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Blizzard announced that in Pandaria they would delay the start of raiding by a whole week. The first raid instance will open one week after Pandaria launches. Two more instances will open a month later.

While I think this is a good move, I don't see why Blizzard doesn't take this further. I must admit that I don't really understand Blizzard's aversion to spacing out content.

Why have this giant glut of content right at the very start of the expansion? It seems to me that when all the content is front-loaded, we just end up with larger and larger gaps at the end of the expansion.  Take the tail end of Cataclysm. It's been eight months since there's been any new content.

Why not release Pandaria without any raids? Let everyone go through all the leveling content and the heroics. Two months later, release the first raid.  Two months after that, release the second raid. Then two months after that, release the third raid. That gives lots of time for Blizzard to add new content into the game, while still giving everyone something new to look forward to every couple of months.

It seems to me that a steady stream of content would be more interesting that everyone gorging themselves at the beginning of an expansion, and then dying off at the end.

So EA/Bioware has announced that the old Republic will go Free-to-Play later this year. As a current subscriber, I'm somewhat disappointed. I don't really like F2P games, and I don't think they end up in a good spot. Maybe I'll write a longer post on F2P later.

The structure of the F2P option is interesting. Levels 1 through 50 are free, and you get a limited number of flashpoints and warzones per week. Operations are reserved for subscribers. There's a pretty clear division where they're hoping that transient players are attracted by F2P, and the extended players stay on subscription.

What I expect--though it's not explicitly stated--is that the free player will only get 1 character slot, and will have to pay to unlock more slots. This way TOR gets money from the people who want to see multiple class stories, which are the major selling point of the game.

It's possible that TOR will end up putting more emphasis on raids, because those players are the dependable revenue stream. The people who pay the bills call the shots. This might end up being a good thing for raiders.

Though, maybe all the raiders will end up dropping their subscriptions. The thing is that the raiding in TOR is decent, but the class stories are the major attraction. Right now, you have to sub to get both aspects. When it goes F2P, it might better for an extended player to switch to another game for raiding, while maintaining TOR in a F2P mode to finish the class stories at leisure.

Basically, I don't think the marginal value of TOR raiding is worth a subscription.  Class story plus raiding, definitely worth it. But not raiding alone.

I am rather leaning to that plan at the moment. I was having an internal debate about what to do when Mists of Pandaria comes out, but now my plan is pretty set. Drop the TOR subscription, and maybe leave it installed and play the class stories. But if I want to raid, I'll raid in Pandaria.

I've been trying out some of the raids--or operations, as they're called--in The Old Republic.  TOR now has three raids: Eternity Vault, Karagga's Palace, and Explosive Conflict. So far, I've tackled the first and last instances on Story Mode difficulty.

(As an aside, it's interesting how good a word "raid" is. It's short and sweet. You can use "raider" and "raiding" easily. Compare to "operation".)

TOR raids follow roughly the same formula. There are 5 bosses per raid. One boss will be a "puzzle" boss. The first bosses are reasonably simple in terms of mechanics, while the final fight will be a complex multi-stage fight. There are two or three difficulties: Story, Hard, and Nightmare. Only the first two instances have Nightmare mode, the latest one does not have it.  I've only seen Story Mode mode, and I would say that it is definitely harder than LFR, maybe a bit easier than T11 or T12 normal mode.

The step up in difficulty of the last boss is pretty funny if you aren't expecting it. In Eternity Vault, it was a bit like going from a Molten Core boss to Kael'thas in T5. Exaggerating a bit, but it's definitely a large jump in complexity.

Loot-wise, I think TOR's system is much more sensible than WoW's. Hard Mode drops a specific tier of gear. Hard Mode flashpoints drop Tionese, Eternity Vault drops Columni, Karagga's Palace drops Rakata, and Explosive Conflict drops Black Hole. Then Story Mode has gear from the previous tier, except the last Story Mode boss drops current tier gear.  Then there's all sorts of commendations flying around, and bits and pieces from each tier can be gotten from specific commendations.

As far as I can tell, Nightmare Mode drops come from a future tier or include mounts, etc. It seems more for challenge or bragging rights.

It is a little complicated with the tokens/commendations, but I find it much simpler than having three levels of gear per tier, and having LFR gear obsolete the previous tier in WoW. It does feel like there's more of a sense of progression, where you move through the tiers as you gear up.

One of the interesting things about TOR is that each player has five companions that they can gear up. So loot that isn't taken by a player is often taken for a companion or stripped for the individual mods that make up the item. This is a lot less waste, and makes gearing up new players easier.

The "puzzle" bosses are a neat twist. This is a boss or event where part of the raid has to solve a simple puzzle. In Eternity Vault it's a very simple pattern matching puzzle, a bit like a Rubik's Cube. In Karagga's Palace it's a Towers of Hanoi puzzle which debuffs the boss. One of the interesting things about these fights is that poor performance on the puzzles is not necessarily a wipe. It makes the fight longer and maybe harder, but still beatable.

 TOR does have a raid finder for the first two story modes, but it isn't exactly fully transient the way LFR is. You still get locked out, and then you can only join a group which has bosses that you haven't killed. But you can specify to only join fresh groups which haven't killed anything. The downside of this is that if your raid does break up, it becomes very hard to replace people and finish the instance.

As well, TOR doesn't have mods, so you just have to work with the built-in UI and emotes. For the most part, this isn't any issue. However, TOR does suffer from the standard problem with tracking the vital buffs and debuffs. I wonder if an MMO will ever handle vital debuffs well. The Secret World makes an interesting attempt with only having four possible debuff states that matter, and then keying off those four.

All in all, raiding in The Old Republic is a lot of fun. Five solid bosses with some decent trash makes for a nice two to three hour night. There's a good mix of mechanics and difficulty. The bosses are varied and interesting. The multi-stage final boss fights are a good capstone fight for the instance or the night.

Now, if you don't like raids at all, you probably won't like operations in TOR. But if you do like raiding, TOR's operations are worth checking out.

It seems like cosmetic gear has won the battle. Almost all games include the ability to change a character's appearance without affecting a character's stats. The days where you could look at a character and visually identify what they had achieved or their power level are gone. However, it's interesting that there are at least four separate cosmetic gear systems in use in modern MMOs. Let's compare each one.

1. Transmogrification

Used by Blizzard, TERA.

In this solution, an individual item's appearance is changed to look like something else. The changed appearance is tied to the item. Advantages are that this makes a sort of sense within the fiction of the game world. As well, it is easy to tie different appearances to your different gear sets. You can have one look for dps gear, and one look for healing gear, and when you swap gear, your outfit automatically swaps.

The disadvantage is that because it is tied to your gear, every time you get a new item, you have to transmogrify it to get your look back. You also have to keep the old items around, and the process is a bit complicated compared to some of the other solutions. As well, each work set corresponds to one and only one cosmetic set. You can't switch between two different looks while wearing your healing gear, without re-transmogrifying everything.

2. Mods

Used by The Old Republic.

In this solution, the visual armor is a shell, and the stats come from mods which are inserted into the armor. Again, an advantage is that it make sense within the game world. It can tie into the crafting system, as there are now mods as well as armor to create. As well, it's fairly easy to upgrade pieces. Just rip out the mods from a new item and put them in the old item. A final advantage is that this doubles as a "reforging" system, because you can adjust stats simply by switching up the mods.

For disadvantages, again, it is a little complicated. Like transmog, each work set matches to one and only one cosmetic appearance. It's also pretty hard to compare gear in this system, as you have to compare each individual mod as well as the whole item. A last disadvantage is that set bonuses are a bit weird, because the set bonus is usually tied to the armor shell, and the mods are more generic.

3. Non-Visible Power Items

Used by The Secret World, Champions Online.

In this system, character power usually comes from non-visual items like trinkets or jewelry. The character's clothes are completely cosmetic. Advantage here is that it makes sense in the game world. As well, cosmetic outfits are completely decoupled from power outfits. What you are wearing has nothing to do with your power.

The disadvantage is that trinkets and jewelry are often unexciting. Very visual pieces like weapons and armor are often desired. They pack a 1-2 punch of good visuals combined with good stats. Also, an older piece of armor can carry memories, and reusing those older pieces can be a nod back to a previous time. For example, T2 Judgement is not just a great looking set, it's a reminder of the good times in Blackwing Lair. As well, while in the other systems you can choose to forego the cosmetic gear, and display your true set, in this system you can't. You have to pick a cosmetic outfit to wear.

4. Cosmetic Slots

Used by Rift, TERA, and LotRO.

In this solution, the character sheet simply has a second (or more) set of item slots. Items in the cosmetic slots are displayed, while items in the regular slots contribute stats. The big advantage is that this system is simple, easy to understand, and easy to use. The cosmetic set is decoupled from the work set. You can switch your cosmetic set without affecting your work set, and upgrade your work set without changing your look. Item comparison still functions correctly.

The major disadvantage is that this system makes no sense in the context of the world. Are you wearing two helms or two pants? It's a very gamist solution to the problem, and you just ignore the oddity of wearing multiple helms. The other options at least attempt to nod to the simulation.

Conclusions

Those are the cosmetic gear systems that I know about. In general, if you have to have cosmetic gear, I think straight cosmetic slots is the best solution. It's easy to understand and very simple to use in practice. Cosmetic armor slots parallel the regular armor slots. You can keep your power set while switching between multiple cosmetic sets. You can keep your cosmetic set while switching between multiple power sets.

The wearing of multiple helms is a bit weird, but it can be handwaved, and more or less ignored. Personally, it does not affect my suspension of disbelief. Your mileage may vary, however.

Sometimes I wonder if The Old Republic managed to incur an ancient voodoo curse during its development. It feels like almost every design decision they made carried a hidden sting, an aspect that would later come back to bite them.

Take your personal spaceship, for example. Fairly early in the class storyline, at about level 20 or so, each class gets a spaceship. They use this spaceship to travel around the galaxy. As well, all your companions are located on the ship, and it's where you talk to them and continue their individual storyline. The ship exists in game, and is usually found in a hangar in the planetary spaceport. It's very Millennium Falcon, and very much a part of Star Wars.

However, the downside of the personal ship is that it makes travel very tedious. To travel from one planet to another, you have to go to the hangar, board your ship, travel to destination, leave the ship, leave the hangar.

As well, sometimes the planet doesn't have a true spaceport with multiple hangars. To get around this, TOR puts the hangars on a space station in orbit. So the worst case scenario becomes something like:

1. Take shuttle from planet to station.
2. Go to hangar and board ship.
3. Fly to destination.
4. Leave ship for station.
5. Take shuttle from station to planet.

It actually takes a fair bit of time, and involves multiple loading screens. I think that TOR recently patched an option on some planets to compress steps 1 and 2.

This process is fine while you're levelling, because you don't actually travel from planet to planet that often. But then at 50, you might actually travel a fair bit, to do the dailies on different planets, or to go to the Fleet to use the markets or buy gear.

Now, imagine if TOR didn't have a spaceship at all. What would travel have looked like?

I think it probably would have been something like clicking on a shuttle at a spaceport brings up the interstellar map, and then you travel to the destination spaceport directly. One step and only one loading screen. It would make your day-to-day life at endgame so much easier.

Having a personal ship is pretty cool, but it comes at a cost, and makes the endgame far more annoying than it should be.

Blizzard has changed the spelling of Judgement to "Judgment"!

Confirmation from Ghostcrawler himself can be found here.

Damn Yankees and their laziness. Dropping perfectly good letters from words. Rush, rush, rush, but are you really getting anywhere?

In seriousness, paladins with macros might have to watch out when Pandaria or 5.0 hits. It's likely that any macros invoking "Judgement" will stop working.

I've been playing The Old Republic for most of the past week. I've been gearing up my Imperial Agent with the small group flashpoints, using the new Looking For Group tool, as well as dailies.  I've really enjoyed the process so far. TOR is a great small group game, and a lot of this pre-raid game emphasizes that.

TOR also has benefited incredibly from the server mergers and larger-pop servers. It is a game that really needs that mass of people on the same server. There are lots of small group quests, and being able to quickly get a group in local chat makes a huge difference. As well, being able to fill out your group with companions makes grouping, especially for the [HEROIC 2+] quests, a lot easier.

Making the LFG server-only was an interesting move. I'm not totally sure that it's a big difference maker, but even after just running LFG for a week as DPS, I'm beginning to see familiar faces.  Groups are mostly good and nice, which matches my experience with WoW as well.

I even ran an instance today, Lost Island, which came out in 1.2, with a group of people who had never run it before. We wiped on all the bosses, but generally figured out everything and eventually completed the instance successfully. It was a great experience, and one that I haven't had in a great while.

Funniest moment in that run: we're fighting a boss with a knockback that drops us into the lava. There's a force field bridge that goes to the boss's platform. The healer theorizes that maybe we're supposed to get knocked up the bridge, so he stands on it. Fight starts, bridge disappears, and the healer falls into the lava.

There have been a couple bad groups. Last time I discussed the Group Finder in WoW, I facetiously remarked that maybe it was the healers who caused problems in groups, and since I always healed, I never saw the drama queens and always had good groups.

After running instances as DPS, I'm inclined to think that maybe there's a grain of truth in that. I had one group where the healer got upset at our strategy, and ran away from a boss fight as it was started, causing a wipe. The healer then left the group. After waiting a few minutes in LFG, we pulled out a companion healer and beat the fight.

(You can't do that often, this time it was because both DPS could CC the two main adds, greatly reducing the damage flying around.)

That's really the only negative experience I've had with the Group Finder in TOR. For the most part, the Hard Mode flashpoints are fairly easy, comparable to Wrath or post-nerf Cataclysm heroics.

That's not to say that the Group Finder has made everything perfect though. There's still a fairly long wait for DPS, on the order of 20 to 30 minutes. As well, the Group Finder dumps you outside the instance entrance when you're finished, usually leaving you a fair distance away from where you were before starting. Travel in TOR is a bit of pain, with multiple load screens, so this can get annoying.

The other unfortunate interaction is between TOR's daily group quests and the Group Finder. Each area with dailies also has one or more repeatable daily group quests. It's usually fairly easy to get a group for these quests. But the problem is that you have to leave the Group Finder queue in order to group up for the dailies, starting the queue all over again when you finish the group daily.

The reason behind this behaviour is fairly straightforward. You don't want people leaving a group in the middle of something because they got an instance group.

What would be nice is if the Group Finder "paused" if you joined a group, and then re-inserted you at the same position when you left that group. Like if you start at position 300, eventually get to position 100 after 20 minutes, then join a group for a daily. Group Finder removes you from the queue. After finishing the daily and leaving the group, Group Finder re-inserts you at position 100, and the queue continues, rather than having to start over at position 300.

But still, these problems are relatively minor. The Group Finder works, and has made TOR a much better game.