WoW Journal - 20-Jun-2005

I'm still in a bit sad "game over" mode, due to Raslebol having hit 60. I tried a range of possible level 60 activities, but none of them were as fun as leveling up. The best activity was to lead a group of guild mates through the Scarlet Monastery, because I really like being able to help people. Then I tried PvP, but the battleground system isn't working all that well. The wait is often so long, that by the time people are allowed to get into the battlefield, they have gone afk, or started something more interesting, and then decline the invitation. In the worst case I found myself as one of only 3 characters on my side of the battlefield, instead of the 10 it takes for the capture the flag. In such cases the battlefield closes down after 5 minutes. I tried at least to get a honorable kill or two in that time, but the other side not only outnumbered us, they also had 2 mages who kept turning me into a sheep. There doesn't seem to be any defence against that, and so I spent most of the 5 minutes totally helpless and frustrated, and with no desire to try it again.

The main activity for level 60 is raids. I'm member of a The Order of the Rose-Croix, a very nice guild, but only medium sized. Sunday evening I did a raid with them, but all we could get together was 8 level 60 players. Small raid. At least at level 60 I wasn't all too worried about not being able to do quests, and getting little xp, but raids are still not very profitable. We spent several hours in Lower Blackrock Spire, and we got less than 1 blue item per person. And not many green items either. I ended up with one blue plate Belt of Valor, which is good because I already had the Bracers of Valor, and this is the first time I get two pieces of a set. And one green belt which was only good for being disenchanted.

The raid was relatively successful in that we never got wiped out, although we had a few deaths. I died only once, when our only healer lost his connection. I only made one big mistake, using shift-click to loot random monsters, and accidentally picking up a piece needed for the key for Upper Blackrock Spire, which should have gone to the guild leader. But it seems the key needs this piece and three gems, and we only found one gem, so we have to redo that part several times anyway. I'm certainly willing to go on raids whenever my guild needs me, but it seems we aren't doing this more than once per week, on Sunday evening, due to lack of players. But I wouldn't want to be part of a powergamer guild, just to be able to do raids more often.

So I think I'll stick with the previous plan of now mainly playing my other characters. Kyroc, my priest, is now always teaming up with a mage character played by my wife. That is very nice, playing with your significant other. We both reached level 20, so I now can push the cap of tailoring and enchanting to 225, and use the silk and mageweave cloth I gained with Raslebol, which I had hoarded for that purpose. The only problem with our team is that we had planned to stick to the undead zones, but we have run out of quests there. We did all the quests we could in Silverpine, and all the remaining quests there, and the quests in the next zone, Hillsbrad, are too high for us. So we will have to move to the Barrens and quest there, which is not as fun, as we both have done the quests there already. Which is actually the main stumbling block on the way to replayability of WoW, after about 4 characters (2 Horde, 2 Alliance) you run out of quests that you haven't done before.

On the French server my warlock Honey is still level 30, having mainly done a couple more battlegrounds this weekend. 43 honorable kills, but only 111 honor points, because our side lost all the time. The Horde repeatedly fielded a well organized team (You could recognize that by the fact that several characters had nearly identical names, only differing by one letter), consisting mainly of shamans. And on a capture the flag battleground, shamans are simply superior to all other classes. They are allowed to use their ghost wolf running ability, thus they are faster than anybody else. And once they got the flag, they drop earthbind totems, which slow down the pursuers. In a game mode which consists mainly of running around, having one class which runs faster and can stop others from running fast is unbalanced.

More and more I see that World of Warcraft character classes are really nicely balanced for PvE. Some solo a bit worse than others, but then they are better in groups, so no class is much worse or much better than the others in PvE overall. But as PvP is a completely different game, the same character classes are horribly unbalanced in PvP. As I always said, PvE and PvP don't mix well. I just hope Blizzard isn't spending too much energy on further fiddling with the PvP system, I'd rather have them work on more PvE content.
- posted by Tobold @ 8:08 AM Permanent Link