Worst Gaydar Ever

It was a typical weekend. I was tired, bored, and playing WoW. Specifically, running old raids. I went to Ahn'Qiraj, which due to a summoning error started in the usually-soloed AQ20. After that was BWL, but a bugged Rend event mixed with a lack of patience and inability to follow basic directions eventually resulted in only four of us in the raid. Razorgore died. I rushed off to grab the goblins before they could escape with their precious average of .08 elementium ingots.

One of the two mages said something to the effect of "whoever dies is a faggot", in reference to the Burning Adrenaline buff which eventually kills them. I was still chasing goblins and hoping to outrun the boss speech.

I considered explaining that there is no evidence for a link between the buff/debuff and homosexuality, and furthermore that as it is commonly used, faggot is a pegorative term, making it a pointless and unscientific insult against a group that I have yet to see harm me, either collectively or as individuals. Alas, time was short, so I went with "worst gaydar ever".

I'm not actually opposed to the use of the word faggot, but I think it should be restricted to faggots, either bundles of sticks or homosexual men, with it usually referring to the latter unless hobbits are involved and it's not a slashfic. I think it's very important to have the word faggot as a negative reference for gay men. It helps me identify and avoid homophobes. The usage of faggot as generic insult mostly confuses me. Sure, that's what people did in 8th grade. Everyone was a jumbled mess of immaturity and ignorance and the concept of masculinity was poorly understood but understood to be very important, so linking someone to a group often associated with femininity made perfect sense in the strange logic of cruelty. Gay or not, labeling someone gay, or with a gay label, was a useful tool in inflicting social and psychological harm on others. Then at some point I figured people went to high school, spent a few more months using gay or fag as generic insults, and then switched to Shakespearean attacks in an attempt to win points with the English Lit teacher and avoid punishment from authority figures who did not realize that telling someone to "get thee to a nunnery" wasn't a Catholic joke. I generally expect people to grow up.

Boss dies, shaman friend gets shield, and burning adrenaline, and dies. Faggot faggot faggot faggot faggot faggot faggot.

Ah. So now we're past the one-off immature joke. Now he's being insistent. Spamming it. Pardon me a moment.

*ahem*

What the fuck is wrong with people that they think that this is any way remotely acceptable behavior? What circuit is wrong in their heads to think that any spamming is appropriate? Even worse, spamming at someone with a probably-inaccurate and definitely-irrelevant insult? It makes no god damn sense. This isn't a college frat where everyone is drunk and being an immature jackass helps a person fit in. It's a small group in a game. What could possibly be the point of this? Is it some mental disease? Is it contagious? (yes, unlike homosexuality, which is a great irony)

*end rant*

I kicked him in the middle of his spamming. For whatever reason the chat message is "so and so has left the group" rather than "so and so has been removed by irritated raid leader". The shaman friend whispered me, asking if I'd kicked and I said I had.

 But why then? What actually changed from the first mention of faggots to the last? A bit of spam? Surely I can better survive a bit of spam than pointless hate directed at 10% of the population (they're everywhere, look out!) and hitting 100% due to terrible aim.

I've been called a faggot before. There I was riding my back to the high school, not or school, but for summer sports camp when I was going onto 7th or 8th grade. Someone was riding behind me saying "faggot", not close enough or loud enough for me to even realize anyone was saying anything, but eventually I noticed. It was someone my age who caught up and asked where I was going and somehow my school came up, a nearby Catholic school for kindergarten to 8th grade. He called it a fag school. Having been there, I can assure you, there would have been little tolerance for any fagging. This is the Catholic Church we're talking about here. If that's a fag school, then fag is clearly meaningless.

If I woke up tomorrow and fag was universally used as a generic insult, that would be fine. It's not. Instead it's sometimes generic, creating the fag=bad connection, if that hadn't quite been drilled into people yet, and sometimes specific, allowing it to act like one of those parasites that has a dozen stages of life all of which allow it to better survive and infest hosts. If it were generic, it wouldn't be hateful to gays. But as a hybrid, it's hateful to gays, suggesting that they are so bad that even the description of them is bad, and to be described as gay is not merely inaccurate (it usually is), but offensive. That's the key. If someone says fag they aren't saying bad+homosexual, but rather homosexual->bad. If fag was merely pairing two unrelated terms, one neutral and one negative, that would be okay. It instead acts like a very short [il]logical argument: If gay, then bad. I wonder if it's coincidence that one of the first people to explicitly explain to me that gay is bad was also someone who told me to carry a pocket Bible. I think I'd need the word of a deity before I'd start hating people for a behavior which doesn't harm anyone else (not that I'm suggesting it harms them either).

I've never been attacked or significantly harassed (I just have a particularly good memory for bad memories). So then it makes sense. If I've never been hurt by homophobic behavior, then it's no wonder I'd let it slide, at least until they start spamming. That's what is bugging me now, that it was the spamming that got him kicked. But isn't the initial comment the real problem? A bit of spam here and there never hurt anyone. It's the little comments that slide by unchecked, un-fact-checked, un-questioned, which act like little seeds. Call it the "broken windows theory of hate".

Yet if I were to ignore, kick, and report every single hateful comment from the niggs in trade chat to the faggots in a pug raid, where would that leave me? Well thankfully, I'd still have my guild because I can't recall them being hateful assholes. But I'd definitely find myself labeled a nit-picker. "Choose your battles" sounds like common sense, but there is also "death by a thousand cuts", like when in Wyoming two men tortured him most of the way to death and then left him to slowly die tied to a fence. Then people (I'm using the term only in the genetic sense) showed up to protest his funeral. I'm not suggesting that there is a direct link between calling a female shaman in BWL a faggot leads to murdering people. But I am suggesting that a little bit of hate goes a long way. Seeing someone as a little less human makes them a lot less safe. That spreads. Maybe we should be more careful with what we say and how we say it and why we say it.

If you've read The Giver, you might remember a part where the protagonist yells at someone who is playing poorly "You're released!" and is reprimanded by the adults, because "released" isn't just a word for being free to go; it means something very serious and specific in that society.

One little change to loot rules

People who leave the group automatically pass, even if they have selected something else already.  Dropping group during loot rolls overwrites everything else.

Assassinate Creed

You know that great feeling you get when you've been struggling with a boss and finally get it down?  That's how I felt after this quest.

It's part of the rogue legendary quest chain and is definitely a rogue quest.  You must not only sneak, but sneak well.  And sap too.  Sapping and sneaking and being patient and quick.  Patient and quick, that's a rare thing!

This particular part takes place in Gilneas, sneaking past highly-alert guards to assassinate a black dragon disguised as a human.  It was great to see the city used again, and used well.

It took me four tries, though I don't count one of them because I was just testing the circles.  Tip: the outer circle is the detection one.  The inner circle is... round.

But I triumphed!  Then I cooked some food to help me fight the boss.  And then I forgot to eat it.  But he died and I didn't.  Then they gave me daggers that match T6 quite nicely and sent me to go kill bosses in Dragon Soul and the other place which might be the same place, for a few weeks.

So let's hope I can get into the raids.  Maybe if I kill a guildy.  That's a legitimate rogue tactic, right?  Maybe not funny to joke about after the EVE incident...

Anyway, point remains, bravo, Blizzard, on an amazing quest.

Persuasive and Authoritarian Roles in the Holy Trinity

Some people tell you what to do and you have to listen because they're the ones in charge.  They have the law or guns or mind-control.  These are the authoritarians.

Some people convince you to do it by manipulation: bribes and blackmail and friendly smiles with the knife behind their back.  These are the persuasives (not a real word)(or so the authoritarians would say).

Some people don't tell you to do anything, they seem to never order anyone at all, but they are always there, making things happen, invisible and often uncredited, but necessary beyond imagination.  These are the nameless ones, because I can't think of a good label and maybe that works anyway.

Consider control over mobs within WoW.  I think we can map these labels onto the group roles.  Not the holy trinity of tank, healer, DPS, but to tank, crowd control, and healing. 

Tanks hold aggro by mechanic and mind-control.  They use sheer numerical power to force enemies to attack them.  That's what aggro is, a number on a table that tells the mob who to attack, and tanks make very big numbers.  Taunts are the mind-control, forcing them mob, regardless of any other preference (except when specifically disabled) to attack the tank.  Tanks are ultimately about straightforward use of power to force the mob to do what they want.  As WoW tanking has evolved from aggro being difficult to survival being difficult (relatively speaking), this has become even more accurate as an analogy.  Indeed, authoritarians can impose their will, but then people try to kill them, with varying degrees of success.

Crowd control uses tricks.  The crowd control cannot easily tell mobs to attack them, but some classes can tell them to attack others.  They can pin mobs in place, stun them, fear them.  They kite them, using constant effort to make it happen, in contrast with the tank who can more often start off with aggro and keeps it, with little effort.  A kiting hunter cannot ever stand still because the mob is always moving, just as a persuasive leader must constantly counter the intellectual, or blatantly false but nevertheless convincing, attacks against him.  One misstep can be the end.  But the results can be more beautiful to see.  While the power of a tank may be impressive, everyone enjoys a story of intrigue.

And then there are the healers.  They don't tell anyone what to do, not directly.  Without them, everything else falls apart.  They are the bureaucrats and the secretaries, who we may see, but never quite acknowledge as essential, and they may try to keep it that way.  Their bosses are likely to be authoritarian or persuasive and neither likes to have their spotlight stolen.  If we notice an amazing healer, it probably means something went wrong.  They take the heat when someone stands in the fire.

Or if you were expecting this to be about God, then let's say God is the authoritarian, Jesus is the persuasive, and the Holy Spirit is the nameless.  It doesn't even get a name.  Sometimes it's the Holy Ghost, which sounds like the least terrifying Halloween movie ever.  God tends to kill people, the Holy Spirit does something I can't quite remember but is important, and Jesus once crowd-controlled a pack of demons by putting them into sheep and running them off a cliff into the sea.  And then he self-rezed and BAM, casted frost shock.

You must, maybe, be in a raid to enter this isntance

Why?  And when?

Obviously from a strategic standpoint you're going to need a raid group to get far in a contemporary raid instance.  Just zoning in though, that also requires a 'raid'.  There is this strange requirement that players be in a raid group in order to zone in.  It's an inconsistent requirement.

The raid group does not even need to be a group.  Five players in a group cannot zone in, but hit the convert to raid button and now they can, despite no actual difference in the group composition.  This was a past-time in the past, of completing a BRD run and attuning people and then you'd convert to a raid and gaze in wonder at the Molten Giants that stand near the entrance.  Sometimes we'd pull one, they're linked so we'd get both, and see what happens.  Usually it meant we died.  Sometimes we ran out fast enough.

You don't need 40 people to zone in to a 40-man raid.  You don't need 25 for a 25 or 10 for a 10.  Or even two.  The other person in the 'raid group' can be offline, even on another character, and it still works.  I don't know why the raid group requirement exists.  Maybe it was a way to prevent the generation of hundreds of single-person raids that would destroy the servers back when Blizzard staff wasn't yet swimming in pools of molten gold.  BTW, a very painful process, but they come out very shiny.

The inconsistency goes further.  It seems to me that the raid group check only occurs at instance portals.  That means that if you can get inside without the glowing purple or green wall curtain, you don't need a raid.  There are two raids which have that ability.  It's not coincidence that both are also linked to instances.  Molten Core is linked to Blackrock Depths and has a portal down there, which no one uses (anymore), but also in Blackrock Mountain there is a window which acts like a portal.  The window does the raid check.  But next to it, there is an elf.  He doesn't.  Talk to him and you can get in, even without being in a group, let alone a raid.  Blackwing Lair is linked to Blackrock Spire, and also has a teleport mechanic in Blackrock Mountain, an orb which will put you inside the raid instance, again, without needing to be in a raid group.

I've tried other raid instances, not all, but a decent sample covering both sides of Ahn'Qiraj, Karazhan, Mount Hyjal in the Caverns of Time, Icecrown Citadel, and Ulduar.  All block me, requiring a raid group.  This seems to support my theory that if you can bypass the portal, you can get inside.  But I don't know of any other raids which allow that.  Maybe the legendary staff from old Naxxramas would do that for Karazhan (I don't know where the portal it makes goes, inside or outside), but good luck finding one to test!

BREAKING NEWS: The wasps have armed themselves

 Terrifying!

Should LFR form 10-man raids?

Currently, LFR forms 25-man raids. This has benefits and costs. Let's look at those.

Speed of raid formation
We know from random heroics that there is a relative shortage of tanks and healers. In a perfectly balanced system everyone would see approximately the same queue times, slightly above zero and varying with time, due to random variation in the number of tanks, healers, and DPS online at a given time. The average wait time of any role would be the same as any other. Obviously this is not the case.

25-man raids shift the required ratio of tanks, healers, and DPS. While only one or two more tanks may be needed, as well as more healers, the majority of the increase in raid size is from DPS. The overall ratio swings away from tanks+healers toward DPS, which may more closely match the overall population ratio. In contrast, 10-man raiding can simply double the requirements, leaving the general balance approximately the same. This means that we can expect 25-man raids to form more quickly than 10-man raids.

Or can we?

Let's imagine that players queue in at random times, and also randomly fail to accept the created raid (the dreaded red check mark followed by another few minutes of waiting). If two tanks, two healers, and six DPS are queued up, that's a 10-man right there. If we add more DPS, they don't have a group until we've added so many that a 25-man forms. That means waiting, which means more time for people to get bored and drop out, meaning a longer wait to form the raid.

The critical factor here is the size of the queued population. If it is small, then the 10-man raid will form more quickly, while a large queued population will make 25-man raids quicker on average by bringing in more of the overflow of DPS. Note that this does not mean the population that wants to use LFR. Players already in a raid are not queued and are therefore not available to form additional raids.  I'll come back to the logic, or lack thereof, of this later.

 Quality of Experience
I think I might enjoy LFR more if it formed ten-man raids.  With the current 25 it becomes a giant mess of players, crammed into small spaces, lagging out anyone with a low-end computer, and feeling like a zerg-fest rather than a raid.  Switching to a ten-man format could alleviate this problem.  Individuals could feel slightly more accountable and important, but with heavy nerfing they would have to try just as hard to wipe the raid.

On the other hand, that was some terrible math that I didn't do
If the overall population trying to raid is out-of-proportion with the 10-man raid size, there are going to be longer queues, even if each group forms faster, because each group is smaller.  It would be faster movement through a narrower pipe, and a pipe that for some reason blocks half the DPS from entering.

For this, I suggest a hybrid model: Form 10-man raids by default, but if the DPS backlog grows too large, form 25-man raids until it has been reduced.  This would put the average raid size and composition somewhere between 10 and 25, allowing it to more closely match the overall ratio of players.  If there are a lot of DPS one night, it will skew toward 25 to let in more, while if the DPS are lower, it will create 10-man raids.  This wouldn't help much with any imbalance between tanks and healers.

The hybrid model should result in faster queue times for everyone, better matching the requirements of the raids to the available population.  As an added bonus, it could give Blizzard a way to measure how many people actually want to raid in each role.  If the queue times between roles are more similar, then players will be more likely to play the role which is most fun, with less distortion from queue times.  In the future  Blizzard could use that information to form better raid sizes and ratios of tanks, healers, and DPS.  Imagine that, having data on what people want to play based on what they do, rather than what they say they want to do, or what they do when we provide a distorted incentive system.  It's like science!  But sadly, with fewer lasers.

Why you should use a boring mount

Turning into a dragon is definitely cool.  Carrying friends to great heights and dropping them is cool too.  Having friends is overrated.

What isn't cool, but is definitely valuable, is being able to land.  With the small, boring, basic mounts, landing is easy.  You know right away where the center is, where the feet are.  When you need to land on tiny outcroppings to get minerals, herbs, or just need a good spot from which to rain down terror on soon-to-be terrified enemies, having a small mount helps.

My own experience with landing the big mounts has shown that they are much trickier.  The worst may be the dragons, which always seem to be an inch away from landing but are still insistent on flapping their wings.

There is the option of dismounting before the mount has settled, but if it isn't landing, you're probably going to end up on a steady downward slope.

In most situations this all just means you waste a little bit of time moving around trying to get the unwieldy dragon to land.  But sometimes, it means someone else wins the race, to the ore, the herb, or the rare.  You can't have that.

Don't let vanity stand in the way of the pyrium vein that you've earned by flying in circle for hours!

P.S. I'm re-restarting my political blog over at Delusions of Truth.  This could result in 25% less randomly political posts here.  No promises.