Sunwell Plateau

Late last night, I joined a group making a visit to Sunwell Plateau.. the hardest raid in the Burning Crusade expansion, containing the Sunwell.  We only ended up with six players including Vorlak and myself, as it seems there aren’t that many people wanting to go and chase down older content like us 🙂

I had the WoWWiki guide up on my second screen so I could at least glance over the tactics as we went through.. reading about things is not the same as experiencing them though, so I had to be on my toes to start with.  After the first few trash mobs, the other healer asked if I could heal the group by myself so he could DPS instead.. I was happy to try, though a little worried in case things went wrong and I took the blame.

The first boss, Kalecgos, proved a problem thanks to a tricky mechanic with two fights going in simultaneously, one in the regular world against the dragon himself, and the other in a shadowy world through a portal, where you must stop Sathrovarr the Corruptor from killing Kalec, the dragon’s half-elf form.

Those of us who had gone through the portal were unsuccessful in killing off Sathrovarr, meaning we were then unable to win the fight.  Fortunately we were able to solve this by leaving and re-entering the instance.  Our second attempt was much better, as all but the tank entered the spectral realm and killed Sathrovarr, then came back out to deal with Kalecgos.
So far so good though.. the group was nice enough and everyone else seemed to know what they were doing 🙂

The next bosses were found in The Dead Scar: a path made of blight leading through Quel’Thalas.. this is where the Undead attacked in the Warcraft III storyline 🙂

Brutallus, the pit-lord, kept applying his Burn ability to me, so I had to stay away from the other players to avoid passing it on to them, but fortunately it wasn’t doing a lot of damage.

Felmyst, the third boss, is resurrected from the corpse of blue dragon Madrigosa as it is tainted by the blood of Brutallus.. so she appeared as soon as we were finished with Brutallus.  This fight was a little more trouble as Felmyst’s abilities included various poisonous AOE effects.. gas, fumes, vapour..
I’d been given a heads-up to avoid these, but got caught out right at the end and was Mind-Controlled.. and the group had no choice but to attack me.  Fortunately the dragon was killed first 😉

After resurrecting our two dead players, we went back indoors, heading towards the Witch’s Sanctum and the Eredar Twins.

These two bosses work as a pair, with them both fighting in the first phase, and then after killing one Twin, the other continuing with some of the first Twin’s abilities.  Looking over the tactics, I was a little worried by Dark Touched as 20 stacks of this on a player means healing effects reduced by 100%.  I hoped this wouldn’t apply to Vorlak, as he was the tank.. but in the end it didn’t even register as a problem during the fight 🙂

M’uru was the next boss, a Naaru which I thought looked corrupted as the others I’ve seen were all bright and shining.. and didn’t want to kill us!

The group were going fairly quickly at this point and I didn’t get to check the tactics, but it just seemed to be a case of killing him quickly.. once M’uru is dead he transforms into Entropius, a void god, which again required burning down quickly.  No problem for this group!

Then there we were.. at the final boss, Kil’jaeden!

Kil’jaeden is being summoned through the Sunwell, where energy is being drained from the imprisoned Anveena.  Bit of lore here: Anveena looks like a human girl, but is actually the manifestation of the energy within the Sunwell; she sacrifices herself to weaken Kil’jaeden, which means the Sunwell’s destruction.

Tactics-wise.. the first part of the fight involves pulling the three Hands of the Deceiver away from the Sunwell.. thanks to us being overpowered and the group moving so very quickly, these were virtually dead before I’d got near the fight..

Part way through the fight, Vorlak used an orb at the side of the room to turn into a blue dragon!  This gave him some useful abilities including Breath: Revitalize, which gave me mana.. always useful.. and Shield of the Blue, providing a shield which reduces incoming damage by 95%..

As Anveena sacrifices herself, she applies a buff to Kil’jaeden meaning he takes increased Holy Damage.. yay for my use of Holy Fire letting me get extra damage in!  Once defeated he disappears back through the Sunwell..

There was more lore here too, with a conversation between Lady Liadrin and Prophet Valen about the victory, and how the heart of M’uru had been recovered, and is now a source of light energy in place of the Sunwell.   I really need to read the books so I have more of the story.. 🙂

Healing the group for this was much easier than I expected, and I was really glad I’d come along despite worrying about not knowing the tactics.  Vorlak and I both got the Sunwell Plateau achievement, and Vorlak also got Outland Raider.. I’m missing this one still!

Once the loot was distributed, the others left and we wandered around a little.  I also tried out the dragon orb 🙂

The Lashtail Hatchling

I found another rather interesting quest chain while earning reputation with the Darkspear Trolls over in Stranglethorn..

Over in Grom’Gol Base Camp, I picked up a quest to go and kill of some raptor eggs.  I was just smashing the last egg when the Lashtail Hatchling appeared!  This added a quest to check with Far Seer Mok’thardin back at camp.. he said I should feed him Murloc meat..

After this, I headed back to camp but got no new quest.. so I thought he was a temporary pet, maybe lasting until I logged off.

That was, until I was sent to deal with some food thieves in the Bal’lal ruins, and my little friend found me a skull!  This set off a chain of tasks when the skull went back to camp, and into a cauldron for a bit of troll magics.. he turned out to be the skull of a troll lord, who wanted me to help him return to life.  Did I suspect that this might be an evil skull?  Not at this point..

Following the collection of some artifacts, the body of the troll lord’s enemy, and some mojo, the Bloodlord Mandokir appeared..

He turned out to be evil, and he demanded my Lashtail Hatchling! 🙁

His departing comments mentioned Zul’Gurub.. so I didn’t think this would be the last of the story.. then in Bambala, I got a quest leading to a Mind Vision where I saw through the inside of Zul’Gurub through the hatchling’s eyes..

More quests followed: fetching Braddock’s Big Brain for a Mind Control quest, and an attempt to rescue the Hatchling, where I attempted to flee Zul’Gurub!

My first attempt ended in capture by net, and I was sent back to the beginning, where I realised I was able to talk to the raptor at the start.  This turned out to be a fantastic little mini-game, with adult raptors teaching me different abilities such as chewing through nets, lighting fires to distract the soldiers, and dropping skulls in their paths to trip them!

Just at the exit, I was caught by a lurking Shade of the Hexxer, ending the Mind Control session.. looks like I need to go into Zul’Gurub and rescue the Hatchling for myself!

Mind-Controlled Games

I’ve always been rather interested in how new technology can improve gaming, so when I spotted this article on Eurogamer’s Digital Foundry blog about the use of biometic data in games to alter gameplay according to how the player feels, I was quite interested..

Valve have done some studies using skin galvanic response (electrical conductance of skin changes with moisture level) and heart-rate, measuring them on players using a special build of Left 4 Dead 2.  On feeding back some of this data to other players, they noticed that people reacted to players based on those projected feelings.. with people being more aggressive towards a highly-aroused opponent, but very defensive of similarly aroused players on their own team.

This makes sense enough.. if an opponent is crowing about every kill they make then I tend to want to take them down more, while I would tend to be defensive of a teammate having a bad time.. however, if you use voice then you can already tell which players are worked up.

Another problem would be in having the system determine whether the player is reacting to the game or external stimuli, as well as establishing readings per person, as everyone reacts differently.  I rarely get to launch a game while in a calm, relaxed mood.. sometimes far from it.. so the system would probably struggle to work out what my baseline readings should be.

I also imagine some people would try to block the capture of data.. disconnecting the sensors, or wiring up a sibling.. so that the opposing team don’t target them as much.. and there might be more trolling as they would be able to see the readings for themselves, and know they were having the desired effect.

A system using biometric data probably won’t be really effective unless you have genuinely co-operative people.. for me it would maybe be friends-only.. though I can see it being better for single-player games where more enemies could be sent towards calm players, basically altering the difficulty based on how the player feels.

Interesting stuff, anyways, and even if it doesn’t end up with a practical outcome for gaming, I guess it will be useful somewhere.