Having writen about the animosity between the Alliance and the Horde recently, I am now curious as to just how much the two factions really dislike each other. I know, the blog-reading WoW populace is hardly a good representative cross-section of the entire WoW-playing community, but considering the purposes of this poll (the satisfaction of my own curiosity, and perhaps the ability to speak accurately about the way my readers view the opposite faction), I don't think it needs to be exhaustively accurate. Anyways, there is now a new poll on the side of my blog asking which faction (or factions) you play and what your feelings are of players of the other faction. I would go into further detail, but I fear I will sway the results one way or another if I do, so I'm keeping this brief. You can expound upon your choice in the comment section on this post if you so wish.
Monday, August 30, 2010
Friday, August 27, 2010
Azerothian politics and the illusion of power
The role of us players in the evolving story of Azeroth is an interesting one, and a confounding one, at times. After all, look at what we have accomplished. We've killed the leader of the Burning Legion, two old gods (or at least incapacitated them for a while), the king of the undead hordes, and even an observer of the titans themselves. Our prowess is obviously quite impressive for faceless adventurers (or, as the Lich King himself says, "Azeroth's greatest champions"), for through cooperation, we have saved Azeroth from countless threats that even the heroes of lore couldn't combat. In fact, we players have become those heroes; that's why we are Azeroth's greatest champions.
However, though we may posses great power as players, we make up for that abundance of power through a lack of control. The dichotomy between those two wasn't apparent to me for most of my time playing WoW, but one event brought it to the forefront of my awareness. Well, not one event, so much as one key player in contemporary WoW lore, and all the ways he has bollocksed up everything: Garrosh Hellscream. I have written about this polarizing figure before, and I concluded that, as much as we may hate him, it's for the best that Blizzard keep the events of WoW going as they have and as they plan. However, I bring him up today because Garrosh, his mistakes, and his inevitable rise to power as Warchieft of the Horde perfectly illustrates the sheer lack of control we players have. That lack of control is illustrated by the amount of frustration I see players express over Garrosh's brazenness and Thrall's baffling decision to keep Garrosh in a position of power, in spite of his history of decisions that work against Thrall's goals.
Put in a different way, we players know what is best for Azeroth. We know that the best thing for the races to do would be to put aside their petty squabbles and cooperate, for we have seen the good that can be wrought when they do so and the loss that comes about when they don't. And yet, wish as we may that we could somehow alter the politics of this that world we inhabit, we cannot. Now, I know I don't speak for all players here. I know there are players out there who are glad that the drums of war are sounding yet again, who can't wait to see how this conflict evolves, but I know there are also plenty of players who wish it could be avoided. If anything, that shows that we put some emotional stock in Azeroth, which shows just how good of a game Blizzard has developed. But I digress. The fact that we can't stop Garrosh from messing everything up, that we can't urge the other leaders to work for peace, rather than war, and that we can't prevent a destructive conflict we can see coming from a mile away shows just how little control we players really have when it comes to the events that happen in Azeroth. We may have a lot of power, which is why we can kill beings like old gods, but we have very little control, which is why we can't affect the story of WoW at all.
Why does this dichotomy exist? It exists because, in the end, WoW is Blizzard's game, and it progresses as Blizzard sees fit. We players think we have power within the world of Azeroth, but that is only because Blizzard gives us that power. They give us the power to defeat monstrous enemies if we have the right gear and skills; if they didn't do that, we couldn't defeat them, plain and simple. Thus, we really don't have any inherent power within the WoW universe; we only have abilities which Blizzard has allowed us to have. We could only change the course of Azerothian politics if Blizzard gave us that power, too, and there are plenty of reasons for them to not do that.
As I said, the fact that we players wish we could affect the way WoW's political scene plays out says a lot about just how good of a game Blizzard has developed. They haven't just developed a game, they've developed a world, a world whose outcome we feel invested in. But the thing is, WoW is really a very stagnant world. The world of WoW only changes when Blizzard decides it's going to change, and though we players feel as if we are somehow instrumental in this change, we really aren't. We can only kill the great monsters we kill because Blizzard has made them killable and made us the ones who are able to kill them. Blizzard, it turns out, is really the one with the power here, so it's no wonder they have the control, as well. In the end, this is Blizzard's world, not ours; we just play in it.
However, though we may posses great power as players, we make up for that abundance of power through a lack of control. The dichotomy between those two wasn't apparent to me for most of my time playing WoW, but one event brought it to the forefront of my awareness. Well, not one event, so much as one key player in contemporary WoW lore, and all the ways he has bollocksed up everything: Garrosh Hellscream. I have written about this polarizing figure before, and I concluded that, as much as we may hate him, it's for the best that Blizzard keep the events of WoW going as they have and as they plan. However, I bring him up today because Garrosh, his mistakes, and his inevitable rise to power as Warchieft of the Horde perfectly illustrates the sheer lack of control we players have. That lack of control is illustrated by the amount of frustration I see players express over Garrosh's brazenness and Thrall's baffling decision to keep Garrosh in a position of power, in spite of his history of decisions that work against Thrall's goals.
Put in a different way, we players know what is best for Azeroth. We know that the best thing for the races to do would be to put aside their petty squabbles and cooperate, for we have seen the good that can be wrought when they do so and the loss that comes about when they don't. And yet, wish as we may that we could somehow alter the politics of this that world we inhabit, we cannot. Now, I know I don't speak for all players here. I know there are players out there who are glad that the drums of war are sounding yet again, who can't wait to see how this conflict evolves, but I know there are also plenty of players who wish it could be avoided. If anything, that shows that we put some emotional stock in Azeroth, which shows just how good of a game Blizzard has developed. But I digress. The fact that we can't stop Garrosh from messing everything up, that we can't urge the other leaders to work for peace, rather than war, and that we can't prevent a destructive conflict we can see coming from a mile away shows just how little control we players really have when it comes to the events that happen in Azeroth. We may have a lot of power, which is why we can kill beings like old gods, but we have very little control, which is why we can't affect the story of WoW at all.
Why does this dichotomy exist? It exists because, in the end, WoW is Blizzard's game, and it progresses as Blizzard sees fit. We players think we have power within the world of Azeroth, but that is only because Blizzard gives us that power. They give us the power to defeat monstrous enemies if we have the right gear and skills; if they didn't do that, we couldn't defeat them, plain and simple. Thus, we really don't have any inherent power within the WoW universe; we only have abilities which Blizzard has allowed us to have. We could only change the course of Azerothian politics if Blizzard gave us that power, too, and there are plenty of reasons for them to not do that.
As I said, the fact that we players wish we could affect the way WoW's political scene plays out says a lot about just how good of a game Blizzard has developed. They haven't just developed a game, they've developed a world, a world whose outcome we feel invested in. But the thing is, WoW is really a very stagnant world. The world of WoW only changes when Blizzard decides it's going to change, and though we players feel as if we are somehow instrumental in this change, we really aren't. We can only kill the great monsters we kill because Blizzard has made them killable and made us the ones who are able to kill them. Blizzard, it turns out, is really the one with the power here, so it's no wonder they have the control, as well. In the end, this is Blizzard's world, not ours; we just play in it.
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
Proposal: reverse feats of strength (feats of growth)
I would like to propose, today, an idea for a category of achievements that would exist as the counterpoint to feats of strength. Feats of strength are achievements designed to be retroactively awarded for difficult accomplishments that can no longer be done, that no longer need to be done, or that were/are just plain difficult. This means that someone who started playing after they were added is pretty much out of luck when it comes to getting any of them, unless one is added after they start playing. This always seemed a bit unfair to me, even if feats of strength are completely cosmetic awards that don't even add to your achievement point total (even though those, too, are cosmetic), since WoW is supposed to be a game where the only thing differentiating you from someone who achieves more than you is time, dedication, skill, and perhaps knowing the right people. When you started playing, ideally, shouldn't factor into it.
Then I hit upon an idea: what if Blizzard were to just add the reverse? What if Blizzard added achievements that can only be earned in a certain level ragne, and become unavailable once you go beyond that maximum level? Feats of growth, I call them, for they denote accomplishments made as your character was developing. Feats of growth would be achievements that would represent accomplishments done while they were still significant and difficult, before being of a higher level made them trivial. Feats of growth would be inaccessible to us players who have been playing for longer, in the same way that most feats of strength are inaccessible to players who have started playing recently, and would serve to fill that gap left by the absence of feats of strength in the achievement panels of new players.
Feats of growth could include achievements for completing an old-world, Outland, or low-level Northrend dungeon with only level-appropriate group members. There could also be one for crafting a rare-quality piece of armor while it is still a good piece for you, i.e. when your level isn't more than X levels greater than the piece's minimum required level. While it might not be possible to award this retroactively, there could also be a feat of growth for completing class specific epic questlines at the appropriate level, or just completing any epic questline at the appropriate level. Then again, the fact that those kinds of achievement couldn't be awarded retroactively would be exactly what would make them good candidates for feats of growth, since feats of growth would be the antithesis of feat of strength, which are awarded retroactively.
Some specific examples of feats of growth could be something like completing Deadmines without anyone in your group being above level 22. I would also say that the regular achievements for level-cap heroics and raids should automatically award feats of growth for completing those instances with only level-appropriate group members once the new expansion is released, since that's when those feats of growth would be added, and it's obvious that the player was able to complete the instance with only level-appropriate group members if they got the corresponding "complete this instance" achievement when it was a level-cap instance.
That crafting crafting feat of strength I mentioned could be awarded if someone, say, crafts the Barbaric Bracers before they reach level 32, or whatever level the developers think would be the cut-off point where the bracers are no longer useful and the materials insignificant to gather. Considering how frequently crafters make armor for people once they hit the level cap, there would need to be a point beyond which recipies would not award this feat of growth. I'd say that any crafted gear with a required level of 78 or higher shouldn't qualify. I also think that the cut-off point for gear to award this feat of growth should be two levels higher than the minimum required level, rather than five, when crafting items learned from Outland or Northrend recipes, since levels are gained more slowly in Outland and Northrend. This would also mean that players would be cut off once they hit the level cap, making it a true feat of growth.
The implementation of this kind of achievement would also be a boon for the current Wrath heroic and raid achievements. I don't mean the run-of-the-mill "Kill this boss" achievements. I mean the "Kill this boss with this criterion that makes the fight more difficult" achievements. Achievements like Shocking! or Just Can't Get Enough or Momma Said Knock You Out. These achievements are special because they make the fight more difficult, but once Cataclysm hits and everyone is walking around in amazing gear with five more levels, they won't be nearly so meaningful. That's why the old-world and Burning Crusade dungeons and raids don't have these kinds of achievements. So, if Blizzard is to keep things consistent, they should remove these achievements once Cataclysm comes, but that wouldn't be fair to those players who already earned them. So, they could make them feats of growth, and thus acknowledge the effort those players put in that was significant for the level they were at. Yes, they could also make them feats of strength, but if someone somehow manages to get a group together to do heroic Halls of Lightning when he could be moving on to Cataclysm content, shouldn't the game recognize not only the difficulty in doing that, but also the difficulty in doing so while not allowing Volkhan to shatter more than four Brittle Golums or defeating Loken in two minutes?
The remaining question, then, is, should these achievements be visible to players when players are eligible for them? I don't think so. After all, feats of growth are meant to be the counterpart to feats of strength, and we aren't able to see the feats of strength we are eligible for (or the ones we aren't, but that would be particularly cruel). And while showing feats of strength the player can't get is really just taunting them, showing feats of growth would put a sort of pressure on the players to complete the achievement before it becomes unavailable to them, and players probably wouldn't take kindly to a system like that. Besides, most of us didn't work hard for the feat of strength itself; we worked for the achievements that they represent, and the feat of strength is just an incidental marker. Feats of growth should work similarly; no one should try to complete Deadmines without anyone in the group being over level 22 just for a box of text saying they did so. They should do it because it means they'll get more experience points and everyone in the group will have a shot at some drop that is useful for them.
Now, with sites like Wowhead revealing these achievements to the general public, will there be players who plan the leveling of their alts so that they can get as many feats of growth as possible, regardless of the discouragement of this kind of playstyle provided by the fact that un-obtained achievements would be invisible? Probably, but that's just the way things are. Theoretically, players shouldn't be looking at sites like Wowhead to find feats of strength they can still do, but they are, so the fact that players would do a similar thing for feats of growth shouldn't discourage the idea.
Then I hit upon an idea: what if Blizzard were to just add the reverse? What if Blizzard added achievements that can only be earned in a certain level ragne, and become unavailable once you go beyond that maximum level? Feats of growth, I call them, for they denote accomplishments made as your character was developing. Feats of growth would be achievements that would represent accomplishments done while they were still significant and difficult, before being of a higher level made them trivial. Feats of growth would be inaccessible to us players who have been playing for longer, in the same way that most feats of strength are inaccessible to players who have started playing recently, and would serve to fill that gap left by the absence of feats of strength in the achievement panels of new players.
Feats of growth could include achievements for completing an old-world, Outland, or low-level Northrend dungeon with only level-appropriate group members. There could also be one for crafting a rare-quality piece of armor while it is still a good piece for you, i.e. when your level isn't more than X levels greater than the piece's minimum required level. While it might not be possible to award this retroactively, there could also be a feat of growth for completing class specific epic questlines at the appropriate level, or just completing any epic questline at the appropriate level. Then again, the fact that those kinds of achievement couldn't be awarded retroactively would be exactly what would make them good candidates for feats of growth, since feats of growth would be the antithesis of feat of strength, which are awarded retroactively.
Some specific examples of feats of growth could be something like completing Deadmines without anyone in your group being above level 22. I would also say that the regular achievements for level-cap heroics and raids should automatically award feats of growth for completing those instances with only level-appropriate group members once the new expansion is released, since that's when those feats of growth would be added, and it's obvious that the player was able to complete the instance with only level-appropriate group members if they got the corresponding "complete this instance" achievement when it was a level-cap instance.
That crafting crafting feat of strength I mentioned could be awarded if someone, say, crafts the Barbaric Bracers before they reach level 32, or whatever level the developers think would be the cut-off point where the bracers are no longer useful and the materials insignificant to gather. Considering how frequently crafters make armor for people once they hit the level cap, there would need to be a point beyond which recipies would not award this feat of growth. I'd say that any crafted gear with a required level of 78 or higher shouldn't qualify. I also think that the cut-off point for gear to award this feat of growth should be two levels higher than the minimum required level, rather than five, when crafting items learned from Outland or Northrend recipes, since levels are gained more slowly in Outland and Northrend. This would also mean that players would be cut off once they hit the level cap, making it a true feat of growth.
The implementation of this kind of achievement would also be a boon for the current Wrath heroic and raid achievements. I don't mean the run-of-the-mill "Kill this boss" achievements. I mean the "Kill this boss with this criterion that makes the fight more difficult" achievements. Achievements like Shocking! or Just Can't Get Enough or Momma Said Knock You Out. These achievements are special because they make the fight more difficult, but once Cataclysm hits and everyone is walking around in amazing gear with five more levels, they won't be nearly so meaningful. That's why the old-world and Burning Crusade dungeons and raids don't have these kinds of achievements. So, if Blizzard is to keep things consistent, they should remove these achievements once Cataclysm comes, but that wouldn't be fair to those players who already earned them. So, they could make them feats of growth, and thus acknowledge the effort those players put in that was significant for the level they were at. Yes, they could also make them feats of strength, but if someone somehow manages to get a group together to do heroic Halls of Lightning when he could be moving on to Cataclysm content, shouldn't the game recognize not only the difficulty in doing that, but also the difficulty in doing so while not allowing Volkhan to shatter more than four Brittle Golums or defeating Loken in two minutes?
The remaining question, then, is, should these achievements be visible to players when players are eligible for them? I don't think so. After all, feats of growth are meant to be the counterpart to feats of strength, and we aren't able to see the feats of strength we are eligible for (or the ones we aren't, but that would be particularly cruel). And while showing feats of strength the player can't get is really just taunting them, showing feats of growth would put a sort of pressure on the players to complete the achievement before it becomes unavailable to them, and players probably wouldn't take kindly to a system like that. Besides, most of us didn't work hard for the feat of strength itself; we worked for the achievements that they represent, and the feat of strength is just an incidental marker. Feats of growth should work similarly; no one should try to complete Deadmines without anyone in the group being over level 22 just for a box of text saying they did so. They should do it because it means they'll get more experience points and everyone in the group will have a shot at some drop that is useful for them.
Now, with sites like Wowhead revealing these achievements to the general public, will there be players who plan the leveling of their alts so that they can get as many feats of growth as possible, regardless of the discouragement of this kind of playstyle provided by the fact that un-obtained achievements would be invisible? Probably, but that's just the way things are. Theoretically, players shouldn't be looking at sites like Wowhead to find feats of strength they can still do, but they are, so the fact that players would do a similar thing for feats of growth shouldn't discourage the idea.
Monday, August 23, 2010
The sad inevitability of Deathwing's defeat
Warning: This post contains spoilers about the death of the Lich King. If you have yet to defeat him and you wish to go into the fight unspoiled, please do not read any farther.
As I was admiring Deathwing's Cataclysm model on WoWWiki, I was hit by a sudden realization that changed my admiration to sadness. Here is this great villain, with a detailed model to represent him as he decimates our world. Here is this terrifying creature, destruction incarnate, who can change the face of Azeroth forever simply by returning to it. Steeped in lore, immensely powerful, Deathwing is a very intimidating villain. And by the end of the expansion pack, he'll probably be dead. Simple as that; he's been cast as the main villain, so he's probably going to die.
Something about that just doesn't sit right with me. If Cataclysm will follow the precedents set by the previous three games, then it's only a matter of time before we can kill Deathwing, and this once great antagonist will be just another trophy on the wall for players. But maybe it's just me. Maybe, because I haven't experienced the thrill of killing the final boss of an expansion after many tries and failures, I think too little of the experience, but something about a team of faceless adventurers being able to take down some of the greatest villains in the Warcraft universe just doesn't seem to do justice to these figures.
But I don't think the problem lies in these bosses being killable by players; I think the problem lies in how the killing of these bosses is treated by the game itself. The killing of a lore figure like the Lich King or Illadan or Kil'Jaeden should be a big deal, but something about it just... isn't. Some of the reasons for that are unavoidable in the MMO genre. When we can kill a villain, then hear others claim responsibility for the kill a week later, it takes away from the larger significance of our accomplishment. When we can kill that villain, then go into the raid the next week and see him again, as if we had never laid our blade on him, it makes the whole thing feel meaningless. The killing of major villains on a weekly basis just feels... bland.
There is hope, however, and we can see that hope in the way that the death of the Lich King was handled. Two things were unique about Arthas's death: the fact that his death rewards players with a cutscene, and the fact that his defeat was not a complete win for us "good guys". The cutscene may seem a minor issue, but few events in-game have cutscenes, so the presence of one clearly indicates that something important has happened. More important, however, was the fact that we, the players, were not able to defeat the Lich King; we were only able to defeat Arthas, and Bolvar Fordragon had to take his place as the new King of the Damned. Thus, we really weren't able to defeat the Lich King, though we were able to defeat his avatar, so our victory was believable in its scope.
What does this mean for the future and for Deathwing? Unfortunately, I don't know enough about the lore behind Deathwing to ponder how something similar could be done to make our defeating him reasonable, but I do have one idea. Perhaps, rather than trying to defeat Deathwing, we would merely try to stop him. I don't know what we'd be trying to stop him from doing, but perhaps at some point in Cataclysm's story, it would be revealed that he was doing something that would threaten to shatter Azeroth completely, and rather than trying to kill him, we would only be trying to prevent him from doing whatever it was he was doing. With that under our belt, Deathwing could then be set free upon the world to be a recurring antagonist, continually hindering the efforts the good guys in whatever way the writers find convenient. Then, perhaps after some event has weakened him sufficiently (another foe, perhaps), or he has simply been weakened by time, we could kill him.
Aside from the benefit of this approach making the idea of us players fighting and "defeating" Deathwing more realistic, it would also allow the writers to keep him around as a character and weave him into the lore of expansions yet to come. It would really be a shame to bring him back for a one-shot deal when it would be much more convenient (and believable) for him to stay around longer. And besides, if we keep killing off Warcraft's major villains, who will be left to play the roll of antagonist in Warcraft's continually evolving story?
As I was admiring Deathwing's Cataclysm model on WoWWiki, I was hit by a sudden realization that changed my admiration to sadness. Here is this great villain, with a detailed model to represent him as he decimates our world. Here is this terrifying creature, destruction incarnate, who can change the face of Azeroth forever simply by returning to it. Steeped in lore, immensely powerful, Deathwing is a very intimidating villain. And by the end of the expansion pack, he'll probably be dead. Simple as that; he's been cast as the main villain, so he's probably going to die.
Something about that just doesn't sit right with me. If Cataclysm will follow the precedents set by the previous three games, then it's only a matter of time before we can kill Deathwing, and this once great antagonist will be just another trophy on the wall for players. But maybe it's just me. Maybe, because I haven't experienced the thrill of killing the final boss of an expansion after many tries and failures, I think too little of the experience, but something about a team of faceless adventurers being able to take down some of the greatest villains in the Warcraft universe just doesn't seem to do justice to these figures.
But I don't think the problem lies in these bosses being killable by players; I think the problem lies in how the killing of these bosses is treated by the game itself. The killing of a lore figure like the Lich King or Illadan or Kil'Jaeden should be a big deal, but something about it just... isn't. Some of the reasons for that are unavoidable in the MMO genre. When we can kill a villain, then hear others claim responsibility for the kill a week later, it takes away from the larger significance of our accomplishment. When we can kill that villain, then go into the raid the next week and see him again, as if we had never laid our blade on him, it makes the whole thing feel meaningless. The killing of major villains on a weekly basis just feels... bland.
There is hope, however, and we can see that hope in the way that the death of the Lich King was handled. Two things were unique about Arthas's death: the fact that his death rewards players with a cutscene, and the fact that his defeat was not a complete win for us "good guys". The cutscene may seem a minor issue, but few events in-game have cutscenes, so the presence of one clearly indicates that something important has happened. More important, however, was the fact that we, the players, were not able to defeat the Lich King; we were only able to defeat Arthas, and Bolvar Fordragon had to take his place as the new King of the Damned. Thus, we really weren't able to defeat the Lich King, though we were able to defeat his avatar, so our victory was believable in its scope.
What does this mean for the future and for Deathwing? Unfortunately, I don't know enough about the lore behind Deathwing to ponder how something similar could be done to make our defeating him reasonable, but I do have one idea. Perhaps, rather than trying to defeat Deathwing, we would merely try to stop him. I don't know what we'd be trying to stop him from doing, but perhaps at some point in Cataclysm's story, it would be revealed that he was doing something that would threaten to shatter Azeroth completely, and rather than trying to kill him, we would only be trying to prevent him from doing whatever it was he was doing. With that under our belt, Deathwing could then be set free upon the world to be a recurring antagonist, continually hindering the efforts the good guys in whatever way the writers find convenient. Then, perhaps after some event has weakened him sufficiently (another foe, perhaps), or he has simply been weakened by time, we could kill him.
Aside from the benefit of this approach making the idea of us players fighting and "defeating" Deathwing more realistic, it would also allow the writers to keep him around as a character and weave him into the lore of expansions yet to come. It would really be a shame to bring him back for a one-shot deal when it would be much more convenient (and believable) for him to stay around longer. And besides, if we keep killing off Warcraft's major villains, who will be left to play the roll of antagonist in Warcraft's continually evolving story?
Friday, August 20, 2010
A slump in both worlds
It seems the blogosphere is going through a phase where WoW isn't as central to public conscious as it once was. What I mean by this is that WoW blogs--at least, the ones written by people without beta access--seem to increasingly be less about WoW itself and more about... well, other issues. Between the considerations of the prevalence of killing in games and the consideration of gender stereotypes in the geek world, the game that gave birth to all of our blogs seems to be taking a back seat to other points of interest. And truth be told, this doesn't surprise me.
Take a look at the state of WoW itself right now. We are in the intervening months between two expansion packs, and the content of the current expansion pack is starting to feel stale after being experienced so many times. This is, of course, inevitable, so what are we players to do? Well, our choices are three-fold: stop playing until the next expansion comes out; keep doing the same content, in spite of our boredom; or try something new. Considering that our blogs are about WoW, our blogging activities are inextricable from our in-game activities. As such, our choices of what we can blog about are similar to our choices of what to do in-game: we can not post at all, keep posting about the same things we've been posting about, or post about new things we haven't discussed before.
Not posting at all is obviously not a very attractive option. After all, it's our posts that keep our readers coming back to our sites; backlogs and archives can only entertain someone until they reach the end. Even then, our blogging and writing styles evolves over time as we become more practiced, so if someone were to read back far enough into our archives, the posts they discover would probably read like they were written by a different author, a less experienced and skilled one. Some bloggers may have a lengthy enough archive to keep their readers entertained until Cataclysm comes and they start blogging again, but if your posts are enjoyable enough that people would want to read through your archives*, they probably already have. If people enjoy your posts, they'll probably want to read your past posts without you needing to prod them to do so.
What about continuing to post about the same things? Well, as long as there are people still doing the same content, this is a viable option, especially because there will likely be players who get to the game late and start that content after everyone else is done with it. The trouble comes from the fact that many players probably won't take this option for very long, so at some point, people will stop being interested in reading about content they have stopped playing. There's also the issue that you can only write so much on any given topic, and eventually, you're going to start repeating yourself. As you write more on a single topic, you need to either start scraping the bottom of the bucket for things to write about or get really creative when coming up with topics to write about. In other words, this option isn't sustainable.
What about our third option, writing about something new? This is an attractive option for many reasons, aside from the fact that the other two have been proven to not be very pracitcable. When we start writing about something we haven't written about before, we tend to write our posts to be very broad in scope, and thus more accessible to our readers than they would be if we were to write about more specific topics. This is especially important when writing about something that may not relate to WoW directly, like gender equality or video game ethics, since we build our readerships by writing about WoW. Thus, the only thing we can be absolutely sure our readers will be familiar with is WoW, and perhaps the general online WoW community. So in order to be sure that a post about a non-WoW topic doesn't go over our readers' heads, we need to keep it general, for people are more likely to find something that they can relate to in a general post.
Of course, we don't need to abandon WoW as a topic to write about something new, but the same issues of audience commonalities and exceptions apply if we write about a different topic within WoW. Most blogs have some sort of central theme in terms of what they write about; in my blog, that theme is anything WoW from a philosophical perspective. Other blogs may be based around a single class, a single activity within the game, etc. and they build readerships based on that topic by consistently writing about it. If a blogger spends his/her whole career writing about mages, it would be a bit of a shock for readers to see him/her writing about warriors all of the sudden, and the readership that blog has built up would probably be less interested in reading about warriors than reading about mages. However, make that post general enough, and people will usually be able to find something to relate to within it.
So it seems that writing about completely new topics isn't that big of a stretch in these few months between Wrath of the Lich King and Cataclysm. And besides, if we take the other alternative, continuing to write about the same topics, we'll eventually need to get so creative in deciding what we write about those topics that we'll likely end up just writing about new things anyways, if we want to avoid repeating ourselves.
*There are some authors whose blogs I enjoy reading but whose posts I don't enjoy enough to make me want to read their blog's archive. Then there are blogs like You Are Not So Smart, whose posts are so enjoyable and timeless that I enthusiastically did an archive binge upon discovering them.
Take a look at the state of WoW itself right now. We are in the intervening months between two expansion packs, and the content of the current expansion pack is starting to feel stale after being experienced so many times. This is, of course, inevitable, so what are we players to do? Well, our choices are three-fold: stop playing until the next expansion comes out; keep doing the same content, in spite of our boredom; or try something new. Considering that our blogs are about WoW, our blogging activities are inextricable from our in-game activities. As such, our choices of what we can blog about are similar to our choices of what to do in-game: we can not post at all, keep posting about the same things we've been posting about, or post about new things we haven't discussed before.
Not posting at all is obviously not a very attractive option. After all, it's our posts that keep our readers coming back to our sites; backlogs and archives can only entertain someone until they reach the end. Even then, our blogging and writing styles evolves over time as we become more practiced, so if someone were to read back far enough into our archives, the posts they discover would probably read like they were written by a different author, a less experienced and skilled one. Some bloggers may have a lengthy enough archive to keep their readers entertained until Cataclysm comes and they start blogging again, but if your posts are enjoyable enough that people would want to read through your archives*, they probably already have. If people enjoy your posts, they'll probably want to read your past posts without you needing to prod them to do so.
What about continuing to post about the same things? Well, as long as there are people still doing the same content, this is a viable option, especially because there will likely be players who get to the game late and start that content after everyone else is done with it. The trouble comes from the fact that many players probably won't take this option for very long, so at some point, people will stop being interested in reading about content they have stopped playing. There's also the issue that you can only write so much on any given topic, and eventually, you're going to start repeating yourself. As you write more on a single topic, you need to either start scraping the bottom of the bucket for things to write about or get really creative when coming up with topics to write about. In other words, this option isn't sustainable.
What about our third option, writing about something new? This is an attractive option for many reasons, aside from the fact that the other two have been proven to not be very pracitcable. When we start writing about something we haven't written about before, we tend to write our posts to be very broad in scope, and thus more accessible to our readers than they would be if we were to write about more specific topics. This is especially important when writing about something that may not relate to WoW directly, like gender equality or video game ethics, since we build our readerships by writing about WoW. Thus, the only thing we can be absolutely sure our readers will be familiar with is WoW, and perhaps the general online WoW community. So in order to be sure that a post about a non-WoW topic doesn't go over our readers' heads, we need to keep it general, for people are more likely to find something that they can relate to in a general post.
Of course, we don't need to abandon WoW as a topic to write about something new, but the same issues of audience commonalities and exceptions apply if we write about a different topic within WoW. Most blogs have some sort of central theme in terms of what they write about; in my blog, that theme is anything WoW from a philosophical perspective. Other blogs may be based around a single class, a single activity within the game, etc. and they build readerships based on that topic by consistently writing about it. If a blogger spends his/her whole career writing about mages, it would be a bit of a shock for readers to see him/her writing about warriors all of the sudden, and the readership that blog has built up would probably be less interested in reading about warriors than reading about mages. However, make that post general enough, and people will usually be able to find something to relate to within it.
So it seems that writing about completely new topics isn't that big of a stretch in these few months between Wrath of the Lich King and Cataclysm. And besides, if we take the other alternative, continuing to write about the same topics, we'll eventually need to get so creative in deciding what we write about those topics that we'll likely end up just writing about new things anyways, if we want to avoid repeating ourselves.
*There are some authors whose blogs I enjoy reading but whose posts I don't enjoy enough to make me want to read their blog's archive. Then there are blogs like You Are Not So Smart, whose posts are so enjoyable and timeless that I enthusiastically did an archive binge upon discovering them.
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
Oh, to be a newbie again
Go ahead and play that video up there; there are no spoken words in the song it links to, so it shouldn't distract you as you read this post. Of course, for the full effect, it's best to just play it and close your eyes. Do you recognize that music? You should if you started playing before Burning Crusade was released. It's the music that played on the original log-in screen of World of Warcraft, when WoW was just WoW. I listed to that music recently, and I got the usual nostalgic jitters that I get when I listen to or watch something that I loved that I haven't seen or heard in a while. But something more than jitters overcame me that day. I was flooded with something similar to memories, but rather than a single flashback to a single event, I instead felt a certain sense. It was that sense of wonder I felt when I first started playing WoW.
Maybe you remember it, too: the time when you first started playing WoW, and everything was a new experience. It's hard for me to describe it, because, like I said, it wasn't a single memory that overcame me that day, but a sensation. The sensation I felt when all of the quests I was doing, all of the dungeons I was running, were all new. When I could walk into the next zone and literally had no idea what would be there to great me, aside form a scant few descriptions I had seen in general chat. When I took skinning and leatherworking because it was what I thought would be the best choice, not what others had told me would be the most beneficial in the leveling process. When I chose to level as Feral Combat because I thought it would be the most fun, in spite of all of the anti-feral sentiment that existed at the time (this was back when only warriors could tank).
Of course, I'm not one to wear rose-tinted glasses, and there are things that I regret about that time. I regret limiting myself to one quest at a time (my thinking at the time being that I would be better able to focus on that quest if I only had one). I regret selling my ore and leather to vendors (I thought that was how you made money with those professions; I wasn't aware of the existence of the auction house at the time). I regret staying in one zone without moving around when I ran out of quests, choosing instead to grind enemies until I was of a high enough level to do the quests I had. But these were all understandable newbie mistakes, and who doesn't have a few of those in their memory banks? We all did stupid things when we started playing the game, and only experience can teach us the error of our ways. Therein, however, lies the problem.
The loss of newbie astonishment is quite similar to the fabled loss of childhood innocence, an idea about which plenty of media has been made. In the case of the loss of childhood innocence, we (supposedly) gain knowledge about the world through our experience, but trade off the optimism of our youthful ignorance of all that is bad in the world. Of course, playing WoW isn't as bleak of a prospect as simply living in the real world, but in WoW, we still trade off our amazement at everything we experience in exchange for the knowledge that comes from experiencing that content. It's a trade off we all have to make eventually, in every game we play, if we enjoy it enough to play it again, and I certainly enjoyed leveling my druid enough to level more characters through the game again.
But it will never be the same. I now take only gathering professions on my alts, rather than a crafting profession that might add some depth to the experience, not only because I now know that to be the most efficient option (so I don't need to support my alt with donations from my main), but also because my experience has shown me that I rarely stick with an alt long enough to make it worth it to put that amount of dedication into leveling his profession. I am similarly jaded about raiding and PvP. When I first went into a battleground, the novelty was what captivated me, for fighting players--as opposed to computer controlled enemies--was completely new to me. After some time, though, once the novelty started to wear off, I realized I just wasn't cut out for PvP. I wasn't competitive enough, and hated dying as frequently as I did when I first started out, so needing to inflict that experience on other players in order to win left a bad taste in my mouth. My experiences with raiding have been similar. Though my first few raids were a fun experience, after some time, the novelty soon gave way to frustration with the constant wipes inherent in progression raiding, the monotony inherent in non-progression raiding, and the pressure to be at the top of my game and to not mess up inherent in both.
The PvP and raiding examples I mentioned may seem like me simply exchanging my former optimism for pessimism and focus on the negative, as seems to happen with the loss of childhood innocence, but it is really a case of the novelty of those experiences preventing me from noticing the things I didn't like about them. Once that novelty wore off, it was clear that raiding and PvP weren't for me. Losing the novelty of leveling, on the other hand, was different experience for me, because after the novelty wore off, I was still able to find things to enjoy about the leveling process.
So what was the difference between leveling before the novelty wore off and leveling after? It seems to me that the commonality between all of the contrasts between my nostalgia for the first time I leveled through Azeroth and my current experiences is concern. I take two gathering professions instead of a gathering profession and a crafting profession because I'm concerned about having enough money to make my alt self-sufficient. I take multiple quests at once and do them all in one go because I'm concerned about leveling efficiently. I don't grind anymore because I know it's simply not as efficient as questing (and yes, I do miss grinding). The things I used to do and enjoy are now things I shy away from because experience has taught me not to do them.
Would I still enjoy them if I were to ignore my experience and do something considered newbish? Probably. Would taking one quest at a time, grinding every once in a while, or taking a crafting profession on my alt diminish my enjoyment of the game? Theoretically, it shouldn't. After all, I used to enjoy the game in spite of doing those things. And yet, when I consider doing them now, I am hesitant because my experience leads me to believe that I will enjoy the game more by avoiding grinding or taking multiple quests at a time or taking two gathering professions.
Herein lies the greatest irony of the issue of newbish amazement: as we gain experience with the game, we think we become better at figuring out what will make the game more fun for us, but even if we do, we stop considering things we once found fun to be enjoyable. As much as I want to confidently say that doing multiple quests at once is always more fun than doing one at a time, that leveling an alt with two gathering professions is always more fun than doing so with a gathering and a crafting profession, and that questing is always more fun than grinding, I can't. I can't, because when I think back to how much fun I used to have while doing things the "inferior" way, I realize that the game was no less fun then than it is now; in fact, it may have been more fun. Of course, I may just be looking back with rose-tinted glasses and reminiscing about enjoying those ways of playing simply because I wasn't aware that better ways exist. Maybe the way I play the game now really is the "best" way, and I'm just getting bored with it because it's the only way I play, so there isn't much variety. It's really not possible to know.
I can't really find a satisfactory way to end this post, so let me just leave you with a song by Evanescence about the loss of childhood innocence; I think it fits the theme of this post well.
Monday, August 16, 2010
For the Alliance! or: Why I'm proud to play the pretty faction
Allow me a bit of catharsis in today's post. The comments on Thursday's WoW.com breakfast topic about the possibility of cooperation between the two factions brought up many memories of being ridiculed by my "friends" for being an Alliance player, and even if the animosity I feel towards those who seem to have animosity towards me is unreasonable, it's time I finally get those thoughts all down on paper... er, cyberpaper, so I can finally let the topic go.
I play Alliance. Why do I play Alliance? Because Druids can only be two races: Night Elves, and Tauren. I use Shadowmeld more than I would use War Stomp. As a tank who has always liked taking less damage more than being able to take more damage before dying, I like Quickness more than I like Endurance. And while Cultivation would only prove beneficial to me while I was still leveling up herbalism, I'm never going to stop dying, so Wisp Spirit will always be useful. Thus I rolled a Night Elf, and now that all of my wealth is on the Alliance side, all of my alts are Alliance, too.
That's all there is too it: I like the Alliance racials more (Heroic Presence, Gift of the Naruu, Expansive Mind, Diplomacy, and Every Man for Himself speak for themselves), and I find the races and the architecture more pleasant to look at. And for some reason, making this choice has opened me to supposedly fully-excusable ridicule from those who choose to play as Horde characters. All because of some self-serving misconception Horde players have about Alliance players. What misconception, you might ask? The idea that the Alliance is full of little kids, trolls, and noobs, while the Horde is for the real players. I give no credit to this idea, for while I can't speak from personal experience, all of the people I have talked to who play both sides say that the two factions really aren't that different. Both have their jerks, both have their serious players, and at the end of the day, noobs will be noobs, whether they fly the Horde's banner or the Alliance's. It's also notable that all of the reports on wowjackass.com for my realm are about Horde players, which doesn't exactly make me eager to faction change for the community.
Besides this false idea of the relative qualities of the communities, there's also the idea that, because the Alliance are the "good guys" and Horde are the underdogs, somehow, everyone who plays Alliance does so because they believe they are the good guys, and that makes them acceptable targets. Considering the events that have transpired during Wrath of the Lich King and the events that are set to transpire during Cataclysm, the Horde are quickly losing their underdog label and gaining the "just plain evil" label, making it much harder to be sympathetic towards them as a faction. But for the longest time, the two factions were approximately equal in terms of the potential for player sympathy for them. The Alliance was hardly a spotless group, and the Horde really were just underdogs.
But while those new to the game may have easily mistaken the Alliance for good guys and the Horde for bad guys, there is one undeniable fact that favors the Horde; when the game was first released, the Horde races was much more badass than the Alliance races. So while it's easy to make fun of people who picked the Alliance because they thought they were the good guys, it's just as easy to make fun of people who picked the Horde because the Horde races were more badass, and I would imagine there were many players who did that. Both reasons are equally inane as reasons to dislike the other faction, so the idea that the Alliance are the good guys, and thus Alliance players are acceptable targets, is hardly a convincing point.
However, what really irks me about the Horde vs. Alliance mentality is something that WoW.com commenter Ophelia captured quite when when he/she wrote in a comment on that breakfast topic I mentioned before:
Ouch. The replies to this post make me want to bury my head in the sand for playing Horde. Seriously, guys? :|
"I think we should get along. I have no dislike for you :3"
"WE R TEH WHOOREDD~~!!111ONE ALLIANCE PANZZYYY~~!!"
Oi [sic] vey.
Oy vey, indeed. Somehow, the unique combination of elements within World of Warcraft has created an Alliance community that has little animosity for the Horde community and a Horde community that looks down on the Alliance community with the utmost condescension and ridicule. (If you are a Horde player who has no such thoughts about Alliance players, please don't comment just to say that you don't hate the Alliance; I know that many Horde players, possibly most, don't hold this kind of animosity. Unfortunately, the most vocal members of your community do, as does every single Horde player I have ever met in real life.) And somehow, in this community where the Horde freely disses the Alliance while the Alliance does not provoke the Horde, the Horde still views themselves as the underdogs, the ones who made the less popular choice, which is why they feel justified in having this attitude.
With all due respect, Horde players, give me a break. When was the last time an Alliance player ever showed the kind of disrespect or flat out aggression towards a Horde player that Horde players show to us on a regular basis? I have never seen a single bit of animosity towards players who choose to play as the Horde, and the only time I ever heard Alliance players mention the Horde is to say either, "They keep beating us at [X battleground]," or "I've been thinking of transferring to the Horde." We Alliance players view the Horde as just another group of players, albeit one we cannot communicate with in-game, while the Horde seems to dislike us and somehow perceive themselves as the downtrodden ones. Maybe that's why this issue is so irksome for me; the Alliance-hating Horde players seem to think that we somehow deserve their hatred, and yet we have done nothing to deserve it.
I suppose it shouldn't surprise me that the Horde has much more pride in itself than the Alliance; the same conditions that would lead to a dislike of the Alliance would natural lead to the creation of faction pride on the part of the Horde, so it's not a jump to say that the lack of animosity towards the Horde on the part of the Alliance and the lack of faction pride on the part of the Alliance would go hand in hand. However, in the face of all of the negative reactions I get when I proclaim that I play the Alliance, I am beginning to develop a bit of Alliance pride. Now, it's not the fact that I chose to play Alliance that I am proud of. My Alliance pride is the same kind of pride that a woman develops when she is told she is of the inferior gender, or an African American develops when he/she is told he/she is of an inferior race, or a gay man or lesbian develops when he/she is told that he/she has an inferior sexuality. The pride I am developing is not pride in the fact that I chose to play as an Alliance race; it is pride in the fact that, though I am told constantly that my choice was the inferior one, I am at peace with my choice. I am not proud to be an Alliance player; I am proud to be at peace with my choice in spite of the overwhelming pressure to regret it.
I play Alliance. Why do I play Alliance? Because Druids can only be two races: Night Elves, and Tauren. I use Shadowmeld more than I would use War Stomp. As a tank who has always liked taking less damage more than being able to take more damage before dying, I like Quickness more than I like Endurance. And while Cultivation would only prove beneficial to me while I was still leveling up herbalism, I'm never going to stop dying, so Wisp Spirit will always be useful. Thus I rolled a Night Elf, and now that all of my wealth is on the Alliance side, all of my alts are Alliance, too.
That's all there is too it: I like the Alliance racials more (Heroic Presence, Gift of the Naruu, Expansive Mind, Diplomacy, and Every Man for Himself speak for themselves), and I find the races and the architecture more pleasant to look at. And for some reason, making this choice has opened me to supposedly fully-excusable ridicule from those who choose to play as Horde characters. All because of some self-serving misconception Horde players have about Alliance players. What misconception, you might ask? The idea that the Alliance is full of little kids, trolls, and noobs, while the Horde is for the real players. I give no credit to this idea, for while I can't speak from personal experience, all of the people I have talked to who play both sides say that the two factions really aren't that different. Both have their jerks, both have their serious players, and at the end of the day, noobs will be noobs, whether they fly the Horde's banner or the Alliance's. It's also notable that all of the reports on wowjackass.com for my realm are about Horde players, which doesn't exactly make me eager to faction change for the community.
Besides this false idea of the relative qualities of the communities, there's also the idea that, because the Alliance are the "good guys" and Horde are the underdogs, somehow, everyone who plays Alliance does so because they believe they are the good guys, and that makes them acceptable targets. Considering the events that have transpired during Wrath of the Lich King and the events that are set to transpire during Cataclysm, the Horde are quickly losing their underdog label and gaining the "just plain evil" label, making it much harder to be sympathetic towards them as a faction. But for the longest time, the two factions were approximately equal in terms of the potential for player sympathy for them. The Alliance was hardly a spotless group, and the Horde really were just underdogs.
But while those new to the game may have easily mistaken the Alliance for good guys and the Horde for bad guys, there is one undeniable fact that favors the Horde; when the game was first released, the Horde races was much more badass than the Alliance races. So while it's easy to make fun of people who picked the Alliance because they thought they were the good guys, it's just as easy to make fun of people who picked the Horde because the Horde races were more badass, and I would imagine there were many players who did that. Both reasons are equally inane as reasons to dislike the other faction, so the idea that the Alliance are the good guys, and thus Alliance players are acceptable targets, is hardly a convincing point.
However, what really irks me about the Horde vs. Alliance mentality is something that WoW.com commenter Ophelia captured quite when when he/she wrote in a comment on that breakfast topic I mentioned before:
Ouch. The replies to this post make me want to bury my head in the sand for playing Horde. Seriously, guys? :|
"I think we should get along. I have no dislike for you :3"
"WE R TEH WHOOREDD~~!!111ONE ALLIANCE PANZZYYY~~!!"
Oi [sic] vey.
Oy vey, indeed. Somehow, the unique combination of elements within World of Warcraft has created an Alliance community that has little animosity for the Horde community and a Horde community that looks down on the Alliance community with the utmost condescension and ridicule. (If you are a Horde player who has no such thoughts about Alliance players, please don't comment just to say that you don't hate the Alliance; I know that many Horde players, possibly most, don't hold this kind of animosity. Unfortunately, the most vocal members of your community do, as does every single Horde player I have ever met in real life.) And somehow, in this community where the Horde freely disses the Alliance while the Alliance does not provoke the Horde, the Horde still views themselves as the underdogs, the ones who made the less popular choice, which is why they feel justified in having this attitude.
With all due respect, Horde players, give me a break. When was the last time an Alliance player ever showed the kind of disrespect or flat out aggression towards a Horde player that Horde players show to us on a regular basis? I have never seen a single bit of animosity towards players who choose to play as the Horde, and the only time I ever heard Alliance players mention the Horde is to say either, "They keep beating us at [X battleground]," or "I've been thinking of transferring to the Horde." We Alliance players view the Horde as just another group of players, albeit one we cannot communicate with in-game, while the Horde seems to dislike us and somehow perceive themselves as the downtrodden ones. Maybe that's why this issue is so irksome for me; the Alliance-hating Horde players seem to think that we somehow deserve their hatred, and yet we have done nothing to deserve it.
I suppose it shouldn't surprise me that the Horde has much more pride in itself than the Alliance; the same conditions that would lead to a dislike of the Alliance would natural lead to the creation of faction pride on the part of the Horde, so it's not a jump to say that the lack of animosity towards the Horde on the part of the Alliance and the lack of faction pride on the part of the Alliance would go hand in hand. However, in the face of all of the negative reactions I get when I proclaim that I play the Alliance, I am beginning to develop a bit of Alliance pride. Now, it's not the fact that I chose to play Alliance that I am proud of. My Alliance pride is the same kind of pride that a woman develops when she is told she is of the inferior gender, or an African American develops when he/she is told he/she is of an inferior race, or a gay man or lesbian develops when he/she is told that he/she has an inferior sexuality. The pride I am developing is not pride in the fact that I chose to play as an Alliance race; it is pride in the fact that, though I am told constantly that my choice was the inferior one, I am at peace with my choice. I am not proud to be an Alliance player; I am proud to be at peace with my choice in spite of the overwhelming pressure to regret it.
Friday, August 13, 2010
Expand your horrizons to conquer the slump
Wrath of the Lich King is in its twilight hours, and many players are feeling bored with the game as a result. There are no new raids to run if one has already completed or given up on Icecrown Citadel, no new heroics or factions to grind reputation with, no new battlegrounds to fight in, etc. There's a real feeling of repetition that seems to permeate our play. At this point, it seems as if there is nothing for us to do aside from all of the things we have already done many times over.
There are, I'm sure, many who would suggest we break up the boredom by preparing for Cataclysm, but the things we do to prepare for Cataclysm are really the same activities we have done many times over dressed up with different goals. Making money for the new money sink? How do you propose to do that? Whatever method you choose, being it grinding, dailies, or playing the auction house, players have been doing it to pay for their repair bills since the expansion debuted. The last time new content was added that enabled players to make money in new ways was patch 3.2, which brought us the Argent Tournament. There's also the option to try to gear up to make leveling through Cataclysm faster, but that must also be done through the same avenues we have already used: heroics, raids, PvP perhaps, the occasional crafted piece, etc. Point is, anything we do in the name of preparing for Cataclysm will likely not relieve the doldrums we feel now.
So how to busy ourselves while we wait for the new content, while there's nothing else to do? Well, therein lies the problem: there is plenty to do; most players suffering from inter-expansion boredom have just dismissed the the things they could be doing to pass the time. And because those players have dismissed these activities, the idea of doing them doesn't even pop into their heads when they log in and ask, "What should I do today?" They are blind to any in-game reminder that these activities exist because those activities aren't within their realm of possibility. They skim past the relevant achievements, forget about players they see bearing the rewards of these activities, all because they once decided, "Nah, not worth it."
Let me ask you something: have you completed WoW? Because unless you are that Taiwanese man who earned every achievement, I doubt that is the case. There's plenty to do in this game, and you know that content is there. Some of it is obvious to you: leveling alts, fighting in battlegrounds, fighting in arenas, raiding, the kinds of things that likely take up most of your time now. But what about the other things you don't think about? What about farming old-world bosses for their rare-drop mounts? What about getting exalted with old-world factions? What about farming for rare pets? What about doing old-world quests? What about just going for achievements? These are all viable options of things to do to pass the time while we wait for Cataclysm to come out, things most people suffering from burnout have probably never gone for and can thus do to pass the time, yet I imagine many players dismiss these options. In other words, there are plenty of things out there for players to do while waiting for Catalcysm, and yet they aren't out doing them.
This probably seems natural to you. After all, who would bother with the activities I mentioned above when raiding can give better gear, dailies can give better money, and the rewards of all of the things I mentioned above are all cosmetic? That's the kind of thinking that keeps people from realizing all of the content that is available to them. But allow me to propose a potentially radical idea: raiding for high end gear and grinding for money through the dailies that reward the most of it is no more productive than any of the activities I listed above, and thus there is no reason for you be dismissive of the aforementioned activities as things to do while playing WoW.
Let me ask you something about that gear you get from raiding: what is it for? The only practical purpose gear serves is to allow you to beat more challenging content, so gear only allows you to move on to beat harder raiders, which allows you to get better gear, allowing you to beat harder raids, etc. I'm not saying that trying to get good gear is a waste of time; what I am saying is that getting better gear through raiding doesn't provide any permanent practical reward at all. The benefit provided by that gear is fleeting, temporary, and only as good as it compares to the current best gear. So why go for the gear? Because raiding is fun (at least, it's supposed to be). The gear we get through raiding is simply a tangible motivating factor to get you to raid if the fun of doing it isn't enough to motivate you to start. Once you do start, that fun should be enough to keep you raiding, since, as I mentioned, gear only provides a benefit for so long. In short, the only reason to try to get gear from raids is to have fun in the process of acquiring it.
And as for money? With each expansion, money has become progressively easier to earn; that's why the gold sinks keep getting more expensive. That has the added benefit of each expansion putting wealthy established players and poorer new players on more equal footing than they would be otherwise. But where exactly do we get all of this money? From the things we would do otherwise: daily quests that award reputation with a certain faction, one-time quests that we do to see the evolving story of WoW, the selling of materials that we enjoy collecting, the selling of items we enjoy grinding, etc. All of the in-game activities that reward money are things that are supposed to be enjoyable in their own right; the money is just a nice byproduct. Now, would there be fewer people putting up ore, herbs, and fish for others to use in their crafting if doing so didn't pay money? Maybe. But the point is that gold is just the reward for accomplishing our in-game goals and activities, not a goal itself. Those money sinks may be nice to have (I can tell you from personal experience that epic flying is a big time saver, and that the Traveler's Tundra Mammoth is quite convenient), but the fun is supposed to be had in earning the gold to buy them, moreso than in having them. It will be more fun to earn them after Cataclysm (more money earned for your effort; newer, more enjoyable content to earn that money from; etc.) than to collect that money before.
The point is, while there are activities in WoW that we view as "productive", they are no more productive than activities we dismiss for their perceived lack of productivity. Their only real purpose is to allow us to have fun, and if that is the only benefit we get out of them, then why limit what we do between now and the Cataclysm to things we consider "productive" and thus rule out other activities that may be fun? The fruits of our labor will only last so long, so the enjoyment of that labor is the only goal worth pursuing. If you are suffering from the pre-expansion slump, I invite you to try some part of the game you had previously dismissed as unproductive or pointless. Go for an achievement. Grind out a mount or a pet. Do some old-world quests. Get exalted with that faction you never got exalted with. Or try leveling an alt or hitting up some battlegrounds if you had previously dismissed those activities without trying them. As long as what you do is fun, then whatever you do in-game is time well spent.
There are, I'm sure, many who would suggest we break up the boredom by preparing for Cataclysm, but the things we do to prepare for Cataclysm are really the same activities we have done many times over dressed up with different goals. Making money for the new money sink? How do you propose to do that? Whatever method you choose, being it grinding, dailies, or playing the auction house, players have been doing it to pay for their repair bills since the expansion debuted. The last time new content was added that enabled players to make money in new ways was patch 3.2, which brought us the Argent Tournament. There's also the option to try to gear up to make leveling through Cataclysm faster, but that must also be done through the same avenues we have already used: heroics, raids, PvP perhaps, the occasional crafted piece, etc. Point is, anything we do in the name of preparing for Cataclysm will likely not relieve the doldrums we feel now.
So how to busy ourselves while we wait for the new content, while there's nothing else to do? Well, therein lies the problem: there is plenty to do; most players suffering from inter-expansion boredom have just dismissed the the things they could be doing to pass the time. And because those players have dismissed these activities, the idea of doing them doesn't even pop into their heads when they log in and ask, "What should I do today?" They are blind to any in-game reminder that these activities exist because those activities aren't within their realm of possibility. They skim past the relevant achievements, forget about players they see bearing the rewards of these activities, all because they once decided, "Nah, not worth it."
Let me ask you something: have you completed WoW? Because unless you are that Taiwanese man who earned every achievement, I doubt that is the case. There's plenty to do in this game, and you know that content is there. Some of it is obvious to you: leveling alts, fighting in battlegrounds, fighting in arenas, raiding, the kinds of things that likely take up most of your time now. But what about the other things you don't think about? What about farming old-world bosses for their rare-drop mounts? What about getting exalted with old-world factions? What about farming for rare pets? What about doing old-world quests? What about just going for achievements? These are all viable options of things to do to pass the time while we wait for Cataclysm to come out, things most people suffering from burnout have probably never gone for and can thus do to pass the time, yet I imagine many players dismiss these options. In other words, there are plenty of things out there for players to do while waiting for Catalcysm, and yet they aren't out doing them.
This probably seems natural to you. After all, who would bother with the activities I mentioned above when raiding can give better gear, dailies can give better money, and the rewards of all of the things I mentioned above are all cosmetic? That's the kind of thinking that keeps people from realizing all of the content that is available to them. But allow me to propose a potentially radical idea: raiding for high end gear and grinding for money through the dailies that reward the most of it is no more productive than any of the activities I listed above, and thus there is no reason for you be dismissive of the aforementioned activities as things to do while playing WoW.
Let me ask you something about that gear you get from raiding: what is it for? The only practical purpose gear serves is to allow you to beat more challenging content, so gear only allows you to move on to beat harder raiders, which allows you to get better gear, allowing you to beat harder raids, etc. I'm not saying that trying to get good gear is a waste of time; what I am saying is that getting better gear through raiding doesn't provide any permanent practical reward at all. The benefit provided by that gear is fleeting, temporary, and only as good as it compares to the current best gear. So why go for the gear? Because raiding is fun (at least, it's supposed to be). The gear we get through raiding is simply a tangible motivating factor to get you to raid if the fun of doing it isn't enough to motivate you to start. Once you do start, that fun should be enough to keep you raiding, since, as I mentioned, gear only provides a benefit for so long. In short, the only reason to try to get gear from raids is to have fun in the process of acquiring it.
And as for money? With each expansion, money has become progressively easier to earn; that's why the gold sinks keep getting more expensive. That has the added benefit of each expansion putting wealthy established players and poorer new players on more equal footing than they would be otherwise. But where exactly do we get all of this money? From the things we would do otherwise: daily quests that award reputation with a certain faction, one-time quests that we do to see the evolving story of WoW, the selling of materials that we enjoy collecting, the selling of items we enjoy grinding, etc. All of the in-game activities that reward money are things that are supposed to be enjoyable in their own right; the money is just a nice byproduct. Now, would there be fewer people putting up ore, herbs, and fish for others to use in their crafting if doing so didn't pay money? Maybe. But the point is that gold is just the reward for accomplishing our in-game goals and activities, not a goal itself. Those money sinks may be nice to have (I can tell you from personal experience that epic flying is a big time saver, and that the Traveler's Tundra Mammoth is quite convenient), but the fun is supposed to be had in earning the gold to buy them, moreso than in having them. It will be more fun to earn them after Cataclysm (more money earned for your effort; newer, more enjoyable content to earn that money from; etc.) than to collect that money before.
The point is, while there are activities in WoW that we view as "productive", they are no more productive than activities we dismiss for their perceived lack of productivity. Their only real purpose is to allow us to have fun, and if that is the only benefit we get out of them, then why limit what we do between now and the Cataclysm to things we consider "productive" and thus rule out other activities that may be fun? The fruits of our labor will only last so long, so the enjoyment of that labor is the only goal worth pursuing. If you are suffering from the pre-expansion slump, I invite you to try some part of the game you had previously dismissed as unproductive or pointless. Go for an achievement. Grind out a mount or a pet. Do some old-world quests. Get exalted with that faction you never got exalted with. Or try leveling an alt or hitting up some battlegrounds if you had previously dismissed those activities without trying them. As long as what you do is fun, then whatever you do in-game is time well spent.
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
I fear for the fate of Outland
I am worried about our humble floating rock. As excited as I am for Cataclysm and all of the great changes it will bring to old-world Azeroth, I am worried what the lack of changes in Outland will mean for the continent. I won't assume that everyone feels the same way I do, so I'll just explain my person reasons for worrying. While leveling a character, I look forward to getting to Outland, for it is a big improvement over the old world. I can move from quest hub to quest hub in a linear order, rather than needing to run back and forth between them because they don't have any quests for my level. The quests award gear I'll actually use, rather than gear with a hodgepodge of stats that have no business being together. Still, Outland seems to somehow lack something when compared to Northrend. I can't quite put my finger on what it is that makes the two so different, but the fact that Borean Tundra is prettier to look at than Hellfire Peninsula might have something to do with it. Either way, while approaching level 68, I look forward to going to Northrend in the same way I looked forward to going to Outland. Thus, in my mind, Northrend > Outland > Kalimdor/Easter Kingdoms.
Cataclysm could change all of that, since Cataclysm will be bringing the old world up to speed with all of the improvements that have been made to the leveling process since WoW was released. Old world questing won't require us to run back and forth from quest hub to quest hub and back again, and those quests will reward gear that we will actually want to use. However, Outland and Northrend will only be receiving a negligible amount of attention in this overhaul, and won't be changing that much. Thus, the first round of content (Kalimdor/Eastern Kingdoms) will now be the newest, most innovative content, while Outland and Northrend, both revolutionary in tier time, will be relics of older design.
Where does that leave the humble floating rock? It means that Outland will be the oldest content in WoW, and potentially the least enjoyable. In other words, rather than a progression of solo content where each continent gets better as you go on (which we have now), I fear that players will think that they have gone backwards when they enter Outland, that they have downgraded their experience. In other words, I fear that Outland will no longer be the improvement to leveling that it is now, but instead, like the old world now, it will be an unfortunate necessity we must begrudgingly level through in order to get to the newer, more interesting content (Northrend, and eventually the 80-85 content).
How to avoid this future? One option is to improve the old world in such a way that it is better than it currently is, but still not as enjoyable as Outland, thus keeping the current flow of how enjoyable the leveling content is intact. Considering the ceiling that would put on the enjoyability of the content, though, this would probably result in players feeling cheated out of what could have been a more enjoyable experience. The other option, and the one that must thus be taken, is to redesign Outland to be more enjoyable. But how to do that when Blizzard already has their plates full, needing to redesign two continents and add another expansion's worth of content to them? Whatever the solution is, it must be simple if it is to be implemented with Cataclysm.
Still, there is always the chance that there may be no such simple solution for Outland. After all, old-world Azeroth needed a total redo to come up to speed with the current game design. Of course, Outland was a greater evolution from the design of Azeroth than Northrend was an evolution from the design of Outland, so the key lies in figuring out the differences between the two, and trying to compensate for those differences.
To me, the biggest difference between Outland and Northrend was the absence and presence, respectively, of feelings of immersion in a war. In Outland, though there is a massive battle raging before you when you enter the Dark Portal, you are never able to fight that battle, to help the soldiers you see in front of you. Instead, you fly over that battle and head to Honor Hold, where, much like in old-world Azeroth, ironically, the quest givers sit safely in their fortresses while you go out and do the dirty work alone. Not only do you not feel like part of a massive effort to take down the big bad (Illidan), but the fact that the enemies are just minding their own business makes the whole thing feel very... sterile. Most of Outland follows that same design: you allies are here, you enemies are there, go run back and forth between them. Quite simply, it feels like you are the only one doing anything.
When you get to Northrend, however, you are sent to kill enemies that are attacking the very town you dock in when you arrive. (this is the case, at least, if you are Alliance) Not only that, but there are soldiers out there fighting the enemies you are sent to kill, soldiers on your side. It would have been impractical and impossible for Blizzard to design all of Northrend this way, so obvious the whole continent doesn't look like that, but the fact is that there are still many battles raging when you enter this frozen land. Your allies are actually fighting your enemies, and you feel like part of a living, breathing battlefield. Quite simply, your allies and your enemies are not segregated, and that makes the experience more believable and more immersive.
Of course, there are likely many factors that lead to Northrend feeling more advanced in its design than Outland, but if this factor is a significant one, then it means Outland can't be improved with a simple solution. I image it would be naive of me to assume that it would be easy to just add some battles to Outland, but it's something to think about for the next expansion pack, when Blizzard will have more time for a moderately demanding project like making Outland feel less stale. Until then, I'll just have to grumble as my priest continues trudging through the remains of Draenor, while smiling as my shaman fights his way through Northrend.
Cataclysm could change all of that, since Cataclysm will be bringing the old world up to speed with all of the improvements that have been made to the leveling process since WoW was released. Old world questing won't require us to run back and forth from quest hub to quest hub and back again, and those quests will reward gear that we will actually want to use. However, Outland and Northrend will only be receiving a negligible amount of attention in this overhaul, and won't be changing that much. Thus, the first round of content (Kalimdor/Eastern Kingdoms) will now be the newest, most innovative content, while Outland and Northrend, both revolutionary in tier time, will be relics of older design.
Where does that leave the humble floating rock? It means that Outland will be the oldest content in WoW, and potentially the least enjoyable. In other words, rather than a progression of solo content where each continent gets better as you go on (which we have now), I fear that players will think that they have gone backwards when they enter Outland, that they have downgraded their experience. In other words, I fear that Outland will no longer be the improvement to leveling that it is now, but instead, like the old world now, it will be an unfortunate necessity we must begrudgingly level through in order to get to the newer, more interesting content (Northrend, and eventually the 80-85 content).
How to avoid this future? One option is to improve the old world in such a way that it is better than it currently is, but still not as enjoyable as Outland, thus keeping the current flow of how enjoyable the leveling content is intact. Considering the ceiling that would put on the enjoyability of the content, though, this would probably result in players feeling cheated out of what could have been a more enjoyable experience. The other option, and the one that must thus be taken, is to redesign Outland to be more enjoyable. But how to do that when Blizzard already has their plates full, needing to redesign two continents and add another expansion's worth of content to them? Whatever the solution is, it must be simple if it is to be implemented with Cataclysm.
Still, there is always the chance that there may be no such simple solution for Outland. After all, old-world Azeroth needed a total redo to come up to speed with the current game design. Of course, Outland was a greater evolution from the design of Azeroth than Northrend was an evolution from the design of Outland, so the key lies in figuring out the differences between the two, and trying to compensate for those differences.
To me, the biggest difference between Outland and Northrend was the absence and presence, respectively, of feelings of immersion in a war. In Outland, though there is a massive battle raging before you when you enter the Dark Portal, you are never able to fight that battle, to help the soldiers you see in front of you. Instead, you fly over that battle and head to Honor Hold, where, much like in old-world Azeroth, ironically, the quest givers sit safely in their fortresses while you go out and do the dirty work alone. Not only do you not feel like part of a massive effort to take down the big bad (Illidan), but the fact that the enemies are just minding their own business makes the whole thing feel very... sterile. Most of Outland follows that same design: you allies are here, you enemies are there, go run back and forth between them. Quite simply, it feels like you are the only one doing anything.
When you get to Northrend, however, you are sent to kill enemies that are attacking the very town you dock in when you arrive. (this is the case, at least, if you are Alliance) Not only that, but there are soldiers out there fighting the enemies you are sent to kill, soldiers on your side. It would have been impractical and impossible for Blizzard to design all of Northrend this way, so obvious the whole continent doesn't look like that, but the fact is that there are still many battles raging when you enter this frozen land. Your allies are actually fighting your enemies, and you feel like part of a living, breathing battlefield. Quite simply, your allies and your enemies are not segregated, and that makes the experience more believable and more immersive.
Of course, there are likely many factors that lead to Northrend feeling more advanced in its design than Outland, but if this factor is a significant one, then it means Outland can't be improved with a simple solution. I image it would be naive of me to assume that it would be easy to just add some battles to Outland, but it's something to think about for the next expansion pack, when Blizzard will have more time for a moderately demanding project like making Outland feel less stale. Until then, I'll just have to grumble as my priest continues trudging through the remains of Draenor, while smiling as my shaman fights his way through Northrend.
Monday, August 9, 2010
Why are "First!" comments so despised?
If you've been on any internet site with a large membership or readership, you've likely seen the "First!" phenomenon. For those who have been living under a cyber-rock for all the time you've been on the internet, allow me to bring you up to speed. "First!" is a phenomenon that usually takes place in the comments section on blogs, but it tends to find its way into all manor of websites if that website has some sort of social and/or communication element and becomes popular enough. On blogs, "First!" is the practice of pointing out that you are the first person to comment on a post by posting a comment that only says, "First!", or some variant (proper pronunciation, spelling, and punctuation are not required, nor expected from those who post "First!" posts). The only point of the first post is to point out that you were the first person to post a comment on the post. It is not constructive, informative, entertaining, or in any way positive. "First!" also finds its way onto the official WoW forums in the form of people posting a "First!" reply after a Blizzard poster posts a new thread or replies to an existing one. It's less common on Youtube because Youtube shows the newest comments first, rather than the oldest first, so if the video's poster is popular enough to garner the kind of audience that would include people who post "First!" comments, those comments are usually hidden by the dozens or hundreds or even thousands of comments that come after.
But that's enough information about this heinous practice. The reason I am writing this, as you may have guessed from the title, is to try to figure out why the practice is considered so heinous in the first place. After all, in the long run, if a blog is popular enough to gain an audience that includes first-ers, then its posts will generally have enough other comments to make the "First!" post ignorable. And most communities don't give much attention to "First!" posts anyways. Most, except for the commenters of WoW.com, where first-ing is not tolerated at all and will only guarantee that your comment is mocked by the few who deign to reply to it, and those mocking responses will be up-voted while yours is down-voted, while you will likely be either given a warning or banned from commenting. This reaction is relatively unique to WoW.com, but I imagine that it does represent the opinion of the larger internet on "First!" posts.
Yet "First!" posts aren't all that unique in the grand scheme of things. They are just another example of someone calling attention to themselves in spite of not deserving that attention, and the web is full of examples of that (most people call those types "attention whores"). Most of us don't get in a tizzy over attention whores, so why are we annoyed by first-ers? Perhaps it's because it's easy to avoid most internet attention whores, but we must scroll past that "First!" comment in order to get to the meat of the comments section. If a blogger is nothing but an attention whore, we can stop reading his blog. If a youtube user is nothing but an attention whore, we can stop watching his videos. If, however, the first commenter on a blog post is an attention whore, we are forced to give him that attention he seeks by reading his comment. Our choice in the matter is taken away from us, and most people resent having their choice taken away from them.
Our disdain for first-ers might be related to something more deeply rooted, though, something called the anchoring effect. The anchoring effect is a mental time-saver that our brains use whereby we judge our things based on our first impression of them, rather than always judging each experience on its own merits. For example, your thoughts on raiding were likely deeply affected by your first raid. If your first raid was an abysmal failure, all other raids you run will seem much better by comparison. Inversely, if your first raid is wipe-less speed run, progression raiding will probably seem unnecessarily frustrating and difficult.
What does this have to do with "First!" posts? Well, when we read that first comment on a post, our brains are hoping to use that comment to gauge the rest of the comments. But a "First!" post isn't a legitimate comment, so our brains are left hanging, forced to compare each subsequent comment to a troll. And of course, anything except more trolling is preferable to a "First!" post, so every subsequent post will seem better by comparison. Thus our brains aren't able to judge subsequent comments as discerningly as it would be able to had the first comment been legitimate.
Of course, the simple explanation is usually the best, and in the case of "First!" posts, there is a simple explanation. We, the more enlightened denizens of the internet, associate "First!" posts with the less refined parts of the internet: Youtube, the official forums, etc. As such, the presence of "First!" posts on a website normally thought to be beyond that kind of drivel is disheartening. It means a website you consider to be a cut above the rest of the internet might not be so. Thus it is reasonable for a website to want to discourage that kind of behavior, for it stands on similar grounds to the other ways of the troll (not that kind), and trolling in general is to be discouraged whenever it can be.
But that's enough information about this heinous practice. The reason I am writing this, as you may have guessed from the title, is to try to figure out why the practice is considered so heinous in the first place. After all, in the long run, if a blog is popular enough to gain an audience that includes first-ers, then its posts will generally have enough other comments to make the "First!" post ignorable. And most communities don't give much attention to "First!" posts anyways. Most, except for the commenters of WoW.com, where first-ing is not tolerated at all and will only guarantee that your comment is mocked by the few who deign to reply to it, and those mocking responses will be up-voted while yours is down-voted, while you will likely be either given a warning or banned from commenting. This reaction is relatively unique to WoW.com, but I imagine that it does represent the opinion of the larger internet on "First!" posts.
Yet "First!" posts aren't all that unique in the grand scheme of things. They are just another example of someone calling attention to themselves in spite of not deserving that attention, and the web is full of examples of that (most people call those types "attention whores"). Most of us don't get in a tizzy over attention whores, so why are we annoyed by first-ers? Perhaps it's because it's easy to avoid most internet attention whores, but we must scroll past that "First!" comment in order to get to the meat of the comments section. If a blogger is nothing but an attention whore, we can stop reading his blog. If a youtube user is nothing but an attention whore, we can stop watching his videos. If, however, the first commenter on a blog post is an attention whore, we are forced to give him that attention he seeks by reading his comment. Our choice in the matter is taken away from us, and most people resent having their choice taken away from them.
Our disdain for first-ers might be related to something more deeply rooted, though, something called the anchoring effect. The anchoring effect is a mental time-saver that our brains use whereby we judge our things based on our first impression of them, rather than always judging each experience on its own merits. For example, your thoughts on raiding were likely deeply affected by your first raid. If your first raid was an abysmal failure, all other raids you run will seem much better by comparison. Inversely, if your first raid is wipe-less speed run, progression raiding will probably seem unnecessarily frustrating and difficult.
What does this have to do with "First!" posts? Well, when we read that first comment on a post, our brains are hoping to use that comment to gauge the rest of the comments. But a "First!" post isn't a legitimate comment, so our brains are left hanging, forced to compare each subsequent comment to a troll. And of course, anything except more trolling is preferable to a "First!" post, so every subsequent post will seem better by comparison. Thus our brains aren't able to judge subsequent comments as discerningly as it would be able to had the first comment been legitimate.
Of course, the simple explanation is usually the best, and in the case of "First!" posts, there is a simple explanation. We, the more enlightened denizens of the internet, associate "First!" posts with the less refined parts of the internet: Youtube, the official forums, etc. As such, the presence of "First!" posts on a website normally thought to be beyond that kind of drivel is disheartening. It means a website you consider to be a cut above the rest of the internet might not be so. Thus it is reasonable for a website to want to discourage that kind of behavior, for it stands on similar grounds to the other ways of the troll (not that kind), and trolling in general is to be discouraged whenever it can be.
Friday, August 6, 2010
Is WoW a Caillois-complete game?
If that name looks unfamiliar to you, don't worry; I didn't know who the man was myself until a week or two ago. Roger Caillois was a French philosopher who wrote a book called Les Jeux et Les Hommes, which traslates to English as Men, Play and Games. In this book, Caillois discussed games and what truly constitutes a game, and he came up with six points about what makes a game a game. For a game to be a "Caillois-complete" game, it must fit all six of these points, or else it is just not a game. It might be an interesting tool or an entertaining diversion, nonetheless, but it is not a game. For a game to be Caillois-complete, it must be:
-Free: “in which playing is not obligatory; if it were, it would at once lose its attractive and joyous quality as diversion.”
-Separate: “circumscribed within limits of space and time, defined and fixed in advance.”
-Uncertain: “the course of which cannot be determined, nor the result attained beforehand; and some latitude for innovations being left to the player’s initiative.”
-Unproductive: “creating neither goods, nor wealth, nor new elements of any kind; and, except for the exchange of property among the players, ending in a situation identical to that prevailing at the beginning of the game.”
-Governed by Rules: “under conventions that suspend ordinary laws and for the moment establish new legislation, which alone counts.”
-Make-Believe: “accompanied by a special awareness of a second reality, or of a free unreality, as against real life.”
(transcribed from a post on the blog "Cope")
What I would like to look at today is whether World of Warcraft is a Caillois-complete game, i.e. whether WoW counts as a game. Now, astute readers will remember my post, Is WoW "just a game"?, in which I concluded that, in some instances, WoW was more than a game. However, I did end the post by saying, "WoW is not just a game, but it is still a game," so I can still examine whether it is a Caillois-complete game. Besides, even if I had concluded that WoW was not "just a game", it would not prevent me from examining whether WoW is a Caillois-complete game, for one could not conclude that WoW not being a game means it isn't a Caillois-complete game. That would be a "converse error", a logical fallacy in which you assume that if one fact implies another, and that if the second fact is true, then the first one must also be true. In this case, the implication is that if WoW is not a Caillois-complete game, then it isn't a game. If I had concluded that WoW isn't a game, it would be a converse error to assume that that means it isn't a Caillois-complete game.
Right, so now that your lesson in logic is over, let's get to the examination.
Free: “in which playing is not obligatory; if it were, it would at once lose its attractive and joyous quality as diversion.”
Interestingly, WoW is one of the few games that actually has a mechanism in place to encourage players to play less and rewards players who do not play as if they are required to play; that mechanism is rested state, which you gain when you log out and which doubles the experience you gain from killing enemies. Of course, once you hit the level cap, rested state is no longer useful to you, so this point no longer necessarily applies. Thus we must ask; at level-cap content, it playing obligatory? Are players at a disadvantage if they take a break from playing?
I would say that in the days of Burning Crusade, that answer to this question was a definite "yes". I tried to get into raiding back then, but I was behind in gearing up, and the guild I was in didn't have the time to run me through older content to help me catch up. Now, granted, this lack of gear was a result of trying to start raiding too late, rather than a result of me taking a break, but the end product would have been the same either way. Fortunately, in today's WoW, we have the emblem system, which allows people to get gear in heroics that is good enough for them to go right into the current tier of raiding. Thus players are able to take a break from raiding, and if their gear falls behind, it's easier for them to catch up without their guild needing to drag them through old content. This was a big step for making WoW a more Caillois-complete game, in addition to a more casual-friendly game.
For progression guilds filled with hard-core players, however, the situation is likely not the same. After all, if you are doing cutting-edge content, you need to get as much gear as you can get your hands on so you can gain that much of an edge, and if you take a break and fall behind your guild, even if the difference is small, it could be enough of a disadvantage that your guild will leave you out in favor of someone who is more geared than you. And all that practice you missed? Not to mention needing to make it to raids on time or else being replaced and being less likely to be picked for a future raid. Of course, that content isn't going anywhere, so if you do take a break, you can always find a group of people who are at your current skill and gear level and run with them, instead. Suffice it to say that the design of WoW is Caillois-complete in the sense of being "free", but the social structures and obligations created by the players sometimes make it otherwise.
Separate: “circumscribed within limits of space and time, defined and fixed in advance.”
Well, it's certainly safe to say that WoW and the real world are separate entities... objectively, at least. But as I said above, when you look at the ways hard-core players approach WoW, the line between WoW and the real world gets blurry quite fast. When I was in a raiding guild, it wasn't uncommon for one guild member to call another guild member when we were trying to form a raid and were short one person. If that isn't WoW bleeding into the real world, I don't know what is. So, again, WoW is only as separate as its players want it to be.
Uncertain: “the course of which cannot be determined, nor the result attained beforehand; and some latitude for innovations being left to the player’s initiative.”
On the surface, this one seems much harder to defend than the others. After all, think of all of the raiders who do dailies for the money to enchant and gem their new gear, as well as pay the repair bills that endless wipes will lead to. Why do they run these dailies? Because they know exactly how much money they will get from those dailies, and they know it's enough to pay the bills. Think, also, of the raiders who run a heroic each day for the extra Emblems of Frost to get their tier gear that much faster. They know exactly what is going to happens in those heroics, and because of their gear, they know that failure just isn't a possibility. In other words, the outcome of dailies and heroics is certain, and thus they are not a Caillois-complete part of the game.
Of course, players only do these chores (let's call them what they really are) because they feel they have to, but the game doesn't require them to enchant and gem all their gear, and the money from the raid enemies themselves is usually enough to pay the repair bills if you don't wipe. And there are even ways to earn the money for gems and enchantments that are uncertain, and thus are a Caillois-complete part of the game. After all, one of my favorite parts of the game is fishing, and fishing is a great way to make money. The out-come is still uncertain, though; you don't know how much of the profitable fish you are going to get, and you don't know whether people will actually buy your fish. Still, it is a great way to make money, and the same facts apply to all gathering professions (except perhaps skinning). Thus, once again, dailies and heroics are only a Caillois-incomplete part of the game because players chose to continue to do them when they become chores.
Unproductive: “creating neither goods, nor wealth, nor new elements of any kind; and, except for the exchange of property among the players, ending in a situation identical to that prevailing at the beginning of the game.”
Two words come to mind when I see this rule: gold sellers. Where it not for the trade of in-game currency for real-world currency and the hacking that takes place as a result, this point would apply to WoW without exception. But gold sellers exist, and their presence means that WoW can be a productive activity, and thus not a game. Of course, their presence is only made possible by players who buy the gold those gold sellerssell steal, so yet again, the only reason this point doesn't apply to WoW is because the players don't let it.
Governed by Rules: “under conventions that suspend ordinary laws and for the moment establish new legislation, which alone counts.”
WoW certainly suspends ordinary laws and establishes new legislation. The fact that a human being can drop down in Goldshire and throw fire at a wolf, or the fact that the Undead Forsaken exist is enough proof that the game makes its own rules of what is possible. The game also makes new rules that are less fantastic and are still feasible by real world sensibilities, like the fact that we are literally unable to directly kill anyone on our side. The key to this point, however, is that the game establishes new rules to replace the old rules, and only those new rules matter. This means that none of our real-world rules bleed into the game unless we want to them to. Well, as a social game, it's likely that the rules we have for social interactions in the real world are going to become a part of WoW, but its safe to say that we want that to happen. WoW is just more fun when people act civilly around one another.
But what about when a player doesn't want that to happen? I'm talking about trolls, griefers, and people who generally make other players' experiences miserable. Where do we get the idea that their activities are to be frowned upon? Why, from the real world of course. If WoW somehow punished griefing and trolling in some way other than players reporting trolls and griefers to GMs, this wouldn't be the case. However, there currently exist no in-game mechanics (and thus no "new legislation") to discourage this kind of behavior, so because the players bring with them their sensibilities of what is and isn't allowed in social interaction, WoW doesn't fit this point.
Make-Believe: “accompanied by a special awareness of a second reality, or of a free unreality, as against real life.”
I think you can see the pattern developing. While WoW certainly can invoke a second reality for us players, that reality is tainted by all of the exceptions brought up in the previous points. It's difficult to acknowledge WoW as a second reality when there are consequences for not entering that reality regularly, when players contact each other outside the game to ask each other to enter that new reality, when we know how exactly how some of our interactions with that reality will end, when financial transactions take place in which currency within that reality is exchanged for currency in real life, and when our rules for social interaction in our reality bleed into our second reality. Suffice it to say that because of the players themselves, WoW doesn't create a second reality, or an unreality against real life.
So it seems that the general trend is that WoW is an objectively Caillois-complete game, but not a subjectively complete one. In other words, once players actually start playing, the Caillois-completeness of the game breaks down. I wouldn't say that this is WoW's fault, though. Perhaps with a smaller, more intimate playerbase, these issues wouldn't arise the way they do now. Because there would be fewer raiders to pick from, the raiding guilds would be happy to help guildies who took a break gear up again. With fewer potential customers, the gold-selling business wouldn't be as lucrative. With a more intimate playerbase, it's less likely that trolls would necessitate the infusion of real-world social rules into the game. Maybe WoW isn't a Caillois-complete game because it's playerbase is just too big.
Or perhaps we don't want WoW to be just a game, so we try to make it more than just a game, subconsciously or otherwise, and thus is loses some of what makes it a game in the process. That's an issue too big for me to consider in this post, though. Maybe next time.
-Free: “in which playing is not obligatory; if it were, it would at once lose its attractive and joyous quality as diversion.”
-Separate: “circumscribed within limits of space and time, defined and fixed in advance.”
-Uncertain: “the course of which cannot be determined, nor the result attained beforehand; and some latitude for innovations being left to the player’s initiative.”
-Unproductive: “creating neither goods, nor wealth, nor new elements of any kind; and, except for the exchange of property among the players, ending in a situation identical to that prevailing at the beginning of the game.”
-Governed by Rules: “under conventions that suspend ordinary laws and for the moment establish new legislation, which alone counts.”
-Make-Believe: “accompanied by a special awareness of a second reality, or of a free unreality, as against real life.”
(transcribed from a post on the blog "Cope")
What I would like to look at today is whether World of Warcraft is a Caillois-complete game, i.e. whether WoW counts as a game. Now, astute readers will remember my post, Is WoW "just a game"?, in which I concluded that, in some instances, WoW was more than a game. However, I did end the post by saying, "WoW is not just a game, but it is still a game," so I can still examine whether it is a Caillois-complete game. Besides, even if I had concluded that WoW was not "just a game", it would not prevent me from examining whether WoW is a Caillois-complete game, for one could not conclude that WoW not being a game means it isn't a Caillois-complete game. That would be a "converse error", a logical fallacy in which you assume that if one fact implies another, and that if the second fact is true, then the first one must also be true. In this case, the implication is that if WoW is not a Caillois-complete game, then it isn't a game. If I had concluded that WoW isn't a game, it would be a converse error to assume that that means it isn't a Caillois-complete game.
Right, so now that your lesson in logic is over, let's get to the examination.
Free: “in which playing is not obligatory; if it were, it would at once lose its attractive and joyous quality as diversion.”
Interestingly, WoW is one of the few games that actually has a mechanism in place to encourage players to play less and rewards players who do not play as if they are required to play; that mechanism is rested state, which you gain when you log out and which doubles the experience you gain from killing enemies. Of course, once you hit the level cap, rested state is no longer useful to you, so this point no longer necessarily applies. Thus we must ask; at level-cap content, it playing obligatory? Are players at a disadvantage if they take a break from playing?
I would say that in the days of Burning Crusade, that answer to this question was a definite "yes". I tried to get into raiding back then, but I was behind in gearing up, and the guild I was in didn't have the time to run me through older content to help me catch up. Now, granted, this lack of gear was a result of trying to start raiding too late, rather than a result of me taking a break, but the end product would have been the same either way. Fortunately, in today's WoW, we have the emblem system, which allows people to get gear in heroics that is good enough for them to go right into the current tier of raiding. Thus players are able to take a break from raiding, and if their gear falls behind, it's easier for them to catch up without their guild needing to drag them through old content. This was a big step for making WoW a more Caillois-complete game, in addition to a more casual-friendly game.
For progression guilds filled with hard-core players, however, the situation is likely not the same. After all, if you are doing cutting-edge content, you need to get as much gear as you can get your hands on so you can gain that much of an edge, and if you take a break and fall behind your guild, even if the difference is small, it could be enough of a disadvantage that your guild will leave you out in favor of someone who is more geared than you. And all that practice you missed? Not to mention needing to make it to raids on time or else being replaced and being less likely to be picked for a future raid. Of course, that content isn't going anywhere, so if you do take a break, you can always find a group of people who are at your current skill and gear level and run with them, instead. Suffice it to say that the design of WoW is Caillois-complete in the sense of being "free", but the social structures and obligations created by the players sometimes make it otherwise.
Separate: “circumscribed within limits of space and time, defined and fixed in advance.”
Well, it's certainly safe to say that WoW and the real world are separate entities... objectively, at least. But as I said above, when you look at the ways hard-core players approach WoW, the line between WoW and the real world gets blurry quite fast. When I was in a raiding guild, it wasn't uncommon for one guild member to call another guild member when we were trying to form a raid and were short one person. If that isn't WoW bleeding into the real world, I don't know what is. So, again, WoW is only as separate as its players want it to be.
Uncertain: “the course of which cannot be determined, nor the result attained beforehand; and some latitude for innovations being left to the player’s initiative.”
On the surface, this one seems much harder to defend than the others. After all, think of all of the raiders who do dailies for the money to enchant and gem their new gear, as well as pay the repair bills that endless wipes will lead to. Why do they run these dailies? Because they know exactly how much money they will get from those dailies, and they know it's enough to pay the bills. Think, also, of the raiders who run a heroic each day for the extra Emblems of Frost to get their tier gear that much faster. They know exactly what is going to happens in those heroics, and because of their gear, they know that failure just isn't a possibility. In other words, the outcome of dailies and heroics is certain, and thus they are not a Caillois-complete part of the game.
Of course, players only do these chores (let's call them what they really are) because they feel they have to, but the game doesn't require them to enchant and gem all their gear, and the money from the raid enemies themselves is usually enough to pay the repair bills if you don't wipe. And there are even ways to earn the money for gems and enchantments that are uncertain, and thus are a Caillois-complete part of the game. After all, one of my favorite parts of the game is fishing, and fishing is a great way to make money. The out-come is still uncertain, though; you don't know how much of the profitable fish you are going to get, and you don't know whether people will actually buy your fish. Still, it is a great way to make money, and the same facts apply to all gathering professions (except perhaps skinning). Thus, once again, dailies and heroics are only a Caillois-incomplete part of the game because players chose to continue to do them when they become chores.
Unproductive: “creating neither goods, nor wealth, nor new elements of any kind; and, except for the exchange of property among the players, ending in a situation identical to that prevailing at the beginning of the game.”
Two words come to mind when I see this rule: gold sellers. Where it not for the trade of in-game currency for real-world currency and the hacking that takes place as a result, this point would apply to WoW without exception. But gold sellers exist, and their presence means that WoW can be a productive activity, and thus not a game. Of course, their presence is only made possible by players who buy the gold those gold sellers
Governed by Rules: “under conventions that suspend ordinary laws and for the moment establish new legislation, which alone counts.”
WoW certainly suspends ordinary laws and establishes new legislation. The fact that a human being can drop down in Goldshire and throw fire at a wolf, or the fact that the Undead Forsaken exist is enough proof that the game makes its own rules of what is possible. The game also makes new rules that are less fantastic and are still feasible by real world sensibilities, like the fact that we are literally unable to directly kill anyone on our side. The key to this point, however, is that the game establishes new rules to replace the old rules, and only those new rules matter. This means that none of our real-world rules bleed into the game unless we want to them to. Well, as a social game, it's likely that the rules we have for social interactions in the real world are going to become a part of WoW, but its safe to say that we want that to happen. WoW is just more fun when people act civilly around one another.
But what about when a player doesn't want that to happen? I'm talking about trolls, griefers, and people who generally make other players' experiences miserable. Where do we get the idea that their activities are to be frowned upon? Why, from the real world of course. If WoW somehow punished griefing and trolling in some way other than players reporting trolls and griefers to GMs, this wouldn't be the case. However, there currently exist no in-game mechanics (and thus no "new legislation") to discourage this kind of behavior, so because the players bring with them their sensibilities of what is and isn't allowed in social interaction, WoW doesn't fit this point.
Make-Believe: “accompanied by a special awareness of a second reality, or of a free unreality, as against real life.”
I think you can see the pattern developing. While WoW certainly can invoke a second reality for us players, that reality is tainted by all of the exceptions brought up in the previous points. It's difficult to acknowledge WoW as a second reality when there are consequences for not entering that reality regularly, when players contact each other outside the game to ask each other to enter that new reality, when we know how exactly how some of our interactions with that reality will end, when financial transactions take place in which currency within that reality is exchanged for currency in real life, and when our rules for social interaction in our reality bleed into our second reality. Suffice it to say that because of the players themselves, WoW doesn't create a second reality, or an unreality against real life.
So it seems that the general trend is that WoW is an objectively Caillois-complete game, but not a subjectively complete one. In other words, once players actually start playing, the Caillois-completeness of the game breaks down. I wouldn't say that this is WoW's fault, though. Perhaps with a smaller, more intimate playerbase, these issues wouldn't arise the way they do now. Because there would be fewer raiders to pick from, the raiding guilds would be happy to help guildies who took a break gear up again. With fewer potential customers, the gold-selling business wouldn't be as lucrative. With a more intimate playerbase, it's less likely that trolls would necessitate the infusion of real-world social rules into the game. Maybe WoW isn't a Caillois-complete game because it's playerbase is just too big.
Or perhaps we don't want WoW to be just a game, so we try to make it more than just a game, subconsciously or otherwise, and thus is loses some of what makes it a game in the process. That's an issue too big for me to consider in this post, though. Maybe next time.
Wednesday, August 4, 2010
How to solo Northrend group quests as an enhancement shaman
My long-suffering shaman alt (which I rolled at the beginning of Burning Crusade) finally hit level 68 a while back and headed for the frozen wastes of Northrend, and I have been enjoying leveling through the new continent significantly more than I enjoyed Outland. Of course, my shaman is late to the game, and is usually one of only two or three Alliance players in the Borean Tundra, unless Blood is Thicker is the fishing daily. This becomes problematic when I need to complete quests like Last Rites and The Assassination of Harold Lane, group quests that involve killing elite enemies. However, in a fit of potential madness, and inspired by my success with solo-ing The Ultimate Bloodsport, I decided to give Last Rites, the first group quest I was charged with when I came to Northrend, a try. So I went in, with only my wits and my quest-reward gear to help me, and after a very tense battle, Valanar lay dead at my feet. It didn't hit me how impressive this feat was, though, until I took a look at my quest log and saw that this quest was orange. Yep, I, a level 69 shaman in nothing but gear rewarded by quests had killed a level 72 elite, alone. This gave me a whole new respect for the shaman class, especially enhancement shamans.
Now, this success had nothing to do with my skills and everything to do with the sheer solo-ing power of the enhancement shaman. What that means is that any enhancement shaman leveling his/her way through Northrend can do what I did with the right instruction. It is that instruction which I aim to provide today.
Before we go into that, though, let's look at the key abilities that will help you while solo-ing elites as an enhancement shaman. You will want all of these abilities to be within easy reach before you try to solo any elites; if not hot-keyed, at least somewhere on your bars.
Earth Elemental Totem: This ability will change your shaman's life when you get it at level 66 and is your main asset while solo-ing a group quest. Dropping this totem releases a greater earth elemental to attack your enemies. He causes a fair amount of threat, and can take quite a beating before crumbling into gravel. The key to successfully solo-ing an elite is to let this guy take damage for you, like a tank.
However, to describe the greater earth elemental as a tank-in-a-totem (tank-in-a-bottle sounds just demeaning) would be a gross over-statement of its power. The Earth Elemental Totem isn't just a set-it-and-forget-it tank. A typical elite can kill your greater earth elemental in much less time than it will take you and him to kill the elite, Also, the amount of threat he causes is very low compared to most player tanks you run dungeons with, and you'll easily cause more threat than him if you aren't careful. However, there is one bright side to this totem that should not be overlooked: you can heal your greater earth elemental. Thus, the key to successfully using the Earth Elemental Totem is to heal him when he needs it and to watch your threat so you don't attract your target's attention. If you don't have an addon to display your threat and the threat of your greater earth elemental, activate the in-game threat display by going to the main menu (escape key), then going to Display and checking off "Show Aggro Percentages". I also recommend you set Display Aggro Warning to "Always", so you'll be able to know immediately if you pulled aggro off of your greater earth elemental.
Wind Shear: Of course, you will sometimes pull aggro from your Earth elemental, no matter how careful you are. An unlucky string of crits will do that to you, and it's when that happens that you'll want to have Wind Shear handy, since it lowers your current threat on your target. Of course, Wind Shear coupled with a ceasing of all of your attacks can only do so much, so it's still important to watch your threat.
Healing Wave: You should have this spell handy while solo-ing, anyways, since being able to heal yourself while leveling is one of the enhancement shaman's greatest strengths. You'll be using this ability to heal your greater earth elemental, and you will make great use of it for that purpose. You might also want to have Lesser Healing Wave handy, in case you space out and forget about your greater earth elemental, then realize you haven't healed him in a while, only to target him and see that his health is low.
Maelstrom Weapon: While this isn't technically an ability, and thus you can't link to it on your action bar, I wanted to bring it up anyways because it makes using Healing Wave on your greater earth elemental much easier. It also serves as a nice reminder to check on your greater earth elemental; any time you hit five stacks of Maelstrom Weapon, check to see if your greater earth elemental is in need of some healing.
Shamanistic Rage: You should keep Shamanistic Rage within easy reach while leveling anyways, but you'll especially want to keep it within reach while fighting an elite because you'll be using more mana. When you fight typical enemies, you usually spend some time out of combat, i.e. not using mana, in addition to the time you spend in combat, i.e. using mana. Thus you don't use mana very quickly while fighting regular enemies. While fighting an elite, however, you are always casting (or at least casting more time per minute than you would be otherwise), so using this ability to get your mana back is critical.
Fire Elemental Totem: The fact is, you will sometimes fight enemies that will outlast your greater earth elemental. He only has a two-minute duration, after all, and what to do when that runs out? Why, bring out this guy, of course. The Fire Elemental Totems summons a greater fire elemental to fight for you, but unlike the greater earth elemental, the greater fire elemental is focused on doing damage, not taking it. Thus, you will be the tank when you take him out, but how will you survive that onslaught of damage in just mail armor with no shield?
Feral Spirit: Why, with your wolves, of course! One of the best benefits of the ghost wolves summoned by Feral Spirit, aside from their taunt, which you will make liberal use of, is that they heal you when they do damage. The healing they do is so significant that combined with a few Maelstrom'ed Healing Waves, you can survive the onslaught of damage brought about by an elite. What could be better?
Bloodlust/Heroism: Ah, yes; this could be better. While you are alone, Bloodlust and Heroism will increase your melee haste, but also the melee haste of your spirit wolves if and only if they are out when you cast it. That means more healing done to you, more damage done by them, and a better chance of successfully killing your elite.
So, now that you have all of the necessary abilities within easy reach (as well as your normal damaging abilities like Stormstrike, Flame and Earth Shock, Lightning Shield--which is a damaging ability with the Static Shock talent--, etc.), you are ready to take down your first elite.
Get ready to fight your opponent by laying down your fire, water, and air totem of choice, leaving your earth totem slot reserved for your Earth Elemental Totem (yes, it actually counts as an earth totem, so you can't have your earth elemental totem and Strength of Earth Totem active at the same time. It sucks, I know.) I use the Flametongue, Mana Spring, and Windfury totem, respectively. I know Magma Totem would probably lead to a greater DPS output, but I personally prefer a totem I can set and forget to one I need to cast every twenty seconds. And did I mention that the one that needs to be re-cast every twenty seconds costs two and half times more mana than the one you can set and forget? Still, if you just want to cause as much damage as possible, then it's your prerogative to go with Magma Totem. I'm not here to tell you how to play, just to give you advice that you can decide whether to follow or not. If you do go with Magma totem, don't drop it until your enemy is in range, so you won't waste any mana on a blast of fire that doesn't damage your enemy.
So, you have your totems ready. Now just wait some time to regenerate your mana, and once it's back at 100%, it's time to fight. Open with a Flame Shock to bring your enemy into range, then cast Earth Elemental Totem. Your greater earth elemental should start attacking your target quickly, but be ready to heal yourself if you do take some damage before your elemental gains control. Now, you want to give your elemental some time to build up threat before you start attacking; think raiding pre-Burning Crusade. While waiting, you might do well to click on your greater earth elemental, then right-click his portrait and set him as your focus so you can always see how much health he has.
Now, once your elemental has established threat, start attacking your target. In these early stages of the fight, you'll probably shoot up from zero percent threat to almost pulling aggro rather quickly if you blow all of your short-term cooldowns, so just be careful. Since you have an effective cap on how much damage you can do (since you don't want to out-aggro your greater earth elemental), you'll want to focus on causing your damage in a way that is as mana-efficient as possible. Assuming you aren't at 95% threat (compared to your elemental), always auto-attack your target so that you can build up charges of Maelstrom weapon to allow you to quickly heal your greater earth elemental. However, don't use your damaging abilities unless you are around 80% threat or below, so that you can cease your attacks if you get a huge crit and get a lot of aggro.
If you are at that magic 80% mark, use your special abilities with the following priorities, stopping if you reach or pass 90% threat. If you have Improved Stormstrike, then use Stormstrike, since it will give you mana back. Then use Lightning Shield if you have the talent Static Shock, since it's free damage. If you don't have Improved Stormstrike, but you do have Static Shock, prioritize Lightning Shield over Stormstrike. If you don't have Static Shock, then don't bother with Lightning Shield. If you still have threat to spare, use Flame Shock, since it's more efficient than Earth Shock. You probably won't use Earth Shock much, since you should use the more efficient Flame Shock if it has run its duration, and you might cause too much threat if you use a shock more than once every 20 seconds or so. You'll probably never use Lava Lash. If you do cause too much damage, use Wind Shear and then stop attacking your target, even auto-attacking, until you greater earth elemental gets its attention again.
As you are doing all of this, you'll want to keep an eye on two things: the threat you have on your target, and your greater earth elemental's health. If your threat falls below 80%, use a damaging ability. If your elemental's health falls below 50%, heal it. Heal it sooner if you don't have many stacks of Maelstrom, and it will thus take you longer to cast the heal. When your mana starts to dip below 50%, check to make sure you aren't approaching dangerously high levels of threat, then use Shamanistic Rage while auto-attacking. I wouldn't recommend doing much else during this time unless you are sure you have threat and mana to spare, since using damaging abilities always poses the risk of out-aggro-ing your greater earth elemental, meaning you'll need to stop attacking, and you'll thus lose mana you could be gaining by attacking.
This strategy alone should be enough to help you with elites that a quest says only require two people to take down, but sometimes you'll need an extra "umph". Sometimes those two minutes won't be enough, and you'll find yourself with an angry elite looking at you and no earth elemental to help you. That's when you pull out the big guns: Feral Spirit, Fire Elemental Totem, and Heroism, in that order. The spirit wolves will heal you with their attacks, the greater fire elemental will damage your target, and Heroism will increase the damage you do, the damage your wolves do, and the healing your wolves do to you. This phase gives you about a minute to finish off your target, since your wolves only last 45 seconds, and you probably won't last longer than 15 seconds against an enemy you couldn't kill in two minutes.
So what to do in that minute? First of all, save your Shamanistic Rage cooldown unless you run desperately low on mana, since that 30% damage reduction could give you the extra time you need to finish your target off after your wolves die and aren't healing you anymore. Until then, make sure your wolves are attacking your target, make sure they use Twin Howl whenever it is off of its cooldown (to divert some damage away from you), and heal yourself if you find yourself below 50% health. Assuming you have taken care of all that, then just unload on your target with all that you have. Since you are now the tank, you don't have to watch your threat anymore. Thus, unload with Stormstrike, Flame and Earth Shock, Lightning Shield, and Lava Lash per usual.
If your wolves disappear and your target is still alive, then pop Shamanistic Rage and hope you can heal yourself and finish him off before he destroys you. Otherwise, you may have to try this whole performance again, or even worse... try to form a group. *shudder*
Of course, pulling this off method of killing an elite off by yourslef is an extremely satisfying exercise, so take what you now know and try it yourself if you are leveling a shaman through Northrend and are skipping the group quests because you can't or don't want to find anyone to help you with them. You don't need anyone to help you with them; you are a shaman.
Now, this success had nothing to do with my skills and everything to do with the sheer solo-ing power of the enhancement shaman. What that means is that any enhancement shaman leveling his/her way through Northrend can do what I did with the right instruction. It is that instruction which I aim to provide today.
Before we go into that, though, let's look at the key abilities that will help you while solo-ing elites as an enhancement shaman. You will want all of these abilities to be within easy reach before you try to solo any elites; if not hot-keyed, at least somewhere on your bars.
Earth Elemental Totem: This ability will change your shaman's life when you get it at level 66 and is your main asset while solo-ing a group quest. Dropping this totem releases a greater earth elemental to attack your enemies. He causes a fair amount of threat, and can take quite a beating before crumbling into gravel. The key to successfully solo-ing an elite is to let this guy take damage for you, like a tank.
However, to describe the greater earth elemental as a tank-in-a-totem (tank-in-a-bottle sounds just demeaning) would be a gross over-statement of its power. The Earth Elemental Totem isn't just a set-it-and-forget-it tank. A typical elite can kill your greater earth elemental in much less time than it will take you and him to kill the elite, Also, the amount of threat he causes is very low compared to most player tanks you run dungeons with, and you'll easily cause more threat than him if you aren't careful. However, there is one bright side to this totem that should not be overlooked: you can heal your greater earth elemental. Thus, the key to successfully using the Earth Elemental Totem is to heal him when he needs it and to watch your threat so you don't attract your target's attention. If you don't have an addon to display your threat and the threat of your greater earth elemental, activate the in-game threat display by going to the main menu (escape key), then going to Display and checking off "Show Aggro Percentages". I also recommend you set Display Aggro Warning to "Always", so you'll be able to know immediately if you pulled aggro off of your greater earth elemental.
Wind Shear: Of course, you will sometimes pull aggro from your Earth elemental, no matter how careful you are. An unlucky string of crits will do that to you, and it's when that happens that you'll want to have Wind Shear handy, since it lowers your current threat on your target. Of course, Wind Shear coupled with a ceasing of all of your attacks can only do so much, so it's still important to watch your threat.
Healing Wave: You should have this spell handy while solo-ing, anyways, since being able to heal yourself while leveling is one of the enhancement shaman's greatest strengths. You'll be using this ability to heal your greater earth elemental, and you will make great use of it for that purpose. You might also want to have Lesser Healing Wave handy, in case you space out and forget about your greater earth elemental, then realize you haven't healed him in a while, only to target him and see that his health is low.
Maelstrom Weapon: While this isn't technically an ability, and thus you can't link to it on your action bar, I wanted to bring it up anyways because it makes using Healing Wave on your greater earth elemental much easier. It also serves as a nice reminder to check on your greater earth elemental; any time you hit five stacks of Maelstrom Weapon, check to see if your greater earth elemental is in need of some healing.
Shamanistic Rage: You should keep Shamanistic Rage within easy reach while leveling anyways, but you'll especially want to keep it within reach while fighting an elite because you'll be using more mana. When you fight typical enemies, you usually spend some time out of combat, i.e. not using mana, in addition to the time you spend in combat, i.e. using mana. Thus you don't use mana very quickly while fighting regular enemies. While fighting an elite, however, you are always casting (or at least casting more time per minute than you would be otherwise), so using this ability to get your mana back is critical.
Fire Elemental Totem: The fact is, you will sometimes fight enemies that will outlast your greater earth elemental. He only has a two-minute duration, after all, and what to do when that runs out? Why, bring out this guy, of course. The Fire Elemental Totems summons a greater fire elemental to fight for you, but unlike the greater earth elemental, the greater fire elemental is focused on doing damage, not taking it. Thus, you will be the tank when you take him out, but how will you survive that onslaught of damage in just mail armor with no shield?
Feral Spirit: Why, with your wolves, of course! One of the best benefits of the ghost wolves summoned by Feral Spirit, aside from their taunt, which you will make liberal use of, is that they heal you when they do damage. The healing they do is so significant that combined with a few Maelstrom'ed Healing Waves, you can survive the onslaught of damage brought about by an elite. What could be better?
Bloodlust/Heroism: Ah, yes; this could be better. While you are alone, Bloodlust and Heroism will increase your melee haste, but also the melee haste of your spirit wolves if and only if they are out when you cast it. That means more healing done to you, more damage done by them, and a better chance of successfully killing your elite.
So, now that you have all of the necessary abilities within easy reach (as well as your normal damaging abilities like Stormstrike, Flame and Earth Shock, Lightning Shield--which is a damaging ability with the Static Shock talent--, etc.), you are ready to take down your first elite.
Get ready to fight your opponent by laying down your fire, water, and air totem of choice, leaving your earth totem slot reserved for your Earth Elemental Totem (yes, it actually counts as an earth totem, so you can't have your earth elemental totem and Strength of Earth Totem active at the same time. It sucks, I know.) I use the Flametongue, Mana Spring, and Windfury totem, respectively. I know Magma Totem would probably lead to a greater DPS output, but I personally prefer a totem I can set and forget to one I need to cast every twenty seconds. And did I mention that the one that needs to be re-cast every twenty seconds costs two and half times more mana than the one you can set and forget? Still, if you just want to cause as much damage as possible, then it's your prerogative to go with Magma Totem. I'm not here to tell you how to play, just to give you advice that you can decide whether to follow or not. If you do go with Magma totem, don't drop it until your enemy is in range, so you won't waste any mana on a blast of fire that doesn't damage your enemy.
So, you have your totems ready. Now just wait some time to regenerate your mana, and once it's back at 100%, it's time to fight. Open with a Flame Shock to bring your enemy into range, then cast Earth Elemental Totem. Your greater earth elemental should start attacking your target quickly, but be ready to heal yourself if you do take some damage before your elemental gains control. Now, you want to give your elemental some time to build up threat before you start attacking; think raiding pre-Burning Crusade. While waiting, you might do well to click on your greater earth elemental, then right-click his portrait and set him as your focus so you can always see how much health he has.
Now, once your elemental has established threat, start attacking your target. In these early stages of the fight, you'll probably shoot up from zero percent threat to almost pulling aggro rather quickly if you blow all of your short-term cooldowns, so just be careful. Since you have an effective cap on how much damage you can do (since you don't want to out-aggro your greater earth elemental), you'll want to focus on causing your damage in a way that is as mana-efficient as possible. Assuming you aren't at 95% threat (compared to your elemental), always auto-attack your target so that you can build up charges of Maelstrom weapon to allow you to quickly heal your greater earth elemental. However, don't use your damaging abilities unless you are around 80% threat or below, so that you can cease your attacks if you get a huge crit and get a lot of aggro.
If you are at that magic 80% mark, use your special abilities with the following priorities, stopping if you reach or pass 90% threat. If you have Improved Stormstrike, then use Stormstrike, since it will give you mana back. Then use Lightning Shield if you have the talent Static Shock, since it's free damage. If you don't have Improved Stormstrike, but you do have Static Shock, prioritize Lightning Shield over Stormstrike. If you don't have Static Shock, then don't bother with Lightning Shield. If you still have threat to spare, use Flame Shock, since it's more efficient than Earth Shock. You probably won't use Earth Shock much, since you should use the more efficient Flame Shock if it has run its duration, and you might cause too much threat if you use a shock more than once every 20 seconds or so. You'll probably never use Lava Lash. If you do cause too much damage, use Wind Shear and then stop attacking your target, even auto-attacking, until you greater earth elemental gets its attention again.
As you are doing all of this, you'll want to keep an eye on two things: the threat you have on your target, and your greater earth elemental's health. If your threat falls below 80%, use a damaging ability. If your elemental's health falls below 50%, heal it. Heal it sooner if you don't have many stacks of Maelstrom, and it will thus take you longer to cast the heal. When your mana starts to dip below 50%, check to make sure you aren't approaching dangerously high levels of threat, then use Shamanistic Rage while auto-attacking. I wouldn't recommend doing much else during this time unless you are sure you have threat and mana to spare, since using damaging abilities always poses the risk of out-aggro-ing your greater earth elemental, meaning you'll need to stop attacking, and you'll thus lose mana you could be gaining by attacking.
This strategy alone should be enough to help you with elites that a quest says only require two people to take down, but sometimes you'll need an extra "umph". Sometimes those two minutes won't be enough, and you'll find yourself with an angry elite looking at you and no earth elemental to help you. That's when you pull out the big guns: Feral Spirit, Fire Elemental Totem, and Heroism, in that order. The spirit wolves will heal you with their attacks, the greater fire elemental will damage your target, and Heroism will increase the damage you do, the damage your wolves do, and the healing your wolves do to you. This phase gives you about a minute to finish off your target, since your wolves only last 45 seconds, and you probably won't last longer than 15 seconds against an enemy you couldn't kill in two minutes.
So what to do in that minute? First of all, save your Shamanistic Rage cooldown unless you run desperately low on mana, since that 30% damage reduction could give you the extra time you need to finish your target off after your wolves die and aren't healing you anymore. Until then, make sure your wolves are attacking your target, make sure they use Twin Howl whenever it is off of its cooldown (to divert some damage away from you), and heal yourself if you find yourself below 50% health. Assuming you have taken care of all that, then just unload on your target with all that you have. Since you are now the tank, you don't have to watch your threat anymore. Thus, unload with Stormstrike, Flame and Earth Shock, Lightning Shield, and Lava Lash per usual.
If your wolves disappear and your target is still alive, then pop Shamanistic Rage and hope you can heal yourself and finish him off before he destroys you. Otherwise, you may have to try this whole performance again, or even worse... try to form a group. *shudder*
Of course, pulling this off method of killing an elite off by yourslef is an extremely satisfying exercise, so take what you now know and try it yourself if you are leveling a shaman through Northrend and are skipping the group quests because you can't or don't want to find anyone to help you with them. You don't need anyone to help you with them; you are a shaman.
Monday, August 2, 2010
A screenshot tells a thousand words
Nenunial of The Rambling Draenei Death Knight suggested we post our favorite screenshots, or screenshots that have some sort of meaning for us. I know I'm late to the game, but I thought I'd share one of my favorite screenshots with you now, since I have nothing else to post today.
Click for a larger version.
The short description is that this shot was taken of my priest after he used an Elune Stone on himself and then casted Holy Nova. There's a story behind it, though. You see, when I first bought Holy Nova from a trainer, I hadn't heard very good things about it from the various priests I had talked with. From what I had heard, there were simply better spells than Holy Nova for any situation where it might be useful. However, I was curious about it, so I gave it a cast after I got it. Well, what those curmudgeonly players had neglected to mention was that the animation for this spell is just plain beautiful. I was blown away by the visuals, and I especially liked the way the little specs of holy light lingered after the spell was cast. When the Lunar Festival came around, I hit upon the idea to use an Elune Stone in conjunction with holy light to create the effect above. It looked so good to me that I took a screenshot of it and kept it around, which is why I can share it with you today.
Click for a larger version.The short description is that this shot was taken of my priest after he used an Elune Stone on himself and then casted Holy Nova. There's a story behind it, though. You see, when I first bought Holy Nova from a trainer, I hadn't heard very good things about it from the various priests I had talked with. From what I had heard, there were simply better spells than Holy Nova for any situation where it might be useful. However, I was curious about it, so I gave it a cast after I got it. Well, what those curmudgeonly players had neglected to mention was that the animation for this spell is just plain beautiful. I was blown away by the visuals, and I especially liked the way the little specs of holy light lingered after the spell was cast. When the Lunar Festival came around, I hit upon the idea to use an Elune Stone in conjunction with holy light to create the effect above. It looked so good to me that I took a screenshot of it and kept it around, which is why I can share it with you today.
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