That's not the sky.
The Treasure Of The Midnight Isles
5 days ago
Showing posts with label Cataclysm. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cataclysm. Show all posts
Vash'jir was the best zone in Cataclysm
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Friday, May 16, 2014
It's like they say, "Second time's the charm." They were too impatient for the third. Anyway, I ran Vash'jir on my warlock. It was pretty awesome.
The first time around I just entirely missed the story. I read the quests, but I never put them together into a complete story. I missed the forest for the greens.
Speaking of greens, it's pretty. I didn't realize just how much better it looks than Hyjal. Of course by the story they're telling, Hyjal is supposed to be a dark, burnt-out, smoke-filled wasteland. It's not a failure to deliver, I just didn't like what they were delivering. In general, my favorite zones are green, orange, or white. Grizzly Hills: green and awesome. Durotar, Silithus, and Barrens: orange and nostalgia-filled. Alterac Valley, Storm Peaks, Winterspring: white and filled with awesome, nostalgia, and excellent music. On the other hand, Icecrown is white, but also very dark, so maybe it's more like grey, and I really only like it because fighting with the Ebon Blade is just plain fun.
Vash'jir is colorful, but not garish. It isn't filled with humming purple crystals. On the other hand, if you pop up to the surface, it's just flat. The island over which we're fighting is a small atoll, of no use except as a naval base to attack Stormwind. It's obviously just a battle for the sake of a war. The water is flat, perfectly flat, without any features at all. Maybe that's lazy design, but it's also perfect for indicating that you are in the middle of nowhere, stranded.
That's the story: war and folly leaving us stranded. I'd somehow managed to miss that this isn't a zone of triumphant victory. It's us sailing off to glorious battle and getting our asses handed to us by a much worse enemy. It's an entire zone of us fleeing for our lives, trying to accomplish a little bit while we can. We're not rescuing lost marines out of kindness, but out of absolute necessity: we have no reserves, no backup, and no army. We cobble together a decent fight here and there, only to retreat when we find that our enemy is orders of magnitude more powerful than we expected. At the end of the zone we lose.
In Hyjal, despite the gloominess of it all, we won, driving out Ragnaros, rejuvenating large parts of the land, waking the ancients, and killing a whole lot of Twilight cultists along the way. It's essentially an unending march toward victory. Vash'jir is a beautiful zone of crushing defeat. Yet, it's not entirely a lost cause. We accomplish a lot while we're there, dealing major blows to the Naga and Old Gods; it's just not enough.
I like a little desperation in a story. I like the feeling that our victory is not pre-ordained, but is something that we will struggle for, and not get the first time around. While Hyjal consisted of us waking up the ancients so they could do the heavy lifting for us, Vash'jir was us doing the hard work, and everyone got creative with everything from improvised explosives to finding air to breathe.
My title might be hyperbole, since I think Twilight Highlands was great, particularly on a PvP server, but Vash'jir is definitely competitive, and makes the other zones look simplistic, ugly, and boring in comparison.
The first time around I just entirely missed the story. I read the quests, but I never put them together into a complete story. I missed the forest for the greens.
Speaking of greens, it's pretty. I didn't realize just how much better it looks than Hyjal. Of course by the story they're telling, Hyjal is supposed to be a dark, burnt-out, smoke-filled wasteland. It's not a failure to deliver, I just didn't like what they were delivering. In general, my favorite zones are green, orange, or white. Grizzly Hills: green and awesome. Durotar, Silithus, and Barrens: orange and nostalgia-filled. Alterac Valley, Storm Peaks, Winterspring: white and filled with awesome, nostalgia, and excellent music. On the other hand, Icecrown is white, but also very dark, so maybe it's more like grey, and I really only like it because fighting with the Ebon Blade is just plain fun.
Vash'jir is colorful, but not garish. It isn't filled with humming purple crystals. On the other hand, if you pop up to the surface, it's just flat. The island over which we're fighting is a small atoll, of no use except as a naval base to attack Stormwind. It's obviously just a battle for the sake of a war. The water is flat, perfectly flat, without any features at all. Maybe that's lazy design, but it's also perfect for indicating that you are in the middle of nowhere, stranded.
That's the story: war and folly leaving us stranded. I'd somehow managed to miss that this isn't a zone of triumphant victory. It's us sailing off to glorious battle and getting our asses handed to us by a much worse enemy. It's an entire zone of us fleeing for our lives, trying to accomplish a little bit while we can. We're not rescuing lost marines out of kindness, but out of absolute necessity: we have no reserves, no backup, and no army. We cobble together a decent fight here and there, only to retreat when we find that our enemy is orders of magnitude more powerful than we expected. At the end of the zone we lose.
In Hyjal, despite the gloominess of it all, we won, driving out Ragnaros, rejuvenating large parts of the land, waking the ancients, and killing a whole lot of Twilight cultists along the way. It's essentially an unending march toward victory. Vash'jir is a beautiful zone of crushing defeat. Yet, it's not entirely a lost cause. We accomplish a lot while we're there, dealing major blows to the Naga and Old Gods; it's just not enough.
I like a little desperation in a story. I like the feeling that our victory is not pre-ordained, but is something that we will struggle for, and not get the first time around. While Hyjal consisted of us waking up the ancients so they could do the heavy lifting for us, Vash'jir was us doing the hard work, and everyone got creative with everything from improvised explosives to finding air to breathe.
My title might be hyperbole, since I think Twilight Highlands was great, particularly on a PvP server, but Vash'jir is definitely competitive, and makes the other zones look simplistic, ugly, and boring in comparison.
Pet battles, the solution to Cataclysm
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Monday, December 2, 2013
I admit it, I like pet battles. I like them more than I like doing Mount Hyjal more than once. It turns out they give a decent bit of xp. It's not a fast way to level, but it's a non-Hyjal way to level.
I don't like the PvP, mind you. My pets don't seem to be very good yet, since while I have a good selection of pets, my level 25 selection is limited. Someday though, I may enjoy it. I have this notion that I'll be able to watch what I tend to face and adapt accordingly. A bit of vorfreude.
In the meantime, I've been fighting NPC battles. It's been a romp around the world. At fight I'd think of what pet I was lacking and fly out to get it. Then I got all efficiency-oriented. Optimization is, for me, a form of fun, particularly when I'm the one working out the method. I like puzzles.
I switched methods to instead going to a zone and identifying those pets that are at their highest level in that zone. Once I have one of each of those I move on to the next. This minimizes leveling, since that can be somewhat tedious if done for its own sake. If I happen to get a rare that isn't of the highest level I still capture it, since a rat in the hand is worth ten thousand poor qualities in the bush. As I move along I switch pets in and out to fit the zone, thereby pushing everyone upward a little bit each time.
I've learned that strong against and weak against aren't absolutes. Thorns might have lower damage against critters, but critters often do lots of small attacks, meaning lots of triggers. They are strong against mechanicals, but mechanicals often use single large attacks. Similarly, while fliers are strong against aquatics, their rapid, small attacks can be greatly reduced by a shell shield. A critter fighting something with a shell shield is a joke, with swarms entirely negated.
As with all things that involve moving around a lot, a druid is great to have, popping in and out of flight form in an instant to hop over enemies and hop to pets. I pick up herbs along the way, which give a whopping more than 100 experience each. Astounding, I know. But it all adds up. It all adds up to my druid being 81 and a quarter without yet recovering Frandral from the cave, though I did do everything up to that. A few instances might help too. I rather enjoy Blackrock Caverns.
I don't like the PvP, mind you. My pets don't seem to be very good yet, since while I have a good selection of pets, my level 25 selection is limited. Someday though, I may enjoy it. I have this notion that I'll be able to watch what I tend to face and adapt accordingly. A bit of vorfreude.
In the meantime, I've been fighting NPC battles. It's been a romp around the world. At fight I'd think of what pet I was lacking and fly out to get it. Then I got all efficiency-oriented. Optimization is, for me, a form of fun, particularly when I'm the one working out the method. I like puzzles.
I switched methods to instead going to a zone and identifying those pets that are at their highest level in that zone. Once I have one of each of those I move on to the next. This minimizes leveling, since that can be somewhat tedious if done for its own sake. If I happen to get a rare that isn't of the highest level I still capture it, since a rat in the hand is worth ten thousand poor qualities in the bush. As I move along I switch pets in and out to fit the zone, thereby pushing everyone upward a little bit each time.
I've learned that strong against and weak against aren't absolutes. Thorns might have lower damage against critters, but critters often do lots of small attacks, meaning lots of triggers. They are strong against mechanicals, but mechanicals often use single large attacks. Similarly, while fliers are strong against aquatics, their rapid, small attacks can be greatly reduced by a shell shield. A critter fighting something with a shell shield is a joke, with swarms entirely negated.
As with all things that involve moving around a lot, a druid is great to have, popping in and out of flight form in an instant to hop over enemies and hop to pets. I pick up herbs along the way, which give a whopping more than 100 experience each. Astounding, I know. But it all adds up. It all adds up to my druid being 81 and a quarter without yet recovering Frandral from the cave, though I did do everything up to that. A few instances might help too. I rather enjoy Blackrock Caverns.
The Old Gods
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Wednesday, August 8, 2012
In your day to day life, how much are you affected by the Old Gods? Okay, badly-phrased question. But let's face it, how much importance do we give to the Old Gods in WoW? Oh sure, the lore nerds can tell us of the various nefarious schemes and their parasitic nature which corrupts everything, but who listens to them? My point is that they too often seem to be behind the scenes, despite being present at all times. It's strange to me.
In vanilla it was the Old Gods who had corrupted Deathwing and through him, the black dragonflight. They were central to a raid and a few instances as well as several zones, ranging from the low-level Alliance in Redridge Mountains to the near-60 Searing Gorge and Burning Steppes. Through Ragnaros, they controlled the Dark Iron dwarves, which were key to a level 50-60 instance and led directly into the raid against Ragnaros himself. Most directly, there were the Ahn'Qiraj raids, the larger of which had us directly fighting the Old God C'thun. Despite this, do we think of vanilla as being the Old God-themed time?
Burning Crusade was of course about the Burning Legion. Even then, there was a brief, easy-to-miss sighting of something which seemed much like an Old God being summoned in Shadowmoon Valley. Later, in the Arcatraz, we find an imprisoned minion of the Old God. They're everywhere. The Netherdrakes are descended from the Black Dragonflight, being from black eggs exposed to the nether, and are trying to forge their own identity, free of the corruption of Deathwing.
In the Wrath of the Lich King the Lich King took center stage. And yet, his Vrykul minions were themselves victims of the Old Gods who turned away from their gods as they felt the Curse of Flesh had been inflicted by them, leaving them open to the accept the Lich King as their Death God. As a human, Arthas came from the effects of the Curse of Flesh on the Vrykul. Grizzly Hills and Storm Peaks were heavily based on the corruption of the Old Gods, leading into a pair of instances, which themselves led into a raid. Dragonblight dealt with the Black Dragonflight, leading to the Sartharion raid, as well as the Old Kingdom instance where, rather than the Scourge being the main threat, it is the Twilight Cultists and the Faceless Ones who feature prominently.
Given this context, the complaint about Cataclysm that all this Deathwing and cultist stuff came out of nowhere is absurd. We've been dealing with the Old Olds and Black Dragonflight all this time, both directly and indirectly. If there is a complaint to be made, it is that we've had too much exposure, like a recurring background villain suddenly becoming the primary enemy. Maybe that is the problem, that the entire expansion is so purely devoted to the Old Gods, Deathwing, and their elemental minions. The Scourge gets some minor notes in the Plaguelands, mostly reinforcing the notion that it has been defeated and we're in the mop-up stages. I don't remember anything outside of the Blasted Lands that dealt with the Burning Legion.
Previously the expansions had a variety of foes. They even interacted. We saw the Legion and Illidan in conflict as well as the Scourge and Yogg Saron going so far as to have a Scourge leader directly mention undeath as releasing one from the Curse of Flesh, which combined with the obsessive use of saronite (blood of Yogg Saron), leads to all sorts of interesting questions.
The Cataclysm is unique in its complete focus on one side and one event. Vash'jir is about the Naga, minions of an Old God. Mount Hyjal is about the elementals and cultists, also minions of the Old Gods. Uldum almost has variety, bringing in a new race and culture, but that too is ultimately about us finding an ally, who is fighting minions of Deathwing and the elements. Stonecore is also us fighting elementals and cultists to fix the damage caused by the Cataclysm. And finally there are the Twilight Highlands, dominated by the Twilight Cultists, with a dash of Horde-Alliance conflict.
I don't think this singular focus is good for the game. It reduces complexity, reducing the amount of interesting lore discussion and debate to be had. Is the Scourge a greater threat to us than the Legion? Is it even a potential ally? What is our fate in the battle between the Old Gods and Legion? Will we be wiped out if the Titans show up? This last one is, for now, no, though we came pretty close. Contrast that with the current battle, in which the Old Gods control Deathwing, the Twilight Cult, and the elementals. It even seems as if the old conflict between Deathwing and the Old Gods has been pushed aside, as if he forgot that they tried to steal the Dragon Soul. Now they're all best friends in blowing up the world.
Now Deathwing is defeated, the elements are all fixed, and happiness and sunshine forever! There are no equivalent questions to what will happen to Bolvar, whether he can truly control the Scourge and avoid corruption. No questions about what will happen if we keep killing Old Gods, given that the Titans thought destroying them would threaten the world. Instead we have the dragons becoming mortal and declaring it the age of portals, saying that we're the protectors now, except by all indications, we always were.
In vanilla it was the Old Gods who had corrupted Deathwing and through him, the black dragonflight. They were central to a raid and a few instances as well as several zones, ranging from the low-level Alliance in Redridge Mountains to the near-60 Searing Gorge and Burning Steppes. Through Ragnaros, they controlled the Dark Iron dwarves, which were key to a level 50-60 instance and led directly into the raid against Ragnaros himself. Most directly, there were the Ahn'Qiraj raids, the larger of which had us directly fighting the Old God C'thun. Despite this, do we think of vanilla as being the Old God-themed time?
Burning Crusade was of course about the Burning Legion. Even then, there was a brief, easy-to-miss sighting of something which seemed much like an Old God being summoned in Shadowmoon Valley. Later, in the Arcatraz, we find an imprisoned minion of the Old God. They're everywhere. The Netherdrakes are descended from the Black Dragonflight, being from black eggs exposed to the nether, and are trying to forge their own identity, free of the corruption of Deathwing.
In the Wrath of the Lich King the Lich King took center stage. And yet, his Vrykul minions were themselves victims of the Old Gods who turned away from their gods as they felt the Curse of Flesh had been inflicted by them, leaving them open to the accept the Lich King as their Death God. As a human, Arthas came from the effects of the Curse of Flesh on the Vrykul. Grizzly Hills and Storm Peaks were heavily based on the corruption of the Old Gods, leading into a pair of instances, which themselves led into a raid. Dragonblight dealt with the Black Dragonflight, leading to the Sartharion raid, as well as the Old Kingdom instance where, rather than the Scourge being the main threat, it is the Twilight Cultists and the Faceless Ones who feature prominently.
Given this context, the complaint about Cataclysm that all this Deathwing and cultist stuff came out of nowhere is absurd. We've been dealing with the Old Olds and Black Dragonflight all this time, both directly and indirectly. If there is a complaint to be made, it is that we've had too much exposure, like a recurring background villain suddenly becoming the primary enemy. Maybe that is the problem, that the entire expansion is so purely devoted to the Old Gods, Deathwing, and their elemental minions. The Scourge gets some minor notes in the Plaguelands, mostly reinforcing the notion that it has been defeated and we're in the mop-up stages. I don't remember anything outside of the Blasted Lands that dealt with the Burning Legion.
Previously the expansions had a variety of foes. They even interacted. We saw the Legion and Illidan in conflict as well as the Scourge and Yogg Saron going so far as to have a Scourge leader directly mention undeath as releasing one from the Curse of Flesh, which combined with the obsessive use of saronite (blood of Yogg Saron), leads to all sorts of interesting questions.
The Cataclysm is unique in its complete focus on one side and one event. Vash'jir is about the Naga, minions of an Old God. Mount Hyjal is about the elementals and cultists, also minions of the Old Gods. Uldum almost has variety, bringing in a new race and culture, but that too is ultimately about us finding an ally, who is fighting minions of Deathwing and the elements. Stonecore is also us fighting elementals and cultists to fix the damage caused by the Cataclysm. And finally there are the Twilight Highlands, dominated by the Twilight Cultists, with a dash of Horde-Alliance conflict.
I don't think this singular focus is good for the game. It reduces complexity, reducing the amount of interesting lore discussion and debate to be had. Is the Scourge a greater threat to us than the Legion? Is it even a potential ally? What is our fate in the battle between the Old Gods and Legion? Will we be wiped out if the Titans show up? This last one is, for now, no, though we came pretty close. Contrast that with the current battle, in which the Old Gods control Deathwing, the Twilight Cult, and the elementals. It even seems as if the old conflict between Deathwing and the Old Gods has been pushed aside, as if he forgot that they tried to steal the Dragon Soul. Now they're all best friends in blowing up the world.
Now Deathwing is defeated, the elements are all fixed, and happiness and sunshine forever! There are no equivalent questions to what will happen to Bolvar, whether he can truly control the Scourge and avoid corruption. No questions about what will happen if we keep killing Old Gods, given that the Titans thought destroying them would threaten the world. Instead we have the dragons becoming mortal and declaring it the age of portals, saying that we're the protectors now, except by all indications, we always were.
It's been a while, so where's my nostalgia?
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Friday, August 3, 2012
Raise your hand if you're nostalgic for vanilla leveling. Keep it up and if you're nostalgic for BC leveling, raise it (you don't have to raise both). Same for LK level. Okay, who doesn't have their hands up? Duck down and hide if you started in Cataclysm. In my imagination, in which I get to make this stuff up (I love punditry), everyone has their hands up. Okay Cataclysm people, you can stand up now. Everyone hands down. Now, hands up for Cataclysm leveling nostalgia?
Anyone?
No?
Okay.
I started in vanilla, played pretty much non-stop through the start of Cataclysm. Looking back, and playing through again, I had fun going through the content again. I'd even look forward to it. This wasn't a "I want to get out of the current content", but looking ahead to what was coming. As Azeroth wrapped up and I ran BRD, I still looked forward to Hellfire Peninsula and Nagrand. In Nagrand I looked forward to Grizzly Hills and Storm Peaks (I'm cherry-picking my favorites). But now that my paladin is on the verge of Grizzly Hills, I am thinking ahead to Cataclysm and neither Mount Hyjal nor Vash'jir hold much appeal to me. Twilight Highlands sounds nice, but that's not for a while, particularly given the 90% experience nerf for previous expansions, so no sticking around Icecrown a bit longer.
I don't know why Cataclysm has not created this sense of nostalgia or fondness for what is to come. I could try to blame it on my lack of love for the Cataclysm end-game with its heavy emphasis on randoms and dailies. But that was the case in LK too and I look forward to the LK zones. Perhaps it is the limited selection, with Cataclysm adding only 5 zones while Northrend contains 8 (I'm not counting Crystalsong or Wintergrasp). This means less repetition. Outland has 7 zones, so perhaps it fits. But LK and Cata both have a pair of starting zones while Outland has only 1, so there doesn't seem to be much of a link between choice of starting area and nostalgia.
Maybe it's the linear nature of the Cataclysm zones. That makes it feel more like watching a movie a second time than playing a game a second time. Different classes will play much differently, making the play different as well. I'll go with that.
Anyone?
No?
Okay.
I started in vanilla, played pretty much non-stop through the start of Cataclysm. Looking back, and playing through again, I had fun going through the content again. I'd even look forward to it. This wasn't a "I want to get out of the current content", but looking ahead to what was coming. As Azeroth wrapped up and I ran BRD, I still looked forward to Hellfire Peninsula and Nagrand. In Nagrand I looked forward to Grizzly Hills and Storm Peaks (I'm cherry-picking my favorites). But now that my paladin is on the verge of Grizzly Hills, I am thinking ahead to Cataclysm and neither Mount Hyjal nor Vash'jir hold much appeal to me. Twilight Highlands sounds nice, but that's not for a while, particularly given the 90% experience nerf for previous expansions, so no sticking around Icecrown a bit longer.
I don't know why Cataclysm has not created this sense of nostalgia or fondness for what is to come. I could try to blame it on my lack of love for the Cataclysm end-game with its heavy emphasis on randoms and dailies. But that was the case in LK too and I look forward to the LK zones. Perhaps it is the limited selection, with Cataclysm adding only 5 zones while Northrend contains 8 (I'm not counting Crystalsong or Wintergrasp). This means less repetition. Outland has 7 zones, so perhaps it fits. But LK and Cata both have a pair of starting zones while Outland has only 1, so there doesn't seem to be much of a link between choice of starting area and nostalgia.
Maybe it's the linear nature of the Cataclysm zones. That makes it feel more like watching a movie a second time than playing a game a second time. Different classes will play much differently, making the play different as well. I'll go with that.
The Five Level Problems: Forcing Content
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Monday, April 30, 2012
Changes rarely have single effects. One little thing, such as the way we count levels, can ripple through a game causing changes far beyond the level cap.
Previously I complained that the expansions had a leveling cutoff: once you reached the cap for that expansion, xp dropped by 90% for the mobs in the area. It seemed pointless to just cut out content. Besides, there was already the gear issue: new expansions give much better gear, so there is already a carrot to bring people to the new content, making a stick seemingly redundant. The gearing was also a stick, since the Cataclysm instances all have ilevel restrictions so that to get in you need to run the new zones anyway.
The problem, as was pointed out by a commenter, was that without the xp depreciation it would be faster to level to 85 using Northrend mobs than the newer and tougher Cataclysm enemies. I'll leave aside "so what?" as a counter-argument and just run with the assumption that speed-leveling to 85 must happen in the Cataclysm zones. Here is where we get to one of the Five Level Problems. With a wider range of levels we'd naturally see a drop-off in the experience from Northrend mobs, which would eventually become grey and not long before that, green. This would leave a short distance where perhaps Northrend mobs are better, but not far, and attempting to jump ahead with them would leave the player undergeared from lack of quests and instances, slowing them before long (though a player with a great deal of ICC gear would be near the level of Cataclysm gear, so maybe that's not true, at least not for a long time). At the least, adding ten levels rather than five would reduce the relative speed of Northrend racing (and give more time to switch out ICC gear).
Previously I complained that the expansions had a leveling cutoff: once you reached the cap for that expansion, xp dropped by 90% for the mobs in the area. It seemed pointless to just cut out content. Besides, there was already the gear issue: new expansions give much better gear, so there is already a carrot to bring people to the new content, making a stick seemingly redundant. The gearing was also a stick, since the Cataclysm instances all have ilevel restrictions so that to get in you need to run the new zones anyway.
The problem, as was pointed out by a commenter, was that without the xp depreciation it would be faster to level to 85 using Northrend mobs than the newer and tougher Cataclysm enemies. I'll leave aside "so what?" as a counter-argument and just run with the assumption that speed-leveling to 85 must happen in the Cataclysm zones. Here is where we get to one of the Five Level Problems. With a wider range of levels we'd naturally see a drop-off in the experience from Northrend mobs, which would eventually become grey and not long before that, green. This would leave a short distance where perhaps Northrend mobs are better, but not far, and attempting to jump ahead with them would leave the player undergeared from lack of quests and instances, slowing them before long (though a player with a great deal of ICC gear would be near the level of Cataclysm gear, so maybe that's not true, at least not for a long time). At the least, adding ten levels rather than five would reduce the relative speed of Northrend racing (and give more time to switch out ICC gear).
As we level up and get better gear, mobs level up and get stronger, so once we're in an expansion's gear, until we start running heroics, we're going to stay somewhat on par with mobs. They get stronger as fast as we do. With five levels that means we get stronger faster, and so do they. The result is that small differences in level are more significant. With ten levels, the small differences are diluted, so if you're off by a few levels you're not going to get rolled over, just suffer a worse attack table. For players this means more choice. Sick of Borean Tundra and Howling Fjord? Jump ahead to Dragonblight and it's not the end of the world. Back in Burning Crusade some players would skip straight to Zangarmarsh as a way to bypass the crowded Hellfire Peninsula. For leveling in Azeroth this gives a little more flexibility. In all cases, the level requirements to pick up quests don't help, locking out zone quests which are still possible for the player. The quest locking, extended to entire zones, was made worse with only five levels. There is the second Five Level Problem: if a level is even more significant, then whatever justification is used for the level requirement becomes stronger, so have more gates on content then we would otherwise.
Before I wrap this up, I want to leave a comment for commenters: I know some of you don't like gating or gearing or leveling. Those are all internally-generated opinions which are not caused by the five or ten levels added by an expansion. So please, don't comment about how gates are stupid and why can't we all just do the content we want to the instant we get the thought.
I don't know why Blizzard only added five levels. I'm sure Google could give me some statements from them, but I'm not sure that would actually explain anything. The fewer levels are consistent with the ever-stronger push to the level cap and away from leveling. This push is much more insistent, as rather than being an heirloom that you can avoid or excessive quest xp that you can grey out and ignore, having only five levels shoves players right into the level cap. But, maybe it's not so bad, since after all, so far all these "five level problems" are all leveling problems, not part of the "real game."
The Five Levels Problems: Introduction
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Friday, April 20, 2012
I kept thinking about how Cataclysm has only five levels. Was it a good thing? Bad? I was leaning towards bad as I kept finding problems and changes that needed to be made to compensate for only having the five levels. So I decided to really look into it. I pulled up wowhead and began filtering and running the numbers on the gear between and within expansions to see if I could find something. I was pretty sure it was there, a problem which would link in to several others. All of it coming back to the core issue of only having five levels.
Let me assure you, it's a great post. At least I think so. I have some good, solid points, some analysis, data to go with it all.
There's one small problem: do absolute changes matter more or less than percentage changes? 50 is more than 25, but 50 more than 200 is less than 25 over 50 (25% vs. 50%). Absolute terms point in one direction. Percentage in another. The argument might be stronger for the percentage, which would seem to go in the opposite direction of my conclusion. Or does it?
If that made no sense, here's the general idea: there is always inflation between and within expansions: we level up and gear up and before long the gear from the last expansion is obsolete. Given the goal of the gear reset, Blizzard tries to make it obsolete quickly, so the gear of a previous expansion is pretty much gone by the first new zone. Then they have to inflate to get rid of that gear too. The result is that you get some inflation from the start of the expansion to the cap (before instances and raids). In BC and LK this was 40-50%. In contrast, in Cataclysm it was around 22%, or roughly half. Aha! Half the change for half the levels, a brilliant way to fix inflation and we'd see about the same growth of character power.
However, in absolute terms, Cataclysm was higher, 61 vs. 57, suggesting that Cataclysm was working off the hugely inflated ilevels created by the many tiers and modes of LK. From this perspective, the half-count of levels weren't any help at all, an accounting trick to paper over the problems created by runaway inflation in LK. Reducing the leveling gear inflation by reducing the levels would help to reduce the inflation over the expansion as a whole, or give greater room for raid gear inflation. I've not looked at which of this is the game.
They say there are lies, damned lies, and statistics. I don't know why someone would lump the science of uncertain results with the art of certain falsehood, but maybe that person was just a liar who didn't like pie charts.
Let me assure you, it's a great post. At least I think so. I have some good, solid points, some analysis, data to go with it all.
There's one small problem: do absolute changes matter more or less than percentage changes? 50 is more than 25, but 50 more than 200 is less than 25 over 50 (25% vs. 50%). Absolute terms point in one direction. Percentage in another. The argument might be stronger for the percentage, which would seem to go in the opposite direction of my conclusion. Or does it?
If that made no sense, here's the general idea: there is always inflation between and within expansions: we level up and gear up and before long the gear from the last expansion is obsolete. Given the goal of the gear reset, Blizzard tries to make it obsolete quickly, so the gear of a previous expansion is pretty much gone by the first new zone. Then they have to inflate to get rid of that gear too. The result is that you get some inflation from the start of the expansion to the cap (before instances and raids). In BC and LK this was 40-50%. In contrast, in Cataclysm it was around 22%, or roughly half. Aha! Half the change for half the levels, a brilliant way to fix inflation and we'd see about the same growth of character power.
However, in absolute terms, Cataclysm was higher, 61 vs. 57, suggesting that Cataclysm was working off the hugely inflated ilevels created by the many tiers and modes of LK. From this perspective, the half-count of levels weren't any help at all, an accounting trick to paper over the problems created by runaway inflation in LK. Reducing the leveling gear inflation by reducing the levels would help to reduce the inflation over the expansion as a whole, or give greater room for raid gear inflation. I've not looked at which of this is the game.
They say there are lies, damned lies, and statistics. I don't know why someone would lump the science of uncertain results with the art of certain falsehood, but maybe that person was just a liar who didn't like pie charts.
So what's the symbology there?
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Monday, March 12, 2012
I log onto my shaman to test far sight. First thing I did was to go find the elevator to go learn flying. That caused me to discover Orgrimmar (something I've already done that the game says I haven't), and gain 8 xp, which made me hit level 80 (and I didn't even have to use a scroll of resurrection). Cata leveling is way too fast.
In related news, my gear was an indecipherable mess.
In related news, my gear was an indecipherable mess.
Cataclysm heroics should have dropped legendaries
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Friday, February 17, 2012
In vanilla we ran around in greens and some blues. Purples were a strange thing to see.
In Burning Crusade we were certain to get our blues and as the expansion moved along, we got our purples from heroics and Karazhan.
Wrath of the Lich King purples were standard attire. A blue was a filthy, awful thing. A purple was really just barely getting by anymore.
Cataclysm came and did it give us a new color to yearn for? Alas, no. It gave us blues! Blues! Filthy rotten poisonous blues, rather than yummy delicious purples, yes, we wants we do. Our... precious. Purples. But did we gets them? No! They takeses them.
*ahem*
As expectations progress, it is important to either keep up with the expectations or to change the change in expectations (derive the derivative's derivative!). Cataclysm failed to do this. Wrath of the Lich King was an effective teacher and it taught us that purples were something to have, not something to get. Perhaps Cataclysm could have successfully transitioned back to blues, but it did not. I blame some of this on the lack of sets; none except for PvP and a few crafted; neither of which are instance loot. I've said it before, that sets are special, telling players that they are allowed to stay in this gear for a while while they gather the rest of the set, that they aren't expected to get this item and drop it an hour later.
In conclusion: The title:
Cataclysm heroics should have dropped legendaries.
In Burning Crusade we were certain to get our blues and as the expansion moved along, we got our purples from heroics and Karazhan.
Wrath of the Lich King purples were standard attire. A blue was a filthy, awful thing. A purple was really just barely getting by anymore.
Cataclysm came and did it give us a new color to yearn for? Alas, no. It gave us blues! Blues! Filthy rotten poisonous blues, rather than yummy delicious purples, yes, we wants we do. Our... precious. Purples. But did we gets them? No! They takeses them.
*ahem*
As expectations progress, it is important to either keep up with the expectations or to change the change in expectations (derive the derivative's derivative!). Cataclysm failed to do this. Wrath of the Lich King was an effective teacher and it taught us that purples were something to have, not something to get. Perhaps Cataclysm could have successfully transitioned back to blues, but it did not. I blame some of this on the lack of sets; none except for PvP and a few crafted; neither of which are instance loot. I've said it before, that sets are special, telling players that they are allowed to stay in this gear for a while while they gather the rest of the set, that they aren't expected to get this item and drop it an hour later.
In conclusion: The title:
Cataclysm heroics should have dropped legendaries.
Desolace 2.0: At least the old one didn't have quests
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Tuesday, February 14, 2012
Yea yea, exaggeration, the original Desolace had quests, but not many, and it was pretty easy to tell that it wasn't a great zone. Then came the Cataclysm and Blizzard was faced with the challenge of making what may have been the most disliked zone into something that would not cause a sudden drop in subscriber numbers when people reached level 30.
They failed.
Desolace appears to have been carefully designed to be terrible. A bad quest can happen now and then, and some zones are more fun than others, but I Desolace appears to have been planned. There are just far too many absurdly stupid and bad elements.
Step one: Go to Desolace.
Well alright! Now we're talking. Hero's Board says go, so off I fly to the northern-most place: Nigel's Point. Maybe I should have ridden, because of course the starting quest isn't there, silly! So I ride over a little bit to get the first quest: a breadcrumb to Nigel's Point.
Step two: Butter him up.
You know what time it is? That's right, demon-fighting time. Now, paladin, you're going to get a quest to go down there and tear a path of destruction through a whole lot of demons. It was pretty awesome. So no complaints there.
Step three: Kill naga so you can make a naga suit so you can talk to a naga to learn why you should talk to an elemental who you were going to end up talking to anyway because he was already fighting the naga and then without actually assisting in the fight, tell him how to kill the naga leader.
Get rewarded for contributing absolutely nothing. I guess it's practice for LFR.
Step four: Hey look, green stuff!
Some trees and flowers grew here, so obviously, we need you to start wiping out the local wildlife, to restore the balance that was never there in the first place. Note that this came from druids, not Hemingway. Somehow I missed the quest to go help a Tauren who isn't slaughtering wildlife, but more on him later.
Step five: You're really good at not doing anything, so we're going to give you another chance to show off your skills, by riding a centaur.
When I first got the quest I was confused about the "you get to fight alongside us"; what were they going to do, kill me if I attacked a demon too? Then I figured out that I ride one. Okay. Then I told it what to do, with most of the buttons seeming to do nothing, which I think was because they were only for the last fight and they figured they'd give a preview of all the abilities we'd not use by giving us buttons that didn't work. To fully comprehend the utter pointlessness of my presence in these battles, note that not only could I not use any of my abilities, but my auras were disabled. I know that's just how vehicles work, but it really did get the point across that I, as a character or player, was entirely redundant. And why the hell are centaur, which as best as I can tell are the logical evolution of Gengis Khan's Mongolian hordes, incapable of attacking while moving? That was one, among many, of the reasons that the Mongolians were badasses who conquered of everywhere that wasn't separated by an ocean. Imagine if they'd had dolphins to ride! But no, the WoW equivalent are just lame brutes who get their asses kicked by a minor demonic invasion, despite apparently being fully capable of fighting back, if only they had someone else sitting on their backs ordering them around.
Step six: Bird nets are like dinner plates for hyenas, right?
Finally, I meet a tauren who seems to have a way to save the wildlife that doesn't involve killing it. Apparently every other druid learned about ecology from the same people who taught us how to keep villagers from turning Communist. He has a great idea: Take these eggs that he somehow got and give them to birds. He doesn't explain where he got the eggs, but I'm picturing him fighting off an angry mother bird to get them. I have the job of placing them in nests. How nice! Except for a few problems. First off, these aren't their eggs. While altruism does exist in nature, infanticide also exists, and is pretty common, particularly when the parents are nowhere to be found. Even worse, these 'nests' are just piles of sticks on the ground. But I figured, fine, I'll stick the egg there and a mother will come get it, hopefully before one of the many large reptiles wandering around eats it. I hadn't fully read the quest. Yea, turns out the tauren anticipated this, so my job was to fight off basilisks and hyenas until a swoop came to get it. Because we know nothing attracts birds like the loud sounds of violence. Finally there is this mystery: Where are these eggs being taken, if not to nests, which are probably also just piles of sticks on the ground, and if they are not and are actually safe, why am I not putting them there in the first place? And where the hell did he get all these eggs to hand out to violent strangers?
I'm not sure how I automatically (magically?) knew that the stuff laying around was element 116, but as a general rule of thumb, it's a bad idea to pick of pieces of smouldering, highly-radioactive elements. That's what they did at Chernobyl and the biobots didn't turn out well. And of course the best thing to do with this stuff is to give it to a goblin who is out here for no apparent reason, because goblins are known for their environmental records. To prove the point, he asked me to engage in some mass slaughter.
But it gets better!
That's it. Yea, that's all of it. I find a weird rock that may be interfering with the rejuvenation of the area and all I do about it is sell Ununhexium to a goblin, kill a few dozen wildlife so he can sell armor and poison to the Horde (note that this is a draenei paladin), and nothing else. "Please, Draenei. Scour these lands and discover the source of the desert's stubbornness. " "And then be sure to not tell me about it."
Step Seven: If you're not using the map quest tracker to point your mount at the correct place, we think you are a stupid monkey who needs to be punished by being sent after a stealthed quest mob for which the quest text gives absolutely no detail about his location, so have fun riding in circles in frustration before giving up and finally, slowly, every so slowly, creeping toward the quest dot until you reach the range of stealth detection.
Step seven actually came sooner, but it wasn't until later in the stupid quests that I was annoyed enough to write this, and by then the stupidity of that last point had gotten overshadowed slightly by other quests.
Desolace was never a great place, but it appears to me that in their effort to revamp it, they managed to make it even worse.
On a brighter note, the one random group I did that caused me to outlevel the zone was a pretty good experience. No one died or did anything exceptionally stupid. After we killed the ridiculously short two-boss orange-side Maraudon, we continued on a little further, with no one dropping, until we killed the satyr boss on purple side. I'm not sure how they decided on that arbitrary stopping point, but it at least seemed a little better than silently dropping the second the second boss died.
So there we have it, if I'd had to pick one single reason I left WoW last year, it was LFD, and now that seems to be the single best feature. What the hell? Come to think of it, the quest structure still bugs me, guild leveling is simultaneously alienating and restricting, and ever since BC, PvP has become more and more inaccessible to new players, so I guess an improvement in one feature would make it stand out pretty well.
They failed.
Desolace appears to have been carefully designed to be terrible. A bad quest can happen now and then, and some zones are more fun than others, but I Desolace appears to have been planned. There are just far too many absurdly stupid and bad elements.
Step one: Go to Desolace.
Well alright! Now we're talking. Hero's Board says go, so off I fly to the northern-most place: Nigel's Point. Maybe I should have ridden, because of course the starting quest isn't there, silly! So I ride over a little bit to get the first quest: a breadcrumb to Nigel's Point.
Step two: Butter him up.
You know what time it is? That's right, demon-fighting time. Now, paladin, you're going to get a quest to go down there and tear a path of destruction through a whole lot of demons. It was pretty awesome. So no complaints there.
Step three: Kill naga so you can make a naga suit so you can talk to a naga to learn why you should talk to an elemental who you were going to end up talking to anyway because he was already fighting the naga and then without actually assisting in the fight, tell him how to kill the naga leader.
Get rewarded for contributing absolutely nothing. I guess it's practice for LFR.
Step four: Hey look, green stuff!
Some trees and flowers grew here, so obviously, we need you to start wiping out the local wildlife, to restore the balance that was never there in the first place. Note that this came from druids, not Hemingway. Somehow I missed the quest to go help a Tauren who isn't slaughtering wildlife, but more on him later.
Step five: You're really good at not doing anything, so we're going to give you another chance to show off your skills, by riding a centaur.
When I first got the quest I was confused about the "you get to fight alongside us"; what were they going to do, kill me if I attacked a demon too? Then I figured out that I ride one. Okay. Then I told it what to do, with most of the buttons seeming to do nothing, which I think was because they were only for the last fight and they figured they'd give a preview of all the abilities we'd not use by giving us buttons that didn't work. To fully comprehend the utter pointlessness of my presence in these battles, note that not only could I not use any of my abilities, but my auras were disabled. I know that's just how vehicles work, but it really did get the point across that I, as a character or player, was entirely redundant. And why the hell are centaur, which as best as I can tell are the logical evolution of Gengis Khan's Mongolian hordes, incapable of attacking while moving? That was one, among many, of the reasons that the Mongolians were badasses who conquered of everywhere that wasn't separated by an ocean. Imagine if they'd had dolphins to ride! But no, the WoW equivalent are just lame brutes who get their asses kicked by a minor demonic invasion, despite apparently being fully capable of fighting back, if only they had someone else sitting on their backs ordering them around.
Step six: Bird nets are like dinner plates for hyenas, right?
Finally, I meet a tauren who seems to have a way to save the wildlife that doesn't involve killing it. Apparently every other druid learned about ecology from the same people who taught us how to keep villagers from turning Communist. He has a great idea: Take these eggs that he somehow got and give them to birds. He doesn't explain where he got the eggs, but I'm picturing him fighting off an angry mother bird to get them. I have the job of placing them in nests. How nice! Except for a few problems. First off, these aren't their eggs. While altruism does exist in nature, infanticide also exists, and is pretty common, particularly when the parents are nowhere to be found. Even worse, these 'nests' are just piles of sticks on the ground. But I figured, fine, I'll stick the egg there and a mother will come get it, hopefully before one of the many large reptiles wandering around eats it. I hadn't fully read the quest. Yea, turns out the tauren anticipated this, so my job was to fight off basilisks and hyenas until a swoop came to get it. Because we know nothing attracts birds like the loud sounds of violence. Finally there is this mystery: Where are these eggs being taken, if not to nests, which are probably also just piles of sticks on the ground, and if they are not and are actually safe, why am I not putting them there in the first place? And where the hell did he get all these eggs to hand out to violent strangers?
I'm not sure how I automatically (magically?) knew that the stuff laying around was element 116, but as a general rule of thumb, it's a bad idea to pick of pieces of smouldering, highly-radioactive elements. That's what they did at Chernobyl and the biobots didn't turn out well. And of course the best thing to do with this stuff is to give it to a goblin who is out here for no apparent reason, because goblins are known for their environmental records. To prove the point, he asked me to engage in some mass slaughter.
But it gets better!
That's it. Yea, that's all of it. I find a weird rock that may be interfering with the rejuvenation of the area and all I do about it is sell Ununhexium to a goblin, kill a few dozen wildlife so he can sell armor and poison to the Horde (note that this is a draenei paladin), and nothing else. "Please, Draenei. Scour these lands and discover the source of the desert's stubbornness. " "And then be sure to not tell me about it."
Step Seven: If you're not using the map quest tracker to point your mount at the correct place, we think you are a stupid monkey who needs to be punished by being sent after a stealthed quest mob for which the quest text gives absolutely no detail about his location, so have fun riding in circles in frustration before giving up and finally, slowly, every so slowly, creeping toward the quest dot until you reach the range of stealth detection.
Step seven actually came sooner, but it wasn't until later in the stupid quests that I was annoyed enough to write this, and by then the stupidity of that last point had gotten overshadowed slightly by other quests.
Desolace was never a great place, but it appears to me that in their effort to revamp it, they managed to make it even worse.
On a brighter note, the one random group I did that caused me to outlevel the zone was a pretty good experience. No one died or did anything exceptionally stupid. After we killed the ridiculously short two-boss orange-side Maraudon, we continued on a little further, with no one dropping, until we killed the satyr boss on purple side. I'm not sure how they decided on that arbitrary stopping point, but it at least seemed a little better than silently dropping the second the second boss died.
So there we have it, if I'd had to pick one single reason I left WoW last year, it was LFD, and now that seems to be the single best feature. What the hell? Come to think of it, the quest structure still bugs me, guild leveling is simultaneously alienating and restricting, and ever since BC, PvP has become more and more inaccessible to new players, so I guess an improvement in one feature would make it stand out pretty well.
Something Cataclysm Didn't Destroy
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Thursday, February 2, 2012
Did you know that when I run Scholomance, LBRS, UBRS, and Dire Maul East I get to fight an extra boss if I want? That's right, I do. You might wonder why. Or you're just wondering what I'm babbling on about this time. Well here are the bosses.
Isalien
Kormok
Mor Grayhoof
Lord Valthalak
To summon them you need this item, Brazier of Invocation, no longer available, thanks to a really great quest chain being removed.
And there used to be two additional mobs, Jarien and Sothos, but they were removed for being too high of a level, despite being in an instance a little higher than the ones with Kormok and Isalien.
I don't think they did much with LBRS/UBRS, so it's not surprising that those are still active. Dire Maul and Scholomance were reworked somewhat, which would give a chance to remove those bosses. Maybe removing them takes effort, since my guess is that the instances truly were retuned rather than remade, meaning that all the old triggers and whatnot are still in place. Though the anti-fun team always has time...
None of these really matter. I mean, the loot isn't anything great, particularly if you need a friend who would be level 60 to have the quest, meaning that even if they'd done nothing since vanilla, they'd still be heading off to Outland, not farming strangely-itemized gear from obscure bosses. But in a way, that's what makes them actually matter. It's easy to justify putting time into the middle of the road loot grinds and reputations. But to have something off the path, in a corner, where not everyone will see it or even know it is there (their fault for not reading this blog), that shows some dedication to having a world rather than just a themepark.
It gets better! Not, not in that way. Sorry, you're still going to be deined marriage, visitation rights, and a seat at Thanksgiving.
But in WoW, there is a trinket, Spectral Essence, which allows the player to see the ghosts outside Scholomance. One sells bread and water. Another is a blacksmith, which I may have to investigate further as a source of profit off obscure plans, and who I used to use when I farmed Scholomance, as a trash dump, not sure where he got the gold or put the stuff. Well, I'd deleted it, because when I needed it, I could ask for it, and with all my old stuff, I was low on space. And then Cataclysm hit.
Thankfully, it seems that Blizzard also left that ability in place, to ask for a new trinket. I just need to zone in now. Why was I, at level 85, in Scholomance? To test the bosses of course. Science!
But wait, there's more!
Blizzard stole all my keys and gave me a few measly gold for them. At this point it has crosses the Incompetence-Malice line into them clearly just being asses about it all. But I beat the system. A little. In a very minor way. I talked to Khadgar about losing my key to karazhan and would you believe it but... absolutely nothing happened. But I wasn't going to give up. I was going to fill my bags with unnecessary keys, dammit! I was not going to be set back, nor would I compromise my principles, at least not these ones. So I talked to the windchime and BAM, key to the arcatraz, sitting in my bag, taking up a bag slot for absolutely not use whatsover! TAKE THAT, BLIZZARD! I HAVE BEATEN YOU AT YOUR OWN GAME. Not even figuratively, I mean, it literally is your game. So booya.
One of these days you're going to get all mixed up and accidentally close the gates to Ahn'Qiraj and I will BE THERE with my The Scepter of the Shifting Sands and you're going to have no idea what hit you. And neither will I, because first I'd need to gather ten skrillion linen bandages for the war effort.
And then you'll try to have a Scourge invasion to stop me, but I'll have my Blessed Battlegear of Undead Slaying as well as 233 Necrotic Runes, which I'm sure by then will be used to purchase tier 57 and I will have beaten your system, exactly as intended. According to a bear.
It's not all good news. Barov Peasant Caller shares a cooldown with the Barov Peasant Caller, and for some reason, the new, lower-level version has an every so slightly higher vendor value than the level 60 version. SLAP IN THE FACE.
And as of writing, a sunflower just went chasing after a bird through the bank.
Isalien
Kormok
Mor Grayhoof
Lord Valthalak
To summon them you need this item, Brazier of Invocation, no longer available, thanks to a really great quest chain being removed.
And there used to be two additional mobs, Jarien and Sothos, but they were removed for being too high of a level, despite being in an instance a little higher than the ones with Kormok and Isalien.
I don't think they did much with LBRS/UBRS, so it's not surprising that those are still active. Dire Maul and Scholomance were reworked somewhat, which would give a chance to remove those bosses. Maybe removing them takes effort, since my guess is that the instances truly were retuned rather than remade, meaning that all the old triggers and whatnot are still in place. Though the anti-fun team always has time...
None of these really matter. I mean, the loot isn't anything great, particularly if you need a friend who would be level 60 to have the quest, meaning that even if they'd done nothing since vanilla, they'd still be heading off to Outland, not farming strangely-itemized gear from obscure bosses. But in a way, that's what makes them actually matter. It's easy to justify putting time into the middle of the road loot grinds and reputations. But to have something off the path, in a corner, where not everyone will see it or even know it is there (their fault for not reading this blog), that shows some dedication to having a world rather than just a themepark.
It gets better! Not, not in that way. Sorry, you're still going to be deined marriage, visitation rights, and a seat at Thanksgiving.
But in WoW, there is a trinket, Spectral Essence, which allows the player to see the ghosts outside Scholomance. One sells bread and water. Another is a blacksmith, which I may have to investigate further as a source of profit off obscure plans, and who I used to use when I farmed Scholomance, as a trash dump, not sure where he got the gold or put the stuff. Well, I'd deleted it, because when I needed it, I could ask for it, and with all my old stuff, I was low on space. And then Cataclysm hit.
Thankfully, it seems that Blizzard also left that ability in place, to ask for a new trinket. I just need to zone in now. Why was I, at level 85, in Scholomance? To test the bosses of course. Science!
But wait, there's more!
Blizzard stole all my keys and gave me a few measly gold for them. At this point it has crosses the Incompetence-Malice line into them clearly just being asses about it all. But I beat the system. A little. In a very minor way. I talked to Khadgar about losing my key to karazhan and would you believe it but... absolutely nothing happened. But I wasn't going to give up. I was going to fill my bags with unnecessary keys, dammit! I was not going to be set back, nor would I compromise my principles, at least not these ones. So I talked to the windchime and BAM, key to the arcatraz, sitting in my bag, taking up a bag slot for absolutely not use whatsover! TAKE THAT, BLIZZARD! I HAVE BEATEN YOU AT YOUR OWN GAME. Not even figuratively, I mean, it literally is your game. So booya.
One of these days you're going to get all mixed up and accidentally close the gates to Ahn'Qiraj and I will BE THERE with my The Scepter of the Shifting Sands and you're going to have no idea what hit you. And neither will I, because first I'd need to gather ten skrillion linen bandages for the war effort.
And then you'll try to have a Scourge invasion to stop me, but I'll have my Blessed Battlegear of Undead Slaying as well as 233 Necrotic Runes, which I'm sure by then will be used to purchase tier 57 and I will have beaten your system, exactly as intended. According to a bear.
It's not all good news. Barov Peasant Caller shares a cooldown with the Barov Peasant Caller, and for some reason, the new, lower-level version has an every so slightly higher vendor value than the level 60 version. SLAP IN THE FACE.
And as of writing, a sunflower just went chasing after a bird through the bank.
The sanity deadzone
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Tuesday, June 14, 2011
Imagine if capping your badge points of winning required 20-40 hours per week. Would you do that? I'm guessing you'd probably do it once, on some really awful week, and never ever again. You'd also never expect anyone else to do it, ever. In other words, you'd accept that people would be gaining in badges at less than the maximum rate. You would consciously accept that less than optimal is acceptable. Why?
Because optimal would be insane. Remember this idea, we'll need it later.
Now imagine that capping your points of super instead required a mere one hour per week. Would you ever not do that? I'm guessing yes, during some really awful week, or possibly a really great week, but in some way a week that causes you to not devote a mere one hour in an entire week to capping points. But in general you'll get it done, because it's just that easy. If you didn't cap points you'd probably look pretty lazy. I mean, wow. You cannot find one hour? Lazy, stupid, worthless piece of crap. Why?
Because optimal is too easy to not do. Also remember this one.
Now put that time requirement closer to the middle, somewhere between 2 and 8 hours. Over a week these aren't insane amounts of time to play, barely over an hour a day. But are they trivial? Can you guarantee that you will have 8 hours in a week? Remember, that's barely an hour a day. Not much, not trivial. You could very easily not have that 8 hours, particularly if those 8 hours are in addition to other activities.
But it still sounds reasonable. It's a trap.
The 8 hours sounds reasonable, and I think it is, but it is not universally reasonable. And yet, because it is so reasonable, it may be universally accepted and expected. It is the sanity deadzone.
Somewhere between so absurd that we'd never expect it and so trivial we'd never fail it, there is the sanity deadzone. In this area the requirement is not so high that we'd think anyone cannot do it, but high enough that some people cannot do it (or don't care enough to).
Of course this post is about why BC had a much better badge system than now.
BC badges were in the insane range. Would you ever expect someone to cap their badges for the week? BC had 16 instances. Some were short. Some were not. Even if they were a mere 15 minutes each (nowhere close, except some SH runs on my paladin...), that's still 4 hours, every day. Plus a few dailies that gave badges. And Karazhan (decent-length raid, best one ever). And every raid after that. Capping badges for the week was not a reasonable expectation at all. Capping for the day was not either. I did every heroic in a day, once, and never ever again.
LK used something fairly close to the trivial range. One random heroic a day and the weekly random raid to cap the good badges, plus possibly ICC. With heroics down to 15-30 minutes, this wasn't so bad. But I didn't count DPS queue times, did I? So add another 15-45 minutes. Now we're in that (arbitrarily defined) sanity deadzone. To cap isn't insane, but it isn't trivial either.
This carried over, but worse, into Cataclysm. Heroics take longer and fail more, yet the daily expectation remains. Yet it has become less reasonable. Of course you can argue that the failure rate is a temporary condition of gear, but is that any comfort to the person who has now had his 10th wipe, 5th healer, and 20th tank?
This is a rare situation where the extremes are better than a moderate position. An insane cap can be ignored. A trivial cap is trivial. But in the middle you get conflict. This is the sanity deadzone.
Because optimal would be insane. Remember this idea, we'll need it later.
Now imagine that capping your points of super instead required a mere one hour per week. Would you ever not do that? I'm guessing yes, during some really awful week, or possibly a really great week, but in some way a week that causes you to not devote a mere one hour in an entire week to capping points. But in general you'll get it done, because it's just that easy. If you didn't cap points you'd probably look pretty lazy. I mean, wow. You cannot find one hour? Lazy, stupid, worthless piece of crap. Why?
Because optimal is too easy to not do. Also remember this one.
Now put that time requirement closer to the middle, somewhere between 2 and 8 hours. Over a week these aren't insane amounts of time to play, barely over an hour a day. But are they trivial? Can you guarantee that you will have 8 hours in a week? Remember, that's barely an hour a day. Not much, not trivial. You could very easily not have that 8 hours, particularly if those 8 hours are in addition to other activities.
But it still sounds reasonable. It's a trap.
The 8 hours sounds reasonable, and I think it is, but it is not universally reasonable. And yet, because it is so reasonable, it may be universally accepted and expected. It is the sanity deadzone.
Somewhere between so absurd that we'd never expect it and so trivial we'd never fail it, there is the sanity deadzone. In this area the requirement is not so high that we'd think anyone cannot do it, but high enough that some people cannot do it (or don't care enough to).
Of course this post is about why BC had a much better badge system than now.
BC badges were in the insane range. Would you ever expect someone to cap their badges for the week? BC had 16 instances. Some were short. Some were not. Even if they were a mere 15 minutes each (nowhere close, except some SH runs on my paladin...), that's still 4 hours, every day. Plus a few dailies that gave badges. And Karazhan (decent-length raid, best one ever). And every raid after that. Capping badges for the week was not a reasonable expectation at all. Capping for the day was not either. I did every heroic in a day, once, and never ever again.
LK used something fairly close to the trivial range. One random heroic a day and the weekly random raid to cap the good badges, plus possibly ICC. With heroics down to 15-30 minutes, this wasn't so bad. But I didn't count DPS queue times, did I? So add another 15-45 minutes. Now we're in that (arbitrarily defined) sanity deadzone. To cap isn't insane, but it isn't trivial either.
This carried over, but worse, into Cataclysm. Heroics take longer and fail more, yet the daily expectation remains. Yet it has become less reasonable. Of course you can argue that the failure rate is a temporary condition of gear, but is that any comfort to the person who has now had his 10th wipe, 5th healer, and 20th tank?
This is a rare situation where the extremes are better than a moderate position. An insane cap can be ignored. A trivial cap is trivial. But in the middle you get conflict. This is the sanity deadzone.
Leave Cataclysm Alone!
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Thursday, June 9, 2011
I briefly mentioned this during the Twisted Nether interview, but I think it deserves another saying: Cataclysm was not a horrible expansion and would have been a pretty awesome game by itself. The problem is Wrath of the Lich King. Or was.
What did LK do? It gave WoW a whole lot of problems. Cataclysm, at worst, built off those, but in terms of truly creating new problems, Cataclysm didn't do a whole lot wrong (beside retaining LK problems).
Problems that LK brought to WoW:
- Taught us that heroics are meant to be trivial zerging lootfests. Cataclysm tried to fix that and make heroics more challenging and presumably more fun. But once people have been trained to expect something, especially if that something is a lot of rewards very fast, they don't like change.
- Brought about extensive use of phasing. Cataclysm extended this. If anything, Cataclysm did it better, using phasing in solo-oriented content such as leveling. LK used this anti-grouping mechanic (fall behind and the other person must wait, cannot help) for lead-ins to group quests and instances. Phasing also encourages, even requires, highly-linear quest designs.
- Random formation of cross-server groups. Your mileage will vary in terms of how much you care about the negative social effects relative to the speed gain. But I do think that BC had higher-quality groups than LK and beyond. We could blame this on a population change, but that would assume data that I don't have, whereas we can see how the devs changed incentives and social mechanics with these features.
- Everything became about raiding. Now certainly vanilla and BC had a lot of raiding going on and a lot of raiding content. But there was not an expectation that everyone would raid or must raid. Both had players who wanted to raid but could not due to this or that problem unrelated to skill, and so changes were almost certainly to their benefit. But I suspect that a lot of players who did not particularly want to raid were driven into it by the structure of the game. Late-game (not end-game) content was thinner, in favor of fast gearing to get people into raids. This causes all sorts of problems, such as players who lack internal motivation to raid and who must instead be driven purely by loot or social pressure, neither of which are long-term formulas for fun.
- Blue sets, what? BC had blue-quality late-game sets. They were not fantastic at all. But some pieces were okay. My paladin used a couple pieces for a while. Other classes had similar experiences. These were not amazing sets, but sets give some sense of legitimacy, they say that this tier is one that is okay to be at. Sets indicate that the devs think you will be here a while and are okay with rewarding that. LK had no instance sets, nor did Cataclysm. It says something: don't stick around and do not, under any circumstances, feel like anything you got here is worth remembering or keeping.
I'm not claiming that sets imply we are meant to stay at a certain level of content, since I doubt we're meant to spend months in VC or WC (both have sets). But the lack of a set does indicate that content is meant to be temporary and fleeting.
- I will do the math so I can properly blame LK for jewelcrafting (since BC is currently the best time ever in WoW, having replaced vanilla despite neither changing), but that's a bit too complex for right now. The number of gems isn't the problem (I checked).
- Time. LK gave WoW a new way of doing thing. Some was good, some was bad. It took time for people to get sick of the bad and quite, which coincidentally put it during Cataclysm. Also, if not for LK, Cataclysm would have been sooner and there would have been fewer horribly burnt-out veteran players leaving.
If WoW had Cataclysm, minus LK, it would be in a much stronger position.
What did LK do? It gave WoW a whole lot of problems. Cataclysm, at worst, built off those, but in terms of truly creating new problems, Cataclysm didn't do a whole lot wrong (beside retaining LK problems).
Problems that LK brought to WoW:
- Taught us that heroics are meant to be trivial zerging lootfests. Cataclysm tried to fix that and make heroics more challenging and presumably more fun. But once people have been trained to expect something, especially if that something is a lot of rewards very fast, they don't like change.
- Brought about extensive use of phasing. Cataclysm extended this. If anything, Cataclysm did it better, using phasing in solo-oriented content such as leveling. LK used this anti-grouping mechanic (fall behind and the other person must wait, cannot help) for lead-ins to group quests and instances. Phasing also encourages, even requires, highly-linear quest designs.
- Random formation of cross-server groups. Your mileage will vary in terms of how much you care about the negative social effects relative to the speed gain. But I do think that BC had higher-quality groups than LK and beyond. We could blame this on a population change, but that would assume data that I don't have, whereas we can see how the devs changed incentives and social mechanics with these features.
- Everything became about raiding. Now certainly vanilla and BC had a lot of raiding going on and a lot of raiding content. But there was not an expectation that everyone would raid or must raid. Both had players who wanted to raid but could not due to this or that problem unrelated to skill, and so changes were almost certainly to their benefit. But I suspect that a lot of players who did not particularly want to raid were driven into it by the structure of the game. Late-game (not end-game) content was thinner, in favor of fast gearing to get people into raids. This causes all sorts of problems, such as players who lack internal motivation to raid and who must instead be driven purely by loot or social pressure, neither of which are long-term formulas for fun.
- Blue sets, what? BC had blue-quality late-game sets. They were not fantastic at all. But some pieces were okay. My paladin used a couple pieces for a while. Other classes had similar experiences. These were not amazing sets, but sets give some sense of legitimacy, they say that this tier is one that is okay to be at. Sets indicate that the devs think you will be here a while and are okay with rewarding that. LK had no instance sets, nor did Cataclysm. It says something: don't stick around and do not, under any circumstances, feel like anything you got here is worth remembering or keeping.
I'm not claiming that sets imply we are meant to stay at a certain level of content, since I doubt we're meant to spend months in VC or WC (both have sets). But the lack of a set does indicate that content is meant to be temporary and fleeting.
- I will do the math so I can properly blame LK for jewelcrafting (since BC is currently the best time ever in WoW, having replaced vanilla despite neither changing), but that's a bit too complex for right now. The number of gems isn't the problem (I checked).
- Time. LK gave WoW a new way of doing thing. Some was good, some was bad. It took time for people to get sick of the bad and quite, which coincidentally put it during Cataclysm. Also, if not for LK, Cataclysm would have been sooner and there would have been fewer horribly burnt-out veteran players leaving.
If WoW had Cataclysm, minus LK, it would be in a much stronger position.
Cataclysm should have been an expansion
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Tuesday, May 31, 2011
Cataclysm was an expansion in name only. Whether we call the remade zones new content or not, they replace the old Azeroth, which means that they do not expand the world, merely change it (a lot). We did get a few entirely new zones for 80+, but in terms of quests, levels, and geography, the remade world was the big thing.
This caused some problems. Rohan pointed out a big one: the remade zones don't make a whole lot of sense to a new player. This may be a selective perception, but I felt like vanilla, and then eventually LK, did a good job of introducing the story, so that even without needing to play earlier Warcraft games or reading books, it all made some amount of sense. BC was a bit more disorienting, but some of that may have been merely the sudden influx of glowing purple crystals. But the remade Azeroth feels as if it's a huge reference to the old Azeroth, which is of course, gone.
This creates a worst of both worlds scenario. New players may wonder what the world was before, and have no good way to find out, since that content is all gone. As Rohan describes it, it's like if volume IV of a series came out, but they burned volume I. It's not much better for veterans who may miss the old content. Or even worse, since not everything is completely new, we can see what is new and what is old. The old feels lazy, or in the case of some tweaked quest chains (I'm looking at you, Darrowshire), butchered. Meanwhile new content can feel out of place in this almost the old place but not quite.
Then there's the time problem. Before WoW followed something almost like linear time: Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdoms (pre-60) came first, then Outland came next (60+), and finally Northrend (70+). Levels fit the timeline. There was the ability to go back to old zones or do them out of order, but that was a player action; the structure of the world made sense. The remake breaks that, with the 1-60 content taking place after the 60-80 content.
Cataclysm as a proper expansion would have fixed this, along with other problems. As an expansion the remade Azeroth would have come after Northrend, somewhere in the 80+ range. How exactly this would fit in, I'm not sure, but the simplest way seems to be a Caverns of Time portal that can switch us between new and old Azeroth, much as the Dark Portal moves us between Azeroth and Northrend.
Having only five more levels made the new content feel lacking, if only because people like more numbers, regardless of the actual content. But if the remade Azeroth started at 80, it could have easily added another five levels. At the least, it would have allowed the devs to speed up Uldum and Vash'jir, both of which dragged on a bit, despite having cool concepts.
In terms of story-telling, it would make the expansion more potent for new players. Sure, the scale is obvious, but it's all something that happened to someone else. Pre-Cataclysm players would instead know what used to be, remember questing there, have some attachment, good or bad, to what was destroyed, which gives the destruction that much more impact.
Compare this with the Caverns of Time instances, which do this, but in reverse, showing us what our world used to be, which can still draw on memory and attachment to give a greater sense of meaning. Players in the Culling of Stratholme can see the city before it is burning, filled with people, in its full splendor, all of which would be meaningless if they didn't yet know it as a burning city of the dead. Similarly, though in my experience, less strongly, the Escape from Durnhold let us see it before the Syndicate, and before Thrall blew it up with lightning (something which I don't think WoW mentions). It adds a little bit more meaning to the rotten state of Tarren Mill to see it before the Forsaken moved in, before it was decaying.
In short form: Cataclysm is more powerful if it is preceded by vanilla.
But remaking Azeroth, duplicating it for a single expansion, does have problems.
Right now leveling is too fast, despite using less than the full world for an entire 60 levels. The speed of all the new and remade zones compressed into only 10 levels would be terrible. We'd get a quarter of a level before leaving a zone, meaning either extremely short zones (few quests and done quickly) or unbearably slow leveling. Yes, even I, the advocate of slow leveling, do believe it can be too slow. This could be fixed up a bit by adding levels. With 20 levels I think a new Azeroth could be made to work as an expansion. However Blizzard would have to throw out their philosophy of maintaining a constant time to max level with each expansion (which I think they should do anyway).
Two Azeroths could feel repetitive, despite the separation of two expansions between them. This would only get worse with alts. Creating entirely fresh quests would help, but that would further increase the development work needed.
Instances would have been a huge problem, especially if heroics were mixed in. I have no good ideas for dealing with those.
Perhaps the solution would have been two Cataclysms, meaning to expansions, one after LK and another one after that. One expansion for Kalimdor (Horde bias!), using that continent remade for ten levels and the raids to go with. Then something triggers the same for the Eastern Kingdoms, for another ten levels. This would be more than a little bit contrived, but let's face it, "dragon who slept all the time suddenly wakes up right as we're looking for an excuse to add flying mounts to even more areas" isn't exactly a logical progression. Well okay, dev/marketing logic, but not normal person logic.
Now if only I had a time machine and a printout of the sub numbers for cata...
This caused some problems. Rohan pointed out a big one: the remade zones don't make a whole lot of sense to a new player. This may be a selective perception, but I felt like vanilla, and then eventually LK, did a good job of introducing the story, so that even without needing to play earlier Warcraft games or reading books, it all made some amount of sense. BC was a bit more disorienting, but some of that may have been merely the sudden influx of glowing purple crystals. But the remade Azeroth feels as if it's a huge reference to the old Azeroth, which is of course, gone.
This creates a worst of both worlds scenario. New players may wonder what the world was before, and have no good way to find out, since that content is all gone. As Rohan describes it, it's like if volume IV of a series came out, but they burned volume I. It's not much better for veterans who may miss the old content. Or even worse, since not everything is completely new, we can see what is new and what is old. The old feels lazy, or in the case of some tweaked quest chains (I'm looking at you, Darrowshire), butchered. Meanwhile new content can feel out of place in this almost the old place but not quite.
Then there's the time problem. Before WoW followed something almost like linear time: Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdoms (pre-60) came first, then Outland came next (60+), and finally Northrend (70+). Levels fit the timeline. There was the ability to go back to old zones or do them out of order, but that was a player action; the structure of the world made sense. The remake breaks that, with the 1-60 content taking place after the 60-80 content.
Cataclysm as a proper expansion would have fixed this, along with other problems. As an expansion the remade Azeroth would have come after Northrend, somewhere in the 80+ range. How exactly this would fit in, I'm not sure, but the simplest way seems to be a Caverns of Time portal that can switch us between new and old Azeroth, much as the Dark Portal moves us between Azeroth and Northrend.
Having only five more levels made the new content feel lacking, if only because people like more numbers, regardless of the actual content. But if the remade Azeroth started at 80, it could have easily added another five levels. At the least, it would have allowed the devs to speed up Uldum and Vash'jir, both of which dragged on a bit, despite having cool concepts.
In terms of story-telling, it would make the expansion more potent for new players. Sure, the scale is obvious, but it's all something that happened to someone else. Pre-Cataclysm players would instead know what used to be, remember questing there, have some attachment, good or bad, to what was destroyed, which gives the destruction that much more impact.
Compare this with the Caverns of Time instances, which do this, but in reverse, showing us what our world used to be, which can still draw on memory and attachment to give a greater sense of meaning. Players in the Culling of Stratholme can see the city before it is burning, filled with people, in its full splendor, all of which would be meaningless if they didn't yet know it as a burning city of the dead. Similarly, though in my experience, less strongly, the Escape from Durnhold let us see it before the Syndicate, and before Thrall blew it up with lightning (something which I don't think WoW mentions). It adds a little bit more meaning to the rotten state of Tarren Mill to see it before the Forsaken moved in, before it was decaying.
In short form: Cataclysm is more powerful if it is preceded by vanilla.
But remaking Azeroth, duplicating it for a single expansion, does have problems.
Right now leveling is too fast, despite using less than the full world for an entire 60 levels. The speed of all the new and remade zones compressed into only 10 levels would be terrible. We'd get a quarter of a level before leaving a zone, meaning either extremely short zones (few quests and done quickly) or unbearably slow leveling. Yes, even I, the advocate of slow leveling, do believe it can be too slow. This could be fixed up a bit by adding levels. With 20 levels I think a new Azeroth could be made to work as an expansion. However Blizzard would have to throw out their philosophy of maintaining a constant time to max level with each expansion (which I think they should do anyway).
Two Azeroths could feel repetitive, despite the separation of two expansions between them. This would only get worse with alts. Creating entirely fresh quests would help, but that would further increase the development work needed.
Instances would have been a huge problem, especially if heroics were mixed in. I have no good ideas for dealing with those.
Perhaps the solution would have been two Cataclysms, meaning to expansions, one after LK and another one after that. One expansion for Kalimdor (Horde bias!), using that continent remade for ten levels and the raids to go with. Then something triggers the same for the Eastern Kingdoms, for another ten levels. This would be more than a little bit contrived, but let's face it, "dragon who slept all the time suddenly wakes up right as we're looking for an excuse to add flying mounts to even more areas" isn't exactly a logical progression. Well okay, dev/marketing logic, but not normal person logic.
Now if only I had a time machine and a printout of the sub numbers for cata...
Players should see content
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Thursday, May 19, 2011
But how much?
For $15 a month you have access to all content in WoW. With a catch. There are barriers. These take three general forms: time, skill, and organization.
Time
Time barriers mean needing more time for content than you have. These can take the form of needing large blocks of time during the content, such as multi-hour heroics or raids which take even longer, which was a serious problem before raids could be saved week to week. Or the barrier can be not one of continuous blocks of time, but just time overall. Consumables can be major material sinks, meaning time sinks, as best symbolized by the original Naxxramas where the consumable requirements were so bad that a few high-end guilds became notorious for gold-buying (to buy pots) and eventually alchemy was er, tweaked (heavily nerfed) which is where the battle/guardian elixir system came from. Repair costs are somewhere between the two categories, being incurred by the raiding but using time outside the raids to compensate.
The ideal spot for a time barrier isn't simple to figure out. While no barrier at all sounds ideal, this can instead deprive players of a sense of investment. It can also act as a filtering mechanism. While it's hard to say that farming flask materials indicates skill, it does indicate some level of dedication, a quality which is frequently as necessary as skill. It's like a guild application: the actual answers are frequently pointless, but the guy who cannot even fill out an app is probably not the person you want around for serious content.
Skill
I'll keep this short: If someone isn't skilled enough for content, they aren't going to beat it. Let's just ignore the carrying/overgearing bits because those are beside the actual point. Skill is a barrier to seeing content. No, I'm not going to define skill. Pretend I did.
Organization
This is the task of assembling the required number of competent players, with competent being a theoretical mix of skill and gear which matches the minimum required for the content. This is closely linked with skill and time, since it's harder to find players if skill matters and time constraints get ever more difficult as you add people. Think of organizing five people for an hour. Now make that forty for three hours. See why there weren't a ton of raiders in vanilla? Now add a bit of skill requirement and it's a wonder anyone even got past BWL. A big server population will help, just by giving more chances of sufficient numbers of sufficiently skilled players being on at convenient times.
All
At this extreme content requires little to no skill, not much time, and is easy to organize, or done for you. Think LK heroics. Weren't those a blast? And there we go: why a "everyone sees all content" ideology isn't so great. Or as I said yesterday: "Get rid of all this “we want players to see content” crap. It’s not working out so well. It’s fundamentally incompatible with challenging content and good community." In retrospect, I could have phrased that less in a less combative manner, but I still think it's true.
The problem with this extreme is that everything ends up meaningless. There is no challenge overcome. No sense of investment. Nothing at all to inflate an ego, and if an MMO isn't inflating an ego, what is it doing? Oh sure, there's that social angle, but if the organization part is trivialized, that's going to take with a lot of the social binding.
None
Time, skill, and organization requirements are tuned such that you, whoever you are, will not have the combination of time, skill, and personal connections to even attune yourself for the Raid of Doom. This is the second job type thing, but working overtime, with a side job to pay the gold costs. Anyone who cannot do this is free to prance around the world at level 5, hoping the Doomboars doesn't kill them forever.
This is clearly the opposite of the All ideology. In both causes and effects. Sure, you cannot possibly get anywhere in this game. But if you did, oh man, would it feel awesome. If you beat the Raid of Doom you'd have the courage to do anything, like expose your by now translucent skin the the sky-bound nuclear ball known as the sun, protected by only some wisps of assorted gases known as the sky.
Sure, it's great that the few winners feel awesome, but so few people will possibly feel awesome that no one is going to play for long. Even the winners will have no one to gloat to. Trust me, that girl over there has no clue how awesome you are for killing Doomlord of the Doom Council on heroic mode in the Raid of Doom. Or that guy. Or that guy and girl. Two guys. I don't know, whatever you're into. Beside the point.
Some
Ah yes, the theoretical happy middle. In this magical land there are time sinks to keep us busy and feeling invested. We need a bit of skill, not so much that we're hopeless, but we're pretty sure that someday with practice we can go to the Raid of Significant But Not Overwhelming Challenges. Meanwhile the Raid of Puppy Flowers is fun enough. And man will it be cool to see the Raid of Doom! Organization isn't too bad, with raids which aren't gigantic, but we're still always eager for another person to play with.
But how much content do we actually see in this magical world?
Barriers should be such that players feel confident that they can progress, eventually. Enough content should be available to keep them entertained. But there must also be content that they cannot yet reach. Maybe some that they will never reach. But they can strive for it and not feel that it is in vain. Or another way to see it is that content should block players enough to feel meaningful to overcome, but not so much that it is unable to be overcome.
This still doesn't quite answer what to do with the amazing player and the garbage player. Can they play in the same world? To challenge the better player will mean blocking the lesser player, and likely the majority of players. Content creation must be profitable, attracting/retaining players to at least cover the cost of developing it. However the simple math of "this many players saw X content that cost ~Y" is not the full story. We also have to know how exclusive content affects the rest of the players. Is it something to strive for or is it a frustration? The attitude of the game company and how it communicates will affect this. Do they create the content as something to strive for or as an exclusive gift to their favorite players?
Expectations
These are the killer.
In vanilla I did three raids: MC, ZG, and AQ20. I never even saw Naxx or AQ40 and BWL killed me on the first boss. I have mixed memories of this. On one hand I wanted to see more content, and I did feel that there was a bit too much catering to the highest tier of play, but it wasn't a game-ruiner for me. I thought that someday I'd clear BWL and maybe even make some progress into AQ40. Someday.
I also did every 5-man, and the UBRS 10-man, many times. And some of the now-gone dungeon 2 upgrade chain, a set of quests which turned my blue set into a slightly better mix of blues and epics. This chain was long and for the time, expensive, but told an interesting story and even gave some more content in the form of additional bosses that I could resummon. This was the attempt, or impression of, alternative content.
In BC I had higher hopes. I really wanted to clear through Tempest Keep. I didn't. But I did do Kara (best raid ever), Gruul's Lair, Magtheridon's Giant Room, Zul'token'trollraid, and a little bit of SSC. I'd also hoped to clear SSC. Alas, BC introduced a stupid problem: the 10-25 man transition in raiding, with kara being the starter raid with 10 people and then every raid but ZA (which was released very late) needing 25 people. This created an organizational problem that constantly tore apart guilds and were generally a huge headache. If not for that, I think things might have gone better. So that may be my first time when I felt I should have gone further than I did and the devs were to blame. That is not a good thing.
I don't remember what I'd hoped for in LK. Honestly, I think by then I was starting to burn out. But I was disappointed at not clearing Ulduar. Very. But next thing badge inflation set in and I was progressively pushed into an incredibly shitty excuse for a raid called ToC (I refuse to even look up or remember what the stands for, trial of the crusader? Tournament? Who fucking cares?) and then the overhyped depressing place known as Icecrown Citadel. Sure, I killed the Lich King. Didn't really care. I wanted to get going on Shadowmourne. In this way Blizzard managed to combine the depressing power of trivializing content with the depressing power of excluding players from expected rewards. These go together.
As I see it, I should have barely even seen ICC. Ulduar, sure thing, all dead. ToC, yes, but in this theoretical space it is a raid worth caring about, not a buggy (no pun intended) gimmick festival to distract us from the lack of content. In this imaginary version of LK raiding, I'd not think that I in any way deserved the last legendary in the game. But because everything was made easy easy easy have this have that and that as well, and then suddenly something is help back: not fun.
Cataclysm piggy-backed on the LK expansion to take this to a whole new level. Maybe that's why six hundred thousand people left. There's the take-away lesson from this post: do not create expectations in players that you will not fulfill.
P.S. I expect that I won't have any more super-long posts like this for a while.
P.P.S. I wonder if I can fit more tags on here.
P.P.P.S. Woo, Blogger gave me the post back!
For $15 a month you have access to all content in WoW. With a catch. There are barriers. These take three general forms: time, skill, and organization.
Time
Time barriers mean needing more time for content than you have. These can take the form of needing large blocks of time during the content, such as multi-hour heroics or raids which take even longer, which was a serious problem before raids could be saved week to week. Or the barrier can be not one of continuous blocks of time, but just time overall. Consumables can be major material sinks, meaning time sinks, as best symbolized by the original Naxxramas where the consumable requirements were so bad that a few high-end guilds became notorious for gold-buying (to buy pots) and eventually alchemy was er, tweaked (heavily nerfed) which is where the battle/guardian elixir system came from. Repair costs are somewhere between the two categories, being incurred by the raiding but using time outside the raids to compensate.
The ideal spot for a time barrier isn't simple to figure out. While no barrier at all sounds ideal, this can instead deprive players of a sense of investment. It can also act as a filtering mechanism. While it's hard to say that farming flask materials indicates skill, it does indicate some level of dedication, a quality which is frequently as necessary as skill. It's like a guild application: the actual answers are frequently pointless, but the guy who cannot even fill out an app is probably not the person you want around for serious content.
Skill
I'll keep this short: If someone isn't skilled enough for content, they aren't going to beat it. Let's just ignore the carrying/overgearing bits because those are beside the actual point. Skill is a barrier to seeing content. No, I'm not going to define skill. Pretend I did.
Organization
This is the task of assembling the required number of competent players, with competent being a theoretical mix of skill and gear which matches the minimum required for the content. This is closely linked with skill and time, since it's harder to find players if skill matters and time constraints get ever more difficult as you add people. Think of organizing five people for an hour. Now make that forty for three hours. See why there weren't a ton of raiders in vanilla? Now add a bit of skill requirement and it's a wonder anyone even got past BWL. A big server population will help, just by giving more chances of sufficient numbers of sufficiently skilled players being on at convenient times.
All
At this extreme content requires little to no skill, not much time, and is easy to organize, or done for you. Think LK heroics. Weren't those a blast? And there we go: why a "everyone sees all content" ideology isn't so great. Or as I said yesterday: "Get rid of all this “we want players to see content” crap. It’s not working out so well. It’s fundamentally incompatible with challenging content and good community." In retrospect, I could have phrased that less in a less combative manner, but I still think it's true.
The problem with this extreme is that everything ends up meaningless. There is no challenge overcome. No sense of investment. Nothing at all to inflate an ego, and if an MMO isn't inflating an ego, what is it doing? Oh sure, there's that social angle, but if the organization part is trivialized, that's going to take with a lot of the social binding.
None
Time, skill, and organization requirements are tuned such that you, whoever you are, will not have the combination of time, skill, and personal connections to even attune yourself for the Raid of Doom. This is the second job type thing, but working overtime, with a side job to pay the gold costs. Anyone who cannot do this is free to prance around the world at level 5, hoping the Doomboars doesn't kill them forever.
This is clearly the opposite of the All ideology. In both causes and effects. Sure, you cannot possibly get anywhere in this game. But if you did, oh man, would it feel awesome. If you beat the Raid of Doom you'd have the courage to do anything, like expose your by now translucent skin the the sky-bound nuclear ball known as the sun, protected by only some wisps of assorted gases known as the sky.
Sure, it's great that the few winners feel awesome, but so few people will possibly feel awesome that no one is going to play for long. Even the winners will have no one to gloat to. Trust me, that girl over there has no clue how awesome you are for killing Doomlord of the Doom Council on heroic mode in the Raid of Doom. Or that guy. Or that guy and girl. Two guys. I don't know, whatever you're into. Beside the point.
Some
Ah yes, the theoretical happy middle. In this magical land there are time sinks to keep us busy and feeling invested. We need a bit of skill, not so much that we're hopeless, but we're pretty sure that someday with practice we can go to the Raid of Significant But Not Overwhelming Challenges. Meanwhile the Raid of Puppy Flowers is fun enough. And man will it be cool to see the Raid of Doom! Organization isn't too bad, with raids which aren't gigantic, but we're still always eager for another person to play with.
But how much content do we actually see in this magical world?
Barriers should be such that players feel confident that they can progress, eventually. Enough content should be available to keep them entertained. But there must also be content that they cannot yet reach. Maybe some that they will never reach. But they can strive for it and not feel that it is in vain. Or another way to see it is that content should block players enough to feel meaningful to overcome, but not so much that it is unable to be overcome.
This still doesn't quite answer what to do with the amazing player and the garbage player. Can they play in the same world? To challenge the better player will mean blocking the lesser player, and likely the majority of players. Content creation must be profitable, attracting/retaining players to at least cover the cost of developing it. However the simple math of "this many players saw X content that cost ~Y" is not the full story. We also have to know how exclusive content affects the rest of the players. Is it something to strive for or is it a frustration? The attitude of the game company and how it communicates will affect this. Do they create the content as something to strive for or as an exclusive gift to their favorite players?
Expectations
These are the killer.
In vanilla I did three raids: MC, ZG, and AQ20. I never even saw Naxx or AQ40 and BWL killed me on the first boss. I have mixed memories of this. On one hand I wanted to see more content, and I did feel that there was a bit too much catering to the highest tier of play, but it wasn't a game-ruiner for me. I thought that someday I'd clear BWL and maybe even make some progress into AQ40. Someday.
I also did every 5-man, and the UBRS 10-man, many times. And some of the now-gone dungeon 2 upgrade chain, a set of quests which turned my blue set into a slightly better mix of blues and epics. This chain was long and for the time, expensive, but told an interesting story and even gave some more content in the form of additional bosses that I could resummon. This was the attempt, or impression of, alternative content.
In BC I had higher hopes. I really wanted to clear through Tempest Keep. I didn't. But I did do Kara (best raid ever), Gruul's Lair, Magtheridon's Giant Room, Zul'token'trollraid, and a little bit of SSC. I'd also hoped to clear SSC. Alas, BC introduced a stupid problem: the 10-25 man transition in raiding, with kara being the starter raid with 10 people and then every raid but ZA (which was released very late) needing 25 people. This created an organizational problem that constantly tore apart guilds and were generally a huge headache. If not for that, I think things might have gone better. So that may be my first time when I felt I should have gone further than I did and the devs were to blame. That is not a good thing.
I don't remember what I'd hoped for in LK. Honestly, I think by then I was starting to burn out. But I was disappointed at not clearing Ulduar. Very. But next thing badge inflation set in and I was progressively pushed into an incredibly shitty excuse for a raid called ToC (I refuse to even look up or remember what the stands for, trial of the crusader? Tournament? Who fucking cares?) and then the overhyped depressing place known as Icecrown Citadel. Sure, I killed the Lich King. Didn't really care. I wanted to get going on Shadowmourne. In this way Blizzard managed to combine the depressing power of trivializing content with the depressing power of excluding players from expected rewards. These go together.
As I see it, I should have barely even seen ICC. Ulduar, sure thing, all dead. ToC, yes, but in this theoretical space it is a raid worth caring about, not a buggy (no pun intended) gimmick festival to distract us from the lack of content. In this imaginary version of LK raiding, I'd not think that I in any way deserved the last legendary in the game. But because everything was made easy easy easy have this have that and that as well, and then suddenly something is help back: not fun.
Cataclysm piggy-backed on the LK expansion to take this to a whole new level. Maybe that's why six hundred thousand people left. There's the take-away lesson from this post: do not create expectations in players that you will not fulfill.
P.S. I expect that I won't have any more super-long posts like this for a while.
P.P.S. I wonder if I can fit more tags on here.
P.P.P.S. Woo, Blogger gave me the post back!
Labels:
Cataclysm,
gaming,
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philosophy,
raiding,
world of warcraft,
Wrath of the Lich King
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'Carrying' a tank: Yes, DPS have gotten that bad.
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Thursday, April 7, 2011
I might as well jump on Tobold's bandwagon of making posts to respond to comments on his blog.
Those are not carrying. Those are how you are supposed to play. I know, it's crazy, the thought that DPS would do anything other than mindlessly punch something. But here's the reality:
This gets its own line.
If you're not using all your abilities, you or someone else is overgeared and there is carrying going on.
Or to put it another way:
DPS have gotten so damn spoiled by tanks carrying them that the moment the tank puts them down, the DPS thinks they are carrying the tank.
Or to put it another another way:
This is part of why I got sick of WoW. I like the idea of tanking, but the actual practice of it is a pain in the ass because so many people play like absolute shit and then whine that it's my fault.
Most DPS aren't bad. Most players aren't bad. But the players who are bad are noticeable.
It is possible to carry a tank, in extreme circumstances. If we assume that the healer is properly geared and skilled, but still cannot keep up the tank, then a DPS helping with heals will be carrying the tank. Similarly, if the healer is overgeared, they may be carrying the tank. But...
Using CC and interrupts are not at all carrying the tank. They're your fucking job. Fuck. You've got me swearing about how fucking stupid you are being. You know who you are. Fuckers.
I think I just used more bold text in this post than I have this entire year, and the one before. God dammit.
Oh here, masterlooter had a pretty good comment, slightly trimmed.
On a lighter note, tomorrow I will complain about Nazis.
There are a few ways good DPS can "carry" a tank.. lets see.
They can use proper CC both before the pull and during (such as stuns), put up proper damage reducing debuffs, interrupt spell casts (HUGE), move out of bad (to help the healer), make sure to not pull threat, consistently using threat re-directing abilities, not pulling more then the minimum number of creatures, tossing out off healing if needed, tanking or kiting creatures briefly if needed.
Those are not carrying. Those are how you are supposed to play. I know, it's crazy, the thought that DPS would do anything other than mindlessly punch something. But here's the reality:
This gets its own line.
If you're not using all your abilities, you or someone else is overgeared and there is carrying going on.
Or to put it another way:
DPS have gotten so damn spoiled by tanks carrying them that the moment the tank puts them down, the DPS thinks they are carrying the tank.
Or to put it another another way:
This is part of why I got sick of WoW. I like the idea of tanking, but the actual practice of it is a pain in the ass because so many people play like absolute shit and then whine that it's my fault.
Most DPS aren't bad. Most players aren't bad. But the players who are bad are noticeable.
It is possible to carry a tank, in extreme circumstances. If we assume that the healer is properly geared and skilled, but still cannot keep up the tank, then a DPS helping with heals will be carrying the tank. Similarly, if the healer is overgeared, they may be carrying the tank. But...
Using CC and interrupts are not at all carrying the tank. They're your fucking job. Fuck. You've got me swearing about how fucking stupid you are being. You know who you are. Fuckers.
I think I just used more bold text in this post than I have this entire year, and the one before. God dammit.
Oh here, masterlooter had a pretty good comment, slightly trimmed.
I think there might be a confusion on terminology here.
"Carrying" implies that the group/raid could very likely have done the event without the "carried" player being there at all.If you're saying that you're "carrying" a tank. that means you could have done the instance without a tank altogether.
Other players needing to CC, interupt, "heal more", and aggro dump are NOT indicators of "carrying" a tank. It's just using different strategies with the group you have at hand. It's no different than how some guilds 2 tank Omnitron, and others single tank it. Those with 2 tanks are not "carrying" another tank - just using a different strategy.
Four man a heroic 5 man instance without someone in a tank spec, then you can say you're able to "carry" a tank.
On a lighter note, tomorrow I will complain about Nazis.
CC that you can't outgear
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Wednesday, January 26, 2011
I have a rapidly growing imaginary list of stupid expectations I had for Cataclysm. One was that we wouldn't be quickly outgearing heroics to the point of forgetting about CC, ever. I thought it would at least take another raid tier, or at least current players being fully geared up in the current. Boy was I wrong.
I was wrong in two parts. First off, I thought that there was any sustained desire on Blizzard's part to make heroics more challenging. Why I would think this I cannot fathom. It goes against the entire trend of what has made WoW so successful. Second, I failed to account for the fact that the current mob abilities don't require CC, our relative power levels do.
If those don't seem any different, try this hypothetical: Raging Boars hit for 500 and the entry level tank has 1000 effective health*. In other words, he can potentially die instantly, given two hits at once or very closely spaced. This is a bad scenario. It is literally a roll of the dice whether the tank lives or not. This can be easily fixed by CCing one of the boars or putting it on another tank. Or, a small health gain will allow him to survive simultaneous hits. In this scenario the power level called for CC or gear.
* Effective Health is essentially health multiplied by mitigation, but excluding avoidance. It is an expression of how much damage you can take before dying. It was the theoretical backing for stam-stacking, while the practical reason was that stamina is an easy way for simple-minded people to pick between tanks.
In the other scenario, there is one Raging Boar and one Boar Trainer. Boar Trainers have Death Aura which causes Raging Boars to hit for 100% of enemy health, one-shotting them. Gear cannot fix this. Instead the only way for the tank to survive is to separate the boar and the trainer. The boar could be CCed and the trainer killed first, the trainer kited out of range of the boar, or possibly the disc priest likes a challenge and uses frequent bubbling to keep the total damage he can take slightly above his health. In all of these scenarios it is player action, not player gear, which make the difference.
Somewhere in the middle, which is more desirable, since for many players the true benefit of gear is the ability to play mindlessly, is the third scenario, in which the challenge can be overgeared, but only at an extreme degree. In this scenario, the trainer's Death Aura only causes a 200% damage increase (1500 damage, exceeding even the 1000 damage of two boars at once), so that the required effective health is doubled when he is near the boars. This means that for most gear levels it will be necessary to use some form of CC, but eventually it may be possible to simple take the full damage and DPS quickly to avoid draining healer mana.
Raging Boars and Boar Trainers would make for a pretty boring instance, even for trash. So here are a few other mechanics which will make CC more desirable, hard to outgear, but not a permanent factor.
Fear: It makes us run into adds that we weren't quite expecting. Can be very bad on healers.
Mana Burn: Can really wreck a healer, both in dealing damage to them, but more importantly, in making a big mana pool and regen that much more important.
Roots and Ranged: This can cause a group to scatter, making control more difficulty, making AoE less effective, and possibly running into adds.
AoE spell reflection: If this mob is not dealt with quickly, casters, including paladins and DKs, are not going to be doing very well. Very quick focus fire with non-casters can also deal with this. The reflect would have to exclude spells or else rogues and hunters could become mandatory, and clearly that's a worst case scenario.
What's Aggro?: This is the simple one: a mob that hits hard and ignores normal aggro tables, encouraging CC, kiting, and focus fire.
To me, abilities with a cast time are desirable because they can allow for a more active, aware response of interrupts and target switching than a fire-and-forget CC. While I like kiting, it requires an instance with plenty of room to move, assuming our goal isn't to kill hunters. I admit, that might be a design goal for some players and developers.
I know that I've been making quite a few negative posts recently. These are not a build-up to some massive rage-quit post. My goal isn't to say that WoW sucks, which it doesn't. Instead my goal is to find ways that WoW can improve, which of course means become more fun for me, without alienating the currently gigantic player base. I have nothing but disdain for the angry posts which boil down to more or less: "WoW sucks and you are all stupid for playing it and someone should make my game with permanent death, xp loss, item loss, nine thousand person raids, and no elves or ponies." Those points accomplish nothing. They give developers nothing useful to go off of. For example, "dumbing down" isn't single, reversible change, nor is it even always bad. Frankly I am very glad that Ulduman has been 'dumbed down' with the addition of a map.
I was wrong in two parts. First off, I thought that there was any sustained desire on Blizzard's part to make heroics more challenging. Why I would think this I cannot fathom. It goes against the entire trend of what has made WoW so successful. Second, I failed to account for the fact that the current mob abilities don't require CC, our relative power levels do.
If those don't seem any different, try this hypothetical: Raging Boars hit for 500 and the entry level tank has 1000 effective health*. In other words, he can potentially die instantly, given two hits at once or very closely spaced. This is a bad scenario. It is literally a roll of the dice whether the tank lives or not. This can be easily fixed by CCing one of the boars or putting it on another tank. Or, a small health gain will allow him to survive simultaneous hits. In this scenario the power level called for CC or gear.
* Effective Health is essentially health multiplied by mitigation, but excluding avoidance. It is an expression of how much damage you can take before dying. It was the theoretical backing for stam-stacking, while the practical reason was that stamina is an easy way for simple-minded people to pick between tanks.
In the other scenario, there is one Raging Boar and one Boar Trainer. Boar Trainers have Death Aura which causes Raging Boars to hit for 100% of enemy health, one-shotting them. Gear cannot fix this. Instead the only way for the tank to survive is to separate the boar and the trainer. The boar could be CCed and the trainer killed first, the trainer kited out of range of the boar, or possibly the disc priest likes a challenge and uses frequent bubbling to keep the total damage he can take slightly above his health. In all of these scenarios it is player action, not player gear, which make the difference.
Somewhere in the middle, which is more desirable, since for many players the true benefit of gear is the ability to play mindlessly, is the third scenario, in which the challenge can be overgeared, but only at an extreme degree. In this scenario, the trainer's Death Aura only causes a 200% damage increase (1500 damage, exceeding even the 1000 damage of two boars at once), so that the required effective health is doubled when he is near the boars. This means that for most gear levels it will be necessary to use some form of CC, but eventually it may be possible to simple take the full damage and DPS quickly to avoid draining healer mana.
Raging Boars and Boar Trainers would make for a pretty boring instance, even for trash. So here are a few other mechanics which will make CC more desirable, hard to outgear, but not a permanent factor.
Fear: It makes us run into adds that we weren't quite expecting. Can be very bad on healers.
Mana Burn: Can really wreck a healer, both in dealing damage to them, but more importantly, in making a big mana pool and regen that much more important.
Roots and Ranged: This can cause a group to scatter, making control more difficulty, making AoE less effective, and possibly running into adds.
AoE spell reflection: If this mob is not dealt with quickly, casters, including paladins and DKs, are not going to be doing very well. Very quick focus fire with non-casters can also deal with this. The reflect would have to exclude spells or else rogues and hunters could become mandatory, and clearly that's a worst case scenario.
What's Aggro?: This is the simple one: a mob that hits hard and ignores normal aggro tables, encouraging CC, kiting, and focus fire.
To me, abilities with a cast time are desirable because they can allow for a more active, aware response of interrupts and target switching than a fire-and-forget CC. While I like kiting, it requires an instance with plenty of room to move, assuming our goal isn't to kill hunters. I admit, that might be a design goal for some players and developers.
I know that I've been making quite a few negative posts recently. These are not a build-up to some massive rage-quit post. My goal isn't to say that WoW sucks, which it doesn't. Instead my goal is to find ways that WoW can improve, which of course means become more fun for me, without alienating the currently gigantic player base. I have nothing but disdain for the angry posts which boil down to more or less: "WoW sucks and you are all stupid for playing it and someone should make my game with permanent death, xp loss, item loss, nine thousand person raids, and no elves or ponies." Those points accomplish nothing. They give developers nothing useful to go off of. For example, "dumbing down" isn't single, reversible change, nor is it even always bad. Frankly I am very glad that Ulduman has been 'dumbed down' with the addition of a map.
Vash'jir: First, Second, and Third Impressions
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Thursday, December 9, 2010
In the beginning...
This boat is taking forever. At least the NPCs have some dialogue to read while I wait.
Finally here. I want to capture it for the Bloodsail.
Poor Budd.
Wow, those guys out there are screwed. Maybe we should keep moving.
TENTACLES EVERYWHERE OH GOD LET ME GO LET ME GO LET ME GO!
That was cool.
This zone sucks. It's a gigantic zerg rush for 10 total mob spawns and I get all turned around underwater. Fuck this, I'll go try archaeology.
Archaeology was fun.
In the thing directly after the beginning, making it second, which took place the next day...
Not so crowded, maybe now I can actually play. This is kinda fun.
I'm still a bit disoriented, but at least I can find my way around and am not perpetually facing the wrong direction.
Where the hell is all the ore?
I want to tell Budd that he's not crazy, at least not for that one specific reason. Where's his troll mask?
WHY DID I LISTEN TO BUDD A SHARK IS EATING ME THIS WAS STUPID STUPID STUPID!
In the last of three things which would be the third...
I can walk on the bottom, and run, and the animation looks silly but fun.
This place is alright after all.
I still want to know where all the ore went.
This boat is taking forever. At least the NPCs have some dialogue to read while I wait.
Finally here. I want to capture it for the Bloodsail.
Poor Budd.
Wow, those guys out there are screwed. Maybe we should keep moving.
TENTACLES EVERYWHERE OH GOD LET ME GO LET ME GO LET ME GO!
That was cool.
This zone sucks. It's a gigantic zerg rush for 10 total mob spawns and I get all turned around underwater. Fuck this, I'll go try archaeology.
Archaeology was fun.
In the thing directly after the beginning, making it second, which took place the next day...
Not so crowded, maybe now I can actually play. This is kinda fun.
I'm still a bit disoriented, but at least I can find my way around and am not perpetually facing the wrong direction.
Where the hell is all the ore?
I want to tell Budd that he's not crazy, at least not for that one specific reason. Where's his troll mask?
WHY DID I LISTEN TO BUDD A SHARK IS EATING ME THIS WAS STUPID STUPID STUPID!
In the last of three things which would be the third...
I can walk on the bottom, and run, and the animation looks silly but fun.
This place is alright after all.
I still want to know where all the ore went.
How Much Content?
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Monday, December 6, 2010
I've been thinking of Shattering patch as an expansion. I mean, just think of the huge amount of new content. Just guessing I started thinking that the free patch was bigger than the expansion it's meant to introduce. So then I asked, which has more content?
For me, I'd guess that Shattering now vs. Cataclysm week one, Shattering has more content. Sure, a few zones are essentially unchanged; so far I've noticed that Arathi for the Alliance isn't majorly different; mostly some quest progress smoothing and tweaking of the timeline. Iapetes reports that Ashenvale isn't much different for Alliance either. But Teldrassil and Darkshore are quite different, and as I've posted earlier, a whole lot better. Dun Morogh and Loch Modan are much changed, with a major expansion of the troll and dark iron conflicts. Wetlands was fun, but perhaps because the progression was so smooth, it felt insubstantial. Not spending most of my time traveling and lost in marshes really changes the experience.
But what if I had started say, today? For a new player the new zones aren't new at all. They're the current zones. Not old, but not new. For a new player WoW has as much content before 60 as it did at the end of vanilla, less if we count that Zul'Gurub and Naxxramas are gone, but since I'm not counting instances added (Were there any? Don't answer that.), let's ignore the raid changes. My point is that all this new content isn't added content, it's replaced content. So Vanilla vs. Shattering isn't a matter of amount of content, but quality of content. While I inevitably mourn this or that change, I see the new content as giving a much smoother playing experience.
New for old and old for new, how much content was added for you?
For me, I'd guess that Shattering now vs. Cataclysm week one, Shattering has more content. Sure, a few zones are essentially unchanged; so far I've noticed that Arathi for the Alliance isn't majorly different; mostly some quest progress smoothing and tweaking of the timeline. Iapetes reports that Ashenvale isn't much different for Alliance either. But Teldrassil and Darkshore are quite different, and as I've posted earlier, a whole lot better. Dun Morogh and Loch Modan are much changed, with a major expansion of the troll and dark iron conflicts. Wetlands was fun, but perhaps because the progression was so smooth, it felt insubstantial. Not spending most of my time traveling and lost in marshes really changes the experience.
But what if I had started say, today? For a new player the new zones aren't new at all. They're the current zones. Not old, but not new. For a new player WoW has as much content before 60 as it did at the end of vanilla, less if we count that Zul'Gurub and Naxxramas are gone, but since I'm not counting instances added (Were there any? Don't answer that.), let's ignore the raid changes. My point is that all this new content isn't added content, it's replaced content. So Vanilla vs. Shattering isn't a matter of amount of content, but quality of content. While I inevitably mourn this or that change, I see the new content as giving a much smoother playing experience.
New for old and old for new, how much content was added for you?
Insane Scarab Lords
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Wednesday, October 27, 2010
Over at the Pink Pigtail Inn I expressed some sympathy for players who are going for Insane in the Membrane but who are suddenly informed that it's going to be gone very very soon. Perhaps too soon. But after my post I'm having some second thoughts.
For the most part WoW isn't a particularly exclusive game. By that I mean, what you have doesn't deny me the same. We all get the badges and reputation. Gold, shards, and all manner of trade materials are plentiful enough that the nodes that I get before you don't deny you all ore, because there are a hundred more nodes that we've not gotten to yet. Even quest mobs will respawn soon enough. Bosses are mostly in instances where each raid gets its own, so there's not really such thing as a "kill steal".
There are a few exceptions to this lack of exclusivity, such as certain extremely rare materials and raid-based quests. For example, not everyone can get Shdaowmourne because there just aren't enough shards and for many guilds, possibly not even enough raid resets. Or not everyone can get the old legendaries since eyes of sulfuron and bindings of the windseeker and extremely rare and they cannot be farmed endlessly; so luck will deny some. Sulfuron ingots and elementium ore may claim more victims. But this isn't about those feats of strength. Instead there are the pristine black diamonds; an exceptionally rare drop in the late vanilla range; something of which you may only see a few in your entire time playing, far less if you're skipping late vanilla content like most players. These place a very clear limit on the number of players who can complete Insane in the Membrane. Gold cannot make more appear, at least not in any reasonable quantity, since farming them would mean literally just grinding instances for hours with possibly no results. The result is that in the remaining month, very few players will get the diamonds they need.
Should we feel sorry for them? I certainly think so. It's a horrible feeling. I can say I share it, as I was more than a little bit concerned that Kingslayer might vanish in 4.0, though thankfully it was not. But that sense of extreme rush is not a pleasant one.
But should it be any different? Not everyone can be insane and I don't think everyone should. Not everyone would even if they could, merely due to lack of interest. But on top of that there is the rarity, the RNG which dictates how many there will be. Is that good? I didn't think so with the Hallowed or Love Fool; the RNG shouldn't arbitrarily deny people that which they for which would otherwise be fully capable and willing. And yet...
I have a Scepter of the Shifting Sands. It will never work, because every gate is open. I will never be able to ring the gong. I performed the task of grinding reputation and gathering materials and dealing with various insane dragons and one extremely dangerous minnow. Why should I not be able to be a Scarab Lord?
Because I was too late. It's a sad, unfair, frustrating reason, but that's that: I was too late. And soon, the partially insane may also be too late. That's just how it is.
And yet, I still cannot understand why there is not simply a new hostile pirate group? Maybe another expansion of insanity would be too long. Maybe that spreads it out too far, makes it less of a grind, would flood the cities with Insanes. I could be a cold-hearted asshole and ask why they needed more than two years to do it. But I wasn't the first insane on my server, so clearly I'm the slow one too. I wasn't the first Bloodsail Admiral all those years back either. So I guess how slow is too slow? Six months ago was not too slow. One month from now is too slow. I guess that's where the dart landed on the timeline.
But insanity isn't a title anyway. It's a lifestyle. I was a Bloodsail before I could be a Bloodsail Admiral. I wear silly hats. I tanked Arthas with Thunderfury last night, and it worked. I'm the official story-teller in my guild, responsible for the three voices needed for Uther to inform Arthas that he was glad to make it. I've received compliments on my Jaina voice.
To my fellow insane, to my future insane brethren, let us ask, let us ask the questions that no one else is asking. How does mental disease magically stop spreading? How? Mind control. Don't you see? Hitler, Stalin, Blizzard. They all wanted to tell you what and how to think. First they're going to come for the people who didn't even start the Bloodsail grind and we'll say nothing because we're farming Dire Maul. Then they'll come for the people who are working on goblin rep and we'll say nothing because we're searching for blood of heroes. They'll come for the people turning in their last few librams as the servers go down. And finally they'll come for us and there will be no one to speak for us because everyone will be a damn Kingslayer.
Am I the only one saying that putting a time limit on achievements means that Blizzard is going to mind-control players? Am I just crazy or... yes.
Tomorrow: The Butchers of Maraudon: How Blizzard is destroying Azeroth.
For further reading, here's an insightful take on the gathering of titles or other 'cosmetic' additions to a player's WoW persona.
For the most part WoW isn't a particularly exclusive game. By that I mean, what you have doesn't deny me the same. We all get the badges and reputation. Gold, shards, and all manner of trade materials are plentiful enough that the nodes that I get before you don't deny you all ore, because there are a hundred more nodes that we've not gotten to yet. Even quest mobs will respawn soon enough. Bosses are mostly in instances where each raid gets its own, so there's not really such thing as a "kill steal".
There are a few exceptions to this lack of exclusivity, such as certain extremely rare materials and raid-based quests. For example, not everyone can get Shdaowmourne because there just aren't enough shards and for many guilds, possibly not even enough raid resets. Or not everyone can get the old legendaries since eyes of sulfuron and bindings of the windseeker and extremely rare and they cannot be farmed endlessly; so luck will deny some. Sulfuron ingots and elementium ore may claim more victims. But this isn't about those feats of strength. Instead there are the pristine black diamonds; an exceptionally rare drop in the late vanilla range; something of which you may only see a few in your entire time playing, far less if you're skipping late vanilla content like most players. These place a very clear limit on the number of players who can complete Insane in the Membrane. Gold cannot make more appear, at least not in any reasonable quantity, since farming them would mean literally just grinding instances for hours with possibly no results. The result is that in the remaining month, very few players will get the diamonds they need.
Should we feel sorry for them? I certainly think so. It's a horrible feeling. I can say I share it, as I was more than a little bit concerned that Kingslayer might vanish in 4.0, though thankfully it was not. But that sense of extreme rush is not a pleasant one.
But should it be any different? Not everyone can be insane and I don't think everyone should. Not everyone would even if they could, merely due to lack of interest. But on top of that there is the rarity, the RNG which dictates how many there will be. Is that good? I didn't think so with the Hallowed or Love Fool; the RNG shouldn't arbitrarily deny people that which they for which would otherwise be fully capable and willing. And yet...
I have a Scepter of the Shifting Sands. It will never work, because every gate is open. I will never be able to ring the gong. I performed the task of grinding reputation and gathering materials and dealing with various insane dragons and one extremely dangerous minnow. Why should I not be able to be a Scarab Lord?
Because I was too late. It's a sad, unfair, frustrating reason, but that's that: I was too late. And soon, the partially insane may also be too late. That's just how it is.
And yet, I still cannot understand why there is not simply a new hostile pirate group? Maybe another expansion of insanity would be too long. Maybe that spreads it out too far, makes it less of a grind, would flood the cities with Insanes. I could be a cold-hearted asshole and ask why they needed more than two years to do it. But I wasn't the first insane on my server, so clearly I'm the slow one too. I wasn't the first Bloodsail Admiral all those years back either. So I guess how slow is too slow? Six months ago was not too slow. One month from now is too slow. I guess that's where the dart landed on the timeline.
But insanity isn't a title anyway. It's a lifestyle. I was a Bloodsail before I could be a Bloodsail Admiral. I wear silly hats. I tanked Arthas with Thunderfury last night, and it worked. I'm the official story-teller in my guild, responsible for the three voices needed for Uther to inform Arthas that he was glad to make it. I've received compliments on my Jaina voice.
To my fellow insane, to my future insane brethren, let us ask, let us ask the questions that no one else is asking. How does mental disease magically stop spreading? How? Mind control. Don't you see? Hitler, Stalin, Blizzard. They all wanted to tell you what and how to think. First they're going to come for the people who didn't even start the Bloodsail grind and we'll say nothing because we're farming Dire Maul. Then they'll come for the people who are working on goblin rep and we'll say nothing because we're searching for blood of heroes. They'll come for the people turning in their last few librams as the servers go down. And finally they'll come for us and there will be no one to speak for us because everyone will be a damn Kingslayer.
Am I the only one saying that putting a time limit on achievements means that Blizzard is going to mind-control players? Am I just crazy or... yes.
Tomorrow: The Butchers of Maraudon: How Blizzard is destroying Azeroth.
For further reading, here's an insightful take on the gathering of titles or other 'cosmetic' additions to a player's WoW persona.
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