Loot specialization is really cool and possibly the thing I was looking forward to the most in this patch. The idea is that you right click on your portrait and can choose a spec that you want the loot to roll on. For instance, you can choose blood, frost or unholy or your current spec. This can occur for scenarios, LFR and quests and you can switch at anytime. What makes this great is LFR in particular. This should solve a lot of problems for people who queue with the wrong spec for loot. Although you’ll never get away with bad tanks and healers, it should reduce the problem that seemed out of control before. Also, this feature makes questing a lot more convenient since you no longer have to switch specs and lose any built up resources (especially as a spellcaster).

The unlucky rolls bonus is another feature that compelled me to play. The way it works is that every time you use a coin on a reroll for loot, you can get a bonus on the next roll if you just got gold. If you win loot, I think the percentages are reset (meaning, even if you didn’t use a coin on a reroll). I don’t know how much the percentage is increased but I heard that Throne of Thunder’s base change is somewhere around 14-17%. Usually, after 1-2 rerolls I’ll get a piece of loot so my guess is that the bonus is increased around a similar amount.

Something I’m uncertain about with regards to the unlucky bonus streak is if it gets reset between instances and raid resets. The problem is that there’s no visual cue to alert the player if the bonus is being applied. It would be a nice feature just to demonstrate that they’re in line for something and to show just how long this bonus exists.

Something else that I’ve noticed when it comes to loot is the lower percentages of dropping loot as my guys gear up. For instance, my druid ran through all old content this week and didn’t see a single piece of gear. I had set the loot mostly to her offspec but her main spec is ilvl 481/483 thereabouts. Without using any elder charms, she got nothing. So my theory is that once you hit ilvl 480, the game might lower your percentage to win loot. Compare that to before where both she, my Shaman and Death Knight geared up really quickly when the increase in drop rates occurred for pre-patch 5.2 LFRs. I suppose then that this will just motivate players to try running the treasure scenario to get their coins if they want to get offspec loot in the situations where their gear is pretty good already.

Lastly, I started working on my warrior. Already, I’m at the second little village in the Jade Forest and I managed to hit level 86. I feel that by the time she completes the area she’ll either be 87 or very close to hitting 87. Short form: 33% experience reduction is pretty gnarly.

Another thing I want to check out is the upgrade system. Since I’m pretty focused on getting the new loot, I don’t really want to spare any valor points for the upgrades. But they are cheaper. The only upgrade I’m considering is the BoA inscription staff for my spellcasters. That actually might be a really good investment since the damage will be huge once my priest and mage hit 90.

I haven’t tried the new scenarios as of late but have wandered around the Barrens and Durotar just to check out the zones. I believe you pretty much have to complete those scenarios before really partaking in the following quests leading to the siege on Ogrimmar raid coming up. But it was interesting to say the least seeing some changes around the zone. They did remove the CRZ aspects to both areas at least for level 90’s that I can see. I haven’t stepped outside on my lower level toons to see if that’s changed. But overall not as many visual changes as I had anticipated.

I did try LFR Throne of Thunder again. Part 1 is becoming pretty fun now that I have a better idea of what to expect. I managed to finish up to Part 3 so I just need the final wing before completing it on my hunter. It’s been a real mixed bag so I think the more practice I get in, the better I’ll get on it overall. But it’s nice just being able to push these spots a little more.

With regards to PVP, I’ve heard a lot of people complaining but I suspect that it’s mostly the assholes who go around ganking people in the world. I might get into it eventually but I want to focus on leveling my toons and gearing my 90s up.

The post World of Warcraft: Patch 5.3 Experiences Thus Far appeared first on Kontroversial Keith.

The leveling process is quite long and arduous. I would say that the average zone can take 4-6 hours easily maybe more. Despite the amount of experience, everything is relative so those numbers really have no meaning at the end of the day outside of a general calculation that factors in the number of quests, mobs and gathering. People already are complaining about the length of time required to level.

Truthfully, I think it’s perhaps slightly more arduous than Cataclysm. Cataclysm would allow you to gain about one level per zone (except for the starting ones). But usually, I would do one level per day on a toon. But it’s hard to say since the way the zone achievements are handled now aren’t by count, but by completing quest lines.

In terms of the questing zones themselves, I felt that only the first two areas were enjoyable. Dread Wastes definitely was a horrible zone. I attempted to finish leveling my paladin to 90 there but I found the quests to be difficult because of the mobs being level 90. So I had to step back and focus on the Townlong Steppes. Quite frankly, towards the end I gave up trying to read every little quest and just plowed the remaining levels to 90. I figured with my other 9 level 85s, I had plenty of time to read each quests down the road.

Right now, I think the mobs are pretty tough. Many have a ridiculous amount of life so you won’t be able to faceroll through them, especially as you’re leveling. Sometimes it can get really frustrating with all the people leveling up. That causes high respawn rates. So quite often I’ve found a ninja spawn right next to me while I’m downing another mob (or two).

The quests themselves are more or less the same. Some are irritating but I don’t think I’ve found any that were as frustrating as a few Cataclysm quests. I do like some of the cinematics though. The best ones by far was the kung fu training sequences. As a fan of old school Shaw Brothers, I couldn’t help but smile as we saw a nod to the training sequences.

While leveling, I’m also occasionally working on my professions. My mining and blacksmithing are already maxed out. This time around the amount of mats have significantly become more profound. So as I gather spare ore with my paladin, I’ve been sending them to my Death Knight and Warrior (who are jewelcrafters and engineers respectively) to work on their professions. Already, I’ve maxed out my JC skill while my engineer will eventually need to level to progress any further.

This expansion is definitely a massive grind. There’s an understated emphasis where Blizzard hints for you to “slow down.” Some say that it’s because they don’t want people to consume content too quickly. However, I feel that’s the wrong approach because of alts as well as those who simply lack the time to spend attempting to max out their characters.

For one thing, the upper content is tied to rep grinding, where the best gear is associated to various factions. So in order to obtain that gear, everyone will be required to do daily quests to unlock venders and additional factions. The dailies are pretty much an advanced form of the Molten Front and there’s no easy way to get around them as tabard rep grinding isn’t allowed in this expansion with these factions.

Also, the amount of Valor Points gained in instances is quite small. Once per day for doing a Heroic, you only get 60 as opposed to the 150 in Cataclysm. You still are capped off at 1000 per week. However, the way one can hit that cap every week is through the combination of running heroics, doing scenarios (which gives a small VP award too), LFR, but most importantly doing your daily quests. I haven’t done a complete calculation, but with the current factions that I have open, I estimate that I can receive around 60 VP from dailies (where each daily provides 5).

You can attempt to do a VP grind via Heroics. However, the reward is pretty insubstantial after your initial one as it’s reduced to 30. Unless you’re gear grinding, running heroics for anything but gear and the daily is pretty much a wasted effort.

The other massive grinding aspect is the way Motes of Harmony are handled. As they are BoP, you pretty much have to grind with each individual toon to receive any. For crafters, Motes of Harmony are pretty much a nightmare. While any mob can drop them in Pandaria, the rates are pretty low. There are some mobs that have a higher drop rate, but those are typically elites so you’ll find it pretty challenging to farm them reliably.

Moving on, I want to talk about my experiences with Heroics. It was said that Heroics would be tuned to Wrath of the Lich King in terms of difficulty. I think that’s not entirely true. It’s definitely a mix between Cataclysm and WOTLK. I think the mechanics are more intriguing than the facerolling mechanics in WOTLK. So that aspect is closer to Cataclysm. However, I think removing the one shot mechanics is probably where Blizzard is attempting to be more forgiving on this end. I did Scarlet Monastery and Temple of the Jade Serpent on Heroic mode. Those weren’t bad but I was with a friend’s guild. However, when I pugged Shado-Pan Monestary, despite making through it, my PUG experience was quite frustrating. Most of that was because the healer was a jackass and the tank had an attitude towards the end. So if the intention was to make the pugging experience better, then I still think it’s something Blizzard needs to work on. Or perhaps just kill the LFG and LFR and promote more CRZ.

Next is scenarios. I tried two outside of the Theramore one. One wasn’t bad but the other (the brewery one) was bad. I think it’s because no one had any idea what to do. I got blamed for not healing some jackass warrior, despite the fact that there were these healing circles that you could use to replenish one’s health. So these two experiences have led me to believe that the pugging experience in general is something that Blizzard needs to work on.

Here’s the thing. PUGs simply have a certain mentality about them. The problem is that you’re queued up. There’s no real complex logic outside of perhaps your class combination and perhaps some timing logic. But the whole LFG, LFR and now scenarios situation are massively problematic because of the sheer randomness of the type of players that group together.

The interface for these things need to be upgraded. You need an advanced tab that functions more or less like a dating service. It needs to survey the players in the type of play style and personality type. The thing is that dungeons can be as easy or as hard as Blizzard wants. But with the way groups are put together, then they’ll never resolve the core issue, which is the social experience. I’m certain that everyone wants to experience a fun game at the end of the day. But you really need the right type of people who want to play together.

Going back to MoP content, one thing that I thought was great was bringing back world bosses. I got into a PuG for the Sha of Anger and it was great. I believe we had around 37-38 people. But I thought that was far more fun than LFG. I think the reason why it’s fun is that you’re basically grouping up with a ton of people, you’re zerging, there’s no thought process, it’s action based and you don’t have to worry about being blamed because of the people requirement.

That kinda reminded me of the end of WOTLK where you had the raid of the week. By that point, most people had outgeared the older WOTLK raids. So the incentive was to give some frost badges and vanity loot. But you just had to get into a group and get through it. When you were done, you gave each other congratulations and would see each other the following week. That’s the structure of gaming that Blizzard should aim for imo.

Besides that, I want to go into pet battles. This probably is one of the best things they’ve done in the game. It’s simple and fun. No real stress where people have to jump around, avoid stupid shit, etc. Just grab your pet and go beat up other things in the wild. I think the real why it’s fun is that it’s simple. But that’s what I think can make a game great. I think when Blizzard adds all these fancy mechanics to fights, they really just are shooting themselves in the foot. All they do is just attempt to appease one group, which is the hardcore players. So the only thing they should focus on for them are the challenge modes. I refuse to do them for the same reason I like the pet battles.

There’s also their version of farmville. I haven’t gone very far into it. I heard it’s tied to the new cooking mechanics. But it felt more like a daily grind than something I could enjoy. But then again there’s a lot in the game to do at the moment so it really isn’t a huge priority for me.

The mechanic that I have enjoyed thus far is Cross Realm Zones. Although I know there’s a lot of complaints and that the phasing issue really screws things up, the main positive that I see is inviting friends from another realm into yours. An example is how my friend’s wife is on a PVP server. She was getting ganked on her realm. So I invited her to my realm and she could quest peacefully. Not to mention I could help her out. The only issue that I’ve found in CRZs is the logic behind invites and where people end up. I think that the realm of the inviter should by the destination. Doesn’t matter about the level, number of people, etc.

That said, one thing that might be interesting in the future are cross realm guild linking. Meaning that it would be interesting (and cool) for guilds in different realms to be able to link together. I think for things like 25 man raids, this could be a huge boon.

Anyway, my main goal now is just gear my paladin up while leveling alts and professions. The grind won’t be fun. However, I am looking forward to the next patch. Not sure if that’ll help but at least the new content sounds promising.

The post Mist of Pandaria Initial Thoughts appeared first on Kontroversial Keith.

Today, my friends asked me to join up with them again to do a few achievements for Forge of Souls. Once again, I was summoned and entered their realm. After completing the instance, we decided to hit Serpentshrine Cavern (SSC) for some achievements and transmog gear. I still was on their realm. After finishing it up, we decided to keep the group but hang around a bit more.

So I ended up back in Shattrath and found myself once again in my friend’s realm. We decided to go check out the Auction House and I found that it was closed to me. Afterwards, I quit the group and found myself back on Saurfang. That intrigued us so we decided to play around a bit to see how the whole CRZ worked.

Turns out it’s somewhat convoluted. The rules aren’t exactly clear. For instance, it seems that if you’re the leader of the group and invite a higher level toon, you’ll go to that toon’s realm. But when you’re of equal level, then it seems that the other person will appear on your realm if you’re once again the group leader. What was kinda nice was that my friend’s PVP timer eventually wore off when he came to my realm. So we figured that coming to a low population PVE server is advantageous as he could go around looking for rare spawns in peace.

But the whole thing to me is that now we have the possibility of doing cross realm raids. This is going to be great for MoP since I’m located on a low population Oceanic server and have trouble finding people on at my time. However, the few people in my guild can accompany my friends and I to larger raids in the future potentially. One possible thing is that we might be able to get 25 mans in the future given the ability to recruit people from multiple realms.

At any rate, this ought to be quite interesting. I’d love to see more of this in the future.

The post World of Warcraft: Where Cross Realm Zones Shines appeared first on Kontroversial Keith.

Here’s Blizzard’s interpretation of what CRZ should’ve been:

“Hey, even after revamping all of Vanilla areas, people still won’t quest in Desolace!”

One person at Desolace, “Wait, I’m here!”

“Ah! That means, we need to put more people in there so that it’ll be fun and social for the guy leveling!”

Um, Desolace is empty because it’s a shit place to level. The vast majority of the zone is just boring and people won’t go there because there are better spots to level. People didn’t go there in Cataclysm because most people probably already had an 80th level toon and wanted to hit 85 to go raiding. Any veteran players figured that questing is a complete waste of time for the most part and just instance grind their way to 80. The few people who do level in Desolace do it maybe once and promptly forget the whole place as it’s dreary and boring overall. Putting a little bit of foliage did nothing to make the area more appealing.

Instead, the places where you really see people are popular spots so that they can grab ore and other resources. This doesn’t sound like the way the CRZ was originally intended. It sounds like Blizzard’s disease called…..

LAZY PROGRAMMING

But let’s put that aspect aside and attempt to define what CRZ should’ve been all along….

Player in LFG.

“Hey, this guy in the dungeon is pretty cool. But damn, he’s in another realm and I probably won’t ever see him again. Let’s exchange email/battle net tags so we can keep in contact!”

New Friend in Other Realm.

“Man, my realm sucks because I’m in an Oceanic realm where everyone is awake at 4am my time and I can’t really play with this guy I just met. But hey Mist of Panderia is around the corner and more than likely, I’ll be soloing content again for the entire expansion.”

Zing…..

The way CRZ should’ve been is those who want to group up across realms should be able to the way LFG (and some raids) are being done now. Exchange email or Battle.net tags. Then hit a special button that allows a player to bring others in their realm (and vice versa).

Oh wait! But now we’re hurting Blizzard’s revenue because this will lower the incentive for overpriced realm transfers!

No, because most of the time players will more than likely solo the content they’ve been wanting to do. Many players want small populations to either avoid gankings on PVP realms or to avoid social griefing and have more resources available to them. So grouping up still means that the resources will be more limited overall. However, for a few hours now and then, players who group up would be able to at least enjoy hanging out and leveling together.

At any rate, Blizzard fucked up big time in this. They had a huge opportunity to improve the world but completely screwed it up, along with LFR loot rules in patch 5.0.4. It’s doubtful even with fixing bugs that CRZ is going to improve the perception of Blizzard as well as the social aspects. But Blizzard is overhill and their shit does stink without them being able to tell anymore. Good thing I got a busy CTO position because damn I’d hate to waste more time on a shitty ass feature.

The post World of Warcraft: Cross Realm Zones, the Clusterfuck appeared first on Kontroversial Keith.