Liebestod

Something like that. You have to jump through a lot of semantic hoops to argue that Warcraft has no "inherently evil" characters, in essence defining "inherently evil" in such a way as to make it nearly-impossible.

I'd say that Gul'dan is the best example of an inherently-evil character in Warcraft. Yes, he was presumably rather docile before he was tempted with power. Still, he embraced it willingly rather than being manipulated into it or trying to use it for noble purposes like Ner'zhul or Arthas or whoever else.

Kel'Thuzad strikes me as another inherently-evil character. Yea, he's always kinda been a bitch, and he was just sketchy before the Lich King found him, but that's enough for me.

Kil'Jaeden/Archimonde... I forget exactly what the lore says they were like before they were tempted by Sargeras. Maybe not so great, like Gul'dan. And Queen Azshara for that matter.

Other minor characters... Mekkatorque of Gnomeregan. The younger Mourgraine. Emperor Thaurissan. Nefarian and Onyxia (their father was corrupted, but this was likely before they were born, already corrupted.) The frist Satyr guy as well... Xavian, I think his name was?

The list could go on, I'm sure.

 

Buiden

I don't think that saying the difference was completely gear based is really fair since there have been a lot of class tweaks since your earliest parses that definitely add to overall DPS. Either way, we've had really low DPS Gorefiend kills due to the Ghost order, and also some really high ones as well, but the fluctuation from our best at the start and our best now certainly isn't 10k raid dps.

First kill for us was 20,200 DPS back in July WWS and the highest i've seen now is around 26k for us.

Anyway not trying to nitpick, just saying that the difference in numbers is a lot more complicated than saying T6 gear is so amazing that guilds who don't farm Illidan for 6 months won't be able to touch sunwell. They might be at a disadvantage but I don't think for a second they won't be able to compete.

On to other things.. As Quigon mentioned earlier, the timing for Sunwell is very problematic. We're looking at sunwell in March? Then when will WotLK be? My best guess would be off the TBC Alpha->Release timeline which was August->January, roughly 5 Months of "public" testing. Given that timeline if Alpha doesn't start within 3 months of Sunwell, in the June/July range, it is really unlikely we will see a 2008 release.

In any event, I'm an advocate of the war effort-esque delay that will be put on guilds to clear sunwell. As mentioned earlier, the war effort for AQ looked good on paper and there really wasn't any problem with the numbers of items, yes even 800k linen cloth. The problem was that there was literally no motivation for non raiders to complete the materials, leading to 5% of the players doing 90% of the work. You can't honestly tell me if there was a 5 gold turnin per stack of linen cloth you wouldn't have every nooblet and their friend turning it in as fast as they could get it.

So, daily quests seem like a great way to motivate people to get involved. It would be cool if until the daily quest quota was met if daily quests gave something in addition to the gold reward, maybe extra rep or a token of some sort you could buy limmitted time items with -- anything to motivate the average joe.

 

Tyrian

Blizzard has no choice but to release WOTLK sooner in the year (rather than later) due to Warhammer if they want to protect their business. I think a 2008 release is certain, if only for this reason. Whether they want to release it is another thing but they won't certainly let potential competition pull any feathers from their golden goose without a fight. At the very least, they would have to implement the so called 'back up ideas up our sleeves' if WOTLK is delayed while Warhammer comes out.

 

Buiden

Thanks for the completely out of context quote, I clearly stated if they don't go to Alpha within a couple of months of Sunwell it is not likely.

 

PSGarak

I'm going to have to disagree with that statement. Blizzard doesn't need to push WLK to compete with warhammer because, quite simply, nothing can compete with WoW anyways. Warhammer, just like everything before it, will not be a WoW-killer. WoW's customer base is mostly determined by WoW, not by other games. Hell, Warhammer's customer base will probably be determined by WoW as much as its own merits--if WLK is released around the same time and sucks, that will be a major surge towards warhammer. Blizzard knows that WLK has a lot more to gain by examining warhammer for good or functional ideas that by rushing to compete with it.

There is an outside chance Activision will make the wrong call and bust out the bullwhips... historically their marketing and strategic decions haven't been very bright. That depends how sincere the "blizzard will continue to call all the shots" press release really was.

http://sig.gamerdna.com/quizzes/INFL...erks/Garak.png

 

Layana

Derailing this to clarify something: The DPS on Teron is influenced by the massive amount of damage the ghosts deal to the constructs. The 10k difference in raid dps between an Illidan Kill and a Teron Kill simply is the ghosts and the amount of damage they deal.

16-17k DPS is a good value for a raid that has downed Illidan for a few times.

Astennu - FOH Boards

 

Vhad

No, just no. The ghosts are not counted as raid dmg on WWS.

What!?

 

Fellwraith

The vengeful spirits are considered mob to mob damage and not counted toward the dps of the person who is controlling the spirit. They have a separate damage tally if you look at the "mobs" entries. Mob damage is never included in the player/raid dps totals unless you define the mobs as being someone's pet.

 

Balkoth

The raid DPS can definitely vary based upon who gets the debuffs, though. If it's mostly healers, you'll have higher DPS. If it's your best DPSers, well...

 

• _Retribute_

Didn't a CM say that there was no plans for 2.5? That would somewhat indicate that WotLK is closer than expected. I'm guessing that 3.0 would be the first patch after 2.4

 

Alerian

I remember reading that quote when I was browsing one of the blue-scanning sites at work, but I can't find the link...

Back at Blizzcon, I remember seeing videos of areas in development and thinking "wow, they're a lot further along with Wrath at its announcement than they were for BC." That being said though, they could easily go up to 2.4.18 or higher. But I would be pretty surprised if the Wrath alpha test didn't start shortly after 2.4 came out.

EDIT: Here's the link WoW Forums -> Will there be a 2.5.0 patch?

 

Metrosexuelf

That is just patently absurd. I know ripping on Blizzard is the vogue thing to do for all the cool kids but this is still a game studio that has managed to earn their parent company over a billion dollars a year in gross income via subscriptions. Despite what you read here and elsewhere it isn't run by total imbeciles. They aren't so incompetent as to think they can get away with no expansion for another year and some change. I doubt WotLK will be out any later than this summer.

Yes. I'm too lazy to go find the link but it can be found by skimming the last few pages of MMO-Champion or WoR. The CM essentially said there are no plans for anything beyond 2.4 but that they had 'emergency content' available should the expansion be delayed for some unseen reason.

 

Tyrian

Well said.

I think the 'content in case WOTKL is delayed' is really a coverup for saying "We need some content to push out in case Warhammer comes out earlier than expected before WOTLK and we need something to keep the subscribers occupied for a few months, fast'. That certainly qualifies as an emergency, from Blizzards point of view.

At an guess, I think Blizzard is going to release WOLTK reactively based on their competition behaviour this year. They will hold it as long as possible in development/testing until the release of Warhammer is announced then they will shift it out the door as close as possible to then (and patch in any unfinished high-level content, like BT and TBC).

 

Bullshot

Why does everyone and their dog consider Warhammer to be a big threat to WoW? In my opinion, Age of Conan would be a bigger threat to WoW that WAR could ever be.

Back on topic, lots of interesting info regarding the Sunwell. I personally can't wait for the 2.4 PTR to become active.

 

Vaccine

I think part of the reason is that WAR, like when WoW was released, had a pre-built fan base. I had certainly never played or even been tempted to play any of the MMORPG genre before WoW was released, I thought the idea absurd. This game tempted me over because of how much I'd enjoyed the Warcraft series of games. The same can be said for Warhammer, it will get most of its currently diverse audience from its many games over to this MMORPG, even if they've never played one before.

That said, I have beta tested it a fair bit and I wasn't impressed. It has been bigged up as something that will take WoW's PvPers but the PvP or RvR as they call it is incredibly lackluster 1 button spamming.

 

Tacitus

What spec tuned? Arms, Fury or Prot?

Not that it matters that much since my warrior won't be seeing the Sunwell, but I'm fairly interested as the paladin set was defined as holy. This would lead me to believe that it's a prot spec set. Care to confirm/deny?

Brotherhood, Peace, Unity

Welcome back, Comrade

 

Jubling

Or we could be in for a really long wait between 2.4 and either 3.0 or Wrath (depending on whether 3.0 arrives first a la BC, or if they arrive together as originally planned for BC).
The best scenario for Blizzard would be for Wrath to arrive a few weeks before WAR so everyone is busy having too much fun leveling to jump ship to another game.

 

Shadout

Ill be surprised if an Alpha isnt up and running in a few months.
Blizzard isnt stupid, if they knew there was still 1 year to the expansion, they would hardly go out and say they had no plans for a 2.5 given current circumstances.

That said, they also seem slightly interested in delaying 2.4 on PTR right now, with 2.3.2 being there for quite some time and then 2.3.3 in January.

I really doubt you can say Blizz tries to release expansions and games based on their competitors either. First its too difficult to time. Second, the best time to release, to compete with other MMO's is hardly the same time as them, might just as well be X time after, to take back any lost customers.

On the other hand, 2+ weeks after Wotlk might also be the time where many players are getting the "same old, same old" feeling of Wotlk.
The worst scenario for Blizz is rather a very long wait between 2.4 and Wotlk, so people wont even bother coming back. Anything more than 6+ months between them is really stretching it.
Timing with WAR could end up being really silly, when the WAR devs seems fairly dedicated to have a very polished game before releasing it. I wouldnt be surprised if that game gets delayed a few times more.

In the end it probably doesnt matter anyway, those people who will give WAR and Conan a try (the "real MMO-players") will do so even if Blizzard throw out a perfectly timed expansion . The "WoW4Life-players" who arent so much playing his game because they love MMOs, but simply because they love WoW and only WoW, will hardly care about WAR and Conan or any other random game coming out.

Of course Blizzard takes competition serious, but trying to time their content to specific other game releases (which themselves are being timed? Dogs chasing their own tails?) rather than releasing it "when its done" (read: as late as we can without pissing the customers off) seems like a stupid strategy.

People talk like Blizz is trying to delay the sinking ship (=WoW), which is exactly not how the situation is. WoW is going strong from a commercial perspective, while WAR and Conan are unknowns, hell, they might end up as the new vanguards...

-----

Getting back to 2.4, I kinda hope the sets and items wouldnt replace T6, but rather build around other items, and maybe 1-2 T6 set items (give the choice between the set bonusses maybe). BT/MH should still be considered end game instances gear wise at that time, for those who still need to gear up (which excludes everyone already farming Illidan for months of course).
IMO it gives a much better end to an expansion, having BT/MT/Sunwell as the 3 end game instances (obviously with Sunwell as the slightly highest), than having Sunwell as a new Naxx, which offers a fresh new start for the end game raiding, which is then abruptly cut off when Wotlk arrives. As it happened with Naxx.
Naxx was amazing in so many ways, but hardly as a fitting way to end an "era" before an expansion.

 

Morelis

This depends entirely on the person generating the report. If "vengeful spirit" is flagged as a pet(even without an owner) then the total damage will jump by 1+ mil and your raid dps will go up 6-7k. You can see plenty of examples of this on the WWS rankings for Teron.

 

Anedris

I should think it blatantly obvious that raid DPS on Teron is higher than raid DPS on Illidan because Teron is, for most of the raid, simply a stand-and-nuke/hack fight whereas Illidan requires target switching, movement, cinematic gaps, and generally a certain amount of attention to survival and positioning at the expense of all-out DPS. Ghost damage is going to be inconsequential compared to that rather obvious difference.

 

JulianMaiev

Increases in base raid DPS are magnified by WWS parses.

The more raid DPS you have, the shorter the fight is and the higher the percentage of the fight you have cooldowns active.

 

Krazen

And on Teron in particular, shorter fights mean you have a greater percentage of your full force up. I suppose a lot of these things do multiply.

 

Mideci

Let me just say a couple of things about release date on Lich King. First of all, I know it's intended for 2008. This is from people at Blizzard (yes, sources; yes, I tell you who they are no longer sources). When in 2008? Not entirely clear. From the way things stand with 2.4 and such, all reasonable guesses we can make here put it no sooner than May / June and really no later than September / November. Software is a black art as far as release dates as many of you know.

Second, as far as competition. I want to speak for the WoW passionate who aren't gamers otherwise. I don't know what Warhammer is. If it's released tomorrow and it's 10x better than WoW I have no chance of playing it. Millions of other people that really enjoy WoW are very much alongside me in this regard.

 

Derketo

More than anything I think wow has alot of people who have jumped on the bandwagon. The people I run into generally dont seem like they've played any warcraft games before wow. I think you're overestimating the number of people who will be loyal to it, simply because it's a warcraft universe.

I'll be alright when we get to pass out time.

 

Trouble

Amongst people I know there are a lot of people who are at least eyeing Warhammer. It's a lot of things to a lot of people. To anyone who played DAoC seriously, it's the next version of a game they loved (I never played it, but I know a few who have). To people who like PvP, it's a more serious alternative to WoW's sport PvP. To people who have been playing WoW 2+ years and are chafing from same-old same-old, it's the first serious contender for a quality alternative.

This is all contingent, of course, on WAR actually not sucking. As a jaded MMO player, I know this is far from guaranteed. If the game is good, I think the release of it will be different from all the other MMO releases in the last few years. They all fit in three categories: niche, suck, WoW-clone, or a combination thereof. WAR purports to offer something different from WoW, while having the development dollars and time to potentially make it good.