Warrior Q&A with Ghostcrawler2009-10-17 00:00:00A little late on this one too! What with all the time we're spending on the Profiler combined with some big news we have for next week, and we're a little slower on the draw than usual this week. But here it is, the Warrior Q&A! Thanks to MasterofDisguise for helping me throw the blog together. I can't comment much on the actual content here, Warrior is not a class that I play鈥攖he rage mechanic never really appealed to me, and the interview below indicates the same may be true of the developers! You can read the entire interview after the break, or read the original one linked below: http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/underdev/warrior.html Community Team: We鈥檇 like to start things off by asking a question that players often ask in regard to the very purpose of each class. In this case, we鈥檙e looking specifically at warriors, which have been stalwart base for comparisons since the start of World of Warcraft. Q: Where do warriors fit into the larger scope of things currently and where do you see them going from this point forward? A: Historically, warriors have always been one of the most dominant classes in World of Warcraft. In Molten Core and for raids afterwards, warriors were THE tank, no question. DPS warriors could also top the damage meters, and were a very potent PvP force. We think we allowed the warrior class to overshadow some other classes, which is probably to be expected given the iconic nature of the plate-wearing fighter in RPGs that long preceded World of Warcraft. We think they are in a fairer place now, in that there is room on the stage for other classes, yet they are still a very powerful and popular class to play. The warrior class has been a very tricky one to balance, largely due to the way rage converts into damage (which converts into rage, which converts into damage...), and we haven鈥檛 completely nailed that design just yet. One of the things we want to do in the future is take a hard look at the Arms and Fury trees. There are several talents which just haven鈥檛 weathered the course of time well and pale in comparison to some of the newer Wrath of the Lich King talents. We鈥檙e happiest with the Protection tree -- we made a conscious effort to pare down that tree and remove a lot of mandatory talents in order to give the warrior more flexibility to take some more fun or utility-oriented talents. We need to make the same pass on the dps side of things. The reason we haven鈥檛 done so yet is that warrior dps is in a pretty good place and we don鈥檛 want to have to nerf the class across the board just to make some talents a little sexier. We will eventually do this though. We also need to make some decisions about the difference between Arms and Fury. Traditionally, Arms was the PvP tree and Fury was the PvE tree. We understand some players prefer that model, but we don鈥檛 like the way it cuts off such a big chunk of the class from players who might not have much interest in the PvP or PvE parts of the game. However, we would like to reinforce a little more the kits of Arms and Fury. Everyone (I hope) gets the difference between Frost and Fire mages. Arms is supposed to be about weapons and martial training and feel 鈥渟oldierly.鈥?Fury is supposed to be about screaming barbarians in woad. You get a sense of that, but it could be stronger. With the death knight, we allowed all three trees to more or less be able to tank. There is a desire among some players and designers to see Arms tank with a two-hander while Prot tanks with a shield. We鈥檙e still not sure that鈥檚 the direction we鈥檒l go -- it鈥檚 a ton of re-design and will never work for say the druid or paladin classes. Q: What is it that makes them unique compared to all other classes? A: The big ones are stances and rage. Other than warriors, only bear druids use the rage mechanic, and that is pretty much just because that form is intended to mimic warriors. Rage is an unusual resource because it is infinite over the course of minutes, but can be very limiting over the course of seconds. While the basic mechanic of rage is interesting, it has caused us lots of balance problems over the course of World of Warcraft -- sometimes in the favor of the warrior and sometimes not. It鈥檚 probably time to give the mechanic another look. Stances are intended to be a major battlefield decision for warriors, though we realize it doesn鈥檛 always pan out this way. You have access to different abilities in different stances, but pay a rage cost as well as sacrificing the potential to use other abilities. More on this below. Warriors also have some unusual mechanics like say their ability to move quickly around a battlefield, to survive massive physical damage through plate armor and Defensive Stance, and game-changing abilities like Spell Reflect. Community Team: Warriors have quite a few abilities that are contingent on certain circumstances like Overpower and Intervene. Q: What is the reasoning behind this and do we have any plans to change that type of gameplay? A: We like situational abilities. When specs don鈥檛 have situational abilities, it鈥檚 easy to fall into a very fixed rotation. We call this the metronome. Push button 1, 2, 3 on your keyboard over and over until the ...
Fictional WoW terrorism plot detailed2009-09-19 00:00:00Just how would terrorists plan an attack through an online virtual world like World of Warcraft using actual game lingo to mask their true intents? This isn't the premise for an episode of 24, although the writers of that show may want to start taking notes. Pentagon researchers have been trying to answer this premise and recently revealed a possib...
World of Raids WoW Blue Tracker: Recent In-Game Fixes2009-08-13 00:00:005/4/09 The NPCs just inside the front entrance of Ulduar (like a repair ogre) should no longer despawn. The Druid Tier 8 Nightsong Battlegear 4 piece bonus should now properly extend the length of Savage Roar. The Auriaya encounter has received the following changes: The range of Savage Pounce has been slightly reduced, the impact and periodic damage has been reduced in Heroic difficulty, the Guardian Swarm ability now summons 10 Swarming Guardians instead of 25 but their individual damage has been ...
