Banter about attunement

There are many blog posts at the moment about attunement; love it or hate it.

Like all things there is a benefit, and a cost to that choice – which changes as your playstyle and perspective changes. I like attunement as I can know that the player has at the very least done some content.

I dislike attunement as it means I cannot gracefully skip content to the stage my alt was/is at. There is no right answer, which is probably why attunements were removed. Too much of a grey area led to angst, which then absorbed far too much time.

Overall I like attunements more than I dislike them, and think that they could have a valuable place in world of warcraft.

While I agree that creating very large attunement paths is a barrier which is difficult for some, and could even be problematic for raiders who switch characters (or whatever) there was something great in the story aspects of the attunements.

eg. Getting the Karazhan key was interesting from a story perspective. It took a small amount of additional time and effort, but it was entertaining and interesting.

If the attunements were part of the general story, in content which was not repeat-gated (eg. one after another) then they could return with my support. Perhaps the attunement is for the 5man to raid step, rather than for each raid step?

Perhaps also start the stories and the attunement chains as the leveling experience (e.g. the Marshal Windsor UBRS key), and therefore the story plays through the experience, which leads into the raids.

Make it so that the players would be foolish not to take the opportunity (Wrath Gate questline, or the Battered Hilt quests) and you’ll see more game lovers than haters.

Related articles

• Attunements and why they must never return (wow.joystiq.com)
• Should Attunements Return To WoW? (mmomeltingpot.com)

Kris Kringle shared topic on BattleChicken

As part of the shared topic by Blog Azeroth community, I was lucky enough to get a guest post on a very story based blog called BattleChicken by  Ambermist. My first world of warcraft fictional snippet-story, and about my main toon: Mortigen, the Death Knight.

Damn fine idea Gnomer!

3 Stories, 1 Night, Much Swearing

A few days ago I had a day of WoW that was like playing Snakes and Ladders. Here are the three stories that made up another “learning experience”.

Story One: The BF PuG that couldn’t.

Cast: My Tankadin, Hunter-1, Huntard-2, SPriest-DC, Priest-Heals, Mage-Gone.
Started the night with a Heroic BF run.
– I pop into LFG and get messaged to see if I’m a tank and up for a BF run. Well as its the daily, so of course I say I’m keen, and I join group.
– Upon join we have Tankadin, 1x Hunter and a Heal and Shadow Priest. For BF thats not ideal as they have reduced AoE, but thats not an issue if we keep on the game. Having me as AoE tank is the real cheat mode for BF, so we’ll be OK.
– We are one dps short, but that should be easy to fill. I jump into LFG and start looking.
– The Huntard says he needs 10 minutes before we start, and his mate will join us. OK, free DPS is good, and 10 minutes is not a train wreck.
– Leave LFG
– So we wait, the time passes and finally after 15 minutes we have a new player. A mage. Well he pops in, asks a few questions and we get rolling.
– Summon everyone.
– Summon one of them again, as they are not ready.
– Except the SPriest disconnects, so we wait.
– Then SP is back, so we zone in.
– And the SPriest disconnects, and we wait.
– All on, and buffed, so I check in chat that everyone is ready.
– OK good, mark, and first pull.
– Skull and X make a quick beeline for me and start swinging. Nobody else has moved, Hunter then sends in Pet and Mage starts damage. Healer does sweet fuck all, and I go down due to 2000, 2000, 6000, 2000, 2000, plus some other hits. Dead tank. Group makes for the door.
– Priest survives and we get res’ed.
– Take two is better, I use a Sheep mark and the Mage does a perfect sheep. We drop them no sweat.

What use is tollerance?

I just had a lesson in tolerance, with a positive outcome. So on the back of my posts about bad players, pugs, anger, and frustrating experiences here is something where bad turned into good.

Last night I decided to do something chilled and do an easy run, my plan was to grab the non-heroic daily and do some daily quests on my Warlock. You know, turn the brain off for the eve.

The daily was Arcatraz, which is a long trashy Instance that I dislike. Arc is odd in that:

– Some of the trash is tougher than the bosses. eg. big elemental guys who drop meteors can really crunch a group even when you stack up.

– The first boss you see is considered damn hard due to the shadow damage output, the seed of corruption, and a general lack of shadow resist gear. As a Warlock this is OK as I can buff myself with some resist, and if you have a paladin’s aura thats even better. He’s also often left to last in case the rest of the run is a wash too, which means that you miss out on his drops. Frankly I think this boss is not difficult at all on normal, the group just needs to concentrate.

– Layout is curvy and twisted, without adding flavour. Its a very beautiful place without question though, anywhere that has laser doors can’t be a total waste of pixels.

– You need to kill everything in the place. That makes it easy to follow as you don’t need to remember to skip trash, but that also adds time.

– The last boss is a few mobs in sequence, which means you’re always at risk of dropping a character early, and therefore the boss is harder.

But that does not mean its impossible, and if you have guys who are geared and paying attention Arc can be a good run. I was thinking that a Pally Tank and a healer who can cross-heal well would be the go.