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Role Playing (Games)

Next World of Warcraft Patch Review 95

Via Penny Arcade, a review of the next patch for World of Warcraft on Blizzplanet. The author takes a look at some of the new art being added to the game and examines details of the new honor system. From the article: "The horde slowly started to show up in the area to attempt to protect their territory. I joined a raid group to counterattack, and noticed that each kill where my Priest character helped with fear, word: pain, or healing counted toward my Honorable Kills, even if I didn't directly caused damage or killed. Healing and Fear count toward your kill points."
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Next World of Warcraft Patch Review

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  • by The Kow ( 184414 ) <putnamp@gmail . c om> on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @01:06PM (#12225356)
    This is a pretty big chance of pace for Blizzard. It took 90 days for their first content patch to come out - they had originally promised new content every month.

    Additionally, up until now, WoW's PvP system was seen as largely pointless. This provides tangible benefits (and not just OMG POINTS!) to succesful PvP ventures. It should be exciting. Anyone who plays now can test this patch out a bit by copying a character over to the (grossly over-populated) test server. The disadvantage, as I stated, is that there are way too many people on it, and can get very laggy if you're in the wrong place at the wrong time. This isn't a major concern for me, though, because the server population is immense compared to an average server, and they've already made another sub-patch to improve performance, with noticable improvement. There's still a LOT of room for more improvement. For example, player corpses should disappear after a certain point, or you should have the ability to not display them. Without that ability, you can run across a field that is just littered with corpses of dead players, and while it's a visceral joy to look at, it's also a huge network performance hit.
    • This is a pretty big chance of pace for Blizzard. It took 90 days for their first content patch to come out - they had originally promised new content every month.

      Unfortuantly they made this claim and the people who play non-stop or since beta have been trying to hold them to it. They were in such a hurry to get the last patch out, that it broke the game for a bunch of users. Check out this 17 page thread about it.. Error 132 [worldofwarcraft.com]

      Here is another one [worldofwarcraft.com] if you are really interested.

      Another bug that m
      • Issue 1) seems like a hardware/network related issue that could be highly exclusive to specific configurations - though those configurations themselves may not be erroneous, which would make it even harder to find.

        Issue 2) was attributed to 3rd party software. Tricky, but not something any overworked QA department is likely to have a lot of time to troubleshoot variants of.

        Issue 3) is one I've noticed several times, but as a priest I hardly ever rez people's pets - the hunters have their own means to do
        • Issue 1) seems like a hardware/network related issue that could be highly exclusive to specific configurations -

          Not too specific, since they claim it's only DDR ram on ASUS mother boards, but then people say they don't have DDR ram. So is it everyone with ASUS motherboards?

          Others can't fix it no matter what they do. I ran into this issue, and was lucky enough to find what seems to be a shaky fix.

          Lastly, if their QA department doesn't have enough time to test things, that's a failure of their p
    • If you want endgame content play FFXI. If you can get to level 60 in three weeks I'll be shocked (unless all you do is play the game for 16 hrs a day) and there's so much to do that after ~9 mo. of playing i'm not even through 1/2 of the ever expanding content. The fipside of this coin for a game designed to take awhile is that it takes awhile to occomplish things. For those who are impatient and want a high level warrior with a sword of uberness +1 easily this is not the game for you.
    • How in the hell do I get modded as a troll? Who are these mods? I'm a friendly guy! I'm a people person! What's wrong with you people!?!?
  • I wish they would just release it already, I'm so bored with my lvl 60 hunter I don't even play anymore. The end-game has very serious hangups. I hope this patch addresses them. If not, I'm probably cancelling.
    • Re:Endgame==boring (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      You're bored because you rolled a Hunter. I had to reroll because we are so worthless in groups and it took me hours to get into a 5 man. Im having a lot more fun with my Priest, and feel way more useful.
  • This is going to be great, this patch will turn PvP servers into roaming gank sqauds looking for players to wreck to increase their honor points.

    I expect it will take about 48 hours from the start of the patch for every instance to be camped and the entrances to every contested zone.
    • On the PvP servers, maybe. But if you are wandering around without backup on one of those, then you really are asking for a ganking anyway. And remember that Blizzard has implemented diminishing returns on the points you get for killing the same person over and over again. For the RP and PvE servers, I only see good. Remember, except for certain areas, you aren't forced to PvP unless you want to. Ganking a person is hard when they have the ability not to consent to it.
      • On the PvP servers, maybe. But if you are wandering around without backup on one of those, then you really are asking for a ganking anyway.

        Nah, I'm on a PvP server and I run around alone all the time. There isn't as much ganking as you think. Certain zones are more prone to it (ie Strangethorne vale) while others aren't because they are less populated (Swamp of Sorrows). I think after this patch, there will be a lot more ganking. I'm not complaining, I joined a PvP server for this sort of thing.

        A
        • If you are attacking 5-10 levels below you, this is the way to go. Aren't chars 10 levels below gray? If so, doesn't that mean they would be dishonorable kills?
          • Aren't chars 10 levels below gray? If so, doesn't that mean they would be dishonorable kills?

            It scales as you go up in levels, I think a level 50 isn't gray to a level 60, but a level 30 would be to a level 40.

            Dishonor points are only going to apply to NPC kills at first If I read the patch notes correctly.
            • As such, what's the point? There's functionally no difference between a char 9 levels lower than you and a char 40 levels below you. Hell, not much difference between -9 and -3, other than just mana/hp usage.

              I guess they justify this as a community-building feature. Makes sense, assuming you are constantly part of a group in non-aligned zones.
      • The PvP servers actually have a minimal amount of ganking. I personally found that once I hit about 30 the gankings by people 10+ levels higher then me almost stopped. Generally, the only time I get ganked by a level ?? alliance is when I kill people my level too much at one location and they call in for guild support.

        Sure, ganking is going to go up, but I have a feeling most the increased ganking will come from people that are roughly the same level. It doesn't bother me much if I get to a dungeon and
        • I'm in pretty much the same situation. Currently I'm at level 39 and I hardly ever get ganked anymore. It's worst when you're in the 20s, because you're in places (for Alliance) like Redridge Mountains, Duskwood, Wetlands, Hillsbrad or (god forbid!) Ashenvale, which just attract lamers looking for easy PVP kills. Now that I've moved on to areas like Desolace, Thousand Needles, Dustwallow Marsh and Arathi Highlands, the ganking has gone down significantly.

          I encounter horde constantly, we just leave each
  • Crap review (Score:3, Funny)

    by mwheeler01 ( 625017 ) <matthew@l@wheeler.gmail@com> on Thursday April 14, 2005 @09:05AM (#12233242)
    I'm sorry but I'll take my reviews from people who don't use words like 'dramatical'
  • I bought the game at the end of January. I've built my Paladin up to 34 or 35. No alts except a very low-level gnome Mage I use as my auction house/additional storage mule. Although I'm single my job requires crazy hours so I don't get to play much; maybe two hours all this week. Some weekends I get to play more.

    (Parenthetical comment to those who gripe that they were able to get to 60 in WoW in two weeks: Don't assume you represent most, or even many, of WoW's 1.5M subscribers. Most people in real life ar

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