The Perils of a Single Source

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

WoW is not Real Life

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Blessed by the RNG

This past week or two the RNG has decided to be kind to me, dropping much loot that I want when I'm in a position to get it. This is in contrast to the previous few months when I would often not see loot except that I could not get.

The upgrade I'm happiest about is The Jawbone, finally replacing Colossal Skull-Clad Cleaver. My extended use of a heroic weapon through all of Naxx and into Ulduar was getting to be a frustration. Having such an important source of my DPS be so out of date made me feel like I wasn't pulling my weight. Before this I just was not seeing any weapon drops. Okay fine, I saw four. Cryptfiend's Bite was a small upgrade for the hunter who outrolled me. Betrayer of Humanity I was outrolled on. Ironsoul I lost the roll to a guildy with a taste for calling need. Most recent was my loss of Rune Edge about which I cannot complain because it was a justified loot decision. What? No it's not weird that I remember exactly what weapon upgrades I've lost for the past few months. You can't remember four things? Yes four weapons over the past few months. FOUR over MONTHS! Sorry.

I got a pair of 7.5 chests over two nights of naxx, beating one other person for an effective health chest and the other uncontested to be a ret upgrade.

VoA gave 8.5 ret legs, which then triggered a bunch of Rawring to figure out what to do about hit, followed by the realization that the belt that I passed on in Naxx would have been just about perfect (ever so slightly over the hit cap, but I could adjust gems to compensate), except I didn't care much about it at them time.

I got a new tanking neck for my EH set, a new healing ring for my Not Heroic Blues set, leather boots from Council of Iron (Assembly?) which are apparently awesome. Previous weeks brought my respec to ret, followed within the hour with a new ret hat and the next week with a new trinket, ring, cloak, and another cloak (first was badge), and some tanking gloves. This leaves my belt as the last item which I hate, so I'm planning on getting the crafted ret belt, possibly after 3.2 floods me with badges.

Speaking of Rawr: I finally started using it and realized that I was completely undervaluing hit. Thanks to all the loot I'm finally in a position to use it effectively, since previously whatever I had was the best I had as opposed to having multiple items which can be switched around for better combinations depending on whatever I recently found. This weekend my task is to find gems and enchants for all of it, something I've not had much chance to do since my schedule tends to look something like work, shower, eat, raid, sleep, work... and I hate myself when I cut sleep for WoW.

Dueling Cults

As you go through life you will find many cults. There are small bits of Christians, Muslims, comet-worshipers, pretty much anything that exists or does not exist has a cult devoted to it. It's the rule 34 for cults. There are two cults which are currently locked in an epic battle for world domination. They are based on no deities or holy books. Instead both are based on worship of the material existence. However they take opposite sides. Both began with good roots and eventually were corrupted, existing now only as irritants to the world.

The first is the Cult of the Environment.
This cult began with pretty sensible ideas such as not dumping toxic waste into water supplies or not hunting to extinction necessary species such as those we eat. However the passage of time has turned this highly positive set of goals into a destructive cult. Ironically the cult will talk endlessly about sustainability and attacks any human influence in nature, but it fails to define sustainability (is it using less? How much less?) or that ultimately, the world is doomed even if humanity ceases to exist, in fact only through human intervention will anything survive the inevitable melting of the planet when the sun goes red.

Members of this cult should not be confused with environmentalists who have retained their sensible roots.

The other is the Cult of the Economy.
This cult also began with intelligent ideas: higher production means greater happiness and chances of survival for a civilization. A rather simple example of the value of a strong economy (as measured by GDP) is war. If you have no factories and you suddenly need tanks, you're in trouble. If you have car factories, it won't be simple, but you can retool them and retrain workers to build tanks, in addition to already having supply chains for steel, rubber, oil, etc. Unfortunately somewhere along the line people forgot the point of the economy and started to worship it as an end in itself. Even worse, they may act directly against the point of the economy, encouraging factories to move to other nations based on the illusion that they will produce cheaper goods for their own nation. Some sink even lower and see nothing but their own money and cannot even see the economy anymore.

Members of this cult should not be confused with businesspeople.

These two cults fight on any front they can. Some go so far as to pretend that GDP exists in a video game. Pretend might not be the right word. Perhaps there is a measurable GDP in a game. It would deal in material production: gear, ore, herbs, gold, all that sort of thing. More means a higher GDP. With this in mind the new badges and easily accessible loot will increase the GDP. But you say: "they didn't earn any of it!" Wrong. Give a man paper and pencil and ask him to design a bridge. It will take a while. Give him a computer and ask him to design it. It will take less time. The change was not that he earned it less, but instead that he was more efficient.

Let us fight the cult though by going back to the roots. What is the purpose of the virtual GDP? If we consider all the gear and trade goods and gold to be the products, what are they for? This is not easy to answer. The ultimate goal is presumably fun, seeing as this is a video game. What are some steps along the way? Perhaps the devs want to encourage us to raid for fun, so GDP is a way to facilitate raiding. This seems to fit with Gevlon's thoughts.

PS: if you are claiming that "5-man grinding badge gear is useful as they become more geared so ready to raid" I must ask, "who are you fooling?". Of course there can be raiders filling the last missing spot. A few of the grinders will be new players gearing up. Some PvP-ers will collect some pieces into missing slots. But 95% of the badge gear will never see good use. With crafted BoE, at least half of the effort of the grinders would be useful (not the half that goes into their gear of course)

Unfortunately we don't have very good numbers to work with. 95% is clearly an exaggeration. I suppose I could make up numbers with my own experience, but then I'd have 100% of it being useful and that's even more skewed in the other direction.

What's useful anyway? As we established, it's getting people into raids. Okay. Well that 5% is useful. The rest is 'waste'. Or is it? That 95% is actually not wasted. First off, waste implies some sort of material being lost, when in fact there is no such loss. It is not as if we are burning up our limited oil reserves in order to create badge gear. What will happen with the wasted gear? Perhaps it will end up on a canceled account. This can happen to any gear, not just badge gear, so that waste can hardly be blamed on badges. Perhaps it will end up on a person who just runs heroics. Is that a waste? No, because nothing is lost. In fact, by providing such 'wasted' gear to a player who only does heroics, it provides further progression, encouraging them to play longer, resulting in a longer subscription, and from that more money to design raids. Having raids in the first place is essential to any attempt to encourage raiding.

And as always: only raiders and PvP-ers need gear. Anything else (RP, casual questing...) can be done in blues perfectly. Without the real intent to go raid (I mean spamming guilds with applies) or without the real intent to do serious PvP (creating team, play 20+/week) someone does not need any epics. If he "needs" gear, he is a social and wants the gear to show it to peers.

Why did Sunwell drop gear? It was the final raid and there were no hard modes to do. Any gear from it would be going towards either raids which had already been cleared (which means the new gear was not needed) or leveling in the upcoming expansion (which Gevlon claims needs nothing more than blues).

Gear is a reward. This is apparent simply by the fact that end raids have dropped it. It is not just a tool to get to the next raid. For players who cannot raid, not due to being M&S, but due to RL time contraints, then gear rewards will stop sooner than those of raiders. Since MMOs are founded on virtual reward and social interaction, this would cut non-raiders away from half the game, and as a result just might make WoW fall below the point of being worth their money. At this point the non-raiders would likely leave, starving Blizzard of the massive amounts of money needed to design, test, and maintain raids and servers for them.



If that was too much to read, here's a shorter version: Badge gear is not wasted because no base materials or effort were wasted (oh fine, the half an hour of dev time required to switch all bosses to a different emblem). Attempting to use RL economic rules in a virtual world with effectively no material limits is outright stupid. Just to end on a stupid note:
Talking about badges, "You are payed by an NPC, disregarding the needs of other players. In a BoE economy, the price of different items would depend on the demand and supply generated by players."
Badge loot is actually highly beneficial to other players. If I buy a T7 token (which I did) I will no longer attempt to take a T7 token from a fellow player. This can be applied to any loot. Badge loot is in fact the most selfless of loot, the most regarding of other players. It takes a resource (badges) which is entirely mine and uses it to prevent the need to take another resource (random drops) which would be valuable to others. If I had not bought a badge cloak I'd have taken two more drops from others (or maybe it's more, I've lost track of how many items I've passed to others). It is exactly my regard for others which causes me to spend my own currency in order to be better prepared to help my guild and take less loot from others.

Finally, a fully BoE economy would be terrible. It would encourage gold-buying on a massive scale. It would encourage people to do solo dailies (rather than grouping up for instances) and avoid any potential gold losses (raid wipes). To top it off it would be very rewarding to two groups: raiders who directly acquire the gear and "the facerolling moron, who spend his infinite free time (unaffected by working or learning) on grinding..."

"Welfare" is Stupid

Gevlon has become a man of the underdog, advocating for the handicapped players who cannot play constantly. Oh yes, he is standing up and showing that welfare is destroying WoW for those most vulnerable. Sadly, as is typical, he's managed to still be a complete asshole and wrong. Both at the same time: he's a talented guy. Let's find the fun.

"Military dictatorships where huge tax is collected and spent on the army are usually much more developed and having much higher GDP than socialist dictatorships, spending on welfare."
This ignores that military dictatorships so often have outside support or unusually valuable natural resources far in excess of their need. See Iraq, US support, and oil for more information.

"Gnomegaddon found the real reason (/bow). As you know Blizzard will implement a welfare system, where you can get Naxx25-Ulduar25 gear for no effort, just by grinding 5 mans."
This is an easy one: "No effort" followed immediately with "grinding."

"He will be much less geared than the facerolling moron, who spend his infinite free time (unaffected by working or learning) on grinding 5-mans. If Gnomegaddon logs in, sees a "LFM 1 mage to Ulduar 10", he'll have practically 0 chance to get accepted against a completely useless facerolling M&S, due to much worse gear."
As before, the M&S, with S meaning slacker, is using his unlimited free time to get better gear. So the slacker is putting in a lot of time and he's a moron for using an efficient source of gear?

If anything I see this being a boon to infrequent players. Limited time or unpredictable schedules aren't kind to raiding, but they work well with the much shorter heroics. Most guilds use some sort of system that rewards contribution to the guild, usually by some measurement of attendance such as DKP. Our gnomish friend would likely have very little DKP or other pull in the loot system, so getting gear outside of raids is a very good option.

"If some new player reaches level cap, he will be completely uncompetitive against the ilvl226 M&S. Normally, his ilvl200 blue/crafted epic would be enough to get into starter raids. I'm damn sure that you can clear the siege area with a full 200 group if they know what to do. It's proven that you can clear all T7 content in ilvl 160.

Due to the welfare system he has no other option than join the welfare leech class, stay out of raiding for months to grind enough badges just to apply."
People expecting new players to be overgeared is hardly new and not the fault of badges, it's the fault of people doing the unthinkable: wanting easy smooth runs.

"The upper class of the world (the raiders of Ulduar) are not really affected by welfare. No geared M&S will risk our positions as their skills are ridiculous. Our work will always be needed, both RL and WoW."
Wrong. This is actually really great for guilds in Ulduar or late Naxx. This means that they can recruit more easily and suffer much less from any loss of members. Easy badge gear means they don't need to scrutinize gear as closely since they can quickly gear them up if necessary. This is in fact the complete opposite of Gevlon's earlier claim that this hurts new players.

"If there would be an even field, the working person would be rewarded for his work. Even if he is poor, by the end of the day, he would be less poor. With welfare he can easily be more poor (compared to the society average) due to the fact that the lazy welfare leech got more money for doing nothing than he got for his work (after tax)."
Whether you start with no badges or 100 badges, you get the same number of badges for equal heroics. Is there a relative loss? Sure. That's a very limited perspective though. The bottom still gets higher. IRL a poor person in America is just as relatively poor as 200 years ago, or possibly even much worse, but by absolute standards they're much less likely to starve to death, end up in debtor's prison, or become an indentured servant. Moving up from the bottom to the lower middle class the difference is even bigger. Much of this is due to those damn socialist communist, anti-American safety nets called welfare.

"If there would be no welfare epics in WoW, the players would be forced to improve and "work", by becoming useful to the server community. They could only get gear by actually defeating bosses, or producing enough gold to buy BoE."
Heroics have bosses which must be defeated to get badges. Buying BoEs is nice, I won't argue with it. But the overall effect of badges is that a player can get better than naxx gear without having to run naxx, meaning that they can much more quickly be ready to help in Ulduar.

One more thing: the socialist always whine about the income differences, that the society is split into a rich and a poor class with no middle. Currently the WoW-PvE classes:

* Ulduar-raiding "rich"
* Naxx25 and Ulduar-siege raiding "upper middle"
* Naxx25 2 wings raiding "middle"
* Naxx10 raiding "poor"
* 5-man playing "very poor"

After the welfare system implemented, there will be no reward in Naxx or Ulduar. So the classes will be:

* T9 raiding "very rich"
* 5-man playing "very poor"

This allows the Naxx classes to much more easily move into the Ulduar classes and the 5-man classes can move up as well. This will do the exact opposite of what Gevlon claims. After this there will be no "poor who is not responsible for being poor" because anyone with an hour can be on the road to the gear needed for Ulduar.


I don't mean to imply by all this that I think the badge change is great. I think it's overkill. However I dislike seeing assholes pretend to be friends of the disadvantaged. I also dislike seeing people use the term welfare in WoW. Any attempt to equate 'welfare' in WoW and welfare IRL is the result of trolling or a mental defect such as virtual elitism or just plain stupidity.

Midsummer Set

I finally got enough blossoms to buy the full Midsummer set and the pet. If you don't have enough before the holiday ends, at least get the robes. The sparky dance thing looks really cool. It might be extra awesome for female belfs since they do so much hand waving and spinning.

Remember when paladins were bad OTs?

I remember when he had almost no regen if we weren't taking damage. JoW, potions, and that was about it. Terrible.

Aggro was pretty bad too. Back then we were huge on reflective damage. Holy Shield, Blessing of Sanctuary, and Retribution Aura were really bitg parts of our aggro. Next to those we had auto-attack with SoR, judgement, and consecration and without regen, we couldn't afford them.

I remember HATING that robot guy in TK. If I didn't start with aggro, I wouldn't get it until after a few DPS had died. If I started with him, I could hold him for a long time.

Paladins just had way too much of a gap between their MT and OT aggro. It was ridiculous. Sadly, I see the same problem, though of a much smaller magnitude, with warriors. Not being MT means no rage from damage taken and no enrage for 10% more damage.

What brought this on? I'm having big aggro problems. Not lack, but too much. I often end up staring at Omen, waiting for when I can start using specials again, just judging and auto-attacking in the meantime. I've had this problem with DKs, warriors, I can't remember the last time a druid tanked, even another paladin. Apparently our aggro so so OP that we can pull aggro off ourselves.

I use a 6-9 rotation for MT, for OT I use pretty much the same, but replacing HS. In that case I alternate exorcism, avenger's shield, and sacred shield refreshes as needed. The result is an almost full rotation with only the occasional gap and tons of aggro. We've come a long way. Remember Vanilla when we had no regen ever?

Why don't we make our own achievements?

In How nerfed is WoW? You decide! a little bit ago Larisa explores how WoW has changed in terms of getting easier. My response was this:

Overall? Hard to say. WoW used to be harder, but much of that harder was because of terrible balance, not due to actual challenges. Only one real tanking class made it harder to do raids due to lack of tanks, but fixing that is hardly what I'd call a nerf.

There's not much to be gained by tallying nerfs and checking the score. If the game is too easy, it means you're not trying hard enough to make it hard. If you're not willing to put in the effort, don't complain. Maybe this is where WoW has been nerfed: challenges are handed to people on platters. There didn't used to be specific challenges spoon fed to raids.

If they wanted a challenge they made it themselves. I didn't see that happen often though. Why not? Why do most people not do something unless the devs tell them to do it?

My last paragraph is most relevant: Why don't we make our own challenges?

Perhaps this helps to explain it: we get banned. But there was a lack of such initiative before this. This isn't the cause. Why don't people make up their own challenges?

On my first wander over to Yggradsil I came up with this: (it makes a little more sense in context, but I think it still works)

I have noticed that spending less time often results in more fun. Oh sure now and then it's nice to lose a whole day, but for the most part WoW fun has diminishing returns. It starts to get stressful, especially if you spend half your time staring at the LFG interface thinking "I don't need that heroic, I don't need this other heroic, there's nothing to do."

It's not just the time though. It's what you think about the time. Is the time work or is it play? Too often I think we start seeing it as work, not rewarding in itself but only for the rewards. When that happens it's pretty obvious why we'd get angry over content getting easier. On the other hand, if play was purely for the fun and experience, then we'd pity those who come after the nerfs because they won't get to play what we played.

We're motivated by gear and other tangible (as much as virtual can be tangible) rewards, not as much by experiences. Self-made challenges do not give rewards. The devs don't intended for us to do them, so they don't reward them either.

What can change?
Ever heard the phrase "not working as intended"? That's another way of saying bug or exploit. The four man kill was not working as intended. The devs wanted the fight done with 10 or 25 people, not 4.

Change the philosophy. Rather than having just intended (do this) and not intended (don't do this, or else), add something else: unexpected (that worked? Cool!) I realize this makes things difficult for the devs and GMs. Where is the line between unintended and exploitative?

I hate to say it, but City of Heroes/Villains might actually have something to contribute. As far as I can tell from secondhand evidence, the game doesn't really have intention or balance. The result is that people just do fights however. My friend claims it makes them think, I thought it made them never have to plan ahead if just anything works (meaning it goes to the other extreme of non-thinking). A middle ground could be cool though. Take current raid design, loosen it slightly, and ease up on the bans because something was "not working as intended."