Group Labs

People that spend a lot of time playing this game can easily get burnt out in a matter of months. It's a bit of a wax and wane relationship between myself and the game, so I take advantage of the fact that it lets you create several characters on one realm and even more across multiple realms.

Creating an alternative character (alt) can be a good way to take your mind off of fail raids and annoying PuG groups that your main is cursed to come across (not just me I hope..). The alt itself might be the same class, it might be different, it may be a change of race it may be a change of type (tank, DPS, healer).

But what else are alts good for?

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With Cataclysm coming Soon(tm) we are going to see another increase in maximum level from 80 to 85. This increase is an obvious extension to the current maximum level and we will (I suspect) continue to see an increase in level as the game matures and more expansions are released. This then gives rise to the question of how far will it go? Will we see level 100 characters in a few expansions? The minimal increase from 80 to 85 serves as a clue to the direction that the developers would rather go in.

There is still something which intrigues me about increasing the maximum level and the whole basis of level as a metric to balance ability. At what point is the advantage of a higher maximum level outweighed by the time taken to reach it?

Discuss!

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With the new direction firmly in place inside the World of Warcraft to promote casual play - more casual players can join and quickly enjoy the game and as much content as possible - there have been some victims. People that really have taken the brunt of the major changes, which affect their playing, their group style and the way that they see progress as an achievement.

I'm not talking about hardcore raiders that people think are missing out with the new casual gearing system. No, these people are actually cared for. The problem is that there is a class of players between hardcore raider and casual raider groups; the raiding middle class. 

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OK, this is a departure from previous posts but I'd just like to mention that I recently found out about this documentary project which I find fascinating and would love to see more people support them to reach their goal.

Basically they are looking for financial support to produce a full length documentary about raiding and the social aspects of the WoW community when involved in raiding. As you may have gathered from previous entries on here this is something I like to think about as well. Right now they are looking for backing on KickStarter - a service that lets projects promote themselves to the public for donation-based funding - and I have already made my donation.

Please check out their promo video and read the blurb to get more info on what they are planning to do with the money and how your donation will help.

Since the introduction of the new LFG (Looking For Group) interface there has been an obvious contention between gameplay style across realms, guilds, groups of friends and solo players. When queueing for a random heroic there are a few different categories of players: some want to run the whole place for badges, some are there to gear up their new character or build their alternative specs and some are there just for the daily emblem of frost.

Understanding the types of players that will queue helps to accept that these different game styles can work across any number of groups and being willing to accept one of these styles is good training in understanding group dynamics and being flexible enough to make compromises on your own goals for that run or any other group raid activity.

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Yes I've been playing World of Warcraft for quite a few years, yes I've enjoyed my time playing it, yes I've built-up quite a history with my characters (although my latest ones aren't originals at all), but there is a fly in the ointment that I still resent today; I'm in the UK and play on the US servers.

You see I used to play another MMO called Anarchy Online and had the pleasure of meeting some guys that I enjoyed playing with. I've hopped around a couple of games but normally with at least one of these in tow. Now however most of them have left or real-life commitments have meant I don't see them on-line at the same times I'm on-line.

I know, I know, it's my own fault. I'm not here to complain about the lack of cross-regional transfers, I understand that it isn't feasible to transfer such a large amount of data regarding a character's logical database history. My problem is time-zone, basically I'm in the wrong one.

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