[WoW] Solutions to 4 lockouts a week

In my last post I talked about the change to LFR and the removal of "Raid" items from its drop table. While personally I am slightly disappointed, I understand Blizzard's reasons for the change and it's one I can live with. Even if that means I'll grumble my way through some Flex raids to get my set. But for many raiders WoD will still mean running the same raids 3 times a week.

[NBI] Why write? Why not?

When it comes to blogging everyone has their own story. In my case the story is surprisingly short. Like any gamer I spent a large amount of my non-gaming time thinking about them, and at some point I can't remember I was introduced to the WoW blogosphere from a link on WoWwiki. I ended up at Tobold's blog and from there I was hooked. I read many of the larger blogs of the time, many now sadly defunct like Letters from Birdfall and Big Red Kitty. Others power on, and while for a time I was content to be the occasional comment (usually arguing with Gevlon, I was quite active there around 2012), I eventually decided that I was less interested in reacting to their topics and wanted to talk about what was on my mind some of the time. Thus "Out of Beta" was born.

[WoW] WoD LFR changes, it's Montague and Capulet all over again

This past week WatcherDev has released three blog posts explaining the history and forward vision of raiding. In the third entry he threw a bloody morsel into the pool of piranhas they call a playerbase. While we’ve known about the changes to raid structure for a while, this was the first confirmation of lockouts and rewards. Needless to say, feathers were ruffled, jimmies were rustled, and the WoW-ternet exploded.

The main point of disagreement as I saw it was the change to LFR rewards. As it stands, in Warlords of Draenor, the LFR raids will drop their own set of loot separate from the regular raids. In other words LFR will not drop the raid trinkets, rare pets, or class sets. Unsurprisingly, players for whom LFR is the primary form of endgame gear acquisition were not pleased. On the other side of the debate, players who felt forced to run LFR to complete set bonuses or get specific trinkets were overjoyed.

Both took to the interwebs to tell the other side about why they were having fun wrong, harsh words ensued. Each forgot that it’s actually possible for both sides to be “right” and both to have legitimate concerns because in the end we’re talking about subjective enjoyment of a game.

[LoL] Some proposed tweaks to ARAM

Due to my dislike of the meta-game and communities in MOBAs I ended up stepping away from League of Legends for a long time. It took the introduction of ARAM (All-Random All middle) mode for me to enjoy them again. Randomized characters destroy the idea of a meta, and it brings the game back to focusing on having a character and fighting enemies rather than placing the importance on arcane jungling routes, last-hit numbers, and team composition.* It is by far my favorite mode because its very design helps reduce much of the stress of being in a typical MOBA game; players can't expect you to know every champion when you had no control over who you got and with the amount of chaos going on things like creep-score have diminished importance.

But for all its perks ARAM still has some points I find unduly frustrating that could deal with a little tweaking.

[WoW] The Ladies of Draenor, or "Don't judge us just yet!"

Back at Blizzcon people were highly critical about how female characters would be treated in Warlads of Dudemore when its primary advertising had a solid 1:1 X-Y chromosome ratio. But wait, Blizzard assured us, there will be meaningful female characters, just wait and see! They made vague promises about a Draenei warrior named Yrel, but aside from a name we got precious little.

So we waited, and we hoped, and we speculated…

[WoD Spoilers ahead]

[WoW] If you haven't finished Heroic SoO, you aren't allowed to be bored

With roughly 4-6 months before WoD, players are starting to get burnt out on SoO content. As Rohan points out, the delay before WoD is one of the longest content gaps WoW has ever experienced. Plenty of players are claiming that they have nothing left to do but stand on the Timeless Isle waiting for Huolon (or whichever rare you’re farming) to spawn.

H1Z1: The cure for the common zombie game?

For those who don’t spend all their time refreshing gaming news sites SOE has recently announced an ambitious MMO zombie game called H1Z1. Boasting a deep crafting system and massive world the game apparently hopes to fill in the gaps games like State of Decay and DayZ have left unfilled. Despite it being released by SOE, whose history has just enough black marks to make me a wary consumer, the enthusiasm I've seen for the game could fuel a thousand hype trains.