WoW Weekly Report - The Overpull for 9/7/09
Updated Thu, Dec 17, 2009 by Medeor
Welcome
to The
Overpull, Ten Ton Hammer's weekly newsletter that discusses all things
WoW.
The same week that Champions Online goes live and NCsoft preps the Aion open beta, Blizzard suddenly opens the door to faction changes. Both a blessing and a curse, I was finally able to move some characters around but at $55 each for the faction and realm changes, it still stings.
In a hallelujah moment, we can all praise the advancements to the instance capacity solution(s). The jury is still out on the whole LFG cross-server option, but if it fixes the dern "can't start another instance" problem, then I already love it.
From the nobody goes to France file, TCG has canceled the Darkmoon Faire that was scheduled to take place. Fear not European WoW card flingers; the Amsterdam event is holding strong. Those of us on this side of the Atlantic can still stop in for events at Austin and Las Vegas. I don't seem to have local buddies that play the games but when I do find time for the miniatures game, it is quite fun. The card game still makes my head hurt though.
Blues Clues
Race to change your race.
Crygil confirms that Race changes will be available soon (tm):
"The Race Change feature is on the way, but it's not at a point where we can give you specifics about it yet. As soon as we feel this feature is close to done, we will give out additional information on it."
Armor Penetration can't go away quickly enough:
Ghostcrawler explains why they aren't waiting to nerf Armor Pen:
"Several melee specs (and Marksman hunters) had begun to focus on armor pen at the expense of all other stats. Gear without armor pen was being passed over and gem sockets were increasingly being filled with just this one stat. While every spec has stats that are more valuable than others, this one felt like it was starting to trump everything. Not coincidentally, characters stacking lots of armor pen were starting to do more damage than their peers and more damage than we were comfortable with."
The game we call WoW has changed a lot the last few weeks. Some might say for the better, others lament the decreasing difficulty of the game. Our very own Medawky was boasting the other day about having eight hours played on one of his fresh level 80s and still having all level 200+ gear and none of it crafted. That is both impressive and depressing. Does the game hold any challenge for players when gear is no longer an issue? Are the achievements enough to make for compelling reasons to log in? I used to think that it was, but my certainty is wavering.
Even with the ease of gathering loot, there certainly appears to be another great chasm opening up again between the "easy" runs and the very difficult instances. The five man heroics are a slam dunk. The ten player instances are becoming laughable and the 25 player instances have been brought to their knees. If you disagree, check in on the forums under the heading "ToC is Teh Fail Blizzard!" and the thousands of other angry posts.
Where will Onyxia line up? That will be interesting. The loot tables are flowing forth from the PTR and there are some very impressive pieces of iLevel 232 and 245 gear - in addition to the "Head of Onyxia" of course. My guess is that Blizzard is tiring of the cream puff instances and will ratchet some of these last of instances up to 11 to really test the mettle of the players. I know I would if I were them. I'd name one of the bosses "QuelQeuue Extremis" and have him hit for 50k in an AoE of 100 yards in 3 second pulses. I haven't received an email from the instance design group from Blizzard, that's odd.
Last week Xerin led a lively debate in the forums after starting with the line "No one in WoW is a good person." I immediately got pissed and then realized that I'm exactly who is he talking about. Not a good sign, and to my relief not really the point of his post. The point is we all submerge ourselves into a virtual game where we take credit for slaughtering hundreds (if not thousands) of other virtual living things. We torture some and others we abandon. Most of them had it coming so I don't feel so bad, but other times I feel a pang of guilt until I roll "Need."
Speaking of Canada, Guam is a real state, right? Or is it a suburb of a state, you know like Washington DC? I was glad to hear of the Lt. Governor of Guam, Ray Tenorio, who plays a level 80 Dwarf Priest. All jokes about the Alliance aside, this is just a first revelation, we're sure to learn of more as our legions continue to level up in government. Someday trade negotiations will be decided by a 3v3 arena match. Knowing our congress we'd end up with an Enhancement Shaman, Prot Warrior and that damn pacifist Tauren lady who wanders the path in Stranglethorn Vale.
In other political news, Curt Schilling didn't say near enough "No Way's" during some questions about running for the recently vacated congressional seat of Ted Kennedy. Curt has never been one to back down from a political discussion so he may think about it, but I'd rather he concentrate on 38 Studios and the game being developed - is it Copernicus or Galileo? It's been a while since I've seen any updates so I'm forgetting. Whatever it is, hurry up already. Stop all this congressional nonsense and show some gameplay footage.
For the lucky ones that made it to PAX this weekend, Blizzard was there showing off more of what we saw at Blizzcon. Meanwhile other games announced expansions (Pirates of the Burning Sea) and all kinds of new information and updates for Conan, Guild Wars2 and Global Agenda. I still have my hands full with my newly created faction-changed WoW alts and a bit of Champions Online. I'm a tried and true fantasy fan, but Champions scratches an itch I didn't know I had. This is a tough month for MMO-monogamy with Aion right around the corner too. It is not surprising how Blizzard is pulling all the stops to keep the hook set nice and deeply into our psyche.
What's on your MMO-mind this week? All things WoW or are you looking out of the corner of your eye at those *other* games? Do you really want our Congress to be WoW players? Would we be better off if they were EVE players? The cut-throat back-stabbing espionage seems more their style. Are we all bad people because we root for death and destruction as Xerin says? Let's discuss in the forums.
Have a great week, and thanks for reading.
-Jay "Medeor" Johnson
The same week that Champions Online goes live and NCsoft preps the Aion open beta, Blizzard suddenly opens the door to faction changes. Both a blessing and a curse, I was finally able to move some characters around but at $55 each for the faction and realm changes, it still stings.
In a hallelujah moment, we can all praise the advancements to the instance capacity solution(s). The jury is still out on the whole LFG cross-server option, but if it fixes the dern "can't start another instance" problem, then I already love it.
From the nobody goes to France file, TCG has canceled the Darkmoon Faire that was scheduled to take place. Fear not European WoW card flingers; the Amsterdam event is holding strong. Those of us on this side of the Atlantic can still stop in for events at Austin and Las Vegas. I don't seem to have local buddies that play the games but when I do find time for the miniatures game, it is quite fun. The card game still makes my head hurt though.
Blues Clues
Race to change your race.
Crygil confirms that Race changes will be available soon (tm):
"The Race Change feature is on the way, but it's not at a point where we can give you specifics about it yet. As soon as we feel this feature is close to done, we will give out additional information on it."
Armor Penetration can't go away quickly enough:
Ghostcrawler explains why they aren't waiting to nerf Armor Pen:
"Several melee specs (and Marksman hunters) had begun to focus on armor pen at the expense of all other stats. Gear without armor pen was being passed over and gem sockets were increasingly being filled with just this one stat. While every spec has stats that are more valuable than others, this one felt like it was starting to trump everything. Not coincidentally, characters stacking lots of armor pen were starting to do more damage than their peers and more damage than we were comfortable with."
The game we call WoW has changed a lot the last few weeks. Some might say for the better, others lament the decreasing difficulty of the game. Our very own Medawky was boasting the other day about having eight hours played on one of his fresh level 80s and still having all level 200+ gear and none of it crafted. That is both impressive and depressing. Does the game hold any challenge for players when gear is no longer an issue? Are the achievements enough to make for compelling reasons to log in? I used to think that it was, but my certainty is wavering.
Even with the ease of gathering loot, there certainly appears to be another great chasm opening up again between the "easy" runs and the very difficult instances. The five man heroics are a slam dunk. The ten player instances are becoming laughable and the 25 player instances have been brought to their knees. If you disagree, check in on the forums under the heading "ToC is Teh Fail Blizzard!" and the thousands of other angry posts.
Where will Onyxia line up? That will be interesting. The loot tables are flowing forth from the PTR and there are some very impressive pieces of iLevel 232 and 245 gear - in addition to the "Head of Onyxia" of course. My guess is that Blizzard is tiring of the cream puff instances and will ratchet some of these last of instances up to 11 to really test the mettle of the players. I know I would if I were them. I'd name one of the bosses "QuelQeuue Extremis" and have him hit for 50k in an AoE of 100 yards in 3 second pulses. I haven't received an email from the instance design group from Blizzard, that's odd.
My wallet is the one that says bad mutha trucker.
Last week Xerin led a lively debate in the forums after starting with the line "No one in WoW is a good person." I immediately got pissed and then realized that I'm exactly who is he talking about. Not a good sign, and to my relief not really the point of his post. The point is we all submerge ourselves into a virtual game where we take credit for slaughtering hundreds (if not thousands) of other virtual living things. We torture some and others we abandon. Most of them had it coming so I don't feel so bad, but other times I feel a pang of guilt until I roll "Need."
Speaking of Canada, Guam is a real state, right? Or is it a suburb of a state, you know like Washington DC? I was glad to hear of the Lt. Governor of Guam, Ray Tenorio, who plays a level 80 Dwarf Priest. All jokes about the Alliance aside, this is just a first revelation, we're sure to learn of more as our legions continue to level up in government. Someday trade negotiations will be decided by a 3v3 arena match. Knowing our congress we'd end up with an Enhancement Shaman, Prot Warrior and that damn pacifist Tauren lady who wanders the path in Stranglethorn Vale.
In other political news, Curt Schilling didn't say near enough "No Way's" during some questions about running for the recently vacated congressional seat of Ted Kennedy. Curt has never been one to back down from a political discussion so he may think about it, but I'd rather he concentrate on 38 Studios and the game being developed - is it Copernicus or Galileo? It's been a while since I've seen any updates so I'm forgetting. Whatever it is, hurry up already. Stop all this congressional nonsense and show some gameplay footage.
For the lucky ones that made it to PAX this weekend, Blizzard was there showing off more of what we saw at Blizzcon. Meanwhile other games announced expansions (Pirates of the Burning Sea) and all kinds of new information and updates for Conan, Guild Wars2 and Global Agenda. I still have my hands full with my newly created faction-changed WoW alts and a bit of Champions Online. I'm a tried and true fantasy fan, but Champions scratches an itch I didn't know I had. This is a tough month for MMO-monogamy with Aion right around the corner too. It is not surprising how Blizzard is pulling all the stops to keep the hook set nice and deeply into our psyche.
What's on your MMO-mind this week? All things WoW or are you looking out of the corner of your eye at those *other* games? Do you really want our Congress to be WoW players? Would we be better off if they were EVE players? The cut-throat back-stabbing espionage seems more their style. Are we all bad people because we root for death and destruction as Xerin says? Let's discuss in the forums.
Have a great week, and thanks for reading.
-Jay "Medeor" Johnson
Features, Opinions
Fri, Feb 10, 2012
Saia
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Features, OpinionsSun, Feb 12, 2012Saia
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FeaturesMon, Feb 13, 2012Mem
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Features, OpinionsMon, Feb 13, 2012Messiah
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Features, OpinionsFri, Feb 10, 2012Saia
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BlogsWed, Feb 08, 2012Arxkanite
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GuidesTue, Feb 07, 2012Xerin
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OpinionsTue, Feb 07, 2012Mem
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Basics, GuidesSun, Feb 05, 2012Xerin
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GuidesSun, Feb 05, 2012Xerin
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FeaturesMon, Feb 06, 2012Mem
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