Category Archives: Rants

Burning through the pages

It’s Monday morning as I am writing these words, so be warned dear reader, because this is a grumpy Monday morning post. To honor code and good manners, I should ask first mayhaps how you have been, or more precisely how your weekend was and where your path has taken you – across the planes of Telara? Or maybe down into the Maelstrom of Azeroth? Up a mountain somewhere here on planet earth, down to the city, out to the sea?

And did you burn a lot of content along the way? 

When Gods become consumers

Once upon a time there was an MMORPG that gave players a basic, functional setting and stage: a beautiful world of rock and stone, with maps and towns, woods, mountains and seas and a few roads to travel them. And the woods would be populated by beasts and animals and the towns would be bustling with vendors and tradefolk and the odd, suspicious looking traveler or merry minstrel in front of a tavern. And from there the world was the player’s: to explore, to do with and shape as he cared for, to build alliances and establish trades, to command and conquer, to build or destroy, to settle treaties or rage war against one another, within a ruleset and handful of laws.

And so life on that world was never-ending; as endless as the playerbase cared to make it and create their own adventures. There was no content to “finish” and no final goal to “beat”, because the heart of the MMORPG was a second world, not a high score or ending credits like for other, traditional games. Content was created while and through playing, making the player not just a hero inside a story, but hero and God of a much greater story.

That was a long time ago.

If you can burn through it, it’s because it tastes of nothing

Reading through Wolfshead’s most recent article, I came a cross a line that outraged me like no other, elaborated in more detail in a short commentary over at Gamasutra. And it wasn’t so much the whole shallow explanation attempt behind Blizzard’s reasoning, but the wording itself, the greater mindset and concept behind lines such as these:

“And so I think with Cataclysm they were able to consume the content faster than with previous expansions, but that’s why we’re working on developing more content.”

“We need to be faster at delivering content to players,” he added. “And so that’s one of the reasons that we’re looking to decrease the amount of time in-between expansions.”

Our player, the consumer. Our player, that hungry animal who’s wolfing down our content so fast, we have to keep throwing it at him faster and faster.

Without realizing it, the developers have not only reduced their playerbase to an insatiable cookie monster, but degraded themselves and their product to nothing but a fast food-delivery service, more scripted than ever, less dynamic and alive than ever. And like with all food that is so processed that’s it’s completely “dead” and devoid of any nutrition, Blizzard need more and more of it to keep their spoiled yet malnourished customers content. They have created their own vicious circle and now they suffer from the pressure to deliver at increasing speed. An entirely self-created pressure, because they want to do everything and let us do very little.

The player is no God in their world. He does not interact with it, only consume, he does not co-create anything, not cook his own food. It’s like eating 5 burgers a day and no workout on the side either. What’s the point of fantasy worlds if they start resembling downsides of the real one? Will future developers be forced to create “Slim-Fast”-servers to re-introduce overfed players to a more balanced MMO “lifestyle” and re-adjust things back to a more active and healthy playing environment? Metaphorically speaking?

Burning through the pages

Tonight after my work’s done, I will rush off to the local bookstore in town to pick up the sequel of “The Name of the Wind”, Patrick Rothfuss’ formidable debut fantasy novel of his Kingkiller Chronicles. I have burned through the pages of the first book this weekend, over 600 pages in merely two days – it’s been this gripping and entertaining, and overall I was just happy to read some solid high fantasy again after a longer drought in this particular corner of the genre. The second book is apparently even longer and I have no doubt that I will devour it like the first one. Then it’s over and finished until the author releases the next part in a couple of years.

And that’s okay – because it’s his story and his world, he’s the master of all things there, of a story that’s already been told. I’m merely a spectator he’s inviting to enter, I can make it a walk or rush-through, but either way my time there is limited. And you wouldn’t go and ask for more from a book; one volume, one ride for which you pay one time.

It’s okay to consume a book.

Never give up, never surrender

Before the weekend, a little comic I played around with (I added a link to the original version in the caption, just so my copyright infringement guilt feels a little lighter).

(Original version)

To end the week on a somewhat lighter note, two links you all want to look into:

  • Altnotes.com where Gilded has recently set up camp with a new MMO blog. He focuses on analyzing and discussing modern MMO design and mechanics in general, adding a new voice to the circle of blogging MMO critics in the blogosphere. In the spirit of supporting our newcomers, check his thoughts out sometime, it’s worth it! 
  • Rift: The little things over at massively; I’ve always been one to look for the little things in my MMOs, the silly, fun and secret along the way which are all too easily missed in the rush. A formidable list with the very same focus, saves me creating one for Rift then, I guess!

Enjoy your weekend everybody, be it inside or outside those virtual worlds we all love so much!

The beast that wrecked wonderland. Or: Oh noes, I’m an RPer?

The blogosphere is loaded on fundamental design questions and debates lately and it’s not just events like Blizzard’s most recent Call to Arms announcement that make us wonder about where the future of MMOs lies. The more I’m reading, the more I realize how conservative I am – and how I really hopped off the bandwagon somewhere around the Burning Crusade. Very few game design changes have actually appealed to me since then. Maybe I’m just not the average MMO gamer anymore. Maybe I have become too “oldschool” for this genre.

Scrap that “maybe”.

I’ve tried to put a finger on this sentiment lately, but I couldn’t quite find the right word. This recent post by Green Armadillo is a great example of the overall problem though: I really do resent the fact that dungeons have become a synonym for lootbags in MMOs. That is SO far apart from what dungeons used to stand for, game designers might as well stop putting any effort into dungeon design if drops are all that matters. And now, as if loot, gold and tokens weren’t enough, you even have to bribe people further to play cooperatively in there. Sic transit gloria mundi?

That’s just the tip of the iceberg which fast-food, drive-thru MMOs are developing into, with their dungeon finders, achievement points, welfare loot and in-built quest helpers. Big fat red arrows across your fantasy world. Flashy text hovering over your stupid head. Min-maxing guides for teh win.

All the things I want are almost completely opposed to the current trend: no quest helper, no maps, no fast leveling, no soloing major content, no anonymous grouping, no welfare loot, no cookie-cutters, no bottomless bags, no epeen titles and silly achievement points. Instead, more need to cooperate. More need to play intelligently. More consequences when not playing cooperatively or intelligently. More customization. Lore rather than loot. More need to travel without an instant map. More wetting your pants on the way. Proper outdoor PvP. Less linearity and more player-generated content. Player housing. More campfires. A bag-pack with bandages you actually use.

And then it dawns on me, the inevitable conclusion: my wish-list strongly resembles the 100+ pages long RPer’s wishlist that was up on Blizzard’s official RP forums a few years ago, a collection on how to improve the game for roleplaying (unfortunately that topic is long gone). Is to wish for these things, to be an RPer in today’s post-WoW MMO world?

I’m not an RPer in the strict sense. I do play role-playing games, but I’ve always played on PVE servers. I cringe a little at the whole “in character”-stuff some people really take to extremes on dedicated servers. On the other hand, I’ve absolutely no problem with players who enjoy their MMOs that way, it’s just not my cup of coffee to make up a past history for my character, attend ingame weddings or talk in Shakespearean English. But when it comes to everything else that adds atmosphere to fantasy worlds, yes I do want that. It’s been there before.

So, am I an RPer now? A traditionalist? How do you call MMO players like me today? And is it really me who needs a new name?

But finally, I realized what this whole mess is called that’s currently happening to the genre (thank you Spinks): the beast that’s wrecking wonderland is called “Gamification”. It’s been going on a lot more rapidly on consoles ever since the XBOX went live and now it’s made its way into PC MMOs too. And I really shouldn’t be surprised: just the way traditional RPGs have become a rarity on console ever since, the classic MMORPG is doomed to disappear. I never realized the parallels in such clarity. MMOs might be part of the world of games, but they never played by the same rules, their virtues were always of a different kind. They were virtual worlds; not linear, scripted scenarios with the goal of instant gratification, stilling players’ achievement hunger and collection drive whenever they please. Those games were about setting, narrative, simulation and cooperative longterm goals. But there’s a whole new mentality out there today, a new type of gamer walking down my virtual streets. A gamer with different values than me.

And I’m fine with it, really – you can collect achievements ’til kingdom come for all I care. But if game studios start developing more and more MMOs for you rather than me, then I have a problem.

And no, I don’t want to start playing MUDs or write fanfiction.

The spirits that I called

From the spirits that I called,
Sir, deliver me!

“Back now, broom,
into the closet!
Be thou as thou
wert before!
Until I, the real master
call thee forth to serve once more!”

When reading Tessy’s final blog post last night, I was instantly reminded of this famous poem by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice”. Goethe is to German literature, what Shakespeare is to English and so back in school we would naturally read and analyze this formidable piece of literature quite meticulously – and years later, when standing in front of my own students teaching German classes, I was happy to return the favour (muaha). While Goethe’s work is probably not widely known in an English speaking society, that particular poem is definitely a well-known one and that’s not just thanks to adaptions like Disney’s Fantasia opening.

The Sorcerer’s Apprentice has a very simple message even the youngest can understand: be careful what you wish for – and: don’t go behind the back of your superiors (the part I will shamelessy ignore in this article…I think). While his master is away, the spiteful apprentice dabbles at forces of magic he cannot yet understand or control and as a consequence, creates utter chaos in his study, nearly being drowned to death in the process. That’s what the poem’s most famous citation stands for, having become a frequently used proverb in the German language: “die Geister, die ich rief, die werd’ ich nicht mehr los” – which literally translates into “the spirits that I called, I can lose no more”.

In her goodbye post, Tessy draws another analogy from fairy tales she enjoyed as child, to explain why World of Warcraft is slowly but surely losing its shine for her. She says “All the bumps in the roads have been smoothed out and all the detours have been made unnecessary” and concludes later: “I’m not saying the game has become too easy – I just think it has become a bit too smooth.“

And that conclusion is only an arm’s reach away from a rather ranty article I wrote some time ago, when starting off with this little blog, complaining about the decreasing difficulty level in WoW and how it can kill what makes adventure come alive to many (not all) MMORPG players. It’s a natural law: challenge and sense of achievement go together. To take away the first, is to take away the second. To overcome challenges and hardship together fills us with a sense of heroic satisfaction and enjoyment we can never get by other, more forgiving means. A rep or daily quest grind can never be a challenge in the same way, much rather than being a test of your mathematical skills – it’s all a matter of time and easy enough to calculate. Well, another matter of time is when removing all the pebbles on the road will start vexing players.

I’m not speaking of painful gameplay and mind-numbing, idle tasks and downtimes here by the way; I don’t actually believe in the virtue of suffering. I do however believe in a balance between challenging and rewarding game features. To define “challenge” in online games is obviously another can of worms, but for simplicity’s sake let’s just assume that we all want to run and scream in terror every once in a while.

Are the whiners always the same people?

The missing link between Tessy’s observation and Goethe’s poem is of course this: a playerbase wishing for changes long enough and whining about anything that makes the game a little hard / unfair / unsatisfactory to them in a particular moment in time, might end up with exactly what they wish for (given the master’s willingness to listen). And before knowing it, they have spoiled all aspects that made the game fun to them in the first place. You know, a little bit like lovers who over the course of their relationship attempt to change one another, until one day they wake up beside a completely different person – one they don’t recognize and don’t love anymore.

MMOs, like other real or virtual worlds, are rather delicate works of design; to meddle with balance, fixing a little here and there and changing things on one end and not the other, can easily cause disaster. I’d never claim that Blizzard didn’t do substantial amounts of calculation and testing in their re-balancing and patching acts, of course they do – but every change, no matter how small, actually changes something. And very often, players do not actually know what they want: they think they do, but they should really leave it to those who know better (y’know, those who do this shit for a living). Because the thing that players will not and cannot consider (and apparently some devs can’t either or will ignore), are long-term consequences. You might not see the greater picture when you complain about classes not having enough solo-ability (and then, in a year’s time, complain about all classes being way too similar); for short-term and long-term change are quite an unhappy couple in MMOs.

How many times have we not witnessed class or content difficulty whining in WoW’s official forums, only to read a diametrically opposed echo of said whining a year down the road? Really, this is erm….what you asked for? Now you figure, huh? But then, there’s really no way of keeping the whiny voices on any gameforum apart: they might sound exactly the same, but how can you tell they go back to the same people? (No, I don’t feel inclined to track nicknames.)

Which is something justly pointed out to me by Chastity of Righteous Orbs, a few months back when he wrote an article on linearity in WoW and how he didn’t enjoy all the cut-scenes during Cataclysm’s quest lines. Personally, I felt the short ingame movies were a brilliant addition to the game, making quests and lore feel more immersive. It’s certainly been a common complaint among WoW players for years that the game really lacked this sort of player inclusion (the way you find yourself inside the clips with Harrison Jones for example). But there you go: “among WoW players” – which ones exactly? The ones screaming loudest on the forums at the time? The ones simply louder than those who didn’t wish for ingame movies (and therefore had no reason to speak up before)?

When we hear “the players”, “the PVPers”, “the druids” (loads of’em…) moan on gaming boards, we don’t actually know who they are. We don’t know which players were whining before and we don’t know which players whine later (after change happened). All we know, really, is that there will be whining. Ample empiric evidence has been given!

Yet, maybe they exist? Those players that did ask for XY in the past and only later realize the gravity of their wish? Players who cry for buffs on today’s forums and then cry the same be nerfed later, in an even louder voice because hindsight is such a beautiful thing? Are there any sorcerer’s apprentices in today’s WoW community or is it always different people?

I’ve no clue, I’m usually rather consistent in my whining (and I avoid official forums like rabies – way too many whiny hybrids around). But if the waters are rising all around me because the apprentice is messing with his absent(-minded) master’s work, there’s one hope I cling to – that it’s all just a story in a book and everything will be fine in the end. Alternatively, I’ll grab another book if the old one got wet beyond repair. Yep, I can always do that.

Tired of the Holy Trinity – Guild Wars 2

I admit that I’ve never been much into Guild Wars. When the game launched in spring 2005, I browsed some previews and while it looked visually impressive, things like play style, non-persistent world and the initially very low level cap put me off. Also, there was another very promising MMO title just about to launch: World of Warcraft by Blizzard Entertainment. The rest is history.

6 years later, I’m looking back on my time in Azeroth with a very fed-up feeling of “been there done that” which is a natural thing, I would think, after playing the same game for such a long period. I had a great time with WoW for as long as it lasted, it’s been a formidable ride – and an eye opener, in more ways than one.

But I’m a gamer; I’ve played games before WoW and will be playing them after WoW, I’m not looking to stick to a company. I want good games. Several times during my ride, I’ve ventured into other realms, sometimes for a week or two, sometimes for months. On the way I’ve fallen in love with aspects of other online games, like the vast and beautiful maps in Age of Conan or the wicked race that are the Arisen in Allods. But MMOs need to be more than a great race or nice world – they need to be a polished package.

So now that WoW is the past, what do I want from the next AAA-MMO? The other day, Tesh asked what themes outside the classic fantasy genre might attract the crowd. I’d certainly be intrigued to see promising Steampunk concepts realised someday, but I’m not all that fussed about a change of setting: I love fantasy RPGs and MMOs. I would play Eve Online in a heartbeat if it wasn’t set in space; I want magic and swords and dragons. I want fairy woods and dark caves.

I’m not even sure I want all that many big changes in this genre; I think I want small changes and innovations. I probably know a lot better what I do not want from my next MMO than what I do want. When I draw my conclusions on World of Warcraft, the most pressing matter that comes to mind is that I want future fantasy MMOs to outgrow some of the genre’s most stale mechanics: I want them to outgrow the holy trinity.

Tired of the Holy Trinity

The Holy Trinity – tanks, healers, damage dealers. The bane of guild recruitment, the disturber of peace in raidguilds, the headache of group setup, the killer of spontaneous cooperative fun. But “players want class identity”, they say…….and playstyle versatility, and group flexibility, and be able to solo, and do well in PVP.
WoW solves the obvious dilemma with hybrids and dualspec, by abandoning key abilities or handing out an even share of everything to everybody – their famed “bring the player, not the class” credo. Yet with that, class identity is down the drain, 10 classes or not.

The saddest part is, that for all their good intentions, the “bring the player not the class” concept couldn’t be further from reality in WoW: raid guilds are still struggling to recruit particular classes for a balanced roster, a DPS still sits in the LFG queue for 20 minutes easily on an average weekday and if your mates want to run a 5man heroic and happen to be a rogue, mage and 3 warriors, they’re out of luck and better have alts. Bring the player? I don’t think so.

The existence of hybrids or dualspecs does not automatically make for versatile gameplay or flexibility. Never has an MMO been more about cookie cutters and min-maxing than World of Warcraft. Never have classes been more about just one thing: healers staring at healthbars, DPS tied to fixed rotations to squeeze out every last bit of damage, tanks playing aggro whack-a-mole. Never have raid guilds been more pressed to make the constant, unhappy choice between good raider vs. friend.

A breath of fresh air

During my 6-months visit to Hyboria, the thing that I enjoyed most about playing a priest, was that healing in Age of Conan is so limited: you have three direct healing spells only: 1 direct heal, 1 AoE, 1 HoT. Some heals come with a CD, most of them are local rather than having you target a specific health bar. None of the heals is strong enough to make healing an essential part of an encounter. That’s why priests in AoC are also main CCers, fulfilling a lot more functions in order to prevent and absorb potential damage. And they add needed extra auto-healing via damage dealing.

Quite a lot of jobs for one class only – quite a refreshing versatility for a healer. Now, you could say that a hybrid in WoW can perform 3-4 roles as well, but that’s the question really: when do they? How many times does a hybrid actually get to play like a hybrid during a 5man run or raid, inside the same encounter (let’s forget for a minute, that you can’t switch specs in combat anyway)? I’ve healed WoW raid bosses for almost 6 years; I know healers get to stare at healthbars, with the odd cleansing on the side and very rare, insignificant CC job. A good old resto druid could be in a raid for 4 hours and never switch out of treeform once.

If you want players to make use of their versatility, you need to design gameplay to require it in a meaningful way. WoW does not require players to play that way: healers are healers, DPS optimize output, tanks tank. And they better all excel at the one thing and be efficient. If you respec from healer to tank, you do this outside an encounter, like relogging to an alt.

Summing up

“Bring the player, not the class” is an illusion in WoW. Despite featuring 10 classes, it doesn’t provide you with class identity so much as with role identity. This role identity is so strong that it’s limiting players more than ever, despite Blizzard trying to balance the game to bring players, rather than classes. Potential flexibility and versatility both suffer in the process and players and guilds are constantly forced to make decisions between whom they can play with and whom they’d like to play with. How is this what MMO players want?

Not that other MMOs haven’t failed at either or both before; WoW has done a lot more than most here. But what it’s really shown us is that identity is not synonymous with different classes available and having talents and specs is not synonymous with versatile or flexible gameplay. The only thing we know is that players want many things. Maybe the future lies in a different approach.

Why can’t we have fun like the FPS players?

Somewhere down the line it was established that MMORPGS need to be about archetypes in order to allow for class identity and character development. So far, so good. Classes aren’t the same as roles though – where does it say that you need the holy trinity in order to guarantee for identity? And how is it fun to wait on a healer or tank for 30 minutes when you could be playing with friends?

Half of the challenge to raid in World of Warcraft or beat the average encounter, is not actually about mastering the fight itself but about setting up for it. It starts with recruitment and roster headaches and goes right down to raid night preparations and balance checks. Did you bring the right setup? Are there enough tanks/DPS/healers for this or should somebody respec? Are the right classes doing the right thing at the right position? Can’t that hunter squeeze out a little more damage?

What about the boss? Do you remember his name and how he looks like?

Which finally brings me back to Guild Wars, or more precisely to Guild Wars 2 and a fascinating and insightful article on what they intend to do about healing (and death) in their upcoming MMO sequel. Some of it has struck such a chord with me that I want to highlight a few quotes in more detail in the next paragraph.

Spinks recently asked why MMO players cannot have the same cooperative fun like FPS clans do. I’ll ask the same: why can’t we? Fantasy MMOs and online shooters might be different in player character approach, but there’s no reason why MMO gamers cannot develop and be fond of their avatars and have what other gamers enjoy.

Guild Wars 2: The answer to the dilemma?

NC Soft announced the launch of Guild Wars 2 for 2012, planning to dedicate all of this year to intense testing and modifications. Like its first installment, the game art is visually stunning and things like animations and spell effects already look out of this world. The overall concept and races are not everyone’s cup of coffee though – neither is the active combat system which frightens many a classic RPG gamer. Still, if you have any interest in the MMO market and game development as a whole, you will want to risk a second glance and see what the devs there are up to. Here’s what they have to say about the holy trinity and why there won’t be a dedicated healer in Guild Wars 2:

[…]Simple systems like this, along with cross-profession combos, and the dedicated healing skill slot, help free players from the MMORPG shackles, and let us break the mold even more. We’re making players more self sufficient, but are also providing appealing ways for them to effortlessly work together to create a more inspired moment-to-moment experience. That is why Guild Wars 2 does not have a dedicated healing class.
Everyone take a deep breath. It’s going to be OK.

(If you’re already worried, I suggest you follow that advice now. Breathe.)

Support players want to be able to say, “Remember that one time when I saved you from certain death?” They want to stand in the line of fire and block attacks. They want to surround their allies with a swirling dome of air that keeps enemy projectiles from passing through it. It’s not about clicking on a health bar and watching it go up, it’s about being there for your friends when they need you. 

Finally somebody said it: Healing is only one aspect of support – the last and most reactive part of it. What about all that time that passes beforehand? Why are healers just standing there, waiting for the inevitable to happen? Why is there an ‘”inevitable”? What about debuffs, interrupts, CC, absorbtion – why are these things not the main focus of support, making a job much more diverse and fun in the process? Why would a supporter only stare at his ally?

Heal: Don’t belittle the SUPPORT role by calling it heal. Healing is the least dynamic kind of support there is. It is reactive instead of proactive. Healing is for when you are already losing. In Guild Wars 2 we prefer that you support your allies before they take a beating. Sure, there are some healing spells in Guild Wars 2, but they make up a small portion of the support lines that are spread throughout the professions. Other kinds of support include buffs, active defense, and cross-profession combinations. […]

We keep hearing other MMO developers espousing the “holy trinity” of DPS/ heal/tank with such reverence, as if this is the most entertaining combat they have ever played. Frankly, we don’t like sitting around spamming “looking for healer” to global chat. That feels an awful lot like preparing to have fun instead of having fun. 

A thing that never seizes to baffle me personally, is the strict separation of abilities between roles, in WoW and most other MMOs: You have this powerful caster standing next to you in a 5man party, that magic spellweaver – and all he really does for the group is deal damage, besides few more mob-centric abilities. While his allies fall left and right, while his healer is about to die horribly, he stands there hurling firebolts at the enemy, unable to do anything about much more pressing matters.

As a child of fairytales, sword & sorcery books, tabletops and classic RPGs, I need to ask: in which fantasy setting is this “realistic”? If I hear “mage”, I see Raistlin from the Dragonlance series; I see a magic wielder capable to do many things for his group, from grilling or sleeping foes, to casting shields on his allies and calling them back from the dead. I’m also pretty sure Gandalf didn’t wiggle his finger at the fellowship, saying “sorry guys, arcane spec only”.

Fantasy classes can be defined and still be a lot more dynamic in their roles than what I’ve seen these past few years. MMOs should be about players vs. the encounter, not players battling the boundaries of their individual class or role.

Ultimately, DPS/heal/tank just didn’t cut it in our book…er, game. Our players demand more from Guild Wars 2 and we intend to deliver on that demand instead of delivering more of the same. Not only is the trinity very formulaic, but it leaves out a lot of gameplay elements that make many other games so much fun. 

Fun. It seems to me that NC Soft got this one right: games should be about fun. And more than anything, MMOs are about cooperative fun – fantastic settings, classes and personal investment yes, but these things should not restrict one another. You should never have to choose between setup and playing with whom you’d like to play. You should not have to sit around waiting for the game to actually start. You should have to fight bosses, not yourself or each other (PVP aside).

Remember how much fun it was to play a coop game in good old Mario Bros? Or to clear stages together in Metal Slug or Contra? Why should this kind of pick-up play be exclusive to genre or platform?

You can be a mage, a warrior, a hunter, a bard, with clear distinctive mechanisms and abilities and still be flexible enough to party with any combination of other players. You can be self-sufficient and have a variety of skills available that do not only enable you to fulfill a role but react in a smart way to whatever the encounter demands, rather than blindly following one rotation or script. You can be a complete player, rather than a fifth of a whole – and this will force developers to create interesting encounter dynamics that actually challenge the players, not their group setup. It will force them to think about proper cooperative challenges.

You can have all these things if game design does not only allow but require you to. You can have all these things without a holier-than-thou trinity.

The future is change

It’s way too early to judge where Guild Wars 2 will be a year from now; but I am excited and dare say this is good news – possibly the best news I’ve heard in a long time. If you take some time to go through the entire article on their official site, you will see that the developers do not only have plans to change how healing works, but make adjustments to the tanking role too and the significance of death in the game. I’m suprised to hear myself say it, but I’m open to that concept too.

I hope we get to see more developers thinking out of the box, especially in the fantasy MMO genre – looking to keep core values while adopting and improving what makes online and cooperative gaming so much fun for millions of players worldwide. Learning from others is just as important as learning from the past. I welcome the changes ahead and salute those who dare to move forward.

Absolute Zero

Returning from holidays (which turned out to be shockingly snow-less) never fails to leave me slightly wistful – oh ye blessed free time, such a sweet life it could be without work! People keep saying that we need to work in order to appreciate our time off properly, you know all that ying-yang rubbish. Sometimes I wonder if these people have ever actually been off for longer than a few weeks? I could do with more spare time. Lots! I never get bored.

Anyways, back to work and the blog, I noticed that trolls without a Rent-a-Troll© approved certificate of authenticity have been busy in my absence – I guess I should’ve known the competition strikes when I’m not around! Over 10 people (shockingly anonymorons) felt the need to post the exact same thing in an older post of mine about the silly item names in Cataclysm, pointing out how utterly stupid I am for not getting the actual meaning of “belt of absolute zero”. Squirrel did of course make quick work of them and while I’m way more inclined to get amused about comments such as these and make fun of their authors rather than getting upset, the occurrence inspired me to take up a topic I’ve been wanting to blog on for a while now. What a nice opportunity.

Bridges, Walls and Language

The WoW blogosphere can seem daunting to freshly starting bloggers: such a huge playfield of well-connected blogging veterans and regulars, so many blogs to explore, so many bloggers and commenters to get to know. Over time however, you realize that it’s actually quite a cosy place to be in, a village much rather than a mega-city. Oh, every now and then a wave of wild guests from WoW Insider and Co. will find their way into this part of Azeroth and its inhabitants too, like to tease each other and even brawl sometime; life gets boring and stagnant without the odd argument. It’s really up to you though how much you’d like to engage in the more active and maybe heated part of things – there’s room for pretty much any type of blogger, just like there is an audience for every writer.

If you’re a fairly regular blogreader in this village (and a nosy person like me) you will gather more demographic information about the blogs you like to frequent over time: maybe what age the author is, what he or she is doing for a living, what their geographic location is. Some bloggers are more forthcoming in this respect than others, either by leaving an about-section or writing more personal posts sometime where the reader can glimpse a little of the person behind the screen.

Personally I enjoy getting to know authors more personally; it’s not that I actually care if they’re male or female, 20 or 50 years old, but I’m naturally curious about people and the background they’re coming from. I’m also not ashamed to admit a slight tendency to groupie-ism, or rather enthusiasm in following news and background history of authors I enjoy reading (I love you, Neil!). Writing and reading are about connecting for me.

A particular thing I’ve always enjoyed about the blogosphere is that unlike to when we’re playing on our servers, there’s no separation between EU and US players. A large group of the blogs linked on my blogroll are authors from across Europe, probably as many as there are American writers (I don’t think I noticed anyone blogging out of Asia yet but maybe they’re just good at hiding?). We get to communicate and share our experiences – and we realize just how little it really matters where somebody is from. That is not the determining factor about people, no matter what those who like to build walls instead of bridges would have us believe.

What I’ve always loved most about online gaming and MMOs is this “global village”; talking to somebody halfway across the globe whom you’d otherwise have never ever met and realizing just how much you can have in common. And a shared language is of course the central means for this; it is the meeting stone, it sets the stage for more interaction. In this case English which serves as a lingua franca worldwide.

I’m sure we’ve all met WoW gamers that actually struggled with speaking the accepted, official server language, be it that they weren’t native speakers or were suffering from some other cause that would impede their ability to communicate. While many guilds use voice comms, the main communication in MMOs still happens via written chat. That can be a big disadvantage depending on the environment of the player and the requirements set before him, for example by a raidguild that expects its members to actively and vocally participate in ongoing discussions. I remember many occasions when the guilds I was in would turn players down or at least heavily debate their application on grounds of not being able to communicate properly. And I think that is a legitimate concern – even if it felt a little lousy to me each time.

In the WoW blogosphere too, your language skill can be to your advantage or disadvantage. I would argue that it’s directly connected to a blogger’s success, but if written language is the central medium and in the spotlight like it is on a blog for example, then your background and level of literacy adds to the impact of your posts and the appreciation you might receive from your readers – especially, if you manage to impress with both content depth and writing style. I’m not talking about things like typos here, I doubt a lot of people care for them nearly as much as I care about mine. What I mean is the actual “high end” of literary skill: stylistics, rhetoric, semantic finesse.

Now I’d never claim that these accomplished skills actually go hand in hand with native speakers; I’ve studied language learning and linguistics and I’ve taught languages for several years at different schools and on different levels, to all kinds of students. Quite often a non-native speaker would match or surpass his class mates: talent and passion aren’t things you can teach. Also, if I am to believe my English WoW mates, the “worst English” can be found on the island and of course everyone likes to refer to the horribly incorrect, clichéd American English we get to watch on youtube and co. (which of course is totally representative for all Americans..). Just because I’m not a native speaker doesn’t mean all native speakers speak or write better English than me – no argument there. Still, there are natural “gaps” that will come up sometime from not actually living or having grown up in anglo-cultural background or an English-speaking society.

A big part of language knowledge is based on pragmatics: that affects how we understand each other in relation to all sorts of non-linguistic knowledge and psycho-linguistic factors. Another important role play sociolinguistics: factors like cultural background, but also age, sex, level of education etc. all shape our perception and ultimately how we understand, judge and value not only the world around us, but all ongoing communication.

Blogging in a second language

I think sometimes WoW players on English-speaking servers (no matter UK or US) forget that not all the people they’re playing with are actually of native English background. That makes for some funny puns at best and unhappy misunderstandings at worst. I’ve seen a player take serious offense at a well-meant joke, either because his level of English was beginner or because what was said simply wasn’t very funny where he came from. That can be a tricky situation to deal with and it’s usually not made better by defending the maybe harmless intention with a smug and arrogant air of “lingual leadership” (“my language, my server, punk”).

The same can be said for blogging. A while ago I wrote an article on how we tend to forget that the other bloggers and readers we’re talking to aren’t necessarily playing the same WoW that we are playing. This extends to language as well: sometimes people forget that speaking English doesn’t mean somebody’s English (or alternatively, they don’t realize the world reaches farther than the end of their nose). I guess to some extent this can be seen as a compliment, a testimony to a writer’s skills if you will. Yet, I’ve cringed many times when reading through a fellow European blogger’s article, seeing readers pick them apart for literally misreading a patchnote or leaving petty, formal attacks rather than commenting on anything substantial to the article.

Than can of course happen to any author: nobody’s safe from stupid, not even the most glorious writers. To me, it’s usually overly apparent though when a reference, idiom or jargon term is being misunderstood because the person lacks either cultural or colloquial knowledge or special lingo, rather than linguistic knowledge. Especially if you know little about someone, it’s an option to consider. Then again, if you already fail to tell these things apart, you probably cannot be expected to know what you’re dealing with anyway..

Just to clarify: I don’t mind a commenter who rectifies me on an error or educates me on something in the process of an exchange – in fact I find this helpful and enriching. What I find rather pitiful however, are people who nitpick for nitpicking’s sake, or make a comment section sound like a broken record. A close friend of mine is an outstanding writer himself but shies away from giving English blogging a go exactly for this reason. And I know bloggers in this blogosphere too who are very self-conscious about their articles because they aren’t native speakers. And they really shouldn’t have to be: not only are they producing brilliant texts, but they’re doing it in a second language. 

And yeah, I know: if you can’t take the heat, you probably shouldn’t be out there blogging. I still think it’s a little bit sad though – way of the world or not. As a sidenote, I also find such uninspired comments almost offensive in their lack of finesse and commenters who lack any sort of imagination or creativity so entirely in their trolling, are an incredibly boring lot. Maybe I can help once more?

Dear fellows

To the boring, uncertified trolls, a few kind words:

• I’m not native to English so it can happen that I miss an existing reference from within the field of physics – shocking, I know. (I speak 5 languages fluently by the way. You?)

• Repeating the exact same thing like the 9 people above you, doesn’t make you look very clever. I know some people actually don’t comment on blogs for the sake of exchange, ignoring everything else; find my special Email link for you at the bottom of that page.

• Semantically speaking, “absolute zero” is funney. But of course, if very smart people in history named it that changes everything. Mea culpa! That means “my bad” in latin, by the way.

• It looks to me like you could use some training. Find a selection of properly educated, sophisticated trollery on my page here. I am accepting beginners, although your clear lack of trollish language skills might prove too great a handicap to overcome!

To all of you out there who blog in a second language or are overly self-conscious about writing errors:

Don’t worry. It’s not about the odd mistake but what the person on the receiving end likes to focus on the most. You know, pragmatics and sociolinguistics. Or maybe just dickery.

Don’t waste your time on such things, they matter not, nothing – absolute zero.
Happy blogging everybody and a good weekend to all the creative and the inspired.

P.S. I have deliberately placed 3 errors in this article, of either grammatical, semantic or textual nature. If you can spot them all and send me an Email with the correct answers, you shall be awarded an exclusive Raging Monkey’s “Blogger-Sherlock of the Month”-Award©!

Bogus Belt of the Silly Nonsense

So we got ourselves some more shiny loot on Tuesday, as we cleared our way through Bastion of Twilight after a week of many kills and clearing everything up to Nefarian in Blackwing Descent. And I gotta say the raid loot in Cataclysm is a little funny all around..

Almost since week one, we’re sharding 25-30% of the drops. I don’t know if we’re just majorly unlucky (maybe my bad standing with Lady RNG is taking over the guild?) on repetitive drops, but it hurts to already be sharding gear this early into fresh content. Extra shards or not, it’s wrong!

Then, there are the oddly unbalanced loot tables and itemization. It seems Blizzard’s armor department had jolly good fun creating belts of all shapes and colors and headpieces for the expansion and totally forgot about creating more and better choices for other item slots maybe! As a priest healer, stuff like bracers, wands and main hand weapons for example, seem very hard to come by. Jewelry isn’t exactly being sold out on the streets of Stormwind either.
The current BiS staff for probably priests and druids alike (and I fear some DPS too) is a trash drop (!) in Bastion of Twilight. The alternative to that is….a staff from archeology! Riiiiight, do you see me getting that one?

And it’s not just that – have you noticed the names of some of these items? We had a laughing fit last raidnight in the healers channel, reading some of the names our supposedly epic drops of heroic awesomeness are carrying:

Scorched Wormling Vest

Ew! I don’t even wanna imagine how that looks like! Were they at least really shiny, epic wormlings that went into that chestpiece or are we talking gooey sewer dwellers?

Sky Strider Belt of the Faultline
Soul Breath Belt of the Feverflame
Belt of Absolute Zero

Absolute zero? Wait.. as in zero zero?? Really absolutely absolute zero???
And what’s with these clunky long-winded names: Sould Breath Belt of the Feverflame? Whoa, my tiny mind is boggling under the exercise!
And what on earth is Faultline? AM I PLAYING FOOTBALL AGAINST MY WILL NOW?

Gale Rouser Belt of the Undertow

Erm….help me out here English people: Undertow? Now, I know what this word means, in theory, but what exactly is this belt doing? Anyone?

Anyway, we ended up deciding that Bogus Belt of the Silly Nonsense really was as good a name as any for the items currently dropping in Bastion of Twilight and Co. Would you notice much if that belt dropped among Sky Strider Belt of the Faultline and Gale Rouser Belt of the Undertow? And can you say this last sentence 10 times in a row real fast?

Whose MMO am I playing here?

There are innumerable examples of such failed nomenclature to be found on current WoW loot tables. It makes me wonder whether the “naming department” over at Blizzard has been sent off to work out item names for Diablo and Starcraft, along with their music composers. Clumsy, far fetched name-giving like this is one reason why I chose to play the original version of WoW 6 years ago. Right now, it sounds as if English WoW has actually been translated, very badly, from somewhere else. Is the “real World of Warcraft” secretly in Chinese these days and we’re all just playing a bad translation?

Or maybe they’re just running out of ideas in a fantasy MMO. Now that’s not very comforting, is it? “BUT Syl! WoW has been there for 6 years, that’s thousands of ingame items, one can only come up with so many fantastic names!”

Really? I don’t think so. I can’t obviously prove it very well and send you a list of a couple of thousand item names, but I’ll just claim that if it was my job to design things such as these, I would still try and do a little better than some random fantasy-name generator on the internet!

It’s oh so quiet

When I set foot into Bastion of Twilight three weeks ago with my guild, I was excited. I was so curious to see what Blizzard had done with the new instances in Cataclysm. And then, approximately 10 minutes later, I was stunned – by silence. 
“Is my headset broken?”, I wondered, checking my USB hub and ingame sound settings. No, the music was definitely turned on, it was even on loop, as it usually is. Ummm okay, maybe the music comes later, you know when we get further in or face our first encounter.

Nope. It stayed silent in the raid instance and now, four dead bosses later, it’s still quiet. And not just that: it’s the same in the other instances too – there is no soundtrack at all! Where is the music in your new raiding content, Blizzard?

Now you might chuckle at this, because you never have your ingame music turned on in WoW. I know many raiders don’t, they consider it distracting or even annoying. And very rarely, when we’re discussing the most complex fight during a wipenight, I will turn my music off too. But most of the time and certainly by default, I enjoy my music in MMOs. It adds immensely to my gaming experience, it makes a raidnight twice as epic and memories of awesome kills last twice as long (we love you, Raggy!), if they were accompanied by an exciting, bloodrushing score. Never will I forget the dark and wonderful symphony meeting us in Black Temple, when we stepped out of the sewer on our way to Supremus; suddenly clearing all those draconic packs on the way didn’t seem quite so tedious. Even Stumps turned his soundtrack on for that part (and that means a lot).

The silence in Bastion of Twilight or Blackwing Descent is absolutely unnerving. I could take long and boring trash or meager decoration, but the acoustic “nothing” I am met with as I enter these places is vexing me in a way I can only describe as wrong.. Soundtrack is an essential part of MMOs, well at least MMORPGs. It adds depth and wonder to fantastic worlds, it makes us sigh in awe the first time we walk through Elwynn Forest. Music and sound satisfy one of our major senses and shape our reality, inside and outside of games. And Blizzard has always been top notch in this regard: WotLK was a wonderful expansion for soundtrack lovers. Up to date I have collected all the music compilations for WoW.

Yet in Cataclysm, music seems to have become a mere afterthought? I already noticed while leveling in the new zones, that there was no “Grizzly Hills” in Cataclysm and no “Stormpeaks”. The only place I can remember for its music, is Mount Hyjal which has lovely tunes in places. But really, is that it? And: am I the only one noticing or caring about this?

It seems at least one guy did notice on MMO Champion’s forums. Overall it seems however, and I probably shouldn’t be surprised, that the vast majority of the playerbase does not consider the lack of music any loss in Cataclysm… For me, the shiny world of WoW, the beautiful maps and soundtrack, have always been essential – the one big veto for WoW; if all fails, there is still that art in the game I can enjoy.
I don’t know what I’ll do if Blizzard slowly takes that shine away too.

Have a good weekend everybody. And remember to listen to some music sometime.

Accepting World of Warcraft

Maybe you know the feeling of stumbling upon a line in a book or quote on a webpage, in a moment when it seems so fitting to your personal situation that it makes the hair on your neck stand erect. As if someone out there in the cosmic pattern of things reached out to you, echoing what you think or feel. As if that line had been written just for you, no matter how long ago or by whom.

I’m sucker for words and language. I carry a mental library of quotes and poems in my head and take them with me wherever I go, like precious jewels helping me on the way (“may it be a light for you in dark places”). In moments where a well-timed word hits me like a truck, I get the proverbial goosebumps. Some might consider me a geek because I play online games but oh, you’ve no idea where my real geekdom lies, it’s in literature.

It’s difficult times in WoW at the moment, for our own raidguild that is currently struggling to recruit and keep a 25man agenda going, but also on a larger scale many players and guilds currently ask uncomfortable, inevitable questions about themselves or the game. The ever-lasting dilemma of the “social and friendly guild” who’d still like to attract serious raiders, is one of them. Another is the old question about class balance in WoW versus identity and loss of immersion. Yet another that will always wind us up, is the question of accessibility in your mainstream MMO and how that has killed the sense of epic achievement for the average gamer – or to put it even more extremely, like Wolfshead does, has created the worst MMO community ever in the history of the genre.

While players will never agree on these matters (and it’s probably a good thing or WoW blogs would be posting a lot less), we can agree that Blizzard have changed the face of the MMO genre forever, by opening WoW to a mainstream audience with a low gaming background on average. The genre has taken a big shift and it’s true that compared to classic MMORPGs, WoW has simply decided to go down a new path, for better and for worse (I can easily think of improvements here too).
To sum it up for the oldschool players and all those concerned, vexed or outraged:

  • Yes, WoW allows for more casual play than any MMO before. It also has a lot less annoying timesinks, to be fair.
  • Yes, there’s not much “RPG” in WoW. 
  • Yes, WoW is very item/loot-centric, rather than lore-centric for example.
  • Yes, WoW favors bringing players rather than classes, thus inevitably gimping the identity associated with “class”. 
  • Yes, WoW is more solo-friendly and therefore, by design, enforces a lot less cooperation, a lot less “MM” in the MMO. This doesn’t mean it discourages cooperation.
  • Yes, so much freedom has probably lead to a wild mix of players in WoW of whom many do not actually care for the same values a classic online gamer cares for. They pay subscriptions too though.
  • Yes, all of us are subject to these changes, whether we like it or not.

I won’t disagree with any of that, I have been disillusioned with some of these aspects in WoW just like other, long-time gamers have. However, I am not grumpy anymore and I’m not disappointed by Cataclysm. I am in fact surprised that anyone would be: did you really expect Blizzard to change their trend of 6 years in the new expansion? Huh?

Which brings me back to the quote I read this morning. It’s doubly dear to me, for it is in fact taken from my alltime favourite fantasy series on which the name of my WoW avatar (and nickname of many years before), Syl, goes back. I haven’t read them in a while (I usually re-read them at least once or twice a year though), and this just seemed so fitting –

“Hope is the denial of reality. It is the carrot dangled before the draft horse to keep him plodding along in a vain attempt to reach it.”

“Are you saying we shouldn’t hope?”

“I’m saying we should remove the carrot and walk forward with our eyes open!” [M. Weis / T. Hickman; The Dragonlance Chronicles] 


If there’s something humankind is good at, then it’s the denial of what we don’t want to see or be. If we don’t accept reality a little longer, surely things won’t be quite as bad – maybe they will even magically change and adapt to our will. And while we’re doing this silly exercise, we lose something very precious: we lose time. Time to face the truth and act. Time to look for options maybe, that can still resolve our situation. Sometimes, living the dream is preferable to reality; reality however, is going to catch up sooner or later and when it does, it hurts doubly so.

I don’t believe in prolonging the inevitable. That said, judging when the “inevitable” applies, can be hard. I have colored glasses of my own, just like everyone else does, I am not the master of things to come. Yet, if I have to choose between accepting a sucky truth or standing around dreaming a little longer, I will always prefer the first option. Just like I would rather have you tell me how much I annoy you rather than blowing smoke up my ass (bring on the hate mail!). 

Removing the carrot

How does all this rambling lead to WoW? My message for the day goes to Wolfshead (whose critical articles I appreciate very much) and all the unhappy WoW players out there:

Time to face truth, friends. You’ve had 6 years now and surely, that is enough to accept and understand the basic concept of WoW. Years of proof have shown that WoW is not your classic MMORPG and that it will follow its own course in the future. The things that annoy you about it, they will only get “worse”. Blizzard does not care to serve an older definition of the genre. You can stop hoping now and face reality or you can be disappointed after every content patch or expansion. Why do this to yourself though? Why chase the carrot?

By all means do criticize; but winding yourself up over fundamental aspects of the game is waste of breath. You need to accept they are there, and there to stay. You won’t change Blizzard’s mind. It might hurt to accept it, but: WoW is not designed to suit you – and it’s not personal. Once more with feeling:

WoW is not designed to suit you!

I remember back in vanilla WoW, I had a few classic gamer buddies all leaving the game sometime before TBC hit, for the same reason: “This game is only about loot. This game is not our MMORPG.” They figured that out 5 years ago and they were consequent about it. WoW failed to be what die-hard UO, EQ or DAoC players were looking for – and so they left. They’re playing other games now, like EVE Online which is possibly the geekiest and most elitist MMO out there at the moment. And it’s sandbox. And the devs do not care one bit about players whining that things are too hard.

You can make the same choice, the customer’s ultimate statement: stop paying. Or you can accept reality and still enjoy the few aspects in WoW you care about, if there are any.

Personally, I am done making myself unhappy: I choose to take WoW for what it is in Cataclysm. I know that WoW is a chatroom with epics, I know it’s a world of collectors and whiners, I know it’s a parodist fantasy world at best, the Discworld of its genre.
WoW will never be my perfect MMORPG; but it still holds some attraction for me and things I enjoy doing, like exploring a shiny world or raiding with friends I’ve known for years. I can live with that and kiss my carrot goodbye. I can probably even accept the reality of 10man raiding, if that is what the future holds for Adrenaline. I will go into it with open eyes and make the best out of it, just like we always have. For now, we’re evaluating our options.

P.S. To all those who were crossing their fingers on behalf of my loot luck after my last posting, I can update you that Lady RNG has of course not changed her mind about my case (thanks though!). I have however successfully “farmed” the auction house since then and finally added that Oozeling to my collection. Accepting reality ftw.

Lady RNG hates me and I hate her right back!

Disclaimer: The following article contains an excessive amount of foul language. And loathing. Lots of loathing. Hide the kittens.

I am insanely frustrated with my loot luck at the moment. And I know what you must be thinking right now, “we’ve all been there” – but NO, you really haven’t. Trust me! On a scale of 1 to 10, my loot luck in WoW is a reliable infinitesimal. If there’s something I want real bad, it will absolutely take me ages to acquire, no matter how frequent everybody else claims the item’s dropping or how damn easy it supposedly is to farm. That is, if I’m going to get it at all: I have been known to return in the next expansion (yes I am looking at you, Staff of Immaculate Recovery!). I might have loot luck from hell but I got a persistence to match it.

I don’t know what it is with me and Lady RNG (to whom, by the by, I’m referring to in broad generalization for all that is random in WoW, for the nitpickers out there); somehow we’ve never been close friends. As far as I remember I’ve never stepped on her toes, but I’m starting to wonder if we’ve worn the same dress to the same party or something.
I probably should admit here, that I’m an excessive ‘google-scientist’: Yes I do google….everything! That starts with checking on why that headache I got since last Monday has a slight sting on the left part of my skull, just so I can properly freak myself out (OH NO, I HAVE CANCER!) and get scared shitless reading all the posts which the other self-diagnosing and totally not paranoid strangers out there have left on the subject, in some dodgy webforum (with animated gifs).

And really, it’s the same with wowhead comments and similar sites too: if you wanna get real miserable real fast, go and read just how lucky some people are with loot drops and how “easy peasy this dropped for me after 5 minutes”. Take courage from their words and dispair later. In his novel Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, the brilliant Jonathan Safran Foer writes “…I’ve thought myself out of happiness one million times, but never once into it”. My personal equivalent to this goes: “I’ve googled myself out of happiness one million times, but never once into it!”

The immediate reason for my current discontent are the new Cataclysm minipets acquired through Archeology and also the Tol Barad fox pet that can be obtained by killing foxes on the northern half of Tol Barad Island. I don’t know how many damn holes I have dug all over Azeroth by now, but it’s not just that I haven’t gotten any pets yet when everyone else around me, including the crazy cat lady from Elwynn Forest probably, seem to have them by now – it’s that I’m getting NOTHING! As in nada, niente, rien, nichts.
Not a single rare so far, just common fragments enough to fill a museum of lousy fossils nobody would pay to see. And I hate archeology! It’s fucking boring!!! The pets are the only reason I’m putting up with this stupid shovel monotony, just like they’re the only reason for me to touch a fishing pole sometimes or a PuG (eeew..!). I don’t know how people could call this profession addictive. Oh look, the telescope is blinking faster now!…Oh, just get a real hobby already!

Also, I must have killed a thousand foxes or more and they’re not exactly swarming the area. Of course there are plenty of those lovely people on warcraftpets.com sharing their success with the other readers, letting them know just how quickly this dropped after only 30 minutes and how it’s really “not a hard pet to farm at all”. Oh really?! How about a nice cup of STFU with that fox kit?

Yeah, I’m talking myself into a bit of a rage here, bear with me. This is typically my stage three, which means I am somewhere between utter loathing and denial, but I definitely haven’t given up yet. That makes me wonder whether I’m the only WoW player out there with a psychological pattern for loot farming….it’s always the same emotional roller coaster for me – well, maybe you know it too.
Typically, when I start farming a so-called “rare drop” in WoW, I do some research first. Then, once I am properly convinced I know exactly where to go and how to best farm my object of desire, that little voice in my head will start to speak.

For the first 200 mobs or so, the voice goes something like this:

“It’s gonna be fiiiiine! People keep writing how easy this is to get, so I really shouldn’t take me too long. Doesn’t seem to be the rarest drop after all, yeah, an hour max I’d say. I can do that. It will drop tonight, I know it. Yay, go me! Lalalalaaa.”

Then at some point, between 250 and 300 kills, the voice starts taking a slightly edgier tone: 

“Easy drop, my ass. I can’t believe I’m still here! Hmmm…it should really drop any moment now, I can feel I’m getting closer! Must not miss a single mob now, every kill is crucial – I’m almost there, YESYES! Come on, my preciousss!”

Past the 500th kill, things start going downhill fast:

“WTF is this shit?! God damn those silly comments on wowhead, oh how I hate them all! I can’t believe they call this an easy drop..hahahaha…riiight! SRSLY? Same shit for me everytime, oh I hate this, I HATE Blizzard!! Is that orc mage just killing my fox over there?!”

Stage 4 is typically the denial stage.
It’s also where utter loathing meets humiliation and where I start bargaining with Lady RNG, as silly as that sounds (it sounds a little bit like Calvin’s letters to Santa). And just like Calvin, I’m also giving reverse psychology a shot, because y’know, you can totally coerce and trick randomness: 

“Ahh, I don’t even care anymore! That’s right, just dont drop you piece of shit, I couldn’t care less! Am just killing a few more before going to bed now, and I know it won’t drop – so, watch me prove my point! My loot luck sucks, just like I always say!! &!*(&ç”*)%* /doom !!!

That’s right, I’m actually challenging the arbitrary as if it was some sort of fate. Doesn’t make any sense at all? Won’t stop me. I detest luck in WoW just like in real life: I’m a maker. I don’t know how to lose even though I’m good at saving grace (losing is one thing, being a bad loser is utter fail). The truth is, I absolutely hate failing and I’ll do anything to avoid it. Fortuna however, is laughing in my face; I am utterly helpless there (and frustrated….and spiteful….and sulky).
So usually, after stage 4 or approximately 4 hours of focus-farming, I throw in my towel – for the day. I will return of course, to repeat the silliness from stage one just like Sisyphus and his rock (I bet he hated archeology too). God, I hope I’m not the only WoW player with a little voice up there…surely you got your own weirdo mechanisms to deal with shitty loot luck in MMOs? Anybody??

A prayer to Her Fickleness

This time around, I’ve  also resorted to some more extreme measures (no, not the special rain dance, I’m way past that). I figured if Lady RNG hates me so, a little extra effort can’t hurt, heck nothing hurts at this point! So I remembered that Tam and Chas over at Righteous Orbs have this shrine where Lady RNG is basically y’know living, and where common folk can go and offer their prayers and donations to appease the will of the fickle deity. How handy! It appears the shrine has been somewhat deserted of late, in fact Rhii was the last person to pay Lady RNG a visit back in October 2010. Maybe that’s why she’s in such a foul mood (Lady RNG, not Rhii)?

Anyway, I paid my respects there and gave her a little heads up on my situation. And since it can never hurt to say the same prayer twice, here it goes:

Dear Lady of the R-N-Gee
(I’m not sure you’re still listening to these, but here’s my plea:)
I’ve been trying to get these pets for a while,
Y’know to get my collection in style.
I’m really not much of a collector in WoW,
But them minipets, I just need them, NAO!
I’ve killed foxes in Tol Barad, a thousand or two,
Yet the fox pet wont drop – what have I done to you??
I’ve dug holes across Azeroth, enough for Swiss cheese,
And yet nothing I found there, you’re so hard to please!
Oh, and that ooze in Felwood, you never dropped it for me,
Nor the phoenix in pink elf land, how cruel can you be?
It’s Cataclysm now, that means change, amiright?
So, how about being a little less tight?
All I’m asking for is a pet or three,
So how about you stop hating me??
I’m not a bad person, I’m not greedy, not rich,
NOW WILL YOU GIEF ME MY LOOT ALREADY YOU……WITCH!!!
/gently place poppy flower on the altar

 
Wish me luck folks, I’ll need it.