Season 4 Talk

So this post by Slorkuz on the European forums shed some light on what we can expect from Season 4. And frankly, there are some aspects I am not happy with. Oh, and check out the data-mined gear (EDIT: The items are up on the PTR instead of data-mined) here.

Let’s talk about what can be good changes:

If a character’s personal rating is more than 150 points below the team rating, they will earn points based on their personal rating instead of the team rating.

Good change. This ideally is going to prevent point selling and make people play for the points themselves.

If the average personal rating of the players queuing for a game is more than 150 points below the team’s rating, the team will be queued against an opponent matching or similar to the average personal rating.

At first I thought this would backfire and up encouraging team selling rather than just point selling (although team selling is rampant) but put it into conjunction with the first statement and it is not so bad. Even if someone buys a 2300 rated team, they will face 1500 rated opponents if that is their rating, earn points off of a 1500 rating, and quickly sandbag the team rating when they lose with a 2300 rated team in the 1500-1600 bracket or so.

I think another change that could be made, although it might not be necessary with the aforementioned changes, is to prevent the founder of the team from quitting the team. That way the incentive to sell teams is not there since they would be unable to join another team unless they completely disband it.

The problem I have with the plans for the new Arena season is the rating requirements on Honor gear. Putting it on additional Arena pieces is fine, but not on Battleground gear. There are a lot of people that enjoy playing in Battlegrounds but not in Arenas. Casual folks who queue up for a few Arathi Basins or Alterac Valley or the like. But what will be the point now? To buy out-dated gear? It’s not an incentive for people to play. No boots, bracers, or rings unless you play in Arena. I don’t like Blizzard forcing multiple aspects of the game to achieve a single goal. Sure, I will play in Arena and what not, but there are a lot of people who won’t.

It’s just a bad idea. Blizzard will get fewer people doing Battlegrounds as opposed to more people playing in Arena. They have their tournament realm, Arena does not need to encroach on Battlegrounds as the play-style in each venue is completely different. And in all honesty, this will further perpetuate class imbalances in Arena.

Fewer and fewer Hunters will be able to obtain gear. Take a look at the Brutal Gladiator’s Bonegrinder. Tell me, how long do you think your pet is going to last against Warriors as melee damage continues to scale like this? And this is not calling for a nerf to Warriors but rather the idea that pets need to scale. Badly. As this damage goes up, Hunter viability in Arena goes down.

But to me the bottom line is don’t force Arena. We know you like it Blizzard. It’s your e-Sport thing. But there are plenty of people who don’t want to try to form an Arena team with only the ideal class composition in order to meet ratings to buy a belt. Sure, some of those ratings are easy to obtain but forcing them to do it at all is just . . . . meh.

So let’s talk about random happy stuff. :) I am sure you all know who Jonathan Coulton is. YOU BETTER! He is awesome, his music is great. And a user by the name of Spiffworld has done a incredible job of making WoW-themed videos using Jonathan Coulton’s stuff. Watch the videos, and be sure to check out Jonathan’s other stuff.

On his website I saw a video of him in concert with a girl singing lead for his “Tom Cruise Crazy” song, and followed the link to her YouTube profile, and her stuff did not disappoint either. Meet sweetafton23, also known as Molly. Her “My Hope” song is great, making fun of all the MySpace users, althought she admits in a twist of irony, she also made one after requests from her fans.

Archimonde down to 60% last night. Some people weren’t grasping the finer points of using Tears of the Goddess and staying out of fires. Here is a tip:

If you’re standing in a fire, don’t stand in the fire.

I think we will get him tonight though. I will record our attempts provided my Internet allows me to stay connected. I have a couple good songs I want to put with the video. I was excited for the High Warlord Naj’entus video but I guess I will use them for Archimonde now, which is probably a more exciting fight to watch anyways.

OK, that’s it for now. Hope you have a good Thursday. We are getting random snow flurries. SNOW! It’s May. Seriously. : / Comments, questions, concerns, favorite stuff to watch on YouTube. Post it here.