Gnomebliteration as a daily? Not so fast.

Suffice it to say that Gnomebliteration has become one of the most popular one-time quests in Cataclysm's content, and due to other fun quests being made dailies or repeatable quests, many have asked that Gnomebliteration receive the same treatment and be made either a daily quest or a repeatable quest. I myself also had a lot of fun with this quest, (though I had even more fun with the game that probably inspired it, which I highly recommend you check out if you haven't done so) and would love to jump on the "Gnomebliteration for daily!" bandwagon, but I could never let myself do that without really looking at the issue first and deciding whether becoming a daily quest really is the best fate for Gnomebliteration.

Let's get the obvious concern out of the way immediately. Gnomebliteration is a fun quest because there are often large crowds of gnomes or mechanoids to pick up or obliterate. If you had to go around looking for enemies to obliterate, it would not be nearly as fun of a quest. And if the quest were a daily or repeatable quest, you can bet that many people would be doing it at the same time. With a lot of people doing this quest, the number of gnomes and mechanoids to pick up or obliterate would go down significantly, and there goes the fun you might have had otherwise. Now, there are two ways to remedy this issue. One is to make the respawn rate on the gnomes and mechanoids dynamic, making it go up as more people are doing the daily. Considering how many people would probably do this daily at any one time, that would likely result in groups of gnomes spawning ludicrously frequently, with you obliterating some groups more by accident than intentionally when they happened to spawn right in front of you. That would ruin some of the fun of the quest, since the intentional rolling destruction of numerous gnomes is what makes this quest so fun.

The only other option is to give players their own phased environment through which to roll their fusion core. That way, we wouldn't have to compete with anyone else for gnomes to obliterate. Of course, this option is not without its own issues. Part of the fun of Gnomebliteration is seeing other people rolling their fusion cores around and sharing that sense of, "Isn't this so fun?" as you roll past them. And considering how popular this daily would be, I could see it putting a real strain on the servers to maintain that many "instanced" versions of the zone. Perhaps a limit would need to be put on how many people can do the quest as once.

But the biggest risk to making Gnomebliteration a daily is that it would risk losing its appeal. I don't think I need to expend too many words to convince you that, if you do something over and over again, it begins to lose its appeal. The fact that we expect Blizzard to make new content for us, rather than being satisfied with what we had at launch, is proof enough of that fact. And though this quest is without a doubt a cut above the rest, it, too, will begin to lose its appeal if we play it enough times. That is the fate of anything we play too much, not matter how much it may be a cut above the rest of what we play; "Embedded" by Job for a Cowboy is, in my opinion, Rock Band's funnest songs on guitar, and yet I don't play it as often as I used to because, like everything else, familiarity makes it lose its appeal. And if this quest is made into a daily or a repeatable quest, it, too, will lose its appeal.

Of course, you might say, this is all well and good; if players want to replay a quest until they are sick of it, that should be their right. I am inclined to agree, but I don't think Blizzard is, and I can see why. As it stands, if we want to level a new character, we have to go through all of the quests we have already played on our previous character without much deviation. The path we take on our first character won't be much different from the path we take on our second character, and these fun quests provide the high points that make the leveling worth it. If we were able to play them repeatedly, the leveling process would lose those high points that make it bearable for those who don't enjoy leveling new characters all that much, and that would make leveling a new character that much less fun.

So in the end, I say make Gnomebliteration a repeatable quest a la Return to the Abyssal Shelf: one that can be repeated several times a day, but provides no reward of any kind. This way, players can get to replay what is clearly one of the quests they enjoy the most in the whole game, but they'll have no incentive to keep playing it once it stops being completely enjoyable, which means they'll still enjoy when they come to it on a new character. Will Blizzard do it? Probably not, but hope is a free resource.

Zone replay in WoW?

I was hit by a sudden realization today regarding WoW's solo content. In contemplating the "daily grind" I have returned to (a term I coined a bit over a year ago to describe the repetitive ritual of doing the same daily quests every day), I thought about methods that other games have used to remain interesting after being completed out of hopes that the lessons learned from these other games could be applied to WoW. Thinking about this took some time, for my stingy-ness regarding buying new games and my recent penchant for open-ended games (the last four games that have held my attention for any extended period of time were WoW, Rock Band 3, Minecraft, and Rock Band 2) means it has been some time since I played a typical game that could be "beaten" in any conventional sense. But when I looked back upon the games I have played which I was able to "beat" and continued playing, I realized that most of the time, I was simply playing these games multiple times all the way through, occasionally with some sort of "New Game Plus" bonus.

Thinking back, I realized that this was how I milked most of my old games for more play time once I had finished them; I simply played them again. Yet when I looked at WoW, I realized that there is no such simple "play the game again" feature. There is no way to replay entire zones that you enjoyed, unless you level an alt and do the whole level grind over again, a daunting thought for such a huge game (especially when some zones are horribly behind others in terms of their design philosophy). Outside of rolling a new alt, there is simply no way to experience WoW's solo content more than once.

And the truth is, I see the option to roll and alt and experience the whole game again as a less-than-optimal way to give players the option to replay the game. Why? An argument for this method would say that it is equivalent to starting a new save file in a console game, but that analogy doesn't really work, because WoW is no longer equivalent to one game. It is now equivalent to several, and forcing players to start from the beginning if they wish to re-experience a part of the game is equivalent to making them play multiple games in order to replay the one they like. Let me elaborate. In the beginning, there was vanilla WoW, which was equivalent to one game (we'll call that game WoW 1). Then Burning Crusade was released. Because we had to pay extra money for Burning Crusade, it was equivalent to another game (WoW 2), and ditto for Wrath of the Lich King (WoW 3). Cataclysm is an interesting case, because we got all of the new 80-85 content (WoW 4), as well as the remake of old-world Azeroth (a remake of WoW 1).

To provide an analogy, look at the side-scrolling Metroid Games. You had Metroid, released in 1986 on the NES; Metroid 2: The Return of Samus, released in 1991 on the Game Boy; Super Metroid, released in 1994 on the SNES, and Metroid Fusion, released in 2002 on the Game Boy Advance, all of which were chronologically related to each other in terms of story and all of which were great technological improvements over their predecessors, much like WoW and its expansion packs. But after Metroid Fusion was released, a game called Metroid: Zero Mission was released, which was a remake of the original Metroid that brought it up to speed with the technological advancements made after the original Metroid was released. Cataclysm is the equivalent of a game that packages Metroid Fusion and Metroid: Zero Mission together, in that we have an advances fourth entry in the series, as well as an advanced remake of the first entry, while the second and third are still behind the other two in terms of how technologically advanced they are.

Why do I make this analogy? I make it because I think forcing WoW players to play through the updated Vanilla content, Burning Crusade's content, and Wrath of the Lich King's content before they can replay Cataclysm's content is equivalent to forcing a Metroid fan to play through Metroid: Zero Mission, Metroid 2: The Return of Samus, and Super Metroid before being able to replay Metroid Fusion, which just wouldn't be fair. Now, when you apply this analogy practically, it makes it seem like I am suggesting that people should be able to skip entire expansion packs when they roll a new character, which is not what I mean to suggest at all (although Death Knights can already do that, but they start out right in the least-advanced content, which is hardly an ideal skip). What I am saying is that the precedent set by other games makes it seem unfair that we should have to play through all of that old content just to replay the new content we enjoy.

It was at this part in my thought that I was hit with an idea: what if we could replay entire zones? What if we could go through a zone again and play through it's one-time quests a second, third, maybe even fourth time, and the longevity of the solo content could be extended that way? The precedent for it exists with the Caverns of Time; major villains could be replaced with members of the Infinite Dragonflight with similar abilities, and occasionally, a quest giver could be replaced by a member of the Keepers of Time. Or perhaps there could be one quest-giver from the Keepers of Time who gives a bread-crumb quest that starts you off in each zone. These quest-givers could be set up near the portals in Stormwind and Ogrimmar, and they could get their own portals that would lead to past versions of each zone. Thus these "replay zones" would be their own separate zones, allowing Blizzard to put in quests that wouldn't award items (to avoid flooding the dust/essence/shard market) or reputation (to avoid making faction rep too easy to farm), both of which would make sense due to the fact that you aren't actually doing anything to help any of the zones you play through again. To keep the sense of shared questing, the game could also show other players replaying the zones alongside you, preventing it from becoming a lonely experience.

What purpose would these replay zones fulfill? Aside from allowing players to play through a zone again without needing to level a character through old content, the quests in these zones could also award money, making them an alternative to the "daily grind" we have now. Because there are countless more one-time quests than there are dailies, this would probably be a more interesting experience than the dailies we have now, and would make it take longer for players to get bored with Cataclysm's high-level solo content (of course, the dailies would stay around to help players earn reputation). Perhaps they could also award reputation with a new faction comprised of members of the Keepers of Time, giving solo players something else to work towards. They would also allow players to re-experience key moments in the evolving storyline of WoW (in case they missed them the first time around), as well as give Blizzard an idea of what works in questing and what doesn't by allowing them to see which zones players replay the most.

But really, the important point is that these replay zones would allow players to experience the best of currently available content without needing to replay the old content. Raiders who roll a new character don't need to run Molten Core, Black Temple, Ulduar, etc. with that character before they can run Cataclysm's raid content, so it seems a bit silly to force us to experience old solo content more than once when we just want to re-experience the relevant, not-behind-the-times-in-design-philosophy content.

What will happen if our sub-culture goes mainstream?

We as gamers are a subculture that still has not seen total mainstream acceptance. We may have a wider variety of people under our umbrella than we used to, but as the Real ID scare showed us, not everyone is comfortable associating themselves with the gamer label. Sure, some people wear t-shirts or buttons proclaiming their gamer pride, and I've been known to wear my druid t-shirt out in public (though the fact that non-WoW-players wouldn't understand the meaning of that kind of shirt is part of the reason why I'm so comfortable donning it for a public outing), but the people who I see wearing t-shirts that explicitly state their identity as a gamer tend to be the ones who fit the "gamer stereotype" more than most of us do; after all, there is still a stigma attached to gaming, so if one can get away with not immediately being associated with our subculture, it's generally beneficial to do just that.

In many ways, I find being a member of the gamer community to be a lot like being a member of the gay community, and I can say that because I am a member of both communities. Membership in either community isn't immediately obvious to others if one don't fit the stereotypical image of their respective community. (For the gaming community, it's the overweight, glasses-wearing antisocialite; or the gay community, it's the flamboyant man or the butch woman.) In other words, unlike race or religion, being a member of the gamer community or the gay community has more to do with what you do than who you are, so the only way someone can identify you as a member of either subculture is to see you participate in either subculture's defining activities, see you proclaim that you are a member of either subculture, or see that you fit the stereotypes about the subculture and make an assumption based on that fact. Both communities also have varying levels of acceptance in different circles and different areas, though gay acceptance seems to vary more by geographical location than gamer acceptance does, but both definitely vary by the average age of the members of the circle in question.

Of course, being a member of the gaming community somewhat more of a choice than being a member of the gay community, which could lead to the gaming community being more of an acceptable target than the gay community. However, I would argue that we don't choose which activities appeal to us the most, so though being gamer might not influence our lives as much as being gay influences the lives of members of the gay community, being a part of the gaming community isn't as much of a choice as it is made out to be.

So why do I bring up these similarities? I bring them up because I have recently read an article about the end of gay culture, which proposes that as the gay community becomes more accepted in mainstream culture, the "gay subculture" will fade away, becoming less of a defining aspect of our community. To quote the latter part of the article:

So, too, the majority of gay men and lesbians want nothing more than to raise families behind picket fences. There are other signs of increasing conformity in the gay world. Leather is seen by most younger men as more silly than hot. While they may exercise, younger men mostly don’t strive for Adonis physiques. It goes on. (Lesbians are way ahead of the curve on this. They’ve been mating and nesting for years.)

Is this bad? Probably not. We’ve been fighting for acceptance. Now that we’re getting it, it’s up to us to do what we want with it. If younger gay men and lesbians want the same things as their straight counterparts, so be it.

Have we lost something? Probably. Just as blacks lose their jive and soul when they become middle-class suburbanites, and Jews lose their Yiddishkeite, so we shed the camp, the bitchy humor, the diva worship, and the other facets that defined “gay” for so long. [Emphasis is my own]

Most people, however, would consider it a fair tradeoff.

In other words, as the gay community becomes more accepted as part of the mainstream culture, we could start to shed the trappings once thought typical of gays and lesbians. And this doesn't surprise me at all. It's not uncommon for members of a culture that hasn't been accepted into the mainstream to act as exaggerated versions of their culture, and for that to cease once they have been accepted into the mainstream. After all, the thinking behind it goes, if people aren't going to accept us for who we are, even if why try to earn that acceptance, why try to earn it? Let's instead be as gay (or what have you) as we possibly can; they won't accept us if we try to act like them, so let's act as unlike them as possible for the sake of preserving our sense of identity. However, once the mainstream does accept a sub-culture, members of that sub-culture have a reason to try to fit in with the mainstream culture. After all, for all that we may put individuality on a high pedestal, we humans are social animals, and the desire to fit in is hardwired in our brain for that reason.

I witnessed this phenomenon myself in high school and college. My high school was in a fairly wealthy, very white suburb, so the school was mostly comprised of white students; I could count the number of black students I knew of who lived in that town and went to that school on one hand. As part of a program to try to give inner city children better education, we also had black students from urban areas nearby bussed in to attend school with us. Now, the school wasn't racist by any stretch of the imagination, but these inner city kids didn't fit in, and they knew they didn't fit in and would never fit it, so they would act very "thuggish". I have read that this phenomenon is not isolated to the high school I attended, and it happens for the very reason I outlined above. Contrastly, the college I currently attend has a very racially diverse student body, and though I have met my fair share of thuggish black students, I have also met a lot more subdued, not-so-thuggish black students in my time at college, and I think it might have something to do with the fact that they stand a chance of fitting in if they don't act like exaggerated versions of the stereotypes about their subculture.

In short, we once had the choice between trying to fit in and not being accepted, or acting like exaggerated stereotypes and not being accepted, and since both would lead to the same result, we picked the latter, because it was more fun and didn't force us to sacrifice our identity in vain. Yet now we have the choice between trying to fit in and standing a chance of being accepted, or acting like exaggerated stereotypes and not fitting in. Since we stand a chance of actually being accepted for who we are, the former option is starting to look a lot more attractive.

The question I want to ask is, what will happen to the gaming community if we are accepted into the mainstream? Will we lose the jive and soul, the Yiddishkeite, the camp, the bitchy humor, the diva worship of our community, whatever that may be? And if we do, will that really be a bad thing?

In order to answer those questions, we need to ask what it is that we stand to lose if we become accepted by the mainstream. What, exactly, is our jive and soul, our Yiddishkeite, our camp, bitchy humor, and diva worship? Well, if we look at what these staples of each community have in common, it is that they are the result of members of those communities putting forth time and effort to be a part of something that defines their subculture. Being "camp" in a showy way takes time and effort, time and effort a gay man might not otherwise spend if he stood a chance to fit in if he didn't act camp. Perhaps when a subculture is assimilated into the mainstream, its members start putting forth effort towards fitting in rather than standing out, since the former can actually lead to them being accepted. Are there exceptions? Certainly; long after gays have been assimilated into mainstream culture, I'm sure there will still be members of our community who try to be as campy as possible and who will still spend time worshiping divas and all that, but it will likely be more rare than it is now.

So what is a staple of the gaming community that takes this kind of time and effort? An easy answer would be giant LAN parties, midnight release parties, and gaming conventions, which could very well be what we lose if we go mainstream. After all, if gaming became more mainstream, you would see a lot more gamers who have much bigger lives outside of gaming than the typical LAN-attending, convention-attending, midnight-release-attending gamer does. These would be gamers for who gaming is not as big of a part of their lives as it may be a part of ours, so they won't have the time to go to and arrange LAN parties or conventions or midnight releases. We could also see people who now spend a lot of time gaming start doing other things outside of their gaming hobby as less and less stigma is attached to it. With this disappearance of stigma will come more acceptance of gamers in non-gaming circles, and that acceptance could motivate once-hard-core gamers to start doing things outside of the realm of gaming. After all, we are all social animals, and social experiences brought about through gaming (like the ones brought about by WoW itself) can only do so much for us.

In other words, I think the best conclusion to draw from this logic is that if gaming becomes more accepted by the mainstream, we will see a decline in the number of hard-core gamers. It wouldn't surprise me if the current stigma attached to gaming is what drives hard-core gamers to play as much as they do in the first place; they know they can't fit in with mainstream culture, so rather than trying to fit in, they just do more of what they love: gaming. Once that stigma no longer exists and gamers are more accepted by the mainstream, maybe they will no longer be driven to these isolating levels of dedication to their hobby. Just as the black community lost their soul brothers, just as gay community may lose it's flaming queens, we may lose the most extreme members of our community to mainstream assimilation.

Is that a bad thing? That's a topic for another post, though I wouldn't mind hearing your thoughts on whether it is or not in the comments section.

Food for thought on remake and genre designation

Just a week ago, I found myself defending WoW from the accusation that it has become too linear of a game, yet as time has gone by and I have consumed more of Cataclysm's content, it has become apparent to me that WoW really has changed in terms of how linear it is. I remember in my last post before Cataclysm came out, I considered whether Cataclysm could really be called WoW 2, as it has frequently been called, since the setting hadn't changed much. If only I had known just how little change was really wrought by patch 4.0.3, and how much awaited me once the switch was flipped on Cataclysm itself.

Suffice it to say that questing in Cataclysm has more linear than it was in expansions past, especially compared to questing in vanilla WoW. It has become so linear that WoW really has become a different game, at least in terms of its questing, so I would say the title of WoW 2 is not undeserved. In fact, it really deserves the title of WoW 2.0, rather than WoW 2, because Cataclysm is really an updated version of the old WoW. See, when I heard everyone calling Cataclysm WoW 2, I assumed they meant that it would be like a sequel to the game, like the way Metroid 2: Return of Samus was a sequel to the original NES Metroid game. It continued the story of Metroid (which Cataclysm does) and provided some updates to the gameplay and the player's arsenal (which Cataclysm also did). However, considering how greatly Cataclysm has changed WoW, it now seems to me to be more analogous to Metroid: Zero Mission, a remake of the original Metroid released almost twenty years after the original. Zero Mission completely updated the original Metroid, adding all of the new features, weapons, and abilities fans had grown accustomed to over the years as new games had come out, while also expanding the game's universe to add new areas to the remade ones. Cataclysm, to me, seems to be more of a remake of WoW than a sequel to it, which is why I say it deserves the title of WoW 2.0 more than that of WoW 2.

Yes, WoW feels like a very different game now. In fact, after doing enough quests to see just how much WoW has changed, I can say that it reminds of another game I spent a lot of time playing: Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. I never got into the other entries in the series as much as I got into San Andreas, so I don't know whether they all have this same design or not, but in San Andreas, you often had a few missions you could do at any time, and once you finished those, a new segment of the story would open up. Maybe it would involve one mission that would progress the story to its next stage, or maybe you'd have more missions to do, but the story missions were very linear, and the game itself was very story driven. However, that wasn't to say you couldn't do other things. There were a plethora of side missions you could do, items you could collect, and there was always the option to just go out and cause mayhem. A game with linear story-driven missions in addition to side missions you could complete if you wanted to? Sounds a lot like the way I described WoW but a week ago.

Yet San Andreas was not an RPG by any stretch of the imagination; it was a sandbox game, a genre which shares many elements with the RPG genre, including an open world and many things to do, yet it was not nearly as open and non-linear as WoW was in its earlier incarnations. Could this mean that WoW is moving away from its MMORPG categorization and becoming something new? Not likely. Linearity or lack-thereof is not a defining feature of an RPG, though RPGs tend to fall closer to the non-linear side of the spectrum, but this is more by convention than by definition. No, what defines in RPG is really stats, numbers, leveling up, and things of that nature, game aspects that are reminiscent of the table-top RPGs of yore. What this means is that WoW is still definitively an RPG, not a sandbox game; it is simply and RPG with sandbox elements, which could always be said about it to some extent.

But with that said, WoW is most definitely very different from its vanilla days; the newfound linearity of the quests is enough to prove that is true. If anything, this is the culmination of changes to questing that have been made with each expansion pack, for each continent's quests became more and more linear as time went on, until we got to the point where we are now, where questing has become much more linear than is typical of an open-world RPG. Is this a sign that WoW is moving away from the conventions of the open-world RPG genre and taking on aspects of other, more mainstream genres? And if so, what will that mean for MMOs as a whole? It's probably too early to tell at this point in the expansion, but it's something I'll be keeping an eye out for as the saga of World of Warcraft continues.

How linear is Cataclysm, really?

Larisa has a post over on her blog in which she remarks on how linear Cataclysm's quest design is. Rather than allowing movement between the various parts of the zones, we are restricted to a set path by which we can progress through the quests. She compares it to "the moving walkway in the room where they keep the royal jewels at The Tower of London. The only way you can see them is by standing on that walkway, and it passes those jewels at set, nonnegotiable pace." And though I have only just completed the quests in Mount Hyjal and am thus ill-equipped to judge the expansion as a whole, I have to agree that the quest design in that zone was indeed very linear. It could have been worse, though; there were sometimes two quest hubs one could choose to go to, and you could choose which order you did the quests in each "round" of quests at each hub. Yes, it could have been a lot more linear, but for an MMO, a genre supposedly defined by an open world, it was indeed pretty straightforward.

Why did it take me so long to get through one zone, you might ask? As I mentioned in Friday's post, questing is not the only thing I have been doing since Cataclysm came out. I have done the fishing and cooking dailies every day, fished in Hyjal's lakes and rivers, searched the world for archeological fragments, and even taken some time just to fly around the old world (oh the flying, oh how I love it) and see the changes wrought by Deathwing's return. After all, questing isn't the only thing that has been changed or added in this expansion, and it would be a pretty poor way to experience it to focus solely on that aspect of this new Azeroth. But what's this? Choice in what I play when I play WoW? But I thought this game was supposed to be linear? (That's not a personal jab at you, Larisa; just a jab at the idea of WoW being linear.)

This is where I take issue with the idea that WoW has become "too linear", an idea I have heard elsewhere, aside from Larisa's blog. Yes, the questing has become more linear, but as the commenters on Larisa's post that I linked to earlier have pointed out, that's a necessity for phasing to be as prevalent as it is, and phasing is a necessity for us to think that our changes are having any effect on the world around us. But questing isn't all there is to World of Warcraft. There's PvP, dungeons, professions, secondary professions, and even just exploring the world to see what can be found. And even if some of these things themselves are pretty linear (professions especially; gone are the days of searching the AH for recipes or the world for vendors who sell them in a limited stock; we get our recipes from a pretty limited selection of sources these days), we are completely free to choose which ones we engage in and when. There's no "negligence punishment" mechanic put in to keep you in one part of the game when you'd rather be doing something else, outside of the fear of falling behind your guild.

Now, this does mean that in order to experience the true non-linearity of WoW, you need to take the initiative to do something other than what the game will direct you to do; the quests won't tell you to take a break and go try out archeology or PvP or fishing. The best you'll get is an occasional quest that will direct you to a dungeon of the appropriate level. I bring up this little detail because, in the past, I talked about the decline of Wrath of the Lich King heroics and the players' reacting to this decline by being more creative about how they ran heroics. In that post, I concluded that the player's running the heroics in unconventional ways was indeed a sign that the heroics had gone into decline, because players were running them in ways they weren't intended to be run. The implication of the conclusions I came to in that post was that if the game doesn't tell you specifically to do something, and you have to do that something to make the game interesting, then the game is a failure. If we apply this logic to Cataclysm's design, then that would mean that the fact that game can only be non-linear if players do something of their own accord to make it so--rather than because the game told them to--then the game fails at being nonlinear.

But the reason I concluded that players doing things in Wrath's heroics to spice up their heroic runs was a sign that heroics had declined was that the heroics weren't designed for that kind of play. Wrath's heroics were designed to be run in particular ways, and that fact that players weren't running them in those ways meant that they had failed. Cataclysm, however, is designed to support players doing things other than questing. If it weren't designed that way, archeology and all of the other things we can do aside from questing wouldn't be in the game. Cataclysm-era WoW is designed so that it can be played in a non-linear way, if the player chooses to do so. And therein lies the crux of the problem: WoW's linearity is inversely proportional to how much initiative you take to seek out other things to do within the game. Someone without that initiative will probably limit themselves to questing and the occasional dungeon run, and in doing so, they'll find WoW to be a very straight-forward game.

But in a way, I don't mind WoW being designed this way. It reminds me of the way that the story was told in the GameCube game Metroid Prime. In that game, you collected bits of the story (similar to the way we collect bits of lore through archeology) with your scan visor, including logs by space pirates and stories told by those who inhabited the planet where the game takes place before they were wiped out. You can also find vanity text aplenty by scanning various things in the environment, which adds even more to the atmosphere of the game. The beauty of this system was that it allowed players to experience exactly as much of the story as they wanted to. If they wanted a straight shoot-em-up, they could eschew the scan visor completely and just go in with gun ablazing. If they just wanted the background story but didn't want to hear all of the little details about the world itself, they could keep an eye out for the red scan nodes which would indicate a lore entry that would reveal the background of the world, while ignoring the other ones that just added to the atmosphere of the present situation. And if they wanted as many details as they could sink their teeth into, they could scan everything, which would tell them a lot about the story and about the world itself.

In a way, the non-linearity of WoW's design is like the depth of the story in Metroid Prime; both are at the control of the player. Just as players of Metroid Prime chose how much of the story they cared to experience, players of WoW choose how linear they want their experience to be. Are you looking for a game with a wide variety of things to do? Go out and find them; they're there for you. Are you just looking for a straightforward quest-based adventure? Fine, just follow the quests and do what they tell you. You'll miss out on a lot, but if that's how you want to play, who are we to say no? And if you don't want a linear experience, but you haven't taken the initiative to check out the other things there are to do in WoW? If that's the case, then who's really to blame?

The things we carry with us

Picture, if you will, some times in the future, far enough into the future that World of Warcraft's last server has been shut down long ago, the epics and the mounts now nothing more than a memory. Other games have taken hold of our collective conscious, and all we have left are whatever screenshots we took; whatever merchandise we purchased, merchandise we probably keep just for nostalgia's sake; and the various archives of websites and blogs dedicated to the game. The Wikipedia page about WoW, the tvtropes page about WoW, all of them have stopped being updated as frequently as they once were. Our collective awareness of WoW has moved firmly into the domain of memory.

Now imagine a time even farther into the future. Not much farther, for it probably won't take as long as you may think to reach this point, but at this time in the future, our memories of WoW have started to become fuzzy. We may remember certain instances that made a big impression on us, or certain raid nights that were particularly unique for some reason or other, but the finer details of the game elude us. If someone asked, you couldn't tell them what stat was best for your class or what the best strategy for beating raid boss X was. You couldn't tell them what piece of gear you were most proud of, or what boss was your favorite to fight.

Or could you? I ask that question because of my own experiences with nostalgia related to a favorite game; specifically, Metal Gear Solid 3. I was lucky enough to procure the soundtrack to this amazing game, and though all of the music was enjoyable, I was particularly taken back by one song. It's the song that plays during the ending cinematic of the game, during which the big reveal that makes the game the tear-jerker that it is comes out. I wouldn't dare spoil it for you, but suffice it to say that the Metal Gear Solid series as a whole is one of the few series that has ever made me cry, and the third installment was no exception, thanks to the ending. Listening to the music that plays during the ending, I got chills like I hadn't felt in a long time. I was reminded of just how powerful that ending was, and I even got a bit teary-eyed as I listened. Naturally, this made me want to look up the ending on YouTube and watch it again, which I did. But a funny thing happened: I wasn't nearly as affected by seeing the ending itself as I had been by the music. Thinking that listening to the music had just ruined me for whatever nostalgic experiences I might have otherwise had, I tried listening to the song again, and I had more of those nostalgic chills than I did while watching the ending cinematic. It was this that made me realize that the music had stayed with me more than the actual plot itself, that the music was what I had carried with me.

Now, great as it was, the music was hardly the best part of Metal Gear Solid 3. The story, the gameplay, the boss fights, the sheer depth of the game--everything about it was impressive and worth remembering. So why, of all things, is it the music that takes me back the most? Your guess is as good as mine, but it was a lesson for me. I learned that we can never be sure what will what will make us fondly remember the things we are nostalgic about. What does this have to do with WoW? If nothing else, it made me realize that the things that make me nostalgic for WoW once I stop playing might be the things I least expect. It might, of course, be the music; after all, music from WoW has made me nostalgic before. But music isn't the only thing that has made me unexpectedly nostalgic for something; in conversing with a friend of mine, I once became nostalgic for the original Spyro the Dragon trilogy by remembering this one glitch in the second game that allowed you to swim in the air in one of the levels. It was my first video game glitch that I exploited knowingly, and remembering it brought back fond memories of that time.

I suppose the only useful conclusion I can come to from these ramblings is that developers should do their best to make sure that every aspect of their game (the visuals, the sound effects, the music, the writing, etc.) is superb, because different things make different people nostalgic. Sure, they should also focus on making the game fun to play, but we're going to be living with our memories long after we stop playing this game, and those memories will be the true payoff for our experiences. They will be the lasting trophies of our triumphs, but what good are they if we don't actually remember them? That's where these nostalgic triggers come in, for they are what help us remember those good times, and those triggers will work best if they are well done. Would the music that played during Metal Gear Solid 3's finale have brought me back if it weren't as well done as it is? Probably not. That's why game designers owe it to players to make sure every part of the game is very well designed, so that players can be better served by their memories.

Justifying the limits on player influence

Bless me, readers, for I have sinned; it has been three months since my last confession. In the past few weeks, I have not been faithful to World of Warcraft. I have been cheating on WoW with another game, and I am a bit ashamed of it because it has meant less inspiration for topics I could write about for this blog. Who is this mistress who has pulled me away from the game, you ask? She is a tempting one, one who has caused many to falter from their chosen paths. She is the indie game sensation... Minecraft.

It's understandable if you haven't heard of Minecraft, but the fact that it is the most successful indie game of all time, and it's only in alpha, should say something about the phenomenon it has become. I could never do the game justice with my own explanations, so I'll just direct you to YouTube user SeaNanners, who explains the game quite well in his "Welcome to Minecraft" series. You can start with part 1 here and go on as you please. I invite you to watch his video (or even a few of them) if you aren't familiar with the game, since it will give you a better idea of where I'm coming from when I talk about these two games, World of Warcraft and Minecraft.

Minecraft is an interesting game. It's a sandbox game, a game that answers the question of, "What do you do in this game?" with "Whatever you want to." It's similar in that respect to games like Dwarf Fortress or Animal Crossing, especially the latter, in the much of the fun that there is to be had is driven by the player's creativity, rather than things like missions or other objective goals. This may sound boring to players used to games where what you do in-game is entirely driven by what the game designers want you to do, but once you adjust to this freedom and all of the possibilities it provides, some pretty amazing things are possible. I, for example, built in my Minecraft world, complete from scratch, a volcano which is continually erupting. Someone else has built a sixteen-bit computer in Minecraft, and a group of people worked together to build York Minster Cathedral to scale in the proper size. It's pretty amazing what one can do in this game.

But what does this have to do with WoW, you ask? Well, playing Minecraft has made me realize just how little freedom we have in WoW, even when it seems like we have so much. Sure, there is plenty to do in this game--raids, leveling, battlegrounds, crafting, fishing--and yet, we are very limited in how we can tackle all of these options. If we wanted to try to take Warsong Gulch by destroying our opponents' entrance into the battlefield, rather than just capturing their flag, we couldn't do it. If we wanted to try taking Icecrown Citadel by just flying to the top of the Frozen Throne, we couldn't do it. If we wanted to finish a quest where we act as a double agent by converting over to the other side, rather than by returning to the side we were working with before, we couldn't do it. Though there are many things we can do in WoW, how we go about those activities is really pretty linear. We can choose how we fight Blood-Queen Lana'thel on our way to Arthas, but we can't try using deception, espionage, or even diplomacy to get past her. When starting a death knight, we can't choose to remain an agent of the scourge and play on the side of evil if we want to. What we do and much of how we do it is all decided for us.

This kind of limited freedom is something I have discussed before, such as when I discussed how we players really don't have any power to change how the plot of WoW progresses, and when I discussed how we players can't use the knowledge we have to change our character's actions, for their actions are dictated by the plot of the game. Having given it some thought, though, I can now see why our actions in WoW are so limited and so inconsequential: for a game of this scope, they have to be.

In terms of justifying the lack of consequences of our options, one of the things that makes WoW, in my opinion, great, is that everyone gets to have the same great experience when they play, as long as they are willing to put in the effort. Someone who started playing five years ago and someone who started playing five months ago both have equal objective odds of being able to complete the Wrathgate questline or take down the Lich King, as long as they are both willing to put in the same amount of work. Now, if our actions had greater consequences for the game's world, some of these experiences could be lost, and new players would have no chance of experiencing them. Without the use of phasing to show the consequences of our questing in Dragonblight, new players would come to the zone and see that every significant thing that needed to be done had been done. If a player completing the Wrathgate questline caused the changes that are currently phased to happen permanently to the zone, newer players would have no chance at seeing this amazing questline. And if killing the Lich King permanently crippled the enemies in Icecrown Citadel (as killing their leader should), then newer players wouldn't experience the satisfaction of beating that raid when it was as difficult as it could be, and their satisfaction would be shallower for that reason. Or even worse, if players killing the Lich King killed him for good, players who were just a bit behind in getting to him wouldn't be able to fight him at all. In short, WoW must remain a static world so that new players can experience it and all its majesty the same way veterans get to.

As for the limitations on the kinds of choices players can make in how they tackle the game, suffice it to say that WoW is a huge game. Blizzard has enough on their hands trying to make a game as expansive as WoW is now; imagine how much work they'd have to do if there were multiple ways of going through it. If, for example, death knights could decide to stay with the scourge, Blizzard would need to design an entire set of quests to see those death knights to level 80 (soon to be 85), and that would take away from time they could spend developing more content for the rest of us. If the game didn't include so many different areas of play, perhaps there could be options like this, but because we have so many options in terms of what we do, we can't have many in terms of how we do what we do. It's just not feasible.

My top 15 favorite video games of all time. Part 2: 5-1

I apologize for this post being posted later than usual, but circumstances beyond my control conspired against me in the past few days that prevented me from posting it on time.

Last week, I wrote the first part of a list of my top 15 favorite video games of all time. This week, we finish that list, as I unveil the top 5. As I mentioned already, WoW is within this part of the list, but it is not number 1.

5. Rock Band
Guitar Hero II was a game I really enjoyed, so when I found out they were making a full band version, I got excited, to say the least. This was the game that cemented my Harmonix-fanboyism in the Rock Band vs. Guitar Hero debate. It's difficult to verbalize what I like about this game so much, for it's not like any other game on this list, so suffice it to say that it took everything I loved about the original Guitar Hero games (being able to experience the music in such a direct way, having a more physical way of playing the game than controller-based games, featuring rock music) and made it full band. It was also a drastic improvement over the gameplay interface of the original Guitar Hero games, and one I liked more than the latter Guitar Hero games' interface.

Now, don't get me wrong, I love Rock Band 2 almost as much as Rock Band 1, and I think it improved upon its predecessor in several ways. Rock Band 1 was pretty easy on guitar and bass guitar, and extremely easy on vocals, while being very challenging on drums, and Rock Band 2 corrected all of these balance issues. It also made the general gameplay interface easier on the eyes, added hyperspeed for those of us who need it, and had a better menu for selecting songs. So why does Rock Band 1 get higher billing on this list? For one, Rock Band 2 wasn't all that different from it's predecessor; it was more of Rock Band 1.5 than anything, so it doesn't stand on its own in my memory as much. I also think that, as small as it may have been compared to recent games, Rock Band 1 had the best song selection out of any rhythm game I ever owned, a category which includes quite a few volumes, including Guitar Hero and Rock Band games. Yes, it was heavy on the soft rock and light on other genres, but so much care went into choosing each song that it ended up being an amazing setlist. Rock Band 2's setlist has much more variety, but that combined with its size means some of that polish in the selection is lost. Truth be told, before I bought Rock Band 3, I played my Rock Band 1 exported songs just as often as the on-disk songs on Rock Band 2

4. Dance Dance Revolution (any of the PS2 iterations)
Ah, Dance Dance Revolution, or DDR, as well call it in certain circles. This was my first rhythm game, my first game that involved an unconventional controller (the dance pad), and my first game that required something other than typical button pushing to play. I really enjoyed this game, to the point where I played long enough to become good enough to beat some of the hardest songs on the highest difficulty. I'd say I played this series regularly for about five years before losing interest, and I had some very good time with it. Though I have good memories of all of the games, Extreme 2 and SuperNOVA were my favorites based on setlist alone. Though I don't play frequently anymore, when I go to an arcade, I'll often play and find that I haven't lost much of my skill, for I can still play on Heavy, the game's highest regular difficulty.

3. World of Warcraft
You knew it was coming, but WoW is without a doubt one of my favorite games; if it weren't, why would I write this blog? As it stands, I have been playing WoW for more than five years, making it one of my longest-running video games, soon to be the longest, for it is only behind DDR by a few months. I probably don't need to tell you all of the reasons why WoW is a great game, but one of the reasons I like it so much is that it is constant changing, evolving, improving, to meet the desires of the playerbase. Many mandatory addons have been integrated with the game's default interface in simpler versions, like Omen and QuestHelper. Each round of content (solo content, at least) has improved as Blizzard has gotten better at designing engaging and enjoyable quests, and the changes to Azeroth coming in Cataclysm show that they aren't afraid to admit that something they've already done needs to be changed. I also enjoy just how many things there are to do in game, and even if I get tired of them all, I can roll another class and do them again in a different way. Suffice it to say WoW has provided me with a lot of hours of entertainment, and I'm sure it will continue to do so. In fact, I once did the math and found that for every dollar I have spent on WoW, I have gotten about three hours of play time. No other game I have played comes even remotely close to a ratio like that (though Minecraft looks like it might... but that's a story for another time).

2. Guitar Hero II
This game will always hold a special place in my heart. In addition to being the game that got me into instrument-based rhythm games, this was also the game that got me into rock and roll for good. I listed to rap mostly before playing this game (it's not something I'm proud of), but Guitar Hero II opened up a whole new genre of music to me in a way that was very much suited to my tastes: video gaming. Rock and its sub-genres have taken the primary spot in my musical tastes, and that might not have happened without Guitar Hero II.

Of course, while my personal reasons for liking this game put it high on this list, it wouldn't be this high if it weren't a great game, as well. The soundtrack, though comprised mostly of covers, was excellent (besides, at that time, we were alright with covers), but the gameplay itself was what really drew me into the game. The simulated guitar playing really was a revolution in music gaming that allowed us to experience the music more directly while still playing something that was very much a video game, and a fun game to boot. I also progressed from easy to medium to hard to expert in my time while playing this game, so many of my most satisfying memories of beating challenging songs come from this game. I have often heard people say that this game is the best game ever released in the instrument-based rhythm game genre, and I'm inclined to agree with them.

1. Resident Evil 4: Wii Edition
Resident Evil 4 was, in my mind, a perfect game. I couldn't tell you a single flaw that game had, because I didn't think it had one. The action was tense, the game was quite challenging (even on normal difficulty), and the way the combat system was set up left the game open for many different ways of going through an encounter, whether you wanted to run in with guns blazing or wait on top of a ladder and pick the enemies off one by one. I also liked the fact that the game rewarded ammo conservation and resourceful playing--which is something that comes natural to me--much more so than the "more dakka" method of play, which would drain your ammo quickly. The game also rewarded exploration, something else that comes naturally to me, in that careful examination of your environment would often reveal treasures that could be sold to the merchant in the game for money to upgrade your weapons. Add to that the imposing bosses, the tense atmosphere, and the fact that the game was just plain fun, and you have one of the best games to ever come out on the GameCube.

Now, I've been talking about Resident Evil 4 all this time, so you might be wondering why I put the Wii-remake on the list instead of the original game. I put it here simply because it is better than the original in every way. The control scheme, which uses the wii-remote to aim your gun, is much more fluid than the control scheme in its GameCube counterpart, and the lack of the inherent shakiness of your gun (present in the GameCube version) meant aiming was much more about how steadily you could hold your own hand, meaning shots were often easier to make. The Wii-make also added all of the extra features that had been added in the Playstation 2 remake, like the new costumes, weapon, and extra mode. The Wii Edition of Resident Evil 4 took everything I loved about one of my favorite games of all time and added things to improve it even more. Even considering how many times I played through the original Resident Evil 4, I still enjoy playing through the Wii-make, and its incredibly rare that an updated re-release can hold my attention anywhere close to as long as the original held it. Resident Evil 4: Wii Edition did just that.

So there you are, my top five favorite games of all time. I don't have a satisfactory way to conclude this list, so let me just say that if you have been curious about any of the games on this list but never tried them, do give them a shot. They're all excellent in their own way.

My top 15 favorite video games of all time. Part 1: 15-6

A turn of events that took place over the course of this weekend lead me to consider what my favorite video games of all time are, and since I am at a lack of topics to write about that I don't want to save for another day of the week (considering my posting schedule) I decided to write about my favorite video games of all time here. I have been a long time video gamer, since the days when the original Playstation and the Nintendo 64 were the big consoles on the block, and thus I have a lot of good memories relating to games. The best, though, are the ones detailed below. These are the games I played and replayed, learned all the secrets of, sometimes completed, and just thoroughly enjoyed. Think of this as a spiritual sequel to my lists of my top 25 favorite songs and my top 5 favorite movies. To answer the inevitable question, WoW is very high on this list, but it is not number one.

15. Super Mario Sunshine
This is an interesting entry. You see, I was pretty young when I first played Super Mario 64, which many consider to be one of the best games of all time, so my memories of that game aren't as vivid as my memories of Super Mario Sunshine. That said, my memories that I do have of Super Mario 64 aren't as fond as my memories of Super Mario Sunshine, so I don't feel guilty putting it on the list instead. Super Mario Sunshine was one of the first games I ever played on the GameCube, and it is still one of the games I remember best. The atmosphere alone made it a great game, for the game took place on a tropical island paradise. The environments, the characters, the music, they were all designed to support the feeling that the game took place in tropical get-away. It worked so well that even after I had beaten the game, I enjoyed just exploring the environments, seeing what I hadn't seen before, finding the little secrets of the game, because playing this game actually felt like going away on a vacation. The gameplay was also very fun, with the FLUDD (Mario's water-squirting accessory) adding a new dimension to the game's already fun Super Mario 64-based control mechanics. It was just a joy to play, simply put.

14. Super Smash Bros Melee
Suffice it to say that I have a lot of good memories associated with playing this game with friends. My character of choice was Sheik, and I got quite good at her. In addition to playing the regular melee mode, I also enjoyed a game some of my friends and I would play on Venom, where we would restrict ourselves to one side of the stage and fight each other only by throwing Pokéballs on the other person's side, which were set to spawn often. Before Rock Band came around, this was the party game among my friends, and the one that motivated me to buy my three additional GameCube controllers. Considering that the fun to be had in this game was mostly based on the interpersonal interactions it created, it's hard to pin down what made it such a great game, but it was certainly one of my favorites. Don't get me wrong, I like Brawl too, but Melee will always hold a special place in my heart.

13. The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker
Like Super Mario Sunshine, Wind Waker is a game that is often overshadowed by an installment in the series that came before it: Ocarina of Time, considered by many to be the best game ever. That it may be, and while I did enjoy playing it, it was another one of those games that I was pretty young when I first played, so it didn't stick in my mind as much as Wind Waker, which I played later. But I digress; Wind Waker was a great game because of its art design and it's scope. I know the cartoony art design was a polarizing facet of the game, but I thought it brought a lightness to game's overall tone that prevented it from getting too serious. It's scope was also huge in that the game took place on the open ocean, with the major actions taking place on the islands in the ocean. There was a lot to be found between these islands, and the art and music made traversing the ocean a joy, rather than a pain. It was also the first Zelda game to feature a sword fight with Ganondorf (the series' main villain) as its final boss. How can you go wrong with that?

12. Animal Crossing
A rather unique game, Animal Crossing had no obvious completion requirements, and was a game where you largely had to make your own fun. Of course, the game gave you multitudes of ways to do that, from fishing to decorating your house to changing the landscaping of the town. It was nice change of pace from games where there was pressure to do something specific; in Animal Crossing, you did what you wanted to do. The fact that the town changed with the year also gave the game a nice flair to it. Like Super Mario Sunshine, this was a game where you felt like you had been transported to another world, a more relaxing world where you wouldn't mind spending a few hours.

11. Tales of Symphonia
This was an interesting game: an action-RPG with a story that could get convoluted at times, but certainly kept me invested in the game. But what made the game great was its gameplay, which combined RPG and action-game aspects beautifully to create something that was just plain fun. The fact that the random encounters were also somewhat avoidable, depending on your skill at avoiding them (it was something you became practiced with) was also an appreciated aspect of the game. Like Wind Waker, this game was especially massive in its scope, and you didn't truly appreciate that until you got the means to fly through the overworld. Once that option was open to you, you realized just how big of a world there was out there to explore, and there were plenty of reasons to explore it, too, from bonus bosses to bonus storylines that told you more about your characters. Definitely not a game for everyone, but I certainly enjoyed it.

10. Metroid: Zero Misson
A remake of the classic NES title Metroid, brought up to date with improved controls, items that had become mainstays of the series, and an expanded world to fit it all into. This game was everything I loved about the game Metroid Fusion and more, with more precise controls, a better sense of progression, and a faster pace. There was also a lot of potential for sequence breaking in this game, and I sequence broke the hell out of it, skipping items and bosses for fun, but usually using the sequence breaking to get items early, making challenging parts of the game easy. I must have played through this game dozens of times, and I wouldn't be at all surprised to find out I played through it almost a hundred times. It's just a great game, and probably the hand-held game I enjoyed the most.

9. Pokémon Gold Version
Who doesn't have fond memories of their first Pokémon game? Pokémon Gold Version was one of my first games, as well as the game that taught me the mainstays of the RPG genre: random encounters, leveling up, elemental weaknesses, those damn slippery floor puzzles where you could only move in the four cardinal directions, you kept moving until you hit something, and you had to find the exact path through (did anyone really enjoy that?). My dedication to this game was such that I had a level 89 Meganium (the final evolution of the starter pokemon I picked), who took down Red, the game's final boss, on his own. It's hard to pin down exactly what I liked about this game, because I played it so long ago, but I know I enjoyed it.

8. Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence
All of the Metal Gear Solid games hold a special place in my heart (except the fourth, but only because I haven't played it yet), for the three Metal Gear Solid games are the only video games that have ever made me cry. The third was no exception, and though I won't spoil what plot twist made me cry, suffice it to say it was a good one, and thinking about it still brings a tear to my eye. It was also a very fun game, with the camouflage mechanic complimenting the stealth mechanics the series is known for very well. However, it is not the original Metal Gear Solid 3 I place on this list, but the remake. Why? Because the remake took the series' typical horrible camera and replaced it with a significantly better one, one you could actually control and move to make exploring your surroundings easier, making the whole experience much more fun.

7. Metroid Prime
The Metroid franchise's jump into 3D was a risky move that could have gone wrong in many ways, but Retro studios did a fantastic job with this game. The combat is fun, the world is beautiful and expansive, and the little tidbits of lore provided by the scan visor really make the whole experience very immersive. What's nice about the way the plot is revealed through the scan visor is that it means that you never experience more of the plot than you want to. If you just want the action without any backstory, you can have that by just not scanning anything. If you want every little detail of the world around, then just scan everything and you'll get that. The game also boasts impressive graphics, even by today's standards, and a higher frame-rate than most games I have played, which is a pet pleasure of mine.

6. Sypro the Dragon (the original trilogy)
Spyro 2 was my first video game, and this series was my first video game obsession. I completed all three of these games way back when and enjoyed every minute of them. Granted, I may be wearing rose-tinted glasses due to my age at the time, but I really just loved these games. The platforming was superb, the obsessive pursuit of every last gem in every level kept me coming back until I had finished the game, and the characters were downright entertaining (to my young mind, at least). It's a game that will probably always be locked in the vaults of nostalgia for me, but hey, maybe that's a good thing.

Due to time constraints and to avoid this post becoming too long, I'm going to stop it here and save entries 5-1 for next week. So stay tuned for My top 15 favorite video games of all time, Part 2: Revenge of the Rhythm Games next week.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What other games could learn from WoW

I sometimes see posts on other blogs by people who have spent significant time playing other games, talking about what WoW could learn from those other games and how taking up those aspects of those games could make WoW better. While they often make good points, I think we need to take some time to consider the opposite; the things WoW does well that other games would do well to imitate. After all, Blizzard did many things right in their design of WoW, things other developers would do well to take note of.

-Streamlining pre-playing processes
Games can throw a lot of obstacles in your way to prevent you from reaching your objective: enemies, puzzles, bosses, or even the level you are playing on, but the game itself should not be an obstacle. WoW has done a great job streamlining the things we need to do before we can play the game so we can spend more time actually playing the game. The dungeon finder is a great example of this. Say what you will about how it promotes trollish behavior and reduces the feeling of companionship among group members, but it definitely streamlined the process of getting a group for an instance run and made it much more convenient.

-Not denying content to less skilled players
Let's get one thing straight before we continue; I am not in favor of not rewarding skilled players for overcoming difficult challenges. What I am in favor of is giving the majority of players access to the fun rewards, and at least a good number of players access to the practical rewards. However, the big thing I am talking about here is content, the meat of the game itself: the sights to see, the things to do, the bosses to fight, etc. Raiding in WoW was once confined to the great minority because of the effort it took, and Blizzard has done a great job of making raiding easier for the more casual players to jump into, allowing more of their playerbase to see the content they make. Normal modes, 10-man raiding, the new emblem system--all of them made it easier for players to see the content, while the inclusion of 25-mans and the addition of hard modes ensured that the more dedicated players wouldn't lack for a challenge to overcome.

Most games do something similar in this regard in the form of difficulties, such as easy, medium, hard, etc., that scale the challenge of the game to the desires of the player, and that's a good thing in my eyes. However, what isn't a good thing in my eyes is when a game saves the best and most fun rewards for the people who beat the game on the highest difficulties, be it a special weapon, an extra level, etc. WoW is good about this in that, though the best gear is only available to the hard-core raiders, gear itself is not difficult to get, and the important things (basic mounts and the like) aren't denied to all but the most dedicated players. The only things that are denied to the less skilled players are better gear (which they don't need, after all) and cool-looking mounts, which are cosmetic, anyways.

-The ability to undo mistakes or misinformed decisions
I'm a bit of a perfectionist, and for that reason, I don't like it when a misinformed decision or flat-out mistake plagues me for the rest of the game. Because of this, when I play expansive and complex RPGs like Oblivion and Fallout 3, I often find myself replaying the first hour or two of the game multiple times because I don't like the way it played out or because I looked up a guide on the game and found out a way to make a certain decision much more intelligently. Perhaps I found out that making a certain choice during a certain quest would have been a better decision in the long run, or perhaps I chose a sub-optimal way to design my character. Either way, I often find myself restarting the game simply because I don't want one bad choice to hinder my future chances of success.

One of the great things about WoW is that that problem is not present. Make a bad talent choice? Pay gold to reset your talent points. Didn't like the pet you trained? Train another. Pick the wrong quest reward? You'll replace it soon anyways. Pick the Oracles but like the Frenzyheart more now? Do the quest to switch over. Pick the DPS Ashen Verdict ring but want the tank one now? Do the quest to switch it. Don't like the race you picked? Pay to change it. Don't like the faction you picked? Pay to change that. There are very few decisions in this game that will permanently hinder you for the rest of your time with that character, and the few there are can usually be undone with a ticket to a GM. I wish other games would take WoW's example on this, because it's one of the things I love the most about WoW.

So what about you, dear readers? What aspects of WoW do you like that you wish other games would adopt? Failing that, what mistakes has Blizzard made that you hope other developers can avoid?

A reflection on moral choices within video games

After looking in vain for a great action-RPG, I finally broke down and started replaying the game that raised my standards for the genre to the heights that had made made my search impossible: The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion. Now, Oblivion follows a pretty linear plotline, no matter what choices you make in-game. Still, certain side-quests and the decisions you make during those side quests affect whether your character is "good" or "bad," to some extent, so the game is not devoid of choices. For example, there is one quest where a paranoid man is convinced that the town residents are plotting to kill him. You can either try to convince him that he is wrong, or go along with it and take his money. In the end, neither choice is particularly lucrative for its objective rewards, so its up to the player to make the choice for himself. It was in considering that choice that I started asking myself: why do we make the moral choices that we make in video games?

I should let you know right now that I come from a pretty unique position in this issue (or maybe not so unique). Whenever a game presents moral options, I usually pick the good side. Unless doing so hinders the kind of fun I can have in-game, I will always do what is considered moral. Why? Because those are the kind of decisions I would make in real life, so it feels more natural for me to make those kind of decisions in-game. I suppose it comes from my militant adherence to rules and standards that I agree with, a product of my Asperger Syndrome. Anyways, I bring that up because I know many players do the exact opposite; they make evil choices when they play games. I could never fathom making such a choice myself, so I won't try to consider the issue from the perspective of someone who usually sides with evil; I will only speak from my own experiences, and when I make broad statements about morality or life, I will only be saying what is true for me.

When I make a moral decision in a game, I do give some consideration to what the objective consequences will be. Will one choice close some door in terms of what I can do in game? Will one choice make the game more difficult? However, sometimes I go against that kind of rationality and make the good choice, even when the evil choice will benefit me more. Why? Because video games are a part of my life; not an escape from it. Sure, I play games in lieu of doing more serious, consequential things, but they are not an escape from reality; they are part of my reality. As such, when I play video games, I bring the same assumptions to them that I bring to all parts of my life. Sure, I leave some assumptions behind, like the assumption that everything I do cannot be undone and the assumption that the characters within video games are real people whose feelings I could hurt; any reasonable person would leave those assumptions at the metaphorical door.

Still, while I recognize the fantasy worlds I play in as fictional creations, my actions within them are real. I am manipulating a program that creates images when I push buttons, and the images that come up are under my control. When I make a virtual decision, I can see the virtual consequences of that decision. That decision affects my future experiences in that world. I know that I will not need to face those consequences once I turn the console off, but I have still made the decision. If I play again, I'll need to face those consequences again. Sure, I could just load a file from before I made the evil decision, but then the decision wouldn't carry any weight at all and wouldn't be worthy of consideration. In other words, my decisions affect my experience, and that experience is part of my reality. As such, I need to be comfortable with that experience, or else I won't want to make it a part of my reality, and so I need to make decisions that affect the video game's world in a way I am comfortable with.

So, since video games are a part of my reality, I need to be comfortable with the moral decisions I make in them, which is probably why I usually choose to be good. I know that's a lot of reasoning to get to something I probably could have assumed from the start, but I wanted to be at least a bit thorough here. I could generalize this and say that the decisions we make in-game reflect what we are morally comfortable with, but that conclusion would have a lot of scary assumptions when applies to the horrible things people do in games. After all, even I have gone on killing rampages in Grand Theft Auto and then used cheats to make my stars go away. (Although that probably doesn't count, since I didn't kill any characters whose death would be consequential, and the cheat meant the decision to kill was completely without consequence.) If someone were to do the paranoid man's quest in Oblivion and tell the man that he is being spied on, would that mean that the player is comfortable maliciously taking advantage of people to benefit himself? I hope not.

However, this is not the case, and we can see that when we look back at my reasoning. In coming to the conclusion that I make good moral decisions in video games because I need to be comfortable with the consequences of that decision, I assumed that video games are a part of my reality, and this is probably not the case for all video game players. I'm sure there are many players out there who see video games as just games, and thus they have no qualms about doing something in game, the likes of which they could never do in real life without immense guilt. Perhaps the moral decisions we make in games are not a reflection of our own morals; perhaps they are simply a reflection of how we view video games, and more loose your morals are in-game, the more you see the game as "just a game."