World of Warcraft 3.1 Patch Brings Dual-Specs, New Raid 204
On Tuesday Blizzard rolled out the first major content patch for World of Warcraft since the launch of Wrath of the Lich King last November. The 3.1 patch includes the long-awaited dual-specialization feature, which allows players to quickly and easily switch from one set of talent choices to another. Action bars and glyph choices change as well. The patch also includes a new end-game raid dungeon, Ulduar, which expands upon the variable difficulty modes Blizzard has recently experimented with. The instance contains 14 bosses, 10 of which have an optional "hard mode" that players can attempt for better rewards. In addition, the patch contains a host of class balance changes, bug fixes, and UI improvements. You can see the full patch notes at Blizzard's website, and a brief trailer is also available.
1000 gold (Score:2, Informative)
1000 gold for dual spec. Don't need quivers or ammo pouches any more.
Re:Exams (Score:5, Informative)
To start, you net about 700 gold in the level from 70 to 80. If you're careful, much more.
Fundamentally, MMORPGs that use a DIKU archetype system (classes) find an overabundance of damage dealers and few tanks; even fewer healers. It's easy enough to note that leveling up / grinding for money / pvp rank / whatever (DIKU style) you need damage, making the classes capable of tanking/healing even more sparse as they min/max toward the damage specs. This is a nightmare for developers who have to try to balance that system. I'd say dual speccing is useful for just under half the wow population and really makes the non-damage dealing classes much much more attractive as there is now true flexibility, guaranteeing more $$$. From a player perspective, it's a win. From the developer's perspective, it's a win. From the publisher's perspective, it's a win.
Re:Exams (Score:3, Informative)
1) 1000g isn't exactly a lot of money any more.
2) The dual spec addition isn't for respec freaks. It's for people that don't like sitting around waiting on a healer or tank for a group, or that want to take their healer or tank out solo to do some dailies and not have it take all damn day to kill something.
3) Some of us aren't total losers, ya know. My GPA for the last two years of grad school is 3.7. I'm not the only person in my classes that plays WoW, either.
Re:Ulduar (Score:2, Informative)
I'd just like to point out that the original Naxxramas was released a few months before the BC expansion, hence most players never had the chance to try it out. I was in a semi-hardcore guild at the time but we were busy wiping in Ahn'Quiraj and didn't have the time to try out Nax. There were only a few guilds on my server that made any progress at all in Naxxramas.
Re:Ulduar (Score:3, Informative)
The Burning Crusade did not ship with SSC, The Eye, or Hyjal. These were all added in later content patches.
Re:Exams (Score:4, Informative)
1. Getting from 1-80 without instances is not hard at all.
2. Blizzard made it easier to get from 1-60 (I think), by reducing the exp required per level.
3. Instances are a boring way to level up, compared to questing.
4. There's more quests in the game than it takes to get leveled up. For example, you could easily hit level 70 in Outlands after doing Hellfire, Zangarmarsh, Terrokar Forest, Nagrand, and a little bit of Blades Edge Mountains. That leaves the rest of Blades Edge Mountains, Shadowmoon Valley, and Netherstorm to get quests where you got more gold rewards for quests. In Northrend you could hit 80 easily by the time you've done Borean Tundra, Howling Fjord, Dragonblight, Grizzly Hills, Zul'drak, Scholazar Basin, and if you're a bit unlucky a little in Storm Peaks. Either way you'll have most of Storm Peaks and all of Icecrown to get gold from quests.
5. Lv60 and Lv70 raids aren't done frequently. The people that do them frequently either do them with a small elite group of players because they're looking for specific stuff (Elementium Ore from BWL, Bindings from MC), or they do it with high level characters because they don't want to be carrying people.
6. Instances are fine to find, the problem is that some instances are quicker and have better equipment and people generally drift towards those instances. You can almost always find Scarlet Monestary groups horde side, but trying to find a group for Sunken Temple or Blackfathom Depths is near impossible.
7. If you were a low level when BC started there should have been numerous new low level characters, tons of Draenei alliance side and a tons of blood elves horde side. I smell BS there.
Re:Ulduar (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Exams (Score:3, Informative)
On the other hand "spec" is of almost negligible importance until level 45 or so and only becomes really critical as you approach end game. I have personally healed instances as far as the Scarlet Monastery with a DPS spec Shaman, and I've run with non-spec healers in even early Outland instances. Being the proper spec helps of course, but it's not nearly as big a deal as gear is until later. I remember running Ragefire Chasm (The mini-instance in Orgrimmar for 13-15th levels) once and someone asked me if I was a "speced" healer. I was level 14, I'd spent a grand total of 5 talent points... Does it matter?
(For the uninitiated, you get 1 talent point per level from 10 on in WoW. A level 80 therefore has 71 points to spend. This can make a huge difference to how you play and what you are capable of. Lower level characters have many fewer points and are therefore getting less of an advantage from them, but conversely have greater flexibility because they are less specialized.)
Re:Exams (Score:3, Informative)
"3. Instances are a boring way to level up, compared to questing."
I totally disagree.
After doing the end-game raid dance, my wife, a few friends and myself made 4 Undead Warlocks and an Undead Priest, calling ourselves The Ungrateful Dead. Other then a few class quests, we spent ALL of our time doing what I had wanted to do since I was playing pencil & paper Dungeons and Dragons as a kid many years ago--Dungeon Crawls.
As soon as we met the level requirements of a dungeon (I think level 6 for Ragefire Chasm is the lowest), in we went. It was very challenging, filling specific roles with various Warlock builds combined with a Priest in either shadow or healer mode. We had to use our heads, had to spend time testing different approaches and all in all had a great time.
In regards to the leveling rate, since we were going in at very low levels, as soon as we could, we earned a relatively large amount of XP from runs. A couple levels gained for each run was normal. Did it get boring? Nope. By the time we had run the dungeon a couple of times we were leveled up for the next one. It was actually a really smooth transition from one to the next.
I can honestly say that I had more fun playing one of those Warlocks then any other gameplay style I experienced in WoW.