When greens mean progression

Kiiva is 80.

When I hit 80, I naturally started to put together a resto set (having levelled as feral and without any healing gear put away), so that I would be able to get back into healing.

I was a bit lost, to be honest. When Keeva hit 80, she was still wearing Tier 6 and Sunwell gear, which was quite good for Naxx 25. I never had to "put together" a set. Compare and contrast with Kiiva, who levelled entirely as feral and around about the 79 mark I realised I should prrrrobably consider taking the resto quest rewards if I was going to want to at least do 5 mans at 80..

So, I set about quickly looking at the reputations I had, what I had stashed in the bank, etc. At first I had to make do with half greens, half feral gear! Finding a green resto item was exciting. Greens at that point really were progression items for me.

With my "rule" that all of Kiiva's gear has to be paid for properly out of her own earnings (no outside loans, donations, or funds from other characters), I had to scrape together the cash to buy rep items and BOE epics.

My current gear is half enchanted, partly gemmed.. yuck. But it's because I am very literally scraping money together as I go. An epic here or there and I'm back to no cash - then back out to quest and farm and play the AH to get the next piece. Ha, I just remembered I still don't have glyphs.. :P

It's fun - it feels like I'm really working on my character, rather than having epics land in my lap.

My current gear:

Helm of the Majestic Stag - Kirin Tor (Honored)
Artruis's Focus Stone - quest (Sholazar)
Mantle of the Underhalls - quest (Icecrown)
Wispcloak - Auction house ~500g
Tunic of the Unduly Victorious - quest (Icecrown)
Putrescent Bands - purchased from gbank 200g
Moonshroud Gloves - Auction house ~500g
Bridenbrad's Sash - quest (Icecrown)
Earthgiving Legguards - Auction house ~320g
Earthgiving Boots - Auction house ~350g
Runed Mana Band - made by a friend (with my mats)
Lady Nightswood's Engagement Ring - quest (Icecrown)
Will of the Red Dragonflight - quest (Dragonblight)
Totemic Purification Rod - Kalu'ak (Revered)
Iron-bound Tome - made with Inscription
Harold's Rejuvenating Broach - quest (Nagrand)


To be honest I have been very busy with my two jobs, plus my current RL project of building a new chicken coop, so I haven't even had time to look at available gear and see what I should aim for to round out my "pre-raid" set.

I'm sitting at around 1450 healing in tree - not bad for not having stepped into heroics or raids yet. I'm quite happy with this starter set of gear that I have mashed together through quests and AH shopping sprees. Hopefully I'll get some time shortly to get a few more pieces, enchant and gem everything, buy some glyphs (heh), consider the various reps that I need to raise and for what benefit, plan out which badge items to get and in which order, and finally - do instances!

I can't wait to get back into healing :D

Blizzard's Q&A and the future of trees

A look at the druid corner of the blogosphere today shows just how passionate we all are about our forms - whether you love them, or you want them changed.

I won't copy/paste the entire Q&A session, as others have already done so and given good summaries of their thoughts for each item. If you would like to read the entire Q&A, it can be found here.

Instead I wanted to touch on only one point - regarding Tree of Life itself. First - a disclaimer: GC is speaking very vaguely on "improvements" that might be made "sometime" to the druid class. This is not a definite, it is probably something that was merely tossed around standing at the water cooler. Here's the question, and GC's answer:

Q: Can you describe for us what the intended identity and versatilities of the Tree of Life druids are supposed to be?


A: Druids overall have a strong niche. We are at a little bit of a crossroads with the Tree of Life however. We are currently wondering if druids sacrifice too much just to be as good as a healer as everyone else. What I mean is that if druids were good healers in caster form but great healers in Tree form, then there might be a decision there. However, we pretty much assume that healing druids are in Tree form nearly all of the time and balance around that. We don’t think it would be fair for them to be the best healers just for taking that talent.

In addition to having to give up utility in order to heal as a Tree of Life, we have become less enamored with druids locking themselves into one form. In fact, you really never see the basic tauren or night elf druid form (you know, the one that actually shows off the awesome armor art) because all druids are in cat, bear, tree, or moonkin form nearly 100% of the time. I’m not saying we would just cut Tree of Life from the game. It’s been around awhile and for better or worse, it’s part of World of Warcraft now. However, we could see taking the druid in a direction where shifting was much more common and easy to do. Maybe you only go into tree form for certain spells but leave for other spells -- this didn’t work previously because of the high cost of shifting, but in the absence of power shifting, we’d love to get rid of the costs completely. Another way to go would be to make Tree of Life form a cooldown, more like Metamorphosis. You shift into tree when you need a healing boost, but you don’t stay in it all the time. Now, I am totally waving my arms here. This is not the kind of change you are going to see in the next patch. But it is something we’re thinking about long term, and the kind of thinking we’d love to have more feedback on from the community.

Note to other healers: this is why you are unlikely to see any kind of “Holy form” ever. Giving up healing to do damage works okay. Giving up everything to heal is lame.

I almost don't know where to start, because I have so many point swimming around in my head that I want to get down on paper - not uncommon for me!

I think the blatantly obvious thing to state is that forms are our "thing". We give up certain parts of our abilities in order to improve other aspects of our abilities. We transform into bears, giving up our ability to heal ourselves or cast offensive spells, but becoming solid tanks. We transform into cats, also giving up the ability to heal, in order to be nasty melee dps. We transform into trees, giving up our ability to do damage, in order to excel at healing.

If the cats, bears, and moonkins are content to do their thing and not think it's unfair that they can't heal AND DPS at the same time, why is it such an issue for trees?

Here's Lissanna's take, which I think mirrors my own thoughts:

We lock ourselves into forms and don’t come out because that’s what druid playstyle IS at this point. It’s possible that tree form could work differently than our other forms, but doing that would probably be lame, because the druid class expects to spend all of our time in a form. In PvE, there can be more shifting around to use Utility spells (hurricane & roots, etc) that aren’t useable in tree or feral forms. The problem of sacrificing everything else to be able to fill our roles well is just that… we have to sacrifice everything else, and in the end, that’s fine. Making tree form a shapeshift on a cooldown is actually a lame idea, since none of our other forms would have that, and it would go against what it is to be a druid.

Bears choose bear-centric talents and gear and roles because they want to tank.
Cats choose kitty specs, gear, and they rip things apart because they want to DPS.
Moonkins choose to zap and pow with spells.
I spec ToL because I like to heal. I don't care about DPSing.

There may be times as a bear, cat or moonkin that you need to pop out and heal, rez, innervate, CC, depoison, etc. But it's rare enough that we don't see people jumping up and down and demanding that bears should be able to cast Regrowth and cats should be able to shred their target to pieces while tossing out Rejuvs on the party.


The problem with Trees

Since its inception, the Tree of Life form has undergone a lot of changes, mostly to remove or improve restrictions placed on us that were seen as disadvantages. It was rough at the start - but we've had a lot of minor improvements to relieve some of the problems. Compared to Day 1, trees can now:

- move at normal speed instead of 20% slower than other classes
- cast all restoration spells, not just HoTs, NS and Swiftmend
- cast Remove Curse and Remove/Abolish Poison
- cast Nature's Grasp
- cast Mark/Gift of the Wild and Thorns

The remaining restrictions or complaints against ToL:

- ugly appearance (to be changed sometime in the future)
- form hides the character/equipment (not unique to this form)
- can't CC
- can't cast offensive spells

Since their release, I don't think anyone can argue that we haven't had some good improvements. We're no longer locked into certain heals and not others. We have access to our utility spells to cleanse. We can run around with everyone instead of having to shift out and run at normal speed.

But STILL some druids complain that we should be able to heal and DPS in Tree form.


Trees are not a sometimes food

I will concede that trees are.. a little ugly. But a spruce-up (hehe, spruce.. get it :D) is on the horizon - and I'm confident it will be impressive.

Sure, we can't see our pretty elf or tauren characters. But that is true of every druid form. Are they also hoping to make cats, bears and laz0r budgies shift in and out frequently? Surely not..

I don't want my ToL to be turned into a 3 minute healing trinket that I put into a rotation. Or worse - a proc that is out of my control. I don't want it turned into a trinket in exchange for the ability to moonfire and cyclone. I can already do those things - I just have to temporarily give up my boosted healing. And I'm fine with that.

Geez, it's not like shifting out makes us AWFUL healers. If a cat shifts out, his healing is going to be woeful (but better than nothing). But as a resto druid, I can pop out and do respectable DPS and continue to do respectable (if not excellent) healing - I've just lost those boosts to my spells. They're not crippled, just reduced. Shifting does not suddenly make me a terrible healer.

I honestly do not see it as a huge sacrifice to have to lose some healing in order to DPS or CC.

However, I do understand that some resto druids don't like being a tree all the time, and would like to spend some time in caster. Certainly I would like to see myself every now and then. Others like the idea of a super-resto form that you bust out when things are really dire - along comes the awesome tree to save the day. I can definitely understand the appeal of that one! Pew pew, heal laz0rz.

For me, I guess what it boils down to is that we've had Tree for years now - and suddenly they want to take it back and make it something you can only use occasionally, as a super perk. I don't want to give up the form I have loved for several years because some people feel that we should be able to DPS and heal.


Counter argument: Tree form benefits aren't much

So just when I thought I had a handle on exactly how I felt about the issue, Siobhann from Silver Hand comes along and complicates things for me by bringing up a really good point, grr. so I'm cranky at you, Siobhann! *angrytree*

The difference between moonkin/ToL and other forms is that all we do when we shift into them is lock out half our casting abilities. Feral forms are an entirely different playstyle with energy or rage and you GAIN a completely different set of abilities by shifting.

Why should I be forced into a form that only has access to healing spells to heal the same as other classes who have all their base abilities?

I shift into cat form, I get an entirely new ability bar and energy rather than mana. Shift into bear, I get a different set of abilities and now I'm a warrior playing with a rage bar. I shift into tree from caster, all I do is lose abilities. I gain nothing but the spirit->spellpower conversion and aura that I should have access to all the time with 41+ points in a healing tree.

Gotta say it, this is a great point. What do we actually gain in tree form? Buffs, and that's about it. Immunity to poly (which has limited use for me, as a PvEr). Modifications to what we already have - nothing new or special. And to add insult to injury, I not only don't get anything new or different, I lose abilities also.

I have to say that I never really thought of it that way. I consider/ed our tree form buffs/auras/improvements to be defining, and more than adequate. But maybe tree form is - as other people have said - just a bunch of modifiers wrapped in a broccoli graphic? (I believe I'm paraphrasing Nadine from Magtheridon - sorry, I closed the window)

Should they perhaps be considering giving us different abilities or a different power system as a tree? Some kind of energy-type power like "life force" or something? And some funky new spells (and take months to balance them..) Not necessarily more spells to have to choose between, but something different. A slightly different style of play if you choose to become a tree.

Rather than focusing on the fact that we give up our offense and defense - should we address the fact that we don't really gain anything great when we shift into tree?

Suddenly I'm not so sure of myself.




A common sentiment on the forums at the moment is "if it isn't broken, don't fix it". The majority appear to be vehemently opposed to turning ToL into a trinket (as am I).

But I have to admit that now I am questioning what really is so great about this form that I love.

I still don't care about being able to DPS in tree form. I doubt I'll ever care. But now that I sit and think about it - even though we are definitely formidable healers in our current state - ToL basically just boosts our existing spells and spellpower and doesn't give us anything new or change our play much (if at all). On top of that, it removes our offensive and CC spells (although we can still cast them, but then we lose healing performance).

Even though I honestly don't care to DPS, now I find that I can't help feeling as though we've been a little short changed.



I'm happy the way we are at the moment, though. I will be very unhappy if ToL becomes a proc or is put on a cooldown.

As always - time will tell.

Epic flyer: done!

Next goal: 1000g for dual specs.

Then after that.. I'll start stockpiling, I suppose!

5000g

I'm off to start my epic quest!

I'm very pleased with myself - starting from scratch with no gold and no outside help, and now I have my epic flying skill. Much faster than when I got my first couple of epic mounts, too. I think this is the fourth one? I'm not sure - I've lost count. At any rate, I've definitely put a whole lot of gold into my characters.

Now I just need another 1000g (and half a level) and I'll be flying in Northrend :)

PS - Wrathgate is awesome and it will never get old. And if you have only done the Undercity quest as Horde or Alliance, you're missing out. The two quests are quite different and it's pretty cool to see what "the other side" was apparently doing while you were running through the city following the route that your city leader has chosen - Thrall goes through the ruins/elevator and goes after Varimathras in the royal chamber, Wrynn goes through the sewers and hits up Putress (down where that creepy Apothecary Keever hangs out).

It's awesome how it ties the two sides together into one event at the end.. you really should see it from both factions' point of view.

3.2: Northrend flying at 68, no waiting; more info on raid extensions

In 3.2, Cold Weather Flying is being changed to an heirloom item.

Taken from Wowraid:

Tome of Cold Weather Flight is actually a new heirloom item planned to go into patch 3.2. At level 80 players can buy this heirloom item from the Cold Weather Flying Trainer in Dalaran for 1,000 gold and send it to an alt of the same realm, faction and account. The tome can be used to learn Cold Weather Flying at level 68, consuming the tome in the process.

Translation:

You can buy Cold Weather Flying (note: no change in the price), and send it off to an alt; the item is consumed when the alt learns it. "Big deal!" was my first thought - it's the same price, and single use (at first I thought it meant you could mail it to *every* alt, thus saving you the cost for each subsequent character). If it gets used up, you're not saving any money, so who cares?

But then I realised what it actually means - the cost is the same, but you no longer have to wait until you are almost through levelling in Northrend to be able to fly.

You'll be able to fly in Northrend from level 68 - essentially immediately - by having your main character mail you the skill while you're still in Outland. No levelling to 77. No trudging across Northrend on foot/horse/cat/monkey. You'll be able to fly as soon as you get here!

It really goes without saying that this will make a massive, MASSIVE difference to levelling. Especially to Alliance characters starting off in Daggercap Bay, ugh.


More info on raid extensions

* In order to allow for parties and raids to progress through instances at their own pace, players can now extend a dungeon or raid ID on an individual basis.
* Existing or recently expired IDs can be extended via the Social tab under Raid by clicking on Raid Info.
* The ID of any instance to which a player is saved can be extended. Doing so will extend the lockout period by the same amount of time as the original lockout (i.e. extending an Ulduar raid ID will add 7 days, a Heroic: Halls of Lightning dungeon ID will add 24 hours, and a Zul’Gurub raid ID will add 3 days to the lockout time).
* An ID can be extended more than once.
* An extension can be reversed on an individual basis provided the player does not do anything in the instance during the extended lockout period that would save that player to the instance.

So my interpretation of this, correct me if I'm wrong:

- extensions are individual; each person chooses to extend their ID or ditch it for a fresh week/day/3 days/whatever
- if you decide you don't want it extended anymore, you can reverse it, BUT
- if you've killed another boss since extending it, you have to wait for the rest of the extension period to expire before you can start fresh.

So if you do half of Ulduar, extend your ID, and then kill one more boss on a Thursday, you can't just opt to reset the instance and get a few days of farming in before the next raid reset on Tuesday.

Also, the second last point is pretty interesting - it would seem that you can extend your raid period indefinitely, for as long as you need. That should really help the raiders who can only raid a few hours per week, but are really keen on conquering the fights; but also the hardcore raiders whose team might be completely decked out (and so don't need resets to farm gear), but want to push on for their kills.

Exciting changes!

Rawr!

I set my alarm for 6:30am on Sunday and sat bleary-eyed in my pyjamas, as Stompalina cheerily wished me good morning. I asked whose crazy idea this was, anyway. She laughed. I grumbled.

But I had a blast being on the show with them. It was a lot of fun, and I think I did okay, considering the fact that it was stupidly early on a Sunday. I only had a couple of mishaps.. one where I zoned out for a sec and misunderstood what the guys meant when they were talking about not being able to get into instances.. heh. Ohhhhh you mean actually getting INTO instances. Right, right. I thought that was a PTR thing, I never even knew that could happen on live servers.. I'm so clueless. Playing on a small, backwater Oceanic server means we never have maxed instances, so I have just never come across that problem.

Still, I was a little embarrassed that my eyes had glazed over and I missed a few key words like "error message" and whatnot. Those couple seconds of silence from Stomp that said to me "you have no idea what I just asked, do you?"

/blush.

Had a great laugh about it later, though. Not sure if it got edited out - haven't had a chance to listen yet. :P

Other than that, I think at one stage I was waffling about tradeskills and forgot my point (luckily one of the guys cut me off with his opinion.. saved!!).. I knew what I was talking about when I started, I swear.

The other slightly embarrassing moment was when Stomp paused mid-sentence and asked, "Do you have birds?" I have nine pet budgerigars who tend to be extremely noisy - often to the point where I can't hear people on vent. My grand plan to keep them quiet for the podcast was to leave their blankets on and sit in the dark. It almost worked.



I had a great time on the show, and the time absolutely flew past. I was so disappointed when it was over, I wanted to stay and chat more! Thank you to everyone who stopped by the chatroom, especially old friends... and thank you to Stomp and Haf for having me (and Jeppy for being the chat moderator). I had heaps of fun - would love to do it again sometime :)

If you missed out - head over to The Rawrcast Show's site and grab it (in various formats).

I hate Borean Tundra

I really hate Borean Tundra.

Lots of people have their favourite zones, and their most hated zones. I seem to find that most people I talk to hate the zones I love, and vice versa. For example, I ADORE Stranglethorn Vale, and get excited to "finally" get there when I'm levelling. Many people can't stand the zone.

I love Zangarmash. I love Blade's Edge Mountains. In my experience, STV, Zangarmarsh and BEM are some of the most hated zones.

Oh, and Dragonblight. Most people hate it - I really enjoy it. To each their own, I suppose.

But I hate Borean Tundra.

I don't really know why; I suppose it's an irrational hatred. There are some good quests. Maybe it's the landscape? The weird groundcover? I'm not sure. All I know is that I really hate the place.

The only saving grace for this horrible zone is this:

/click
/click
/click
/click

.... *explodes from the cute*


Level 75 now, enjoying fishing and cooking dailies so much! I'm weird. Bank alt has 3500g.. well on my way to epic flying/cold weather flying. Levelling slowed a little in the last few days, had a minor accident at work and haven't played as much over the weekend. I'm hoping to get to 80 this weekend though.

Most people would want 80 so they could start doing instances, get some shiny gear.

I want to get to 80 so I can do dailies. DAILIES YAY!

Maybe I hit my head in the accident? :P

Faction change service Q&A with Nethaera

Just a quickie - Neth has answered a few of the faction change service questions (although I'm still very interested to hear more info on how they will deal with reps and mounts).

Updated* 7/1- Due to the many questions that have come up with the announcement of this new service, we wanted to take the time to answer the ones we can at this point in time.

Q. Will we be able to switch between the races on our own faction?
A.. No. Players will only be able to switch to a race of the opposite faction.

Q. Will I be able to choose the race on the opposite faction that I want to change to?
A.. Yes, but you will only be able to switch to a race that has your class type available to it. So if you play a human paladin, you’d only be able to change to a blood elf paladin.

Q.How much will it cost?
A.. We do not have further information on this at this point in time.

Q.Will I be able to switch back to my original faction but a different race?
A.. No. You will only be able to switch back to your originally chosen race.

Q.. How will the switch between reputation, gear, mounts, etc be handled?
A.. We’ll have more details for you at a later point in time, though we plan to keep these as close to a reflection of the other faction as much as possible.

Q.How often can you change your faction?
A..We do not have any information to share on this at this point in time, however we will have restrictions on the frequency by which players can change their faction.

Q. How will this affect the balance of Horde and Alliance on the realms?
A.. We are taking great care in how we implement this new service in order to maintain balance between the factions on the realms but do not have any further details to share.

So you won't be able to change races within your faction, nor will you abe able to change to the opposite faction, wait out the cooldown, and then change back in order to say, go from Orc to Undead.

I think they want to prevent people from deciding that "the best rogue is Race X" or "Race Y has the best warrior racials" and everyone just piling into these particular combos.

Even so, I think we'll see race to race swaps in the future. I'm surprised faction to faction came first, actually. And then eventually, I think we'll see class to class. Yeah, it might seem silly.... but hey, they said PvE to PvP would never happen, and it did. Eventually.

Oh oh oh, and I forgot another question that I thought of: what if you're on a PvP server... the rules state that you can't create characters of both factions on one server on the same account. Are they finally going to break that rule and allow for players to have both factions on a PvP server?

Doesn't affect me at all, I play PvE and I've had multiple accounts for a long time.. just curious!

Kiiva progress update!

Kiiva is now 70 and in Northrend. It's good to be back.

Look a little familiar? I guess I just really like that spot overlooking Daggercap Bay..

My bank alt has 1700g, and I think I will easily be able to afford epic flying, cold weather flying, and dual spec by time time I need them. Making money in the game is something that I really enjoy doing, and it's exciting that Kiiva has full 20 slotters, high professions, her epic mount, and loads of cash left over as she goes into Northrend - all without any external help from my other characters or friends.

I've tried to rein myself in and not bore everyone with a trickle of small updates on how I was going - but I think 70 is a worthy enough milestone to mention. I'm still having a lot of fun doing everything from scratch - but I have to admit that I'm really itching to get to 80 and do some healing again!

Onward to 80 - and to healing!

More "casual" stuff; latest big changes

I opened an enormous, squirmy can of worms when I posted about "Casual vs Hardcore". Not that I was the first to do that, of course.

And as I mentioned, Blizzard is clearly making it their new direction to offer up more of the game to what most people refer to as "casual" players (although the definition of casual blurs according to your own personal views and ingrained stereotypes). Part of this is to apparently make raiding "easier" (more accessible in their view), but there have also been a number of other changes over recent months to allow people more flexibility in order to play with their friends.

Whether or not you like or agree with these changes is a very personal thing. Personally, I sit on the fence somewhere between wishing the game wasn't getting easier, and appreciating that it makes much more sense for the vast majority of people to be able to enjoy the game and have changes made that allow them easier enjoyment of it.

While there are some changes and nerfs that I think cheapen the game a little, I'm certainly not one of the people saying that "casuals are ruining the game"; I think that is extreme.

I think we should really refer to this as catering to the "socials", not "casuals". The term casual really seems to carry a negative stereotype, and for some reason casual is synonymous with "scrubby". We know this isn't always the case - there are plenty of players and guilds who play on casual schedules due to real life commitments, but are just as skilled and dedicated as the "hardcore" players.

Blizzard have recently announced two interesting changes - one slated for 3.2, the other for "sometime" - that should be pretty big for social players.


Latest changes for socials

Two new interesting changes have been announced for the future.

1. The ability to change your faction (ie Horde to Alliance or Alliance to Horde), transforming your character to that of the opposite faction, while keeping your class (and I assume, most possessions). This is a future change, for sometime down the track (likely in a major content patch, or it may even be something implemented in the next expansion).

2. The ability to extend your raid lockout period by one week, to allow groups to keep working on an instance if they want more time. This will be released with Patch 3.2.

Faction change

This is pretty huge. It's a great change for people who rolled a particular faction and perhaps found themselves segregated from friends who play on the opposite side. Social players will be able to opt to change over to the other faction to find a new home with friends on that side. It also means that players are able to experience the other side of the game - without "throwing away" the progress made on your main character.

Future changes will allow you to change faction, in addition to already
being able to change your character's gender, appearance, name, and realm.

So you can go experience the Horde side of Warcraft without throwing away your gear, achievements and whatnot, and have to start over. Considering that I have actually done this twice now, I couldn't help wincing a little :P

For raiders and PvPers, things are a little less cut and dried, and although not much has been announced yet (we need to be patient!) Here are my questions:

- what about faction specific reps? Will they be erased, or will you get the equivalent - eg Stormwind=Orgrimmar, Exodar=Silvermoon, etc? What about PvP reps that are faction based (one would assume these would just swap over, surely)?

- will you lose achievements based on the above?

- what about faction specific mounts? Will you lose them? Or will you magically score the equivalent city's mounts (as above)? And the PvP mounts?

- Would you lose your Wintersaber/Ravasaur if you had one? Yiiiiikes. That would be tough to give up! Such is the price of faction flexibility though, I suppose..

- will "Realm First! Level 80 Night Elf" disappear, or forever live on in your Undead's achievement pane as something worth a giggle every now and then?

- will people keep their Black War Bears and still be credited with killing the leaders of their OWN faction?

- will this mean a way to transfer BoA items to the other side?

Obviously there are standard questions like "what's the cooldown period" and whatnot.. but I'm more interested in what will happen to your statistics when you take the plunge and go to the dark side. Interesting stuff.

I don't know that I could change Keeva, I love her too much as a character. I don't see her as a lump of pixels to be shunted around at will to do whatever suits me. Much like Caoimhe, my first druid who was "retired" when I rolled Keeva, Keeva is now on hiatus. She may come back later if I want to play Horde again, but for now she is on a break.

But then, part of me can't stop thinking about all her achievements, titles, long ground-out reps, and those 5 Legendary shards in the bank..

Something else I wonder about is whether this will cause massive faction imbalance overnight on servers and battlegroups where people have long wished they were on the other side. What if a battlegroup notorious for terrible Horde players all suddenly change to Alliance? :P

For raiders, it will mean that you might no longer have to consider uprooting yourself and your guild to move to another server to boost your pulling power and find new recruits. If Alliance isn't working out for you but you spot a great Horde guild, it will be easy to make the switch without having to relocate all of your characters. As a raiding guild, you'll suddenly have access to twice as many potential players - we may see some cross-faction guild mergers happening rather than entire guilds relocating to try to boost their numbers.

It should be interesting to see how Blizzard are going to handle this, and what it will mean for faction balance on the realms. Will we suddenly see a massive shift one way or the other? Or will people casually drift from one side to the other, according to PvP and raiding opportunities that pop up over time?


Future changes?

So far, to allow players more flexibility without having to reroll or start over, Blizzard has introduced:

- server transfers
- paid name changes
- PvE to PvP transfers (which was never going to happen)
- paid gender/appearance changes
- faction changes (in the future)

Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if further down the track they introduce paid class changes. I'm also waiting for account-wide achievements, reputations, special items etc.

Raid period extension

In 3.2, raid groups will be able to opt to extend their raid period to 2 weeks.

A new feature has been introduced in this build, you can now extend your raid lockout to make them last one more week. This is probably very useful if your guild is trying to get a specific boss down and doesn't really need any other loot in the instance, you can just get one more weeks of tries without having to clean everything in the way.

As quoted above, this is going to be very useful for hardcore and casual guilds alike, if they are working on a particular boss but can't quite get it down on the last night of the week - VERY frustrating!

While progression guilds will probably be interested in this for the weeks when they are working on new content, I think that it will be even more exciting for casual guilds who only raid for a couple of hours a few nights a week (or less), or sometimes find it hard to put a group together. They won't lose their progress in an instance because they can choose to continue the following week.

Obviously this means sacrificing a week of drops from those earlier bosses that you're already locked out of, but it does give you that flexibility of being able to decide whether to keep pressing on with new content, or start over for more gear.

There hasn't been any clarification yet about whether this would mean you could be "trapped" in a 2 week lockout if you go along to a pug and they decide to extend to 2 weeks; I think that is the main concern at the moment.


A change that helps everyone progress at their own pace

This is definitely a change that is great for casuals and hardcore alike; although I'm sure there will be some people complaining that it is catering to people who are bad and can't kill bosses. Personally I think it's a really great change for the guilds out there who love to raid but can't always field a team or have real life commitments that eat into their playtime.

A hardcore guild might raid 4 nights, 4 hours at a time; a casual 2 nights for 4 hours. Now the casual guild will have the option to raid for 16 hours in one lockout period, like the hardcore guilds have been able to - but do it over a fortnight if that's what their schedule allows. It will still be slower than people who can devote more time, but without the hassle of having to spend the bulk of your raid time reclearing the instance to get a few tries on the new boss and then run out of time.

That is something that was always frustrating - granted you would get gear along the way, but spending 3.5 of your 4 nights just getting BACK to the boss you're working on, having a few tries and then running out of time... ugh. At least this way you will be able to say, "Ok, we're out of time.. let's keep trying next week."

Should be interesting to see what the options will be to reset the lockout after that first week has expired though. Will individuals be able to opt out? Or will they be locked in? Will guilds be able to do an extra night or two, then opt out and have the rest of a normal lockout to start the instance over?

I may not agree with all of the changes that Blizzard has rolled out over time, and yes, I am "hardcore at heart" and not afraid to admit that I DO think skilled and dedicated players should get greater rewards and recognition.. but I still recognise that there are players out there who simply don't have the time. I'm all for changes that help these players raid when they want to and progress at their own pace.

I can see a lot of positive things coming out of these changes - for both types of players.