Spugnort's

Archive for September, 2008

This is a direct statement from AoC game director about the upcoming additions and changes to the game.

Quote from Craig Morrison:

Today I wanted to take the opportunity to go over some of the updates, changes and developments you will see in the game over the coming weeks and months. Hopefully this will give you a little insight into what order things are being addressed in and what sequence you will see the new content arrive in. There are two things on the immediate horizon that will very soon be on the test server for public testing in the shape of Ymir’s Pass and the second stage of the PVP update. There are a couple of things I want to address on these.

Firstly Ymir’s Pass is a large zone and has quite a bit of content to test. This may mean that it stays on the test server through several updates on live. We have the ability not to include a given playfield when we build new versions for live, which means that this testing won’t hold up the release of the other new content and Ymir’s Pass will still get the time on the test server that it needs. We want the experience to be as good as possible for its release and feel the public testing phase is important in that. We hope to be bringing the playfield to the test server shortly, and we all hope you will enjoy the many varied encounters it brings.

 

 

Then there is the second stage of the PVP update that brings with it the consequence system. This new system allows for players PVP actions to have real consequences in the world, and it will greatly enhance the entire PvP experience in Conan. As you know the system is meant to bring repercussions for repeated evil behaviour (i.e. killing players outside of your level range), so should you chose to “gank” other players, a whole new gameplay area opens up! For one, it will result in you no longer being welcome in many parts of the game-world, but in its place you will have to rely on a newly arrived network of camps and areas that function with a little more moral ambiguity. This is very true to the essence of the Conan lore, and a change I think many players will find intriguing. You will be able to access the same services as you can in the “orderly” parts of the world, but you might find your new ‘friends’ have a price for their services. We felt it was very important to make the system as immersive as possible and not just a purely mechanical system on top of the game-world to support PVP. So to that end, these new camps and NPC’s function as a kind of “shady network” for those with more nefarious reputations. Be warned though. It also means that those who hunt for such criminally inclined adversaries might find out where to look for you!

The other new content additions are all shaping up internally, and I’ll let you know the order in which they will appear after Ymir’s in my next letter.

Moving on to some things a little further out I mentioned in my welcome letter that we are working on the itemization and gem systems, as well as how the budgets for character statistics are going to be refined and improved. This is an area I wanted to elaborate on a little in this letter.

One of the issues we have been working on in that regards is the limited budgets that were originally assigned to the in-game items. It was always the intention that Age of Conan would not be a game where items would be the deciding factor in encounters. This meant though that the statistics available for items, and their actual effect on your character, was simply too slim. The items do scale within very limited ranges and have quite a limited effect on your characters abilities, and this I feel we need to do something about. When we sat down and analyzed the way this worked and the impact it had on players actual sense of progression through the game, so we came to the hard choice that something had to change.

With that in mind we have been working hard behind the scenes to prepare for a shift in the range and meaningfulness of character statistics and items. So what exactly does that mean? Well, firstly it does not mean that we are going straight to the other end of the spectrum and making items the ‘be all and end all’ of progression. We will though be making items and statistics more important to your characters.

Currently the items account for a maximum contribution of 25% of your characters total in any given statistic or ability (if you had all the stat modifications available for that statistic equipped, which in itself isn’t always practical). We are aiming to increase that so that your statistics from items contribute closer to 50% (although it will vary slightly from class to class), while also adjusting the formulas so that ability statistics (strength, stamina etc) contribute more meaningfully to your visible abilities, like health and Damage per Second. Items do have an effect on those calculations at the moment, but just in numbers, and that mean it isn’t always all that visible or impactful given the vagaries of an inherently random roll system. The most telling factor is probably that many players felt these statistics were ‘broken’ when in fact they were working correctly, they just didn’t contribute enough of a variance for players to see or feel it properly in combat. Evolving this part of the game is therefore something we deem very important, and something we are actively working on right now.

So what does it mean to the game-play? It means that items will have more varied and more meaningful statistics. Existing items will be modified appropriately and you won’t have to go and find new gear (of course it might mean you want to, once the statistics start to be more meaningful!). We are aiming for the conversion to the new system to feel like players have not lost any relative power in their game-play experience. The key difference will be that if you don’t have your items equipped, or relatively up to date with your level, you will start to notice the difference! We feel this is important for the ongoing progression in the game to be more meaningful andwe are not doing it lightly. It will go through extensive testing and feedback cycles (this letter being the start of that part of the process!). We genuinely want to ensure that we have the ability to deliver a much more meaningful feeling of progression and achievement for players, but without going too far away from the action elements that makes the unique combat system what it is.

It is currently coming together internally and will require a good deal of testing at our end. We will be letting you all know when the new system is ready for public testing. In the meantime your feedback will be an important part of the process, so please feel free to give your initial thoughts and reactions. I am certain that this change will improve the overall gameplay experience, and that items dropping from encounters will matter more than it currently does.

Next up I wanted to cover two features that were talked about previously that will change significantly from what was originally mentioned, and that’s ‘Powerpoints’ and ‘Kingship’. While both are great concepts I felt that we needed to go back to the drawing board a little with both of them. They will however make an appearance in some form in the future.

The ‘Powerpoints’ type of concept will appear first in some form of loyalty program, although I think we might try and find a more suitably ‘Conanesque’ title for it! (…and yes, for those who have asked in the forums, any loyalty program will in effect be ‘backdated’ and take into account how long you have already been subscribed since launch).

The ‘Kingship’ concept will be taken back for another design round internally, before we announce our plans for building the guild and conflict elements of the game. It’s an area that I believe is key to the ongoing success of any MMO and is an area that we really want to do well. This means that we are taking another look at how to best achieve it. This will include looking at building more, and better guild support functions inside the game. Also we most likely want to include some other forms of ‘lateral progression’ at the same time, an alternate advancement path for max level characters, for example. It is an area that I feel will bring some great new content to the game in the new year, but we have to address it properly and put something in that will have lasting appeal.

Another aspect which has popped up in the forums recently is whether we are going to do a server merge or not, and I can today confirm that we are actively working on an approach to merge servers, both in Europe and North America. It’s important for us to ensure the best gameplay experience for you all, and more healthy populations on each and every server will make sure we maintain healthy communities for the game in the future. Still, there are many complexities involved in this, and we want to ensure that everything happens as fair and streamlined as possible. That work has now started, and we are naturally making sure that guilds and players can get to new servers in the best possible way. We will come back with more info on this, but I hope that this will serve as a positive injection to the social scene in the game.

Lastly for today (I think I have taken a good deal of your time already, hopefully constructively so!) I also wanted to mention that we‘ve come very far with the DirectX 10 version, which we unfortunately had to keep on internal test-servers for launch. It’s now almost ready for the full test server. Once the next game-play update is out expect to start to see the DX10 functionality coming to the test environment. How long it will take to transition to live will depend on the testing of course, but it’s starting to shape up nicely. Having done some reviews of it internally over the last few weeks I can admit that a few of the features really do give some added visual punch. I know it’s a feature that is long awaited and I can assure you the technical folk here are working flat out to try and get the version in a state where it can be considered for live release.

 

Well, we all knew it was likely and now it is official, honor points and marks will not be carried over to WotLK, read the official blue post below:

Quote from Eyonix(Blizzard poster):

“As many of you know we will be featuring a new Battleground, a dedicated world PvP zone and all new PvP items in Wrath of the Lich King. In order to make the transition from The Burning Crusade to Wrath of the Lich King flow as smoothly as possible, all accrued honor points will be reset at the launch of the expansion. We do this to ensure select players do not have an unfair advantage at level 80 from stockpiling honor to instantly purchase the newest Wrath of the Lich King PvP rewards. For those with unspent honor points prior to the release of the expansion, we will be offering a few upgrades and special rewards in next content patch solely for purchase via the honor system.”

Hmmm….well I guess they’re not 100% evil anyways, hopefully they’ll offer up some decent stuff to blow that extra honor on!

Sounds to me like there may be some changes to the way we look at boss fights in the future, what do you think? 

Quote from Blizzard poster Ghostcrawler:

 

Blizzard announced in the forums this week that they are working on some DK changes to make them more viable tanks.

Quote from: Ghostcrawler (Blizzard Poster):

 

We have been doing some more tests on DK tanking, this time especially on raid bosses. We think the DK design has some limitations, which weren’t showing up as much on tanking 5-player dungeons.Specifically, as many people suspected, the death knight really suffers when attacks fail to land, especially opening attacks. Having a Plague Strike dodged or parried can throw off an entire rotation, eventually leading to bad Obliterates because both diseases weren’t up at the same time. Missing attacks is a fact of life for all tanks since it’s hard to stack +hit and +expertise along with mitigation stats. However, existing tank classes have mechanics to let them “burn off rage” (or mana) to make up for those bad strings. The DK plays more like a rogue who can’t get enough combo points in play. This had a deadly effect on DK threat generation, which just didn’t compete with that of other tanks.

We didn’t want to just solve this with more free expertise because A) that has major PvP ramifications, and B) the death knights would start to hate expertise on their gear.

Instead we are making some fairly big changes:

 

• Blade Barrier now procs when your Blood Runes are inactive. While the initial implementation of this ability was fun, as we added Death Rune mechanics it became harder to use, and the fast recharge on missed attacks made it even harder. Now it should be up almost all the time.
• We also found a bug where a naked, untalented death knight only had 2.5% dodge instead of 5% like warriors and paladins. With these two avoidance changes, death knight survivability should be very close to the other tanks, recognizing that avoidance is more dangerous than mitigation for a tank. As an aside, death knights, warriors and paladins currently mitigate a similar amount of damage, and druids may very well be mitigating too much.
• Frost Strike can no longer be blocked, dodged or parried. Frost death knights were losing too much potential damage and threat when Frost Strike failed to connect, putting Frost tanks in the awkward position of wanting to skip Frost Strike and just use Death Coil.
• We changed Rune Strike completely. It is now mostly a tanking ability meant to dish out high damage (and therefore threat). Rune Strike can only be used after you dodge or parry an attack. It affects the next swing, so it doesn’t compete with global cooldowns and can be spammed to some extent. It hits for 200% weapon damage (remember 100% of that is the white swing you lost) plus a percentage of AP. It cannot be dodged, blocked or parried, and costs 10 runic power (for now). Think Heroic Overrevenge.
• I think we already announced these changes, but just to get them all in one place: Bladed Armor went back to attack power. It was changed only to match the warrior talent, which we changed back. Death and Decay got a decent threat boost to get it closer to the realm of Consecration and the new Thunder Clap.

Below are some hot fixes which couldn’t wait til the next patch:

 

Combat and Careers

• Fixed an issue with the Rune Priest spell Grimnir’s Shield that allowed it to stack with Guard to absorb 100% of incoming damage.
• Fixed an issue with the Zealot spell Embrace the Warp that allowed it to stack with Guard to absorb 100% of incoming damage.
• The Ironbreaker tactic Powered Etchings will no longer stack with other snare effects.

Realm vs. Realm

• Fixed an issue that would, in some cases, allow players to use the mounted speed buff in scenarios.

Players participating in the Black Fire Basin scenario will now receive the benefits of “Bolster

Preliminary Patch Notes for September 16th (Patch 2.0)
**These notes do not necessarily reflect the final version that will be deployed on Live**

COMBAT

• The issue with combat damage being delayed or lagged behind the animation has been corrected.
• Some changes have been made to the Charge ability. All Charge attacks now apply a combo attack to the target when you arrive and no longer increase your Damage Multiplier.
• Guardian feat Stunning Charge now requires 1H+Shield equipped to execute.
• Guardian feat ability Impale now requires a Pole Arm equipped to execute.
• Herald of Xotli ability Hellstep now requires a 2H weapon equipped to execute.
• Assassin feat ability From the Darkness’ charge combo attack now has 100% crit chance.
• Barbarian feat ability Finishing Blow now has a charge combo attack for bonus damage. Investing feat points improves the damage of the attack.
• Rogue General feat ability Ambush will hit for bonus damage against non-minions once more.
• Bear Shaman feat ability Ursine Rush now has a charge combo attack for bonus damage in addition to the bleed effect. The feat has been updated to improve both the combo and the bleed with further points spent.
• Herald of Xotli Hellstep ability now has a charge combo attack for bonus damage in addition to the burning effect.
• Guardian feat ability Impale now has a charge combo attack for bonus damage in addition to the bleed effect.
• Guardian feat Momentum has been updated to modify the charge combo attack damage.-KNOWN ISSUES WITH THIS-
• Charges can be performed while unarmed, but will hit for no damage. This will be fixed in a future update.GENERAL
• Fixed the cause of a server crash.

General

• All players will have their talent points reimbursed and will have access to new talents throughout their trees; this includes the 51-point talents. Several new spells and abilities have been added for all classes. Players will need to visit their class trainer to learn new spells.
• The Kirin Tor have made their move and so has Dalaran.Please watch your step around the crater that has been left behind!
• The Barber Shop has been implemented and you can now visit one of the Barber Shops in the major cities to change your appearance. Be sure to get your Shave and a Haircut!
• The all new Achievement System has been implemented and the Achievement panel can be accessed via the interface. While many achievements are not retroactive, we have done our best to credit as many as possible. Gamemasters will not be able to grant achievements for past accomplishements.
• Stormwind Harbor is now open for business.
• New towers have been added outside Of Orgrimmar and in Tirisfal Glades. Crews are currently at work to establish a new Zeppelin route to Northrend for your travel pleasure. Please no /spit off of the towers.
• A new entrance is now viewable in the Caverns of Time.
• Hit Rating, Critical Strike Rating, and Haste Rating now modify both melee attacks and spells.
• Spell casting and spell channeling pushback has been changed to the following:
  • When casting a spell:
    • The first and second hit will add .5 secs each to the cast time.
    • All hits after the second will have no effect.
  • When channeling a spell:
    • The first and second hit reduces current duration by 25% of total duration each.
    • All hits after the second will have no effect.
  • Spellpower:
    • All items and effects which grant bonuses to spell damage and spell healing are being consolidated into a single stat, Spellpower. This stat will appear with the same values found on items which grant “increased spell damage and healing” such as on typical Mage and Warlock itemization.
      • For classes which do not heal, they should see no change in the character sheet other than new tooltip wording.
    • Healing characters will see their bonus healing numbers on the character sheet decrease, however, all healing spells have been modified to receive more benefit from spellpower than they received from bonus healing, with a net effect of no change to the amount healed by their spells. Some talents have had to be rebalanced to accommodate this change, but the amount healed will remain roughly the same. In addition, some talents will provide only healing spell power.

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We really like the idea of the heirloom items and thought we would post all the blue posts we could find regarding this subject.

The following are quotes from Blizzard posters:
You guys have discovered our Heirloom items. These (as you know) are Bound to account, which means you can mail them to any character on the same realm. They also scale with level. So you can mail these to a level one character and it will have appropriate stats (although slightly uber) for about 10 levels and then the item scales in power again, all the way up to how you’re seeing it now.

We’re also going to add some Bind on Account non-scaling items for higher level alts. in the future.

1) Heirloom items Bind to Account. This means you can mail them between other characters on your account of the same faction.

2) Heirloom items’ stats scale to the level of the person wearing them.

3) Heirlooms’ power is equivalent to a blue item of the characters level.

4) Heirloom armor pieces will transform based on the type of the gear the character is capable of wearing. That is to say Heirlooms that are Plate on a level 80 character will be mail when equipped by a level 1-39 character who can wear plate. Items that are Mail on a level 80 character, such as Herod’s Shoulders, will be equippable by people who can wear Mail armor at level 40.

We wanted to add something to the game for people interested in trying new classes or who just generally love playing alts, and what’s more fun than using an Arcanite Reaper on your level 1 Warrior

We are intending to expand where we use the “Account Bound” flag over time but for now Heirlooms are the only items that work this way. We also intend to expand the types of ways that Heirlooms can be attained but for now they are only purchasable via Emblems of Heroism (the new BoJ) and Stone Keeper’s Shards, which are attained by killing any dungeon boss in Northrend while your faction controls Wintergrasp.

As for enchanting these items, they can only be the recipient of anything that you could put on a level one item.

Originally we wanted these to be transferable to any character on any account you own. Unfortunately we were unable to make this happen for Lich King. Ideally I would like to see these transferable to any same server same faction character on any account a player owns. If this becomes possible in the future it is certainly something we will look into. I own five accounts myself so I’m right there with you all.

Heirlooms do not cross any boundaries except those that you would expect them to. Plate items become mail pre-40, pail items become leather pre-40. A cloth Heirloom is still a cloth item. Currently the only Heirloom types available are weapons, shoulders, and trinkets, in time we will expand on this.

As far as how they are attained, your point is definitely something that we are aware of and after the system has had more time to solidify itself in game we will consider expanding the number of ways that they can be attained.

Can’t get enough of Open Beta but you’re ready to finally start your journey in the Age of Reckoning?

Starting Sunday, September 14th all Collectors Edition Pre-Order players will be invited to join the official kickoff of WAR and officially end Open Beta.

On Tuesday, September 16th all Standard Edition Pre-Order players will join the ranks of Collectors Edition players as WAR is prepared to release to the world next Thursday, September 18th.

Make sure you’ve used your Open Beta code to download the client from FilePlanet and have registered your Head Start code in the Mythic Account Center so you don’t miss a minute of action!

WAR is Coming – We’ll see you there

Quote From Zarhym: Source

With the release of upcoming content patch players will see a change in the way we allow buffs and debuffs to stack exclusively in a raid. For the most part, what this change means is that many buffs and debuffs that were previously allowed to stack together no longer can, and that many buffs and debuffs that only a single talent specialization could bring can now be brought by multiple different specializations. The philosophy behind this change shows up in many of the changes we have made in Wrath of The Lich King, such as when we made almost all buffs raid-wide. We want players to be able to form raids and parties based on who they want to play with, rather than who has the correct talents and abilities to min-max their raid performance.

Raid composition will still matter to some extent, but without this change, it would have overwhelmed every other aspect of raid planning (as we added new capabilities to each of 30 different talent trees). You no longer need to rigidly control the melee/spellcaster balance of your raid, or make sure every group has all the critical buffing classes, etc. This change has many class balance implications.

IMPORTANT! Before we are done, we will thoroughly test the performance of every class. It should not be assumed that one class’ current performance relative to others in beta is final. Some classes (and specializations) will need to be reduced in power and some increased. Many may feel the change has more impact on class X than class Y. We will address all of those concerns via our internal testing and community feedback.

There are thirty or so different categories into which buffs and debuffs fit. Here you will find a comprehensive list of the changes made broken down by category and which spells/talents are in that category.

• Armor Debuff (Major): Acid Spit (exotic Hunter pet), Expose Armor, Sunder Armor
• Armor Debuff (Minor): Faerie Fire, Sting (Hunter pet), Curse of Recklessness
• Read the rest of this entry »