It's the Little Things... (part 5)

Stand and Deliver!

Lest Ze Blog lapse into too much QQ, I was thinking about things I really really enjoy in the game...details in particular that don't really fit into any larger topic:

• Using an invisibility potion while running up the steps of Farson Keep on Tol Barad so I can bypass all the trash mobs and engage Lord Farson for that one daily quest. It's even better when you get there and somebody already has him mostly dead so you hit him once and immediately start running out again.
• Getting a really lucky streak with Lava Surge proccs and slamming a boss with Lava Burst over and over and over again.
• Getting to fly over Uldum. That place has some of the coolest scenery.
• Thieving Little Pluckers: a daily quest that never gets old.
  
• Flying in the Old World: it really was worth it.
• The Death Critters of Mulgore. You can be just questing along and suddenly find yourself surrounded by masked, gun-wielding critters who apparently are set to rumble with each other. Weird.
• If you hex various Schnotzz troopers around Uldum, they hop around as frogs, still wearing their distinctive pith helmets.
• Jenny, I mean, Johnny Awesome. I hear he's visiting a new resort area in Desolace (?)

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Check out this hippogryph that has been previewed as a part of the 4.2 Firelands Preview. If I understand correctly, this is a reward from that area's new daily quest hub. One of the senior developers remarked that it's getting harder and harder to make more exciting new mounts, which is something I can understand. But this one looks awesome. Good work!


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On the downside in the Firelands Preview, they pretty much confirm that 4.2 will be the one Firelands raid, with seven bosses, and there shall be no more raids this patch.

It doesn't matter, in the end, what the real reason for all this is, because Blizzard is going to do what Blizzard is going to do. And they can explain it however they want to.

From what the blues say, most guilds are not really getting through the content available now, for the most part. I think most guilds are at like 10/12 or 11/12 at this point, but that heroic progression is much less. (btw: please don't write in to say what your guild progression is. Your guild's progression is irrelevant to the average for the entire WoW community and proves nothing.)

Quoth the Bashiok: "We think 7 is our current ideal for number of bosses in a raid."  But I'm not going to forget so quickly Corey Stockton sitting on stage at Blizzcon about seven months ago saying 12 was the ideal number.

Both Stockton and Bashiok are always quick to say "We're not promising anything, and it could all change" but there has been a change, and it is a departure from the relative raiding content provided in the initial Cata content, Wrath and BC, in which we basically saw 10+ raid bosses for each tier of content.

Blizzard can adjust their tactics if want to, but I would really rather hear more about why it has changed. Are they waiting for greater heroic progression? Hardcores are going to shoot at heroic fights and casuals are not. Has that changed in the past six months?  Does Blizzard think that raid encounters are more difficult than they used to be and so we need a more manageable number? Is this just a production decision: that they can't produce as much, as quickly as they want to?

I'm good at speculating, and I think it's kind of fun really. But speculation is not information and it's the information I would love to hear.