The Egotistical Priest
An irreverent and opinionated discussion of the many classes
in the World of Warcraft gaming universe.
The Success of Wrath of the Lich King (Part 2)
by Vonya
Tuesday, we discussed success from a monetary (Blizzard) perspective, and success with regards to tradeskilling in Wrath.
Let’s see how much farther we get today. *grins*
Current Score : 1/1
Achievements
I’m going to go with a great, big, massive WIN for this one. Although I’m sure there are a number of people playing the game who don’t have any achievements they haven’t accidentally stumbled across, most of the people I know and talk to range from spending ridiculous amounts of in-game time trying to get every single achievement, no matter how insane (*cough*Zasp*cough*) to those who think getting the little achievement floosh and ding is a lot of fun, and worth going a little bit out of their way to do some of them.
Whether you’re looking for the highest score, a particular title, a pet or item, or one of the flying mounts, it’s always nice to have a goal of some kind. And with the achievement system, there are now a lot of things to do in down-time, and a lot of goals to do outside of raiding.
Win.
Current Score : 2/1 Blizz
Theorycrafting
The theorycrafting in Wrath makes my head spin, and it keeps on changing, over and over again.
My husband currently plays an enhancement shaman.
Those of you in the crowd who have theorycrafted enhancement shaman lately just got a sympathy headache. Those of you who have no idea why that’s such a bad thing – count your blessings.
Even my two beloved classes have gone through some pretty significant changes. Discipline being a powerful healing tree meant an entirely new way to heal.
Survival hunters topping the damage meters? Most of you remember when Survival huntering was a nonstandard spec, and those hunters who used it endured a great deal of ridicule. Now, it’s a fairly complex spec to master.
Theorycrafting in Wrath is not easy.
Therefore, I’m calling it a Win.
Surprised? Think about it. The fact that it’s not easy means that Blizz is thinking about things, changing them, balancing them, and trying to fix them. They’re trying to make all of the classes and specs more fun. Less single button spam classes and more with actual rotations.
If I was JUST using the enhancement shaman as a measuring stick, it might’ve been a Fail, though. *eyes Blizzard meaningfully* Let’s not go too far.
Current Score : 3/1 Blizz
Questing
Win. Oh, so very much win.
My priest went through Northrend like a comet. She spent most of her time instancing, and any quests she did, she didn’t bother to read.
My hunter, on the other hand, is aiming for doing all of the non-PVP quests available in Northrend. She’s been 80 for a long time now, but only just now finished up Grizzly Hills.
I am absolutely loving the questing in Wrath of the Lich King. The quests are frequently hilarious – anyone else done Mr. Floppy’s Perilous Adventure? I often have to stop and read quest text to the hubby so he knows why I’m laughing.
And when they’re not funny, they’re chain quests. I love that. I love following the various storylines and watching the NPC characters react to the changes.
Blizzard spent a lot of time getting the questing right in Wrath, and they get two thumbs way, way up from this blogger.
Current Score : 4/1 Blizz
Ending
Well, it looks like I’ll have to make this a three-parter. We’ve still got instancing and Raiding left to cover next Tuesday. Those of you doing the math will see that the way it’s currently stacked, Blizz would still come out the overall winner on Wrath – even if I give them a failing grade on the last two criteria, they still get a majority win.
We’ll get to how I rate those last two pieces on Tuesday.
For now, what do you guys think, on Achievements, Theorycrafting, and Questing? Would you give the same grade I did, or do you have a different opinion? Also, anyone seen Zasp? *cough*
March 12th, 2009
Total agreement on theorycrafting. They’ve made it complex enough so that you can’t fall back to a cookie cutter recipe for talent spec and gear, and expect them to carry you. They’ve made it challenging to find the right gear for the job. You almost always have to give up something to get something. It brings diversity to the game.
One thing I would add to the questing comments is the “Phasing” that was added in LK. Quest chains actually have an effect on the landscape, especially those in Icecrown and Storm Peaks. This is a very cool thing.
The one thing I have against the achievement system is how some people have turned what is supposed to be a fun little sub-game into some sort of ugly thing where they rail against every little challenge and obstacle towards the goal of the Big Purple Mount. I think Blizz made a mistake putting tangible rewards into the achievement system. Aside from that, I love it.
March 12th, 2009
I think its too early to judge Lich king raiding. There’s currently no non-recycled multi-boss level 80 raids in the game. I suspect Ulduar and Ice Crown will be the raids people will think of when they look back on Lich King. I suppose you could call ‘fail’ on the fact that its taken so long to get them finished.
March 12th, 2009
The complexity of theorycrafting only applies to some classes. Some of us still have changed so very little that what was true and valid in 1.x is still true and valid now. Not that I want it to change. I like that my class has only undergone relatively minor tweaks since BC was released. You know, once they nerfed us into oblivion. Ahem, but I digress. Yes, it is good that Blizzard is adding more depth and thought to the classes and rotations, though. When I first rolled my (no longer) wee priestie, I had planned from the start to spec disc and that was going to be my arena character, since that was really what disc was for. Now, I’m actually looking at being a raid healer…my how the times have changed.
As for quests, most of them are made of awesome and filled with win, with one exception: the sheer volume of poop quests. While the two in BC were amusing and kind of cute, the vast number of poop related quests is a little on the excessive side in Wrath, to the point that I’m starting to suspect that someone on the quest design team might just be a closet coprophiliac. Either that or they share a brain with Peter Griffin, one of the two. But like I said, most of the quests are just pure awesome. You know your quests are done well when you don’t mind doing them three, four and five times on all your alts and you still read through them each time. There are precious few “filler” quests, those quests that you can tell were just tacked on to fill out a requirement for X number of quests per zone, something I felt was a huge problem in BC (I’m looking at you, Hemet Nesingwary in Nagrand.) You can actually look at all the quests as a whole as being directed toward the overall war effort in Northrend in this expansion. They make you feel like you’re part of an army moving forward and readying for a huge war. Phasing was a big part of this and a major win. I can’t wait to see what else they do with it in the future. Really, I would have liked to see more phasing, but since the technology is still new, it makes sense to only see limited use from it.
Lastly, I agree with Valis in that it’s still too early to start judging raids. Naxx is a retread and it shows. Once Uldaur is out and being farmed, I think we’ll be able to more accurately judge raiding in Wrath.
March 12th, 2009
I heard a rumor a Zasp-like character was seen horde-side, or maybe on another server, trying for even MORE achievements!
March 12th, 2009
Ill start with the following
Achievements – Win?
You either love them or hate them, very few people are in between. How the hell I have both I dont know. My warlock is an achievement hound, when Im on the lock I go out of my way to find something to do. My hunter, well lets just say if I get an achievement it wasn’t my fault
Theorycrafting – FAIL as in EPIC
I followed more than one ghostcrawler thread to have them say well this class is doing to much dps so we are nerfing them. Only to turn around and come back with their damage isn’t enough but we don’t yet have a way to fix that. You mention survival hunters, well the simple fact that the list of changes to buff/nerf a particular branch has been mind boggling. Blizzard just can’t seem to make up their mind how they want us to play, every time they lay down the rules we learn how to play inside them to only have them come back and say – oh we don’t like how that’s working out when everyone in the think tank community said it was going to turn out that way.
Questing – Win
This one is really tough to call, I say win because there are probably enough quests to get to 80 without touching an instance or spending to much time just grinding. To me many of the quests felt forced and just shoved in there so you had enough quests. This may be an end result of them making it easier to solo and level so you didn’t have to do instances. It might have something to do with the shear amount of xp you need to get to 80, Im working on my 4th 80 (lvl 74 enhancement shammy). I would have loved to have more quests that started inside an instance and finished there instead of the ones that chained through half the world to end up requiring an instance run.
@vonya – safe to say Im going elemental/resto with my shaman when I hit 80. Just the thought of having to theorycraft windfury proc’s vs flame tongue vs weapon speed vs main hand vs off hand .. ouch .. the pain ..
March 12th, 2009
Oh noes! Poor Mr. Floppy gets shaken like a rag doll and dies! And then lives! Poor Mr. Floppy.
March 12th, 2009
Achievements – WIN, great time fillers. They fill the inate hunger that most players have for setting goals and checking off completed tasks. They make you feel good and they get spammed to your friends to share / brag / gloat with you.
Quests – WIN for all the reasons already stated.
Theorycrafting – WIN. As most have said, the level of complexity and depth available now give you much to think about, try out, and play with. But for me, I view theorycrafting with the same love Vonya has for pvp combat. I do some minor thinking and do my best to be all that I can be; but the idea of dragging out my old calculus book so I can mathematically prove the best order to cast my spells in is purly strange to me. Its a stitched together undead beast with three arms for cryin’ out loud! You either grab you shield and charge or grab your skirt and run. Just like there is no crying in baseball, there is no calculus in dungeons. I give Blizz kudos for the sheer depth and for confounding the wise.
March 12th, 2009
Vendric wins todays internets by throwing in the random quote from “A league of their own”.
March 12th, 2009
Achievements: they are win except with the exception of the time limited or forced PVP ones, which cause lots of stress. We’ll see about next year though as it’ll all depend on how much is repeated and how many are left after that initial year of achievement hunting. I must say though Achievements + Dungeon/Raids is win because it gives bored people something extra to strive for.
Quests: Win except for Icecrown, I still haven’t been able to pug the 11th billion group quests there. But otherwise thumbs up.
Theorycrafting: As a fellow Enhancement Shaman I understand your husband’s frustrations, though I think I have a handle on it now. All things considered, it’s a lot like Hunter except with Expertise.
March 12th, 2009
Theorycrafting: Not having any noteworthy alts, I have to say I like it that if I went disc. I’d have to do a bunch of figuring to prioritize my spell casting and to rank gear at a fine level of granularity. A change of tree should have a big impact on how one optimizes their play.
March 13th, 2009
Achievements=for the suck
As a tank I have seen more Smooth flawless Instance runs turn to crap because someone wants to try for the achievement without ever looking it up first.
Questing = Win
now if only the quest rewards didn’t suck.
Theory crafting = Who knows? Not this guy. As a rule I don’t do the math, I Steal the info once it has been posted here or one of my other favorite sites =) Then I ignore everything and make my own Spec/Gear list.
March 14th, 2009
Hai from a fellow healer!!! *waves frantically* (but I’m the barky type – I hope that’s not a problem *bites lip*)
I just found your blog, and I’m glad that I did =D I really like this series you’re doing, rating Blizzard on various components of the game. It’s a good read – can’t wait to see part 3!
March 16th, 2009
The questing is great, there’s some fantastic stuff there. I’m not entirely sold on the phasing, though; if you’re not at the same phase as someone then you can stand in the same place as them and not see them or help them. So if there are people you regularly play with, it’s inconvenient being on a different phase to them.
I do like how the quests are structured, with not nearly as much gratuitous running around as in vanilla wow, but also the way they tell the story and the sheer variety of things they have you do.
March 16th, 2009
I think it’s very appropriate to judge raid content at this point, waiting on new content is an excuse. The fact not enough content was released is in itself a defining quality. Plenty of time has passed and well they failed on it miserably.
March 17th, 2009
[...] it to? Vonya sets out to find out in what has turned into a three part post: you can find parts one and two on the site now, and part three is set to come out tomorrow.So far, the answer is yes: while the [...]
March 17th, 2009
Like someone noted above, Achievements are a hate or love thing.
Personally, I completely and utterly HATE them with a passion.
They are a sad excuse to milk old content and milk new content again and again. Example, Achievements are in placed of actual real encounters rather then making the actual encounter hard. This removes all ‘epic-ness’ from encounters and hardcore raiders or casuals that just prefer harder content are left in the dark.
There is no real reward for achievements a part from epeen for how many points you can show others, most achievements are time wastes with very little being about real skill. Even achievements that you think require skill, just really require a whole heap of luck moveover anything else.
Grinding Achievements pretty much is masturbation, but with even less benefits. It doesn’t affect the game what so ever and are not fun.
Again, Achievements are a sad, sad excuse for not having a polished game. Instead of giving the grinds to raiders for hard encounters so at the end of their hard work they have something to show for it (e.g. areas no one else sees and gear no one else has).
TBH this blog also sounds sad, money as a sub heading? ‘Theory-crafting as one? WTF? Theory-crafting has always been hard, and as someone who got deep into the theory-crafting of the whole new class early in the xpack, I can say that there really isn’t any real difference between this, TBC or wotlk. You cannot seriously think money/theory-crafting are viable sub-headings! Obviously you in Vanilla or even in TBC weren’t smart enough to figure out about theory-crafting and getting the most out of your class, or you’d know that it is basically the same all the way through… If anything the mechanics have become more simple, just look at ret Paladins, they got majorly dumbed down in the pre-xpack patch. And any actual hard work into raid design has gone down the toilet because Blizz wants all classes to be the same and because the raid encounters are able to be done by 4 year olds.
These whole series of posts just sound like a bad excuse for the blogger to fanboy-up to Blizzard for what was an obvious start to an expansion pack. Considering he gives points to Blizzard on the most random things and can’t even see how damaging and lazy achievements are.
March 17th, 2009
Correction;
These whole series of posts just sound like a bad excuse for the blogger to fanboy-up to Blizzard for what was an obvious *bad* start to an expansion pack. Considering he gives points to Blizzard on the most random things and can’t even see how damaging and lazy achievements are.
March 17th, 2009
@ Puntos
I agree, this is a very very sad place. We have missed you! Your constructive feedback and delightful witicisms have made our morning sparkle. I especially liked how you pointed out how bad the subheadings were. We’ll be sure to let our masters at Blizzard know how the people really feel about things, right after they bring us our mid-morning martinis. We do, afterall, expect a level of pampering after all this hard work of trying to fanboy-up to them. We’re sorry for the bad excuse, though. We’ll work on it.
I hear a new patch is coming up! Oh man, wait until you see the fanboy-upping (sorry, new term to me) we can do once THAT hits!
Dammit, I wanted SALT on the rim of this glass, not ‘frosting’. What the blazes is this? Did you threaten my martini with salt? I want to see CRYSTALS, Ghostcrawler! CRYSTALS WITH MANA IN THEM. NO. NO CRYING. JUST GET ME ANOTHER ONE.
March 23rd, 2009
I hate the questing in Wotlk. I generally am not a fan of questing, I hate “go there, kill things, come back for points, and go by yourself”. So it’s not surprising that the funny text didn’t wuite do it for me. I think the questing here is lots better than previous expansions.
But,
I. Hate. Phasing.
Here is why. I am a healing priest, and I don’t like quests or killing things. But, I do like playing with my friends, and helping out my husband with things like quests while he was going for loremaster. No one in our guild, a raiding guild of 80s, could help him with the last couple group quests he needed in ice crown….why? because of phasing. This is a social game, why make it impossible for friends at different quest stages (not even different levels!) to play together? Why make it impossible to get groups for group quests? Everyone has to be at the same stage in the questline and the zone. Silliness, and a big enough problem for blizz to get a thumbs down from me on questing.