It's so hard to say goodbye: Tree of Life

I thought I'd be over it by now. I thought the pain, the sadness, the grieving would have come to an end, but I just couldn't accept it, and I still haven't. When patch 4.0 hits, I really don't know whether I'll be able to enjoy all of the great new additions, because of one little hitch: Tree of Life. I know the point has long run its course. I know this discussion has been held before, and has probably been done to death in every conceivable venue where it can be discussed. I know that those who don't share the sadness of those who will miss this form will probably roll their eyes at this post. But I can't help it, because this blog is a receptacle for my feelings about WoW, and right now, my feelings are those of sadness at the loss of this form.

You might be wondering, if this blog is just a receptacle for my feelings about WoW, then why do I advertise it as a blog where I look at WoW from a philosophical perspective? I do that because most of my thoughts on this game tend to wax philosophical. But take a look at the subtitle of my blog: "The lengthy ramblings of a World of Warcraft player who happens to be into philosophy." I promise nothing about consistently writing about philosophy, but I try to do that as often as possible, because that's the draw I try to give this blog. But right now, I can't wax philosophical, because the grief I feel about tree form is just too great. I suppose I'm going through the depression stage of grief. I've been through the denial stage ("They would never make a change like that; that's just preposterous, and not at all like our class."), the anger stage ("Gah! Why! Argh!"), and the bargaining stage ("Can't they try to improve Nature's Swiftness? Then we'd have a good cooldown and wouldn't have to lose our form."), and now I'm in the depression stage. Perhaps I can move on to acceptance before patch 4.0 hits. Until then, allow me a bit of catharsis in today's post.

If you're wondering why these emotions are coming out now, you can thank Allison Robert, a writer for WoW Insider, whose recent column about the upcoming changes to druids--which was organized in sections by our forms; i.e., it had a "the bear" section, a "the cat" section--included this heading:

The tree

A moment of silence, please.

And I bowed my head, for I am still sad to see this form go. I don't think my first post on the subject did a good enough job of explaining why I feel this way, but then again, I was probably still in denial back then. Maybe now, now that my kvetching can't do anything to change Blizzard's mind, now that everyone's probably over the subject, now that my self-deprecating introduction is probably getting on your nerves, maybe now I can express why I am sad to see our beloved form go.

For me, it has something to do with the fact that shifting is integral to the druid identity. I might be the only one who reads this deeply into it our class mechanics, but something about the very act of shifting itself is what makes the druid class so special. It may cut us off from many of our abilities, but that's what druids are all about; we sacrifice our utility for the sake of gaining new abilities or empowering abilities we already have. Our identity as the "jack of all trades, master of none" class was one we could only lose (in favor of a "jack of all trades, master of all" identity) because our shifting prevents us from being a master of all; we can only be a master of one thing at a time. That concept, the concept of sacrificing most of our arsenal so that we can fulfill any roll, has been integral to the druid class for ages, and our forms are the visual representation of that concept.

Now, I'm not going to resort to appeal to tradition to make my point, for it is one of the logical fallacies that I find most objectionable. Besides, tradition has nothing to do with my grief over the loss of Tree of Life. No, this is not a matter of tradition; it is a matter of mindset. Perhaps I'm more affected than most because I am a long-time feral druid, but the class design of our class has created a very distinct mindset that I will not assume is universal to all druids, but I'm sure is shared by at least a few. The fact that every one of our specs becomes more viable when we shift into its respective form means that when I shift into an animal form (or plant form, as the case may be), no matter what form it is, it's a way of psyching myself up. It's a way of saying, "I'm ready for battle." Caster form is for non-combat situations--repairing, crafting, transportation, running around Dalaran aimlessly, etc. By shifting into a form, I am saying, "It's time to get serious; it's time to fight."

I can't help but think that Blizzard wanted to encourage that mentality in every druid spec. After all, in ye oldie days of vanilla WoW, feral combat was the only spec with shapeshifting spells. Hurricane was the final talent for balance druids until patch 1.8, and restoration druids didn't get their form until Burning Crusade. But Blizzard intentionally added these forms to specs that once did not have them, leading me to believe that they wanted druids to have the mentality of a shifting class, that they wanted us to equate being in a form to being ready to fight. Granted, Tree of Life had a rocky introduction when it was first introduced as a form with enough drawbacks to make people need to seriously consider whether they would use it or not. That rocky introduction was probably what doomed it to its current fate, for Blizzard wanted us to use the tree, so they removed any and all significant drawbacks for Wrath of the Lich King. This, however, made the tree more of an incidental ability than anything, since all it did now was limit our arsenal to healing spells and some balance spells and give us an aura that increased healing received by raid members; it was something we used because it objectively helped us perform better, but something we weren't all that excited to use.

But Tree of Life form fed into that very druid mentality of "shapeshifting = ready for combat" so well that we probably didn't notice that we were excited to use it, that was, until we were told it was going away. Tree of Life, like every druid form, takes on a life of its own once it is donned by the druid. We druids don't have just one personality like some classes, you see; we have many, and those many personalities come from our forms. They have their own sitting animations, their own lying down animations, their own dances (the bast part by far), and though they may not look better as we get better gear (though I went over ways they could look better as our gear got better long, long ago), they are part of our identity. Again, I don't mean to argue this from the perspective of appeal to tradition; all I mean to say is, Blizzard has made shifting an inexorable part of the druid class, and for them to take away one of our forms now just because they didn't give it better bonuses and make it more useful is to take away part of our identity.

And I really can't help but wonder: why was Moonkin Form spared? I don't mean to say that our balance brothers and sisters should suffer the same horrible fate that resto druids have, but Moonkin Form is in an almost identical situation to the one Tree of Life was in. It locks balance druids out of using half of their spells (their healing spells), gimping their utility, and if it were made into a temporary ability that would increase their damage done, it will fill the current hole in the balance arsenal of a throughput-increasing cooldown. The only difference between Moonkin Form and Tree of Life now is that Moonkin Form has more and better bonuses. Honestly, if that's the only thing that spared Moonkin Form the fate of Tree of Life, then I can't help being angry at Blizzard for letting Tree of Life reach the point where it wasn't exciting enough to keep around as a permanent form. And for their oversight, we have to suffer the loss of our beloved Twist-dancing form.

In short, I see shifting as an integral part of being a druid, as part of the druid mentality, and for Blizzard to change that now just seems unnecessary and callous. Yes, there were complaints about how the form locked us out of our offensive spells, but those could have been addressed by changing the form itself, rather than scrapping it, which was basically throwing the baby out with the bath water. And to all the people who say they get tired of looking at the same form all the time (which, again, could be remedied), if that's how you feel, then you picked the wrong class... sorry.

Well, I'm glad I could work a bit of philosophy into my reasoning for why I'm sad to see Tree of Life go. I don't want this blog to become a cesspool of moaning and complaining, but I couldn't distract myself from this train of thought long enough to write about anything else. Hopefully now I'll be able to return to whatever usually distinguishes the posts on this blog as WoW Philosophized posts. Until then, thanks for bearing with me.

Some actual numbers on faction animosity

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Putting a sense mystery back in the game?

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

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

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

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

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

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

The absurdity of feat-of-strength panic

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

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

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

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

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

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.

For the Alliance! or: Why I'm proud to play the pretty faction

Allow me a bit of catharsis in today's post. The comments on Thursday's WoW.com breakfast topic about the possibility of cooperation between the two factions brought up many memories of being ridiculed by my "friends" for being an Alliance player, and even if the animosity I feel towards those who seem to have animosity towards me is unreasonable, it's time I finally get those thoughts all down on paper... er, cyberpaper, so I can finally let the topic go.

I play Alliance. Why do I play Alliance? Because Druids can only be two races: Night Elves, and Tauren. I use Shadowmeld more than I would use War Stomp. As a tank who has always liked taking less damage more than being able to take more damage before dying, I like Quickness more than I like Endurance. And while Cultivation would only prove beneficial to me while I was still leveling up herbalism, I'm never going to stop dying, so Wisp Spirit will always be useful. Thus I rolled a Night Elf, and now that all of my wealth is on the Alliance side, all of my alts are Alliance, too.

That's all there is too it: I like the Alliance racials more (Heroic Presence, Gift of the Naruu, Expansive Mind, Diplomacy, and Every Man for Himself speak for themselves), and I find the races and the architecture more pleasant to look at. And for some reason, making this choice has opened me to supposedly fully-excusable ridicule from those who choose to play as Horde characters. All because of some self-serving misconception Horde players have about Alliance players. What misconception, you might ask? The idea that the Alliance is full of little kids, trolls, and noobs, while the Horde is for the real players. I give no credit to this idea, for while I can't speak from personal experience, all of the people I have talked to who play both sides say that the two factions really aren't that different. Both have their jerks, both have their serious players, and at the end of the day, noobs will be noobs, whether they fly the Horde's banner or the Alliance's. It's also notable that all of the reports on wowjackass.com for my realm are about Horde players, which doesn't exactly make me eager to faction change for the community.

Besides this false idea of the relative qualities of the communities, there's also the idea that, because the Alliance are the "good guys" and Horde are the underdogs, somehow, everyone who plays Alliance does so because they believe they are the good guys, and that makes them acceptable targets. Considering the events that have transpired during Wrath of the Lich King and the events that are set to transpire during Cataclysm, the Horde are quickly losing their underdog label and gaining the "just plain evil" label, making it much harder to be sympathetic towards them as a faction. But for the longest time, the two factions were approximately equal in terms of the potential for player sympathy for them. The Alliance was hardly a spotless group, and the Horde really were just underdogs.

But while those new to the game may have easily mistaken the Alliance for good guys and the Horde for bad guys, there is one undeniable fact that favors the Horde; when the game was first released, the Horde races was much more badass than the Alliance races. So while it's easy to make fun of people who picked the Alliance because they thought they were the good guys, it's just as easy to make fun of people who picked the Horde because the Horde races were more badass, and I would imagine there were many players who did that. Both reasons are equally inane as reasons to dislike the other faction, so the idea that the Alliance are the good guys, and thus Alliance players are acceptable targets, is hardly a convincing point.

However, what really irks me about the Horde vs. Alliance mentality is something that WoW.com commenter Ophelia captured quite when when he/she wrote in a comment on that breakfast topic I mentioned before:

Ouch. The replies to this post make me want to bury my head in the sand for playing Horde. Seriously, guys? :|

"I think we should get along. I have no dislike for you :3"

"WE R TEH WHOOREDD~~!!111ONE ALLIANCE PANZZYYY~~!!"

Oi [sic] vey.

Oy vey, indeed. Somehow, the unique combination of elements within World of Warcraft has created an Alliance community that has little animosity for the Horde community and a Horde community that looks down on the Alliance community with the utmost condescension and ridicule. (If you are a Horde player who has no such thoughts about Alliance players, please don't comment just to say that you don't hate the Alliance; I know that many Horde players, possibly most, don't hold this kind of animosity. Unfortunately, the most vocal members of your community do, as does every single Horde player I have ever met in real life.) And somehow, in this community where the Horde freely disses the Alliance while the Alliance does not provoke the Horde, the Horde still views themselves as the underdogs, the ones who made the less popular choice, which is why they feel justified in having this attitude.

With all due respect, Horde players, give me a break. When was the last time an Alliance player ever showed the kind of disrespect or flat out aggression towards a Horde player that Horde players show to us on a regular basis? I have never seen a single bit of animosity towards players who choose to play as the Horde, and the only time I ever heard Alliance players mention the Horde is to say either, "They keep beating us at [X battleground]," or "I've been thinking of transferring to the Horde." We Alliance players view the Horde as just another group of players, albeit one we cannot communicate with in-game, while the Horde seems to dislike us and somehow perceive themselves as the downtrodden ones. Maybe that's why this issue is so irksome for me; the Alliance-hating Horde players seem to think that we somehow deserve their hatred, and yet we have done nothing to deserve it.

I suppose it shouldn't surprise me that the Horde has much more pride in itself than the Alliance; the same conditions that would lead to a dislike of the Alliance would natural lead to the creation of faction pride on the part of the Horde, so it's not a jump to say that the lack of animosity towards the Horde on the part of the Alliance and the lack of faction pride on the part of the Alliance would go hand in hand. However, in the face of all of the negative reactions I get when I proclaim that I play the Alliance, I am beginning to develop a bit of Alliance pride. Now, it's not the fact that I chose to play Alliance that I am proud of. My Alliance pride is the same kind of pride that a woman develops when she is told she is of the inferior gender, or an African American develops when he/she is told he/she is of an inferior race, or a gay man or lesbian develops when he/she is told that he/she has an inferior sexuality. The pride I am developing is not pride in the fact that I chose to play as an Alliance race; it is pride in the fact that, though I am told constantly that my choice was the inferior one, I am at peace with my choice. I am not proud to be an Alliance player; I am proud to be at peace with my choice in spite of the overwhelming pressure to regret it.

I 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.

Calm down about the changes to raid loot

What I am about to write will not be as logically rigorous as most of what I write, because this is a piece from my heart, not from my mind. After seeing the furor of indignant responses to the changes coming to raid loot in Cataclysm (namely, that 10-mans and 25-mans will share loot tables), I feel like I need to write a piece in defense of the company that had made the game that has held my interest longer than any other game I have every played. Yes, this post is going to defend Blizzard as a company (not the changes, though), and you may disagree with me. Yes, I am a bit of a Blizzard fanboy, and so you may not enjoy reading this post if you feel more doom and gloom about these changes than I do. With that said, if you are angry by the end of this post because of the optimism contained within, you have only yourself to blame; you have been warned.

Blizzard is a smart company. They have to be to be one of the most successful game companies out there and to design the most successful MMO ever. They've certainly made their fair share of mistakes, but as a smart company, they have likely learned from those mistakes. As such, I trust them. I trust them to make these changes to raid loot without ruining the 25-man raiding scene. They know what a loss it would be to their revenues if 25-man raiders quit the game due to loss of motivation to raid, and they will do their best to make that not happen. They know better than to let 25-man raiding die.

More importantly, the Cataclysm beta hasn't even started yet. Blizzard has many months to observe the effects this change will have on the raiding scene when people start raiding on the beta, and if 25-mans are abandoned by the players, they will do something to make them viable again. Maybe they'll even revoke this change and we'll be able to look back on it as the change that almost killed 25-man raiding. Point is, there is still plenty of time for Blizzard to see exactly effects this change has on the raiding scene and to respond to those changes.

We can speculate all we like, but with the vague kind of information that Blizzard has given us so far about this change, it's hard to say for certain what it will mean for raiding. Maybe the change will drive people to the 10-mans and no one will run 25-man raids; if that does happen, Blizzard will do something to change that. Considering the outcry this change has created, I don't think they can afford not to.