Reason to Kick: dc

A dark night in a city that knows how to keep its secrets...

It was a lie.  I think we all knew that.  But what was I supposed to say?  Time was short and we needed results.  The clock was ticking.  Two clocks, one up, one down.  The count up was to act and the count down was for him to act.  Tick tock.

Combat?  Yes.  Still combat.  Not any more.  Time was short because he was itching to get into it again and if he got it again, we'd be out of time.

I panicked.  I lied.  I acted.  I ain't sayin I was the good guy or even a good guy.  Not then.  No one was then.

But dammit, the tank just would not slow down.  No looting.  Skipping all the quests.  Zone in and off to the races.  Not the listening sort.  We struggled to keep up.  I panicked and talked to the goblin, just in time, because if we didn't blow that door, then it would all come to a grinding halt.

I acted.  I called for a vote kick on the tank.  I said "dc".  We knew it was a lie.  I voted of course.  So did my friend, the healer.  And someone else.  I bet it was the DPS warrior.

All the evidence fit.  Like me, he needed the quests.  He knew we didn't need the spare tank.  He might have been duel-wielding, but he knew what to do.  He knew how to throw heroically.  He let the hunter pull when the pull was a tricky mess waiting to happen.  I'd have invited him to the guild if he weren't a million servers away.  I settled for a compliment on his tanking.

Achievement: Zul'Farak.  And a hunter weapon.

Intellect is not a rogue stat. Did you know that?

Imagine that in your group there is a rogue in full heirlooms buy whose damage is terrible.  Upon inspection, he is in all caster gear.  An intellect robe drops.  He rolls need.
If you respond by kicking the rogue, then you're looking a lot like the person who was yelling at me (in the original intro, someone yelled at me)(omg beyond the scenes of the making of Troll Racials are Overpowered)(Original name: Lucas Starkiller)

Here's my pet peeve: Not explaining problems.

Let's look at that rogue again.  Is he a noob?  It certainly looks like it.  Note that he is a noob, not a ninja, at least it does not appear so.  Based on the gear he had and the gear he tried to get, it appears that he does not know that intellect is worthless for rogues.

Either that or he's obsessed with style.

Whichever it is, the important thing is to talk to him, rather than just shoving him off into a new group of victims.  Explain, politely, that intellect is worthless to rogues, that agility is a much more useful stat.  If that is unconvincing, invite him to mouse over his character sheet where it describes the primary stats, with emphasis on the part that says "Intellect: Provides no benefit to your class".

Alternatively, if he insists that he needs it for style or transmog, then explain the problems with that. Transmog is obvious: you can't transmog leather for cloth appearance.  Style, well that's trickier.  You'll need to carefully explain that rogues go for a leather-based style with dark colors and maybe knives, rather than flowing robes.  If he insists on dressing in robes, avoid using homophobic slurs (seriously, not cool) and instead use tribalistic cultural appeals, similar to why your company insists on a dress code and you don't let your children get their eyelids pierces.  The important thing is to talk it over first.

The wrong thing to do, and I don't just mean "impractical" wrong but "you're a sociopathic menace to society" wrong, is to simply kick them.  That puts the burden on another group without solving the problem.  Instead the rogue is likely to think that you're an asshole.  And maybe that everyone is an asshole, "Why do people keep kicking me?  This game is filled with assholes.  Well fuck them, I'm ninjaing everything!  I bet that druid won't like it when I take his agility gear!"

Down the the Dictator, but not the extensive bureaucracy that maintains civilization

"There must always be a Lich King."  Lame, right?  Or is it?

The other day I watched Equilibrium, which is basically what would happen if you wanted to make the Matrix but couldn't legally do that, and replaced machine-driven illusion with drugs to block emotion.  For various reasons it irritated me, but one in particular stood out: the downside of ending the regime was never discussed.  The film of V for Vendetta had this same problem.

It might be because I'm a Stalinist*, but I'm not a fan of the pattern of "dictator falls, everyone lives happily ever after."  That's not actually how things happen.  Ever.  I can sense the objection rising up inside you, so I have these two things to note.

*according to my critics

First off, I don't think the downside to the fall of the dictator must necessarily be shown, at least not right away, but there should be at least some notion that something went wrong.  Take Star Wars for example.  After A New Hope we're all happy that the Death Star was destroyed.  Then the Empire strikes back in the appropriately-named The Empire Strikes Back in which the Rebels are stuck on a planet made entirely out of ice and wampas.  In the extended universe we learn about how just because the Emperor eventually died doesn't mean everything is great.  Instead, people go out to celebrate and are gunned down by the millions and a whole new form of civil war breaks out, which as best as I can tell, never ends no matter how many times they kill clones of the Emperor.

Compare this with real life where we celebrate the fall of a dictator, and then all go "so... now what?"  That's when every single suppressed grievance explodes and suddenly people start missing running water and streets paved with something other than unexploded ordinance.


Despite that, there is my Second thing to note: just because there is a downside does not mean it is bad that the evil regime has fallen.  Of course it's bad when the basic infrastructure is wrecked and rule of law breaks down, but that's something to consider when taking down the dictator.  This doesn't mean "oh well, things would be worse without them", but instead "let's have a plan for what happens when the Elite Guard of the Evil Government are all out of work."




The admission of a downside is part of what can make the story complex and interesting.  It makes the enemies, the villains, a little more understandable.  Sure the dictator is bad, but perhaps his supporters are just people who see stability as worth the occasional murder and rampant corruption.  Maybe they think it will be even worse without him.  This makes them people with different philosophical leanings and social predictions, rather than evil people.  That's what the world is filled with: people with different perspectives, who we may still find ourselves in conflict with, but who are not evil faceless goons.  After the rebellion they may even join the winning side, not because they are traitors or flip-floppers, but because they see it as the best way to protect what they value and to continue to do their jobs.





They are the bureaucrats.  They are the police and the army.  The judges and administrators.  Are they on the wrong side?  Perhaps.  But that doesn't mean they cannot be on the right side.  Nor does it mean that they are necessarily evil.

I remember an argument in a Star Wars novel in which the hero is arguing with his future father-in-law about smuggling.  The father was a smuggler, running Imperial blockades and bypassing their customs.  It paid well and seemed to be righteous work, sticking it to The Man.  But the hero points out that while the Empire was evil, those import taxes were what paid for roads and schools and healthcare for children.  So even as it is a blow to the Evil Empire, it is also a blow to those who are subjects of the empire and who have no choice in the matter.

Perhaps the best book I ever read that showed the downside, the cost of victory, the burden of maintaining civilization, was called The Star Conquerors.  It's an old science fiction novel in which humans are gradually getting crushed by an alien empire.  It is approximately a gagillion times bigger, which is not helped by a human population which isn't very interested in paying for the war effort that keeps them from being crushed in a week.  The hero does the sensible thing: rounds up what ships he can and goes flying off to kick some ass, which after a mix of luck and brilliance, results in him capturing the core planets.  The aliens hand over control of the entire empire, about a third of the galaxy.  Cool, right?  USA USA USA!  Er.. TERRAN EMPIRE TERRAN EMPIRE TERRAN EMPIRE!  Except for one problem: Before they leave the aliens explain that now we're responsible for administering it all, of managing the flow of trade, of preventing starvation, of keeping everyone in line so it doesn't all collapse into a giant civil war among the various species.

Should we have just given up and lost?  No.  But knowing that there is something after victory, some burden of leadership, of survival against entropy rather than war, makes the story that much more complete and interesting.

And so, when we hear that there must always be a Lich King, maybe let's go ahead and say that in the literal sense, that sounds ridiculous.  But let's not forget that there are still the Vrykul up there, who are going to wonder what happened to their Death God, who are going to need to be either crushed, assimilated, or some mix of the two, and better hope we don't get that wrong.  There are still Scourge agents, dedicated to various agendas of evil, power, and insanity.  In fact, we run into one in the Eastern Plaguelands, a spider who thinks he's going to start his own Scourge.  A joke, for now.  We should wonder, without the leadership of the Lich King, what will the mindless ones do?  What about the sentient and free agents?  What happens to the Plague?  The diseased and corrupted land?

Perhaps we should even be glad that Deathwing showed up.  Imagine the chaos, the destruction, if the greedy, amoral adventurers with incredible magical and combat powers backed with even greater magical artifacts and armor, found themselves bored.  Perhaps that's what was meant by the Scourge going on an even greater rampage of destruction.  With the Lich King, we had a target and that target was something everyone could agree on.  Without him, then what?  Perhaps he did not actually need to convert or corrupt us, merely step aside and let us do what we do: mass slaughter of anything which might be remotely profitable.

Maybe those daily quest givers aren't so bad after all.  I shudder to think what we'd do otherwise.

An auction house without speculator buyouts

FIRST!

Annoying, isn't it?  The first person into a forum thread or comments section can completely derail it, ruining it for everyone else, for some personal gain, but a net social loss.

This can happen in the auction house too.  Whoever gets there first, particularly as a buyer, can reshape it dramatically, to the detriment of others.  As an example, I offer this story of my own.

I occasionally engage in speculation, acting somewhat like a futures broker, though without anyone asking me to.  I'll see things which are at absurdly low prices and buy them up, sometimes reposting them all higher, thereby setting the market price at what I want.  Or I may simply hold them.  At the time there may be a glut of supply or a lack of demand.  Reposting later keeps a more consistent price, which helps future sellers, though obviously all of this comes at the expense of buyers.  They do get something for that expense, a more stable supply.  So at times this speculation may be an economically productive activity.

At other times it is little better than theft.  The incident which inspired this post was when I saw moss agate at a mere 3 gold.  I bought it up and feeling unkind, reposted, not at the usual market price of around 15g, but at an outrageous 20g.  One sold a minute later.  Clearly it would be absurd to suggest that I added value here, since it's not as if I have moved them through time, bringing them to the market at a time of a shortage.  If I had arrived a minute later, the buyer would have gotten an item for about 12g under the usual price, rather than 5g over.  In effect, he was 17g worse off and I was 17g better off, not because I added value, but simply because I got there first.  While this clearly was to my benefit, it is still ridiculous.

What would fix this?

Bring the auction, by which I mean bidding, back to auction house.  Either remove the ability to buy out items or add some extra cost to it to make short-term market manipulation significantly less profitable.  If I could not have instantly bought out those moss agate, then all I could have done is placed bids.  In the event that only the one sold, then I'd walk away with cheap gems and the sellers would have had successful auction (if underpriced, but that's purely their own faults.  Reposting would have then meant I was putting them up at a time that they might not have been up otherwise, allowing other players to buy when they otherwise could not.

Removing buyouts entirely would probably be unpopular, since sometimes we're in a rush and just need that flask before the raid.  For this, remove the ability of sellers to set a buyout price and instead make buyouts automatically double the current bid.  That means that if something has been bid up a great deal, it's going to cost a lot to buyout, and if it was bid up so much, it was likely closer to the market price than if it had started off with a buyout near the starting bid.  This removes the profit of short-term speculation without removing the ability to carry out time-based arbitrage or for people to get what they need at the last second.  As a side benefit, it might encourage players to plan ahead more, a useful habit for everything except murder (in that case it's a tradeoff between better planning and an increased sentence if caught).

To clarify, the "double bid price" is not set in stone.  Merely adding 10 or 25% would be enough to entirely stop some speculation and reduce others.  Furthermore, since I know you're thinking "everyone uses buyouts, so if the speculator pays 25% more, they'll just get that back when the end user pays 25% more" the extra buyout fee does not go to the person running the auction, but is instead removed from the game, much as the auction house cut and lost deposits are.

Dear fellow protection paladins,

I'm leveling another protection paladin.  Early in the day there seems to be a DPS shortage (or maybe it's something with the healers), so I end up in randoms as DPS rather than as a tank.  As a result, I have found myself in several groups with you tanking.  I have been disappointed.

You keep dropping consecration early.  And in the wrong spot.  This makes no sense.  It's not something which follows you.  Where you put it, it stays.  So put it in a useful place, such as in the middle of a pack, rather than where you were standing when you pulled.

Speaking of pulling, throw avenger's shield at casters.  It silences them and bring them close so all the AoEs can hit them.  That also means that you have aggro on them, so they aren't standing off to the side zapping the healer.

You don't have to always use seal of insight.  Especially when DPS are getting aggro because you're so bad.

As for all you retribution paladins, why?  You're above 30, so you can get two specs.  I understand that healing is terrifying (not sarcasm), but why not tank?  Throw on a shield and you are now geared as a tank, since it's not as if avoidance stats become common until much later, and aren't needed until much later anyway.  You can do it!  I have a friend who just started playing and managed to teach her to tank on a druid.  A druid!  Now there's a tricky tanking class, what with not every single ability being an AoE for massive damage.  If some newb can pick up druid tanking (not an expert, but did get a compliment once) in a few days, surely you can do it too.  Just pretend it's DPS and replace crusader strike with hammer of the righteous and you're about halfway there.  It's like I said, tanks are DPS who gave up on aggro management.  Oh, but please do drop consecrate in the right place.  I'm sick of healers getting pissed on.


Finally, why are you such assholes?  I get that tanks are awesome and all, but seriously?  I'll grant that my sample size is small, but I don't want to deal with the assholes rewuired to get a larger sample size.  So with that in mind, one group has the tank ignoring suggestions and then pulling as awkwardly as possible, complete with random pauses in movement and what appeared to be keyboard turning, and then topping it all off with a boss pull that wiped the group and then blaming the healer.  I decided to save us the trouble and just tank the last boss, since we had to kick him after he logged off without dropping group.  After that we had the healer who forgot water, so then everyone had to make up the 99.9999999% of the time useless habit of not auto-looting, the failure of which resulted in the rogue being called a retard.  I pointed out the absurdity of that being the sole qualification for being a retard, resulting in me being called a noob and claims that I was "carried", whatever the hell that means at level 49.

Tanks, we have a heavy burden.  We are the front of the group, the first thing the enemies see, so let's put on a good face.  Set a good pace.  Set a good mood.  As the sniper says: "Be polite, be efficient, have a plan to kill everyone you meet."

Learning to be a Death Knight, at level 1

Is anyone tired of having their DK's leveling narrated by Batman?  It's a great set of quests, but perhaps it has gotten repetitive, particularly given the highly-linear, scripted nature of it.  Beside that, given the small changes that have taken place since Wrath of the Lich King came out, there is justification for a new source of death knights.


That source?  Take your pick.  Warriors or paladins could have a corruption chain which converts them.  Warlocks could take a liking to inch-thick steel.  Alternatively, they could start at level 1.

Like any other class, the death knight would start off as a little nothing nobody.  But they'd learn something else.  Something darker.  Gone would be the scripted DK creation/rebellion sequence.  Instead, they'd play in the same level 1 world as everyone else.

Surely the Knights of the Ebon Blade could feel a similar pressure as the Forsaken, pressure to ensure their survival, both for their own interest as individuals in need of allies and as an organization that doesn't want to see the return of the Scourge.  However, while the Forsaken need abominations and corpses to increase their numbers, Death Knights can be converted, willingly.  The weak would desire such power, though only the strong would survive it.

This could even be beneficial to the player population overall.  Death knights wouldn't be hit with so many ability so quickly, then having barely learned their class (if that), shoved right into the middle of the leveling curve filled with players who expect people to have half a clue.  The outside impression could be improved as well, removing the "you started at level 55" or "you're lazy" element.


Rather than delete the current death knight quests, they would be a class quest chain, starting at level 55.  They would be optional, though I expect that the gear rewards would be a strong draw.  Rather than being directly about breaking away from the Lich King, they would instead be set as a series of challenges, to confront the past history of their class and those who wield such power.  In this form, it could be broken into multiple quest sections, so that players would not need to complete them all at once.  Contrast this with the current quests which essentially imprison the death knight until they are entirely completed.


Would you want to level a death knight from level 1?

Segregating the NPCs

The static prices of NPCs, unlimited gold of quests, and the dynamic prices of a player-driven economy do not play well together.  A player economy only needs a little bit of gold, enough to act as a medium of exchange.  The NPCs want big piles of gold.  The dailies churn out unlimited amounts.

Taken together, we're left with a problem.  Someone wants a pile of gold to give to the NPC for something cool.  They do dailies to get that pile of gold and give it to the NPC.  No problem yet.  Until someone else shows up who doesn't care about the NPC's cool wares, but can still do the dailies for the pile of gold.  Now where does that pile of gold go?  Rather than being generated and destroyed, it instead goes into the player economy, the player economy which doesn't need much gold, but now has a lot.  Prices rise.  Absent the dailies and cool wares, players would have little need to farm gold, and little ability.  Just a little bit would be enough to keep everything flowing, with gold as a medium rather than a goal.  But now gold is both medium and goal and there is a quest mechanic to fuel the engine of inflation.

My suggestion is to cut the tie between the player and NPC economies.  Make gold non-tradeable.  Now players can do their dailies or not, with no impact on the economy, except to the extent that dailies are done instead of farming materials.  Even then, that is merely a function of how much a player wants something from the NPC will cool wares rather than something from the player economy.

If players want something from NPCs, they'll interact with NPCs.  If they want something from players, they'll interact with players.

As for the auction house, allow players to create trade offers.  Initially this would be chaotic, with a billion linen being asked for a truegold bar.  But eventually, players would settle on some new medium to use.  Perhaps ore or another commonly-used crafting material.  This does allow for inflation, but there would not be any NPC giving innate value to the material.  Elementium ore would be worth only what players think it is worth, based on its ability to be traded for other materials or used itself.  Farming a lot of ore would be pointless, because increasing the supply much faster than it is used would devalue it, driving players toward a different medium of exchange.  Without the distortion of NPCs feeding and taking, the market could better set a value for the 'currency'.

Hoarding would be less useful.  Gold is useful across expansions and having a lot early in an expansion gives an advantage when the crafting rush begins.  Materials would not be, so that the barons of the last expansion are at no great advantage in the next except to the extent that they are good at what they do.  This would also have the benefit of keeping the currency in exchange, rather than stockpiled.

You might have noticed by now that merely making gold non-tradeable would not perfectly sever the economies of players and NPCs.  As I mentioned before, there is still the time cost of one or the other.  That is inevitable.  Vendors could still buy and sell materials, creating an exchange between the economies, though I predict that it would be inefficient and therefore not too common.  The exception would be when the player currency is in transition, with the old currency being vendored in large amounts.  Despite these exceptions, I think the separation could be done without too much leakage.

Commence criticism.

Ergo, engineering ruined WoW

Wednesday I suggested that adding gold to quests, and therefore the resulting daily quests, had created all manner of problems for WoW.  Rohan pointed out that there was another area to consider: the relative desirability of crafting and gathering professions.  In short, crafting professions got combat bonuses, making them more desirable for taking on challenges in raiding and PvP.  But two crafting professions are not profitable enough to sustain the player, so dailies were created so that combat bonuses would not ruin the economy and make players sad.  Sadly, dailies ruined the economy instead.

Now you might be wondering why Blizzard added combat bonuses to professions.  The reason: Engineering.  This profession was, and still is, filled with quirky devices that extend the flexibility and effectiveness of a player, assuming they do not backfire.  Long ago, they could use an inexpensive grenade over and over to stun players and deal damage, while moving.  Combined with a variety of useful tricks such as death rays, cloaking devices, and mind-control helmets, engineering was extremely powerful in PvP.  Beyond the usefulness of the devices was the fact that trinkets used to be hard to find and weaker than they are now (with some notable exceptions), and since engineering made a variety of trinkets, it was quite handy.

To balance this, because people whined incessantly, and because engineering never got an EMP to destroy the forums, Blizzard added combat bonuses to other crafting professions.  And also nerfed engineering.  Repeatedly.  This begins Rohan's suggested pattern of combat crafting causing dailies.

Of course gathering professions were then weaker in combat.  Sure they could get gold, but what's the use of gold if you're denied a raid spot for having the wrong profession?  So gathering got buffs too.  But then if those appear to powerful, crafting needs some benefit as well.  And so on and so forth.

My solution: remove all combat bonuses from non-awesome professions.  Bring back mob farming as a way that non-gathering players can contribute needed materials.  Bring back unusual materials and hard to find but powerful crafted items, which are not quickly made obsolete by LFR and badges.  Remove daily quests.  Increase the coin drops from latest-tier raid bosses if raiding drains too much gold.  Remove the many gold sinks which encourage obsessive daily farming.

I don't think it's asking too much that players never feel compelled to log in every day.  They should never feel like they're missing something just because they missed a completely random day, not a raiding day, not a guild event, not a holiday, but just some day, some utterly normal day.  I don't think there is anything wrong with playing every day, unless the player doesn't want to.

P.S. Bring back iron grenades. :P