The Fallacy of Gear

Dorgol of Boulderfist posts a comment in the previous thread:

Removing attunements will HELP the guilds currently working on SSC / TK by allowing them access to T6 loot.

No, in my opinion, it won't. This is because gear is relatively unimportant in raiding in TBC. The natural progression of raiding prepares the guild gear-wise for the boss they are working on. By the time a raid reaches a given boss, the raid will have enough gear to tackle the boss. The only guilds who are undergeared for the content they are working on are Nihilium and the other Top 50 guilds. That's because they go through content at such a fast pace.

The rest of us are appropriately geared--or even overgeared--for the content we are working on. (Note that I'm talking on a raid level. It's possible to have a few new people who are individually undergeared.)

There are four elements to defeating boss fights. From most important to least important, they are:

1. Strategy
2. Execution
3. Skill
4. Gear

Gear, though necessary, is the least important of these. In my experience, every time my guild has had issues on a fight in TBC, it has been because of one of the top 3 reasons, never gear.

Unfortunately, most lower level raiders do not believe this, or at best pay lip service to it. Tobold called Gruul a gear check. Gruul is in no way, shape, or form, a gear check. The DPS requirements to kill Gruul are easily in reach of a blue-geared character who knows how to play her class.

I have been through the learning process for Gruul with two different guilds (Valarin was drafted to fill out a raid). With Coriel, our first problem was being killed by Shatters, which we fixed by using the safe spots (Strategy error). The second problem involved too low DPS, and that was fixed by focusing on hit rating and proper rotations (Skill error). With Valarin, the main issue was that healers were letting the tank die at about Growth 12 (Execution error). Note that none of these errors had anything to do with gear.

But gear is the only variable that Blizzard controls, without nerfing the fight directly. Blizzard cannot improve our strategy, execution, or skill. So they add in more gear, hoping to compensate for the lack of the other three elements.

You need to spend time on boss fights, improving your strategy, execution and skill. That will serve your guild far better than attempting to gear up for the fight. In many ways, I think that skipping Kael/Vashj for early T6 content is a distraction that will end up hurting T5 guilds, just as skipping Magtheridon for Void Reaver did.

Hard fights teach the strategy, execution, and skill required for even harder fights. Skipping a hard fight in favor of an easy fight does your guild no favors.

If you don't believe me, consider this quote from Ciderhelm's Time Management for Raiding Guilds (a superb article which completely changed a lot of my views on raiding):

What players do not understand is how real a factor time is on the guild welfare as well as their own. Spending time gearing up for new content is almost never as well spent as time actually working on that content. This is especially true in the Burning Crusade, where stat differences and gear progression between Karazhan and Black Temple is relatively small; keep in mind that Nihilum cleared through Black Temple just 3 months after raiding began. Gear is good, but it is not key. [Emphasis mine]

Attunements and Reward Bosses

Patch 2.4 is removing the attunements to Mount Hyjal and the Black Temple. If you look at the WoW Dungeons and Raid forums, you'll see a lot of angst over this decision. First off, I fully support removing the attunements. In general, I think raid attunements beyond the first level are pointless and end up hurting the slower, less hardcore guilds.

However, the raiders complaining about the attunement removal do have a point, and it's worth considering their perspective. In my view, the issue is not really the attunements themselves, but rather the nature of the bosses right after the attunement.

Remember that for raiders, quality of reward needs to match the challenge overcome. However, it is generally accepted that the first few bosses of T6 content are "easy" and really are not worthy of the quality of loot that they drop. But this is acceptable because Kael and Vashj are so difficult. Early T6 bosses do not just reward you for beating the T6 boss, they also reward you for killing Kael/Vashj.

Essentially, the first few T6 bosses are "reward bosses". There are other reward bosses in the game: Void Reaver in Tempest Keep, the Chess event in Karazhan, the drakes in Blackwing Lair.

But with the attunement removal, you don't need to kill Kael/Vashj, so the challenge ceases to match the reward, and thus there's a lot of complaining. People are allowed to skip the hard content and access the easy bosses with over-generous rewards.

This happens on a lesser level with Void Reaver in Tempest Keep. Originally, you had to beat Magtheridon to get access to Void Reaver, and thus Void Reaver was essentially an extra reward for beating Magtheridon. But now you can go straight to Void Reaver, making his reward (T5 shoulders) greater than his challenge.

Another way to think about it is to look at the Chess event in Karazhan. There is no question that the Chess rewards seriously outstrip the challenge of that event. However, those epics are not just a reward for Chess, they're also a reward for getting that deep into Karazhan. If the Chess event came at the beginning of the instance, or after Attumen the Huntsman, it would make no sense. The reward would be disproportionate to the challenge on every level.

If the first boss in T6 content was the equivalent difficulty step of Razorgore in Blackwing Lair, there would be no complaints about removing attunements. Challenge would match reward, and everything would be fine with the world.

In general, I think that "reward bosses" are a bad idea. They encourage guilds to take shortcuts, to waste time and skip over content that would teach them necessary skills. I honestly believe that having guilds skip Magtheridon to go for Void Reaver has hurt them in the long run. Magtheridon teaches coordination skills that are very valuable in later T5 content.

Reward bosses are an especially bad idea to have near the beginning of an instance. If you have to have a reward boss, it is best to follow the Karazhan model, and drop it deep in the heart of the instance.

The Road To Damascus

January 10, 2008:

Retribution is currently terrible in every aspect of the game, even with the best gear currently available.

- Azreal, 70 Paladin, Death & Taxes, Korgath (Yes, that Death & Taxes)

---

11:04 AM, January 15, 2008:

Retribution Paladins do not have comparable DPS to Shadow Priests. I do not understand where this comes from, as I have never seen a WWS of a major fight with Paladins anywhere near respectable DPS margins.
...
Death and Taxes would use Retribution Paladins if they were good. There's no spite or hatred of the class preventing them from doing so. They simply don't work. If they did, they would be used; it's that simply. Top tier guilds have to take advantage of everything available to them. It would be hindering progression to do otherwise. Unfortunately, at this time, the spec is sub par.

- Azreal, 70 Paladin, Death & Taxes, Korgath

---

10:26 PM, January 15, 2008:

I just went Ret in 3s, and I took top 10 undefeated.
...
You seem to be really gun-ho on Paladins as a hybrid, and, for the first time in a long while I actually feel like one, rather than a healer / cleanser.

I never really considered Ret as a viable spec until today. I always compared Ret Paladins to other melee classes, and in that regard they fall short. No interrupt, no snare, no healing debuff etc. etc. I'm sure you've heard it all before. After a few games however, I can see how Paladins can still play support as Ret, and the things that make Holy so strong are still there.

- Azreal, 70 Paladin, Death & Taxes, Korgath

---

Febuary 5, 2008:

By the way, I started Raiding as Ret, it's completely viable.

- Azreal, 70 Paladin, Death & Taxes, Korgath

---

All teasing aside, this is great to see. Perhaps it will convince more guilds to give a Retribution paladin a trial. For better or worse, the high end guilds do hold a lot of sway in the raiding community, and D&T are among the very top.

I feel like posting a thread to the paladin forums. I'm pretty sure I could get a 10-page flame-war going.

Leotheras

I Hate Trash Respawns!

Have I mentioned lately that I hate trash respawns?

Tonight was our first night of serious Leotheras attempts. We took a look at Leo on Thursday, but our warlock tank hadn't finished collecting her Fire Resist set. We normally raid from 6:30 to 9:30. We try several attempts, learning how to start and stop DPS, healers learning how to kill their Inner Demon, etc. Our last attempt was gorgeous, except we got a little bit too excited when we hit the 15% mark. It was a heartbreaking 1% wipe.

We res up and get ready to try again, when trash respawns on top of us, wiping us again. It's now 9:00pm, and while we still have half an hour of raiding time, we have people who need to leave right at 9:30 and we have to clear all that trash. So we have to call it. I suppose it's possible that we could have cleared fast enough to get an attempt in, but there are 7 pulls before the boss, and the boss takes 10 minutes or so.

Calling the raid right after a 1% wipe, when you still have half an hour of raiding time, really, really sucks.

Trash respawns suck. Seriously, Blizzard, just remove them already. They're a pacing mechanic which doesn't affect the elite guilds, who are the ones who need to be paced. Trash respawns as a mechanic just hurt the rest of us who are moving at a slower pace or with real-life constraints on our time.

Fathom Lord Karathress

We killed Fathom Lord Karathress last night. Two new bosses in a week. Hopefully this is a sign that we are out of our slump.

I have mixed feelings about this kill. We killed him on the ninth try. On the first seven tries, I was Prot-specced and tanking the priest. On the eight try, I tanked the hunter, but the dps pulled him off me. So one of our warriors, who was DPS, and I teleported to Ironforge. He respecced Prot, I respecced Holy, and we came back in and killed Karathress.

It's probable that having that ninth healer was what put us over the edge, especially for keeping the raid alive (Karathress randomly Bolts a raid member for 50% of their max health), rather than having a warrior tank instead of me. But still, in some ways I kind of feel that I failed as a tank.

The respec was probably unnecessary, as I finished the fight with like 60% mana, so I probably could have healed it as Protection wearing Holy gear. However, it was frustrating after eight tries, so we made sure.

Comment Moderation Enabled

I've been having a problem with a gold seller spammer, so I've enabled comment moderation.

For Raph Koster, this is why Real-Money Trade is different than info sites and walkthroughs. The latter do not spam my website.

Al'lar!

Finally! That's hopefully a big monkey off our backs. We killed him 2 seconds or so after the Enrage timer. Best part was that I got the killing blow!


After that, we killed Void Reaver, and then went and saw Kael. That looks like a very fun fight. Phase 1 went by very fast, and Phase 2 was just total chaos. I think we're going to go back to SSC first though.

Still, 3/4 TK and 3/6 SSC is not too bad. Hopefully we can make better progress on the back half of Serpentshrine Cavern.

The Problem of Hacked Accounts

One of the major problems facing WoW today is the proliferation of keyloggers and hacked accounts. With the introduction of Guild Banks, hacked accounts are an even greater security risk. It's a very hard problem for Blizzard to solve, because the player's computer is already compromised by the time World of Warcraft is started up. I imagine that Blizzard's Warden already looks for known hacks and keyloggers, but they'll always be a step behind.

The best way for people to avoid having their account hacked is to be rigorous about their computer security. But sometimes people make mistakes. So what are some other ideas that Blizzard could implement that would help security?

Here are three ideas that I had that could help stem the tide of hacked accounts:

Remove hyperlinks from the WoW Forums

The WoW forums are one of the main vectors of keylogger transmission. It's compounded by the fact that your account and password for the forums are the same as the ones for your game. Most people will not take the extra effort to cut and paste a link rather than just clicking on it. So the lack of hyperlinks will probably cut the spread of a keylogger infection significantly.

The price here, of course, is that you wouldn't be able to link to other useful sites. I personally get a fair number of hits from the link in my signature on the forums. So you would damage the "eco-system" of WoW websites.

Make the user select a secret image upon logging in

A password is just text. You can detect someones password by detecting the keys pressed. There is a one-to-one correspondence between a key and a letter. Every time you type your password, it is the same. So we need something that is harder to detect than a straight key press.

One idea is to have the user select a secret image when setting the original password. Then when logging in, you type your password and choose an image from an array of possibilities. The location of the image changes each time. All you can really tell from outside the program is the exact co-ordinates of the mouse-click.

Since the image's location will change each time, the co-ordinates of the mouse-click will change each time, and it will become harder for a keylogger to capture the necessary information to access the account.

Safe Mode

Have World of Warcraft create a "signature" of the physical machine used to create the account for the first time. This signature would be derived from the physical characterstics of the machine including things like the processor, amount of ram, hardware installed, etc.

When a computer connects to the account, its signature is compared to the signature on file. If the signature is different, the account starts up in "Safe Mode". In Safe Mode you wouldn't be allowed to do stuff like sell or disenchant soulbound blues and epics, spend more than 100 gold, or withdraw items from the bank. Guild officers would not be able to invite, promote, or remove people from the guild.

The idea here is that WoW is basically saying, "Hey, this isn't your normal computer, so I'm going to be very suspicious." Of course, people will occasionally play from different computers, or a laptop, so you can't prevent them from logging in entirely.

As well, you would need some mechanism for changing the computer signature on file for when people get new computers or upgrade. In many ways, this idea is similar to Microsoft's Windows Genuine Advantage, and it will have the same issues that system has.

Anyways, those are three ideas I had which could help stem the problem of hacked accounts. I don't think that there is anything (short of banning asymmetric trades, which I think is overkill), that Blizzard could do to eliminate the problem entirely. The point of weakness that allows for the installation of keyloggers and computer hacks lies outside Blizzard's control.

Short Notes

Castsequence Macros broken in 2.3.2

If you use castsequence macros (for example, to weave HL5 in-between FoLs), be aware that if your target is out of range or the cast is interrupted, the macro will "jam" and will stop working. It might start working again after a bit, but it's very annoying.

World of Warcraft Sweepstakes

The book publisher Simon & Schuster is holding a World of Warcraft Sweepstakes. Lots of swag including novels, CCG packs, and other WoW material. The contest is open to residents of Canada and the US (sans Quebec, as normal).

Loot Update

I picked up [Crystalforge Shoulderguards] last week. I went with the Protection shoulders, as I have the healing shoulders from Tidewalker. I also got [Chestguard of Hidden Purpose] from Zul'Aman. I haven't been in ZA very much, and last run was the first time I've killed Bear, Eagle and Lynx bosses.

I also picked up some mail healing gloves from Solarian. It was a pretty good week for loot.

Hybrid Theory: Shadow Priests

Shadow Priests are an example of a successful class in WoW. They combine good DPS with solid utility and are in high demand in raids. They heal and regen their group while they DPS. They are often regarded enviously by paladins who wish to be fluid hybrids, to heal and melee in the same fight. So what makes the shadow priests successful? In my view, there are three significant reasons: minimal time costs; one scaling mechanism; and the fact that the sum of their parts is greater than 100%.

Minimal Time Costs

A Shadow Priest's utility comes from the spells Vampiric Embrace (which provides health to the party) and Vampiric Touch (which provides mana to the party). A Shadow Priest spends 1.5s every minute casting VE, and 6s casting VT. The rest of the time is spent dealing damage. Further, VT is actually good DPS (eyeballing it, it looks better than Mindflay). So a Shadow Priest actually spends 97.5% of her time doing damage, all the while contributing health and mana regen to her party. This means that the Shadow Priest can actually come extremely close to her maximum possibly DPS (disregarding threat).

In contrast, if a paladin casts a heal, she reduces her DPS by the equivalent amount. If she casts only a single Flash of Light every 10s, her DPS drops to 85% of her maximum. If she swings her weapon, she reduces her healing throughput, just though time costs.

One Scaling Factor

A Shadow Priest only has one scaling factor for both her damage and utility: spell power. VE and VT scale with spell power. That means that a Shadow Priest only has to collect one stat in order to maximize both her utility and her damage.

In contrast, each side of the paladin's nature has a different scaling factor. DPS scales with Attack Power, threat scales with Spell Power, while healing scales with Healing Power. All scale with Spell Power, but damage and healing does so poorly. Having multiple different scaling factors encourages the paladin to choose one and specialize, ignoring the other.

Sum of the Parts is Greater than 100%

The deep truth of hybrids is that to be less than 100% of any pure dimension (tank, healing, dps) is a huge drawback. The other side of a hybrid must contribute more to make up for that fact. A hybrid that is 50% of a dps and 50% of a healer is simply not good enough. In my opinion, the sum of the two sides must be closer to 150% to even be considered for a raid.

However, this looks unbalanced, but it really isn't. The only two successful fluid hybrids in WoW are Shadow Priests and Feral Druids. I would class Shadow Priests as 90% dps and 60% utility, and Feral Druids as 90% tanks and 60% DPS.

The hard part here, though, is keeping the class from becoming 150% in one aspect. For example, if the paladin was a 75%/75% dps/healer hybrid, what would stop a paladin from not dpsing, and becoming a pure 150% healer?

Conclusion

Minimal time costs, one scaling factor, and the fact that the sum of the parts is greater than 100% are the reasons that the Shadow Priest is a viable hybrid. You can do the same exercise for Feral Druids, and see that all three reasons apply to them as well.

In my opinion, time costs are most important barrier to hybrid viability. You always have the choice between casting a heal or swinging your weapon. If one option is always a better choice for a particular spec, you don't have a fluid hybrid.

If Paladins are ever to become a fluid hybrid, I think that they will need to be changed such that they follow these three rules.

A PvP Milestone

Outlands as a Protection Paladin

Grogin of Area 52 wanted to know how viable levelling from 60-70 in Outlands as a Protection Paladin is.

Short answer, it's very viable. I levelled from 60 to 70 as Protection. Of course, I level by questing, and very rarely grind for experience, so I don't know any specific spots which are good for AoE grinding while levelling. Once you hit 70, though, you have to go to the Demon Hunter training grounds at the Temple of Karabor in Shadowmoon Valley. It is the Protection Paladin version of Paradise.

However, there are a couple of things to watch out for. There's not a lot of true Protection gear until you hit 70 and Netherstorm. Most paladin quest rewards tend to be str/int/sta/spell damage. Luckily, most quests don't make you choose between warrior tanking gear and paladin gear. So you can use warrior tank quest rewards for your tanking set, and paladin gear for general levelling if you prefer.

Personally, I recommend levelling as Protection/Holy rather than the standard tank build of Protection/Retribution. I find Spiritual Focus invaluable while soloing, especially when undergeared. Also, take Reckoning. It's very good while levelling, especially for regenning mana with Seal/Judgement of Wisdom, though most tanks spec out of it when they hit raid content.

The only other thing about levelling as Prot that I can remember is that you get Seal of Blood/Vengeance at level 64. Try them out and see if you like them better than Righteousness. I tried Vengeance for a bit, decided it was silly, and went back to Righteousness. Vengeance can give more damage, but half the time it falls off. Righteousness is always reliable.

If you're bored, you can "twist" Vengeance and Righteousness. Cast SoV, after 10s Judge it, and then switch to SoR. You'll get SoR damage while the Vengeance debuff continues to tick. It's decent extra damage for the last part of the fight.

Anyways, as long as you save the warrior tank quest rewards, you should also be able to tank any of the instances as you level.

Hope that helps!

Upcoming Articles

In lieu of New Year's Resolutions, I'm posting a list of topics that I want to write about. I find that I have a bad habit of coming up with a topic, thinking a lot about it, but never actually writing about it. I want to write a bit more, so this post is to encourage me to actually write up the articles I'm thinking of.

Upcoming topics:

1. Revisiting Warsong Gulch
2. Selling Raid Spots (for Gwaendar ;) )
3. Should Diminishing Returns from Honour Kills be Removed?
4. Gear, Raiding, and Difficulty
5. An Entry-Level Raid?
6. Guild Application Questions
7. Why Does the Shadow Priest Work as a Hybrid?
8. My Super-Secret Crazy Idea

Hopefully these upcoming posts will be decent. As always, if you want to hear my thoughts on anything specific, feel free to email me or leave a comment.

Also, the Super-Secret Crazy Idea requires graphs, so if anyone knows a Windows program that allows you to quickly sketch good mathematical graphs, please post. Sadly there's a Mac program, Graph Sketcher, which is exactly what I am looking for, but there is no Windows version. I don't really want to resort to MS Paint or Excel.

Second Year Mark

It's been exactly two years since I started writing this blog.

I've been looking back at the posts from a year ago, and I find that I am much less happy than I was back then. Specialization came and, rather than freeing other paladins to join me on the front lines, it chained me, and bound me to join the vast majority of my brethren (90%!) spamming heals from the back.

Do I really like playing my paladin, or do I just love the paladin archetype?

The paladin archetype, that of a holy warrior, is really, really strong. Even a movie like Tales of the Past--a WoW movie steeped in over three years of WoW lore--depicts a paladin as a divine fighter.

One of my very first posts was about how important the mental image of your character is. Watching that movie just hit home how much I want my paladin to be that style of paladin. For a brief moment in Blackwing Lair, that paladin was my paladin. And it also hit home that being a hybrid will never happen again.

WoW Paladins are healbots. The design of Flash of Light, coupled with the extreme specialization now in the game, ensures that, now and forever. A low power, high efficiency heal that resets the swing timer has doomed us to a life of spamming heals from the back.

I could pretend to be a tank, or DPS, but that puts stress on the already thin healing corps, and that just feels selfish to me. We're already struggling to field a full set of healers. Our Shadow priest had to respec back to Holy, and I think we're down to one Resto druid. And quite frankly, I don't want to be a tank, or to be DPS. I want to be a paladin once again.

Do I like my paladin? Or do I just like the idea of a paladin, a hybrid melee character who healed and blessed her group while dealing retribution with a two-handed hammer? Coriel was that paladin once, will she ever be again?

Tales of the Past

Tales of the Past, Part III is an awesome WoW movie. It's a full feature-length (1.5 hours) movie.

Be warned that it is 2.4 gigs in size, but it's worth the download. I recommend the torrent option, and that was pretty fast for me. I didn't see parts I or II, but they aren't necessary to enjoy this.

Martin Falch has made a work of art. It must have taken him an incredible amount of time and effort, but the results are amazing.

The final battle in particular is spectacular, and even modern filmmakers could probably learn something about how to make something truly feel epic.

Hit Rating and Dual-Wielders

One very common question is how much hit rating does a dual-wielding character need? My Hit Caps Guide only lists the actual cap, and doesn't address whether going for the cap is a good idea or not.

Basically, after you reach 9%, hit rating only affects a portion of your damage. However, hit rating is cheaper than crit rating. So how does that balance out?

It depends on how much white damage you do. As a general rule, with the current costs of hit and crit rating, you need about 65-70% of your damage to come from auto-attacks for hit rating to outweigh crit rating. However, you also have to take into account special abilities that may come from white hits.

Baseline, most melee classes get about 50% of their damage from auto-attack (white damage) and 50% from specials (yellow damage). Each class does have unique aspects though. Please note that you must get at least 9% hit so your specials never miss. This really concerns the range from 9% to 28%.

Rogue

The most powerful finisher is Slice and Dice, which speeds up auto-attacks by 30% (equivalent to increasing auto-attack damage by 30%). This pushes rogues into the range where hit rating becomes worthwhile. Additionally, Combat rogues get extra energy from off-hand strikes, through Combat Potency, making it additionally important that their white attacks hit.

Thus the accepted wisdom for rogues, especially combat rogues, is to try and reach the hit rating cap, choosing equal values of hit over crit.

Warrior

Fury warriors often use Heroic Strike, which converts your next white attack into a special, using the miss rate for specials. This actually pushes the proportion of white damage down, and makes crit a better option.

Auto-attacks do provide rage, so hit rating shouldn't be completely scoffed at. Don't go out of the way to pick up hit rating, but most warriors tend to have a bit more than the minimum.

Shaman

Enhancement Shamans again have about 50% of their damage coming from auto-attack. However, unlike warriors and rogues, shamans don't get rage or energy from their white attacks. The only other consideration is Windfury, which procs off auto-attacks. Windfury has an internal cooldown, however, so hitting more often does not really increase the number of procs.

So shamans are generally safe in ignoring extra hit rating and going for crit rating and attack power.

Hunter

No. Just No.

Credit Where Credit is Due

I spend a lot of virtual ink discussing what I think are flaws in Blizzard's game, mostly because flaws are more interesting to look at. It's not really fair though, as there are a lot of things that Blizzard has done well, and has improved significantly.

In particular, the current endgame is leaps and bounds ahead of the endgame that existed when I first started writing, about two years ago. Back then, level 60 dungeons such as Stratholme and Scholomance were a joke, as everyone "raided" them with 10 people, twice as much firepower as was necessary. They provided very little challenge, and the quality of play was abysmal. Raiding was Molten Core, where half the DPS was AFK watching TV. It required 30-40 level 60s, which was next to impossible for the small guilds to build towards.

Today on Skywall, both the heroic and normal dailies pointed at Botanica. As 40g and 7 Badges for one run is a great opportunity, I was trying to get into a pickup group (it was a bit early, and few guildies were online). I joined a group of 4 people who were all from the same guild, Hysteria, a small guild who's name I did not recognize.

That run turned out to be one of the best pickup groups I've been in. The players in this guild had a high level of skill. The tank kept everything on him, the mage sheeped and counterspelled efficiently, the warlock banished and switched demons on the fly, the rogue pulled off some tricky saps, and everyone did solid DPS. It was the type of run that I love, where everyone is playing with focus and skill. It was such an unexpected pleasure to find this run with a pickup group.

It turned out that they were a small casual guild working on Karazhan. They only raided one or two nights a week, and were up to Shade. They were planning their first expedition to Zul'Aman sometime in the new year.

It really struck me that this guild could not have existed in the old WoW endgame. The 60 dungeons would not have provided the challenge they needed to hone their skills to their current degree. The skill level is basically what I would have expected from a Blackwing Lair guild, and yet this is an entry-level TBC guild. They also wouldn't have had the numbers to field raids in the old game, and in the end they probably would have broken up and died.

And yet, in the current game, they are not only surviving, they are doing well. They have challenges that they are working on, challenges which are worthy of their skill, and have further challenges to look forward to. They don't have to raid four nights a week if they don't want to, nor do they need to marshal 25-40 people in order to progress.

I like that people, especially non-hardcore raiders, are playing with greater skill than before. To me, that's a sign that the game is healthy. I like that guilds such as this have new challenges available to them, and can continue to progress at their own pace.

In some ways, I guess I see my first guild in these guys. But where we found only barren rock after hitting the level cap, and were essentially forced to scatter to the large raiding guilds if we wanted new challenges and progression, this guild has found fertile soil and is thriving.

And this is mostly due to the efforts of Blizzard. They have made the endgame more challenging, with better and smoother increases in available challenges, which has encouraged skilled play, and they have made the endgame more accessible to smaller guilds. All in all, the WoW endgame of today is far superior to the WoW endgame of two years ago.

Last look at PvP vs PvE Rewards

Alright, this will be my last post on this subject for a while. Most of this comes in response to a reader's email.

The heart of my issues with PvP rewards is probably more philosophical than anything else. I don't like rewarding failure. I like rewarding success more. And to me the PvP loot system is very close to excessively rewarding failure. It does a good job at rewarding success, it just doesn't do a good job of NOT rewarding failure, if that makes any sense.

Further, if there's one thing I hate in this game, it is people who do not even try. And while you occasionally see people like that in PvE, it seems like PvP attracts more of them. For example, people who go AFK in battlegrounds, or teams that deliberately lose in Arena. And to me, it seems like this behaviour is caused by the way the reward system is structured. In contrast, in PvE, it is fairly hard to get rewards if you don't try, especially on a guild or team level.

Basically my ideal system of rewards would go like:

1. Person who does not try - gets nothing
2. Person who tries but is not very successful - gets something decent
3. Person who tries and is successful - gets something good

And to me, quality of reward matters. S3/T6 should be reserved for Category 3. Category 2 maybe gets Badge Reward/S2/S1/T4/T5 depending on how unsuccessful you are. Category 1 should die in a fire.

From the raider point of view, this argument is not about how Category 3 should be treated, it's about how Categories 2 and 1 should be treated. PvE gives them T4/T5 or nothing, respectively. PvP gives them lesser amounts of S3. I just think that is an excessive reward, especially for Category 1.

Please note that I generally consider myself to be in Category 2 in both PvE and in PvP (when I do participate).

To be honest, I probably shouldn't have titled the original post "Welfare Epics". I meant it as more of a tongue-in-cheek reference to Tigole's Blizzcon presentation.

The Arena Rating Reset

One thing that's always puzzled me about Blizzard's Arena system is that Blizzard resets ratings at the beginning of every season. Most other rating systems go out of their way to avoid situations like that.

The concept of ratings is that a person has a "true skill level". Ideally, her rating accurately reflects her true skill. And as her true skill increases and decreases, so does the rating. The problem is that when a person first enters the rating system, her rating does not match her true skill, but through winning and losing many games, the two will eventually match.

As such, most rating systems treat that entry point a little differently. In chess, people are often given a "provisional" rating, which lasts for about 25 matches or so. While they have a provisional rating, rating changes are calculated differently. Microsoft's Trueskill system actually has a second value paired with the rating, which is a measure of how "confident" the system is that the rating actually reflects a player's true skill. As you play more and more games, the system becomes more and more confident that your rating is correct.

Blizzard's rating system is very unusual in that it returns everyone to that low confidence state every so often. The usual reason given is that it gives everyone a fresh start. But in reality, your true skill level doesn't change that much that quickly. All the reset does is cause people to end up playing matches against teams of wildly differing skill level. A team that should be rated 2000 is now rated 1500, and is going to steamroll most teams it will encounter at the start of the season. This happens until the ratings shake out and people are restored to their true skill levels.

I think there's a different reason Blizzard resets the ratings. The Arena rating system is meant to be a zero-sum system. If my team gains 20 points, your team loses 20 points. However, in its current incarnation, the Arena system is vulnerable to rating inflation. What happens is a low-ranked team (say 1200 rating), gets tired, dissolves, and reforms as a new team. The new team enters at 1500 points, meaning that 300 points are added into the system. They will probably eventually fall back to 1200 and the process may begin anew.

By resetting the ratings, Blizzard clears out the excess ratings added into the system and restores the system to its zero-sum balance. Unfortunately it has the side effect of ensuring that ratings don't match the true skill of the teams for a few weeks after the reset. And it causes heavy load and long queue times on the servers as the higher ranked teams seek to restore their correct rating.

It's sort of amusing, but chess actually has the same problem, only in the opposite direction. I have a friend who is heavily involved with the Chess Federation of Canada. According to him, one of the main problems with their rating system is the existence of chess schools or camps for youth. What happens is that during the summer, the kids play constantly against each other and end up being pretty good because of the practice and training (not Grandmaster-good, but better than average).

Then at the end of the summer, they will play in a couple of rated tournaments. Because their entry rating is lower than their true skill level, they end up taking a lot of rating points from the other people. However, after that summer they stop playing tournament-level chess, taking those points with them, and the chess rating system suffers from point deflation.

To combat this, the equations used by the CFC that govern rating changes have a very small bonus term, which increases the amount of rating in the system, hopefully restoring the balance and keeping the amount of rating in the system constant.

It's an amusing parallel to the situation faced because Blizzard did team-based ratings and allowed teams to be dissolved and rebuilt. A personal rating system, such as is being introduced with Season 3, tends to be more robust because it cannot be reset easily, and the system is not quite as vulnerable to inflation.