After the patch that brought the Shattering dropped, I hopped onto my new mage to check out the world (and maybe level a bit.)  I logged into Orgrimmar and was immediately lost.  I had no idea where I was.  I stumbled around the city trying to figure out where everything had moved, and eventually found my way to the flightmaster.  I had heard (from trade chat no less) that you could see a great view of the changes to the Barrens by flying to Thunderbluff.  I had wanted to see Thunderbluff anyway so I hopped a wyrven to see.   Off I flew over the new Orgrimmar, over the South Fury river and into the Barrens.  The point nearest to the river didn’t seem so changed, but I watched as the plains swept by.  In the distance I noticed some smoke rising and wondered what I would see ahead.

We flew up over a few trees and as the view cleared…*blink* there was Deathwing, Aspect of Death, breathing fire and…well…death on the plains below.  I watched and looked at the destruction, and then passed over the chasm of the divide.   We kept flying and the wyrvern flew over the hill into the valley of Mulgore safely away from Deathwing.

I think by this point the idea of “social networking” and “games” being two separate worlds has melted away with the popularity of casual games on Facebook.  Very few people who use social networking sites have not heard of Farmville or Zynga, even if they don’t play the games themselves.  We also have been seeing the gamification of sites (adding game elements to a site) – with social tie in, often with facebook tie in,  to try and increase engagement in sites that might otherwise get only brief visits.

However, the other side of gamification is the socialization (or is socialification?) of games.  This is where games start using social network tools sites to help promote themselves.  Like gamification socialification can be done well or poorly.  I do remember taking a test to see which faction I would be in some game that looked very cool – but at the moment I can’t remember what the game was called (or find it in my Facebook apps – I just looked) even though my thought was “Wow I’d like to check this game out.”  That said – having the social network site tie in can help promote a game.  Blizzard has World of Warcraft feeds that you can set up on Facebook (and that is nicely tuneable so it doesn’t spam your feed) so anyone who friends me will get occasional updates about what I’m doing in World of Warcraft, which if they don’t already play, may get them interested.

Today I came across a new Blizzard site, designed to promote the upcoming expansion pack – Cataclysm.  It is called Darkmoon Faire.  Unlike the achievement feed I think this has more potential to draw new players in. The fact that I got “1 Light in the Darkness” is just some random fact for most. However “fortunes’ and “factions” and hints of some of the elements of what makes World of Warcraft interesting might draw in new players who might just think of the game as just being “beating up on monsters”.   I haven’t had a chance to do much on the site yet, but just reading through the FAQ and glancing at the page it definitely shows an evolution of Blizzard’s socialification activities.

The interesting thing about the socialification of a game like World of Warcraft is that as an MMO it already has a social component.  We have guilds, groups, group activities, interaction with other players who are near you, etc.  However, the social aspect within the game is in its own realm (literally).  Guilds may create websites that people can socialize and discuss things outside of the game, and many do.  However, there is the game (or virtual world) social network and then there is the “real world” social network.  With the integration into sites such as Facebook (and Twitter) the divide between “virtual world” and real world becomes increasingly permeable.  Some will chose not to participate (as with RealID) or they may chose a mixed participation.  They may let friends know their interest in WoW through something like the Darkmoon Faire site, but yet not share their particular identities within the world.  However, as socialification of games continues keeping that division becomes more of conscious choice rather than just the natural state of things.

I went on the PTR to see some of the changes such as what happens to stats that are going away, what to do the trees look like and the like. I figured that some people won’t be heading over to the PTR and might like to see what these things look like. Most of the shots are from logging in as my warrior so the spell power/mp5 etc. changes won’t be reflected. This is also more of a “peek my head in and take some quick notes” update. For more in-depth analysis check out Tankspot and Elitist Jerks (as well as other good sources).

The source of some the biggest changes is influenced by Blizzard’s attempt to enable players to understand concepts like class specialization and training even without checking out websites. To that end the talent trees have changed significantly, and how you can apply points changes.

Talents

When you first go to put your points into a tree you are required to chose a tree. The DK selection looks like this:

If you click on “view talent trees” you can see the talents and select that way as well.

Once you pick your talent trees you need to put 31 points into your chosen tree before you can put points in any of the other trees. At level 80 that means you only have 5 points left and that is not enough to get to the second tier of any secondary talent tree. At 85 you will have enough additional points to get into the second tree.
This is an example of the warrior tree:

Training
Along with the tree changes your spell book will let you know if you haven’t trained on some talents. It tells you “See your trainer” like this:

Stats
Another big change is the simplification of stats. There are a number of stats that are just going away. I’m not going to list them all here, but one big example is Defense is going away for tanks. No more “I can’t tank this because I don’t have enough defense gear”, crit reduction now comes from your talents, (and stance). This means that all the gear that used to have defense now has more dodge. It isn’t a 1-1 conversion. I haven’t figured out the math but I’m sure someone has (if you know where please let me know in the comments. I haven’t had the time to check the usual places). For example here is a before and after shot of my helm:

Other stat conversions seemed to be different as well. I know some may be related to how I placed my talents, but armor/dodge/parry definitely are lower on the PTR , even with the additional dodge from the defense conversion. (Also block is now a percentage so that conversion is completely different.)
Defense stats before:

Defense Stats after:

In addition to the gear stats changing they want to encourage you to wear gear types appropriate for your class. Thus Warriors/DKs/Paladins get a bonus for wearing plate and other classes get bonuses appropriate to their highest material gear. Here is what that looked like for aPaladin:

With all the stat changes and encouraging players to use the right material gear they have added the ability to change the stats on your gear. This is through the process of Reforging. Currently reforgers can be found near the enchanters (and any guard can tell you where to go.)

Here are a few shots of reforging:
Selecting a stat:

Changing dodge to…:

Ready to reforge:

You’ll note the restore button at the bottom (currently greyed out because I hadn’t clicked reforge yet.) If you change your mind about reforging a piece of gear you can restore it back to its original stats.

A Few Other Changes
Badger badger badger badger…
For those who have been playing long enough you probably have emblems of various types. Heroism, Valor etc. These are all going away. Triumph and Frost emblems are converted into Justice points, and all other emblems are converted to gold which is mailed to you. (By Omar the Test Dragon on the PTR.) A gratuitous currency shot is below (they are still tuning the conversion rate.)

This does mean that if you have extra emblems that are going to be converted to gold you might consider buying any heirloom gear you were thinking of buying but hadn’t yet.

Lastly the location of some things have changed, namely you profession, mounts and pets. These all have been relocated to tabs on your spell book. So don’t panic when you don’t see that usual button for your profession – it’s over in the Professions tab.

There are lots of changes to look forward to when the 4.0.x patch goes live. I hope the brief tour was enjoyable and if you want to just poke through the pictures on Flickr you can find them here.

Dear WoW Dev Team,
Thank you for my perky pug. He is a wonderful companion. Unfortunately he appears to have worms. I stopped by the pet store and Breanni didn’t have anything to treat him, and while the pet grooming kit has left him sparkling it doesn’t seem to have given the poor thing any relief from itching. I thought to check at the barbershop, but alas there was nothing for him there either. By any chance, do you know of a place that sells a remedy for my pugs worms, or could you perhaps supply Breanni with some?

Patiently Yours,
Mightymoe

A while ago I wrote about “The Gamer Divide” and how I think we are approaching a time when gaming is viewed as normal or even positive, instead of some thing that you might want to avoid mentioning.

Just this week Forbes had an article on How Playing Video Games Can Boost Your Career. It features a guildie of mine (Hi Elliot!), and makes some good points about how game skills, especially multi-player games, can provide real career building skills.

I think my favorite quote was:

“We’re finding that the younger people coming into the teams who have had experience playing online games are the highest-level performers because they are constantly motivated to seek out the next challenge and grab on to performance metrics,” says John Hagel III, co-chairman of a tech-oriented strategy center for Deloitte.

But head on over to Forbes and read the whole thing.

This morning, listening to the news on the radio, I started pondering what the radio shows in Azeroth would be like. In discussing the idea with Shamir, we decided that the gnomes would run the public radio station. You would have announcements like “This episode brought to you by Sisters of Elune”.

Goblin radio on the other hand would be commercial radio. I can hear the ads now, “Get the best deals in Azeroth, but act now. Time is money!”

There would be an Undead, or rather Forsaken, political commentary show with the characteristic sign off of, “Trust no one.” The intro and outro would be Heavy Metal riffs.

We’d probably have a selection of spiritual shows, including “The Light of Elune” “How to Walk With The Earthmother” and “Reaching for the Light” (which perhaps might be an exercise show).

The show listing could go on. It was an amusing muse for the morning. For those of you that know World of Warcraft do you have any shows or special stations you would add?

This isn’t my typical post here, so as a fair warning – this is about World of Warcraft Gear. I’d posted this over in my guild forums and had wanted to share it with a friend outside of the guild and realized it might be useful to have this somewhere other than in the archives of our guild forums.  So with that intro, here is an introductory overview to WoW Gear, and how to pick your gear and know what you are looking at.

I was having a discussion with someone the other day about gear, and thought I’d write up a bit about gear in case anyone else can benefit from it. I’ve included item links below so you can click through to  the items and see the information being discussed.

To start with the basics, gear has “what material is it” (cloth, leather, mail, plate) which determines if you can wear the piece at all and stats. For example: [Web Winder Gloves] has Stam, Int, Haste and Spell power. At the same time this is a piece of plate. This would be a fine piece for a Holy Paladin (since no other healer could wear it) but it would look kind of funny on a Death Knight as they have no use for int or spell power.

Depending on your class and spec different stats are more important. Depending on your current gear, different stats are more valuable to you. For example hit isn’t a primary stat for Protection Warriors, but if the Prot Warrior is below hit cap (how much additional hit is needed to not miss a mob) the hit rating of a piece of gear may make the item more valuable.

Next up is the “color” of the gear. For the most part we are looking at “greens” like [Ancestral Chestplates], blues like [Patina-Coated Breastplate] and purples like [Breastplate of the Afterlife]. If you mouse over click the links those items you will see that the name of the item has a particular color. Greens are known as “uncommon”, blues “rare, purples “epic”. As you might guess greens < blues < purples. So when you hear someone say “oh he’s in all greens” that’s what they are talking about. A very simple gear check (which may or may not be useful) that people will do is to just check the color of the items in a person’s gear.

Now the greens < blues < purples is a general rule but that isn’t always the case. With each expansion the old purples became worth less than the greens of the next expansion. So for example [Blinkstrike], a nice purple sword from Outland, might get replaced by a green [Blade of Diligence] from Northrend. You might guess this simply from the stats, but another way to see the difference is from the item level (ilevel).

[Blinkstrike] has an Item Level of 100.
[Blade of Diligence] has an item level of 158.

As a general rule the higher item level is likely to be the better gear – but again, the stats, and how they relate to your class and spec are what are going to be primary. However, when someone says “Oh their gear score is X”, what that is based on is the item levels of the gear they are wearing (and whatever formula their addon does to come up with the number.) Again, it can be used as a quick glance evaluation of someone’s gear, but again with variable usefulness.

Next up is Tier gear. Tier gear is gear that makes up a “set” and when you wear enough pieces of a set you get a “set bonus”. For example

[Wrynn's Pauldrons of Conquest] has 2 set bonus that affects taunt and devastate, and a 4 set bonus that decreases the cooldown of shield block. If a toon was wearing 2 or more pieces of the Wrynn Plate set they would get the 2 set bonus, if they were wearing 4 they would get the 4 set bonus (in addition to the 2 set.) Tier gear usually is associated with a particular raid instance. Tier 8 gear came from Ulduar, Tier 9 is associated with Trial of the Crusader (ToC). Tier gear is acquired by getting a token for the piece of gear and/or by using emblems. For example

[Breastplate of the Wayward Protector] a token can be used to buy one of six different ( tier 8 ) chestpieces. These tokens were acquired either by them being dropped in the raid instance or by buying them with emblems ([Emblem of Conquest] in this case.) The vendors for the tier gear are either in Dalaran, or in the case of Tier 9 at the Tournament Grounds. You can find how many emblems you have in your character tab under currency. Also note, not all gear bought with emblems is tier gear. (Look for the set bonus information if you aren’t sure.)

As you might guess, the higher tiers are designed as upgrades from the lower tiers. So is tier gear better? Not necessarily. Often it comes down to evaluating stats versus set bonuses. If you look at the Best in Slot (BiS) lists a lot of the gear is not tier. Again, it depends on stats and what type of a gear set you are looking for.

Gear sets? Yes, in addition to general for your class stat priorities there may be different functions you want your gear to perform. This usually isn’t relevant until you are working on refining your game for specific fights. (And I don’t know if it is relevant for all classes. I’ve only seen details on tanks and paladin healers.) When gearing up your first priority is to just get a good set of gear that meets the needs of your class and spec. You can ignore this next section if you want but I thought I should include this since it is something discussed in the forums and something that took me a while to get my head around.

The specific purpose gear sets are sort of an elaboration of the “what stats are important”. For example, a protection tank may have 3 (or 4) different priorities, Effective Health – how much damage they can take from a boss before they go splat, Avoidance – How much they can avoid being hit by the boss, or Threat – How much they can make the boss pay attention to them over the rest of the raid team. Different sets would be used for different fights depending on the boss mechanics. Because of the limits of the stats you can’t have maximum health, maximum avoidance and maximum threat, you have to pick one. While it is something you can do to some extent just playing with the gear you have, I usually look around on the forums and look at examples that other people who actually find all the gear and do the math come up with.

I know that this covered a lot of details on gear. To recap start with the basics. Know what stats are relevant to your class, and what your various “caps” are. Then work on getting better gear moving from greens to blues to purples. Often looking at what drops from various bosses on WoWWiki can give you an idea of places to go for upgrades. You can also look at sites like Wow-Loot, and many more. As usual if you have questions or corrections, fire away.

Happy gearing up!

In the them of virtual worlds and games, today I present a slide show of photos from World of Warcraft.  All of these photos, except the first four are all of a single build, called Ulduar.  It is quite the complex both in size and detail.  I love the amazing mix of styles that can be found, one right next to the other.

For your viewing pleasure, I present a tour of Ulduar:

This past weekend there was an academic conference in World of Warcraft. When I first heard about the conference I was intrigued by the concept. The topic of the use of virtual worlds for research was intriguing, but even more so I was intrigued as to how the conference would work

As many of you know I have attended more than a couple of conferences in Second Life so the opportunity to explore a conference in another virtual world was right up my alley simply from the point of view of comparing the technologies and the experience.

Unfortunately I was only able to attend one day of the conference, so my observations are limited to how it ran on the very first day. I will post links to other blog posts reviewing the event at the end.

Looking at the content of the conference, the session I was able to attend was more discussive than instructive. Certain questions were presented and the group shared their thoughts and experiences, some backed by fact some backed by intuition. Although less structured than a standard conference session it was an interesting round table discussion.

My personal recommendation for future sessions would be a little more focus, and a glossary. I asked a number of dumb questions, “Can you define what you mean by x,” and after each question a number of people whispered to me that they had had the same question. That said, with the question and answer format it is harder to keep control of the discussion and it is hard to know what exactly would need to be in the glossary.

From the technical standpoint it was very different from the experience of Second Life. Although I recognize the focus of this conference was one that would likely appeal to people who already have experiences in virtual worlds I am going to look at the experience from the perspective of the challenges of holding a conference in a virtual world. (Yes, I know that WoW is not designed for it. This is merely looking at the challenges given the design of the world.)

In World of Warcraft there are no ways to limit who can enter an area, kick people out of an area. This presents a considerable level of risk to a conference. You can try to pick a remote location but a horde of people with the same group tag heading in a general direction (with the initial starting place announced in a public place) is pretty easy to track. If someone wanted to they could have rounded up a gang and entered into battle with the attendees which could have been pretty disruptive, unless we all decided to hang out as ghosts for the duration of the conference.

Another challenge was getting to the conference. Luckily I had been in at the beginning and had been added to a group for the pre-conference raid. This meant I had indicators on the map indicating where the people in my group were which allowed me to find the location. Without teleport (in general) or an easy way to mark and travel to coordinates on a map getting to a location or directing a person to a location requires that they have a reasonable ability to follow directions, as in go east along the hills and then turn north at the tree.

One thing that they did that was clever was to use the guild chat (think group IM for those familiar with SL) for the conference. This meant that even if a person was not present they could participate in the event. There was no remote viewing of any presentations, but then there is no way to bring a presentation in to World of Warcraft so this was not a problem.

Over allit was a very good first experiment with holding a conference in World of Warcraft. Although a conference is not the standard fare for how people interact in World of Warcraft it is not completely beyond the pale of reasonable interactions. We often see people using applications in different and unexpected ways. I would say that holding a conference in World of Warcraft is not for the faint hearted, but as a place to gather and play and discuss I think a lot of benefit can be found.

—
More on the conference:
Stereo Left, Right, Centre on the conference
A flickr group of photos

If you were at the conference I’d love to hear your thoughts. Feel free to comment below.

Before you is a passage. Blocking the passage is a large sign made up of a wide plank with four pendant planks.
The top plank invites you to press with the words ‘Install World of WarCraft(tm)’

A small creaking voice of warning is heard ‘don’t press that – turn around! turn around!’.

Do you
1) Press Install World of Warcraft(tm)
2) Listen to the warning and press Exit Installer or
3) waver and examine the documentation.

With a bold stab of her staff she presses “Install World of Warcraft” and proclaims loudly to all who would hear her “She who hesistates is lost”"

And with a swift motion she was hurled into another world.