My oldest met reality last week.
Oh, it's not that she lives in fantasy-land; believe me, I get an earful about school/friends/the-uncaring-world when she comes home every day. What I mean is that she finally met some of those people in MMOs.
I'd been cleaning around the house when I heard a scream of anguish from her. "I'll get you for this!" she yelled.
"What did your brother or sister do this time?" I called down the stairs.
"Not them! This.... this.... GUY!"
Uh-oh. I came downstairs. "What happened?"
She was moving her Elven Hunter all over a clearing, following some near max-level toon around. "I was killing this dude for a quest, and this IDIOT came and took the treasure out of the chest I was supposed to open!"
"Ah." I sat down and looked over her shoulder.
"I want to attack him so bad.... But I CAN'T!!"
"Well, you could challenge him to a duel --at least I think you can in LOTRO-- but you're L32 and he's L73. It wouldn't be a contest."
"But I am just so mad right now! I have to wait and do the whole thing again!!!"
I sighed. "Yeah, I know. You just met the ninja looter. They're one of the asshats you'll meet in MMOs."
The mini-boss respawned, and the ninja looter attacked the mini-boss before my daughter could. I swear I saw steam coming out of her ears.
"Look," I said. "LOTRO is one of the best MMOs out there for learning the game because of the community. But that doesn't mean that you won't find asshats out there in LOTRO, either. You've been playing LOTRO for over a year now, and you've only run into a few. I finally ran into my first really bad one in The Old Republic the other day. It happens."
"Yeah, but it's so not fair!"
"I agree completely. But there's nothing you can do about it right now, because he didn't do anything that you could sic the game admins on him."
She opened her mouth to retort, but I cut her off with a wave of my hand. "This is why I won't let you play WoW. You have to learn how to handle these sort of people before you play WoW, because there are a lot more of them on WoW than on some of these smaller games."
"But you play WoW!"
"Yes, and I'm a lot older. The asshattery in WoW is minor compared to other parts of the internet, and you have to learn how to handle this maturely first. It's just like my opinion on Facebook; you have to learn how to let things roll off of you, to filter them out, and not let them get to you. And believe me, there are plenty of people my age or older who have trouble with that."
She turned back to the screen, crossed her arms, and fumed.
"I didn't say you had to like it; I said you had to learn to deal with it."
"I am," she replied. "I'm imagining my hunter skewering him on the end of a flight of arrows."
I glanced up at the timer we use to limit the kids' computer activity. "Tell you what," I said as I reset the timer, "I'm not going to count the time you had to wait here to finish up your quest. This was something beyond your control, so it shouldn't count against you."
"Okay....." Her shoulders relaxed a little. "Thanks, Dad."
"You're welcome." I got up and retrieved my bottle of cleanser. "Besides, someone will eventually decide to teach him a lesson with their guildies. It happens on WoW all the time, especially on the PvP servers."
"I just wish your Rogue were on LOTRO."
"Me too, kid. Me too."
Tuesday, January 15, 2013
Tuesday, January 8, 2013
I'm Sorry, You Confused me with Somebody Else
It's been one of those weeks.
No, not in a bad way, but in a "who did you think I was, anyway?" sort of way.
Like the Warrior who berated me in Arathi Basin for not pursuing a retreating Horde player and instead returning to the flag. "Shoulda killed him," he said. "Don't be such a pussy."
"My job is to protect the flag, not get HKs," I replied.
"She's right, you shithead," a Druid added.* "You win by getting and protecting the flags."
The Warrior just wouldn't give up. "But what Rogue turns away from an easy kill? She's a wuss."
"I want to win," I replied. "If it means fewer HKs, I'll do it."
"Chicken shit."
Or, like the group finder in The Old Republic, which had my Jedi Shadow automatically checked as Tank and Damage, and I only found out about it after I'd ported into Cademimu. "Gang, I'm going to drop," I said. "I thought I was queued as Damage, not as Tank."
"You sure?" the Commando marked as healer asked. "I can keep you going."
"Not here. I'm at the low end for this Flashpoint, and I'm not specced for tanking."
I'm sure the Commando could have given it a good try, but come on. I've been in Cademimu as a low end DPS before, and even then I had trouble staying upright against bosses.
Or the people in Eye of the Storm who, when they asked what to do in this battleground, I replied "You get and hold towers, then worry about the mid. Three towers will beat holding and getting the flag most of the time."
So what happened? 9-10 of our team went to the mid, 3 went to a far side tower, and there was one person on each of our regular towers. While our side fought over the mid, the Horde swept in and took three towers. As players died and respawned, we were slowly pushed back and away from the remaining tower.
So much for asking my opinion.
Or yesterday, when I was back on Taris with my Jedi Shadow, I got mistaken for a tank. I was taking a break from the Alderaan push toward the end of Chapter 1, and I figured it'd be nice to smash a few rakghouls and clean out some old quests in my queue since those raks couldn't really hurt me.
So, when the call went out for a group to take on the World Boss, I waited until I was sure there was going to be a group pulled together and I whispered if they needed DPS. I got an immediate invite, and I drove on over to the spot where Subject Alpha awaited us. As I arrived, discussion centered on who would tank the giant rakghoul.
"I can do it," a Shadow replied.
"Tal," the Ops Leader asked of me, "can you be off tank?"
I was about to say no, but then I remembered I was an L30 in the land of L18-20. "I'm DPS spec, but I can tank in a pinch since I've got more health than everyone else."
"O_o"
To be fair, there was an L47 Sage in the group, but I only discovered that afterward.** Everybody else was L20-L23 and had half of my health. I felt reasonably confident that if it came to me tanking, my lack of tank expertise would be offset by the Shadow's taunting ability and my extra health. Sure, I didn't have any of the Shadow's tank spec goodies, but I figured I could hold my own.
Probably.
Maybe.
Once everyone arrived at the site, about five minutes later, the tank pulled and we began. The main tank held aggro well enough that I hardly took any damage, and whenever the Ops Leader asked the World Boss to be turned around I taunted Subject Alpha to my side. My lack of aggro holding extras meant that the main tank got the World Boss back, but given the amount of healing heading our way we were in good shape. There was some nut who kept taking huge amounts of damage, but the healers in the group kept him upright.
After about 5-10 minutes, Subject Alpha bit the dust, and I didn't even have to worry too much about tanking dynamics.
Now why couldn't the Eye of the Storm run have ended so well?
*My Rogue is a female Night Elf. I've decided that it's easier to simply let people believe what they want to believe rather than correct them all the time.
**That probably explained why she was assigned to heal the main tank exclusively.
EtA: Cleaned up a few grammatical errors.
No, not in a bad way, but in a "who did you think I was, anyway?" sort of way.
Like the Warrior who berated me in Arathi Basin for not pursuing a retreating Horde player and instead returning to the flag. "Shoulda killed him," he said. "Don't be such a pussy."
"My job is to protect the flag, not get HKs," I replied.
"She's right, you shithead," a Druid added.* "You win by getting and protecting the flags."
The Warrior just wouldn't give up. "But what Rogue turns away from an easy kill? She's a wuss."
"I want to win," I replied. "If it means fewer HKs, I'll do it."
"Chicken shit."
***
Or, like the group finder in The Old Republic, which had my Jedi Shadow automatically checked as Tank and Damage, and I only found out about it after I'd ported into Cademimu. "Gang, I'm going to drop," I said. "I thought I was queued as Damage, not as Tank."
"You sure?" the Commando marked as healer asked. "I can keep you going."
"Not here. I'm at the low end for this Flashpoint, and I'm not specced for tanking."
I'm sure the Commando could have given it a good try, but come on. I've been in Cademimu as a low end DPS before, and even then I had trouble staying upright against bosses.
***
Or the people in Eye of the Storm who, when they asked what to do in this battleground, I replied "You get and hold towers, then worry about the mid. Three towers will beat holding and getting the flag most of the time."
So what happened? 9-10 of our team went to the mid, 3 went to a far side tower, and there was one person on each of our regular towers. While our side fought over the mid, the Horde swept in and took three towers. As players died and respawned, we were slowly pushed back and away from the remaining tower.
So much for asking my opinion.
***
Or yesterday, when I was back on Taris with my Jedi Shadow, I got mistaken for a tank. I was taking a break from the Alderaan push toward the end of Chapter 1, and I figured it'd be nice to smash a few rakghouls and clean out some old quests in my queue since those raks couldn't really hurt me.
So, when the call went out for a group to take on the World Boss, I waited until I was sure there was going to be a group pulled together and I whispered if they needed DPS. I got an immediate invite, and I drove on over to the spot where Subject Alpha awaited us. As I arrived, discussion centered on who would tank the giant rakghoul.
"I can do it," a Shadow replied.
"Tal," the Ops Leader asked of me, "can you be off tank?"
I was about to say no, but then I remembered I was an L30 in the land of L18-20. "I'm DPS spec, but I can tank in a pinch since I've got more health than everyone else."
"O_o"
To be fair, there was an L47 Sage in the group, but I only discovered that afterward.** Everybody else was L20-L23 and had half of my health. I felt reasonably confident that if it came to me tanking, my lack of tank expertise would be offset by the Shadow's taunting ability and my extra health. Sure, I didn't have any of the Shadow's tank spec goodies, but I figured I could hold my own.
Probably.
Maybe.
Once everyone arrived at the site, about five minutes later, the tank pulled and we began. The main tank held aggro well enough that I hardly took any damage, and whenever the Ops Leader asked the World Boss to be turned around I taunted Subject Alpha to my side. My lack of aggro holding extras meant that the main tank got the World Boss back, but given the amount of healing heading our way we were in good shape. There was some nut who kept taking huge amounts of damage, but the healers in the group kept him upright.
After about 5-10 minutes, Subject Alpha bit the dust, and I didn't even have to worry too much about tanking dynamics.
Now why couldn't the Eye of the Storm run have ended so well?
*My Rogue is a female Night Elf. I've decided that it's easier to simply let people believe what they want to believe rather than correct them all the time.
**That probably explained why she was assigned to heal the main tank exclusively.
EtA: Cleaned up a few grammatical errors.
Wednesday, January 2, 2013
How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love those OP Classes
You don't know how much you'll miss something until it's gone.
Yes, it's cliche --and also the subject of an 80's power ballad by Cinderella-- but it's also quite true.
In this case, the something I missed was internet access. On this past Saturday, we lost our internet connection, which didn't get restored until a few hours ago. No, this wasn't due to any natural disaster, but to MAC address problems between our DSL modem and our ISP.
Not counting the occasional vacation, that was probably the longest time I've been without internet access in about 20 years.*
In the Internet era, we've become used to permanent online access, and we reduce ourselves to complaining about First World problems when we don't have it. But really, is it all that bad?
No, not at all.**
This kind of dovetails right into a favorite complaint of MMO players, right after "I'm bored!" and "[Pick a faction] sucks!": "[Pick a class] is over/underpowered!"
You can't enter into a battleground or read Gen Chat without someone making an observation that "Monks are SOOOO OP right now" or "Damn, Warriors are BEASTS!"*** I've been as guilty as the rest, since I saw how Locks got revamped compared to their Cataclysm incarnation, but I don't spend my BG time complaining about which class is the "favored class" right now. Others, however, live for that sort of thing.
There's an entire cottage industry built around maximizing classes and specs for raiding and PvP, so it's not surprising that people complain when they feel that a spec has gotten some unfair love or hate from the Devs. But really, is it that big of a deal? Unless your toon is being picked on by the OP ones, is this really that much of a problem that it requires a Dev to get out the nerfbat? Is absolute class equality the goal?
While a nice idea, I don't think class equality should be an overarching design goal. You can lose sight of the overall game while trying to make everything equal for everybody. I realize that a basic tenet of Blizzard's raid design philosophy is "bring the player, not the class", but the reality is that people will bring a specific class for a specific raid boss mechanic. That can't be avoided. Likewise, a BG/arena team will look for specific specs/classes, because they bring the best chance at survival. Tweaking things to promote class balance is tricky, and doesn't necessarily work to encourage more classes to take over specific roles.
I'm reminded of pencil-and-paper RPGs, with the common complaint in D&D 3.x (and it's successor Pathfinder) is that the spell casters are overpowered in high level campaigns. Well, Wizards of the Coast decided to "fix" that in D&D 4e, to the point of having constant tweaks to different classes via the D&D Insider subscriptions. I was unaware as to just how much tweaking Wizards had done until I signed up for DDI. Much to my surprise, Wizards had tweaked classes to the point where they'd even gone and changed the names of some of the basic classes just to make them sound more in tune with newer class names. Gone was the Cleric, in its place was the Templar. That, to me, seems to be taking things a wee bit too far.
While MMOs haven't gone down that route just yet, it seems that temptation is there. After all, look at the wholesale changes to talents that each new WoW expac brings to the table. To say that the Mists version of WoW's toons bears only superficial resemblance to the Vanilla WoW version is probably an understatement. The classes act in a similar manner, but almost everything under the hood is different.
But why worry about it too much? Is that particular Feral Druid that's dancing around you, firing off heals, the source of your annoyance? Or is it the class? Odds are good that we'll hear people say it's the class, when it really is the player.
So maybe it's time to be more specific, that it is a player you're complaining about, not the class.
*That includes several days without power due to Hurricane Ike back in 2008.
**I was perfectly fine, thank-you-very-much, but the lack of internet meant that we had to periodically go to a free WiFi location to check to make sure there weren't any school/work e-mails that required addressing.
***That warriors crack covers both WoW and TOR: the WoW Warrior and the TOR Sith Warrior.
Yes, it's cliche --and also the subject of an 80's power ballad by Cinderella-- but it's also quite true.
In this case, the something I missed was internet access. On this past Saturday, we lost our internet connection, which didn't get restored until a few hours ago. No, this wasn't due to any natural disaster, but to MAC address problems between our DSL modem and our ISP.
Not counting the occasional vacation, that was probably the longest time I've been without internet access in about 20 years.*
In the Internet era, we've become used to permanent online access, and we reduce ourselves to complaining about First World problems when we don't have it. But really, is it all that bad?
No, not at all.**
This kind of dovetails right into a favorite complaint of MMO players, right after "I'm bored!" and "[Pick a faction] sucks!": "[Pick a class] is over/underpowered!"
You can't enter into a battleground or read Gen Chat without someone making an observation that "Monks are SOOOO OP right now" or "Damn, Warriors are BEASTS!"*** I've been as guilty as the rest, since I saw how Locks got revamped compared to their Cataclysm incarnation, but I don't spend my BG time complaining about which class is the "favored class" right now. Others, however, live for that sort of thing.
There's an entire cottage industry built around maximizing classes and specs for raiding and PvP, so it's not surprising that people complain when they feel that a spec has gotten some unfair love or hate from the Devs. But really, is it that big of a deal? Unless your toon is being picked on by the OP ones, is this really that much of a problem that it requires a Dev to get out the nerfbat? Is absolute class equality the goal?
While a nice idea, I don't think class equality should be an overarching design goal. You can lose sight of the overall game while trying to make everything equal for everybody. I realize that a basic tenet of Blizzard's raid design philosophy is "bring the player, not the class", but the reality is that people will bring a specific class for a specific raid boss mechanic. That can't be avoided. Likewise, a BG/arena team will look for specific specs/classes, because they bring the best chance at survival. Tweaking things to promote class balance is tricky, and doesn't necessarily work to encourage more classes to take over specific roles.
I'm reminded of pencil-and-paper RPGs, with the common complaint in D&D 3.x (and it's successor Pathfinder) is that the spell casters are overpowered in high level campaigns. Well, Wizards of the Coast decided to "fix" that in D&D 4e, to the point of having constant tweaks to different classes via the D&D Insider subscriptions. I was unaware as to just how much tweaking Wizards had done until I signed up for DDI. Much to my surprise, Wizards had tweaked classes to the point where they'd even gone and changed the names of some of the basic classes just to make them sound more in tune with newer class names. Gone was the Cleric, in its place was the Templar. That, to me, seems to be taking things a wee bit too far.
While MMOs haven't gone down that route just yet, it seems that temptation is there. After all, look at the wholesale changes to talents that each new WoW expac brings to the table. To say that the Mists version of WoW's toons bears only superficial resemblance to the Vanilla WoW version is probably an understatement. The classes act in a similar manner, but almost everything under the hood is different.
But why worry about it too much? Is that particular Feral Druid that's dancing around you, firing off heals, the source of your annoyance? Or is it the class? Odds are good that we'll hear people say it's the class, when it really is the player.
So maybe it's time to be more specific, that it is a player you're complaining about, not the class.
*That includes several days without power due to Hurricane Ike back in 2008.
**I was perfectly fine, thank-you-very-much, but the lack of internet meant that we had to periodically go to a free WiFi location to check to make sure there weren't any school/work e-mails that required addressing.
***That warriors crack covers both WoW and TOR: the WoW Warrior and the TOR Sith Warrior.
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