Better Raids through Command Structures

Beating a new raid boss encounter in WoW - and every other MMO I've seen so far - is a three step process. First you have to research the encounter and find out how it actually works, then you have to turn this information into a battle plan, and finally you need to execute that plan reasonably well in order to kill the boss.
If you've ever wiped for a lot of times in a row on the same boss trying to implement a strategy that you knew as correct, you'll know that this can quickly get boring. There is no element of surprise, no adapting to circumstances, you simply need to perform just as the battle plan demands and everyone else needs to do the same.

Itemization 3.3: A New Hope (?)

Lately I've had a couple of people whispering me helpful hints on how I had forgotten to put my healing gear on. You see, my shaman is wearing two pieces of elemental tier nine gear in her healing set and her cloak has hit on it. This is far from uncommon with informed restoration shamans these days because in some cases the DPS gear is just plain better than that designed for healing, especially with the low emphasis on mana in current raid content.
Now I am seriously considering to get the elemental totem instead of the restoration one from the new tier of badge gear. Its bonus is triggered by Flame Shock - not normally a spell a healer would use - but is simply better than the bonus triggered by the restoration totem. The judgement is still out on which of these is better in the long run, but many shamans are already complaining about crappy itemization and how they shouldn't be forced to wear DPS gear when healing. I actually quite like it.

Icecrown Impressions

With all my ranting about 3.3 I was still interested to see how the new raid instance has turned out and was therefore actually happy to get selected for my guild's first foray into it. Well, technically our first two forays but Wednesday was, well, patch day. Advantages to patching a day later my ass.
Anyway, we actually got into the instance late Wednesday night and then without issues on Thursday. You'll find my first impressions from all four available bosses below the break.

Patch Tidbits

Patch 3.3 is upon us, or so they claim. I still haven't finished downloading yet and I would bet that the servers over here aren't even up. Reports indicate that the launch of Icecrown Citadel was riddled with lag and other server issues - as always when we get a new content patch.
With the patch we also get a new official cinematic, aptly called Fail of the Lich King.

Healing the Day After Tomorrow

World of Warcraft patch 3.3 is expected to hit the day after tomorrow (or tomorrow if you live on the other side of the Atlantic ocean), bringing with it the brand-spanking new Icecrown Citadel raid instance to entertain us for months and months to come. If you are raiding as a healer you will have noticed that healing is quite broken at the moment - even Blizzard has admitted that there are issues.
Some issues will be addressed in the patch, others will have to wait for cataclysm.

Christmas Raiding

Blizzard poster Datth posted the following on the tech support forums a couple of days ago, hinting at the release date for World of Warcraft's newest patch:

"We only provide mirror links for full client patches. Background downloads do not count. You have around 1+ month to download this file so we're not really worried about your speed. :)"

-Datth (emphasis mine)

This doesn't really tell us a lot. MMO Champion's Boubouille doesn't believe it will take that long, and if it does, 1+ month is still very inaccurate. This could mean, however, that we get the patch right before Christmas. That got me thinking - who would want a content patch at that time?

Like Butter Scraped Over Too Much Bread

If you are anything like me, you have probably been playing the last few months in World of Warcraft bored and annoyed with Blizzard's decisions but didn't stop playing because there was a shimmer of hope in Icecrown Citadel at the horizon. The issue with horizons is that, the more you travel towards them, the faster they move away from you.
The lead encounter designer for World of Warcraft, Scott "Daelo" Mercer, posted yesterday on the topic of Icecrown Citadel access progression.
And, merlin's beard, it sucks.

Defining Content

There's been a lot of talk on the optimal difficulty level for raids, I even had my own post about it a few days ago. One argument on the pro-easy side is "everybody should be able to see the content." I've countered this in the past with the question of why you would need to see new content while there is so much old content you haven't seen yet. Maybe it's the definition of content that's actually the core issue here.

Healer Burnout

This is a post I've been meaning to write for a while, yet other stuff always got in the way. Casual Raid Leader Starman wrote a post a while ago on why wrath is burning out healers and why healing in wrath isn't fun. His main reason: Fights are too hard for healers. Seriously.
Now, I just had a post on difficulty and I won't go back into discussing whether boss encounters in Wrath of the Lich King are harder or easier to heal than they were before. Instead, let's have a look on why healers really burn out and whether that happens more often in Wrath than before.

Levels of Difficulty

The discussion about whether WoW has become too easy or not is hardly new, but Mimetir, a guest poster over at World of Matticus brought it up again. This prompted Larísa to write a strong post on how she's sick of hearing people claim that WoW is too easy these days if they haven't beaten all the content yet.
She is correct in many points and I'll address that below, but here's one thing I am sick of: People claiming that just because there is something left that I haven't managed to do yet, the difficulty is fine.

Endgame Killed the Levelling Content

Keen over at Keen and Graev's Gaming Blog wrote an interesting post on how current MMO design is too vertical. Content is bypassed quickly in order to get closer to the endgame. When is the last time you have actually cared about gear while levelling?
A huge part of current MMOs is only there to guide the players to the maximum level where the real game takes place. I know I myself usually rush to the new maximum in WoW whenever an expansion hits. I don't care about the content in between; I don't care about crafting (other than getting that to max level too,) etc. Keen calls this “concentrated action” in a follow-up post. Instead of having a lot of things to do all over the place, we are funnelled into a linear progression path to the endgame.

Ze Items, Zey do Nothing

No, I'm not suddenly a subscriber in the blue Ulduar theory. Clearly gear has a strong effect in World of Warcraft, both on performance and as a motivator. What it isn't, is interesting.
Most people I've talked to dislike the incredibly unimaginative Trial of the Grand Crusader gear, but the issue I'm talking about is as old as WoW itself. For one, gear isn't very varied (and will be worse with Cataclysm.) But even if it was, the stats would just be very boring and unimaginative.

Utility is Dead (or is it?)

We've all heard of "bring the player, not the class" and are getting used to the fact that virtually every class and spec in WoW brings some kind of buff to the raid. Not all MMOs handle raid utility this way and in fact WoW didn't always either. I distinctly remember the time where you absolutely wanted a shadow priest or two in the raid for their mana regeneration, even though their DPS was sub-par. Survival hunters were only taken for their debuff and shamans switched groups mid-fight do chain Heroism on a DPS group.

When Casuals go 2D

Much talk can be found on the blogosphere about the meaning (and lack thereof) of the words casual and hardcore. Euripedes of Critical QQ wants to abolish these terms altogether while Arioch over on Clearcasting proposes a scale of seriousness instead. There used to be a discussion over at WoWRadio that casual and hardcore don't exist anymore because guilds like Ensidia often spend less time playing than your average raiding guild - just because they are so good.
Do you see the issue here?

Of Elephants and Tigers

I linked to an article by Tobold a while ago in which he argued that the MMORPG market might be saturated. It is true, we see various new MMOs launch with reasonably high sales numbers but a very low amount of long-term subscribers. Is Blizzard god and everybody else just fails at making games?

So long, Ghostcrawler, and thanks for all the fish.

We are gathered here today to bid farewell to our beloved Ghostcrawler, who will always be remembered for bringing customer interaction at Blizzard to a new level. Yesterday, at 8:51 pacific daylight time he passed away into the land of the silent.
Alright, obviously Ghostcrawler didn't die or I wouldn't make such a cheesy opening. He did post this, however:

"I always said that when my posting was doing more harm than good that maybe it was time to stop. I think I'll at least chill it out a little. I will continue to read the forums though. If you want to make sure the WoW developer see your feedback, this is still a good place to post."

- Ghostcrawler

The Wolpertinger Must Stay Free!

Those of you who live in the US and have a mind for seasonal events will likely have had encounters with pink elephants - excuse me, elekks - and maybe even the elusive wolpertinger. Some lucky Europeans had that opportunity too - for a few hours after the weekly maintenance. After that, these Brewfest quests were disabled again as it is apparently intended.

I, Vork

It's been common knowledge for ages that there are different types of players in MMOs that want different experiences. Richard Bartle already published his paper Hearts, Clubs, Diamonds, Spades: Players Who Suit MUDs in 1996. That paper defines four central types of different gamers: achievers, explorers, socializers, and griefers.
A more recent distinction that has come up in the community is, that between hardcore and casual players. Recent events, such as the Cataclysm discussion, lead me to believe that there are far more categories than that.

Blizzcon Dissected - Part 2: Dumbification

Welcome to the second part of my Blizzcon series. You can find the first part here. Today I will look into various bits and pieces that we got from day one and then go deeply into the itemization disaster they announced. No, it won't be pretty.

Blizzcon Dissected - Part 1: Goblins and Worgens and Titans, oh MY!

The first day of Blizzcon is over and man do we have some news. Some people have had their faith in Blizzard renewed by these. My faith still is shaken, but it's definitely not all bad. In this multipart series I will dissect the announcements and let you know what I think about them. This is a blog after all.
Check out World of Raids and MMO Champion for full details of the changes.