The Ambush Everyone Sees Coming

Right now in World of Warcraft in the lower-level battlegrounds there is nothing more imbalanced than the subtlety-specced Rogue. There are a lot of interesting little changes to spice things up in the 10-19 bracket such as resto Shamans with Earth Shield and frost Mages with their elemental pet, but giving a rogue Shadowstep at level 10 is just mind-boggling.

Hearing about the outrage on the forums yesterday, I decided to quick roll a new rogue to test out the allegations. I dinged 10 and joined the WSG queue and immediately noticed how there were few hunters, but more rogues than usual. Immediately I saw why. There was a L10 warlock boldly running alone, and I quickly saw the opportunity to test my damage. Shadowstep - Ambush - crit! - 1-shot kill. I was critting for over 300 damage at level 10 on an undetectable, indefensible opening move.

There were a couple of other rogues L16 and L19 who were dominating. The L19 didn't even bother to stealth much, and after one-shotting any character of their choosing would stay unstealthed and fight packs of enemies until eventually killed. She finished the match 36-10.

So now I have two heirloom daggers with +15 agility enchants and heirloom chest and shoulders, and the heirloom bow. I hit L12 last night, almost 13, and I plan on leveling to about 15 tonight and then going the rest of the way to 20 just in battlegrounds. As long as Blizzard doesn't fix this - and history shows they are very slow to fix class abilities - I should be able to level most of the way to 80 in battlegrounds with my overpowered rogue.

There's a number of things that go into making this ability overpowered. They include:
- Glyph of Ambush increases Ambush range by 5 yards
- Shadowstep range of 25 yards puts you right behind your target, and adds 30% damage to ambush
- 3/3 Improved Ambush increases Ambush crit chance by 60% and damage by 15%
- 3/3 Opportunity increases Ambush damage by 30%

Add it together and the level X9's are one-shotting everything.

On the Horizon

Warcraft's Wrath of the Lich King is winding down, with the populous becoming bored of the current content (which never came close to the levels of fun in Burning Crusade, in spite of the subject material). Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 is also suffering from rampant hacking on the PC platform and ordinary players are getting frustrated at the diminished gameplay. Fortunately, these games are seeing sequels in the coming months that should cure player malaise.

World of WarCraft: Cataclysm has an (unofficial) official release date of December 7, 2010. In two months' time the new addition to the WarCraft universe will bring forth Goblins and Worgen as playable races, and the mighty Deathwing as a major villain. It remains to be seen if the class/talent changes are viewed favorably or if they are too limiting, and if the Archeology profession helps cure the between-content blues during this xpac.

There are still no features on the horizon that encourage creation over destruction (player housing, armor dyes, building construction, etc.) and in some ways the trend is further against them. The new talent changes are going to box players into a single talent tree for most of their development, and leveling will require fewer visits to trainers. The city portals are also being removed from Dalaran and Shattrath, which will require more travel from players, and make mages a class in high demand for casuals. This should be another well-crated expansion from Blizzard, but I'm having a hard time getting excited about it. So far it only feels like more of the same.

Call of Duty: Black Ops is arriving a little sooner on November 9, 2010, and offers a cure for what ails the legit FPSer - dedicated servers. Peer hosting was a low-cost solution, but it was rampant with hacks and cheats and offered little fun in exchange for a lot of diminished gameplay. With dedicated servers the Steam network can easily identify client hacks and disable accounts, and at $60 a pop it's not likely that gamers will risk having their license banned from network play.

The game itself offers character customization that we wish WarCraft had - everything from face paint to weapon mods and textures, when someone gets the knife up close they're going to remember you for a long time. They've added new killstreak rewards and battle types, including wager matches. For my dollar this is more of a must-have upgrade than Cataclysm.

And if either of the big 2 coming out this fall doesn't appeal to you, there are still more games coming soon. DC Universe is dipping a toe into the MMO genre and available for preorder, and SWTOR is approaching ever closer on the horizon. In all, there should be plenty to do to entertain yourself this winter.

Mine, all Mine

If you're stuck at work or someplace where you have internet access and not much to do, and have a couple minutes to waste, I suggest you take a quick peek at Minecraft. It really only takes a couple minutes to learn, it runs in Java in your browser, and it has a simple concept: Shape the world.

There are apparently multiplayer and "survive the zombie apocalypse" modes, but I haven't tried them. I like just clicking it open, seeing the world it randomly generates for me, and then sculpting it a little bit until I've made a comfortable place to live in it.

It's not a very advanced game and the graphics are obviously terrible, but it has a large following. There's a really simple reason why: It allows players to change the world they live in, and create something instead of just destroying it.

I remember the people at Blizzard talking about FarmVille and, citing its popularity, saying that they needed to change their game to incorporate more things in WoW that people could obsess over like in FarmVille. Well here's another hint for you. Over 280,000 people have actually paid for the full version of this simple, terrible block game just because they are able to create something original instead of only killing things.

Focus on the content, the creativity, and the contributions players can make. Give them some control over their appearance, behaviors, and environment, or they will seek it elsewhere. It's more important to many of them than good graphics, or they wouldn't bother with games like Minecraft and Dwarf Fortress.

Asus High

How's this for price/performance?

• Core i7 720QM / 1.6 GHz
• RAM 8 GB 1066 MHz DDR3 SDRAM
• HDD 500 GB + 500 GB 7200 rpm
• DVD±RW / DVD-RAM
• Mobility Radeon HD 5870 w/1GDDR5 SDRAM
• Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
• 17.3" Widescreen TFT 1920 x 1080

$1,599.99

Praise Elune and Pass the Ammo

Lately I haven't been blogging much because I've been contributing a lot of photoshops to brewcrewball.com and sharing comments about the baseball season, which for the Brewers is circling the drain at this point. It's been a fun season, but football is here now, and with the colder weather, a return to more frequent video gaming.

Cataclysm is coming! I have my beta sub for Cataclym, giving me an inside look at the new content that will be released for World of WarCraft this holiday season, and so far it looks fun as hell. Everyone and their emo sister will be playing a werewolf (Alliance gets Worgen as their new race), but for my money the Goblins (Horde) are where it's at. Oh man, the selfish storylines and grouchy emotes have me to a T, if there was ever a race built for a cynical old man like myself, this is it. Fun!

Also, I've been splitting my gaming time with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. The guys at work here play it on the X360, and that's a more pristine environment than the PC, where hackers run wild. Aside from that, it's a lot of fun to zone out with a sniper rifle behind an old junk car on a map somewhere and plunk baddies. I don't need to role play, I don't need to learn complicated sequences, just shoot the other guy before he gets you.

And rumor has it that the sequel Black Ops will be out in November and be hosted on dedicated servers, eliminating the hackers who are running wild with MW2. Lots of fun on the horizon this holiday season... and almost time to buy a new gaming rig too.

Badges burning a hole in my pocket

So my paladin has exactly 50 triumph badges in his inventory, which are enough to trade in for a shiny new helm, or almost enough for both gauntlets and shoulderpads. All of those need replacing, as I'm still in mostly blue gear. The question though is whether I should bother with the badge gear, or if I should skip it in favor of spending those badges on an heirloom for whatever class I end up rolling my worgen.

Which leads into the second choice - when Cataclysm is released in November we will be able to roll a character from one of the two new races, worgen and goblins. I'm somewhat interested in goblins, but worgen are going to be insanely cool, and they're an Alliance race, so it makes sense to roll one. But what I haven't decided yet is whether I'll be leveling a worgen right away or if I'll be taking one of my 80s on the WrA server (priest, paladin, rogue) to 85 first.

Supposedly, the new dungeons are actually difficult. This would surprise me since they're making all other aspects of the game much simpler and easier, but it gives me some hope that my rogue might actually be useful in Cataclysm. Possibly. We'll see. Healers and tanks, for sure, are going to be valuable, so I will probably make my worgen a druid. I don't currently have a druid on this server, and I am going to want to be able to group more to see the new content.

And a worgen moonkin sounds pretty natural - a wolf, howling at the moon?

PvP: FPS > MMO

It's been a while since I blogged, and the primary reason is that my interest in WarCraft dropped off the table over the past couple of months. I'm a fairly self-aware person, so I can probably list the reasons why my interest has waned:

• Transitioning from pvp to pve gear on my priest, I was mocked for trying to heal in pvp gear. I understand it's not mana-efficient, but a person has to start somewhere. That's crap I just don't need to deal with.
  
  
• My rogue is weapon-capped unless I raid, and my damage is capped unless I improve my weapons. There's basically no way to improve at this point unless I raid, and even if people were seeking rogues for raids, I'm not seeking to endure raiders and their endless ventrilo crap-flinging sessions. Umadbro?
  
  
• The prospect of Blizzard forcing users to reveal their real name on the forums highlighted how much they've forgotten who their playerbase really is.
  
  
• My son plays WarCraft and enjoys talking about it all the time. I like talking about other things from time to time, and there's only so many times you can recite the raid bosses in Karazahn or wonder about the role of the Guardian of Tirisfal, etc.
  
  
• If you don't raid, there's nothing to do but achievements and alts. I already have over 2,000 levels of alts, and I don't get any enjoyment from knocking out achievements. They're fun when they happen, but they're not fun to chase.
  
  
• The community is still stupid, foulmouthed, and terrible.

I finally buckled down and picked up a copy of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, and it's a lot more fun than WarCraft is for pvp, by far. Aside from the occasional hacker, games are balanced, and you always have the ability to kill your opponent by being smart rather than just having superior weapons or being really twitchy. WarCraft doesn't come close to how much fun the pvp is. Not even in the same ballpark.

I'm a PC player, not console, so if you see me online as Sussemilch gimme a shout.