Incoming patch

So 1.3 and the land of the dead starts today it seems.

Should make for an exciting week of WAR playing. Here's what I'm interested to see when the patch fully hits:

What's the impact of the Land of the Dead?

Lots of new stuff to do, but in potentially short bursts. Should make for a nice change of pace, but will the constant back and forth and the randomness of control be a major frustration? (ie. You log on ... oh well, the other side just got control of the LoD, might as well go have a snack.)

How will this affect the RvR siege game? What about city dungeons/bastion stair? (I assume that BS will basically rot until it gets fixed.)

They've rolled back the AoE/caster stat changes (as I understand it) but there's still plenty of other class mechanic changes in the works, always interesting to see how those play out.

Will the new and improved gunbad be an alt-cation destination of choice when LoD is unavailable? I know I'm interested.

As mentioned before, the talisman changes should have some interesting fallout. Curious to see exactly what happens to my bank full of mats and talis. IIRC there's something about these being grandfathered in, but we'll see what that looks like.

Glad to see auto-rolling, bag/storage changes, and bag opt-out getting in the game, those things will all be well received ...if they work.

What's next ... what should be?

Jeff Hickman's post on the LoD on the herald indicated that the following would be next on the block:

1. Addressing concerns related to Crowd Control and Area of Effect abilities.
2. Continuing to improve client and server stability and performance.
3. Strengthening and improving the Tier 4 experience.
4. Improving server population distribution – both in terms of overall population and realm balance.
5. Improving itemization and the overall distribution of “carrots” (rewards) throughout the game.

Well we knew 1. would get attention, as it was supposed to be in this patch before people started QQing. 2 and 4 are Mythic's personal hell ... they're never going away and will always be important.

3 and 5 are interesting (if vague). Improving Tier 4 ... uh, can I get a "hell yeah"? Bastion Stair needs a big re-tool, PQs in the mainland need a re-tool (to make them worth doing in endgame) and the RvR game still needs to um, work? Forts aren't super fun and while city-sieges are fun, they don't really ever go anywhere for most of us.

5. Could mean anything but hopefully it means a real examination of what loot is available and how it stacks up, a real overhaul of the gear choices and what it takes to get them. It's sort of absurd right now really with some really vital gear being super-easy to get (100g will buy you a lot of engame gear) and other stuff insanely hard.

What should be done? Well I'm going to get specific. Dungeons need better ramping up ... too many of them are like boss 1=SNORE boss2=SNORE boss3=WTFPWNED. That's just goofy. We did BWE last night, my first time and the first boss was just a total joke, but the second boss completely hammered us. An experience all-too familiar from other WAR dungeons (herald of solithex in Gunbad, slaurith in BS etc.)

Some bosses will be more difficult than others, and the last boss should be harder, but it shouldn't be night and day. Group composition (eg 2x MDPS or 2x RDPS) should make some easier and some harder, not all-easier or all-harder.

One other simple thing ... tell us what's in a bag. Why do they want gear to get wasted? It's great that we can pass on a bag now, but what if say I have annhilator shoulders and chest but not helm? should I take all gold bags? (not that I'm getting any gold bags mind you.) That'll mean a lot of wasted gear.

Besides, shouldn't I be able to tell if a friggin' bag has a chestplate or a helmet in it? it's a bag for god's sake, not a black hole.

Oh, and yeah, make RvR fun to do.

See you all in the LoD.