: the Valley of Echoes is a wonderful place for skinners to farm spideys! If you complete the questline, you will destroy your farming spot! There is another phased questline in the Storm Peaks that unlocks the Sons of Hodir as an ally (and sellers of shoulder enchants!) that will make a crystallized-fire farming spot, at the forge east of Dun Niffelem, much easier to harvest. ^_^

Phasing made some quests much easier (along with summonable named mobs) as it reduced quest camping. I understand Blizzard is �late to the party� with this technology, as Lord of the Rings Online incorporated it from the start (is it used in Warhammer Online?). It�s kind of a shame that Blizzard didn�t have time to incorporate phasing into every zone of Northrend, because it really makes sense for certain quests. One questline in the Borean Tundra had Warpy getting weapons for a bunch of farmers whose town (Farshire) was being overrun by Scourge. Every time he goes back, they�re still armed with pitchforks. :`(

Class Balance: Is there a problem?

Warpy — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 16:31:02 GMT

Things must be pretty bad for warlocks if even Bigredkitty feels sorry for us! BRK can be funny about everything, but many of the unhappy warlocks and the trolls on the other side (some of whom used to play warlocks) really aren�t as much fun to read.

How bad is it really?

One test would be to see how many players have abandoned their warlocks for death knights. Warcraftrealms.com collects data on World of Warcraft characters using an add-on and the in-game �who� command and can answer that question. Fortunately, I wrote an entry about that site in July, 2008, and so I have an old census that I can compare to today�s. The July, 2008 data I�ve got are from the Alliance side of a typical server (I checked that), so I�m comparing them to Jan. 2009 data from the Alliance-side averages of all the servers.

Before: TBC - Patch 4

After: WotLK, Patch 3.04

The most obvious change is an increase in Death Knights, already 10% of the level-80 population. Even if the actual numbers of every other class remained the same (every level 70 in the July count had been leveled to 80), their percentages would each decline by 1.1% of the total because of these new Death Knights.

But most classes are roughly the same %age they were before death knights were added, indicating that their numbers have increased slightly.

The paladin population has increased noticeably.
Warlock numbers are down from 9% to 7%, an impressive decline given their original rarity.
But, the most impressive declines are in rogue and hunter numbers; those were among the most common classes in the game.

Does these declines indicate a serious problem for warlocks, rogues, and hunters?

It could. A lot of the end-game warlocks, rogues, and hunters were there for PvP, which now favors plate-wearers. Enthusiastic PvPers would have serious incentive to reroll, and death knights get to level 80 much faster than new paladins.

However, two of the characters in the July �08 survey were my alt hunter and my alt rogue, both level 70. It will be a while before either sees level 80. Rogues and hunters make great alts, and are popular with casual players, who aren�t as likely to level as quickly as hard-core raiders and PvPers. Likewise, perhaps many of the July �08 warlocks were alts and just haven�t leveled yet?

But the January decline might be worse than it looks. Many of the characters in the census are alts, even though the expansion has only been out for a few months. Have people leveled their warlock/hunter/rogue mains to 80, been disappointed in their ability to raid/PvP/whatever they do in-game, and begun rerolling and leveling new mains?

Identifying Mains vs. Alts

One way to identify mains is by measuring prime-time activity, something Warcraft Realms extracts from census data. Servers are crowded from 6-10 PM, so that�s a good time for raiding, dungeon runs, and PvP; activities one tends to do on one�s main toon.

Changes over time are tough to interpret here, because there was a period when census+ (the mod that collects Warcraftrealms data) was broken. It was fixed Oct. 28th. That second "Dec." should probably be "Jan." There were also important family holidays in November and December that took priority over WoW playtime for many people. :shock: According to Rollie�s concurrency report, WoW total primetime activity increased gradually through October and November (based on 47 days, the ones with good data, I guess, out of 61). However, trends in relative prime-time activity by class are pretty easy to see here.

Back in July of 2008:

Hunters were not only the most common class, they were by far the most active at prime-time, so they more likely to be someone�s main toon than any other class.
Warriors were second most-active.
Shamans were the least-active during prime-time.
Warlocks were the second-rarest on here, even last-summer when we were supposedly Blizzard�s fair-haired child.

As of Jan. 2009:

Hunters are still highly active, but they�ve been joined by death knights, warriors, and paladins, all very popular classes. So I�d say there hasn�t been a real decrease in people playing hunters as mains, but manyof the hunters in the July 2008 census were actually alts out there who have not yet leveled, or possibly even been played to be censused.
The two least-active classes, warlocks and shamans, have become even less active, as have rogues, once highly active.

When The Burning Crusade was developed, Blizzard pushed players to reroll the rarest classes at the time: shaman, paladins, warlocks, and druids. This time, in Wrath of the Lich King, those big/interesting buffs went to the most common classes: paladins, warriors, and hunters. Blizzard added a new powerful and interesting class, the death knight, but though it added diversity in terms of total number of classes, it just made it easier for players of the rare classes to reroll.

Which classes are being leveled?

In terms of coming changes, players are still leveling, including many that are new and many that have rerolled. Ghostcrawler was right about there being very few level-80s in the total WoW population. As of Jan. 2009, there are about fifty times as many toons leveling between 19 and 80 as there are at level 80!

WotLK

Six months ago, there were almost no toons left to level. Just about everyone and her alt was at level 70 (except for a handful of level 19 twinks, not shown below).

TBC, patch 4

So what classes are people leveling? Looks like more hunters (alts or casuals?) and a few more rogues, but fewer shaman and still 7% warlocks. Lots more death knights on the way!

WotLK

Many, probably most of these characters will be abandoned before they reach level 80, but it looks like the gap between the most common classes and the rarer ones is only going to get wider and wider with time.

Looks like we�re headed for a player-base dominated by paladins (mostly retribution), warriors, death knights, and hunters.
Warlocks and shaman, always rare in the past, are getting even more scarce.
In terms of loot, hard times are ahead for plate-wearing tanks and DPS! ^_^ Expect no sympathy here.

Some changes are coming that may affect these trends: there are a bunch of buffs for elemental shaman in patch 3.08, which may increase their damage by as much as 20%. But it�s hard for Blizzard to nerf classes that are apparently overpowered; that turns the players into unhappy customers. The obvious solution is to buff the rare classes (especially the needed healing specs!) or to make them more fun to play.

Possible Causes of Warlock/Shaman/Rogue Population Declines

Why are warlocks and shaman getting rarer? Their are other sources of data available.

For example, people have done tallies of highly ranked WoW arena teams (rating of 2000+) and found that:

Warlocks are the least common class in high-end PvP for every team size.
Shaman tend only to be on successful teams in the 5v5 bracket.
Rogues are likely to be found on highly-ranked 2v2 and 3v3 teams. This was the case in TBC as well, I believe.

So it looks like arena PvP (and presumably some battlegrounds) is not likely to go well for warlocks given our current situation, and this is discouraging, given that many end-game warlocks prefer PvP to PvE play. Some of these warlocks may be hanging out in seige vehicles in Wintergrasp or Strand of the Ancients, waiting to see what the next patch holds.

How many of the raiders who've cleared Naxx have been warlocks or shaman (and how many times)? Are guilds limiting the number of shaman and warlocks that they're bringing to raids or are guilds with fewer of these classes more successful?

Those data could be worked out from WoWJutsu. Many of the top guilds have about 10% warlocks, but this doesn't encourage me too much, because many of them are the >5% of raiding guilds that actually stacked warlocks and shaman to down Brutallus. So there are a number of legacy shaman/warlocks in Sunwell gear still raiding in the most highly-ranked PvE guilds.

However, Ensidia, the number-one pro-gamer guild that cleared all the WotLK content within a few days was careful to assemble a new guild, not to be constrained by legacy. As of Jan. 2008, they have very few warlocks, 4 enhancement shaman, and 4 resto shaman (0 elemental shaman). Does Ensidia also run small raids for alts? Could be also that personalities are as important as class, but Ensidia is the daughter of the two guilds that made it to the top of the PvE charts by raid stacking.

The deal with getting a high WoWjutsu rating was to get through Naxx (and to a lesser degree, the other two raids) as many times as possible as soon as possible. Leveling to 80 and starting gear would have been more important than class.

If there's a problem with warlocks/shaman getting spots for raids (above and beyond the usual difficulty for any DPS to get a raid spot), the data aren't very clear at the moment. After the release of Ulduar, raid stacking patterns will get clearer. Alternatively, a gear-rating site with good data might be helpful.

Summary

Looks like there is a bit of a warlock population decline, but it's not an obvious one, because we've always been rare.
Rogue numbers seem to be declining a bit, but I'm not sure why. I'm not seeing any QQ posts at Roguespot; they seem happy, and there are quite a few rogues still leveling.
Shaman, always the rarest class, are declining further, but a dramatic buff for the elemental spec in patch 3.0.8 and the introduction of dual specs may help them recover.

Most screenshots modified from http://www.warcraftrealms.com/ and WowJutsu: World of Warcraft Guild Rankings: All Realms

Gearing Up for Raiding... Again

Warpy — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 22:27:34 GMT

Naxxramas and the Vault of Archavon are so easy compared to what Karazhan was like in the first few patch of the Burning Crusade (when the 25-man instances were just plain out-of-the-question for most of us), and they have no attunements! By the way, the comments below are mostly by, for, and about warlocks.

But even when you reach level 80, you still don�t want to be carried by your guild. Many of us had pretty good gear by the end of the Burning Crusade, but as you level, your gear gets worse, because every point of crit, hit, and haste rating on your gear does less for your actual performance in a raid. Your chance to hit and crit and the reduction in cast time from haste will go down with every level unless you improve your gear.

At level 70,

1% crit = 22.08 points
1% hit = 12.6 points
1% haste = 15.77 points

At level 80,

1% crit = 45.91 points
1% hit = 26.23 points
1% haste = 32.79 points

People have cleared all of the current Wrath of the Lich King instances in level 70 gear, but you may not want to, and your guild may not want you to. In my case, I�m doing some raiding even as I get ready, but every little bit helps.

Choosing Gear

You�ll probably be using the same tools both to find gear to raid in and to decide what to roll/bid DKP on in Naxx.

I used maxpdps.com, changing the list of available instances based on what the guild was doing at the time. However, it grossly undervalues hit and only has settings for deep-affliction warlocks at the moment. The destruction page is out-of-date.
Bakka�s spreadsheet is a work in progress currently. It only supports level-80 epics for the moment, and he�s struggling with some technical issues.
CanadianPimp�s list/guide is also under construction, but he offers a Leulier-type formula for weighing the values of different gear stats for affliction and destruction specs.
Gear lists: one way to start is to find out what�s available: Akasha�s WotLK Warlock Armor Upgrades includes info on quest rewards, dungeon drops and tailored items. The search engine on WoWhead can be filtered for different kinds of items.
You can use RatingBuster in game to compare items, but it helps to know what you are looking at beforehand.

Getting Gear: Crafting and Buying

Much of the best crafted gear out there is now exchangeable (bind-on-equip), so if you�ve got buckets of gold, or gold and skilled guildies, you can make a decent start on your gear without having to farm heroics. Tailors can make (and sell!) some raidworthy armor much, with +hit:

Jewelcrafters can make a wonderful Titanium Spellshock Necklace and a nifty Titanium Spellshock Ring for you, but each requires four Dragon�s Eye gems, and these are horribly expensive right now. Faces of Doom Saronite Spellblade from blacksmiths (but you can replace it pretty easily; see below). Alchemists and engineers can not share their trinkets/goggles.

I actually saved up and bought the Signet of the Kirin Tor as soon as I hit level 80. It�s not just a nice ring; I use the extra-hearthstone feature a lot. can be obtained from scribes (EDIT: but you can only use if if you are a scribe! Thanks, Darinar).

Making the Right Friends

Many factions have very nice epic caster items available at exalted status, but I assume that most people want to start raiding within at least a few weeks of hitting level 80.

Exotic pets are all good and well, but I'd recommend that prospective raiders start on the Kirin Tor and get that relationship to revered as soon as possible. At revered, you can buy the Flameheart Spell Scalpel and the DPS-caster helm enchant (Arcanum of Burning Mysteries). Crystalsong Forest looks like it should have been full of Kirin Tor and Silver Covenant/Sunreaver quests, but Blizzard did have to release Wrath of the Lich King quickly, so we may see those in a later content patch. In the meantime, you can buy their tabard as soon as you hit level 80 and run heroics in it for rep (championing). I also recommend doing the daily cooking quest as you level as you need the recipes and reagents for buff foods.

The Sons of Hodir provide shoulder enchants for everyone except scribes, so you want to work on the quest chain that gets you to honored with them to buy the basic ones (Lesser Inscription of the Storm). It starts with "They Took our Men!" at K3 in the Storm Peaks. At least one of these quests involves your poor warlock getting carried around by the scruff of the neck by an exceptionally n00bish giant.

Your faction's Death Knight in Icecrown will pack you off to help his pals in Shadow Hold. Doing those quests will unlock the Ebon Blade Quartermaster and quickly get you to honored status, so you can buy the Dark Soldier Cape.

There's more +hit on the Sash of the Wizened Wyrm, available at honored rep from the Wyrmrest Accord. They have both regular quests (Coldarra and Wyrmrest Temple) and daily quests. Don't forget an Eternal Belt Buckle.

Balancing Stats

Until you get to the hit cap (depends on talents and raid make-up, but eventually you want to get to 446 hit), hit rating is the most valuable single stat on your gear. How valuable? Well, don't go crazy here. For example, if you can choose to raid in a Deathchill Cloak or a Dark Soldier Cape, choose the former, because it offers so much more spellpower, crit, and haste that you'll do more damage, even if you do miss 1% more often.

For more info on lvl-80 warlocks and the hit cap, check out Akasha's Hit Cap Guide.
For a discussion about gearing sensibly for hit, see BRK's comments on balancing gear.

Heroic Drops

I haven't said much about these because I haven't had much luck here, both in terms of getting caster items to drop and rolling against other casters. The items that you can get are great, but don't count on them if you want to raid soon. There's a somewhat higher density of loot in raid instances.

What you can count on are Emblems of Heroism and rep. You can buy T7 gloves and chest with these, but you might want to go for one of the trinkets as you have two of thise slots to fill, even once you start raiding. Frozen Orbs are important for crafting more gear.

Next blog entry should be sometime before Tuesday, January 13th.

Beyond Redemption

Warpy — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 22:26:22 GMT

One problem we've seen with warlocks heading in to Wrath of the Lich King is the lack of New Stuff: ideas which would transform warlock playstyle and make warlocks more fun, like the improvements to warrior tanking or the pet talent trees for hunters. It's still too early to tell whether the lack of New Stuff for Warlocks is due to diabolical brain damage suffered by the developers as part of an infernal plot or to a simple lack of creativity and inspiration on their part.

So where is Blizzard's apparently limited supply of creativity and inspiration going?

WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD!!!

The new theme that took over Outland and Northrend has been that of redemption. It's central to every major storyline from patch 2.4 to the present. It's really the only major theme being developed currently aside from the increasingly overwhelming battle-between-good-and-evil motif which has always been important to the World of Warcraft, but has been constantly undermined by ironic elements like the war between the Horde and the Alliance.

Three major storylines have recently involved:

The Death Knights and the Ebon Blade faction
Lady Liadren and her Blood Knights
The Forsaken and the Royal Apothecary Society

The death knight storyline, I understand, is well enough on its own. Redemption for the Blood Elves has the potential to add a bit of depth to those shallow creatures (doubt it will happen), but I fear that attemps to clean up the Forsaken will strip them of depth and pathos that they already have.

I haven't started my death knight yet, so I'm not going to comment on their storyline. They are however, only being redeemed in the eyes of others. It's hard to sincerely repent for evil deeds you've committed while under someone else's total control. So they're pitiable, but pretty straightforward, and, from the sound of things, lots of fun.

I started a blood elf priest last December, and he was lots of fun for 19 levels. Every NPC in the blood elf starting area was either boring or a complete bastard, and the paladins were among the nastiest of them. As the priest trainers explained, blood elves don't work for the Light; It works for us! ^_^

Silvermoon City was downright creepy, full of harassed citizens and evil robot sentries spouting totalitarian platitudes. The bazaar was the stage for a grisly scene between protesters against the new regime (Lyria Skystrider and Priest Ennas) and Priest Kath'mar, who uses Mind Control to make dissent simply... go away! One of my ugliest discoveries was the paladin power source, M'uru. It was an ugly scene, basically these elves were vampirizing an angel to give themselves apparently divine powers!

All of this changed with patch 2.4. M'uru was taken away and the Blood Elves were abandoned by the bad guy who'd started corrupting them in the first place: Kael'thas. Lady Liadren promised to work with A'dal and to raise her blood knights to be good little paladins. So the Blood Elves go from shallow, nasty, and amusing to shallow, self-righteous, and probably rather dull. I will have to log on to my priest to check what has become of them.

Everyone who's played Horde, especially as far as the Beggar's Haunt quest lines knows that the Forsaken are up to no good. They start as neutral with the rest of their faction unlike every other race (except the unlovable blood elves). The Horde is an alliance of convenience. The orcs and trolls have enough in common that they can share a capitol, and they look up to the Tauren, but all three of those groups know better than to trust their allies from the Eastern Continent.

I leveled a Forsaken mage and alchemist to level 48 just before the Burning Crusade was released, and did lots of Apothecary quests. There was no secret about what we were working on, a plague to finish the remaining survivors of the Scourge, the humans of the Eastern Kingdoms. Presumably, the rest of the Horde didn't care because their population centers are in Kalimdor.

The Forsaken aren't self-centered jerks like most of the Blood Elves. They're a dying race, by their own choice. Unlike the Scourge, they can't and won't recruit more people of any type into undeath. They practice all kinds of magic, but not necromancy, never ever.

At the same time, they're not immortal. The plague of undeath even kills them eventually. At level 7, Horde get a grim little quest called The Chill of Death in Brill that involves helping one of the Forsaken prepare for her coming slow death which is even more moving in some ways than the Wrathgate cinematic. The Forsaken are a desperate bunch. The petty judgments of the living and the unending squabble between good and evil should hold little interest for them.

However, the Wrathgate quest sequence results in a bit of tidying up of some of the questionable elements of the Undercity, conforming the remaining Forsaken and their queen a bit more to Horde norms. What good does it do them, as game settings leave them untrusted, and as their story just isn't going to have a happy ending? I'm kind of glad the new Alliance leader (King Wrynn) is too short-sighted to see how easy it would be for the Alliance to make common cause with the Horde now, makes things a bit more interesting.

Blizzard can't do a mass redemption of warlocks; we have no home city and no leader (though Kissybear is Our Hero). Even within a faction or a race, warlocks don't form a single group and have no common origin. Some learned demonology from the Burning Legion (like the orc shamans corrupted by Gul'dan), others from their own research (especially gnomes). There are different levels and kinds of corruption even among warlock NPCs. If all the stories from here on out are going to be about redemption and a straightforward battle between good and evil, we are a fly in the creative ointment.

It's not necessarily much fun to be on the other side of the developers' overpowering vision. Look at what happened to paladins. If all the stories are about paladins (and I don't recall Bolvar Fordragon being a paladin before Wrathgate!), they need to be more versatile and important! Great fun, while it lasts.... What's the point of new toys if you don't get to keep them?

There are other stories out there to be told about characters who are other than knights in shining armor, who are involved in battles where good and evil are a bit hard to distinguish, and might in fact not even be exactly involved.

Blog delayed by travel

Warpy — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 03:57:35 GMT

I hope to get some stuff online by Tuesday or Wednesday. I don't dare trust Jubham with the password again. >.>

Level 71: Freshmen Again

Warpy — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 15:02:58 GMT

I thought about doing the "10 Things You Will/Will Not Miss from The Burning Crusade Now that You are in Northrend" blog, but I realized:

It's too soon to really know what those are since I've only been in Northrend for a few days
For the last year of TBC, I was mostly concerned witnTier 5/Tier 6 raiding. For the first several months of WotLK, I'll be busy leveling and gearing my main.

For your fancy raiding guilds, the new expansion is a little like the situation of college freshmen in the US during their first week at a university. College freshmen were upperclassmen for two years back in high school, but now

They are in a strange place and they don't know where everything is
They're taking classes that require much more self-reliance than their high-school equivalents
They're not the coolest/most experienced people in the school (teachers do not count as people).
They don't have the advantage of being the only people with cars (no flying mounts yet!)

At least, with Northrend being new, everybody's a freshman now! Maybe not the people who leveled to 80 in beta-testing... but that would be Priestn00b, Ambassador to the Horde, so I'm just not worried!

I made all these wonderful plans (and blogged about most of them), but of course none of them panned out. So I've revised my strategies.

Do Interesting Quests: I'd originally planned to rush to Dragonblight and power-level there, away from the madding crowds, but working on the Loremaster Achievement for Kalimdor, I realized how much of the Warcraft stories I'd missed by skipping certain quests.

In Northrend, I wanted to do the first two instances with my guildies. We're well-geared enough that we would not be farming them for drops. So I wasn't sure I could come back and do them in 2009. I went to the starting zones to pick up the dungeon quests and breadcrumbs for later zones, and got distracted. I oozed Captain Adams' Vrykul prisoner. Couldn't just leave him hanging after that, ya know? :confuse: The Nexus quests in particular are a long way from Valiance Keep ("Valiance" is not a word! Is Valor Keep trademarked or something?!).

There's a lot of really amazing stuff in those starting zones!

The Kvaldir: Viking Raiders who can't be seen unless you're in the mists with them, who turn back into sea-water when they die
Baby murlocs!!!
The Cultist/Traitor questlines from Valiance Keep
Learning how to be an evil robot! And bluffing dwarves who make robot noises!
The lame Nesingwary lackeys (I remember them camping the lousy young tigers in STV!!!), and that hypochondriac, Harold Lane

And lots more! I'm having too much fun to powerlevel! :shock:

Explore: I've only got the achievement for the first four zones so far, and I'm still discovering places in all of them. But it's time for me to move on. I've found the path from Borean Tundra to Sholazar, and once I got to Dalaran, I hiked through Dragonblight to Moa'ki harbor and took a turtle boat and there I was back in Howling Fjord! I need to take a break from questing to look around some more. I'm being careful to ignore quest-givers so I can still pick up bread-crumbs. Besides, those flight-paths are convenient! The Dalaran cooking quests will give me an excuse to wander around some more.

Dalaran itself has been fun to poke around. I found an elixir in the Underbelly that turned my warlock into a walrus. By the way, Lower City drama has followed us to Northrend: Jedaar and Asric are still arguing in a bar in the sewers! :2funny: Cro Threadstrong and the apple lady apparently couldn't leave their jobs in Shattrath.

Be social: Sure, most of the quests are solo, but there are not only some group quests, but if you're going after a named mob, there's usually a queue for it, so /invite the waiting people from your faction to save everyone time and stress. It's a chance to meet new people and get to know your server better.

Some of my guildies are powerleveling in exclusive groups with relatives and particular friends, but I've had a chance to run instances with some folks I haven't seen much of. It's getting tougher as we're all different levels now, and it will get worse over the holidays. I'll be out of town for about four weeks - that's most of December and late November.

Planning on Raiding... Eventually: Yes, the first Karazhan raid team in my guild were our first level 70's, but within a month, two of them had quit WoW, we were running multiple groups through Karazhan every week, and those groups always needed extra DPS because someone couldn't make it. By the time we got serious about King Maulgar, everyone had a chance to gear up and raid.

I've seen several of the announcements of the first of various classes to reach level 80 on Kul Tiras. Some of them are from Sunwell raiding guilds, but not all. Why would hardcore raiders be especially good at raiding? We have some very serious solo players who have leveled multiple alts and known exactly what they're doing. The first level-80 toon in my guild belongs to a person who's had three different mains (the first of which is a Scarab Lord). In fact, I think the only thing slowing down most of our hard-core soloers is the desire to level a Death Knight from 55 to 80 before they go to work on their mains!

Extreme Exploring

Warpy — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 18:08:43 GMT

You've probably flown over a number of places that no roads lead to, or realized that something ought to be on the other side of those mountains.

Much like the real world, Blizzard's World of Warcraft has some places that don't serve anyone's purposes; they're just there! There are a lot of players who have put serious time and effort into getting to them.

A number of these places seem to exist to liven up flight paths, particularly the Shatterspear Village that you see between Auberdine and Moonglade, or the Dun Morogh airfield between Ironforge and points north.

There are also places that no one would ordinarily ever see, usually on the inaccessible coasts of zones bounded by mountains, like the empty Tauren village below Silithus or Newman's Landing on the west coast of Dun Morogh.

So how does one get there, and why would one want to go? Most importantly: Is it illegal and could it get one's beloved warlock banned? :confuse:

Before I even set off, I had a look at the WoW Terms of Service. They even forbid the use of profiling software! However, I've never heard of anyone getting banned over Magelo or Guildlaunch Characterprofiler. That rule is in there to protect Blizzard; if there's a threat, they'll respond.

The only possible problem for a visit to the secret places is 5.C.1:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Blizzard

Using or exploiting errors in design, features which have not been documented, and/or "program bugs" to gain access that is otherwise not available, or to obtain a competitive advantage over other players.

However, most hidden areas can be walked to or slowfalled to. None of the secret places I've heard of outside of battlegrounds confer any kind of in-game advantage on players that visit them. In other words, unless you need to use a glitch or a bug to get to a place (i.e. Gilneas), you're not breaking the rules, and Blizzard has no reason to ban you.

GMs used to instakill player characters caught wandering around the Dun Morogh airstrip, but they no longer bother. Blizzard can and sometimes does change small features of the landscape or boat paths to make some hidden areas inaccessible; they've done it to Hyjal and those two islands between the continents on Azeroth. You simply can't go to Hyjal or the troll islands anymore.

I can see some problems with players getting trapped in some places, or having troubles getting to one of them and hassling GM's. That's probably something Blizzard wants to avoid. Never go anywhere without your hearthstone. If you leave it behind and you can't climb out of your current location, you can always die and rez in an accessible graveyard, everywhere I've ever been or heard of. Remember to take your armor off first.

What I've noticed about hidden areas. Since few players will closely interact with them:

The NPCs and buildings will often be stock models. At least the Shatterspear trolls have their own name (and 4 named NPCs), but they are pretty bland beyond that. The Dun Morogh airstrip is populated by generic Ironforge Mountaineers (complete with directions to all kinds of trainers) and even Holdout Warriors from Gnomerangen.
The NPCs for the flight path decorations are animated. They are endlessly dancing or spawning/fighting/dying or crying, or otherwise engaging in repetitive activity that would create lag if lots of players were around. This makes them fun to watch from the air.
Sometimes they have Doors or Tunnels to Nowhere that can be used to connect them to the rest of the world if Blizzard ever decides to use them. Trying to use these doors/tunnels usually results in death and a trip to a graveyard back in the normal WoW world.

Some of them may have been intended as quest hubs. Faldir's Cove is an example of a quest hub that's hard to see, hard to find, and hard to reach. For all I know, it may have started as a secret place with a pirate ship. The author of the WoWwiki article on the Dun Morogh airfield proposes that it may have been intended as a gnome starting area, as part of a road from Ironforge to Menethil, or as a quest hub for the AQ War Effort.

So how does one get to these places? For the Dun Morogh airstrip and the Shatterspear Village, there are places you can climb up and work your way through the mountains. The easiest path to the airstrip involves using slowfall to help your mount jump further. For both of these, bring slowfall stuffs like parachute cloaks, Noggenfogger, seasonal goodies, etc. You can corpse run if you must, but slowfall and soulstones are a better deal. I recommend not wearing your expensive T6 armor! Tuxedos don't break and look so much spiffier in screenshots! BD

Bring lots of shards and friends if you want to summon your undeserving guildies to these places. Keep in mind that certain n00b hunters will then turn around and kill all of the NPCs. :Angry!:

Getting back from Shatterspear Village involves hearthing; you can't climb out. If you didn't bring your hearthstone, you can offer your guildies in another zone a small fortune to summon you or you can drown in the lake.

On the way down from the Dun Morogh airfield, one usually wants to go north to have a look at the little Wetlands farm and its Tunnel to Nowhere. Do not fall down the waterfall the way I did. :nono: From there you can head east through the mountains to view unnamed secret places. For example, this blank spot where I'm standing (little silver arrow) on the map below:

holds a very pretty lake, with ordinary bristle-whisker catfish.

Getting to the coastal sites is simply a matter of swimming or waterwalking to them. Be careful, as the shallow water zones along mountainous zones tend to be very narrow. Two yards out, and your character's fatigue bar lights up. I hoped I could put my toon on auto-run and go do other stuff in the fifteen-plus minutes it takes to get there, but I had to check at least every 30 seconds to make sure he didn't end up in deep water, die, and have to ghost-run all the way back! :`( Multiple swim-speed potions or water-walking elixirs are needed here, or a heck of a lot of patience.

Neither the Tauren Village nor Newman's Landing are visible from any flight path, so no player knows why they are there. The Tauren village and the nearby cave are empty. So was Newman's Landing until recently. With patch 3.0.2, it became the retirement home of High Admiral Shelly Jorrik, who sells blacksmithing supplies and speaks with a female gnome voice. <:o

I was surprised that these inaccessible spots were actually pretty polished, with complete models, and mostly complete textures on the landscapes. The only unfinished bits I saw was a small area in the Wetlands between the farm and the lake, and I've seen worse on highly visible ridgetops between mountainous zones.

In fact, a number of the zones seemed to be designed with visitors in mind! There are little goofy touches like the signpost near the Wetlands Farm, which points out "This Way", "That Way", and "The Other Way".

So where to next? It won't be hard to check out the lighthouse near Auberdine, and I hear good things about Quel'Thalas, but there are some interesting elven ruins and Tauren settlements visible from flightpaths along the coast of the Stonetalon Mountains. Time to get Warpy some climbin' boots and to send him up there.

Gamer Psychology - Test Yourself on GamerDNA

Warpy — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 18:58:23 GMT

I remember reading about various kinds of personality profiles that led to different gaming behaviors and preferences, and Blogazeroth led me to a test on GamerDNA. com that gave me the above profile.

Explorer: No surprises there. That was what hooked me into WoW in the first place: the prospect of a new virtual world to explore! 40% of the people who take the Bartle test on GamerDNA are primarily explorers. This makes sense for a couple of reasons. One is that they found GamerDNA to begin with. The other is that most online gamers play World of Warcraft, a game with a large and fascinating world! I still need to figure out how to get to the Ironforge Airport, though.

Socializer: Well, these games are multi-player. I'm pretty attached to the people in my guild, but I like soloing as well. I think one needs to be fairly social to tolerate raiding! Some people, especially role-players, play MMPORGs specifically to interact. I expect that the saner part of the population of Second Life are primarily socializer gamers.

Achiever: These folks keep score: raiders for whom progression is key, arena addicts who keep a close eye on their ratings. The rank system used to really pull these guys into BGs (but created other problems). I suspect that achievers turn up in all kinds of games which let them play to win, whether it be against other players or against raid bosses.

Killer: Almost 30% of the quiz-takers are primarily killers. For various reasons, they like PvP better than PvE gaming. Some of our biggest arena-enthusiasts are primarily killers, but I think a lot of killers stick to pure PvP games like Halo and Team Fortress.

One amusing observation Faradhim made, of all the bloggers who've reported on this test, our top scores are in Explorer and our bottom scores are in Killer. This was predicted by the GamerDNA staff: "Explorer socializers power the wikis, maps, forums and theory craft sites of the gamer world."

GamerDNA offers three other personality-profile quizzes, one geared for FPS (first person shooter) games, another for RTS (real-time strategy) games, and another dealing with eras of game culture and their influence on you. Somehow, they amalgamate the results to create a graph like the one below:

It's basically a polar-coordinate graph with 6 data points, which can be positive or negative numbers (the white line around the middle of the hexagon represents zero).

I'm negative on reward-driven (not true, I love loot!)
Negative on competitive (true, and one of many reasons I'll never be a great PvPer)
I'm not very organized either (just look at my bank).
Very exploratory, obvious from the other quiz
Somewhat social
Thoughtful, but not very!

Aside from the fun quizzes, GamerDNA is a social-networking site for gamers. It used to be Guild Cafe. They still organize game tournaments. They host guilds and clan web sites, and help them recruit players based on *gasp!* compatible personalities! It's still in Beta, so it will be interesting to see how it evolves.

So how did your quiz results turn out?

Belated WotLK Warlock Wishlist

Warpy — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 19:49:42 GMT

Like any old fogey, I�m always going on about the good �ol days, and why we need to bring them back. In particular, I�m remembering the month before the release of The Burning Crusade, how excited we all were about the new content, and how much fun we were having trying out and planning new specs. Other warlocks, particularly our hardcore PvPers, were having a blast with the new affliction tree, but I wanted to try out a felguard! And it was a blast. I could finally solo elites and do all those Cenarion Field Duty quests!

I look forward to trying out all three of the new 51-point talents this time but I know that this time, my toon isn�t going to be able to do anything he couldn�t do back in WoW 2.4.

Quote:

Originally Posted by elitistjerks.com

Excerpt from The Banhammer

Since 5 zillion bloggers/forum posters/etc. have ranted in great and documented detail about What Blizzard Has Done Wrong this Time, it might be more amusing to talk about What Blizzard Should Have Done this Time. I want new, different abilities! I�d love a new and different demon! However, with limited testing time, that�s probably not a great idea from Blizzard�s perspective, since they�ve seen fairly ugly exploits involving minor abilities like soulstones and summoning.

So here�s my thought, let�s go with an old idea that has worked before, that is key to the success of several classes now. It doesn�t involve any ideas new enough to be risky, and should be easy to tune with a month�s worth of Public Test Realm data. Not that it will even be tried, but this is my rant! :Angry!:

Make us hybrids!

Affliction (DPS/healing): If I�m in a group, have the healing from my Haunt spell go to the person with the lowest percentage of their max. health. It would be a different effect from a chain heal, arguably better, but it�s on a cooldown, and Blizz might add a range. In PvP, that healing could be a life-saver for the team-mate who is being focus-fired (if I get focus-fired, I probably shouldn�t cast Haunt).

One problem I noticed with Haunt while raiding Black Temple and Sunwell in WoW 3.0.2 is that the healing, which is considerable, usually isn�t useful to me personally. Drain Life is still necessary when I take a lot of damage at once, because I can control the timing. Siphon Life is adequate to recover health lost to Life Tapping.

I really wouldn�t mind seeing other, darkly-themed healing abilities for affliction warlocks, or all warlocks. We�ve got health stones and soul stones, so arguably, we�re in the healing/rezzing business already. I�m trying to think of a good replacement for our rather useless level 75 spell, Shadowflame, that isn�t yet another generic DoT or nuke. Some kind of healing/cleansing/buffing spell might be nice.

Demonology (Tanking/AoE DPS): The best solution for Metamorphosis, I believe, is to go back to the original idea that most of the warlock�s abilities are replaced with new ones, rather like a shapeshifting druid. Like a druid, however, the capabilities of the new form must be adequate for a boss fight in a progression raid. It should not have a cooldown or duration.

Blizzard seems reluctant to give us pets like Beastmaster hunters have. Seems like those can do almost as much damage as a player-character and bring utility to a raid. So rather than buffing our damage (something else Blizzard seems to fear doing with warlocks), perhaps Metamorphosis should allow warlocks to fill another role: tanking.

As with the original model, shapeshifting gives the warlock a different set of abilities, but this time make sure that they're adequate for tanking raids (if the warlock has decent gear). The demon form already has lots of non-ranged AoE damage (Immolation/Shadow Cleave), extra mobility (Charge), a taunt, and some damage resistance. Now, crit and hit are the same for spell and melee. Use spell power for AP, armor, defense, and dodge rather than making them a function of original caster armor and make sure the other abilities scale with warlock-appropriate gear.

This change would appear to require extensive re-writing of the demonology tree, but many lousy talents were pruned out and yet more remain. Recycle ideas which couldn't fit in to the Death Knight template or old ideas from the days when warlocks could wear leather armor and melee. There�s room in the Demonology tree for both metamorphosis-oriented talents and pet-oriented talents.

None of the current pets actually help a tank and may be a distraction (Blood Pact does not scale enough to constitute help). The original version of Metamorphosis banished the warlock�s pet. This was a problem partly because most of the talents required to be able to buy Metamorphosis are intended to buff the pet! If we went back to the banish-the-pet version of Metamorphosis, have multiple forms of most demonology talents, one form that buffs the pet when the warlock is in human form and another that buffs the metamorphosed warlock (or enables him/her to buff the raid).

One talent that should be removed from the Demonology Tree (because it doesn�t fit with the others) is Demonic Sacrifice. It may well be appropriate as part of the Destruction Tree.

Destruction (DPS/DPS/More DPS): This spec shouldn�t be a hybrid. But it shouldn�t be lower DPS than any of the mage or hunter specs either. It�s currently not set up to provide any utility except the few that warlocks can all do, and after the whole Can�t-Run-Sunwell-Without-100%-ISB-Uptime fiasco, I�m pretty sure Blizzard�s not going to give it any more utility. This spec needs to be able to DPS like a BC rogue, a BC rogue without interrupts, aggro-transfer abilities, Vanish, Expose Armor, etc.

To do all that damage, destrolocks need to concentrate, and micromanaging a fragile imp isn't practical unless that imp contributes a lot of DPS or utility. By level 80, a pet won't be a decision, it will be a distraction to a well-geared destrolock. As gear improves, and warlock pets provide less and less of the warlock�s DPS, Demonic Sacrifice, even in its nerfed state, seems increasingly appropriate. Move it over to the destro tree. Alternatively, get rid of DS and let pets buff a destrolock's damage.

Likewise, the more DoT durations, cooldowns, etc. warlocks have to monitor, the lower our DPS is, and the further our performance is below simulations. Conflag is reported as a DPS loss even against target dummies for some players because it�s so distracting to keep track of.

The cooldown and the broken tooltip are the only major difference between Chaos Bolt and Incinerate right now; Chaos Bolt does 10% more damage, but it�s another cooldown to keep track of and another button to press. Chaos Bolt is the crown of the destro tree, let it at least apply a hefty debuff to the target.

Scaling with Gear

All specs didn�t scale equally with gear in TBC, nor do they do so now, despite Blizzard's best attmepts. So have haste make DoTs tick faster (haste currently favors destro builds). If warlock pets' damage doesn't scale better with caster gear than it did in TBC, enhance their utility or let us sacrifice them (boring!). The imp still needs more damage mitigation (haven�t tested the succubus).

Hybrid Builds Not for Hybrid Roles

The above very much favors builds that include the 51-point talents. But for so long, the most popular end-game raid builds have not included the top tier of talents: SM/Ruin or Ruin/Master Demonologist, then 0/21/40 (Demonic Sacrifice/Shadow and Flame) and 40/0/21 (Malediction/Ruin), because there were mid-tier talents that were better once a warlock had certain stats on their gear.

The WoW 3.0 version of the affliction tree has explicit synergy between Haunt and lower-tier talents, and Chaos Bolt is the most powerful warlock nuke currently. It looks like Blizzard actually wants us using the 51-point talents. Having two of those talents actually allow the warlock to play a role besides DPS, and the third to DPS better than we could with any other spec, would cause us to use them even late into the expansion.

The above are proposed as raiding specs, particularly ones that would make us good candidates for progression raids. Hybrid builds (no 51-point talents) would be for DPS and would still be fun, with great possibilities for PvP, solo play, farm raids, and 5-man instances.