A Few Miscellaneous Thoughts for a Rainy Wednesday

It might not be pouring where you are, but is sure is outside of my window.

Although it looks gloomy, I don't mind.  Not today, anyway, when the plants have woken from their (excessive) Winter slumber.

Which reminds me; I was perusing old patch notes --really really old patch notes-- for WoW when I came across the note announcing the grand improvement of Weather in Azeroth.  That surprised me a bit, since I'd assumed that having rain fall randomly in a zone would be a minor thing.  Still, it wasn't there at release, but showed up sometime prior to BC.

While some other MMOs seem to not bother with things such as graphical changes based on the time of day or having "weather" impact the scenery (::cough:: TOR ::cough::), they get around other issues such as seasons by focusing on a small part of a planet for the questlines.  MMOs based on a single world don't have such a luxury, and yet they never seem to change the scenery in a zone based on the season.

I can understand the reasoning behind a reluctance to concentrate on these things --it not only takes up valuable developer time but adds to the horsepower needed to run a game-- but the next time an MMO touts "Weather" as a feature I'm going to be a bit skeptical.

***

It was bound to happen, but somebody finally started using raid announcements in WoW BGs.

Ever since WoW changed BG chat to Raid chat, I was waiting for some BG leader to decide to take advantage of Raid announcements to start ordering people around.

If you know nothing else about pickup BGs, you should know that there's always someone who thinks they can lead, and there's always about 5 people ready to tell that person that they're doing it wrong.

Now, inject raid announcements into the mix.  Wait for everything to combust, and.....

Oh yeah.  You can see what's coming, right?

This all went down in Arathi Basin.  That BG confounds the Alliance more than it has any right to, and I've no idea why.

As I waited for the BG to start, I perused the lists to see how the classes broke out.  Then the announcements began.

Need 5 people to cross water to assault BS
5 people pls
We'll kick ass
Need 5 people to cross water to BS

Okay, I thought, this is different.  So when Arathi Basin began, I parked myself down at the Stables to watch the show.*

Of the 15 people on our team, 14 crossed the water to the Blacksmith.

"...and nobody went to GM or LM," I said in chat.

"Keep pressing to Farm!" the Raid announcement replied.

You can pretty much guess what happened from there.  The assault on the Farm collapsed, and the Horde rallied to push against the Blacksmith and the Stables, capturing the Blacksmith.  The BG began to fall apart at that point, for whenever a Raid announcement came "5 to GM go!", about 10 toons wheeled and went to the Gold Mine.

"What a bunch of idiots!" one person grumbled.

A DK pulled up to a stop next to me.  "Stop sending those messages!" he said in chat.

"I know what I'm doing!" the BG Leader replied.

"No you don't!  This isn't a raid!"

"Shut up!"

I just kind of rolled my eyes at the spectacle.  While the raid announcement does have its use, in a pick-up game it's a bit of overkill.




*I've kind of given up on being on offense in AB when so few people actually play defense on bases they capture.  Given that --as a Rogue-- I'm usually in the shadows, an apparently empty base is a far too inviting target for the opposite faction.

Paging ELIZA... ELIZA, White Courtesy Phone, Please....

I was going to write about something else, but the Boston Marathon bombing happened, and I pretty much threw my paragraphs into the bit bucket.

I'm not going to comment on the bombing itself or speculate on who the perpetrators were --not that I haven't been doing it on my own time as it is-- but because this isn't the forum for it.  But while I had been turning over things related to the bombing, I sat down at the computer and played around on some MMOs to clear my mind a bit.

For a change, I found them vaguely unsatisfying.

At first I wasn't sure why, but the more I played the more certain I became that the source of my discontent had more to do with the nature of MMOs and PvE content.

When you play an MMO, you're following a specific storyline.  Or you're performing a set of tasks.  While the story itself might be new to you, it is the same story for everyone.  The Wrathgate still unfolds the same way.  The Desolator story in TOR will follow the same pattern.  Sure, small things change in the TOR questlines --after all, that's what Bioware does-- but the big pattern stays the same.

The theme park MMO, for all of its popularity, is not oriented toward spontaneity.  Random bolts out of the blue simply have no place in the game.  If there is something random that pops up, just wait a bit and you'll see that it comes back after a set amount of time.  The truly random elements in a game like WoW or TOR or the others are what the players make for themselves.

While it does sound like that is how things ought to be, the problem with the concept of the players making their own spontaneity are twofold:  there are far more NPCs on an average MMO server than there are actual players, and you have to have buy-in from other players to make such spontaneous actions occur.

***

In case you haven't noticed, the Fruit Vendor in Shattrath City doesn't talk back to you beyond a few basic set phrases.  While the recycled interplay between the Fruit Vendor and her grumpy neighbors is amusing, you never get a chance to insert yourself into the conversation.  Likewise, there have been times when I've been tempted to chat up the Cheese Vendor and her "woe is me" routine in Falconwing Square, but I can't.  The most a toon can do is buy something from her, or if you're the opposite faction, kill her.

Not exactly a lot of interaction there.

Even when there is an "event", such as the All Hallow's Eve Headless Horseman event, did you notice that the vendor (or other) NPCs just kind of stand around and do nothing?  No interaction with the world at all.

In TOR, about half of the background characters in an area aren't clickable at all; they're there just to fill up the scene.

While you can make a successful argument that world interaction would be more effectively done on an RP server, what about the person going questing in Felwood?  If a region is empty, about the best you can do is strike up one sided conversations with various NPCs.

While I was bored in Arathi one day, waiting for the BG queue to pop, I did just that.  It lasted about two or three sentences until somebody landed at the Alliance flightpoint, saw the bubble still hanging in the air, and said "L2P noob; they don't talk back!"  He then took off on a twilight drake.

I kind of just rolled my eyes and waited for the BG in silence.

At the very least, something like the old Eliza program* would be nice to give you the impression that you're conversing with an NPC.

***

Okay, NPCs aside, when was the last time something completely unexpected and unplanned --and not connected to a quest either-- happened in an MMO that came out of the PvE environment?

The only thing I can think of the past year or so was the Rakghoul event on Tatooine in TOR.  WoW draws a complete blank, because even the pre-launch events (of which there were none for Pandaria) are completely scripted.  Hell, they're often completely analyzed and dissected online prior to the event actually happening.  And the other MMOs I play... Well, they take their cues from WoW.  'Nuff said.

In a sense, I get the feeling that a totally random event would not be welcome by a certain portion of the MMO populace.  After all, look at how people approach the game:  analyzing gear, where to get it, what instances to run, what dailies to do, what mats to farm, and analyzing all of the boss fights, all in the pursuit of being completely ready for anything.

Hey everybody!  I'm raid ready!

If you think people like the unexpected, try saying "So, what's this raid about?  Are there any interesting boss mechanics?" in LFR.

On the flip side, I remember reading about the reactions when the Rakghoul event dropped:  completely and totally unexpected by the general populace, and there was no advance warning in the blogosphere.  Just "BLAM!" and it was there.

Zombies.  In Star Wars.

The Walking Dead Goes to Tatooine.  Deal with it, toons!

Why can't that sort of thing happen more often in MMOs?

Is it the fear of widespread apathy from the gamer populace?  The dreaded "Oh, this thing only drops iL483 gear" dismissal?  Or is it a "we play to our strengths, and plotting the unexpected doesn't fit into that?"

Whatever the reason, breaking out of the same-old same-old can provide memorable moments in MMOs that prefer the tried and true.




*Surely I can't be the only person who remembers ELIZA, can I?  (And don't you DARE call me Shirley!)

On a Clear Day, I Can See Pandaria

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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





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

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

You Never Forget Your First Time

As I've been watching my kids play LOTRO and TOR, I've been thinking about my own history with MMOs.

Has it really been almost four years since I began playing?  It feels like even longer.  I did try a Middle-earth MUD back in the mid-90s --as well as the MMO-like online game that GEnie had (that used the old Rolemaster system for the ruleset)--  I never really dipped my toes into a modern MMO until the end of Summer in 2009.

While I can't remember all of the details regarding the first time I logged in, I remember one overwhelming emotion:  fear.

It seems silly now, given what I know how MMOs work, but I was expecting an "emperor has no clothes" moment when I signed into WoW for the first time.  I'd read up enough to know that there was a starting zone, but beyond that the WoW lore left me so confused that I figured I'd fail any surprise "geek test" that might appear before I got my bearings.  The one thing I didn't want was the "Hey, look at the noob!" and "L2P noob!" pursuing me on my first screw-up.

I also was painfully aware that the magical "pause" feature I loved in Baldur's Gate I, II, and Neverwinter Nights was non-existent.  I did not like RTS games very much because they forced you to think faster than I wanted to; like any long time boardgamer, I was accustomed to examining the board, thinking out strategy, and playing things out slowly.  I was not a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants player, and here I was playing the ultimate RTS game.

The narration that's supposed to set the scene for my new toon made absolutely no sense, either.  I now know that it was referencing events at the end of Burning Crusade, but I had no idea what on earth the narrator was talking about.  I kept wanting to say "Wait!  Wait!  Who the hell are you talking about?  What treachery?  What disasters?"  But there was no time to stop and look up the WoW lore on the website.  It was time to start playing.

Naturally, less than a minute after seeing my toon appear in front of the first questgiver in Sunstrider Isle, I received an invitation to a duel.  I had no idea what the hell it meant, but I knew I wasn't going to say yes to anything.  The would-be duelist ignored me and began harassing the next bunch of new toons as they ported in.

It took a bit, but I slowly worked my way through the first few quests.  The format was different than what I was used to, and the concept of an arcade-like push the button to attack took some getting used to.  By that time, Soul's wife had appeared and she gave me some tutoring while we moved in the general direction of Silvermoon City.*

As we passed Falconwing Square, I had no idea of the size of Azeroth, and the on-screen map meant absolutely nothing to me.  Neither did Silvermoon City itself, where I was introduced to the Auction House and a few other places.**  But when Soul popped in as a Death Knight, I was stunned.  Here I was, used to the old D&D system of L1-20ish, and here was a toon with L56!  And remembering what little I understood of WoW lore, weren't we supposed to be fighting these Death Knights?

I kept my mouth shut and just let things go.

And the music....  The music was disquieting.  Silvermoon City's theme was dramatic, but the background music in Eversong, that stuck with me.  I had this vague feeling that all was not right, and the fact that monsters were so close by bothered me a lot as well.***  Here was this supposed big city in WoW, and yet the enemies were almost literally at the gate in what you could (charitably) describe as a time of peace.  This is not what you'd expect in the D&D worlds I've campaigned in; usually you had to travel a day or so (and often longer) before finding some nasties to fight.

Truly this was a place where civilization was teetering on the edge of destruction.

After I'd logged, I still wasn't sure what to make of WoW or MMOs in general.  They were... different than what I was used to.  But one thing that definitely surprised me was how little I was noticed by the populace at large.  This became even more apparent when I entered into Org for the first time; when I was surrounded by people who truly didn't give one whit about my toon at all.  (Except those who wanted to recruit me to a guild; there were way too many of those out there.)

There was enough interest in the game to keep me going until I got my sea legs, but it was definitely not love at first sight.  WoW really had a learning curve, and even though it was a slight one comparatively speaking, it was enough for someone completely uninitiated in MMOs to have second thoughts.

But in the long run, I'm glad I stuck it out.  I often wonder, however, just how many people were like me but didn't keep trying until they got the game.




* I also learned all about how Priests were squishy, and the concept of a Cleric as an armor wearing and mace wielding healer from my pencil and paper RPGs met the WoW version of reality.

**Travelling to Org came on my next session, and I very nearly ended up taking a zeppelin to Stranglethorn by mistake.

***In the original Baldur's Gate, there's an early cutscene where you see an idyllic farm with a little girl going out to play, and as she wanders down the lane you see two kobolds appear behind the hedge in the foreground.  It's that sort of foreboding that I got while playing WoW that first time.

Starting All Over Again

I hung around Taris on the Old Man, just north of Dynamet Hospital, practicing some healing.  While I don't typically heal these days, I know that when I run a toon that has that capability, you never know when you'll be pressed into service.

Like this day.

My oldest and I had grouped up, and I was waiting for her to arrive on her Sentinel.*  I knew that while she'd been playing MMOs for a while, she was still unfamiliar with certain aspects of the game.  This was going to be her first group quest, I figured that if nothing else, this should prove to be an interesting experience.

She appeared with Kira in tow.  "Ready to do Fallen Stars?" I asked in group chat.

"Sure!"

"Okay.  I'll be healing, since nobody else has that spec.  Once we buff up we can go."

"What's a buff?  That thing you wear on your head in Survivor?"

Hmm.  I hadn't expected that.  Okay, I guess I'll have to back up and get more basic than what I'd expected.  "Buffing is a stats boost," I began.  "In some MMOs you can drink or eat and get a buff, and in TOR each class has its own unique buff.  Mine is Lucky Shots, and yours is Force something-or-other.  When in a group, you can select that buff and everyone will get that buff; it's considered polite to buff up everyone else when grouping up."

Force Might suddenly appeared next to Lucky Shots.

"Good.  Okay, let's go."

We moved into the heroic area for Fallen Stars and quickly came upon our first mob.  "Look at the boss there," she typed.

"In a heroic you'll see a lot of elites like that.  You'll know a real boss when you see it."  I scanned the group: one healer, one elite, and one strong melee.  "Okay, I'm going to send in Corso to tank, and once he gets going you can attack.  We need to get rid of the healer first, and then we can work on the rest."

"Okay."

"Ready?"

"Yep."

Corso flew in on his jet pack, and the fight began.

We quickly dispatched the enemy medic, and my oldest moved in on the elite.  I would have tried to DPS down the strong melee enemy, but I wasn't going to quibble.  I dropped a few medpacks down, but for the most part we DPSed down the mob quickly enough that I didn't need to worry about it.  It's saying something about your ability to down a mob when Corso doesn't reach even half health.**

Now that she had the basic method down, we DPSed our way through the area and eventually found ourselves before the ship at the end.  "I'm pretty sure that once we touch this the boss will fly in," I typed.  "It's been a while since I've done Falling Stars."

"Okay," she replied.

"Here's the thing.  This boss will take a while to kill, and bosses have immunity from a lot of CC's."

"CC's?"

"CC = Crowd Control.  Stuns, interrupts, that sort of thing."

"Oh, that stuff."

"Yeah.  Don't bother wasting Focus on those, since they won't work."

"okay"

"Alright, here we go."  I went over and triggered the boss, who flew in for the attack.

Now this was a fight.  I was healing so much that Corso lost aggro to me, and since he had no way of getting it back --his abilities were on CD for a while-- I had to grin and bear it.  Rule #1 of healing says that you can't heal when you're dead, so I spent a lot of energy healing myself while the boss wailed on me.  Good thing that I'd worked with my oldest on using mods and enhancements in gear, because otherwise we'd have wiped.

The boss finally bit it when Corso finally got his aggro abilities back off of CD and I was finally able to get that boss off my back.

"Wooo!" my oldest typed as we entered the final cutscene.

"Yep, that's it."

"Are there any more around?"

"There are some 2+ heroics in the bonus area, but others are 4-man."

"When do you think I'll be ready for a 4-man?"

"We'll see, kid.  We'll see."




*She was upstairs on the laptop.  From what she informed me later, her brother and sister were watching too, so I really felt on display.

**If you've ever played a smuggler, you know what I'm talking about.  Corso is famous for losing most of his health on decently sized mobs, which makes me wonder just how well equipped of a tank he is.

Me and My Big Mouth, Part Whatever

You know how I said that it'd be terrifying to see 20 DKs on a side in Alterac Valley?

Be careful what you wish for.

I was blowing off some steam tonight when I got into an Alterac Valley run.  During the countdown I got up, grabbed a drink, and settled in to check the player lists.

"Holy crap," I said in BG chat.  "I think half of their team are DKs!"

I counted the list a few times and found they had 19 DKs with one slot left empty.  Sure enough the last slot was filled by another DK.

"We're gonna get whiplash by all the Death Grips," a Priest quipped.

"At least a lot of them play like crap at this level," a Warrior added.

"Yeah," I said.  "We're gonna need it."

The DKs belief in their own invincibility proved their undoing in the game.  We had about 15 players stay back and defend Belinda, while the rest pushed down toward Drek.  Another Rogue and I hung out in Icewing Bunker, catching those who broke through to try to capture it.  The DKs were like a wave of blue frost crashing against our defense, but they were unable to break it.

In the end we won on sheer attrition, which was perfectly fine with me.

Still, I ought to have learned by now to keep my mouth shut.

No One Expects the Ninja Smuggler!

I'd plotted for this moment for close to a month.

While my TOR toons are all on The Harbinger (US), I'd gone out of my way to roll up a Smuggler on The Shadowlands (US).  I gave my new Smuggler an unusual appearance, too:  as a Human, I decided to give him a distinctively older look:  gray hair and a beard.*  I even gave him a name that is a vague echo of my own.

When nobody was looking, I surreptitiously leveled him out of Ord Mantell and into Coruscant.  Deciding to go against my tendencies, I made him a DPS Scoundrel:  enough healing to use in a pinch, but preferring to fight close in and use Dirty Kicks and Pistol Whips and Backblasts to keep the enemy busy.

The kids finally took notice of the ol' Greybeard in the Justicar section of Coruscant, but they figured I was merely leveling another alt.  They never noticed the server I was on.

I knew my oldest's Sentinel was on Taris, working on the other quests while getting ready to take down Watcher One.  That gave me something to shoot for.

On Saturday night I arrived on Taris, cleared the first area, and hooked up with an Ops group to take down the World Boss.  Rather than getting in close to assist with DPS, I instead hung back and tossed heals around.  Seriously, I needed the practice, as each healer class operates differently.

Then I waited.

Sunday afternoon, my oldest logged into TOR on the laptop upstairs.  I took careful note of her toon's name, scampered downstairs, and logged into Ol' Greybeard.  A quick check of the social lists, and there she was.

I'd made a point of letting them do their thing without interference for the longest time, so I wasn't sure what her reaction would be.  I was betting it'd be something like the traditional teenager rolling of the eyes and "Da-aad", but you never know.

I sent whispered her a hello with her real name in it.

Silence.

I got distracted by some rakghouls, then decided to go upstairs and knock on the door.

The door opened.  "What do you want this ti-- oh, hi Dad."

"Expecting someone?"

"I thought it was my brother."

"Oh."  I decided not to pursue that issue further.  "I sent you a hello.  Did you get it?"

"What?  What, where?"

My youngest picked up on my question a bit more quickly.  "You mean in the game?"

"Really?!" my oldest squeaked and ran back to the laptop.

I went back downstairs and pinged her again.  "Hit slash 'r' to reply," I added.

"This was you?" she replied.  "I thought you were a stalker!"

"Oh."  Gee, thanks.  I guess I earned that one without any announcements beforehand.

"Where are you at?"

"I'm in the Endar Spire, bashing pirates.  Are you still in the cave?"

"Yes, I haven't left yet."

"Do you need a hand?  I know you have Fallen Stars on your list."

I heard the excited babbling among my kids from even where I was.  "No, not right now," came the reply.  "Gottagonowbye!"

A few moments later what sounded like herd of elephants came down the stairs.

"I thought you were a stalker!" my oldest said as she skidded to a stop, her brother and sister right behind her.  "There was another person who was pestering me to do Fall of the Locust until I left the area and went back to Olaris Spaceport."

"Good.  But I figured your real name would have tipped you off."

"Yeah, but wouldn't a stalker have figured that out?"

"Good point.  But if you've been careful about who you tell your toon's name to, it wouldn't be an issue.  After all, the account is registered in my name and e-mail."

"Oh."

"Still, if you want to do Fallen Stars, or if your sister needs help on Coruscant, I can help out."

"Really?!"  The shrieks were deafening.

"Yeah, really.  I can help out from time to time, but only if you want me to."

"Woooo!!!"

I had to close up shop because my ears were ringing too much.  Still, I considered the mission a success.  I figured that they were ready for dipping their toes into a bit of group content.  From there, the next steps were dealing with in-game chat, but I have to teach them those skills first.  It's a bit different than dealing with IMs to friends, and as my oldest surmised, there are a lot of unsavory characters out there.  Things can also mutate and take on a life of their own, which is more the province of Facebook, but you still have to be on your guard.

A small step into a larger world.  Yeah, that's it.





*Okay, fess up.  When was the last time you saw a toon deliberately designed to look old, or at least middle aged?  I know my answer:  almost never.  WoW doesn't even have that option, and I don't think LOTRO or AoC do either, but TOR does.  WoW does allow you to select gray, but not look middle aged, and while LOTRO does (that's what I get for tinkering with Elves in character creation) AoC might not.  Still, you know it's lonely being the "old guy" when you're in an Ops group of 20 or so and everybody is some stunningly youthful toon.

EtA:  Clarified the "*" section after receiving some comments.

Where Have You Gone, Svala Sorrowgrave?

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

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

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

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

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

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

And now we come to Mists.

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

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

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

LFR.

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

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

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

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

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

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

But hey, popularity doesn't lie, right?




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

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

...And lo, there were Death Knights as far as the eye could see...

The L55-L59 battleground range is (in)famous for two reasons:  this is the first range where an expac's gear becomes available, and this is the first range where DKs appear.

I will not speak of BC clown gear, other than to say that Orcs certainly do look pretty in them.

While it may have taken several months, the flood of Monks and Pandaren leveling through Azeroth has died down.  The general makeup of your average leveling BG has evened out to an even composition of various classes.  (For the record, the Mistweaver and Windwalker Monks are far more popular than Brewmaster, with a slight nod to Windwalker at the moment in the 40s/50s BGs.)

That is, until the Great DK Invasion.

I can only imagine what it was like those first few months of Wrath when everybody and anybody created a DK.  I remember the one time this past Winter when I was the only non-Monk on my side in a Warsong Gulch battleground, but the idea of having almost half of an Alterac Valley run composed of Death Knights terrifies me.  It's bad enough when there are ten of them per side in AV, but more?

The consolation I can take in witnessing DKs swarming over everything is that not a lot of them know how to play their class.  As a player who leveled a Warlock via BGs in Cata, I know firsthand how little fun it is when a group of DKs decide to play Death Grip Ping Pong with you.  The fact that I've not been Death Gripped all over the place when even clothies know to target me mercilessly speaks volumes.

That influx of powerful but unskilled DKs has reinvigorated BGs a bit for me.  The slog of trying to get to at least the first expac, coupled with a long losing streak, can wear a player down.  It got so bad at one point in a WSG game that I ended up parking in the middle platform above their base and waited for the thing to end.  The Horde team had us on farm, but instead of people simply running away and not respawning in the graveyard, we kept feeding the beast.  I couldn't bring myself to drop group, because WSG had only 4 minutes left in the timer, but there was no way we could win.  So I got up and got some coffee instead of stressing over this.

"Get their flag!  Get their flag!" someone said over BG chat.

"I can't," I replied.  "They've got a Monk, a Lock, and a Feral protecting it."

"Get it anyway!"

"I'm not going to add to their HKs."

But on the flip side, with the instability induced by BC gear and new Death Knights, the Alliance has finally started making inroads on Eye of the Storm and has been dominating Alterac Valley.*  I've stealthed in Stonehearth Bunker several times now, watched the wave of Hordies go by, and leave SHB empty for me to recap.  You'd think that after the first three or four times I wouldn't be able to get away with this, but it keeps happening in either SHB or Icewing Bunker.

I realize that this state of flux will subside by the time I reach the Wrath level.  DKs will gain more skill or will drop out, leaving a leaner, meaner group to contend with.  Still, I intend to enjoy this chaos while it lasts.  Rogues thrive on chaos, you know.



*YBMV -- Your battlegroup may vary.

I Don't Know Where Ya Been, My Lad, But I See Ya Won First Prize

I was out of commission due to illness most of last week, so there's not that much to report.  I mean, I played a little, but I didn't really do much of anything at all.

Somewhere around Christmas time I finally splurged and bought Skyrim (hey, it was on sale).  Sure, it's about a year or so too late to be relevant, but I figured I'd play around with the game and see if I liked it.  I've heard enough about the sandbox nature of the game to make me interested, and the fact that you're not forced into FPS mode but you can zoom out a bit into a more familiar third person mode is even better.*

The game is okay so far, but nothing so engrossing that I would find myself up way past my bedtime playing. The graphics are nice, and the old style quest finding is a welcome change to the MMO style quest markers, but when I sit down to play a game I find myself skipping over Skyrim for Civ IV or an MMO.  The fact that (I believe) that purchasing the DVD of the game appears to be irrelevant as the game uses Steam to download to my computer doesn't exactly help, either, since I'm not that big of a fan of the Steam ownership model:  you don't purchase a copy of the game itself, you only purchase the right to play the game, just like Amazon's Kindle purchases.

However, there was one aspect of Skyrim that I was unprepared for.

Like quite a few people, I use Curse to manage my WoW addons, and once every couple of months I hop onto Curse to make sure all of my addons are up to date.**  I've gotten used to having WoW as the only game in my stable with a Curse connection, so imagine my surprise when I saw Skyrim pop up as an option.

Curious, I clicked on Skyrim and loaded the database of mods, just to see what I could add.  There were mods to make lockpicking easier --something Ol' Fumblefingers can definitely use-- as well as mods for tracking your mats and whatnot.  But by far the most popular mod was something I didn't expect:  Nude Females.

No, really.

Apparently this game isn't "Rated M for Mature" enough for some folks, and they took it upon themselves to create a few mods to "tweak" the models for the game.  Making more detailed facial models is one thing, but making sure what's under a toon's clothing is anatomically accurate is quite another.  I'd almost be inclined to believe that the mod's creators had altruistic intentions except that you won't find an equivalent mod for male toons.

Just like some people can't play Age of Conan without going "Oooo, boobies!"***, some people need that in-game nakedness that the nude female mods --yes, there are more than one-- provide.  This is akin to people who like to zoom in and watch the female Night Elf breast bounce, I suppose.

Me, I just don't get it.  If you're interested in this aspect of the game, why are you playing and not surfing the Internet instead?





*It's been a while since I mentioned it, but I find that FPS games give me headaches, and one of the reasons I suspect that MMO's don't is due to the game's viewpoint.  With third person mode, I can use my character as a focal point and not have issues with the constantly changing terrain.

**If I were a raider or already into Mists content it'd be a lot more frequent updates, but I'm still about 30 levels away from needing to purchase Mists.

***Go hang around Tortage on any server, and you'll see what I mean.  I suspect that some people play Demonologists in AoC just so they can have the nude Succubus hanging around.  And if you thought that the Shivarra in WoW was bad, the AoC Succubus makes the Shivarra look tame.  But that AoC Succubus has a very sinister look about her.  Oh, and the AoC Incubus (for female Demonologist toons) has just as little clothing and the same uncomfortably malign feel to them.

I Don't Believe it! We Have a New Champion of Anguish!

Among my friends, I've been known as being a bit obsessive about winning from time to time.

There was one (in)famous time where I hadn't won a game of Settlers of the Stone Age all evening, and I kept my wife and another friend playing the same game until 3 AM when I finally was able to pull out a victory.  Back in the days of the original Sid Meier's Civilization, I once played three full games back-to-back because I'd lost at the last second twice in a row.  I may be older (and, theoretically, wiser), but there are times when thoughts of 'winning' cloud my brain.

Of course, 'winning' in an MMO means different things to different people.

The PvP oriented may focus on being an Arena Master or winning Rated BGs.  (Or even winning regular BGs as much as possible.)  The PvE people may focus on raiding or pet battles or dominating the Auction House.

But what do you do when you've got limited time to play and you get that itch to 'win'?

Sometimes, that urge gets channeled into something like dailies or reputation.*  Or maybe you become a completionist, hunting down and finishing every last quest --group quest or otherwise-- that you can find.  In the pre-Cata days, you had to use a third party app to try to find those last weird quests out in the middle of nowhere in the Azerothian Old World.  TOR makes the completionists go crazy when they stick area quests on a planet, so you end up cruising all over, say, Alderaan trying to find the one zone you might have missed. LOTRO has taken that idea and run with it in their recent revision to the Moria expac, and Age of Conan sticks individual quests in the middle of group quest areas, leaving you to fight your way through just to collect that extra quest for another zone**.

Or maybe you just content yourself with following the story to the end --sans raiding, of course.

To get that last one, you don't have to be a completionist.  After all, just how many side quests are out there in an MMO these days?  But finishing a story can become a Civ-like obsession:  "just one more quest!"***  While WoW has all but eliminated the old class stories from the game, there still are two faction questlines to progress through.  Star Trek Online seems to follow the WoW pattern of having a set story for each faction, but I've not gotten anywhere deep enough to confirm this.****  LOTRO has only one questline track (but two different starting zones, so that provides some variety).  AoC has one real story line, but each zone has it's own set of stories to follow; they're almost like side quests in a way, but the real story line's quests show up once you reach a certain threshold level:  L30, L50, etc.

TOR, however, is a different animal, with questlines for each class from L1 through L50.  And then there are the companion quests, the zone quests, and... You get the idea.  A story freak can take months --years even-- exploring every aspect of a game like TOR.

***

The obsession with "winning" an MMO can drive self destructive behaviors.

Just like a gambler has issues with getting up from the poker table, an MMO player can spend way too much time in game, seeking that rush of victory and, more importantly, validation.  Think of the money spent on gear to get an extra edge, whether it be a bigger screen, faster CPU, or that awesome keyboard (want!).  Also, consider the cost of extra purchases via a cash shop (whether you play a F2P game or not, the cash shop is still there) to give yourself an edge in some aspect of the game.  All of that money adds up, and the urge to overspend just to "win the game" can be very seductive.

When American sports fans talk about destructive behavior, the name Art Schlichter often pops up.  Art's compulsive gambling ruined his pro career and led to jail and drugs, and yet Art still can't stop.  This is a direct parallel to the board gamer who can't stop buying new board games, or the video gamer who will spend every waking moment playing to the chagrin of coworkers, family, and friends.

I've never crossed that line, but I understand its appeal.  I also understand how it impacts others playing the game:  the people who sit around and complain in Gen Chat that they "finished" the game and now "there's nothing to do, this game sucks", the people who refuse to play nice because they want to "just win, baby!", and the player who thinks nothing about being a ninja looter or griefer because it's all about them.

That inevitably begs the question as to what do these people get out of this behavior?  While that sort of thing might work for a while, eventually it catches up to you.  Turn off enough people, and they isolate you.  You start to live in an echo chamber, where everybody thinks the same thing as you, behaves the same as you, and validates the way you do things.  The trouble is that we don't live in an echo chamber, but in the real world, where people don't think and act like this.

***

I've kind of wandered a bit far afield when I started this post (shades of Cynwise's old Field Manual posts, I suppose), but obsession and addiction are but one output of the need to "win the game".  Competition can be good, if channeled well and doesn't venture into that morally grey territory.  I play MMOs to enjoy myself and explore a good story, and I try to avoid obsessive behavior as much as I can.  I understand my limits, which is part of the reason why I don't try too hard to raid.  But I have become acquainted with obsession, and I'd rather not try to get to know it any more than that.






*"I will finish all of the dailies I can find and I will reach Exalted!"  Not that I've ever said that.  Okay, I did, once, back in Wrath days.  At least at the time, it seemed achievable, which is why I kept slogging through the Crusader dailies.

**There's one in Conall's Valley that sends you in the direction of the true end boss right when you think you've slain the end boss of the region.  For the record, it takes a player of about L50 or higher to bring down the pseudo-end boss who is L30.  Yes, the AoC elite bosses are THAT tough.

***Sid Meier memorialized this urge for "just one more turn!" by building that quip into later editions of Civ.

****Oh, did I mention I've begun tinkering with STO?  I like it much better than Aion, and while I can see what some people complain about with you becoming your starship, I don't mind.

Thoughts on an Icy Friday

I was on TOR the other day when someone asked a question in Gen Chat:  do the planets ever change their background due to time of day?

No, was the instant response, but it'd be cool if they did.

While I'd be the first one to think that the planets with an outside would look cool if they did change with the time of day, I realize that TOR has bigger issues to worry about at the moment than background.  Or weather, for that matter.

But something about that question did get me to thinking.  Why is it that weather and times of day are simply bolt-ons to most MMOs?  I say most, because the Tortage-at-night solo portion of the intro zone in Age of Conan does take advantage of the darkness to make it easier to hide, and that does carry over to the regular game.  

Think of it this way:  when was the last time that sneaking around in WoW was made easier due to cover or darkness?  Shouldn't there --at the very least-- be a debuff or two associated with bad weather?  I know I don't operate at peak performance in the rain, and there's the constant threat of hypothermia, so why doesn't your toon feel it?  Shouldn't it take longer to trudge through a snowstorm or thunderstorm?  If there can be a visible reaction to and a game changing debuffs associated with drinking to excess, why not with weather?  Having a snowstorm or blizzard whip up, leaving your toon disoriented and weakened, would have an impact on whether you're actually out and about when the skies turn crappy.  Hell, I'd have a harder time imagining that wandering monsters and intelligent opponents would be out in a downpour; you'd think that they'd confine themselves to shelter --makeshift or otherwise-- to wait out the bad weather.

Perhaps I'm taking realism a bit far, but I think it would make the sense of immersion that much more satisfying.  In Ultima V, you could watch the shop keepers move around and back to their homes when night fell, so if a game from 1988 could figure such basic things as this out with the changing of the hours, then why can't an MMO do it?

And You Thought the Brawlers' Club Was the Seedy Underbelly of MMOs

One day last year, I was goofing off in Ratchet while waiting for the BG queue to pop.  Every so often I get the urge to check out the Steamwheedle Cartel's Auction House and see what items people are trying to sneak across the Faction DMZ.  Most of the time they are pets, but once in a while you see some low-priced raw materials or a nice piece of gear go through the WoW Black Market.

Anyway, I'd been perusing the miscellaneous items for a minute or so when I got a whisper from someone.

"Hey, what are you doing here?"

Whatever.  Since I've been known to drop in on low level zones on my max level toons from time to time, I've grown accustomed to such questions.  Some people seem genuinely perplexed that I'd not be spending all of my time in the Firelands or Icecrown Citadel, I suppose.

"Just loitering around, waiting on a BG."

"k."

After a few moments longer, I closed the AH window.

"Yr not waiting on a delivery, are u?"

I blinked.  "No," I replied.  "I'm good."

"U sure?  I've got some gold here for u."

"Yeah, I'm sure."  I then took a flight path to Org and marked the toon as a gold seller while on the way.

***

About a little over a year ago on Age of Conan, I spent a couple of hours teamed up with a pair of players, a Guardian and another Barbarian, while working our way through Conall's Valley.  There are quite a few stretches of the valley where safety in numbers is essential, and I was grateful for the company.  The conversation was good, and we had fun really sticking it to the Vanir.  Over the next couple of weeks, when I'd login to Age of Conan I'd find one or both of them online, and we'd group up and chat.

Then, for a few weeks there was silence, but that didn't surprise me much since the three of us had families and jobs.  I never saw the Barbarian again, but one Friday I logged in and saw the Guardian and whispered a hello.

I was ignored.

Puzzled, I whispered a hello again, and then I saw it.

The account started spewing Gen Chat with gold farmer spam.

***

What exactly is the amount of money that the gold farming industry makes?

Back in 2006, the BBC estimated that the industry made $900 million, but that was well before WoW's current popularity.  I'm not exactly sure whether you can directly translate the increase in WoW subs from 2006 to 2013 to corresponding increase in gold farming, but it seems reasonable to say that MMO gold farming is at least a billion dollar business.

While that's not iPad dollars, it's still a big chunk of change, in the realm of such non-IT brands as Heinz ketchup.  Think about that the next time when you see gold farmer spam in Gen Chat:  gold farming is big business, and people are willing to skirt the law for it.

But at what cost?

Everybody knows somebody who has had a hacked account.  Sure, you may get your virtual stuff back, but you really never get over the sense of violation.  And the company involved has to spend time and money in getting your stuff restored, never mind attempting to prevent it in the first place.

All of that costs money, and affects a company's bottom line.  Security one of those hidden costs that you never see in a company's balance sheet --the lengths a company goes to protect itself from the Black Hats, and the costs involved in successful hacking attempts, user accounts or otherwise-- but it does exist.

MMOs are a game, but you can't say that they are just a game.  That's like saying that the New York Yankees or Manchester United aren't worth much because they both are organizations that play kids' games.  Good luck trying to say that to a sports fan.

***

I suppose I ought to explain the trigger for this post.

A few weeks ago, a dormant account from a fellow WoW guildie who'd passed away from an illness over a year ago suddenly became active and refused to respond to tells.  An alert guildie informed Blizz, who quickly shut the account back down, but the sheer brazenness about it still sticks in my craw.  The Black Hat had to find out about and hack the account, reactivate it with (most likely) a stolen credit card, probably upgrade the account with the same, and only then could they go on their merry way.

Just a game, right?

They Say Memory is the First Thing to Go

I don't know how altoholics do it.

Really.

Just how do they keep track of all of their toons, and more importantly, what abilities their toons have?

I logged into Neve for the first time in what felt like ages, and tried zapping a few assorted beasties in Icecrown.

Tried being the operative word.

After I finally stopped hitting keys for abilities that hadn't procced yet, I finally started spamming Frostbolt, because at least I remembered where that was.  I froze myself in ice at least twice before I successfully killed my first mob, and yes, it really did take me that long.

I stared at my empty glass by the computer, and sighed.  "I'm going to need another beer if this keeps up," I mumbled and switched to Quintalan.  Surely I couldn't have forgotten how to play Ret, not after years of play beforehand.  But a short glimpse of the main bar later, I decided to just switch back to my Rogue and queue for a battleground.

Surely, I thought, it must be better on The Old Republic, where I'd gotten used to playing different classes on a regular basis.

Um, no.

After spending the end of Chapter One on my Sith Inquisitor, I switched back to my Commando and quickly found myself in a 4-man Heroic on Alderaan.  On the first pull the Shadow cc-ed an elite and I readied a Concussion Shot on another.  I hit the button and...

"Dammit, Ki!  What are you doing?"

Oops.  I'd hit Explosive Round by mistake, which had the side effect of undazing that elite.

We managed to DPS down everything, and I apologized to the group.  While they were accepted, I still smarted from my screw up.  This was something that I prided myself on not doing.

Clearly, a better method than "I think I remember where everything is" was needed.

***

Way back in her Pugging Pally days, Vidyala of Manalicious posted a chart she used to keep track of all of her Draenei alts' hair style and design.  While it served her purpose, I've begun working on my own version of her chart to keep track of keystrokes on differing alts.

Since I play more alts on TOR, I figured I'd start there first.

Ironically enough, one of the things that people complain about with TOR --the similarity between different classes on knockbacks and whatnot-- is perfect for my work.  Setting up my alts so that similar abilities are always on the same keystrokes will make it easier to slip into gear in each class.  Knowing that a toon's main attack is on button #2, the incapacitated attack (if any) is on button #4, and the knockback is on button #5 makes my life a lot easier.  While the details on the lesser abilities are different from toon to toon, the main rotation can be reduced to a level I can easily use to slip into and out of while playing.  Keeping certain abilities grouped together, like the Commando's various grenades or the various heals of a particular toon, make for good common sense.  It also makes for good common sense to keep them out of easy finger range, so that in the heat of battle you don't accidentally hit the wrong button and cause a wipe.

But for a game like WoW, where the abilities and rotations are so different from class to class, the challenge is much greater.  Throw in the transition from PvE to PvP, and the organization becomes much harder.

The way I attempted to organize my Cata-era Affliction Warlock --attacks on one row, DoTs on another, and interrupts on a third-- don't necessarily work for a Pally or Mage which are DoT-less.  Also, you have to remember the more obscure abilities in your class, because what isn't important in PvE suddenly becomes critical in PvP.  How many times have you had a Lock just get going on DoTs in a fight, only to have the mob and/or boss die on you?  Well, that inability to use DoTs effectively in an instance suddenly doesn't matter in PvP, because laying down DoTs is one of the primary ways a Lock can kill you.  A Rogue doesn't try to out tough a Warrior, it tries to surprise, stun and slash.  Doing that in a boss fight is suicide, because the last thing a Rogue needs is aggro when a boss is bringing the hammer down.

Therefore, I've kind of thrown in the towel a bit on WoW alts, and have been reduced to generalities.  I don't know what might be most important at a particular time, but I can guess.  It's just like switching poisons around; if you've got the time and you're closing in on a caster, get the one that zaps their spellcasting speed. Otherwise, go for the slow poison which works on everyone.  The spellcasting poison is a specialist ability, so it goes behind the more general slow poison.  Ordering up the finishing strokes is important too; you want ones that will give you the best bang for the buck to be the ones easiest to reach for, while others that work better on extended raid boss fights should be placed farther away.   But hey, if the Warrior you're sneaking up behind is focusing on another team member, use the DoT finishing stroke and then Vanish to reset yourself for another strike.

***

One drawback to reorganizing everything is that it takes time.

Yes, I know there will be the reward of getting everything set up is that I can more easily transition between toons, but when you're looking at the tinkering involved that's not much comfort.  And when you throw in customization options, you could easily spend days of game time merely fooling around with your UI.

At times like this, WoW's customization becomes more a curse than a blessing.

If you've ever heard of the theory that with more options the more unable you are to make a decision, then you've got the idea of what I'm getting at.  With so many third party add-ons and scripts to choose from, a player can become paralyzed trying to decide how to set up their keys and/or macros.*  When all you really want to do is make it easier on yourself to play, it seems counterintuitive to spend all of your time tweaking your key bindings and setting up macros.

However, if you're expecting me to say that The Old Republic has it better, well....  Maybe, maybe not.

No, there aren't any third party UI tools available.  Yes, if you subscribe, you have full UI customization access --the same as every other subscriber-- so everyone (theoretically) has the same starting point.

But you still have to configure the UI to your liking.  And that takes time, and tinkering.  Lots of tinkering.

And each time you train, you may gain access to a new favorite ability, causing you to curse under your breath and try to figure out where to shoehorn that new! cool! awesome! ability into your bars.

***

Layers, Shrek once said.  Ogres have layers.  But he could have also been talking about tweaking the UI and keybindings in an MMO.

And I still don't know how a true altoholic can do all of this, keep it all straight, and be able to play well.




*Which is why Elitist Jerks and other sites are so popular; they take the difficult part of the decision process away.

Well, That Explains a Lot

Activision/Blizzard released their earnings today, and while they did make record profits, the surprise for me was that WoW subs dropped back to close to the pre-Mists release levels, with only 9.6 million active subs.

Now I know the true reason behind all the sales and enticement; Mists wasn't able to bring the WoW subs back to the heights of Cata.  In fact, Mists wasn't even able to sustain the release bump that they got.

That explains why it felt like the Ysera server was so empty, and even the CRZ often felt devoid of people.

To be fair, 9.6 million subs is probably more than the #2-#6 other MMOs combined.  Still, it looks like the Mists experiment hasn't quite panned out as hoped.  I doubt that means that Blizz will suddenly switch to a F2P format, since they're practically printing money with WoW, but I do think that it means Titan will move up to the front of the development lists.

The View from the Halfway Point

While it seems that everybody else on WoW already has multiple toons at L90 --their main, their primary alt, their secondary alt, their cross-faction alt, and their bank alt-- my main for this expac just dinged L45 somewhere in the middle of an Arathi Basin fight.

I've been steadily moving along, splitting time between battlegrounds and skinning, and playing about 3 days a week or so.  There have been many waves of players passing through BGs on new Pandaren toons, and we're now down to seeing more traditional BG compositions --with a few sprinkling of Monks, that is.

Once I reached the mid-30s on my Rogue, BG leveling slowed to a crawl and is only now starting to pick up with the unlocking of Alterac Valley.  I don't think this is by design, because leveling via BGs is heavily dependent upon your side's ability to grind out wins.  And since the Alliance has had very few healers in the mid-30s to early 40s BGs, the wins have been hard to come by.

The bots are in vogue too, I see.

Eye of the Storm seems to be the biggest place where you'll find bots, because their behavior is so obvious.  When a toon repeatedly:

• pops from a graveyard
• runs up to the nearest base
• pivots where the buff would ordinarily be (but isn't because it was freaking used already)
• races to the mid

you know you've got a bot on your hands.

I'd like to see Blizz be a bit more proactive in zapping bots, since they can't really be gotten rid of from a BG except by being marked as away, but I guess that's something they're going to have to come up with.  Making it easier to kick people from BGs could turn out to be a double edged sword, because people could simply vote-kick players who are on the low end of the level range just because they're on the low end of the level range.  I'm not sure Blizz wants to pay enough devs support staff to watch enough BGs to make sure everybody is playing nicely, either.  It's a conundrum that I don't have a good answer to.

***

Since I've got 40 levels to go before I really purchase Mists, I've found it interesting watching the lures the Blizzard has been dangling out in the internet.  The free week in Pandaria, the Christmas sales, the recruit a friend, they're all out in force.  I have no idea how well the bait has been working, but the fact that Blizz hasn't stopped them yet is an indicator that they're fighting hard to get all of their lost subs back.  Or, perhaps, just to stay even with what they've got.

My own guild, however, hasn't recovered from Cataclysm.  In fact, while some people returned for Mists, others came back and have since disappeared.  Still others left the guild for other, more active raiding guilds before Mists dropped.  And there have been those who came back but not because of Mists, but because their work/life/whatever has finally allowed them the free time to resub.  But from the high point in Wrath where the guild was pulling in enough people to run 25s on a once-in-a-while basis, I've yet to see 10 people logged in at one time on any consistent basis, let alone raid.  There have been a lot of evenings when I've been the only one logged in.

"This server's dead," I saw someone type recently in Gen Chat.  Given that the crowds in Stormwind aren't very impressive --still averaging in the 50s on a given night-- I suspect that there's more truth to that than meets the eye.

***

Still, the game seems to be doing fairly well for itself.

Judging by the blogs I read (a subset of which is listed on our site), the most popular parts of WoW in its current state are a) Transmogs, b) Pet Battles, and c) Pandas.  Raiding, instances, PvP in its various forms, and the ongoing expac story haven't been very active topics in Mists.  Now, while people write a lot about Dailies, I can say that while the topic is popular, the activity is not.

I think it is safe to say that if Transmogs and Pet Battles didn't exist, then there wouldn't be nearly as many people excited about Mists as they seem to be.  I'm not sure about the staying power of either through the entire expac, but Transmogs at least seems to scratch the itch of a subset of WoW players well enough to last long term.  Of course, it also takes some pressure off of the Blizz art team to not repeat the BC clown gear, since people will merely transmog any "ugly" gear into something they like.

I'm not quite sure what to make about Pet Battles.  Judging by bloggers alone it seems wildly popular, yet ragging on Pet Battles is a popular topic in low level BGs.  I suspect that Pet Battles falls squarely into the love-it-or-hate-it category, with the people who don't really give a damn (like me) few and far between.  I suspect the Pet Battle mojo will last a lot longer --more than I anticipated, anyway-- by simply creating new pets as part of upcoming patches.  Pets are easier to design than raid or instance bosses, and don't need backstory like questlines, so they're incredibly easy to drop into a story as a carrot-on-a-stick for the aficionados.  "Run enough dailies, get a pet!"  "Go through this side questline, get a pet!"  This isn't exactly new*, but Pet Battles ratchets the desire up to another level entirely.

Whether that desire will flame out is the million dollar question, and I don't have an answer for that.  After all, I still can't explain the continuing fascination with Justin Bieber, and I have middle school kids in the house.




*The Miniwing quest reward in Terokkar Forest, for example.


EtA:  I thought "support staff" and typed "devs".  Sigh.

Chit-Chatting Away

Gen Chat is an interesting beast.

Some games, Gen Chat is overwhelmed with gold farmers hawking their wares.  Other games, its dead silent.  And on still others, it can be a cesspool.

WoW's Gen Chat is decidedly schizophrenic.  In the capital cities, Gen Chat is active and reasonably well behaved.*  Outside of Stormwind and Orgrimmar (and Northern Barrens), Gen Chat is notable for its silence.  Occasionally you'll see the guild recruitment posts, especially in the starting zones, but for the most part Gen Chat out in the world is merely a marker to let you know when you left one zone for another.  Given that so few people actually use Gen Chat, its hard to tell if Gen Chat actually transcends the cross-server zones.**

In this post LFG/LFR World of Warcraft, Gen Chat's utility has declined.  Yes, there's Trade Chat and the LFG channel, but once the queues came along a lot of in-game chat activity vanished.

By comparison, Gen Chat in Aion is very busy, but unfortunately most of it is filled with gold farmers.  I suspect there are conversations in Gen Chat that are worth following in Aion, but they are drowned out by the flood of gold farmer spam.  I never thought I'd say this, but in the worst days of WoW gold farmer spam (in Wrath), we never even came close to what I've seen on an average night in Aion.  As much as some people gripe about the miscellaneous topics in Gen Chat, I'd much rather have that than gold farmer spam.

I think the only world where SWTOR's Gen Chat isn't that busy is on Quesh.***  Between the LFG requests and miscellaneous talk, Gen Chat in The Old Republic resembles a pub on a busy night.  I'm not sure how much of this is due to people who migrated from SW:Galaxies, but it doesn't surprise me that a game built on leveling would have an active chat environment in the various game zones.

LOTRO doesn't have a true chat channel marked General, but it does have Regional and Advice channels, which are what a F2P player will mostly see.  Like everything else about LOTRO, the chat channels are mellower than most.  Yes, there are arguments that flare up, but LOTRO chat channels reflect the player base.

Some F2P games tend to isolate players away from the "subscribers" Gen Chat, so I can't say how much different the subs have it.  Age of Conan is a prime example of the 'isolate the freebies' environment, and I can understand why.  By keeping the F2P players in a separate chat channel, that eliminates a lot of the fly by night gold farmer spam in the regular chat channels.  Throughout much of 2012, the F2P channel in AoC was very much dead.  There were people playing the game --just going to Tortage would show people that-- but they weren't saying anything.  In recent months, Funcom has done some server consolidation, and the formerly dead F2P Gen Chat is now active.  Topics in AoC tend to remain tied to the game, since that is the only outlet available to F2P players, but also because AoC's servers tend to have a more global contingent than most other MMOs.  I'm not sure why this is the case, but I've seen far more "pardon my English, it isn't my first language" in AoC's Gen Chat than in any other MMO I've played.

***

Why are some Gen Chats more active than others?  I've thought about this a bit over the past few months, and I don't believe there's a single item you can point to that explains the differences.  That said, here are a few of the ideas that I believe contribute to the success and/or failure of Gen Chat:

• Some of Gen Chat's activity is due to game design.  A game like TOR, which has a lot of Heroic group quests in each planet, encourages activity by forcing players who want to run them to ask the old fashioned way.  A game that has a strong RP player base, such as LOTRO and the WoW RP servers, will have more activity as well.  Those players tend to be interested in the social aspects of the game, and will speak up more often.
• Some games encourage self-isolation, and for a social person that can be grating at times.  While it can be fun to group up in LOTRO, a lot of content can be taken care of solo.  The same with TOR and WoW.  Blizzard used to have a lot of group quests in the Old World, but the Cata revision streamlined zone quests and eliminated most group quests.  LFR takes care of the need to see end game content as part of a guild, and LFG is famous for silent dungeon runs.  With TOR, you can solo quest all the way to max level and complete your class story without grouping once.  And without a burning in-game need to join a guild, the outlet some people have is to talk in Gen Chat.
• The need to join a guild also factors into Gen Chat activity.  Sure, guilds are optional in every MMO, but being guildless makes playing some games much harder.  However, other games (like TOR) make it very easy to play the game guildless, and those games have more active Gen Chat than others.  It may not be a direct correlation, since there are quite a few WoW players who create a guild just to avoid being pestered by guild invites, but the games that have huge guilds and emphasize guild oriented activity are also the ones that have the least amount of Gen Chat activity.
• Finally, in some games the argument could be made that Gen Chat has been rendered obsolete.  Look at WoW, for example.  You have so many methods of communication --both in and out of the game itself-- that Gen Chat is more a method of last resort.  Additionally, the game design in Mists has been pushing people into doing dailies --lots of dailies-- prior to any raiding, and there isn't a centralized chat that enables players out and about in various regions on a server to communicate together.  The mentality becomes "get the dailies done and then get on to other things," which isn't very conducive to chatting away either.  The old "standing around and fishing at the Dal fountain" design just isn't there anymore.  True, this isn't the only time that Blizz has put a lot of dailies as a gatekeeper for raiding --Quel'Danas and Firelands come to mind-- but those patches came later in each expac, not at the beginning.  Starting an expac with dailies as a gatekeeper is quite different, and sets the tone for the entire expac.

Some of the funniest as well as the most vile things I've read in an MMO came out of Gen Chat.  I once got into a discussion about the original Robert E. Howard short stories in an AoC session, and there was the "what events would a Star Wars Olympics have?" discussion during last Summer's Games.  I've learned a bit about theorycrafting in a WoW Gen Chat session, and I found out that some people who play LOTRO know far more Quenya than I do (which ain't hard to do, really).  The Gen Chat is the watering hole for an MMO, and when a Gen Chat turns toxic that's an indicator of larger problems in the game.

Here's to hoping your Gen Chat experiences are fun and interesting.






*Compared to Trade Chat, that is.

**It apparently does, but you'd never guess it.

***Okay, maybe Ilum too, but it's been a while since I've been there.

****The need to avoid being harassed also speaks to the importance of guilds in a game.

Where the Lowbies Are

Since my Rogue has made it to the L40s, I've taken to skulking around in the Old World while in stealth mode.  I still am working on leveling skinning, but the main reason why I'm constantly in stealth mode is because I pop out of BGs into areas that are frequented by the Horde.  I'd spent way too much time on PvP servers (and getting ganked in pre-Cata Tarren Mill) to not take precautions when entering enemy held territory.

I've also discovered where all the lowbie toons are:  Eversong Forest.

I kid you not.

When I crossed the Elrendar into Eversong, I was stunned by the sheer number of toons running about.  Yes, I'm aware of the cross server zones, but this was the first time I'd seen a cross server zone not called Elwynn Forest work as intended.*  Players were everywhere.  I even found a pair of toons working away by the eastern coastline, which tends to be overlooked as a questing area.

In the age of Panda, Blood Elves are still popular.  Go figure.

There were a few other trends I noticed:  a significant number of toons were Hunters and Mages, with Warlocks a distant third.  More interesting was that about half of the toons had titles already attached to them, indicating that a lot of these toons were alts.  And perhaps the most interesting item of all was that the ratio of female to male Blood Elves was on the order of 7:1.  I'd read somewhere that there were actually more female than male Sindorei played on the servers, but I don't recall the discrepancy being so wide.

One big surprise was that there weren't any Sindorei Monks around.  I know they exist, because I see them in Battlegrounds all the time, but there weren't any in Eversong.  I checked both Eversong and the Ghostlands, but nary a Monk could be found.

The few paladins I saw, however, were busy working away in the Ghostlands, fighting the Scourge.

***

Being a Rogue means that you occasionally scare the hell out of opposing players, even when you don't intend to.

For some reason, I really like the Ghostlands.  The eerie feel to the place, coupled with the fight of the Blood Elves against the twin fronts of the Scourge and the Amani Trolls, gives a new Blood Elf player a laserlike focus on the threats at hand.  The fact that the Forsaken have shown up to assist Tranquilien in holding the line on the Scourge, even before the Sindorei officially join the Horde, adds to the conflict.**  There's also the enjoyable interplay at the entrance to Zul'Aman, put in place in Cataclysm, between Ranger General Halduron Brightwing, Silver Covenant Ranger General Vereesa Windrunner, Chieftain Vol'jin, and a messenger from Silvermoon.  Finally, I really do like the elite abominations, Luzran and Knucklerot.***

I was sneaking around in the general direction of the Dead Scar when I saw a pair of L18 Blood Elves --a Blood Knight and Mage-- run up to take on Luzran.  Remembering how rough it used to be to kill him at level, I loitered around.  I'm not one to gank lowbies, but I figured if it looked like Luzran was going to win I could give them an assist.****

The Paladin charged Luzran, and the fight was on.

Luzran kept up a steady stream of attacks, gradually sapping the Pally's strength.  His healing simply couldn't keep up with Luzran's damage.  I made a quick mental calculation and began to maneuver into position.  If that Pally didn't have Lay on Hands available he was sunk, and that Mage was going down soon after.

Just as I reached Luzran's backside I saw the telltale flash of light.  The Pally had finally used Lay on Hands.

I pulled back to wait.

The abomination wasn't going down so easily, and he very nearly killed the Paladin again before he finally dropped.

Using emote, I said "Well done.  Not bad for a pair of Hordies."

The two Blood Elves froze, and one said something (in Orcish) out loud.

After a few seconds, I realized they thought they were going to be ganked.

Oops.

"Don't mind me," I emoted.  "I'm heading to the Plaguelands."

The pair began to move around again, and I slunk away.  The Scourge surrounding Stratholme needed some thinning out.




*Why don't I count Elwynn?  One word:  Goldshire.  It attracts toons for, shall we say, other reasons.

**If you play Alliance, go take a Horde toon into Tranquillien and watch the interplay between Dame Auriferous and High Executioner Mavren.  Let's just say that Mavren is a lecher, and the Lady is not amused.

***You used to have to get a group of 3-4 L17s to take out one of them, but with the changes to the game since Wrath you can take them out with two.  A word of advice:  if you're out questing in the Ghostlands, watch your back.  Those two have an annoying habit of sneaking up on you when you're not paying attention.

****Besides, I like the sound that an abomination makes when you hit it hard.

Attack of the Ninja Looters

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."

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.

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.