Grouping away (yawp)

I was sitting on 187.208 gold on my four alliance characters in WoW this morning. That's just a bit over 25k profit over the week, which is not shabby by any means, considering how little I pay attention to the detail and profit in general. I may well craft a dozen glyphs to sell at 30g, but end up selling them at 8g, below costs. Mostly out of spite, because no-one else will sell at that time, either.

What has brought this up is simply the obsidium shuffle and the way the cut rares have started to roll out. The Shadowspirit diamonds (the meta gems) are going steadily, but the price range for them is fluctuating quite a lot. The prices may easily go from 168g on one day to 327g on another, and so far I haven't been able to pinpoint the pattern. Perhaps it is connected to the raid days, but I'm not totally sure.

Gnomore got some love over the weekend, a couple of levels up and a very, very interesting encounter with the Archeological dig sites: He ran from one end of an area to another between two sites which kept popping up in sequence. This has changed the way I play Gnomore considerably, hunting for the dig sites rather than gathering nodes. But in the end, this results less deaths, which is nice.

Rift. I've spent some very interesting time in Rift, not only because it is a new game, or because it's beautiful. Mainly because of the guild I got into and the people in there. Also the people within the game - if you shut the general chat off - are very nice and co-operative, something you do not find in WoW in the levelling areas anymore.

The most interesting aspect I encountered was the ease of grouping meaningfully. I was just doing quests and gathering (this follows me from Gnomore for sure...) and I came to the quests leading to the Iron Fort, a big fortress from which the big bad evil warlord was originally from. The quests are quite doable as solo, and there is no need for grouping, but the kill 10 of these, 12 of those and 8 of them quests mount up to some serious killing. So... I grouped with one cleric on the same quests. Soon another player character joined and before I noticed, there were eight of us doing the same quests, running from one tower to another, from tower to altars around the fort and so on.

And it was bleeding fun. Everyone was working towards their own, but at the same time common, aims and ends, chatting about the progress of the quest and having slight RP on the side.

In the end, everyone thanked for the group before splitting and about an hour had passed: it was like an open mini-instance in WoW.

The additional reward for doing the quests in group? Nothing, except getting them done faster than alone, and with style.

I think this one instance shows how a small thought on the social availability of grouping can change the experience quite considerably, and as the players realize more the possibilities of this open grouping, Rift play experience may well change to something we've never seen before. Social design at work, really.

All in all, a fun weekend with the games. With a lot to write about over the week, too.
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First of Three

Congratulations Förgelös for hitting the Cataclysm level cap!

Förgelös is the first of the Three Stooges to gain the revered level 85. I'm pretty sure Bishopgeorge will follow him soon enough, leaving Laiskajaakko last, where the order in WotLK was quite the other way around.

Supposedly this will help the Three Stooges to clear the rest of the 5 mans undermanned and unmannered.

As always, dying can be glorious.
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Tale of two princes

After writing the yesterday's post about my son's way of playing and how jaded and serious we gamers in general are, I have been thinking the whole thing over and over again. The comments on that post have been very eye opening in many ways and especially the one Hirvox posted was a kind of a revelation to me.

In a way everything in this train of thought can be condensed into a story I've heard time and again, a story about two princes. The story can be interpreted in many ways and can be thought of depicting various issues in life as well as in gaming.

The Two Princes


Long time ago in a land very, very far away, there was a lovely kingdom. This being a fairy tale, the kingdom naturally had dragons, witches, damsels in distress and beautiful heroes to save them, but they are not important for this tale.


The kingdom had a King, who was loved by the people, and a Queen who was wise and admired, even by his hudband. After years of loving and trying to have a heir, they got lucky and the twin princes were born. Right from the birth it was clear that the princes, though born at the same time, were completely different. One was dark and gloomy, while the other was blond and joyful. Regardless of this difference, the King and the Queen - as well as the whole kingdom - loved the princes very much.


As years rolled by, the difference between the princes became more noticeable. The dark one always saw doom and gloom in everything, and there was nothing which could have cheered him up. On the other hand, the other was all joy and enthusiasm, finding only positive things from all things that happened in his life.


After watching the differences of the princes for six long years the King and the Queen decided to do something about this disparity. They decided to put their plan into action on the seventh birthday of the princes.


The morning rose on the princes' birthday, bright and warm as it always does in the fairy tale kingdoms. The King and the Queen had decided to woke the dark prince first to cheer him up even more, as he would be the first to get his birthday present. 


The prince woke up, and was lead to a shining new door at a new extension of the castle. Looking all sad and desperate, the prince was told that everything found behind the door would be his birthday present, his alone and no one else's. Warily the prince pushed the door open and saw a huge room full of  shelfs upon shelfs full of new and shining toys of all sorts.


"There, son! All that is your birthday present, each and everyone of them belongs to you", said the King, proudly presenting the present to his son.


Much to the King's, Queen's and the Royal court's surprise, the prince dropped on his knees and burst into tears. As they finally got their son calmed down enough to ask the reason to this, the prince said: "All these new toys are going to break down. I can't touch them for I may break them and there is no-one to repair them at the rate they will break and the repairs will cost a fortune and the kingdom will go bankrupt."


Shaking their head in amazement and desperation, the King and the Queen left their weeping son to the care of his valet and went to wake up their other son.


The joyful son jumped out of the bed immediately and started looking for his present. The King and the Queen took this prince to the backyard of the stables and showed him a huge pile of manure.

"Son, this is your birthday present on your seventh birthday. Happy birthday, son!", said the King, trying to hide his amusement of the situation.


The young prince stood still for a second and dashed back to the castle. The King and the Queen and the Royal court were amazed: What on earth was going on and where had the prince gone?!


After a few moments the prince ran back with a shovel and started to dig the immense mount of manure. The King asked what he was doing.

"If there is this much manure, the sparkling pony must be somewhere here", responded the prince.

First I thought that the two princes could picture the different kind of bloggers: one sees the doom, gloom and broken things even in a new sparkling game, while the other takes the time to dig the sparkling diamond out of the apparently broken game. (There was a third brother, too, but he died of asphyxiation and ecstasy right after birth seeing only the sparkling diamonds in a sparkling game which was sparkling before it even saw daylight.)

The other approach was to think the princes as the WoW players of now: one sees the game as broken and bent and keeps wailing over it, while the other still sees some good in it - even though recognizes it is broken -  and keeps digging the pile in search of the diamond (or next purple gear).

The question really is about the interpretation. How do you relate yourself to the story as a blogger or as a gamer?

Joy of being newbie

I recently read a post in Pink Pigtail Inn, where Larísa shows and tells an application her guild has gotten. The applicant - according to the application - was a 14 year old kid, with a level 82 deathknight, and the guild is pretty much a hardcore - at least serious - 25 man raiding guild.

Now the comments range from the typical evaluation of "fail" to Gevlon's mention of "M&S proper" to adoring mentions of cuteness of the applicant.

I told this in the comments, but I'll expand a bit.

My son, coming 10 years this May, plays a DK, too. Level 63, Unholy for dps and geared only from questing. My son loves to spend gold on trivial and unnecessary shinies: sure sign of M&S conduct by Gevlon's rules. He also likes to bash mobs, to a such an extent that he signs in PUGs every time he gets to play (because he's so young, he has this character on my account, under my supervision).

I have selected his spec, talents, skills and help with the gearing questions among other things. But that's it: I have never taught him on how to play the class, nor how to min-max the rotation. Never even occurred to me to do such a thing.

Taking into account that he's so young and English isn't his native language (in fact he's just started to learn it in school), he still gets into the PUGs. As it happens, he likes to play in group content: so much so that he automatically pops the LFD tool on when ever he gets the privilege to play. Yes, that is earned around our house.

To make this really strange - or in some others words showing the state of the levelling players - he scores to the top of the damage meters every time. Not necessarily the top, but in the top two usually.

And he has never - not a single time - been kicked out of a group. He's the epitaph of the current WoW thinking in group content: "shut up and deliver".

As I monitor how he plays and what he does, I'm constantly amazed how he finds the things I take for granted or have already trivialized to myself extremely interesting or amazing. The childish glee on everything new, strange and surprising is still there. He's loving the game for being as fluffy, cute and amazing as it is. He's enjoying the game, being the newbie he still is.

Now that wasn't the reason why I brought my son into the blog. The reason is that it's quite brutal how the 'jaded veterans' treat the newcomers, newbies, kid learning the ropes and each other in the game. The level of cruelness tells quite a lot about the state of the game itself. The only people worth the while are only those who make the min-max-game their main hobby, who know their class by heart (and the accompanying stats and bonuses) and play the abstract gameplay system regardless of the shiny graphics involved.

The elite who are not to be called elite, because the raid content is at everyones - and their cousins - reach. Provided that you fulfill the forementioned requirements of the gameplay mechanics.

Is this really the way the game, which we all started to play for fun, has turned to?

What have we lost when the game could be easily turned into a number crunching simulation with a few Simon Says scotch-hopping?

Is it the same game anymore?
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I doubt that's a good idea

This is not a Gnomore post. Gnomore is on vacation for this week due to Rift head start weekend.

This is a Rift post. Due to Gnomore being on vacation because of the Rift head start weekend.

Onwards.

So far I've been playing only one character, Kelari Mage called Copraf (ingenious naming, don't you agree?). The term "glass cannon" is an over estimation of Rift Mages survival abilities, but at least at the low levels the damage I can deal is quite enough to keep single mobs a couple of levels higher at bay. Even as much as to get them down before they can even hit me.

What can I say? Argent, the RP server I'm located with this character, is a very helpful and nice community. There have been no queues as far as I've seen, and the overall attitude is the we are in this together. The most bothersome thing about the game is its namesake, the rifts: it seems to me that there are invasions and rift events going on constantly when I'm online, making it nearly impossible to level up by the normal questing way. I'm overlevelling the content here, people!

As the explorer me, I had to take a breath of fresh air in Sunday and I ventured off the beaten path of Freemarch (the level 5-20 area). Strolling around in Droughtlands (level 22+) and later in Shimmersand (at least lv33+!) with a level 14 character was a stressful, exhilarating and very much refreshing experience! As every step had to be thought out in advance to stay alive, the intensity of that session was very, very high. And I really mean that you had to plan your steps ahead, because the nearest resurrection point was always at the other end of the map if you were lucky: the corpse run wasn't as nice as it may sound.

Anyhow, seeing the depth of detail put into these areas and the love in the graphics has convinced me even more that there is no hurry to level up. There is quite enough to explore on the way up, and the lore and legends which I encountered on those travels are quite promising. Like the separation of two Cyclops tribes after they were freed from the ilk of the evil Eth, who had brought them through dimensions by magic to serve as slaves and gladiators... How the heck has all that happened and what is going on in the cave there?!

In Shimmersand there are some nice triggered events which left me giggle: I won't go any deeper into this, because they are somewhat a surprise and I would surely spoil the fun from someone entering them for the first time. Needles to say, I'm waiting to come back with a proper level character and see how the events proceed then.

I have only one thing to complain about in the Rift events and public groups. There seem to be no interest to heal in them. As a pure dps I have no way to keep my health up, while the dps from Druid persuasion toss a self heal every now and then and keep pounding. The elite invader as much as breathes to my general direction and I'm gasping for a potion to stay in the foray.

Sad to say, but this was to be expected: everyone wants to beat the baddies, and as the system rates everyones personal performance, healing isn't going to be rated too high by the players. It's a war out there, anyhow, no time for losers! (I should have rolled a pure healing cleric and level only by quests and healing... no, too much Gnomore!)

The best part was yesterday: guild fun in Iron Tombs.

First of all, the game is gorgeous. But the instance itself rises the bar even higher: it is dumbfounding. The atmosphere, lighting and sounds are just magnificent and just ... right in its grand meaning. Can't wait to run the instance again, even though the initial amazement has vaned.

The structure and flow of the run is well thought. Like I said during the run, Trion has truly delivered the fun they promised to include in the game. Even though our rag tag group had one 'overlevelled' character, the rest at level 18 and my meager lv15 had quite enough to do and the challenge was to plan the pulls and kills after the first - and only - wipe after a specialist pull gone somewhat awry. Or how can you rate a pull for three mobs which ends up pulling thirteen, among which at least one mini-boss? Expert job, I say. Something I capped by stating the next proposed pull with "I doubt that's such a good idea".

The fun part of the run was that I really learned more about my Mage than I had learned before questing and rifting. I also found out later, when I was going through the run, the reason why it was so fun in many ways.

The main thing was the fact that there was no feeling of having to be the min-maxed super performer of the class. There was no need to show and tell how my class is played properly. And there was no expectations on anyone in the group that a certain class should perform at a certain level.

Here comes the only comparison to WoW in this post: in WoW I don't like the instances anymore because I have to be the best there is only to stay out of the name calling ring. Be it tank, healer or any dps, it is the same. The damage meters and the sour community does have its toll on the fun, really. Instead of going into an instance I have to think whether I have the gear to do it, the right spec to be accepted, the buffs I'm supposed to have. There is the feeling that the game and the rest of the group are expecting more than you can deliver.

Sure, there are players who don't give a damn about it and just go and get the bashing. But as a tank or a healer in WoW you are bound to get the shaft even if you perform well if someone decides the failure was your fault. Seen that on both my tank and my healer, and that's the major reason I don't want to tank in PUGs anymore.

It is not fun anymore, it's a chore.

Granted, the run in Rift was a guild run, but in a way it was a PUG: I'm a newcomer to the guild, the composition of the group came on the fly and we were just having a look into the instance. It had more common with a server PUG than a real planned guild run, really.

But the most fun came out of the fact that no-one really knew the instance, everyone was a gamer and had played quite a bit of MMOs and everyone was in to have FUN.

Anyhow, Rift is what I have earlier stated many times: WoW on steroids, Trion doing splendidly what Blizzard did way back when they launched WoW. It's new, familiar, simple to get a hang on, a new car with some new gadgets and better stuff under the hood.

For me the head start weekend - even though it was the worst gaming weekend I've ever had - was a great success on Rift point of view.

How about you? Have you tried Rift, will you give it a try or will you just pass it for something more shiny?

Or are you content enough with WoW?
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