Tuesday, June 7, 2011

A bit more on WoW

Continuing my careful exploration of WoW I found quite a lot of strange stuff. Good and bad.

For example this:
As a rotting undead I think it's not exactly fitting that I spawn colorful flowers whereever I go. Not that it makes much sense from a simulation PoV anyway. And why is it called "Doomweed Haze"? Funny in some way, but ultimately a bit too absurd for my taste.


Then there were these bears that started to hibernate themselves when they were below 30% health or so.

That means after just one spell and the subsequent instant they would start to hibernate themselves. At first I just finished them off before they could finish the 2 second cast. (.. Yeah I am already becoming overpowered even though I only wear quest stuff and didn't do more than one BG so far!).
Anyway, once hibernated they would start to regen health at a rate that was completely irrelevant. Does Blizzard think it is good practise to implement gameplay features that are irrelevant? If it at least made sense from a simulation point of view, but, really, the decision to hibernate yourself in combat to regain an irrelevant amount of health is so damn stupid - even bears can't be that stupid! In fact, they aren't; only WoW bears are that stupid. Once again funny in some way, but ultimately silly.


I continued and was asked to bomb cute murlocs into oblivion.

With gas bombs that would do 10x the amount of damage than my pyroblast. I'm sure Blizzard thinks that players like to do immense amounts of damage. But firstly it makes my Pyroblast look weak and secondly I really don't know why they don't give me that mount and the bombs to clear entire silverwood forest. I, obviously had endless amounts! Ten level 12 characters could probably erradicate lvl85 Stormwind with these bombs. It just doesn't make any sense. Since I play WoW the way it was meant to be played (running from arrow to arrow) I also have no idea what the quest was actually about, of course.


Time for something positive: Forest Ettins!

I spotted one of them and, of course, I set my mind to killing him. What else would you do in a game like WoW? Killing them, in fact, is not easy and I am pretty sure that there are a lot of classes and speccs that couldn't do it. With frost bolts, however, it's not all that hard.

It is still quite possible to die to other mobs if your aren't kiting carefully or if the Ettin resists one frostbolt! In the end, I decided that I should just kite him back to the camp. There the NPCs finished him off.

Unfortunately, he didn't have any loot and despawned within a few seconds. I killed one more without the camp's help to find out whether that was the reason, but it was not. It would have been wise by Blizzard to tell the new player at least something like "good job". Either some quest item that the Ettin could have dropped or at least a standard green random loot item. That would have been better than a 2 seconds despawn, I think. The best would have been, if they actually dropped a useless extra-huge club that you could sell for a nice amount of gold. But that's probably too much to ask.
Anyway, it turns out that there is a little bit variety again in WoW and not all mobs in an area have exactly the same hit points and damage output. For that I congratulate Blizzard. The Ettin was the most fun I had so far.

Finally, I have to say that I like the story line event!

I really, really suggest you watch this youtube video, unless you still want to play through this yourself. By WoW standards that qualifies as a smart conversation, I think! I did like it.

2 comments:

  1. Heh, the reason you didn't get anything for killing the Ettin is that it's the subject of a quest later on.

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  2. The new Azeroth has a lot more charm and you do get sucked in very easily, which I guess was Blizzard's intention as part of their campaign to retain new players. Unfortunately however, that charm very rapidly evaporates in Outlands and beyond and that I think is where the big problems lie - it's like biting into a fresh green apple only to discover it has a rotten core.

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