While I have been slack in updating this site, my other post will have to be put on hold.  Blizzard recently announced there would be no Blizzcon in 2012, so that they could focus on getting out Diablo 3, Warcraft Mists of Pandaria expansion and the next Starcraft 2 expansion.  Pushing Blizzcon back to sometime in 2013, yet to be determined.  So for many Warcraft, Starcraft and Diablo players, they see Blizzcon as a way for the communities of all the games to come together and mingle.  With tons of after parties, the time after the conventions has almost become a bigger spectacle than the convention itself.

However now we sit realizing that Blizzcon 2012 is not to be, but yet many folks still yearn for the comradery of their fellow geek gamers.  So what is the community to do?  While some have taken up to petition to Blizzard to still hold their convention, I don’t expect that to happen anytime soon, and if they did, we may end up with the 2010 Blizzcon presentation of “Geek Is…” which I am sure is OK for some, but many were left wanting after that.  Well folks you are in luck because outside of Blizzcon there is a plethora of conventions during the year that are hosted in many parts of the country that you can organize meetups during, while still having a geek central theme.

San Diego Comic Con

Probably one of the largest conventions of geekery, from TV, Movies, Comics, games, its 75000+ people flocking to find out whats in store for the coming year in media.  People in costumes, celebrities mixing it up with fans, its quite the spectacle!  Its located in…you guessed it San Diego.  Not too far from where Blizzcon was held.  This is easily a valid option, in fact Blizzard has participated in this convention in the past, so you can still get your fix!  Though tickets are similar to Blizzcon, difficult to get, have to be quick with your refresh button on your browser.

Info: http://www.comic-con.org/cci/

PAX East

PAX East is in well their terms a “festival” for gamers, video & tabletop.  It is being held in Boston.  There are panels, contests, tournaments.  For those on the east coast always complaining about Blizzcon only being west coast, where here is a valid option.  Though at the time of me writing this, the 3 day pass is sold out, so only individual tickets are for sale.  Being held from April 6-8th.

Info: http://east.paxsite.com/index.php

PAX “West”

PAX was last held in August of 2011, so you can expect it to be held around that time in 2012.  Its held in Seattle, so another West Coast option for folks.  Similar to PAX East.  Here is another option targeted towards gamers.

Info: http://prime.paxsite.com/

DragonCon

Dragon Con is one of those conventions that focus on sci-fi and fantasy.  Usually drawing a lot of Star Trek, Star Wars.  Of course there is gaming, comics and many other things as well.  Located in downtown Atlanta, GA.  Typically held in late August.  This is another great option for east coasters.  Also for you cosplay fans, there is tons of it at Dragon Con.

Info: http://dragoncon.org/

New York Comic Con

Comics, cosplay, video games, TV, movies its a plethora of all things geek.  Also its in the middle of Manhattan!  So not only can you go to the con, but also you are in the big apple.  See the sights, hang out in Central Park, climb the Empire State Building and much more.  Usually the con is held in October, and for 2012 its scheduled for October 11-14th.

Info: http://www.newyorkcomiccon.com/

Wizard World – Chicago

This one is from August 9-12, and a great option for those closer to the middle of the country.  Plus this con is in Chicago, go get some deep dish! They got a lot of great stuff, need a Warcraft connection, they got William Shatner, if you remember he played a shaman!  Plus many more comic, sci-fi and geekery to be had!

Info: http://www.wizardworldcomiccon.com/home-ch.html

So there are a few options.  Of course if you and your guild want to get together you don’t need a convention.  All you need is some planning and a location.  Plan some events, maybe some trips.  Go to a fun location where you all can sight see, or whatever.  You don’t need Blizzcon to bring together the sense of community many of you feel, you just need to organize on your own.

So in light of no Blizzcon 2012, what are you doing?  Any other plans to get together with your guildmates your gaming friends?

I was recently invited to be on the Twisted Nether Blogcast.  I have to say I am extremely excited as they were a large part of why I got into blogging to begin with.  With the recent announcement of Dragon Soul nerfs, no Blizzcon 2012, I am sure there will be some good discussion.  My biggest thing will be toning down my bad language that I frequently use on my podcast, The Sundering.

I will be on the show this Saturday, January 28th at 11pm ET, 8pm PT.  I would love to have all my friends show up in the live chat to throw me off my game, you know what little I actually have.

It was 2 years ago I got to meet Fimlys and Hydra at Blizzcon when I went with them to “The Raid” pre-screening at the House of Blues.  Last year I thought I was late to the TNB meetup and saw someone mention it was over on twitter, so went back to the Hilton.  Where Fimlys found me and said, hey, where the hell were you?! At which point we had a drink, took a picture and chatted some.

I was even on episode 8 of The Double O podcast with Hydra talking about gaming and parenting back in 2011.

I almost consider this coming episode a great reunion of sorts to talk with both of these fine folks again.  Hope to see you all in the chatroom!

Looking for Raid is the latest feature in 4.3 to allow folks who aren’t in raiding guilds to see raiding content.  Now LFR content is much easier than even normal mode, the gear rewards let folks get the latest Tier gear though at an item level of 384 instead of the 397 off the normal modes.  Tier gear was also changed to only drop off bosses in the Dragon Soul.  So LFR is a way for non-raiders to not only raid but also get the tier gear.  Some of the tier gear is so good, well the set bonuses, that several top end guilds have run their players through LFR simply to gear them up and get those bonuses.

Now all these benefits seem pretty great, right?  What about the downside of LFR?  I firmly believe by making the end-game content so accessible that players no longer need to be a member of a guild to gain access to the latest content, which in turn hurts the guild community as a whole.

Guilds, ever since vanilla WoW were a way to organize people to see the end-game, to raid, to accomplish content that was not able to be completed by a person solo.  We would see some folks try to organize PUG raids after content was cleared on a server, however with the addition of LFR, people no longer need to organize PUGs to see the raid content, all it takes is to queue up for LFR.  In fact there are many people in LFR I have met who are unguilded.  I asked one healer why they were unguilded, their response “Because why do I need a guild, if I have LFR to see content”.  That statement alone got me thinking, is LFR hurting the guild community?  I think it is.

Because potential guildies no longer need a guild to see the content what is the incentive to joining a guild?  Besides some of the guild perks, maybe some guild repairs, there isn’t a need unless you are one of those folks who wants the challenge of normal or hard mode raids.  If you are happy in just seeing the content, then LFR takes care of that need.  No the gear isn’t the best, but the fact is the last raid in the game currently has been beaten by mostly everyone.  Many folks have been able to bum rush the biggest of the bad and see the end game cut scenes.

Look I am no hypocrite, I run LFR, getting the gear that drops in there helps me out with my guild’s normal modes, but every time I take down Deathwing it feels hollow.  Where in normal mode beating the game at the very least provides a sense of accomplishment, LFR I feel doesn’t provide that.  In fact many folks in LFR think LFR and normal mode is the same thing!  So part of it may be an education thing, but I think LFR has opened up the content too fast to too many people.  To the extent that I see guilds folding or recruiting non-stop to get members to fill the now vacant raider positions.

I am not going to sit here and say how LFR is ruining guilds, though currently its not making folks look for a decent guild either.  I will offer some suggestions on how to minimize LFR’s impact on the community.

1. Remove tier gear from the loot tables.  If tier armor set tokens only dropped from normal mode and higher, and not in LFR, there would be more reason to run normal modes.
2. Do not allow the final boss to be played.  Make it so the final boss is something special for guilds & organized raid groups.  Letting the end boss of an expansion be able to be beaten even if its easier by a bunch of random folks without truly working at it, cheapens the experience.  Open it up only after the next tier of raiding is available or upon the next expansion.
3. Don’t allow best in slot gear, including trinkets with special on use or random procs to drop.  Use a shared loot table with items across all bosses.  This would also push folks to run normal modes.

I think LFR can be a valuable tool and a great way for folks to see the content, however I think the content needs to be limited, and the rewards also need to be limited.  Limiting these things makes guilds more attractive and helps build that community.  I firmly believe that World of Warcraft has thrived for so long because of the community.  By adding features which limit the community aspect of the game, I think you will see more and more sub numbers drop.  So lets get back to content that focuses on the community of guilds, and not on random people in a group.  Lets focus on content which rewards some work and effort, now I am not saying let people bang their head on a boss for 4 months, but let the reward equal the work put in.

This past week, my guild turned 7 years old.  I have been the GM for all 7 years.  I find it amazing the friends and connections I have made over the years in this guild alone.  The community aspect of the guild was always something I cherished more than the boss kills.  Though I won’t lie, nothing is better than a boss kill with my guild.  The excitement I hear on our voice server, no matter what other sites say about content being too easy, my guild enjoys every moment, and I think that’s just one thing that makes my guild truly special.

When I started the guild in the original closed beta, I liked the idea of the end game, but never really looked ahead to it, or even planned for it, being that WoW was my true all in MMO.  I did play Star Wars Galaxies and Final Fantasy XI, but neither really grabbed me and left me a bit disappointed.  In the Warcraft closed beta I met up with a then pally me and him had similar views and we in turn created the guild.  After a lot of issues with guild creation on day one, we finally got the guild up and running when Blizzard finally brought Dalaran back up.  Oh yeah did I mention that many of the folks we recruited in closed beta who came to Dalaran, only to have the server fail on day 2, jumped to other servers, so we definitely had an uphill battle.

But I digress, the guild I had a vision for it, to be casual, as when I started it I was still a single guy, I wanted to go out and party, meet people, I wanted to have a life outside of the game, so that is the audience I targeted.  We slowly grew, some folks left wanting more focus on raiding, which was understandable, many of our members in vanilla took a while to hit max level.  Also the struggle to get 40 raiders was a bit challenging, especially considering our value proposition among what was then a more hardcore MMO community.

Many folks doubted that we would make it.  I would be lying if I said I didn’t have doubts myself from time to time.  But through all the drama we encountered, from folks wanting to split off and form a more hardcore guild, people leaving upset at guild policies, the only bit of drama we never have really had is loot drama, which I am very thankful for, in fact I can count on 1 hand how many times we had loot drama.

We have never been a world or server first guild, what we have been is a community first guild.  We have seen members get married, graduate college, have kids, change jobs, experience tragedy.  However through it all our guild has rallied around its own.  Through tragedy and arguments we have come out on top time and time again.  Between all that we have beaten all the content that Blizzard has put in front of us, and we did it our way.

I would like to think that at least part of it was my vision and leadership, but I know its the hard work of my officer corps throughout the years and the great membership we have and will have that have truly allowed us to thrive for as long as we have.  We focus more on the person than the toon when we recruit.  We do not care about gear, gear is easy to get now, so we would rather have someone who fits in with our guild’s culture.

So over the years we have grown, spread into other games from console to other PC titles.  Our community has stuck together, we have thrived not as a Warcraft guild, but as a gaming community.  My guild has been a big part of my life for the past 7 years, they have shared a lot with me, and me with them.  I have enjoyed the past 7 years, and look forward to many more with my guild, and I look forward to meeting all our future members.

If you are interested in checking us out we are Phalanx of Nod on the Dalaran (US) server, Alliance side.

Patch 4.3 Hour of Twilight is around the corner and there is a lot to be excited about, there is also some things that folks are concerned about.  The patch is expected to drop most likely on November 29th, or possibly the week after on December 6th  However while I am excited by some of these features, parts of them I have concerns regarding the implementation.

Transmogrification & Void Storage

First Void Storage to store unused gear for Transmogrification purposes is great, and a welcome addition, almost like a second bank.  My biggest gripe here is its not accessible from my personal bank, I need to go to multiple places to use it, but that’s just me being lazy.

This feature is long over due in my opinion.  However some of the limitations really stink.  For example not allowing legendary skins to be used for transmogrification purposes seems like a cop out.  I know many people who would love to continue to use their legendary, the topics alone to allow legendaries to scale with level are too numerous to count.  Allowing them to be used for transmogrification would be a great compromise, but for some reason Blizzard does not want to allow this.

Another issue I have is weapon transmogrification.  While ranged weapons can be used on any ranged weapon, for example making a gun look like a bow, a crossbow look like a gun, etc, other weapons are excluded from this.  Only one handed axes can look like other axes.  The issue with this is, as a DK, I would love to dual wield swords, however right now axes are where its at in 4.2.  Well, unless I find some swords, I am stuck using axe models.  I would like to see Blizzard allow any 1 handed weapon transmog another 1 handed weapon, and the same goes with 2 handed weapons.

Beyond those two gripes I am very much looking forward to this feature in 4.3, customization is great and anytime you can make your char more distinct from others is a great option.

The New Darkmoon Faire

The Darkmoon Faire is moving out of towns and to its own island.  There is a ton of mini-games including tonk racing, whack a gnoll and many others to play to win tickets to buy mounts, pets, even transmog gear.  This will also make it much easier to earn rep with the Darkmoon Faire, much to the dismay of all those who spent countless hours earning that rep via deck turn-ins for the Insane title.  There will also be daily quests for crafting, gathering and secondary professions, to help you level them up even faster.  All is good stuff

Now the big issue I have is, the faire will be around 1 week a month.  With these games and dailies, rewards this island is going to be crowded to holy hell.  The entire server will descend on this island, I am thinking lagfest the whole time, if not the whole place will crash those who are there.  I am hoping I am wrong, but I feel they could have made this separate instances somehow and spread it across all servers to balance it properly.  Either way as it stands I have concerns over playability during peak hours for a small island that will be jam packed.

 Raid Finder

Think of the Raid Finder as LFG for the new Dragon Soul raid, however that being said, difficulty is drastically reduced as well as the item level of the gear.  The Raid Finder is great for those who aren’t in organized guilds to do normal modes, but still want to see raid content.  Due to the nature of LFG, the raid difficulty is scaled down to basically easy mode to allow more folks to see the content.  With diminished difficulty, you also get lower item level gear, which will still be better than Firelands normal mode gear by 6 ilvl, but lower than normal Dragon Soul.

I think this is a great way for folks to see the content, even for raiders to get an idea of the fights other than just watching the videos online for it.  Also a good way for players to raid who may have missed their guild’s raid for whatever reason.  What I think is lacking is to expand this to other raid content, many times people want to see the older content but not everyone on a server may want to do it, while some raid content is easily soloable now from past expansions, some encounters require you to have more than 1 person.  Especially with transmogrification now, I see older raids being more popular, allowing folks to organize pugs in a convenient way seems like a no brainer.

Dragon Soul Raid, Related 5 Man Dungeons, Valor Points  & Tier Gear in Raid Only

In patch 4.3 we finally get the showdown with Deathwing.  In fact we get a 2 boss battle with Deathwing, which sounds awesome, and from the spoilers on the fight I am very much looking forward to it.  The fact that Blizzard is doing 3 five man dungeons that tie into the raid similar to what they did with ICC, I am really digging this.

Tier gear only in raids, I am also a big fan of, sure I like the simplicity of getting raid gear and a 2 piece tier bonus without raiding, but to be honest I like them making raiding feel a bit more special from the aspect that tier gear can only be received in the raid itself.  Reminds me of vanilla WoW, in that all tier gear came from either bosses or raid trash, when you saw someone wearing the gear you knew they were a raider, and while I am not a hardcore raider by any means I do like this feature.

It also looks like that for normal raids, valor points are getting normalized across 10 and 25 mans, now that tier gear is only dropping from bosses.  Whereas before if you ran 25 man you would get more valor per boss than in 10 man.  Now its all evened out it appears, with the exception being the raid finder.  I personally do not mind as my guild will do both 10s and 25s, depending on attendance and class balance so I say bring on the change, but I know some folks are saying this is just another way Blizzard is catering to casuals.  I would like to point out in several instances, 10 mans are more difficult than their 25 man counterpart and much less forgiving if someone dies, even if Blizzard says 25s and 10s are equal.

Conclusion

Overall I am nervous for some of these changes, as it could create technical bottlenecks in the game which will limit folks from enjoying some of the content.  There are some changes that are long over due, like character customization with transmogrification and moving tier gear to raid bosses only.  So what gripes do you have with 4.3?  What are you looking forward to?

So I know I haven’t been posting much, but lately life has been hectic, my daughter has turned 8 months, going on 9 months shortly.  My basement is getting finished to create the Ceraphus Den.  I have spent a lot of time on my podcast, The Sundering, improving audio quality, lining up guests, etc.  Most importantly though I have been organizing guild events to celebrate my guild turning 7 years old!

In a few weeks my guild will celebrate our 7th anniversary, hard to imagine that we have been together for so long, technically we are older if you count Warcraft vanilla beta, but we’re not going to get into semantics here.

Either way, every anniversary I want to do something special for my guildies, this year for year 7 we have several fun things planned.

For my guild I always do a video, this video is usually a comprehensive look at what the guild has done over the past year.  It includes not only in-game video but it also includes out of game.  It includes pictures and activities the guild has done together outside of the game, such as LAN parties, BBQs, even Blizzcon.

Beyond the video in the past I haven’t done much else other than an in-game get together where we all raid a classic dungeon or do a special raid night or what not.

This year inspired by awards and contests going on throughout the blogosphere and podcast nation, I have gotten my co-host, Xia, on The Sundering to setup an award type event.  There are several categories for members to nominate their peers and later vote on the winner.  Now I have also challenged my officers to come up with some “secret award categories” that the officers themselves will pick, so if you are one of my guildies reading this, you will find out soon enough!

So after the voting is done I am looking at getting some awards together for the winners, a little something to ring in the holidays with, but overall its a way for the guild to do something together that isn’t just killing dragons or farming herbs.  While the past year may not have always been an easy road, my guildies still all work together they come together, they bond, they become a family.  The biggest thing I like to get across with my guild on our anniversary is how much I appreciate all of them, and this is my way of not celebrating a guild I created, but a guild they have raised from its infancy to what it is today.

What do your guilds do for anniversaries?  What other ways would you like to see a guild celebrate anniversaries?

With max level growing to 90, that is a lot of levels and a lot of content to get through if you already have several toons at max level.  If you wanted to start over and get a new toon to max level its a lot of redundant content to get through, especially 90 levels worth even with heirloom gear, rested experience and guild perks.  So maybe just like with recruit a friend where levels can be granted, is it time for Blizzard to sell levels or a higher level toon to experienced players?

So lets say you are like me, and have 4 level 85s, 1 level 80, 1 level 79, 1 level 46, and a few lowbies.  Clearly I have proven that I understand the leveling process, I have 4 toons at max level and working on more, but whenever I look at my lowbies hovering between the 10-30 level mark, I get to that point where I say, “ugh, its a long climb to get to max level”, its usually when I say this that I step away, or go back to one of my higher level toons.  Its just that after doing the climb multiple times, when faced with doing it again, it feels more like a chore to get to the content that I consider fun.

Don’t get me wrong I have enjoyed the leveling experience, but after leveling 4 toons to max level, there is no excitement in it for me anymore, it just feel like work, a chore.  Now there are probably plenty of folks out there who love leveling, a fellow blogger Psynister is one of those folks who loves the leveling experience and spends most of his time doing just that.  But there is a large majority of players out there, myself included who find true enjoyment of the game after we hit max level and get to tackle all that max level content.

Right now, the cost of a re-roll for a raiding player can be quite steep.  Level from 1-max level, then start running end-game heroics and dailies in order to get gear just to tackle entry raids.  Lets not forget about your rep grinds to get the right helm and shoulder enchants.  Its one of the big reasons I think some raiders burn out, is they are ready for a change but after investing so much, the thought of the leveling grind on a fresh toon just sounds exhausting and not a task they wish to undertake.  However increasing the experience you gain from questing will appease some folks, but when newer folks go through a zone, and are only halfway through and the quests turn gray they will be a bit disappointed that the zone is completable at the expense of gaining no more experience.

So what can Blizzard do?  The notion of selling levels is something those with disposable income I know would jump at, especially a legit way of doing it at least.  First off there is already a mechanism in the game with the recruit a friend to grant levels, but if you are one of the folks who can’t benefit from this system what then?  So the code is there in the game for granting levels and can be leveraged.  Now I am not advocating that a brand new player can buy the game and buy their way to the level cap.  I still think its important for new players to level up, learn their character, some of the story, learn to interact with the world, etc.  But a seasoned player, one who has leveled multiple toons, maybe to the tune of 2 to 3 characters to max level, should be allowed to purchase “grantable levels” to speed their climb to the level cap.

Sure there are some flaws with this idea, in that people do not learn their class as they level, but I would say a seasoned player understands the game enough to do the research and understand where to go to find out what rotations, specs, etc.  Though I also contend that someone who say wants to try out druid healing, doesn’t typically level as resto, they level as boomkin or feral, then once they hit max level, they spec change.  Its essentially the same thing as purchasing grantable levels up to the level cap, they would still need to relearn their class all over.  Many will even say that the game fundamentally changes once you are at max level, leveling specs are many times no longer valid (though this will change in Mists of Pandaria), and for a veteran of World of Warcraft I can see this being a valid option to reduce burn out but allow them to get into playing a new toon.

I do think that the system should be disabled upon the release of a new expansion for a period of time, and make a player level at least 2-3 toons back up to max level before allowing the system of buying grantable levels again.

In the end there isn’t much incentive for folks to go out and grind out levels 1 to max level unless they are die hard leveling fanatics, seeing the same content over and over, other than maybe the starting zones I contend is not compelling gameplay.  So in an interest of providing more options to veteran players who have already invested in leveling up multiple toons, allow them to spend some disposable income and buy grantable levels for a 3rd or 4th alt depending on the threshold that is set of (2-3 or more max level toons).

What are your thoughts?

Blizzcon 2011 has come and gone.  Besides the big announcements this year there was plenty of fan meetups after the convention in the evening, from the WoW Insider meetup to the Hilton After Party.  Being able to hang out with 7 of my guildies at the convention was one of the highlights, besides of course me trying to convince Ghostcrawler to nerf Warrior tanks, mostly because my best friend is one, and I wanted to see him squirm.

Enough about what I was doing, lets get down to the big announcement, Blizzard announced that Mists of Pandaria would indeed be the fourth expansion to its epic blockbuster MMO World of Warcraft.  Though it seems it got a mixed reaction, let me break down some of those features and the reactions I heard and talked to people about while at Blizzcon.

With the fourth expansion we will see a new class, Monk.  Which I happily predicted.  Now the monk class is going to be a bit different than what we are used to from a melee perspective where there is no auto attack, that the players must push a button for the monk to attack at all.  While this mechanic sounds interesting, I am just not sure how this will stick and I predict after a while Blizzard adds auto attack in for Monks.  The example they gave at Blizzcon of where if a mob is at 5hp fighting a warrior, the warrior’s auto attack will finish them off, but for a monk they need to wait to push a button, to me that reason should not be the justification for not having auto attack or why its cool to not have it.  If Blizzard can have the cooldowns set in such a way that you can constantly be pushing something I think it will work out ok, but if you are ability capped and wind up just standing around that will be a big problem.  Now the idea that they will also handle tanking and healing duties was interesting, so they will share gear with bear and resto druids respectively.  The idea behind the healing for them was interesting.  Blizzard said they were challenging themselves to break out of the current click that health bar and cast type healer, instead maybe have DPS translate into healing, maybe by placing AoE type statues or totems around the area, that would be charged and release heals, if implemented correctly this could be a fun new healing style that might draw more folks into a healer role that previously were turned over from the whack a mole type healing setup that exists today.

Next up is, Pandaren.  My lord the amount of complaining against pandas in the game.  Everything from “there is no lore”, “its a cop out”, “they were an april fool’s joke”, etc.  I heard it all at Blizzcon and after.  But I also heard just as many people say how much they loved the idea, and are excited.  Me I sit in the middle on this, I would have preferred they be non playable, but have the Monk class.  I would have been OK with that, but right now I am just waiting to see.  I will say the starting area was fun to play though, and the graphics for the pandaren are amazing on a 7+ year old graphics engine.  I think part of my issue is that Pandaren can be both Alliance and Horde, having them be on both sides feels like we lose something from a PVP perspective.  As it stands now I see Tauren, undead and orcs I know thats the opposite faction, but when I see a Pandaren, I just won’t know.  Of course there is the red text, but I look at the characters first, because lets be honest if you were in real war, you don’t have little red text over an insurgents head telling you they are a bad guy.

The talent system changes are great I think, as they allow you to customize what you can do and compliment how you would like to play, instead of forcing you to take a certain set of talents then having 2-4 garbage talent points left over that are basically meaningless.  Granted, I sincerely doubt that sites like elitistjerks.com will be out of business because of this.  Despite what Blizzard may think, you will not get rid of the theorcrafting or the mathematicians of Azeroth in finding what that optimal build will be.  However if Blizzard creates a wide range of content where different talents will shine better than others from time to time, you will see people switching their talents like glyphs, which was also another feature that Blizzard said they were looking to accompany this new talent system.  I am all for this system, the talent tree system feels dated, I want something new, and the new Death Knight talents let me play more and more like a Sith, which I am all for.

Pokemon!  OK not really, but non combat pet battle system.  Yup we will soon be able to take our non-combat pets, level them up and fight them against other players’ pets.  This is something I not too long ago predicted on my podcast, The Sundering.  Granted it was under the segment of ridiculous future patch predictions, who knew that this ridiculous prediction would become reality.  Essentially you create teams of 3 pets, level them together to fight in turn based combat against other pets.  This will be a huge time sink after the rep grinds, profession grinds are all completed.  What will propel this new gameplay mechanic to the next level is if Blizzard offered this up as a mobile game via iPhone or Android, that would really kill productivity the world over.  In fact if blizzard offered this as a feature in the wowarmory app for say an extra $3 a month, I would probably pay it.

Next the big one, World of Warcraft Annual Pass.  Basically this is a limited time offer for a 1 year commitment to subscribe to World of Warcraft based on whatever billing model you want, bill monthly, every 3 months, or 6 months, you are just committing to doing so for a total of a year.  What do you get out of this cellular type contract?  Well you get an in-game Tyrael’s charger mount when patch 4.3 goes live, which this mount looks unbelievably awesome.  Next guaranteed access to the next World of Warcraft expansion beta program, so play Mists of Pandaria before anyone else.  Then the next one, a free digital copy of Diablo 3.  So if you were planning on playing WoW for a whole year anyway, getting the mount, access to the beta and a free copy of Diablo 3 is a no brainer.  Many folks claim this is a money grab or a desperate way to keep subscribers.  Folks, lets not forget Blizzard is in the business to make money, with Star Wars the Old Republic coming out end of the year, it makes sense to try to keep your subscriber base locked in, its solid business sense.  For me, I was planning on playing another year and also getting Diablo 3, so this deal was like hey Blizz, thanks for the free stuff.  Not sure how long the deal will last but if you are going to play WoW for another year, sign-up, get some Diablo 3 and some other nice perks.

In the end, while I am not overly excited by playing Pandas, I wasn’t that excited, nor am I currently excited that we have space goats, err Draenei, in the game.  But I have the same choice, I do not have to play as one.  Do I like the other changes they are making?  Absolutely.  The new continent looks fantastic, the talent system is a fantastic redesign and can’t wait to see it in action.  I am looking forward to the monk class, which if they pull off the healing spec and playstyle well, I may even consider re-rolling, who knows.  Then the WoW annual pass was a simple decision.  Overall I am looking forward to Mists of Pandaria, and the changes it will bring to the game, which I feel are badly needed.

So I have been slacking in writing on my blog, I apologize, there has been so much I have needed to get completed before Blizzcon.  Besides work kicking my ass lately, my guild building up from running 1 10, to 2 10s and now 1 25 man has been fun and challenging all at the same time.  Beyond all this my podcast, The Sundering, is recording episode 50 tonight!  I never imagined we would still be going, but its been so much fun recording it with my guildmates.

So with preparing for episode 50 of The Sundering for the past 2 weeks, tying up loose ends at work with my recent promotion, taking care of the #knightling and working to get my basement finished to finally have my man cave, needless to say my blog has suffered a bit.

But I am here today to give you a quick run down, Blizzcon 2011 is almost upon us.  This year I will have 6 of my fellow guildies from Phalanx of Nod, not including myself attending Blizzcon, including Xia my co-host on The Sundering.  This year beside the convention itself I plan on venturing forth with my guildies to the WoW Insider meetup Thursday night, Friday night, there seems to be a lot of parties going on including the Twisted Nether meetup.  Saturday of course is the Blizzcon after party in the lobby of my hotel, The Hilton.

At the convention I expect we will get more of a firm date for Diablo 3, possibly either a January or February release.  We will see more on the first expansion of Starcraft 2, Heart of the Swarm, which I expect a mid-summer release in June or July.  Then of course the big one, World of Warcraft.  I am willing to bet anything that we will see our first glimpses of our newest expansion, which many are speculating to be Mists of Pandaria.  Well this has the Warcraft folks divided, some really want to see this as the expansion, others are hoping this is just an iOS game Blizz has in the making.  Let me go out on a limb and say this will be the expansion, we will NOT get Pandaren as a playable race, but we will get a new character class, like the Monk which I wrote about in a previous post.  I suspect we will see this expansion around holiday 2012 if not sooner, as I don’t see Blizzard making us play the Deathwing raid for a full 12 months like they did with ICC in Wrath, that would be really bad for Blizzard’s subscription rate I think.

As it goes for Blizzcon 2011, the hotel is booked (The Hilton), transportation for guildies is taken care of from LAX, got my airfare taken care of, just need to print out the barcodes for the tickets, and get to packing, its only 3 work days left to go before I am flying out bright and early on Thursday morning to California.  Needless to say I am very excited to see all my guildies, all my twitter friends and attend what I expect to be one of the best Blizzcons ever.  Especially since Foo Fighters will be capping off the weekend.  I have listened to them since I was in high school, listened to Dave Grohl since he was in Nirvana, wow that makes me sound really old, and I have never been able to see them live for one reason or another.  My excitement level could not be higher.  I am ready to head out, get my geek on, get my drink on, and have a great time.

Until I head out, I got episode 50 of The Sundering tonight, maybe one more blog to post, after that see you all in Anaheim for Blizzcon 2011!

Recently, a fellow blogger who I befriended 7 months ago wrote an article stating his disappointment with the recent nerfs in Firelands, and before reading any further I encourage everyone to go take a look at it, as my post here is in direct response to that article.

Let me state this disclaimer now, while I am writing a counter point to Fannon’s article, I do agree in part with some of his points, however my focus is to provide a look at the other side of the coin.

Patch 4.2 went live on June 29th, introducing the return of Ragnaros along with several dailies at the molten front, it was when this was released that Tier 11 content was nerfed to a state where it became puggable.  Some folks questioned why it was nerfed after Tier 12 was out, and why not sooner?  Some folks even asked why not do a tiered buff to players similar to what they did with ICC.  However Tier 11 was mostly nerfed by 25% (health and damage) across the board.  I was happy that my guild was able to clear this content before the nerfs had happened, however many of our raiders still were not geared completely in Tier 11, and Tier 12 was unforgiving if people were not fully decked out, especially on the DPS side of the house.

When Firelands was released, as the GM and raid leader, I slowed our first steps into Firelands to 1-2 nights a week (3-6 total hours) mostly because several of our raiders couldn’t tackle this content yet and we had to focus on Tier 11 to get people geared up.  This admittedly slowed our progression in Firelands, but my guild being casual friendly, we wanted to have people play with us, and not leave folks behind, its just not who we are.

Though as we step into Firelands, we had to ditch our 25 man ways most nights and focus only on 10 man, as we maybe had 15 folks fully decked out who could even tackle this content.  Also many of the remaining 10 were more of FnF rank and were not consistent raiders, but we pride our guild on having the ability to play with your friends without strict attendance requirements.

Firelands forced us to sit many folks, which we hate to do, but it had to be done if we were to progress.  When the nerfs came on September 20th via a hotfix, many folks in the Warcraft community were very upset or disappointed like my fellow blogger Fannon.  My guild was 3/7 and working on Alysrazor when the nerfs happened.  We were admittedly getting better when the nerfs happened, making better progress in the previous 2 weeks than since the raid was deployed to live realms, we also had just started running 2 10 mans as more of our folks were geared and could handle the content, and both 10 man groups were seeing similar progression.

However when the nerfs came, we decided to push all 25 people into Firelands, which we did and we were able to go 3/7 with everyone in 1 night.  I only had to sit 2 people as before I was sitting 7-15 people.  While some of our more determined raiders commented on the easy nature of the bosses, we heard joking, people having fun on voice chat.  As a GM I have always wanted to create and maintain a guild environment that allows people to have fun but also work on progression.  These nerfs allowed me to not sit as many people, I was able to include more people who sometimes typically do not get to see this content until we do alt runs on the patch that follows.

Now on our progression night we killed Alysrazor, Baleroc and Majordomo with ease, granted this was in 10 man with our most experienced raiders.  We chuckled at the ease we cut through them, and yes the challenge was lost for the most part and a part of me thought, this feels underwhelming, especially since these were the first “guild first” kills in Firelands I personally have been able to participate in due to family commitments.  Then we hit Ragnaros, and this fight we found very challenging still.  We never discussed the mechanics for Rag and just kind of winged it.  I expect him to be challenging for our progression 10 man crew for another week or so, maybe more.  Now for the 10 man we had to sit about 9 folks, we had many folks out for a variety of reasons, sick, work, family commitments, traveling, etc.  But after the raid I told my raid officer to plan on tackling our 3 new kills in a 25 man setting starting the following week.

Fannon mentioned

There is no thrill or enjoyment in beating up crippled children, Blizzard, and that’s what you’ve turned these raid bosses into.

I agree, an achievement not earned through hard work and dedication is no fun and not rewarding.  Something given has no value, something earned does.  Alysrazor, Baleroc and Majordomo were our progression kills, and they felt too easy, I will agree and perhaps the nerfs went too far on these.  Though I feel nerfs were needed, before 4.3 comes out to help those who might be stuck, and wanted to clear the content next patch.  For me I see this as an opportunity to farm the heck out of Firelands so we do not have to go back once 4.3 is back and we can focus on the new raid.  But I do wish the bosses before Ragnaros were a bit more challenging than they were.  The current nerfs I feel went too far, after 4.3 I would agree with the current “nerf level”.

As for the challenge, look if your guild was hardcore you probably finished Firelands early, you earned your stripes and can say I cleared it before the nerfs, even some of you on heroic mode.  Then there is the rest of us, we work, we go to school we have little time to dedicate to being as focused as the other hardcore players but still want to see the content completed.  That is what this nerf represents, a way for the rest of the community to see the content.  Did the nerfs go too far and trivialize some of the mechanics, absolutely.  Should this level of nerf be reserved for after 4.3?  Yes it should have.  Are these nerfs game breaking?  No they are not. In the 3 months Firelands has been out, many raiding guilds cleared T12, many times over, many have even gotten the legendary staff, and working on their second, others are farming heroic already.  Then there are the more casual guilds still working our way through.  Some say T12 was easier than T11, but honestly easy vs hard is truly a matter of perspective.  I will say a more gradual nerfing or even buffing to players probably would have been a more preferable approach to keep more of the challenge.  Also heroic modes offer more of a challenge as well, and Firelands heroics are more accessible with the larger nerfs to normal mode.  However I am happy as a GM of a very casual guild that I will be able to include more people on raid nights, and hear the sound of many of my members having fun raiding.

I have been raiding since Vanilla, I remember clearing MC, Ony, BWL.  But this was also when I was younger, less progressed in my career, I didn’t have a wife, or a child who I needed to dedicate my time to.  These nerfs let me see the content before the next content is out, which I enjoy.  What I do not enjoy is being handed raiding achievements, so to that end I would have liked to see either more time at the current difficulty, or a more gradual step down nerfing schedule.  So yes the nerfs trivialize the encounters for those who know what we are doing, but also makes the content accessible to those who previously saw a barrier to entry.  There can be balance between accessibility and challenging content, I have faith that Blizzard can find it.