Parallel Context

The F2P Field is Getting Crowded

2012-02-06T16:48:00.002-05:00

Not only is the original EQ going F2P, but Rift is following Blizzard's lead and releasing a Rift Lite, wherein the first 20 toon Levels are free.

To quote that German guy on Laugh-In: Velly interestink!

That Great Gig in the Sky

2012-02-01T21:24:00.000-05:00

"Nature just gave up and started again. We weren't even apes then. We were just these smart little rodents hiding in the rocks. And when we go, nature will start over. With the bees, probably. Nature knows when to give up, David." --Stephen Falken, Wargames

Lately, I’ve been wondering how WoW will end. Not the storyline, mind you, but how the gameitself will shut down.

(In February, you get some serious brooding done. Either that or I’m listening to too much Dar Williams and Pink Floyd these days.)

How will it look to those of us who have been around for a while? Will we know the contraction caused by lostsubs when we see it? I’m reminded of whatit would look like for people living in the decline of an empire, and whetherthe citizens would recognize the decline around them.

I suppose the first sign would be the lack of activity on the servers themselves. Of course, atthis stage of an expac it would be difficult to notice real subscription lossversus the ‘end of expac blues’, so it would be quite easy to ignore the wide openspaces and empty zones.

But it wouldn’t be easy to ignore server shutdown.

I imagine there’s a certain level of subscription loss on aserver that, once crossed, would place the server on a path toconsolidation. Corporations do this allthe time to save money; they will go through periods of server expansion upuntil someone finally checks out the amount of support they’re paying for eachserver. Once that happens, a corporationwill consolidate as much as it can to retire old and underutilizedservers. Electrical costs, maintenancecosts, and other items affecting the bottom line will push Activision, and theywill in turn push Blizzard into making their server farm more ‘efficient.’

Eventually, that will happen with the WoW servers. One day you’ll wake up, login, and find amessage stating that Wyrmrest Accord is being folded into Argent Dawn. Then it will hit you: WoW really is contracting.

The large population servers may not even notice thiscontraction going on; they have, after all, a huge number of toons on them, andthey wouldn’t have any mass migrations of their own. It’s only when you check to see serveravailability on Patch Day and you mutter to yourself that the server list lookssmaller than it used to be that you’ll start to wonder.

Tools such as LFR and LFD will hide declines very easilytoo, giving the appearance that server activity is up when the reality is quitedifferent.

If server activity declines and consolidations occur, whatabout character/faction transfer? Thosewill already be in decline due to LFR and LFD and cross server grouping, but asfewer toons are being played there is less incentive to take advantage of theseofferings, so Blizz will see revenues fall in this arena too.

Once a decline begins, it is very difficult to stop it. Typically, a corporation will cut staff inresponse to a lack of funding, causing development staffs to scale back releaseschedules and content, which only creates a feedback loop, accelerating thedecline.

But at this criticalperiod a development team needs more funding, not less, to dampen the subscriptionloss and reverse the long term trend.

In the end, if this cycle goes on for a while, the productwill limp along with a small amount of hard core players, until some corporateboss will pull out a PowerPoint stack and demonstrate how cost effective itwould be to simply shut the servers down. People have moved on, he will say, and our resources would be moreefficiently deployed on other teams. Ormaybe the corporation would be best served selling the product to a third partywho would be more focused on the business than they can hope to achieve.

Such a spinoff, if any, might give an MMO a second chance atlife, but these divestitures are often a complete crapshoot. Either way, it may only stave off theinevitable for a few years.

And then the ghosts of SW:G and other defunct MMOs willgather on a specified day to watch their most well known cousin finally jointhem in the graveyard of software. Thecycle will be complete, and another will have taken WoW’s place.

(Hopefully I’ll come up with something a bit more upliftingnext time, like people acting stupid in Isle of Conquest.)

And My City Was Gone

2012-01-27T07:21:00.000-05:00

With the announcements that there will be no Blizzcon this year and that there will be a Battle.Net World Championships event to be held in Asia in 2012, it seems that Blizz is suffering from not enough personnel all around.

Okay, that's the face of it, but here's some other theories.

Focusing on Asia when an Asian themed WoW expac is released is a smart way to revive the WoW franchise. Well, maybe. Part of this depends on how the Asian population will feel seeing a culture that is an echo of their own in MoP. If WoW sets a patronizing tone with the Pandaren culture, this whole thing could backfire and be a big release disaster. The assumption that the pop culture references and snark found in WoW will play the same in Mists of Pandaria can be a very bad one.
Blizzard's focus is now on the Asian market. Similar to #1, but in this case Blizz is going to develop and market with the Asian market in mind first. Considering the worldwide appeal of their games, I'm not sure I quite believe this, but I do realize that the Chinese market will eventually dwarf all others. Still, I'm sure that there are plenty of large overseas markets (hellllooo, Brazil) that don't like being passed over. We don't know whether the Battle.Net Asian event is going to be located strictly in Asia or whether it is going to move to different cities each year. Of course, it could be a one-off gimmick, too, but we'll have to wait and see.
Blizzard needs to realign staff to get their releases out the door. Well, yeah. They said so themselves in their post on the WoW website. Still, for people who are wondering why they aren't hiring staff, consider this: anyone who works in IT/software development will tell you that it takes at least six months before a new hire gets up to speed, and often that can stretch up to a year. Contractors can fill in a pinch, but unless they are former employees even they will take some time integrating into your business environment. Therefore, the best method of dealing with this situation is to peel personnel from other, lower priority projects and delay what you can. Blizzcon, as the lowest priority among the staff, got the axe.
The three releases Blizz wants to work on are in significant trouble. Although similar to point #3, this is more of a technical issue than a personnel one. We haven't heard a peep out of Blizz since D3 was delayed, and as time goes on, this silence becomes more and more damning. From being a week or two away from release to what seems an indefinite hold, the "tweaks" that D3 needed seem to be more major than realized. If Blizz realigns staff (see #3 above), to deal with these major issues, this will have a ripple effect on the rest of the Blizz development projects. In that case, Blizzcon as just the lowest priority item got chucked onto the woodpile. Since Blizz keeps their development timeline so close to their vest, we won't know if there are other slippages in the release schedule at all until you wake up one day and say "hey, what happened to Heart of the Swarm?"
Activision/Blizzard is getting hit hard by SWTOR defections. It's hard to tell right now given the lack of direct data out there, but judging by my personal experience I believe this is more a factor than some people would care to admit. I never discuss guild material on the blog, so I'll only say that TOR has had an impact among the WoW players I know, and I'm sure it will have an impact with their quarterly subscription numbers. If Blizz is feeling some pressure from TOR, then they may be shifting personnel around to accelerate development among all of their projects, not just the ones officially acknowledged. Like oh, say, Titan?
Activision/Blizzard is going to move development overseas. I mean, really? Come on, man. You're going to read that into this move? Get a grip. If Activision/Blizzard decides to move development staff overseas, I'm sure there will be other signs than the movement of a con to Asia.
Activision/Blizzard is going to kill Blizzcon. That's entirely possible. The corporate world works in Byzantine fashion a lot of the time, but one truism often remains: the money will go to the cheaper alternative. If Activision, as the parent company, decides that Blizzard is flushing too much money down the drain by hosting a separate event when they could be better served integrating into PAX, that'll be the end of Blizzcon. Given the history of some game companies to have less than stellar customer relations, it wouldn't shock me if this was merely the beginning of the end of Blizzcon. That said, I'll believe it when I see it. Of course, I said the same thing about Pandaren in the upcoming expansion, so maybe I ought to be careful what I wish for.

Overall, I expect that the next quarterly investor call from Activision/Blizzard to be very interesting, and will shed some light on the direction of WoW in the near future.

The Elekk in the Room

2012-01-12T22:29:00.000-05:00

Remember how busy the Old Worldwas when the Shattering happened?

Toons swarmed over the Vanilla zones like ants on a picnic,investigating the new quest lines and the leveling experience. Many new alts were created, and a plethora ofblog posts were written about the new zones. This fed into the excitement surrounding Cataclysm’s release and for thefirst few months after, keeping Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdomsbusy. Blizzard’s gambit to revamp theVanilla zones paid off in spades.

Or did it?

I’ve spent the spare time I’ve had in between battlegroundscatching up on my Eastern Kingdoms’ questlines, and what I’ve noticed more thananything else is how empty the zones are. There are a few farmers around and maybe one other leveling toon outthere. Some zones, such as Arathi Highlandsor the Hinterlands, are completely empty. In fact, it seems like the only busy zones in the entire EasternKingdoms are the starter zones. I’vecruised up and down the Ghostlands right before Christmas, and there was nary aHorde toon around. You’d think the sightof a Draenei riding on a blasted Elekk around the Dead Scar would bring someL85s out of the woodwork, but that didn’t happen.

Is it possible that all that work to revamp the Old World was wasted?

Think about it: we’reback to where we were in terms of leveling zone population from mid-2010 in abit over a year since 4.0.3b dropped. It’sthe equivalent of a kid ripping open Christmas presents, playing with them, anddeclaring “I’m bored!” an hour later.

Are there no players leveling toons?

Well, there might be toons being leveled, but there are LFDand BGs as alternate routes to max level. Additionally, we can’t simply state that there aren’t any new players,either, because new players are typically shunted into the new, emptyservers. However, on servers that havebeen around for a while, there are definitely very few players leveling toonsthrough questing.

Which again begs the question: was the revamp worth it if very few of theexisting player base take advantage of the options presented?

Now Mist of Pandaria is on the horizon, and without afurther update –aka more money spent on these zones that have seen little longterm interest— the Vanilla zones will be once again out of date. A new player to WoW will end up scratchingtheir heads if they try to level via questing. (“I thought Mists of Pandaria was about Pandas! All I see are all these Deathwingreferences! And who’s Illidan and thatLich King guy?”)

I believe that the revamp was a bold move, but incomplete inexecution. Furthermore, by performingthe revamp Blizzard set itself on a course where the story of Azeroth is toldin a jumble, not in a series of sequential chapters. A revamp is pretty much an all-or-nothingscenario, especially when you mix the expansion’s new zones in with theoriginal Vanilla zones. No amount ofhand waving can make a new player forget about Outland and Northrend --especiallywhen you have to pay for them!

Where is that d20, Anyway?

2012-01-06T22:07:00.000-05:00

I’d say about 99% of the time I play WoW, I forget about the‘RPG’ part of the ‘MMORPG’ label. That’sneither a good nor bad thing, it just is. I don’t play on an RP server, and there are just enough metagame popculture-ish jokes in Azeroth to prevent me from being completely immersed inthe story. Oh yeah, and there’s thelittle fact that nobody else is RPing, either.

It just struck me how strange that was, given my RPG roots.

I’ve been playing RPGs for 30 years, dating back to the daya friend of mine offered to show me this cool game he’d started playing calledDungeons and Dragons. Those early dayswere filled with homemade dungeons with a lack of plot and story, and plenty of“you open a room an inside are…. Three Red Dragons!”

(What was the Loot chart for a Red Dragon, anyway? Something like “Q” or “S” on the table in theAD&D 1^st Edition Monster Manual?)

We were too young to know any better about the story, giventhat we were in the Sixth Grade and we’d skipped the plot and flavor text inthe old Keep on the Borderlands module and gone straight to the Caves ofChaos. Kill the monsters, get the loot.

Sounds kind of familiar, doesn’t it?

I’m not exactly sure when, but sometime during my highschool years the story became very important to my role playing. The most important question you could ask aplayer –why—infected me, and I pushed myself to provide reason and logicalunderpinnings to my gameplay. Eversince, I’ve played and/or GMed a story driven campaign.

They why don’t I roleplay more in WoW?

You know, I don’t have a really good answer.

Some of my toons –Q, Neve, and Tom—I have a backstory for,while most of the others are just, well, there. I created some of them to address a need (Balthan to try out the DwarfPaladin, Adelwulf the Warlock/Worgen, etc.) and others just for the hell ofit. Still, my big three toons do have a(semi-cohesive) story in my own mind, but I don’t act on it.

The game doesn’t really lend itself well to RP-ing withoutinvesting significant effort. Blizz hasspent a lot of time incorporating pop culture into the game, and while that maybe amusing to me as a person, it also is the metagaming equivalent of throwingice water in the face of an RP-er. Evenif you manage to avoid that pitfall, tools used to simplify life in Azerothwill throw you out of the RP zone too. AsSouldat once remarked on a post of mine about RP-ing LFD, it would be hard toRP when you’re ported into an instance on the fly. Compound that with potentially four otherplayers who aren’t interested in RP-ing, and you get the point.

I’ve read several posts over the past few years about howRP-ing is an endangered species, even on the RP servers, and I can understandwhy. In a sense, WoW is a victim of itssuccess, in that even RP servers have significant populations who are moreinterested in the metagame rather than the world itself. Their subs pay the bills, so Blizz can’tcomplain, but in a sense it makes the game smaller than what it could be.

Still, RPing does survive in WoW.

I have a low level toon on Wyrmrest that I created just tocheck things out. When she entered Silvermoon City that first time, she was hailed bya higher level toon passing by, asking the time of day and whether I neededassistance.

“Just point me in the direction of the nearest inn,” Isaid. “I’m tired.”

The Tauren did just that, and wished me well.

I sat back in my chair and smiled. All was not lost.

Wanna run a BG? Um, what time is it?

2011-12-28T21:43:00.001-05:00

No, seriously.

I've some time off this week, so my AV runs have been split into two separate groups: early morning and mid-afternoon. And believe me, there's a huge difference in group personality between the two times of day.

The early morning runs are quieter with less chatter, and more attention paid to details. Call outs are the norm, defense and back-caps are common, and you'd better run in a pack if you're a glass cannon (aka Mage). People actually thank you for the Lock cookies, Feasts, and Rituals of Refreshment. If you say "need 1-2 more to defend SHB", you'll actually have 1-2 (sometimes 3) toons appear from nowhere to assist in defense.

Mid afternoon, on the other hand, is an exercise in confirming stereotypes.

I've rushed in, taken Iceblood Tower, and then watch everyone else as they moved on en masse.

"Need 2-3 more to defend IBT."

[silence]

When the inevitable backcap happens, a flood of recriminations spits over BG chat.

"You @#%&ing idiots! What a fail group!"
"Somebody go back and get it!"
"Get it yourself, retard!"
"Doesn't matter, we can win pulling with two towers up."

When THAT strategy doesn't work, you get:

"What a fail group!"
"Yeah, healers suck!"
"You're tanking in Fury Spec, you idiot!"

Oh, and did I mention the 3-4 people who hang around the BG entrance, waiting for the free Honor?

Why the huge difference in group personality?

I can think of one reason: the early morning runs aren't populated with the teens/college kids that the latter runs are. After all, those folks are probably sleeping in until noon anyway.

If that's the case, then shouldn't the 5-man LFD runs mimic the BGs? You know, I don't know, given that I haven't run LFD in ages, but it wouldn't shock me to find that out. My experience from previous times, however, is that LFD is such a small sample and such a mixed bag that you never know what you'll get. BGs, having larger numbers and are quixotically quicker than your average LFD run, tend to take on distinct group personalities. And when those personalities change --due to an injection of teen hormones, for instance-- the result is noticeable.

Dealing with the mid-afternoon crowd isn't too difficult, just keep your expectations low and ignore most of BG chat. Well, and also console yourself in the fact that the current AV queue time is 1-2 minutes. At least you're not waiting 1/2 hour for LFD to pop.

How to Feel Like an Old Fogey

2011-12-18T00:09:00.001-05:00

It's the end-of-the-year rush on at work, so I've had less and less time the past week or so to actually jump on WoW and play a bit. That said, I did get some good AV time in.

Since colleges in the U.S. are now on Winter Break, you can find an AV run fairly quickly at all hours of the day. The drawback is that the BGs are populated with college (and to a lesser extent) high school kids.

Remember the old EDS commercials about herding cats? No? Here's a reminder:

That is what BGs during Winter Break are like.

All the more reason to find a friend and group up with them, even across servers. Even in as big a sprawling BG as AV is, a group of three working in concert can be enough to turn the tide.

Now, who among my WoW friends gets up waaay early or has insomnia? Hmmmm.....

Two Sides to a Coin: Part 5 -- Alliances and Conclusions

2011-12-07T20:27:00.001-05:00

We must, indeed, allhang together, or most assuredly we will all hang separately.

--Benjamin Franklin

WoW has a history of using organizations that welcome allraces and factions to propel an overarching story to completion. In Vanilla WoW with the Qiraji, there was theCenarion Circle. In Wrath, you have the Argent Crusade, theEbon Blade, and the Ashen Verdict. Cataclysmhas brought the Earthen Ring to the forefront, and the Burning Crusade had theShattered Sun Offensive.

Unlike the other groups from other storylines, the NPCcomponent of the Shattered Sun is composed solely of Draenei and Sindorei, withthe Naaru as a guiding hand. The tworaces which drove the major storylines of Burning Crusade banded together atthe Sha’tar’s request to lead the assault against Kael, Kil’Jaeden, and theBurning Legion.

Oh, all was not Pollyanna in racial relations on Quel’Danas. There were the digs against each faction (“…Cryer. Oh, I’m sorry, I meant Scryer.”), which provided a look behind the veneer of amicability. I found the selection of Scryers to spy onKael’s forces served a twofold purpose: while a Blood Elf could spy upon other Blood Elves more easily, at thesame time those Blood Elves could also be seen to be more expendable thanDraenei.

Nevertheless, the Shattered Sun could not have succeededwithout significant buy-in from both races. You had to be able to trust the person next to you to do their job,whether Draenei or Sindorei, for without that trust the entire organizationfalls apart.

I’ve said before that I’ve wanted to see more ex-ArgentCrusader involvement in a post-Wrath world, because a group that acceptseveryone allows their members to see behind the faction/race to theindividual. When you’ve fought alongsidesomeone of a different race or faction, it is difficult to see them as anenemy. To my disappointment, the onlybig storyline that focused on this came out of the Ebon Blade and the Andorhalquest chains.

Then again, we didn’t see anything come out of the ShatteredSun Offensive, either, but you still see Sindorei and Draenei training togetherand chatting around Shattrath. You canstill watch Lady Liadrin come before A’dal and redeem the Blood Knights. You can watch children of both races playing togetherin the Lower City (the only place you’ll find Draeneiand Sindorei kids in Azeroth outside of Children’s Week).

***

When I started this exploration, I figured I’d get a post ortwo out of it, nothing more. I sure wasn’texpecting to get five, and yet here I am.

I hope these posts have given you some food forthought. If you are on a RP server,maybe this will provide some hooks for your toon’s backstory. (Guilty confession: the first time I took Nevelanthana intoMagister’s Terrace at-level and we downed Selin Fireheart, she walked over andkicked his corpse. “You always were anarrogant ass, Selin,” she said. And I don’tplay on an RP server, either.)

One thing I would encourage people to do is to give theother side a try with an open mind. Ithink that if you do, you might be surprised.

Two Sides to a Coin: Part 4 -- I'm No Angel

2011-12-06T13:17:00.001-05:00

Listen, don't mention the war! I mentioned it once, but Ithink I got away with it all right. [returns to the Germans] So! It'sall forgotten now, and let's hear no more about it. So, that's two eggmayonnaise, a prawn Goebbels, a Hermann Goering, and four Colditz salads.

--Basil, Fawlty Towers

I’m sure that you’ve done some questing in the Cata zones,and you’ve come across Twilight’s Hammer minions doing Deathwing’s work. Or maybe you’ve been in Scourge infectedareas where the Cult of the Damned gathered. Ever notice how the so-called “goody two shoes” of the Alliance is well represented?

Now, that’s no real surprise, given that Blizzard wants todemonstrate both the global nature of the threat faced (whether it be byScourge or Deathwing), and how no race is immune to the siren song of power.

What is interesting, however, is the reception given Tuluun,the sole Broken at Azure Watch. Thesneers and contempt from the surrounding Draenei are striking, given theconstant exhortations from random NPC Draenei to “Open your heart to the Light”or “Be kind to those less fortunate”.

Oh really?

To say the Draenei are a wee bit hypocritical here is an understatement. However, this disconnect between words andactions, particularly concerning the Broken, are nothing new.

The Broken and the Lost Ones represent a conundrum for theDraenei: they have been corrupted by Felenergies, and are unable to contact the Light. For most Draenei, that is a worse fate than cutting off both arms andlegs. I’ve often wondered if the Draeneiexpected the Broken to commit suicide or something should that happen, but thequest chains don’t really say. Whatpicture they do paint, however, is one that shows the majority of Draenei areunable to relate to their ‘cousins’.

There is the obvious racist contempt found in variousDraenic locations throughout Outland, yet the Draenei’s belief in racialsuperiority manifests itself in other ways. In the Alliance-only quest chain in Zangarmarsh, a player attempts toconvince the Feralfen tribe of Lost Ones to join with the Draenei, yet theyrefuse and instead want to forge their own destiny apart from being “Redeemed”,as Elder Kuruti put it. When informed ofthe Lost Ones’ decision, Anchorite Ahuurn at Telredor is confused: “They refused? They are welcome to choosetheir own path, of course, but their choice surprises me. I would think thatall the Draenei, including the Broken and Lost Ones, would still remember thatwe're all a part of the same people.”

The same motivation that pushes the Anchorite to disguise aplayer as an Arakkoa blinds him to the reality that if you stopped treating theLost Ones (and the Broken) as less than an equal, maybe you would get a moredesirable result. Not everyone who hasbeen corrupted wants to be Redeemed, but if they do, they want to do it ontheir terms, not someone else'.

***

If the Draenei’s blind spot is their racism toward theBroken and Lost ones, the Sindorei’s blind spot is to their own personaladdiction, magic.

Oh, they know about it. Everybody and their brother knows about the Sindorei’s addiction tomagic and how it helped lead Kael and Co.first to Outland and then into the arms of the Legion. From practically the first moment a Blood Elfplayer begins to explore Sunstrider Isle, they are forced to deal with theirmagical addiction and the consequences of failure in the form of the Wretched.

And yet, if there’s magic to be found and/or exploited, theSindorei are there.

If there’s an easy way to cure their addiction, there’s someSindorei working on it. Remember MagistrixElosai, the exiled Blood Elf in pre-cata Thousand Needles, who was working onher own version of methadone to cure herself of her addiction? In the end, she accelerated the addiction process,turning herself into one of the Wretched ala Jekyll and Hyde.

You’d think that with the recreation of the Sunwell theSindorei wouldn’t need to seek out more magic to slake their thirst, but theReliquary proves otherwise. You can findthem throughout the post-Cata Old World,hunting down titan and pre-Sundering relics and fighting off the Explorer’sLeague in the process. Sure, they're taking the relics for "safe keeping"; they wouldn't even think of using the magic held inside for themselves...

The sense of denial in the Blood Elf actions makes me rollmy eyes at times. I’m often reminded ofa drunk pounding down shots of bourbon, all the while proclaiming that “I havewillpower! I’m fine! Just one more drink and I’m good.” In that respect, at least some of theFelbloods are honest in their cravings, like when Selin Fireheart drains one ofthe nearby crystals in Magister’s Terrace: “My hunger knows no bounds!”

***

In the end, these flaws in the BC races’ character serve tomake them more realistic, although the temptation to stereotype all members ofa race remains strong. Both races aren’tperfect, and neither race should be perceived as such.

Two Sides to a Coin: Part 3 -- On the Brink of Oblivion

2011-12-05T12:48:00.001-05:00

The dark times will pass.

--Blood Elf NPC saying

The Naaru have not forgotten us.

--Draenei NPC saying

When a new Blood Elf player quests through Eversong Woods,there are a few themes running through the zone. The Amani trolls are on the move, theWretched seek magic –any magic—to feed upon, and there are malfunctions withthe existing Sindorei magics. Oh yeah,and there’s the Scourge.

The Sindorei live with the Dead Scar plowing straightthrough their homeland, and the Scourge rise up and assault the outskirts ofSilvermoon and Fairbreeze Village withregularity. Such is the life of theSindorei, struggling with the constant reminder that racial oblivion is only afew Rangers away.

On the flip side, Azuremyst Isle is like watching a World ofWarcraft version of Swiss Family Robinson play out. You have the shipwrecked Draenei, attemptingto survive and create makeshift living arrangements. There are the interactions with the native,mutating wildlife, and there are first contacts with the Furbolg, Night Elves,and Humans (who also have their own ship up for repairs).

Then there are the Blood Elves in Amman Vale, the Naga closeto Odesyus’ Landing, and the traitor in the midst of Odesyus’ crew.

The Draenei are clinging to the edge of survival, and all ittakes is a little push and they teeter over the edge.

Both races have suffered near extinction as the BurningCrusade opens, yet they have shown remarkable resilience. The Draenei are in an alien world, puttingthe pieces back together and forging new friendships. By contrast, the Sindorei are forsaking theirold allegiances (and the Light) that they believe failed them in their hour ofneed, turning instead to the Thrall-led Horde who at least offered a verylukewarm hand of friendship.*

Even in Outland itself, both races have the will to keepgoing. The Draenei ruins scattering thelandscape are testament to what they have lost, yet Shattrath is stillalive. For the Sindorei in the form ofthe Scryers, they not only have to fight the Legion and Illidan, but their ownpeople in what amounts to a bloody civil war.

***

However, their resilience and bitter experience has alsogiven both races a singular focus on defeating their enemies.

Forget about Velen and Ishanah. Seriously. No matter what they say, pay attention to the Draenei out in the fieldin the BC zones.** With very rareexceptions, they zero in on the Sindorei, whether they are allied with Illidan,Kael/Burning Legion, or the Scryers. InBloodmyst Isle, the elements of the Burning Legion (the Satyr) and the Naga aremerely secondary to the Blood Elf incursion; nothing else really matters. The Draenei in Aldor Rise areconstantly spying on the Scryers, expecting this whole “fealty to the Sha’tar”thing to be a Trojan Horse. And it’s notlike the Scryers haven’t noticed that distinct lack of acceptance, either; likethe Arcanist Adyria says while you’re given the tour of Shattrath, “I'm a Scryer, I always watch what I say. More enemies than allies inthis city, it seems.”

Can I blame the Draenei for being sosuspicious? No, not really. It’s very hard to accept having to fight alongsideyour enemy, and the Aldor no More quest chain really hammers that point home.

While the Draenei are watching the Sindorei,the Sindorei/Scryers have their eyes on the Scourge and their former friends inKael’s forces. Circumstances won’t allowthem to forget –not with Undead showing up at their doorstep every five minutesor so—and they have no inclination to do so anyway. The focus of the entire Ghostlands questchain, to kill the Scourged traitor Dar’Khan Drathir, serves as a reminder fora new player as to what the Sindorei had to go through. (Well, as if the Eastern Plaguelands being effectively impassible was enough of one already,that is. In a post-Cata Eastern-Plaguelands-is-no-longer-L60world, it’s still way too dangerous to make a run for it. Believe me, I tried.) If you didn’t know any better, you’d thinkthat the Blood Elf starting zones were designed for Wrath of the Lich Kingrather than for Burning Crusade.

Once a player gets to Outland and Shattrath,however, that focus turns almost completely on Kael’s forces. Just like how the worst fights you get in arewith siblings, the Scryers are locked in a do-or-die fight with the one groupthat knows them best: their own kin. The Scryers who set up shop in the Sanctum ofthe Stars next to the Kael led forces at the Path of Conquest did so bydesign. Who better to watch and disruptthe plans of the Eclipsion forces than those who fought alongside them? Just like in Netherstorm, who better toinfiltrate the Sunfury forces there than their brethren?***

The specifics are different, but the resultsare the same. You don’t see the Draenei orthe Sindorei talking much about the Orcs (or Fel Orcs, for that matter) inOutland. They both live in the present,against their very real enemies. Ironicallyenough, such a focus and a “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” helped with thecreation of the Shattered Sun Offensive on Quel’Danas far more than anyplatitudes could have done.

*Yes, I’m well aware that the Sindorei abandoned the Alliance in favor ofisolationism at the end of the Second War, but this is about their personalperceptions. And besides, during theThird War, Garithos pretty much poisoned any residual feelings between the vastmajority of Sindorei and the Alliance. Never underestimate the power of prejudice.

**Quel’Danas excepted.

***There are some Scryer/Horde only quests inNetherstorm in which you infiltrate the mana forges to eavesdrop on the Sunfuryleaders inside. On the Alliance side, this is replaced by the AldorNo More quest chain.

Two Sides to a Coin: Part 2 -- The Corruption Story

2011-12-02T11:47:00.001-05:00

“Ray, when someone asks you if you are a god, you say YES!”

--Winston Zeddemore, Ghostbusters

The racial origins of the Draenei and Sindorei are wellknown, but one aspect of their history bears repeating: were it not for the Burning Legion, neitherwould exist in their current form.

Certainly the Legion had a hand in shaping all of the Azerothianraces, but their influence is most directly felt on the Elves and Eredar. Were it not for the Legion, the Draenei wouldstill be Eredar. Maybe they wouldn’t be onArgus, as Sargeras doesn’t really like people saying ‘no’ to him, but thedivision would never have happened. Likewise, the Elves might not be so dominant in Azeroth as they wereduring the rein of Azshara –the Old Gods would have seen to that—but therewould be no Queldorei were it not for the Legion and the War of the Ancients.

The temptation and corruption of an individual/race/nationis a standard tale in SFF circles, and it is used repeatedly in WoW to greateffect. You could argue that with thefrequency of its use, the corruption tale is a sort of Murphy’s Law inAzeroth: anything that can be corrupted,will be corrupted. The Eredar werecorrupted, and those who refused the Gift of Sargeras fled, renaming themselvesDraenei. On Draenor, some Draenei werecorrupted by the exposure to fel energies, becoming the Broken and LostOnes. The Elves were also corruptedmultiple times –first most of the Highborne, then the Sindorei—and each timeonly a fraction of the race resisted corruption.*

Now, I kind of glossed over the division between theQueldorei and the Sindorei, since that division had less to do with the directhand of the Legion and more with so-called ‘normal’ forms of division: racism, addiction, and politicaldisagreements. Some of the Queldorei wereholdovers from the disagreements on High Elven isolationism after the SecondWar, others refused to debase themselves by allying with Illidan and harnessingfel energies, while still others were not directly exposed to Garithos’ racism.

That split aside, the Burning Legion had a direct hand informing the two BC races as they are seen today. The main difference between the two races isthat the Draenei’s corruption happened in the distant past, while the Sindorei’scorruption is revealed over the course of the Outland questlines.

A Draenei player has a big leg up on a Blood Elf player inthis discovery process because Kael’s Blood Elves are their primary focus inthe starting zones. Blood Elf players don’teven know Draenei exist until they reach the Dark Portal and see one for thefirst time.** A Sindorei player,remember, has a starting zone that says “we need to get out of here” and “AAAH!!The Scourge!!” Outland is presented to aBlood Elf player as a Shangri-la, while a Draenei player knows that things arenot well in the state of Denmark.

Once a player gets to HellfirePeninsula, the discussions of the NPCsat Falcon Watch and the Temple of Telhamat prove to be verytelling. The Sindorei are alreadygrumbling about how Outland was supposed to be a nicer place than it’s turnedout to be, while the Draenei are trying to reconnect with the Broken andwarning people to avoid Falcon Watch. There’sdisillusionment and caution, yet without focus.*** In Hellfire or Zangarmarsh, you don’t see non-alliedBlood Elf NPCs as the enemy –even from the Horde side—until the conclusion ofthe Raging Colossi quests and you discover that Kael’Thas was behind thegiant crystal shard.

It’s only when a player reaches Shattrath and is presentedwith the story of the Scryers that the corruption tale takes off, but the waythe story is presented one could easily interpret Vorenthal’s vision asreferring to the Sindorei’s association with Illidan rather than the BurningLegion. The quest lines through Terokkar,Nagrand, and almost all of Shadowmoon continue to hide Kael’Thas’ involvementwith the Legion, leading a player to believe that the Legion is merelyattracted to the Draenei and the Fel Orcs, with Illidan as a nice bonus.

One could make a very successful argument that the Draenei’ssuspicion of the Scryers was borne from experience –not necessarily on Draenoritself, but from many years of dealing with potential enemies. However, given the frequency of how thecorruption story plays out, why the Draenei fail to see its effect in theScryers remains puzzling. If the Draeneiare immortal as they are hinted to be, then you’d think that the older ones atthe very least would recognize what is before their eyes. In a way, this disconnect is implied in the ‘Aldorno More’ quest line in Netherstorm, where the youthful Draenei Kaylaan hasbecome disillusioned and is unable to call upon the Light.

In Netherstorm, the Socrethar’s Seat quest chain culminates thebig reveal that Kael is in league with the Legion, and the side questsassociated with it flesh out that even some Sindorei who didn’t join with theScryers are refusing to associate with Kael anymore. You would think that at this point that the Aldorwould be more accepting of the Scryers, but that had to wait for the Quel’Danas/Sunwellexpansion.

Nevertheless, a corruption story is a corruption story, andalthough it is cloaked in the complexities of allegiances to both Illidan and(for the Sindorei from Quel’Thalas) the Horde, the fall of the Sindorei remainsa high point in the Burning Crusade quest lines. The Quel’Thalas and Scryer Sindorei have discovered the fall of their brethren at the hands of the Burning Legion, just as the Eredarexperienced eons ago.

Did the Sindorei set themselves up for it? Sure, just as you could argue quitesuccessfully that the Eredar did as well. Sargeras was no slouch, and the fallen Titan knew exactly what stringsto pull to get a race such as the Eredar to ally with him. Just as with the Sindorei, most of the Eredarwillingly agreed to an alliance with the Burning Legion, and from the looks ofit, they don’t exactly have buyer’s remorse.

*In the interest of completeness, the Orcs were corruptedmultiple times as well, first the division that caused the break by the Mag’har,and the later division by the Frostwolf clan. However, the Orcs were redeemed at the end of Warcraft III, which is outof the scope of this analysis.

**Unless they run into an Allianceplayer while out and about or they invade an Alliance settlement.

*** If anything, the Apothecary in Falcon Watch is the mostrepulsive character in the zone for the experimentation on a captured Draenei.

EtA: Corrected a plural issue, and replaced "that" with "than".

Two Sides to a Coin: Part 1 -- Introduction

2011-12-01T16:29:00.001-05:00

“I hate the Space Goats.”

“Blood Elves are gay.”

“Draenei are stupid."

“BE women are designed just for oversexed teenagers.”

“Female Draenei are like looking at J-Lo with a tail.”

“Blood Elves aren’t real Horde.”

“I go out of my way to gank the Goats.”

“When I see a BE, I want to punch them. Pretty Horde my ass.”

Sound familiar?

If you’ve played WoW any stretch of time, you come across alot of strong feelings about the two Burning Crusade races. Sure, there’s plenty of love for them outthere, but there’s been just as much (if not more) hate. These two races rarely seem to inspire a ‘meh’reaction from the WoW crowd.

I’m a bit of an odd man out in that I not only play bothraces but I actually like both of them. Irecently finished the Loremaster of Outland achievement on Tomakan, and I cannow share a belief that’s been growing on me the past year: the two races have enough in common that theycould be considered fraternal twins.

Yes, I know, this is a bit of a departure from a previous post of mine, but that post concerned the low level experiences of both racesin the Old World. That post still remains valid becauseBlizzard didn’t change things very much for both races in the post-Cata Old World. As forthe entire breadth of Draenei/Sindorei lore present in WoW, consider thefollowing racial history:

Tempted by outside powers, the majority willingly turn to Darkness. As a reward, they are granted tremendous power. Those who refuse flee.
Finding a safe haven, they rebuild a semblance of their prior life.
Invaded and decimated by outside forces, what remains clings to life support.
These outside forces are the focus of their ire to the exclusion of almost all else.
Convinced of their superiority, the race has a blind spot the size of New Jersey.

Now, which race am I talking about?

Anyone? Bueller?

Both.

What I intend to do the next few posts is expound upon howsimilar the two races are, so that maybe they can be seen in a different light. I’m going to focus upon the in-game lore,because that is the lore that gets the biggest dissemination in WoW. If you play WoW, you have access to thein-game lore; not everybody is going to read the books/comics or watch the DVDsfrom the BC Collector’s Edition.

Of course, I’m not finished with Allianceside Loremaster --I might miss a few isolated things in the post-Cata Old World-- but I’m reasonably confident that I’ve gotmost of the Draenei/Sindorei in-game lore covered.

Hopefully, these posts will help a player gain some insightinto these two BC races, and encourage people to explore the in-game lore forboth sides and come to their own conclusions.

Paizo to License Pathfinder MMO

2011-11-23T09:35:00.001-05:00

Well, this is an entertaining development.

Paizo, the company that created the pencil and paper RPG Pathfinder*, has contracted with Goblinworks to create a sandbox MMO called Pathfinder Online.

Here's the link to the Paizo blog.

I suppose it wasn't too surprising that if World of Darkness and D&D found their way online that the current best selling PnP RPG would eventually get there, but I guess I was thinking that they weren't going to branch out in that direction. However, there's a long time between here and any supposed release date; just ask World of Darkness.

*Known around RPG circles colloquially as D&D 3.75.

Musings for a Wednes Thursday

2011-11-17T10:34:00.001-05:00

Given all of the (rather obvious) Cthulhu influence in the WoW-verse, I'm surprised that HP Lovecraft's estate hasn't been asking for a cut of the dough from WoW. Well, if the estate went down that route, I guess they'd have to tackle Hentai too, and I'm not so sure I'd really want to see that brought up in a court of law.

***

You never know when a conversation might turn to MMOs.

I was in a meeting the other week when I was talking with a fellow employee. He's always been the sober, stern type, the sort that if there was an entry for "dour" in the dictionary, his picture would be there. He never talked about anything --anything-- other than work while I was within earshot, but he took one look at my laptop's screen and exclaimed "Ah ha... World of Warcraft!"

My screen is typically covered in IMs, server console windows, and a few other apps, but the telltale "W" in WarCraft from the background pic was visible at the top. "You play?" I asked, surprised.

"Oh yeah, but I don't get the chance to play a lot. I don't think I've ever gotten a character to max level. You?"

"I've got a few at max level, but playing has been kind of low on my priority list these past few months."

He chuckled. "Imagine that!"

***

I sometimes wonder about celebrity endorsements.

We're all familiar with the "What's Your Game?" series of WoW commercials, starring people such as Mr. T and William Shatner. However, I hadn't realized just how long ago those ads were until I saw a commercial starring (among others) NBA player Derrick Rose for the new Assassin's Creed PS3 game.

Do celebrity endorsements in the computer gaming world actually work? To me, it seems more to highlight how mainstream computer gaming is than anything else, but maybe some people do pay attention to what games their favorite celebrities are playing.

The Invisible Wall

2011-11-11T20:16:00.001-05:00

It's been a while.

When I logged on the other day, I found not only some Halloween quests in my queue, but some Brewmaster stuff as well. I hadn't played for an appreciable stretch of time in well over a month, and I still haven't logged into my Horde toons since, oh, early October. This isn't due to any real lack of desire to play, but merely my credo of keeping my priorities straight.

My overall absence from the game is due to a combination of factors, but the primary ones can be summed up in two words: family and work. It was kind of a perfect storm, really, where work amped up right at the same time that the family got really busy, and I'd end up hitting the hay later and later at night. Since I play early in the mornings, less time for sleep on the one end meant I had to make it up somewhere, and my WoW time suffered as a consequence. About halfway through my disappearance from the servers, I finally admitted defeat and let my sub lapse for a little while. Hell, if I wasn't on to play, why pay for it?

Well, this past week I finally resubbed and logged back in.

You know how Larisa over at PPI once talked about how she'd gone away (on vacation or something) and then came back to find that she couldn't remember how to play at all? Well, that is no lie. The first few battlegrounds I got into I swear I was doing little better than hitting a button --any button-- hoping it would score a hit. About all I was good for was announcing when there were incs or taking away the enemy's attention on the healer. If anyone had listened in on that first early morning, they'd have heard a steady stream of "no, TV comes after I get the 3 HP... Dammit, I hit Exorcism again! Stop it, you moron, use your CDs! Now why the f*** did I blow both the trinket and Divine Shield? He only hit you once!"

Times like this, you kind of wonder why I logged back in in the first place.

(Of course, talking to yourself is one of the first signs of senility, and as the Old Man around the WoW bloggers I frequent since Larisa retired, I'm sure I'm letting myself up for a bunch of retirement jokes.)

To be honest, I did kind of question myself a bit about resubbing. After the first week or so, I found that I didn't miss it quite so much, and I could quite easily keep up with what was happening on the blogosphere and on the guild website without actually needing to login to the game. Was it a sign of an addiction that I wanted to resub just because?

Maybe, but then again, maybe not. Interacting in the blogosphere or on a website (or, yes, on Twitter) isn't the same as in-game interaction; there's a voyeuristic feel to reading about people's exploits or general chatter, and an unspoken but omnipresent barrier involved. If you're not out there, interacting in-game, you're just a spectator. Grab some chips and the remote, and you've got an evening in front of the tube watching a reality show.

But really, what is more interesting: reading about people interacting in-game, or actually being in-game?

Some people (/cough Rades /cough) could write about killing ten fire elementals and turn it into epic prose, but the rest of us aren't so gifted. We need context, we need grounding, we need the interaction itself to make our words come alive. You can mention that "I finished my last Firelands dailies!" or "I finally got that Netherwing Drake!" and those who have a common reference can appreciate it. If you don't have that, they're just so many electrons cluttering up the interwebs.

The irony is that I'm talking about playing in a virtual world when there are likely some people out there saying "Go outside! Enjoy a physical world for a change!" Well, yeah. You've got a point. And yes, I do go outside and enjoy the wilderness, such as it is in my part of the Midwest. But this isn't a blog for my outdoors foibles, and it misses the point.

If I wanted to merely read about people playing WoW, that's all fine and good, but the fun of WoW is actually playing the game. It's a shared experience. People respond to the game --and the other players-- with the entire wide range of emotions because the game world is a living, breathing thing. Perhaps WoW has more than it's share of detractors due to it being the 1000 lb gorilla in the MMO world, but if people didn't care, everyone would yawn. MMOs live and die by the passion they stir in their players, and the players themselves are a large part of that. When an MMO generates merely indifference, then the barbarians are at the gate.

As for myself, I decided to resub because I missed the interaction with friends and fellow bloggers/guildies online. Sure, I tend to play when the servers aren't exactly busy (or are filled with insomniacs), but they're busy enough. And the lunchtime crowd can be plenty fun too.

And naturally, right after I resubbed, I came down sick with a very nasty virus. As I lay on the couch, dosed up with Robitussin and Ibuprofen, I kept muttering "....don't it just figure?"

FYI...

2011-11-01T06:34:00.001-04:00

...I'z busy right now.

Will post soon, but real life has been beating me with a clue stick.

PvP "Hybrids"

2011-10-22T01:52:00.000-04:00

The thing that I do find most intriguing is the concept of the kinda-sorta PvEish version of BGs. Imagine the PvPish zones in Grizzly Hills, and instead of a loosely connected set of dailies, convert them into an "event", and that's what you'll get in this new PvP hybrid.

In practice, I'm not sure how well this will work, and whether phasing will do the job as needed. Think of Tol Barad, and how that has dropped off like a rock.

I was thinking about this, and how the smarter thing that Blizz could do would be to create a PvP option where --if selected-- you'd buff up the non-Boss NPCs in Alterac Valley and add NPCs as needed in the other moderate to large BGs. That way the NPCs wouldn't be a pushover, and you could theoretically turn AV back into the epic battle of old.

Mists of Pandaria = PvP Land and Other Musings

2011-10-21T16:48:00.000-04:00

The title is my first opinion in a nutshell.

If you don't like PvP, I suspect that you're not going to like this upcoming expansion quite so much. PvP has been carrying the Alliance v. Horde conflict for quite a while now, and I don't expect that to change.

When the stated goal of an expansion is the conflict with the opposing faction, PvP will become more important, and possibly more important than raids.
The racials of a Pandaren are very interesting from a PvP standpoint too:

Bouncy: reduces fall damage by half.
Inner peace: double rested XP.
Gourmond: +15 to cooking.
Epicurean: double stats to food buffs.
Quaking Palm (from the live stream): Puts a target to sleep for three seconds.

Quaking Palm is very PvP oriented, as is Inner Peace. (Just wait around the Capital City and queue for BGs. Watch the XP rack up!) Bouncy is kind of meh, and Gourmond and Epicurean equally favor PvE and PvP content.

***

If we complained about Outland being out of date before, I guess we ain't seen nothing yet.

Outland will now be more out of date than the Old World would have been when Cata dropped. Northrend almost as bad, and the Old World will be filled with Deathwing references.

***

In case nobody was noticing, Inner Peace means that Pandaren will rocket through the leveling system. Add a few heirlooms, guild perks, and....

***

My previous post about "quests-on-rails" and the effect of making the leveling secondary is going to be even more pronounced in the upcoming expansion. When Blizz explicitly mentions that they're focusing more on max-level content for this expansion, then you know that leveling has taken a back seat to the WoW experience.

***

WoW Pokemon? Are you kidding me?

Is Blizzard losing subs to Wizard 101 or something?

If there's something that's going to land on the cutting room floor before the game goes gold, I expect this will be the one to get the axe.

A Changing Quest Design Philosophy

2011-10-19T09:20:00.001-04:00

As I've previously documented, I've played around with a few other MMOs in addition to WoW. Certainly WoW takes up the majority of my time, but I do like to putz around when the mood takes me. While I've tinkered a little bit with Rift, my experiences are primarily with Lord of the Rings Online and Age of Conan. Those two and WoW form the bulk of my MMO experience, and what I've noticed is that the quest emphasis on WoW has evolved in a direction that seems, well, more Diablo-like than anything else.

I've read on several occasions that you'll be able to finish Diablo III playing solo. Yes, you can bring your friends along for the ride, but on the normal setting you should be able to beat the game all by your lonesome. Now, take a look at how WoW's quest lines changed from pre to post Cata. Sure, there was a lot --a lot!-- of meandering quest lines that got cleaned up, but think about what also changed: any requirements for teaming up.

The last vestiges of group quests are found in the Outland and Northrend zones (including the BC racial starting areas). The new post-Cata quest chains are all on rails, too: you have to do them in sequence, no exceptions. This means you zip right along, heading straight up to L60. Things get a wee bit diverted in Outland and Northrend with the lack of updates to those areas, but the L85 Express kicks right back into gear once you hit the Cata zones.

The first few times you level up to L85, that's not a big issue. You can quest, you can run instances, you can run BGs. You can even heavily incorporate herb gathering and mining into your leveling experience if you feel like it. But after a while, you start to get tired of seeing the same zone in the same order again and again and again. Yes, the phasing is cool, and you do have a visible impact on the world. And yes, the quests-on-rails is a consequence of that design decision. However, a side effect of it is the lack of group play when you're out questing in Azeroth.

Let's think about this for a moment.

A design that emphasizes --and encourages-- solo play until you get to max level.
Due to the speed of leveling, the emphasis isn't simply on playability, but on how quick you can get to max level.
The quests-on-rails environment is all about telling the story --the same story-- which is completely locked in to this expansion. This means that if Blizz were to create another expansion that had an impact in the two main continents of Azeroth, this entire environment would have to be redone, the story rewritten.

Doesn't this all mean that the "new" Old World is set up to simply get players to max level as quickly as possible? It sure feels like it.

I'll give Blizz the benefit of the doubt in that I'm sure they wanted to tell a good story that couldn't be told without a complete revamp of the Old World, but the law of unintended consequences has re-emphasized that all the action is at max level. Being out in the field is a solo affair, and unless you play in a PvP realm, there's not a lot of interaction going on in Azeroth.

Now look, I know quite well you can turn off XP and goof around as much as you want. But I have tried to slow down advancement on a few of my toons while still collecting XP, and unless you spend your time in zones far below your class, it's almost impossible to not level up while questing. And fairly rapidly, at that.

A side effect of Blizz's current quest design philosophy is that it is so jarring to move from Azeroth to Outland and Northrend, where the quest-on-rails simply doesn't exist. That's why the upcoming adjustments in leveling in Northrend became so necessary: they were the brake on the L85 Express.

However, never has this design philosophy been so evident as when you leave WoW and enter another MMO.

LOTRO is a lot like 'old style WoW': there are mostly solo quests out there, and you can do them in any order you want (within reason, naturally). You're not locked in all the time. LOTRO also doesn't have a bunch of small quests as part of a large chain, either; it's all one long quest, but it's broken into sections without having to subdivide into mini-quests. There are some group quests as well: people hook up for those quests, and they're done ala pre-Cata WoW. The leveling is at a more sedate pace, which matches the tone of the MMO. Sure, people will want to play WoW because they loved the story found in the books and Warcraft I-III, but not as many as you might think. In LOTRO, however, the story is the primary draw, and Turbine knows it. If you spread out the pace of leveling you can immerse yourself more fully into Middle Earth, and you can be more social with friends. End level raiding isn't their primary design emphasis.

Now Age of Conan... That is a horse of a different color.

AoC does have a neat little trick called offline leveling that allows you to level more rapidly once you're past L30, which is perfect for those who choose to accelerate their movement to max level. But if you choose to level using questing, you're in for a surprise.

Once you get past the Tortage starter area, the number of group quests really goes up. Sure, you have a lot of individual quests to work on, but AoC practically pushes you into group cooperation with the way the zones are designed. The Cimmerian area Connall's Valley has the Vanir deployed more like an instance than anything else, and their movements are a lot more detailed than I've seen in WoW. As I've commented before on the AI, enemies are far more sensitive to nearby attacks and use real tactics to give themselves the best possible advantage. For some quests it becomes absolutely necessary to work in a group, even if the quest itself isn't flagged as a group quest.

With AoC the focus is not only on creating a more demanding quest line, but one that encourages group cooperation. AoC shares a similarity with LOTRO in that the journey is important enough to encourage immersion, but the approach to get people involved in the journey is different. The net result, however, is that both MMOs slow down leveling; their devs don't focus the MMOs to getting the player to max level as quickly as possible.

This upcoming week, we'll hear about the new WoW expansion from Blizzcon --and if you don't think we'll hear something, I've got a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you-- and I wonder what Blizz will do to counteract the heavily story-laden Star Wars: The Old Republic juggernaut. Will they orient themselves even more toward end-game raiding, or will they go off the quests-on-rails and change their quest focus again? I guess we'll find out soon.

Dancing With Myself

2011-10-17T13:31:00.002-04:00

The inspiration for this post came from my perusal of the Badlands this morning, when I came across a Worgen Warrior off in a corner near Lethlor Canyon (not to be confused with the other Worgen who was doing the same Rhea's Egg questline as I was).

This particular Warrior simply decided to start dancing. Just for the hell of it.

I've been playing for a little over two years and I've seen some strange things, but this isn't what you'd expect to find at 5 AM.

Then again, is there ever a good time to be seeing strange stuff in WoW?

Like the guy who had his attacks set up via a macro so that he starts by yelling "Go go Power Rangers go go!" (I've come across him twice via LFD back when I was on Stormscale.)

Or the Goblin with the name of Snookie --yes, in honor of that Snookie-- that would shout every minute or so: "Where's the beach?"

Compared to this stuff, I'm kind of an ol' fuddy duddy. (And get offa my lawn, too!) But you know, one of these days...

Like maybe I'll create a Hunter with a pet named Scooby just so I can yell in the Halls of Reflection "Zoinks!!! Run, Scoob!!"

Or maybe that Hunter will go around with a gun, saying "Say hello to my little friend!"

Or I'll level a Rogue so I can quote lines from the Barenaked Ladies' song "The Ninjas" in a BG.

Not Exactly Feeling the Love

2011-10-13T16:26:00.001-04:00

I've been watching the class changes in the 4.3 PTR, and I'm less than thrilled. The three class/specs that I play --Ret Pally, Frost Mage, and Affliction Warlock-- have either got a big ol' batch of nothing (Frost and Aff) or a slight mix of buffs and nerfs, ending up in an overall nerf (Ret). (Druids have been hit by a nerf bat too, now that I think about it.)

What's enjoying the spotlight these days? Holy Spec Pallys, for one. Fire Mages, for another. Destro Warlocks. Warriors. Shamans. Holy and Disco Priests. Hunters and DKs got a smattering of love, too.

It's still way early, but it's not looking so good at the moment.

Well, at least Rogues don't have anything new.

EtA: OH! The most important thing (at least for me) in the PTR is that the Alterac Blitz achievement will no longer be needed to get the Master of Alterac Valley meta-achievement. I just don't see how one team can get the Blitz if you've got two groups of 40, especially since it takes a couple of minutes to go from one end of the BG to the other.

Guardian Cubs and Gaming the System

2011-10-12T22:38:00.001-04:00

Given the imminent release of the Guardian Cub in the Blizz store, does that mean that the Guardian Mount (aka the glowing sheepdog) wasn't so annoying as the Sparkle Pony? After all, you'd think that there would be a market for the Blizzard version of My Little Pony as a pet.

I've seen enough of the brouhaha concerning the saleability of the pet on the AH, I have to ask just what the big deal is. It's just a pet; it's not raid tier gear. Having one won't imbalance the game any more than someone paying for a faction change just to sell pets cross faction. Either way, the money will indirectly go for gold. Why don't you hear a hue and cry over that?

Yes, I do get the slippery slope argument, and how blatant the "money for gold" aspect is. (And so is selling a copy of the Collectors' Edition of the game on eBay just to access the exclusive pet, but I digress.) But as minor as this is, gaming the system is nothing new to WoW.

There are always methods to game a system. The WoW gold farmers are one method; faction changes are another. Automated auction software that has more in common with day trader software is a third. Automated leveling software, which sells prospective buyers on "the game only really starts at max level", is another.

But in the end, what all these methods do is to get a player to a point in time, whether it's with a pet, or gold, or gear. A pet is strictly vanity, but gold and gear are a different matter. Whether they obtain it by cheating or not, the player is then expected to actually do something with their gear. Or their gold. Or their newly minted L85. Just amassing the stuff doesn't mean a lot in WoW terms, because flashing bling and a few silver will get you an apple from the fruit vendor in Shattrath's Lower City.

Failed pugs and raids are littered with people who didn't know how to play their class in that environment.* If you gamed the system to get into Firelands raiding, your (lack of) skill will be on display for all to see. I've been in too many 5-mans wherein poor undergeared me out DPSed toons with the latest gear found on the AH for me to think that gear = skill, and I'm sure I'm not alone.

Besides, who really cares when you flaunt your dubiously obtained gear?* After all, vanity gear is just around the corner, and people aren't going to care if you've got T20 gear on you because people will be too busy outfitting themselves in T2 gear instead. I mean, there will be people who will raid wearing a wedding dress, I can guarantee it.

If after all that you're expecting me to say some platitude about how someone who games the system is only hurting themselves, well, I'm not. Because that's not true. People get their accounts hacked in the name of keeping gold farmers' coffers full. Raids, BGs, and 5-mans fail because of these shenanigans. Just because you can game the system doesn't mean you should.

But in the end, the Guardian Cub controversy is a tempest in a teapot which is distracting from the more insidious methods of gaming the system. Stop worrying about the Cub, because that's not where the action will be.

*This is different from people who leveled their way to L85 and then tried to get into instances/raids/BGs. For starters, they know a bit about the mechanics, just not how to play a toon in a group format. The person who let a leveling service take care of their toon from 1-85 missed out on a lot of critical lessons on how a toon's abilities work. And believe me, it shows; we all can spot the DPS who keeps Righteous Fury on when playing.

**Remember people showing off their e-peen and their proto drakes perched on the Dal fountain? Do you remember their names? I sure don't, and I doubt no more than a few people do.

Is there an Adult in the House?

2011-10-11T00:53:00.000-04:00

When you reach that magical mark of L45, the grind through BGs suddenly becomes worth it.

I clicked to join the queue, waited a few minutes, and the pic of a Frostwolf Orc and Stormpike Guard Dwarf filled my screen.

"Ah...." I sighed in content. "Alterac Valley. The best BG in the game."

Then my Lock ported into the loading tunnel and was greeted by farts, belches, nose pickings, and some guy yelling "I'm running around naaaked!!!"

I was playing Alterac Valley with 39 teenagers. Yay me.

(I mentioned this to Vidyala from Manalicious, who happened to be logged in at the time, and she said "Did you see that strip from The Oatmeal about that? Oh wait, you posted that, didn't you?" Art imitates life, I'm afraid.)

***

For my money, AV is a great learning Battleground, and probably the best starter BG for someone who has never tried BGs before but wanted to test them out.

Before anyone points out the value of creating an alt just to try Warsong Gulch at L10, yes, I'm aware of that as an option. That method of getting your toes wet in BGs does have advantages, namely that you start to learn the PvP capabilities of your class at the beginner level, and your skill will grow over time as you gain in abilities. However, starting at whatever level your toon is at (presumably max level or at least L45) and queuing for Alterac Valley has advantages too:

You are one of 40 players on your side. If you screw up, odds are good that you're not going to drag down your team much at all. With WSG (and to a lesser extent Arathi Basin and Eye of the Storm), one player's mistakes are far more costly to your side. What this means is that in AV, you have a little bit of license to try things out and not worry about messing up too much.
In a large BG such as Alterac Valley, there will always be someone more poorly geared than you are. From quest greens through the latest Ruthless Gladiator set, all types can find a home in AV.
AV has pretty standard strategies (zerg and turtle being the most common), so you don't have to know the intricacies of the BG to contribute.
There is always someone attempting to complete the external AV quests, particularly at the lower levels. This kind of ties into my first point in that AV is forgiving enough that one or two people will wander off and not impact their team so much. Now, I'm not talking about the in-BG quests you find to go and bring back gear to quest givers at each base --I haven't seen anyone do that in a long while-- but the "Capture a mine" and "Defend a tower" quests. While this isn't a big deal in today's WoW, back in Vanilla it was a moderately big deal to get the trinkets from the Frostwolf or Stormpike factions, and completing the quests helped get some of that rep. Besides, if you play Arathi Basin and you complete that starter quest, you're probably thinking "oh yeah, these BG quests aren't a problem." Until you head into gnoll caverns and have to fight your way through against monsters 4 levels higher than you, that is.
When in doubt, help to capture a tower. Graveyards are a bit trickier, because there are times when it makes more sense to not capture one, but towers are always ripe for picking.
The natural tendency of a newbie PvPer is to travel in a pack, and that is perfect for a big BG such as Alterac Valley. Stick with the pack as much as you can, and you lessen the chance of getting jumped from behind. For clothies, I can't stress this enough. Rogues and Hunters love clothies, particularly stragglers.
If you're really lucky --or unlucky, based on how quickly you want to play the game-- you can witness the elemental summoning. I haven't seen it myself, but it does happen from time to time, and there's nothing like having a raid level boss on your side.
Honor per game is better than almost all of the other BGs. Since there are no vehicles to worry about ala Isle of Conquest or Strand of the Ancients, Alterac Valley is a big ol' backyard brawl. The honor will add up very quickly, particularly in a series of quickly resolved zerg games. And yes, that means that even if you lose you'll get some decent honor so that you can buy PvP gear more quickly. (And yes, I meant quickly. I did say it three times, no?)

***

Back in AV, I ignored the excesses of the hormone driven crowd and followed along until Snowfall Graveyard, when I peeled off to cap it. A feral druid pulled in next to me and asked if I wanted to stay with him to defend it.

"No," I said. "There's no need. It's a disadvantage for the Horde to take this; we're better off going to Tower Point instead."

"Okay. You lead."

We reached TP to find that the rest of the group had pushed on ahead, so we darted up the ramp and waited. A priest arrived for support just as "the Horde have captured Snowfall Graveyard" scrolled on screen.

"They actually took the bait," I said.

"Yeah," the priest replied, "you know they're going to lose when they can't resist taking it from us."

A swarm of Hordies came charging up the ramps, and all we had to do was hold out for 20 seconds. I was spamming every fear ability I had while the priest got knocked off the ramp. The druid got two on him and I feared one away. My succubus disabled one and Howl of Terror procced again.

10 seconds.

I got hit and stunned and quickly used my trinket in combo with Death Coil. The feral had two more on him, and a Tauren Sunwalker came barreling in.

5 seconds.

I cast Fear. The cast bar crawled across the screen.

"Come on.... Come on...."

The Sunwalker turned to the Feral just as I feared him. He ran out the room.

3...

The feral died.

2...

Howl of Terror procced just as the two on the Feral turned to me. I mashed the button so hard I was sure I broke the key.

1...

A Judgement hammer struck me and left me with around 50 health left.

Boom! Flames exploded around the tower, and I whooped as the Sunwalker finished me off.

"GJ on TP!" the designated tank hollered.

Ah, Alterac Valley. Such fun indeed.

We Don't Make the Class You Play... We Make the Class You Play Better*

2011-10-04T16:55:00.003-04:00

It's been said by quite a few internet pundits that the Paladin is the easiest of the WoW classes to play. While I don't know whether that's the case --I could make a good argument for Arcane Mages taking that slot-- Ret Paladins are certainly one of the least "button heavy" classes to play.

One of the big knocks about Ret Paladins in Wrath was the lack of any real rotation. The "rotation" a Ret Pally had was the equivalent of a giant game of Whack-a-Mole: whatever ability was off CD was the button you used. Sure, there were a few choices here and there, but in this case perception was indeed reality. Cata actually introduced a rotation (of sorts) to Ret, which boiled down to

Crusader Strike -> filler -> Crusader Strike -> filler -> Crusader Strike -> Templars Verdict

with a few items such as Inquisition, Zealotry, and Avenging Wrath inserted as needed.

This is not very button heavy. (Stop laughing, Arcane!)

With Ret, once I took care of some basic keybindings and a few macros, there wasn't much to do. Since I don't raid, I'm not too concerned about squeezing every last bit of DPS that I can out of my rotation. I know the spec, so as long as I can work it well enough I'm fine. Even a Frost Mage isn't that button heavy, particularly once the keybindings and macros are settled into place. In PvP, it's all about CC and driving the other side batty.**

But when I started leveling that Warlock, my laissez-faire attitude hit a brick wall.

With Adelwulf, there were not only a lot of buttons, but you get them all launched at you in quick leveling succession.

By L20, I knew my old button system was in trouble.

By L30, it was just about untenable. My fingers ached, and I knew that if I didn't overhaul my keys I'd get a serious case of carpal tunnel syndrome, not to mention being completely incompetent.

Of course, that meant that my old keybinding setup had to be thrown out the window, which is why I balked at the task for so long. Muscle memory was going to be a bitch and a half while I settled into something reasonable.

My first attempts went poorly. Oh, I knew what I wanted from a Warlock angle so that was easy enough, but I didn't expect how much trouble it would be to reorganize my Ret keybindings into something I could use effectively. In my first run after keybindings 2.00, I ran Q through AV. Or rather, Q bubbled his way through AV. I'd placed Divine Shield too close to a button I hit more often, and I was accidentally spamming DS the entire run. Iteration 2.01 didn't go so well either, as every time Art of War procced I hit the wrong key and had to look away from the screen to figure out what I was doing wrong.

Not good.

Iterations 2.02 through 2.17 were incremental improvements until I finally got to the layout I liked. Main attacks on top, debuff removal and cc stuff below that, and rarely used spells on the bottom. There were individual quirks about my setup, like having Exorcism and Hammer of Justice use the same finger as before --but keys on different rows-- kept me from accidentally blowing a CD on something I wanted later. (Trust me, it all makes sense in my mind.)

Turning to Neve, I balked. PvP and PvE spell emphasis on a Frost Mage are different enough that I really didn't want to work on it. Like ever. But when you can't even find your main spells once you login, you have to do something. And I'll be honest: I haven't really finished the job of reorganizing Neve's keys into something that feels natural, even after iteration 2.13.

Even that half baked key setup, however, is much easier on my hands. My fingers don't ache after a couple of games of WSG like they used to. And when I remember where everything is, I can hit the keys more quickly.

If it weren't for trying out that Warlock, I'd probably never have reworked all of this stuff. Amazing how something good can come out of a class that wallows in its use of evil.

I do have one side effect of all this work, however: my left pinkie has a disturbing tendency to accidentally hit the "Sleep" button on my keyboard***. Talk about Imps and their tricks. /grumble

*This is a wordplay on an old series of commercials for the chemical company BASF, whose tagline was "We don't make a lot of the products you buy, we make a lot the products you buy... better." Here's a link to a 14 year old commercial via YouTube: 1997 BASF Ad

**If I've got at least three Alliance trying to DPS down Neve in WSG, I consider that I've done my job. When 1/3 of your team is chasing after one person who isn't a FC, then the rest of your team is freed up to do the dirty work.

***Which, naturally, won't stay disabled.

Permanent Death and Other Musings

2011-10-01T00:03:00.004-04:00

Okay, question time: Was there ever a time when you cared about player death, and if so, when did you stop worrying about it?

I've been thinking about this question ever since I've started GMing a Savage Worlds campaign for my kids. When I laid out the ground rules for the pulp-style campaign, one of them asked what happens if their character dies. I told them that if a character dies, the character isn't coming back. They'll have to start with a new character with an appropriate amount of experience for the group.

In an MMO such as WoW that concept of permanent character death goes against one of the core tenets of the game. The entire point of raiding is to attempt, wipe, and attempt again until you manage to down the boss. The raids, instances, and group quests are designed with that in mind. If you're appropriately geared for one of these scenarios, there is a great likelihood of your toon dying at least once. And don't get me started about PvP, given that the entire point of a lot of PvPing is to "gank before you are ganked."

However, trying to switch gears and play a pencil-and-paper RPG can be a bit jarring. Even for my kids, who play Wizard 101 and the LEGO family of video games, your toon always came back. To say that it doesn't, and you'll just have to live with it, took some getting used to.

(Or even trying to play an older CRPG such as Baldur's Gate I/II, where you learned to save right before each battle because if you lost your main character, it was game over.)

Coming from the "permanent death" background, it took me a good long while to get over my toons periodically dying. Conservative play? Ha! I played at so glacial a pace that I didn't move into the Ghostlands from Eversong Forest until my toon was high enough level that all of the enemies were green in difficulty. Obviously, I got over this playstyle once I started getting ganked with regularity in (pre-Cata) Tarren Mill, but vestiges of the "take it very slow and don't ever ever ever rush in" style remain.

If I were a WoW player first, I'm not sure if I would ever make that leap to pencil-and-paper RPGs. Not because of the technology, to be honest, but the fact that my (essentially) immortal toon created unrealistic expectations about what PNP gameplay was like. However, I would also have expectations that the Big Bads in a PNP campaign would require specific capabilities to be used at specific times, and that my party members would be required to maintain a certain level of damage output. That's a ludicrous expectation, but if you look at WoW or LOTRO or Rift or any of the other MMOs out there, this is the design reality.

***

In a pencil and paper RPG, story matters.

Sure, you've got your hack and slash campaign nuts out there --"You enter the door to the room and inside you find three red dragons!"-- but to the majority of people who play PNP RPGs, campaign plots as well as the interaction between PCs, NPCs, and the game world are a big part of why they play RPGs.

I'm sure there are plenty of other lore nuts out there playing WoW (Hi, Rades!), but I've known far more people who play WoW who really don't care too much about the story at all. Just give them something to kill, and they're happy. Raids? BGs? It's just a 2011 version of Wizard of Wor or Super Mario.

"Hey, so this is where Millhouse Manastorm got to!" I exclaimed when I found him in Deepholm on Neve.

"Who?" a guildie asked.

"The Gnome you ran into at the end of the Arcatraz, the one whom the Sha'tar sent you to rescue."

"lol Q, I don't care. I just want to push buttons and kill things."

In a PNP RPG, however, it does matter because your party has to figure things out and decide what to do. There's always a different way to skin a cat in a FTF RPG, while the technical limitations of an MMO dictate that you can't deviate from a specific quest goal.

***

Heard around Azeroth:

In WSG:

(Two clothies and Quintalan (me) reached the Alliance flag. I'm the only plate wearer and we all have about the same Resilience, so I grabbed it. We hit the tunnel just as a Prot Warrior made it to us.)

Warrior: Give it to the mage.

Mage: No! Don't give it to me! You take it!

I tried to drop the flag, but because I'd been screwing around with my key bindings --and let's face it, I rarely carry the flag in WSG at all-- I'd deleted that button by accident, and popping a bubble was on CD.

Warrior: Come on, drop it!

Me: I'm trying, my bindings are screwed up!

Mage: Fuck it, just go!

We headed straight out the door and blasted our way through the first wave of Alliance players. The second wave consisted of two Holy Pallies and two Rogues. The Resto Druid with us did his best to keep me up, but I eventually died. However, just as I died the Censure DoTs killed off the Rogue that was on me. The Prot Warrior scooped up the flag and raced up our tunnel to cap it.

Me (from the graveyard): Well, that's one way to drop the flag.

Warrior: Hey, it worked.

Just Like Old World Azshara

2011-09-27T20:18:00.001-04:00

Back in April, I compared Burning Crusade with Cataclysm and hit upon what I felt was a weakness with Cata: the lack of a continuing story for Goblins and Worgen. I've spent the months since then exploring the Old World under the guise of leveling herbalism, and stopping for quest lines along the way. The more I've explored the Old World, the more I've become convinced that those new races have been my biggest disappointment with the expansion.

The starting zones held so much promise, as did Silverpine and Azshara. But outside of those zones, there's the occasional bone but nothing really meaty to dig into.

From the starter zone, the next logical location for a newly minted Worgen was Darkshore. And there was nothing there for the Worgen. Oh, there was plenty going on --hey there, Malfurion-- but nothing much Worgen-centric. Ashenvale, the center of so much old Worgen lore, only has a couple of Worgen present, who are completely interchangeable with any other race. If you make it all the way down to Feralas, for a few brief moments it looks like the Worgen are going to have a lot to do with zone. But the three Worgen there, just like in Ashenvale, could be substituted for Night Elves or another race entirely. The fight with Cho'gall? That was all Night Elf.

Ironically enough, if you want Worgen lore in Alliance heavy zones, you have to go to Duskwood and Raven Hill. Or you could visit the contested Blasted Lands, where there's a Worgen encampment in the butt-end of the Azerothian universe.

The Goblins fare little better, but that's also due to having to share Azeroth with the Steamwheedle Cartel. There's only so many places you can stick more goblins, although Blizz's love of Trolls seems to dispute that phenomenon. Blizz seems to have solved some of the Bilgewater Cartel Goblin issues by getting rid of some of the Venture Company spots and replacing them with Bilgewater Cartel instead (like, say, Stonetalon). But the Horde Goblins end up with only a few bones, and they get the "they're the Horde's Gnomes" treatment instead.

Both races have such great and complete beginnings that it's a real shame to see them so utterly forgotten once you leave the starting zones. It's like seeing the Draenei and Blood Elves' treatment in the Old World (pre-Cata) only to reach Outland and.... there's nothing for them there. Can you imagine Burning Crusade without those two races at the forefront of Outland, or the Death Knights (and Knights of the Ebon Blade) missing from Wrath? Well, I can sure imagine Cata without either Worgen or Goblins, and it wouldn't be very different from what we have now at all.

Cata was ambitious, no doubt about it. Reworking the Old World, adding two new races, incorporating new zones/storylines, and hefty rewrites of a lot of the class mechanics were a tall order. And I'm not even counting the things that were left on the cutting room floor, such as releveling (aka grouping with lower level toons), the Path of the Titans, and Arathi Highlands. But the Goblins and Worgen are a lot like the post-Cata Arathi Highlands; they're incomplete.

New races are one of those core features of an expansion that once announced, you can't back out of. While Path of the Titans and some other areas (flying in the BC starting areas) were on the optional side of things, once you say "we're going to have two new playable races!" you can't really backtrack without a sizable portion of the player base revolting. A playable race becomes --by its very nature-- a core feature of an expansion.

The least Blizz could have done is add more Worgen/Goblin content in the expansions to continue the story. They certainly seem to have no trouble doing that with Trolls, so why not with the pride and joy of Cataclysm?

Note to Self...

2011-09-23T16:37:00.000-04:00

...when a BG pops and you've just finished fending off the Dark Iron Dwarves at the Brewfest Grounds, you might want to take a pass on that BG. Unless you like trying to run WSG completely smashed, that is.

"There'sh four in their basesh wif the efcsh ...hic!"

(It was entertaining right up until I died that first time, which gets rid of the "drunk" debuff.)

***

Some people are never satisfied.

This morning, I finished up a Strand of the Ancients run wherein we didn't lose a single demo, but people were still yelling "fail!" in BG chat right up until we finished.

As was traditional, I checked the stats at the end, and those people were the ones at the bottom who weren't healers.

***

Rades over at Orcish Army Knife had a brilliant idea for the Naked Dungeon Challenge, which got me to thinking. Now that you can run wargames, why not have a naked BG run between two teams?

It sounded like a great idea, until I realized what it might end up like: The Lingerie Football League.

(Yes, it appears to exist. No, it's not like the Women's Football Alliance, which is regular full contact American Football. My sister-in-law played for a year on the Kentucky Karma as a WR, and she'll tell you that the women who play in that league don't mess around.)

Humor Alert: The Oatmeal

2011-09-21T10:53:00.000-04:00

An LJ friend (and MMO player) pointed me to this entry by the online comic The Oatmeal. Given my playing habits, I can appreciate the humor:

Miscellaneous PvP Musings

2011-09-20T09:40:00.000-04:00

The long slog through leveling an Affliction Warlock via battlegrounds has hit a turning point.

I finally reached L44 and gained access to Howl of Terror.

While it's not an immediate panacea, it does give me two instant cast fear spells in my arsenal, which you almost certainly need given that Kitty Druids and Rogues can down you in two strikes. But being able to actually protect a flag carrier by scattering enemies for a brief moment in time is a wonderful feeling.

It's almost as much fun as that first time I reached out from beyond the grave and took out that Hunter who failed to shed my DoTs after he killed me.

Believe me, after having seen tons of losing fights in WSG, I'm happy for just about anything right now.

***

You can put the Paladin on the shelf, but you can't take the Paladin out of the player.

By now, you'd think that I'd have weaned myself off of my tendency to wade into the thick of a melee and blast everyone from point blank range. On a plate wearer, that works great. A clothie, not so much.

But in extreme moments of "get the EFC! get the EFC!" or "zerg inc BS omg" my rationality goes out the window.

I've found the life of a Frost Mage can get very... entertaining... when you're running around like a nut using Cone of Cold and Frost Nova (and Deep Freeze) to cc everything in sight. And at max level with a decent amount of PvP gear, you can drive the opposing faction batty. I've had a Prot Warrior, a Priest, and a Rogue beating on Neve, yet I was still able to take out that Disco Priest before I bit it. In a small BG such as Warsong Gulch, keeping 1/3 of the opposing faction occupied while your flag carrier zips on by is a great thing.

I'm looking forward to the day when I can hang in there a bit longer on my Lock, so I'm not just a glorified pin cushion.

***

I don't know what it was about today, but the 'bots were all over the place in the early morning BGs.

For example, I was on Neve in Eye of the Storm, holding down the Fel Reaver area. I'd watch as the Spirit Healer timer popped, and two Tauren on kodos would ride up, keyboard turn around where the buff was, and head straight for the middle area. A few minutes later, they'd be back.

Just when I was about to say something, a Night Elf Resto Druid rode up and attacked FR. She laid down a healing circle and, well, not much else. I quickly DPSed her down before any more Alliance showed up, and three minutes later she was back again. After a while, I just shrugged. At least nobody was yelling and screaming in BG chat, and the fight ended up being a very close one with the Alliance pulling it out in the end.
I guess you could say that their 'bots beat our 'bots.

Where's a Tourniquet When you Need One?

2011-09-15T12:16:00.002-04:00

Rohan over at Blessing of Kings has been pondering the differences in WoW's endgame between extended players (dedicated raiders) and transient players (occasional raiders and non-raiders). While I acknowledge the differences between the groups, Rohan's suggestion to use the LFR tool --and make those fights easier-- doesn't sit well with me. I couldn't put my finger on why until I saw the WoW login screen mentioning the Diablo 3 beta and I read Spink's post on the Diablo 3 Character Builds.

Blizz is losing some of its subscriber base, and I suspect it is the transients that are leaving in greater numbers. Why? Because of the changes Blizz has come out with lately: the Call to Arms feature and the upcoming Looking for Raid tool.

Who benefits the most from Call to Arms? The people who run instances. Who are the majority of people running instances not named Zul these days? Not the extended players; they've moved on.

Likewise, the LFR tool is targeted at a very specific group: the transient who wants to be an extended player but can't due to other issues (can't raid when their guild has raid times, etc.) It allows these transients to become extended by bypassing the old raid pugging mechanism with a minimal amount of fuss.

But what about those transients who want an endgame of their own, separate from extended-style raids?

That's where Diablo 3 comes in.

Diablo 3 is geared toward transient players, while WoW is designed for extended players. Trying to create a separate endgame for transient players in WoW is like the proverbial square peg in a round hole, it just won't happen because the design philosophy is different. In WoW, the entire point of endgame is the raid, and anything else is just not happening. If you want to have a transient endgame, Blizzard has a nice software product just for you: Diablo 3.

Sure, extended players will play Diablo 3 too, but the main target for the game are those transient players who want an endgame, something that WoW won't satisfy.

If Blizz can keep departing transient players within the Blizzard product line by selling them on Diablo 3, then Blizz'll be fine with that. It all comes down to money, and as long as the money stays within the family, then things are good. Blizz won't have to worry about declining subscriptions with WoW if Diablo 3 is a smashing success and people pay gobs of real money for items to use in the game.

Besides, there's always Titan.

EtA: Corrected a grammar issue in paragraph seven.

It's All in the Mindset

2011-09-13T15:04:00.003-04:00

The LOTRO experiment seems to have fizzled out.

Not that I'm complaining, mind you, but I am a bit disappointed. The kids seemed to like interacting with Middle-earth well enough, but once they started the F2P version of LOTRO I started hearing the same complaints:

"I can't find the quest giver!"
"The buttons are too hard!"
"I can't see where I'm going!" [aka "I can't adjust the camera!"]
"My friends aren't on here. I keep hearing about [fill in the blank] instead!"

Fixing those first three come with experience. After all, I should know about the learning curve for an MMO. Now that last one...

The Mash-up of Genres called Wizard 101

This was the first game I began hearing about from my kids, about how their friends are on it, it's free to play, and that it's a lot of fun.

What I heard was "blah blah blah KIDS ONLY blah blah blah," which set off alarm bells in my head.

Any place that advertises itself as a "safe place for kids" you have to be extra diligent with, because that's the sort of place that predators gravitate toward. Are there predators on WoW? Sure, but they have a harder time identifying their prey there.* A place that is "kid friendly" is almost too good to be true from a predator's point of view, so as a parent you have to be extra vigilant to make sure that things remain (relatively) safe.

Wizard 101 addresses these issues by restricting what players can say via chat. If your account identifies you as being below a certain age cutoff, for instance, you are limited to only some standard phrases. You can still friend people and connect with them, but communication is minimal. Above a certain age, you can chat normally, but certain phrases are replaced with a "..." if you are the incorrect age to read it. Some words, as you can imagine, are completely off limits and won't appear at all in a chat session (they're marked red when you type).

This is all well and good, I suppose, until your kid creates an account and deliberately changes the age to be older than he or she really is. That's when things can get a bit hairy, and adult supervision is needed to ensure that your kid isn't trying to subvert the system. What was it that Winston Churchill once said about it being impossible to make something foolproof because fools were so ingenious?

These concerns aside, if you thought that toons looked pretty generic in WoW, you ain't seen nothing yet.

In Wizard 101, you enter a rather suspiciously Harry Potter-esque world as a young wizard --and yes, variation between toons is kept to a minimum as far as boy/girl tweaks. So if you've seen one wizard, you've almost literally seen them all. Your gear will change over the course of your time spent in Wizard 101, so if you want to look at least a little bit different, the gear is the way to go.

The game world has a feel of Harry Potter Meets Anime, with a dash of Technicolor brightness thrown in for good measure, so make of that what you will.

The gameplay is a bit of a weird combo between a regular MMO and Magic the Gathering. You can pick up quests, run around the game area using the mouse, and do all sorts of generic things you're used to in an MMO. The one major difference, however, is the combat system. You initiate combat by running into an enemy (or dueling with a fellow player) and then you enter a magic circle. Multiple allies and enemies can join the circle, so be careful how close you are to enemies before engaging. When you fight, however, you fight using a deck of magic cards (hmm, sound familiar?) in which you play a different card each round to attack an opponent, buff yourself, heal yourself/others, or debuff an opponent. The card's power is dictated by the ~~land cards~~ markers on the side of your dueling circle location. You fight until one of you is defeated or retreats.

The game is F2P, but does have a subscription option which allows you access to a lot more of the game world.

Taking a page from WoW, the quest titles have a lot of quips in them. Additionally, certain characters from some old fantasy novels (such as Dorothy Gale from The Wizard of OZ) are present in the game.

When I tried this MMO out, I kept wondering how on earth this company hasn't found itself sued by multiple groups yet, but time will tell. The kids seem to find the game interesting enough, and they have schoolmates who play, so we'll see how long this lasts.

How to Ignore your Mouse in a few Easy Steps -- LEGO Universe

LEGO Universe recently jumped on the F2P model, opening up a limited section of its game to people with lego.com accounts.

Considering that the kids have quite a few of the LEGO PC games, it didn't shock me in the least that they wanted to try this game out. What did surprise me was that you used an actual keyboard to maneuver around LEGO Universe instead of a gamepad.

Or a mouse, for that matter.

Whomever came up with the idea of using keyboard-only commands for LEGO Universe needs to get a swift kick in the butt. Even my kids had major issues with that before they acclimatized themselves to using the keyboard commands.

You also don't have a lot of control over the camera, either. You can tweak a few things, but like most of the regular LEGO games you're at the mercy of the camera's zoom capability. The LEGO games give me a headache for that reason, and LEGO Universe was no exception.**

While I popped a couple of ibuprofen, I studied the game and the chat system. Or lack thereof, in the case of the latter.

If you're taking advantage of F2P, you can't use chat. Period. Just get used to the idea that you can do a few basic emotes and that's it. Supposedly LEGO Universe has active mods to act as police officers, but since you can't really do much in the F2P version of LEGO Universe, I'd not worry about that.

You also are very restricted in your name creation, although the LEGO minifig configuration is much better than what you get out of Wizard 101.

Okay, the LEGO minifigs are cute. And the gameplay is a bit like what you find when you cross an MMO with one of the LEGO video games. But can't these people just throw gamepad support on this game? Or at least mouse support?

But what do I know; the kids find it fun enough. And that the camera is on automatic seems to be fine with them too.

*Unless you get on Vent, of course.

**No, seriously. I can't play FPS's either for that reason. Dramamine helps, but it's not a panacea.

Some Thursday Fun

2011-09-08T11:07:00.003-04:00

After enough deep posts, I figured something lighter was in order.

I don't often crack open the search entries that send people to our blog, but when I did for the past month, it was an eye opening experience.

"Lady Liadrin" -- Seems that most of these searches are looking for pics of the Blood Elf Matriarch. Curious, I tried searching for "Lady Liadrin" via Google, and yeah, my screenshot found in "About Redbeard" is there. To be honest, it's one of the few G or PG rated images out there of her. Some of the fan art made me feel like I had to shower after seeing just the search results.

"orc warrior tank tier 12" and "forsaken rogue" -- I'm sorry, but Soul ~~turned traitor~~ faction changed to the Alliance, and he doesn't have any Orcs or Forsaken in his stable of toons.

"can i play the wee" -- Um, I suppose so. I think you ought to ask your folks first.

"fear of saying something in the wrong context" -- Oh, right, you're asking me about that? And people wonder why I'm not on Twitter.

"adult world of warcraft graphics" -- Maybe you ought to try "Lady Liadrin" or "Thrall and Jaina". Or maybe you don't want to know, because I sure didn't. And no, it's definitely not work safe.

"f2p adult mmorpg" -- Haven't these people heard of Goldshire? Sheesh.

"how to apply retardin desensitizing cream" -- Oh no, not this again. Make one post --just one post!-- about retardins and you pay for it forever.

***

Heard around Azeroth:

In Warsong Gulch:
(After the flag carrier --a Resto Shaman-- and Neve got jumped and wiped by two Kitty Druids)
Shaman: Of course I died, all I had was an undergeared Mage protecting me.

(15 mins later after the two of us DPSed down the Alliance's FC and got our flag back)
Shaman: Two 20k Ice Lances and 40k Frostbolt FTW!

Amazing how good you look when you're not stunned, your trinkets aren't on CD, and you get crits on your attacks.

In Isle of Conquest:
DK: We'd all better look good, cause I'm streaming this right now.
DK dies.
Shadow Priest: Was that good enough for ya?

In Warsong Gulch:
Warrior: These have to be the worst rogues ever.
Paladin: Yeah, I've zapped them about 4 times already.
Mage (while rezzing): Nice to know, cause the Lock and I have been getting one shotted by them the entire BG.
Warlock (me, while rezzing): I feel like they should be turning me on a spit.

In Isle of Conquest:
Human Paladin: I wanna be a Goblin, cause they get to ride tricycles!
Me (as Tomakan): and Gnomes are any better?
Kitty Druid: I like my Gnomes fried. Goblins are better roasted.

***

Oldie But Goodie:

Back when we were on Stormscale (US-PVP), Soul and I were cruising near Hellfire Citadel when we got jumped by an L80 Rogue and his buddy, who ganked us. As we ran back, Soul cautioned me that we're probably being corpse camped so I should be ready to move. We rezzed and I mounted just as the Rogue emerged from hiding and got me from behind. Amazingly enough, his attack neither killed me outright nor dismounted me, so I leapt up to the skies aboard my wind rider.

"I thought you were dead," Soul told me.

"So did I," I replied, and cackled.

The Rogue, however, wasn't going to give up so easily. He mounted, flew up to us, and tried to gank me as he dismounted.

He missed and plummeted to the ground.

I still smirk at that moment to this day.

The Great Equalizer

2011-09-05T13:07:00.001-04:00

In the two years since we've been running this blog, ol' Redbeard has started to turn into Greybeard. Although I'm sure that my family has had something to do with it, streaks of gray can now be seen on the sides of my facial hair, extending up into my sideburns. Every morning, I peer into the mirror and see evidence of my mortality staring back at me.* All the crueler, I suppose, in that my toons never seem to age or show any evidence of previous wounds.

A toon's appearance is the great equalizer in WoW. Until you get on Vent or Mumble, you never know who is actually running the toon. The players in your pug could be grandparents or tweens, male or female, gay or straight, and unless they make it obvious, you'll be none the wiser.

In a very real sense, this is how it should be. We can gripe about racial design or (lack) of armor, but in the end, the toon is an idealized artistic version of an arbitrary race in a virtual game. The toon isn't us; it is merely the vehicle in which we play.

And yet there's so much wrapped up in them.

If you don't think so, I point to the rejoicing at the vanity armor announcement for Patch 4.3. Or how some people refuse to play certain races and/or classes, based on how they look.

We invest so much time in these toons, it's only natural that we look at them as an extension of ourselves. I suppose I'll always look at Q or Neve as Sindorei, Q with his Blood Knight tabard and polearm (evoking the Blood Tempered Ranseur) and Neve with her Kirin Tor tabard** and refusing to wear a helm. Tom seems to have that Ramkahen tabard permanently stapled onto his chest, and will favor a 2H sword over anything else.

Even when we aren't really roleplaying, we notice when things just aren't right with our toons. Whether some gear makes sense or looks halfway decent does matter. It's kind of hard to take a Dwarf or Gnome tank seriously with the Ulduar horned helm that looks like a giant codpiece. Or the people who wield a specific weapon because that was what they leveled back in the pre-4.0.1 era when you had to level individual weapon skills. Or whether your toon prefers to hang around Dal or Shat in the Cataclysm era.

I'll freely admit that one of my toons --Neve-- came out of a long running D&D campaign I was in. She died in one of those freakish rolls of three '20' results on a d20 in a row, not more than 7-8 sessions after I'd spent all the time and effort to get her into the campaign.*** I'd been thinking about trying out a mage in WoW, so I went with Neve's name, hoping that she'd last a wee bit longer than her D&D counterpart. In a sense the name was perfect, because I'd played her as a snarky, academically oriented Elf who thought she knew more than she really did, and that overall attitude is what the Blood Elves exude in spades. At the same time, I don't play on an RP server, so I never really play Neve 'in character'; she's just, well, 'me as Mage'. But I never forgot where she came from, and that kind of influences my attitude toward her.

Maybe we are all roleplaying, albeit unconsciously.

*Unlike, say, my knees, which haven't been really right since college. Yeah, I know, I could lose some weight, but three years of running hurdles in high school haven't exactly been kind to my knees either.

**She's not too proud to use her Illustrious Guild tabard to get rep with her guild, however.

***Our game group had no Wizards or Sorcerers --no magic wielders at all, really-- so I campaigned to take on a second character just so we could have some magic to round out the party. I don't think I'd have minded her dying so much as the manner in which she bit it: killed by a fellow party member who'd been mind controlled by a Harpy.

Who's the Hero Now?

2011-08-30T11:04:00.001-04:00

While I enjoy reading about the WoW lore, it may surprise some people to know that I'm not a big fan of the books. A great deal of my indifference is due to the design decision in Azerothian lore to emphasize the leaders at the forefront of everything.

Look at it this way: if you're out questing in the L1-L60 areas of Azeroth, when you report to a faction leader, it is a "big deal". Sure, you can show up at any of the capitals, walk right up, and dance around Sylvanas*, but actual interaction with the story is fairly rare. The emphasis, naturally, is on you as the hero. You're out in the field, interacting with people who report up the chain to the faction leaders. Now, there are third party groups out there you interact with, such as the Cenarion Circle and the Argent Crusade, but the lion's share of quests come from the two factions.

This format makes sense, because the faction leaders are consumed with less of the day-to-day and more nation building and maintenance. There are advisors and councils who deal with other things, such as the war effort.

Historically, by the time we reached the Age of Enlightenment it was a rare sight to see a monarch in battle, and a monarch having adventures was unheard of. Monarchs weren't the strongest, most powerful, or most intelligent people in the nation, but their bureaucracies ensured that they didn't need to be.

Azeroth, on the other hand, has a bizarre environment. In the time of WoW, Azeroth has lost a great deal of its population, but at the same time has tons of toons when a server is busy. There are Native American inspired cultures and "the strongest rules" medieval type of societies, but also has the trappings of Steampunk and the later Victorian Era. These are huge continents, but near instantaneous travel via portals is a reality. And yet the societies don't have any cross pollination, despite the forces at work.

This is a world where --if you follow the books and the lore-- you have the faction leaders and their equivalents going off on adventures. They are the focal points, because they are the strongest, the most powerful, the most intelligent. In some respects, this is a lot like a David Eddings series.

And like a David Eddings series, after a while it starts to feel like a who's who of people at the top. The rest of the Azerothians don't exist, except as a bunch of red shirts.

I suppose I can't blame the books, given that the authors are working within Blizzard's constraints, but it just doesn't feel right. WoW has taken the focus of the game away from the folks at the top and given it to us, yet the books are still stuck in Warcraft 3 mode.

*Not to mention the inevitable question why you'd do such a thing. Unless you have a death wish or something.

Who Needs PUG Stories, Anyway?

2011-08-28T14:14:00.000-04:00

I was planning on writing something else today, but a week's worth of keeping an eye on the kids while they play LOTRO has been... enlightening.

***

...And a Level One Gold Farmer Yelling, "You buy?"*

My son has demonstrated the best grasp of the mechanics involved in gameplay, but economics eludes him.

"What are you doing?" I asked as he ran around Michel Delving.

"Looking for the stables."

Since I hadn't played as a Hobbit, I had no idea whether the stables were needed for a quest or not. The next thing I know, he's heading through the Old Forest and getting himself killed by a wolf 8 levels higher than him. "Okay, you've got to get out of here," I said, taking over the controls and moving him to (relative) safety.

"But I've got a quest to go to Bree!"

"You can take the stables." I directed him to the nearest stables, and he rode to Bree.

He turned in his quest, then ran around the city for a while. "Why can't I buy anything that's my level?"

"Bree's a higher level city. You shouldn't go there until you get high enough level."

"But I want to buy stuff? Where do I get the money?"

"From doing quests and killing monsters."

"But there's no monsters where I'm at!"

"Go back. They're there."

He then blew another silver traveling back to Michel Delving. Sighing, I turned back to my work.

"Aaaaa!" He had apparently found wolves to kill. Three of them, and they all aggroed on him.

"You can kill them off. Stop running around and face them."

He continued to run around as the wolves nipped at his heels, slowly draining him of life. Stopping finally, he turned the wrong way and wondered why his attacks were missing.

I spun him around and started hitting his melee attacks, but it was too late. "Now," I said as I sat back down, "you were telling me there weren't any monsters here."

"Oh. Yeah."

***

And This Could be from an Older Gamer

"Why am I doing this?" my youngest asked as she ran off to kill some wolves.

"Did you read the quest?"

"Yeah!"

"No you didn't. I watched as you clicked the 'finish quest' and then the 'accept quest'; you don't read that fast."

"Oh, um, yeah."

"That's why the words are there, so you can understand the story behind the quest." And, I added silently, you'd not believe the number of adults who don't bother with that as well.

***

Who Says Guys have a monopoly on Objectification?

My oldest watcher her sister playing as a Human Guardian** when her sister's toon approached Strider to accept another quest. "Aww...." she said. "I hope that my elf gets a chance to meet Strider!"

"Why?" I asked, although the sinking feeling in my stomach already provided the answer.

"Because he's so dreeeaaammmmyyyy!"

*From Wowcrendor's spoof of Goodnight Moon, called Goodnight Orgrimmar. If you haven't seen it, it's awesome!

**Just where did that come from, anyway? I don't play tanks, and her older siblings rolled Hunters. I fear she's been corrupted.

MMOs for the Wee Set

2011-08-22T00:27:00.000-04:00

When do you let your kids play MMOs?

If you play MMOs and you have kids, this question will come up sooner or later. For me, the answer has always been "when I think you're ready," closely followed by "when you can afford the cost of a WoW account."*

I'm not worried about them handling the commands --I've seen them play the LEGO PC games-- but they have to be mature enough to handle the MMO community. If the worst they ever saw in an MMO was Barrens Chat, I'd shrug and move on; the worst thing I'd have to do would be to rent a few Chuck Norris movies to explain who ol' Chuck is. But when you add in all of the other items, such as nerd rage, ERP, and griefing, an MMO isn't exactly the friendliest place for a kid. You have to learn to let it roll off of you, and that's a difficult thing to do.

Now, I have let my kids occasionally take the reins of one of my WoW toons and let them fly around. The first time I let my son fly Tomakan around, he discovered two things: that you plummet to the ground when you click on the 'mount' button in mid-flight, and that there are places in Shattrath City that are impossible to reach so you can rez.** That disaster aside, the kids have generally taken care of my toons on the rare occasion when I let them explore a bit.

But that brings us closer to the threshold of playing their own toon.

I'm not sure why I made up my mind when I did, but I finally let the kids create a few toons of their own.

However, I set up a few ground rules: no more than 1/2 hour playing, and I'm going to keep close tabs on what you're doing.

I also decided almost immediately not to let them play WoW.

My guildies are great, and the community they promote is fine, but I'm not about to foist my kids on them. And although WoW is probably the easiest MMO to pick up and play from scratch, it doesn't have the friendliest player base out there. Sure, you can find people to help you with a quest or a question, but you're also equally likely to find someone to say "L2P noob" or "go look it up in Wowpedia".

Where to go?

Well hellooo, freeplay.

Age of Conan was completely out --hell, I don't even play that while the kids are awake-- but LOTRO was an intriguing option. You could play up to high levels, the setting was well known (they've seen the first two LOTR movies and at least one of them has read The Hobbit), and the servers aren't that populated. Plus, the community is fairly sedate and well mannered.***

Therefore, the other day I let my son create a toon on LOTRO, a Hobbit Hunter.

I gave him two pieces of advice, which I shared with his sisters: be polite, and if someone asks to duel you or join a kinship (LOTROs version of a guild), decline. Then I let him go, with me keeping one eye on his progress and answering questions as he went.

While I figured he'd enjoy the experience, what surprised me was how comfortable I became watching him play. He learned the keystrokes easily enough as I figured, but since the low level areas were sparsely populated, I didn't have to worry about him running into a lot of other players. Also, this being LOTRO, there wasn't a lot of obnoxious profanity or racist/sexist stuff spewed in the chat channels, either. After his half an hour, I felt confident he could handle this.

His older sister created an Elven Hunter a few days later --what is it with Hunters, anyway?-- and had a slightly more difficult time figuring out the mouse movement, but she slipped into the quest mode and was on her way. Now I have the youngest wanting to play too (we'll see how she handles the keystroke commands).

Do I worry about how they'll behave in-game? Sure; if I didn't, I wouldn't be a parent. But I'm determined to make sure that they have as good an experience as they can while they understand that not everyone is nice out there on teh Internets. I'm also going to make sure they understand that real life is more important than MMOs, and as the parent I reserve the right to pull the plug on this experiment if I feel they're neglecting school or other stuff just to game.

So far, so good. But this is a work in progress. (Kinda like my PvP gearsets.)

*As you can guess, I'm not big on providing subscriptions for my kids, whether it is an MMO or a cell phone. For one reason, I can't afford it, and for another, if they want something for their private use with a subscription fee they should pay for it themselves. I don't believe in writing blank checks.

**The repair bill still smarts.

***I laugh at the people who complain in the LOTRO chat channels that the community has gone to hell in a handbasket after LOTRO went freeplay. If this is what 'hell in a handbasket' looks like, I'd hate to see what they'd think of WoW's Trade Chat.

Free stuff is always great

2011-08-16T12:43:00.001-04:00

I was very happy, today, to read that the implementation of the RealID party invites will continue to remain free.

Truth be told, I hadn't even used that feature because I knew (or thought I did) that it would eventually go away, and it was easier not to get used to it.

So, I was thinking about how this opens up the community and the possibilities that could now be available.

Here's what I'm thinking... Similar to the blogger only guild that existed on both the US and EU realms, we could get a group of bloggers together with out having to leave our own server.

Think of how nice it would be to have a group of fellow bloggers to bs with while getting a random dungeon done with out having to deal with pugs.

I know I've been idea starved lately and nothing helps motivation better than really jumping into the community.

Interested? If so, let me know and we'll get something started! Leave a message on how to contact yourself in the comments.

Split Personalities

2011-08-11T00:20:00.000-04:00

I was chatting with Vidyala from Manalicious the other week when she mentioned that it was cool that I ran BGs on both factions. "Most people have a lot of faction loyalty that way," she said.

She's right. It's kind of funny that way, because I'll hear "We suck! We always suck!" no matter what BG or what faction I'm running with. Since the Battlegroups were combined, I've seen little evidence of one faction's dominance over the BG scene. Sure, I've heard stories about how the Horde used to mop up BGs, but that isn't the case these days.

Some BGs are virtually identical for both factions --such as WSG or SoA or EotS-- but others do have a few critical differences. The choke point in AV close to the Horde base can be a deadly trap for the Alliance (I've been on the receiving end of that before), and the current strategies in IoC (Horde to Workshop and Ally to Docks) favors the Horde with the beefier demo units.

But that pales to how identical the BG chat is.

If there's one truism about pugging BGs in Cata, it's that the amount of time spent nerd raging in a BG is inversely proportional to the effect you have on a BG. If you're busy typing about how everyone blows chunks, you're probably not out fighting. Sure, you could have created a "We all suck!" macro, but most nerd ragers aren't satisfied with that simple --if inaccurate-- statement. Why stop with three words when twenty will do?

There's a special space in hell reserved for those people who need to channel their inner George S. Patton. "Get the EFC! Get the EFC!" says the toon who is jumping around back at the base. Meanwhile, five of his compatriots are busy attempting to chop their way through three healers and a Hunter to get at said EFC.

"We all suck! We were never good! Why did I ever FC to Ally anyway?"

Beats the hell outta me, man. If you were on the Horde side, you'd be saying the same thing in a losing effort.

***

If there's one problem I've had running BGs on both factions, it's the keeping track of what side I'm on.

No, seriously.

You'd think that a (relatively) slim Blood Elf would stand out in contrast with a hulking male Draenei, but when I'm in the midst of a BG, keeping track of several things at once, I occasionally slip up and think I'm on the opposing faction. That can get unnerving in a constantly shifting BG such as Arathi Basin or Eye of the Storm, where you could end up running into the opposing faction's territory while you're examining the map. One minute you think you're rushing up to help defend a node, and the next you're back at the Spirit Healer.

Oh yeah... I think I need some coffee.

Under the Heading of "That was interesting...."

2011-08-09T09:18:00.000-04:00

I attended GenCon on Sunday, and one of the first things I noticed were the promotions for Rift.

No, not Rifts, the pencil and paper RPG, but Rift. You know, the MMO from Trion.

The swag bag contained a copy of the game --the same copy that you find in the stores right now-- and the cloth necklace your badge hangs on had "Rift" printed all over it.

Methinks that Trion knows their audience, and if you can understand GURPS or Pathfinder, you can figure out Rift.

Of course, there were a few people pissed off at Rift because it was close enough in name to Rifts that they got some haters just because of that. It's not like the concept of a 'rift' in time and space is anything new or unique to Rifts, so I shrugged it off.

Oh, and for the curious, there was a huge area for WoW TCG called Darkmoon Faire --which I laughed about, telling my brother-in-law that there were more people in this Darkmoon Faire than the one in-game-- and it was well populated.

Language and Respect

2011-08-04T00:21:00.000-04:00

Back in the Wrath days, I was once in a Nexus run that I regretted finishing.

Not that the group wasn’t skilled, or even that one player played in an asinine manner, but of what was said in party chat.

You see, the group had three members of the same guild in it, and they kept peppering party chat with references to how the trash mobs and bosses wanted a piece of their ‘puss-say’. The Druid tank in particular kept up a stream of ‘puss-say’ talk, all the while keeping his toon on the move and tanking each group in succession. As the instance progressed, their descriptions became more explicit, and the greater my disgust grew.

I may not show it when I write here on the blog, but I have a temper. (I’m a redhead, what did you expect?) Typically I keep it in check, and when it does flare up I usually dip into my pool of obscenities to fling a few good barbs at the offenders. It's been a long time since nerd ragers in an instance or a BG bothered me, but these three clowns did. I don’t know whether it was the extremely juvenile nature of the thing or that it was incredibly demeaning to women, but before we had even finished with Telestra, my fingers were twitching. My desire to reach through the screen and smack them good reached a breaking point by the time we reached Alexstrasza. As the tank pulled the Malygos-dominated dragon, my mouse hovered over the ‘Leave Group’ selection. All I had to do was click it and get away from these jerks.

But whether I realized it was a futile gesture, that the instance was almost over, or that I wanted the Badges of Triumph more than anything else, I stayed.

I want to say that I said something to them and forced them to kick me --that I stood up on principle-- but this one time I can’t. I’ve spoken up in party chat before, defended people who did no wrong in spite of what the other party member said, and I’ve called people out for mean and spiteful stuff. But I’m not proud of that moment in The Nexus, and I’m sure it will continue eat at me for a good long while.

Fast forward a year and a half later, and I found myself in Eye of the Storm on one of my Paladins (I can’t remember which). A few of us were holding down the Draenei Ruins, and when the last toon --a Death Knight-- got smacked by my Hammer of Wrath, the Rogue turned to me and said “You really raped that guy!”

My mouth opened and closed. I knew all too well what he was saying, and I thought about ignoring him. Or leaving. Or something.

But I remembered The Nexus.

“I didn’t,” I finally replied.

“Oh, I saw that hammer come down and he dropped!”

“No. I didn’t rape him.”

“It’s just a saying. Lol.”

I ground my teeth. No matter what I said, to him ‘rape’ = ‘pwn’ and that was that. Never mind what ‘rape’ really means. Never mind that you might actually be talking to someone who knows a rape victim –or is a victim themselves. Or that your borderline misogynistic behavior paints all of us gamers in a bad light.

Words have power, and some words shouldn’t be used lightly. They don’t make you awesomely badass, they make you sound like a five year old who overheard a few naughty words and is testing their limit.

And you’re older than that, right?

Moar Mounts

2011-08-01T19:57:00.001-04:00

If you've seen one of these Winged Guardians...

...you've seen them all.

They're the Sparkle Pony of Cata, or so it seems, but I haven't heard that much discontent out there about them. Since they're not the sparkle version of "My Little Pony", I guess people are okay with them.

Well, I've a bone to pick with them.

Since Blizz enabled flying mounts to be used as ground mounts in BGs, I see them all the time. Flying, you see them as they are above. Running, here's what they look like:

Yes, you're riding a BIG GLOWING ENGLISH SHEEPDOG WITH WINGS.

Anyone up for a Shaggy Dog marathon?

EtA: Both pics are links. The mount pic is from Blizzard's web site, and the English Sheepdog pic is from a Reuters pic found on animalpicturesarchive.com.

Playing to Your Strengths

2011-07-31T01:21:00.000-04:00

"Play to your strengths."

"I haven’t got any," said Harry, before he could stop himself.

"Excuse me," growled Moody, "you’ve got strengths if I say you’ve got them. Think now. What are you best at?"
--From Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

When you stand in a bunker in Alterac Valley, waiting for it to be destroyed, you have plenty of time to think.

Oh, I'm constantly moving my viewing screen around, checking for the inevitable attempt to retake the thing, but aside from the occasional nerd rage there's not much going on at 5 AM. Most guildies are asleep, and those that aren't just came off of the graveyard shift and will be hitting the hay shortly.

This morning, however, I was still turning over something in my head that I heard on the Double O Podcast yesterday.* Oestrus and Ophelie had on Vidyala and Voss from Manalicious and Sword and Board, and they were discussing guilds and guild leadership.** The topic, while entertaining, didn't really apply to me; I'm not a GL/officer and don't plan on being one. However, a statement made by one of them got under my skin. The discussion had shifted to the officer corps and how some people take care of certain aspects of the guild, like fish feast preparation, without being an actual officer. One of the panelists --Vid, I think-- mentioned how thorough their guild interviewer was, and how he's good enough that he was considering making it his career. It was a minor point, but that got my attention.

How often are we advised to improve our weaknesses, but play to our strengths? At work, certainly. In sports, hell yeah. In an MMO? Um....

Yes, you can solo an MMO and do it successfully. I'm living proof of that. However, when you make that step into an instance, a BG, or a raid, the game changes. It's no longer about you as the hero, but the team. Then the question becomes: what do you do well that can help the team? Or guild? Do you even know what it is you excel at?

Sure, maybe you've got that DPS rotation on automatic pilot, and you can just sense when some adds are zeroing in on the healer, but what else can you do with that attention to detail? Can you help the prep work for the raids? Does the guild need gems cut and ready to roll? Enchantments available?

Are you good at organization, helping to line up raid and BG groups?

Do you communicate in an instance or BG, or is your 'communication' limited to "yoo all suk!"

Do you stop and help out the lowbies from time to time? If you're on a PvP server, do you defend Grom'gol or the Rebel Camp from gankers?

Do you know how to make a killing on the auction house? Why not apply that knowledge and help the guild's coffers?

Really, the choice is up to you to do what you want in-game; nobody is forced to do this. But if you enjoy what you do, and you do it well, you expand the enjoyment of others in the game.***

And believe me, I hate-hate-hate a Polyanna attitude, but this is just common sense. You can work on your weaknesses, but odds are good that you'll get more satisfaction when doing what you're best at.

*I used to be able to listen to podcasts on a regular basis, but meetings have been steadily consuming my work time to the point that anything more engaging than background music --and yes, a WoW soundtrack counts as background music-- will just get ignored. That's a shame, as I've not had much of a chance to explore the WoW podcasts out there.

**Vid is the GL of Business Time/Moonrunner(US), and her husband Voss is the raid leader.

***Well, except for that ganker loitering around Forest Song that you took out, but he got what was coming to him, right?

A Bit of Nostalgia

2011-07-25T10:06:00.001-04:00

2004

(Apologies to Bowling for Soup and their song 1985)

Liese just hit the wall

She never had it all

Firelands dailies all day

Her GL’s MIA

Her optimism ceased

When BC was released

Only been with one guild

What happened to her goals?

She was gonna be a hardcore raider

She was gonna get world firsts

She was gonna dance around

On C’thun’s bloody corpse

Her sparkle pony is now the enemy

Looks at her stable of toons

And nothing, has been…

All right since

Cata and Outland

Way before Northrend

There was AQ and MC

And Naxx was still in EP

The newbies in her guild

They tell her she’s a greybeard

Cuz she’s been playing since

2000, 2000, 2004

Woo Hoo Hooooo!

(2004)

Woo Hoo Hooooo!

She’s done all the classics

She knows every boss

Four Horsemen, High Priest Thekal

And even Princess Huhuran

She cleared Maraudon

Not a big Stonecore fan

Thought she’d get Exalted

With the Frostwolf Clan

Where’s the Tier 2 gear from Nefarian?

And when was Thrall replaced by that guy in Grommash Hold?

When did the Alliance get Shamans?

Whatever happened to Rexxar, and Bolvar

They’re not where they were before

Cata and Outland

Way before Northrend

There was AQ and MC

And Naxx was still in EP

The newbies in her guild

They tell her she’s a greybeard

Cuz she’s been playing since

2000, 2000, 2004

Woo Hoo Hooooo!

She hates expansions, they make no sense

When did Dire Maul become a mid-level instance?

And when did Blood Elves become playable?

Please make this stop, stop, STOP (tick tick tick) and remove

Cata and Outland

Way before Northrend

There was AQ and MC

And Naxx was still in EP

The newbies in her guild

They tell her she’s a greybeard

Cuz she’s been playing since

2000, 2000, 2004

Woo Hoo Hooooo!

Cata and Outland

Way before Northrend

There was AQ and MC

And Naxx was still in EP

The newbies in her guild

They tell her she’s a greybeard

Cuz she’s been playing since

2000, 2000, 2004

Zen and the Art of Losing in a Battleground

2011-07-14T23:55:00.001-04:00

There was a time, in the distant past, when I ran as a Holy Spec Paladin.

It's now hard to believe, given that I DPS almost exclusively, but I have healed instances on both Quintalan and Tomakan. Nothing since 4.0.1 dropped, but I retain some of the trappings of those days on my UI, with Healbot and Decursive being the prime examples. Like any good Ret Spec is capable of, I can step up in emergencies and heal in an instance when the Healer drops. I may not look pretty doing it, but at least I can hold my own with Ret's limited mana. (And I look much better healing than tanking. Ol' Twinkletoes Redbeard doesn't exactly strike fear in the hearts of trash mobs.)

In spite of all of that, I have been tempted to switch to Holy Spec when I see absolutely no healing in sight in a BG. I figure, 'bad heals is better than no heals', but then I remember that Quint's Holy Spec gear is stuck somewhere between T9 and entry level Cata greens. I suspect that Neve would have more armor on her than Quint in his creaky old Holy Spec gear, and when I last looked at Tom's Holy Spec gear I laughed when I found items dating from Uldaman.

Well, it was a thought. And believe me, after running WSG on my furball dozens of times, you can just tell you've got a winning or losing situation based on the number of healers.

A good tank or two can make up for a dearth of healers, but having three good healers in WSG can make a team an unstoppable juggernaut, tank or no tank. Sure, you have to still play smart and not have everyone running off in different directions*, but your odds of winning just went up by a huge amount.

***

I'd like to say that I'm an expert at BGs, but come on. I merely run them. The experts are the ones that use my toons for a doormat.

My poor furball and his oversexed Succubus sidekick got caught in a WSG buzzsaw last night. After about 5 minutes into this particular run, a pair of Rogues, a kitty Druid, and a Holy Spec Pally set up a tent and went camping at the Alliance graveyard. No matter what we did, we could only barely get to the edge of the graveyard before we got sapped, sliced, and diced. The few times I escaped, I ran into the secondary tier of the rest of the Horde crew who had set up a Worgen-dog stand. I lost track of the number of times I died, and since the Horde side was content to rack up HKs, the game dragged on until the time limit.

And then, a measure of vindication. The end screen popped up to deafening silence.

The game ended in a tie.

I laughed bitterly when I saw the number of times I died: 21. Yes, that's right. Twenty one.

And I still tied them.

[Insert Appropriate Zen Comment Here]

*Like I saw in Arathi Basin late this afternoon. "Go to the Farm! Go to the Farm!" someone cried when we lost the Stables. What happened? Two to Lumber Mill, two to Mine, three fought in the road between the Blacksmith and the Stables, and one went to the Farm. The rest defended the Stables, and watched the saga unfold. Needless to say, we lost.

I Sense Much Fear in You

2011-07-09T00:27:00.000-04:00

There are times when you just know something is going to go badly.

Like the time I was in Arathi Basin a few weeks ago. Tomakan ported in, and I scanned the data in Healbot to see who I'm running with. Healbot usually takes a second or two to scan each toon to let you know what spec each one is, and over the course of the next ten to twenty seconds I felt a disturbance in the Force.

We had six rogues
We had no tanks

At first we also had no healers, but a Druid switched to Resto while buffing. We were living the high life, let me tell you.

Well, I thought, stranger things have happened before, so I decided to stick this run out. In retrospect, I think it would have been better if I'd just dropped and taken the debuff instead. The Horde swarmed over us like kids after an ice cream truck, and the Warrior and two Frost DKs made a special point of making me their personal punching bag.

I figured that was just a bizarre twist of fate to be grouped like that, like the time I was in a four Pally run through Gnomer, until this morning.

My little Furball of Evil got into Warsong Gulch at the crack of dawn, and as I scanned Healbot, I saw the familiar Purple and Yellow in abundance.

"Oh oh," I muttered. We had three Locks --myself included-- and three Rogues.

No tanks. No healers.

Then someone dropped and we got a Resto Druid.

"Oh, this is not going to be good."

One of the Locks kept his Voidwalker on, and I resisted the urge to suggest he try a Succubus or Imp. Sure, that Voidwalker wasn't going to help much against players who would just ignore its threat, but considering the group's makeup, I figured it wasn't going to matter.

On the initial run out from Silverwing Hold, I got caught from behind and one-shotted by a Hunter. I respawned, and before I got anywhere, it happened again. The third time, I got as far as halfway across the no man's land just in time to actually see my enemy before he dropped me.

Rinse and repeat.

While I waited for the Spirit Healer, the Resto Druid complained that nobody was protecting him and he dropped. "Kind of hard to protect him when we're all dead," somebody replied in BG chat.

We respawned to find two Hunters, a Disco Priest, and a Holy Pally camping us. "Oh, come on," I muttered while dropping DoTs as quickly as I could before I was killed. "Like we're a real threat anyway."

In the end, I think I was killed about eight times in the span of seven minutes. It could have been worse, I suppose, but I'd be hard pressed to find a BG run outside of the one time I ran Rated BGs that I got facerolled like that.

Dear Blizz--

Your BG finder needs work. Please correct.

Signed,
The Smudge on the Ground That Used to Look Like a Worgen

You Never Forget Your First Time

2011-07-07T22:46:00.001-04:00

As much as I would like to remain objective, I suppose that I'll always look at WoW through Wrath-tainted lenses.

I guess that a certain subset of people just threw up their hands and said "Oh crap, here comes another 'heroics are too hard' or 'why can progression be the same as in Wrath' topic," but that's not really the case. For one thing, I've yet to actually set foot in a Cata Heroic. It's kind of hard to compare Heroics if you don't queue up for them, you know. The other big reason why it's not the post you thought it was is that I don't raid. (Running AQ40 when you're L80 or L85 doesn't count in my book.)

No, what's really on my mind is how I approach WoW, how I think about WoW, and how I describe WoW to people. Because I started playing mid-way through Wrath, I can't really internalize how different things were in Vanilla or BC. Sure, I can appreciate on an intellectual level the all-day Alterac Valley fights back in Vanilla, but since I never really lived it I can't think in terms of those BG runs.

In a way, it's akin to learning a new language. You learn basics of grammar, memorize words, and practice conjugating verbs, but until you actually learn to think in that language, you're still merely translating what's in your head. The new language could be a cipher for all that's worth, because your brain still uses your native language as a primary reference. Once you reach a critical point and the switch is flipped inside your head, then you can actually say 'I get this now. This makes sense to me.'

I understand WoW through Wrath's eyes because I can't comprehend the BC way (or the Vanilla way) of doing things. Sure, I ran instances throughout the pre-Cata Vanilla and BC zones, but I ran them with the Wrath toolkit. I can't understand how it was to run Magister's Terrace back in the day, because the BC toolset was so radically different than it is now.* Even if you eschewed the L68 Wrath gear and ran with BC L70 gear, you truly won't get it because everything that comprises a toon --Talents, Spells, Attacks, Glyphs, etc.-- has completely changed since then.

This isn't a bad thing or a good thing, but just, well, how it is.

When I think about Halls of Origination, I say to myself "imagine running Halls of Stone and Halls of Lightning back-to-back, and that's what HOO is like."

When I try to describe Tol'vir to people, I tell them "it runs about as quick as Utgarde Keep, although the bosses remind me more of Ahn'kahet and Forge of Souls."

When I look at the Therazane quest chain in Deepholm, I compare it to the Sons of Hodir quest chain in Storm Peaks.

I'm sure that people new to WoW in this post-4.0.1 age will have trouble understanding things like the 'Thrall goes to Outland' quest chain, how Hillsbrad can make Hordies on PvP servers twitch, or how the simple words "attunement chain" can start a fight. They'll be Cata babies, and you know what? That's okay with me.

What's really important to take away from this is that we all started out in WoW differently, and we approach the game differently. Nobody really forgets what it was like to install the software, login, and create your first toon. We all start from the same beginning, but we take different paths along the way.

*Right about now some smart-ass will say "you hit stuff, you kill stuff, how hard can that be?" But that's life, man.

And People Thought WoW had Adult Themes...

2011-07-05T15:39:00.000-04:00

I've been caught up with projects around the house, so I haven't had that much time to devote to WoW lately.

Yes, I've heard about some funky new patch thingie that dropped last Tuesday, but in typical Redbeard fashion I took a huge pass on fighting the crowd in Hyjal and putzed around with other things.

"Are you grinding rep?" a toon asked me when I offered assistance on his plea for help on the Ring of Blood.

"No, working on Loremaster." Okay, I took advange of the PvP flag being on after a BG to go and take Halaa --again, something this Wrath baby had never done before-- but I was exploring Outland as part of my ongoing quest for double Loremaster.

If a toon could look disappointed, it was this guy. "Oh."

"Well, that and avoiding the nuthouse in Hyjal."

"lol."

In addition to doing some out of the way stuff, I've also been examining yet another MMO. No, not the upcoming Star Wars MMO The Old Republic, although I'll say that what I've seen via the vid clips looks very interesting. The MMO I'm speaking of is Age of Conan, which just went F2P last week.

I'll be honest: I only have the money in the budget for one pay-type MMO at a time, so F2P MMOs hold a great amount of appeal to me. The F2P model allows me to explore different MMOs without incurring additional cost, and while I'm aware that I'm observing only a small slice of the entire MMO, the F2P MMOs give me a bit more breadth in the MMO space.

And what breadth it is.

I suppose Age of Conan is most famous for it's 'M' rating, and I'll be honest: the first thing that I heard gamer podcasters mention about AoC --even more than the graphic violence-- was the nudity. The concept of "OMG bewbs!!" from more than a few people kind of turned me away from the game, not that I'm a prude by any stretch, but nudity for shock purposes doesn't appeal to me. And now, with the recent addition of vanity armor to AoC, that also means that you can deliberately customize your toon to walk around almost literally naked.*

However, let's get something straight. This is Hyboria. This is Conan. This is Robert E. Howard's vision.

And nudity is part of the tapestry of the Dreaming West.

I've read several books worth of the original Robert E. Howard short stories, so I know a bit about Hyboria and the Sword and Sorcery genre that it helped spawn. For a Sword and Sorcery environment, you need a few things you don't typically see in traditional Epic Fantasy RPGs or MMOs: all magic is tainted to some degree or another, and rarely --if ever-- used for purely good purposes; the noble savage ala Conan or Tarzan (or even Fafhrd) as a skilled hero; an overall feel of a more primitive lost world whose time is approaching it's end (less Tolkien's Middle-earth and more Moorcock's Melnibone); that nobody has really pure morals and/or motives; and sex and betrayal are often integral to the plotline.

Judging by those tropes, Age of Conan really succeeds in capturing the feel of Howard's Hyboria. The only mages as a playable class deal with those from the tales who wielded the Dark Arts: Stygians and Khitans. The emphasis from Aquilonians and Cimmerians is on Rogues and Soldiers, with the odd Priest or Shaman thrown in for good measure. The quests in Tortage (the starting zone) focus on evils awakened by the Picts, the Stygian witch Myrelle, and the twisted and evil tyrant Strom of the Red Hand. The questlines often present choices where there are really no good answers, only varying shades of gray. Undercurrents of sex, whoring, racketeering, greed, and violence really fill out the quest lines. Consider that you become part of the Resistance against Strom, hoping to overthrow him and Myrelle so that the city can return to being a bustling pirate haven full of greed, slaves, and prostitution, and you get the point.

This is not fodder for kids.

WoW, by comparison, is pretty tame stuff. Sure, you have shades of gray with NPCs' morals, but you also have discernable good and bad guys. There's nothing like dark and darker imagery that you get out of Age of Conan. Considering that WoW is doing something completely different with it's blend of High Fantasy and Steampunk, that's to be expected. Blizzard doesn't take itself too seriously, while AoC is like the student dressed all in black sitting at a table in a dimly lit coffeehouse, grousing about 'art'.

One thing that did strike me about the environment was how AoC equalized the sexes. Sure, you've got your standard-issue damsel in distress style stuff and the omnipresent skimpily clad NPCs, but AoC is set up so that as far as profession is concerned, the sex of the NPC is irrelevant. Sure, some of the female NPCs do show an interest in your toon (I played a male toon, so I don't know what the female toons deal with), but the banter reminded me more of a Mike Hammer episode than anything else.

The graphics are beautiful in a realistic manner, but they make my PC strain more than WoW does. That's kind of a bummer, but it's a tradeoff. The character customization is something that every MMO ought to have; it does a fantastic job of tweaking your toon to just the right size and shape. And yes, for the record, the shape of the human body isn't the cartoony top-heavy look that you get out of humans in WoW.

One huge problem I noticed was the size creep in the game's database. When I started playing the game, the DB was about 8 GB. The next day, it was 12 GB. On Sunday, 16 GB. By this morning, it had ballooned out to 20 GB but seemed to have stopped growing. If it starts expanding again, I'm going to run out of disk space before too long. Additionally, the game kept informing me on startup that the DB might be corrupted, and would I like to thoroughly check the DB. So, what began as a 4 minute startup turned into a 10-15 minute startup. This doesn't lend AoC well to the "okay, I've got a few minutes, let me login and play for a bit" mode that I can slip into.

Another annoyance is that the graphics settings would need to be tweaked on game startup. I mean, every single freaking time. At first I thought it was because I was stressing the graphics card so I backed off on the settings, but it still did it the next time I booted up. Oh well.

I suppose I could talk about the Real Combat system, where combos are a succession of keys pressed in the correct order, but that's really secondary to the environment. The thing that really struck me about combat wasn't the Real Combat system, but how mobs attack. You attack one Pict in a village, and the others will step up and rally to his/her defense. You don't take on a mob lightly, because they will swarm you and attack you intelligently: take you from behind, stand at distance and conduct ranged attacks, and stay disciplined in their movement. If you move to keep the mob in front of you, the mob won't just stand there passively: it will respond to your movements to regain the upper hand. While you do have heroic combat, it's definitely a "make 'em sweat" style of combat where two of the enemy at one time can be a dicey event.

On the whole, I like what Age of Conan is doing, and I'll probably play it a bit here and there. It's not going to replace WoW by any means --I get the impression that Funcom is going to really restrict what is in the F2P area, above and beyond what LOTRO does-- but for a real Sword and Sorcery environment, it can't be beat.

Now, is it asking too much to have an MMO based on Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser?

*And don't think that people haven't done that either. After a while I started to get annoyed at the people who had created female toons with names like "Goodforyou" and paraded them around the city. By the end of the weekend, however, those sort of toons seemed to disappear as the crowd thinned, but still there was one guy in Trial chat who asked if he was "a bad man for checking out his Succubus' rack."

Gotta Keep 'em Separated

2011-06-28T12:48:00.003-04:00

I've been reading some blog posts recently about player advancement, 5-man heroics, and progression raiding.

Priest With a Cause: An Annotated History of the Badge System
Blessing of Kings: The Root Problem
Blessing of Kings: Blocked Player Advancement

I've found the discussion interesting, particularly when you combine these articles with numerous PUG stories out there about overgeared toons behaving badly in Heroics.*

Now, I like Rohan's idea of removing Valor Points from the game, but the problem of overgeared toons running Heroics would still exist. There is no need to run them from a gear standpoint, but that doesn't mean that you can't film an episode of Overgeared Toons Behaving Badly on a regular basis. I can think of a few reasons why an overgeared toon would want to enter a 5-man Heroic anyway: guild runs with guildies who aren't raid ready; mat runs farming DC-able gear and Chaos Orbs; and Justice Point farming runs, where a toon is farming JP to purchase heirlooms or convert the JP to Conquest Points (for PvP gear).

If the goal is to discourage badly behaving raiders from running random Heroics, isn't there a more direct method: expanding the raid lockout to include heroics? I'm not talking a daily lockout, but a weekly one. Or better yet, if you enter a Cata raid, the lockout will include 5-man Heroics via the Dungeon Finder. (Toons could still group up and enter a Heroic the old fashioned way via the meeting stone and instance entrance, however.)

Either suggestion is a very draconian method to keep the overgeared raiders away from the properly geared Heroic runners, but it does force one problem with this entire exercise into the limelight: issue prioritization.

Which is the greater problem:

Keeping bad apples out of 5-man Heroics
Reducing wait times in 5-man Heroics

While some of us may see the former as the problem, Blizzard has voted with the latter and instituted the Call to Arms to encourage people (*cough* tanks and healers *cough*) to jump into randoms to alleviate long wait times. But I'd argue that long wait times would discourage the asshats from queuing for instances in the first place, so why "fix" one problem when it exacerbates another?

Perhaps the solution to keeping the bad apples out is to increase the wait times for a random out of the Dungeon Finder, not reduce them. If you queue for an instance run via the LFD tool, you have a minimum 30-45 minute wait. No exceptions. You end up getting the people who really want to be there, who will want to work out issues and setbacks in an instance run, while discouraging the jerks from entering. The poorly behaved toons can still join groups, but their best chance of instance running is with a guild/friend group.

But what about the rewards for a guild runs? Who'd want to have a guild run via the LFD with a wait like that?

Well, why restrict the daily LFD rewards to the LFD tool? How about allowing a party to reap the same rewards via the traditional route: entering via the meeting stone and traditional instance location. Getting to an instance will be much quicker than the wait involved via the LFD tool, but would yield the same amount of rewards. It also means that people will get out in the world a bit more, rather than loitering around Org or Stormwind. Finally, it also means that people might just group up within the same server a bit more often, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. (Okay, Rhii might have a different opinion on that, given her disastrous encounter with some puggees from her own server, but those asshats will eventually get their comeuppance. Karma is a real bitch that way.)

*Of course, there are plenty of toons that behave badly no matter their gear.

EtA: Yes, I like The Offspring. I couldn't justify using "Hit That" or "Pretty Fly" as the title of the post, tho.

Some Friday Humor

2011-06-24T08:25:00.000-04:00

I'd always liked the Downfall parodies on YouTube, and was disappointed that they got yanked. Well, it seems that they're back, and better than ever. This particular one hits kind of close to home, since I play several Pallys as well as starting up a Warlock. Be warned, there's some strong language, but nothing that you haven't heard in the heat of battle before.

It is... A Puzzlement!

2011-06-22T22:05:00.000-04:00

Have you ever been in a run where you had to wonder what was going on in everyone else's heads?

I don't mean that in an asinine way, or even in a WTF OMG this-is-so-full-of-fail way, either. Sometimes I feel like General Taylor in Good Morning Vietnam when he tells the Sergeant-Major that he's out of line: "You're mean. And this is just radio."

Last I checked, WoW was a game. Sure, it can suck up a lot of your time, but no more than if you're a sports fanatic. (Or a crafting fiend.) But the thing is, in the end it's just a game. It's supposed to be fun, and if you start acting out for no real reason, maybe it's time for you to take a bit of a break.

For example, I took my lowbie Warlock out for a spin yesterday and queued up for a random instance. Out popped the new Shadowfang Keep. SFK isn't the kindest place for casters due to line of sight issues, but I've done it before on Neve, so I figured this wasn't anything I couldn't handle. To be honest, I needed the experience running through the renovated keep at-level before I get sucked into it in the Heroic queues, and I really needed to hammer out a rotation anyway.*

I was the only caster in a party which included a Pally tank and a Priest healer, with a Hunter and Warrior rounding out the DPS. The instance began in typical fashion, with everyone exchanging greetings and buffing up. After the first couple of trash pulls, however, one of the DPS asked if someone had a recount meter running. While the healer posted the numbers, I mentioned that the DPS stats weren't going to mean much. "They'll be all over the place," I said.

"Oh, I just want to see if my numbers are any better."

Okay, that's nice and all, but the surest way to improve your numbers if you're L19 is to get to L20. I can understand the desire to maximize your rotation --hell, I was planning on tinkering with my rotation myself-- but asking for Recount numbers like that is a sneaky way of showing off your e-peen.

We kept winding our way through the keep, and I was bound and determined not to be a spell sink on the healer and kept my use of Life Tap to a minimum. I'd run out of mana, and Life Tap just enough to get going again. After several sessions of rinse-and-repeat, we downed one of the Bosses so I took a short break to drink my way up to full. "Hang on a sec, mana," I said, noting that the healer sat down to drink too.

Did that stop the Draenei Pally? Nope. He kept right on going, as did the other two DPS.

The Warrior and Hunter overtook the Pally and took turns pulling instead. I was starting to wonder when everything was going to hit the wall, but we reached the antechamber before what used to be Arugal's old hideout, and I realized the instance was at an end.

Then I got the pop-up saying that there was a vote to kick the Draenei Pally. The reason? "He does nothing."

I am not making that up.

Yes, because a Pally running full tilt through the instance wasn't fast enough for at least one person, there was a vote kick entered instead.

I voted no, and the measure failed.

What surprised me was that nobody complained about either the Pally's or the other DPS' behavior. Typically, any of this would have set off at least something from someone, but people were tightlipped throughout the run. Well, the only complaint anyone had at all was when my Warlock bit it at the end. I was perched way up high atop the stairs, getting a great view for my DoTs and AoEs, when I got laid low by one of the last pistol barrages.** "Stay behind him when he unleashes those," one of the other DPS snipped at me.

Whatever.

For some hours after my run through that instance, I still puzzled over it. That wasn't a bad run, or a fail run, or even a nerd rage run, but what I couldn't really fathom were the motivating factors behind my puggees' behavior.

Nobody was from the same server, let alone the same guild, so that wasn't it. The Draenei Pally was already tanking at breakneck speed before he got abruptly replaced by the other two DPS, and the Pally didn't say a word. He was doing second most damage, so it's not like he was failing badly in that arena, either.***

I just wish I knew what the hell their motivation was.

*Yes, I'd read several of the guides online, but I believe that it's important to work some things out yourself. Besides, I'd specced as Affliction, which isn't the best PvE spec out there. For BGs, on the other hand...

**This is akin to the last boss in Vortex Pinnacle's instance-wide attack; even though I wasn't what would be considered the field of fire in any regular environment, Godfrey's attack apparently extends all the way to the roof.

***If anything, I was the one limping along with substandard DPS in my quest Whites and Greens. But I also had the lowest level of the bunch.

Friendship in the Age of the MMO

2011-06-16T00:49:00.000-04:00

"We're a guild formed from RL friends..."

"We used to play with RL friends, but decided to strike out on our own..."

"If we join, we have some RL friends who might like to join too..."

If you've been around WoW long enough, you've seen entries like that describing guilds and players alike. This isn't unique to WoW, of course; my experience with the Internet dates back to the 80's, and people would differentiate between real life (RL) friends and online/virtual friends as a matter of course. Online friends were the equivalent of an electronic pen pal, only with a bit more instant gratification. While nice, they were considered secondary to the people you met face-to-face.

The convention has continued to this day, but I wonder if by now the convention has it wrong.

How often do you get online to play WoW? Text/Tweet people? Visit chatrooms/webcams? Update Facebook? And then, the obvious question: how often do you spend time talking/hanging out with your RL friends?

You may not have all the visual cues that you get from a true face-to-face conversation, but for a lot of people their online friends are the real life friends. The transient nature of a lot of jobs --especially in IT-- means that your coworkers may be in the cubicle next to you, or half a world away. If you can work on a team with someone overseas, why is it so unusual to have a raiding buddy a continent away as a friend?

It isn't unusual at all. Not anymore.

The world has shrunk, and tech --MMOs included-- has changed the dynamics of friendship. As a shared activity, an MMO such as WoW fosters friendships where the common denominator is the game itself.

Of course, most in-game interactions are of the "polite stranger" or "general acquaintance" variety,* but it doesn't have to be. Perhaps you hang with your guildies due to a shared goal, but after raiding with people three nights a week for months on end, are you so sure you've remained merely acquaintances?

I know people in my neighborhood who would think I was a special type of crazy for suggesting that online friendships should be given equal footing with RL ones. "What sort of crackpot are you, anyway?" they'd ask, then go back to sitting in their garage, drinking their beer and discussing high school sports.** But replace the garage with a computer, and sports with Tol Barad, and what do you have?

It's important to have perspective in all of this, but the one thing that I've been struck by time and again is that WoW friendships shouldn't take a back seat to anyone.*** Don't try to put the WoW friends into a little compartment and pretend that they're inferior to your "real" friends, because they aren't.

*Or the nerd rager type. Or the OMG FAIL! type. But I digress.

**Yes, that sort of thing really does happen in my neighborhood. All the time.

***Well, except for your family.

Coming to Terms With My Outer Darkness

2011-06-09T09:44:00.001-04:00

As has been well documented, I play several Paladins. You know, the Goody Two Shoes of the WoW world.* While the other ostensibly "good" class that draws power from Holy Light --the Priest-- has a Shadow Spec, the Paladin is free of any direct taint of Darkness. They are the rigidly Lawful Good characters who embody what Roland, Saladin, and Perceval strove for.** Not only pure of heart and mind, but able to kick some serious ass.

And they're also cloying. The constant preaching of the Argent Crusade and from those who hang out in the Cathedral of Light can be grating on people. Paladins have a reputation of being the sort of person that would stand side-by-side with you in a fight, but are too self-righteous to go hang with you at the World's End Tavern afterward.

So naturally it follows that I've started a Warlock toon.

If you thought that Paladins were on the uber-good end of the class listing, Warlocks have to be on the opposite end of the spectrum. Whereas the Death Knight's intro story pretty much sets up their redemption at the Battle of Light's Hope Chapel, there isn't anything so warm and fuzzy about a class that revels in wielding "true power" and "secret knowledge".

The entire concept of the Warlock as a playable class kind of flies in the face of the current World of Warcraft setting. With Guldan and the Shadow Council no longer in charge of the Horde, Warlocks would be persona-non-grata in official Horde circles. Yes, there is still an undercurrent of approval and "those were the good old days" in the Horde, but all that time spent fighting against the Burning Legion in Outland would have driven that sentiment deeper underground. The only official place --Cataclysm Era-- where the philosophy of "I don't care where it came from but I'm going to throw it all against you" would find a home is in Sylvanas' camp.

As for the Alliance, there's even less of a reason why a Warlock is a playable class. The Alliance fought not only the Burning Legion but the old Horde, and if there's any class that the Alliance would despise more than the Warlock, I'm not sure what it would be. Yes, I know that there are always people who are tempted by power, but when WoW tries to set your toon up as a hero, a Warlock is typically not what the general populace has in mind.

Considering all that, I felt distinctly uncomfortable when Genn Greymane and Co. would call my new toon an 'old friend' and a 'hero' during the Gilneas starting zone. "Hello? Can't you see the Imp following along behind me? Doesn't that make you just a WEE bit uneasy, Your Majesty?"

Dominating members of the Burning Legion like a Warlock does is splitting hairs. Really. You can't look at the Warcraft universe and say "well, they may be demons, but they're on our side." To paraphrase Azrael from the movie Dogma, "But they're f@$#-ing demons!" Warlocks are playing with the worst kind of fire, WoW-verse speaking, and I am surprised that Blizz doesn't tweak things a bit so that they are more obviously shunned a bit more.***

In spite of all that, Warlocks are a bit refreshing. Most people --virtual or real-- tend to hide their dark secrets. Locks put their own Darkness right out on display. Hell, they'd probably charge admission if they thought they could get away with it, in their own Ray Bradbury-esque dark circus.

So playing a Warlock --especially in an RP environment-- is all about power and domination.

***

Of course, that's not the reason why everybody plays a Lock. Some of us are in it for the DoTs.

If you've ever been in a BG, you know what it's like to have someone out of melee range dump several DoTs on you, then sit back and laugh --or maybe cast a Fear-- while you bleed to death. If you're lucky and you're playing a class that can dispel those DoTs, you'll end up wasting time dispelling them while there's a Warrior or Kitty Druid beating on you. Having been on the receiving end of that tactic enough times, I finally decided that I'd had enough and I want some of that too. After all, how hard could it be?

Um....

If you come from a melee or Hunter/Mage background, harder than you think.

The hardest thing I had to deal with during the Worgen intro zone was the waiting. Your direct attacks aren't that powerful, so you have to wait for the accumulation of those DoTs to have the desired impact. I suppose I could run around, kiting the enemy, but that could be disastrous if I ran in the wrong direction. So there you are, clad in cloth armor, watching some enemy wail on you. It's only when you finally get a Voidwalker minion that you have a viable mini-tank to take the pressure off.

But that leads into the second hardest thing as a Lock, and that's the accumulation of threat from all those DoTs. Threat spikes have always been the bane of DPS, but you can mitigate some of the danger of threat spikes by slowing down your rotation. With DoTs, however, you don't have any sort of control once you cast your spell; your only option is to determine whether or not to cast that DoT in the first place. Finding a way to control threat in this back handed manner is probably where a lot of Locks fall down in instances.

So, what's up for the little furball of Evil now?

I'm going to keep him questing through Darkshore, and now that he's high enough level to queue for Ragefire Chasm, I'm going to find out how Warlock dynamics work in an instance setting.

Oh, and of course I'll queue up for Warsong Gulch. I can't resist giving the old DoT/Fear trick a whirl!

*Blood Knights notwithstanding. And Lady Liadrin, the Blood Knight Matriarch, has since corrected things during her audience with A'dal in Shattrath City.

**Yes, I know that Roland is the chief paladin of Charlemagne's court, that Perceval was a literary construct, and Saladin was more complex than his Medieval admirers believed. Give a guy a break, will ya?

***Even though it's not in the WoW-verse, there ought to be a chance, however small, that the demon would break free from your control and turn on you. I'd tweak it such that the likelihood of a demon breaking free from your control goes up when you get into a fight; after all, your toon is under increased pressure, so naturally something bound against its will would try to break free when you're distracted.

EtA: Warlocks are a class, not race. That'll teach me to not write and edit early in the morning.

Go go go!

2011-06-04T20:25:00.000-04:00

My guild and I have made some pretty steady progress recently on the raiding front, and we're close to getting 11/12.

I have enjoyed the raiding content so far in the game, but we're really feeling the pressure to down all of the current content before it gets nerfed to oblivion in patch 4.2.

We're pretty casual - only raiding 6 hours over two days each week. Only raiding so little time each week usually leaves us limited time to get attempts in on final bosses, but it all works out.

Wish us luck as we push to get everything down!

WoW in Popular Culture, Part Whatever

2011-05-28T11:12:00.000-04:00

Yes, I've been around (so has Soul and Ehna), but I've been very busy at work and home. But yes, there are new blog posts coming.

In the meantime, here's today's Working Daze comic:

Atari to Sell the Maker of Star Trek: Online

2011-05-17T20:28:00.000-04:00

Apparently Atari's Cryptic Studios has lost $25 million the past two years, and therefore they're looking for buyers.

Gamespot: Atari Unloading Cryptic Studios

What We Need NOW

2011-05-17T15:37:00.000-04:00

After having seen the proliferation of "these" sorts of games....

It only makes sense what ought to be developed next.

LEGO World of Warcraft!

Attack of the Pug

2011-05-16T13:27:00.000-04:00

One nice side effect of the reduced queue time for Tol'vir has been the return of the pug story. Sure, I've got BG stories that are more interesting than your typical nerd rage variety, but I'd missed a good old fashioned pug tale. There's something compelling about a group that puts the 'fun' in dysfunctional, making you grateful for your blissfully silent instance run.

My first couple of runs through Tol'vir were uneventful. I'd prepared ahead of time in much the same fashion as people study raid videos, but of course that didn't stop me from making a few boo-boos. Once I settled in, I got the feel of how the instance flowed, and got to watch group dynamics in action. There was the tank who thought that the party could bypass the Croc boss, but that wasn't anything major. On the whole, people were efficient and courteous, pointing out what to do where without so much whining. I was starting to wonder if all the nuts had migrated to Cata heroics when I entered Tol'vir as Tomakan, proceeded to buff folks, and watched as the first pull turned into an adventure when the tank dropped.

Two of us were L85, so even if we weren't geared for Heroics we were able to put the trash down without anyone biting it. "That was annoying," I said.

"Very," the healer replied. "If he didn't like the instance, he could have dropped before we started."

So we waited.

Five minutes later, a new tank zoned in and decided she wanted to go in the opposite direction. So we reversed course and took out a few more groups of trash.

"I've gotta be honest," one of the DPS piped up. "I'm only here for the rep. Once I ding Exalted, I'm outta here."

"That sucks," the tank replied, and dropped.

Another DPS dropped as well.

"Thanks a lot, asshat," the healer griped to the DPS.

I had really nowhere to go, so I waited. Tol'vir is quick enough of an instance --think SM:Library, Blood Furnace, or Utgarde Keep-- so I figured that it'd take even longer to requeue than go grab some coffee and wait for two replacements.

About 8-10 minutes later, a DPS and a third tank zoned in and we continued our run. This time, the tank was a touch overeager on trash, attempting to pull multiple packs until the healer chastised him. "If I don't have mana, you don't get healed," she said.

Things went well until the last boss. On one of the DPS' request, the healer sketched out the strategy: kill the ads, then in the second phase go after the boss. So what did the DPS do when the fight started? Went straight for the boss and managed to get himself killed via the deflections. Luckily, the lack of DPS didn't mean a wipe, but it did mean that dropping that last boss took a lot longer.

***

That Tol'vir run wasn't the only one where being L85 came in handy.

I tried branching out on instances and queued for Vortex Pinnacle, but the 35 minute queue time was more like what I expected with Cata instances.

Quintalan zoned in --remember him? Blood Knight, about so tall, red hair, last seen taking a vacation on a park bench in Dalaran-- and listened in to the basics about the instance given by the Mage. "...and you have to get in under that triangle before he starts his attack," he was saying, "otherwise it's instant death."

"And don't try to release and run back during the fight," I added. "His attack is instance-wide. Don't ask how I know that."

That earned a round of chuckles.

The first couple of pulls went okay, although there was a tendency to keep attacking the air elementals that were added for "flavor". That's about all I can say about the elementals that see you and vanish without invoking my extensive vocabulary of profanity. The first boss fight went well, but one of the DPS dropped off the platform instead of clicking on the whirlwind to move to the next section of the instance. Oh well.

Then things began to get tricky. Right before the first drake, the healer expressly said to the L82 warrior tank to "pull [the drake] out of the heal zone." Well, the tank pulled, and then stopped with the drake half in and half out.

"Pull him!" the healer cried.

The tank kept the drake stationary, and then bit it.

I cursed, slapped on Righteous Fury, and started tanking. The drake dropped, and the healer rezzed the tank. Properly chastened, the tank proceeded to dutifully pull the next drake out of the heal zone without a problem.

Then we got to the section with the Neferset lackeys.

The first pull there, the tank ran in without marking or requesting that the Neferset healers be sheeped. After realizing that the tank wasn't concentrating on the healer at all, I pulled off of the tank and started dropping as many interrupts as I could on the Neferset healer.

"Let me sheep him!" the Mage cried.

"Okay...." I peeled away and stepped back. "I'm off. Go for it." I remembered to breathe when I saw Mr. Lion Man become a friendly little lamb on the ground. As is typical, once the healer went down, the rest of the mob followed suit.

The Mage then rounded on the tank. "Next time, let me sheep the Healer first; they have to be CCed or this takes forever."

"Got it."

Well, the tank didn't quite get it, because on the last of those packs he bit it again. Because he didn't wait for the Healers to be sheeped, I got to play tank again. All I can say is thank goodness for Lay on Hands.

I did not have a good feeling heading into the final boss, but I comforted myself in the knowledge that we'd covered all this beforehand.

Silly me.

On the first Supremacy of the Storm cast, the tank stayed outside the grounding field, and...

I knew the drill by then. Slap on Righteous Fury and start spamming stuff to keep my threat up. When there's a Mage in your party with more health than you, you know that there's a good chance that you'll lose threat, especially with the way Ret is specced these days. You simply don't have the tools (or mana) to swing tanking for long stretches. However, I don't think I lost threat more than twice in that fight, and each time Hand of Reckoning dragged the boss back my way. I don't know exactly what that healer did, but whatever it was worked: he kept myself, the Mage, and himself upright throughout the rest of the fight.

The Mage was thoroughly disgusted with the way things went that he quickly passed on the two items and dropped group. I can't say I blame him.

iLevels and Deception

2011-05-10T16:24:00.001-04:00

For most people out there, this particular rant doesn't apply to them. They leveled, they ran normals, then got enough gear for heroics. (Hell, who am I kidding? They're way past that now, deep into raid progression.)

The average WoW player probably grumped at bit about iLevels and the restrictions for the heroics, or they had heroic pugs where at least one puggee griped about an undergeared party member.

I, obviously, didn't follow the normal progression.

Due to time restrictions, I leveled, skipped instances entirely, and concentrated on battlegrounds. After running BGs for about a month or two (and crafting gear), I've gotten enough PvP gear on Tom and Neve to be able to jump straight into heroics, almost completely bypassing the Cata normals. If I work on my PvP gear for another couple of weeks, it's entirely possible I could queue for Zul'Aman and Zul'Gurub without having set foot in a single Cata heroic.

And I'm here to say that isn't right.

The point of the iLevel restrictions for heroics and the 4.1 instances are to make sure that the players have a fighting chance in those instances. Whether you get the gear by crafting, running normals, or the auction house, once you get into one of these instances the gear shouldn't be what holds you back. But PvP gear, by it's very nature, will do just that.

I've said before that to run a BG you don't need PvP gear, and I stick to that assessment. Regular BGs have a hodgepodge of people with all sorts of quality gear --from Cata greens to full Gladiator sets-- and anybody can join in. However, if you want to run Heroics --and, more importantly, tank or heal in them-- the reverse won't be true.

The emphasis on Resilience (and gemming for spell penetration) hurts PvP gear when you run PvE content. Sure, you can compensate with skill, and iL PvP gear that is far higher than your PvE gear will be better overall, but if your gear has similar iL, PvP gear will be inferior to PvE gear in PvE content.

And that doesn't address the overall problem of bypassing most of the content to get to the latest PvE stuff.

I'd like to see Blizz fix this issue by dividing the iL into PvP and PvE tracks, much like how the gearscore app has evolved over time. PvP gear won't count toward your PvE iLevel, and vice versa. Or at least have a requirement like Magister's Terrace, where to unlock the Heroic mode you have to have run the normal instance to completion at least once. For the Zandalari Heroics, I'd suggest that having run at least half of the Cata Heroics would suffice, although by the time you get enough PvE gear to get into the Z-H's, you'll probably already have the Cataclysm Dungeon Hero achievement.

As for me, I'm not planning on using my PvP gear to sneak into Heroics. I know better; just because you've got the gear doesn't mean you can slide by. I also don't want to misrepresent my guilds this way, either.* I've discovered that normal Tol'vir has both a small queue wait and a short run time, so I've been spending some PvE time there, but when I get around to it, I'll expand my PvE immersion. But not until I feel that my PvE gear has gotten good enough will I walk into a Heroic.

*I believe that when you affiliate yourself with a guild, you represent that guild when you're out in Azeroth. It's just like in the real world, where you wear a shirt with a university or sports team or company on it, people will judge the name behind that moniker by your actions. It's not fair, but it happens. In Azeroth, if you behave like an ass, people will judge your guild and your server accordingly.

EtA: My last comment about Zandalari Heroics disappeared into the interwebs, so I had to go fix it.

A Tale of Two Expansions

2011-04-26T09:11:00.000-04:00

Cataclysm is the first WoW expansion since The Burning Crusade to get a pair of new playable races. This isn't exactly news*, since Cata has been out for almost half a year. Since that time, however, we've had plenty of opportunity to get used to Goblins and Worgen out there in the field, so I thought I'd do a bit of compare/contrast with Blood Elves and Draenei, and how their introduction was handled.

The Burning Crusade - Shoehorning Made Perfect

When BC came out, Vanilla was still fresh. The old content wasn't quite so old or creaky, but Blizzard did learn quite a bit about how to pace content. Outland's instances and questlines were more streamlined than Vanilla, and nowhere was this new approach more apparent than the new BC races. The Blood Elf and Draenei starting areas had a better flow to them than the old Vanilla ones, and when you finished the Ghostlands or Bloodmyst Isle you were well indoctrinated into each race's viewpoint.

Then you left those starting areas, and returned to the world of Vanilla.

Vanilla was almost exactly the same as before, with the exception of the lone Blood Elf or Draenei in a quest hub. Occasionally, that NPC would have an actual quest chain attached --the Blood Elf at Freewind Post or the Draenei at Forest Song, for example-- but mostly the NPC was a reminder that yeah, there were a couple of extra races in Azeroth. The anachronisms of the Blood Elves in Azshara remained, causing no small amount of confusion to people joining WoW in BC or Wrath. "How come the Orc is so upset about trusting them?" I once asked Soul. "Aren't we all part of the same Horde?"

"That was a Vanilla quest chain," he replied, "and it was never updated or removed."

Vanilla was --by and large-- not well integrated with the two new races, but Blizz compensated for it once you reached Outland.

BC wasn't entirely about the Sindorei or Draenei, but there are plenty of times when it sure seems that way. The new races weren't there for decoration, they were an vital part of the entire story. After spending most of your leveling time in Vanilla forgetting the lore of the starting areas, Outland was almost an overdose on the stuff. While the Orc lore took center stage in Nagrand, Hellfire Peninsula, and Blade's Edge Mountains, were it not for Kael and the Blood Elves, the Horde probably wouldn't even be there. The same goes for the Sons of Lothar and the Alliance: nice, but not necessary. The arrival of the Draenei aboard The Exodar made it necessary.

Cataclysm - Well, That's One Way of Integrating Things: Blow it all up!

After passing on Wrath, Blizz added two races into the fold for Cataclysm: Goblins and Worgen. The reworking of the Old World afforded Blizz the rare chance to seamlessly integrate the two new races into Azeroth, and they ran with it. They did a great job of fixing the problems with plopping new races into an unchanged basic game, and they are to be commended for completing the unfinished backstory on the Worgen.

Once you reach the Cata zones, however, the two new races simply become invisible.

Sure, there's Goldmine the NPC and the Goblin outpost in Twilight Highlands, but outside of that, where are the two new races given any significant face time? I think there was one --one!-- Worgen questgiver in Vashj'ir, but that was it.

Okay, I understand that the emphasis in this expansion is on the Earthen Ring, the Guardians of Hyjal, and some of the original races, but come on. Draenei (and the Taunka Shaman, Toshe Chaosrender) get more face time as members of the Earthen Ring than Worgen do in the entire set of Cata zones. And the Krazzworks in Twilight Highlands could easily have been a neutral Goblin outpost under attack by Twilight Drakes. The new races are merely there in the new Cata zones; the main storylines in Cataclysm have passed them by.

This begs the question: were the two new races even necessary for Cataclysm? After all, the reworking of Vanilla WoW, which was so vital to incorporating the Goblins and Worgen into each faction, is available to anyone who plays only the basic game. There is no Cata-specific content that emphasizes their racial story, despite the obvious potential lead-ins the Worgen could have had in Hyjal (or the Goblins in Vashj'ir, who could have had some of their shipping fleets sunk by the kraken). Instead, the new races come off as being the Scrappy Doo of Cataclysm, which is a shame.

*Yep, and my nickname is Sherlock, too! Okay, not really. Anyhoo....

Exploring for Fun and Profit

2011-04-18T14:11:00.002-04:00

If there's one thing that's gotten an update in the BC starting areas, it's the level of the guards. Sure, that happened everywhere, but when you can fly over Northshire Abbey or Deathknell, you just don't notice.

Until you want that Explorer achievement, that is.

I was doing just that on Neve while I was waiting for a BG to pop, cruising through Darnassus (gotta love flying up the trunk of Teldrassil), and then I hit Azuremyst Isle. Typically, it's not a big deal. The guards throughout most of the Isle are the traditional level, so I got lulled to sleep thinking that all I had to do was pop into Ammen Vale and then scoot over to Bloodmist Isle to finish up the achieve.

Neve approached, forded the river, and rode her strider up the cleft and into the guards patrolling the entrance to the Vale. She got smacked at, but I didn't think anything of it until I turned her around to head back. She was immediately pulled off her mount and pummeled.

Did you know that the L90 guards hit for damage that range into the six figures?

And that using Invisibility to sneak past the guards won't work either?

I haven't had as much an exciting time getting that Explorer achievement since I got my original award on Quintalan on the Stormscale PvP server.

***

While I play battlegrounds, I typically don't engage in PvP play these days. That's a far cry from my time on Stormscale, where I made a habit of looking over my shoulder and I developed a healthy distaste for the Alliance gankers in Hillsbrad. Even then, I wasn't the sort to go out of my way to go after low level toons on the other side. (Now, if I caught an Alliance player going after some Hordies, that was another story.)

Being on a PvE server means that you don't notice the faction territory quite so much as when you're on a PvP server. That first time when I ventured into Loch Modan and I saw that big red "Loch Modan - Alliance Territory" flash overhead, I gulped. I was sure that tons of Alliance would just pour out from behind every boulder and I'd be a smudge on the ground. After all, when you get ganked in Tarren Mill 3-4 times a night, you learn to expect that stuff. Much to my surprise, however, I kept moving and nobody seemed to really care that I was in the area.

If I thought it was terrifying on a PvP server to cross into enemy territory, I was extremely underwhelmed when I did it on a PvE server. There isn't a big red "hey dummy!" alert, so you really don't get that sense of "things could go really really bad" that you get on a PvP server.

Unless you're a lowbie who encounters a max level toon from a rival faction, that is.

Her adventure with the Ammen Vale guards aside, Neve was cruising right along through Bloodmist Isle when she rode up toward the Vector Coil. There, toiling among Kael's traitorous Sunhawks, was a lone Draenei. I pulled Neve up to watch as he dispatched a nest of them, and then he turned and saw her.

If a toon could have a deer-in-the-headlights look, it was this guy.

Neve paused a moment longer, nodded and waved at the Draenei, and sped on her way. Happy hunting!

Thank You, WOWCrendor

2011-04-14T17:21:00.000-04:00

A Simple Observation

2011-04-13T23:18:00.002-04:00

"Org is where it's at."

"The Exodar is so freaking dead, just a couple of bank alts and some noobs."

"Dal has gone the way of Shattrath."

"Everybody's in Stormwind."

Heard those lately? I sure have, whether by fellow WoW bloggers, guildies, or random instance/BG puggers, people know the emphasis of this latest expansion is on the capital cities. For some cities, their day in the sun is over; for others, they never had one in the first place.

Blizz has stated several times that with Cataclysm, they wanted to return the emphasis to each faction's capital city. In that respect, they succeeded brilliantly. Instead of having one Sanctuary where both factions congregate and overwhelm players' frame rates, they divided the crowd between Orgrimmar and Stormwind.

However, every time I pass through another faction city, something just feels missing.

Do I miss the throng in Dalaran on a Tuesday night? Hell no. After a major patch bundle, my framerate would drop to 6 fps and stay there until I got out of dodge. By comparison, Org is a walk in the park. Same with Stormwind, where your flying mount can perch on dozens of buildings and get out of the heavy traffic.

I think what bothers me about Dalaran and the other leftovers is that they are cities, and they didn't stop existing when the Cataclysm redesign happened. But nobody goes there --especially the BC faction cities-- unless there's an occasional World Event or something monumental happens like 4.0.1 drops and everyone tests out new attack rotations. They're like a downtown street the morning after Oktoberfest.

Now, I'm sure that to most people the response is a shrug and a "So what? Change is the nature of things, and as each expansion has come and gone, the center of the WoW-verse has moved on. Get used to it."

Maybe so, but I think that Blizzard can do something here to make the other cities feel more organic: more NPCs.

I've watched the Shattered Sun train, and I've watch the kids play and run through the Lower City, and I think more of that is what all of these empty cities need. With the dawn of the quest marker system built into WoW, you don't really need to hover over each NPC to find the one you're supposed to talk to anyway, so why not add extraneous NPCs to each neglected city to give it a lot more flavor? That way the apple vendor in Ironforge isn't hawking fruit to an empty room. And why on earth is there one single delegation wandering about the streets of Silvermoon City --and Champion Vranesh-- when there could be more crowds moving back and forth?

A lot of these NPCs could have a set route and a series of pauses through the city that don't interfere with any player doing legit business --like at an AH or a bank-- while making an empty AH seem a bit fuller. They don't even need to say anything out loud, just be there and make the cities feel, well, lived in.

And should a future redesign of WoW send players back to another of these cities, Blizzard could simply remove the NPCs. Their presence would no longer be needed.

This obviously isn't the highest priority on Blizzard's drawing board right now, with 4.1's release fast approaching and 4.2 and 4.3 already well under way in the design/build stages. However, at first blush it seems like a relatively easy thing to implement, if only for a couple of NPCs a week.

Imitating Budd

2011-04-11T19:47:00.000-04:00

No, I don't mean by pretending I'm an Manataur.

If you've ever seen the movie Up, you know there's a scene where the two protagonists meet Dug, the talking dog. When he begins to describe the collar that allows him to talk, Dug is distracted by a "Squirrel!"

Well, that's sort of what I've been up to lately on Tomakan.

I've been leveling Tom's Engineering, and since I didn't feel like paying the AH prices for Fel Iron and Adamantite, I've been rummaging around Outland, farming the stuff. And in true Budd fashion, the "Shiny!" has been distracting me.

"Well," I thought, "since I'm here, I might as well solo a few heroic BC instances.

"And oh look, there's a quest here.

"And I can pick up the To Hellfire and Back achieve with a few more quests.

"And I can see about getting enough rep to get into the Tempest Keep heroic 5-mans.

"And here's some quests that lead into Draenei lore."

"And...."

Well, you get the point.

This is why I put on blinders when I was leveling Tom and Neve to L85; the lure of the Shiny! is just too great. Maybe if you've got a stable full of alts this is all old hat, but to me, this is still new. Yes, even BC, because I'm exploring things from an Alliance point of view.

***

One thing that I've been struck by is how perception is indeed reality in Azeroth. Take Dustwallow Marsh, for example. If you've leveled through there as Horde like I have, there are a few simple truths to the region: the Grimtotems are a loose cannon, the buildup to Onyxia dominates the questing, and Theramore dominates the area. If you get even just a little close to the place at level, the magnitude of the stone walls and cannons --and oh yeah, the soldiers-- make the place look impregnable. Brackenwall Village is your kids' backyard fort built with leftover lumber by comparison.

Then try leveling an Alliance toon and take the ship from Menethil Harbor.

Once you land on the dock, the first thing you're struck by is how empty Theramore really is. With such a frontal display of might, your mind conjures up a battalion or two of Lordaeron's finest. While there are buildings around, there are so few NPCs to match. What's more is that a good portion of them are actively trying to subvert Jaina's leadership. Once I got over the surprise, I laughed. Psychological warfare is alive and well in Azeroth.

***

I'll elaborate on this in a later post, but I'm struck by the parallels to the history surrounding the BC races. Both the Sindorei and the Draenei had most of their race willingly turn away from the Light and embrace the Burning Legion. Both have dealt with genocidal campaigns, and barely cling to survival. Both mistrust the other, yet would do well to examine their own ranks more closely.

***

Heard Around Azeroth

In Battle of Gilneas:
BL: I can't believe half of our team is AFK!
Neve: We're not. We're getting corpse camped by two Hunters, two Locks... ::dies:: and a Priest.
BL: And you can't break through that??
Neve: Not when they're on the boat with you.
Priest: And no @#$% tanks, either!!

In Honor Hold, Hellfire Peninsula:
[Tomakan (L85) is perusing the offerings by the Honor Hold Quartermaster for curiosity's sake]
Warrior: ::challenges Tomakan to duel::
Tomakan: ::inspects the Warrior, finds he's L61, and Declines::
Warrior: ::challenges Tomakan to duel::
Tomakan: WTH is wrong with you? ::Declines::
Warrior: /flexes I'm bad! I'm bad!
Tomakan: ::Mounts and flies off to a Shattered Halls run::
Warrior: ::challenges Tomakan to duel::

What just happened?

2011-04-07T18:34:00.002-04:00

I'm being bribed...

"This system is meant to address the unacceptable queue times currently being experienced by those that queue for the DPS role at max level. The long queue times are, of course, caused by a very simple lack of representation in the Dungeon Finder by tanks, and to some extent healers."

"but perhaps we can bribe them a little"

What is this, I don't even...

I suppose something was necessary to address the problem, but seriously? Resulting to tactics my mother would use to get you to do what she wants? That doesn't sit so well.

I'm at a point now, as are most regular players, which I don't really need valor points except for my off spec gear - and I'm not overly concerned about gearing it up.

But wait Mr. Awesomely-Bearded Deftig, you get a nice bonus, what do you have to be upset about?

First, thanks. My beard is awesome, isn't it?

Right, I get the fine opportunity to jump out into the LFD maelstrom and do the same thing that frustrates and burns me out - tank for a bunch of randoms.

It may sound elitest of me, but I don't particularly enjoy running the dungeons anymore. The faster I can pull, the better the dps is, the more geared the healer is, the quicker I can end that dungeon - THE BETTER. My faction grind for Cataclysm is over, I don't need any gear out of there and frankly, I only have one 85 (by choice - warriors are just the best class). And I don't feel the need to help you gear up your 9th level 85 alt while you struggle to remember where you put hex on your hotbar because you rarely play that character.

"Understandably, players prefer to take on that responsibility in more organized situations than what the Dungeon Finder offers"

No shit, ya don't say?

I'm to the point now where I haven't run a heroic dungeon as a tank is roughly two weeks - and in the one dungeon I did run, it was with a guild group going because one of our members was gearing up a tank.

So is the bribe even worth it?

"offer them a chance to get some of those elusive pets and mounts "

Hey that's great and all, but I long ago lost hope of getting any of those instance drop mounts. If I'm not farming Stratholme 5 times per hour now, what makes you think I'm really going to be so inclined to throw myself onto the mercy of the LFD and HOPE I get a decent enough group to finish the dungeon, and also again HOPE I'm lucky enough to get the mount out of a bag? Do you think that would actually happen? Ya, right...

Also, say you're lucky enough to have actually gotten one of the mounts. You now have a chance to get the exact same one as before and get extra peeved!!

"Even if they don't get a pet or mount, or get one they already have"

Not to mention how cheap of a reward it would feel. My guild took a group of players through and earned every achievement to get iron bound protodrakes. I'm proud of that mount because we worked as a team and finished them out (in honesty, we did finish the final achievement once Cata was released). But none the less we still did something and that mounts carries some significance aside from the fact that I was patient enough to carry a group of people I don't know through a dungeon.

Will this ultimately result in me participating? Probably a few times, but not very happily... Because, sadly, pvp is not very fun anymore. And now that the guild is funding repairs, I don't have the need to do dailies, I haven't even been logging in. At the VERY least, this gives something to do...

Blitzkrieg

2011-04-03T23:33:00.000-04:00

I've done my share of battlegrounds in the past, but a couple of days ago I tried my hand at something new: rated battlegrounds.

The result can be described in two words: Ye Gods.

Although we were in three BGs that night, I think we set some sort of record for losing in the Battle of Gilneas, because we lost in exactly 01:44. The opposing team swarmed over us and took the flags as if we weren't even there. Their composition --something like 50/30/20 Healers/Rogues/Tanks-- made it impossible to get more than a few hits in before getting obliterated.

"Geez, Q," one of the guildies told me, "I only got two heals out on your mage before she bit it."

Oh yeah. Now I know what a mop feels like when you're dumped in dirty water.

I think the only BG experience that is comparable is the time I ported into Alterac Valley as Tom to find only five fellow Alliance players against a full complement of Hordies. Even then, I lasted longer in the ensuing fight against an 8:1 ratio.

If you want to run rated BGs, think about Arenas first. Trust me. For myself, I think I'm going to stick to regular BGs, because by comparison the pace is much more relaxing.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go pry a knife out of Neve's back.

Hear Ye, Hear Ye!

2011-04-01T06:58:00.002-04:00

Like the font color?

Good, cause you're gonna see a lot more of it soon!

Yes, that's right, Parallel Context is going to be an official mouthpiece of Blizzard. You hear it here, it must be true!

There will be the occasional guest post by GC and others, but in general the three of us will be providing the WoW community with official updates that --due to our extensive readership-- will be disseminated more thoroughly than is currently possible on the WoW Forums.

One nice little side effect of this is that we can provide Blizz with suggestions that will be taken to the highest levels of development. For example, my suggestion to prevent ninjas in a PuG --flipping a switch so that if a player drops group after a loot roll in an instance they will be unable to roll for loot for a one week period-- has been favorably received by the development staff, and a version of this upgrade will be in the 4.1 PTR shortly.

We look forward to serving you in the future with timely, cogent updates on the game we all love: Ultima Online!

EtA: I'd be remiss in pointing out that a few of my fellow WoW bloggers have similar momentous announcements for this Friday:

Rades at ~~Orcish~~Draenic Army Knife

Vidyala at ~~Manalicious~~Orcalicious

Recycled content...

2011-03-31T13:01:00.002-04:00

Never have I seen a company recycle so much content. In fact, it’s

gonna get really old if everything is always the same. However,

give it time and I’m sure we’ll see some new stuff.

You have to trust that a company as big as Blizzard has something up its sleeve.

Up until the news of the re-release of ZG and ZA, I

never thought I’d see them again. I should say I hoped that would be the case anyhow.

Gonna be fun to see how they changed the dungeons and mechanics. Hopefully, it will

let us get the mounts a bit easier this time, though I seriously doubt it.

You have to wonder though, what else is going to be recycled? Will we see MC version two?

Down to even lower dungeons such as stratholme version 2? If that’s the case I can say I’m

NEVER – ever gonna be really motivated to run them. Seriously, who’s really

gonna want to do that all again? I certainly don’t. In fact I’d be happy to

run any new themed dungeon that’s introduced. You think we’ll see any new dungeons

around path 4.2 as well? I really hope we do, because if the content doesn’t hold my interest

and burn out starts to set in, it would be a really big shame to

desert this game after so many hours put into it.

You can’t take things too seriously though.

You Never Know

2011-03-23T21:00:00.002-04:00

Last night my family attended the district-wide Festival of Bands held at our local high school. The Festival of Bands pulls together all of the woodwind, brass, and percussion band students throughout the entire school district, from 5th Grade through 12th Grade, for a combined concert. The concert showcases all of the hard work the band students have been putting in --my oldest, a flutist, among them-- and gives them a chance to shine on the stage. (Or in this case, gymnasium, as there were over 400 students assembled for the program.)

We left after the concert and went back home, just in time for my wife to realize that she'd accidentally a book she'd been reading behind. I went back to the high school to go hunt for the book, hoping that the building hadn't been emptied and locked for the night.

Luckily for me, I encountered one of the band directors when I was roaming through the gym, and he suggested we try the high school band's office. We crossed into the Commons area, and while he called his wife my eye was drawn to the lost-and-found shelf. I pointed to myself and at the shelf, and the band director nodded while he talked on his cell.

I searched under the hoodies and jackets and found a few notebooks which I searched through, but not much in the way of my wife's book. I set the notebooks back, and it was then that I noticed the owner's name of the topmost one:

Jimmy "Leeroy" Jenkins

"For the Horde!" I whispered, smiling.

So... Where've you been?

2011-03-22T22:51:00.001-04:00

That was the question asked me by a guildie when I fired up Quintalan for about 20 minutes early last evening. It was about the only time I had to spare in between the end of the work day and having to take two of my kids to a skating party, but I figured I'd knock out a few quests in Uldum before I spent a couple of hours at a 1970s era roller rink.

I kind of shrugged at the question. "I've been on," I replied. "Mostly in the mornings and the early afternoon."

"Okay. I haven't been able to get on in the mornings lately, except for Saturday."

I'd noticed that the regular morning crowd for both Tom and Neve/Q has been thinning a bit lately, but until my guildie alluded to it I hadn't noticed the decline in my evening playing. With three kids (and their activities) and a wife who works in the evenings part of the time, I've cut back on my WoW playing. When I do play, it's much easier to run a quick BG or knock out some quests/crafting rather than queue for an instance.

At times like this, I miss the quick Wrath instances like A-N or Forge of Souls, the BC quickie Hellfire Ramparts, and Vanilla's Scarlet Monastery Graveyard. Got 15-20 minutes? No problem! You don't have to be in a losing fight in Warsong Gulch; you can go bash some Scourge or Fel Orcs instead!

But really, the design for Cata instances took away the ability to get a dungeon quickie. Given that Blizz wants to make the instances --especially the heroics-- hard, the concept of a quick and dirty instance clashes with design intent. And I'm fine with that. It's my schedule that has changed, and I shouldn't expect the game to change for me.

This is where things kind of intersect with a persistent theme the past month or two out in the WoW blogosphere, how a certain subset of WoW players have gotten disaffected with the game. We're not talking about the people who like WoW but tried and fell in love with Rift (or LOTRO or another game), but the people who burned out on WoW or who threw up their hands in disgust over the game.

Even if my own WoW time has been cut, I still find things to do. If I'm the only person in my guild on in the morning, I make a point of chit chatting while holding down a tower in Alterac Valley. (And I'm not even talking about roleplaying, but just regular in-game talk.) What I don't get is when people focus in on one aspect of the game so completely that they miss the rest of the game world. I've said it before and I'll say it again: an MMO is what you make of it. Yes, there is design intent at play, but you can choose to buck the system and do your own thing. Nobody pulled out the book of WoW Scriptures and read "Yea, and upon the Seventh Day the Toon assembled with many brethren, and thus they entered the Great Raid. And the Two Headed Ogre with many pokey eyes was slain."

So Many items to craft, so few toons to do the dirty work...

2011-03-18T13:27:00.001-04:00

There are days when I feel like two toons are one toon too many. Then there are days when I look at the AH prices and grumble that I don't have enough toons.

I've been spending some of my recent time leveling Enchanting and Tailoring on Neve, and as I watch my gold disappear into the WoWified ether, I'm reminded of the old maxim: The questgiver giveth, and the Auction House taketh away. But at least she can craft her own high level gear; Quintalan and Tomakan don't have such a luxury.

Sure, Jewelcrafting and Engineering have their perks, but in terms of the majority of gear I'd need a blacksmith to do the dirty work. Since there are some decent Cata items you can craft via Blacksmithing, I really really really would like to level an alt to get access to that stuff.

But I'm also conflicted on leveling another alt.

I mean, it is a grind leveling again. With Cata zones the way they are, you kind of have to go through them to finish all of the phasing. The XP you get from BGs and instances got nerfed with Cata's release, so I don't have the option of pugging my way to riches like I did with Tom and Neve. (Okay, the option is still there, but not as good as before.)

At the same time, there are races and classes I've thought about trying that I haven't had too much of a chance to experiment with before. The concept of a NE Mage is appealing --hey look, an outsider group in the Alliance!-- but also tinkering with a Worgen or Orc Lock could be good. (Shadow Council? What Shadow Council? I don't know what you're talking about!)

***

After being oh-for-January and most of February, I finally started getting on the winning side of BG runs. I still can't win Warsong Gulch to save my life, but I finally got into some winning AV, AB, and BoG battlegrounds. Considering I'm starting over with building up my PvP gear, I'll take whatever badges/points/whatever I can get.

Even after all this time of playing my three toons, I still have this annoying --and often fatal-- habit of charging into the heart of the enemy side while on Neve. I get this "I have to close to really do some damage!" mentality going, and all I can think of is Crusader Strike, Templar's Verdict, Inquisition, and other Paladin abilities. I'm sure that my wife wonders who the hell I'm talking to when I constantly say "No no no! Stay back, dammit! Stay back!" to the computer screen.

***

I've posted before about what happens when my kids watch me play WoW, but it had been a while since any of them had done so. I guess I'd kind of forgotten exactly what it was like having extra pairs of eyes watching me play, when I'd gotten into an Arathi Basin run last week on Neve.

A Hunter and I took the Gold Mine and we kept beating off persistent attempts by a Rogue to ninja us and steal the Mine. After the Hunter pursued the Rogue up toward the Alliance base, I pulled back to see a Pally coming down the other way. In the ensuing duel, I died once but ran back and rezzed to finish the job. Just as I let out a big sigh of relief, I got one-shotted from behind.

"Stupid assed Rogues," I grumbled as I sat by the Spirit Healer, fuming, as I watched the Hunter chase after our persistent pest.

"You died again, Dad!" a small voice piped up at my elbow.

I must have jumped a good foot in the air because my youngest got the giggles. "Scared ya!"

"Hey!" I protested, turning my head in her direction.

She pointed at the screen. "Oh look, you died again."

Frost Mages get a bit more love

2011-03-15T22:29:00.000-04:00

Well, looky here, straight out of the updated 4.1 PTR notes:

Frost

Ice Barrier base damage value has been increased by approximately 120%. In addition, the benefit from spell power has been increased by approximately 8%.

Glyphs

Glyph of Frost Armor (new glyph): Frost Armor also causes the mage to regenerate 2% of maximum mana ever 5 seconds.

I like the tweak on Ice Barrier, but I'm actually just as excited about the new Glyph. Anything to regen mana quicker is fine by my book. I didn't have any issues running out of mana until Neve reached L85, and then suddenly it hit like a truck. So anything to alleviate mana problems that doesn't entail equipping Spirit gear is fine by me.

About those the 4.1 Patch Notes

2011-03-10T08:06:00.001-05:00

I found this little line very interesting in the patch notes:

Blizzard damage has been increased by 70%.

I've noticed a decrease in utility for Blizzard the deeper I've gone into Cata. For what it does --and AoE attack that will proc Fingers of Frost and other goodies-- the damage has been really lagging behind most of a Frost Mage's other attacks. The only times I've used it in instances I've done it more for the procs than anything else. And now, Blizz seems to be putting some of the damage back in.

Finally.

Another big impression is that Arcane Mages are getting some good buffs to bring them more in line with Fire and Frost. Based on the DPS charts I've seen, Arcane has been lagging behind Fire and Frost in raids, and Blizz is moving to correct that.

As for Paladins, not that much is in the PTR, other than Illuminated Shield getting a longer duration. I'm sorry, but Righteous Fury persisting after toon death isn't anything to cheer wildly about.

Now this little note about the LFD tool is very interesting:

The Dungeon Finder now attempts to avoid putting damage-dealing classes with the same armor type in a group.

Apparently that wasn't always the case, but I guess that means that DKs, Warriors, and Pallys will be more rarely grouped together as DPS. Same goes for the cloth armored Warlocks, Mages, and Shadow Priests, and for leather/mail armored Rogues, Hunters, and Druids. Of course, "try" != "will", as I've been on a four Pally run through Gnomer before.

One final note: I found this entry in the Hunter section truly amusing:

Glyph of Mend Pet is now Glyph of Greater Proportion, which increases the size of the pet slightly.

All I could think of when I saw that was the line in Blazing Saddles: "Excuse me while I whip this out!"

EtA: One huge win for the leveling crowd: BC Instance maps are now in the 4.1 patch!! Woo!!

It Takes Diff'rent Strokes

2011-03-08T23:53:00.000-05:00

Well... Two down, one to go.

Both Tomakan and Neve dinged last week. For the record, Tom crept ahead of Neve the past few weeks while she spent some of her time farming for Frostweave, but I didn't really look at it as an Alliance v. Horde competition.

The primary concern I had with this experiment --could a toon go straight into Cata without stopping to farm Northrend Heroics-- was answered well over a month ago. Of secondary importance was the amount of difficulty melee DPS and ranged DPS would have in making it through Cata, and after that how different the stories each faction would tell. Now, I'm not completely finished with Twilight Highlands, but I'm far enough along that I can draw some conclusions.

Melee or Ranged DPS: Who's got the harder time?

The answer for that is that it depends on the zone.

Some people love Vashj'ir, some people hate it. But for ranged DPS, it's possibly the best zone out there. The added third dimension to the zone means that ranged DPS can zoom in and attack at odd angles, negating the advantage that melee DPS would get having to grind their way through a particular area. Sure, your average toon will have a flying mount by then --and zones such as Deepholm and Twilight Highlands pretty much demand one if you want to get to certain areas-- but with a flying mount you still have to land to attack. in Vashj'ir, the underwater vertical dimension effectively allows ranged DPS to attack from the air. You don't have to clear out all of the nearby enemy to prevent from being caught from behind, but instead you can use the WoW equivalent of surgical strikes to take out the enemy.

For melee DPS, there's a lot that Vashj'ir has going for it as well. Plate DPS will find a lot more useful drops in Vashj than in Hyjal, which can be vital in getting your toon Cata-geared. At the same time, Deepholm seemed more tailor made for melee than ranged DPS. For a Ret Spec Pally with the Holy Wrath Glyph active, any place with boatloads of elementals on it is a real bonus, and Deepholm was filled with them. By comparison, Hyjal, Vashj'ir, and Uldum didn't have nearly as many elementals to work with.

After having read the above, you'd think that by omission I must be ragging on Hyjal and Uldum, but that's not the case. Both zones were pretty much DPS-neutral, not favoring either one. Hyjal had more tank Plate drops than Vashj, so if a tanking offspec were of vital importance to you, Hyjal is the place to go. Uldum had one or two quests that were much easier on Plate DPS than on a squishy Mage --The Pit of Scales being the biggest offender, particularly if it's bugged*-- but in general I felt that Uldum was pretty much DPS-neutral in terms of difficulty.

Now Twilight Highlands, that's another story entirely.

If you leveled through Northrend back in the Wrath days, you know that once you dinged L80 --typically in The Storm Peaks-- things weren't bad at all in Icecrown. Quest greens didn't hold you back much, and the real difficulty came in trying to solo the mulit-person quests. That was when you needed the T9 set.

Therefore, if you were expecting history to repeat itself upon venturing to Twilight Highlands, you were disabused of that opinion almost immediately. It was more along the lines of: "Ding! You're L85! Now go to back and start over!"

For people who never experienced what it was like to start the Cata leveling process with Northrend green gear, this had to be a kick in the nuts. And the Horde's initial Naga quests are particularly brutal to squishy mages, as the waves of them come in so damn fast that you can get completely overwhelmed before you knew what was going on. Once you get past the initial quest chains, however, the zone becomes pretty DPS-neutral. Where Twilight Highlands shines, however, is in the story.

"Thundermar ale is 220 proof; I don't know how that's possible."

The story is similar for both factions throughout Vashj'ir, Hyjal, Deepholm, and Uldum. With Vashj, the story is the same, but the quest givers are Horde or Alliance. The other three have the faction neutral questgivers, so the story is almost exactly the same. Then you get to Twilight Highlands, and things suddenly diverge.

The Horde and Alliance stories emphasize dealing with the new additions to each faction --Dragonmaw and Wildhammer-- and the struggles each leader has in exerting control. The Dragonmaw are initially run by Mor'ghor, last seen on the Netherwing Ledge, and the younger Dragonmaw under the direction of Zaela chafe under his demon-tainted rule. Once Zaela leads a successful revolt, she then has to consolidate power against the drake riders who think the Wildhammer are the greater threat. On top of that, the Horde has big issues --as in Wyrmrest type issues-- by aligning with the Dragonmaw.

The Alliance, by comparison, has a slightly more mellow route through the Twilight Highlands. First, you have to fight off a Horde attack --thanks, Garrosh!-- and then you settle into trying to unite the independent Wildhammer clans. I know that Blizz basically lifted the stereotypical Scottish blueprint and stuck them on the Dwarves, but after a while the quests devolved into something like having Robin Williams describe golf. You go rally the clans, but then everything falls apart because the clans can't stand each other. So you try to arrange a political marriage, and you can guess where this whole thing is going.

Well, the divergent paths of each faction really brings Twilight Highlands to life. And I haven't even gotten through the Red Dragonflight portion of the program yet!

***

Heard around Azeroth:

Warrior: LF Port to Dal
Neve (Me): I can do that.
[Warrior invites Neve]
Neve (Me): Um, you're in Dal.
Warrior: Oh.

Tomakan (Me, during the Cursed Landing quests): There's something incredibly satisfying about killing 1000 Gnomes.

[Quintalan is helping a couple of people look for a rare spawn in Deepholm while he's finishing up the questlines]
Priest: Did you find anything yet?
Quintalan (Me): No.
[Quintalan pauses to acquire another quest]
Priest: Did you find it?
Quintalan: No.
[Q completes quest, gets another quest]
Priest: Did you find it?
Quintalan: Look, you don't have to ask each time I pause.
Priest: kk. [10 seconds pass] Did you find it?
Quintalan: /facepalm

Warrior: LFM Ring of Blood
Priest: Wrong location. You want Outland.
Warrior: LFM Ring of Blood
Priest: What level are you?
Warrior: L84
Tomakan (Me): You can solo Ring of Blood at L80, much less 84
Warrior: Tried it. Didn't work.
Priest: Just what did you try?
Warrior: The one here. The Ring of Blood.
Priest: That's not the Ring of Blood; that's the Crucible of Carnage.
[One minute passes]
Warrior: LFM Ring of Blood
Priest: ...

***

Convoy to L85 Update:

Tomakan: L85 and in Twilight Highlands
Nevelanthana: L85 and in Twilight Highlands
Quintalan: L84 and in Uldum

*You know you've got a bugged quest event when you're out of the Pit and taking damage for no visible reason whatsoever while you're still drinking.

Oh, This is going to be good

2011-03-03T22:45:00.001-05:00

I'd known that the Horde was going to partner with the Dragonmaw Clan in the Twilight Highlands, but while Neve was waiting on the platform for the arrival of the zeppelin, I wondered exactly how the intro was going to pan out. Would Hellscream act like a doofus? What exactly would the dragonflights think of this deal with the devil? And were the Dragonmaw worth saving?

Well, at the moment the answers are: yes, I don't know yet, and yes.

For a change, the Goblin in charge of the skyfleet had the right idea: "What kind of madman orders away his close air support?"

Um, that guy.

/points at Hellscream

***

I kind of expected that both the Horde and Alliance lead in quests to the Twilight Highlands would be similar: find a Twilight spy, reveal him/her, and basically look good for your faction's boss. That followed the plan to the letter on the Alliance side, but the Horde side was, well, disappointing. Greedy goblins and troops on shore leave in a town that would make Vegas or Bangkok look tame kind of took the edge off of the Horde's lead in quests. If I want to watch greed like that, I'll turn on the news.

The Siren Calls

2011-02-28T09:58:00.000-05:00

There's quite a bit of buzz out there about Rift these days.

Some people I know in WoW have been seriously considering letting their subscription lapse in favor of Rift, and others are planning on playing both games concurrently. That a decent subset of the WoW community seems to be grumbling over the current state of WoW only heightens the call of Rift.

I can attest to the allure of the "shiny!" that Rift provides; I spent several days poking around the last open Beta and was impressed with what I found. The story seems very interesting, particularly the aspect of the Rifts themselves. Imagine the Elemental Invasion Cata event, but with the Elementals moving in and taking over world areas if you don't beat them back. Throw into this the faction conflicts of religion vs. technology and insiders vs. outsiders, and you've got a very entertaining backstory. Of course, the story starts out with the bleakest of outcomes, and your job is to prevent that disaster from occurring.

The concept of selecting three souls (talent trees) from a large pool of available souls is a customizer's dream, and a theorycrafter's nightmare. From what I've seen online, there are theorycrafters working on optimal builds for each class (naturally), but it may take a long time before things are hammered out. FWIW, I found the array of choices almost too much, and I can see where a noob would be overwhelmed.

As for the introductory quests, I found them straightforward enough. If you've done intro quests before, there's no real surprise here. What did surprise me was that once you got out into the regular game world, you're thrown to the wolves. Imagine an entire world where your low level areas are mixed with the high level ones --like Scarlet Monastery in Tirisfal Glades-- and you end up getting thwacked by high level NPCs before you knew what was happening. Well, that's what the Rift world is like. You don't mess around in this world, that's for certain.

What do I think of Rift?

Well, Rift is not a world for beginners. Although Trion does take pains to lead people along throughout the intro quest line, the overall player customization and world design implies that their target audience is the experienced MMO player who is dissatisfied with their current game. If you came into the game cold, you'd be lost.

Rift is also following the WoW model with raiding as endgame. For those who were hoping for more of a sandbox environment, this has to be disheartening. As for the non-raider, it gets a big /shrug out of me.

Rift also takes pains to level the playing field. There is no customization for the UI beyond what the game is currently capable of. All of those nifty third-party addons you have in WoW will have to hit the road. And from what I can tell, that's causing no small bit of angst in the message boards. Of course, I leveled Q to L80 with the original UI largely intact, so I don't think it that big a deal.

Will I switch to Rift? Not right now, no. I can only afford one pay-per-month MMO, and WoW is the one for me. Given that I'm still leveling my main and my two primary alts to L85, I haven't exhausted my interest in the game yet.* That said, I can see it's appeal. There's potentially a great story to work with, and an entirely new world worth exploring. I doubt Rift will be a WoW-killer --I suspect an MMO based on Bioware's Dragon Age would be that game-- but it will find a niche market. I wish Trion luck, and if Rift succeeds, so much the better.

*That's one small side bonus in taking it nice and slow in the leveling, there's no "is that all there is?" feeling with 4.1 hitting the PTR servers.)

Habitually Speaking

2011-02-24T00:52:00.000-05:00

Back when I first started playing WoW, I developed a lot of bad habits while leveling.

My first 45 levels or so, Quintalan was Holy Spec, but since I rarely went into instances at that time all I knew how to do was quest --and kill things-- using my weak Holy Spec capabilities. To compound the problem, I looked at gear the way I would in my pencil and paper RPGs: a little bit of Intellect and a little bit of Strength never hurt, and look --something with Agility! It never occurred to me that maybe I ought to concentrate on one stat and let the other gear fall by the wayside.

After I switched to Ret --at Soul's suggestion-- I developed another set of bad habits. For example, I'd use tanking abilities in my attacks, which really don't go over well when you get into an instance. And when leveling, I didn't have a concept of a rotation. Sure, you could argue that Ret Spec in Wrath didn't have a rotation --and I'd not disagree with you either-- but the basic understanding behind a rotation escaped me.

Oh yeah, I was a noob. I had my share of "HEY STOOPID!" moments out there in WoW.

It wasn't until I started pugging and got serious about understanding how a Ret Pally works that I finally broke out of these habits. I tinkered with key bindings and how much you could load onto one button until I realized I needed more granularity than that. (Such as saving Avenging Wrath for Bosses; you don't need it for trash. Therefore, don't try to bind it on any of my attacks but leave it on a separate button.)

Even when 4.0.1 dropped I didn't have moments quite like those first few months of playing WoW, and for that I can thank Tomakan. He was mired somewhere in the 40s when 4.0.1 was released, and so I had plenty of time to work out how the new Ret rotations ought to work without all the clutter of higher level Ret capabilities.

But now, after having spent time leveling in the Cata zones, I've kind of backslid a bit. I slack off on my rotations because I can, unless I'm dealing with multiple enemies at once (or an elite). I've got some nice new skills on both Neve and the Pallys, but I haven't really adjusted my key bindings.* I know that the Cata instances are harder than Wrath, but I haven't tested the limits of how quickly I can go through my rotation without pulling aggro.

WoW is still a learning process. Maybe if you work at it hours a day for most days of the week, yeah, you can top out at a high level. But most of us don't have that amount of spare time. To get competent at your class, you need to dedicate some time, but nowhere near the levels seen by the elite raiding guilds.

Unlike my noob experiences, I know what I need to do to get back on track. I need to get into more Cata instances.

Am I worried about getting into Cata pugs? Not really. I like to be prepared, and if I can't be prepared, at least be overpowered. What's killing me is the time factor. I don't have the time to set aside two hours to cover a pug right now. I can run BGs more quickly than what I've discovered via the Cata pugs I've been in, so I end up queuing for them instead. (When Alterac Valley is looking to be quicker than a Cata pug, you know you've got time issues.)

So for the time being, I'm going to continue to quest and accumulate a punch sheet of things I need to do. I'll get around to it. Someday. Maybe.

*I instead lust after a Naga Razr, thinking about adding buttons there rather than upset my current balance.

Checking in

2011-02-21T12:30:00.001-05:00

Hello everyone!

It's been a while since I've posted. I've been busying playing the game lately, instead of writing about it. There's so much to do with a new expansion and I've reached a pretty comfortable spot.

I've gotten all of my Cata reps up to exalted, even as of last night, with my own guild. I've managed to get a decent number of epics and I'm alllllmost happy with my character appearance - gotta replace the shoulders and get a new helmet and weapon.

I've also had the task of building up a somewhat reliable offspec and gear for those situations where we encounter a one tank fight. Which, to be honest, I'm not all that happy about. I really do love tanking and dps is so foreign to me that I end up watching my hotbar instead of raid warnings / bad don't stand here stuff. I'm getting better at it though.

And in the guild, we've managed to down the first 5 bosses in Blackwing Descent. I'm so happy about all of that. My GM has done a little research and found out that we're in the top 60 some odd number of guilds on our server, and that makes me pretty happy considering we spend 6 hours a week raiding. And most of the other guils that have the same numbers of bosses down that we do, have one or two bosses in each raid, not all 5 in one raid.

Also, we've had an interesting twist internally. In wrath, we were loaded to the gills with strength dps classes and only had a few agility based melee. This time around, we haven't had a single strength dps class with us (except for me when I need to offspec), and we're full up on agility characters. And worse yet, we're struggling to get enough ranged classes. We've currently got no warlocks or mages that raid. Argh...

Balancing that sort of raid is pretty challenging, and sometimes proves nearly impossible. For instance, dealing with the worms on the Magmaw fight with any less than three ranged really, really stinks.

For as much as I'm not fond of dpsing, we've had to have one of our bear tanks go boom for the majority of the fights. He says he doesn't mind too much, but still... I'm not sure why the raid design this time around is a bit funky.

There's DPS, and then there's DPS

2011-02-14T16:54:00.001-05:00

When I go through new content on one of my toons, I have a habit of evaluating the content with an eye toward the other toons.

Take for example the Ragnaros fight, which is the climax of the Hyjal quest chain.

Q completed that quest last week, which is an "assist XXX in defeating YYY" type of quest. I know some bloggers kind of pooh-pooh those quests because they feel they have no impact on the result, but I enjoy them. In this quest, you're not the focus, but that's okay. After all, you're not Warchief, but someone else is*.

In the quest The Firelord, you're providing support in Cenarius' fight against Ragnaros, along with Malfurion and Hamuul, the two Arch Druids. Basically, you're there to keep the adds off of Hamuul and Malfurion while they blast Mr. By-Fire-Be-Purged with massive debuffs. Not a hard thing there to do if you're a Ret Spec Pally, but when I saw the healing requests go by, my first thought was "Holy crap! There's no way in hell Neve could do that!"

From what I've read online, I think that the heal requests will only show if your class can actually heal. Otherwise, your job is straight DPS. After finding that out, I let out a huge sigh of relief.

On the flip side, when I was questing on Neve through Vashj'ir, I thought that the zone was ideally suited to ranged DPS. She could stand back and hit from distance, and so long as she obeyed the cardinal rule of engaging in one enemy at a time, she could handle Vashj'ir quite well. I was certain that melee DPS would not only get hit harder, but have a more difficult time of surviving through the first several sections of Vashj. Melee DPS would be under-armored as well as under-powered, while ranged DPS could reduce the enemy's health significantly before the enemy could close.

As it turns out, the result was a wash. Whether ranged or melee, each DPS had could handle what was thrown at them.

***

One thing I've never been able to figure out is why some people take such perverse delight in griefing and corpse camping on PvE servers. It's not like they're not going to get caught, because all it takes is someone with the fortitude to hang around long enough, luring the griefer on, while one of two things happens: the toon being griefed gets friends and/or guildies to show up, or an Admin responds to the ticket request. Either way, the griefer loses.

So why bother? What do you get out of thwacking toons in Goldshire or Tranquillien that you can't settle in a Battleground or an Arena?

***

Having completed three of the Cataclysm zones so far --Vashj'ir, Hyjal, and Deepholm-- I have a set of likes and dislikes. Vashj is the zone with the biggest downer, leading straight into the Throne of the Tides instance. (The other two instances, Blackrock Caverns and Stonecore, are more of a sidelight on the main quest chain.) The Hyjal zone has the happiest ending, with Deepholm close behind.

As for the quest chains themselves... For a quest whore like myself, I really did enjoy them. And yes, I did go through Vashj'ir twice, so the undersea environment didn't bother me at all.

Having now seen both Ysera and Alexstrasza, I guess the formal uniform of a female Dragon Aspect includes a bikini. I'm not exactly sure why, but then again, I'm not planning on asking either of them. I guess it goes to prove the answer to the old question as to what a dragon wears: anything they want.

The Earthen Ring and the Guardians of Hyjal (and the Cenarion Circle) are this expansion's version of the Argent Crusade: a cross faction organization that brings all of Azeroth together to fight the enemy. With all of that going on, it makes me wonder why there isn't more emphasis placed upon the attitude of the grunts who fight alongside their "enemies" on the other faction. Perhaps I'll find more of that later on, but so far I haven't seen anything to demonstrate otherwise.

I've read some posts out there in the WoW blogosphere about how Therazane is a great character, and I can't disagree. She is a strong female character who isn't clad in a skimpy outfit, she has her own agenda that has nothing to do with any other faction, and she's just as likely to kill you as welcome you to her throne room. The strange thing is that I want to check out the quest line for Maraudon again, just to see if there have been any tweaks to accomodate Therazane's presence in Deepholm.

***

And before I forget, Happy Valentine's Day to all of you out in the blogosphere!

***

Convoy to 85 Update

Tomakan: L84 in Uldum

Nevelanthana: L83 in Deepholm

Quintalan: L82 in Deepholm

*Although if you could toss Garrosh out of the Warchief's seat, I'd bet boatloads of Hordies would do so in an instant.

Puppies Want Dungeon!

2011-02-08T15:44:00.001-05:00

There seems to be one bug coming out of the 4.0.6 patch: race changed Worgen are unable to queue for any Cataclysm instances. The Worgen started from scratch are having no problems, but the ones who wanted to swap out their toon for a Worgen are currently puttering around Stormwind, chasing Druids in cat form.

EtA: Looks like hotfixes are being rolled out. Your favorite puppy may soon be able to run around in an instance shortly!

Hyjal vs. Vashj'ir - Brief Thoughts

2011-02-07T08:11:00.000-05:00

Okay, Quintalan isn't exactly undergeared going into his first Cata zone, so I was prepared for an easier time.

I wasn't prepared for the Elites stuck in the middle of those burning areas when you're searching for the staff parts.

Q was wading in, taking 2 of those non-elites at a time, when Holy Wrath pulled another piece of "trash" over.

"Man," I thought, "that one's hitting hard."

The other two trash disposed of, Q turned his attention to that new elemental and...

"Elite. Oops."

During the corpse run, I reminded myself that I should still take a page from Neve and Tom's playbook and go easy on the trash pulling.

***

When I got to the portion of the quest chain where you had to escort Fandral Staghelm through the Emerald Dream, I was amused. "Well, well, well. Both he and Magatha are on the outs. Good."

***

While I know I'm only partway through the zone, one thing that strikes me from the drops so far is the abundance of tanking gear. Most of the Plate drops in Vashj'ir were DPS and/or Healing related, so I got used to gearing up quickly. Hyjal, however, is more tank friendly.

Great news for tanks, but not so great news for melee DPS. I'm not big on reforging Cata green gear --I'd rather save my money when I know the next zone will have gear to replace it-- but let's just say I'm glad that Q started with better gear than Tomakan did.

***

Convoy to L85 Update
Tomakan: L83 in Deepholm
Nevelanthana: L83 in Deepholm
Quintalan: L81 in Hyjal

WoW in Popular Culture

2011-02-03T11:07:00.002-05:00

Courtesy of historiclols.com.

A Few Short Notes

2011-01-30T09:38:00.004-05:00

Where's my Can of Raid?

I hate buggy questlines.

The end of the Fleshwerks questline in Icecrown was bugged for what seemed like ages before that finally got fixed, and it kept me from finishing the Icecrown quest achievement for a while. The same thing happened in Howling Fjord with the end of the Ymiron's questline, and that was my stumbling block in that region too.

And now we have Defending the Rift, a special gift for you from Cata.

After trying for about about a dozen times to get the questline cutscene to work, I gave up and called it a night.

Some people claim that it's Horde only, but since I was doing the quest on Tomakan, I know that Defending the Rift has it in for Draenei, too.

/sigh

Why Is ~~She~~ LFD Being so Difficult?

I have a short, simple goal before I get to L83: Finish the Northrend Dungeonmaster achieve on both toons. It's not a hard thing to do; just get finished with all of the 5-mans (except ICC and ToC) on regular mode.

Then why does LFD hate me so much?

By my count, there are three Wrath instances that are impossible to solo: Trial of the Champion, The Oculus, and Halls of Reflection. ToC and Oculus are impossible to do because of the vehicle portion of the program; you need more than one person in there to survive the joust in ToC and the Eregos fight in Oculus. Halls of Reflection has that nasty DPS race at the end, and no toon is able to put out that much DPS in that short a time before 'Big Boy Arthas' comes within range and nukes you.

To finish these, all you ought to be able to do is queue for only the instances you want, and then slowly eliminate them from the list as you complete them, right?

Then why did LFD send me into ToC over a half dozen times on each toon, giving me the same bosses to fight, without any variation?

I finally finished up enough stuff on Tom so that all I have left is a spare boss in Ahn'kahet that I must have missed, but Neve is still stuck in LFD hell, waiting on a non-fail run of The Oculus to miraculously appear.

Overheard around Azeroth

In The Oculus: "What do you mean, Red is the tank? Red is the DPS, Bronze is the tank!"

In Culling of Stratholme: "What are you doing here, Ginger? You're L82!" [Ginger was Tomakan, in disguise as a red haired bearded guy.]

Tomakan: "I want the achieve before I can't queue for this."

"There is no achieve here in normal!" "Yeah!"

Tomakan: "[Northrend Dungeonmaster]"

"..."

In Icecrown: "So, how are things in Northrend today?"

Neve: "Cold"

"Oh, but I'm sure we could cuddle somewhere for warmth."

Neve: "No thanks."

"But I've got a nice roaring fire here going."

In Pit of Saron: "Why did I die?"

Healer: "Next time, kill adds before you pull Ick. And don't stand in the green stuff. Are you sure you've done this before?"

"Of course I have!"

Healer (in whisper to me): "Yeah, right."

Also in Pit of Saron: "What do we do now?"

"Run up the tunnel and don't stop until you reach..." [tank takes off] "...a halfway mark."

[tank runs up to the safe location]

Healer: "Stop!"

Tomakan: "Stop here!" /jumps

[tank keeps running]

Healer: "Oh Lord"

EtA: Added the rest of Mr. Smooth's attempts to pick up Neve.

Warring Priorities

2011-01-27T12:58:00.000-05:00

It must be nice, being a master of the Auction House.

Not to mention the player who has an entire stable of toons sitting at L85.

And still have a life. (Or a job. Or both.)

For most of us mere mortals, we have to content ourselves with prioritizing our WoW time. And truth be told, playing the role of Farmer Bob is one of those tasks that I typically put at the bottom of my to-do list. My thought process is simple: what's more fun, leveling in Vashj'ir, or mining Cobalt?* Fighting in Alterac Valley, or farming Frostweave?

It used to be the case that I'd combine my farming with waiting for the LFD or BG queue, but since the combination of Battlegroups caused a reduction in queue times, I discovered that I didn't have that much luck getting a lot of farming done. And right now, I'd rather be out questing rather than farming.

Of course, a Tailor still has to have her Frostweave to finish leveling. To help his fellow Hordie out, I've been pulling Quintalan off of whatever bench he's been spending his days on and sending him into Icecrown to beat up on Converted Heroes for their Frostweave. Once he gets a pile, he forwards them on to Neve so she can practice her skills. If you guessed that I don't exactly sound enthusiastic, you're right.

It's one thing if I've seen all of the Cata zones, and poked my nose into each nook and cranny on both factions. I'd be gearing up for PvP, trying my hand at heroics, and working on what I consider side stuff. But since Neve needs the gear she can get from Tailoring (and the boosts from Enchanting), I'm Farmer Quintalan instead.

Tomakan needs the cash, and while the questing is giving a good supply of gold, I don't want him to get to L83 without having visited all of the Northrend instances. So the past couple of days, he's been Miner Tom.

Not exactly the stuff that heroes are made of. Unless, of course, your idea of a hero is more along the lines of Cincinnatus.

I remember reading a post by Linedan from Achtung Panzercow on his attempts to play EVE Online, and my reaction was that if a game feels too much like work, it's no longer a game.** There are days when the WoW grind is too much like work, and not enough like play. That's when I remind myself that to take the measure of a game, you have to assess the good with the bad. Does the fun outweigh the grind?

For me, it does. This grind will eventually go away, and I can move on to other things. There may come a day when the grind no longer makes the game worth it, but it isn't there yet.

*Cobalt was selling for higher prices than Saronite or Thorium on Ysera last week.
**Unless your work is a game, then all bets are off.

Interactive Drug Trips of Vashj'ir Past

2011-01-26T08:20:00.003-05:00

Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed being a Naga. That whirlwind attack is plenty nice too; every time I heard that whistling noise I thought of Ginsu knives.

They even split Kvaldir! Now Available at L78!

As an aside, I still think a group of renegade Naga could be a good fit for the Horde or at least a Neutral installation, but I'm not exactly all the way through Vashj'ir yet. So who knows?

I had mixed feelings playing the Battlemaiden's questline, however. In that old conundrum you'd find in The Frozen Throne, who do you root for: the group aligned with the Lich King (Kvaldir), or the group aligned with the Old Gods (Naga + surprise guests)? Either way, the mortal races lose.

In general, both the Horde and Alliance quest lines are alike. There are a few minor differences, namely with the minor sideshow stuff from Goblins/Gnomes, but that's about it. The tone of the characters, however, is completely different. The Horde characters are out for blood, while the Alliance characters have their words tempered a bit. In the 'defend the ship' event, the Horde Captain yells "Make 'em bleed!" The Alliance Captain doesn't say anything quite so memorable: "For Stormwind!" On the flip side, having the Draenei Earthen Ring member talk about having to run and hide her interest in Shamanism rings far truer than a Tauren, and the Dwarven Earthen Ring member saying "Ugh, an Orc... This will take some getting used to" made me laugh.

Finally, between the second and the last of the Battlemaiden sequences culminating in "Visions of Vashj'ir Past", both toons got themselves geared up enough to qualify for the first of the Cataclysm regular instances. So by the time you're through with the Shimmering Expanse you're instance ready, with almost all of your gear replaced by new Cata greens. It's not always optimal --Tom was wearing some tanking shoulders for a good while-- but it's far better than what you're equipped with coming out of Wrath as a fresh L80.

I'm planning on taking Quintalan in the opposite direction to Hyjal and see how the regearing process goes over there. Naturally, he's going to have a lot of advantages that Tom and Neve didn't have, but that's the breaks.

Convoy to L85 Update
Tomakan: L82 in Vashj'ir
Nevelanthana: L82 in Vash'jir
Quintalan: L80 and being used for farming Frostweave in Icecrown

EtA: For the Paladins, so far I've only seen one Relic drop in Vashj'ir, and it's a Holy Spec Relic given you by the woman who sends you out hunting for her lost items. That means for you Prot and Ret Spec Pallys whatever Relic you've got on when you start up Cata will probably still be with you throughout Vashj'ir. In Tomakan's case, it was an old Relic he picked up in one of the Tempest Keep instances and promptly forgot about. I don't believe Tom encountered a Relic at all while running the Wrath 5-mans, and the point of the exercise was not to go out buying stuff but instead just keep on truckin'.

EtA: A Ret (kinda Prot) Relic finally dropped in Vashj'ir, right before the end of zone. For Prot Pallys, you might want to pass on the Prot gear that is an alternate, but that's your choice.

Confession time...

2011-01-21T13:30:00.000-05:00

Alright, so I have a confession to make here… having one piece of armor that doesn’t match the rest of my gear really bugs me. For instance, my current set of armor is the blue crystal look of tier 11 along with the flat gunmetal grey color of justice point gear. And then there are my legs they’re iLevel 346, but they’re…. Bright red. Ug.

My wife will gleefully (seriously, giggling and finger pointing) point out the fact that she’s overheard a few of us very manly gamers discussing what color the guild tabard should be in order to match our gear.

And this obsession extends past just gear coordination. When I made my Orc Deathknight, I chose the darkest skin available because it looked the best with armor. And when I chose to race change my warrior to a Worgen, he’s got black fur because it looks the best with the different armors. And this even extends to race choices.

My warrior was created during vanilla. It was originally created to be a level 29 twink – and what a power house he was (There’s nothing quite as satisfying as the “blegh-ack” cry of a one shot gnome).

Well when I decided to start playing my warrior more seriously, I race changed to undead, because they have the best shield slam animation. And I got tired of not being able to see directly in front of myself and not to mention the giant furry egg on his back.

And then I found the guild I’m in now and ended up race changing to a human. But I got bored with that, because at the time my main character was also a human. So I changed to a dwarf – which ended up annoying me in the long run because I literally had to jump to hit some targets and stairs were the death of me a few times because I wasn’t in line of sight of the healers at the bottom of the steps.

With the introduction of Worgen to the Alliance, I was very much looking forward to race changing to one because they looked cool in the videos I had watched and they were new. Not to mention a new chiropractically challenged race would make me feel more like I was playing Horde.

I have now been a Worgen since release and I gotta admit – they’re not all that grand. I like the fact that they added sounds to changing stances as a warrior, as well as adding sounds shouts. It gets a bit tiresome to listen to this for every shout and every stance dance.

And I’m not a fan of the way helmets look on them either. It’s like they’ve got the same problem as trolls do. It’s as if they took a helmet that would fit a smaller race just fine, and cut holes in it to modify it to fit. I’m just not a fan…

And then there’s the boots – I’m the tank here. I’m the wall of iron, steel, wood, muscle, and bone with the sole purpose of stopping the bad guy from beating up everybody else. – So we’ve got the bright red legs with backwards knees and the blue / grey boots with awesome clunky looking reinforcements over the knee and bare toes. It just doesn’t sit right… If I were the boss mob I’d just stomp on the tank’s foot and call it a day.

I run around with the helmet turned off – we discussed this already, and I also turn capes off. The way the shield rests on a Worgen’s back looks right, but it’s almost as if they copied the cape animation from a Dra’nei because it doesn’t look like it flows quite right, and it ends up clipping most of my shield off.

And probably the biggest annoying I have is weapons. It seems that the awesome looking epic pvp axe I have doesn’t scale any larger when I’m in Worgen form, than then I’m in human form. Which makes the weapon (to me at least) seem kinda wimpy. Not that you could see it anyhow from how many flips I end up doing when wielding a two handed weapon (It was cool at first, but I’m not playing Metroid or Sonic – do I really need to spend that much time curled up in a ball?) And when blade storming, my claws end up sticking out further than the blade. And it probably good they do, because of the way Worgen hold their weapon when blade storming - not that getting repeatedly smacked the by flat edge of an axe wouldn’t hurt after a while, but it just looks pitiful.

So, I’m pretty sold on yet one more race change…

Under the Sea Plaguelands

2011-01-20T23:59:00.000-05:00

If you want to know my opinion of sending the two guinea pigs straight into their first Cata zone --Vashj'ir-- I think the title pretty much sums it up.

For those of you who were around on WoW prior to Cata*, can you remember what it was like taking your first toon at ~L55 and making a mad dash for Light's Hope Chapel? The Eastern Plaguelands was the scary zone in the Old World (sorry, Silithus and Blasted Lands), where it seemed the waves of Scourge were unending and you had to go at a crawl to reach the one safe place in the entire zone. Oh, and it sucked if you happened to be on the road at the same time as the Scarlet Courier; you'd have been better off just running into Plaguewood naked instead.

Of course, all things being equal, some toons were more equal than others at dealing with the challenges of the old Eastern Plaguelands. Paladins were custom made for the zone, while Cloth wearing toons suffered the most.

In a very real sense, that's what I felt when Neve and Tom swam out into Vashj'ir for the first time.

Neve, as a Frost Mage, has the built in advantage of a minion.

Boy, did she need it.

My experience leveling with her in the Old World (pre-v4.0.1) came in handy. The mantra "nice and slow" was vital to her survival. She could handle one 30-40k HP enemy at a time, but two made her sweat. She had very little recourse for healing during a battle, so she had to rely heavily on damage mitigation using her shields. Because the Naga were a) all over the place and b) prone to aggroing on her, she was forced to stand and fight a lot. The shields she had were often exhausted before their cooldown was over, so these fights became a DPS race. Afterward, the Conjured Mana Strudel was steady part of her diet.

Still, she didn't die at all until the "defend the ship" event.

A Cloth wearer like a mage is often a sitting duck in a melee style event, and Neve was no exception. She survived multiple attacks by one Naga, but two at once were almost too much. And three...

After that experience, things became a little easier. She finally started to get a few Cata greens, and her health (and firepower) jumped 3k. In fact, the only time she died after that was when the rare Lady Ya-Ya (yeah, I know, a nod to Lady Gaga) spawned right behind her.

Tomakan, by comparison, has built in healing, and is surrounded by nice, hefty (if puny by Cata standards) Plate. And when Art of War procs, Exorcism will deal 10k damage at a pop. He found the going quite a bit easier than Neve did, and he didn't die once. Okay, I don't think the elite giant catching you from behind should count, but that's just me. I did follow the same rules that I laid down with Neve: one enemy at a time, switch out damage (Ret Aura) for protection (Protection Aura), and go slow. I'll admit I was a bit concerned that Tom would have it harder than Neve because she could get more damage in from distance than he could, but he made up for it in better armor protection and higher spiky damage.

Now, I think both toons are getting their Cata legs under them, and while they aren't going to be knocking on the door of any instances soon, I'm more confident in their ability to survive in the Cata zones.

So the question I posed, "can you survive in the Cata zones going straight from Northrend after dinging L80?", is so far a yes. Now, the "will you die a lot?" question is still out there, but we'll see. A corollary to all this, "how long will it take you to be instance ready?", now that's a head scratcher. I suspect it'll be after all of Vashj'ir is complete, but I don't know for certain. Even with the Cata greens I have, I don't have a high enough iLevel to get into normal Trial of the Champion on either toon, so that gives you a feel on how far I have to go.

*Okay, that's just about everyone, but you never know.

And so it Begins

2011-01-19T16:51:00.003-05:00

Tom and Neve both dinged L80 this morning.

(My run of bad luck in BGs continues, as I couldn't win in AV on either toon. All I needed was one win and I would have dinged L80 early in the morning on each, but nooo.... /grumble)

Anyway, time to take stock of what's on each toon:

Pretty, um... homely, right?

Although both of them finally left their Outland gear behind (Tom replaced his last piece the other day), both toons only have two items at iL187. (EtA: Tom now has three, since I replaced the heirloom Chestpiece with one from The Oculus he won this morning.) The Wrath heirlooms are still much in abundance, and the vast majority of gear is in the 150s-160s range. Admittedly, this is far lower than I expected when I decided to go with this experiment, but it's realistic. If you're a new player to WoW and you've leveled up to L80, this is what you've got. Unless you figured out how to work the AH, you don't have a lot of gold in the bank to buy the new Cata L78 gear, either.

As you can see, I'm not bothering with an Eternal Belt Buckle (on a low-end Wrath green?). Nor do I have a host of enchants on the items, either. Some of the items don't have the iLevel for it, and others --being heirlooms-- I'd rather not enchant at all. On Neve, I enchant when I can and when it makes sense; I'm not going to dump strength enchants on items just because I can; I'd rather match it up with something she can use. I also need to level her Enchanting and Tailoring more (and I don't want to talk about Tom's Engineering).

I did the initial Vash'jir quest or two on Neve, and while I was waiting on the dock outside of Org, a couple of guildies tried to talk me into buying some of the Cata greens. "You're going to die a lot, Q," I was told.

"But that's the point. I keep reading about how you can do it, and I want to see how well you can do it."

And yes, I won't lie: that first Naga fight was nasty. However, my problem in that fight was that I couldn't damn well see, because my character was zoomed in all the way to FPS mode, and I couldn't seem to zoom back out. (FPS mode makes my head hurt, and I'd rather not play in a zone where I have to play that way.) I'm going to try again later, to see if something simply got out of whack that only a full restart would cure.

EtA: In the interest of full disclosure, this is what Q has on at the moment while he's waiting his turn:

He's a wee bit better equipped to start questing in the Cata zones. His gear is close to as good as you can get without actually having raided in ICC, so he'd have advantages that a true newbie wouldn't.

Me and my Big Mouth

2011-01-18T22:01:00.000-05:00

I kept telling myself I wasn't going to post until both of my alts made L80, but the WoW gods conspired against me. I'd had such a great run of good luck pugging the normal Wrath instances that I'd sort of forgotten what it was like to have a bit of drama in a pug. Oh, I don't mean I'd had a series of Wrath Heroic "shh-don't-make-a-sound-we're-grinding-badges" pugs, because most of the pugs have become chatty affairs. (When a UK run takes 45 minutes, you might as well talk about something along the way.)

No, I mean what I experienced today, where you become reacquainted with the Vote Kick button.

The first entertaining instance of the day, I got Halls of Lightning on Tomakan, and I was going into the middle of a run. No big deal, really; when you LFD solo, you get that a lot. The only issue I had was that I was inside Drakuru's Scourge tower, Voltarus, and I had to get out of there ASAP. I ran down, ported out, ran down the ramp, and tried to mount the gryphon.

Then I was reminded that while in disguise I couldn't mount anything. (Yeah, insert adolescent joke here.) So I bit the bullet and ported into Halls of Lightning, making a mental note that I'd probably port out into an aggro situation.

When I arrived, I found the priest and hunter standing around. Recognizing the location, I said, "Afternoon. Almost to Loken?"

"Um..." the Hunter said.

"Where is everyone? Running back?"

"Um..."

"Hey everyone!" the tank shouted, running up. "I'm an L82!"

"Okay," the Priest replied, "how did you get in?"

"The limit on normal Wrath instances is L82," I said. In one of the most overused lines in Star Wars, I had a bad feeling about this.

"I'm a Worgen!"

"Yeah," I replied, "and I'm a Scourge. Or I was a minute ago."

"And I'm a jelly doughnut," the Priest replied.

We buffed, and the tank took off. I swear, he must have thought we were blitzing a Wrath Heroic. "I can take on one of them all by myself! Wanna see?"

"Um, no," the Priest said.

"Oh. K."

We made it through to the end, killed Loken, and the tank queued us up again. Since in spite of his overenthusiasm he was an okay tank, I queued up too. The Priest and the Hunter had to go and dropped, and we stood around waiting for LFD to spit out a healer and DPS.

Then the tank and the other DPS started playing a game of comparisons.

"How old are you?"

"27. You?"

"28. Got you beat. Married?"

"Yep."

"Nope."

"Kids?"

"Yep."

The comparisons began to veer a bit more toward the explicit, and before they could get to discussing things like penis size, I dropped.

I shook it off, ported out, and naturally got jumped by a pair of Scourge in the Reliquary of Pain. Oh well.

Later that afternoon after I got done with work for the day, I got into what was almost an instant queue for Utgarde Pinnacle. We got buffed, ran up, and started the first trash pull before I could even type the words "hello."

Then the tank lost aggro.

"Hey!" one of the DPS said as he and I died. "Watch your threat!"

"WTH happened?" the healer asked.

"I was wondering the same thing," I replied. "At least UP has a short run back."

Our questions were answered a few moments later when the tank DC-ed.

Oh well. "I'm going to go questing," one of the DPS said.

"You're a lame-ass," the one replied. "Questing during an instance."

"Why not? It'll be 15 minutes before we can vote-kick him."

Lo and behold, three minutes later, the magic vote-kick window appeared. "That was the fastest 15 minutes I've ever seen," I replied.

We queued up and got a new tank, and this one was so brand new he had that "new tank" smell. "I've never been here before," he said, "and I'll need some pointers."

Things went okay --if slow-- until toward the end of the second boss. "I've gtg," the tank announced, and suddenly I had aggro.

Oh. Crap.

Luckily, Lay on Hands was off CD, so I was able to stay upright without us wiping, but the tank left the game without leaving the group. We were stuck once more.

This time, the tank we got hung around until the end, but he ignored the healer when she called out for mana. That almost cost us dearly in the Berserker area toward the end, because I got Feared into the latter two packs in the middle of the room. Rather than do something stupid like run to the tank with two trash mobs trailing me and a healer low on mana, I stayed put and took one for the team.

"How'd you get over there?" the healer asked when he maneuvered over to rez me.

"Feared," the tank and I said in unison.

/sigh

This does not bode well for Cataclysm.

(Side note: Draenei do not need the Viking-esque helmet that's a quest reward for UP; they're already horny enough, thankyouverymuch.)

From QQ to Pew Pew!

2011-01-11T23:09:00.003-05:00

Okay, I'll admit it. I've been one of the pouters QQing about heroics and what-not. But the heavens have parted at the Blizzard ivory towers and delivered news that is sure to make the DPS throng rejoice.

Among the many buffs, nerfs, and balances coming in Patch 4.0.6, mages are getting some much needed love.

With mana costs being reduced to such spells as Arcane Barrage, Fireball, and, my favorite, Living Bomb, it will make it easier to bring down mobs within a decent amount of time. It won't be the face roll we had in Wrath, but it will be enough so that we can get through a heroic without going OOM half way through trash pulls. Yes, mana management will still be, and should be, part of the class mechanic. What makes this easier for healer and tank is that trash will be more managable for DPS to get them down and still be capable of an "oh $#!+" moment.

Cataclysm does offer mages a return to utility less often seen in Wrath. Sure, we're still the best vending machines in the game, but the use of CC has made playing a mage fun once again. Yeah, I love blowing things up, but I love strategy more. I'm slow to learn them, I'll admit. But once I get it, it's a blast (pun intended) working as a team.

I'm lucky. I have proficient players in my guild who make this game fun. Definitely, I prefer doing heroics with them. But I see this next patch making it easier to get through PUGs in the random dungeon finder, and sometimes that's all we DPS have available to us.

What's that old line about patience again?

2011-01-11T13:46:00.001-05:00

I noticed that I haven't been posting as much the past month or so, but it's not like I haven't been doing anything. I'm still plugging away at getting Tomakan and Neve to the Cata zones (they're L76 and L77, thanks for asking), and I'm continuing to pug my way through instances and BGs.

My posts about foibles in instances have been few and far between because, well, the number of worthy failpugs has dropped dramatically. My speculation is that people are working on all of their toons in the Cata zones, and given the commentary about failpugs in Cata instances, I might not be too far off the mark.

One thing I have noticed is that LFD isn't really random. My instance selections while leveling in the Wrath zones have been waves of a single instance at a time: first Utgarde Keep, then Ahn'kahet, and now Violet Hold. Scattered in between have been occasional forays into Azjol-Nerub, The Nexus, and Drak'Tharon. I'm not sure how LFD determines the criteria for an instance, but I suspect that certain instances are ranked higher than others depending on your level, your gear's iLevel, and your role selection. That role selection is subdivided if you're DPS into ranged vs. melee. Finally, you're put into a pug based on need.

Anyway, I'm still plugging away in mostly abandoned areas of Azeroth. Last week, when I had some off time, I spent a morning and part of the afternoon on Tom, and between leveling mining and questing in Zul'Drak, I think I saw a grand total of a half dozen other toons. The power levelers have long passed through with their new alt combinations, and at least one guildie in Neve's guild has already lapped her and is closing in with a third toon.

I'm now starting to get antsy about making it to the Cata zones and see all of those spoilerific things that I've been avoiding on other people's blogs.

"Would it help if I got out and pushed?"

"It might!"

Convoy to L85 Progress
Tomakan - L76
Nevelanthana - L77 ("I'm almost L78!" "How old are you, 10?")

Yet Another Arms Race

2011-01-09T12:59:00.001-05:00

Another case of unintended side-effects seems to have hit with the Cataclysm green gear being accessible at L78.

I mean, we've seen this before, right? You can make the jump at L58 and L68 to the next zones and start getting the new gear and... Oh, wait. The new zones start at L80. You can get the gear off the AH, but the prices.... They make a Hummer look cheap. (Especially if you're leveling Tailoring and/or Enchanting, and you have to sink gold into those professions. Yikes.)

Hmm... Okay, you don't really need the new Cata gear to quest in the Wrath zones, and you definitely don't need them for the regular Wrath instances, either. It might make you feel more invincible running around in entry-level Cata gear in the Wrath areas, but it's not going to have that big of an impact, right?

Well, have you tried a 70+ BG lately?

I spent part of my Friday and a very late night run on Saturday getting pummeled in Eye of the Storm. Whether I was on Tomakan or Neve, it didn't matter. You could tell who the people with the Cata greens were, because their health and damage was way beyond what the rest of us were doing. It was as if Tom was was dressed in cloth armor, and Neve, well... I'm not going there. But it was absolutely ridiculous.

In the BGs for the 50s and 60s, that gear jump to the next expansion was there too, but the overall quality gap is much worse this time (try gear with iL150-160 up against iL278 gear). Tomakan at L57 could enter a one-on-one fight with an L60 tank in AV and have a reasonable chance of winning, but now? Even an L78 Mage in Cata gear outstrips our L76 hero in health. And with the only available remedy being the AH, that tips the balance of power to people with a big gold bank.

The obvious solution to this problem is to retrofit the entry level Cata gear to make it L80 and up, but with the expansion over a month old, that's not going to happen. Perhaps the best solution here is to take a page from Wrath BGs, where L80 was separated from the rest of the L70s, and move the L78+ into the L80's BGs. The result would be L70-77 and L78-84 BGs. Sure, it goes against the 10 Level breakdown, but that is a simpler solution than trying to retrofit something that has already been out there for a while.