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Parting the mists: World of Warcraft turns eight

World of Warcraft's eighth anniversary arrives after a rough year for the franchise. Cataclysm, the expansion that redesigned much of the old world and trumpeted the return of archvillain Deathwing, also saw subscriber numbers drop from their highest point, reached during the Wrath of the Lich King years. Players expressed discontent over the empty zones and the lack of anything to do save run endless heroic dungeons or chain battlegrounds.

It's said that humans often prepare to fight the next war by devising tactics to deal with the last war, and World of Warcraft's newest expansion, Mists of Pandaria, is definitely a reaction to player complaints about the previous one. The past year saw the game transition from one with two separate, segregated endgames to a game with a great deal more variety for players who've reached max level. Whether you loved or hated Cataclysm, you can't deny that the past year has seen more change than the entire expansion dedicated to changing the game ever provided.
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After eight years, the World of Warcraft talent system originally derived from the Diablo II trees was completely removed and replaced. Instead of redesigning the world, the new expansion redesigned the game to a great degree; it adjusted how the combat table worked, introduced the Monk class, and changed how almost every single class played (certain classes like Warlocks were heavily redesigned, and Druids now have four possible specializations).
The introduction of the Raid Finder during the waning days of Cataclysm also changed how some people saw raiding content. It was the first sign of an increased emphasis on accessibility that would become the hallmark of the new expansion; players who didn't have the time to dedicate to a scheduled raiding experience could still get to see the fights. Previously, less than 10% of the people subscribed to the game ever saw Illidan, Kil'Jaeden, Arthas, and other big names, at least not while they were relevant. The Raid Finder meant that you could be a sometimes-player and still say you'd seen the Deathwing fight.

When Mists of Pandaria itself arrived, it brought several further developments in accessibility. Scenarios, essentially an adaption of the public questing found in other MMOs, made use of the already-existing looking-for-group interface to allow three players to run content designed to be harder than soloing but less rigid than dungeons. No tanks or healers are necessary for scenarios, greatly reducing queue times and allowing fresh level 90s to have immediate access to Valor Points for purchasing gear. It's also fair to say that the lessons of Cataclysm's difficult launch heroics was learned, as running a heroic dungeon at level 90 is a far friendlier experience.
These are the games you play while playing the game

World of Warcraft also added its first full-fledged minigame this year. While previous years saw quests that approached minigame status (such as the Plants vs. Zombies-inspired Peacebloom vs. Ghouls), this time around the Pet Battle system debuted to tremendous player interest. Before this year, the many non-combat pets players could collect were merely cosmetic, vanity items to have out while standing around in Orgrimmar or Stormwind. But now, those pets can be leveled up, used to battle other players, and collected via combat with wild critters. Players can devote hours to basically playing Pokemon. So far, it's been a tremendous hit.

Also added this expansion was a radical change in how daily questing works. There are still factions, as there have been in every game, but some of them (the Tillers and the Anglers) effectively make fishing and farming into minigames of their own not unlike Animal Crossing. With the greatly expanded daily quests, scenarios, dungeons, pet battles, raid finder, and the addition of Challenge Mode dungeons, your ability to customize your gameplay is probably heftier than it has been in the entire history of World of Warcraft. If you wish to focus your character entirely on excelling in five-man dungeons, you can do so; the gear is all normalized in these dungeons, so they reward smart play rather than gear.

PvP saw the fewest changes. New battlegrounds were presented, but there was no new kind of PvP, but rather the maintenance of Arenas and Battlegrounds. The soon to be implemented Patch 5. 1 promises a return to a focus on world PvP with its introduction of new Horde and Alliance world PvP hubs in the Krasarang Wilds, however.
A whole new world and the people living in it

There's more to Mists of Pandaria then new game systems and a more eclectic assortment of endgame content, though. When asked what worked and what didn't for Cataclysm, Dr. Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street noted that players just didn't like Cataclysm's scattered game zones.

While zones like Uldum and Deepholm look fantastic, they didn't fit together as well as we'd have liked. In the planning phases, we didn't think that having scattered end game zones would be a big deal. It turned out to feel a lot weirder than expected. Players ended up teleporting to nearly every destination, and it gave Cataclysm a disjointed feeling, detracting from that feeling of exploration and discovery. We learned that giving players a land to explore, a sense of place, is valuable. Ultimately, the scattered zones and the portals both served to kind of shrink the world, when we want to make the world a place you want to go out and be in. We're definitely looking forward to getting back to a continent in Mists. We underestimated how important that was.

This is not a mistake WoW MoP cd key repeated. The past year has seen the debut of Pandaria, a lost continent shielded behind impenetrable mists for 10, 000 years and (from the players' perspective) a whole new world of unknown lands to explore. The sense of place in Pandaria is ever-present, informing every experience players have, and it is absolutely one of the greatest strengths of the new expansion. It feels alive and inhabited, and the wise decision to again disallow flying from 85-90 in Pandaria keeps the new land from feeling small since players can't simply hop into the air to avoid inconvenient monsters along their path.
The creation of Pandaria has also allowed the game to change its visual tone as well. Pandaria looks completely new. Without repeating the alien landscapes of The Burning Crusade, it departs from anything that has appeared in the game to date, giving the visuals the chance to surprise players used to the aesthetic of previous expansions. But what really gives this expansion a sense of discovery is how well the new zones integrate people and places, making the continent feel lived-in. It's not just a place to go and kill monsters; it's a lost land that had its own way of life long before you showed up.

I'd be remiss not to address the Pandaren race, which makes its in-game debut in this expansion after having been around the edges of the Warcraft franchise since Warcraft III. Whether you sneer at them as bait for furries and make Kung Fu Panda jokes or embrace them wholeheartedly, there's no denying that the Pandaren as a race stretch the limits of what's possible in character design with the World of Warcraft engine. This is a game that went into alpha before 2002. The amount of physical expressiveness capable in the Pandaren models' faces is nothing short of astonishing, and it kind of makes my human character look dilapidated by comparison.

Where do we go from here?

During the declining days of Cataclysm, subscriber numbers dropped to 9. 1 million, their lowest point in years. If nothing else, Mists of Pandaria brought players back, sending subs back up above the 10 million mark. It's too early to tell whether it will keep those numbers (and I think it's unlikely that we'll see the 12 million or so of the Wrath of the Lich King era), but there's no doubt that Mists of Pandaria is a significant departure from the game we had before it.

We'll see whether Blizzard can keep to its stated goal of releasing more content more often and shrinking the time between expansions. As it stands, it's been a year of significant changes and additions to the game that's still the biggest dog in the MMO pound.


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WoW Dev Watercooler: Mists of Pandaria PvP Blue Tracker

Now that Mists of Pandaria has been out a few weeks, we wanted to let you all know what we consider working well in PvP, what we want to improve, and what’s coming down the pike. I’m going to split this up into three parts: a discussion of Matchmaking Rating (MMR), class balance concerns, and a sneak peek at some of our PvP plans.

MMR
As I’m sure you’re aware, the intent behind MMR is to match players by skill. This is accomplished by comparing an assigned number (MMR) that adjusts based on the relative MMR of the opponents you win or lose to. Matching players by their effectiveness or performance helps make sure that less experienced players aren’t always getting stomped by expert players, and that competitors at all levels are earning their victories by battling players of roughly equivalent ability. MMR isn’t intended to be a “PvP score”—its primary function is in matchmaking. We’ve seen a lot of players asking for an MMR reset, and to be fair, we had originally planned on doing one (and even announced it beforehand). Some of you may be concerned that high-ranking players won’t have a reason to play and will be able to just sit on their high ratings, perhaps even earning Gladiator without having to fight opponents. While we think there’s some legitimacy to the concern, we don’t think resetting MMR is the right way to address it.

Because MMR is a measure of your performance as a player, we don’t think it makes a lot of sense to reset MMR at the end of a season or expansion. It’s WoW MoP cd key unlikely your skill atrophied significantly more than that of your competition between seasons, so there isn’t a lot of benefit in measuring it again. If we did reset MMR then what you’d likely see is a handful of mismatched games, where experienced players rock weaker players until MMR is calibrated again. That’s a lot of pain for relatively little gain since the MMRs will likely settle back into the same places anyway. It is important to remember that the Conquest point cap, Elite rewards and Gladiator titles are all tied to Team Rating and not MMR. Your Team Rating increases and decreases as you win and lose, and your Team Rating is really the most important number when it comes to Arena PvP.

However, we took a hard look at the way we measure Team Rating, and came to the conclusion that our formula doesn’t do a good enough job of measuring the potential for improvement over the course of a season. While your skill may not necessarily improve over the course of a season, your gear definitely does, and that should have an effect on the relative power of your team. We’re currently working on a change to allow Team Ratings to grow faster over time, as long as you keep playing. We don’t have any specifics to share yet, but this correction will have the added benefit that players who continue playing will be capable of reaching higher Team Ratings, and therefore potential access to rewards, than someone who stops playing and sits on their rating.

As a potential example let’s say the Fatty Goat Steaks have a Team Rating of 2700 and the Mushan Tongues have a Team Rating of 2500. The Fatty Goat Steaks decide their Team Rating is high enough that they’re going to sit out the rest of the season. The Mushan Tongues keep playing each week, their gear gradually improves, and they continue to win many of their matches. Because of the new inflation component, their Team Rating rises, let’s say, 300 additional points to 2800. They are now higher ranked than the Fatty Goat Steaks. If the Fatty Goat Steaks decide to jump back into Arena matches, they can benefit from the inflation as well, but they’re going to have to play and win to catch up. It’s not going to be a system where you have to play every day just to defend your rating, but certainly one where you can’t sit at the top doing nothing and collect your rewards at the end. We’ll have more details on exactly how this system will work as we get closer to its implementation.

We believe this adjustment to the Team Rating formula will have a similar benefit to the “rating decay” that some of you have been asking for, but will feel more positive – rather than feeling like you must keep running just to stay in place (i. e. keep your current score), players that continue participating will be rewarded with higher Team Ratings. As a season wears on, this should also make upper brackets more active as well.

To support this change we’re going to expand the 5. 1 feature of improving the item level of your raid armor and weapons using Valor to now include Justice, Honor, and Conquest points as well. A Gladiator who has purchased a full set of Conquest gear will now have a compelling motivation to keep playing in patch 5. 1, since they’ll be able to improve that set by spending Conquest points.

Class Balance Concerns
We have 34 class specializations in the game now, and the intention here isn’t to go through every one to discuss their strengths and weaknesses. Instead, I’m going to address the ones that players seem to be most concerned about. That’s inherently a subjective call on my part, so I apologize if you think we missed something. Also, simply because something isn’t mentioned here doesn’t mean it’s being ignored. You can see some of the specific changes we are trying out in the 5. 1 patch notes.

Beastmastery Hunters – We agree that stacking too many cooldowns to blow someone up is not interesting, skillful, or fair. (I also want to be clear that with all of these issues, we’re not blaming players for using the tools that we gave them; we’re blaming ourselves. )#) We’re taking a hard look at the various Hunter cooldowns with the intention of reducing their burst. Hunters are receiving a buff in that they will no longer need to swap between Aspect of the Hawk and Aspect of the Fox. We also hope these changes help result in higher representation of Survival and Marksman Hunters.
Warriors – We don’t think Warrior burst is out of control the way Hunter burst is. It’s possible that the combination of Warrior control and burst are too hard to counter, though. The changes we’re looking at are reducing both burst and control. The Glyph of Gag Order in particular is just too powerful for PvP. We think that if you manage to keep a Warrior from you, you should be allowed to get off a cast (and if you’re a Warrior who just can’t stand the thought of that, you can still spec into Storm Bolt. )#) Shockwave, Avatar, and Recklessness are also mentioned a lot, and we’re looking at them as well.

Rogues – We think that Rogue damage in PvP is appropriate—the damage that some other classes are dealing is too high, and we want to adjust those cases before we do any tinkering elsewhere. We still like the Rogue suite of tools and abilities, but we feel like some of these mechanics might have been eclipsed by newer, shinier versions. We are looking at improving Rogue mobility and control in conservative ways.

Mages – We are going to tone down Mage burst and control. We had hoped moving more of their control to talents would force some exclusivity in crowd control options, but it wasn’t sufficient. We increased the cost of Spellsteal significantly to promote its use strategically instead of stealing everything available. We’ve also been trying out changes to Deep Freeze, Frost Bomb, and Pyroblast to reduce burst and control.

Monks – We know some players are concerned about Windwalker viability in Arenas. The Monk class has a high skill cap and they come with a learning curve. The Windwalker PvP bonuses are quite powerful and players aren’t really taking advantage of them yet. We absolutely want the newest class to be popular, but we’re also trying to be conservative and not recreate the situation where the Death Knight dominated PvP and PvE when it first launched. We do want to give the Monk a few more weeks and see where it stands, but we are keeping a close eye on how things develop.

Healing – We agree that off-spec healers are too competitive with dedicated healers. Specs such as Shadow, Elemental, and Balance are supposed to be able to provide some healing—that’s one of their perks—but they shouldn’t be able to substitute for a dedicated healer. The change we are going to try here is to have PvP Power benefit either your damage or healing depending on spec. We are concerned that healing may be too high even for dedicated healers, especially for Restoration Shaman and Holy Paladins, who are incredibly strong in PvP at the moment. After we tone down some of the burst damage coming from Hunters, Warriors, and Mages, we may try the PvP healing debuff at 30% instead of the current 15%, but that won’t happen until after we’ve resolved the damage issues.

Crowd Control – At the moment, we’re satisfied with the state of crowd control. We tried to not add new stackable forms of crowd control to any given spec, but because players have so many crowd control options (say, choosing a stun vs. a snare via talents) the overall number of crowd control spells that a PvP player needs to learn has grown. The pool just became deeper. We know that some of you have concerns, and we’ll keep an eye on it.

Burst – Aside from Hunters, and possibly Warriors and Mages, we don’t think burst is out of control. Other specs that get mentioned by players are Destruction Warlocks, Frost Death Knights, and Shadow Priests. Those are definitely on our radar, but we don’t have any changes to announce at the moment.

PvP Sneak Peek
We have a lot of irons in the fire on the development team, and we’re usually reluctant to discuss ideas that aren’t fully implemented in the game yet. Despite all of our caveats, ideas that we delay or cancel tend to get turned into “broken promises. ” With that in mind, please understand that you may not see some of these ideas in the next patch, or the patch after that, or any time soon. These are just ideas we’re bouncing around:

Loss of Control UI – This is a feature we’ve wanted to build for a long time, and it’s finally close. If you’re feared, you probably realize you’re feared because your character runs around crazy with a big chattering skull over your head. However, if you’re stunned or silenced or disarmed, you don’t often realize it immediately and push your buttons which don’t do anything and as a result the game feels unresponsive. The loss of control UI makes sure you know when something prevents you from using your abilities. It has benefits for solo or instance play as well, but it’s largely a PvP-driven feature.

Rated Battleground Participation Rewards – If you’ve PvPed for any length of time, you’ve been in one of those matches where the final score is so close that victory was a breath away. When we do our jobs right and give you one of those really close matches, it’s sad to not get any reward for participating, so we want to give out some kind of small reward. The rewards will be based on the final score to discourage exploitation.

Battleground and Arena Maps in Dungeon Journal – While veteran PvP players already know all of the Arena and Battleground maps, we think Dungeon Journal is a good way to introduce the basic objectives and map overlay so newer competitors don’t have to learn to swim while drowning.

Improved Scoreboard – It might seem silly to some, but we think small touches matter. Right now, the entire way we end a Battleground hasn’t changed much: it feels a little archaic and isn’t very exciting. We want to have an actual “You win! ” toast, followed by a more exciting scoreboard.

Smoother Battleground Brackets – We have technology now to scale down player items for Challenge Modes, and you might be aware that we scaled up player items during our beta raid testing. We’d like to use the same mechanic to scale up players within the lower level PvP brackets. For example, in the level 15 to 19 bracket, we could make all characters behave as if they were level 19 for purposes of the Battleground. If this idea works well, we could potentially condense lower level brackets and maybe reduce queue times.

Matchmaking – Our Battleground matchmaking system hasn’t changed much since it debuted and doesn’t yet benefit from many of the advances we developed for Dungeon Finder and Raid Finder. The original Battleground queuing system was designed for speed because it only had a single realm of candidates. By incorporating more of the new tech we’ve since developed, we can help ensure that there are a certain number of healers per team or at least a good class distribution.

Honor and Conquest Item Upgrades – We’ve talked about how we’re going to allow players to upgrade raid items with Valor. As mentioned above, we are going to let PvP players increase the item level of their Honor or Conquest gear by spending Honor or Conquest, respectively.

Small Groups joining Rated Battlegrounds – We still don’t want to let solo players queue for Rated Battlegrounds because it would undermine the intent of coordinated group PvP, and then they really just become normal Battlegrounds that reward better gear. However, we’ve heard your concerns that getting even 10 players together to queue for a Rated Battleground can be challenging. Our idea is to let a group of 5 players queue together, which we would then match with another group of 5 players. We think this can still provide a relatively balanced and viable team. One of the crazier ideas on the table would be to convert some of our smaller Battlegrounds, such as Gilneas, to have a 5v5 option.

Tol Barad and Wintergrasp – We are discussing making level 90 versions of these PvP zones that players could queue for to earn bonus honor.
As I said, this is a brain dump of a lot of ideas that a lot of different developers are working on. This is not a list of patch notes and not all of these may come to pass. Please let us know what you think, if we’re on the right track, or if you think we missed a big PvP issue. PvP balance is always going to be really subjective, and while balance is desirable, continual buffs and nerfs that don’t actually solve problems have the potential to be worse than the imbalances they’re trying to fix.

Greg “Ghostcrawler” Street is the lead systems designer for World of Warcraft. He has NEVER impersonated a female in the game in order to get loot.

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How Guild Wars Was Developed and Grew in Popularity

Developed by ArenaNet which is a subsidiary of NCsoft, Guild wars is an episodic online role-playing game. From 2005 all the way to 2007 three episodes were Guild Wars 2 Gold released as well as one expansion pack, this game was developed in order to work in a Windows environment. The game provides two modes: cooperative and competitive.
The core element of this game are the guilds, single players are not required to join guilds however, being part of one has several benefits because more experienced players are able to provide help to those who don't have much experience playing Guild wars. The guild leader is able to register a name for the guild and it is also able to create the guilds Cape which can vary according to the many colors and designs that are available in the game.
When a player joins a Guild the name of the guild is shown in their bracelet. In addition, the leader of the guild is able to acquire a hall or a base where all of the members are able to gather, the headquarters can have several trader items and it can also be furnished with merchants.
This game is quite competitive and it features a Guild Wars 2 CD Key player versus player (PVP) environment which is consensual among the individuals who are playing and can also be arranged as an agreement between guilds. Some of the places where these battles can take place are:
- A team Arena (four on four matches may be arranged in this place)- A random arena (four on four matches with groups for and from random players, the victory conditions may be death match or kill count)- Guild battles- Hero battles- Alliance battles- Competitive missions and many others
People consider Guild Wars' PVP system to be one of the best ever made. With every new patch the classes are adjusted resulting in no overpowered classes and a better PVP experience.
Guild Wars and Hacks: One of the most popular hacks available for this game on the web addresses the amount of money that a player or a Guild may receive, in this case the hack is able to provide unlimited amounts of money to players who use it. However this is a potential danger for your account. ArenaNet uses a continuously updated Anti-Cheating software that constantly scans the memory to determine potential cheaters. If you are caught your account will be closed and can not be recovered.
Due to the fact that this hacks are provided as zip files it is highly recommended for any player who decides to use them to run them through a capable antivirus software in order to detect any possible threat which may damage their computers. The potential danger is huge because some people Buy Guild Wars 2 CD Key try to steal accounts using key loggers which they merge with the hacks' executable files. However if you succeed cheating, then you will experience unbelievable fun in the world of Guild Wars. xiaoqun1009