WoW forums depress me

[--Pete]

Hi,

I've been reading (and posting) on the official testers forums (fora) for WoW. While the overall quality is a lot better than most open fora, the experience rekindled my appreciation for the Lounge and the people who frequent it.

For one thing, the official forum software sucks big time. That it isn't threaded is bad enough. But in addition, there is no search capability, no way to keep track which posts you've read (you can keep track of which threads you've read, sort of), no way to keep track what threads you've participated in. And, of course, no one reads past the first page (the default sorting is newest response first). So the same topics appear in new threads every couple of days. Each time, some good and many poor arguments are made on each side, but the discussion is fragmented and chaotic.

Further, it appears that only one Blizzard person posts with any great regularity. That would be Katricia. But she (he?) only seems to post in the General forum. Since most people seem to want attention from Blizzard as much as anything else, that is where a lot of posts end up going that would be better off in one of the other 18 (!) fora.

The PvPers are out in force, and "carebear" appears in many posts (one PvP supporter even has it in his signature). As always, the PvPers are claiming that only PvP makes a game worthwhile, a true role playing experience, etc. etc. And, no, not a one of them would ever dream of griefing a low level player, or taking advantage of someone down to low hit points after fighting mobs, etc., etc. You don't need to read the posts -- you've seen it all before for over seven years. PvPer, PKer, griefer, all the same species. There are those who have enough intelligence to realize that not all games are DOOM.

And, yes, I've met a couple of "good" PvP players in my time online. It's just (to paraphrase the lawyer joke) that 99% of then give the rest a bad name. And, no, I am not talking "consensual" PvP or dueling -- that is not what these people are asking for.

Now, as WoW stands, there is little skill or challenge involved in most game situations. Many solo combats require little more than targeting the mob and moving your avatar into range. Then it's mostly a situation of watching the avatar do battle. If you have some "special" attack (or spell) you cast them as the timer, rage, mana, or spirit moves you. Often you do this to break the monotony or to increase some skill or other (although no one has yet explained what increase skill in a spell buys you). And if you do die (usually because some mob respawned behind you in an area you checked before attacking), all you need to do is run your invulnerable ghost back to your body.

But, apparently, this is still not easy enough for a lot of people, and all sorts of suggestions are being made to make combat or resurrection or travel or trade skills or everything easier. And the reply to those types of ideas are running mostly positive (and this in a community of people who are gamer enough to get into an alpha or beta). Any suggestion to make the game more challenging gets lambasted. If Blizzard takes even 1% of the suggestions made to make the game easier, they'll have to rename it World of SimCraft.

And, if Blizzard doesn't make the game easy enough for the "average" player, why then there are all sorts of people writing scrips to save effort, energy and thought.

Ah, well. We'll see. I hope that this will be a game that will be playable for a neophyte but still challenging (and not just in the boredom sense of having to kill a million mobs to level) for a hard core player. I don't see it now, I don't see it promised, and I don't particularly see it requested by the community.

Perhaps there will be some variant possibilities that will appeal to some of us. Otherwise, all that there seems to be is eye candy. Worth playing for free, maybe even for the cost of the box. But not yet enough to change my outlook on pay to play.

Then again, they've got months to get it right. I'm still hoping -- but I'd have to get good odds to bet on it.

--Pete

[Brother Laz]

After reading those disastrous forums for about two months, as well as every other article on the net, I have concluded a few things:

1) The difficulty depends on how many monsters you have to fight. As in, two is a guaranteed win barring unlucky resists, three is a guaranteed death. Or other numbers depending on your character class.

2) Rogues and to a degree warriors can try out different skill combos to try and kill the mob faster, and warlocks can use different curses and a different minion. That's about it. As said above, it only makes your guaranteed victory more guaranteed, or damages a mob a bit more before you die. The number of monsters is all that counts.

3) There are many attack spells and skills, but the majority of them are either mutually exclusive [and only the best one gets used] or stack [and all of them get used in sequence]. In fact, the less used ones seem totally worthless.

4) The characters are pretty one-sided. The priest heals. Has a lot of different heal spells too. Direct damage? Nah. This also contributes to the repetitive gameplay. Mind control? Locks your own character in place, gives a damage penalty, and can only be used on monsters below level 30, which is pure genius for a level 30 spell. No improvements are to be hoped for, because this is a priest spell and the priest is supposed to be an one-dimensional healing female dog. There are some staple spells that are absolutely required to get anywhere, such as frost nova and curse of weakness. Ignore them and you stand absolutely no chance.

5) Not enough skills and spells that actually matter in combat. Too many buffs, travel spells, seals, auras, underwater breathing and all that crap. Someone tell me the difference between thorns, retribution and lightning shield and what they are good for besides filling up spell slots and making it LOOK like there are many more diverse spells than there really are.

6) Likewise, there are about 1500 different direct damage spells that do the exact same. Wrath, fire shock, lightning shock, earth shock, fire bolt, lightning bolt, shadow bolt and starfire are identical. So are immolation, corruption, curse of agony, shadow word pain and moonfire. And all of these are click-cast-damage. No aiming whatsoever. The mage has 3 different single target fire spells and I have no idea what the difference is besides damage, mana and spell timer. The shaman has a lot of different weapon enchantments and they don't stack, as well as four different DD spells that do the same as far as I can tell.

7) Resistances. Gives a monster a chance to outright ignore the spell. You could get very unlucky and have everyone resist your frost nova, in which case you die. If they do not, they are now blocks of ice for 10 seconds and you can easily win the fight. Way to balance combat and put it all to a dice roll.

8) Something entirely different, but they took the interesting Warcraft universe and ruined it. Next time I see a screenshot containing a gnome warlock, tauren druid, tauren rogue and undead priest I'm gonna kill someone.

9) Blizzard did not use their common sense. The fact that shaman weapon buffs add a fixed amount of damage forces everyone to get the fastest available weapons, ie. daggers. Likewise, the level 30 limitation of mind control gives me the shivers. Either they don't think about the consequences [100% shamans with daggers, 0% people using mind control] or they just don't care. There are many more of those things, such as the new and totally useless sap, the totally useless blink spell, the totally useless poison resist totem [anyone used cleansing? So there] etc etc.

10) Rest state? *I* paid for this game and *I* decide when I'll play it kthx. Or then again, I probably won't.

11) Hearthstone: metagamey crap put in because some people don't like the 5 minute flight from one place of the world to another, and also to legitimate the HEINOUS rest state system.

[Cryptic]

These rants are interesting, but would likely be more productive in the actual forums, through /suggest, and/or through Blizzard e-mail. The game isn't complete, it's a Beta; if anything isn't fun, tell them! We here who were unlucky enough to not get into the Beta can't really do anything about the problems. This isn't Diablo; since Blizzard wants paying customers, they're very likely to listen to the dissatisfied ones.

Majority is, indeed, going to rule; but dissenting voices with well thought out alternatives will be heard as well. (For example, the announced improvements to the rest system.) I believe the key is to provide the designers with thoughtfully argued, suggested improvements; i.e., not to bitch about what's wrong, but to actually suggest something better to the right people who can do something about it.

Edit: Adding my own constructive addition ...

From thread
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx...ount=9#post1645

From Blizzard employee Tigole, Suggestion Forum:
>>Many members of the development team actively read this forum each day. Every single post here as well as every in-game /suggest gets consideration.

[Ruvanal]

9) Blizzard did not use their common sense. The fact that shaman weapon buffs add a fixed amount of damage forces everyone to get the fastest available weapons, ie. daggers. Likewise, the level 30 limitation of mind control gives me the shivers. Either they don't think about the consequences [100% shamans with daggers, 0% people using mind control] or they just don't care. There are many more of those things, such as the new and totally useless sap, the totally useless blink spell, the totally useless poison resist totem [anyone used cleansing? So there] etc etc.

Curious if you actually tested that this is really working the way you are saying? Blizzard did a change to combat system, but apparently did not change all the text displays to the players to reflect that change. The change as listed in the patch notes for the beta2 patch is

Characters have a new combat stat called "Attack Power." Attack Power helps determine melee damage dealt. The new Attack Power value is displayed in your character sheet as Power. This value is based on class, level and ability scores. Most classes use strength, but rogues and hunters use a combination of strength and agility. The main purpose of Attack Power is to provide a more consistent effect from buffs, regardless of weapon speed. Slow weapons will receive a larger bonus from your Attack Power than faster weapons which will ultimately balance slow and fast weapons. It is important to note that most attack bonuses in the game now add to your Attack Power.

There are still some other good considerations beyond the damge per blow that make fast weapons more preferable.

[Bolty]

The mage has 3 different single target fire spells and I have no idea what the difference is besides damage, mana and spell timer.

Hiya Laz, Pete,

I like your posts a lot - good input. I also don't mean to single out one part of these posts and dwell on it, but I'm not ready yet to give my own general thoughts of the game. I am waiting until much, much farther into the beta (perhaps near final) before I make my "will I buy this game" call.

However, I think some of the sweeping generalizations being made here are a *tad* bit unfair. Since I'm only really familiar with the Mage, I'll jump in on Laz's comment above with some details:

Mages have three general attacks. The other spells are utility-based, and some are very useless indeed in their current implementation. I don't really care that much about it, considering that just three weeks ago Blizzard really moved around the Mage's spells (trashed Phantasms, added Sleep, changed rank level availability). I think it's clear that, for all classes, they're still really moving things around.

The Mage's four primary attacks are:

1) Fire Ball
2) Fire Blast
3) Frost Bolt
4) Arcane Missiles

These three elements are the backbone of the Mage, and there's more to them than simple differences in damage, mana, and spell timer.

1) Fire Ball is the major nuker. It requires an extra-long time to cast, and features the longest attack range of ANY attack in the game, period. It does massive damage.
2) Fire Blast is the instant-cast nuker. It performs massive damage as well, but fires instantly - this allows you to use it once the mob reaches melee range. Once cast, you have to wait 10 seconds before you can use it again. It also uses up gobs of mana.
3) Frost Bolt is the slowdown spell. It requires less time to cast than Fire Ball, does less damage, but reduces the movement speed of enemies by 50%. Frost Bolt is more mana efficient than Fire Ball, but lacks the "uber" punch that Fire Ball does. Usually I lead off a fight with Frost Bolt, giving me time to send off some Fire Balls before the monster closes.
4) Arcane Missiles is the "oh crap" spell, using up a ton of mana but featuring the killer trait of all arcane spells - they can't be stuttered. This allows the Mage to wail on a monster even as he/she is being attacked. Trying to get off a Fire Ball while attacked is an exercise in futility due to the stuttering, but Arcane Missiles works fine.

The differences between the spells are subtle, but they're there. Expert players will know exactly what spell to use in any situation and adjust their tactics accordingly. I like Mages because battles are not simply "click on a monster, press a button, and sit back." A Mage will never survive a prolonged melee encounter with a mob of their level.
If they can't kill the mob quickly, they die.

Also, I've found the generalization that Priests are just healers to be patently unfair. Just watch MongoJerry in action. As far as I can see, every class can solo pretty well.

The game needs work. But Pete, before a final comment on difficulty, have you done much gaming in the instanced dungeons yet (Van Cleef in Phase 1, Wailing Caverns in Phase 2, for example)? The instanced dungeons are where the challenges are, the best quests are, and the best rewards are. The "open" areas where you run around and kill things are considered to be the "easy" areas. I have found that the most fun in WoW is in the instanced dungeons, even though my current belief is that from a questing and leveling point of view, elite quests in instanced dungeons aren't worth doing. In other words, powerlevelers should skip instanced dungeons if they want to level up the fastest. But adventurers such as us should definitely give them a shot.

-Bolty

[DeeBye]

I like Mages because battles are not simply "click on a monster, press a button, and sit back." A Mage will never survive a prolonged melee encounter with a mob of their level.

Most of my experience with WoW thus far comes from playing a Druid, and a lot of what you say applies to them as well. In fact, I'd say that their attack options vary quite a bit more. Right now, using animal forms in battle is horribly broken (I don't use them other than for the novelty of it), but I expect Blizzard to address that shortly.

Even taking Bears and Cats out of the Druid arsenal, there are still quite a bit of weapons at a Druid's disposal. If there's a "jack of all trades" class, the Druid is it. He's an attack spell caster, a melee character, a healer, and a utility character. Once Bears and Cats are adjusted, his options get even larger.

The downside to this huge variety is that he's mediocre in each category. I'm constantly amazed at players saying they can easily solo enemies 4+ levels higher than them. My Druid surely can't. I can take on most enemies one-on-one that are within a level or two of me, but even two enemies at or near my level make mincemeat out of me. Three enemies is certain death.

It might be that my Druid is woefully underequipped, but my gut feeling is that it's because his attack options are intentionally underpowered to make up for his extreme versatility. He's a marginal spellcaster, a marginal tank, a marginal healer, and deals out marginal melee damage.

It's a pity that I play mostly solo, as the Druid is a great party comrade. He can sub himself into whatever role is lacking in the group.

The quests that give me the most amount of trouble are the ones where you have to enter concentrated enemy camps and either kill specific enemy types or grab a specific item. Since I have no way of dealing with groups of enemies, I had to learn how to make each and every battle a one-on-one battle, while still making headway towards my goal.

Frankly, it really reminds me playing a Warrior in Diablo when faced with a room full of witches. You sneak in, activate one, and dispose of it in a safe battleground. Rinse and repeat. If you activate more than one or two, you're toast.

All the while you have to hope that you are clearing them out fast enough to stay ahead of the respawn rate so that an enemy doesn't mystically appear behind you during a fight.

All this might seem like common sense to anyone who has been playing WoW for any amount of time, but it certainly involves strategy.

The battles themselves involve an equal amount of strategy. Druids can't just spam their most powerful attacks for the duration of the fight, because they don't really have a most powerful attack. They have a lot of useful lesser spells, but nothing "uber".

My usual method of attack is to "pull" a desired enemy using either Starfire (high mana cost, high damage, long casting timer) or Moonfire (insta-cast, low damage-over-time). There are pros and cons to using each pulling spell. Starfire would be my preferred choice most of the time, but the casting timer is so great that enemies sometimes wander out of the spell range before I can get one off. Thus, if an enemy is moving away from me, I'll generally use Moonfire. If the activated enemy is at a great enough distance, I'll try to get off a Wrath (medium casting speed, medium mana cost) or another Starfire while it closes the distance.

Faerie Fire and Moonfire are both insta-cast spells that I like to keep on the enemy during battle. Rejuvenation is an insta-cast "heal-over-time" time that helps keep my Druid alive, so it's one that I like to keep active. I constantly have to check all of these buffs and debuffs (they all have very short timers) during battle to make sure that they are all a go, as they really can mean the difference between an easy victory or an embarrassing death. The problem is that constantly casting these spells will deplete my mana pool to nothing, so I have to selectively cast them for mana conservation.

All this while my Druid will be madly wailing away with his slow-as-molasses staff. It does high enough damage, but it's too slow to interrupt any spells (the Bristleback Geomancer quest was a pain++++). Right now I'm contemplating spending some much-needed skill points into a faster weapon skill, but seeing as though Druids need as many skill points as they can get I'm unsure if it would worth the cost. I can't go all strength and stamina, because my spell casting abilities will suffer. I can't go all spirit and intelligence, because then I won't be an effective melee Druid dude. There's also agility, which is never useless. Not to mention Tradeskills.

[lemekim]

All this while my Druid will be madly wailing away with his slow-as-molasses staff.  It does high enough damage, but it's too slow to interrupt any spells (the Bristleback Geomancer quest was a pain++++).  Right now I'm contemplating spending some much-needed skill points into a faster weapon skill, but seeing as though Druids need as many skill points as they can get I'm unsure if it would worth the cost.  I can't go all strength and stamina, because my spell casting abilities will suffer.  I can't go all spirit and intelligence, because then I won't be an effective melee Druid dude.  There's also agility, which is never useless.  Not to mention Tradeskills.

You really should consider pumping your Spirit and Intelligence, and probably even Strength and Stamina to the max. Don't bother with agility, the extra % dodge it gives is something like .05 or .1%, really not worth it. High mana pool with high spirit can really make a difference. As for tradeskills, in the later levels the skill points will come fast and often, so you shouldn't worry about that.

[DeeBye]

As for tradeskills, in the later levels the skill points will come fast and often, so you shouldn't worry about that.

I don't like that advice. I want to be able to use my tradeskills ASAP. If I can't make use of them right away, then why even bother?

[lemekim]

Then you have to choose if you would rather be able to level well, or maximize your tradeskills; you can't have both, unless you are only specializing in 2, maybe 3 tradeskills.

[Nystul]

2) Rogues and to a degree warriors can try out different skill combos to try and kill the mob faster, and warlocks can use different curses and a different minion. That's about it. As said above, it only makes your guaranteed victory more guaranteed, or damages a mob a bit more before you die. The number of monsters is all that counts.

I disagree with a lot of the items you listed, but I'll address this one specifically. Since I've played a warrior the furthest, let's look at that. My strategies probably aren't optimal, but in any case there is more to it than it may look like to an observer.

My usual solo routine is to stay in defensive stance. I will try as carefully as possible to lure one mob, and I have a gun to help with this. Once the mob gets close, I often open with a demoralizing shout to lower the damage against me. If my enemy is pretty buff, I then use a sequence of sundering strikes to make him more vulnerable for future attacks. Then I go into an alternating sequence of shield block and revenge, trying to preserve my own life while finishing off the enemy as quickly as possible. Even if victory is certain, trying to make optimal use of the skills can be critical, because a second mob could stumble into you, spawn on top of you, or in some cases be spawned by the first mob. So in my typical routine attack, I'm using a sequence of about 4 combat skills (not counting my buffing shout, or bloodrage which I am likely to use right at the start of the fight).

However, not every battle is so routine. I may face an enemy with some spells or healing spell, in which case I may try to save enough rage to attempt a shield bash to stop their spell. I may try to use an easy enemy to build up rage to use against the next foe. I may face a pure caster and decide to switch into battle stance, where I have charge, another comination of damage skills, and another spell-distrupting skill. I may face a tough melee enemy who is "social" and now I face a dilemma. Depending on which stance I use, I will have different tactics to try to keep him from reaching his friends to get help. An example in battle stance would be to let my rage build up a little bit in the middle of the fight, then try to get a hamstring off just before the enemy flees, and then use the built up rage to quickly finish him with strikes and/or pummels. If he makes it to his friend, or pulls me close enough to activate more mobs, obviously it can be a grave problem. Of course it is easier to avoid this if you can pull the enemy far away from his friends initially, but this is not possible if there are mobs in every direction.

Speaking of grave problems, we have the desperation scenario. Instead of one mob, it's 2, 3, or 4. Or instead of a manageable mob, it's an uber-boss. Now the gloves come off. It starts with inner rage to fuel my skills. Then it might be shield wall to buy a few crucial seconds, or intimidating shout if I decide to run away. If I stay and fight, then something like thunderclap might come into play. Healing potions always come into play here, and other items like bloodstones or engineering gadgets could come in handy to turn the tide.

Then, there are group tactics. In a typical group, I will be tanking by using defensive stance and using taunt over and over. Fairly straightforward, if we are only facing one mob. If we face multiple mobs, suddenly I have to adjust my tactics to the situation. I might use my long-timered "challenging shout" to try to draw aggro from all of the mobs, or I may try to taunt whichever mob is attacking a vulnerable party member, or I may lock onto one mob and stall it while the group nukes the other. If the party has multiple warriors, or is generally pretty tankish, then I need to figure out if I need to taunt of if I can use more aggressive skills, or even switch to battle stance and play like a rogue.

It's possible (almost certain actually) that I overthink my battles and could do better with a simpler skill combination. But one thing I am quite sure about is that a good warrior has to worry about more than just finding a sequence that does optimal damage.

All of that said, it is true that many, many battles are simply either too hard or too easy. I guess it's the player's responsibility to find an area (or a party) in which most battles don't fit those categories and have some fun.

[Brother Laz]

@ Ruvanal: Yes they added attack power, but that doesn't affect the 30% chance to cast fire damage of Flametongue...

@ Bolty: I don't like timers. If Fireblast did much less damage than Fireball and has less range but casts instantly, it would be properly balanced against Fireball without resorting to a stupid timer.

Three things a MMORPG can really do without:

1) Skill timers. Both the short couple-of-seconds ones, and the hour long ones used to 'balance' an otherwise overpowered skill. Balance the SKILL for antichrissakes. Make Inner Rage and Blood Rage mutually exclusive for 10 seconds, but decrease the rage bonus from Inner Rage. Laying of Hands should not even exist in the game. [both D2 and WoW...]

2) Critical failures and on/off resistances. When I throw a ball of fire at an enemy, he's going to take damage unless he's a demon or something and lives in a lava cave. [= 75% resistance in Diablo] Ditto for sleep, mind control and their ilk. You cast a sleep spell, the target is going to fall asleep. That's a law of nature. If he doesn't, you have screwed up the spell, which I don't think would happen to a professional adept mage all that often [at least not every fifth spell or so].

3) Utility spells. When there are fire/cold/holy/shadow/nature ward buffs in the game, every high level fight has to be balanced for people with the appropriate wards on them. Which means it gets too hard for those not having the wards. Or the other way round: too easy for people with all the wards. It is the age old '1 team of 5 >> 5 teams of 1' thing that plagues Diablo 2 as well. Having tank characters to protect weak casters is already a very important reason to group, no need to have the WoW equivalent of Battle Orders, Oak Sage and Fanaticism to boost the power of everyone in the party tenfold as well. Ugh.

@ DeeBye: 'It's possible (almost certain actually) that I overthink my battles and could do better with a simpler skill combination.' I'll give you that: the rogue and warrior are the only two classes that allow you to use your brain and come out slightly ahead. Scrap the warlock, because most battles seem to consist of piling all dots you have on the enemy and spamming Shadowbolt. Your only choices are whether to use Shadowbolt and live, or use RoF or Hellfire and die.

[Jarulf]

Heh, I obviously need to have someone teach me how to play the warrior, or rather, tell me about how things work. I have not even bought most skills you use :) When looking at many, it seems to not be worth it, but I must be missing something. A few questions (from someone that has played a Night Elf warrior to level 2 and a Orc warrior to 19 (so far) mind you.

In defensive stance (have never used it), do one still use rage? My impression is that you do. So how do you get a demoralizing shout of before you engage an enemy?

What really IS the difference with defensive stance? Do one take less damage? Less often hit? I should perhaps start experimenting with it.

Are those skills such as hamstring and pummel really of any use? Seems to me that one want to simply dish out more damage instead and hence I usually do strikes as much as I can, coupled with that shout that increase ones damage whenever possible. Typically in a battle were I see I clearly will kill the mob without taking much damage, I let range build up to get it of at the end in preparation for future monsters.

Yes, I am of the “dish out as much damage as possible as quickly as possible” type of players. I might take some damage to of course, but I like fishing and tried cooking so now I have VERY easy access to food that heal 288 or more and with sitting down and such, I usually heal some 400+ health faster than the food takes. My routine is mostly a charge (for the stun) and then use strike as often as possible. The shout I mentioned when possible and setting of a Thunder strike, especially if multiple monsters fight me or if I fight a fast attacking one. That is pretty much what I have. In groups I use the skill that makes monsters turn fighting me as well of course. Versus some spell casters I can use the attack that interrupt spells. However, one need to preserve rage for that so one have it when one see the spell starting, and even then, one doesn’t have enough time often, if one have initiated some other attack first and the spell comes off before one get a chance to interrupt it. Versus some monsters it is almost impossible to be quick enough to interrupt it (and I am not referring to the times when the attack does not interrupt the spell).

[Brother Laz]

[OT: how did you get into the beta Jarulf? You're not American?]

[Tal]

In defensive stance (have never used it), do one still use rage? My impression is that you do. So how do you get a demoralizing shout of before you engage an enemy?

What really IS the difference with defensive stance? Do one take less damage? Less often hit? I should perhaps start experimenting with it.

Yes - the way I understand the stance working is that it is a quick way to build up rage. You have fewer offensive abilities but make up for it with higher ability to block and tank. For obvious reasons this is more useful in a group setting.

Are those skills such as hamstring and pummel really of any use?

I find hamstring exceptionally useful when soloing against creeps that like to run off when they're damaged too severely. Once hamstrung you can keep them in range so they cannot summon help.

Pummel in my opinion is only useful against casters. If you successully pummel them you can interrupt their magic casting.

[Nystul]

In defensive stance (have never used it), do one still use rage? My impression is that you do. So how do you get a demoralizing shout of before you engage an enemy?


You still use rage. It is possible to build up your rage a bit before combat by using a defensive stance skill called "bloodrage". This basically is a slow trade of life into rage for a few seconds. It recently occurred to me that I can use this skill between battles to generate enough rage to cast the shout that increases your power. As for demoralizing shout, I usually do use a few normal attacks at the very start of a battle to get enough rage for it.

What really IS the difference with defensive stance? Do one take less damage? Less often hit? I should perhaps start experimenting with it.

There are a lot of differences. It does increase your defense by 10, but this isn't a really big deal. The biggest defensive help is probably that you get a skill called shield block, which can block an attack with your shield more often when used. There isn't any big damage booster like strike. But revenge can be used to get an extra attack each time you dodge an attack.

Defensive stance is very popular for group play because you can use the taunt skill to keep the enemies attacking you instead of the mages or rogues. The rogues and mages can then do more than enough damage to make up for you not using rend or strike.

Are those skills such as hamstring and pummel really of any use?

Hamstring can have two uses. One is to set up your own retreat, if you need to run away. More often, you use it to keep the enemy from retreating quickly, which is really useful against enemies who run for help. It will wear off after a certain number of seconds, so you have to pick the right time to use it.

Pummel is mainly to interrupt spells. (Defensive stance has an identical skill called shield bash.) Timing this attack right is difficult. But it can be useful at times. Earlier this push, I was fighting some harpies who heal themselves once during the battle. If I could recognize the healing cast and interrupt it, I could kill them much more quickly.

[MongoJerry]

Ah, well.  We'll see.  I hope that this will be a game that will be playable for a neophyte but still challenging (and not just in the boredom sense of having to kill a million mobs to level) for a hard core player.  I don't see it now, I don't see it promised, and I don't particularly see it requested by the community.

Pete, if you're looking for challenges, start getting groups together and go through instance dungeons. That's where the real challenges and rewards lie, and I think that's intentional on Blizzard's part. I think the idea is that the outdoor areas can be largely soloed by most players for those who just want to solo for a bit, the mines and castles can be done in groiups of 2-3, and the instances require a well balanced group of five players to run them if you intend to run them at or near the level of the mobs inside. For me, the best part of this game are instance runs. You really get to know people there and how well they work in groups. Lately, I've been running the Monastery's four instances in a wide variety of groups (as a priest, I get invited to run instances by total strangers a *lot*). It's amazing what a difference having skilled players working as a team makes. I ran the library instance of the Monastery with a group yesterday that had all kinds of trouble with deaths and near-deaths. We were constantly struggling to make headway there. Then, I got into a another group of characters of similar levels and the library was an absolute breeze. We then moved on to the cathedral, the hardest instance in the Monastery (and I think in the game for now), and while things were hard and we had a few deaths, we managed quite well and were able to kill the final big three bosses. So I think the instances are where the challenges of the game really lay, and if you want a challenge, I highly recommend them. Oh, and also, if you want the best loot in the game, run instances, too. I can't believe the stuff that drops in the Monastery.

[Charis]

Well I look forward to it! I've not yet played an instanced dungeon (doing too much
at once to get too far lvl'ing up). In particular, I'm hoping our orc party will continue
to grow up and do our first instanced dungeon. At what lvl would I likely hit my first one,
and for orcs, where would one get such a quest? (It is a quest, right?)

Charis

[Bolty]

Charis, your first instanced dungeon will be the Wailing Caverns. You should be able to go for it with a party of 5 level 18'ers, IF they play expertly.

WoW is very unforgiving in instanced dungeons. If you don't play well, the whole party dies, because just one bad player can doom everyone else. Remember too that if you play for 5 hours and get to the very end of the instance - and are then wiped out - you'll have to start all over. When you go back to an instance as a ghost, you gain your body back AT THE START of the instance.

This raises tension tremendously. By the time you work your way to the end, you're freaking out that you don't get killed :)

-Bolty

[[wcip]Angel]

[OT: how did you get into the beta Jarulf? You're not American?]

I'm wondering that myself, as I had the opportunity to join but couldn't because I live on the other side of the globe (next to jarulf.)

[Charis]

how did you get into the beta? You're not American

:o

Good grief man!!!! He's.... Jarulf?! B)

Charis