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ChiefGrizzlyBlunts's World of Warcraft (PC)
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| [January 12, 2007 06:43:39 AM]
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One of my favorite parts of World of Warcraft is the ability to interact with people from almost anywhere. Just as I was finishing my first gamelog my real life best friend messaged me asking if I wanted to do some battlegrounds with him. Upon logging onto my character I received a group invite from him and in less than a minute I had signed us up for a battle with Alliance (opposing player faction) from other servers.
The ability to be able to send group invites across zones and then be warped into a battleground from anywhere in the world saves players tremendous amounts of time and tedious running and is one of those minuscule but absolutely crucial aspects a good game must have to maintain flow. It wasn’t always this way in WoW however, one used to need to distant parts of the world to enter a battle ground queue and were only eligible to fight groups of opposing players from the same server. After joining the queue it could be hours until you began fighting! As you can imagine this wasted tremendous amounts of time and they apparently got enough feedback to change it to the current system where one can queue up themselves and their friends for all three battlegrounds from one room in any of the main cities. Waiting more than two minutes for a fight is unheard of now. The adaptability of WoW is its main strength, despite tantalizing efforts it is still nearly impossible to create a game that doesn’t need refining. Blizzard is able to take advantage of the feedback they get from their millions of subscribers in their weekly patches to constantly evolve their game to their player’s demands.
Also simplified chat features save players from having to repeat chat prompt commands, helping them make fewer mistakes. To direct who you are speaking to you must select a channel by typing either /g for guild, /w to whisper, or /1 for General chat. However, unlike previous MMORPGs I’ve played, once you speak in a channel the next thing you type will be directed at that channel without needing to repeat the chat command. It’s the thousands of little features like this I had always dreamed of having in other MMORPGs WoW has integrated that makes me appreciate the years of design put into it so much.
Grizzel
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| [January 12, 2007 03:42:13 AM]
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Today I did one of the smaller 20 man raid instances, Zul'Gurub, with my guild mates. Though this is by no means an unfamiliar or particularly difficult instance I still find it exciting because of the strategy and teamwork required. Each boss has a different special ability that has to be accounted for, forcing the participants to be aware and make the right decisions at the right times.
For example, the final boss, a life leeching, mind controlling serpent named Hakkar, requires players to bring a particular monster a "Son of Hakkar" to the battle site, keep it immobilized for a minute or so until they expect a a life drain to be cast soon, kill the Son, making a poision cloud appear that every player must get close to so that they are afflicted by the poison when Hakkar attempts to steal their life. If done correctly, Hakkar's siphon backfires as he steals the effects your poison, significantly draining his own health. To further complicate things Hakkar will mind control players throughout the fight, forcing them to attack their teammates. The elements of strategy. the reasoning behind them and the teamwork and unity required are what make and keep this fight interesting to me.
Usually this fight is not a problem for my guild, I heal people, we all get the poison at the right time, Hakkar damages himself and dies within a couple of minutes. However, tonight we had problems. With the upcoming expansion, Blizzard (the game's producer) has been making a lot of changes to the game and a lot of bugs have emerging, we were unfortunate enough to experience one first hand tonight. Every time Hakkar mind controlled the person 1st on his aggression list they would get disconnected and erased from the list. This forced Hakkar's aggression to be transferred to people it shouldn't have been and collapse our raid.
Additionally there is the storyline behind the Zul'Gurub instance that explains why some of these "boss" trolls have extra ordinary powers and why Hakkar can mind control. Tied into the storyline are quests offering items as a reward for turning in a quest item dropped by one of the bosses if you have killed enough creatures in ZG to raise your reputation to the appropriate level with the quest giving tribe.
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ChiefGrizzlyBlunts's World of Warcraft (PC)
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Current Status: Playing
GameLog started on: Tuesday 12 July, 2005
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