Hey Everyone,
Well, I’m working my way through Diablo 3. Not as fast as I’d like, but progress is being made. Just recently I put up a video of the Butcher fight, pretty dang cool. The major boss battles are definitely more involved than what I remember from the previous versions of Diablo.
My most recent major milestone was the Belial fight. This fight is the first time I died even though I was paying attention. There are a handful of abilities that do substantial damage and it can be easy to tunnel vision on DPS. I really liked how it forced me to step back and play slightly more conservatively.
With the different fight phases, it reminded me a raid encounter in WoW. The intricacy of the encounter for a solo player strikes me as something the WoW team could implement. I’d love to see a bunch of solo and sub 5 man group challenges in WoW that felt like this. Random Boss Creator!?!
While I have been focused on Diablo 3, right before launch I was getting back into WoW. I had taken quite a long break and was slow in getting into the 4.3 content. I’ve been hoping for a cross realm raid finder for a while now, so I really wanted to get in and check out the implementation. I finally did and I really love it. I’m DPSing, which is probably part of why I like it, but it is really great for someone like me who can only login at sporadic and inconsistent times. I’d love to do the harder versions, but I just know I can’t commit to the level I’d need to in order to perform the way I want to.
In addition to the raid finder updates, I finally got a chance to really put the Dungeon Journal to the test. All these new instances were perfectly suited for this task. I avoided all fore knowledge of the mechanics and strategies instead letting the journal be my guide. I may not have executed perfectly, but for the most part I didn’t have too much trouble with any of the encounters. Part of it was certainly due to the others in the group having most likely already done the encounters before, but I could have easily got myself killed or missed a critical mechanic if I hadn’t read the journal ahead of time.
All in all it was a great experience. I can’t wait for the future evolution of these tools. The main thing that is missing now is that training mechanism for new and returning players. A random boss generator / solo and small group challenges would be a perfect addition to this stable of great tools. If something exists in the game that helps newer players learn how to improve their own play or what the minimum expectations are for certain levels of content, then everyone’s experience will be better. Fewer unintentional bad puggers, fewer rage quits, just generally better feeling in the community… wait, this is the internet and more specifically the WoW community we’re talking about, so maybe we should strike that last part from the record. Definitely better grouping experiences in general though.
Anyway, I’m looking at setting up a stream. I’m not sure if anyone would be interested in watching a late night gamer like myself, but it will be fun putting it together. I’ll have more details as I finalize everything, hopefully I can do something that is fun and entertaining.
Have a good one!
Stay Safe Out There,
~Aten