Category Archives: WoW

Why WoW is losing players

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I have debated whether or not I should post this for quite some time. Its a very touchy subject because I don’t want to send the wrong message to my guild. So I start by saying that the opinions here while coming from your guild leader, its from the point of view of a player.

I love playing WoW. I think it is one of the most complete games, but what makes it even more compelling beyond the great development effort that goes into creating fresh content it is the community. However, the community is losing members faster than I have ever seen, and not just in my very low populated server but all over.

I real a lot of blogs, not just about WoW but other subjects. When it comes to WoW most of the people that I loved to read are gone or have switched to other games. Once you start losing people that support the community beyond the game, you start losing players as well. I am not a doomsayer and when Rift came out I was very much a defender of WoW and blizzard. However, the more time passes, the more I think they are failing to provide a service for most people.

The reality of what is going on right now is that trying to please everyone with this expansion they ended up screwing everyone over.

Firelands is a big failure in my opinion, as well as the molten front. Not even when I was going back to grind some rep for an alt did it feel like I was simply grinding. The firelands raid has done nothing but highlight that the raiding in this tier is at best annoying and at worst a waste of time. Some of it feels so out of touch with what makes raiding fun that I wonder if any of the developers are actually playing through the game. Raiding always felt like leading an orchestra… now it has turned into an exercise of paying attention to an endless amount of things that can kill you, but can be easily trivialized by either knowing the fight well or gear trivializing it. It brings down the replay value of that aspect of the game a lot.

If I did not play with a group of friends that I enjoy quite a bit and make me laugh every time we get together I don’t think I will be playing this game anymore. I feel like I have seen the content I wanted to see, and even killing Deathwing does not feel like something I would enjoy if I am going to have to dodge fireworks that I cannot even clearly see.

Most casual players that don’t raid have already stopped playing. They did everything that there was to do, and the ones that continue to play are doing so via alts. It is not like back in the day that everyone had tons of stuff to do on their main… now almost everything feels like an endless grind and when you do get the rewards they are not that exciting anymore.

Blizzard had the opportunity to do so much, but instead of making some things excellent and well polished; so much of the game feels incomplete. Guilds hit 25, and even those weekly challenges are not something that we are having to coordinate to do as a guild, they just happen on their own. PvP is so all over the place and unbalanced that fight are either done in seconds or take 30 mins + or until someone simply gives up. So I see more and more people kind of think the game is not fun to play and I really have nothing to point out as a fun thing to do… I used to be full of, have you tried this? this quest like is lots of fun, this class has some new cool mechanics… this is where you find x or y and it will make things awesome.

Maybe I am completely crazy, but I think that if raiding was a lot more like the mega man series, where you would find things along the way that would really help you with other bosses it might change the game a bit. Right now there is no reason to get more gear because the gap between normals and heroics is too big, and for non hardcore raiders the grind of learning a fight and then having to deal with the annoyance that it was the normal now double in damage and with more “pretty lights” just feels like an insane endeavor.

I really hope that the next patch comes out soon, because even though I have only raided 4 bosses in firelands, I am sick of the color palate already.

4.1 and the Goodie Bag

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I have been meaning to post more about my reactions to Cata, but most of my spare time has been spent actually playing the game. Overall I am very happy with the way this expansion came out and its first mayor patch is only a glympse at the things to come.

The phasing technology used in the past has been a great success story for the development team, and besides some annoying nodes that you cannot mine but see in the map or gankers that hide behind a phased quest, it allows for the story in many areas to unfold before your eyes rather than be told through text.

Heroics are not challenging anymore… well at least not the original ones. The new ZA and ZG are not impossible, but I do feel bad for people that have to pug it. When the expansion first came out the bad group to good group ration was about 1 to 10. I have only qued for the new instances a couple of times and I still have not finished one with a pug. A full guild group can complete it with no problem even though it still takes more time than it probably will.

Most people are complaining from the Ruby Sanctum effect with the new content. It goes something like this… when RS came out it dropped mid level gear, a little better than people that did not raid have… but the encounter seemed to almost require raid gear to complete. The groups we have taken through ZA and ZG most overgeared it. I still think it will be a good place to level alts to catch them up to gear level to fill up spots or alt runs.

ZA and ZG are making one of the issues that Blizzard is “trying” to fix more appearent… people don’t want to tank. I have 3 of those right now, all either in raid gear or ready to start raiding. I know several of the tanks in our guild that raid don’t enjoy it. They do it for the quick que and that is about it. Tanking is really not that much fun when you don’t have people cooperating. I tank for guildies, but dread tanking for pugs. So Blizzard released this new goodie bag that pushes tanks and healers to que alone to fill the gaps left by people not wanting to tank or heal.

I know this subject has been discussed at lenght, but this week I have actually been able to que up for the bag and give it a world… and the result was that I really don’t care for the bag all that much. The mounts it promises I already have. I really don’t need the gold or flasks. The irritation level that is reached when pugs start being less than nice is ridiculous and something I just don’t find worth my time.

I might change my mind a couple of weeks from now when most people have done ZA and ZG and most of the run does not consist of explaining each trash pull to people. I don’t have the patience to once again explain to people that CC will make life easier because most of the time they are starting to pull stuff for me if there is any hesitation. I don’t get how a DPS that waits 30 minutes for a que is not willing to wait for 2 minutes of marking and explaining CCs and would rather wipe so that he can “go, go, go!”

So for now I am not that intersted in the goodie bag and running the content with guildies has been tons of fun. This week’s raiding was kind of put in the back burner since a couple of encounters are just bugged, we killed everything we could this week and will continue to progress. Only 4 bosses to go on this tier of content :)

First Alliance Guild to Level 25

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First Alliance Guild to Level 25!

The Saints did it. For months now we have been quietly getting ready for this goal, to be the first guild to hit 25. Another guild that did just a little more grinding that we did and got it first in the Horde side of our server, but we won the race on the Alliance side by days, possibly even a week or two. However, no guild in our server has as many Guild Achievement points as we do! :) You guys are AWESOME!

Ranks

Ever since the new guild leveling feature was announced I knew that we would be excellent at it. Our guild has been able to do amazing things by just working together and at the same time having fun.

I am still tired by some of the grinding we had to do :) but it was all worth it :)

We have about 15 lions now, and next week that number should hopefully double! You have to be Exalted with the guild to claim the price. The perks don’t stop there though. Mass resurrection is a blast of an ability, and plentiful bags is also making it sweet to farm.

I would like to thank all the officers and most of all our members that put in an extra effort this week to achieve this goal. While the end result is sweet, the journey was the most awesome part. We are very proud to have accomplished this as a group since this is not something that just a few did! we all had our part on adding to this awesome accomplishment! Congratulations Saints! and THANK YOU!

L2Play Heroics!

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Since my last rant about healing I went the Holy way and it is possible to heal heroics a lot better than with Disc, at least at the moment… Sad day for me, but I guess I will have to wait until the next patch to try Disc again. My tank is geared past heroics now; but even with him I dread tanking heroics.

The game has always been about the purples. Everyone wants to get their shinnies, be it to show off in the trade district or just to get the achievements related to them, everyone wants to be “Epic.” Most of us in the guild want to get geared so we can start raiding and that means we have to do heroics.

Heroics are taking a lot of time. Back in the Vanilla or BC days when I started playing, a lot of the time was travel time to get to a heroic, but even with instant que from a tank a heroic can go as long as 3 hours if you have to explain the fights. Its also not as cool to be a tank as you think, sure we get insta que’s but the moment we get in with 4 other people, that means there are plenty more in que waiting for one. I have heard of que’s for DPS of over an hour.

L2Play (Learn to Play) is often tossed around when people find something challenging that someone else can do easily in the game. It is really getting on my nerves at the moment that most people seem to want to fall into groups of “awesome” players and people that need to L2Play. Heroics are doing that though. Some encounters are pretty challenging and don’t only have a learning curve but unforgiving mechanics… (what good is a 150K health pool if some mechanics still one shot people?)

I don’t consider myself awesome at the game, I feel I am competent at tanking but certain mechanics still get me. My perfect nemesis is right now in Stonecore. The third boss, huge rock dude is just nasty. He basically can 1 shot everyone including tanks. He has a frontal attack that I can strafe out of with no problem, however that is when things get complicated. he also has a stomp ability that everyone need to run out of, including the tank… and well, timing the strafe, run out, don’t let it face the DPS and healers can sometimes get out of control. I am sure with more practice I will do fine on that fight, but it seems like a pretty unforgiving mechanic that with one misstep can take out everyone.

Don’t get me wrong, the rest of the game is amazing. Questing and dailies don’t seem to have an end to them. The fun I used to have in the Isle of Q grinding is back in several places where I don’t mind doing dailies. The JC daily minus the freaking Lila quest (jeweldigger she is) does not feel like a grind and is making me look forward to getting all patterns. I am having tons of fun farming rep and it has even made me want to go back and get all the alliance side preps to Exalted. Running dungeons on heroic is just not that much fun. Healing them is not either, its challenging but not fun at all.

I think that Blizzard did a heck of a job with this expansion, and I am sure many people are happy to be able to tell other L2Play. I personally don’t find it all that satisfying to do heroics when I know a lot of the people I want to play with cannot do them just yet. Regulars are still fun and now that my tank is geared I might be able to enjoy both healing and tanking on alts a lot more. Raiding is starting to pick up momentum and that will be a lot of fun. For now, heroics are still not a fun part of the game and the only true grind besides archeology.

The Dark Side of WoW

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Cataclysm is an amazing expansion, I have not had this much fun with the game EVER! All around the questing is just very well built. The dungeons are beautiful, the new mechanics are challenging, plenty is broke with the classes, but time will fix all of that. We even managed to down the new boss in Tol Barad in our first visit. Things are going well… well so it seems. The best thing about WoW is that is an MMO and people make the game enjoyable. Having an awesome group of people to play with makes it a wonderful experience… but the moment you step out, the moment the game changes and it turns into a very, very frustrating experience.

Blizzard decided that healing was too easy and decided to go back to making it challenging again. They are sticking by their decision of making things more challenging and while I respect that, well it has also made for some horrible interactions with people. I hear stories every day from guildies having horrible times in heroics. Even though my healer is past the gear level for heroics I stay away. I run heroics with my tank only with guildies and gave up trying to have people CC in pugs.

Sometimes you get into a group and everyone does what they are supposed to, but the norm right now is that one person will not do what they are supposed to and ruin the experience for the rest. Most people got used to the pace of chain pulling heroics during the last part of Wrath and expect that same speed out of a heroic dungeon. I think people don’t realize that heroic is not a 15 minute burn through bosses run, but a couple of hour commitment to team work and execution.

As a guild we have completed most heroic dungeons. Some people have already done them all and are even working on the achievements. I personally have stepped back and been working on reps and professions. I think that we will run a lot more heroics in the coming weeks and probably stay away from pugs as much as possible.

The anonymity of being behind a keyboard miles away makes people say some nasty stuff. Try to not take it personal and stick to your friends when running things for the time being. Its a nasty world out there at the moment and until people start to slow down in heroics, I think more and more people will find them to be a source of frustration rather than the source of sun they should be.

Guild Perks

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There is way too much to talk about in Cataclysm and the more I play this expansion, the more I love it. Guild Leveling is by far the most rewarding because it is an amazing feeling when you are in the middle of playing and across your screen the entire guild gets an achievement. No matter where you are at or what you are doing you see across the screen that we as a group acomplished something that will benefit all of us. From leveling faster to having cheaper repair bills, the guild rewards are making us work as a team and made us all focus on the guild.

During the first week of gameplay I though we were going to make a push to start raiding right away, seeing that many top world guild were already done with the initial normal modes like we were conquering dungeons. Then I took a step back and saw that everyone was having fun, not just leveling but looking at those guild achievments and not being daunted by the task of killing 50K critters but just ready to kill another 500 today.

We have our crafters and miners going nuts to reach all those watermarks. We have our PvPers hunting down horde (actually we are done hunting and already got Horde Slayer). We are slowly but surely getting our raid team geared and together to start farming heroics and helping people get through the initial content, but overall we are having fun as a guild.

Initially some people had concerns about how the rewards would affect their alts. Some of the rewards really don’t kick in until you reach honored with the guild which can take some time. The thing is about commitment though, if you are commited to being a part of a guild you now have to work towards getting those rewards not just by simply showing up, but by actually doing things with and for the guild.

Everyone seems to have their favorite perk, and some are just beinging to notice. Cheaper repairs has been one that almost everyone is noticing, specially after getting into a bad heroic group. The one I am looking forward to Hasty Heart because its always nice to not have your HS on cooldown.

I really want to thank everyone that is working so hard to get the rewards we are all benefitting from and want to say AWESOME JOB guys. This game is all about the people :) and we have the best guildies ever!

A Week in Cataclysm

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After a week in the post Cataclysm Word of Warcraft I have to start by being a blizzard fanboy. I did not mind that ICC was the only new content for a year as much as other people did. It became the training grounds for many players that had never raided before, including my wife. All that time spent in there made them a lot more prepared to take on this new content that is a lot more challenging but far more rewarding. The finished product feels a lot more polished than Wrath felt when it came out. I cannot stop saying, WoW. I never cared much for a game being beautiful because always find gameplay more important… but I just cannot stop flying and swimming through some of these areas and saying, this is just amazing. One freaking paragraph in, and I am already going to start using all the positive adjectives in the English language.

Before I go into more of the love fest, lets talk about some of the bumps on the roads have been.

While the added complexity of the dungeons is truly fun and challenging, there are some mobs and some pulls that are too complex for non heroic content. I keep on thinking on the people that don’t raid but still like to go into dungeons, they almost have no chance against some of these mechanics. As casuals that raid, we are used to not only moved out of the fire, but read the buffs that the mobs have to paint the roadmap of how we are going to kill them. Hey, that thing has a mana bar and its casting healing spells or silencing our healer… kill it. A lot of people will not get why they keep on ending up dead and become frustrated easily.

Even though 90% of the quest content has been revamped to be really easy to complete, there are still some quests that are very frustrating. We play in a PvP server and the other faction does not play nice, and in some cases mob tagging becomes very, very annoying.

Tagging is the practice by some players of hitting an NPC right before you actually engage it so they get the kill. This can be done to an elite that you need to complete a quest, if the target’s health bar is gray it means you will not get credit for it.

I have personally have not been frustrated by world PvP. Even walking through a group of about 30 opposite faction members we were left alone. It seems that for the most part people are trying to level. I have heard from other guildies that some areas become simply infuriating with the ganking, but my response is simple… the moment the game is becoming frustrating, just log into another toon or switch areas. Most gankers are also cowards, so every time we show up to rescue a guildie they seem to leave, even if they were camping. I would say in most instances it has not been worth our trip, but it has been very satisfying to just drive people away from anyone wearing our tag.

Tanking has been pretty difficult specially in heroics. While there is really no more one shots due to gear, most of my deaths have come the way of oom healer (out of mana). This is a little frustrating when it happens because DPS are still thinking ICC or Wrath (burn the whole group) and ignore CC attempts or marked targets which depleats the healers mana. Most healers are also not used to letting DPS drop to conserve mana. Once these shifts (not sure it really will) I think that DPS will get the idea that they cannot tank, even if they do have enourmous health pools now.

And that is it, that is pretty much all I can complaint about… and I am starting to realize that this is becoming lenghty and rambly! So I might have to leave some of the rest for another post!

The End of Wrath

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I started playing WoW during The Burning Crusade. I had the chance to experience some of the raiding at that time, but it was still not as accessible as it is today. My warrior was power-leveled to become a tank and saw some of the end game content. Being there for WotLK release gave me the chance to see how much things start changing before the release. I was not freaked out by the whole revamping of talents or even the elemental invasion. In fact, I think that in the past the whole points reset happened tons more often when they were tweaking things. I am not just looking forward to Cataclysm, I am excited for it to come out. It’s cool because I am as happy for this as I was when the Harry Potter books were being released after I became a fan of the series. (I am not as excited about the movies even though I do watch them.)

Our guild has a lot of plans in motion for the Cataclysm expansion and we will be having a lot of fun leveling to 85, and probably even re-rolling to enjoy the worgen and goblin experience. The month of December will be full of discovery and Blizzard seems to be expecting a lot of people back to see what’s new. They are a company that seems to listen to the community and is going to put out the content people want. Flight in all zone, you got it! More complex fights for raids and dungeons, checked! Being loyal to a guild giving you cool rewards, granted!

As I look forward to this, I want to take a look back at what Wrath of the Lick King did for me as a player, raid leader and most importantly part of the best guild in the world (That might not be a fact, but it is a truth because, for me, there is no other group of people I would rather enjoy my gaming experience with).

Before I dive into the whole discussion I want to make something pretty clear. I am not one of the people that believes that the game begins at cap, if your resilience is bellow 1K you should L2PLAY or that only raiders are doing it right. Many guildies enjoy the game simply for the leveling aspect or even solely the social aspect. Some just like to log in and have people to chat with about their day, or the food that is cooking (or at times burning) on the stove. While this post will have a lot to do with raiding, our guild is casual first. Friends > Loot

Our guild was born out of two thoughts. 1) Let’s help people become better at the game so they can see the content, they paid for it, they should see it. 2) To achieve that goal we don’t have to be nasty to each other. Yep, it was that simple. We had seen a stream of “hardcore” raiders parade on and say “you guys are awesome people but you suck at killing bosses.” Nobody took the time to explain that add-ons to heal made things simpler, or that add-ons needed to be configured, or that macros were actually helpful. Nope, most people would just say “you suck, you noob,” and move on.

I still remember a conversation with my wife back when she did not even play the game. I asked her if she would be OK with my starting a guild; she had even mentioned the option to me in the past when I mentioned that I might be joining another guild that was trying to do more progression (back in the Naxx days). I said to her “it is going to require that I spend more time in the game than I do now, so I want to make sure you are OK with it before I take this step.” She said go for it. (I am not interested on digging up the corpse that it is how me creating a guild affected my last guild. The story is simple but it always becomes a point of debate. All I will say is that there was never any malicious intent to destroy anything, only intent to create something new.)

BoondockSaints was born; it was small guild but we quickly gained some strength and were able to start raiding casually. I started to not just learn the fights more but actually lead more raids. I had done it before at a smaller scale, but now I had the responsibility to learn strategies, know what classes to bring and see where we could do better. We did lots of Naxx and some of Ulduar. We did not have the success other guilds had, but we were able to let people at least enter into those places and get some experience on what raiding was all about.

ToC was painful. We worked on it, but it started to show us that we needed to get lots better if we wanted to finish it. We wiped there a lot, people started to hate going there but we worked through it. I also had been leveling a healer, but this time I had taken my time and enjoyed playing him very much. Having another toon and its being a healer opened my eyes to the game and raiding a lot more. I saw how important it is to move out of the fire (as a tank you don’t have to deal with fire as often as you do as a DPS or a healer.)

When ICC opened and frost badges became the thing to get the game changed dramatically. The gear you could get was a lot better and a lot easier to get. We had also been getting a lot better at raiding and our casuals were now becoming actual raiders. We had come so far from before that some of them were filling up the ranks of other guilds on their 25s. Yep, those people that had left us behind to become “Elite” now needed our help to progress. I continued to run 10 mans and was making progress in ICC, small but steady. Then a bubble spammer became more and more of a commodity and it allowed me to go into a lot more raids, and see more and more content.

Our goal as a guild was simple during WotLK. We wanted to kill Arthas and therefore get the end game title. While some people in the guild do want hard-modes and drakes and the whole enchilada, our goals as a group were simple. One of the guilds that we were filling spots for had a migration to a more progressed guild. This situation put us at a crossroads. I tried to get everyone’s input but at the end we had to make a quick decision before the opportunity was missed. We were going to end up with a merger and potentially some excellent players that knew more than I did about ICC and progression raiding. It was not going to be without the bumps, we could potentially lose some of our ways (helping others, raiding slow and explaining every fight.) It was a rough change for most people and we were able to keep the identity of our guild even though most of the raiders did move on eventually. The end result was that we added more quality players to our casual ranks and loads of knowledge. Before they moved to another server we were able to get a combined group the Kingslayer title. As a guild, the BoondockSaints had accomplished what casuals in a low pop server should not have been able to do.

It is months later now and we have done a lot more raiding and a lot more wiping, but I am happy to report that as this expansion closes we have our 4th new group of kingslayers. We are trying to get at least one new group through the content a week, but the fight takes time to get used to because defiles just suck the soul out of people. Sure, it is a lot easier now and its not as amazing for a raider that has already conquered 25HM. But for a small guild from one of the lowest populated realms, on the 1:3 outnumbered faction, is really cool.
Fourth Group of Kingslayers

TL:DR

WothLK allowed us to become raiders. We might never become hardcore, but we were able and will continue to see content in Cata. We will do it with a group of friends that help each other become better at the game every day and are looking forward to the challenges ahead!

Blizzcon 2010

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Before I even begin to talk about this great weekend I want to say that without the people that I got to meet, hang out and just share this wonderful experience this would have simply been a good time; instead this will be one of those memories that stays with you for the rest of your life. We were lucky enough to have 10+ members of our guild joining the festivities!

Crowd
Even though Blizzard does do an excellent job to get people what they need quickly, there are lines… tons of them. While there is a lot of stuff to do and see while there, you at one point or another will be stuck in line somewhere. The only way to avoid them is to know the schedule extremely well, but honestly I did not see any of the cool stuff (or where they gave free stuff) without a line after the opening cermonies were over. The problem with the lines behind the obvious waiting and waiting is that some or our fellow geeks have not found it important to break the stereotype and some of them still don’t know what deodorant is. It was not horrible but I am not a fan of smelling people. Who knows maybe there is a niche market there to make some quick soap/deodorant combo that can help some of this people out. Thankfully there were plenty of hand sanitizing locations all over the convention center that at least made me feel better about touching keyboards and just overall other surfaces.

Everyone that we did had to interact to in lines and just standing around was extremely friendly and it was very easy to strike up a conversation. We had a big group of people, but others would approach us and ask us questions about our guild or what classes we played. It was very cool to have people just be so friendly and willing to just have a good laugh with you.

The only other negative thing was that their announcements were not earthshattering. I was really looking forward to them announcing something big like what their next MMO is going to be about, but they kept everything very current and concentrated on the release of Cataclysm and SCII related announcements. While they did unveil that Diablo III is going to have a PvP component to it and it looked amazing, revealing what the last playable class “Demon Hunter” was going to be was about it.

Being able to play their upcoming games was probably the most organized and what you could do in less than an hour. Everthing else that was related to a line felt like a ride at an amusement park, minutes upon minutes of waiting for just a 45 second thrill.

Now lets talk about the awesome. 95% of the people that dressed up really put months worth of effort into it. It was amazing to see the dedication some people put into their costumes. I thought this was going to be just a handful of people that knew what they were doing and lots of bad rushed jobs, but no; there were some serious costume makers there doing actual leather work and complicated things that were just jaw dropping. I think 3 of them were actually provided by blizzard and they were simply amazing, but the fan made ones really showcased dedication and sometimes humor. I would say that surprisingly the costumes were my favorite part of the convention.
Diablo Witch Doctors
Jay Mohr has been the host of Blizzcon and appearently last year he was a little under the influence of alcohol which he made fun of saying that he was just simply nervous and not drunk. The first night was the costume/dance contest. You do get to see most of the costumes up close from just walking around and they love to have their picture taken, but if you want to really see them all you must attend this event where they all get to walk on stage. The problem is that some of the get ups are quite elaborate and get heavy and toward the end of the night you could see some of the people having a real hard time moving on them. Nobody from the costume contest actually tripped on stage which was amazing to me.

After that part of the show finished the dance contest started and it was a riot. Basically every in game race/sex combination has their own dance emote in World of Warcraft. You type /dance and they characters go to town. Well now the humans behind the strings get to show their ability to move themselves with some comical consequences. I could seriously not stop laughing during some of the dances and some of the performances were just genious. The whole night was without incident until a kid who was getting really into his dance (and getting some amazing hang time to his jumps) actually ruptured a ligament. I am happy to report that he is “all good” and was at the convention the next day.

The next thing on my favorite list was the PvP tournaments. To see some of those people battle it out in front of an audience is amazing. Their level of skill at the game is just unreal. I was glad to see one of the North American teams make it so high in the later, but Asia simply dominates when it comes to competitive gaming. I would say that it is one of the things you should not miss!