World of Warcraft passes 50% total market share

[Captain Insano]

I cleared wailing caverns with zanchief once. Can I talk about WoW?

[Captain Insano]

Oh did you guys know that supposedly Counselor Troi did a porno back in the 70's? I wish I could get my hands on that.

[Agrajag]

Oh did you guys know that supposedly Counselor Troi did a porno back in the 70's? I wish I could get my hands on that.

Even though she got a little chunky towards the end of the series I still found her attractive

[Jay]

Agra, only a handful of guilds on Nameless can say they cleared PoP content before the end of 2004. That's LoS, PoN and MAYBE Euphoria. You were either with one of them, or you're full of shit. When you experience the levels of teamwork and dedication it takes to get to that level in the game it's not something you forget easily, let alone the name of the guild you belonged to.

Also, a good raid guild player who is already geared and leveled up only needs to log on for peak raid times. That easily covers 9-5 and a couple of hours after to spend with the wife and kids.

[Arlos]

Snerp, obviously I wasn't still with LOS post-GoD, so I never experienced any of those raids. You know quite well I was with them through all of the stuff in PoP stuff, however. I also read the LOS boards regularly (well, the parts I can get to), and was able to pick up a at least some idea of how OMM worked.

No argument that Molten Core in WoW was rather simplistic, though the encounter concept for Majordomo was rather unique: never actually kill the main boss, just keep him busy while you deal with his guards, but be careful of what order and how. Ragnaros is also a pretty scripted encounter, though nothing compared to later ones.

Blackwing Lair introduced several more wrinkles into the mix. Even the opening encounter, Razorgore, requires a big mix of strategies, at least until you get to the point where the boss is killable. Vael is specifically designed to absolutely require tank transitions, and is immune to taunt, and requires people to pay attention for the entire fight, or risk killing everyone. Firemaw and Flamegor are pretty simple, true. Ebonroc is a bit trickier, as he puts a undispellable effect on a tank that heals the mob every time he hits the tank with the effect. Chromaggus is pretty simple too. Nefarian, once you get to him, is not too complex, but getting to him past the chain-spawns in phase 1 of the encounter while keeping everyone alive isn't that easy. Also, he has a number of effects during the fight that require people to pay attention, as he'll do things like make cleric heals actually put a huge stacking DoT on whoever they healed, etc.

Now, get into AQ 40, and they've really gone to new heights of encounter design. Twin Emperors is actually significantly easier if you have Warlocks tank portions of it, for example. Suffice it to say that if I were to list all of the stuff going on in AQ40, this would be one mothering-long post, so I'll just discuss C'Thun.

Stage 1: C'Thun's eye. Every 2 seconds, he stares at someone and shoots them with a green energy ray for about 2-4k depending on resists. No big deal. However, if there's anyone standing within 10 feet of you when you get hit, the beam jumps to them and doubles in damage. If they have someone else within 10 feet of them it jumps again and doubles damage yet again. I've seen screwups where it jumped through most of a guild and people were getting hit for 10+ million HP.

OK, now, on top of that, every so often a ring of eye tentacles spring up around him. They don't have a whole lot of HP, but they pick a target and do like 700hp every second + effectively fear them, so they can't act. (Mind Flay is the spell effect) Also, at random intervals, claw tentacles spring up from the ground, doing about 2k to anyone above them as they pop up plus flinging them a good 20 feet way, and they start meleeing people nearby, snaring them, etc. Oh, and no, there's no warning of any kind before the tentacle pops up, first indication you have of it is when you go flying across the room and see your health drop.

Now, furthermore, every 30 seconds or so, the Eye will stop random beaming, will pick a spot in the room and do a Dark Glare. What happens then, is the eye shoots out a straight red beam that does oh, about 50,000 damage if it hits you, and sweeps in a 180 degree arc around the room. It's random where he starts the beam, though he'll stare there for 2-3 seconds before the beam comes out, and random whether he'll sweep clockwise or counter-clockwise. This means that every 30 seconds, the entire raid will need to rotate around the room 180 degrees with the beam, so as to avoid getting nailed.

So, on top of dealing with all the random tentacles and the eye beams, you need to be putting out DPS on the eye itself, because you have to kill it before C'Thun himself will show up. None of the tentacle spawning stops during the Dark Glare phase either, and the tentacles springing up from underground that fling you around can quite easily knock you into a red beam, or throw you next to someone who then gets hit by a green beam, linking to you for 8k damage before resists, which is instant death if you don't resist it for 99.9% of people. (some top-geared warriors might have that much).

OK, so, you've survived all of that, and killed the Eye. Congrats, that's just phase 1. You now have about a 10 second window as C'Thun himself rises out of the floor to get re-positioned, etc. However, you don't get dropped out of combat, so you don't get to eat or drink, nor can you rez up anyone who's died, unless you use a combat rez from a druid (which are on 30 minute cooldowns). After that 10 second window, phase 2 starts, and all you've got is whoever lived through Phase 1. (and if it's not darn near everyone, forget it, you're not getting through phase 2, period)

Phase 2.
OK, C'Thun himself doesn't attack at all. He is physically present, you can hit him, but he's also near-invulnerable. All hits do is like 1-2 points of damage on him, which is nothing. Now, remember that ring of small eye tentacles that kept spawning and doing the mind flay? They are back during phase 2 as well. The small claw tentacles are not, but now you get GIANT claw tentacles, who do significantly more damage if they come up underneath someone. These generate signifcant melee damage, and MUST be tanked by real tanks. If they ever are not actively being meleed, they will submerge, heal to full, and reappear under someone. These also have a ton of HP, and cannot be burned down quickly.

Besides the giant claw tentacles, he now starts spawning Giant Eye tentacles. These have less HP, but shoot out the same green energy beam that the Eye itself did in phase 1. These need to be dropped FAST, but you can't pack melee around them to do it, in case it beams one of them.

Now, beyond all that, you have an entire other section to the encounter. At random every so often, a mouth tentacle will come up beneath someone, and swallow them down into C'Thun's stomach. You don't get to choose who goes, it's entirely random. Anyone in the stomach is effected by a dot, that stacks the longer you get in there, so by about 15-20 seconds, you're taking 1000hp/sec or so. The DoT is not dispellable or cureable while you're in the stomach, you have to leave to remove it. Being in the stomach is important, however, as there are 2 stomach tentacles in there. These do lots of melee DPS to those that get close to them, and have a fair number of HP. However, they are absolutely vital. If you manage to kill both stomach tentacles, that turns C'Thun's body vulnerable to damage, and stops him from spawning any new tentacles outside for 40 seconds. Any currently spawned tentacles stay up, however, and still need to be dealt with.

That vulnerability of time is VITAL, as it's the only time when you can actually do any real damage on C'Thun himself, and you only have that 40 second window to do it in, lessened by any time you spent dealing with currently spawned tentacles when the vulnerability started. Once it's finished, about 10 seconds after the vulnerability fades, the stomach tentacles respawn, and he starts spawning all of the outside tentacles again. Now, you can't really just off-tank any giant claw tentacles that are up when he goes vulnerable, because they have enough HP that you can't drop them fast enough in that gap between when he goes invul again and before he spawns more such tentacles. If you get behind on dealing with tentacles, you're dead. So, you need to plan on making him vulnerable several times to get enough aggregate vulnerability time to drop him down.


So, you have here an entire encounter where the closest thing you get to traditional "tanking" is vs the Giant Claw tentacles on phase 2. EVERYONE has to pay attention for the entire fight, or risk linking people for the green beam, not moving out of the way of the dark glare beam, etc. You need to be careful with your mana as it's a LONG fight, and you cannot afford to blow it all early on. You have to keep multiple different types of spawns under control during phase 2, while at the same time never knowing who is going to get sucked into the stomach, or when. (and yes, he can and will eat warriors that are currently tanking giant claw tentacles) Anyone of any class has to be able to figure out how to contribute while in the stomach, as literally anyone could find themselves in there at any point during phase 2, and how you'd have to contribute is going to differ depending on the current situation. Oh, and you have to do both stages back to back, and basically anyone in either stage who dies is gone for good, unless you have druids with rez up, and they'll only be able to rez 1 person each during the entirety of the fight.

So, that's the C'Thun encounter. Hard as hell, and the guild I'm in is still working on beating him (50% or so is our best, but we had 39 people up at that point on that one, when he bugged and went invul again 5 seconds after going vulnerable and spawned a whole new wave of claw/giant eye tentacles while we were still dealing with others.) Sorry, but in all my years of cutting edge EQ raiding, nothing we ever did is even REMOTELY close in any way to an encounter like that.

-Arlos

[Snero]

Thats pretty much because you stopped raiding before eq switched from the form they used for pretty much everything before. For the most part, mobs either were straight ass beaters or had 1 AE and that was it. I would say mata muram sounds every bit as complicated as this guy, and it had an added wrinkle in that if anybody on aggro didn't pay 100% attention, they would not only kill themselves but wipe the raid.

As far as changing the encounters to fix them, eq does it all the time too. This is one of the things that was changed, in it's current form (unless it was changed), every certain amount of time, mata muram will randomly gaze somebody on the aggro list with a special mask (if not enough people have a mask, he does it randomly to anybody in the raid). If the person doesn't click their mask within a certain amount of time, mata muram deals double damage for a short period of time, but long enough to wipe out most of the wars.

You just can't compare eq from vellious (in luclin raids started to get a bit trickier, and there was ring events) to current end game wow, and while I can't speak from personal experience, eq raids are every bit as tricky as wow raids.

[Menlaan]

Both end-games sound pretty bad-ass.

Lyion, how many hours of playing time did it take for you to create your character and get into end-game raiding? Were you PL'd or did you just do it on your own?

[Snero]

I should note though that mata muram hasn't been end game for a year and a half or so before somebody busts me on that, new encounters have added other wrinkles

[Harrison]

Both end-games sound pretty bad-ass.

Lyion, how many hours of playing time did it take for you to create your character and get into end-game raiding? Were you PL'd or did you just do it on your own?

1-60 in 2-3 months taking your sweet old time.

You can level once a day with ease and little time.

[Menlaan]

Both end-games sound pretty bad-ass.

Lyion, how many hours of playing time did it take for you to create your character and get into end-game raiding? Were you PL'd or did you just do it on your own?

1-60 in 2-3 months taking your sweet old time.

You can level once a day with ease and little time.

But 60 doesn't get you into end-game content, right? I assume there are at least equipment barriers? Are their keys / flags as well?

[Harrison]

You work at those once you hit 60. And now WoW sounds appealing to me in a scary way.

Though the new EQ server coming out definitely has me sporting wood moreso than this does still.

[Agrajag]

Both end-games sound pretty bad-ass.

Lyion, how many hours of playing time did it take for you to create your character and get into end-game raiding? Were you PL'd or did you just do it on your own?

1-60 in 2-3 months taking your sweet old time.

You can level once a day with ease and little time.

But 60 doesn't get you into end-game content, right? I assume there are at least equipment barriers? Are their keys / flags as well?

Yes, there is keying involved. For Onyxia there is a long, drawn out quest to get the key. Blackwing Lair is just getting the quest and going through an instance to become attuned to the orb. Molten Core is the same as BWL. Some of the lower level dungeons require keys, also.

[Tikker]

Both end-games sound pretty bad-ass.

and endgame in both was also very fun when you were one of the top guilds doing it


I found in WOW that since everyone could progress at roughly the same time, that almost all the content was "spoiled" to a certain extent


part of it is just that there's 09865043 more people playing, and 75428984 more people talking with all their friends about how they kill this, or how they kill that

WoW endgame just never felt as magical

it also never really suffered thru some of the gayness that EQ did tho


ps, baron geddon is still one of my all time favourite encounters

mad props to daelomin for coming up with that one

[Agrajag]

ps, baron geddon is still one of my all time favourite encounters

Gives a whole new meaning to "being the bomb!"

[Arlos]

And now WoW sounds appealing to me in a scary way.

My explanation of one raid encounter show you that maybe WoW isn't quite as simplistic as you thought it was, at least once you reach the raiding game? heh.

-Arlos

[vonkaar]

Agra, only a handful of guilds on Nameless can say they cleared PoP content before the end of 2004. That's LoS, PoN and MAYBE Euphoria. You were either with one of them, or you're full of shit. When you experience the levels of teamwork and dedication it takes to get to that level in the game it's not something you forget easily, let alone the name of the guild you belonged to.

[smiley poster=surprise]still waiting on the answer yo[/smiley]

[Captain Insano]

we should form a pvp guild in WoW and just terrorize people. I want to see how many 15 year olds I can get to commit suicide on myspace.

We could call ourselves: Donkey Punch, or The Angry Pirates with Angrier Fists.

[Ginzburgh]

The Cthun fight in WoW is probably the hardest thing I have ever encountered in a video game but I didn't stick around in EQ long enough to make a valid comparison.

[Tikker]

we should form a pvp guild in WoW and just terrorize people. I want to see how many 15 year olds I can get to commit suicide on myspace.

We could call ourselves: Donkey Punch, or The Angry Pirates with Angrier Fists.

only if it's an all shadowpriest guild~

[Lyion]

Both end-games sound pretty bad-ass.

Lyion, how many hours of playing time did it take for you to create your character and get into end-game raiding? Were you PL'd or did you just do it on your own?

I levelled myself. It was just a few weeks to 60. I think my total played time was 5 1/2 days. I levelled a Druid, also, which isn't the fastest class.

I played WOW in beta and this is my second time through to 60. There is absolutely no need for powerlevelling, since you can solo and level in WOW fast. It gets a bit slower near 60, but it's fairly easy.

Keying BWL, MC and Onyxia are all fairly easy and don't take much time.

Once you start hitting MC/BWL/ZG/AQ items are fairly easy to get and upgrades aren't too difficult.

Blizzard has also been wise in gapping out new servers slowly to allow for fresh starts.

This is where WOW completely owns EQ right now, and even to some degree EQ2. Neither are at all newbie friendly, and especially EQ is a complete mess, even for a returning vet, let alone a brand new player.

I can't see SOE regaining market share since they insist on cranking out expansions that subscribe wholly to the church of mudflation and completely invalidate new and returning players from feeling welcome.

WOW has a lot of neat parlor tricks, and the game itself is designed to address a lot of the problems from EQ. Things are much more strategic. There are fun events, like Baron Geddon and 'the bomb'. This doesn't change the fact for all of this, WOW has no danger and little penalty for death. Thus, there isn't the feeling of winning and danger there was in early EQ. Death is completely trivial, so the lemming factor is present for raiding which is somewhat of a shame.

It still isn't the immersive, dangerous, alive, social world that early EQ was, and it never will be, unfortunately. That's good for some, bad for others, but whatever ones opinion you can't argue WOWs success.

[Ginzburgh]

Death is completely trivial, so the lemming factor is present for raiding which is somewhat of a shame.

I suppose you don't mind paying my nightly 20 gold repairs costs then.

[Lyion]

What does the fact you are a sucky rogue and don't vanish or play your class well have to do with the fact death is easy compared to early EQ?

[Captain Insano]

When I find the time I will probably toy around with WoW again, but definitely on the PVP side.

I will also continue to play EQ.


My biggest gripe with WoW is somewhat the lack of character development. I would prefer they have more races, classes and more spells and abilities. After playing a necro forever in EQ and having a million ways to get things done, playing WoW always felt simple. I was a lot more excited about the game back when they were planning to implement hero classes.

I never felt the grand feeling of real ULTIMATE POWER when I got high level in WoW.

I have to say I had high hopes for Vanguard but I think I will be sorely dissapointed, which really only leaves WoW as the next gen MMO for some time.

[Ginzburgh]

What does the fact you are a sucky rogue and don't vanish or play your class well have to do with the fact death is easy compared to early EQ?

Vanish doesn't do much in a raid wipe against Cthun.

You said "death was trivial" in WoW, when in fact, there is nothing trivial about 40 people having to shell out 20+ gold per night to keep up with the Jones's.

[Lyion]

I've been through tons of wipes. Whats your point? Heck, you can even bring repair bots that nullify the real problems of it, and good guilds are farming and getting plenty of gold. Honestly, how much gold do you have in the bank, Ginz?

Try doing a corpse retrieval as an early rogue in EQ and get in a death loop, and then talk to me.

Death = trivial in WOW. Head to ebay and buy a few thousand plat for a few bucks, and you don't even have to waste time farming money, which in and of itself is pathetically easy, and needed since everyone needs to raise reputation.

You have no fear or anxiety about death in WOW. At least I don't, nor does anyone I know.