So I recently got into the WotLK beta. Here's some first impressions:
Northrend looks awesome. It's as if Blizzard's art department is trying to atone for the abomination that was outland and its contents by making northrend so jaw-droppingly amazing that even the green quest rewards will draw a few "wow"s. From what I've seen, they succeeded. Flying in to Warsong Hold was like the first time I set foot in BRM. Everything is huge, intricate, and badass.
Death Knights are really cool. So cool that I feel they deserve their own post.
Quest design has been kicked up a notch. Sure, there are plenty of the same old "kill x of y" quests, but there's also a quest where you fight along High Overlord Saurfang. Need I say more?
Expect what happened with MC epics < TBC greens to happen again. Northrend gear all looks very well itemized so far, and as I mentioned, most of it actually looks good, so hopefully it wont be so painful when I finally have to dump my s3/t6.
Overall, blizzard seems to have pulled out all the stops to deliver a killer experience in WotLK. If what I've seen continues through level 80 endgame, WoW will have recovered the soul that it lost in TBC, but without most the sucky things that it also lost.
WoW vs. Guild Wars, Part 1
So over the last few months, I've been dabbling in Guild Wars. Now, I first tried the game close to 3 years ago, and wasn't too impressed. But recently, I decided to dust off the CDs and see how things had changed.
Wow.
ArenaNet has done a superb job of ironing out many of the flaws in the original game, leaving an awesome hybrid of single player, story-driven RPGs and MMOs.
Of course, given the MMO element, there is the inevitable question: How does it stack up to WoW?
The answer, is, of course, the predictable "it's complicated". In fact, several posts complicated.
This, the first part, will address the general mechanics: basic gameplay, leveling, character customization, and UI. Other posts will address PvP, PvE, endgame, and the combat system.
Basic Gameplay
Guild Wars (GW) will instantly feel familiar to most WoW players. You create a character by chosing a class, cutomizing your appearance, and then picking a name. The UI and combat system are very similar. Your character advances in power both by earning XP and gaining new gear. Each character must eventually chose a certain specialization to pursue (which can be changed, of course).
But there, the similarity ends. Guild Wars is a much faster paced game than WoW. A really slow melee weapon has a 1.75 second swing speed, and a really big nuke generally takes 2 seconds to cast. There is no GCD to contend with.
GW is also a much simpler game. There is an aggro radius drawn on your minimap (which automatically tracks all enemies) Armor reduces all damage with a linear formula (60 armor = normal damage, +/- 40 armor = half/double damage taken). Melee crits simply do max weapon damage times the square root of 2. Spells never crit. There are only 4 stats to keep track of: Armor, HP, Energy, and Energy Regen. Only Projectile attacks have to worry about LOS. Aggro is mostly based off proximity to a mob, and blocking the path to a mob's current target is generally all that's needed to grab hate. Essentially, GW is more about playing the game, and less about understanding arcane mechanics.
Another nice thing is a much lower amount of mandatory gold/time sinks. Respeccing is free, travel between cities/quest hubs is instant, there are no repair bills, and there are no consumables. The only things you need to pay for are salvage and identification kits, new armor as you level, plus a one-time fee for any inscriptions/runes (the equivalent of enchantments) that you are unable to find and salvage yourself. But there are plenty of optional sinks: "Prestige" armor that looks awesome without conferring extra benefits, armor dyes, weapons with unique graphics, hundreds of titles, etc.
Also, GW is very group-based. Luckily, the game provides AI "henchmen" and "heroes" that can fill in for human players (though not as effectively, of course) in exchange for an equal share of the gold and XP. The result is that players can learn how to function in a group, even if they never play with other humans.
The other big difference is that the entire game is played on one "server", with cities being divided into sub-instances to keep lag manageable, and the actual game world consisting of a private instance for each party. This means no waiting for rare spawns or getting mobs stolen, but it also means no world PvP or randomly meeting people to do quests with.
Leveling
There are very few RPG that don't involve levels of some sort. It is the bread and butter of character advancement, and GW is no different. Characters advance from levels 1-20 by killing monsters and completing quests (shocker).
However, like most single-player RPGS, and unlike most MMOs, leveling is not a repetitive grind, but a reasonably entertaining romp through a good storyline. There are a lot of "kill X beast", "Save person Y", and "Find item Z" quests that take place out in the world, but the bread and butter of the game is the Missions. Missions are like a combination quest/dungeon, with scripted events (even including voiceovers and cinematics) that immerse you in the storyline of GW. I felt involved with the world of Ascalon, an honest to god hero fighting against the forces of evil (there's really no option for players who want to be evil themselves, which will suck for some people). The missions really tie the game together, weaving a story that keeps the leveling process fun and exciting.
WoW, on the other hand, has a leveling process that can only be described as "repetitive grind". Some of the quests are interesting, but there's really no soul in the 1-70 game. You move through a static world that makes almost no note of your presence. There is a story, but you have to really seek it out, and the extra work of reading all the quest text while doing every quest, and then piecing everything together for yourself is almost not worth the tedium, and the story never really advances. I can go back to the crossroads and see that the quillboars are still a menace and Manrik still hasn't found his wife (or he's still in denial).
Character Customization
This is another area where GW simply blows WoW out of the water. Because all endgame gear has the same stats, players are free to chose the armor and weapons that they like the best. Armor and weapons can then be further customized with dyes. Each class also has a distinct appearance, with numerous options for faces, hair styles, etc. The result is that it is very rare to find a character that looks like you.
But beyond the superficial, there are a whole bunch of meaningful ways to customize a character. Each character has attributes that affect skills tied to them, as well as having effects themselves. Each profession has a primary attribute as well as 3-4 secondary attributes. For example, the Dervish has the Mysticism primary attribute, which both increases the power of mysticism skills (Notably the various Avatar skills which transform the dervish into the avatar of a god for a period of time), as well as restoring some HP and energy whenever an enchantment (Magical buff) expires. The dervish also has 3 secondary attributes: Scythe Mastery (increases scythe skills and scythe crit chance), Earth Prayers (increases skills related to survivability), and wind prayers (increases skills related speed or damage-dealing). Attributes are increased with attribute points (gained through leveling), runes, and head armor. However, there is a limit on these increases which forces a character to either specialize in 2-3 attributes, or suck at them all.
In addidion to a primary profession, each character can chose a secondary profession, which unlocks all skills and secondary attributes for that profession. This secondary profession can be changed, though it is tough to do so until you are well into the PvE game. The net result is 7-9 attributes, and something like 150 skills to pick from.
And speaking of skills, these are an important choice. You see, you can only have 8 skills on your bar at a time. Skill choice is probably the most important choice you can make for a character, and while there are plenty of "cookie-cutter" skill templates (literally templates that can be loaded into your game. You can also make your own, for both personal convenience and to share with others) out there, it is very possible to roll your own "build" of skills and attributes and still kick ass. In fact, even in the highest levels of play, you still see players tweaking builds slightly to fit their own preferences.
UI
Here's one category where WoW is the clear winner. The GW UI sucks, it is very icon based (forcing a lot of unnecessary memorization), and has extremely limited customization. In addition, it displays far less information that WoW, and completely lacks a macro system.
This isn't to say that the GW UI is terrible, but it could certainly learn a lot from even the default WoW UI.
That's all for now, part deux on the combat system will be coming soon.
Wow.
ArenaNet has done a superb job of ironing out many of the flaws in the original game, leaving an awesome hybrid of single player, story-driven RPGs and MMOs.
Of course, given the MMO element, there is the inevitable question: How does it stack up to WoW?
The answer, is, of course, the predictable "it's complicated". In fact, several posts complicated.
This, the first part, will address the general mechanics: basic gameplay, leveling, character customization, and UI. Other posts will address PvP, PvE, endgame, and the combat system.
Basic Gameplay
Guild Wars (GW) will instantly feel familiar to most WoW players. You create a character by chosing a class, cutomizing your appearance, and then picking a name. The UI and combat system are very similar. Your character advances in power both by earning XP and gaining new gear. Each character must eventually chose a certain specialization to pursue (which can be changed, of course).
But there, the similarity ends. Guild Wars is a much faster paced game than WoW. A really slow melee weapon has a 1.75 second swing speed, and a really big nuke generally takes 2 seconds to cast. There is no GCD to contend with.
GW is also a much simpler game. There is an aggro radius drawn on your minimap (which automatically tracks all enemies) Armor reduces all damage with a linear formula (60 armor = normal damage, +/- 40 armor = half/double damage taken). Melee crits simply do max weapon damage times the square root of 2. Spells never crit. There are only 4 stats to keep track of: Armor, HP, Energy, and Energy Regen. Only Projectile attacks have to worry about LOS. Aggro is mostly based off proximity to a mob, and blocking the path to a mob's current target is generally all that's needed to grab hate. Essentially, GW is more about playing the game, and less about understanding arcane mechanics.
Another nice thing is a much lower amount of mandatory gold/time sinks. Respeccing is free, travel between cities/quest hubs is instant, there are no repair bills, and there are no consumables. The only things you need to pay for are salvage and identification kits, new armor as you level, plus a one-time fee for any inscriptions/runes (the equivalent of enchantments) that you are unable to find and salvage yourself. But there are plenty of optional sinks: "Prestige" armor that looks awesome without conferring extra benefits, armor dyes, weapons with unique graphics, hundreds of titles, etc.
Also, GW is very group-based. Luckily, the game provides AI "henchmen" and "heroes" that can fill in for human players (though not as effectively, of course) in exchange for an equal share of the gold and XP. The result is that players can learn how to function in a group, even if they never play with other humans.
The other big difference is that the entire game is played on one "server", with cities being divided into sub-instances to keep lag manageable, and the actual game world consisting of a private instance for each party. This means no waiting for rare spawns or getting mobs stolen, but it also means no world PvP or randomly meeting people to do quests with.
Leveling
There are very few RPG that don't involve levels of some sort. It is the bread and butter of character advancement, and GW is no different. Characters advance from levels 1-20 by killing monsters and completing quests (shocker).
However, like most single-player RPGS, and unlike most MMOs, leveling is not a repetitive grind, but a reasonably entertaining romp through a good storyline. There are a lot of "kill X beast", "Save person Y", and "Find item Z" quests that take place out in the world, but the bread and butter of the game is the Missions. Missions are like a combination quest/dungeon, with scripted events (even including voiceovers and cinematics) that immerse you in the storyline of GW. I felt involved with the world of Ascalon, an honest to god hero fighting against the forces of evil (there's really no option for players who want to be evil themselves, which will suck for some people). The missions really tie the game together, weaving a story that keeps the leveling process fun and exciting.
WoW, on the other hand, has a leveling process that can only be described as "repetitive grind". Some of the quests are interesting, but there's really no soul in the 1-70 game. You move through a static world that makes almost no note of your presence. There is a story, but you have to really seek it out, and the extra work of reading all the quest text while doing every quest, and then piecing everything together for yourself is almost not worth the tedium, and the story never really advances. I can go back to the crossroads and see that the quillboars are still a menace and Manrik still hasn't found his wife (or he's still in denial).
Character Customization
This is another area where GW simply blows WoW out of the water. Because all endgame gear has the same stats, players are free to chose the armor and weapons that they like the best. Armor and weapons can then be further customized with dyes. Each class also has a distinct appearance, with numerous options for faces, hair styles, etc. The result is that it is very rare to find a character that looks like you.
But beyond the superficial, there are a whole bunch of meaningful ways to customize a character. Each character has attributes that affect skills tied to them, as well as having effects themselves. Each profession has a primary attribute as well as 3-4 secondary attributes. For example, the Dervish has the Mysticism primary attribute, which both increases the power of mysticism skills (Notably the various Avatar skills which transform the dervish into the avatar of a god for a period of time), as well as restoring some HP and energy whenever an enchantment (Magical buff) expires. The dervish also has 3 secondary attributes: Scythe Mastery (increases scythe skills and scythe crit chance), Earth Prayers (increases skills related to survivability), and wind prayers (increases skills related speed or damage-dealing). Attributes are increased with attribute points (gained through leveling), runes, and head armor. However, there is a limit on these increases which forces a character to either specialize in 2-3 attributes, or suck at them all.
In addidion to a primary profession, each character can chose a secondary profession, which unlocks all skills and secondary attributes for that profession. This secondary profession can be changed, though it is tough to do so until you are well into the PvE game. The net result is 7-9 attributes, and something like 150 skills to pick from.
And speaking of skills, these are an important choice. You see, you can only have 8 skills on your bar at a time. Skill choice is probably the most important choice you can make for a character, and while there are plenty of "cookie-cutter" skill templates (literally templates that can be loaded into your game. You can also make your own, for both personal convenience and to share with others) out there, it is very possible to roll your own "build" of skills and attributes and still kick ass. In fact, even in the highest levels of play, you still see players tweaking builds slightly to fit their own preferences.
UI
Here's one category where WoW is the clear winner. The GW UI sucks, it is very icon based (forcing a lot of unnecessary memorization), and has extremely limited customization. In addition, it displays far less information that WoW, and completely lacks a macro system.
This isn't to say that the GW UI is terrible, but it could certainly learn a lot from even the default WoW UI.
That's all for now, part deux on the combat system will be coming soon.
Why WotLK talents fail even though they kick ass
This is basically an expansion of a post I made over at EJ. In a nutshell, I feel like while blizzard has buffed the shit out of us, they've failed at really fixing us. Now, why is this so? First, let's take a look at the problems with paladins in both PvE and PvP, broken down by spec:
Holy:
PvE:
-Only three healing tools, all of which are single target direct heals. This complete lack of versatility makes it tough to justify a holy paladin over a priest/shaman/druid, who all have solid single-target healing while also bringing other useful tools to the table.
-Mana regen has fallen behind shaman, and way, way, way behind priests and druids. Only a year ago, we were the kings of longevity, now we need a shadow priest and chain mana pots just to sustain a reasonable level of healing.
PvP:
-Extreme reliance on the cast bar makes holy paladins much easier to shut down than druids/priests.
-"Spend mana to get mana" may work in PvE, but when you get feared off a pillar and eat 3 burns, you're pretty much SoL. All other healers have some sort of active regen to get them out of these situations.
-Holy paladins aren't a threat. Every other healer has something nasty that they can do when you leave them alone: Priests will burn, druids will CC, and shaman will shock/purge. Paladins will... heal. We bring solid healing output to the table (probably the best healing output), but the metagame heavily favors healers that can do more.
Prot:
PvE:
-Useless when not tanking. Prot paladin DPS is pathetic, healing even more so. In contrast, wariors and druids both do worthwhile damage while maintaining nice raid buffs/debuffs when they aren't tanking.
-No "Oh Shit" buttons. This is huge. Prot paladins have no control over their own fate beyond healthstones and active trinkets. No last stand, no shield wall, nothing. This is why most guilds use warrior MTs.
-Mana regen makes being a secondary tank considerably tougher than it needs to be, and can slow pulling to a crawl because your MT needs to drink every other trash pack.
PvP:
-lol
Ret:
PvE:
-Ret's damage+utility makes it worthwhile to bring a ret paladin to 25 man raids. 10 mans and 5 mans, the utility goes out the window without nearly enough damage to make up for it.
-Alliance paladins are stuck with an inferior DPS seal.
-Mana, mana, mana.
-DPS is terrible without windfury.
PvP:
-A ret paladin cannot stand on his own, he needs other classes to snare, interrupt, and provide a healing debuff, while himself bringing only damage, BoF, and cleanse.
-Mana runs dry fast, killing damage output and eliminating support after a few minutes (I'm noticing a theme here)
Now, let's take a look at what each tree gets (Full talents/abilities/changes here: http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t28560-paladin_wotlk_talent_trees_abilities_discussion/ )
General:
-Health and mana returns from seal/judgment of Light/Wisdom scale with AP/SP (ret mana issues alleviated in PvE)
-BoP, BoSac, and BoF no longer overwrite other blessings
-BoSac changed to 20% damage for 12 seconds, 2 minute CD.
Holy:
-Heavily improved Holy Shock that procs instant Holy Lights when it crits
-10% haste when you judge, and 30 yd judgments to make that less of a pain
-A heavily limited, extremely expensive, but situationally good AoE heal.
-A weird combo of earth shield and PW:S
-Cleanse sucks slightly less in PvP
Prot:
-Two new threat moves that aren't reactive
-Thunderclap Judgments
-Stamina -> Spellpower
-Mana reduction on some of the more expensive threat moves
-Raid-wide damage reduction when you bubble
Ret:
-AP -> Spellpower, and fixed scaling on judgments
-Ret aura = Jesus
-A new instant, AoE attack
-Way more damage overall
-A raid-wide mana return on judgments
-Seal of Blood for Alliance
-Hammer of Wrath doesn't reset swing timer, making it a good spell
-Repentance now a viable PvE CC
Now, every single one of these things kicks some serious ass. The lowest CD instant heal (which can proc more instant heals) in the game? Awesome. 20% melee haste reduction for tanks? Freakin' sweet. WTFJESUS damage and even more utility for ret? Do I even need to go on?
But many of our core problems still rear their ugly heads:
-Prot still has no emergency buttons, and is worthless in PvP.
-Holy still has the most limited healing options, and still has no offensive utility in arenas.
-Ret still doesn't stand on its own in PvP.
-All specs will have huge fucking mana issues (Holy/Prot always, ret in PvP)
Over half of our core problems remain almost totally un-addressed. With Holy especially, blizzard buffed the hell out of what we're already pretty good at, without hardly touching what we're bad at. With 10 mans becoming a serious form of raiding and 3v3 becoming the focus of competitive arena, paladins need to stand on their own, being a 1-trick pony that depends on several other classes to cover our weaknesses isn't going to cut it anymore.
And that is why, even though Blizzard gave us a ton of power with these talents, they need to go back to the drawing board.
Holy:
PvE:
-Only three healing tools, all of which are single target direct heals. This complete lack of versatility makes it tough to justify a holy paladin over a priest/shaman/druid, who all have solid single-target healing while also bringing other useful tools to the table.
-Mana regen has fallen behind shaman, and way, way, way behind priests and druids. Only a year ago, we were the kings of longevity, now we need a shadow priest and chain mana pots just to sustain a reasonable level of healing.
PvP:
-Extreme reliance on the cast bar makes holy paladins much easier to shut down than druids/priests.
-"Spend mana to get mana" may work in PvE, but when you get feared off a pillar and eat 3 burns, you're pretty much SoL. All other healers have some sort of active regen to get them out of these situations.
-Holy paladins aren't a threat. Every other healer has something nasty that they can do when you leave them alone: Priests will burn, druids will CC, and shaman will shock/purge. Paladins will... heal. We bring solid healing output to the table (probably the best healing output), but the metagame heavily favors healers that can do more.
Prot:
PvE:
-Useless when not tanking. Prot paladin DPS is pathetic, healing even more so. In contrast, wariors and druids both do worthwhile damage while maintaining nice raid buffs/debuffs when they aren't tanking.
-No "Oh Shit" buttons. This is huge. Prot paladins have no control over their own fate beyond healthstones and active trinkets. No last stand, no shield wall, nothing. This is why most guilds use warrior MTs.
-Mana regen makes being a secondary tank considerably tougher than it needs to be, and can slow pulling to a crawl because your MT needs to drink every other trash pack.
PvP:
-lol
Ret:
PvE:
-Ret's damage+utility makes it worthwhile to bring a ret paladin to 25 man raids. 10 mans and 5 mans, the utility goes out the window without nearly enough damage to make up for it.
-Alliance paladins are stuck with an inferior DPS seal.
-Mana, mana, mana.
-DPS is terrible without windfury.
PvP:
-A ret paladin cannot stand on his own, he needs other classes to snare, interrupt, and provide a healing debuff, while himself bringing only damage, BoF, and cleanse.
-Mana runs dry fast, killing damage output and eliminating support after a few minutes (I'm noticing a theme here)
Now, let's take a look at what each tree gets (Full talents/abilities/changes here: http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t28560-paladin_wotlk_talent_trees_abilities_discussion/ )
General:
-Health and mana returns from seal/judgment of Light/Wisdom scale with AP/SP (ret mana issues alleviated in PvE)
-BoP, BoSac, and BoF no longer overwrite other blessings
-BoSac changed to 20% damage for 12 seconds, 2 minute CD.
Holy:
-Heavily improved Holy Shock that procs instant Holy Lights when it crits
-10% haste when you judge, and 30 yd judgments to make that less of a pain
-A heavily limited, extremely expensive, but situationally good AoE heal.
-A weird combo of earth shield and PW:S
-Cleanse sucks slightly less in PvP
Prot:
-Two new threat moves that aren't reactive
-Thunderclap Judgments
-Stamina -> Spellpower
-Mana reduction on some of the more expensive threat moves
-Raid-wide damage reduction when you bubble
Ret:
-AP -> Spellpower, and fixed scaling on judgments
-Ret aura = Jesus
-A new instant, AoE attack
-Way more damage overall
-A raid-wide mana return on judgments
-Seal of Blood for Alliance
-Hammer of Wrath doesn't reset swing timer, making it a good spell
-Repentance now a viable PvE CC
Now, every single one of these things kicks some serious ass. The lowest CD instant heal (which can proc more instant heals) in the game? Awesome. 20% melee haste reduction for tanks? Freakin' sweet. WTFJESUS damage and even more utility for ret? Do I even need to go on?
But many of our core problems still rear their ugly heads:
-Prot still has no emergency buttons, and is worthless in PvP.
-Holy still has the most limited healing options, and still has no offensive utility in arenas.
-Ret still doesn't stand on its own in PvP.
-All specs will have huge fucking mana issues (Holy/Prot always, ret in PvP)
Over half of our core problems remain almost totally un-addressed. With Holy especially, blizzard buffed the hell out of what we're already pretty good at, without hardly touching what we're bad at. With 10 mans becoming a serious form of raiding and 3v3 becoming the focus of competitive arena, paladins need to stand on their own, being a 1-trick pony that depends on several other classes to cover our weaknesses isn't going to cut it anymore.
And that is why, even though Blizzard gave us a ton of power with these talents, they need to go back to the drawing board.
10 months later...
As it turns out, I'm way too opinionated to stay away from this shit forever. I've got some rantings on WotLK pally talents, a WoW vs. Guild Wars comparison, and possibly some other things in the works.
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