Why don't I like endgames?

*As much as the beginning

Don't get me wrong, raiding can be fun along with level-capped PvP. But leveling just has something more to it. Maybe it's the way you don't look at an instance and say "eh, no gear there, skip it" instead you go because so often it's more fun to play in a group and the XP can be better (especially since it's more fun, so you don't get bored with grinding). You don't outgear instances, you outlevel them, and then go on to another set. There are 2-4 instances to do at a time, constantly passing one and moving into another. Once you are done with heroics you have a decent set of three raids, though two are pretty small and one of those contains Malygos phase 3. Naxx even has four starting wings, so you have choices of what to do when learning. After that: Ulduar. Just Ulduar. Grind out your reputations and gold for consumables and stuff to stick on new gear.

I've found this too while playing Civilization. I enjoy the early growth and development of my civ. Learning new technologies and tile improvements seems parallel to new spells. That first war is a lot of fun. Then eventually I look at the map and think "Okay, I'm winning, but if I want to win I'm going to need to either wait for the space part technologies or I have a hundred cities to conquer." It turns into a grind. The dynamic feel of the early game is lost.

Another game where I ran into this was called Escape Velocity. It's a fairly old game by now, but still a lot of fun (enough for them to make two 'sequels'). I recommend it if you're looking for some idle fun. You'd start out weak, poor, and totally ignorant of the universe (empty map). Eventually through story lines and trading and missions and combat you'd find yourself having 'won' the game (completed a major line) and there's not much else to do but conquer the universe. This is done planet by planet, taking down hundreds or thousands of enemies.

However there are two ways that I've found fun in end games. First, there's PvP (practically the point of any FPS). Second, there are player mods, EV is very very adaptable and there even exist some total universe changes which are practically entire new games. I suppose this are the same in a way: other players make games remain fresh longer. Why doesn't that work as well with WoW?

This is a common theme in life: The process is more fun than the result.

If raids gave no gear, would people do them?

To be fair and balanced, two months later I must do the logical followup to If arenas gave no gear, would people do them?

As with the arena post, I'd say the answer is "Yes and no, somewhere in between known as 'a lot less.'"

Can we test this?

The upcoming badge changes will make heroics into the new old arenas: unrated places to gradually build up high-quality gear. Will people leave raids for heroics? People left arenas for Naxx when that became the easy source of gear. Or will people use heroics "as intended" and use them to more quickly get ready for raids?

Perhaps the the question can be better phrased as "If there was an alternate system of advancement, would people choose it over raids?" Obviously that depends on the system and the person, but heroics, arenas, grinds, and buying accounts have clearly shown that some people will choose small content, PvP, grinds, or RL money over raids as a way to move ahead.

I do have a small fear that people will gear up from badges, look at early Ulduar loot and choose to wait for later bosses with upgrades; but then the lack of early raiders will make it harder to get to the later, rewarding bosses. This would confirm that some people do raids purely for gear rather than the challenges or some amount of innate fun in the process of raiding.

From a design perspective this might be a pointless question. If a game is based on gear, it makes sense that the relevant challenge would give the gear for the next one. In other words, raids must give gear. If they did not and we used purely a badge/heroic system, then you'd have a system where people are forced to spend a great deal of time not raiding in order to prepare for raiding. Whether it is gear or a thousand gold of consumables for old Naxx, grinding to be able to raid is just not fun.

In the end I always come to the same conclusion: A lot of people would, a lot wouldn't, and alternative character advancement is part of what makes WoW popular.

Monday holiday > Friday holiday

Alas, today is not a Monday holiday for me. But why are Monday holidays better?

Friday holidays are too easy to waste and they don't help much. When a Friday is off, it makes the previous week shorter. Well that's nice, but when I start a week I am prepared to end it in five days, so the Friday just ends it early. This can be disorienting: "Why am I not at work?" Fridays, being at the start, make it easy to think "well I have two more days, I'm in no rush to do anything" and next thing it's time to sleep and you've done nothing.

Come Saturday and the Friday had no lasting impact.

Mondays are much better for holidays. They extend the weekend unexpectedly. When it is Sunday night and you are dreading the coming day, thinking of all you couldn't do yet, there's your extra day. The new week is shorter and you start it more refreshed. Even better, when it is Tuesday, you can know that without that holiday it would still be Monday. This is obvious by principle of time moving faster when not miserable, so we can clearly see that with a Monday holiday the day effectively vanishes, literally removing one day from the week and acting as a type of time travel.

Pretend this post is awesome

While at work today I had what I thought was a really great idea for a post. It was pretty deep, but not something that you'd have to spend forever to figure out. It covered a lot of ground without being too broad. It was even pretty simple. I had it figured out. I'd gone over it in my head and even written a bit of an outline, though that isn't to imply that it would have been too long to easily read.

Unfortunately I forgot it.

Can we just pretend that this is a really great post about World of Warcraft with potential application in the wider genre of MMORPGs?

Thank you and have a happy day before Independence Day. Unless you're English, in which case have a happy day before you lost to ramble-rousers in wigs and the French.

Oh right, that reminds me of my other, much worse idea: Do people outside the US care about the fourth of July? My first thought was maybe, since we are pretty big and important. But that seemed incredibly arrogant. Britain is plenty important and I have no clue when they have a comparably important day, such as signing the Magna Carta or something of that sort. Then again, what American other than the CIA knows anything about the rest of the world? Even the CIA is in doubt. Maybe it is arrogant, but it could still be true, after all, odds are we've recently invaded your nation or at least invaded someone nearby and called your nation evil.

In related news, I got early fireworks from using a grinder to cut nails. I'm hoping the coating of metal on my eyes protected me from the blinding sparks.

PTR Bug

Apparently Blizzard realized that Divine Shield wasn't long enough for the cooldown, so to correct it they created a new Argent Defender. It effectively fixes a bug that causes paladins to sometimes die.

"There is an unrelated bug with Ardent Defender that makes Prot paladins more and more survivable as their health approaches zero such that it is literally impossible to kill them... though Chaos Bolt might work."

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=18031100345&sid=1

That's right: We are currently invincible, unless you can bypass absorbs.

WoW and Halloween Candy

This isn't about mask achievements.

I have a few friends who play together. They're very casual, playing infrequently and having no plans to raid, ever. And yet they seem to have a ton of fun.

At the end of semester I became a little more like them. I played less. A lot less. I had final papers to write and a few exams to not study for. I simply did not have the time. WoW is my primary source of entertainment, so you'd expect that I would be really down.

Quite the opposite: I had more fun when playing and in general I was happier. This was despite the massive stress.

So what does this have to do with Halloween candy? Think of how a little kid eats it: gone within a couple days (let's pretend he got sick too soon to eat it all that night) and then he's deprived, also very sick and possibly diabetic and down several layers of tooth enamel. He's a hardcore player. He's Ensidia with KT down within a week or two and wondering why there's so little content. I'm the kid who ate it in two weeks: significantly slower, but still not exactly healthy. My friend is eating a piece or two a day and he'll eat the last the day before Halloween.

This got me thinking of diminishing returns on happiness derived from WoW. Early on playing more means proportionately more fun. Eventually though, you run into diminishing returns. The extra time turns into less adventure with friends and more farming for 25-man raids out of whom you may only care much about a handful. The extra time is grinds and farming and all the aspects of the time which we refer to with a very accurate term: time sink.

Imagine what WoW, and our enjoyment of it, would be like if we all played half as much. There would be no need to add time sinks because a couple raids could fill a week. Imagine how much slower content would be cleared. And then imagine that the devs might be able to make content at the rate we clear it.

Bah, wishful thinking. Someone is out there is saying: "Give me that bag of candy, you wuss, let's see if I can get purple vomit."

The Perils of a Single Source

As Tobold has shown, there are potential risks when using a single source for information. I ran into this problem when forming my opinion of City of Villains. My source of information was a friend of mine and watching her play and hearing how she talking about it.

If you were to hear me talking with her boyfriend we'd be complaining about paladin healing and arenas and elitist raiders and this or that nerf. Sometimes we'd talk about lore or quests or leveling. In general though, you'd get the idea that WoW has a lot to offer and something for pretty much anyway, even if we don't appear to like all of it. In contrast my friend talks about farming. That seems to be all she does. I made the false assumption that she played more than 5% of the game (can you imagine if all I ever talked about were arenas?) and as a result, from this single source and a false assumption created the notion that CoV is mostly farming.

Eventually this led to a very negative opinion, with me comparing it to the massive, constant farming for old Naxx which led to various nerfs to consumables, but without the raid. It did not help that as far as I knew from her (and she had directly said this) just about everything was BoE, so there's no incentive to do what is challenging, but instead what is efficient. Imagine the badge change, plus removal of all boss loot tables, and then make heroics soloable.

Apparently CoV has actual storylines that my friend just skips through. There also appears to be something almost like raiding, but tuned very softly: think Naxx, but you could get by without tanks, or healers, and you might even be able to solo it with Ulduar 25 gear.

Dammit. I was trying to explain the perils of single sources and next thing I'm explaining why CoV is bad. Okay there you go: when you use only one source if that source isn't perfect you're going to end up with really skewed impressions.

In unrelated news, I'm not very good at Civ4. I am apparently incapable of building and maintaining a defensive army and strong diplomatic relations, so I end up in almost constant offensive war just to ensure that I maintain a strong military and no one can attack me first. I really only stop fighting if my citizens complain too much or reinforcements cannot get there fast enough. In my second most recent game this didn't become too much of an issue because I swept across the other continent with bombers and tanks, taking over the entire place (and ironically triggering a diplomatic victory) before anyone could get weary and thanks to airlifts and bombers replacing artillery and transport ships.

An observation related to the unrelated news: I find it fascinating that as the Civ games increase options away from predestination (such as France must be Christian or America must be a republic) the results end up totally different from history. The game before my current my American empire was culturally dominant and rich, spreading Judaism across the world and enjoying peaceful relations, before being attacked by the Zulu and getting into so extended a war that I quit out of frustration.

WoW is not Real Life

Attempting to bring real life philosophies into WoW is likely to create absurd statements. Many of the philosophies of real life are based on the limitations of our world. There are limited resources and people die permanently. WoW does not have these limits. Instead the limits are much looser, and created by 'gods' (devs) over whom we can exert some degree of control.

Welfare does not exist, for current welfare is based on a redistribution of wealth in absolute terms. It ensures the physical survival of those who cannot or do not generate sufficient wealth on their own. There is no WoW equivalent since we do not die from starvation or any other material lacking or inaction.

Economies do exist, however direct parallels will inevitably fail because the economy of WoW is optional. One does not need any professions to survive. The world overall does not need professions to generate wealth, in fact currency is destroyed through the auctioning of crafted items. While a strong economy is good, it should not be assumed that a weak economy means mass starvation and rioting. Furthermore, resources are effectively unlimited (except for some limits imposed by devs), so shortages are mostly due to failure to gather that which is plentiful rather than an actual lack of material.

Much of morality is distorted since all enemies are either unfeeling NPCs or other players on which we cannot directly inflict any pain or damage. Death is impermanent. Direct theft is impossible except due to misplaced trust and any player can make himself immune to theft simply through greater control of social interaction (ML in instances, control the guild bank).

To top it all off, WoW has a major flaw (or perhaps feature) which real life doe not have: the creators have told us it is a game. In life there are things which are necessary and must take priority over that which is fun while in WoW there is fun and the only necessities are those which are linked to the aspects of fun which we freely choose. Being a game means that fun takes priority over all else. Virtual economics, perceptions of superiority, nerd raging; they are all subordinate to fun. If it happens that the fun of somewhere else interferes with your own fun, something is going wrong.

To fully explain why trying to bring RL into WoW will fail, here's a strange bit of morality. As I said before, morality cannot be determined by pain, death, or injury since none are permanent or even felt. However, if we take the developers to be the 'gods' of WoW, the creators, then we can see that if they say it is a game and they are the root of all things, then fun must be the morality of WoW. In other words, if you're not having fun, you're not just wasting your time, you're also breaking a fundamental rule. Clearly we can see from this that not having fun should result in bans. To those who bring their twisted RL views into it, consider the implication of acting as if RL rules apply to WoW: you being gone.

Oh Creators of this Virtual World which we inhabit, we beseech thee to smite the infidels and cleanse the World of Warcraft of their corrupting influence!

See that was stupid. That's what happens when you put RL in WoW. Bringing RL-derived philosophies into WoW is only an abstract version of the people who complain about RL relationships in gchat and act as if we should care. That's right, you're just an emo teenager whose parents are totally on his case, like omg.

P.S. This is not a reference to lore or magic, but to the completely artificial and (as the devs create it) unlimited qualities of WoW, and so this can be applied to any video game. Concepts such as "earning" and "deserving" just don't make much sense when removed from their context of a real world where resources are scarce.