Tuesday, January 27, 2009

More than just target dummies

World of Warcraft 3.0 has target dummies in the cities, where players can test out spell rotations etc., although you also need some damage meter addon to make full use of that. But is that enough? One of my readers wrote me with an interesting idea: Why not make a training "raid dungeon" as well? A place with various challenges similar to raid boss encounters, where people could train not to stand in the fire, and move to the right position at the right time. For example there could be a Heigan dummy, where you have to go through a flame rotation three times back and forth. Or a Sartharion dummy with flame waves. If you get hit, you don't die, but there is a display how often you got hit. If you manage a certain time without getting hit, you get an achievement.

And while we are at it, why not a similar place where people could train things like healing, tanking, or aggro management? The healing challenge would be similar to the The Balance of Light and Shadow epic quest. The tanking challenge would require you to hold aggro, while the dps challenge would be about doing a certain damage without grabbing aggro from an NPC tank. The problem with World of Warcraft is that you can very well arrive at the level cap without ever having played in a group, and without ever having seen a raid encounter. And learning all this group play and positioning and timing stuff during your first raids risks to get you and others killed. So if Wow is so solo-centric, it should at least offer a solo option for training group and raid encounters.

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