State of the World (of Warcraft)

For those of us still on the World of Warcraft horse, today is, as you probably know, Patch Day.

Patch Day is a wondrous time where Blizzard giveth and Blizzard taketh away.

Nerfs will be handed out, and everyone's addons will break until they update them; this is the bulk of the taketh away. I can understand the former: balance, tuning fights to be more what they are supposed to be/less impossible/less of a pushover. I don't quite get the latter, aside from changes that really mess around with the LUA interface to the game. Fine, maybe they just want us to know we should look for updates; sometimes we can just blithely hit "Load Out-of-Date Addons" and be done with it, but for major patches I tend to find I have to go to WoWAce or whatever and redownload the crap that makes up my UI. A huge deal? Not really - it gives me something to do on patch day (or rather, it used to, when I didn't have Other Things to Do as well) when the servers are generally messed up to all bijimminy.

The bright side of this patch includes a new 10-man raid instance, Zul'Aman, which is full of trolls. I am generally in favor of 10-man raids; in my opinion, it's a small enough number that unless you are the Most Antisocial Player Ever or cannot be online for more than an hour at a time (and even then, an understanding group can get you to see the content), you should be able to experience the place and get some HAWT PURPALZ. Even better, this particular dungeon is intended to be finished in a couple of hours, *literally* - for each boss (or at least the first five), you have twenty minutes to get to them and possibly also kill them to get some extra treasure. Unless Blizzard totally messed up the balance on that, this means that appropriately geared groups (Karazhan gear, not BT gear) with good knowledge of the fight should be able to accomplish that. So yes, your first few weeks it'll likely take a few more hours (though even if you take twice that...it's *still* only as much of a time investment as Karazhan), but then it'll pick up pace. Oh, and the loot is by and large pretty good, filling a bunch of unfortunate gaps in various offspec gear sets. Plus you get Badges of Justice.

Speaking of those, G'eras, who at this point has probably thoroughly won the "most items on a vendor" award, has a whole bunch of new stuff for people to buy with their precious badges. Some of the itemization there makes me scratch my head - what's with all the DPS plate without crit? - but many items are quite solid (notably for warriors, a pair of pants not too far off from tier 6; it actually has better stamina potential, but...that is a debate for another post). While everyone's favorite badge farming spot - heroic Mechanar - was nerfed (the Key-keepers or whatever they are no longer drops badges, instead the Cache of the Legion drops one), the 10-mans now drop badges (with Karazhan apparently giving 15 or so for a full run), so I think on the whole they'll be not too hard to get, especially for people who run 10-mans but don't have the time to heroics very often.

Also, faster leveling for sub-60 characters. That's gold - I've been on and off building up a new character - a druid - and given that it's my fifth character that's made it past 30ish...I find most of the Azeroth content kind of "well let's get this done with eh (especially the sub-30 content)." I imagine this might be a little bad for people who are just getting into the game and want to see all the content, but...I can't help feeling those people are in the minority now. This doesn't mean that they should be alienated; maybe we should encourage alting more. Or maybe make the "XP lost for being too high level for this quest" penalty smaller.

In general, this seems like a pretty good patch. Raiders get candy (though the hardcore raiders, god bless the crazy fools, will need to wait till 2.4 for their new instance), and casuals - well, all but the most casual - also get candy.

On that note - I'm not entirely sure what should be done to make the game more attractive to those people (mostly, those who can't play for more than an hour or so at a time). To some degree "well this requires block time commitments" and tough noogies, but realistically that should not be the case. Daily quests were a step in the right directions - short quests that you can get done and get some rep for an overarching reputation goal, and get some money - but a) the rewards are too hit-and-miss re: class specialization, b) some of the rewards are...not that well itemized, and c) some of them are inferior to gear out of heroics/badge rewards (which someone could conceivably get even with only an hour to play at a time). Then again, this needs to be balanced against stat inflation...but at the same time WotLK is coming, and if TBC was any indication, the gear we have now will not matter at all at 80. So maybe...let them have their cake and eat it to, maybe.

And that's what I have to say about that. For now.