Category Archives: WoW

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.

25man blues, Holy goodness, oh noes I look like Aladdin, Critternation, I still don’t PuG and community highlights

I’ve been wanting to produce one of those ‘incredibly long topic list’-titles like Spinks does so well for a long time now and today I finally got the chance. That’s another goal for 2011 out of the way, go me!

25man blues

Times are being so-so in WoW at the moment; it appears that 25man raid guilds have pretty much disppeared from the face of the earth which makes recruitment for Adrenaline a bit of a MAJOR PITA right now. We assumed it was gonna be harder in Cataclysm, but by now I’m amazed how Blizzard has managed to kill off the 25man mode so completely and it’s not just happening on our server. It makes me sad and wonder if people really do only raid for loot…What happened to more epic scale battles? Or is the hassle of trying to coordinate a stable 25man team just too much work for people nowadays? That second reason I can understand at least. All that said, I miss you 40man WoW! We will see what happens, I guess.

Raiding goodness

On the bright side, Adrenaline first raidweek has been very successful, 4 bosses went down for us in BoT and BWD and also: holy is officially awesome! While we really didn’t look so great in the new heroics, holy priests still rock the raidhealing boat and there’s lots of holy love to be shared in these new encounters. I’m not surprised to see PoH get a minor nerf soon; it’s already very powerful and my mastery rating isn’t even very high yet. All in all we got some really sweet patches incoming (Chakra, SoL, CoH) and the slight nerfs to PoH and our regen will matter little in the long run, even if we might feel them right now.

I got my first epic loot drop too and…oh noes, I look like Aladdin! The matching carpet was the obvious consequence. Matching dress and shoes – so last season!

“A whole new woooorld…”
(and I’d still rather be sitting, srsly!)

Critternation

In other news, I have successfully coerced enough of our guildies to join me on a 50k CDSC (critter death squad campaign) this last Sunday – finally my subtle convincing attempts paid off. It took us approximately 8 clears of Terrorweb Tunnel in Eastern Plaguelands which is swarming with bugs and spiders aplenty. We had jolly good fun on ventrilo, even if most of us realized later on that we can’t buy the armadillo pup yet, lol!
If anyone of you is looking to get this achievement done with his guild soon, I can really recommend that spot. Respawn time is every 3-4ish minutes and easily adds another 5k+ to that body count in a raid of 15 people. The more you are, obviously the faster you’ll be. And no bunnies or squirrels involved, promise!

Community highlights and another guest post

The WoW healing community has been spilling over with the whole “healing heroics, yay or nay”-topic these past few weeks and I’ve been following many articles with great interest, especially one by Ophelie where she tells us how healers can make a difference in PuGs. I’m always amazed to read how fellow healers still put up with the LFG madness in Cataclysm….I can’t say I do (I know, it must come as a shock to you) and so naturally, I had to share how much of a difference I’m not making:

Watch me NOT healing any PuGs over @ World of Matticus where Matt has been so kind to publish another one of my articles (and not just that, I’ve officially gotten my own mugshot on the page, how cool is that?). I had great fun writing it and I’ve tried to include all the related and inspiring articles I came across myself before (though I clearly failed to mention them all), so you might find yourself link-loved!
Judging by some of the reactions and also a look around the blogosphere this morning, the topic will definitely keep WoW healers and bloggers occupied for a while to come.

Another highlight of the week were definitely also Larísa’s PPI Awards for 2010, so in case you missed her great summary of what’s been hot and steaming around WoW and the blogging community in 2010, there’s your chance to catch up! A very detailed and informative read with many great nominations and well-deserved winners, and this silly blogger here even got mentioned too. I can’t say more than thanks to everyone who might have mentioned my articles or this blog, thank you so very much indeed whoever you might be, the bloggers linking us and all our regular readers (you’re sure this is the blog you’re meaning to read, right? just checking!). It’s a great joy to have been included.

Now let the weekend come, it’s already been the perfect week. Congratulations again to all winners and enjoy your weekend everybody! ^^

Priests, the great manipulators

[Alternative title: The truth about why people choose to play a priest in WoW]

“May be that you are a tank in WoW, mighty shield-bearer and wrestler of foes. May be that you play a melee class, trained to duel and trick the enemy in close combat. Might be that you command the will of fire and frost to drive the crowds before you, or that you chant dark rituals under a waxing moon. Or you might be a healer, drawing upon the blessing of the light, bestowing nature’s greatest gift on those in dire need.

But you are naught compared to me.
I am the all-powerful Priest!
The special powers I was given surpass my greatest talents, my healing’s warm embrace and my worst shadow’s doom. I am not one of you – I am the bender, the pretender. All things tremble under my will!

You cannot hide from me.
No matter where you are, I’ll find you.
No matter where you run, I’ll follow. My /target reaches wide and far.
If you slack during a corpserun, I’ll see it. If you get lost on your way back, I’ll guide you.
If you think you can disappear with that flag, you think wrong.
I AM WATCHING YOU!
And there’s nothing you can do about it. Well, not much anyway.
[/cast Mindvision]

Resistance is futile.
If I catch you off guard, I’ll intrude your body and mind.
I’ll take your strengths and abilities and I will use them against you.
I’ll turn you on your allies while you’re watching, I’ll play you like a puppet on a string.
Nobody breaks your defenses down like I do.
Nobody steals your agency and power so completely.
YOU ARE MINE!
[/cast Mind Control]

You cannot escape me.
If you run away, I’ll command you back to me.
If you linger for too long, I’ll make you move.
Just like the Deathknight grabs his foe, I’ll grab my ally.
I might catch you before you fall – I might turn on you.
I might save you from burning – I might let you burn.
IF HERE IS WHERE I WANT YOU, HERE YOU SHALL BE!”
[/cast Leap of Faith]

[/open parenthesis]
Priests in World of Warcraft are second to none when it comes to tools of manipulation or heteronomy. A tank might stun his target, a rogue might sap it for a while, a mage might sheep, a druid might root – just like a priest can shackle or fear or chastize. CCs are very limited in WoW, easily countered and not further controllable by those employing them.
A hunter might use Farsight just like a warlock has Eye of Kilrogg, but none of these spells impose on another player in the same way Mindvision can serve priests as a spying tool.

Is…this…reality?

Nobody breaks so literally into another player’s privacy like priests, to the point where their very own avatar is no longer theirs to command. The few times I have been MCed in battlegrounds, I’ve felt immensely annoyed and bewildered; it almost feels like a violation when some stranger takes over you character, controls it and presses buttons on your spellbar. It’s not a program doing this, it’s not an NPC as part of a quest: you’re being controlled by another player. There is a real, breathing person somewhere out there sat at his PC, commanding or monitoring my character – WHO ARE YOU?
[/close parenthesis]

“I am your big brother, I’m watching you.
I am the possesser, I’m turning you.
I am the commander, I’m catching you when I please.”

I am a Priest – the great manipulator.
[God I love priests!]

Tol Barad, the second

Shortly after my post about the silly honor gains in Tol Barad of last week, Blizzard announced their hotfix for the outdoor PVP zone which has settled all outcries about servers win-trading swiftly and effectively. Winning an attack game now awards players 360 honor points, as opposed to the previous 1800 (a successful defense still awards 180 points) – a change of astronomic proportions which now makes many a player think, why oh why he didn’t play Tol Barad in its early weeks of Cataclysm.

Yet, not all is well in Tol Barad: the general disproportion in difficulty between winning an attack or a defense game persists, to many a PvPers dismay. I’ve had time to finally join a few more Tol Barad games this last weekend and I haven’t been in a single one that won an attack. Keeping your defense is substantially easier which is doubly frustrating, considering that the zone is not only about honor gains but more daily quests for tokens and the Baradin Hold instance. Where players did not care to defend before, they are now doing their very best to keep their keeps; so we have pretty much switched one extreme for the other.

In a most recent blue post by Cory Stockton, Blizzard assures players that the re-balancing of Tol Barad is far from over: they are aware of the attack game issue and are looking to fix this in a future patch. What’s more revealing about the article, are the comments on how Blizzard have tried to learn from past mistakes of WotLK’s Wintergrasp and what their intentions for Tol Barad were initially, when designing the new outdoor PvP Zone –

Tol Barad is intentionally balanced so that it’s a challenge for the attackers, because we want to make sure that control of Tol Barad matters. For the defenders, there’s a sense of urgency that Wintergrasp didn’t have — if you lose it, you’re going to have a hell of a time taking it back. For the attackers, there are a number of rewards at stake — such as access to the Baradin Hold raid and additional daily quests — that we hope players feel are worth fighting for. That sort of tension is what we wanted from Wintergrasp, and what we believe Tol Barad can ultimately offer.

While the devs’ initial realization of this has failed, it is clear that they were looking to give the battle for victory a much greater meaning by adding more incentives to play well via the big honor difference, and also balancing the games in terms of player slots. I salute Blizzard’s decision to make attacking a challenge of consequence. Wintergrasp was never a meaningful, let alone epic place by any standard; if you lost a game, who cared? You would get a win sooner or later – the only time I was ever annoyed to be denied access to Wintegrasp was when I wanted to go buy some PvP gems or enchants.

This time around, Blizzard wants to add more meaning to conflict. And: they want a lot more people to join in. While you can decide to quest on the northern half of Tol Barad island exclusively in order to get your Baradin Wardens reputation and rewards, conquering the southern map is a considerable speed bonus for PvPers and PvErs alike. The reputation vendor sells a variety of special items (from vanity baubles such as a companion pet and two mounts, to useful blue items and epic trinkets) to attract a wide range of WoW players. There is also the commendation to convert extra tokens to more reputation, which means the more daily quests you can do, the faster your way to exalted and epic rewards (which all require to be bought by tokens too).

I absolutely love the look of the Drake of the West Wind (it looks a lot better live than on pictures) and I will obviously have to get the seagull. Apart from that the trinkets are actually quite nice, especially if you have no immediate access to epic raid loot (the healer trinket has been announced to receive a slight buff soon).

All things considered, I look forward to Tol Barad receiving another patch asap, as confirmed in the blue post and that they will find the right way to balance a battle which can be a great dilemma to balance.
And I also have high hopes that this time around Blizzard’s new PvP Zone will encourage a much greater player base to join in and fight more meaningful battles, rather than being “for them odd PvPers only”.

The LFG Fail

I’m working at this wonderfully relaxed place now where a large portion of my work consists of running errands for others and taking care of correspondence and where nobody only shows up for work because his parents forced him to. I got my own little office and when I started off in December, our IT support told me to “make sure you’re installing Skype”. The entire company is handling their everyday communication over Skype – how cool is that? I get to be online there all day long and I’ve totally not added a single one of my buddies to my contact list…

Anyways, correspondence. When you’re writing several E-Mails in a row to reply to some business associate or contact, the mind switches off at the oddest times (or maybe it’s just my mind which is an entirely valid possibility). Most business is done in English and so I’m taking care to honor the code and include all those nifty, standard greeting and closing formulas, à la “Please do not hesitate to contact us if you need further information” or “Please find enclosed…” and so forth. Corporate language, I has it.

In between handling those letters, I also get to send a lot of short notes or reminders to my co-workers which are frequently in different languages, namely German or French. And that’s when it happened.
When you’re writing more casual types of Emails to friends or colleagues in German, it’s pretty standard to use acronyms like ‘LG’ (liebe Grüsse) or ‘MFG’ (mit freundlichen Grüssen) to replace “kind regards” as a closing line. This has even made its way into more formal letters by now, depending on what the subject is or for how long correspondents have known each other. So naturally, when I was asked to send a short request for booking confirmation out on a workmate’s behalf a few days ago, I didn’t hesitate to end the Email in that way (you need to assume this would have been in German):

[actual message here]

Please contact me if you require any further information.

LFG, Silly Goof

LFG…
I actually wrote LFG!
A splitsecond after sending that Email (figures), I realized it.

/facepalm

And I know why of course: I spent a large portion of my free ‘blogging and blog-reading time’ this week on reading about Cataclysm’s 5man runs, the fail and glory of them, especially in regard to being a healer. There will also be a contribution of my own to that topic pretty soon, so MY BRAIN IS IN LFG MODE!

It’s days like these when you realize you’re having enitrely too many thoughts on WoW. Have a good weekend everybody and be careful on those heroic runs!

When losing is winning. Or: don’t blame players for Tol Barad

Only a few weeks into the expansion, factions on many servers have started to engage into “win-trading” for the honor gains in Tol Barad, Blizzard’s latest outdoor PVP zone equivalent of Wintergrasp. To give complete newcomers some background: the theoretical aim of the zone is to conquer 3 keeps and then, to hold at least one of them as defender through the consecutive rounds (games happen every 2 hours) or re-conquer them as the attacker. Now the horde and alliance have struck a deal which is to alternate between winning and losing, or to put it briefly: never bothering to defend after a win.

– Why is that, you ask?

Simply put it’s because that strategy is the most rewarding for players. A large part of PvP, just like a large part of farming the same heroic for the 20th time, are rewards. Yeah there’s the fun of playing with a team and being successful, but erm….rewards! For many or probably most gamers epics/gear/rewards translate into win. You get loot for killing a boss, not for letting him live. In PvP winning and gaining as much honor as you can is (or should be) identical. So if you want to gain as much honor as possible, what you need to do in TB is losing on purpose, every second game. To lose is to win here.

– How can that be, you ask?

Blizzard designed the honor gains in such a way that attacking gives a lot more honor than a successful defense. So much more in fact (10 times to be exact), that there is basically no incentive at all for players to defend, except for “teh fame and glory”. We know how well that one works…
This difference in honor gain is a result of attacking (claiming 3 keeps) being a lot harder than defending just one base. And while that might contain some “realism” (besieging is harder than defending), it opens a whole can of worms in this case.

Players want to attack as often as they can, so their strategy makes a lot of sense: lose your defense, so you can win more attacks. Anyone looking to optimize and with a minimum of mathematical skills would choose this strategy. The issue are not the players: Losing should never be profitable – the system should make you want to win in every case.

I. When failed game design is an exploit

According to Blizzard such “win-trading” is of course and exploit and against the rules. Now I’m a bit of a free spirit maybe, but I don’t call taking the logic road and making a strategic decision a game offers you, an exploit. To me, abuse suggests players making use of some kind of glitch or bug in game design that is there by error. Be it that you climb up a cliff you shouldn’t be able to climb in Alterac Valley because it gives you a fatal advantage, be it that you use levitate in order to cheat the fire in Crusaders’ Coliseum. That’s cheating and doing so knowingly or unknowingly usually matters not (hai there, Ensidia).

What we basically have in Tol Barad is similar to the situation we had through almost all of WotLK: “let’s lose fast”-mentality in battlegrounds. And while I didn’t like that one bit, the truth is that Blizzard made losing too profitable. And I can see where they’re coming from: obviously a lot of BG pugs are from hell and not getting any rewards for losing would seriously put many players off. Oh the whining. We cant have that, so here’s some welfare points.
And that’s why Blizzard gave losers a bit of a reward, enough to keep them going and sadly also to make them wanna lose fast. That issue was never handled like an abuse though, in fact the whole system encouraged it. Only at the very end of WotLK did they finally make losing hurt enough for people wanting to win and not sabotaging BGs anymore (although I guess they still did, there’s no fix for stupid).

Tol Barad, while being a different case, is indirectly suffering from the same effect. Worse still: alternating between wins and losses is the most profitable way to go (because you can’t win attacks several times in a row). How much sense does that make to you? I see a football team before me that gets paid more for losing every second game than bothering to win. If losing on purpose has such clear advantages, losing becomes a legitimate choice. The big difference here is only that players aren’t deciding this in BG-chat, they’re doing so openly on the forums.

Of course you can say now “but it’s illegal, Blizzard hath spoketh” and that’s right. Works just great too, “because I said so” has always been a really powerful argument in a debate. Fear of ban makes for instant insight? Not only can you not control or prove players losing on purpose, it’s a lot of fuss over something incredibly easy to fix. And yeah I’ve read the EULA – does that mean we can’t reason anymore?

After the same logic, anyone in an Alterac Valley or any other battleground, who is standing around chatting, goes to grab a drink during respawn time or stops trying half-way through, is sabotaging the point of the game. Does that make him an exploiter, strictly speaking? What if he has a clear gain from losing? Do we have a moral obligation to win or at least try to win?

II. Blame not – fix! Possible solutions for the unholy alliance

Just so I’ve clarified my personal view: I’m no fan of win-trading and I’ve detested BG sabotage with a passion for years. I want to play PvP properly and get rewards for winning and playing cooperatively (with my own faction), not for losing. I have in fact not had time to partake in more than a single TB game so far which lasted 3 minutes before it was lost. I also don’t condone deliberate exploiting in MMOs.

In Tol Barad’s case however, players are making the most practical choice in order to optimize honor gains and that choice is there by design. Blaming players to play a system that makes no sense to their advantage, makes no sense. If you design a game that nobody wants to win, you fail at designing. Nobody wants to win a TB defense game, only an attack game. So for me, the responsibility lies with Blizzard here: they need to fix this non-sense. I am frankly also a little baffled that they wouldn’t have foreseen this during the months of Cataclysm testing, but maybe they have simply under-estimated the level of cooperation servers are capable of, which Spinks so aptly calls the “miracle of Tol Barad”.

So, how to fix this? Few ideas:

Harmonize the required effort of attacking and defending. Why does the defender only need to defend one base when attacking requires three?
Harmonize the honor gains alongside with the requirements; attack and defense should both be profitable. If anything, make the reward for a successful defense slightly higher in order to encourage players to keep ownership. This would make thoughts of win-trading obsolete.
Abandon the whole re-claiming concept and reset status before every new game. Maybe a more extreme change, but why does there always need to be the defense part? Make both factions go for the same attack game each round.

In a way, all of this reminds me oddly of Ghostcrawler’s commentary on abandoning the 5-second-rule for mana regen in Cataclysm, which can be roughly summarized as: “it makes no sense to reward and motivate healers to stand around and do nothing”. Exactly! There should be no reward for not playing!

Tol Barad, even if not designed to be played that way, indirectly encourages doing nothing. Or rather: Tol Barad rewards cross-faction cooperation more than conflict at the moment. All it takes for this to change are a few small fixes. We’ll see what happens next.

How to track down an Orc mage

I guess most of you have had some guild achievements flashing up on your screen the past weeks since Cataclysm launched and maybe you’ve shared my feeling of “wut? what happened there?”, followed by trying to find out who did what exactly and what reward the guild might have got.

The new guild perks system is a double-edged blade: not only due to the guild size issue, but overall it feels very underwhelming to see flashy pop-ups coming up ever so often, without having been part of anything – frankly the guild part of the achievement is lost on me there. I know I’m not alone in this, many guildies feel excluded when one, dedicated “achievement hunting team” goes out on the very first days of the expansion to get as many guild achievements as possible and while the rewards are for everybody, it doesn’t feel like a group effort at all.
That said, I don’t nearly care enough about achievements to whine about it and most of them don’t come with noticeable rewards either (the really big part is guild ranks and mass effort achis), but I simply don’t think Blizzard implemented the system very well.

I’ve only just started to explore the new guild tab in the achievement window a few days ago, mostly to check which of them actually come with something useful. Now, as a pet collector I’d love to get the Armadillo Pup, but that one is far away still with our 10k kills out of 50k total. We’re not the biggest guild and I also suspect there’s a natural resistance in many to go and hunt down fluffy bunnies and squirrels! For those among you, here’s a little motivator.

Tracking down the elusive orc mage

Killing horde on the other hand – works fine for most. I’m certainly not shy to PvP and I always enjoyed the achievements that require you to hunt down certain class-race combinations in WoW, either to slay them or put bunny ears on their heads or whatever (see how there is darkness and light inside me!). As a priest especially, you’ve got awesome tools for this kind of mission. So, when I realized that all our guild was missing for the Horde Slayer Achievement was an orc mage, I decided to have a look around AV – it couldn’t be so hard, surely…

…Riiight! Apparently orc mages are the least popular class-race combination ever on horde side. I’m not sure why that is, whether it’s racials or the fact that orcs are generally associated with being “brutes”, so not exactly the educated smart or spiritual kind. The WoW census is rather clear on this: counting all EU servers together a baffling 2%-3% of all horde mages are orcs, already less than there are goblin mages. That’s even worse than the percentage of dwarf rogues on alliance side – honestly, would you rather see an orc in cloth or a hairy dwarf in leather? Anyway.

It took me several nights to finally spot an orc mage in AV and I gotta say, I felt a little sorry for the guy! Having your face on a wanted poster all over an entire battlegroup – NOT FUN! Bad times for orc mages. But then, the system is enforcing this really, because you can’t get the achievement done by killing anything less than a lvl 85, so arranging for an alternative of your own quickly isn’t an option.

Well then, if you happen to be a priest and are looking to do this guild achievement, here’s how to do it the BG way (and I promise you won’t have to PvP any more than absolutely needed):

Queue for an AV and once inside, browse the BG chart to check whether there are any orc mages in. If not and you absolutely hate to PvP, /afk out and repeat in 15mins.
Once you’ve spotted your orcish friend, create a /target + name macro to make sure you spot him right away on the battlefield.
Follow the main rush and stay in midfield on Field of Strife. This is where most alliance and horde cross in the beginning and there’s a very high chance your orc mage will be among them. Spam your target-macro at all times.
Once you got your target, follow the horde rush at a distance and try to spot the player to see where he’s going. It might prove tricky, so what you want to do now is to retreat to a safe spot quickly and throw a mindvision before you’ve lost him.
After you’ve located him, track him down and keep a focus on him to see whether he’s already in combat, winning or dying (in which case he will release at the closest horde GY). Throwing a DoT is enough to get the kill count if he’s already battling someone else. If you have to take him on 1vs1, good luck!

I was lucky because in my case the orc mage was on his way to Stonehearth Bunker and already engaged in a flag fight when I arrived. He was at 50% health and too surprised at my arrival to react, so a quick Penance and SW:Death finished the job. And I realize just how this sounds – I’m really sorry Dag-something, Blizzard made me do it!

On the bright side, we got the guild achievement and with it comes the Guild Page companion which is actually quite useful for non-collectors too: it’s your very own mobile vendor and allows you to clear all the trash from your bags during questing which is rather handy at the moment. Unfortunately he only lasts for 5 mins and is on an 8 hour cooldown, just like the other guild vendor items……/facepalm

Anyway, should you get tired of questing or heroics sometime, give PvP achievements a go, they’re actually a fun distraction and you do not need a PvP kit either to get them, especially in AV. The tracking tactic obviously works for any class-race combination you might be after. For the Alliance – For the Horde! Enjoy your weekend and a happy New Year from Raging Monkeys everybody!