Ease of killing the joy

This seems to be the family introductions week.

My other son, coming 13 this year, is an avid gamer. His bread and butter are games. No special genre required, just games. He has a knack for them, especially the action games. FPS, platform jumpers, puzzles, you name it.

He also has a character in WoW, which he played for a while. But he didn't like the questing and grouping.

Quite the opposite from our youngest.

This son plays a lot of shooters, Crossfire mostly for it being a free to play and lightweight enough to run on their computer. He is good in it: not brilliant, but good. Good enough to be kicked from the matches for being a bot, using hacks or cheating.

The bad part of it: He doesn't cheat. He hates botting, cheating, hacking and using any additional tools in the shooters. He hates them, he hates people using them. "If they are not good enough to play, they should learn to play and not cheat", he says.

I couldn't agree more.

Because he understands the basic idea of a shooter - shoot and get shot at - he doesn't mind getting fragged every now and then. He knows he gets better all the time by following the frag count and his position in the final leaderboard. The more he plays, the more he gets to know the names of similar players and is able to make an educated guess on which side to join to get a good match (or an easy way to fulfill the daily mission...).

All this without resorting to addons or hacks.

I know it's an age old debate over the use of addons, whether they are cheating or not, but after playing Rift for a while it seems quite reasonable to say that the use of multiple addons in WoW has even more dumbed down the content and has caused the situation in which the Blizzard designers have been forced to come up with extreme gear and simon-says hurdles for the players to feel challenging.

The discussion kind of bugged me the other day, when a player/person/blogger I appreciate very much said that Rift would benefit from a threat meter, which would make it easier to spot if you are about to steal the aggro from the tank. I - playing a pure dps mage - do not want to see a threat meter just because I want to learn to play the game with the tools present in the game. My humble opinion, based on the WoW and Rift experiences, is that the more we have bells and whistles, measuring and gauges, the less we actually enjoy the illusion of the virtual world. Thus the less we really have things to measure in the game, the less we pay attention to the mathematics behind the illusion.

Oh, and the aggro stealing: even though I blast out my Pyro/Ele/Archon on full force, I can't steal aggro from a tank spec warrior or cleric. That's my experience so far, and I have a feeling that there are signs in the game telling when you are agitating the boss too much. I haven't been able to verify that feeling, though, but I will do my best to see if the boss/mob starts to give me the eye before they charge on me next time.

If that ever comes again.

Back to the topic, though. The easiest way to kill the joy in a multiple-player game, be it PvP or PvE is to either allow or use cheating. Be it hack, bot or clitching, its just the same: it will spoil the fun from the other parties not using them. The same goes IMO with the addons: the ones using certain utility addons have the advantage over the ones not using the same ones, and the solution can't be to 'get the addon, noob' in any sensible way.

In the end, these are games we want to enjoy. Be it by levelling, questing, crafting or raiding, we are entitled to feel equal in our game, not feeling put down because we do not succumb to the same level as the cheaters or for not having the same addons as the other guy.

I wonder what happened to the experiment to level and raid without any addons in WoW? I know there was someone trying to do that...

I'll get me coat.

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Ramp up the beat (YAWP)

Somehow the weekend was cut short to sessions of WoW and sleep. Don't ask me how and why, but in addition to those, there was only some lunch and breakfast.

Not too bad though: I spent the time in game trying to ramp up my dps in my Arms spec (more about that tomorrow). The reason to this was a lengthy discussion with a guild officer about my performance and my own view that I lack most in the DPS side. So it was off to the drawing board on that for me.

First of all it was all gearing and gemming. Simple as anything, especially as I had few Emblem of Triumphs to spend. So the gear was about there where I could start doing some dps. On gemming I went all strength, more about that too tomorrow.

First try was very, very disappointing. My dps was sub-par by far, reaching only 1.8k on lv80 dummy. After getting the priority rotation around the way it's supposed to be I got the dps up to 2.1k. Nice improvement just by getting the priorities right. And all this unbuffed: warrior dps is crap unbuffed anyhow, so I'm almost pleased by the level I got myself to.

I also tested the protection dps, but that is just stupid and ... dumb to test on a dummy. You need to be attacked to get the Revenge to proc, which is quite considerable damage dealer in the priorities (the best, to be honest...). So those numbers will be left out of the public. Sufficient to say that I got some other skills to the picture and I was pretty happy about that.

And then I got to ICC25 with the guild. First of all I got the quest from the lobby, to collect blood and stuff for Morgraine. Then we went in: the bloody lag hits me like a truck every time, and its funny how bad Marrowgar really is. It has to be all that mist, frost and all which does the encounter next to impossible for my computer to handle, despite the fact that the spammy addons have been cut off.

Long story short, I'm pretty pleased with my dps now, even though there is a lot to improve. That improvement will come shortly as the quest reward is Shadow's Edge which is arguably the best Arms DPS weapon before Shadowmourne. What really made my day was that I got an upgrade to my lousy neck, as I got the Bile Encrusted Medallion to myself.

Now I have to earn enough gold to purchase all those 25 Primordial Saronites for the quest. That Light's Vengeance part was too meh after Wrathgate and the level the quest expects you to be, really. It could have been an epic fight for the individual, but it wasn't. Who would teach the game/quest designers the few valuable things every pen and paper RPG gamemaster learns about pushing the players to the limit and making sure they won't fail despite the odds? This part would have needed such an encounter, really.

Anyhow a very nice weekend, despite the lack of activities. Total game time over the weekend... 4.5 hours?
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I messed up my good impression (YAWP)

by Copra


They say that you can make a good first impression only once. I had my chance and I blew it, really.

You see, I got myself to enter into the Saturday raid and I made a promise to myself to be prepared. Like all good plans, it was ruined by bad luck and bad execution.

First of all, I took upon the preparations in a hurry and by accident put the flasks meant for my warrior on sale. I was to check my gemming before I enter the raid, but was sucked into a living hell of a Stratholme and couldn't leave that be.

And I noticed the lack of flasks when the raid leader did his check...

Then the actual hell began. Like I've told earlier, my computer handles the 25 mans very badly: my fps dropped to 2 on Marrowgar, making it next to impossible with my experience in the encounter to avoid everything. No problem, though, as the other two were pro's and I learned that one of them has the same issue with the encounters. Though it never shows in his performance due to long learning. Which I lack naturally.

Marrowgar was just the initiation rite for the lower depths of hell. My heart sinked when I had to change to and fro between dps and tanking, as I noticed at one point that my action bars had gotten messed up. I was supposed to dps, I was in battle stance (my secondary spec is Arms) but my bar was lacking the critical skills! No time to switch anything in the heat of the battle, but I learned later that... I had been in my protection spec all along...

Now the logs are a mess on my part: they'll show me being is protection spec on fights I was dpsing and I fear it's the other way around on some other fight.

I think all this comes down to two things. Trying too hard and leaving things to the last possible minute.

Let me tell you something: I wasn't pleased on my performance, my gems nor my preparation. I feel miserable enough without the motivational message from the tank officer, which explained in detail what I had done, what I hadn't done and what I should have done. However I've taken everything under consideration and I'll be more prepared next time, if I'm ever allowed to join again...

Raiding is really fun. /cry
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Skill or gear?

by Copra


Over the last few weeks I played quite a bit of WoW. While I was more concentrating on getting my main - protection warrior - up to the GS standards for IC PUGs, I also spent some serious quality time with my shadowpriest and for a while I had her in better gear than my warrior. Which was easy really: as ranged DPS you are more welcome to come and blunder in an impromptu PUG raid than with an almost-decently geared tank. So I got in more PUG raids with my spriest than with  my main, which of course increased the probability of loot gear.

I still cannot fathom the LFD tool, though. Even though my warrior overgeared my spriest, the latter gets PoS or HoR as random heroic all the time, while the warrior has to succumb to VH. Why? As it happens, my spriest has done the quest line in IC5 mans, where as my warrior hasn't.

As if this wasn't enough, I have been playing my unguilded deathknight quite a bit. Coming from lv74 to 78 has been quite a journey and is in fact the point of the title. You see, every time I launched to quest with my deathknight I launched the LFD. Most of the time it took three or four tries to finish the random instance. And I mean three or four total new starts, not just replacing some people in there. The experience was awful, really, as most of the time the players were obviously levelling their umpteenth alt with the mindframe of a capped and geared toon: blast in, aoe everything, move on.

At lv78 it just doesn't work that way, except when the toons are properly geared and the players really know how to play. Of course there were the entertaining runs of Ahn'Kahet, in which we just chain pulled everything in steady flow, but most of the time the group just disappeared mid-instance after a wipe.

The worst case was the druid, who came to Violet Hold as a tank, but it became very soon very obvious that he didn't know a thing about tanking. First of all, his gear was not for tanking. Second, when he was asked to kite Xevozz, he didn't even know what kiting was. And as the final straw, I was asked to tank in my unholy dps gear... I should have declined.

Later on it turned out he was levelling his third alt, and he was in fact a boomkin. And he was so full of himself that he kept saying everyone else a noob, while he was himself one, really.

On the other hand, at level cap, the better the gear you are wearing, the easier the heroics turn to be. The meager improvement of 200 in GS (up to 5.2k now) meant that my warrior gets the silent, strong type heroic runs everytime. We grouped once with Förgelös to run a couple of heroics together and his two comments were quite revealing. First one after we got into a group right after I had chosen my role was: "Well, that was fast. I normally have to wait for 5-8 minutes." (SIDENOTE: With my spriest I have the average waiting time of 13 minutes...) And the second one just after the instance was finished: "That was fast and professional. I usually spend much longer time even in the easier ones."

So all in all, at least in the capped heroics it's not about skill but gear. Gear to take the beating and gear to deliver enough damage to kill them all promptly. However, in the levelling stage the skill is more important than the gear, as I was able to beat the damage meters with few levels lower skills, talents and gear in an instance repeatedly with my dk, even against a mage and warlock.

The more I look at it, at level cap the skill doesn't rate too high. The few raids I got into were more like jumping platform games than MMO experience at its best.

My judgement is that gear >> skill. At least for now.

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EDIT. Just occured to me that I didn't define what I mean by skill. In WoW in my opinion skill is the ability to play the toon to the fullest and be able to utilize all skills appropriately, depending on the encounter. Running around a boss room is not skill per that definition, neither is doing a dance or platform jumper acrobatics while in an encounter. Like Tobold has said time and again, there should be more encounters which require strategic thinking rather than twitch.

Teaser within the game

Last post was about the wonderfull new LFG tool, which works across Battlegroup servers. No more waiting and queuing for group to complete the one you are missing or having a group quest for: just plug in and you're done!

But what has gone unnoticed, in a way, is the Weekly Raid: Daily 5man instances were replaced with the Weekly Raid. Which is even more goodies for someone like me, who has been complaining how Blizzard has forgotten and voided the older content in favour of the new one.Why?

The Weekly Raid is one boss from Naxx, Ulduar, Trial of the Crusader or Malygos or Sartharion. Only doable once a week, resetting on Tuesdays.

It's a teaser of the full raid instance! It's a way for us who have never seen the places to visit it and see if we want to trek any further, and if we can make it in there. Another excellent move from Blizzard to make the game even more casual friendly and cater the people with restricted playing time.

As the group for weekly heroics will be aimed to do that one boss only, the LFG tool will come to help. Or the Looking For Raid (LFR) part of it: if you notice in the teaser Weekly that you can do it, you have already at least that one boss achievement under you to prove that you have at least seen the instance.

And another killer of old WoW. No more tedious planning and scheduling, just pop in to LFR, make your preparations and off you go. Got 2-3 hours to spare? Go for it!

Loving it even though I haven't done it yet. For our guild the current plan is to run the Weekly on Sundays, and it will replace our former weekly Ony run. Guess am I signing up on that one?

Right!

A sad, almost degrading, visit

Last night I had the pleasure to accompany some of our guilds finest in a 'raid' like event. As it happens, Lady Onyxia is being revamped soon, so the guild decided to pay some last respects to the original wipefest.

It was a very sad occasion. Hilariously sad, almost degrading experience, I would have to say.

Because there were only 15 of us, lowest being my warrior (lv78) and the rest capped, Ulduar working veterans.

Onyxia was down before I even understood what was happening. People had to activate the whole swarms of the Whelps to get some action going, though all the AOE in the group was just overwhelmingly over powered against anything in there.

In a way, I can see why the content needs revamping. The veterans -players who have been around since first beta or launch- still remember these encounters with fondness, but to see them in this state, forgotten and weakened by added levels, just makes the memories taste stale.

The content should be experienced around the level range it was meant to be, or the group size should be controlled to make the challenge a real one (like our Auchindoun rampage). This way it would be in the correct scope for the experience and everyone could see/feel/smell the event firsthand.

Because of this, I don't want to pursue higher level visits to other Old World end game instances. Of course I will accompany in such a trip if the opportunity rises, but I'm not deliberately seeking for such.

The saddest part for me is the fact that I have lost the opportunity to experience these instances due to the fact I started the game so late. In fact, I've lost the opportunity to experience the Burning Crusade's end game, too, and with this speed I'm levelling and advancing, I will be too poorly geared and experienced to get into the current end game, too. I don't want to be a leech in a group, I want to contribute: without experience the latter is neigh impossible.

This may be one reason why I'm looking forward to the Cataclysm. Then the table is turned and everyone starts from the same spot.

Everything will be new to everyone.

Learning to play

I read this Tobold's post with somewhat mixed feelings: Mind you, I'm viewing the situation from the point of view of lv70 prot warrior and lv55 holy priest disc priest, with no raiding experience.

In general terms, if there was a new game in which to incorporate this feature, I would suggest that the levelling game should be taken away and replaced with an interactive and interesting tutorial. However, in WoW the situation is already such that the levelling game is being effectively killed by Blizzard itself. In a way, the Old World is void, empty and full of unused questgivers, and the whole development is focused in making more candy for the end game raiding scene.

Which itself is already splitting in different sub-classes which are served with a) new, harder content and b) nerfing the previous harder content. Oh, yes, and c)by making the gear progression easier to move from one to another, even if you do not want to cannot play up to the standards of the raiding guilds. Like Gevlon so nicely put it. And I fully agree on his opinion in that post.

However, in terms of learning to play the class, the current situation in the raiding scene is unbearable. Like I have earlier posted, the /2 -trade channel that is- is filled with the LFM-announcements for people with the achievements for the instance they are going into. It's a Catch-22-esque situation: you have to have the instance completed to get to complete the instance. So the PUG way of learning to play the raiding game is effectively closed and as such the door to the reasonably progressive raid guilds is closed.

My question actually is, how can you learn to play the end game, if there is no way to learn to play the end game as such? And how can you apply for a raiding guild without having the proper (achievement proven) raiding experience, which you cannot get without being able to raid in meaningful way?

I liked Tobold's idea of having a raiding tutorial to teach the people entering the end game the basics of raiding. The problem with that idea, however, is the fact that most of the current mid- and high-level raiding guilds are already so far in the progression that there is neigh possibility for the newcomer to get into that game anymore.

The game is already separated into three classes of players: those still levelling (and probably never entering the raiding game), those who have entered the raiding end game (and are putting time and effort to it) and those who are in the high end of the raiding (raiding the hardest content Blizzard can toss to the players). These three are separated by /played, time available for playing and -like it or not- earlier progression in the end game content.

The guides on how to break into the raiding game released pre-WotLK are already outdated.

There is no way anymore, because there is no way to learn to play the game.

Reconsidering current end game

MMO's are considered to be games. WoW is no exception in that, even though most of the content is heavily soloable and the norm is to power level to the level cap with the aid of addons and guides. If we're very strict about it, MMO's lack something that games have typically in common: winning conditions. In that sense they are more akin to the pen and paper roleplaying games, in which the game refers more to the way of interacting with the story and rules than to the winning conditions and actually winning "the game". In addition to all that, games with set winning conditions are usually played for leisure or spur of the moment. They can be taken out for a quick game, as well as the solo computer and console games.

As the MMO's have evolved to the current stage, where the end game is considered to be The Game, and the levelling game, which in roleplaying games is the main interest, is just a tutorial to raiding, the concept of a MMORPG has changed a bit. At least in WoW you cannot learn to play your character, class or the encounters by playing anymore, at least not as effectively as the rest of the population or raid expects you to. You character is scrutinized before you are accepted to a raid team, and usually this is preceded with clear questions on how and what you have raided before: newbies don't bother.

Because of this requirement that you have to master the flavour of the month talent build, know the encounters by heart so you can dance the right dance and have the experience to support the knowledge, the game has lost something of it's fascination to some. It's not a game, casual entertainment or pass time anymore.

It has become a hobby.

To be able to play the game of "End Game Raiding", you have to level your character to the level cap as efficiently as possible. This is so that you don't waste your time in the levelling game and get bored with the repeating quests. Next you have to spend your time in reading the guides and websites describing the most efficient talent builds, the gear and glyphs to support them and in addition to that, learn to play the specifications. You have to train yourself to play the character at the maximum level with the best possible efficiency.

And in raiding the main thing isn't to kill the boss, but to be the best in DPS, TPS, HPS or whatever your class is specified to do. The main thing is to be able to do your character's job better than the last time and preferably better than the guy next to you (in the raid roster).

Isn't this exactly what you do in any other hobby: You gather information, train your skills and try to do your best and improve yourself?

So what makes MMO's more a game than a hobby?

Computers and computer games are not considered to be hobbies for some reason or another. Reading, riding or playing chess are hobbies, however. Playing games is considered equal to watching TV: mindless waste of time while being 'entertained'.

Which it really is in the end.

Stargrace pointed out to me in Twitter the other day, that there is so much creative talent in the people who play MMO's. My response to was that the games actually deprive us from using that creativity, as we are spending our time in using other peoples' creations instead of creating ourself.

The question is: are the MMO's becoming a real hobby or are they just waste of time comparable to cheap TV-serial?

Everyone is hardcore... almost

I noticed one thing about WoW and hardcore gaming during the weekend. There are some players that are online almost all the time, at least everytime I login, be it morning, day or night. Naturally, they are hardcore gamers who are tackling (currently farming) the raid content of the game, who couldn't care less about this kind of blog.

But there are very few level capped players who take the game less seriously.

In short form, I think everyone who has played the game to the level cap is hardcore. I have been playing the game for about 2 years and I haven't capped yet. I'm as casual as casual can be, and most likely I will never experience the raiding as it's supposed to be. Most probably I'll resort to the Greedy Goblin way and purchase myself a raid when the time comes to visit the raid dungeons.

There are the old raiders, who have plunged through the Vanilla dungeons, Outlands raiding and are now bored to death with Sarth+3. Then there are the ones, who have started when The Burning Crusade hit the shelves and ran through Karazhan and Mt. Hyjal to the max, killing Kil'Jaeden before moving on to Wrath of the Lich King. And then there are the newcomer achievers, who have started to play when Wrath of the Lich King opened Northrend and DeathKnights for all to use and abuse.

All of these groups are playing the levelling game at speed which tells me at least that the quest are just ran through and next to no interest is put on the stories themselves.

And to me, everyone falling into one or another of these categories is hardcore.

All players who have time to form and upkeep guilds, raiding schedules and preparing for raiding are hardcore: WoW is their hobby or extremely large part of their life.

May sound strange, but I'm happy that I'm not one of them.

But avast!, this extends to all MMO's eventually! As the discussion is raging about "WoW Tourists" trying to bend and evaluate all games -DarkFall in this case- in terms of WoW, one thing comes obvious: in games like EVE Online and DarkFall, which are skill based, the gaming hardcore is the ruling class. We casuals cannot even join a guild before we'd be ganked million times and quit. And if we got into guilds, we wouldn't be able to 'train our skills' up to the standards of the guild, thus making us dispensable.

All this time I really wanted to try the deep end of the pool and subscribe for DarkFall when it opens the doors for the less hardcores to enter. Now I know I do not have time and this game is not for the casuals (in the context I can talk about being casual, that is).

This can be evaluated easily, though. Compare your /played to the time you have been playing in Real Time (tm). How may hours a day that would count to?

My time ingame per day is negligible.

How about yours?

By definition

Jason commented to my post "Incoming: plans for a guild" very interestingly. I hadn't thought about this before, but this entry made me wonder a certain thing:

I would define what you described your guild as a "Casual Raiding Guild". I know
you said you are not a raiding guild, but you also say that you will do all the way up to 40 man instances to experience the content and learn your classes. If your intent is to move at your own pace then "Casual Raiding Guild" fits pretty well.

What this popped to my mind is the question: what is a raid? By definition it is:

A raid is a type of mission in a video game, where the objective is to use a very large number of people, relative to a normal team size set by the game, to defeat a boss.

Which in turn means that each and every dungeon and many of the group quests would be considered a raid by this definition. A group with single objective to defeat a vastly superior opponent.

I think this definition taken from Wikipedia isn't up to date. When I think of a raid, it brings to my mind a group which is locked to the completion of a larger, more demanding whole. Usually this definition is used in WoW to describe the 'end game instances', or the hardest dungeons available in the game. Not the ones preceding them, because the 5 man instances are deemed to be 'levelling instances', thus making them 'not raid instances'. They are like pop and run spots, meant to be run once. Or twice. Or as many times as you can endure them.

As it happens, currently the Classic Old World 'raid instances' are deemed to be similar to the Northrend 5 mans: fast nostalgia runs by people at higher level. The same is happening to the Burning Crusade content, and before long -when our guild ever reaches Outlands- we will be toiling the content on our own.

I'm not going to change the definition of The Order of the Fist -or the Boxers, as we lovingly have given a nickname to ourselves- as a guild. We are PvE focused Casual Explorative guild without raiding priorities. And playing to have fun.

I'm content with that. Thanks for commenting and giving me something to think about, Jason!

Crash course

I started reading World of Matticus just a few weeks ago, and already I have gained a huge amount of information about priestly raiding and guilds from this site. Incredible how someone have the stamina and will to pour out all the information in such a beautifully concise format.

As I'm also following Matticus' Twitter, I have been very much following his thoughts about this and that and all I can say is that I like his way of thinking about the game and all, even though he has commented here in my blog that he wants to rip the content and raid it to the fullest. Which contradicts my view of playing the content and stories to the full.

When I wrote him a personal email (through their contact form at the site), I didn't expect the kind of response my mail got. Sydera, one of the three regulars writing in there, took my main question and wrote a full blog entry of it, answering the question very nicely. I would say that the post serves as a crash course to the newcomer on how to become raider fast. Even though my initial concern was about the lack of skill of the power levelling newcomer at the raid level, the post covered that very neatly.

However, the concept of passing the story and content in the void parts of the game (Old World and Outlands) left me cold. I'm having too much fun on my own and on my own pace, even though I'm severely missing the company and grouping for instances with a steady group. The guild I'm currently in is dying, and this has been going on for some time now. I think the Wrath killed most of the alt-garages because there is now something more important to do with the level capped toons.

There is no way to enter the Old World instances anymore, except very severely overgeared and overlevelled. No-one wants to take the effort to even visit the sites anymore and the same is happening to the content in Outlands. It's not about Blizzard neglecting the content, but the players putting more effort on the capping and level cap raiding. I'm actually putting more of the blame on the player base for trying to achieve the cap as if that was the main achievement of the game.

I'm seeing the Achievement system as a starter for activating the whole content. It would be nice to see the raid instances in one form or another, and the only way to activate the capped people to visit the 'old instances' is to generate incentives to do so. Achievements are one way. Variable difficulty and loot tables would be another.

Never the less, I'm following the pace I'm feeling comfortable and I hope to see new players who do the same. The World of Warcraft is such a huge and beautifull place to explore that it's such a shame to see it go to waste by power levelling through it all.

Stay tuned for more on the subject. ;P