It is all about the time sink

The time sink game is all I’m playing at the moment. It has many levels and challenges.

I have three writing mini-projects going at once, a few games to try to play, and a family to look after. The three writing projects have deadlines which are looming so I really should be doing those with all my spare time, but I find them difficult to write them without spending large blocks of time. When I write I need a good 1-2 hours of time to get anything new written. I can review my own work in much smaller time blocks, but there is only so much review that can be done before it is called procrastination. New text needs thinking time.

A pc game however can be 30 minutes to 1 hour if I know what I’m doing (like WoW), or need a heap more (like 2-3 hours) if it is a game which is new to me like Elder Scrolls, EvE, Star Wars. I guess I could go play D3 too if I wanted some hack and slash fun, and D3 is the game I’ll fall back to when all else fails.

The writing is all based around pen and paper role-playing games (for a Deathwatch mini-module and a fan made Ars Magica supplement), and I’m enjoying the process of trying to create something for a critical audience. Writing for your own sake is easy, writing for an audience who will read, review, editorialise, and point out incongruity is much harder. That could be part of my hesitation too. The projects are not commercial things, so I’m not targeting a commercial level quality, but still thinking it has to be better than my typical notepad scrawl.

As far as computer games go, WoW is still interesting to me. I have some gripes which will come out below, but as I write this I’m really just mouthing off about an errant kid who I like, but pissed me off recently.

I think it is interesting that WoW Insider has announced cut-backs to their blog staff across all games, and wow is significantly affected. That would not happen if the revenue was flowing well, and that is telling about the users of these games, and the market in general. Even though the subscription rate is ok-ish the players themselves are not putting up with any kind of silly or boring content anymore. I think repetition will be the next thing that MMOs have to have less of to keep their audiences, and that will be a huge problem for almost all the theme park style games. Players want more content, more often, with no drop in quality or they go elsewhere. They might return when the new content drops, but almost all the players I speak to are not willing to wait. They go elsewhere. And they should too.

WoW and Guilds

Well there is a doozy here to tell. Many of our raiders either left for greener pastures, were removed for being painful, or left for life reasons. That then caused another round of departures, as others had to ponder leaving too. Then some of those greener pastures were not as good as advertised, so those people began looking around again. Because I’m fed up with being treated like a revolving door, and fed up with the whinging, a few were told they were not welcome back. I think most people would support a player making the “right” call for themselves, and forgive a lot of how that was communicated or made. We’re all human. I think a Guild has to also make the “right” choices too, and that means sometimes enough is enough.

This was not a great time for our guild, but also not unexpected at this stage in the game. The downtime between expansions is always crappy for guilds, with only the strongest ones staying focused. Add in some continued drama, a few people who think they are special snowflakes, and you’re left with very little to do. There is no lever by which a player can be controlled (such as an employment contract for compensation) so “managing” difficult people is next to impossible for any prolonged period.

That leaves us with a guild of social players and no “serious progression” raids happening. Frankly I’m glad that some of the pains-in-the-arse players are gone. I’m sad that we lost great people too, and even more so that it might lead to others leaving. At this point though it is not something to fight, but something to accept. I want players to be having fun, and that is far more important than rubbish about which guild you belong to, or she-said-he-said malarkey. I am glad it is “over”. I’m glad that the people who are staying will not have to wonder why such stupidity is tolerated. It is not tolerated anymore.

I can now login without having to think about somebody getting shitty about some illusory problem. Finally, no dramas from World of Warcraft. Yeehaw! I do not even understand why in hell some people require the input that they do; it is like they are not adults at all.

I’m even happy that the people who left are getting what they like from their game time. It is good to think that people can go somewhere and be happy, and it is very possible (and even a certainty in one case) that a problem only existed because of the people involved. Dissolve the problem relationship permanently, and the fun comes back. More power to them. I hope they’re all killing digital monsters, and looting wonderful pixels.

I’m really not having a go, just talking through what happened. I’m sure the choices were not perfect, nobody makes perfect choices all the time.

Bygones are bygones. – TyphoonAndrew.

An aside – Wow characters can only belong to a single guild at a time, and therefore changing guilds is also inevitable. Why can’t WoW have more than one formal method to organise players. Cal them battle units, corps, whatever, but allow a way that players can stay in a guild they like, but also advance and be managed in another set of organisations. It might help players who have dual loyalties. We can cross-server raid all sorts of junk, but cannot organise characters in the same way in-game. I think that is a functional gap.

ESO Beta

This weekend I was given a ticket into Elder Scrolls Online Beta (thanks T!) and it looks like a reasonable game. As my friend told me “think of it as a good single player story, not as an MMO” and its a great game. There was an NDA which I briefly skimmed while downloading the game so rather than say anything questionable, I’ll just say that it is similar enough that I knew what to do, but was a little different. Graphically it will challenge some computers. This is not a game which will run well on a low spec machine.

Where is the value?

If I were to think about value for money when playing time sinks I not subscribe to Wow, Eve, ESO, or any other subscription game. I’d get back into Star Wars, or something like it. It’s free and has plenty of content I’ve not played. Or many of the other games out there that are free to play. I do like the idea of not having a wow subscription for a while to save up for something else. Perhaps it is time to pause my membership for a few months.

I’ve also got a 7 day trial of EvE sitting waiting, but I cannot bring myself to login just yet. It looks fantastic, and honestly I’d be playing more just to look at the pretty space pictures than actually want to do space battles. I don’t think that alone is worth a subscription cost. In fact a video of beautiful space scenes rolling in the background would almost be as appealing.

That’s not weird. Is it? Happy killing, TyphoonAndrew

Is being watched in an MMO by Spooks OK?

By now most gamers have head about the NSA watching games like WoW and SecondLife for dangerous individuals. If you’re also watching out for potential impacts from the NSA’s activities exposed recently, you’re probably now saturated with odd and scary stories.

A meandering thought or two is below.

Frankly the entire concept reads like fiction to me, and is scary enough that I’m seriously considering changing a huge amount of what tools I use and what I do online.

By way of really dreadful example – please consider these revelations about what is plausible for surveillance. It is an video explanation of the methods recently exposed. Actual hardware hacks, device exploits, and all other manner of “hacks and hijacks”.

Garrosh Hellscream still wins, kind of.

At the end of the Siege of Orgrimmar the heroes of the story will have defeated Garrosh, and stopped his plans to use Sha powers to rule Azeroth. That is the expected outcome of the patch content. There is also some question on who the new Warchief of the Horde will be. I won’t spoil that for you.

I will spoil part of the story, as it is a part which I dislike. You have been warned if you read on.

Thinking about the in-game store

It was going to happen. I don’t like at all what I’m reading. If you’re “pro” any side of these features then I’d warn you that I am not before you read on. I’m angry about this, and strong language follows.

FlexRaids in 5.4, and LFR is apparently killing wow?

I’m reading about the Flexible Raid feature which is likely for patch 5.4, and I really dislike where the community is already taking it.

Ultimately, my guess is that in the next expansion, as long as there are no technical difficulties with the Flex Raid system, is that it will replace LFR completely.  I sure hope it does.  LFR is a stone around WoW’s neck and needs to be killed as quickly as possible.  For this reason I welcome the Flex raid system with open arms, and hope that it succeeds.

WTF!

While LFR might be killing the game for some, you are the not the entire player base.

If not for LFR I could not see the raid content. I don’t have a huge social network of raiders with RealID to sync with, and therefore I need LFR for the game to be viable.

I would not have some of the gear I have which allows me to sub-in to help our guild’s regular raid team. I am a pitch hitter who helps fill gaps, and removing LFR only makes that a shitty experience to try and keep up with where our raid team is. Our Guild raids three nights a week and is about as social a group as I have ever played an online game with – because I know a bunch of them from real life and have played with others for years. Years and years in fact.

So this new system is designed for social…good. What I will then need to do is open up and connect with new folks to form irregular raid times to try and suit my irregular schedule? Nah, I’ll just keep doing LFR when I can.

I love that the Flexible Raid feature is being added, it is a great step that will benefit the game, but to say that this renders LFR obsolete is plainly wrong. It might be true that many players who begrudgingly play LFR now will only do Flexibel Raids, but I doubt that too.

Many players will try to do all three, and that is a bad thing. It means burnout and boredom are present faster. i.e. Weekly LFR, Flex, Normal on the same content? Nope, no time. Bah, move on.

Links: I Like Pancakes – Flexible Raid Preview. and MMO Champ’s article.

Piss off Perfect World, your sales spam sucks

Perfect World, the trickster parent company behind a few MMO games that I have looked into (most recently Neverwinter) are offering a 15% discount on a store purchase.

Geez thanks. I can spend money to play your essentially free game. In the case of Neverwinter I’ve barely moved beyond the starting beach and you’ve already got offers for my wallet. Sheesh.

Piss off Perfect World. I hate getting “offers” like this in email and I am slightly obsessive about avoiding this junk. My SWToR account email regularly gets special offers from those folks, despite the fact I have not logged on for other six months. Maybe you’re just trying to make a fair dollar, and it is certainly plausible to offer, but it stinks to me. My inbox is not a place I want borderline spam for games that are dead to me.

I intend Free-to-Play to be free.

Thundering LFR thoughts

I did a LFR for Throne of Thunder (or ToT as it is being called in the off-channels) and it was ahem interesting…I was unlucky enough to joining a run already in progress and on the final boss of that LFR session – Council. What I saw was expected and I’ll share a little.

For starters, the LFR mini-game has not changed and is still present, meaning:

• an idiot still trolled the raid by pulling with missing players/roles, and left before being kicked. I feel there should be a way to make that player’s life worse somehow because he wasted 10 minutes of 20-ish people’s time.
• an impatient player still yelled and whined about “just pull” and was a general pain through out the encounters. These people make me not want to read /raid channel.
• nobody “knew” the strat, despite the raid leader explaining it really clearly,
• many Dps did terrible jobs of staying alive and also actually doing damage. We sat around 80k dps for most attempts, did about 105k on the kill, but 5-7 players were doing less than 40k, and some less than 20k dps. Doing 20k dos with a 30% buff is unthinkable.
• gear level was low for some characters present, but honestly how they played was far more a factor.
• I battlerez’ed another character in each attempt, but I think the attitude is to wipe and reset rather than push in LFR.

Oh, but we have new enhancements to the system to help:

• the new 5% buff for each wipe is interesting. I joined the Council attempts at +15% so knew they’re already suffering. When we killed it we were at +30%. I was around 3rd on Dps for most of the fights, sometimes getting to 1st. The buff is not stopping people from leaving, and is not stopping situational awareness, or lazy players.
• the new buff system will help reasonable players carry bad ones, which is why I fully support it as a concept. The max value of 50% might not be enough if the player base cannot learn about staying out of sand-traps, but it is a help.
• We will have four of these raids by end of April to do each week. I do not have the time or inclination to repeat that repeat wipe experience 4x a week in addition to dailies and trying to get a raid spot. I find wiping like that totally frustrating. It is not progression when nobody stays to learn, or refuses to learn how to do the fight properly.
• Oh – and my Mogu coin and luck remain consistent with the previous tiers, meaning NOTHING DROPPED for me BUT A SCRUB DPS GOT A TWO HANDED WEAPON at item level 502. I wanted to throw my laptop at that point, or go out and buy a cat so I could kick it.

To be fair a single boss kill in not enough to say that the sky is falling, and in fact I like everything I’ve seen in Throne of Thunder. The trash, the bosses I’ve seen, and the physical construction is very good so far. I am pleased to say I will return there, and even keep trying to offload my lucky-mogu-coins for something other than gold.

Arrrg loot in LFR and the Useless Ordinary Legendary Gem

This post is brought to you by the word: Random.

I was going to whine about loot in LFR, as a run through Terrace and the first part of Heart of Fear saw nothing. But then I got lucky in the second part of Heart of Fear LFR, and got the Gloves token which I’ve now had drop 4x times. Arrrrg. No weapons, side grades, other drops for ages. Oh, working as intended? Random rewards are fun. /sarcastic

On an actual positive note I have now handed in and completed the first stage of Wrathion’s quest-line for the “Ordinary Legendary Gem“. Now the slow grind up to 6000 Valor points has started, and we’ll see how far behind the curve I am. I doubt patch 5.2 is 6-7 weeks away given the news and press flying around.

I love the fact that the Legendary quest line is a pain in the arse and bloody difficult for a casual player. Blizzard got this right. it should be driving those players crazy, and should not be something that we feel is deserved; earn it. I get a good quest line and the promise of more great stuff to come.

Not that the “Ordinary Legendary Gem” is actually useful as it requires a Sha Touched Weapon to be slotted into, which is also RANDOMLY DROPPED. So the Ordinary Legendary Gem” is actually a “Useless Ordinary Legendary Gem“. I’ve decided to treat the gem like getting the Left Binding in Molten Core. Now begins the stupidly long path of getting the other random thing to drop.

My Death Knight could really use a Sha Touched weapon for Tanking. Really, really, handy. Random and hard for LFR upgrades is poor, random and hard in a Legendary quest is perfect. Its like the two are the same now. Just saying.

Related articles

• LFR Sha of Fear – Tank’n for laughs (typhoonandrew.wordpress.com)
• Time for Tokens to die (typhoonandrew.wordpress.com)
• Elder Charms, LFR loot, and perception of the doubly random (wow.joystiq.com)

Time for Tokens to die

Years ago the wow community were rousing about the token system was ok, but fundamentally flawed. The mini-game we play after the boss dies is another treadmill-merry-go-round where gear drops which is useless. As a design principle wow’s reward for effort is based upon re-trying the kills each week until you get lucky. Today I’m bloody mad about this as its been far too long that we’ve been suffering this. Rant incoming.

In our guild forums I wrote this class tokens:

On the token (issue) I think we’re screwed for two reasons: we need to take what we can in terms of characters who are able to join and raid above their match on the token, and we can’t get people to switch characters just to suit the bloody token system each major content patch. It is a bullshit scenario to be in, but I can’t think of a solution that does not have the regular raiders re-rolling each patch.

The token system was an ok idea to allow a boss to drop loot which would not be fraught with drama, as only a few classes could use it. Less people = less drama right? Wrong.

We have in guild now is one character with a token to himself, and half the raid split on each of the other two. Ah shit, gear drama. And I don’t mean people being bitches about loot, I mean that we see Tokens getting cycled for gold/de as we’ve had too many of one type and miles from enough of others. The drama is that our progression is slowed due to shitty luck. A boss dies but the drop is totally pointless.

Also with 4-5 players on each 2 tokens it takes huge amounts of time to gear those 9 players. It is not just 9 kills job done, because we have alt sets, and subs who join from time to time to help with the roster, which makes the distribution ever worse.

Just bring more people to suit the tokens? The server populations are shrinking and this is a totally non-viable response.

Bring the player not the class? Nope. Bring a balance of classes for the tokens. Oh and the tokens change each major content patch. Arrrg.

Reroll? Good god, have you seen how unfriendly the alts are? Forget that as viable for everyone except those with huge amounts of time to play.

The outcome is our raid group just has to suck it up, and keep grinding.

Honestly I am so sick of the loot rewards or issues around loot getting in the way of actually having fun with my raid team in World of Warcraft.

Fark this, I’m soon going to play something else. If Blizzard need a reason why I’ve moved to month-on month payments now, and will shortly consider reading a book instead of logging in they can start with this. Fark it. Destroy it all.

(p.s. what about suggestions for alternatives? Nope, I’ve done that for years suggesting ways that progressive “coins” or currency could be acquired each kill. Do a search on Gear on the blog… they’ll be a few.)

Folks still roll Need on offset. FFS

Short one – doing a 5 man for the valor, and the Druid healer needs on a Strength dps Neck item. Riiiiiiight. Druids need strength for what exactly? He then needs another item which could be his offset. Both well before anyone else has even rolled. Deathlordxtx for the loss.

It was not surprising that his name was also an ArthasZ style fiasco. Can’t these people re-roll Rift already? Somebody tell them that Wow is dead please.

I’m sick of this shit, so I’m calling them out. You want an offset item and wish to roll Need, then use the chat function BUILT INTO THE GAME to see who else wants it.

Death advice, “Be more careful” or less lazy

Blue poster Taepsilum has given some advice to those who die frequently, to “be more careful” when your character dies in a weird place (post).

“The death of a character should be something important, the death penalty is there to make sure players don’t disregard it, in my opinion it’s actually already too easy and too fast to resurrect.

It’s because of the penalty and the lost time when doing a corpse run, that players will be more cautious about their character.

If you decide to resurrect at the spirit healer, it’s because either your character died in a very weird place (and you should be more careful), or you just don’t want to corpse run.

I think we should all be glad that there’s no experience loss as death penalty, that would probably be a bit too harsh, but I do think we need something to keep death from being meaningless.

We’re always open to good and new ideas of what that might be; as long as it’s not “removal of the death penalty”, feel free to chip in 😉“

In context it might be fine, as he is discussing overall approaches to death penalties in games. I disagree with his attitude expressed though. As a player I’ve seen many locations that were an absolute bastard to get back to when dead, and putting that down to the player rubs me a little the wrong way. Are we careless or lazy? Hard to answer without accepting that as a premise.

Are players better at avoiding death in Eve which has harsher penalties?

Probably. I would expect them to be more risk adverse, more careful in planning, more viscous when fighting, and more cunning in their structure of assets and activity.

What does that say about the feel of the games in terms of style and flavour of the experience?

I don’t think World of Warcraft should even be considering a more visceral death penalty given the rest of its flavour. Wiping on raid bosses, pvp battle, and trying to push game limits with solo’ing and Challenge modes is core in the game. That style says that dying will be part of your total experience, and penalising players for playing the game as designed is bloody silly.

The range of penalties might be a scale from permanent character death with total gear loss, through to not even running back to your body. The debate for WoW is really about how to match the style of the game to the penalty itself, so that the overall pace and experience is consistent. Total character death makes no sense in a game where death is not meant to be permanent or rare due to the mechanics of design.

The comment that we should be happy that there is no XP penalty is rubbish.

The lack of death XP penalty was one of the factors which I liked when I started playing Warcraft, and if XP penalties had been present in the game I might not have taken to it as much. Telling us to “be thankful that its not worse” is not the way to begin a discussion inviting new ideas, but a great way to make sure you get the feedback you’re willing to hear – your own opinions rehashed as already stated. Maybe he was having a bad day?

Interesting opinionated message, delivered oddly. Then again, perhaps its a shitty thing to rant about it on a blog too. Frequently bloggers say stuff that is harsh, crappy, or misinformed, and the Blues don’t call us out.

And I am actually pleased to see an opinionated response. I’d prefer more rants and blunt posts if that meant we’d also get more insight into the background thoughts. Yes, that contradicts my criticism of his comms style, and that is the point: we are used to a very polished and professional set of answers from Blues, so this is out of character. Had the character of their commentary been “from the hip” for a few years it would not have stood out at all.

Overall I’d like Blizzard to let Taepsilum off-the-leash more, as I think we’d get down to some really accurate and interesting perspectives on how the game could be, or might have been.

My 2c on the actual suggestion is: I think the loss of time to run back to your body is enough of a penalty. I don’t die very often in the open world, and each time it gives me the irrits. It is a waste of time that I don’t have. Yes I’m careful, very careful in fact so it happens rarely in open world. On raid bosses its all the time, as designed and expected.

Some ideas for other options apart from what we have now for death penalties:

• Flip the 10 minutes of sickness around a bit, so that it starts low and short; and ramps up in both impact to the character and duration the more times you die. A small penalty for the first for a few minutes, then keep stacking that buff. It means people cannot use character death to game via repeat deaths.
• If flying is not an option (for whatever reason) in the complex and difficult zones, then what about a huge jump? Change the gravity of a character so they are playing at 1/4th G.
• stay away from penalties that remove the effort that somebody has built. i.e. huge gold expenses, taking away gear, and all that other “hardcore mode” stuff just means that a silly mistake not only costs time, but also pushes you backwards in the game.
• what about allowing out of combat res from member of your own party? That means folks might hook up for dailies more, to get/avoid the harsh.

Happy killing, and dying. Scrub.

Related articles

• Ditching the Death Penalty (wow.joystiq.com)
• Why MMOs Need A Harsh Death Penalty (we fly spitfires)

Shieldwall VP rewards

The Shieldwall rewards are live, and are as follows (5.1 patch notes):

• 458 trinket for approx 100 gold as a starter reward,
• a 496 ring at Honored, costing 1250 VP,
• a 496 Belt, Boots, and Trinket at Revered, costing 1750 each,
• Exalted gets you a new flying mount.

The starter reward is likely to go to an offset, as most raiders have better in main at the very least. Despite the undertone of my last post, this gear is welcome, and will make the dailies for the other factions a secondary consideration.

Getting to Revered will be very rewarding for raiders as 496 gear is far better than MV gear, and good for HoF. The honored Ring also means that you should skip the other Valor rings now if you have not purchased them, by comparison this is better – because it can be upgraded with more VPs to 504 gear level.

There are five dailies to do each day, each granting +250 reputation, 5 VPs, and 2 Lesser Charms of Good Fortune.

You will need 6500 Valor points to buy all the gear for one spec, and will also need to have unlocked the various Reps. That is 1300 daily quests performed if this is done by dailies, so I hope everyone has a realistic impression of how long these will take to get, and also how important a 496 ilevel is compared to some raiders still using 476 gear. I think a raider who is missing key items such as Boots, Belt, Rings, or a Trinket should be doing these dailies before they raid – the upgrade is guaranteed and a powerful change.

Or 13,000 VPs if you wish to have gear for both specs which might be used in raiding.

Yet the VP rewards for activities are apparently as desired and working as intended? Bullshit. Only working as intended by people who don’t play the game. I’m nudging closer to giving this Valor treadmill away for good.

ps. Wasn’t operation shieldwall something in Mass Effect, or by Bioware? Have we run out of names for armies fighting?

pps. If the end boss of the Tier is the Sha of Fear, does that mean this is the War on Fear? How did the war on Terror go?

wow p5.1 Valor Grinding Update by Ask Mr. Robot

You PvE folks don’t need more gear drops, just update the gear you have with Valor and Justice! Yay. Grinding instances and daily quests is not mandatory.

Mr Robot has an excellent summary with examples of how and how gear will soon be able to be upgrades with grind-able points. In Patch 5.1 for WoW you’ll get a +8 item level boost on any gear, costing 1500 points. That is pretty neat for a raider who is missing a key upgrade due to poor luck. It offers an alternative which was not available.

I have a niggling feeling though that it will make capping Valor/Justice each week so much more important. It was already very desirable, but now it feels even closer to a mandatory requirement.

Q. Where do you get the points?

A. Same places – boss kills, instances, and doing daily quests. Grinding instances and daily quests is not mandatory.

Q. Do we get more, or are the scales adjusted?

A. Nope, all is good in the ratios so I’m told. 25 points per boss kill is apparently what is needed.

Raiding and LFR offer between 40-50% max of the Valor, assuming that you are doing full clears. Not many guilds are doing full clears – so many raiders are not even close to max before they start doing Instances and daily quests.

Grinding instances and daily quests is not mandatory.

Q. Should I do progression, with wipes, long effort, etc or do Valor farming?

A. Both. You need to play more, or play more efficiently, or whatever – this is all about being given expanded options. Grinding instances and daily quests is not mandatory.

Q. How could the reward improve or valor system improve?

A. How about:

• Increase the reward from the instances from 80 VP first and 40 every run afterward to 100 and 60 each extra run. Make it so more people run instances to get their Valor – it can’t hurt. It still makes it a hard slog to cap. Increasing the JP reward is a good idea too.
• Reward both Valor and Justice from Scenarios, unless they are intended to be done once and then forgotten.
• Reward more from boss kills in PvE, from 25 to 40-45. This means that it is still very unlikely that a character will cap valor just from PvE clearing.
• Reward daily quest reward from 5 VP to 10 or 15 VP. This is for fools like me who are earning valor through daily quests a lot and are really bored with it.
• The bonus for valor capping a character changes so that instead of one character getting to 1000 valor and the buff kicking in, the 1000 can be gained on any set of characters, then all get more. This means more people are using alts – which would be their choice.

Remember: Grinding instances and daily quests is not mandatory. Are you happy citizen?

Refs:

•  World of Warcraft Patch 5.1 – Valor Upgrades | Ask Mr. Robot’s Blog.
• Wow Forum post discussing the grind of Valor being too long

How to ruin your Guild’s reputation

[Language Warning, this is a rant on a specific set of players. And it makes me mad]

A guildie was recently targeted by a few unsavory players on the Nagrand-US server. I’m calling attention to it because this type of whisper based harrassment is totally beyond reason, and should be outside what anyone experiences on a daily basis.

My 2c is that these players are immature asshats.

Oxygen Thieves is another term I like for those individuals who get a kick out of being rude and vile while being protected by the anonymity of the internet. I’d dare the same juvenile cretins to speak to that guildie in that manner in real life. She’s near kill them, and frankly they wouldn’t dare. I’d also love to meet them in real life as well, and I get a kick out of the idea that someday one of these foul mouthed belligerent little recalcitrants might be interviewing with my company, and I can tell them to go home. Just stop the interview, and send them on their way.

Why is it blog worthy when it happens all the time in game?

I think Blizzard will do sweet fuck all about the harassment, and this is exactly the type of players I wish were doing something else. So instead I’m calling out the behaviour here as garbage. WoW should not tolerate this, and the players should get at least a few days ban, if not a month. If somebody can be sacked for writing the wrong thing into a message forum, then they certainly should be banned for harassing other players. That behaviour is illegal in Australia.

Now I know that these guys are essentially trolling this guild member, and a bit of attention from the internet is exactly the type of drama they might love. They got a rise from a player – well done, you’re special.

It is not hard to be offensive on the internet, and certainly does not differentiate the speaker from almost every other anonymous and rude internet screen-name. Nothing special about the behaviour and I suspect nothing essentially special about the people either.

I could say far worse things about these people and use language which was totally disgraceful, but instead I choose to smile and consider the karmic payback. I am sure that if their real life dealings are executed with the same disregard for civil interaction then they will be serving hamburgers to their peers for a very long time.

Funny thing too – a regular wow activity in game is grinding rep. Essentially getting factions to like you. Now given it is a means to an end, and that is a corner stone of the game – I think its odd that players would choose to ruin their reps, and the reps of their friends through their action but spend so much time pretending to be heroes. Pretending to be powerful and respected characters.

Perhaps they’d like to go play in the traffic. I wouldn’t swerve to hit them, but I’d watch.

Angry about outdated loot rules

Angry. More Hallows Eve runs than I can shake a stick at, and I have more to do. I want that bloody rare helm. I want a Strength Ring. And I want to defenestrate the greedy bastards in Warcraft.

It is hardly 2005 when the behaviour of the community might have not been totally predictable.

Change the bloody rolls in Randoms, so that they mean what (I think) they should mean:

• Main Role: valid for the role you joined in.
• Alt Role: valid if you can use it.
• Transmog: because you like pretty things.
• Gold: because you are going to vendor it anyway, just give the character the cash.
• Disenchant: because you’d like the mats.

Main gets priority, then Alt Role, then the other three are all at the same level. The use of the word Role will be a direct lever for teaching the idiots that they should not try to queue as one role and roll for loot for others.

OK, I understand that it might be too much to have 5 options in some runs, and that might confuse some of the soft brained screen-lickers, but to hell with them. Then take out transmog, that’s a shitty reason to roll against somebody and Alt would do in a push. It will likely only be 3-4 options, and if the game designers cannot find a way to impart that design graphically to communicate the level of consideration then they should not be designing interfaces for a living.

I submit, I submit. No more. I’ll do as you do. Need it is.

I’m very sick of players rolling need on gear in randoms when they should not. It happens all the time in random runs, but especially on the last boss’s loot. A player rolls need then quits group. Too long we’ve seen suggested options to rank up a /roll by a huge number based upon spec, to curb the greedy selfish players.

I’m sick of missing on loot due to rolling “properly”. The game does not enforce a system that makes sense to the roles we use to enter a random, so I feel like a man trying to hold back the tide.

You win you greedy bastards. I submit. I’ll do as you do and roll Need on everything from now on. Why should I be the only player following some sense of decorum and sanity?

Need it is. Always.

To hell with you all.

What do I know about other classes and specs?

With the change in classes in the patch today we have all sorts of new stuff to learn. As a PSA I offer the following advice on the spec and classes. A sly review of the classes might be (ahem) useful.

DKst – Essentially there are two types, those you need to listen to because they are Tanking and they help the Mages and Hunters decide who dies first; and the rest. The first are called Blood spec, the second are called whatever you like. When I play my non-tank DK he names used are: “stop tunneling”, “move”, and “deathgrip it you tard!”. Most Dks do not know what DK stands for, but would guess Death correctly because its a leet word. Probably means Death Killerz.

Druids – Too many types, and way too many on the server. Lets face it – everyone has a Druid, and generally only the good ones get taken to raid; that is ex-trees and bears. Cats are misguided Rogues, and Boomkins are Mages who ate too many fish feasts. Get at least one in your raid and make them change spec every 3-4 trash pulls, they love that. Why else play a hybrid?

Hunters – There is only one type, and thankfully they will have no excuse to roll for non-missile weapons after patch 5.0. Handy at times for traps, and hated for the same reason. They perform their best at range, and I find the best range is about 10 miles from the raid team. A quick review of the armory indicates that Int and mana are still issues for some Hunters, so take one to a raid at your own risk.

Mages – Apparently the hardest class in wow to play well in Warcraft. I asked them. There are three types and many sub-types, but all you need to remember is that they can supply a buff and food, although both are rare. Arguments about specs is what keeps the Mage community flowing, and if you want to distract one then either get the Hunter to MD the boss to them before the pull and blame them, or tell them that an alt spec is superior and they need to re-work their toon. Typically awesome dps, and the class colour (blue for the cheap seats) looks wonderful in screenshots which is really all we need to know.

Monks – sorry what? I killed heaps of these things in SM over the years, and yet they keep persisting. As a class they will be uber powerful at everything they try, and will become the new DKs for MoP. This means they will stay awesome through they first two tiers of raiding until we’re meant to get serious about it, then they’ll be nurfed harder than Paladins on patch day and all the Monks will consider rolling back to their paladins. As they are new just assume that every monk can do all things, and yell when they can’t read your mind…you know, like Druids.

Paladins – Almost the definitive hybrid class, as they wear plate so they are less girly than other hybrid classes, but still somehow wear dresses. And no, it’s a dress not a kilt. They are made up of confused Priests which heal, confused Warriors who tank, and confused DKs who stand behind the boss and whine about moving out of the bad. Take one of the first two types to your raid. With the update to buffs we’ll likely see some really cool transmog sets and “roleplaying” in the Deeprun Tram, but very little real Paladins in raids.

Priests – the best healing class in the game with Holy, and the best animation in Shadowform. Shadow pets, shadow powers, shadow spells; see a pattern? A Shadow Priest is just emo enough to compete well with a Warlock, but not enough to re-roll DK. Way too squishy, so smack them first if you have to kill one in a team. Their most irritating feature is that their class colour is white, which makes pasting class notes from websites a two step process (one more step than they deserve). I’m sure there is a petition out there somewhere to make the class colour charcoal, so the SPr will be happy. Oh and I didn’t mention Disc spec as if you do they don’t shut the hell up. Sheesh. Put them on mute.

Rogues – Until the release of the legendary item in late Cataclysm the Rogues had gone on strike and refused to attend raids, generally being replaced by Death Knights and confused Shamans in melee. Maybe they were stealthed? If you like being sneaky and standing behind people then you will like the Rogue class and are also probably a creepy little sod. Who likes that? Makes my skin crawl. They are known for very effective stuns in pvp and for bringing nothing to the raid; ever.

Shaman – Totems are still awesome, and very confusing to non-shamans. Just assume that whatever buff, effect, or spell you need can be supplied by a Shaman and tap them on the head until you get it. Take one along, at worst they have a self res so you can wipe faster the next time. Spec wise they have more choices that is fair given they were a novelty idea in the original beta which was taken too seriously by some horde and would not shut up. Sometimes confused for Mages in screenshots and damage meters; if you see a blue bar that is doing less dps its a Shaman.

Warlocks – Incredible lore and bloody incredible emo whiners. Now I wouldn’t mean to offend, but Warlocks are just so easy to pick on that it is a shame not to. Ask a Warlock what happened post TBC to the class then walk away from the phone. In MoP they have been tweaked and buffed, primarily by updating some animations and spell effects. Very important stuff. Also voted most likely to re-roll Mage when they realise that Warlock rotations are god-awful complex, and Mages have a UI with two buttons. Oh, and they get the succubus pet which has two roles: dps and fap-fap-fap.

Warriors – A Warrior Tank is a god amongst insects in the tanking community. First and last the Warrior will stand with you through every wipe and res, until finally they crack the absolute shits and tell everyone how to play. Often they are right too, as they’ve watched the mistakes so often. A tank’s role is to stand still or walk slowly backward, and the dps try to spin in circles and roll Need on every two handed weapon in the game. They are a simple class for a simpler time, before DKs, Monks, and all the other pixel based distractions which is not old school raids. A Warrior will always be able to complete the sentence, “back in my day…”.

So yes, essentially I am unburdened by too much class knowledge. Enjoy the patch today.

A guilded alternative

Being social in an online game is valuable for increasing players and keeping them. My gut says that the more my friends play a game, then the more I will too. As I form friends it is good to provide a manner by which to sort and link them. We’ve seen the introduction of BattleTags to Blizzard games as an example of a development company linking their products internally, and an explosion/exploitation of Facebook and mobile games as examples of connecting different games though an information conduit. In a round about way we are seeing that the linkage between players is very important, and something that is valued by a developer as it is popular with the user base.

Right. So if you accept the spirit of that statement then you may also accept that a game dev should seek ways to enhance and innovate ways to be Social (see rant at end) as part of the game experience. Basically if one form of social linking is good, then a few more are better. In fact many many more might also be bloody brilliant, as long as they are optional and do not get in the way of the actual basic game experience the player was interested in.

Righto then. In that case can I suggest more than three ways to organise the player structures and relationships in World of Warcraft? Guilds, Pvp Teams, and Friends/Enemy lists are good, but not enough. The functions exposed under the Guild Structure are excellent, and the same features could be re-used with benefits.

But what could we have?

Companies / Platoons – an additional formal group established without a dependency on an existing Guild structure. For large guilds (like AIE) this might remove the need to have players switch sub-guild for raids too. It also creates the opportunity for guild alliances to be established and formalised.

• Ownership is fixed to a character, akin to Guilds.
• A member must be invited and accept.
• Structure, officers, and ranks as per guilds.
• Linkage can be across traditional server boundaries, to support random pvp battlegrounds, raid finders, roleplaying groups, etc.
• Control and Calendar functions, etc as per Guilds.
• Probably does not need banks, but an interesting consideration.
• A player can below to as many as they wish, but perhaps a max of five per toon is reasonable to begin with.
• Let the character show the Platoon name instead of Guild name?

Raid Teams / Kill Teams – within the existing guild system add a new informal sub-list to be used to create and manage raid teams. The use is pretty self explanatory, except to say that a guild should be able to have a large amount of these.

Collectives – a Guild like link across games, to establish linkage between BattleTag participants beyond basic friend list functions.

• Extend the typical Guild event functions and calendar, and show Collective events within the sub-games.
• Formal accept/reject membership, etc.

Happy teaming, TyphoonAndrew

Update: Something I thought about after writing this was a goal of keeping the concept of guild advantages and levels away from these additional structures. This is so they form the flexible and changable aspect of the game. Your “social” interaction structures should be able to switch according to need, rather than feeling like if you switch you will miss some side-benefit mechanically in the game. Just a thought.

<rant>I’m told by the media pundits that “social” is all the rage, and everything is moving toward/in/becoming more social. It’s a pet peeve of mine that all this stuff has been around for a very long time before the term was coined, and being social is about as new as being nice to people – the delivery has changed, not the attitude or goals.

Does it mean that before we discovered Social Media we were being Antisocial?

Social…balderdash I say. Release the hounds!</rant>

MoP Cinematic

I really liked it. Excellent quality animation, decent sound. Nice and fast combat, heavy use of mists and environments, and a few ultra-powerful combat moves which you’d expect characters to have. The panoramic views of the island were good too. Overall very well executed.

Druid stag dance reviled

When somebody asks why content seems missing in Mists, or a quest is a little rough, which I know somebody will as the community is a ravishing beast with an endless appetite; the Pokemon game and silly farmville phase will pale into insignificance compared with giving the Druid Stag Travel form it’s own dance. Seriously.

But hey – congrats Druids, you get an additional small feature.

Related articles

• Druid stag dance revealed! (wow.joystiq.com)