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Though I’m never smart enough to actually try and exploit game mechanics, I have a certain respect for those that do. I’m not talking about Martin’s Fury incidents or underground mining, I am talking about the players who have a light go off in their head when they see talents and gear in an unconventional way to create a competitive advantage.

I know there are debates on exploitation versus creative use of game mechanics, and I won’t even pretend like I can solve that problem with a thousand posts. Some of us just see the game differently and our ideas about right and wrong in Azeroth are as varied as our ideas about right and wrong in real life.

Some healing (Note: Healing not Holy) paladins have decided to take a prot spec for survivability and then equip healing gear. By going deep into the protection tree, spellpower is boosted by a percentage of stamina so these paladins are able to heal effectively and increase survivability in arenas.

Apparently, these healing paladins in PVP were touched by the light, and Blizzard launched an investigation to find out whether or not it was appropriate when the light touched the paladin. (If you’re like me, you will have already queued up the bad jokes of GC asking paladins to show him on the doll where they were touched by the Light.) The verdict isn’t looking good for the talent, and I am a little concerned.

How many times do decisions negatively impact one aspect of the game to better balance the other?

The WoW community is large and smart enough to understand PVP and PVE are, eventually, going to have to be separated. In a Halls of Stone pug the other day, the discussion came up, and the famous response that always rings in my ears because I hear it ALL the time was uttered, “PVP is ruining PVE.” The response could easily be switched, but the premise is the same. If a change is made to one aspect of the game you do not play and it impacts the part you do enjoy, you will almost always have this response.

More importantly, why are players with alternative specs frowned upon by Blizzard? Is it so terrible for a paladin to heal with a prot spec and “double dip” for spellpower but not have his healing propped up with talents like holy shock, sacred cleansing, or beacon of light? Sometimes I wonder if the only thing hurt with a functioning alternative spec are the egos of the development team.

-Rhab

Greetings Rawrcast fans,

With the attention grabbing, headline hyperbole out of the way let me explain why I genuinely fear for the future of the WoW player base.

Back on December 2nd 2007 it was announced that Activision was to merge with Blizzard under the umbrella of Vivendi, creating

‘the world leader in online and console games…perfectly positioned to take advantage of these rapidly developing markets across the globe.’

Blizzard assured us that they would retain their autonomy resolutely stating,

‘This will not impact Blizzard’s games.’

With Michael Morhaime still acting as president of Blizzard and their creative freedom assured we all breathed a sigh of relief. Sierra Entertainment, meanwhile, was not so lucky. Dropped by Activision in an effort to clear ‘overlap’ a variety of gaming franchises were given the boot, but we don’t mind all that because all we’re concerned with is Blizzard right?

Ok, so on the face of it things are rosy for us WoW players. Blizzard is to keep control of their product, after all their quality over the years speaks for itself so why should anyone want to meddle? You see, this is where I get concerned.

Robert ‘Bobby’ Kotick was announced as the CEO and President of Activision Blizzard, having led Activision for over 17 years but as of late he’s been acting a bit of a fool. Ars Technica sum up this guys media blunders in a great article from which I borrowed their artwork.

Gamesindustry.biz reported only a couple of months back that Kotick had threatened to pull Activision’s support from Sony if they didn’t drop the price of the PS3. I’m sure there is some sound business sense in making that call, but on The Combobulater podcast we couldn’t help but ask why Activision were throwing their weight around like that? Effectively what we have here is a big bully publisher, bowling round the play park bumping into the other kids as they flap their arms in a windmill!

Sony are going through a hard time at the moment, with staff layoffs climbing and profits suffering at the hands of the PS3’s failure to penetrate the market as well as it should have… Whilst the rest of the industry seemed to comprehend that Sony has invested a lot in an effort to push the media along Activision just had to stick their oar in. In my opinion there was just no need for Kotick to put the boot in whilst Sony were/are clearly down.

Fast forward a few weeks into July and we see Kotick announce that Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 is to retail at a higher than typical price, £55 being set in the UK for the standard edition of the game; £10 more expensive (nearly £20 actually) than most other console games on the market.

Wrapped up in excuses about games looking better, costing more to produce and blah, blah, blah – the plain reality is that Kotick wants to push up the RRP of the games you buy.

We’re not finished yet. Kotick seems to spew controversy with everything he says lately, only the other week during a conference call with company execs patting themselves on the back for their ‘better than expected earnings for Quarter 2’ (really, they were surprised that this merger has earnt so much wealth!?!) Kotick ‘quipped’ that if he had his way he would push the price of games even higher.

He backs this up by stating that the market would welcome this,

‘On the pricing, we’ve had for all of our launch titles in the back half of this year, some of which contain peripherals, as you point out, very strong retailer acceptance and support for all parts of our plan’

To sum up so far, what we have in Kotick is an industry leader who believes that gamers are lapping up the plastic peripherals (or tat as I like to call it) and whatever else they bundle with their games (see CoD: MW2 Prestige edition) and to add insult to injury he believes we’re prepared to pay through the nose for it.

I shall tell you what worries me most of all, he will probably be proven right!! CoD: MW2 is bound to sell by the truck load and Activision Blizzard will no doubt look at their profits for the next quarter with shock and awe as sales rocket into the Christmas period.

‘These are console games though’ I hear you cry, ‘Why should we care?’

Let’s think about this. Kotick is head of Activision Blizzard, in my opinion I believe he out ranks Morhaime**. Kotick is the one holding the purse strings to the company and Kotick is the one that seems to sanction things.

As much as Blizzard say they have retained their autonomy do you seriously think Activision has had no say in what goes on with one of the biggest profit margins in the company? Take a look at the way WoW has changed over the course of the last year with announcements made the WoW community thought would never see the light of day.

Rules set in stone have been blown to smithereens, real money transactions have been expanded upon as the community can now pay to change the sex of their character or even switch factions! All for what? So that players have flexibility in how they play, the freedom to play WoW as they see fit? Come on, you can dress it up nicely but what we have here is an exploitation of the WoW player base and under Kotick’s rule I don’t see this getting any better.

Whether it will happen in World of Warcraft or in the yet to be announced MMO that Blizzard are working on I can’t help but look on with dread and wonder how Kotick will take advantage of over 12 million gamers. He has the WoW community eating out of the palm of his hand and whilst you may all argue that the changes so far have been minor I really don’t feel comfortable with this man in charge.

Will we be expected to purchase some sort of plastic tat with the next MMO, perhaps some ‘innovative’ new peripheral that will ‘immerse’ the player into the game. Or will the core price of the game take a leap into the next generation with a higher box price and monthly subscription to support the developers as they ‘struggle’ to stay afloat.

Only time will tell, but I say be on your guard. If you feel as though you’re being ripped off then you most definitely are! Don’t let Kotick ruin your wallet, WoW may be an awesome game but as a united community we need to be wary of his direction.

Emeny.

Click here Buff this article on buffd.net

** Thanks for the comments and mails made on this thread. I’d like to revise my concerns raised on this particular point (that of Kotick ‘outranking Morhaime) it would appear that I got my wires crossed here and that Kotick does not actually ‘outrank’ Morhaime as more sit alongside him. I stand by my concerns for what influence he may bear on WoW, whether they be just whispers in the dev team’s ear or outright pressure is up for discussion. Thanks again for your keen insight guys, this is a good learning experience for me in the art of blogging

Emeny.

Apparently the pre-Blizzcon leaks have begun to occur. The first major leak out of Blizzard is that there will be two new playable races in the next expansion; Cataclysm. Most of us have been expecting the new expansion to be so titled, but we were expecting that we would have to wait until Blizzcon to get the confirmation. Now, we not only have confirmation of the title, but we also have information on the two new races.

The alliance will now have the addition of the Worgen to their character building choices, while the Horde will have Goblins. This will present a whole new side to the debate on what the expansion will include or not include. I myself will have to really think about this news to see if it changes the proposed scenario I presented in my last blog entry on Cataclysm.

For weeks now there has been much speculation on the new races after MMO Champion released screen shots of new masks that Blizzard is releasing. What were the masks? Goblin and worgen. So the race speculation based on the masks has turned out to be right. The initial reaction by many is enthusiastic surprise. One of the key questions remaining will be what classes a player can choose when playing a worgen or goblin?

I look forward to hearing more about these races and the lore that Blizzard is spinning to make them playable. We have less than two weeks until Blizzcon, and we at the Rawrcast will be keeping our eyes and ears out for any more leaks that come our way. I do want to thank the folks over at wow.com who through their hard work initially broke this story.

Inquisitor

This week we are brimming with apathy over the release of 3.2 – Call of the Crusade. While many of the updates made will do great things to aid the development and preparations being made in our young guild, Bound, the general feeling about the new 5-man instance and raid dungeon leaves us wanting more.

All of this, along with this week’s top buffd news stores, and much, much more is available for your listening pleasure via iTunes, RSS feed, direct download, or you can stream it from our main page.

Links to topics discussed this week:

• Emblem Farming Route
• Fusion Gets Hacked
• Authenticators NOW AVAILABLE in the Blizzard Store
• LAPD using WoW to Fight Crime
• Collusium Bosses to be revealed over time
• Druid Skin/Color Comparison
• Should there be an heirloom item for every slot?

Mark your calendars and make plans to
join us LIVE for
RAWRCON: Blizzcon Saturday
August 22nd, at 4PM, CST!

With BlizzCon only 2 weeks away, I felt that my very first blog entry for the Rawrcast blogs should address the Cataclysm speculation. For weeks now, everyone that operates a WOW related blog or podcast has thrown out their opinions on what Blizzard is doing with the legal filings related to the term Cataclysm. Some of the ideas seem to hold water, while some are way out there in the imagination zone.
Here is my opinion on this issue:

The one fact that we can all agree upon is that the term Cataclysm according to The American Heritage Dictionary means:

“A violent upheaval that causes great destruction or brings a fundamental change.”

A second related definition is: “A devastating flood.”It is my contention that both of these relate directly to this Cataclysm trade marking by Blizzard.

After thorough thought on the subject, I feel that Blizzard plans to take the WOW mythology of the Maelstrom to wipe out much of what we think of as vanilla WOW.A good portion of Azeroth, including both Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms, will be wiped off the map in a massive water based event.There will still be some of the major cities and the most important instances, but possibly half of the map will be wiped away.

Now, before you panic or scream out loud that I am a kook, who is wrong, wrong, wrong, give me a second to explain my thinking.

Major Changes? Possibly… changing the face of Azeroth

First, this is a four year old game that Blizzard is trying to figure out a way to combat the newest competitors / impostors such as Aion coming out soon or the new Star Wars MMORPG in 2010.Blizzard needs to do something drastic in order to keep this game fresh and attractive to the current players and possible future players.The best way to do that is to create an event that is so massive, so “cataclysmic” that it catches everyone’s attention, both in and out of the game.

Second, we have seen as each and every expansion and patch that these low level areas are becoming more and more irrelevant.They are making it so that toons, many of which are alts, rush through these areas without experiencing much of the content.Blizzard has shown no inclination to really stop alts from becoming super geared, semi-twinked outtoons that are far more powerful than any real low level could ever be at the same level.

In addition, Blizzard has made changes that make it so easy to rush through the early part of the game; such as lowering the xp required for leveling, multi-boxing, recruit-a-friend, and the latest is making mounts available much earlier.The fact is that with the 3.2 addition of quest-helping UI changes or the Questhelper type add-ons that most of use, true exploration is a thing of the past, except for achievements sake.You know where the quest is sending you and your toon gets there and completes the task. There is no more searching the landscape to find Hogger’s camp or the Booty Bay Pirates, we know where they are.

Third, it will allow Blizzard to add a whole new continent including known and unknown creatures, life forms and enemies.Once the water has settled, a new continent will emerge in another part of the map, where all new adventures can be had.Plus, this will allow them to use the lesser used creatures that are in the game such as the Naga, the new Kraken off of Ice Crown, the water elementals and many others.

There seems to be some support in the game for abilities related to water adventures such as breathing underwater using multiple devices, potions and spells in Northrend and now that mounts can swim, there is no reason why could they not extend these to the new expansion? Along this same line of thinking,

they can reinvent some of the old instances, cities or areas as Atlantis like cities that have been taken over by bigger and better monsters or races.Just like a portion of the Temple of Atal’Hakkar in Swamp of Sorrows is under water, these “reborn” instances can be also.

Lastly, the Liche King will either have been defeated before this expansion or he will be remaking the map to suit his own needs.Northrend will no longer be able to contain him if all of the jousting and tier 9.75 gear out the Tournament fails to defeat him.The Cataclysm will either be caused because of his death or it will result from our failure in the combined efforts of horde and alliance to beat back the Scourge.

I hope that all of you have at least given my theory some thought. We will all have a better idea of what is to come after Blizzcon.There will be much more to come from my new posts on being a Noob in a 4 year old game.Good Luck in the Tournament, so far my Ulduar geared guild is getting its butt handed to it in the Heroic 10 and 25 man.

For Azeroth,
- Inquisitor

OK, historical dork reference of the week…

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Welcome Rawrcast fans,

Crikey, having been parched by the Searing Gorge it would seem that I over-indulged myself in the Blackrock Depths bar where the grog is likely to hit you hard!!

Six weeks I’ve been down and out but never mind that, my eyesight may be bleary and my head a little foggy but we’ve finally come to the Molten Core where I plan to unravel the history of Ragnaros.

Summoned from the elemental plane the Titans had banished him to in centuries past, Ragnaros seethes in his molten lake as he wrestles with the forces of Azeroth and searches for a way back to his homeland. Ragnaros proved one of the fiercest lieutenants of the Old Gods in the fight to control Azeroth but was ultimately pushed back. Thrown into a new war waged against the elemental forces – Ragnaros, with the help of his allies Baron Geddon and Garr, succeeded in laying waste to Prince Thunderaan during the Elemental Sundering. Dealing an unmerciful strike with the legendary mace Sulfuron Ragnaros brought Thunderaan down and feasted on his essence, though he was unable to consume all of his power. Read more…