The biggest change is to the former Abominable and beloved Metzen the Reindeer quests.  Where in years past you had to fight like a dog to just get the claim on the Greench to get your Snowman suit, that is no longer the case.  The once one time quest is now a daily quest and combined with the saving of Metzen.  So head on out to Alterac Valley, but make sure you bring your friends.  The changes to the Greench have made him much meaner.

He is now a level 85 elite with that hits fairly decently on a Protection Paladin.  While soloable by a tank correctly using personal cooldowns, he is definitely no longer a pushover.  Thankfully you do not actually have to be grouped up to kill him.  Learning from early mistakes, Blizzard has seen fit to “drop” the item required to complete the daily quest on the ground near the “Christmas Cave” after he is dispatched.

You may be saying to yourself, why do the daily at all?  In the past the quest was only there as a way to get the Snowman Kit in order to complete the Winter Veil meta-achievement.  It still does that, but the quest actually rewards you with a Stolen Present for you to keep as well.  The present can contain the new Lumpy (of coal) pet, anything sold in the Dalaran Toy Shop as well as any of the old yearly exclusive gifts.  That’s right, if you do not have a BB gun, or a Clockwork Rocket Bot, or a Mini Zep Controller you can get them from the bag.  The Clockwork Rocket Bot gives you the Feat of Strength for the 2007 pet, but the other exclusive gifts do not.

Good luck and go grab those achievements and that one Feat of Strength if you were like me and didn’t have it.

There are a lot of issues to be said about this type of real money system in a game.  This goes far past the RMT that is already involved in some MMOs.  With the basics of those other games are you buying and selling in game currency for real money.  This system allows you to use dollars, pounds, yen, pesos, etc. to buy and sell items directly.  There is a middle man however.  In order to obtain the money you earn through sales, you will have to immediately choose to have the money sent to you, minus a fee from the third party that Blizzard has contracted in your country.

What do you think of this?  Personally, I find it a disturbing start to a possible trend to monetize these games more and more.  While, I find all RMT activities a bane on the existence of MMOs and games in general, I think this is just another step to trying to curb the gold farmers that will backfire in Blizzard’s face.

The producers over at Square-Enix released a little information about Eorzea’s version of the Sunbreeze Festival event that became so popular over the years in Final Fantasy XIV.  This year we get real bikinis for the girls and a new name, “Firefall Faire”.  Hell, if you go out looking for the pictures of the “Galka” is even wearing a bikini.  I guess that man-bra is needed for them.

It’s really sad to me that they are spending so much time and effort doing all these events and not nearly as much trying to fix this game.

And oh what a collector’s edition it is!  There is a lot to be had in this package.

• Exclusive Gentle Giant Darth Malgus statue
• Star Wars: The Old Republic game discs in collectible metal case
• The Journal of Master Gnost-Dural annotated by Satele Shan
• Old Republic galaxy map
• Custom Security Authentication Key (i.e. Authenticator)
• Exclusive Music of Star Wars: The Old Republic CD
• High-Quality Collector’s Edition Box

With In game items listed as:

• Flare Gun: Fire flares into the air
• Training Droid: Hovers at your side for combat assistance
• HoloDancer: Project your own holographic dancer
• HoloCam: Keep visual records of in-game adventures
• STAP: Sleek and unique in-game vehicle
• Exclusive Mouse Droid: Spun-ky droid to join your adventures
• Exclusive Collector’s Edition Store: Unique in-game vendor with a dynamic assortment of items

All of this can be yours for $220 dollars US.  (Update: The 220$ price was the conversion into US Dollars from the Euro price of 150.  It has been confirmed that the box will retail for 150$ in the US as well.  Making the North American box price a whopping 70$ cheaper than the European version.)  This just rings completely as a cash grab to me.  I have played this game in both the first and second testing phases and had every intention of picking it up and possibly picking up the Collector’s Edition.  For no other reason but to get my hands on the Original Soundtrack that is included.  However, that is now not only not a possibility for me financially, but I am now extremely wary of how the game is going to be handled as a whole.

The game already has a number of game design flaws, that if nurtured could be fixed give time.  I mean there is no game (no not even Rift although people like to say it) that launched a perfect game out of the box.  Hell, Final Fantasy XI took over  a year of Japanese retail before it was fit for a worldwide release.  World of Warcraft had a horrible launch and look at it now.  That being said, there is a lot of reasons to be extremely wary about Star Wars: The Old Republic just based on the in game items listed in this collector’s edition package.

The Training Droid and HoloCam items are the ones that stick in my craw.  These are both very different items, but they both reek of how the microtransaction shop will be handled for this game.  EA is notorious for trying to milk every drop of money out of its playerbase and this just sits with me the wrong way.  The Training Droid sounds like an in game item that functions somewhat like a companion.  This may not be a hugely bad thing, as most classes get their companions between levels 6 and 10.  So we can discount that one somewhat.  Yet it leads to my belief that we will eventually see companions being able to be purchased through the cash shop.  This goes beyond the cosmetic and “fun” and in a subscription based game model it is out of bounds in my mind.

The HoloCam itself sounds cool.  An in game way to record your gameplay.  So instead of loading up that fraps application you “bought” you are given the opportunity to use an ingame tool (not unlike those mac wow users.  Not quite sure why we havent ever seen the ability to record go to PC users in WoW but thats another conversation all together.)  So this HoloCam would seem that it is another cash shop “item”.  This time not a “power” issue but one that expands the functionality of the game’s client to include recording.  This is not something totally out of the realm of paying for.  However, with Rift doing its best to include screenshot and video recording capabilities embedded within its default client and WoW having this function at least available on some platforms out of the box, it would just be another sign that we are going to be getting an incomplete client for our money and having to pay for each separate feature we have become accustomed to getting within the package.

Overall, the CE itself gives a lot of good stuff, but the pricepoint is $120+ too high.  The physical items are all “cheap” to make and the ingame items do not live up to a standard to where they are worth an extra C-note.  Hell, the CE for Uncharted 3 holds a very similar selection of physical items and a few interesting in game ones and is a much cheaper CE to buy this holiday season.

Lastly, while this box goes up for preorders on July 21st, we can safely begin to assume that the game itself is set for what I expect to be a late September/Early October release date.  Putting it smack dab in the middle of a WoW content cycle and beating Tera to the punch by several months.  Both of which are good news for the games prospects.  Now if only they could make the game actually look good graphically they’d win over a lot more people.

Unfortunately, Blizzard and Bashiok specifically have lost their ability to manage their own community.  They have lost their touch and have lost their ability to do any good P.R. spinwork.  They realized too late that this player that their GM team had banned was an “internet celebrity” and Player sponsored by one of their key merchandising partners.  This is the most unfortunate thing.

Whether or not the ban of Swifty (and friends) was appropriate or not, we are left with very clear idea that Blizzard fucked up and did so multiple times during this fiasco.  We now have the distinct feeling that 1) they may have not followed their own internal protocols on how to handle player bans/investigations 2) that they can and will be swayed by a large amount of forum outpouring and Youtube hype and 3) that they will bend over backward for their Sponsor/Partners.

While 0-3 of these things may actually be true, we are left with the feeling that they all are.  The saddest fact that has come out of this mess is that we are left now with Bashiok and when you add all of this to all of the rest of the recent messes, we are left with a community that has very little respect for him.  He has gone from a community manager who people listened to and grudgingly respected to someone who just seems like a little informed brat.  The forums lately have become a festival of gripes over this or over that.  This is not the first time this has happened, it is just the first time that the CMs seem to be doing nothing but fueling the fire.

In my opinion, Bashiok should take a much needed break away from the forums and let someone else take over his role for a while.  We could use some new blood feeding us the WoW news everyday.  Both the good and the bad are there to be had everyday, but we could all stand to lose a lot of the thread deletions, this thread already exists, and other random junk that is fast making the CMs sound and feel like just a bunch of bullies and the userbase feel less and less heard.

In the end, the entire situation with Swifty just comes off as sketchy to me.  We do not know the entire situation from either point of view.  If he did what he is rumored to have been a part of.  Even if it was not something that he was a completely willing participant in, he should have been banned and kept being banned.  I realize he is a WoW celebrity, but the reality is, celebrity should NOT protect you from doing stupid crap and getting away with it.  We have had entirely too much of that in the past.  The sad fact of the world of MMOs however is that there is no jail, there is no court system where you are fined, or put to community service.  If there were, he probably would have been fined 100k gold and sent to the Molten Front to do 30 day of hard dailies (oh wait…)

The graphics are pretty damn nice looking and the overall look and feel of the game is pretty awesome.  Right down to the combat animations.  Taking a look at the video of the massive group PvP shows many of these animations.  The two biggest things you will notice are that there seem to be no lag whatsoever in the large group combat.  A pretty amazing feat considering the number of players that are on screen.

The second has to be the gliding.  Which is the true WTF moment.  This type of gameplay just seems far too gimmicky for words.  I had been looking forward to checking out this game until I saw it.

Phase One: The Joke

The first phase of this event was pretty much a ridiculous excuse to add another set of currency and daily quests.  Sure, this has pretty much become a staple for MMO events, thanks much to World of Warcraft’s handling of most of their world events.  However, the major difference here is that in WoW or FFXI or even Warhammer we were given a number of activities ranging from completing a few dailies, killing some newly spawned event only monsters, to completing some random task such as collecting easter eggs, spelling our name with letters or just plain going into a dungeon and defeating a special event only encounter.

With Rift, we were relegated to participating in content that was “new” yet it was still the same old thing.  During phase 1 of the encounter we were given several new Rift types.  While in and of themselves they were interesting, but they got old fast.  The real meat of the phase was already the basic routine of playing the game.  What we got was a zone that normally received invasions of Water and Life, we got some Death invasions mixed in.  In the zones such as Stillmoor, Gloamwood and Scarwood Reach where death invasions were already the norm, we got nothing but the status quo.

These invasions were supposed to have a ramped up schedule of occurrences.  However, while playing through no less than 6 different leveling zones during this event, we did not feel like the invasions happened nearly enough.  It was not until we hit the Droughtlands that we saw a regular stream of invasions.  Yet these invasions were more never once an event death invasion.  We saw Earth and Fire and Air, but not a single death invasion during out exceedingly amount of time there.  This was more due to the sheer number of players that were leveling through the zone and in no part due to the supposed increase in event invasions.

This is all ignoring the fact that the first phase of the event was extended for a week due to concerns of stability and functionality of phase 2.  Phase 1, just became another joke.  Something that was so close to the status quo of the game as a whole, that most people did not even really feel its impact besides doing a couple of dailies.  Most friends of mine, stopped trying to do the 3 rifts per day daily after Trion limited these to experience only rifts.  While leveling through Scarwood, my long time companion and I could not even get credit for a good number of these.  In our own level appropriate zone because the rifts tended to pop on the lowest possible level for the area, which was just under our experience level.

In short, the phase was not a disaster but it was a pathetic excuse for an “event”.  There was nothing new and interesting that drew the player out of their normal day to day gameplay.  It was Rift as usual in most player’s minds.

Phase Two: The Joke Turns Bad

Before Phase 2 even began there were problems.  Logistical issues that Trion did its best to weather.

The previous week we saw cancellation of the EU event because of bugs and other concerns with the phase.  We were given to believe that ano

ther week of effort, coding, and rethinking of the specifics of the event as previously planned were going to make it an epic adventur

e.  So wh

at do we get when noon comes?  Nothing.  Even in Europe they got nothing come the clock striking 12:00pm.  Gone was all the talk of “being able to schedule” t

he event so all players who wanted to, could find a way to be online for it were out the window.

European servers had issues with the event.  Everything from the server turning off “smart healing” abilities such as Chloromancer’s Lifegiving Veil to monsters evading and people not getting credit for defending zones occurred.  So at 12:35pm PST on NA servers we were given a server restart and a patch.

Now that would not normally be a really big deal, but Trion forgot that there were these things called server caps.  That players on high population servers had logged in hours before the event in order to get their place in line.  So think of it with this analogy in mind.

You and your friends know there is this great free concert going at noon on Saturday.  You go and get in line super early in the morning, you may have actually camped out to ensure that you got in and got your pick of places to experience the concert.  Then the concert promoter says “Oh yeah, we moved the line over here, you gotta go and get in the new line.”

Players who had been proactive about getting on line now were no greater than those who had not cared enough.  It would have been one thing for Trion to say “You missed the event?  Oh man you should have done what we suggested and got on early to avoid queues.”  Now they had no excuse and sealed the deal on their need to give something to their playerbase to appease them.

The phase itself was not bad.  Servers were stable, latency for 98% of players was low.  In turn server lag was also much lower than ANYONE had expected.  The problem with phase 2 was not based on what everyone expected them to be.  They were created by Trion’s handling of things combined with the complete lack of a real epic event.

Having 4 monsters that had very interesting mechanics attack major strongholds in every zone was a good idea.  Yet those interesting mechanics were largely ignored due to the zerg.  Zerging monsters with 100+ people is an interesting concept.  Yet this was not done in a manner that was remotely engaging.  Even Aion’s Fortress boss zergs had more flavor and fun than these.  Those fortress encounters required tanking, healing and overall team work and simple strategy.  What we got in Rift was about a 3-5minute uninteresting zerg fests.

What did you get from participating in these zergs?  A measly 10 otherworldly sourcestones per boss and a chance at a quest item.  Oh and a “legacy” achievement.  Completely let down…

Phase 3: And The Punchline Is…

We had heard stories from the Alpha Shard (Trion’s name for their Public Test Server) that there would be an epic battle with multiple resurrected bosses from the 5man dungeons.  Sadly, all we were treated to was a pretty well done cutscene.  Even if that cutscene was basically 3 NPCs taunting each other and at one point firing a pair of randomly spawning cannons at the evil witch lady Alsbeth.  No fighting, no danger, no epicness to be found.  It was like being built up for 2 weeks to have this wonderfully epic culmination of an event and then getting told that Elvis had gotten bored and left the building.

Conclusion: A Priest, a Rabi and a Monk Walk Into A Bar

The event as a whole was designed from the word go to do two very specific things.

Number one: it was supposed to showcase Trion’s ability to create and manage new content in a quick and efficient manner.  We were supposed to have a wonderful engaging event that showed us how good the developers are.

Number two: it was designed to keep players playing for an extra month.

Unfortunately for Trion, the event did neither for me.  It actually proved to me that the developers know very little how to develop and MMO in today’s market.  They have good ideas, but their execution shows their nativity in design, explanation and overall handling of their game.  Trion gave us a polished game on launch.  A game that was complete from top to bottom, in no short because of the cloning and copying for complete game systems from World of Warcraft.  As the game that was seen through smoke and mirrors at lower levels turned on itself and showed the lack of MMO design experience as levels went on.  The event itself just proved to me what I had been thinking since about the time my friend and I started leveling in Scarlet Gorge.

This game is not ready for primetime.  It is an experiment and a testbed for Trion.  They created the software and server technology and THEN decided to use it to create an MMO.  I am confident that Trion will eventually take what they learn from Rift and turn it into a much better game.  I am just not confident right now.

While press releases from Square-Enix have indicated that both services could be back up and running as early as March 20th, these are far from solid restart dates for either game.  With electricity concerns and rolling black outs in effect for much of Japan, this time frame could be pushed back.  Now the question is, when that day comes that the power company re-stabilizes itself, should Square-Enix flip the switch back on for both games?

We all know that Final Fantasy XI is going to get turned back on as soon as it possibly can be.  Even with a considerable amount of XI’s playerbase leaving the game since last year’s FanFest and its announcement that the level cap would be increased by 24 levels.  Many players were excited by this news and many other players were dismayed and left the game.  Reports have the game’s subscription levels dropping from the 500,000 mark to around 100-125,000 currently.  While this is a significant loss over the course of a calendar year, the game is old, takes very little development dollars and the income greatly outweighs the cost.

Its baby sister however is not doing even that well.  With less than 100,000 boxes for Final Fantasy XIV sold in North America and Collector’s Edition boxes still sitting on store shelves 6 months after it’s release, FFXIV was the biggest flop in the last 5 years of video games.  The game is in its 5th Free Month.  Should SE take this as an opportunity to take the game offline for an extended period of time and do some substantial redesigning and fixing of issues?  Should SE take this as a sign and an excuse to take the game offline permanently?

I honestly do not think SE will keep XIV off longer than XI, but they should.  The game had so much potential and many former XI players and WoW players alike looked forward to the game for 2 years.  Until the day we saw the final open beta push that is.  This is the definition of opportunity.  We should see a closing of the game for at least 6 months and a relaunch.

If not, then we should see an apology and a closure.  Final Fantasy XIV had potential.  It never lived up to it.  It tried to do far too much innovation without innovating things people wanted changed.  The game was never supposed to live in the same MMO market as WoW or Rift.  It is/was a game that was meant to be different from the get go.  It just never made any of its basic game systems the “good” kind of different.

So, Square-Enix look upon this as an opportunity to fix the game and bring it down for a month or two (or six).

Rallying Cry
3 min cooldown

Temporarily grants you and all party or raid members within 30 yards 20% of maximum health for 10 sec.
After the effect expires, the health is lost.
(Shares a cooldown with Last Stand.)

On its face this ability is a boon for all specs of Warrior.  This solves our balance issues with Protection Paladins and their Divine Guardian.  This gives us a raid cooldown that is actually good and useful.  That is until we look at the fine print.  That “Shares a cooldown with Last Stand” part of the description.  Ahhh and there is the rub.  What are the ramifications of this?

1) Why does Rallying Cry share Last Stand’s cooldown?

By making these abilities share a cooldown Blizzard has solved one problem while causing another.  There is a reason why Divine Guardian also has fine print in its description.  Divine Guardian does NOT effect the casting Paladin.  Why?  For one reason and one reason only, because the developers did not want to give Paladins yet another cooldown they could use while tanking.

These abilities were designed to be used as raid cooldowns and not as personal cooldowns.  Thus by linking the cooldowns will force the cooldown to not be used as a personal tanking cooldown.

2) How does the linking effect Last Stand?

Unfortunately, this will cause other complications based on the overall design of this ability.  By linking these two cooldowns creates a paradigm where tanking warriors are now forced to make a decision between using one of their two tanking cooldowns and saving it to benefit the raid at a set point in an encounter.  Thus, for a good chunk of the more difficult encounters where a raid cooldown may be called for Warrior tanks will now be without a cooldown they would normally have.

3) What are the ramifications for Fury and Arms?

What of the other warriors inside your raid?  While Arms Warriors are not a spec that are often brought to raids for their stellar dps, fury warriors are.  Warrior damage is high and raids are bringing the “player” and not the “class”.  After this change will warriors be brought for their class?

We had similar circumstances back in Wrath of the Lich King.  Back then, all Paladins had access to Divine Guardian.  Paladins of all three specs were being brought to raids because of this.  Retribution Paladins in particular were being brought because of this.  Divine Guardian was so powerful that when the trees were redesigned the ability was given only to tanks.  Tanks and healers have a place to protect the raid.  Limiting and healing damage to the raid is their pervue.  The DPS pervue is to do damage and keep themselves alive.

I am not going to say that Rallying Cry will be to Warriors what Heroism/Bloodlust was to Shaman.  I will however say, that the ability will shift raid makeups considerably across the board.  Where there were once 1 DPS warrior in a 25 man raid, there will now be 2-3.  Where there were no warriors in a 10man group, there will be 1.

Raid cooldowns should remain in the hands of the Tanks and the Healers.

4) How do we fix this ability to be what Warrior tanks need?

First off, do we as warrior tanks need a raid cooldown?  Part of me wants to say, “No we do not.”  While the other part of me see’s Divine Guardian and says “They have one, I want one!”  What it really comes down to, will Protection Warriors be chosen more over Paladins if they had a similar raid cooldown?  I can’t help but to agree that they would.  Yet, that being said, is it a necessary addition to the game?

Personally, I am going to go with the “No we do not” sentiment.  However, it seems like we are getting this no matter if we like it or not.  So how do we make this ability workable within the Protection Warrior toolkit?

The easiest solution is perhaps the best solution.  Divine Guardian has fine print, just copy it and paste it into the Last Stand talent.  Create extra wording to the talent changing Rallying Cry from effecting the warrior if cast by him and preventing Last Stand and Rallying Cry from being up at the same time no matter who cast what.

Yes, it would be better if Rallying Cry was flat out attached to Last Stand’s Talent.  One talent to grant both abilities within the Protection tree.  Thus making it a Protection only ability.

5) What are the PvP ramifications?

I do not PvP regularly, but I can see some real issues within organized PvP.  Rallying Cry during an Arena Match could turn the tide.  Rallying Cry during a Tol Barad could do the same.  Giving upwards of 40 people 20% extra health will be as strong or stronger than a well-timed Time Warp/Heroism/Bloodlust.  Is Blizzard thinking everything as through as we’d like?

WoW is a game that just ends up bringing me back into the fold.  Not because WoW is an awesome game, but because other games just do not do anything WoW does with any polish.  I honestly, loved the “Asian Grind” that was the original Final Fantasy MMO.  FFXI had its grind, but it mitigated that grind with a heck of a lot of good story, cutscenes and missions that mattered both to the player and to the world at large.  Armor, Weapons and other rewards you got along the way, often times stayed with you for a long period of time.  A character in the game was permanent and was “all-in-one”.  You “owned” your character much more because you could grow with it.  Want to play a mage today?  Sure, just go to your Moogle and change jobs and level up!”  There was no rolling or rerolling when you wanted to change it up.

I was looking forward to that more than anything in FFXIV.  Alas, even that portion of the game was botched in my mind.  From the first day I entered the Alpha, I wasn’t impressed with the new “Armory” system of choosing your job.  Crafting as a “Class”?  It never made sense to anyone and it just didn’t work in the end.

That brings me to the simple fact about FFXIV.  It won’t recover.  The new development staff may be trying to tell us of all these changes they are making to the game.  However, it’s all smoke and mirrors and the game will probably never make it out of its “free to play” time it currently sits in.  While I know a handful of people who still play the game and are having fun with it, that is a small majority.  What those players have to say about the state of the game still holds true.  It’s not a great game, it’s not a good game, it’s just a game of hope.  They are holding out that the devs give them what they are telling them they are going to get.  Hope is all they have, because the rest of the MMO market consists of a handful of older games, that most have either played or have no interest in, WoW, or a couple of new games like DCUO or Rift.

Most players left WoW for XIV because they were tired of the Amusement Park mentality of the game.  The idea where you rush to get in line (level up) and then sit on the kiddie rides (5 man dungeons) until you are ready to get on the big rollercoaster (raids), then by the time you experience the Matterhorn, you just don’t get excited by riding the Tea Cups anymore.  Rift is a virtual copy of ever major part of WoW.  Except it’s based on the same ugly graphics engine as Warhammer.  The physics are horrible and the gameplay concepts take a few things that were interesting from Warhammer and even FFXI and try to put them to work.

Rift’s major draw is just that… Rifts.  They play a lot like a crossbetween XI’s Besieged and Warhammer public quests.  Where as instead of having the same public quest each time in the same place like you had in Warhammer, the server continually ramps up and sends rifts and even mobile armies to attack towns and encampments like Besieged/Campaign is in XI.  I must admit, that being in the Beta for Rift and experiencing these small, medium, and hugely large rift invasions and the mobile armies of elites that lay waste to everything between them and their chosen target are extremely cool.  It brings an element to the game that WoW is lacking, ie the War in Warcraft.

But is that enough to make the game appeal to me?  Not really.  The look and feel of the game and the extreme lack of character customization make the game unappealing.  It is fun to play for a few here and there, but it will never be what XI or WoW have been for me.

–

Rant off…

I should be back to posting.  The guild has become quite casual, but we are 12/12 and now working on Heroic Modes.  So some good stuff here and there to come.  Check us out at http://tempest-kilrogg.wowstead.com