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Previews: World of Warcraft
World of Warcraft, the MMO Game being developed by Blizzard Entertainment and published by Vivendi, building upon the past experiences of the Warcraft games, mixing RTS and RPG for what will no doubt be a game that stands alone. Olaf tells us why, in his continued journies from deep within the closed beta! Be sure to check out the first part's of his continued adventures!
I was originally going to write about grouping and how it shapes the gameplay experience in WoW. But, since there was a massive patch to the game last Thursday, I decided to write about that instead. If you want to read over these changes I am going to discuss they are here. This build of WoW significantly changed many of the core gameplay mechanics. I will highlight what I consider to be the biggest and most interesting changes and talk about them, starting with the hot button issue of the patch…resting. At the time of this writing, I have played 3 characters past the level 10-12 range this push, an Undead Warlock, Night Elf Druid, and a Tauren Shaman. Room at the Inn? You can get an idea of the mechanics behind the rest system from the patch notes, but it's explained in greater detail here. Initially I was skeptical about this new system as I started the 9-hour download process and read over the patch notes for the first time. On the surface it appears to be a thinly disguised attempt to slow down leveling. Especially when you consider the changes to the xp tables, player stats and combat mechanics that happened alongside the introduction of this new system. You need more xp to level in this push, and fighting things above your character level is more difficult as well. Finally, statistics and their impact on your character have been revamped. Characters have less hitpoints now than before.
Along your xp bar you can see a tab representing the point at which you will enter your next fatigue state. This tab assumes that you will fill your experience bar with combat xp only. As you complete quests, this tab will move to the right of your xp bar indicating clearly that quest xp does not affect energy states. If you don't have a tab on your xp bar that means that you will not change rest states in the current level. Regenerating energy requires being in an inn, or having your character logged out of game. When your character is considered to be resting at an inn, the portrait in the upper left will have a flashing yellow border. It takes 8 hours of uninterrupted time at an inn, on or offline, to go from any state to fully well rested. This is my biggest problem with the system. Getting back to well rested from the rested state or the exhausted state takes the same amount of time. So, it's essential that you leave your character in an inn when you log out. If you log outside of an inn, you will only regenerate fatigue back to the normal state, not the well-rested state. Getting to an inn is never a problem thanks to the new hearthstones. Think of these as a gate item, with inns being the available bind points. To teleport back to an inn you right click on your hearthstone and after a 15second or so casting animation, you appear at your 'home' inn. This home point can be changed by speaking to any innkeeper, who will give you a hearthstone if you don't have one or change your home point if you do. These stones can be used once an hour, so while not being easy transportation at all times, they ensure that you will always be able to camp at an inn if you activate them sparingly.
Another big change was to the skills and talents system. Previously, skill and talent points were earned at a fixed, per level rate for everyone. Skills were used to learn trades and optional weapon skills and talents were used to improve attributes or to provide small bonuses to things like regeneration, stealth or damage vs. a certain type of mob. In the new system, skill points are earned from combat xp. This is somewhat controversial as a player can earn skill points forever, even after being level capped. This also changed the economy of skill points. Tradeskills are now much more expensive, especially the higher ranks. In addition to controlling trades and weapon skills, skill points can also be used to boost attributes now. Each class has their base attributes rated green, yellow and red. This rating controls how frequently a stat can be boosted, and how much it costs to boost. Red attributes are expensive and provide the least benefit to your character. Green attributes are cheap and provide a lot of bang for the buck. Not all classes have green attributes. As an example, a Warlock has Intelligence and Spirit rated green, Stamina rated yellow and Agility and Strength rated red while a Shaman has Agility rated red and everything else yellow. Skill points were scarce for me until level 10ish. Up to that point, because I choose to keep my yellow and green stats maxed, I wasn't able to train any tradeskills because I didn't have enough skill points. I finally had a bankroll of skill points at 10th, and from what I hear; it gets better from there. Talents are currently disabled as Blizzard is finalizing their implementation and is trying to figure the best way to convert the locked characters (characters created in earlier pushes are not playable right now) to the new skill/talent system. My guess is that Talents will be more specialized and less bland than before, more like the Archetype and Class Alternate Advancement Abilities from EQ as opposed to flat statistics boosts. Combat Changes Combat mechanics have changed some since the last push. First off everyone has a new stat called Power. The higher this stat, the greater the chance to hit and the more damage you will do when you do hit. It is a derived statistic from class, ability scores and level. Combat is now directly level based, so all else being equal you have a decided advantage in melee combat over something lower level than you. Creatures above your level got a lot harder this push. Related to this change, weapon damage is not as important as it was in the last push. You still want the best weapon you can get your hands on, but the effects of weapon upgrades are not as dramatic now. Dual wielding was tweaked down some, so it is no longer the best melee DPS in the game. Finally, player hit points have been toned down. You get less per level, and don't get as many per point of Stamina as before.
This patch saw the introduction of the Druid class, and also the re-opening of the Shaman class since it is a Horde only class, and that side was locked last push. These classes are very popular because they are 'new'. Especially the druids, only one race per faction can play the class (Night Elves and Tauren) so if you are in either of those starting regions, 50% of the folks you encounter are going to be druids. On the Horde side of the fence, there are a lot of shamans running around too. Both of these classes wear Leather, and both have some healing. Shamans have a little more melee power out of the gate, but not much. Basic similarities aside, the Shaman rely upon totems, short-term area affect buffs/debuffs, and the Druids have more versatile spells and the ability to shape change. Druids get a nice complement of spells. Nukes, DoTs, heals, regen heals, damage shields, roots and at least one buff. Their nukes are the second most powerful in the game behind the Mage and along with melee and a DoT line they have versatile damage capabilities and so can help out in any situation. They are a strong healing class. They get three lines of healing spells, a direct heal, a short-term regen heal and a direct heal with a short-term regen component. They are as effective as Priests in the healing department unless the tank is taking a brutal thrashing, and because of this I expect their heals to be toned down eventually. Some of their spells are instant cast, the regen line and their Moonfire line of DoTs to name a few, which makes them very powerful. The most interesting class feature is the shape shifting. These forms open up at 10th with additional shapes like cat form (some rogue abilities and stealth options) opening up as you level. The first one is bear form, meant to be a tank. It has its own set of abilities that you can learn from your trainer, and when in bear form your mana bar disappears and is replaced with a rage bar. Unfortunately, aside from the coolness factor there is no reason to turn into a bear right now. Melee damage and armor increase by 20 and 40 percent respectively (a general estimate as your 'base' values are strongly influenced by gear and level), but this is not enough to offset the inability to cast spells, or even eat food, while shifted. Shamans get a good variety of spells too. Nukes, some personal buffs, heals, and totems. The Shamans nukes are not quite as stout as the druids, neither are their heals. They get some good personal melee buffs, including spells that raise the base damage of an equipped weapon, the chance to proc additional damage, and lightning shield, which is a charged damage shield. These buffs make them more effective than a Druid in melee (but still not anywhere near the DPS output of a true melee class like a Warrior or a Rogue). Totems are the ability unique to Shaman. There is a totem for each of the four elements, and coinciding spells for each one. They are quested, with Earth being the first one you get almost immediately, and Fire being the second, available at 10th. I am not sure of the progression to Water and Air. The totems provide a mix of effects, with about half being beneficial group buffs and half being offensive in nature. Totems are an interesting concept but in practice they need work, at lower levels anyway. None of the totem spells I have received through 10th level have been better than the first one I got. A Shaman can place one totem from each element, so at higher levels a Shaman could have up to 4 deployed. They are instant cast and relatively low mana and they are all area effect in nature, with beneficial totems being restricted to party members only. They last anywhere from 1-5 minutes before disappearing, or they will disappear immediately if you cast another totem from the same element. Totems are also targetable and can be destroyed. That all sounds very good, but the actual effects of the totems just aren't that impressive compared to other classes' buff and debuff spells. The offensive ones also generate strange and unpredictable agro, which brings adds to your camp if you are fighting in mob dense areas. The Rest of the Story Each class got some tuning with this patch, and of particular note is the change to sap and crowd control in general. It was the best Crowd Control ability in the game in the last push, but it has been changed so that it is pull technique where one mob will not aggro for 25 seconds if it works. This is a big hit to the Rogue's groupability. Sleep, the other major form of CC in the game, was moved to Mages from Priests. Finally, the Warlock's Banish now has a 30-minute cool down. Blizzard definitely does not want crowd control or the balance headaches it causes developers.
They fixed some bugs of course and with all of the new content there is more to do, and the Horde side of the world is just as captivating as the Alliance side, with just as many cleverly written quests. In particular, I really enjoyed the Undead quest for my 10th level Warlock pet. It required me to recover a stolen spell book from 'evil' humans and return it to my master. Upon returning the tome I expected to be handed a pet summoning scroll to memorize, congratulated and sent on my way. Not so. I had to first summon this new pet, a Void Walker the Warlock's tank pet, in a special summoning circle off to the side of the NPC and prove I was ready to master this demon by killing it first. Nice touch. Part Five: About Time! Discuss: Part Five! What Would You Like To See?
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