8-piece Netherwind anyone? I had to scream till I was blue in the face at the Mages I headed at the end of AQ - they were all so up in arms about breaking their 8/8 NW, when it's actually only a very small increase in DPS (4% for Frost, 5% for Fire). They were all just blinded by the "OMG, this is so cool" rather than, "Hey, Enigma has so much better +dmg and other stats, that it's actually better in the long run".

That's why I believe 8/8 NW was a stroke of genius in Mage gear. It just dazzled whoever got it to the point of irrationality.

Yep. The trait system is like an ever-increasing talent tree system, you just need to pick which talents you want to use at any given time. I suspect that WAR is doing something similar with their PVP progression to prevent power imbalance. Even if I'm a veteran that has over 100 talents to choose from, I can only load up 10 at any given time.

LOTRO's system seems pretty good - character progression determines the number of slots you have, but what you can put in those slots can be advanced. There's infinite scope for expansion of the breadth of character power, without succumbing to rampant inflation of amount of character power.

Ironically, there's a perfectly good system in game for this - talents. Imagine if AA points could be spent to unlock new talents. Your total number of talent points (and therefore, roughly, power) stays the same, but you gain different abilities/flexibilities.

Of course balancing it into the talent system would be a bitch.

I'm pretty sure this was actually the case in early alpha but it was removed because Blizzard didn't want to have to deal with the distressed masses who would learn that their plan of making Gandalf the Sword-Swinging Battle Mage wasn't going to end well.

I'm not comfortable saying that at all.

If you watch the arc of WoW's development it becomes clear that WoW wants things to be as even as possible. With a true, free for all pvp game with expanding borders, meaningful buffs and progression, player owned cities and server wide wars balance goes out the window due to the varying sizes of the warring factions. It's something I just don't see WoW doing after funneling what pvp they do have into tightly controlled environments.

I see them doing more of the same which is providing tight pve with a pvp sideshow because it's GOOD and it makes them money.

Or as the exchange went with some of our guys who went to E3 after hanging out with some Blizz guys for awhile (all in jest):

Guy1: Yeah, when you guys want a MAN'S game look us up
Guy2: Dude, I'm sure they're wiping the sweat from their brows with hundred dollar bills at the thought of it.

I've often considered that perhaps defeating a major boss could give abilities to the raid, or even just particularly crucual members of the raid, that would make that boss or future bosses somewhat easier in future. Current raid design already works vaguely on these principles - your tank learns to berserker rage through fear so that he can apply this principle to future dragons that have more complex mechanics. On a very simple level, early bosses help DPS classes establish their basic rotations so that meeting enrage timers on later bosses is second nature.

Imagine, for instance, if an encounter required hunters to utilise misdirection; upon completing the encounter the hunters gain an a permanent buff to misdirection that increases the range of attacks while affected by misdirection by 10 yards; this additional range could allow the hunter to out-range boss abilities and also demand an additional skill of the hunter in range measurement.

In PvP, evolving and gaining abilities can ensure that reaching higher ratings means you're presented with a more complex game.

Once again it's difficult to balance, but with new and fresh MMOs coming out, it's up to Blizzard to either keep up with the innovation or become a purely raid-orienated MMO.

This is what i don't get about blizzards strategy. You pursue better and better content, once you reach that end content you want to show off your gear in pvp. But when blizzard added in completely separate gear for pvp it made the pursuit of gear almost futile for the people wanting to pvp in their hard earned BT gear. I love seeing the new raid content and i do it to learn encounters from trial and error, but when that hard work pays off with harder work and once you reach that top content you feel horribly burnt out and not wanting to play anymore. Its not like you cant pvp with some of that pve gear, some classes can. Its just the different itemization makes it very difficult. At times i really miss the old pre-tbc WoW.

On the contrary I actually like that they made PvE and PvP in separate ways. Getting stronger items from PvPing that makes you stronger in PvP makes absolute sense to me.

It makes absolute sense to everyone; it's the "stronger items in PvE that don't make you stronger in PvP" part that people don't get.

Um, surely this is a large patch of jam on the ground where a horse used to be?

PvE items do make you stronger in PvP, just not as strong as the items earned through dedicated PvP. And vice versa, PvP items do make you stronger in PvE, just not as much as the items earned through dedicated PvE.

Just about the only wild card is the arena weapons, since it's pretty hard to make a weapon that's differentially useful in PvE and PvP. But then, the same applies to weapons obtained through PvE.

For what it's worth, I for one don't think that items earned through excellence in one part of the game should necessarily render you excellent in another area, and think Blizzard finally has a reasonable system for differentiating the two. It's unfortunate that the balance isn't quite even across different specs, though.

Warcry's Zul'aman preview is here:
World of Warcraft WarCry : News : WoW: A Look At The Next Update From E3

I found this quote particularly interesting:

I dont hope they are going too far with "Logical loot" (tm...).
To look at a different, but still somehwat related genre, the action-rpgs's such a system can really be terrible. While loot in WoW obviously is far less random than it was in Diablo2, and should be that way, in the end it takes away the fun in rare random drops, if the system is close to What-you-see-is-what-you-get as a game like Titan Quest use (and because they knew it sucked they just had a million chests instead with random loot).

Fun > Realism. I surely dont like a game less because a wolf can drop more than meat, eyes and whatever.

Adding a few items the bosses are using to the loot is fine ofc, but uhm, havent they always been quite good at doing that.

About Blizzcon, Ive believed for a long time Blizz would go for something similar to the current "Intel Strategy", with "Revolution" Year X, Evolution next year, then a new revolution etc. Instead of the old strategy with revolutions only (whether big or small). They changed strategy to throw out upgrades more often. Since they hardly works faster than before, it obviously means the upgrades you get each year is less than before. Faster expansions is ofc somethig Blizz has expressed interest in too.

With such a strategy Blizz would have an expansion 1 year with lvl upgrades and lots of new content, like BC. Then next year no new lvls (as this really add a need for lots of content related to it + insane amounts of rebalancing), but instead just more end game zones, more instances, raids, features etc.)


Not that I really have any idea ofc For another week at least

I agree with you. Why break a winning concept? As much as people rant, WoW has something that pleases most of its customers, because there wouldn't be so much people playing it.

Think about Warcraft and Starcraft. From the 1st to the last, the core of it remained unchanged, and that's what made Blizzard RTS so popular. I think that if they try to revolutionize WoW, they're going to lose, because most people are reluctant to changes, and revamping the current mechanics would definitly end up in a disaster; Just look at the rather minor changes they do to classes and how much people end up complaining...

I hope they will announce more content for Azeroth, and will complete the unfinished sections there are (Uldum, Hyjal, Grim Batol, etc). I'm really eager to see Zul Aman.

Everyone is different but I never PvE'd for the purpose of gearing up to dominate people in PvP. Sure it's a nice side-effect but most people PvE for the enjoyment and challenge of PvE itself. I don't find it incongrous in the least that being good in PvE doesn't necessarily give you a leg up on PvP.

Also, as Emily said: It's not broken so they won't fix it. Nine million subscribers now (yes I know it's not nine million unique people but that's irrelevant to Blizzard that is still hauling in 1.5 billion a year gross income)? No reason to alter fundamental aspects of the game unless Warhammer starts siphoning off accounts in a year or so.

Yes, but the quests to achieve those traits in LotRO are the most mind-numbing grindfest. Slug-killer title for killing 180 slugs. Trait boost (e.g. wow talent) from farming an additional 300ish for a small benefit. It's a reputation grind without the reputation. A Deed system would be great, but not the way LotRO has implemented it.

Truth. When the game was capped before the full release I spent needless hours grinding out traits, for lack of anything better to do. It was awful. Unfortunately it was wasted time since the game turned out to suck at the higher end.

What I'd like to see is a revamp/extension of the relic system. Unsure on the terminology; call them artifacts perhaps.

Give every player oh...3 "artifact" slots, and add a large number of artifacts. A token system with a vendor might be ideal. Artifacts act a lot like existing relics - they give moderate, unique, but highly specialized boosts to specific skills, and/or unique abilities (much like set bonuses). This lets people customize their character to fit their playstyle or the encounter. The bonuses wouldn't be extremely powerful, but they would be unique and interesting, much like the T3 set bonuses, for example. (Much weaker than trinkets, and never with activateable abilities.)

The benefit to the system is that it would give you "unique" abilities (and not just "oh yay, another 2 spirit"), but that it wouldn't interfere with normal gear progression (hence avoiding the 3 piece trans problem).

I really like this idea. I truly enjoy the Demonology aspect of the Warlock class and would love to use it more in PvE. However, the barriers to doing so involve 3 slots of gear which I am then all but forbidden from upgrading if I want to continue my adventures in Demonology(2-piece Tier 5 bonus and the Void Star Talisman). If I could equip an item to allow my damage to heal my pet, another to give him additional resistance, and say a third to improve my felguard's AP scaling from my spell damage, I would be happier than a naked gnome. A system like this could allow a great deal of customization to a character while maintaining viability in the world of min-max raiding.

What I would really like to see is some kind of solution to the whole 'we'll let you get 20 slot bags but most of them will be filled up with different outfits that you need for different encounters'. I get that managing your bag space as a resource makes people think about their farming but it's just not fun to have to lug that much gear around regularly.

A single gear-swap set a la Diablo 2 would be an interesting start. It's certainly a lot more gear and the inventory system in the two games is massively different, but paladin memories of having resist sets, a healing set, a ret set, a shockadin set, a pvp healing set, etc make me yearn for some sort of solution. Even on my warlock I wouldn't mind having a "Boss Set" for hitcap and standard max damage on bosses as well as at leadt one other set.


Hmm, for those who didn't play D2, this involves an alternate equipped gear screen that you switch between with a keypress, doubling the amount of items you can carry as equipped items.

Good example. Set bonuses and "real" items are not good places to put unique abilities. If they're good and they scale, you'll never take them off (which typically leads to a nerf when Bliz realizes their mistake - see [Lifegiving Gem]). If they're good and they don't scale it creates frustration as people outgrow an item which is key to their build or playstyle (as with your [Void Star Talisman]). And if they're bad (as happens all too often) then you've just got a junk item taking up a valuable slot in a loot table (*cough*[Aegis of Preservation]*cough*).

The key is that it would be nice if characters could further specialize their characters above and beyond what existing talent trees can offer. It would also be very nice if this "extra" specialization could be tweaked in between fights; making the system be based on items seems like an obvious way of doing this. Plus, if you had, say, 10 useful artifacts, and had to pick 3 to use at any given time, it'd provide choices, limit the unbalancing effects, and let min/maxers have some fun.

Random additional point: One thing which bugs me is the random and haphazard way Blizzard does set bonuses. There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to it, nor any real attempt to balance the power of bonuses across classes or tiers.

To a point yes, the core of the game is excellent but there's just a lot of roadblocks.

I, for example am a very avid raider, and while we aren't cream of the crop in raid progression (SSC/TK) I consider myself a hardcore raider. That being said I have no way to advance my character outside of raids. I'd love to see ways to really customize/optimize my character on my own time through AAs, hero classes, etc to really create an extraordinarily customized playstyle. I'd like to be able to advance when we're not raiding. I'd like to really focus my character in on certain abilities/talents at the expense of others...I'm an Affliction nut, why can't I focus even more on it?

Unfortunately, none of these things exist . I've gotten to the point of playing other MMOs because I'm so roadblocked in WoW. I'm starting to lose interest just because I can't advance in any form be it raid gear(simply terrible Affliction itemization), further specialization, rep grind(already done the few things that were worthwhile), etc. If it goes on too much longer they may lose a customer, not because it's a bad game(It's a great game!), but because I've been stuck with the same gear/stats/progression for the last 2-3 months.