Speaking of Tentacled Old Gods...

...and now for something completely different.

Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime joined Bill Prady (co-creator of The Big Bang Theory), Felicia Day (The Guild and Dr. Horrible's Sing-a-long Blog), and Wil Wheaton in playing a game of Elder Sign.

Elder Sign is a card game by Fantasy Flight Games based on H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos.  The game is part of Tabletop, the real play series that's part of Felicia Day's Geek and Sundry web channel.  Sure, it's not an MMO, but it's got Blizzard's CEO involved.  It's a tenuous connection, but I'm running with it.

I'm Not as Young as I Used to Be

The family and I (and a friend and another relative) were up at Gen Con today for their Family Fun Sunday.

Five years ago --hell, try two years ago-- I'd have not blinked an eye about a 1.5 hour (each way) day trip and then walking around a humongous vendor/demo area for several hours, playing games and soaking in the atmosphere.  I could have gone back for more without hesitation, or sat up and talked about the experience for hours into the night.

But now, all I want to do is take a nap.

I suppose it's only natural that as time marches on, people change.  When Soul and I started this blog back in 2009, I knew very little about MMOs and WoW in particular, other than the standard jokes about "Warcrack" and "people who make RPGers look like they have a life".  But throughout the life of this blog, I've learned a lot about MMOs, and more importantly I've learned more of what I don't know.

It's very easy to sit back and start grumping like an Old Man hanging around the Dal fountain, but without purpose all it does is seem like whining.

I realize I've sounded a bit like a Negative Nancy the past few months about things, but a lot of that is driven by my need to look at things with a critical eye.  When people zig, I zag.  I am the "yes, but..." hovering around the edges of the MMO blogosphere, fully realizing that I can't buy into the hype and remain honest.

"Mists is gonna be the best thing evah!"

"Yes, but...."

"TOR is gonna be so awesome that it'll have sprinkles on it!"

"Yes, but...."

"TOR sucks major donkey dongs!  It's an unrelenting piece of trash!"

"Yes, but...."

"EVE is full of people who think that Lord of the Flies is a good learning experience!"

"Yes, but...."

"GW2 is chock full of awesomesauce!"

"Yes, but...."

Things are never cut and dried, black and white.  People who tell you otherwise are missing the point.*  Every game has pros and cons.  Some people like games that others detest; is one right and the other wrong?  No, both are right, because opinions about games are just that, opinions.  A post about what I think about a game is subjective while a post about something independently verifiable, like mechanics, can be objective.

Most of what I write is subjective, because I think it important to explore that hazy grey area between what the game provides and what I believe.  

For example, I've not been shy in my opinion that I dislike Warsong Gulch.  I've spent way too many hours being farmed by Rogues and one-shotted by Hunters on Adelwulf to have a high opinion of that BG.  It's a game where one person going AFK or getting DC-ed can be all the difference in a win or loss.  However, I do know of other people who absolutely adore that BG, and consider it WoW's crowning achievement in the development of the PvP battleground.

Who's right?  Everbody, because these are just opinions about the BG, not independently verifiable data.

However, what is really important about opinions is how well they're defended.  Any ol' Blood Elf can pipe up an opinion, but there's an eternity's difference between "It sucks!" and "It sucks because..."  Does the "because" portion of the opinion make sense?  Does it hold logical water?  Can you appreciate the position in spite of disagreeing with it?  This is what sets the intelligent "Yes, but...." apart from other net pontifications.**

What I'm hoping for is to provide a reader with some actual understanding of my position on whatever it is I post about.  I realize all too well that I can be obnoxious and stubborn when I want to be, and I have to constantly fight that tendency when I write.  Others have put the bar so high that it'll take me years to even approach it.  Still, this is a journey, and I'm in this for the long haul.

And my highly biased, totally undefended opinion about Gen Con?  It rocks.  Seriously rocks.

There were a few Old Republic fans present... ***

And I finally found one WoW cosplayer!  There's Vanessa VanCleef at 6:20 in the video clip.

*Or they are NPCs populating an MMO.

**If you want examples of really well thought out and defended opinions and speculations, go see Rades' Orcish Army Knife and Cynwise's Warcraft Manual.  Just be prepared to read; both can be very thorough in their arguments.

***From Nerd Approved's Flickr account.  Unfortunately, I couldn't decide just how many Blood Elves were actually cosplaying Link and his girlfriend.  There were plenty of folks in attendance wearing WoW themed t-shirts, however.


EtA:  Added a reference to the source of the pic.

EtA: Cleaned up some English.  Oy, my old English teachers would kill me....

EtA: Added a video clip for a WoW cosplayer.

Return to Yesteryear

Well, that's the reaction I got from the new WoW cinematic.

Ever seen the Warcraft III cinematic, where the Orc and Human are fighting in a field and an Infernal attacks (and kills) them both?

Well, you can see the similarities with the new Mists cinematic.  An Orc and Human are fighting after a shipwreck (the background is one part Robinson Crusoe and one part Treasure Island), and their battle is interrupted by a Pandaren.

There's more humor (and wuxia tropes) in the latter, but the former is more focused.  You know what you're going to be doing in Warcraft III, but Mists presents a bit more sandbox scenario, ala Vanilla WoW.  Sure, there's the voiceover talking about family and balance, but the imagery presents a different picture.

The selling points that the Mists trailer is presenting to the world?  Martial Arts.  A new continent to explore.  Humor.  Pandaren.

In short, an open book.

Given the direction that Blizzard has moved WoW ever since its inception, this trailer presents a different challenge.  I think this will resonate with people who like to explore a new culture and most especially it will resonate with people who quest and craft.  Whether altoholics can handle leveling in Pandaria multiple times remains to be seen; there's some early indication that the quest chains aren't so rigid as they were in Cata, which bodes well for leveling alts, but whether someone will care to repeat the same story multiple times is the big question.

The raiders, however, aren't necessarily going to be entranced by the trailer; the lack of an endgame pointer in the trailer suggests that Mists might actually be a transitional or bridge expac.

Blizz may have put out Mists to set up the next expac in much the same way that the second book in a trilogy sets up the last book.  Unlike Cata, where Blizz tried to pack both the second book (revamping the Old World) and the finale (the Deathwing/Twilight's Hammer story) in one expac, perhaps Mists lays the groundwork for the next expac.  Sure there will be raids, and we know that Garrosh bites it, but that's all done to set up the Big Finale two to three years later.  Garrosh as the End Boss in Mists isn't all that exciting; he's an asshat who --combined with Varian-- has kept Azeroth in an almost constant state of war since the middle of Wrath, but Garrosh as the Big Bad has the same sort of ring to it that Cho'gall had.

The trailer confirms my belief that Blizz is taking a big risk with Mists.  They're banking on the appeal of Pandaria to sustain WoW for a while, but going off of their traditional expac/raiding script might be off putting to some of the player base.  Right now, it's too early to tell.

Well, except for the humor.  They'll always have that.

Security Breach at Blizzard

Okay, I'm putting on my security hat and telling people to go to battle.net and change their passwords.

Why?

Blizz announced (in a roundabout way, via a blog post by the Blizzard President Mike Morhaime) that they've been the victim of a security intrusion.  Hackers apparently made off with passwords and some info regarding the authenticator programs, and there's the potential that your battle.net account has been compromised.

While the passwords are bad enough, it's the authenticator program breach that is the real problem.  Without two factor authentication to rely upon, your account is vulnerable.  If you use authenticator software to get your ID token, make sure it's updated to the current version.  No word yet on those people who have ID Badges (like the ones that RSA sends out), but if the breach included the algorithms necessary to generate the tokens, I presume that those will have to eventually need to be replaced.  However, at the moment Blizzard is only saying to make sure the authenticator software you use is up to date.

Here's the link to the WoW Insider entry on the issue:  Blizzard security breach, no evidence that financial data was compromised

On the bright side, Blizz is saying that they make sure the passwords are properly encrypted, which does make me feel better.  That gives people time to get their passwords changed before the old ones are cracked.

The Power Behind the Throne

Funny how things work.

I was sitting around on Friday, wondering what to write about this week, when the Activision earnings call dropped the bomb that WoW's subscriber base had dropped to 9.1 million, down 1 million from the previous quarter.  Couple that with TOR having dropped to below 1 million subs, and you've got an interesting week's worth of MMO data.

My first reaction was that the numbers would have looked even worse were it not for the annual pass subs, because the WoW base remained flat for the previous two quarters while I noticed a distinct dropoff in the number of people logged into a server.  As I've said before on several occasions, there are days when I think that 90% of the people logged into WoW are gold farmers, because I see very few people in the capital cities on an average evening* and what people I do see are out farming mats or working the auction house.  Actually seeing a leveling toon out in the wild is a rarity.

However, when I turned things over in my head for a while, I began to wonder just how many subs WoW has that are actual players versus gold farmers.  The reason why I bring that up is because, unlike some other MMOs, I keep turning over how gold farming will work in TOR outside of actual account stealing.

Most people buy gold to get a leg up on the competition or to help themselves in other fashions, but with TOR designed the way it is, I don't see the need to buy credits to assist you in the leveling game.  Sure, manipulating the AH can be done, but I haven't seen the TOR AH to be quite as cutthroat as WoW's AH is.  Perhaps I'm missing something obvious, but it seems to me that TOR doesn't really need the gold farmer industry very much.

If that's the case, then perhaps that 9.1 million figure that Activision put out in their earnings call is actually lower --a lot lower-- when you remove the gold farmer accounts**.

WoW is the big dog of the MMO world, and the gold farmers will flock to it like bees to honey.  Their numbers will only decline when their demand declines, and given the amount of announcements you get in the big cities, I doubt that's going to happen anytime soon.  TOR, by comparison, is conspicuous in its lack of gold farmer spam.  Other MMOs that don't have a large population, such as Age of Conan, still have plenty of gold spammers, but TOR doesn't.  Part of that is due to no major city-spanning communication system like WoW's Trade Chat, but other than that I don't really know why TOR has less gold farmer spam.

The scenario that TOR has fewer proportional gold farmers than WoW is significant, because that means that the actual number of true, playing WoW subs is a lot lower than people realize.  Which also means that if it's the actual WoW players who unsubbed, then WoW is in a bit more of a world of hurt than we believe.

Still, this is all water under the bridge since the definition of "true, playing WoW subs" probably is defined by Blizz as "a paying subscription."  They can't afford to discriminate, unless the behavior of the sub is deemed malicious in intent.  I'd argue that acts that participate in gold farming are "malicious in intent", but where you draw that line is kind of hazy.  Merely farming mats like mad isn't enough for malicious intent, because anyone farming for a rare item would be guilty.  Stealing accounts is malicious intent, but Blizz has to either be alerted to the theft or notice a pattern that tips them off that the account was stolen.

What all that means is that WoW needs gold farmers to keep their numbers up.  Other MMOs do too, but none more than WoW.  We can only conjecture as to how many accounts are gold farmer accounts, because Blizz itself probably doesn't know.  You can bet that if they did know, they'd point that out in an earnings call, particularly if it was the gold farmers leaving the game.

Investors, however, aren't interested in gold farmers***; they only care about subscriptions.  If subs go down, they want to know why.  If they stay down, they want to know what Activision is going to do to bring them back up.  People are slamming EA over TOR's subscription loss, and EA announced some major changes to the game in response.  Blizzard's response to its sub loss is "Mists will fix this."

But will it?

Blizz hasn't had subscription loss like this before.  At this time last release, Blizz was still riding high from the success of Wrath, and subs were either relatively flat or trending upward heading into Cataclysm.  Whether you played or took a break is irrelevant, because the subs themselves only changed by a couple hundred thousand.  Right now, things are going in the wrong direction for WoW, and if Mists only halts the bleeding, the investors will still be up in arms and demand a better response to the problem.

Higher sub prices?  Maybe.

More gimmicks?  Maybe.

More gold farmer friendly changes?  Maybe they will.  Subs are subs, no matter where they come from.

The saying goes to not bet against Blizzard, but Blizzard is now fighting its reputation as always being a 'safe haven'.  These are uncharted waters, and even Blizzard can't see what's ahead in the fog.  Maybe they'll find salvation in Pandaria, but maybe they'll just strike some rocks.




*Averaging about 45-55 a night on the two capital cities on Ysera, and about 100 in Org on A-52, which is 8:1 Horde dominated.  I have poked into Stormwind on A-52, but it'd make you cry at how empty it is.

**That's both toons created for the purpose of gold farming as well as stolen accounts.

***As long as the farmers aren't engaged in illegal activity, that is.

For Your Friday Amusement....

....A few in-game escapades, providing a glimpse into MMO life.


In Eye of the Storm (WoW):

(Several Alliance hold the mid from a Horde attack)
Pally:  You see that?  I'm AWESOME!
Pally: /flexes
(Horde Shaman appears and knocks the Pally out into space)
Me:  Oh yeah, that WAS awesome!
Mage:  Do that again!
Pally:  You both suck!


In Alterac Valley (WoW):

(Horde Hunter sets up shop above Stormpike GY, one-shotting Adelwulf twice as he respawns)
Me: Will somebody get that damn Hunter?
Rogue:  Get him yourself.
Me: He's GY camping and one-shotting me.
Rogue:  That's no excuse.
(Rogue spawns at the same time I do, and he gets one-shotted instead)
Rogue:  Damn!  Someone get that Hunter!


In Isle of Conquest (WoW):

(Alliance gets the Workshop and we pick up the siege engine)
Pally:  Which gate is lowest?
Me:  Right.  It's at 54.
Pally:  Go right!
(Siege engine takes off, and then before it gets to the Horde Keep, starts dancing around.)
Me:  Go right!  Go right!
(Siege engine chases after a stray Horde player)
Pally:  WTF!
Warrior:  Go right, dammit!
(Siege engine goes to main gate and starts attacking)
Me: Not there!  Go right!
(Siege engine goes left and chases after Horde players)
Rogue:  Someone else drive that damn thing!

Hold On While I Get My Coffee

There are certain stereotypes surrounding gamers that everyone knows, such as  the 40 year old who lives in his parents' basement or the guy with no self esteem (or social skills) who has never talked to a girl ever since puberty hit.  A stereotype peculiar to video gamers is that they spend all their money buying the latest upgrades for their computers and/or console systems.  Don't bother hitting a video gamer up for beer money, he just spent it on a new video card.

Well, if that gamer is out there, he must be made of money, because I'm surely not.

I'm still playing MMOs on the family computer, which five years ago was a middle-of-the-road Core Duo 32-bit machine running Vista.  Today, even with only a few upgrades, it's still basically that same Core Duo 32-bit machine running Vista.  I haven't even bothered to upgrade it to Win 7 because the machine is in such high demand from the entire family that I can't seem to schedule any downtime.*

Life on a machine that barely meets the minimum specs to play a game is, well, interesting.

It's a good thing I cut my teeth on gaming back in the 70's and 80's, because I'm used to long loading periods.  If you've ever loaded a saved game from cassette tape to your Commodore or TI-994/A, you know what I mean:  You start the process, hear the good old screeching of the computer data, and go get something to drink.  By the time you get back with a glass of Coke**, maybe you were lucky enough for the load to go well so you get back to playing Tunnels of Doom.  Otherwise, you had to rewind the cassette and start over.

Those old days have returned in the form of MMO loading screens.

There have been times where I actually hear the distinct sound WoW makes when a guildie logs in while I'm still in loading mode.  I've lost track of the number of times I've had someone say "Hi, Red!" in guild chat about a half a minute before I actually get to see it.  Sometimes I wonder if people think I'm blowing them off, but really, it's not you.  It's the machine.

The current load king is TOR, naturally, because I think it tries to use so much memory that I'm afraid one of these days I'm going to see stuff come oozing out of the SD chip slots.

A side effect of these long loading times is the Mysterious Floating Weapon Syndrome.  Ever walk into a high population zone and see a pair of daggers, hanging in mid-air?  Or maybe a lone double-bladed lightsaber, bobbing along?  Then you've seen a victim of MFWS, also known as "what happens when you've got a slow computer and it's trying to render a high density area on screen."  If I get up and go away, the problem resolves itself after 2-3 minutes and every nearby toon gets rendered, but if you made it into Org on Patch Day that really sucks not being able to actually see people.

Once the game is loaded, how it plays on the low end machine is a different matter entirely.  Of all the games I play, LOTRO actually plays the best.  I can't put a finger on why, because I think the graphics are more precise than, say, WoW has, but I've never had a glitch while playing at all.

Age of Conan, on the flip side, seems to cause the most issues with gameplay.  It's become bad enough that I dropped the graphics from 1440x900 down to the 1280 range, which isn't thrilling but at least it plays (relatively) smoothly.***

WoW, being the oldest MMO I play that hasn't had a major overhaul, plays well.  Even so, I had to crank down the settings on the fancy new water rendering for Cataclysm, because otherwise flying through zones like the pre-Cata Loch Modan would be akin to watching somebody filling a pool.

Oh, and I learned to avoid certain scenarios, such as some of the mob packs in AQ40, whose graphics would end up kicking me out of the game.  Dal on Tuesday nights was miserable, with single digit FPS not that uncommon.  And if you get 40 people wailing on Vann in Alterac Valley, there was a good chance I was going to be kicked back to the WoW loading screen.

Now, TOR actually plays on my machine with the graphics cranked down a bit.****  And plays pretty well, honestly, although my machine gets tons of loading screens which most people with faster computers probably never see.  Like, say, when you get out of a taxi.  Or quick travel.  Or some cut scenes.  But travelling by speeder can be an exercise in patience.

The worst zone I've been in for my computer has been Alderaan.

No, really.

It all has to do with the trees.  Every tree gets rendered, and unlike a lot of other zones that have swampy stuff in the background, Alderaan's trees are part of the foreground as well as the background.  So all those trees have to get rendered.  I'd be using the speeder bike going from point A to point B and the trees would be rendering more slowly than the speed of the bike.  That has nothing to do with the zone itself --I liked Alderaan a lot-- and everything to do with the computer.

After Alderaan, I spent a lot of time on Newegg, drooling over new motherboards, until I got a look at the price.  This was exactly like what I was doing two years ago, when I was grumbling about the "new water" of Cata.  It's okay to look, but for me at this time this sort of upgrade isn't necessary.  Considering that "playing MMOs" is only a small portion of what the machine is used for, I can't justify the cost.

But that's okay.  Really.  You can play these games on a machine with the minimum spec levels, you just have to be patient.



*Besides, do I really want to risk a potential disaster by upgrading the OS on the only machine we have?

**Coffee came later.  Come on, do you think I'd really drank coffee when I was twelve?

***The server I'm on is in Europe, and the lag there shows up in a slight delay between when I hit a button and it registers.  Kind of annoying, but if I don't try to do too much, I'm okay.

****This actually happened in Gen Chat on TOR:
Player 1: Is anyone lagging?
Player 2: A little
Me: I'm at 99, which is pretty steady for me.
Player 2: Maybe it's your machine.
Player 1: Prolly not.
Me: Yeah, if I can run without lagging on my old machine, he's probably fine.
Player 2: Old is relative in this group.  Mine's a slower quad.
Me:  Mine was a middle of the pack core duo 5 years ago.
Player 1: O.o
Player 2: Holy Shit!  It actually runs?
Me: Yeah.  Had to crank the graphics down a bit, but it runs.