It's dead, Jim

First of all, I'm not dead. Nor is this blog. It's this.


Yes, I'm participating and I'm already couple of thousand words short of the aim I'm supposed to be at.

I think it's WoW that is dead for me. I got somewhat pepped up last week when we had the ongoing Three Stooges evening with our second team (paladin, shaman, rogue) and logged in with my - little played - Unholy Deathknight, tender at level 82. Ran some idle quests while queuing for a random and got into the Vortex Pinnacle.

I fully agree that I'm not up to the gear nor anything, but I also must state that I was the only one not stacked with heirlooms and top enchants. I am still running around with my lowbie quest gear, with one or two blues in the mix. And due to this, I was severely lacking in the dps I may have been supposed to deliver. Considering this, I wasn't the one standing in the fire. I was not the one disconnecting repeatedly. I was not the one constantly pulling unnecessary aggro and definitely not the one pulling stuff off from the pally-tank. I even mentioned this and got mentioned for being ok in these regards.

Still I was kicked before the wind dragon boss. The only thing I saw was a note from the warlock who was repeatedly disconnecting and stalling our progress stating "Just kick him" before I was ushered back to the world.

No mention of doing something differently. No mention of getting better or asking if I knew things.

Not. A. Thing.

Sure, where the others were stacking incredible 11k dps at that level (heck, Förgelös barely can make that on a good day on our lv85 trio!!!), I was doing 'merely' 3.5k. Maybe that was the reason, not the overall performance.

So WoW is dead for me except for the Brotherly Thursdays. The community and the players currently suck and are obnoxiously stupid.

I rather spend my time in Rift or Champions Online. At least I'm not judged by an arbitrary number in either, yet, but by my performance and behaviour.

Fool me around, dear

Level cap killed my fun in WoW. Several times over, especially the most recent 'grind rep till you really drop dead and quit' Firelands stunt.

Like I've said time and again, I like levelling up. I like the stories, sometimes even the feeling of being the hero of the day. But when I hit the cap, I really feel that this was it: the stories are told, there is nothing more to go for - especially storywise.

Raiding is no story. Raiding is a passtime for those who play the MMO to win. It's the cornerstone of competitive edge in the genre. Forget the RPG part of MMO's alltogether, as that has been forgotten way back when.

I had a lengthy post written in my head about all this, but the frustration got the better of it. I had clever statements in the lines of comparing the new MMO character's growth - or evolution - to the full blown hero and how that doesn't come anywhere near the concept of Universal Hero which Joseph Conrad coined and George Lucas (among others) later utilized succesfully. There is no such evolution of character in MMO's because everyone is as much a hero as the next player character!

I had also clever reasoning why raiding per se is outdated and faulty design, as it came to be from game mechanics present in Everquest. You had this huge, next-to-unbeatable monster for which you needed really huge amounts of people to beat. The mechanics stated that no single character could have ever fallen those monsters. It was part of the game. Then came the instanced dungeons and raids and it was taken as a norm that the 'final' monsters reside in instanced 'dungeons' with their ever breeding minions.

And the game was over for the heroic evolution on the player character.

Why? Because everything started to evolve around the gear required by game design to fell the beast. No amount of character development was needed, only hitting the cap and gearing up.

Take the quest system to it and you can easily see the current state of levelling: the speediest method wins by far. In Rift, which I currently play most, you get the 'veteran reward potion' which grants you 100% more experience for 2 hours. Clever way to give the players the choice either to level up fast or to take the scenic route. In WoW the 1-60 content has been watered down so much that when you earlier had trouble with world elites of your own level, you can now take down one 2-3 levels higher without breaking a sweat. And you level up the questing zones so fast that you cannot even complete the quest chains in one area without the quests in that chain going grey. 

In short, the story of a young farmer's helper growing into a world saving hero is not there. It cannot be unless the structure of the games is either changed or... we just move back to the single player games.

Bring back the world bosses, which are not contained in the instanced containment fields. Different ways to gain recognition, prestige and power.

And please, please... stop calling 'reputation quests' content. I mean, if you can show me one heroic fiction story in which the hero must do simple, menial tasks time and again to gain favour or influence only to be able to purchase that one shiny piece of gear for his next challenge, then I may accept this. Otherwise it's really just the game developers deliberately wasting the players time because they just couldn't come up with any better.

Content should be something that entices you, lures you deeper into the story or game, makes you feel emotions and grants eventually the sense of accomplishment. The best quest chains do that time and again, even if you know them by heart already.

Senseless reputation grind doesn't. Except for the feeling of accomplishment, which is usually described as being a relief.

How many times you have to be fooled before you see the vanity of it all and say that it's enough?

(Discussion in my 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?

Comic relief

I feel so stupid.

No. I have been stupid.

Well, maybe I still am, but I have been shown to be extremely stupid.

I've been sitting in Dalaran, using my emblems on the vendors and wondering how come I cannot unlock the T9 gear at all. Due to my hate towards the Argent Tournament I haven't visited the area since the LFD launched, and I have visited the vendors there way back when the Tournament was opened, only to make a mental note that their gear requires something I don't have.

I have changed that mental note later to tell me that they require tokens for the gear, and there is no emblem gear available from the Argent Tournament vendors.

Stupid me. /smack in the head

As if there were any pointers to them in-game, anywhere... I wonder how many players even 'need' to visit Argent Tournament area now, as you can enter the Trial of the Champion through the LFD...?

Rant, vent, poof

I wasn't going to post anything today, due to a huge amount of inner rage for several reasons. However, I decided to post a few links.


Without WoWHead, WoW Wiki, or Thottbot, how was I supposed to figure out all the different choices for the emblems?


The standard motto for MMO questing became ‘Yeah, yeah, whatever’.


One of the functions of the community was to teach new players.


Whatever way you look at it, MMO's are a team effort in more ways than one.


In condensed form: New player hits the lv80, and has been running the LFD for the last 10 levels. He has visited all the instances a couple of times at least, knows to handle them at least reasonably and starts gearing up with emblems from the heroics. There is no primer in-game to tell him what to concentrate on, how to improve and how to gear, really.


Gear gets up to raid levels, even though the 'low tier' raiding is going further away in every content patch. Naxx and Ulduar have been voided for either being 'too boring' or 'not of any value in gearing'. There is no in-game primer whatsoever to tell the the newcomer anything about the raiding part. No information about raids and raiding at all.


Being the casual slacker-moron, playing only now and then, this feller wants to experience the content. Funnily enough he wants to spend his time in the game rather than going through the off game material required to participate the group functions. Being as casual as he is, or as hardcore as he can, he is seriously deprived from the information which might make his playing more enjoyable.


So he takes his stand, plays whenever he likes and cares Jack about the raiding which is as mysterious to him as the finesses of the Algalon fight. It's just a myth.


Until he miraculously encounters another fellow, who has been playing for a long time and is willing to teach the poor time deprived gamer the ropes of the finer things in the game. The game gets new face and new lease in his life. And an extended subscription.


Can the game companies really rely on the off game information in making the game more accessible to the players with no -or limited- understanding of the game mechanics?

It's a bloody team effort

Whatever way you look at it, MMO's are a team effort in more ways than one. In the most basic level, the single character's growth from zero to hero is a single experience both to the toon and to the player, but everything else is involving co-operation with other toons and players.

Dungeons. Group quests. Raids. Guilds. Trading.

The difficulties in maintaining these functions boils always down to the communication and understanding on the personal level.

That's why I'm pretty much bothered by the silent 5man runs the LFD is providing. In fact, I'm pretty much bothered by the silence in all the areas of the game: even the /2 trade and 1/ general are pretty silent when you take the excessive spam off the channels.

Proper communication is key to success in team effort. Assuming that others understand you perfectly leads to disaster. If you are leading a party, take that few sentences in that PUG group to explain in few words the bosses, do not assume others know and execute it the way you want to.

Do not assume I know what you mean with your silence.

Communication is the key thing to success in team effort. Make it count.

Sure, not all of us can type while we're bashing the trash. Wait for the more quiet moment (mana break?) to state your mind. You may not ever see the rest of the group again, but they may rank you in something like Elitist Group for others to see. That one helpful sentence may help you later on in your runs.

Not all of us are as vocal with their concerns: never the less, the concerns are not any less than those of the vocal minority. After all, it's a team effort and the team is just as strong as it's weakest link. The failrun has it's weakest link, and if you are there for the first time without saying anything about it, it's your fault. By stating that you are there for the first time, do not understand or do not know the stuff you may well get advice on how to proceed.

Might even get congratulated for your honesty.

MMORPG, Massively Multi-player Online Role-Playing Game, is a team effort in it's multi-player part. Behind each and every player controlled toon is a player, a person, with different values, knowledge and experience of the game. To convey your thoughts and information to those other players with whom you play ensures that they understand your position and point of view, and in the end, makes your life a bit easier in the MMO world of your choice.

In the group content -5mans and raids- you are nothing without the team. The team can replace you, but you cannot experience the content without a team. The same goes with a guild: the guild can easily replace you, but without the guild you are deprived from a lot of things in the game.

In team effort, communication is everything. Even more than skills.

Open up and share your thoughts.

Stoopid computer

My computer has been acting lately. At first I have taken the blame on my kids, who have been surfing and playing whatever flash based games where ever they have found them. Granted, that has been the easiest thing to do with all the malware and spybots I've removed from the machine after each of their game sessions. But the situation has gotten worse over the last few months when their time on computer has been restricted and that made me worry.

So I've ran some programs to tweak, clean and repair my old XP installation. Only to make things worse.

Until I resorted to the thing I should have done way earlier. I removed my old F-Secure antivirus program and replaced it with Avast.

Holy Guacamole!

Goodbye sloppiness, goodbye stalling screens in WoW. That old rusty resource hog was eating up the memory more than anything!

The funniest part is that no memory checking program noticed anything unusual and the control panel didn't show any strange memory usage. The antivirus just has slowed down the processes in some ways I don't understand, making the machine go slower and slower over time.

Anyhow, my worries on that area are over. WoW loaded up faster than ever, the buttons and bars which had been missing from time to time loaded immediately and even the AH and mailbox worked faster.

I love it.

Blog snippets

First of all, I've joined as a guest writer in a blog called the Nomadic Gamer, and volunteered to post some posts into that blog. So if I'm not posting in here, you may as well go and see if I have done something there. The tone of those posts will be -hopefully- different but recognizable me.

The other thing I wanted to share in this quick snippet is the -so far- best post to the know-it-all selfish jerks in the LFD heroics, written by Karatheya from Cold Comfort (which is an excellent blog!). I would say that even though it's longish and rantish, it's about the kind of post you would want everyone participating the end game heroics grind to read.

Really read and think.

Off now.

Is there a comparison?

Made a funny (?) note for myself today: there are no blogged responses to my yesterday's plea for features and aspects of WoW which make it so much better than, say, EQ2. I made that remark to Twitter and got my eyes opened by Stargrace and Kadomi: as the two launched at around the same time, most of the WoW players have never even tried EQ2.

Now I'm not saying that it's a fact or the truth to void all other truths, but this may be the case. Dechion mentioned that he wouldn't know if (quote)"EQ2 would come to my front door singing christmas carols"(end quote).

Also a good note was that WoW players don't seem to have a reason to defend their choice of game in the same extent as the ones playing the underdog EQ2. As it was mentioned in the comments of the post, EQ2 started with no backing from the previous IP (being EQ) while WoW had strong backing of Warcraft-series and especially the Frozen Throne expansion. EQ2 was also very resource heavy on the then current computers compared to WoW which still would run on a (pretty high end) toaster.

But the idea or note which struck my fancy was the fact that if majority of the WoW players have never tried EQ2 or any other MMO so far, how can they say that WoW is the best MMO or the best for them? Considering the current selection of active and devoid MMO's available, there has been a lot from where to select the daily medicine dose. EQ2, Warhammer Online, EQ, Age of Conan, Aion to mention some on the fantasy side.

Thinking of this it's no wonder why the term "wow tourists" has been coined and from where it brews from. The players who have entered MMO's with WoW as their first ever who have tried the competing one only to notice that the game cannot deliver the same playability, stability and content from the start as their first choice after (currently) five years of honing and tweaking, patching and nerfing casual friendliness.

The point of comparison is scewed and thus makes the appearance of a single WoW killer impossible. Everytime a new MMO launches, it will be compared with the updated, upgraded WoW, even though everyone should know that any MMO launches incomplete. So did WoW, but that truth is lost in time already.

So what are we to expect from the future. Small baby steps from different companies slowly gnawing the player base of WoW? "WoW2" or similar from Blizzard to make the doors of Azeroth close once and for all? (IMO Cataclysm is this)

Or that one game that comes from the left and takes the whole MMO population off guard?

But the only thing I'm sure of is that the current games have a comparison point which is not on level with the launching games at all.

Too bad: so much wasted effort only because people want more of the same.

We are so lazy, comfort seeking and selfish after all.

PvP reflections

I took the plunge yesterday. I have a low level warrior in a PvP server which I started as an experiment to see how the PvP server and PvP in general would feel like.

I'm disappointed.

The mentality is a lackluster. Sure, the feller is still in the first bracket of WSG (lv10-19), so I haven't met any real 'world pvp' as of yet. In addition to this, the starter areas are void and empty: I've seen a handfull of players in my journey to the Battlegrounds, even the big city is pretty quiet.

But the PvP... I've stated earlier that the game is too gear centric to be interesting in PvP: the one higher in level and with better gear wins, always. That's the way it simply is, there is no avoiding it. The guy who has had the luck to gain blues (or heirlooms, for the matter...) has the upper hand to the Jack the Rabbit who has plunged through the mud to get where he is.

As if that wasn't enough, the system is playing the game, too. I mean in ruining the PvP. As you are roaming in the battleground, you can hide behind a pillar, wall, tree stump, what not. But you cannot really hide, as your nameplate shines like a star above you. Not only above, but through the walls and floors of the flagrooms!

Frustrating to be ready to ambush an opponent's player who just stops dead right before you are about to pounce on him/her, and starts the last preparations for your demise. To which you cannot get in time to disrupt the preparation.

Then again, you might get lucky. I won a one-on-one against a 4 level higher player, barely, but still. My warrior beat that rogue good.

That's the only thing that has made me feel good about pvp so far.

The other thing completely is the hacking. In WSG at low levels you can still find the speed hacks, which enable the player to cap the flag within few seconds after the game has started. Obviously the hack is faulty, as the player cannot reproduce that feat after the first try. Or the guy using it was just a dumb schmuck in addition to the fact he was hacking.

What bugs me most about the hacking is the fact that it ruins the game for all the players in the battleground: the opposition feels cheated, the team mates feel cheated and the dumb bugger gets reported.

So to make the PvP in WoW is IMO a big joke, with no real skill needed, just enough butt to get the best gear for the job before entering the battleground. And then relying on the fact that the rest of the team thinks the same about working in the field of glory.

Which they most probably will not do, anyhow.

Can't say anything about the arenas, but I presume the gearing component is present in there, too, and in as great extent as in the normal bg's.

We'll see, if I ever get that far. I'm more inclined to the PvE grind than the PvP one.

Minor reflections

The last post was about a week ago, and due to real life (work) commitments I just haven't been able to either blog nor play.

However, due to my INTJ/INTP Briggs Myers-personality, I have had a lot of time to think and ponder the game and my approach on it. And my current situation and interest in it. As a side notion, I find it somewhat strange to be also ESAK in Bartle, which would suggest some clear extrovert trait, too...

The recent post has created a quite active chain of responses and responses. The overall notion of the responses is though that the game is as it is and shouldn't be changed in any way. Whatever the discourse of the comment is, I got quite fast the impression that there are really no instances people run for fun in WoW: only the glint of new loot -or loot which helps to move along- is the reason to commit to the group activity of an instance run. So instead of running the instances as they are meant to be ran at certain level ranges, people solo through the game to the cap and only then 'solo' the lower level instances, too, for the achievements. If they bother.

The mere mention of the approach that the instances are passed this way points out the flaw in their design to me: they are not fun as themselves. Maraudon is passed because it's not fun (it's too big, too winding and too messy to be fun), Blackrock is too long/big and so on to be fun and at the end game the Oculus is generally passed because it sucks. Which is the short version that it's not fun because it takes too much time to run through and the resulting loot is not equal to the time spent.

Wanted or not, all but one comment point this fact out. And the idea of having the instances scale up to the party entering, giving them the appropriate challenge is met with similar fervor.

I understand that the time has passed on the older content: new content voids the older one. But why is it so? Instead of growing the game within the confines of the world created, the designers have taken the easy route and created new areas for each expansion. Easy route in that sense that they haven't had to accommodate the new quests and scripts to the old content, and perhaps even change the old content to accommodate the new one.

Thus bringing on the Cataclysm, which wipes off the design flaws and faulty design of the original content. Only to be replaced with what? More of the same?

Anyhow, that's pointless as it's based on opinions and not facts.

My reflections on the game has been quite much on the same level with the earlier ponderings. Am I having fun when I play? If not, why is it so? What do I feel about the gearing, dailies, content now?

And to be honest, I am confused in a way.

I love to login. I hate the fact that all I have to do is cooking and fishing dailies, and if I'm lucky, the odd heroic daily. For anything else I do not have time to allocate. I don't have time, nor interest, to sit in the LFG or Dalaran calling for group for anything, because it always takes time from my actual playing to get something running. Because I do not do this or sign to the guild raids (which is another thing covered later) I do not get exercise and practise to be good enough to pass my own scrutiny. Also due to this I do not sign into to the guild runs, because I do not want to ruin the other players fun by being the inadequate tank or poor dps (which I hate to do anyhow).

Add to this the fact that I find the whole concept of gearing up for the instances outside the instances completely folly and stupid concept, and you have a mess.

I want to play the game, but I cannot find a reasonable way to enjoy it the way it's supposed to be enjoyed. Does that make any sense?

It seems that I have to sign the view my brother stated sometime ago: the journey is more important than the destination in an adventure game. In WoW there is no adventure in the destination for me.

One thing that bothers me with the whole end game concept is the fact that the game doesn't 'guide' the players at all. If you do not have the luxury of having time to plunge through the guides and lists within the internet, you are completely out of the game. The game doesn't state that you need to have 540 def to be able to tank in the Heroic instances, nor any other stat which is currently thought to be essential information to be able to advance into the raid instances.

I have said it before and will state it again: I love the game, the overall concept of the MMORPG which is executed perfectly in WoW. This ranting may sound the contrary, but it really isn't: I see flaws in there which bother me, but do not prevent me from finding that nugget of enjoyment every now and then. As it happens, raiding isn't the thing for me with my schedule even though that is what I would love to try at one point or another. However, I see it the way that the game is not designed for a role player or casual player to advance to the point where they can meet and vanquish the Lich King. That's only because the required information of gear, stats and theorycrafting just isn't supported within the game for those who are less fortunate with their internet time.

Quite another point is the fact that to advance within the game you need to be extremely selfish and/or be a member of an excellent guild. That selfishness comes up in both loot situations and in the participation in groups with whatever gear you are in. To enter an instance group or raid without properly preparing ruins the fun for the rest of the group, and IMO that is extremely selfish conduct: me first, nevermind the rest. In guild runs you can expect some tolerance with poor gear, as it is commonly understood that your situation is what it is. But then again, in guild runs you are not participating the 'important runs' and thus are not ruining the possibly first time experience of anyone else.

To sum this up, I urge you all to listen to Veneretio's latest podcast called "That's the game you are tanking". His next post, however, has a valid point, stated much better than I can ever put it.

That it is a people's game. How easy that is to forget when you solo up, gear up solo and live at the cap.

Solo.

Till we meet again next week.

(Disclaimer: Of course major part of this rant is due to the fact that I do not have enough time to play at the level I desire. Then again, if the philosophy Blizz is trying to instil is "bring the player, not the class", then the game should be made so that you do not have to plough through various theorycrafting sites to overcome the class/player hurdle.)

Separation anxiety

Life takes it's toll. That's something I've noticed as of late to be more than accurate description of the current global situation. The more pressure there is to save, the more pressure there is to do your work properly. And beyond.

But that is not enough for a parent with family obligations. Same kind of pressure comes down from the school through the kids performance -or lack of it- and the pressure to keep the family unit going is something you have to experience. Add to that the typical issues with which a home owner (with loads of debt) has, and you have the 'normal' life I'm living in.

Which in turn has resulted that my in game time has dropped down severely lately. I thought it might be refreshing to come back to the game after a few days 'off' of my dose of the crack. But now as those few days have become few more, I'm starting to feel a some sort of anxiety over one thing.

What if my expectations are too high and I'm disappointed -yet again- on the elements I'm missing so much?

I know -in the conscious level- that the game or the community doesn't chance overnight. I also recognise the fact that people tend to forget the unpleasant and irritating things very fast and the 'good' gets the bigger part in the memories. Even in such a short time I think this may be the case.

So how can I avoid the probable disappointment in the repetitive game mechanics, poorly behaving community outside the guild and the incapability of myself to commit to longer term pursuit in the game (thus making me feel like a failure in the guild/community I belong)?

Any ideas?

((note: this is exaggeration and mostly in sarcastic tone))

Betting is open

Blizzard Store's vanity pet sale micro transactions haven't gone unnoticed. Several bloggers have posted for and against the mere idea of Blizzard beginning a micro transaction system through their Battle.Net tied Blizzard store and all I can say is what did I tell you. The list ranges from Tobold to Leafshine to Kiasa and so on, so I won't even bother to link them here: all having their own approach to the issue.

One thing is sure, however. The Store wasn't opened only for the vanity pets. It will have more content soon and as time passes it will contain xp scrolls or potions, cloths, mounts and -like it or not- gear: not at the epic level not to 'disturb the game experience' but to help the newcomer/casual without the time to grind the gearing game to take part in the revered End Game concept. 


The question really is, how long will it take for the basic raiding gear to enter the store?


Granted, like it was mentioned in the comments of my earlier posts this week, that the pets sold at the moment are just a continuation of the TCG loot cards, but making them more easily attainable is the main thing in this: taking the obstacles from the purchasing off, making the buying easier for the consumer is the key. Like Melmoth (I think) in Kiasa noted, now there is no excuse for all, each and every MMO to have a micro transaction store, as the main player has opened theirs. He also pointed out (I think) that whereas other games like DDO have the stuff sold in the Store available as rare loot drops in the game, Blizzard has refrained to do so. Why might that be, and when will the Marine Marine for example be for sale in the store? Or the mini-diablo from the collectors edition?


Do I like the idea? As much as I have liked the gold sellers and micro transactions in any games I've seen them. Does it effect my playing? Not as long as the game itself offers the possibility to acquire the same 'benefits' as the Store. 


Does it matter to me? Not as long as the game is as it is. But when the stuff acquired from the store become a norm like achievements as an requirement for grouping, then it will.


Why do I feel cheated, then? Beats me.

Two different issues in one post

I was listening to the Twisted Nether Blogcast this morning and found myself thinking about one thing. And later on when I read the comments on the last few days postings about micro transactions and paying separately for different content I noticed that I could combine these two into a single post (and stop posting for the rest of the week... clever!).

The one thing that started to bug me was that how far the level capped people have separated themselves from the beginning player and how different the actual starting zone game is from the much famed 'end game'. For me the illusion has always been that 'the game starts at the cap', but I have come to notice that actually the game is what you make of it. For me -and for several others, I've noticed- the game almost ended at the gap between the levelling game and end game. And it still is at a standstill, even though I get geared up at almost each heroic run I get into. There just isn't any drive in the gearing game like there was in the levelling game.

What bothered me in the Blogcast was that Daewin told how he had levelled from 1 to 80 within the free trial period. For a content and quest enthusiast I am this seems more of a travesty, as he has been running through the main content in the game by 'power levelling' and completely discarding the background. In my mind, he has exactly played the game to win, maximising the 'win the content' mentality and completely discarding the RPG elements of the game. The race, class and talent build have been just mechanics to use and nothing more.

This sounds to me as extremely alarming in the sense that the content Blizzard has become renown of has been discarded so easily. On the other hand, the preaching that the end game is where the game is does the same: it doesn't matter why we are trying to get to Arthas, it only matters for as long as he is the 'final boss'. What happened to Kael'Thas or Illidan? Where did all the earlier end bosses disappear? And why?

The second thing that struck me was that in fact the game has been changed so that the journey doesn't matter anymore: to be honest, the emphasis of the content has been increasingly in the end game content anyway for at least for the last expansions, and the next one is trying to make a slight shift in there by destroying what we have learned to be a persistent world.

I'm completely disillusioned about the fact that we're playing the game instead of playing the character or role. There is no story to the characters, only the story of the gear and where we got it. The game's levelling design at the moment enhances the illusion that you MUST hurry to the level cap to even experience something within the game, which already has a huge amount of both solo and group content before that. Due to the fact that everyone is ushered to the level cap by the speeded up levelling, the group content is greatly shunned and empty, and next to no new players (and certainly no new alts) experience the group content as a challenge or interesting content.

The disparity between the rich background content of the starting areas and the earlier content and the end game content (both gearing and raiding) proves to me that the RPG aspect of the game is dead to a large extent, and that Blizzard is serving mainly to the level capped population. And is making sure that the newcomer to the game gets this from the beginning levels on, that the actual world of Azeroth doesn't mean a thing in itself: the only thing that really matters is the highest level raid instance, to which the access has been made easier for everyone to try to enter. If they are lucky or persistent enough. The sad part of this is that the players forget the immersion aspect of the vast lore of the world and play the game like it was a some sort of Mario Bros in fantasy land.

WoW has all the content, lore and adventure, but we're playing it for the game mechanics.

Sad.

Bane of anonymity in WoW

The player in an MMO is in fact anonymous being, hiding behind the mask of the avatar name. This leads to the fact that a huge MMO suffers from the same problem with anonymity as the internet: the decent, nice Average Joe turns into a virtual troll and sociopath goblin due to anonymity and wide audience. In an MMO, however, the name the player gives to the avatar is a kind of personality to the character and is a bit slowing down this approach: you are worth your name and your name is all you have in the game.

But still, like Azariel wrote yesterday, the anonymity and not knowing the people you group with leads to similar conduct: if you are not satisfied with the performance of someone in a PUG, you can kick them out without a word (provided you're the group leader). This doesn't help the person to improve their performance due to the problem in the system: you do not get any kind of response or evaluation on how well you are performing unless you are doing so good that people are thanking you for that. In a case of 'poorer' performance, you are called names and told you're either noob or crap player, without telling what to do or how to improve.

No constructive criticism or capability to give such exists in the majority of the PUG's, anyhow.

Now add to this the possibility to group over server boundaries: the audience grows wildly, your anonymity increases immensely and -like Spinks posted- 

You don’t need to talk to the other people in your group if you don’t want to – you won’t ever meet them again.

In the future cross-server PUG system Blizzard claims that they have thought about the jerk factor and tried to find ways to prevent the excessive ninja behaviour this system gives a great thumbs up. However, even though I can see the benefits of being able to PUG fast I cannot see a way to make this viable and reasonable way to improve the game experience. The initial issue is with the Interned Dickwad Theory and the implications it has over the amount of players submitted to the cross-PUG community. The secondary issue is with the lack of criticism and advice you -as a player- will face even more strongly in this system.

But it all comes down to the fact that anonymity brings up the beast within. I can see the conduct which Azariel reported in his post escalating to the point that you get invited into a group, get kicked due to factor or another, get immediately replaced and you never know what hit you, why you were kicked and who you were grouping with, whom to avoid in the later groups. Sure, Blizz instigated that they are expanding the ignore list and that you will not be grouped with the people in the list, but you can already have a name change in the game? Hello?

Or then you get into a group in which there are two friends who are working together: they decide the loot and effectively ninja the instance. You get out, get in again only to group with guildies or friends of theirs... Guess how that will work out?

I suppose that WoW Jackass took a head start to help people avoiding situations like this... but then again, if this kind of system is needed, there should be something to be done on the game mechanics' side.

We are having problems with jerks, ninjas and antisocial PUG groupers already in the smaller, server size scale: the problems are there within the 'confined space' of one server. What preventive approaches can be taken to avoid these problems from escalating in the cross server PUG system?

And will the cross server PUGging be the saviour Blizzard thinks it is?

Watch and tell

Okies, now I've done it. I've enlisted into the first raid in the guild, that being the normal Onyxia 10. All I can hope is that there will be enough people attending and making me feel uneasy and inadequate.

The only thing I want to achieve before that is just one daily heroic. That would earn me that one Emblem of Triumph I'm currently lacking from my Clutch of Fortification, the Holy Grail in my current set. Then I'm ready to begin the hunt for a new shiny headpiece, thrown weapon, shoulders and helmet. Goodie.

The game, however, is currently such a lag fest, that I do not have any interest in doing anything in it. Last night I spent over an hour emptying my mailbox (3 full mailboxes, 147 post items), when it normally takes five minutes. Add to that any need for crafting (sssslllloooowwww) and the day is done. No thank you.

It all came from the beginning of the Halloween event and it doesn't seem to get any better as the event goes on. I for one haven't done any of the Halloween quests and even though I couldn't participate in the Headless Horseman runs last year, I don't have any interest in plunging in. For some reason or another, I share Gordon's view in the seasonal events: they come too often and are too similar grind fests. I would much rather see something along the lines of the pre-WotLK zombie invasion, which came more or less without a proper warning and caused some real activity in the world. Well, maybe not as devastating incident, but still, something more surprising and different than the same old as last year. Besides, the events seem to be massing to the end of the year anyhow, so could we have some breathing space, please?

But this is just my opinion. If this keeps the games we play, MMO's, alive, then, by all means keep them coming. I can go and live under a rock for their duration and hopefully will be able to play outside the events without the infuriating lag they seem to create.

I will be reporting my ventures in the end game content as soon as that happens.

How broken is it really?

Had a long discussion with my brother, Bishopgeorge, the other day. The main thing about the discussion was the difference of the 'end game' and the 'levelling game' in WoW. Or in any MMO I suppose nowadays. And how broken the game in level cap in WoW currently is.

How much more broken can it be?

Larisa from The Pink Pigtail Inn wrote a nice post about how easy WoW currently is. Or isn't, according to her. She points out that the people whining about the easy mode raiding in WoW are mainly the people who haven't downed Yogg-Saron or the rest of the rowdy bunch in Ulduar (even in normal, let alone hard mode), and that they have no right to say that the game is easy. In her own words:

Hands on heart, how many of you have actually killed Yogg-Saron 25 man? Not quite that many. As a matter of fact, people seem to have given up about him altogether. I haven't got any scientific evidence that this is the fact, but from what I read on the blogs, it appears that most raiding guilds have stopped aiming for an Ulduar clear. They make ToC, Onyxia and not much more than that.

I think the main question is, why people have given up on the real raiding in WotLK and resort to the 'easy mode' gearing instances instead?

Because the raid progression is broken.

I know, that is harsh from someone who has never even raided, but there is nothing new in that statement. And certainly nothing I haven't said earlier either.

If the raid progression was working, people could progress through the raid content in orderly manner: Heroics to gear up for Naxx to gear up for Ulduar to gear up for Icecrown. It just doesn't work like that. People do not work like that, in the sense of 'taking up the challenge': instead they go by the route of leasts resistance, accepting the 'welfare epics' to be able to take on the harder content. If at all.

The difference between Naxxramas gear and Ulduar content level may have been too large, because Blizzard decided to create such an utter waste of space as the Argent Tournament, which -let's admit it- is just a loot piñata for the people who cannot for one reason or another raid the Naxxramas content for the Ulduar content.

Now the situation is such that you can get way better gear through grinding ToC Heroic and then ToC 10/25 than you can ever get from Naxx. Add the daily heroics Emblem of Triumphs and Emblems of Conquest gear to the mix and you can skip Naxxramas completely.

Why would anyone in their clear senses take on the challenge of Naxxramas (other than for the Achievements), if they can get better gear easier and through more simple encounters?

As the patch 3.3 is nearing, you can be sure that Ulduar is going to suffer the same fate as Naxxramas: it will be forgotten before Icecrown is done, and I'm afraid that Blizzard is going to apply some more welfare epics into the game (in addition to the 'new' emblems...) to ease the gap between ToC/Ulduar gear and Icecrown difficulty.

In effect, Blizzard is voiding the content in the end game the same way it has voided the 'old' end game content of the former expansions.

Where does that leave us, newcomers to the game? In a situation where we pass huge amount of content without ever setting our foot in it and leaves us wonder what the fuzz about that content ever has been.

So, how broken is the end game, really? And how broken will it be, before Cataclysm comes and repairs all (not likely, but a nice thought...)?

Customer service at it's best

(First of all, this is the first time I feel pressured to post. Not only because I got some 'demands' from the guildies, but also because I have cut the promising daily posting routine. Explanations follow.)

Customer service is a peculiar beast. It's always depending on the personal contact with the customer service person. Those who have been working in such a position (in a customer service post) know that the customer is always right even though they seldom are in real. We've had some interesting encounters in the last few years because of the new internet solutions, especially payment systems.

The first was when our electricity was cut off without a notice. Thankfully our mobile phones didn't need charging that day, because otherwise the furious calls to the a)bank, b)electricity company's customer service and c)the accounting department of the electricity company wouldn't have been possible. The bank customer service (always happy to oblige) told that the payment had been processed as requested and that from their side everything was in order. The customer service simply stated that there were no payments made within the last few months (!) for our electricity and (after another confirmation call to the bank) directed us to the accounting department. Who simply told us that the reference number we had used was void and the account which we had been paying for the last few months didn't even exist anymore. And -due to being accountants and no customer service professionals- told us to scram it and settle to the fact that the electricity wouldn't be connected until the payment came to the right account.

Long story short, we got it returned in few hours, right after threatening to contact the consumer awareness organisation. You see, the accounting department didn't see anything wrong with the fact that they had changed the reference code and the account without sending any notice to the customers. Their claim was that as so few people were using the automated payment service and the internet payments, their customers would notice for sure that the numbers had changed!

Hello? That was in 2006, and the company had been promoting that their payments came fast, cheap and easy through the internet payment service!!

Out ISP -which is also our mobile service provider- launched a new payment portal, their OwnPaymentService (OPS from now). Through OPS you can see your account status, pay the bills, set the user restrictions and blocks on service numbers and so on. So we've been using that from the beginning to make it easier to follow our kids' mobile bills. We learned this from our daughter's first crush, when she a) sent thousands (at least!) of SMS' to her 'boyfriend', b)downloaded ringtones from (blocked) numbers and c) caused one heck of a phone bill. The funny part was that we had applied service blocks to the account through the web service and put a limit to the expenses on her account too. The bill was voided on one call, with a splendid customer service person.

That was about a year ago. Fast forward to today. This new OPS has been just launched and it's a heaven sent: it's fast, it shows all the billing information and works like no tomorrow. Payment is easy and precise and there have been no problems.

Except that the connection was lost on Monday morning. A phone call to the customer service person who clearly didn't have his best day -or he was a technician with no customer service background- confirmed that there was no payment on this service. Come again?

After a short discussion it became imminent that the OPS system didn't work and the payments made through it shouldn't have been done! The payments for the mobiles worked alright, but the ones for other services -like internet and normal telephone connections- do not work. The response was along the lines that 'everyone knows that this service shouldn't be used'. Then again, even our 8 year old can recite their advertisement stating that you should make all your payments through the system...

Alls well that ends well: after a heated discussion the connection was opened on Tuesday morning and the issue is still up. On ISP's side, since it's their job to find out where our money paid to their system has gone. For our bank confirms that the payments are processed immediately when we use the OPS site and thus they are in the custody of the ISP.

Suck that!

Now comes the WoW part, thank you for following up here. Everyone and their cousins know that Blizzard just released the information that each and every WoW account must be merged into a Battle.net account. There is nothing strange in this, actually, as other companies have their central game hubs already. Most know I think is the SOE's Station Launcher system, which has integrated all their MMO's into one launcher.

But I think this is the first time that Blizzard has underestimated the effect of the announcement, because the registration and the merging was -at least for me- a real pain and torture. I had to fill all the information twice for registration, as it returned the forms to the first page after I had confirmed the information. And with the merging of accounts I had to do the same, as if the system had forgotten what I had entered. And then...

WoW didn't work. It just couldn't connect to the server and so my joy of being merged to the Battle.net so I could get my Oswald the Penguin fluff pet waned into Oblivion. Which I had been playing during the time I couldn't login, anyhow.

Oh, well. I hope the customer service people had their spirits high after the Battle.net announcement, for there must have been loads of calls from satisfied customers on that one.

End note: I'm on vacation this week, but I may put a post or two still. Right after I can return to the game.

Social shortcomings of MMO's

I've been listening to several WoW/MMO podcasts during the last week. In fact, about two a day, as I found out I can do that while driving to/from work. Interesting things have popped out and come up, and I have to apologize for not remembering where the ideas came.

However, the butterfly effect of all what I have hear and read over the week has made a connection with real game incidents and caused this post.

I have come to the conclusion that there are in fact three games in a DikuMUD type MMO like WoW (WoW being my main example because, well, I play it and blog about it):
1. Levelling game
2. Gearing game
3. 'End game', which is actually the continuation of the gearing game.

The shift from levelling game to gearing game is very drastic: it requires the player to change their perspective of the game and the way they play it immensely. It hit me very hard, and last night my brother Bishopgeorge got enough of the change. He, as a healer (disc priest), has been taking the blame for failed pugs and runs for the last week or so, even though I know he can heal in a very, very difficult situations. But his performance as discipline priest in 5mans isn't enough for the pugging people on the server we're in. Knowing he's very pedantic about his performance and gaming, his announcement to me to retire from the capped game struck me very hard.

Granted, his gear is suboptimal, crafted and quest rewards mainly, which isn't enough at the cap. And this difference (you gear isn't enough like it was enough while levelling) really hits hard when you think you can enter the normal 5mans at the cap. It just isn't so.

I thought earlier that it's just tanks who suffer from this, but obviously it isn't. The gearing game is the primary part of the 'End Game', which gets longer and longer the older the capped content gets. Blizzard has tried to ease that up by creating artificial loot piñatas like ToC's and Onyxia, but getting into those even you have to have certain level of gear to be accepted into the groups doing the content.

If not, you are the blame of the week.

In Shut Up We're Talking episode #54 there was an interesting discussion about the social game in MMO's and Richard from Middle-Earth Adventurer made some interesting points in the blogpost which was discussed about. He states very clearly -and with a good example- that the social experience within the game enhances the gaming experience and gives him more reason to really adventure in the content he has played already. The idea is along the same route I have been posting earlier about, too, as I find it much more rewarding to play in a group and laugh at the stupid things you might end up doing.

When you're in a similar minded group the dying itself is a very funny thing. A sideshow to success which comes from effort put to down the boss, kind of.

The group effort and social contacts are something our current MMO's do not have any mechanic for. Sure, there are guilds, chat channels, friend lists and such, but the game mechanics actually reward you for soloing the content (faster levelling game), being selfish (faster gearing game) and raiding with the best possible players (end game content, giving the reason to call others 'noobs'). All this takes the fun out of the game and puts addictive game elements in.

The switch from levelling game to gearing game would be a lot easier with proper social tools and social awareness of the level capped population. Instead of being only interested in their own advancement (which is natural and human to an extent) there should be a way to reward the helping and advancing others, too. Now it is left to the few magnificent souls who try to help the unknown without any personal gain or reward.

And -like in Bishopgeorge's case- it isn't necessarily enough.

Sure, it's easy to say that he should have stayed out of PUG's and stuck to the guild runs. But this is where I see the WoW's mechanics failing: the change from 'easy mode' levelling game to 'look for yourself' gearing game is way too abrupt and the paradigm shift is supposed to happen over dinging in a way: nothing prepares you to the fact that you should have grinded the reputations to get at least adequate gear to start with, or that you should have been pugging and enduring the abuse several levels earlier to gain anywhere near appropriate gear to start with.Especially when the levelling up in Northrend is fast enough for you to overlevel the content altogether (heck, I went through three areas from 70 to 80 and visited one instance en route to cap!).

There is a tutorial on how to play the toon and how to use the skills you gain, but there is no tutorial on how or where to get the gear you need to succeed in the gearing game. Not ingame at least. And that is a severe lack in the WoW's in game mechanics, I think. I mean, what is a game in which you cannot play properly without reading extensive amount of off game material?

To ease your mind, dear reader, I can tell you that the guild we're in took the issue seriously. When Bishopgeorge logs in the next time, he will be expected and treated 'well' to ease his anxiety and rage. While I agree with him that when the game becomes too serious and like work, losing the fun in it, it's time to step back and do what is fun, I know that the most fun in the game comes from the social playing. The guild is that instance which enables the social, mutual gain game, and that is what I want the Three Stooges to be part of.

A greater community of good people playing the game together.

If this was a single player game...

If WoW -or any other current AA rank MMO- was a single player game, I wouldn't most probably play it. At least not the gear min-maxing game, which is the most apparent one in the level cap.

In fact, I don't know a single single player game which would require the player such a dedication, information digging and preliminary preparation as playing at level cap requires at the moment. In a sense the 'fun' is lost for the most part due to the fact that every time I log in I'm faced with the obligatory requirement to have learned the fights off game, tweaked my gear beforehand and/or created a 'wish list' for the min-maxed gear setting.

If I do not do this, I will be shunned upon, my gear and performance will be evaluated before entering the dungeon, instance or group and even if deemed proper I will be held responsible for the poor performance of the whole team due to the fact that it's always either tank or healer who blunders.

The more I think of it, the more apparent it is that there is something else in the game that is keeping me logging in than the co-operative game (which feels more abuse than pleasure): I haven't yet grasped what it is in tangible terms, but when I find that out, I'll tell you. But it isn't the group playing except with guildies, as in parties the players are most of the time for themselves: either to top the damage meters, to ninja the next piece of gear or just pass time and whine about others. Especially newbies who are running the dungeon for the first time are pointed at as being "n00bs" and usually claimed to be the fault when something goes wrong.

I mean, how many times have you stated that someone was either a noob or just a loser in a group, causing a wipe after a wipe, and forgot to see your own part in the whole? How many times have you started the evaluation from the point of view that there might be something you could do otherwise or -God forbid!- wrong?

There must be a decent amount of masochist in me for letting this go on and making me log in voluntarily to the cesspool of disappointment time and again. But then again, there are millions of us who are chasing the digital holy grail day in, day out, just by logging in and moving some bits across the screen.

Still, if WoW was a single player game with the population and itemization it currently has, I wouldn't be playing it.

I would still be playing Oblivion.