This guys is really pissed about 3.2. And I think he's mostly right. The only thing I object to is the strong personal attacks against Blizzard employees, whom I'm sure are decent people with families and stuff just doing their jobs. But I have to agree that they really phoned it in with 3.2, and it's pretty insulting.
I've been having a big problem with WoW lately, one that has been pushing me more and more towards canceling my subscriptions (thus all the time I've spent looking into other MMOs). They rake in millions upon millions of dollars every month. But nearly every cent of that goes toward Actiblizz shareholders (note to self: buy their stock), while what's left gets invested into other projects, rather than the one we are paying them for. Our WoW money is NOT being reinvested into WoW development at anywhere near the rate it should be.
That's right: the money you pay them for WoW is being used to create games that you will then pay full price for. You are paying for SC2 and D3 and "Hydra" right now and you'll have to pay for them again when they are released. You'll be buying them twice. GG you.
If anything, the development staff for WoW has SHRUNK as they've become more and more profitable, rather than growing as you would naturally assume it would. I swear they have exactly the same size team creating content for 10 million people as they would if only 500,000 played the game. All that extra subscription money? Just gravy that we never get to see any results from. They make more and more money while giving less and less value. That's not just insulting: it strikes me as morally wrong. We put trust in them, and invest in them, and in return they half-ass it while pocketing our collective millions. I understand why people personally attack them, because it is a struggle for me to remind myself that they are just regular decent joes, rather than top-hatted mustache-twirling cartoon villains.
I can't say this enough: we deserve more for the money we pump into their company. We deserve more than the B team. We deserve more than 6 new armor models and zero new NPC models in 6 months, accompanied by 5 boss fights in one room and appallingly slow balance corrections.
Ghostcrawler has done a great job creating the illusion that Blizzard as a company is really paying attention to the WoW playerbase, beginning with his appearance during the WotLK beta soon after Blizzard merged with Activision. But I work in communications. I have worked in PR. And you know when's the only time that a corporation will ever invest in increased PR? When they need it. The company putting the most effort into acting like they care is ALWAYS the one that cares the least. The one investing the most money in looking customer-friendly is always in the business of ignoring the customer. It is a hard and fast rule. The emergence of Ghostcrawler and the non-answers of the class Q&As and this whole attempt to step up public image with the community: it's all there specifically because they've abandoned us to be milked. It is NOT evidence that they care, it's actually the best evidence we have that they as a corporation, couldn't care less.
[clarification: I think the development team left on WoW, including GC, care very much about their jobs and doing well. I'm saying that Blizzard as a whole doesn't care. GC's team is the B team, and while they try their best, they can't compensate for the fact that the majority of the institutions weight is directed at other things, like presenting a profitable quarterly report to the shareholders at the next board meeting. GC has been posting alot lately about how players shouldn't be posting in the official forums about how "Blizz doesn't care about them". Either he doesn't realize that those feelings are the biggest danger to his game right now, or he's just a very smart marketer downplaying what he knows to be his product's greatest weakness.]
I've been a loyal Blizzard fanboy for a long time, even as I rejected other game companies. Before the merger, I really thought Blizzard cared about making great games for their fanbase. But the current treatment of WoW is quickly eroding my brand loyalty and trust. They are killing the goose that laid the golden egg. I hope this negligence destroys their profit margin. I hope that someday, they have a quarterly report that shows a loss, and that they actually have the smarts to trace the losses back to the complete slaughter of customer trust they perpetrated with WoW.
But is my outrage enough to get me to not buy Starcraft 2? Not a chance. So the insult continues, because they really do have us where they want us. We're going to buy their games even if they continue to treat us like crap. They used to be a good company that produced the best games and treated their customers like their buddies. They made great games because they loved games and wanted to share those with us. Now they will still produce the best games, and we'll all buy them, but all the while we will hate them like we hate EA and Microsoft for treating us like mugging victims/drug addicts/caged rats rather than friends. They'll keep making money, but can that money allow them to accept what they've become? How they've changed into something predatory and bad? ...probably. Money is very nice.
We went from being players to being [willing!] cash siphons for them to harvest. GG us. And I'm just as complicit as anyone else. GG me.
Update: I've been told that it's easy to misinterpret what I said here, and I think that's fair. I want to clarify that I understand how businesses work. I understand that they are going to act in their own self-interest. I understand they are going to pay shareholders and reinvest in future projects.
I am NOT trying to say that they shouldn't reinvest at all. I'm NOT trying to say that they shouldn't pay shareholders. And I'm really NOT trying to say that they should act against their own self-interest.
What I am saying is that too small a portion of the money we send them is actually coming back to us in the product we pay for. We should be getting more for the money, and I think eroding Blizzard's brand loyalty is against ActiBlizz's self-interest, and in the long-run this money grab will cost them. And it sucks that they have no true competitors in this market to drive improvement. I think they are going too far in taking advantage of the lack of competition, and I hate feeling complicit because I'm still paying them for the "only game in town".
I'd liken it to buying a gallon of detergent. When you do that normally, you pay $5, and you get a gallon of detergent. But if it were WoW brand detergent, you'd pay $5, the package would say it was a gallon, but when you opened it up you'd find about 2 fluid ounces in there, and a note saying "sorry, the other $4.50 goes toward a new kind of detergent to be released in 2012 that will cost you $6 a gallon". A business wouldn't be able to survive like that if there were any competition, but I believe it's what's happening to us right now.
I feel like I'm repeating myself here, but I realize that there are tons people out there who have no understanding of business and expect corporations to be charities. Given the numbers, internet people who know something about economics are usually safe to assume others are naive. Basically consider this a disclaimer where I explain that I don't have wide-eyed naive delusions about corporations being charities that will ever act outside of their self-interest. "Well corporations are supposed to make money, duh" is something that I'm well aware of and think is consistent with my criticisms. I had hoped I had communicated that adequately in the post itself, but I may have assumed too much while communicating too little about my frame of reference.
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Monday, July 27, 2009
More Aion Impressions
Aion is the kind of game where you fight things like this:
Sadly, I failed to get a shot of the tog during the most recent beta event. A tog is what you would get if you crossed a wrinkly-faced bulldog with a pig, then hired a manga artist to draw it all cute-like. The effect of something that ugly trying to be cute makes vomit well up in the back of my throat.
For the uninitiated, Aion is an upcoming WoW-alike MMO imported from Asia and currently in beta. It has a Final-Fantasy-meets-softcore-porn aesthetic running beautifully in the Crytekimabob engine (or something impressive-sounding). It plays just like WoW: you hit action buttons to use abilities to slaughter an unending stream of NPCs to steal their armor and complete a string of quests for people with symbols over their heads. The “hook” is that your character has wings, making gliding, free-flight, and airborne combat a central part of the experience – in theory. So far, up to level 14, I have done almost zero flying, as all of the questing areas so far have been ground-bound.
I’m told the flying combat comes into play in the outer zones that border a giant rift between the two halves of the world. Each half is populated by a different faction: the angelic Elyos and the attractive-but-emo Asmodeans.
Having explored the first section of the Asmodean experience as a spear-swinging, plate-wearing Gladiator (Part 1 and Part 2), I spent some time in the most recent beta weekend visiting Elyos and trying a different class, the Scout.
Being another melee class, the Scout plays a lot like the Gladiator did at earlier levels, except the Scout is way squishier. I had to stop to bandage after almost every battle. In return, I got stealth and the ability to stun (via a counterattack). Until you pick a sub-class at level 10 – assassin or ranger – the Scout plays just like an early-level WoW rogue, only instead of combo points you have escalating Chain Techniques where move 2 only becomes available if used immediately after move 1. However, Chains are part of the game for all classes, hardly unique to the Scout. Again, as with the Gladiator, attacks seem only limited by their cooldowns. I didn’t appear to have any energy-like resource to keep track of. I did have a mana bar, but I never saw it move. So far, both melee classes echo the design philosophy of the Retribution Paladin: just hit whichever button lights up!
As you can see, Elyos is much sunnier than Asmodae:
Oooh, pretty! (and keep in mind my computer is crap and playing on low graphics settings)
And the capital city is almost blindingly so:
The Elyos land uses a warm color palette, except for pure reds, which are reserved to keep Asmodae (I’m not going to look up how to spell that, thank you) from being too grey. The monsters I encountered in the first ten levels were mostly different from those in Asmodae, and the quests, while largely variations on the same kill or fetch designs, were at least set in a different storyline.
But sadly, the two worlds are disappointingly similar. The quests are nearly identical. The starting areas are both surrounded by camps of little kobold-type mobs that gather some type of food you have to steal from them. The skins are different colors, and maybe the models are slightly different, but in the end, one tiny fat mole-person is no different from the other 500 you brutally murdered, palette-swap or no palette-swap.
What I’m saying is: there’s not much replay value in the first 10 levels of the game. Nominally, there are only two starting areas. In reality, there’s about 1.5 of them. This isn’t anywhere near damning for the game, given that 1) I loved my first play-through, 2) Many other MMOs only have one or two, including my current favorite non-WoW game, Champions Online, 3) WoWs starting areas are pretty similar to each other when you get right down to it. The similarities are just better masked by the art in WoW. In WoW, you have to stop to think about it to realize how similar the starting zones really are. In Aion, you have to work to avoid noticing how close they are to being identical.
According to these NPCs and my mom, I am super-duper awesome.
Hopefully, this will change in the higher levels, and the endgame PvPvE (apparently raid monsters will attack you during your massive PvP fights?) will make up for the repetitive leveling experience.
There’s another beta weekend coming up, and I plan to try out a caster class and get my Gladiator a little bit higher to see how the game changes as you level. Also, I’ll try to get a picture of a tog so they can haunt your nightmares as they have mine.
Sadly, I failed to get a shot of the tog during the most recent beta event. A tog is what you would get if you crossed a wrinkly-faced bulldog with a pig, then hired a manga artist to draw it all cute-like. The effect of something that ugly trying to be cute makes vomit well up in the back of my throat.
For the uninitiated, Aion is an upcoming WoW-alike MMO imported from Asia and currently in beta. It has a Final-Fantasy-meets-softcore-porn aesthetic running beautifully in the Crytekimabob engine (or something impressive-sounding). It plays just like WoW: you hit action buttons to use abilities to slaughter an unending stream of NPCs to steal their armor and complete a string of quests for people with symbols over their heads. The “hook” is that your character has wings, making gliding, free-flight, and airborne combat a central part of the experience – in theory. So far, up to level 14, I have done almost zero flying, as all of the questing areas so far have been ground-bound.I’m told the flying combat comes into play in the outer zones that border a giant rift between the two halves of the world. Each half is populated by a different faction: the angelic Elyos and the attractive-but-emo Asmodeans.
Having explored the first section of the Asmodean experience as a spear-swinging, plate-wearing Gladiator (Part 1 and Part 2), I spent some time in the most recent beta weekend visiting Elyos and trying a different class, the Scout.
Being another melee class, the Scout plays a lot like the Gladiator did at earlier levels, except the Scout is way squishier. I had to stop to bandage after almost every battle. In return, I got stealth and the ability to stun (via a counterattack). Until you pick a sub-class at level 10 – assassin or ranger – the Scout plays just like an early-level WoW rogue, only instead of combo points you have escalating Chain Techniques where move 2 only becomes available if used immediately after move 1. However, Chains are part of the game for all classes, hardly unique to the Scout. Again, as with the Gladiator, attacks seem only limited by their cooldowns. I didn’t appear to have any energy-like resource to keep track of. I did have a mana bar, but I never saw it move. So far, both melee classes echo the design philosophy of the Retribution Paladin: just hit whichever button lights up!
As you can see, Elyos is much sunnier than Asmodae:
Oooh, pretty! (and keep in mind my computer is crap and playing on low graphics settings)And the capital city is almost blindingly so:
The Elyos land uses a warm color palette, except for pure reds, which are reserved to keep Asmodae (I’m not going to look up how to spell that, thank you) from being too grey. The monsters I encountered in the first ten levels were mostly different from those in Asmodae, and the quests, while largely variations on the same kill or fetch designs, were at least set in a different storyline.
But sadly, the two worlds are disappointingly similar. The quests are nearly identical. The starting areas are both surrounded by camps of little kobold-type mobs that gather some type of food you have to steal from them. The skins are different colors, and maybe the models are slightly different, but in the end, one tiny fat mole-person is no different from the other 500 you brutally murdered, palette-swap or no palette-swap.What I’m saying is: there’s not much replay value in the first 10 levels of the game. Nominally, there are only two starting areas. In reality, there’s about 1.5 of them. This isn’t anywhere near damning for the game, given that 1) I loved my first play-through, 2) Many other MMOs only have one or two, including my current favorite non-WoW game, Champions Online, 3) WoWs starting areas are pretty similar to each other when you get right down to it. The similarities are just better masked by the art in WoW. In WoW, you have to stop to think about it to realize how similar the starting zones really are. In Aion, you have to work to avoid noticing how close they are to being identical.
According to these NPCs and my mom, I am super-duper awesome.Hopefully, this will change in the higher levels, and the endgame PvPvE (apparently raid monsters will attack you during your massive PvP fights?) will make up for the repetitive leveling experience.
There’s another beta weekend coming up, and I plan to try out a caster class and get my Gladiator a little bit higher to see how the game changes as you level. Also, I’ll try to get a picture of a tog so they can haunt your nightmares as they have mine.
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
3.2 Playable Races: Definitely Worgen!
By now, you've all heard about the masks. The dataminers over at MMO Champion found 2 new sets of Halloween masks in the PTR build: Male and Female Goblins, and Male and Female Worgen.
Female Worgen don't exist in the game, and the the textures are way more detailed than most current in-game models.
I'm going to join Boubouille and go on the record as saying that this is definitive evidence of Worgen as a new playable race.
Reasons:
1) All previous Halloween masks have been for playable races only.
2) The female worgen out of nowhere.
3) This is the big one: look really carefully at the textures. Sure, they look more detailed, right? Now go look at the new models for bear/cat. Notice how old textures are blocky, with solid colors, while the new textures take advantage of higher resolutions to add detail and shading that make the model look even more 3-D than it actually is? Creating depth even with a low polygon count? Detailed fur, rolls, ridges, etc.?
Now look at the detailed folds of skin around the mask's eyes. And the detail put into the fur, a quality only seen before on the new druid models. These textures reek of having a ton of work already put into them. It's just too much for something throwaway, especially considering that there's already 2 different male Worgen textures in the game. It took them this long to update druid forms, do you really expect me to believe that the art department could be bothered to put this much work into a throwaway mask? Not a chance.
I guess there's a chance it's a hoax, but it's so elaborate and unnecessary that I seriously doubt it.
The next edition of the PTR added masks for all of the races that have been speculated in the past as possible future playable races: Murlocs, Vykrul, Naga, etc. Even a never-before-seen female Ogre!
Except the female ogre isn't even a model-mapped texture, it's just a copy/paste of a drawing from the WoW tabletop RPG!
I think it's pretty clear that these are just meant as a misdirection to cover up the leak. Fully expect the Worgen/Goblin announcement next month. I'll be looking forward to playing both.
Female Worgen don't exist in the game, and the the textures are way more detailed than most current in-game models.
I'm going to join Boubouille and go on the record as saying that this is definitive evidence of Worgen as a new playable race.
Reasons:1) All previous Halloween masks have been for playable races only.
2) The female worgen out of nowhere.
3) This is the big one: look really carefully at the textures. Sure, they look more detailed, right? Now go look at the new models for bear/cat. Notice how old textures are blocky, with solid colors, while the new textures take advantage of higher resolutions to add detail and shading that make the model look even more 3-D than it actually is? Creating depth even with a low polygon count? Detailed fur, rolls, ridges, etc.?
Now look at the detailed folds of skin around the mask's eyes. And the detail put into the fur, a quality only seen before on the new druid models. These textures reek of having a ton of work already put into them. It's just too much for something throwaway, especially considering that there's already 2 different male Worgen textures in the game. It took them this long to update druid forms, do you really expect me to believe that the art department could be bothered to put this much work into a throwaway mask? Not a chance.
I guess there's a chance it's a hoax, but it's so elaborate and unnecessary that I seriously doubt it.
The next edition of the PTR added masks for all of the races that have been speculated in the past as possible future playable races: Murlocs, Vykrul, Naga, etc. Even a never-before-seen female Ogre!
Except the female ogre isn't even a model-mapped texture, it's just a copy/paste of a drawing from the WoW tabletop RPG!
I think it's pretty clear that these are just meant as a misdirection to cover up the leak. Fully expect the Worgen/Goblin announcement next month. I'll be looking forward to playing both.
Monday, July 20, 2009
The Only Way to Fix WoW is to Kill Raiding as We Know It.
I have come to a conclusion recently: raiding needs to die.
Through my extremely scientific method known as "what do I recall reading about in the past few years", I've established that the major thing that turned many off from WoW was that the very nature of the game changed completely at max level. What started out as a fun romp which mixed the then-innovative solo questing with remarkably accessible small group dungeon crawls, suddenly and sickeningly shifted to become a heavily gated gear grind that required organizing 40 people. Barriers to entry slammed closed suddenly in the faces of the masses as they dinged 60, as player-gatekeepers sprang up in charge of their elite guilds and what had once been a social and constantly novel experience became both impersonal and repetitive overnight.
The Bait n Switch
The bottom line is, people loved the game they thought WoW was. Like so many crack addicts, they fell for the free samples of high-quality product, and were already invested by the time they discovered they were going to have to take 10 times as much of the shitty crack sold at a premium to the addicts to get the same high. We loved the game, so we'd take whatever content was given to us. Mindless 10-man grinds of 5 man dungeons? Not what I really like, but I'll do it. Become a faceless number in a clusterfuck of 40 people because that's where the rewards and "elite" social status lay? Um...OK, I guess, at least I still get to play WoW. Those who wouldn't raid either quit, or were treated like second-class citizens and subject to lower social status in a game they loved. They continued to play the game they had originally fallen for - solo questing and 5-man dungeons - but never got new content, having to watch their meager rewards rendered trivial as the 5% who had gotten past the gatekeepers and had time to burn were gifted huge raid instance after huge raid instance that almost no one got to see. And I say this as one of the people who got past the gatekeepers!
And that brings me to one of my favorite horse-shaped punching bags: 25-man raids. Ghostcrawler is often quoted as saying 25-man raids will die if they don't give rewards a tier higher than 10-man raids. Having fond memories myself of 40 and 25 man raids in the past, I used to think that losing them would be a shame. Now I say: to hell with them. Put Old Yeller down, already, instead of the current artificial life support.
Too Many People!
I've run a 25-man guild before. Yeah, it's harder to organize than a 10-man guild in some ways, but easier in others. Just take my word for it for now, I don't want to go off on this tangent and water down my main point. My main point is that people really like smaller groups. For the most part, the gravitation toward 10-man raiding isn't that it's easier to organize: only the leaders even have to worry about that. No, the real reason is that the majority of people prefer smaller groups. This is for a variety of reasons: they are more intimate and social, there is room for everyone to talk and feel like a part of the group, each member is important, and the group is small enough to largely avoid the factioning inherent in larger groups. I can't remember where I read this research, but I do recall that around 5-8 people is the default human social group. We are hardwired, regardless of culture, for this. Our brains are set up to store and process information about a close social group that size. In a 40 or 25 man guild, you'll always see factioning and cliques. In a 10-man group, this is a lot less pronounced. In 5 or 10 mans, you can be together because you are all friends. In a 25-man guild, you by definition cannot all be friends, and in fact are just a few disparate groups crudely taped together by the promise of loot and social status.
So instead of forcing something almost nobody wants down our throats because the main devs happened to have played too much EQ (EQ made this same "the endgame is giant groups all of the sudden" mistake, much to its detriment), why not make the game people want to play? The one we all fell in love with? Instead of the one that only a small percentage even get to see? When you have to twist the raiding game so brutally in order to make it "accessible", maybe that's a sign that the original concept is fucking broken.
Change the Game
The key to the solution is to renew focus on 5-mans. There's plenty of solo questing content, and the dailies give appropriate rewards through rep, tokens, and money (as I've said in the past, the best fix is to attach Crusade rewards to all non-daily quests you haven't done yet at max level, so I have a better reason to clear out Icecrown). But aside from a big dose from an x-pac every 2 years, there is almost never any new 5-man content. Everyone runs 5-mans, and almost everyone likes them. Remarkably fewer people raid, and only a small percentage of those prefer raiding to five mans (most only do it for the gear and social status). So instead of focusing all of the developmental energy on a giant epic new raid instance every patch, focus on a new 5-man (or 2 or 3) every patch. Mimic the tiered progression of raid gear, similar to the new Coliseum 5 man coming out, which drops Naxx-level epics on normal mode and Naxx 25 epics on heroic.
But I don't think the ability to raid should just be taken out of the game. As much as I love 5-mans, I also love 10-mans, and could enjoy a larger raid from time to time. People liked 10-15 manning UBRS. Take that original emergent gameplay and systemetize it. Make all of the new 5-mans scale to group size. To make it easier on yourself, just offer versions tuned for 5, 10, 20, and 40-person groups. Tuning should be easy enough: just pump up the damage and HP appropriately (and make it standard for bosses without adds to do a cleave that is distributed amongst everyone in front of it, requiring multiple tanks at higher group sizes). Make the raids drop the same rewards, just more numerous, with some extra vanity items and monetary rewards thrown in. For instance, maybe killing a boss on 5-man heroic gives you 1 Hero Badge, one Crusader Badge, 1 Epic, and a bit of money. 10-man gives you twice as much, plus a chance at a non-combat pet. 20-man gives you 5 epics, plus 3 of each badge, plus a bag of gems and a chance at the pet and a tabard. 40-man gives you 12 epics, plus 5 of each badge, plus a bag of gems and a better chance at a pet, tabard, and giant bag dropping. Just for instance. Suddenly, bigger groups don't give you better gear, but they do reward you more than smaller groups. So if you enjoy a bigger group, you have the option to run the instance that way, and you are rewarded appropriately for the added investment.
As an added bonus, every group size can go in on heroic and fight a pumped-up version of the bosses to get loot half a tier higher. Make this actually challenging, and it gives the hardcore types something to do. After the initial expansion tier, the average group should not immediately get new heroics, even 5-mans, on farm. You still have Ensidia getting world firsts, it's just that the community can define what group size they want to have "matter". Admittedly, this is the weakest part of my plan, and is more a bone thrown to good players that want to differentiate themselves from the "bads". But the bottom line is that good players will still have fun (as long as all instances have a "hard mode") and this system makes everyone happier and more included without us losing much of anything. If 90% of us are having a blast while Ensidia quits in disgust, then even though I like Ensidia and raiding, I call it a win.
Now you can also pump out patches more quickly, since you are designing fewer bosses per patch, and most of the development effort is in balancing and less of it is in time-consuming and costly artistic assets. If you release one raid dungeon every 6 months, then we're going to be pissed when the models of the bosses are recolors of current models (coughColiseumcough). If you release two 5-mans every 3 months, then I promise we won't complain when those bosses are mostly simple recolors.
Wouldn't the Loss of Raid Superiority Ruin the Game?
As we saw when TBC came out, and again with Wrath: the players drawn to do what it takes to be elite don't care what type of content they are doing. If you change things, then they will simply move to the new "elite" activity. The 40-man guilds bitched and moaned, but they've simply transitioned to 25-mans, and kept doing it even as they became more accessible and less gated (no more attunements!) and 10-mans kept getting more legitimized. As long as there is something to do that is considered "elite" (in my design, this is clearing cutting-edge heroics before others can farm up the gear to clear them and catch up before the next patch), they will keep playing your game and just focus on that new activity, even if it's supposedly "easier" or less exclusive than the old activity.
Rather than ruin the game, I think this change would make WoW what it really always should have been. Let the game we all fell in love with continue after we ding 80, instead of mutating into the raiding monster we see today.
-------------------
Inspired by this article by Jeff Hollis on how WoW is committing suicide: Part 1 Part 2 Which btw is COMPLETELY wrong about raiding only taking time and not skill, so don't think for a second I endorse the entire article as correct. I just used his ideas as a jumping-off point.
Thanks to Syp at Bio Break for linking that article originally.
Through my extremely scientific method known as "what do I recall reading about in the past few years", I've established that the major thing that turned many off from WoW was that the very nature of the game changed completely at max level. What started out as a fun romp which mixed the then-innovative solo questing with remarkably accessible small group dungeon crawls, suddenly and sickeningly shifted to become a heavily gated gear grind that required organizing 40 people. Barriers to entry slammed closed suddenly in the faces of the masses as they dinged 60, as player-gatekeepers sprang up in charge of their elite guilds and what had once been a social and constantly novel experience became both impersonal and repetitive overnight.
The Bait n Switch
The bottom line is, people loved the game they thought WoW was. Like so many crack addicts, they fell for the free samples of high-quality product, and were already invested by the time they discovered they were going to have to take 10 times as much of the shitty crack sold at a premium to the addicts to get the same high. We loved the game, so we'd take whatever content was given to us. Mindless 10-man grinds of 5 man dungeons? Not what I really like, but I'll do it. Become a faceless number in a clusterfuck of 40 people because that's where the rewards and "elite" social status lay? Um...OK, I guess, at least I still get to play WoW. Those who wouldn't raid either quit, or were treated like second-class citizens and subject to lower social status in a game they loved. They continued to play the game they had originally fallen for - solo questing and 5-man dungeons - but never got new content, having to watch their meager rewards rendered trivial as the 5% who had gotten past the gatekeepers and had time to burn were gifted huge raid instance after huge raid instance that almost no one got to see. And I say this as one of the people who got past the gatekeepers!
And that brings me to one of my favorite horse-shaped punching bags: 25-man raids. Ghostcrawler is often quoted as saying 25-man raids will die if they don't give rewards a tier higher than 10-man raids. Having fond memories myself of 40 and 25 man raids in the past, I used to think that losing them would be a shame. Now I say: to hell with them. Put Old Yeller down, already, instead of the current artificial life support.
Too Many People!
I've run a 25-man guild before. Yeah, it's harder to organize than a 10-man guild in some ways, but easier in others. Just take my word for it for now, I don't want to go off on this tangent and water down my main point. My main point is that people really like smaller groups. For the most part, the gravitation toward 10-man raiding isn't that it's easier to organize: only the leaders even have to worry about that. No, the real reason is that the majority of people prefer smaller groups. This is for a variety of reasons: they are more intimate and social, there is room for everyone to talk and feel like a part of the group, each member is important, and the group is small enough to largely avoid the factioning inherent in larger groups. I can't remember where I read this research, but I do recall that around 5-8 people is the default human social group. We are hardwired, regardless of culture, for this. Our brains are set up to store and process information about a close social group that size. In a 40 or 25 man guild, you'll always see factioning and cliques. In a 10-man group, this is a lot less pronounced. In 5 or 10 mans, you can be together because you are all friends. In a 25-man guild, you by definition cannot all be friends, and in fact are just a few disparate groups crudely taped together by the promise of loot and social status.
So instead of forcing something almost nobody wants down our throats because the main devs happened to have played too much EQ (EQ made this same "the endgame is giant groups all of the sudden" mistake, much to its detriment), why not make the game people want to play? The one we all fell in love with? Instead of the one that only a small percentage even get to see? When you have to twist the raiding game so brutally in order to make it "accessible", maybe that's a sign that the original concept is fucking broken.
Change the Game
The key to the solution is to renew focus on 5-mans. There's plenty of solo questing content, and the dailies give appropriate rewards through rep, tokens, and money (as I've said in the past, the best fix is to attach Crusade rewards to all non-daily quests you haven't done yet at max level, so I have a better reason to clear out Icecrown). But aside from a big dose from an x-pac every 2 years, there is almost never any new 5-man content. Everyone runs 5-mans, and almost everyone likes them. Remarkably fewer people raid, and only a small percentage of those prefer raiding to five mans (most only do it for the gear and social status). So instead of focusing all of the developmental energy on a giant epic new raid instance every patch, focus on a new 5-man (or 2 or 3) every patch. Mimic the tiered progression of raid gear, similar to the new Coliseum 5 man coming out, which drops Naxx-level epics on normal mode and Naxx 25 epics on heroic.
But I don't think the ability to raid should just be taken out of the game. As much as I love 5-mans, I also love 10-mans, and could enjoy a larger raid from time to time. People liked 10-15 manning UBRS. Take that original emergent gameplay and systemetize it. Make all of the new 5-mans scale to group size. To make it easier on yourself, just offer versions tuned for 5, 10, 20, and 40-person groups. Tuning should be easy enough: just pump up the damage and HP appropriately (and make it standard for bosses without adds to do a cleave that is distributed amongst everyone in front of it, requiring multiple tanks at higher group sizes). Make the raids drop the same rewards, just more numerous, with some extra vanity items and monetary rewards thrown in. For instance, maybe killing a boss on 5-man heroic gives you 1 Hero Badge, one Crusader Badge, 1 Epic, and a bit of money. 10-man gives you twice as much, plus a chance at a non-combat pet. 20-man gives you 5 epics, plus 3 of each badge, plus a bag of gems and a chance at the pet and a tabard. 40-man gives you 12 epics, plus 5 of each badge, plus a bag of gems and a better chance at a pet, tabard, and giant bag dropping. Just for instance. Suddenly, bigger groups don't give you better gear, but they do reward you more than smaller groups. So if you enjoy a bigger group, you have the option to run the instance that way, and you are rewarded appropriately for the added investment.
As an added bonus, every group size can go in on heroic and fight a pumped-up version of the bosses to get loot half a tier higher. Make this actually challenging, and it gives the hardcore types something to do. After the initial expansion tier, the average group should not immediately get new heroics, even 5-mans, on farm. You still have Ensidia getting world firsts, it's just that the community can define what group size they want to have "matter". Admittedly, this is the weakest part of my plan, and is more a bone thrown to good players that want to differentiate themselves from the "bads". But the bottom line is that good players will still have fun (as long as all instances have a "hard mode") and this system makes everyone happier and more included without us losing much of anything. If 90% of us are having a blast while Ensidia quits in disgust, then even though I like Ensidia and raiding, I call it a win.
Now you can also pump out patches more quickly, since you are designing fewer bosses per patch, and most of the development effort is in balancing and less of it is in time-consuming and costly artistic assets. If you release one raid dungeon every 6 months, then we're going to be pissed when the models of the bosses are recolors of current models (coughColiseumcough). If you release two 5-mans every 3 months, then I promise we won't complain when those bosses are mostly simple recolors.
Wouldn't the Loss of Raid Superiority Ruin the Game?
As we saw when TBC came out, and again with Wrath: the players drawn to do what it takes to be elite don't care what type of content they are doing. If you change things, then they will simply move to the new "elite" activity. The 40-man guilds bitched and moaned, but they've simply transitioned to 25-mans, and kept doing it even as they became more accessible and less gated (no more attunements!) and 10-mans kept getting more legitimized. As long as there is something to do that is considered "elite" (in my design, this is clearing cutting-edge heroics before others can farm up the gear to clear them and catch up before the next patch), they will keep playing your game and just focus on that new activity, even if it's supposedly "easier" or less exclusive than the old activity.
Rather than ruin the game, I think this change would make WoW what it really always should have been. Let the game we all fell in love with continue after we ding 80, instead of mutating into the raiding monster we see today.
-------------------
Inspired by this article by Jeff Hollis on how WoW is committing suicide: Part 1 Part 2 Which btw is COMPLETELY wrong about raiding only taking time and not skill, so don't think for a second I endorse the entire article as correct. I just used his ideas as a jumping-off point.
Thanks to Syp at Bio Break for linking that article originally.
Champions Online Microtransactions
Champions Online will allow you to pay some real-life cash to buy some novelty stuff.
Anyone who is whining or complaining about this can feel free to click the following link:
http://entertainment.upperdeck.com/points/store/c-9-wow-in-game-codes.aspx
At least Cryptic is willing to call a spade a spade and be honest about their microtransactions, instead of hiding them behind another product and marketing nonspeak gobbledygook.
I too am skeptical of microtransactions. Like many others, I look upon them with suspicion that the Big Evil Corporation is using them to "trick" me into giving them more of my money for less product. I feel my suspicions are well-founded. But I don't think the fact that a game will have some form of them is, on it's own, a reason to condemn the game or get all up in arms.
I generally am not a fan of micro-transactions, but if we're going to jump on anyone for them, it should be Blizzard first (cough$25tochangeavalueinaspreadsheetcough). They just didn't use the dreaded word "microtransactions" themselves.
Anyone who is whining or complaining about this can feel free to click the following link:
http://entertainment.upperdeck.com/points/store/c-9-wow-in-game-codes.aspx
At least Cryptic is willing to call a spade a spade and be honest about their microtransactions, instead of hiding them behind another product and marketing nonspeak gobbledygook.
I too am skeptical of microtransactions. Like many others, I look upon them with suspicion that the Big Evil Corporation is using them to "trick" me into giving them more of my money for less product. I feel my suspicions are well-founded. But I don't think the fact that a game will have some form of them is, on it's own, a reason to condemn the game or get all up in arms.
I generally am not a fan of micro-transactions, but if we're going to jump on anyone for them, it should be Blizzard first (cough$25tochangeavalueinaspreadsheetcough). They just didn't use the dreaded word "microtransactions" themselves.
Friday, July 17, 2009
Seanbaby teaches you to WoW
http://www.cracked.com/blog/understanding-the-world-of-warcraft-using-super-mario-brothers/
Next time someone in your group can't figure out how to step out of the fire, or follow any simple instruction, please direct them to this article.
Seanbaby has been one of the best things about the internet for a good decade now. If just the fact that this was written by Seanbaby isn't enough to get you to click it immediately, then please leave earth and return to your home planet.
Next time someone in your group can't figure out how to step out of the fire, or follow any simple instruction, please direct them to this article.
Seanbaby has been one of the best things about the internet for a good decade now. If just the fact that this was written by Seanbaby isn't enough to get you to click it immediately, then please leave earth and return to your home planet.
Try a Ret Paladin Today!
So you know that reputation that ret paladins have as a faceroll class that's both super-easy to play and super-powerful?
Totally. Merited.
BIG DISCLAIMER: I'm not saying people who play ret paladins are stupid, facerollers, or can't handle a "real" class. In fact, I'm saying, with no irony or sarcasm, that they are the smartest of us all. They were smart enough to pick the easiest to play in the entire game, which is also super-desireable in groups (have you seen the list of buffs a ret pally brings to a raid?!*), can respec to any role, and can perform on par with any other class. If all classes perform roughly equally, but ret paladins are by far the easiest ones to play, then by definition those who choose ret paladins are the smartest. Props to you! I guarantee that many ret paladins are excellent players.
Just for reference: I have a level 80 DK, rogue, druid, and warrior. I have a mage and shaman in their 70's. I leveled my paladin on follow with a hunter while dual-boxing, so I didn't play her at all while leveling. But I did play the hunter and a warlock from 1-60 just before Wrath came out. So I have a pretty decent idea of how other classes play.
Ret paladins are by far the easiest thing I have ever played in this game. Picking one up at level 60 with this spec, I am having an absolute blast mowing down anything in my path.
Let me explain ret paladins to you. They have 5 attacks. They are all instant cast and do big chunks of instant direct damage (no wussy DoT spells here!). Three of these are ranged (no other melee class has more than 2 ranged attacks, most have 1 or zero). One is an aoe that heals them. One is a ranged execute that is nearly guaranteed to crit. The absolute only limiting factor on activating these attacks is their cooldowns (most around 10 seconds long). There is no setting up diseases or combo points or bleeds or even applying stormstrike while waiting for a maelstrom proc. It's just all super-satisfying instant-cast direct attacks, all the time. Walk up, mash buttons, mob dies. Rinse, repeat.
Ret paladins also don't have to worry about resources. One of their attacks actually gives them mana back while activating replenishment. Meanwhile, other classes have to worry about mana efficiency, or if they have enough rage/energy/RP/runes to do their next attack. Ret pallies might as well not have a blue bar. All you have to do is wait for cooldowns. Now, I understand that at the highest levels of play, managing these cooldowns in the most effective way can be challenging, and requires an element of skill, experience, and decisionmaking. But while leveling, it requires no thought. Hit whichever button is lit up, kthxbai.
And did you take a little bit of damage through your plate armor? No worries, just pop a cheap, instant-cast heal that shields you if it crits.
Usually, calling a class "faceroll" is figurative hyperbole. They actually wouldn't do too well if all you did was roll your face across the keyboard. But with a ret paladin, I mean it literally. You could just smack the five attack keys against against your forehead over and over, and perform roughly as well as someone who is actually paying attention.
And that brings us to the reason I've hated rets since the Great Battleground Holocaust of 2008: 1v1 PvP dominance. DKs are the only thing that even approaches them in single combat, and this has been the case since 3.0 came out and suddenly you could no longer enter a BG without a holy hammer being shoved so far up your ass it was coming out of your mouth. Granted, it's toned down a bit at 80, but they are still overwhelming 1v1. Yeah, I know Blizz doesn't care about 1v1, and doesn't balance around it, blah blah blah. But in a game where development of your own avatar is at its core, the players are certainly going to care about it, and always have.
You know how rogues are balanced around their stuns? They have relatively low survivability, but rely on CC instead? Stuns that require setup (either stealth or 5 combo points) as well as energy? Oh yeah, ret paladins have a stun that lasts as long as both rogue stuns put together, and can be cast without any setup whatsoever. Oh, and it's ranged. Paladins out-stun rogues, and their class isn't even based around stuns. Are all these italics getting the point across?
Unlike warriors, DKs, and rogues, Paladins have no limit on their ability to unload damage except cooldowns. So they can fire off all 5 of their attacks at once in rapid succession, in the space of the stun. They don't have to wait for resources. Unlike other mana-users, all of their attacks are instant-cast direct damage with zero setup requirements. In short, their burst damage is second-to none and mindlessly easy to execute compared to their closest competition.
Meanwhile, they have 2-3 full health bars you have to clear before you can kill them (bubble and lay on hands), aside from being able to instant-heal themselves indefinitely (did I mention the bubble if they crit?). Which might not be so bad if they weren't also wearing plate. And able to go completely immune to all snares. And dispel themselves of almost anything. And mimic DK's Icebound Fortitude (so powerful it's getting nerfed in the next patch) to be even harder to kill. Shall I continue? I can do this all day.
Did I mention the ranged stun that goes with the plate and the heals and the burst damage and ...
--------------------------------
Here is a visual aid to demonstrate what you are doing to yourself if you choose a class that isn't ret paladin:
I never would have believed just how easy this class is to play until I tried it. I recommend you try one for yourself. I'll certainly continue leveling mine, because playing one is just so much fun, and so much more relaxing when I barely have to pay attention. The big instant attacks are very satisfying. Ret paladins are just so much better than other classes that I'd recommend them to any new player, and am considering devoting a lot more of my playtime to this character.
I have to give props to those who were smart enough to get on the EZ train before it left the station. I'm enjoying my ride.
*For the record:
Replenishment
3% crit
3% damage
3% haste
Blessing
Aura
Judgement (either free mana or free health to the dps)
Divine Sacrifice
Dispels
Instant heals
Threat control (Hand of Salv)
Hand of Freedom
Totally. Merited.
BIG DISCLAIMER: I'm not saying people who play ret paladins are stupid, facerollers, or can't handle a "real" class. In fact, I'm saying, with no irony or sarcasm, that they are the smartest of us all. They were smart enough to pick the easiest to play in the entire game, which is also super-desireable in groups (have you seen the list of buffs a ret pally brings to a raid?!*), can respec to any role, and can perform on par with any other class. If all classes perform roughly equally, but ret paladins are by far the easiest ones to play, then by definition those who choose ret paladins are the smartest. Props to you! I guarantee that many ret paladins are excellent players.
Just for reference: I have a level 80 DK, rogue, druid, and warrior. I have a mage and shaman in their 70's. I leveled my paladin on follow with a hunter while dual-boxing, so I didn't play her at all while leveling. But I did play the hunter and a warlock from 1-60 just before Wrath came out. So I have a pretty decent idea of how other classes play.
Ret paladins are by far the easiest thing I have ever played in this game. Picking one up at level 60 with this spec, I am having an absolute blast mowing down anything in my path.
Let me explain ret paladins to you. They have 5 attacks. They are all instant cast and do big chunks of instant direct damage (no wussy DoT spells here!). Three of these are ranged (no other melee class has more than 2 ranged attacks, most have 1 or zero). One is an aoe that heals them. One is a ranged execute that is nearly guaranteed to crit. The absolute only limiting factor on activating these attacks is their cooldowns (most around 10 seconds long). There is no setting up diseases or combo points or bleeds or even applying stormstrike while waiting for a maelstrom proc. It's just all super-satisfying instant-cast direct attacks, all the time. Walk up, mash buttons, mob dies. Rinse, repeat.Ret paladins also don't have to worry about resources. One of their attacks actually gives them mana back while activating replenishment. Meanwhile, other classes have to worry about mana efficiency, or if they have enough rage/energy/RP/runes to do their next attack. Ret pallies might as well not have a blue bar. All you have to do is wait for cooldowns. Now, I understand that at the highest levels of play, managing these cooldowns in the most effective way can be challenging, and requires an element of skill, experience, and decisionmaking. But while leveling, it requires no thought. Hit whichever button is lit up, kthxbai.
And did you take a little bit of damage through your plate armor? No worries, just pop a cheap, instant-cast heal that shields you if it crits.
Usually, calling a class "faceroll" is figurative hyperbole. They actually wouldn't do too well if all you did was roll your face across the keyboard. But with a ret paladin, I mean it literally. You could just smack the five attack keys against against your forehead over and over, and perform roughly as well as someone who is actually paying attention.
And that brings us to the reason I've hated rets since the Great Battleground Holocaust of 2008: 1v1 PvP dominance. DKs are the only thing that even approaches them in single combat, and this has been the case since 3.0 came out and suddenly you could no longer enter a BG without a holy hammer being shoved so far up your ass it was coming out of your mouth. Granted, it's toned down a bit at 80, but they are still overwhelming 1v1. Yeah, I know Blizz doesn't care about 1v1, and doesn't balance around it, blah blah blah. But in a game where development of your own avatar is at its core, the players are certainly going to care about it, and always have.
You know how rogues are balanced around their stuns? They have relatively low survivability, but rely on CC instead? Stuns that require setup (either stealth or 5 combo points) as well as energy? Oh yeah, ret paladins have a stun that lasts as long as both rogue stuns put together, and can be cast without any setup whatsoever. Oh, and it's ranged. Paladins out-stun rogues, and their class isn't even based around stuns. Are all these italics getting the point across?
Unlike warriors, DKs, and rogues, Paladins have no limit on their ability to unload damage except cooldowns. So they can fire off all 5 of their attacks at once in rapid succession, in the space of the stun. They don't have to wait for resources. Unlike other mana-users, all of their attacks are instant-cast direct damage with zero setup requirements. In short, their burst damage is second-to none and mindlessly easy to execute compared to their closest competition.
Meanwhile, they have 2-3 full health bars you have to clear before you can kill them (bubble and lay on hands), aside from being able to instant-heal themselves indefinitely (did I mention the bubble if they crit?). Which might not be so bad if they weren't also wearing plate. And able to go completely immune to all snares. And dispel themselves of almost anything. And mimic DK's Icebound Fortitude (so powerful it's getting nerfed in the next patch) to be even harder to kill. Shall I continue? I can do this all day.
Did I mention the ranged stun that goes with the plate and the heals and the burst damage and ...
--------------------------------
Here is a visual aid to demonstrate what you are doing to yourself if you choose a class that isn't ret paladin:
I never would have believed just how easy this class is to play until I tried it. I recommend you try one for yourself. I'll certainly continue leveling mine, because playing one is just so much fun, and so much more relaxing when I barely have to pay attention. The big instant attacks are very satisfying. Ret paladins are just so much better than other classes that I'd recommend them to any new player, and am considering devoting a lot more of my playtime to this character.I have to give props to those who were smart enough to get on the EZ train before it left the station. I'm enjoying my ride.
*For the record:
Replenishment
3% crit
3% damage
3% haste
Blessing
Aura
Judgement (either free mana or free health to the dps)
Divine Sacrifice
Dispels
Instant heals
Threat control (Hand of Salv)
Hand of Freedom
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