The Great Divide

There are days when I really wish that screen caps were working for me in WoW again.

You see, in a recent Arathi Basin run, I was the only non-Pandaren in the group.

You read that right.

The Alliance had fifteen players:  one Night Elf, fourteen Pandaren.

The Horde was nearly as bad:  one Blood Elf (a monk), one Tauren (a Druid), thirteen Pandaren.

Orcs?  Humans?  What are those?

You know how some people were excited because the Pandaren capable of being on either faction meant that you couldn't rely upon silhouettes any more?  In this scenario, you don't even bother looking at silhouettes; you just rely upon your add-ons.  Due to the scenery, I felt like I was in some bizarre recreation of the Spanish Civil War, but with pandas.  The only thing that was missing was a few Messerschmitts flying overhead.  (Note to Gnomes and/or Goblins:  make yourselves useful and build some Spitfires and ME-109s!)

***

Leveling via BGs is often something that goes in fits and spurts.

Unlike leveling via instances or questing, gear acquisition becomes a bit of a problem.  Sure, you can use heirlooms to make up the bulk of your gear, but what if a) you don't have heirlooms for the class you're creating, or b) you can't afford or don't want to move heirlooms over across servers?  Here are a few options:

• You can go do some questing to get a few pieces here and there, but the Old World's quests discourage cherry picking.  In the pre-Cata days, you could do a quest here and a quest there, grab what reward you wanted, and then go on your merry way.  Now, with the linear quest lines in Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdoms, you can't do that without running a lot of quests to get to the one you really want. Forcing you to quest through the majority of a zone kind of defeats the purpose of leveling via BGs.  
• You can run the occasional instance, but you're at the mercy of whatever gear drops.*  Instances, however, will level you very very fast, especially at low levels.  If you're not careful, you'll end up leveling via instances instead of via BGs.
• If you've the cash, you can look through the auction house and rummage through the available gear.  That has the advantage of speed, because you can quickly hunt through the AH in between BGs, but it's not very cost effective.  But hey, if you play the AH already or are sitting on a pile of gold, why worry?
• If you don't mind being out in the world a lot between BGs, you can also craft your gear.  The speed of BGs proccing these days --anywhere from 1-6 minutes-- means that you're either going to have to set aside some crafting time for your toon or you're going to just have to live with getting one or two items at a time in between BGs.  For the gathering professions, however, you can also level fairly quickly, so you have to be careful that you don't outlevel the gear you're hoping to craft.
• Visiting the Silverwing Sentinels/Warsong Supply Officer and their Defilers/League of Arathor equivalents is a good way of supplementing gear at low levels.  Once you gain access to Alterac Valley, another vendor opens up for use.  While this isn't perfect --you have to travel a lot-- it will fill in gaps.

Finding gear for leveling via BGs can often become a huge subgame, because gear can create such a huge disparity in a BG.  At least a Rogue can hide if the time isn't right to strike, but what if your Mage or Lock is the undergeared one?  Well, I know from experience that it's not fun being the target.

***

The net result of all this is that I've often found my toons undergeared in BGs, particularly when I'm up against toons with a full set of heirloom gear supplemented with the highest available crafted items.  I may play BGs, but other people live them.  It isn't until you get up to L78 and you run into the people with Cata greens that you see a disparity on the same level as in the lower three tiers of BGs between the haves and the have nots.  When you're a toon with about half white gear going up against the heirloom equipped, all of the skill in the world isn't going to keep you from being one-shot.  When my Rogue finally got enough Honor to buy and equip the heirloom dagger, my DPS and kills took a big jump.  I didn't change my play style, I just added a really nice piece of gear, and that bit of min-maxing was all the difference.

Lara at the now sadly defunct Root and Branch blog had written a story encapsulating this disparity, entitled Don't Fret Your Pretty Little Head.  Although she wrote from the perspective of instances, it also applied directly to BGs.  I often wondered which was worse, the nerd rage of dungeon puggers or the nerd rage of the BG puggers, and I think that the prize has to go to BG puggers, because they can bitch and moan and whine and be anti-social without repercussion.  If someone is an ass in an instance, you've at least got a shot at getting rid of them via vote kick.  In a BG, you're stuck with them unless they go AFK, and believe me they know it.  They're the ones always saying that the faction you're on sucks, that you suck, that you don't know how to play your class, that your mother had sexual relations with a turnip, etc.

But you know what?  Gear matters, often more than skill.  Sure, gear can cover up deficiencies in skill, but gear can also help you dominate beyond what skill can't provide.  Skill isn't going to give you an extra 200 health in the L15-19 BGs, and being one shot is still being one shot.  Additionally, how you acquire skill is more difficult than acquiring gear:  you actually go out and play the game, take your lumps and learn how things work.

And you get told that you're an idiot.  Frequently.

Who'd want to put up with that abuse when there's a nice, easy alternative in place?

For those who have the honor and/or gold, that is.

*I ran Shadowfang Keep to get the mats for the Rogue weapon, but discovered that the dagger I got from the Silverwing Sentinels was actually better.  Go figure.

**The speed of BGs proccing these days --anywhere from 1-6 minutes-- means that you're either going to have to set aside some crafting time for your toon or you're going to just have to live

Azerothian Pink

In the U.S. it is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and in honor of that JD Kenata of Amateur Azerothian is organizing an I'm Going Pink campaign for WoW bloggers.  (Thanks to Kamalia of Kamalia et alia for her post, or I'd have missed it.)  The idea is to wear transmogrified pink gear* in Azeroth this month --or at least post pics of it on your blog-- to help raise awareness for breast cancer.

Now, I'm not much of a transmogrifier, but I'd encourage those who are to have one of their toons wear pink for October.  Just about everybody either has a relative or knows someone who has wrestled with breast cancer, and this is a fine way to demonstrate in-game support for breast cancer research.  And if someone is being hassled in-game for this, stick up for them.

For you comics fans out there, Deviant Artist Maisa Chaves (aka Halfy) has created four drawings of some iconic DC and Marvel female superheroes as part of a campaign in Mozambique for Breast Cancer Awareness Month.  I'd seen this on both Facebook and The Mary Sue, but I wanted to post them here.  The pics below of She-Hulk, Storm, Catwoman, and Wonder Woman will send you to their respective page on the Deviant Art website, where a larger size can be found.

*Pink is the color of breast cancer awareness in general.

And I Danced on Your Graves!

I once wondered how on earth the two factions in WoW could have Warlocks as a playable class, given the history of Azeroth.  Given the perceived wickedness of Warlocks by both factions, how both could tolerate Locks in their midst was a puzzle.

However, that was the in-game perception of a specific class.  Metagame-wise, Locks are Mages with funkier pets, more DoTs, and lots of fears.*

But you want to know who are the real metagame bad guys?  Rogues.

Having spent some time playing my new Rogue, I can feel the seductive tug of being just so bad.  See that straggler lowbie bringing up the rear of the pack in Warsong Gulch?  Sap and kill.  Players respawning at the rez points?  Sap sap sap, wait for a good juicy lowbie, then kill.  A pair of the enemy trying to reach the flag?  Sap them both repeatedly until they blow their trinkets and chase me, wasting precious time.

Yesterday, in WSG, I was checking the scoreboard when I realized what I was doing.  I'd never checked the scoreboard until now.  But I was becoming the sort of player that I hated.

And yet I loved it.

And that I really liked WSG after all.

That thought gave me pause.  I've had a low opinion of WSG pretty much since the day I set foot in the place, and my experience leveling a Lock through battlegrounds only reinforced that dislike.  I can't count the number of times I'd been ganked by a Rogue while in that BG, swearing that if I ever decided to start a Rogue I'd never do any of this stuff.  And yet there I was, roaming around in the rez zone, waiting for toons to respawn so I could gank them before they could buff themselves.

***

Does the class make the player, or the player make the class?

It's a little bit of both, I'd imagine.

As my example above showed, the Rogue's gameplay is tailored to striking from the shadows.  It doesn't have the magical or spiritual abilities that other classes have, and it doesn't have the get-down-and-dirty-in-the-trenches that the Warrior has.  It doesn't have the send-in-a-pet-and sit-back-and-CC/damage that a Hunter has.  For a Rogue to be effective it has to get up close and personal, but it also has to avoid getting into a slugfest as much as possible.  That means slinking around and striking from the shadows when conditions are optimal.

Because a Rogue can do this, it also means that a Rogue can operate behind enemy lines.  Causing death and wreaking havoc is a Rogue's calling card.  In WoW's PvP environment, Rogues aren't Robin Hood.  They aren't even Han Solo.**  They're a bit more brutal:

Kids, don't try to imitate Tony Montana when you

grow up, k?  Or at least not the Rogue at the end.

But at the same time, Rogues have their admirers as performers of (un)official activities in groups such as SI:7.  I look at that as WoW's attempt to put lipstick on a pig, because no matter how you dress it up, Rogues are involved with the so-called dishonorable jobs.

This sort of class attracts a certain type of player.  And that attraction is seductive, promising the thrill of the well executed backstab in exchange for glory atop the scorecard.  A single backstab can be the difference between victory and defeat, and the trick is knowing when to take it.

***

Ironically enough, I've found it more difficult to be an evil player when the storyline explicitly gives you the option to do it, such as playing a Dark Side character in The Old Republic.

When Yoda talks about the Dark Side being "quicker, easier, more seductive," he could have been talking about playing a Dark Side character in The Old Republic.  Anyone of either faction can play a Dark Side character, but certain classes (::cough:: Sith ::cough::) are better suited than others.  The temptation to click on that side of the wheel, to KILL! MAIM! TERRIFY! and explore the dark path, is a valid game option.  And when I pull up an Imperial player, I often am drawn to that selection.  But in my case, I find that I can't make my characters take Dark Side choices very often.  In spite of my best efforts, I'm still me when I play.

This even goes for the Sith classes, the Warrior and Inquisitor.  Perhaps it is the story, and the over-the-top evil that the Sith wallow in that turns me off, but I find myself playing more Light Side Sith than anything else. I have chosen some Dark Side selections on the wheel, and they do register approval with some of the NPCs, but more often they register fear.  (Of course, that's what the Sith want, but I digress.)

My son explained it best when he tried and gave up on an Imperial Agent.***  When he saw me noodling around on a Sith Inquisitor, he mentioned that he'd deleted his Imperial toon.  "I just couldn't do it," he said.  "They kept asking me to do all these bad things, and I just couldn't do it."

***

As for my dilemma, I'm going to continue to play the Rogue, but be mindful of what sort of player I can be.  Is the victory worth the price?  Do I want to be an asshat?  All's fair in love and war and BGs, right?

Right?

Bueller?  Bueller?

*Yes, I still love playing a Frost Mage.  No, I've not drunk the kool-aid.

**Although they do shoot first.  Take that, George Lucas!

***The kids have their own free account; this is done deliberately so they don't interfere with my account.

Another Day in the Neighborhood

You know it's going to be one of those days when you login in the morning to a post-expac WoW and the first toon you see is a Pandaren named Skadoosh.*

Then I got in a WSG team with 6 Monks on our side, one named Choppnblok.**  "I'm surprised that there's a non-monk out there," one of them quipped.

Afterwards, I wandered through Elwynn just for the hell of it, and I found at least one Horde Rogue loitering outside the gates of Stormwind, stalking the occasional Pandaren.

I was tempted to get onto Moon Guard just to see what was happening at Goldshire, but my brain kind of let out a little scream and hid under the covers.

As far as activity goes, there wasn't too much of a difference at Stormwind itself (mid 40s), but there was definitely activity in Pandaria (mid 40s each in the first few zones).  I'm not sure if this bodes well, however, given that there was more activity on the server back when Cata was released.  I guess we'll wait and see how things develop.




*If you have to ask, it's a reference from Kung Fu Panda.

**We lost because the Horde side had 4 healers, two of them Druids with the AoE heals, and they kept healing each other while defending the flag.  Not much you can do there if you don't have the same number of heals.

Who's Manipulating Whom?

I realize that everybody else is busy counting down the minutes before Mists drops, and those few not doing that are waxing eloquently on the Theramore scenario.  But I can't say that I'm really all that interested with either Mists or Theramore.

There hasn't been a real event to get people excited about Mists, and no matter what people say, Theramore ain't it.  Having a sneak-peak special preview of Theramore's scenario tuned for L85 isn't the same as the Outlands invasion/Scourge invasion/Twilight's Hammer+Elemental invasion that we'd had in the past.  World events are supposed to ramp up excitement for the new expac, not leave us scratching our heads.*

Am I the only one out there who gets the feeling that Blizz is performing a Trial of the Crusader experiment on the lead-in to Mists?

If you'll recall, Trial of the Crusader was Blizz' response to the "moar boss less trash" compaints from some out there in the WoW-verse.  Instead of trash, there was boss after boss after boss.  They gave the complainers exactly what they wanted, but the raid itself fell flat.  ToC was yet another case of people  not exactly understanding what they really wanted; they didn't want no trash, they wanted no extraneous trash.  There's a big difference between the two.

Like ToC, I wonder if Blizz is simply foregoing the traditional world event because of the reaction to the previous world event.  People knew in advance that Cairne was going to die offscreen in The Shattering, so they paid a visit to him one last time.  When the Elemental invasion happened, I made a point of trying to be around Thunder Bluff, just so I could fight alongside Cairne, and I know I wasn't the only one doing it.

Blizzard took note of these little spontaneous in-game gatherings, and decided to do one better with the Mists event:  take advantage of the book to drive in-game behavior, by letting the cat out of the bag that Theramore would be destroyed, and have a reciprocal response from the players.

The problem with this idea is twofold:  Jaina/Theramore isn't nearly as beloved as Cairne was, and the circumstances behind Cairne's death was well known to the general WoW population.  Sure, Theramore bites it and we know the how, but nobody knows the why.  There's too much in the fall of Theramore that goes against the current questlines for this to make any sense, and even the book is silent as to why.**

My first reaction to this conundrum was that Blizz simply dropped the ball.  It wouldn't be the first time that I'd come across incomplete questlines or other head scratchers in the game, and it smacked of Blizz not spending nearly enough time on the transition phase and too much time to get Mists out the door.***  The more I think about it, however, the more I'm convinced that this lack of "why" is deliberate.  Blizz wants you to feel the mystery surrounding Theramore, and will use that to drive a wedge between Garrosh and the rest of the in game world.

But if that's the case, then they didn't get quite the reaction that they planned.  Like an Ed Greenwood novel, they overreached with their cleverness.

Sometimes it makes more sense to follow Occam's Razor rather than invent an even more convoluted in-game explanation.  I know that WoW's reputation was built upon corruption and the premise that the most bizarre explanation was the right one, but there are times when simplicity is better.  And no, I don't mean the ToC version of "simplicity", but a simplification of the plot.  The K.I.S.S. moniker.****

Think of it this way:  I've found that the best stories told in an RPG session are the ones where I --as the DM-- don't have much of anything to do with it.  I may play the NPCs with different motives, but the PCs are the ones who drive the story.  They interpret things, occasionally get stuff wrong, and make for memorable game sessions.  If I'm not railroading people along, the story takes on a life of its own and the players feel like they've a stake in the tale.  Additionally, I can then make the NPCs react to the players, creating new subplots based upon what the PCs did.  But my job is simple:  set the pieces in motion and step back.  Don't manipulate with a heavy hand.  If there's an overarching story to the expac, present it without making it seem like a) the players need to pay for access to "premium" content (the books), or b) the story dropped out of the sky, fully formed, onto the ground below.

Azeroth is a great place for storytelling.  It just needs to be used for that purpose.




*Or be the equivalent of a big neon sign shouting "Buy the book!"

**There's that 'read the book!' refrain again.

***If that's the case, then Mists was in worse shape when the release date was announced than we were led to believe.  I've worked in software, so I know what it looks like when a release is in danger of slipping.

****You mean you don't know this?  No, I'm not talking about the band, but "Keep It Simple, Stupid!"

Time Marches On

There have been some well known blogging voices that have faded into the sunset this year.  This happens all the time, but it still seems odd to read a post announcing a blog's end or a blog going on hiatus.

Today, Cynwise of Cynwise's Warcraft Manual announced that he's going to take a break from blogging until next year.

I'm going to miss Cyn's walls of text, his self deprecating humor, and his sharp insights into PvP and BGs in WoW.  He was always thorough in his analyses, and he never believed that BGs were so hard that a noob couldn't excel at them.  After one of his entries in his magnum opus, The Decline and Fall of Warlocks in Cataclysm, I quipped that if he brought that level of detail to his job, I'd want him on my side in an argument at work.  He never, and I do mean never, came unprepared to a topic.

I've moved Cyn's link down to the Blogs in Mothballs section, but I'm really tempted to move it to the References area.

As with Ratters when he retired, I'll miss ya, Cyn.  Don't be a stranger.

What's in a Name, Anyway?

Names are a funny thing.

When I was on the Twisted Nether blogcast, one of the standard questions Fim asked me was where I got my characters' names.  Even though I knew it was coming --I'd listened to all but the last few questions* of a few episodes prior to my interview-- I still kind of muddled through an answer.  What it boils down to is that I tried to create names that at least sounded Fantasy-esque.  The each name's origin may be different, but the name itself arose from a desire to make something that sounded at least semi-realistic.

Every time I enter a BG and find the game populated with names like "Sukstobeu", "Ikeelthings" and "Hotsxyfun", I'm reminded that not everyone plays the game with the same goals in mind.

I've often wondered how much of a correlation there is between purely goofball names and a players' tendency to play certain aspects of an MMO.  I suppose there are exceptions, but I don't often find players with XBox-esque names while I'm out and about in Azeroth, leveling by questing.  I'm sure that once Pandaria drops that'll change, but right now it seems that a lot of these sort of names are concentrated in BGs, and to a lesser extent instances/raids.

While I realize there's a great tendency to pass these people off as merely kids or teenagers, I don't think there's a direct correlation between age and name choice.  I can think of enough examples in the guilds I've been in that refute the idea that only kids play with names like that.

But what does stand out in my mind is that the level of immersion a player wants in a game does have an impact on their toon names.

Quite a few of the people I know who have crazy names don't really care much about lore/story, RP-ing**, or seeing a final raid boss down due to in-game reasons.  They're not likely to be (non-battle) pet collectors, transmog players, or achievement hunters.  Among the MMO bloggers I chat with, I don't think a single one has created a name like "MrCowCanMooCanU"***.  But to me, that makes sense because we care about the games we write about, and we're not playing just to kill a few things and blow off some steam.  Or show off our e-peens.

When we take time to create names that sound Fantasy-esque, we're saying that immersion matters.

There's a great temptation to make the leap from naming to immersion to longevity in a game, but I don't think you can connect the last two.  There have been far too many people who have tried games and moved on to make an effective link there.  Just because someone does care about immersion doesn't mean that other factors don't influence their game playing.

Still, I've never forgotten what one (now ex) guildie on Horde side once told me in Stonecore when I said "So THAT was what happened to Millhouse":  "Q, I don't care about who they are, all I just want to do is kill them."

And you can guess what type of name his was.





*I figured I might as well be surprised by a few of the questions, and the famous "last three" seemed like a good idea.

**Erotic role playing (ERP) is most likely a different kettle of fish.

***Now having written this, I'd bet money that someone --probably Rades-- would name a Tauren that just to tweak me.