WoW: Cataclysm - SPOILERS WITHIN

I am VERY curious to see how their numbers decline come SWTOR.

I don't think it's just games like TOR, but the gradual erosion by a lot of games. There's a lot of big names going F2P now, it's not just one knife in the back where you can say "It was Rift" (unless their population exactly mirrors the decline) or so on, but lots of pin pricks.

I guess if you want to drag cataclysm into it you might say it wasn't good enough armour against other interests draining their players away.

merphle wrote:
Scratched wrote:

Minus another 800k subscriptions, to 10.3m. - http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/3...

I think this will provide a good data point from before they offered the yearly offer, and the next expansion. Cataclysm was rough to them though.

That's still north of $120m USD revenue per month...

Yes, but losing such large amounts of subscribers will hurt Activision's stock price, which is definitely something to consider.

Not if the bulk of them are in China where Activision isn't making a ton of money.

As one of the other game sites noted, the thing that's hurting Activision at the moment is the lack of a new game.

But the stock price suggests that investors don't really care all that much. A-B shares today at $13.93. That's a buck fifty higher than at the end of 2010 and nearly $2.50 above a year ago at the same time.

Yes, there's plenty of companies that would love to be 'hurting' like Activison are now.

Scratched wrote:

Yes, they're still at the stage where the sum total of their losses would be like a mountain of players for most other games. Still, it's going to be interesting to watch the landscape over the coming years, it seems like WoW is no longer the default safe/good MMO (at least in China) and perhaps the competition is no longer merely snapping at WoW's heels.

Shoot, the sum total of their losses during Cataclysm are as many or more subs than some MMOs have ever had.

BHA us doing another weekly leveling group if anyone is interested.

I'm trying to get my head around the Valor Point changes as detailed here.

Let me make sure I have it right:

Tier 11 - retired

Tier 12 - available for Justice Points.

Tier 13 - available through Valor Points and various raids

In other words, nothing has really changed? I'm ending that sentence with a question mark because Blizzard seems to indicate that it wants to change the purpose of Valor Points, but I don't see any change. What am I missing here?

P.S.: Some signs appear to point to the patch dropping on 11/29. That seems early to me, but, hey, rumor mill has gotta churn.

Enix wrote:

I'm trying to get my head around the Valor Point changes as detailed here.

Let me make sure I have it right:

Tier 11 - retired

Tier 12 - available for Justice Points.

Tier 13 - available through Valor Points and various raids

In other words, nothing has really changed? I'm ending that sentence with a question mark because Blizzard seems to indicate that it wants to change the purpose of Valor Points, but I don't see any change. What am I missing here?

P.S.: Some signs appear to point to the patch dropping on 11/29. That seems early to me, but, hey, rumor mill has gotta churn.

Tier pieces are no longer available through valor. Likely what they mean is that Valor is supposed to be for "filling in" slots that you don't get in raid as opposed to the primary source of upgrading. Which will be interesting as, without valor, I would have only like 4-5 pieces from FL... (less on the priest).

Enix wrote:

I'm trying to get my head around the Valor Point changes as detailed here.

Let me make sure I have it right:

Tier 11 - retired (probably still purchasable with JP)
Tier 12 - available for Justice Points. (yes)
Tier 13 - available through various raids (not VP)

Bolded mine.

Tier 13 will drop from bosses 2-6 in the Dragon Soul raid instance (Deathwing is bosses 7 and 8). It will drop in all three modes: LFR (ilevel 384), Normal (397), and Heroic (410). It will not be available for purchase with Valor Points. You will be able to purchase chestpieces, gloves, etc for Valor Points, but they will not be Tier Pieces with the appropriate set bonuses, just regular pieces of gear which may or may not be upgrades for you. Blizzard is doing this for two reasons: They feel that LFR makes Tier tokens accessible enough that they don't need to give them away for VP anymore, and they offer set-bonus-less equivalents just in case you get a horrible run of luck and simply cannot get a piece you need to drop. They want VPs more as a consolation prize in case you don't get what you want, not something that you use to buy the best-in-slot items.

(However, note that in most cases VP gear will still be better than most non-tier LFR gear, since the VP items will be ilevel 397 but the LFR items from non-Deathwing bosses will only be 384).

Tier 12 will certainly be available for Justice Points.

Tier 11 will probably also still be available for Justice Points - Blizzard tends not to take things out of the game unless they have to, and it still gives players the ability to acquire it for transmogrification purposes. Also, the T11 tokens still drop from Cho, Nef, and Al, and people may value those set bonuses higher than the T12 bonuses for some reason. For the most part, though, T11 will be made obsolete by virtue of T12 being dropped to Justice level.

Keldar wrote:
Enix wrote:

Tier 13 - available through various raids (not VP)

Bolded mine. ...

Tier 13 will drop from bosses 2-6 in the Dragon Soul raid instance (Deathwing is bosses 7 and 8). It will drop in all three modes: LFR (ilevel 384), Normal (397), and Heroic (410). It will not be available for purchase with Valor Points. You will be able to purchase chestpieces, gloves, etc for Valor Points, but they will not be Tier Pieces with the appropriate set bonuses, just regular pieces of gear which may or may not be upgrades for you.

Thanks for that clarification, Carg. I think my confusion is over language -- specifically, my sloppy use of it. ("Tier gear" to raiders usually means "stuff with set bonuses"; I lump everything that's in the same general iLvl into something I call a tier) The upcoming change doesn't really change my approach -- run some Heroics to get JPs and VPs and fall into leftover gear via an occasional raid.

Main hand weapons are still raid-only (i.e. not via Valor Points)?

@ Tall: Blizzard has said they want more people raiding, so I guess that's the avenue you (and everyone else) will have to take to get Deathwing capable gear. I'm not a big fan of PUGs, but, hey, LFR pugs should be twice as entertaining as LFD pugs.

Enix wrote:

Thanks for that clarification, Carg. I think my confusion is over language -- specifically, my sloppy use of it. ("Tier gear" to raiders usually means "stuff with set bonuses"; I lump everything that's in the same general iLvl into something I call a tier) The upcoming change doesn't really change my approach -- run some Heroics to get JPs and VPs and fall into leftover gear via an occasional raid.

There were also other weird sets with set bonuses that didn't count as Tier, such as the Dungeon Sets, which dropped from 5-man instances. Tier sets properly referred only to the epic sets that dropped from the major raids - T1 from Molten Core, T2 from Blackwing Lair, etc.

Main hand weapons are still raid-only (i.e. not via Valor Points)?

I don't think there are any VP weapons, but there are some ilevel 378 weapons out of the new 5-man dungeons.

@ Tall: Blizzard has said they want more people raiding, so I guess that's the avenue you (and everyone else) will have to take to get Deathwing capable gear. I'm not a big fan of PUGs, but, hey, LFR pugs should be twice as entertaining as LFD pugs.

They should be five times as interesting, in fact, since LFR raids are 25-man only. I'm sure as a guild we'll put a few partial LFR runs together - a "see how many people we can get together to beat down some bosses" sort of thing. The LFR actually also apparently breaks the raid instance into two pieces - bosses 1-4 and bosses 5-8 are considered separate instances - so we might actually be able to clear one in fairly decent time before four months have passed.

Could someone recommend a raid frames/buff tracker combo that you like?

My current compilation might bite the dust as of 4.3, and I'm hoping not to have to cobble together something on my own.

I use Shadowed Unit Frames (SUF), and like it, but it's a bit configuration-heavy to get it to do exactly what you want. That may be an understatement. Buff tracker, I just use Blizzard's default UI, at least, for MY buffs/debuffs. SUF keeps track of target and party buffs/debuffs fairly well, and sticks the important ones out front for you.

Anyone know the least expensive way to buy a month back to WoW? I was waiting for a good six month deal, but I can't do the year/Diablo 3 deal because I travel for work months out of the year. If you just wanted to hop back in for a month or so, what would you suggest (other than a month sub, obviously)?

Thanks!

Natus wrote:

Anyone know the least expensive way to buy a month back to WoW? I was waiting for a good six month deal, but I can't do the year/Diablo 3 deal because I travel for work months out of the year. If you just wanted to hop back in for a month or so, what would you suggest (other than a month sub, obviously)?

Thanks!

I'd buy a prepaid timecard since there's no need to input a credit card and deal with remembering to unsubscribe. Someone linked to cheap WoW prepaid cards in this forum earlier, but the ones there seem to be out of stock.

If your google-fu is greater than mine I bet you'll find some deals on the intertubes somewhere.

Natus wrote:

Anyone know the least expensive way to buy a month back to WoW? I was waiting for a good six month deal, but I can't do the year/Diablo 3 deal because I travel for work months out of the year. If you just wanted to hop back in for a month or so, what would you suggest (other than a month sub, obviously)?

Thanks!

Wait for time cards to go on sale? There were just a few deals for Black Friday. My last foray into WoW I just paid my $15 on the Blizzard store for a code that enabled 30 days. If you find a cheaper way to pay for a single month please share.

Well, I hope that the time cards go on sale sometime this upcoming holiday season. $15 per one month is the norm, and IIRC a six-month sub averages out to $13/month. I'm hoping that the tidal wave of great game releases causes Blizzard to fish for re-subs like me. I'm dying to get back in the water, but there are so many great games out now that I want a deal. Is that so wrong?