Where does our pride come from?

This post discusses some experiences I had with a real-life friend of mine who I know reads this blog and whom I make some conjecture about that could be patently wrong. You'll know who you are once you start reading, and if what I say is wrong or portrays you in the wrong light, you have my sincerest apologies. But think about it this way; no one else will know it's you I'm writing about.

I have been playing WoW for more than five years now. I don't say that to show off at all, just to provide background information for the story I'm about to tell. I have a friend who has been playing WoW since the beginning of Wrath of the Lich King (about two years now) and has spent most of that time raiding. As such, he has procured some pretty impressive epics, including the Ring of Rapid Ascent, the Amulet of the Silent Eulogy, and the Gunship Captain's Mittens. Now, he and I have the kind of friendship where we occasionally show off to each other, but never in a legitimate attempt to make the other person jealous; just friendly boasting. As such, one day he logged in to show me his gear. Now, as someone who has no motivation to raid and who is rarely impressed by numbers alone, I wasn't as impressed as he expected me to be, so he asked me to show him what I had accomplished. He should have known better, for he knows I have been playing for more than five years.

You see, when you play for that long, you tend to accumulate various rewards here and there that really add up over time. My friend got the first hint that asking me to show off might be a bad idea when he saw my 4605 achievement points, more than double his 2200 (give or take). We were looking at my armory profile, mind you, so he decided to compare achievements, and his dread became a bit more apparent when he saw that he had many times more raid achievements than I (that was where most of his achievement points came from). Then we logged in to look at my character, and he was greeted by my 85 pets (including my Magical Crawdad, my Kirin Tor Familiar, and my Argent Squire with bridle), my 25 exalted reputations (including Netherwing, Ogri'la, and the Kalu'ak) my Onyx Netherwing Drake, my Chef title, my Traveler's Tundra Mammoth, and my Violet Proto-Drake. See, I'm a big solo player, and when you are a solo player who has been playing for five years, you tend to accrue these kinds of things without giving it too much thought, and at this point, most of these things were just trophies of past exploits, things I hardly even thought about now.

My friend, however, was extremely envious of my acquisitions, and vocally so. I made a point of telling him that everything I had acquired was not difficult to get, just time consuming; of course, having played the game for five years, I had a lot of time to put in to getting those things, but I left that part out. See, this friend of mine is a Kingslayer, something he put a considerable amount of time and effort into achieving, and he is also a raid leader, so he spends more time on raiding than the average Kingslayer. My thought was, if he could put forth that much time (to raid management, the multiple attempts, etc.) to getting Kingslayer, why couldn't he put forth the same amount of time it would take to get any of the things I had gotten? His claim was that he just didn't have the patience to go for something as time-consuming as the Violet Proto-Drake or the Traveler's Tundra Mammoth, so I let it rest at that.

But there was a disconnect about the whole thing that piqued my interest. Here he was, with his epics and his raid achievements, quite proud of them, and here I was, with my pets, mounts, and solo-ing achievements, and I had never given most of them a second thought. They were just trophies of parts of the game I enjoyed playing, many of which I probably would have played even if there was no reward (getting exalted with Netherwing certainly falls in that category), so I had no particular pride in most of them, and yet my friend was quite jealous of them. Why this difference between us?

My first guess was that it was just a matter of his inability to obtain what I had that made him jealous, but I realized that I myself had similarly accepted that I would probably never raid and never get epics and achievements like him. If it were that "forbidden fruit" effect that had caused him to be jealous of my acquisitions, then I would be similarly jealous of his epics and achievements. Yet here I was, sitting back as he showed me the things he had achieved, beaming with pride, and I just sat back and nodded, not at all jealous of what he had experienced and obtained that I hadn't. Of course, I thought, maybe I've just had longer to accept that I won't get these things, so I'm more at peace with it than he is about never obtaining the Traveler's Tundra Mammoth or Violet Proto-Drake.

But I found my potential answer in a comment he made as he was showing me his gear and achievements. When he had sufficiently impressed upon me just how much time he has spent raiding, how much time he has put in to get to the point he's at now, he said only half sarcastically, "I hate this game." It was just a joke at the time, but upon reflection, I realize there may be more to read into in his words than I initially thought. My friend may not be the most honest of people (he's not dishonest by any stretch of the imagination, but as someone who legitimately has difficulty with lying, I can say he's more liable to stretch the truth than I am), but perhaps he was being honest when he claimed he disliked that game at this point. I can't help but ask myself, if he really grew to dislike this game, then why did he keep playing? Perhaps he was one of those players who played for the achievements, the loot, the bragging rights; perhaps he had become the type who plays for the objective rewards.

I, on the other hand, am not the type to play for objective rewards, at least I'm not anymore; I may have been that type back in the day, but no longer. I'm definitively in the subjectively-driven camp now, in that I play for the experience more than the end result. Don't get me wrong, the end result is important to me in some respects, but it's the earning of the end result that is most important to me. Perhaps the difference between how my friend and I view the spoils of our exploits lies in this difference in motivation; perhaps he was prouder of his gear and achievements and jealous of my pets and mounts because he was focusing of the rewards, not the process of obtaining them. I, on the other hand, am not at all jealous that he got to experience raiding--which is how he got his achievements and loot, after all--since I don't enjoy raiding. When I saw those purples, I saw the frustration, the time commitments, the needing to deal with other people and depend on them for your success; I saw all of the inconveniences associated with earning that loot, not the loot itself. When you look it that way, is it any wonder I wasn't jealous?

Why I'm excited for the difficulty spike in Cataclysm

One of the biggest consistencies thus far in Cataclysm's development is that parts of the game that are currently simplistic are going to become more complex and difficult. We won't be able to AoE our way through heroics, where crowd control will be necessary again, and it looks like solo questing is going to become more difficult, as well. Raid healing is going to become more about using the right spell at the right time, rather than using our strongest heals on everyone because we have the mana to do so. Things are going to require more thought and strategy when Cataclysm comes out, rather than being the way they are now, where the game design allows us to brute-force our way through content. Rather than using strategy and kill orders on trash in heroics, we AoE it down because the tank won't take unhealable damage if the group does so, and the healers have the mana to heal through that damage. Rather than healers using many different heals for each situation, they use their strongest spells because they have the mana to do so. Come Cataclysm, this will be different, and as you could probably tell from the title of this post, I am looking forward to that fact, and here's why.

As it is now, in the age of Wrath of the Lich King, the game starts out easy. 5-mans may have been more difficult back in the beginning of Wrath than they are now, but let's be honest, they were still pretty easy back then compared to Burning Crusade's heroics. Anyone who did heroics back in the days of Burning Crusade remembers that we used normal dungeons and faction rewards to gear up for heroics. You Wrath of the Lich King babies (I don't use that term derisively, mind you; I, for example, and a Burning Crusade baby) might need to read that again. We didn't just jump right into heroics to gear up for raids; we first geared up for heroics, then we used the gear we got there to gear up for raids. I'm not saying this as any sort of "back in my day... you kids have it too easy" speech; I bring that up only to prove how difficult heroics were back then. And, of course, we used crowd control. Extensively. A group without any viable crowd control probably couldn't complete a heroic, and victory was far from guaranteed, like it is now. (Has anyone been unable to complete a heroic since patch 3.3? And, before patch 3.3, did you ever go longer than a few days in a row without being able to complete the daily heroic? Didn't think so.)

And as for soloing? Judging by the fact that my level 69 shaman, decked out in nothing but green-quality quest rewards, was able to take down, on his own, a level 72 elite, soloing is pretty easy now, too. In fact, I've always been disappointed by just how easily my priest and shaman have been able to decimate anything in their path as they go through Outland and Northrend. Now, truth be told, I don't remember what it was like to level through Outland back when it was the final continent, and I'm not going to pretend I remember, so let's just say that leveling now is a very easy activity in which you must engage two mobs at once to make it at all interesting or challenging.

But the ways we play through solo content, dungeon trash, and raid healing now all have one thing in common; they are the kind of play-styles that, in expansions past, were only possible by over-gearing the content in question. When yo look at it, there's a certain natural flow to the way things are going to work in Cataclysm. Soloing will start out difficult, but as we get heirlooms to put on our alts, and as we get better gear at the level cap, it will become easier, and we'll be able to take on more than one mob at once. Heroics will require kill orders and crowd control at first, but once we out-gear them, we'll be able to use AoE instead. Raid healing will require strategy at first, but once we out-gear the read, we'll be able to just use our strongest spells. In other words, what is now the default behavior will become a reward for out-gearing the content you are doing. Rather than brute-force being the main way we play, it will only be the way we play through content we have long surpassed.

In addition to the natural flow it creates, I like the fact that brute-force will become the privilege of those with better gear because the progression of complex/difficult to simple/easy allows the simplistic ways of tackling content to act as a sort of consolation prize for players who want to run content they outgear. If someone decked out in raid gear needs to do some dailies for gold for the repair bills, the fact that the enemies are now easier to kill makes the experience different from how it was as he was leveling up. The enemies are dying faster, and he can take on a few at once, so it becomes more fun. If a cutting-edge progression raider wants to run a heroic for extra valor points, the fact that he out-gears the dungeon will allow him to AoE his way through it, providing a nice contrast and a nice break from the progression content he is used to, where he has to use crowd control and kill order. Healers will see a similar benefit; if they decided to run content they outgear, either for the valor points or to help out a less geared guildmate or friend, they'll be able to just spam their most efficient heal since they'll have enough mana regeneration and healing output to do so.

This will be especially nice in contrast to the current way the game progresses as we get better gear. As it is now, all three of the areas of gameplay that I mentioned start out simple yet intense (except with leveling, which is just simple), and then get simple and boring when we outgear the content. Heroics started out as an AoE spam fest, and became a faster AoE spam fest when everyone got better gear. Raid healing started with us using our strongest spells to maximize our healing output, then devolves to us continuing to use those spells--but using the less often--when we get better gear. In other words, the way we play when we out-gear content and the way we play when we don't are very similar, but the former is less interesting, so your reward for getting better gear is that old content becomes more boring. With Cataclysm, this will not be a problem, for the playstyle difference between content we out-gear and content we don't will make doing content we out-gear a change of pace, and thus make it enjoyable.

Proposal: reverse feats of strength (feats of growth)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

On the denial that mana will matter

From when Blizzard first announced that their intention for the Cataclysm healing design was to make mana management matter again and make using the right heal at the right time more important than keeping raid members topped of, I knew the playerbase would resist it. I had a feeling that players would be hesitant to give up their limitless mana pool, in spite of the downsides that healing design has brought on the community. There's something about human nature that just isn't willing to give up the luxuries one has already obtained, even if the cost of those luxuries makes them not worth having. That's why so many lawyers and other professionals stay in jobs they hate when those jobs pay well (I'm only targeting lawyers here because I know many who say they hate their job); they have adjusted to a certain lifestyle that those jobs make possible, and thus they stay in them, even though they dread going to work each day. I'm sure there are marriages that continue to exist for the same reason.

Well, we players have a similar relationship with mana and healing. The luxury, in our case, is mana pools that never seem to run out, no matter how much overhealing we do. The downside, then, is boss attacks that do ridiculously large amounts of damage and require split-second timing of heals, for without those elements to add challenge, healing would be a brainless activity, a boring one that wouldn't actually require anything of the player. Now, I'm sure people have differing opinions on whether huge damage spikes are a fair price to pay for practically limitless mana, but it seems that Blizzard believes it is not a fair price to pay, which brings us to this quote from Ghostcrawler on the official forums.

Q u o t e:
If you have to use your inefficient heal too much, you will go OOM.
If you take too much damage, you force your healers to use their inefficient heals more.

Avoidance reduces damage. Stamina does not.

"I think the issue is that some players are rejecting the notion that mana will ever matter, in which case there is no reason to approach surviving as a tank any different than you do today. There's not much we can do to disabuse anyone of that notion until they see the content." -Ghostcrawler (source)

It's easy to follow Ghostcrawler's logic here: The reason stamina is so emphasized by tanks is because a larger health pool gives healers more time to react, and healers need that time to react because boss attacks do so much damage, and boss attacks do so much damage so the boss fights can actually be challenging for healers, and the boss fights wouldn't be challenging for healers without those large attacks because healers have a largely limitless supply of mana. Because Blizzard wants to change the third link in that chain, they have to change the fourth, and by doing that, they will change the second link, and thus the first. All that is a long way of saying that avoidance will be more important in Cataclysm than it is now because of the new healing design.

So, why the hesitation to accept this design change? Perhaps players see their effectively limitless mana pools as a necessity when they consider the fact that Wrath of the Lich King bosses have high spike damage. It's hard to worry about using the most mana-efficient spells when taking the time to consider which spell is right for the job could result in the tank dying, after all. As such, rather than recognizing the spike damage as a result of the large mana pools, they see it as the other way around, that they focused on having high mana and regeneration so they could use their inefficient but powerful spells to heal through the spike damage. This is all conjecture, mind you; I could be completely wrong about this, and would appreciate some affirmation or denial from those who do raid.

However, what I do know for a fact is that the players that are still holding on to the ideas of high health pools and limitless mana for healing are holding on to crutches used to overcome challenges that won't exist once Cataclysm hits. Perhaps this is out of habit, or perhaps it's due to comfort with the familiar, or perhaps these players are afraid to give up the tools they need now. Whatever the reason, I have a feeling this trend will continue into Cataclysm. Tanks will gem and enchant for stamina, healers will gem and enchant for spirit, and who knows? Maybe it will work. Maybe what the tanks lose in avoidance, and thus gain in damage taken, the healers will gain in gross healing output as their super high regeneration allows them to heal more without running out of mana. Then again, by focusing on regeneration, healers will be losing out on having higher healing-per-mana, so that added regeneration may not be enough to make up for the extra damage taken by tanks, especially considering that healers will be healing everyone else, as well. We'll just have to wait and see.

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?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Should better gear look more unique?

As I said in my post on the Celestial Steed, aesthetics can be serious business in WoW. It's for this reason that something as simple as the look of the gear that drops off of bosses can create as strong a reaction as it does. As someone who doesn't raid frequently and is just happy to get his hands on whatever gear he can, I never thought about this much until WoW.com did a breakfast topic on the subject of the lack of unique models in the Lich King's loot tables. It's easy to understand where the author comes from; the Lich King is, after all, the final boss of the expansion pack, so it seems ludicrous for him to not drop unique-looking items. But is it really?

As I have said before, loot serves two purposes: it acts as a gatekeeper to determine how quickly we can move through content, and it represents the challenges we overcame to obtain it. Whether the loot has a unique model is only relevant to the latter purpose, so we'll focus on how the loot's appearance relates to its representation of our achievements. (Still, imagine what WoW would be like if how cool gear looked were relevant to both of its purposes: "Look, man, I am proud to be a part of this guild, but our tabard just looks so... plain. It really is in our best interests that I wear the Tabard of the Shattered Sun instead; we've been banging our head on the wall on this boss for the past week, and it may give me the advantage I need to help us kill this guy." "Fine, but once we get him on grind, do you think you could wear our tabard instead?" "Alright; I guess it will help keep him interesting once he's no longer a real challenge for us.")

So, if the look of gear is supposed to be reflective of the challenges we overcame to get it, then the more difficult and significant a challenge is, the more impressive the gear should look. That's why the coolest mounts drop off of the hardest bosses, and that's why people were so indignant about a mount as impressive as the Celestial Steed being available to every Tom, Dick, and Harry who shelled out the money for it. Well, the Lich King is certainly the ultimate challenge of Wrath of the Lich King, so it certainly follows that he should drop the coolest loot in the game. "Cool" may be subjective, but I don't think it's a stretch to say that unique models are the coolest models of all.

Granted, we can't expect Blizzard's artists to be able to come up with twenty of their best models on the spot, but they certainly could have saved their best ideas for the Lich King. As they were going through making models for loot from quests, normal dungeons, heroics, and the first tier or raiding, and even as they were making models for Ulduar and Trial of the Crusader, they could have taken one of two of their ideas and said, "That's one of our best. Save that one and flesh it out for the loot that drops off of the final boss." If they didn't do that this time around, then it's too late to change anything about that, but at least it can be a lesson for the future.

So, the Lich King should drop unique weapons because he is the final boss of the expansion, as well as the greatest challenge of the expansion, and the gear he drops should reflect that visually. Case closed, right? Perhaps, but that's not all there is to it. We must remember that the models of the items in-game take time and creativity to develop. Some artist at Blizzard had to first come up with the idea of a unique model for a weapon or piece of armor, then spend the time it takes to actually develop that model so that we can see it. I imagine that process takes a very long time, and I don't think any one piece made me realize that more than the Conqueror's Nightsong Raiments, which I used to wear on my druid. Just go ahead and go look at the screen shots of that piece. I'll wait.

Back? Did you see just how intricate the design of that piece was? How many details there were? And that's just one model for one piece of armor. The art team has to churn out hundreds of those in the duration of any given expansion, not to mention models for enemies, bosses, the raids themselves, etc. And with every piece that's made, that's one good idea they likely won't be able to use again, limiting their reserve of creative ideas for future models. What I am trying to say is, every single thing in the game was the result of some artist's long work and effort, be it a weapon dropping off of the Lich King, a blue-quality drop from a heroic, a level 68 baddie in Borean Tundra, or just a small plant used to add scenery. I think we sometimes get too caught up on the look of one thing to appreciate all of the amazing artwork in this game.

So the next time you log in, as a favor to me, the design team, and yourself, just look. I don't care what you look at; it could be your character, the raid you are in, the heroic you run, the world itself, or even just an herb you pick or a node you mine. Just take a look, and appreciate all of the effort the art team puts into this game. And whatever you look at, think to yourself, "An artist worked hard to make this, just so I could see it." Gratitude and appreciation, my friends; that's all I ask.

Why should the final boss of an expansion drop gear?

One of the things that continues to amaze me is the vast variety of places that I can find inspiration for my posts. For example, I was browsing TV Tropes a few days ago and came across an article entitled "Bragging Rights Reward", which describes any practical reward in a video game that takes immense effort to acquire, such that by the time you acquire it, you have already proved you don't need it. It's a fairly frequently used trope, and it got me thinking: are there any such rewards in WoW? One example immediately popped into my mind: any loot that drops from heroic Lich King (or Kil'jaeden in Burning Crusade, or Kel'thuzad in vanilla WoW). After all, those bosses were/are the last boss in their respective expansion, so once you defeat them, you don't need better gear. This, to me, begs the question: why should these bosses drop gear?

The Lich King in an interested exception to this case, because with the Ruby Sanctum being released in patch 3.3.5, the gear that he drops on heroic mode will give players a better chance at defeating the foes in the Ruby Sanctum, and considering that everything in the Ruby Sanctum will be side-grades, rather than upgrades to the things dropped in Icecrown Citadel, they won't be bragging rights rewards either. After all, players could go for Halion first and heroic Lich King after that, or they could have already defeated heroic Lich King and will now be trying to best the Ruby Sanctum. Either way, the rewards from one fight will make the other easier, making neither a clear case of bragging rights rewards. That is, unless Halion isn't a comparable fight to heroic Lich King, and is a good deal easier. in which case the Lich King's heroic drops will still be bragging rights rewards. After all, if he is, by far, the hardest fight in the expansion so far, so by the time you defeat him, you have proven you don't need better gear.

For now, I'm going to write under the assumption that heroic Lich King will remain the hardest fight in the game, even after 3.3.5 is released, for this will not only make writing about the subject more interesting, but will also allow me to consider whether there was any point in Kil'jaeden and Kel'thuzad dropping gear. Now, I'm sure one of the first justifications for them dropping gear that one would point out is that their gear helps people level more quickly through the new content released with each expansion, but if your gear is good enough that you can beat the final boss of an expansion, it's probably good enough that you won't notice the difference between having gear that drops off of that final boss and not having gear that drops off of that final boss; you'll probably be mowing through enemies too quickly to notice the time you save. One could also argue that the gear they drop would give one an advantage when one starts the new expansion's raid content, but considering the rate at which gear has steadily gotten better, the difference between top-end gear and second-best gear becomes even less significant when you enter a new expansion's raids.

So where does that leave us in terms of uses for gear that drops off of the final boss of an expansion? I once said in one of my other posts that gear really serves two purposes: helping you advance through an expansion's content, and serving as a representation of your achievements. The real question is, if gear isn't serving one of those purposes, is it fair that it exist only to serve the other, less practical one? Making the models for that gear takes time away from the design team, time they could be spending on other things, like the gear for the new content. More importantly, though, it reinforces the idea that the main goal of playing WoW is to get better gear, and though that is often an important step in accomplishing other goals, it isn't the reason most of us play. Most of us play for the experience, whether that experience is downing a raid boss, winning a battleground, or just getting exalted with a faction; gear just happens to be a nice consolation that also makes future experiences go more smoothly.

But, you may ask, are there any alternatives? Plenty, actually: mounts, titles, vanity pets (granted, people would probably only be excited about receiving one of the first two of those three), all of which serve the purpose of representing a person's achievements without existing solely as a bragging right reward (by the definition above). And truth be told, I think that rewarding regular old gear for defeating the final boss of an expansion is a bit... underwhelming. Gear was just a necessity to get to that point, and to reward more gear almost seems like mockery to me. Think about it: by beating heroic Lich King, a raid has beaten Wrath of the Lich King. They have overcome the greatest challenge off the expansion, and the reward is just more gear? Just more of the same? Now, granted, beating the Lich King on heroic mode does also grant special titles, depending on which mode you beat him on, as well as a mount for one member of the raid, but rather than giving some other members of the raid gear as a reward, why not give everyone the mount? It seems to me a more fitting reward for what is, in essence, beating Wrath of the Lich King, at least more fitting than just more gear. Maybe that's just me, though.

Calm down about the changes to raid loot

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

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

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

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

Musings on the changes to raids coming in Cataclysm

To say that Blizzard dropped a bombshell when they announced the changes being made to raiding in Cataclysm would be a gross understatement. I will assume that if you read my blog, you are relatively well informed about current WoW events, so I won't patronize you by summing up what was announced; you can read the announcement itself if you need to get up to speed. Naturally, the community erupted into debate upon hearing these changes, with reactions that were as varied as they were passionate. Before I delve into this issue myself, I just want to say for the record that because of my limited raid experience, I won't be focusing on the specifics of how these changes will affect raiding. Though I will consider those specifics, I will also look at the potential consequences of these changes and examine those.

The worst possible outcome of this new system would be 25-man raiding dying entirely, and it's something that could conceivably happen if the rewards for running 25-mans aren't much better than the rewards for running 10-mans. I say this is the worst outcome because there are people who actually enjoy running 25-man content more than 10-man content. It's more epic, the challenge is greater, and thus the satisfaction is greater as well. The trouble with the tangible rewards for the two modes being the same (but in different quantities) is that the satisfaction of organizing more people to accomplish the same goal may not be enough to motivate people to meet that challenge. This makes me wonder, though; if 25-man raiding risks dying because the objective rewards for doing it won't be as good, are the people who run it now running it for the right reasons? Might they be like the people who did arena content in Burning Crusade just for the gear, and then dropped arena once Wrath hit? Far be it from me to decide what is the right and wrong reason to play the game a certain way, but it's something to think about.

So, what if 25-man modes go away? If something is lost because the community loses interest, is it really that big of a loss? I think so. Some say that the better gear is the only thing that keeps people running 25-mans, but if it really were all about the gear, I don't think that 25-mans would be around. After all, 10-mans and 25-mans theoretically run along the same difficulty path, and gear is only about getting further along that path, and that path is more easily traversed with ten people than twenty five. Some combination of increased scale, greater socialization, and a greater organizational challenge keeps people coming together in groups of 25. Theoretically, that should be enough to let 25-man raiding survive through the changes being made in Cataclysm, but it may not be.

The real question is, does Blizzard owe it to 25-man raiders to give them a motivation to run 25-mans other than the increased personal rewards? As I said in my musings on micro-transactions, people expect the rewards for completing a challenge to scale with the difficulty of doing so. Thus far, 25-man content has been more difficult both in terms of the gear required and the organization required. Blizzard can take one of the factors that make 25-mans more difficult (gear), but 25-mans will always be more difficult to organize than 10-mans. Unless Blizzard can somehow change that fact (which is doubtful), then 25-mans will always be more difficult than 10-mans. The only thing they could do about that fact would be to lower the objective difficulty to compensate for the increased organizational difficulty, but that would only exacerbate the problem, since 25-man raiders would feel cheated of the "true WoW experience" and would probably drop down to 10-mans in response, which is the exact opposite of what Blizzard seems to want to happen.

Will giving more gold, badges, and gear be enough to compensate for that increased organizational difficulty? I wish I could say that I think it will, but I have a feeling that there will be a sense among the 25-man community that they are working harder for the same rewards, regardless of the increase in quantity. This increase in quantity also risks making 25-man guilds burn out faster than 10-man guilds. If they get gear faster, what with getting more badges and drops, they'll gear up faster than 10-man raiders and burn through the content faster. I wouldn't be surprised if this makes 25-man raiders drop down to 10-mans as a final straw that breaks the camel's back. We may be hearing complaints like "We burned through tier 11 so fast that I never go to savor it; we're not making the same mistake with tier 12."

Of course, this is all speculation, and it's difficult to talk about "should"s without knowing any "will"s. What we do know is that some people enjoy running 25-man content more than running 10-man content. 25-man content is a more difficult de facto challenge than running 10-man content, and no de jure changes Blizzard makes can change that fact. When players work harder, they expect a greater reward. The increased personal reward of running a 25-man would be sufficient if the increased challenges of running a 25-man were also just personal, but they are also organizational. It takes extra effort on the part of guild leaders to make 25-man raids happen, and they deserve extra reward for it.

Luckily for us, Cataclysm will give us just the way to reward guilds for the extra effort they spend putting those 25 people together: guild experience and currency. If Blizzard wants 25-mans to live, an easy way to make it happen is for them to make 25-man raids give more guild experience and currency than 10-mans. That would allow them to directly reward the people who suffer the most to make 25-man runs happen: the guild leadership. Since running 25-mans is a team effort, it makes sense to reward that effort in a way that benefits the team, and guild experience and currency will do just that. Though balancing the exact ratio of experience and currency granted by 10-mans and 25-mans may take some time, it's worth it to reward people for the extra effort they put forward to play the game they love, and it won't compromise any of Blizzard's goals that they wish to accomplish with the changes coming to raids.

Raiding advice for people who raid infrequently

I am part of a unique group within World of Warcraft: I have a character at the level cap, and yet I rarely raid. I do raid occasionally, but I do it so infrequently that the way I approach raids is fundamentally different from the way regular raiders approach raids. I know I'm not alone in this. Some of us don't raid because our schedules are so inconsistent that we can't commit to raiding with a guild at specific times each week. Some of us don't raid because we play the game to relax, and having all of those other people depending on you performing your job perfectly, ready to pounce on you if you mess up, is anything but relaxing. Some of us simply don't want to repeatedly fight the same bosses over and over again just to earn the right to fight more bosses over and over again. Whatever our reason, we simply would rather not group up with 9 or 24 other people to fight bosses on a regular basis.

That doesn't mean that we don't ever raid. Sure, there are people out there who never do step into the raiding scene, but some of us do dip our feet. We come along when our guild says they need a healer, we PuG a single-encounter raid (like Onyxia or Sartharion), or we may even get bored one night a run a longer raid all the way through. Hell, we may even enjoy it. However, stepping into the raiding scene from heroics can be a scary prospect, which brings us to this post. What follows is advice for people who wish to raid infrequently, just to see what it is like, but don't know how to get started. If you raid regularly or at least have raided, this advice isn't for you. However, if you don't fit into either of those categories and would like to fit into the latter, then to quote Wowhead, "OK HERE IS HOW SO LISSEN GUD."

1. Start small.
The single-boss raid dungeons are good places to start if you want to dip your feet into raiding. They don't require much more time than a heroic, so they will allow you to adjust to all of the other aspects of raiding that will be new to you: the increased number of people, the increased complexity of the encounters, etc. Running those raids also means only needing to learn one boss strategy (or one and a few more simple ones for the sub-bosses). As such, try to start raiding with Obsidian Sanctum, or, if you gear is good enough, Onyxia's Lair.

2. Be realistic about what you can handle.
If you don't raid frequently, you may not have the skills and habits common to most raiders that you need to carry you through the raid. As such, you may need to make up for that lack of skill with your gear. As a casual raider, I can tell you that out-gearing content is a great help when you want to dip your feet in raiding but don't think you have the skills for it. Sure, gear can only take you so far, but it certainly helps. If you just want dip your feet in raiding, use a site like be.imba to gauge the general quality of your gear, then try running a raid that won't offer many upgrades for you. If you get more comfortable with raiding, you can move up into the "upgrade range," meaning you can try running raids that may help you upgrade your gear.

You may be asking, how can one over-gear a raid without ever raiding? Heroics. Heroics these days are an easy ways gear up for raids without needing to raid, helping you catch up with other people in terms of your gear. Even in the days when heroics only dropped Emblems of Heroism, I used heroics to get the best gear one could get without entering a raid, and was more than prepared for Naxx-10. Since then, getting gear through heroics has only gotten easier.

3. Know the strategies
If you don't raid frequently, it isn't worth your RAM to download a mod like Deadly Boss Mods to help you anticipate a boss's attack. As such, you need to know the in-game cues that make raiding without DBM possible. It's imperative that you read the strategies for the bosses in whatever raid you plan on running so that you can be prepared for them. Knowing what attacks are coming and knowing when they will come is an integral part of raiding, and you need to be intimately familiar with the strategies to do that. As a guild I was once in said, casual raiding is not sloppy raiding. You don't get to do this frequently; give it your all. If that all seems like too much to take in, then as Saniel said bellow, ask for a brief reminder of the strategies before each boss fight. Sometimes one little reminder is all it takes to bring back what you read earlier.

4. You are in this for the long-haul.
One of the biggest shocks for a first time raider is just how long the bosses take to kill. Bosses can take anywhere from five to ten minutes to kill, so get used to being in this for the long-haul. If you are a healer, use your mana-restoring abilities early and often and make sure you have enough MP5 so that you don't run out of mana. If you are a DPS, use your cooldowns early and often (unless you need to save them for a burst phase) so that you can cause maximum damage. Above all, don't be surprised when you see how slowly the boss's health meter falls. Also be prepared for how long a raid will take; most non-single-encounter raids will take you a few hours unless you run with a group of people who know the raid inside and out and out-gear it immensely. You probably won't finish the raid in one night, so don't be surprised if your raid leader asks whether you plan on showing up the next night to continue.

The inherent risk of replenishment

Replenishment is an interesting little buff. It has been added to a variety of talent trees over the course of Wrath of the Lich King, from the most overpowered to the ones in greatest need of a buff. The first three trees it was added to (Survival (Hunter), Shadow (Priest), and Retribution (Paladin)) were all less than popular during the Burning Crusade, and I suppose part of Replenishment's raison detre was to increase interest in these trees. Replenishment was later added to the Destruction tree and the Frost tree (Warlocks and Mages, respectively), and though I can't speak about the state of Warlock balance when Replenishment was added to Destruction without risking saying something horribly incorrect, I know that Frost has been falling behind the other Mage trees in terms of DPS and is only now coming to the forefront on the PTR. It seems to me that Replenishment was just a band-aid to make Frost seem more raid-viable while Blizzard worked on an actual fix to Frost's DPS, just like how Replenishment was likely added to it's original three sources in case Blizzard wasn't able to make them viable by the time Wrath of the Lich King came out.

There is a risk in using Replenishment in such a way, though. That risk is that replenishment may let Blizzard off the hook when it comes to fixing specs. We saw that risk manifested in Frost Mages, who are still falling behind on the PTR, though not as much as previously. Though I can't say for certain that Survival wasn't as attractive as Marksmanship when Wrath began, I do know there were few talents in the tree that actually boosted ranged damage, and I know that Black Arrow was originally slated to be included in Burning Crusade, but was scrapped because it was too powerful. The fact that Blizzard added a spell to the Survival tree that they once considered too powerful says a lot about how Survival was matching up against the other specs.

Far be it from me to criticize Blizzard's balancing efforts, for they have a lot of things to consider when tweaking the numbers behind class balance. That said, Replenishment seems to me to act as no more than a consolation until Blizzard can come around to fixing a spec. After all, most raids already had a source of Replenishment in the form of a Retribution Paladin, considering their massive popularity during most of Wrath, and considering the prevalence of Replenishment when it was added to Improved Water Elemental (now Enduring Winter), most 25-man raids (the only place where Replenishment was considered a necessity, rather than a bonus) had some source of it already. Point is, giving Replenishment to Frost Mages didn't really mean much in the grand scheme of things; it was little more than a symbolic affirmation that Blizzard recognized that Frost Mages were falling behind and wanted to improve them.

Blizzard could have accomplished the same thing with an actual buff, however; something like adding Glyph of Eternal Water earlier. Now, I don't know the logistics of how Blizzard goes about buffing and nerfing classes, but it seems to me like giving a minor buff to a class would be a better option than adding Replenishment. It would allow Blizzard to dip their feet, so to speak, in the buffing pool and get an idea of how much buffing the class needs to be even with everyone else, it would actually improve the class in a tangible way, and it would give the same affirmation that adding Replenishment to a class gives.

Of course, Blizzard probably would have buffed Frost Mages if they thought they really needed to be buffed. Perhaps Frost Mages weren't falling behind at that point in time, or perhaps Blizzard didn't see keeping them competitive as a necessity, considering their survivability and thus viability as a solo-ing and PvP spec. (Perhaps one of the commenters could enlighten me on the state of Frost Mages around the time when patch 3.1 was released.)

Regardless, the fact that Frost Mages fell so far behind shows that adding Replenishment or a similar effect to a spec isn't enough to make that spec worthwhile. Many people think Rogues should get an effect similar to Bloodlust/Heroism in order to make them more popular, but considering how many shamans there are in the world, how much would that really help? After all, like Replenishment, the Rogue version of Bloodlust would need to be subject to the same cooldown as the Shaman's Bloodlust, meaning if there were already a shaman in the raid, the Rogue's Bloodlust would be a pointless addition. The key to making classes and specs attractive is not adding homogeneous buffs, but to either bring the class up to speed with everyone else or add something that makes the class unique (or both). Adding a carbon-copy of another class's buff to an underpowered class is nothing more than pointless consolation, an easy way out for Blizzard.

Shoot raid loot still be based on random drops?

Anyone doing the Love is in the Air event this year knows that much less of your ability to successfully complete the meta is based on chance than it was last year. This year, you can get all of the items you need by handing in Love Tokens, which are rewarded by the new dailies and given when you give the holiday vendors a Lovely Charm Bracelet, which are made from Lovely Charms, which can be farmed off of any enemy in the game that gives you experience. In short, getting all of the achievements for Love is in the Air is simply a matter of investing enough time in the holiday, to the extent that, with some dedicated play, I got all of the achievements for the meta in two days.

Why do I bring this up? Because the larger trend in World of Warcraft seems to be a general moving away from RNG. In general, chance is playing less of a roll in everything we do. Tier gear is now bought with emblems, not tokens that randomly drop off of certain bosses, which was still less random than the tier pieces themselves dropping off of raid bosses. We now focus more on gear that can be obtained from emblems and less on gear that drops from bosses than we ever have (though we still think about the latter, obviously). The chance for quest items in Northrend to drop increases with each kill, meaning you don't get those situations where you kill dozens of enemies for that last ear you need for your quest. However, drops from raid bosses are still a very random element of the game, much to the irritation of people who want a specific drop. Is it better that loot remain this way, or are random drops a relic of a more primitive time in WoW's history?

I have said in the past that gear serves two purposes: giving you access to new content and representing your achievements. An RNG-based loot system isn't the best way to accomplish these purposes, but it isn't a horrible way. Basing a person's ability to see content on how lucky they can get with gear drops may not be the best way to go about regulating the rate at which people see the content, but in the long run, streaks of good and back luck when it comes to loot drops tend to even themselves out. Sure, raiders may feel frustrated when a certain piece continually refuses to drop, but raid drops will rarely screw over a person so consistently that he won't be able to gear up for the next raid. As for representing one's achievements, though skill is required to successfully complete raids, getting gear from those raids is more of a matter of luck and dedication than skill. In that sense, gear can be a display of one's dedication to the game, and though one may get lucky with one or two drops in his first raid, many raid runs are usually required to fully deck out one's character, so good gear does a pretty good job of representing one's achievements. That said, the loot system as it is is less than perfect. The amount of gear that gets disenchanted into Abyss Crystals can attest to that, and the random nature of random loot drops necessitates guild loot systems so that everything can be fair.

Still, I think the way loot works is fine as it is, because any feasible alternatives (meaning alternatives that don't change the loot system into some completely new system) would resemble the way loot drops now, but wouldn't be as interesting. Emblems are an example of one such alternative; a different loot system could involve bosses dropping only emblems and all of our gear coming from emblems. However, in the long run, farming emblems for all of your gear would have the same effect on your character as simply running multiple raids for loot drops: both result in your character getting better gear, and though the latter is a bit less consistent, it is more exciting. I think the system we have now, where bosses drop both random items so people can get instant upgrades, and emblems so they can work towards other upgrades, has the best of both worlds: emblems allow people with bad loot luck to still gear up, while random loot drops still allow people to feel the excitement of getting a new piece of gear and the immediate satisfaction that comes with it. Barring a total overhaul of the system by which raid loot is acquired, I think it is fine the way it is.

Where is the line between "playing your way" and being a burden?

In the constant (supposed) conflict between casual and hardcore players, one argument that frequently comes up from the casual side is, "I play this game to have fun, so let me play it my way!" This reply is used in a wide variety of situations, from suggestions on how the casual could better contribute to the raid to base taunting by hardcore players who think that casuals are somehow inferior to them. The advent of raids that are easy enough that casuals can actually run them has brought these two groups together more frequently than they have ever been together before, so this kind of conflict has begun to arise more and more. Who has more ground to stand on in this debate?

One of the arguments I see frequently cited by those arguing that they are only playing there was is that WoW is "just a game." I have already addressed this argument in a previous post and found it to be untrue. WoW is more like a sport (at least in the group setting): people come together to cooperate towards some competitive goal (even in PvE, the raiders are still competing against the raid bosses) for the sake of recreation. When you look at it that way, it's easy to see why someone who wants to "play their way" could bring the whole team down and make it less fun for the other people to take WoW more seriously. After all, some people find fun in success and measure their success by whether or not that raid boss was downed, so a more casual player could easily make that more difficult if they aren't pulling their weight. In that case, the river flows both ways: casuals often accuse hardcores of ruining their fun by taking the game too seriously, but hardcores can just as easily lob the accusation that casuals ruin their fun by not taking the game seriously enough.

Who's right? We can't say; WoW is a game, and how one plays it is completely up to each individual player. No one has the right to say that one person "should" play one way or another, so it seems the only surefire solution would be for casuals and hardcores to not raid together. However, in the grand scheme of things, this would do nothing to resolve the underlying issues that cause this kind of conflict in the first place. If the real source of the conflict is the idea that one group is preventing the other from enjoying the game, then the only thing that can really resolve this kind of conflict is for both sides to be more accommodating of the other. As they say, treat others as you would like to be treated.

Don't be that Druid...

I was inspired by this post on WoW.com to write this how-to guide on how not to be that druid. These are things that some druids do that no druid should do. With that said, if you play a druid, don't be that druid who...
-Puts Thorns on anyone but the tank(s). If the tank loses aggro, those thorns mean more aggro for the poor DPS or healer who is hit, making the tank's job more difficult. No one else needs that extra threat. "But," you may say, "they'll only be hit a few times; what harm can a little extra damage do?" If they are being hit that infrequently (as they should be), that damage really won't make any difference. In short, only put Thorns on the tank.
-Who doesn't keep Thorns on the tank(s). This is especially true of you balance and resto druids, since you have spellpower, and thus your Thorns will cause quite a bit of damage, helping the tank keep threat. However, if you are a Cat feral druid and there are no other druids in the group, your Thorns will be better than nothing. Keep it up on the tank.
-Doesn't put Mark of the Wild on someone after they die and are resurrected. This one should be self-explanatory.
-Forgets reagents. Keep a stack of twenty of whatever you need to cast Gift of the Wild on you at all times, maybe even forty if you are a raider. At level 80, that's Wild Spineleaf. Also, always keep some seeds on you for Rebirth, unless you have Glyph of Unburdened Rebirth, a great glyph for any druid.
-Fights in caster form. Granted, feral druids can't really get away with this, and balance and resto druids don't get their respective forms until levels 40 and 50, respectively, but once you get your form, you'll rarely have a reason to leave it during combat. Between fights is fine, but not during them.
-Complains about any tank or healer shortage. Now, just because you can tank or heal doesn't mean you need to. That said, if you are tired of waiting for a group because you are a DPS, it is fully within your power to do something about it. As such, know that if you do complain, then you are complaining about an issue to which you can be part of the solution

Don't be that Bear who...
-Uses Swipe around enemies under crowd control. You need to remember that Swipe hits all enemies around you, and it has a range of eight yards, so it can hit enemies you can't hit with your normal attacks.
-Uses Lacerate on packs of trash when your group is AoE'ing everything down. Swipe is a better option, since it is better for short-term threat and damages everything around you, whereas Lacerate causes better long-term threat on a single target.
-Never uses Rebirth. It may be difficult for you to find an opportunity to use Rebirth as a tank, but those opportunities do exist. Don't think that Improved Leader of the Pack can replace your healer if he dies; bring him back to life. That said, if there is another druid in the raid who isn't tanking, let them use it first before you use yours.

Don't be that Cat who...
-Uses Mangle (Cat) when you have a Bear tank. Mangle (Bear) is a Bear's highest single-target threat ability, so they will be using it. Save your energy for more Shreds. The one exception to this rule is if you have an idol that is activated by Mangle, like the Idol of Mutilation.
-Uses nothing but Swipe (Cat) on pulls with two or three enemies. Ok, maybe spamming Swipe would be ok for three enemies, but not two (and certainly not one). Just focus on one, then the other.
-Always stays in Cat Form. I know that goes against the advice I gave before, but let's face it; you won't be using Innervate on yourself. Throw it on a healer in need of some mana. And if a healer or tank dies, Rebirth can save the run. Use both. If you are going through a 5-man and your healer dies, Barkskin and Tranquility, when used together, can save your group. Don't forget that you can also heal the tank if you need to do so.

Don't be that Moonkin who...
-Spams Moonfire. Seriously, just don't do it; it goes through mana like America and China go through oil.
-Never uses Remove Curse or Abolish Poison. You're healer could use the help, especially in The Frozen Halls.
-Uses Hurricane on pulls with one or two enemies. I've seen it happen, and it's a horrible waste of mana.

Don't be that Tree who...
-Stacks Lifebloom. Lifebloom is no longer mana-efficient when you stack it. If you want a HoT on your tank, start with Rejuvenation. If that isn't enough, use Regrowth. If you still need more constant healing, use a single Lifebloom, let it bloom so you can get your mana back, and use it again; that is a much more mana-efficient way of using it than keeping it stacked three times.
-Uses Wild Growth when you will only be healing one or two people. Using a single-target heal or two is much more mana-efficient.
-Uses Tranquility outside of 5-mans. Tranquility is a wonderful emergency ability in 5-mans, but it only heals your group, so it's next to useless is 10-mans and pretty much useless in 25-mans. It also needs to be channeled, so even in 5-mans, that limits its versatility. If your tank is taking more damage than Tranquility can heal, there is nothing you can do to heal him without canceling Tranquility and wasting all that mana.
-Uses Healing Touch at level 80. You have Nourish; it is better; use it. The only time you should use Healing Touch is in conjunction with Nature's Swiftness for a large emergency heal.

Is there anything else you have seen a druid do that you would like added to the list?