A State of the Game Request

Back before the private equity firm that now controls them ruined the company, Fantasy Flight Games' annual InFlight Report was one of the most well attended presentations at Gen Con. Their presentations were more E3-esque than anything else, and their fans loved them as they brought their upcoming games to life. 

This is from the 2019 InFlight report,
probably the last of their really good
presentations in spite of the technical
glitch partway through.

Alas that FFG's masters, the holding company PAI, began to eliminate product lines and focus the company only on their big Intellectual Property titles. Additionally, to boost profitability PAI had FFG cut staff and trimmed the fat right to the bone. As one Redditor put it, "It's the first games publisher to have switched from hobbyist management to MBA management."

I was feeling nostalgic about the old, independent FFG, and I loved it when they leveled with their fans about how things were going, as well as the direction the company was headed. That got me to thinking about how things have changed, both in tabletop games and in video games. Because of that meandering path it took in my head, this nostalgia led me to a wish that more video game companies would provide a better window into their game statistics than they currently have. 

***

Let's be honest with ourselves for a minute: no publicly traded company is going to provide data that makes them look bad. 

So we can forget about a listing of total number of WoW subscriptions ever again, particularly once Blizz threw them out the window close to 7 years ago. 

However, that doesn't mean they can't play percentages.

I don't mean the Tenth Anniversary WoW Infographic, which is vague enough --courtesy of stretching over a decade's worth of playing-- but percentages about the current expacs (and Classic). 

Obviously, there's a lot that can be gleaned from the WoW Armory (for Retail) and Warcraftlogs (for both Retail and Classic) but that only shows things on a per toon basis, not a per account basis. That's where the rub comes in: when someone has a stable of 10, 20, or more toons but raids with only 1, the data from the Armory and Warcraftlogs can be deceptive. After all, I likely showed up in the Armory as having logged in on several toons over the past year, and I definitely am not playing Shadowlands.

In case people ever wonder whether
I (or Neve, in this case) actually
did the Quel'Danas grind in the past.

When people tend to say things about raiding and make generalizations --myself included-- it would be nice to put some real data behind it. One of the guild leaders from my ex-Classic guild made the assertion in the guild's Discord that you need about 6k worth of raiders to make a server viable, and I kind of choked. After all, the maximum number of players at one time on a server back in Vanilla was estimated at 2500-3000 players (out of 4k maximum that the hardware could handle), and I always felt that the 2500-3000 raiding toons found in Warcraftlogs for Myzrael-US back at its height resulted in a pretty healthy population. So I was extremely skeptical of that 6k number that was put out, and I felt it more along the lines of a justification for a decision --switching servers-- that had already been made. 

Another way of putting it is "What does a healthy population look like, and how would we know?"

I think it would also be a good thing if companies such as Blizz provided data that allowed us a better peek at who actually plays MMOs, and what they do when they're in game.

Do they spend their time crafting? Doing dailies? Raiding? Transmog? PvP?

A lot of WoW players I know suspect that far more people play WoW than actually raid, but what does the data say? If you looked at Wowhead, Icy Veins, YouTube, and other places, you'd think that raiding --and things leading up to raiding-- is all people ever do in WoW. But if the number of raiding accounts is something around 20% of the active player base, well.... That tends to put all those raid walkthroughs and meta guides into context, doesn't it? (For the record, I believe that the number is closer to 50% because I'd include LFR, but that's just an off the cuff observation.)

On the flip side, I have very little idea as to how many people play some other MMOs, such as LOTRO or ESO or SWTOR. In those games, I play in an extremely casual fashion --questing and sight seeing-- with very little time actually doing instances or other group content. I mean, I've done so little SWTOR group content over the last several years that I'm still wrapping my head around Tactical Flashpoints not requiring the trinity of Tank-Healer-DPS. But given that I play them in such a manner, I have no idea just how many people play like me, versus those who go all in on raiding and/or PvP or even just consuming current content.

Ah, the Prophet of Vodal Kressh.
Athiss is still my favorite Flashpoint
among the Classic SWTOR FPs.
(From Gameplorer.de.)

***

This is all pretty much water under the bridge, because like I said earlier in the post, very few publicly traded game companies are ever going to post anything that puts them in a bad light. But it would be nice to know the reality behind the games, wouldn't it?

A Mage can dream, I suppose.

Oh no, not both of you...

/sigh Maybe I should take up Scrabble.
Hey, wait a second... You're both...
Oh, nevermind.

#Blaugust2022

EtA: Corrected some grammar.

What Do You Want on Your Tombstone?

“Most people do not have a problem with you thinking for yourself, as long as your conclusions are the same as or at least compatible with their beliefs.”

― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

There are times when I have to remind myself that while the name "meta" for "metagame"* is relatively new --within the pencil and paper RPG Era, certainly-- the concept of following the crowd for an optimal solution is anything but.

Anybody remember peer pressure? Or how financial bubbles are created?  Or the concept of The Greater Fool?

Yeah, that stuff is "the meta" in another form. 

I was reminded of this the other day during a discussion at work when the magic word "Gartner" came up. If you work in IT --or in Corporate America to any degree-- you can't help but run up against the monolith that is the Gartner Consulting Group. They are a $4.7 billion per year consulting business, of which most people know them by their White Papers that they use to identify trends in the business world. I use the word "trends" rather loosely here, because if you talk to people in the corporate world you run up against the belief that Gartner doesn't really identify trends as much as they create them.

I believe I just twitched when I posted this
snippet from Gartner's "About Us".
From gartner.com.

Gartner likes to say that they are data driven when they create recommendations for clients or industry leaders, but when you reach a certain critical mass of influence --and believe me, Gartner has that-- you begin to dictate the trends. By elevating one trend over another, Gartner acts as a force multiplier for those trends as CIOs and others (or their wannabees) in the corporate upper echelons of power implement their recommendations. 

Or use their recommendations to choose a company to do business with. After all, the Gartner Magic Quadrant lays it all out quite nicely: you want to do business with people in the upper right hand of the quadrant chart, because those are the true leaders in an industry. By making these charts, however, Gartner alters the dynamic within an industry by the sheer weight of their influence. They make the industry leaders even more so, and those left behind even farther behind than before. 

Which ought to explain the groans that went up when someone mentioned Gartner at work. There's always a Gartner shill in any corporate gathering, because it's the safe bet. But because it's the safe bet, there's no room for creativity or quirkiness. 

***

Now, replace Gartner with "influencer" or "popular kid in high school" or... say... Wowhead...** and you get the idea.

Or maybe a better way of looking at the meta is under the viewpoint of data analytics, because that's pretty much what it is. Someone crunches the data to determine the optimal way of doing things, and that becomes the meta. Data analytics has even crept into the sporting world, as early adopters such as baseball's Tony La Russa*** led the way for widespread use of data crunching to determine the best way to do things for a variety of situations. 

While perusing the Sports Illustrated for this
post, I realized just how much also happened
in that issue: Hank Gathers of Loyola Marymount
University's basketball team collapsed and died on
the court, and Dayton defeated Notre Dame
and Xavier in their quest to make the NCAA Tourney.
(From Sports Illustrated, March 12, 1990.)

On the face of it, data analytics makes sense: you use raw data to determine what successful outcomes are for a variety of scenarios. You can drill down and add all sorts of variables to help with your analysis, but in the end what you get is the likelihood of success for various situations. The goal is to maximize that likelihood of success, but athletes still have to perform out on the field to realize that success.

In the business world issues such as employee retention, sales success, market penetration, and other things that would make my eyes glaze over are ripe for use with data analytics. The age old problem of how to keep employees in the fold --without simply paying them more****-- has been subject to many a data crunching session. And a Gartner White Paper, to be honest. The thing is, even if the data show you an obvious path forward, there's no guarantee that it'll work. 

Just like in video games, the meta will only get you so far; you have to actually perform to live up to your potential. But just like in video games, if you're not following the identified "trend", then you're already at a disadvantage. It doesn't mean that you can't do the job effectively, but nobody ever got fired for following the current Gartner recommendations, either.

***

As someone who disliked following the current trends, whether it was in school, at work, or in gaming*****, I've struggled to put my aversion to words. Part of it is that I want to maintain my own individuality in the face of corporate sameness. I remember an article from the late 90s about the music industry's infatuation with boy bands at the time, and the assertion was that the industry professionals had figured out how to package music to such a degree that they could influence the trends all on their own. The boy bands of that era --Backstreet Boys, N-Sync, 98 Degrees-- were corporate sameness personified. Of course, the music industry was about to be blindsided by a wave of music file sharing and downloads, proving that dictating trends and thinking you know best isn't always the correct bet. 

Same same but different.
Also, Southern Rap and Green Day
were coming for your ass.
From Entertainment Weekly.

I guess another part of it is the loss of creativity when everybody follows the data driven outcome. If everybody is following it, then where's the fun of finding something else that works for you? Oh, it's out there, but like I mentioned above you're at twice the disadvantage: once for not following the data driven recommendation, and once for people's doubts of your abilities because you're not following those recommendations.

Still, my only advice for people is to be yourself. In the end, "They followed the Analytics" doesn't make for a good quote for a tombstone.

#Blaugust2022

*No, not the even newer and more pretentious "Meta" as in "Metaverse". Even that in it's non-corporate state isn't that new, given that the concept of the metaverse has been around in comics for what feels like ages. It was enough of a trope that when WoW's Warlords of Draenor came out, that "alternate universe" Draenor concept was enough of a turn off for me to contribute to the cancellation of my WoW subscription. But still, Mark Zuckerberg has a certain spot in my heart for pure loathing.

**Or Icy Veins, or even Elitist Jerks if you're old like me.

***Tony was most famous during his time spent as manager of the Oakland A's and St. Louis Cardinals from 1986 through 2011. Columnist and baseball aficionado George Will devoted a large section of his book Men at Work: The Craft of Baseball to Tony La Russa and his managerial techniques.

****Don't get me started on that bullshit. Companies come up with all sorts of ways to keep from doing the obvious two things when you want to retain people: pay them more and treat them like people. I know, I know, what a concept!!

*****I mean, come on. I played D&D during the Satanic Panic, and lost all my stuff to the same. If you ever wanted to meet girls in the early-mid 80s, playing D&D and board games such as Civilization or Axis and Allies was most definitely not the way to do it. I think one of the biggest shocks to my system was during the first week of classes at UD I was at the game room down in Kennedy Union, playing a video game, when a couple happened to walk by and paused to watch me play. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the shirt she was wearing --a Dungeons and Dragons shirt-- and nearly died in the game due to my surprise. That had to have been the first girl I ever "met" who actually was into RPGs. Usually I got the "ew, gross" if any of them ever found out that I played.

Security Alert

Today I had to move a blog off of the MMO Blogroll, but not for the traditional reason of the blog going silent (or vanishing).

Tobold's blog was flagged by Bitdefender for being an infected website.

I checked the alert more fully, and yeah, there's a definite infection there:

Oof.

Alas that I'm unable to contact Tobold, since doing so would require me to visit his blog to then find his email, so I'm kind of stuck here. So, here's hoping that Tobold actually reads blogs and will find this. Or, if someone knows Tobold's email they can contact him about this.

#Blaugust2022

The Soundtrack to My Life

The thing about Blaugust that dislike the most is when you're supposed to talk about yourself.

I don't mean the (mis)adventures I --or my toons-- have, but rather when you explain yourself to people.

Certain times, you kind of just have to talk about yourself because it impacts both the blog and your game playing (from which material for the blog originates), such as my little hospital adventure last November and my subsequent follow-up several months later. There are also other assorted times when I've felt like I had to explain some of the things that go on in my head, because otherwise some of my in-game behaviors would make no sense. That doesn't mean I have to like it when I make those sorts of posts, it just simply is a thing that goes with the job of being a blogger: sometimes you have to explain yourself. 

But actively promoting yourself and giving out your bona-fides under the guise of "Introducing Yourself"?

Gah.

I'd rather run around naked in my backyard.*

Still, this is supposed to be "Introducing Yourself" week, and even though I'm not officially enrolled in Blaugust I do feel obligated to at least pay lip service to saying something about myself.

You know, hobbies, doodads, history, family, and other assorted things that go to make up a life.

That's what you get for letting that little line "things that go to make up a life" slip into my head: a Genesis song.

Hmm.... Maybe that's where I should go with this post: music.

***

I was not born into a musical family.

Oh, my mom's family had musicians in them, but a lot of them were in the 19th century past. My immediate family wasn't musical: my maternal Grandmother was tone deaf and simply didn't like music much at all. My dad's mom and aunt liked the "old timey" songs like Shine On Harvest Moon --my great aunt was born the year before the Wright Brothers' first flight-- and while they loved watching Lawrence Welk** they had no more affinity for music than a squirrel does. My dad wasn't musically inclined, and my mom made a few attempts to learn guitar and gave up soon afterward. Dad liked to listen to what is now called Yacht Rock, and Mom liked religious music.*** Of the two of us kids, I quickly grew bored with the grind of slowly learning piano and passed on learning how to play. My brother, on the other hand, loved to play piano and played mellophone in marching band for his high school. 

The funny thing about all that is you'd not expect my household to be filled with music, but it is

My wife does play guitar and piano, and she took harpsichord lessons in college, but that's in spite of a rather disastrous guitar recital she had when she was seven or so. If it were me, I'd likely have given up trying to play guitar, but she doggedly kept on going. She doesn't play much now, but I'm certain the kids picked up whatever musical talent they have from her, not me.

Me? I just loved to listen to music. I didn't want to play it****, just surround myself with it. I listened to almost everything --with the notable exception of Country-- but I loved anything that made my heart soar and kept my blood pumping.

Thank goodness for the Blues Brothers,
otherwise you'd not get this little gem.

We didn't make the kids take music lessons in the way some parents force it on their progeny in the vain hope that it'll pad a future college resume, but my wife took them to preschool music appreciation programs when they were around toddler through preschool age, and as they liked it and wanted to play the instruments themselves, we signed them up for lessons. Aside from that, no pushing on my watch. All I did was simply play music while I worked, cleaned, drove the parental taxi, and did just about everything else in life. And like a love of reading, they just kind of fell into it because of the exposure.

So our lives eventually have come to this: maneuvering around a drum kit in the basement, tripping over guitars around the house, and a keyboard on my wife's dresser.

Oh yeah, and me building speakers for stereo systems around the house.

But you know, I'd never change it for the world. Music keeps me going and it provides a nourishment that I can't describe. It's not exactly an addiction, and to be honest I've had tinnitus since roughly 2018 or so, but I make a point to simply enjoy music for what it is.

#Blaugust2022

*And believe me, it's been more than a few decades since I was in good enough shape to even think about pulling that off. And no, I've never been drunk enough to consider it, either.

**Oh yes, the horror. I had to put up with that show being on --along with Hee Haw-- whenever they babysat my brother and myself.

***I really hate the music played at churches. And no, I don't mean the traditional fare found at weddings, such as Wagner's Bridal Chorus. As a kid at a Catholic grade school, singing hymns was pretty much all we ever sang in Music class, and the few times we did something other than that sort of Relgious fare, it was (and I kid you not) Country Western Music. Like we were somehow going to be happy it was that and not another version of "On Eagle's Wings". About the only Religious music I like to this day is that found in the Classical repertoire, such as this:

****Okay, when I was in high school I used to daydream about playing guitar or bass in a rock band in a cartoony sort of fashion: rock star by day, SF hero by night. I suppose you'd say that I'd be up for a male version of Josie and the Pussycats or Jem, or even Batman if Batman weren't a billionaire playboy but rather a rock star. That had about as much chance of happening to me as getting bitten by a radioactive spider and turning into Spider-man, but a guy could dream.

A Short Interlude

Sometimes I login to a game just to enjoy the scenery.

The Burning Crusade Classic

The Elder Scrolls Online

Guild Wars 2

The Lord of the Rings Online

Star Wars: The Old Republic

World of Warcraft (Retail)

#Blaugust2022

What Happens When Mages Ponder

You'd think that I would know enough about Mages in Classic (and TBC Classic), but every so often something pops up that catches me by surprise.

Like how I was helping my questing buddy's Mage run through Sunken Temple --I was on Linna-- when one of the pulls went a little haywire. We managed to kill off the pack, and then my questing buddy mentioned that "I didn't know you could Ice Block and break a sheep."*

I paused a second. "I had no idea either."

Honest.

Most of the time I'm sheeped in Alterac Valley my Ice Block is on cooldown, and when it isn't I'm likely about to die anyway so I'd rather not waste it. And in instances where you can get sheeped, such as Sunken Temple and Zul'Farrak, Ice Block may be available (if you pick up the talent in the Frost tree) but it's typically not what you're thinking of when you get sheeped. Especially with a 5 minute CD and the potential to get sheeped multiple times in one pull.

And to be fair, Cardwyn 1.0 has been Fire Spec for almost two years, so I'd kind of forgotten that Ice Block for all specs was a change made in TBC Classic. I'd probably have continued in blissful ignorance --courtesy of the leveling grind Card went through-- until sometime in Wrath Classic.

***

While that's one example of me learning new tricks, there is one surprising part of TBC Classic where I, uh, by accident kind of broke the game.

Okay, maybe it's by design, but it was waaaay too much fun to not do it.

If you're a Mage in TBC Classic you're familiar with the Spellsteal Level 70 spell. For the uninitiated, Spellsteal allows a Mage to steal a buff that is currently on an enemy and use it for yourself. This is the how a Mage can perform Mage Tank duties during the High King Maulgar fight: the Mage uses Spellsteal to take the Spell Shield buff from Krosh Firehand, rendering him vulnerable to spells, and the Mage (mostly) invulnerable to the same. In my case, I've used Spellsteal from time to time with Neve in Alterac Valley, stealing heals and other assorted buffs from enemies, often to their displeasure (and Neve's inevitable death).

The other day, I had gotten it into my head to farm some Runecloth on Cardwyn 1.0 to replenish my depleted supply, and since I could also use some extra Winterfall Firewater as a cheap melee DPS buff I figured I'd head out to Winterfall Village in Winterspring. The Winterfall Firbolgs drop both items, and Winterspring is typically empty anyway, so why not?

Now, anybody who knows anything about WoW probably perked up their ears when I mentioned Winterfall Firewater. It has two effects: you get +35 to your Attack Power for 20 minutes, and you get a bit of an increase in size for the duration while it is active. I used to use it with Azshandra all the time until one fateful Blackrock Depths run where I was heading to the entrance of the instance and I jumped down from the outer walkway within Blackrock Mountain onto the ledge below, which serves to break my fall at about the halfway point in the drop so I don't plummet to my death. Well, that was the idea, but Az had consumed some Winterfall Firewater and had correspondingly grown large enough that she couldn't fit properly on the ledge, and so she bounced off of it and died in the lava below. 

My groupmates had a good round of laughter at my expense. 

"Helluva way to find out if your butt is too big, Az!"

I still use Firewater from time to time on Card when I'm goofing around, even though she doesn't need it at all**, just because she can then almost look a Draenei in the eye. But I did use it on Briganaa and Linnawyn when they were out in the field, because it's a cheap buff and I acquired a ton of them when I was working on the Wintersaber mount grind. 

But my supplies were running low, so I headed out to Winterspring.

While I was obliterating Firbolg for fun and profit, I took a note of something:

Hmm....

The buff that you see there is the Winterfall Firewater buff on the Firbolg. All of the Winterfall Firbolg have it, so at first I didn't notice anything. But do you notice the highlight around the buff? That means the buff was a candidate for Spellstealing.

When I was last farming up here, Card was L66, and that buff wasn't highlighted. After all, Spellsteal is only learned at L70.

But that got me to thinking.

So I used Spellsteal and yes, I noted the slight size increase and I got a 2 minute version of Winterfall Firewater with a boost to the buff itself:

Instead of 35 AP like the regular
version, this one was 70 AP.

Convinced this was a cheap way to amuse myself, I attacked another Winterfall Firbolg and used Spellsteal there.

And much to my surprise the little bump in height happened again.

Sure enough, there were now two Winterfall Firewater buffs active:

I checked, and the buffs did actually stack in Attack Power as well. So I wondered if this was like the little "cheat" to the system in Karazhan, where a Mage using Spellsteal and a tank keeping one of the Ethereals with their stackable caster buff could get up to 10 stacks of said buff and absolutely obliterate Netherspite.***

Well, it wasn't exactly the same, as the Spellsteals for Winterfall Firewater were separate buffs, but...

I drank one of the Winterfall Firewater potions Card had on her (after one of the buffs had fallen off) and....

Now this is interesting.

I went out and killed a few more Firbolgs, stealing their buff, and each time Card grew a little more. It didn't seem like she was that large...

But when I ported to Theramore as my questing buddy needed a hand with something, I was greeted by this:

This is with four stacks.

I sent that screencap to my questing buddy, who said "She's huge!"

I mean, I've had multiple buffs before, with Heroism + Firewater + Alterac Valley Belinda buff, but this was something entirely different.

Just exactly how many stacks could I do at once? 

Mana would become an issue, as would killing the Firbolg I pulled. But I figured "why not" and at my earliest opportunity I went back to Winterfall Village and got to work.

I discovered that 8 stacks was the practical limit given my constraints...

I could hit 9 stacks, but one would fall off just as soon as I put one on, so I just left it at 8 and ported into Stormwind.

"I look like a raid boss!" I said out loud, and then I tried to exit the Sanctum:

"I can't get out the damn door!" I cried.

So I had to wait for a few stacks to burn off and only then could I squeeze through.

"Who's the Archmage now, Malin?"

I should have checked what my Attack Power was, but just being able to game the system like this was awesome. No idea if this would work in Wrath Classic, but I've the screencaps to prove that it does in TBC Classic.

Totally worth it.

#Blaugust2022

*Or maybe it was a frog. Can't remember and I'm tired.

**It's a melee buff, not a caster buff.

***We tried this out one Friday night with a friend who'd just specced Fire for the first time --so she even wasn't aware of using Combustion or the Fire Mage rotation at all-- and she absolutely dominated us in the DPS meters.

EtA: Corrected some grammar.

EtA: Corrected some more grammar.

Gen Con 2022: The Gamers Returned

I normally wouldn't have had a follow-up post like this, but Gen Con LLC released their post con press release, and the contents confirmed what my son and I thought was the case.

The gamers were back.

According to the press release, Gen Con attendance returned to pre-pandemic levels at over 50,000 attendees and over 15,000 ticket events. The Gen Con Online version had over 900 virtual games and events as well, so there seems to be a future for Gen Con Online. 

For us personally it certainly seemed that the crowds were just as busy as when we last attended on Sunday (around 2012), but the tweaks made to improve the flow of people throughout the con kept the traffic snarls low.

I do wonder just how much space the Exhibit Hall will expand into so that the traffic is kept to decent levels, given that there were tons of cafeteria style tables in a good 1/3 of the area beyond the Exhibit Hall itself. That was where I saw this poster:

Given that I typically play AD&D 1e
these days, I could use a refresher.

That area was pretty empty, but I think they might have been holding a Magic: the Gathering tournament there during the other three days of the con. 

For the curious, I did want to point out what the prices were for badges for this year's Gen Con:

Have I mentioned lately that
I love Snip and Sketch?

This does not include buying Event tickets, but as you can see a Sunday badge is incredibly cheap, which is why we tended to focus our Gen Con visit on Sundays. In fact, parking at the Stadium was almost as expensive ($30) as the cost of two Sunday badges. 

Still, the cost of attending Gen Con was very much worth it. I got to see the games in action that I'd not even be able to find on the shelves at my local game store, 

Point Salad! My questing buddy recommended
this as a present for my wife, so it's nice to
see it get some love.

and I got to talk to people there who were specialists in the games they were promoting. I mean, being able to talk to someone at the Atlas Games booth about Ars Magica and segueing into a game that he really liked, Feng Shui 2, was priceless:

Obviously he did a good job,
because this.

If you can imagine an RPG that plays like
a Jackie Chan movie or Big Trouble in
Little China, that's what Feng Shui 2 is like.

So unless you're not a fan of crowds, which is understandable, you ought to give Gen Con a try. Even this introvert found something to love.

#Blaugust2022

EtA: Corrected some grammar.