…in Dalaran, do Blizzard devs notice?
Shintar’s The Day That Tree Form Died
Larisa’s Yet Another Angry Post From A Disappointed Ex-Tree
Ardol’s It’s So Hard To Say Goodbye: Tree of Life and a nice set of screenshots as a Photo Tribute
I’ll just sound another voice, saddened for the loss. I do play in cat/bear form most often (if I’m playing WoW at all, anyway), but this always struck me as an odd choice by Blizzard. The new forms are a bit strange, too, though they do feel more like the traditional Ancients that the Night Elves revere so much, albeit with a slightly… bovine facial structure. Think “buffaloak“, perhaps.
Of course, you’re not supposed to listen to the players, so no sweat, Blizzard. (My snark aside, that’s a good article from Scrusi… and it looks like Blizzard is throwing sad Druids an olive branch anyway, see Ghostcrawler’s post in this thread.)
One more voice: Lara’s Fare Thee Well
One more post for your collection maybe?
http://needmorerage.blogspot.com/2010/10/scuse-me-while-i-heal-this-guy.html
=D
Sweet, thanks! I’m all for more good links, and Ratshag is always welcome.
I haven’t been following WoW recently. Has there been any explanation for the change from permanent form to cooldown?
I’m not the best one to ask either. Something about letting high end Druids see their gear and balancing the form’s bonuses and penalties compared to other healers is what I’ve understood about it. Mechanically, it may well be a good move, but it’s a little odd that Tree form would be nonpermanent and on a cooldown when none of the others are.
Yeah, it strikes me as a weird move.
Like I said, I haven’t been keeping up with things, but I don’t really recall “I can’t see my gear” being a major concern for Druids. Ever.
I guess it’s one of those things Bliz does that no one ever asked for.
Thanks for the link love, and in a post that my article has nothing to do with as well! <3 (And it's not like my post's title wasn't asking to be abused ^^)
On topic, I don't mind the loss of the tree at all. This way caster form has some purpose other than giving rogues a window to stun and kill you in PvP.
I do also find it weird that the gear visibility would be cited as even slightly relevant when they have ignored the cries for appearance tabs, cosmetic gear and dyes. Policy on WoW really does seem rather scattershot sometimes.
Scrusi, I know, I know, this really isn’t relevant to your post, and I feel ever so slightly guilty about it, but it just seemed to fit in so well as a poke at Blizzard with a side hint that they might really know what they are doing. Plus it’s a good article, so why not call attention to it?
I actually think this is probably one of the best things that ever happened to resto druids. It is not cool to be locked out of half of your spells for no reason, when no one else has that disadvantage.
Maybe it’s because I remember druids before treeform, and I feel it’s the way things should be. Or maybe it’s because I think taurens look cool and I like the use of the tree to let people know that things are really serious.
Or maybe because it’s so frigging stupid to have a walking tree anyway. (and the tree is fugly, I don’t know why people think it looks cool.)
Isn’t the Moonkin form locked out of healing spells, though?
I think people dislike the new Tree because it has a slightly angry look. Disharmony in Disneyland?! NEVER!
Don’t get me wrong, Tesh, I’m loving the link. Even more so in a post that mine had nothing to do with
Oh, yeah, Scrusi, I read it that way, I’m just admitting that it was a tenuous link at best.
Laughing at myself, as it were.
Longasc, angry? Angry? Trees don’t get angry, they get even… they do have long memories, you know.
I think the problem here is that they’re messing with a character’s identity. For most people, their druid is the shapes they can change into. I haven’t played the game much since the initial changes to Druid form a while ago (where not all cat forms looked identical), but I know that I really did enjoy being in my forms. It was what made my character visually distinct.
For comparison, imagine if they made it so that Paladins could only wear leather armor. There would be an outcry from all the paladins because it would radically change the appearance of their characters.
Seems like a goofy change to me, but like others in this thread I’ve not cared about WoW’s design issues for a little while now. Not sure how it fits into the grand scheme of things.
Thinking back, I don’t think I’ve seen any other game that changes mechanics so often and sometimes so drastically.
5+ years in and I still don’t know if they are schizophrenic or it’s just their way of keeping it fresh.
*shrug*
“Not sure how it fits into the grand scheme of things.”
Like any other move made by a live team on a big product; it’s a piece of the puzzle. In this case, I see it as a curious conflict between flavor and function. If the changes are indeed all about balance, it’s interesting that such would take priority over the “Druid identity” issues.
It seems to me that there’s always a tug of war between flavor and function, so it’s interesting to me to see these stress points and how they get resolved.
I actually have much more of a personal concern with the talent tree locking. I see that as a curious step back toward strict dev-driven design, even if it is altruistically meant to make talent gimping less likely. It’s a curious contrast with the freedom of something like MineCraft. I can’t help but think the two are at least subtly playing off of each other.
When they first announced this change, the reasons they gave basically boiled down to two ideas. They said (in essence):
1. Lots of players don’t like the Tree art, and want to be able to see their caster form. (No evidence was actually provided for this claim, and I’m skeptical of it, but that’s more or less what they said. Lots of players on the other side too, it seems like!)
2. You can’t do anything but heal and decurse/depoison in Tree form, and we (they) think you’d have more utility if you didn’t have to shift out of your healing form to do other things.
Neither of these is a particularly good reason. As Tesh said above, they have never really shown any interest in supporting players’ aesthetic preferences in other areas of the game, so why here?
Point (2) is a little better, but I find it unconvincing. Druids have ALWAYS had to make trade-offs between doing something in-form (e.g., DPS as a cat or a moonkin, tanking as a bear, healing as a tree) and doing things out-of-form (e.g., healing as a cat or a moonkin, decursing as a bear, crowd-control as a tree). Those trade-offs are part of what makes the Druid class compelling, in my view.
The new regime is a major shift of emphasis for Druid healing, as compared to the other Druid roles. A cat, say, has to shift out of form to apply crowd control, heal, decurse, etc. That’s how it was before, and that’s how it remains now. A bear, similarly, has to shift out of form to apply a battle res, remove a poison, or what have you. The default position is that Druids are IN the form that is optimal for their primary role. Until now, that’s how it was for trees also: You could shift out to do something special, but you spent most of your time in the form that is best for your healing role.
Now, your healing is suboptimal most of the time. You have to choose to enter a shapeshift form to obtain optimal healing output, and that shapeshift form is on a fairly long cooldown. That’s totally the opposite of how all the other Druid forms work. Why? I suspect the real reason is quite simple: They think Druid healing was too powerful during Wrath of the Lich King, and they wanted to find a way to knock it down a bit.
Maybe I’m wrong, and in the end it doesn’t matter what the real reason is. What’s done is done, and we’re stuck with it. Druids aren’t the only ones with changes, but for me this particular one makes very little sense to me, and reduces the fun and interest of playing a Druid as a healer.
Thanks for stopping by and chiming in Lara! I can’t get too worked up over this, but I am befuddled and a bit saddened by the change. I’m with Julian; there’s a lot of change inherent in the WoW modus operandi, and it’s not readily apparent that there’s always good reason for it.
Then again, this is hardly my biggest concern with Cataclysm…
“Then again, this is hardly my biggest concern with Cataclysm…”
Spill the beans, boy.
*chuckle*
There are a lot of little things like this, but the biggest oddity I see is the conflict between the focus on the newbie experience (complete with a revamped Old World (good), dummy-proofed talent trees (hate the locks, but probably good overall), streamlined UI (not bad) and stronger class identity) and the requirement for a Cataclysm player to purchase all three previous boxes. If any WoW expansion would benefit greatly from being a standalone box, CAT would be it. TBC and Wrath were game-extenders… CAT is a game *changer*, complete with plenty of goodies for newbies.
It is exceptionally poor taste in my book to make players who want Goblins or Worgen buy four boxes of WoW to *start* the game. Again, there’s that schizophrenic approach to priorities that just doesn’t make a lot of sense.
Yes, yes, the world will change for everyone, and they recently caved and said the new class/race combos will be open to anyone, but locking two races behind a pretty massive paywall just isn’t friendly to that newbie hose that an MMO relies on.
In the end, it probably won’t really be a huge dent in the sales, but it’s a decision that just doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. That sort of internal business tension suggests to me that things just aren’t as well thought out as they could be.
…but I’ve been tainted by Guild Wars and their sensible approach to monetization, not only in the core game but also in their expansion model.
Is WoW getting any new players though? I’m talking new as in NEW. Never touched it before.
I’ve got the feeling it isn’t (which would be normal for a 5+ years old game, even if said game is the largest western MMO). I’ve got the feeling pretty much everyone who wanted to try WoW has either done it and abandoned it, done it and stayed or keeps coming and going.
Yeah, that huge pay wall totally sucks for completely new players but maybe that’s why they’re not getting any. Hell if you told me I had to pay that much to try a game I never tried before, I’d pass.
Besides, we’ve had that mystical, mythical figure of “11 million players” for how long now? If they had new players it would’ve increased at least some by now.
I’m quite sure that WoW’s newbie hose is very much alive and kicking. Not only is the game still growing (albeit slowly) despite the numerous amounts of people quitting it, they also mentioned the newbie retention rate of 30% a while ago which would hardly be of interest for them if they didn’t have a relevant amount of newbies.
Also, the TV ads are likely targeted at new customers and not just there to remind old players to renew their subscriptions.
Then there’s Cataclysm itself of course which simply screams “new players”. You can say many things about Blizzactivision, but not that they don’t know how to make money. If they make an expansion that’s mainly targeted at fresh blood then they will be damn sure that those people actually exist.
I just have a hard time seeing how they can get new players for Cata if it requires -at least- Vanilla + Cata.
Unless I’m not understanding the whole scheme correctly, which is perfectly possible since it’s friday and all.
The way I understand it (not gospel) is that CAT and all previous boxes are necessary for levels 80-85 (makes sense) *and/or* if you want to start a Goblin or Worgen (makes much less sense).
The Old World will be shattered for everyone, trial accounts on up, which is probably a good move… but that Goblin/Worgen bit is where I lose their train of thought.
We saw the same thing with Blood Elves and Dranei, but that has been alleviated a bit with the Battle Chest and time. Death Knights begin unlife at level 55, so it’s implied that Wrath was for already-invested characters from the get-go.
I just think that if you’re introducing new races that newbies might want to play (or fresh new non-hero classes, which hasn’t been done yet), you’re better off with the Guild Wars-style standalone expansion.
I’ll concede that if you could get all four boxes for $60, that might work out. It’s still silly to sell boxes rooted in endgame content to players who won’t see it without subbing for a while (like you’ll get when buying the FFXI or EQ2 all-in-one boxes), but at least those Goblins and Worgen wouldn’t be as inaccessible.
It’s this tension between endgame players and newbies, complete with expansion plans that try to target both but only really work for vets, that’s really making a lot of WoW’s core game design (DIKU race to the endgame and addiction to treadmills) and business (service vs. product) show some stress fractures. I do have to wonder if they had a five year plan to start with sometimes. It’s not the end of the world for the game, but they are painting themselves into a bit of a corner in some ways, and it will be interesting to see how it all settles out.
You do know those goblin and worgen aren’t going to be much different, right? It’s like your post about classes – goblin and worgen will pretty much be a couple of minute modifiers, a few different meshes on the local starting terrain, and that’s it. I mean, maybe they’ll have a different idle animation – is this really anything noteworthy?
Also I don’t understand how a revamped old world somehow has something to do with a newbie experience? Certainly just looking at game world portrayal, I see no link at all?
Callan, the difference is important to someone who wants to play one. To me, no, it’s not a big deal, but, like appearance tabs, there are players who care. It’s interesting to see how devs do or do not care.
Also, as this largely makes Worgen and Goblins alts of existing endgame players, their whole early game balance may well be skewed by heirloom gear as well as endgame habits. That might be tricky to design around. (Though that might be one reason not to throw true newbies into the deep end with them… but it’s a bit of a chicken and egg issue.)
As for the old world, they are going to go in and change the starting zones along with everything else. Quest flow, visuals, storytelling, it’s all going under the knife with an eye to making the game better, having learned from what players do in Northrend and what they have done in the existing starting areas. Layer that on top of the revamped character progression scheme (Talent tree revamps, Hunters with pets at creation, Druid Cat form at level 8 rather than 20, Bear at 15 rather than 10, more descriptive tooltips that put skills in context, Holy Power, etc.), and the newbie experience will be different from what it was even a year ago. CAT will likely bring the biggest changes to the newbie experience that the game has ever seen. It will be more streamlined and educational. I think that’s a Good Thing, and one big excuse for why they went back to the Old World in the first place.
Yes, it’s still a DIKU dog and pony show, the backbone of the game isn’t changing. It will sell itself better, though, and in an increasingly populated market, that’s probably a good idea.
It’s not so much that the visuals of the game will make it a Brave New World (though they are updating visuals, too), it’s that the whole package is getting a face lift.
Tesh,
Hmmm, I don’t think I’m interested in nuturing the care those players have. It seems missplaced and I’m instead inclined to dispell it rather than look at some sort of dev reaction to the missplaced care.
And this changing the world – I’m sorry, this seems to be clumping two different things together. 1. World portrayal and 2. Human resource management.
In terms of world portrayal by itself (and everyone keeps talking about the old world and how it’ll change to a new world), the newbie experience is not changed one iota. A genuine newbie never saw the old world. So it wont affect them in the least. It can only affect someone who’s played before.
And even the human resource management – that’s not for newbies. They never experienced the old way, if they are genuinely new. Let’s not fool ourselves it’s for the newbies greater good.
So the world portrayal isn’t for a newbies benefit and in the same way, nor is any of the new human resource management for newbies.
This ‘for the newbies’ reminds me of ‘think of the children’. When it’s not about the children or the newbies.
From what position are you commenting that this is a Good Thing?
It’s pretty simple. The new world will look better and play better than the old one. A new player after CAT hits will have a better experience than a new player preCAT.
It’s not about new players knowing the difference between the two and appreciating the changes as a connoisseur might, it’s just about the experience itself being better. That’s better for new players, even if they don’t know what they might have had.
Better in as in some sort of one unified global sense of better?
Most likely guys at blizz thought they knew a ‘the one global sense of better’ when they changed the tree form.