Complete lack of any AI for the monsters

[kandrathe]

You are still locked into the existing system. Sure, one might have to change the system oe normal/elites. Why must EVERY monster have tons of damage just because it is supposed to be a hard encounter? Why no mix? Why not mix in hard hitting monsters with less hard hitting ones that for example goes after priests and such. After all, players are vastly different, not all hit hard, not all wear huge armor and so on, why not have the same for monsters? There are endless possibilities.
[right][snapback]87727[/snapback][/right]

I've been thinking about the aggro list, and it's not a bad solution to the AI problem. The MOB does need to "decide" who to hit and we know at least two factors that increase the values on the hate list include damage done to the mob and healing done. It would be fairly easy to modify that formula to account for potential threat (e.g. higher levels have more powerful spells), or easier kills (e.g. (FACTOR / AC*HP) * HATE). But how playable is a game where any MOB goes first to kill the priests, mages, and warlocks, druids, and then rogues before turning on the lower DPS turtle toons?

It would change the nature of the game entirely where you would need more hard shells to serial aggro and sacrifice themselves to those mobs with priests preparing, rezing, bubbling things out of combat from a safe distance. Or, you would depend on mobile battles where the mobs are slowed, hamstrung, dazed, with the soft shells kiting and healing on the run. "Now I'm the bait, since I generated the most hate. Run, Kite, Run!" You would neuter the tanking skills of the warriors to be able to generate threat to pin down mobs.

This really now descends into game theory. Does the AI reality matter, as long as the rules are known? There is a chance of winning and a chance of losing. If you look at how this game is built, it is very trivial to kill things marginally below your level, and very difficult to kill things marginally above your level. There is no point in killing things too low, or too high. So now you can structure the encounters to become more increasingly difficult, by MOB as increasingly higher levels. I'd say this is what Blizzard has done. In Diablo II terms, I think 1-60 is normal difficulty, 60+ is nightmare difficulty, and we have yet to see hell difficulty. People will play the game because they find winning a challenge, and there is a reward for winning. Now, another aspect to consider; Looking at WCIII vs WOW -- how much of the concept of intelligent enemy in WOW was dependant on the Horde vs Alliance PvP? Perhaps the PVE AI was irrelevant in many ways because your intelligent adversaries should be mostly other players. Should WOW be a Chessmaster 5000, or more like an arcade shoot em' up?