Me and My Big Mouth, Part Whatever

You know how I said that it'd be terrifying to see 20 DKs on a side in Alterac Valley?

Be careful what you wish for.

I was blowing off some steam tonight when I got into an Alterac Valley run.  During the countdown I got up, grabbed a drink, and settled in to check the player lists.

"Holy crap," I said in BG chat.  "I think half of their team are DKs!"

I counted the list a few times and found they had 19 DKs with one slot left empty.  Sure enough the last slot was filled by another DK.

"We're gonna get whiplash by all the Death Grips," a Priest quipped.

"At least a lot of them play like crap at this level," a Warrior added.

"Yeah," I said.  "We're gonna need it."

The DKs belief in their own invincibility proved their undoing in the game.  We had about 15 players stay back and defend Belinda, while the rest pushed down toward Drek.  Another Rogue and I hung out in Icewing Bunker, catching those who broke through to try to capture it.  The DKs were like a wave of blue frost crashing against our defense, but they were unable to break it.

In the end we won on sheer attrition, which was perfectly fine with me.

Still, I ought to have learned by now to keep my mouth shut.

No One Expects the Ninja Smuggler!

I'd plotted for this moment for close to a month.

While my TOR toons are all on The Harbinger (US), I'd gone out of my way to roll up a Smuggler on The Shadowlands (US).  I gave my new Smuggler an unusual appearance, too:  as a Human, I decided to give him a distinctively older look:  gray hair and a beard.*  I even gave him a name that is a vague echo of my own.

When nobody was looking, I surreptitiously leveled him out of Ord Mantell and into Coruscant.  Deciding to go against my tendencies, I made him a DPS Scoundrel:  enough healing to use in a pinch, but preferring to fight close in and use Dirty Kicks and Pistol Whips and Backblasts to keep the enemy busy.

The kids finally took notice of the ol' Greybeard in the Justicar section of Coruscant, but they figured I was merely leveling another alt.  They never noticed the server I was on.

I knew my oldest's Sentinel was on Taris, working on the other quests while getting ready to take down Watcher One.  That gave me something to shoot for.

On Saturday night I arrived on Taris, cleared the first area, and hooked up with an Ops group to take down the World Boss.  Rather than getting in close to assist with DPS, I instead hung back and tossed heals around.  Seriously, I needed the practice, as each healer class operates differently.

Then I waited.

Sunday afternoon, my oldest logged into TOR on the laptop upstairs.  I took careful note of her toon's name, scampered downstairs, and logged into Ol' Greybeard.  A quick check of the social lists, and there she was.

I'd made a point of letting them do their thing without interference for the longest time, so I wasn't sure what her reaction would be.  I was betting it'd be something like the traditional teenager rolling of the eyes and "Da-aad", but you never know.

I sent whispered her a hello with her real name in it.

Silence.

I got distracted by some rakghouls, then decided to go upstairs and knock on the door.

The door opened.  "What do you want this ti-- oh, hi Dad."

"Expecting someone?"

"I thought it was my brother."

"Oh."  I decided not to pursue that issue further.  "I sent you a hello.  Did you get it?"

"What?  What, where?"

My youngest picked up on my question a bit more quickly.  "You mean in the game?"

"Really?!" my oldest squeaked and ran back to the laptop.

I went back downstairs and pinged her again.  "Hit slash 'r' to reply," I added.

"This was you?" she replied.  "I thought you were a stalker!"

"Oh."  Gee, thanks.  I guess I earned that one without any announcements beforehand.

"Where are you at?"

"I'm in the Endar Spire, bashing pirates.  Are you still in the cave?"

"Yes, I haven't left yet."

"Do you need a hand?  I know you have Fallen Stars on your list."

I heard the excited babbling among my kids from even where I was.  "No, not right now," came the reply.  "Gottagonowbye!"

A few moments later what sounded like herd of elephants came down the stairs.

"I thought you were a stalker!" my oldest said as she skidded to a stop, her brother and sister right behind her.  "There was another person who was pestering me to do Fall of the Locust until I left the area and went back to Olaris Spaceport."

"Good.  But I figured your real name would have tipped you off."

"Yeah, but wouldn't a stalker have figured that out?"

"Good point.  But if you've been careful about who you tell your toon's name to, it wouldn't be an issue.  After all, the account is registered in my name and e-mail."

"Oh."

"Still, if you want to do Fallen Stars, or if your sister needs help on Coruscant, I can help out."

"Really?!"  The shrieks were deafening.

"Yeah, really.  I can help out from time to time, but only if you want me to."

"Woooo!!!"

I had to close up shop because my ears were ringing too much.  Still, I considered the mission a success.  I figured that they were ready for dipping their toes into a bit of group content.  From there, the next steps were dealing with in-game chat, but I have to teach them those skills first.  It's a bit different than dealing with IMs to friends, and as my oldest surmised, there are a lot of unsavory characters out there.  Things can also mutate and take on a life of their own, which is more the province of Facebook, but you still have to be on your guard.

A small step into a larger world.  Yeah, that's it.





*Okay, fess up.  When was the last time you saw a toon deliberately designed to look old, or at least middle aged?  I know my answer:  almost never.  WoW doesn't even have that option, and I don't think LOTRO or AoC do either, but TOR does.  WoW does allow you to select gray, but not look middle aged, and while LOTRO does (that's what I get for tinkering with Elves in character creation) AoC might not.  Still, you know it's lonely being the "old guy" when you're in an Ops group of 20 or so and everybody is some stunningly youthful toon.

EtA:  Clarified the "*" section after receiving some comments.

Where Have You Gone, Svala Sorrowgrave?

The news that Blizzard is going to stop putting out new 5-man instances for Mists seems to have caused a bit of a stir.

Those people who gear up using LFR kind of shrugged and said "no big deal".  So did those who like the new Scenario concept.  And the "I love dailies" crowd chuckled and continued muttering to themselves in a corner.

But for me, I see this as the continuation of what started in Cataclysm.

Cataclysm began the deviation from the standard Warcraft pattern by instituting Heroic-only 5-mans, and then segregated them further by separating them out in the LFG queue.  I can presume this was done so that those who wanted to either gear up to the latest tier or max their VP acquisition could do so in the most efficient manner, but as in all things there were unintended consequences.

By subdividing 5-mans like that, the queue times soared to levels only previously seen in obsolete 5-man end game instances.*  Starting with the Zuls --Zul'Aman and Zul'Gurub-- people began to complain about a lack of variety in their instance runs.  Finally, the new Heroics created an "asshat divide" within 5-mans:  asshats flooded the 5-man Heroics, particularly the latest ones, while people who simply enjoyed running instances gravitated toward the baseline 5-man Normal instances.

However, those who enjoyed 5-man Normals found their options sadly lacking as compared to their Heroic brethren.  Unlike Wrath, which had the same number of Normal 5-mans as their Heroic version --16, if you were curious-- there were only 7 Normals vs. 14 Heroics in Cataclysm.**  Perhaps the statistical data for Wrath showed that not a lot of people ran the ICC Normals, but instead of making the last patch's instances Heroic-only, Blizz took their solution a step further in Cata and eliminated the Normal option entirely from all major patch instances.  It wouldn't be so drastic a step if it weren't that Cata dropped with only 7 Normal instances as opposed to 12 in Wrath.

And now we come to Mists.

Mists shipped with 4 Normal 5-mans (9 Heroic), and that's going to be it.  If you're an instance runner, you're out of luck.

While Blizzard will point out the Scenario model that is new to Mists, they are all tuned for max level and are designed for a "dungeon-lite" experience.  I look on them as the equivalent of a multi-player Daily that you can queue for, not a traditional instanced dungeon.

So what happened to the slate of instances we are used to seeing in an expac?

LFR.

Blizzard has decided to use LFR for mid-expac progression, and as a consequence instances have drawn the short end of the stick.  To be fair there were only 4 new instances post-release in Wrath versus 5 in Cataclysm, but those 4 represented only 25% of the overall total of Wrath instances as opposed to 36% in Cata.  Think about it:  Wrath shipped with 12 instances, while Cata had 9 (7 normal).  If you look at Normal instances alone, this is a further erosion from the Wrath model:  12 -> 7 -> 4.

If you only ran Normals, Blizzard didn't design any new instances for you at all once Cataclysm dropped, so this erosion isn't new behavior to you.  What is new, however, are how few Normal instances are now available and the lack of future prospects for those instances.

As much as Dave Kosak Twittered that there will be more 5-mans in future expacs, the numbers don't lie.  Instances are less important to Blizzard moving forward.  Scenarios and LFR will get the development time previously allocated to instances, and the expectation is that you will use instances to assist you in getting that initial "raid ready", but instances as a viable max level activity will be phased out.

Before someone says that Blizzard is swimming in money given the number of subs that WoW has, remember that profit doesn't translate into more development staff.  Even if there were more development staff around, items such as Pet Battles have taken up significant development time, further eroding the time to devote to 5-man instances.

Finally, let's not forget the elephant in the room:  Titan.  It could also be that Blizzard is shifting priorities to their next gen MMO.  Any low hanging fruit, such as instance development, will get put on the back burner.

I think we can safely say that the BC/Wrath era of instances is now over.  I'll miss having a lot of instances to run, as my limited playing time prohibits even LFR from being an option, and Scenarios are of little use to someone still leveling a toon in Pandaria.  But I also thought it a mistake by Blizzard in Cataclysm to not pair up Normal instances with the latter Heroics, as those Normals became a refuge from the drama that so often infected Cata Heroics.

But hey, popularity doesn't lie, right?




*I once waited 2 hours for the queue to pop for a 5-man Heroic Tempest Keep/MgT run back in Cata.  Amazing how much farming you can get done in that time.

**Since BC instituted the Heroic we can't count Vanilla, but in BC there were 16 instances and all had Normal and Heroic settings.

...And lo, there were Death Knights as far as the eye could see...

The L55-L59 battleground range is (in)famous for two reasons:  this is the first range where an expac's gear becomes available, and this is the first range where DKs appear.

I will not speak of BC clown gear, other than to say that Orcs certainly do look pretty in them.

While it may have taken several months, the flood of Monks and Pandaren leveling through Azeroth has died down.  The general makeup of your average leveling BG has evened out to an even composition of various classes.  (For the record, the Mistweaver and Windwalker Monks are far more popular than Brewmaster, with a slight nod to Windwalker at the moment in the 40s/50s BGs.)

That is, until the Great DK Invasion.

I can only imagine what it was like those first few months of Wrath when everybody and anybody created a DK.  I remember the one time this past Winter when I was the only non-Monk on my side in a Warsong Gulch battleground, but the idea of having almost half of an Alterac Valley run composed of Death Knights terrifies me.  It's bad enough when there are ten of them per side in AV, but more?

The consolation I can take in witnessing DKs swarming over everything is that not a lot of them know how to play their class.  As a player who leveled a Warlock via BGs in Cata, I know firsthand how little fun it is when a group of DKs decide to play Death Grip Ping Pong with you.  The fact that I've not been Death Gripped all over the place when even clothies know to target me mercilessly speaks volumes.

That influx of powerful but unskilled DKs has reinvigorated BGs a bit for me.  The slog of trying to get to at least the first expac, coupled with a long losing streak, can wear a player down.  It got so bad at one point in a WSG game that I ended up parking in the middle platform above their base and waited for the thing to end.  The Horde team had us on farm, but instead of people simply running away and not respawning in the graveyard, we kept feeding the beast.  I couldn't bring myself to drop group, because WSG had only 4 minutes left in the timer, but there was no way we could win.  So I got up and got some coffee instead of stressing over this.

"Get their flag!  Get their flag!" someone said over BG chat.

"I can't," I replied.  "They've got a Monk, a Lock, and a Feral protecting it."

"Get it anyway!"

"I'm not going to add to their HKs."

But on the flip side, with the instability induced by BC gear and new Death Knights, the Alliance has finally started making inroads on Eye of the Storm and has been dominating Alterac Valley.*  I've stealthed in Stonehearth Bunker several times now, watched the wave of Hordies go by, and leave SHB empty for me to recap.  You'd think that after the first three or four times I wouldn't be able to get away with this, but it keeps happening in either SHB or Icewing Bunker.

I realize that this state of flux will subside by the time I reach the Wrath level.  DKs will gain more skill or will drop out, leaving a leaner, meaner group to contend with.  Still, I intend to enjoy this chaos while it lasts.  Rogues thrive on chaos, you know.



*YBMV -- Your battlegroup may vary.

I Don't Know Where Ya Been, My Lad, But I See Ya Won First Prize

I was out of commission due to illness most of last week, so there's not that much to report.  I mean, I played a little, but I didn't really do much of anything at all.

Somewhere around Christmas time I finally splurged and bought Skyrim (hey, it was on sale).  Sure, it's about a year or so too late to be relevant, but I figured I'd play around with the game and see if I liked it.  I've heard enough about the sandbox nature of the game to make me interested, and the fact that you're not forced into FPS mode but you can zoom out a bit into a more familiar third person mode is even better.*

The game is okay so far, but nothing so engrossing that I would find myself up way past my bedtime playing. The graphics are nice, and the old style quest finding is a welcome change to the MMO style quest markers, but when I sit down to play a game I find myself skipping over Skyrim for Civ IV or an MMO.  The fact that (I believe) that purchasing the DVD of the game appears to be irrelevant as the game uses Steam to download to my computer doesn't exactly help, either, since I'm not that big of a fan of the Steam ownership model:  you don't purchase a copy of the game itself, you only purchase the right to play the game, just like Amazon's Kindle purchases.

However, there was one aspect of Skyrim that I was unprepared for.

Like quite a few people, I use Curse to manage my WoW addons, and once every couple of months I hop onto Curse to make sure all of my addons are up to date.**  I've gotten used to having WoW as the only game in my stable with a Curse connection, so imagine my surprise when I saw Skyrim pop up as an option.

Curious, I clicked on Skyrim and loaded the database of mods, just to see what I could add.  There were mods to make lockpicking easier --something Ol' Fumblefingers can definitely use-- as well as mods for tracking your mats and whatnot.  But by far the most popular mod was something I didn't expect:  Nude Females.

No, really.

Apparently this game isn't "Rated M for Mature" enough for some folks, and they took it upon themselves to create a few mods to "tweak" the models for the game.  Making more detailed facial models is one thing, but making sure what's under a toon's clothing is anatomically accurate is quite another.  I'd almost be inclined to believe that the mod's creators had altruistic intentions except that you won't find an equivalent mod for male toons.

Just like some people can't play Age of Conan without going "Oooo, boobies!"***, some people need that in-game nakedness that the nude female mods --yes, there are more than one-- provide.  This is akin to people who like to zoom in and watch the female Night Elf breast bounce, I suppose.

Me, I just don't get it.  If you're interested in this aspect of the game, why are you playing and not surfing the Internet instead?





*It's been a while since I mentioned it, but I find that FPS games give me headaches, and one of the reasons I suspect that MMO's don't is due to the game's viewpoint.  With third person mode, I can use my character as a focal point and not have issues with the constantly changing terrain.

**If I were a raider or already into Mists content it'd be a lot more frequent updates, but I'm still about 30 levels away from needing to purchase Mists.

***Go hang around Tortage on any server, and you'll see what I mean.  I suspect that some people play Demonologists in AoC just so they can have the nude Succubus hanging around.  And if you thought that the Shivarra in WoW was bad, the AoC Succubus makes the Shivarra look tame.  But that AoC Succubus has a very sinister look about her.  Oh, and the AoC Incubus (for female Demonologist toons) has just as little clothing and the same uncomfortably malign feel to them.

I Don't Believe it! We Have a New Champion of Anguish!

Among my friends, I've been known as being a bit obsessive about winning from time to time.

There was one (in)famous time where I hadn't won a game of Settlers of the Stone Age all evening, and I kept my wife and another friend playing the same game until 3 AM when I finally was able to pull out a victory.  Back in the days of the original Sid Meier's Civilization, I once played three full games back-to-back because I'd lost at the last second twice in a row.  I may be older (and, theoretically, wiser), but there are times when thoughts of 'winning' cloud my brain.

Of course, 'winning' in an MMO means different things to different people.

The PvP oriented may focus on being an Arena Master or winning Rated BGs.  (Or even winning regular BGs as much as possible.)  The PvE people may focus on raiding or pet battles or dominating the Auction House.

But what do you do when you've got limited time to play and you get that itch to 'win'?

Sometimes, that urge gets channeled into something like dailies or reputation.*  Or maybe you become a completionist, hunting down and finishing every last quest --group quest or otherwise-- that you can find.  In the pre-Cata days, you had to use a third party app to try to find those last weird quests out in the middle of nowhere in the Azerothian Old World.  TOR makes the completionists go crazy when they stick area quests on a planet, so you end up cruising all over, say, Alderaan trying to find the one zone you might have missed. LOTRO has taken that idea and run with it in their recent revision to the Moria expac, and Age of Conan sticks individual quests in the middle of group quest areas, leaving you to fight your way through just to collect that extra quest for another zone**.

Or maybe you just content yourself with following the story to the end --sans raiding, of course.

To get that last one, you don't have to be a completionist.  After all, just how many side quests are out there in an MMO these days?  But finishing a story can become a Civ-like obsession:  "just one more quest!"***  While WoW has all but eliminated the old class stories from the game, there still are two faction questlines to progress through.  Star Trek Online seems to follow the WoW pattern of having a set story for each faction, but I've not gotten anywhere deep enough to confirm this.****  LOTRO has only one questline track (but two different starting zones, so that provides some variety).  AoC has one real story line, but each zone has it's own set of stories to follow; they're almost like side quests in a way, but the real story line's quests show up once you reach a certain threshold level:  L30, L50, etc.

TOR, however, is a different animal, with questlines for each class from L1 through L50.  And then there are the companion quests, the zone quests, and... You get the idea.  A story freak can take months --years even-- exploring every aspect of a game like TOR.

***

The obsession with "winning" an MMO can drive self destructive behaviors.

Just like a gambler has issues with getting up from the poker table, an MMO player can spend way too much time in game, seeking that rush of victory and, more importantly, validation.  Think of the money spent on gear to get an extra edge, whether it be a bigger screen, faster CPU, or that awesome keyboard (want!).  Also, consider the cost of extra purchases via a cash shop (whether you play a F2P game or not, the cash shop is still there) to give yourself an edge in some aspect of the game.  All of that money adds up, and the urge to overspend just to "win the game" can be very seductive.

When American sports fans talk about destructive behavior, the name Art Schlichter often pops up.  Art's compulsive gambling ruined his pro career and led to jail and drugs, and yet Art still can't stop.  This is a direct parallel to the board gamer who can't stop buying new board games, or the video gamer who will spend every waking moment playing to the chagrin of coworkers, family, and friends.

I've never crossed that line, but I understand its appeal.  I also understand how it impacts others playing the game:  the people who sit around and complain in Gen Chat that they "finished" the game and now "there's nothing to do, this game sucks", the people who refuse to play nice because they want to "just win, baby!", and the player who thinks nothing about being a ninja looter or griefer because it's all about them.

That inevitably begs the question as to what do these people get out of this behavior?  While that sort of thing might work for a while, eventually it catches up to you.  Turn off enough people, and they isolate you.  You start to live in an echo chamber, where everybody thinks the same thing as you, behaves the same as you, and validates the way you do things.  The trouble is that we don't live in an echo chamber, but in the real world, where people don't think and act like this.

***

I've kind of wandered a bit far afield when I started this post (shades of Cynwise's old Field Manual posts, I suppose), but obsession and addiction are but one output of the need to "win the game".  Competition can be good, if channeled well and doesn't venture into that morally grey territory.  I play MMOs to enjoy myself and explore a good story, and I try to avoid obsessive behavior as much as I can.  I understand my limits, which is part of the reason why I don't try too hard to raid.  But I have become acquainted with obsession, and I'd rather not try to get to know it any more than that.






*"I will finish all of the dailies I can find and I will reach Exalted!"  Not that I've ever said that.  Okay, I did, once, back in Wrath days.  At least at the time, it seemed achievable, which is why I kept slogging through the Crusader dailies.

**There's one in Conall's Valley that sends you in the direction of the true end boss right when you think you've slain the end boss of the region.  For the record, it takes a player of about L50 or higher to bring down the pseudo-end boss who is L30.  Yes, the AoC elite bosses are THAT tough.

***Sid Meier memorialized this urge for "just one more turn!" by building that quip into later editions of Civ.

****Oh, did I mention I've begun tinkering with STO?  I like it much better than Aion, and while I can see what some people complain about with you becoming your starship, I don't mind.

Thoughts on an Icy Friday

I was on TOR the other day when someone asked a question in Gen Chat:  do the planets ever change their background due to time of day?

No, was the instant response, but it'd be cool if they did.

While I'd be the first one to think that the planets with an outside would look cool if they did change with the time of day, I realize that TOR has bigger issues to worry about at the moment than background.  Or weather, for that matter.

But something about that question did get me to thinking.  Why is it that weather and times of day are simply bolt-ons to most MMOs?  I say most, because the Tortage-at-night solo portion of the intro zone in Age of Conan does take advantage of the darkness to make it easier to hide, and that does carry over to the regular game.  

Think of it this way:  when was the last time that sneaking around in WoW was made easier due to cover or darkness?  Shouldn't there --at the very least-- be a debuff or two associated with bad weather?  I know I don't operate at peak performance in the rain, and there's the constant threat of hypothermia, so why doesn't your toon feel it?  Shouldn't it take longer to trudge through a snowstorm or thunderstorm?  If there can be a visible reaction to and a game changing debuffs associated with drinking to excess, why not with weather?  Having a snowstorm or blizzard whip up, leaving your toon disoriented and weakened, would have an impact on whether you're actually out and about when the skies turn crappy.  Hell, I'd have a harder time imagining that wandering monsters and intelligent opponents would be out in a downpour; you'd think that they'd confine themselves to shelter --makeshift or otherwise-- to wait out the bad weather.

Perhaps I'm taking realism a bit far, but I think it would make the sense of immersion that much more satisfying.  In Ultima V, you could watch the shop keepers move around and back to their homes when night fell, so if a game from 1988 could figure such basic things as this out with the changing of the hours, then why can't an MMO do it?