Kontroversial Keith

Tag: game design

  • World of Warcraft: And the Numbers Keep Dropping (600,000 Subscribers Gone) and My Fixes

    A recent report pegged World of Warcraft’s current subscription base to 7.7 million, which means that 600,000 more subscribers have quit. Back during Cataclysm, Blizzard claimed the decline on China being behind in the release. However, this doesn’t seem to be the case any longer and possibly is a major reason why Viviendi no longer…

  • World of Warcraft: My Ranking of Mist of Pandaria LFR Bosses

    After doing all the LFRs for Mist of Pandaria uncountable times, I decided to come up with my own list that ranks from the easiest to most difficult bosses in LFR. This comes strictly as someone who has done every encounter on all classes as a DPS except for the monk.

  • World of Warcraft: Recent Tank Shortage in LFG/LFR?

    There’s an interesting hot topic on the Blizzard forums discussing how people are experiencing a general tank shortage in LFG/LFR. The real question is whether or not this is a current phenomenon or if this has been going on for some time.

  • World of Warcraft: Class Change Thoughts

    On the topic of class changes, I decided to write a post about somethings I wish were changed with classes/specs.

  • World of Warcraft: Why the Constant Changes for Classes in Each Patch?

    Something that has frustrated me for the longest time is the moving target for classes in World of Warcraft. Obviously, this has gone on since the start of the expansion. In some cases, the changes are positive as bugs might be addressed in a patch. However, a lot of the changes in spells, talents, etc.…

  • World of Warcraft: Reputation/Valor Point Changes to Gear in Patch 5.4 and Ruminations

    Some notes on the upcoming reputation/valor point change to gear is that pre-Throne of Thunder gear will cost Justice Points and cost between 1250-2250 points while having their reputation requirement removed. Shado-Pan Assault gear will have the reputation requirement for honored level gear reduced to friendly while the overall Valor Point cost will be reduced…

  • World of Warcraft: New Loot System Idea

    By now, I’m certain the vast majority of people probably feel that the LFR loot system is quite awful. You hear it on the forums all the time. Blizzard seems to want to retain the slot machine mentality behind the loot system because for them it’s because a horribly lazy way to continue to put…

  • World of Warcraft: Was Wrath of the Lich King the Best Expansion?

    I know a lot of people ended up panning Wrath of the Lich King, with old timers calling people starting in that era “Wrath Babies”. People criticized the instances as being too easy, ICC as allowing casuals to participate, allowing people to purchase gear using badges and even some of the dumbed down quest design.…

  • Diablo 3: Itemization Design Ideas

    There was some talks on the Itemization patch (aka Loot 2.0) with a nice summary on the Diablo Fans page. The three big ideas are 1) making legendaries have unique properties; 2) making items upgradable (and thereby non-tradeable); and 3) more attention to less used class talents/skills. While the last part is yet to be…

  • World of Warcraft: Raid Boss and Quest Design Theories

    I’m a pretty big critic when it comes to game design since I’ve dabbled a bit in writing my own home grown modules for games like Shadowrun, Dungeons and Dragons and even games with a customized aspect. So when it comes to playing games I do enjoy such as Diablo 3 and World of Warcraft,…