Category Archives: WoW

Remembering World of Warcraft

The other day the Wayback machine took me back to my first ever blog that was hosted on blogspot. It was the early 2000s and I was an English literature student at the University of Bern. I had only just moved close to campus and inhabited a 6-bedroom flat with four other students whom I had personally managed to recruit so we could afford a place in the Swiss capital. The times were exciting and I am happy I got to live that free spirited campus life that was so full of comings and goings, meeting new people, partying and late nights out. Bern is my place of power to this day for this reason.

With living an independent life also came a new PC I could use for my study work and my first own internet connection. I remember my 56k modem very well – the sound it made when connecting is the stuff of legends. It was also hell because we were five students in the same flat with only one phone line and mobile phones were only just becoming a thing. Kids nowadays have no idea.

Once the phone line situation improved with ISDN, nothing could keep me from exploring the many diversions of the early internet. Online gaming soon followed with my first foray into FFXI. I tried Everquest for a short while too but the graphics felt incredibly dated, so I stuck with FFXI until WoW came around. Courtesy of the Wayback machine, I managed to find the first screenshot I ever posted on World of Warcraft:

The US beta, for which I was lucky enough to obtain a key, had just concluded. I was completely in love with the priest class and Elwynn Forest and couldn’t wait for the official EU launch in February of 2005. As I look at the old screenshot entry I am somewhat puzzled at the date stamp for the post; the US beta I joined was in fall of 2004 so something must have gotten mixed up in the blog’s archive. Anyhoo!

Twenty years later

World of Warcraft is celebrating its 20th birthday this year and many bloggers like Shintar are paying tribute to their time in Azeroth. Between 2005 and 2011 much of my free time was consumed by WoW. I was living and breathing the guild life with the two raid guilds I became part of and co-founded with buddies. I came to learn just how real and profound a digital life could be, how strong the friendships and how dear the shared moments and victories. For quite a while this made us weirdos and nolifers in others eyes; what on earth were we doing wasting entire days per week playing an online avatar? How were these strangers we hopped on Teamspeak with every night so important to us – in some instances more important even than “the real people out there”? You have to experience it. I don’t think there’s ways to explain MMORPG communities to people who don’t play. Luckily in 2024 you don’t have to do nearly as much explaining as we did back then. Or maybe you do and I’m just no longer aware of it.

After besting Arthas 25 with my guild Adrenaline

I left WoW at the beginning of Cataclysm. Like so many it broke our raid guild which already had had to deal with reducing from 40mans to 25mans in the past. I was burnt out and so was our GM who had founded the guild with me at the cusp of The Burning Crusade. We had bested the majority of raid content from there with our fairly casual guild. We had seen Adrenaline succeed all the way to Arthas 25 and spent the better part of our twenties updating DKP lists, recruiting members and running forums. Then finally we were spent.

Over the years I came back twice if memory serves, once at the beginning of Warlords of Draenor and shortly during Shadowlands. I sort of regret both attempts to rekindle my relationship with WoW. Too palpable and heart wrenching was the absence of old guildmates, too heinous the changes Blizzard had wrought over the years. I could not revive the corpse I had buried in Elwynn Forest when I left in 2011.

Me on Nether Drake at Adrenaline’s 1st Sartharion 3D kill

I treasure every memory from WoW’s heyday. I treasure most the fun times spent in the company of friends, some of whom I also came to know in real life and am still in contact with today. I will never forget the laughs we had online, the magic of working together like a well-oiled machine or the banter in my healers chat. I was a decent enough holy priest but I was great at running the steady healers team we fostered over the years, coordinating the healing raid assignments. I loved every minute of it. We had the best of epic times together.

Nostalgia is a powerful thing. It takes you back to a warm place in your life in seconds, only to pull the rug out from under you because you can never go back. I’m glad I kept this blog alive as an archive of my late WoW adventures. Over the years I managed to write a half-decent post every now and then thanks to WoW. The posts that stand out to me now are those that tackled my favorite subjects: exploration, cooperation and that endless quest for immersion. So in honor of the 20 year anniversary, I’m listing some of my old favorites below.

Happy birthday World of Warcraft! For a time you really were formidable.
Now I wonder how much longer the game can last…another 20 years?

Videogame Movie Adaptions

Back when the media landscape was simpler and videogames still young, aka the 80ies, gamers could only dream of movies or TV shows that were based on their favorite pastime. According to Wikipedia, the Super Mario Bros movie from 1993 was indeed the first foray into such territory which is not surprising given Nintendo’s market leadership at the time. I have vague memories of that title which range from initial excitement to recoiling in horror. Not a great start for videogame movies.

What followed were two decades of fairly terrible or just plain boring adaptions, with the odd watcheable flick like Tomb Raider in between. In fact, I don’t recall anything big until the much debated Warcraft movie by Duncan Jones came out in 2016. While not perfect, I enjoyed Warcraft; watching many of our beloved settings come to life on screen was fun. There were some great characters especially among the Orcs (Durotan, Orgrim, Gul’dan) and the CGI was fabulous. I also enjoyed the humor and lighter moments despite the grim plot. Medivh was silly and Garona poorly written, yet nothing I couldn’t forgive.

While Duncan Jones probably didn’t do himself any favors starting off a WoW trilogy with the Orcs origin story (personally I believe they should’ve focused on Lordareon and the Arthas arc), I was horribly disappointed to learn the sequels got canceled over US box office numbers. Warcraft did great globally and still ranks as the third highest grossing videogame movie of all time to date, making almost $440Mio on a $160Mio budget. I would have loved to see Thrall’s story continue but alas, it was not to be.

Despite all this, videogame adaptions have been going through a renaissance of late. Maybe this is due to cultural lag and videogames finally becoming mainstream in the western market, or maybe other successful movie franchises such as Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter and Game of Thrones paved the way for bigger overall investment in “all that geek stuff”. Whatever it is, it’s nice to see some videogame IPs finally getting proper screen treatment, with titles like the new Super Mario Bros from 2023 reaching an insane worldwide gross of $1.36Bn. Redemption, Nintendo!

I thought the new Mario movie was surprisingly okay, with the understanding that I am hardly its target audience. On a more personal note there have been some disappointments (looking at you, Witcher!) but also a few series I have thoroughly enjoyed:

Castlevania, minus season 3
Arcane, with an upcoming season 2 this November
Fallout, also see this post
The Last of Us, to be continued in 2025

It’s no surprise that animated series are doing well in this regard. There’s also a symptomatic absence of actual movies among my list, although I still intend to watch Sonic and Assasin’s Creed at some point. As for recent titles like the horribly rated Borderlands or upcoming Minecraft movie, they are a hard pass (maybe it’s Jack Black’s fault). I guess that just leaves me waiting for the other shows and whatever surprise the future may yet hold in store for us. Videogames aren’t going anywhere so I assume neither will the screen adaptions good or bad.

FFXIV: Give me your tired and your poor

I think it’s safe to say that 2021 will go down as the year of FFXIV’s third coming. A Realm Reborn being its second coming literally, it was with the release of the Heavensward expansion that Square proved to the world they are still capable of creating wonderful RPG experiences with a mass market appeal – and that they can also deliver this experience as an MMO themepark. The title has been going from strength to strength since and has known a notable influx of new players in 2021, to the point where FFXIV is now officially Square’s most profitable Final Fantasy game in the entire series. The hype is so big that even the father of Final Fantasy, Hironobu Sakaguchi, has started playing the game this fall and is apparently racing through Eorzea like a champ. Good times.

Welcoming Captain Grim to Shadowbringers on Omega

Along with the increasing player base, many more well-known WoW streamers have jumped ship this year which has led me to follow Twitch for the first time ever. Honestly, I never expected that many grown up men to cry over an MMORPG (yes really, it’s everywhere on twitch and youtube), to the point of where several streamers confessed they had forgotten what this genre “was really about”. It’s been a real joy to watch these tired old WoW players discover Eorzea and break the shackles of toxicity that are Blizzard and their abusive shenanigans. And that isn’t even related to the Californian lawsuit, no – I am talking about the state of WoW and Shadowlands. This is where you’ll have to bear with me while I rant.

Against all better judgement, I joined a few old WoW guildies this late spring for the odd dungeon run and raid night. You could say the timing of my return couldn’t have been more ill-advised. Despite all the bad press that literally broke about two weeks after my resub (after 10 or so years), I decided I would judge the expansion myself and I really tried my best to find anything redeemable. But what I’ve encountered was a disgusting, manipulative shell of an MMO that is frankly insulting in the way it’s treating its playerbase and its players’ time. I cannot believe what passes for content in WoW nowadays, all the lazy micro-management and RNG-infested gear sub-systems and stupid re-grinds…for what? Raising another 0.5 item level on the third iteration of the exact same gear item or exact same skill conduit, so you can go have a shot at the third iteration of the exact same raid. Oh and shards and legendary slots and currencies and timers and cooldowns for almost everything! I’ve never known another MMO to grab such exclusive hold of its playerbase the way WoW does, by design and very deliberate engineering. And don’t get me started on the joke that is Oribos, lackluster circle in the sky hub, the Maw and Torghast. Nothing in WoW feels alive any more – 99% of the world is dead, pugs are toxic and players hate the devs. Now I understand why this community is so resentful; the hamsterwheel Blizzard have created demands constant playtime in a joyless world full of recycled, meaningless rewards. Heck, they don’t even design tier sets anymore.

If you ever felt MMORPGs were about the whimsy, world building, community, diversity and social interaction, WoW 2021 is not for you. Sadly, it isn’t even killing it on the endgame side of things anymore either. FFXIV has hundreds of epic fights and some of the hardest raid/trial encounters in the genre right now. There is not enough COPIUM in the world to keep me playing this game anymore. It is truly and veritably over!

FFXIV Community Highlights

No time in MMORPGs is more exciting than when the community is collectively psyched and waiting for the next expansion. Endwalker is three weeks away and you can feel the excitement in the air whenever you log into Eorzea. Especially since Yoshi-P’s recent media tour, where he gave a large number of streamers personal interview time, message boards have been ablaze with new info and speculation. I was personally very happy to hear that some of my most wanted class changes are going to happen and I love the new armor sets and class designs. Sage and Reaper make older jobs look like nubs.

Pop-up concert in Limsa Lominsa

The anticipation of Endwalker has led me to some personal milestones and discoveries too. For one, I’ve finally founded my own FC on Cerberus as more mates are flocking to the game. We’ve hit rank 8 last night and I am both antsy and weary in equal amounts for a shot at the housing lottery in 6.1. The housing system is my biggest gripe in FFXIV bar none and now that we have an FC, I would love nothing more than a (small) house for our daily business. Here’s to hoping fortune will smile on us come Endwalker.

Dance Party at Slayers FC on Cerberus

Our server’s community has also been very lively of late with concerts, house parties and Halloween events. The clubbing scene is one of FFXIV’s many subcultures I had never looked into before. Having finally experienced a Halloween event, I am positively surprised as it was a completely enjoyable and friendly experience (with a live DJ via standalone webpage, no less). It’s interesting how effortlessly fun and joy are spread in MMOs when everyone’s having a carefree time. That’s what I’ve really come to appreciate so much about FFXIV; after so many years it can still surprise you and while it has all the trappings of a traditional themepark MMORPG, a bottomless well of side-activities and creative opportunities lie underneath. You never quite know what you may encounter next.

Welcome to FFXIV: Don’t rush the MSQ

It’s official: everyone I know is trying out FFXIV right now, stubborn WoW evangelists included. And i’m not surprised, FFXIV deserves all the credit it’s gotten since Shadowbringers and it doesn’t look great over at Blizzard Activision right now. Many bloggers have commented on the current shit storm so I’m not going to say too much about it. Other than maybe this: while I’ve held both Blizzard and their upper management in low regard for years now, I never suspected just how foul the corporate C-level of Activision is. As if the contents of the lawsuit weren’t harrowing enough, all the other info pouring out on this has left me somewhat speechless. If it’s one thing I do not need in my life it’s my MMO gaming being directly or indirectly connected to some of the worst US government types. What the hell has happened to this industry if it hires such people? I am still processing.

With that out of my system, let’s get back to why you don’t want to rush your FFXIV beginner experience.

The journey is the reward

Coming from WoW which is different to FFXIV in how it runs its themepark content, I’ve had many friends reach out to me these past weeks asking how long exactly it would take them to catch up to current content. While I don’t like the reasoning behind the question in this particular case, I totally get it. My answer is therefore always the same:

I’ve been playing FFXIV regularly for 7 years now and I still don’t know half of the content going on in that game. Some stuff I’ve heard about and some I am still literally discovering myself. This is partly due to how the game has been developed with many of its core features added incrementally over time (and not always advertised in the best way either). It’s also due to the fact that, as also mentioned in my last post, FFXIV is just incredibly broad with lots of different activities to sink your teeth into, catering to a wide range of players.

What ties all these different activities together is the main story line in FFXIV, aka the MSQ. While WoW was originally designed with endgame in mind and lore fluff was added later, all aspects in FFXIV revolve around or get enhanced by its central narrative. The MSQ is a large part of why some people play and it serves as a fine guide through the leveling process as well. The primary NPCs have been the same since ARR and by now, they mean a lot to the developers as well as the community.

That is not to say that there is not a max level with classic PVE endgame content waiting for FFXIV players. But that’s just it – it is happily ‘waiting’ for them. The MSQ is a central part of the game, so it’s really not something you want to rush through or skip if you’re trying to establish a long term connection with this MMO world. It is also just very fine content and storytelling that gets better and better after ARR (yes it really does and it’s worth hanging in there!). As for endgame and things like dungeons, trials and raids, they are literally not going anywhere. There will be time aplenty to do them with either your friends or in pugs and they won’t be decaying for years to come. I’ve explained how some of this works here but one probably just has to experience FFXIV to understand how smoothly it all works out.

Enjoy the world of Eorzea

As someone who is in FFXIV for its wider allures and relaxed atmosphere, I’ve personally come to love the MSQ. Between following the story as well as enjoying dungeons and raids, exploration, housing and glamour endgame (the real endgame *cough*), I feel the game achieves a great balance between different activities. I think some WoW players are worried that this means the game lacks cooperative content or difficult encounters, but once you tread into savage territory and above none of that applies. These features just don’t get advertised or emphasized nearly as much by the FFXIV community because they’re just that, features among many others (if you think FFXIV has no complex raids, I suggest checking out this channel and watch some savage guides). Eorzea is not a vessel for endgame raid content.

For further analysis and in case you’re currently still on the fence, I recommend this great rundown by Jesse Cox on Youtube. It’s one of the best, most detailed and fairest comparisons of WoW to FFXIV I’ve encountered. See you on the other side – we have Moogle hats!

(P.S. I am on Cerberus EU – feel free to say hi to Sylvara Fallstar any time! The server is currently quite busy but new characters can still be made if you try early mornings or after server maintenance (Tues 4am EST).

Pugging in FFXIV

I’ve been in contact with several of my old WoW buddies recently who are teasing me back to Azeroth. It’s a completely different game than it was when I left in 2010 and from what I gather, the current expansion isn’t well received. At the same time, the pull of old friends is mighty and they seem to be enjoying the mythic content in the game. I am however still playing FFXIV and have only finished all the post-Shadowbringers patches last night. What a fantastic expansion this has been – I sincerely hope Endwalker can live up to its reputation!

Talking back and fourth with my buddies I’ve told them a lot about why FFXIV, in my humble opinion, is the superior game these days. Them being generally curious about it, that has led to some interesting discussions. One major point that seems especially baffling and inexplicable to WoW players, is the friendliness and casual attitude in FFXIV and especially its pugs. This is one of the biggest differences between the two MMOs and has been for a long time. Nobody really seems to be able to explain why.

Apples and Oranges?

My few ventures back into the WoW 5man pugging scene have been almost absurd. All of the groups were radio silent for starters. When I joined a party and tried to get a grasp of a new dungeon, half the group had already sped on to boss number one. Generally, the tank didn’t seem to give a crap if the healer kept up and boss rooms just lock you out these days if you’re late. To my big chagrin, skipping as much as possible within the dungeons has also become common place which leads to frustrating scenarios for newcomers. Again, nobody cares about that. It’s what’s made me quit GW2 back in the days and it’s equally bad design in WoW.

The difference to FFXIV pugging could not be more pronounced, as my screenshots above illustrate. These are not my ‘top screenshots’ by any means, they are in fact just screenshots of the pugs I did last night. It is common place for people to greet each other, tell if the dungeon is new to them, ask the healer if big pulls are okay, end runs with a GG or cheers. As a healer, I’ve literally been in groups where the tank apologized to me when someone died. This has been my FFXIV experience for over 6 years. To date, I have pugged hundreds of dungeons and had maybe three unfriendly pug experiences that I can remember.

So why is there such a huge difference between WoW’s and FFXIV’s community? On the surface, both games have the same approach to pugging, with dungeon finders, ilvl-requirements and cross-server grouping. So it cannot be explained by these game mechanics. Personally, I believe it’s many design factors, some more subtle than others, that directly and indirectly turn FFXIV into the friendlier environment.

My Theory(-ies) on FFXIV

The daily pugging system in FFXIV is the heartbeat of many players’ every day routine. Running dungeon roulettes for marks always awards the latest token armor currencies (which ranks between normal raid gear and savage raid gear) and serves as a fantastic counter to content decay. There is none in FFXIV; the majority of dungeons, trials and raids get run every single day by thousands of players. This ensures new players can get through the main storyline of the game, while providing everyone else with rewards as well as varied locations. Needless to say, the routine factor makes people pretty laidback about pugging and most players are familiar with all the dungeons in the game. Dungeon design is mostly straightforward and linear, so there’s not much to skip along the way and they generally take no more than 15 minutes.

Among the things that FFXIV excels at, playstyle variety and social engineering are center. There are numerous non-combat activities as well as vast solo play content that attract a very wide spectrum of players. No matter your preference or age, FFXIV offers plenty of options for you to pursue activities and get great rewards. For this reason, the community feels very broad to begin with and endgame feels flat. Newcomers have various ways to get into the game with combat tutorials, mentoring systems and NPC parties to get them started if they so desire. New players are marked with the sapling icon and dungeon runs award player recommendations for friendly or helpful behavior. Wherever the l33t competitive players are in FFXIV, they make a tiny percentage and keep to their dedicated static groups for ultimate content.

Speaking of the l33t kids, Square-Enix does not officially allow DPS meters in FFXIV. I have never once encountered anyone talking about DPS or spamming numbers in any type of public chat, as it risks getting reported. While DPS mods exist and are quietly tolerated, players don’t talk about them publicly and keep them inside their dedicated FC and static groups. Which is exactly where meters belong! The same goes for achievements which are not a relevant thing in FFXIV. Nobody inspects you to decide whether they’ll have a good pug with you or not.

Interview with Yoshi-P @ Destructoid

Last but far from least, FFXIV is a Japanese title with a Japanese dev team. This cannot be discounted by any means and gets very visible in the great three-part A Realm Reborn documentary on the rebirth and re-design of the game. Yoshi-P and his dev team approached FFXIV with a certain ethos and cultural background that values social conduct and boosts certain behaviors in the game as well as shaping communication. Overall, this dev team still feels very committed and emotionally invested in the game whereas WoW is long past its prime and A- and B-Teams. My heart legit broke into pieces watching parts of this last FF Fan Fest.

Your mileage may vary

It’s a mixture of things that make MMOs enjoyable to us. When it comes to providing ample opportunities for casual and fun content as well as accessible dungeons, FFXIV hits the sweet spot for me. When I log into the game and sign up for a couple of roulettes, I am guaranteed to wind down and enjoy myself after a long day of work 99% of the time, rather than being wound up and frustrated by a stressful group or toxic player. The game won’t force me to join elite content for great rewards and there’s no ramp-up of systems with unlocks and pre-requisites that push me into one linear grind. If you don’t feel like running dungeons, there’s plenty of other things to do and the game is good at catching you up between content and armor tiers. While it’s far from perfect in all respects and I’ve had my gripes with it in the past, I guess it’s safe to say I won’t be converted away from FFXIV any time soon.

WoW Classic: Are you yearning for the good old, bad days?

As revealed during this year’s Blizzcon, WoW Classic is coming summer 2019 and will be part of the regular WoW subscription, with no additional costs to subscribers. An exclusive Blizzcon demo of the game has been released in which players get to either quest in the Barrens or Westfall as a level 15 character, for a limited amount of time. Having followed discussions on the demo and supposed leaked screenshots on youtube and twitter, it really appears Blizzard are going for that mostly unaltered vanilla experience. All the while we must ask ourselves if we are truly ready to return to 2004.

Kotaku published a very amusing first impressions post on Classic WoW, aptly titled “The WoW Classic Demo Is The Hell We Asked For“. Already the first paragraph had me laughing and cringing because so much about vanilla WoW is tortured nostalgia to the veteran player, an emotional struggle between yearning for our early days and knowing better. Really, I know I know better – but I also know that there is an undeniable, irrational pull towards Classic WoW. Lord, save me from myself!

I once wrote a rather detailed account on the struggle that was vanilla WoW raiding. I wrote it for myself more than anyone, lest I forget how brutal and time-consuming it truly was. We tend to forget these things, we forget how there wasn’t a guild bank or a keyring or dual specs. The list is endless.

As an MMORPG player with limited amounts of time these days, I am mostly over the grim satisfaction mindset. The virtue of suffering that was a badge of pride in oldschool games, holds no fascination for me. Look, I have done it all, had it all, what could I possibly gain from WoW Classic?

WoW Classic: Are you yearning for the good old, bad days?

Old Westfall with buddies.

But then I also remember why I cannot stomach WoW today and suddenly the notion of an Azeroth without achievements, dps meter min-maxmania and flying mounts sounds very appealing! I would probably hate the graphics but Blizzard are letting players opt-in the new character models, at least (which I think is a wise choice). I can see myself walking down that road from Northshire Abbey once again. I can see myself stop at the Lion’s Pride Inn, wondering if I should go kill Hogger next or murder murlocs at Eastvale Logging Camp while looking for that dead soldier. I’d like to see Stormwind as it once was, a smaller city without harbor. I’d like to hitch a ride on the Deeprun Tram because it’s still faster than flying to Ironforge.

And then, arriving at Ironforge I would undoubtedly make for the auction house which is where it would hit me full force: there is no guild I belong to, no guild spot where we used to hang out, no familiar guild tag hovering under my character’s name. My friends are all gone and there is no Syl, the holy priest, without them.

So I’m thinking if I was to return to Classic WoW, I would probably have to roll a vastly different character with a different name, indeed maybe this would be the time to roll horde. In any case, that’s a big “if”!

Monty is very skeptical of all this WoW business!

LOTRO 10 Year Anniversary: Community

Roger has a special post up remembering his past 8 years in LOTRO for the game’s currently ongoing 10th anniversary event. I joined LOTRO late in 2013 but I recognize the special nostalgia and fond memories of the early player from my own time with WoW where I was a regular from the US beta up until the beginning of Cataclysm. That is a very long time to be invested in an MMO world. Looking back even as an ex-player of WoW today, there is so much to be thankful for but nothing more important than the people: the social encounters, the friendships and the guilds.

Without community, MMOs are just a very large online world. A beautiful world for sure and one that’s worth exploring but hardly worth sticking around for years and years. More so even that virtual property, I believe the thing that glues us to MMOs are other people – the only truly unscripted thing that shall remain unpredictable forever.

Early MMO camaraderie, as described by Roger, is a special thing that tends to wane as MMOs become more streamlined and well explored. Internet databases have done their share of replacing some of the social interaction and seem to grow ever faster for every new game that gets released. I remember a time in WoW when everyone knew everyone on a server and world chat would buzz with support. That was long ago in WoW and long ago in LOTRO.

Stranger things will happen at 2am in the Prancing Pony…don’t ask

As a recent LOTRO return however, I can say that at least for Laurelin, “the EU RP server”, server channels are still fairly active and friendly. Zone chat is dead for some reason and maybe it was never a thing, but you do generally get advice in world chat. Places like the Prancing Pony are well frequented and always good for a stop to listen to a bard play or take part in shady night time activities. There is also an inexplicable amount of generous and supportive players in general who will whisper you after a noobish question or come meet you to y’know…trade you gear upgrades for no reason or let you copy their cosmetics for the wardrobe. Both has happened to me within 3 days of play.

It seems relatively difficult to find groups for old content however which is something I struggle with in Moria. LOTRO’s dungeon finder seems to be a completely ignored feature by a majority of folk, so I was encouraged to use LFF chat for Grand Stair and Hall of Mirrors. It took the better part of Sunday afternoon just to find 5 other people willing to run HoM twice since that is the required amount of runs to complete the quests there. It was a very friendly and fun group however and I ended up getting invited to their cross-fellowship channel.

Despite some grouping difficulties, just having company out there to chat or listen to and knowing you’re not alone, creates much of my enjoyment in MMOs even when I’m running solo (the other important parts being exploration and world building but you knew that already). Now that I’ve re-subscribed to LOTRO and intend to make up for lost time in Middle-Earth, it was an obvious next step to join a casual but active guild once more. I had been part of a bunch called the Grey Guard in 2013 who were kind enough to accept and not kick me after 3 years of absence, but it’s been very quiet after my return and I’ve felt rather lonely and behind even more so than in 2013. Thankfully, a kind offer by Roger to join his long term kinship has arrived at what seems the perfect time! I am back in the saddle and back among people who still enjoy an MMO they’ve been attached to for years – a warm and familiar feeling.

The Long Shadow of World of Warcraft: Titan and the Legacy Server Question

In the wake of the much discussed Nostalrius server closure, Gamespot published an interview with Blizzard’s Overwatch team about the great failure that was Titan, as part of a history feature for Overwatch. Titan having been this great hush-hush project for so long, with only a single Kotaku article shedding some light on its demise at the time, I found both the timing and takeaway of this new interview quite fascinating. It is rare for a developer of Blizzard’s caliber to come out and talk about screwing up projects of such magnitude in candid fashion, with notable commentary by Jeff Kaplan and Chris Metzen. Yet if youtube comments are anything to go by, it was another smart move on their end in terms of marketing Overwatch and generating some more trust and curiosity within the player base.

What the Titan interview is too, is a rather ironical look at the long-lasting after-effects of the monster that was created in 2004 – World of Warcraft, proclaimed hero and villain of mainstream MMORPGdom depending on whom you ask. Over the years many a case has been made against WoW for hijacking the creative diversity of the genre, causing a plethora of unfortunate clones or ill-budgeted AAA-titles crashing in one treacherous MMO bubble. What isn’t discussed nearly as often however are the negative side-effects of WoW from within, for a company and creative enterprise. WoW may be the best thing that ever happened to Chris Metzen and Co. but it “happened” to them in the same bewildering, unforeseen and uncontrollable way it happened to the entire market; a child of chance and momentum as much as creative genius and industry know-how. An alchemy that defies simple re-creation.

That fortuitous chain of events led the team at Blizzard through the same process it would lead anyone that could not be prepared, from a time of unstoppable force and hubris to a place of shattered dreams and identity crisis when it came to Titan, crushed under the real MMO giant that remains World of Warcraft. The irony is strong in this one. WoW casts its long shadow to this day and left the staff soul-searching and scavenging Titan’s remains to come up with Overwatch, a completely different, much smaller game to complement their genre palette. Thus a team used to the dizzying successes of the past stood humbled, as Chris Metzen points out in the Gamespot feature.

Among MMO bloggers there goes the saying that “there is no WoW killer other than WoW” and indeed, nothing can seem to affect this title’s weight, not even the next Blizzard MMORPG. This must create a challenging emotional ambivalence even among those closest to WoW and most blessed by its many rewards. And I can’t help but think it also plays a role in Blizzard’s unaltered disregard for WoW legacy servers; something that surely makes sense business-wise and in terms of fan service. But if we then consider a crew of people who are simply tired of old WoW and eager to create new experiences, experiences not continuously outclassed by a 12 year-old zombie that just won’t stop rearing its insistent head, well then we can empathize more with that decision.

You run legacy servers when you’re actually happy to keep the past alive. At this point, I don’t get the feeling Blizzard are content to be defined by the successes of WoW’s heyday and this weighs heavier on their mind than a couple more subscriptions.

About that Black Desert Online Learning Curve

Five days into Black Desert Online, including some beta testing and headstart, my current state of mind is best described with this picture:

HALP! (click to enlarge crazyness)

I still don’t know what the fuck I am doing. And that is probably a good thing too, given how I generally find new MMORPGs too easy, too repetitive and too been there done that. Really, BDO is doing a lot of stuff its own way; I can’t say how effective or worthwhile it all is yet, but between node and worker management, haggling and raising amity with NPCs, one million gazillion crafty things and sub-menus for every possible resource, horse breeding, AFK-fishing, shipyards and feeding pets while looking to unlock the perfect residence, I have my hands full and then some. That Black Desert Online learning curve is no joke even for seasoned players.

Sandbox musings

While browsing the official Black Desert Online forums, I chanced upon this provocatively named youtube rant by WoW raider Kungen – ye, that dude that ran/runs Nihilum and raided with Ensidia for a time. I honestly never payed much attention to WoW’s 1% although there was a time when I statistically would have belonged among that group, albeit much further down the ladder from our Scandinavian overlords. In the few interviews I ever read back in wow.com’s time, most of them seemed aloof and not in touch with anything.

Anywho, after several minutes of WoW tirade Kungen goes over to waxing lyrical about BDO, its great sandbox premise and horizontal endgame “progression”. I confess, I found the video rather entertaining for all the ways he hits and misses various points related to his general WoW malaise. He is quite obviously incapable of relating to what constitutes the majority of WoW’s non-hardcore player base. Where there’s only “easy peasy mythics” left for him in today’s endgame, other players would argue that the game has added a lot of non-raiding related content over the years, from achievements to pet battles and the garrison. That doesn’t interest Kungen because raiding was the greatest in vanilla and after that, the game gradually went to shits. Here’s where I agree with him: WoW took a big turn for the worse after the conclusion of the Arthas arch in WotLK; I too am a Cataclysm-unsubscriber. And I hate flying mounts in WoW, they rank right after achievements for me.

The rest is mildly amusing, given how this hardcore player fails to realize how his playstyle adds to his own detriment in MMOs. He probably level 50+ during the BDO beta too or something, so I wonder how long the enthusiasm is gonna last. But hey, it’s nice that even the “WoW elite” (…) can appreciate Black Desert Online for doing things a bit differently.

Who are the MMO Core Players?

A brief exchange today between myself and Gazimoff on WoW’s fluctuating player base, got me thinking about the often referenced „core players“ in MMOs. Although there’s unfortunately no data on who today’s longtime WoW subscribers are and when they started playing, it’s reasonable to assume that WoW has a core of the faithful, made sticky by longtime relationships, memories and trophies accumulated over the years. Social ties and virtual property are an important glue for MMO retention and WoW hit the market like a blazing star in 2004.

But really all sarcasm aside (I’ll try!), who are the core players in WoW? Are they the ones who never unsub, never fluctuate? Are they the all-abiding, undemanding that Blizzard need never worry about? Are they the so-called fanboys and fangirls?

What constitutes core and how many core players are there in an MMO like WoW? Is it enough to remain subbed for a certain amount of time to qualify or invest a certain amount of money? Is it the current 5 million players or much less than that – 1 million, 500’000 players? More importantly, how long until we’d find out, how long until the last non-core player is ready to quit WoW and never look back?

What does it take to reveal an MMO’s core?

Questions, questions!

"I don't like the community in this MMO, content is so yesterday and the graphics suck. Well yes, I'm staying." #cognitivedissonance

— ~Syl (@MMOsyl) November 9, 2015