Permanent Death and Other Musings

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

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...

...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

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

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?

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

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

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

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?

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?

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

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

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

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...."

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

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

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

"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

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

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

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

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.