The questionable legitimacy of objective rewards

So I'm back with more tales from the warrior front. As I mentioned in my last post before my laptop went down, patch 4.0.1 revitalized my interest in the game by turning my warrior alt from a joke to a force to be reckoned with, one who can take down red-colored-level monsters and complete red-colored quests with ease. What was once something of a burden has become fun; so fun, in fact, that I didn't want to stop playing my warrior. Killing things became so fun that I started to resent any break in the process, including needing to go to a capital city to learn my new moves. It was when I realized that this was the case that I was a bit shocked; after all, isn't leveling up the whole point of the leveling process? Why was I suddenly not looking forward to hitting those levels?

I remember that back before patch 4.0.1 made leveling a warrior fun, I looked forward to each time I leveled up. I would count the little bars in my experience bar and watch them fill, waiting anxiously for that time when I would see that golden light. Though all levels gave me a bit of a rush, the even ones especially were the ones I looked forward to, for that was when I would get my new abilities. But more than that, each of those levels represented something I had accomplished, something I had worked for. Leveling at the lower levels was usually not that fun, and each time I leveled up, it was like the game was telling me, "You should feel satisfied with what you have accomplished." And I did, and thus, though the leveling process was a pain, it was worth it for the sense of satisfaction I felt upon ascending to each new level.

Now, however, things are different (for me, at least). As I play my warrior, I don't watch the experience bar at all; I've been taken by surprise by that golden light quite a few times, in fact. And while the odd levels are met with joy (I do get to spend a talent point, after all), the even levels are met with less enthusiasm, since I have to go out of my way to learn whatever new ability I get at those levels. In other words, as I play my warrior now, leveling up is merely incidental to the leveling process; it's just another event that happens along the way. And it has become that way because the leveling process is now exciting in its own right, because this class is finally fun to play.

But now I'm a bit jaded, because I have experienced the contrast between playing for the objective statistical rewards and playing in spite of them. I have experienced the contrast between playing the game for the end result and playing the game for the sake of playing the game, and I'm not sure I could go back to the former. To put this in terms that might be more familiar to people who don't level alts frequently, the difference I have experienced is like the different between running a raid because you want to say you killed that boss or because you want the loot upgrades they drop, and running a raid because you enjoy raiding. One mode of play is motivated by the end-result, the other is motivated by the playing itself, and that's what I'm experiencing on my warrior now.

After experiencing this shift in mode of play, I realized that much of the time I have spent playing WoW has been spent in results-oriented mode. Most of the heroics I ran were motivated by the emblems that dropped and the gear that could be obtained with them. Most of the alts I leveled were leveled so that I could experience playing them once they got their better abilities and became fun, but I ended up leveling even the few that I managed to get that far for the sake of that flash of golden light. Maybe that's why I was never able to get into raiding; I was there for the experience, not the loot, the achievements, or the bragging rights, so I had nothing to motivate me to gloss over the things I found tedious or frustrating about the whole process.

So what does that mean in the larger scheme of things? Well, for me, it means I have become skeptical of many of the rewards we get for playing and their purpose in the game. By a metaphorical show of hands, how many of you would play WoW if there were no gear, no leveling up, no achievements, etc.; just the gameplay? Some of you would, I'm sure, so the other question is, how long would you play a game like this? Would you have raided ICC for ten months (going on eleven) if the gear weren't there to motivate you or to pace your progress? Maybe you would have; I won't make any assumptions, I'm just presenting these questions as food for thought.

But where am I going with this? Truth be told, I'm not sure myself; this mode of playing WoW is so new to me that I'm still getting a feel for it, for its nuances and consequences. I suppose the only thing I can say for now is that, though levels, gear currency, achievements, and gear itself might serve larger purposes within the game, they should be incidental to the gameplay itself. They should be there as conveniences and game mechanics, not as motivators to play. When they do become players' reasons to play, that's a sign that the gameplay itself isn't enough to keep people playing, and that says to me that the game just isn't fun.

How did we put up with this for so long?

There are a lot of negative things I could say about patch 4.0.1. I could talk about Warlocks losing the names of pets that they have had since long ago, names they grew attached to, before a bug took them away (but that's going to be fixed, anyways). I could talk about how atrocious I find the new tree of life model, but time and accepting that I'm probably done healing on my druid has turned my abhorrence into utter indifference. I've already talked about the loss of tree of life as a permanent form, so no point in belaboring that point. Of course, the fiasco of post-4.0.1 class balance is a topic rife with discussable points, but I can't be angry about any of these things. I can't be angry about them because of the changes this patch has made to my warrior alt.

You see, I rolled my little warrior (currently residing at level 25; he was level 22 when the patch hit) as a way to enjoy this game before Cataclysm comes out, but leveling him was a very trying process. Heroic strike, the ability we were supposed to use while fighting one-on-one, consumed so much rage that using Thunder Calp, an ability meant for AoE combat, was actually more rage efficient, even against one enemy. Of course, this meant the damage of a low level warrior was incredibly sub-par, for there weren't many other abilities I could use to increase my damage. I could use Rend, a damage over time ability; Overpower, which I could only use after one of my attacks was dodged, i.e. not all that frequently; and Victory rush, which I could only use once per battle, anyways. In short, at low levels, warriors lacked the abilities they needed to be viable in one-on-one combat.

With patch 4.0.1, however, that all changed. My warrior went from level 22 to 25 (granted, I was two bars away from 23 when 4.0.1. hit) probably as quickly as he went from 21 to 22 thanks to the new move set he has. What you might not know if you've only been following the level-cap changes in patch 4.0.1 is that this patch brought with it changes to how and when we learn abilities at low levels. We only need to learn an ability once, after which it scales as we level. Because of this, Blizzard spread out the rate at which we learn new abilities, so that we have more to learn at higher levels than we would if they had kept it the same. In the process, they reevaluated the order in which we learn abilities and shifted it a bit. This was also the patch where they changed the nature of our abilities. What this all adds up to is that, thanks to the new (new for my level, at least) and improved abilities this patch gave my lowly warrior, he is suddenly viable in combat and--dare I say... fun.

Yes, I said it... ok, I really implied it, but I'll say it now: leveling as a warrior was just not fun in the 1 to 22 range before this patch. Having abilities that weren't viable sitting unused on my bar while using abilities that weren't meant for the situation I was in because the abilities that were meant for the situation I was in were practically useless wasn't fun. Now, all of a sudden, leveling as a fury warrior actually feels like playing a berserker. We have a lot more rage now, thanks (I think) to the rage normalization, and we have abilities that we actually want to spend that rage on. Playing as a fury warrior in low levels is now a frenzy of trying to use the abilities available to you as quickly as possible, since you actually have the rage to do so, rather than an exercise in waiting for Thunder Clap to come off its cooldown and hoping you have enough rage to use it when it does.

So why am I gushing about the new playstyle of low-level fury warriors? Well, after playing as my warrior for an hour or two last night; after surviving a battle against seven enemies of my level, all attacking me at once, when four doing the same thing could have easily done me in before the patch; I had to ask myself: why did we put up with the absolutely terribad playstyle of low level warriors for so long? In fact, I'm sure warriors aren't the only class whose low-level play has been vastly improved by this patch, so I have to ask; why did we put up with bad low level playstyles for so long?

Well, part of the answer is that many people didn't. I know quite a few players who hate the leveling process, and the way some classes play at low levels played no small part in their hatred of that part of the game. Of course, alt-aholics like me really had no choice other than putting up with the bad low-level content, hoping it would be worth it with the higher level content. Part of it could be the idea that we are somehow earning our fun, that the bad low-level playstyle is the price we have to pay to get to the more fun playstyle. That idea is reinforced by the idea that any sort of bad experience we go through makes us able to better appreciate the good experiences we go through, a truism I have often heard in real life.

It could also have something to do with a little condition called learned helplessness. The idea of learned helplessness is that if we accept that we have no control over a situation, it causes us to accept the misery that situation brings upon us, even if a way out is presented. There wasn't a lot we could do to improve the playstyle of classes that were not at all fun to play while leveling, other than not leveling those classes, so those of us who wanted to level those classes just had to accept that the early levels were going to be unenjoyable. (And boy were they. Priests? Paladins? Warriors? Druids? I'm looking at you.) So we gritted our way through those early levels, because we had no other choice if we wanted to get to the part where the classes become fun to play (and I can tell you from personal experience that priests and druids got much more fun to play as you approach the later levels).

Could it really be that bad, though? Could us hopeless alt-aholics really be suffering from the same condition that keeps battered spouses and depressed people in their predicaments? As the blog post I linked to mentions, when someone suffering from learned helplessness does get out of their situation, they often have a hard time committing to anything afterward, and tend to continue believing in nihilism and futility, rather than having hope and being optimistic. When I first logged in to my warrior, I had my doubts about whether he would be any more fun to play, but I gave it a try anyways. As you can tell, I was blown away once I did, but the important thing was whether I hesitated at all. Well, I did find it a bit tedious to need to go to the trainer and learn new moves, and viewed rearranging my action bar with the same weary view. In fact, that fact that I started playing again after rearranging my abilities doesn't really do much to disprove the learned helplessness theory, because I still expected playing to not be all that enjoyable; the surprise came from the fact that I enjoyed play my warrior, not from the fact that I did, in fact, play him. Thus I was engaging in old behaviors with the same kind of futile outlook; all that changed was the result.

So perhaps we alt-aholics who braved our way through the early levels of the unfun classes did suffer from learned helplessness, but patch 4.0.1 is here now, here to liberate us from the previous doldrums of the early levels. Along with this forced liberation comes the force relocation (metaphorically speaking) to a much more fun game design; in other words, we are being flat-out prevented from going back to the situation that caused our learned helplessness in the first place. We have been forced into our escape, forced into a more hopeful situation, and though we might not have been cured of that helplessness, at least we have been saved in spite of it. What this means for the future of low-level playing and us alt-aholics, though, remains to be seen.

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.

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.

Proposal: reverse feats of strength (feats of growth)

I would like to propose, today, an idea for a category of achievements that would exist as the counterpoint to feats of strength. Feats of strength are achievements designed to be retroactively awarded for difficult accomplishments that can no longer be done, that no longer need to be done, or that were/are just plain difficult. This means that someone who started playing after they were added is pretty much out of luck when it comes to getting any of them, unless one is added after they start playing. This always seemed a bit unfair to me, even if feats of strength are completely cosmetic awards that don't even add to your achievement point total (even though those, too, are cosmetic), since WoW is supposed to be a game where the only thing differentiating you from someone who achieves more than you is time, dedication, skill, and perhaps knowing the right people. When you started playing, ideally, shouldn't factor into it.

Then I hit upon an idea: what if Blizzard were to just add the reverse? What if Blizzard added achievements that can only be earned in a certain level ragne, and become unavailable once you go beyond that maximum level? Feats of growth, I call them, for they denote accomplishments made as your character was developing. Feats of growth would be achievements that would represent accomplishments done while they were still significant and difficult, before being of a higher level made them trivial. Feats of growth would be inaccessible to us players who have been playing for longer, in the same way that most feats of strength are inaccessible to players who have started playing recently, and would serve to fill that gap left by the absence of feats of strength in the achievement panels of new players.

Feats of growth could include achievements for completing an old-world, Outland, or low-level Northrend dungeon with only level-appropriate group members. There could also be one for crafting a rare-quality piece of armor while it is still a good piece for you, i.e. when your level isn't more than X levels greater than the piece's minimum required level. While it might not be possible to award this retroactively, there could also be a feat of growth for completing class specific epic questlines at the appropriate level, or just completing any epic questline at the appropriate level. Then again, the fact that those kinds of achievement couldn't be awarded retroactively would be exactly what would make them good candidates for feats of growth, since feats of growth would be the antithesis of feat of strength, which are awarded retroactively.

Some specific examples of feats of growth could be something like completing Deadmines without anyone in your group being above level 22. I would also say that the regular achievements for level-cap heroics and raids should automatically award feats of growth for completing those instances with only level-appropriate group members once the new expansion is released, since that's when those feats of growth would be added, and it's obvious that the player was able to complete the instance with only level-appropriate group members if they got the corresponding "complete this instance" achievement when it was a level-cap instance.

That crafting crafting feat of strength I mentioned could be awarded if someone, say, crafts the Barbaric Bracers before they reach level 32, or whatever level the developers think would be the cut-off point where the bracers are no longer useful and the materials insignificant to gather. Considering how frequently crafters make armor for people once they hit the level cap, there would need to be a point beyond which recipies would not award this feat of growth. I'd say that any crafted gear with a required level of 78 or higher shouldn't qualify. I also think that the cut-off point for gear to award this feat of growth should be two levels higher than the minimum required level, rather than five, when crafting items learned from Outland or Northrend recipes, since levels are gained more slowly in Outland and Northrend. This would also mean that players would be cut off once they hit the level cap, making it a true feat of growth.

The implementation of this kind of achievement would also be a boon for the current Wrath heroic and raid achievements. I don't mean the run-of-the-mill "Kill this boss" achievements. I mean the "Kill this boss with this criterion that makes the fight more difficult" achievements. Achievements like Shocking! or Just Can't Get Enough or Momma Said Knock You Out. These achievements are special because they make the fight more difficult, but once Cataclysm hits and everyone is walking around in amazing gear with five more levels, they won't be nearly so meaningful. That's why the old-world and Burning Crusade dungeons and raids don't have these kinds of achievements. So, if Blizzard is to keep things consistent, they should remove these achievements once Cataclysm comes, but that wouldn't be fair to those players who already earned them. So, they could make them feats of growth, and thus acknowledge the effort those players put in that was significant for the level they were at. Yes, they could also make them feats of strength, but if someone somehow manages to get a group together to do heroic Halls of Lightning when he could be moving on to Cataclysm content, shouldn't the game recognize not only the difficulty in doing that, but also the difficulty in doing so while not allowing Volkhan to shatter more than four Brittle Golums or defeating Loken in two minutes?

The remaining question, then, is, should these achievements be visible to players when players are eligible for them? I don't think so. After all, feats of growth are meant to be the counterpart to feats of strength, and we aren't able to see the feats of strength we are eligible for (or the ones we aren't, but that would be particularly cruel). And while showing feats of strength the player can't get is really just taunting them, showing feats of growth would put a sort of pressure on the players to complete the achievement before it becomes unavailable to them, and players probably wouldn't take kindly to a system like that. Besides, most of us didn't work hard for the feat of strength itself; we worked for the achievements that they represent, and the feat of strength is just an incidental marker. Feats of growth should work similarly; no one should try to complete Deadmines without anyone in the group being over level 22 just for a box of text saying they did so. They should do it because it means they'll get more experience points and everyone in the group will have a shot at some drop that is useful for them.

Now, with sites like Wowhead revealing these achievements to the general public, will there be players who plan the leveling of their alts so that they can get as many feats of growth as possible, regardless of the discouragement of this kind of playstyle provided by the fact that un-obtained achievements would be invisible? Probably, but that's just the way things are. Theoretically, players shouldn't be looking at sites like Wowhead to find feats of strength they can still do, but they are, so the fact that players would do a similar thing for feats of growth shouldn't discourage the idea.

Oh, to be a newbie again

Go ahead and play that video up there; there are no spoken words in the song it links to, so it shouldn't distract you as you read this post. Of course, for the full effect, it's best to just play it and close your eyes. Do you recognize that music? You should if you started playing before Burning Crusade was released. It's the music that played on the original log-in screen of World of Warcraft, when WoW was just WoW. I listed to that music recently, and I got the usual nostalgic jitters that I get when I listen to or watch something that I loved that I haven't seen or heard in a while. But something more than jitters overcame me that day. I was flooded with something similar to memories, but rather than a single flashback to a single event, I instead felt a certain sense. It was that sense of wonder I felt when I first started playing WoW.

Maybe you remember it, too: the time when you first started playing WoW, and everything was a new experience. It's hard for me to describe it, because, like I said, it wasn't a single memory that overcame me that day, but a sensation. The sensation I felt when all of the quests I was doing, all of the dungeons I was running, were all new. When I could walk into the next zone and literally had no idea what would be there to great me, aside form a scant few descriptions I had seen in general chat. When I took skinning and leatherworking because it was what I thought would be the best choice, not what others had told me would be the most beneficial in the leveling process. When I chose to level as Feral Combat because I thought it would be the most fun, in spite of all of the anti-feral sentiment that existed at the time (this was back when only warriors could tank).

Of course, I'm not one to wear rose-tinted glasses, and there are things that I regret about that time. I regret limiting myself to one quest at a time (my thinking at the time being that I would be better able to focus on that quest if I only had one). I regret selling my ore and leather to vendors (I thought that was how you made money with those professions; I wasn't aware of the existence of the auction house at the time). I regret staying in one zone without moving around when I ran out of quests, choosing instead to grind enemies until I was of a high enough level to do the quests I had. But these were all understandable newbie mistakes, and who doesn't have a few of those in their memory banks? We all did stupid things when we started playing the game, and only experience can teach us the error of our ways. Therein, however, lies the problem.

The loss of newbie astonishment is quite similar to the fabled loss of childhood innocence, an idea about which plenty of media has been made. In the case of the loss of childhood innocence, we (supposedly) gain knowledge about the world through our experience, but trade off the optimism of our youthful ignorance of all that is bad in the world. Of course, playing WoW isn't as bleak of a prospect as simply living in the real world, but in WoW, we still trade off our amazement at everything we experience in exchange for the knowledge that comes from experiencing that content. It's a trade off we all have to make eventually, in every game we play, if we enjoy it enough to play it again, and I certainly enjoyed leveling my druid enough to level more characters through the game again.

But it will never be the same. I now take only gathering professions on my alts, rather than a crafting profession that might add some depth to the experience, not only because I now know that to be the most efficient option (so I don't need to support my alt with donations from my main), but also because my experience has shown me that I rarely stick with an alt long enough to make it worth it to put that amount of dedication into leveling his profession. I am similarly jaded about raiding and PvP. When I first went into a battleground, the novelty was what captivated me, for fighting players--as opposed to computer controlled enemies--was completely new to me. After some time, though, once the novelty started to wear off, I realized I just wasn't cut out for PvP. I wasn't competitive enough, and hated dying as frequently as I did when I first started out, so needing to inflict that experience on other players in order to win left a bad taste in my mouth. My experiences with raiding have been similar. Though my first few raids were a fun experience, after some time, the novelty soon gave way to frustration with the constant wipes inherent in progression raiding, the monotony inherent in non-progression raiding, and the pressure to be at the top of my game and to not mess up inherent in both.

The PvP and raiding examples I mentioned may seem like me simply exchanging my former optimism for pessimism and focus on the negative, as seems to happen with the loss of childhood innocence, but it is really a case of the novelty of those experiences preventing me from noticing the things I didn't like about them. Once that novelty wore off, it was clear that raiding and PvP weren't for me. Losing the novelty of leveling, on the other hand, was different experience for me, because after the novelty wore off, I was still able to find things to enjoy about the leveling process.

So what was the difference between leveling before the novelty wore off and leveling after? It seems to me that the commonality between all of the contrasts between my nostalgia for the first time I leveled through Azeroth and my current experiences is concern. I take two gathering professions instead of a gathering profession and a crafting profession because I'm concerned about having enough money to make my alt self-sufficient. I take multiple quests at once and do them all in one go because I'm concerned about leveling efficiently. I don't grind anymore because I know it's simply not as efficient as questing (and yes, I do miss grinding). The things I used to do and enjoy are now things I shy away from because experience has taught me not to do them.

Would I still enjoy them if I were to ignore my experience and do something considered newbish? Probably. Would taking one quest at a time, grinding every once in a while, or taking a crafting profession on my alt diminish my enjoyment of the game? Theoretically, it shouldn't. After all, I used to enjoy the game in spite of doing those things. And yet, when I consider doing them now, I am hesitant because my experience leads me to believe that I will enjoy the game more by avoiding grinding or taking multiple quests at a time or taking two gathering professions.

Herein lies the greatest irony of the issue of newbish amazement: as we gain experience with the game, we think we become better at figuring out what will make the game more fun for us, but even if we do, we stop considering things we once found fun to be enjoyable. As much as I want to confidently say that doing multiple quests at once is always more fun than doing one at a time, that leveling an alt with two gathering professions is always more fun than doing so with a gathering and a crafting profession, and that questing is always more fun than grinding, I can't. I can't, because when I think back to how much fun I used to have while doing things the "inferior" way, I realize that the game was no less fun then than it is now; in fact, it may have been more fun. Of course, I may just be looking back with rose-tinted glasses and reminiscing about enjoying those ways of playing simply because I wasn't aware that better ways exist. Maybe the way I play the game now really is the "best" way, and I'm just getting bored with it because it's the only way I play, so there isn't much variety. It's really not possible to know.

I can't really find a satisfactory way to end this post, so let me just leave you with a song by Evanescence about the loss of childhood innocence; I think it fits the theme of this post well.

I fear for the fate of Outland

I am worried about our humble floating rock. As excited as I am for Cataclysm and all of the great changes it will bring to old-world Azeroth, I am worried what the lack of changes in Outland will mean for the continent. I won't assume that everyone feels the same way I do, so I'll just explain my person reasons for worrying. While leveling a character, I look forward to getting to Outland, for it is a big improvement over the old world. I can move from quest hub to quest hub in a linear order, rather than needing to run back and forth between them because they don't have any quests for my level. The quests award gear I'll actually use, rather than gear with a hodgepodge of stats that have no business being together. Still, Outland seems to somehow lack something when compared to Northrend. I can't quite put my finger on what it is that makes the two so different, but the fact that Borean Tundra is prettier to look at than Hellfire Peninsula might have something to do with it. Either way, while approaching level 68, I look forward to going to Northrend in the same way I looked forward to going to Outland. Thus, in my mind, Northrend > Outland > Kalimdor/Easter Kingdoms.

Cataclysm could change all of that, since Cataclysm will be bringing the old world up to speed with all of the improvements that have been made to the leveling process since WoW was released. Old world questing won't require us to run back and forth from quest hub to quest hub and back again, and those quests will reward gear that we will actually want to use. However, Outland and Northrend will only be receiving a negligible amount of attention in this overhaul, and won't be changing that much. Thus, the first round of content (Kalimdor/Eastern Kingdoms) will now be the newest, most innovative content, while Outland and Northrend, both revolutionary in tier time, will be relics of older design.

Where does that leave the humble floating rock? It means that Outland will be the oldest content in WoW, and potentially the least enjoyable. In other words, rather than a progression of solo content where each continent gets better as you go on (which we have now), I fear that players will think that they have gone backwards when they enter Outland, that they have downgraded their experience. In other words, I fear that Outland will no longer be the improvement to leveling that it is now, but instead, like the old world now, it will be an unfortunate necessity we must begrudgingly level through in order to get to the newer, more interesting content (Northrend, and eventually the 80-85 content).

How to avoid this future? One option is to improve the old world in such a way that it is better than it currently is, but still not as enjoyable as Outland, thus keeping the current flow of how enjoyable the leveling content is intact. Considering the ceiling that would put on the enjoyability of the content, though, this would probably result in players feeling cheated out of what could have been a more enjoyable experience. The other option, and the one that must thus be taken, is to redesign Outland to be more enjoyable. But how to do that when Blizzard already has their plates full, needing to redesign two continents and add another expansion's worth of content to them? Whatever the solution is, it must be simple if it is to be implemented with Cataclysm.

Still, there is always the chance that there may be no such simple solution for Outland. After all, old-world Azeroth needed a total redo to come up to speed with the current game design. Of course, Outland was a greater evolution from the design of Azeroth than Northrend was an evolution from the design of Outland, so the key lies in figuring out the differences between the two, and trying to compensate for those differences.

To me, the biggest difference between Outland and Northrend was the absence and presence, respectively, of feelings of immersion in a war. In Outland, though there is a massive battle raging before you when you enter the Dark Portal, you are never able to fight that battle, to help the soldiers you see in front of you. Instead, you fly over that battle and head to Honor Hold, where, much like in old-world Azeroth, ironically, the quest givers sit safely in their fortresses while you go out and do the dirty work alone. Not only do you not feel like part of a massive effort to take down the big bad (Illidan), but the fact that the enemies are just minding their own business makes the whole thing feel very... sterile. Most of Outland follows that same design: you allies are here, you enemies are there, go run back and forth between them. Quite simply, it feels like you are the only one doing anything.

When you get to Northrend, however, you are sent to kill enemies that are attacking the very town you dock in when you arrive. (this is the case, at least, if you are Alliance) Not only that, but there are soldiers out there fighting the enemies you are sent to kill, soldiers on your side. It would have been impractical and impossible for Blizzard to design all of Northrend this way, so obvious the whole continent doesn't look like that, but the fact is that there are still many battles raging when you enter this frozen land. Your allies are actually fighting your enemies, and you feel like part of a living, breathing battlefield. Quite simply, your allies and your enemies are not segregated, and that makes the experience more believable and more immersive.

Of course, there are likely many factors that lead to Northrend feeling more advanced in its design than Outland, but if this factor is a significant one, then it means Outland can't be improved with a simple solution. I image it would be naive of me to assume that it would be easy to just add some battles to Outland, but it's something to think about for the next expansion pack, when Blizzard will have more time for a moderately demanding project like making Outland feel less stale. Until then, I'll just have to grumble as my priest continues trudging through the remains of Draenor, while smiling as my shaman fights his way through Northrend.

How to solo Northrend group quests as an enhancement shaman

My long-suffering shaman alt (which I rolled at the beginning of Burning Crusade) finally hit level 68 a while back and headed for the frozen wastes of Northrend, and I have been enjoying leveling through the new continent significantly more than I enjoyed Outland. Of course, my shaman is late to the game, and is usually one of only two or three Alliance players in the Borean Tundra, unless Blood is Thicker is the fishing daily. This becomes problematic when I need to complete quests like Last Rites and The Assassination of Harold Lane, group quests that involve killing elite enemies. However, in a fit of potential madness, and inspired by my success with solo-ing The Ultimate Bloodsport, I decided to give Last Rites, the first group quest I was charged with when I came to Northrend, a try. So I went in, with only my wits and my quest-reward gear to help me, and after a very tense battle, Valanar lay dead at my feet. It didn't hit me how impressive this feat was, though, until I took a look at my quest log and saw that this quest was orange. Yep, I, a level 69 shaman in nothing but gear rewarded by quests had killed a level 72 elite, alone. This gave me a whole new respect for the shaman class, especially enhancement shamans.

Now, this success had nothing to do with my skills and everything to do with the sheer solo-ing power of the enhancement shaman. What that means is that any enhancement shaman leveling his/her way through Northrend can do what I did with the right instruction. It is that instruction which I aim to provide today.

Before we go into that, though, let's look at the key abilities that will help you while solo-ing elites as an enhancement shaman. You will want all of these abilities to be within easy reach before you try to solo any elites; if not hot-keyed, at least somewhere on your bars.

Earth Elemental Totem: This ability will change your shaman's life when you get it at level 66 and is your main asset while solo-ing a group quest. Dropping this totem releases a greater earth elemental to attack your enemies. He causes a fair amount of threat, and can take quite a beating before crumbling into gravel. The key to successfully solo-ing an elite is to let this guy take damage for you, like a tank.

However, to describe the greater earth elemental as a tank-in-a-totem (tank-in-a-bottle sounds just demeaning) would be a gross over-statement of its power. The Earth Elemental Totem isn't just a set-it-and-forget-it tank. A typical elite can kill your greater earth elemental in much less time than it will take you and him to kill the elite, Also, the amount of threat he causes is very low compared to most player tanks you run dungeons with, and you'll easily cause more threat than him if you aren't careful. However, there is one bright side to this totem that should not be overlooked: you can heal your greater earth elemental. Thus, the key to successfully using the Earth Elemental Totem is to heal him when he needs it and to watch your threat so you don't attract your target's attention. If you don't have an addon to display your threat and the threat of your greater earth elemental, activate the in-game threat display by going to the main menu (escape key), then going to Display and checking off "Show Aggro Percentages". I also recommend you set Display Aggro Warning to "Always", so you'll be able to know immediately if you pulled aggro off of your greater earth elemental.

Wind Shear: Of course, you will sometimes pull aggro from your Earth elemental, no matter how careful you are. An unlucky string of crits will do that to you, and it's when that happens that you'll want to have Wind Shear handy, since it lowers your current threat on your target. Of course, Wind Shear coupled with a ceasing of all of your attacks can only do so much, so it's still important to watch your threat.

Healing Wave: You should have this spell handy while solo-ing, anyways, since being able to heal yourself while leveling is one of the enhancement shaman's greatest strengths. You'll be using this ability to heal your greater earth elemental, and you will make great use of it for that purpose. You might also want to have Lesser Healing Wave handy, in case you space out and forget about your greater earth elemental, then realize you haven't healed him in a while, only to target him and see that his health is low.

Maelstrom Weapon: While this isn't technically an ability, and thus you can't link to it on your action bar, I wanted to bring it up anyways because it makes using Healing Wave on your greater earth elemental much easier. It also serves as a nice reminder to check on your greater earth elemental; any time you hit five stacks of Maelstrom Weapon, check to see if your greater earth elemental is in need of some healing.

Shamanistic Rage: You should keep Shamanistic Rage within easy reach while leveling anyways, but you'll especially want to keep it within reach while fighting an elite because you'll be using more mana. When you fight typical enemies, you usually spend some time out of combat, i.e. not using mana, in addition to the time you spend in combat, i.e. using mana. Thus you don't use mana very quickly while fighting regular enemies. While fighting an elite, however, you are always casting (or at least casting more time per minute than you would be otherwise), so using this ability to get your mana back is critical.

Fire Elemental Totem: The fact is, you will sometimes fight enemies that will outlast your greater earth elemental. He only has a two-minute duration, after all, and what to do when that runs out? Why, bring out this guy, of course. The Fire Elemental Totems summons a greater fire elemental to fight for you, but unlike the greater earth elemental, the greater fire elemental is focused on doing damage, not taking it. Thus, you will be the tank when you take him out, but how will you survive that onslaught of damage in just mail armor with no shield?

Feral Spirit: Why, with your wolves, of course! One of the best benefits of the ghost wolves summoned by Feral Spirit, aside from their taunt, which you will make liberal use of, is that they heal you when they do damage. The healing they do is so significant that combined with a few Maelstrom'ed Healing Waves, you can survive the onslaught of damage brought about by an elite. What could be better?

Bloodlust/Heroism: Ah, yes; this could be better. While you are alone, Bloodlust and Heroism will increase your melee haste, but also the melee haste of your spirit wolves if and only if they are out when you cast it. That means more healing done to you, more damage done by them, and a better chance of successfully killing your elite.

So, now that you have all of the necessary abilities within easy reach (as well as your normal damaging abilities like Stormstrike, Flame and Earth Shock, Lightning Shield--which is a damaging ability with the Static Shock talent--, etc.), you are ready to take down your first elite.

Get ready to fight your opponent by laying down your fire, water, and air totem of choice, leaving your earth totem slot reserved for your Earth Elemental Totem (yes, it actually counts as an earth totem, so you can't have your earth elemental totem and Strength of Earth Totem active at the same time. It sucks, I know.) I use the Flametongue, Mana Spring, and Windfury totem, respectively. I know Magma Totem would probably lead to a greater DPS output, but I personally prefer a totem I can set and forget to one I need to cast every twenty seconds. And did I mention that the one that needs to be re-cast every twenty seconds costs two and half times more mana than the one you can set and forget? Still, if you just want to cause as much damage as possible, then it's your prerogative to go with Magma Totem. I'm not here to tell you how to play, just to give you advice that you can decide whether to follow or not. If you do go with Magma totem, don't drop it until your enemy is in range, so you won't waste any mana on a blast of fire that doesn't damage your enemy.

So, you have your totems ready. Now just wait some time to regenerate your mana, and once it's back at 100%, it's time to fight. Open with a Flame Shock to bring your enemy into range, then cast Earth Elemental Totem. Your greater earth elemental should start attacking your target quickly, but be ready to heal yourself if you do take some damage before your elemental gains control. Now, you want to give your elemental some time to build up threat before you start attacking; think raiding pre-Burning Crusade. While waiting, you might do well to click on your greater earth elemental, then right-click his portrait and set him as your focus so you can always see how much health he has.

Now, once your elemental has established threat, start attacking your target. In these early stages of the fight, you'll probably shoot up from zero percent threat to almost pulling aggro rather quickly if you blow all of your short-term cooldowns, so just be careful. Since you have an effective cap on how much damage you can do (since you don't want to out-aggro your greater earth elemental), you'll want to focus on causing your damage in a way that is as mana-efficient as possible. Assuming you aren't at 95% threat (compared to your elemental), always auto-attack your target so that you can build up charges of Maelstrom weapon to allow you to quickly heal your greater earth elemental. However, don't use your damaging abilities unless you are around 80% threat or below, so that you can cease your attacks if you get a huge crit and get a lot of aggro.

If you are at that magic 80% mark, use your special abilities with the following priorities, stopping if you reach or pass 90% threat. If you have Improved Stormstrike, then use Stormstrike, since it will give you mana back. Then use Lightning Shield if you have the talent Static Shock, since it's free damage. If you don't have Improved Stormstrike, but you do have Static Shock, prioritize Lightning Shield over Stormstrike. If you don't have Static Shock, then don't bother with Lightning Shield. If you still have threat to spare, use Flame Shock, since it's more efficient than Earth Shock. You probably won't use Earth Shock much, since you should use the more efficient Flame Shock if it has run its duration, and you might cause too much threat if you use a shock more than once every 20 seconds or so. You'll probably never use Lava Lash. If you do cause too much damage, use Wind Shear and then stop attacking your target, even auto-attacking, until you greater earth elemental gets its attention again.

As you are doing all of this, you'll want to keep an eye on two things: the threat you have on your target, and your greater earth elemental's health. If your threat falls below 80%, use a damaging ability. If your elemental's health falls below 50%, heal it. Heal it sooner if you don't have many stacks of Maelstrom, and it will thus take you longer to cast the heal. When your mana starts to dip below 50%, check to make sure you aren't approaching dangerously high levels of threat, then use Shamanistic Rage while auto-attacking. I wouldn't recommend doing much else during this time unless you are sure you have threat and mana to spare, since using damaging abilities always poses the risk of out-aggro-ing your greater earth elemental, meaning you'll need to stop attacking, and you'll thus lose mana you could be gaining by attacking.

This strategy alone should be enough to help you with elites that a quest says only require two people to take down, but sometimes you'll need an extra "umph". Sometimes those two minutes won't be enough, and you'll find yourself with an angry elite looking at you and no earth elemental to help you. That's when you pull out the big guns: Feral Spirit, Fire Elemental Totem, and Heroism, in that order. The spirit wolves will heal you with their attacks, the greater fire elemental will damage your target, and Heroism will increase the damage you do, the damage your wolves do, and the healing your wolves do to you. This phase gives you about a minute to finish off your target, since your wolves only last 45 seconds, and you probably won't last longer than 15 seconds against an enemy you couldn't kill in two minutes.

So what to do in that minute? First of all, save your Shamanistic Rage cooldown unless you run desperately low on mana, since that 30% damage reduction could give you the extra time you need to finish your target off after your wolves die and aren't healing you anymore. Until then, make sure your wolves are attacking your target, make sure they use Twin Howl whenever it is off of its cooldown (to divert some damage away from you), and heal yourself if you find yourself below 50% health. Assuming you have taken care of all that, then just unload on your target with all that you have. Since you are now the tank, you don't have to watch your threat anymore. Thus, unload with Stormstrike, Flame and Earth Shock, Lightning Shield, and Lava Lash per usual.

If your wolves disappear and your target is still alive, then pop Shamanistic Rage and hope you can heal yourself and finish him off before he destroys you. Otherwise, you may have to try this whole performance again, or even worse... try to form a group. *shudder*

Of course, pulling this off method of killing an elite off by yourslef is an extremely satisfying exercise, so take what you now know and try it yourself if you are leveling a shaman through Northrend and are skipping the group quests because you can't or don't want to find anyone to help you with them. You don't need anyone to help you with them; you are a shaman.

Alts for their own sake?

Full disclosure: I'm a recovering alt-oholic. For as long as I have been playing WoW, I have always felt the temptation to see how the other nine sides live. The sheer number of alts I rolled that never made it past level 20, or even level 15, astounds me sometimes. I used to go through a very predictable pattern with my alt-itis: I'd grow envious of one class, roll alt of that class, give it a profession I was envious of, play it, get board with it somewhere in the 10-15 range (or sometimes even before then), and repeat that process about six times, give or take. I would then have a mini existential crisis where I would look at that screen of alts and wonder, "Why do I keep rolling alts that I never play? No more of this!" I would then log in to each alt individually, sell all of their stuff, send the money to my main, and delete them. I would then promise to myself that I would not roll another alt without having a good reason to do so. I have gone through this whole process at least four times thus far, enough times to have gained some insight into how and why it happens.

One thing that is consistent with most of the alts I roll is that I never roll them for the sake of just leveling them. In most cases, what motivates me to roll an alt is the desire to use that alt in end-game content. It's usually jealousy of that class's abilities and perceived strengths that draws me away from my druid. Perhaps a class looks fun to play as a DPS, or perhaps the class's healing or tanking style looks more varied than my druid's and thus more engaging. Inevitably, though, I realize that it will likely take me months to reach that point (that point being level 80), and I realize that I will likely never be able to use my alt for group content. (What's that you say? Run dungeons on the way to 80? Um... no.) And with the possibility of using that alt for level cap content gone, my motivation to level it goes as well.

So it seems the issue is a disjunction between my motivation for rolling the alt in the first place and the amount of effort I am willing to put up with to get it there. After all, when you roll an alt, you start with a very small selection of that class's abilities, and if the goal is to play the class because of the class's playstyle, it's disheartening to only be able to start with a skeleton of that playstyle (it's really just the ribcage, if we want to stick with that metaphor). That's part of the reason that I've always thought that a good middleground between the people who want to be able to start alts at level 55 and the people who think we shouldn't be able to do that would be the ability for us to start our alts at level 20. That way, you skip the most boring levels and start at the point where most classes start to come into their own and feel like the class they are. In other words, you could skill the lol-smite/lol-wrath/lol-judgment stages in which the classes are incredibly boring to play. But that's a topic for another time.

Of course, the obvious answer is to just roll an alt for the sake of playing the alt, for the sake of experiencing the class as it evolves and comes into its own. My most successful alt, my shaman, who is now level 66, was rolled for exactly this reason, which is part of the reason why I have stuck with him for so long. So why isn't this enough of a motivator for me to stick with an alt? Why isn't playing an alt for its own sake enough to motivate me to roll an alt?

I think it has something to do with the issue of meaning. Perhaps in WoW, as in life, we desire a meaning for our actions, a motivating factor to motivate us to play. Fun can certainly be that motivating factor, but I see fun in WoW as similar to happiness in real life: they're both one answer to the question of what to live for, but for some, they are insufficient answers, not enough to make all it worth it. Perhaps you don't know what I mean, but maybe some of you reading this do; maybe you have experienced the dissatisfaction with living for day-to-day experiences rather than for something greater. Life isn't constantly enjoyable, so living only for the moment can backfire when that moment isn't a particularly good one.

Alts are the same way. They are certainly fun, but some parts of the leveling process are just plain grueling, including the lol-phases listed above, the 40-50 stretch, quest items with aggravatingly low drop-rates, etc. In those moments, it can be easy to forget the fun times you had with your alt and the fun times you will have if you continue playing. That's where that long-term goal comes in. That long-term goal is what will keep you playing through those uninteresting stretches, because achieving that goal will make it all worth it.

So the real question becomes, are those long term goals necessary, or are the fun moments themselves enough motivation to keep playing one's alt? I guess this is just a question that every player needs to answer for themselves.

Comparing the three WoW's, Part 2: Raiding and Leveling

I have already compared the parallel structures of cooperative PvE and PvP, so today I shall compare the parallel structures of leveling and cooperative PvE and see what conclusions can be drawn from them. If you haven't read part one of this post, please do, for I will be writing with the assumption that you already have, so I don't have to repeat myself.

One thing that makes the two parts of leveling different from the two parts of cooperative PvE and PvP is that there is no objective line between pre-level-cap content and level-cap content. Sure, by the time you reach the Storm Peaks, you'll probably be level 80, or at least very close, so that zone and Icecrown could perhaps be objectively considered level-cap content, but even that is a difficult call to make. After all, you are eligible for all of the quests in Storm Peaks at level 77, and ditto for the vast majority of quests in Icecrown (excluding the Quel'Delar quest chain and a few Argent Tournament quests, exactly three to be exact). And even though you are very likely to be level 80 by the time you enter Icecrown, the fact that nothing in either of those zones requires you to be level 80 means the distinction is blurred, to say the least.

Another interesting point of note is that, aside from the chestpieces awarded by the Icecrown quest Battle at Valhalas: Final Challenge, the best gear you will get from quests that don't require you to enter an instance is ilevel 174 (and the quest above only rewards gear that is ilevel 183). For comparison, gear dropped by the normal version of the original level 80 5-mans (Culling of Stratholme, The Oculus, Halls of Lightning, and Utgarde Pinnacle) is ilevel 187, while the rare-quality gear that drops from the original heroics is ilevel 200. That's 13 ilevels of difference between those three areas of the game, a steady increase. Thus we can see these three areas of the game as pre-raiding tiers, with out-of-instance quests being tier 1, normal mode 5-mans being tier 2, and heroics being tier 3.

Of course, with the inclusion of craftable epic gear and reputation rewards, it is possible to skip normal mode dungeons, and even heroics if you know what you were doing, and go right into Naxxramas. I suppose those craftable epics and reputation rewards could be seen as similar to the current system by which heroics drop the second best emblem in the game, while the daily heroic awards the first; they allow you to skip to the interesting stuff, the stuff that everyone else is doing, without needing to go through old content to get there. They allow you to get to the cutting edge without people needing to drag you through old content to gear you up.

But wait! This is the start of the expansion pack that we are talking about. This is when nothing was "old content", not the normals, the heroics, nor the raids. And yet, these measures (craftable epics and reputation rewards) were put in place from the beginning to allow people to skip normal modes and go right into heroics or into raids, just like how the current emblem system allows people to skip all of the previous tiers of raiding and go right into the most current tier of content. Something isn't right here; similar measures were implemented in both cases, yet the circumstances that necessitated them in the second case didn't exist in the first case. What I mean by that is that the new emblem system was implemented so that people could enter the raiding scene if they got in a bit late and missed the chance to gear up while everyone else was running the lower-tier content, but craftable epics and reputation rewards allowed people to skip new content that everyone would have been running if Blizzard hadn't implemented those epics or those reputation rewards. What gives?

I suppose one explanation is that Blizzard didn't want to force people to run 5-mans if they really didn't want to, but even this explanation is difficult to accept. After all, the amount of time it would take to fully gear a character up for Naxxramas without entering any 5-mans would probably be similar to the amount of time it would take to gear up that character using normal modes and eventually heroic modes. The only difference is that the player could move at their own pace and play at their own convenience while using the former method, while gearing up in five mans would force the player to play not only for themselves but also for those they group up with, and they wouldn't be able to just drop out whenever they feel like it, like they could when they are out solo-ing. But the thing is, those differences are also exactly what differentiate raiding from solo-ing, and those differences only get more pronounced in the raiding scene. 5-mans are like a mini preparation for the demands of raiding, so to want to skip them to get into raiding is like skipping learning how to walk because you want to start running. As such, a player who would chose to gear up for Naxx through solo ventures rather than 5-mans would likely be doing so for reasons that would show that he, as a player, isn't ready for raiding, no matter how good his gear may be.

So who were these craftable epics and reputation reward made for? It looks like they were made for the mysterious brand of player that enjoys solo-ing more than 5-mans but still ultimately enjoys raiding more than either. Or perhaps they were made for those players who have the necessary grouping skills to raid and want to get into raids without bothering with that 5-man nonsense. This is certainly a feasible possibility, but heroics in those days weren't like heroics now. In the days before the Dungeon Finder, it was common for guild members to run heroics together for gear and badges, which would negate the one aspect of heroics that could make them less enjoyable than raids: the fact that they were usually PUG'ed. I suppose these craftable epics and reputation rewards could also provide a source of back-up gear, like that provided by emblems, gear that you could use to gear up if the RNG gods decided to deny you a certain drop over and over again.

But could these craftable epics and reputation rewards also have been made for us, the soloists? We players may say that gear is just a nice consolation prize for the grander experience of playing the game, and we may look down upon those who openly admit to playing for the gear, but gear is still an important factor in all parts of this game. As I have said before, gear doesn't only serve as a gatekeeper to keep us from steamrolling through content; it also serves as a representation of our achievements, of the effort we put in to obtain that gear. Crafted gear represents the time we put in to farm the mats and/or earn the money to buy them off of the auction house, while reputation gear represents the time we put in to reach exalted with the faction that rewards it. So is this gear for us?

Honestly, I doubt it. Crafted gear and reputation rewards were integral to entering heroics and raiding back when Wrath first came out, meaning that obtaining them was simply another step on the path to raiding. After all, raiders had to obtain this gear first, then move on to raiding to obtain better gear, so I really couldn't see Blizzard putting this gear in the game to give us soloists something to work for. To say that those rewards were put in for soloists would be like saying that the first few levels in a single-player game were put in for the people who aren't skilled enough to beat the latter levels. It doesn't work that way; those first few levels (and the craftable epics and reputation rewards) are the stepping stones through which a player moves on to more difficult and more rewarding content, not something put in to stand on its own.

It's the fact that this gear serves as a stepping stone into cooperative PvE that convinces me that Blizzard didn't want Wrath's solo content to be viable, to be able to stand on its own as a unique part of the game; they only want it to facilitate players' entry into raids. Astute readers will notice that I have come to this conclusion before through very similar reasoning, but hey, at least I'm consistent, right? In the previously linked post, I concluded that in the same way PvP (and the entire game, really) was balanced around class performance in arenas, PvE has been balanced around raiding to make getting into raids easier. This fact, coupled with everything I have said up to now, leads me to only one conclusion: the three WoW's aren't solo-ing, cooperative PvE, and PvP, with content done before the level cap and content done at the level cap, heroics and raiding, and battlegrounds and arenas as their respective sub-areas. The three WoW's are, instead, leveling, level-cap PvE, and PvP, with level-cap PvE split into three areas: soloing, heroics, and raids.

So what does this mean in the grand scheme of things? It means I can take the conclusion of my previously linked post a step further: WoW's level-cap solo content isn't just a stepping stone into cooperative PvE content; it exists only to facilitate the transition from leveling to heroics and raiding. Wrath's solo content was, quite simply, not designed to be viable, to stand on its own, which explains all of the points I brought up in On the homogenization of Wrath of the Lich King solo content. And yes, I think that the lack of viability of WoW's solo content is a bad thing. So I wait for Cataclysm with bated breath, to see if the game will go further in this direction, or if it will reverse it. Only time will tell.

Comparing the three WoW's, Part 1: Raiding and PvP

One could say that there are three worlds (of warcraft?) in this amazing game we play: solo-ing, group PvE, and PvP. These three areas have an interesting parallel between them: they each have two categories of content, one of which is a gateway of sorts for the other, the other of which provides better loot. For group PvE, those two categories are heroics and raiding. For PvP, they're battlegrounds and arenas (though battlegrounds will provide gear as good as that provided in arenas once Cataclysm hits). For solo-ing, they're, quite simply, content done before the level cap and content done at the level cap. Considering the parallel structure between these three areas of the game, I think it's worth it to look at each area, examine their similarities and differences, and see what that says about the game itself.

It seems that my readership is comprised more of solo-ers than of raiders or PvP-ers, but I'll look at the group PvE scene first--I want to save soloing for last, for I suspect that is where the most interesting conclusions will come from. From the beginning of Burning Crusade, when heroics were first implemented, they were designed to be an entryway into the raiding scene: they gave loot that allowed one to enter the first tier of raiding, and they provided a challenge to those who had just reached the level cap, while still being less of a challenge than raids (and thus rewarding comparably worse loot).

It seems, however, that Blizzard has acknowledged the popularity of heroics (a full 14% of my readership seems to spend most of their time in heroics), for they have added four since Wrath was released, all of which were designed to be harder than regular heroics and to be comparable to raids in terms of their difficulty, and thus reward better gear. All heroics received another upgrade when Blizzard changed the emblem system so that the daily heroic would reward the best emblem in the game, while the bosses themselves would drop the second best emblems. While this meant that heroics did allow players to get better gear, they were still firmly in the position of a stepping stone into raids; if anything, the new heroics themselves were just added to give people who can't raid but can run heroics a place to use that new gear, and to give those looking to get into the newest tier of content another avenue to get raid-worthy gear. Thus heroics still seem to exist as little more than the step before raids; the change in the emblem system only improved that functionality, since people likely don't want to run old raids to help alts and new players gear up, so the emblem system makes it so they don't have to.

And as for battlegrounds and arena? Well, they share a similar structure; battlegrounds are available to players before arenas are, and they allow players to gear up in second-rate (compared to arenas) gear, gear which can allow them to move into arenas, where they will get the best gear. Thus the best gear is only available to those who participate in arena, while gear that was once exclusive to arena players becomes easier to get for players who only participate in battlegroung PvP.

The way gear is obtained in battlegrounds and arenas shows an interesting parallel to the way gear is obtained in heroics and raids: the latter provides better gear than the former, but gear that was once exclusive to players who participate in the latter becomes available to those who participate in the former as the expansion wears on. This can allow us to conclude that Blizzard wants players who decided to enter the arena scene a bit later than others to have a chance at getting geared up for it with relative ease. It certainly takes longer than it may have at the beginning of the expansion, but it is still easier for them to do so than if they had to use the same starter gear as people had to use during the first season of the expansion.

More disturbing, though, is the implication of this parallel that Blizzard sees arena as the PvP counterpart to raiding, and thus they see battlegrounds as the PvP counterpart to heroics, i.e., inferior content. Now, Blizzard has said that they want as many people who PvE to raid as possible, and they have certainly designed the game to make that happen. Can we thus conclude that Blizzard sees arena as the end-goal of all PvP, just as raiding is the end-goal of all PvE? It's an interesting prospect, but it might not be the case. After all, Rob Pardo, Blizzard's VP of game design, has gone on record as saying that arenas were the biggest mistake in WoW's history, and I doubt Blizzard would want to encourage players to participate in something they saw as a mistake. One could see rated battlegrounds as Blizzard's way of admitting that arena should not be the end-goal of PvP, since rated battlegrounds will allow people who play only in battlegrounds to get the same gear as people who play only in arenas. This means that battlegrounds and arenas will no longer relate to each other the way they do now, with the latter being awarding superior gear and thus being implied as being superior to the former.

Still, if Blizzard was so unhappy with the way arenas were implemented, why did they try so hard to promote them over battlegrounds? And why did they still try to do this when arena participation dropped dramatically after rating requirements were added to gear, showing that many players simply weren't interesting in arena for the experience of it? And most importantly, why did they stick with this dying part of the game in spite of the balancing nightmare it created for them? The best guess I have is that they simply didn't know what a nightmare arenas would create; Pardo himself said that if they did know what a nightmare it would be to balance the classes in arenas and PvE, they probably wouldn't have implemented the arena system. I guess their best excuse is the classic excuse: it seemed like a good idea at the time.

I wanted to make sure I had enough time to explore this topic as much as needed, so I will have to postpone looking at the parallels between leveling and cooperative PvE for my next philosophy post, which may or may not be posted next Wednesday (considering the sporadic nature with which the ideas for these blog posts come to me, I can't make any promises). Stay tuned!

Edit: As I suspected might happen, the follow-up to this post will be posted on Friday.

Achievements I would like to see added in Cataclysm

With the slew of Cataclysm announcements that have come out in the past week, my mind has been racing with ideas that have manifested themselves in an interesting way: achievements. With so many changes being made to WoW, there are certain achievements I would like to see implemented to correlate with those changes. Note that many of these will be feats of strength; you'll see why once you start reading.

Back in My Day... (feat of strength)
Reached level 58 before the Cataclysm

Cataclysm is going to change the leveling game to make old-world leveling more interesting, so it only makes sense, I think, to honor those of us who leveled through that old content before it was revitalized. Since you can head to Outland when you reach level 58 (and most people do), I think it makes sense to make this achievement only require reaching level 58.

Barefoot, in the Snow, Uphill Both Ways (feat of strength)
Learn the master [or whatever they call the next level of mount skill] riding skill by obtaining a 310% speed mount.

One of the announced changes coming to Cataclysm is that people will be able to buy a new level of riding skill which will upgrade all of their epic flying mounts to 310% flying speed. Those who already have a 310% speed flying mount will receive the skill automatically. Now, sure, getting one of those mounts is an achievement in and off itself (and they all have their own achievements to go along with them), but I think it would be nice of Blizzard to honor those who earned their 310% flying speed upgrade the hard way by working for one of the mounts, and what better way to honor them than with a feat of strength? Considering that these mounts are supposed to be synonymous with the most difficult achievements in the game, I think an overblown title like "Barefoot, in the Snow, Uphill Both Ways" is in order.

Hoofing It (feat of strength)
Earned Explore Eastern Kingdoms and Explore Kalimdor before the Cataclysm

With flying mounts allowed in Azeroth, getting World Explorer is going to be much easier to obtain, so like reaching level 58, I think its only fair to honor those who did it before Catalcysm made it much easier. Considering that ground mounts are slower than flying mounts, I think "Hoofing It" is an appropriate title.

You Can Have It (50 points)
Pass on a mount that drops in a maximum-level dungeon or raid
Title Reward: The Selfless

Granted, this achievement doesn't have anything to do with Cataclysm, but it's still one I wouldn't mind seeing added to the achievements. Were this implemented now, it would go to the people who pass on the Onyxian Drake or the Sartharion drake. Sometimes we get too caught up in our own personal exploits and forget just how important the people around us are, and an achievement like this would serve to encourage people to be a bit more selfless from time to time.

Tips on leveling any class

Having written two posts with tips for leveling specific classes, I feel like it's time I write a post with tips for leveling any class, considering that leveling alts is what I spend most of my time doing these days, so it's a part of the game I know quite well. This guide will assume you know the basics already and are simply considering leveling an alt on the side. After all, if you have gotten into the WoW blog scene, you are probably already fairly familiar with the game, so I don't imagine anyone reading this will be unfamiliar with the basics. (Though if you are, I apologize for my assumption and applaud you for involving yourself in the greater WoW community.)

1. Stick with it.
This seems like a pretty basic tip, but it's only recently that I started heeding it myself, so I figure it's worth mentioning. Classes are supposed to be simple when you first roll them. This is to make it easier for a newbie to acquaint themselves with the game; if they had to juggle five or six abilities in addition to learning all of the things we take knowing for granted, it would be a very confusing experience. As such, expect one-button spamming at first, and don't expect it to get much more interesting quickly. Classes evolve slowly as you level up, and you really can't get a feel for a class until you have a few dozen levels under your belt. As such, don't give up on a class just because you find the first few levels boring. My shadow priest didn't become as fun as it is until I got Vampiric Embrace and Shadowform at level 30 and 40, respectively, so stick with it.

2. If you use mana, carry water with you during the middle levels.
During earlier levels, you mana regeneration is greatly increased, so you won't need to use water. During later levels, many classes gain abilities that allow them to regenerate more mana, so you won't need to use water as much. During those middle levels, you'll likely find yourself running out of mana, and many classes can't fight without mana. As such, you should always have some of whatever is the best water you can drink so you can reduce your downtime. You can buy water from most Innkeepers and general suppliers, as well as bartenders. Of course, it helps to practice smart combat practices and try to conserve mana as you fight, but water will likely be helpful anyways, no matter how little mana you use. I remember questing on my shadow priest, using only three spells at the beginning of the fight and doing the rest of the damage with my wand, and still running out of mana. Point is, keep water on you until you stop using all together.

3. Keep any and all healing potions you get from quests or that drop from enemies.
Some quests award healing potions, and most humanoid enemies drop healing potions from time to time. You may want to sell them for a bit of extra gold, but you should keep them when you get them. No matter how careful you are, you will run into situations that spiral out of your control, and that little bit of health can really help. Think about it this way: the money you get from selling a potion will be less than how much a repair bill costs; which is the better deal? I keep my healing potions in a bag I dedicate to holding things like my hearthstone, crafting tools and supplies, and bandages, so they don't take up space in my regular bags. You should drag your healing potion(s) down to your action bars on the bottom of your screen so you can have them handy when you need them in a pinch.

4. Take First Aid
Even if you are a class that can heal yourself, it helps to be able to save that mana for fighting. Bandages allow you to heal yourself without expending mana, which makes them good for healing classes and great for classes that can't heal themselves. You may end up abandoning the profession in later levels if you can heal yourself and you won't run out of mana doing so (that happened to my shaman once he hit Outland), but until then, you won't regret keeping bandages in your bags to heal yourself.

5. Switch around between zones so you are always questing.
Outland and Northrend were designed so you could move from one zone to another in a linear fashion: Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms were not designed that way. If you want to keep your leveling interesting and fast, you'll need to move around between zones so you are always questing. If you finish all the quests you can reasonably do in one zone, move to another zone in your level range. You can look on the Wowhead zones page to see which zones are in your level range, though make sure you look at the quests page of each zone to see if it will actually offer you any quests.

6. Keep quests that take you out of the zone you are in so you can do them when you eventually go to that zone.
Because Azeroth was not designed for fast leveling, there are many quests that start in one zone and end in another. If you get one of these quests, take it and keep it in your quest log. You will likely go to that zone at some point in the future. Doing that extra quest will give you more experience and give you more to do once you enter the zone. The one exception to this rule is if the quest takes you to a zone you have already out-leveled or a zone that doesn't offer any quests for you because it favors one faction; in that case, don't let that quest take up space in your quest log.

7. Turn on quest tracking and take advantage of quest tooltips.
Go to the map screen (m button) and check the "Show Quest Objectives" box. This will make your leveling much easier as the locations of the objectives of most of your quests will be shown on your map. You can then click the diagonal arrow to make the map smaller so you can look at it and locate your objectives without blocking your view of your character. As for the quest tooltips, if you move your mouse over an enemy or object that you need to kill or collect for a quest, a little blurb should appear under it telling you which quest it is for and your progress on that quest. It helps to scroll your mouse over enemies as you pass them in case you can kill them for a quest but didn't know it. That way, you can kill them on the way to wherever you were going and be a more efficient quester.

8. A macro for selling all of your gray-quality items
/script for bag = 0, 4 do for slot = 1, GetContainerNumSlots(bag) do local name = GetContainerItemLink(bag,slot) if name and string.find(name,"ff9d9d9d") then DEFAULT_CHAT_FRAME:AddMessage("Selling "..name) UseContainerItem(bag,slot) end end end
If you use this macro while talking to a vendor, you'll automatically sell all gray-quality items in your bags. This is very useful when you are out questing since you probably won't want to keep any gray items for any reason; they're called "vendor trash" for a reason. I also take advantage of this macro by putting my vendor trash in my extra bags and keeping white-quality or better things that I plan to sell in my main bag. That way, I don't have to go searching through my bags for the things I plan to sell, since I can use the macro to sell all of the vendor trash strewn throughout my different bags, and all of the other things I plan on selling will be right in my main bag.

Tips on leveling a priest

A while ago, I went over some general things I have learned by leveling a shadow priest. That priest is now level 47, and though I still have a ways to go before hitting the level cap, there are some things I have learned by leveling him that I would like to share with anyone out there considering leveling a priest.

1. Be prepared to be bored.
Priests are definitely near the top of the list of most boring classes to play at early levels, along with paladins and druids. You'll spend a lot of time spamming Smite, since that will be your only worthwhile offensive spell until level 10, when you get Mind Blast. Shadow Word: Pain? Only worth using if your enemy will be alive for a while, which, at low levels, they won't be. Things get much better at level 20, when you get Holy Fire, Holy Nova, Devouring Plague, and if you spec'ed shadow, Mind Flay. Yep, your offensive arsenal more than doubles in size when you reach level 20.

2. Take advantage of Mind Flay's speed debuff.
I like to start every battle with either Mind Blast or Holy Fire. Obviously, once you get Shadow Form, Holy Fire isn't an option, but before then, it's usually more mana-efficient and causes more damage. Anyways, start your battles at maximum range, then use whichever ability you plan on starting out with. Immediately when your cast finishes, use Mind Flay. That will slow your enemy and damage them, and if you used Holy Fire, it gives some time for the DoT to do its work. I can usually use Mind Flay twice before the enemy reaches me if I start at maximum range. Doing this also applies five stacks of Shadow Weaving if you have three points in that, allowing you to start the battle out strong. Also, if your enemy runs away from you, use Mind Flay to finish them off and slow them down at the same time, reducing the risk of them bring back more of their buddies. In fact, I often find that when I use Mind Flay to slow down a runner, he tends to run in the opposite direction when I use it, meaning back to me and away from his friends, but he is still technically fleeing, so he won't attack me.

3. Use this macro.
#showtooltip Mind Flay
/cast [nochanneling:Mind Flay] Mind Flay
This macro allows you to cast Mind Flay, but only if you are not channeling it already. Thus you can spam it and start using Mind Flay again immediately after you finish casting it, which is useful for the above-mentioned method, without clipping it and losing out on damage.

4. Don't use your DoTs unless your target will take a while to kill and the DoTs will run their full duration.
Your damage-over-time spells are some of your most mana-intensive spells. They aren't worth using unless you are using them to their full potential, meaning you won't get the most out of them unless your enemy takes a long time to die. Now, granted, I have been known to drop Devouring Plague and Shadow Word: Pain on an enemy that attacks me while I am attacking someone else so that they don't have as much health once I get to them, but aside from doing that and when facing elite enemies or targets a few levels above you, DoTs aren't worth using. When facing a target a few levels above you, it's generally better to use one of your DoTs, rather than both, otherwise you'll burn right through your mana. Use whichever one is more mana-efficient. Once you get Improved Devouring Plague, that will generally be Devouring Plague, but until then, it's usually which ever one you last bought an upgrade for.

5. Keep Inner Fire up at all times.
With Inner Fire active, you'll have a similar armor-count to what a leather user has, which definitely makes it amazing. Trouble is, you lose one charge everyone time you are hit, so after 20 hits, you're right back down to your crappy cloth armor-count. This means you'll need to refresh it at the end of every two or three battles, or even in the middle of battle if you are facing multiple enemies or an elite (yes, you can solo-kill elites on a shadow priest if you know what you are doing; I solo-ed Big Game Hunter while it was still yellow in my quest log). Like a shaman's shields, it's easy to forget to reapply it in the middle of battle, but be sure you do so.

6. Take advantage of Spirit Tap to buff yourself while regenerating mana.
Speaking of buffs.... Spirit Tap is an amazing talent that doubles your spirit after you kill something and allows most of your spirit-based mana regeneration to take place, even if you are casting. That means you should use it as an opportunity to reapply the multitude of buffs you'll need to keep active on yourself so that you don't gimp yourself out of mana by buffing yourself when it will activate the five second rule.

7. Get Glyph of Shadow.
Spirit Tap alone is a good reason to stack spirit on a Shadow Priest, but this glyph makes it an even more lucrative stat. I don't know why, but this glyph was particularly hard to find on my realm's Auction House. If the same is true on your realm, then as you start approaching level 40, you should look on the auction house to see if someone put it up. Anyways, this glyph gives you a spellpower boost based on your spirit when you crit with Mind Blast, Mind Flay, Mind Sear, or the instant damage of Improved Devouring Plague, and considering that you'll probably use the first two pretty frequently, you are bound to learn personally just how sweat this glyph is, especially when that Mind Blast you start the battle with critically hits.

Since this post probably qualifies, I will be submitting it as part of Tree Burglar's Elder Blogging Event. You can read about it here on his blog or here on Blog Azeroth.