Oh dear, Vashj'ir: Redux

I had a lot on my plate when I wrote Wednesday's post due to my claiming that Hyjal was a better zone than Vashj'ir and the fact that two of the currently three comments on that last post disagree with me. Fidjit claimed "Hyjal felt very 'been there, done that' to me," and Neverender agreed with Fidjit and added, "But all in all, I appreciate what Blizzard tried to do and applaud them for making Vash'jir such a beautiful zone to quest in." I appreciate their comments and can see where they are coming from, but one little blurb in Neverender's comment gave me insight into why I dislike Vashj'ir so much: "...I appreciate what Blizzard tried to do..." [emphasis is my own]. If you look at what Blizzard was trying to do with Vashj'ir, it is indeed a very praise-worthy zone, for their aspirations for this zone were clearly very high (why else would they make it so long?). This much I agree with.

The trouble in considering what Blizzard was trying to do with Vashj'ir is that when we quest in Vashj'ir, we are not playing in the zone that Blizzard tried to create; we are playing in the zone they did create. Considering that both Fidjit and Neverender agreed that my complaints about the zone were legitimate, I supposed that whether you think Vashj'ir is a praise-worthy zone ultimately comes down to whether you want to praise Blizzard for their efforts or their results. Which brings us to the question I ask today: in choosing to praise or criticizing Vashj'ir, should we choose to praise or criticize Blizzard for their ambition or for the end product? Should we praise the potential and innovation of a venture, or the actual quality of the venture when it ships?

To look at Vashj'ir again, the zone was most definitely a step away from familiar territory for Blizzard. It was innovative because the entire zone took place underwater, and Blizzard took quite a few risks is designing the zone that way. I find it telling that most of my complaints about Vashj'ir had little to do with the fact that the zone was underwater, because that means that Blizzard averted all of those risks. My complaints about Vashj'ir were that it was too large and its questline too lengthy,that it lacked a grounding location that allowed us to better comprehend our position within the zone, that creating the kind of tension that Vashj'ir was trying to create was simply impossible due to the game's mechanics, and that the ending was underwhelming and abrupt. Every single one of these flaws could just as easily have been made in the process of designing a land-based zone, though the underwater setting does make it more tempting to try to create the kind of mood Blizzard was trying to create with Vashj'ir. So really, Vashj'ir is a case where the innovation and potential of the zone do shine through, and it's its other flaws that bring it down. Thus it is perfectly reasonable to praise the zone for its innovation.

But that doesn't excuse the zone for having these flaws. In fact, it's all the more reason to criticize the zone, because the fact that these flaws could just as easily show up in any zone means that Blizzard should have known better. Blizzard has had years of practice designing zones, and these are flaws that those years of practice should have prevented. But no one is perfect, and the developers are going to make a few mistakes from time to time; they just so happened to make these mistakes while designing their most ambitious zone yet. It's almost a shame that they did manage to avoid the potential flaws that were directly related to that ambition (i.e. the typical pratfalls of most water levels), because those flaws would have been forgivable due to Blizzard's inexperience with designing entirely-underwater levels. But there's no reason that the kind of flaws that did show up in Vashj'ir should be any more excusable just because Vashj'ir was a water level.

So in the end, Vashj'ir deserves both praise for its successful innovation and criticism for its definite flaws. I guess whichever you prefer to focus on comes down to just how much the innovation amazed you (I was less than amazed once all the environments started to blend together) and was thus able to distract you from the zone's flaws, and how influential those flaws were in detracting from your enjoyment of the zone.

Hyjal won't appall

Having already given my opinions on Vashj'ir as a questing zone, I feel it's time I turn my eye towards the other Cataclysm starting-zone: Mount Hyjal (the fact that I promised I would do so in my last post might also have something to do with why I'm looking at it now). Now, Mount Hyjal wasn't my favorite zone of the expansion, but if I were to rank the zones in order of how much I enjoyed them, Mount Hyjal would definitely be in the middle (Twilight Highlands > Deepholm > Mount Hyjal > Uldum > Vashj'ir, if you're interested). I agree with the commenters on my Vashj'ir post that Mount Hyjal wasn't exactly innovating or ground-breaking, but overall, I felt that the zone worked well, and that's where its strength was.

As I said in my last post, Mount Hyjal was similar to Vashj'ir in many ways, but overall, I felt that Mount Hyjal worked in many ways that Vashj'ir didn't. To wit, Hyjal has the enemy that we need to face right on our doorstep in plain view, a pattern done right from the beginning with the earth elementals attacking Nordrassil, and the sense of urgency created by the mountain being on fire could not be mitigated by leaving the zone, creating suspense that remained taut even if you left the zone and came back later (which could not be said for Vashj'ir). It was also not of unreasonable length, which certainly didn't hurt its overall quality.

So what do I have to say about Mount Hyjal that I didn't say in my last post? One thing I was appreciative of about the zone was its liberal use of phasing, allowing the player to have a very real sense of having an impact on the zone. This was another way that I felt Vashj'ir was lacking: it didn't feel like our actions changed the zone at all, even though they would occasionally cause NPCs to spawn where they hadn't been before. There was also a sense that Mount Hyjal was unfolding before our eyes, what with its almost spiral-ish structure and fairly linear physical progression path, giving a real sense of progress, something I feel is lacking in many of WoW's zones. What I mean by "progress" is that was had a sense of how far we were in completing the zone. Most zones send you running around the zone in a seemingly orderless fashion, making it difficult to tell how far you have to go before you have solved that zone's problems. Sure you could check how far you are in the quest achievements to figure that out, but where's the fun in that? With Hyjal, you traversed through the zone in a fairly linear fashion, making it easier to tell how close you were to the end.

As for flaws? One of the major things about Cataclysm that bugs me is how most of the new factions have little to no representation outside of their respective zones, and the Guardians of Hyjal are no exception. Sure, their name may preclude them from doing much outside of the zone, but they are still a very one-dimensional organization. Their tabard claims that, by wearing it, I am "championing their cause", but how can I do that when their sole purpose is to save Hyjal, and I'm running around in an instance that has nothing to do with the zone? I felt this was a problem with many of the factions, but it's especially bad for the Guardians of Hyjal, since their purpose is so obviously one-dimensional and they were my introduction to just how self-contained Cataclysm's factions are.

But that's clearly not a criticism of the quests themselves, and I really don't have many negative things to say about Mount Hyjal as a questing zone, because Blizzard just played it really safe with this zone. There wasn't much innovation, but because it's familiar territory, they were able to pull it off quite well. So overall, my thoughts on Mount Hyjal could be summed up as, very well executed, but not very ambitious. It's nothing new, but that's why it's not so bad; as I said in the title, it "won't appall" because we've seen much of it before. And perhaps my disagreements with the Vashj'ir camp in the Hyjal vs. Vashj'ir debate stem from my prioritizing execution over ambition; in other words, I judge a zone more by what it is than what it could have been. But more on that on Friday.

Oh dear, Vashj'ir

This post contains spoilers about the storyline of Vashj'ir, as well as a plethora of negative opinions. If you haven't finished Vashj'ir or you prefer to read optimistic and constructive posts, you have been warned.

Apparently, overly opinionated posts criticizing Cataclysm's content are all the rage in the blogosphere these days. Of course, I'm in no position to judge Cataclysm as a whole, which presents a bit of a problem when writing one of those total review posts. I have yet to experience the 5-man content and will probably never experience the raid content, and PvP hasn't interested me in years, so I haven't experienced fighting in Tol Barad, The Battle for Gilneas, or Twin Peaks. What I have experienced is every zone's one-time quests and all of the daily quests (Alliance side, anyway), as well as Archeology, but being that I have already given my thoughts on the latter (though I have taken a decidedly more neutral view on it since then), it is the former to which I shall turn my discerning eye this week. And by discerning, I mean incredibly subjective and opinionated, so get your grain of salt ready before you start reading today.

Got it? Good. Now, I was originally going to write a post about all of the zones, including the daily quests in their own section, but I had so much to say about Vashj'ir that I had to give the zone it's own post, so I plan to put the other zones under the lens on Wednesday. Without further ado, let's get to my very opinionated review of Cataclysm's underwater zone.

It's something of a tradition in video games that if a game contains a water-based level, it's going to be the least fun level in the game. There are many reasons for this: if swimming isn't an integral part of the game otherwise, a physics engine for swimming may need to be thrown together for just that level, which will likely lead to that engine being sub-par due the limited amount of use it will actually get. Breath gauges are also a nuisance, as is the often low visibility in water levels. Blizzard managed to avoid these common pratfalls when they designed Vashj'ir thanks to the fact that WoW has always had swimming, so we are used to navigating water, and thanks to the sea legs buff, which does away with the breath gauge, and the Abyssal Seahorse mount, which largely does away with the limited mobility typical of a virtual aquatic environment. Which is why it's such a shame that Vashj'ir was the zone I liked least out of all of Cataclysm's zones.

Maybe it's the zone's size. Vashj'ir is the only zone in Cataclysm's high level content that had to be split into multiple subzones--and three of them, at that--and moving around in these huge zones became tiresome at times (especially the latter quests in Darkbreak Cove). Maybe it was the lack of any grounding aspect of the zone's storyline. Moving from shelter to shelter without any constant base that could be considered the main outpost of the zone made the whole zone feel very disconnected. Vashj'ir is the only Cataclysm zone (to my knowledge) that will send you to a different part of the zone, depending on where you are in the quest lines, when you use its portal in the capital cities, and that becomes disorienting, especially since the caves all look the same, as do many of the environments, beautiful though they may be. This leads to the zone not having many landmarks that give us a definite sense of where we are, which doesn't help things.

But maybe, just maybe, what makes Vashj'ir so unenjoyable is the impossibility of creating the mood that Vashj'ir is trying to create. From the moment the boat sinks on the ride over, it's clear that Blizzard's intention with Vashj'ir was to create a zone where we are constantly on the run, ducking for cover in an environment where we are out of our element, while being constantly surrounded by foes who would love nothing more than to rip us to shreds. And yet, as they are trying to create that mood, there is nothing preventing me from swimming to the land in the zone, mounting up, and flying out of there, or better yet, hearthstoning back to Stormwind. Was I supposed to be in danger or something?

Now, Mount Hyjal is similar to Vashj'ir in a lot of ways, in that we are constantly moving throughout the zone and the zone tries to create a sense of urgency on the part of the player. I'll go over this zone more in another post, but the reason the creation of tension works in Mount Hyjal and not in Vashj'ir is that Mount Hyjal's tension is much more feasible to maintain. In both zones, the enemy is supposedly right on our doorstep, a threat we need to face immediately. In Mount Hyjal, there are earth elementals right in the front lawn of the zone's main hub, so this sense is created successfully. In Vashj'ir, these enemies are often far away, and though their numbers are supposedly imposing and dangerous, they rarely are if we actually go an have a look at them. In other words, in Mount Hyjal, Blizzard successfully followed the mantra of "show, don't tell", whereas in Vashj'ir, that was not the case.

And as for the sense of urgency, in Hyjal, that sense of urgency is created by the fact that the mountain is on fire. If we leave the zone, it will continue to burn, though we may now be safe. As such, though we can leave the zone and its problems with little difficulty, its conflict still remains. As for Vashj'ir, I get the distinct feeling that the zone is trying to create tension by implying that you yourself are in danger by being stranded in the zone, but if you hearth or fly out, oh look, problem solved! Sure, the soldiers of your faction and the Earthen Ring might still be in trouble, but again, the zone depends too heavily on telling us that our allies are in danger without ever showing us how they are in danger. Do these naga that we need to be afraid of ever storm the caves we get our quests from? Do they send out scouting parties to see if we have become a threat yet? Nope, they just leave us alone, and whatever tension that could be drawn from this situation is diffused by the fact that the zone just tries too hard to create it, breaking the tension by exceeding the capabilities of text-based tension creation.

Then there's the zone's length. It's bad enough that the zone doesn't create the kind of tension that can keep me interested in the storyline, but it then drags me through that tension-less chore for longer than any other zone in the game expects me to stay within its boarders. If Cataclysm's one-time quests werre like a novel with five chapters, the only one that wouldn't have any kind of suspense or tension would also happen to be the longest one. A lack of tension compared to other parts of the story can make anything seem to drag on, even if it isn't longer than the other parts of the work in question, but Vashj'ir has the double wammy of seeming to drag on due to its lack of tension and actually dragging on because it is so much longer than the other zones. For members of the Horde to get the quest achievement for Vashj'ir, they need to do 25 more quests than they need to to get the achievement for the next longest zone. The Alliance have it even worse, needing to do thirty five more quests to get their achievement, making Vashj'ir almost a third longer than any other zone in Cataclysm for the Alliance. Unbearably long, and boring, to boot. Oy vey.

And then there's the ending of the zone's storyline. I'm not even going to bother talking about that submarine ride that made Crime and Punishment feel like a haiku and forced you to watch the battle as your sub-mates narrated the fact that you were losing because the battle itself was so uninspired in its design that you really can't tell who's winning and who's losing (there's that "telling instead of showing" problem again). Or the inexplicable hole in the bottom of that submarine (or maybe it was a different one; I can't differentiate between the submarines when I remember them) that invites you by its very presence to go for a swim, only to deposit you in the ocean if you should swim too deep, with the submarine moving too quickly for you to catch up and get back in. No, let's just get right to the ending.

After losing the battle, Erunak is pulled into the breach by a mysterious tentacle and your commander follows. Without actually giving you a definite prompt to follow your commander into the Abyssal Maw, the quest simply leaves you outside of the rift, with no one around, abandoning you in the deepest, most desolate part of the most disconnected-from-the-rest-of-the-world zone in the game. It's about as lonely as WoW can possibly make you feel, and that's how this chore of a zone ends: an empty ending to a tension-less story. And if you do follow your commander into the Maw, you have to enter an instance to continue the story. So you are left with an exceptionally unsatisfying ending: you have been defeated in battle, your allies are nowhere to be found, and you have to do an instance to finish the story. If you wanted to move on to the next zone's quests after finishing Vashj'ir, too bad; go into that dungeon and find out what happens!

And speaking of moving on to the next zone, I think I should do that mentally, because all of this accentuating the negative isn't good for my psyche. So let me conclude by saying that if you are still working through Northrend, Outland, or even the remade vanilla content and you still have to make the "Hyjal vs. Vashj'ir" choice, choose Hyjal. The only reason to go to Vashj'ir is for the extra gold, Earthen Ring rep, and quest rewards to disenchant. On Wednesday, shall I move on to Mount Hyjal, and perhaps another zone or two if I don't have enough to say about Mount Hyjal alone.

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.

The lonely journey to the top

About five days ago, I earned Loremaster of Cataclysm, thus, for all intents and purposes, beating Cataclysm's solo content. I have done every quest I could find in Mount Hyjal, Vashj'ir, Deepholm, Uldum, and the Twilight Highlands, and in doing those quests, I noticed a particular absence, something missing that was once an integral part of the questing landscape. I noticed it in the way that I progress swiftly and almost effortlessly (comparatively, at least) through Cataclysm's zones. I noticed it in the way that I didn't need much help as I went through doing the quests. I noticed it in the way that I said nothing in general chat other than occasionally answering other players' questions about the new quests. That absence was the absence of group quests.

You remember group quests, I'm sure--those quests that recommended you bring an ally or two along with you to take down the baddie in question. They peppered the landscape throughout WoW's history, especially in Icecrown, and we had to group up with other players to do them. Yet it seems, if memory serves me correctly, that outside of the first few months of any given content's lifespan, there weren't many groups to do these quests with. In any given zone, I might have gotten lucky and found someone else willing to do them with me, but for the most part, I remember either trying to do those quests on my own (and learning ways to push each class to its limit as a result), or just skipping over them entirely. Thus these quests weren't, for me at least, group quests, so much as they were really challenging solo quests.

Now, this wasn't really a tragedy, because some of my proudest moments while leveling have been taking down the elites required for these group quests without the help of a group. Those were the true epic moments of my solo play, the moments that rivaled my memories of raiding in terms of satisfaction and challenge. Those battles were long and difficult, like raid fights, and required me to use all of the tricks that I could to take down these elite opponents. In the way that raids require raiders to maximize their awareness, their damage, their efficiency, these group quests required me to maximize my survivability, and I quite enjoyed them for that.

But while Cataclysm may lack group quests, it is not lacking in elite quests--quests where you take down an elite opponent--but these elite quests are a little different. Unlike the elite quests of yore, which were synonymous with group quests, these quests are fully designed to be accomplished on one's own. Yes, you do fight an elite opponent with a ridiculously large health pool, and these battles often go on for a good deal longer than most other battles, but unlike most elite enemies, these enemies will not kill you before you've taken away even a chunk of their health. Some of them are designed to have avoidable attacks, while others are fought while an NPC ally acts as the tank, thus you yourself take little damage. These kinds of quests peppered the Cataclysm questing landscape, and I'm pretty sure they were designed with the specific intention of taking the place of group quests.

Do they succeed in this regard? The answer to that question depends on whether they can accomplish the same thing group quests were originally designed to accomplish. Group quests, when I could actually get a group together for them, had an epic feel to them because I was taking down an enemy who was many times bigger or more powerful than me, and they also gave a bit of experience with the dynamics of grouping (tanking, healing, threat, etc.). Do Cataclysm's elite quests hold up to those parameters? They certainly feel epic, and they provide a very satisfying conclusion to whatever quests they end. But what about teaching group dynamics? You may not learn tanking or healing from these quests, but they do have some pretty sneaky ways of teaching you other important aspects of group content. In killing Skullcrusher the Mountain, you are encouraged to run around activating various relics which give you and your allies buffs to help you fight Skullcrusher, and you also have to right-click your fallen allies to revive them. This teaches you that you do need to do things other than attacking your target in order to succeed in a group environment. The fight against the Obsidian Colossus in Uldum teaches you how to not stand in the fire, as does the fight against Barron Geddon in Hyjal. These are things the old group quests didn't often teach, so I'd say that Cataclysm's elite quests teaching them to new players is an improvement.

But where these two kinds of quests differ most, and where Cataclysm's elite quests are much stronger than the previous expansion's group quests, in my opinion, is that two or three years from now, when most of the players are off questing in whatever new zones we find ourselves in in the next expansion pack, if you decide to level an alt and you find yourself in one of Cataclysm's zones, you will be able to complete these elite quests in spite of the fact that you will be one of three of four people in the zone (and probably the only person in the phase you are currently in). As it stood in the days of group quests, if you couldn't complete a group quest on your own (which, if you were the appropriate level for a zone, theoretically, you shouldn't have been able to), you would simply be unable to complete that quest, and if that quest should happen to advance the story of the zone, too bad; you'd just have to make up the rest. With Cataclysm's group quests, though, since they never required a group in the first place, players will be able to complete them well after Cataclysm's zones have been abandoned.

When you consider Cataclysm's linear quest-design structure (a structure which I don't mind and actually support), it really is a necessity for the elite quests to not require groups. If these quests did require groups and you couldn't complete one due to being unable to form a group, you would either be stuck in a zone's progression and be unable to continue, or you would have to leave the quest undone as you enter a new phase. The former possibility makes the solo content unplayable, and the latter makes certain quests become unavailable to players, something which they wouldn't be very appreciative of. So instead, we are left with group quests becoming something seen very rarely in Cataclysm. The only group quests we have now are dailies, which people will probably continue to do for a very long time (due to their being level-cap dailies), but can still be solo'ed pretty easily, and the Crucible of Carnage chain, which was probably added more out of tradition than anything else. Thus we are left with the conclusions that there really are no proper group quests in Cataclysm other than the Crucible of Carnage, which is it's own stand-alone quest-line and thus doesn't pose the potential issues brought up above, and for the reasons I have mentioned in this post, I don't mind that fact.

How to gear up a druid at level 85 without entering an instance

Way back in the days of Wrath of the Lich King, I wrote a post about how to gear up a druid without entering an instance due to my own aversion to dungeons and my hesitance to rely on random drops to gear up. Well, now that Cataclysm has gotten underway, I thought I'd write a similar post for this expansion pack. This post is a collection your options for gearing up a Druid before you set foot in any 5-mans. Keep in mind that some slots don't have very good options, and you are probably better served getting gear for those slots from 5-mans themselves, but I included your options for those slots here just for completion's sake. Like last time, I will give you multiple options for each slot so you can pick the one that best suits you. Since balance druids can dip into resto's sections'for spirit pieces with the talent Balance of Power and the two feral druids share many pieces, I tried to avoid redundancy when there are actually different options for each one. In those cases, if you don't like any of the suggestions for your spec, check your corresponding partner spec's section for other options.

Weapon(s):
Balance: Beak of Julak-Doom (drop from a specific rare mob, most likely to be found on the AH), Insidious Staff (Baradin's Wardons/Hellscream's Reach, revered), Elementium Spellblade (blacksmithing), Very Manly Staff (quest in Twilight Highlands) Staff of Solemn Secrecy (world drop)
Feral (tank): Spear of Trailing Shadows (Baradin's Wardons/Hellscream's Reach, revered), Mobus's Vile Halberd (drop from a specific rare mob), Elementium Poleaxe (blacksmithing), Staff of Old Woes (world drop, most likely to be found on the AH), Staff of Draconic Pacification/Torth-Slayer's Staff (quest in Twilight Highlands)
Feral (DPS): Spear of Trailing Shadows (Baradin's Wardons/Hellscream's Reach, revered), Mobus's Vile Halberd (drop from a specific rare mob), Elementium Poleaxe (blacksmithing), Staff of Old Woes (world drop), Staff of Draconic Pacification/Torth-Slayer's Staff (quests in Twilight Highlands)
Resto: Elementium Hammer (blacksmithing), Shimmering Morningstar (Baradin's Wardons/Hellscream's Reach, revered), Gurgthock's Garish Gorebat (quest in Twilight Highlands), Mace of Apotheosis (world drop)

Off-hand:
Balance: Dungeoneering Guide (inscription), Skyflight Beacon/Air Raid Beacon (quest in Twilight Highlands) Book of Origination (dungeon drop, look on AH)
Resto: Heartbound Tome (world drop), Divine Companion (inscription) Bone-Inlaid Sarcophagus Key (world drop)

Idol:
Balance: Tattooed Eyeball (inscription)
Feral (tank): Halted Clock (world drop), Silver Inlaid Leaf (inscription)
Feral (DPS): Silver Inlaid Leaf (inscription)
Resto: Tattooed Eyeball (inscription)

Head:
Balance: Bloodied Wyrmhide Helm (leatherworking), Hood of Lost Solitude (quest in Twilight Highlands)
Feral (tank): Hood of the Crying Rogue (world drop), Dunwald Winged Helm/Shocktrooper Hood (quest in Twilight Highlands)
Feral (DPS): Hood of the Crying Rogue (world drop), Dunwald Winged Helm/Shocktrooper Hood (quest in Twilight Highlands)
Resto: Bloodied Wyrmhide Helm (leatherworking), Wax-Filled Hood/Mechano-Assembler Headguard (quest in Twilight Highlands)

Neck:
Balance: Lightning Flash Pendant/Yellow Smoke Pendant (Wildhammer Clan/Dragonmaw Clan, exalted), Charm of the Muse (dungeon drop), Eye of Many Deaths (jewelcrafting)
Feral (tank): Elementium Guardian (jewelcrafting), Don Rodrigo's Fabulous Necklace (world drop), Acorn of the Daughter Tree (Guardians of Hyjal, revered)
Feral (DPS): Don Rodrigo's Fabulous Necklace (world drop), Acorn of the Daughter Tree (Guardians of Hyjal, revered), Barnacle Pendant (dungeon drop), Brazen Elementium Medallion or Entwined Elementium Choker (jewelcrafting), Nightrend Choker (world drop), Pendant of Victorious Fury (quest in Twilight Highlands)
Resto: Acanthia's Lost Pendant (dungeon drop), Lightning Flash Pendant/Yellow Smoke Pendant (Wildhammer Clan/Dragonmaw Clan, exalted), Pendant of Elemental Balance (Earthen Ring, honored)

Shoulders:
Balance: Spaulders of Rolling Incineration (quest in Uldum)
Feral (tank): Aledrinker Shoulderpads/Cult-Hide Spaulders (quest in Twilight Highlands)
Feral (DPS): Aledrinker Shoulderpads/Cult-Hide Spaulders (quest in Twilight Highlands)
Resto: Mantle of Wild Feathers/Spaulders of the Endless Plains (Wildhammer Clan/Dragonmaw Clan, honored)

Back:
Balance: Ritssyn's Ruminous Drape (world drop), Cloak of the Dryads (Guardians of Hyjal, honored)
Feral (tank): Zom's Electrostatic Cloak (world drop), Twilight Dragonscale Cloak (leatherworking), Shroud of Dark Memories (dungeon drop)
Feral (DPS): Razor-Edged Cloak (leatherworking)
Resto: Cloak of the Dryads (Guardians of Hyjal, honored)

Chest:
Balance: Chestguard of Nature's Fury (leatherworking)
Feral (tank): Assassin's Chestplate (leatherworking), Sly Fox Jerkin (Guardians of Hyjal, honored)
Feral (DPS): Assassin's Chestplate (leatherworking), Sly Fox Jerkin (Guardians of Hyjal, honored)
Resto: Chestguard of Nature's Fury (leatherworking), Robes of the Loving Ursine (world drop), Wrap of the Fallen City (quest in Uldum)

Wrist:
Balance: Bracers of Caustic Purification (world drop), Keg-Stealer Bracers/Alefire Bracers (quest in Twilight Highlands)
Feral (tank): Bloodied Leather Bracers (leatherworking), Flarefire Bracers/Buildingblast Bracers or Whirlpool Bracers/Dragonheart Bracers (quests in Twilight Highlands)
Feral (DPS): Bloodied Leather Bracers (leatherworking), Keg-Stealer Bracers/Buildingblast Bracers or Flarefire Bracers/Dragonheart Bracers (quests in Twilight Highlands)
Resto: Bracers of Caustic Purification (world drop), Keg-Stealer Bracers/Alefire Bracers (quest in Twilight Highlands)

Hands:
Balance: Aessina-Blessed Gloves (Guardians of Hyjal, revered)
Feral (tank): Stormbolt Gloves/Liar's Handwraps (Wildhammer Clan/Dragonmaw Clan, exalted), Safecracker's Gloves (world drop), Thartuk's Inimitable Gauntlets (drop from a specific rare mob)
Feral (DPS): Stormbolt Gloves/Liar's Handwraps (Wildhammer Clan/Dragonmaw Clan, exalted), Safecracker's Gloves (world drop), Thartuk's Inimitable Gauntlets (drop from a specific rare mob)
Resto: Aessina-Blessed Gloves (Guardians of Hyjal, revered)

Waist:
Balance: Lightning Lash (leatherworking), Belt of the Untamed/Withered Dream Belt (Wildhammer Clan/Dragonmaw Clan, exalted)
Feral (tank): Belt of Nefarious Whispers (leatherworking), Quicksand Belt (Ramkahen, revered), Belt of a Thousand Mouths (drop from a specific rare mob)
Feral (DPS): Belt of Nefarious Whispers (leatherworking), Quicksand Belt (Ramkahen, revered), Belt of a Thousand Mouths (drop from a specific rare mob)
Resto: Lightning Lash (leatherworking), Belt of the Untamed/Withered Dream Belt (Wildhammer Clan/Dragonmaw Clan, exalted)

Legs:
Balance: Blazewing's Furious Kilt (drop from a specific rare mob)
Feral (tank): Swiftflight Leggings/Leggings of the Impenitent (Wildhammer Clan/Dragonmaw Clan, honored), Shaw's Finest Leggings/Garona's Finest Leggings (quest in Twilight Highlands)
Feral (DPS): Swiftflight Leggings/Leggings of the Impenitent (Wildhammer Clan/Dragonmaw Clan, honored), Shaw's Finest Leggings/Garona's Finest Leggings (quest in Twilight Highlands)
Resto: Blazewing's Furious Kilt (drop from a specific rare mob)

Feet:
Balance: Treads of Revelation/Vision-Tainted Treads (quest in Stormwing/Orgrimmar)
Feral (tank): Flameproof Treads/Heartstone Treads (quest in Twilight Highlands)
Feral (DPS): Flameproof Treads/Heartstone Treads (quest in Twilight Highlands)
Resto: Tarvus's Poison-Scarred Boots (drop from a specific rare mob), Treads of Revelation/Vision-Tainted Treads (quest in Stormwing/Orgrimmar)

Rings:
Balance: Band of Singing Grass/Band of Lamentation (Wildhammer Clan/Dragonmaw Clan, revered), Diamant's Ring of Temperance (Therazane, revered), Ring of Warring Elements (jewelcrafting), Abandoned Dark Iron Ring (dungeon drop)
Feral (tank): Felsen's Ring of Resolve (Therazane, revered), Red Rock Band (Ramkahen, revered), Elementium Moebius Band (jewelcrafting)
Feral (DPS): Terrath's Signet of Balance (Therazane, revered), Band of Blades and/or Elementium Destroyer's Ring (jewelcrafting)
Resto: Ring of the Great Whale (dungeon drop), Ammunae's Blessing (Ramkahen, honored), Ring of Warring Elements (jewelcrafting)

Trinkets:
Balance: Stump of Time (Baradin's Wardons/Hellscream's Reach, exalted), Darkmoon Card: Volcano (completing the Volcanic Deck), Talisman of Sinister Order (quest in Uldum)
Feral (tank): Unsolvable Riddle (Baradin's Wardons/Hellscream's Reach, exalted), Mirror of Broken Images (Baradin's Wardons/Hellscream's Reach, exalted), Darkmoon Card: Earthquake (completing the Earthquake Deck)
Feral (DPS): Unsolvable Riddle (Baradin's Wardons/Hellscream's Reach, exalted), Impatience of Youth (Baradin's Wardons/Hellscream's Reach, exalted), Darkmoon Card: Hurricane (completing the Hurricane Deck) Schnotzz's Medallion of Command (quest in Uldum)
Resto: Mandala of Stirring Patterns (Baradin's Wardons/Hellscream's Reach, exalted), Darkmoon Card: Tsunami (completing the Tsunami Deck), Rainsong (dungeon drop)

The other faction: my friend or my enemy?

This post contains minor spoilers for the quests in Deepholm and Vashj'ir. They're nothing major, but if you wish to avoid them, here is your warning.

As I have already written about, WoW circa Cataclysm has been less than consistent with its storytelling, and the same sort of mood-whiplash I wrote about before relating to our motivations in Uldum compared to our motivation in Cataclysm's other zones has shown up again. This time, it has shown up in how inconsistent Cataclysm's storytelling is in terms of how we should view the other faction: the Horde. Different people may have different opinions on how the other faction should be viewed, but I think we can all agree that if Blizzard wants us to feel a particular way about the other faction, they'll be much more effective at making us think a certain way about them if they can be consistent in enforcing that viewpoint. Now, Blizzard has said that they want there to be more faction conflict than there was in Wrath of the Lich King, so you would think that, with Cataclysm being a complete redesign of WoW, they would design the game to foster that kind of combative atmosphere, yet Cataclysm hasn't been very consistent with that goal.

This inconsistency shows up best (for the Alliance, anyway) if you quest in Vashj'ir first and then move on to Deepholm. In Vashj'ir--from the Alliance perspective, anyways--your entire reason for going there is to fight the Horde, for they have attacked us in our attempts to scout out a new land mass. But after finishing up Vash'ir, you go to Deepholm, where while searching for a fragment of the World Pillar, you discover that the Horde ship that was delivering it might have been attacked by the Alliance. Upon returning with this news to Stormcaller Mylra, she has this to say:

"The Earthen Ring is a neutral organization, [name]. We cannot pick sides in the war between the Horde and the Alliance. Look around you -- our members come from all backgrounds. Our mission would be compromised should racial tensions be put above our goal. Let's try to keep this under wraps until we have more information."

So in two sequential zones, we go from being entirely motivated by the need to fight the other faction to being expected to cooperate with them. Something just doesn't add up here.

The animosity in Vashj'ir was to be expected. Like I said, Blizzard has said that they want Cataclysm to reignite the fires of war between the Alliance and the Horde, and they have shown some effort towards making that happen. The Worgan starting area is an example of this kind of effrt, for it contains much Forsaken aggression against the innocent Gilneans, the kind that makes me as ready to fight them as they clearly are to fight me. This is exactly the kind of animosity that it seems Blizzard wants players to have for the other faction, and yet when we get to Deepholm, we are asked to put that animosity in check for the sake of saving the world. Many players have expressed their desire for the factions to stop their bickering and come together to save the world, and for once, we actually get it. But why now? Why, after so many instances of being told that we should hate the other faction, do we get to cooperate with them now?

We saw this inconsistency in other parts of the game, too. Northrend featured the event that forever cemented that the Alliance and the Horde would never cooperate again (the Wrathgate), yet also includes numerous examples of the players putting aside their differences to help out one of the many neutral factions on Northrend (the Kirin Tor, the Argent Crusade, the Sons of Hodir, etc.). And yet, in addition to this cooperation, we also saw many examples of faction animosity in Northrend (the quest Catch More Dispatches, the Gunship Battle in Icecrown Citadel). In Hyjal, we rallied behind the Guardians of Hyjal to save the mountain, and in Deepholm, we rallied behind the Earthen Ring to save the world. Yet in the face of trying to take down one of the biggest threats to Azeroth at the time (the Lich King), the factions still had an air battle. So it seems as if the only time we can get the Alliance and the Horde to cooperate is when we have a third party that they are both rallying behind; in other words, having a common enemy just isn't enough to get the Alliance and the Horde to put aside their differences. I guess that's just what it takes to get the two to cooperate.

As a non sequitur, I have often noticed that if you read the story that unfolds in WoW like a novel, it seems that the theme of that novel would be the destructive nature of faction conflict and how much good can be wrought when the two sides put aside their differences. In Hyjal and Deepholm, the Alliance and the Horde work together and save the mountain and the world, respectively. In Vashj'ir, we ride into battle ready to face some Horde scum, and we are attacked by a kraken and almost die. When we cooperate, good things happen, and when we don't, bad things result. Perhaps that's the whole moral of WoW, that cooperation is good and needless conflict is bad. That could explain why we veteran players often complain about the damage wrought by faction conflict: we have already learned that moral, and to see new content that is still trying to teach it to us means the game is re-teaching us something we already know. When that thing we already know is a moral lesson, and the game tries to teach us that lesson through demonstration, watching those demonstrations of why faction conflict is bad long after we have realized this fact is just frustrating.

Don't you know there's a Shattering on? Redux

The last time I asked the question, "Don't you know there's a Shattering on?", it was because I was struck by the nonchalance the citizens of Stormwind seemed to have taken towards the recent destruction of their world, and I was able to formulate a reason as to why they were so calm after a gigantic dragon had just ravaged their city. Now I am forced to ask this question again, this time by the Hero's Call board. Allow me to copy a line from the Hero's Call quest for each Cataclysm zone (the Alliance versions of those quests, that is) that succinctly sums up your purpose going into each zone:

Vashj'ir: "Recent attacks by the Horde on our trade ships must be met with swift and just force!"

Mount Hyjal: "Our brothers in the Cenarion Circle report that Deathwing's minions have launched a destructive offensive against the world tree and threaten to burn it to the ground!"

Deepholm: "The Earthen Ring requires our aid! They report that the elemental plane of Deepholm threatens to overtake our world and destroy all life on Azeroth!"

Twilight Highlands: "King Wrynn requires a trustworthy and proven hero for a mission of the utmost importance."

Uldum: "Be one of the first to enter glorious Uldum and claim its treasures in honor of the Alliance!"

One of these things is not like the other... I mean, what's up with Uldum? The way that your motivation for going into Uldum stands out from your motivation for going into all of the other zones becomes even more clear as you accept the introductory quests for each zone:

Vashj'ir: "As you may have heard, the Horde's attacking just offshore. The fighting's been fierce and relentless. We need every able body out there repelling the enemy!"

Mount Hyjal: "It is good that you've come here just as Azeroth finds itself in a time of great need. Deathwing's minions are attacking Hyjal and seek to bring the destructive Ragnaros back into our world."

Deepholm: "Deathwing's return to our world left a rift open between Azeroth and Deepholm. If we don't mend the breach, this land will be torn asunder."

Twilight Highlands: "Great burdens have been placed on my son's shoulders in his short lifetime, and I fear his responsibilities are only going to grow. He will never learn leadership confined to the keep, but I am loathe to send him forth without escort. [Name], your deeds in the wake of this cataclysm are already legendary. You would be an excellent mentor for young Prince Anduin."

Uldum: "The ancient region of Uldum has been exposed! Treasures beyond your wildest dreams, free for the taking! We just need a bit of an escort, what with the bandits and all..."

Let's look at each zone individually. In Vashj'ir, the Horde has attacked Alliance ships out near an island that has recently surfaced, and we need to go out and defend ourselves, lest we loose even more lives to the conflict. On Mount Hyjal, the mountain threatens to burn if we don't do something about it, and Ragnaros might be brought back, which would be an even greater threat upon the world. In Deepholm, the world threatens to tear apart if the world pillar cannot be reconstructed. For the Twilight Haghlands, though Varian doesn't exactly make it clear what is wrong in that zone, the tone of the quests give the impression that it is important and consequential. In Uldum, there are treasures to be found! Yes, one of these things really isn't like the other.

In other words, it seems as if our actions in every zone in Cataclysm minus Uldum are motivated by the basic need to save the world or ourselves, or at the very least, some grander purpose. We are out there to do things for other people, as is our character's motivation for much of the game. But when we get around to going to Uldum, we suddenly find ourselves motivated purely by the treasures we can find. Sure, the quests may try to gloss over that by saying that we are looking for these treasures "for the glory of the Alliance" or that we are really helping this caravan get into Uldum, but at the end of the day, rather than being there to help, we are there for fame and glory. In every other zone, we are there to make a difference, to help the innocent, to save the world, but in Uldum, we are there for easy treasures... what.

This dichotomy was especially apparent to me because I only quested through Hyjal and Deepholm before starting Uldum, and in both of those zones, we narrowly avert widespread destruction though swift and timely action. In Hyjal, we narrowly avert the destruction of the mountain by fighting back those responsible; in Deepholm, we narrowly avert the destruction of the whole world by resembling the world pillar. Between these two zones, the mood of the expansion is set as one where the world is constantly teetering on the brink of destruction, and only by acting quickly can we save it. That's why it's pretty jarring to spend two zones saving a world that is very close to destruction, then to be lead to a zone where our only reason for being there is to see what treasures we can find. As the people in that caravan asked me to escort them into the desert, I couldn't help but ask myself, don't you know that there's a world out there that could be lost if we don't go help? Don't you know there's a Shattering on?

The one possible reason I could think of for Blizzard to put in a zone with such a different mood is that they wanted to show that our characters are not the spotless paragons of good they might otherwise seem to be. They may be heroes, but perhaps Blizzard wanted to show that they are by no means perfect, and they can get excited about personal gain just like anyone. I can understand why they would want to do this. After all, they are trying to tell a story, and we are simply playing the part of the protagonist of that story. If the protagonist of a story is too perfect, he becomes a Mary Sue, and the story becomes unbelievable. But our characters do have flaws, the most prominent of which might be their gullibility. The way we help Tyrus Blackhorn, Drakaru, Teron Gorefiend regain their power in Mount Hyjal, Grizzly Hills, and Shadowmoon Valley, respectively, show just how easily our characters trust others, a trust which is often taken advantage of. But being that that is the only flaw that comes to mind (for me, at least), perhaps they are a bit too close to being Mary Sues, which is why Blizzard wants to add self-centered greed to the list of their flaws by sending them to Uldum to look for treasure.

Does it work? I suppose this is a matter of opinion, but I'm of the opinion that it doesn't. Our characters spend so long being near-perfect heroes (with gullibility as their only flaws) that for them to show this interest in more selfish motivators so suddenly feels more like character derailment than character development, even if there isn't much character to derail in the first place. Now, maybe I need to level an alt through the old content so I can see that our characters really can be pretty self centered, because the truth is that I haven't leveled a character past level 14 since the start of the expansion. Hell, it probably isn't out of character at all for goblins. But I can say that two large zones' worth of setting our character up as a grand world-saving hero is enough to establish our characters suddenly taking on the role of a treasure hunter as decidedly out of character.

And even if this concept did work, it would completely ignore the fact that the world is teetering on the brink of destruction, as was made clear to us in Hyjal and Deepholm. No amount of character development or any other such justification can mask the fact that Hyjal and Deepholm probably aren't the only areas in need of being saved by our characters, and to be forced to go treasure hunting when the world is teetering on the brink of destruction forces our characters to show an uncomfortable amount of disregard for the world at large.

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?

Should we have competition for quest items/kills?

Whilst doing part 2 of the elemental invasion quests today, I was hit by a sudden thought, a thought which came out of nowhere, yet was blindingly obvious when it came to me. I starting to think about one specific aspect of the design philosophy behind the solo-ing part of WoW. It is something so integral to the MMO landscape (or WoW's landscape, at least) that I have never even thought to consider whether it might really be necessary. As I was looking around for elementals to subdue, a hunter was doing the quest in the same area as me, subduing elementals before I could get to them. It was a manifestation of something very basic to WoW's design: competition in questing. This facet of WoW's questing design manifests itself all the time in ways we barely notice. When a quest requires you to kill a specific enemy, there will be other players in the same area killing that enemy. When a quest requires you to collect an item off the ground, there will be other players around collecting that item. And every time another player does one of the above things, questing becomes a bit harder for you. Maybe it's because of the break I've taken from the game, but when I saw that hunter subdue an elemental I had my eye on, I didn't dismiss it as something that's to be expected, nor did I get annoyed at him, but instead, I asked myself: should quest credit be a limited resource? Should we need to compete with other players while questing?

It's a difficult question for me to ponder, for it is something so integral to the way questing works in WoW that in the more than five years I have played, I have never considered it until today. I suppose the best way to start thinking about it would be to think about it from a realism standpoint, and from such a standpoint, it makes sense that having competition while doing a quest should make that quest harder to do. If there are other people in a forest killing wolves, there will be fewer wolves for you to kill; it's basic math. But then again, many quests often imply that, by doing what you are doing, you are taking care of the problem for good; by killing those wolves, you have solved the wolf problem completely, yet wolves still spawn for other players to kill. Sure, some quests acknowledge that you are just culling the threat a bit, but then, how do you explain the quests that ask you to kill a specific enemy? From a realism standpoint, once that enemy is dead, he's dead for good, and no one else can kill him; of course, this isn't the case. What this means is that we can't examine the issue of competition in questing from the perspective of realism, since any realism-based justifying of WoW's quest design falls apart pretty quickly.

With realism out of the question, the next simplest perspective I can think of to look at this issue from is that of practicality; is it practical for us to need to compete with other players for quests? From the players' perspective, it seems like it isn't; after all, wouldn't questing be faster, and thus more fun, if we had our own enemies to kill, our own items to collect, and other players had their own enemies to kill and items to collect? Archeology is a good example of this kind of game design in action, for everyone who takes archeology will have their own set of phased dig sites to find and explore. From the players perspective, it seems like the game would be better it quests, too, were designed this way.

But there must be reasons that Blizzard hasn't adopted a style of quest design similar to the way players look for artifacts with archeology. Perhaps it has something to do with system limitations. After all, as Wintergrasp showed us, putting a lot of players in one area can reek havoc on WoW's servers. Now think of what would happen if we had a lot of players in one area--say, in Mount Hyjal or Vashj'ir after Cataclysm launches--as well as individual enemies, quest items, and phases for all of those players. Though I don't know much about the hardware behind WoW's servers, I can imagine this would be a huge load for them to bear, probably more than they could.

Pacing also factors into this issue, for having competition for quest objectives works well to adjust the pace of the game to an appropriate pace for different players. When Cataclysm comes out, players are probably going to be rushing to the level cap, flooding those zones as they try to gain experience as quickly as possible. But Blizzard put a lot of effort into designing those zones, and they probably don't want players rushing through it as quickly as possible, which will not only prevent them from appreciating Blizzard's work, but also cause them to get to, play, and exhaust the raid content Blizzard has added at launch, reducing the longevity of the expansion. Artificial as it may be, having quest competition slow down players while playing through solo content does increase the game's longevity. But now, suppose someone has started leveling through the new Cataclysm zones after everyone else is already at the end-game, or someone decided to level an alt to raid with. Both of these players will find themselves with much less competition than the players who quested through those zones at launch found themselves with, and they'll be able to level faster for that reason. Thus the lack of competition will give them an edge in catching up with everyone else.

But perhaps the most important reason for there to be competition for quest credits--and also easiest to overlook--is that this is, in the end, an MMO. We are supposed to inhabit a living, breathing world, but considering how stagnant WoW really is, the only way for that world to be living and breathing is through the players. It is our interactions with other players and the way they influence our play that brings WoW to life. In group content, this influence is easy to achieve, for players' cooperation is necessary to make such content work. But how to bring that influence to solo content? Group quests help, but there can only be so many of them, and once there aren't as many players leveling through a zone as there used to be, they become more of an annoyance than anything. So how can players influence one another's playing if they are off doing their own thing? If they aren't working together to make their questing easier, then the only option left is to have one player's actions have consequences for another player in a way that the first player might not be consciously aware of. And that's exactly what the competition inherent in solo questing accomplishes.

So, in short, annoying as it may be from time to time, the competitive aspect of questing has a reason for being there. To remove it would take some of the second M out of what makes WoW an MMO, and would effectively go one step towards making it a very different game. While change isn't always a bad thing, change in that direction would not be good for the social dynamical that helps keep WoW interesting and alive, that puts it firmly in the MMO genre, and that probably drew many people to the game in the first place.

Thoughts on the doomsday cultists

As short as the questline concerning the doomsday cults that have recently started appearing in Azeroth may be, it has given me quite a bit of food for philosophical thought (good thing, too; my reservoir was starting to run dry). If you haven't done said quests, I invite you to go to Ogrimmar or Stormwind and do the questline before you read this post, so I don't bore the people who have already done the questline with a summary of what goes down.

What struck me the most about these questlines was the irony in the situation: we as players know the cultists are right when they prophesize the "end of the world", for we know about the coming Cataclysm. Yet, as our avatars, we fight against them, trying to stifle their message and prevent it from spreading. It was an interesting experience for me, doing the questline, for that reason; if the cultists are technically right, how can I be ok with silencing them? The justification I came up with for myself was that their attitude about it was too pessimistic, and that if we are going to survive the Cataclysm, we can't take a "the worst will happen" attitude about it, and that's exactly what the doomsday cults were promoting. If my interpretation is correct, they seem to plan to die during the Cataclysm, but they are sugar coating that fact by saying they are "ascending to a higher plane of existence". Yeah, not the best message to be sending around.

Of course, my druid's reason for wanting to stop the cultists probably wasn't that complex. In the midst of earthquakes and elemental turmoil, these people were causing unrest, both by preaching the end of the world and by stealing citizens away into their ranks. Our characters just want to do what they consider right (unless you roleplay them as otherwise, that is), and keeping the peace is probably considered a good thing. Even though we as players know these cultists are right, with the way the game is set up, our characters can only fight against them. We, in spite of our foreknowledge, are the misled ones here, not the cultists.

There's a good reason for that, though, and a simple reason, too: our avatars are characters within the WoW universe. Just like the leaders we fight for, just like the enemies we fight against, they are limited in their knowledge of what is going on by what they have found out through their experiences. We may know the other faction is comprised of just as many good and bad people as our own, and that we have no reason to not cooperate with them, but our avatars don't; all they know about the opposite faction is their experiences in battle with them and what they have heard from their leaders. We may know that Drakaru is an agent of the scourge as we help him in Grizzly Hills, but our characters think he is an ally. Most significantly, we may know the Cataclysm is coming, but our avatars won't know until they see it, unless they're crazy enough to believe the doomsday cultists.

And in the end, this is Blizzard's game, so they decide how much our avatars know and what course of action they take in response to that knowledge. Just as we lack the power to influence how the plot changes, we lack the power to impart our own meta-knowledge to our avatar. We may know what we know, but they only know what Blizzard decides they can know, so they are the unwitting pawns of a larger plot being written for them. We can do nothing to alter this plot; all we can do is experience it, in spite of knowing what wrongs may be wrought as a result. In the end, all we can do is go with the flow, for WoW is an evolving story, ones whose plot points and conclusion are not ours to decide.

Expand your horrizons to conquer the slump

Wrath of the Lich King is in its twilight hours, and many players are feeling bored with the game as a result. There are no new raids to run if one has already completed or given up on Icecrown Citadel, no new heroics or factions to grind reputation with, no new battlegrounds to fight in, etc. There's a real feeling of repetition that seems to permeate our play. At this point, it seems as if there is nothing for us to do aside from all of the things we have already done many times over.

There are, I'm sure, many who would suggest we break up the boredom by preparing for Cataclysm, but the things we do to prepare for Cataclysm are really the same activities we have done many times over dressed up with different goals. Making money for the new money sink? How do you propose to do that? Whatever method you choose, being it grinding, dailies, or playing the auction house, players have been doing it to pay for their repair bills since the expansion debuted. The last time new content was added that enabled players to make money in new ways was patch 3.2, which brought us the Argent Tournament. There's also the option to try to gear up to make leveling through Cataclysm faster, but that must also be done through the same avenues we have already used: heroics, raids, PvP perhaps, the occasional crafted piece, etc. Point is, anything we do in the name of preparing for Cataclysm will likely not relieve the doldrums we feel now.

So how to busy ourselves while we wait for the new content, while there's nothing else to do? Well, therein lies the problem: there is plenty to do; most players suffering from inter-expansion boredom have just dismissed the the things they could be doing to pass the time. And because those players have dismissed these activities, the idea of doing them doesn't even pop into their heads when they log in and ask, "What should I do today?" They are blind to any in-game reminder that these activities exist because those activities aren't within their realm of possibility. They skim past the relevant achievements, forget about players they see bearing the rewards of these activities, all because they once decided, "Nah, not worth it."

Let me ask you something: have you completed WoW? Because unless you are that Taiwanese man who earned every achievement, I doubt that is the case. There's plenty to do in this game, and you know that content is there. Some of it is obvious to you: leveling alts, fighting in battlegrounds, fighting in arenas, raiding, the kinds of things that likely take up most of your time now. But what about the other things you don't think about? What about farming old-world bosses for their rare-drop mounts? What about getting exalted with old-world factions? What about farming for rare pets? What about doing old-world quests? What about just going for achievements? These are all viable options of things to do to pass the time while we wait for Cataclysm to come out, things most people suffering from burnout have probably never gone for and can thus do to pass the time, yet I imagine many players dismiss these options. In other words, there are plenty of things out there for players to do while waiting for Catalcysm, and yet they aren't out doing them.

This probably seems natural to you. After all, who would bother with the activities I mentioned above when raiding can give better gear, dailies can give better money, and the rewards of all of the things I mentioned above are all cosmetic? That's the kind of thinking that keeps people from realizing all of the content that is available to them. But allow me to propose a potentially radical idea: raiding for high end gear and grinding for money through the dailies that reward the most of it is no more productive than any of the activities I listed above, and thus there is no reason for you be dismissive of the aforementioned activities as things to do while playing WoW.

Let me ask you something about that gear you get from raiding: what is it for? The only practical purpose gear serves is to allow you to beat more challenging content, so gear only allows you to move on to beat harder raiders, which allows you to get better gear, allowing you to beat harder raids, etc. I'm not saying that trying to get good gear is a waste of time; what I am saying is that getting better gear through raiding doesn't provide any permanent practical reward at all. The benefit provided by that gear is fleeting, temporary, and only as good as it compares to the current best gear. So why go for the gear? Because raiding is fun (at least, it's supposed to be). The gear we get through raiding is simply a tangible motivating factor to get you to raid if the fun of doing it isn't enough to motivate you to start. Once you do start, that fun should be enough to keep you raiding, since, as I mentioned, gear only provides a benefit for so long. In short, the only reason to try to get gear from raids is to have fun in the process of acquiring it.

And as for money? With each expansion, money has become progressively easier to earn; that's why the gold sinks keep getting more expensive. That has the added benefit of each expansion putting wealthy established players and poorer new players on more equal footing than they would be otherwise. But where exactly do we get all of this money? From the things we would do otherwise: daily quests that award reputation with a certain faction, one-time quests that we do to see the evolving story of WoW, the selling of materials that we enjoy collecting, the selling of items we enjoy grinding, etc. All of the in-game activities that reward money are things that are supposed to be enjoyable in their own right; the money is just a nice byproduct. Now, would there be fewer people putting up ore, herbs, and fish for others to use in their crafting if doing so didn't pay money? Maybe. But the point is that gold is just the reward for accomplishing our in-game goals and activities, not a goal itself. Those money sinks may be nice to have (I can tell you from personal experience that epic flying is a big time saver, and that the Traveler's Tundra Mammoth is quite convenient), but the fun is supposed to be had in earning the gold to buy them, moreso than in having them. It will be more fun to earn them after Cataclysm (more money earned for your effort; newer, more enjoyable content to earn that money from; etc.) than to collect that money before.

The point is, while there are activities in WoW that we view as "productive", they are no more productive than activities we dismiss for their perceived lack of productivity. Their only real purpose is to allow us to have fun, and if that is the only benefit we get out of them, then why limit what we do between now and the Cataclysm to things we consider "productive" and thus rule out other activities that may be fun? The fruits of our labor will only last so long, so the enjoyment of that labor is the only goal worth pursuing. If you are suffering from the pre-expansion slump, I invite you to try some part of the game you had previously dismissed as unproductive or pointless. Go for an achievement. Grind out a mount or a pet. Do some old-world quests. Get exalted with that faction you never got exalted with. Or try leveling an alt or hitting up some battlegrounds if you had previously dismissed those activities without trying them. As long as what you do is fun, then whatever you do in-game is time well spent.