Those Who Can, Play; Those Who Can't, Crank it up to Eleven

As my family will tell you, I like music.

I'm one of those people who can't play an instrument worth a damn, but I've spent a lot of my time surrounded by music.  I worked a DJ shift in college, listened to shortwave radio for the world music (now easily found over the internet), volunteered at our local Celtic festival to help run sound and do stage work*, and spent time supporting the arts as much as I could.  It would figure, I suppose, that I really enjoy the music in video games, such as this gem from 1998:

It isn't exactly news to gamers that video game soundtracks had reached movie soundtrack quality, but the wider world only seemed to take notice when Christopher Tin's Baba Yetu, the main theme for Civilization IV, won a Grammy in 2011 for Best Instrumental Arrangement With Vocalist(s):

In that spirit, I thought I'd take a quick look at some of my favorite pieces in the MMOs I play, and you're welcome to add your own favorite in the comments.

The largest MMO out there, WoW, has some of the most impressive soundtracks as well.  The music ranges from the classic:

to the solo piece:

to the Appalachian inspired:

But my favorite piece in WoW has to be this one:

It feels like the composers were channeling Brian Eno and adding a sinister guitar riff atop it.  WoW has a history of music that evokes and complements the scenery of a region, but for some reason they really hit one out of the park with the soundtrack to Hellfire Peninsula.  This music isn't in your face, it isn't classic inspirational/emotional raid boss fight type of stuff, but it's there, lurking.  And when the ground shakes at the approach of a Fel Reaver at the same time as the guitar riff starts, look out.

By contrast, Lord of the Rings Online has a soundtrack that is understated and designed to fit neatly into the background.  Like Middle-earth itself, the music is part of the tapestry surrounding the fields of the Shire or the halls of stone in Thorin's Gate.  It's there, and you notice it from time to time --just enter a tavern-- but it never comes to the forefront.  

Unless, say, you manage to make it to Rivendell for the first time:

When you hear that music, you know the long run is finally over.  You can relax; you're at Elrond's house at last.

Switching gears from Epic Fantasy to classic Sword and Sorcery, the soundtrack to Age of Conan echoes Basil Poledouris' soundtrack to Conan the Barbarian.  There's something raw and primal to pieces like this one:

Or this:

The sharp beauty of the pieces echo the barren lands of the Hyborian Age, with a heavy dose of Norse imagery thrown into the mix.

With the wealth of music generated by six movies (okay, seven if you count the Clone Wars movie) and a television series, you'd think that The Old Republic could coast a bit.  Yes, the MMO does use a bit of legacy Star Wars music (okay, a lot), but it does have a soundtrack in its own right.  The piece that most people are familiar with is the loading screen:

But among other items, each planet does have its own soundtrack as well.  This one happens to be one of my favorites, and I'll be honest in that I thought at first it was written by John Williams:

As you can see by my lists above, I avoided the "rah rah" in your face battle music.  All of the MMOs in question have great inspirational music that you might not even notice in the heat of battle (or you've turned down the in-game music so you have your own to listen to while raiding).  I was tempted to select the old Warsong Gulch BG music, because that always gets my blood flowing during a hotly contested game, but in the end I went with music that I can also pause and just listen to for a few minutes.  Try doing that in WSG and you'll be spending most of your time being corpse camped at the graveyard.

Still, I find that game music fits nicely into my playlists while I get my work done, and on my MP3 player while I'm cutting the grass or going for a walk.  Good music has a utility all its own, and I'm glad that video game composers are finally starting to get their due from the world at large.

*Don't ask me to mix sound for a recording.  It's been over a decade since I was last behind a mixing board.


EtA:  Stupid cut-and-paste issues.

Making the Gamer Stereotypes Harder to Shake, Part Whatever

World of Warcraft Stabbing: Jordan Osborne Assaulted And Stabbed In Chest Over Video Game

I just want to shake my head.

Blizz Announces the Guild Mentoring Program

When the announcement of the Guild Mentoring Program for WoW came through the interwebs, I raised my eyes to heaven and said "Finally!"  Looks like someone took a page from EVE Online and decided to help noobs out by creating mentoring guilds out of a pool of volunteer guilds.

Here's the link for you to go read up the FAQ (such as it is):  Introducing the Guild Mentoring Program

At first glance, I love the idea.  It basically formalizes what some random individuals have been doing over the years, providing a destination for new players to be tutored in the ways of WoW and MMOs in general.

That said, I do have some questions/concerns how this will work out:

• The portion about identifying and inviting new players into the mentoring guild does make me wonder how that'll work in practice.  People can be prickly about such things, and if they feel like they're being given a hard sell, this could backfire.  Also, how the mentoring guild will determine that a player is new is going to be a challenge; people create new alts all the time, and if you don't have the funds/don't care about transferring heirlooms over, a new alt could seem a lot like a new player.  The same goes for an already experienced MMO player who just happens to be new to WoW.
• A three month tour of duty (or three months in the barrel if you prefer that slang) might not be enough time for new players.  I still wonder just how some people are able to power level their way through to max level, no matter what MMO I'm on, because it seems like they have to be spending almost every waking moment playing to do just that.
• Will the new players be encouraged to 'leave the nest' once they've got things down, or will this merely become a clever recruiting tool for guilds lucky enough to be chosen?  I can easily see that some guilds will look on this initiative as the latter and try to pad their raiding ranks this way.
• What happens to the mentoring guild if drama breaks out?  I don't think I need to say anything else, other than a big guild breakup while in the tour of duty would have the opposite of the intended effect.

Still, I think it's a decent first step.  I suspect that the smartest move in the long run is to create a permanent Mentoring Guild for each faction on each server and ask for volunteers to help staff it.  Blizz might be surprised at how many people would put in some volunteer time in a Mentoring Guild to help people along.  This might even counter Trade Chat and the scum and villany that pervade it.

One final thought:  while I think EVE Online's idea of EVE University is a great idea all MMOs should emulate, some need it more than others.  LOTRO and TOR have a friendly enough community that the needs of a Mentoring Program are served by Gen Chat.  AoC's F2P Gen Chat is pretty dead right now, with only gold spammers for the most part, so a mentoring program could be useful there.  But WoW, being the 900 lb gorilla and having the rep of being populated with "L2P NOOB!" denizens, definitely needs something to show that not everybody is an asshat in the game.

Now, if they could do something about the nerd ragers in BGs......

On Mists and 'The Smart Kids'

Anne Stickney stirred up a bit of a hornets nest with her post on WoW Insider The Smart Kids -- Or Why Cataclysm Failed to Impress.  Her points about the complaints with Cataclysm --that it was not what we thought we wanted-- struck a bit of a nerve with people.

I can't say I disagree with her assessment that people thought they wanted one thing, such as a revamped Old World, and it turned out that they really wanted was something new and innovative.  However, her assertions that Mists has what will cure the complainers' ills has me raising an eyebrow in skepticism.

One thing that I have to point out is that the beta people say the stuff about Mists that they were saying about Cata:  how great, new, and interesting it is.  Remember how people got excited about having to work in the new instances, and how they made you use CC, etc. etc?  Well, that excitement didn't last long in Cata, and I don't expect it to last long in Mists either.

Blizz doesn't want to sit on its laurels, because pleasing only the complainers is a reactionary thing.  They want to grow beyond 10 mil subs, but the problem is that gaining new subs is becoming more and more difficult.  To a new sub, Pandaria is all about the endgame, because they have to go from L1-L85 just to get to Pandaria.  Want to start as a new sub with a Pandaren?  It's going to cost you, because you have to buy the whole shebang.  (Yes, Blizz does specials, but if you don't know someone who plays, then Blizz' specials are an unknown item.)

If Blizz pleases only a portion of the playerbase --like they did in Cata-- they'll be hard pressed to stand still.  The race to L90 is already being plotted out, and the talent changes haven't exactly put the theorycrafters out of business, either.  Pet Battles will keep theorycrafters busy as well; anybody who watches games of MtG in action knows that Magic players (and their Pokemon kin) are out for blood.  Before I hear someone tell me that "Oh, but it's all about FUN!", I'll say this:  are you nuts?  Don't people remember the Beanie Baby craze, where collectors when absolutely bananas over those stuffed animals?  I've seen how obsessive collectors can be --just go to a flea market and watch the sideshow-- and Blizz could be unleashing something they did not intend by mixing theorycrafting with pet collecting.

What I'm saying is that Mists isn't going to be a panacea.  It's going to have good points and bad points, and there will be unintended consequences of actions.  Take LFR for instance.  LFR is going to have a much larger impact on Mists than it did on Cata, and its mere presence will cause people to burn through endgame content more quickly than ever before.  So, while there may be more endgame content at launch, Blizz may find people complaining that they're bored just as quickly as with Cata.

Blizz is also a business, so they're going to make some decisions on economics rather than pleasing the player base.  Just because WoW is raking in cash doesn't mean that Blizz is not under pressure from Activision to increase profits.  If there's one rule of today's Wall Street, it's what have you done for me lately.  "Oh, that's great, you brought in $XXX this year.  But that's the same as last year.  Where's the growth potential?  Why haven't you increased subscriptions?  What is your plan to expand into the high growth Asian market?  How are you keeping your costs down?"

When viewed through the lens of the 'smart kids', as Anne did, I really don't see any other MMO that would cause the 'smart kids' to leave and stick with, because the EQ/WoW/standard MMO model is still the dominant form out there.  Perhaps if they wanted a true challenge, there's EVE Online*, but really, it's easier to complain than to actually try something different.



*The Secret World holds some promise of breaking the traditional mold, but it's still too early to tell.

Where's my Peace and Quiet?

Anybody who has created a new toon in WoW the past several years knows that with a few exceptions, the starting zones have been empty of life.  Sure, there was the surge in Goblins and Worgen the first few months of Cataclysm, and there was the Death Knight invasion at the beginning of Wrath, but in general you simply don't see a lot of activity in the starting zones.*

The situation is so bad that Blizz is considering a specialized form of server merge to make the intro zones seem more active, on the premise that Blizz is losing potential new subs because "there's nobody on WoW".

The funny thing is, among the MMOs I've played, WoW is the deadest game at the low levels.

Sure, you could argue that the F2P nature of some games like Lord of the Rings Online and Age of Conan means that you'll see higher numbers of people trying those games out.  In the case of AoC, detractors will point out that the Tortage intro area is the best developed part of the game as well.  LOTRO has the benefit of name recognition among non-gamers, and has a more developed F2P area than AoC.

Then we come to a title like The Old Republic.

Sure, it's got that name recognition, but so did Star Trek Online.  It's also got its detractors, saying that the game is dead and a failure.

Then why are the intro and lowbie zones so busy?

When I tried TOR on one of the free weekends a month or two back, I found the intro zone for the Trooper and Smuggler filled with people (>100).  This was before any talk of server consolidation became a reality, and according to some statistical analyses contains the least played class (Smuggler) in the game.

After hemming and hawing about it,** I picked up the game last week, logged in to get access to the Smuggler I started, and found over 100 people in Coruscant alone.  Each planet I've been to since (Taris and Nar Shaddaa) has had a similar population level in the (late) evenings.  These aren't twinks, but people leveling actual toons.

When was the last time that you saw 100+ people in (Ashenvale + Northern Barrens) or (Loch Modan + Wetlands) that didn't involve a holiday event?  Outside of the first month after 4.0.1 dropped, I can't think of any the past 3-4 years.  Hell, the past month or two the population in Stormwind in an evenly divided server (Ysera) has been averaging 45-50 people a night.  That's right:  the big central home for an entire faction is averaging less population than a lowbie leveling zone in TOR.  Is it the end of an expac?  Sure!  But do you expect more than 50 people in your home city on an average night, even at this late date?  Yes!  And the week after D3 dropped, the population plunged to 20-25 people before recovering.

Getting back to the low level zones, perhaps the maturity of WoW hurts it the most in these areas, since the entire MMO is geared toward endgame.

Look at it this way:  how many recent posts geared toward Mists are talking about endgame already?  How many are saying "well, if your guild wants to raid you have to be at L90 by XXX date after launch, so you'd better get ready"?  How many are plotting out all the class changes for Mists, so you'll be ready to get to L90 and raid as soon as you can?

To me, this means that the focus of the two MMO populations is completely different.

Design intent or not, the TOR population's values are different than WoW's.  I could make a very successful argument that WoW's population is big enough that you can't make any generalizations, but at the same time the focus of WoW's expansions and content are mostly on the endgame.  When they did attempt to rework the Old World in Cata the results were incomplete at best, and Blizzard took a PR beating from people who complained there wasn't enough to do once they got to L85.

TOR suffers from the "there's nothing to do at L50!" stigma, so maybe the leveling activity is part of a desire of people to explore all of the Class stories.  I tend to doubt this, however, due to one other item:  Gen Chat itself.

Unlike the other MMOs I've played, I've noticed a lot more basic MMO questions in TOR's Gen Chat.  Yesterday, I fielded a question about using the word "drop" in MMO parlance, and I could tell by my conversation that the person on the other end was completely new to the game and MMOs in general.  People were less inclined in Gen Chat to say "L2P noob!" as well, in an almost LOTRO level of tolerance.  That doesn't mean that TOR is free of spammers in Gen Chat; on Taris there were enough Chuck Norris jokes I quipped that "Barrens Chat has been reborn in Taris."***

Does this mean that TOR is better than WoW?

No, it doesn't.  It just means that TOR is different than WoW.  Pronunciations by the suits and pundits aside, TOR caters to a different sort of player than WoW does.  Sure, the mechanics are similar, and most of the 'under the hood' character development is similar, but TOR seems to have taken over the mantle of "the first MMO you'll ever play" from WoW.****

Blizzard knows what it is good at --endgame and an expansive world that somehow works (if you ignore the story continuity issues)-- and if it sticks to that for Mists, it will do well.  If it tries to somehow 'outdo TOR' to lure those new MMO players over, it may be making a Cataclysm-sized mistake by trying to turn a game with a high intro cost into something it's not.  Mists is set to drop probably by October at the latest, and we'll see what Blizz has in mind with their marketing campaign.

Until then, I guess it's safe to say that if you want peace and quiet in your leveling, go hang out in Azeroth for a while.




*And lowbie zones.  Of course, when 4.0.1 dropped and all of the quests changed, the lowbie zones were a hive of activity for a month and a half until Cata dropped, then they almost instantly dried up.

**And running the numbers for the budget.

***I got several LOLs from Gen Chat on that quip, which made it worth my while.

****Although for my money, I'd suggest people try LOTRO first.  It's F2P, after all, so you're not out of money if you don't like the concept.

Talk to the Hand, Bub

I've been in plenty of BGs where someone --typically on the opposing team-- starts shouting something.  I watch and shake my head, wondering that they could possibly be going on in their BG chat that would make them yell like that.

Well, the other day I got to watch this in action.

I ported into Eye of the Storm on Adelwulf.  Not my favorite BG, but not the worst, either.  A lot of the game depends on how many stealthies the other side has, and whether people can adequately defend the stealth captures.*  I could see 3 or 4 stealthies on the Horde side, so I knew that I was in for a long game if my fellow Alliance players chose to leave me alone on a node.

At the start, a bunch of us went straight for the Draenei Ruins.  So did the Horde.  We found ourselves in a firefight, and in between dodging attacks by a Hunter, I kept fearing the Horde side's healers (Druid and Pally).  Luckily, we managed to hold onto DR and finished fending off the Horde when our Priest started bitching in BG chat.

"Way to keep me alive.  Jeez, learn to fucking fear next time."

I rolled my eyes, decided to not give that Priest a Soulstone next time, and scanned BET while I began drinking to bring up my depleted mana.**

"Call your damn pet, Lock.  How fucking stupid are you?"

Oh great, a real big asshole.  Just what I need.  Well, I still needed mana to summon my Felpuppy, and so I ignored the Priest.  It was only after I'd gotten done drinking and summoned my pet that he finally decided to heal me, kind of an insult-to-injury sort of behavior.

The Priest then kept riding everyone else the entire BG.  "What a fucking fail group," he declared at one point.  "You're all just a fucking bunch of losers."

Nevermind that we were actually winning at the time, and ended up winning the BG anyway.  Just before we were set to cap and finish off the win, the Priest abruptly changed his tune to a "Good job."

"Not too bad for a 'bunch of losers'," I quipped to those around me at the DR, which brought out several laughs.

I took some comfort in that I knew I wasn't going to see that Priest again in another BG, and requeued.

I got WSG, where Locks go to get eaten by Rogues.

And guess who was on our team?

I sighed and was about to take the Deserter debuff when I decided, Hell no, I'm just going to ignore him.  I've gone through worse in instances.

Thankfully, I wasn't the target of his egotistical ire.  At first it was the DK, who the Priest claimed "should never have been allowed to carry the flag at all; I've got more health than him!"  Then, when it became obvious that the DK actually knew what he was doing in spite of his not-so-great health, the Priest turned to the Horde side.

"COME AT ME, BRO!"
"COME AT ME, BRO!"
"COME AT ME, BRO!"

"I love yelling that to piss them off," he declared.

"COME AT ME, BRO!"
"COME AT ME, BRO!"

My lips trembled with suppressed mirth.  "Do you think he even realizes that the Horde can't read that?" I whispered the DK.

"Nope, and I'm not gonna tell him either," he replied.  "Just desserts, if you ask me."




*Okay, I'm shortening things up quite a bit here, because strategies change almost by the minute in EotS.  But in general, the fewer stealthies a side has, the more it has to rely upon brute force to capture an area, which depletes any push in the mid.

**I was short on health, and the Priest hadn't healed me yet, so I wasn't planning on using Life Tap.  You learn very quickly that if you make excessive use of Life Tap in a BG, that's an opening for a stealthie to come in and finish you off.

That Long Ride into the Sunset

I don't often do memes, but this one suggested by Cymre over at Blog Azeroth touched a nerve:

"If Blizzard added your main as an NPC in WoW, where would they be located and what would be their function? Give us a shot illustrating the fact."

Of course, my first thought was "which main?"  There's my old main, Quintalan, basking in retirement, and my current pair of mains, Tomakan (Alliance) and Nevelanthana (Horde), who will soon be retiring once Mists drops.  I haven't decided on a new main, but Adelwulf is probably in the mix.

Then I remembered how we used to handle our characters in the old AD&D games I played my first time around as an RPGer.  Once a character amassed enough wealth and/or power, we had the character merely 'retire' to live out the rest of life as the lord of some castle-or-other.  Essentially, our characters became NPCs in the game world.

So I was already doing to my WoW characters what I'd done all that time ago:  making them de facto NPCs.

Therefore, I'm going to take a look at each of my already retired or soon-to-be-retired mains and see what they'd be up to.

Quintalan, Blood Knight Loremaster

Mu'ru is gone, his spark used to re-ignite the Sunwell.

The Blood Knights loyal to Liadrin, Lor'themar, and Halduron Brightwing fought and defeated Kil'Jaeden as part of the Shattered Sun Offensive.  Many went on to lend support to the Argent Crusade in the struggle against Arthas.

Lady Liadrin now resides at the Sunwell, speaking to pilgrims from all over.

Therefore, it falls to the veterans of the Blood Knights, such as Quintalan, to indoctrinate the new initiates into the fold.

As the bearer of Quel'Delar, he roams Eversong Woods and the Ghostlands as a quest giver.  His quests concern the Blood Knight lore:  their creation, their fall, and their redemption.  (As a model, look at the Demon Hunter quest chain in Felwood, but spread out over a longer time.)

Initially, he is found alone, looking at the Shrine of Dath'remar on Sunstrider Isle.  

Does anybody ever read the plaque here?

Later, he wanders between Fairbreeze Village, Tranquillien in the Ghostlands, and the Farstrider enclaves in both Eversong and the Ghostlands.

Eversong is a beautiful and pleasant place.
Pay no attention to that Dead Scar over Q's left shoulder.

He gives Blood Knights quests at L20 and L40 on the history of the Order.  Upon completion of the L40 quest, the Blood Knight opens an additional quest in which Quintalan presents the Blood Knight to Lady Liadrin at a phased version of the Sunwell.  The Lady gives her approval to accept the Blood Knight as a squire of the Order, and sends the new squire on a quest chain for the purpose of atoning for the misdeeds of the fallen Blood Knights.  At the completion of the quest chain (and at >= L60), the Blood Knight receives a message to seek Quintalan out, and he initiates a special chain which takes the Blood Knight to the Sunwell for a presentation before A'dal and Liadrin.  The latter then gives the Blood Knight the Order's tabard, signalling acceptance as a full Blood Knight.

Nevelanthana, Arcane Tinkerer

Quintalan's sister was never the one for history.  She spends her days between the Isle of Quel'Danas and Dalaran, exploring the Arcane and stretching the boundaries of what it can do.  At her room in Dalaran, she is surrounded by her beloved books of Arcana and the mages whose order she longed to join as a youth.  The post-Kil'Jaeden Quel'Danas is a hive of activity and optimism as Sindorei and Queldorei work to rebuild  and cleanse the place of the demonic taint.  She refuses to get involved in factional politics, but Arcane arguments are a different matter.

On Quel'Danas, she is found among a group of Magisters and Arcanists, each arguing over who should gain possession of the recently cleared out Magister's Terrace.  (Her argument:  "I helped to exterminate the vermin in the place, so I should get a stake in administering it.")

When I get my rooms at Quel'Danas,
my books are coming with me!

In Dalaran, Neve begins a Mage quest chain that ends in the Mage learning how to port to both Quel'Danas and Wyrmrest Temple.  A final quest explores the possibility of a portal to Coldarra, yet in the end she concludes that "the ley lines surrounding the Nexus have yet to completely stabilize, rendering a portal unusable for the time being."

Come on, Celindra, it can't be THAT
difficult to get a portal open to the Sunwell!

Tomakan, the Voice of Reason

A Draenei who sincerely believes in the words "be kind to those less fortunate", Tomakan has seen everything the length and breadth of Azeroth.  To him, the greatest danger to the world doesn't reside in what's left of Twilight's Hammer, or even the Horde, but in one of Azeroth's most vexing races:  Gnomes.

The Hand of Argus is firmly convinced that somehow, somewhere, some pint sized engineer wannabee is going to be the person who accidentally opens a portal for the Burning Legion to enter the world.  And if he can help it, that fate is not going to happen on his watch.

Therefore, in a supreme act of sacrifice, he has taken up residence around the outskirts of Gnomeregan in a (mostly vain) attempt to guide the Gnomes' research away from anything resembling portals or dark knowledge.  He is a quest giver who has an Engineer make certain items to give to the Gnomish engineers nearby, giving the Trinket "Headslap of the Light" as a reward.*

And in Comic Sans, too!!

*That trinket's special ability is to stun an enemy by a slap to the head.