IainC :

Spec :Make Subscriptions Cheaper:The Chinese model of “The9″ where you buy time cards and only pay for the actual time you play is a pretty solid pay-to-play setup. Considering then you stop all whining about downtime and maintenance (not that you should launch with much downtime anyways).

That model works well for the asian market and some very specific Western ones (Greece and Spain for example) but isn’t so great for other Western markets.
You know how annoying it is when your party has to sit around waiting because the healer has to go and feed the kids in the middle of a raid or the tank needs to let the dog out RIGHT NOW? Now imagine that it’s not just wasting time but costing you money when they do that.

Technically – right now you are paying for the time that you sleep, work, eat, or whenever you aren’t even logged into the game. I actually live in China (not Chinese)- and yes, internet cafe’s are popular (they are more like dirty slave dungeons). If you walk around most of them though, it’s typically starcraft or other games. Alot of the WoW community here plays from home (not to say you don’t see WoW at all in the cafe’s).

Anyway, it seems as if slackjaw is talking about the “taunt” mechanic whereby mobs are artificially forced to attack a target that is not the most logical target.

And he says “well, if/when collision detection exists in a really feasible way, then the taunt mechanic can go away.”

And then you say “No” and then go on to give a paint by numbers example of EXACTLY what slackjaw was saying (or at least the way I interpreted it).

So maybe we’re all disagreeing on what “taunt” is referring to or something?

Monster picks a target based on what the biggest threat is (with healing usually being given a greater weight than DPS)
Monster zeroes in on the highest aggro
Tanks need to move aggro from the squishy healer to themselves

Simply blocking the mob isn’t a good design solution as that then leads to zero risk encounters. The important thing is aggro movement and currently this is done by the players directly (through taunts/detaunts) as well as by switches in the AI (IF can’t reach target THEN move to next aggro magnet in list).

It’s not a quantum leap, it’s what already happens.

slackjaw :
Taunt exists to fill in the blank for where collision dection could/should/will be in the “future”. Once healers can actually hide behind the tank, mobs will permitted to be smarter.

No.
Taunt is in no way a design substitute for CD. Imagine a mob that wants to eat your healer (because that’s the smart thing to do right?), he can’t get to your healer because Burly McTank and his identical twin brother are blocking his way. So he froths and rails as he tries to scrabble over the tank wall to get to the healer. Meanwhile the McTank brothers and their good friend Seamus O’Stabby are turning him into dogfood without taking any damage in return. So to make the encounter challenging, we tell the monster to put aside his death feud with the healer after a while and concentrate on the guys who are stopping him from getting there.

Ooh look it’s a taunt system by any other name!