The Valor Dance: Dailies, Reputation, Upgrades, Trouble

Mists of Pandaria has brought us a bit of a roller coaster when it comes to our valor points and how we acquire and speed them. In Cataclysm, there were very few changes (just the move from 1 dungeon per day awarding valor to 7 per week) and we essentially just did a few heroic dungeons, killed a few raid bosses, and spent our points when we had enough. In MoP, however, the valor gear was gated behind reputation which was gated behind dailies. Valor being unspendable before doing enough dailies has been much lamented by the player base. Of course, since launch, each patch has brought a new curve ball in terms of valor. Continue to see the different valor changes so far, the problems with those changes, and what’s coming up in patch 5.3!

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Transfer Gold Cross Realm

Ever want to start a character on a new server but don’t want to do it without the power of your gold? Transfer to a different server but hampered by pesky limits on gold transfer limits? Something recently occurred to me, it may have been obvious to others, but I’d yet to hear about it. The new pet system in 5.2 is a perfect way to send gold between characters on different servers. Continue to see how and why this works.

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Valor Upgrades and Why I Hope They Stay Gone

Patch 5.1 brought forth a fantastic (or so I may have seemed at first) new feature – gear upgrades with points. This feature allowed a player to take their piece of gear (as long as it met item level requirements) and upgrade it up to 8 item levels with justice points for blues or valor points for epic pieces. This gave players the ability to continue to use their valor points long after they had already purchased or surpassed the valor gear available. In this way, players could keep gaining more power for their characters even if they have incredibly bad luck with drops. Heck, I’ve been able to upgrade my Raid Finder Sha Touched weapon to be nearly the item level of getting a normal drop and above the Mogu’Shan Vaults two-hander that I’ve had no luck on. So why, when I heard that patch 5.2 would remove the valor upgrade vendor, was I happy to hear about it? And why on earth would I hope they stay gone? (more…)

Daily Thoughts: Did MoP Really Kill Alts?

I’ve read a lot of posts since Mists of Pandaria was released that Blizzard killed players ability to have max level alts (multiple characters) and have to wonder what merit there is to those arguments. As a player who had leveled one of every class to max level I can safely say that I feel a similar burden of almost any altoholic. My goal is always to have my characters raid ready (at least entry-level raids) and took all of my 10 characters into raid finder at least once. So here we find ourselves in Pandaria, a land with endless adventure (or work as some call it) and an additional class. Blizzard removed the cap on daily quests and made reputation gains important, added pet battles, added challenge mode dungeons, put 3 raids in the first tier, added scenarios, added a farm (ridiculously addictive somehow) on top of what we already had. With so much to do, is there any time for alts? The answer that I’ve found: Maybe. (more…)

Daily Thoughts: Too Easy is Still Too Easy

I finally got a chance to get into the second half of Mogu’shan Vaults as looking for raid (along with the first few bosses on normal mode as well, but that’s for another time) and I found the bosses to be much more interesting. These encounters were such that completely ignoring the mechanics may result in death (unlike the first half) where I kept my finger near the “Raise Ally” skill to bring up a tank or healer that may have died – cause we’d need them alive to win.

The first boss I landed on was the last one. The group had wiped on that encounter previously though we had little trouble collecting our loot that time. It did at least give me the impression that everyone had to at least catch on to what was happening or the healers would have trouble keeping up. After getting into my next group and passed the first bit of trash, the actual first boss was a little tricky if the group isn’t paying attention. Half of the team was dead before the boss fell. The second boss, Elegon, is a titan defense machine those is a little unlike those we’ve encountered before. This was the only boss we wiped on. Most of the raid, maybe, fell to their deaths, or something. Otherwise, the fight was tough but manageable. It as well ended with the raid looking like it might fall over if there were a small gust of wind.

So, if these fights were of appropriate difficulty for a raid finder situation, then why is this post about things being too easy still? Because the first half is still, ridiculously, too easy. Sure, raids typically get progressively harder as you go down the bosses, but even raid finder bosses shouldn’t be as much of a set of pushovers as the first three were – particularly given the raid is still pretty new and people don’t know it yet. Maybe I’m mistaken, but I’d like to think that most gamers (of really any type) want some sort of challenge as part of their enjoyment. Instead, the first half of MV shows people it’s a place to go to get free epics then it’s a slap in the face when the second half makes them work for it a little. Although I’m hopeful that future raids don’t aren’t such a walk in the park (which may be insulting to the difficulty of walking through a park), I can’t quite understand why these particular bosses were balanced this way. Any ideas?