PST - Episode 80

This week:
0:33 - Would rewards from dailies be okay on the Black Market?
4:44 - Should different raid difficulties drop different items?
9:39 - Will we ever see armor dye in WoW?
13:04 - Could Blizzard allow players to buy level 80 characters, like the Scroll of Resurrection?
18:14 - How do you prepare for a new boss fight?
25:18 - Is Diablo 3 killing WoW?
30:25 - Should there be a maximum price for low-level glyphs?
36:44 - Would gems be more interesting if they could give primary stats?
41:19 - Have you ever thought about playing WoW with your fans?
47:00 - What's going to be the big announcement at Blizzcon this year?

Wat you mean Spongebob no real?!!?

I can't imagine adding dye is as hard as you are making it out to be. DAOC had it in 2001 and a WAAAAY more customizable guild cloak. There is something to be said for a guild all wearing the same colors and cloak. I really miss it.

http://www.blogcdn.com/massively.joy...aoc-su2003.jpg

Thanks for the answer Lore!

I should've specified that I didn't really mean like OP Legendary-esque weapons more on the asthetic side of cool loot, not stat based.

I had an idea on how to keep the inscription profession profitable while also lowering the prices of glyphs. What if instead of having to grind faction in order to get helm and shoulder enchants, have scribes make the arcanums for both pve and pvp. In fact this would probably make inscription MORE profitable, since every time you got an upgrade you'd need to get an arcanum, and it wouldn't make that much difference to max level characters since we tend to have a fair amount of gold lying around. AND low level toons don't tend to use those types of enchants (unless they're twinking) because they replace gear so quickly and heirlooms cant have arcanums applied.

Samething happened when Starcraft 2 came out. We lost a few raiders for a couple days.

Hey Lore,

Soooo... I have a problem now.

I was watching this on my laptop while doing some housework while my nieces were over... The youngest being 6. I can only assume you know where this is going.

So, while cleaning up the living room, my nieces were just doing their thing when I went to walk into the other room to get the vacuum. Suddenly, I hear the youngest kinda sniffle and pout... Sure enough, you outed the tooth fairy, and I was stuck with a sad little girl for a bit.

To quote her: 'The Fluffy man (you) said the tooth fairy isn't REAL!!! And there's no more CHRISTMAS!!!'

It's so hard to console a child while you are silently DYING of Laughter on the inside...

Professions in World of Warcraft (imho) have always been a little flaky. Some provided a few usable items while levelling but mostly professions could be ignored. These days we are being (I won't say bullied) "directed" towards having to use Jewel Crafter, Enchanters and to a lesser degree these days Scribes to a point where we are reliant on them.

For example you get a new Chest piece you need to buy at least 2 gems and enchant for it. Which is why the price of these things maintain a consistent high price in the AH. Before you say it not all of us are in big guilds, or in guilds that are totally focussed on helping each other out for free or at least dirt cheap so we are reliant on AH prices.

As the system stands right now the Red, Yellow and Blue gems slots (Especially Red) do not encourage much in the way of variation so I would love to see Blizzard change how gems work, maybe even award 50% of the socket bonus for having both slots gemmed and 100% for having both slots gemmed with the correct colour gems.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by tjayrocket

To quote her: 'The Fluffy man (you) said the tooth fairy isn't REAL!!! And there's no more CHRISTMAS!!!'

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I think Lore has a new nickname :D

First question: I got the impression that this question was also about things like the polar bear mount or the scorchling from the molten front stuff, rare and random rewards from doing daily quests. I'd kind of lump these in with rare 5-man drops as BMAH candidates.

Second question: The other side of "should they do this again" is "could they?" With 10 and 25 man being separate loot tables, and regular and heroic being separate, as they were in TOC, they have to fill the full loot tables for the instance four times. Right now, they're barely managing to fill the loot table once (which is also a part of why a Firelands cloak is the best available for agi users).

Third question: Don't most models come with 4+ recolors already, some of which are never even used for player gear? They could just make it an option on the transmog interface to select any existing color variation of a piece, and then maybe roll out some extra recolors at a later date.

Fourth question: I think only accounts that were already inactive when the promotion was revealed are eligible for the free 80 and all the goodies (this may have changed, I haven't looked into it since it was new). So no, it's not currently something they're offering in some way to existing players who just want to speed up an alt.

..

Sixth question: It's kind of funny, WoW seems to be the game we all play when there's nothing else to play. Also funny: Diablo 3 looks to follow the same pattern as a lot of would-be WoW-killer MMOs. It's taken a lot of player attention off of WoW, leveling was tons of fun, and everyone will be back in a month because it's not entirely clear they put a lot of thought into the endgame.

Seventh question: Glyphs are expensive because it's awful to manage at a large scale, and if the large-scale players dropped out of the market a lot of important glyphs wouldn't get listed at all. I should know, I've been doing it for a couple years now, and I always get a chuckle out of people who accuse me of "driving prices up" when I'm the only one selling what they need and other sellers (on the other faction, or different glyphs) have much higher fallbacks anyways. MoP changes may mitigate this somewhat, especially if they remove the need for glyph books, but the inventory management won't be any less awful. It would be neat to see inscription get something else even just for variety, though. Maybe if there were some open area of design space currently on people's minds, that might involve pigment...

Eighth question: For linear, numerical comparisons like whether to match a socket, the only middle ground between two extremes of boring ('always match' and 'never bother') is "consult the spreadsheet." As we're seeing with glyphs and talents, I think the only way around this might be to deny the premise entirely, but that's probably not feasible with gems.

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Last question: Christ, man. Spoilers.

I can't help but feel the first question was more aimed at Argent Tourney mounts / Molten Front pet, correct me if I'm wrong. I've just got through grinding the argent tourney mounts, doing each daily on 5 alts every day to get them out of the way quickly now account wide mount means that's an option. I didn't mind that grind, because it was a guaranteed end.

Molten Front pet however, I've been grinding those dailies for months, still no pet despite the odds being in my favor by a significant amount. If it was a guaranteed drop after so many weeks, that'd be fine. As is, it's causing me more grief than farming any other rare drop mount / pet that comes to mind.

Also, wasn't the SOR only open to people who have had their account "dead" before it was introduced? I was pretty sure that anyone who canceled their account after it was announced weren't eligible.

The new talent system also opens the doors to scribe money, if both the items to change glyphs AND talents were made via scribes, then I imagine that would be a steady income - talents look like something you'd want to change around at least every time to switch between pve, pvp and on a boss to boss basis in raiding. I suppose some argument could be made for a consumable that let you swap spec on the fly instead of hearthing to a trainer. That would be 3 regularly used consumables to manufacture as well as the BOE offhands / relics etc.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by tjayrocket

Hey Lore,

Soooo... I have a problem now.

I was watching this on my laptop while doing some housework while my nieces were over... The youngest being 6. I can only assume you know where this is going.

So, while cleaning up the living room, my nieces were just doing their thing when I went to walk into the other room to get the vacuum. Suddenly, I hear the youngest kinda sniffle and pout... Sure enough, you outed the tooth fairy, and I was stuck with a sad little girl for a bit.

To quote her: 'The Fluffy man (you) said the tooth fairy isn't REAL!!! And there's no more CHRISTMAS!!!'

It's so hard to console a child while you are silently DYING of Laughter on the inside...

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oh god i feel terrible now D:

I bought two level 80's thanks to two expired accounts I had from when I bought myself RAF mounts.

No issues with it at all. I still had to level professions so it doesn't unduly distort the markets etc. Learning how to play the classes was no different to people who roll toons to play tank/healer and level as DPS then have to learn an entirely new spec at cap.

I think that is a great business idea for Blizzard. A sliding level scale with a sliding cost depending on how high you wanted to level the character. Max level could be as it is now - the cap before the current expansion.

I personally would like to power boost my toons to level 90 as I hate questing with a passion and don't fancy levelling all my toons in MOP to get to the content I want. I'd gladly pay to skip perhaps this wouldn't be available until a month after expansion launch so as not to ruin the race for server firsts and the first raid tier progression. That way I'd just use it for alts so I don't have to repeat content, maybe make it a condition that you already have a 90.

With regards to D3 - it is merely acting as another WoW patch to keep people going until MOP. Smart timing by Blizz, saves wasting dev resource making another RS by sloting D3 in now.

LOL at Lores answer to the final Question. Good PST this week :)

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Originally Posted by Lore

9:39 - Will we ever see armor dye in WoW?

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Maybe they can implement them only in tier sets (pvp and pve) for the old content, and just added to selected sets in the new ones.

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Originally Posted by Lore

30:25 - Should there be a maximum price for low-level glyphs?

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I really think that considering a glyph "a leveling perk" is an overstatement, nobody want to pay a lot of gold for anything but the time when glyphs really matters is when the character is at end game (pre-MoP).

Just a comment on the armor dye. Not that i would ever care to dye items because i'm not that anal when it comes to how they look, but they were able to put a vendor in the game to transmog items by going to that vendor and putting your item in the slot to look like something else. With that being said, why dont they just incorporate another vendor that can put a slot on an item to be dye'd and make it a purchased slot. Say 5g per item or whatever...Now the only way that wouldn't work i guess would be if they actually had to go through every single item in the game to be transmog'able. So i guess what i'm saying is that if they could make it so every item in the game aside from legendaries or whatever could be transmog'd then i don't see why the same type of system couldn't be implimented to change the color of armor. Should work like this, hi MR vendor i would like to add a dye slot to this piece of armor, costs...X amount of gold and off you go now u have a slot for dye and the person next to you in town has that same item without a slot for dye on it. Sound pretty simple seeing as that seems how the transmog system works. Just my opinion and would love some feedback....thx love the show/site.

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Originally Posted by stelthy

Just a comment on the armor dye. Not that i would ever care to dye items because i'm not that anal when it comes to how they look, but they were able to put a vendor in the game to transmog items by going to that vendor and putting your item in the slot to look like something else. With that being said, why dont they just incorporate another vendor that can put a slot on an item to be dye'd and make it a purchased slot. Say 5g per item or whatever...Now the only way that wouldn't work i guess would be if they actually had to go through every single item in the game to be transmog'able. So i guess what i'm saying is that if they could make it so every item in the game aside from legendaries or whatever could be transmog'd then i don't see why the same type of system couldn't be implimented to change the color of armor. Should work like this, hi MR vendor i would like to add a dye slot to this piece of armor, costs...X amount of gold and off you go now u have a slot for dye and the person next to you in town has that same item without a slot for dye on it. Sound pretty simple seeing as that seems how the transmog system works. Just my opinion and would love some feedback....thx love the show/site.

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It how the armor is done, how the actual model is created, almost none of the armor models are just one color, nor one drawing object, and you don't want it to be, when you have a armor piece it has many "drawing parts" and each part has it own properties. For example when you see a green chest, you don't see a homogeneous green, you see a range of green in some section and another in others, to generate that requires time, some parts have a completely different color. You don't have a int variable for the color of all the piece anymore, sometime ago we moved from that 8-bit drawing you know?

TL;DR Adding armor dye to WoW take a lot of time.

First question: Lore, I think he means things like the baby croc pets, the RNG cooking recipes, RNG fishing poles, Scorchling, etc with a bit of the annoying to farm things like the ToC pets. As I am continually doing the fishing daily because my main is the only fisherman I have that has not gotten the bone fishing pole, I could support this in that capacity.

Second question: Rhyolith cloak, the issue wasn't as much the gem slots as it was the lack of a cloak drop at all in DS. When you are stuck with 391 Rhyolith and 397 valor, it's not much of a competition, though the 378 still beats the 397 due to it's gem slots.

@Impeesa

Um, do you realize that killing things for stuff and then killing things for more stuff is Diablo's endgame?

@stelthy

Transmog transposes an existing model onto another existing model, a dye system that did not look goofy (only dying parts instead of the whole thing) would require rebuilding every single model so constituent pieces that are dyed would remain independent of the other parts.

Hey Lore,

All is good. She's at that age where she'd figure it all out sooner or later. Just of all the people to burst her bubble, you were probably one of the LAST people I'd expect to have done it.

A little lower on the list than Sponge Bob, but higher on the list than Hitler. Somewhere in between...

Oh well, sorry if that made you feel bad, keep up the good work.

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Originally Posted by Kagitaar

@Impeesa

Um, do you realize that killing things for stuff and then killing things for more stuff is Diablo's endgame?

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Oh, I know. I don't really have a strong opinion on the matter, and I didn't play D2 (just original Diablo) so I don't have a lot of emotional investment there either. But I have played up through the beginning of Inferno, and I can understand where people are coming from when they say that most of Inferno's challenge just feels like random punishment, and that the loot is so blandly randomized that it doesn't feel like much of a carrot. Mostly I'm just curious to see whether that feeling will go away over time, or if they'll end up making changes.

Just a comment here. I would be extremely upset if blizzard put in an option to color gear. Since the homogenization of tier and other pvp/raid loot color has been the only differentiating prestige factor. Already gone are the days of people being able to look at models and know you worked at something for a good amount of time to get; All the prestige we current have left is color and transmogrification is killing that too.

Many people play WoW to get their 'I'm a special snow flake' fix. I don't think that is going to be really possible anymore with the direction the game is taking. Ie.

Transmogrification: Great now I can show off the gear I worked so hard for way back when. Blizzard screwed that by making it available from vendors and probably BMAH.

Achievement Mounts: Great now I can work to earn a unique mount that will be in indicator of achievement something at level. Blizzard screwed that by not taking out the mounts once the content was no longer relevant.

Tier Gear: Great now I have a unique matching set that everyone of my class will know I am a good player and worked at raiding. Blizzard screwed that by putting the models in LFR and re-using tier models for off gear.

Server First Titles: Great now I have something no one else will have to show that I was one of the first players to complete a difficult encounter. Blizzard screwed that by taking them out of the game and leaving the kill titles only; which are still obtainable after content is out leveled.

I could go on. My point is, Blizzard is removing incentives to actually play the game. They are handing players stuff on a silver platter. I really would like to see the game go back to a grind over this log-in do dailies collect the same loot as the guy that raids or pvps 4 times a week. Its perpetulaully killing the desire for players to get better at the game. People already bail on pugs after one wipe because it isn't a D3 style click button collect loots. Forget re-coloring gear; bring back the ability to achieve the 'I'm a special snow flake' in the game.

-- rant end