Last updated on March 31, 2013
And just like that, April’s here for all to cheer. I’m not much of an April Fool’s guy, all said, so no funny business on today’s Monday Update. Well, maybe a little.
World of WarCraft Patch 5.2 – Although I play WoW quite a bit, you may notice that I did not bother to talk about the latest patch. That comes from the fact that I played it, and making a value judgment on a new patch without playing said patch makes one look like a fool, no?
In a nutshell, it’s pretty fabulous! I’d say there’s a few objectives with this patch that Blizzard achieved brilliantly: first, bring world exploration and world PvP back to the forefront. Now, they already did this in some measure with Pet Battles, since catching pets out in the wild in old questing areas gave both factions incentives to go there and possibly find themselves in a fight. Still, it did not inspire a mad rush to explore Pandaria and do the same. The stakes simply aren’t high enough, and the incentives not strong enough to force such a situation.
The Isle of Thunder, however, cramps both player factions in a small area AND provides plenty of tangible gearing incentives. Heck, you can even choose whether to do PvE or PvP dailies. I might prefer PvE myself, but I find the liveliness of the new areas quite nice and much reminiscent of “old WoW”. Mists of Pandaria sees continual success in this regard. Not only that, but we’re really getting tons and tons of content – more than you can finish in a few weeks (Cataclysm), and more content for casual and hardcore raiders alike (mounts, reputation rewards, cool vanity items, etc). Also, an island full of dinosaurs. I’m not sure how anyone could hate that. And a dinosaur raid boss! A few of them! I mean seriously, dinosaurs (the kid inside all of us should love the popular cultural image of dinosaurs, not the ones with feathers because those are dumb).
To make the exploration portion more interesting, Blizzard scattered rare spawn NPCs and five-man bosses around the Isle of Thunder, also making dailies worthwhile. I constantly found myself distracted when finding these new enemies, and they present quite a challenge to a soloer (and even to a full group!). Unlike before, tagging these bosses doesn’t exclude everyone else from the loot – the boss merely becomes more powerful if someone else tags it, and they get their own loot table. This can be abused by the opposite faction, sure, but it rarely happens that way; I’ve found Alliance and Horde work together, most times, as they both want whatever drops off said bosses. Usually, the rewards become worth it, as getting the Key of Lei Shen opens up a solo scenario where you can find tons and tons of useful loot. When I say useful, I mean the ability to roll multiple times on raid bosses – sounds good enough, right? All of this, and you’ve got a whole new faction for which to grind reputation (well, “grinding” being the normal way to describe said things, but the variety of tasks makes it less so).
As for the Throne of Thunder Raid itself? Rather excellent, all said. Being in Raid Finder the first week isn’t a fun experience, as twenty-five people walk in blind to some stiff challenges, but it isn’t insurmoutable. As one of two tanks, I found myself delegating responsibility and explaining boss strategies to the group – not that I had actually done it before! I just watched the videos and knew my information. We only died a few times on that first run, and later runs proved that people learn quickly when the lure of the gear carrot places itself before the average player. Not that herding 24 strange cats to one task ever transforms into a simple task, but you get the idea.
The fights themselves require a lot of spatial awareness from every member of the raid, making the players move to and fro to avoid obstacles, destroy additional enemies, and possibly dodge death. Tier 14 (the previous set of content) required this, but ToT does not pull punches when, say, making some abilities instant death for anyone unlucky or unaware enough to stand in the wrong place. Some fights look like hell broke loose, as in Tortos; so much crap falls on the ground and so many adds move around the small arena that it’s difficult to concentrate and multitask with all that craziness. Maybe we’re all good at WoW from playing so long, but this does NOT look casual friendly (WARNING: NSFW language in the video):
Tortos also shows Blizzard’s penchant for blatant plagiarism with the turtle kicking mechanic. If that’s not supposed to reference Super Mario Bros., I think that’d have to be the greatest bout of unintentional parody I’ve yet seen. Also: thank you, other tank, for always giving me the hard job of tanking the absolutely CRAZY vampire bats who do tons and tons of damage. They will kill you if healers aren’t paying attention (and usually, for a first attempt, they won’t). Just saying. In sum, ToT fills its halls full of fights both interesting and requiring lots of movement – not just stacking on top of each other and waiting til the boss dies (vanilla WoW *cought*). I’m looking forward to doing some more stuff!
Even if you can’t do the new raids due to the gear requirements, Blizzard reduced the cost of all items and allowed for multiple rolls for loot on old raid content, so it’s really easy to gear up for the new stuff WITHOUT plying people with gear for no reason (again, Cataclysm). I’m still doing that now, because the Sigils for a particular quest still haven’t dropped somehow. As you may expect, there’s always a touch of randomness, but I suppose that’s what keeps people playing the game. If they just gave you what you wanted, it wouldn’t be a challenge, now would it? Nor would anyone pay $14.99 a month for the content. So yeah, thumbs up for 5.2!
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That’s it for this Monday Update. More PAXtravaganza 2013, along with the debut of a new writer! Stay tuned!
