Breakfast Topic: The joy of phasing

Posted by Alburfmub on 07 27th, 2009

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Rayless on the General Forums asks a question that I’ve always wondered about but never poked into; how exactly does phasing work ? If you’ve leveled through the Death Knight starting area , done the Wrath Gate questline , or quested in Icecrown (and you should really do all three), you’ve had the opportunity to see Blizzard’s most intricate phasing in action . However, Zarhym and Crygil are pretty cryptic on how it’s done, and it’s up to players to fill in the details. In a nutshell, phasing is all about the information that’s sent (or not sent) to your computer by the game server; Blizzard can toy with anything that’s not client-side , affecting which buildings and NPCs you can “see” but not affecting the game’s basic geography. I was surprised to discover that phasing has technically been in the game since launch — ghosts and stealth are a form of phasing, as are (I would assume) the ghosts of Caer Darrow — but the hugely elaborate set pieces of Wrath are simply a more complicated evolution of the same mechanic. Given the success of phasing, players have been kicking around suggestions for instances or zones that could do with a touch of it, and Gnomeregan seems to be a pretty consistent pick. I’d have to agree, but I’d also add the Echo Isles (the Gnomes and Trolls have overcome their low-level foes by now, surely?) and perhaps Duskwood for starters. Is there any other zone or instance that you think would benefit from a little reality-bending? Filed under: Odds and ends , Breakfast topics , Quests , Expansions Breakfast Topic: The joy of phasing originally appeared on WoW.com on Mon, 27 Jul 2009 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Read