Thanks to the group that stuck with me through it. I didn’t die, but I can’t say the same for the other melee DPS in the group.

Edit: My second Oculus of the day disbanded before I could pick up a drake. I replaced a healer who quit after a wipe on Eregos: people are still convinced this is hard, which just goes to show they never tried it before 3.3 nerfed him. Amber Void, Emerald Void, and Ruby Void are much more attainable now than they were a month ago.

Classes: General

• Area-of-Effect Damage Caps: We’ve redesigned the way area damage is capped when hitting many targets. Instead of a hard cap on total damage done, the game now caps the total damage done at a value equal to the damage the spell would do if it hit 10 targets. In other words, if a spell does 1000 damage to each target, it would hit up to 10 targets for 1000 each, but with more than 10 targets, each target would take 1000 damage divided by the number of targets. 20 targets would be hit for 500 damage each in that example.

This potentially hurts my bear, especially when doing Sholazar dailies. The mobs have relative low hit points (~6000) but I may not be able to swipe down all 22 Wolvar quickly enough. This won’t impact Icecrown/Argent Tournament dailies as I’m typically only hitting seven or eight scourge at a time. This will mean low level instance runs need to be handled a little more carefully (no pulling the entire Scarlet Cathedral).

Druids

• Prowl: This ability no longer has multiple ranks and penalizes movement speed by 30%.
• Rebirth: The cooldown on this spell has been lowered from 20 minutes down to 10 minutes. Cannot be used in Arenas.
• Rejuvenation: The base duration on all ranks of this spell is now 15 seconds.
• Tranquility: The cooldown on this spell has been reduced to 8 minutes, down from 10 minutes.
• Talents
  • Balance
    • Eclipse: This effect will not activate again within 15 seconds of either type of Eclipse effect firing, in addition to the existing 30-second cooldown for each type of Eclipse. In addition, Eclipse now grants a 40% critical strike chance to Starfire and 40% increased damage to Wrath, up from 30%.
    • Force of Nature: Health on the treants has been increased.
  • Feral Combat
    • Predatory Strikes: The Predatory Swiftness buff from this talent now has an 8-second duration.
  • Restoration
    • Gift of the Earthmother: Redesigned. This talent now increases spell haste by 2/4/6/8/10% and reduces the base global cooldown of Lifebloom by 2/4/6/8/10% instead of its previous effects.
• Pets
  • Avoidance (passive): Now reduces the damage your pets take from area-of-effect damage by 90%, but no longer applies to area-of-effect damage caused by other players.

The Prowl change has no impact at level 80. Since I’m not Moonkin spec, Eclipse changes and the treant health buffs don’t directly impact me but I think it will help other raiding druids.

Predatory Strikes isn’t a direct nerf to me like it would be to talented PvPer. Declaring the duration at eight seconds clarifies the buff duration.

The Rejuvenation change won’t really impact how I heal: I would usually really Rejuvenation before it expires on the tank. The Rebirth change is huge for me and my parties and should make encounters like Ony25 or ToC10 easier — I’ll end up losing a DPS on about a quarter of the runs (or a tank on raids) and getting Rebirths in faster will make those encounters a lot easier.

I’m more likely to use Tranquility than before: now, it’s only used for encounters I know will stress Wild Growth. I’m much more likely to pop it on any AOE boss now, not just the ones that were tougher AOEs. Honestly, I can count the times I’ve needed to use Tranquility on one hand (usually in OS25).

Gift of the Earthmother means I will concentrate a little more on Haste when gearing or gemming. I’m constantly using Lifebloom in conjunction with Rejuvenation when running heroics or to keep the tanks topped off on raids, so reducing the cooldown is a little better, although I’d really like to see a reduction in mana cost — I’m not running around in Tier 7. On heroics, when I’m with a good tank and the group isn’t taking heavy damage, mana isn’t usually a problem but on some encounters (ToC 10, for instance) I can blow through my whole bar. I’m more likely, with the lower cooldown, to apply Lifebloom to more than just raid tanks.

Finally, I’ve been looking forward to the dungeon finder. This has the potential to let me complete Heroic Dailies on weekdays (I log in around 8pm PST) and being able to teleport directly to the instance will save a ton of time, and I like that it supports returning to town to repair or buy reagents. I’m not happy about losing the Heroic Daily and Dungeon Daily quests, but understand the new system replaces them. I’ll need to make sure that I always have bag space free to hold onto daily random rewards (yes, this can be a problem at times).

Oh happy day: Looking for Group channel is back by default.

I’m curious about the rewards for weekly raids. I can be assured my guild will be running those every weekend.

We’ll call it, for lack of a better term, Mystery Quest.

One outstanding question remains: do you believe players need feedback when collecting correctly clues, interviewing witnesses, and assembling evidence?

Procedural content is usually dry, obviously generated, and tends to lack any personality. Consider, for instance, the first episode of Castle: the killer didn’t just act like a serial killer, he worked to frame a victim, made the killings look like those from the book but with subtle flaws, and left a trail of contradictory evidence that was very hard to pick out from the activities of the obvious suspect. This would be pretty darn hard to generate procedurally.

The Parts of a Mystery
A mystery quest is composed of:

• clues – items and states that act as evidence of the action and actors
• witnesses – in these terms, NPCs who saw the action/actors or discovered the results of the activity
• motive – the underlying reason that the activity took place
• suspect – the actor(s) responsible for performing that activity

Assume for now that I don’t have any shell actors, that is that I don’t have plans for a system that creates cut-outs or intermediate actors (someone framed for the crime).

Starting a Mystery
I’ll use 20th/21st century terms to describe starting mysteries in the context of crimes. There’s no reason mysteries couldn’t be set in a fantasy medieval, steampunk, 19th century, or far future milieu but I choose to use language and scenarios common to our contemporary period.

Given a mystery (which I’ll describe shortly), the player needs to be notified of the mystery in some way, in a detective game by notification by the police or a client, for actions such as:

• crime occurs; the witness notifies the police or authorities
• witness finds a body or out-of-place person
• victim of crime is admitted to a hospital
• victim of crime discovers something is missing (from their home or person)
• witness finds victim is missing
• player character (PC) notices something is odd or incongruous (clue grants the quest)
• PC witnesses/notices crime taking place (online or offline)
• witness or victim expresses a worry or concern to the PC

Within each of these is some cause, such as PC witnesses/notices crime taking place may be caused by a:

• break-in
• mugging
• murder
• theft

Causes and Sources
The intersection of the cause and source defines the broad mystery. The source indicates who begins the mystery, while the cause describes what kind of crime or action took place by the actor(s).

Sources

• player character – the PC was either the victim or witness, or obtained a clue independently
• contact – an NPC with a relationship to the PC starts the mystery, such as a vendor NPC’s bark, the player asks the NPC for updates, or the player finds a quest indicator (such as a quest board)
• victim – an NPC without a relationship to the PC starts the mystery (if the PC is a detective, the victim contacts the PC for assistance; if the PC is the police, the victim seeks help)
• witness – an NPC without a relationship to the PC starts the mystery (the PC runs into the NPC; the NPC has a quest marker)

The role of victim and witness both allow the player to start the mystery but each should fulfill different criteria toward completion of the mystery.

Causes

• missing item
• missing stranger – an NPC without a relationship to the PC is missing
• missing contact – an NPC with a relationship to the PC is missing
• theft
• burglary
• robbery
• assault
• murder
• poisoning
• disease
• harassment
• treason
• perjury
• arson
• property damage

For each mystery source, the time, location, witnesses, and clues need to be established.

For each mystery cause, the motive, means, and evidence need to be established.

Clues may become evidence, but clues may also be misleading.

Motives are generally soft: they don’t have a lot of meaning within the game but are needed to provide flavor for the player. Motives flesh out the NPC actors who are suspected of the crime.

• conspiracy
• passion
• poverty or desperation
• vengeance
• vigilantism
• accident
• orders or job

Witnesses are a second form of evidence. While they aren’t collected like clues, they are interviewed to provide additional direction (a new location to look for clues, a victim or suspect actor, another witness to continue the narrative). Witnesses can be described using two axes:

Witness Helpfulness

• Helpful
• Neutral
• Misleading
• Obstructive
• Hostile

Witness Accuracy

• Accurate
• Mostly Correct
• Half Correct
• Incorrect

Witness attributes provide an opportunity for skills use (Interviewing, Charm, Character Reading, etc.) to help the player evaluate whether the witness is accurate and helpful in continuing the investigation. Likewise, systems with PC reputation may adjust the witness attributes. Witnesses may need to be found and interviewed more than once: their statements may change (become more correct or change helpfulness) as the player obtains more clues or speaks to other witnesses.

Means depends on the crime committed and will need to be defined individually for each cause. For a death, means may be one of:

gun, knife, icepick, newspaper, pillow, animal, syringe, food, blanket, bag, telephone, wire, lighter

You should be able to pick out how some are appropriate or inappropriate for particular causes.

Time establishes when the action took place and may also impact the decay of clues or witnesses. Determining the time of the crime can be a reflection of the chosen difficulty of the system (cold cases are harder than recent murders).

Location establishes where (in which room) the action took place and can also impact the decay or spread of clues and witnesses. In a busy game, clues may be picked up by other players and moved from the room, or some clues attached to some objects may be obscured by later, replacement clues to more recent actions.

Putting it all together
To solve the mystery, the player will need to meet certain criteria:

• obtain some percentage of the original clues (50% or more)
• do not assign any incorrect clues to the mystery (the player should be able to deduce or discover this from in-game evidence or tools)
• contacted and received statements from some percentage of the original witnesses (50% or more)
• identified the victims of the mystery (100%)
• correctly identified the actors (100%)
• correctly eliminated innocent suspects (100%)

When the mystery is solved, the player can bundle up the results and turn it in for some reward. It’s up to the game system to determine how correct the player needs to be and what rewards are appropriate to that setting.

in my WoW cancellation reason for Blizzard, I entered:

Zombies. After this last weekend, I’m not sure I want to spend any time with these people.

I sent my share of petitions for foul language. All in all, I’d count the zombie weekend as a disaster for anyone who wasn’t already bored of the game. It was enough to make my wife and I walk away from WoW, and she has an overpowered fresh level 61 Enhancement Shaman she leveled from creation in the time it took me to go from 43 to 57. That’s pretty damn good alienation of your casual customers, Blizzard.

Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t play well, or for very long. I cut myself with a steak knife while preparing pet food on Sunday evening. I spent three hours in the emergency room before being discharged.

There are parts in there that you’re not supposed so see. Something was nicely severed that looked like a spaghetti noodle. The doctor was worried about tendons, but I still had a good grip.

The stitches go in. Unfortunately, I can’t tell you how many. I couldn’t watch, except through the phone’s screen. It’s funny how I needed the experience to be mediated.

Almost done. This is about where it started to hurt: the local wasn’t very strong on the inside edge of my thumb, but I wasn’t about to ask the doctor to add more. The anesthetic makes your nerves feel like they’re burning as they start to shut off. I could feel pressure for sure, and definitely the sting of the suturing needle.

All stitched up and waiting for antibiotic gel. I asked about the suturing kit: it’s less expensive to throw it out than it is to autoclave the instruments. Later, the nurse came back and cleaned most of the blood off my hand and wrapped it.

The sock is tube gauze, stretched over a metal frame and pulled over the horse wrap and sterile gauze. My thumb and hand itch and the thumb hurts, and every time I stretch my hand to do things like move a chair, type, or tie a shoelace, I can feel the stitches pull and the would stretch open. Although I’m splinted, I’m also double jointed and can pull my thumb away from the splint.

Yeah, it was a lot of blood. The kitchen looked like I tried to paint it with an airbrush. We’re still finding blood two days later.

For 10 days, no fun coding (I can’t really type now . . . I’m a two handed, home-row typist) and no FPS gaming. WoW is barely playable, and mostly if I just use the mouse for everything.

Returning to Ekrund as a level 12 Shaman, I figured I’d be the right level to basically be leaving the zone, based on my experiences in Beta. I could whip through the quests and be on the beach sipping seawater from salamander skulls in no time. Unfortunately, on my first encounter with a level 9 Dwarf Skeleton, I was turned into a Chicken, lost nearly 1000 hit points, and then was blown up by feedback (!) on a DOT. I found myself resurrecting at the nearby town, paying to get the health debuff removed, and figuring I just came across an odd bug. This seemed to be borne out until I grouped with a level 8 Squig Herder who was a little over his head in the same Dwarf tomb, then was (again) turned into a chicken and blown up by one of my DOTs–from his perspective, I was insta-killed–when I attacked the named ghost mob.

This makes WAR basically unplayable. It was bad enough that I would chicken when moving to a lower Tier, but I didn’t have to worry about that until after level 20. Now, I’m being chickened on mobs just a couple levels below me, well within my current Tier, and as the next stage in the storyline.

I reported the bug, but I can pretty much say that I don’t think EA/Mythic is going to be receiving any subscription money from me or my wife. They fixed a lot of warts in the game in the past couple weeks, or last couple patches, but this is game breaking and a real sign of code and design quality. It’s just too bad and it shatters some of my hopes, but I’m afraid WAR isn’t going to be my casual MMO gamer destination in the end.

WAR Closed Beta was down. A note stated that they were preparing for the preview weekend, which I’ve been dreading all week as I figured I’d end up stuck in a newbie zone, waiting for named mobs to respawn, and tripping over other players. I figured, however, that Mythic would have to have plenty of servers up, and maybe I could leave a quick note with Becky that she could come play WAR today while I’m at work.

Becky has felt that the last phases of this beta could have been handled better. Although Mythic has emphasized communicating through the Herald, she still felt cut-off as the standard has been set that patch notes, downtime, and important updates are displayed by the patcher–which rarely showed anything up-to-date. I ended up getting my best information from the Warhammer Alliance boards and a couple guild sites I’d check now and again.

It looks like the authentication server is acting as a significant point of failure in the process of selecting a server on which to play, and that the servers themselves are capped at 1600 players, about half of the server cap for DAOC. I can assure you that, at least until players spread out from gaining levels, 1000 players on the server make most of the low-level zones feel crowded.

Becky has had such poor customer experiences from the beta, with (to her) randomly downed servers during the middle of the day, the crowded newbie zones, and the RvR-based elder game that she’s looking to take a pass on WAR altogether–and can’t understand what I like about the game. (Is it enough that WoW is old?) We both realize this is a beta, but she was expecting it to be more like LOTRO’s beta and less like Shadowbane’s.

Edit:

It looks like Mythic raised the server caps. I can log in now–of course, now I have to leave for work.

I’ve only taken notes on the Empire starting area (it’s new to me), and I’m going out of my way to try to identify history and lore and notable NPC unlocks. I’ve submitted a bunch of bugs and gameplay issues, and I only wish that Closed Beta was going on a little longer so I could get more done before the masses arrive.

I think Becky is going to take a pass on Warhammer. Dungeon Runners is very appealing to her right now, although she dislikes how much larger the dungeons get after the first set (Algernon) simply because it takes much more time to clear them, and she really needs a break from World of Warcraft. She’s still trying the WAR beta but the game doesn’t appeal to her very much. I think I may now have a shrinkwrapped WAR collector’s edition with unused pre-order keys arriving on September 18.

RvR has been about what I expect. My Goblin Shaman tends to be pretty hard to kill, although I specialized into healing instead of damage so it takes me quite a while to kill tank and healer classes. It typically takes duos or trios to take me out when I’m paying attention to my health, although this might be a little harder for them now that I’ve picked up a couple more RvR-specific abilities. I’m still most interested in the game for PvE at this point, and that’s pretty rich and well polished. Public Quests are downright addictive, especially because they give you great equipment rewards for rolling at the top for the chest loot and from the local rally master. Finally, in PvE or RvR, tanks tend to be pretty rare (apparently, Shamans are the FOTM for Greenskins, even more than Squig Herders), so every Black Orc can easily form a group and get a couple (or three) pocket healers following him around.

• The artistic style is quirky and fun and well done
• The game has significant polish
• The most fun we’ve had with it so far is when playing Greenskins. Other races we’ve tried have more serious storylines and starting areas.
• WoW Hunters might be looking forward to the White Lion, but that should really be for people who miss playing their Beastmasters from EQ. The closest WoW Hunter analogue is the Squig Herder. No kidding.
• Low level Demonologists play like Animists from DAOC
• Public quests can be a ton of fun, but quest mobs for unrelated quests should be moved outside the public quest area (they may not respawn until after the public quest is complete)
• We’ve had two client crashes, one each, and one zone crash. This isn’t too bad considering that the game still has five weeks before release.
• Character customization is in, although the slider IDs aren’t necessarily matching the character body part, and there are some very gory choices available
• The zones feel, overall, smaller than WoW zones, more on par with starting zones in DAOC (which makes some sense)–Becky described it as a very urban feel in that she was constantly rubbing elbows with other CE closed beta players
• WAR has the hands-down best map implementation we’ve ever seen in an MMO. CoH/CoV were good, but this is better.
• The characters we’ve played don’t feel particularly weak, even in my case where I rolled up primary healers. Becky has no complaints about her Squig Herder.
• High Elves don’t have enough money to train all their skills at level 5 or 6. Greenskins don’t run low on money.
• There’s an interesting mechanic to some “green name” drops before making them usable. I had pretty good luck with drops on my Shaman.
• As always, big races are a pain to see around or click NPCs
• There are (or were) queues to get into the lowbie RvR. It looked like you could start that as early as level three simply by following quest lines.
• The quest tracker has a great implementation, definitely a step up from WoW
• The Tome of Knowledge takes a little getting used to for navigation and isn’t always obvious–it made more sense to me than to Becky
• On the other hand, I was more likely to get lost and not be able to find my quest mobs or locations (at least without the help of the map) than Becky who pushed through the quests (all new to her too!) about half-again as quickly as I could
• There are a lot of bottleneck named mobs with three to five minute respawn times, and a lot of players who don’t understand grouping for that kill
• We’ve still seen other graphical bugs, such as channeled spells that have the termination end prematurely for the player but continue indefinitely when seen by other players
• You need to watch your message log, such as when logging out–there are few popups

The game runs better and is more fun than Age of Conan, which is a much more serious game. Becky’s overall impression is that WoW doesn’t have anything to worry about in the long run, and the however much fun WAR is, it’s tempered by the density of players and how difficult it will be to start a new character and complete quests in the first few months. On more than one occasion, we’ve missed named quest mobs who weren’t up because they died within seconds of spawning or had to fight with crowds for even relatively common spawns.

Becky believes the Dwarves and High Elves were the most popular races she tried, although the server population skewed 5:3, Chaos to Order (the opposite of a typical WoW server).