Random Aside

Life has gotten "Holy Crap" crazy and complicated for me lately. As such, my gaming focus may be somewhat blurred. Don't expect big things from this corner of the blogosphere, and you won't be disappointed. I still plan to write about random things (hopefully gaming related), but I guess I just wanted to say: Beware Incoming Erratic Posting Behavior. No ETA yet on when the skies might clear.

Today's post is brought to you by anyone who has ever said "Well, X number of people can't be wrong."

I saw that today, in relation to a game. I forget exactly where (see aforementioned crazy/complicated disclaimer). Might have been about GW2 or TSW or WTFBBQ. All equally likely.

Whatever the case, it went something like, "Well 60,000 people can't be wrong, so obviously this game must be great." Maybe I'm completely making up this sentence, since I'm not sure where the 60k number comes from. Maybe it was a commercial on the radio. What can I say, mentally disheveled blogger is... you know the rest.

In any case, it got me thinking. There's like 311,591,917 people in America (according to the US Census in July 2011, anyway). That means that what such a claim is really saying is that 0.01% of the population can't be wrong. And that's just for America (I may be mistakenly assuming that the 60k figure was referring to people in America. It doesn't really specify. Global would be much, much smaller).

I'm pretty sure 0.01% of people very much CAN be wrong. In fact, it's probably very likely that, given any decision ever, at least 0.01% of the decisions makers choose poorly. Even if it's something simple like, "Is murdering someone wrong?" I'm pretty sure I could round up 60k people in America that would totally agree with murder.

Just because a lot of people do something doesn't mean absolutely Jack or Squat about the inherent value of the product or event. Upon reflection, the whole "a bunch of people are doing it" marketing like maybe the stupidest since adding "50 Shades of..." in front of everything known to man.

Couldn't we just flip that on its head and say, well if only 60k are doing something then the other 311,531,917ish people are NOT doing that same thing. That's a lot of people not doing something. When you put it that way, it probably sucks, right?

It just doesn't make any sense.

I suppose I shouldn't search for some sort of deep truth in marketing statements, should I? It's pretty transparent what the point of the line is. It just struck me this morning is all, and I wanted to rant about it. Probably the ultimate lesson is this:

Don't ever do something solely because a whole bunch of other people are doing something.

Unless we're talking like running from a rampaging pack of bears riding jumping sharks and wielding sniper rifles. Then, yeah, probably a good idea to follow the crowd and get the F away. Especially if you see little red dots on everyone's foreheads. Just make sure you're not around a bunch of folks with bindis before jumping to an incorrect conclusion.

(Yeah, I didn't know that was what it was called, either.)

LoL - Almost Twenty

Ima write about League of Legends today. Because, you know, there's nothing big happening in WoW or anything. It's not like there's some giant patch of doom dropping today that will completely change the way I play my class. Not at all. I'm completely not going to talk about that.

"Talk about what?" you might ask. "Exactly," I reply.

(In all fairness, I imagine we'll all be sick of WoW stuff by the end of the week. Once I get some game time, I'll be jumping on that bandwagon... but I'm already behind.)

It's been a bit since I've talked about LoL. I'm approaching level 20 right now. I'm not sure if that's a milestone, other than being another 10 levels closer to 30. 30, of course, being max and when you can play ranked stuffs.

I actually streamed some of the professional circuit games over the weekend. It was pretty interesting. I thought they did a good job with the coverage. It was nerdy, but not silly. To me, that means "good." I think there's always a danger of pro-gaming coverage jumping the shark, so to speak. It can get pretty crazy, and every game has special lingo. The coverage for LoL was layman enough that a newb like me could understand. Plus, as a player, the discussion and strategy was interesting. I didn't watch for a long time (I had games of my own to play, mind you), but the bit I did consume was pleasant. I suppose you could say this is unexpected. I don't have a whole lot of experience watching pro-gaming.

The coverage whetted my appetite for ranked matches. All of a sudden, I wanted to be 30 and playing "real" games. Then the game corrected my over-eagerness. My random team was steamrolled by the opposition. One of those crushing games where you contemplate returning to the safer AI pastures (only for a moment, though).

I think that I've become pretty deadly with Morgana. Also, I feel pretty competent in the solo-mid slot. There are a few champs that counter my play well, but otherwise I feel in control. I've been trying, then, to branch out. I've been attempting to play more on Miss Fortune, getting used to the AD play style. Sometimes I'm still sent mid, but generally I end up in a lane with someone. This is good for me to learn as well.

On any given night, my rotation sort of works like this. Morgana first. If we get a win, I queue up as MF next. I get a win on her, I try one of the free champs. Lately, that has been Twisted Fate. TF has a completely fun play style, but I don't feel very effective on him. Great if you consider me support. Poor if you're looking for me to carry.

Is is odd that I enjoy playing the support role? I'm more than happy to let someone else carry and rack up the assists. Don't know why, just find it more fun. I'm getting pretty good at initiating a battle and letting others clean up.

I still fail at melee, have no idea how to jungle, and think the Dominion map gives me the shakes (it's so much faster!). In short, I'm definitely still a newb.

I was reminded of that last night, when some fellow who claimed to be smurfing (playing an alternate, low level summoner in order to "wreck noobs," as he put it), proceeded to rant at all of us for how awful we were. He (I'm assuming male, consider me biased) was actually playing TF, so from experience I knew that he wasn't exactly exhibiting all-pro game play. In fact, the only thing he seemed to be excelling at was feeding the opposing team.

I do this thing in PvP; it's very "zen" of me. Basically, when someone calls me a newb, I completely cop to it. I say something along the lines of, "Yes, I am new to this game. What would you rather I do?" Generally, I get the exceedingly helpful, "Not suck" back. Or some variation thereof. It doesn't really bother me. Sort of like when they move to the next line of verbal sparring... calling me a "fag."

Now, I'm not gay, but I have some good friends who are. They rank among the best folk I've had the fortune to meet in this life. Several of them, y'all could probably meet and have no idea they are gay. I know that's shocking... you can't always count on a lisp or assless rainbow chaps. Darn. Point being, when someone calls me gay, I don't really see it as a bad thing. Or, rather, I've certainly be called worse (or maybe, more accurately for me, I'm not always called better). I have a wife. I don't need to prove my sexuality to anyone else, and trust me, she's well aware of how I roll. In fact, she'd probably prefer I "roll" a little less often.

So, generally I just accept the gay remark. I may even go along with it. Why not? Anyone that truly cares to know about me already does. I'm not exactly hiding here on my very public blog(s). I don't care what Nerdrage Smurf thinks in his infinite wisdom.  So, usually, I shoot for measured and rational responses to the rage. I know it's pointless, but it amuses me.

Like last night, when I said, "Well, if you're going to go slumming, you shouldn't be surprised to catch the clap."

He didn't get it, high ELO rating be damned.

#Diablo - Musta Been Tuesday

Got the "Error 37" rigamarole last night. Awesome. My evening activities were cancelled. I'd already cleaned the bathrooms. My wife was raiding... but there were no spots for me. All I wanted to do was log in and play my purchased single-player game in peace. Oh, wait. It's patch day. And WoW is up, running smoothly, but Diablo is full? Must have been full because the server was up.

So here's my question, if Blizz is trying to make Diablo like WoW in that it runs from a server and all that... where the hell is my queue? I never thought I'd say those words. Or these: Can we get a felling queue? Seriously. If this "Error 37" crap is caused by overburdened servers, then the least they could do is put me in a line for spots when they open up.

Maybe it was something else. Like I said, the website indicated the servers were up. I noticed on The Facebook and The Twitter that other folks were playing. I had patched completely. Why was I getting an E37? Was I just unlucky, something was messed up? Or were the servers really full.

I wanted to highlight a post by Targeter. It's pretty ranty, I'll warn you, but he raises good points. Points that I thought about, sort of irked me, but ultimately dismissed. The big one that I disagree with him on is the whole gold selling thing. I know Blizz said they didn't want to do gold selling, but it happened anyway (and companies, like people, can change their stance on things). My thought is that the best way to stop gold selling from third parties is to simply offer the gold yourself. Make it cheaper and more convenient than the other guy. Heck, I don't even mind them taking a cut. Whatever, this is a business. In my dream world, they'd make a bunch of money, stop charging subscriptions, and sell cheaper games (also never sell stuff in the AH that isn't readily available in the game. Make sure you didn't miss the "dream" part of this world).

I think it's silly that they're doing a second AH. I don't see how that lets you opt out. I mean, you can just buy gold and then go shop on the non-$$ AH, right? I guess it's a nice gesture.

At the end of the day, I can turn a blind eye to the AH stuff. I may throw some things up, maybe I'll make a couple bucks, who knows? Ultimately, the AH is a completely optional facet of the game. You can play from start to finish and never do any dealings on the AH. Thus, ignorable (unless you have moral qualms against it, which is your right, I just adopt a more live-and-let-live view, so it doesn't rile me up).

This logging online to try to play a single player game stuff, though... this is getting old. It wouldn't be so bad if it worked. But any DRM that prevents you from playing game is felling stupid in my opinion. Great way to lose customers. Blizz can afford to make these mistakes. They've delivered enough to convince people to give them the benefit of the doubt (me included), but they're the exception.

As things stand now, if I had not purchased a year pass, I would not have bought Diablo III. It is a great game. I'm enjoying playing it, when I can. I would have missed out. The game is great. All the other crap? Seems like one blunder after another.

Fine Blizz, if you're going to make us log into every game from now on... fine. Then make it felling work. My game time is precious. I can deal with maintenance windows. I can deal with full servers. But at least give me a queue. Really, is that too much to ask? I can be flexible, but only if I know what I'm being flexible for. If I know where I am in line, I can go do other things. Getting straight E37s just makes me want to write a strongly worded letter to the developer. Much like Targeter did.

Now, where did I put my lightsaber?

#SWTOR - Patch Thoughts and A Small Rant

This is not about the MoP beta invite I just received in my mail. The title may have given as much away. Still, I wanted to note that beta thoughts are probably inc next week, as I'm downloading the beta at home right now. Actually, it's probably done, but I'm stuck at work.

Instead, because when it rains it pours, I wanted to talk about the other game that had big recent news. TOR's 1.2 patch was just released, and it's really the first major content patch we've seen. A whole bunch of functionality was added and, quite frankly, if you've made it this far into the article, you're probably aware of many of the changes. There's legacy, new PvP stuff, new PvE stuff, new guild stuff... something for everyone really. And, of course, the controversial free game time.

Here's where the "small rant" is going to come in. I had to force my fingers past "controversial free game time," because honestly, is this what we've come to? I hate to use the "trophies for everyone" analogy (it's so over-played), but why does it seem like every time someone gets something, the Internet weeps blood for all the folks that did not get something. Life is unfair. Deal with it. Sometimes people get things that you do not. It happens. Every. Day.

Let me clarify, I'm totally cool and respectful of well-formed opinions. For the folks that are complaining but then offering constructive advice like "what if, instead of basing 30 days free on having a level 50, they base it on accumulated time played. Say, for everyone over a month in-game time." Or something like that. I've seen some constructive shit. That's good times. That's solid discussion. You're not just being a whiner. You're applying brain.

For the folks that insist on perpetrating the logical fallacy of "if someone calls someone loyal, that means everyone else is disloyal," I reserve my most warlocky Glare of Ire. Raised eyebrow at no extra soulcharge (like surcharge... get it?). But seriously, the Internet needs to get over this particular fantasy. In fact, people in general do. (Politicos use it all the flippin' time.) Someone saying something positive about one thing does not inherently mean everything else is negative. There's this whole middle ground where SHIT IS NEUTRAL. Yes, you can have neutral feelings about things.

For instance, I can say: Yeah, Stop at Stoppable Force is an awesome writer (and I wish he wrote more)... and that doesn't mean I think Psynister sucks (and should write less). (In fact, I think Psy took a rather mature approach to his criticism of Bdubs, but that's beside the point.) (Can you do a parenthetical bumped up against another parenthetical?) Asides aside, the point here is that it is completely possible to feel positive toward one group of people without feeling the exact opposite toward another group of people. Calling someone loyal is not calling everyone else disloyal, no matter how much we may wish to perceive the slight. Yeah, it sucks not to get free game time. It's probably even unfair. That's life. If it pisses you off enough, vote with your dollar and leave.

Was that a small rant? Maybe medium-sized, I don't know. The more positive (less-ranty) point I'd like all and sundry to take home is that we should take care in our negative criticisms. We don't want to let jealousy of nice things to color us so green that we advocate no one getting nice things ever just so we don't have to feel jealous. I guess I'm saying that I'd rather buff everyone to "haves" than nerf everyone to "have nots," but you probably have to draw a line in the sand somewhere. The Internet would do well to keep that frame of mind in the headlights while they're speeding full-on to a nerd rage.

/steps down from soap box

Other than that, I found the patch to be pretty awesome. I had the usual amount of information overload when I logged in. Stared blankly at the screen before spending far too much time tweaking my UI. My respec was relatively fast, as I didn't detect any glaring chances for the Balance Shadow (if I missed something huge, feel free to slam me with your nerd rage racer). I even got to play the new Warzone. I was berated as being AFK when I stood there for the first ten seconds, drooling on myself because: "hey, this is new, and there's a cut scene." But otherwise it was pleasant. Went 3 for 3 on the Rep side, always a good night.

I'm going to have to re-figure my gearing strategy, as currency and such has changed slightly. It looks like it's been simplified a bit, as you just have to have the Battlemaster gear before snagging the War Hero gear (they each require the previous piece as currency). Monday, hopefully we'll be able to get our little group together and check out some of the PvE stuff.

So apart from my "get off my lawn" irritability, patch day and post-patch day have been pretty fun for me. Just wish I had more time. How about you?

Zon'ozz Pong

One of the things about being back in the saddle as Raid Leader is that I'm apparently going to feel motivated to complain a bit more (read: write on here) about boss tactics. Seeing as how we're woefully behind any raiding curve you can think of, I'm sure my tactics won't be news to anyone. Heck, they probably won't even be helpful. They may, however, be entertaining. Also, I've generally gotten some good and helpful comments from readers (since you're all ahead of me), and who helping someone else can make you feel good. So, I guess, help me help you. Or something.

Our ragtag group is on regular Zon'ozz. We've done him via LFR, but our goal (as has been since mid-Wrath) is to progress through ten man content at our own rate. That is to say, LFR doesn't "count" as far as we're concerned. It's like running BH on off nights. Good for gear and to keep the fingers limber (with a side bonus of introducing us to the bosses).

What I had conveniently forgotten about Raid Leading was that I can't help but get irate at shoddy visual cues and tricky mechanics. When I'm not RL, I'm a little more laid back. I don't feel personally responsible when someone dies. After all, it's not my crappy strat. (To be fair, I try to whisper the RL with any and all suggestions, but it's a little easier to weather when the buck isn't stopping with me.)

Well, now it is, and we're dying. For anyone who hasn't done this boss (and a quick sanity check for myself), here's the quick run down of boss abilities:

• There is Purple Ping Pong Ball of Doom that spawns. Look for the lightning from his nose. It will bounce of players and do distributed damage.
• There is a frontal conic called Psychic Drain. It hits like a truck, but will only occur when the ball is active.
• There is a stacking buff for the boss that makes him hit harder. It stacks up until the boss is hit with the ball and then resets.
• When the boss is hit with the ball, you enter what I call the Back in Black phase. Characterized by creepy tentacle monsters, a dark room, mosh pitting on the boss's butt, and, yes, me singing like Brian Johnson over vent.

That's pretty much it for abilities to worry about. There's one debuff the healers have to cleans ASAP that will cause a knockback, but it's unavoidable. It's probably unfair to my healers, but I consider that pretty much par for the course. (Isn't there always something stupid to dispel, just cuz?)

So what we were doing was the basic half the group on the boss, half the group out at max range. When the ball spawns, our tank flips the boss so the lightning goes through his crotchal region. The ball goes out first, then in (being ponged by the group). After it hits the melee group on bounce (2), we call for them to get out of the way. It pongs off the ranged group, heads back in, and then strikes the boss, starting Back in Black mode.

There are two major issues. First, the flipping ball has a giant hit box that is in no way indicated by its visual representation. After a while, it sort of felt like playing ping pong with ball that has a giant, beach ball sized force field around it. The graphic does not help really at all. Even when it hits a group, the explosion lags behind DBM's reporting and the actual direction change.

Second, a direct corollary of the first, the ball does seem to want to rebound directly at the boss. For the life of me, I can't figure out how it decides it's path. I tried hitting it flush with my ranged group paddle. I tried "adding spin" by moving into it. Yes, I even tried to curve the bullet. Myth Busted. Again. Seriously, if anyone knows how to get the ball to behave, you leave me a comment. Just when I think it's going right... it goes left.

So yeah, "catching" the ball with the boss is a big issue for us, especially when compounded by the fact that the actual radius of the thing is way larger than it appears to be. (So you inevitably get that one person that thinks they're far enough out, but really isn't and sends it ponging back unintentionally. Also, I've heard it sometimes ricochets off of pets. Anyone see that in action?)

When got used to catching, we found that we started getting the tank squished around the third pong match. That is, we were using a 3,3,3,splat... strat. Apparently, and this didn't occur to my bright ass until later, you can and should change the number of pongs. By leading off with a 3 pong, I was likely condemning us to a splat later. Supposedly it has to do with how the stacking lines up, because it takes longer the other times for the ball to spawn (and thus he builds up more stacks before you can get rid of them).

Instead, I should go with at least a 5,3,3,3 strat. We should be close to killing him by that last set of three, hopefully avoiding the splat. Leading off with 5 makes the next couple 3's not so bad, as the ball spawns sooner after you exit Back in Black mode. I guess there's a definite cooldown between spawnings, so by making it bounce more, you're shifting the phase back a bit in time, evening out how long you are forced to take it to the face. I'm not sure I completely grasp all the nuances, but suffice it to say, I need to try a front loaded pong strat.

Yes, this is a healer heavy fight. Our healers are, while not over geared, decently geared. We probably have room for improvement in that area, but it is what it is. We're casual, so we don't focus a lot on gearing, trying to make up for the "grind time" with being smarter in our strats. Thus, more research was needed, and while I don't think I can improve the ball catching, the new pong pattern should help. I can mess with it a bit to see what we can handle.

Anyway, any advice from y'all? Did I miss something? Is it just a matter of getting better geared so our healers can "heal through it?" (Five hits is rough with the AoE, but I think we can do it the first time through.) Otherwise, I'm just going to be pissed about the terrible purple ball graphic. Seriously, if you're going to make a pong mechanic, Blizz, at least make the ball part look logical. I'm not fond of giant invisible force fields on my balls... just sayin'.

The Dealership Service Quest Chain

Since it's Monday and I spent a good chunk of the weekend helping my mother move (gah my back hurts)... here's something that is only vaguely MMO related but will hopefully make your smile.

So I took my car into the dealer last week to repair an oil leak. It was all covered under warranty, so not a huge deal, but a bit of a hassle all the same. No part was more troublesome than the checkout. Let me recount that proceeding for you.

First, I spoke to the man at the service reception desk, the same bloke that had accepted my vehicle into the ranks of to-be-repaired. He explained that I would need to go inside to the cashier's counter. Very quickly, this is the layout of the dealership. Reception area just inside the entryway. To the right, a doorway to the service area. Through that door, you take a U-turn through another adjacent door to get to the cashier's counter. Also, at the top of that "U" is a small building-inside-of-the-building-office-looking-thingy that will come into play in just a bit. The point here, is that all of these areas are damn near in arm's reach of each other... yet separated by big glass windows. You know, so you can see exactly how far you've gone.

At the cashier's counter, I talked a friendly woman, who informed me that Dennis (and only Dennis) had to print me off a different sheet before we could complete any steps of the transaction. Dennis was apparently the receptionist that accepted my car (different from the guy I just spoke to out there; Dennis was on lunch break). I proceeded back to the original reception person and gave him my best "wtf dude, why didn't you tell me I needed Dennis" look, while being as polite as possible in my retelling of the cashier's quest line. He skipped reading the quest text and went straight to paging Dennis.

At that moment, someone who was definitely not Dennis entered the reception area. This Not Dennis took my papers and promised me that he would take care of it. No sooner had that man's heels clicked out of the reception room than Dennis himself entered, almost running into the man. Dennis gave me his best "wtf do you want, I was trying to eat" look. I explained hastily that Not Dennis had supposedly taken care of it. Dennis seemed satisfied, though mildly annoyed, and directed me back to the cashier's counter.

Shortly, the cashier materialized with papers in hand, printed by the mysterious he-who-is-Not-Dennis-but-has-Dennis-like-powers and had me sign something. Check out complete, I figured she'd pass along my keys, but what she really passed on was a token to redeem my keys at a different vendor. If you recall that building within a building, then you might expect that is where I now needed to go. You would be right. It was the service office.

The service office was lightly staffed with four men for the two desks therein. They all looked at me as if I were some sort of Russian Unicorn, and simply stared until I stated my case. I think it went something like: "Um, lady gave me this thingy and told me to get my keys?" With a grunt and a nod, one of the me snatched the token, matched number to number, and handed over the keys. I had almost turned to leave when I thought to ask: "So where is the car?"

"Just go out the door, it's somewhere in the lot out there. First few rows."

As fate would have it, it was in the third row. It took me much pressing of the lock button (for bat-esque echo-location) to find it.

When I was safely aboard my chariot, I reflected. This was, quite frankly, the Worst Quest Ever. The objective was completed within one quest hub, yes, but with much travel between nodes. The token was redeemed, but I still had to go find my reward. There was no gold. No Valor Points. I did not get any rep with any faction. Were I a developer at the offending dealership, I would quite seriously look into revamping that quest chain. Maybe add a cutscene or two, throw some montage music over the top, and save us all the trouble of watching it play out in real time.

Just sayin'...

Random Hump Day Shenanigans

Several quick items today.  First of all, posting may be sparse for the rest of the week (and has been already) due to a confluence of day job busy-nesses and night job finishing-ings.  Or something.  My "real job" has me in training for three days this week, which makes it hard to squeeze in any writing.  Then, I'm writing the very end of my next novel, which requires my attention outside of work moreso than just your average chapter.  Good news is, both should ease up after this week... just in time for the holidays!

Ugh.

In other news, Fuu and I are definitely picking up Skyrim this Thursday.  Followed by AC: Revelations next Tuesday.  Don't be surprised if I write a bit about them.  WoW's sort of in the whole breath-holding-between-patches thing right now anyway.

I have one fun non-WoW related story to tell before I leave you today, but first I wanted to mention something kind of cool.  You can now subscribe to this blog through Amazon and have it directly delivered to your Kindle device!  That's pretty neat, right?  Amazon apparently opened the service up for all and sundry, and we decided to take advantage.  Now, you should know that THEY set the price.  We have no control of it.  $0.99/mo is the basement (we can't offer it free), and I think we see only like 30% of that.  So it's not going to make us rich even if all of you subscribe.  It's better than a kick in the teeth, though, if you'd like to support what we do here.  On the other hand, you can keep getting everything here and through my RSS feed completely for free.  That's completely cool too (and probably what I would do, were I you).  I just wanted to let you guys know that it's offered. 

(A side note is that we'd still like to publish a collection of my IC stuff as a free ebook, we just need to get some time to do it.  I plan to have a bit of time when I finish the current novel I'm working on and ship it off to the editors).

Now, story time.  I'll make it quick.  Promise.

The aforementioned day job happens to be at a global corporation.  Like all seven continents global.  Ok, maybe more like four, but still... a myriad of languages can be heard at any given staff meeting.

I walked in this morning, and a note was taped to the employee entrance.  Apparently, we were being instructed by someone important (important enough to have written the not ordering us to do things in hastily scrawled sharpie, anyway) NOT to answer "the email."  I gave a snort and continued on my way, not really knowing what it was referring too.  I am, after all, not nearly important enough to be included in "the" email. 

Fatal last thoughts, am I right?  I log into my workstation to be immediately confronted with no fewer than 68 unread emails.  (Side note: I keep a pretty clean inbox.  When I left for a full week, I think my record was like 20... maybe).  "Holy fel," I says to myself.  "What gives?"

The email, conveniently titled "IT Learning Newsletter" is repeated on every one of my unread messages.  Being a good engineering detective, I went back to the first to see how this chain of doom started.  As anyone involved with corporate emails may know, there exist a construct known as "contact groups."  HR types use these extensively to create lists of folks to send appropriate emails to.  Generally, it works well, as a boss might say "make sure the group gets this," and Sheila (or whomever) clicks on the "our group" list and off goes the memo.

Sure you occasionally run into what might be called the "Peter Gibbons" syndrome, whereby one receives a memo in octuplet due to having eight bosses.  Eight, Peter?  Yes, Eight, Bob.  And let me tell you about TPS reports...

Anyway, there apparently is also a group for "Everyone."  Several everyones, in fact.  Everyone in each continent and location.  For whatever reason, some mental midget decided to include EVERYONE EVERYWHERE on an email.  I'm assuming it was an accident by an overtired, overworked user.  But let's go with idiot, because it makes for more provocative reporting.

This idiot hits the send button, and it goes out to everyone.  Now, even in a good company, you could probably say that 1 in every 10 employees are technologically impaired.  This is simply fact.  1 in 10 people still think email is magic.  They understand that someone, somewhere is sending them something.   They've also been inundated with things called "mailing lists" and "spam."  Obviously, all one must do to rectify this is ask the machine to nicely "to take me off the distribution list."  Or, more succinctly: "PLEASE STOP THE SPAM FOR ALL THAT IS SACRED TO YOUR GODS."  One or the other.

Problem is, they can't really figure out where the email originated from.  There is no convenient link at the bottom that says "to remove from list, click here."  This is not the thing you accidentally signed up for when you installed that piece of free software and didn't read any of the checked boxes and "oh, my, where this Yahoo search bar come from?"  No, this isn't you granddaddy's spam.  This is accidental corporate memo spam.

So you take the only rational recourse.   You "reply to all" with your polite request.  Can you see what happened here?  That's right, now everyone gets a second email in this huge change that says "please stop sending me this stuff."  Since 1 in 10 people are also secretly sheep, they say "Oh, that's how it's done," and copy-cat their way to freedom.  What we have here, is a failure to communicate.  That, and an avalanche of corporate spam.

For perhaps the first 4 hours of my day, I received around two emails every ten minutes, in probably one of six different languages (including Chinese characters which I have no hope at all of deciphering) pleading for an end to the spam.  What 1 in 10 people fail to realize, obviously, is that in responding, they're simply scratching and spreading the rash of stupidity.

Then, of course, the server crashes, and I'm sure bursts into flame somewhere in IT-land, and for the rest of the day our network shows all the speed of a dying whale, marooned on the beach.  I think I breached triple digits by the time someone had figured out how to shut down the chain, but I could have more... my inbox was full to capacity  (helped along by the people attaching screenshots of their own full inboxes as if we didn't believe that they, too, were getting the emails).

So what did we learn in this "IT Learning Newsletter?"  10% can screw it up for the 90% of people that are sitting there laughing/crying/screaming behind the screen, not replying, but hoping to God/Allah (or the Nether if you prefer) that someone sitting next to the sheep, sheers it.  Or at least instructs it in the finer points of email etiquette.

That is all.  Yaaay Hump Day.

Wherein I Get Angrier And Less Constructive About Gear

Coming on the heels of yesterday's attempt at offering a rational solution for what I perceive to be a problem, I've now seen the Blue Post regarding clarifications for the Valor Point changes in 4.3.  For a good summary of the information, check out WoW Insider here.

My initial reaction is to throw things.  It's a joke that the raid finder's limit on VP is 500 per week.  Can you even get anything for 500?

For the record, a new piece of gear PER WEEK is not fast.  I understand the need to cap VP gains so that people don't chain run and replace all their gear in a short amount of time.  What I do not understand is why the devs feel the need to force us into a breadth of activities to achieve these Valor Points.  You can't just pick the path you enjoy the most, because the limits on each are set low.  You have to do multiple things if you want to gear SLOWLY.  As in, one piece of gear per week slowly. 

That is bollocks.  How can they get this right with PvP, yet bone it up so hard in PvE.  Slap an overall VP limit that is right around the average cost of a piece of gear.  Then, simply let folks decide what they want to do to get there.  It's fine if you put a slightly lower limit to encourage people to try a different path each week... but 500 is far too low for that.  Heck, 1000 is too low. 

I'm okay with big items like tier pieces and/or weapons costing double.  But in my opinion, the goal should be to make it possible for people to gear up, on average, one piece per week.  At that pace, content will be cleared, and you don't have to worry so much about when to nerf.  They've already admitted that we're behind, in general, where they want us to be... why impose more limits on VP?  Open it up for Light's sake!

The problem I see, the disconnect, hinges directly from the statement that the "aim is to return to the days of valor points being a consolation prize rather than being central to the gearing process."  Aka - we want you to gear through raiding.  Then fix your damn drop system!  It's awful.  The loot tables are awful.  What drops is awful.  The things people need don't drop, and the items people can't use always drop.  Who are these tuned for?  I've not seen one post ever where someone has said: "Wow, I seem to get all the drops I need through raiding."

VP is a necessary part of the gearing process because Blizz has MADE IT SO.  EGADS!  It's working as felling designed (if not intended).  How the fel do any of these VP changes help make it easier to get gear through raid drops?  All I see is a bunch of restrictions as if they're afraid to make VP "too good" and to limit the number of drops you can get to make sure people don't "overfarm" or something.

Here's a thought: GETTING GEAR IS FUN.  By placing all these ridiculous limits on gearing, not only do you make it harder to understand, but you are restricting THE FUN.  You wouldn't have to nerf the fel out of the raids if you'd simply let us gear a bit faster. 

The base problem I see is this: The gear you get per hour spent doing PvE things is horrible right now.  As I said yesterday, for PvP it seems tuned correctly... and CP/HP is an integral part of the process (you don't have drops).  So either fix the drops in PvE to be more effective, or embrace that fact that token points really aren't that bad when tuned correctly.  I don't think a new piece of gear per week is too much to ask.  Especially at this new, faster release rate.  If you want us to burn through content, you're going to have to speed up the gear.  Instead, we seem to be going the other way with it.  Why?

I've seen the "gearing up" malaise strike a lot more people this expansion.  It takes the form of "why even try when the gear is going to be obsolete in a month or two."  It's pretty simple to understand why.  If you spend a whole lot of time and effort getting something, then you want it to last.  Seems at direct odds with pushing people through content faster.  Make up your mind, Blizz.  What do you want?  Valuable gear spread out over time, or fast paced adventures through quick-released content?  You can't have both.

My Crazy Dream: PvE Arenas

The more that I play 2v2 arenas, the more my issues with the current PvE gearing solidify.  It seems strange to find PvE clarity through PvP, but I suppose it simply serves to highlight that Blizz can still do things completely right.  And make no mistake, I think the current gearing path for PvP is completely right.  Sure we had that slight snafu during the transition from season 9 to season 10.  But if you throw that bit of confusion out (which we were probably over-compensated for anyway), it's really proven to be a pretty good system.

I wish I could say the same for PvE.  The word painful comes to mind, and that's it.  What I think Blizzard forgot is that we enjoy getting new gear.  That's part of the... what's that word?  Oh yeah.  Fun.  Gearing is fun.  Yet, the whole expansion has been focused on limiting the speed of gearing.  We've been forced to throttle our fun, lest we exhaust it too soon.

I understand why they slowed us down, but I'm not sure that it's been done evenly.  The more I play arenas, the more I believe that PvP has hit the nail on the head, while PvE has missed the mark... by about a week.  I would conjecture that what takes me one night of casual play to accomplish in PvP, takes me a week in PvE.

I guess my main complaint is simply that PvE gearing is too slow and arduous.  That is to say, I don't feel like I'm adequately rewarded for my time and effort spent.  Spend two hours playing arenas, and you can cap your CP for the week.  Spend two hours running dungeons, and you can get two done... if you're lucky.  And what is that?  ~300 VP on a good day?  Compared to ~1200 CP.  And we're not even "killing it" in arenas.  We lose as much as we win.  I'm sure we could cap a lot faster.

The difference, as I see it, is that I can put in a good two hours of playing, cap out for the week, and net myself a gear upgrade (Or significantly closer to one.  Some are more expensive.  Like weapons.  And I'm totally okay with that).  To get the same treatment from PvE, I basically need to run each day of the week for two hours.  Hardly equivalent.

And I know, we're supposed to be raiding to get gear upgrades.  But the VP isn't exactly falling from the sky there either.  Also, the loot tables seem horribly tuned.  We routinely get drops we can't use.  Or the same drops we got last night.  Or the same slot that dropped from the last boss.  I mean I'm sure it's not "by design," but it certainly feels that way a lot more, doesn't it?

In Wrath, there were always one or two slots (I would argue now there are like 4 or 5, but let's throw that one out for the moment) that were hard to get.  And you could chain run the super-quick heroics, be rewarded with a good (it seemed) number of token points, and fill a lot of your slots with purchased gear.  Now, I can agree that it led to some crazy patterns of running and gearing out super quick.  So I'm fine with capping.  I just want a fun way to reach the cap, and the current answer of heroics are not it.  Raids aren't really cutting either, though maybe they're working on that with all the nerfs.

Here's what I know.  As a player and long time customer, I'm really looking forward to arenas tonight.  I've been capped all week, and that has simply built my anticipation.  They're getting the same money from me whether I log on Tuesday excited, or log on Saturday frustrated with the same troll-roics I've been running each day.  Wouldn't you rather have an excited customer?  And I have to believe a lot of that is simply due to the feeling that I can get somewhere in PvP.  It has been tuned correctly, in my opinion (as far as gearing goes... class balance is a whole 'nother post).

So what would I like to see?  I do have an idea.  I always try to have an idea when I whine.  Try this one on for size...

While we all hated the idea of a one room raid (ToC), I don't think we similarly hated the idea of one room dungeons (think Violet Hold, but there really hasn't been one of these in each expansion).  Let's take that assumption and run with it.  Arena-ize it, if you will.  Arenas are fun because you can queue up, be thrown right in to the mix, be done in 10-15 with a moderate reward.  They're a quick fix, balanced nicely with other, longer options.

I think we need that option on the PvE side.  We need a PvE arena.  Want to be radical?  Make it 2vB, or 3vB, or 5vB options.  Throw in a random boss.  Scale the health depending on the players, but don't change the mechanics.  Part of the fun might be: do we go in with two DPS and try to burn and kite?  Do we need a tank?  How about a healer?  It breaks away from the holy trinity... and that's what I love about this idea.

Now, I grant that that would be a pretty ambitious projects so deep into an MMO's life-cycle.  It may not be worth it, from a business sense, to commit so many resources to a project.  So here's the lazy version: One random dungeon (maybe even a scaled raid?) boss, 5 players enter.  You get one shot.  If you wipe, you are awarded no points and my the Light have mercy on your soul.  Otherwise, you get a nice little hit of points.  No gold.  No drops.  Simply VP.  Maybe like 50 with a ~1200 cap.  It'd still be somewhat slower than arenas, but boy would I think that'd be fun.  And it'd give us a quick fix option that it seems we're lacking.

Is this a horrible idea?  Would it ruin some aspect that I'm not thinking off?  Let me know what you think.

QotD: Should Melee Get a Pity Buff?

I'm sure that Blizzard has loads of data to back up this change. I'll bet they have graphs and charts and screenshots and beta tests and all sorts of intelligent thought going into it. I'm sure this change is meant to level an unbalanced playing field.

BUT NONE OF THAT CHANGES THE FACT THAT I THINK THIS CHANGE SUCKS.

What is the change? Here's the snippet (from some preliminary information for the next patch):

Melee classes will be getting a buff that is only active in the new raid to help them compete with ranged classes.

WTF.

From my extremely limited and narrow viewpoint... I call bullshit.

How is being a melee DPS any harder than being ranged?  I've raided as both, though I'll give you the majority of my time is spent on a ranged.  Still, I have some experience as a DK.  Crazy thing... I find it far easier to achieve high numbers on my DK than I do on my Warlock.

Yeah, sure, you have to be in range.  And on some fights this is a problem.  On most fights, it means you park it right near the tank and y'all bitch when you have to move away from something.  Meanwhile, the rest of us folks IN CLOTH are running the hell around avoiding geysers of fire, zones of void, additional monsters, and all sorts of nasty things.  And THEN you whine about having a kiting fight. 

I have news for all the melee folks out there: movement is not an excuse for your poor DPS.  You know why I find it easier on my DK to get numbers?  I DON'T HAVE CAST TIMES.  Yeah, that's right.  Melee are designed with the fact that they're melee in mind.  They get more instant abilities, while those of us in sissy robes in the back are forced to stand still for one, two... oh crap void zone.  One, two.... add in my face.  One, two... OUT OF RANGE ARE YOU KIDDING ME?

You want to talk about something that is UNFAIR?  How about the fact that because Affliction Warlocks were TOO GOOD at multi-managing, we got a nerf to Soul Swap, effectively putting us back in the worthless zone on trash.  I had about four months IN THE HISTORY OF THE GAME of not being completely sucky on trash.  Entire forums and guides are written on the ART of juggling DoTs on trash so that you don't appear to suck.  Then on my DK, I apply face to keyboard and easily bypass my own numbers.  If you want to talk about design flaws, how about that?

Here's something: NOT EVERYONE HAS TO BE GOOD AT ALL THE THINGS. 

Yeah, that's right.   It's entirely possible your class could have a - Light Forbid - weakness.  For Hunters, it's needing to be up close.  For Warlocks, it's anything that dies faster than 10 seconds (which is like everything these days, and even boss fights are being designed around this shitty principle... like sustained DPS is too much to ask).  For Mages, it's crying whenever milk is spilled.  For melee, it's what?  Having to be in melee range?  I'm sorry, but that's WORKING AS INTENDED.

I saw this over at Spinksville, and while I love Spinks, I completely reject the statement:

I read this as an acknowledgement of what most players recognise, which is that melee are hampered with respect to ranged as dps (esp in raids). This is largely because of the Cataclysm implementation of ‘bring the class not the player’ which reduced or removed most of the issues with ranged dps while not touching the melee classes requirement to always be in range.

I do not recognize that.  I also disagree with the notion that "most of the issues with ranged dps" have been removed.  See above whining about trash as an Affliction Warlock.

Now, this is a rant (on an upcoming patch note, no less).  I'm completely whining here (it may turn out to be completely mild and functionally sound).  Sometimes you just need to let it out.  I admit to being completely biased and perhaps I'm just not among the "most players" that Spinks is talking about.  So that's what I want to know.  Am I the only one that doesn't think melee have it hard?  Am I the only one who thinks there are simply different challenges involved, and that's okay?  Am I the only one who has felt absurdly OP on my DK after working my butt off on my 'lock?

I guess I just hold my melee to a higher standard, and have the fortune of playing with some solid players.  They don't seem to have any problems battling me for that top DPS slot in raids.  Especially on fights which slant in their favor (whenever you need to kill adds).

At the end of the day, I think Spinks naming this the "Pity Buff" is right on.  Really melee?  Are you going to let them throw you a pity party?  As a Warlock, I would be ashamed. 

As Blizz I would be ashamed.  It's a lazy solution to lazy design.  If all the fights really do gimp melee... why the hell are we designing them that way?  This whole thing strikes me as a bit stupid.

Let me be clear: I do not think having a "weakness" in your class is a bad thing.  It encourages folks to get creative, to exercise their class.  Blanket buffs/nerfs encourage laziness... and in general, I guess I'm against them.

I'm sure there are great counter arguments.  I'm not really trying to do the topic justice, just rant a bit.  Sound off about my stupidity in comments :-).

The Problem With Tanking

The hot topic out there continues to be tanking design. It is obviously high on Blizz's to-do list, and it's been getting a lot of air time and little tweaks.  Most recently, Ghostcrawler discussed some of the finer points on the Dev Watercooler blog.  There have been some responses, but in particular I'm fond of Ratshag's article.  Not only does it pretty much represent the single longest buggerthumpin' article we've seen from the loquacious orc, but I feel it also makes some darned good points.

The overarching message of the article is that Ghostcrawler seems to be missing the point a bit.  He seems to be discussing button presses and abilities, when perhaps he should be focused more on what tanks believe to be the essence of tanking.  Namely, things like positioning, control, and situational awareness.  Or, as Ratshag puts it: Tanks don't want to be Mages.  (To which I might reply: who does?)

In any case, I agree wholeheartedly with my green-skinned fellow blogger.  Furthermore, I think a lot of the loudest complaints right now are from people that just shouldn't be tanks.  They don't really want to do what tanking requires, but are looking for some way enjoy a role that, quite simply, they don't want.  They would be happier as a DPS, and just don't want to admit it.  Call it tank denial.  And should we ruin a role to accommodate this?

I would say that most tanks, true tanks, were relieved at the threat change.  Maybe it does trivialize button pressing to some extent, but only in the area of throughput.  Now tanks can focus on the more important aspects of tanking without worrying about losing things so much.

In my musings about this topic, I've tried to go back and figure out how we got here.  What was the history that has led us to this point.  It seemed pretty clear, actually.  In Wrath, there was too much dependence on AoE that led to a trivialization of encounters.  Blizz wanted to make things harder, so the answer was to "make AoE harder."  However, instead of relying on innovative mechanics to do this, we got a higher mana cost for AoE spells, and AoE threat nerfs.  They controlled it by punishing us for using AoE, and, at first, it worked.  But there are always consequences.  In this case, tanks became too focused on threat throughput, and lost a bit of the soul of tanking.  It made the role less fun.

Maybe we should step back, though.  Maybe to truly solve this problem we need to stop trying to put duct tape on a band-aid and actually deal with the wound.  Maybe we should ask "Why do we AoE?"

In that, the response is quite simple.  We AoE because it is faster.  Easier.  But what if it wasn't?  Right now, it's still easier, once you get geared enough, to simply group everything up and burn it down.  The answer shouldn't be to punish players by nerfing abilities to keep them playing "slower."  Why not innovate, and deal with the core issue.

For example, if we're talking trash mobs, make sure you have a healing mob with every pull.  A simple design philosophy.  And make that healer badass.  Make him able to nullify incoming damage unless he is CC'ed.  Shift the CC decision from one of limiting incoming damage, to one of actually controlling the mobs.  Currently, we CC because we'll die if we don't.  Why not make it a choice not of death, but of time?  Make it longer and harder to AoE.  Then, I would bet good money, people eventually wouldn't do it as much.

In fact, we might see some awesome consequences like people looking for the healer.  As it stands now, I hardly pay attention to the role of mobs.  If CC were an answer for easier and faster instead of easier but slower, it might be significantly more attractive.

We've proven, over the years, that we, as players, are going to find the quickest, easiest route.  We want to maximize our rewards for the time spent (for the most part).  Then design around that.  Make that the core philosophy and embrace it.  Reward the proper usage of ability with faster completions.  Punish it by making it take longer.  CC doesn't do that now.  The punishment is supposed to be death and corpse runs (time), but that's becoming more and more trivial.  Make it actually rewarding to plan your pulls.

Getting back to tank design, if follow this design path, it seems to me that we can get away from threat throughput based designs, and focus more on the essence of tanking.  Tanks can look less at threat meters, and focus more on positioning and location.  To me, that is the kind of solution that would make tanking more fun and rewarding, not any amount of clever button pressing.  Like Ratshag, I believe the Devs seem to be missing the point a bit.  Maybe they're listening to all those tanks that are secretly Mages.  And we all know what happens when you listen to Mages...

The bottom line: the game should be about more than button pressing.  If tanks are standing around, contemplating Magery, then they should be doing it wrong, and the game design should teach them that.

I have faith that the Devs are smart guys, and I'm sure Ghostcrawler was simply relating one, small, poorly communicated sub-conversation of the greater tanking discussion.  I would shudder if that was the only avenue they're pursuing.  Still, it's up to us, the customers, to use our voices to make sure they don't corrupt the true soul of tanking... which may sound odd coming from a Warlock, but there it is.

Why Rivs Is Wrong

I know, I'm probably feeding the Troll Mage here. Fact is, I generally like Rivs over at High Latency Life,* and I'm willing to excuse one terribly awful no-good very-bad post. After all, don't random gratuitous pictures of scantily clad women make up for a lack of journalistic research and integrity every time?** 

I swear, some people just love drama.  And oranges.

So this is me, pulling myself up from the bowels of the city, rising to the occasion to defend my honor. 

Honor?  Pssch.  You think Warlocks give a shit about honor?  Nah, this is just going to be plain fun.  And let me tell you something about the bowels.  The Light is well... light.  I like cool shades as much as the next guy, but I burn in the light.  And it's hot outside.  Nice and cool down here in the "bowels."

You say bowels.  I say super-awesome man cave.  We've got leather recliners made with REAL BABY SEAL.  Also, with your well-publicized fondness of skanky women, Rivs, I'm 666% sure you frequent the "bowels" as much as we do.  Who do you think organizes and dresses all those women?  It certainly ain't the Paladins on staff.

But let's get to the meat of the post.  The six points.  (Six because that's all you could grope for.)

6. You're penalizing us because you don't speak demonic?  Live a little.  Strike up a conversation with some of those bowel-women instead of just raining ice on their heads and calling 'em twenties.  Besides, what are you going to do when the Burning Legion shows up again and screws with things?  We'll be the ones out there taunting them appropriately.  IN THEIR OWN LANGUAGE.

5. The party is where we are.  (Did you see the green disco ball?)  Hence, summoning.  You get portals so that everyone can flee from your "awesomeness."  Also, Flasher Phonebooth >> Whatever-the-hell-nickname-ports-have.  Probably something Tyrion has called Cersei Lannister's mommy parts at some point.

4.  I don't know a self-respecting Warlock alive that uses conjured anything.  Heck, we don't use regular food/water.  That's right, we cut ourselves.  And then resupply ourselves from our enemies.  Your tears are our sustenance.  Have fun in your little magical kitchen, Top Chef.  We'll be out baking cookies from SOULS.

3.  I love how you reference Shaman here.  Like they're somehow related to Warlocks.  Then you flaunt Rocky Horror Picture like it gives you some sort of street cred.  Go back to 1973.  Did you know we have our own self-heroism?  It's called Demon Soul.  It doesn't help anyone else, doesn't stack with your shit, and we like it that way.  You can take your Time Warp and shove it.  We'll be just fine.  Not pretending we're in a musical, but killing... slowly.

2.  Did you forget we can still Soulstone?  Sure we could save it to use as a b-rez for others... but why would we?  We can fight 'till the death, die, then pop back up with health to spare.  Run away you little ice-blocking, Rogue-like cowards.  We've conquered Death.  That shit was so vanilla.  Go talk to Xenophilius Lovegood about the Deathly Hallows or something.  Get a glove, get in the game.

1. Wait, what's this?  You couldn't even come up with six?  Well, that's a shame.  Does anyone even use portals anymore?  Between hearthstones, guild shrouds, permanent ports in the main cities, the "leave instance" option in dungeons, and quest chains that take you exactly where you need to go... who ports?  Maybe you're trying to bring back the "glory days" when y'all used to be able to charge everyone because there was no other way to get around.  You opportunistic bastards.  No, we haven't forgiven you for that.

0. Oh, there's more?  You betcha.  I could go all day.  Let's look at pets.  The devs had to give you one just so you could attempt to keep up with us.  While you're over there trying to coax an itty-bitty elemental from the planes next-door like a Shaman (oops, I did it too), we're ripping our minion forcefully from across the felling Nether.  THE TWISTED DAMNED NETHER.  (No association with the blogcast of the same name.) 

-1.  Gettin' deeper into the bowels now.  Let's take a look at famous Mages.  I've done this one before so it's sort of cheating.  Here's a recap:  Enjoy Kel'Thuzad and Jaina Proudmoore.  Stellar cast you've got there.

-2. Pop quiz: Which are better, councils or covens?  If you chose councils, go debate about it for 6 months and get back to me with a debt-reduction plan.

-3. You make cuddly sheep.  We skip the shape-changing sparkly crap and just make mobs too scared to move.  It's so OP that Blizz still makes it pull aggro, just to even things out.

-4.We turn into a frickin' Demon.  You turn into a block of ice.  Handy, if we're all sitting around drinking Coke.

-5. You have normal orange fire.  We have that, plus green fire, plus purple fire that shoots from a demon head of awesome.  (You know, the one you've seen in every guild pic ever with a Warlock.)

-6. To finish with a strike home where we believe your heart may reside: Warlock women will do things that Mage women think are gross.  'Nuff said.

I went to negative six.  Pretty deep in the bowels.  Also, that gives me a grand total of 13... which is a little more than double and a pretty lucky number.

Gnomer, you'd better come back and help out your boy, Rivs.  He needs some sort of 10-step program, I think.

THE END

* I do.  Seriously.  You should be reading over there if you're not.  He's a great guy/writer/picture-chooser.

Also, unrelated: Twitterati - Yes, I'm a dude, too.  Though I got some of my writing analyzed over at Gender Genie, and it thought I was a girl too.  Raised by wolves, say I.


**(Like we're all doing responsible journalism here...)

Not Immediately Related to WoW

Here's a look at my company approved problem solving process:

1. Ask if anyone knows anything.
2. Google it.
3. Google it with a slightly different word order.
4. ???
5. Solve Problem, but do not profit.

Immediately after solving the problem, I rush off to share it with co-workers who will find said solution helpful.  Inevitably, one of them informs me that the one person who actually "knows something" about whatever it was I was doing will be showing up in ten minutes for a consult.  Thus, I've just basically re-invented the wheel.  Never mind that when I asked if anyone knew anything, everyone said "no" and no one thought to mention it THEN.  I suppose I should be more specific in my inquiry process: "Do you know anything about subject A, or know of anyone who does that will be here in the foreseeable future?"

The world is full of ineptitude.  Much like how I felt punting turtles last night when it seemed like every other toon there was personally following me around, waiting for me to engage the fire elemental, and then SNAKING MY FELLING TURTLE.

There is a fiery retribution in your future.  I may or may not follow you around for the next half hour purely out of creepy, ineffective spite.

Seriously, I see your flaming bird and raise you a middle finger matriarch.  Platform this.

I'm So Angry

I don't have a whole lot of rational thought right now. I'm just angry. Call it a bad case of the Mondays. Why? I waltzed into work after a particularly rough weekend... only to find out that the Internet Gestapo has struck again, this time blocking a personal favorite: Goodreads.

I am so horribly and utterly against internet filtering that I can't even form a coherent and reasonable line of thought when discussing it.  It's like burning books.  It just makes me so... asafldskjsdf.

I mean, I get it.  Corps drink the Kool-aid.  They think that we're all wasting time on the scary interwebz that they provide when we should be working.  They stand around the water cooler discussing it, then go out for a smoke break and discuss it some more, then shake hands over a table of discussion in a meeting room, then... oh wait, it's time to go home, enough work for one day.  Meanwhile, in the cubicles... I was at my desk, doing desk-based activity the whole time.  NO. WAI.

Sure, they need to block the pr0n.  And that's all the internet is for.  No one has ever used it for work-related purposes.

I'm getting caught up again.  I shouldn't be this mad about workplace censorship.  After all, that dude that walks around stopping at desks and engaging helpless co-workers in meaningless conversations about his divorce has been sto... [20 mins later] ... Sorry, got interrupted by That Guy.

My argument comes back to this: If you are a salaried employee, you should be judged on performance.  That is all.  If you deliver ahead of your deadlines on everything and THEN you'd like to pop in on Twitter and tell the world that you're going to be late for dinner... WHY THE F NOT?  If someone's performance is bad... then deal with that aspect.  Blanket solutions like a workplace-wide filter simply DO NOT WORK.

In lieu of something actually worthwhile to read, since you've made it this far through the rant.  I shall point you to BBB's article involving internet dragons and PvP.   Mostly because I want to use the following out of context with regards to the usage of Dragon as a solution for all life's problems:

...Surprise ambush by Rogues in the woods? Dragon. Attacked by an army of the damned? Dragon. Bar fight? Dragon. Behind in your taxes? Dragon.

It’s the best answer to any problem. Once you apply Dragon to it, it goes away.

...utility ain’t the POINT. I’m a freaking DRAGON.

To which I'd like to add:

Facing a work-place firewall? Dragon.

Rawr.

A Stat I Would Like To See

Sometimes good things really do happen to good people, and I'll be the first to admit that I'm not always able to "just be happy for them." I think that being happy for someone else in the face of your own struggles is quite the acquired talent. I do strive to be that way, but I don't always achieve that.

To be fair, I was being mostly facetious, and also I know Big Bear Butt to be a good guy and a good player. That he has, admittedly, gotten fortunate with a good group to see a majority of the content is not really something that bothers me. It's actually a great thing. The Bear has contributed a lot to the Community and set a good example for a lot of bloggers (me included). If someone is going to write about getting carried, I'm glad it's him.

I just wish it wasn't on a damned Hunter. That's what I'm saying here. Only a Mage would be worse. Then, I read that he was on his Warlock alt when all this started to go down, and I felt a small bit better.

But my point is just that my sort of mini-rant last week wasn't about Bear in particular. I felt like the feeling I experienced was something that is pretty common in this game of ours, and really highlights the importance of intrinsic motivation. It's one thing to feel an initial sense of jealousy at the fortunes of someone else. I daresay that a bit of that is simply human. It's quite another if I had gone off the deep and end decried the game "too easy" or thrown in my raiding towel because someone else didn't have to walk uphill in the snow both ways to get where I got. Instead, I tried to turn in my human nature into something silly and fun (at least that's what I was shooting for, I may have erred, as humans are wont to do).

I have chosen to raid only once a week for two hours. I have chosen to stick with my group of people and learn to succeed with them. To me, raiding is a team sport. Winning has a lot more of an emotional reward when you do it with people you care about (not that winning a random pick-up game isn't fun as well). With my decisions come certain limitations. I understand and accept that.

One of the stats I would like to see is "wipes/hours per kill." Maybe it exists out there somewhere, but I imagine it would be hard to measure. What I'm talking about though, is a measure of the perceived effort a group has to put in to succeed. However, if we could figure out a way to do this, I think they should start using such a stat to rank the "top guilds."

(Aside: Even as I write this, I can think of about a million ways to "game" such a system. Likely, it would take someone more clever than I to come up with an accurate and consistent way of implementing such a measure. Fortunately, life has proven that I'm nowhere near the most clever person alive... so I can still hope.)

I know, there is something "fun" about the whole race to be first. I'm not looking down on that, I promise. Kudos to those folks. I'm just not able to even begin to participate in that because of my chosen lifestyle. (Note: I'm not making a judgement here of "better" or "worse," just different). To me, the true measure of the skill of a group is really how quickly they adapt to a new fight. How many tries does it take them to learn. This, perhaps, hinges on my belief that lessons in this game of WoW are hard-fought. That's where my motivation comes from. I know that when my group eventually succeeds, we've fought tooth and nail to learn it our way, and that has value to me. Nothing about that depends on what anyone else is doing. My motivation is intrinsic to our group.

I really wanted to highlight that difference. Someone else achieving something takes away nothing from my own achievements. What the Bear says, then, is true:

What it proved to me is that skill and coordination and talent all play the largest roles… even to the point of a very good 9 person team being able to deal with a horrible noob and still come out on top. At least, as long as that noob ain’t a tank. Or a healer. Or one of the people needed for CC.

I would argue that those other nine have earned it. I'm sure they've spent the "hours per wipe" needed to know those fights, to earn the proper gear. Skill has a lot to do with that, but even skill isn't as simple as a "gift of the Naaru." Skill is something we fight for as well.

To a certain extent, even Bear earned it, though he claims otherwise. There's a saying escaping me about surrounding yourself with good people, like a President with a stellar Cabinet. In life, we are both supported and hindered by those we choose to surround ourselves with. In Bear's case, he's formed relationships with these good players enough that they want him along (presumably because they have confidence that at the very least he'll stay out of their way and can take directions, but maybe also because they suspect he could bring a bit more than the average Bearhunter in terms of skill or just plain likeability). Forming solid, trusting relationships is something we fight for also. That's the part of the second M in this online genre.

I've gotten lucky recently too. Our group has had a really difficult time getting our team back off the ground. One of the problems inherent to any casual raiding group is the RL boss, and our hours per wipe on that one are way, way up this year. I feel extremely fortunate that we've gotten as far as we have, with the hurdles we've faced. We're lucky that Blizzard is putting just enough "welfare epics" in the game still that a group like ours can sort of "keep up." And I'm also lucky that I've found 9 other people that share my goals and desired pace of play in-game to be able to do what we do for years now.

I think there's one thing Bear and I both agree on as far as this "race" goes: There is something epic about setting your own goals and then working to make them happen, whatever those goals may be.

Even though he and I are doing the same encounters, we're not really on the same course. Sometimes that's hard for a cranky human Warlock to see right away, but there's another saying about forests and trees. And also, I'm not a Druid.

A Case of the Mondays: 10 Man Raid Ed.

Fair warning: I'm going to whine today. Whine without offering a solution too. It's like my golden internet rule and Ima break it. I know. Chastise me if you will. Shake your finger at the screen and call me a noob. Whatever. Today I'm gettin' my cranky on.

Any raid leader can vouch for this: sometimes it's just not your night. Such was the case last Thursday when I got called in to lead. Mind you, being the backup raid leader has it's own downsides. Like, you're pretty much always going to be dealing with subs. Otherwise, why would they need the backup? And it isn't that our subs were bad or anything like that. It's simply that subs that haven't regularly been running with you tend to need time to acclimate themselves to the environment. That sword cuts both ways too.

I swear this isn't a complaint about subs. Our people are great. We've been very fortunate in that regard.

What this is a complaint about is the difficulty of 10-man encounters.

Yep, Ima go all noobsauce on you and whinge about how hard 10-mans are. That's fine if you want to berate my lack of skill. That may completely be true. I can handle being the suckz.

What frustrates me is how unforgiving these early ten man encounters are. We've only succeeded on three bosses thus far: Halfus, Double Dragon, and Conclave of Winds. It's been probably two months of raiding, and that's as far as we've gotten. Why? It's freaking hard!

To some extent, you could argue that being hard is a good thing. No more are we concerned with the burnout that plagued the game via Naxx. Yet, I see a different sort of burnout looming on the horizon: the Wipe Burnout. Again I say of Cataclysm, the pendulum has swung too far the other way. I said it of heroics and early gearing, and I say it now of raid tuning. We went from really easy to really hard with no in between. (Though I do feel like being a strict ten man guild in Wrath was challenging.)

My chief complaint about the new raid encounters stems from design choices. To summarize it in a sentence: the bosses are too unforgiving for ten man's. When Blizzard decided to legitimatize ten man raiding in Cataclysm by offering the same rewards, it is my belief that this indicated a verbal contract that they would design the fights with both ten and twenty-five man raids equally in mind (probably a false assumption). What we have gotten are twenty five man fights ported to ten man's, same as Wrath only with a whole lot more to learn as they've consciously tried to make things harder. The end result is that ten man's are too unforgiving.

Everything scales, right? Let's say you get 6 pieces of gear dropping from a 25-man boss, so you get 2 pieces from a 10 man. Or 2 and some fraction. It scales. Makes sense right? Should be easy. Yet, what happens with mechanics? Where in a 25 you can have 3 people to take care of some mechanic, in a 10 man you have 1. And what happens if that one person dies? WIPE!

That is the problem we're running into. We can't lose anyone. To succeed consistently at these bosses, we need to be members of the un-freaking-dying club. It's too hard. Not to mention that they do stupid shit like the drakes change every week, so we can't just get used to one type of fight. We have to memorize 30 versions of the same fight before we're "on farm." I could deal with this for a later boss fight, but for the first fight of the night? Let us at least warm up on something easy first.

(Here's where you could probably suggest we go to Magmaw, which we're going to do. The f-ed up progression path is another complaint of mine, but we are where we are right now. We've done what we've done.)

Then we inevitably discover bugs like we did last Thursday with Conclave of Winds. The nature dude (Anshal) hits 1% (dead), but hits it while in a green healing circle. What happens? Well the 1 minute timer starts meaning we have to focus fire the other bosses down, but, oh yeah, he's still completely active as if he were alive. Leave his platform and he nukes you. Stay and you're struggling to down stuff. What to do, what to do? That is NOT working as intended. The fight is a headache and a half already (and the rewards are shit for the complexity too!)

Oh, how this hurts morale. These are bosses we downed months ago, and we still can't do them consistently. Why? Well if we get one sub, we're screwed. If one person looks away for a second and dies... screwed. We get a random DC... screwed. There is a lag hiccup... screwed. The moon is in the seventh house and Jupiter aligns with Mars... the dawning of the Age of Screwed.

A group can only take so much of this before raiding stops being fun and starts simply being tedious. I don't mind a learning curve. I don't mind "hard." What I do mind is the feeling that 10 mans were not given due thought and simply "scaled to" like it would all just work magically. If you're going to put so much pressure on the single person, then maybe we should be getting freaking bribe rewards for raiding 10 mans just like if we were a pugging tank.

[Insert Unintelligible Screaming Here]

That's it. That's my bitch-fest. I had the flu over Easter Weekend and now it's Monday. I'm cranky. 4.1 better drop this week or Ima lose it. They've strung us out long enough, and I consider myself one of the more patient ones. What good is having a policy of smaller, quicker patch drops if that policy is complete BS? Quicker my ass.

So yes, I'm frustrated. No, I'm not going to rage quit because that's silly. There are still far more positives than negatives. It just can't always be rainbows and sunshine here on the blog though. Occasional ranting is healthy. Please disagree (intelligently!) in comments below. I'd love to hear how newbish and hypocritical I'm being.

Ten Man's: The Jon Snow of Azeroth.

The Problem with MMOs

Today, I want to broadcast that I love my guild. Having a good guild makes all the difference in the world, especially when there seems to be a lot of general malaise out there right now. Now, I'll be the first to admit that I really lucked into my current situation. We started out with a big guild, and just happened to be able to find 10-15 people that share our goals and outlook on life and gaming.

It's nice when you get that group of people that play "the same." There are minor differences, sure, but sharing goals helps that. We all want to "get there," and there is the same place. We go about it different ways, and we respect that about each other. Like any family, we sometimes have scuffles or complain about each other to each other, but I don't think any of us ever really seriously contemplate leaving. We know we've got it good, in the grand scheme of things. We've been around enough to know what else is out there.

And what a difference that makes! If you're willing to sacrifice things like progression speed or guild perks. If you're okay with being part of a family and having to sometimes put your selfish desires into a group perspective. If, in short, playing with people you care about is more important than what exactly you're playing. Well, then you too can find a home in MMO gaming.

I don't angst about leaving the game, or quitting, or the Next Big Thing, precisely because I know that here, I'm home. I'll go where these people, my friends, go. I have the freedom to try things on my own, and I've done that. I don't feel like I'm missing out. I can also step back and do things outside of the virtual world for a while. If they need me, they'll call me. And I'll be there.

In my eyes, our group represents the idea MMO experience. We don't really have "balance" issues with real life. We make the most of our hobby time. We don't have a lot of drama. Certainly not any more than any RL group of friends (and often less). At some point, if you truly want to have a "group of friends," you have to let go of selfish things and be an adult. I don't care if you're paying $15/mo for the pleasure, or $5/beer at the bar, or $40/person to be on the bowling team. People have paid to be a part of things for decades and it hasn't ever before entitled you to a good experience.

It has, however, entitled you to think like there actually being pins at the bowling alley, or that the beer isn't completely stale... but that's a different point in the analogy that I'm not going to touch here. I'm talking more about the social aspect of MMO's, and how I feel like a lot of people have really lost sight of what being "social" entails. Being a good friend, being successful in social circles... it's not simple. It's not something you can just "log onto" whenever you feel like it and expect to work for you.

MMOs aren't broken. People are broken. I really enjoy the writing of Dean Koontz, and one of my favorite excepts from his Odd Thomas series includes the following:

While Carla brought another chair out of the restaurant, put it next to mine, sat down, and fussed over me, Wyatt used the Police Ban radio to order an ambulance. When he returned I said, “Sir? You know what’s wrong with humanity?”

“Plenty,” he said.

“The greatest gift we were given was our free will and we keep misusing it.”

“Don’t worry your self with that now,” Carla advised me.

“You know what’s wrong with nature,” I asked her “with all its poisoned plants, predatory animals, earthquakes, and floods?”

“You’re upsetting yourself, sweetie.”

“When we envied—when we killed for what we envied, we fell. And when we fell, we broke the whole shebang; nature, too.”

A kitchen worker whom I knew who had worked part time at the grill, Manuel Nunez, arrived with a fresh beer.

“I don’t think he should have that,” Carla worried.

Taking the beer from him I said, “Manuel, how you doing?”

“Looks like better than you.”

“I was just dead for a while, that’s all. Manuel, do you know what’s wrong with cosmic time as we know it, which steals everything from us?”

“Isn’t it spring forward and fall back?” Manuel asked, thinking we were talking about Daylight savings time.

“When we fell and broke,” I said, “we broke nature, too. And when we broke nature, we broke time.”

“Is that from Star Trek?” Manuel asked.

“Probably, but it’s true.”

“I like that show. It helped me learn English.”

“You speak it well,” I told him.

“I had a brogue for a while because I got so into Scotty’s character,” Manuel said.

“Once there were no predators, no prey, only harmony. There were no quakes, no storms: everything in balance. In the beginning time was all at once and forever; no past, present, and future; no death. We broke it all.”

Chief Porter tried to take the Heineken from me. I held on to it.

“Sir, do you know what sucks the worst about the human condition?”

Bill Burton said, “Taxes?”

“It’s even worse than that,” I told him.

Manuel said, “Gasoline costs too much, and low mortgage rates are gone.”

“What sucks the worst is this world was a gift to us and we broke it. And part of the deal is that if we want things right, we have to fix it ourselves. But we can’t. We try, but we can’t.”

I started to cry. The tears surprised me. I thought I was done with tears for the duration.

Manuel put a hand on my shoulder and said, “Maybe we can fix it, Odd. You know, maybe.”

I shook my head, “No. We’re broken. A broken thing can’t fix itself.”

(From Forever Odd by Dean Koontz; Full Disclaimer: I'm not associated with Mr. Koontz in any way, shape or form, nor do I get anything from relating this excerpt.)

I love that batch of dialog. To me it neatly summarizes a part of the human condition with some clever humor thrown in. It's sad, yet at the same time highlights a struggle that I believe can be found at the very core of any group of people. We're all, essentially, broken. We have faults and failings. To err is human. And no amount of effort on our part is ever going to fix all of what is wrong with us (nor, in my opinion, should we strive for that).

The magic, then, is in the fact that we can try. We're only ever as good as the attempts we make at creating bonds and connections. Any MMO is inherently bound by this simple fact. Any guild is bound by this fact. Any social group or activity is bound by this fact.

We can decry the failings of MMOs and the internet a thousand times over, but what it all boils down to is that they are run and populated by humans. And humans are flawed beings by nature. Both our bane and our brilliance can be found in our dissatisfaction with simply being. We are always going to want more, bigger, better.

The cool part is that, if we only apply ourselves enough, we can get there.

Elitism, entitlement, trolling. These are are exhibits of our human nature. No developer is going to be able to overcome it. We can only hope to offset it by doing enough in the other direction.

So, next time you find yourself frustrated, you might want to ask yourself: Are you striving to find a solution, or are you simply contributing to the problem?

MMOs will first and foremost be about the people. Always. Find a group that strives, and you've found a home. You will, however, have to put yourself second from time to time. That's just sort of how this whole social thing works.

In Defence of the Rails

I was going to go a bit silly and lighthearted today, but the first annual Coven Awards are going to have to wait until tomorrow it seems, as I find myself intrigued with another topic.  The bug first bit me when Tam asked who was driving.  Then Larisa followed by musing about the moving walkway.  I found myself biting my tongue, wanting to write a rebuttal, but (because of the work nazis) unable to comment directly.  Thus, a post is born! 

Both basically comment on the linearity of the quests as something bad.  I kept wanting to yell: "But linear storytelling is not necessarily bad just because it's linear!"  They made several other good points about several of the pitfalls, but a lot of it simply boiled down to them feeling uncomfortable with what seemed to be a direction toward linearity, as if linearity itself was some sort of unspeakable evil.  Yet, many of our favorite stories are linear.  Ever read any bestselling thriller?  A vast majority of those are simply roller-coasters in words!  What should matter is if the telling is entertaining and engaging, and both authors readily admit that the current offerings are (for now anyways, we all reserve the right to change our minds later).  In that, I agree and think Cataclysm represents a resounding success in storytelling via quests.  It is a step in the right direction, which is contrary to what it seems that both Tam and Larisa are implying.  

I would tend to agree that too much linearity is bad.  As Larisa points out, this can be somewhat alleviated by other aspects of the game, such as Archaeology.  The major gripe, then is just that the most efficient method of leveling is linear, not that there aren't other options, just that the other options don't provide a lot of experience.  If this is what it's come to to complain about, I would argue that perhaps you're playing the wrong game.  If you want the true sandbox, go play EVE.  If you want an accessible-at-most-levels game, that's where WoW is.  That's what makes WoW popular and successful.  To change that would be to change the identity of the game.  You can make a case for a lot of things that make up the WoW-identity, but accessibility is always going to be a major component.

We can complain all we want about being "too casual", "too easy", and "too linear", but all of those objections are too based in personal opinion to be valid as any kind of universal truth or direction.  After all, what is "too linear"?  The only truth we can consistently state as outsiders about WoW is that Blizzard's design goal is to have the most people have the most fun.  They can't please everyone all of the time, but they do a damn good job of pleasing the majority of the people the majority of the time.

I applaud the direction of the new quests, the cinematics, and yes, the linearity.  Questing, as a result, is efficient and engaging.  If there's one place they might cast Sacrifice of the Sandbox, it should be because of story-telling.  I guess in my mind, questing is the one place where it should be "okay" to skew towards linearity.  It's everywhere else that we should be worried about it.

I'll admit there are places for improvement.  Larisa points out a great one: the need to enable the player to replay cutscenes if they happen to miss one.  What they've done in the past where you can click on a statue on monument to replay a prolific cinematic is a great idea.  Perhaps they could add something as simple as where you talk to Harrison (or whomever), and he says "remember what just happened", showing you the scene again.  That's something that totally needs to be implemented.  Also, I'd like to see more of the storyline where it gives you several different hubs to choose form.  When you were soliciting votes for Ramkahen was a good example of this.  The storyline was still pretty linear, but you had several options.  Little tricks like that relieve the perception of linearity a bit.

Still, at the end of the day, the quality of the narrative should be what matters when questing, in my opinion.  If the design team manages to tell full and engaging story, then we should forgive the linearity and judge the game on its entertainment value.  I feel the urge to channel Maximus Decimus Meridius and ask: Are you not entertained?!  Aren't we, just a bit, worried for the sake of worrying?  The direction of the quests isn't toward "the rails"; it's toward "better story telling", and to get from where they were to here, perhaps a few rails are necessary.  We did, after all, have the railroad before the interstate and free-range chickens.  As technology improves, I believe the perceived linearity will decline.  What we should be most concerned about, though, is that storytelling continues to improve.  To work within Tam's construct: perhaps we need to start with Dan Brown before we can graduate to Shakespeare... and all this is great because we've been in the realm of "Creative Writing Term Paper" for so long.  In my view, we should focus our vigilance on the entertainment value continuing to increase.  If the value for you is purely creating your own experience, then I would argue that you're in the wrong box. 

Perhaps I'm just a smitten fanboy, however.  Tam and Larisa both make valid points, and I realize I'm taking a lot of what they said and generalizing it to the extreme.  However, I also know how generic mass perception works, and so that's really what I'm focusing on.  They may temper their thoughts with rationality, but there are certainly folks out there who won't.  At the very base of what I'm saying is simply that I think they may be nitpicking a bit.  I mean, can't you just be happy with already vast improvements?!  (To be fair, they both indicate they are, I'm just emoting my gut reaction to their posts.)  As a blogger, I know that "I'm perfectly happy" posts don't make for good conversation, so I'm sure they would both readily admit, and do, to not staring any proverbial gift horses in the mouth (as is said); they're simply bringing up great food for hungry thoughts.  And this is me, swooping in to hammer at a counterpoint.  There are two sides to every fence, right?  As for me, I fall firmly on the "Questing is headed in the right direction" side, despite any current perception of "too much" linearity, and I certainly don't think anything done in Cataclysm questing is bad for the MMO genre in general.