Is it WoW with lightsabers? Yes. Is it just WoW with lightsabers? No. The MMO mould is pretty much unchanged: classes, talent/skill trees, action bars, cooldowns, roles. SW:TOR doesn’t bring anything new to the game in these main respects. So what is the lure? There are three things drawing me away from WoW:

1. Temporal – SW:TOR is in the levelling bubble stage of its development. There are many people levelling up characters for the first time. This means that all areas of the game are well populated. Given the MM nature of the game this is quite key. The WoW levelling bubble burst many years ago now and largely the only people you see about are those you are automatically grouped with via the dungeon finder. Somewhat soulless.
2. Thematic – Sure, WoW has a lot of lore. But there’s never really felt like a story, and I’ve personally not played any other Warcraft games. Whereas I’m of an age where I saw Star Wars on release in the cinema. I’ve grown up with Star Wars. I still have a somewhat threadbare Star Wars duvet cover in a cupboard somewhere. SW:TOR really does bring that world to life. (more on this later hopefully)
3. Personal – Whilst I have formed some great friendships with my fellow guildies in WoW, nothing quite beats playing alongside people you know and see regularly outside of the game. Nobody I know from that latter category is still playing WoW, whereas several have picked up SW:TOR.

Is this the end of WoW for me? Who knows. I’m at least “on a break”. I suspect this will turn out to be permanent though. I’ve not found going back to games after breaks particularly rewarding in the past. In the meantime I hope to follow up this post with some commentary on the similarities and differences between the two games, and what I think works (or doesn’t) in each.

The flaw stems from the underlying assumption that all the players are equally capable. That the difference in achievement is simply down to the amount of effort they put in. The poorest performers are the ‘morons and slackers’ who either don’t understand the game properly or can’t be bothered to learn.

I don’t deny that there are ‘morons and slackers’ out there. I’ve come across DKs trying to tank without Blood Presence on. We’ve all seen the stories of hunters in INT gear and warriors in cloth gear. The problem is that these examples are outliers. They sit at one end of a normal curve with the other end populate by, well, here comes the other flaw…

Lets go back to that assumption that everyone is equally capable. So from the game mechanics themselves we can deduce a theoretical maximum output, be it DPS, HPS or mitigation. We can surmise that with enough ‘hard work’ everyone will get to within a percent or two of the maximum physical achievement of that output. How then do we tune our encounters? How do we provide these people with a continuing series of challenges?

There are two problems with this. Firstly, how do we tune the encounters? If our target market is achieving within a few percent of optimal that doesn’t leave us much leeway. Tune it lower and it becomes too easy for them. Tune it higher and it becomes impossible. Tricky. Secondly, what does new content look like? Given we’ve already hit the optimal path then it is just the same tank and spank encounter with different skins.

So, we can see that non-gimmick fights are an issue for people at the top of the game. Interestingly enough, from this it follows on that it is actually easier to provide tank and spank content for the majority of players rather than the best players. We can look at the distribution of ability across our player base and tune fights accordingly. This gives people two routes for progress: get better gear, or get better skill. Both of these, as it happens, come from time played.

This does of course come back round to the ‘no-lifer’ issue. People who play more progress faster and further. We’ve just seen the reasons for this: the capable people hone their skills to beat the encounters, the less capable people get better gear to beat the encounters.

Gevlon dislikes the dance; the gimmicky nature of fights. I contend that this is a natural evolution. We’re already at the point where there are enough people getting within a percent or two of the optimal output that something extra is needed to fights beyond the tank and spank to challenge them. This isn’t even new. Even classic WoW had its own dances. I remember “You are the bomb!” and wiping because someone hadn’t moved. TBC had Lady Vashj; arguably one of the best boss fights in WoW whilst at the same time being all about the dance.

I think the problems we are seeing in WoW now is that it is actually incredibly difficult to create encounters that cater to the sliding scales of competency people bring to the table. Both in terms of output optimisation skill and learning the dance skill. I imagine a graph with output optimisation on one axis and dance skill on the other. You’ll be wanting to optimise stuff for the top right quadrant. Except that knocks out 75% of your players.

You can now see how and why Blizzard come up with differing difficulty levels and encounter nerfs. For the people working on heroic Firelands, the normal mode T11 is fairly trivial now. In fact a lot of the dance can be ignored due to over-gearing. Yet there are still people out there happily playing the game and wiping in that content. Some of those are ‘morons and slackers’. Others though just aren’t as capable gamers.

That said, I’d still rather see new content for extra difficulty rather than heroic modes. To me it feels like heroic modes are catering more for just the very best players. Unfortunately I’m in the group just behind them. Just about finishing normal modes but often finding heroic modes just that little too hard. If we had the next tier available then the heroic people would be working on that tier’s end boss whilst we were starting out. The jump from normal to heroic feels too much like a step function than a gradual progression.

So, if you can’t beat them, join them. I switched one of my DK’s specs from Frost to Blood. I had a quick read up on EJ for spec and glyph advice plus a heads up for the how to play. I also hit up MrRobot and sorted out optimal enchants and reforging. And off I went into my first normal 5man. And …

DK tanking as blood in Cata is much easier than frost was in LK. Based on my limited experience of some 5-mans. I’ve already managed to tank a handful of heroics, both in guild groups and pugs. I still maintain tanking is tougher than other roles though. There’s an expectation you’ll know which way to go and how to handle every pull, from marking mobs up if CC is needed to the kill order, interrupts and turning mobs away from people. As DPS and healer I’ve been able to just follow everyone else and stand behind stuff if I’m melee.

The actual tanking though? Much much easier than healing was at the same progression point. I think I’ve only used some of my cooldowns once. My main issue is being a bit low on threat generation and not always picking up strays quickly enough.

As to the Call to Arms? It hasn’t been as prevalent as I thought it would be. Whereas I figured it would be up almost constantly, reality has it that I’ve only picked up two bags so far. Netting me a bunch of gold, a flask, a  Deviate Raptor pet. Seeing as I have that on my main already that netted by another 900g.

Yes, it is like WoW. The thing is, that statement is entirely unhelpful. There are oodles of games out there like WoW:

• Fantasy 3rd person MMORPG.
• Subscription payment model.
• Levelling based progression.
• Quests.
• Two faction consensual PvP.

If anything I would say Rift is more like Aion. Graphically it is closer to Aion than it is to WoW. The back story also shares similarities: two factions split from one origin, fighting each other and a common foe. The user interface is closer to Aion than it is to WoW. Though it is more flexible, having a layout mode (like WAR only well implemented). The crafting model is almost identical, only without the annoyance of Aether collection.

One of the strong comparisons being made with WoW is how slick it is. How polished it is. Frankly, this says more about the sort of shoddy workmanship gamers will put up with if this is somehow a selling point!

So in what way is Rift unique?

The two big selling points are the soul system and the rifts, and I’d say both of these work quite well. The soul system is on the face of it just like choosing a spec like other games. However, you are getting to choose 3 spec lines from 8 available (for each class). You pick these up over the first few levels and it can feel a bit daunting trying to work out which to go for. The bit that isn’t immediately obvious is that these spec lines control what spells you get. Instead of each class getting their class spells as they level up, spells are learned based on how many points you’ve got in a spec line. So two mages with different souls will have entirely different spells.

One of the nice things I found with this (especially when compared to recent WoW’s dumbed down model) is that you get something new every level. The most boring level will be one talent point to spend that doesn’t grant you any new abilities. Most levels though will grant you a new ability as you spend your talent point (the roots of the soul tree).

The downside is that there is a vast number of options and a vast number of abilities. In practice you’ll work out which are the best and stick to them. So some abilities won’t see much use. You get enough talent points to reach the top of one soul tree and get most of the way through a second (or fill out the first soul tree should you wish). Whilst you could spread your points across all three trees I suspect the best builds will be one main tree, a secondary tree and then the third tree either for the free abilities or for cherry picking a first tier talent.

I like the souls approach of Rift. It certainly has a lot more to choose from than WoW’s current paired down talent trees. I like the way spells come from the roots of the trees as you spend more talent points in them. My gut feeling though is that optimal builds will become the norm and many abilities and talents won’t see much use. It is very difficult to create truly balanced choices, especially with the number of options Rift has provided. Only time till tell whether this boils down to a true choice or whether there are “must have” talents.

And so to the rifts themselves. These have, obviously, been compared to the PQ system from WAR. Rift’s rifts are much more dynamic than WAR’s PQs whilst at the same time being less diverse and interesting. The rifts are all about invasions from other planes. They’re thematically associated, so fire, or life (fae), or undead for example. They can appear anywhere across the map and vary in strength (i.e. level). To defeat a rift, simply kill all the mobs, of which there will be several waves, culminating in a bonus boss mob if you’re quick enough.

As well as rifts there can be invasions which will be a boss and associated mobs who appear and make their way towards a landmark. There are also wardstones. There are good ones, which can be taken over my invading mobs and the invading mobs can also place their own wardstone. A wardstone is guarded and sends out occasional invading mobs towards nearby landmarks.

So far so good. Lots of dynamic content that can pop up anywhere, even in your quest area. Anyone can take part and there’s a public group system to team up. However, with one minor exception they’re all just mobs to kill. The one minor exception was a rift that had some crates which could be destroyed to clear that wave. It is, afterall, an invasion system. But it would be nice to have some variance on the gameplay maybe.

Where it really takes off is when a full scale zone invasion happens. Suddenly the zone will be covered in rifts, wardstones and invasions. The whole zone will become a quest zone with a shared achievement to defeat the invasion. This will be by clearing a number of rifts, and defeating a number of enemies. There’s a lot of running around, some very nice mobs (I was most impressed by the giant treants) and a gathering together towards the common goal. Or a fun zerg, depending on how you look at it.

They do add a dynamic feel to the world. I do fear they’ll suffer like WAR’s PQs did over time in that they only really work if there are enough players around to take part. Which is fine if you’re on the crest of the levelling wave but if you pick the game up in 6m time you and the two other people who are actually around might struggle. It makes the world feel more alive than a sequence of static quests does, and in a better way than WoW’s phasing (which is really just static quests in a semi-instanced world zone) does.

I think this sort of feature is good, but I also think it hasn’t been perfected yet. Perhaps GW2 can show us the way?

I’m feeling much more confident with disco healing now. Partially this will be down to better gear, even if it is focussed on Shadow spec. We started with Ascendant Council. I stuck with Inner Will, kept PW:S on both tanks and PoM on cool down. Then in P1 it is Smite spam for Atonement on the frost boss ready for the fire shield and Archangel, Inner Focus and a PoH on each group. For P2 PW:S and PoM are mostly sufficient with the occasional Penance. I was surprised to find myself hitting P3 with over 80% mana. In P3 it is bubble spam, PoM, the occasional Flash Heal and of course Divine Hymn at the last. Simples.

Of course that took us about 8 wipes to get right. Keeping the two bosses health level in P2 seemed tricky and our first couple of goes in P3 we suffered from excessive chain lightning due to being overly bunched.

The rest of the night was on Cho’gall. I did get to DPS on a couple of attempts but we lost people so I went back to healing. A different fight though this one. Rather than just using Smite spam to get stacks ready for Archangel I was using it continuously. I’d toggle Inner Fire on and Smite spam. Then when Rapture was available I’d toggle back to Inner Will for a PW:S and PoM and then back to Inner Fire and Smite. Weaving in Archangel, Inner Focus and a PoH to cover for raid damage. Sadly whilst we got into P2 a couple of times we haven’t got that sorted. A kill is imminent though.

Whilst I’m still #3 for healing, there’s no longer much in it. Paladin tops the meters as main tank healer and the shaman obviously has better raid healing. But I’m feeling in a much better place about my healing. The ability to swap easily between Inner Fire and Inner Will is really nice: use the former for Smite + Atonement heals and switching to the latter for shields and PoMs. For quick spot healing the combo of Penance (for Grace) followed by PW:S and hasted Greater Heal is really nice too.

However, it wasn’t all doom and gloom. As it turned out I was healing about as much as the resto druid we had, both of us well behind the holy pally. This was still enough to get the kill and move on. Even though the numbers were low I was reasonably pleased with this as it was my first time Holy since Vanilla and first time playing with Chakra.

Since then I’ve healed a few more fights. Most notably break 10k hps on Halfus. This boggled me and was a bit of a breakthrough point (though I’ve not come close since). I was struggling after a couple of attempts and then got a piece of advice from one of our other priests (a social who raids occasionally). The advice was simple – alternate PoH on each group and use PoM and CoH on cooldown. I was amazed at the difference it made and managing not to run out of mana on the fight!

I’m still sticking with Shadow mainspec but I’m going to pay more attention to my Holy offspec now. First thing I need to do is sort out UI and keybindings for efficient use of Chakra. Specifically – swapping between the AOE and single target modes for efficiency.

I’ve now got some proper raiding under the belt, and the conclusion is… I’ve gone shadow mainspec. I was just struggling too much with the healing as Disco. Heals were all too weak and so so slow. Hopefully some of the trouble was gearing rather than me just being a bit poor. It certainly looks like healers gear curve is somewhat steeper in Cata than other specs.

And I’m really enjoying being dps main spec. Sure, I’ve run as shadow in some raids pre-Cata but only due to surplus healers. I’m finding it so much more relaxing not having to worry about healing. Or mana, mostly. It can still be an issue in AOE heavy fights but I’m working round that and haven’t run out yet.

We’re still limited to a 10man team but we’ve got three boss kills so far, all of which have been repeated this week already. Add to that the PvP raid boss kill, and some close goes on the twin dragons. We’re starting to make good progress.

I’ve invested a chunk of gold on the AH buying up the crafted epics that are available. This includes 18k for the latest Darkmoon trinket. Glyph making is still plenty profitable and I’ll be recouping the cost fairly quickly I expect. Which is good as flasks and the materials to make them are currently costing over 200g each. Making an evenings raiding cost 1k!

The trade skill profiteering addon I’m alpha testing is shaping up very nicely. It has streamlined the glyph business very well and I’m starting to tinker with other crafting skills for fun and profit as well now. Somewhat more limited on crafts other than inscription due to lack of recipes. Hopefully I’ll find time for alts at some point!

The first obvious change is that some recipes can give multiple skill points. My crafting addon of choice (Gnomeworks) shows this as a percent chance to gain a skillup. So some items show as 300%. Nicely this also works for green recipes which can show percentages <100%.

This means there are two tricks to play with crafting now. Firstly, consider crafting two items at 85% chance of skill-up rather than the single item at 100% that takes twice as many mats. Secondly, consider crafting the item that gives 300% skill-up just before it goes yellow (and reduces to 100% or less). These recipes tend to be more expensive so you can be better off crafting from 100 to 104 with single skill-up cheaper recipes and then 104-107 with the 300% recipe.

Another change is that a lot of crafted items are now a generic base item with random extra stats. For example, craft the base item Nightstone Choker and you’ll get one of several potential versions. There’s also a chance of getting blue items, some of which can sell well on the AH.

The final change involves high level crafting. This varies between profession but by and large you’ll be wanting vendor bought items and recipes from Twilight Highlands. This will require reaching level 84 and doing the first few quests before you’re in phase with these merchants. Some items are simple gold bought BoE reagents on limited supply (thankfully with a much boosted refresh time now). Others are recipes (or in the case of engineering cogwheels to go in the new head piece) that are bought with other crafted items. In the case of enchanting this includes the new rod recipe, which is BoP so all enchanters will need to level to 84 to be able to craft top end enchants.

So what has Cataclysm brought? For max level characters there is less new content than LK. Five new zones. Several guildies are already Cataclysm loremasters. There is however about the same, if not more, crafting content. And of course raiding content. Seems like a poor deal on the expansion? That’s because the other half of this expansion is the complete revamp of class specifications (which came in the pre-patch), two new races, and the upheaval of the 1-60 areas and levelling process.

A lot of work has gone into quests. The quests are fun (though there are still plenty of kill 10 rats type) and the story is better handled than ever before. I barely read quest text and I’ve picked up on the storyline in both the 80-85 zones and my new goblin. On the levelling process there are many little UI improvements that streamline this, and the 1-60 quests storyline is much better handled. And of course there is the sundering of Azeroth giving new terrain to all the old zones.

I’ve got my healer geared up for heroics and even popped into a couple of raids with the guild, though no boss kills yet. Healing is a very new beast in Cata. It took me a while (and some more gear) to get the hang of heroics and build confidence, only to have it shattered again when we checked out the raid instances. Bosses there will need very different healing patterns to heroic bosses. Mana is going to be a serious issue.

We start raiding officially on Wednesday. I am not feeling prepared. Gearing up is going to take a while and be a bit grindy. Half of the factions that offer decent gear don’t have dailies so running level 85 instances for tabard rep is the only option there. And the heroic instances are tough, and long. I feel like I’ve spent 24+ hours doing heroics and only completed 3. One of those was chosen specifically for the guild achievement so I’ve only completed 2 randoms. Farming heroics for honor points and the epic gear is going to be a long slow grind.

I’ll do a separate post about my crafting experiences so far.

1. Variety – different classes, different play styles.
2. Tradeskills – with many alts I can cover all the trade skills.
3. Completion – eventually I will have a max level character for each class.

In theory, having all the trade skills means I can make lots of money. In practice I’m too lazy to work out and make use of the various synergy so I stick to the glyph market. Though I’ve recently started dabbling in enchants as well.

At the moment I don’t quite cover all the trade skills. I’m missing leatherworking. Or, rather, I don’t have a leather worker. I’m not missing it as I don’t have any classes requiring the output of leather working. My intention come Cata is to create a Goblin Shaman leather worker.

So, what characters do I have…

Priest – Disco / Shadow. Mining / Engineering.

This is my main and has been since classic. Not quite the first character I created, and technically not the first to hit max level. But the first character I properly played at max level and the only one I’ve ever raided properly with. She’s been healing specced throughout. Was hybrid disc/holy up to WotLK at which point went solely disc.

Druid – Resto / Balance. Herbalism / Inscription.

My first max level character, though it was already an alt at the time and not even on the server I was primarily playing on. With inscription, this has been the source of most of my gold funds.

DK – Unspecced. Enchanting / Blacksmith.

Who hasn’t at least tried out a death knight? I haven’t re-specced since the most recent patch but was Blood / Frost DPS specced. I’ve tried tanking (and also on my druid) but never enjoyed it.

Hunter – Beastmaster. Jewelcrafter / Alchemist (transmute).

I seem to have a love/hate relationship with my hunter. I was loving it whilst levelling up until a patch hit that nerfed mana regen excessively. This meant having to use the mana regen aura for too much for my liking so levelling stalled. Obviously mana isn’t an issue now. I’ve mostly got my head around the new focus tactics and may play this character a bit more now. I prefer beastmaster as I like the idea of having a strong pet. I’ll probably pick up a better offspec though for decent DPS as BM isn’t really up there currently.

Mage – Arcane. Skinning / Tailoring.

This is my most recent max level. I haven’t quite maxed out tailoring but it should be ready for a decent run into the new skill levels come Cata’s release.