Saturday 14 November 2009

"Excuse me, waiter. Another round of nerfs, please."

Yeah, this time it's Lay on Hands. 5 years it's been perfectly fine and suddenly the bat comes a-swinging again.

Why?

It can't be used in Arenas so it can't be for that reason it's nerfed.
It is a lifesaver in PvE if you are suddenly up shit creek. Both for you or for the tank or whoever might benefit from it.

The only thing that remains is duels and Battlegrounds. And honestly, if it is nerfed because of that, then we can safely say that Paladins are the only class to be ever nerfed because of 1vs1 and Battlegrounds where people with little to no resilience roam and get one-shotted because they're in full greens or quest blues or any combination there of.

The nerf? Ah, yes. If you use it on yourself you get 2 lovely minutes of juicy forbearance.

I know. It's fucking retarded.

Death Knights have access to far better instant self-heals than Paladins have. Even if you include Lay on Hands. And they aren't on an 11-20 minute cooldown either. Not to mention that Arms warriors - any who knows what the hell he/she is doing - can completely and utterly annihilate a holy paladin.

Lay on Hands is overpowered but a 75% healing reduction through Mortal Strike and Unrelenting Assault isn't?

Ghostcrawler (who else?) said that it wasn't "fair" that you have to kill a Paladin 3 times when you only have to kill another class 1 time. That only says that we've got fuck all offensive tools and the other class beating the living daylights out of us have all the necessary tools at their immediate disposal to lay down some serious hurt on us.

We can't have an MS effect because this is a unique Warrior/Rogue/Hunter/Mage/Shadow Priest/Warlock ability.

We can't have a gap closer because this is a unique Druid/Warrior/Rogue/Death Knight ability.

We can't have a slow effect because this is a unique Mage/Warlock/Rogue/Warrior/Death Knight/Shaman/Hunter ability.

We can't have a proper interrupt/silence because this is a unique Mage/Warlock/Priest/Warrior/Rogue/Death Knight/Shaman/Hunter ability.


"And that is called Balance." (name the quote and get a cookie.)

Tuesday 13 October 2009

Aion – The Tower of Eternity

Or rather the Queue of Eternity. If you thought the WoW servers were horrible at launch, they are flawless in comparison to how awful Aion's were and still are.

During Closed Beta there were queues on every server. During open beta even more so. Up to 2hrs queue. Now, at launch, there still are queues of 2hrs+. You would've thought that they'd get it through their inch thick skulls that they need to upgrade their servers for retail launch.

It's been a few weeks now after launch and the queues still remain. Not to mention bots, gold famers, gold sellers, power-leveling services – I actually noticed these in-game spam adverts 2 days after official launch. But we'll get to that later...

RETAIL LAUNCH

For those who played in Closed Beta had everything set up and running to play the game. All that was needed to do was to simply input your payment of choice (credit card, game card, paypal) and enter the retail launch code from the Aion box and log in and play to your hearts desire.

Or rather, that's how it should've been. Trying to log in to your account on NC-Softs site was impossible. Server error, server timing out, all those "fun" things. When you actually managed to input your code and payment option, you couldn't log into the game because your account was deemed inactive as you hadn't paid yet. They (NC-Soft) didn't take into account the 30 day free time you get shipped with the box.

I, and many others, had to run through all kinds of stupid hoops on the account site just to get the account from Inactive to Playable. Some people who chose PayPal as payment got billed twice as they tried to activate their game properly.

The forums were in an uproar during launch day. It wasn't resolved until several hours later. I remember picking up my game that friday on my day off and I figured I'd have a fun time trying out this new MMO as it was looking pretty solid during beta. I came home around mid day and I couldn't log in to the game until at least 4 hrs later due to the horrible bugs and server time-outs during launch. Fun, yes?

QUEUES

As I mentioned earlier, there are insane queues on almost every server. The fact isn't made better that some servers are designated solely for french, german and spanish speaking people. Leaving oh, say, 6 or 7 odd servers for english speaking people only. Which have all filled up to the brim. They added ONE new server for english speaking people. One.

Honestly, they should've anticipated the half a million odd sales in EUROPE ALONE not to mention the queues during BETA that their servers need to be upgraded and/or get some more to compensate for the huge influx of people.

The North American and Europe forums are filled with complaints and questions how they (NC-Soft) didn't add a whole bunch of extra servers when they new that this game was going to get a huge influx of people.

What answer did we get from NC-Soft? Nothing. Except for a deluded PR post from Lance Stites, the executive producer of Aion.

He says that they are seeing time-frames where 60% of all players are playing at any given time. "Another surprising development is how long players are staying in game—I think that’s a testament to the enjoyable nature of the product ."
That is pure and utter bullshit. Most of those "players" are bots, gold farmers or gold sellers. The real players are either stuck in queue or are avoiding the 30 minute AFK logout because of the insane queues at prime-time. Enjoyable nature? Don't make me laugh...

He says: "The reality of the situation is that some servers quickly become very popular servers, with lines queued up to enter, but other servers have plenty of space to accommodate players. Obviously, adding servers won’t help in this case. If you’re waiting to enter a full server, 100 extra servers won’t help. "

Partly true, but let me go back to my previous point of HOW YOU SHOULD'VE FIGURED OUT AT BETA THAT YOU NEED MORE SERVERS! Idiot.



BOTS

Two days after retail launch I saw the first power-leveling service. Two days after that, gold seller spam. After that, it just went quickly downward. Nowadays you can't even log in without being hit by a million and one spammers all wanting to sell their gold, power leveling service etc. Etc.

Oh, and there are no GM's around to handle it, either. As you can only make petitionts between 9 am to 5 pm (I shit you not) and only 5 petitions per day. Seeing as how the GM's are non-existant and bots are still running rampant throughout the game, one can only surmise that NC-Soft doesn't give a rat's ass about it. They've said they've banned a whole bunch of accounts, but somehow we (the players) just don't believe it as we're seeing the same bots, the same names running around in the same old pattern.

OFFICIAL FORUMS

This is perhaps the absolutely best part: the CM's (community managers) can't post on their official forums due to some "bug" in the forum software. Yes. It's true. I couldn't make this shit up even if I tried. They CAN, however, post sticky notices but not much else. They also ask people to follow them on twitter. Yes. Twitter. Again, I couldn't make this shit up. It just stinks how utterly unprofessional this is.

The english forum CM, Ayase, posted a sticky topic asking people to express their thoughts on how they think NC-soft should handle the queues and bots. Excuse me, you are asking US how YOU should handle your own product when it's so blatantly obvious even a blind man could see it?

That thread has reached 13 pages with people all wanting to hear an official NC Soft representative or even the CM (Ayase) to reply to his own thread he's started. No luck. Guess we'll need to follow him on Twitter, right? Yeah, if you really think that's gonna happen, Ayase, you've got another thing coming.

I've seen them post more on unofficial forums than the official ones. I find it also amusing they can't solve a forum bug that prevents the CM's from posting.

Recently, people hve been posting that the queues have improved. That may well be so, but it's not thanks to NC-Soft. It's because most of the players have left (me included).

Anyone who isn't a fanboi can see that this game won't last the year if it continues the way it does.

There is no community representatives active, no GM's, no nothing. Anyone who ever says anything bad about NC-Soft on the official forums gets their post deleted. Speak no evil, see no evil?

It's a shame it had to come to this, really, as the game had potential. It has stunning graphics and the game runs smooth on most systems; but the complete and utter lack of support and horrible bugs still in the game that should've been resolved during beta makes it a sub-par game. At best.

If you're planning on buying this game, don't. Save them for STO or SW: Old Republic.

Tuesday 9 June 2009

The bat comes a-swinging again.

You know it, folks. Another overnight "hotfix". This time to Vindication which has been fine all the way through TBC and all the PTRs in WotLK up until 6 months in when BAM! The nerf-bat smacked it around with a vengeance.

Honestly, this is just stupid now. Why are Paladins the only class getting "overnight hotfixes" without even a word prior to it? This stinks of WotLK early days where JotW got nerfed from 33 to 15%.

Everything is starting to feel more and more like it's the badly thought out idea of Kalgan who is notorious for his hate towards Paladins back in the EverQuest days. And by the looks of it, Ghostcrawler jumped on that bandwagon.

A quote from Bornakk:
"Increasingly it felt like someone playing against a Ret-Pally really only had 60% of their health bar because Vindication took away 20% from the start and then Hammer of Wrath kicked in when they had 20% left. This change was something we could confidently hotfix and would have a minimal to no impact on the PvE side of things."

Protip: Hammer of Wrath does NOT kill a high-resilience target.

A quote from Ghostcrawler:
" The point was that Retribution's representation is at a pretty good place for the highest rated players. Maybe it's even balanced. But as you drop down 100 points, its percentage grows. The deeper you drop, the more it grows. We feel like we owe the lower rated players, who still might be good at PvP and just not world-class, as balanced a game as we can."

So you balance around sub-par playing in hopes that it will level out the playing field? Nice going, idiots. But I suppose it's all good as long as the Rogue/Mage/Priest teams continue to dominate the seasons and 3vs3 brackets. Don't see much "overnight hotfixes" to those.

But, do go on and destroy the paladin class. Bit by bit.

Scrub company catering scrub players. That's what Blizzard has become.

It's no wonder the original WoW dev-team left...

Monday 1 June 2009

Paladin Schmaladin no more?

The blogger Ferarro who has been writing the blog Paladin Schmaladin is apparently not who she or he appears to be.

To begin with, the blog itself is a fairly decent source on "How-To" for Paladins and whatnot. Lately, however, an unholy shitstorm has brewed up when it turns out that the writer of said blog has been lying through his/her teeth, claiming to be someone she/he isn't.

For starters, Ferarro claimed to be TechDarling. This claim was shot out of the sky when a warlock posted a link on the WoW forums to the site TechDarling and outed Ferarro as a fraud.

Recently, Ferarro closed down her blog, or rather, made it Private due to her having a stalker (stalking is bad, people, mmkay? Consult your doctor before practicing). I call BS on that, though. I think it's more along the fact that she's trying to save face as all the pictures you've come to associate with Ferarro are taken straight from TechDarling.

Reminds me of when a guy on a forum linked a picture to a girl claiming her to be his girlfriend only to be made into a fool when the girl on the picture actually posted and refuted his claims. But I digress...

WoW.com recently interviewed Ferarro, wanting to know more about her life as a blogger, paladin and game tester for Blizzard. After that article was posted, a few things happened.

1. Ferarro switched her blog over to Private Mode. Only accessible to those who got an invitation from her. However, you can still view a Google Cache of her page. Clicky!

2. Her Twitter page has been deleted.

3. Her character is no longer accessible on the Armory. I assume server transfer or name-change?

4. Her posts on Retpaladin.com are deleted and she's no longer writing for them. However, Slayton and the rest of the guys over at RetPaladin didn't delete her stuff. Apparently she's done that herself before dodging into shadows.

Ferarro also claimed that there have been 7 Ferarro's writing on Paladin Schmaladin. Check the cached site. There's a full-on explanation there.

Now, Wow.com did a little digging and unless these 7 Ferarro's live within a few miles of each other, they are the one and the same person. IP-addresses rarely lie.

Also, do note that all the comments on Ferarro's blog are moderated. All the "good" comments remain while the "bad" comments are deleted.

I think most paladins are rather upset with this as a person who claims to have a stalker have been doing a lot of stalking herself, as well as lying through her teeth claiming to be someone she isn't.

So, what now?

I don't know, really. Guess it's a matter of "wait and see what happens." WoW.com have given Ferarro a chance to come clean and explain things as they really are and not post some bullshit about there being multiple Ferarro's.


EDIT: Sarah Townsend (TechDarling) has posted a video response to this whole thing. Hop on over to her Blog to watch it. Also, Ferraro seems to have removed the whole explanation about there being 7 of her writing on Paladin Schmaladin.

Monday 4 May 2009

"This isn't helpful. If you feel like your feedback isn't contributing anything, we would suggest that you just stop posting rather than posting about how you feel ignored. Smart players realize that we take community feedback into consideration when we make decisions."

Like you did pre-Wrath launch on the beta servers? Like you did on the PTR's where most of the general issues about the classes were completely ignored? Like you did the past few seasons where certain classes tore up the rankings and others were left in the gutter due to inadequate skills for the horrible piece of shit that is Arenas where you told everyone "the classes are fine"? Like you do now with all your knee-jerk nerfs and fixes?

Yes, I'm sure you do listen to the community GC. I'm sure you do...

http://blue.mmo-champion.com/28/16903630963-only-a-handful-of-classes--comps-are-viable.html

Saturday 14 March 2009

Spritual Attunement removed

In the latest PTR build they've removed Spiritual Attunement and made it a deep prot talent. Way to go fucking ret paladins over. I sincerely hope JotW is getting buffed up to 30% or similar which would enable us to sustain a DPS rotation without going dry in the first 30 seconds of the fight.

Thursday 12 March 2009

Blessing of Wisdom / Mana Spring Totem change

Just when you think you've seen all the stupidity Blizzard could pull out of their respective asses, here comes another one.

Come patch 3.1 Blessing of Wisdom and Mana Spring Totem is going to be mutually exclusive. Meaning you can either get one or the other as they won't stack anymore.

This is yet another backhanded "fix" that wasn't necessary. Especially not when they said that "Shaman regen is exactly where we want it." 'Exactly where you want it for the moment; wait for us to nerf every other class first. We'll get back to you.'

They made a mistake with Replenishment, making it a bit more powerful than they hoped for and instead of tuning it they proceed to make this retarded fix that no one asked for.

I don't know who the Dev's are raiding with or how their internal testing is being done but one thing is for sure, it's not in the same environment as the rest of us else they wouldn't make these kind of idiotic changes.

A quote from GC: "Additionally, we have been trying to tone down mana regeneration in large groups, and were concerned raids would feel the need to stack paladins or especially shaman to have enough Mana Spring totems."

That has NEVER been the issue for as long as I've raided and I have NEVER heard of any proper raid guild who are stacking shamans for mana spring totems. Way to go making shit up.

"We have also been trying to get more benefits out of the party and into the raid, and Mana Spring previously was still a party only buff. With this change, if there is only one paladin, he or she can bring Blessing of Kings while the shaman offers Mana Spring. If there are two paladins and the second offers Blessing of Wisdom, then the shaman can offer healing or cleansing with their water totem instead."

So basically, GC and his gang of retards wants to pigeon-hole shamans into a heal/cleanse-bot... now where have I seen that before? Hmm... Oh yeah! Paladins in vanilla WoW! It works the other way, too. If, as GC says, you stack shamans in a raid (god knows why you would), the Paladin player becomes a heal/cleanse bot as the Shamans already bring whatever buffs the paladin has - bar Kings - returning us to square 1. In the back of the raids doing absolutely fuck all, which is where we didn't want to be for the past 3 years and now they seem intent on moving us back there again.

Good job, Blizzard Dev Team. Once again you show your complete and utter incompetence. Fixing things that weren't broken to begin with, backhanded fixes because of your precious Arena E-Sport (ENOUGH ALREADY! Quit fucking up PvE with your god damn awful PvP!) and nerfs that make no sense whatsoever.

By the way, anyone else find it ironic that Eyonix is the harbinger of bad news? I'm sure the Warlock community can relate.