Blizzard Shortchanging Player Base, 3.2.2 Feral Druids/FoK/Prot Paladins, My Blogging Philosophy, Wintraders Attract

Azael had to take care of some real life things so I will be covering tonight. He'll be back next week in full force.

Blizzard Shortchanging player base

The news is beginning to pour in about the new expansion of World of Warcraft, Cataclysm. I have to say that I'm a little disappointed from what I've been hearing, as it is painfully obvious that Blizzard is running out of ideas.

Some of the things we have to look forward to in Cataclysm is the addition of a reworked Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor so that flying mounts will finally work.

Another is that Blizzard is going to be re-using some of the popular instances of the old days. For example, we just recently heard about Onyxia being re-used as part of an anniversary event with some 232 and 245 item level gear.

Redesigning Onyxia's Lair in Patch 3.2.2 was just the first step. As most of the leveling will take place in revamped areas of Azeroth, so too will the dungeons, allowing players to use them to level from 80 to 85.

As far as I know, Ragnaros will also be back in this expansion.

Sound familiar? No? Naxxramas?

We're also learning that no new continent is planned, which is a stark contrast to what players are used to expecting out of the expansions.

The honest truth is that when a game company starts rehashing content as Blizzard plans to do (and they've already begun doing so) it is clear that either the creativity department is running out of ideas, or they are trying to pave the way for a new MMO. Could they be trying to weaken World of Warcraft's influence by releasing less content so that the new MMO can outshine World of Warcraft?

Further, it is looking like the cap of the next expansion will be 85, an increase of just 5 levels compared to the 10 typically seen from previous expansions. It is possible that they could really just be making the levels twice as time intensive to complete, but I think the real goal here is Blizzard has heard a lot of complaints about people trying to level alts that they want to make it easier for people to reroll and experience end game content.

Whatever the case, Blizzard needs to re-energize their worn out development team so that more ground-breaking, fresh changes can be made like when TBC was released.

3.2.2 Feral Druids/FoK Rogues/Prot Paladins

Among various other news related items today on mmo-champion is something which just blew my mind when I read about it. It is one of those things that you just know won't last through the testing phase for very long.

Predatory Strikes: This talent now also causes the druid’s finishing moves to provide a 7/13/20% chance per combo point to make the next Nature spell with a cast time below 10 seconds instant cast.

As the paladin watchdog who vehemently challenged every change that was not a nerf for the druid class back in TBC, there is absolutely no way this change will stay as is. Currently, in the 2v2 bracket alone, feral druids can tear me to shreds in a few seconds despite the lack of a healing debuff. What this change will essentially do is allow feral druids, who have in my opinion borderline obscene damage, to dump all their energy, shift for an instant cast cyclone on a healer, then shift back and continue pummeling someone into the ground. I've been on the receiving end of feral druids in their current state and watching someone go from 100% to 20% in 2 GCDs is frightening. It will be even more frightening when you cannot actually see the cyclone coming before you are caught in it.

Prediction: this change doesn't last a week before being reverted.

Aside from that spotty patch change, there are some actual good changes that Blizzard deserves credit for.

One of those changes, which I will leave more to Ming to give a more in depth analysis on his opinion, is the death of the FoK spec.

Fan of Knives: The damage done by this ability has been reduced by 30%.
Throwing Specialization: This talent no longer causes Fan of Knives to interrupt spellcasting.

It was expected. I had to deal with a FoK specced rogue in 2v2 a few days ago and it was absurd. I could not get a single heal off and there was enormous damage being put out.

The other big nerf:

This talent now provides 20/40/60% of the paladin’s strength as spell power instead of 10/20/30% of the paladin’s stamina.

This is an excellent change, no doubt about it. The talent Touched by the Light currently gives my paladin about 500 spellpower, but with the new changes  there will be a net drop of about 450 spellpower for protection specced paladins.

And finally, there has been a slight nerf to Judgments of the Just, which is a talent that currently reduces the hammer of justice of protection paladins by 20 seconds.

Judgements of the Just: The reduction in cooldown to Hammer of Justice provided by this talent has been reduced to 5/10 seconds instead of 10/20 seconds.

I still think Blizzard should just remove Judgments of the Just entirely as a protection specced paladin does not need a stun, especially in raids.

And of course I am fully expecting people to say I am a hypocrite because I was specced protection for 2v2, but that doesn't mean I didn't want the spec nerfed. It was a huge oversight by Blizzard to give a spec  (which was not supposed to have any real healing capabilities) so much utility wherein it could be useful in arena at all. So, for that, kudos to Blizzard for making the right decision.

My blogging philosophy

I felt that after writing on WoM for over a month now it is time that I talk a little about what I use as a template for my articles. I feel the need to talk about this because I've gotten a lot of flak from all sides lately regarding my writing here on WoM, and I wanted to explain why I do what I do and take in some feedback from the community.

Generally speaking, a typical blog (assuming it's been a good week for content) consists of news + commentary and drama.

The reason I do news + commentary is because even though everybody can always go to mmo-champion for content updates, not everybody can get the opinion of the changes by someone who is very familiar with the game. Putting that aside, I do understand that sometimes it may seem Jasi-esque to talk about things posted on mmo-champion, but it has to be done. With regards to the commentary portion, hopefully people find my opinion to be somewhat valuable, otherwise I'm probably just wasting my time when I give commentary on something. But, I find it better for the readers to be able to come to WoM to get some outside analysis other than their own when it comes to WoW content.

When I select what news to write about, I try to find something that is going to be moderately informative to read about and not just every little thing that Blizzard is talking about changing. I mean, really, who wants to hear about Blizzard adding in new pets or hairstyles? Maybe if you're really into that sort of stuff then it will jive with you, but I find it boring and i can barely even read through that stuff on mmo-champion myself.

The second and usually last portion of my blog is some form of drama. This is the part of my article that I get a lot of hate over from my peers. Just in the last week alone I've gotten anger and insults by one of my teammates, Douja, Vhell and Kintt to name a few.

I've done my very best to continue providing drama which, believe it or not, is not entirely fabricated as most people in the community seem to think. I try to almost never just "make stuff up" out of the blue.

I've had people in the past message me telling me I was full of garbage with something I wrote, but the truth is that I do usually have some evidence to corroborate everything I write about that is drama related. Furthermore, even though there is truthful information in almost everything I write, I always make it a habit to make it entertaining to read about so people want to come back and read more content by me in the future, which I guess is something that really bothers some people. To reiterate, when I write about something, the goal is to entertain; it's not insult, to injure or to make other people feel bad (although sometimes that does happen). Hence why I try to shy away from personal, ad hominem attacks as much as possible so that the unintended consequence of making someone feel bad is avoided as much as possible.

I've asked myself this numerous times: is it worth the blowback I get? I'd like to think so, as I want to make World of Warcraft as fun to read about as it is to play.

What is the line you cannot cross?

It's tough trying to make the decision sometimes about whether to write about something or not because anything drama-related will almost always step on somebody's toes and potentially damage the relationship with that person. Which is again why I avoid using any form of personal attack in my articles unless I've really got a bone to pick.

I've had some really border-line stuff PMed to me on Gameriot which I thought long and hard about posting simply because it may have either been inapproriate or too off the wall to get people to understand in a simple blog post. Hopefully everybody has enjoyed what I've written about so far.

I'd like to keep doing what I do because although I know some people will be angry with me, I'd like to hope that the vast majority of people find the content enjoyable.

Wintraders attract

It's time for a little bit of news straight out of Tichondrius. Some of you may remember the 2009 online qualifiers (top 8 got sent to the 2009 US Regionals in Germany) where there was accurate reporting of wintrading in the old team eMg lineup of Minor, Chumpjohn and Veyl.  For those who do not remember or are not familiar, their team spiked 250 points on the very last night of the online qualifiers, with tons of fingers pointing at them for wintrading. It turned out to be true as Blizzard did not even acknowledge their 8th place finish after getting fed 250 points from eMg's second team, led by Cerberus.

Chumpjohn, known for his druid play back in TBC with the likes of Serennia in the now infamous Swarm rage video, has also been reportedly spending close to 8 hours on vent every single day with fellow wintrader Minor for the past 6 months. With credentials like these, it would surprise no one if an attraction was developed.

Initially, I thought this entire story was false because numerous sources have told me that Minor has been in a relationship with somebody for the past several months.

However, somebody who knows these two very well found out they were going to the beach one July afternoon and knew the location. My source went ahead with that information and headed to the beach armed with a brand new iPhone and wearing a coonskin cap as camouflage. Below is the picture he  took from behind some brush:



Could this man be the one seen in this video?