Many faces of content

I've been kind of catching a trend in discussion around the blogosphere and I know I'm a bit late on this. To be honest, I haven't even read my blog reader over the summer, so I really don't know what is going on.

Who cares?

In MMOs we so much love and love-to-hate there has to be some reason why we keep on coming back to this form of 'interactive entertainment'. Yes, let's be honest about it. MMOs are not games because there are no set winning conditions. No "Game Over" screen. No cake.

No. Wait. That was another game.

In the loveliest sense the MMO world would be a virtual life, virtual, boundless world to explore and exploit. However, that would mean also that the 'gameplay' of the sandbox would fall into the hands of the player alone, which in turn makes it too much like 'real life'.

Some say that the content in a MMO is that which is scripted in as quests: menial tasks leading to another and so on. If the quests are just those menial tasks to kill ten (insert a critter name here), then they are not content. They are a filler. A soap opera episode without any ties to the story arc of the season. The episode with big red reset button at the end. You know what I mean.

The best quests, however, are those which lead you to an evolving plot. In WoW there are some must see quest chains which do this, most prominently the Wrathgate-chain and the Mount Hyjal opening. Come to think of it, the whole Cataclysm expansion is one big evolving plot stuff, each area having their own storyline down there somewhere. Shattered by menial tasks, making it next to impossible to follow the actual story among the clutter of clues and sidetracks.

In WoW, there is no way of telling which quest leads to a bigger story.

As I've been playing Rift lately, there is this clever 'story quest' system in: the quests which carry a grand storyline are on a golden background. There are other stories which slowly lead you to these, but the general point is that you know immediately that these stories mean something. I would say that these are the grand story arcs of your favorite tv-series, and you know that you must see the next chapter. And fast.

But quests are not content alone. Nor is the totally open sandbox world. The content comes from the combination of the two, if and only when you add a bunch of players into the play.

You see, I think most of the content is what we create by ourselves while doing those menial tasks to find the story arc lines among other players of the play.

We players are the content. Without us the grand sandboxes and themeparks would be nothing.

PS. As of now, the comments and discussion can be continued in Google+.

Innovation in a bottle

Just a couple of days ago I downloaded Ultima 4: Quest of the Avatar and DOSBox to run it. As it happens, this is one of the games which really did it for me on the computer games, even though my early experience of games had been more or less the same arcade games as for anyone else. To be honest, first RPG I played was Ultima III, in which we just were all oohs and aahs how a computer game could be so like our tabletop RPG's. (Tells a bit about our early gaming group, really.)

As I started the game, I realized that it is exactly like I have been saying time and again in this blog, in some commentary on other blogs and in Twitter: the more the games get eye candy, the less depth and meaning they convey. Take Ultima 4 for example. The quest to fulfill the eight virtues is the game. Still the virtues, being so basic human ones, are pretty hard to come by. In a way, pushing the player through the virtues in the virtual world Richard Garriot - who wrote and designed the game - pushes the player to think about the virtues themself. Even if the player doesn't think them actively, the mere ideals are planted in the player.

It's a bit like what they say in Inception.

In a way, Ultima 4 put the quest for good into the games for a short while. Before - and after - the quest has been to kill the bad to save the world. More or less, of course there are exceptions. And yes, you know who you are, to whom this is pointed at. And in many ways Ultima 4 was a sort of turning point in many ways in RPGs as whole.

What happened next in Ultima series is history, too, which culminates into the conception of Ultima Online. Now I got so interested in Ultima series that I read through the whole history of it (in Wikipedia, but anyhow) and what struck me seriously was the fact that they had all these neat things already prepared which they took off the game because the players broke them. Like the Artificial Life Engine:

Starr Long, the game's associate producer, explained in 1996:

Nearly everything in the world, from grass to goblins, has a purpose, and not just as cannon fodder either. The 'virtual ecology' affects nearly every aspect of the game world, from the very small to the very large. If the rabbit population suddenly drops (because some gung-ho adventurer was trying out his new mace) then wolves may have to find different food sources (e.g., deer). When the deer population drops as a result, the local dragon, unable to find the food he’s accustomed to, may head into a local village and attack. Since all of this happens automatically, it generates numerous adventure possibilities.

Which they had to take away, because the players ended up killing everything faster than they could spawn back, thus voiding the neat AI behind it all. So - in words of Garriot - they had to rip it out of the game.

As the years have gone by, MMO's have evolved in many ways. Still the main quest of the hero-to-be is to kill the big bad ugly meanie, who is trying to destroy the world. This is theme is repeated ad nauseatum in all major MMOs out there, fantasy especially and even doubly so.

It's time for a MMO with quest for good. With intelligent, living world, for intelligent players.

Rift, with it's dynamic world events, is still doing the same old in a bit different package. It's doing it well, though and with variation, but there is still raiding in the end of the levelling tunnel, it still has gear dependent advancement and there is still bad meanie to kill to save the world. But Rift has shown that the 800lb gorilla isn't the only solution anymore, and that there are other possibilities to go about. If its possible to come to the same turf and challenge the giant - not saying that they won or anything - then it's more than possible to come outside of the field and do something quite differently. And win.

Now to the title. This is all what if and what might be.

As it happens, all the MMOs are based on the fact that people play the games through the internet. You don't actually pay for the game box nor the game client as such anymore, but for the privilege to use the game content which is actually on the game publisher's servers. The content is what is valuable, not the game the player has on the hard drive.

This means simply that there is no actual need to purchase the game as such, but only the right to use the game content. Yes, many free to play games use this already, and as it happens, most of the big MMOs, too.

Lets start from small. Take Minecraft for example: no box sales, the game is in beta and it's still generating good revenue from the beta sales. What if this was a homebrew MMO with a good, solid idea which worked? Like Artificial Life Engine to take care of the environment, challenging the players to begin with? A game in which the character would challenge the world in search to become better, to fill the virtues, to champion for the good?

I wonder what are the reasons that the nasty people in fantasy very seldom go about and kill everyone, like they tend to do in MMO's with open PvP. Maybe they don't want to work for their bread, tend their gear by themself or dig for their precious alone? Why aren't the games already such that the way of a ganker is the lonely, shunned and depressive way, not the glorified and revered they currently are? This could be worked out that by fulfilling the quest for good you actually get to see the "Game Over - You Win!" for the character. Why not?

What if the game also spawned the players randomly into the cities and towns around the world, much like people are born, but with the tools to become a hero? This would greatly lessen the impact of thousands of people entering the game in waves. Thus the environment might survive to a point where the players started to take note of how the villager who was first offering money for wolf pelts would ask them to get rid of the rabbits pestering the fields, later to paying for deer meat as the village is suffering from famine due to rabbits which had eaten all the grain?

The big problem with the publishing - both print and online - is that everything has to be now. Even then the games are opened in 'beta' stage, which is in fact a powerful marketing tool instead of actual beta. So what if the opening of the gates to this game was a trickle of alpha, beta, open beta and ongoing beta stage with constant improvements as the economy permitted?

I'm sure there would be room for a game with good idea, innovation and drive, without the huge marketing machinery around. But only as long as the idea is good, the base game works and people like what they see.

Minecraft wouldn't be what it is if any of these parts were lacking. Why couldn't this be achieved by a MMO, too?

Some thoughts on heroics

I've run a couple of heroics with my shadowpriest, and quite honestly it's been a shock to see how much harder they really are from the normals. Add to that the fact that I've been running in PUGs rather than guild runs (only one guild run), the statement that "pugs are the new heroic mode" really shines.

What I have noticed, though, is the tolerance to failure has changed from the Wrath. PUGs in which I have been have been extremely tolerable towards failure and first timer failures. Not saying that I have been faulty of them, but neither saying I haven't. The only kicks from the pugs I've seen so far have been due to someone disconnecting or going afk without a notice.

The difficulty made me think about the Three Stooges and our possibilities to go further on our quest to die undermanned in unimaginable ways in the dungeons where normal pugs go laughing. In Wrath we were in a blissful situation because our tank - which happens to be me - had geared up to raid level gear before we started on the ICC5 man instances. I was overgearing the content on regular basis and my survivability was above the norm back then, even though the rest of the holy trinity - healer and rogue - were not up to the same level.

Now the situation is already the other way around. The tank is the only one who hasn't gotten to level cap, and I sure as can be have no will to start pugging the instances to get geared up. So we go along and seem to have already struck the glass ceiling in the tanks survivability in the Lost City of Tol'Vir. I know there would be an easy remedy to that.

PUG as a tank.

In Wrath I did at least the daily PUG and one or two heroics a day. The instances were quick and - after the first run - passable in a PUG, let alone in a guild group. In Cataclysm... I do not even want to tank in a PUG, knowing how much love tanks get when something goes awry. Like Tobold posted sometime ago, the most stressful positions in a dungeon party are the tank and healer, who have to move and act while the ranged dps just stands in one select position throughout the combat.

How true it is, even in heroics.

The fact that a heroic takes almost double the time of a normal instance (not discussing about the threesome) makes the PUGging even less attractive, even with the additional bag of loot from Call to Arms. The stupid grind for reputation based gear enchantments makes the whole issue even more depressing, making me ask why the Wrath enchantments couldn't have been like heirloom, upgrading along with the level.

There would have been quite a few apparent gold sinks if Blizzard had utilized the upgrading enchantments a bit more. I would much rather fly through Northrend than kill bazillion monsters for a new reputation to be honest.

We'll see when the tank hits the cap. I guess it's time to start digging up those gearing guides.
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Evil is as evil does

Spinks asked in her blog, "Do you play evil characters in RPG's?" I even responded to this in the comments, but the idea stuck once again. The original idea was to play a character in Sims Medieval as an evil sorceress or warlock and see how the game evolves. However - as one commenter mentioned - if the evil is just skin deep, evil surface of decorations and clothing with no ingame repercussions at all, it's not good or evil, it's just flavour and skin.

You see, I very often start playing a completely rotten and evil character, only to find myself turn into the nice, helping and concerned janitor of all. I just can't cope with the injustice of being evil, nor the suffering an evil character must inflict.

Bullies run the evil in their way: if you can instill the sense of fear to the average person, then you rule by fear and can resort to evil ways. It's the ruler who resorts to unnecessary violence and acts of cruelty who gets to rule that way and really be evil.

But in the end it only takes the one moment of weakness from the evil bully to turn the scales in favor of the weaker party, as we have recently seen in the Northern Africa, where dictatorships have fallen like domino pieces, one by one.

To be able to be evil, you have to be a bully. To make that evil fall and go, the weak and good have to unite.

If we take a sandbox MMO, there usually are not just one bully, but a set of bullies, who carve their power from the weak, "noobs" and not so good players. They seldom - if ever - turn against each other, because if they lost to another player, they would be in the position of their former prey.

It's funny how we make fun about the carebears, who actually are the heroes of the open-PvP worlds: fighting against the injustice and bullies who are causing unnecessary suffering to the players who are not yet geared enough or seasoned enough to stand their ground. Instead of making these brave few a laughing stock, we should in fact remember them as the revered heroes - and heroines - of the day, the ones we would have liked to see in the school yard more often.

The ones we all would like to be: the strong ones fighting against the bullies of the world, making the living just a bit more tolerable on this small planet called Earth.

Evil is as evil does, but is it as good as it gets?

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Intermission: traffic appreciation post

Last night, after reading a couple of emails we've been tossing to and fro with Larísa from the closed Pink Pigtail Inn I got this devastating urge to install Planescape: Torment on my computer. While I was hunting for a way to actually do that (as the four disk installer wouldn't even start the install) I began to think. That alone is pretty amazing, but this time the thought bubbled from the fact that I know where this blog's traffic comes from pretty decently and quite a lot of it has been coming from the same blog for some while now.

So I decided to break my normal policy of not discussing the blog statistics at all. Only because the major contribution of the linked traffic still comes through the forementioned Pink Pigtail Inn.

Werit has been quite a good contributor, too, even though I haven't had a single WAR related post, ever. There is this steady flow of readers from that blog, as well as odd few from the following, excellent blogs.

Raging-Monkeys
Spinksville
Stylish Corpse
Tank Like A Girl
Chappo's Opinion
Highlatencylife
Kill Ten Rats

Those are not in any particular order, and there are some I have seen in the logs (Kiasa, weflyspitfires, oakstout and so on), but haven't been there for the last few weeks for a reason or another.

The biggest single burst of traffic came from Tobold's post about his 'not a blogroll' in which this blog is presented among the greats of the gaming blogosphere, a honor I will not easily forget. The same blogs are in my roll, too, which was kind of nice to notice. Please use the blogroll, use the links and make the network work!

In the time of globalization and internet, the whereabouts of the traffic are not important. Sure I could break the linked traffic into countries and the 147 subscribers my FeedBurner informs this blog having, but what would be the value of that information. More important are the connections which are keeping the traffic up, showing the networking and the routes people come in (and go out).

Knowing that no man blog is an island and seeing that be true is a revelation in itself. To see a waterfall to close into a dribble and disappear on that island feels uncomfortable, but not totally disheartening. It only means that you have to go out there and make the connections even stronger and open up the dams to form another stream to burst.

It may happen, or it may not. Without trying you'll never know.

Oh, and the Planescape: Torment problem? In case the installation doesn't start on Win7, 64bit especially, you have to restart the computer in Safe Mode, make the installation and return the computer to the normal mode. This is done by Start -> Accessories -> Command Prompt and write msconfig in there (press enter). Select tab Boot and check the Boot Options "Safe Boot" checkbox, apply, ok, restart as prompted and install PS:T. Return the computer to the original state by removing the tab in the Safe Boot checkbox. And after that, go through this list of added value. You won't regret it!

And one thing which most certainly interests me in the most used search words I've seen lately is do people not explore anymore? I mean, if the most of the incoming search engine traffic comes by "Where is Talon Stand" or "Talon Stand", then the player has to be extremely lazy and effective...

That's all for now, thank you readers for making this feel worth while!

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What everyone wants in games

Pure and simple thing, right?

To have fun passtime in which you feel accomplishments, gain successes and go through feelings which may or may not connect to you through the story.

It's the interpretation of fun, accomplishments, successes and feelings you as a player want to experience which separate you from the player of another character, the slacker from moron, the elite from the newbie.

We all want the same things.

It's simple as that.

How hard is it to accept, though?

It's the way you use it

This is kind of a response to the discussion resulted from yesterday's post.

I admit that I measure my performance in WoW. Be it Gnomore with his no-kills policy (binary measurement: kill/no-kill), my spriests performance in random instances (DPS), my AH adventures (GPH or total gold gained) or my tanking with the Three Stooges (did we get it or was it another wipe). I also resort to some comparative measuring during the last one, due to the fact that we three are in it together and if any of us spots any way to improve the overall performance, its a gain for all of us.

It comes down to the fact that I use the numbers and measurements for myself, to improve my personal gameplay, performance and/or evaluate my success in gaining my goals.

I admit that I did pose the thought in a somewhat provocative manner, condemning the whole measuring as bad, evil or originating from poor self-esteem.

As Hirvox mentioned, minmaxing can be fun, and for some it is the only fun part of the game. At the same time we should accept the fact that not all are interested in minmaxing at all, even though the game itself imposes this on us. I still think that if the game is played so that you must seek additional information from off game sources to be able to play it at any level, there is something wrong with the game itself. And that measuring performance is way out of the way of reasonable if your gearing and/or performance is used as a measure of yourself as a player.

In Rift there are no actual performance meters (dps or threat meter), the only metrics there is is in fact the rift/invasion group roster, which can only be accessed while the event is on: after the event is over the roster disappears and there is no way of telling who performed the best or who worst. I think Rift is going to avoid the measurement issue WoW is already suffering because of the fact that there are so many ways to set the souls up and even though the archetypical soul/role composition changes, the general class bonuses in the gear still apply: the gearing is much more straightforward in it's own simplified way.

Main point today is this: it's not wrong or a bad thing to have measurements or measuring in the game. What makes it wrong or right is the way you use the information. To use the information to improve ones own performance is more than applicable, but to rank people according to some arbitrage numbers - usually taken out of context - is just sheer dumb. (Note: I'm not talking about improving raid performance, that is similar to what we do as Three Stooges. But if that information taken from separate fights are used to put people down, I really doubt the motivation of the raid leader.)

The question for today is: is it really necessary to measure the performance to the last decimal (or hexadecimal, or even binary sequence)? Like I said about Rift, there is no need for it, and the game is overall deemed seriously fun, where as in WoW where everything is measured by addons the game is funnily serious.

At least that's the way I see it: measurements, when used 'wrong', alienate the player base and creates a separation to those who minmax and those who couldn't care less. Both groups will suffer if there is no middle ground or mutual acceptance.
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Bane of measuring

I spent last weekend on my primary hobby, that being dog sports. Lure-coursing, to be exact. While I was working in the event, I got the time to study the dog owners and their ways once again, and despite of this being the first event of the season (next one due in May...), I saw the same symptoms as over the last season.

In short, it's all fun and games until someone starts to evaluate and measure the performance. Some want to win at all costs and are very agitated in the event, the closer the start comes, the more agitated they are. If they do not win - or rank as high as they think they ought to - they leave from the event and start bashing the organizers, judges and the personnel in the event because their dog didn't get the results...

It was so easy to draw the parallels to the issues in MMOs, WoW especially. I think that these things just have condensed in WoW because of it's age: the player base has had time to tweak stuff to the optimal max and are thus breaking the numbers as far as possible. The same can be seen in the event I participated: the ones with the most competitive spirit are the most eager to restrict the rights of the others with not-so-strong need to win.

In fact, the discussions about competitivity, performance, the elite and noobs and so on can be read from both groups, with similar intensity, with similar hate.

All in all, it's all human, and while it is so, it's very hard for me to understand it being so. Sure, a hobby is something you want to excel, be the best you can. But does it have to come out of the fun of others? The performance is as important to the high end winner/elite as it is to the person playing for fun or coming into the event for the first time.

I have never understood the impression how people who see themselves as being at the top of the chain look down on the rest. Even less I understand people who at the top have the need to put others down to enhance their sense of being at the top.

That is the way I see 'raiders' do when they mock and call the other group in names. In a way it's the same the other way around, when the 'non-raiders' call the other group as no-lifers.

Because WoW has been dissected down to the min-max paradise, forgetting the roleplaying game aspect and seeing only something to beat, crush and win, it has lost the soul of an adventure. More or less it is the same if it was a browser based game with some neat animations in the mix, where you could min-max your character on a text/number based interface. What's the difference? The amount of moving pixels?

The bane of this all is our inherent need to measure, dissect and best everything we touch. I think I get enough of this in my work and thus look for something completely different from a MMO passtime I have than the average gamer at the age range of 18-33. It doesn't mean I don't want to perform better within the game, but it means that I have enough of min-maxing in real to bother with it in the game. If the game doesn't provide the information freely from within the game itself, I can't be arsed to seek for the information from off game sources, really: the character couldn't do it, so why should I do it?

I'm very happy with Rift, still, but I fear the moment they start breaking down the stats and start measuring the dps. That will state the beginning of the end of the community for sure.

The bane of measuring performance.

How will you be remembered?

Every contact you have over your life has an effect on you. Be the contact long or short, fast fleeting moment or a long term relationship, everything matters. Of course it depends on you yourself how much these contacts will affect you.

To conclude this weeks theme of playing the social game, there is one aspect left unexplored. 

How will you, your character or your personality be remembered by those you play with?

The longer the contact, the deeper the effect. That's quite reasonable to understand. But in a case of a negative encounter - say, someone ganking you unexpectedly - the effect of that player may well be the straw that broke the camel's back. Short, sharp shock with long term effect.

During the age of anonymity and everything goes, the clear faulty of the virtual world design is exactly the anonymity. You are not accountable for what you do in a MMO, really, because you can ditch that toon, change name, gender, class, role and race by paying some money. Or by just creating a new one.

It doesn't matter what you do to the other player characters in any way.

As it seems to be customary, there is no need to commit to anything anymore. It's the same in real life relationships as in virtual worlds: there is no commitment to the better and for worse. There is commitment to the instant gratification, my own personal pleasure and enjoyment, and everything contra that is to be removed from the experience.

However, the best experiences in life and MMOs come out of the long term effort. Long term effort which pushes you through the mud, rain, slick and sleet, which refine your persona and build your character. The prizes through effort have that sweet taste of victory, which cannot be taken away from you.

A player who has left a strong mark on me said once, that in the internet the only thing with any value is your name. I have taken it so far that for me the only thing with any value in any MMO I play is the name and conduct of my character. Even my own personality is a bit on the sidelines there due to my strong RP background. The character takes charge from time to time, Gnomore being an excellent example of that.

But currently there is no such commitment nor such high regard on personal integrity in the MMOs. Nor in blogosphere, if you think of it. People change the names of the blogs out of whim, switch their characters just for the heck of it and do stupid things on characters which are not their main.

As we all have an effect on the other players we are in contact with, are we ever really thinking how we really affect the people around us?

Have you ever thought what kind of character your character - and in a way yourself - will be remembered?

And bloggers, have you ever thought how you are going to be remembered after you shut the lights and close the door?

What will read in your characters' or blog's obituary? How will you be remembered? 

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You will be missed

The most recent evacuations from the WoW blogosphere have gotten me to think about the people who have been a renowned part of the community for some years and suddenly disappear. Some years in the life cycle of WoW, for example, is a lifetime, though.

There are people who have been so renowned and revered by the community, that they have even gotten their named gear or regalia into the game. There are those who have given whole new names into the game, both in and outside it.

What became of those people after they left the blogosphere?

One thing which incited this train of thought was that about a week ago I saw a character who's name was familiar to me from my first real Internet family. One of the Clan, in which I learned all I know about the most important tenets of the internet: honor, integrity and pride. And that your name is the only thing worth anything in the 'net, something you really do not want to spoil or mess around with.

But there it was, a name from the past. And my heart jumped. Just like it had jumped time and again when I had seen the nicknames from that past group of dedicated players on a messy, old school text based browser game.

And I started to wonder, what has happened to the people after I last was in contact with them. Has that one troublemaker stayed out of jail since that first visit? How had the business been for the one who started his during the time? Where has the most aggressively acting, but soft mannered player gone after his graduation?

I know of only one for sure, but even though I thought the whole group to be my good friends back in the day, people I would have sacrificed a lot for, I have no contact with them anymore.

And it bubbled down to the issue which Larísa had with her guild. And what Tobold asked about playing with friends. And to some comments in those posts.

Those friendships over the net change you, definitely, as do every contact with another human being. I would even go further stating that they change you as every contact with a living creature does: you get what you give, but only as much as the other is willing to give in return. But those friendships are not true in the sense that you never know the person on the other side for real, you only see the avatar, the nick, the blabber of the chat channel or voip. Not the person, the body language, not the nervousness of the introvert or flamboyance of the extrovert.

You always get the filtered personality, a mask.

I wonder how many would even notice if I just disappeared from the internet. Or Larísa. Or Gordon. Or Tobold, even. Of course some people would notice the actual disappearance, but how long would people be interested about the reason or the whereabouts of any of us.

You will be missed may well mean "you will be missed for the next week... oh, look, shiny!", a kind of epitaph of the current culture.

Its always good to remember that latin proverb, Memento Mori.

Today I will ask myself, what would happen if I just disappeared. Was it worth it?

Would there be an obituary to the blog, stating "you will be missed"?

Would anyone even notice?
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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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Social design and lack of it

I've been writing and discussing about the lack of social tools in WoW, though I could as well talk about them lacking in MMOs in general. It just happens to be so that the MMOs we play teach to do things in their way, and the teaching aspect can be very, very subtle.

We joke about "kill ten rats" quests, mention the few somewhat controversial quests on the repertoire (namely Kirin Tor torture quest in Northrend and the Aviana kill or release quest come to my mind right away) and may have noticed how the game teaches you to care only about yourself and steal, kill, murder and main in the name of fulfilling you quest. How WoW teaches you that it's ok to steal the half-empty glasses in Dalaran Inn to present them to a paying customer for a daily, for example.

All of this is in the category of social design. Not only the lack of control and consequences of the LFD PUGs, nor the inability to add cross faction players to friend lists (except RealID, I think), nor the inadequate and antiquated social tools presented in the game.

MMOs are based on the ever evolving Skinner Box, which just sucks you deeper into the hunt for new shiny gear, achievement, entitlement, making the players eyes shine and jaws gape like the ringing bell effect on Pavlov's dogs. In finer language, the operant conditioning in the game results the typical classical conditioning results in the players.

This is social programming, too. It makes the players do as the designer has planned the players to do when the game has been designed. As the players learn to do thing #1 from the beginning of the game, the designer can predict that the player knows how to do thing #1 when this player's character advances in levels. Due to this it becomes later on in the game to break the thing #1 causing something to happen. However, this is what happens in WoW this very moment: the game teaches the player to solo up and do it in style fast, and as the character 'comes of age' and reaches level cap, the rules are changed completely. Be social, group or leave.

In a twitter convo sometime ago Wolfshead asked a valid question: Why cannot we debate with the mobs? Why can't we take the culturally viable way of avoiding the physical confrontation and use non-violent ways to reach our target? Currently the social design of the MMOs in the market are more in line with the Milgram Experiment, where the designer has decided how the game must proceed and the player must follow that train of thought or quit. The torture and killing quests are just excellent examples on how - in my humble opinion - the game designers are using their power to teach, condition and change the players views wrong.

The further we go along the line, the more closer we come to the Stanford Prison Experiment, where the ones given the authority by their role became the monsters they originally abhorred. We have a sort of situation already, where the established guilds already dictate the non-guilded players fates quite by a whim and in fact use their power pretty casually. "If you don't like it here, you can leave" is a very common statement in a guild if someone proposes a change or asks for an explanation for something.

Power without responsibility is violence.

If the game design teaches everyone take care of themselves, the designers cannot expect the players later on to take the stand and take care of each other. Especially if they make it clear that only one can get the leet loot and epics in a raid, when some have to settle for the greys and coins.

Also the MMOs currently have very binary quest system: either you take a quest or you abandon it. If you take it, you get reward. If you choose not to take it, you get nothing. What if there is a quest chain in which you get into a moral conflict with the story and would like to take another approach? No, you either continue and do 'wrong'/against your morals (or your character's) or you decline and lose the rewards.

The binary Yes/No choices are way too ancient for the current games and there should be more ambition in the designer/coding side to get around this crap. Already in the early adventure games there were multiple choices to go along, so why couldn't the current MMOs have even rudimentary set of choices to be presented?

Also the social aspect of reputation and factions is laughable at best. The effects of ones actions should have repercussions ingame, on the NPCs and factions far more tangible than currently. The social minigames like the persuasion in Morrowind/Oblivion could serve as a starting point, add a few nuances and see how it works.

Anyhow, I could rant on forever. I think it would serve the MMO or RPG designers and/or companies to have at least one person with sociologic and/or psychology as a background to help in the design from this side and point of view.

At least this way the game design could change towards more socially engineered instead of more achievement oriented.

Do you have any other suggestions on how the social design could be changed? Regardless of the players, of course...

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You get what you give

Social contacts require effort from both sides of the fence. As mentioned yesterday, we are prone to form our own microcommunities within the game with the people who think similar, who have same kind - if not same - goals in the game, thus sharing similar - if not same - values. As Wolfshead explained in his excellent, though lengthy post, the MMOs are still viewed as shared social experiences. Where as the earlier games, like EQ, were so hard that you had to co-operate and thus you formed friendships through the must, the game design now relies on the activity and willingness of the participants to form those connections. If there are no measures to check the values or aims of other people, there is no way to know if the possible contact is a match or not.

Now I can hear comments on this that there are no such things in real life either. I must disagree: we connect with the people within the same context. You do not go to a bar in which you feel yourself uncomfortable, nor do you attend to a hobby you don't like. You select with precision the context in which you want to meet people and form new contacts.

One might think that the context in MMOs is already there: everyone is a player of the game, everyone wants to play against the big bad boss, everyone wants to have the shiniest leet gear.

But it isn't so.

Even though in MMOs everyone aspires to be the hero, there are none. In its base, a MMO is a virtual simulation, and within the context of the game design, game mechanics and the game setting the simulation is pretty much open for interpretation by the user, player. Thus there are several different ways to use and enjoy this simulation. For certain, a roleplayer wouldn't enjoy the company of a raiding guild, or the hardcore AH goblin the company of a slow leveller without money. All of them would try their best to find the subgroup they fit the best.

As Larísa mentioned in her post, you get what you give and if you are socially active in the game, you get social group around you. From my experience in WoW and the servers I've been actively in (granted, not at level cap in any except my main), this doesn't hold true. It can't be like it was mentioned in Wolfshead's post, that the social game enables the end game raiding, and that the social game starts when you reach the cap.

Then again, yes it can. But my humble opinion in this is that in this case the game has failed. It's the same as the newcomer playing a dps because its fun and fast to level reaches the level cap only to learn that s/he should play as a tank. Or that the new character levels up fast, only questing, only to learn that he should learn how to play in groups (and learn to use more than the three-four skills he has used so far).

The game design has failed the player in that case. And the effort required from the players part at this point is more than required for having fun.

I can take Gnomore as an example: he's the social me. In every turn I encounter people in my adventures, I toss a buff on them, maybe greet them and every time I see people needing assistance, I help them. Like yesterday, when I did the cooking daily in Stormwind: there were four characters standing besides the cook in an Inn, waiting for the Confectionary Sugar to materialize. What they didn't notice was the fact that the bag of sugar appeared at the cellar in that particular Inn. So I went, picked it up and as I came up I said to them that go down, sugar is there. Result:
* One said "thnx"
* Three just rushed by
and that was it.

Of the several buffs I've tossed around, the only thanks came from a level 85 night elf priest, whom Gnomore met boarding the ship to Stormwind. Which was kind of amazing.

But the overall results, even when Gnomore tries to discuss with others is very much in vain.

It is useless to say in this context that you get what you give: the community itself is already shut inside their own little micro communities, tribes within tribes, shunning anyone outside their own. The game design lacks the meeting places and reasons for people to mix and match, to find new contacts and the opportunities to make your mind about other players.

Then again, for the majority of the players this is no brainer: why bother because I'm content with the guild I'm in. It is the perfect case of "Someone Else's Problem". At the same time players are telling their stories how they - as a guild, raid or group - have overcome this and that, done miraculous feats in the game and came out of anything as a group attract new players to the game, who are faced with the one simple guiding line.

You get what you give.

Now where is the support or route for these players to get where the established players who have been in the game for years are now? Where are the tools and possibilities to match the similar thinking, already established players in the game?

What are the options of the new player - or the one outside the social groups - to find one most suitable for her/him?

Now there is something to think about, outside your own box and comfort zone.

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Deeper into the community

I've been reading about work place cultures lately and formation of different types of cultures. The fact is, these theories and studies, when done and written properly, are more or less transferable to any group of people involved with similar interests.

Thus I've been making some connections with the stuff I've been learning for work and with the Metropolitan Players post I made a while ago. In that post I compared the current state of WoW population being that of a population of a metropolitan city: busting with action and no interest or concern over what the passerby is doing, thinking or planning. In the worst case this goes as far as the random dungeon experience, where you easily treat the other player characters as moderately working AI characters.

As in all societies or groups of people, there are bound to form structures. Call them tribes, creeds or guilds. The stuff that drives these groups forward is the motivation to work for a common cause. In special circumstances these groups of people will exceed the individual level of expertise of its members, but usually it is the lowest nominator which states the achievable results.

In MMOs - and in WoW particular for being so huge - the problem is to show the values of the guild to form a tightly knit group of individuals willing and motivated to work together to the fullest. Usually the guilds are advertising with the general terms like "nice social levelling and raiding guild", "good mature guild" or "mature group willing to raid later on". Very seldom - if ever - you will actually see something stating about the values or aims of the group in question.

Due to this and lack of general social tools in game, it is neigh impossible for a player outside of a group they feel their own in spirit to find one. There are no actual meeting places to find like minded people save the dreaded guild hopping from one to another till something clicks. The LFD tool took the last bit of server reputation off of your shoulders and at the same time took away the only spot where you could have made those connections with people on the same server, which might have given you any sort of direction to look for a group with same thoughts about the content or life in general.

WoW community, which is so much discussed everywhere every now and then is in fact an infantile community. It revolves around the Me, Myself and I in the elitism and respect, with certain aspects from This Game Sucks and My Game Sucks. For well performing guilds, which are not driven only for the individual gain of the GM or an elite officer group, it may go to the common good ground of We Are Good.

For the lonely soldier in the levelling trenches, to find that group in which one can state that We Are Good is a part time job alone. For it is not enough to feel that I Am Good, when the ones you are bound to be compared are already raiding at highest level with their own special group.

Especially when there are no connecting points in the community to introduce yourself, your personality, your skills and your abilities to the groups desperately seeking a team player.

The groups seeking a specialist are in another pit: they can get the specialist, but what might be the personality and how will that fit into the group?

And will it be determined fast enough to avoid any damage?

MMOs at the moment are enjoyable group endeavors to those who travel within their own social contact group. They are a massive single player game to those who are not in any existing group, and there are less and less possibilities to find people with similar mindset in the typical DIKU mud due to the achievement oriented power levelling culture which is present in the games. Like the destination is more important than the journey, the way it IMO should be.

It is not the destination that determines the hero, but the journey during which his integrity is put on test.

Maybe public quest types can be of some remedy to this?

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Metropolitan players

A comment on yesterday's post spurred this train of thought. In short, the MMOs and their populations are so big that the social coherence and unity is already broken by the fact that players are more like citizens of huge metropolitan cities rather than the nice little rural village I dreamed of. The characters running across my screen when I play are just as anonymous and meaningless as the passerby in any modern city only because there are so many of them.

The dark side of this thought is the fact that the more there are heroes in the MMOs we play, the less anyone is really a hero. The social connections we make in the game are far and few, and if they click, then we have a foundation to the group adventures I and many others crave for.

However, the clubs, associations, jobs and social gatherings which make us connect with people in the real life are missing in MMOs, WoW in particular. The only possibility to meet other players in a meaningful in game endeavor is the random instance provided by the Dungeon Finder, and that has been watered down by the fact that it selects other players to the group across the battlegroup of several servers. It doesn't make any difference to meet other people with whom you will never have the opportunity to go any deeper in the relationship than hello-thanks-bye.

The tight social groups which go through the group content in the game are more like modern day villages or tightly knit social clubs which have strict rules to keep the riff-raff out. What comes to mind is to have miniature countries composed of only one block of flats or one skyscraper, each side by side but separated by different government, laws and taxes. (I think Ian McDonald had a novel about London like that or something... I may be wrong, though.) The guilds are more or less such, and there is no way for a stray on the street to say whether this one suits you or the other.

If we dig deeper into this, it becomes apparent that because every character in WoW (for example) is supposed to be the master of their class and skills, there is no place for the 'normal people' within the players. Whereas in real medieval times (or in literature, for example) the heroes have a huge supporting cast to provide them with gear, sustenance and information. In concurrent MMOs there is no place for a armorsmith, weaponsmith, provisioner nor sage, for they all have to be the hero of the day.

For some to be the specialist in crafting would be more than enough. I can say that I would be more than happy to be one such character, sitting in the city, crafting superior gear and be recognized as one being capable of doing that. The game mechanics do not approve that in any way, and as there is no way of giving any credit to other players for their performance, anyone crafting more than plunging through dungeons is dismissed as failure in the game. Add to this the fact that the crafted gear has no real meaning in the game as whole and you can see how the most important infrastructural piece of society is simply wiped out of the game.

We players are the citizens of huge metropolitan areas of MMOs. We treat our fellow players - more precisely, their characters - with same courtesy as we do any other person in real life we encounter on the buzzing streets of our home town.

We simply ignore them and go about our own business.

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Narrow vision - 20:20?

I have just read the post Tobold made about WoW in 2020 and Larísa's 'response' to that. I even commented both of them, almost with the same response, something I see every time I run a levelling PUG with my druid (lv63). The sad decline of the random groups ever since the Dungeon Finder came. Especially the decline in the social side of the grouping, as no one can be held accountable on anything else than their performance in the dungeon and with no repercussions on acting poorly or being a jerk, aspects which have caused the PUGs to be silent runs through the instances with - in a good case - a hello and thnx to cap it.

My opinion is that the social side of WoW has died outside the guilds which are composed of people fitting into the guild mentality and group. Anyone else is a lone wolf in a world of pixelated avatars which could be easily replaced with AI drones everywhere, creating an illusion of a living world.

The more I read the blogs of people in high end raiding guilds or people in guilds with real life friends, the more I get the impression that this vocal minority has narrowed 20:20 sight of the game. They live the game in the promised land, in tight, seclusive, social ground which seems like the game is perfect to their needs. What ever is outside that perception is fault and voided by their perception.

Even though I'm in a great guild, I don't feel I'm part of the group. It's purely because we have differing agendas on the game. Thus I'm levelling up Gnomore as well as my banker druid, exploring and experiencing the game without the hurry and need to compete or achieve. And as such I see a very much different game than the people in guilds gearing for the next raid.

And the view isn't pretty.

Sure, to make a social connection requires activity on your side. But why bother on a random group, which you will never meet again. A group of random players from other servers whom you will never know any better than "nice tank", "great healer" or "darn dps".

So I'm very reluctant to agree with the rosy tinted views Larísa poses as the future facts of the game: I share her view on how newcomers will have a very different view on the game than her, though.

If we socialize, we tend to do it with people we already know. I feel truthfully sorry for new players who enter the game on their own, like I did once upon a time. My impression is that you’d better have some real life friends joining at the same time, or you might end up lonely and alienated. It seems to me as if people don’t have the time for small talk they used to have once upon a time. It’s all about efficiency and return on investment of time. Get your achievements done. Gear up. Get your ranking. Accomplish. Don’t waste your time on strangers!

The game is already more solo friendly than ever, the social possibilities have been limited to the bare minimum and I doubt that any player coming to game even gets the notion that the other player characters are played by a living person. To deny this is the ultimate way of narrowing your vision by your own experience.

And I refuse to narrow my vision like that. Instead, I treat the other players in a PUG with the same courtesy they offer to me.

They be NPC's, means to my ends.

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Power of words

There has been quite a few posts about how PUGs suck, how there is animosity towards tanks and healers and how people are just jerks in PUGs in general. In my current craving for positive things around me in life I decided to look at this thing the other way around.

As we are all responsible for the atmosphere of a PUG, the question really is...

How to improve the PUG from the inside?

As it happens, I got the best possible experience on this yesterday. My main idea was to jump in to my AH banker and check the mail, get some Archeology on him and log off. Out of habit - or just for the heck of it - I punched the character en queue for a random: as he was at level 54, the wait could have been around 20 minutes on the server I'm on.

No such luck. Didn't even get to Ironforge IP before the Random Group was ready.

Off to the Sunken Temple, the shortened, pitiful, run around version of the former Temple of Atal'Hakkar. Sure, most of the people hate it, but I found the maze-like structure fun and in it's own way demanding place. It was one of the first instances we cleared as Three Stooges, so that may have something for the place...

Never the less, I was summoned as the replacement healer, and the group was performing quite decently. The tank was a selfish bugger, not really suitable to tank at all. Told that he was a newbie tank, but went on like on steroids. Despite of this,, One by two we cleared the bosses, and as you may know the hall where Jamaal resides is full of those nasty undead trolls who turn into ghosts who happen to love the healer. And that the casters in there just happen to shoot fear around, usually causing major aggro chaos and huge add pulls.

Well, long story short, that all happened on the last three groups, until which I kept everything under control very nicely. (I can brag from time to time, right?) That was until a) fear hit our rogue DPS, who b) ran into another group, which c) for some reason took it on the healer, me. Talk about crud hitting the proverbial fan.

There I was, mana depleted, with caster and couple hunters hitting me, tank very much involved in gathering the mobs he could and losing health in alarming rate. I did my best to stick to the tank, hoping to hit Swiftmend (proccing Effloresence) and hoping that the tank would pick up the aggro.

It all failed, naturally.

Just when I was about to call it a day, I got a heal. And another.

The other druid in the group had dropped out of feral and brought me up to the land of living! The day, and the encounter was saved only by the mutual co-operation of the druid kind.

After Jamaal was down I generously thanked the feral feller and made him to the top of my heal list. Screw the tank, this guy saved my life!

As I got out of there, I punched the LFD on again. This time I got to flight before the group was there: it seems that the second wave of alts is just up in the last levels before Outlands.

Blackrock.

As you may know by now, that you can run parts of Blackrock as whole 5 man instances. It's been split into smaller runs than earlier, but this group... it seemed they wanted to have it all. The tank was obviously from a PvP server, hopping and jumping and delivering serious damage on the way. She was easy to heal, though, as she kept her self heals on pretty constantly.

It was a run from one mob to another in a speed I have never seen before. Chain pulling would be belittling the whole run, it was one constant fluid motion. After a couple of tricky, and almost lethal, pulls the tank stopped for a moment and said in /party

"Awesome healer is awesome."

That was all. Only smilies from the rest of the party, and me blushing at my keyboard. Why, I hadn't done anything any healer wouldn't have done. But from that moment on, that tank was my aim, focus point and devotion. I followed her like a puppy, and the only time I didn't we wiped, even though there were two priests and a shaman in the group!

At one point I even had to run back to save one of the priests and the shaman from mobs in the Lycaeum, where the iron dwarves come in lots and are normal: they just were cut off from us in the frantic race the tank kept on.

Conclusion
Few nice words work better than cussing and calling. If the tank or healer isn't doing en par your expectations, praise one of the dps or the other one (tank/healer). Bring positive words into the meddle and see the whole group gather more strength from it. Forget the one calling, cussing and making jerk of him/herself. Unless of course, that one is acting really destructively and causing the group to stall...

It's easy to go down to the level of "OMGWTFNWB", which is usually very destructive. Make a point of splendid use of CC, nice DPS, great heals or perfect pulls and use the power of the positive.

You may be surprised.

C out
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It's not fun anymore

I did try my best to overcome my gripes with the current state of warrior tanking, but I just couldn't. Really.

For some reason the whole thing doesn't seem to work. Don't get me wrong, I like the talent change and the challenge it poses to all classes. Even though the talent system is so streamlined that you could call it a dumbed down version of the earlier one, there are less options to really gimp your toon down to unproductive leach. In fact, there are none at the moment: the PvE and PvP specs perform pretty nicely in the other function as well, thanks to overlapping talents.

But the game feels unresponsive.

Before the patch, when I pushed a button, the skill happened. WoW is very much renown for this, being very responsive in the combat, and thus very enjoyable to play. Yesterday I ran a couple of heroics and Headless Horsemans and it just didn't feel right. Even if I take the inability to hold aggro in a multi-mob situation off of the equation, the combat felt like it just wasn't following my commands.

In this I'm in the same boat with Baenhoof of the Tankatronic blog, where she says:

The one thing…the ONE thing that I cannot fucking stand about this patch is the goddamned ability queueing. I dont -want- to have to WAIT until a dev lands onto one mob before I can tab over to the next (tab is fucked up now, by the way) and slowly hit that one, too.

I like mashing keys. Its fun. Its part of the reason why the warrior is my main and not the paladin or the DK. The ability queueing feels sluggish and unresponsive and needs to be gotten rid of. It was part of the reason I enjoyed WoW over say, Aion- everything was more streamlined and tended to feel faster.

I’d really appreciate a choice to revert back to the old, quicker way of doing things- and from the look of the official forums, so would everyone else. 

She points out exactly what I mean: it feels sluggish, and I feel I don't have control over what is happening in the game.

Then again, if I'm to believe Spinks and Kadomi, I am not any good as a tank, either, as they state that nothing has really changed in the way the warrior should be played and haven't noticed anything changing in the playability of our class at all.

The other option is that my computer or addons are borking the game, but that doesn't hold when I'm very content with the other classes I'm playing (DK, Spriest and druid). They seem to be up there, performing nicely, so why the protection warrior feels so like he's sleepwalking?

I'm just no good at it, and where the other classes have gotten the fun back into their game, the warriors got the work part back. Like a moonkin in one of the heroics said: "your class got the raped in the patch, pal" after I voiced my concern over the well being of the rest of the group.

That is exactly how I feel. It's more a work than games.

It is not fun anymore.

C out

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Patch always breaks something

Addon breakdowns aside, why is it that a patch always breaks the fundamental game somehow? Is it because of that list of thousands of bugs in the code which still wait to be repaired? Or is it just fault in the testing procedures?

WoW is acclaimed for being the most polished MMO out there, a game which is said to be the benchmark of polish. Right, WotLK worked nicely for the last few months of the expansion. BC did the same and Vanilla, too. If you do not count the disparity of the class balance which just got a new blow by the latest, most fundamental changes to the talents and skills.

So the first question is, why is there such a long list of unrepaired bugs in the game?

Because... I don't know. New content needs A-team to work on. Daily maintenance and content patching requires the B-team to work at their best, with the glint in their eye to be included into the A-team. The C-team... There is no C-team to patch and fix the bugs which have bugged the players for so long time, some even from the launch.

And now we have some real bugs to bug the players. Mouse-over lockout. Instance entrance lockout. Instance bugs like the Anub'Arak bug in the 5-mans.

The first two however bug me the most. I login and queue for an instance for the meager 10 minutes, only to get my computer freeze to the instance load window. Total. Lock. Out. Kind of freeze. Login and find myself from where ever my hearthstone is set, with 5 minute cooldown on LFD. Wait for another 10 minutes, hoping it will go through this time.

Happened to me once yesterday, a couple of times over the weekend.

How about the Headless Horseman? Game freezes the moment I mouse-over the event activation pumpkinhead. Finally get logged in and... I have the stuff in my bag. Whoo-hoo. Only if I was the tank this would have been a disaster. So what is Blizzards word of advice in here? "Make the dps to activate the event, don't mouse over the pumpkin if you are a tank."

Great.

Now I have been playing with the tradeskill window replacements because Skillet isn't working anymore. Even though LilSparky, who's responsible for the addon currently, has stated that it will be updated in the future. However, knowing he's working on his own tradeskill window replacement (GnomeWorks), it may well be the end of Skillet as we know it. And still no other comes close to Skillet in functionality, light weight and simplified outlook.

What can I say. These both issues have one thing in common. Keep It Stupid Simple is the best way of doing it. Or at least do it so that it all seems incredibly simple to the end user.

C out
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PS. Lil'Sparky's Workshop, the tradeskill window enhancement, is updated, but I can't make it work. I have only zero prices to all products in there, so if anyone could give me a hint what to do to make it work again it would be appreciated. I like my things simple, effective, easy and working, you see.
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Leaks

by Copra


Cataclysm beta leaks. I hate them. I really do. But they are a genius pre-marketing tool from Blizzards side in many ways.

Achievements. Guild levelling. Instances. Class changes. Gear wipe. You name it.

Every little bit of information going out of the new shiny expansion fills a specific marketing target. There is a fabulous name to this creation of future expectations which cause people focus on the future rather than to the current moment.

Nextopia.

It's the current trend that we expect the next big thing to be The Thing. The same as the reason to publicise the next big concert a year ahead, put an outrageous price tag on the ticket and see how the price of the tickets declines the closer we come to the gig. It's the way we look our world tomorrow and forget to concentrate on the current moment. Tomorrow everything is better.

And we're all playing according to Blizzards pipe on this.

Take the guild achievement system for example. ICC is more or less on farm for most of the guilds out there. They are keeping some sort of raiding schedule to keep the raiders happy, to feed the not raiders through the LK grind and get everyone geared for the next big thing. (See what I did just there? Nextopia!) Some have started to look for greener pastures, and Blizzard reveals their plans for guild achievements and how ancient legendary weapons are ranked high in that system.

Guess what happens. Oh, sorry, you may have seen this, so it's no spoiler at all.

The guilds which have gotten bored or just lost the zest to go through ICC for the umpteenth time turn their eyes towards their legendary weapons. Suddenly there is a new surge in going through Ulduar, vanilla raids and so on. The people scatter from Dalaran to do their magic in the areas where they have set their foot a couple of years ago, if ever.

Blizzard just created 'meaningfull' stuff to do to you people! Clever marketing trick using the Nextopia idea!

At least I'm interested to see how Blizzard will fool us all to go through the old content once again. Cataclysm itself started the new minigame boom on achievements, but what if they introduced another one just to make sure everyone leaves the safety of Dalaran to see the old world again...

I can't wait for it to happen. It's bliss to live on expectations!
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