So, about that Lich King…
Blizzard has been beginning to disseminate information regarding the second expansion to World of Warcraft, titled Wrath of the Lich King. We’ve known for awhile that the expansion would introduce a new profession, a new class, new instances and raids, and let us level to 80. However, Blizzard did an interview in their podcast last week that shines some more light on where they’re headed, and what trends from the original game into The Burning Crusade are staying around in the newest expansion, and in what ways they’re evolving. I’m not going to cover (much less regurgitate) everything covered in that interview, but I will offer commentary (and shameless opinion) on the pieces I find interesting.
First things first: Encounter Complexity (podcast time: 15:09)
In short, the designer at Blizzard made a comment regarding the introductory 25-man raids (Gruul’s Lair and Magtheridon): they’re excellent encounters, but for being introductory raids, they’re too damn complicated. I have an interesting position to speak from here, as I’ve been a position on several occasions of being a raid leader, tank lead, and heal lead on the same raid at the same time. I have to go over what every mob does (there are five), how the pull works (our group does an uninterruptable countdown from 10 to 0), who the tanks are, and then who the healers on each tank are. It takes a long time to iterate through all of that. One lesson I’ve learned from having to brief this fight: bottled water or lemonade is for the win; I’ve literally had my throat get dry from briefing this fight. And all of this is fine, but does seem to be an out of place level complexity for what is literally the first 25-man raid groups are supposed to hit.
Of course, two things about what Kaplan says make me nervous here. One, I don’t want to see the game get too easy. I agree that this encounter was a bit too heavy on scripting to be a good initial encounter (the key word here is initial; it’s a wonderful encounter overall). That said, as Blizzard makes the mechanics of many fights easier and easier, I worry that the game won’t have any challenge remaining in it anymore.
On the flip side of this exact concern is my other concern: I remember a raid instance that was being created where Blizzard stated that it was supposed to be simplier, more accessible to players with strict schedules, and less dependent on having a particular class balance. It’s was going to be called…Zul’Aman. Not to be bitter, but I’ve had the opposite experience with that zone, which has several extremely complex encounters (Jan’alai, Zul’jin) and several encounters that expect a particular class to be present (hunters for Halazzi, or protection paladins for Jan’alai). So, the last time that sort of accessibility was promised, it very much didn’t happen.
I’d like to see the initial content be mostly simple to understand and execute, but have difficulty increase as you move through that initial zone and continue to do so as you go to the next zone, and so on and so forth. Let each guild move forward until they hit their level of incompetancy. Of course, that’s going to be a very challenging thing to do when taking what is currently a 40-man encounter (Naxxaramas) and having to tune it to be not only a 25-man zone, but a 10-man zone. Which brings me to…
Next Up: What can you reasonably expect? (podcast time: 22:01)
About a month ago, I took my holy priest along with a feral druid (tank), two elemental shaman, and a combat rogue, and we went to heroic Magister’s Terrace. We cruised along until we got to the third boss of the zone, which involves fighting a shadow priest as well as four of eight (untankable) adds chosen at random, two of which are demons and the remaining six of which are humanoids. Everyone in the group had cleared the zone before, and had gear significantly above what the zone requires. We couldn’t break past that boss, and anyone who has done the encounter even one can probably guess the reason: we had, other than a single sap, no crowd control.
This may seem like a ridiculously obvious statement, but the more people are to be included in a group or raid, the more reasonable it is to expect that certain elements be present. Most 2 person or 3 person quests don’t require a tank to complete; most 5 person dungeons can be done (albeit with a bit more difficulty) without specific crowd controllers; most 10 person dungeons (Zul’Aman being a key exception) aren’t catered to absolutely requiring a specific class to be present. You get the idea.
One of the interesting aspects to having 10 man and 25 man versions of raids is going to be that they will be unique challenges as far as what you need to have to pull off the encounter successfully. It doesn’t seem unreasonable to require a mage tank on the Maulgar encounter, or two warlocks on Magtheridon. On a 10-man raid, those are extremely stiff requirements. Now remember that we’re taking a set of 40-man encounters in Naxx, which are to be retuned to be completed by a team of, in some cases, 10. That’s a very, very different thing.
Personally, I’m wondering what this means for where the game is going. It’s going to be an immense challenge to give a fight a consistent spirit and still tune it to be handled by either 10 or 25 players. I’m not trying to state that Blizzard can’t do it (they’ve proven that they have a good deal of skill at making games); I am saying that it’s a risky move. One wrong move will leave us with either ridiculously easy (or oversimplistic) 25-man encounters or ridiculously difficult 10-man encounters.
On this point, I guess I’ll have to have faith in the intelligence and wisdom of the devs and designers, at least for now.
And another thing: About those Badges of Justice (podcast time: 25:57)
I really think the badge of justice system was a great system. When you run one of the zones where they drop, everyone gets some; there’s no rolling. It’s a nice way to guarantee that, even in the worst-case scenario for loot drops, everyone’s getting something (well, except maybe Hushai, who no longer wants anything off the badge vendor).
Of course, it always seemed a bit off to me that you can go to heroics or Karazhan and get badges that purchase Black Temple quality gear. Don’t get me wrong; I’m not trying to look a gift horse in the mouth (as the idiom goes), but it just feels improperly balanced to me. I think I know why Blizzard did it this way (because the system for acquiring PvP gear through losing arenas was so catastrophically broken that they needed PvE gear to play catchup), but it’s probably not a system they want to keep verbatim.
Sure enough, it appears that in the expansion, we’ll have more than one type of badge, with each “tier” of progression dropping a badge of that tier, which can be traded for loot within that tier. This seems much more balanced to me, to be perfectly honest; it still allows players to have a guarantee of payoff from a successful run without tipping the scales. Of course, it probably means a decrease in the overall gear (and therefore content) accessible to players who aren’t able to more “naturally” get to higher-end material.
That’s all, folks!
Overall, it’s nice to see more information regarding this expansion hit the public view. Personally, I’m really looking forward to seeing the new talent trees and spells being given to the various classes. I’m sure there will be plenty to talk about when that happens, too. I’d also like to see Blizzard (or a fan site) put together a sort of compilation somewhere of all the information they’ve released.
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I like the Maulgar encounter, and I don’t think it’s too difficult for an introduction to 25 man raiding.
The key to the Maulgar fight is that people have specific jobs. The Mage has to know how to tank Krosh. The Warlocks have to enslave the Fel-puppies. Some ranged have to know how to tank Kiggler. So on and so forth.
The encounter is pretty simple if you can break it down to its components - and if each person knows his or her job. This requires some research on their part, and perhaps a wipe or two for experience. This personal responsibility is what sets these raids apart from most 5-man and 10-mans, where the bulk of the responsibility often lies with the standard tank and/or healers.
What really annoys me, though, is when I go on a Gruul’s or Mag’s run and the RL decides to explain every detail about the fight. I can go read Wowwiki. I could read all of those details if I wanted to. But if I know my role, what else do I really need to know?
With this in mind, I Gruul’s and Mag’s are great places for both raids and raid leaders to learn how to effectively dive into the 25-man raid content. They’re short, to the point, and teach valuable lessons that every raid will need to succeed.
I think that another reason that the decision was made to put such — let’s face it — GOOD gear in the hands of people who were wiping their way through Karazhan is simply because we are getting dangerously close to New Expansion time. Blizzard regrets sorely that the state of the raiding scene just before Burning Crusade came out was the way that it was. They regret that so few people got to see Naxxramas (which, according to those few who DID get to see it, is one of the best-designed instances in the game) so badly that they are now saying “We screwed up with Naxx, so here, everyone who didn’t get to see it the first time around get another shot.” Almost nobody got a single piece of their Tier 3 set, and as far as Blizz is concerned, that’s a crying shame.
So, how do you avoid a situation like that, where less than 5% of your community gets to see a raid instance that you put an absolutely ENORMOUS amount of time and effort into? Simple, says the WoW Gods. You move as many people through as much content as quickly as possible. Remove attunements for top-level instances. Make items and patterns that were once BOP into BOE items. And most importantly, give those who hit the raiding scene late a means to catch up. In this case, that means just happens to be tier 6 level gear available to be bought with Badges of Justice.
Lore-wise Black Temple is a pretty huge instance. Lots of things go on inside the Black Temple — and Sunwell, too — that are pretty important to the overarching storyline. It isn’t fair that so few people get to see those things happen with their own eyes, and I think Blizzard really does see that.