Fight Mechanics

While slowly making my way through Outland (one step, second step, corpse run, third step... you get the idea) I had a chance to fight many times. In fact sometimes it felt like too many times. In fact it was not so much of "had a chance" case, as "had to"...

Throughout the fights I noticed that the mob AI seems to be improved over what I am used to from standard WoW play. I cannot confirm it in 100%, but the opponents seem to have their own fight tactics, making it much more challenging.

When fighting two mobs at the same time, I often found it fairly difficult to keep both of them in front of me. Especially in case of humanoids, they tend to have some limited flanking ability, positioning one in front of me and one hitting from the back.

It could be all a blind chance, but I have a feeling that it is a conscious design decision. Harder? Yes. More challenging? Yes. More fun? Hell, yes!

Hiding underground

I found one particular type of creatures most interesting - the underground ones. You might have seen something similar in Dune or That movie with Kevin Bacon (I think) where they fight the underground worm-thingies (I may be not 100% correct on the second title). They come in many flavors; Bursters, Tunnelers, and whatnots, but they have one thing in common - an interesting attack tactic.

You cannot be the first to attack the underground mobs for a very simple reason - they are hidden and although you can see a pile of rubble travel through the ground, you are unable to target the creature. This gives our mob a better hand right from the beginning of the fight. Warriors cannot charge them (hence less rage), Rogues cannot Sap or do some other dirty trick that Rogues do... The mob has the first hit guaranteed.

My passing makes the mobs come out

During the fight it will not just stay in front of you waiting to be hit. Much like the disappearing bugs in AQ20, the tunnelers will quite often hide underground, make their way underneath you and reappear at the safe distance behind your back. From there they will launch some ranged attacks (spit green stuff at you), while you need to re-target them, turn around and if you're a melee class - run a couple of meters to get in range.

In a long run it may be frustrating to fight them, but that's just because I got used to easy kills of the brainless mobs. Now it is more like Half-Life without impulse 101. (Yes, I like Half-Life. I keep referring to it on various occasions. I think Half-Life is one of the best games ever made. There, I said it, now let me be!).

They proceed to spit venom at me.

Meanwhile a redskin also wants a piece of the action.

...by the way, there was indeed a similar creature in Half-Life :P I believe in expansion. Now back to Opposing Force expansion... Now back to The Burning Cursade.

There is a bunch of creatures (Stonewhelps if I recall correctly) who use a strange Paladin-Berserker technique during the fight. When their health gets down to around 50%, they cast a buff on themselves, making them invulnerable to the attacks and get healed up a bit. Just as the buff is about to finish they go into a frenzy attack type, gaining what I believe is around 25% extra attack power. It is bandage while you can or corpse-run when fighting these guys for most of the time.

I actually wish I had some caster or hunter character at level 60 to try Outland mobs with, since I noticed all my experience is with melee fights. I really wonder how is it to fight the same opponents with a ranged attack techniques.

Burning cannon

Outland does not differ much from the Blood Elf (by the way, I hate when people call them Belf) and Draenei starting area quest mechanics. Gone are the days of boring tasks. There is a really nice variety of things to do, and literally almost everyone wants you to do something for them.

One of my favorite quests so far required me to set fire to huge Alliance cannons, surrounded by redskin orcs. It wasn't maybe the most enjoyable concept for the quest, but hell, destroying public property of humans - definitely my kind of thing.

Military ranks of computer problems.

Back in the day when Windows 95 was king, I had a good military friend on my computer. His rank and name was General Failure and he really liked reading disk. I haven't heard from the general for a while, but it seems I have found a new friend.

His name is Major Lag and he likes to hang around when I try to play WoW.

Today I wanted to login to my normal WoW account, maybe throw some snowballs at people, maybe do some PvP - to no avail. Each time I logged on, Major Lag would show up. My latency would skyrocket to the regions of 10000ms (yes, 10 seconds for a response) and the server would keep dropping me out. Major Lag was also around when I tried playing The Burning Crusade but his influence was not so dramatic - just around the usual 800ms I get on the beta servers.

It was time to rise and live again for Quba, the Orc who cannot level.

Rise and shine Mr. Freeman... *cough* Mr. Orc...

I was planning to do a longer session tonight, but it appears some Ally Paladin managed to level all the way to 70, get an epic flying mount and decided it is time to make other's lives miserable. I kept on getting ganked (so pissed off I did not even take screenshots), and soon I logged out.

Still, there are couple of points I did not cover yet from my previous session, and a bunch of screenies I took that may as well constitute to a nice new post here.

First of all - a correction. I am not sure where the name Fel Orcs came from. Maybe that is the race, maybe not. After inspecting the screenshots I found out that the characters are described as Bonechewers. This could be the clan name for the redskins, or racial name - I am not really sure. Just wanted to mention that.

Bonechewer indeed. Mmmmm, bones...

One of the quests I attempted, or shall I say, one of the quests I actually managed to complete, required me to collect scraps of wood and metal from some wreckage guarded by the Bonechewers. yet again, the reward blew my mind. Green leg plates, level 60 totally outranked my old pants. I did not have any purple in that slot, only Abyssal Plate Legplates of Striking but getting 100 extra armor, 4 more strength and agility and 15 more stamina points isn't bad for a quest that takes approximately 10 minutes to complete.

Old and new leg pieces compared

All I can hope for is that when Burning Crusade comes out, people will not get too obsessed with racing forward. I still didn't have a chance to raid Blackwing Lair (well, went there solo once, needless to say I did not last very long), I still haven't seen Naxxramas - I have a bad feeling that many players will not want to bother with these once the expansion comes out. Of course, the drops from what is now the end-game raid content will be obsolete in a month's time, but the experience will still be there!

Anyway, back to the topic.

Another neat addition in the interface I noticed is dynamic quest objectives display. As you know, SHIFT-clicking on the quest title in the log allows you to display the objectives on your screen. In Burning Crusade the mechanic of this system got well thought of improvement. Once you complete an objective of the quest (even if you are not tracking it), the list of objectives will automatically display on the screen for a while (around 1 or 2 minutes I believe).

It is really useful, especially when you pick up 25 quests and don't want to search which one that particular flower you just picked was good for and what other objectives were there.

Unyielding Knight, just like a bad driver

In an earlier post about Outland, I mentioned the ruins populated by the ghostly undead. This particular group of baddies goes by the name of Unyielding and is not too tough to kill (as long as I managed to pull one or maximum of two at the time). One of the more fun mobs are the Unyielding Knights who fight you mounted. I cannot recall anything similar in the earlier WoW content - mobs would always dismount before the fight, and either attack you solo or assisted by their beast. Of course this is just a model of an enemy, much like the centaurs, but makes an interesting difference in the gameplay.

Of course, it also makes me long for the ability to actually perform some basic attacks without the need to dismount from my good old wolf.

Outland is filled with interesting "bonuses" - either for the player to participate in, or just watch. After one of my unfortunate resurrections I stumbled upon a following scene: A poor guy, Arcanist Torseldori getting attacked by dozens of Infernal Invaders. I did not manage to take a very good shot of the scene as I was running from quite far away to witness the fight. The fight itself lasted good 3-5 seconds, after which Mr. Torseldori obviously had some cleaning up to do.

Arcanist Torseldori and dozens of Infernal Invaders attacking him

Arcanist Torseldori and a pile of dead rubble

Well, that's it from me for today. I will perhaps attempt to log on again, maybe my pally nemesis is gone and I can finally complete that capturing towers quest.

No Burning Crusade blog could be possibly complete without some snapshots of Fel Reavers - these huge monsters (machines?) roam the surroundings of Thrallmar and tend to freak me out, somehow managing to sneak up on me. Did not fight any yet - I usually stay away from things that are taller than my house and have a skull for a level number.

I hope you enjoyed this installment of my Blog. Please drop me a comment about what you like and dislike in my articles, what would you like to see and read about. I am all for answering your questions, but with virtually zero feedback on the blog it is tough for me to figure out what the audience is and what you may want.

The Burning Crusade Cinematic Intro

Well, here it is, no longer in Shaky-Cam Telesync, but officially released by Blizzard in full HD glory. I doubt many of you missed it, but just in case, I decided to post it.

You can download the video from WoW's page at: http://www.wow-europe.com/en/downloads/ (46MB, no Blizzard downloader! Direct link :)

The cinematic does a great job introducing the two new races to the exisitng conflict. It also seems to be much more horde focussed than the original one. I only saw a human mage as a representative of Alliance (brilliant little sheeping scene, by the way), while all Horde classes are present in various scenes.

Could that be a subliminal messaging by Blizzard trying to get more faction ballance in the game by getting more people to play Horde?

Here are few snaps, but really, just go and download the file. It is worth it.

Outland: Think different

One of the things I forgot about leveling was how easy it is to die. I got used to being level 60 and pretty much owning all the mobs around. Death would be a less and less familiar encounter only experienced in high level instances and in company of freshly wiped guild mates.

After playing for a while with new races, it was time to head back to Quba and mess around the Outland properly. I don't know if I got used to low level areas with most of mobs being yellow, where character and opponent abilities are highly limited. Maybe it is the new talent tree which I have a suspicion I picked all wrong...

This was the sight I saw the most:

See Orc Run. Run Orc, Run!

Well... Stuff happens.

The most common enemy in the surroundings of Thrallmar are red-skinned Orc fellas, who look quite familiar to the possessed Orcs in Warcraft III campaigns. Fel Orcs is their name, I believe (I could be wrong though, I was never good with names).

Not all the deaths were on my side.

For me, one of the tricky elements of questing in Outland (or at list in Hellfire Peninsula) was pulling the mobs. I got completely unused to the concept of generating unwanted aggro, taking care of bandaging and health.

During raids, aggro is what warriors are after - you want the mobs to be concentrated on you. Apart from occasional potion and bandage (usually between fights), you forget about healing for most of the time, and concentrate on your rage bar and threat you generate, leaving your health in the hands of a skilled priest, druid or other healing class. Especially the hardcore raiders (whom I am not), raiding 5-7 days in a week may have a bit of adaptation problem going solo again for the first time in months.

From what I have noticed, Fel Orcs tend to pair up, and pulling one will most likely cause another one to run to you as well. Bad pull and you'll have four mobs to deal with. You will either need to run away till they leave you, or die and corpse-run. Either way, lots of leg exercise awaits.

Once you prepared yourself for frequent deaths and corpse-runs, it's time to rethink economy and asset management. I may be biased in this issue, since, as a casual gamer, I never reached the point in World of Warcraft where I could light-heartedly spend 1000+ gold, hell... even 100 gold is something big for me. My character runs on a normal mount, not an epic one, and does not wear all-purple equipment.

It was shocking, therefore, to see how fast the flow of money is in the Outland. It is not uncommon to get a couple of gold pieces for a quest, or nearly a gold from a mob. I'm sure these values are to rise much higher in virtually no time, since I am still at the area designed for leveling up from 60. Just imagine what level 65 earns on looting mobs!

It is not all income though. All skills have been extended beyond skill level 300, and training costs a lot. New skill levels, new recipes, ingredients, not to mention constant repair costs... The whole economy scales upwards very fast and I completely understand why some people were requesting Blizzard to include a new highest level of coinage that would replace extra zeros in gold prices.

Green dagger from 10-minute quest versus purple hand weapon from Zul'Gurub

On the positive side, loot and quest rewards help regain the balance of your monetary situation fairly well. Killing 12 Fel Orcs and turning in their blood rewarded me with a green dagger with the DPS much nicer than a purple hand-claw I obtained after days and days spent raiding Zul'Gurub.

In the future posts, I will write some more about the experience, mobs encountered, look of the place etc. For now I have one more thing that will make you think different: tilted terrain.

I noticed this both in Outland and in the Blood Elf starting area - there is a lot of tilted terrain on the map, making it tough to play for those who get dizzy easily. For me it is just pure fun - I love roller coasters, flight simulators and all that - but I can imagine how some players may feel uneasy with seemingly unstable ground under their virtual feet.

This thing is b0rked?!

The image above demonstrates the idea - the entire city, or rather ruins, populated by not-very-friendly undead army is located on a slope. It makes it quite interesting to run, turn and fight on such terrain.

I got no dizziness, I got no vertigo, I fought like a lion, but soon enough I was...

Dead again...

Gold ads be gone!

I just added AdSense to the right pannel of the blog. At the moment it reads keywords in the page and results with displaying several gold-selling site ads.

Since purchasing WoW Gold is illegal, I will be trying my best to filter these results out. It may take a while, but eventually there will be no single ad for this type of activity.

Seven is a magic number

I could not really find a way to smoothly incorporate these seven subjects into any of the previous topics, so here they are: Today's leftovers - too good to pass, too out of context to mix with any sense.

1. Arcane Sanctum
As a big fan of the whole Warcraft series, and someone who still plays Warcraft III on quite regular basis, I was very happy to see more of familiar elements being brought to WoW. One of the recurring structures that can be seen around Silvermoon City are Arcane Sanctum Towers - the very same buildings in which you "produce" priests and sorcerers in Warcraft III. It's always great to stumble upon the structure in WoW and be able to say "hey, I know this building, only I never seen it from this perspective or never went inside".

Arcane Sanctum (North, I believe)

2. Cool Sailing Ships
One of the quests took me to an area occupied by creatures known as Wretched Hooligans. Now, I am not sure what were they supposed to be. They look quite elvish, and my guess is that I missed some part of the quest where it was explained how noble Elves turned bad under the influence of alcohol and violent video games...

Fight Wretched Hooligan

Kill Wretched Hooligan

Anyway, that was not the point. The area occupied by these, was a port featuring a beautiful boat docked at the shore. I really wonder if as I progress through the Blood Elf storyline, will these ships ever serve as an actual transportation or are they just a cool decorative piece?

Blood Elf vessel found at the port

3. Nice UI change
Now, I am not sure if this is present just in The Burning Crusade or WoW got it with the 2.0 update (haven't as much as touched original WoW ever since I got my hands on the beta). While fighting the hooligans I noticed that target UI now displays the progress of your opponent's spell casting. This is a really great improvement. Especially if it works in PvP mode, it will finally allow all the warriors to Shield Bash in the right moment :)

UI displaying target's spell casting progress

4. Silvermoon Forge
Well, I just thought it looked cool. Instead of classic copy-paste forges we see all around Kalimdor, this one is more like something found in Blackrock Depths. A half-circle filled with molten lava delivered by a giant head suspended a few meters above ground.

Silvermoon forge

5. Ostriches... *cough* I mean Hawkstriders
Basically Mechanostriders minus "Mechano" (and plus "Hawk" if you really have to). For those of you who might not know - found at the vendor just outside Silvermoon, these are the Blood Elf mounts.

Ostr... Hawk... BLOOD ELF MOUNTS

6. Reputation weirdness
I don't know if this is something added just for beta, to make people's life easier, but gaining reputation with Silvermoon City faction seems to be just way too easy. Come on, I remember grinding reputation with Orgrimmar on my Orc Warrior to make sure I reach status before the time to buy the mount (level 40). With Minimage I got to Honored at level 8! Even simples quest would earn as much as 250 reputation points. And that's for killing 4-8 level 9 mobs.

Minimage gains Honored reputation at level 8

7. Eversong Party
One of the quests got me running all over the place on an untypical FedEx type mission, where I needed to buy booze, food and fireworks for the Eversong Party. The reward for the quest was the invitation to the party, allowing me to grab as much food and drinks as I wanted (fireworks weren't for grabs unfortunately).

While the reward does not have much value (you can't sell the alcohol for profit), it is a great example how quests are being integrated into the story and environment in Burning Crusade. And it was fun to drink 20 bottles of alcoholic beverage and trying to run in a straight line.

Eversong party

...and by the way, I got one more 4-slot bag as a reward for another quest. This time it was for helping a magician turn two of his misbehaving apprentices into boars.