Some actual numbers on faction animosity

A month-and-a-half ago, I posted a rant of sorts about how I, as an Alliance player, always felt marginalized by Horde players for my choice to play Alliance in spite of the fact that I held no such animosity towards them. Though I did my best to avoid generalizations in my post, I did fall into their alluring trap more than once, so I decided that, since my blog now has a readership and occasionally gets linked to by major sites (i.e. WoW Insider), that I would set up a poll to see how the two sides really view each other. The poll generated a moderately impressive (in my mind, at least) 76 votes before WoW Insider linked to my post on the absurdity of feat-of-strength panic, at which point the number of results in my poll instantly shot up to more than four hundred in one night. Now, with the other three polls I put on my blog in the past, I was only trying to get a better idea of what kind of players comprised my readership, so I never talked about them. This one, however, deserves some discussion.

The most obvious conclusion we can make the majority of those who voted who play Alliance exclusively do not hold any animosity towards the Horde at all. Almost sixty percent of Alliance players who voted in the poll are like me, and have no issue with Horde players. Among that remaining forty percent, there is an even split between those who feel superior to Horde players and those who flat-out dislike them. This data stands in pretty stark contrast to the votes from Horde players, who had an approximately one-third-each split between indifference towards Alliance players, feelings of superiority to Alliance players, and flat-out animosity, with slightly more players leaning toward hostility than indifference. This means the ratio of Horde voters who weren't indifferent to a player's faction choice to Alliance players who weren't indifferent to a player's faction choice was more than three to one. In other words, it seems the Horde voters were more than three times more likely to judge a player for choosing Alliance than the Alliance voters were to judge a player for choosing Horde.

What interested me more, though, was that players who play both factions were also almost evenly split between those who like the Alliance more, those who like the Horde more, and those who like them both equally (there was a slight leaning towards the Horde, but it was still much more even than I expected). While my initial impression was that this means that the two factions aren't that different after all, if that were the case, there would have been many more votes in the "I like both sides equally" option (an option which I just realized has a horrendous typo in it; the horror! the horror!). The fact that there was an even split tells me that the two sides are, in fact, quite different, but not different in such a way that one is clearly superior to the other. Which one voters like more seems to be just a matter of preference. While I'm quite interested in knowing what those who chose either the seventh or eighth option prefer about their respective preferred faction, we can't make any conclusions about that from the poll alone.

You'll notice that in discussing these numbers, I always talk about the people who voted in this poll rather than WoW players at large; that's because we can't make any significant conclusions about the general WoW-playing populace from this poll. The people who voted in the poll are comprised entirely of people who read WoW blogs, which is the only way they could find it in the first place, and are likely comprised mostly of people who read WoW Insider. While WoW Insider is a pretty faction-neutral website, the general attitude of the readership it cultivates could certainly have a big effect on how those readers voted when they came to my blog. After all, I have never seen many posts on WoW Insider encouraging people to have more faction pride and trying to cultivate faction animosity, while I'm sure there are other WoW websites that do encourage that kind of thing. There are probably also websites that cater to players of one specific faction and make no attempt to hide their animosity for the other faction, which would certainly cause their readership to be comprised mostly of people who would pick option one or option four in the poll. Had one of those less neutral websites linked to my blog instead of WoW Insider, the results of my poll could have been very different indeed.

Another hint that this poll doesn't reflect the general WoW-playing populace is that 24% of those who voted play Alliance exclusively, while 40% of those who voted play Horde exclusively, yet according to Warcraft Census, there is an almost even split between total Alliance characters and total Horde characters. If the poll truly reflected the general WoW-playing populace, then shouldn't those numbers have been closer? There must be some sort of explanation for the inconsistency. A few pop into my mind upon some basic reflection; the cause of the inconsistency between my poll's data and Warcraft Census's data could be any one of them or a combination of some of them.

One, voters who play both factions tend to have more Alliance characters. If this explanation alone accounted for the difference between my data and Warcraft Census's date, this would mean that, assuming Alliance voters, Horde voters, and double-dippers have the same average number of characters per an account, the double-dippers would need to have, on average, about seven Alliance characters for every two on their account, or two and a half for every one Horde character. While I could see this happening if the double-dipping voters liked Alliance players more, and thus favored the Alliance in general, the fact that the double-dipping voters seemed to like both factions equally makes this possibility unlikely in my mind.I f this possible explanation had any impact on my data, I predict that it was minimal.

Two, the Alliance voters have more characters per account than the Horde voters. By my data, if we assume that double-dipping voters have, on average, equal numbers of Horde and Alliance characters, then that means the Alliance voters would need to have almost twice as many characters per account as Horde voters, on average (the real number is closer to seven characters per Alliance account for every four on a Horde account, so like I said, almost twice as much). This is an explanation I find somewhat more believable; if the stereotypes about the Horde being a more close-knit community than the Alliance are true, there would probably be more incentive for a Horde player to keep playing his high-level character. A cohesive community means more successful raiding, giving the high-level character more longevity after he reaches the level cap, and if Horde players just like talking and being around each other more than Alliance players, well, they certainly don't need to roll a new character to do that. Conversely, if it's true that the Alliance tends to have a less cohesive community, that would imply that raiding would be less successful on the Alliance side, giving players less incentive to stick to one character and keep him well-geared. With less incentive to keep playing at the level cap, it's easy to see how Alliance players in this situation could find leveling alts more attractive than sticking with one character. Now, it would be a converse error to assume that, because these conclusions make sense, the assumption they are based on must make sense too, but it's still an interesting possibility to ponder.

Three, voters lied in their answers. Since the poll is anonymous, I don't imagine people would have been motivated to lie about which side they play, though I could see the subjectivity of answers seven through nine creating this unbalance. Allow me to elaborate: if being an Alliance player is viewed by the blog-reading community as being more shameful than being a Horde player, as my results seem to indicate, then perhaps the Alliance players who happen to have one Horde alt that they don't play all that often were more likely to vote as double-dippers than the Horde players who have one Alliance alt they don't play all that often. Conversely, if being a Horde player is something to be proud of, then perhaps Horde players who have one Alliance alt voted as full Horde players for that reason. If this were the case, however, it would mean that more of the double-dipping voters should have, theoretically, favored the Alliance, since that would mean that more of the double-dippers would have been players whose primary faction was the Alliance than players whose primary faction was the Horde. Since this wasn't the case, I don't find this explanation very likely.

The fourth explanation, and the most intriguing and likely one in my mind, is that players involved in the WoW blogosphere are more likely to be Horde players. This is certainly supported by the old stereotypes that Horde players are more serious about the game than Alliance players, since serious players are more likely to be involved in the WoW blogosphere and the WoW internet-community at large. After all, if they are serious about the game, they probably seek out information to help them become better players. Since many sources of information about WoW have associated communities (the comments section of blogs or the forums of informative websites), it's not a big jump to make that serious players are more likely to become involved in WoW-based communities than less serious players. It could also be that Horde players are more likely to be opinionated and seek out the opinions of others than Alliance players, since opinions are what differentiates blogs from other online WoW resources, like databases. This would certainly help to explain why Horde players seem to have more pride in their choices than Alliance players, since being opinionated would support that kind of pride.

Again, this is all conjecture, as we can't make any definite conclusions from this data alone. However, my own guess is that the inconsistency between my data and Warcraft Census's data could be explained by the fact that Alliance players are more likely to roll alts and/or the fact that there are more Horde players in the WoW blogosphere than Alliance players. Another poll could certainly tell us just how much that first possibility factors into the difference between my data and Warcraft census's data, but that would be too specific of a poll for my sensibilities, and the fact that it would involve a different pool of data (i.e. votes from different people) could lead to it telling us less about the original voters than we think it would. And truth be told, such information gathering is beyond the scope of this blog and my intent for it. I do these polls as a diversion from writing, and a follow-up poll like that would turn this issue from a diversion into a full-on project. While that might be something good to do to occupy my time in between now and Cataclysm (as well as giving me something to write about), it's not something on my radar for now. Maybe some day, though.

Putting a sense mystery back in the game?

About a month ago, I wrote about the contrast between playing as a new player and playing as someone with more experience with WoW. Well, the topic has once again been brought to the forefront of my mind, because as I was taking my long-suffering shaman alt through Dragonblight today, I did a quest in a crypt that brought me back to my first serious character, an undead warrior (the crypt reminded me quite a bit of Tirisfal Glades, which is why it brought me back to that time of newbish-amazement). Once again, I was overwhelmed by that same sense that I talked about in my last post on the topic: that sense of immersion, of wonder, of amazement over what has been seen. It brought me back to that time when things were simpler, and I could enjoy these simple things without wanting/eagerly awaiting more.

I theorized in my last post that what differentiated my behavior as a player now and my behavior as a player then was the fact that I was more concerned about efficiency now; more concerned about efficiently leveling my character, efficiently leveling my professions, efficiently playing the game in general. The only reason I could be this concerned was that experience had given me the knowledge of various was of playing the game, as well as knowledge of the potential consequences of playing the game "incorrectly". Is it any surprise, then, that when I finally realized today what it was that made the game so amazing when I first started playing, the answer I hit upon was the simple concept of mystery?

It really is a very simple idea: if gaining knowledge of the game is what takes the wonder of it away, then not having that knowledge is what makes the game so wondrous. When we don't know what amazing abilities and spells are going to be available to us at later levels, it's easier to enjoy using the abilities and spells we have now. When we don't know that there are better designed quests waiting for us on a new continent, it's easier to enjoy the quests we are doing now. When we don't know how powerful the gear available to us at higher levels is, it's easier to be excited about an upgrade at a lower level. And in a larger sense, as I have said before, it's easier to enjoy the game now when you don't know that better content is on its way and you don't know just how much better than content is going to be.

So the question in my mind then becomes, is it ever possible to regain this sense of mystery? Is it ever possible to somehow return to a time when things were new? I doubt it's possible to do so without starting over in a completely new game, but I don't think it's completely impossible to do in WoW. The game is always changing, and WoW as it is now is a very different game from WoW when it first came out. Considering just how much is going to change in Cataclysm, there's certainly plenty of potential to rekindle that sense of mystery. The quests in the redesigned Azeroth will be quite new to us, as will the overall design of the zones. Though we will be getting many of the same abilities as we level a character, the order and pace at which we get them after Cataclysm comes out will be quite unlike the order and pace at which we get them now. The talent trees will also be quite different, and spending talents in them will be exceptionally different as well, for we will be getting one point every two levels.

Yes, the potential is certainly there, so the challenge lies, for me, at least, in spoiling as little as possible for myself. I've been dutifully avoiding spoilers of what the new zones and the redesigned zones look like and what their quests there will be like, but I recently discovered that I probably have to do even more to truly make Cataclysm the wonderous experience it can be. If I want Cataclysm to really bring back some of that mysterious wonder into the game, I need to try to stay as virginal as I can when it comes to knowledge of the mechanics as well. That's why I've stopped trying to become familiar with the rogue talent trees and the order in which rogues get abilities (my first alt after Cataclysm drops will probably be a rogue); I want the experience to be new, fresh, to be something that can revive that feeling I felt when I first started playing. And in order for that to happen, I need to know as little as possible going in.

And I'm ok with that. I'm ok with the idea of avoiding information for the sake of making the experience better, because I know it will be worth it. I'm also with the opposite, with sacrificing some small parts of the experience for the sake of knowing more when Cataclysm comes out. I do still keep up with many of the changes to the mechanics of the game, because as a new player, there's some level of foreknowledge that I just need to have, or else I won't feel comfortable going in. That sense of mystery can never be completely reclaimed, after all, so there really isn't any harm in knowing some things beforehand; it's just the way a player like me plays.

Redemption for the Lich King?

Warning: This post contains spoilers concerning the final fight against the Lich King in Icecrown Citadel. If you haven't seen his death cinematic and are trying to remain spoiler free for whatever reason, please don't read on.

WoW Insider recently featured an interview with a Lutheran pastor who plays WoW about the various ways those two aspects of his life intersect. Though I skimmed over most of the interview, one answer in particular caught my attention:

Do you find any of the themes in WoW morally or spiritually disturbing?

Sure. Life is spiritually and morally disturbing. I can't tell you how bummed I was that there was no redemption for Arthas, or even Illidan, for that matter. I know a lot of people love to hate those guys, but I saw humanity in them: our weaknesses, our vulnerabilities and the way little evils lead to greater ones, until we're trapped and hardened, with no answer, escape or hope. So I desperately wanted a way for their stories to be redemption stories. Humans need redemption.

I'm sure he's not alone in this issue. I know quite a few people who, in spite of knowing that Arthas was probably going to die at the end of his battle and not have a chance at redemption, wished for a happier ending for the Lich King. While the Lutheran pastor brings up the question of whether villains in general should be given a chance to redeem themselves, I think it's better to focus our discussion on one, the Lich King. So I ask, should Arthas have had a chance at redemption, rather than simply dying by our hands?

I have already discussed how WoW, as a piece of art, has a responsibility to challenge our ideas and assumptions with its story, so that already justifies denying its villains redemption. The idea of a villain is basically an embodiment of evil that our hero (or heroes, in the case of WoW) can fight directly to metaphorically strike down all that we consider evil. Evil, that ambiguous concept we can't seem to pin down completely, yet we all recognize as something objectionable. It's comforting to be told that evil is not as omnipotent as we fear, which is why redemption for a story's villain can often be a very gratifying ending. Of course, this means that, if we want to believe that everyone deserves a chance to redeem themselves and that everyone has some bit of good inside of them, then there is no better way to make us question our assumptions than to show that a villain is truly evil and can't be redeemed. Perhaps that's why Arthas simply died at our hands rather than having a chance at redemption.

But was Arthas really beyond redemption? Though I can't find the exact dialog anywhere online, in the Alliance version of the Halls of Reflection (this might happen in the Horde version too, but I wouldn't know), Uther tells us that the reason the scourge haven't run rampant over Azeroth already might be that the last remnant of Arthas's humanity, the last bit of good within him, is holding the scourge back. This alone seems to give some possibility of redemption for Arthas, since that means there might be some good in him that could be brought out. However, it says something darker to me, as well. If Arthas, as the leader of the scourge, struggling to hold them back, that must make for some inner conflict the extent of which we can't possibly fathom. It says to me that the little bit of Arthas left in the Lich King can't be leading that great of an existence when the struggle to be good is a literal struggle.

We see more evidence of that struggle during Arthas's death cinematic. Arthas's final words gives us a bit more of a glimpse as to what it was like to be the Lich King.
Arthas: "Father! Is it... over?"
Terenas: "At long last. No king rules forever, my son."
Arthas: "I see... only darkness... before me."
Both of Arthas's lines gives us a bit more insight into what that last remnant of his humanity was going through while he was the Lich King. Upon realizing he is about to die, he asks his father whether it is "over". That line doesn't give me an image of Arthas as the embodiment of evil; it gives me an image of Arthas suffering just as much as the souls within Frostmourne. The line even suggests that Arthas is happy it's over, which doesn't surprise me. After being the Lich King for so long, and after being as infused with evil as he has been, I doubt Arthas could image being good again. The line "I see only darkness before me" confirms this suspicion in my mind; Arthas was so beyond redemption that he can't fathom anything other than evil.

So, between the hell of Arthas's literal inner conflict and his inability to fathom anything other than evil, was redemption really the best outcome for him? I say nay. When a person's existence is that torturous, death really may be the best ending for them. That humanity that the pastor saw in Arthas isn't the same humanity I see in him. The pastor saw Arthas's humanity as a symbol of our own humanity, a humanity that could potentially be brought to the forefront again. I see his humanity as similar to the Christian view of humanity in general, meaning not what is human within us, but what is common to all us people: we are trapped in a realm of suffering (this world), with release found only in death. In the same way that we humans can't return to Eden because we are cursed with knowledge of good and evil, Arthas cannot return to his pre-Lich King form because he has been so corrupted with evil. Thus, it is my opinion that death was the best outcome for him.

Now, I know I am basing a lot of this speculation on the actual death of Arthas, meaning it's all based on story points that were probably constructed to support him dying, rather than him potentially being redeemed. However, considering how much of a lore novice I am, that's really the best I have to work with, and hey, it's still canon.

Guild achievements: a further push towards an extrovert-oriented WoW?

I can't lie, my fellow introverts; I don't think we're long for this world (of warcraft). I say this after reading a post on Larisa's blog about how Blizzard lifting the cap on the number of players who can contribute to a guild's leveling process and achievements could destroy smaller guilds. For those of you who are out of the loop, let me catch you up to speed. The guild leveling process and, assumedly, the earning of guild achievements, was once going to be limited to whatever was contributed by the top 20 contributes in a guild. This would prevent the huge guilds from having too much of a leg up over the smaller guilds when it came to the guild leveling process, and would thus discourage people from joining a large guild just for its size. However, it was recently announced that this cap had been scrapped a long time ago, and anyone and everyone will be able to contribute to a guild's leveling. This means that the big guilds will have an undeniable leg up over the smaller guilds in the leveling and achievement-gaining process, and will thus gain access to those awesome guild perks and the rewards of those mass-effort guild achievements that much faster.

As Larisa puts it in her post, there has to be a reason Blizzard is doing this. "They don’t give away carrots randomly; they normally have a purpose, trying to make players to play the game in a certain way. They handed out badges to make us play more five-mans than ever before, and extra badges to make us do it with random strangers. They’ve made us revisit old raid content through the weekly raid quests in a futile effort to revive raid instances we’d left behind. If they now mainly reward quantity-related guild achievements, they apparently want to give incentives for guilds to grow bigger." Well, I have my own theory as to why they're dangling this metaphorical carrot, and it's doesn't bode well for the future of WoW and us introverts' place in it.

A few months ago, I predicted that Blizzard was designing WoW to be more appealing to extroverts, a market not typically targeted by a company making an MMO. After all, video games have typically been the realm of the social outcasts, especially MMOs, due to the amount of negative publicity they got--when they got any publicity at all, that is. Extroverts just can't stand being social outcasts, so the social outcasts tend to be introverts, and thus most gamers were introverts. And considering that most of the original video games were single player or designed to be played by only a few players playing together (an intimate experience), its no wonder introverts flocked to video games. MMOs were no different; though they were more social in nature, the player-bases were small, keeping things intimate, and thus introverts still felt very much at home.

Extroverts are a difficult market for developers of MMOs to tap, and in the same way that the holy grail of toymaking was once a doll that could be marketed to boys (and thus the action figure was born), the holy grail of game design may now be an MMO that can be marketed to extroverts. However, with WoW having grown as successful as it has, it has the qualities it needs to break into the extrovert market: a large community and mainstream status. The large community appeals to extroverts directly, and the fact that WoW is mainstream means that being a WoW player doesn't instantly put one in the same league as social outcasts. Both of these facts work together to create a positive feedback loop (or vicious cycle, depending on who you ask) where each fact encourages the other to become more true, and each fact helps make itself more true. A large community attracts more people who judge something by its popularity, as well as bringing in new players simply by word of mouth, and thus the community will grow because people will flock to it due to its size. Mainstream status means people will start to see WoW in a more neutral light or even a more positive light than they might have otherwise, helping make WoW more mainstream. A large community helps make the game more mainstream simply by saturation; its hard to say that a game is for social outcasts when you know "normal" people who play it. And of course, being mainstream attracts more people to WoW who might not have otherwise considered trying an MMO, causing the community to grow.

Blizzard is now closer than any company has ever been to cracking that market, and encouraging large guilds may be one more small step in the process. While I've never done a mathematically rigorous survey, there is a pattern I have noticed in my own experience with introverts and extroverts that might give us some insight into why this is the case, and I invite you to see if this pattern applies in your own life. I, like many, have an account with the social networking site Facebook. In my experiences with this site, I have noticed a striking pattern among the people I am friends with: the more extroverted they are, the more friends they'll have on their friends list. While the inverse doesn't seem to happen consistently (I myself, an extreme introvert, have a relatively robust 162 friends, and my best friend, an introvert himself, has 344), the extremely extroverted of my friends invariably have friends numbering in the 700s, 800s, 900s, or sometimes more. Now, while I can't make any legitimate guesses as to why this is the case, I can guess that extroverts seem to somehow gravitate towards large numbers of people, even if those numbers are meaningless when it comes to how close those connections are (that closeness is what we introverts strive for, which is why I have the fewest friends out of most of the people I know).

This might give us some insight into why Blizzard is pushing guilds to be bigger in Cataclysm. Extroverts gravitate towards large numbers of people, so if there are more guilds with large numbers of people, wouldn't that appeal to them? Not only that, but the fact that the game supports and encourages that kind of large-guild structure would invariably affect and influence other facets of the game--both its design and its playerbase--to become more extrovert-friendly. With this push, I could easily see WoW becoming the first MMO to achieve success with the extrovert market, which, considering that extroverts are a bigger market than introverts (about three times bigger, at last count), would mean the game would be very successful upon reaching that point. Part of me wants to be happy that Blizzard is in the position to reach that milestone of game development, that modern-day entertainment holy grail. But I can't be, because Blizzard can only do it at the expense of its introverted players.

We need only look at the likely outcome of these changes to which guild structure is encouraged to see that Blizzard is fine with sacrificing its introverted players for the extroverted market. Anyone can tell you that the more a group of people grows, the more superficial and shallow the relationships between those people become. Eventually, a group will reach a size where smaller sub-groups will form just so people can maintain that needed amount of substance in their interpersonal relationships. Robin Dunbar once theorized that there is a limit to the number of people we can reasonably interact with and maintain a meaningful relationship with. That limit is called Dunbar's number, and the most commonly used figure for it 150. If we have to interact with more people than that, we simply won't be able to form meaningful friendships with them, or even worthwhile acquaintanceships (it's a word; look it up). However, the number is more accurately put somewhere in the range of 100 and 230, and I would guess that introverts have a lower Dunbar's Number than extroverts, as well as a lower tolerance for situations where their Dunbar's Number is exceeded.

I bring all this up because expanding guild sizes will invariably result in a decay in the depth of interaction between members of that guild, unless those members form their own cliques within the guild, which defeats the whole purpose and will probably result in guild-ending drama. For an introvert, this is our worst nightmare, for we search for quality in our friendships, not quantity, and we have no issue with sacrificing the latter in pursuit of the former. Extroverts, it seems, have no problem sacrificing quality in their interpersonal relationships for quantity (I'm sure they have their limits, but their limits are certainly much higher than ours), and these changes to guild leveling and achievements will encourage guilds that do just that: boosting their numbers at the expense of the depth of interaction between their members. Again, extroverts will love this and could possibly flock to the game, if not as a result of expanding guild sizes, then as a result of all of the consequences of expanding guild sizes, while introverts will slowly be driven away as the game we grew to love becomes a game that just isn't made for us anymore.

Now, I'm not going to say for certain that Blizzard is doing this intentionally; they probably aren't. They're probably just trying to design WoW to be as accessible, enjoyable, and successful as it can be, and this pattern of changes (WoW becoming more extrovert-friendly and less introvert friendly) is probably an unintentional byproduct of that goal. As I said in my post on Real ID and the future of WoW, WoW is probably just a victim of its popularity. As it stands now, I don't think Blizzard is trying to design this game specifically to be introvert-unfriendly; I think they're just trying to design the game to be the best in can be, while still trying to make it a successful game, and encouraging large guilds is just one of the ways they're doing that. While I don't fault Blizzard for it, though, that doesn't change the fact that I don't think WoW is going to be a very friendly place for us introverts in the future.

So what to do? Well, for an extreme introvert like me, who doesn't even talk with anyone in-game outside of party chat in PuGs and the occasional deep one-on-one conversation with another player, I'll probably just join the biggest social guild on my realm, a guild where my quiet lack of presence won't be noticed, so that I can benefit from those achievement rewards and guild perks as soon as possible. It's an unfortunate course of action*, but it seems I'll have no choice in this new, more social WoW. So I will join a guild, as much as I may regret not being able to contribute to the guild in any way other than mass-effort achievements, guild leveling, and money in the guild bank from Cash Flow, but that's just what I have to do in this WoW that is slowly devolving from the game I fell in love with.

But I'll keep playing. As long as there is fun to be had, as long as there is a way to work around these pro-extrovert leanings in the game, and as long as I can still enjoy myself, I will keep playing. And as long as I keep playing, I will keep writing about this game that has brought me more than five years of fun times (that's out-of-game time, of course, not /played time), because I just can't help but be analytical about WoW--that's just how I am. So worry not, my faithful readers (and new readers, alike); I and this blog aren't going anywhere.

*As a player, I was happiest when I was guildless. The only times I ever resented being guildless was when I would PuG a raid and guilds would ask me if I wanted to join. I know they were trying to fill their rosters with actual raiders, but the message I always got from it was that one can't be happy without being in a guild, a message I disagreed with intensely and resented.

The absurdity of feat-of-strength panic

When I realized just how soon patch 4.0.1 was coming, I was hit by this ambiguous sense of panic I had never felt before about the onset of a patch. I'm sure others are familiar with it, though: the sense of urgency, the idea that we need to do whatever we can in what little time we have been given before it isn't available to us anymore. Leveling weapon skills, for example; once Cataclysm comes around, weapon skill will no longer factor into the game; they'll be gone completely. We'll start with our characters knowing all of the proficiencies for weapons they can use, and we won't have to go through the arduous process of level up a skill we have neglected. Of course, this means that Master of Arms and Did Somebody Order a Knuckle Sandwich? are going to become feats of strength. Things like that, the idea that certain aspects of the game won't be available to me anymore, set me into a panic as I wondered, should I level my weapon skills to try to earn those achievements before they go the way of the dodo?

As you may be able to tell by the title, I decided against it. I realized that this kind of panic was only brought on by the fact that these achievements aren't going to be available, and that fact was causing me to misjudge whether I should do them. After all, if I got any enjoyment out of leveling weapon skills as anything other than a way to pass time*, I would have gotten those achievements by now, wouldn't I? The fact is that I just don't think that leveling weapon skill is all that fun, especially when I know that, as a druid, weapon skill is completely irrelevant to my playing. Quite simply, I had no good reason to level my weapon skill, and the fact that these achievements weren't going to be available was the only thing making me consider doing them. I suppose this gave me a first-hand lesson in what Saniel was talking about when he commented on my post about reverse feats of strength by saying, "No one likes being told that there's parts of the game they'll have no way of ever accessing." I found out that I myself was not immune to this kind of thought.

I suppose the take-home message from this whole experience is that if your only reason for wanting to do something is because it's not going to be possible to do later, it's best to ask yourself whether you really want to do it before you commit a substantial amount of time to it. I suppose this advice could be applied to other areas of the game as well, such as content that will be available later, but that you want to do while it's still relevant. A friend of mine, who just downed the Lich King, seemed to be suffering from this kind of delusional motivation. He was burnt out from raiding, to the point where he feared logging in each night to try to kill Arthas again. He complained to me about how he just didn't enjoy the game anymore, and once he killed the Lich King, he was going to quit. Non-raider that I am, I couldn't help but wonder, is it really worth it? Is it really worth it to play the game long after it has ceased to be enjoyable for you, just so you can kill a raid boss while he still matters? Are the bragging rights and the satisfaction really worth the unnecessary misery?

I ask because, at the end of the day, the Lich King is just another boss. He may be the most difficult boss now, but new expansions will come out with even harder bosses, and defeating the Lich King won't seem so impressive then. I'm sure the same could be said about the weapon skill achievements: we may be able to smile when we see them in our feats of strength panel immediately after Cataclysm comes out, but soon they'll be just another box in our achievement panel, giving no more satisfaction than anything else in there, if any at all. So really, when we decide to go for these achievements, whether we be motivated because they are going to become feats of strength or because they are going to become trivial, the real question is, is it enjoyable? Because if it isn't, then we have only ourselves to blame for not enjoying the game.

*One example of a way to level weapon skills to pass time is to attack the enemies in Violet Hold for weapon skill before starting the instance. Before patch 3.3, when we got the ability to teleport into the instance through the dungeon finder, I spent a lot of time waiting for people to get there, so I'd just attack the enemies with my weapon to level up my skill.

Gear demotion and justice points

I'm going to write this post at the risk of putting my foot in my mouth due to lack of information, but I will give my reasons for believing what I believe so that if I look like a fool, I can at least look like a reasonable fool.

We already know that, come Cataclysm, the current emblem system will be replaced by a point system to simplify and streamline the process of getting gear from heroics and raids without depending on raid drops. (Which, incidentally, has motivated me to retire the "badges/emblems" tag for my posts and replace it with "gear currency", which reads better than "badges/emblems/points".) In order to finally retire the current badges and emblems, Blizzard is converting most of them to gold when they release patch 4.0.1, but emblems of triumph and emblems of frost are going to be converted into justice points. Not only does this mean our current emblems will give us a head start on gearing up in Cataclysm (though probably not a big one), but more intriguingly, emblems of triumph and emblems of frost are being converted to justice points at the same rate. (2.75 points per emblem)

Now, I am going to make a few assumptions at this point before I go on, assumptions which could easily be proven wrong by the PTR, but I'm going to take that risk. First of all, I'm going to assume that gear that can be bought with emblems now will be purchasable with justice points after patch 4.0.1 is released. While it might make sense from the players' perspective to save those points for Cataclysm gear that we'll use for a while, rather than spending now it on gear we'll likely replace while leveling, it wouldn't make sense from a business perspective to keep players from having that option. After all, I'm sure there are many players play just to see their numbers go up, and denied the option to do so with gear that was once available to them, how would they respond? Not well, I'd imagine.

The second assumption I am going to make is that both emblem of triumph and emblem of frost gear will cost justice points equal to 2.75 times their current emblem cost. Yes, this means I am assuming that a piece of armor that costs 50 emblems of frost and a piece of armor that costs 50 emblems of triumph will cost the same amount of justice points. Were it not for the fact that the two emblems will be worth the same number of points, I would not make this assumption. However, if emblems of triumph and emblems of frost are going to be converted to the same number of justice points each, it's only reasonable that cost of gear would be converted similarly. Suppose someone is limited to heroics and has been saving up emblems of frost for one special item by running the daily heroic each day. Just before he has enough emblems saved for that one special item, patch 4.0.1 hits. Now, if the point costs of emblem of frost gear was calculated at a higher emblem-to-point ratio than emblem of triumph gear (that is, unless the cost of emblem of frost gear were 2.75 points per emblem, while the cost of emblem of triumph gear was less than 2.75 points per emblem, a possibility I'll go over later), then that patch has diminished the fruits of his labor. That patch has now made it so he needs to work harder for gear that will soon be obsolete, and why would Blizzard do such a thing?

Of course, we must also ask the opposite question: why would Blizzard make emblem of frost gear so easy to get this late in the expansion? Elementary, my dear Watson; it's a final gear demotion before the expansion. Gear demotion (a term I made up for this post) has happened before, in the form of heroics and their daily quests rewarding better emblems with each patch after and including 3.2. When patch 3.2 made emblems of conquest the base-line emblems for heroics, gear that had once been exclusive to raiders who could enter Ulduar-25 or ToC-10 became available to anyone who could run heroics. Thus, the gear became less exclusive, which is why I say it was "demoted". The same thing happened in patch 3.3, which made emblems of triumph the baseline emblems in heroics. Why did Blizzard do this? To make it easier to get right into the most current tier of raiding content.

It's my theory that, by converting emblems of triumph and frost to justice points at the same rate, Blizzard is doing one more gear demotion as the expansion comes to a close. At this point, anyone who wants to defeat the Lich King while he's still relevant doesn't have long to do so, so being able to farm heroics for emblem of frost gear will certainly give players a leg up in getting the gear they need to do so. That combined with the more powerful talent trees and the stat conversions should make the process easier, allowing more people to see the content Blizzard put so much effort into designing, and in the end, that's a worthy goal.

The druid resto tree: she's not broken, she's just a baby

Though I've been trying to keep myself spoiler free when it comes to the story of Cataclysm, one thing I have not denied myself is news on the mechanics of the game and how those will be changing. New spells, changes to the professions, changes to the stats, etc--I have been keeping up with all of these changes, mostly because I want to be prepared when Cataclysm drops to make the best decisions and not spend my time undoing or regretting a bad decision I made due to lack of information. It was only through the reflection brought on by this news hunt that I decided that my inevitable Worgen alt would be a rogue (Before that choice, I had considered a mage, warrior, and hunter, but it was upon reviewing the talents and ability distributions, as well as the abilities themselves, and some personal reflection on why I enjoy playing my druid, that I decided on the rogue.)

But there is a darker side to that news hunt, and that darker side is that we see classes in the middle of the great balancing act that is game design. We grow attached to abilities or talents that never make it to the live servers, or we languish in worry as we see that our class just isn't doing well in the design process. That latter point is affecting us resto druids on the beta right now. The comments I've seen from druids on the beta trying out resto healing consistently say that it needs work, and now the math has shown that our mastery bonus is the worst thing since pre-nerf Oculus. It's fair to say that this isn't a good time for resto druids, and that has lead to a lot of worrying on the part of the druid community. Will it be fun to heal in Cataclysm? Will mastery, this new and exciting stat, be of any use to us? Will we all just roll/switch to shamans/priests/paladins when we find out that we can't really heal anymore?

I used to worry about these kinds of things, but I now realize that it's better to think of resto druids on the beta as a work in progress, rather than a broken class that Blizzard needs to fix. After all, we're going to go through quite a shift in game design when Cataclysm comes out, and with Blizzard actually trying to keep all of the classes balanced, it can't be easy designing us druids to fit that philosophy, so I'm happy to not cry foul until a week or two before the game ships.

Let me elaborate on that point about game balance. Back in the day (I'm a player who grew up during vanilla WoW but came of age in Burning Crusade), the game was much less balanced than it is now. Once upon a time, warriors were the class that could tank, and any class that could heal was expected to do so (they couldn't do much of anything else; the game just wasn't designed to support them doing so). To put it simply, Blizzard didn't really care all that much about the classes being on par with one another. This mentality allowed the classes to evolve in their own special way, since they Blizzard wasn't all that worried about balancing them, and each class gained a unique feel to it. However, as the expansions went on, Blizzard started to care more about class balance, to the point where Wrath of the Lich King has been the most successful class balance in WoW history.

Of course, by the time Wrath rolled around, the classes had all developed their own unique feel to how they play. We druids, for example, specialize in healing with HoTs (heal-over-time spells) and tanking by absorbing damage, rather than avoiding it (this was especially true in Burning Crusade). This worked fine in Wrath of the Lich King, where the rapid damage spikes of raid bosses and our HoTs somehow worked well to make us good healers without us being overpowered (to my knowledge). However, come Cataclysm, that damage model will change. When Cataclysm rolls around, damage will be much more consistent, and healing won't be a race to top off every player's health bar. Healing will be more about using the right spell at the right time than using your most powerful spell as quickly as possible. Because of this, players will spend more time with their health below the maximum.

In an environment like this, HoTs would have dominated. The biggest weakness of our HoTs right now is that players are likely to snipe our healing by healing a target to full health before our HoT has run its duration, leading to wasted mana (though that was never really an issue). In a world where players won't be healed to full health immediately after they take damage, this would not have been the case. Our HoTs would have been able to do much more healing than they can now simply because players will be at less-than-full health more often, giving our HoTs ridiculous mana efficiency. After all, their current mana costs are balanced around the idea of them not healing for the full amount because of other healers bringing our targets to full health almost immediately. If those mana costs stayed the same while HoTs were able to heal for much more, they would have been ridiculously mana-efficient.

Of course, in a world where mana is supposed to matter and where Blizzard wants us using most of our spells, this just couldn't be. They would need to balance us around the ridiculous efficiency of our HoT's, making our direct heals much less appealing and effectively gimping us when we needed to use them to add extra healing to our style, like when we are the only healers in a five-man or when we are tank healing and our HoTs aren't doing enough. We would have been stuck in a style reminiscent of Tree of Life healing circa early Burning Crusade, when Tree of Life limited us to casting heal over time spells, meaning we could never use our only pure direct heal at the time, Healing Touch. It was this limitation that lead to the creation of the Dreamstate build, which forewent Tree of Life in favor of buffing Healing Touch. This was a viable build in heroics, where our HoTs might not have been enough to heal everyone there, but it petered out in raiding once the efficiency of Tree of Life HoT healing was revealed.

But I digress. We have been a HoT-centric class ever since Burning Crusade, and that needs to change in Cataclysm for us to remain balanced with the four other healers. In order to do that, Blizzard needs to effectively rebuild the druid class from scratch, taking our old abilities and reworking them to fill new niches, allowing us to retain some of what makes us unique (our HoTs) while still allowing us to fit into their new philosophy of healing design without being overpowered. Blizzard really had to overhaul our class to make us fit into this new game design, so it doesn't surprise me that they haven't perfected us yet. And considering everything else they have to do on the beta, I'm going to be patient as I wait to see what they do to make us good again.

In other words, the druid's resto tree and resto playstyle as they stand in beta aren't a failure, or a disappointment, or a sign that Blizzard isn't giving the same level of attention to us as they are to the other classes; they're just an indication of just how much work Blizzard has to put into designing it. While all of the other trees started mature and didn't need to change too much, Blizzard had less to work with when it came to designing the resto tree, so our tree is, if you will, younger than the rest. It isn't broken; it's just a baby.

My overall thoughts on Operation: Gnomeregan

As you know if you read my last post, I have quite a few thoughts on Operation Gnomergan. Having already given my thoughts on the sudden nature of the event, I think it's time I give my general thoughts on it: what went right, what went wrong, and all that jazz. I'll start with what I thought went wrong, then end with what I thought went right so that this post can end on a high note. Obviously, I won't discuss the fact that the event came out of nowhere in the first section, since that was covered by my last post. I warn you now that this post has spoilers about the entire event, so if you plan on participating in the event yourself, please don't read on any farther.

The bad:

-We test tanks that we never end up driving
As part of the questline for Operation: Gnomeregan, we perform diagnostic tests on mechano-fighters before the battle starts. We tests their weapons, their attacks, and the ejection seat, all of which are mapped to different buttons. The whole thing felt like something we had seen before at the Argent Tournament: a training mission. Those quests felt like they were preparing us to take those tanks into battle. And then the battle came... and we fought on foot. Now, I had no issue with us fighting on foot, and fighting on foot was very fun, but after testing those tanks to make sure they work and practicing with them, it's a bit disappointing to never use them.

-Underwhelming ending
This where the spoilers really come in. At the end of Operation: Gnomeregan, Mekkatorque and his adventurers reach a radiation bomb like the one that originally poisoned Gnomeregan. Turns out Thermaplugg put it there hoping to wipe us out, but rather than telling us that himself, he sends his "Brag-Bot" to tell us about it. The fact that we never get to lay a finger on or even see the infamous traitor is disappointing enough, but it gets worse. The event ends with the bomb going off and us players being teleported back to Tinker Town before it does, as we are greeted with a cutscene of the entrance of Gnomeregan with radiation flooding out. Once we are back in Tinker Town, the event ends with this monologue:

High Tinker Mekkatorque says: Curses! We had to fall back. But Thermaplugg's lost, and he knows it...he's only bought himself time.
High Tinker Mekkatorque says: We hold the surface, and when the radiation clears we'll assault and recapture Gnomeregan with a force twice this size.

A short but sweet ending? Hardly. If the bomb is twenty six times as powerful as the one that first decimated Gnomeregan, as Thermaplugg claims, then we haven't won. After all, wasn't the radiation the exact reason why we haven't been able to take back Gnomeregan for good thus far. And now that there's twenty-six times as much of it, with all of it concentrated in the exact part the gnomes were trying to retake, how can we make any use of the city? How can Mekkatorque say that he holds the surface when the radiation would make going in there dangerous for him and his gnomes, but still safe for the irradiated residents of Gnomeregan? These plot holes make it very difficult to believe that Gnomeregan is any more in the Gnomes' grasp than it was before. This leaves the ending feeling pretty empty, and very disappointing. We put in all this work for so little payoff? And now Mekkatorque is telling us it was a success? Hardly a way to end the only thing to tide Alliance players over until Cataclysm.

Of course, the event wasn't a complete failure, or even a major one, or else I wouldn't have enjoyed it. With that said, let's move on to the good:

-Invincibility during the invasion
As we stormed Gnomeregan, Doc Cogspin cast the following spell on us: "Surgeon General's Warding: When the "Doc" is on the clock your health won't drop." In other words, as we stormed Gnomeregan, there was no risk of us dying. I know I've spoken against this kind of risk-less-ness in other areas of the game, but with a mobile event like Operation: Gnomeregan, death would have been a huge inconvenience. In the time it would have taken to run back to our corpse, Mekkatorque could have moved on way beyond where we were when we died, making finding the event difficult and making us miss crucial developments in this event's story. Since we can only participate in this even once, to make a player miss a large chunk of it would be quite cruel, so Blizzard did the right thing by putting Doc Cogspin in.

-Ending with an AoE-fest was a great way to see off the expansion where AoE reigned supreme.
Using AoE to bring everything down isn't going to be a viable tactic once Cataclysm hits, so it was only appropriate to see off AoE's dominance with a massive AoE-fest, which is exactly what Operation: Gnomeregan was. As the event wore on, more and more enemies attacked our motley crew, making focusing on one at a time simply impractical. It may have been mindless at times, but it was nice to give AoE one last "Hurrah!" before it went back to something we only use situationally.

-The quests were just plain fun and humorous.
The Gnomes' personality really shined through in these quests, from the fact that a machine was used to test potential speeches to the fact that the Motivate-a-tron could backfire and turn gnomes into critters, as well as the fact that one quest involved emotes. And while testing tanks we never got to drive did lead to disappointment, it was fun while we did it, and the scouting allowed for some nice views of Gnomeregan from the air. Of course, the final quest where we zerg-rushed our foes was all sorts of fun, and considering that it was Wrath of the Lich King's last hurrah, it's a nice way to end the expansion.

So what did you think of Operation: Gnomeregan? Were there any points I listed that you thought were good points when I listed them as bad points or vice-versa? Also, for my Horde-exclusive readers, did Zalazane's Fall suffer from similar problems and have similar high-points? And for those who play both sides, how did the two events compare?

Event out of nowhere: Why the sudden nature of Operation: Gnomeregan was a mistake

The title of this post is a reference to a NSFW image which you can view here.

On Tuesday night, I participated in Operation: Gnomeregan. I stood proudly as a soldier of the Alliance alongside Gelbin Mekkatorque as we tried to take back the surface of Gnomeregan from the troggs and leper gnomes. And though fun was had by all (I'll give my full thoughts on the event on Monday), something about the whole turn of events seemed... off. But why was that? Here I was, fighting along side my allies, as well as Mekkatorque's armies and mechano fighters... say, where did those come from? And on second thought, why would Mekkatorque use a letter to tell me about an invasion that was set to occur the night after I got it. As you can tell by the title of this post, the fact that Operation: Gnomeregan came out of nowhere is what seemed off to me.

Now, you might think I'm wrong in saying that Operation: Gnomeregan came out of nowhere. There has been plenty of news about it on the various WoW fansites, as well as an official announcement on the official WoW fansite, so how can I say there wasn't any lead-up? Easily, dear readers: where was the build-up in Azeroth itself? WoW went from a stagnant world where very little was happening outside of Icecrown Citadel and practically nothing was happening outside of Northrend, to a world where the leader of an entire race decides, seemingly on a whim, to attack a city and take it back for gnomes everywhere. So quickly, High Tinker; so soon. I couldn't help but wonder: has he been planing this for a long time? Did he amass those armies in secret? Did he just pull those mechano-fighters out of a locker somewhere? And why did he have me test drive them if I wasn't even going to be able use them? (But that's a gripe for another post.)

Point is, in Azeroth itself, this grand undertaking, this significant event in the history of the Gnomish people, seemingly came out of nowhere. It started one day, and all of a sudden, it was done. No planning, no preparation aside from the few quests we did, nothing. Any planning that was done was done by the High Tinker behind closed doors, and while that is feasible, I find it hard to believe that Mekkatorque would put such a large amount of effort into this operation and then send out letters to anyone of the proper level without them first proving their worth. The whole thing just seems rushed (in-universe, mind you; I'm not making a jab at Blizzard there), and that made it rather anti-climactic.

Blizzard poster Lylirra addressed this very point in a forum post on Tuesday:

Q. Why are these events so short in duration?
A. Both Operation: Gnomeregan and Zalazane's Fall are intended to be fun in-game events that allow players to experience the continuation of the Gnomeregan Exile and Darkspear troll storylines, and we think each quest line achieves just that. As several gnomes would argue, just because something is "short" doesn't mean it's not worthwhile! ;)

They certainly nailed the fun in-game event part, but as a continuation of the Gnomergan Exile's storyline, I find that Operation: Gnomeregan just doesn't measure up, mostly because of all of the plot holes created by its brevity. Where did Mekkatorque get all of those mechano-fighters to fight his battle? How did Mekkatorque know so much about Gnomeregan's surface level without any scouting to check it out? Why did Mekkatorque launch this attack after so little planing? And if he did spend a lot of time planning, did spend time building up his mechano-forces, and did send out scouts, why would he recruit every tom, dick, and harry who was powerful enough to come and help him? With an operation of this scale, shouldn't he have tested the loyalty and ability of the forces fighting with him before sending them in? Sure, theoretically, our exploits in Northrend show that we are powerful and trustworthy, since the questlines don't allow us to be anything other than loyal to the Alliance, but no real leader would put so much trust in such rogue adventurers that he would invite them via letter to help with the operation. And even then, though the massive zerg rush was very fun, wouldn't it have been an inefficient tactic? Wouldn't it be better to have a few highly trained forces, rather than a bunch of adventurers attacking as they please? And wouldn't a leader as smart as Mekkatorque have known all this?

Now, the quests leading up to the invasion itself were a small way for us to prove our loyalty to the Gnomeregan Exiles, but if Mekkatorque had been planning this for a long time, he would have doubtless planned a better way to test our loyalty than a few quests. What could that way have been, you ask? A preparation stage. I think Operation: Gnomeregan (I would probably say the same thing about Zalazane's Fall, but I'll make no assumptions without having experienced it) should have been preceded by a week-long or more period where we would have helped Mekkatorque prepare for the invasion. Blizzard could have taken the same quests we did that led up to the invasion and stretched them out as dailies over the course of that time. This would have allowed us to help build up the mechano army, recruit soldiers to make a sizable fighting force, improve Mekkatorque's speech, and do the requisite scouting in a believable amount of time. Doing all of this would also have allowed us to build up Mekkatorque's trust, making it believable that he would trust us to fight alongside him.

I know I might be alone in this. I know I might be the only one who thinks that there wasn't enough lead-up to the event, that the plotholes are as gaping as they are, and that the whole thing was too short. But such is the life of an opinionated person, and I wouldn't put these thoughts out there were I not ready to defend them from people who disagree.

A decline of heroics, or a rise of player creativity?

It's been ages since I ran a heroic dungeon. I'm not sure exactly when I swore them off, but it couldn't have been long after patch 3.3 was released, because the dungeon finder made heroic groups so easy to form that I chain ran them like nobody's business. With those badges rolling in like Draenei alts rolling into Azuremyst Isle after Burning Crusade was released, I ran those heroics non-stop until I got all the gear I wanted. It was then that I realized, why am I going through these heroics? Because aside from the Frozen Halls, they just weren't interesting. Kill order wasn't important anymore, the bosses didn't provide a challenge, and victory was practically guaranteed. They were just plain not fun, so I stopped, and with Wrath's solo content exhausted and raiding out of the realm of possibility, I went back to leveling alts, leaving the world of heroics behind to evolve as it would.

And evolve it did, as I have become quite aware over the past few weeks. I first became aware of this evolution when I read a WoW.com Breakfast Topic asking players how they spice up their heroic runs. My comment could be summarized, as Skarn so eloquently put it, thusly: "...while there ARE things you can do to make an instance more interesting, once you reach the point that you have to come up with these crazy things, is the place really worth running any more? Hasn't the activity worn itself out?" However, what got me thinking about this whole situation in a different way was a response to my commend that said the following: "what he's saying is that running the heroics itself should be fun all by itself, and the fact that he has to change a normal routine a bit to keep his interest is not what he's paying for. " That latter part got me thinking: what if I really am just sticking too closely to my normal way of doing things? What if finding ways to spice up boring content isn't a sign that the content has run its course, but an expression of creativity on the part of the players, and I'm just showing a lack of creativity by not doing that?

The second thing that got me thinking about this possibility was a post by Larisa of the Pink Pigtail Inn about people trying to take short-cuts in instances and how doing so is a waste of time, since taking shortcuts usually makes the run take longer (since they usually don't work) than it would have taken to just kill the enemies being skipped. My comment on that post remarked that taking those short-cuts probably wasn't about saving time; it was probably about trying to make those boring old heroics interesting, and adding the possibility of failure back into heroics definitely makes them interesting again, since that possibility has long been absent from them. In other words, these shortcuts are another way to add dimension to easy content, and a rather impressive way at that, for finding and pulling off these shortcuts is no easy task.

So I was forced to ask myself, am I just too used to the fun in this game being handed to me to see that fun can still be had in heroics? Or is the fact that players are resorting to these measures to make heroics interesting a sign that they really have run their course? Really, what the question comes down to is, should this game be fun on its own without players needing to make their own fun, or is it ok for the game to exist in a way where players do need to make their own fun?

It's not an impossibility, after all. Rare as they may be, games and mini-games where you largely have to make your own fun have been successful. The best example I can think of is Nintendo's series Animal Crossing, a life sim lite where there really aren't many true "goals", and the few goals there are take so long to get that you need to make your own fun along the way. However, the game provides so many outlets for you to do so that it's easy to make your own fun. There is a huge variety of goals in the game: paying off the loan on your house, as well as successive loans on your house's expansion; trying to catch every fish in the game, trying to catch every bug in the game, trying to complete the exhibits at your museum, trying to improve the layout of your house to appease the Happy Room Academy (who judges your house for what you put in it), etc. There are also a number of creative outlets within the game, including a tailor shop where you can make designs for all sorts of uses (t-shirts, laying on the ground, etc.), you can change the layout of the town itself by planting trees and flowers, you can buy furniture to make your house look the way you want it to, etc. All that is to say that a game where you have to make your own fun isn't that out-there of an idea.

But could that idea be applied to WoW? Unlike WoW, Animal Crossing was designed from the group up to support this kind of play, which exactly why it's the main form of play in that game. WoW, on the other hand, has a much more straightforward design where it's much clearer what you're supposed to do for fun: level up, do quests, go into raids, go into battlegrounds, make money for the money sinks, etc. Really, the most creative aspect of the game is making money, since there are more ways to do that than any other activity in the game. Not only that, but for the longest time, it was also the part of the game that inspired the most creativity on the part of the players, mostly through people who found ways to fight in so-called "auction house PvP", or players who found unorthodox markets to try to corner.

Thing is, like most games with this kind of design, the game stops being fun once the content is exhausted. Animal Crossing could keep being fun even after you completed everything there was to do in the game (and I doubt anyone actually did that) because of all of its creative outlets, but as we have seen with heroics, when a game is designed to be fun in a straight-forward way, it loses its appeal much faster once we have exhausted that fun. The Wrath heroics have been around for long enough that that very well could have happened ages ago, and the lack of challenge in heroics now just makes it harder to ignore. Players trying to find ways to spice up their heroic runs and taking short-cuts to put some challenge back into heroics are really just doing the only thing they can do to make heroics fun again: putting some creativity into a part of the game that wasn't designed to support a creative playstyle.

So, where does that leave us with our original question? Are these alternative ways of running heroics signs of heroics being on the decline or signs of players playing more creatively? Well, I think it's both, and the second is simply an instinctual reaction to the first.

On the pre-expansion doldrums

Having grown bored with my shaman, my priest, and my level-cap druid, I have given in to my alt-itis and rolled another alt. This time, he's a warrior, who is currently level 15, and I will likely leave him there for a while since he ran out of rested experience this morning. I did roll a rogue before him, but I have more-or-less decided that my inevitable Worgen alt will be a rogue, so I dropped that idea out of fear of becoming bored with the rogue class before Cataclysm comes out. I knew I wanted to play a class that was as melee-based as possible, though, so if a rogue wasn't in the works, a warrior seemed like an acceptable substitute. Thus far, he has been pretty enjoyable to play, his lack of survivability notwithstanding, and he is serving his function as a pre-expansion diversion quite well.

And yet, playing my warrior alt is a bittersweet experience, and that bitterness comes from the fact that he'll likely be more fun to play in a few months. Once Cataclysm is released, the questing will be more enjoyable, the more even rate at which I learn new moves will make the evolution of the class as I level it up more interesting, the quests (from the looks of it) will reward more useful gear, etc. In other words, I won't fear leaving Bloodmyst Isle for the older content; hell, I may look forward to is. Those are the pre-expansion doldrums, and I'm sure many players are feeling them right now. The raiders are probably feeling them because it seems pointless to try to get better gear when the expansion will make that gear meaningless. PvP'ers might not be feeling it as much, because PvP always seemed to me to be a part of the game that derives the most its fun from the experience itself, rather than the obtainment of the end goal. The manifestation that is affecting me the most, however, is the knowledge that leveling alts is going to be more fun once Cataclysm comes out, so any alt I level now won't be as fun to play as it will be. Thus we are forced to ask ourselves: why play when the game is going to get so much better?

Thankfully, there's one question I asked myself that re-motivated me to continue leveling alts: isn't it still fun? Most players would say yes, and then follow it up with some "but" about Cataclysm. But here's the thing; as it is now, the idea that leveling alts will be more fun after Cataclysm comes out is just an abstract concept floating about in our minds, the result of news and announcements about an expansion pack that we have not yet experienced (well, that those of us who are not in the beta have not yet experienced). We are comparing our current gameplay to content that we have only heard about (in descriptions and announcements) or perhaps seen (in screenshots or videos). Thus, we are our own obstacles when it comes to playing before the expansion is released, because the game we are comparing our current experiences to exists only in our mind. Yes, it does technically exist on those beta servers and in Blizzard's development HQ, but in our own realm of experience, it's just in our minds. Once I recognized that, my warrior no longer felt bittersweet to play.

Of course, that can't change the fact that it's more efficient for me to use an AoE ability as my primary attack than a single-target ability that is probably supposed to be my main attack, but at least it allows me to feel more intelligent about the way I play my character. And hey, it's still fun.

Talents, prerequisites, and thinking like a player

It has been quite some time since the event that inspired me to write this post occurred--almost two weeks, to be exact--but the issue I want to discuss doesn't derive its relevance from any recent development; it is a point that is, I think, worth discussing at any time. About two weeks ago, Ghostcrawler (WoW's lead systems designer) posted a comment in a forum topic about senseless prerequisites within talent trees (like when a PvP ability is a prerequisite for a class's core PvE ability; Dragon’s Breath being required for Living Bomb was given as an example). In response to players asking for their removal, Ghostcrawler had this to say:

This is the kind of feedback I categorize as thinking like a player not like a designer. As a player, removing prereqs in talent trees removes restrictions. Rather than having to make a hard choice, you can take what you want. Under that logic, it makes sense to you for the developer to remove the prereqs. But you could make a similar argument about the talent tree tiers as a whole. If I didn't have to spend those 5 talent points in tier 2, then I could get that extra talent point somewhere else! Wouldn't that give me as a player more freedom, and doesn't more freedom always lead to a better game?

I can see where his thinking is coming from, and like many of Ghostcrawler's posts, I can sympathize with the point he is trying to make, but I think he missed one key point in this discussion: what about the developers thinking like players? Because from the other comments he made in the thread, it doesn't seem like there's a lot of that going on.

Ghostcrawler's main point seemed to be that the reason these seemingly senseless prerequisites exist is to force the player to make actual choices about whether it's worth it to take those less useful talents in order to take the more useful ones. This I can understand, but I find his method misguided for several reasons. For one thing, when the prerequisites are for talents that players need to take, because those talents are part of their main DPS arsenal (the original post lists many examples), it really isn't a matter of choice. When players are forced to take talents they'll never use in order to get their necessary talents, all the designers are doing is inconveniencing those classes. Now, this can be justified by the idea that it's up to the players to find creative ways to take advantage of these situational talents, but there are some cases where that just isn't possible. When will a frost death knight DPSing in a raid use Hungering Cold? And won't an arms warrior who's DPSing in a raid lose damage if he going out of range to charge?

And here's the thing: yes, these paths force us to make choices about how we spend our talents points, as Ghostcrawler himself said.

A lot of the game is about making choices. If the choice is hard, that means both options are compelling. If the choice is easy then the game has less depth because instead of picking left vs. right you are picking right vs. wrong.

I completely agree with him on this, but being forced to choose between taking a lack-luster talent in order to take a good one and not taking either isn't a compelling choice if no player in their right mind would take the second option. When that's the case, the developers only succeed in making the player resent the game for reducing his choice by forcing him to spend extra talent points that could be spent elsewhere.

I can think of another reason Blizzard might want these abilities to be behind less useful talents, but that one doesn't hold up, either, even from a developer's standpoint. That reason is that, perhaps those abilities are behind prerequisites because they give the player too much power after spending only one talent point. Maybe the developers are just trying to increase the cost of the more useful abilities without flat-out increasing the number of talent points it takes to unlock them. If that's the case, there are other alternatives to putting them behind barely useful/useless prerequisites that only make the player resent receiving a useless talent when he reaches his odd level. They could always nerf the talent so it isn't as important of a part of the player's rotation, thus making it feasible the talent would be worth just one talent point. The other option, though, is a much better one when you think like a player: make the other talents in the tree more appealing.

To go with the old saying about trying to keep kids on the farm when they've seen the city, don't make it harder to get to the city; instead, improve the farm. Do you want players to actually consider whether or not they should take the talents you want them to put thought into taking? Then give them some viable alternatives. This is especially important in an era when we are only getting a talent point every two levels, so each talent needs to feel significant. If they really want the choice to be difficult, the solution is to improve the less attractive options, not to make the more attractive options more difficult to get. As players, this would be a much better alternative than direction Blizzard seems to be taking now. I know I'd rather antagonize between two excellent choices than two mediocre ones, and this would still create the same kind of difficult choice between two compelling options that Ghostcrawler is so focused on.

What really irks me is that it seems like Ghostcrawler, and possibly Blizzard in general, hasn't considered this option. This possibility shines through especially in this response by GC:

Let's take your argument to the next level. What if there is nothing in the first tier that appeals to me? Why can I just skip over tier 1 and spend points in tier 2 directly? For that matter, why do I have to spend down a talent tree at all. If I would use both Earthquake and Feral Spirit, shouldn't I be able to get both of those? Is it a better game that I am denied that option?

While I agree with him about his larger point, that talent tree mechanics exist the way they do now to prevent players from cherry-picking talents, I can't agree with where he's coming from about skipping the first tier of talents if nothing there appeals to you. I can't agree with him, because in that case, the problem isn't a player trying to maximize his potential power within the system; the problem is the system itself. If there is really nothing within the first tier that appeals to players, but Blizzard still plans on making players spend talent points in that first tier, how can they call that talent tree successfully designed? See, though the current talent tree system exists as it does so player can't cherry pick talents, that doesn't mean that players are supposed to feel as if they would like to cherry pick talents. The fact that players can feel the restraint of those restrictions shows that the talents in the tree just aren't that appealing, which is the fault of the designers, not the players. In an ideal world (of warcraft), players wouldn't notice those restrictions because the talents would be so awesome that players would wish for more talent points to spend. The fact that players can feel those restraints shows that the choices just aren't as appealing as they should be, and when those choices aren't appealing, the talent tree is just not well-designed.

All of the conclusions I came to in this post would be abundantly clear to Ghostcrawler and team if they would try thinking like players. We players are fine with making difficult decisions when it comes to our talents if both options are viable and both are appealing. If Blizzard can make that happen, then there will probably be less complaining about the talent trees. Sure, players will probably just complain about how the talent trees are too good and they need more talent points or fewer talents, but at least it would be easier for Blizzard to defend their design against that kind of criticism. After all, it's easier to defend there being too much of a good thing than there not being enough.

Why I'm excited for the difficulty spike in Cataclysm

One of the biggest consistencies thus far in Cataclysm's development is that parts of the game that are currently simplistic are going to become more complex and difficult. We won't be able to AoE our way through heroics, where crowd control will be necessary again, and it looks like solo questing is going to become more difficult, as well. Raid healing is going to become more about using the right spell at the right time, rather than using our strongest heals on everyone because we have the mana to do so. Things are going to require more thought and strategy when Cataclysm comes out, rather than being the way they are now, where the game design allows us to brute-force our way through content. Rather than using strategy and kill orders on trash in heroics, we AoE it down because the tank won't take unhealable damage if the group does so, and the healers have the mana to heal through that damage. Rather than healers using many different heals for each situation, they use their strongest spells because they have the mana to do so. Come Cataclysm, this will be different, and as you could probably tell from the title of this post, I am looking forward to that fact, and here's why.

As it is now, in the age of Wrath of the Lich King, the game starts out easy. 5-mans may have been more difficult back in the beginning of Wrath than they are now, but let's be honest, they were still pretty easy back then compared to Burning Crusade's heroics. Anyone who did heroics back in the days of Burning Crusade remembers that we used normal dungeons and faction rewards to gear up for heroics. You Wrath of the Lich King babies (I don't use that term derisively, mind you; I, for example, and a Burning Crusade baby) might need to read that again. We didn't just jump right into heroics to gear up for raids; we first geared up for heroics, then we used the gear we got there to gear up for raids. I'm not saying this as any sort of "back in my day... you kids have it too easy" speech; I bring that up only to prove how difficult heroics were back then. And, of course, we used crowd control. Extensively. A group without any viable crowd control probably couldn't complete a heroic, and victory was far from guaranteed, like it is now. (Has anyone been unable to complete a heroic since patch 3.3? And, before patch 3.3, did you ever go longer than a few days in a row without being able to complete the daily heroic? Didn't think so.)

And as for soloing? Judging by the fact that my level 69 shaman, decked out in nothing but green-quality quest rewards, was able to take down, on his own, a level 72 elite, soloing is pretty easy now, too. In fact, I've always been disappointed by just how easily my priest and shaman have been able to decimate anything in their path as they go through Outland and Northrend. Now, truth be told, I don't remember what it was like to level through Outland back when it was the final continent, and I'm not going to pretend I remember, so let's just say that leveling now is a very easy activity in which you must engage two mobs at once to make it at all interesting or challenging.

But the ways we play through solo content, dungeon trash, and raid healing now all have one thing in common; they are the kind of play-styles that, in expansions past, were only possible by over-gearing the content in question. When yo look at it, there's a certain natural flow to the way things are going to work in Cataclysm. Soloing will start out difficult, but as we get heirlooms to put on our alts, and as we get better gear at the level cap, it will become easier, and we'll be able to take on more than one mob at once. Heroics will require kill orders and crowd control at first, but once we out-gear them, we'll be able to use AoE instead. Raid healing will require strategy at first, but once we out-gear the read, we'll be able to just use our strongest spells. In other words, what is now the default behavior will become a reward for out-gearing the content you are doing. Rather than brute-force being the main way we play, it will only be the way we play through content we have long surpassed.

In addition to the natural flow it creates, I like the fact that brute-force will become the privilege of those with better gear because the progression of complex/difficult to simple/easy allows the simplistic ways of tackling content to act as a sort of consolation prize for players who want to run content they outgear. If someone decked out in raid gear needs to do some dailies for gold for the repair bills, the fact that the enemies are now easier to kill makes the experience different from how it was as he was leveling up. The enemies are dying faster, and he can take on a few at once, so it becomes more fun. If a cutting-edge progression raider wants to run a heroic for extra valor points, the fact that he out-gears the dungeon will allow him to AoE his way through it, providing a nice contrast and a nice break from the progression content he is used to, where he has to use crowd control and kill order. Healers will see a similar benefit; if they decided to run content they outgear, either for the valor points or to help out a less geared guildmate or friend, they'll be able to just spam their most efficient heal since they'll have enough mana regeneration and healing output to do so.

This will be especially nice in contrast to the current way the game progresses as we get better gear. As it is now, all three of the areas of gameplay that I mentioned start out simple yet intense (except with leveling, which is just simple), and then get simple and boring when we outgear the content. Heroics started out as an AoE spam fest, and became a faster AoE spam fest when everyone got better gear. Raid healing started with us using our strongest spells to maximize our healing output, then devolves to us continuing to use those spells--but using the less often--when we get better gear. In other words, the way we play when we out-gear content and the way we play when we don't are very similar, but the former is less interesting, so your reward for getting better gear is that old content becomes more boring. With Cataclysm, this will not be a problem, for the playstyle difference between content we out-gear and content we don't will make doing content we out-gear a change of pace, and thus make it enjoyable.