The Soft Glow of Electric Sex Gleaming in the Window*

When you were a kid and you wanted to be outside but couldn't, you'd press your face against the glass window pane, smudging the window to the point where you left a soggy mess when you pulled your mug away. Rainy days, frozen days, days where you had to go to some important family event, just pick one and they're all the same. That longing of wanting to be where you couldn't made your entire day miserable. Even later in life, when I wanted to be reading about different worlds found in SF&F novels, if I had to be somewhere else I'd not be in the best of spirits.

I mean, who wants to go take a Chemistry test if they had the option to go play Risk or read Dune instead?

This is my copy, circa 1985.
I mean, look at the price on
this paperback! $3.95!!

Tonight is my questing buddy's regular Wrath raid night, and while for the most part I'm quite happy to be no longer in the grind given all the Heroic Plus Plus** "runs" she's been doing lately***, I will confess to missing out on all of the trappings surrounding those raids.

More than anything else, I miss the camaraderie in the raids, chatting and enjoying the company of each other, than the raid itself.

Ever since the transition from 40/20 person raids in Vanilla Classic to TBC and now Wrath Classic, the raids have felt "less than" compared to those early raids. I know that it could be argued that 10 person raids in Wrath Classic truly are less than, particularly given the differences between 10 person Wrath Naxx and 40 person Vanilla Naxx, but I've felt that way ever since I set foot in every 25 person TBC raid I participated in****. Blizzard may have made it easier to field a raid team in terms of numbers, but they also left some magic behind. 

It's an acceptable trade-off, I guess, but for me raiding hasn't been the same. 

But it's a bug I can't completely leave behind, despite my obvious refusal to "play the game" and catch-up to the current raid tier in the most expedient way possible. The raids themselves don't exactly hold much in the way of charm for me, and Trial of the Crusader holds bittersweet memories for me.

***

Back in 2010, I almost became a Wrath raider.

Oh, you never heard about that? Well, there's a reason why I never blogged about it: why blog about an event that ended up not happening? I didn't expect that I'd ever be back in this situation in a Wrath of the Lich King Classic edition of WoW, either, but here we are.

Remember this guy? Here's Quintalan,
complete in his T9 Liadrin's Battlegear, earned
the hard way by running plenty of dungeons.

Back in Satyana's very brief period of joining Parallel Context, I'd been logged in one evening when she whispered me "Hey, you want to join a raid?"

This was back when I severely restricted my WoW time because the mini-Reds were truly "mini" and they took priority over my game time, but this particular evening I had a few hours to just kick around. Still, my brain kind of froze at the prospect. I still had a hard enough time dealing with the 5-person pugs in the LFD tool --not that I didn't now what to do in those instances, but the very nature of dealing with random strangers on the internet-- and here I was being asked to make a huge leap into raiding. 

"Uh..." was my oh-so-brilliant reply. "I've never been raiding before."

"Oh, you'll love it! It's fun!"

She kind of had me over a barrel there. "Okay, what are we doing and do I have enough time to read up on it?"

"It's Trial of the Crusader, and don't worry, I'll tell you what to do."

That didn't exactly make me feel any better. But since I didn't want to let my co-blogger down, I joined the raid team that Satyana was putting together, and she cast about for 3 or so more people to finish filling out the raid.

Raiding was such an unknown to me that I didn't even realize there was a "raid" channel, so imagine my surprise when I started seeing chat messages with an unfamiliar color popping up in my dialogue box.

I, uh, kept my mouth shut throughout this, but I had a feeling that I was going to need to go on Ventrillo if we were going to run this raid. Oh yay, I thought. Mister Introvert is going to have to be in a voice program with 8 strangers and look like a complete idiot along the way.

I hung around Dalaran for a few minutes and after consulting with a WoW website --maybe Thottbot-- I flew up to the Crusader area in Icecrown.

It was then, while I felt like I was waiting for my own funeral, that it began to dawn on me that Satyana was having trouble filling out those last few spots. 

Over the next 15 or so minutes we got to 9 raiders twice, then someone would drop.

"Anybody know anybody who can join?" Satyana asked in raid chat.

Nobody said anything, and my hopes rose some more.

A couple more people dropped, and we went down to six raiders.

"Okay, I'm going to call it," Satyana finally said. "We'll try another time."

I breathed a big sigh of relief. 

That "another time" raiding with Satyana didn't materialize, as she moved on from both the server and from Parallel Context shortly after that aborted raid attempt.*****

***

Thirteen years later, Wrath Classic has returned to Trial of the Crusader, and I can't help but think of what might have happened then. 

Would I have liked it? (I don't know.) 

Would I have screwed up royally? (All signs point to yes.) 

Would my fellow raiders have tolerated my mistakes? (Come on, this is World of Warcraft we're talking about; what do you think would have happened in a pug like this in the era of GearScore?)

I do believe the trajectory of my MMO career might have been totally changed if that raid had actually happened, but my suspicion is that it would have made me even more reticent about raiding when Vanilla Classic became a thing. Even then, I had to be fast-talked into those first raids I went to in Vanilla Classic: Zul'Gurub and Molten Core. Yes, I ultimately had fun in both raids, but there was a learning curve. And the weight of expectations was not upon me. If anything the only expectation was that if we didn't loot the Corehounds like we were supposed to, we were gonna get called out in that first Molten Core raid. (Luckily for me I stayed on top of that job; I only got called out once and was in the middle of looting when it happened so it went something like "Cardwyn, loot the-- oh, nevermind.")

At times like this, I do wonder whether I deliberately sabotage my gearing and playstyle just so I am never put in the situation where I'm asked to join a raid. You can't have someone reach out to see if I'm interested if I'm not geared enough, and with my avoidance of running 5-person H+ and H++ instances, I'm guaranteeing that I won't have the gear.

Still, I do have to periodically clean the smudge from the window, looking at all the fun, wishing I was there.

*From the movie A Christmas Story. Here's the reveal of the now classic "leg lamp":

**For those who remember their programming languages, I always hear Heroic Plus Plus and think of C++. Kind of weird how this stuff comes back into your life after being away for a couple of decades.

***I put runs in quotes because the current strat for those runs is to basically run through all of the boss encounters to get to the final boss because badges for the current raid tier only drop off of the final boss.

****For the record, that does not include Hyjal, Black Temple, or Sunwell.

*****It's been forever since I've thought about her, but my biggest memory about her time here was the time she made a post criticizing someone and disparagingly wondering if someone had Downs Syndrome. My biggest regret was not standing up to her more forcefully than I did for that behavior.

EtA: It's co-BLOGGER, not coworker. Sheesh.

The Game Goes Ever On

Looking back on my history playing MMOs, I'm surprised I lasted as long as I have.

Oh, not from the "does this game interest me" perspective; after all, I still play Civ IV a lot and do get my feet wet in Baldur's Gate from time to time. What I meant was truly how ignorant I was for the first several months of playing MMOs, and how that didn't deter me from playing despite not knowing jack shit about how to play MMOs.

Okay, let me step back a second and explain a few things.

The concept of talking to people and getting quests in a computer game isn't new. After all, you see that in just about every RPG computer game, even in the old Ultima IV days. In the same vein as opening each freaking cabinet or chest in a video game might earn a player some gold (or in the case of Link smashing vases and amphorae, rupees), talking to everybody you see in a game is critically important when you're trying to figure out what to do and where to go. 

That's the case even in Stardew Valley.

Even in pencil and paper RPGs, talking to NPCs is frequently how you find out plotlines and adventure hooks, but in a pencil-and-paper game the GM is free to redo their adventure hooks to make it relevant to the group. Is the group going to the wrong inn, or the wrong town? Never fear! The hooks just swapped names, that's all. In fact, one of the hallmarks of a "meh" GM is one that can't adapt their campaign to accommodate players' various whims and flights of fancy.*

But I digress.

The basic cadence of questing, I understood. And after a disastrous misunderstanding that a Priest != a D&D style Cleric, I adapted to what I was presented with. 

Understanding gearing and how to pick out gear, however? Well....

Let me put it this way: pencil and paper RPGs are a LOT easier to understand than MMOs as far as gear is concerned. And while Pathfinder and D&D 3.0 have all sorts of crunch for min/maxing Classes and Feats and Skills, they don't have anything on the complexity of MMOs for all that.

Probably the biggest difference between the two is that a significant portion of people who play pencil and paper RPGs probably don't care quite so much about min/maxing or making optimal choices for your character as they do in MMOs. When the goal is raiding and killing the big bad, MMOs are pretty unforgiving about numbers. In pencil-and-paper RPGs, GMs have far more flexibility to adjust things on the fly as needed. They can also read the room and make decisions because, well, the GM is the ultimate arbiter of things, and if there's a conflict with what is in game versus the rules, the GM's rule is law.

MMOs simply can't compete like that, so raids become a test of skill. And gear. And talents. And other options such as enchants, potions, glyphs, etc. 

And there's that small matter of physical dexterity as well.  

***

When I started playing WoW back in 2009, I was ignorant of all of that. I was ignorant of even where to go and what to do, as far as gearing goes. I knew Mail (and then Plate once it became available) for my Paladin was good (because armor), but what stats were good was a completely different thing. After all, Paladins do cast spells, and their abilities rely on mana, so Intelligence is good, right?

Well... Not really.

I mean, not even Blizzard had a good handle on things like that in Vanilla Classic, since the gear that comprises your class tier set is frequently not as good for your role as individual pieces cobbled together. And while leveling, you're likely to not even run into gear such as bonuses to Hit and Expertise. You actually have to go out of your way to find such gear, which is why such guides exist.

This screencap is from Wowhead's TBC
Classic Ret Paladin Guide.

Take a look at the listing above, which not only shows the BiS gear for pre-raid Ret Paladins in TBC Classic, but specifically if your raid doesn't have a Boomkin with Improved Faerie Fire. There's a lone piece of Green gear there, which I chose to highlight, that has Expertise. So without looking that up and going down that rabbit hole, the piece likely a quest reward or a random drop as part of a quest chain. That's something that unless you were clued in using a guide, you'd likely have replaced with a Blue or Purple piece at earliest opportunity.

Oh, and the goggles? Yeah, you should have chosen to level Engineering, noob.

This is what I was talking about being ignorant of. 

I had no clue that anything like this existed back when I started WoW in 2009. Sure, I knew of print guides for video games, and I did have a few myself**, but websites that crunched numbers and somehow figured out the math behind the game so they could reliably tell players what they should do to min/max their characters? No, I didn't know that at all. 

Not until Soul and I had a chat in-game while hanging around Org, and he pointed out a Ret Paladin nearby. He told me to inspect that person's gear --I was pretty ignorant of how to do that, even-- and said that this is the sort of gear that I should be aiming for. He then pointed me in the direction of Elitist Jerks and their guides. 

This was in 2010, a month or two after I reached max level in a game that I'd already been playing for months, and I was wondering why I was still struggling to kill mobs when other Ret Paladins were just cruising through them.*** After all, I was finally running dungeons by myself and accumulating Blue gear.

When I finally opened up the guides, they were a revelation.

There it was, in one summary, what I needed to do to properly gem and enchant items for my use. What gear to focus on. What rotation to use.**** And why it was okay to ignore gem bonuses and just go all out on gemming Strength. 

And almost immediately my DPS output leapt upward.

Back then, I immediately became a believer in the usefulness of these guides to make me a player better, and while I can appreciate the work behind the scenes, I'm glad I wasn't involved in creating those guides. That would have taken a lot more work --and free time-- than what I had available to me.

So, when All-Trades Jack talks about the hoops you must go through to raid in WoW in his This Game Wasn't Made For You video, and how a new player would be completely ignorant of all this unless someone points them in that direction, I get it because I've lived it.

***

In retrospect, I was lucky.

I mean, I had Soul to point me to the guides rather than being ripped on or called out in group content*****, and he was nice about it. Given that I didn't have any aspirations to raiding, I wasn't trying to do anything more than simply not embarrass myself in an instance. The Quel'Delar questline alone was worth it not simply because it was the best non-raid weapon in the game at the time, it had a fantastic story in the quest chain. Gearing for T9 and then T10 may have started with simply gaining access to better gear than found running heroic 5-person instances, but because the gear looked so damn cool it became a reward in itself.

I don't have the fashion sense that
Kamalia does, but I do like the look
of a well designed set of gear.

Even when I quit WoW back at the end of Wrath, it had more to do with dealing with bots and whatnot in battlegrounds more than anything else. Because of those guides, I could at least hold my own compared to other people, even when I transitioned to other MMOs over the years. 

But if I had nobody there to tell me where to look for guidance, it's not exactly a given that I'd ever have stumbled on those external guides at all before I gave up the game. As much as I found WoW fun and interesting, I felt that there was a level of skill and understanding that separated the end game raiders from me that I couldn't match. Even when I began to get what was supposedly "good" gear, the Blue and Purple varieties, I lagged in output. How much of that poor output being due to a lack of understanding what was important for the role I had chosen --first as a Healer and then melee DPS-- is likely pretty significant. 

What was also immediately apparent once I began reading those guides was the lack of such guides on the official Blizzard website. You'd think that information such as this would be available on the website, or at least the game would have identified as such and oriented certain bonuses (such as gem bonuses) toward what was considered optimal for a player's class and spec. 

Over time, some things were fixed by Blizzard, such as using Reforging to correct gear, and aligning gear stats/drops to better match classes and roles, but also due to the hiring of some of those Elitist Jerk theorycrafters on the development staff. However, the accompanying mindset that brought about those changes reinforced other aspects of WoW (raiding/PvP focus) at the expense of others (older expacs, story, the world). 

***

I can't go back and relive the past, because my experiences helped shape who I am. I can't erase memories, such as in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and because of that I know what the answers are likely to be. 

The joy of discovery is gone, because that was a one time event. I never got to experience the Marshal Windsor storyline back in the day, so it was new and epic to me in 2019/2020. Raiding was new and fresh to me, even though it wasn't to most people I have encountered in Classic. Looking ahead to the Wrath Classic release, there will be no fumbling around, trying to figure things out, and getting frustrated when I hit a DPS/healing wall. I know where to go and what to do to discover what the meta should be. 

From all over the internet.

However, I will feel constrained by the chains of doing things the "right way", knowing that most people will simply accept them as the cost of doing business, without stopping to wonder what it would have been like to look upon the game with fresh eyes, with all the joys and frustrations contained therein. 

Will the tolerance be there for those people, I wonder?

*I should know, since I was in a campaign with one for 20+ years. I only found out when it blew up this past Spring that we "missed all sorts of encounters" along the way. Which is pretty silly, given that we had no idea we missed that stuff.

**Such as the in-depth understanding behind the original Sid Meier's Civilization and the first Master of Orion games.

***I went hunting to try and find a post on the matter back in the day, but either I'm just looking in the wrong place or it's simply not coming up. Kind of a bummer.

****In the case of Ret Paladins in Wrath, there wasn't one. I breathed a big sigh of relief that I was actually doing it right for a change.

*****Okay, that happened too, back when I was still leveling as a Holy Paladin, which directly led to me switching to Ret.

Corking the Bottle

So the latest WOW expac is likely to be Dragonflight, apologies to Anne McCaffrey I suppose. 

Want to discuss The Dragonriders of Pern?
I'm ready.

 

I am conflicted about this, but not likely for the reasons that you might expect.

You see, having been reintroduced to the dragonflights by way of Classic, I miss how they were presented there, and I long for a return to that level of storytelling in WoW, where the Dragon Aspects were these remote beings that were simply not seen or heard from directly.

Even in Burning Crusade, the dragons you met operated as their own agents, and always undercover, posing mostly as humans or elves. (Chromie is not seen in BC, although her flight did have a significant part to play.) At best, in Classic and TBC you met the prime mate or the matron protectorate of a flight, not the Aspects themselves. Even then, it was pretty explicitly stated that the flights were not to interfere with the affairs of mortals, and was only the depradations of the Black Flight (and the Gronn) that forced their hand. The best they did was provide some guidance and support; anything more direct seemed doomed to failure (see Sunken Temple and Blackwing Lair for example).

Even though I did like a lot of Wrath –it was my introduction to the game, after all—that expac began the shift in how the dragonflights and the Aspects were presented. The result was to make them more familiar and mundane, which kind of ruined them as a part of Azeroth.

It can be hard to express my sentiment here without an analogy, so let me put it this way. If you are an average French citizen circa 1700, King Louis XIV is some remote figure that you knew of but didn’t have a personal relationship with. The Sun King was no Prince Hal out of Henry IV. But if he did start hanging out with you, having you over for dinner and asking your opinion on the politics of the day (and not threatening to have to imprisoned if he didn’t like what you had to say) he would cease to be the Sun King and instead just be closer to “Lou the Baker” who lives next door. The mystique would be gone, and with it the familiarity that replaced it would make the storytelling less by comparison.

Which is what happened in Wrath and Cataclysm.

I will freely admit that the first time I was summoned to Wyrmrest Temple and flown up top was kind of daunting. 

Ever had that feeling you're in over
your head? Yeah, like right about now.

 

I just didn’t know how daunting that would have been to someone who’d been playing since 2004 (or earlier), seeing Alexstraza and company for the first time. Of course, the members of the Accord being 15 feet tall* didn’t exactly make them feel all that chummy either...

You were always the smarter sibling,
Neve. Kneeling is a damn good idea.

 

...but by the end of that entire expac you were on a somewhat first name** basis with the entire Wyrmrest Accord. Which when you think about it, is rather…. Odd.

You started off your career killing some imps in Durotan or Defias in Northshire Abbey, and now you’re talking to the most powerful beings on Azeroth as if you’re on equal footing with them.

Go figure.

Then Cataclysm came along, and while it is very much the Thrall story***, it is also the story of the dragonflights and their Aspects. Over the course of the expac you end up being very chummy with the Aspects, as in “we’ll have you over to dinner and gaming next week” sort of chummy.

I do have to admit there are a few nice
perks being friends with dragons.

 

Set piece-wise, very cool. But story-wise from a logical standpoint, that makes no sense at all. You are not one of the most powerful people on the planet; there’s a ton of others hanging around Dalaran or Stormwind or Orgrimmar right then and there, so either you’re far more powerful than you thought or the Aspects are far less powerful than you thought. Either way, this serves to completely undermine all of the storytelling that went on in Vanilla and TBC.

And I’m pretty sure that the WoW story team doesn’t see the problems inherent in that, but once you uncork that bottle, you can’t stuff the genie back in.

***

Heading back to Wrath, the entire subplot about Malygos going crazy was completely lost on me at the time, because I didn’t have the backstory or the weight of in-game history. But now I do, and I can now say with a degree of certainty…

WHAT THE FUCK, BLIZZARD?

You really took one of the four most powerful beings on Azeroth and just up and had him decide to go bonkers one day and decide to kill all of the arcane wielders just because? Except for those who hung out with Malygos, of course, because that was what he did: he wanted all the magic for him and his entourage. Hardly any explanation, and he was given an Onyxia-style one shot raid that was hardly worth it when compared to Discount Naxx, Ulduar, and ICC. Hell, Wintergrasp’s raid was more well attended in the guilds I was a member of than Malygos’.

So what was the point? That Malygos was out of the way so that Jaina could be making out with Kalecgos, the Aspect-in-absentia?

/sigh

Anyway, I’m aware that in Legion (or thereabouts) Ysera dies too, so I guess I should be glad I didn’t play that expac. It certainly seems that the in-game lifespan of a Dragon Aspect throughout WoW isn’t exactly very long. At times it feels like the Roman Emperor Commodus lived longer than some WoW leaders. Or the average Doctor Who companion in the New Who era. And yes, that’s a snap at the WoW story team; I didn’t sign up to watch leaders go crazy or die or whatever just because you needed a good dramatic setpiece. Work harder at crafting a plausible, well told story and you won’t have to rely upon a virtual bloodbath whenever you want drama.

***

But in the end the familiarity, the deaths, the inconsistent story, and a lot of other small things add up to the dragonflights not being a big deal compared to what they once were. And while I should be excited that the dragons will take center stage, I don’t know if there’s anything you can do to give them back their majesty and remoteness that they once had.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to get the grill started. We’re having Alexstraza and her Consort over for steak and roasted vegetables, and we’ll be playing Concept afterward.

"The easiest route is to take I-75 north
across the bridge and get onto I-74..."

 

 

*I presume they could be any height they wanted to be, since dragons were master manipulators of the arcane even before the Highborne. It’s just that they chose to be gigantic to intimidate the lesser races. But as I’ve pointed out before, I suspect that at least someone on the WOW dev team had a thing for giantesses.

**When I was first typing this post out this little section autocorrected to “you were on a somewhat first base basis”. I snickered, because Jaina certainly was during the events in at least one of the books. 

"So you're the one that Jaina is shacking
up with? You know, you ought to do more
to disguise yourself. The super size
look and blue hair kind of gives you away."

 

And for people unfamiliar with the baseball analogy, each base corresponds to a certain level of physical intimacy. First base is kissing/french kissing. Go look up the rest in urban dictionary if you’re curious, because the quickest way to get me to blush and stammer is to have to explain to a girl/woman what second base and third base are, let alone a home run.

***I’m calling it here now, that if part of the expansion is the restoration of the Aspects and selection of new flight leaders, then Jaina will end up leading the Blue Flight. Because that’s a natural yang to the ying of Thrall being whatever the hell he is these days. And that Blizzard can’t seem to help themselves with the Mary Sue and Marty Stu that are Jaina and Thrall.

One Little Add-on That Changed WoW Forever

I was speaking with Shintar* recently when she pointed out that I worry too much about gear.

/raises hand 

Yes, that's me. I'm guilty.

But in that moment I realized something. I began playing WoW during Wrath, and if there was one hallmark of Wrath --outside of the destruction that raiding in Wrath caused to many guilds-- it was the omnipresent Gear Score.

Does anybody else remember the Trade Chat entries for ICC pugs to be something like "LFR ICC 10-man. GS 5000+ pst"? That magical 5000 Gear Score became a barrier to people getting into ICC and other raids, because it boiled down your gear, your skill, and your class to a mere number that people could point to and determine your raid worthiness.  I seem to recall that 5000+ meant at least a full T9 set, and probably at least one or two T10 pieces, which really meant you were capable of grinding 5-man dailies over a period of a couple of months. 

Skill? No.

Talent Spec? No.

Knowledge of the fights? No.

But you've got that gear, man.....

Blizzard indirectly encouraged the GS domination by having their own internal method of determining your "fitness" for entering the ICC 5-man instances via the LFG tool. Once you got past a certain point, and I think it was around the 3000+ GS, you could get into the Frozen Halls instances. I remember quite clearly when The Forge of Souls popped up for me, and I promptly freaked out. I was kind of expecting something more tame, such as Ajol-Nerub, but nope. 

"WTF is this?" I remembered whispering Soul back then.

"It means that you've high enough gear score to get into the endgame instances," he replied. "Congrats!"

I wasn't that thrilled, as it was a whole new set of strats to learn, and I knew I was starting at the bottom once more.

And the flaws of LFG had already begun to rear their ugly head, as one of the players I'd ported in with promptly dropped group, and this was on an instance with endgame implications and gear designed to get you ICC ready.

That sort of behavior sticks with you, and you wonder what you did wrong.

***

I guess I'd completely buried those experiences in Wrath somewhere deep inside my psyche, but I can still see a direct correlation between those experiences pugging via LFG and my behavior today, both the good and the bad. Every time you'd get The Old Kingdom as an instance, there would be at least one person who would drop as they couldn't be bothered to deal with a "long" instance when all they wanted was their daily badges. And every time I saw that behavior, I'd resolve that I'd never be "that guy" who put themselves over the group. 

But it also does explain my obsession with making sure my gear is "good enough", because I was once on the receiving end of being judged purely based on what I carried with me into a fight, not how well I performed in the fight. 

It's kind of bizarre when you think about it, because this is simply the same "judging" behavior from middle school and high school, picked up and transferred wholesale into an MMO. But with numbers to back it up.

***

Maybe I ought to re-evaluate Wrath some day, without the rose colored glasses that I have for my first exposure to MMOs. I'm not so sure I'll like what I see, but I believe being honest with yourself is one way to take a critical eye toward the assumptions you make whenever you play.

But trying to make me stop worrying about gear? Well, that's a topic for another time.

*Owner of several blogs, most notably Going Commando (SWTOR Blog), Priest With a Cause (WoW Classic Blog), and Neverwinter Thoughts (Neverwinter Blog). And yes, I can trust her to get at the root of a problem. She knows me way too well.

Waiting for Godot WoW-Cthulhu

To say that I'm disappointed the Big Bad at the end of another WoW expac is related to the Old Gods is probably an understatement.

Sure, it's Emo Guy Garrosh Hellscream, but come on.  It is yet another Old God-related ending to a game that simply can't move beyond the Old Gods as a plot device.  About the only expac that didn't have a heavy dose of Old God material in some form was Burning Crusade, and I've often suspected that if Kil'Jaeden wasn't around to provide a convenient villain in the Sunwell, we'd have seen yet another Old God pulling Kael's strings.

By my count, Mists' Y'Shaarj-influenced Siege of Orgrimmar will make three of the five releases (including Vanilla) that was overshadowed with an Old God-esque ending:  Vanilla, Cataclysm, and Mists.  You could also make an argument that the Lich King, while tracing a lineage back to the Burning Legion, is also heavily influenced by Yogg-Saron*; after all, what exactly does Arthas use as a metal for his devices and buildings but Saronite, the blood of Yogg-Saron itself.  And don't forget the Old God influenced quest chain in Icecrown where the ghostly child teaches you about Arthas and his heart; there's a reason why we found Arthas' heart in that strange area in the first place.

What makes the Y'Shaarj  tie-in so disappointing to me was that the entire concept of the Sha was so new and interesting that it seems a shame that Blizzard couldn't let it stand on it's own.  Just like how the Mogu had to have the help of the Zandalari Trolls, the underlying cause of the Sha just had to be the Old Gods.

I suppose you could say that Blizzard has an addiction to conspiracies.  The popular uprising in Westfall characterized by the Defias simply couldn't stand on it's own, it had to tie in to the Twilight's Hammer somehow.  The overeager and blind self righteousness of the Scarlet Crusade couldn't stand on its own as Garithos' racism and arrogance did in Warcraft III, it had to be tied back into the Dreadlords and the Legion.

Maybe that works for a while in a fantasy world, but the problem is that in the real world a lot of stuff just happens.  There is no dark conspiracy behind a lot of criminal activity; a lot of it is a crime of opportunity (or passion).  If there is a plot involved, it is very localized (one spouse hiring a hitman to take out the other spouse, for example).  Sure, there's organized crime, but you can't blame everything on the mob.  If there's a drug turf war, it tends to unfold organically, not manipulated by some master puppeteer in the shadows.

Fantasy lends itself well to that evil overlord, the shadows in the dark controlling our lives.  But when you dip into that same well too often, it starts to feel forced and loses its punch.  The most unique thing about Mists was the Sha, but it turned out to be just more Old God trickery, lessening the impact that it could have had. When all questlines lead to the same ending, all that's left for variety is the kill ten rats.

***

Perhaps that is why I've seen a lot of griping lately that WoW's high point was Wrath.  Wrath had one raid that was the culmination of a long questline that had absolutely nothing to do with the "Let's Get Arthas!" movement:  Ulduar.  Was it Old God related?  Yes.  Was it a big, tough raid?  Yes.  Did it advance the Arthas story?  No.  Not one bit.

Ulduar was part of a giant three pronged fork in the entire Northrend questline --Arthas and Malygos being the other two-- and it demonstrated that a story didn't have to be part of the main part of the expac to be meaningful.  Blizzard has gotten away from that with Cataclysm and Mists, and to add insult to injury they end up reusing the same old same Old (Gods) as a crutch.

I guess that we're going to be treated to yet another dose of Old Gods fairly soon, assuming that The Dark Below turns out to be the name of the next WoW expac.  After all, what tends to inhabit the dark places of the world but Twilight Hammer and their ilk?




*Certainly in hindsight people still talk about Ulduar as the high point of WoW raiding, and I have to admit I liked Storm Peaks much more than Icecrown.

On a Clear Day, I Can See Pandaria

I may be a Wrath baby, but there was always something exciting about passing through the Dark Portal and into Outland on a toon for the first time.  When my rogue passed through into the barren wasteland of Hellfire Peninsula, crawling with demons and Fel Orcs, it brought a smile to my face.*

I've yet to figure out why starting out on the Borean Tundra or Howling Fjord doesn't inspire the same reaction out of me.

Boring Borean Tundra is vast, sprawling, and feels totally disjointed.  The Horde and Alliance outposts in the northern part of the zone seem like a clumsy method of introducing the Taunka and Mechagnomes --the Taunka outpost in the SE part of the zone does a much better job for the Horde-- and I often get the feeling that the flight point is there merely to provide a connection between the main bases in the zone and Sholazar Basin.  I like Coldarra and the Taunka village as well as the DEHTA compound, but the best quest zone in the Borean is Thassarian's quest line.

By contrast, Howling Fjord is more focused, the scenery more beautiful, and plants the seeds of the quest lines that bear fruit in both the Wrathgate and Storm Peaks.  But there are only so many Viking rip-offs one can take before it starts to get old.**  The same goes for the Forsaken, where after a while you start to wonder if the writers were using Jeremy Irons' character from the Dungeons and Dragons movie as a model.

Perhaps the biggest reason why I'm not that fond of the Wrath intro zones boils down to the storytelling itself:  Blizzard does best when it is a) being completely original and not basing storyline elements off of a real world counterpart, and b) when they are trying not to do too much.  If the storylines are too much to remember, or you're led too much by the nose, a zone loses its luster.

Look at Storm Peaks versus Icecrown.  While both have quests that end two separate storylines, the better of the two is the more original one:  Icecrown.  In Storm Peaks, while I do enjoy the zone better than Howling Fjord, the quests are an exercise in "spot the Norse myth behind the story".  The Icecrown storyline is all about the Death Knights and the Crusaders, where groaners are limited to the Valhalla and Eye of Sauron references.

In the end, these detours into Hellfire and Borean Tundra are just so I can gear up enough to press onward.  My rogue is only two expacs behind, now, but reaching L70 means I'm that much closer to my goal of leveling up to Pandaria via BGs.  The path has been painfully slow at times, but the end is in sight.

And I really hope that I'm not going to be wincing at all of the sly in-jokes when I reach Pandaria.





*The minimal level of cooperation between Alliance and Horde never hurt either.

**The biggest eye-roller isn't in Howling Fjord at all, but in Borean Tundra:  Hagar Heigarr the Horrible.  Considering Hagar the comic strip jumped the shark back when I was a kid, I can only groan when I see that name in the Tuskarr area.  What's next, a storyline with names from Funky Winkerbean?

Where Have You Gone, Svala Sorrowgrave?

The news that Blizzard is going to stop putting out new 5-man instances for Mists seems to have caused a bit of a stir.

Those people who gear up using LFR kind of shrugged and said "no big deal".  So did those who like the new Scenario concept.  And the "I love dailies" crowd chuckled and continued muttering to themselves in a corner.

But for me, I see this as the continuation of what started in Cataclysm.

Cataclysm began the deviation from the standard Warcraft pattern by instituting Heroic-only 5-mans, and then segregated them further by separating them out in the LFG queue.  I can presume this was done so that those who wanted to either gear up to the latest tier or max their VP acquisition could do so in the most efficient manner, but as in all things there were unintended consequences.

By subdividing 5-mans like that, the queue times soared to levels only previously seen in obsolete 5-man end game instances.*  Starting with the Zuls --Zul'Aman and Zul'Gurub-- people began to complain about a lack of variety in their instance runs.  Finally, the new Heroics created an "asshat divide" within 5-mans:  asshats flooded the 5-man Heroics, particularly the latest ones, while people who simply enjoyed running instances gravitated toward the baseline 5-man Normal instances.

However, those who enjoyed 5-man Normals found their options sadly lacking as compared to their Heroic brethren.  Unlike Wrath, which had the same number of Normal 5-mans as their Heroic version --16, if you were curious-- there were only 7 Normals vs. 14 Heroics in Cataclysm.**  Perhaps the statistical data for Wrath showed that not a lot of people ran the ICC Normals, but instead of making the last patch's instances Heroic-only, Blizz took their solution a step further in Cata and eliminated the Normal option entirely from all major patch instances.  It wouldn't be so drastic a step if it weren't that Cata dropped with only 7 Normal instances as opposed to 12 in Wrath.

And now we come to Mists.

Mists shipped with 4 Normal 5-mans (9 Heroic), and that's going to be it.  If you're an instance runner, you're out of luck.

While Blizzard will point out the Scenario model that is new to Mists, they are all tuned for max level and are designed for a "dungeon-lite" experience.  I look on them as the equivalent of a multi-player Daily that you can queue for, not a traditional instanced dungeon.

So what happened to the slate of instances we are used to seeing in an expac?

LFR.

Blizzard has decided to use LFR for mid-expac progression, and as a consequence instances have drawn the short end of the stick.  To be fair there were only 4 new instances post-release in Wrath versus 5 in Cataclysm, but those 4 represented only 25% of the overall total of Wrath instances as opposed to 36% in Cata.  Think about it:  Wrath shipped with 12 instances, while Cata had 9 (7 normal).  If you look at Normal instances alone, this is a further erosion from the Wrath model:  12 -> 7 -> 4.

If you only ran Normals, Blizzard didn't design any new instances for you at all once Cataclysm dropped, so this erosion isn't new behavior to you.  What is new, however, are how few Normal instances are now available and the lack of future prospects for those instances.

As much as Dave Kosak Twittered that there will be more 5-mans in future expacs, the numbers don't lie.  Instances are less important to Blizzard moving forward.  Scenarios and LFR will get the development time previously allocated to instances, and the expectation is that you will use instances to assist you in getting that initial "raid ready", but instances as a viable max level activity will be phased out.

Before someone says that Blizzard is swimming in money given the number of subs that WoW has, remember that profit doesn't translate into more development staff.  Even if there were more development staff around, items such as Pet Battles have taken up significant development time, further eroding the time to devote to 5-man instances.

Finally, let's not forget the elephant in the room:  Titan.  It could also be that Blizzard is shifting priorities to their next gen MMO.  Any low hanging fruit, such as instance development, will get put on the back burner.

I think we can safely say that the BC/Wrath era of instances is now over.  I'll miss having a lot of instances to run, as my limited playing time prohibits even LFR from being an option, and Scenarios are of little use to someone still leveling a toon in Pandaria.  But I also thought it a mistake by Blizzard in Cataclysm to not pair up Normal instances with the latter Heroics, as those Normals became a refuge from the drama that so often infected Cata Heroics.

But hey, popularity doesn't lie, right?




*I once waited 2 hours for the queue to pop for a 5-man Heroic Tempest Keep/MgT run back in Cata.  Amazing how much farming you can get done in that time.

**Since BC instituted the Heroic we can't count Vanilla, but in BC there were 16 instances and all had Normal and Heroic settings.

Lost in the Basin

Sholazar Basin has to be my least favorite zone to level in.

This, in spite of the presence of the Avatar of Freya and the amusement surrounding the "Why is everyone looking at me like I crashed the ship?" banter, and the Frenzyheart vs. Oracles quest line.

I suppose I should be happy about a series of quests that are blatant in that they're the "kill ten rats" variety --that's what you get with Hemet and Co, really-- but all I feel is "please please PLEASE just let me get through this quickly!"  At one point I looked up and checked the number of quests I'd finished in the Basin, saw it was around 15, and blanched.  I had about sixty more quests to go?

I needed a beer.  Badly.

Of all of the zones in Northrend, Sholazar is the one that feels the most 'tacked on'.  The Scourge only start to take center stage once you get through all of Hemet's quests and almost to the end of the Oracle/Frenzyheart quests.  Yes, you could skip around and head straight to Freya, but in the end there's no avoiding the Nesingwary and O/F stuff.

When I made it to Sholazar Basin the first time on Quintalan, I'd already finished up Storm Peaks and most of Icecrown, and I'd paid the (then) 7k gold to get Cold Weather Flying.  However, that did me little good in Sholazar because of the tree cover.  Having returned to it twice now, I've found that it is harder and harder to navigate because you have to fly so low to the ground.  I'm sure I'm not alone in this, but the more obstacles to fly through and constantly change directions with give me headaches.  In much the same way that first-person shooters give me motion sickness, flying through Sholazar --like Un'Goro or Feralas-- is a chore for me.  Then, when you add the numerous 'kill ten rats' quests of Nesingwary and Co, Sholazar makes my head spin.

I thought about other forest zones that don't give me such problems, such as Ashenvale and Felwood*, and two things do stand out:  the density of the foliage and the gaps in the forest.  Ashenvale and Felwood are temperate forests, and the density of the trees at flying level isn't so bad.  Or rather, you can fly at a decent level above ground and see where you're going.  You also get breaks in the forest where you can get your bearings and not feel so closed in.  With Sholazar (and U'G and Feralas), that feeling of claustrophobia can come on strong, along with the disorientation of a forest that looks alike in every direction.

Maybe with some Dramamine Sholazar Basin wouldn't feel so bad.  At the same time, however, it is pretty much a dead-end, storywise.  I'm not sure if that's what's intended, but the impression I get is that Sholazar is the odd-man out of the Northrend story Blizz wanted to tell.  Sure, there's an Avatar there fighting the encroachment of the Scourge, and you have a connection with Un'Goro, but as far as the focus on progressing the story toward the Endgame, Sholazar stands apart.  It takes you nowhere.  Normally I wouldn't mind, given that it expands the overall feel of the game world, but given that the three expansions after Vanilla got away from the "sandbox" type of game, Sholazar just feels out of step from the rest of the design goals for Azeroth.


*I would include the Ghostlands too, but you can't fly there.  Yet.

You Never Forget Your First Time

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.