Keeping that Sense of Mystery

I make a point to watch long standing developer Tim Cain's Cain on Games YouTube channel. He has decades of experience creating video games, and as a long time player/coder myself*, I really enjoy his insight into designing and creating games. Today, his post was a quick world building tip:

For those unwilling to watch a less than 10 minute video, the TL;DR is to give just enough worldbuilding to complete the game, but no more than that. In other words, leave a lot of mystery in your creation. 

This is something that it seems a lot of MMOs have issues with in their storytelling. 

Maybe it arises out of a realization that min/maxers will distill everything into a mathematical analysis and they have issues with anything resembling a sense of mystery, or that a subset of people have to know exactly everything about a game/world or they're not satisfied, but it certainly seems to be a trap that game developers fall into. It's not something about video games specifically, because tabletop games have this problem too, but I do tend to see it a lot in video games these days. Look at how the storytelling in games such as WoW or even in the average D&D or Pathfinder campaign books have progressed over time, and you'll find more and more that everything is spelled out for the player/DM. Everything is knowable.

You'll see this in book series too, where more of the world the protagonists inhabit is revealed with more mystery stripped away. 

That's not to say the reveal of a game world is bad, since you have to reveal a world as you progress in a story or game, but there's a fine line between revealing and oversharing.

Tim's point is to reveal just enough to tell the story, but no more than that. Maybe you, the author/developer, know more than the player ever will, but leaving a lot of mystery out there will not only fuel more stories in the future but allow player speculation to direct further development as well. 

One thing I've complained about with stories over the years, both in video games and in fiction, is the constant raising of stakes. It seems that many games/books/comics are engaged in a constant level of one-upmanship where the stakes in the current iteration absolutely have to be higher than the last iteration. The thing is, you can only dip into this well so often before it starts to become ridiculous. By leaving mystery in place in your work, you can avoid that one-upmanship trap by leaving a lot of mystery in your game so you have plenty to mine without constantly raising the stakes.

And maybe, just maybe, knowing when to walk away and say the game or story is complete --despite all that's left unsaid-- is good enough. (If only the suits knew this as well.)

*Okay, my coding this past several years has been limited to the occasional shell script, but once a coder always a coder.

Finding that 'Aha!' Moment

Sometimes it takes looking at a game through fresh eyes to appreciate what we've got. 

I'm not sure how this appeared on my YouTube feed, but this relatively short video is worth a watch:

Back in 2009, I think my "aha" moment was questing through The Ghostlands on Quintalan, my Paladin, and finally building up to Deathholme. I happened upon another player struggling through that place, and we teamed up to finish off Dark'Khan Drathir. Neither of us had played before, so it took us a try or two, but we figured it out and defeated the traitor. Coming back from that part of the zone forever changed the game for me, because I finally began to understand the story and what had happened there.

For Vanilla Classic in 2019, being the first time I'd ever played the "original" version of WoW, it was a different moment. It was exploring my way through Wetlands to the Arathi Highlands, to Hillsbrad Foothills. Up north I went, and I found myself quite by accident in the Western Plaguelands. I had... experiences... with doing this before, but while I was stealthed and kept to the mountains, I found I was able to sneak all the way up to the entrance to Scholomance. I had absolutely no business being where I was, as a L28 Rogue, but sneaking there and into other places just whetted my appetite for more. 

In LOTRO, I know where my aha moment was: reaching Evendim and looking up at night and discovering The Pleiades in the sky. SWTOR was a bit different; I think it was when I arrived on my Smuggler at Coruscant and there was a custom cutscene of me slicing a terminal to get into the spaceport unnoticed. It wasn't much, but it was a helluva touch, given that I was trying to get my starship back.

What about you? What was your 'aha' moment in an MMORPG?

Meme Monday: Grinding for Stuff Memes

It's part and parcel of playing RPGs and/or MMOs that there will be min/maxers. And an outgrowth of such mix/maxing is that there's an optimal set of gear or pathway to get what you want to achieve. I mean, it's pretty unavoidable in a game that is mathematically and probabilistically based that there will be a "best way" of doing things. 

Since I'm doing my own version of this while prepping for the Spring to work on the deck once more, I thought I'd take a look at the gamer version of this phenomenon. After all, I've been watching my Questing Buddy scamper this way and that, typically going into multiple dungeons a night, trying to get her BiS gear and materials for raiding.

From Mematic.

It's not just for hardcore players any more!
From Imgflip.

There are people who are like that.
I've learned to not do that. From Reddit.

I don't know the details about shards and
DS gears, but I get the gist of this. From Reddit.

And yes, This is very much a WoW Classic
thing, getting the best gear frequently means
not getting a cool looking set. From Reddit.

A Snapshot of Classic Fresh Guild Names Part 3

One aspect of the continuing health of the Anniversary servers is the constant flow of new guilds onto the scene. On the bright side, I have more material for this blog. On the not so bright side... You know, I haven't gotten many whispers about guild invites lately. I think that's because there's simply so many people that the bots and guilds aren't needing to scavenge for everybody out there. Perhaps when the people playing drop off will I start seeing more guild invites, but I guess we'll wait and see.

And away we go...

EtA: Not sure how "One aspect" became "I slice" in my writing, but it did. Corrected.

Economic Life Lessons from an MMO

If there's one thing about my leveling experience in Classic Fresh that's a truism, it's that I almost never run out of Rested XP while playing. When you think about it that's not a great surprise, given that I'm leveling 10 toons:

For Joan, I went with a vaguely unsettling look with
a shock of white hair and piercing blue eyes with her
mocha skin tone. In her red robe, she had that look.
She had to have been a Wednesday-esque sort of child
growing up. The listings are current as of January 14, 2025.

Right now, I'm at the point where I play a different toon every evening, so I might get around to them once every week or week and a half, and I can now go an entire evening session on WoW without leveling at all.* Admittedly, a bit of that is that I'm cheap and don't take a flight from a flight point if I can help it, because my lack of gold means every flight cuts into my money quite a bit. 

The economics of an MMO aren't exactly what people signed up for when they started playing --EVE notwithstanding-- but it's a reality that has to be addressed sooner or later. I've never played Everquest or any of the predecessors to WoW, but I have played several games released after WoW. I'm not sure whether the in-game economy of WoW necessitated changes or whether it was in response to other MMOs making life easier, but I never truly appreciated how easy it was to obtain gold by the time Wrath of the Lich King rolled around until I began playing Vanilla WoW in 2019. 

In Wrath in 2009, I discovered very quickly that the gold coming in was greater than what my needs were, and by the time I reached max level and started running dungeons I wasn't hurting for gold. I wasn't rich enough to by fast flying or the Battered Hilt at the drop of a hat, but I had a couple of thousand gold on me at any given time. I didn't have repair bills due to raiding (or enchantments or whatnot either), so just doing a dungeon or two per day was more than enough to keep my gold supply increasing. In other words, I never had to really think about how to obtain more gold. When I decided I wanted fast flying or that Battered Hilt, I just waited for my supply to get high enough and I bought it. 

Other MMOs I played had a similar approach: just playing the game and leveling meant I would have a supply of gold available to me. That supply was nowhere near what the likely "average" amount of money was out there, but I was happy with that because I didn't really use it that much. To use another game's currency as a reference, I get a supply of Cartel Coins per month from SWTOR for subscribing. That being said, I can't tell you the last time I actually used those Cartel Coins for anything.

Over 57,000 Cartel Coins as of January 14, 2025. Yikes.

I don't buy cosmetics, and I'm happy with the (relatively unfurnished) housing I do have, so I really have no need to spend that currency.**

But coming back to Vanilla WoW in 2019 and once more on the Anniversary servers is a bit of a shock to the system.

There's simply not enough money to be had while questing to cover all of your expenses, so you have to prioritize things a bit. You have to pick and choose which abilities to train, consumables to obtain, and even whether to take that flight point or not while out in the field. 

Now, multiply that by 10 and you can see where the problems are, especially if you never played the majority of these classes before and you're dead set on figuring it out by yourself. There have been evenings where I spent the majority of my time finding ways to make some gold, whether it be by fishing and selling my catch, grinding mobs for drops, or crafting to sell raw materials or finished items on the Auction House. If I'm not doing that, I'm basically making things for my own toons to use, because it's cheaper than buying it on the Auction House or from a vendor.

My insistence on following Operation Spread the Love means that I've hamstrung my ability to make gold as well, because people are making gold selling max level services, such as ports or water/food or highly desirable potions while I'm back at L20 making pretty basic stuff to distribute to my various toons. Even low-end magic items that drop off of mobs that I would ordinarily disenchant for Enchanting raw materials I instead distribute to my various toons because, well, they can use them. 

And so my penny pinching continues. 

***

Some of the people I played with back in my old Retail Orphans guild have returned to WoW and begun playing the Anniversary servers. I'm not especially surprised by this, because the Anniversary servers are explicitly going to The Burning Crusade expansion, and they've previously expressed to me their love for Karazhan, one of the first raids in TBC. The irony is that the last time I spoke with them I was powerleveling a Shaman and they were stunned at how rapidly I was leveling. Now, the tables have been turned as they're in the mid-L30s even though they started two weeks ago, while I started in late November and only have some toons at L20. 

I had a lengthy conversation with a player in Westfall while I was on my warlock, Joanofdark, the other week. He, like me, is a member of Gen X and we bonded over playing D&D back in the day as well as books we liked. He, like me, was taking his time leveling because he wasn't wanting to get caught up in the rat race. All in all, it was a pleasant hour spent just chilling with a random person in a 20+ year old video game.

*That's happened on my Warlock, my Warrior, my Rogue, and my Shaman.

**Obviously, this doesn't apply to real life, as I have enough projects around the house just to fix things up that there's a constant "gold sink" in my life. 

Meme Monday: Miscellaneous Memes for 2025

I figured that with the holidays and the new year over, let's clear out some of the old memes I've had lying around.

Heh. From Imgflip.

Alas for WoW players that Warcraftlogs will point
the finger at you. From Ranker.

Yeah, I can relate. Especially when Blizz
drops something like Classic Fresh.
From Imgflip.

Yep. From Pinterest.

This has been in my holding area
for so long I don't even have a reference
to where I found it.

Same with this meme, but I do agree with
the sentiment. I'm pretty much all Star Wars' out
at this point, with the exception of the SWTOR
vanilla areas.

That Barrens Schizophrenia

Even among WoW players, The Barrens is kind of a weird place. Oh, not the awesome stretches of the savannah that reach north and south, and not even for how (in)famous some of the quests are --Mankrik's Wife, anyone?-- but for Barrens Chat itself.

From the endless supply of Chuck Norris jokes to the truly oddball mixture of political and social topics, Barrens Chat is unique to World of Warcraft. Elwynn Forest Chat might want to compete, and The Lion's Pride Inn at Goldshire notwithstanding Elwynn Chat is definitely second banana to Barrens Chat.

I was reminded of that the other day when I was on my Shaman for a little while, working on some of the Kill Ten Rats* quests. 

Someone complained in Barrens Chat about someone stealing their mining node while they were actively mining the node, and instead of sympathy the player got a lot of "mine faster" and "too bad so sad" reactions. A few people did express disapproval of that asshole's behavior, but they were outnumbered by quite a bit.

Then conversation turned toward politics, and... Yeah, I'm not gonna go there on this blog.

I was kind of disheartened by the conversation, so I switched to another tab where I had Gen Chat disabled and kept questing. 

Then I got back to The Crossroads, and before I could even unload by bags a Tauren Hunter came up to me and opened a Trade window.

He began dumping a load of crafted gear into the window.

"Do you need anything for this?" I asked. "Some mats or something?"

"Nah," he replied. "Take it."

He also provided me with an extra bag, since I was a bag short and my bags were all full anyway.

After that conversation, I shook my head. "Only in The Barrens," I thought.

*Or in this particular case "Kill Enough Harpy Lieutenants and Take Their Rings".