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[Fjordson]

It always kinda shocks me how much people who play other MMOs seem to hate World of Warcraft.

Like I'm currently playing Final Fantasy XIV, pretty good game, some quirks and pretty limited content but still the only WoW-like I've been able to get into. Anyway, like 50% of the time I bring up WoW to make a quick reference to explanation since things either spurred from WoW (and WoW has a high quality of life/polish that I appreciate) in that game...or any other MMO... someone gets furious.

Like I'm having a discussion with some people in XIV about the accuracy cap and in XIV there's no gem system (there's a take on it called Materia but its highly limited and only on crafted gear and quest gear, no real end game loot) and no reforging, talents system to pull out from, etc, so I express my lament about struggling with the cap and my desire for more systems to toy with it.

So, instantly I get a: "What is reforging? Please don't let it be a WoW term..." followed by a bunch of other nonsense and it's just like...you're playing a fucking completely shameless WoW clone, get over yourself. I just don't understand the rivalry people feel with these games. Maybe I'm just gettin' too up there in years to care.

I get what you mean. It does get tiring really fast. I encountered some of that when I was trying out Guild Wars 2 in its first month.

I think it's partly just a product of WoW being the biggest MMO still. People love taking potshots at whatever is the most popular. Especially if its been around a while. Like CoD comments in any big FPS topic or condescending snark towards Grand Theft Auto in any open-world game topic.

(CoD might deserve it at this point, I hear Ghost is not that great, but it's been going for a long time)

 

[mclem]

My understanding was the item squish had to happen due to the engine not being able to handle the large numbers.

I don't buy that. We're some way off numbers that would usually be regarded as normal caps on integer size. Now, it's possible that they're using unconventionally-sized integers, but that would be, uh, unconventional.

 

[GLopez12]

It always kinda shocks me how much people who play other MMOs seem to hate World of Warcraft.

Like I'm currently playing Final Fantasy XIV, good game, some quirks and pretty limited content but still the only WoW-like I've been able to get into. Anyway, like 50% of the time I bring up WoW to make a quick reference to explain something (when WoW created so many of these concepts and has a high quality of life/polish, it happens) in that game (or any other MMO, really) someone gets furious.

Like I'm having a discussion with some people in XIV about the accuracy cap in XIV. Now, there's no gem system in this game (there's a take on it called Materia but its highly limited and only on crafted gear and quest gear, no real end game loot) no enchanting, no reforging and no talent system distribute any stats from it can be a bit of a pain with hard cap-style stats.

I express my lament about struggling with the cap and my desire for more systems to toy with it and instantly I get a: "What is reforging? Please don't let it be a WoW term..." followed by a bunch of other griping and bemoaning and it's just like...you're playing a fucking completely shameless WoW clone, get over yourself. I just don't understand the rivalry people feel with these games. Maybe I'm just gettin' too up there in years to care.

I'm very much bored of WOW even though I still say it's a very good game on the PvE side, but I absolutely agree with your sentiment. I can understand someone playing a different game like Guild Wars 2 or EVE Online and disliking the WOW model, but it's absolutely hilarious when someone tries to blindly hate on WOW while playing a total clone like Rift, Star Wars: The Old Republic or Final Fantasy XIV. It makes no sense.

 

[Tacitus_]

I don't buy that. We're some way off numbers that would usually be regarded as normal caps on integer size. Now, it's possible that they're using unconventionally-sized integers, but that would be, uh, unconventional.

Not really. Boss HP is already very close to hitting the 32 bit signed limit. This is Iron Juggernauts Health (25-player Heroic): 1,788,161,664.
They'd easily hit the unsigned limit in WoD. Given that the game was originally designed for bosses that had HP in the millions (Raggy having almost exactly 1M), not billions, it's very possible that they didn't use 64 bit ints and having a squish might be easier than rummaging through the code base.

 

[LukeSmith]

Tidbits:


Heh, I think when I first came back in Cata, this was one of the first things I noticed.
But obviously, nobody used it, so it showed nothing.

(Much like how In-game Voice Chat still exists, but nobody really uses that.)

Speaking of, I really should finish up my Shadowmourne. (On Infusions at the moment.)



Crap. I was wanting this so badly.

How do I even use the Raid Browser? It's not even clear to me where this piece of UI is

 

[Salamando]

Not really. Boss HP is already very close to hitting the 32 bit signed limit. This is Iron Juggernauts Health (25-player Heroic): 1,788,161,664.
They'd easily hit the unsigned limit in WoD. Given that the game was originally designed for bosses that had HP in the millions (Raggy having almost exactly 1M), not billions, it's very possible that they didn't use 64 bit ints and having a squish might be easier than rummaging through the code base.

True. Even then though, they could be running into issues elsewhere if they used shorts instead of ints for values to save on memory. Things like character stats and such.

How do I even use the Raid Browser? It's not even clear to me where this piece of UI is

Click 'O' to go to your social panel. On the "Raid" tab is a button at the top for "Other Raids"

 

[Ultratech]

Whats a hard to find pet for a hunter? The spirit beasts? I kinda want to get the spotted tiger from shlozar basin.

The majority of the Spirit Beasts are pretty hard to find mostly due to rarity or people camping them (*looks at Arcturis*).

There's those Spirit Porcupines in Pandaria though that respawn quick if you want one of those.
You'd have to get past their gimmicks first though.

 

[Data West]

I keep considering turning my warrior arms or fury to level quicker, and it seems like my only character being a tank would be frustrating. But I like whacking stuff with a shield

 

[Fjordson]

I keep considering turning my warrior arms or fury to level quicker, and it seems like my only character being a tank would be frustrating. But I like whacking stuff with a shield

I'm leveling a warrior right now also.

Prot is pretty nice since tank queues are literally instant with random dungeons, but I dunno, I'm not really a fan of tanking personally.

I want to go fury because Titan's Grip with dual BoA arcanite reapers seems like fun, but I keep reading that it's actually not that great until end-game because of a lack of hit.

 

[Jag]

The majority of the Spirit Beasts are pretty hard to find mostly due to rarity or people camping them (*looks at Arcturis*).

There's those Spirit Porcupines in Pandaria though that respawn quick if you want one of those.
You'd have to get past their gimmicks first though.

That was a fun tame. Reminds me a bit of the old Hunter Class quest. The place where all good Hunters learned how to kite.

 

[Fjordson]

Whats a hard to find pet for a hunter? The spirit beasts? I kinda want to get the spotted tiger from shlozar basin.

Like Ultratech, I'd say spirit beasts are still the hardest (one of them being Loque'nahak from Sholazar).

Not so much hard to find, because with NPC scan and other resorucese these days it's easy to find exactly where a pet's spawn areas are, but because the spawn timers are long and there's usually competition from other players.

Especially these days with cross realm zones. I started going for all the spirit beasts on my hunter when I resubbed about six months ago and a few of them were difficult to get because of the constant presence of other players.

Actually think I have all of the spirit beasts on my hunter now. Finally got Ghostcrawler a few months ago, he was tough to find.

 

[Data West]

I'm sure most people have seen it, but if you haven't
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/warlords-of-draenor/?autoplay=true#characters

this is awesome. Hope they show humans soon.

 

[mclem]

Not really. Boss HP is already very close to hitting the 32 bit signed limit. This is Iron Juggernauts Health (25-player Heroic): 1,788,161,664.
They'd easily hit the unsigned limit in WoD. Given that the game was originally designed for bosses that had HP in the millions (Raggy having almost exactly 1M), not billions, it's very possible that they didn't use 64 bit ints and having a squish might be easier than rummaging through the code base.

That's a fair point. I was only really thinking in the ballpark of player values, didn't really take into account boss numbers. That said, I'd be rather surprised if they were represented by signed values!

(Then again, there may be a purpose to that I was unaware of; I recall discovering that gold was stored as a signed value, which I didn't understand until I found the explanation for what negative gold represented)

 

[Entropia]

Tidbits:

During the final interview they did with Chilton on DirectTV, they specifically mentioned it'll be like OpenRaid and oQueue

 

[Fjordson]

I'm sure most people have seen it, but if you haven't
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/warlords-of-draenor/?autoplay=true#characters

this is awesome. Hope they show humans soon.

Yeah, they look awesome.

They showed male undead also during the art panel. Can't wait for to see all the others.

 

[CarbonatedFalcon]

I'm leveling a warrior right now also.

Prot is pretty nice since tank queues are literally instant with random dungeons, but I dunno, I'm not really a fan of tanking personally.

I want to go fury because Titan's Grip with dual BoA arcanite reapers seems like fun, but I keep reading that it's actually not that great until end-game because of a lack of hit.

Leveling prot warrior is super fun (hell, my warrior stayed prot all the way through MoP leveling content - including tons of quests), though I've mostly done it via dungeons. If you're decked out in heirlooms you can just charge from group to group or pull half a dungeon and be able to tank it all easily, at a much lower level than is possible for other classes.

 

[Data West]

So since I've returned, I've in one way or another, messed with the following specs. Some are characters I used to have, so it's not like I got every single one of them this high in a week's time but these are my impressions.

89 Prot Warrior - Fun. Get nervous about tanking even though I've found it incredibly easy. Thunderclap seems to generate way more threat than it used to.

50 BM Hunter - Ok. I LOVE the lack of ammo(that's how long it's been), and I absolutely love that weapons display on their back now instead of their melee weapons. I don't really get 'attached' to her pets though. She's currently rocking a rare mob form of this guy from some cave from Loch Modan. The rotations are kind of boring.

47 Destro Lock - Boring as hell. Boring rotation, but he's efficient, and I like the gimmicky warlock spells. He out DPSes heirloom DPS easily in dungeons.

27 WW Monk - Tons of fun. I wish you could hide weapons from displaying if they're not staves though.

73 Unholy DK - Don't like. Kinda confusing. I tanked with him before, and I came back as DPS, and it's been weird.

82 Holy Paladin - Don't like. Never much cared for Paladins. No idea how I managed to get him so high.

26 Elemental Shaman - Eh. I played Elemental in WOTLK, and I loved it, but it's really dull without chain lightning OR lava burst.

So far, I think I enjoy the warrior and Monk the best, but I keep going back to the Hunter and Lock as well.

 

[Mothman91]

Never really used a mod that changes the actionbars and stuff.

Which one is the best? Gonna change it because I've always used the default one(yuck, i know), yet never really cared. Gonna try to get use to one before WoD.

 

[davepoobond]

Never really used a mod that changes the actionbars and stuff.

Which one is the best? Gonna change it because I've always used the default one(yuck, i know), yet never really cared. Gonna try to get use to one before WoD.

Dominos is popular good and minimal


You can also have like 8 bars showing at the same time.


You can also change keybinds on the fly without menu hunting.

 

[Khezu]

This is completely off topic so I'm sorry for bringing it up, but FF14 is a wow clone?

I completely ignored everything about it because I assumed it was going to be like 11, which I didn't like very much.

 

[CarbonatedFalcon]

Never really used a mod that changes the actionbars and stuff.

Which one is the best? Gonna change it because I've always used the default one(yuck, i know), yet never really cared. Gonna try to get use to one before WoD.

I liked Bartender a lot, combined with OmniCC and Quartz for cooldowns/cast bars.

 

[zeemumu]

When are we going to go to the emerald dream? Time traveling into Draenor/Outlands is cool too though. Someone remind me, did they reveal any new hero classes?

 

[SafeinSound]

When are we going to go to the emerald dream? Time traveling into Draenor/Outlands is cool too though. Someone remind me, did they reveal any new hero classes?

No new classes this expansion.

 

[zeemumu]

No new classes this expansion.

Most major expansion addition aside from the new zones and stronghold thing?

 

[Dawg]

Man, I should really start an alt.

Can't decide between orc hunter, belf paladin and undead lock though . Or maybe something else.

I just want something with cool armor at lvl 90, being able to wear a lot of cool stuff. I miss that in my rogue.. this alt should be good at soloing raids and stuff too.

 

[Mothman91]

Dominos is popular good and minimal


You can also have like 8 bars showing at the same time.


You can also change keybinds on the fly without menu hunting.

I liked Bartender a lot, combined with OmniCC and Quartz for cooldowns/cast bars.

Good suggestions, going to look them up and see how they are.

How about for healing?

I usually use Grid and never switched to anything else.

 

[Data West]

Most major expansion addition aside from the new zones and stronghold thing?

New race models

 

[Zerokku]

This is completely off topic so I'm sorry for bringing it up, but FF14 is a wow clone?

I completely ignored everything about it because I assumed it was going to be like 11, which I didn't like very much.

Yup. And a damn good one too outside of the sparse endgame.

 

[CarbonatedFalcon]

Good suggestions, going to look them up and see how they are.

How about for healing?

I usually use Grid and never switched to anything else.

There's a few healing addons, but I always liked just using Grid + mouseover macros and/or Clique. They all have essentially the same functionality anyway, so if you're already using Grid you may as well stick with that to avoid bloat. You can use the profiles to make different frames for all the various situations you might need: 5-mans, 10s, etc. And you can keep a more compact Grid profile up for non-healers just to see statuses. Otherwise you'll have to disable the healing addon when you're playing a tank or dps - less bloat overall with Grid + Clique.

 

[davepoobond]

Good suggestions, going to look them up and see how they are.

How about for healing?

I usually use Grid and never switched to anything else.

i use grid on all of my toons. i dont heal in raids, though.

i dont really believe in the "click to heal" stuff, but if i really had to i wouldnt be against using it.

 

[KyanMehwulfe]

Haven't played at all since WLK and played regularly since Alterac Valley/BWL/AQ days and early Outland... But I definitely want to try out this new xpack. Any realistic guesstimate based on recent dev time/announcements of xpacks/patches?

 

[InsaneElite]

Haven't played at all since WLK and played regularly since Alterac Valley/BWL/AQ days and early Outland... But I definitely want to try out this new xpack. Any realistic guesstimate based on recent dev time/announcements of xpacks/patches?

They said they're shooting for a release before next summer, and that there won't be any new patch for MoP, as they want to focus entirely on cranking out WoD. If they're hoping to meet this target estimate, I'd expect beta in a few months.

 

[CassSept]

Wait spell ranks? Can you all elaborate on this? I don't remember seeingf anything about spell ranks coming back.

There is apparently new system that boosts one of your spells every level from 91 to 100. So it's kind rank-like but not exactly it.

 

[Data West]

I tried giving the default UI a go for as long as I could. But I was just in a dungeon on my hunter, and man, the UI is all over the place. The hotbar placement alone is so damn confusing.

 

[davepoobond]

There is apparently new system that boosts one of your spells every level from 91 to 100. So it's kind rank-like but not exactly it.

they are just larger increases in spell's abilities.

they probably will show something on the screen like it does in diablo III

"LEVEL 92: FIREBALL IS NOW 30% STRONGER!"



the item level squish allows them to re-implement some of the "power increase" things that we got before the Cataclysm talent revamp. since the numbers are so small, "30% more damage" is a much smaller number as well.

 

[Data West]

Is the squishing going to make solo farming harder? There's some tier pieces from Cataclysm raids I want to get, and I was hoping I could stomp through them at 100

 

[InsaneElite]

Is the squishing going to make solo farming harder? There's some tier pieces from Cataclysm raids I want to get, and I was hoping I could stomp through them at 100

No, everything is affected by the squish. Soloing won't change at all.

 

[HarryDemeanor]

Most major expansion addition aside from the new zones and stronghold thing?

For me it's gotta be account-wide heirlooms and new models.

Hopefully the new toy box feature makes my Murloc Costume account-wide.

 

[Mothman91]

Second time I resubbed and my main character was naked lol. Made a ticket, just feels weird going through every character and thinking, "It feels like he took shit on this character too." Hopefully my ticket will be resolved soon (said 3 days =/), and I can get my items/gold back.

 

[Data West]

Oh, by the way, I was listening to the Blizzcon Instance podcast, and they have Russell on there. And I think one of the most exciting 'small details' thing he said was that
A) It sounded like they were going to make weapon sounds(I think he cited guns in particular) more dynamic

B) There's going to be a lot more sound for certain races running on certain textures.

 

[davepoobond]

Is the squishing going to make solo farming harder? There's some tier pieces from Cataclysm raids I want to get, and I was hoping I could stomp through them at 100

basically your relative power is unchanged. the only thing that should be different is the numbers. i think all they do is "drop a zero" at certain level points.



anyway, i'm interested in that Ogre continent thing they were talking about in the bottom corner of the Draenor map. It sort of reminds me of Kezan on the Azeroth map where you can only see "part" of the whole thing. wonder how big it actually is.


also, does anyone think they're going to let us keep our Followers after Draenor? It seems like it would be a waste to only use them for one expansion without having a "garrison" type of mechanic in each of the new expansions going forward.

 

[HarryDemeanor]

Oh, by the way, I was listening to the Blizzcon Instance podcast, and they have Russell on there. And I think one of the most exciting 'small details' thing he said was that
A) It sounded like they were going to make weapon sounds(I think he cited guns in particular) more dynamic

B) There's going to be a lot more sound for certain races running on certain textures.

They showed some of that stuff off during the Sound panel.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GwNEeMkBvg

Some good stuff in that panel if you're interested in the music and sounds of warcraft.

 

[SRTtoZ]

I just cancelled auto renew on FFXIVARR and subbed to WoW.

smfh.

 

[Vigilant Walrus]

Count me in as one of the many people who left because of the character models. Many of us didn't leave because we thought WoW sucked. It just got old. And the priority during Cata on environments over the characters, made me quit.



It's not new models. It's recreated models. It would have been 100 times easier for them to throw it all in the trash and start over, but they want to keep every face and hairstyle the same so people wont suddenly play a different looking character. Not only that, they are redoing many of the animations.
During the art panel, you could see characters can move their eyes, eyebrows, mouth(and have teeth, mouth).
From being lifeless puppets the old races will now feel timeless because for the first time they can be expressive. before they could blink and open mouth. now they have individual toes, fingers, and can look sad, happy, angsty etc.
To me this is a massive feature I have never seen done in any MMO I have played.


But this means I will be 3 expansions behind. I don't really feel like instant levelling all the way to 90. I hope there will be others who will take the long path. Maybe if they introduced another levelling boost one could get faster past the redundant levelling quests and focus on the awesome ones?

I noticed that one of their UI improvements is marking important story quests separately from non-important quests. It would be cool if that translated across the game.




Secondly, as an old school Warcraft 2 player I love this idea of Garrisons. That looks really cool and in the iconic style of Warcraft! The only thing that could top it is if other players could attack and defend your garrison, but for what this is - it's really cool. its too bad its only a part of +90 lvl gameplay, but I can see why they did it.
the follower-send-out-on-mission system is really cool regardless if its assassins creed brotherhood or metal gear peace walker!
For someone like me who didn't play Cata, MoP, and now WoD, I will have a lot of stuff.

Thirdly, a chance to get back to see all the old clans of Dreanor. I don't think it can get back to the heart of warcraft more than this.


I've heard a bunch of other people say the same thing in the last few days. I hope they get this out before the end of next summer. I heard they stopped doing updates for the regular game to speed up development of this!


Does anyone know if they will introduce any other graphical updates or effects? no engine upgrades?

 

[HarryDemeanor]

Does anyone know if they will introduce any other graphical updates or effects? no engine upgrades?

Every expansion seems to have something in terms of graphical updates. WotLK brought us new shadows, Cataclysm gave us new water textures, and MoP gave us better lighting and SSAO. It's pretty much possible we could see something new like those.

 

[Peachpies]

Does anyone know if they will introduce any other graphical updates or effects? no engine upgrades?

they said they have a number of planned upgrades to the graphics engine but they haven't released any specifics yet

 

[mclem]

89 Prot Warrior - Fun. Get nervous about tanking even though I've found it incredibly easy.

90% of tanking is confidence. It's not a particularly *tough* role, but you need to be the calm rock when everything else might be going to shit. A calm tank can compensate for small mistakes, either by themselves or by the raid. A panicky tank can guarantee a wipe.

Thunderclap seems to generate way more threat than it used to.

All tanks have had a massive threat boost. The only threat challenges these days come in the form of occasional threat drops; tanks are now expected to focus more on the mitigation and movement side of the role.




Thok down last night. We had an hour to spare, so we went over to have a poke at Blackfuse... and didn't get to pull him for 40 minutes. That trash doesn't hang about, does it?

 

[Angelus Errare]

I decided to try the 10 day trial after a 3 year absence...overwhelmed like hell! @.@. Then WoW remembers your keybindings so I was just lost lol.

 

[Skab]

Hm, watching the lore panel and they confirmed that Zaela is both alive, and goes back with Garrosh.

Edit: Oh, and Garona is around.

 

[mclem]

Wait...we're actually getting Draenei Lore? I thought that didn't exist?
Getting some? We're going to their HOME. We get to get up close and intimate with who they are, what they're about, their lore, their, struggles, their triumphs, their defeats. We get to find out so much more about them (plus no one crashes a space ship.) Are you sure you're ready for it?

...now I'm intrigued.

Gut hunch: WoD will end with Gul'dan summoning the Burning Legion, either as a conclusion to this pack or a lead-in to the next.