Musings for a Wednes Thursday

Given all of the (rather obvious) Cthulhu influence in the WoW-verse, I'm surprised that HP Lovecraft's estate hasn't been asking for a cut of the dough from WoW.  Well, if the estate went down that route, I guess they'd have to tackle Hentai too, and I'm not so sure I'd really want to see that brought up in a court of law.

***

You never know when a conversation might turn to MMOs.

I was in a meeting the other week when I was talking with a fellow employee.  He's always been the sober, stern type, the sort that if there was an entry for "dour" in the dictionary, his picture would be there.  He never talked about anything --anything-- other than work while I was within earshot, but he took one look at my laptop's screen and exclaimed "Ah ha... World of Warcraft!"

My screen is typically covered in IMs, server console windows, and a few other apps, but the telltale "W" in WarCraft from the background pic was visible at the top.  "You play?" I asked, surprised.

"Oh yeah, but I don't get the chance to play a lot.  I don't think I've ever gotten a character to max level.  You?"

"I've got a few at max level, but playing has been kind of low on my priority list these past few months."

He chuckled.  "Imagine that!"

***

I sometimes wonder about celebrity endorsements.

We're all familiar with the "What's Your Game?" series of WoW commercials, starring people such as Mr. T and William Shatner.  However, I hadn't realized just how long ago those ads were until I saw a commercial starring (among others) NBA player Derrick Rose for the new Assassin's Creed PS3 game. 

Do celebrity endorsements in the computer gaming world actually work?  To me, it seems more to highlight how mainstream computer gaming is than anything else, but maybe some people do pay attention to what games their favorite celebrities are playing.

The Invisible Wall

It's been a while.

When I logged on the other day, I found not only some Halloween quests in my queue, but some Brewmaster stuff as well.  I hadn't played for an appreciable stretch of time in well over a month, and I still haven't logged into my Horde toons since, oh, early October.  This isn't due to any real lack of desire to play, but merely my credo of keeping my priorities straight.

My overall absence from the game is due to a combination of factors, but the primary ones can be summed up in two words:  family and work.  It was kind of a perfect storm, really, where work amped up right at the same time that the family got really busy, and I'd end up hitting the hay later and later at night.  Since I play early in the mornings, less time for sleep on the one end meant I had to make it up somewhere, and my WoW time suffered as a consequence.  About halfway through my disappearance from the servers, I finally admitted defeat and let my sub lapse for a little while.  Hell, if I wasn't on to play, why pay for it?

Well, this past week I finally resubbed and logged back in.

You know how Larisa over at PPI once talked about how she'd gone away (on vacation or something) and then came back to find that she couldn't remember how to play at all?  Well, that is no lie.  The first few battlegrounds I got into I swear I was doing little better than hitting a button --any button-- hoping it would score a hit.  About all I was good for was announcing when there were incs or taking away the enemy's attention on the healer.  If anyone had listened in on that first early morning, they'd have heard a steady stream of "no, TV comes after I get the 3 HP...  Dammit, I hit Exorcism again!  Stop it, you moron, use your CDs!  Now why the f*** did I blow both the trinket and Divine Shield?  He only hit you once!"

Times like this, you kind of wonder why I logged back in in the first place.

(Of course, talking to yourself is one of the first signs of senility, and as the Old Man around the WoW bloggers I frequent since Larisa retired, I'm sure I'm letting myself up for a bunch of retirement jokes.)

To be honest, I did kind of question myself a bit about resubbing.  After the first week or so, I found that I didn't miss it quite so much, and I could quite easily keep up with what was happening on the blogosphere and on the guild website without actually needing to login to the game.  Was it a sign of an addiction that I wanted to resub just because?

Maybe, but then again, maybe not.  Interacting in the blogosphere or on a website (or, yes, on Twitter) isn't the same as in-game interaction; there's a voyeuristic feel to reading about people's exploits or general chatter, and an unspoken but omnipresent barrier involved.  If you're not out there, interacting in-game, you're just a spectator.  Grab some chips and the remote, and you've got an evening in front of the tube watching a reality show.

But really, what is more interesting:  reading about people interacting in-game, or actually being in-game?

Some people (/cough Rades /cough) could write about killing ten fire elementals and turn it into epic prose, but the rest of us aren't so gifted.  We need context, we need grounding, we need the interaction itself to make our words come alive.  You can mention that "I finished my last Firelands dailies!" or "I finally got that Netherwing Drake!" and those who have a common reference can appreciate it.  If you don't have that, they're just so many electrons cluttering up the interwebs.

The irony is that I'm talking about playing in a virtual world when there are likely some people out there saying "Go outside!  Enjoy a physical world for a change!"  Well, yeah.  You've got a point.  And yes, I do go outside and enjoy the wilderness, such as it is in my part of the Midwest.  But this isn't a blog for my outdoors foibles, and it misses the point.

If I wanted to merely read about people playing WoW, that's all fine and good, but the fun of WoW is actually playing the game.  It's a shared experience.  People respond to the game --and the other players-- with the entire wide range of emotions because the game world is a living, breathing thing.  Perhaps WoW has more than it's share of detractors due to it being the 1000 lb gorilla in the MMO world, but if people didn't care, everyone would yawn.  MMOs live and die by the passion they stir in their players, and the players themselves are a large part of that.  When an MMO generates merely indifference, then the barbarians are at the gate.

As for myself, I decided to resub because I missed the interaction with friends and fellow bloggers/guildies online.  Sure, I tend to play when the servers aren't exactly busy (or are filled with insomniacs), but they're busy enough.  And the lunchtime crowd can be plenty fun too.

And naturally, right after I resubbed, I came down sick with a very nasty virus.  As I lay on the couch, dosed up with Robitussin and Ibuprofen, I kept muttering "....don't it just figure?"

FYI...

...I'z busy right now.

Will post soon, but real life has been beating me with a clue stick.

PvP "Hybrids"

The thing that I do find most intriguing is the concept of the kinda-sorta PvEish version of BGs.  Imagine the PvPish zones in Grizzly Hills, and instead of a loosely connected set of dailies, convert them into an "event", and that's what you'll get in this new PvP hybrid.

In practice, I'm not sure how well this will work, and whether phasing will do the job as needed.  Think of Tol Barad, and how that has dropped off like a rock.

I was thinking about this, and how the smarter thing that Blizz could do would be to create a PvP option where --if selected-- you'd buff up the non-Boss NPCs in Alterac Valley and add NPCs as needed in the other moderate to large BGs.  That way the NPCs wouldn't be a pushover, and you could theoretically turn AV back into the epic battle of old.

Mists of Pandaria = PvP Land and Other Musings

The title is my first opinion in a nutshell.

If you don't like PvP, I suspect that you're not going to like this upcoming expansion quite so much.  PvP has been carrying the Alliance v. Horde conflict for quite a while now, and I don't expect that to change.

When the stated goal of an expansion is the conflict with the opposing faction, PvP will become more important, and possibly more important than raids.
The racials of a Pandaren are very interesting from a PvP standpoint too:

• Bouncy: reduces fall damage by half.
• Inner peace: double rested XP.
• Gourmond: +15 to cooking.
• Epicurean: double stats to food buffs.
• Quaking Palm (from the live stream): Puts a target to sleep for three seconds.

Quaking Palm is very PvP oriented, as is Inner Peace.  (Just wait around the Capital City and queue for BGs.  Watch the XP rack up!)  Bouncy is kind of meh, and Gourmond and Epicurean equally favor PvE and PvP content.

***

If we complained about Outland being out of date before, I guess we ain't seen nothing yet.

Outland will now be more out of date than the Old World would have been when Cata dropped.  Northrend almost as bad, and the Old World will be filled with Deathwing references.

***

In case nobody was noticing, Inner Peace means that Pandaren will rocket through the leveling system.  Add a few heirlooms, guild perks, and....

***

My previous post about "quests-on-rails" and the effect of making the leveling secondary is going to be even more pronounced in the upcoming expansion.  When Blizz explicitly mentions that they're focusing more on max-level content for this expansion, then you know that leveling has taken a back seat to the WoW experience.

***

WoW Pokemon?  Are you kidding me?

Is Blizzard losing subs to Wizard 101 or something?

If there's something that's going to land on the cutting room floor before the game goes gold, I expect this will be the one to get the axe.

A Changing Quest Design Philosophy

As I've previously documented, I've played around with a few other MMOs in addition to WoW.  Certainly WoW takes up the majority of my time, but I do like to putz around when the mood takes me.  While I've tinkered a little bit with Rift, my experiences are primarily with Lord of the Rings Online and Age of Conan.  Those two and WoW form the bulk of my MMO experience, and what I've noticed is that the quest emphasis on WoW has evolved in a direction that seems, well, more Diablo-like than anything else.

I've read on several occasions that you'll be able to finish Diablo III playing solo.  Yes, you can bring your friends along for the ride, but on the normal setting you should be able to beat the game all by your lonesome.  Now, take a look at how WoW's quest lines changed from pre to post Cata.  Sure, there was a lot --a lot!-- of meandering quest lines that got cleaned up, but think about what also changed:  any requirements for teaming up.

The last vestiges of group quests are found in the Outland and Northrend zones (including the BC racial starting areas).  The new post-Cata quest chains are all on rails, too: you have to do them in sequence, no exceptions.  This means you zip right along, heading straight up to L60.  Things get a wee bit diverted in Outland and Northrend with the lack of updates to those areas, but the L85 Express kicks right back into gear once you hit the Cata zones.

The first few times you level up to L85, that's not a big issue.  You can quest, you can run instances, you can run BGs.  You can even heavily incorporate herb gathering and mining into your leveling experience if you feel like it.  But after a while, you start to get tired of seeing the same zone in the same order again and again and again.  Yes, the phasing is cool, and you do have a visible impact on the world.  And yes, the quests-on-rails is a consequence of that design decision.  However, a side effect of it is the lack of group play when you're out questing in Azeroth.

Let's think about this for a moment.

• A design that emphasizes --and encourages-- solo play until you get to max level.
• Due to the speed of leveling, the emphasis isn't simply on playability, but on how quick you can get to max level.
• The quests-on-rails environment is all about telling the story --the same story-- which is completely locked in to this expansion.  This means that if Blizz were to create another expansion that had an impact in the two main continents of Azeroth, this entire environment would have to be redone, the story rewritten.

Doesn't this all mean that the "new" Old World is set up to simply get players to max level as quickly as possible?  It sure feels like it.

I'll give Blizz the benefit of the doubt in that I'm sure they wanted to tell a good story that couldn't be told without a complete revamp of the Old World, but the law of unintended consequences has re-emphasized that all the action is at max level.  Being out in the field is a solo affair, and unless you play in a PvP realm, there's not a lot of interaction going on in Azeroth.

Now look, I know quite well you can turn off XP and goof around as much as you want.  But I have tried to slow down advancement on a few of my toons while still collecting XP, and unless you spend your time in zones far below your class, it's almost impossible to not level up while questing.  And fairly rapidly, at that.

A side effect of Blizz's current quest design philosophy is that it is so jarring to move from Azeroth to Outland and Northrend, where the quest-on-rails simply doesn't exist.  That's why the upcoming adjustments in leveling in Northrend became so necessary: they were the brake on the L85 Express.

However, never has this design philosophy been so evident as when you leave WoW and enter another MMO.

LOTRO is a lot like 'old style WoW':  there are mostly solo quests out there, and you can do them in any order you want (within reason, naturally).  You're not locked in all the time.  LOTRO also doesn't have a bunch of small quests as part of a large chain, either; it's all one long quest, but it's broken into sections without having to subdivide into mini-quests.  There are some group quests as well:  people hook up for those quests, and they're done ala pre-Cata WoW.  The leveling is at a more sedate pace, which matches the tone of the MMO.  Sure, people will want to play WoW because they loved the story found in the books and Warcraft I-III, but not as many as you might think.  In LOTRO, however, the story is the primary draw, and Turbine knows it.  If you spread out the pace of leveling you can immerse yourself more fully into Middle Earth, and you can be more social with friends.  End level raiding isn't their primary design emphasis.

Now Age of Conan...  That is a horse of a different color.

AoC does have a neat little trick called offline leveling that allows you to level more rapidly once you're past L30, which is perfect for those who choose to accelerate their movement to max level.  But if you choose to level using questing, you're in for a surprise.

Once you get past the Tortage starter area, the number of group quests really goes up.  Sure, you have a lot of individual quests to work on, but AoC practically pushes you into group cooperation with the way the zones are designed.  The Cimmerian area Connall's Valley has the Vanir deployed more like an instance than anything else, and their movements are a lot more detailed than I've seen in WoW.  As I've commented before on the AI, enemies are far more sensitive to nearby attacks and use real tactics to give themselves the best possible advantage.  For some quests it becomes absolutely necessary to work in a group, even if the quest itself isn't flagged as a group quest.

With AoC the focus is not only on creating a more demanding quest line, but one that encourages group cooperation.  AoC shares a similarity with LOTRO in that the journey is important enough to encourage immersion, but the approach to get people involved in the journey is different.  The net result, however, is that both MMOs slow down leveling; their devs don't focus the MMOs to getting the player to max level as quickly as possible.

This upcoming week, we'll hear about the new WoW expansion from Blizzcon --and if you don't think we'll hear something, I've got a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you-- and I wonder what Blizz will do to counteract the heavily story-laden Star Wars: The Old Republic juggernaut.  Will they orient themselves even more toward end-game raiding, or will they go off the quests-on-rails and change their quest focus again?  I guess we'll find out soon.

Dancing With Myself

The inspiration for this post came from my perusal of the Badlands this morning, when I came across a Worgen Warrior off in a corner near Lethlor Canyon (not to be confused with the other Worgen who was doing the same Rhea's Egg questline as I was). 

This particular Warrior simply decided to start dancing.  Just for the hell of it.

I've been playing for a little over two years and I've seen some strange things, but this isn't what you'd expect to find at 5 AM.

Then again, is there ever a good time to be seeing strange stuff in WoW?

Like the guy who had his attacks set up via a macro so that he starts by yelling "Go go Power Rangers go go!"  (I've come across him twice via LFD back when I was on Stormscale.)

Or the Goblin with the name of Snookie --yes, in honor of that Snookie-- that would shout every minute or so: "Where's the beach?"

Compared to this stuff, I'm kind of an ol' fuddy duddy.  (And get offa my lawn, too!)  But you know, one of these days...

Like maybe I'll create a Hunter with a pet named Scooby just so I can yell in the Halls of Reflection "Zoinks!!!  Run, Scoob!!" 

Or maybe that Hunter will go around with a gun, saying "Say hello to my little friend!"

Or I'll level a Rogue so I can quote lines from the Barenaked Ladies' song "The Ninjas" in a BG.