Monday Musings

Let's get this out of the way now:  I'm a PC gamer.

That said, the appeal of a console for gaming right now is pretty strong, but not because of what you'd think.

There are a lot of good, new games that I'm interested in but I've not pulled the trigger on because of the system requirements.  My aging PC still meets the minimum system requirements, but I know from two decades of gaming experience that those minimum requirements are just about worthless.  So, instead of paying for the game itself, I'd also have to pay for some significant upgrades to my system.

With a console, I wouldn't have to do that.  Yes, that means I wouldn't be able to play a lot of the games I currently own as they aren't made for the console, but it also means that I don't have to pay for hardware upgrades every couple of years.

***

Speaking of hardware upgrades, WoW's older graphics engine might actually work in it's favor for a while.

As newer MMOs with more sophisticated graphics are released, you need more horsepower to run those games seamlessly.  For gamers such as myself, who are reluctant to shell out cash for the hardware just to play one or two games, it's a cheaper option to simply remain with WoW.

I doubt we're going to see much impact by that, but I know that one significant deterrent from me playing TOR are the system requirements.  My PC struggles when you get all 40 people wailing on Drek or Vann in AV, and  there have been a few times where I've actually gotten kicked out of the game in AQ40 when there's been too much activity on screen.  Now, throw in the nicer but more processor intensive graphics of the latest MMOs, and you get the idea.

***

Given the instant popularity of Healers Have to Die, you'd think that Healers would be higher on the priority list in a BG.  Or at the very least, CC them or something to keep them from assisting in the BG.

But nooo....

I can't tell you how many times I've been in a BG lately where people have had to spell out "KILL THE HEALERS" in BG chat.  You know, it's one thing if there are four enemy healers in Warsong Gulch and they're all focusing on the flag carrier, but it's quite another if there's just one Holy Spec Pally out there spamming Holy Light.

It's as if everyone in the BG is expecting someone else to do it, so they get the glory of offing the FC.

One-a-Day Plus Something or Other

After spending much of the Cataclysm expansion playing BGs, I've recently returned to my questing roots.

Sure, I've squeaked in BGs, but I've been recently cruising through Azeroth, working on that Alliance Loremaster for Tomakan.  I figure he'll have it by the end of the NCAA Tournament, when most of the people at work seemingly disappear into the ether and I can take a few days of vacation.  (Okay, I'm not going to take vacation days just to play WoW, but it is something to chill out with.)

Horde Loremaster Quintalan has been operating in semi-retirement, occasionally dropping in to Silvermoon or Eversong Woods to stroll the area.  There's always some smart-ass lowbie toon who thinks it's funny to challenge Q to a duel if he's on Sunstrider Isle, but I always refuse those requests.  I've been tempted to send him into AV, but right now he's content to relax and fish for a while.

In Q's absence, Neve has taken over the Horde toon mantle for the time being and has been running both Firelands and Quel'Danas dailies to keep herself busy.  I'm not exactly sure why I decided to start both at the same time, but a mage's teleport ability is invaluable for handling this task.

Comparing the two sets of dailies has been very educational, even though Neve can sleepwalk through the Q'D dailies given the level imbalance.  In fact, the two sets of dailies have demonstrated the evolution in daily design over the lifetime of WoW.

The Quel'Danas dailies came at the end of BC and featured one big element found in some of the more vexing pre-Cata Vanilla questlines: trooping all over the Continent just to kill or collect something.  Does anyone remember the questline that the ghost in front of Stratholme sent you on?  First you had to collect stuff to assemble the ghost detector in order to contact him, then he sent you on quests all over Azeroth (and several times into BRD) to assemble what you needed to defeat the monster in question.  Finally, after crisscrossing Azeroth numerous times you were able to complete the quest chain and return to the capital city for your reward.  While about half of the Quel'Danas dailies were in Q'D proper, the rest sent you all over Outland to collect and/or fight things.

Most people who come to Quel'Danas these days see the sunny location and the numerous dailies to choose from, but it wasn't always the case.  Q'D as released was a rainy beachhead that only changed as enough dailies on a server were completed.  The Shattered Sun gradually retook the island, more dailies opened up, and skies cleared.  It was a great idea in theory, but in practice what happened was that on some servers people were in such a rush to unlock more content that they blew through the daily requirements and unlocked everything in record time.

The next major set of dailies, for the Call of the Crusade patch in Wrath, improved on things a bit by removing the world trigger for a change in the dailies.  Instead, the player progression unlocked the next level of dailies, and the player could move at their own pace.  The variety of locations you could be sent to was reduced to a more manageable level, with the implication that you could do the dailies and then go about your raiding (or whatever).  The trouble was that the same 5-8 quests got monotonous after a short while, and each time you tried to become a champion for another race in your faction you had to go do this all over again.

Blizzard apparently learned from these issues when they designed the dailies for the Firelands, because they brought back the world effect changes, but tried to keep the character oriented approach.  Firelands utilizes phasing to separate out the world event changes, from the growth of the tree at Malfurion's Breach to the addition of different quest types in an effort to prevent stagnation.  This allows the dailies to take place in a more limited locale, reducing the monotony of travel time and increasing the amount of in-game activity.

Variety?  Check.
World altering events?  Check.
Small locale?  Check.
Time length?  Um.....

I've discovered that the Firelands dailies take a lot of time --and I do mean a lot-- when compared to their predecessors.  Even though you can one-shot mobs in Quel'Danas, you still take about 10-20 seconds fighting monsters in Firelands on average.  You'd also have to consider that Firelands is still active as a quest hub, so there are enough other players there that your way from one location to another isn't hindered by having to mow down excessive mobs.  Quel'Danas probably would take about 10 minutes longer if I were at-level, but that still doesn't take as long as the 45 minutes for me to clear all of the Firelands dailies, and I haven't even unlocked everything yet.  Blizzard didn't eliminate the time factor, they just tweaked it so that you had to do more dailies at once for fewer days overall.

The current state of dailies rewards persistence, not skill or gear level.  While persistence in and of itself isn't a bad thing, too many people who don't value persistence at the level required of the Firelands felt obligated to run those dailies to get the rewards at the end, and people don't like being forced into anything.

What's That About Wrestling With a Pig Again?

Most of the time my battleground chat is restricted to announcements.  You know the sort:

"3 inc TP"
"3 to Farm, no 4"
"SHB is secure; need 1-2 more for def"

That's what you see in BG chat, anyway.  I might be shooting the bull with people while holding down a location, but I never stick that in BG chat.  I figure there's no reason why I should clutter up the channel further when nerd ragers are doing that all the time.

Well, last week in an IoC run I broke my rule.

I was on Neve, which must mean something, but I'm not sure what.

Things were not going well for the Horde in this run.  While our D had taken out the glaives early, the Alliance's D inside the keep was doing a good job of preventing us from breaking through.  I was staying put at the Workshop, waiting to escort the siege engine once it became available.

Ding!  One siege engine rolled out into place.

There was nobody around to drive it.

"Need someone to take engine."

"Got an engine ready to go."

Finally a Pally (unfortunately) came riding up, hopped in, and began driving toward the Alliance keep.

We'd all been going to the East Gate, but this guy drove straight to the Main Gate instead.

"East Gate!  East Gate!" I said, then said it again when he started to go to the West Gate.

He pulled the engine out and rotated it toward the East Gate just as the announcement that the Alliance had broken through popped up.  I knew we had a chance if our D could hold just a bit longer, but we needed speed and firepower.

The Pally then started wiggling the engine as if he were dancing.  "Don't I have a hot body?" he yelled.

I gritted my teeth.  "And no brains," I typed as I was dumping all my CDs trying to distract the Alliance defenders.

"Nevelanthana is either a guy or a really ugly bitch!"

Another guy piped up.  "Why don't you STFU and drive the damn engine!"

"You're just jealous of my abs!"

Thankfully, the Alliance slew Agmar a half a minute later, so I didn't have to see his idiotic comments any further.

***

You know how I've mentioned in the past that if you're a newbie to BGs that AV is an ideal starter because one person isn't going to make that much of a difference?  Well, I've noticed something the past month or so in AV that kind of disproves that assertion.

Whether it's due to sloppy play or some other issue, I've notice that the majority of runs are almost completely of the zerg variety --where the pull starts with two towers/bunkers down-- with almost nobody playing any sort of defense.  In a pure sprint, you're totally  dependent upon things such as Crusader Aura, and that nobody on the other side is setting up any sort of defense.

You can see where this is going, can't you?

If you've got all your CC available, you can hide out in TP or IWB and do just enough to throw the other side off schedule so that your side can pull first.  The last AV run I won on Neve I did just that, hiding out in TP alone, and when the Alliance stormed up the tower I cast Invisibility, drawing them in, and then unloaded with every CD I had.  In a tight area with three mirror images of myself as well as a water elemental, chaos ruled.  Sure, I went down after about a half a minute, but it was just enough of a nudge to throw the Alliance off schedule so we won.

I'm not very proud of that, given that I prefer the turtles, but I'll take the victory.

***

Free Hint:  If you're a stealthie, dismiss your companion.

I was on Tomakan in AB, holding down the Lumber Mill, when I saw a Perky Pug walk by.

"What the--" I began when a Rogue materialized and began slashing me.

Thankfully, he was an undergeared Rogue, but once I realized what was going on, I kept close tabs on the location of that Pug.  Sure enough, he was lurking out there, waiting for the two of us to drop our guard.  Twice he tried to get the drop on us, but that pug gave us enough warning to lay down some AoE of our own.

How do Cross-MMO Guilds Work?

The advent of TOR and the subsequent creation or TOR branches of WoW guilds has gotten me to thinking. How much to the WoW guilds share with their TOR counterparts?

If you want to use Venn diagrams then so be it:

Just what is inside that intersecting area? Web sites? Vent/Mumble? Just a spot on a guild’s forums? Nothing at all?

The thing I can see is that --even with the best of intentions—the two guilds will grow separate over time. Members may join for one MMO but have no inclination to join the other. Perhaps a guild may have a rule that only their WoW members are allowed to join the TOR guild, but that will create a subgroup within the larger WoW guild that may eventually seek independence from the larger organization.

If both groups are large enough, does it make sense to maintain a single Vent/Mumble server or subdivide into two separate servers? If you’re recruiting for your TOR guild, is it really smart to just have a single section on your guild’s Forums for TOR, or should you create an independent website? (Or something in between?)

I’d imagine that the answers are a whole lot of “it depends”, but I’m curious as to how this little social experiment pans out.


(Side Note:  I'm trying to track down the source of a potential issue with the blog.  At least one blog reader has informed me that some browsers are showing some of the words without spacing between them.  Instead of "this and that" they read "thisandthat" instead.  If you see that issue, let me know so I have a better idea how to fix it.)

The F2P Field is Getting Crowded

Not only is the original EQ going F2P, but Rift is following Blizzard's lead and releasing a Rift Lite, wherein the first 20 toon Levels are free.

To quote that German guy on Laugh-In:   Velly interestink!

That Great Gig in the Sky

"Nature just gave up and started again.  We weren't even apes then.  We were just these smart little rodents hiding in the rocks.  And when we go, nature will start over.  With the bees, probably.  Nature knows when to give up, David."  --Stephen Falken, Wargames

Lately, I’ve been wondering how WoW will end.  Not the storyline, mind you, but how the game itself will shut down.

(In February, you get some serious brooding done.  Either that or I’m listening to too much Dar Williams and Pink Floyd these days.)

How will it look to those of us who have been around for a while?  Will we know the contraction caused by lost subs when we see it?  I’m reminded of what it would look like for people living in the decline of an empire, and whether the citizens would recognize the decline around them. 

I suppose the first sign would be the lack of activity on the servers themselves.  Of course, at this stage of an expac it would be difficult to notice real subscription loss versus the ‘end of expac blues’, so it would be quite easy to ignore the wide open spaces and empty zones.

But it wouldn’t be easy to ignore server shutdown.

I imagine there’s a certain level of subscription loss on a server that, once crossed, would place the server on a path to consolidation.  Corporations do this all the time to save money; they will go through periods of server expansion up until someone finally checks out the amount of support they’re paying for each server.  Once that happens, a corporation will consolidate as much as it can to retire old and underutilized servers.  Electrical costs, maintenance costs, and other items affecting the bottom line will push Activision, and they will in turn push Blizzard into making their server farm more ‘efficient.’

Eventually, that will happen with the WoW servers.  One day you’ll wake up, login, and find a message stating that Wyrmrest Accord is being folded into Argent Dawn.  Then it will hit you:  WoW really is contracting.

The large population servers may not even notice this contraction going on; they have, after all, a huge number of toons on them, and they wouldn’t have any mass migrations of their own.  It’s only when you check to see server availability on Patch Day and you mutter to yourself that the server list looks smaller than it used to be that you’ll start to wonder.

Tools such as LFR and LFD will hide declines very easily too, giving the appearance that server activity is up when the reality is quite different.

If server activity declines and consolidations occur, what about character/faction transfer?  Those will already be in decline due to LFR and LFD and cross server grouping, but as fewer toons are being played there is less incentive to take advantage of these offerings, so Blizz will see revenues fall in this arena too.

Once a decline begins, it is very difficult to stop it.  Typically, a corporation will cut staff in response to a lack of funding, causing development staffs to scale back release schedules and content, which only creates a feedback loop, accelerating the decline.

But at this critical period a development team needs more funding, not less, to dampen the subscription loss and reverse the long term trend.

In the end, if this cycle goes on for a while, the product will limp along with a small amount of hard core players, until some corporate boss will pull out a PowerPoint stack and demonstrate how cost effective it would be to simply shut the servers down.  People have moved on, he will say, and our resources would be more efficiently deployed on other teams.  Or maybe the corporation would be best served selling the product to a third party who would be more focused on the business than they can hope to achieve.

Such a spinoff, if any, might give an MMO a second chance at life, but these divestitures are often a complete crapshoot.  Either way, it may only stave off the inevitable for a few years.

And then the ghosts of SW:G and other defunct MMOs will gather on a specified day to watch their most well known cousin finally join them in the graveyard of software.  The cycle will be complete, and another will have taken WoW’s place.

(Hopefully I’ll come up with something a bit more uplifting next time, like people acting stupid in Isle of Conquest.)

And My City Was Gone

With the announcements that there will be no Blizzcon this year and that there will be a Battle.Net World Championships event to be held in Asia in 2012, it seems that Blizz is suffering from not enough personnel all around.

Okay, that's the face of it, but here's some other theories.

1. Focusing on Asia when an Asian themed WoW expac is released is a smart way to revive the WoW franchise.  Well, maybe.  Part of this depends on how the Asian population will feel seeing a culture that is an echo of their own in MoP.  If WoW sets a patronizing tone with the Pandaren culture, this whole thing could backfire and be a big release disaster.  The assumption that the pop culture references and snark found in WoW will play the same in Mists of Pandaria can be a very bad one.
2. Blizzard's focus is now on the Asian market.  Similar to #1, but in this case Blizz is going to develop and market with the Asian market in mind first.  Considering the worldwide appeal of their games, I'm not sure I quite believe this, but I do realize that the Chinese market will eventually dwarf all others.  Still, I'm sure that there are plenty of large overseas markets (hellllooo, Brazil) that don't like being passed over.  We don't know whether the Battle.Net Asian event is going to be located strictly in Asia or whether it is going to move to different cities each year.  Of course, it could be a one-off gimmick, too, but we'll have to wait and see.
3. Blizzard needs to realign staff to get their releases out the door.  Well, yeah.  They said so themselves in their post on the WoW website.  Still, for people who are wondering why they aren't hiring staff, consider this:  anyone who works in IT/software development will tell you that it takes at least six months before a new hire gets up to speed, and often that can stretch up to a year.  Contractors can fill in a pinch, but unless they are former employees even they will take some time integrating into your business environment.  Therefore, the best method of dealing with this situation is to peel personnel from other, lower priority projects and delay what you can.  Blizzcon, as the lowest priority among the staff, got the axe.
4. The three releases Blizz wants to work on are in significant trouble.  Although similar to point #3, this is more of a technical issue than a personnel one.  We haven't heard a peep out of Blizz since D3 was delayed, and as time goes on, this silence becomes more and more damning.  From being a week or two away from release to what seems an indefinite hold, the "tweaks" that D3 needed seem to be more major than realized.  If Blizz realigns staff (see #3 above), to deal with these major issues, this will have a ripple effect on the rest of the Blizz development projects.  In that case, Blizzcon as just the lowest priority item got chucked onto the woodpile.  Since Blizz keeps their development timeline so close to their vest, we won't know if there are other slippages in the release schedule at all until you wake up one day and say "hey, what happened to Heart of the Swarm?"
5. Activision/Blizzard is getting hit hard by SWTOR defections.  It's hard to tell right now given the lack of direct data out there, but judging by my personal experience I believe this is more a factor than some people would care to admit.  I never discuss guild material on the blog, so I'll only say that TOR has had an impact among the WoW players I know, and I'm sure it will have an impact with their quarterly subscription numbers.  If Blizz is feeling some pressure from TOR, then they may be shifting personnel around to accelerate development among all of their projects, not just the ones officially acknowledged. Like oh, say, Titan?
6. Activision/Blizzard is going to move development overseas.  I mean, really?  Come on, man.  You're going to read that into this move?  Get a grip.  If Activision/Blizzard decides to move development staff overseas, I'm sure there will be other signs than the movement of a con to Asia.
7. Activision/Blizzard is going to kill Blizzcon.  That's entirely possible.  The corporate world works in Byzantine fashion a lot of the time, but one truism often remains:  the money will go to the cheaper alternative.  If Activision, as the parent company, decides that Blizzard is flushing too much money down the drain by hosting a separate event when they could be better served integrating into PAX, that'll be the end of Blizzcon.  Given the history of some game companies to have less than stellar customer relations, it wouldn't shock me if this was merely the beginning of the end of Blizzcon.  That said, I'll believe it when I see it.  Of course, I said the same thing about Pandaren in the upcoming expansion, so maybe I ought to be careful what I wish for.

Overall, I expect that the next quarterly investor call from Activision/Blizzard to be very interesting, and will shed some light on the direction of WoW in the near future.