Black Dragonflight Encounter

This one isn't really for my dungeon that I'm making, per se, but I suppose it could be tucked away in a basement or nearby cave if desired. My plan already has a green dragonflight encounter in the last boss tower's adjacent garden, but there's no rule against having two dragons in one place. I'm mostly just trying to force myself into situation where I'm like 'my assignment is to come up with a black dragon flight boss, let's see what I can come up with'. Abstract brainstorming can come up with ideas out of the blue, but I think it's harder (and more interesting) to say "come up with something, but we need to use element X. The rest is up to you."

Preemptive 'get in the mood' ramblings in notepad.exe:

Black encounters have been done (Onyxia, Nefarion, Sartharion), and they tend to be more of the "vanilla" dragon of WoW; understandably, due to lore... The black dragonflight is outright hostile, while a red member such as Vael in BWL was forced against his will to fight the lesser races. Their attacks (excluding Nef's calls) are pretty straightforward conical fire, cleaves, and maybe fears (Nef and Ony), or something like ony's deep breaths. Lots of fire being thrown around. What makes these fights more interesting is the phase shifts or other "non dragon" elements thrown in that need to be dealt with, i.e. Sarth's firewalls (plus the addition of drakes left up), Ony's whelps, Nef's calls and drakonids (and subsequent bone constructs).

Looking on Wowiki, I can see that in the game, there are two 'unused' black dragon flight members that we have yet to defeat, and would make ideal candidates, since they're already in the game.

• Sabellian (ony and nef's borther?) is a quest giver shown in human form that gives out quests pertaining to Gruul and his sons (who he despises for killing his people).
• Kalaran, a quest giver in Thorium Point, tells some lies pertaining to the dark iron dwarves. Kalaran was also the name of the original character in EQ of Alex Afrasiabi (whom you may know of as Furor/Foror).
  

At the culmination of each of these quest chains, both reveal their true selves. Sabellian battles Goc in dragon form (Rexxar takes his place hordeside), and Kalaran flies off after giving away some items, to gather forces to ransack the Searing Gorge, apparently (it never actually happens). Rexxar has been 'repurposed' in The Burning Crusade to serve as a quest giver in the Blade's Edge Mountains for the horde (and removed from the now-pointless Onyxia attunement chain), so it serves that these two (especially Kalaran, in the old world), could also receive the same treatment.

Kalaran, the encounter:


Setting:

He’s a black dragon. Big and Black. Black and Large. Whatever. The encounter itself is a ranged fight, where you don’t actually get a chance to melee him until the last phase. He’s in a cave, with a 20 yard moat of lava in between him and the raid. In addition, there’s a waterfall of lava flowing over the ledge where he resides. Like, the whole encounter takes place in a big grotto, but the dragon himself is in a smaller cutout behind a waterfall of lava. The lavafall itself is wide, about 60 yards across. There are ruined catapults strewn about on the floor of the main area, where people have tried (and failed) to assault him previously.

Side View:

Head on View:

The Gimmick: As the fight rages on, boulders will fall from the ceiling. These either:

1. fall into the catapult loadout baskets, which would be entirely too convenient and lame
   
2. need to be transported by one or two players to a catapult to be launched
3. break into pieces that are small enough that they can be ‘looted’ by individual players, and be put into the basket for launching.

The design problem here is figuring out how to make it not seem so lame that you’re loading up catapults out of crap that falls from the ceiling. I like the idea of the boulders remaining large, and requiring two people to work together to move them (more on that in a sec). Keep it simple… there are many catapults in various stages of disarray, but three that are the main Left, Middle, and Right ones. The teams of two coordinate to load up a catapult when they can, and the raid waits until the proper moment to fire it. The thing is, you’re not aiming to hit the dragon in the face with it, you throw it ABOVE him, into the path of the streaming lava, and that creates a window in the barrier he’s hiding behind, and gives you a brief moment to actually DPS him, before the boulder is dissolved in the lava flow, and the window closes again.


For that reason alone, I think it would be best to have BIG boulders that would actually last for a few seconds. Or maybe the boulders are big enough that they just stay up there, averting the lava for the rest of the encounter? If you had individual people collecting little pebbles, then when you threw them up there they’d just rain back down… hardly big enough to part a lava stream.

The whole other option is to just have it not be a lava stream at all, but instead just a ravine or moat of lava across which DPS has to attack using ranged spells. The idea being that you need to keep him moving back and forth becuase he chucks red hot blasts that deal spash damage or something of that sort. The melee would need something to do, as well, so dragonkin are spawned throughout the encounter to keep the tank and melee on them. Hmmm... actually... dragonkin are the default standbys for dragon encounters, so maybe Kalaran has something different. In his earlier quest chains, he fought against the iron dwarves. Perhaps now he has a band of unwilling followers who he’s subjugated. They serve him in his lair, and in order to not be cooked by the heat in the chamber, he’s granted them a certain degree of spell immunity. They run from nooks behind the raid towards the lava moat, carrying various charms and shouting about “sacrificing themselves to serve their master”. They need to be stunlocked and melee’d down (spell immunity, rite?) before they can leap into the moat, or it triggers a wave of lava to crash up and over the raid, for massive AoE fire damage.

This whole time, ranged DPS is trying to nuke through the slots created by the catapults (or just nuking as they move back and forth along the ledge face, if we skip the catapult mechanic), while avoiding the crap falling from the ceiling, and targeted cones of lava from Kalaran’s mouth. I kinda like the idea that he shoots a thin stream of lava at a target, and that stream then settles onto the floor, creating a little 2 foot wide creek of lava that needs to be hopped over as you move… but if that’s creating too busy of a ‘workfloor’ then fuggit. He just shoots fireballs once in a while that land for splash damage.

This all continues until a certain percentage of health, when phase two begins. Kalaran leaps across the ravine, and engages the raid toe to toe. The traditional tank steps in to grab threat (aggro wipe), and your typical dragon tank and spank ensues. This gives melee a chance to ‘get in on the action’ directly, or we can continue to have our dark iron shamans leaping for the ravine. Maybe as a shift of pace, when he comes over, they would no longer want to hurl themselves into the lava (as it would splash lava on their master as well), but instead choose to come out in full force and engage the interlopers head on… interfering with healers and spell locking mages, etc.

At this point, the fight can flip flop back between these two phases, at various percentages of his health pool, or just play out... phase 1, phase 2, collect loot.

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Holy Fucking Self Pwnage!

LOL gold selling ads on Blizzard's own OFFICIAL FORUMS. Oh snap, son! WoW Insider has the story, which I found on Alt Fanatic, but daaaammmmmnnnn! That's hilarious. This isn't an actual story (there's nothing in the "continue..." link), but I just had to put this up here for LOLs.

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Bringing It All Together (a.k.a Mapbuilding)

My dungeon is starting to come together, I have about 6 encounters almost fully fleshed out, and figured it was time to start thinking about actual architecture. As I said before, I'm kind of aiming for a Karazhan / SFK style old-castle-on-a-hill thing, since I really like that theme even if it's a bit overdone. Speaking of overdone, anyone know of any good games what feature ELVES AND ORCS FIGHTING DRAGONS? no? yeah...

So anyway. I know how to use Photoshop, and am pretty proficient with Illustrator as well, and figured Illustrator would be a good blueprint app since I can rescale rectangles after they've been plopped down (vector vs. raster), and draw polygons from scratch using the pen tool. I started with the basic ideas I've outlined so far, based on the fights I've come up with. The entrance ring where you collect the keys to unlock other wings, the Library, Hall of Arms, and the Baron's Throne room. I've decided that the Baron fight is worthy of being a "final boss" after all, since he has enough interesting mechanics coming into play that it'll take a while to learn and iron out. Plus his room is very dynamic, so it's a worthy "final showdown" area. I've also included the Garden and Alchemy Lab from two encounters I already have written up, but haven't posted yet. The garden is a Green Flight Dragon encounter, and the Alchemy lab is, well... you'll just see the Alchemy Lab when I decide to unveil it ;)

Another basic element I wanted to include was a bunch of towers, rather than wings like Naxx has. I wanted it to be impressive to behold from a distance, perched up on a hillside overlooking a cliff, with lots of 'impossible' balconies jutting out from the side of said towers. Ones that wouldn't be possible due to gravity and general engineering issues, but this is a fucking game, so let's just enjoy it, k?

Basic Floorplan:

You can see I've got a color theme going to demonstrate the various floors, purple being lowest and red being the top floor. The twisting towers are spiral just to demonstrate the staircases leading up them. This is still a very rough layout... for one, it basically doesn't leave much room for trash. Unless every trash pull is done on a staircase leading up the towers, there needs to be more open spaces like the ballroom in Kara, and that whole area after Curator and before Aran. I do have those two big purple rooms to the left and right of the very first "ring boss", and those were the intended trash zones, but in the 3d representation I left out the one on the right, because I really liked the towers being so close to the initial ring... where you zone in and feel like these towers are looking down on you as you fight the doorman for your first key.

So in comes the 3d portion. I got a trial of 3d studio max, and then realized I have no idea how to use it. I went to the Art Academy in San Francisco for a while, back when Maya was brand new on the scene, and I took classes in Softimage. Softimage has since been bought by Autodesk (makers of 3ds max), and so yeah. Hm. After fumbling around in tutorials for a bit and getting way too involved on tiny unnecessary details, I finally scrapped the project I was working on (a fully detailed Baron's Room), and decided to keep it simple, and just hammer out a basic blueprint similar to what I had done in Illustrator. To my surprise (and delight), I began picking things up as I went along. The dropdown menus are still full of advanced crap I have no idea about, but after spending all day today at my desk at school (one class = 45 min out of an 8 hour day spent at school, zzzz) just plugging away, and I actually feel pretty comfortable with it at this point. Again, I'm not really applying for a 3d modeling job, but if throwing basic mock ups together helps get my ideas across, then all the better. These cylinders aren't hollowed out and full of staircases or anything, but it's getting the layout and silhouetting intact, which is what I'm aiming for mostly.

Silhouette (still needs something on the left side, I really want it to give the impression it's going to collapse at any second, so thinning up the towers, making them taller, and exagerrating the lean is something I'll be aiming for):



Front:

Rear:

I tried poking around and trying to figure out how to attach a camera to a path and do a full render of a flyaround, then realized I was spending 45 minutes on something that really didn't matter.

These posts are actually beginning to look more like an actual BLOG, and less like ramblings of a madman, so you'll have to forgive me if I just chuck shit up here to "timestamp" it. I want to be able to look back and have a timeline for all of this coming together, and have a good cross section of before and after shots for the "final product".

Wuwu~

I'll get the Alchemist and Green Dragon encounters typed up in something more choerant than "ramblings in notepad mode" for later, and from the time I saved this blog entry to the time I got home to post it, I came up with another encounter (very rough) that could fit in the little green box room off the Alchemist's Tower (note to self: pulsing crystals + paly shield).

Till next time...

*edit* Been poking around a bit more; got the towers made taller, and shifted the alchemy lab's position a bit...
Good times ;)

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Raid Encounter: Hall of Arms

The Hall of Arms is another encounter in my raid. I'm mostly just brainstorming ideas at this point, and trying to think of how to fit them all tgether in a single dungeon, and I had a cool thought right before I drifted off to sleep last night regarding the common "winged dungeon" theme that seems to be getting pretty popular (and rightly so). I like the idea of not being forced from boss #1 to boss #2 to boss #12 at the end, all in a straight line. The thing with a winged layout like Naxx is that you have four wings to choose from from the very start, and so each wing's first boss should be relatively easier than that wing's last. It makes sense, pacing wise. The problem here is that you can't have a wing where it starts hard, or no one will ever start there! I have an idea about that, somewhat inspired by Zelda...

You zone into the instance, and are initially in a large anterior courtyard or foyer. There's the initial pull or two (think: the horses in Kara), and the introductory boss. He can be either a simple first 'warmup boss' like Attumen, or a cock-blocking gear check, but his main point is that he drops a "small key", Zelda style. From your view around you, there are a few locked doors leading in various directions, and branching off from this initial entry point. The small key will let you enter one of the doors, but you can decide which one. This way, from the beginning, there are multiple paths to choose from, but you can't farm "the first boss from each wing" and let the Raid ID rot. The last boss of each wing drops another key that can be used to open the next wing you wish to explore, plus 1/4 of a Master Key piece. After clearing all four wings, the pieces of the "boss key" are assembled, and entry to the final chamber is granted.

Anyway, on to the encounter.

The Hall of Armor

Setting:

A loooong, wide hallway (think Curator in Kara, but maybe twice the length) with a large tiled checkerboard floor, and suits of silver armor lining the walls on raised pedestals. The final boss is visible from the start, and is a Large Black Knight in a nod to the original Dragon's Lair, and should have the boss beginning the encounter by noting how DARING everyone is for confronting him here (etc, etc), and then tapping his sword tip into the ground to begin setting the event in motion.

Encounter:

As the party makes their way down the hallway, sections of the floor light up (anti void zones, white or light blue instead of black), in a noticeable and repeating pattern. The ground can flash momentarily before the surge hits, to give groups a chance to react. The group needs to make their way down the hallway itself, avoiding the charged sections of floor, while the suits of armor activate and engage (based on basic tank face-pulling proximity). Each armor suit is a basic, hard hitting tank and spank, with the twist that if the suit happens to come into contact with the 'activated' section of the floor --in addition to the raid's fear that their tank is standing there and taking a large hit of damage from the floor-- the mob itself becomes charged with energy, too, and hits harder (or perhaps flurries). Anyone hit with the floor charge takes damage, and is dazed for a few seconds, reducing movement speed, and compounding the issue of moving off the charged sections of the floor.

Boss:

The boss himself is a huge black knight, as noted, and the fight begins once the group has made their way down the hallway to him. He engages, and the fight is done in a similar fashion as the lead-up. The ground pulses, then activates, and anyone caught in it takes large damage spikes. the tank can have blessing of freedom (the movement one?) put on him in case he gets dazed, and the boss hits extra hard on dazed targets (perhaps this could be a dispel race to get it off the tanks asap). There need to be two tanks, because every so often, he will grab the person with highest threat, and hurl him down to the beginning of the hallway. The secondary tank picks him up while the MT works his way back to the group, avoiding the floor charge-pattern as usual (obviously, the adds are already dead, he just needs to watch the floor on the run back). It's a mobililty fight, with the tanks having to kite the boss around in little circles to avoid the floor charges, healers and DPS needing to shift accordingly as well. General abilities include the "flurry or enrage on floor tile activation" (if he's standing on the charged section), the "MT chuck", a basic cleave to keep melee on thier toes, and the floor itself. When the boss dies, the floor flickers out, and becomes safe.


I'm actively trying to keep the bosses themselves rather simple for these warmup fights. There's a trick to each fight, but it's not some mind bending Vashj headache where you have to kite 80 adds while watching for contaminated things and becomin rooted while holding the shield thing. It's a pretty straightforward fight, and is a nod to Dragon's Lair mostly. This isn't "final boss" material, just a basic tank and spank with a few fun twists thrown in to keep everyone on their toes.

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Raid Encounter: The Library

Another thought exercise in the Design a Raid Encounter thing I did before. I've already got a few more fully fleshed out, and will be submitting them here to stimulate feedback and changes to core mechanics. It's always good to have an outsider look in on the thought process, and give feedback you're too close to see. I'm also trying to build a few around the other one I did before, and am going to try and come up with a floor plan that links them all together in one cohesive dungeon to present to Blizzard. Feel free to poke fun, but this is my honest to god plan of action... to show that I can design a frikkin raid dungeon, dammit. So far the place is shaping up to be a Karazhan / SFK of sorts; a kind of spooky old castle theme. With that said, I present: The Library.

Setting:

A large library, bookshelves as far as the eye can see. They line the walls, and go up the walls to the ceilings. There’s large chandeliers overhead, and cobwebs stretching off them to the ceiling and walls. The chandeliers don’t function at full capacity. It’s overly dark, in fact. There are 'reading sections' set up from time to time featuring long heavy tables scattered with open books, paper notes, and quills. These serve to break up the otherwise claustrophobic surroundings, and cramped corridors.

Notes on Setting: It would be interesting to enter the room at ‘mezzanine height’, but would ultimately defeat one of the key points of the encounter of not knowing which way to go. The encounter itself is a maze of sorts, and if you could just stop before the entrance and plot out your path, it would defeat the point. Optimally, an element of randomness to the structure itself of the room would be awesome... if the maze through the bookshelves could be dynamically generated, or at the very least, have a static structure intact, with mob packs having dynamic spawn points. More on this later.

The Encounter:

You walk into room, and are confronted by an ethereal boss hovering out of range (maybe blindfolded, or with the crisscross wraps some undead have?). I have a mental image in my head of the Anguished Highborn from Winterspring (in fact, ta-dow!, there's my awesome Photoshop mockup to the right). She tells the party they “must choose one of their own to serve as their eyes". This person steps onto a platform, and the raid channels an altar to encase 'the chosen' in some sort of binding device (chains, or they can be trapped in a crystal… whatever, right?). The chosen raid member releases a spirit version of themselves that the rest of the party can't see (PHASING, ZOMG!), and has the 'Frodo while invisible' effect applied to their screen. This ghost has the ability to fly high above the room and look down on the rest of the party as they work their way through a maze of bookshelves. There are constant swarms of mobs charging thru the corridors at any given time, as well as dead ends with switch levers. Behind the dead ends are either more packs of mobs, or "the correct way" to pass thru the maze (perhaps some are both... the correct way, but also mobs to fight thru). Having these packs given dynamic spawn points would add to the variation each time the encounter is done. It wouldn’t always be “straight, right, right, left, straight, whatever”. They would need to actually have the ghost scout ahead.

The person in ghost form guides the group through vent or chat, telling them "the door to your right" or "straight ahead, the blue shelf", etc. The ghost could have a few unique abilities, too, so they don't feel completely useless during the encounter. Perhaps some relatively overpowered abilities with longish cooldowns. The ability to drop void zones, one shot single mobs, or daze mob packs? There's also a timer involved; the ghost is losing X% of their health every Z seconds, so the raid has to hurry or the group will lose their 'eyes'. Another thing should be that for every raid member that dies, the ghost loses 1/25 (or 1/10) of their health as well, so that you never end up with a situation where the group wipes, and they're all waiting for the ghost to trickle out.

Once finally through the gauntlet portion of the library, they reach a channeling stone that will "summon" the ghost player from their cage back at the beginning of the encounter. Should the team take too long, or suffer deaths, this will be the way for them to recover players from the beginning of the encounter that have to run back (or perhaps after the maze event is finished, a teleporter can become activated, similar to the ones in Tanaris, but short range).

The Boss:

The gauntlet itself is just the warm up to the main event, in which the spirit comes forth again to actually do battle. The end room is a large library, and the boss has the ability to rip out and throw bookshelves down on the raid, or summon tornadoes of books and loose pages. Anyone caught in a tornado takes massive damage, and gets stuck in a cyclone type CC for a few seconds (similar to cyclone, they can't be healed, or pot, or whatever). A cool effect would be to have a few loose pages just begin swirling in mid air where a cyclone is about to form, a visual indication that you should move before it goes off. She also has a small ‘cloud’ of books hovering behind her, which she pulls from to throw individual books at casters to interrupt their casts and stun them momentarily. Other more basic attacks include a kind of spirit bolt, and perhaps a mana burn or drain. Other than that, it’s a basic tank and spank, though, while avoiding the cyclones, falling bookshelves, and having healers deal with the single book stuns.

Overall Notes: Variations on the ‘ghost scout’ theme could have the person in the phase be the only one able to activate the bookshelf switches. For all intents and purposes, the person chosen could become completely isolated from the group (can’t chat, although vent would be an issue). They would move silently thru the maze with the group, but able to pass thru the walls to peek ahead, and the switches are only available in the ghost phase… the group just sees bookshelves opening, and a pathway being formed, but they don’t do the lever flipping themselves. I could see this being an issue for someone who doesn’t want to be stuck being the ghost every week, so that’s why I mentioned the special ghost abilities available to them. Plus I think the ability to drop a void zone would be more impressive from 'up above looking down' than just chucking one over to the side at normal player level.

Also, in what appears to be a common theme I'm forming here with my werewolf tanks from the Baron fight, it would give a chance for undergeared players to remove themselves from the encounter, while still providing a valuable role in the gauntlet. If that's lame, you could make the ticking health a flat value (instead of a percentage), and have an offtank fill that role, with their increased health pool.

The Baron fight also involved some pretty intricate mechanics. Getting bit, turning the crank, phase shifts for Day and Night. I intentionally tried to keep this boss fight simple (tank and spank while avoiding various obstacles), but make the gauntlet leading up to it unique. I think, looking back at these two, and a few more I haven't posted yet (but have lined up for later), that I really enjoy fights with lots of mobility. Patchwerk is a neat little DPS race, and a chance to shine in the meters if you have your rotations tuned, but overall it's not a very "fun" fight. Even the fel reaver in TK had the interesting element of avoiding the orbs thrown in.

Anyway, any feedback is appreciated. Look forward to the Hall of Arms and my various experiments on basic dragon encounters coming up soon ;)

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Chunli in a New Game!? Slow Down, Breathe...

Well paint me a fan boy and call me Sally, I love that little lady in the blue outfit with the legs that kick kick kick at lightning speed. So sue me. People come and people go, and everyone seems to be caught up in one silly little thing or another regarding her massive thighs, freakish "man hands", or a mysterious 'bulge' in her panties, but for me, lil Chunners can do no wrong. Chun-Li was my premiere female avatar back in the days of Street Fighter II at the local bowling alley, and ever since I first gained the satisfaction of beating someone's ass with a girl, I've been sold.

Since then, there's been the various pretenders to the throne... Pai in Virtual Fighter, Kasumi in the Dead or Alive series, all my Isobelles in WoW (and any. other. game, for that matter), even that little chick with the bird in Samurai Showdown. But for me, going back to the basics is where it all comes together, and whenever Chun-Li makes an appearance (excluding shameless Pachinko tie-ins), I gotta do my duties and get to spinning-bird-kicking.

Imagine my surprise (and delight!) then, when Tatsunoko vs. Capcom on the Wii actually featured some pretty solid badassery. To think I bought the expensive USB arcade stick for my PS3 in anticipation for Street Fighter 4 (and to practice my skillz on MAME ROMS on the PC), and now have a really fun fighter on the Wii is a bit of a letdown. I do have the 'classic' controller though (that looks like a beefed up SNES pad with dual analogs), though, so I wasn't stuck with the 'pussy' control scheme made for those with just a nunchuck (where like F + P is a fireball instead of the actual D, DF, F + P).

Tatsunoko uses a system similar to Marvel vs. Capcom, where you have a tag partner, can double jump, and basically there's like 800 things happening on the screen at once at certain times. They also use Baroques, Advancing Guards, and all kinds of nutty shit that I don't quite understand. BUT MAN OH MAN, KICKING OVER AND OVER GETS CHUNNERS GOING, SO FUGGIT, RIGHT? It actually has a somewhat trimmed down system, consisting of light, medium, and heavy attacks only (instead of 3x punch and 3x kick), but if you know how to play a character, it all lines up anyway. Jumping and hitting medium is going to give you the "medium kick" you'd expect (not some lame jumping punch), and a standing fierce throws a punch. It feels like they sat down, and were like "standing fierce, punch or kick? yeah punch. crouching low, kick or punch? yeah, kick" etc etc. It works. With someone like Ryu (my tag partner), the forward fireball motion does a fireball, the back one does the spin kick, and the shoruken does a shoruken. It all just. makes. sense.

While I'm really looking forward to SF4, still, there have been a few moments in this where I acidentally do some super double limit break whammy, and Ryu jumps out WITH ME, and we both drop a fucking nuke bomb right on someone's fucking face, and I smile knowingly...

I'm home honey.



Did you miss me?

:) :) :)

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Ulduar Predictions

Ulduar is going to be the holy messiah of Wrath, finally giving those noobs noobing it up in Noobxeramas a taste of what real raiding is supposed to feel like. Nevermind that we, the hardcore elite internet dragon killer raidmasters of the universe, haven't universally beaten Sartharion with 3 drakes up... Sarth is a total noob, and the fact that we've killed him hundreds of thousands of times with NO drakes up is proof enough in OUR book that Wrath is totally EZ MOAD, and a huge waste of time. When Uludar is finally delivered, we will grovel before or overlords of the Raid and Dungeon team at Blizz, and shower them with Uuleydar Praise from on high. We will happily wipe (once or twice) while experiencing new raid content, and will finally be graced with brand new encounters (that we'll look the strats up for on Wowiki before actually attempting the fight ourselves). When we finally down those raid bosses (on the first night of attempts) our shouts of triumph will be heard far and wide (on the internets). You better hope these encounters aren't too hard bugged, though, or you'll have blood on your forums hands!

Sure, buddy. If you say so.

Is it me, or are 'teh hardcorez' gonna be let down no matter what Huladar ends up looking like? If it's too easy, it's going to be a huge piss and moan fest about "OMG GG WAY TO NOOB IT UP JUST LIKE NAXX THIS IS TOTAL PROOF THAT WRATH IS KIDDIE POKEMON RAIDS FROM HERE ON OUT". Too hard and the content is "OBVIOUSLY BUGGED WAY TO GO BLIZZ L2TUNE PLESE". Why is there no satisfying these people?

I'm going to come right out and make Ixobelle's Big Prediction for Ulidor: It's going to be 'too easy' in the eyes of many people that consider themselves expert raiding experts, and a huge tidal wave of massive crying about it is going to follow right after its release.

FebruaryNilihimGaming Inc will beat the encounters in 37 seconds after their release, and write long winded overly dramatic posts that will be linked on front pages everywhere about how they're going into retirement as nothing in the game is challenging anymore. My friend Tragedy will echo the sentiment in ever more emo tones on vent even though our guild has a hard time getting even ten people together in the first place. MMO-Champion will have full loot tables and strats posted for every encounter before the sun sets on the first day of release, and everyone will generally go about thier lives exactly as they right now, except that there will be one new raid per week to be saved to.

Hooray for the internet, long live something or other!

Blizzard is basically screwed no matter what, but here's the shocking revelation: who cares! People will continue to play the game, and even those that cry the loudest will still line up and zone in (much to the dismay of those forced to listen to their complaining on vent during the run). People seem to be investing way too much effort in Waiting For Urgadore, as though it's going to be some radical departure from the game as it stands.

This coming from the same crowd who won't do runs in Heroic Occulus or Heroic Halls of Lightning because those encounters are too hard, or who cry about Sarth with 3 drakes up "not counting" because they have Sarth with 0 drakes up on farm.

Hot cocoa isn't cutting it this morning. I need a beer, dammit.

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How 2 Preist? Plz PST.

I've kinda shelved my warlock in favor of my priest recently, and am enjoying running around healing things in instances again. My resto druid was a fun alternative to my rogue and tank, so this isn't the first time I've ever healed, but it is the first time I've done so with a priest, and hoo boy... Night and Day, baby. Night and Day. I'm slowly coming to the realization that I have no idea what I'm doing, and am therefore asking my friends on the internet (that's you) for help.

Let's start with what I'm doing, and then we can go from there.

My spec and gear can be seen by clicking the armory thing over in the right hand pane of my blog. The priest is Ixobelle, and as of this writing is level 70. I ran heroic Magister's the other day with a bunch of 78-ish folks who were hoping to get the tanking trinket for a DK. It's apparently still really good, and we blasted thru reg and heroic MGT in about an hour. It was a shadow priest, 2 DKs, me healing, and another 70 rogue that we picked up after a hunter rage quit on us mid run for some reason I swear that no one in the group could figure out. He started cursing, then pulled like 4 packs of mobs on us, and left group. It was all very mysterious! In the end I wound up with the Sunwell Trinket, some cloth shoulders, and a cloth belt that I stuffed full of +SD gems. Plus I have 3 more runed whatever gems in my Shadowmoon Valley hat (you know the one).

I'm up to like 840 or so spell damage, but I'm not a warlock anymore. It helps with grinding mobs, but is kinda useless in a run, since I tend to throw out way bigger heals than I'm used to, and a lot of it gets wasted. My spec is geared towards being 'holy enough' to heal 5 mans, but not completely suck for questing, with a few talents like Spirit Tap, Surge of Light, Searing Light, and Meditation. My druid was a trickle healer, that could throw out nuke heals with Swiftmend or Nature's Swiftness if needed, but for the most part just tried to keep people from getting low in the first place.

One of the more interesting tactics I've discovered is a post that described how to make the most from the Five Second Rule by starting and cancelling Greater Heals over and over and over, and then just letting the final one land when it's actually needed. I've known about the FSR, but never really paid it much attention as my druid was always keeping a Lifebloom rolling, or my warlock is just going apeshit, and mana on a lock is free (provided I can get a spare heal from time to time). I aso thought that starting a Greater Heal would nullify the FSR, but it goes from the actual spell being cast, so that's cool.

Before that, I was chucking Power Word: Shields around like Halloween candy (which is still good, and I still do), and using Renew more than I really should have, and then spamming Flash Heals to keep people topped off. I'm trying to avoid falling in love with CoH, since a huge nerf is coming down the pipe, so I try to get around using it now (Prayer of Healing when needed, etc). I use CoH from time to time --it's silly not too-- but I don't faceroll 5 mans with it bound to every key.

So I'm getting better use out of focusing more heavily on stuttering Greater Heal, and falling in love with Binding Heal, too. That's a huge one, as well. Any time I take any damage at all, I look for anyone else that needs a heal, and hit us both. That's a neat trick, and I'm getting better at actively looking for opportunities to use it.

My main questions, now that I'm figuring out specific spell uses, is one of gearing, and more specifically gemming and enchanting. As I said, I have no less than eight +14 Spell Damage gems in my gear at the moment. It's silly. When I hit 71, my Inner Fire charges will begin to add something like 90 or 100 to my spell damage, too, so I can begin focusing on the dreaded journey to MP5 land. My druid had a lot of regen through Spirit on his gear, plus an innervate, and generally speaking, wasn't very mana starved. I'm bad with watching my bars, and mid fight I'll suddenly realize that pushing my buttons isn't doing anything anymore, and I realize belatedly that I'm totally fucking OOM. The shadowfiend helps, and I'm beginning to use it earlier in boss fights to keep me from running out in the first place, and talents like the "free flash heal on crit" or Meditation (allows 30% regen to continue during casting) help, but bleh. Do I need to just suck it up and trade all my pew pew gems for mana regen gems, or what? I have a really hard time being excited about getting 4 points of mana every 5 seconds, especially considering that spells seem to be using a base percentage of mana these days. Just think! If I stand still and do nothing, I can cast a Greater Heal again in 12 minutes! Woo!

I understand that one gem by itself isn't the idea, and that you should stack as many as possible... eventually that number becomes like 2 or 300 mana per 5, which is better, but still... how far do you have to aim before it becomes viable? Do you guys have any 'general priesty tips' you can chuck out there? How valuable is crit, for example, and what about hit for casting friendly spells? Heals don't miss, but landing an MC will eventually become an issue (if only for Razuvious). On my warlock, I just throw SD gems in every slot unless the bonus is uber (or to satisfy my meta gem reqs). What's the main priest gem?

After hitting "publish post" I'm going to troll the EJ posts for a good hour or so until it's time to go home for the day (no classes after lunch today), but any little tips that 'you wish you had known back then' or whatever will probably help. This priest was basically /following my warrior all the way to 60, and I wasn't even playing the warrior either... just powering them thru instances over and over to reap the RAF 3x XP and get to Northrend ASAP. I've played a warrior before, though, and know what to expect on that front. I fumbled through Outlands just questing, and still using the 78 paladin to blow thru stuff like Nessingwary's questline and the Ring of Blood/Durn in Nagrand. Now that I've really sat down and began using him, I've respecced my priest about 7 times over the last two days, and am finally getting a general feel for how the class works. I actually like my spec atm, I just don't know the stat breakdowns, and what's important for me to focus on ;)

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I Miss CC

Remember crowd control? Remember sheeping mobs? Remember the hot and heated discussions over whether or not Rogues should need to put 21 (!) talent points into subtlety to get improved sap? Even when they trimmed that down to 7 (!) it was still an outrage. Now rogues get Imp Sap for FREE, but when was the last time you HONESTLY saw a Rogue sap (excluding Arena or just for giggles)? A warlock seducing? Lol, as if? It's cute that shamans got hex, because when will they ever use it?

CC is dead, long live CC.

A post lamenting the oft-lamented "difficulty of raids" garbage I'm tired of hearing about had this comment by Cassini:

It's not just raids either. Look at the heroic 5 mans. Then look at the heroic TBC instances. The level of challenge isn't even comparable. Most people I know didn't even bother with many instances on normal and just went straight to the heroic versions. Once there cc was non-existant and the places were cleared with all the tactical acumen of a sledgehammer.

This pretty much sums up 5 mans. The spell I use most often on... well, anything really except a boss encounter... is Rain of Fire. RoF seems to not be as bad is it was, but it's hardly a good spell, and it's pretty boring to cast over and over. On single 'big' targets I'll actually use a rotation, but anything rarely lives long enough to warrant the placing of DoTs unless I'm just hoping for a lucky free shadowbolt, and even then, if I just began casting RoF, I usually just ignore the SB and let RoF finish out. That's pretty much the deal with anything over two mobs. Even on Sartharion trash with the two big grey guys, I just chuck up instant DoTs and then spam RoF, while refreshing the DoTs while they run out.

I'm not necessarily a bad or lazy player, either... it's just that this is how trash pulls go, and it's not like I'm going to break a sheep or anything.

Remember Heroic Shattered Halls? Those 5 and 6 mob pulls that would rape your group unless you brought a sap, trap, sheep and/or seduce? Yeah, those are gone. In their place are now 4 or 5 mobs pulls that require no coordination whatsoever. AoE tanks are the peanut butter of Wrath, with AoE DPS being jelly. Wrath itself is the big piece of Wonder Bread that apparently holds it all together.

Don't get me wrong, I really don't have a huge issue with it. Another comment in the same thread went something like "not everyone wants to crawl through glass and come out on the winning side triumphant in their victory of some video game". I respect that, and more importantly, I BELIEVE IN IT. There seems to be a general consensus recently that OMG-WOW-IZ-EZ-MOAD-FUCK-THIS-SHIT. It's a boring sentiment to read, and even more boring when people get emo over it in vent. If you don't like the game don't play.

Mario 64 was a fun game to play. You could run and jump and fly. There were a few levels where they pushed the needle towards "chore" (rainbow-whatever-it-was-called?) , but in the end it was a fun experience. My favorite level is probably the very first one, because everything is laid out, and there's just a lot of running.. and jumping... and flying. The simple core mechanics of the game can be appreciated, and you can explore and perform simple acrobatics without the hindrance of a bunch of crap trying to kill you. There are enemies, yes, but not controller throwing crap where you're riding an 8 pixel wide flying carpet while doing back flips with a 2 pixel margin of error, any mistake causing you to plummet to your doom.

Doom II was a fun game too, but a bit more challenging than Mario 64 (or challenging in a different way). I never actually beat Doom II. Those white screaming-demon fuckers kept blowing me across the map into 8 other fuckers while I was burning in hellfire or something. It was hard. I was also playing with a Gravis Pad, lol... so sue me. Years later, I found a god mode cheat in Doom II, and just for the hell of it, went back to finish the last level. Nothing could hurt me, and the entire sense of urgency was removed from the situation. Doom II was suddenly very boring. With the sledgehammer mentality of our new "heroic" dungeons, we're no longer really challenged to analyze pulls, and we just go in guns bazing, mowing the lawn with AoE burst. Even healing has become some AoE fest, and I can't say I haven't grown attached to Circle of Healing on my Priest. An instant cast heal with no cooldown that affects all party members, even if it's a minor heal, is pretty ridiculous, and is due for a nerf next patch.

edit** I really need to get better at making the point I set out to make: In the above paragraph, I'm saying that without the danger, Doom became boring, and that that's how 5 mans feel now, since you just mow everything down without worrying about threat or whatever. I tend to get right up next to the point I'm trying to make, and then I just jump to the next subject too quickly ;)

I'm not, however, going to get on the bus and start preaching that WoW is too easy. People that do so just annoy me. If it's too easy, then don't play, or go suck your soul into Final Fantasy 11 for a few months. You'll come crawling back to WoW, trust me.

People keep saying that Naxx is Wrath's "entry level raid" for people to learn how to raid, but that just seems silly. While I'm sure there are people that have never raided before Naxx, it's probably a pretty minor slice of the overall pie. Karazhan was the most popluar raid of BC, and that isn't shocking news. It was accessible, ten man, and pretty fun (the first fifty or so times). But BC also had Gruul, Mag, Hyjal, TK, SSC, BT and later ZA and Sunwell. Some were patched in after the fact, and Wrath is still new, but yeah... I think it's safe to say that a lot of people know how to raid by now, or can learn on the job. Leveing in WoW is a joke, and nobody wants to run anything seriously. If an 80 isn't 'boosting you thru deadmines', you don't bother going there. I myself boosted two toons all the way to 60, and when I set foot in Outlands on my priest, I had to learn what all the buttons did.

One other thing that cheeses me is saying that WoW is catering to the lowest common denominator, which really isn't true. If you drew a bell curve, and put "never raided before Naxx 10" at the left, and "Nihilum" at the right, the big swell in the middle would represent the majority of the playerbase. People keep saying that WoW is aimed at the three people on the far left of the chart, which just isn't true. Blizzard is finally beginning to 'get it' and design content for the middle of the curve. Not the super high (or super low) end. I personally fall in a few categories, from "beat ZA finally, but never completed a bear run", to "was in a guild that beat Kael once and Vashj a few times, but I only got the one vial, so I began raiding Hyjal and BT after attunments were lifted, much to the disgust of my server's elite". I think I'm on the right half of the curve, but not by much.

To me it just comes back around over and over that I've honestly got bigger fish to fry than to complain about how a game I enjoy playing isn't fun enough. Gong back to the start of this post, I miss marking targets and having duties to perfom on each trash pull, but I'm not going to rage quit the game because my butt hurts about it. I do wish the current level of heroic level 80 dungeons was the 'regular' difficulty, and that heroics were heroics again, but Naxx is fine.

Just give it a rest.

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Your PvP Video Thrills Me!

A while back at NotAddicted, I wrote an article about how boring everyone's PvP videos were. They basically just blew cooldowns and then hit 'record' on Fraps, and put some lame metal track as the BGM, and were like "YEAH BITCHES, SUCK IT DOWN! Wuwu~"

How could I have been so wrong, when honest to god Spielbergs are out there, like diamonds in the rough? Since vowing to give arenas another chance, I came across one video in particular that has inspired me to take my game to the next level. For those who've never heard of Flowers of Happiness, put the kids to bed, turn the lights low, and prepare to see the game in it's full unadulterated glory.

It just doesn't get any hotter than this 3v3 action. Bravo, sirs. You will inspire a new generation in PvP, and PvP video creation!



(High Quality link HERE)

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WTB Game Industry Employment

Hi, my name Ixobelle, but that's not my real name. It's almost a better definition of 'who I am' than anything my given name (Richard Ericksen) could tell you. I'm an English teacher at 7 different elementary schools in Japan, but I also slay internet dragons, and blog to the masses in my spare time. It's who I am. It's what I do. I've reached a point in my life where it's time to make a change, but frankly, I intend to continue slaying internet dragons, and blogging to the masses. Odd, right? You'd think those would be the first things to go, and that's the big topic for today. I'm basically tired of teaching English in Japan, for a few basic reasons, and am looking to take active steps to do what I've always felt I really wanted to do.

I want to help maek teh gamez.

This is something I've always wanted to do, but I think until just recently, I never really took it very seriously internally. When a five year old girl says they want to grow up and be a ballerina, you just nod and smile and think it's cute. Chances are they aren't going to feel the same way when they're 15 or 25, but I think it's time I come to grips with the fact that it's my real desire to do so. I've sometimes felt like it was a silly aspiration, like wanting to grow up and be Superman, because honestly, who makes video games, right? Um, it's actually a pretty huge industry, and a metric shit ton of people make games, that's who.

Japan is ... well let's just say it's neat-o. I came here after my office shut down, with my last severance check intending to just check it out on vacation. That I would be blown away by Japan, and need-to-work-and-live-here-like-right-now took me by surprise. I had never taken a trip to a foreign country on my own (I've been to Italy with an ex), and intended to just sit around in Japan and soak it up while I decided what I wanted to do next with my life... get another IT job? Go back to school and finish a degree? I putzed around in art school for a while because my father is an illustrator, but he works freelance (albeit very successfully until just recently), and I didn't have the natural talent he does. I also didn't really want to be an illustrator; so the drive wasn't there, and I was in a pretty listless point in my life (this was about 12 years ago, mind you). So I took classes in Photoshop and the like, and used that knowledge to land a full time job in a small PDF conversion company in Oakland, then stopped going to school.

The company I worked at did endlessly repetitive work day in and day out, just scanning legal documents, cleaning up the scans, and OCRing them. Then we'd go through and proofread what the computer thought it read, and output final text searchable PDFs from these filing cabinets full of paper. It was tedious work, and I immediately came up with more creative ways around the tedium of almost every facet of our workflow. I showed them how to use Actions to automate certain operations using Photoshop, and generally got the staff using shortcut keys whenever possible. Many of our staff were basic people who weren't afraid to use a computer, but weren't very proficient in their usage either, so I began reaching out to those around me and showing them better ways of getting simple tasks done. You didn't NEED to click here and there and there and there 12 times in the exact same way for every document. Point this automation at the folder first, and THEN start from step 6 at least.

When something didn't have direct shortcut keys (in Photoshop, for example, to this day there's no shortcut for Brightness / Contrast, something we would regularly adjust for greyscale photos... you have to click Images, then mouse over Adjustments, then select Brightness / Contrast) I actually convinced the management to buy Belkin Nostromos for the staff, and taught them to make a keystroke macro that went like "Alt, I, down, down, right, Enter", and have it play out in a split second, and be bound to a certain key on the Belkin. Klunky, but effective, and simpler for the crew to get used to, plus it sped up repetitive motions. As silly as it sounds, I basically introduced the office to the concept that if something is being done over and over in the exact same way, let's stop, take 5 minutes and think of how it can be done better.

That, I feel, is one of my defining traits. Everyone else in the office was fully content to just click the same buttons over and over, because they didn't bother to see if there was a better way of going about it.

Management eventually realized I was being somewhat wasted just putzing around cropping images and cleaning up scans, and began to put me in charge of individual client projects. I'd be in charge of converting the Endoscope manuals for Olympus, and would handle the project from start to finish. Or I'd be used for more elaborate work that actually required knowing how to use Photoshop (reproduction in PDF of full color brochures, etc). I moved up in the company, and due to my knowledge of computers, began actually building new systems for the workfloor with the help of the IT guy, Jon. Eventually, when Jon bailed out to work for a Linux company with an office in Oakland, I stepped up and basically took over the IT side of things, maintaining the servers and troubleshooting workstations.

Even here in Japan, surrounded by other teachers that demonstrate no inititiave on any front except where they'll be clubbing that weekend, I consolidated and standarized the teaching materials, so that when we change schools (every semester), we can know what the teacher before us taught. Also, and more specifically, if they taught Vehicles, that it was "taxi, bus, train etc etc" and not just 10 random vehicles they chose ('blimp' is fun, but probably not horribly useful). About every other teacher in my district has a huge "who fucking cares? I'll probably be back in my home country next year anyway" attitude, which is another reason I'm just tired of teaching here. That, and the contract never changes. I've been here 5 years, and have the exact same 1 year contract as someone hired tomorrow would be offered. Eventually, one year they just won't offer me a contract, as they like to have fresh faces that the children haven't seen before to keep English classes fresh and fun. :/ There's nowhere to move UP to, and no point in staying longer than it takes to 'get your fill'.

None of this is horribly interesting except that it leads to the following point, and herein lies the biggest concern I have in my immediate future: I don't have a degree, and no form of specialized training. Without it, though, people I come into contact with are able to ascertain that I'm an intelligent individual, I learn quickly on the job, and want to put me to use in solving problems. With the exception of very technical industries (I think you should probably have a degree in engineering to build bridges), I find that I come across a lot of people that really have nothing to do with what they studied in school. My manager at Document Solutions was a French Major if I recall correctly.

I don't want to design the next client server TCP/IP net stack for Diablo 3. I want to be a part of the brainstorming sessions where they come up with stuff like having 10 and 25 man equivalents of dungeons. Where they design raid encounters, or entire dungeons. I think that after having done the number of quests I have, I could design interesting quest chains. It begins to feel silly again when you put it that way, but it's true! Who knows WoW better than someone who plays it? It leads back again to what I said a few posts back... that a few of the top players from EQ were hand picked to help design WoW from the ground up, based on what they had played and seen. They knew what was fun and what was stupid (scroll to the very bottom of the page, and read that entry, then read the entry at the top, dated 5 days later).

The problem is: how to get it across that you think you have good ideas?

HI! I ARE SMART, PLEAZ LET ME IN ON YOUR ULTRA SECRIT BOARD MEETINGS DISCUSING WORLD OF TEH DIABLOES, I PROMIS U WONT REGRET IT, DOODS.

Yeah. Hrm. So my plan is to start at the bottom (as a tester or QA or something), and wow thier friggin socks off every opportunity I get. I mean seriously, that whole crap about "you only get one chance at life and blah blah blah" is pretty much true. It's time to stop dicking around in "Where are you GOING? I'm going to the ZOO!" mode over here in Okayama, and head on back to Cali.

I've discussed this with my wife, and decided that this is officially my last full contract year in Japan. I'm putting it here on the blog with a bullet so I can look back and take inventory as time goes on. I obviously can't move back to America tomorrow (as much as I'd really, really like to), but I'm in the third semster of a school here right now. I think when offered my next year's contract I'll politely refuse, then tell them I GUESS I could finish out one more semester while we sell all our crap and wrap up the paperworks. It will have the double function of giving the Board of Education a panic attack that they're losing the one teacher on staff that actually gives a shit about the curriculum, as well as driving the point home of "well, what do you expect when you refuse to give us ANY incentive to stick around with this one year contract every year bullshit". August is an especially hateful time in the Japanese schoolyear, and if I can make it back to America and on the job hunt by then, then I think I'll have made good time, and have something to be looking forward to.

I spent 5 years in Japan, and it was a good thing. While it isn't over yet(!), it's coming to a close. Picking up, selling all your stuff and moving to a foreign country where you know nobody and hardly speak the language is a pretty big deal. I reckon if I can do that (and emerge on the far side of it with an awesome wife and son), then I've got it in me to do anything. Heading back to the motherland in search of the next big thing sounds easy at this point.

The blog will continue to be a shitstorm of ideas and random whatevers. I fully intend to further flesh out and use my Baron Von Lupus as an example of something that I can just sit down and crank out at a moment's notice, and will probably be doing more thought experiments like those in the weeks and months to come as I gear up for Jobpacolypse Now. I think the very fact that I write here also gives credence to the notion that I tend to think of myself as a creator, and not just a consumer. Like my 'create a raid encounter' thing, I think it's easy for someone to just play a game and then later say it sucked or whatever... but it's harder for the average person to do the creating, or even offer useful informatin as to WHY they felt that way, or nail down what could be done to take it to the next level.

Many people sit around and complain that their life isn't as awesome as it could (or should) be, but very few will pick up and affect the change themselves.

Wish me luck!

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Choose-Your-Own Difficulty

Mordiceius has a post up giving some love to the concept of scaling dungeon difficulties. I personally think this is an awesome idea, way better (and for some reason, less acknowledged) than this dumb phasing thing. The fact that you can beat the Sartharion encounter with four degrees of difficulty (regular, or with 1, 2, or 3 drakes still alive) is huge. Zul'Gurub was like this, where you could technically engage Hakkar without killing the various aspects, but I don't ever remember reading about anyone actually doing it that way, and even if they did, there was no tangible benefit to doing so.

Another fight like this was the Eredar Twins in Sunwell. After one was killed, the other would gain the dead one's abilities, and it was generally agreed upon that there was one that was supposed to be killed first in order to make the fight go smoother (I've never set foot into Sunwell, QQ). However, killing them in the 'wrong' order was extra challenging, and actually rewarded extra loots, much to everyone's surprise. This was later nerfed in 2.4.3, and killing them at all dropped the 'bonus' loot, but for a while there was a normal way and a hard way to do the same fight.

Fast forward to a few nights ago, when a certain mouth breathing 16 year old in the guild (without naming any names, let's just call him "Dangx") was complaining that the entire endgame was so easy, and how awesome it used to be. I'm not sure how old Mr. Dang was when C'thun was released, and maybe he was just cranky and needed a nap, but I decided to probe a bit into the conversation. Sartharion, and his 'dumb variations' was brought up, and I asked our mystery tank from the Cho'gall server's Audacity guild how many times he himself had downed Sarth with 3 drakes up. The implication, of course, being that he must have it on farm since it's so fucking easy. Dipshit McDang began mumbling incoherently --you seriously should hear his voice, I'll record it sometime-- and stated for the record that 3 drakes up was totally puggable, but that he himself had never done it.

Ok.

For the record, I've attempted 25 man Sarth with one drake up in a pug, and it, uhh... got a little fucking nutsy. Like real fast. We left 'the egg one' up, so that the adds would come out of the portal, and yeah, shitstorm wipefest doesn't begin to describe it. I'm not complaining, that shit was fun as hell. We tried it about 4 times, then just killed the drake on its own, and finished the encounter the normal way. That was the option, to scale it down a bit because our group couldn't handle it. THAT WAS AWESOME.

I know a few out there are turning your noses up, but I've really just reached the point where I play WoW to have fun, and I had fun. There's nothing to be ashamed of there. I got caught up in the bullshit of WoW before, botted on my main account for flask costs, and lost my three favorite toons. I'm in the process of releveling another warrior and priest, and was given a warlock. I've learned my lesson, and know what I want from the game now. The most aggravating part of the game now is coming across people who refuse to enjoy playing it, and I seem to be surrounded by these types recently, to my endless torment.

Anyway, back on the subject. Self Adjustable Sliders for each dungeon. I love this idea. Obviously you can't set the slider to 'EZ' and expect the rewards to be the same, and part of human nature (for whatever reason) is to invalidate self imposed restrictions that offer no external reward. Like, unless BLIZZARD adds a variation, it doesn't exist. Achievements are a perfect example of this. If someone was to down Ragnaros before he summoned the first wave of Sons, then hooray, but it doesn't really mean anything. Suddenly there's a list in the game that can be brought up with the Y ("why"?) key, and it means something when a little light goes off, and you get 10 xbox live points. Hey, whatever floats your boat.

The better alternative is the way Sarth is handled. From wowiki.com:

The loot is modified by the number of drakes taken alive into the Sartharion fight:

• Normal: (10-man)
  • 1 Drake up - bonus lvl 200 item
  • 2 Drakes up - bonus lvl 200 item and bonus lvl 213 item
  • 3 Drakes up - bonus lvl 200 item, bonus lvl 213 item and [Reins of the Black Drake]

• Heroic: (25-man)
  • 1 Drake up - bonus lvl 213 item
  • 2 Drakes up - bonus lvl 213 item and bonus lvl 226 item
  • 3 Drakes up - bonus lvl 213 item, bonus lvl 226 item and [Reins of the Twilight Drake]

Oh boy, more loot! The point is that it isn't some entry in a list, it's a tangible reward (and a mount, if you're into that kinda thing). It's also recycled content, kept fresh by adding variations for people that outgear the encounter, or have it on farm.

I like this, and everyone likes more loot (some people like it a bit too much, perhaps). I think this is a good thing, and should be expanded upon.

A few general ideas:

Green Mode - Beat the encounter wearing ONLY GREENS. Any iLevel green is fine, and any enchant is fine, as long as the base item is a green. This would add a huge minigame of 'getting prepared'. People would be linking each other 'awesome green drops' they got as world drops in guild chat ("uuuh! CHECK OUT ALL THAT SPELL POWERRR!"), although it might be tedious having two full sets, especially when there's also...

Blue Mode - same drill, but blues.

The truly hardcore could maybe go for Grey Mode (It's not the gear! It's the player!), or 'Do it Naked', but yeah... an entire 25 man Naxx raid, beating the whole thing wearing all greens? NOW you can complain it's too easy ;)

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Baron Von Lupus, the Final Version

I posted a "create a raid encounter" challenge a few posts back, and came up with an idea of my own. It evolved and changed through the various comments that were left, and I figured it would be good to consolidate the final culmination here in one simple post, rather than having to sort through the loose comments in the end... although, to me, that's a better look at how the final encounter was formed. Nothing comes crapped out of someone's mind in the 'release copy' version. For those that read that one, this is the same content, in one easy to read format.



Baron Von Lupus (a.k.a The Vampire Werewolf Guy)


The Setting

The fight has the raid entering into a large circular room with a domed ceiling, dominated by a large crank in the center... kinda one of those things that they used to have on old pirate ships to pull the anchor up. It's got five 'poles'.


The floor itself is smooth and uniform tiles, but has one wedge missing. Imagine a pizza sliced into 8 slices, with one piece missing. The door leading into the encounter is right next to the edge of the pit, with the bosses throne being at the opposite end of the room.
Above his throne is a large sundial type clock thing. From 12-6 is day, and 6-12 (up the other side) is night. The dial is at 12 exactly (and unmoving), ready to begin the first 'day' cycle.


The roof is domed, and has a large slit cut into the radius, similar to a telescope observatory.



The Encounter

The boss is engaged, and he stands up and give some "FOOLS! DID YOU THINK YOU COULD BLAH BLAH BLAH ME?" spiel. He sets the clock into motion, and this begins Phase 1 (a.k.a The Day Phase, a.k.a The Vampire Phase). During this phase, the room is brightly lit to indicate it's daytime, and sunlight shines through the open slit in the ceiling. The boss is untankable in this phase, and instead levitates/flies around the room to various locations, casting various 'vampirey' spells (life drains, enfeebling stat reductions, at this point his 'normal' attacks are just flavor).

The crank in the center of the room rotates the ceiling, to 'aim' the sunbeam. It acts as a 'vehicle' mechanic. Manning the crank will put your toon 'leaning into a pole', while moving formward or backward will then turn the crank clock- or counter-clockwise. To 'abandon' the crank, click the 'eject from vehicle' button. The boss is immune to all damage except when the sunbeam is on him (which weakens him). He also casts undispellable 'uber life drains' that tick for a flat percentage of his health on 3 raid members. These raid members also need to run and stand in the sun to nullify the effect of said drain.

During this phase, he also summons bat adds (of two types) that need to be handled. Normal Bats are just to be offtanked off to the side, similar to the phoenixes in the Alar encounter of TK. Vampire Bat adds do massive damage (through stacking bleed effects), and need to be tanked and destroyed as soon as possible. Killing ANY type of bat enrages the boss, transforming him into a large bat himself, whereupon he bites a raid member, turning them into a vampire themselves. Phase 1 will have one Vampire Bat spawn. Phase 3 (day phase two) will have two, etc. Since killing any bat will turn a raid member into a vampire, it's in the raids best interest to choose the Vamipre Bat as their target to kill (more on this mechanic in a sec).

A bitten raid member becomes a vampire themself, with a new action bar and various 'vampirey' abilities (including a taunt?), and a greatly increased health pool. During the day phase in which they are bitten, they have no control over themselves, and they run rampant in the raid (CC by Turn Evil or Shackle Undead could apply).


The dial in the room eventually makes it to 6 o'clock, and this begins Phase 2 (a.k.a the Night Phase, a.k.a the Werewolf Phase). The lighting in the area changes dramatically as the day phase goes on towards dusk, so no one is forced to 'watch the clock' to know when night is coming.


The boss has a short animation of transforming from a vampire to a werewolf. Upon transforming, he immediately charges the offtanked 'normal bats' and destroys them (werewolves hate vampires, duh). Anyone standing in range takes huge cleaves. The sunlight streaming through the roof is now moonlight, and if the boss comes into contact with the moonlight, he enrages, whirlwinding in a typical 'Bladestorm' fashion for 4 seconds. That's not good. The raid needs to be aware that he's going to charge the bats straight off the bat (lol, straight off the BAT, oh god, I kill me), and try and position the sunbeam so that it's not between the boss and the bats when the phase is getting ready to shift. Afterwards, the crank in the center of the room should be positioned so that the moonbeam falls 'off the floor' (the missing slice of pizza), eliminating random enrages due to moonbeam contanct, and freeing up the raid members manning the crank to engage the boss for this phase.

During the Night Phase, the vampire raid member(s) that were bitten in phase 1 gain control of thier toon again, and are used to tank the Werewolf. This is the phase where the majority of damage is done, since you aren't messing around with the crank, or dealing with loose adds to pick up.

When the clock reaches 12 again, the wolf goes back to vampire phase, and the raid member(s) that were bitten die. The Vampire boss now summons more bats, and TWO vampire bats that need to be destroyed to create two tanks for phase 4. The Werewolf boss has a cleave that splits damage among tanks in front of him, but phase 2 is solo-tankable (i.e. healable). Phases 4, 6, 8 (etc) see his damage output doubling and tripling, so two and three tanks are needed after phase 2.

This creates a spiraling effect in that you need to kill off more raid members in order for the wolf phase to be tankable, and yet, with three bitten members runing rampant in the third day phase (plus having to man the crank again), everything gets more hectic the longer the fight goes on.



10 man variations could include one tank being sufficient for the first TWO night phases (two tanks for the next two), and having the crank only require 2 or 3 people to operate.

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Design a Raid Encounter

Something I originally intended this blog to be was a compilation of 'big ideas' I had for the MMO genre in general. I felt like new MMOs that were coming out were following certain formulas for the sake of "that's how it's done" instead of spending he time and energy to see how it could be done differently. I've covered Questing (including player offered quests), Tradeskills (with a separate entry for the actual interfaces), Combat, and many entries just touch on various aspects. While I think about living in Japan, and 'what I really want to do with my life', I can't imagine I'll be teaching English much longer. I'd like to actually get involved in the gaming industry, but my programing skillz aren't very leet. I think I'm a pretty creative person (who thinks they're boing, right?), and someone needs to be the guy that sits down and just thinks about crap, right? Obviously that wouldn't be the all encompassing job description, but many of the lead designers for WoW were just uber EQ nerds that got recruited by Blizz to Maek Teh MMO.

UPDATE: The 'Final Version' of my encounter has its own entry HERE. It changed through feedback from the comments on this entry, and figured I should consolidate it all in a clean new entry, for those who are more interested in the final product that the process itself.

Tigole is a famous example. Jeffrey Kaplan, a.k.a "Tigole Bitties" is the lead raid designer for WoW. He took over leadership of Legacy of Steel, a famous EQ1 raiding guild, after Rob Pardo (of who you may have heard of, as well) stepped down. Here's the actual post where Tigole describes how he's being brought on to help design WoW (in the meantime, there's a whole world of NPC's that need to learn the words "cacksugger" and "mo faka" and the like. . .although something tells me I'm already in trouble with the boss). Reading the archives of the LoS site are a unique insight to the single most influential person in WoW's dungeon and quest development team. Obviously he doesn't just sit down and decide how everything is going to go, but after banging his head against so many poorly designed encounters in EQ, he got a feeling for 'what works' and 'what doesn't'. Sound familiar? About every single person who plays an MMO can sit down after a boss fight and say why it was (or wasn't) fun, but how many of you can actually sit down and DESIGN an encounter that would be?

It doesn't have to be terribly complicated. I think the initial problem is that people immediately WANT to make it some huge event where you need to push levers or everyone needs to be involved in something extravagant to make it enjoyable. Let's take a look at a few (varied) examples.

Gruul: The pull before Gruul (High King) is much more complicated than the Gruul fight itself. I think they intentionally made it so a "stupid" raid can't get to the "stupid" fight and get the shinies. The High King pull is pretty technical, and requires about 8 things to be happening all at once in order to get it right, but we aren't focusing on that, we're looking at Gruul himself.

He's basically a big truck that hits really hard, and gets bigger the longer you take to kill him. That alone is one mechanic. The grows. If your DPS isn't fast enough, it eventually becomes untankable. This is called the soft enrage, the alternative being a hard engrage like Gluth or something, where after X minutes the boss just hits for 20 billion on plate and you failed. After Gruul 'enrages' you still have some time if it's really close. Shield Wall, Last Stand, or a few lucky trinket procs can buy you a few more seconds.

Crap falls from the ceiling during the fight. This keeps it so people don't get tunnel vision and just focus on the action bar GCDs. They also need to be aware of their immediate surroundings, and make sure they aren't dying to crap falling on them. He also has the knockback, followed by the shatter. People get punted in random directions, and are hit with a slowing effect. Eventually they can't move anymore, and if they're too close to one another, they take a bunch of damage and possibly kill one another. This puts strain on the heals as they need to bring everyone back up (tanks are the main priority) before it happens again. This spreads heals around, and gives people jobs. MT heals, spot heals, and AoE heals all play an important role.

Finally there's the hateful strike to secondary threat. He hits the OT every X seconds.

While many people with Gruul on farm think it's "stupidly easy, and if you die you're a retard", there's actually a lot to consider during the encounter.

Tanks - Need to be geared enough to live long enough to kill him. It's a gear check for both the MT and OT. They also need to be aware of the crap falling from the ceiling, or they're taking EXTRA damage that they probably can't afford.

DPS - Needs to burn fast enough to get the encounter over with, as well as being aware of the silence effect (which I forgot to mention until now) to maximize their output. Hunters need to keep re-directing threat to the OT, other DPS needs to make sure they never rise above #3 on the threat table.

Heals - Avoid the silence. Maximize HoTs or big heals immediately after a shatter to keep the tanks up, don't be silenced if you can avoid it. Don't get tunnel vision on the little health bars or you die to crap falling from the ceiling.

In addition, everyone needs to not be brain dead dunces that are capable of reacting quickly after the knock back to avoid the shatter damage from one another.

When taken in full, the encounter is actually pretty complicated, and that's an easy one, complexity-wise.

Taking something like Magtheridon in contrast (which I'm not going to type out in full detail), where you have five people clicking cubes, Infernals being banished, crap falling from the ceiling, and three distinct phases, is a huge variation in gameplay. Some little bosses in SFK like Fenrus are tank and spank, but that's extremely rare these days. Even Patchwerk, a traditional tank and spank, has specific restrictions in place (melee needs to jump in and out of the slime river to minimize HEALTH, not THREAT, and heals can't use any AoE heals for fear of getting someone besides the tanks one shotted).

Other encounters like Moroes, Wizard of Oz, High King, Four Horsemen, and others, use the tactic of dealing with many unique adds simultaneously. It breaks the one big raid into many little groups, where players need to fill specific roles... Sartharion has some people going through the portals to kill the adds, while others stay behind to tank the drakes. Leotheras the Blind in SSC has a warlock tank, priests tank Rasuvious using mind control. Fights are mixed up and players are kept from falling into certain grooves or ruts to make the game fun.

With all of that in mind, can you design an encounter?

With nothing in mind beforehand, here's me, sitting on my laptop in the teacher's lounge in Yorishima Sho Gakkou, giving it a try:

(time passes)

uhh...

Hm.

It's hard to try and think of something new... the polarity-shift things with the boss in mechanar (which was lifted from Thaddeus in Naxx) is an awesome mechanic that I wouldn't have thought of on my own. The Kiting of Razorgore adds in BWL while someone MCs the dragon to kill the eggs... Razorgor is another good example of a basic mechanic (kiting) taken to another level. Adds spawn, but you kill the mages, while kiting the 'regular' ones. For each mage that dies, another add will spawn. Maybe it's another mage, maybe it's a grunt. If it's a grunt, add it to the kite, if it's a mage kill it and see what comes out next... the dragonkin are immune to slowing (piercing howl, totems), while the orcs aren't, that ALONE adds another dimension to the kiting, and makes for a more interesting fight. The layout of the room plays a role in many fights as well (Heigan, Shade of Aran, Chromaggus, don't even get me started on the Suppression Room/Broodlord in BWL)

Okay, here's my encounter:

The setting is a large planetarium type room. High, domed ceiling with stars and constellations on it. On the far side of the room sits the boss. He's a regular sized human (maybe a bit bigger for visibility during he fight). He wears dark clothing with a fancy red cape. That's not terribly original, but I'm not weaving a huge lore here, I'm desgining the fight. Gears, machinery, and test tube type stuff (think: alchemy lab style) are littered around the room. The center of the room is dominated by a large wheel device that turns parallel to the ground with 5 poles. Dunno what they're called, one of these things:

There's a slit in the ceiling, like a telescope observatory has:

There's also a large disk seen on the far side of the encounter, above the guy's throne:

The boss himself is Baron Von Lupus, an honest to god Vampire Werewolf! This works to our advantage, since vampires and werewolves are natural enemies (naturally!). He basically has two distinct forms, and they both play off one another.

In vampire form he summons hordes of bats, and has some lifetap thing going on with the raid, and is weak to sunlight. In werewolf form, he hits harder, has a 'skittish' aggro table, and gains strength from the moon.

The fight begins, and he sets the sundial clock thing above his throne in motion. It begins with daytime, and the room is brightly colored. Sunlight streams in through the slit in the roof, and he begins to lifetap the raid as well as periodically summoning bats that need to be offtanked. Any time a bat is killed, it enrages him, so they need to be 'just handled' for the time being. His 'abilities' at this point are just flavor. One awesome ability would be turning into a bat himself, raising up in the air, and swooping down to bite a random (? ...maybe lowest on the threat table so it's 'aimable' for the raid to select specific members?) raid members thereby turning them into a vampire that need to be offtanked as well. Other various bleeds or whatever are thrown in as needed.

This phase continues with tanks tanking the bats (not the boss, see below), healers spot healing the raid and dealing with the bitten, and DPS burns.

The crank in the middle of the room is 'mannable' by 5 raid members, who can turn the crank which rotates the ceiling. The boss either teleports or flies in bat form to various locations in the room, and the sunlight falling thru the slot in the roof can be aimed using the wheel to weaken him and make him either able to be damaged AT ALL, or just have the damage amplified. I like the idea that he's immune to damage unless he's in the sunlight. He isn't tanked in a traditional sense during this phase, though. He moves around on his own (perhaps flying, because you know... vampire and all).

Phase two begins when the sundial in the far side of the room reaches the night time phase. The lighting in the room is changed dramatically to you don't need to be 'watching the clock' in order to realize what's happening. He transforms into a werewolf, and now the slot in the roof that was damaging him becomes a damage amplifier. He wants to stand in the moonlight that's now streaming thru the roof, so it's best to move him away from it. His initial hatred for vampires gets the best of him at the beginning of this phase, and he goes nutso bonkers on the bats we've been offtanking. Anyone standing near the bats takes huge cleaves, so when you see the room get dark, GTFAway from teh Bats, yo. After the bats are dead, a tank picks him up, and DPS continues. Another awesome aspect would be if the 'bitten' members of the raid from phase 1 still generate huge amounts of threat.

ooh! Wait!

Okay! The vampire guy bites them during phase one, and they become vampires, with a new ability action bar, but during daytime phases they aren't in control of themselves, they're under the control of Vampy McVampsalot. They stand by helpless during this phase lolling on vent as they go nuts and one shot priests, etc. But during phase two, they regain control of their (still vampire) selves, and are used to tank the wolf phase, from the massive threat they have. Sweet. Make the bite random then, so you never know who's going to tank? Or make it one of the tanks (who would naturally be lowest threat to the vamp boss since they're busy with the bats, and not tanking him in the traditional sense anyway).

The wolf form cleaves, which becomes a full whirlwind spinning Bladestorm kinda thing if he touches the moonlight, and the vampires from phase 1 are tanking him. The sundial ticks back over, the vampires have to be handled again (they lose control during this phase), and the process repeats.

Let's look at the breakdown:

Day Phase

Tanks = Tanking Bats, possibly getting Vampired
Heals = Bats have bleeds that tick (and stack), the whole raid is being lifedrained
DPS = pew pew (plus operating the crank)

Night Phase

Tanks = Tanking boss (as vampires)
Heals = Focusing big heals on the tank
DPS = pew pew (plus operating the crank)

The night phase is when the majority of damage gets done. The crank can be ignored for the most part, since the boss is actually tankable, or.... hmm.

Perhaps there's one section of the floor where the beam can be moved where it shines 'off the floor'. Like the room isn't a full 360, but instead like 325 degrees, and during the night phase, the beam can be positioned to 'fall off the floor into the gap'. Since the wolf actually runs around on the ground (and doesn't fly) it wouldn't be an issue... I like the idea that the crank isn't completely ignored, it's 'handled' and then out of the picture until day phase rolls back around, freeing up the random DPS that are acting as crank operators.

Also, the day phase imposes a lifedrain on the entire raid (or perhaps a debuff on a few members) that can't be dispelled. Maybe it's active any time he's not in the sun. This way the boss regains some health during this phase. This, coupled with the fact that he's creating more vampires each day phase from your raid members, leads to a situation where it's eventually helpless. You don't have enough tanks to magage the extra vampires in addition to holding the bats, and it's a wipe.

I hate the idea of "after 8 minutes the boss just kills you". I prefer to know it just becomes a winless situation, instead of the boss artificially enraging and hitting you for 3 million damage.

I think this encounter would actually be pretty fun, and could have a few variations thrown in for tuning. If Night becomes too easy, throw in wolf adds for the (non vampire) tanks to pick up. If the raid wide drain life is too hard to heal, tone it down to five members, or ooh! Make it so if you have the debuff, you need to stand in the sunlight that whole phase to negate its effect. That adds more mobility to the encounter as well.

Reading back over this post, it's pretty long. But I basically sat down and just started whacking away. Certain things lead to others, and elements play off each other... like the idea that room wouldn't be a FULL circle, to allow you to park the moonbeam during might. You still have to move it to the gap ASAP during night, and if the boss is between the gap and the beam, he's gonna bladestorm as it passes over him. Or having raid mobility during daytime (negating the debuff by standing in the sunlight as well). These are things that can be tuned and adjusted once you have the basic idea in place.


I leave the end here up to you guys... try and throw a really basic encounter together, and type it up. I'd be curious to see what you guys can come up with. Give it an honest attempt, don't just dismiss it. I know you've complained about certain encounters, we ALL do... how could you make a better one, or how could you tweak an existing one to make it more fun?

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