Better than Concrete Geese if You Ask Me

If you ever wondered about the impact of geek culture on the public consciousness, I give you these pics of stone sculptures from one of our local garden centers:

#Blaugust2025

The George Lucas Method of Preserving the Past

Time may change me

But I can't trace time

--David Bowie, Changes

One thing I’ve discovered about Northrend is that the questing cadence is quite different from Outland (TBC Classic) and the Old World (Vanilla Classic). I suppose that you could say that Northrend is the first area that contains the “Modern WoW” quest design, where you get quest chains that are: 

Quest 1 -> Quest 2 [-> Quest 3 Optional] -> Mini Boss

in flow. TBC Classic had some quests like that –and Vanilla Classic as well—but you find it in abundance throughout Northrend. Since I started playing WoW back in Wrath, I never realized that there was anything other than that style of quest design, but having seen the progression from Classic -> TBC Classic -> Wrath Classic, I can now see clearly how Blizz zeroed in on that questing style after fumbling around with a variety of different designs in Vanilla. 

Which also explains why I’m so used to that cadence throughout the MMO-verse, especially those that are called “WoW Clones”. 

***

Of course, doing things in threes isn't exactly new. Aristotle --yes, that Aristotle-- had a triptych about communication involving three steps:

1. Tell people what you're going to say.
2. Say it.
3. Tell people what you just told them.

The first time I encountered that triptych, I was in college and part of a team working on a project for an Engineering Design Seminar. Everybody had a part to play on the team, and I got drafted (they pulled my name out of a hat) to present the team's findings in class. I remembered my old Speech class back in high school providing me some basics on how to lead a meeting, but it was only when I was putting the report used with the overhead machine did my professor suggest the triptych. 

Ah, those were the days.
You know, before PowerPoint.
And computer presentations.
From Wikipedia.

I always thought the triptych came from Mr. Rogers --again, that Mr. Fred Rogers-- but only when I looked it up for this article did I discover its true origin.

Regardless, the triptych highlights the importance of the cadence of three things at a time, and one that Blizz* has embraced in their quest/story design.

***

Remember the long, meandering questline for Marshal Windsor --or for the Horde, their even worse Onyxia questline-- and how it sometimes took forever? Or the Green Hills of Stranglethorn? Yeah, those questlines would never get made today, and I recall Soul telling me when I first started encountering those missing pages for the Green Hills of Stranglethorn that even Blizz admitted that the quest didn't work the way they wanted it to. 

But you know, I was fine with that. It may not have been a streamlined experience, but it certainly had character. 

***

Being a Wrath baby, I had no idea just how much the Old World --and, consequently, Outland-- already had been altered from its original state when Wrath dropped. I was aware of the "Feats of Strength" achievements, for things that were no longer in the game, but since most of the people I interacted with in-game had begun in TBC or Wrath, I never knew about some of the quests and achievements that lurked out there. Such as Marshal Windsor. 

Or that the original Hemet Nesingwary quests in Nagrand didn't involve killing 12 animals per quest, but 30.**

Or just how many of those older quest zones --such as in Silithus or Burning Steppes-- began life with all those mobs as elites, not the normal mobs I encountered. 

Or that some of those roaming world bosses in places such as Burning Steppes were true world bosses, not the "rares" as they turned into when the Dark Portal opened. 

By the time Wrath came along, enough of the Old World had changed that some of those old zones were closer to the 1997 Special Edition Star Wars releases than the OG versions I thought I knew. 

Some of the changes were simple, such as allowing riding inside the ring and chains areas of Blackrock Mountain, which was how I remembered it when I first poked my nose inside. (Because Wrath, you know.) The same goes for allowing some of those high end (Vanilla era) raid/dungeon Summoning Stones allow summons for up to L80, an increase from TBC's more stringent requirements. 

Of course, the fact that Summoning Stones actually, you know, SUMMONED people without the need for a Warlock being new to TBC was bit more of a dramatic change to the environment.

Yep, a lot like that.
From WoW's Facebook page.

Or the questing additions to Dustwallow Marsh, which effectively doubled the quests in the zone and completed the mystery questline as to who caused the fire at the Shady Rest Inn. 

Oh, and the change of Tabetha from a mysterious character of somewhat unknown origin and purposes (and age, let's face it) to just another Mage with some apprentices hanging around was also significant. To a non-Mage, that might not be a big deal, but to me... Yeah, it's kind of a big deal. The Mage questline to make a wand in Vanilla Classic was hard to do at level, because you were outnumbered and outleveled by everything nearby. You either had to band together for mutual defense or you spent a lot of time and effort getting there and back to her farm, not to mention actually doing the quests. Even finding the farm was an adventure, because there was no path there and nothing to indicate you were nearby until you were practically on top of her shack. Yes, it was quite a rite of passage for a Mage if you tried to do it at level without an assist from a much higher level toon.***  

Even Horde Mages sought out
Tabetha. Also, note the name of 
Tabetha's apprentice in the screenshot:
Garion. Someone at Blizz was likely
a fan of David Eddings' The Belgariad.

That's not to pretend that Cataclysm wasn't a blowing up of the Old World entirely, it's just an acknowledgement that what I thought I knew wasn't the case. 

***

There are times when I simply don't understand George Lucas.

His historical reluctance to never release the original trilogy in their original form is totally at odds with his reverence for the movie serials of decades past. I get it that he paid homage to those movie serials with Raiders of the Lost Ark and the eventual Indiana Jones series of movies, just as I understand his desire to see Star Wars as he originally envisioned it come to life on the screen. I also understand that he wants his wishes as the creator of the work to be respected. 

That being said, the original Star Wars has significant historical importance from not only a fan's perspective but a filmmaker's as well. It's not just that the special effects were ground breaking --they were****-- or that the cinematography and editing were all well done, but the entire product is a film that can be studied by future students to appreciate the significance of A New Hope. (And yes, I'd be fine with the "A New Hope" scrubbed from the titles, but I realize that is likely never gonna happen.) As much as George studied those movies and movie serials of the past, future filmmakers should be allowed to study his movies as well.

From quickmeme.com.

Right now, people will look at Star Wars: A New Hope decades from now and wonder just how much was modified over the years, and how much was left alone.

***

Admittedly, video games --and MMOs in particular-- don't quite have the same problems. If you'll recall when discussions surrounding Blizz creating an "official" Vanilla version of WoW first began in earnest, the biggest question was "Which release version of Vanilla should Classic be?" Wilhelm Arcturus weighed in on that more than a year before Blizz officially announced WoW Classic, and others did too. Trying to figure out what release version of an online game --even if it were just an exercise among friends relaxing on a weekend, remembering the "good old days"-- is bound to raise some passionate responses among any fan base.*****

This isn't going to devolve into a "no changes" versus "some changes" argument, because I'm not interested in that. It's just that I wanted to point out that in WoW at least, there really never was a static "Old World" that I thought existed once TBC and Wrath released. I'm not even talking about class changes and whatnot, because that's been tweaked from the beginning, but I meant the world itself. Blizzard didn't have to blow up the Old World to make things better in Cataclysm, because they already had tweaked it a bit in TBC and proven that "some changes" could be done without ruining everything.

I guess it says something about Wrath Classic that my very first impressions about the expac were what changed in the Old World versus a return to Northrend itself. Having seen firsthand how the class changes in the prepatch suddenly felt overpowered compared to TBC Classic, I can understand now how some people felt Wrath wasn't what they were used to, raiding and other things notwithstanding. What I thought was an unchanging world definitely wasn't.

*And other software development houses, to be fair.

**When that changed in the Wrath Pre-patch, my jaw dropped.

***One, that I might add, I did not accomplish at level. 

****As much as 2001: A Space Odyssey broke new ground in special effects in 1968, the overall feel of those effects was to emphasize the cerebral nature of 2001 as a film. Lucas expanded on those designs and integrated them seamlessly into an action movie format in a way that still feels concrete today. I look at the average Marvel, DC, or Star Wars product today and think that I'm watching a comic book rather than an actual film. There's a certain amount of Uncanny Valley feel to them, where in the back of your head you comprehend that it's all computerized special effects, and there's nothing that people can actually reach out and touch.

*****If Bioware wants to bring back "Classic" SWTOR, I'd be on board with playing! I remember how much harder things were back in the day, and how convoluted certain things were (commendations on a per planet basis, anyone?) But I also remember going through just about every quest on every planet because you needed all of the XP and gear and whatnot you could get. The people who blitzed to the end, WoW style, then filled chat with "I'm bored" moved on very quickly, so these servers would most definitely not be for them.

Well, That was Unexpected

Back in pre-history, when people still loved the live action version of Game of Thrones on HBO, the question arose what would happen when the showrunners ran out of George R.R. Martin's A Song of Fire and Ice as source material. After all, George wasn't known as the speediest of authors, and anybody could see that the series on television was going to finish long before the books were.

Well, it was revealed back in 2014 that the showrunners had met with George and already knew the broad strokes going forward, including how the series would end.

And while Season 7 had its moments --including the Hodor masterstroke that the showrunners confirmed was George's idea-- we all know how Season 8 ended the series.*

I was thinking about that debacle, where there were only broad sketches of what came after the books ended, when I read Kamalia's post about the existential horror surrounding WoW retail's upcoming Shadowlands expac reflecting on Battle for Azeroth. Namely, exactly how much of the Warcraft/WoW story is planned out ahead of time?

And when I mean planned out, I don't mean for an entire expac, but rather years in the future.

***

As I commented on Kamalia's post, back when I was in college --and even before the red beard itself-- I'd read about how soap operas were plotted out. I was curious about this because I developed an addiction to Days of our Lives my sophomore year in college**

Yes, it was really this cheesy.

and I wondered just how much of the plot was planned in advance and how much was just made up as they went along. In spite of the "bad acting" that goes on in those shows --and when you consider that they film/record them day in and day out with very few outtakes due to the schedule, it's actually pretty good-- the plots, stories, and scripts are written months in advance of actual filming. Add to that the shows frequently had months of filming already "in the can" as the saying goes, the storylines were frequently plotted out about a year or more before airing. While this isn't saying a lot for a regular prime time television show, a soap is broadcast almost without fail, five days a week, 52 weeks a year. At maximum, that's 260 possible episodes, but in reality --due to holiday programming and other factors-- the number is somewhere between 200 and 260. For a 24 episode prime time season, that's 10 years worth of episodes, and for a BBC or cable type of series that's more like 20 years' worth.

To keep everything straight, therefore, long term plotting is essential.

Now, let's translate this into video games.

An MMO such as LOTRO, which is based on a completed series of fantasy novels, has a great advantage over MMOs that are on the Game of Thrones plan. You know the plot, you know the characters, and you even know the geographic locations and the potential for in-zone quests. All you have to do is fill in some of the details and extrapolate based on the author's works (and in Tolkien's case, both finished and unfinished). While I'm not saying it's easy mode, for a developer it's far less stressful to fill in a portion of Middle-earth than it is, say, the Star Wars universe with SWTOR.

Sure, there's a lot of potential reference material out there for SWTOR, but there's also a huge amount of freedom for a developer to change things around. The Old Republic era of the Star Wars universe doesn't have to tiptoe around the old Expanded Universe novels (outside of the Revan ones, obviously), it doesn't have to worry about any of the movies in terms of settings and plot, and it certainly doesn't have to worry about the vast majority of Star Wars fans upset with either the jettisoning of the EU or the direction the prequels and/or sequels took.

But it is under constant scrutiny by everyone and their grandmother for whether SWTOR is "Star Wars enough" to be considered Star Wars.

Between that and the constant pressure SWTOR's development staff is under, courtesy of Bioware executives and EA overall, it's no wonder that the direction of SWTOR's story has swung wildly over the years.

***

Warcraft and WoW fans may not be as rabid as the Star Wars fanbase***, but they do have definite ideas on how their beloved franchise should progress. However, unlike SWTOR and LOTRO, WoW's fanbase dictates a bit of a different focus than what you'd come to expect.

Remember the maxim "the game starts at max level"? For WoW, that means the focus is on Endgame more than anything else. However, I personally don't think that Endgame itself is Blizz' focus, narratively speaking.

If you look at the expacs for WoW --at least the ones that I've played up until I dropped by subscription-- it seems that Blizz's focus is toward specific set pieces, and plot/narrative is driven in service of those specific set pieces.

From Burning Crusade --with the dramatic conversion of Lady Liadrin prior to taking up the leadership the Shattered Sun offensive-- through Wrath with the Wrathgate event, and even into Mists with its multiple video cut setpieces (and the Siege of Orgrimmar), that seems to be what drives the WoW expac.

But for me, the question is whether there's an overall narrative plan stretching across multiple expacs, or whether their service to the set piece means that the set piece is developed first and then the expac is developed around it.

***

The reason why Kamalia's post is so important is because she lays bare that the upcoming Shadowlands expac takes all of those dramatic death scenes --or moments of sacrifice/suicide missions-- and makes them horrifying because death isn't the release people thought it was.

And yes, I agree with her completely on her point.

But I don't believe that was a primary objective of the expac; it was merely a side effect of the WoW expac development process.

I find it very hard to believe that all of those raids, starting from Wrath onward, that have bosses who die and exclaim that "[insert end boss here] controls me no longer", would have led to this existential moment where death turned out to be a horrifying alternative. Instead, I believe that Blizz said "Okay, let's do [XXX] set piece. Cool, isn't it? Now, how do we get to there?"

That's the thing about these set pieces: they only work if they are part of a cohesive whole that extends from expac to expac as part of a long term story that Blizz wants to tell. Right now, it certainly seems that Blizz is creating these set pieces without any sort of long term plan.

Why would I say that? Because if the set piece creates some jarring plot holes large enough to fly a zeppelin through, then maybe the set piece is the one that needs to change.

Speaking of set pieces that
drive expacs (or movies)...
From wikipedia.org.

For example, in the lead up to Mists there was the "mana bomb destroying Theramore" set piece. On the face of it, a major Alliance city so close to the Horde capital city would naturally be a military target in an Alliance vs Horde war. However, if you played the Horde (post-Cataclysm) questline in Stonetalon Mountains --which made use of another mega-sized bomb-- the total destruction of Theramore makes absolutely no sense, as Garrosh (in an earlier set piece) executed the Stonetalon Horde leader for displaying a lack of honor in slaying non-combatants. And, as everyone knows, there are plenty of non-combatants in a major Alliance city --with a sympathetic Alliance leader-- that had in the past sided with Orgrimmar over their own faction's potential interests.

Because someone decided edgier is better.
Hmm... There's something about that statement
that fits right in with the DC Universe....
(From metacritic, of all places.)

But when set pieces (and to a lesser extent the endgame) rules the decision making process, plot holes happen.

Just ask all those Daenerys fans about Season 8 of Game of Thrones.

From Vanity Fair.

Or maybe not.

*And that's coming from a guy who had no interest in reading or watching either version. George takes maniacal delight in killing off characters, so I took a wide pass on any of his writings.

**I only overcame this addiction when I was watching an episode and blurted out loud after a supposed major reveal "That was incredibly stupid!!" It was then that I realized bad storylines couldn't keep me engaged forever.

***I'd imagine that Blizz employees would beg to differ on this point.

Welcome back, Mr. Kotter

...so, what happened?

I've been away from the internet and gaming/blogger space --with a precious few exceptions-- for the past few weeks.

As you can see from my previous entry, I was around enough to have taken note of Carrie Fisher's passing. For someone who had such an incredible impact on our geeky lives*, the outpouring of grief and sadness on her passing was therapeutic.

And SWTOR was no exception:

Aside from Carrie's passing, I've been totally out of the loop of the MMO and gaming circles to an extent that I've not been in years. Not even during the Grand College Tour this past year did I just drop off the face of the earth, gaming-wise.

I did take advantage of a Steam gift card to buy a few items --such as The Witcher Trilogy in my typical way of waiting until the hype subsided before I pulled the trigger-- but I made a deliberate choice to not peruse any gaming news.

In a very real sense, I needed that break. I've found it increasingly difficult to simply stop paying attention to gaming news, even in my down time. Recharging my batteries by disconnecting was a good thing, and it also gave me a chance to reflect on the best part of gaming: being with friends and family who share a common interest.

On a closing note, there's one game that we got over the holidays that I am really excited to play. But it isn't a video game at all.

This is the Z Man 2009 revision of the 1985 classic.

*And while I was the perfect age for thinking Carrie Fisher was hot in Return of the Jedi, she wasn't a big crush of mine. Sorry, Ross from Friends. If you had to push me into naming a name from that immediate era, I'd have to go with Katdarina Witt, the East German figure skater.

Farewell, Princess

From picsofcelebrities.com.
(Yes, that's a real website.)

...you were my favorite Skywalker.

Whatever you do, DON'T piss off a Sith

In honor of the Dark vs. Light event going on in SWTOR, I thought I'd post a link to a Taylor Davis video.

If you may recall, Taylor is the violinist who has been making videos of her arrangements of music from all corners of geekdom. People who have read PC before may recall my post referencing her rendition of Theme for Rohan by Chance Thomas for the LOTRO expansion Riders of Rohan. Well, she's outdone herself in this video, uploaded just prior to the release of The Force Awakens last December.

And yes, that's her as both Jedi and Sith.

I could have done without the synthesized backing music, but that's because I hear that and get flashbacks to the Star Wars Theme by MECO.

For the curious, here's the YouTube video of the behind the scenes making of her Star Wars Medley:

About that movie....

Yes, I have now seen Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

No, I'm not going to talk about it much.

Yes, it's a good movie.

No, it's not a great movie.

Yes, it is better than the Prequels.

No, It's not better than the original.

Yes, it is (IMHO) better than Return of the Jedi, whom I actually put below Revenge of the Sith.



I feel it is now safe to venture into SWTOR without concern of spoilers being splatted across the screen.

And Jihad Comes to Star Wars

You know, I wonder just how many of the people of the so-called Alliance to Preserve the Expanded Universe actually intersect in a Venn Diagram of GamerGate people....

Rogue Star Wars Fans threaten to ruin The Force Awakens via 'spoiler jihad'

No, really.

I mean, I know that spoilers come out once movies are released, but deliberately behaving like this because Lucasfilm decided to can the EU?

Stay classy, EU fans.

Meanwhile, back in Azeroth...

It's BlizzCon, which means that this got viewed and released into the wild:

The oldest Mini-Red was confused. "World of Warcraft?" she asked. "They really improved the CGI on their expac trailers."

"No," I replied. "It's for the movie."

"There's a movie?"

"Yeah. Been in development for a decade or so."

"Looks pretty good," the youngest mini-Red added.

"True, but the dialogue is a bit clunky."

(I decided not to point out the obvious Moses references to Thrall in the trailer. I presume a helluva lot more of those will be in the movie.)

***

Seeing a full trailer, I'm wondering whether this is one of those movies where the best parts are all in the trailers. (I'm thinking the same thing of Star Wars: The Force Awakens as well, so it's not just Warcraft.)

Why? Well, trailers have now been honed to an art form, making even bad movies look good.

Like, oh, this one:

But in terms of Warcraft, I'm really thinking of this:

In a pre-LOTR special effects environment, it's really a pretty good trailer. And the characters didn't sound that bad in their acting, either. But if you actually watch the Dungeons and Dragons movie, you realize pretty quickly how lousy it is: clunky dialogue, confusing plot, metagaming*, and bad acting.

Looking at the trailer for Warcraft, I honestly rolled my eyes at the Thrall parts. I know the story, but the Green Jesus criticism that is often lobbed in Thrall's direction is going to haunt this movie. And he's not even a main character.

For the sake of the MMO genre, I hope it doesn't suck, but I've a bad feeling that some of the worst parts of the Warcraft storyline are going to bite this movie in the ass.

***

Oh, and continuing the tradition of the Warcraft movie being upstaged by Star Wars, the Star Wars: The Force Awakens international trailer was released:

Yes, it has Japanese subtitles, but it shouldn't detract from the trailer experience.

All of the extra scenes not in the US trailer make the movie's secrecy all the more interesting.

Will it succeed? I think that's more on J.J. Abrams than anyone else.

***

While digging up the D&D Movie's trailer, I started punching in some old trailers from movies that I liked when I was a kid. These movies were much older than me, and I used to watch them on television when there were a lot of independent television stations and they would show old 50's and 60's era movies during the day.

Like, say, this one:

Yes, that's really Ernest Borgnine. And yes, they really butchered Viking society in this flick.


Or this one:

Yeah, that's Pat Boone.






*There's even a scene where one character accuses the other of being just low level. I mean, who actually wrote this script, anyway? Was it a riff on a D&D campaign?


EtA: Clarified when I was talking about the D&D movie trailer versus the movie itself.

Did You Expect Anything Else?

If you're one of the few people on the planet who haven't seen the new Star Wars trailer (released today), here you go:

Oh, and did you catch that Sith's mask? Looks an awful like a certain (ex) Sith Lord:

from starwars.wikia.com

Before you jump to conclusions, no I don't think it's Revan, but boy is the mask similar.