Just recently we noted that Blizzard is already preparing for the day when World of Warcraft will be declared obsolete, and while many readers felt that, like Everquest, WoW will never be considered "obsolete" (only unprofitable), there is one aspect of World of Warcraft that has remained untouched in its six years of development: WoW's classic hotkey based combat, otherwise affectionately known as "1-2-1-2-1-2" combat.

More specifically, while there are many who are happy with World of Warcraft's responsive combat design, it is also undeniable that sometimes it can be a bit jarring to realize that your raid DPS cycle really consists of you just pressing 1 button while occasionally pressing 2 once you've built up enough combo points or once a certain skill is off cooldown. In this regard, there have been a number of MMORPGs that have set out to try to "break free" of WoW's 1-2-1-2 combat, and while not all of these innovations have been very successful, we, here at ZAM, decided to really check out what sort of technology fads are on the rise for MMO gamers away from WoW's classic hotkey style of combat.

First / Third Person Shooter MMORPGs: (Global Agenda, Fallen Earth, Darkfall)

The unfortunate problem with first person shooter MMORPGs is that FPS MMOs can sometimes skimp on the "RPG" aspect of their genre, with many MMOFPSs quickly degenerating into slower versions of Counter-Strike, but with more levels. Collectively, however, gamers have always been keen for a good MMOFPS and, while super-indie MMOs like Darkfall and Mortal Online have tried (and failed) to create a responsive MMOFPS game, the industry does seem hell-bent on being the first to make a true successor to the genre after SOE's Planetside.

Unfortunately, however, since the release of Global Agenda (another one of those MMOFPSs that may have skimped too much on the RPG aspect), and the uber-difficult Fallen Earth, MMOFPS fans may have only a few remaining bastions in which they can put their hopes: Webzen's highly delayed Huxley Online, CCP Games' Dust 514 and SOE's The Agency. Of these, however, both Dust 514 and The Agency are being developed with a focus on consoles rather than PCs. Thus, while it does seem as though MMOFPSs may be the way of the future, it will probably take quite a while for the concept to attract the right developer. Who knows? Perhaps MMOFPS gaming is destined for the console, and there's nothing we can do about it.

NCsoft's Blade & Soul

In case you weren't aware, Blade & Soul is an MMORPG being developed by NCsoft, and they claim that B&S will involve action-based / directional combat rather than targeting something and pressing 1 repeatedly. The one issue with directional or action-based MMORPGs is the fact that they require a very good internet connection to really appreciate the game. Korea has an incredible internet structure that is virtually impossible to recreate in North America, and it would seem somewhat difficult to play an action game that relies on subtle movements and fast reactions if there are any latency issues involved. Even with an MMO like Aion, players are noting that aerial combat is incredibly difficult for melee classes because, with latency, it's almost impossible to actually hit your opponent mid-air if they're constantly moving.

Ii this way, should NCsoft succeed in creating a great action-based game for North American players, they'll need to also get the server prowess to support such a game. If everything lines up, however, you can be certain that a number of World of Warcraft players would willingly make the journey to Blade & Soul just to check out this innovative combat system.

Square-Enix's Final Fantasy XIV

Square Enix has always marched to a very different tune than most North American MMORPG companies, but it could also be the fact that they released Final Fantasy XI before the launch of World of Warcraft. Either way, some players really loved the skillchain system of FFXI and its unique, albeit slow, style of combat, while others have hated the game with a passion for precisely these same reasons. Now Square Enix will be coming out with FFXIV after seeing all that is World of Warcraft, but early alpha combat videos all point to SE creating yet another unique combat style for FFXIV.

Of course, we'll all have to wait at least until the closed beta starts before we can start another brouhaha about hating or loving FFXIV's combat system, but the one thing that we can expect from Square Enix is an MMO that is completely different from the norm. In reality, it's unlikely that there are many other MMO development companies out there that can take such massive risks as Square Enix does with their gameplay, but it would be great if, one day, we could see this kind of innovation being put forward on every major MMORPG title to come to North America.

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In the end, whether you love or hate World of Warcraft, it's difficult to deny the incredible success they've had. Chances are low that Blizzard will look into revamping the combat system of WoW for Cataclysm, and, if 11.5 million users love the game as it is, I'm sure everyone's heard the cliché: if it ain't broke, don't fix it. What has become clear, however, is that, if Blizzard's biggest worry is that they become obsolete as more advanced games come forth, competing MMO companies should start to focus on creating games that do exactly that - challenge World of Warcraft on an innovative level, rather than repackaging parts of the game and adding in unique elements of their own. Developers should look to re-creating the MMORPG from the ground up!

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Last week Blizzard finally delivered a semi-detailed explanation of the upcoming character stat changes scheduled to be introduced shortly before Cataclysm's official release. At BlizzCon 2009, the World of Warcraft development team revealed the news that the existing character stat system would be completely redesigned in the next expansion. We only received a smattering of details back then, indicating that, among other changes, modifiers like Spell Power and Attack Power would be rolled into base stats.

The details were all but speculation until last week, when Blizzard poster Eyonix announced the preliminary information in the official forums. The result is an itemized list of all game stats and combat mechanics outlined in several categories, including "What You’ll See on Gear," "Being Removed from Items," "Going Away Completely" and more. The announcement was well-received but, as expected, the player community unleashed a barrage of questions and concerns. Instead of spending a few hours scouring multiple forum threads and searching for individual "blue" responses, we've done most of the legwork for you; after the jump, you'll find Blizzard's answers to last week’s most commonly-asked questions from players.

As expected, Blizzard's original announcement at last summer’s BlizzCon left many WoW fans scratching their heads, eager to learn more about the upcoming changes to the character stat system. This is, after all, a collection of stats and combat mechanics that we've spent five years trying to master; the art of theorycrafting is a complex and almost religiously-scrutinized practice, as evidenced not only throughout our own forums but also in dedicated communities like the number-crunching tacticians at ElitistJerks.com.

The average WoW player won't have a detailed understanding of these gameplay mechanics by the time his or her first character reaches level 80, let alone all the newcomers who are left mystified by the complexity of things like damage mitigation, damage per cast time and MP/5…and therein lies the problem.

During the late-Burning Crusade era, the developers at Blizzard started to recognize that the character stat system and its underlying mechanics were becoming increasingly complex, especially with the addition of new stats like Armor Piercing and the branching-off of stats like Spell Hit Rating and Spell Haste. Blizzard occasionally applied band-aid fixes like the integration/disintegration of certain stats, but the overall system had become dangerously convoluted for the majority of players who weren't interested in studying tomes of information in order to participate in raids with a modicum of efficiency.

Or, as Blizzard explained it in the recent announcement:

As the game has matured, we've run into increasingly complex issues with the current stat system. Many stats are inherently confusing, and the way they interrelate can feel convoluted. […] Our ultimate goal is make gear a more interesting (and less confusing) choice by making each stat valuable to more players.

If you haven't already read about the specific changes to the character stat system and gear itemization, check out the full announcement in the aforementioned link. In this feature, we're interested in the most commonly-raised issues and concerns from players that followed the announcement. Blizzard posters Eyonix, Ghostcrawler and Nethaera have done a decent job of making good on their promise to answer the community's questions, so far.

One of the biggest concerns raised by players is the increase of Stamina for classes, specifically for cloth-wearing characters. Blizzard announced that "non-plate wearers will end up with more Stamina than before" so that "health pools will be much closer between plate-wearers and other classes." Casters and healers probably don't mind hearing this news, because it might mean they will gain a little survivability in situations like accidentally drawing aggro from a tank; perhaps they'll be able to take five or six hits before death, instead of one or two.

Some tanks didn't share the enthusiasm, though; many players interpreted this to mean that Blizzard was "homogenizing" classes to an extent that cloth- and leather-wearing characters might be potential off-tanks. In a few posts like this one, Ghostcrawler explained that tanking will still be a class-dependent role because of their superior damage mitigation and possession of stats like Parry and Block Rating. "We have a lot of room to bring them closer together while still leaving them very far apart," he said, in conclusion.

In a later post, Ghostcrawler explained that cloth-wearers in Cataclysm still won't have as much Armor as plate-wearing classes; instead of having one-fifth the armor value of plate-wearers, cloth-wearers might have around half the value of plate, he offered as an example. "Really, cloth isn't the issue, since cloth wearers have spells to buff their mitigation," he said. "Leather wearers are the ones who end up the most fragile. Mail would be bad too except that shaman[s] can use shields when needed and hunters typically don't get hit by melee much. We just want to bring things a little closer to each other. It's easier to establish a baseline for how hard a particular attack should hit for when one dps spec isn't literally four times as survivable as another."

In a post regarding the upcoming change to Block (blocked attacks will simply hit for 30 percent less damage), Eyonix addressed the fact that low-level mobs will soon be able to damage players no matter what their Block Rating is. "We don’t like that block allows certain tanks to trivialize older content," he said. "Older content is always going to be easy, but it was a little strange that warriors and paladins could literally take no damage with enough block while DKs still took some damage. Stats need to scale and this one wasn’t."

Haste was another topic of conversation, especially among melee classes. Blizzard announced that Haste will become more attractive for melee classes that rely on resources like Energy and Runes, allowing them to "do stuff" more often—or, as Eyonix mentioned in another post, "effectively letting [melee classes] hit their buttons more often." He also confirmed that "the change to haste for melee dps is 'in addition to its current effect '" when responding to an Enhancement Shaman about the current role of melee haste.

However, some players thought this might leave Warriors at a disadvantage; if melee classes like Rogues and Death Knights will benefit from Haste in both attack speed and resource regeneration, will it affect Rage as well? "Our plan is to make haste good for all classes, even warriors," Eyonix said in this post. "The goal is to make all the stats that appear on your gear attractive."

In several posts, Eyonix reiterated that the upcoming changes will encourage players to wear the type of gear they're supposed to, and the simplification of the itemization process. After receiving dozens of questions asking "Does this mean X class won't have any reason to roll on Y gear anymore?, Ghostcrawler finally stepped up and offered the following summary:

DPS cloth: Int, Sta, Hit, Haste, Crit, Mastery (mage, warlock, Shadow priest)

Healing cloth: Int, Sta, Spirit, Haste, Crit, Mastery (Holy and Disc priest)

Melee leather: Agi, Sta, Hit, Haste, Crit, Mastery, Expertise (rogue, Feral druid)

Spellpower leather: Int, Sta, Spirit, Haste, Crit, Mastery (Resto, Balance druid)

Physical mail: Agi, Sta, Hit, Haste, Crit, Mastery, Expertise (hunter, Enhancement shaman)

Spellpower mail: Int, Sta, Spirit, Haste, Crit, Mastery (Resto, Elemental shaman)

DPS Plate: Str, Sta, Hit, Haste, Crit, Mastery, Expertise (Fury, Arms, Retribution, dps DKs)

Tanking plate: Str, Sta, Hit, Armor, Dodge, Block, Parry, Mastery, Expertise (Prot, Prot and tanking DKs)

Healing plate: Int, Sta, Spirit, Haste, Crit, Mastery (Holy paladins)

Ghostcrawler mentioned that there will be some exceptions, such as "some spellpower cloth with no hit or Spirit that healers and nukers may want," or "Elemental tier sets with no Spirit." He also said that jewelry and cloaks will be "more class agnostic" than actual armor gear. Echoing Blizzard's desire for classes to wear the type of gear that's intended for them, he reminded players that they will receive a "small mastery bonus" for wearing the heaviest armor they can; Hunters wearing mail armor instead of leather will receive the bonus, for example.

In another post, Ghostcrawler explained the benefit of receiving the Mastery bonus for wearing class-appropriate gear; "So a Balance druid who takes cloth will be essentially giving up free stats," he said. "Sometimes that may be worth it to them (just as sometimes it's worth it for a Resto druid to take that piece of +hit gear), but often times it won't be worth it especially if it's an upgrade for you."

Another new Cataclysm mechanic that players are asking about is Reforging, which allows players to "convert one stat to 50 percent of another stat". Not every conversion will be allowed (like Stamina to Strength), but it's meant to add another layer of customization to gear. In response to several questions about mechanics of Reforging items for more-appealing stats, Ghostcrawler finally revealed some important details.

"Think of reforging like enchants," he said. "It's not that you take a piece of gear and turn it into whatever you want. You pick up specific scrolls with specific conversions." He continued to explain that not every type of stat conversion will be available. "Rest assured that we're not going to promote a system where Prot paladins want dps plate for tanking more than tanking plate," he said. "Part of all of these changes is to discourage behavior like that. We don't want to recreate it immediately in a different form."

In last week's announcement, we also learned that it will be tougher to max-out combat ratings—like Crit and Hit—in Cataclysm. Players are still trying to figure out how the new system will affect a player's ability to hit higher-level enemies—and apparently, Blizzard isn't sure yet. "We’re not sure yet how bosses will 'level up' in subsequent tiers," Eyonix said in this post. "The general idea is that currently you need a specific amount of hit and after that hit becomes worthless even though more hit goes onto higher level gear. Furthermore it creates odd balance problems when you are critting and avoiding the most powerful bosses by more than you did the earliest bosses (because your gear keeps getting better while they just get more health and damage)."

Blizzard fielded several other "one-off" questions regarding specific classes, abilities or game mechanics. On the European forums, Blizzard poster Wryxian replied to "What happens to the weapon skill achievements?" by saying that achievements like Did Somebody Order a Knuckle Sandwich? "may well become candidates for Feats of Strength," but we won't know for sure until later. Mages are wondering if they'll still be able to create food and water for their lowbie friends when their spell ranks are removed, but Eyonix still doesn’t know how buffing and handing out food/water to lower-level players will work.

Warlocks are a little curious about Spirit changing to a pure-healer stat; what happens to the damage increase that Spirit provided via Fel Armor and other benefits, such as Life Tap? Eyonix confirms that Warlocks won't rely on it in Cataclysm because of the stat redesign. In another post, he tries to clear up similar questions by summarizing the issue; "I would remind players who are focusing on individual talents and abilities to remember that we're going to be doing a major redesign on all talent trees," he said. "So fear not, these changes are meant to work in conjunction with the design of each class come Cataclysm."

There are big plans for World of Warcraft just over the horizon, so it's no surprise that players are anxious to learn the details. When the developers announce fundamental changes to a game that many fans have played for half a decade, apprehension is only natural. About halfway through a couple thousand replies, Eyonix tried to put things into perspective.

"We're announcing these changes now to pave the way for other information to come," he said. "It's important that people don't freak out. We're not going to break your class—though there will be many changes to the game—ones we believe are positive changes. For now we ask that you just digest the information, try and absorb it, and wait for more specific class information to release before you scream that the sky is falling."

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