Phasing - Why I love it, why it is amazing, and why it is shittyI

I love Phasing, it's great. My character feels like they are progressing through some form of time, it also feels like I'm having some form of affect on the world as a whole. It completely lends itself to narrating a story that the Developers want to, and have to tell, especially within an IP such as WoW. It allows for me, as a player, to do that "Burn a Barn" quest, and not see it switch between painted on flames to completely OK in mere moments. No, when implemented with certain quests, you will after a certain point, always see that barn burning, or better yet, burnt down from said fire.

Why I think it is amazing is in the same vein of thought. Not many, if any, MMORPG's have or had a system similar to this, where the actual game world changed through the player and his or her groups actions. It is really believeable and many times puts me in the story, right there in the action. It captures that storytelling feel of Warcraft 3 and my immersion into the game lore as a whole. Instead of in theory of doing these quests, the alliance is pushing ahead, I now in fact do see the forces of the scourge being whittled away in weakening defenses, and watch as the lines incrementally get pushed back through my efforts. This gives me a great feeling of accomplishment, that I did infact achieve something with that quest instead of an arbitrary number floating accross my screen telling my how much closer I am to my Exp or Gold goals.

Why I hate it, many times it is used to very small effect, and in not so noticeable ways up until you hit the Icecrown and Storm Peak areas. up until that point there is only a few minor changes here and there. The Dragonblight quest for Wrathgate being the very very prominent exception to this. Another large problem is, if a guildy or friend is before this pivotal point, as far as I know, I cannot interact with that person in the specific area s/he needs help with, since in my world, the alliance has already pushed back the scourge and defeated Elite Mob XXYZZ thanks to my help. This is very promlematic and a work around to circumvent the phasing to allow higher ups to help their friends, who many be completely boned in completing their quest due to lack of people.

Now in Blizzards defense, none of the quests that trigger a phasing event, to my knowledge, require a group, whilst they do pit you against terrible elites, many times they also supply a horn of some sort to allow you to call for a similarly leveled, compared to the enemy elite, ally character. Though I still feel that a -just in case- clause should be created and an ability to go back in time to help an ally would be extremely useful.

In other news, I hit level 80 on my Death Knight, and spent only a couple days working on my Epic Flyer training which I was able to achieve in short order. I didn't farm and work the Auction House at all with this character, though I did get a loaner of 1,000gold from my other character as seed money for bags and such. Though even without that seed money it would have only taken me 2 or 3 more days to get the gold required. As accoridng to my stastics on the armory I was making somewhere in the area of 400-450 gold a day.

Anyways, happy questing/pvping/pveing.

~Xi

Caught up in WoW

Wrath of the Lich King content and the Death Knight class are both amazing. The new content and zones in WotLK are polished to a freaking HDR bloom. That is all.

~Xi