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

Who should pay for Guild Vent and Website?

I’m angry about a guild issue, and venting on this blog seems appropriate. Normally I don’t publish guild stuff because it keeps the morale higher and most people don’t need to know. However this scenario is guild wide and I suspect something that other guilds face frequently too.

Basically who should pay for a Guild’s out-of-game services?

e.g. Ventrillo, or whatever voice chat, or the website, or hosting, or whatever.

For our guild the cost of these services has been paid for primarily by the guild officers, with a few donations from some players along the way. I took up the Vent costs a while back from another Officer who had been paying them for years. Another officer has paid for almost all our other web hosting services for many years. Recently I decided that paying for a service that I almost never used was pointless, so I asked for donations and/or other solutions.

I think there has been three donations since then. Not even close to enough to cover any one service, let alone Web and Vent.

A few players stepped up to discuss it, and a few made donations. I really appreciate the time, effort and donations of those people.

The other 12-15+ people in the guild who raid 3x nights a week and use Vent all the time have given nothing. They turn up, raid, and go.

The vent server will stop working any day now because I’ve stopped the account. We are discussing options, but without donations the costs just pass to another of the officers who is being too generous with his money. The silent majority of our raiders who use the service have not helped at all.

I’m angry that others have not donated.

I’m disappointed that other raiders don’t care enough to help.

It would take about a cup of coffee a month from each raider to pay for all our services easily. In fact we’d probably have huge amounts of cash left over. It could be one coffee every three months from each of them and we’d still be fine.

e.g. 20 raiders x $3.50 per quarter =  $280. Even if I exclude the few folk who have already donated or already paid up regularly we could still have just less than $200 to pay for this stuff.

So I have to ask – who should pay? I guess I expect raiders to contribute, but most do not.

Is that view unreasonable?

It is reasonable to be in a guild and never contribute to any of the out-of-game costs?

Should the officers or GM alone pay for all the extra services?

My advice to others is to think about what you are using, who is paying, and what you get out of it.I’m done paying for others to raid on my dime.

Kill everything and loot the corpses, TyphoonAndrew.

 

Quick Impressions on Warlords of Draenor

Quick little re-post of my thoughts when asked on the Guild’s forums. Overall there is a lot of material in WoW Warlords of Draenor which could be wonderful (WoD is about as great as MoP for an expansion abbreviation).

Likes:

• I’m pleased with the item stat squish, and the associated HP value changes, etc.
• separate raid lockouts
• added flex style to normal mode
• stat / gear use simplification. Pally Plate’s often DE needs to stop, this addresses that issue.
• reduced gear-sets. The gear model means that one item may serve multiple roles. Brilliant. The negative on this system is not as large as the negatives we already have in game with the current system.
• removal of reforge, etc. It was a way to “fix” shitty complex itemisation, or the wrong stats on gear. It was also a gold sink. I won’t miss it at all. i.e. I think I reforged manually about three times in the expansion, otherwise I used a mod. If I am seeking to automate a function then why bloody have it. Just fix the itemisation.
• free level 90 toon. Cool, more powerful bank alts.

Too soon to tell:

• How much sense does Garrosh escaping into the time machine really make?
• Garrisons might be cool, or might be the “farm” of MoP. Great at first, a grind, and then pointless.
• 20 man Epic mode. Might cause issues. Might be the same problem we have now but a different number as the target. Moot.
• character models. Increased polygon complexity is fine and good, hopefully we see more. What about a thin human male model which has actual fingers?
• followers akin to Star Wars. Good system.
• craft from your bank mats. Great.

Not fussed:

• +10 levels vs 5
• Orc vs ?? Lore. Frankly the lore is never going to be cohesive and congruent to what came before.
• no flying. It was ok when we could, it was ok when we couldn’t.
• time travel stories

Dislike:

• the renaming of the raid types is confusing at the moment because of the re-use of the same words. It’ll be fine later.
• why scrap “the blood” corruption of the orcs totally? It was a cool lore.
• the trailer was meh, but I’m thinking we’ll get a better one when the launch the actual expansion.

I want:

• more/better Archy information, & Profession changes to suit actual raid benefits

Related articles

• Warlords of Draenor – World of Warcraft (psyckostinamuffin.wordpress.com)
• Blizzard announces World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor (wired.co.uk)

A few more thoughts on WoW p5.4

Now that I’ve seen more and read more about how people are using the new content and features in patch 5.4 for WoW; I’m impressed.

The standout items are the raid encounters and the proving grounds. Both I’ve not really stepped into much of either yet but both have created such an effective response from the players that they seem to be the aspects that will be remembered the most. The new raid benefits from the way the lore of the Destruction of the Vale cannot be ignored in the game. A straight up clever and direct call to players.

Those who must be left behind, on purpose.

A long time ago in my guild there was a player who needed to be removed. The story around why was typical in an online game, an ego was out of check and was disruptive to many of the other guild members.

He wasn’t special, wasn’t an officer, and was certainly one of the rudest people I’d had the displeasure of talking to closely. What made is worrisome was how many months later the same person was still out in /Tradechat bad mouthing the guild, the characters involved, and still sending rude whispers. A truly enlightened bastard who appeared to get his enjoyment from the game by bothering others.

Recently in the guild we also had to tell a few people tone it back. They did, and everything seems to be ticking along without issues now. When the Officers and I were talking through the situation with the recent guys the enlightened bastard’s character name came up as a point of reference. The recent guys were not even close to the E.B in the long past, but EB is still out there playing.

It got me thinking… about not wanting to ever see the EB again. Not under any circumstances.

Now my ignore list solves that problem for me, but I also have a responsibility to my guild. I think MMO games like World of Warcraft could do with a Guild based parma-ban feature.

When set the PLAYER’s account is stopped from being a member of that guild. This stops somebody from alt switching, it makes removing somebody who is really vitriolic easy, and means the other guild members who might have invite ability will not and cannot be pressured into letting the person rejoin.

Block them permanently. Anyway, just a thought.

TyphoonAndrew

Related articles

• Officers’ Quarters: When to give up (wow.joystiq.com)

A good time to return

If the banter around flex raids is true, then patch 5.4 will be a good time for players to return to WoW, particularly if they are members of a guild like ours.

I know, that sounds like a recruitment post. It’s not especially one, but more players and characters are welcome.

What I mean is our guild is one which has a very dedicated raid team who sometimes used to have trouble with numbers. We now also have slightly more darn good raiders than we can fit in an ideal x10 man composition, and an additional growing number of more casual members who love to raid but also play wow in a less serious way. Or they might play hard, but less often.

For us (and potentially a large number of other guilds) Flex-Raids that means we are in an ideal spot. Whichever way we go in terms of using the flex systems, it can only be to our advantage. That said we (the officers) haven’t chatted through the implications as yet, but I fairly confident that we’ll get to a good place with a minimum of fuss.

Now all I need is to get through the 11x remaining kills of Lei-Shen for the uber-rare widgets of awesome, so I can catch up on the legendary quest chain. Fun times ahead watching folks stand in the bad.

Insidious Guild – Ultimate Challenge (screenshot)

A little while ago the Insidious Guild on Nagrand got THE ULTIMATE CHALLENGE (yes, has to be written in caps, its the ultimate). That means 250 Guild Challenges. Sheesh the boy and girls in Insidious are a busy bunch of achievement junkies players.

A bloody good night Tanking

Our Wednesday raiders typically smash Mogu’shan Vaults in a reliable and solid way. Much of the gear now goes to offsets or to DE and frustratingly a few of the team still await those few gear drops that will snugly fit them out. Last night I joined them for the MV clear, but due to the silly season we were a few characters/roles short. That meant some characters needed to switch roles around, which adds risk and can frustrate.

To facilitate the first 3x boss kills before one of our regular tanks could join us – I became the off-Tank for the first three fights. I was bloody nervous being Blood spec. Now that I can look back some cool things happened:

(a) It was challenging and fun. Fun because I saw these fights in a totally new light, and didn’t feel that I made more than a few silly mistakes which cost us. I love seeing new content, and changing roles really does change the fights significantly.

I loved the Petrify mechanic in the Three Puppies Fight and think it is a very clever idea. I hate it as a Melee dps as the mobs move around, but I love it as a Tank as the fight becomes about correct taunting, positioning the bosses, awareness of bad on the floor, and control of cool-downs. It is better as Tank than melee dps.

Trash in MV is “be aware” and “use common sense” rather than disastrously punishing and that makes sense. Yes, some hit hard/often (especially if you’re missing significant amounts of requisite Tank stats because you’re using high level Dps gear) but use of cool-downs and not being an ass made this viable.

I didn’t understand the tricky-button-thing for Feng and likely didn’t use it properly ever. It smells like a gimmick to me, or rather a good idea executed using a gimmick button, anyway I need to see and do that fight more to learn what/how.

The poncy dress wearing Troll Shaman Boss was cool, switching based upon being pulled into the Spirit realm means we have a reason to be there – and the task of smashing the special Tank mob is plain enough to be straight forward. Much more than that it seemed I was just hitting and swinging. I’m OK with that.

(b) While actually Tanking nothing really awesome dropped, but some Tank gear did drop when I was back in Dps mode, which I snaffled for my Tank set (a great 489 Ring, and a dps Helm I can re-purpose for Tanking). Offspec gearing looks to be a higher need if I Tank again, so I’ll amp up the priority.

(c) I’d like to see the later 3 bosses in Tank mode too. Elegon’s taunt-switch sounds like something I think I’ve done before and having the positioning and stacking buffs keeps us honest.

I have no idea how to execute the Emperor’s New Dance mechanic for the Will of the Emperor fight, but will be willing to learn (link)

ps. We did have a few funny screw-ups along the way, but I have not yet made character assassination demands from the Priest involved yet; just waiting while I ponder how much gold those screenshots are worth to stay hidden. Your secret is safe Sir, for now.

Happy Killing

Garalon 10 Man Normal Guild Kill

I had the pleasure of smashing Garalon last night in Heart of Fear, playing 10 man Normal mode with the guild. Here is the kill screenie I took with the other Insidious folks.

The wonderful thing about last night was the fact that we stayed at it, and it was one of the classic kills.

We all survived to kill him, and then all died just after the boss (he enraged, but we killed him in 7:05m), we kept at it beyond the official end time of the raid (which caused much aggro and enraging offline), and many folks were tempted to change strat after each attempt (which evoked in me the “shut up and pull” twitch).

Our top DPS did 105k dps (this particular Warrior is a dps bamix, just insert squishies), with the next three characters doing 90k or higher as well; with all dps having 97-98% up time on the boss. For a fight where you switch targets that is pretty healthy!

On a DK note – my self healing abilities did about 2% healing (or approx 1,526,635 health) which shows just how important self healing abilities are in that fight. On the early attempts I was not self healing as much, as it is a Dps loss to use some of the more efficient heals, but in combination with damage resistance cool-downs (Icebound Fort, you’re a wonderful toy) I think the extra effort really helps keep everyone alive. The less healing I need the more healing that somebody else takes.

The counter to that was the 7.1 million Health healing that I needed over the fight, which was about average across the team (massive crush in the logs fusks the ratios, so has to be ignored)

For Raid Progression it makes us MV 6/6, and 3/6 in HoF – and 20th on the server (although 18th if you go 10 man strict – how ever the bloody hell logic). Apparently the next boss is far easier, or so the raid lead promises.

When he’s not dead due to how awesome our raiders are the big fat bug looks like something out of a sci-fi film.

Happy Killing

Ps. The comment about changing stats wasn’t a snarky shot at anyone in the team, it’s my own OCD.

Head Down Bump Up

I’m DHBU at the moment covering for one of my PMs who is on two weeks leave, and my wife started working again this week, and all sorts of real life junk…which gets in the way of a good gaming session.

In Warcraft the absolute highlight of the month so far was last night getting a new sword upgrade (finally) from Elegon, which replaced my crappy item level 463 weapon – Starshatter. It’s a great looking toy. It might get transmogged to an older style Death Knight weapon soon, as they look even better.

Screenshots and happy rants will follow soon, for now though – I’m a happy lad.

I cannot help but love an almost 1200 raw dps upgrade, plus the additional stats.

Happy Killing.

Quicktip – Use wowprogress to look for guild hoppers

WoW Progress tells you a lot about a player, when it can get reasonable data. It will show you how many guilds they have been in, which might give an indication of their character.

When you have players come and go through guilds which affects the balance, spotting those players who are always entering and leaving on whims is handy so that they never enter in the first place. Apart from checking The Armory and other tools to check their character’s current setup, the character history can help.

Where do you stand within the Gearing community?

Today I ponder my item level. Non-gear junkies might look away?

There is a way (well many ways from different websites and many methods) to know how you are gearing for PvE by comparison to others, in guild, on server, and in general. Fundamentally this is a score based from the item level of the gear your character is wearing. I like using Wow-Heroes ranks to check gear and enchantments. It is a bit less math-y than some tools, and covers good recommendations to improvements.

Aside – ranking of position, and gear scores are essentially epeen malarkey, and only worth something to the owner, or if used “properly”. Wrath’s short romance and break-up with GearScore was a very interesting time in WoW, and one that could be a set of blog-posts unto themselves. As a tool for drawing quasi-intelligent conclusions the websites like wow heroes give us that opportunity. It considers

• real value of all items (not just their item level)
• all gems (their value and quality)
• all enchants (their value and quality)
• also gives a small penalty for using a resilience (PvP) items according to benefits from the useful stats from that item

What that tells me is that the GS is a useful measure of how advanced a character’s gear is, giving a plausible ceiling value and range for the character’s performance. The game also uses something similar when considering if a character is ready for Heroic dungeons and raids, although the algorithm in game appears to be less fussy and far more forgiving of offspec gear and bad choices.

Use any of the sites you like, understanding none are better than the other in the long run, unless you’ve a particular need.

So: I know that Mortigen’s dps gear is scored as 6663 from Wow Heroes, which ranks around 6-7ish in guild, and ~264th on the Nagrand server. That is also approx 10th on the server for Dps Death Knights.

While I’m proud I’m also a bit surprised and put off.

I play 3 nights a week and should be far lower in the rankings. It seems that something is not 100% in the ranks as presented. Perhaps this is the players who are ranked because it is what the servers can find on the players, or those players have had their data refreshed recently, and others have not. I imagine that all the high geared players would be ranked to a close approximate as they’d care and want to know, but then that itself is a huge assumption.

Then I checked Wow Progress (another tool, focused more on what the charterer has done, as well as what gear) and saw more humbling figures. They have my Death Knight’s Gear-Score (not the same math rules for the numbers) as 10550, which sits as 1024th on the realm and 83rd for Death Knights. That sounded more in line with what I expected.

But then I updated the Wow Progress tool, fetching the latest data. It altered to 10618, making Realm overall 712, and DK 49th. Fark, for a casual scrub that’s ok. It’s not even close to mid 200s on the server, but then that always sounded like a bunked number.

Finally for the sake of being particular I checked what Mr Robot had, and my very old score was 80602 from around 18 October (again the ranking on each site mean totally different things, they do not correlate). Then when updated today it rose to 84569.

I see also that almost all the higher geared DKs are using Frost, which matches what I’ve seen around and means I’ll likely switch soon to test it out too. The actual position is variable because of things like the rating given to different enchants or gear; and what gear a character is logged out wearing. eg. Sometimes I log-out in my Tanking set and fall down 25+ positions as it is poorly setup and not configured correctly.

Overall – odd. Something is not quite right…

My first guild raid and a boss kill

Sunday I joined the Insidious regulars for a set of attempts on the Four Kings encounter (aka Spirit Kings) in Mogu’shan vaults, and we killed him. Yup, that’s me in the middle of the screen doing a Guild first boss kill.

Now to be humble, I have no idea of actually how I performed other than to say I stayed alive and didn’t wipe us, and the World of Logs might show me running in fire for all I can tell – but the four stinky old spirits were vanquished successfully.

I am darn excited to have done it.

In the nick of time

The raiders in Insidious were fighting bosses down to the wire before MoP and a space appeared so I nabbed it. It meant that I got to see the Heroic Ragnaros kill and Heroic Deathwing kills while the content was current – just in the nick of time.

I thought some pictures might be good too. Thank you to Insidious.

In a friendly guild, who should get the Legendary?

Update: Apparently the tokens/widgets for the legendary quest will drop randomly and all members of the raid will get them (heard it from a guildie who is a voracious reader). This makes the drama and selection totally moot. Legendary for all. Mains, Alts, everyone gets a shiny orange item.

The Legendary item in Mists will be something that every class can get, and every player will want it on at least one character. It appears that the quest / story line will be at least worthy of significant effort, and that guilds will need to prioritize which characters are up for the rare drops first.

Once again a choice must be made. The degree of severity and scale of that choice unknown at the moment, and I’m assuming that the drops will be rare enough that selection to receive them will be something worth considering, much like the random Fragments in Ulduar. I doubt the tokens will be as rare as the Eye from Rag or the Bindings from Molten Core. If so we have a really rare adventure ahead. Instead I suspect that these will drop with a low-ish percentage, so that guilds will get enough of them to progress as they kill through a raid.

The following has a very large amount of my personal opinion and bias build in. After writing it I came around to one question which is perhaps the best question to ask:

If it cannot be yourself, who else would you wish it to go to first?

Tears over Tier Tokens

Death Knights waiting for a token not shared with bloody Mages or Druids.

Because of a Guild Officer’s meeting I was pondering the loot tables, gear distribution systems, and the associated mods that raiders use. Of course the loot reward system was discussed, and we once again chatted about all sorts of options. Silly ones, great ones, in an ideal world, and also very much in the world we have to play in. That might make it sound like I didn’t want to chatter about it; not so. In fact we’re pondering all sorts of useful stuff for the teams, and considering carefully what the game will feel like in WoW version 5.1+. The question that came to my mind outside of those discussion was:

What if the tier tokens were made universal for all classes?

I suggest removing them, and making them just “shoulder token” or “helm token” with no class restriction. And here is why:

• Essentially most raiding guilds have loot policies and systems to handle gear distribution. Therefore the token is adding a layer of restriction which is actually inhibiting the guild’s progression, because it limits options.
• Some groups have actually implemented separate bid lists or systems specifically fro tier gear, due to the importance it has on the character and raid. Well no change there one way or the other, only that the skew of classes in your raid group will be affected by the random token that drops. i.e. Good luck being a geared Shaman if you rarely see that token drop.
• Random LFR runs now have no loot need/greed anymore. You either get look or you do not. The token is moot now in LFR.
• The tokens have the positive change of allowing a character rewarded with one a choice on what particular item they choose from the vendor. This is a huge positive as it means that classes can pick the best gear. Druids for example can pick any of their types of gear fro one token. No change as either an advantage or disadvantage here.
• The tokens helped when you didn’t want to compete against everyone in the raid for loot, which gave an illusory feeling of hope. But once again that is a mechanic which raiders can handle. It still comes down to which Token dropped, and then who you roll against. So essentially is a two step random process (which token, then roll against other classes) better than a one step random process (what was your loot roll)?
• The tokens at times were useless due to not having enough of a class range, or they could not benefit the raid the most. Huge problem, just ask anyone doing Wintergrasp, et al.
• The only situation where these have some limited value as implemented now is for pug runs which are not in the LFR system, and that is only because they keep the illusion of two random events alive. That is a thin line.

So there it is. I can’t see a reason to keep them anymore.

Related articles

• Need Before Greed Looting Protocal (evalandor.wordpress.com)
• LFR Loot System (typhoonandrew.wordpress.com)
• LFR Post Patch (bubblesofmischief.com)

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>

Paid mobile services go free

The Mobile Armory guild chat and AH features are now free. Holy crap. Awesome!

Why do this? Giving it away free adds another “feature” which other MMOs will be compared with. These options are not something that I’d pay for, but I will certainly use infrequently if they are free to use. It also makes it far easier to update guildies on what is going on.Its based on retaining and increasing the value offering of WoW against other games which will compete with Mists of Panda-randa-mania.

Fantastic news, cute toy, and nice option.

GuildOx Stats on WoW Raid Decline

GuildOx have used their outstanding stats to create a story around the frequency of raids being conducted by guilds. As could be expected, guild raids appear to be in gradual decline.

GuildOx (..) has discovered that raiding guild activity has fallen 50% since the beginning of 2012.

This is by no means a doom and gloom message for raiders. Most raiders would already accept a large drop-off in attendance and activity as a reality, and one that reflects the length of time in the game since the last content patch for Cataclysm. Not shattering news, except to see the an approximate value indicate the drop-off is around 50% since the start of 2012, and since mid April the figures really hit a steep decline.

As the stats continue we’ll likely see the population drop far further, especially in response to a release date. In previous years my (various) guilds have taken the announcement of the release date as a point in time to decide our plans, and that typically calls for an ending to raids in prep for the new expansion.

The stats do not include LFR or include content which is not current, so while the graph is an indicator it should be taken with due consideration. The real message here is not new, it is one of understanding the degrees involved which is interesting; rather than worrying that a decline exists.

The guildox writers indicate that a jump start is needed when MoP is released, which is a fair expectation and fair desire. What is uncertain is how many raiders are needed to return to Warcraft when MoP is released so that the raid community can thrive again. Population doom and gloom abound in the blogs and forums, but MoP can still be expected to sell well, as it is a Blizzard product after all and many raiders return for the new game each expansion. Will the bounce be enough to ensure a thriving raid community? Not sure.

What I’d love to see is the same graph with all the expansions plotted to demonstrate the population behaviour from say 2006 to 2012. A holistic view, with the spikes for each batch of raid content would be interesting.

Related articles

• GuildOx data shows 50% decline in raiding guild activity (wow.joystiq.com)
• GuildOx player analysis highlights the warlock decline (wow.joystiq.com)

Feelings on GM retirement

Part of the challenge to play wow well is at a basic level having enough time to make progress. There is a minimum amount of time needed to do any particular task, and of late my time available has been decreasing – this is especially true of any player who wishes to also have a controlling role in a guild structure. It takes a bit (or a lot) more time than just playing.

In future I expect it to get even harder to get a regular cycle of time each week, so (with much apprehension) I’ve retired as GM of the Insidious guild, returning the title to the old GM. In hindsight I have some thoughts on being a guildie, a GM, and a player that I thought might be interesting to others.