Thursday, October 13, 2011

BlizzCon:Titan

I considered alternative titles for this post. But really, do I need to say more? ST:TOR is going to be interesting. If I end up playing it for more than one month I'm going to be surprised. If I end up subscribed after six moths I would be very, very surprised. Guild Wars 2 is going to be interesting for many of the new gameplay features. But are they about to offer a virtual world? Not really.

And those other games, like Vindictus (they are spamming my email to post about them. Here, now I did). Come on! These aren't virtual worlds, they are *insert dirty word*.

And, sure, there's CCP and World of Darkness which will turn out a virtual world. And even though I'm not really into werewolfs and vampires, I am certain to buy it, whenever it is realeased. If ever. I don't know enough to have a more detailed opinion about it right now.

(1)
This leaves me with Titan. And Titan is worth blogging about, because I expect it to be announced this Blizzcon. Ha! I think this is the first time I made such an prediction, so it has to be right. I mean, this thing is in serious development since end of classic WoW, January 2007. That's four and a half years of serious development. Blizzard announced Diablo III years before its release and they might do the same with Titan. And Blizzard is running short on interesting stuff for Blizzcons. WoW is declining, and fast, if you ask my stomach. The LFR will result in a subscriber spike, but at the end of the day it will only speed up the decline.

But why would I expect Titan to be anything else but a WoW clone plus some extras (like instanced housing)? Well, first because Blizzard is one of the last companies run by gamers. I often criticize this, as many of the shortcomings of WoW result from the hardcore raider's mindset. But it's also a reason for hope.
Second, because they still resist the f2p business model to some degree. Which means they haven't fallen for it completely. Third, because Blizzard said very early that Titan is the most ambitious project ever undertaken by them. And I see no reason to doubt this.

Now, remember when it was started! Some time during 2005-2006. This was a time when undertaking a ground-breaking MMORPG project still meant creating a virtual world with many features and not a WoW-clone with a ground-breaking business model and more daily quests.

(2)
So, what do I expect Titan to be about? They already said it's going to be a different IP. Very good, Blizzard, you evaded trap #1. I also actually expect it to have a cartoon-style like WoW, which means, no ultra-realistic graphics. I also welcome this. Computers still can't display 500 ultra-realistic character models and there is really no need to. However, they will have tried very hard to make it look very different from WoW. Will it be about medieval fantasy? I hope, but I'm not sure. In fact, I guess it is not probable, unfortunately.

What will be the defining features? First procedurally generated locations. They started this with Diablo I and it is the future, anyway. It has the potential to completely distinguish the game from any competitor and all it requires is a lot of time and money to buy the most talented people. I know Blizzard's management is greedy and rather buys back stocks for billions of dollars than to invest, but I still hope that a few million were put aside for some basic research.

Once you have procedurally generated locations, and thus unpredictable encounters, things like scouting and picking your fights can change the entire gameplay and create a radically new game. I'm also certain that they played around with collision control replacing tanking, but I'm not sure they succeeded. They'll watch GW2 very closely, I guess.

Titan will have player housing, but it will be heavily instanced. Player housing isn't really something I ever wanted, but it would be good for marketing and, really, it's not that hard.

Finally, Titan will have a completely player-run economy. But not for idealistic reasons. They want it so that they can further develop their business model which they already test with Diablo III. It is ironic that it required those terrible creative business models, to finally make companies put a player-run economy into games, but in any case I welcome the decline of soulbound items.

Oh last reason: It's probably the A-team's dream MMORPG! :)

(3)
Last question: when do I expect it to be released? 12. November 2019 after many internal delays and allegations of vaporware. Remember my words!

22 comments:

  1. Some of you might have seen some recent speculation out there regarding the unannounced MMO and BlizzCon. There’s going to be a ton of information and content at the show -- including a closing concert by Foo Fighters, which we just revealed today -- but we want to be clear up front that we’re not going to be discussing the unannounced MMO.
    -Bashiok

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  2. Damn.
    Ok.
    Make it 2020 then ;)

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  3. WoW had a 10 year business plan when it was released. That means they've expected WoW to last from 2005 to 2015. Unless Titan was intended to be released after 2015 it wouldn't have made sense to start working on a second "orks and elves" IP which would just cannibalize the WoW IP.

    And I don't think they intend to release enough information about Titan to fill a Blizzcon.

    Personally I expect more about WoW.
    - Mists of Pandarian, to be released in Q1 or Q2 2012
    - WoW going or adding some kind of F2P with their next expansion, first half 2012. (There's just no way to get their ex player back with a subscription based game.)

    > It's probably the A-team's dream MMORPG!

    Wait wait wait. We all know that Mr. T plays a Mohawk warrior.

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  4. First, a 10 year business plan for a MMORPG is about as good as playing lottery, Kring.

    Second, I was talking about the announcement and predicted a release near the end of this decade.

    Third, "Mists of Pandaria" may be another game, but it is never ever going to be a WoW expansion. It can't be *cry*.

    Last the A team's dream MMORPG is certainly not 100% my dream MMORPG. But it's certainly better than current WoW or any of the near-future competitors.

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  5. I know that you're expecting Titan to be released 2020. But I doubt that Blizzard started Titan in 2006, expecting it to be released 2020. Nobody could pay for 14 years of development without a cash cow like WoW (which they didn't have back then). 14 years, that's DNF.

    I think they expected Titan to be released during their expected 10 year WoW area. Hence, a second "orks and elves" IP wouldn't make sense, back then.

    "Mists of Pandaria" sounds exactly like what the player asked for but don't want. Which means it has about a 95% chance of being implemented.

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  6. But I doubt that Blizzard started Titan in 2006, expecting it to be released 2020. Nobody could pay for 14 years of development without a cash cow like WoW (which they didn't have back then). 14 years, that's DNF.

    I didn't say that this is the plan. It almost certainly isn't. But Blizzard wants to do it right and at the same time need to consider the changing industry. They are shitting in their pants right now that some polished Minecraft-like MMORPG is released just before Titan is.

    They will rework and rework this Titan until they will eventually decide to release it in 2020, because they are running out of time.

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  7. I almost semi-necroed a post to respond to your Titan comment so now I get to respond au courant.

    I have repeatedly, including the latest WoWInsider podcast, heard the rumor that Titan was going to be "some sort of shooter." It could easily be wrong, but for now Titan joins GW2 on my list of upcoming AA+ games that seemingly will not appeal to me.

    I think a success for WoW is if they get their development process trimmed down. For competitive reasons, they need to be on a release schedule that is faster than 18 months. So I would see a Q1 Panda 5.0 as a good sign. If the D3 slip until Q1 causes them to not launch D3 and WoW in the same quarter and they slip WoW until Q2, that would be a bad sign for me.

    When I resubbed to EVE Online, all my ships and pilots still did about what they used to do with no gear reset. My fantasy MMO still remains EVE run by Blizzard (much, much better UI and less griefing.) I don't see BioWare adding the player-run economy to TOR to keep me forever but getting a few alts to max level is hopefully going to provide playtime closer to 1000 hours rather than 100. Still not convinced BioWare has the MMO endgame down but we shall see. By far the most hopeful sign to me is the buzz the D3 AH received. More focus on player driven economies has much appeal to me.

    The problem with WoD is that the Icelandic economic bubble bursting means it is hard to see the resources to develop WoD, Dust 514, and EVE vigorously. The EVE players push and the recent apology sure sound like fewer resources on non-EVE games.

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  8. Hagu, I guess Titan will have some classes that play like in a shooter. But as long as they have some classes that play in the traditional way, I don't have a problem with it. If the majority of the challenge of the game is reaction-based, I will be disappointed, though.

    I'm not so sure that more content can save WoW, actually. At least not if they only double it or so. Dailies and raids just aren't cutting it anymore. That's WoW's problem. But I wrote about that yesterday ;)

    On Eve, I agree. Eve in a classical fantasy setting done by Blizzard is as good as a MMORPG gets without me making it myself ;)

    I don't think the Icelandic economic problems are a problem for CCP. They make most of their money in dollars and euros, not in ISK (the national currency). If anything, they had an easier time employing specialsts in Iceland, who became very cheap for them.

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  9. As someone who went through the y2K, WWW, NASDAQ 5500 days, my complete speculation was about venture capital. When the venture capital is flowing, sales don't matter - the development is funded by shareholders.

    And the frequently linked story on EVE forums is

    http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2009/04/iceland200904

    IDK, I read where some of the investors in CCP were players in this. Certainly during a boom, then I could see Apocrpha-sized EVE expansions, White Dog, UK and Shanghai acquisitions, DUST 514, and WoD being funded. But if they did not get enough VC the first round, I don't see them getting more atm.

    ---

    Blizzard has mention on how many more ex-WoW players there are than current. So if they get a month out of you every expansion, it's best to get 1 of 12 subscription time rather than 1 of 18. More importantly, the quicker you do development, the quicker you can respond to trends and competitors. E.g., the F2P/RMT trends and the success of WoT in the last year would have been harder to anticipate three years ago. Even Rift did better than expected from people who remembered the WoW-killer talk of WH, AoC, Aion, ... Huge, slow development processes like Windows Vista are not optimal.

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  10. When I resubbed to EVE Online, all my ships and pilots still did about what they used to do with no gear reset.

    If I resubbed back into WoW after 4.3, all my characters' gear would still do what they did in 4.1. It would be of less relative value compared to players who were grinding gear/etc in the meantime, but are you saying that something similar doesn't happen in EVE? Have the prices of things never changed? Would you literally be no better off if you had been playing the whole time?

    I have never played EVE myself, although I understand that there is no real "ship progression" per se. But to compare the two when EVE doesn't have meaningful PvE seems a bit disingenuous.

    ----

    As for Titan, it is almost assuredly a FPS MMO. Blizzard acquired the Bungie guys (i.e. Halo) some time ago in a 10-year contract, and there is a plethora of hints along those lines, such as Ghostcrawler himself being a former Ensemble member who was working on a Sci-Fi MMO from 2004-2007 also called Titan.

    In any case, the thus-far accurate leaked product slate puts Titan's release at Q4 2013. We most likely will be getting it sooner rather than later.

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  11. There were one thing that really killed all my hope regards "Titan".
    They explicitly called it "casual MMO".
    (Source: http://massively.joystiq.com/2011/06/29/blizzards-titan-a-casual-mmo/)

    And I also fully expect them to go the social route like BF3, just worse.

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  12. > If I resubbed back into WoW after 4.3, all my characters'
    > gear would still do what they did in 4.1

    If I would resub for the upcoming LFR patch I would have to do the following.

    1) Go to EJ and read up on how to play my warlock because it's very likely that this changed completely in the last few month. This will be a very painful experience because EJ doesn't have guides and I have to read through hundreds of posts trying to figure out which are still relevant and which are not because something got changed. This will most likely take a few hours and I will not enjoy that.

    2) Reskill my character. It's very likely that I don't have the correct FOTM skill. Or maybe there was a talent tree reset done by Blizzard. I will not like that because it prevents me from getting back to play.

    3) Download Simulationcraft and calculate the scale factor for my current gear. Search for a reforge calculator with google and import my character. Reforge, regem and reenchant my character to match the current FOTM. I will not like this because it's way to many variables. Once upon a time gemming was fun when your total gear had about 2 sockets.

    4) Update all my add-ons because I'm sure the default UI still sucks. I will not like this because it's very boring. After 6 years and they still don't have an app store for addons. Why does it take more time to keep my WoW installation up to date then it takes to keep a whole Windows system up to date?

    5) Spend an hour on a training dummy to get a feeling for the current FOTM rotation and to position all the thousand combat timer add-ons on my screen. I will have to by able to play my rotation while watching about 8 timers and dancing the dance.

    6) Start queuing for the troll heroics and start doing the daily from the fireland hub because I must gear up to be able to join the LFR or new 5 mans. My gear score will not be high enough to run the new content. I will not enjoy this as I hate daylies and I will have very long queue times to run outdated content (troll heroics). It's not going to help that my group mates will have run those instances hundred times and just want to rush through them. Don't expect them to help you with quests or to run all bosses although I still need a higher item score.



    Now I would be ready to test the new LFR.

    So, to answer your question (which wasn't a question).

    > If I resubbed back into WoW after 4.3, all my characters'
    > gear would still do what they did in 4.1

    No, the gear would not do what it did back in 4.1. Back in 4.1 it would allow me to access all content, now in 4.x it doesn't do that anymore.

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  13. @Kkring: your answer is so wrong, I don't know where to start. And note that I took the time to read it all, even if the first point is already wrong.

    1) no you don't. EJ reading and optimization are needed if you aim for a high-level guild and hard mode kills. You can raid at the normal level without any kind of optimization except taking stuff with the right main stat/armor type and the highest ilvl. end of story.

    2) talent choices at this time: see above. If you play to have fun any spec will do and there are no "wrong" talents you can take. As long as you get the topmost talent of your tree of choice you're never wrong (the fact that it's good is usually very clear from the description).

    3) reread my 1) and raise to the power of 10. It's even less relevant. Hell, I'm in a HM guild and I DON'T optimize using simulationcraft....

    4) the interface has been improved for raid frames. DoT tracking still sucks, so yes, you would need at least one addon. There are programs which keep them all updated anyway. BTW I find that the time spent on addons is very well spent, when I compare to MMOs with a non-configurable interface (see LotRO and 1mm x 1mm critical debuff icons).

    5) Again, if you plan to jump in and do RAgnaros HM you may need it (actually, you'd need more than that). If it's just to play, not even remotely.

    6) You can safely ignore the Fireland hub if you hate dailies. Running the dungeon puts you in full 359, which is enough to try Firelands. Add a ilvl 365 weapon bought from the AH (weapons can't be bought with emblems, but you could get a PvP weapon, if you like PvP).

    In short what you're saying is "I hate to do PvE, but in order to do PvE I would need to do some PvE". I'll leave you to spot the error.

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  14. 1,2,3) Yes, I'm quite sure that you can raid on the new LFR level without optimization. But that's not what I want. I LOVE to optimize. It's one part of the game I really enjoy. What I don't like is that every patch obsoletes my knowledge. There isn't only a gear reset with every patch, since WotLK there's also a "knowledge reset" with nearly every patch. And that's bad IMHO.

    (Plus there are to many variables these days with not enough impact. We don't really need enchanting, reforging and gemming.)

    And even if I wouldn't have to do the things I've listed this would exactly be the list I would work through if I would go back to the game.
    - Not required? Possible not.
    - Not fun? Definitely not.
    - Reducing my motivation to get back. Definitely yes.

    4) I love the add-ons of WoW but I think WoW should have an included add-on updater. Blizzard should take care of keeping them up to date.

    They could even have an app-store where add-on developers could sell their add-ons and Blizzard takes 30% of it. Or they could force-exchange it to free subscription for the add-on developers. After all add-on developers are the player they want to keep around so they can fix their add-ons.

    Being forced to go to curse and a other pages to keep your addons up to date isn't the most clean solution.

    > 6) You can safely ignore the Fireland hub if you
    > hate dailies. Running the dungeon puts you in
    > full 359, which is enough to try Firelands.

    Will that be enough for LFR Deathwing?

    And how long will that take as DD? (I'm referring to queue time)

    With the announced change to the troll heroics I'll have to wait 30-45 minutes to get into the dungeon for just 3 bosses, the other 2 will be skipped. 3 times the chance for a drop and only HP from 3 bosses. That's going to take a lot of time to get LFR ready for a DD.

    > In short what you're saying is "I hate to do PvE,
    > but in order to do PvE I would need to do some PvE".
    > I'll leave you to spot the error.

    I wouldn't classify reading third party sites and using third party tools to get knowledge about the game as "PvE".

    I think the game would be friendlier to returning players with a much weaker gear progression and with more stable "game rules". It would be better if your blue normal 5 man dungeon set (which doesn't exist) from Cata would be enough to successfully raid LFR Deathwing. It would be better if the difference between level 85 blue gear and T13 heroic epic would be less than 10%.

    Just check how often holy shield was completely changed since TBC.

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  15. @Kring: well, if you love to optimize you should love the massive changes which occur periodically. Otherwise it's optimize once, play forever.

    I also like to optimize, and for me the problem is that the current approach for secondary stats kills most of the complexity. Right now optimization depends on the selected fight (which you can model with the current simulation tools), but the difference is not worth the effort unless you're going for a world first. And even there, I'm sure that player skill will beat optimization easily (I mean being able to play efficiently while "dancing").

    The enchanting/gemming/reforging is to spice up the economy: a single approach would do (reforging), but then you'd eliminate two professions from the picture. And less professions means less AH farming, which some people enjoy.

    I think that curse provides an addon auto-updater. Not that I would ever trust it, of course :P

    For the Deathwing LFR, fireland quests will be irrelevant since the "lower" emblems will give access to ilvl 378. Any heroic dungeon will do to stock up on them. The problem will (again) be the weapon, but the reduced gear inflation of Cataclysm compared to WotLK means that you can still find groups willing to raid the previous tiers, since the gear is not irrelevant (=same as buying with the lower emblems).

    Shorter queues are not difficult to obtain as a DD if you're willing to go "old school", i.e. become friend to a tank player on the server (warning: trade channel spamming may be required :). Run the instances together for insta-queue.

    Actually, I find that the gear progression now goes very fast. You can be raid-ready in one week-end of playing.
    In my guild we're pretty much hardcore, when Cataclysm was released we woke up at midnight and rushed to 85 as a group of around 10 people with a 20-hour session. By the week-end people were gearing up for raids, and the next week we were happly wiping on Omnitron Defense.
    Right now the situation is even simpler, because prices have crashed and there's a lot of people you can group with at level cap.

    There are things to complain about, but a long "time to raid" is definitely not one of them.....

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  16. I think what Kring is complaining about is not that there is no optimizition to do in WoW - there's a lot. I think he complains about the lack of "meaning" of his efforts.

    Now, you can attribute this to burnout, like Azuriel would, or specific design choices. But whatever you do, I think it's hard to claim that design choices during the last few years have helped make the player's efforts in WoW more meaningful.

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  17. > @Kring: well, if you love to optimize you should love
    > the massive changes which occur periodically. Otherwise
    > it's optimize once, play forever.

    Yes and no.

    Let's assume I have an item with 200 int. I prefer to invest time to farm an item with 205 int, which will be good for 12 month over investing the same amount of time to farm an item with 400 int that's good for 2 month.

    Same with your rotation. Getting a changed rotation every 2 year is ok because it spices it up. Having the rotation tweeked every 3 month doesn't feel right to me. And makes playing alts painful (for me).

    > I also like to optimize, and for me the problem
    > is that the current approach for secondary stats
    > kills most of the complexity.

    You mean that primary stats are to powerful compared to secondary?

    > but then you'd eliminate two professions from the picture.

    Not that they cared when they made other professions useless. :)

    I see what you mean but it could be improved. We have three "item improving steps" that all do the same and have some impact on each other.

    We don't need gems to increase stats. Replace them with meta gems that do something cool. One in head, legs and chest.

    We don't need enchants to increase stats. Let them do something else like proccs or something you don't care for normally. e.g. resistances or increased money drop chance or whatever.

    And reforging just shows how irrelevant secondary stats are because you can just exchange them. Replace them all with "secondary power" if you can't work it out where they are useful without exchanging them, it wouldn't add much more harm to the game...

    > I think what Kring is complaining about is not that
    > there is no optimizition to do in WoW - there's a
    > lot. I think he complains about the lack of "meaning"
    > of his efforts.

    Yes. Enchanting should be crusader. And not "10 int to bracers". The first is amazing when you get it. The second is one less complaint from be.imba.hu.

    > I think that curse provides an addon auto-updater.
    > Not that I would ever trust it, of course :P

    Sure, but the new launcher could be used to also do that. And they could make money with it.

    > For the Deathwing LFR, fireland quests will be
    > irrelevant since the "lower" emblems will give
    > access to ilvl 378. Any heroic dungeon will do
    > to stock up on them.

    Perfect, didn't think about that. Still, resubbing would be more awesome if you could do the new stuff and not be forced to do the old stuff, that you've already did, again.

    > Shorter queues are not difficult to obtain as
    > a DD if you're willing to go "old school",
    > i.e. become friend to a tank player on the server

    This discussion always goes the same way. But in the end I have a long queue if I'm not interested or able to befriend a tank player. That might be my fault but it doesn't change the fact that the queue is long. I'm not complaining that my queue is long, merely stating the obvious that the game is no fun with a long queue.

    > There are things to complain about, but a long
    > "time to raid" is definitely not one of them.....

    The time to raid is way to short.

    The "upkeep cost" of staying raid ready is to high. My char was raid ready for T11. And that should suffice to do something "relevant" for the whole of Cataclysm. That wasn't a problem in vanilla/TBC because the old dungeons stayed relevant. But that's no longer the case. They aren't even implementing a LFR for T11 and T12.

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  18. Obviously, Titan will be about WoW Titans... with all their world-building, creature-creating, universe-defining stuff! After all, it was Team A that defined most of Titan lore anyway. It would also match 2020 release date by required feature polish!

    ...and one of quests will have you send Algalon to investigate signals from Azeroth.

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  19. @Kring: a change in rotation every two years is way too little to keep optimization interesting. And the changes every two months have been quite minor for the moment.

    Primary stats are usually worth between 2x and 3x secondary stats. This is why you can gem fully for your main stat and probably be at the optimum (or very close to it).

    Reforging is to deal with the caps, which I actually find to be a nice thing. They are not critical, but at least in the "preparation vs. execution" duality of fights, they provide something to do with "preparation" which was disappearing.

    Addons will not appear anywhere near an official Blizzard logo EVER. If they did something like what you suggest they would end up being forced to support all the resulting mess. As the situation is today, whatever addon mess you end up with, Blizzard can stay away from it. And honestly, I prefer it this way, the only alternative being a heavy-handed Blizzard deciding which addon are "good" and which "bad".

    The "raid upkeep" is automatic if you raid. Because when you raid, then the daily heroic is irrelevant. Look at my stats on eu battle net if you don't believe me.... The initial heroic kills for some reason don't appear in my statistics (0 heroic Tol'Vir is certainly false), but the Zandalari totals are true. I've run a total of 11 zandalari dungeons since they were released.... and the others must be at around the same level. I might have done 8-9 tol'vir for the trinket and the same amount of stonecore for the staff. 11 zandalari in what, 6-7 months? You cannot really say that I'm grinding them.....

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  20. > a change in rotation every two years is way too little
    > to keep optimization interesting.

    Ah, I see. I think we talk about two different kind of optimization.

    If I understood you correctly you are refering to the optimization of your play style. Gemming crit or haste or int does very little to have an impact on your rotation. The "optimization" is the mathematical challenge of finding the correct rotation and mastering it.

    And I think that's the current thing we have because it's "relatively easy" to get the BiS gear and the destinction will be made through how good you master your rotation.

    I was referring to the optimization of your character through gear. There the rotation is not so much important. Think shadow bolt spam in MC. Yeah, we probably don't want to go that far back but anyway. :) The challenge comes from obtaining the gear that is the best improvement for your character. That would require that gear is hard and random enough that it's impossible to get BiS gear. The best gear for you might be different then the best for me because we might have different sources to obtain gear.

    This could be implemented by having random generated stats on the gear, like the "of the Shadow Wrath" wands back in vanilla. Those were the BiS wands for warlocks for a long time. But you couldn't farm them. Just regularely check the AH. Now if all gear would be like that, a BiS list would not exist and the "optimization" comes from knowing the math behind your class and equipping the correct items. That's what I would prefer.

    Another advantage would be that you could impriove your gear forever (+10 int/+11 spi is not as good as +11 int/+10 spi) but you wouldn't be able to gain too much power.

    > And the changes every two months have been quite minor for the moment.

    Unless you happen to not having played your alt for a few month. Yes, for a main character it might be acceptable (I still would prefer more static "game rules" because it hurts my immersion) but for people with lots of alts it's a nightmare (at least it was for me).

    > Primary stats are usually worth between 2x and 3x
    > secondary stats. This is why you can gem fully for
    > your main stat and probably be at the optimum
    > (or very close to it).

    Yep. And it makes gemming as boring as enchanting.

    > Reforging is to deal with the caps, which I actually
    > find to be a nice thing.

    They can deal with caps, yes, but they also remove the gear diversity. Where you happend to use a lower iLvl item because it had hit or didn't use the set legs because they had to much hit, you're now just reforging every item.

    The "challenge" was shifted from gear selection to reforging. I think that was a bad change because we all are more excited about a new item then about a new reforge. :)

    > Addons will not appear anywhere near an official
    > Blizzard logo EVER. If they did something like what
    > you suggest they would end up being forced to support
    > all the resulting mess. As the situation is today,
    > whatever addon mess you end up with, Blizzard can
    > stay away from it.

    I'm quite sure someone at Apple mentioned the same thing. And they did their app store anyway.

    > And honestly, I prefer it this way, the only
    > alternative being a heavy-handed Blizzard deciding
    > which addon are "good" and which "bad".

    That's the reason I don't have an iPhone. So yes, I wouldn't want that.

    > The "raid upkeep" is automatic if you raid.

    Yes. But I started my comment to a comment that mentioned the situation when you return to WoW.

    I much preferred the slower gear progression of vanilla.

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  21. @Kring:
    The challenge comes from obtaining the gear that is the best improvement for your character. That would require that gear is hard and random enough that it's impossible to get BiS gear.

    This leads to endless farming in order to get "that last upgrade". No thank you, I prefer the current approach, where hard to get gear is hard because it's on Ragnaros HM. Hard because I have to do some other random boss 1000 times is not my cup of tea.
    BTW up to now I've never reached BiS gear for my character.

    Optimization for me is both gear and rotation (they are interdependent, at least they are for a feral druid depending on the type of combat, whether this is relevant or not, it's another story :).

    Gemming: yes, with the latest changes they could have killed it, it would have had the same effect. Which is clearly evident from red gems being 200g each and all the others being 20g....

    App store: if I'm not mistaken Apple can pull an app at any moment. I would most definitely NOT want this happening with an addon I'm used to.

    BTW the situation for alts is not that bad: as I said, unless you're going for HM kills, you can do a decent job just by knowing the basis of the class. When I play my reroll shaman I ask a shaman friend what to do and in 5 minutes I can run an heroic dungeon without looking ridiculous. So it's not hard. Rogue I leveled in Subtlety, never asked anything and just read the tooltips, and I can still do some decent damage. Of course in a "serious" raid setting I'd be a joke, but to run some dungeons just to see how the class plays, it's more than enough.

    When you play you have to make a choice: "hardcore mode" requires you to gear up, study the class, and practice. "casual/fun mode", just log in, LFD or quest or BG, you need nothing more than to read the tooltips.

    BTW if you find than one week-end farming heroics is not worth the effort to go raid, then you should definitely not do it, because after 1 week of raiding you'll stop anyway. It's always the same bosses, after all....

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  22. Incidentally, cartoony graphics is often just as much about dodging the Uncanny Valley as it is about low poly counts.

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