The plight of the prot warrior and other tanks in PvP has been lamented for ages on the forums. DPSers can, of course, kill their opponents in PvP, and healers can help out their team, but the effectiveness of tanks depends entirely on a non-sentient opponent. Illidan and Archimonde apparently can’t see beyond attacking the shiny person in the nice thick armor, but even the dumbest player knows not to go for the guy in plate with 15k health. Making taunt work on players is a commonly-mentioned idea, but it would take away a lot of the fun and strategy from PvP.
Prius of Blade’s Edge has a new idea for helping out our protection buddies in PvP. He would like WoW to implement collision mechanics in PvP. That way, a prot warrior could “tank” by physically preventing enemy players from getting to his squishies. Warhammer Online is already implementing such a system, whenever it finally comes out (probably bundled with Duke Nukem Forever.)
There are a lot of problems with body collision in general, most of which are aptly summed up in this thread. Total body collision would allow WoW’s infinite supply of jerks to block off access to banks, inns, dungeons and whatnot. PvE collision would turn raids into a group of tauren warriors standing around a boss while ranged DPS nukes it down. And, like everything, collision would add lag to the servers.
But a pure PvP collision, done only in battlegrounds or if two players are PvP-enabled or dueling, sounds like it could be a neat mechanic. Of course, I’d feel sorry for the gnomes, but maybe they could get some ankle-biting collision abilities.
Do you think PvP collision could be a viable new mechanic for WoW PVP? What problems would you forsee?
As one of maybe six people who seem to derive enjoyment from Sony and Media Vision’s RPG series Wild Arms, I was was understandably pleased with news of publisher XSEED’s intent to bring the new PSP-exclusive Wild Arms XF, or Crossfire, to North America next spring, even if those around me could care less.
This latest jaunt through the Wild West-themed world of Filgaia will mark a return to the hex-based combat system used in by the previous two games in the franchise. While few other details have been revealed about the game, it’s interesting to note that the Japanese version of the title supports linking between it and Wild Arms 5 for the PS2, unlocking new items and boss battles across both titles, giving the handful of us who appreciate the series another reason not to pack away our aging PS2s just yet.
Lolzengers of One on Nordrassil sends us this shot of Karazhan’s own Maiden of Virtue, not quite at her best moment. (For those of you who are wondering, her best is usually when she’s mercilessly devouring innocent groups of raiders.) But in defeat she looks so peaceful… like the loot pinata she was clearly meant to be.
Have you ventured into any new corners of the World of Warcraft lately? Send your stories and screenshots to aroundazeroth@wowinsider.com — your image may be featured in the next Around Azeroth!
This may be a bit out of the ordinary, but we came across a few new Crash of the Titanstrailers featuring our favorite bandicoot doing some dare-devilish stunts. The two commercials (one above and another after the break) involve a random dude dressed up in a Crash outfit who climbs on the backs of extreme sports stars’ shoulders and ultimately gets hurt in the process. Odd? Yup. Entertaining? Double yup. Do we know why we enjoy this kind of commercial foolery? Nope.
If you’ve been looking for a good excuse to go back to Warhawk, you may have one today, as our dear friends at PS3 Fanboy are reporting that the 1.1 patch for the game is available now. In case you’ve forgotten since we last talked about it, the patch is largely under-the-hood fixes to improve performance. (We’ve put the full list after the jump.)
As a reminder, as of today you’ll also want to be on the lookout for “Arbiters,” a crack team charged with infiltrating games and snuffing out shenanigans. They’ll be keeping an eye peeled for cheating (which we bet will make them a fairly easy kill.)
Druid root is very good for crowd control outdoors due to it working on any mob type, but most instances and raid zones are indoor only. In Burning Crusade the Druid class got a new spell, Cyclone, that worked indoors as well, but with a 6 sec duration (and diminishing returns), it was only effective in limited situations.
Druids have asked loud and long for more reliable crowd control abilities. And now it looks like they might get it.
Player Wisperella recently specced Moonkin and feels she would be more desirable in groups if the Druid Entangling Roots spell were usable indoors. With a 27 second duration and a 1.5 second cast time that can already be made uninterruptible through Talents, it could make Moonkin an integral part of many groups. Especially since Moonkin with their high armor won’t get squished so easily trying to crowd control a mob that’s pounding on them.
Community Manager Eyonix responded that an idea along these lines is “possible” in the Wrath of the Lich King expansion. He couldn’t guarantee that it would happen, but let us know that he has been campaigning for it “a very long time.”
Time will tell if this will be one of the handful of new abilities Druids will get in the expansion.
It’s always nice to watch new media for Xbox Live Arcade games come out of nowhere. Cruising over at GameTrailers, we uncovered a video for Poker Smash, from Void Star Creations. The game takes standard puzzle game mechanics (match tiles of the same type) and throws in a little bit of poker flavor. As in most puzzle games, the object is to match up tiles of a similar color. The twist is that each tile is in fact a poker card, and players can also create poker hands instead of merely matching colored tiles together. We don’t know many more specifics other than that, though it appears online multiplayer may not be included, as the official site lists “split screen head to head” only. Poker Smash is currently slated to hit XBLA before the year is out.
Tomb Raider Anniversary is almost ready for its European debut on the PSP. The remake of the original PS1 game will be available on shelves on October 26th. If you don’t fancy waiting for the PSP version, however, the PC and PS2 versions are already available, with Xbox 360 and Wii versions to follow later this year. Still, if the opportunity for some portable Tomb Raider action is there, then why not go for it? The game has been available in the US for quite a while already, so if you’re really impatient then you could always import it and get it a week or so early.
Scott Gairdner posts a short, sweet video about the advantages of riding a Yoshi over a Segway. The subtle edits and great production entertain, even if the theme is less epic than other videogame riffs. Keep a close eye–and ear–on the action for Super Mario World in-jokes.
The plight of the prot warrior and other tanks in PvP has been lamented for ages on the forums. DPSers can, of course, kill their opponents in PvP, and healers can help out their team, but the effectiveness of tanks depends entirely on a non-sentient opponent. Illidan and Archimonde apparently can’t see beyond attacking the shiny person in the nice thick armor, but even the dumbest player knows not to go for the guy in plate with 15k health. Making taunt work on players is a commonly-mentioned idea, but it would take away a lot of the fun and strategy from PvP.
Druid root is very good for crowd control outdoors due to it working on any mob type, but most instances and raid zones are indoor only. In 
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