The Major Fault Line in the MMO Audience

I'm going to respond to the comments on the Blueprint for Endgame, but I find it requires a little set up first.

There are many divisions among the MMO audience. Casuals versus Hardcore. PvP versus PvE. Gevlon's Morons & Slackers versus all the non-M&S. Roleplayers versus Everyone Else.

But there is one conflict that I think is more important than the rest. The conflict that essentially shapes all the contortions that endgame goes through. This is the conflict between Transient and Extended content.

To recap:

Transient group content is content that is expected to be completed in a single session of play. The group is formed, the group completes the content, and then the group is disbanded. In WoW, group quests, battlegrounds, and 5-man dungeons are transient group content.

Extended group content is content that is expected to be completed over several sessions of play, and where the group is composed (more or less) of the same individuals throughout. In WoW, raids and PvP arena are extended group content.

The MMO community is divided into two factions. Those who are willing to do Extended content, and those who are not willing, who only want to do Transient content.

Please note that this is not about skill, or anything like that. It's about time, and the willingness to follow a schedule, or accept a constraint on your free time. It's about being willing to undertake obligations to other players. Many people simply do not want to be obligated to other players, or for other players to have a duty towards them.

It's also not about the amount of time played. There are Extended players who play once a week for two hours. There are Transient people who play for 40 hours a week. They play so much that it is really hard for Extended players to understand why they will not commit to a schedule. The stumbling block is the existence of the schedule at all, not about the total amount of time played.

In the past, it was assumed that people would move from Transient into Extended. That it was a natural graduation. You joined a guild, and started working with that guild on Extended activities. But I think this was a bad assumption. Rather, the Transient people are simply different from Extended people. You can't change them into Extended people. You can go the other way, however, in that Extended people will do Transient content.

Traditionally in MMOs, Extended players have made the core of the playerbase. The raiders, the high-end PvP players, the stable guilds.  But I think the Transient players actually outnumber the Extended players significantly. And the Transient players want the game shaped to meet their needs, not the needs of the Extended players.

As an example of the design choices imposed by this conflict, consider the Guild Perks system that was introduced in Cataclysm. I don't think this system really made any difference to the player base, and to be honest, was probably a waste of developer time. The Extended players already were in guilds. The Transient players simply joined uber-large guilds to get the perks. But it did not change the nature of the players.

The single biggest problem with the endgame of WoW is that it persists in believing that if the incentives are just right, Transient players will transform into Extended players, and everything will work out properly. But this transformation never occurs. The Transient players are unhappy that their needs go unmet or that they are thrown one or two sops while the Extended players get all the goodies. The Extended players are unhappy because those sops for the Transient player often end up distorting the Extended endgame.

A Blueprint for Endgame: Cataclysm Edition

I've been debating how to structure this post. Should I discuss what I see wrong with the current endgame, and then look at solutions? Or should I present a plan, and explain what I think is wrong with the current endgame through the lens of that plan? I've chosen the latter, but I'm not sure it's the best choice.

I think the pendulum of the raiding endgame has swung a little too far. It needs to be brought back towards Vanilla/TBC. Not all the way, because that would be just crazy. But I think some of the desires and ideals of this current endgame have just not worked out the way they were intended, and should be jettisoned.

So this is my plan of what, as of this point in time, I think the ideal endgame for WoW should look like.

1. One Raid Size: 15-man

This is going to tie in with Point 2, but with two raid sizes there are just too many variations. 25-mans are dying because 10-mans are so much easier to organize. There are conflicts over abilities like Chain Heal. You cannot guarantee a full complement of buffs/debuffs in 10-man. You can't even assume that there will be one of each class.

15-man is a good compromise. It's only a bit larger than 10-man, keeping down administrative complexity, but enough that a raid will carry a good cross-section of classes. You can tune it for 2-3 tanks, 9-10 DPS, and 3 healers. That makes it match 5-mans. We can have three tank fights once again.

2. Three Difficulties: Easy, Normal, Heroic

I think it's pretty clear that raiding needs an Easy difficulty setting. Right now, Blizzard fudges it with buffs and nerfs to old content.  Heroic is necessary to challenge the Royalty and Aristocracy guilds, while Normal is needed for Gentry and Bourgeois guilds.

But when you go lower than that, or when you try to turn raiding into transient content via pickup groups or an automatically generated group with a Raid Finder, you're going to need an Easy setting. I don't really want to see Normal mode gutted like BWL and BoT were.

To go back to point 1, right now there are 4 permutations of raids: 10-Normal, 10-Heroic, 25-Normal, 25-Heroic. If we introduce a third difficulty setting, that would make 6 permutations. One raid size brings the number of permutations down to 3, making balancing even easier for the devs than the current situation.

3. No Valor Points/Badges

If you want raid loot, you kill bosses. No boss kills, no loot.

All these point systems just warp the game and force people to do content that they aren't really interested in. It even spoils the lower levels of content with bored people just in it for the points.

If you want to have Justice points, and have the previous tier of gear available on a vendor, that's different. But the current tier of loot drops from bosses, as it did in Vanilla.

4. Only One Item Level of Gear Per Tier

Honestly, what has multiple item levels per tier really gained us? Pretty much just massive stat inflation across the board, and non-iconic tier sets. Royalty and Aristocracy guilds enter the next tier in higher level gear anyways. Their gear only increases by one jump, just like everyone else. If everyone started at the same item level, it really would not make much of a difference.

The major counter-argument to this is that heroics need the higher item level to attract people. I don't think this is the case. For the majority of guilds at this level, it's really about the challenge, bragging rights, and recruiting.

If this had been the case in Cataclysm, we would have seen:

BoT/BWL = i359
Firelands = i372
Deathwing = i395

I think that's a much more sensible scheme than watching Deathwing loot top out at some crazy number.

5. Quantity of Loot Varies With Difficulty

Easy drops 1 piece per boss. Normal drops 3 pieces. Heroic drops 5 pieces. Additionally, Tier Tokens don't drop in Easy, only Normal and Heroic (1 token in Normal, 2 in Heroic).

That gives lots of incentive to move into Normals and Heroics. You don't want people to wallow in Easy. If 1 piece is absolutely too low, maybe 2/4/6 would be better.

Right now, gear is a bit too easy to come by. Pushing the scarcity pendulum back towards Vanilla would make upgrading more interesting.

6. Flexible Lock-Outs

I like the current Normal mode lockout system. I think the extra restrictions on Heroic mode are proving to be unnecessary. As long as each character only kills each boss once per week, I think it's fine to allow people the maximum flexibility when making groups.

Don't bother with gating Heroic/Normal with Normal/Easy mode, let the guilds go nuts on their chosen difficulty from the start.

7. Separate Achievements More

Right now, I think Achievements are too focused on Heroic mode. What I would do is have the mount achievement be more aimed at Normal mode. The mount achievement would require beating the instance on Normal, and doing all the "special achievements" for each fight on Normal or Heroic.

At the moment there's a bit of a conflict between Heroic mode and the special achievements. You can really only do one or the other, and the fact that Heroic mode offers better loot often makes the special achievements a one-night thing.  I think that making the mount achievement doable without Heroics would make it easier for Gentry and lower Aristocracy to get. It would separate out the rewards more, rather than clustering them at the very high end.

The title achievement would require doing the instance on Heroic mode. If the final boss is going to be a "super-fight", you might want two titles or rewards, one for killing 6/7 Heroic, and one for killing the end boss on Heroic.

Edit: This didn't come across quite the way I intended. In the current endgame, there are essentially two Meta-Achievements with rewards for a raid tier. Both Metas require heroic modes. I'm advocating having one Meta for Normal modes (the one with the "special achievements") and one Meta for Heroic modes (basically beat the instance on Heroic). Each Meta has a reward, but what the reward is doesn't really matter. If you want to reserve the mount for the Heroic Meta, and have the title for the Normal Meta, that's fine.

But the basic idea is to have one Meta-Achievement for Normal mode, and one Meta-Achievement for Heroic mode.

Conclusions

So those are my suggestions for endgame. A lot of  the current innovations in raid administration (size, lockout, difficulty) are kept, but gear moves back to a more old-school Vanilla style model.

Catering to New Players

Jinxed Thoughts talked about Blizzard's desire to smooth the first 30 minutes of gameplay for more casual players. She espouses a view that I think is pretty common among experienced WoW players:

People around me basically go into two different categories - the ones that know games because they enjoy them and the ones that don't know games because they don't enjoy them. The latter ones probably wouldn't enjoy WoW no matter how easy it was at the start because the whole idea of running around and killing monsters on a computer simply does not appeal to them. ... She had no idea on how to handle the spells, although there were only two or so, or what to do with quests. I find it really hard to see how you could make the game so easy so that she would be interested in playing. Am I evil to say that people who can't get through the first 30 minutes of a game that is as simple as WoW should be trying something else instead? Can WoW ever be the learning grounds for people who've never touched a game before?

While I sympathize a bit with this view, here's the thing: it is not trivial to start playing WoW, even before you get in game. You have to buy a copy or download a multi-gig client. You have to set up and create a Battle.net account.

People who don't want to play WoW don't do those things. If someone goes to the time and effort of installing WoW, then they are interested in playing WoW. Maybe because they know people who play, and want to see if they can join them. Maybe because they want to try an MMO. Who knows?

But the point is that just by getting to character creation, they have demonstrated a significant interest in playing the game. They want to like the game, if only to justify the time and money spent setting it up.

This situation is not like various television networks dumbing down sci-fi shows, in order to appeal to people who never watch sci-fi. I think that's what we're scared of, that our game will be weakened in a vain attempt to appeal to people who have no interest in sci-fi.

But I think the people who Blizzard is targeting are not those uninterested people. They're new people, most likely new to computer gaming, that is true. But they have demonstrated interest. The simple act of getting, installing, and setting up an account for WoW shows that.

Some game has to be the first real game for new gamers. I think WoW is the best for that because of its network effects. It's totally understandable that a new gamer would want to play the game her friends are playing. If encouraging that new player takes more hand-holding at the lower levels, then I am all for it.

Recruitment

My guild, Ad Infinitum, is looking for DPS. (Though we could always use another healer or tank.) We're a 25-man guild. We raid Wed/Sun/Mon from 7-11pm PST. We're currently 1/7 Heroic Firelands.

We would really like a couple more regular raiders. Apparently, you can 23-man Heroic Shannox. Heroic Ryolith, not so much.

Risk Legacy

Hasbro is going to be publishing a very interesting variant on the board game Risk. It's called Risk Legacy.

One of the fundamental axioms of board games is that each game starts fresh, resetting back to an original starting point. Chess goes back to the original layout, as does checkers, Axis & Allies, Scrabble, Monopoly and pretty much every other board game out there.

Risk Legacy does not.

Instead, playing Risk Legacy causes the game board to permanently change so that the next game will be slightly different than the last game. The board itself evolves as games are played.

The designers accomplish this by using stickers that you attach to the map. Each sticker added essentially changes the map for all games from that point on.

Here's a very interesting thread with information from Rob Daviau, one of the designers of Risk Legacy. He outlines a lot of the reasons behind and aims of this attempt:

This led us to wondering why games always have to reset. Why are they a medium that always goes back to start? Movies and books are static forms of entertainment meant to be viewed but not altered. Games, by nature, demand that the user create the experience. We wanted to push that boundary to have lasting effects. Now you really create the experience. This game is not art to be hung on a wall but a leather jacket to be worn around until it has its own unique story.

I'm not sure how I feel about this board game. It is definitely an example of truly bold and ground-breaking game design. Will it be a success? Will it be a failure? I have no idea, but it is a glorious experiment.

Instanced Starting Content

Should starting content be instanced?

Most games say no, though that leads to over-crowding on launch day. Some games, like Age of Conan, do start off with the player in a small instance by themselves.

I actually think that starting content being instanced is a mistake for MMOs. I don't think you can make the assumption that people start playing by themselves. There are a lot of people who start by creating a character with a friend or family member. I think that it is a bad idea to separate them right at the start.

When I first started WoW, I started with a friend. We both created undead, and jumped right into the game together. That was a very attractive feature of the game.

Plus, the distinguishing feature of this genre is that you are playing with other people. I think it's important that right at the start you see other people running around. That's what makes it an MMO.

Even the crowds lend the game a certain "energy". People running around like crazy, chat channels going nuts. It might not be mechanically ideal, but I think crowded starting areas are important to the social ideal of this game.

I think there are things the designers could do to alleviate crowds. In particular, drop the tagging rules right from the start. Have mobs drop items for everyone involved in the kill, rather than only one person.

Tagging rules are primarily to prevent exploits, or prevent other people from stealing your loot or kill. Those situations don't really applies to the starting zones.

Ragnaros Redux

Alternate Title: Molten Core was merely a setback.

I really like the new Ragnaros fight.

I'm not 100% sure why though. It's not too stressful. There's some randomness, notably where the hammer lands and where the engulfing flames appear. But the randomness is very controllable.

I like the Sons phase. It's a nice nod to the old fight, with an interesting mechanic. Plus, I get to Hammer of Justice something.

The pace of the fight moves nicely, and the last phase (in normal) builds to a nicely chaotic ending, as there are lava waves and giant boulders flying around.

In some respects, it reminds me of Moroes back in TBC. It's a fight that you win because you do all the little things right. You keep the raid healed up, you dodge the fire, you burst down the Sons, you pop traps appropriately, you kite meteors properly.

It's very much a fight that when you beat it, you know you deserved to beat it. Your raid gains mastery over the fight as you learn it phase by phase.

About the only disappointing thing is the lack of RP with Ragnaros. I loved the old Ragnaros RP to start the attempts. I'd quote it along with him and Majordomo Executus when we first the triggered the fight. In fact, I'm going to quote it in this post because it's just that awesome:

Majordomo Executus yells: Imprudent whelps! You've rushed headlong to your own deaths! See now, the master stirs!
Majordomo Executus yells: Behold Ragnaros - the Firelord! He who was ancient when this world was young! Bow before him, mortals! Bow before your ending!

Ragnaros yells: TOO SOON! YOU HAVE AWAKENED ME TOO SOON, EXECUTUS! WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THIS INTRUSION?

Majordomo Executus yells: These mortal infidels, my lord! They have invaded your sanctum and seek to steal your secrets!

Ragnaros yells: FOOL! YOU ALLOWED THESE INSECTS TO RUN RAMPANT THROUGH THE HALLOW CORE? AND NOW YOU LEAD THEM TO MY VERY LAIR? YOU HAVE FAILED ME, EXECUTUS! JUSTICE SHALL BE MET, INDEED!

Ragnaros kills Executus.

Ragnaros yells: NOW FOR YOU, INSECTS! BOLDLY, YOU SOUGHT THE POWER OF RAGNAROS. NOW YOU SHALL SEE IT FIRSTHAND!

Sadly, Firelands lacks anything this stylish (which, to be fair, is a really high bar). Apparently some crazy stuff happens in Heroic mode, but that's Heroic Mode.

So that's Ragnaros. Awesome fight, but I miss the introduction.

Story and Impact Decisions

I was reading Tobold about The Old Republic and how certain story choices give you certain Light Side or Dark Side points and how some gear may require Light Side or Dark Side gear. I want to comment on this, but I am having a little trouble phrasing it in my head.

The thing is that Bioware wants Story to matter in their MMO. Their whole "Fourth Pillar" concept. But for the story to matter, for the decisions you make during the story to be real decisions, they have to have consequences.

If there are no consequences, then the decision and the story is just cosmetic and unimportant.

Now, maybe this particular implementation is heavy-handed. Maybe people will game the Light Side and Dark Side choices to get a specific piece of gear.

But maybe instead people will choose the other way. That they will make their story decisions first, and live with the consequences. Maybe the consequences themselves will make the decision worthwhile.

I'm sure that we all think it's unlikely, but we don't know for certain.

Perhaps that will become a differentiator for guilds. Certain guilds might put a requirement on Light/Dark points, and certain guilds won't.

I don't know if this system will work out for Bioware. But if they want Story to become vital, to become that Fourth Pillar, then they have to have consequences, and they have to attempt something like this system.

Remembering Divine Intervention

I rather miss Divine Intervention.

For those who don't know, Divine Intervention was a spell that killed the casting paladin, but removed another player from combat and encased him in a unbreakable bubble for up to three minutes. It was generally used to save someone when wiping, or possibly to grief the tank.

Divine Intervention definitely was a clunky spell, mechanics-wise, but I always felt that it spoke to the heart of the paladin class. The paladin sacrificing herself to save a comrade.

I had the thought that--if it was still in the game--Divine Intervention would actually work really nicely with Mass Resurrection. Wipe is called, you DI anyone else still alive, and they Mass Res the raid.

Transmogrification and Cosmetic Gear

Well, it looks like I'm the only one, but I don't think cosmetic gear is a good idea.

I talked a bit about this in 2007. Your character model is on screen for 99% of the time. It's the one constant in your WoW experience. I think the game is better served by having that model gradually change over time. I wore T4, and then upgraded to T5, then so forth.

As seasons change, your character changes in a natural fashion. You look forward to new sets, commiserate with others when sets are weird (honestly, pally T3 and T5?), rejoice with them when they are good. Your character changes as you do things, and your gear reflects your accomplishments.


Gear is tied to a time period, and gear from that time period evokes memories of that time.

Cosmetic gear throws away all that. You find some set of gear that you think looks "cool", and you wear that. Or more accurately, all the teenagers will find the gear that looks the sluttiest and wear that. Yay for raiding with people wearing [Black Mageweave Leggings].

I guarantee that the vast majority of paladins will be wearing T2 Judgement from now until the end of time. Judgement is awesome, I have collected 7/8 T2 and an Ashkandi recently. I consider that to be the high water mark of paladin fashion, and wear it in town on occasion. But its time has come and gone. New tier sets will just not be as exciting as before when everyone wears the best of the old ones.

There are issues with gear art at the moment. There are too many recolors, diminishing the uniqueness of the art. Tier art is reused for off-spec pieces, so everyone looks the same, instead of having Tier sets being instantly recognizable.

But I think those issues could have been solved without cosmetic gear. I think cosmetic gear will prove to be a mistake in the long run. We play these games for a long time, and fashion needs to cycle, to refresh itself with new ideas. Allowing time to stand still, to grow stagnant and ossify, will only hurt WoW.

Tank Changes

Ghostcrawler has written a post on upcoming tank changes in WoW. The changes can basically be broken down into two items:

1. Tank threat is being significantly boosted, to the point where tanks can maintain threat leads with minimum effort. This is coming in a hotfix soon.


2. The tanking classes will have some of their survivability changed from passive to active. Basically, moving towards the Death Knight model where the tank uses Death Strikes at appropriate times to stay alive. This will be implemented with the 4.3 patch.

In the past, tanks have had responsibility for both threat and survival. And yet, survival has always been the most important. I don't think that--in the history of the game--there has ever been a time where tanks sacrificed survival for more threat.¹

So this change is basically Blizzard throwing in the towel after 5 years and saying, "Well, you tanks don't care about Threat at all, so we're going to stop trying to force you to care." Instead, tanks will have to take a more active role in their survival. They will still gear and optimize for survival. But if, for example, Shield Slam has to hit the enemy to boost your armor, then stats like Hit and Expertise become survival stats instead of threat stats, and will be valued higher as a result.

Additionally, this will make it easier for under-geared tanks to group with geared DPS, which should help out Dungeon Finder groups a little.

The truth is that tanks never really had to care about threat, save at the edges of progression content. If a DPS pulls threat, most people consider it the fault of the DPS player. This change is merely reflecting that reality.

1. Possibly Horde-side Vaelastraz back in Vanilla, as the Horde didn't have Blessing of Salvation then. But I don't know for sure. I do know that Horde tanks were pretty sick threat machines compared to Alliance tanks in my experiences back then.

Creator-centric Games

There's been a fair amount of chatter recently about Namaste's upcoming game/system, Storybricks. The tech they are talking about looks very cool.

But here's the problem I have with these types of games:

Where is the audience?

Creators need an audience for their work. A writer needs readers. A director needs movie-goers. A machinima maker needs YouTube viewers. And a game designer needs players.

So what is the hook that will get people that will play the stories that others make with Storybricks?

When I think of the most robust add-on/amateur communities, they tend to be for games which stand on their own, which throw in mod-tools as more of an extra than anything else. Quake, Civ mods, the WoW mod community.

And I don't think this is coincidence. I think that the audience, that group of non-creators, is essential to the growth of a creator community. It provides the feedback loop and the sense that people are using your creation because it is useful or provides enjoyment.

This is the part where the creator-centric or building games always seem to stumble for me. I just don't see what will draw the audience. And without the audience, I don't think a creator-centric game can thrive.

Some Thoughts on World PvP

WoWInsider posted an article on world PvP. MMO Melting Pot posted an editorial decrying that post, calling it "a guide to griefing". I meant to comment on this kerfuffle at the time, but got distracted. Jinxed Thoughts posted some thoughts and reminded me about the issue.

For reference, I play on a PvP server, though I'm really a PvE player at heart. But my guild prefers PvP servers, so that's where I am.

In my experience, there are two "mindsets" when it comes to player-against-player combat. One mindset is that of chivalrous combat:

The orc warrior steps into the clearing, and sees the human knight. The knight draws his sword and salutes the orc warily. The orc unlimbers her axe and grunts, acknowledging her enemy's bravery. A charge, and there is blood in the snow. A single tear rolls down the face of the victor.

This mindset is old, invoking Arthurian legends, and codes of single combat and dueling. Combat here is consensual for both parties, and they are driven to it by their honor.

The second mindset is that of total war. Here victory means everything, and victory is the goal. Ambush, poisoned knives, the destruction of supply lines, outnumbering your opponents. All of these are acceptable practices. There is no honorable combat, only death and victory. Under this mindset, the entire idea of consensual combat does not even apply.

In my experience, the players who tend towards the first mindset usually prefer PvE servers, while players who tend towards the second mindset prefer PvP servers. But then the chivalrous mindset people see what happens under total war mindset and object to those tactics. And the other side doesn't see why they are objecting. In essence, they are playing different games, and talking past each other.

The thing is that world PvP is not consensual on a PvP server. Or rather, the act of existing is implicit consent.

If you cannot handle that, or you think that is dishonorable or griefing, then you should not roll on a PvP server. It will just lead to frustration. Stay on a PvE server and formally flag when attacking the enemy or do battlegrounds. The act of flagging counts as giving consent on a PvE server, but there is no equivalent action on a PvP server.

For PvP though, the entire mindset is different, and you just have to accept that PvP servers play by "total war" rules. You have to keep your guard up, be alert. It is a tiring playstyle sometimes. (Also, I miss bubble-hearth.)

So why play on a PvP server? Because you get random stories that never happen on a PvE server. The other night I got jumped by a Horde rogue and shaman healer. They killed me pretty quickly. When I got back to my body, the rogue had attacked a druid. But that druid had a friend who the Horde hadn't seen. So I ressed, and jumped into the fight. We killed the shaman, and the rogue vanished and that was the end of the fight.

A short vignette that interrupted my questing, true. But it is something that doesn't really happen on PvE servers.

Finally, from a fairness perspective, the Molten Front is the best place to engage in world PvP. All parties are guaranteed to be level 85. As well, there are usually many people questing, so you can call for help from others of your own faction in the area.

Molten Front Daily Quests

Warning: Contains spoilers for the first part of the Molten Front.

I'm way behind on my Molten Front dailies. I generally like the quests, but I haven't been doing them diligently. I've unlocked the Shadow Wardens and the Druids of the Talon, but haven't unlocked any of the next three.

I really like the Leyara storyline so far. When she killed Hamuul Runetotem, it was a genuine shock, and Leyara jumped quite rapidly to the top of the villain list. Even though my guild is Alliance, there were outcries in guild chat as people hit that part. As I posted back in Wrath, villains need victories. In some ways, it's sort of unfortunate that Blizzard copped out and let Hamuul survive, though badly wounded.

For the quests themselves, they're quite good for the most part. I like how a lot of the group quests share tagging. The Mylune quests are awesome.

I also really like the quest that gives you a small group with a named character to help out. It's really nice to see old favorites like Mankrik, Chromie, etc. The one thing I would like for this is if these friendly NPCs would show up on your group bars. It would make it a lot easier for a healer character.

However, in one respect the Molten Front dailies feel weird to me. The zone really feels like it was designed to "progressively phase". It really feels like when you first unlock the Shadow Wardens/Druids of the Talon that the first area is supposed to permanently phase to a "finished" state. And then you only do the tearing down of the tower and walking through the flames once. Instead of going through the entire process every day.

One point of evidence is that there are no Achievements for those first quests in the Molten Front, though there are Achievements for every other section.

I think this would have lead to slightly fewer daily quests, and not so many bottlenecks in questing progress. You would unlock entire sections of the Molten Front once, and they would stay unlocked from that point on.

What I think happened is that Blizzard originally designed the Molten Front to work like this. But a lot of people complained that extensive phasing made it hard for grouping, so Blizzard cut back on the phasing that actually affected questing, leaving in the cosmetic phasing like the tree, and then "resetting" the phasing of the zone every day, so you always start fresh.

In some respects, I think that was a mistake, and a progressive phasing design for the entire zone would have been better and smoother. But it would definitely have caused issues for people at different stages of progression trying to group together.

Mists of Pandaria?

MMO-Champion is reporting that Blizzard has trademarked the phrase "Mists of Pandaria". Apparently the timing and technical details of the trademark are leading people to speculate that this will be the title of the next WoW expansion.

It could be true. A mysterious continent, maybe magically hidden until the Cataclysm revealed it, would be an interesting setting for an expansion.

I don't think Pandaren will be a playable race, though. Which faction would they belong to? What race would the other faction get? If anything, I thing Blizzard should go with making them a neutral race, maybe one that both the Alliance and the Horde are courting for favor.

Another argument against a Pandaren expansion is that it would not be "epic" enough. The last two expansions have been the Lich King and Deathwing. Pandaren are simply not in that league.

While this is a good point, I wouldn't mind a quieter expansion. A little less world-destroying threats, and a narrower, more detailed focus.

So is Mists of Pandaria the next expansion? I have no idea, but Blizzcon this year should be very interesting.

Diablo III Cash AH

Eliminating the middleman is never as simple as it sounds. ‘Bout 50% of the human race is middlemen, and they don’t take kindly to being eliminated.
-Malcolm Reynolds (Firefly)

So the big news is that Diablo III will feature a real currency Auction House.

Personally, I don't think it's that bad an idea. Diablo being more a single-player game than a persistent world, it seems very optional.

Things I like about this plan:

• It uses real currencies like dollars. There's no messing around with "fake" transition currencies like Turbine Points, etc.


• It's obvious how Blizzard is going to make their money. They get the listing fee on every posting and the transaction fee on a sale. There's no games or trickery. Their cut is obvious, straightforward, and reasonably fair.


• It's symmetrical. You can buy or you can sell. But there's also no subscription fees so that certain segments of the audience end up going infinite and playing for free at the expense of others.


• It's completely ignorable. You can use the regular gold AH or even not use any AH at all.


• Arbitrage between the two auction houses might be interesting. Maybe people will buy items off the gold AH to put up for sale on the cash AH.


• Hardcore mode is cordoned off into its own section. You play Hardcore, and all you have to rely on is in-game resources. That is respectable.

Stuff I'm unsure about:

• It kind of legitimizes farming. The "illegal" and dangerous part of farming has always been the transfer from gold to dollars. This gives a reasonable way for people to take advantage of this. Further, farmers will decrease prices on the cash AH, because of increased supply of items. But they should actually increase prices on the gold AH, because the farmers will use the gold they farm to buy items on that AH to sell on the cash AH.
  
  Keeping the dollar price low seems better, even if it frustrates would-be sellers. It sort of separates the professional sellers from the people would sell in the course of playing the game. The gamer sellers would probably be better off with the gold AH, at least in my initial eyeballing of it.


• As someone on another message board pointed out, this is the precise strategy offered by many people to deal with illegal drugs. Legalize it and tax it. Let's see how that works out.
  
  Most gamers tend to the liberal/libertarian side of things, so it's amusing to see how many of them complain about this strategy when it affects what they deem important.

Things I don't like:

• It raises the stakes enormously for account theft. Let's say you have $100 attached to your Diablo 3 account. Now if your account is stolen, the immediate strategy is to buy overpriced items from a specific seller in order to transfer your money to a different account.
  
  I don't really know how Blizzard plans to deal with this. Perhaps access to the cash AH will require an Authenticator. Perhaps there will be a significant delay on the actual cash transfer in order for Blizzard to identify and reverse false transactions. You could give the item to the player right away, but just delay the payment for 48 hours.

So those are my thoughts. Overall, I think it's a good fit for a random item-driven game like Diablo. I especially approve that Blizzard makes it obvious how they are going to make money. In my view, when you can't tell how the company providing a service will get their money, that is cause to be nervous.

Eliminating Reforging, Hit Rating, and Expertise

I hate reforging. It's just so inelegant. It's complex and time-consuming. You basically have to use an external application to figure out how to reforge properly. All in all, it just seems so unnecessary.

So how can we get rid of reforging?

The primary reason that reforging exists is because of Hit Rating and Expertise Rating. In particular, Hit Rating has a very steep value curve that looks like a step function. When you are below the Hit cap, Hit Rating is usually the most valuable stat. Then past the Hit cap, Hit rating is a complete waste. Expertise displays a similar value curve.

So the best path to eliminating reforging would be to eliminate Hit Rating and Expertise Rating. If those two stats were gone, reforging would not be needed. It still might be nice to have, but the extra complexity would outweigh the value it adds to the game.

The easiest way to get rid of Hit and Expertise would be to say that special attacks and spells cannot miss, or be dodged or parried. White melee auto-attacks could still be affected by those stats.

If this was done, the game would not change greatly. Once you hit raiding, pretty much everyone has enough hit to make this the default state anyways. Indeed, Blizzard has started moving towards this state in small steps. First, taunts were changed to always succeed. Then interrupts were changed to always succeed. A lot of threat dumps used to miss, but now always succeed. Extending this to all specials just removes a little randomness.

Then Blizzard just needs to introduce a new stat for melee dps and ranged dps. Perhaps something like changing Expertise to increase autoattack damage. Maybe casters could get a stat like "Spell Charge" which increases damage done by spells with cast or channel times. Then each role would have a unique secondary stat. Healers would have Spirit, tanks have Dodge and Parry, melee DPS would have Expertise, and caster DPS would have Spell Charge.

But none of the remaining secondary stats would display the steep step change of value. They wouldn't go from amazing to useless at a single point. There would still be breakpoints where the value changes slightly, and that would keep the theorycrafters happy. But adding more of stat would always improve your character.

The need for reforging would disappear. Blizzard could eliminate reforging from the game. Mylune would save all the wee forest animals in Hyjal. And we would all live happily ever after.

Dev Interaction with the Community

Blizzard recently ended their "Ask the Devs" series of community interaction. In Ask the Devs, the community posted questions and the questions were voted on. The 10 or so questions with the top ratings for each topic were resented to the devs and the devs gave answers.

It was an interesting exercise in community management. However, Ask the Devs is generally regarded as unsucessful by both the Blizzard CMs and the community.

Let's take a look at why Ask the Devs failed. It was a worthwhile experiment, but I think that there are two major reasons why it failed.

First, the vast majority of questions were thinly-veiled versions of, "My class sucks. When will you buff my class?"

That was not conducive to interesting answers.

The second reason is that asking good questions is just plain hard. A lot of the time, it is difficult to ask a good question unless you already know the answer.

For example, let's take a question like, "Is Blizzard planning to change the paladin healing model?" If the answer is No, this was a very pointless question. But if the answer is Yes (as in pre-4.0), all of a sudden the question is extremely interesting.

But the playerbase doesn't really have enough information to know which are the interesting questions and which are the boring questions.

This was the biggest strength of the previous interaction between Ghostcrawler and the forums. Because Ghostcrawler knew the answers, he also knew which questions were worth answering.

Of course, that model was not sustainable, and Ghostcrawler's presence on the forums tended to warp them, as everyone started trolling for blue responses.

The new form of Dev interaction, the development blog posts, also have weaknesses. In particular, they have a tendency to be at "too high a level". Ten thousand foot overviews are generally not interesting. Specifics are interesting. The best Dev blog was probably Ghostcrawler's line-by-line explanation of the patch notes, which was about as specific as you can get. Even the ten thousand foot overviews can be greatly improved with concrete examples.

But dev blogs are probably an art, and something that needs to be learned. The gold standard of gaming dev blogs, in my opinion, is Mark Rosewater's columns for Magic: the Gathering. A dev looking to communicate with her game's community would probably be well served by studying how Rosewater did things.

Valor Point Capping

Over the last couple of weeks, when I've sat down to game on the computer, here's a list of activities that I wanted to do:

1. Raid Firelands
2. Work on the new Molten Front daily quests and achievements.
3. Play Mass Effect

Notice what's not on the list? Running Troll Heroics for Valor Points.

I liked the troll heroics. I don't mind doing them occasionally. But honestly, being "forced" to do them when there's all this cool new content to explore is very annoying.

What's especially aggravating is that I know that in a couple of weeks the novelty of new content will have started wearing off, and it will be enjoyable to mix in a few heroics. But by then my guild will be 6/7 or 7/7 and we'll be capping out Valor Points just from raiding.

Of course, "forced" is a bit of a misnomer. But right now, capping valor points is the most effective use of non-raid time to help your team defeat bosses. And the worse your guild is, the more pressure there is to do more heroics. Someone in a 4/7 guild only has to do 3 heroics, while someone who is 1/7 needs to do 6.

Please note that the single most effective use of time overall is to put in more attempts on the boss. If your guild is thinking of raiding less and instead doing heroics for valor point gear, reconsider! Down that path lies failure, madness, and a shattered raid team!

I am really not fond of mechanics that keep me doing things that I may not be interested in. If I just want to raid, why not just let me raid? Why make the optimal path include a lot of other stuff?

Mastery/Crit Build In Practice

I decided to give the Mastery/Crit build a try last night in raid. We were going after Baleroc, and it was mentioned that this build was particularly good for Baleroc since the fight is mostly single-target heals.

The Mastery/Crit build uses the following stat priority: Intellect > Mastery > Crit > Haste > Spirit. The idea is to rely more on Holy Light and less on Divine Light. It was a little nerve-wracking to reforge away so much Spirit.

Performance-wise, the build is solid, I think. The numbers were definitely comparable to the other paladins. Additionally, the single highest source of healing done is actually from mastery shields, Illuminated Healing (something like 27% for me, followed by Beacon at 25%), and damage prevented is always better than damage healed. As well, overheals are not a complete waste, as they still give shields.

For playstyle, initially the build feels very sluggish. High haste means that all your spells are very fast, and it feels easier to react. But you get used to it after a while, and you still have Holy Shock and Word of Glory for speed.

Surprisingly, mana is not really an issue. The thing about Spirit/Haste builds is that even though you regen mana faster, you also spend mana faster. This build seems a lot less "swingy" when it comes to mana. You spend mana at a steadier rate. You still have to Judge on cooldown and use Divine Plea, like normal.

Personally, I rather like this build. It feels very solid and complements the other healers in the raid well. I'd like to see how it performs across more fights, but I think it's the build I will try for the next few weeks.

Holy Paladin Builds

Blizzard's class dev team is probably estatic at how their changes have worked out for Holy Paladins. Holy Paladin theorycraft is all over the map at the moment. As I can see it, there are currently three different stat weights being discussed.

1. Intellect > Spirit > Haste > Crit > Mastery

The standard build from 4.1. It's still the best build if you have to raid heal, and is also the most versatile build.

2. Mastery > Intellect > Spirit > Haste > Crit

The ultimate single-tank healing build. Insanely large mastery shields buffer the tank's health. Probably only viable in 25-man raiding with good raid healers to cover for you.

3. Intellect > Mastery > Crit > Haste > Spirit

Eloderung of Eternal Reign is touting this build. He says that it is a very strong two-tank Beacon healing build. It relies a bit more on Holy Light, and takes advantage of all three new mechanics: 100% HL transfer through Beacon, 200% crits, and a stronger mastery. Unlike build 2, this is likely a viable build for 10-mans.

This is probably the most interesting time to be a Holy Paladin in a long while. Excellent work, Blizzard!