Is Blizzard Playing the Same Game?

This entire post is completely hypothetical. A thought experiment, if you will.

The Raid and Dungeon forums are currently in an uproar over the slated nerf to Windfury Totem. It is a general consensus that Alliance raiding is easier than Horde raiding, and that shamans are less powerful than paladins in PvE. So to nerf Windfury Totem, which is used by Horde tanks to increase rage and threat, seems nonsensical. If you add this nerf to both the shaman and paladin reviews, it almost begs the question, is Blizzard playing the same game as the rest of us?

Well, what if Blizzard isn't?

In all the discussions on the forums, the only items being taken into consideration are blessings, totems, and heals. All other aspects of the two classes are ignored. In a 40-man raid, the player base assumes that there are 15 healers, who stand in the back, buff and heal. Gregthegreat on the paladin forum summed it up best: "A paladin is better than a shaman because a paladin emulates a priest better."

But what if Blizzard does not have that same assumption? What if they assume that there are only 10 or so full-time healers, and shamans and paladins are meleeing/casting and spot healing? And that their raid design takes into account the additional paladin/shaman damage when they balance the two factions.

I think that a lot of Blizzard's actions regarding the shaman and paladin make more sense when looked at through this lens. If Blizzard believes that the existing optimum raid strategy for paladins is to melee, how are they going to react to calls to improve meleeing? I think they would be confused, and make minor changes, shuffling things around. Which pretty much describes the paladin review. After all, if meleeing is already the best strategy, making meleeing better just breaks things.

I believe that Blizzard tests its content, with raids from both factions. That proposed changes are the result of the internal testing. But if the internal testing makes fundamentally different assumptions than the player base, there will be a disconnect between what the internal team believes is necessary, and what the player base believes is necessary.

From my own personal experience, 15 healers *is* excessive for the majority of fights. 10 healers, with additional spot healing from meleeing paladins, is good enough for most fights. And if that holds Alliance side, it should also hold Horde side.

It also explains the Horde/Alliance disparity a bit. A paladin has a low amount of internal power, but gives a lot of power to her allies through buffs. A shaman has a higher amount of internal power, but gives less power to his allies. So if they both restrict their actions, the Horde raid suffers much more from the withdrawal of shaman power than the Alliance raid does from the loss of paladin power.

Now, I don't know if what I described in this thought experiment is true or not. For this to be true, the commonly held wisdom by the player base about raid roles--that paladins and shamans are primarily healers--is false. But a lot of Blizzard's actions simply do not make sense if the common wisdom is true. So we're left with two choices. Either the common wisdom is wrong, or Blizzard does not know what they are doing.

I'm sure I know what the cynical among you would pick. :)

Horde Edge in PvP

After PvPing for a bit, I've been reconsidering Horde vs. Alliance. I still think that the Horde have a slight advantage when it comes to mobility, and that Paladins are a little too vulnerable to interrupts/fear/shiny distractions. But for the most part, the factions are reasonably balanced against each other in PvP.

However, on average, the Horde are still better than the Alliance. As Horde, I win far more games than I lose. I think that this is because the Horde gets much more practice than the Alliance.

If I'm only on for an hour, as Horde I can get in three to four games. As Alliance, I'm lucky to even get one. So the average Horde gets a lot more practice at the BGs, and thus gets skilled in a faster time than the Alliance. I would estimate that a Horde Rank 6 plays as many games in a week as an Alliance Rank 10+.

As well, the fast queue times allow you to experiment or incorporate new ideas faster. If you have an idea to improve your play, you can instantaneously test it out. If it's a bad idea, and you lose the game, it doesn't matter, because the next game is right around the corner. The feedback cycle is much faster, and thus you can improve your skills faster.

As they say, practice makes perfect.

Fear Ward

On the topic of fearing paladins, I actually think that Fear Ward should be taken from dwarf priests and given to paladins. Race should be a mostly cosmetic choice, and Fear Ward is really unfair to the night elf and human priests. If it is given to paladins, it keeps it alliance-only, makes priests of difference races more equal, and shores up an excessive weakness for paladins. Honestly, I shouldn't have been able to toy with the paladins like I was (see previous post).

Paladins already lack speed and range, so Fear is really devasting to a paladin, removing them from combat for both the duration of the Fear and the amount of time it takes to return to melee range. As well, Fear Ward just seems like a paladin ability, helping the paladin and her allies stand strong in the face of terror.

The New Alterac Valley

So I've been PvPing a fair bit the last couple of days. I really like the new Alterac Valley. With all the NPCs cleared out, it goes much quicker and there's more opportunity for actual combat.

It has a really nice balance between offense and defense as well. If you go all offense, and just turn it into a race, you will lose. A few people on defense can delay the enemy advance sufficiently. I actually really like playing defense. It's fun spoiling people's plans. I take special pleasure in Fearing paladins. There was one paladin with Sulfuras, Hand of Ragnaros, and I just kept fearing him constantly. I find I can also time the bubble quite well, and get a Fear to finish casting just when the bubble comes down. It's a great deal of fun.

(It's entirely possible that I am working out my frustrations with the paladin class in this manner.)

However, you can't have too many people on defense, or your offense stalls out. So there's a bit of a delicate balance there, which is quite nice. Horde seems roughly the same as Alliance, though for some reason the Alliance seems better at rushing and quickly capping a flag. I'm not sure why this would be, and it may just have been because the numbers were lopsided at the flags I was at.

As an aside, some of the Alliance are huge cheaters. I ran into a paladin in a tower killing guards through a wall. He was a terrible paladin though, and was dispatched post-haste. Another time I saw 2 alliance wall-climb the waterfall to get into the Horde base and ninja the Frostwolf Relief Hut. When playing as Alliance, I don't really recall ever seeing the Horde cheat (other than the jump into Dun Baldar North tower, which isn't really in the same league as it didn't really require any tricks).

Honestly, my warlock is crazy good in BGs, at least compared to my paladin. The only BG that is giving me trouble is WSG, and that is mainly because the Alliance honor farming raids hang out there, and the constant firing of Horde BGs means that the Horde side is very unstable, with people leaving and joining constantly. As well, I probably should have taken the slowing curse, which would help a great deal with flag runners.

I'm almost scared to see what the 'lock can do once I actually get decent gear.

Warlock Hits Level 60

My warlock hit level 60 today. Now I have 2 60s. Probably a sign I play this game too much.

Now the question of what should I do now. I need to gear the warlock up, as I'm still wearing level 40 gear. However, since I'm Horde and a DPS class, it occurs to me that PvP may be a viable path to getting some gear. Horde queue times are insanely short, on the order of 5 minutes or less. And PvP gear is pretty good PvE gear for warlocks, as it emphasizes +Int, +Sta, and +Damage.

However, PvP may take longer than instance running. And instance running offers a wider variety of gear. I can also complete quests and get gold.

But instance runnning does not guarantee drops, whereas PvP does. I'm not sure how quickly I can rank up, but I should be able to get the blue PvP gear. I don't think I'll be able to get the epic sets, but the blue set, combined with the AB/AV/WSG faction rewards, should be good enough to set me up for endgame.

And of course, I'm guildless, which means that any instances I run will be strictly pickup groups. That seems like a recipe for frustration.

I guess I'm leaning toward PvP. Maybe I'll try for a week or so, and see how much progress I can make.

World PvP at Level 59

World PvP is a lot more fun at high levels. My warlock is 59 now, and I'm reasonably confident I can put up a fight now. I still don't bother attacking people, but at least I can defend myself against most would-be gankers.

I was questing in Andorhal in Western Plaguelands, and a level 60 dwarf priest attacked me for some reason. He started casting spells, I started DOTs and fearing. Eventually he gave up and decided to run. I chased him all the way across the map, up to the Hearthglen Lumber Mill, before finally killing him. Good times.

Talent Trees

I really like the Warlock talent trees. They are very well designed, and the sheer variety of viable warlock builds is amazing. This is not to say that they are perfect, as there are some mediocre talents here and there, but the top end warlock talents are really strong.

There are different points in a tree where I think you can judge how good a talent tree really is. If you stopped after spending 20, 21, 30, or 31 points in the tree, can you get a good build? So let's look at the warlock trees, and how they stack up:

---

Affliction

20 pts - Yes, Nightfall/X builds are common
21 pts - No, Siphon Life generally isn't worth stopping at
30 pts - Yes, Shadow Mastery is a great talent
31 pts - Yes, Dark Pact is a staple levelling talent, and gets a serious look from early raiders

Demonology

20 pts - Yes, Dark Pact/20 is considered the best levelling build
21 pts - Yes, I'm currently running an Shadow Mastery/Demonic Sacrifice build
30 pts - Yes, Master Demonologist is possibly the high end raiding build
31 pts - Yes, Soul Link builds are considered the best in PvP

Destruction

20 pts - Yes, contains a lot of staple raiding talents
21 pts - Yes, a lot of builds, including the classic SM/Ruin
30 pts - No, I haven't seen too many builds that stop at Emberstorm
31 pts - Yes, Conflag builds exist

---

So what we can see is that each tree contains at least 3 of the 4 possible stopping points, leading to a large number of combinations. This gives the warlock class a tremendous variety of builds.

Now lets look at the paladin class:

---

Holy

20 pts - Yes, Illumination is really good
21 pts - Yes, Divine Favor is also really good
30 pts - Yes, Holy Power is also a good stopping point for healing paladins
31 pts - Yes, shockadins love Holy Shock

Protection

20 pts - No, seriously, this seems like a terrible place to stop
21 pts - Yes/No, in many ways just taking 21 points seems forced by raiding into a sub-par spec, just to get that extra Blessing
*25 pts - Yes, Reckoning is a stopping point
30 pts - No, heh, can't even imagine ending with 1H-spec
31 pts - Yes, this talent is the entire point of the Protection tree

Retribution

20 pts - Yes, enough talents to complement a 31 point build
21 pts - No, Sanctity Aura isn't good enough on it's own
30 pts - Yes, Vengeance is quite good
31 pts - Yes, Repentance is a solid talent

---

So as we can see, Holy is in really good shape. All four stopping points are completely viable. Retribution is in decent shape as well, with 3 of 4 stopping points. Protection on the other hand has 2, and one is in an awkward position.

Add to this the fact that Spiritual Focus is considered a must-have for paladins, and the number of builds are restricted and are weighted heavily towards to the Holy Tree. Realistically, the trees need to be a bit more balanced, with Protection or Retribution combinations being more viable.

Realistically there are only four paladin builds. Holy/Retribution, Retribution/Holy, Reckoning, or Protection/Holy. And the first two are far more popular than the last two. There needs to be more, and also more differention between builds in the same tree.

In fact, I think that only having two popular builds is bad for the community. It sets up a gulf between Holy paladins and Retribution paladins. In contrast, warlocks--with their multitude of builds--seem to regard differences in build and playstyle as far less of a dividing factor than paladins do.

Edit: After thinking about it a bit more, I think I need to expand on things. It's not just that the warlock trees have better stopping points, it's that choosing one stopping point over another makes a significant difference in playstyle. For example, take a warlock 30/20/0 build. If you put the extra point in Affliction (31/20/0), you get a Dark Pact build. If you put the extra point in Demonology (30/21/0), you get the SM/DS build. These two builds play very differently to each other, and where you put that last point matters a great deal, even if the previous 50 points are identical!

In contrast, take the common Retribution/Holy build (20/0/30). Here you have a choice of of Divine Favor or Repentence. But the one you choose does not matter all that much. It does not really change how you play. The build is dominated by the previous 50 points.

To be honest, the only ending paladin talent that really makes a significant playstyle change is Holy Shield. A build without Holy Shield plays very differently than a build with Holy Shield.

Instance Questing

Coriel is now guildless. Since I'm not really sure what to do, I'm trying to finish quests. Some of these quests I've had for months. It's always been a sad feeling for me to open the quest log and see quests that are still incomplete.

Today, I tried advertising for a 5-man Lower Blackrock Spire run. I've never actually gone on one of these, as everyone seems to prefer raiding it. Surprisingly, I was able to get a good, balanced group fairly quickly.

So we went through LBRS, and did several quests. We didn't actually finish, as we wiped near the end. We'd been in the instance for a long while, and so we called it. It was a good group, and we used Need/Greed for loot, so we didn't have the traditional hassle that is loot in endgame raids. 99% of the time, Need/Greed covers everything, in my opinion. Making things more complicated is pointless. I was raid leader, and got to play with the targeting icons. Makes things so much easier, in many ways.

In any case, I cleared out about 4 quests from my log, which I'm actually really happy about. I'm a bit of a completionist, and I think I actually get more pleasure out of finishing a quest, then from getting a piece of new loot.

As well, 5-manning with a paladin is a ton of fun. You shift between damage and healing and judging and blessing non-stop. It's sort of a pity that Blizzard spends so much time on 40-man instances. I think that the 5-man zone is where World of Warcraft truely shines.

I also finished the Tablets of Mosh'aru questline (starts from Yek'ina the troll at Steamwheedle Port). Major style-points to Blizzard for that questline. It wove together many different elements into a polished whole. I really like the long questlines, and the stories that unfold.

It was a good day. I should do more questing.

Edit: Also, today I found and killed the Winterfall Runners with my warlock!

Winterfall Runners

I always run into them when travelling on the road in Winterfall.

I now have the quest to kill them.

I cannot find them anywhere.

Eternal Legend

Really good anime-style intro for Wow. My favorite parts are the tauren hunter in the desert and the fade into Ragnaros.

Debuff Priority System

Currently, you can only put a maximum of 16 debuffs (continuing negative effects) on any one target. This limit is often reached in raids, and so raid groups try and control the amount of debuffs put on a target. This is hard, because currently all debuffs are considered the same, and many common effects, such as Fireball, have a small attached debuff. If a 17th debuff lands, one of the existing debuffs--perhaps an important one--gets bumped off.

Blizzard is working on implementing a debuff priority system, so that minor debuffs do not replace greater ones. But this is obviously a large undertaking, so they are taking some time on it. So I thought I'd take a stab at what a debuff priority system should look like.

To my mind, there are four main categories of debuffs, listed below from most important to least important.

1. Controlled Enablers - These are debuffs which a player chooses to place on a target and grant some effect other than damage. Examples include Judgement of Wisdom or Curse of Elements.

2. Uncontrolled Enablers - These are effects which are randomly placed on a target, or are a side-effect of another spell, and grant an effect other than damage. Examples are effects like Vindication, the Thunderfury proc, or Shadow Weaving.

3. Controlled Damage - These are the classic damage-over-time spells, like Corruption.

4. Uncontrolled Damage - These are effects which add a bit of damage, but are more of a side-effect of another ability. The classic example is the Fireball DOT, or the warrior talent Deep Wounds.

Of course, there is a spectrum between controlled and uncontrolled damage. Some spells have both an initial component and a DOT component. Which category a spell should be in depends on how the total damage is divided.

I think that the four rough categories above are the basic elements of a debuff priority system. Controlled enablers are the most important, and should not be bumped off by spells from the lower categories. Uncontrolled enablers are the second-most important, and so on.

Controlled effects are more important than uncontrolled effects because the player deliberately chose to place them on the target. That choice should be respected. If a raid has too many controlled effects, and needs to reserve space for an uncontrolled effect, it is within their power to do so.

Enablers are more important than damage because the effects provided by the enabler are fairly unique. Damage can be compensated for from other sources. But an effect like Shadow Weaving is not easily replaced.

Combining these two rules gives the four categories above. At first glance, I think they seem pretty reasonable. There is a little fine-tuning within categories, and some ordering in the damage categories, but I think this debuff system would cover 99% of the cases in WoW.

But there are a lot of effects out there, and one important one may have slipped my mind. Is there any effect that would not fit nicely into this system?

Dead Guild Walking

I don't have much hope for my guild. Something like 90% of the raiding core has left. The remaining 10% are frantically recruiting. We're essentially going to be starting a new raiding guild, only under the old name.

I have no idea what I should do. I could stay, and help them rebuild. But I think that will take a long time. And there doesn't seem to be any inclination to correcting the structural flaws that, in my view, caused this rift. Rather, the leadership appears to be treating the problem as a social problem, as if it's merely a problem of sufficient numbers before we start raiding again. I am not sure that this is a prudent course of action. Of course, I'm not one of the guild leaders, so I may just be out of the loop.

I could leave and apply to another raiding guild. This guild allowed me to melee-heal, though, and I really don't want to healbot. As well, most other guilds on this server have an EST raid schedule, and I'm PST. In fact, the server is CST, but I think it got transfers from both EST and PST servers, which led to silliness.

A last option is to wait until character transfers open for this server, and go back to my old realm or another PST realm.

It would be easier if I felt loyalty to, or was good friends with, anyone in the guild. Then I could follow their lead and go and stay as they did. But I'm don't. I'm just a member who shows up and does my part. As well, I think neither side of the split was fully wrong or fully right. They both made mistakes, and both sides had their virtues. It would be easier if one side was absolutely wrong, because then I could just make a decision based on what they did.

Where did this guild go wrong? Looking back, I think it came down to a lack of order. Rules were not fully thought out and laid down properly. The leadership structure was unstable, basically split between three people. The split came when one officer was on an extended absence, and the other two officers had a serious disagreement.

The DKP system, while fair, was very complex, and burned out multiple DKP Officers. As well, the DKP system wasn't really auditable. You couldn't really keep track of your own DKP, and easily correct the officers when they made a mistake. Instead all you had was a vague sense that things weren't adding up. To be honest, I could never tell how much DKP I had, only in relative terms to the other paladins. Of course, this never mattered, as Lawbringer rarely dropped.

(The guild also had an annoying habit of /gkicking people as a joke, which I didn't like. Does being in the guild mean so little that being booted is a laughing matter?)

Of course, I'm a very lawful sort of person, and not all that good with people, so I may be seeing things through that lens. To me, rules create expectations, so one knows what is required of all parties. Otherwise, you have go by feeling and unspoken agreements. The trick, of course, is to have the exact amount of rules to create shared expections. Too many rules lead to inflexibility and stagnation. But this guild didn't really have enough rules. Or rather, enough rules spelling out the basics.

I kind of wish I had spoken up a bit earlier. Outlined my concerns. But you know how it is, when you're not part of the core that really runs things. You're hesitant to interfere with them, especially as people seem to be happy with how things are going, and things are actually going well. You don't really hear the different factions.

Oh well, regrets.

Guild Drama

My guild is going through some major drama at the moment. I'm not going to get into specifics, as I've seen some blogs descend into flamewars when someone posts something that another person feels is unfair.

However, we're up to Ragnaros, and it's this point that I think the greatest stress on a new raiding guild appears. I've seen several guilds run into trouble at this point. It really has nothing to do with Ragnaros, just that this is the point in time when the guild structure is really tested.

A guild has usually been in existence for a couple months, and for a lot of this time period guild members are proceeding in spite of any flaws in the guild structure. They are taking things on faith, that the officers will sort out flaws eventually. The officers, meanwhile, are mostly learning how to run a guild. Their solutions are jury-rigged, and fixes to mask the fundamental flaws in the initial structure. Sometimes a guildmaster is holding their guild together through pure force of personality.

Additionally, bad habits may have started in the guild, and the officers only realize that these habits are negatively affecting the guild far too late, after they have become entrenched. The problem is that most officers don't really know how to build a successful guild when they start. In a lot of ways, it's something that you can only learn by doing. And if you are an officer in a successful guild, why are you starting a new guild?

Eventually, though, faith runs out. And then a guild's core structure becomes tested. If it is good, the guild survives. If not, the guild either changes or dies.

Edit: To be clear, I don't think it's the Ragnaros fight that causes the problem. It's more that by the time you get to Ragnaros, you have MC on farm, loot is being to flow steadily.

It is at this point where deficiencies in structure begin to show up. People start wondering at percieved unfairness in loot distribution, problems with attendance, problems with rules, etc. At the start of MC, you're more willing to push through in spite of things like this, because it's new, and the high of downing bosses the first few times makes up for a lot.

Patch 1.11: Scourge Invasion

Patch 1.11 came out today. So far it looks pretty solid. I did the first couple Argent Dawn quests and got in some undead killing. Multiple paladins dropping Consecration and Holy Wrath is really fun. Of course, since it's the first day, the necropolises were beaten back really fast, disappointing some people who logged on later. Hopefully they will respawn fairly fast. I was fighting in the Burning Steppes and one of the Scourge one-shotted Volchan (60 elite giant that wanders around). That was highly amusing.

I really like the new mechanic where price is determined by reputation level. You have access to all the items, but it allows you to find your own sweet spot. It's much better than the old mechanic where you had to have reputation level X before you could get an item. I'm Revered with the Argent Dawn, so I'll probably stay at Revered, rather than attempt to get to Exalted.

As well, I like how items needed for the Scourge quests are sellable. You don't have to grind the items, you can buy it instead if you prefer. Or you can make money if none of the rewards interest you. I also like how items drop both inside and outside instances. Even the Craftsmanship quest can be auctioned. This way, if you get a Craftsmanship quest that you can't do, you can just AH it, or give it away. Basically, there's a lot of choice in how you can attain the rewards, and I like that.

There are also a lot of nice small touches in this patch. Spell icons on a non-main bar display a little red mark when out of range. Bind-on-pickup items look very different in the Rolling window. The new raid leader features are also nice. Also, repairing all the items in your inventory is a godsend, especially for paladins who switch between gear a lot. Another nice thing is that if you are inspecting someone else, the set pieces lists works properly.

As for the new epic dungeon Naxx, I'm not going to see it for a long time, so it doesn't really matter.

The one serious negative change is that the LookingForGroup channel is now global. I can't see how anyone thought this would be a good idea. It's sort of good for looking for high end instance groups, because you don't have to hang around in a main city, but it's absolutely terrible for every other situation possible. As well, since it's a chat channel, most of the chatter has nothing to do with Looking For Groups. I don't think I've ever left the LookingForGroup channel before today. The only hope is that people calm down, but still, if I'm in Plaguelands, I don't really care that people in Silithus are looking for groups to do Silithus quests.

But aside from that, patch 1.11 looks pretty good so far.

Edit: Also, I'd just like to say that the anti-griefing measure with the new Flight Paths in Un'goro Crater and Ratchet was very stylish. Having a goblin as the Flight Master for both factions was an elegant solution.

PvP or PvE

One of the first choices you are faced with in Warcraft is what server to roll on. My first character, a warrior, was on a PvP server--mainly because other friends were playing there--then Coriel was made on a PvE server, and recently I've been levelling a warlock on the PvP server.

I have a kind of love-hate relationship with world PvP. Before I started playing WoW, I used to be a pretty hard-core PvP type of guy, even to the point of advocating perma-death. After all, if there are no consequences, what is the point of playing in a persistent world? Now, however, I've moved far away from that position, and probably into the "carebear" side of things.

In my view, a PvP server offers much higher highs, but also much lower lows.

My single favorite memory of WoW is a world PvP memory. My warrior and a priest friend were around level 30 and adventuring in Durnholde Keep in Hillsbrad at night. A level 30 rogue snuck up behind me, sapped me, and attacked the priest. She killed the priest, and I came out of the sap and charged her. She took off, leaping from roof to roof on the buildings in the Keep. We had a crazy, moonlit chase, jumping across rooftops, which ended when I mistimed a jump and fell off a roof, allowing her to make her escape.

But I remember thinking to myself, as I was leaping, that this was awesome. It was a good fight, against a skilled opponent of the same level. The chase was like something from a movie. This was an encounter that simply could not happen on a PvE server.

But then you have to balance that experience against all the times a 60 rogue has decloaked inside a town and slaughtered me. And then proceeded to corpse camp my body. Higher highs, but lower lows.

A PvE server on the other hand, is much more restful. On a PvP server, you always have to have your guard up, watching for the enemy. It's a very tiring playstyle. Sometimes it is nice to be able to quest in peace. As well, I like concentrating on one task at a time, and PvP interrupts that, making it annoying. Finally, a fair fight on a PvP server is rare, and something to be treasured. Realistically, the vast majority of world PvP consists of a high level character ganking a low level character.

So if I had to chose between a PvE or PvP game, I'd probably choose to play the PvE game. But I'm glad that WoW offers the choice.

Ideal Qualities of a Raid Guild

Mynia, of Archetype X, wrote a really good post on the ideal qualities of a raiding guild. As the thread will eventually disappear into the void, I'm reproducing it here.

Here are the most important things for me:

1) The people should be polite and respectful. Cursing is fine as long as you aren't cursing AT someone. If you respect the people in your group and know they are doing their very best then there is no need for the stereotypical yelling etc. If they aren't doing their best rethink if they should be there.

2) No hotheads please. The worst thing about raiding is it sometimes is stressful. You are spending hours wiping repeatedly on bosses to learn the encounter. Everyone needs to be mature enough to step away when frustrated. With the right attitude and respect for others even wiping for hours can still be fun and challenging instead of miserable. A good sense of humor also helps here.

3) Punctual.

3a) Everyone should be on time and prepared. 39 other people are waiting on you and for many people game time is valueable. If we are starting at 6 show up before 6. Not at 6 and not after 6.

3b) The raid leader should begin the raid on time, even if everyone isn't there. Most instances you can clear trash etc without the entire 40 present.

3c) The raid leader should also end the raid on time. If the raid is supposed to end at 10 then end it then. People need sleep and if raids run too long it hurts everything. Tired people are not as sharp and reflexes get slower. Tired people also might be late to work/school etc making said person unhappy in RL and make them not want to raid with you.

4) Recruitment.

4a) The recruiting process should be a long one. If your group is close knit and spends hours and hours raiding you need to be sure that this person wants in for the right reasons, fits the personality of the guild, has the same goals in game, and their RL schedule works with the appointed raiding times. Applications, causal instancing, trial runs, and then probationary status are all good ways to confirm if someone is a good fit. If it takes 3 weeks then it takes three weeks.

4b) Part of this process too is determining if the person understands his class well. Find out how they are specced and ask questions. Let them defend their build. If they know there stuff and put thought into it then they should do well.

4c) Look at their gear. Is it a random hodge-podge? Their gear is an indication. A motivated individual will spend their time farming good gear with stats and abilities that complement their build.

4d) Asking questions about alternate characters and knowledge of other classes is also a good thing. Playing other classes broadens your knowledge of the roles and importance of the other people in the raid and how they all work together. This is important, as the raid needs to work smoothly together and understand everyone elses role.

5) Your Guild.

5a) Don't overwhelm your guild with tons of people and don't over fill your classes. There is nothing more frustrating than having to sit out of a raid because there are like 100 people and only 40 spaces available. If you spend the right amount of time recruiting you shouldn't have issues with low attendence etc.

5b) Guilds with "mixed" types of players are more difficult to manage and its hard to make everyone happy. Stick to one focus if you want to raid. Everyone or 90% of your guild should be raiders.

5c) The rules of the guild should be clearly written and posted somewhere for reference. This includes recruitement processes, guild goals, processes for displinary action, attendance requirements, loot distribution rules, raid times/schedules etc. Miscommunication and undocumented "rules" are often points of contention.

6) Strategies.

6a) Stratages are fine, but if you use them be careful. Nothing adds more chaos to a new encounter than changing the strategy that everyone has studied mid fight. Be sure that everyone knows what the strategy for your next boss fight is and that everyone has read it. Have a plan B strategy as well, if the first plan really isn't working for you.

6b) There is no law that says you must beat the encounter the way that everyone else does it. Find the way that it works for your group and do it that way.

Those are the highlights anyway for me.

WoW Videos

A bit old, but still funny:

World of Warcraft Community Manager Meeting

My favorite WoW music video. Still the best one I've ever seen. Perfect song for the story:

Here Without You

Soulstones and PvP

I have a warlock alt on a PvP server. One of the interesting/annoying things about warlocks is that if you are killed in world PvP, you will almost always have your corpse camped.

Why? Because they know you have a soulstone. They are just waiting for you to resurrect, and they'll kill you again. You can't even release and run back, because they'll still be waiting at your body. It becomes a waiting game between them and the release timer.

So what does a warlock do? Personally, I minimize WoW, open a web browser, and make a blog entry.

Is +Heal a Mistake?

A very common complaint among healing classes is that upgrading their gear only helps them in one area of the game: raiding. This is in contrast to the DPS classes, where raid gear is often just as good for PvP and farming as it is for raiding.

Perhaps stepping back a bit will provide some perspective. As a caster levels, you often find gear with very specific bonuses: +Fire, +Frost, +Shadow, +Arcane, +Heal. However, as you get closer and closer to 60, the more specific bonuses tend to get subsumed into +damage/heal. At 60, there are essentially only two categories of gear that makes your spells more powerful: +damage/heal, and +heal.

So the gear naturally gets split up into two categories. Damage casters go for +damage/heal, while healers go for +heal. The problem, though, is that +heal does not help you pvp or solo. So healers would also like some +damage/heal gear to make them more effective in non-raiding situations. This starts fights with the damage casters who see +damage/heal as their gear, and healers being in less "need" of it.

Now, imagine if +heal had also disappeared as endgame approached. Or that you wake up tomorrow and every +heal bonus on epic items has been replaced by the equivalent (lower) amount of +damage/heal. What would that change? Obviously, healing spells would be significantly reduced in power. But now healer gear, such as class sets, help in all situations. There is no longer a divide between damage casters and healers, there are only casters. All of whom get the same rights as each other.

Honestly, I think that this would be a much better situation than what we have now. But it would probably be a lot of work to try to retune all the boss encounters to work with a reduced amount of +damage/heal. As unfortunate as it sounds, the best hope is to wait for the Burning Crusade expansion. In BC, Blizzard should phase out +heal as people reach level 70, much like they phased out +fire or +shadow. Then at level 70, all casters will be using +damage/heal, which will allow them to be effective in all areas of the game.

Loot Systems and the Human Factor

A lot of times, when people look at loot systems, they are concerned mostly with the "fairness" of the system. While fairness is important, there are other factors which are also very important. These include factors such as ease of administration, transparency, error detection, and error correction.

In particular, I think ease of administration is greatly undervalued by the WoW raiding community. Many loot systems are complex, and are not trivial to administer. Often they require you to keep track of 40 people, with people coming and going, and loot being distributed. And it's not an easy task, especially for game, where the officers would like to have fun too.

If you have a perfectly fair system, but it is so complex that the loot officer makes mistakes with it, is it still a fair system?

Even the system I proposed in the previous post is complex. Look at all the elements the loot officer must consider. She must make sure that she sees all the bids, which can be very hard when people are spamming raid chat. She must correctly identify both the top bid and the second-highest bid. She must confirm that both these people actually have the DKP that they are trying to bid with. One mistake in any of these areas, and the fairness that the system is striving for is thrown out the window.

And that's just the spending DKP side. There's still distributing DKP to consider, which is its own headache.

Lately, I find myself more and more attracted to loot systems that are robust and easy to administer, even if they can potentially be less fair than other systems. As long as the system is reasonably fair, I would say that it is good enough.