That was very welcome, but you need to pay attention during the cinematics

GDC10 (Game Developer Conference 2010) was last week and one of the tidbits to come out was a summation of a 45-min hands-on play session of SWTOR by Massively.com. Obviously Shawn Schuster likes what he saw, but what I took away from his summation was the sentence I chose for this blog entry.

That was very welcome, but you need to pay attention during the cinematics.

I wish I could find the quote now, but a few months back (or perhaps it was many months, I simply don't recall) one of the Blizzard developers spoke candidly about what they've learned over time about quest development. Essentially he said it took them a while to figure out people didn't want to read a lot of crap. That what people really wanted was to get their quest and then go about completing it. I couldn't agree more.

SWTOR is going to be completely voice-over though. And I've been worried that those voice overs would force you to engage in a "conversation" with each NPC quest giver before you can actually just play and it sounds from Shawn's article that that is indeed the case.

Let me remind you, this is not on one or two quests, this is every quest. The voice acting I experienced by a half-dozen voices was done very well. There was never a point where I felt it was done cheaply or felt awkward, as I regularly encounter in other games with voice work.

That sort of thing is fine in an RPG, but in an MMO I can see it getting old very quickly. In an RPG you will spend about 30-40 hours or so. In an MMO you can log thousands of hours over a few years. You really think that I'm not going to become annoyed after having to pause and work through a conversation with various NPCs after a couple weeks in the game? I'm all for story. I'm not all for inconvenience or annoyance.

Leveling experiences and what Cataclysm has to do with it

I’ve been playing WoW since March 2005. And if you read this blog on any regular basis you will know I’m somewhat of an alt-a-holic. I’ve been pretty good (considering) in WotLK in keeping myself to two main characters I play – now my Paladin and my Druid – but when WotLK launched I was playing my Shaman and my Death Knight. I dropped my Shaman relatively early in the Winter 2008/Spring of 2009, but I played my Death Knight all the way until late Summer 2009. Now I never touch him and have no plans to revive him. I had recounted last November the various characters I have, but that list has changed somewhat as I deleted my Hunter and my Mage replacing them with a baby Horde Druid I’ve been blogging about recently and a baby Warrior I’d also blogged about in the recent past. But I also have a baby Horde Rogue which has been languishing at level 7 for a long time now. Because of my desire for a Horde Druid that is beginning to change though, and it’s the comparison between the two which I most want to blog about today.

First, understand that a new player is at a serious – and I mean tremendously so – disadvantage to other established players in that the current leveling experience simply sucks. Blizzard made changes to the 1-20 experience by upping mana and health regen for low level characters, and most recently enabled Rogues and Warriors to start out with dual-wield, whereas previously neither got dual-wield until level 20. Those changes certainly helped, but the issue of low level gear itemization was equally important, and that won’t be changed until Cataclysm. Right now you very easily can still be stuck with white/grey level items at level 12-15. And outside of a lucky green drop off a mob, buying something off the auction house at extraordinarily outrageous prices, or winning a lucky drop off a boss in dungeons you can start running in your teens, you are absolutely stuck. The best thing established players can do is equip your new alt with heirloom gear, but a new player doesn’t have that option.

Second, even without the gear issue you still need some way to support yourself. New players may not realize this point, but long time players certainly do. It’s why I didn’t simply transfer my Druid to Horde as he’s my Enchanter and my Jewel crafter on the Alliance side. During the leveling experience it isn’t as much of an issue, but by the time you are in your 70’s and certainly by the time you hit 80 and expect to raid you need some way to make gold or at the very least supply yourself with materials to raid (flasks, potions, gems, enchants). Otherwise you’ll go broke. 200 gold per day running dailies simply isn’t going to be enough to outfit you initially at level 80 when one gem alone can cost that much. Let alone the enchants you need. 1400 gold per week from dailies can be spent remarkably fast and that is ignoring the expense of mounts (flying or otherwise).

In my view it is necessary to have at least two characters to make yourself some-what self-sufficient, although three would be better. That is unless you have the time to complete 25 dailies daily, and still have time to do a considerable amount of farming. On the Alliance side my Druid is my Enchanter/Jewel Crafter, and my Paladin is my gatherer (Miner/Herbalist) and right now my Alchemist is my 75 Warlock who I don’t really play. Those are the professions I consider to be “must haves” and would not like to play without having direct access to. When I decided I wanted to have Horde side characters and had made the decision to become serious about that and started leveling my Horde Druid I also decided that I would need these available on that side as well. Which means that I would have to level 3, not 1, characters. As I have no set deadline to get all this done, and don’t even plan on raiding with at least 2 of them. I might raid on the Druid, but the other two (Rogue and Paladin) will just be support characters.

When I started leveling my Horde Druid I made a point of mentioning how OP he felt at the 1-10 bracket, mostly because of his heirloom gear. But I remember well what it was like when I leveled my Druid the first time around and nothing has changed since then. When a Druid first starts out their only recourse is to cast Wrath or Moonfire when they get it, and auto-swing a level 1 staff they get at creation. It’s a horrible experience, broken only by the need to constantly sit and drink water to regen mana. The fact that I could actually kill things with a few swings of my heirloom mace the second time around made all the difference in the world, but even my three heirloom items could not make up the difference by the time I was level 12 or 13. By then I hadn’t been able to upgrade the other white items I was still wearing and it began to show. By level 15 it felt very much like I remember feeling at the initial levels on my original Druid as it was taking longer and longer to kill things, and I was taking more damage doing it. Then I’d have to heal and was having to sit and regen mana again.

You do get bear form at level 10, and the idea really is to fight in bear form, yet that isn’t much different from just whacking with my mace. Fighting in bear form at levels 10-13 is just as slow as fighting in caster form, except if I need to heal I have to pop out into caster form, and then waste more mana by popping back into bear form. As you get closer to level 20 things get slightly better once you get swipe, and enrage, but not much more so. Things do not get markedly better until level 20 when you get cat form and can dish out much higher DPS, though you will occasionally still take damage spikes if you have to take on more than one mob at a time. But even with that you will have needed to upgrade those armor pieces, preferably through dungeons.

Compare that to the low level Rogue experience though. Low level Rogues start out with dual wield now and as with my Druid, I equipped Chest, Shoulder and heirloom weapons (two daggers). While it took only 2-3 whacks with my mace to kill things in the 1-10 bracket on my Druid, it would only take 1-2 seconds to kill things with my Rogue. While I have to wait for weapon swings on my Druid if I didn’t want to cast multiple Wrath spells, all I had to do to kill things with my Rogue was Sinister Strike to 1 or 2 combo points, then eviscerate. I leveled from level 7 to 15 over the weekend and still have that feeling of OP’ness, even though I haven’t upgraded any of my other armor pieces. It’s something altogether different from how my Druid felt by that level and highlights tremendous differences in the leveling experience that I think Blizzard needs to address. I haven’t seen any mention of it, but I keep hoping Blizzard will take the opportunity to conduct a cleanup of the classes while they also take the time to address the zones.

By level 15 on my Rogue I SS once, pop Slice and Dice and kill the mobs with white hits in just a few seconds. On my Druid I’ll apply claw 2-3 times, then rip as a finisher and kill individual mobs in a few seconds as well, but my Druid is level 24 right now, whereas my Rogue is nearly 10 levels lower. As this is my second Rogue, I already know (also) to ignore the advice I’ve seen so often to level as combat. Instead I’ll level as Assassination, where I’ll take a lot less damage and will have a whole lot more control over mobs. I won’t make the same mistakes I made the first go around.

The point is, even though the classes are obviously different, and have different abilities, the leveling experience should not be so stark between the classes. Rogues are very powerful at the lower levels and have very little, if any, issues when leveling. You can level non-stop and quite literally never have to regen if you know how to play the class right, whereas another class like Druid, is much slower and takes more effort. The gear situation I expect will be fixed in Cataclysm when Blizzard revamps the quests and zones, but the rest of the experience can be changed by altering when classes get abilities. For instance, why can’t Druids start out with Cat form and keeping bear form at level 10? Forcing someone to level by auto-attacking until level 20, or at the very least, semi-auto attacking until level 20 is just down right silly. If Cataclysm is WoW 2.0, as a lot of people are comparing it to, then take the time to clean up all the other glaring areas as well.

Druid 15-20

Dude.....

The best thing about the 15-20 level bracket is that you get travel form at level 16 and you are within grasp of cat form. Things get progressively more difficult to kill through auto-attacking with the mace, however if you have the money to upgrade armor you can do a fair amount of AOE killing in bear form as you now have Swipe. I ended up doing that myself because it was just too painful to endure auto attacking any more.

I did end up going to the Blood Elf zones to level as I understand the leveling experience there is generally easier, like I know it is with the Draeni start zones. It probably won't be the case much longer as all the zones in old Azeroth will be redone come Cataclysm, but for now I really do recommend saving yourself some time and making your first act as a new character to get to the Draeni or Blood Elf starter zones. In any event I burned through this level bracket not only because of the zone but because you can use the Looking For Group function as well. Two dungeons, despite them both taking a fair amount of time to clear, netted me two levels by themselves.

I mentioned in my last post that I was allotting my talent points to take advantage of cat form, as I already knew I'd be spending most of my time in it. But there is considerable disagreement as to which specific talents to take. A lot of people will tell you to get to Omen of Clarity in the Resto tree first, because it's multi-use. It'll help you in Cat and Bear form, and if you intend to do any serious tanking that might be a good idea to pursue. However for me I know that I won't be tanking regularly and will be spending the majority of my time in Cat form running quests. Therefore I think the best plan for me is to get Feral Swiftness in the Feral tree first, then continue working down the tree until I can pick up Mangle at level 50. I already know that once I get Mangle I'll never use Claw again, so after picking up Mangle I'll go back and work toward Omen of Clarity. Chances are I may want to start tanking again as I hit the Outlands, so having it by that point will come in handy.

On hitting level 20 you also get a mount. Which, frankly, is one of the best things since sliced bread. Even with travel form you can't help but do the Snoopy Dance. Makes the considerable amount of travel you are doing by this point much easier. Especially if you are like me, and realize you can get faster XP by working two zones at the same time. Bounce back and forth between the Crossroads and the Ghostlands for plenty of green quests.

It was only a setback?

See? I told you information was beginning to trickle out. Today comes drips and drops, thanks to PC Gamer with a whole bunch of spoilers. Don't read the WoWinsider article I link to unless you want to get your Cataclysm on!

Proving again that you just can't fix stupid

Yeah it just takes one person to press Need after everyone's pressed Greed on the Frozen Orbs and you miss out. But the good news is that in patch 3.3.3 this won't be the case anymore -- the roll for Frozen Orbs will be an automatic Greed roll. Rejoice!

It's a sad day when "government" has to cater to the lowest common denominator as a matter of case.

Blood Princes down

It's been a fairly exciting two weeks for me in my mains guild. We've consistently killed Festergut and now Rotface, and we've now killed the Blood Princes after only a few days worth of attempts. Quite honestly I didn't expect us to do that quite so quickly, but I'm also certainly not going to complain about it. I'm happy as could be about it! It's a busy, technical fight and if we can kill the Blood Princes we can also kill Putricide. Unfortunately we haven't attempted him yet but I expect that we'll probably do that soon.

Putricide and the Eclipse effect

In my main's guild we've skipped over Putricide in order to work on the Blood Princes, but in my alt's guild we've chosen to work on Putricide. And I got my first look at that fight last night. I didn't think I was going to like the fight all that much, but after a handful of attempts where we were able to get him down to 20% at his enrage timer, I found myself actually liking the fight a great deal. I see us killing Putricide Friday night if we make sure we more quickly transition to the sludges and burn them down faster, and ensure we more cleanly transition between phases without having sludges remain up as carryovers, and ensure the person kiting the orange sludge doesn't run out of range of the ranged classes I think we'll kill him on Friday night. The issues above are simply about maintaining a high level of DPS on target to meet the enrage timer, but the other issue that we have to work on is also not being hit by the Malleable Goo. We simply had too many people being hit by that last night, putting pressure on the healers to keep those individuals up, but also the effects of being hit effectively reduce their DPS as it increases the duration of spells and attacks by 200%.

As my Druid is in the alt guild, this fight is relatively easy for me. Limited movement, unless I have to dodge Malleable Goo, or unless I have to move to get back into range of the individual kiting the orange sludge (or unless I'm also the one kiting), I get to stand and do what Balance Druids do best - pew pew with massive DPS increases thanks to the Eclipse effect. At the end of the attempts I found myself always in the top five, but twice ending up number two on the DPS meter. It made me think again of how bad Eclipse is, or really, how it's simply too good. On fights where I have to move fairly often like on the Rotface or Restergut fights I always find myself around number 10 or 11 on the DPS meter which is middle of the pack. On those fights where I simply get to stand and take advantage of my Eclipses I'm up near the top. Other casters, like Mages for instance, are not as affected by movement as they hit harder on a spell by spell basis and some of my DPS is reflected in the DOTs I put on the target and which amplify my main spells (Wrath and Starfire) effects. In short, fights that require movement - and the more movement the more the affect - have more of a detrimental impact on me that they do on other casters and I would very much like Blizzard to fix that now rather than later. Yet I know a fix, whatever it is, isn't due until Cataclysm.

Cataclysm information is starting to trickle out

It must be getting closer to the Cataclysm beta because Blizzard has been releasing a lot of information about important changes that are upcoming, like last weeks announcement about stat changes and yesterdays announcement about how the new Mastery system will work. As I expect to see Cataclysm launch at some point in the October or November time frame, I’d expect to see more information about these changes and others not yet discussed in increasing frequency as we head into the Summer. Such revelations lead inevitably to thoughts of where Blizzard must be in there testing now. They must already be in their Alpha and must be gearing up to head into a closed beta soon, if they aren’t in it already. My guess is that the public beta, though still invite only, will begin in June or perhaps July but the dreaded NDA will keep information flow at a minimum. Which of course means we will be devouring any trickle of information that does come out.

Like this Mastery system announcement from yesterday. I have to admit I was intrigued by it when it was first announced at Blizzcon but the details that were released yesterday – specifically the level 3 Mastery abilities -- still remain largely unknown. All we know is that they will be affected by gear we obtain in levels 81 – 85. A Mastery set bonus! Blizzard has been up-front that the idea of the Mastery system is to remove talents that directly buff abilities by adding specific amounts of damage or healing abilities. Those talents are being replaced by the level 1 and level 2 Mastery abilities and will be earned as passive bonuses by spending points in specific trees, and I imagine will require a level of points for each level, which should make it a bit more interesting for min/maxers to eek out those tidbits in upcoming talent builds.

We also already know that the talent trees will not be getting any deeper, but will be getting wider. Not only will Blizzard need to replace those talents being removed through the Mastery system, but if they are getting “wider” it necessarily means they will also be adding additional talents that are not already existing. For those of you looking at the talent trees now and salivating over where to put an additional 5 talent points now, you might want to put the brakes on and just sit back and wait for more relevant news. Because it’s clear Blizzard simply isn’t going to give you 5 additional points just to put where ever you wish. The talent trees are still going hobble you in the same sort of ways they always have. Regardless of what Blizzard says, there are still going to be talents that are “required” for your class and role, and there are still going to be a limited number of points available to you for “filler”. In short order the math geeks will figure out the “best” talent specs and most will adopt those. Same as happens today.

I remember well my thoughts on Jewelcrafting back in BC when I realized gear with slots were actually worse than previous gear that had no slots. The slots have value costs that have to be subtracted from the rest of the item budget. Blizzard’s stated intent was to enable people to buff the item stats in a way they chose but the end effect is that the vast majority of people use the same gems and buff in the same way. The real reason for the gem slots was to add in additional money sinks. No money is involved in the new talent system that I’m aware of but it acts in the same way. In order to keep talent inflation to a minimum we’ll have the new wider talent trees with the new Mastery system.

Druid 10-15

I was right in that I was level 12 before I moved into the Barrens. It's quite the hike without a travel form, or without the flight path!

You want me to find who??

Unfortunately the OP'ness that I experienced in 1-10 all but disappeared as I got closer to level 15. This being my first Horde toon, I don't have another character to fund my way which means I can't simply upgrade gear from the auction house as often as I probably need to. The prices on the auction house are ridiculous and I feel very sorry for the player who is just starting out now and has no high level character to farm on. The quests I’ve completed this far give money, but very few items that are usable meaning I either have to upgrade from the auction house, or continue on with the equipment I have and hope things improve soon. As I’m no longer over-geared for the content it takes longer than a two or three whacks with my mace to kill things and I’m doing a lot more healing that I have before. I’m still killing creatures with little trouble, but as they have generally have more health the higher I go, it simply takes longer to kill them and I consequently take more damage doing it.

The only other option is to drop into bear form and fight that way. Unfortunately that option isn’t much better because all I have in bear form is auto-attack and maul. Think of Maul like Heroic Strike for Warriors, and as Bear form works much like the Warrior class, Maul takes Rage just like Heroic Stroke takes Rage for Warriors. I gain rage in bear form by auto-attacking, so I might be able to get one Maul off on a creature before it’s killed. In my opinion, it doesn’t offer me much more than continuing to auto-attack with my mace. Especially as I do not yet have Feral Regeneration yet and can not heal in Bear form. And popping out to heal, then popping back into bear form takes up considerable mana. All in all, nothing has changed from level 10 to 15 in that you gain nothing new in the way of combat abilities, so for me it remains casting a couple Wraths, then auto-attacking. This being my second Druid, if I didn't know how much better things begin to get at level 20 I'd quit right now. Especially if all I knew was the Barrens. Questing in the Barrens can most aptly be described as "the hike". Travel is involved in every quest and I’ve had to travel all over the area surrounding the Cross-Roads. And all of it done at normal run speed because I won’t get my travel form until level 16. I've all but decided that the Barrens isn't for me and will be making my way to Silvermoon where I can experience the better leveling experience and hopefully get better quest rewards.

The only other consideration that you really need to make at level 10 is how to best place your talent points. I already know that at level 20 I will be using Cat form extensively, so I want to put my talent points in to best leverage that.

More on Eclipse

WowInsider has more on the current Balance Druid Eclipse situation.