WoW Plex

Over the holidays, Blizzard floated the idea of introducing an item which can be used to give a month's subscription, and allow that item to be sold in-game. Essentially taking Eve Online's PLEX and applying it to WoW.

I think this is a bad idea.

I think this is similar to Diablo 3's Auction House. There the problem was with third-party trading, and Blizzard introduced the AH to combat scams. That worked, but ended up warping the game even farther. WoW PLEX would be similar. It would be introduced to combat Real Money Transfers from sketchy sites. But it does this by turning players into RMTers, by warping their incentives.

You can see this in Eve Online. Eve has a significant problem with scamming, lotteries, multiboxing and similar shenanigans. I believe this is because PLEX helps incentivize these actions, not just among the illegal third parties, but for regular players.

A lot of Eve partisans will say that PLEX has been good for Eve. Truthfully, I am not so sure. I think PLEX has masked a lot of problems with Eve, especially on the resource production side. Problems which would have been exposed and fixed a lot earlier without the bandaid of PLEX.

As well, I don't believe that it is good for the game to have one segment of stronger players play for free at the expense of other weaker players. Right now, the playing field is relatively equal. WoW rests on a broad base of subscribers, and we are all relatively equal. The necessary monetary support is divorced from the in-game universe.

PLEX for WoW is a bad idea. It warps the incentives for a significant fraction of the playerbase, and creates a real divide between those players who free-ride, and those who pay. I urge Blizzard to reject this idea.

Edit: I posted this in the comments. Hopefully it makes the parallel with D3 and WoW more clear.

D2 had a problem with scammers. D3 introduced a mechanic (the Auction House) to combat that problem. That mechanic warped the incentives for the larger playerbase. The cure was worse than the disease.

WoW has a problem with 3rd party RMT. WoW is proposing to introduce a mechanic (WoW PLEX) to combat that problem. That mechanic will warp the incentives for the larger playerbase. The cure will be worse than the disease.

A New Year

Happy New Year to everyone!

As the new year arrives, I find myself in a bit confused as to what direction I should go in. I'm currently playing 3 MMOs, but at a low and rather unsatisfying level. The big problem is that I'm not in any stable groups. I am essentially playing solo at the moment.

World of Warcraft

Most of WoD has been good. But 5-man Heroics are absolutely terrible this time around for me. They just don't feel right. The tanks are playing crazy, and healing feels terrible. It feels like Cataclysm Heroics, only instead of killing the DPS when they do something stupid or mechanics are ignored, they just take extra damage and strain the healer more.

It's just a bad experience entirely. I blame active mitigation.

LFR is pretty boring. So if I want to stick with WoW, I'll have to apply to and join a raid guild. Yet I'm not sure I want to do that again.

The Old Republic

I did not like Shadow of Revan. I thought the story was pretty terrible. I also realized after my last post that I don't really feel in control of my character during conversations anymore. If you play the original stories, every time your turn comes up in the conversation you get a choice. It's pretty rare that your character makes an automatic response. In SoR, it feels like your character makes more and more automatic responses, and you get fewer choices in the conversations.

Essentially, story-wise it feels like TOR has been drifting further and further away from the original design. But I liked that original design, and it was the main reason I was playing TOR. I don't really want to play "WoW with lightsabers and a few more cutscenes."

As well, TOR has had real problems with responsiveness since the expansion. To me, responsiveness is key. A game that responds badly simply makes playing an unpleasant experience. For example, my sniper has a channeled ability called Series of Shots. If Series of Shots finishes its entire channel, a second ability Followthrough is enabled. Lately, at least half the time there will be lag during the Series of Shots channel, and Followthrough will not trigger.

The upside to TOR is that it's the closest thing I have to an existing raid. It would be much easier to get into a steady operations group in TOR than in any other game.

Final Fantasy XIV

There's nothing really wrong with FFXIV. I just don't seem to be excited about it. I log in whenever there's new content, but don't really feel keen to work on my gear or Relic weapon or new classes.

Resolutions

Three resolutions this year:

1. Write about other subjects - I'd like to start a non-gaming blog, maybe write about programming or other random things.
2. Write more - I've been pretty erratic about writing this year, and I would like to write more often.
3. Be willing to write about controversial subjects - I usually shy away from controversial subjects. But I am not sure that is the correct approach. As well, the outlines of a controversial subject post often stay in my head, and keep me from thinking and writing about other topics.

In any case, I hope 2015 is a great year for all my readers.