Is this withdrawal?

I stopped playing about two weeks ago, give or take a few days. At first I noticed almost nothing. I didn't care one way or another about WoW. I didn't want to play, but it's not as if I thought I didn't want to play, it just never entered my mind.

Now it's different. I sort of want to play, but that's not my issue. I'm restless, feeling like I should be doing something. This isn't entirely negative. It's making me go out and do homework when I normally wouldn't. This isn't as great as it sounds since at the last minute I have nothing to do when normally I'd be doing homework.

So here's what I can't figure out: am I restless because of WoW, directly? In other words, is this a symptom of withdrawal? Or am I restless because now I have a lot more time and no standard filler activity? Or was I restless before and that's what made me quit?

Since I quit I've actually logged in twice. Once was to clean up my mailboxes. The other time was because a friend was wondering about my character to compare someone in his guild. He wanted me to tank for his guild on Sunday, but then I forgot. I suppose I didn't care enough.

How do you create endless content?

WoW is clearly intended to last forever, or at least the game equivalent of more years than can be counted before getting distracted by shiny objects. To do this it needs endless content, something either new or forever (or close enough) repeatable in order to keep people paying.

Obviously content must be created at least as fast as it is consumed. This gives two strategies: create content faster and/or slow the speed of consumption. The former is expensive or may result in a lot of crap. The latter is cost-effective, but can also result in crap.

What's the crap that is risked? Grinds. Make everything take a long time, lots of play time, and you can create many playable hours for comparatively small investment of time. Want to buy more time? Take the current rewards, bump the stats up 5%, and add another level to the grind: more gold, reputation, tokens, whatever. Grinds are efficient: easy to make but taking as much time as the developers want. They're perfect except for being absolutely no fun.

What's the alternative? PvP. Give teenagers fake guns and they will shoot each other all day for years, even without new maps or guns. Look at Halo. PvP can last almost forever since it brings a few tools and then lets natural competitive drives do the rest. The biggest risk is that something better will come along. Of course this example isn't perfect since Halo doesn't have a monthly fee. Still, it shows the possibility of endlessness.

Unfortunately RPGs and PvP don't get along well. RPGs like gear. They like people getting stronger and stronger as time goes on. PvP doesn't like it so much. It works better when new people have a similar footing to those who have been around for a while (excluding personal skill of course). Gear imbalances keep out new people and eventually time will take away the old players, leaving no one at all. But PvP which ignored gear would, well it would do exactly what I said, it would ignore gear. What's the point of gear if not to better crush foes? It could be hard to sell the idea that you only get to be a total badass in the NPC world, but you're as puny as anyone else when you attack another player. It doesn't even make much sense from a RP perspective.

WoW seems to have tried to work around this a bit with arenas and BGs which slowly, but steadily reward losers. This way even a person at the bottom can work up to the top; given enough time they can get the gear they need. But isn't getting slaughtered over and over just a grind, except with other players instead of NPCs? Grinds aren't fun, especially when they involve repeated punches to the ego.

I've not been able to figure out how WAR is tackling this issue. I've had trouble getting interested enough in it. The trailers haven't seemed all that exciting, almost like a bad kung fu flick where it's obvious that no one is actually hitting anyone and you can see the guy jump back into a wall after a light kick. Gameplay didn't seem to catch me either. The graphics were pretty, but somehow the animations seemed lacking. They didn't seem better or worse than WoW, which is exactly the problem, I'd expect more from a game which is much newer and clearly is going for a higher visual standard, at least as far as stress on a graphics is a good measure.

New Raids, Old raids

I decided to pull some of the tangent out of my previous post. It might not make sense with it missing, if it even would have with it still in.

From what I've heard, new servers have their gates open automatically. This suggests that Blizzard intends to make it easier to get into the old raids. They are making them more accessible, since let's be honest, can anyone imagine the supplies being gathered now? It took a long time even back when people were motivated and the proper level. But what was the point? Blizzard should have recognized by now that people will go through horrible grinds for the slightest upgrade. Easy or hard, tedious or convenient, it doesn't matter much as long as the end reward is good. What is there for AQ? No upgrades, with the exception of one extremely rare shadow damage enchant of which Blizzard did not make a TBC version. Still, some people do go into AQ, I've gone myself, even got some funny-looking gear, so perhaps the automatic gates weren't wasted.

MC wasn't for noobs while Kara is. Sure, MC was easier and you could drag 20 noobs through, perhaps even more if they just went AFK and caused no trouble. But MC was the raid. Kara was never the raid. It was always the introduction. In terms of player's attitudes, MC was put on a pedestal labeled: Badass, while Kara was on a little platform that said: for ages 7 and under. How did that happen? It's about how the raids were given out. MC was alone and the top for it's time. Then BWL, then AQ40, then Naxx. Each had its time to be badass and so they could get and keep those labels.

TBC raids came out almost all at once. With the exception of BT, they were all there at release (I really hope I'm not forgetting something, I hate being wrong, especially when it's written down). Any badassness was only a temporary label due to the highest guilds being there at the time, quickly thrown away a couple weeks later when they were cleared and farmed.

It's stupid to have set out the raids that way, clearly showing them to be nothing more than stepping stones to the next level, insignificant except as a source of gear, and even then only leading to another source of gear, never anything impressive. They weren't even fully debugged. I wonder how much better raiding would have turned out if there had been gaps between raids. Not a year or so like vanilla, but a month or two, time to build anticipation, make current raids seem more impressive, and give a chance for more guilds to get to the top.

Certaintity into Doubt

When I quit, I was certain that I would return for WotLK. Now I have my doubts. I think ignorance may be removing my belief that WotLK will fix anything. It's hard to get excited about a game that I'm not playing, so I've not been following the development of WoW, current or beta, as closely as I used to. Because of this it's nearly impossible to see any improvements, since I see almost nothing at all. Will WotLK fix the reasons that I quit?

I doubt it. I don't see the gear dependence going away, or lessening since I don't know that I'd want a gearless game. Crafting is still based on identical plans. Customization seems to mean nothing more than new hairstyles.

I hold out hope for better story-telling.

But back to gear, it's not new to TBC. I've played for about three years and for all of that time the game was gear-based. What made me care enough to quit now? I suppose early on I just didn't notice. I leveled slowly and was a genuine noob for many months. I made alts. Gear never became a major thing. It's also worth considering that back then there was no Naxx and even BWL was fairly new. AQ wasn't out for months after I started playing and I mostly saw it as a chance to make some gold from all the lowbie crap that I gathered. It also had an element of anticipation and really seemed amazing seeing such a massive effort, even cross-faction.

Back to the matter at hand: I didn't mind being a noob back then. Now I'd hate to be stuck in Kara and occasionally wiping in ZA. Back then I spent months in MC and died a few times in BWL. What's different?

MC wasn't for noobs while Kara is. Sure, MC was easier, but it was The Raid. Kara was never the raid, justthe introduction. In terms of player's attitudes, MC was put on a pedestal labeled: Badass, while Kara was on a little platform that said: for ages 7 and under. How did that happen? Vanilla raids came out one at a time, giving all of them a chance to become "serious business," with the exception of AQ20 since it was very clearly set up as an easier, smaller counterpart to AQ40. Even ZG had its challenges and time in the sun. TBC did not give that time.

I wonder if Blizzard will do that again. I get the feeling they will. They want to make the expansion feel like it has more to it than just a couple new instances and a raid or two. Vanilla came out with only a single raid and it worked. Why did TBC need five all at once with another coming down the pipeline in only a few months? They should have spaced them out more. Instead they shoved a bunch of content at raiders, then made them wait what seems like almost a year for the next big raid. I didn't forget about ZA. And a single instance. They didn't even add a new Dire Maul, a set of cool instances, just one. And a single new arena.

Why so serious?

This has nothing to do with the Dark Knight. I've not even seen it. This post is Fio-[letters]'s fault.

JotW was radically changed recently. From the looks of it the overall regen will be higher and smarter, from a certain point of view. It gives mana to the lowest people and to a lot more people, but it's less per person, especially the paladin. Going from unlimited mana, or close enough, to what looks to be around 150 mana/5 is a pretty big blow. The details are really not the point of this post though.

Why are we so serious about this? I suppose I'll start with why we shouldn't be serious.

It's a game. Game. GAME! We don't get paid for winning or losing. We don't even pay a whole lot to play. We play for fun. Can you imagine a child screaming at Mother Nature because the flowers she wanted to run through were the wrong color? I actually can, which is sort of the point. Whining that what is fun anyway isn't the exact right bit of fun is rather childish. Why can't we relax and get lost in a world, unconcerned with all the details?

But games have rules and those rules affect how people enjoy the game. Imagine a game of soccer. You can't touch the ball with your hands, unless you're doing a throw-in or you're the goalie, but only in the box. Imagine if goalies couldn't use their hands anymore, since it's clearly overpowered that only they can do it. People would score a lot more, but overall I can't predict an effect on win-lose ratios for teams, that is if they adapted at similar speeds. The team shouldn't care much, right? Well the goalies would care and might start quitting, especially the ones that are exceptional at the current game. Teams would lose their best goalies, sot hey should care. Point, where did you go?

We should be serious precisely because this is a game. It is our fun. We should fight for our fun, kicking and screaming at any attempt to reduce it. After all, if we play for fun and the fun is taken away, the game is ruined. We might as well just keep working and at least get paid for being in a state of unfun.

The seriousness may also be a sign of exactly how well Blizzard has done at getting people into the game. The rules of the game are the equivalent of the laws of a nation. People live and die by them; they dominate life. Depending on how much a person depends on the game for fun or a social life, it can be one of the dominant aspects of life, on par with more 'real' issues like the price of gasoline or tax rates. These are the politics of the World of Warcraft. While I wish the manner of communication and discourse was more civilized and less stupid (have you seen some of the posts people make?), it is entirely understandable that people would take a strong interest in the rules of this world... of warcraft. The stupidity which is ever present on the forums isn't even all that outlandish compared to real life political arguments. The ignorance wouldn't out of place either.

It is amazing that a virtual world can so accurately imitate real life. I think this means that everything is as real as we make it, as much as we care about it. I still see how reality is a bit more real, due to the one-way interaction of death.

Oh right, seriousness.

While WoW is just a game, it is also a world and a significant part of the lives of many people. It is understandable that they would be as passionate about the rules and laws of the virtual world which they inhabit as the real one. The importance of fun should not be underestimated, especially when paying money for it, and it should be fought for. After all, if we're not having fun, what's the point? I might expand on this in my other blog. Might.

I guess that's it

I finally bit the bullet and canceled. I just didn't care anymore. There's not much more that I can experience. My schedule doesn't fit raiding very well. I'm not willing to twist my life around to fit it. My closest friends rerolled on another server, but I'm tired of rerolling. Of course these are just the immediate reasons why I quit. The more general and important reason is the not caring.

Why did I stop caring? I suppose you could read all my posts to see, but that would take far too much time for the payoff (nothing).

The game is too focused on gear and it drags players with it, so if you're not chasing gear, there's no one to play with. I don't want to spend my time in arenas, but that's where the gear is these days.

The raiding system is not fun. The focus is on gear, but the random system is terrible, including doing bad things for the mind. Each boss kill is little more than another pull of the level on a slot machine. The costs are high. I once met an engineer (with every single schematic in the game, including the old-world raids) who was switching to LW in a few days just for drums. How fucking stupid is that? Did Blizzard never realize that something was wrong when shit like that is happening? Yea, I'm swearing, I try to avoid it here, but being nice and polite never seemed to help anything. Oh right, raids... They're supposedly balanced, which really means designed for a certain minimum gear combined with chain-potting, specific professions, and all sorts of flasks. Don't bother to try without these, or just wait a few months before it all gets nerfed, or another expansion hits and no one cares about the old content anyway.

Solo content is almost exclusively grinds. Reputation grinds are not content. They are not fun. They are massive time sinks, a distraction to keep people from noticing that there's not much to do if not with at least 5 other people, or preferably 25. What happened to the long quest chains?

The stories are dying and poorly told. Outland was a failure at story-telling. Except for SMV and the Dark Portal, none of the zones carry a ton of weight. I'll excuse Nagrand since it's just plain beautiful and we can't always be in the Apocalypse. Netherstorm could have been better, except it just doesn't look right. The mana forges look like giant pretty machines which never fail (the pipes are supposedly leaking, but the effects are barely noticeable). It doesn't look like a land torn apart by magic, it looks like purple, lots of purple. The zones are too small, except for Nagrand there is just not enough space between enemy factions to make it believable.

PvP gives gear now, really good gear. It's attracted all the loot whores, all the people that don't care about winning or losing, just gear. AV was nerfed from an epic battle to a 15 minute zerg race. Why must PvP give gear? Just prevent the use of PvE gear. Now killing can be its own reward and the raiders can go back to raiding for gear rather than doing arenas. But hey, can we criticize them for going to a system that isn't random?

I suppose I'll say later. My account doesn't end until September 20, so I'll try to sort out my mailboxes and whatnot before then. I'm sure I'll be back to try WotLK.

A few prot talent buffs

Like a few other posts, this is just a boring copy from a post on the paladin forums. Maybe my title just wasn't catchy, though I even tried an exclamation point; neon signs were not an option.

Blessing of Sacrifice: redirect 5% of each attack. It will be less amazing again DW, but it will be an extremely powerful (overpowered?) boss fight ability. Maybe put a damage absorb limit on it, for example the max health of the caster. This would limit the power in raids without excessive gimping in PvP and also force a rotation, giving paladins more to do, which hopefully wouldn't just be more tedium.

Blessing of Sanctuary: renamed Hand of Sanctuary: increases block value (sorry, DKs) by 10% of the next damaging (so it isn't wasted on avoidance)physical attack, lasts X seconds. It's a triggered mitigation and aggro boost tied together.

Devotion aura: Increases armor by 5% plus an additional x/level. At a bit over 16k armor this will give more armor, scaling up from there. Below this it's a nerf, but in that case it's either a tank who isn't at the point to care about effective health yet or someone who shouldn't be getting hit anyway.

Wow is Dead!

Or should I say, Undead? From my experiences, WoW is best when it involves the Undead.

The Plaguelands are underrated. Even Blizzard doesn't seem to fully realize what they started there. The cauldrons, countering the Plague, that's huge. That would have been a good setup for a backstabbing by the Royal Apothecary Society, who while they are fanatical about fighting the Scourge, they might be afraid of the side-effects of the reversal of the Plague, such as their destruction/death.
The Eastern Area has a lot of wasted space, which is good. It forces the player to see the scale of the devastation. It gives plenty of room for all sorts of quests. Plagued trolls, the remnants of the high elves, there's a lot there, and it's all mixed in with the Undead.

The Ghostlands are creepy. Very creepy. The entire quest area is amazing, with a perfectly timed rep scheme, and a build up to a final attack on the traitor.

Scholomance is a great instance. It's semi-linear, you can't really get lost, so it would fit well with the BC design. Still, it's complex enough to not seem like a glorified hallway. The pulls are varied, the bosses have some interesting mechanics. Even after the nerfs/adjustments, it's still a place that can kill a bad player. The quest chain from the ghosts outside sets a perfectly awful tone.

Stratholme: I admit it, I'm amazed that it has managed to burn, unchanged, for 3 years. I know WoW is significantly after TFT, but maybe it changed since then, as players we can only comment on three last three years that we've seen. The quests are a little strange and seemed concentrated on the Scarlet side, but still, they were more interesting than "kill X number of Y." Oh right, looting the head of the Grand Crusader is a... surprise.

Naxxramas I'm talked about before. I actually did it Saturday night, had a blast again. Sapphiron has a really cool animation, neat mechanic with the ice blocks too. Though the pre-KT trash is really annoying.

Northrend, it's filled with the dead. It's the throne of their King. How can it not be amazing? Yea, you might have noticed that I'm really excited.