Por que*, NDA?

*For those who don't know, "¿por que?" is Spanish for "why?" and is pronounced "poor kay?" Get it? "Por que" and "NDA" rhyme... and now for your usual blog entry.

With the news that the Friends and Family alpha test will soon begin, it's hard not to be excited, but my excitement is tempered by a little thing called the non-disclosure agreement (abbreviated as NDA). For those who don't know, the NDA states that those involved in the F&F alpha may not release information about the content they play to the public, so if we are to glean anything from the F&F alpha, it will have to be through shady wikis or websites that people covertly send screenshots to (it happened for Wrath, and I'm sure it will happen again). However, the beta test usually follows on the heels of the alpha test, and those who participate in the beta are not bound by the NDA. So why bind those on the F&F alpha by an NDA when that information will be coming out once the beta is released?

There could be a very practical reason that Blizzard doesn't enforce an NDA on the beta. On the F&F alpha, considering that everyone there is a friend or relative of a Blizzard employee, they have some personal stake in following the NDA. If they don't follow it, they risk being shunned by whichever employee brought them in to test the expansion. Beta testers, however, usually have no such personal stake. Since most beta testers are just random WoW players, their stake in the game goes only as deep as the game itself, so they would likely feel no qualms about ignoring an NDA. Blizzard could go so far as to kick people who break a hypothetical NDA off of the beta or even suspect their accounts for a while, but that's where the practical considerations come in. Considering how many people are involved in the beta, to try to police all of them and make sure they never release information to the public would be a nightmare.

However, I remember that when I was on the Wrath of the Lich King beta, I was still able to take screenshots with the F13 key. If Blizzard preferred that beta information not leek out, they could have taken the basic precaution of disabling screenshoting, yet they didn't. This says to me that they don't at all mind information on the beta leaking out, but they do mind information from the alpha leaking out. One must ask, what's the difference?

Perhaps Blizzard sees the alpha as a safe place to perform their preliminary balancing without the players flipping out over extreme changes. Suppose Blizzard adds a new spell to the game. The testers on the alpha try out the spell and show that it is extremely overpowered. Blizzard nerfs the spell to bring it more into balance with the other spells. If anyone had grown attached to the spell and expresses disappointment with it being nerfed, a Blizzard employee can personally reassure them that it was for the greater good, and because there are so few testers, sentiments such as attachment to a particular spell won't be too widespread to be handled by Blizzard.

Now, imagine if Blizzard had no NDA on the alpha. Testers would have released info on that new overpowered spell, and the community would be in a frenzy. Those who play the class receiving the spell would celebrate, while those who don't would freak out over what they perceived as that class getting an unfair advantage. Those who play the class would say "tough" and claim it was their time to shine. Then Blizzard nerfs the spell. While the rest of the playerbase is relieved, the players who were going to receive the spell now freak out because they had grown so excited over the spell, and now they won't be getting it. Now they start complaining about it, while everyone else tells them to deal with it. By handling their major balancing away from the public eye, Blizzard can avoid these kinds of scenarios. Sure, they still see more minor versions of those scenarios on the beta, but at least they can reduce the frequency and severity with which they happen by doing their preliminary balancing on the alpha, away from the public eye. But if Blizzard really does have an NDA with their alpha testers for that reason, I hate to think about what that says about us as a community...

My musings on Cataclysm from a story perspective

For those of you who don't know, the next WoW expansion was announced last weekend during Blizzcon. It is called Cataclysm, and you can read up on the story and new features on Blizzard's official site, linked before. Normally I'm not much of a lore nerd, but the announcement motivated me to do some research on the lore behind it, and I noticed an interesting pattern that has been consistent with all of the expansion packs thus far: each one has featured a main villain who was not inherently evil, but become that way when he was corrupted by someone else. Illidan admired the Burning Legion for the purity that lay under their chaotic behavior, and was thus turned by the satyr Xavius and eventually given his power by Sargeras. The Lich King became evil when Arthas Menethil was corrupted by the demon Kil'jaeden. Deathwing was driven insane by the whispers of the Old Gods. It seems to me as if Blizzard is simply having us face the minions of the faces of true evil in the Warcraft universe. Then again, although players were able to kill Kil'jaeden in Burning Crusade, facing a powerful being like Sargeras or the Old Gods would probably mean the end of us.

What interests me is that way that Blizzard transitioned away from the Burning Legion as our main enemy to our main enemies being the old gods. Although the Burning Crusade did have us facing the Legion for the most part, the main villain of Wrath of the Lich King was himself created by the Burning Legion's magic. Thus the legion's influence has really been the subject of two expansion packs, not just one. The Old Gods have also been a part of our adventures thus far, though not prominently as the Legion. We faced K'thun in vanilla WoW, but the Old Gods didn't make a return until we faced Yogg-Saron in Ulduar. Now we are going to be facing a being corrupted by the Old Gods, Deathwing. If Blizzard continues that pattern they started with Burning Crusade, where we players first reactively kill the immediate threat to our world then proactively kill an even greater, related threat, perhaps we will be facing more Old Gods after we face Deathwing.

Another thing of note is that, thus far, both of the evil forces responsible for the conflicts we players have faced (the Burning Legion and the Old Gods) have been motivated by the desire to return the world to it's original chaotic form. For those of your unfamiliar with the Dungeons and Dragons alignment system, it makes a distinction between good vs. evil and lawful vs. chaotic. The distinction is important, for it shows that those seeking order are not always fighting on the side of good. I bring that up because the fact that WoW's main villains are chaotic, not evil, implies that we players are not fighting the age-old fight of good and evil, but we are simply fighting to preserve the ordered world which we inhabit and which the titans created so long ago. If this is true, then our cause is not so noble as we thought.

The motives of the Old Gods and the legion are more clear than ours, as are the reasons for them. Both wish to return the world to its original chaotic form, as I mentioned. The Old Gods wish to do this because that is the world they ruled. When they were defeated by the titans, their power over the world also vanished. Thus they probably wish to rule the world again. Sources suggest that they are now simply sleeping below the earth while their telepathic whispers drive the creatures above insane. Perhaps by driving the powerful creatures of the world insane, they wish to restore the world to some form of chaos. Even if they can't rule that world, I would imagine it would satisfy them to know that the world has become as they left it. As for the Legion, well, spreading chaos just seems to be what they do.

Back on the previous topic, I see two possible reasons for Blizzard continually using secondary villains as the main antagonists in their expansion packs. One reason is that it allows them to continue the story of Azeroth without needing to create new evil forces. If we players were to simply defeat the Burning Legion and the Old Gods as a whole, there would be no one left for us to fight. Of course, getting rid of the Burning Legion as a whole would probably be more difficult than defeating the Old Gods, but regardless, if we players succeeded in removing the true threats to our world, the only conflicts left would be those within the world itself. Sure, there are still many fights to be fought among the mortal races, but those are really more patch material (e.g. patch 2.3 and Zul'Aman) than expansion material. An expansion really wouldn't feel like a proper expansion unless we have a very powerful entity to fight, and though there is probably enough left for many expansion packs, if Blizzard wants to continue the story of Warcraft, their choice is to either let players kill the true antagonists of the lore of Warcraft and need to create new villains, or to protect the villains and allow their plots to continue.

That's the practical reason for the pattern of casting corrupted heroes as main antagonists, but there could be a hidden meaning in Blizzard's decision. As I mentioned before, Illidan, Arthas, and Deathwing were all more or less good before being corrupted by some other evil force. If we were to analyze WoW as a story, then this sort of corruption would definitely be a motif, the deeper meaning of which would probably be that we can never truly expunge evil from our world. Although there are still villains aplenty for us to fight, perhaps future expansions will see the corruption of prominent figures in the lore who are currently on our side and whom we will be forced to face after they become evil. My bets are on Varian and Garrosh. Their anger makes them prime targets for any sort of corrupting force, and to be honest, I know a lot of players that would be happy to see them go.

Then again, perhaps it is not other characters who will be corrupted, but instead it is us. Sargeras, the creator of the Burning Legion, slowly became corrupted as he fought the demons of the Legion in an effort to maintain order in the universe. As I mentioned before, that's all we are really doing, maintaining order in a world that is threatened with chaos, not maintaining good in a world that is threatened with evil, although it may seem that way. Are we next? Will we become the Old Gods' or the Legion's new minions? I wouldn't discount the possibility. Perhaps we will then go from Alliance vs. Horde to Corrupted vs. Uncorrupted. (I doubt that will happen; if Blizzard were to corrupt the players themselves, it would be a gradual thing that we would all be involved in.)

I would just like to add that I got most of my lore from WoWWiki, so if anything I have said here is wrong or oversimplified, please let me know.