Ok so I am really excited about dual specing. I would really like the ability to tank an instance OR heal it depending on what is needed, and I REALLY hate the idea of paying for respecs as they stand now.
I must say I think that one part of Blizzard's plan regarding dual specs is sorely lacking.
Ghostcrawler: Players who have reached the maximum level will be able to set up dual specs.
This, to me, is bogus. Come on -- one of the greatest thing about having 2 specs is that you can switch in-between -- you can have a dps spec for leveling and another for instancing. Why oh why is it so hard to find healers? In my opinion it's that they don't want the hassle of trying to down mobs while soloing on a healing spec. This is true at max level, which this rule is fine for, but is incredibly true when it comes to leveling! Especially now that we have 10 newish and still somewhat fresh levels that people are putting mains and alts through, they want to do instance runs and its incredibly hard to find healers because they are all speced into dps roles. I think this rule needs to be changed. No ifs, ands or buts.
Nethaera: How will you be able to set up a dual spec?
Ghostcrawler: Players will be able to visit their trainer and pay a one-time fee to be able to use it.
This sounds good at first blush. Alright, I'm willing to pay for this service, it doesn't need to be free for all. But wait a second. How much will I have to shell out? There has already been a troll post on the WoW forums about some crazy 5k gold shell out, to which a Blizzard employee never did say whether or not it was true. If it is indeed something around 5k I am against that. While I know that is not hard to get money of any kind in Wrath, unless it's higher than say 10k gold, I still think that 5k will make it hard for a lot of players to be able to get this going. It took me about 2 weeks of focused saving of gold in order to come up with the 5k I needed to get my epic flying training (just never got around to it in TBC). While that isn't game killing, it does tend to crimp my "fun gaming" time. 1k gold might be alright, but I just don't want to see this being some crazy huge gold sink. No thank you.
Well, really that's all I have to say about this right now. I think all the other details given are pretty neat and cool. Scribes will be happy to have something truly indispensable for customers, and it's something that can be done without a scribe's assistance in a city, so that's cool by me.
All in all, sounds good, I just hope that it's not too expensive to set up and that they make it available to at least level .... 60s or something.
Cheers.
Showing posts with label customization. Show all posts
Showing posts with label customization. Show all posts
Friday, February 13, 2009
Thursday, February 5, 2009
Death Knight-adin
Firstly let me say that I'm an awful blogger. I can't for the life of me remember to take screen shots and screen films. And my posts are regularly wall of text. This is especially interesting in light of the fact that I'm a multimedia producer at my job. I do video and digital photography all the time -- why is it that I can't remember to do that at all while playing? We may never know. On to the post.
Death Knights ARE cool.
I played my DK last night for a while -- he's only level 60, but this is my third DK that I've taken to 60 (I just enjoy the opening quest and the event at the end, I just keep re-rolling). I logged in and really did not want to face the uncertainty of an heroic PUG. Good or bad, I just wasn't in the mood.
So I played my DK -- he's frost spec, but not yet with tanking talents. As I'm going along facemelting, pulling multiple mobs, kicking arse, taking names something begins to occur to me.
Death Knights are the heroic version of Protection and Retribution paladins. Sorta. Having been a paladin for so long I feel I can say this. If you wanted to sit down with paladins of those 2 specs and figure out what they really want out of their class -- you'd get pretty close to the current Death Knights.
One thing that paladins have been wanting for freakin ever has been a ranged spell. Granted that you can spec into Holy Shock, or Avenger's Shield or .... what, Repentance, (does that count?), but there has never been a long range base ability until just a little while ago. Right out of the gate DKs get Death Grip and Icey Touch -- which are pretty awesome and you don't need anything to get them started.
Next up -- a way to deal with freakin' casters. Paladins still cry when they think of trying to tank Scholomance (at level) with all the casters and no way to silence them or get them to shut up or anything. We still have no real way to deal with them -- although we can stun them, we can only do that once a minute and you have to be within melee range -- phht. Along come DKs and they have, again, Death Grip and the juicy Mind Freeze. Casters can now eat my shorts (as a DK).
Finally, and perhaps most interestingly, there is the runic power and runes mechanic. As long as their health is not too low, a DK can keep fighting, given the right rotation etc, until their player's eyes bleed and their fingers fall off. Paladins, on the other hand can keep going as long as they still have mana -- and mana runs out pretty quickly (unless of course you're dodging and parrying and you've got Blessing of Sanctuary up).
Am I going to stick with my Death Knight and allow my paladin to gather dust? Will this plog be re-named Death Knights Smash! or DKPWNZMOAR?
No. NO. No. I love my paladin and have a hard time leaving him behind to level any of my other toons. Especially because it was soooo hard to level him in the first place. But I must say, DKs are kinda fun, and REALLY don't they have a kind of evil uber paladin feel to them?
Death Knights ARE cool.
I played my DK last night for a while -- he's only level 60, but this is my third DK that I've taken to 60 (I just enjoy the opening quest and the event at the end, I just keep re-rolling). I logged in and really did not want to face the uncertainty of an heroic PUG. Good or bad, I just wasn't in the mood.
So I played my DK -- he's frost spec, but not yet with tanking talents. As I'm going along facemelting, pulling multiple mobs, kicking arse, taking names something begins to occur to me.
Death Knights are the heroic version of Protection and Retribution paladins. Sorta. Having been a paladin for so long I feel I can say this. If you wanted to sit down with paladins of those 2 specs and figure out what they really want out of their class -- you'd get pretty close to the current Death Knights.
One thing that paladins have been wanting for freakin ever has been a ranged spell. Granted that you can spec into Holy Shock, or Avenger's Shield or .... what, Repentance, (does that count?), but there has never been a long range base ability until just a little while ago. Right out of the gate DKs get Death Grip and Icey Touch -- which are pretty awesome and you don't need anything to get them started.
Next up -- a way to deal with freakin' casters. Paladins still cry when they think of trying to tank Scholomance (at level) with all the casters and no way to silence them or get them to shut up or anything. We still have no real way to deal with them -- although we can stun them, we can only do that once a minute and you have to be within melee range -- phht. Along come DKs and they have, again, Death Grip and the juicy Mind Freeze. Casters can now eat my shorts (as a DK).
Finally, and perhaps most interestingly, there is the runic power and runes mechanic. As long as their health is not too low, a DK can keep fighting, given the right rotation etc, until their player's eyes bleed and their fingers fall off. Paladins, on the other hand can keep going as long as they still have mana -- and mana runs out pretty quickly (unless of course you're dodging and parrying and you've got Blessing of Sanctuary up).
Am I going to stick with my Death Knight and allow my paladin to gather dust? Will this plog be re-named Death Knights Smash! or DKPWNZMOAR?
No. NO. No. I love my paladin and have a hard time leaving him behind to level any of my other toons. Especially because it was soooo hard to level him in the first place. But I must say, DKs are kinda fun, and REALLY don't they have a kind of evil uber paladin feel to them?
Friday, December 12, 2008
Paid Character Re-Customization
So this is the latest breaking news. If you visit any WoW related site today, you will most likely be seeing this as a big headline.
My feelings on this are pretty straightforward -- meh.
I kinda don't care that much. I think that the in-game Barbershop was cool enough. Changing everything else is just cake to me.
The only thing that I can really think of to use this for is my girlfriend. She is not a fan of the leveling grind and so perhaps I could give her one of my alts and she can make it look the way she wants. That way I might be able to get her interested through the much cooler quests in Northrend. And maybe we can finally play together. (Even then it's not a guarantee.)
That's about it.
I actually spend a lot of time working through the different faces, hairstyles, skins and so forth before I'm ready to finalize my characters. I always choose male toons, I don't like pretending to be something I'm not and I don't enjoy the idea of staring at this female toon's ass for 80 levels -- it's feels too lecherous.
All in all I think this is probably a good thing. It lets people make some changes that perhaps they've been wanting to make for a while now, and it, along with all the other paid changes, gives Blizzard another line of income.
Hopefully this, and the other paid changes, will ensure that real microtransactions for items and in-game gold will never happen. That, in my mind, would truly ruin this game.
FACTION CHANGES
On a slightly different note, I would really like to see the ability to change factions. Much like is done in Everquest. I don't think it should be something you pay for though, but a long and difficult questline involving becoming gaining reputation to Exalted with a specific neutral faction. A questline to become a traitor to your faction, and then the need to raise your reputation to at least Honored with the new faction before you can get regular quests from that factions questgivers. And, of course, this should not be available until level 60 or higher.
I think if you looked at what might be the reality of life in Azeroth, you would find people who would naturally gravitate to other ways of being, ways of thinking -- these people might just decide that even though they were born Tauren, they might agree with the gnomish way of life (although that is a highly amusing thought).
My feelings on this are pretty straightforward -- meh.
I kinda don't care that much. I think that the in-game Barbershop was cool enough. Changing everything else is just cake to me.
The only thing that I can really think of to use this for is my girlfriend. She is not a fan of the leveling grind and so perhaps I could give her one of my alts and she can make it look the way she wants. That way I might be able to get her interested through the much cooler quests in Northrend. And maybe we can finally play together. (Even then it's not a guarantee.)
That's about it.
I actually spend a lot of time working through the different faces, hairstyles, skins and so forth before I'm ready to finalize my characters. I always choose male toons, I don't like pretending to be something I'm not and I don't enjoy the idea of staring at this female toon's ass for 80 levels -- it's feels too lecherous.
CAN I CHANGE KNALES TO LOOK LIKE THIS ALL THE TIME?
All in all I think this is probably a good thing. It lets people make some changes that perhaps they've been wanting to make for a while now, and it, along with all the other paid changes, gives Blizzard another line of income.
Hopefully this, and the other paid changes, will ensure that real microtransactions for items and in-game gold will never happen. That, in my mind, would truly ruin this game.
FACTION CHANGES
On a slightly different note, I would really like to see the ability to change factions. Much like is done in Everquest. I don't think it should be something you pay for though, but a long and difficult questline involving becoming gaining reputation to Exalted with a specific neutral faction. A questline to become a traitor to your faction, and then the need to raise your reputation to at least Honored with the new faction before you can get regular quests from that factions questgivers. And, of course, this should not be available until level 60 or higher.
I think if you looked at what might be the reality of life in Azeroth, you would find people who would naturally gravitate to other ways of being, ways of thinking -- these people might just decide that even though they were born Tauren, they might agree with the gnomish way of life (although that is a highly amusing thought).
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