Escape Hatch

Quick Response to Gevlon re: WoW's market

2010-09-03T13:08:00.000-04:00

I'm going to leave the rest of Gevlon's post on feminism alone because it would take forever to talk about, but I do want to address one point he made that I think is patently false:

Now the game design being sexist seems a different issue but it's not. The game is exactly what its audience wants it to be. Blizzard is an ethic-less company, responding only to market factors. If the audience is a bunch of morons who jerk off watching cybering blood elf girls, then the blood elves are designed to be sexy. Anything else would be bad business.

The problem with this idea is that the demographic he's talking about is only part of the game's audience.

There is no comprehensive research about female MMO/WoW players. The BBC did a survey that estimates that 40% of EQ2 players are female. Nick Yee used data from WarcraftRealms that showed only 16% females, but that's only people who gave their gender on that fansite, so it's surely an under-representation.

Even if you think the BBC's estimate is high, Blizzard's chosen imagery still turns off millions of potential players (not just females, but also males who don't like this art style). The current state of the game is bad business.

But if they are an ethic-less company that only responds to market factors, why would they do this? Because their art choices are driven by their own preconceived notions, not market factors.

Blizzard is a boys' club. Guess how many female artists, out of at least 16, worked on Starcraft 2, according to the behind the scenes DVD? One.

Blizzard's elite art team, responsible for most of their concept art? Zero females. In fact, it's called Sons of the Storm.

Remember that photo of the entire community relations team that came out a while ago (y'know, where Netheara became a sex object for thousands of frustrated internet teenagers by daring to allow her photo to be taken?). There were 2 women in that crown of 2 dozen.

So a bunch of boys make a game. Of course the art will cater to boys, because that's what they think looks cool. I'd also argue that a lot of socially insecure guys end up devoting their lives to video games to the point that they work at (arguably) the top developer in the world. We could go on and on all day about why there are so few women involved, and I'm going to sidestep that issue for now. What I will say is that it's hard to put out something females would like if you don't have a single female on the team.

They have no proof that their portrayal of gender "sells" or doesn't. The game might sell just as well or better if they had more variety. They aren't responding to market forces in this case. It just doesn't occur to them how unappealing some of the art in this game is to a huge chunk of their potential audience, because to them, half-naked buxom women and burly, inadequacy-soothing men have "concentrated coolness".

If they really wanted to improve business, they would give a wider range of options. And in a lot of ways, they have (dwarf and troll females, gnomes, goblins), but those options are poorly represented by NPCs and especially by major lore figures. There's absolutely no need to get rid of the impossibly-burly males and buxom chain mail bikini babes that appeal to the insecure boy market. Don't take anything away from them. Instead, add more variety to appeal to a bigger audience and bring in even more money. How about a dwarf female faction leader in heavy armor, built like a tank? Or a trim and cut human dude in nothing but a chain loincloth (and a bow tie) as a faction leader (just to make it even given sylvanas's outfit, after all)? Why are the worgen led by some old guy when they could have a young topless male werewolf with washboard abs (talk about a ready-made audience!)?

As it stands, Blizzard is failing to be an ethic-less company responding to market forces, at least when it comes to their representations of gender.

A few posts you should read

2010-08-19T13:20:00.000-04:00

I swore to myself I wouldn't talk about politically divisive issues on my wow blog. When I read a gaming blog or listen to a gaming podcast, I'm there for gaming discussion, not political discussion. I have very strong and entrenched political opinions, and I've abandoned more than one entertainment source completely because someone decided to run their mouth with a stupid political opinion.

But you know what? I'm just going to come out and say that I support feminism, and if you don't like it then please let the door hit you repeatedly in the ass on the way out.

I bring this up because the debate sparked up in the wow blogging community again (as it does every few months) and I wanted to draw attention to some posts on the subject that I think are exceedingly worthwhile reads. Nevermind that these other people probably have more readers than me. :P

First, Larisa serves as an entry point into the debate with her pragmatic way of enjoying entertainment despite stereotyping.

This led me to Pewter's post about how WoW is a game made by men for a male audience (even though a ton of the audience is female).

And finally to some ladystats to know and think about from Paperclipchains.

I'm sure there's a ton of other great work out there on the subject, but these are just the things I ran across today that I wanted to draw more attention to.

P.S. I'm pretty much on blogging hiatus indefinitely (thank you, RL). Maybe I'll drop a small post like this from time to time. I hope you'll keep me in your readers. I also want to thank the wow blogging community, all my commenters, and the bloggers that made this such a welcoming, interesting, and creative place. Especially Ixo, Larisa, and Spinks.

Starcraft 2 Single-Player Impressions

2010-07-28T10:33:00.000-04:00

Short version: Blizzard continues to release games when they are ready.

Long version: OK, I'm not the most impartial reviewer here. I was predisposed to absolutely love this game after how much fun I had with both the single- and multi-player parts of the original Starcraft, as well as every installment of the Warcraft RTS games. And guess what? I absolutely love it. I love it so much that I wish I could italicize that last sentence twice.

More after the jump.

I've only completed the first 5 missions, so keep that in mind as you read.

The story is primarily moved along by cutscenes rendered in a sort of in-between engine: fully 3-D world and models (reminded me of Mass Effect 2) that aren't as good as a CGI cut-scene but quite a bit better than just zooming in on the overhead RTS graphics. Once the cutscenes are over, you can't walk around freely in the world, though - it plays like a point-and-click adventure game. This is actually a blessing, because it eliminates the extra, unnecessary steps of walking between areas or even moving around a 3-D world to click on each object.

According to videogame luminary Sid Meier, "A game is a series of interesting choices." Starcraft 2 strips away everything else and delivers concentrated game without the usual filler.

That's a hallmark of the SC2 single-player mode: needless complications are removed. I'm sure there was a version of the between-mission areas where you walked around, but it was scrapped because walking around didn't add anything. Instead, you travel between areas by simply clicking an ever-present menu at the bottom of the screen. Then you'll just appear on the bridge, or in the cantina (complete with holographic nude Night Elf and fully playable "Lost Viking" shoot-em-up arcade machine), or wherevert. You can interact with the environment as little as you want. The game will highlight objects of interest with new content, such as characters with dialogue you haven't seen yet or a TV with a new report, so you don't have to waste any time clicking around looking for new stuff.

Speaking of televisions, Blizzard went out of their way to add optional content throughout these areas. You don't need to click on the characters or the TVs to progress the story, but if you do, you'll be treated to high-production-value, fully-voice-acted, and amusingly-scripted news reports deepening the storyline of our hero Jim Raynor being painted as a terrorist by the douchey Emporer Mengsk (I swear that name must translate as "douche" in Terran). In a humorous running gag, the news anchor continually interrupts the correspondent trying to give him facts, and then recaps every story with a spin about how evil Raynor is. It's a little optional detail that goes a very long way to building the world and making the game feel more fun.

The streamlining carries over into the single-player progression system as well. You get your choice of missions from a star map where all you have to do is click a planet and you launch the mission, which gives you all the benefits of Mass Effect 2's nonlinear planet-hopping without having to waste time tediously flying the ship every step of the way. Each mission unlocks a new unit for your army that you can then use in all future missions and upgrade in between missions. The upgrade system is simple and intuitive, with each unit having 2 upgrades with varying costs. Each mission you complete gives you a certain amount of cash, and you can then spend that cash as you wish on upgrades and mercenaries (uber-units with limited supply-per-mission).

The key thing about the upgrade system is that you can freely choose which upgrades you want to buy, but you will never have enough money to buy them all. Despite its simplicity, it gives you interesting choices to make that you can tailor to your playstyle and influence how you use your army. The system is easy to understand, but can actually lead to a different experience for every player and every playthrough.

The missions themselves are classic Starcraft gameplay. The first two are really throw-aways meant to ease new players into the game, but then it quickly moves into a base defense mission and then a fun and memorable mission where you must escort waves of civilians to a starport while zerg are falling from the sky and popping up from underground all along the route. You can defend certain entrance points, but you also need to have some roving teams to deal with zerg ambushes along the road.

Each mission also includes optional goals. Aside from the side quests the game overtly issues, there are also resource caches hidden throughout the maps as well as zerg and protoss objects that give you research points with each race. As you gather research points, you unlock yet another upgrade tree, Research. Each tier of the tree offers two mutually exclusive options. Again, the game gives you very simple choices, but they are impactful and engaging. They are also fully optional. Even more replay value comes from achievements linked to each mission that add extra challenges, such as completing the mission in a certain time limit on hard mode or destroying enemy bases on missions where that is not the objective.

--------------------------------------

Throughout the design of the single-player campaign, Blizzard managed to make everything simple and easy to understand while still offering interesting choices that make up the core of a satisfying game. The game is nothing but wheat, and there is no chaff to be found. Bravo. It's a testament to how complexity does not necessarily equal depth or fun. Interesting and meaningful choices give you those things, and there's absolutely no reason those choices need to be obscured just to achieve an appearance of complication. A simple and elegant way of offering interesting choices is actually a better way.

Sight unseen, you'd think that more freedom would obviously be a good thing. But in SC2's single-player mode, Blizzard cleverly pruned out the aspects of freedom that don't really add to the game, and instead focused on delivering content and interesting choices to you in the least wasteful way possible. Every moment is spent making interesting decisions or being entertained, and none of it is spent trying to figure out complicated systems or wandering down 3-D hallways trying to find which door leads to the armory.

It's a brave choice, and one I think some reviewers will lament. But I, for one, love tossing all the rinds and only getting the juice. The sweet, sweet interstellar cowboy juice.

....wait, ewwwwwwww

Death Knights in Cataclysm: what will change?

2010-07-26T16:24:00.005-04:00

Well, we've finally gotten the big talent tree revamp we've all been waiting for. It's obvious that the Death Knight trees are far from finished, but we are starting to see themes forming, and getting some idea of what will change. A lot remains to be implemented and seen, so it's hard to judge these too deeply.

Overall:

New rune cooldown system: this one was announced a while ago. Simply put, runes of each color refresh one at a time. You essentially get half as many runes during ongoing fighting, but if you are inactive for a bit you can start out with all 6. Each of the 3 colors is basically its own energy bar. The damage and runic power generation of the abilities and talents has been doubled across the board to compensate. In theory, you should have more free GCDs since waiting a second to use a rune won't lead to a large dps loss down the road as future recharges are delayed.
Runic Empowerment: Until recently this was a first-tire frost talent, but is now baseline for all DKs. When you use a runic power ability like Frost Strike or Death Coil, you have a 45% chance of refreshing a random rune. That's a lot of free runes. This adds an element of randomness to all rotations. I'm worried that it will undercut the new rune cooldown system because you'll feel pressured to always have at least one full rune of each color on cooldown in case this procs.
Each spec gets its version of death runes right off the bat, as well as a key ability (heart strike, frost strike, perma-ghoul).
Anti-magic shell no longer generates runic power off of damage by default. This does remove a measure of skill from the class (timing AMS to optimize free RP), but hopefully new abilities will make up for it.

Blood:

Now a pure tanking tree, and the only tanking option. Our own Prot tree!
Blood presence is now the tanking presence, having the same effect as the current frost presence
We just pile on the cooldowns: IBF, AMS, Vampiric Blood, Bone Shield, Rune Tap, and Will of the Necropolis all in one tree! Also, WoN now procs a free Rune Tap heal and refreshes the ability's cooldown, adding an active element to save yourself when low on health. We clearly have more cooldowns than other classes, and it will be very interesting to see how hard this is to balance.
Block equivalent: in Wrath, Death Knights have been at a disadvantage for smaller-scale fights because of a lack of a block-style mechanic (druids can proc a mini-shield on crits). There was mention of a block equivalent a while back, where we would have a chance to auto-heal for a percentage of the damage we take. That appears to have been scrapped, as it does not appear in the current talent trees. I still hope it makes a comeback.
Innate crit immunity: say goodbye to defense rating, the most annoying stat ever in the game! It was confusing and served as an unecessarily stark barrier-to-entry, and required too much outside research to even begin to understand. Good riddance. Now we get PvE crit immunity from Blood talents, just like other tank specs. Hurrah!
Attack Power Debuff: just like with Block, DKs were the only tanking class with no attack power debuff they could apply to enemies (Demoralizing Shout, etc.). That's finally changing, as talents in the new blood tree give Blood Boil the ability to apply that debuff, making it into a damaging Demo Shout. Another great call by Blizzard, it's a necessary tanking tool that we went without for too long.
Dancing Rune Weapon: now you can parry for two! In a great leap in the realm of MAKING SENSE, having a second weapon flying around in front of you gives you a sizeble bonus to your chance to parry. But wait . . . is that another tanking cooldown? OK, guys, this is getting a bit ridiculous. 6 cooldowns? That's a lot of runes and runic power being devoted to survivability (even though IBF can be talented to be free!). Hopefully that won't cripple our threat.
Sub-specs can only go 10 points into another tree at most. This leaves you with very few attractive talents currently within reach for tanking. You're basically picking between a reduced DnD cooldown and a fear immunity.

Frost:

With blood presence taking over tanking duties, frost presence now boosts damage and runic power generation (sorry, no more self-healing)
Pillar of HOLY SHIT (aka Pillar of Frost): I'll just link the tooltip for you:"Calls upon the power of Frost to increase the Death Knight's Strength by 20%. Icy crystals hang heavy upon the Death Knight's body, providing immunity against external movement such as knockbacks. Lasts 20 sec." Notice anything . . . missing? Like, say a cooldown?!? It used to be at 1 minute, maybe wowhead isn't displaying it. 33% uptime is still pretty good - but where will we get the spare frost rune?
You can now choose between a dual-wield talent and a 2-hander talent. This is quite a relief, as I'd love to have a 2-hander spec without a pet.
Frost DKs now get the 4% increased damage debuff for raids that was previously limited to combat rogues and arms warriors.
On a Pale Horse was moved to early Frost. I find myself constantly wishing I could fit this mount-speed talent into my builds on live. I hope Blizzard follows through on the promise to leave you points for optional talents so I can pick this up.
The top tiers of unholy have little worth subspeccing into, so you'll end up putting the majority of your extra points in blood in the current build.

Unholy:

The biggest change to unholy is the loss of Bone Shield. Most players underestimate this talent's current impact in raids. Taking 20% less damage at all times is huge. It prevents some insta-gibs (hello Mauradin cleaving me as I run past him on heroic gunship), reduces healer panic from big aoes, and makes you all-around the most survivable dps in any raid. Get lucky enough to be the first Mark on heroic Saurfang and laugh all the way to your purples. This would be even more important in the new Cataclsym healing environment, so it was placed 11 points into the blood tree to prevent non-tanks from getting it.
The damage buff Hysteria was removed from Blood and replaced with a similar cooldown called Unholy Frenzy in the blood tree. Sudden Doom also got moved from blood to give unholy free death coil procs.
Ghoul Frenzy keeps getting buffed in the beta builds. It's more afforable with the new talent philosophy, but it remains to be seen if 1 unholy rune will ever be worth it, especially now that:
Scourge Strike costs 1 unholy rune, instead of 1 frost + 1 unholy. Obliterate and Death Strike, the other FU abilities, remain unchanged. Blizzard will presumably be introducing some use for the extra frost runes, as they can't possibly expect us to just cast extra Icy Touches, especially given the ludicrously long disease durations we get from epidemic.
The likely solution to the frost rune problem is the new Festering Strike, which further extends disease durations and is the first 1 Blood + 1 Frost ability. I don't see the other trees getting use out of this when they could cast Obliterate or Heart Strike.

Problems:
These builds are clearly still early and in flux. Some of the priority things for Blizz to work on:

Top-tier talents are lackluster in Frost and Unholy, especially for sub-speccing. At least Improved Icy Touch, Icy Reach, and Vicious Strikes should be both reworked and shuffled.
Ghoul Frenzy should either have its rune cost removed, or be reworked to be a desirable cooldown. Maybe reduce it's duration to 30 seconds, double it's damage effect, and give it a 2 minute cooldown.
Frost needs its "required" dps talents to be reduced in number. Dual-wielders can only afford 1 optional utility point, while 2-hander-wielders can technically afford 4, but are forced to put two of those into Icy Reach and the other 2 into tier 2. The whole tree really needs rearrange-in'.
Can you tone down the cooldowns in Blood just a little bit? And are you sure threat won't be an issue with all those resources going to staying alive?
Festering Strike will have to be implemented very carefully. Not only will it have to do more damage than an Icy Touch + Scourge Strike (remember, unholy gets Reaping automatically, so blood runes become death runes after being used for blood strikes), but it will also need a way to deal with the fact that you aren't going to be using the blood rune for a blood strike, and thus won't be getting a death rune later. In the same patch, Festering Strike was added to Reaping, meaning that the Unholy rotation currently looks like SS > SS > FS > FS > SSx6 or something (I'm not really accounting for the new rune recharge mechanics there because I haven't tried them).

Any further evaluation will have to wait until I can actually get into beta and find out the real consequences of the new talents, the new rune cooldown system, and haste's effect on rune refresh speeds.

Starcraft 2 releasing

2010-07-26T12:25:00.000-04:00

Yeah, I haven't been around in a while. Got real life stuff, blah blah blah. I'm not gone, and I'll be back, just need a blogging break.

Despite that, it's hard to contain my excitement today. Starcraft 2 is finally releasing, after more than a decade of waiting. It was far and away my favorite PC game until WoW came out, and my favorite non-Nintendo video game until the HD era as well. It introduced me to the RTS genre, which is a perfect fit for my tastes but I had never seen before. I love Sci-fi and I found the campaign mode revelatory because of how it merged storytelling with the gameplay. SC so perfectly crystallized what makes a game great for me - and specifically to my personality - that it will always hold a place in my personal pantheon of great video games. I bonded with lifelong friends over it, even.

So I'm quite relieved that Real ID isn't overstepping and I can play, with a clear conscience, this game I've been waiting for. My amazon preorder has already shipped, and I'm spending today drooling in jealousy at the countries that, due to the vagaries of time zones, exist in the future and can already play.

My life for Aiur!

Facepalm

2010-07-13T09:59:00.000-04:00

OK, at this point, you just have to laugh.

Blizzard Does Listen To You

2010-07-09T13:16:00.000-04:00

Honestly, I'm pleasantly surprised: Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime just announced that Real ID will no longer be required to post on the SC2 and WoW forums. They are responding to (an unprecedented level of) player feedback and concerns and rescinding Tuesday's announcement. We can all breathe a sigh of relief: we get to continue using the forums without having to risk the dangers of exposing our real names.

I am both overjoyed and relieved. It took them longer than I'd like to figure it out and make a statement, but you have to give them credit for doing the right thing, listening to the players, and even having the Big Man himself sign the statement.

I'm still worried about privacy, and the direction of Real ID. I'm still worried that my game about killing internet dragons will be transmorphed into an intrusive social network. Hell, the fact remains that even if they went back on it, Blizzard still claimed Real ID was "only for people you know and trust" while planning to give out your real name to anyone with an internet connection if you used the forums.

But Blizzard deserves credit and some positive press. And I've re-preordered SC2 and will not be allowing my WoW account to lapse.

I am so glad that I no longer have to choose between my principles and my games. At least for now.

Thank you, Blizzard.

Who is Activision/Blizzard's Customer Base

2010-07-08T14:18:00.000-04:00

Traditionally, the customer for a video game company (publisher or developer) has always been the gamer. Or, to avoid categorization, anyone who purchases a game to play it. As a moneymaking venture, gaming companies focused on eliciting as many purchases as possible. This motivated the developers to provide games and features that the most gaming customers would be interested in paying for.

Ask the average person on the street, and it's likely they think of television the same way: that the customer of the television industry is the viewer. You would think, then, that this would motivate television companies to make decisions in the interest of the viewer, because their primary goal would be to make the viewer happy.

And yet, Firefly gets canceled, great shows get underpromoted into obscurity, and we're inundated with reality shows that everyone claims to hate yet everyone seems to watch. [I believe they watch mostly because they want to watch TV and that's what happens to be on, and because it's something they can talk to coworkers and strangers about as a shared point of experience, much like sports; but the reasoning doesn't really matter to the point I'm trying to make here]

So why doesn't television cater to the audience in the way you'd predict if the viewers were the network's customers?

Because the television network's customer is not the viewer. The network's customer is the advertiser.

NBC is not in the business of providing television programming to viewers. It is in the business of providing eyes to advertisers. Every decision is not made based on providing quality programming in a way viewers want to see it. Decisions are instead made based on the most cost-effective ways to get advertisers to pay top-dollar for ad space. That just so happens to lead to television striving to attract viewers, which often leads to the network acting in the viewers' interest; but such actions are coincidental. They are simply a side effect of serving advertisers.

There's no need to demonize the networks over this, but it's important to be aware of it so we have realistic expectations. Television networks do not consider you to be a customer, so don't be surprised when they routinely act in ways that seem unfathomable to you as a viewer. If they lose 10% of viewers over intrusive product placements or longer commercial breaks, they'll do it if it increases the other ad revenue by 11%. They'd never do it if viewers were the customers.

So what does this have to do with video games, and Activision/Blizzard's expansion of Real ID? I'm glad you asked.

Actiblizz's recent actions seem unfathomable. They are going against the wishes of the vast majority of their players. They are startlingly unresponsive to criticism from the customerbase on the Battle.net and Real ID issues. They are taking actions that are clearly contrary to the best interests of their players, and are going out of their way to avoid explaining them (except through the ocassional half-truth like "cleaning the forums"). People are canceling WoW accounts and SC2 preorders left and right over something that seems so easily avoidable or fixable. Don't they care about losing so many customers?

You have probably guessed where I'm going with this by now: we, the players, are no longer the World of Warcraft's customerbase. Advertisers are.

It's pretty clear from this interview and other statements about Real ID about how they "have been planning this change for a very long time" that Real ID is the lynchpin in an effort to leverage an untapped asset that Actiblizz has more of than any other company out there except Facebook: our personal information.

Facebook makes its revenue from advertisers by using our personal information to help them target us more accurately, and by using our social connections to lubricate the spread of marketing messages. Activision has done the math, looked at their potential to help advertisers target 12 million people, and decided that, come hell or high water, the potential loss in subscription revenue will be dwarfed by the potential gain in ad revenue along with the other benefits to emulating the Facebook business model with a near-captive mob of players to be tapped.

Blizzard once had a reputation for making games for the players. They were known for scrapping sub-par products rather than releasing them for a quick buck. They were known for being more player-friendly than any gaming company outside of Valve. But to Actiblizz, we are no longer the customer. We are an asset to be monetized . . . stock in a warehouse . . . entries in a quarterly earnings spreadsheet. We are now Actiblizzard's product, to be sold to advertisers for more than our subscription is worth. This is, ironically, our reward for making the game so popular.

Actiblizzard has signed a contract with Facebook. They are committed to this course of action, no matter what we say. And no matter how many of us quit, it's most likely going to be a profitable move for them.

From this point forward, Blizzard's reputation is done. We can stop expecting them to treat us like customers. Advertisers are their primary customers now.

I wonder if Actiblizzard treats them as well as the old, dead Blizzard used to treat us?

Real names on the WoW forums.

2010-07-06T13:18:00.002-04:00

I cannot comment on this right now because I feel too betrayed and angry to be rational. Just thought you might like to know that anyone who wants to keep their real name private can't use any Blizzard forum anymore, including WoW and SC2 forums.

http://bit.ly/9ZfjeD

Fuck you, Blizzard.

UPDATE: some comments added. This is what I posted in the thread under one of my alts (gotta savor the anonymity while I have it):

This is a terrible idea, Blizzard. I know that you're going to go through with it no matter what we say, but hey, I gotta try. I love this game and I had a lot of respect and loyalty to your company, and that is all gone now with the advent of Real ID and it's expansion to other parts of the WoW experience. How long until giving out my personal information is no longer optional for simply playing the game?

You say that you're trying to improve the level of discourse on the forums. Do you realize that what you are doing is driving out every intelligent adult?

Any grown-up with a career outside the games industry? No longer posting on the forums, because it will hurt their career for their boss and peers to know they play WoW. Gaming is not understood by the masses, especially the career-minded.

Anyone mature enough to have a healthy sense of how to protect themselves online? No longer posting on your forums.

Any female who has ever been stalked (ie almost every female)? No longer posting on the forums.

Any female who has ever been ignored or disrespected simply for being female, but found herself finally treated as an equal in WoW because her gender was hidden? No longer posting on the forums.

What's left? Teenage boys who don't have enough career aspirations to want to keep their gaming a secret. The dumbest, most immature, most dead-end teenage boys.

That's the forum culture you are building. Good job thinking that one through.

UPDATE 2: You can post a complaint to the ESRB here:

https://www.esrb.org/about/contact.jsp

I'm all for parents supervising the gaming activities of their children. It is in no way the game company's responsibility to protect children. BUT the ESRB has taken that goal upon themselves to help inform parents. And a "TEEN" rating is not high enough when the game is giving out your personal information on the net. No minor, including 17 year olds, should be allowed to purchase this game without the presence of a responsible adult who is well-informed about the parental controls available to them. No minor should be able to choose to give out their personal information this way.

Here is the content of my complaint to the ESRB (limited to 500 characters, excuse the grammar):

Filing a formal complaint about Blizzard's announcement today that their forums will display your real first and last name.

It poses a security and privacy risk, especially for minors. Please raise the rating for all Blizzard games to at least what you would give Grand Theft Auto (preferably Adults Only).

Giving out personal information is more dangerous today than letting a child see the content in GTA.

The move also shows a startling disregard for privacy that you should keep an eye on.

Cataclysm Talent Tree "Bloat"

2010-07-02T12:35:00.002-04:00

Blizzard's stated goal in revamping the talent trees for Cataclysm and adding the Mastery aspect has been to remove a lot of the "required" talents from the trees and leave players with some options for utility talents. They know they can't eliminate "cookie cutter" specs, but what they want is for those specs to include the sentence "spend the last 5-10 points anywhere you want".

So far, they are failing.

The Cataclysm NDA lifted with the beginning of closed beta this week, and we've all gotten open access to the talent trees in the current beta build. They are all obviously under heavy progress and subject to great change, but we can see that they've already done substantial work on some trees, and so far I'm disappointed, especially with the Death Knight talent trees.

You can play with the talent calculator here: http://www.wowtal.com/#

You may want to open it up just to follow along, since I'll be naming talents but don't know of a way to link tooltips for them that are up-to-date with the latest Cata beta build.

Try building a frost death knight dps spec, taking only talents that give a direct DPS boost. Not only can you do that quite easily, but you can't even afford the one point in Hungering Cold without a dps hit! The other two trees present similar conundrums, as do the current warrior trees and many others.

When people complain about "bloat" on the forums, the devs have been known to respond with "Just because you can't get everything you want doesn't mean the tree is bloated." That statement is true on its face, but unfortunately isn't true in practice right now. Most trees are actually bloated because there are so many dps talents (or healing, or mitigation) that you can't take a single utility talent. None of these trees leave the player with a choice between utility talents. Elitist Jerks will not be advising these classes to "put those last 5-10 points anywhere you want". Instead, the cookie-cutter specs will be as rigid as ever.

This is fairly easy to rectify by removing some dps/healing/mitigation talents and adding more utility talents.

In the case of the death knight frost tree, it's a bit more complicated. All of the pure dps talents there also effect the playstyle of the tree, causing them to favor Obliterate or make sure Frost Fever is applied.

Start by cutting down a few of the talents that cost a lot of points. Black Ice, Icy Talons, and Killing Machine are good candidates to become 3-pointers: just pick 2 of them. Then, consolidate a few talents. Drop the 4% strength from Brittle Bones and merge it with Glacier Rot as a 2-point talent. I just freed up 7 points, which is smack dab in between 5 and 10. I may have made a few of the individual talent points you'd spend overpowered, but I simultaneously made a few other talent points you'd need to spend in utility talents to get down the tree give you zero dps, plus I took 4% strength out of the tree.

Despite the bloat in many trees, one great victory has been the rogue trees. A class traditionally ruled by spreadsheets more than any other, rogues will now actually be able to take utility talents without gimping their DPS. Just try to build a combat rogue spec with pure dps talents. It can't be done. Instead, I get to reduce the cooldown on evasion and make sprint break snares. Awesome!

Hopefully Blizzard will use that tree as an example as they continue to work on the other trees.

APB Review

2010-06-28T15:26:00.001-04:00

If you are an MMO gamer, don't be fooled by the persistence of the world in Realtime World's new online GTA-clone All Points Bulletin (APB). It's not for you. I'd argue that it's not even an MMO. It's a shooter with driving and great customization options that just so happens to take place in a single persistent world instead of the usual structure of separate servers for each match.

The core gameplay consists of receiving a mission that gives you an objective and some opponents and sets you loose in the city. Each mission is more like a miniature Warsong Gulch match than a warcraft-style "quest" - though sometimes you will be Fed Ex-ing an item from one place to another - sometimes in an actual delivery truck, even. Nonetheless, such quest-like mechanics end up bearing more resemblance to capture-the-flag than deliver-the-parcel.

If you can accept the analogy: APB is like Halo or Call of Duty if you got to hang out in the map between matches instead of going to a "find a match" menu. Except it plays exactly like Grand Theft Auto, with very basic first-person shooting and challenging and sometimes wonky driving.

Any reports you've heard that the shooting or driving is "bad" are greatly exaggerated. They certainly are simplistic, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. The shooting is serviceable, and the driving is actually quite good if you spend enough time with it to realize that not every car handles like crap, and you have access to nice cars from the beginning if you simply steal/commandeer them when you see one nearby. The game actually gives you a nice little voiced video tutorial explaining how to use the handbrake, which is the key to driving in APB. Once you master the handbrake, driving gets a lot more fun. I think I can safely liken most harsh criticism of the driving to hating on Mario Kart before you learn to power slide. Just because you sucked at it doesn't make it bad.

That said, the shooting and driving aren't extraordinary or groundbreaking either, and they make up the entirety of the gameplay.

So don't play APB if you are looking for an MMO, and don't play APB if you are looking for a top-tier shooting experience. Do play APB if you like GTA and arcadey third-person shooting and driving, and the ocassional bit of utter chaos. Especially do play APB if you like customization and have an artistic side.

One of the best selling points in the game is the nearly unlimited avatar customization. It starts with the body, offering advanced sliders for everything from weight to eye tilt to ear size to body hair. Then, you can get new pieces of clothing and accessories and customize them heavily for color and texture, and even add symbols and art to them. You can use an in-game photoshop-like system to create your own symbols and art and use them as tatoos, as part of clothes, or even as car decals. You can compose your own music, repaint your car, and make your own art. Then you can sell it to other people who are less artistically-inclined.

At least, that's the idea. We'll have to wait and see how the customization market develops as the game matures. In beta, everyone is low level, picking from the same small set of options and itching to get into gunfights. There is no telling where it will go, but the tools are there. They are far from perfect and in some ways hard to use (especially when trying to place a piece of art at a certain angle), but they are there.

What appeals to me personally about the game is the opportunity to express myself artistically through my avatar, and play some fast-paced arcade-y driving and shooting. Unfortunately, the game already feels a bit repetitive only a few hours in; I find myself doing the same type of mission over and over. That's not necessarily a bad thing, as the missions are fun. It's just like how I might queue up for Arathi Basin 4 times in a row or play TF2 on the same 3 maps for hours. But APB, while deriving a lot of its fun from its simplicity, just isn't deep enough to compete with those games for long-term interest. It hurts APB greatly that there are no character classes, so everyone plays the same and even starts with the same gun. I have enjoyed playing APB at stretches of a few hours at a time, but I always eventually get bored and decide to log out. This is in stark contrast to games like Mass Effect 2, WoW, or League of Legends, where I sometimes I have to tear myself away from the desire to play many hours into a session and way after my bedtime.

Boiled down, APB is an arcade shooter that has been tweaked enough to be marketed as the GTA MMO. I've enjoyed my few hours with it, but I find it hard to recommend a full-price purchase to anyone but the most interested in that type of game and the groundbreaking level of customization and artistic expression available within.

It's also a shame for Realtime Worlds that better games are on ridiculously-cheap sale on Steam the same week that their game releases at full price.

Interview Reveals that RealID is a Scam

2010-06-28T14:30:00.001-04:00

Can't believe it took me nearly 2 months for me to come across this interview. In USA Today!

http://content.usatoday.com/communities/gamehunters/post/2010/05/blizzard-and-facebooks-friendly-social-networking-deal-launches-with-starcraft-ii-/1

Holy crap. Blizzard's plans for Real ID are beyond what I even imagined.

So back at Blizzcon, Blizz announced that they were going to be using Battle.net to add cross game/faction/server communication. This sounded great. It would let me ask a friend logged into WoW if they wanted to come play some Starcraft . . . in the form of a whisper to their character! Yay!

Oh wait. Now it turns out that they weren't adding cross game/server chat as a benefit to the players. It's simply bait to create their own social network to get a piece of the Facebook revenue pie.

Hundreds of pages have been posted on the WoW official forums asking for the ability to use Real ID's desirable functionality with aliases (like Xbox gamertag or Steam username) and without giving out email addresses. These threads have been ignored in a way unprecedented by Blizzard's response to any previous issue. Never have they been this silent. Never.

This USA Today interview reveals why.

Highlights:

"Go back to the previous Battle.net, Xbox Live, PlayStation Network and Steam and other different networks in the context of gaming services. they are all kind of anonymous. That whole veil of anonymity has been an important part of the design. There are those who feel like I want to go escape and create this parallel identity to myself on a gaming network and I don't want anyone to know who I am in real life. What we have seen in recent years is that veil of anonymity has been cast aside largely. Culturally, I think we have become more and more accepting of social networking in the context of your real identity and Facebook, of course as the leader in the space, has led this charge. We're now at something five years ago I don't think any of us would maybe necessarily be comfortable with. We all now have our own Facebook pages and we have got a lot of our information on there. We've got our real names and pictures of ourselves on there and so forth."

I love that veil of anonymity. I don't understand where they get this idea that we are all now accepting of casting aside our anonymity on the internet. Did they get that idea from all the recent Facebook privacy lawsuits and uproar? Or all the reports about people losing their jobs because their employer checked Facebook? Do I want my boss to know I play WoW at all? NO. It would, in fact, greatly hurt my career. Which means I can NEVER use Real ID, because I can't have my real name associated with WoW in any way.

And you know what one of the cool things about having "a lot of information on [Facebook]"? It's that (until recently) we could make that information as private as we wanted. They seemed to have missed that aspect of it.

Here's the most hilarious quote:

Do you expect any push back from diehard Blizzard fans from the Facebook features? We don't anticipate any.

And here's the most terrifying quote:

Here at Blizzard we have seen the social networks as an inspiration to us to really think about what the next stage of the online gaming space will look like. What if we gave people the option to display themselves by their real name and create a social network of real-life friends connecting that Blizzard community based on their real names? So what we are doing is we are introducing this feature called Real ID, an optional layer of identity on top of the standard character level of identity you would have on any game service.

It turns out the entire point is to NOT have a gamertag-like alias. The entire point of the service is to use this real name "layer of identity" different from what's used on other gaming services. Y'know, services that have been wildly successful and acclaimed as opposed to your widely panned system - but hey, those other guys aren't making Facebook money, now are they?

I think it's quite telling that Blizzard won't just come out and say this in response to the forum posts asking for aliases. Talk about selling your playerbase out.

"Step one in our relationship is to have this Friends Importation,"

This is just step one in their relationship with Facebook. Oy. I wonder how deep down the Facebook rabbithole this goes? How closely have they been working with them?

"We are actually fully integrating with the Facebook team."

FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU

OK, that kind of shit just plain does not happen between two companies of this size unless a deal is in place. Consider a contract with Facebook, of some type, confirmed.

And I don't even own tin foil, let alone a hat made of it. Sorry, haters.

Scott Jennings is absolutely right about RealID

2010-06-25T16:06:00.000-04:00

Read about it here. And do not use RealID. This thing needs to look like a gigantic waste of money on the next ActiBlizzard balance sheet.

New Post at VTW: Mass Effect 2 vs. Final Fantasy 13 Deathmatch!

2010-06-18T15:57:00.004-04:00

One ring. One cage. Final Fantasy 13. Mass Effect 2. A metal chair.

FIGHT!!!

How To Keep Raid Tiers From Being Skipped

2010-06-18T09:27:00.000-04:00

If you are a new raider who hit level 80 some point after ToC came out, it's possible you have never seen Naxxramas (beyond weeklies, at least). Ulduar is the best raid instance WoW has ever had, but despite the Accessibility Doctrine, very few people have seen Yogg-Saron. This isn't because those instances are too hard, or because those people don't want to see lore. It's simply because the rewards in those two instances are completely obsolete. Heroic 5-mans give tokens that will buy you gear that blows the drops from those raids out of the water, and some 5-mans even drop gear on par with ToC 10 itself. There's no efficient way to advance your character in the old instances, so very few people do them.

Blizzard could fix this right now while giving players an entry-level raid experience to learn from before going into "real" raids.

Have bosses in "obsolete" raids drop a ton of emblems.

Make it so raiding Naxx is a more efficient way to get emblems (currently, Triumph Emblems) than heroics. The earlier bosses should drop fewer emblems than the later bosses, so going deep into the instance would feel rewarding. Maybe have the final boss also drop a Frost Emblem on top of the Triumphs. This will be even easier to balance in Cata with the move from emblems to points.

And it fits in very neatly with Blizzard's current design philosophy because you can only do it once a week. Instead of having to log in every day to do a heroic, I can get similar emblems from spending two hours at a stretch on one night doing Naxx.

Combine that with the upcoming weekly cap on emblems that forces you to choose how you want to earn them, and it's even better.

For this system, an "obsolete" instance is one that drops gear a tier behind the current lowest level emblem. So using Wrath as an example, Naxx would have gone in the Dungeon Finder with inflated emblem rewards in the same patch that released ToC.

The best way to do this would be to put the older instances into the Dungeon Finder. There are obviously major challenges with putting together, say, an ICC 25 group in the DF. But with content as easy as Naxxramas, it's easily justifiable, especially with the new raid lockout system that let's you have more flexibility. Just have it use the same minimum gear requirements as ToC 5 or the ICC 5 instances so you don't end up with an entire group in just greens expecting to be carried. At the same time, I anticipate most of the people queueing for these will be on the low end of the gear scale, perhaps even being able to use a few "obsolete" drops from the raid in a few slots.

Seeing how Blizzard plans to automatically scale point acquisition as new raids are released (meaning that, for instance, when Tier 13 comes out, Tier 12 raids will go from "frost emblems" to "triumph emblems"), it worries me that we'll see the same abandonment of the early tiers that we saw late in Wrath. And that would be a shame. Giving players a reason to visit obsolete raid instances as an efficient way to advance their character would have a myriad of benefits, from breaking up the monotony of running the same raids over and over, to giving new raiders and new alts an appropriate training ground for raiding, to simply preventing good instances from becoming ghost towns.

I hope they think of it too.

The plot thickens....

2010-06-17T09:03:00.000-04:00

Paladins Officially Overpowered, Blizzard to Kill 25s.

2010-06-15T11:02:00.002-04:00

A highlight from Ghostcrawler's interview at Eurogamer:

Eurogamer: Is there a particular class that you thought needed an overhaul more than the others?

Greg Street (Ghostcrawler): I think the Paladin is one I'd say probably needs some of the most work, it got a lot of work in Lich King but it's still not quite there. Each individual role, the damage, healing and tanking all have problems, in some cases they're over-powered but a little simplistic in other cases, so we definitely want to address that. Without changing - you know, it's a very popular class, I think it's our most popular class at the moment, so we don't want to make it unrecognisable either.

Told ya!

And it turns out they actually are killing 25s:*

The amount of gear in the 25 person raids will be roughly equivalent on per-person basis to the 10 person raids. One thing to keep in mind it that we don't plan to allow players to upshift from 10s to 25s, only downshift from 25s to 10s on a given week.

The statements beforehand said that 25person would have more gear per person than 10s, so I wonder if "roughly equivalent" indicates a change in plans, or just not wanting to commit yet to either "exactly the same" or "more".

The number 6 per boss was being mentioned I believe, so slightly more I guess, but anything can change in testing so I wouldn't say that it is set in stone. But we all know you guys won't call us out if anything changes during a beta, right?

So basically there will be no real incentive (gear-wise at least) to run 25 man raids.

There are rewards like badges/gold for the additional coordination involved, but we are trying to avoid having gear be the reason that one style is better than the other.

What a shame. Still, the proposed system is better than the current raiding system, IMO.

*Saying they are killing 25s is hyperbole. More emblems really will be a strong draw, especially if the difference is very large. I expect many people will still do 25s, and with the raid ID improvements I expect my guild will farm early bosses on tuesdays with our 25-man alliance then do progression in our 10-man group using the same instance ID later in the week, for instance. But giving more loot per person was the key to keeping a balance, and now that that's gone, 25s are going to be hurt much more badly than I had anticipated.

The overall system is still an improvement in my eyes.

APB "beta" Preview

2010-06-14T09:04:00.000-04:00

I preordered All Points Bulletin, the new Grand Theft MMO from Realtime Worlds. The preorder comes with 2 chances to play the game ahead of release: the "key to the city beta" (read: a taste of the finished game so you can hype it to your friends) and an early start a few days before its release on June 29th North America and July 1 in Europe. I played the PC version that I ordered through Steam.

First of all, there were still some technical issues with the download and launch of the game. I'd recommend a boxed copy, which is the opposite of my usual stance. You download the APB Launcher through Steam, but starting the game through Steam fails to open the launcher, requiring that you hunt down the file in a different folder directory. Once the launcher starts, you are in for a (at best) 8 hour download of a 7 gig game. The APB and Steam forums were both overrun with threads complaining about the download speed. Then, once I let it download overnight and finished the installation, I still couldn't run the game from Steam, and had to hunt down the new launcher in yet another different directory.

I forgot most of that once I started the game.

More after the jump.

It is pretty, and reeks of high production values. After bad experiences with similar games on my decent PC, I was pleasantly surprised at how well the game ran even at passable graphics settings, at least in the tutorial, which was the only part I had time to complete. Loading screens were a little long, but even those were full of animation and colorful art. The game kind of looks like an 80s fashion designer spilled paint on a 2000s comic book artist's work.

I had been led to believe by previews that the game had a lot of customization for the look of your character, and the concept art of awesome-looking avatars was one of the selling points of the game for me. Unfortunately, you start in a standard outfit, depending on whether you decide to join the Enforcer or Criminal faction (and the criminals start in an UGLY neon-green baseball cap. Ugh). I presume further customization is all unlockable. The backstory, explained in quality voice-acted cutscenes, is that crime got so bad in the fictional city of San Paro that the government essentially deputized the citizens. So now anyone who isn't a criminal is either a cop or a hapless pedestrian waiting for me to "accidentally" run them over.

The character-creation can be done simply, with a few options for muscularity and a series of randomized face/hair/scar combos to flip through. You can also enter advanced mode, which is not kidding about being advanced, including such options as "eye tilt" and separate sliders for "frown" and "smile".

You load into a tutorial zone and immediately get offered a mission over your cell phone. The UI is quite streamlined, and you never have to physically go to the quest giver to get missions. A message simply pops up at the top of the screen telling you a quest is on offer, and you hit Y or N to accept or reject it. Then a waypoint will appear in the environment with a number over it representing its distance from your current location. Just run/drive toward that waypoint, hit F, and you're done (unless another waypoint pops up - some quests include a few objectives in sequence). The missions had variations in set dressings - erasing graffiti, defusing a bomb, breaking down a door to a criminal stronghold and collecting bomb materials - but all amounted to identical gameplay: drive to the waypoint, hit F, wait a few seconds, done. Mind you, this was just the tutorial.

The game plays just like Grand Theft Auto. It's a 3rd-person shooter, and there are no action bars or skills, just weapons and shooting. Driving is very similar too. It's intuitive, but it can be tough to avoid pedestrians until you get the hang of it (hint: learn to use the handbrake). In a nice touch, some of them yell at you in Spanish. There's even a brief tutorial cinematic of how to play the game, and when it shows you "commandeering" a car, you can actually hear the owner yell "What the fuck?" as you toss them bodily from the vehicle.

The sound design is one of the standout features I've been exposed to so far, with great voicing of pedestrians and interesting music playing from the radios of cars. There are some nice details, like being able to hear your own muffled car radio as you approach your car (helped me figure out which one was mine as new players spawned Enforcer vehicles and left them all over the map).

I didn't get time to delve into the game proper, so a lot of the systems remain a mystery to me. The tutorial tried to explain how I can amass levels and cash to advance my character, and I could gain reputation with questgivers to unlock more options in their built-in shops to buy weapons and such. One interesting mechanic I did get to try was "pledging" to a particular questgiver. If you pledge, limit yourself to only taking quests from that NPC until you break the pledge, but in exchange you gain rep with that NPC more quickly.

So far, APB has left a good impression with me. If it keeps it up, I'll be glad I bought it. The pay-per-hour pricing model is interesting, to say the least, but it seems like a decent deal. You get infinite time in the "social" district, which I get the impression includes no questing, but shops and customization tools as well as chat. You also get 50 hours of gameplay proper just for purchasing the game, which for me is much more time than I spend on most full-priced games or even the other MMOs I've purchased (sorry Aion and Champions!) As long as that gameplay turns out to be good, I'll consider it a bargain.

I got to play the game back at PAX East, and I enjoyed the more advanced district PvP gameplay I was exposed to. Each sector of the city would essentially become a locked-in arena for a certain number of players, matched based on advancement and skill (for instance, for every high-level criminal, there might be 3 low-level enforcers in the zone). When more players are needed for a zone, an "APB" goes out to certain active players whom the game thinks would make a good match-up for the battle. Objectives would pop up on the map for every player, and you'd all be in competition to reach it first. In the example I played, criminals were racing to "tag" a certain wall with graffiti, while enforcers were trying to get there in time to stop them. This led to what seemed to be pretty standard gunfighting, though I didn't get enough time with the game to really form impressions.

We'll see what I think once I make my way into the game proper. Hopefully I'll be able to get a cool outfit soon!

Blizzard's Cataclysm Press Tour

2010-06-13T18:02:00.001-04:00

Summary: They realized there was no way they'd finish everything in time for a Xmas release, so they cut out most of the new features.

http://www.mmo-champion.com/content/1790-World-of-Warcraft-Cataclysm-Press-Tour

Personally, I'm glad to see Path of the Titans go (just another grind per alt imo) as well as guild talents (no way they'd be balanced, everyone would just take the same ones anyway).

Very nice to see that 25-man raids can be split up if you don't have enough people the second day, and that raid IDs will be more flexible and interchangeable. Great changes.

I cannot wait to raid the elemental planes.

The Lost Finale

2010-05-24T14:12:00.004-04:00

If you haven't watched the Lost series finale that aired yesterday, stop reading now.

After the jump is spoilerland.

On it's own, as 2.5 hours of thrilling and emotional television, the finale was excellent.

As a caring sendoff for the characters and their stories, it was great.

As an explanation for 6 years of craziness and mystery, the finale left a lot to be desired.

Here's what I was able to piece together about the plot:

On the island, Jack and Flocke bring Desmond to McGuffin's Cave of Pretty Lights. Desmond's unique resistance to electromagnetism appears to be the sole reason he's so important, as he's the only one who can uncork the core of the island and turn off the light without being fried/turned into a smoke monster. No explanation is given about what the light is, but it definitely provided the source for the "island magic" that gave the Smoke Monster his powers. He can now be killed. This leads to an incredibly epic and satisfying fight (can I please have that shot of Jack's furious leaping punch as my computer desktop?), the death of Smokey, and the mortal wounding of Jack. Jack goes on to pass immortal island stewardship to Hurley, recork the island, and - his purpose completed and humanity saved - die in the exact spot where he first woke up on the island, giving the show the perfect final shot: his eye closing. Meanwhile, everyone else who is still alive, most notably Kate, Claire, and Sawyer, escape the island on the Ajira plane.

While we're watching this, we're also getting flashes of the Sideways world, which many had guessed was an alternate timeline created by the hydrogen bomb detonation at the end of Season 5. This was a brilliant, brilliant misdirection and an even more brilliant narrative device. It allowed the writers to give each character the type of loving send-off they deserved without disrupting the meaning of any of their deaths on the island. In uniformly beautiful and heart-tugging scenes, the characters remember their lives on the island and gather for a funeral. Ostensibly, the funeral is for Jack's father Christian. In reality, the funeral is for themselves: they're already dead! Dun dun DUNNNNNN!

It turns out that the entire flash-sideways universe was a part of the afterlife, a place their souls had created to allow them to come together, work out a few final hang-ups, and let go of their mortal lives.

I don't think it was a cop-out in any way, and in fact was the opposite of a cop-out. By confirming beyond a doubt that the island and its events were real, and that each of the deaths was an actual death that meant something, the writers really own up to the story. (and if you think that the island itself was purgatory and they all died in the original plane crash, I'm sorry, but you're obviously wrong, for about a million reasons)

Imagine how big a cop-out it would have been if SidewaysLand was actually a parallel timeline, and all of the characters were somehow able to escape the island timeline and go there so they could live happily ever after (an outcome which Desmond seemed to be banking on right up until he popped the cork)?

The character-driven part of the finale was a rousing success. All of the characters got beautiful, heart-rending moments that made many of us stop caring about whether we got all the answers. Sawyer and Juliette "going dutch", Locke forgiving Ben, and even Jin's beaming smile upon seeing his friend Sawyer again for the first time (yes, I rate that as one of the top 3 emotional moment of the episode, even above Jin/Sun) were so emotionally satisfying that I think the characters got one of the best send-offs in TV history.

But that leaves us with where the finale fails - and fails hard. The real cop-out was in how the writers chose to explain - or not to explain - the island's mysteries.

The series had always hinted at the underlying systems and their explanations. There was always promise that the clues we were being fed led to something.

It turned out that the sci-fi and fantasy aspects of the show were nothing but a backdrop and device to get the characters to do cool and interesting things. That worked out great, but giving so little care the mythology was a disservice to all of the fans who had latched on to that mythology and devoted a lot of time and interest to trying to figure out the island.

The explanations the writers did give were enough for the narrative to work. A lot of crucial questions were answered (sort of), but many of those were simply steps back to new questions that no one could reasonably answer. The writers basically said: "you want to know why Alpert doesn't age? Well it's because Jacob has magic. How does he get this magic? Well, we aren't going to explain exactly how it works, but we'll tell you it comes from this magical cave full of light. What's in the cave? A stone radiating light while plugging a hole full of lava. What is the light, the stone and the lava? Well none of the characters can reasonably be expected to know that, so that's all you get!" We find out that the island is important for some supernatural reason, and that the Losties have to protect it, but we never find out exactly what it is that they are protecting (though we get enough hints to make our own conclusions). These big questions are answered well enough to be passable for the story, but not satisfying to those who were puzzling over the mythology.

What really pissed me off were the "clues" that the creators of Lost dropped (carelessly) in the previous seasons, before they themselves had bothered to figure out the answers that fans were spending hours trying to suss out. Things that seemingly got thrown out as unimportant because they didn't fit the vision the creators had of what would finally happen. Why was Walt special? Who was doing the food drops? Where did the four-toed statue come from? It feels disrespectful to the audience to give them what appear to be crucial clues, but are really just crap they threw out there to be "mysterious" and toss by the wayside once they no longer fit where the writers wanted to take the story.

It felt like a bait and switch. They put a puzzle in front of us that had no answer because they wanted us to feel puzzled. Fine as a narrative device, but a disservice to the fans nonetheless.

Many fans spent hours coming up with complex sets of rules that explained what was happening on the island. Though the show alluded to rules (when Ben's daughter dies, when discussing Jacob and his brother), it never delivered them in the end. There was never any grand plan, and everything really was made up as the writers went along. The show would have been a lot better if they had figured out the ending ahead of time, and built the series with a bit more focus, instead of littering it with broken pieces of old ideas as they went. It betrayed the faith the fans put in them, and it seems insulting that the people paid to write the show couldn't be bothered to come up with something as interesting as what these random internet people had done with the mythology.

Instead, Lost's creators stuck to their strengths and focused on characters and emotions. And though I'm disappointed by the seemingly haphazard handling of the mythology, in the end I have to agree that they made the right call, and the finale worked on the most important levels. Vanity Fair's writer makes this point in a slightly different way in one of the best next-day thoughts on the finale out there.

The writers may have made the right choice for the characters by avoiding a "Midi-chlorion" moment that ruins the magic by overexplaining it. But the bottom line is that they shouldn't have dug themselves such a big hole in the first place, then asked us to jump down it only to find nothing but an unexplained, vaguely magical light and our own mortality.

Lost worked like the best science fiction and fantasy is supposed to: it used circumstances that couldn't exist in real life to explore the human condition from a new angle. The backdrop of the island and its mythology allowed grand, riveting, and emotional stories to be told that couldn't be told otherwise. It was an end in itself, and from that perspective, it didn't need any explanation at all.

Interesting Link About Girl Gamers

2010-05-24T10:58:00.003-04:00

As a bit of supporting evidence for "This is Why Girls Don't Talk To You":

70% of women playing online games choose male avatars and pretend to be male to avoid sexism.

This is all our fault, guys. Stop it.

Hatch at VTW: Starcraft 2 Beta Tales

2010-05-21T17:03:00.002-04:00

You can find my thoughts on the Starcraft 2 Beta in my weekly column at VTW Productions by clicking this sentence using that plastic object under your hand.

Female Worgen Models Revealed

2010-05-19T13:26:00.003-04:00

The female worgen models officially previewed at the Escapist (nice name) look pretty good!

But I'm glad these are still a work in progress. I'm actually happy with the general idea, but the hips/waist/pelvis look wrong. Kind of fragile. Like, they need some shatter-proofing. Bulk em up a bit. Their faces also need work. I'd recommend giving them more jaw and just generally making the head a and mouth a bit bigger. We'd have to see them with hair. They look too much like does rather than wolves. I know they need to be feminine, but that doesn' t mean you have to change them to another species!

I love the lanky, languid feel, and the bit of graceful savagery to their apparent animations. I'm glad the devs avoided the temptation to over-feminize their limbs, instead making their arms long and their hands and feet large. They really do look like Worgen, isntead of a furry reskinned Draenei female like I expected. Then, just when I think they've made a step forward, I notice that not even plate armor covers their midriff. Vulnerable underbellies are usually a good place for armor, ladies.

I especially want to point out the apparent ear animations as shown in the stills, which are a nice touch, and really bring the model to life.

And their shoulders are a good size! Some of the WoW models have a lot of wasted potential because the shoulders are too small.

Overall, it' s looking promising.

My Weekly Column at VTW Productions: Why RealID is a Real Bad IDea

2010-05-13T17:02:00.002-04:00

Extra! Extra! Read all about it here!

Jewelcrafting Win!

2010-05-12T14:13:00.001-04:00

"Jewelcrafters will have some fun new (and potentially lucrative) vanity items, including fist weapons, rhinestone sunglasses, monocles, and stardust (sprinkle on players for entertainment)."

-Blizzard

Win.

Battle.net should NOT USE YOUR REAL NAME!

2010-05-05T15:43:00.002-04:00

Dear Actiblizz,

The fact that Battle.net's method of cross-game communication forces you to give out your full real life name (the one associated with your credit card,no less!) as part of the "RealID" is a [bleep]ing travesty.

IT NEEDS TO GO.

ActiBlizz, I know you really are banking on leveraging facebook and RL social networking and stuff, but you are purposely crippling the useability of your service for absolutely NO benefit to the user. The ONLY people who benefit from forcing realIDs to use real names are ActiBlizz shareholders and executives.

I do not want to give out my name over the internet. I want to go by my handle. I want to keep my RL and gaming life separate. The excuse that "well don't give our your realID to anyone to whom you don't want to give your real name" is complete buttpoopcrap, because it means you are explicitly saying that no one should be using the cross-game communications with their in-game friends that they only met through their guild.

It essentially locks a ton of people out of the service. A service you want to be successful. It can't be used for its intended goddamn purpose because using it opens up a personal security/privacy breach with no way to opt out except to not use the service at all. When it would be SO EASY to just plug that security hole so users could actually use the service freely.

Why didn't you instead just announce "there will be no cross-game communication available in battle.net for people you meet online".

Again, this ONLY hurts the end user and the success of the product's widespread use. So why is the real name being forced in there? Is it really just for facebook integration? Is that really so profitable that it's worth hamstringing the entire service until it's almost pointless? Why would you EVER do it this way??!??!

Yours in INCANDESCENT RAGE,

Hatch

(not my real name, which means that I can't use it as my battle.net handle without giving out my real name to everyone that my blogging persona wants to keep in touch with, thus destroying the purpose of the pseudonym entirely!)

PS: and I quote:

"You will also be able to see the first and last name of your Real ID friends and their Real ID friends."

Yep. If you friend someone with your Real IDs, anyone that other person EVER adds will be able to see YOUR personal information without any way for you to block it except drop that friend.

Why would you force real names on there when the system would be so much more useable and less [bleep]ing dangerous if you just let us opt out of displaying our real names?

Premium Articles at VTW Productions

2010-05-03T14:51:00.003-04:00

Hello faithful readers,

Today I posted my first Premium Article over at Versus the World Productions, home of Octale & Hordak, Casually Hardcore, and other great podcasts.

It's (inevitably) about the Cataclysm raid changes, and goes into depth about why the old system is bad, and the new one good.

I AM IN NO WAY STOPPING OR EVEN SLOWING DOWN UPDATES TO MY BLOG. My articles over at VTW will be in addition to my normal blogging over here.

So go check it out, enjoy their podcasts, and tell your friends!

A Brief History of Gear

2010-05-03T10:52:00.005-04:00

Click this link and read a great guest post on Blessing of Kings, which gives a decent history of how gear was obtained throughout the past 5 years of WoW. It highlights the fact that players always flock to the best effort/reward ratio activity in the game, regardless of whether it is the most "fun" activity for them.

Busting the Top 9 Myths About the Cataclysm Raid Changes

2010-04-29T13:58:00.014-04:00

Let me preface by saying that I’ve been a raider since back when BWL was the highest tier. My 40-man guild went deep into AQ40. I lived through it as that same guild transitioned to 25s. Then I ran a 25-man raiding guild for a year as the primary raid leader. Then I ran a 10-man strict guild for 2 years, and now I lead a 10-man guild that hosts a 25-man guild alliance run. I’m really, really familiar with every facet of this debate, having led both 10 and 25 man raids as well as having firsthand experience of the 40 to 25 transition.

Now let’s move on to shattering the myths about the new raid changes.

Myth 1: You have to roll against more people in 25s.

Yes, I know, it seems obvious that with 15 more people there, you’d have more competition for loot in 25s. But it’s a myth: Blizzard has stated clearly that 25s will drop more items per person. There is no room for misinterpretation: there is a 0% chance that 25s will only drop 3 or even 5 items if 10s drop 2. It seems most likely that if 10s drop 2 items per boss kill, 25s will drop 6-7. Now do some math: 6.5/25 is a BIGGER NUMBER than 2/10. Which means that even though there are more people in the 25, you will actually have a better chance at personally getting loot in the 25-man raid because so many more items drop (and there is absolutely no reason to assume we won’t see the same item more than once per kill in this case).

Myth 2: We lose too much content with the shared lockout.

All that will happen is you won’t be able to run the same instance twice a week on the same character. Do you really like rerunning the same instance over and over like you do now? Is it a good thing that 25-man raiders feel pressured to run 10 man to get double the emblems? Is it a good thing that 10-man raiders have little to no access to the 25-man run while the bigger groups can easily do both sizes in the same week?

If you have a small group of friends you like to raid 10s with outside your 25-man guild, or if you are a 10-man guild who enjoys a 25-man alliance, that’s easily solved with alts. And if you don’t have time to level an alt, then why are you asking to get to raid the same instance twice a week anyway?

Another easy solution would be to do the previous tier’s content with the other group. Hopefully Blizzard will set up the tiers so hard mode loot from the previous tier is still relevant (but not required), so you have a reason to do so.

If you just prefer to have the freedom to run the instance twice if you so choose, then you are really arguing against lockouts altogether. Why not get rid of every lockout, if having fewer lockouts is inherently better? Oh yeah, because it would break the game.

Myth 3: 10s will be too hard to balance and make class stacking a problem

This one is legitimate as a suspicion, but not a fair assumption to make with this little information. Blizzard design hasn’t been perfect, but they’ve done a pretty good job overall.

As for class stacking: we have no idea if there will be buff changes made to go along with the raid changes. There is no reason why you can’t get a good mix of buffs with any reasonable comp if they set it up right. They’ve already started spreading buffs out.

It’s OK to have reduced faith in Blizzard, but it’s too early to just assume they will blow it. And it’s especially silly to assume they haven’t thought of this yet.

Another thing to keep in mind: right now, everyone is focused on how much bigger a logistical challenge 25-mans are to organize. Well what if the unique challenge 10-man leaders face is in forming a comp that optimizes buffs, while 25-man leaders don’t have to worry about that because they will inevitably have every buff covered?

Myth 4: The devs want to kill 25s

Hah! If they did, they would have just removed them from the game, instead of going out of their way to make sure there are still incentives to do them. Would all of the work they will put into making 25-man versions of dungeons be worth it if their plan is to “stealth kill” all 25-man raids?

Myth 5: The devs will let 25s die (unintentionally)

I’ve often been cynical of Blizzard’s design choices. I can understand this impulse. But every indication is that they are committed to making whatever adjustments are necessary to make both raid sizes into viable choices that people will be interested in. There is no way they are so stupid that if they want 25s to stay alive (as we’ve already established) that they would accidentally totally fail at their goal. Blizzard makes many choices I don’t agree with, but it’s pretty rare for them to outright fail through incompetence.

Myth 6: I love 25s because they are more epic, but obviously no one else does so I’ll never get 24 others together for it after these changes

I have seen this one so many times that I could form a dozen 25-man raids out of the people who say it. It seems like tons of people just prefer the bigger raids. If anything, the response to the changes has proven that 25s will never actually die unless they are removed from the game. What surprises me is how all of these people assume that no one else feels the same way. The entire point is that you feel free to pick the format you prefer rather than having to "game the system" by doing 25s just to get worthwhile gear.

Here’s an example of this one from Dawn Moore at wow.com:

She opens her thoughts with:“I play in a high ranking 25-man guild because that is what I love to do. I don't do it for the glory, better gear, prettier mounts, or legendary items.”

Then she ends them with: “ Blizzard's proposal removes the incentive to do 25-man raids, which will kill the majority of 25-man guilds, which in turn will kill the community I come to the game for. I hate to say it, but for the first time ever I have been served a very good reason to quit the game.”

Yeah, you read that right. She really did just say that she doesn’t raid 25s for the glory or the gear, but now that the glory and gear are gone she has no incentive to do them anymore. GG, Dawn.

Remember back in TBC when everyone was doing arena because losing 10 matches a week would get you a weapon that blew away what was available to most people in a raid? Remember how so many of those people hated arena and never would have done it if they hadn’t seen that it was by far the optimal way to progress their character? Ever notice how now that the rewards are more balanced, the only people in the arenas are those who love arena, and everyone is happier?

That’s exactly what happened to 25s in Wrath. They were the only legitimate PvE progression path (10s offered gear that was a tier behind) through this entire expansion. Tons of people who preferred 10s or other activities felt compelled to do 25s because they were the only avenue to “real” gear and achievements (because 25-man guilds could just cheese the 10-man achieves, rendering them irrelevant). Now that 10 vs 25 is a real choice, and both are legitimate progression paths, those people will leave 25s.

Let me rephrase that: those people will stop doing an activity they didn’t like as much in favor of one that is more fun for them.

Yes, that’s an awful thing to have happen! How dare they have more fun while still relevantly progressing their character!!! This isn’t some game, goddammit!

If you are in a 25-man guild and you think that losing the higher tier of gear over 10s is going to cause many people to leave your guild, that means they didn’t want to be there and were only there because you were bribing them. Are you really trying to tell me you prefer the system where you bribe/blackmail your friends into having less fun? Rather than the system where everyone chooses the activity they want, and gets rewarded either way?

Myth 7: Raid leaders won’t want to lead 25s anymore.

It’s undeniable that organizing a 25-man raid and guild is way more difficult and stressful than managing a 10-man guild. But what is the incentive right now to lead a 25-man raid? A higher tier of gear? That higher tier goes out to the entire raid, not just the leaders. How come the rest of the guild gets rewarded just because the leaders work harder?

The weirdest thing about this argument is that 25-man raiders and leaders aren’t losing anything. They are, in fact, gaining. They still get the top-of-the-line gear, only in Cataclysm they get a lot more of it per boss than they did in Wrath.

If it’s not the gear, then is it the prestige? Not only will 25-man raid leaders still be competing at the cutting edge just like they do now, but their raids will have an innate advantage over 10-man raids: they will gear up faster (including much faster emblem income). If you are hardcore and want to compete for server or world firsts, you will NEED to be a 25-man raid guild because the gear advantage will help propel you to the top. You simply won’t be truly competitive if you are a 10-man guild. So the prestige may be reduced, but it is still there for 25s.

Yes, the number of 25-man guilds will be reduced, and fewer people will want to lead 25s. But it will happen not because no one will want to do 25s anymore, but because people who didn’t want to be doing 25s in the first place will finally feel free to choose not to do them while still being able to advance their character.

Myth 8: The 10 best people in my 25 man guild will just ditch the ones who are “holding them back”.

GOOD. This one boggles my mind. The statement in itself admits that 15 people in your raid are being carried and don’t deserve their victories or spoils, and it implies that the top 10 resent having to do the carrying, but don’t think they have any choice because without the other 15 people they won’t have access to the current tier of gear. I mean, seriously? That's your argument?

Myth 9: First 10 people to hit level cap will not want to wait for the other 15 to catch up and will ditch us.

What? How is this situation ANY DIFFERENT from Wrath? The first 10 people got to 80 and started doing Naxx 10. Then the guild switched over to 25s as soon as enough people were max level. In both situations, the first 10 were ahead on gear. But with 10s and 25s sharing the same difficulty, that will actually be less of a problem in Cata than it was in Wrath.

Yes, I get that the idea is that those 10 will think that using their gear will allow them to progress faster than they would in the 25 with a lower average gearscore. That sort of makes sense…if you are willfully ignoring the fact that with more drops per person on each boss in 25s, they’d make up that deficit almost immediately, and would end up far better geared in the long run.

-------------------------------------------

As you can see, pretty much every argument I’ve seen claiming this is a disaster, or a bad change overall, has giant, gaping holes in it. I was trying to figure out why it seemed to be “gutting” the fun for some people, then I read this statement by Jerome Phillips, and it all fell into place [emphasis mine]:

“The competitive raiding scene is what drove me to play WoW. I started in a casual guild in Vanilla and as I discovered and grasped the concept of a 'top' guild I worked hard to become better at the game so that I could join one. I wanted to play the best and be the best and I worked for it and I still do. It is by far the primary reason I and the majority of players in my guild play this game. When I'm not playing WoW, I play MW2, COD4, and MvC2. Highly competitive games that force you to exert relentless dominance over your competitors and instill a sense of superiority and accomplishment in achieving a win and/or goal. This same feeling is why I and people in guilds such as mine play this game…why would anybody run 25-mans in Cataclysm? The hardcore players like myself have no sense of accomplishment and no discernable way to establish who is best.”

It became clear to me: these arguments that break down under scrutiny are actually smokescreens. The reality is: a lot of 25-man raiders were doing it because they liked feeling superior to 10-man raiders.*

The saddest part is that they don’t realize how artificial that superiority was. The only people who work harder in a 25 are the leaders. Period. The average joe in those guilds does nothing more than any 10-man raider does. In fact, 10-mans are tuned similarly to 25s for their own tier of gear (go look up the health and damage numbers yourself if you don’t believe me).

Right now, 25-man raiders can pretend they are better than any given 10-man raider, but the reality is that they don’t really know who’s better. After getting screwed over for years on end, please forgive me for not feeling sorry for the people who spent those years benefitting from the system that was screwing me now that they have to face - gasp! - the prospect of a more level playing field!

If you are a competitive person, wouldn’t you rather the playing field be evened so you can find out who’s really best, rather than getting a false sense of superiority from a rigged system?

There were tons of great players who chose 10-man, but never got any respect or recognition for their skill. With the artificial signal of superiority gone, that type of 25er is in for a rude awakening: you aren’t as superior as you thought, unless you yourself were organizing the raids.

Now we have a way to really establish who is best. And guess what – some of those 10-man raiders are going to be better than you.

OK, that would have been a great way to end the post. But I just can’t do it. As Larisa reminded me with this post, everyone in this argument has feelings, and many people are reacting more out of fear that their own raid group that they have grown to call home will be torn apart. In fact, I bet the vast majority of people arguing against the change are well-meaning and simply reacting to what they perceive as a threat to their current raiding group.

Of course no one likes that, and it’s understandable that perfectly reasonable people would be unhappy about it and be searching for way to convince others that it is a bad change when really they just don’t want to see their group broken up. In the end, I still hold the opinion that the old system was inherently broken and unfair and that the new system is a massive improvement to the game overall that must be done. But I extend my truly heartfelt condolences to anyone who loves the guild that they built under the broken system and might now see their friends torn apart by an improvement to the game.

*I said “a lot” I did not say “every” or even “most”. Please don’t assume I was talking about you unless you actually suspect you are that type of person.

Cataclysm Raid Changes Kill Guild Websites

2010-04-27T13:58:00.002-04:00

The sky is falling!

My guild hosts it's site and forums for free on wowstead.com. We've never had any problems with the site. It's passable.

Almost immediately after the raid change announcement yesterday, the entirety of wowstead went down. It is still down.

Hm. Guild-shaking raid change that sends everyone into a tizzy of speculation about where their guild will end up comes out. Guild forum hosting goes down on the same day.

Coincidence?

It's finally happening. 10 and 25 sharing lockout and gear.

2010-04-26T11:46:00.004-04:00

I'm in shock right now. I always hoped this would happen, but I never really believed it would.

http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=13200223842&sid=1

Thank you, Blizzard. You just won yourself a purchase and months of subscriptions money that was in doubt until this moment.

Oh, and by the way? I designed this exact system exactly a year ago Saturday.

Update: To add to the debate and discourse, I'd like to call attention back to this post by Rohan:

http://blessingofkings.blogspot.com/2010/04/blueprint-for-endgame-raiding-gear.html

It puts forward a very plausible model for endgame dungeon tiers that creates an incentive to run two tiers at once. This could be a good solution to the "Blizzard's taking away half my raid IDs!" dilemma presented by the changes. To boil it down: If you clear the current raid tier and still want to raid, you can go back to the hard mode of the previous tier and still get useful gear.

Ghostcrawler on Population and Perception

2010-04-20T15:09:00.003-04:00

Now that you've read what I have to say about population and perception's role in MMO design, here is Ghostcrawler's take. He says a ton of stuff that backs up my points. I came up with the idea for the post and wrote most of it before reading this. I swear it's coincidence that they share some similarities.

It's too long for me to quote here, so follow the link and read it. He makes a few specific points I'd like to touch on:

In GC's second post in the thread, he talks about why they don't balance around population, and how it's OK to not have all 10 classes at a perfect 10% balance.

I want to be clear about this: I agree with him that there is no need to strive for exact balance. There are devoted fans of every class and spec. They all appeal to some people. Just because fewer people are attracted to demonic wizards than they are to shining holy knights is no reason to simply nerf Paladins until their population is even with warlocks.

I also agree that simply nerfing a class to balance population is yucky.

But, I do not agree with his entire post. For one thing, simple aesthetic preference, or even game mechanic preference, are only responsible for part of a class's population. There are always people flocking to classes perceived to be overpowered, and avoiding a class they love because it seems underpowered. Acknowledging personal preference does not excuse you from having to consider population in your MMO design.

Also, he's thinking too small, just in terms of obvious numeric buffs or nerfs. To borrow GC's own phrase: there are more levers you can pull.

How about the races? Blizzard has already taken good steps in this direction by not allowing either of the new races to be Paladins, and allowing the new races to feature most of the less popular choices. But why can't Night Elves be Shaman?

How about group buffs? Being a hybrid is too desirable at the moment. Let them keep the current advantage of role switching without also piling on the legacy of buff variety that you held over from TBC in the name of not rocking the boat too much. Give BoK to rogues. Have Ret Paladins only give one bonus buff instead of 3 (yes, by simply being there and specced Ret, you give 3% crit, 3% haste, and 3% damage on top of replenishment, a blessing, and the aura's base effect. I'm not kidding. Currently, a rogue can bring, at max, ONE buff to a raid.) and spread some of them out to pure classes a bit more. Inviting a Paladin to your 10-man should be a trade-off: flexibility for utility. Balance it so on his own, a Ret Paladin does damage close to the rogue, and can switch roles if needed - but the rogue brings 5 buffs and the paladin only 2. So every Paladin you invite to your 10-man raid gives you more reason to add a pure class to make up for the buff deficit. Right now it's the other way around, exacerbating the population problem.

How about ease of play? Blizzard is pretty on-the-ball about balancing the potential dps numbers each class can reach. But they haven't done much lately to balance the ease of playing each class. It sounds like they may make strides in this direction in Cataclysm, especially by forcing Paladins to have a rotation that matches the others more, and by giving DKs, Rogues, Hunters, and Warriors more user-friendly resource systems, and simplifying the Feral Druid rotation. Make Paladins apply an array of debuffs while reducing the prerequisites and build-up time of "pure" dps specs, while leaving all specs with similar mathematical damage potential. Make Paladins and Druids have to wrangle their abilities carefully and thoughtfully to hold equal aoe threat to a Warrior or Dk who isn't even looking at the screen (ie reverse the current situation). All 4 classes should have the same threat potential, but it should be easier to reach that potential for the less flexible class, instead of the other way around.

Some example changes: Crusader Strike does less damage, but applies a debuff that increases the Paladin's holy damage. Divine Storm is no longer cost-effective on single-targets. Holy Shock becomes a go-to nuke on a longish cooldown, but Exorcism does more damage but requires an Art of War proc, which is harder to get. Judgements do more damage to enemies with the Righteous Vengeance dot ticking on them, so it makes sense to plan when you use it. Tanking Paladins find that Consecrate has a longer cooldown than its duration, meaning you -OMG - actually have to think about when to use it, god forbid!. Meanwhile, rogues spam SS and SnD/Evis.

OK, went off on a bit of a tangent there. Back to GC's post:

At one point, GC objects to a player who suggests that the classes at the top "should be made miserable" I object to that idea too! I agree that the goal is to make sure everyone has fun. But the problems I see with GC's stance are:

1) It's not a dichotomy. You can make moves to help balance class representation without making anyone miserable. In fact, the net result of such changes can actually be to increase overall happiness! I think it's disingenuous to suggest that population should be discounted as a balance concern because you don't want to make people sad.

2) Representation differences can often mean there is a real balance problem, or a dangerous perception problem. Either way, it may need to be addressed in a way that makes some players have less fun, temporarily, in order to make the game better and more fun overall.

He seems well aware of perception and population as issues, but I'm not sure he takes them as seriously as they warrant.

I'd like to close with the best and most perceptive GC quote of the whole thread:

"We know (and so we have to be very careful about it) that players will do monumentally unfun or even self-destructive things if it conveys even a small advantage."

Yet another reason why the developer's caretaking of the playerbase is so important, and why population balance should be a bigger consideration.

Population vs. Design, and the importance of perception

2010-04-20T12:26:00.005-04:00

I recently made a giant poopy - I mean, post about population in Cataclysm. Now I'd like to go into why I think population matters.

There is some truth to the statement that forming a raid full of druids and paladins would be easy because they can cover all of the roles. Is it really that bad if a few classes dominate the population?

Yes. Yes it is. But why?

One issue is buff stacking. If you can cover most of the group buffs with only paladins and druids, but no other 2-class combo can, then those too classes have too much group utility. Another issue is comparative class advantages: there are going to be other benefits to other classes as well. For instance, my group would have it a lot easier in phase 1 Lich King if we had a rogue for Tricks of the Trade > FoK on the ghouls. Other examples include Death Grip (Malygos), Misdirect, and the strength of block tanks on Anub. If both your tanks are Paladins, your raid is not going to be as effective as if you had two tanks of different classes.

The last, and most important one, is perception. What the game seems to be matters as much as what it actually is, and how players feel is more important than what they are told is true.
The easiest example of why perceptions matters pops up every time a new patch comes out. A nerf to a class makes many players of that class feel weaker, and perceive their class as weaker, even if they were overpowered before and the nerf simply brought them into line (or even just made them slightly less overpowered!). Players become less happy with their class, and a bunch will even switch “mains” when this happens. I’ll use the case I’m most familiar with: Death Knights.

There was a time (Wrath release until ToC) when the majority of the population believed DKs to be overpowered. In some aspects, they certainly were. This belief was a major factor in their popularity. They are still very strong (outside of arena), but have been nerfed enough that their popularity has dropped precipitously. Every nerf lowered the number of DKs – especially as “mains” – even though they remained a powerful class. But being perceived as “nerfed” hurt them.

DKs also lost ground for being perceived as the weakest tank after they were nerfed in the ToC patch. They had been basically required for hardmodes in Ulduar, and were rebalanced in response to that. Their popularity fell even more as they became the only tanks without a block mechanic in the era of the auto-LFD-omatic. Facerolling heroics is a lot easier as a tank when you block big chunks of all the little hits coming your way. DKs are still good tanks overall, but they are harder to heal in heroics.

Death Knights are still a strong class: one of the highest raid DPS classes, effective in BGs, bringing a good mix of buffs, and effective tanks on any content that matters. But their population and time played is dropping precipitously because they are perceived as weaker than their competition.

On the flip side, Paladins have seen a surge in popularity from which the game itself has yet to recover. In the pre-Wrath patch Blizzard completely and utterly broke the game, making Ret Paladins into 2-shotting-during-a-stunlock Battleground GODS (at level 70. Few cared that they would be balanced at 80 and against resilience). This along with the efforts to balance all 4 tank classes and the perception that Paladins were the best AoE tanks (thank you Shattered Halls) led to an explosion in Paladin population. Let’s not even get into how much dual specs benefit them.

From wow.com. PS: I wholeheartedly endorse nerfing Paladins To the Ground.

It sucks to feel like a sucker. It sucks to feel weak. It sucks to walk around Dalaran and have every other character you see be a Paladin or Druid. It sucks to watch groups fill up with half pink names. It sucks to have any group that is forming go out of its way to get a Paladin when none happen to be around. It sucks to hear “oh we need to get a Paladin for XX reason” or “Yay, 3 paladins!” in raid chat or vent.

And it really sucks to perceive that Paladins are better than all of the other classes, and to see everyone but Paladins agree with you (but they keep playing their Paladins no matter how much they fish-for-buffs-I-mean-complain, of course). Their population is out of control in part because they are perceived to be so much better.

It sucks to try a Paladin myself and realize that they are more effective and easier to play in every way. That’s right, I’ve got a new Paladin at level 80, currently grinding out triumph emblems in heroics. I’ve played him pretty much equally between Ret and Prot. In both of those roles, he is so much easier to play than any of my other characters, while being effortlessly effective. FCFS and Clash Resolution and 9-6-9-6-9 (for those of you who are familiar with Paladins) are simple to master. As a tank, the AoE packs stick to you like glue, and the short cooldowns and constant nature of Consecrate mean that you’re never caught without a strong response (unlike a DK who just used up his runes or a warrior with Thunderclap on cooldown, which btw GC used to rub their inferiority to Paladins in their faces here). I never have to worry about putting up diseases or combo points or rage or runic power. I just hit buttons. It’s ridiculous.

Pictured: the Paladin District in Dalaran

Regardless of where things are numerically or rationally: when players perceive imbalance, they will be less happy with your game. Their experience will be tarnished. Blizzard shouldn’t just rely on what the numbers say: they should put more stock in the playerbase’s perceptions.

Right now, the game is reasonably close to balance, if you look at it as a spreadsheet (not counting population numbers). But many players perceive some classes as being stronger, some as being easier, and the game being easier as a whole. These specific topics dominate the conversation about the game. It’s not good for your game, Blizzard.

Players do not like feeling like they are being punished for playing a class that is most appealing to them while it looks to them like Paladins and Druids enjoy advantage after advantage. And population matters a lot of each player’s enjoyment, because when they see players flock to a few seemingly advantaged classes, it makes them feel like a sucker, or feel forced to switch classes as well. Aside from that, the game gets kind of boring when you see the same class over and over. Forming a raid or recruiting is also a problem, because you are more likely to end up with another character of a class you already have enough of, and have trouble finding the classes that would help your raid the most (with utility, buffs, lack of gear competition, etc.)

Bottom line: population matters - and perception matters – to how fun your MMO is for the players.

Quote of the Day:

2010-04-16T12:34:00.001-04:00

"I just hope that Blizzard is using some of that extra money to speed up their expansion development cycle, because *that* is where they are losing customers from right now."

-Tobold

Never thought I'd be afraid of a sparkly pony

2010-04-16T11:31:00.007-04:00

First off, this hilarious video by Totalbiscuit:

I have verified -at much risk to life and limb - that the reference to homosexuals is not anti-gay, but just a statement that the sparkly pony is "faaaabulous!"

Anywho, quick statement on the horse: overall, I find the insanely high demand for the thing terrifying given it's price.

I am also kind of sickened by the (frankly unecessary) marketing ploys they're using to artificially increase demand.

But it doesn't scare me for the reasons you may think. I'm not worried Blizzard is going to compromise the integrity of the game by selling gear or achievements. I don't think Cataclysm will be an RMT-palooza.

But I am worried that the millions of dollars they just made in one day in return for a few hours of work by an artist and a programmer is going to . . . skew their priorities a bit. After all, they are a for-profit company, and in the end their goal is to make the most money, not make the best game. Making such good games is just a good way to make money.

Companies are meant to make money, and there is nothing wrong with that. I don't begrudge Blizzard the millions they made yesterday at all. Obviously, hundreds of thousands of people thought $25 was a fair price for a mount. I'm not even criticizing them. The whole thing was generally a win for everyone all around: people who wanted the mount for that price got it, Blizz made a ton of cash, and no one who didn't want the mount is hurt by the whole thing.

Or are they? (dun dun DUNNNNNN)

The only thing I'm worried about is a priority shift. Now that Blizzard has invested so much in laying the groundwork of creating a game that so many people love so much that hundreds of thousands of them are willing to pay half the cost of an entirely new video game just for a new graphic on their mount - quite an accomplishment in itself - what is their motivation to keep investing those resources into polishing the rest of the game? Are the i's going to be dotted and t's crossed anymore? Let's look at a hypothetical (and likely hyperbolic) example just to get my point across.

From Blizzard's point of view:

Option 1: Release an innovative, deep dungeon full of new art, cool lore, and great music, voice acting, and sound effects (think Ulduar). Make a number of new models and animations.

Option 2: Take half of those artists off of making the dungeon and have them design a few cool pets and mounts for the store instead. Phone in the dungeon with stale graphics and mechanics, very few bosses, and with every single enemy model fully recycled (think ToC).

Let's say both of those options cost the same amount of money. Option 1 has an indefinable value in keeping customers interested and excited about the game. But ToC showed that releasing a crap dungeon with no new assets will have little to no effect on subscriptions numbers (the main effect is lowering overall excitement for your game, which may eventually lead to a noticeable reduction in profits).

Option 2 will make you 3 million dollars in one day.

As a for-profit company, which of those two options do you pick?

That's why I'm worried that the rest of the game will start being phoned in. We'll see fewer new character models as the artistic resources get redirected towards filling the store. I'm scared that the game, overall, will get worse because spending those resources on pets instead is so much more financially attractive.

/sadface

Cataclysm Class Population, or "World of Paladins 2: Now With More Paladins"

2010-04-14T12:37:00.008-04:00

As promised, here I am bringing out my Crystal Ball of Dubious Accuracy and telling you what I think will happen to the class populations in WoW based on the design intent evident in the class previews that were released over the past few weeks. I consider class population balance to be crucially important to WoW, and I find it shocking how little Blizzard developers seem to consider it when balancing classes. But I'll get into that in more detail later.

Current Populations:

Before going into predictions, it will be useful to look at the current class populations statistics. Despite the prevalence of max-level alts to switch to, the class of each player's current "main" will likely be the biggest deciding factor in which class they play in Cataclysm. There will need to a strong reason to switch, especially since mounts, pets, and achievements are non-transferrable (something that I'm almost begging Blizzard to change, even if it's for a fee). For instance, I have not been willing to begin to entertain the thought of switching mains away from my Death Knight because of his Rusted Proto Drake . . . plus all the pets (many impossible or horrendously difficult to replace), mounts (including a 12k gold motorcycle), and achievements.

All of this data considers only level 80 characters.

Right now, Armory Data Mining puts the classes at:

To back up that data with a second source, here are the likely-less-accurate numbers from the Warcraft Census:

I'm going to assume that a comparably large percentage of these level 80 DKs are not mains, given the high DK starting leve and the "shiny and new" factor. I don't see any reason to consider any of the other classes less likely to be mains or more likely to be alts.

In summary, there are way too many goddamned Paladins.

Role representation is also a concern. Basing my estimates off of the percentage of all Paladins and Warriors who specced Prot, we can assume that roughly 7% of the population is a DK or Druid tank. Add on the prot tanks, and only 16% of the population is a tank.

20% of a 5-man or 10-man is a tank. On the other hand, 12% of a 25-man raid is a tank. That means there are too many tanks for 25-man raids, but not even close to enough for 5-man or 10-man content. This indicates that Blizzard needs to balance 25-man raids to include more tanks, and if that's not enough, take more steps to increase the tank population.

The problem is similar for healers: only 18% of all level 80's heal. Sure, you only need 20% for 5-mans, but raids need about 25%.

No matter how you look at it, there is a healer shortage, and a massive tank shortage outside of 25-man raids.

Pure DPS classes have nosedived in Wrath, filling out the bottom of the population list. Overall, they make up 32% of the population, vs 34% who are hybrids playing a DPS class. It seems clear that the community perceives the benefits of hybrids, especially with dual-spec available, as far outweighing the unevenly-implemented "hybrid tax". Unless something is explicitly done to prevent it, I believe this trend will continue.

Take-away points:

25-mans must be rebalanced to require more tanks.
Tank and healer populations need to be increased
Pure dps classes need to be be more appealing for dps relative to hybrid dps classes
We need fewer plate dps and more leather dps

In predicting class populations, it also makes sense to consider the current popularity of each race. It stands to reason that many players will be loathe to leave their favorite race, or consider race as a factor when considering a new main.

Armory Data Mining:

Warcraft Census:

Humans and elves are predominant. The most physically imposing races come next, as does the "darkest" race. The ugliest and smallest races take up the rear. Apparently, the type of people who play WoW a lot want to roleplay as something beautiful, big and strong. Whodathunkit?

Worgen will be explosively popular. They will hit the ultimate trifecta heretofore untouched by other races: they will be the Shiny New Thing, and the "darkest" thing, and also be able to look exactly like the most popular race at the drop of a hat, all at the same time! Everyone will make a Worgen. But few will make a Worgen their new main before they are opened up for race changes from existing characters. So 3 months after Cata release, they will be few and far between at 80. 6 months after and beyond, they will eventually overtake most other races, just as the Blood Elves have since BC.

Goblins are both ugly and short. Being shiny, new, and highly anticipated will help them, but they will never exceed even Orcs in population.

Rating Each Class Preview

So how did each class preview pan out? Look! I rate them from 1-10! Based on how much they would make people want to main that class in Cata!

Death Knight

Blood became the dedicated tanking tree, which is a good change but won't help the numbers. Rune system change is great, but a bit under-the-hood, so would only lead to modest population uptick. New abilities are extremely lackluster.

Rating: 4

Druid

Almost every change addresses something wrong with druids. They are getting a few cool abilities, more buttons to push as bear, an easier cat rotation, eclipse is getting overhauled, their heals are staying largely intact and benefiting from crit and haste, and there are no clear nerfs. Wow.

Rating: 8

Hunter

They are getting Focus instead of mana, which will push away almost no one and draw a few more in. The increased pet stable will be a big draw. Their rotation is getting less frantic. Annoyances like Ammunition are going away. Pets are getting increased raid utility. And the new abilities are very exciting.

Rating: 6

Mage

Bloodlust, only better. Since BL isn't going away, keen players will find the buff to be a big draw to a mage or shaman. Other new abilities are OK, but there are very few mechanics changes.

Rating: 5

Paladin

Are you fucking serious? Cool new abilities (one of them is literally "flashy") that all have utility in both PvE and PvP, easier buffing, and Paladins become the only class with an exclusive buff (Kings, though GC started a rumor that Druids might get it).

Rating: 9.5

Priest

Strong mechanic improvements, and flashy, cool new spells like Life Grip (though Life Grip will turn some people off because it gives them extra responsibility). The changes should rope in some people who would otherwise be turned off, but priest populations will always remain relatively stable.

Rating: 7

Rogue

The combo point system is improved (that system was the biggest annoyance with rogues) and survivability is going up, while stunlocks are nerfed. Smoke Bomb is super-flashy. Rogue population will go up among raiders and down among gankers.

Rating: 6

Shaman

Lots of flashy, cool new spells, but little in the way of mechanic changes or real improvements.

Rating: 8

Warlock

Shard overhaul, decent new spells, and green fire. A few nice mechanics changes.

Rating: 7

Warrior

Awesome fix to rage. Heroic Strike going away as an on-next-attack spam button. New abilities are booooring. No news on exactly how they will be improved to be brought in line with the other tanks on ease of aoe threat, or how the other tanks will be nerfed (yes, vague things have been said so far, but not enough concrete stuff to bank on).

Rating: 2

Healer and Tank changes:

One last thing to consider before we get to the predictions are the major changes being made to healers, and to a lesser extant tanks, as a whole.

The healing change to make them care about mana is a great design idea, if I understand it correctly. We won't know how good it is until we play it, but it sounds like we won't need to keep people topped off at all, instead doing triage based on leaving some people who aren't in danger at medium health. It follows that someone at half-health isn't likely to die in the next few seconds unless they are staying in the fire.

But the healing change is a major turn-off for healers. No matter how much PR GC tries to do, the bottom line is that it sounds like a nerf, and sounds like more work (even if it's not going to turn out that way). What GC needs to do ASAP is release a video demonstrating what healing will be like in Cataclysm, and showing very clearly why it will actually be more fun and less stressful.

As Gevlon and others have pointed out, if you make healer mana the limiting factor in a raid's or group's success, then you give everyone even more reason to blame the healers. Even if it isn't the healer's fault, the social perception will be that it's easy to blame the healer. And Blizzard is continually thinking of this game too much as a game system when they should be thinking about it as a social environment a lot more. Hire Tobold to be your social engineer!

Meanwhile, the tanking changes that make threat scale better with gear are broadly appealing, though talk of making AoE tanking more difficult will likely be misunderstood by some as a nerf.

Predictions:

Now that that's out of the way, here are my predictions, from lowest to highest, of populations percentages for each class at 85 about 3 months after the release of Cataclysm.

Shaman: 6.5%

Bad news, shamans. No amount of Healing Rain can save you. Mages are getting Bloodlust, and none of the most popular races can be your class, including Worgen (and lots of Draenei players will switch to Worgen). The only new Shaman will be Dwarves and Goblins, two of the least popular races. The mana change will be perceived as a nerf, hurting the representation of healers of every class. Totems will remain an annoyance, and you still won't have escape mechanisms, and Enhance will still play like a weaker Ret Paladin. Sorry.

Death Knight: 7.5%

Yeah, you read that right. Biiig cut. Most people will not level their 80 DK as their main in Cata. Paladin popularity will hit this class the worst, but the unexciting new abilities and the loss of freshness won't help either. Expect a good number of Worgen DKs who want an easy way to get a Worgen to 80 early, but few Goblin DKs, as most players will want to roll a Goblin only to see the new starter experience. The appeal of seeing the new 1-60 content will cut into the number of DKs, since they start at 58 (once they get out of their starter zone).

Warlock: 7.5%

Warlocks will see a tiny increase due to their improvements, especially the soul shard system. They will be hurt by the lack of a new pet and what I expect will be a surge in mage popularity.

Priest: 8%

Priest population should stay pretty steady. More than any other class, priests attract a certain type of person, and there is nothing in the preview to suggest they will lose players. Nevertheless, there will be a sizeable drop due to the mana change to healers driving away many players from healing classes. That is the main reason I have them rated so low. The popularity of Druids, especially as Worgen, will also take a bite out of the Priest population.

Rogue: 8.5%

This is also a modest increase for rogues. They will be popular Worgen and Goblin classes, and more popular as raiding mains because of their improved combo point system. They will lose some people who are PvP fans.

Hunter: 9%

I expect a signifiant increase in the hunter population. The biggest factor here is that many of the most popular races can already be hunters, as can both of the new classes, and even humans and undead will be able to hunt in Cata. Also, the improved pet system and the addition of focus will attract more people than it drives away, noticeably increasing the hunter population. I expect them to increase in PvP popularity as well as the focus turns away from Arena and toward BGs.

Mage: 10%

A class with Bloodlust, except it can be played by all of the most popular races, including humans, worgen, and now both kinds of elves? Buy stock in this class, folks.

Warrior: 11%

I originally thought that the boring new abilities in the Warrior class preview would hurt them. And it will hurt them slightly. But no one will notice while rolling their Worgen and Blood Elf warriors and enjoying the fixed rage mechanic, now will they? A perennial popular class will only get more popular.

Druid: 15%

And here we come to the biggest problem. What we've heard about Cataclysm so far has given us no indication that the value of hybrids will decrease. Players as a community are already picking up on this, which explains why the current druid population is so high for a class that can only be played by 2 races and can't see it's own hard-earned armor 90% of the time. As a 3-role hybrid, and the only one that can do both melee and ranged dps, you have a recipe for popularity in a land of dual-specs and little to no downsides to playing a hybrid. GC even hinted that Druids might be the only other class to get Blessing of Kings!

They will also remain the strongest healers once Paladins lose dominance of tank-healing, kitty dps will be easier, bear will be more interesting, and moonkin will finally get a non-spec-breaking version of Eclipse. Plus, the new abilities are pretty cool. Add in that fucking Worgen can be Druids, and iiiit's ovaaaaah for most of the other classes.

Paladin: 17%

The saddest thing about how giant this number is? The fact that it's such a small increase over the current number! The class is getting some great new abilities and almost no clear nerfs. Holy Paladins will become more popular as their toolbox increases and they get raid healing capabilities. Retribution Paladins will pick up a number of refugees from other dps classes, particularly DKs and Warriors, who have been watching them in jealousy for months now. And though there are hints that Prot Paladins will be brought back into line with other tanks, it's hard to dispel the long-running perception of them as the best tanks, the easiest to play, and the ones with the highest and most dependable aoe threat. Plus, they certainly won't be the weakest tanks, and if they are, you can just play dps or healing instead!

The only saving grace here is that Worgen can't play them - though Tuaren will be added to the list, which can only increase their popularity.

Yes, I am predicting that about a third of all players will main either a druid or paladin. Have fun forming raids in 2011, kids!

-----------------------------------------------------

So what does Blizz need to do between now and Cataclysm to prevent a disasterous healer shortage and gross class imbalance?

1) Change the healing mana "nerf" to make it more palatable.

2) Better PR for the increased importance of mana for healers and the cleanse changes. We need video demonstrations of how the game will be changed to compensate and keep these changes from being nerfs, and we need some social engineering changes in the game mechanics to take some of the responsibility for failure away from healers, at least in the public perception. Perception matters.

3) Increase the "hybrid tax" in some way so that players don't flock to Paladins and Druids for being the only 3-role classes in the game (and top-tier at some of those roles at the same time!). It doesn't need to be limited to the current (failing) damage tax. Change around buffs so that hybrids provide fewer of them, rather than more, compared to pures. Make sure hybrids have the weakest CC, and make it very well-known to the WoW population how much CC will actually matter - with demonstrations. Give some extra utility to pure and 2-role classes that the 3-role classes will lack. Continue to suppress the druid population by keeping them from seeing their gear in bear/cat/moonkin. Stop letting Paladins be so goddamn powerful while being so easy to play.

4) Allow Worgen and Elves to be Shaman, and simplify totems even more.

Speaking of Shadow's Edge

2010-04-09T17:07:00.003-04:00

...I got mine more than a month ago, and have been so busy playing with it that I never got around to posting!

It was a bigger accomplishment for me than it may have been for other raiders because my guild is a 10-man guild. We actually pug ICC 25 weekly now (and clear through the first wing consistently) but I had to call in some favors with friends in one of the top 25-man guilds on my server to get the two quest items off Festergut and Rotface back before the zone-wide buff was implemented.

The endless, mindless, torturous work of my 3 saronite slaves finally paid off after months of stabbing myself with hot pokers (aka using the random LFD tool to get frost emblems EVERY SINGLE DAY FOR MONTHS ON FOUR CHARACTERS-I'M NOT BITTER OR BURNED OUT AT ALL THANKYOUVERYMUCH). That's only - what - 50,000 gold down the drain for an axe?

The quest itself is quite cool, because you . . .

. . .

. . . oh, was I talking? Oh yeah, so in the questline, you get to watch Mograine forge the axe for you, like so:

Now if you'll excuse me, I just got us 2 hours in a room at the local motel. Just me and the axe.

Death Knight Cataclysm Changes

2010-04-09T14:24:00.006-04:00

Why are we seeing so many PvP-only abilities in these class previews? None of them so far moreso than the Death Knights:

New Death Knight Abilities

Outbreak (level 81): Outbreak infects the target with both Frost Fever and Blood Plague at no rune cost. This ability allows death knights to apply diseases quickly when they are switching targets or when their diseases have been dispelled.

Necrotic Strike (level 83): Necrotic Strike is a new attack that deals weapon damage and applies a debuff that absorbs an amount of healing based on the damage done. For context, imagine that the death knight can choose between doing 8,000 damage outright with a certain ability, or dealing 6,000 damage and absorbing 4,000 points in incoming heals with Necrotic Strike -- the burst is smaller, but a larger overall amount of healing would be required to bring the target back to full health.

This ability is meant to bring back some of the old flavor from when death knights could dispel heal-over-time (HoT) effects. It also gives the class a bit more PvP utility without simply replicating a Mortal Strike-style effect.

Dark Simulacrum (level 85): The death knight strikes a target, applying a debuff that allows the death knight to copy the opponent's next spell cast and unleash it. Unlike Spell Reflection, Dark Simulacrum does not cancel the incoming spell. In general, if you can't reflect an ability, you won't be able to copy it either.

Dark Simulacrum will work on nothing in raids. It's purely a PvP ability. Don't DKs already have enough defensive cooldowns in PvP? And ranged attacks? Do they really need a weakened version of Spell Reflect (OK, well it's actually balanced since DKs don't have to switch to a shield).

The same with Necrotic Strike. There will be maybe 1-2 bosses with self-heals over the entire expansion where NS might be worth casting. But really, it's purely for PvP. Sigh.

That leaves Outbreak. Great for both PvP and raids. I love it. Reading it first made me excited about the preview, but I was quickly disappointed as I read the other abilities. Switching targets will no longer be nearly as painful, and Outbreak is especially a boon for tanking, giving us a way to react to situations where we don't have runes available in an emergency. It will also make raiding rotations more interesting, because on single target fights you will likely be replacing IT/PS with Outbreak every 5th cycle. It will definitely raise the skill cap for the class.

The skill cap will also go up from the biggest change to the class: the new rune system.

Right now, DKs must spam their abilities the exact moment a rune comes off cooldown. Every second the rune is off cooldown and unused, that resource is going to waste. This leaves so little room in DK rotations that I often find myself wasting RP because I can't afford to take the time to Death Coil.

In Cataclysm, each of the 3 flavors of rune (blood, frost, and unholy) will recharge one at a time. So, for instance, if you use both blood runes, one of them will refill, then the other will refill (right now they both refill at the same time). The benefit to the change is that the first blood rune isn't going to waste if you don't use it immediately. It doesn't start being wasteful until both of them refill.

This will slow down DK rotations a bit, and all abilities will be adjusted to hit harder to compensate. I'm happy because this fits more with my idea of a DK . . . it always seemed wrong that my specials sometimes did less damage than my white swings.

With the rotation slowing down, and the wiggle-room before runes go to waste increasing massively, the devs get some space to add other abilities to the rotation, make runic power more valuable, and offer rune regen (through haste) and RP regen as useful bonuses. DKs as a class will be much more flexible. The change is great.

If it still doesn't make sense (I found it wicked confusing at first), GC gives a good example to clarify:

"I'll try another comparison. Imagine that all rogue abilities cost 100 energy. They have to wait until they get 100 energy, and then immediately use an attack so that they aren't wasting future energy. That's how DKs play now, except they have 6 runes to watch. Now imagine the same rogue except all his abilities cost 50 energy. If he hits an attack when he has 60 energy, then 50 is consumed but he has 10 energy still left and a head start on the next attack. That's the way we want DKs to play.

If that still doesn't make sense, then focus on what the experience will be, which is that you'll have more breathing room in your rotation and won't have to hit a button every single GCD. If you don't use a strike the second it's available, that's more okay because the extra tank will store extra rune resources rather than just wasting it. You'll still be hitting a lot of buttons though."

As for the talent trees and masteries: they are strong, but uninspiring. I mean, disease damage? I am thankful that Frost will be viable for both 2-handers and Dual-Wield, because I enjoy both playstyles greatly, but haven't been able to try frost lately because I love my Shadow's Edge too much.

----------------------------------------------------

Much like the Warrior preview, the DK preview offered a number of "under-the-hood" mechanics changes, but little in the way of "flash" or excitement. Even though the changes are unequivocally good - and point to some great design minds working at Blizzard - I can't help but be disappointed.

Though, it's only fair, as DKs are the newest class, and already had the most pizazz. But with DK numbers declining already as the freshness wears off, I wonder if mechanic changes will be enough to hold people. I anticipate a lot of players will be drawn back to their DKs because the old inflexibility of the rune system turned them off. We'll wait and see as the other previews are released.

Starcraft 2 pricing announced. P.S.: We're screwed.

2010-04-08T13:12:00.006-04:00

The physical manifestation of Starcraft 2 was revealed today. You can get the standard edition for $60, or the collector's edition for $100. A bit on the pricey side, but not unexpected.

What is unexpected:

"Digital copies of the game will be available to download through Battle.net "shortly after release" of the retail Sku."

Join the 21st century, Blizzard. Let us download the game on Day 1.

Wait, I shouldn't be complaining to Blizz. I should be complaining to Activision, since they are clearly in full control now. I'm assuming this decision was made by the marketing and sales departments because there is some advantage to forcing Day 1 buyers into the stores (whether a deal with Gamestop or unwillingness to pay for the bandwidth necessary to handle the demand).

What makes me absolutely sure that Bobby Kotick is at the helm are a few other little surprises in the collector's edition:

1) A WoW pet. Seriously? It makes sense from a marketing standpoint, but damn it's exploitative.

2) "Exclusive Battle.net downloadable content, including special portraits for your Battle.net profile, decals to customize your units in-game, and a..."

I cut that statement off because the last part deserves it's own number. Decals to customize units in-game? That just screams value-added content to me. Pay $100 for the base game, then get on the Microtransaction Express and keep shipping your money directly to Blizzard so they can use it on an Orc statue and paying Bobby Kotick and shareholders rather than using it on development! But that pales in comparison to:

3) "...and a visually unique version of the terran Thor unit"

...

WHAT?!?!?!

Are you kidding me?!? You're going to be able to pay to make your individual units look different?

Blizzard's motto is very quickly shifting from "when it's ready" to "anything for a buck".

Customer . . . loyalty . . . failing . . .

Everyone who believed the PR saying the Activision merger wouldn't change Blizzard: please accept this bottle of ketchup, which should make it less unpleasant for you to eat your words.

Warrior Class Preview: Boring

2010-04-08T12:18:00.004-04:00

As Spinks rightly points out, players will be using the Cataclysm previews and beta to select which class to "main" up to 85. I know I won't be switching from my DK because I couldn't give up the Rusted Proto, but such previews have influenced my choices in the past and clearly have a noticeable effect on the WoW population. Honestly, I'd chalk up the lack of Rogues throughout this entire expansion as about 80% due to how unexciting their new abilities and talents seemed way back in Wrath beta. The other classes were just too shiny. The other 20% is that Paladins, Warriors, and Death Knights were equally strong melee classes that could also tank/heal (and many Rogue players switched to DKs because they were the cool new shiny), drawing Rogue players (including me) away.

Now the low numbers of Warlocks? 90% due to their outlook before Wrath hit, easily.

What each class gets going into the expansion defines what class distributions will be like for at least the following two years.

Once all the previews are here, I'll whip out my infamous Crystal Ball of Totally Dependable Except When I Guess Wrong Predictions and tell you what I expect the class distribution to look like a month after Cata is released. In the meantime, I have to comment directly on the Warrior preview that was released this morning:

How utterly disappointing. Yes, the rage change is perfectly executed, but it's a mechanics change. It's got no "cool" factor. The new abilities aren't exciting. The talent tree changes aren't exciting. Heroic Leap is kind of cool, but it's not enough to carry the entire class.

Based on this preview, I will be shocked if there is not a mass exodus from the warrior class come Cataclysm. There will still be many who love the flavor of the class and enjoy their warrior, of course.

And I'll likely still go forward with my Worgen Warrior plans - Titan's Grip Werewolf, HOOOOOOO!

I don't expect Warriors to die out at all. But I expect the population to cut in half, going from one of the most populous classes to one of the least.

Death Knights get a "Prot" talent tree

2010-04-07T11:44:00.004-04:00

Jiggawhozawhuuu?

Cataclysm class changes are coming thick and fast, and will be relentless through this week. To avoid overshadowing the rest of the DK changes, Ghostcrawler announced today that Death Knights would no longer be able to tank using all of the three talent trees, and would instead be getting a "Protection" talent tree, just like Warriors and Paladins.

This tree would be called "Blood" and the tanking abilities from the other 2 trees would be consolidated therein. This seems to set up Unholy as the 2-handed dps tree and Frost as the dual-wield dps tree.

I'm definitely surprised. We'll have to wait to see how the implementation goes down. With what little information we have, I'm firmly against this. One of the things I enjoyed about my DK was being able to switch specs as I got bored (or based on what type of content I was doing), and the flavor and playstyle of my character would change with it, while still allowing me to tank or dps. For instance, in Ulduar, I basically had to use Blood as my tanking spec because it was helpful on Iron Council and pretty much required on hard-mode Vezax. But lately I've been able to play Frost as my tanking spec because it is great for aoeing down easy heroics while I farm emblems: DnD, glyphed Howling Blast, Blood Boil, take a nap.

From the dps side, the flexibility of DK specs has helped keep my interest as I've been using a different spec at each tier. The transformation of the Frost tree into the DW tree dampened this somewhat, but there were still two distinct options for 2-handed dps. Specs are going to be a lot more limited going forward, and that's a bad thing.

But that's probably the point: balancing DKs has likely been hellish when they essentially have 6-7 talent trees while most other classes have 3, especially when tweaking one DPS tree influences a tanking tree, and vice versa. And they needed a solution to DK masteries, since the new system of investing points in a tree couldn't reasonably yield both DPS and tanking stats.

Honestly, I expected a more ingenious solution to the problem from the Blizzard designers (not that I could think of one). I'm disappointed.

But it's not the end of the world! I'll still enjoy my DK, and who knows what other changes they have in store. We'll find out tomorrow. Being the most recently-designed class, I'm expecting the new DK talent trees to be the most similar to their current incarnations compared to the older classes. But I'm very excited to see the promised revamp of the rune system to make it more flexible. Tanking can get frustrating as a DK when you really need some runes to react to an emergency and they just aren't available, and DPS has become all about optimizing rune usage, making DK dps a lot like Paladin DPS (where you are locked down by Global CoolDown limitations), except we also have to keep track of resources while Paladins just have to hit the right attack as soon as the GCD is up (not a dig at Paladins!).

It should be an exciting week for WoW players.

Rohan is Righteous

2010-04-07T11:42:00.001-04:00

I wholeheartedly endorse this post by Rohan at Blessing of Kings about how raiding tiers could be set up. God I hope Blizzard goes that way.

How I would fix Warriors

2010-04-05T13:01:00.007-04:00

Warriors in World of Warcraft have been a broken class ever since the initial Wrath patch made the Paladins the most-well designed and overpowered overall class in the game and made Death Knights into everything Warriors should have been, plus more.

DKs have a variety of defensive cooldowns and self-heals at their beck and call at all times, even while in full DPS mode. Meanwhile, Warriors must switch to a shield just to use spell reflect or shield wall. Paladin tanks dominate on dps, aoe threat, and survivability, while Warrior tanks lag behind. Ret Paladins bring more buffs to the raid than any other class while easily doing competitive dps at any gear level and being able to heal themselves and use defensive cooldowns with impunity.

Meanwhile, Warriors have to give up a chunk of their dps just to use a meager self-HoT.

Rage's implementation was also a weakness of the class. They were rage-starved at low gear levels, but had infinite rage past a certain threshold. This not only led to an awkward gearing point where dps suddenly shot up now that rage was available, but it also made the class completely impossible to balance. It also meant that, for geared Warriors, Heroic Strike was no longer a choice: you might as well just macro it into your attacks.

Oh, yeah, and dps warriors don't have a threat reduction like every single other dps spec. So they will always be the first person to pull aggro. Fun.

So it's clear Cataclysm will need to make some major changes to the Warrior class. I was prompted to write this post today because Blizzard made an announcement about the subject that was pretty much word-for-word what I was planning to say about rage. I better get my other ideas out there so y'all know I thought of them first!

Blue sez:

1) Rage is no longer generated based on damage done by auto-attacks. Instead, each auto-attack provides a set amount of Rage, and off-hand weapons will generate 50% of the Rage main hands do. This amount is based on a constant formula which factors in the base swing speed of the weapon. This means the Rage gained should be averaged out between fast and slow weapons. The constant formula also gives us the ability to easily increase the rage gained if it feels too low (or reduce it if is too high). We are also implementing the following mechanics, which will still allow rage to improve to some extent as you improve gear:

If the attack is a critical strike, it will generate 200% Rage.
Haste will accelerate swing times to generate Rage faster.

2) Rage from damage taken will no longer be based on a standard creature of the character's level, but instead will based on the health of the warrior or druid. Again, there is a constant that is multiplied by the rage generated in order to allow for fine-tuning. This calculation ignores all damage reduction from armor, absorption, avoidance, block, or similar mechanics, so improving your gear will not reduce Rage gained.

3) We will provide warriors and druids with more instant sources of rage. For example, the warrior shouts are changing to work more like the death knight ability Horn of Winter. Instead of Battle Shout consuming Rage, it will generate Rage but have a short cooldown. Both classes will have additional methods to generate Rage in an emergency or bleed off Rage when they have too much.

4) All "on next swing" attacks in Cataclysm are being removed. Heroic Strike and Maul will be instant swings that cost a variable amount of Rage. For example, imagine Heroic Strike costs between 10 and 30 Rage. You must have at least 10 Rage to use the attack, but it will consume all available Rage up to a maximum of 30. Any Rage consumed above the minimum will cause the ability to hit harder, and in some cases much harder. We will tune the ability so that it's generally not a good idea to hit it when you have low Rage (unless everything else is somehow on cooldown) but becomes a more attractive button the higher your Rage.

All great ideas. That I thought of first. It's nice to see Warriors finally get at least brought on par with DKs in #3, as well.

So that pretty much 100% fixes rage. But I would tweak it a bit more as part of revamping the talent trees. My main goals would be to give each tree a unique flavor, bring warriors into line with DKs and Rets in independent survivability, and solidify charge/intercept as the defining warrior "move". I like the steps Blizzard took in this direction in LK, and would keep the current "arms in battle stance using rend and overpower" vs. "fury in berserker stance using whirlwind and Slam" dichotomy.

First off, Enraged Regeneration (heal over time) should no longer remove an enrage effect and should have a shorter cooldown. Battle and Berserker stance would both come with an innate threat reduction, as well.

Furthermore, each talent tree will get a unique rage-building mechanic, defensive cooldown, and signature "charge". Here are some examples of how I would handle the revamp of each tree.

Arms:

Unleashed Rage - increases rage generated on weapon hits by XX% (25%?)
Spell Parry - allows the use of Spell Reflect without a shield equipped
Juggernaut - same as now: allows use of Charge during combat
Improved Disarm - Disarm lasts longer, reduces the target's spellpower and leaves a DoT on them

The overall tree will emphasize precision strikes. Talents will grant hit and expertise, and the masteries will raise armor penetration and crit.

You can see that the Arms Warrior will focus on getting hits, in contrast to:

Fury:

Wild Swings - Gain rage as though you had landed a hit whenever your attacks are parried, dodged, or miss.
Weapon Wall - Allows the use of Shield Wall without a shield equipped
Interceptor - Reduces the rage cost and cooldown of Intercept. Allows it to be used for free if you are out of combat.
Improved Intimidating Shout - Reduces the cooldown of the shout, and roots the primary target in place with terror

The overall tree will emphasize wild, enraged -but imprecise - assault. Talents and masteries will increase strength and haste. The Wild Swings talent means that the Fury Warrior can focus more on increasing his haste and strength without worrying as much about hit and expertise caps. He may swing wild, but he swings fast and hard.

Prot:

Front Line - attacks against you generate XX% more rage (25%?)
Last Stand will remain, and Improved Spell Reflect will be changed - if a spell cannot be reflected, the damage it does while your Spell Reflect is active will be reduced by 35%
Warbringer - same as it is now, essentially allowing prot warriors to charge during combat without switching stances

This tree is already pretty strong so I wouldn't change too much, especially if Paladins get the promised aoe threat nerf. With rage generation fixed, the only thing still needed is cleanup of the dps trees to differentiate them from each other and give them some way to help healers keep them alive.

So that's a sampling of how I'd change Warriors for Cataclysm. They definitely need some major work - more than any other class, imo - and the announced rage changes are a welcome start.

Some PAX East pix

2010-04-02T15:23:00.007-04:00

I'm Still Alive! Recovering from PAX East, a case of PAX pox, and catching up from my time off at work has not been conducive to blogging. While I sit down to drink and eat to recharge my "writing" bar, here's some pics from the Show of Shows:

Wil Wheaton Keynote

The line for said Keynote

Varian Wrynn and Jaina Proudmoore cosplay (filthy alliance!)

APB booth in the expo hall - I got to play it, post coming later!

Kotaku & Croal panel about deciding the best 10 videogames ever. Entertaining.

My view from the front of the line for Gabe & Tycho's book signing

I had SUCH a great time at PAX. Many more posts and pictures to come.

OMG PAX EAST TIME!

2010-03-24T13:37:00.004-04:00

In less than 24 hours, I'll be landing in Boston, MA (the location of some of the best years of my life) for PAX East. PAX = Penny Arcade Expo, a fan-focused gaming convention with tens of thousands of attendees run by Gabe, Tycho, and Robert Khoo of the king of gaming webcomics, Penny Arcade.

In a strange way, I idolize those guys because they get to live their lives on their own terms and be successful at it. They are a bunch of genuinely good guys with a lot of integrity, and somehow they managed to make a successful business out of their art and enthusiasm. And instead of looking for more ways to burn their brand with hyper-monetization, they instead started a convention dedicated to fans instead of companies, and founded a charity that raises millions every year for sick children.

In other words, they win at life.

I'm going with my female lifepartner, whom I first met - in Boston, no less - by overhearing her talking about Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2. So it should be a pretty special trip for us. I've always "vibed" with Boston, so I was happy to hear Tycho say that the city "felt right" to them as well.

This Friday through Sunday, I'll be live-tweeting my experiences from PAX East as much as I can (provided that the sheer number of smartphones in the convention center doesn't crush the 3G), and even if you don't have a twitter account, you can see my tweets at twitter.com/EscHatch.

There is so much going on at the show, with a constant stream of panels and events while the corporate show floor (swag!), tabletop gaming room, classic arcade, tournaments, chiptune music rooms, and a million other things happen all day and late into the night.

But there are a few things I must not miss:

Wil Wheaton's keynote: Wheaton has become a geek icon over the past decade by writing books and blogs about being a geek after coming to notoriety as Ensign Wesley Crusher on Star Trek: The Next Generation. I became a fan after his hilarious turn on the Penny Arcade Dungeons and Dragons podcasts. He's delivering the keynote Friday at 3:00pm, and it's expected to be legendary. Here is his keynote at PAX 2007: it starts off slow but gets great by the end, so stick with it:

The Protomen: Oh my god, this band is good. They do a passionate rock opera telling an emotionally amplified version of the story of Mega Man. I expect their show to be one of the highlights of the weekend if their live work is half as good as the albums. And I'll definitely get a T-shirt.
Bill Amend: Ever heard of Foxtrot? Yeah, it's him. Enough said.
The Death of Print: This panel is about the end of the era of video game magazines (which were a mainstay of my childhood and whose recent loss in the form of the GFW/EGM layoffs hit my entertainment sources pretty hard). I'm excited to finally see Jeff Green (squee!!), John Davison, and Julian Murdoch in person.
Podcasting for PR: Since podcasting is sort of my day job, I should probably go to this anyway. Add in the fact that Jeff Green, Shawn Elliot, and Ken Levine (!!!!!) will be there, and I'm going to have to skip dinner on Saturday for it.

Saturday Night Concert: OK, I've seen the Video Game Orchestra before, and it's pretty good. I've heard good things about Paul & Storm. But - OMG, am I reading this correctly? - JONATHAN MOTHERFUCKING COULTON!?!?!?! I'm making a note here: this will be a Huge Success.

The Future of the MMO scene: The title kind of explains why I want to make it to this one. It includes a number of members of MMO studios, including Curt Schilling.

D&D: I've never played Dungeons & Dragons before, but Wizards of the Coast is running some demo game sessions throughout the weekend. After hearing how fun the game could be through the PA podcasts, this seems like the perfect time to give it a try with a professional DM guiding the way.

I'm pretty much giddy with excitement. Hopefully I won't do too many fanboy squeals in the coming days.

I'm going to PAX East

2010-03-22T17:09:00.002-04:00

I'll be at PAX East this Friday-Sunday. I'm very excited. There will be a pre-trip post and a post-trip post, and I'll be sporadically live-tweeting the event from @EscHatch, hopefully with pictures. Even if you don't have a twitter account, you should be able to view what I have to say this weekend by simply following that link. It's easy-peasy!

If you are going to be there, let me know and maybe we can meet up in person or something. If you aren't creepy and stuff.

Whiny Post Day

2010-03-17T11:55:00.005-04:00

By decree of Klepsacovic, today is International Whiny Post Day! I'll join Larisa, Tobold, Spinks, and others in celebrating this awesome holiday.

But what do I want to whine about? There are so many things.

Keep in mind that these are the criteria:
- Would you be annoyed at reading it?
- Would you want to respond with "cry more"?
- Do I disagree with your complaint?

So my goal here is to annoy you into telling me to "QQ moar" about something that only I even think is a problem.

Oh, here's one thing that irrationally annoys me:

Backseat raidleaders!

You know what? Once I explain a fight strategy, you don't need to add minor details about how using X move at exactly X second can give us a tiny advantage. Yes, it's a neat trick. No, no one will remember it the first time in our lives that we pull the boss and are just trying to remember the basics of the strategy. The more complicated you make the explanation, the faster we'll wipe. That's why I didn't mention that tiny tip. It's not because I didn't know about it - I actually read the same sites as you! It's just that I didn't want to make the strat any more complicated than it had to be until we get a look at it.

You know what else? I know that you need to line your cooldowns up with bloodlust to pwn the meters. But you don't need to be obsessed with BL. Nor do you need to call for it every fight without fail if I'm about to call for it a second later than you liked (because I'm also having to call everything else that someone in the raid forgot to pay attention to).

And another thing: we really don't need to completely change our strategy every attempt just because we wiped. Sometimes, we just need everyone to perform a little better at the strategy we already have. 99% of the time, changing the strategy will only server to confuse someone and make us wipe even faster. I'm all for analyzing and making changes based on what we did wrong, but usually what we did wrong is "stand in the fire", not "had the positioning totally wrong and should have switched targets later and one of us should respec. Oh, and Bloodlust earlier!"

But worst of all is the guy from another guild who has something to prove in our joint raids and needs to step all over my playcalls. I also don't appreciate when that guy waits for me to miss some detail or other so he can jump in and "prove" how I'm a bad raid leader because I forgot to say one thing out of the 100s of things I generally need to remember to tell the group. Tearing someone down is easy when they have a lot of responsibility. Actually shouldering that responsibility yourself? Not so easy.

I fully acknowledge that a lot of this is irrational. I'm far from perfect, and raid leading isn't that hard. Often, these "backseat raidleaders" give useful suggestions that are key to our victory, and they certainly help keep the raid thinking critically.

But sometimes, they just get on my nerves.

/end whine

Starcraft 2 beta impressions

2010-03-16T14:11:00.003-04:00

This is going to be a bit stream-of-consciousness. If I try to edit or organize too much, I end up not getting anywhere because there's just too much for me to talk about. I've been waiting a decade for this game, and now that it's here I'm pretty much gushing.

Starcraft is one of my top 3 all-time favorite games. I could not get enough of that game back in the early 2000s.

I've had a few days in Starcraft 2 beta, and so far it is more an SC1 redesign with pretty graphics than a different game. And I'm perfectly happy with that.

Right now the beta is multiplayer-only, with 1v1, 2v2, and ffa available on a pool of about 5 maps. So it can get a little repetitive, but it does allow Blizz to focus-test balance. I've played all of the races a bit, and after specializing in Protoss for about 50 games, I've switched over to Terran. I never liked Terran back in SC1, partly because I disliked siege tanks and the race's comparative lack of mobility. The race has been vastly improved by mixing up the roles of some of the basic units, improving their air options, adding a heavy high-tier ground unit, and reducing their reliance on siege tanks. They have a new heavy infantry unit, called a Marauder, that, unlike the marine, can take a few hits, and is strong against armored enemies. You can make a reasonably durable ground force early on now, which makes Terran a lot more attractive to me. Conversely, the Protoss ranged units that replaced Dragoons can't take much punishment and rely in maneuverability and spell casting.

OK, I'm getting too specific now.

There is so much I could write about SC2, but I'll try to limit myself to a general overview here.

The visuals are great. They have the "Blizzard touch" in the art direction, and the effects are well-done. If you zoom in close the models look blocky, but they look perfect from the normal distance. Most have a unique profile that makes it easy to keep track of things at a glance and avoid losing your units. The animations blew me away, especially for the construction of the terran and zerg buildings, and the transformers-like animations of the Valkyrie and Thor.

Likewise, the music is excellent, though a bit limited right now. Playing the same race, I hear the same tune far too often. The sounds are what I expected: they hearken back to the SC1 sound effects, but are much higher quality.

Korea is probably going to be pretty happy, because this game is Starcraft 1 only prettier. Most of the iconic units are still there, except - notably - the Dragoon, which has been replaced by two similar units, so its absence is less felt.

It's also balanced better overall (not that SC1 wasn't well-balanced, just in a different way), with a larger variety of useful units and counters. There are some units that got very limited use in SC1, but in SC2 so far I've had a good reason to bring out every single unit at some point or another.

Games tend to last 10-15 minutes, except for the occassional knock-down-drag-out 45-minute slugfest. I've also had some epic matches where my force reaches the enemy base just as his force reached mine, but instead of either of us retreating to defend, we both just race to burn the bases down more quickly while expanding in hopes of buying ourselves a few more minutes. In these cases, Protoss generally wins because of Observers, cannons, and some unit balances (such as the fact that Carriers can kite Battlecruisers).

The current playerbase seems . . . more skilled than I expected. I'm a reasonably good player, and was originally placed in one of the top leagues. I decided to screw around and play random races for a while, and that got me knocked down a few leagues. Even in the below-average league that I'm now climbing out of as Terran, I'm encountering so many people who know so much about the game even though they are supposedly below-average players. The pool of people in the beta must be dominated by pros and superfans. There are only about 5k people playing at once and I think roughly 10-20k in the beta at all, so hopefully the skill levels will spread out a bit when the game releases or more beta opt-ins go out. I'm shocked by how few people I encounter who don't know what they are doing. Everyone seems to at least know the basics, and about 70% seem to know macro tricks like kiting and running, and seem to know unit counters much better than I expect. I thought I'd be ahead of the curve, and instead I seem to be right in the center.

So far, Starcraft 2 definitely embodies the idea of "just one more match". I can't seem to stop!

HEEEEELP MEEEEEEeeeeee

Starcraft 2: Protoss Job Application

2010-03-15T12:03:00.003-04:00

A'dun Tassadar! Thank you for your interest in a position in the Protoss army. Please take a few moments to answer the following questions to help us place you within our forces:

1) Would you give your life for Ai'ur?

a) Yes
b) No

2) Do you long for combat?

a) Yes
b) No

3) Please detail any experience you may have with constructing additional pylons:

Thank you for completing our questionnaire! An Arbiter will contact you shortly about exciting employment opportunities throughout the universe.

Had to share this....

2010-03-12T11:11:00.006-05:00

This Penny Arcade comic could just as easily be about MMOs.

Gaming Update: It's About Time!

2010-03-12T10:48:00.004-05:00

This week, I gained accessed two games that I have been waiting nearly a decade for.

My first year of college, I met two of my best lifelong friends from across the hall, and they introduced me to Starcraft (among other things, such as whiskey, another lifelong friend).

My second year in college, I met my current female lifepartner. In the early days of our relationship, one thing we did together was play through Final Fantasy 10 (her idea, not mine . . . she's awesome!)

This week, Final Fantasy 13 was released. It is the first "real" FF in my opinion since 10. I'm sorry, but 12 flat-out sucked. The graphics were good, and the story as well, but the gameplay systems were a disaster. We bought it with excitement upon release, and gave up in disgust a few weeks later. We spent last night playing FF13, and have loved it so far. If anything, it feels so far like the spiritual successor to FF7 (tied with 6 for my favorite ever), in so many ways.

Also this week, I was reading this interview with Dustin Browder, lead designer on Starcraft 2. He mentioned offhandedly that they had "added a bunch of new keys this week", meaning beta keys. I had been avoiding my email and battle.net account page to save myself the heartbreak of not being in the SC2 beta. Hoping against all hope, trying to keep my excitement in check, I futilely logged into my battle.net account.

Well, not so futilely - the beta was there.

So in conclusion: you know how people tell you "life isn't fair"? Well, guess what: for me it is. There is a god, and I believe in miracles.

So far, I love both games. Have a great whiskey! I mean, weekend!

WoW.com has an agenda. It's to support entitled leeches.

2010-03-10T14:17:00.004-05:00

Nerdrage time.

So WoW.com does a "Most uber players of the week" post. Except it isn't about uber players at all. There are none of the examples I expected, of a strong player kicking ass or succeeding where others failed, or demonstrating any skill at all. It is ONLY stories about "nice" people who take one for the team and agree to carry someone else who shouldn't even be in the instance. In fact, almost all of the stories are about someone being extra-nice to a severely undergeared and underpracticed tank who is new to 80 and couldn't be bothered to run a normal instance, instead insisting to skip a step and go straight to heroics and expecting the rest of the group to pay for it. The column is solely about compassion rather than superiority (notice how "super", uber's most direct analogue is in that word?). There are definitely better descriptive words for what you meant than "uber", professional writers over at wow.com. Like, for instance, "compassionate" or "nice".

What I'm saying is that you're being misleading by calling them "uber". You need to pick a different word now or you're going to look dishonest.

I really wish such a prominent wow site would stop openly supporting people being dicks and expecting to be carried.

Oh, and btw, wow.com readers: if you have time to read a wow site and write in about your pug experience, then you certainly can be bothered to DO A FEW NORMALS FIRST BEFORE GOING STRAIGHT TO HEROICS AT 80 YOU JERKS.

Book Review: The Steel Remains

2010-03-09T13:31:00.002-05:00

What can you do to spice up a genre as well-traveled as swords-and-sorcery "hard" fantasy? A genre that is perhaps more locked into tradition and disconnected from reality than any other?

In the case of Richard Morgan's The Steel Remains: you take a critical eye to it, and you root it back into reality. You wipe off the gilding until you find the dirty, flawed humanity underneath. Instead of writing a shiny, clean bit of wishful thinking that happens to come equipped with swords, dragons, and beautiful damsels, you instead write a noir story that just so happens to be set in a world of magic and dragons. Oh, and torturing Inquisitors and wolf-shaped demigods who will mangle your genitals.

This is Morgan's first foray into fantasy, after making a name for himself with award-winning and best-selling sci-fi noir stories and thrillers such as Altered Carbon and Thirteen. He has always had a knack for grounding his books in reality even as he tackles such fantastical topics as gene manipulation, mind-swapping, and space travel. The worlds he creates feel genuine, and the inhabitants are realistically flawed and react to these crazy technologies in believable ways. Morgan's visions of the future are so authentic that they don't just seem possible: they seem likely.

In The Steel Remains, Morgan brings these skills fully to bear on the fantasy genre.

The narrative bounces amongst three protagonists: the disenfranchised and cynical war hero Ringil, the gruff viking tribe leader Egar, and Archeth, a woman half-bred with a long-lost race of engineers whose works border on magic. Ringil's story treads familiar noir territory: a woman finds him living a low life and tasks him with searching for someone in trouble, which leads him into a larger mess than he bargained for. Meanwhile, Archeth faces a military mystery of her own while wrangling with the corrupt government, and Egar encounters betrayal and demigods.

Their stories intertwine while introducing the reader to the three main allied factions in their world. Years after a war that united humanity against the invading "scaled folk" that emerged from the sea, we see an aftermath where imperfect leaders and institutions (like those we'd expect in the real world) have led to imperfect conditions. Conflicts are made, politics and petty bickering must be observed, and the people of this world suffer for it. After border disputes and brutal slaughtering of rebels, an uneasy alliance has been reached amongst the Emperor, a king, and the northern tribes. It is in this setting that Morgan explores human nature and the flaws of our institutions and leaders.

No review of this book could be complete without addressing Morgan's head-on treatment of homosexuality. Two of the primary characters are gay, and the reader is faced with an odd juxtaposition: Morgan treats homosexual sex and desire as just as normal and open as most authors treat the hetero versions (there are a few very explicit scenes), yet those characters are shunned within the book's world for their preference. Their version of the church even goes so far as to design a special torture for those "convicted" of sodomy: they are locked in a paralyzing cage and put on dispay in the public square as a massive spiked pole is slowly screwed into them from below until it emerges from their shoulder. There they hang for days, impaled and in agony (and with jeering children throwing rocks at them) until they finally die.

Yeah, it's a dark book.

Morgan's previous books could easily be described as "page-turners", but if there is any problem with The Steel Remains, it is that the story sometimes feels meandering. It can be hard to discern where the plot is going, so the reader may feel less driven to keep following the story. The plot plays fast and loose with the usual 3-act story conventions. It can be great to spurn tradition, but this book seems afloat without the usual guideposts. Morgan also seems more interested in world-building than character-building, with everything else sometimes feeling like an afterthought in comparison to descriptions of the book's setting. The story could probably use a minor restructuring, but it is still a great book in spite of this.

The Steel Remains will not allow you to escape to a simpler world where heroes are heroes and blah blah blah. But it will entertain, intrigue, and impress you. You'll probably be challenged to look at a few things a different way, and in my opinion that's the best thing any book can strive for.

This is why guilds will not be obsolete in Cata

2010-03-07T15:34:00.003-05:00

What's that you say? You've already killed all the easy loot pinata bosses and now you want me to get saved to your instance just to wipe?

Too bad it isn't a guild run, then the social norms would have kept that healer from leaving . . .

Catclysm Stat Changes Revealed

2010-03-01T13:34:00.002-05:00

Eyonix posted this afternoon on the official WoW forums with a preview of the upcoming changes to item statistics in Cataclysm. Most of it was in line with previous announcements and expectations, but there were a few nice surprises in there:

Defense is being removed from the game entirely. Tanking classes should expect to become uncrittable versus creatures just by shifting into Defensive Stance, Frost Presence, Bear Form, or by using Righteous Fury.

Awesome. We'd heard about this before, but not simply from shifting stances! Defense was always a confusing stat, and I never understood why it was on gear. It has always been a major barrier to entry for tanks. Making their gearing much more straightforward will help the game a lot, and hopefully shorten LFD queues. It also makes it viable for a geared dps to handle tanking duties in a pinch, or using an incomplete patchwork of dps and tanking gear while gearing up.

Weapon Skill - This stat will be removed from the game completely. Classes will start with all the weapon skills they need to know and will not need to improve them.

OMG BEST CHANGE IN WOW HISTORY!!!!!1! No more grinding for hours to level a weapon skill!!!!! No more randoms in LFD skilling up their new weapon during my dungeon runs! YES!! With this, we watch some of the last vestiges of Tigole's World of Everquest fall away, and it's undoubtedly for the better.

Gems - We are changing the gem colors of a few stats as a result of these adjustments. For example, Hit is likely to be blue instead of yellow.

What? Blue gems not being useless to dps? Where do I sign up?

Ratings will be steeper in Cataclysm, and creatures in later tiers of content will be harder to hit or crit, similar to how level-83 mobs are harder to hit or crit than level-80 mobs.

Intriguing. Does this mean most people will never cap out hit and expertise? Or will it just be a crappy implementation where most of our stats are wasted when going back to older content? For instance, if I have 8% hit cap for Deathwing, will I be overcapped at like 20% for the boss two tiers below him?

Armor Penetration becomes Haste or Crit.

Crap. That's gonna hurt. Hopefully this patch won't apply until just before Cata. Or it will be accompanied by talent tree changes that make me no longer love armor pen so much. Who knows?

The only downside to this post is that it will renew all the wishful-thinkery about Cata's release date. Just because they posted some more info does not mean Cata "must be mere months away!" Enjoy free epics from the Ruby Dragonshrine until at least October, everyone!

THIS IS WHY GIRLS DON'T TALK TO YOU

2010-02-26T12:24:00.003-05:00

This is a rage-induced public-service announcement for all of my fellow straight guys out there:

A lot of girls play WoW. It's a fact. And yet, you don't seem to encounter any of them, right?*

Well here is why:

-As soon as someone admits they are female, or even speaks with a female voice on vent, you immediately make a big deal over how "OMG THERE'S A GIRL!" Now, let's think for a second. Do you think this makes them more or less comfortable? Think for a second about why you are saying it. Are you saying it for anyone's benefit other than your own? Or can you just not resist any opportunity to vent about your pathetic sexual frustration and loneliness?

-The Blizzard community team releases a pretty cool staff photo, and every single fucking comment is about how "the chick in the front is hot". Things to note: 1) She's out of your league, 2) Commenting on her hotness isn't going to make her cyberz with you, 3) WTF happened to everyone else in the photo? 4) Do you have any concept of how uncomfortable that makes every woman who sees it, including her?

-You say "girls don't play WoW". You know why you think no girls play WoW? It's not that they aren't there. It's because -and let me emphasize this - they don't talk to you. Because they are off talking to people who don't make them feel embarrassed or objectified for being female.

-When a guy makes a mistake, you blame it on him, and him alone. When a woman makes a mistake, you take it as damning evidence that all women suck in every way at video games and men are clearly superior because she made one mistake. You think women make mistakes because they are women, and men make mistakes because they made a mistake. Now think about whether this attitude makes a woman want to approach you, or go away. You have no fucking concept of what an uphill battle it is for a woman once she makes herself known in WoW, especially in raiding. Meanwhile, roughly half of the best raiders I know and run with are female. They got skillz, despite their boobies. Crazy, right?

-You sexually harass them. I actually had a pugger in my ICC25 run the other day say to our GM/raid leader upon hearing her female voice in vent, something unintelligible about driving his truck between her legs. He got kicked so fast his head is still spinning.

All of this can be summarize quite easily into something you may not realize:

Girls are people too.

I know, shock of shocks, they aren't just there to make you a sandwich and look pretty for you!

Learn to act like someone a woman would be proud to be partnered with.

*There are a lot of good guys out there to whom this post does not apply. Those guys probably know a lot of girls in WoW, because they don't automatically repel them. You know who you are.

Breaking News: Your Opinions Aren't Automatically Important Just Because You Write for WoW.com!

2010-02-25T12:24:00.002-05:00

Well, I guess that's only news to the bloggers at wow.com.

Rant incoming.

WoW.com (formerly wowinsider) is in a unique and powerful position to influence the views of the community. And I believe that power comes with some responsibility (thanks, Uncle Ben) that lately (and only lately) the wow.com staff have begun to shirk.

A lot has been made about wow.com's supreme and shameful irresponsibility in posting hoax rumors about Cataclysm alpha as fact and stirring up an unnecessary shitstorm by massaging the facts from a Blizzard Support Department Budget Meeting. They explicitly tried to make a non-story seem like some diabolical plot by Blizzard to screw people, when it very clearly was not. They should be ashamed.

But that's not even what I'm posting to criticize them about.

When you go to MMO-Champion.com, you are looking for pure news, distilled down to bullet points. When you go to Tobold or Spinks or Gevlon, you are looking for opinion. You don't go to Tobold's blog expecting updates on the latest patch notes and blue posts. And you don't go to MMO-Champ expecting opinions about WoW and its community.

But there is a place in between. This place is WoW.com. It is the largest WoW blog, and holds the distinction of being the only one that actually pays a staff of dozens of bloggers to keep the spigot of posts coming constantly. It can do this because it's owned by AOL's blog network and uses its unparalleled (well, unparalleled by people working alone for free) ability to produce content to drive millions of hits to the site for advertisers. I can't find the numbers at the moment, but I remember seeing some estimates, and the number of people who visit that site every day is staggering. Good for them! (But bad for the community!)

WoW.com covers everything. They post news in a relatively timely fashion (read: after their staff reads it on MMO-Champion), have guides to all classes and aspects of the game, follow the community (including their machinima and horde-themed cupcakes), and include editorials, classifieds, and advice columns. They are basically analogous to a full newspaper, while blogs like Tobold's are limited to an opinion column, and MMO-champ amounts to a basic news feed.

For so many years, this worked well. However, lately, the staff has begun to abuse the fact that they have the ears of a massive chunk of the WoW audience to push their own personal, petty opinions (often in the guise of news posts!) without the benefit of point/counterpoint to temper their views. They are starting to act like a pure opinion site, which poses some major problems.

They have no unified editorial voice. So any single blogger can post his/her own petty feelings and have it read by millions. Meanwhile, their name, their content stream, and their massive audience all position them as seeming to be *the* definitive source on WoW. So when their bloggers express an opinion, it's going to hold more weight than it should. It's going to seem, to many readers, like this is the voice of WoW.com and its opinions should be considered greater than others.

The most egregious example of this was Adam Holisky's post from mid-December, in the wake of 3.3, entitled How the WoW Community is About to Push the Self-Destruct Button. How obnoxiously arrogant do you have to be (and this coming from someone with a PhD in arrogance) to presume to tell the entire community what they "need" to do? That because Holisky's opinion differs from theirs, they must be a "minority" that "needs" to do what he says because, for some reason, his opinion matters more than theirs? You expect more professionalism from someone getting paid. And you expect more restraint from someone with such a large audience available to him. He's abusing the audience the site gives him to trumpet his own opinion.

To all of the wow.com staff. People do not come to wow.com for your opinion. They come for information. So every time you push your opinions on them, you are failing them and failing at your job.

Wow.com did not build it's audience on your personal opinions. So every time you express them, you are abusing the audience.

Since then, it's gotten even worse, because now WoW.com bloggers are inserting their opinions into the news stories. It's not so bad when a post is clearly labeled and titled as an editorial. It's another matter entirely when it's the only post about a piece of news, and the post actual is all about the blogger's own personal feelings on the subject.

Example 1. So Matthew Rossi doesn't like it when people skip bosses in a dungeon. Tough shit. Guess what: there's a reason why so many people skip that stuff, and it has nothing to do with "not being able to bear a 20 minute dungeon". They are only there for frost emblems, and I don't get why you think your personal desire to clear every boss in OK should outweigh their desire to skip it, especially to the point where you claim moral superiority and call them lazy. Oh, and by the way, the Blue post by Cyrgil doesn't even say what you claim it says, Rossi. It actually has nothing to do with legitimate boss-skipping in places like OK, but just explains why they don't put in a mechanism to automatically skip to the last boss in all dungeons. But thanks for spreading your misinformation without even bothering to post the quote or even understand it. Now millions will read your opinion with no counterpoint and use it to make the lives of perfectly nice and rational people more difficult. Thanks so much.

Example 2. This one is smaller and more petty on my part. Matt Low (who's personal blog World of Matticus is excellent) posts a brief news clip about the Night Elf Mohawk NPC being removed from the game. Then he goes on to fill space by ranting about how much he hates the grenade. Which is of absolutely zero value to anyone reading news. Stop it.

Imagine if you read a news article in the New York Times entitled "Obama Passes Health Care" in the news section and the article read: "I hate Obama, and today a disasterous health care bill was passed by the evil snakes in Congress that's certainly only going to screw the country up." Maybe you agree with that statement, but the point is it belongs in the opinion section, not the news section.

So please, wow.com bloggers: take the responsibility that goes with your massive audience and noteriety seriously. Stop abusing it to try to unduly influence the playerbase with your personal opinions without giving equal voice to disagreement. (I mean outside the largely-ignored comments section) Stop even abusing it to waste everyone else's time by venting your ill-thought-out personal feelings and masquerading it as content.

Thanks.

Oh, and if you have any sympathy for wow.com, this will kill it: check out this shit. Michael Sacco should issue a public apology. Or be . . . heh heh . . . sacked. :D

Mass Effect 2 Thoughts

2010-02-19T12:13:00.010-05:00

WARNING: This post contains spoilers for Mass Effect 2 and Dragon Age.

I'm finally done with Mass Effect 2.

I'm not talking about "finishing the game". I've done that 3 times already. I mean that I'm finally done with the game and can move on to other things. Its stranglehold on my brain has slackened. I was unable to achieve escape velocity until I'd explored every nook and cranny, completed every quest, and gotten my fill of shooting at giant robots.

Mass Effect 2, like Bioware's other recent RPG release Dragon Age, is a game about choices, but unlike DA, it's also about consequences. That's partly because DA is the first in a series and ME2 is the "Empire Strikes Back" of a trilogy, so you see the consequences of your choices from the first game and always hold the possible consequences for ME3 in your mind (does anyone doubt that ME3 will be about uniting the galaxy against the incoming Reaper fleet?). But it also has to do with the impact of your choices in ME2.

In DA, you can't get to the end without recruiting the four main armies, and the differences your choices make in the ending sequence are largely cosmetic. Sure, your actions lead to each faction having a different leader, and maybe you have stone golems or werewolves on your side, but in the end that doesn't amount to much in the climax.

In ME2, you simply need to complete a certain number of missions to progress to the end, so if you do some sidequests you don't need to recruit every crew member, and you certainly don't need to make any or all of them loyal. Even if you do a loyalty quest, the way you choose to complete it can actually prevent that squad member from becoming loyal. You also don't need to get every upgrade to progress. This matters because all of these choices have consequences. Neglecting to upgrade your ship can actually kill your crew members in the final assault, and loyalty, along with your choices, determines who in your crew survives as the end sequence progresses. Even the choice to do sidequests before heading off for the final battle can lead to dire consequences that impact both the talking and combat aspects of the game.

I think by integrating these consequences and making your choices more impactful, Mass Effect 2 is a leap ahead of Dragon Age. Add in the fact that the combat gameplay is just so much better in ME2, and I don't see much reason to go back and replay DA even though I've chain-replayed ME2.

Much ado has been made on the internetz about how streamlined ME2 is, and how it barely qualifies as an RPG instead of a shooter because the itemization and character development have been simplified.

Having played ME1, I can say unequivocally that this streamlining is an exceedingly good thing. ME1's items and levelling could fairly be described as a "clusterbumblefuck." The reason ME2's is so good is because it almost eliminates item management and scales back on talent points without losing depth. This is a very important lesson for game developers to learn, because otherwise you end up with disasters like Final Fantasy 12 where I gave up 2/3 of the way through the game because I was tired of grinding mobs so I could vendor wolf pelts.

The beauty of these streamlined systems in ME2 is in their immediacy. There is no more fumbling with a menu after every mission, or even checking every time you pick up a new item to see if it's an upgrade. You can get to the actual play. At the same time, if you decide you want to change your weapon loadout or focus on certain skills, you can. It's just that those parts don't weigh so heavily on the game anymore. It makes the game feel more like an action game while still giving RPG depth and meaningful choices.

This idea that depth and choice without unnecessary complexity will lead to good gameplay (a tenet the WoW devs have recently embraced more fully) is evident throughout the entire design of ME2. Most noticeable is in the new combat system, where 3 different types of possible armoring on enemies leads to more interesting gameplay scenarios, and gives you a legitimate reason to switch guns or modify your strategy without being gimmicky or annoying. It makes the fights more interesting by constantly making you feel like you are making impactful strategic choices and demonstrating mastery.

The class design reinforces this. One of the greatest masterstrokes of ME2 was giving each character class a different special power that only that class has access to. For instance, my Vanguard had a unique "biotic charge" ability that would instantly teleport me into an enemy across the room, knocking them back, shielding me, and slowing down time so I could land a perfectly-aimed shotgun blast into their internal organs. My Sentinel had a "tech shield" that afforded an extra layer of tanky protection and knocked back enemies when it was destroyed. Infiltrators were the only ones with access to cloaking. I think the only place Bioware failed with this system was in making the special ability for the Engineer be attack drones, because there are a few squad members who also have that ability. The other unique class abilities are not shared by any non-player characters or even enemies. These abilities gave each class a clear identity and a totally different playstyle, a massive improvement over ME1's muddled classes.

Despite these victories, the game is far from perfect. Sure, exploring planets for resources and anomolies is streamlined into a mini-game, but the mini-game is mind-numbingly boring and tedious. If there is one thing that needs to be removed, it's that. One reviewer even demanded that Bioware issue a public apology. It's that bad.

The Security Bypass and Hacking mini-games are also tedious interruptions that could stand to be sheared off, though they are better than the "circular frogger" Bypass from ME1. I do like the idea of having some active player involvement in hacking, so perhaps instead of scrubbing the games, they should just be replaced with something better. For instance, the word games from Fallout 3's hacking system were infinitely better than the lame match games ME2 requires you to play. At the same time, F3's slower pace might have just been a better fit for that type of game.

The morality system is also limited, though it works well in its own way. Most interactions give you three choices of response: Paragon (generally "nice"), neutral, and Renegade (generally "not so nice", but not to be confused with "evil"). You cannot play a Shepard who is not trying to save the world, so either you do it by helping people out or you do it by blunt-forcing your way through situations.

The morality system suffers from being yoked to the "negotation" system. What this means is that certain Paragon or Renegade dialogue options only open up if you've already built up points by acting like a P or an R. This wouldn't be so bad, except these special options tend to be much better than the default options, and often have a major impact on your gameplay. For instance, you can get discounts at stores if one of your scores is high enough, and you can - without warning - even lose the loyalty of a crew member if you haven't built your score up in one of the two directions by a certain point in the game. I think the game suffers for this, because I tended to feel like my choice was taken away most of the time because I had to take the Paragon options just to build my Paragon score, even though I didn't think that option was the one my mostly-Paragon Shepard would really choose. The system basically punishes you for making choices in shades of grey, and that's a major failing they should fix in the third installment.

Those are my "deep thoughts" on the game, having completed it once neutrally, once as a Renegade, and once as a Paragon. On my first "blind" playthrough, I managed to keep everyone alive except for poor Yoeman Chambers. On the second, my goal was to kill Shepard, but I failed. In order to die, you need to kill off every single member of your squad, and due to some missteps on my part both Zaeed and Miranda were alive at the end to save me. My final runthrough was meant to max out my Paragon points and get a "perfect" playthrough where everyone lived, I explored every planet, got every upgrade, did every sidequest, and maxed everything out in preparation for ME3.

Now that I'm done with all that, I feel like I've finally truly "finished" the game and I'm ready to move on. Next up: Final Fantasy 13 (and hopefully Starcraft 2 beta)!

Starcraft 2 Beta Test Begins

2010-02-17T16:27:00.001-05:00

After so many years of waiting, SC2 beta is finally starting today.

I didn't get an invite.

QQ

So um if anybody out there wants to give me an invite... well, let's just say I would be interested.

...

...

...anyone?

Mass Effect 2

2010-02-12T11:52:00.004-05:00

Please see above title for explanation about why I haven't posted in a while.

Dear god, this game is good. I won't blink if it's still on "top 5 games of the year" lists even in a 2010 that promises Starcraft 2, Heavy Rain, Final Fantasy 13, Bioshock 2 and a new Fallout.

I skipped the original Mass Effect because usually that type of spacefaring Sci-Fi doesn't interest me. But so many people I respect were saying so many good things about ME2 that I had to see what all the fuss was about this time around. Not wanting to sink the money until I was sure, I bought the original ME1 from Steam first for about $25.

It was a blast. The gameplay was basically a stripped-down Dragon Age (made by same company, actually) with more action-oriented combat. Sure, I was annoyed by the same things everyone else had been - elevator rides, the inventory mess, and the fucking Mako - but I loved the game all the same. My expectations were shattered as I discovered an intriguing and mature galaxy full of interesting stories and alien races to meet and mate with. I plowed through it in a few days, and had purchased the sequel off Steam before the credits were even done rolling.

Mass Effect 2 blew me away. It simplified the game in the most pleasant ways, all while somehow keeping it from getting simplistic. There was no more moon rover, no more long elevator waits, and the inventory was replaced by an elegant but fun upgrade system. And it continued the original's process of getting me attached to the characters and to my Shepard, which is no mean feat.

But the real superstar is the combat system. It's a cover-based third-person shooter in the vein of Gears of War (which I've never played) that adds in RPG elements like castable abilities and leveling. The gameplay is addictive, and I've found myself playing side missions just to get more time with the combat. That has never happened in an RPG before in the history of ever. It's just . . . it's just a joy to play.

I think one of the keys is that Mass Effect 2 never gets boring. There are only three things ever happening: either you are engrossed in the shooter gameplay, riveted by an incredibly epic cutscene, or involved in a satisfying or thought-provoking interactive conversation, all while surrounded by very pretty graphics, shockingly good voice acting, and excellent music. You are never sitting around bored. Gush, gush, gush!

[update] OK, it does get boring at one point: gathering resources from planets. You explore galaxies and scan planets for resources, but the scanning is super-slow and you have to do a ton of it for each upgrade, all while constantly replenishing your probe supply. And this is not optional because you need the minerals to buy upgrades. The hacking and bypassing minigames are also kind of tedious, though not as bad as the "frogger in a circle" known as ME1's manual bypass. [end update]

From someone who was raised on Final Fantasy instead of the PC RPGs like King's Quest or whatever, Mass Effect feels to me like the heir to the FF throne. While FF stays too traditional - sitting in the same rut and never seeming to evolve - the Mass Effect series is just chock full of new ideas and improvements while laying claim to the FF tradition of cinematic awesomeness.

Bioware are masters, and in my opinion, Mass Effect 2 is their masterpiece. I will certainly be writing much more about this game . . . after I finish my third playthrough. I can't seem to tear myself away.

Ensidia should be un-banned and given back their world first.

2010-02-04T14:17:00.004-05:00

So Ensidiagate (thanks Matticus) exploded yesterday. For those of you who haven't heard about it: Ensidia, arguably the world's top raiding guild, got the world-first kill of the Lich King in 25-man. Then, Blizzard revoked the achievements and suspended the entire guild for 3 days for "exploiting" to win the fight. Evidently, engineering items that cause siege damage bug out the encounter, causing it to become significantly easier. Rogues with engineering are known to use Saronite Bombs on cooldown to maximize their dps, and this kill was no exception.

There's been some half-hearted debate and full-hearted buzz about the subject in the WoW community, with many trying to decide if the ban and loss of the world first was justified.

Boubouille's post on the subject, including Ensidia's raid logs, should put this matter to rest.

There was no way for them to know the fight wasn't supposed to work that way. Using the saronite bombs is standard. And now they are screwed out of not only the world-first, but they have to wait an extra week to do hardmodes. This basically invalidates an entire tier of content for a world-first guild. All for doing something that they had no idea was wrong, and no way of knowing was wrong.

I'm not a fan of Ensidia, but they are in the right here, so their treatment is disappointing. Blizz should give it all back and make a big apology. Then wipe the egg off their faces.

WoW: Quick & Easy Guide to Playing a Rogue in Heroics

2010-02-04T11:16:00.010-05:00

This post is dedicated to Arisal, the most polite saronite slave in the EU.

So you've never played a rogue in World of Warcraft before. You don't really care enough about a character that just runs heroics for badges to bother with the extremely complicated and intimidating ins and outs of min/maxing raiding rogue dps. Maybe you aren't used to playing a melee class.

Well guess what? To do reasonably good dps in heroics, (and be an asset to your group in other ways) you barely have to do anything! No extra research, no spreadsheets, no dps simulators. Just copy this spec, follow a handful of guidelines, and hit just 5 buttons for fun and profit!

Talent Spec:

51/18/2

Mutilate is the easiest to play. Combat requires more buttons and Subtlety sucks, so let's ignore them for now.

Abilities:

OK, I lied. You may need 7 buttons, depending on who is in your group, but you really only have to use 4-5 on 90% of pulls. Those buttons are, in order of importance:

Mutilate
Fan of Knives
Envenom
Hunger for Blood
Tricks of the Trade
Slice and Dice
Garrote or Rupture (to put up a bleed so you can use Hunger for Blood. You can skip this if a dps warrior or feral druid is in your group)

Opening the fight: This is the only remotely complex thing I'm going to ask you to do. Just stay with me, it's worth it. Hit Esc to open your WoW menu. Select "Macros". Hit the button at the bottom to create a new one, and select the question mark icon from the list and name the macro "tricks". Then copy and paste the following text into the macro:

#showtooltip Tricks of the Trade
/cast [@focus] Tricks of the Trade

And drag the macro onto your action bar. Hotkey it so it's easy for you to reach.

At the beginning of every instance, target the tank and type:

/focus

and hit enter. You have now set it so that whenever you hit your tricks hotkey, you will cast Tricks of the Trade on the tank. You just became a major asset to your group because you give the tank a massive threat boost. Use this macro before EVERY PULL.

The only other concern you may have at the opening of the fight is Hunger for Blood. Keeping track of that buff and keeping it up can be annoying. The solution that's almost as effective: don't bother tracking it! Just refresh it every other pull! No complicated monitoring of the buff required.

There are two ways for you to refresh HfB every other pull. One of them is to start the fight from stealth, use Garrote, then HfB. Starting from stealth is preferable because of the Overkill talent. If you aren't starting from stealth, do a single Mutilate, then hit Rupture, then HfB. That's it. Just refresh it every other pull, and stop worrying!

Rotations:

AoE pulls (3+ enemies at once) are easy (and they make up most of today's heroics). Just pick a target in the pull and start autoattacking it. Then hit Fan of Knives over and over. Sure, you could squeeze out a few more dps in other ways, but it really won't matter in a heroic. Just spam FoK.

On single-target trash, you're generally just going to Mutilate until you have 4 or 5 combo points, then Envenom. You only need 4 to make Envenom worth it. If you want to ignore combo points, you can simply Mutilate x2, Envenom, repeat.

On bosses, simply add a single Slice and Dice to the beginning of your rotation. You will usually only need to use it once because the Cut to the Chase talent will keep it refreshed for you. You might need to use it again after a long break from dpsing a boss, like when the lightning guy in HoL splits into sparks or when the last boss in Drak'tharon turns you into a skeleton. Once SnD is up, just keep doing Mutilate x2, then Envenom.

Stats: every melee stat is reasonably good for you; don't sweat it too much. Put on all the agility leather you can get, gem for attack power and hit rating, and make sure you are at least over the 8% melee hit cap (though more hit after that is still good)

Weapons: Daggers. Get whatever the highest ilevel dagger is you can get, but if you have a choice get a slow mainhand (1.8 speed) and a fast offhand (1.3-1.5 speed). A nice starter offhand you can get on the AH for peanuts is Librarian's Paper Cutter.

Poisons: Instant Poison on your mainhand, Deadly Poison on your offhand. Don't forget them, and stay stocked up! You can buy them from a guy in the Dalaran Sewers.

Pictured: not the kind of Rogue this guide is about

Tips:

Stay behind your target when you can.

Don't be an asshole. Being a nice and humble sub-par player is better for your group than being an arrogant ass who happens to be top dps. Take it from the arrogant ass. :)

Be an asset to your group by paying attention to fight mechanics. Stay out of void zones, stop attacking when necessary.

Be nice to your healers and tanks.

I hope this guide makes it easy for new rogues to do reasonable dps without much work or attention. Playing a rogue well can be a blast, so have fun with it!

"Strike Teams" - A Substitute for Raids

2010-01-26T11:16:00.002-05:00

So I was thinking about SWtoR, and realizing that even if I played it, I probably wouldn't be in for the long-term because of the potential endgame. When it comes to raiding, I'd play WoW. That's Blizzard's wheelhouse, and you should do something different if you want to compete. Plus, a dozen smugglers and a dozen jedi all facing a single sith lord with 1 trillion hp or whatever just wouldn't fit with that world. Han Solo wouldn't be part of an MMO raid.

But if the endgame was just more 5-man stuff, it wouldn't seem like a "serious" game to me. There needs to be some way to step it up at max level, and the option to play with more than a single group should be there. However, building an endgame around 10- or 25-man groups is, frankly, not a good idea, especially considering how scheduled and job-like raiding becomes.

Then I had an idea that would fit perfectly in the Star Wars universe, and could be used in other games as well:

Strike Teams.

Instead of a 10-man raid on a dungeon, you have a pair of 5-man teams that are linked into a Strike Force, with a shared chat channel and some other ui components (scale it up for larger groups). Then, each Strike Team of 5 goes into the dungeon from two different entrances or angles, with two different goals that link together. You are still playing in 5-man groups, but you're also getting a more shared and epic experience akin to raiding.

Let me walk you through an example. I know some of the elements I'm about to describe aren't part of the ToR world, but let's pretend for this example that we are in the time period of the original Star Wars films:

You form a Strike Force out of two Strike Teams: Red and Blue (oh, oh, let us name them in-game!). Blue Team approaches an Imperial Battleship in a millenium-falcon type vehicle pretending to be a cargo delivery. Once in the hangar bay, they begin to take out stormtroopers on their way to disable some of the security measures of the ship. Meanwhile, Red Team sneaks up on the Battleship by hiding behind asteroids, and launches an attack in a set of x-wings just as Blue Team opens fire inside the ship, creating a mutual distraction for each other. Once Blue Team takes out some of the defenses, Red Team boards in a different section of the Battleship and progresses towards the brig to rescue a captured rebel leader. Meanwhile, Blue Team takes out security and creates distractions that help the enemy from noticing Red Team, utilizing constant communication between the teams. As the mission reaches its climax, Blue Team unexpectedly faces down a Sith officer who has appeared to put a stop to their sabotage, while Red Team is pinned against the locked door to a cargo chute that leads down to the hangar bay, fending off wave after wave of security bots while protecting the rebel leader. Once the Sith officer goes down, Blue Team can activate the hatch allowing Red Team to reach them, and both teams escape together on the Millenium Falcon. Perhaps they lay explosives before they leave, leading to a dramatic ending as the teams fly away from the exploding imperial ship.

What do you think?

Blood Princes 10-man

2010-01-22T15:20:00.003-05:00

This is a Public Service Message:

Blood Princes, the first boss in the blood wing of Icecrown Citadel, is currently buggy in 10-man mode. There have been a torrent of reports of the bugs on the WoW general forums, but no official blue response yet. The bugs boil down to:

The bosses seem to be doing the same amount of damage in 10-man as in 25. Obviously, this is a problem when your 25-man group has 6-7 healers and your 10-man group has 2-3.

The purple orbs that are supposed to protect your shadow tank from Empowered Shadow Lance are not working as intended. The ESL does around 90k damage unmitigated, but each orb reduces that by roughly half, so with 4 orbs the tank should only take around 11k. I witnessed multiple wipes where a tank with 4 or more took 22k hits, and many others on the forums corroborated this. I verified this both visually and with multiple players' combat logs, on at least 5 different attempts. They aren't working right.

You have a 50/50 chance that the shadow boss will become empowered around the time the 3rd shadow orb spawns, making it impossible to have the 4 orbs that would make him safe and healable without big cooldowns.

Reports of damage done by the Princes vary. It may be different for different raid groups. Some report very low damage, some incredibly high.

It's clear something is wrong with the tuning of the 10-man version. Many 10-man strict guild especially are reporting problems, while 25-man guilds that overgear the instance tended to be able to beat the encounter, but uniformly found it much more difficult in 10-man compared to 25-man, which I'm pretty sure is not intended. Right now these guys are harder on 10-man than the endwing plague boss Putricide, which isn't intended, especially when they are reportedly a pushover in 25-man mode. We are executing the fight perfectly, and managing the other mechanics without a hitch, but every attempt ends with the shadow tank being insta-gibbed, either with 4+ protective orbs, or before 4 orbs could even spawn.

Lending more credence to this bug are the similar fixed bugs with Marrowgar (doing 25-man damage in 10-man) and Putricide (25-man aoe ticking for 10-man amounts). It looks like they simply did it again. Yet another in a chain of bugs that are stifling progress for 10-man-only guilds like mine.

Hopefully Blizzard will stop worrying about the resilience changes long enough to fix this encounter soon.

UPDATE: Well that was quick! Daelo responds:

Blood Prince Council

Prince Keleseth will no longer melee players. So if you get knocked into Keleseth or happen to move by him, he won't swipe in between his casts and kill a non-tank.
The first Shadow Resonance should appear earlier in the fight, which will allow the Keleseth tank to have more orbs on him or her if Keleseth is empowered second instead of third. We didn't want which Blood Prince was empowered second to be a major element of the difficulty in the fight.
We reduced the melee damage for the Princes by 10% for the 10 player difficulty. They were doing less damage than the 25 player before the hotfix, but this change lowers the damage further.
Empowered Flames will now run out of power after shooting fewer firebolts in the 10 player difficulty. We did not change the initial impact damage.

Is gear doing the carrying? And WoW class guides!

2010-01-15T11:29:00.005-05:00

Forgive me father, for I am about to be a complete asshole:

A meme has been making the rounds in reference to the performance deficit between players in random heroics. The argument goes thusly:

"Player 1 thinks he is carrying Player 2 because he does twice as much dps. But in reality, it's just his own gear that is carrying Player 1 himself!"

This is wrong on so many levels. The quickest one to note is that tons of people are wearing full tier 9 now and still sucking.

The largest and most onerous problem with the idea of "gear doing the carrying" is that it completely ignores all the time and effort put into getting that gear and optimally gemming and enchanting it. It even ignores the research that goes into getting the right gear. Yes, the stats on the gear do contribute to the performance of the character. But that person put in the time and effort to get the gear and prep it. You can't just consider the gear in a vacuum. MMO's are about time, effort and skill put in to progress your character almost as much as they are about being a good player. If you want a game where all that's considered is skill, play an online shooter. If you want a game where all that's considered is what a nice person you are, play Facebook.

This is why going in ungemmed is so onerous. Leaving out gems will reduce your damage just as much as having a crappy rotation. So both should be reviled.

If you don't gem, you are saying "I care so little about my performance and helping the group that I'm not willing to spend a few gold on the AH before I Q up. Now please use those gems you paid for to make the run go faster for me while I slow you down. And I'm not slowing you down because I'm new, inexperienced, or simply haven't gotten the gear yet (which would be understandable), but simply because I'm cheap and don't give a crap about other people."

If you do not gem, you are a jerk. Plain and simple. You should not have a good self-image.

And I should not have to bother saying that! How far we as a people have fallen that someone actually has to say "please gem your gear"!

At the same time, I have a lot of sympathy for new players with suboptimal rotations. Finding the right information is not always easy - oh wait, it is, just go to elitistjerks.com, or any of the million WoW sites and blogs that explain to you step-by-step exactly how to play your character!

I even did the work for you: (you'll never guess how I found these...google!)

Death Knight
Druid
Hunter
Mage
Paladin
Priest
Rogue
Shaman
Warlock
Warrior

You now have no excuse.

Or is there something I'm missing that makes reading things on the internet just too hard to bear?

Games that are Metal: Darksiders

2010-01-13T12:52:00.003-05:00

This guy is a horseman of the apocalypse from the recent beat-em-up Darksiders. Check this mutha out:

He's like some grunge-loving The Crow fan's fever dream (read: I would love to look like this IRL). Not much of a surprise, because the awesome artist Joe Madureira also drew the X-men in the mid-90's.

This is the first image that comes up when you google his name:

YOU OFFICIALLY WIN THE INTERNET, GOOD SIR.

Blue Post: Random is Not Random

2010-01-12T14:52:00.001-05:00

Some nice insight into how the Dungeon-o-matic 5000 works. Might shed some more light on my Oculus rants. Courtesy of Zaryhm:

"No, it's not random. There are some loose gear checks and gear matching systems in place. The Dungeon Finder weights dungeons you've already run a little lower, but then also looks at who is in the queue, what they are in the queue for, and tries to figure out the quickest way to get you inside a dungeon. It's a fairly complicated algorithm that isn't trivial, took a good deal of time to develop, and we're happy with the way it's turned out. Ultimately, it's getting players in dungeons with minimal wait times, but it's not completely random."

I'm on Twitter now, and the "controversy" of Spitfires' guest post on Matticus

2010-01-12T11:45:00.011-05:00

So yeah, now that I got a new smartphone that I brag about at every opportunity, I've joined the 2008 and started twatting. You can follow me on Twitter:

@EscHatch

I always poo-poo'd Twitter, but I'm discovering that you miss out on a lot of the interwebs conversation if you aren't there. For instance, I saw an intriguing twoot by prominent WoW blogger Matticus this morning:

matticus I sealed off that "controversial" guest post on my blog. Tired of moderating shit and tired of being accused I do stuff "for the hits".

The guest post he is referring to was by We Fly Spitfires, and it was indeed controversial. It was titled: "Tanks and Healers Should Get the Biggest Rewards". And boy, am I sad that there is controversy over that statement. Of course they should get some extra reward, because when compared to DPS, they are in higher demand, have more responsibility and harder jobs, and are really the crux of the group. Which is basically what Spitfires said.

I say this as a DPS who will top anyone but Jong on the meters while not pulling aggro or breaking CC or standing in bad shit, while leading the raid. When it comes down to it, I am the first to admit that no matter how leet my superstar dps is, I'm just a piece of interchangeable meat compared to the tank.

And sadly, speaking that truth is where Spitfires' post went wrong. Instead of the comments section becoming a reasonable debate about the differences between the roles and how we can incentivize the less popular roles, it became an angry flamefest in response to a few choice phrases he used to (coughaccuratelycough) describe DPS in most situations:

“But the DPS? They’re just meat in the room.”

“DPS are a dime a dozen.”

“DPS can just be picked up randomly as required.”

“I’ve got nothing against DPS. It’s fun and there’s nothing wrong with that but they simply don’t deserve the equality of rewards.”

I think he's absolutely right, (especially in the dungeon finder) except when it comes to the most high-end of raids, or in the case of absolutely terrible dps. But the bottom line is: your raid or group can handle one bad dps. Your raid or group is going nowhere with a bad tank or healer. Unless you are in complete denial of reality, the fact that there is a difference in the value of tanks and healers compared to dps, no matter how good the dps, is indisputable.

But petty little egos must be fed, so the the fragile, defensive dps players must come out and express how insulted they are. Bad dps! Bad! Back to the LFG Q with you!

Spitfires asked the right question, but tragically in the wrong way (not that I would do any different). Tanking and healing are more important than dps while requiring more responsibility and skill. And there is a shortage of both. DPS, it is in your best interest to encourage people to play tanks and healers at every turn. Kiss their feet. Massage their aching shoulders. Buy them presents. Take off your robe and wizard hat if you have to.

Just stop pretending like you matter as much as they do.

Signed,

Your fellow dps who never has to wait for a tank or healer because he knows how to treat them.

PS: Just saw Rohan's thoughtful post on this issue. In light of it, I'd like to clarify that I don't think there is any "moral superiority" to tanking or healing, which is probably the perception that rubbed dps the wrong way. I am referring only to their higher value due to scarcity, and the increased personal responsibility of those roles.

Rohan makes a good point that at high level play, dps matter more and more. For instance, my guild runs two ICC 10 runs a week (one of them contains some geared alts and friends of the guild). The only real difference between the groups is the gear and experience level of the dps. Group 1, full of our best dps, pushes progression content while our second group has to actually try Saurfang twice before he goes down, can't beat Festergut, etc. And those dps aren't bad by any stretch, they just aren't the extraordinary deliverers of beatdowns that the other group is.

BUT - and that's a capital but for those of you paying attention - I'd argue that a tank or healer still has more personal individual responsibility, even in the highest-end raids, simply based on numbers. We as DPS are less important because there are 17-19 of us. There are 2-3 tanks and 5-8 healers (in my case in 10-mans its 5 vs. 2 and 3, a similar ratio). No matter how much great dps can "carry" a tank at the high end, it still won't fully make up for the responsibility of being part of a smaller group.

Plus, they are still rarer - but I would never argue that they are morally superior. I do argue that they should be pampered and incentivized so they become less rare.

A Treatise on Oculus, Part 4: The Solution

2010-01-08T11:23:00.006-05:00

Back to Part 3

So, now we have established that Occulus is different than every other Wrath heroic, and in fact 99.9% of the rest of the game, and we’ve established that, no matter what your personal feelings about the instance, these differences have caused negative consequences, especially when combined with how the Dungeon Finder works. First, I’m going to suggest three simple things to change in Occulus that I believe will “fix” it and for the most part and eliminate the negative impacts that I listed earlier. Then, I will suggest a small set of low-impact changes to the Dungeon Finder itself to put the reality of the player experience more in line with what I stated earlier to be the developers’ primary intent with the system. Finally, I'm going to give some suggestions for the Blizzard developers on how they might avoid similar mistakes in the future.

How to fix Oculus:

1) Change the spawn distribution of the enemy “trash” drakes. Instead of having them spread out in singles throughout the sky, place them in groups of 3 as “packs”. One of these packs will auto-aggro as you approach a robot platform during the second part of the instance, meaning that a normal group will face only 3 of these groups. A few more packs can be around the instance for flavor, as long as they aren’t too close together or likely to be directly in the group’s path.

2) Greatly decrease both the time the final boss takes and his difficulty. Eregos is the only boss in the instance you fight while on drakeback, and as such he should be nerfed, hard. Blizzard already did this to some degree, but I don’t think it was enough. He should only summon drakes twice, and should only banish himself and send sparks after you once. Then just cut about 20% of his health off. Now he’s more on par with the difficulty and time commitment of a boss in any other heroic.

Yes, Eregos can be very easy if you have a great group. But we aren’t talking about fixing the instance for an experienced group of guildies. We are talking about fixing it for random dungeon finder pugs, which are more likely to have ungemmed pvp-geared DKs who have never seen the instance before than they are to have good players.

3) Visual guides. Probably the biggest problem with Oculus compared to other heroics is how easy it is to get lost. There are no hallways, and shockingly few ways for someone who hasn’t been there, or even someone who gets lost, to tell where they are or where they are supposed to go, and this problem is compounded by the vertical nature of the instance. I know that it’s going to sound like I’m rebuilding this instance for a short bus full of blind people (oh wait I am), but when you think about the linear hallways of every single other heroic, you have to admit it makes sense. There are a few options for visual cues that will help people find their way:

Lines of light: This would be the best option, but I’m not 100% sure the tech is there on Blizzard’s end. When a boss or pack dies, a beam of light appears leading directly to the next objective. So, you kill the first boss, and a beam of light arcs up from that platform leading to one of the platforms above you with robots on it. Once you beat the last enemy on one of those platforms, another beam of light appears leading to the next one, etc.

Dragon Guide: similar to the beams of light. Once you beat the first boss, a friendly drake NPC leashes to your party and helps you fight. It follows a script as each enemy pack dies, leading you to the next one.

Platform coloration: Each “level” of the instance (sections between each boss) should be a different color, first of all. Then, ideally, the next platform you need to get to should turn a pulsing bright red until you get there.

Basically any strong, noticeable visual cue will work, but I think these would be the most effective.

Now that Oculus is fixed, let’s move on to how to improve the Dungeon Finder. I do not know if these are technically possible, but they are improvements that directly address the Oculus problem:

1) Weight the instances based on how many people have entered (not completed) the instance that day on that battlegroup. If tons of people are leaving Oculus, it’s less likely to show up for others. This is preferable to the mess of people leaving as soon as the loading screen is done.

2) If someone leaves in first 2 minutes, your group gets teleported out of the dungeon and inserted back into the front of the Q to replace those who left. The next dungeon will be assigned randomly. You can only do this once before you’ll have to leave Q and wait out the debuff if you want to get a different random dungeon.

Future lessons for Blizzard:

Thinking back to the early coverage of Wrath, Oculus was one of the most talked-about and anticipated pieces of content (oh, how things have changed!). It showcased the vehicle tech and promised an era of new and exciting instance design (that was only partially realized). In short, Oculus was actually a good idea. I’m glad they went for it. They just blew the execution spectacularly.

So I definitely think Blizzard should keep trying new things with instances. But how can they avoid a repeat of the failure of Oculus?

For one thing: don’t throw so much new and different stuff at us at once. If you want to add vehicles, then make sure the abilities are simple, the paths are clear and linear, the gear scaling is strong, and the enemies behave in traditional ways. If you want an open-world instance with scattered single enemies, don’t make people fly an unfamiliar drake with unfamiliar abilities in a 3-D plane at the same time. Before I knew what Oculus was actually like, I imagined it would be much like Nexus, only with a hole in the middle that you had to fly your drakes through. That would have worked much better. You clear a linear set of hallways, then do a brief drake flight across a chasm to reach the next clearly-marked linear hallway to dismount into.

Another thing to keep in mind: people like to play their characters much more than they like vehicles. If more than 25% of the instance is vehicle-based, you screwed up. Also, take a lesson from Ulduar and do not force players to start an instance in a vehicle first thing. Nothing was more annoying to me than having to do Flame Leviathan at the beginning of a raid week when I was just itching to play my character and get further into the instance.

Also, keep in mind how the instance will compare to other instances. If you add new mechanics, vehicles, or flying (or swimming! Hint hint!), compensate for it somehow. Make the instance easier or shorter than the more traditional ones. Or add an easy “freebie” boss with good loot. Plus, fully account for scaling from the very beginning. We’ve learned from Oculus that once an instance gets a bad reputation, it can be nearly impossible to improve that image in the eyes of the playerbase. By the time you start hearing complaints about how Oculus 2.0 doesn’t scale so geared people don’t want to go there, it’s already too late. Think of it ahead of time.

Finally, and by far most importantly: hire more fucking people to develop and test instances. There is no goddamn excuse for Oculus to be released the way it was, to be as ill-thought-out as it was, and to remain so shitty for so long. There is not enough content in this game. Blizzard has enabled us to consume content more quickly and accessibly than ever before, but development has not even begun to keep pace despite the literal fortune of cash we send them every month (which gets siphoned directly into Bobby Kotick’s pockets instead, awesome). Get more people on it, and get more testing done by intelligent people who know their shit. I could name 20 people in the community right now who would accept peanuts as pay (literally) if they got to go to Blizzard every day and test instances. Smart people.

People who could have made something better than Oculus with their eyes closed and using nothing but their nipples to type in the lines of code.*

Thanks for reading, and may all your randoms be VH.

*Blizzard devs are smart and skilled, I’m just suggesting they are understaffed. They had too much time pressure and too few resources to get Wrath done, and that’s why Oculus is so bad. Not because they are bad developers or people.

WoW Radio Closing Its Doors . . . Sort Of.

2010-01-07T13:20:00.005-05:00

My favorite podcast provider announced a few days ago that it will be closing down. WCRadio.com, affectionately known as WoW Radio, has been around for 6 years, providing a centralized, united source of WoW media, flagshipped by their fleet (wait, that metaphor made no sense...) of weekly WoW podcasts, and accentuated by events like their exhaustive Blizzcon coverage and WoW Idol, a showcase of WoW-themed music created by fans*

But thankfully, WoW Radio won't really be gone. Each of its nearly a dozen podcasts will be continuing on their own, and the wcradio.com site will become a hub to help us keep track of where they've gone. Though my favorite podcasts will continue, and perhaps even be improved now that the overhead of running the entire organization is gone, I can't help but feel, with a twinge of sadness, that this is the end of an era.

So long and thank you, WoW Radio.

If you, dear reader, are not listening to WoW Radio, here's what you should be downloading right now:

Blue Plz!

Winner of Larisa's "Best Podcast" award for 2009, and my favorite podcast ever, Blue Plz! is not to be missed. Snarky solo host Totalbiscuit brings his homebrewed combo of British wit and belligerence to bear on the most controversial WoW topics of the day . . . and if there isn't a topic of the day, he'll make up some controversy on the spot! He's intelligent, opinionated, and always entertaining, and he's not letting the over-entitled get away with anything.

Except . . . TB . . . please stop it with the "singing".

Casually Hardcore

Much more generally inviting, but only slightly less entertaining, is Casually Hardcore. It's hosted by a team of older gamers (in their 30s) who talk about trying to fit WoW gaming into their busy lives around their children ("Nemesis" can often be heard interrupting the show to ask his parents for a juice box), jobs, and other hobbies, but it's by no means dry. Hosts Gnomewise, Iolite, Gwenora, Daksa, and Grail (a nice mix of 3 men and 2 women) imbue the show with constant levity and humor, and most of the meat of the show is about relaying and digesting WoW news to help the casual player keep up with what is going on and actually make sense of it. They definitely showcase what it means to be "casual" without any of the negative connotations that word sometimes gets.

Octale & Hordak vs. The World

You are the world, and they are versus you! Often imitated, never duplicated, and sometimes eviscerated, hosts Octale and Hordak - along with their 3rd wheel Doc Dead - are smart guys with a great sense of humor. Though the show rarely discusses WoW anymore, instead focusing on other developments in the wider world of gaming, it's non-stop entertainment. Their use of "drop-ins" (a common radio trick of using audio clips they can play at the push of a button) is especially enjoyable.

the rest

The three I've already listed are at the top of my weekly podcast listening list, but that doesn't mean that the rest of WoW Radio's offerings are any worse. For more Totalbiscuit, listen to his general gaming show called "Gaming the System". Natural20 provides great guides to WoW class mechanics in "Just Plain Better", which I'd highly recommend to anyone who wants to better understand their class. General gaming show "Maxspeed" is also entertaining (if a little bit more on the juvenile side) and "But Wait, There's Lore" is great for people who care about - you guessed it - lore.

So if you are interested enough in WoW to be reading this blog, I highly recommend you check out the shows on WoW Radio, and follow them as they go their separate ways. It is a sad day to see an institution in the community go, but I can't be too sad when the podcasts are still going to be there.

And finally, I want to offer a heartfelt "thank you" to WoW Radio for all of the hours of entertainment you've provided for me. Keep it up.

*Check out Brewguy, especially "The Ganker", and Fatty, especially "Nerdcore".

A Treatise on The Oculus, Part 3: Working as Intended?

2010-01-06T12:23:00.005-05:00

Click here to go back to Part 2

Yes, I know I spelled it wrong in the graphic.

I'm forging ahead with my original set of posts, despite the many changes made to The Oculus this week (thank you Blizz!). When I give my own suggestions for "fixing" the instance tomorrow, you'll see that I somewhat support the route Blizzard has taken, but would have done it slightly differently. I just wish I had posted this over the holidays when I originally began jotting down these ideas.

Back to business!

“Random is random.” This is a refrain on the WoW General Forums in the extremely common event that a player begins a new thread to complain about getting Oculus in the random Dungeon Finder an inordinate number of times, seemingly defying all statistical odds. If such a thread is started less than 3 times an hour, then it’s a slow day.

But the Dungeon-o-matic is, in fact, not purely random. It uses weights, which influence the outcome. For instance, if a player already completed a heroic once today, they are less likely to get it again. Which means that if the Finder puts you in a group with them, you too are less likely to see that dungeon. Another influence is the built-in gear thresholds. Fewer people in the Q will be allowed to do Halls of Reflection, so you are less likely to see it than one of the Wrath release dungeons.

So you can already see how the system is slightly weighted to give you Oculus: it's the least likely heroic for someone else in your group to be already saved to, and it has no gear requirement.

But the biggest reason why the supposedly "random" system gives you Oculus all the time (and I know there are many who, like Larisa, have resigned themselves to an eternal purgatory of running nothing but the big O when they Q for a random) is that if a group loses a member, they get put back in the system at the front of the line. Think about that for a second, and realize that whenever you are put in a group, you too are necessarily at the front of the line. Now add in the fact that Oculus is the only dungeon that players leave immediately in droves. Combine that with the fact that, as I have already explained, it is the most likely to be failed and/or have people leave or be kicked during the instance. Suddenly, you find yourself playing a kind of Russian Roullette where most of the front of the Q is populated by partial groups already in Oculus who are looking to fill in the spots left by leavers.

That is the explanation for why everyone is constantly getting Oculus, in defiance of all "random" odds.

To be fair, the system really is, in a sense, "random" because it's not preferentially putting you in any single dungeon. It's just that circumstances are exposing a specific weakness in the system Blizzard chose to use to place people in dungeons. The Dungeon Finder isn't broken at all. But is it really working as intended? True, the system is working "as designed". But I'd argue that the intent of the developers when creating the Dungeon Finder is not being fulfilled.

I do not believe that they intended for people to get Oculus constantly (and too much Old Kingdom and Halls of Stone, to a lesser extent). "Because they wanted that type of system" is not the reason they made a random system. They made a random system to achieve a goal, and in this case that goal was twofold:

1) Provide players with variety, showing them all of the dungeons in a roughly even distribution. A purely randomized system would be excellent for this goal - but, as we've seen, this Finder isn't purely random.

2) Prevent exploitation: keep players from being able to repeat the "easiest" dungeon over and over, or otherwise "game" the system to gain better rewards or grief their groupmates.

The current system is doing OK at achieving (2), but failing spectacularly at (1). Players are not getting variety. Players hitting the "random dungeon" button are nearly guaranteed to see Oculus, and maybe HoS or AK:OK. This is not very fun.

Tomorrow, I'll wrap up this series by discussing solutions for both The Oculus itself and the Dungeon Finder tool. Blizzard has already implemented pretty decent changes, but I intend to both improve upon those changes and offer advice for how future designs can avoid the pitfalls The Oculus hit.

Until then, may all your randoms be VH!

I spell "Oculus" wrong, but I'm too lazy to change the graphic I made.

2010-01-06T12:11:00.002-05:00

Just FYI, I'm not talking about a dragon in Tanaris. :)

Turns out I should be calling it "The Oculus". Sigh.

Sidebar: Once back at level 70, while waiting for a CoT group to form up, 3 of us decided to take on Anachronos, an elite boss dragon outside the Caverns. After about 10 minutes of beating on him, he reached 20% health and totally ****blocked us by despawning and saying ""A terrible and costly mistake you have made. It is not my time, mortals."

I'm totally going to say that to Rotface the next time he kills me, and then despawn. Take that!

A Treatise on Occulus, Part 2: "The New Heroic" & "Like a Different Game"

2010-01-05T16:54:00.004-05:00

Back to Part 1

Now that Blizzard has put another Band-Aid on the Occulus problem, one that I believe will stick, I’ll redirect the thrust of this thesis towards discussing what actually went wrong here and how Blizzard can avoid it when designing Cataclysm without giving up on trying novel ideas for dungeons.

When the “3.3 PuG-o-matic Deluxe” (thanks Ixo) was impending on the PTR, the Blizzard developers recognized that Occulus was the least popular – and in fact, the most reviled – of the heroic dungeons. They nerfed it, adding gear scaling to the player drakes and nerfing every enemy in the instance. As evidenced by the many continuing problems with the dungeon, their gesture was insufficient. That’s because the problem with Occulus is not that it’s “hard”. Let me illustrate with two quotes from my guildies.

Soon after 3.3 hit, one of my guildies noted that change to the landscape of max-level 5-mans. She described it as “The New Heroic: push the lever, get a pellet.” To a certain degree, WoW – and most MMOs – have always been about performing a task for a reward, like the quintessential lab rat pushing a lever for a food pellet. But never before have heroic dungeons, the pinnacle of 5-man content, been so blankly lever-like. The New Heroic is all about blowing mindlessly through easy dungeons as quickly as possible, disenchanting every useless item along the way as you grind out Emblems. Anything that gets in the way of the pellet – any added complexity to the lever, if you will – is viewed with disdain. Bosses in HoL and DTK were “fixed” to accommodate the new status quo of bursting bosses down in 30 seconds (changes I support).

But, every time one speed bump is removed, the next most delaying boss mechanic becomes the new evil. Your massive overgearing of the content won’t help you get through the HoS computer event any faster, and Anub’arak and King Ymiron will still prevent you from attacking them to an annoying degree.

Occulus is pretty much made of speed bumps, and that’s one of the core reasons it is so undesirable in the Dungeon-o-matic environment. Back when all of the heroics were reasonably challenging, Occulus wasn’t quite so different. But now that the goal is to blast through as quickly as possible, the differences between Occulus and every other dungeon become more grievous.

No matter how many flat nerfs you apply, Occulus still won’t be comparable to other dungeons in the new environment.

The other quote from another of my guildies illustrates what’s really wrong with Occulus: “It’s like a different game”.

As I observed in the last installment, the game you played leveling to 80, and all of the other dungeons you do, share certain characteristics that Occulus does not. Let’s go through the list:

Abilities: Throughout the game, players learn to handle abilities based on their class. When put on a drake, they are robbed of every one of those abilities, and instead given 2-3 new abilities. This in itself wouldn’t be so difficult to manage, except each of these abilities tries to do too much at once, all while including effects that are not found elsewhere in the game. For instance, not only does the red drake’s attack chain to multiple targets, but contrary to every other chaining ability in the game, it does more damage to the secondary targets. The red drake shield and the bronze drake focusing beam are other clear examples of abilities with no analogue in the player’s normal arsenal and way too many simultaneous effects.

In a way, the abilities constitute a puzzle for the dungeon-crawler to solve. Unfortunately, players are looking for WoW’s gameplay, not a puzzle that involves reading ability tooltips and considering them in light of enemy abilities. The bottom line is that these abilities are difficult to figure out and constitute a massive roadblock to the expected “faceroll normal rotation for badges” that players expect in the New Heroic.

3-dimensional combat: Players spend the vast majority of the game locked down to the ground, limited to 2-dimensional movement. When they get flying mounts, they are explicitly prevented from engaging in any mounted combat. There are almost never dangers to avoid while flying, and certainly no dangers that cannot be escaped by continuing to fly away until the pursuer gives up. Players are simply never prepared for flying enemies who could come from any direction while they themselves are trying to navigate 3-D space on a 2-D screen.

Linearity: Most instances are sets of hallways, or otherwise quite linear. Occulus is a giant open space with very little clarity about where you are supposed to go next, especially considering how graphically same-y the whole place is. It’s very easy to get confused or lost, and even easier to lose track of where your group is.

Monster “Pulls”: All of the other dungeons in the game offer groups of stationary or patrolling enemies that you pull in a small group, dealing with each “pull” one at a time. Occulus fills the air with drakes who can spot you from above, below or to the sides, and rather than being pullable in groups, they stand individually, but literally fill the sky. This is very counter-intuitive for the player who is used to a normal enemy loadout in a dungeon.

Dismounting: In no other dungeon, as part of the normal, intended game mechanics, can you be rendered nearly unable to attack an enemy who is killing your party. Almost everyone has had an experience in Occulus where a flying drake pulled after your party had dismounted, forcing you to awkwardly kill the drake, if you were able to at all. The drakes are much harder to kill without your own mount, and if you don’t have a DK to death grip or are short on ranged dps, they can be a massive pain to deal with once you’ve dismounted.

Blunted gear scaling: People in tier 9 and 10 will mow over any other heroic. In Occulus, they will do a tiny bit more damage on a drake mount. No comparison.

Coordination Requirement: No other dungeon requires the coordination Occulus does. Aside from the difficulty of staying together without guiding hallways, and the dangers of straying an inch from your group and pulling 2 more adds, there is also the functionality of the bronze drakes. To maximize their dps, your group must work together in a way that requires either ventrillo, ESP, or unusually skilled and attentive play (which is not required anywhere else).

That’s a lot of differences, many of them drastically changing the core of the game and/or requiring a totally different set of skills.

One lesson Blizzard can take from Occulus is that when they get creative, they shouldn’t change too much all at once. We’ve seen many of the differences above in other dungeons, with much greater success. And that’s because only one or two of the above aspects are integrated, rather than all of them flying at your face trying to kill you at once.

The difference between Occulus and other dungeons is not simple “difficulty”. It’s the mix of changes to the gameplay that vastly increase the potential for disasters, as well as the potential that the players simply will not enjoy the dungeon.

Next, we’ll take a quick look at the Dungeon Finder itself, and its relationship to Occulus and consider whether or not it is working as intended. When is random not random?

Blizzard Poons Me, RE: Occulus

2010-01-05T12:08:00.002-05:00

To oversimplify, Occulus is riskier than other heroics. And one way to balance that risk (which I was going to suggest in my series of posts on the dungeon, which may or may not see the light of day now) is to offer better rewards.

Blizzard is incentivizing Occulus, and doing it pretty well:

To encourage players not to shy away from the many invigorating adventures to be had in The Oculus, we have applied a change to enhance the rewards players are provided when selected for this dungeon via the Random Heroic option in the Dungeon Finder. Once Ley-Guardian Eregos is defeated, one loot bag per character will be provided in his chest in addition to the current rewards. Each loot bag will offer players rare gems, two additional Emblems of Triumph, and a chance of being rewarded the Reins of the Blue Drake. These fine treasures could be yours should you honor your fellow party members by besting the challenges contained within The Oculus! Keep in mind, however, that these extra loot bags will only be awarded to each party member if Oculus is selected by the Dungeon Finder when players choose the Random Heroic option.

In light of this change, the Reins of the Azure Drake will now have a chance of dropping in both 10- and 25-player versions of The Eye of Eternity.

So clearing Occulus will now give you extra emblems, gems (hopefully epic rather than blue, remains to be seen) and a chance at a rare mount. Neat!

A Treatise on Occulus, Part 1: The Occulus Problem

2010-01-04T15:33:00.009-05:00

My goal with this Treatise on Occulus is nothing short of creating the definitive examination of what is wrong with the Occulus heroic dungeon and how the Blizzard developers might go about fixing it. This is not QQ. This is an acknowledgement of a problem that is very real and negatively impacts every WoW player who has ever used the new random dungeon finder. Though I do, of course, have personal feelings about Occulus, I will strive to look at this issue objectively; so that we might arrive at useful conclusions and solutions that could actually be implemented to improve the experience for every player, not just a niche. These solutions should help retain subscribers while improving the experience for the widest and deepest range of people.

But first: what exactly is wrong with Occulus? Depending on your attitudes toward the dungeon, you have undoubtedly experienced at least one of the following issues. But, as we will see, these tangible issues are all a manifestation of the same core problem.

Painful grouping experiences: if you decide to “stick it out” and run Occulus with a poor pug, you have experienced this at least once. For reasons I will get into in the next installment, Occulus is in a league of its own when it comes to the potential for things to go wrong in a heroic. If you go with a good group, you’ve had some good runs of the place, but you’ve also undoubtedly had some bad runs, especially with PuGs.

Leaving Occulus: On the opposite end of the spectrum, some leave the group immediately if they get randomed into Occulus, accruing a 15-minute penalty. This causes the next two:

Getting ditched in Occulus: you may plan to stick the dungeon out, but too many group members leave as soon as they see which instance they got, leaving you stranded, and in the worst cases, waiting in Q through a procession of tanks who refuse to do Occulus.

Getting Occulus when you random Q much more often than you get any other dungeon. I’ll explain the causes of this in Part 3, but it is a real and widespread phenomenon, and NOT a case of selection or perception bias. It is definitely actually occurring.

As you can probably guess, Problem 1) is the main cause the other three: people have bad experiences with PuGs in the dungeon, so many of them refuse to run it. But that is not the true cause. Problem 1) is the result of a more abstract Problem Zero: Occulus is a starkly different play experience than anything else you’ve ever done in your preceding WoW career.

This leads to two abstract sub-problems: Occulus is easier to screw up than any other heroic, and is more likely to be not fun for a given player than any other heroic (which is the other reason some players leave it immediately). If you got to level 80, you probably enjoy the normal WoW experience of using your class’s abilities in a 2D plane and running relatively linear dungeons made up primarily of hallways. However, your enjoyment of WoW gives absolutely zero indication of how much you will enjoy using a limited selection of unfamiliar abilities in an enemy-crowded 3-D environment (ie, riding the drakes).

We'll explore this idea further tomorrow in:
AToO, Part 2: “The New Heroic” & “Like a Different Game”

LFG [of jerks], or: Why I Hate the Dungeon Finder Now

2009-12-14T12:43:00.018-05:00

Remember how, only a few days ago, I praised the new LFG system in WoW?

I'm here now to tell you that I was a bit premature. All is not sugarplums, roses, and nude models.

The bottom line is something that we all already knew: people are assholes.

The core problem with the dungeon finder is also its core value proposition: it allows you to spend more time in random groups. Not only that, but it cycles you through those groups much more quickly, and pulls those groups from a larger pool of people. Add in the fact that most of those people are from another server and will never see you again, and you have the perfect recipe for a highly concentrated example of John Gabriel's Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory. I'm far from the first person to point out this downside of the system.

Being exposed to more people at a more rapid clip for longer periods of time means 1) you are spending more time with assholes, 2) you are seeing more different kinds of assholes (and remember, each asshole only has to be an asshole once), and 3) you are increasing the number of terrible pug experiences you can have per hour.

After the first day, people started to learn how to game the system and they started to figure out that they could bring their undergeared alts to everything, and other players wouldn't have much choice but to carry them (because of the penalties for leaving and the vote-kick timer, which I'll get into later). So over the past few days, almost every group I join has two people doing 1.5k or less dps (below the tank). Out of the dozens of groups I ran this weekend, only 3 were reasonably pleasant and competent. I had no idea before just how shitty WoW's community actually is. I'm not sure I want to keep playing a game that includes so many people who are just wastes of breath and Fritos.

Why does this food taste like asshole?

My stand-out bad experiences: a hunter joins heroic OK and proceeds to do 600 dps. When asked why, he says that he started the instance with his crossbow skill at 1, and he didn't bring any other weapons. He says he "could care less" about how rude, inconsiderate, and unfair that is to the group.

Or how about this: I join H Occ on my super-geared main. I see 4 people from the same guild on another server are my group, and they have decent gearscores. So I compliment them, saying "it's nice to see a geared group, so many of my groups lately have had sub 1k dps". We go through the run, and get to a part when we are about to land on a floating platform. Everyone gets into landing position, and the mage actually dismounts, so I think it's OK to land. After the mage dismounts, the tank and healer go off alone, still on their drakes, to kill a random drake nearby. The tank gets killed. On an unnecessary drake that hadn't even seen us. At the same time, the mage runs forward and aggros the pack. I assume we are dead, so I run around in circles waiting for the wipe.

After we wipe, the group starts screaming at me about how I should have gone into frost presence and prevented the wipe (without the healer, mind you), and says I'm a terrible player. I tried to defuse the situation and be classy, but they wouldn't have it. They kept flinging insults, even though they had actually just wiped in a 5 man as a group from the same guild, despite their raid gear. They must have been so embarrassed to fail like that in front of me that they had to blame me. It was pathetic. I just let it go, and just kept running the instance, because I didn't really care about what random internet idiot said. But then we kill the 3rd boss and are flying up to engage the last boss, and they vote to kick me out of nowhere so I can't get my frost emblems. Classy.

But that's not even the worst part of the dungeon finder. The worst is the number of people showing up with quest greens or empty gem slots (not even getting into the lack of enchants). Please, please, please have the consideration to at least put a green gem in there before you queue up for a heroic. Remember that your group is made up of other people whose time is valuable, and you do not have a right to waste their time. You are not entitled to be carried, and they are not "bad people" if they don't want to pick up your slack.

THe LFG system is shaping up to be a way to yoke geared, competent players and pressure them to carry crappy, undergeared, inconsiderate players (presumably so that those baddies continue to pay a monthly fee instead of quitting because they can't get a group that will keep them). More on that later, with a great quote from Comrade Ghostcrawler. Sure, no one is "forcing" you, but if your a good player who doesn't use the system, you are screwed out of a ton of frost emblems that the terribads are getting. You are punished for not putting yourself at the mercy of the system. I can't wait until good players don't need frost emblems anymore and the LFG system becomes a cesspit of bads all expecting each other to carry them to phat epix. Mmm, community!

Pictured: good players (left), morons, slackers, and assholes (top center)

The rapid-fire cycling of assholes would, in itself, probably be bearable if it weren't for the ruleset that comes along with the system. I understand why Blizzard used the rules they did, but I think, in light of live-server conditions, they need to be revised.

As it stands, if you join a group and someone is immediately an asshole, you have two options: 1) continue the run, or 2) leave, incurring a 15-minute wait until you may queue again. You may not vote to kick someone until 15 minutes into the run.

Think about that for a second. If you are a perfectly nice and capable person, you join a run, and someone in that run is immediately an asshole, you are the only one who is punished. You can't kick him, but if you leave, you have to wait 15 minutes before you can even queue again, while the asshole can just let someone else fill your spot. The asshole gets the run he wanted with almost no interruption, but you have to pay 15 minutes of your life (plus queue wait time, if you are a dps) because you weren't willing to let him impose his assholishness on you.

Great thinking, Blizz.

Now let's say the assholishness only emerges later in the run. Now you can vote kick the guy. However, even if you do kick him, he does not incur a deserter debuff. So he can requeue right away and have almost no interruption in his ability to punish others with his presence.

Awesome.

I think Blizzard's current rules could be vastly improved:

1) Allow vote-to-kick from the beginning.

If I join a group, and the first thing out of the rogue's mouth is "lol you fags are gay", I should be able to kick him. I should not have to leave the group and be punished with a 15-minute wait to requeue.

The 15-minute grave period before you can vote-kick is especially onerous to me given Ghostcrawler's rationale for why it is in place (emphasis mine, of course):

"I suspect it's going to take a few tries before we get the vote kick thing feeling right. I hope it's obvious what purpose it serves though. We feared without some kind of grace period that a common behavior would be to automatically kick someone in greens or without certain achievements or perhaps even someone who would roll against you on stuff (in the partial premade situation)."

The reason you can't kick someone immediately is that - dear god, let me clutch my pearls - you might kick someone for being in greens!?!? Screw. You. It is not my obligation to carry slackers, no matter how important it is to you to keep their subscription money coming.

Aside from that outrage, the benefits of being able to immediately kick "Bustanutz" vastly outweigh the risk that we might dare to kick someone who is undergeared for the instance. Get your priorities straight, GC!

2) No deserter debuff if you leave the group in the first 2 minutes.

This way, you aren't stuck with the choice between running the dungeon with assholes or punishing yourself with a 15 minute wait while the assholes get to fill your spot instantly and keep running.

3) Apply a fresh deserter debuff if you are vote-kicked. To prevent griefing, allow a group to only vote-kick one person every 15 minutes.

You should not be able to requeue immediately after being vote-kicked.

4) Do not let a player queue if they have even a single empty gem slot.

The system should give them back an error message explaining why they were not allowed to queue, as well. The system already uses a highly lenient gearscore measurement to prevent someone in full greens from entering your heroic. Simply add this on.

I believe these simple changes will go a long way toward giving the vast majority of us, who are pleasant, competent people, a way to deal with assholes that is more punishing to the assholes than it is to us. They will also greatly encourage good behavior and increase player satisfaction with the LFG experience, while having little to no negative effect.

The return of Games that are Metal

2009-12-11T12:56:00.004-05:00

Today marks the return of an early feature of the site that I haven't revisited in a while: Games that are Metal. I was inspired by the following image. For maximum viewing pleasure, please imagine a kick-ass wailing guitar solo in your head while viewing:

Glorious.

Not only does Mega Man have a gun for a hand, but he's using his free hand to hold another gun, and using that other gun to fire blind at an attacking robot while he shoots his gunhand into the air, all while clearly screaming an ultra-high hair metal note. And there is a robot dragon in the background, firing his torso-cannons wildly into the air.

It just doesn't get more metal than that.

Scourge Strike: an Odyssey of Disappointment

2009-12-11T10:58:00.005-05:00

3ps

From the moment that beta information about DKs started leaking, the Unholy talent tree appealed to me most. I liked how it focused on the disease mechanic more than the other trees, making me feel more like a DK. And why would I care about Blood or Frost when I could control a ghoul, run and ride extra-fast, summon a gargoyle, create a swirling mass of death and destruction around me, and all the while be protected by a shield of bone?

Well, clearly it was far too fun. Unholy Blight's implementation as an aoe aura is gone. No DPS spec can afford to spend points in the utility talents like the increased run and mount speeds. And worst of all, the tree's signature strike, Scourge Strike, has been the only real story of failure for the new class.

Originally, it ignored armor, doing shadow damage instead. This was cool, but it turned out it hit too hard in PvP, and not hard enough in raids (where the target's armor was heavily debuffed, reducing the value of ignoring armor). Trying to correct this problem has led to a series of changes to the strike in almost every patch, none of those changes actually solving the problem.

The absolute low point was when, for an entire patch, Unholy DKs no longer even spent the talent point in Scourge Strike, finding it more effective DPS to contort their spec into the frost tree to focus on Obliterate as their FU* strike instead (*in this case, FU refers to the strike's cost of one frost and one unholy rune, not the developers' attitude towards unholy DKs). The devs were pretty much OK with this, and Ghostcrawler recently admitted that they only revisited SS because of player complaints. I specced out of Unholy and went for blood when this change occurred, especially in light of just how much armor penetration (useless to unholy, key for blood) was going to be on the raid gear going forward. I missed my favored spec and my trusty ghoul Beetlegobbler, but I persevered.

After that, a patch made SS marginally useful again, but not useful enough to bother with talents and glyphs that propped it up, such as Reaping and Epidemic. Hearing that Unholy was key for Anub'arak hard mode (which turned out to be true), I tried Unholy again. The disease-a-palooza was fun, but SS was still not doing too well, and armor pen still wasn't useful enough for the spec, considering how unavoidably prevalent it is on gear now. It seemed kind of sad that Unholy's viability outside of aoe situations was entirely predicated on abusing a badly-designed Glyph of Icy Touch for bonus RP to do more Death Coils, to the point that another Icy Touch was more valuable to your DPS than another Scourge Strike.

But when 3.3 hit the PTRs, a ray of hope shone on the beleaguered strike. The changes seemed genius: they fixed everything wrong with the strike while keeping its flavor. The attack would do physical damage, making armor pen attractive, but then also do a fraction of that damage on top as shadow damage. That shadow damage would be affected by talents and be able to crit independently, making many talents in Unholy attractive again. Along with the change to Glyph of Icy Touch, this brought the spec back to where I felt it was originally intended to be, and where it had been back when I fell for it: using Reaping to get more Scourge Strikes.

This change went through months of favorable testing on the PTR, without much change to it at all. Then it hits the live servers for less than two days, and already a nerf was hotfixed in.

Let's put aside the fact that other, more overpowered mechanics have been left in for months at a time.

Apparently, Unholy was doing too much damage now. I didn't really notice during our raid, given how I wasn't really paying attention to the meters with everything else going on. My first thought was that it was fine. If the dps was too high, OK, let's nerf it. They just removed the ability for the shadow portion to crit independently, I thought, how bad could that be?

Turns out: pretty fucking bad.

According to the DK math gurus over at Elitist Jerks, the change was enough that the Unholy rotation and talent spec revert to what they were before the change. The playstyle is back to being less fun and flavorful. In the end, all they have accomplished with this change is making armor penetration marginally more attractive.

Ugh.

Can you just get it right, guys? This is so disappointing. Once we are done with Anub Hard, I'm respeccing back to blood to get off this roller-coaster of suck.

The worst part? Ghostcrawler's post today explaining the change. Please note before reading this statement that they nerfed the ability in less than 48 hours.

"Will it stay this way for long? It's too early to tell. This implementation has a chance of working out, but we also want to see the Icecrown hard modes start up as well as the new Arena season kick in."

You read it right. They are going to leave it as-is (which is to say, broken) until they get some data from Icecrown hard modes and the new arena season (I refuse to capitalize arena, the game's greatest mistake, GC).

Those are months away.

-----------------------------------------------

To be clear, I'm not asking for SS or unholy, or anything about DKs, to be overpowered. I just think it's clear that Blizzard's intent is that players use SS and Reaping, but no matter how many changes they make, they just can't seem to make that appealing without breaking the game. I don't enjoy the playstyle of Unholy without those, so I'm one of the people who would like SS to be viable without being broken. And I'm quite disappointed with how badly they've done so far, and with how quick they are to break the spec while being so slow to fix it.

Quote of the Day

2009-12-11T10:31:00.003-05:00

Unofficially filling in for Syp while he deals with finals. :)

From the comments thread from a post at Spinksville about how bear druids wear their rocket packs in an . . . interesting way during the ICC gunship encounter:

"Maybe they can combine it with the Mohawk mechanic to create a Set Someone’s Ass on Fire Grenade."

-Stabs

3.3 Early Impressions, and the LFG tool

2009-12-10T11:56:00.007-05:00

As much as I anticipated this patch, I have to say I was pleasantly surprised with just how good it has been so far. There were some bad server problems on patch day (I can't believe Blizz didn't anticipate how many people would want to do this new stuff...), and I was all ready to rage about them. But then last night things were fine, so I guess either they splurged on some more servers or the number of people trying to do exactly the same thing simultaneously plummeted.

From the patch notes, I expected to be excited about the lore-rich 5-mans, the raid instance, and a few other tweaks. But I never expected that after only two days, the real stand-out part of this patch - and the part that will change the face of the game forever (and for the better!) - wasn't any of that.

The new LFG tool
If you had told me a week ago how good this thing was, I wouldn't have believed you. In fact, lots of people tried to tell me how good it was, and I was incredulous as a Ret Paladin finding his PvP target still alive after the HoJ stun wore off. I wasn't having none of that.

For five years now, everything Blizzard has tried to do to help people find groups has been sub-par. They've tried to make improvements, but the new additions always showed a lack of forethought and indicated that the developers were at least somewhat out of touch with how players actually find groups. It destroyed my faith that Blizzard couldn't even make a LFG interface that competed with City of Heroes, which is an older game.

But they've more than made up for it now. I'm blown away.

This thing slices, it dices, and it will actually find you a tank in under a minute. It makes instancing and assembling a group a breeze, and it means that when I'm playing, I can spend my time actually playing, rather than spamming Trade channel for a tank or healer.

[unrelated note: people who complain about LFG messages in Trade channel need to shut up. I've accidentally joined many a great group pre-3.3 when I didn't happen to be in the LFG chat channel or system but saw an ad in trade chat. It's not like you were really using Trade for much of anything anyway.]

So far, I've run about 7 heroics using the system, and not had a bad egg in any of them. Once we got a severely undergeared rogue, but he played just fine. If anything, I wish that I could keep in contact with some of the good players I've met from other servers and manually invite them to future pugs.

Sure, maybe it won't be as good once 3.3 fever winds down and the LFG qeue isn't as crowded as it is right now. But nevertheless, I think it's a great system. I'm especially interested to see how this effects what role players choose to play. Tobold thinks it will increase the number of tanks and healers, and I'm inclined to agree.

The main downside is that I will no longer be able to get such a good laugh when I see a group of 3 plate DPS "LFM tank and healz pst"

Icecrown Raid
Awwwwwww, shit. That's the stuff. Mmmmmm. Oh, yes, don't sto-what? You're kidding, right? I have to wait 28 days for the next hit?

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooOo

So far, the ICC raid has lived up to my high expectations for it. My guild was the first to complete it on our server (we finished the 10-man only 20 minutes before the top guild finished it on 25-man), so I've seen the whole thing, and it's reasonably challenging, but not very hard. I'd put most of the bosses roughly on par with Northrend Beasts 10 hard-mode. Given the easier ways to get gear now, I anticipate that most groups will be able to at least make some progress in the place. Without getting too spoiler-y:

The opening trash is a bit brutal and a bit long. I think it's intended to dissuade really casual groups from trying to farm the first boss. Hint: don't charge into the first room and start AoEing. Unlike with the rest of Wrath content, that strategy will feed you your own intestines. Also, watch out for gigantic skeletons and their saber lash.

The first boss looks supremely epic. And really, how can you go wrong with a guy who periodically shouts "BONE STORM!!!"? It's a relatively simple fight, borrowing mechanics from BT and Shattered Halls. He was easy to beat with our 232-geared mains, but was a lot harder to bring down with our lesser-geared alt group - not because of the mechanics, but just because of the raw damage numbers the boss was putting out, especially on the tanks.

The trash for the second boss will evoke Shadow Labs for many of you, and you'll have to actually drag the CC spells back onto your action bars. If you can even remember which spells they are. The boss herself is little more than a skeleton (she must be friends with Kate Moss, whose motto is: "nothing tastes as good as skinny feels") protected by a mana shield. The fight is quite novel, because it has you dealing with a variety of adds in exciting and constantly-changing ways. It's like a more fun and interesting take on Gothik.

The way to the third "boss" is when things start to get really epic, with horde and alliance battling for control of this upper balcony outside of the citadel, all the while fending off the scourge. You'll head to your faction's airship, at which point you get to play with rocket packs! This fight is epic, fun and frenetic, and exactly the type of thing that I was asking for when I designed The Awesoming raid encounter way back in the early days of this blog (in fact, the entire instance so far invokes that to some degree; there are tons of lore and storyline events going on throughout the epic set pieces). It wasn't hard to take out the enemy ship, the only challenge was not letting our offtank get owned by Bronzebeard.

Your ship will drop you off right in front of the final, lore-rich boss of this wing. The fight was straightforward to figure out, but very much a challenge of execution, as each mistake you make heals the boss more and more until the extra damage to you and healing to him becomes insurmountable. But once our tanks got a taunt rotation perfected and the ranged dps worked the kinks out of the kiting, we were able kill this boss so well that we even got an extra acheivement!

Overall, the same flare for both aesthetic and fight design that went into Ulduar is on full display again here, only knocked up a notch and soaked in a thick gravy of delicious lore. Every single battle of this wing trumps everything else in the game in some way, whether it be the emotional storyline resonance of Deathbringer, the epicness of the gunship battle, the horrible beauty of a giant skeletal construct, or the new and interesting fight mechanics of Lady Deathwhisper. Having major warcraft characters directly involved and performing a variety of scripted events throughout the dungeon cements the entire thing together into something greater than its parts. They've turned the raid into a fully fleshed-out piece of entertainment. This is the apex, as it should be.

I don't have time to talk about the 5-mans right now, but suffice it to say I'm impressed with them as well. So far, this is shaping up to be the best patch they've ever done. Bravo, Blizzard!