Rift 1.1 Live Patch Notes

Since they are official and the world waits as this all gets applied, going ahead and posting the official updated live patch notes.  I have to say I am extremely excited to participate in the new content tonight.  Here is the official forum link to the notes, but I have listed them all out instead of broken into posts.

== FEATURED ==

The Endless Court launches an unprecedented invasion of Telara. Check out WORLD EVENT below for event details!

In-game video can now be recorded as well as posted on YouTube! Read more under VIDEO CAPTURE.

You can now report AFK teammates in Warfronts. Check out PVP/WARFONTS for details.

Rift events no longer track player contribution against other players. See below under RIFTS AND INVASIONS for more.

Leaders of merged groups now have the option to Unmerge Group through their portrait menu.

Many quest fixes below under individual ZONES.

WORLD EVENT

The Endless Court invades Telara! This worldwide event for all present-day Telara zones and level ranges culminates in the opening of the River of Souls raid zone.

Events and rewards are available for characters of all levels!

The new World Event UI keeps you up-to-date on current and future event progress. Check it out to see where your server stands in the fight against the Plane of Death.

Quest starters in Meridian and Sanctum offer currency rewards for special vendors, including limited-time items only available during this event.

VIDEO CAPTURE

You can record video through RIFT up to 3 minutes in length. If you add a YouTube account through the Settings menu, RIFT will automatically upload videos to that account!

Type /record or press CTRL+Y to start recording. Use it again to stop!

Small icons next to the minimap show when video is recording and encoding.

Once encoding is complete, you will have the option to upload if you have attached a YouTube account.

GENERAL

After merging your group with another public group, you can now un-merge it! Look for the menu option to Unmerge Group if you were the party leader of a group that has been merged.

Exposed now reduces movement speed by 6% per stack, rather than increasing damage taken.

There are now Raid Rift daily quests! See Abbess Katia in Sanctum or Raj Tahleed in Meridian. These award Inscribed Sourcestone which you can use to buy all sorts of cool things.

Fixed the loot bug where only the tank could get mob loot.

All artifact nodes now have a consistent 1.5 second gathering time.

You can now accept a quest on behalf of your guild even if your personal quest log is full.

Guild members cannot be promoted while offline.

If a group disbands after killing a mob with loot that would otherwise trigger a roll, that loot is now free-for-all.

Angelic Flight and Mighty Leap will not interrupt movement when used (auto-run or holding down a movement key).

Fix for quickly opening a series of clickable loot (such as geodes for gems) with auto-loot that would occasionally result in lost items.

Server Announcements now stay on-screen for twice as long.

Fixed multiple status updates going to Twitter during important discoveries.

RIFTS AND INVASIONS

Rift events no longer track player contribution against other players. You are checked for participation in the event and given rewards appropriately. It’s still important to participate in as many stages of a Rift or event as possible to receive the best rewards.

A large number of new Essences have been added to merchants in Meridian and Sanctum for purchase with Inscribed Sourcestones.

Tweaked cooldown times between zone events.

Fixed some instability with Wardstones disappearing when a large mob population is nearby.

ASCENDED POWERS

Planar Charges are no longer consumed immediately when starting to cast an ability. They are consumed when the effect actually takes place — no more wasted charges on an interrupted cast.

GUILD PERKS

Killing Spree and Blood Thirsty use the proper perk tokens now.

The following perks will now properly show the description/tooltip values associated with them: Lucky Penny, Call of the Ascended, Journeyman, Foe Hunter, Cache Finder, and Rift Extraction.

Journeyman no longer always shows in the buff bar.

CULT SAGA

Epic quests now award Achievements and titles at key advancement points. These are granted retroactively so if you already completed portions (or all!) of the epic questline, you will receive these on login.

The conclusion to the Saga of the Aelfwar is now obtainable.

The epic questline updates for Greenscale’s Heart and Death Corruption Sample are now granted for only one raid member per Greenscale kill.

The Saga of the Endless: Darkblade’s Terror will now properly update.

The Peacemaker: Disguise step no longer required. Defiants can still get to hide in the bushes!

The Peacemaker: Disguise items for this quest have been removed following the quest re-work to no longer require them.

COMBAT

Updated the tooltip description text for Attack Power and Spell Power in the character sheet.

Effects subject to diminishing returns will now also use diminished durations on player pets.

‘Immune’ scrolling combat text no longer appears on characters in stealth.

Player tracking abilities no longer proc trinket effects.

Fixed a bug causing some Soul abilities to be inappropriately blocked when respawning after a death.

Occasionally NPCs would be unable to attack stealthed players. Not anymore!

Increased the amount of Armor on Cloth items.

PvP Combat: Abilities now only check for caster facing their target at the start of a cast – they will still land if a target moves behind you while casting is in progress.

SOULS

Warriors: The following abilities have been changed to fix an issue where the character could use them and die before they actually triggered, making it seem like they missed: Touch of Life, Master of the Abyss, No Permission to Die, Rift Shield, and Predictable Movements.

Warriors: Taunts now continue cooldown timers while logged out.

Mages: Reduced pushback on all non-healing Mage spells.

Mages: Increased the base damage on all damaging Mage abilities.

Clerics: All cleric Cleanses should now properly remove associated effects.

PvP Souls: The cooldown for Break Free has been reduced to 2 minutes. Improved Break Free now reduces the cooldown by 10 seconds per point spent.

ARCHMAGE [PvP]

Rune Shield: Now has a 60 second cooldown. Fixed multiple issues with this ability so it now works as described.

ARCHON

Exhilaration: Now only triggers on damaging or healing Critical Hits. Mana procs will appear correctly in the combat log.

Ashen Defense: No longer counts as a mage armor buff and will stack with other mage armors.

Consuming Flames: Now a 6-point root ability. No longer deals damage to the caster and can be cast on yourself as well as other friendly targets. Now absorbs a set amount of damage and has multiple ranks.

Power In Numbers: Corrected the second rank so it will affect aura buffs.

Procs from Surging Flare, Volcanic Bomb, and Earthen Barrage now affect allies within 35 meters of the caster.

BARD

Due to the below changes, characters with points spent in Bard have received a free soul point respec.

Invigorated Soul, Coda of Restoration: Now affects up to 5 targets.

Using Verse of Fascination or Verse of Captivation now turns off auto-attack, since these effects break on damage.

Verse of Fascination is now tagged correctly as a Mesmerize effect. It can now be removed by abilities that clear Mesmerizes and will not affect enemies that are immune to them.

Motif of Tenacity: Now unlocked at 12 points.

Anthem of Defiance: Now unlocked at 18 points.

Motif of Regeneration: Now unlocked at 24 points. Now casts on the Bard and heals up to 10 raid or group members nearby with each tick. Uses smart healing to select targets – those with the lowest health of available targets nearby.

Anthem of Fervor: Fixed tooltip so the cost reduction is shown correctly when points are spent in Street Performer. Also fixed the cost reduction not being applied correctly to raid members when points are spent in Street Performer.

BEASTMASTER

Flesh Rip: Will now properly show up in the reactive ability UI when your pet critically hits. Fixed an issue where this was gaining weapon damage to each tick of the bleed effect. Base damage reduced.

Backhanded Blow: Now correctly triggers global cooldown. Fixed a bug causing Rank 3 to do 20% more damage than intended. Base damage reduced. Corrected Power cost on ranks 2 through 8 to cost the proper 25 Power.

Slashing Strike: Fixed a bug where this ability was doing the damage of a single target ability. The damage has been reduced to match other cleave-style abilities.

Fight as One: The benefits gained from Fight as One have been reduced to 5-15% for Hit, Critical Hit, and Damage. This ability has been taken off of global cooldown.

Diversion Strike: Increases Critical Hit chance of the Beastmaster and their pet by 5% instead of 10%. Damage lowered.

Tenacious Wounds: Now increases bleed damage by 2-4% instead of 3-6%.

Feral Sweep: Resolved a bug where this was dealing extra damage on each tick of the Bleed effect. Base damage lowered.

Tearing Slash, Fierce Strike: Damage lowered.

Protective Companion: Fixed a bug where the armor bonus from Protective Companion was not being applied for ranks 2 through 5. Corrected the armor bonus from Protective Companion remaining on the Beastmaster after their pet was killed or dismissed.

Protective Companion caused Companion’s Bite to debuff the target’s damage. This ended up not working as hoped, and the ability has been changed to a buff for the pet that reduces the damage they take by 2% per Bleed effect on the target, up to a maximum of 5 (10% damage reduction).

BLADEDANCER

Combat Culmination: Ability will not break stealth when it triggers.

CABALIST

Nebulous Haze: Now increases cast time by the 20% advertised on the tooltip.

Decay: Lurking Decay will now always trigger, even if Obliterate or Tyranny kills the enemy outright.

CHAMPION

Debilitating Strike: Made the tooltip for the debuff from this ability more clear.

Titan’s Strike: Damage has been lowered and the stun has been reduced to 1-3 seconds, down from 1-5 seconds.

Mark of Extermination and Mark of Inevitability: Will now cause the target to attack.

Bull Rush: Fixed a bug where this ability could root boss mobs.

CHLOROMANCER

Withering Vines: Increased the amount healed.

Livegiving Veil: Now affects up to 5 targets.

Radiant Spores: Now has a base chance to proc of 10%.

Phytogenesis: Now increases the chance for Radiant Spores to proc by 2-6%.

DOMINATOR

Priest’s Lament: The primary debuff on this ability is no longer affected by diminishing returns. The silence proc debuff is still affected.

Haunting Pain: Will only trigger on the first tick of damage from a damage shield.

Mana Wrench: Now drains 4% of the target’s max mana per second, capped at 4% of the *caster’smaximum mana, returns 4% of the caster’s maximum mana per second, and has a 25 second cooldown. The damage and energy drain portions of the spell are unchanged.

Improved Mana Wrench: Now increases the mana drained and returned by Mana Wrench by 0.5% and reduces the cooldown on Mana Wrench by 5 seconds per point spent.

DRUID

Trickster Spirit, Slothful Spirit, Spiteful Spirit: Reduced the damage to better account for the attached debuffs.

Fury of the Fae: Now a pet-cast buff that increases the group/raid’s Attack Power and Spell Power for 30 seconds with a 10 second cooldown. Shares stacking with Bard’s Motif of Bravery.

Satyr: Increased the ratio of the owner’s Spell Power converted into the Satyr’s Attack Power.

Weight of the World: Fixed a bug preventing this from applying to ranks 2 through 6 of Crag Hammer.

ELEMENTALIST

Intensify Elements: No longer on the global cooldown.

INFILTRATOR [PvP]

Due to the below changes, characters with points spent in Infiltrator will receive a free soul point respec.

Cloudy Poison: Ability should not break stealth when used. The debuff from this is now cleansable.

Murderous Thoughts: Now requires Prestige Rank 3. Now increases all damage against players by 3-6%.

Knock Knock: Now requires Prestige Rank 2. Increases critical damage against players by 2-10%.

INQUISITOR

Fanaticism: No longer consumed by Shroud of Agony.

Purge: No longer unintentionally removes debuffs that are caused by buffs (ex: the debuff from Battlefield Distraction).

Shroud of Agony: No longer triggers on falling damage.

JUSTICAR

Reparation: Now affects up to 5 targets.

NECROMANCER

Empty the Crypts: Charge can now be gained while this is active. The pets summoned by Empty the Crypts can be active for a maximum of 20 seconds.

Lich Form: Will no longer consume buffs that reduce the casting time of your next spell.

NIGHTBLADE

Scourge of Darkness: Can no longer miss, be parried, dodged, or blocked.

PALADIN

Touch of Life: Now continues cooldown timer on logout.

Balance of Power: Now deals 25-75% of weapon damage.

Aegis of Salvation: Ranks 1 and 2 have their cooldowns changed to 1.5 seconds to match with other buffs.

PARAGON

Strike Like Iron: Ability is no longer on the global cooldown. Increased from a 10-30% damage buff up to a 16-48% damage buff, with the value doubled for follow-up attacks. No longer overwritten by lesser effects.

Death Touch: Due to the Strike Like Iron changes, damage of Death Touch has been lowered.

Force of Will: Due to the Strike Like Iron changes, damage bonus to follow-up attacks from Force of Will has been reduced from 20 per point to 10 per point.

Path of the Wind, Path of the Raptor: Now have cooldowns of 4 seconds and a slight increase in damage due to the longer reuse time.

Dual Strike: Fixed a bug causing this to do less damage than intended – as a result, damage from this ability has increased.

Deadly Grace: Increased from 7% of Dual Strike damage per point to 9% Dual Strike damage per point.

Weapon Master: Increased from a 4-20% chance to gain a second attack point up to a 10-50% chance.

Combat Precision: Fixed a bug that caused this to ignore 100% of target’s armor. Combat Precision now correctly ignores 1-5% of the target’s armor.

Rising Waterfall: Damage increased.

Turn the Blade: Damage increased.

Flurry: Damage lowered.

PURIFIER

Shield of the Ancestors and related buffs now appear in the combat log.

Caregiver’s Blessing: No longer procs off of procced heals.

Surging Flames: Now converts 50% of overhealing.

Divine Cascade: Reduced Spell Power contribution. Now has a stack size of 1 per caster instead of 1 total, but only triggers when target is healed by the caster rather than anyone.

Spirit Rupture: Fixed the contribution from Spell Power.

PYROMANCER

Due to the below changes, characters with points spent in Pyromancer have received a free soul point respec.

Heat Wave: Reduced cooldown to 2 minutes.

Inferno: Removed from global cooldown.

Improved Grounding: Now a tier 2 branch ability.

Improved Smoldering Power: Now a tier 3 branch ability.

Ground of Power: Now obtained at 6 points.

Smoldering Power: Now obtained at 8 points.

Burning Shield – New Ability: Consumes the mage’s Ground spell to shield them in flames, absorbing damage. Lasts up to 30 seconds. While Burning Shield is active, the next Ground spell is instant-cast. Obtained at 6 points.

Ground of Strength: The stun proc from this spell is now affected by diminishing returns, to match other stuns in the game.

RANGER

Escape Artist: Fixed a bug where the improved version was not causing the pet to be immune to Root, Snare, and Stun.

Fixed a bug where the Razorbeast’s Charge could root boss mobs.

REAVER

Due to the below changes, characters with soul points spent in Reaver will receive a free soul point respec.

Soul Sickness, Flesh Rot, Necrotic Wounds, Blood Fever: The damage on additional targets when using Plague Bringer has been lowered. The Threat generation has been increased to keep overall threat gain of the abilities the same.

Crippling Infestation: Moves down one tier to unlock at 21 points.

Wasting Away: Moves down one tier to unlock at 16 points.

Grisly Works: Moves up two tiers, now unlocked at 26 points. Now increases the healing of Soul Feast by 30-90% for 15 seconds after killing a target the Reaver has engaged.

Soul Devour: Now increases the damage of Soul Feast by 50%, instead of 150%.

Power from the Masses: Changed to give a stack per nearby party/raid member rather than per nearby enemy.

RIFTBLADE

Earth Burst: Now properly interrupts elites and other high level mobs.

Avatar of Wind: Fixed a bug causing the tooltip of this ability to report improper values.

Rift Surge: Can now be removed with abilities that remove Curses. Now has a 30 second cooldown instead of 10 seconds and is adjusted by Attack Power at a slightly lower rate.

Flamespear: Now has a cooldown of 4 seconds and has its damage slightly increased to reflect the longer cooldown.

Burning Blood: Now deals damage based on 10-30% of the character’s Strength.

Improved Freeze Armor: Now only affects Riftblade attacks.

RIFTSTALKER

Memory Capture: Ability should no longer get you stuck in collision or falling through the world.

Rift Scavenger: Ability will not break stealth when it triggers.

Removed internal cooldown from Defer Death and Scatter the Shadows. Both abilities should be more responsive now.

Hasted Time: Fixed a bug with the second point spent in this ability gave an incorrect movement speed buff.

SABOTEUR

Due to the below changes, characters with points spent in Saboteur will receive a free soul point respec.

Shrapnel Charge: Fixed a bug where Shrapnel Charge would not fire if the main target was killed by the initial Detonate damage.

Long Range Bombing: Now increases the range you can hurl Bombs by 1-5 meters, down from 2-10 meters.

Improved Blast Charge: Fixed a bug where the armor penetration provided was higher than 25-50%.

Charge Booster: Redesigned. Using Detonate with 5 combo points will fire off a Booster Charge, dealing 50% weapon damage. This damage is increased by 15% for each point in Saboteur over 21.

The outcome and damage of each charge is now calculated individually. When you detonate 5 Blast Charges, you will see 5 damage numbers, each with its own chance to critically hit, rather than one large number.

When a Trap or Land Mine is triggered, the player who placed the trap or mine will not have their Stealth broken.

Undetonated Spike Charge and Blast Charge will not cause stealth to break when the charges expire.

SENTINEL

Vigilance: Now triggers more consistently.

Serendipity: Now properly affects heals that are queued immediately after being triggered.

SHAMAN

Strike of the Maelstrom: Rank 1 is no longer unintentionally affected by Stormborn.

Glacial Shield: Ranks 2 and up now work properly with overwrites of similar abilities – Shield of Oak can overwrite Glacial Shield, and vice versa.

Lust for Blood: Fixed a bug causing this to increase the damage of non-Physical abilities, such as Strike of Judgment. Fixed tooltip to more accurately describe functionality.

Ageless Ice: Description now properly mentions that it does not trigger a global cooldown.

Stormborn: Now properly affects the lightning on Lightning Hammer.

STORMCALLER

Static Discharge: No longer on global cooldown.

Static Flux: Will no longer be overwritten by weaker buffs.

Cloudburst: Increased damage.

Icy Vortex – New Ability: Reduces damage done to the Mage by 25% for 10 seconds and applies Hypothermia to attacking enemies, reducing their movement speed by 50% for 10 seconds. Obtained at 6 points.

VINDICATOR [PvP]

Due to the below changes, characters with points spent in Vindicator will receive a free soul point respec.

Dangerous Game: Now requires Prestige Rank 3. Fixed a bug that only increased damage on critical hits. Now increases all damage (not just physical) against players by 3-6%.

Resilient: No longer has a Prestige Rank requirement. Fixed a bug that only reduced critical chance received by 6%. Now reduces chance to be critically hit by players by 3-15%.

VOID KNIGHT

Insatiable Hunger: Now drains mana equal to half of the equipped weapon’s damage.

Devouring Blow: Now drains mana equal to 100% of the damage of Devouring Blow, rather than 50%.

Soul Pillage: Reduced to drain approximately 15% of target’s mana, down from 20%. The amount drained is now modified by Endurance to better scale at level cap.

Catalyze: The mana drain component has been reduced to drain approximately 15% of target’s mana, down from 30%. The amount drained is now determined by how much damage is dealt by Catalyze. This ability also gains Instability, a 15 second buff that reduces the damage taken by the Void Knight by 5% for 15 seconds.

Unstable Reaction: Now drains mana based on how much damage it deals. The net change should reduce it to approximately 15%, down from the 25% drained previously.

Power Sink: Mana drain value reduced to drain approximately 20% of target’s mana from each target, down from 60% previously. The amount drained is now modified by Endurance to better scale at level cap. It has also gained Instability, a 15 second buff that reduces the damage taken by the Void Knight by 5% for 15 seconds.

WARDEN

Tidal Resonance: No longer consumed by actions that are not Heal Over Time spells.

Track Water Creatures: Wardens can now use this ability to track creatures from Water Rifts.

Well of Life: Now has a 35 meter range.

WARLOCK

Neddra’s Might: No longer requires a target to cast.

Neddra’s Torture: Reduced cooldown to 20 seconds.

WARLORD

Call to Battle: Fixed buff tooltip to report a straight value rather than a percentage.

ZONES

The items on Rare Planar Goods merchants in Scarlet Gorge, Scarwood Reach, Droughtlands, and Moonshade Highlands had incorrect minimum levels to use. Scarlet Gorge items now have a minimum use level of 25, Scarwood Reach level 30, Droughtlands and Moonshade Highlands level 35.

Fixed many minor typos in quest and NPC text.

DROUGHTLANDS

Ancient Wardstones have been uncovered in Droughtlands! A dangerous land just got more dangerous-er. Beware the beast that lies within the ruins of Eth – Skirathos, the Eye of Fate!

Nowhere to Run: Fixed an issue that could cause the kobolds to not show up and attack.

Sothul’s Demise: Sothul now respawns faster.

A Fall Tale: Anontok’s Notes’ description now shows the level requirement to use the item.

Lecu the Claw: This cat is now almost as vicious as my cat.

The Biggest Void: Netharius is now more nefarious.

Additional variety and difficulty pass was made on Droughtlands named mobs.

FREEMARCH

The Tech is Mightier than the Sword: Jakub will no longer sucker-punch players or their pets during this quest.

Zone event Shadestones can now be used for pickup by multiple people at once.

Tete-a-Tete: The faction-change effect during this quest now makes you friendly to Life Rifts as well as the surrounding Aelfwar.

I Heard a Storm Was Coming: Doubled the duration of the swim speed buff.

Man v Mandible: Increased the drop rate of mandibles.

Durgin the Keeper: Durgin now respawns much more quickly.

Freemarch Defender – Achievement: Fixed the Rift ‘Encroaching Death’ to give credit for the minor version instead of the major version.

GLOAMWOOD

Dead Water: Quest now gives out Millrush Brew, which is soulbound and has no resale value.

A Burgher with Lies is now less disruptive to players not also on the quest.

The Toxic Source: Re-ordered the quest rewards so they are displayed more consistently with other quests.

IRON PINE PEAKS

A Hymn of Frost and Flame: All party members can now loot the Redsnow Communique.

Conquered Minds, Imprisoned Minds: Fixed an issue causing these quests to reset too often.

Deepmoss Lurkers are no longer skinnable and do not give experience.

Dagda Skullthumper, the Redsnow Bandit, should no longer return to life instantly when slain!

Dominance of the Soul debuff correctly affects Armor instead of Attack Power.

Corrected duplicate loot drops from rare mobs Emissary Kavenik and Frosthide.

Thunder Snow has been fixed so that Sentinel Nightbane is always where expected.

Removing Their Eyes: Increased total number of cultist kills required.

Protectors of Stone: Reduced the total number of gargoyle kills required.

Telara On the Brink: Significantly retuned to be more solo-able.

MATHOSIA

Shyla will cast heals more often to assist players during the Rift event.

MOONSHADE HIGHLANDS

Rainy weather is a bit less frequent in Moonshade.

Question and Answers: Centurion will stop beating on the Imprisoned Legionnaire before you get a chance to interrogate him.

The hounds of Conchobhar will stop trying to defy their master.

To Know Evil: The Infernal Transmitter will be more reliably provided.

Fall of Moonshade: Updated quest locators on the map.

In Plain Sight: The first objective now shares progress for the whole party.

A Gathering Force: The Demiurge of Earth now has a more accurate quest locator.

Death’s Embrace: Reduced Gorvaht’s damage.

A Holy Remedy: The sickly dwarves now stop to offer thanks before running back to Three Springs.

Scanning for Clues: The Defiant Scanner should be more reliable.

A Demon Among Satyrs: This quest now grants credit to all group members on the same step.

The Elite Greater Golems in Grey Gardens now look visually different from the Lesser Golems.

SCARLET GORGE

Taking Shards: Fixed an issue causing the visual effects to not appear as intended. Group members now also receive credit for placing the Problem Solvers.

Bits and Pieces: Construct components now drop as group loot for everyone on this quest.

SCARWOOD REACH

Honest When Dead: Fixed step four of this quest so it properly progresses.

Sealing the Portal: The portal at the back of Sagespire should be much more active now.

Salve No Longer: Quest can once again be completed.

Seek and Destroy: Added a map marker for Kelynn Eregor.

A Troll’s Lunch: Rakthug should respawn much more quickly now.

Let them Come: Fixed to allow party members to join in on the mission.

SHIMMERSAND

Reduced respawn rate of Rifts in Dunes of Akala, and made it possible for Major tears to spawn.

Final Preparations: Anthon Eskar, the Dragonslayer Covenant guard who provides the disguise for Flatyard quests, no longer tries to offer a second disguise if you already have one.

Buried Beneath: You will now be required to kill 16 Immature Whelplings for this quest.

A Crafter’s Lament: Now grants loot to all group members on the quest.

Fire and Sand: Improved spawn rates of Wanton Bone Rituals.

Tweaked scripting for the levers to summon Warden Nevin for Dragonslayer Covenant daily quests.

Slither the Voice: You get to keep the Inmate Disguise item after completing this quest!

Binding the Lightning, To Turn Aside the Storm: Golden Maw Enforcers will now correctly display quest tooltips.

Dragonslayer: Forging the Haft: This was a sneaky leftover quest from testing that was horribly broken and not intended for the live game — it’s been removed!

The mobs inside The Flatyard should respawn more slowly when fewer players are in the area.

Added more guards to Fortune’s Shore.

A sinister and powerful force from the Plane of Fire is on its way to Shimmersand. A large and organized force will be required to stop it! [aka: a New Fire Raid Tear in Shimmersand.]

Ritual Rescue: This quest should now be fixed for Dragonslayer Covenant dailies in The Dragon’s Tail.

SILVERWOOD

Azure Blade on the shores of Suncrest Rise now properly share faction with the Defiant.

Rift: Forging Heat: The Gedlo Heater should quit getting stuck inside the bonfire during stage three.

Beast of Burden: This quest is now offered to mount-less players at level 13 instead of 20.

Aelfwar Monstrosities: Quest now has more accurate locators for Aelfwar Defenders.

Clouded Contemplation: Quest now requires you to kill 8 Greenscale Zealots, rather than 12.

The Power of Life: Increased the drop rate of items required for this quest.

Thanks to the recent efforts of the Ascended, the road leading to and from Silver Landing is now much safer for travel.

STILLMOOR

The Spirit Walk: Quest now gives proper credit for the second objective.

Spirit Animus: Quest gives credit when entering Hillsborough.

The Spirit Walk and Spirit Animus shadow forms match up with player Calling!

Galenir’s Last Answer: Fixed respawn of Galenir.

Digging in the Dirt: The JKG-77 has learned to better recognize the character it should be following.

New Blood: Added a missing pre-requisite to this quest, so that you must first complete An End to the Horror.

Guardian NPCs at Thalin Tor should no longer respawn instantly.

Lowered respawn times on named quest targets for Stillmoor daily quests in the Endless Citadel.

Past is Prologue: Fixed a bug that would sometimes cause the quest giver to not appear.

STONEFIELD

The Graniteborn Champion and Corrupted Graniteborn Champion ability, Earthen Shock, will no longer react to passive or DoT damage.

Dead Drop: The respawn rate of the Earthmaul Ward is now faster.

Breaking the Breaker: Bonebreaker will always be tagged to the player who spawned him. Also cleaned up a case where players who attempted to summon Bonebreaker immediately after someone else killed him could have their quest items removed but not spawn the NPC.

Goorn has been working on overcoming his shyness – he might even stick around long enough at Titan’s Well to offer an escort quest!

The artifact set, ‘Ancient Eth Tablets’, included two different items with the same name. One has now been corrected to Scuffed Tablet Fragment.

DUNGEONS AND RAIDS

Plaques of Achievement will no longer drop off the zone quests for Expert Dungeons.

Added new daily quests for Expert dungeons for both tiers – one quest from each tier can be completed per day.

Tier 1 Expert dailies reward 10 Plaques of Achievement.

Tier 2 Expert dailies reward 20 Plaques of Achievement.

Only the final boss of Expert dungeons drop the Corrupted and Grotesque Souls needed for Expert and Raid Rifts.

Reduced the drop rate of tradeable, Bind on Equip zone-drop items in Expert Dungeons.

The appearance of Chain Raid-tier armor from the vendor has changed. It was incorrectly using the PvP Chain armor graphics – it now uses a unique appearance.

The Head and Shoulders of Cloth Raid-tier armor from the vendor have an appearance change.

The appearance of Warrior Raid-tier armor from the vendor has changed.

Updated a number of armor drop appearances from tier 1 and 2 Expert Dungeons; there’s now more variety in the look of various armors within a tier.

ABYSSAL PRECIPICE

Expert: Icetalon’s Ripping Talons can no longer critically hit.

CHARMER’S CALDERA

Expert: Gronik will now reset if he leaves his encounter area.

Expert: Gronik’s minions, Xaeiel and Sanwusu now ignore line of sight with their spells.

Expert: Added borders around Ryka Dharvos’ area to ensure more laser goodness.

THE FALL OF LANTERN HOOK

Expert: Oludare the Firehoof can now Charge and throw harpoons at players from a greater distance.

FOUL CASCADE

Corruptive Ritual: Fixed so that the mobs that drop the required items now always spawn in certain groups.

GREENSCALE’S BLIGHT [Raid]

Blightleaf Hexmaster’s Noxious Cloud can no longer critically hit.

Blightleaf Guard’s Wicked Vine can no longer critically hit.

All general population mobs’ standard attacks can now critically hit.

Made small adjustments to boss enrage timers.

Raid bosses in Greenscale’s Blight have new items added to their drop tables.

Raid bosses in Greenscale’s Blight now drop more items per kill than they previously did.

IRON TOMBS

Added new ranged weapon rewards to the zone quest, You Are Who They Call.

KING’S BREACH

Expert: Konstantin’s Mathosian Fury is now more lethal (and furious).

RUNIC DESCENT

Changed the quest mobs, Guardian Purelights, so the ambush should be easier to manage.

Expert: Eliam’s Death’s Fury can no longer be removed by player abilities.

Expert: Rictus: Changed Rotting Flesh from a targeted AoE DoT to a ground target effect with a longer duration.

ITEMS

Increased the amount of Armor on Cloth items.

Increased the amount of Plaques of Achievement needed to purchase first and second-tier Expert Dungeon items:

Boot and Glove items from the first-tier Expert Dungeon merchant have their price increased to 30 Plaques of Achievement.

Shoulder and Helm items from the first-tier Expert Dungeon merchant have their price increased to 40 Plaques of Achievement.

Chest and Leg items from the first-tier Expert Dungeon merchant have their price increased to 50 Plaques of Achievement.

Boot and Glove items from the second-tier Expert Dungeon merchant have their price increased to 120 Plaques of Achievement.

Shoulder and Helm items from the second-tier Expert Dungeon merchant have their price increased to 160 Plaques of Achievement.

Weapons from Greenscale are now Relic quality, and their stats/effects have been upgraded.

Swift Armored War Horses have had their price increased from 100 platinum to 125 platinum.

Pure-Endurance ‘Of the Fortress’ items will no longer drop above level 13.

A large number of new Essences have been added to merchants in Meridian and Sanctum for purchase with Inscribed Sourcestones.

Earthbreak Pauldrons from the quest Hero of the Defiants had defensive stats on them when offensive stats were intended. This has been updated for future Earthbreak Pauldrons, but existing items will remain as-is.

Fixed a number of items, including high-end Weaponsmith recipes, that had incorrect auction house categories. They now appear in the expected search results. We would list them all, but it’s a long list.

Fixed an issue where high-level Runes were showing as ‘level 1’ in the Auction House.

Going forward, randomly generated two-handed weapons will come with DPS stats rather than tanking stats.

The Waxing Shadesource had stats applied for a higher level item, and has been reduced in effectiveness to match its level.

Spellbinder’s Sash now has Spell Power instead of Attack Power.

Crystal of Brilliance and Crystal of Foresight had melee stats but are caster items. This has been corrected.

Rare Essences dropped from Major and Minor Rifts should no longer be bound on pickup.

Chan’s Thundering Fist was set up as a Warrior weapon rather than a Cleric weapon. This has been corrected so it now properly has spell power and lower base weapon damage.

Sacred Heirloom of Eth and Totem of Overgrowth were incorrectly gaining a bonus to their healing procs from Spell Power. These have been fixed.

Petrifying Rune: The root proc will now break on damage.

Fixed Ritualist’s Buckler to be a Cleric-equippable shield.

A number of offhand book items had the wrong visual attached and have been fixed.

Powdery Ash now has a proper sell price.

Ancestral Sourcestone: Fixed the tooltip so it shows an actual number value instead of 0.

Fixed many minor typos in item names.

CRAFTING

Apothecary updates: Endgame Apothecary recipes no longer use Minor Catalyst as an ingredient. Recipes that previously used Rift essences or augments now use consumable items gained from Rifts instead.

Bottle of Spellstrikes, Bottle of Critical Strikes, and Philter of Power now have a potion cooldown of 3 minutes. Each of these also apply a 1 minute immunity after use, so a player can only be affected by one of these effects for each minute.

Many vials that did not last through a death now persist. Rejoice!

Fixed an issue where all potions were on the same cooldown. They are now divided into three major groups based on their effects: Healing/Positive, Damage/Negative, and Buffs.

A large number of items have been updated to be Runebreakable/Salvagable. In general, all items not purchased from a vendor should fall into these categories.

Runecrafting material names have been updated. Crystals, Shards, and Powders now have new names. Uncommon has become Flickering, Rare has become Sparkling, and Epic has become Shimmering.

Fixed an issue where some runes were displaying incorrect names when applied.

Devastating Runes, Calamitous Runes, Ravaging Runeshards, and Destructive Runeshards have had their stats updated. They now award Wis/Int [Calamitous, Ravaging] and Str/Dex [Devastating, Destructive].

Accurate Rune now grants Attack Power/Hit, and Sharp Rune adds Spell Power/Focus.

New zone-specific drops come from monsters in the following zones, and are used in recipes from each zone:

– Gnarled Core – Scarwood reach

– Evergreen Core – Freemarch

– Enchanted Core – Silverwood

– Stone Core – Stonefield

– Shadow Core – Gloamwood

– Rusty Core – Scarlet Gorge

– Cracked Core – Droughtlands

– Glowing Core – Moonshade Highlands.

Artificers are now able to use Looms to craft Parchment and Vellum.

A large number of recipes from notoriety vendors have been adjusted. Recipes that were previously Uncommon are now Rare and have their stats adjusted accordingly. Ingredients used in these recipes require the Cores mentioned above or have had their other ingredients and quantities updated.

Iron Buckler recipes from faction vendors have been renamed to Steel Buckler.

The recipe for Divine Defender now appears in the ‘Maces’ section of the recipe list.

Recipe: Blazing Wisdom Rune now teaches the correct recipe.

Fixed an issue where Recipe: Polished Shadethorn Lumber and Recipe: Polished Mahogany Lumber tooltips displayed incorrect item information.

Blackwood Chopper crafted item has been renamed to Blackwood Cleaver.

Greater Rootcatch Brew is now a single target potion, while the Heroic Rootcatch Brew is now area effect.

Luminous Accurate Rune now grants Hit instead of Focus.

Fixed Rootcatch Brew items, which were using a healing effect rather than functioning as a snare.

The crafting quest items Light Downy Cloth, Tough Silken Cloth, and Exquisite Cloth are now Bind on Pickup.

The quests from Light Downy Cloth, Tough Silken Cloth, and Exquisite Cloth now direct Defiants to Master Outfitter Deo Zervos, instead of Master Butcher Jace Prisco. These quests direct Guardians to Master Outfitter Louis Klies.

Defiants: Rare Ore quests involving Kleeg Stonebreaker no longer try to convince you he is in Sanctum.

Fixed some floating and sunken resource nodes in Droughtlands, Stillmoor, and Moonshade Highlands.

Crafting related actions should no longer trigger abilities that proc on criticals.

Luggodhan now requires more than ‘0’ Butchering skill.

Crafting trainers in Fortune’s Shore, Shimmersand, now teach Master level crafting instead of Novice.

Adjusted harvest nodes in Abyssal Precipice and Charmer’s Caldera – nodes before the first bosses can no longer be stealthed to.

Additional adjustments to many resource nodes across the world. New locations have been added, and many nodes will now respawn faster than they did before.

PVP/WARFRONTS

You can now report AFK teammates in a Warfront. When enough of the team has reported someone as AFK, they will have a short period to prove themselves by engaging the enemy or supporting the team. If they fail to prove themselves, they will be banished! PvP combat: Abilities now only check for caster facing their target at the start of a cast – they will still land if a target moves behind you while the casting is in progress.

Killing lower level players in your Warfront bracket will now grant some favor and some experience.

The Black Garden: The damage dealt from the Fang of Regulos now increases higher than 100% of the carrier’s max health.

The Codex, Whitefall Steppes: Fixed a bug where stunning/mesmerizing/incapacitating an enemy player did not interrupt flag captures in progress.

The Battle for Port Scion: Repeatable quests now grant 50 Notoriety, up from 25.

The Battle for Port Scion: 50 Notoriety is awarded with the Noble Guard or Eldritch Vanguard for every 100 points earned.

The Battle for Port Scion: Resident NPCs in Port Scion no longer apply the Exposed debuff.

The Battle for Port Scion: Defiant Centurions and Guardian Lieutenants have had their difficulty slightly reduced.

The Battle for Port Scion: Capturing Sourcestone with two Idols up is now worth 30 points. Each Idol lost will reduce the score for capturing Sourcestone by 10 points.

The Black Garden Token, The Codex Token and The Whitefall Steppes Token can now be consumed to gain back the Favor that was spent to purchase them.

GRAPHICS AND AUDIO

Wardstones in player hubs have new and improved visuals!

New fancy appearances are incoming for the Epic Najmok, Yarnosaur, and Vaiyuu mounts.

The low health and death effects have been improved in the Low Quality Renderer.

Shield spell effects now appear on players even when mounted.

Extraplanar Leather Gloves and Ellisar’s Gloves now have actual glove graphics when equipped instead of INVISIBLE HANDS.

Various ambient sound and voiceover updates, as well as volume level tweaks.

COMMANDS AND MACROS

The /focus command now understands the @targeting arguments like the /target, /cast, and /use commands.

@pet targets your primary pet, and @targettarget picks up your target’s target.

UI/SETTINGS

Character stats will turn green on the character sheet if they are under any sort of bonus.

The total number of discoveries for a character is now displayed in the Achievements window.

Additional improvements to the Soul Tree window – role-changing and resetting visuals, confirmation to save spent points on exit, etc.

Equipped Planar Essences should now show colored borders based on the rarity of the Essence.

Guild names are now included in player tooltips.

Fixed a brief artifacting flicker on the screen when discarding changed video settings instead of applying and saving them.

Fixed a bug that would cause the Reactive Abilities UI to stop working after performing a /reloadui.

Edit Layout Mode: Elements can now be set to fade in and out when moused over or when entering and leaving combat.

The Rift meter contribution bar and leaderboard button have been removed due to the above change to contribution.

UI pieces docked to the Target and Target of Target windows now stay where you told them to be.

The Tutorial Alert icon will now always appear in the same place instead of being attached to the casting bar (which can be moved by editing the UI layout).

The guild roster will stop showing you as AFK when you log back in after having logged out with the AFK flag on.

A special World Event UI is now available.

CLIENT

Any existing connections will be disconnected as soon as you enter character selection, rather than when a character is logged in.

The green dot next to recommended shards at Shard Select now says ‘Recommended’ instead, which is what it indicated.

High population shards show in orange text, and medium in yellow. Full is still red!

We now also display queue sizes at shard selection.

Why You Should Be Playing Rift: 06 – Atmosphere

Over the last few weeks I have been doing a series of posts highlighting some of those cool features of the game that make it so worth playing.  To date they have all been tangible features, that you can interact with.  Today we are going to delve a bit into the esoteric, and as such this post will probably have a gratuitous usage of screenshots.  Originally I had set aside fifteen shots for this, but I will be trying to pair down a bit.  Some of the images are used with permission from jensketch.com (because I don’t play Guardian side).

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Episode 06:  The Atmosphere

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In past articles I have covered a good number of features that show you why, rift is a game that is extremely polished and well thought out.  Problem is, these features alone do not add up to what makes a game enjoyable.  The reason why you get drawn into a game for any length of time is the environment.  You ask yourself if the world you are being drawn into believable and is the central conflict and its characters compelling.

Basically what makes or breaks a game is it’s atmosphere, and the world of Telara has it to spare.  Whether you start Defiant or Guardian you are drawn into a world at war, and into the heat of the battle.  You are dipped in conflict from the moment you set foot out the door, and ushered into a world torn asunder by factional warfare and a battle with elemental planes themselves.

There have been many games that have presented you a bleak, body strewn landscape.  Warhammer is a perfect example of this as it draws the player into a world of constant attacks between the forces of order and chaos.  Problem is, you see this world, so decimated that you have no clue why anyone would be willing to spill blood over it.  With Rift the player is given an apocalyptic vision of a possible future, only to be whisked away into the past where we the player can see exactly what there is worth saving.

A World of Beauty

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The world of rift is a truly beautiful place.  Even at low resolution, you can see that there has been some amazing work done on trying to bring about unique looking settings.  At high and ultra settings, the world is just breath taking.  As I have played various MMO titles, there have been many “ooooo” moments.  The very first of these that I can remember is coming out of the mist, in Butcherblock Mountains and seeing the Statue atop Kaladim in Everquest.

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With each new game, there have been more of these.  I sit back, take a screenshot and move on.  My rift’s screenshot folder has grown exponentially as I have leveled because each and every zone in Telara has two or three of these breathtaking moments.  Above is a picture I took, when I first entered Stonefield from Freemarch.  The sky had darkened, and it had just began to rain, but you could still see the strong shadows on the rocky faces.  I stopped leveling, stopped paying attention to questing, and just sat there for a moment enjoying the view.

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I tend to power quest my way through zones, and in other games have been able to ignore much of the scenery in my push for the goal.  In rift however, I just cannot help but stop and smell the roses from time to time. Part of what has made this world so compelling is the fact that each zone is unique.  In games like wow, you have prefab objects that get reused over and over.  In rift, the architecture, the trees, the caves, and the landscape feel custom fit just for each area.  Each board on the bridge in the above image, feels as though it were placed by hand, and is unique looking from the other bridges in Crimson Gorge (of which there are many).

A World of Danger

wysbpr_06_gloamwood One of the things that had been missing from MMO games for so long, that I did not even realize I was missing, was a sense of fear.  In games like Everquest and Dark Age of Camelot I used to tread into unexplored areas with a sense of dread.  In the case of those games, I thought at the time, it was due to the stiff death penalties imposed on its players.  So when the modern crop of MMOs heralded by World of Warcraft arrived, with easy death penalties, I was happy at the time.

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What I am coming to realize now, is that those early games had a certain zone design ethic that lead to uneasiness in its players.  You know that you had to be extremely careful as you hunted mobs, both in the dungeons and the outside world because one too many would mean a certain death.  Rift has carried over this same old school ethic into it’s content.  As you move through the outside world, you have to have the same care as you would pulling a dungeon.

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On top of this, the dungeons themselves have a creepy natural feel to them.  You can almost feel the dust being disturbed under your feet as your party explores them.  The above image is from the end of Iron Tomb, the entry level Defiant dungeon in Freemarch.  Notice how each of the surfaces exudes texture, as they are filled with careful carvings and decorations placed there once upon a time to honor the dead.  Having run numerous other dungeons, I have yet to see any of the assets in Iron Tomb show up elsewhere.  Each zone feels like it was crafted just for its purpose.

A World of Substance

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One of the arguments I have seen on the WoW Fan sites, is that because Rift has shied away from the slapstick humor and blatant pop culture parody, that it lacks a “soul”.  I think the exact opposite is true, like the titles that influenced Blizzard, Trion takes it’s game world very seriously and to me it exudes soul.  So many times in an MMO you do things that seem to have no purpose.  If you are asked to go to a town and rescue the villagers, it is often times from generic cartoon thugs.

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From the very start of the game you are immersed in a diverse tree of factions, each with their own methods, goals and objectives.  To the best of my knowledge, Rift has no nameless faceless meaningless cartoon thugs. The world is besieged by the Dragon Cults, who collectively seek to spread the influence of the dragons they champion.  In other games, where the dragons represent elemental aspects, they are often times benevolent forces that shape mankind.  In the world of Telara, the Dragons are cruel selfish creatures that want to seize control of the world for their own means.

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In Freemarch you are introduced into this conflict first with the Endless Court.  This group of cultists worship Regulos the Destroyer, the dragon of death.  The Endless Court harness the power of death to bear against you a multitude of undead abominations.  As you move through the zone you begin to encounter the Abyssals, a cult waging warfare on Freemarch from the depths of the Lake of Solace.  This group is devoted to the water dragon Akylios, and with it brings an unspeakable legion of deepspawn and water elementals.

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On the Guardian side, in Silverwood you have two central conflicts, that of the Aelfwar and the Wanton.  House Aelfwar are a xenophobic group splinter cell of High Elves devoted to Greenscale, the Dragon of life.  Lead by Prince Hylas, they seek to destroy civilization and remake the world in a primordial jungle.  Diametrically opposed to the Aelfwar, are The Wanton.  These monstrous humanoids, namely goblins and dragonians, worship Maelforge, the dragon of fire and revel in senseless violence and brutality.  The Wanton will not be satisfied until every person has been slain, every forest burned, and every village ransacked all in a carnal sacrifice to their dragon god.

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So each time I read one of the complaints that this game lacks soul, I keep asking myself.  Are these players playing the same game I have been?  I came to Rift with a pretty open mind, because quite honestly I wasn’t expecting much from it.  I sat on a beta key for six months, and finally the discussions started to make me curious enough to download the 8 gig client on my crappy DSL connection.  Going into it, expecting nothing, I was shocked and amazed by the vibrant and polished world I found.

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Thing is a few months down the road, and a month into the live release I am still amazed by the world of Telara.  Trion has shown a level of attentiveness to its players that I have not seen ever during my tenure of playing MMOs.  Since release we have seen 10 hot fixes, 2 patches, with the first major content patch set to roll out this Wednesday.  This level of dedication, to the game and to the world they have created truly is, why you should be playing rift.

Belghast Is A Noob

Greetings loyal (and sometimes imaginary) readers.  I am still in process of writing another “Why You Should Be Playing Rift” feature.  Hopefully will have it in a more polished state tomorrow or Wednesday.  In the meantime I figured I would do another more personal blog entry.  Ultimately, the series will come to an end and this is all you will be left with, so hopefully those who came for it will stay for the other posts as well.

Expert Dungeoneers Incorporated

agg_BelMechanoHorse As I highlighted in a post last week, the upcoming changes that should be rolling out this Wednesday are going to change the prices for the Plaque of Achievement gear vendors.  I’ve heard rumors as to what this will actually mean, but regardless of the specifics change is coming.  As a result the core group of level 50 players in my guild, that have been running experts on a semi-regular basis, decided it was best to get as much gear as we could beforehand.  The better gear, the easier a time we will have gearing up the other members as they reach 50.

Starting Friday we began running 3-4 experts a night, and by day two we had the dungeons to a science.  For most of the runs we saw no wipes, and in the runs we had to draw deeper into the well of pug players, they were kept to a minimum.  Personally I managed to upgrade almost every slot on my character, including 3 t1 epic pieces, an epic weapon, epic trinket, epic ring, and some epic pants that in my recollection are better than then plaque ones anyway.

While Iron Tombs for example is starting to get a bit well trodden, the experience of running with friends in truly challenging dungeons stays relatively untarnished.  While we made a pretty massive push this weekend, it still does not feel near as “grindy” as the heroics in wow had become.  So I hope as they add additional dungeons to Rift, they figure out ways to keep them feeling fresh.  Honestly, to me, the experts feel far more like a 5 man raid instance, than a dungeon that can be rushed through in the way we did heroics.

I Said It, I’m A Noob

agg_belghastInT1 I need to preface this next part a little bit.  I am a very tank centric player.  All of my character that can tank, end up tanking eventually.  As a result, when I started playing this game, I created a tank spec and pretty much stuck with it as I leveled from 1 to 50.  I purchased my second spec, but I never really did anything with it apart from adding talent points to it every now and then.  That said, over the course of all these expert dungeons I had managed to amass a full set of t1 quality blue warrior dps gear.

So we move forward to Sunday night, Kings Breach, I get the wild idea that I want to dps it.  This is awesome, in that it lets our rogue tank the instance, which he also enjoys.  For weeks I had been complaining that I just didn’t have the survival in my dps spec that I had expected.  I would switch to it every now and then, but end up swapping right back to my paladin centric role after a mob or two.  No one would really understand what I was talking about, and I had gotten the impression that maybe paladins were just that phenomenally broken.

We start out the instance, and the rogue pulls.  I charge in and send the pet as well… and moments later a pack of mobs nowhere near us adds onto us.  We blamed the spec being new to me, and poor pet management.  We get to the second pack, and my pet is consistently dying a few moments into the fight each time.  While trying to figure out why, I look down and notice my pet is level 23.  It is at this point the rogue asks, in a sarcastic tone… “you did train up your dps spec, right?”

I honestly thought I had.  All this time, I couldn’t figure out why I had no problem with money, and all my other guild members were struggling to make ends meet.  I couldn’t figure out why I had 10 plat to spare when I bought my level 35 mount and 10 to spare again when I bought my level 50 mount.  Turns out…  I didn’t realize I needed to swap into my second spec to train it up. 

At some point in my 20s I had caught it up, but at level 50 I had a ridiculous number of abilities to purchase.  I ported back to town, and proceeded to spend 23 platinum on training costs catching up my dps role to level 50.  So yes, like I said, I am a complete noob.  However the rest of the run went silky smooth and I was puling out just silly numbers.  Seeing 2500 hp finishers, or the screen light up with thousands each time I cleaved was a bit addicting.  All that said, I can also see why the champion/beastmaster spec is getting nerfed, because it is a little unfair to be that powerful in my level of gear.

Face Meet Palm, Palm, Face

Friday evening after a discussion with a friend, I wrote the somewhat depression blog post “Is WoW the WoW-Killer?”.  In it I outline my views about how a series of decisions by Blizzard have lead to the slow dismantling of the server community.  It was initially received well by my friends, who I think make up the majority of my regular readers.  A few of thing thought it was spot on, and others disagreed with various points.  The line being more or less divided by the players who are happy in wow, and the players who are in various forms of quitting.

While playing Rift or WoW, we have taken to hanging out on mumble.  It lets the two factions of the same community stay in contact even though we are no longer playing the same game.  It is common place for various WoW Stalwarts to pop down and chat for a bit before returning to the various grouping channels above our “Rift” channel.  One of my longtime friends, a druid healer for our guild and raid, did the same thing to talk about my blog post.  After a bit of chitchat he asked if I minded him sharing the link.  I assumed he was going to post it to a friend.

I was shocked to find out, that the “Friend” was the entire wow community.  I started seeing these weird redirectors in the blog dashboard from battle.net.  After some tracing, I found out that he had in fact posted the link on the wow general forums.  I greatly appreciate his support, and his believing in me, but I have to say it was a bit shocking.  I was tanking an instance at the time, so it could just be that I didn’t fully “grok” the meaning of what he was saying on mumble.

The general forums, have in the past at least, been a wretched hive of scum and villainy.  I figured that I would start getting flamed left and right since the post was in no way supportive of the game so many of these players loved.  I have to say however, I was extremely shocked to find that the vast majority either supported my statements, or disagreed in a civil manner.  I have to admit, I did a bit of a “facepalm” when I had heard this had happened, but at the end of the day it seems like a good number of players are just as disappointed and troubled as I was.

I reiterated Friday, that I am done with World of Warcraft.  I still very much feel this way, and that I would rather catch up on my single player games than ever go back to it.  However I am hoping that maybe my post, and others like it will serve to give Blizzard a reminder that the players do matter.  That gaming is not just handing out content in an automat style, but also honoring the game environment that the players themselves create.  It is the mechanics that make a game worth playing, but it is the player base that make it worth staying.

Is WoW the WoW-Killer?

I’ve been teetering back and forth on whether or not I should write this post for awhile now.  I honestly thought I had posted my last “WoW” weeks ago.  Over the last few weeks playing another game has helped to lift the rose colored lenses I had so long for the World of Warcraft.  In the past I would go off, play another game for awhile, and it would remind me of all the things I missed.  This time however, all it has done is made me realize all the things I hated.

Death Of PVP Rivalry

Blizzard has made plenty of bad calls over the years, but it seems that recently the frequency of them keeps happening more and more often.  Of all the poor choices, the one that still sticks in my craw the most is what seems like the systematic dismantling of the server community.  In every MMO I have played, the server you play on is as much apart of the experience as the game itself.  Those that have had thriving vibrant player communities have lead to a much more enjoyable experience across the board.

The first of this decisions that has chipped away at the player community, is the cross-server battleground.  From the perspective not playing has given me, it is easy to see that this was the “beginning of the end” per se.  In the days before battlegroups, the server I played on had a fairly thriving pvp community.  The forums were filled with constant reminders of this rivalry and a begrudging respect for the players on the other side and how badly they could decimate you.

This spilled over into a nightly war that was waged starting at Southshore and ending at Hammerfall.  Almost the entirety of Hillsbrad and Arathi Highlands was taken up in a series of skirmishes to hold imaginary territory.  With the release of the Battlegrounds, this conflict was supported by seeing the guild or player you dreaded on the other side of the field.  The population imbalances however made life frustrating to players on the larger side of the divide, giving as long as 2 1/2 hour long Alterac Valley queues.

Instead of choosing to bolster the underdog by giving the player base a reason to re-roll there, like Dark Age of Camelot did.  They chose to institute cross-realm battlegroups, which instead pitted you against a series of players from other servers as well as your own.  Quickly those old rivalries began to fade, and with it a lot of the community that centered around PVP.  No longer did you know you were fighting players from your server, that you might see out in the world, instead you were just rallied against nameless faceless numbers.

Death of Communication

Prior to the Wrath of the Lich King expansion, my server had a very vibrant pug community.  If you ran heroics on a regular basis, you quickly began filling your friends list with suitable fillings.  You learned which guilds harbored good players, and which had lousy reputations.  Through this constant interaction with other players, the server community was thriving.  The leaders of each of the guilds, for the most part knew and communicated with the leaders of the other guilds on a weekly basis, each of us knowing that if a problem arose we would deal with our membership to rectify it.

The looking for group tool was never used that much, and instead groups relied on trade chat and social channels that each of the larger guilds had to fill groups.  It was a system that supported communication between players, and taught them the basics of building good groups.  All of this changed when the 3.3 patch was released in August of 2009.  The “idiot button” as I have taken to calling it, allowed players to click a button, choose a role, and get pulled into a dungeon with a cross-realm group when one was available.

At face value this sounded like a really cool change, it would allow players to fill groups without having to bother their guild members to run lower level content.  What it did almost immediately is destroy all communication and civility in dungeons.  Previously when you had to build groups from scratch, you knew that the players you were grouping with, were players that you were likely to see again on your server.  If you behaved bad enough, then more than likely your exploits would make their way to the realm forums.  On a day one server like I played on, with a long memory, getting a bad reputation meant you ended up blacklisted from pretty much all content.

Gabriel’s Theory

Since these players however you were now grouping with, were from other servers, and it was unlikely that you would ever see them again, what did it matter if you were a complete and total ass to them.  Within weeks the G.I.F.T. was in full effect, as players rolled need on everything they could, chewed other players out for minor mistakes, and generally threw all tact out the window. 

What was almost worse however, were the silent groups.  In the vast majority of these runs I go into, especially with well geared players, no one said a single thing.  We just charged forward like some out of control locomotive towards the goal line to get your “badges” for the day.  No one was willing to help anyone out that needed a quest in the zone, it was all about speed and skipping as much content as you could to get in and out with minimal interaction.

While this decimated the pug culture on my server, and eroded at the community we had built up, it did worse things to guilds.  No longer did you need anyone from your guild to do anything but raid, and as a result the vast majority of players simply ran things in this solo mode to save time.  You would have a guild full of players, none of them actually doing anything together but all running heroics.

The major unintended consequence, of this however is what pugging used to be the way you got to know potential players for your raid.  With the death of pug-culture, so died the ability for raid leaders to recruit from a pool of known good players.  So many of the players that we raided with, and ultimately later on ended up in our guild started out as players we one of us had met while pugging.

Death of the Forums

On my server particularly, we had such a strong community in the early days, that even after all of this assault we still managed to remain in contact through the server forums.  We were highly protective of our server, and Argent Dawn became adept at repelling trolls, by trolling them in return until they finally surrendered and left.  You have to understand that our server has been attacked from all sides since day one.  The first roleplaying server in the list, earns you the job of being a magnet of every griefer and whack-job with a cause.  So in return, those of us forum regulars became bandits with white hats, defending our server from invasion.

However beginning in mid 2010 the server admins began supplying crooked justice with an itchy ban hammer.  One by one, valued community members, that had supported the server since day one were given temp and permanent bans from the server forums.  If you mentioned someone that had gotten banned, you earned yourself a ban as well.  So as a result, we began referring to banning by the code word “Cream Cheese”.  This continued for months, and over time the population of the forum dwindled.

With the realid debacle, another group left the forums as well.  Some of us took up refuge, and tried to salvage what we could of the community on another forum, but in the end the real wages of war were already spent.  The general civility of the community, and willingness of player groups to work together was just gone.  We had been holding onto the skeleton, holding onto our pride, and the exodus off the forums just allowed us to salvage a bit of our dignity. 

Blizzard had fairly thoroughly broken our server community.  There were little shoals of players, scattered here and there through social channels, and trade chat still lent it’s way to the occasional successful pick up raid.  But for the most part, the general sense that we were all pulling towards some goal was gone for good.  All the elders of the community, the day one folks, found themselves backing away and becoming less active, only to be replace by the loud brash trolls that took our place.

Last, Best Hope… Dashed

With the Cataclysm expansion, death watch for the server community began.  The change to unified raid lockouts had many consequences on our environment.  In the past, we had been able to go to 25 mans with our raid, and attend 10 mans with various groups of friends.  At this time, our guild lead a thriving non-guild based raid as well.  With the changes to the guild system, and the introduction of guild only achievements, it pretty much signaled the end of that era for us.

For the most part, one by one, the smaller satellite guilds that made up our raid merged into House Stalwart.  With it introduced a slew of new personalities, and issues.  More than anything however it caused us to draw inwards.  While it revived the guild groups, it completely destroyed the concept of grouping with the community at large.  Everyone was pushing to get that guild experience, guild levels, and more importantly guild achievements.  I freely admit, I had a lot of hope that this would be the era that changed things and re-established the community of guilds.

What happened however is the last of the server community has all but dried up.  There is little communication between guild leaders anymore, let alone players from other guilds that they do not already have on realid.  The focus on the importance of the guild, has caused a great internalization, shrinking the size of the server to the constraints of the members of your group.  Our server forums are all but dead, and the faces that are there included none of the players that had been there for literally years.

The Final Nail – The Point

I am sure by now, if you made it this far you are wondering when I will get to a relevant point.  Well here it comes. This week a few things were announced that caught my attention, even though I have not been terribly active on the wow websites anymore.  The biggest of these is the announcement of a guild transfer and rename systems.  This will be the final destruction of what is left of what it is to be on a server.  No longer will guilds need to worry about their reputation, or attempt to help the general server community.  If you get a bad reputation, change your name.  If you end up on a low population server, uproot your guild and make the situation worse.

On top of this being bad for the servers, this is a flat out money grab on the part of Blizzard.  Think of in these terms.  You are in a guild that you love, and have worked to help level it to 20.  Your guild leader decides it is best for the group to move to another server.  Now you have to make the decision, do I leave the guild and lose all the work I have put towards getting exalted and getting all these cool perks, or do I have to pay $25 per character to follow.  If larger guild decides to move, blizzard gains several thousand dollars for performing what I am sure is a scripted process.  I’m a developer, you don’t offer something like this if you don’t have an automated tool. The price of these services has long been nothing more than a convenience tax.

Also this past week, it was announced that a brand new mount would be sold on the Blizzard Store.  So you mean to tell me, that all they can release is recycled dungeons…  but they have plenty of time to code up a new money generating mount?  I don’t begrudge them selling items, because that is pretty much something we will have to deal with, but what I do begrudge them is the fact that since the merger with activation it has been one money grab or another.

Time for a Change?

At this point I am just sick of the game, and sick of the company behind it.  I had been a loyal supporter of Blizzard and WoW for years, but what I keep seeing I don’t like, and haven’t liked for a long time.  Being removed from the game just let me realize how badly I disliked it.  I have given over the guild I spent six and half years, and little bits of my soul building to a friend and fellow officer.  As well as that major step, I’ve given away all my money and anything of value on my characters.  I have reached the point where I will never play WoW again.  I would quite honestly rather play nothing, just hang out, read books, than play World of Warcraft again.

I hear a lot of rumblings of the same from friends that they are just tired of the game.  After 6 years of playing, it is feeling really old, and with the lack of positive direction from blizzard it seems hopeless.  Larisa of the Pink Pigtail Inn, who has often been a cheerleader of the blizzard cause (or at least more positive than me), is starting to show doubt that the community might be off the rails.  I think things are changing for Blizzard, and hopefully for the sake of those who are left… they will realize that we are not just numbers.  We are not this inexhaustible supply of willing fan boys, that will gobble up everything they offer.

There has been a lot of talk about Rift, and its impact on the community.  And while I won’t belay the fact that it is a freaking amazing game… I think what you are seeing is more than that.  Rift won’t be the WoW-Killer, in fact there will NEVER be a WoW-Killer.  When WoW came out, it was touted as the Everquest-Killer.  Everquest has kept chugging with a smaller but equally devoted fanbase, and has released 9 additional expansions since 2004 when WoW came out, the last of the expansions in October of 2010.  Once an MMO reaches the point of sustainability, you simply cannot kill it, it will keep going so long as it has a loyal following.

What I feel will ultimately be the end of the game, for the most of us are the poor decisions Blizzard continues to make.  It has trained a player base, willing to put next to no effort into the actual gameplay itself, and is resigned to setting up a bunch of cups for us to knock down in the form of raid content.  They spent so much effort, redoing the old-world, but have made the content so easy that you can get from 1-85 in 2 days played.  The entire focus of the game has been on the fictional virtues of the end game, with no focus from the player community on the journey itself.  I guess at the end of the day, I miss the journey.