Archive for November, 2009

Arena Points Alternative; Compare TBC to WotLK

Tuesday, November 24th, 2009

Arena Points Alternative

I just picked up my relentless weapons last week. Our current goal is to push for a 2000 rating once we pick up more gear. We are happy with the amount of points that we are obtaining per week currently and are happy to be in the top 1000 teams in our battlegroup with our gear. All of us have obtained every piece of gear that we wanted short of our relentless main set pieces.

Now the waiting begins. Currently, to complete my relentless set (not including the t2 weapon), it will take 8500 arena points to buy that gear or 10 weeks at our current rating. Obviously at some point we’ll have to get 2000 and higher for the gear and that will cut down on some time. Overall, I’m still looking at at least six weeks of waiting for arena points to calculate. This amounts to very little time spent working on this during a week.

When you are used to grinding out honor for offset pieces and playing a bunch of arena games for practice every week, then you hit the arena point wall and suddenly have no reason to log on anymore. Our gear is not good enough to push for above 2k right now and we are not trying to farm anything else. I find myself logging on and working to get random achievements and doing other frivolous character development.

So what can be done to fix this? The ability of obtaining arena points faster is currently based on your team rating. In a lot of ways, this means the better geared the team, the faster they get points. This leaves new teams and new characters in the dust to wait for the gear so they can be competitive. The immediate solution would be to allow points to be given out faster than once a week.

Rated battlegrounds will help this a little bit but will also suffer from the same limitation. The limitation is there because obviously you don’t want someone to be able to get a full season of gear within the first week if they play enough. There is no accomplishment to that and it makes the gear trivial to most people.

I have thought about this quite a bit recently and can not think of a decent alternative to the current system. If anyone has a good idea, please let me know and definitely send your idea to blizzard.

“Raid” on SW

We randomly started to harass some Alliance players the other night. By “we” I mean 5 of us and by “some” I mean over 20 Alliance characters. There were at least 5 prot paladins, 2 prot warriors, and 3 DKs who showed up for the fray. We were able to push past the entrance and into the wall of SW, but were forced back out because of going OOM and the sheer amount of Alliance who were defending.

Overall it was a blast and I was reminded about the nature and mindset that a lot of WoW players have. It doesn’t seem to matter how bad you outnumber the opponent or how many times they killed you, you must show your superiority when you get that one kill on them. Our group makeup was double rogue, mage, resto druid, and me (disc priest). We were able to pull off over 60 hk’s before one of us was killed because of the chain stuns/silences from the prot paladins. Immediately, the paladin dropped a flag of ownership on Darafeln’s corpse.

It was pretty funny that the paladin left the scene feeling victorious over us even after we killed him multiple times and dozens of his friends. Notice how this is a common theme in WoW. Watch how other players will brag about their skill or superiority no matter how much of a lie it is.

TBC vs WotLK

Patch 3.3 will introduce the final raid content of this expansion pack. In Ice Crown Citadel, we will most likely fight the Lich King. Looking at the games current state in PvE and looking back to TBC and vanilla, does ICC and the Lich King seem as epic of an achievement as Illidan or bosses like Twin Emporers in AQ40?

I just don’t get that feeling like I did in TBC where the final boss of the expansion was only really killable by the best raiding guilds on your server. It wasn’t just anyone who strolled into the Black Temple and killed Illidan. It was even an attitude that if you didn’t have Illidan on farm status, your guild was a joke.

I think that some of that attitude will remain, but overall the “hardcore” side of the game is dying out. I don’t think Blizzard is to blame for this. I get the feeling that the current player base is getting more casual every month and Blizzard is just accommodating for the largest common denominator. I kind of miss those times where the hardcore were somewhat a resemblance of the word instead of the current state where it is equally conceivable to say “I’m hardcore at Candyland”.

I feel that PvP has gotten more hardcore with the age of the game and PvE has tapered off. PvP still is challenging and refreshing to me where as there are very few bosses that really would challenge me as a player.

I am excited for Cataclysm because of going back to vanilla areas. I just hope that the old feeling is not gone by the time I get there.

Tags: , , , , ,
Posted in Randomness | No Comments »

Doodadnox.com

Wednesday, November 18th, 2009

Doodadnox.com is our partner site. The purpose of Doodadnox is to give gamers (specifically WoW players) a very clean and straight forward place to upload their gaming screenshots, not to mention FREE. It is a place where people can browse and discuss other player’s screenshots as well as posting their own. The big draw to the site is the lack of advertisements and clutter that is associated with big image hosting sites. Check out the site and see these great features:

No Clutter

The look and feel of Doodadnox was created with a gamer in mind. When you browse screenshots, you don’t want ads screaming at you, tiny thumbnails, and overcrowded pictures. At the core, you are there to view the screenshots. Doodadnox gives you decent sized thumbnails as well as a fullscreen image preview. Ultimately, you can view any screenshot in its raw form; Exactly the format and size that the screenshot was uploaded to the server.

Social Networking

Doodadnox also offers basic social networking tools. You will find a link to quickly share your screenshots to any major social networking site as well as a link to the direct image. There is also commenting directly on screenshots. Share your screenshots with the world and see what others think.

Free Screenshot Hosting

All of the bandwidth and space are free. Obviously there will need to be limits put in place at some point in time. We guarantee that these limits will not impede with 99% of the user’s bandwidth needs. The costs for bandwidth and space are covered by donations. There may be a need to put Ads onto some pages in the future to recoup the costs, but they will never get in the way of your screenshot viewing. We want the user experience at the site to be the #1 priority.

Other Benefits

  • Direct Hot-Linking to any image on Doodadnox.com is allowed
  • Very few ToS rules to worry about
  • It is 100% FREE
  • No limits on storage or bandwidth (currently)
  • Updated frequently

Tags: ,
Posted in Randomness | No Comments »

How Long Will You Play WoW?

Tuesday, November 17th, 2009

I’ve always wondered how long I would play World of Warcraft. From the first few moments that I played it, I know that it would hold my attention for a while. Nevertheless, I couldn’t have predicted that I would still be playing it 4-5 years later. I probably would have laughed at the notion at the time. The longest I had ever played a single game was only for a few months at the time. In fact, I have “quit” WoW multiple times (more like took a hiatus). The 4-5 years of playing might never have happened.

The first time that I quit, it was some time before TBC. The game had the honor system for the super hardcore and raiding for the hardcore. Obtaining R13 wasn’t an option due to the massive amount of time needed to reach that rank. Also, I wasn’t able to spend enough time playing while in college to raid and actually get gear. There came a point where I realized that my gear was as good as it possibly could be without me raiding. Since I did not have time to raid, and had no other options of getting gear, I decided to quit. I really still wanted to play WoW, but couldn’t justify playing and not getting anywhere. That all changed a couple months later when Blizzard announced most of TBC changes. It was like they had read my mind and I started playing again. Coincidentally, I started raiding shortly after the game became more casual.

I played through much of TBC before taking another hiatus from WoW, this time for completely different reasons. It was during season 4 and I was playing my paladin. Our main focus was 3’s and our team makeup was Disc Priest, Ret Paladin, Ret Paladin. If you can remember season 4, you will see where our difficulties came from. The lack of a healing debuff or any real interrupts during a season where drain teams and double healers ruled the arenas left a sour taste in our mouths. At the time, ret paladin damage was lackluster at best. I had a lot more fun healing through hours in Zul’Aman with my guild than I did playing PvP. This was a low point in the history of paladins and I was tired of not having a good comp to play in arenas, so I quit again.

During this time, I ran a Counter Strike: Source server that grew to be one of the most popular servers in the world (top 100 out of 30000+ tracked servers). It was all a lot of fun, but ultimately I still wanted to play WoW, just didn’t enjoy it the way that it was. Yet again, Blizzard made changes that drew me back to the game. I have taken breaks from playing many times. Each varied from a couple weeks to a few months and had various other reasons (too busy, gone a lot, trying AoC, other MMOs, etc). Some of those times I was sure that I wouldn’t play again. Each time I was wrong.

So that brings me to to my original question. How long will I play WoW? I don’t think this question can really be answered. Whether another MMO steals my interest or if I just get tired after 5 years, I couldn’t say. Ultimately I’ll at least quit by the time the servers are shut off (which judging by the fact that Everquest is still going, could be another decade or so). Whether I play that long or not depends on if I continue to have fun playing a great game with friends.

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Randomness | No Comments »

1800; Manual Dodge

Monday, November 16th, 2009

I had a long post written for this past weekend. It was the culmination of my frustrations over not being able to hit 1800 to get relentless weapons. For my gear, I was losing a lot of spell power by gemming for the resilience that I need to stay competitive in arenas. I have also been wearing a WG trinket instead of my battlemaster’s because of the resilience. There was no other solution to getting that SP back other than getting the relentless weapons.

So what was the problem? We played for the past three weeks without breaking 1750 on our 3v3. Every time we got close to 1750, we would lose a bunch in a row or lose big points with a single loss. My 2v2 team was able to hit 1787 max and was over 1770 on ten different occasions in the past three weeks, yet we were not able to hit 1800. After being stuck at those ratings for three weeks, one starts to wonder if it will be possible without buying the rating. It has always been the catch 22 of WoW for me. In order to get better gear you need to have a high rating, but in order to get a high rating you need to have better gear (if you aren’t willing to be carried).

Skill > Gear (expanded discussion)

In the world of PvP, the concept of skill being more important than gear is a common attitude. I think that a majority of players consider this to be true. I would say that I used to generally subscribe to that theory. The problem is that I know that most of the time, skill has nothing to do with the outcome of a PvP match. If you put a list together of the most important factors in determining the outcome of a PvP match, skill would be pretty low.

Now you have to understand that I’m talking 99% of the PvP that happens. Tom Chilton was recently quoted as saying 20-25% of WoW players play arenas and 1% of those hit a 2k rating. I would generally say that skill matters much more when you are over a 2k rating. So is it possible for a keyboard turner and clicker to hit 2k? Is it possible for a undergeared player to hit 2k? It is possible, but rare. Most of the time you will find skilled, knowledgeable players at this level and the undergeared are carried by others.

So that must mean that the other 99% of players who play arenas are bad, right? I don’t think so. I’ve played against a lot of people at lower ratings who were very good players. I have seen a lot of players who want to play with a friend so they are in a bad comp. I know that there are good players at lower levels of play (ones who could reach 2k given the right circumstances). I could only reach a maximum 1450 rating last season playing Warrior/Resto Shaman. Judging by my ratings, I would be considered a bad player. Nothing has changed between then and now for me except a new character and team composition.

On the same note, I have seen bad players at the 2k level. WotLK opened the play for faceroll teams to dominate. Most of these players can push 3 buttons to win and do not need to even think about it. Find a good stream of a faceroll team on Xfire and watch for a match when their initial burst fails at killing someone. Most of these teams have no idea what to do after that, they just give up. Nevertheless, these teams are over 2k and so are worshiped by many. Gear can carry you and so can your comp.

The attitude about skill being more important than gear comes from our wanting it to be true. We wish that PvP was all about who could play the best rather than who had all the gear.

1800

We were able to pull off some great wins this past weekend and hit 1800 in our 3v3. Our final win was against a ~2100 rated team to give us 19 points and get 1808. It was a Priest/Ret/Mage team that outgeared us considerably. We controlled the entire match holding their ret paladin to only 7.4k damage and their Priest to only 17k healing.

I will be able to pick up my Relentless MH on Tuesday when I get enough arena points and then re-gem most of my gear to compensate for the extra resilience. I will definitely enjoy the extra SP.

Manual Dodge

I had mentioned in last week’s post that I was starting a new guild. I finished getting the signatures the other night and was able to form the guild <Manual Dodge>. The guild is going to be a PvP oriented guild. I haven’t raided much since Ulduar and my priest is fully PvP geared so I do not plan on raiding with him in the future. I focus a lot on PvP because that is still a lot of fun for me. When you play this game fully for PvP and you are in a guild that is full of PvE fanatics, there is just a disconnect. I wan’t to play with others who like PvP, that is why I formed Manual Dodge.

We are planning on doing a weekday premade schedule. We will pick out one BG per weekday and make a premade for that BG. All BG’s will be covered every week and will rotate so that personal schedules do not make a player miss out on the same BG every week. Potentially, if you are able to play 15 games (wins) per day in the premade, you will be able to make over 65k honor from turn ins alone. Also, the bonus honor would probably be around 75k. This is a great and fast way to honor grind. Our premades will be open to anyone on our realm but guild members get priority positions and advanced warning on them.

I’m pretty excited about the guild and hope to meet some new people who love to PvP as much as I do.

Tags: , , , , , ,
Posted in Arenas | No Comments »

Relentless Weapons; New Guild

Thursday, November 12th, 2009

I should be getting back to my regular posting now. I have been hunting every weekend and it doesn’t leave me time for much else. It will be nice to have a weekend without all the traveling. I am also starting a new guild (which I’ll talk about below) and that has been taking up my time. You can expect more posts in the next few weeks, so keep checking back.

1800

We have been pushing to get 1800 in our 2v2 team. The weapon boost is a big upgrade for Ballsagna for his DPS and also mine for the extra resilience allows me to gear more SP. We have been 1700+ for about a month now. We had saved up arena points to buy our weapons because our MMR was over 1800 long ago and we were expecting to hit 1800. Up until we hit a wall.

With my being gone every weekend and Ballsagna’s schedule, we were left with very few opportunities to play. This left us with late at night games on slow nights. Usually there were very few teams on for the night and most of them were not near our rating. Every time we got above 1750, we would get matched up against a geared team or a counter-comp and we would lose big points (17+).

We have gotten over 1775 nine seperate times in the past month and yet haven’t been able to get the right matchups to get that 1800. Hopefully it will just be a matter of time before we get the right matchups to hit 1800 and get our weapons.

Everyone Has Relentless Weapons

I recently saw a Paladin advertising in trade chat, “LF Disc Priest for 3v3 rated 1440 must have 230+ weapon”. I was floored. Our 3v3 rating is currently 1700 and none of us have 230 weapons. I am using a 219 MH and a level 78 OH. We started the season as fresh 80’s with no gear and have worked our way to where we are currently. Too often, I see bad players who have relentless weapons. It reminds me of a druid on my old server who, after 300 games, was rated 1200. He even has a relentless weapon.

This is especially true when you get around 1800 and you don’t have your weapons yet. Every team has relentless weapons and does double the damage that your team can. It is a lot of fun and encouraging to get there without gear. We play teams that should beat us because of the gear difference, but we outplay them for the win.

The only teams that I hate playing are the geared faceroll teams. We played a few last week that could drop me in a stun (25.2k health, 36% physical reduction, 1162 resilience, pain suppression, and other passive damage reduction talents). Even with our trying to stop their insane damage with every form of CC that we have at our disposal, there was no stopping them. I don’t even understand why people play those comps. To me, that wouldn’t be any fun.

Skill > Gear

While I generally subscribe to this statement, it is only true when gear isn’t a huge factor. If you took a veteran player with a fresh 80 against an ebay character that is full s7 gear, who would you bet on to win? While there are other factors that come into play, as long as the ebay character has basic knowledge of how to play, they will win because of their gear.

We would all like to say that skill is always more important than gear, but this is just not the case. The game does take skill to be good at, but it also takes gear. Just enjoy the times when you bear a mirror comp who has better gear or that 200-300+ rated team who you should never have played.

The best thing is to use your gear disadvantage to learn your class and comp more than the people who are pushing 3 buttons for wins. When you finally get the gear, you will be a much better player and your team will be playing like there is no gear difference instead of being used to outgearing everyone.

New Guild

When I transferred and faction changed, I was originally looking for a PvP oriented guild but instead joined a guild that my friend was in. I have never raided with them mainly because of the times that they raid and haven’t really gotten to know anyone. I decided to jump ship and join a PvP guild. The problem is that there aren’t any big PvP guilds left on Dragonmaw and the ones that I found are not that active anymore.

So I have decided to start a guild. We have some great ideas in store for events and how to make a PvP guild work and make it fun so people want to join. I still need to get signatures, but should be able to get those tonight and will start recruiting soon. I will be posting more details about the guild in future posts so check back here for news. Also, if you are interested in joining the guild, let me know. We always welcome new recruits.

Tags: , , , , , ,
Posted in Arenas | No Comments »