Paging ELIZA... ELIZA, White Courtesy Phone, Please....

I was going to write about something else, but the Boston Marathon bombing happened, and I pretty much threw my paragraphs into the bit bucket.

I'm not going to comment on the bombing itself or speculate on who the perpetrators were --not that I haven't been doing it on my own time as it is-- but because this isn't the forum for it.  But while I had been turning over things related to the bombing, I sat down at the computer and played around on some MMOs to clear my mind a bit.

For a change, I found them vaguely unsatisfying.

At first I wasn't sure why, but the more I played the more certain I became that the source of my discontent had more to do with the nature of MMOs and PvE content.

When you play an MMO, you're following a specific storyline.  Or you're performing a set of tasks.  While the story itself might be new to you, it is the same story for everyone.  The Wrathgate still unfolds the same way.  The Desolator story in TOR will follow the same pattern.  Sure, small things change in the TOR questlines --after all, that's what Bioware does-- but the big pattern stays the same.

The theme park MMO, for all of its popularity, is not oriented toward spontaneity.  Random bolts out of the blue simply have no place in the game.  If there is something random that pops up, just wait a bit and you'll see that it comes back after a set amount of time.  The truly random elements in a game like WoW or TOR or the others are what the players make for themselves.

While it does sound like that is how things ought to be, the problem with the concept of the players making their own spontaneity are twofold:  there are far more NPCs on an average MMO server than there are actual players, and you have to have buy-in from other players to make such spontaneous actions occur.

***

In case you haven't noticed, the Fruit Vendor in Shattrath City doesn't talk back to you beyond a few basic set phrases.  While the recycled interplay between the Fruit Vendor and her grumpy neighbors is amusing, you never get a chance to insert yourself into the conversation.  Likewise, there have been times when I've been tempted to chat up the Cheese Vendor and her "woe is me" routine in Falconwing Square, but I can't.  The most a toon can do is buy something from her, or if you're the opposite faction, kill her.

Not exactly a lot of interaction there.

Even when there is an "event", such as the All Hallow's Eve Headless Horseman event, did you notice that the vendor (or other) NPCs just kind of stand around and do nothing?  No interaction with the world at all.

In TOR, about half of the background characters in an area aren't clickable at all; they're there just to fill up the scene.

While you can make a successful argument that world interaction would be more effectively done on an RP server, what about the person going questing in Felwood?  If a region is empty, about the best you can do is strike up one sided conversations with various NPCs.

While I was bored in Arathi one day, waiting for the BG queue to pop, I did just that.  It lasted about two or three sentences until somebody landed at the Alliance flightpoint, saw the bubble still hanging in the air, and said "L2P noob; they don't talk back!"  He then took off on a twilight drake.

I kind of just rolled my eyes and waited for the BG in silence.

At the very least, something like the old Eliza program* would be nice to give you the impression that you're conversing with an NPC.

***

Okay, NPCs aside, when was the last time something completely unexpected and unplanned --and not connected to a quest either-- happened in an MMO that came out of the PvE environment?

The only thing I can think of the past year or so was the Rakghoul event on Tatooine in TOR.  WoW draws a complete blank, because even the pre-launch events (of which there were none for Pandaria) are completely scripted.  Hell, they're often completely analyzed and dissected online prior to the event actually happening.  And the other MMOs I play... Well, they take their cues from WoW.  'Nuff said.

In a sense, I get the feeling that a totally random event would not be welcome by a certain portion of the MMO populace.  After all, look at how people approach the game:  analyzing gear, where to get it, what instances to run, what dailies to do, what mats to farm, and analyzing all of the boss fights, all in the pursuit of being completely ready for anything.

Hey everybody!  I'm raid ready!

If you think people like the unexpected, try saying "So, what's this raid about?  Are there any interesting boss mechanics?" in LFR.

On the flip side, I remember reading about the reactions when the Rakghoul event dropped:  completely and totally unexpected by the general populace, and there was no advance warning in the blogosphere.  Just "BLAM!" and it was there.

Zombies.  In Star Wars.

The Walking Dead Goes to Tatooine.  Deal with it, toons!

Why can't that sort of thing happen more often in MMOs?

Is it the fear of widespread apathy from the gamer populace?  The dreaded "Oh, this thing only drops iL483 gear" dismissal?  Or is it a "we play to our strengths, and plotting the unexpected doesn't fit into that?"

Whatever the reason, breaking out of the same-old same-old can provide memorable moments in MMOs that prefer the tried and true.




*Surely I can't be the only person who remembers ELIZA, can I?  (And don't you DARE call me Shirley!)

On a Clear Day, I Can See Pandaria

I may be a Wrath baby, but there was always something exciting about passing through the Dark Portal and into Outland on a toon for the first time.  When my rogue passed through into the barren wasteland of Hellfire Peninsula, crawling with demons and Fel Orcs, it brought a smile to my face.*

I've yet to figure out why starting out on the Borean Tundra or Howling Fjord doesn't inspire the same reaction out of me.

Boring Borean Tundra is vast, sprawling, and feels totally disjointed.  The Horde and Alliance outposts in the northern part of the zone seem like a clumsy method of introducing the Taunka and Mechagnomes --the Taunka outpost in the SE part of the zone does a much better job for the Horde-- and I often get the feeling that the flight point is there merely to provide a connection between the main bases in the zone and Sholazar Basin.  I like Coldarra and the Taunka village as well as the DEHTA compound, but the best quest zone in the Borean is Thassarian's quest line.

By contrast, Howling Fjord is more focused, the scenery more beautiful, and plants the seeds of the quest lines that bear fruit in both the Wrathgate and Storm Peaks.  But there are only so many Viking rip-offs one can take before it starts to get old.**  The same goes for the Forsaken, where after a while you start to wonder if the writers were using Jeremy Irons' character from the Dungeons and Dragons movie as a model.

Perhaps the biggest reason why I'm not that fond of the Wrath intro zones boils down to the storytelling itself:  Blizzard does best when it is a) being completely original and not basing storyline elements off of a real world counterpart, and b) when they are trying not to do too much.  If the storylines are too much to remember, or you're led too much by the nose, a zone loses its luster.

Look at Storm Peaks versus Icecrown.  While both have quests that end two separate storylines, the better of the two is the more original one:  Icecrown.  In Storm Peaks, while I do enjoy the zone better than Howling Fjord, the quests are an exercise in "spot the Norse myth behind the story".  The Icecrown storyline is all about the Death Knights and the Crusaders, where groaners are limited to the Valhalla and Eye of Sauron references.

In the end, these detours into Hellfire and Borean Tundra are just so I can gear up enough to press onward.  My rogue is only two expacs behind, now, but reaching L70 means I'm that much closer to my goal of leveling up to Pandaria via BGs.  The path has been painfully slow at times, but the end is in sight.

And I really hope that I'm not going to be wincing at all of the sly in-jokes when I reach Pandaria.





*The minimal level of cooperation between Alliance and Horde never hurt either.

**The biggest eye-roller isn't in Howling Fjord at all, but in Borean Tundra:  Hagar Heigarr the Horrible.  Considering Hagar the comic strip jumped the shark back when I was a kid, I can only groan when I see that name in the Tuskarr area.  What's next, a storyline with names from Funky Winkerbean?

You Never Forget Your First Time

As I've been watching my kids play LOTRO and TOR, I've been thinking about my own history with MMOs.

Has it really been almost four years since I began playing?  It feels like even longer.  I did try a Middle-earth MUD back in the mid-90s --as well as the MMO-like online game that GEnie had (that used the old Rolemaster system for the ruleset)--  I never really dipped my toes into a modern MMO until the end of Summer in 2009.

While I can't remember all of the details regarding the first time I logged in, I remember one overwhelming emotion:  fear.

It seems silly now, given what I know how MMOs work, but I was expecting an "emperor has no clothes" moment when I signed into WoW for the first time.  I'd read up enough to know that there was a starting zone, but beyond that the WoW lore left me so confused that I figured I'd fail any surprise "geek test" that might appear before I got my bearings.  The one thing I didn't want was the "Hey, look at the noob!" and "L2P noob!" pursuing me on my first screw-up.

I also was painfully aware that the magical "pause" feature I loved in Baldur's Gate I, II, and Neverwinter Nights was non-existent.  I did not like RTS games very much because they forced you to think faster than I wanted to; like any long time boardgamer, I was accustomed to examining the board, thinking out strategy, and playing things out slowly.  I was not a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants player, and here I was playing the ultimate RTS game.

The narration that's supposed to set the scene for my new toon made absolutely no sense, either.  I now know that it was referencing events at the end of Burning Crusade, but I had no idea what on earth the narrator was talking about.  I kept wanting to say "Wait!  Wait!  Who the hell are you talking about?  What treachery?  What disasters?"  But there was no time to stop and look up the WoW lore on the website.  It was time to start playing.

Naturally, less than a minute after seeing my toon appear in front of the first questgiver in Sunstrider Isle, I received an invitation to a duel.  I had no idea what the hell it meant, but I knew I wasn't going to say yes to anything.  The would-be duelist ignored me and began harassing the next bunch of new toons as they ported in.

It took a bit, but I slowly worked my way through the first few quests.  The format was different than what I was used to, and the concept of an arcade-like push the button to attack took some getting used to.  By that time, Soul's wife had appeared and she gave me some tutoring while we moved in the general direction of Silvermoon City.*

As we passed Falconwing Square, I had no idea of the size of Azeroth, and the on-screen map meant absolutely nothing to me.  Neither did Silvermoon City itself, where I was introduced to the Auction House and a few other places.**  But when Soul popped in as a Death Knight, I was stunned.  Here I was, used to the old D&D system of L1-20ish, and here was a toon with L56!  And remembering what little I understood of WoW lore, weren't we supposed to be fighting these Death Knights?

I kept my mouth shut and just let things go.

And the music....  The music was disquieting.  Silvermoon City's theme was dramatic, but the background music in Eversong, that stuck with me.  I had this vague feeling that all was not right, and the fact that monsters were so close by bothered me a lot as well.***  Here was this supposed big city in WoW, and yet the enemies were almost literally at the gate in what you could (charitably) describe as a time of peace.  This is not what you'd expect in the D&D worlds I've campaigned in; usually you had to travel a day or so (and often longer) before finding some nasties to fight.

Truly this was a place where civilization was teetering on the edge of destruction.

After I'd logged, I still wasn't sure what to make of WoW or MMOs in general.  They were... different than what I was used to.  But one thing that definitely surprised me was how little I was noticed by the populace at large.  This became even more apparent when I entered into Org for the first time; when I was surrounded by people who truly didn't give one whit about my toon at all.  (Except those who wanted to recruit me to a guild; there were way too many of those out there.)

There was enough interest in the game to keep me going until I got my sea legs, but it was definitely not love at first sight.  WoW really had a learning curve, and even though it was a slight one comparatively speaking, it was enough for someone completely uninitiated in MMOs to have second thoughts.

But in the long run, I'm glad I stuck it out.  I often wonder, however, just how many people were like me but didn't keep trying until they got the game.




* I also learned all about how Priests were squishy, and the concept of a Cleric as an armor wearing and mace wielding healer from my pencil and paper RPGs met the WoW version of reality.

**Travelling to Org came on my next session, and I very nearly ended up taking a zeppelin to Stranglethorn by mistake.

***In the original Baldur's Gate, there's an early cutscene where you see an idyllic farm with a little girl going out to play, and as she wanders down the lane you see two kobolds appear behind the hedge in the foreground.  It's that sort of foreboding that I got while playing WoW that first time.

Starting All Over Again

I hung around Taris on the Old Man, just north of Dynamet Hospital, practicing some healing.  While I don't typically heal these days, I know that when I run a toon that has that capability, you never know when you'll be pressed into service.

Like this day.

My oldest and I had grouped up, and I was waiting for her to arrive on her Sentinel.*  I knew that while she'd been playing MMOs for a while, she was still unfamiliar with certain aspects of the game.  This was going to be her first group quest, I figured that if nothing else, this should prove to be an interesting experience.

She appeared with Kira in tow.  "Ready to do Fallen Stars?" I asked in group chat.

"Sure!"

"Okay.  I'll be healing, since nobody else has that spec.  Once we buff up we can go."

"What's a buff?  That thing you wear on your head in Survivor?"

Hmm.  I hadn't expected that.  Okay, I guess I'll have to back up and get more basic than what I'd expected.  "Buffing is a stats boost," I began.  "In some MMOs you can drink or eat and get a buff, and in TOR each class has its own unique buff.  Mine is Lucky Shots, and yours is Force something-or-other.  When in a group, you can select that buff and everyone will get that buff; it's considered polite to buff up everyone else when grouping up."

Force Might suddenly appeared next to Lucky Shots.

"Good.  Okay, let's go."

We moved into the heroic area for Fallen Stars and quickly came upon our first mob.  "Look at the boss there," she typed.

"In a heroic you'll see a lot of elites like that.  You'll know a real boss when you see it."  I scanned the group: one healer, one elite, and one strong melee.  "Okay, I'm going to send in Corso to tank, and once he gets going you can attack.  We need to get rid of the healer first, and then we can work on the rest."

"Okay."

"Ready?"

"Yep."

Corso flew in on his jet pack, and the fight began.

We quickly dispatched the enemy medic, and my oldest moved in on the elite.  I would have tried to DPS down the strong melee enemy, but I wasn't going to quibble.  I dropped a few medpacks down, but for the most part we DPSed down the mob quickly enough that I didn't need to worry about it.  It's saying something about your ability to down a mob when Corso doesn't reach even half health.**

Now that she had the basic method down, we DPSed our way through the area and eventually found ourselves before the ship at the end.  "I'm pretty sure that once we touch this the boss will fly in," I typed.  "It's been a while since I've done Falling Stars."

"Okay," she replied.

"Here's the thing.  This boss will take a while to kill, and bosses have immunity from a lot of CC's."

"CC's?"

"CC = Crowd Control.  Stuns, interrupts, that sort of thing."

"Oh, that stuff."

"Yeah.  Don't bother wasting Focus on those, since they won't work."

"okay"

"Alright, here we go."  I went over and triggered the boss, who flew in for the attack.

Now this was a fight.  I was healing so much that Corso lost aggro to me, and since he had no way of getting it back --his abilities were on CD for a while-- I had to grin and bear it.  Rule #1 of healing says that you can't heal when you're dead, so I spent a lot of energy healing myself while the boss wailed on me.  Good thing that I'd worked with my oldest on using mods and enhancements in gear, because otherwise we'd have wiped.

The boss finally bit it when Corso finally got his aggro abilities back off of CD and I was finally able to get that boss off my back.

"Wooo!" my oldest typed as we entered the final cutscene.

"Yep, that's it."

"Are there any more around?"

"There are some 2+ heroics in the bonus area, but others are 4-man."

"When do you think I'll be ready for a 4-man?"

"We'll see, kid.  We'll see."




*She was upstairs on the laptop.  From what she informed me later, her brother and sister were watching too, so I really felt on display.

**If you've ever played a smuggler, you know what I'm talking about.  Corso is famous for losing most of his health on decently sized mobs, which makes me wonder just how well equipped of a tank he is.

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.