Grimmtooth's Troops

Today marks the last day before Panderia goes live. The weeks leading up to it have been interesting, as people come to grips with the new talent system and glyphs, get a feel for scenarios, and maybe say goodbye to some old content.  Starting tomorrow, a lot of people will be power-leveling¹ to level 90 and rushing to start raiding². There will be a peppering of realm-first achievement spam, occasional ganking, stability issues, and hotfixes galore.

How did Cataclysm fare, in retrospect?

Personal

From a personal perspective, I made many new friends, lost a few of them to other games, got a few of those back, though not as thoroughly as I’d like. I advanced further in endgame play than I ever have before³. I mended fences a bit with my old guild and learned the skill of just ignoring people intent on being asshats.

Lore-wise, the game had many highs and lows. Unfortunately, I feel I must agree with many of my colleagues when I say that the game lore felt remote and disconnected from me as a player.  Arthas still is, to many, the epitome of Big Bads, with Ragnaros a close second, but Deathwing himself was never personally engaging⁴.  Putting that blowhard in charge of the Horde and making Thrall – excuse me, Go’el – into Jesus Orc⁵ pretty much rankled.  The advances on and atrocities seen in Night Elf territory, Gilneas, and the kingdom of Lorderon, well, as Alliance we’re not surprised but we are very, very disappointed that we’re expected to just kinda shrug our shoulders once again and weakly mutter "We shall avenge you!" to our honored dead.

The Shattering

The Shattering and the jump in time between the end of Wrath and now were used to cover the revamping of the zones. Some were excellent – Badlands comes to mind – while others were meh. Some should have been done differently⁶ Others felt contrived⁷. So much real estate was made available to us as characters when we got the means to fly in Old Azeroth; so much of that was a vast disappointment⁸.   Some were pretty much ignored⁹.  Overall it was nice seeing the march of time, but disappointing in how it was expressed.  And the disconnect with Outland and Northrend makes it difficult to keep one’s head in the moment.

Questing

Questing in leveling areas was reworked, with tightly controlled progression through zones that would tell the story of the zone. Great idea, when it worked, such as the Wrathion story in Badlands, but usually there were two negatives: 1) the quests turned gray in the bigger zones before you were done with the story, and b) Subsequent runs on alts tend to be tedious and tiring. Nice try, but no banana. Additionally, reliance on cut scenes often distracted from rather than contributed to the mood.

New Zones

If I never see another underwater zone, I will not be at all displeased. Vashj’ir was lovely, the story told quite compelling (right up to the sudden dead ending). The mechanics of underwater movement were frustrating and difficult to deal with. The fact that they took a mechanic that we HATED on Malygos and applied it to an entire zone is just unbelievable. Of the rest of the zones, Twilight Highlands is my personal favorite (For obvious reasons) followed by Deepholme. Uldum would have been 2nd except for two things.

1. Harrison Jones ruined the mood, constantly and consistently. I don’t need Nazis in my fantasy world, and I don’t need Indiana Jones. 
2. I don’t care if she IS in front of a firing squad, Floramel would never – ever – cower in fear like that. She would stand straight and spit her last breath into Schnotz’s eye. On several occasions, Uldum attributed characteristics to our heroic players that were not consistent with who and what they are. Bomb about to go off? Grimm wouldn’t be cowering behind a cart – he’d be trying to get a peek at the EXPLOSION. It’s in his idiom, as with all Wildhammers and Bronzebeards. So, bad characterizations of our toons here, and, as Saxy says, CLANG. If you can’t respect the characters in your story telling, nobody else will respect the story.  And, as a reader of this story, it came across as a bad joke.

Instances

A lot was made of the heightened difficulty of dungeons in Cata. They were more brutal and less forgiving of poor behavior. As a purist, I approve. As a gamer, I approve. I liked the BC instances a lot more because they required thought and coordination between players, whereas the WotLK instances were big loot vaults once you got a few Professor Plums on you. I felt that Cata was a return to this, and was kind of disappointed when they relented.

My favorite instance? Grim Batol, of course. Even tainted and broken, that place is magnificent. It’s hard to gawk when your tank is all go go go, but I do try to take it in as much as I can.

My least favorite? Deadmines. Vanessa van Cleef is terribly underused, and the poison sequence at the end is a very annoying and difficult experience, especially those lightning bars. Not everyone in this game grew up on Super Mario Bros or whatever they stole that from.

And I would really love to see Vanessa explored as an antagonist for future expansions.

Raiding

Nothing in Wrath captured the imagination quite as well as Karazhan, though Icecrown came close. Cata gave it a go, but fell short, I’m afraid. Part of this stems from the in adequate storytelling in-game, it just set us up with a series of loot holes to dig out of without any context of why. Other than, yaknow, they were all very bad people.  From the view as a raider, they all were entertaining enough, with some definite favorites and not so muches.

My favorite raid in general had to be BWD, but  Dragon Soul came in close behind.   The fights in BoT were a bit over the top gimmicky, and Four Winds was as well.  Firelands had its moments, but the long protracted trash clear requirement before Shannox even shows made it difficult to get into.  DS was okay, but not as satisfying as it should have been.  Of all these, Four Winds was my least favorite, and my guildies as well. We ran it as few times as we could manage and still get the achievements and loot.

Favorite raid boss without a doubt was Ultraxion, because as a Hunter I had a very useful role to play with Deterrence allowing me to be the "soaker" occasionally.   But most were close seconds. From a DPS perspective, all were fairly enjoyable, once the dance was learned.

Least favorite has to be Al’Akir.  Hate hate haet. I hate gimmick fights, Al was all about gimmick, and Blizz can’t implement a 3D fight that doesn’t make your eyes bleed, it’s that simple. Second on that list is Ryolith, with his clunky steering mechanic and inaccurate visuals. If either of those had been modified, the fight would have been okay – again, I felt useful as a steerer! – but together, those two flaws rendered this fight a soul-crushing series of wipes due to missteps and miscues. No fun at all.

I never finished Ragnaros before DS came out. I always felt like I was behind the curve on that fight. It was very discouraging, earning Rag third place, but it wouldn’t take much to move him up to 2nd.

Now versus Then

Looking back to the announcement, I was very enthusiastic for the changes brought by the Shattering in principo, neutral on the choice of big bad, confused about glyphs and Path of Titans, confused on Archaeology, and, as usual, oblivious on the new zones. 

Near the end of Wrath, I was in a funk.  Finding a new home to raid in wasn’t even a glimmer at that point. I had almost decided to quit, but since I had preordered the expansion anyway, I decided to at least run the new content. I had no hope of raiding again, so the way things turned out was a BIG surprise.

The overarching technical reason given for The Shattering was that it would give the architects the ability to fundamentally rebuild the underpinnings of the game. The only visible effect is the means to fly on Azeroth’s old zones. We can only hope that it bears future fruit.

As a player, I have yet to lose interest of the game despite what many point out as Cata’s shortcomings. I am apparently easy to please. Well, also, I have yet to achieve all I wish to. To that end, there’s always something to do. And, with Panderia, more to come.

Wrapping Up

Overall, Cataclysm was, for me, a disappointment. Nothing stands out as much as the rough treatment of lore and internal character consistency from a storytelling perspective. The impression I get is that the person in charge of storytelling changed in Cata, and he or she either sees things differently than the last one, has new directives, or just isn’t perceiving the characters as we have. 

There was also what I saw as an increased stream of people leaving the game, at least for a while, some before 4.3 came out. I can’t prove anything here, but my perception is that the number of people doing so was higher than the same point in Wrath – even with the cheesy Tournament tier level. The challenge for Blizzard is to somehow figure out why and to counter it, and not just with headcount.

Still, any expansion you walk away from is a winner, amirite? I’m looking forward to Panda Land, and hope you are as well.

Let’s go hunt some Orc.

1. I’m not one of them. [↩]
2. I won’t be. [↩]
3. I even have all BiS for non-Heroic T13! [↩]
4. Neither was Rag, but he had something about him that made us want to punch him in the face. [↩]
5. Stolen from Rades, by the way. [↩]
6. Looking at YOU, Ashenvale and Darkshore. [↩]
7. Looking at YOU, any zone that suddenly had a shoreline that was totally ignored as a place to do things. [↩]
8. Looking at YOU, big empty lake in EPL. [↩]
9. Hello, Silithus. [↩]

Ever since I started running instances with the guild again, I’ve been running into a memory problem: I couldn’t remember which binding I had assigned to my dispel set up for in Clique.  I’d see error messages like "Invalid target" and wonder what I’d just hit.  Then I’d open Clique up after the fight and go "I could swear I hit that combo."

A couple of days ago I realized what my mistake was.

Tooltip for Dispel Magic:

Dispels magic on the enemy target, removing 1 beneficial Magic effect.

Contrast to the older version – the one I was bound to:

Dispels magic on the target, removing 2 harmful spell from a friend or 2 beneficial spell from an enemy.

So Dispel Magic only works on the Bads, then. What replaces it, and Cure Disease?

Digging through the spell book, one sees Purify.

Dispels harmful effects on the target, removing all Magic and Disease effects.

It’s actually two spells in one, making and it isn’t limited in the number of debuffs it’ll remove – it removes all of them. The tradeoff? It’s on an eight-second cooldown now.

So don’t be Derp Priest like me¹. Square your binds up before things get real.

1. To be fair, I don’t remember this being part of the "things that changed" text, or called out in WoWHead. Even if it was, I’d've probably missed it due to the sheer volume of information. Derp derp derp. [↩]

It’s probable that there will be some changes between now and the 28th, but we’re close enough that we can consider the numbers we have now to be fairly stable. So let’s consider the stats and what they mean for you.

Note: I am not linking to any of the items on WoWHead because after a very short time, those links will be invalid when the MoP database becomes the real database.  Obviously I can’t link to the real database for items are going to change. Sorry.

First and foremost: Blackfallow Ink is not your friend. On the 28th, it will not be usable to buy other inks. It will only be good to make glyphs. And there is only one glyph that you can make with it.  So, before the turn of 5.0.4, you need to convert Blackfallow Ink into anything that’s useful.

Topic the First: what’s useful.

First of all, at the end of this article will be a chart showing all glyphs that are active in MoP. In case you want to skip the brilliant analysis.

So what inks are useful? This chart shows the distribution of ink utilization in MoP.  Obviously, you can’t buy Ink of Dreams, but everything else is fair game.

As you can see, Ink of the Sea is by far the most useful.  Basically, 30% of your ink-exchanging should be for this glyph, followed by Ethereal¹ at roughly half that. Blackfallow is that little sliver.

This chart confirms Blackfallow as officially the most useless ink in the game.  You can make one glyph with it, the market is going to be flooded by people skilling up, and you can’t buy anything else with it. Useless. Unless you directly need to use Blackfallow ink for some sort of skilling up activity, don’t bother grinding Cata herbs. Sell them to alkys.

One thing to take into account: all this chart does is show the utilization of inks. It does not show how well the glyphs that are made will sell.  We won’t know that until we start rolling those glyphs out on the 28th.

Surprisingly, utilization of Ink of the Sea increases in MoP. This is despite moving several glyphs to different inks from what they used in Cata. It bewilders me that they didn’t bring Blackfallow up even with at least Ink of Dreams. This has always been a thing that confuses me. It seems that a glyph’s ink should be on par with the glyph’s level, and the glyph’s level should be on par with the level of the skill that it is modifying. But none of the glyphs learned between 80 and 85 use Blackfallow Ink except for Colossus Smash.

Within a few percentage points, glyph distribution in MoP is pretty even. DK seems to be hurting the most.  Compared to Cataclysm’s distro, it looks like this:

First of all, note that there were close to fifty (50) glyphs added between Cata and MoP. Of those, Monk accounts for around 35.

Big winners were Warrior, Priest, and Paladin.  Hunter did well, while everyone else held even or lost one or two spots.  Which is bad news for mages, as roughly 1/2 of their glyphs are now variations on Polymorph².

Following is a full list (as of today, 8/17/2012) those glyphs³ that will be supported as of 8/28/2012. Enjoy!

Note: this table defaults to 25 entries, but has over 400. Please use the drop-down at the top of the table for navigation.  There are little pagination buttons at the bottom, too.

1. Yes, I realize it’s mis-spelled in the chart. [↩]
2. Just kidding! [↩]
3. Plus Certificate of Ownership [↩]

Is there an echo in here?

• Blizzard: Mists of Pandaria to Release Sept 25, 2012
• WoW Insider: Mists of Pandaria to Release Sept 25, 2012
• WoWHead: Mists of Pandaria to Release Sept 25, 2012
• MMO Champ: Mists of Pandaria to Release Sept 25, 2012
• Massively: Mists of Pandaria to Release Sept 25, 2012

I think I have a release date nailed down: Sept 25, 2012.

Somebody’s feeling a bit smug now.

Note: due to the somewhat volatile nature of the subject matter, it is entirely possible that I will update the info therein after it posts to the RSS feed. If you are reading via RSS (and who isn’t?) then for once I suggest that you go to the actual article on the blog, because the RSS feed will not update content once FeedBurner caches it.  I promise, I won’t try to sell you gold services if you do.

Although the overall Inscription series was a bust¹, there is still a real need for one bit of information that was coming from it. Namely, what glyphs are sticking around? Or, more to the point, which ones are going away?

In typical Blizzard fashion, I imagine that a bank full of Prime glyphs will become a bank full of gray items. Blizz may also, in typical fashion, grant them a sell-off value that far above what you can get for it on the live servers, but don’t count on it. Unfortunately, they’re playing that one cagey, and I have no good data on what the “complementary” value of a grayed-out Prime may be. The upshot is that they may only offer vendor pricing, which, as you probably know, is pretty miserable. ²

The “smart” money, therefore, is on getting rid of what you have that will NOT be viable when the pre-expansion hits³.  This consists of, for example and not surprisingly, almost every Prime – though some are being “demoted” and retained in the constellation of available glyphs. Another group of glyphs that are going away are those that removed a material cost for some skill or another, such as the one that removed the Light Feather material component from Slow Fall.

There are also a ton of glyphs that defy classification – but the ability or the need for the glyph is going away, so, therefore, is the glyph.

With no hard and fast rules, then, a brute-force approach has been required to sort it all out.  But I think I have a handle on it.

When to Dump

A huge chunk of this list consists of glyphs that never sold very well – or for a decent price. Therefore, getting them onto the market and sold for whatever you can get for them is the priority. I wouldn’t fuss over mat costs or anything at this point. If you can get a whole GP for each glyph, take it. I doubt that you’ll get that much for a grayed one in the 5.0.4 world.

Others, however, continue to sell well, despite the fact that they’re going to be useless when the patch drops. If you’re making 150-300 gp per glyph, when do you give up the gravy train and stop sinking ink into them?  “Smart money” says right until they stop selling, but that will leave you with a pocket full of grayed glyphs if you don’t time it exactly right.

“Safe money” says, don’t take chances. Once you start dumping, dump it all.  Use that ink on glyphs that will be available after the patch drops.

It’s been said before, and I am still thinking that the time of release for the pre-expansion patch (5.0.4) will probably be around mid-September, and probably two or so weeks later, the expansion.  With that in mind, my sell-off is going to start at the end of July.  This gives approximately six weeks to unload everything and get the house in order.

If 3.0.2 and 4.0.3 were any indication, we will lose the ability to use Blackfallow Ink to purchase lower level inks when the patch drops, and we won’t have the ability to make the new ink⁴  until we get to explore the new zones. If that’s the case, conversion of your Blackfallow into lesser inks (especially of the Sea) might be wise – either to sell off for a handsome profit, or to continue making glyphs – especially new ones, if we’re permitted to do so⁵.

What to Dump

Following is the list that I have managed to extract. If a glyph isn’t on this list, it is either being retained, or I mistaked.

You should be aware that mistakes are probably common, considering, and also the list may be changed by Blizz.  The change lists from them or WoWHead are rarely accurate or complete, WoWHead offers no API for independent data mining⁶, and brute-forcing it would mean the list never got published. I choose to publish now rather than hold out for perfection and not be timely.  For the record, that makes this list current as of July 19, 2012, and no later.

As before, I am not providing WoWHead links to everything in this list, because, like, that’s actual work.

1. I blame Garrosh. [↩]
2. If anyone knows for sure, drop a note in the comments, please. [↩]
3. 5.0.4 is on the PTR now, by the way. [↩]
4. Ink of Dreams. [↩]
5. Do note, however, that many of the new inks require Ink of Dreams directly – something I approve of, from a game design perspective, but which is damned inconvenient for those trying to get out of the gate early! [↩]
6. In fact, they’ve made it harder to programmatically extract data from the site, despite making soothing noises on their forums. I have a bad feeling about this. [↩]

Anyone even vaguely interested has probably noticed that the MoP Inscription series has kind of ground to a halt.

The problem is that I only did part of my research at first, and as I went on I realized that the game was woefully unprepared for this level of analysis.  Glyphs were changing on a daily basis, new ones added, old ones removed, and so forth.  Many of the glyphs mentioned in the first article were already altered by the time of the most recent one.

After watching that go in a million different directions, I kind of froze up (iknorite?) I began to formulate a recovery plan.  So here it is.

I’m going to drop the by-the-class glyph analysis, and, once the changes appear to be stable, I’ll put together one big list of glyphs that won’t be making it past the patch.  That was the long-term main reason for doing this, was to try to suss out what glyphs that we should get rid of before they became gray items in the bank.

That leaves open the question of when that date will be. Right now, our little collective is reckoning that September or early October is a likely release window for MoP, based on the fact that new MoP-level loot has been implemented for the Hallow’s Eve holiday. If they weren’t planning for release until after that, they wouldn’t bother with a holiday that was almost a year away, not right now. On the other hand, late October isn’t a good candidate, either, because releasing software in the middle of a holiday event sounds remarkably fraught with danger.

We’re therefore looking at a possible early September rollout for the pre-expansion patch, and early to mid September for the expansion.

We want to drop our junk well before then.

With all that in mind, this is the plan.

• Last week of July, I’ll gather all the data I have at that point and create a list of items that won’t be making the cut.
• First week of August, I’ll publish.

And that’ll be it for this series.

I’m not really happy with the direction this all took, and I hope nobody was really disappointed¹².

1. Although of course that has angsty connotations of its own! [↩]
2. True story: Angst was named after Ang Lee. – Grimm [↩]

Name?

Shadow.

Surname?

Fiend.

Profession?

Minion, type 4.

Aye, times are tough for you types, ain’t they?

Well, the paycheck’s still coming in, but the writing’s on the wall.

New guy, isn’t it?

Yeah. A real go-getter.

All show, no go?

Oh, he’s got the right stuff, for sure. Quite frankly, we’re outclassed.  Gotta be honest.

How’s he doing that?

Well, first of all, he flies!  I can barely slither, and here he comes flying?  Can’t hold a candle to that!

How’s that happen?

I’m guessing the Twilight types left a few bits of research lying about, and the Temple had a look.

That’s a right shame, it is.

Well, at least I have time to find a new gig.

Well, right. What’s your qualifications?

Well, I studied in the twisted nether. Majored in Hit-and-run Tactics and Ignoring Masters’ commands. Picked up a nice Disco spec in Karazhan and romped around Northrend for a while. Spent most of my time recently in Shadow spec questing about. Seen Alien about 1,344 times and it keeps getting funnier EVERY SINGLE TIME I see it.

Hm. Yes. Very good.  The computer’s coming up with some nice candidates.

Great!  What you got?

Well, we got this walk-in part in Westeros that pays pretty well.

Cold there, isn’t it.

That it is. Hm. Do you have a hairnet?

I don’t  have hair.

Right, that would be a no.  How are you with numbers?

Um, not bad.

Right. Okay, luv, I’ve got a few options here.

Yes?

First, we have several entry level openings in the food service industry.

That’s not really my gig, though.

Exactly right, I thought the same. So, we have several middle-management openings in the Banking industry to do with Derivatives.

I have principles.

Oh, that is unfortunate.  Well, there’s one other possibility other than Oblivion, but I doubt you’d like it.

I’ve an open mind, lay it on me.

It’s in your field of expertise, but it’s a huge change of pace.

Come on, out with it.

Sorry, sir, of course.  Was just trying to prepare you.

I am prepared.

Warlock minion.

Warlock minion?

Warlock minion.  Type 2. A promotion, actually.

…

I was not prepared.

Sorry, luv, I tried to soften the blow.

I do appreciate that.

… Think they’d waive the hairnet?

I’m sure they would.

Well, let’s get the ball rolling then!

Right, sir. I’ll need you to sign here …

(200 quatloos to the person that completes the quote and names the source)

Yesterday was an explosion of beta madness.

Sadly, there was angst and drama as some that "paid for beta access" (via the Annual Pass program) were incensed that SOME people that DID NOT PAY got in AHEAD of them.  To them: Listen very carefully. The terms were "guaranteed" access, not "exclusive" or "preferential". I’m willing to bet there are many people out there that were outstanding beta testers for Cata that they want to get back into the process before the tourists come mucking about. So, chill the fel out and go kill some womp rats for a bit. I have faith that you’ll get a turn.  Love ya, buh-bye.

Okay, done being judgmental and vindictive for now.

Let’s talk fun stuff.

With there being no NDA for the beta, and thus having access to the full-on list of glyphs¹ at this point has future glyph mongers like Illume polishing their pestles with glee. To others of less mercantile intent, the list provides insights into what Blizzard means by "moar fun" in this expansion. Druids are absolutely thrilled at many minor shape-enhancing glyphs specific to various forms, such as Stag, Orca, and Chameleon.

What really floats my barge are likewise superficial.

Glyph of Nightmares – Your Felsteed and Dreadsteed can cross water while running and leave a trail of flames.

Throw in a flying demon steed, and I’ll call it even with Death Knights.

Glyph of Felguard – Your Felguard will equip a random two-handed axe, sword or polearm from your backpack.

What this seems to imply is that every warlock out there will have the option to personalize his or her Felguard in a fairly unique way.  Of all the glyphs I’ve read about so far, this one seems to have the greatest chance of being dropped – because how many weapons will they have to deal with, right?

A big fear I have right now is related to something said by a Blue a while back, that being that eventually we’ll be seeing both male and female succubii.  Or succubii and incubii, more properly. I can see it coming out like this.

Glyph of Succubus - Your Succubus will take on a male form.

Why can’t it be

Glyph of Incubus - Your Incubus will take on a female form.

Even better would be this.

Glyph of Demonform - Your Demon form will be male.

Why? Because this game defaults to a male-dominated mindset entirely too much.  Shake up the dudes. Or, at least split the difference between the demon form and succubus defaults. I’m not saying it would undo close to a decade of we-are-the-patriarchy-bitch buffoonery, but it would be a step in the right direction.

On the other hand, how about an even more brilliant step, and making it a game option and not pissing off anyone? Yeah, that’d be cool, too. A couple of little flags is all it would take, guys!

Enough with the negativity on my part². I’m looking forward to learning more about how all the new stuff will work out.  This is some good stuff!

1. WoW Insider has a good list. [↩]
2. You are of course welcome to continue on your own. [↩]

Between Grimm in DS and my own undergeared butt in Heroics, we’ve finally – as of last night – gotten to see all the threads in the endgame story for this expansion¹.  It’s gratifying to see that the endgame has a more solid narrative than ever before.  Only twice does it succumb to what I call the "Gallery of bads" syndrome.

If you remember the pilot movie for Babylon 5, you no doubt remember the Gratuitous Alien Gallery, a venue that Sinclair and Alexander cut through on the way to somewhere more useful.  The Alien District, as it was called, resembled more of a toxic petting zoo than a place where aliens lived and carried out business – glass booths with aliens standing in them, cubicles with aliens standing them, empty spaces with aliens standing in them – you get the picture.

A lot, it might be noted, like Icecrown Citadel, and many other raids. Just dudes. Standing around. Doing standing around dude things.

Some examples.

• Karazhan – you have to beat up the stable boy, the castellan, and a travelling group of troubadours to even get close to the guy that’s making the place go bad².  And even then, there are rooms off to the side with a couple of dragons, a bereaved father, and a studious demon that you can go beat up just for funsies.
• Icecrown Citadel – With an airship at your disposal, you can just fly to the spire and take care of business. But instead we go the long hard way through a gallery of bads, none which even matter, and some which were plain made up – had no previous connection to lore – for this instance.
• Naxx – For this gallery of bads to even make SENSE, they had to force you to clear each wing as part of unlocking a portal to the one guard dragon that stands between you and the big bad.
• The Eye – Aside from Alar (and who doesn’t want a shot at a flaming mount?), you can walk right in to Kael’s throne room and start beating on him. And speaking of dudes just standing around. Don’t belfs own chairs?
• Ulduar – After taking down XT and Kologarn, not much stopping you from just jumping down into the pit and getting jiggy with Yogg. Well, aside from the invisible barrier that forces you to go the long way, but it is not mentioned as part of the lore.

The common thread here is that you have a bunch people standing around scratching their butts, doing nothing but looking decorative until a bunch of mercenaries comes along to rob them.  You don’t have to kill off Moroes³ – he doesn’t drop a key. You don’t have to kill off Putricide ⁴ to get to the Lich King. Notwithstanding game mechanics, why exactly is Ignis standing around? What is the purpose of Aran, other than fleshing out some lore that didn’t, really, exist? 

While this is coming off as a rant against how artificial and contrived the circumstances of most raid bosses are constructed, it is intended as praise for Dragon Soul.

The five-mans leading up to it, while somewhat contrived and confusing at times, do actually link up to the raid elegantly.  The escort quest at the end exists for a reason (as any raider knows, the front door is blocked). And, granted, the "echoes" do fall into the "contrived bad dude just standing around thinking bad dude thoughts" trope, but the next instance in the chain more than makes up for it in integrating the bosses into the story. ⁵

The only raid-related boss issue in this case are Zonza and Ballchucker.  They exist only to be beaten and looted. They serve no part of the story other than to stand around and look lootish. Had they been integrated better⁶ I’d have no complaint, but they weren’t. They block nothing, unlock nothing, drop nothing related to the story⁷. They are Miscellaneous Bad Dudes. In holes.

But, overall, the endgame for this expansion has proven to be far superior to what we’ve seen before.  I don’t know how much of an actual story that MoP will have. If it does, I hope they improve on the linear story-based raid instance over the collection-of-loot-piñatas rogues gallery approach. It was a lot more fun and a lot more interesting.

1. Minus Deathwing, which Grimm is working diligently on. [↩]
2. Oh, and before a "fix" in 3.0.2, you didn’t even have to do any of the lower castle stuff – you could go straight to Curator if you didn’t want loot. [↩]
3. Within the story line – I’m not counting locked doors suddenly popping open, which isn’t the case here anyway. [↩]
4. Ditto. [↩]
5. Plus, bare-chested Nelf Illidan has to count for something in somebody’s scorebook. Flora like. [↩]
6. "To get to the temple, you must take this tunnel, heroes! And beware the Faceless Ones!"  I dunno, that was too easy. Should Fargo send me a check? [↩]
7. While I love it so, loot doesn’t count for this discussion. [↩]

I think enough time has gone by now that we can focus a bit on one of the big technical changes coming in MoP and how it affects us. Namely, the massive changes in the new talent system.

First of all, a LOT of stuff has been taken out of the talent trees.  Things that are signature talents now are becoming spec-bound abilities that you automatically get as you progress.  So that cuts down on clutter.

Then there’s a bunch of stuff that just came out because it was stupid, or unloved, or it was just added to learnable abilities because everybody uses it anyway.

What is left are eighteen talents, out of which you can choose six.  Each tier gives you three choices, of which you can choose one. Each of the three choices is biased towards one spec or another. For example, Grimoire of Supremacy is obviously playing to the desires of the Demonology warlock (and, might I add it looks pretty spiffy).

So here’s how it pans out for MoP.

• Abilities that go with your spec that you were going to pick up anyway.
• Abilities that go with all specs that you would want anyway.
• Talents that may have a bias to one spec or another, but you have a choice.

Compare that to today (Cata).

• Talents that go with your spec that you have to have.
• Talents that are not of your spec but which you will choose once you are able.
• Filler talents in your specs that you use to get to the next tier.

The Illusion of Freedom

The lament has been “But this removes my essential FREEDOM to choose!” I disagree. Your freedom is illusory.

The fact that you can choose a spec that makes absolutely no sense does not mean that you will or should. This was especially true before Cata hit, when we had seventy-ish talents to choose from and no spec restrictions in place. You had total freedom to go with a 20/20/21 spec but only if you didn’t care about being competitive or competent in your class. If you were raiding, you had roughly three to nine templates to choose from, and that was it. So much for “freedom”.

Your freedom was an illusion. You were either going to choose what Elitist Bastards told you to choose, or you just didn’t care about talents at all, in which case your essential freedom was not to choose at all.

Broken

The talent system WAS broken, then less broken, now even less broken – and yet, still broken.

The problem is that any talent that affects performance significantly will either be required – in order to meet performance needs – or it will cause an imbalance if everybody else doesn’t have access to that talent.

All other talents are more flavor or filler talents than anything else.  The fact that you shoot green fire instead of red fire doesn’t affect the fact that you’re shooting fire, and green fire has no more damage potential than red.

You can call that freedom, but I don’t.

Paladins have complete freedom to wear cloth. They don’t. Why? The illusion of that freedom is that it’s actually a CHOICE. It is not, if that paladin is going to be serious about doing Pally stuff. Freedom is an illusion for this pally, because she’s going to put on Plate, and she’s gonna use a shield, and she’s gonna go tank stuff with her faith and nice, solid armor. She has the “freedom” to wear a dress instead. Her raid leader has the “freedom” to replace her.

The fact that the game doesn’t stop you from doing something stupid is perceived as “freedom” but the realities associated with why you wear certain things negate that pretty effectively.

Bottom line is, that paladin never had any freedom at all if she wanted to raid. There’s a list of BiS equipment, of best enchants, reforges, and gem configurations, and she will BY GAWD adhere to those or suffer the consequences.

That’s how Talent System 1.0 was. Oh, sure, as Destro you could be either shadow or fire spec. But we all knew which spec worked better, and you wanted your epeen, yes you did, so you went with the spec that put you on top of the charts.

You had absolute and total freedom … to do exactly what you were told to do – or not to raid.

The Choice is Yours

So what’s different about the MoP talent system isn’t that it removes choices, but that it removes the choices you never had. It is doing away with the silly concept that you ever had a choice on your spec configuration, once the spec was chosen.

You still get to choose. You get to choose what spec you want to run. You get to choose which minor talents to use – which is the only real choice you had in the first place. And, mind you, you can choose from ANY school for these minor talents, which you can’t do right now in Cata.

Another thing about these minor talents is that I am seeing a lot of new stuff to play with. These may be minor talents, but they have game-changing significance. Oh, some of the choices are non-choices, as the talents range from “that’s nice” to “OMG MUST HAEV NAOW”.

BUT – what I am seeing is that they are acknowledging that where a talent makes a huge difference there is probably a lesson to be learned; that the real choices should be significant but not unbalancing. That the real choices should define style but not performance.

You mad bro?

I don’t think that the people that hate this new system have thought the matter through on these terms. They perceive a loss of flexibility without acknowledging that they never used it anyway. Sure, there are outliers. There always are. But those outliers are either out on the edge to prove a point, or landed there by accident and don’t really care otherwise.

No, you should not be concerned about the fella that doesn’t even have his talent tree filled in right now. He won’t care about these changes, either, even if he notices them.

The ones that care – the ones that PvP and raid and do other endgame activities – have already surrendered the freedom to choose out of the wider pool anyway. From here on out, they can focus on stuff that they always had a choice on – red, or green?