World of Warcraft: Patch 5.2 Rise of the Thunder King

Good Morning and Welcome to Patch Day!  Servers are currently down for maintenance and are expected to be up around 9 AM PST.  It wouldn’t be unheard of for maintenance to be extended however, so while waiting remember to update your add-ons and read the highlights of Patch 5.2 here:

• A new raid is being released, Throne of Thunder
  • LFR gear is ilevel 502 and ilevel 522 on Normal
  • Heroic gear is ilevel 535
  • Thunderforged items are included
    • these items are six levels above regular level for the raid tier
    • low drop rate for these items
  • LFR bags have been fixed, and should no longer be known as Fail bags
  • LFR requires a ilevel 480 to queue
  • Raid schedule can be found here
• Two new world bosses
  • Oondasta
  • Nalak, The Storm Lord
• Isle of Giants is now open for business
  • new quests allowing players to discover new mounts and vanity pets
• PvP Season 13 begins
  • 4 tiers of PvP gear
  • Crafters can learn new recipes via daily transmutes for ilevel 458 PvP armor sets
• Isle of Thunder
  • Gated daily questing content, much like the Isle of Quel’Danas during the Burning Crusade expansion
    • Kirin Tor Offensive and Sunreaver Onslaught are the main factions: both battle one another and the Zandalari
    • Activities on the island are server wide efforts, so pacing on individual servers will be determined based on the server population and balance
  • Island unlocks in stages
  • The War Effort is being extended to the new island, the Isle of Thunder
  • Single player scenario coming, Troves of the Thunder King, if a player has the appropriate key to unlock the scenario
  • Portals to the Isle are located in Townlong Steppes near the Shado-Pan Garrison
• New Factions:
  • Shado-Pan Assault
    • has the best gear of the three factions
    • ilevel 522 Epic gear for valor points
  • Kirin Tor Offensive and Sunreaver Onslaught
    • Alliance and Horde factions respectively
    • Both factions will offer gear that will assist players in the Troves of the Thunder King scenario to maximize a players effectiveness in the the scenario
    • will also offer two dinosaur mounts
      • Reins of the Golden Primal Direhorn and Reins of the Crimson Primal Direhorn
• Changes are coming for Pet Battles
  • Elite Battle Pets are located on Pandaria and are indicated with a yellow paw on your map
• Legendary chain continues, with the reward being a metagem
• There are class specific changes comings, but here are a couple of highlights:
  • Hunters have the opportunity to tame three new spirit beasts and a new family: Direhorns
    • Check out the new models over at Petopia
  • Warlocks will finally have the opportunity to quest for green fire
• Reputation changes coming:
  • Sunsong Ranch will now have Work Order quests allowing reputation boosts for two factions per day
  • Random instances and scenarios will offer a bonus reputation line allowing additional reputation to be earned for the first instance and scenario of the day
• Transmogrification has some changes coming
  • Highlight is that many weapons that were once main-hand restricted are now available as one-handed weapons
• Profession changes:
  • Archaeology: Mantid race is now included
  • Blacksmithing: if you have the Ghost Iron ingots, it is now possible to level from 1-525 solely utilizing Ghost Iron
    • New weapon are also available, resembling weapons from the Burning Crusade
    • New recipes are also learned from discovery by making Lighting Steel Ingots
      • ilevel 458 PvP gear and ilevel 522 epics
      • However, in order to learn these items your SERVER must first unlock the Thunder Forges on the Isle of the Thunder King
  • Tailors and Leatherworkers will also be able to craft ilevel 458 PvP gear and ilevel 522 epic gear via recipes learned via discovery
    • Tailors have a chance when crating Imperial Silk
    • Leatherworks have a chance once they have obtained one of two new world drop patterns (patterns are green so the drop rate shouldn’t be abysmally low)

Blizzard sent the development team out on a blitz of media events and interviews for this patch.  For a full listing, head here and pick the one that interests you the most.

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So, what makes a video game great?

When Blizzard announced the Mists of Pandaria expansion a couple of years ago, I was less than enthused about the concept, the included extras, and Pandas.  The announcement left me deflated and was very doubtful about the direction Blizzard was taking the game.  Thus began my game hopping saga and I dragged hubby through multiple games trying to find that one game that could recreate the WOW experience when I first started playing the game.  No one game had everything I was looking for unfortunately.

Lords of the Ring Online and Everquest II both had the stories and questing I enjoy, but while LOTRO has unique PVP, EQ2 starts PVP too late for a character (level 30 is entry PVP).  Star Wars: The Old Republic is a terrific game but game was released a little too soon and penalized players after the fact. (Requiring both factions to obtain HK51 on the same server when their own analysis would have told them that most players had one faction per server, for example.)  Rift has great quality PVP but the while the story is there, it is constantly interrupted by rifts and events.  The Secret World had the chance to have great stories and PVP but the game has so many issues that it was unplayable for me.  Guild Wars 2 failed to live up to any of the hype: there was no story, never tried PVP because I just didn’t care enough to try, and there was nothing original to the game.  The other games I tried just couldn’t hold my interest very long.

WOW somehow has all the right mojo rolled into one game.   Yes, there are massive balancing issues between classes sometimes and I firmly believe that the development team listens to the squeaky wheel too much and makes changes based on the loudest whiners.  But despite it’s many flaws, it still manages to have great PVP, good quests, and interesting characters populating the world.  Then they announce Mists and it seemed like they not only missed the boat, they failed to even have a clue what their player base was after.  Farms? Pet Battles? Panda Bears?  I had been unsubscribed for 99% of the beta and wasn’t keeping up with the latest beta changes or upcoming changes but that druid travel form peaked by interest.  I came back about a month before the expansion released and Patch 5.0 blew me away.  I had a strong glimmer of hope that maybe, just maybe they hadn’t destroyed their careful crafted universe. 

Then the Theramore scenario released and I was plain and simple pissed off.  There was no story, it was stupid simple, and it did not require three people to complete.  I couldn’t care about the loot and the fact that the one character I ran it on, one time only mind you, received fireworks to celebrate the destruction of Theramore was too much to take.  Why on earth would an Alliance character celebrate mass murder and destruction by the Horde?  Twitter and bloggers assured me repeatedly that the scenario was NOT representative of what they had experienced on beta.  I took them at their word and I am so incredibly pleased that I did.

Mists has not only revitalized WOW, it has raised the bar for the competition.  The new continent is amazing.  The quests, the stories, and the non-player characters are interesting and entertaining.  My highest level character is 87 so far and I’m in no rush to get to 90.  I’ve gotten my farm, I’m leveling crafting, I’m fishing, I’m questing, and I’m looking forward to the lack of grinding instances to gain reputation once I hit 90.  I made a new character, she’s a Pandaren monk and a blast to play.  The new Scarlet Halls and Monastery are so much fun and such a blast.  I’m questing with my Monk through the old world and it is truly enjoyable.  The revamp the old world received in Cataclysm was extremely well done and under-appreciated.

Admittedly, the developers took ideas from other videos games and have incorporated them into WOW (farming and pet battles for instances).  However, they’ve managed to put their own unique spin on borrowed items and made their incorporation feel natural and like it’s always been there.  I particularly love how farming and cooking now tie-in together, although no a requirement for either.  The two things I was most skeptical about I have to admit are unqualified successes.  The one thing WOW has borrowed from other games and I don’t think is super successful is appearance armor.  Transmogrification has gotten me to go do instances I hadn’t done before admittedly, but the process is clunky and time consuming.  I think they would have served their player base much better by incorporating an appearance tab like EQ2 and LOTRO for example.

So, what makes a great video game?  The short and sweet answer is a lot of luck and hard work.  The real answer is much more complicated.  It takes people who truly love the lore, corporations that give designers and developers time and space to turn out a quality project, and project team who knows where the game is at, where it is going next, and what the next couple of updates and expansion will contain. 

Right now, WOW is quite simply a great video game. 

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World of Warcraft: What WOW Could Borrow from Other Games

Well, I finally got around to claiming my Spectral Gryphon … thanks Honey, I know how much you wanted to resub to WOW.  But all my characters look awesome on her so I will always smile when I fly around on her.

So, all of my characters are 85 except my druid who is at 84, half way to 85 though.  I wanted them to all be able to queue for the Theramore event when it starts a week from tomorrow.  I haven’t picked up Tides of War yet but next time we are out and about running errands I will be picking it up.  Although I might just go ahead and pick-up the e-book instead. 

As I’ve leveled the last couple of weeks, I’ve realized that WOW could really benefit from borrowing a couple of ideas from the competition.

Mentoring: While leveling in WOW isn’t difficult or necessarily time consuming, it would be extremely nice if mentoring were possible in WOW.  Then friends and couples who play together but don’t have equal play time, could stop worrying about out leveling friends.  Everquest 2 and Rift have both implemented mentoring seamlessly into the game.  No NPC intervention required, just adjust your level to your parties and off you go to experience content together.  Everquest 2 also has the brilliant self-mentoring option which does cost gold, but allows you to mentor down to experience content without being capable of wiping out the entire zone. 

Instant Adventures and/or 2 Person Instances: Rift has both of these and both are brilliant, alternative ways to level.  Instant adventures automatically party up and mentor higher level characters to the appropriate level for the content.  It offers rewards based on “quests” completed and that are appropriate for the natural level of the character.  Two person instances are great for people that solo or prefer not to be a member of a huge guild.  It is especially nice if you only have a couple of hours to play at night and don’t want to hang around waiting for a pick-up group that may or may not successfully complete a five man instance.  Scenarios are a good step in the right direction but from what I’ve read recently they are going to be very difficult and I still will need another person if hubby and I want to try a scenario. 

Armor Dyes: Guild Wars and Guild Wars 2, among other games, have the ability to change the color of armor.  Doesn’t sound like a big deal but it is something I really, really wish WOW would put in the game.  I am so very, very tired of brown, drab armor that may or may not have some muted colors tossed in.  It is nice that they have implemented Transmogrification but I’m still stuck with the same drab armor as others.  It may be the armor of my choice appearance wise, but it is still drab in color.  Honestly, I’m a girl I want armor that has some color to it! 

I’m not complaining and I don’t think WOW needs to revamp itself entirely to emulate the competition and new games.  I do think that it can reinvent itself over time and keep itself revitalized and interesting.  It’s time to realize that gamers aren’t all in our teens and twenties, thinking raiding is the ultimate accomplishment, or that “catering” to the “casuals” is a bad thing. (Personally, when any game has scheduled times where you must show up for events like raids then it is no longer a game and it has become a job.) 

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