Hunter Q&A....

Wow. I mean really. Nothing in this Q&A was particularly interesting, exciting, or clever. In fact, the first third of the class review dealt with every hunter's favorite long-term undelivered promise: special arrows. But I suppose the overall cluelessness toward the class was best summarized in this quote:

We want to resolve what a hunter is supposed to do in melee (Raptor Strike? Disengage?).

I can resolve that for them right now. The hunter never raptor strikes. Ever. You know when a hunter raptor strikes? When they tank Bloodboil in Black Temple and are forced to melee for 30 seconds with no other option. And even then most hunters just melee and watch their healthstones/healthpots/deterrence in a desperate effort not to die. Even before the launch of Burning Crusade there was only one time to ever bother with Raptor Strike - Thaddius in 40 man Naxx, if your tank failed at positioning him just right and you could not get out of your dead zone to shoot. Even in PvP the only useful melee skill a hunter posesses is counter-attack, which is not nearly worth the point spent, especially since it requires a parry or a dodge to trigger it...I really forget, since I haven't even bothered to train level 1 on my new hunter. Hunters do not melee. EVER.

The hunter is not a ranger, a hybrid, a melee character of any kind. They are a physical dps ranged class with a pet (regardless of the "magical" aspect to some attacks, they are still an archer). I sincerely hope Blizzard does not make the mistake this late in the game of redesigning the class to involve any melee skills whatsoever - if this was inteded to be a ranged/melee hybrid class then it should have been developed in that vein rather than with a pet. Oh wait,

I’ll add that the melee attack issue for hunters themselves is something we keep discussing. While we are unlikely to go back to a melee-focused build for hunters, we might consider a model where hunters don’t run away most of the time but switch to melee attacks – perhaps even a single punishing attack on a cooldown before the hunter Disengaged or whatever. This would be one of those things that helped hunters feel more different than actual magic casters, and might make them care about melee weapons as more than stat sticks.

I was confused about this "melee attack issue" until I read further to see the other community questions addressed. This reads like the laziest list ever - complaint after complaind regarding pet controls, survival, heals and resurection for pets. The heal issue was actually my favorite:

One suggestion made by many hunters was to add a passive ability that healed the hunter's pet when the hunter received a heal from a party or raid member.

I have an alternate suggestion. People who are too slow/bad/lazy to heal their own pet should not play a pet class. Pets already recieve pleanty of accidental healing from AoE heals, PoM and other passive regeneration skills. Proper management of pets, such as pulling them AWAY from whirlwinding mobs goes a long way to keeping a pet alive, as does healing it when you know unavoidable damage is incoming. Often, keeping your pet alive in PvE content is as simple as setting your pet on the melee target and setting yourself on the ranged target. Not hard. But then again these are the same people who complain it's too slow to resurrect your pet as BM spec - even though the cast timer goes down to 5 seconds or so.

Finally, the largest misstatement of the interview:

Now for hunters specifically, we think the class is just too cooldown limited,
which creates problems with haste.

This just made me laugh. Out loud. Hunters have many different shots, all of which share a global cooldown. We also have a large number of INSTANT shots - all stings (viper/serpent/scorpid), black arrow and explosive shot for survival, chimera shot and silencing shot for marksmanship, aimed shot and arcane shot for all specs. The only shots that have a cast time are multi-shot, steady shot, and the channeled volley. So perhaps when thinking about itemizing the hunter set gear Blizzard should take into account that haste is not a desired stat - it is equally useless to all. Haste would have been useful in the days of aimed shot spam, but this is the age of hunter instant shots with steady shot mixed in when nothing else is available. Haste is simply not beneficial to most of our skills. This has nothing at all to do with cooldowns. I prefer to play without cooldowns, and that is how it works for Survival spec - I hang onto my Rapid Fire for Bloodlust or favorable conditions, and then maximize my dps. As Marksmanship it's another story that involves on use trinkets, properly timing Rapid Fire, using Readiness to make Rapid Fire available again, and then reusing it again at the proper moment. So yes, I feel this build is restricted greatly by cooldowns and I don't enjoy playing it. But that has nothing to do with haste whatsoever. To make haste useful would require reworking hunter instant shots to include cast time, and would fundamentally redesign the class.

So to summarize. Nothing interesting in the pipe, nothing necessary being fixed (apart from the oft made "we're going to streamline the pet bar" promise and the teaser of maybe, possibly, perhaps in a few years you can tame more pets). And no real solid understanding of what real hunters want, just responses to the whining masses.

Full Text:
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/underdev/hunter.html

LAN for SC2 Petition

Sign it, I did!

I was the 24,567th person, too.

please do not castrate this game by forcing the burden of a dedicated
internet connection as an absolute necessity for gameplay. though the majority
of play does and will happen on battlenet, the flexibility of LAN play greatly
enhances gameplay and encourages people to network and have LAN parties. please do not remove this bridge between the virtual and visceral community of SC players.

No LAN for Starcraft 2

Screw you Blizzard for killing the one and only game I enjoy playing at LAN parties. I don't play FPS games for a reason and really Starcraft was my only "get drunk and play for hours" entertainment. I guess I will have to move entirely to console titles for LAN entertainment now. I spent an entire summer playing SC over the LAN connection at my parent's house when my brother and I were younger and at home for summer vacation. I think we both would've gone crazy without the entertainment. And my cat Lucy absolutely adored watching me run replays off my PC (she thought the probes were bugs, so cute!) and "helping" me by falling asleep on my number pad. Looks like the glory days are over.

Perhaps I should be saying "thanks" instead since I'll never again have to lug a PC to someone else's place and go through the hassle of networking just to get raped by zerglings.

More Blizzard Pandering to the Masses

They said it would never happen. Then they probably calculated how much money they've made off of server transfers, gender changes, and name changes.

WoW Faction Changes

I think I hear the death of what little integrity was left in the WoW universe. There's really no way to fit this into the game narrative.

Game Stop and Sims 3

Last night I paid an ill advised visit to the Game Stop in Bellevue Square (ok, 2 strikes against it for being located in the heart of evil and for being, well, a Game Stop). I just wanted to pick up the new Sims game, which is an emberassing public admission. I haven't played a Sims game since they released their puppy and kitten expansion pack for the first Sims title, so I thought I would grab it for a bit of mindless summer entertainment, and also to cover the net downtime and hassle I'm bound to face as I get ready to move out of my apartment. What can I say, I'm a chick and I love building houses and gardens...anyway, equivocating about my purchase aside, I was reminded why I never go into Game Stop stores:

1) pushy sales clerk who I tried to avoid in the incredibly small store
2) he was the only person on staff, so when the 10 year old ahead of me at the register started asking questions I had to wait. And wait. And wait. This kid bit on everything "do you want to buy a strategy guide? 10% off." "Would you like to order? E3 just happened so there's lots to preorder."
3) The highlight of it all was when the kid asked what was available to pre order, and the clerk started listing other Blizzard games (the kid was buying a game pad to play WoW with, which made me cringe pleanty). When the clerk semi excitedly (the guy was practically comatose) said "you can preorder Starcraft 2" the kid actually said "Star Craft? what's that?" and his mom actually asked "you mean Star Wars?" so in an effort to speed things along I chimed in that "it was an RTS game released before you were born by Blizzard." Kid has probably never heard of Diablo either.
4) Anyway, kid and mom finally finished their business, and I got to buy my copy of Sims 3, which aparently I was getting the LAST copy of, because they gave me the damn display copy. I really hate when they do that.
5) Feeling the need to defend myself from the clerk's "you're buying a shitty game and you're a chick therefore you are a fake gamer" look, I wound up chatting about Blizzard games. After I said I played WoW he asked me the dumbest question ever: "what level". SERIOUSLY. WHAT LEVEL. The 10 year old kid probably has 3 level 80 characters. It was the most insulting question I've been asked in a long time. So I said 80 and he asked a less insulting question: Horde or Alliance, to which I replied both. Then he asked what class and I told him I played a hunter since the open beta and he finally shut up. Before asking me if I wanted to preorder any games, because E3 just happened and games like Starcraft 2 are now available for pre order. SERIOUSLY.

/facepalm

Children's Week!!! (Don't Be A Dick)

I am getting seriously annoyed with the attitude of most WoW players these days, and here is a prime example, in story form:

I clear my way through a tower in Alterac Valley with my Children's Week orphan in tow - capping a tower in AV is one of the 4 goals for the "School of Hard Knocks" PvP achievement for this world holiday. Another player follows me up, also with an orphan out - I know he/she is also making a bolt for the flag and this is a slight annoyance, since I was there first, put in the effort of killing the guards that were aggroed, etc. However, a rogue without an orphan zoomed in, beat us both to the flag (as I was still getting pelted by arrows) and proceeded to cap it even though both of us with orphans out tried to petition him to stop. I would've been a bit annoyed if the other achievement seeker had snuck by me and stolen my opportunity, but to have someone blatantly block our efforts was just plain rude. This experience was followed by several other failures on my account - getting stuck in combat so that I couldn't summon my orphan (while another rogue capped the flag without an orphan despite the protests of yet another person trying to actually do the achievement), trying to get credit for recapping a tower on defense (that should really count), getting my face smashed in by a ret paladin intent on interupting my flag cap. Fail, fail, fail. People seriously need to learn how to SHARE in this game.

Thanks to Alliance players making an extra effort to kill players attempting to cap towers with their orphans out, and thanks to other Horde players being dicks, it took a number of AV games before I was finally lucky enough to sneak into a tower with my orphan and cap without anyone noticing.

Achievements like this would be a total blast if people were not so dead set on cock blocking other players for fun. I know a lot of other people had nice cooperative experiences with this set of achievements, such as teams allowing opposing players into their Warsong Gulch base to pick up a flag, drop it (without being killed or attacked) and repeat until the team completed the achievement. It reminded me a little bit of my favorite pasttime when WoW first released - cobbling together simple phrases from numbers, symbols and punctuation in order to bypass the linguistic filter meant to keep Horde and Alliance players from communicating. It was hilarious and entertaining to see gamers put forth the effort to think their way around the game's intended social system. I wish I knew where I put the screenshots I took long, long ago of my Night Elf hunter chatting with some random Horde player as we assisted each other with a difficult group quest...

We Are Experiencing A High Volume of Petitions

Because our game is always broken!

Seriously -- several hours ago, while doing my dailies, Icecrown glitched. No NPCs, unable to log out. I reset my computer and went about doing some other things. When I attempted to log back onto my character, I discovered that I couldn't. She is stuck in some sort of no-man's land. The character selection screen properly places her in Icecrown, but I am unable to log in. Instead, the blue bar simply sits on full for minutes. I can hear people logging in and out with game sounds, but see nothing but the loading screen.

Now I get to spend my Friday waiting in que behind people with petty complaints so that my major issue can be explained or resolved. Horray for bad customer service!

Come on, Blizzard. LET ME IN!!!

UPDATE: Wow, a GM actually fixed something. I'm nearly speechless. Unfortunately my other petition was answered with "GMs cannot award achievements if they bug out and do not credit you" so I guess I will have to redo "Watch Him Die".... FAIL!