I Knew It Was Something Engineering!!!

I knew this item existed somewhere in WoW after seeing it used a few times in PvP videos. Something that looked like flaming rocket shoes that made you run really fast, used really effectively in PvP escapes. They looked really cool, though I was kind of clueless on what they were, until now anyway.

With my growing obsession with goblin mage engineers, I've been paying a bit more attention to engineering and the stuff that comes with it, and now I see that engineers have items like Nitro Boosts which can be attached to boots.

Awesome!! :D

So, imagine a goblin engineer mage with a PvP fire or arcane spec. He potentially has three different possible escapes from classes with melee, or three ways to close in quickly and deliver some nasty dragon breath, arcane explosions, or frost novas.

Blink, of course, always their for mages.
Nitro Boost
Goblin rocket boot racial.

In the hands of a skilled player, I anticipate many, many pissed off alliance gnashing their teetch at escaping gnomes! It's going to be awesome! :D

Battlegrounds in Old Azeroth

It's pretty clear from the Cataclysm trailer that the Horde took the win for the Battle of Warsong Gulch, judging by the amount of deforestation in Ashenvale now. Do I feel bad for the Silverwing Sentinels? Well...kind of. That is their home that's slowly being chopped down after all.

What about the other battlegrounds of Vanilla WoW though?

Who won Arathi Basin? More importantly, who won Alterac Valley?

That's the one I'm really interested in! I'm a huge fan of the Frostwolf Clan and I think that the Stormpikes can get bent in all the wrong directions. They are the encroachers in that regard. Sure, sure, some Alliance fanboys would accuse the FW as being squaters on lands that never belonged to them, but how the hell would SP be any different? Alterac was destroyed which means that land was up for grabs, and Frostwolves made their home there before the coming of those stupid dwarves.

What's more, FW weren't looking to stripmine the place for the sake of archeology.

Knowing Blizzard and how badly they designed Alterac Valley, I would not doubt that victory went to the Stormpike in that regard and Frostwolves will now be homeless, which would suck yes, but not altogether impossible. Maybe, just maybe though, Blizzard will make up for that foul up with AV's bad design and let the Frost Wolves keep their home. That would be justice after all I think.

We do know that Drek'Thar, current leader of the Frostwolf Clan, accompanies Thrall to Outland when they visit the Mag'har in Nagrand. That's means by lore he was alive at that time, after the battle of Alterac Valley. That doesn't necessarily mean they won the battle though, although victory is obtained by killing the other dude's general, which is Drek'Thar on the Horde side. It leads me to wonder what the current lore status of Vanndar Stormpike is. Hopefully dead, the bastard.

Final Fantasy XIV and MMO Essentials #3: Keep Your PvP Out of my PvE (part 2)

Continuing on this subject of PvE players being screwed by a PvP system that sucks yesterday's crack pipes, I come to you with another issue. Last time it was about PvP'ers who would get their way when they complain enough to developers and get the nerfs they want, and PvE'ers are the ones who have to compensate for the sudden difference in their toon's capabilities.

Now I'm going to talk about something different, and I hope that SquareEnix is paying attention to this (more wishful thinking).

Bottom line: I don't want to see another situation where some bored, high level asshole walks into a low-level enemy town, kills all the NPC guards, kills all the NPC vendors, kills all the quest givers, and then sits there and mocks the low level players who just got screwed, and then get away with it with nothing happening to him.

Ever.

I swear on the name of God and Jesus, if this happens once in Final Fantasy XIV I will quit the game right then and there. If they get to the point where they've killed a few vendors and then a mass of guards equal to the player runs out and stomps his skull into the mud, then I would laugh, because that's what should happen. If they let it progress to the point where a town is destroyed and people are sitting there waiting for something to happen... No. Just no.

If I wanted to keep participating in that shit, I would not have quit WoW. I gained interest in FFXIV because it's a new Final Fantasy MMO and I'm hoping to escape that ludicrous bullshit. I know there are a few proponents to PvP being in the game. They can have it, just keep it in its own designated areas and have no world PvP in the game whatsoever. I could live with that better than anything.

So this is my suggestion to SquareEnix. Please, please, please leave world wide PvP out of the game. You can keep in stuff like the Balista matches or assigned battle grounds if you want to, I don't care. Just keep tucked away in a corner where I don't have to see it if I don't want. Those players who want unrestricted world domination PvP that like to go in and slaughter entire towns can get bent. If they're upset by my words I'm telling them now to ship off back to WoW and Warhammer Online.

Leave Final Fantasy XIV for the PvE players!

Final Fantasy XIV and MMO Essentials #3: Keep Your PvP Out of My PvE!

Ok, I'm going to refrain from the "welcome to blah blah blah" bit that I had in my last two posts. They were a bit too presumptuous in my opinion. If you're here and reading this then you know you're welcome already. Public blogs are public after all, yes?

Anyway, this is pretty much a simple concept I think any regular player of MMO's can appreciate. How do you balance PvP gameplay with PvE gameplay in games like this. There is no doubt that there are tons of dudes and ladies out there who like nothing more than to pit their skills against human opponents and try to win bragging rights on who is most leet. Some people like to take part in battles between huge armies. Others just like to band together with friends and go up against dungeons filled with AI monsters. It's a pretty diverse group of gamers out there and games like this should normally be diverse. Some MMO's on the market lean more towards PvP, such as Warhammer Online, others are more PvE like Everquest 2 (last I checked anyway). Others try to be in the middle and give equal share of both pies, like World of Warcraft.

I say "try" when I mention WoW, but I should also say "fail rather discretely".

This is one of the main reasons why I turned my back on WoW. Imagine you are playing a certain class and have his talents set so he can perform in a certain role, and you are doing really good in that role. You are having fun doing raids with your guild or heroic instances with your friends, and you don't PvP that much. Life is good for you.

But somewhere else we have the player of another class besides yours. He's really into PvP, he's really into playing the arena, he wants to be thought of as leet. The dude has this notion of him and his team getting to the top %10 of all arena participants. However, for some reason, the dude can only win half his matches, and he is upset about that.

This poor guy is not the first to think too highly of his own abilities and end up not doing all that well in the arena ladders. Neither is he the first to not face the facts that his skills are just average. Remember, he wants to be leet, and he wants people to think he's leet! Psychologically, he just isn't capable to face the fact that he kind of sucks, so he tries to make excuses instead. If he's so leet and awesome at PvP, and yet he's still losing many of his matches, then OBVIOUSLY the system is broken! No way it can be him!

Like I said, he's not the first with these thoughts. Nor is he the last. There are TONS of players who are currently playing WoW PvP who are in this mindset. They flood the forums almost daily with threads saying...

"Warlocks are to OP, NERF THEM NOW OR I QUIT WOW!!"

"ZOMG War is Broken! Fix Now Blizz! U SUXXORS!!!1111lol"

"Blizzard, you guys suck with deathknights! Frost strike can hit every time and they can do it bunches of times in a Row! OMG! NERF NOW!"

Nerf this, nerf that, nerf it all, buff me, buff my class, nerf his, yada yada yada, blah blah blah...

The river of crap and tears never ends!

Well, since these whiners and cheeseheads make up so many of the WoW playerbase, it would be foolish on Blizzard's part to not listen to what they want, and sometimes they get the nerfs that they demand. Now, we come back to the guy who does not PvP and prefers to raid and dungeon crawl with friends. Supposedly, WoW has just as much balance into those who prefer PvE over fighting other players, but suddenly this guy find he can't tank as well as he used to, or his abilities are not damaging as much as the last time he went through. Are they still able to get through the raid and get some loots? Maybe, but not always. Maybe that decrease in armor makes it so he dies to early when he's trying to tank a boss or that decline in DPS makes them take too long to get the boss down. Who knows?

The PvE was working before though! So, what the hell Blizzard? Why the nerf?

OHHHHhhhhh!

It's because Johny Wannabe the PvP Fanatic cried for the nerf bat and he got it.

Folks, it's almost impossible to balance both PvP and PvE at the same time. If one class or job gets nerfed because they're too much on the battlefield, the PvE factor of their jobs is going to take a hit as well. That's just the nature of the beast. That is why I am hoping against hope that SquareEnix sticks predominently to their original MMO roots and keeps the majority of gameplay on Final Fantasy XIV on a PvE basis. Am I outright opposed to any type of Player vs Player game? No, I am not. I might be willing to do a Ballista match here and there, or whatever FFXIV might have included, but it won't be very often.

I'm interested in FFXIV because I'm looking for a better, cleaner gaming environment then what I had in WoW. Part of the dirt that developed there was that there were too many PvP'ers making ridiculous demands and too many of them were getting listened to. It would have been stupid for Blizzard not to at that point. Those impacts had negative concequences for those of us who didn't want to fight in battlegrounds.

So, the bottom line is this. If you are having trouble in whatever FFXIV's PvP system, you can't kill that black mage because he nukes you too hard before he can get to you, I'm going to tell you to learn how to silence him. If SquareEnix is smart, every job should have at least some counter to something like that. That's just basic class balance.

If you demand that SquareEnix nerf the black mage and downgrade his ability to nuke, I'm going to tell you to get bent and go play some other game with rampant PvP.

If SquareEnix actually gives into your demand and nerfs the black mage because you can't kill him otherwise, I'll tell them to get bent and I'll be the one to go play something else.

If that happened then I think FFXIV would officially be WoW 2.0

Have a nice day.

WoW and the Real World

I have always thought that the World of Warcraft was basically a representation of our world in a sense, and the things that go on in WoW has sort of represented events of real life.

Take, for instance, the constant conflict between the Horde and the Alliance. In retrospect, these are two sides that have the same goals in mind: to live in peace and make the best life possible for themselves and for their children, and that is entirely understandable. We all want the same for ourselves and our children, so we do what we do. However, these two forces often clash and viewpoints conflict, differences can't be resolved, greed often steps in and whispers in someone's ears saying "you don't want to share with the other side", so they try to take things that don't belong to them, the other side tries to defend it, and thus war breaks out. It's a law of the world as a whole.

I view the relationship between the Horde and the Alliance a lot like the way I view the relationship between Democrats and Republicans. These are two factions of people who should not be fighting because they are both pursuing the same thing, and thus should work together to achieve it. The Horde and the Alliance both face the same enemies in the Scourge or the Burning Legion or the rising threat of Old Gods and corrupted dragonflights. Just as Democrats and Republicans, both Americans, face threats of terrorism and a declining economy. If one side were to work with the other side, it would make things better for everyone, yes?

Every once in a while though, a certain someone comes along who has no interest in playing with the other side, he just has his own agenda in mind or is driven by his own motivations and not those of the country he is trying to protect. In those regards I see Varian Wrynn along the same line as George W. Bush. Bush was driven by the thought of wanting to "kick ass" and Varian is driven by his revenge, both started wars against the wrong people, and though Varian has not screwed Stormwind the same way Bush screwed America, I would not doubt if it comes down to that. He is a man who was traumatized as a child when he saw his father murdered and his home burned during the first war and has suffered much since then, and people like that might be great combat leaders but they seldom make great kings. I really think that this vendetta turned to war against the Horde is going to cost Stormwind a lot when it's all said and done.

The bottom line is that I think that Blizzard introduced Varian Wrynn as an allegory of Bush's presidency. It begins with a tragedy to both the Horde and the Alliance by what happened at the Wrath Gate event (9/11) and both sides are quick to make the perpetrators pay for it. When they do though, Varian Wrynn sees all the human bodies in Undercity and gets pissed. The truth is he's always hated the Horde, and now he has an excuse to move against them, even if they had nothing to do with it (Iraq and 9/11).

A lot of Alliance players have drank that kool-aid however just the same way a lot of Republicans bought into that reasoning and were quick to support a war. The only difference at this point is that Bush did not make war on the Democrats, but with the start of the war the differences between Dems and Reps took a nasty turn for the worse.

This is where we're at now in WoW, two sides fighting each other when they should be fighting a more dangerous enemy, and though I have no doubt that we'll take care of the Lich King, Yogg-Saron, and any other real threats to Azeroth, I think the war between the Alliance and Horde will most undoubtedly get in the way. And even after the Lich King has been defeated, what then? Will the war go on, or will certain people gain some sense? Judging by the nature of WoW, I doubt it.

The whole tragic thing I find about all this is just how enamured some Alliance players have gotten with Varian Wrynn. "Ohhhhh, we have a king who kicks ass now! He's going to lead us to victory! *GASP* SQUEEE!" A lot of Americans did the same thing with Bush because he was a dude who was willing to take the fight to the sands of Arabia and beat terrorists on their own ground, but as things got worse he lost a great deal of support. Some not so bright individuals in the world still think that Bush was the best president ever though, just as I think some Alliance players will think Varian is the best king ever.

You know, I don't hold it against Alliance players for playing Alliance, I started WoW as Alliance myself and still have a few alts abroad. I don't hold it against people if they want to be Conservative Republicans either. I might not agree with their ideals or beliefs, but this is America and they are entitled to those ideals and beliefs. However, if, as a Republican, you are not appalled, embarassed, and ashamed of George Bush, then I think there is something seriously wrong with you. I'm not to that point yet with Alliance players and their attitudes towards Varian Wrynn, but time will tell if we get to that point.

What will our new Alliance Bad Boy have to do to get to that point? Everything that Bush did I guess. Can we expect Varian Wrynn to all of a sudden start ignoring the Lich King the way Bush started to ignore Osama Bin Laden, just to concentrate his efforts on Thrall? Instead of toppling Icecrown Glacier, will he try to burn down Orgrimmar first? Is Varian Wrynn willing to sacrifice the sons and daughters of Stormwind to fight a needless war? Is he willing to destroy his nation's economy to get that war?

God, I hope not, but I would not be surprised. I guess our saving grace is that some of the factions out there who were once part of the Alliance probably will not support King Douche if he makes such an action.

I already mentioned in the last thread that I think Jaina would stop being Alliance only if it came to blows and she was forced to choose sides. Doubtless guys like Tirion Fordring, who has friendships with orcs, will see such things as folly, plus his focuses are on the Lich King.

I'd like to think that people like Velen, Tyrande Whisperwind, and King Magni might have more sense, but who knows... The draenei have bad blood with the orcs for past transgressions, Tyrande is constantly getting upstaged by Staghelm, and Magni Bronzebeard has no love for orcs either, so they might support a war as well, to which they currently are it seems.

What will they do if things start turning bad though? Only time will tell.

Courage and Cowardice

Define Courage.

Is courage taking on a level 80 human death knight, unholy specced, knowing you're outclassed as a caster shammy, getting your butt kicked for the most part, but coming back for more anyway? I think so.

Define Cowardice.

I would say Cowardice is a level 80 human death knight body rezzing after being killed just once by a caster shammy and a blood elf death knight. The dude didn't even come back to try again.

Prime example of Alliance cowardice?

I would say so.

For the Horde!!

*From the writings of Dakore, Shaman of the Horde*

We stand victorious, and the Horde has reclaimed the Undercity! Lok'tar Ogar!

Varimathras, a dubious ally for many years now, has finally shown his true colors and betrayed the Horde. For a time, Sylvanus and many of her loyal followers, loyal to the Horde, were ousted from the Undercity. Through the might of the Warchief, the Dark Lady, and the power of the Horde, we have taken it back and destroyed Varimathras!

Only to be met by another tragedy. Alliance forces have also broken into Undercity through the sewers and successfully destroyed the other traitor, Putress. When they were done with that, they charged us in the Throne Chambers and attacked us.

Some time ago I saw the human warrior once known as Lo'Gosh, a gladiator slave fighting in Horde arenas. Since then he has found his true self as king of the alliance city of Stormwind, Varian Wrynn. Now he has proven the age old fact that all warriors of the Horde know to be true. For every honorable human like Bolvar Fordragon who falls due to unjust betrayals, there is another dishonorable human who rises in power. Now the Alliance is being led by this fool!

All I see is war in the immediate future, and the times after that are uncertain. How can a man make war on a people when a much more grave threat threatens to destroy all that is. I have always know humanity as a whole was a race of dishonorable people, and it should not be a surprise that the one who calls himself their king is the most hateful and spiteful of all. I would lie if I said it was not disheartening, but now is not the time for that.

If the Alliance wants a new war with the Horde, they will be given one! They will soon learn the price of biting off more than they can chew, and humans I find can chew very little. Soon they will be force fed the entire might of the Horde and will find it a grim meal indeed.

Do you hear me, Alliance dogs!!! We are coming for you!