Cloud Serpent Mount, Dynamic Quest Rewards, Blue Posts

It's April 2nd in enough timezones to stop the sillyness! Yes, everything was a fake, including the new Jaina model with her awesome tramp stamp. We're going back to regular news, and to an insane amount of blue posts we've missed/skipped over the past week.

Cloud Serpents Mount Video Preview
The Cloud Serpents are definitely the most popular mount in Mists of Pandaria so far and I finally found the time to make a real preview of the mount with actual, in-game footage. I also added a couple of raw footage for all the recolors for those of you who want to spend a little more time inspecting one specific color.



Mists of Pandaria Dynamic Quest Rewards
One of the interesting change made to leveling in the expansion is the quest rewards. In Mists of Pandaria, quests no longer have predetermined rewards and they have been replaced with dynamic rewards depending on which class you're playing.

For example, this is the rewards for the first horde quest of the expansion, from the point of view of 3 different classes.


Each class gets a different weapon, and hybrid classes get to choose between multiple weapons based on their specialization. You don't have to run a bunch of quests that won't give you anything useful for your plate tanking gear, and you don't have to spend forever trying to figure out where you can get an upgrade for your weapon!

In the case of this quest, this is all the possible weapon rewards you could get:

Level Type Slot Name
372CrossbowPhysical DPSRangedScavenger's Crossbow
372DaggerPhysical DPSOne HandScavenger's Dagger
372MacePhysical DPSOne HandScavenger's Club
372StaffPhysical DPSTwo HandScavenger's Combat Staff
372StaffSpell DPSTwo HandScavenger's Divining Rod
372MaceSpell SpiritMain HandScavenger's Scepter
372StaffSpell SpiritTwo HandScavenger's Meditation Staff
372AxeMeleeOne HandScavenger's Handaxe
372MaceMeleeTwo HandScavenger's Battlemace
372MaceTankOne HandScavenger's Battlehammer
372AxePhysical DPSOne HandScavenger's Axe
372DaggerPhysical DPSOne HandScavenger's Blade
372MaceMeleeOne HandScavenger's Mace
372SwordMeleeTwo HandScavenger's Greatsword

Of course the system could get much more interesting as leveling progresses, with instance quests always rewarding you with an useful blue item for your specialization, etc ...


Class Blue Posts
Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
Death Knight (Forums)
Death Strike Healing not Working
There is a bug that prevents Death Strike from healing at all at the moment on beta. This is the kind of thing we should be able to hotfix. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Druid (Forums)
Allow me to play as Balance without looking ridiculous.
We want to clarify a bit more about the Moonkin model update being "in the schedule." Essentially this means that though it is on the way, it is not currently intended to be ready for the launch of Mists of Pandaria. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Monk (Forums)
Monks Aren't Fun to Level
There are apparently some bugs in what levels monks get certain abilities. There should not be big level gaps in any class until you start hitting the 50s.

Overall, classes should still get new abilities at about the same rate they always did. We shifted some around to where they would make more sense (e.g. Shadow priests need some heals, but not nearly as many as a Disc priest) but those gaps are made up for by old talents that are no spec-specific spells. Using priests as an example again, all Holy priests get Chakra instead of having to spend a (no-brainer) talent point on them.

Feedback on specific monk abilities is appreciated. We just didn't want you to blame the talent changes for an apparent lack of abilities. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Chi Wave
The design of Chi Wave is that it jumps from hostile to friendly to hostile to friendly and so on. It prefers the closest target, and in the next build will try to perfer players over pets and guardians. The way we use it internally is to cast it on the tanks, which causes it to hit the boss, and then back to the tank and so on. We agree missing is pretty punitive, but I believe Mistweavers don't yet have the Spirit to hit conversion mechanic of healers. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Monk Feedback
Thanks for the feedback, everyone. Monks are a new class, and we will be iterating on them quite a bit and often we change mechanics a lot faster than we make beta builds. With that in mind, we wanted to clarify our design intent on some of the abilities:

Dizzying Haze -- We increased the threat and lowered the energy. We're not crazy about making it do damage because then it risks competing with other Brewmaster abilities. We really don't want Dizzying Haze used rotationaly on single-targets. We also run into whether or not the ability should break CC if it does damage.

AE tanking -- We agree that monks need a little more ability to cleave.

Missing Jabs -- It isn't intended to lose all Energy on a miss. We will fix that. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Paladin (Forums)
Protection Paladin Design
You shouldn't have to "wait to do things" much. The Protection rotation should include Avenger's Shield, Crusader Strike, Judgment, Consecration and Holy Wrath, with Shield of the Righteous and Word of Glory as finishers. You should almost always have a button to push. We don't have a problem with occasional holes in the rotation, so long as those don't occur with frustrating regularity. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Shaman (Forums)
Lava Lash Tooltip Error
Lava Lash does still spread Flame Shock, but the tooltip was, strangely, updated and no longer say it spreads Flame Shock.
Yes, this is just a tooltip error. The design intent is that Lava Lash spreads Flame Shock.

There is a minor glyph that lets you turn the Flame Shock spread off (which is sometimes useful to shaman), but the tooltip appears as if you always have the glyph even when you do not. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Warlock (Forums)
Warlock Tanking
Just to make our intent clear, the Glyph of Demon Hunting isn't intended to turn Demonology warlocks into a tanking spec. You won't be able to queue as a tank for Dungeon Finder for instance and won't have the survivability or tools of say a Protection paladin.

Historically, warlocks felt tankier than other casters and could even off-tank some encounters. We have made an effort in Mists to recapture some of that flavor. A warlock with this glyph should feel like they are about as effective tanking as an Arms warrior who pulls out a shield and swaps to Defensive Stance, or a Feral druid who goes into Bear form. You might be able to off-tank adds or pick up an actual boss for a short period of time if the tank goes down.

To make warlocks an actual tank would take more significant changes. For example, we want tanks to have to pick up separate tanking gear than their DPS gear (this is even true of druids) and want tanks to have to give up some of their DPS potential in exchange for their survivability. In short, it needs to be a commitment, and that's the sort of thing that needs larger gameplay changes than just a glyph.

That shouldn't stop the glyph of Demon Hunting from being fun though. As you can probably tell, we are trying to make even the major glyphs more about character customization and fun.

As some of you have pointed out, the glyph of Demon Hunting in your beta build doesn't deliver on what I described above as the design. The newer version of the glyph, hopefully available in the next beta build, allows a warlock to toggle in and out of the off-tank / survival mode, more like the druid going Bear or the warrior going Defensive.

The new shapeshift granted by the glyph is called Threatening Presence (PH) and adds Taunt and Fury Ward to the normal Metamorphosis toolkit. You still get the damage reduction from mastery instead of the damage boost from mastery while in this form. You can also choose to go into normal Metamorphosis even if you have the glyph. Let us know how it feels.

We appreciate all the feedback and passion on this topic. We expected this glyph would serve a pretty niche community and were surprised at how many players were excited about it. We are still in beta and are still very much experimenting with what kind of gamplay we can deliver in glyphs. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Warlock Fire
So we’ve obtained some additional insight about what exactly lies behind the use of the word “hope” in regard to our efforts to achieve green fire for warlocks. Essentially, we want this updated information out so that we can better manage expectations, especially as the announcement created such a flurry of excitement.

Unfortunately, dear warlocks, those of you who retained a modicum of skepticism were right to, as it would seem that the chance of green fire for warlocks is even less as likely as the wording of the original information indicated.

Since spell effects are not as simple to change around as — for example — druid forms are, we need some additional technology implemented in order to allow the use of red or green fire to be a player choice and not a permanent change that is put in place for all warlocks.

Also, technology aside, we want to do the introduction of something like green fire in the right way. Implementing it in “a quest” doesn’t really explain our stance here. We want something as substantial as this change to be an epic accomplishment for you.

So though we have definitely heard your thoughts on the matter, and we’ve explained what we want to do from our side, green fire will not be available with the launch of Mists of Pandaria. And we haven’t a timeframe to commit to, or communicate about, at this stage.

It is with regret that we were unable to clarify these details more when we first mentioned our intent — “our hope” — and we wish we hadn’t caused such excitement and raised expectations for those that didn’t instantly take the news with an “I’ll believe it when I see it” pinch of salt. It seems, as many of us said at the time here and on Twitter and fansites, the proof of the (green fire) pudding really was in the eating. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Warrior (Forums)
Protection Warrior Design
We wanted to clarify a little the direction we are trying to go with Protection warriors and ultimately all tanks.

You generate rage through auto attacks. You also have some sources of rage more under your control, such as shouts, Charge, and in particular Shield Slam (the same is true of MS or BT if you are Arms or Fury). You no longer generate rage from taking damage, because we found that it basically meant Prot warriors always had infinite rage, so the resource wasn't relevant to gameplay. We think classes are more fun and interesting when they have to manage, even to a small extent, some resource.

For Protection, we expect you to spend most of your rage on Shield Block. Shield Block is not an emergency button. It generally won't save your life. But this is a good thing. Emergency buttons with resource costs aren't reliable. On the other hand using Shield Block (or Shield Barrier for magic damage) will make a difference over the course of a fight. It will help your healers out. It will slightly blunt spikes. Shield Block has no cool down, allowing you to use it more frequently when you have lots of rage, but also letting you play a little with when you use it. If you know a big hit is coming soon, you can delay the block for a few seconds. Otherwise, you can use it, knowing you'll have rage soon for another one.

One of the changes for old time Prot warriors is getting used to not spamming Heroic Strike. Think of HS (and Cleave) as an alternative to Shield Block for times when you don't need to worry about blocking, such as when you are soloing, off-tanking or doing easy content. If you use too many Heroic Strikes, you won't have rage for Shield Block as well. Your other attacks, Devastate, Revenge, Shield Slam and Thunder Clap, should fill in most of the holes in your rotation and should be sufficient for holding threat without HS spam.

As I mentioned recently, Prot warrior damage is probably 50% of where it needs to be. When we have that adjusted, your threat will be higher and those Shield Slam and Revenge hits in particular should feel meatier.

If you are a Guardian Druid, there are a lot of analogues. Notice what costs rage, and don't spend it on the wrong things. If you are a Prot paladin, spend your Holy Power mostly on Shield of the Righteous (in this case for damage and mitigation). If you are a Blood DK, your rotation isn't that different than it is on live.

We will ultimately balance all of the tanks around their suite of survival mechanics. Just be aware that we balance based on typical group situations and not how long a tank can go without getting a heal. If a tank can be two shot by a boss (assuming appropriate gear and skill), it's a design problem. If a tank is getting four or five shot, it's a healer problem.

P.S. Standard caveat that our design intent here is to make things more fun overall, not to nerf anybody. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Thunder Clap
TC's attack power scaling was removed. It is gone.
That doesn't sound like something we would document. Do you remember where you saw it? In any case, it isn't accurate. Thunder Clap has a 0.456 attack power coefficient. We cleaned up a lot of melee tooltips to remove "scales with attack power" because it is pretty much always true. We don't say for Flash Heal "scales with spell power." It's just superfluous.

There is a general problem where Protection warrior damage is much too low across the board. That is something we are working on. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Blue Posts
Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
New Quest Reward System
Offering quest rewards this way is a change for us, and the kind of thing for which we could definitely use feedback.

For the players that level as X spec but want to also collect gear as Y spec, we have a few solutions:

  • Several of the zones have vendors with decent gear that isn't quite at the quest item level. These help provide coverage if you miss a reward, say gloves or shoulders, since questing is less linear now. However, these vendors also help you gather off-spec gear.
  • Several quests, especially those that offer blue rewards, weapons, trinkets and most of the level 90 quests, offer you a choice of gear for all of your specs instead of just your current spec.
  • Because the questing in zones isn't as linear as Cataclysm, and because there are two zones per level in some cases, you'll have the option to hit some quests as spec A and some quests as spec B.
  • There are still other sources of gear, such as crafting, the AH, dungeons, faction rep and so on.

Also remember that if, for example, you level as Arms but want to tank a few dungeons as Protection, that the level-up dungeons are not so brutally difficult that you need full tanking gear. A Prot warriors in DPS Strength gear would do just fine. As you get into endgame content, especially normal raids, you'll want actual tanking gear.

We don't players to have to feel like they should do this. Keep in mind that you would need to be pretty min-max focused to agonize over whether you want the healing or the DPS legs when you'll probably get a new set of legs in an hour or two. It starts to matter more as you get closer to level 90 and the rate of upgrade slows down, but as I said, you'll generally get options on those quests. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Tiller Farm
A little snippet of information for you: your farm will be visible only to yourself. So nobody's going to come by and poach your crops... or, I guess, water your plants while you're away!

I’m a warrior who has hunted down dragons and demons, so why would I go work on a farm?
As with anything in the game, the idea is if it's not for you, you can leave it and concentrate on other things. One of the themes you might have noticed in Mists of Pandaria is that we're trying to ensure a range of fun options. Hopefully you can pick and choose which ones interest you and focus on them. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Cooking Changes
So you might have heard for Cooking in Mists of Pandaria we will have specializations. At the moment we're looking at around 5 branches of cooking, for example: broiling, steaming...etc.

Each of these specializations will focus on a particular stat. So let's say the Steaming specialization allows you to create Agility food. A rogue would find that very interesting, and would probably want to max that one out first. At which point, said rogue would be able to create Agility buff feasts for groups. Cool, huh? But worry not, once you max out in one specialization, you can then work on the other specializations.

Maybe they're gonna make it take ages to fully train all of them.
Well, maybe not ages. But it does mean that until enough time passes for you to train all specializations, you need to—er—specialize. Actually it's the way for other crafting professions too. For example, my jewelcrafter specialized in spell related stat recipes first, since of all my multitude of alts, I prefer my casters. Eventually, of course, she learned many more recipes and of course so did other crafters, so the market changed. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Lilian Voss
In Mists of Pandaria, we finally catch up with Lilian Voss. For those who didn't play through the Forsaken starting experience, Lilian Voss was brought back to life by Sylvanas, but despite this she refused to become part of the Forsaken.

After trying to re-connect with her still living father, those players with keen eyes might have noticed her handiwork in Western Plaguelands. As a non-aligned "free agent," Lilian has some surprising hidden talents. In Mists of Pandaria she's still confused about her situation. Still broiling with internal conflict, despising what she has become.

Now she has a new and grander mission in mind and it revolves around Scholomance and Darkmaster Gandling in particular. She wants to ensure that like herself, no others shall be raised from death and subjugated. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

DoTA Style Battleground as a Potential E-sport
The biggest problem with releasing this battleground is that it requires some new tech, however we would very much love to be able to release the DotA-style Battleground during the Mists of Pandaria Life cycle.

Regarding this particular battleground becoming an eSport, I see that as all depending on the community and the support that it is given. I personally would love to see more World of Warcraft eSports, I find myself spending loads of time watching streams and videos of arena and rated battlegrounds...they are ridiculously entertaining! (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Outland update.
Especially in comparison to the revamped 1-60 experience, we feel the pacing of Outland is a bit awkward at the moment. This is something we might try and work on.

Having Wrath as the weakest link in the chain? Not so bad, in my opinion.
And in our opinion too. Well, no... we don't think Wrath content is weak, we spent a lot of time lovingly crafting that place. In fact, we don't think it needs as many adjustments as perhaps Outland does, if any.

I'd rather they just reworked the leveling experience to not include Outland anymore
Well it might be more feasible to re-work the 1-60 content to avoid Outland (or Northrend) if it was "just" to skip 5 levels of content. But we don't want to somehow try to stretch 1-60 to cover 10 extra levels, let alone 20. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Pandaren mount is a yak?
So no, the Yak mounts are not the racial mounts for Pandaren. We're still thinking about how we want Yak mounts to be obtained. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Circumvention of Battleground Balancing Measures via Addons
This is not something that we are encouraging, but it is also something that we currently have no realistic way to prevent. That being said, this is something that may change soon, which is why we always advise people to not use any type of add-on designed to circumvent or bend our balancing safeguards... using such add-ons can lead to severe account penalties! (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Horde not as Appealing to Female Gamers
To answer the question in the title, I think the majority of responses in this thread show that female gamers like to play Horde characters just as much as Alliance. It's purely down to personal taste.

I play a nice range of characters across both factions, and I feel the options available for each side match the spirit of the faction. Any 'pretty' missing for Horde females was more than made up for when blood elves joined back in TBC, and goblins are adorable!

Having said that, what changes would you all like to see to the models to make them more appealing to play, besides those already mentioned? (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Poll: VoIP Clients


Curse Weekly Roundup
Pico gives us news on Notch creating a Firefly game, updates on WoW: Mists of PandarIa, rumors on X-Box 720 and PS4 consoles, Smithsonian opens The Art Of Video Games, Athene charity, Save the Children, Operation: ShareCraft, Eve Dust trailer, and our indie game spotlight on "Warp".

This article was originally published in forum thread: Cloud Serpent Mount, Dynamic Quest Rewards, Blue Posts started by Boubouille View original post
Published on 2012-04-02 03:02 AM
210 Comments
Comments 210 Comments
  1. Spellweaver's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by notorious98 View Post
    Not quite. There is nothing innovative about this. You can implement questing and be innovative (TOR, for example.) But to change your own quest rewards after years and years to follow a model that others have been doing for a few years now is a blatant rip off. It's like the first couple "goth" kids had an innovative style. Everyone who came afterward were following the trend....i.e. ripping them off.

    And I'd be more willing to accept the idea that they are flattering their competitors by stealing their ideas if it wasn't for the continued assault by higher ups in ActiBlizz ripping these other games. Or the continued assault from WoW fanboys about how these other games are "WoW clones" or "WoW ripoffs".
    How exactly is TOR's questing innovative? It's still the basic ''Kill this, collect this, click on this thingy to activate something'', the only difference being that instead of reading the quest text, it's voiced over.

    I like how you mention that it's just ActiBlizz ripping off other games, while the whole MMO genre is about looking at what good ideas your competitors have, and trying to implement said ideas into your own game to improve it. Else everyone would be ripping off from EverQuest anyway (or any other mmo games before that)

    While I think it's silly that there's people (or fanboys) that call every other MMO a WoW clone, this isn't something exclusive to WoW. Or do you honestly think Rift, SWTOR, GW2 and other MMO's don't have these kind of fanboys?
  1. brok3nh3lix's Avatar
    Edit: wrong reply again... in response to the post about a mod that chances the color of the flames.

    the issue is its modifying a game file so that the effect it looks for on your computer is edited to look for a file with the green version instead. I havnt seen said mod, but my guesse is that it effects ALL warlocks on your screen when they cast said spell, and not just your self.

    Editing the game files in this way has ben around for a long time, and when its done, it effects every one useing it from your POV, not just your self. For instance before blizzard made it so you couldnt do it, people edited the color of items such as dragon stalkers. It didnt just make your armor look black instead of purple, it made all dragon stalker armor look black instead of purple.

    totaly differnt than make it so that warlock x's fire is green, but warlock y's fire is red, and thats the way it looks to every one.
  1. mmoc6378d51645's Avatar
    Small problem with them automatically chosing your quest reward for you: un-even selling price.
    Scavenger's Crossbow sells for 16g73
    Scavenger's Greatsword sells for 27g30
    So every 2h melee toon will end up with an extra ~6g from that single quest compared to. Add that over hundred of quests and that will become noticable for the more casual players.
  1. Lolsteak's Avatar
    I sorta lol'd at the "dynamic rewards".. it's basically EXACTLY the same as it is now except you get given what they want you to have.
  1. Kuja's Avatar
    Heh. One more feature stolen from SWTOR, quest rewards change that is. Wonder why they are coming up with these changes just when swtor did? People have been wanting aoe looting for years. And changing quest rewards like that could also have been done years ago. What gives? Out of ideas? ;o
  1. Spellweaver's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Kuja View Post
    Heh. One more feature stolen from SWTOR, quest rewards change that is. Wonder why they are coming up with these changes just when swtor did? People have been wanting aoe looting for years. And changing quest rewards like that could also have been done years ago. What gives? Out of ideas? ;o
    Yeah, totally!

    Not like Rift (or other games before that) had AoE looting. Nope, invented by SWTOR.
    (same goes for the quest rewards change)
  1. tenzing21's Avatar
    Bwahahahah.

    This Blue Post is ~exactly~ why I quit playing this awful game. BILLIONS of dollars in cume profits from all IPs, and yet they can't have a colored, skinned, and animated wire-frame model ready to go before December 21st. You have got to fucking shitting me.
  1. Liliris's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Archermit View Post
    All the things that WoW apparently didnt needAoE lootingclass specific quest rewardsSWtor brings them in at launch and they are a huge success, wow follows with "new" things......yh right
    This is pretty much what I thought when seeing both AoE looting and this new class specific looting. Although this expansion has been in the works for a good year or so (it's not like they started developing right after SW:ToR came out or anything) but still, calling this all "new" makes me giggle a little. I'm sure there are TONS of other games out there that have either and or both of these options as well, but as SW:ToR is the biggest and most recent and as stated in a blue post last month a lot of the WoW dev team plays SW:ToR so it strikes me as funny that this is all "new" and "flashy" as far as anyone, including the blues are concerned.

    I know a lot of people (especially fanbois) like to bash SW:ToR but apparently they did something right seeing as WoW is putting a ton of things into their next expansion that is the same or at least mimics their latest competitor. I love them and play them both so it's really a luxury to have both my mmo's work relativity the same as far as basic mechanics go.
  1. notorious98's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Spellweaver View Post
    How exactly is TOR's questing innovative? It's still the basic ''Kill this, collect this, click on this thingy to activate something'', the only difference being that instead of reading the quest text, it's voiced over.

    I like how you mention that it's just ActiBlizz ripping off other games, while the whole MMO genre is about looking at what good ideas your competitors have, and trying to implement said ideas into your own game to improve it. Else everyone would be ripping off from EverQuest anyway (or any other mmo games before that)

    While I think it's silly that there's people (or fanboys) that call every other MMO a WoW clone, this isn't something exclusive to WoW. Or do you honestly think Rift, SWTOR, GW2 and other MMO's don't have these kind of fanboys?
    I didn't say the questing DESIGN was innovative, but adding actual voice overs instead of just quest text = innovative. And, no, I never said it was ONLY ActiBlizz ripping off others, that's an insinuation that you created all on your own.

    Other MMOs definitely have their fanboys and the ones that are making the assumption that TOR created AOE looting would be among them. Also, I rarely ever see Rift players showing the same type of misguided fanboyish nature that I see from WoW fanboys and, to a slightly lesser extent, TOR fanboys.

    GW2? They don't have any real fanboys because the game barely even exists.
  1. ganush's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Kittahsmash View Post
    Obviously I wanted them to add them to the game 10 years ago, and am bitching about how long it took for them to add it.
    So you admit you are complaining for the sake of being a whiner then.

    "OMG, Blizzard is adding something I've wanted in the game for 10 years! They are so terrible."

    Makes you sound very rational.
  1. Lolsteak's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Kittahsmash View Post
    Obviously I wanted them to add them to the game 10 years ago, and am bitching about how long it took for them to add it.
    Umm...the game wasn't out 10 years ago
  1. Azrile's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by notorious98 View Post
    Not quite. There is nothing innovative about this. You can implement questing and be innovative (TOR, for example.) But to change your own quest rewards after years and years to follow a model that others have been doing for a few years now is a blatant rip off. It's like the first couple "goth" kids had an innovative style. Everyone who came afterward were following the trend....i.e. ripping them off.

    And I'd be more willing to accept the idea that they are flattering their competitors by stealing their ideas if it wasn't for the continued assault by higher ups in ActiBlizz ripping these other games. Or the continued assault from WoW fanboys about how these other games are "WoW clones" or "WoW ripoffs".
    I think you are seeing things that didn´t happen the way you think.

    Blizzard implemented ´story mode´ raids in order to get more people into endgame content
    Immediately ´loot´ problems arose because need-greed just does not work with 25 strangers
    New Technology is developed that allows that identifies class and spec and their appropriateness for rolling need.
    The same technology is used for quests to identify your spec and offer you appropriate rewards.

    My guess is this change has more to do with tech becoming available because of LFR. Blizzard tends to do that a lot.. they develop a new tech and then find everywhere possible to add it.

    There are obviously 3 different issues that need to be addressed. The first being off-spec, the second being vendor sell prices and the third being RP and Transmorging.

    Honestly, even though I am personally hit by the off-spec thing.. I welcome this change because there was nothing worse than playing a low-gear spec like moonkin and seeing great, end-of chain blue quests not offering you any suitable rewards.
  1. Kortiah's Avatar
    Dafuq i372 dagger with 300dps more than the legendaries

    I think there's a problem in balance between DPS & Stats! Too much DPS, too few Agility (as for the others weapons)
  1. Azrile's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by notorious98 View Post
    I didn't say the questing DESIGN was innovative, but adding actual voice overs instead of just quest text = innovative. And, no, I never said it was ONLY ActiBlizz ripping off others, that's an insinuation that you created all on your own.

    Other MMOs definitely have their fanboys and the ones that are making the assumption that TOR created AOE looting would be among them. Also, I rarely ever see Rift players showing the same type of misguided fanboyish nature that I see from WoW fanboys and, to a slightly lesser extent, TOR fanboys.

    GW2? They don't have any real fanboys because the game barely even exists.
    Age of Conan had a large amount of voice overs also... it was as slow and boring in that game as it is in SWTOR. it was also in about 10,000 other non-mmorpg games before AOC.

    Voice-overs in a video game is not innovation. SWTOR is showing exactly why most MMORPGs don´t have voice-overs... there are simply too many quests, most of them actually pretty boring. Adding voice-overs does not make the quest less boring, it just makes ´getting´the quest much longer and painful.
  1. Glub's Avatar
    I think Blizz introducing class based loot (a *really* wellcome feature, IMHO) has more to do with Raid Finder than SWTOR. Loot in Raid Finder (or actually all loot in Wow, for that matter) didn't have an associated spec. The consequence was the massive QQ from Raid Finders not getting their loot, or me getting blue crap while leveling alts with Dungeon Finder, or getting quest rewards that had absolutely nothing to do with my char. Now that Blizz introduced a spec tag to the loot (solving the biggest complain in Raid Finder), why not use it to retrofit those quest rewards? Which is what I think they did.

    Now, the green fire issue. I may be wrong, but I can't remember a single spell effect that has a different look according to user preference (aside from mage's polymorph, but that isn't the kind of effect we're talking). Considering Wow's engine complexity, I assume that it's not a simple matter of having a flag and dupplicate spell effect files for each Warlock spell (and which they would have to keep in synch from now on to the end of Wow). It would also mean having different spell Ids, so the other players would see that you were using a different set of spell effects (otherwise, what would be the point of having it?), and/or changes to the underlying combat messages to accomodate that (which could potentialy break addons and internal features that rely on those messages). All that considered, if and when they put in the tech to give spells a distinct color, I suppose you will be able to pick specific colors for your fire, not only green. Black fire, anyone? =))
  1. SinR's Avatar
    totally getting the green one once MOP goes live.

    Also, I love the new music that's coming out this expansion, anyone know what to type in to be able to play them in-game?
  1. notorious98's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Azrile View Post
    I think you are seeing things that didn´t happen the way you think.

    Blizzard implemented ´story mode´ raids in order to get more people into endgame content
    Immediately ´loot´ problems arose because need-greed just does not work with 25 strangers
    New Technology is developed that allows that identifies class and spec and their appropriateness for rolling need.
    The same technology is used for quests to identify your spec and offer you appropriate rewards.

    My guess is this change has more to do with tech becoming available because of LFR. Blizzard tends to do that a lot.. they develop a new tech and then find everywhere possible to add it.

    There are obviously 3 different issues that need to be addressed. The first being off-spec, the second being vendor sell prices and the third being RP and Transmorging.

    Honestly, even though I am personally hit by the off-spec thing.. I welcome this change because there was nothing worse than playing a low-gear spec like moonkin and seeing great, end-of chain blue quests not offering you any suitable rewards.
    What the hell are you talking about? Other games had this "tech" long before Blizzard decided to implement LFR. It's not "new tech".

    ---------- Post added 2012-04-02 at 02:31 PM ----------

    Quote Originally Posted by Azrile View Post
    Age of Conan had a large amount of voice overs also... it was as slow and boring in that game as it is in SWTOR. it was also in about 10,000 other non-mmorpg games before AOC.

    Voice-overs in a video game is not innovation. SWTOR is showing exactly why most MMORPGs don´t have voice-overs... there are simply too many quests, most of them actually pretty boring. Adding voice-overs does not make the quest less boring, it just makes ´getting´the quest much longer and painful.
    Then no game has created much as far as innovation, have they? We're not talking about regular video games, we're talking about MMOs and, no, AoC did NOT have this high level of voice over acting. And it only makes the quest much longer and painful to the short attention span crowd, such as yourself. Ones who wish they could space bar through the dialogue of any video game they play.

    Quite honestly, the fact that you would even considering lumping MMOs and regular console games together is completely ridiculous in and of itself.
  1. mmoc9bd1872f9c's Avatar
    I hope the Dynamic Quest Rewards won't affect the means of leveling Enchanting. (That picking weapons often grants better enchanting mats etc.)
  1. Guddonof's Avatar
    I'm gonna get motion sickness riding that mount... =)
  1. mmoc9bd1872f9c's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Guddonof View Post
    I'm gonna get motion sickness riding that mount... =)
    It is indeed a lil' bumpy! ^^ Not a mount I will be using for farming herbs/archeology etc.
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