The Blogger as Revolutionary

Count de Monet:  It is said that the people are revolting.
King Louis XVI:  You said it! They stink on ice!
--From History of the World Part I


I have a mid-40s Dwarf Paladin over on the Moonrunner (US) server that dates from the pre-Real ID days.  Back then, myself and a few other WoW bloggers created a social guild to connect in-game.  As Real ID and cross server grouping has replaced the need to hook up on the same server, the guild has fallen into disuse.  That said, every couple of weeks I login to Balthan to get in some low level BG action on a Ret Pally.

Well, the other day I logged in and was greeted by the following pop-up:

Now, let's set something straight:  I know that the GM isn't inactive; he's Rades of Orcish Army Knife.

Before you ask, yes, he has an Alliance toon.  And a female Draenei Hunter, no less.  (So much for that Horde bias, right?)

Considering that I know Rades hasn't exactly bolted for greener pastures, I got in touch with him about this little pop-up.  Naturally, he thought it funny that it appeared, and he wanted to see what would happen if I tried to dethrone him.  I wasn't so sure about how this would work out, since I was the only person from the guild to login for the past 4+ months, and if there were a vote, I wasn't sure how that'd work out with nobody else to cast a ballot.  Hell, given the fact that we'd never identified which toon belonged to which blogger, I had no idea who was even still around to assist.

Well, I need not have worried.

 

And that was how I ousted Rades in a bloodless coup, providing him with endless fodder for blog posts as the exiled GM of Puggers Anonymous.  (Well, it's not really that bad; I kept him on as an officer.  You know the quote: keep your friends close and your enemies closer....)

Hmm, maybe I should create a Fabulor toon on Moonrunner before Rades decides to make one there....

 

 

That Elusive New Shiny

(Note:  I kind of wrote this straight without editing, and I decided to post it as-is.  If it meanders, well, you know where that came from.)

I was on Tomakan, working my way through Un’Goro Crater, when a guildie posed me a question.

“What do you think of the revamped zones?”

“I’m kind of torn,” I replied.  “I don’t like the quests-on-rails, but in some zones the stories are compelling:  Stonetalon on both sides, Southern Barrens on both sides.  They needed to do the quests-on-rails format to tell a story, especially with the phasing involved.  However, for a sandbox it doesn’t work so well.”

I couldn’t get those comments out of my head while I took a break and got catapulted into a WSG run.  While I’m not the biggest WSG fan, I still preferred that WSG game to the prospect of going back to Northrend and finishing up the zones I’d left behind.  Why was that, I asked myself.  Leveling a Warlock via BGs in Cata is an exercise in masochism, yet that was preferable to finishing up Zul’Drak for the fourth or fifth time.

The easiest answer to that is because the story never changes.  Even with phasing, we know this tale because we’ve played it before.  The outcomes are always the same, every time you play.  You may have an impact on the game world, but your choices don’t matter.  The few times you do have a true choice –to either kill or release the harpy leader in Hyjal, for example—it’s not a game impacting decision.  It’s a lot like the jokes that would get thrown around in the Culling of Stratholme instance about simply letting Arthas die:  everyone knows that the point of the instance is to keep him alive, in spite of our personal preferences, so we’ll simply just tag along in the knowledge that this really isn’t our story, but Blizzard’s.

This understanding about the game world is the basis for how Blizzard gets away with having major plot threads performed off-stage in books, rather than in the world itself.  I’ve found even in my own writing that it is easier to have certain major events occur off-stage and then have the characters react to that instead of the more arduous task of actually putting the events down on paper.  I can only imagine that this difficulty is magnified when you have to have people “act” in an MMO:  you’d have to design the quests, the NPC activity, the words, the artwork, and all sorts of other stuff associated in setting up a scene vs. paying an author $5k-$10k-$20k to write a book.  To a finance department, that’s a no-brainer.

And yet, I can’t help but wonder if a good portion of the reason why the lower level zones are so consistently empty is because we really don’t have an impact on the story.  Those zones are reduced to being leveling fodder for people hunting for a transmog piece of gear or are populated with gold farmers trying to crank out as much raw materials as they can.  Because we can’t change the story we’re forced to relive the events of the doomed Alliance commander in Southern Barrens where he is effectively betrayed by elements of his own side who want a scorched earth policy toward the Horde.  We can’t even raise a red flag to the Horde commander in Ashenvale that there might be a demon hiding in his midst until such activity draws the ire of Garrosh.  (Old Garrosh despises demons far more than the Alliance, and I have to give him credit for that.)  Have we seen this play before?  You bet we have.  And like a cursed sailor on the Flying Dutchman, we’re forced to relive these events every time we quest in a particular zone.

Perhaps that’s what appeals to me in BGs:  the outcome is uncertain, and you can have an impact on the game.  Sure, you can be saddled with a lot of people who know nothing about how to play AV, but so can the other side.  Plenty of real battles were fought when one side was hopelessly green or outnumbered, and yet you can never say for certain what will happen in the end once the troops are committed.  (The Battle of Marathon or the Siege of Rhodes in 1480 both come to mind.)

In a game designed like WoW, perhaps this is the best we can come to an uncertain outcome where our decisions actually matter.  Sure, there’s raiding, and I’ve heard and seen the toll that smashing your collective head against the impregnable wall of an end boss can put on a person and a guild.  Raiding is, by nature, a hard thing to accomplish, and once you succeed all of that effort will have been worth it.  However, the story will never change no matter how many times we down that boss.  Once the boss is a photo op lying on the ground, we know how things will go.  The NPC reactions are always the same.

This might be an unintended side-effect of the LFR tool:  as more people can easily see end content, the clamor for the new shiny comes louder and quicker.  While some folks love to chase hard modes (or even normal modes now) others who are conditioned by console gaming say “Okay, I’ve beaten the game.  Now what?”  This isn’t because people are greedy, it’s just that they’re conditioned to play the game a certain way, and if that goal is reached more quickly, they’re at a loss as to what to do.

***

MMOs –even those that aren’t sandbox types-- are by nature big worlds with lots of options.  Soul and I have posted that very thing on occasion when the “I’m bored!” crowd kicks it into high gear.  If you’re bored with 5-mans, try BGs.  If you are looking for something off the beaten track, try a naked dungeon challenge like what Rades advocated.  Or maybe how about an old-time flashback and organize a Paladin vs. Shaman throwdown? 

However, it needs to be said that people have different motivations when playing an MMO such as WoW, and when that motivation is unfilled, people will move on in search of that magic.  But what is that magic that people are chasing?

Everyone is different.  People play games for different reasons.  Some love a good story; some love the thrill of having beaten the game; some go for the competition of PvP; some love to collect, and some just live to role play.  There are as many different motivations to playing an MMO as there are options inside a game.  That elusive magic that a game can bring into your soul is a chameleon; each player sees a different siren leading them onward.

Perhaps the restlessness we see in the MMO world today is a reflection of chameleon like nature of our pursuit of the magic.  People remember that moment, that ‘oh wow’ moment, and they wish to recapture it.  For some, the new shiny holds promise, and we shouldn’t be surprised when people unsub/resub in pursuit of that new shiny.  This same group will migrate to and from MMOs, testing the latest and greatest, yet remembering their first.

I still play ‘old’ games such as Civ and Master of Orion, because the magic is still there.  I remember that thrill when I finally beat Civ I on King level, a feat I’ve never repeated.  My kids will see the clunky graphics and primitive sounds of MOO and laugh, but I know that they’ll remember Civ IV the same way I remember Civ I.  Or how I remember when I finally started playing WoW.

Now that the NDA is Over...

...I've seen the female Pandaren design.  While it's better than I expected, she's still too skinny.  Is it too much to make a female Pandaren look more like a Panda first and a dwarf second?

On That New Pandaren Silhouette...

When I saw the female Pandaren Silhouette, this is what I thought of:

Yeah, Jack Black and Gwyneth Paltrow.  

If you're going to have male Pandaren that look a helluva lot like, well, pudgy pandas, why on earth would you create a female Pandaren that looks like she's been on The Biggest Loser?  Don't give me the "we have to make females look significantly different than males" crap, either.  Therazane alone defeats that concept.

To me, making female Pandaren "skinny Pandas with J Lo hips" signifies a lack of imagination.  Another way of looking at it is to consider the female Pandaren as a female Human base that has been "Panda-ized", instead of going from a real honest-to-god Panda and building a recognizable female from that.

Think of Therazane; she broke the mold for female bosses and (semi) faction leaders completely, and Blizz could have built on that by going in a more unique direction.  But with the female Pandaren silhouette, it looks like Blizz played it safe and sexy because it sells.

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.