Class balance in a post-WotLK World of Warcraft
Filed under: World of Warcraft, Classes, News items
Class balance is always a touchy subject, depending on the class a person plays. But WoWRIOT has put together an impressive look a class balance in a post-WotLK World of Warcraft. After looking through much of the post, we’re pretty impressed with its accuracy and overall take on current class balance, especially as it pertains to arena and PvP.
Normally, those who actually play the game are much more interested in these kinds of balance overviews. However, the article contains an extensive look at Death Knights and everything about where their place in the game is right now. So for anybody who’s been curious as to what’s going on with the first new class in World of Warcraft, we’d say the article is definitely worth a look. For everyone who does play the game, it’s probably a good idea to at least check out your class (or classes) if only to see why you should or shouldn’t be upset with Blizzard.
 |
One of Azeroth’s millions of citizens? Check out our ongoing coverage of the World of Warcraft, and be sure to touch base with our sister site WoW Insider for all your Lich King needs! |
Class balance in a post-WotLK World of Warcraft originally appeared on Massively on Tue, 06 Jan 2009 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Read | Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments
Grimwell takes a look at Atlantica Online
Filed under: At a glance, Fantasy, Game mechanics, Free-to-play, Hands-on
Atlantica Online is one of those MMOs that people always seem to talk about, but never really get fully in-depth with. Insight into the game recently came from an unexpected source: Craig “Grimwell” Dalrymple, a noted MMO blogger and senior community relations manager for Sony Online Entertainment. Craig just recently spoke up about the turn-based MMO, relating his experiences and gripes with the game on his blog. For him, the strong points of Atlantica are the turn-based combat (as it allows PvP to be a bit more tactical rather than a fast paced gankfest,) the mercenary system (which is…
Grimwell takes a look at Atlantica Online originally appeared on Massively on Tue, 06 Jan 2009 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Read | Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments
EVE Evolved: The art of tanking - Armour tanking
Filed under: Sci-fi, EVE Online, Game mechanics, Guides, PvP, Tips and tricks, PvE, Hands-on, Education, EVE Evolved
Back in 2005, I became obsessed with the art of tanking in EVE Online. Before writing the definitive tanking guide for EON issue 2 (for which the EVE community dubbed me “the tanking guy”), I spent a lot of time working out the mathematics behind the art. At a time when people preferred a trial and error approach to combat, I went as far as to create a spreadsheet to automate calculations on the strength of your tank. Over the years, more advanced tools like EFT (EVE Fitting Tool) have been released which have this functionality and more. In this short series of articles, I aim to cover…
Continue reading EVE Evolved: The art of tanking - Armour tanking
EVE Evolved: The art of tanking - Armour tanking originally appeared on Massively on Mon, 05 Jan 2009 10:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments
Behind the Curtain: The spirit of competition
Filed under: World of Warcraft, Fantasy, Culture, Game mechanics, PvP, PvE, Opinion, Behind the Curtain
I was going to write a little about the differences between making better games, and making games better.
The more I thought about it though, the more I realised that a topic like that doesn’t really have a place here at Behind the Curtain.
You can take that statement either to mean that an intellectual, investigative piece doesn’t really fit the mood of an opinion-based weekly column; or that an intellectual, investigative piece would simply be too hard. Your choice. Also, it’s Christmas, I’m Scottish, so I’ve been drinking a lot.
Instead, I got to thinking about competition. I’m not really competitive at all, you see, so most games (computer and real-life) which involve Vs. modes or PvP hold little appeal to me.
Continue reading Behind the Curtain: The spirit of competition
Behind the Curtain: The spirit of competition originally appeared on Massively on Sat, 27 Dec 2008 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments
EVE players get free advertising during live PvP tournament broadcast
Filed under: Sci-fi, EVE Online, Events, real-world, Events, in-game, MMO industry, PvP, News items
A popular event in EVE Online is returning this winter: the Alliance PvP Tournament, which kicks off late January, continuing through to final rounds in February. The final rounds of the Alliance PvP Tournament will be broadcast live, which is the basis for the latest announcement from CCP Games. EVE Online dev CCP Fallout has stated there will be free advertising slots for players to use during the live broadcast of the tournament finals. As CCP Fallout says, “Simply put: this is the biggest ad space available for EVE players and yet it will cost you absolutely nothing to submit an advertisement.”
We cringe at the thought of some of the video footage that could make it into the live broadcast (while looking forward to it as well), but CCP Games has laid out some general and technical guidelines that should keep the live broadcast relatively clean. Also, they’ve opened up the use of some of their intellectual property for players to use in producing their adverts — namely the EVE Online music and sound effects. (Although it must be noted that you actually have to use their music and sound effects, due to copyright issues that would inevitably result from widespread Rick-rolling.)
Continue reading EVE players get free advertising during live PvP tournament broadcast
EVE players get free advertising during live PvP tournament broadcast originally appeared on Massively on Sat, 20 Dec 2008 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Read | Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments
Wizard 101 previews first game content expansion, Dragonspyre
Filed under: Fantasy, Patches, PvP, Free-to-play, Wizard101
KingsIsle, the makers of Wizard101, have unveiled their plans for the next big content update for their card-iconic kid’s game. With players still investigating the new PvP spell arena recently added to the title, it’s interesting to see new content like this announced so soon! Players who have already worked their way through the four Wizard101 worlds will have a new realm to explore: the world of Dragonspyre. The site of a once-active magical school, the new zone is now a burnt-out husk. Players will be forced to deal with dark creatures specializing in Fire Magic, and a slew of new…
Wizard 101 previews first game content expansion, Dragonspyre originally appeared on Massively on Mon, 22 Dec 2008 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Read | Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments
EVE players get free advertising during live PvP tournament broadcast
Filed under: Sci-fi, EVE Online, Events, real-world, Events, in-game, MMO industry, PvP, News items
A popular event in EVE Online is returning this winter: the Alliance PvP Tournament, which kicks off late January, continuing through to final rounds in February. The final rounds of the Alliance PvP Tournament will be broadcast live, which is the basis for the latest announcement from CCP Games. EVE Online dev CCP Fallout has stated there will be free advertising slots for players to use during the live broadcast of the tournament finals. As CCP Fallout says, “Simply put: this is the biggest ad space available for EVE players and yet it will cost you absolutely nothing to submit an…
Continue reading EVE players get free advertising during live PvP tournament broadcast
EVE players get free advertising during live PvP tournament broadcast originally appeared on Massively on Sat, 20 Dec 2008 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Read | Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments
Wizard 101: Killing me softly with your spells
High level players gathered at the duel masters
Wizard 101’s surprise announcement of a full PvP Arena system to accompany the PvE-focused excitement of the next world, Dragonspyre, early next year shocked and electrified the community. It’s one thing to beat easy and predictable computer opponents in the W101 game of magical cards. Battling human players is a whole different story. You can’t truly say you’re a master wizard until you can beat human opponents.
Can Wizard 101 deliver both a kid friendly game and also satisfying PvP?
About to lose a 1v1 duel
Dueling has always been in the game; one of the first quests you get in Wizard 101 takes you to the Arena to learn the finer points of battling with cards. The new Arena system builds on the old one. You still go to the Arena, but instead of heading down the stairs and into the Arena, you speak with one of the two guards on duty. Tweedle Dee (the one on the left) matches people up for ranked missions, from individual 1v1 duels to 4v4 grand mêlées, and lets you peek in on duels and battles in progress.
Tweedle Dum (on the right) sets you up for practice duels. Unlike the ranked missions, battling here won’t change your ranking. Here, though, you can just play for fun or wager on the outcome of duels. When you tell someone to put their money where their mouth is, Tweedle Dum is the man to see to let you work it out on the hot sands of the dueling ground.
Filling up the team for a 4v4 battle
Unfortunately for PvP anyway, there is no smack talking on the dueling fields. And since there is no team-specific chat, casually suggesting to your group that everyone focus on the Life wizard on the other team is going to be clearly heard by the other side, who likely have different ideas of what to do with their main healer. This makes it hard to coordinate attacks among team mates. All you can do is hope your team mates figure out what you’re doing and follow along.
Us vs Them on the killing fields of the Arena
Not that there’s terribly much variation. In 1v1 duels, wizards tend to use very short decks that focus on multiplying a specific attack to end the duel in spectacular 3000+ damage fashion. My very first duel, I was killed by a necromancer who had two traps on me, two blades hovering over him, and I just couldn’t find my myth/death shield fast enough to blunt the blow. I knew darn well what was coming, but I couldn’t avoid it, and learned my lesson.
In duels, shields are your best friends.
The larger 3v3 and 4v4 fights are all about the group damage spells. You’ll never kill the other team by focusing on just one; the others will just heal them, as everyone has heal spells either in their deck or their sideboards. Massive group damage is the only way to keep people worrying about themselves and not about helping out their team mates.
My evil twin. I so totally killed her in battle
There is something truly satisfying about surviving an arena match full of people who likely are better geared and higher level than yourself. I’ve never seen so many level 50 people as I have seen today. It’s been virtually impossible for Johnny-come-latelies such as myself, who took my own sweet time leveling, to level past the mid-40s since KingsIsle removed the experience for repeating instances.
Comparing PvP (left) and PvE (right) gear
MMO PvP has always suffered the twin Achilles heels of level and gear imbalance. W101 is not particularly a level-focused game, except as far as the level and quality of the spells you have in your deck. You can, after all, just buy those cards at the various card vendors, so even a level 1 wizard can (potentially) cast the most damaging spell in the game if they have the treasure card for it.
Gear is also not an issue, since every single person — without exception — that I fought today was outfitted either completely in RMT gear (which you can buy with vast amounts of in-game gold if you don’t want to pay real bucks for the stuff), or in a combination of RMT and Oni gear (as I am).
RMT gear gives you good resists across the board, improves the damage of every spell you cast, improves your chance of getting power pips, and all around, is just good stuff to have in a duel.
Diego, the horse guy who instructs new wizards in the art of the Arena, also sells special PvP-oriented gear that can be bought only with Arena tickets. You get 3 of these tickets for losing a ranked Arena battle, and 10 for winning one. If you are the world’s best player and win every one of your Arena duels, then just 105 of them later, you can afford the above robe, roughly comparable to the robe I won from the Jade Oni, pre-Oni loot nerf.
Neither robe at all compares with the RMT robe, though. Both the PvP robe and the Oni robe only boost Life damage and resists, where RMT robes improve ALL resists and ALL damage, and toss in a spell to boot.
Balancing PvP gear is a tough job no matter what the game. Here in W101, they have chosen to balance their PvP gear according to the best PvE gear of the same rank; but few duelers at max level won’t have the RMT armor, which dwarfs both the PvP and PvE gear. I imagine KingsIsle still has some PvP gear balancing to do; either to make it easier to obtain, or markedly superior to the RMT armor, or possessing some special attacks that are only useful in duels. As it is now, folks will just use the RMT armor.
Once you have queued up for a match, you can go about your business and you’ll be ported to the Arena when your teams are ready to battle. This doesn’t seem to work while in minigames, though, which is too bad, since they have a fun new minigame I was having a good time with today.
The lack of guilds or clans has been somewhat eased by having the teams you form persist from battle to battle, which is a nice touch — but I would still really prefer to have a guild or a clan so we could discuss fights and strategies without the rest of the world listening in.
As a Life wizard, there is no way I can match the sheer damage output of other classes, but I can definitely make it very tough for an opposing team to take my team down. I would definitely prefer, then, to stick with 3v3 or 4v4 fights where my particular powers can shine. 1v1 duels are fun, though… but it often comes down to keeping shields up and heals going. Almost all the duelists I met today were extremely well prepared for battle, with tightly focused short decks and sideboards full of useful cards.
Duels are not something you can sleepwalk through, and that is likely the best reason of all to join the fight.
Wizard 101 Arena Season 1
Given a games company founded by the developers of the PvP-centric MMO Shadowbane, and the fragfest shooters DOOM and Wolfenstein 3D, making a game centered around a bloodless card game where kids could battle monsters with funny monsters of their own must have been a little tough.
Stingite over at The Friendly Necromancer says that that’s all about to change.
Just in time for Christmas, the small dueling arena (picture on top) is being entirely revamped. There will be leader boards, ladder, arena ranking, matches, betting, special PvP loot… This is all sounding so incredibly familiar.
I’m not sure that adding a strong PvP element to Wizard 101 should have taken priority over pushing Dragonspyre out, but, there ya have it. A WoW-like Arena system is coming to W101.
Full details past the fold, but I’d like to point out this quote from Director Todd Coleman:
“If you prefer questing or mini-games, great… you never have to duel another player,” said Todd Coleman, Director of Wizard101. “But families — and a lot of core gamers that are playing Wizard101 too — are going to have a great time competing against other players in the Wizard Arena.”
In the best of all possible worlds, perhaps… but we all know what happens in arenas. The absolute worst impulses of your MMO player come out. But Coleman does point out that a lot of core gamers — if you read this blog, you are one — play W101.
Were you really waiting on an arena? As a core gamer myself, here are the things I put above an arena: An unfiltered chat server for adults. Guilds. Appearance slots. Customizable housing. Some basic means of crafting, perhaps combining the stats of one item with the look of another. A broker for treasure cards where players can make and trade them. Guilds — I list that again because how can you even have structured PvP without guilds or clans?. Larger battles than 4v4. Some sort of basic raids. The new, rumored Astral magic. The ability to re-spend training points.
I’ll play the Arena, but I find PvP fairly dull. I do like the sense of danger it brings to a game world, but when I’m involved in PvP, I usually wish I were doing something fun instead.
Today we announce the pending launch of full featured wizard vs. wizard card duels in Wizard101. The newly expanded Wizard Arena will enable players to participate in practice or ranked spell-casting duels against each other. All other aspects of the current worlds in Wizard101 are collaborative, and community members play spell cards that come to animated life in order to battle zany creatures like Ninja Pigs.
“If you prefer questing or mini-games, great… you never have to duel another player,” said Todd Coleman, Director of Wizard101. “But families — and a lot of core gamers that are playing Wizard101 too — are going to have a great time competing against other players in the Wizard Arena.”
We will launch the enhanced player versus player (PvP) Wizard Arena this week. Players will be able to access the Wizard Arena from any of Wizard101’s worlds. Upon entering, one of multiple Arena looks in the style of Wizard101 worlds such as Moo Shu, Marleybone and Krokotopia will be generated. All dueling in the game is turn-based so that victory is more about strategy and deck building, rather than button mashing or internet connection speed. The new launch will give players two ways to compete against each other using the characters they have developed in other areas of Wizard101:
Practice Duels (non-ranked)
• Two teams of up to four wizards compete against each other
• Players can either quick join a duel or set up their own team and chose opponents
• Free for all Wizard101 players
• Players may elect to place wagers of in-game gold on the outcome of their duel
• Any in-game gold winnings are split evenly between team members
Sanctioned Duels (ranked)
• A matchmaking service assigns duels based on Arena ranking and character level of individual players
• Players are ranked based on duel outcome
• Winners get Arena Tickets, redeemable for loot, some of which is unique to the Wizard Arena
• At the end of each quarterly Wizard Arena season, a top Duel Master will be crowned
• Free for Wizard101 subscribers or purchase by microtransaction for 80 Crowns (equivalent to 16 cents or less depending on quantity of Crown purchase)
A look at hiring mercenaries in EVE Online
Filed under: Sci-fi, EVE Online, Guides, PvP
The galactic setting of EVE Online is always buzzing with conflict, somewhere. The game is very PvP-centric, although not all players have an interest in the violent side of EVE. That’s all fine and good, even those who concentrate on industry (EVE’s take on the crafting system) have a powerful weapon at their disposal to fend off, or spark, hostilities from other players — their in-game currrency. The power of the Inter Stellar Kredit (ISK) makes many things possible in EVE, and there are a number of mercenary corporations active in the game that are willing to kill or die for you, for the…
Continue reading A look at hiring mercenaries in EVE Online
A look at hiring mercenaries in EVE Online originally appeared on Massively on Mon, 15 Dec 2008 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Read | Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments
