5.2 Tomorrow!

Or rather, by the time you read this, today!

I'm looking forward to this patch. I really liked the storyline of 5.1, and it will be interesting to see what happens in 5.2.

Since I am raiding primarily in LFR, I won't get to see the new raid until next week. Blizzard is touting it as the "new Ulduar", and that is a very high bar. It will be interesting to see what happens.

There aren't really a whole lot of changes for Holy paladins this patch. Mostly changes aimed at PvP, increasing cast time of various crowd control abilities. Hand of Purity does get a straight buff, and Eternal Flame gets a buff when you cast it on yourself.

What are you looking forward to in this patch?

The Decline of Rogues

As Cynwise notes, the rogue population at endgame has been steadily decreasing pretty much since Vanilla. This is interesting because rogues haven't really changed as a class since Vanilla. There have been small changes here and there, but by and large the rogue class is still the same as it was at creation. Instead, the game has changed around it.

I've always thought the rogue was well-designed. In fact, if you look at the other classes, more of them have moved towards the rogue model than otherwise. So why then has the rogue population dropped?

I think that it's not one major reason, but several trends. The cumulative weight of all these trends has been to push the rogue population down.

1. Non-rogue melee dps specs became viable.

In Vanilla, pretty much the only melee dps at endgame were the rogues. Warriors tanked. Druids, Shamans, and Paladins healed. Sure, you may have had one or two offspecs running around, but the heart of your melee dps in Vanilla was your quintet of rogues.

Now, of course, all these melee classes can dps. Many of them dual-wield as well, occupying a lot of the rogue style in melee. As well, they also offer more options than the pure DPS class. They can tank or heal if necessary.

2. The new classes overlap with the rogue.

Both monks and death knights are melee dps. Indeed, both of them can dual-wield. Again, the overlap in kit causes the rogue class to bleed players to these new classes.

3. The other pure DPS classes lost a lot of their weaknesses.

Hunters lost their dead zone. Mages and warlocks improved their mobility, cut down on long casts, and gained more instants. Meanwhile, the rogue's fundamental weakness, melee range, has not changed.

4. Stealth has been marginalized.

The signature non-combat ability of rogues is stealth. However, because no other class (save feral druids) uses stealth regularly, it has become a mostly unused ability. The major use of stealth these days is to launch an opener, more than anything else. It is not really used in group play at all.

Think about this in terms of crowd control. In the past, rogue stealth/sap was the only crowd control which did not start combat. So sap had a lot of uses. Now though, all the ranged crowd control is easier to use and does not start combat, while having the advantage of not requiring the caster to get close to the mob.

This devaluation of stealth becomes really obvious if you play The Old Republic. TOR has 2 of 8 classes able to stealth, and that includes tanks and healing specs. Stealth is really powerful in group play, because many packs have one member that, if sapped, will allow the group to avoid the pack. This includes the non-stealthies in the group. Running an instance with a good stealther is a hilariously awesome exercise in avoiding as much combat as possible. In WoW, this type of gameplay is only possible if the entire group is composed of rogues and druids.

Stealth is also the only method to avoid running back from a wipe in TOR. The stealther can vanish if everyone is dead, and then res a healer who resses the group. Between these two elements, stealth remains relevant to group play in a way that it does not in WoW.

Conclusions

Those are the four reasons that I believe are causing the rogue population to decline in WoW. I don't think it's really possible to do anything about the first three reasons, mostly because it would make the other classes howl.

However, a concerted effort to make stealth more useful in group play might be possible. As well, I think the next new class should be a ranged stealth class. Making stealth more common gives a reason to make it more useful, while a ranged class would avoid cannibalizing rogues even further.

Diablo 3, the Auction House, and Efficiency

I've been thinking a fair bit about Diablo 3 lately. Unlike a lot of the gaming community, I thought D3 was quite a good game. In particular, I think the ability and rune system was inspired. However, I think Blizzard made one major mistake: the Auction House.

The Auction House is an understandable mistake, though. Diablo 2 had a lot of issues with people selling items on eBay, with all the attendant scams and customer service issues that entails. As well, just regular trading was a big hassle and not easy to undertake.

Blizzard basically had two choices: introduce a mechanism for secure trading; or disallow trading entirely. They went for the first option in the AH. More and more, I think they should have gone for the second option, and just not allowed trading. They already made loot drops from monsters be separate for each individual player. Banning trading would have only been one step further by not allowing others to see the items you drop.

The Auction House had a lot of negative effects. It made the game much too easy. D3 isn't that hard, but the difference between a character with only random drops, and one outfitted from the AH is huge. It devalued the whole blacksmith subsystem. I think that without the AH, D3 would have had far more longevity than it did.

The central fun in Diablo is making your character stronger. After you do the campaign once to see the story, the point is to kill more bosses and outfit your character with better and better gear. The AH allows you to "shortcut" that central fun, all in the name of efficiency.

Too much efficiency is not fun. Players will always argue for more and more efficiency. However, I think it's important for developers to stand firm against this trend.  It is especially dangerous to offer shortcuts to whatever your "central fun" is. For example, if the central fun in your game is leveling, I don't think you should offer items that make leveling faster or easier.

For example, looking at WoW, I'm not certain if heirlooms, valor points, or tier tokens have really improved the game at all. They've all made the game more efficient, certainly. But I think that they've caused character progression to become too efficient, too easy. And I think Blizzard agrees with this stance to a degree. In 5.2, they're introducing rare Thunderforged gear, which makes gearing up fully much harder, and a less efficient, longer process.

Disengaged

I really haven't been writing much lately. A lot of that is due to the fact that I just don't feel engaged in anything I am playing. I have TERA, The Secret World, The Old Republic and World of Warcraft installed.

TERA - My lancer is 45 or so, now. It's still fun, but, I don't know, something is missing. As you go higher in levels, it feels harder and harder to get a full group to kill things.

The Secret World - I restarted playing this when it went F2P. I haven't gotten out of the first zone yet. For some reason, I'm finding the regular gameplay very difficulty. I'm not sure if it's because my builds are bad, or for some other reason.

The Old Republic - Still in my guild, we're still spinning our wheels a bit. I think we're hovering around our skill level, and aren't really progressing. It's not really helping that the raid makeup doesn't seem very stable as people are constantly bringing in alts and similar shenanigans.

As well, I dislike the Section X daily zone. It's very annoying, some quests have abysmal drop rates, and it feels like you have to wade though heaps of useless enemies to get to your real objectives.

World of Warcraft - I finally got my weapon, and then haven't logged in since then. I still have to do the legendary quests. The issue is that I'm in my old guild, and I'm the only person in that guild. I think the cure here is to find a new guild and raid with them instead of running LFR. But I'm not sure if I actually want to do that.

Maybe I need to focus on one game. Choose one and concentrate on it.

Fake Gamers

Ophelie over at Bossy Pally has a post on the somewhat recent phenomenon of labeling people (mostly female) as "fake gamers". Penny Arcade did a comic on this a couple weeks ago as well. I wrote a comment on Ophelie's post, and thought I'd repost it here.

Heh, this topic reminds me of Ferraro, the fake female paladin from a couple years ago. She was a popular blogger and forum poster who was later revealed to be using pics of someone completely different. Kind of a pity, actually, as whoever was writing as Ferraro had some interesting points and insights. In any case, I’m pretty sure that Ferraro was a fake gamer.

Back on topic, I think a lot of the animus comes from certain male producers of secondary content like blogs and podcasts. They see female content producers zoom past them in terms of audience. These men feel that the work the women are producing is of lower quality. Thus the feel that the audience is entirely a result of being female. These men then label the women as "fake" gamers, implying that their audience is disproportionate to their skill or insight as gamers, and instead inflated by their gender.

And to bend over backwards to be fair, there is a point. A number of female bloggers/podcasters make the fact that they are female a central point in their blog/podcast identity. Think of how many female blogs use “grrl” or similar in their title. A lot of men see this as the women trading on the fact that they are female in order to attract an audience.

Personally, I think it is just that being female seems to be central to some women's identity in a way that being male just isn't for men. Male identity seems to be less about what you are, and more about what you do. This is better in some ways, and worse in others. Something like losing your job ends up cutting at the core identity for a lot of men.

In any case, I think that a lot of this issue isn't really about game players. It is really about the relationship between secondary content providers and their audience.

The Pandaren Starting Zone

I recently created a pandaren monk and went through the new starting zone. Here are some thoughts and observations. There will be spoilers if you haven't done the zone.

By and large the zone is very good. It's fun, gets across a lot of the themes, and gives a small taste of what Pandaria will be like. The ballon ride is a particular high point.

However, in my mind, there is one major problem with the zone: Aysa Cloudsinger. With Aysa, Blizzard falls into the trap of "telling, not showing". Everyone comments about how amazing Aysa is, but she never actually acts amazing. I think she meditates while you kill stuff, and that's the high point of your interactions.

Whereas Ji Firepaw actually solves problems. Admittedly his solutions are a little crazy, but he is shown doing stuff. As well, Ji is never outright wrong. He's supposed to represent taking action rather than thinking about things. But the downside of taking action rapidly is that sometimes things go wrong. But this is never fully shown.

What's really weird is that Blizzard did not take the obvious route at the very end. Ji uses explosives to get rid of the ship in the turtle's side, which causes the turtle to start bleeding rapidly. This almost gets across the idea of making a bad situation worse, which is the drawback of Ji's philosophy. However, Ji is the one who thinks of using all the healers to staunch the wound.  So Ji solves one problem, creates another problem, and then solves that problem too.

I don't really understand why Aysa is not the one who comes up with the idea of using the healers. It's the logical, obvious solution to balancing out the two factions, making them equal.

Also, the way Aysa is written at the end of zone, she is very reminiscent of an unfortunate female archetype: that of the nagging wife. Honestly, for the entire last part of the zone all she does is verbally criticize Ji. She does not come up with any ideas or solutions of her own.

In some ways this male vs female dichotomy is further reinforced by the Horde/Alliance NPCs. The Horde representative is male, like Ji. The Alliance representative is female, like Aysa. So the final choice has a very strong male vs female vibe to it. And in my view, the female Alliance side comes off very badly in the comparison, being the side which didn't actually do anything useful, just complained. I think is an unintentional error on Blizzard's part.

By and large the pandaren starting zone was very good. Aysa should have just done something in the final sequence, justifying the idea that she is a competent person. Again, "show, don't tell". If you want players to think of Aysa as competent, you have to show Aysa being competent. As well, Ji should have been shown at least once as being obviously wrong. And finally, I think the genders of the Horde/Alliance NPCs should have been switched to weaken the link between gender and the dueling philosophies.

Frontiers and Force Projection

There is a debate in Eve Online circles about the role of small, independent corporations in null-sec. To wit, there really isn't one. Null-sec has come to be dominated by large empires. To move into null-sec, a small corporation must sacrifice their independence, and generally bow down to one of the major powers.

I think this issue is not specific to Eve Online. Almost every sandbox game ends up with a similar problem. People want to be out on the frontier, to stake a claim, and watch that claim grow. It's very much the myth of the American West. But inevitably, these games run out of frontier.

But Eve has hundreds of star systems. At first glance, it seems that surely a frontier can still exist. The problem in Eve is that it is too easy for an empire to project force anywhere in its claimed space. If at any given time, the empire can bring its entire force to bear without repercussions, then warfare essentially becomes about who is larger. And the empire will always win that battle against a small corporation.

Let's say you have a large null-sec empire. A small corporation takes one star on the border. What happens? The empire drops its entire fleet on that star. There is generally no real downside to doing that.

But imagine there was a downside. Let's say it takes two weeks of real-time travel to get from the heart of an empire to its border.  Now, the empire cannot send the entire fleet, because if another empire invades, it would take the fleet over a month to get back. Instead the empire has to send just enough ships to deal with the small corp. And the resulting battle might actually be won by the smaller corp, if the empire miscalculates.

The empire has to be able to be stretched "too thin" for smaller corporations to be able to exist alongside it. But so long as it is easy to project force, so long as distance does not really matter, the empire cannot be stretched too thin.

To be honest, I don't think this problem can be solved without significant travel time that lasts longer than a single play session. Significant travel time introduces logistics, supply lines and military strategy, as opposed to just military tactics. But significant travel time is highly inconvenient. I really doubt that anyone really wants to take two weeks or more to reach their destination.

But without significant travel time, it becomes a numbers game, and then a game of covert actions to influence that numbers game.

Frontiers cannot exist without meaningful distance. If you want your game to have a frontier, the price is the inconvenience of distance. And I don't think that players will accept that price.

New Ilum: Genius or Madness?

I can't decide if the new PvP area in Ilum in The Old Republic is genius or madness. All I know is that it is pretty hilarious.

To recap, the latest patch introduced a new area with dailies on Ilum. All rewards are cosmetic, aside from the fact that you unlock new bosses at some point. I believe the bosses drop gear from existing raids. There are 6 dailies in total, 4 in the PvE area, and 2 in the PvP area. So the PvP dailies are reasonably optional.

(At least as far as I am concerned. But there are a lot of people who disagree with me.)

The PvP area is interesting. It's a free-for-all zone, so you can attack your own faction. Only 4-person groups are permitted in the area. Larger raids get disbanded automatically.

The PvP objects respawn somewhat slowly. So there is significant advantage to killing other groups, because you remove your competition, and get your dailies done faster. As well, it gives the PvP groups points over which to fight.

It's really funny because people in chat are trying to get the factions to work together, and groups are instead randomly slaughtering each other.  Area chat is hilarious.The Imperial side is convinced that the Republic is working together as a team, while the Imperials are attacking each other. Ironically, this seems very true to form, and totally in-character for each faction. I blame the Sith.

(Though the Republic side is probably saying the same thing.)

The design of the new area is quite well thought out, in my opinion. Free-for-all keeps things balanced on servers with unbalanced factions. Small teams only keeps the feel of multiple forces running around, prevents raids from stomping everyone, and gives tanks and healers a place in combat. The quest objects and respawn timers give people something to fight over, rather than simply ganking. Plus, it's only 2 of 6 quests, so it is pretty optional if you absolutely hate PvP.

The final interesting note is that this is a temporary event, though it will be repeated in the future. By making it temporary, it means that when the event appears again, everyone will flock to it again. This keeps the numbers high and many people involved, which is essential for good PvP.

All in all, this looks like a winner for the SWTOR dev team.

Overlapping Offensive Cooldowns

Should offensive cooldowns stack?

Right now, there is a common complaint in Retribution Paladin circles that Ret burst dps is too high, while Ret sustained dps is too low. One of the major reasons this happens is that Ret can combine at least 3 strong offensive cooldowns together (and then trinkets, potions, etc.). There is a short 20-second window when the burst dps is very high indeed.

As a general rule of thumb, you always want to stack offensive cooldowns together. This is because subsequent cooldowns magnify the effect of the previous cooldowns.

As a simple example, say you do a baseline of 100 dps. Cooldown A increases damage by 20% for 10s, and Cooldown B increases damage by 30% for 10s.  If we take a 20s window, we have:

Situation A: Stacking Cooldowns

[10s * 100 d/s * 1.20 * 1.30] + [10s * 100 d/s] = 1560 d + 1000 d = 2560 damage

Situation B: Non-Overlapping Cooldowns

[10s * 100 d/s * 1.30] + [10s * 100 d/s * 1.20] = 1300 d + 1200 d = 2500 damage

Stacking cooldowns gives more damage.[1]  Notice that stacking cooldowns also greatly increases the burst. Situation A has a window where the player is doing 156 dps, while in Situation B, the player maxes out at 130 dps. The "burst" dps is much closer to baseline dps.

Burst damage has always been a problem in WoW, especially in PvP. Blizzard is constantly making adjustments to reduce burst. As well, it generally contributes to an "unfun" feeling of play. 10% of the time, you're a god. 90% of the time, you're weak. An opposing player that runs into that 10% buzzsaw is going to be very unhappy. On the other hand, getting stunned or otherwise prevented from acting during your 10% window is devastating to you.

Perhaps a blanket rule that an offensive cooldown cannot be used while another offensive cooldown is active would go a long way to smoothing out gameplay. This would include things like on-use trinkets and potions, which you can control, but not uncontrollable procs. You'd probably also have to exempt Bloodlust, since trying to coordinate the entire raid would probably be a little excessive. And admittedly, saving one of your cooldowns for Bloodlust is a little bit of good gameplay.

It would also ease designing offensive cooldowns. The designers wouldn't have to worry about the combination of cooldowns, they would only need to consider base rotation/damage plus cooldown. Adding new offensive cooldowns, or shortening existing cooldown timers would become less dangerous, and more predictable, than it is currently.

All in all, I think a blanket rule preventing offensive cooldowns from overlapping would go a long way to smoothing out some of the gameplay and balance problems in WoW.

1. Excepting edge cases that generally involve hitting the haste hard cap with Bloodlust.

A Good LFR Experience

Since we usually hear stories about how terrible Looking For Raid is, I thought I'd mention a good experience I had last Sunday. We were on Amber-Shaper Un'sok. Both tanks were new to the fight, as were several other people.

And we wiped.

But people didn't start whining and complaining. Instead the fight was explained, especially the mechanics of the construct. Some people cycled in and out, but by and large the raid stayed together.

And we wiped again. But we did better.

The fight was re-explained, and the specific thing we were failing on was pointed out. Again, no raging.

And we wiped again, but came fairly close to finishing.

Still no complaints, and we tried again.

This time the boss died. And we finished the instance. Four attempts on the boss, each time getting better and better, until we got a kill. No whining and complaining, just explaining the strategy.

I think a great deal of this is due to the first person who spoke up after the wipes. He or she was very positive, focusing on mechanics, and the things that need to improve. Without insulting or denigrating the others in the raid.

I think the first person to be vocal sets a lot of the tone for the group. If that person is hateful and elitist  then others feel like they have permission to be hateful and elitist. So the lesson here is not to stay quiet. If you want a pleasant experience, you should speak up first, and set the example for the group.

---

Then of course I ran into my standard loot luck. The only non-epic I have is my i450 weapon. I was hoping to get the Sha-Touched mace from Empress. Instead, I got a tier chest, which I already have. I popped a Greater Charm and got ... another tier chest!

Lady Fortune mocks me.

PvP Reward Changes

Last year, I noted that Magic: the Gathering had dropped its ELO system for a pure point system.  Last week, we saw the latest ripples of that change as Blizzard followed suit.

Blizzard announced that they would drop rating requirements on PvP. Instead, there is a point "threshold" for the best gear and weapons:

Gear will be available in four tiers:

• Dreadful Gladiator’s gear will be crafted. (5.2)
• Malevolent Gladiator’s gear, including weapons, will be purchased with Honor Points. (5.2)
• New tier of PvP items: Tyrannical Gladiator’s gear will be purchased with Conquest Points. (5.2)
• Tyrannical Gladiator’s gear can be purchased for Honor after 27,000 Conquest Points are earned for the season. (5.3)
• Elite Tyrannical Gladiator’s gear can only be purchased with Conquest Points after 27,000 Conquest Points have been earned for the season. (5.2)
• Conquest Point weapons can only be purchased after 7,250 Conquest Points have been earned for the season. (5.2)

Blizzard is not dropping rating entirely. It will still be used to matchmake, and will govern the maximum amount of points you can earn each week.

This is an excellent change, in my view. It encourages everyone to cap out on Conquest Points each week. Good teams will still earn gear faster, but all teams have the possibility of getting the best gear. It's unlikely that a poor team will be able earn very much Elite Tyrannical gear, but it's better than having it out of reach forever.

However, the caps on Conquest will prevent people from playing 24/7, like in the High Warlord system. There's also a catch-up mechanism that increases the caps as the season goes on for people who haven't earned a lot of Conquest (either because they have lower ratings, or because they were not playing.)

It's interesting how the pendulum swings. In the old High Warlord system, the problem was that people played too much, and that weaker players were completely shut out by time requirements. In the second iteration, where your rating determined how many points you earned, the problem was that people played too little, and that weaker players were completely shut out by the skill requirements. The third iteration pushed people to play more with conquest caps, but rating requirements still locked people out of gear progression.

This new system tries to split the difference, pushing people to play for a medium amount, while leaving weaker players with an upgrade path all the way to the best gear. I think this looks like a solid system, so kudos to the Blizzard PvP team.

Tip: Scenario Queues and LFR

Tip: You can do Scenarios while in queue for Looking For Raid/Dungeon.

It's not well publicized, and the UI doesn't really explain this, but the scenario queue and LFR/LFD queues are concurrent.  If you queue for both as dps, your scenario will pop up almost immediately  When you’re done, you’ll be 15 min further into the LFD/LFR queue. Sometimes that’s enough to put you at the head of the line, putting you in LFD/LFR immediately.

Basically, you can spend the time waiting in queue for LFR/LFD by doing scenarios instead of dailies (or trolling trade chat, etc.) if you prefer.

Thunderforged Items and Loot Incentives

Blizzard unveiled their latest scheme for loot in 5.2, Thunderforged gear:

Each 5.2 raid boss will have a chance of dropping this new designation of a particular item that’s 6 item levels higher than their counterparts. These higher quality versions will be called “Thunderforged”. This means that there will be five variations of some items. You’ll now see a 5.2 raid item of LFR quality at item level 502, the same item in Normal quality at item level 522, the item in Normal Thunderforged quality at item level 528, the Heroic version of the item at level 535, and the Heroic Thunderforged version of the item at level 541.... 

We’re going to try having Thunderforged items drop more frequently in 25-player raids. They’ll be somewhat rare in both cases compared to the standard versions that’ll drop, but they’ll be even rarer in 10s. Overall, a 25-player group will be more likely to end up with a slightly higher item level after several weeks of raiding.

Basically, Blizzard is introducing rare pieces of loot that are about half a tier higher than regular loot. They will drop in both 10 and 25-man raids, but will have a higher drop chance in 25s.

The way I see it is that Blizzard has two objectives here. First, they want to make the path to Best-in-Slot (BiS) a lot longer and a lot more work than it was previously.  Normal BiS should be relatively easy to get, minus one or two pieces that never drop, like paladin healing weapons. But getting Thunderforged BiS will be very unlikely, so you'll be working on it until the next raid tier. However, the gap between Normal BiS and Thunderforged BiS should be small, so not having Thunderforged BiS should not be that big a deal.

(This is roughly analogous to Magic: the Gathering introducing Mythic Rares a few years ago. The higher rarity made it a lot harder to collect a full set.)

The second objective is to encourage people to do 25s. But here Blizzard runs into a contradiction.  Thunderforged BiS cannot be good enough to make significant difference to the raid. If it is a large difference, an unlucky guild will have a lot of issues, and there will be loot drama, and lots of strife. It will end up like Legendaries in previous expansions once again.

But the items also have to seem to be good enough that the mere possibility of a higher drop rate is enough to get people to sign up for 25s. Don't forget that the drop rate has to scale for the larger raid size. If a 10-man has a 10% chance of getting a Thunderforged item, the 25-man needs a 25% chance before the extra bonus kicks in. Then the expected amount of Thunderforged items per person will be equal.

I am not sure this is enough. The move to 10s was driven by guild leaders and officers, and I'm not sure that they will see a higher drop rate as enough to make up for the extra work. Sure, this change will probably encourage some regular raiders to apply to 25s, but they would not have extra work in either case.

As well, as I've mentioned before, raiders do not handle randomness well. A higher drop rate on a rare item will seem pretty rare anyways, and I'm not sure that simply increasing the drop rate would be enough.

To actually convince officers to shift back to 25s, you would have to guarantee the Thunderforged item, not simply play the odds. If each 25-man boss guaranteed that one Thunderforged item would drop, I think that would be enough to steady 25-mans.

But that's a fairly high expected value for something Blizzard is positioning as a "rare" item. However, without the guarantee, officers will weigh the chance of extra loot against the extra work of 25s, and find it lacking.

In conclusion, Blizzard will succeed on one of their aims, increasing the work and time required to obtain a true BiS set. But this gambit will fail to stop the bleeding of 25-man raiding.

Simplify Your Strategies

Big Bear Butt wrote a post last month, Some Folk You Just Can't Reach, that I meant to respond to. In the post, BBB asks,

So, do you blame someone else for being slower than others, if they’re trying like hell but just aren’t getting it?

Well, the first thing you do is simplify. I'm sure, as a former marine, BBB is very familiar with the KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid!) principle. And yet, when it comes to raid strategies, very often people ignore this principle.

The reason this happens is because raid strategies, videos, and guides are usually created by the elite, and to be frank, they are just better at handling complexity than the rest of us. As well, they are usually running at the edge of progression, and need to maximize performance, even at the cost of increased complexity.

When you drop down to lower raids, you generally see the same flaws. For example, take target switching. Elite guilds are good at target switching, and their strategies reflect that. In contrast, lower tier guilds are much worse at target switching than you would predict.  Ideally, to adapt a strategy for a lower tier guild, you want to minimize the amount of target switching required.

As well, you generally want to minimize your concerns during a fight.  One big mistake raid leaders often make is that they will recite the entire boss fight to the raid, bombarding people with extraneous information. In my opinion, the key to learning new fights is to ignore everything that is unimportant to you and only care about the things you personally need to care about.

This may result in some wipes that you could have prevented if you knew what the other roles were doing, but it will also result in you learning your own role much faster. Worry about yourself first before worrying about others.

As well, regular guilds often benefit a lot from practice and repetition, especially if you can practice a single element at a time. In a way, this is unfortunate, because regular guilds are also the ones which quit early after a few wipes.

One technique I am very fond of is practicing the movement of a fight before you actually pull the boss. Ideally this is done in the actual boss's room if possible, but otherwise any open space will do. This way you can focus on the movement, without having to worry about DPS or adds.

If you have a single person who is having trouble with movement, often having them just move, without doing dps or healing, for an attempt or two can help enormously. Sadly, you can't do this with tanks.

The final thing when adapting strategies for a regular guild is to avoid "being clever". I'm very suspicious of people being clever in raids in order to theoretically "make things easier". In my experience, it often ends badly. Don't worry about special tips and tricks. Focus on the basics, the bare minimum, and worry about tricks after those have been mastered.

Always remember that the default raid strategies are being created by the elite, and the elite often err on the side of complexity. Expecting your regular raid guild to flawlessly execute a complex elite strategy is foolish. Instead, you'd be better off simplifying as much as you can, minimizing movement and target switches, and ignoring "clever" tricks. Add complexity back into the strategy as you need to.

Upgrading Gear in 5.2 and Beyond

Green Armadillo at Player Versus Developer takes note of the fact that Blizzard has removed the Upgrade Vendor NPC from the 5.2 PTR. This is the NPC who allows you to upgrade your gear for Valor. He sees this as an failure of Blizzard's part, a signal that they have over-emphasized the importance of item level in the current game.

That's one plausible interpretation. However, I'd like to offer a different--and perhaps simpler--explanation.

Perhaps Blizzard is removing the Upgrade Vendor NPC in 5.2 so that they can bring him back in 5.3.

See, the thing is that--given Blizzard's current goals for patches--5.3 is probably not going to include a raid.  I imagine that it will be a patch very much like 5.1 was. A new reputation, a new storyline, lots of random side-events. Those sort of activities only ever reward sidegrades. They won't offer true upgrades a tier higher than the current raids.

Of course, character progression is still important. I think Blizzard still believes that a patch without any way to improve your character will not be popular with their playerbase. That position could very well be correct.

Bringing back the Upgrade Vendor in 5.3 allows people to continue improving their gear at that point. You continue raiding to fill out missing pieces and earn Valor to improve your current gear.

This is a much more likely plan for Blizzard. Upgrading gear probably required a significant amount of tech to implement, and it is very unlikely that they did not foresee any mechanical issues (with scaling, etc.) that would result.

So I think the plan looks more like:

• In 5.2, players upgrade their gear by doing the new Thunder King raid and getting new items.
• In 5.3, players upgrade their gear by spending Valor on the gear they earned in the previous tier. All the non-Royalty guilds will also still be progressing through the Thunder King raid, and earning new gear that way. And of course, filling things out with sidegrades from the new non-raid content.

That's more plausible than Blizzard suddenly deciding right now that the entire concept of upgrading gear was a mistake.

Update: Looks like I was right! Post from Bashiok:

Even Ethereals need a vacation, and the item upgraders (Voidbinders), are no exception. They’re saying they need to go home to take care of business arrangements, but … I’m not convinced. I think they’re just homesick for their ‘space mummy’ families. 

Ok ok, fourth wall broken, we’re actually just temporarily removing them from the game for 5.2 due to the new raid tier. The idea with the item upgrade system is that it’s a way to spend currency on upgrading items when buying new items isn’t the clear path. Either you’ve bought everything, or at least most of them, and then spend currency to get that extra *oomph*. With a new raid tier coming, we don’t want to create a trap where people are wondering what’s more lucrative: spend currency on new items, or on the new gear appearing on vendors? (Hint: It’s the new gear on vendors.) To help ensure we’re not indirectly encouraging anyone to spend their currency somewhere they probably shouldn’t, the item upgraders will be taking a break. 

Right now we’re planning for them to return in 5.3, which will not have a raid tier, and offer upgrades again as people will have likely have some currency to burn. We’re not sure yet if we’ll continue this cycle of having them take a break for raid patches and then come back in non-raid patches, but we’ll continue evaluating as we go, absorb feedback, and let you know how these plans evolve.

The Old Republic Expansion

The Old Republic is releasing a mini-expansion, Rise of the Hutt Cartel. It costs $10 for subscribers, and $20 for non-subscribers.  It has 5 levels and a new planet.

Sadly, the class stories are not continued, with only two storylines, Empire and Republic being offered.

The real question, in my mind, is how will this mini-expansion interact with the current endgame. TOR has built up a fair chunk of PvE endgame by now, and I can't imagine that this small piece of content can totally replace that.  At best, I expect one or two flashpoints, and one operation. That doesn't sound like enough.

Maybe the power curve will be very flat, allowing the current endgame, or at least the latest two operations to stay relevant.

Still, this will be an interesting experiment.

Looking For Raid, Pandaria Edition

My computer was having a lot of trouble with Looking For Raid in Pandaria. It would crash often, on pretty much every fight. Given that it would occasionally crash at other times, I finally bit the bullet and got a new machine. Ah well, the old one served effectively for almost five years, so I guess it was just time.

So in the past couple of weeks, I've actually gotten to try out the new raids in Mists of Pandaria, if only the LFR versions.  Here are some thoughts.

I like pretty much all the raids in this tier. They're a lot of fun, with interesting mechanics. By and large the difficulty seems appropriate for LFR. It's doable, but you do need at least some of your group to pay attention.

Skill-wise, LFR seems pretty much the same. There doesn't appear to be any completely terrible people, but there's the standard not-switching targets or killing adds issue that always plagues LFR. I can usually count on having at least 4 of 6 healers being competitive on the meters.

I've switched away from Eternal Flame to Sacred Shield. In LFR, raw HPS is pretty much the only thing that matters, because you can't "trust" your other healers in the same manner as in a normal raid group. So raw raid healing with cooldowns on the tanks is more likely to help the group survive.  That means heavy reliance on Holy Radiance and Light of Dawn.

Loot System

So the big controversy with LFR this time around is the loot system.  I have mixed feelings about it. On the whole, I think I get loot at the same rate as in previous tiers.  And per-character loot definitely solved the drama issues with LFR loot in previous tiers.

But now, killing a boss seems like a big letdown. Previously, you killed the boss, and there was a cascade of purples. Maybe you personally wouldn't get anything, but there was plenty of treasure for the group. But now, most of the time it seems like just a small amount of gold, which is a disappointment.

I don't know. It's like before, the treasure definitely existed. If you didn't get an item, then someone else did. You saw rogues get cool daggers, and hunters get bows, and enthused with everyone else when they got their items. But now, it seems like 80% of the time there is no treasure at all.

Also, not being able to get off-spec gear is a bit disappointing. Especially since rep gear costs Valor, that precludes reputation as a source of off-spec gear. But on the other hand, it's better than people taking off-spec gear over main spec players.

This is especially reinforced with the Greater Charms of Forture. You pop a Charm, and 80% of the time is just gold, again. Blizzard should have just tripled the cost per Charm, and only allowed you get one per week, but made it guarantee a drop.

I don't really see a decent solution for the loot issues. Maybe announcing the winners of items to the raid, since you can't change anything, would be enough to get the old feel back. This system is good enough, though. I just feel sad that the previous system wasn't able to work, that it died in a tragedy of the commons.

The Case Against Cross-Server Raiding

Big Bear Butt had a post last week decrying Blizzard's stance against cross-realm raiding in the current tier. Ghostcrawler tweeted that Blizzard was worried "about what it would do to guilds".  BBB generally disagreed with Ghostcrawler, and felt that cross-realm raiding would generally be good for the game.

Well, I'm here to outline the future where cross-realm raiding goes badly.

If you look at BBB's post, there's an underlying, unstated assumption. He assumes that if you need a raider for that last spot, you would pull from your guild, then pull from your cross-realm friends list, and lastly pull from trade chat on your server. That there is a priority list that goes:

1. Guild
2. Friends
3. Strangers

Now suppose that assumption doesn't hold. Suppose with the advent of cross-realm raiding, the priority list becomes:

1. Friends
2. Guild
3. Strangers

I.e. you pull from your friends list before you pull from your guild.

This would do immeasurable damage to WoW in the long run. If you're someone new to end game, how would you break into raiding? Right now, the path is you apply to a guild, and the guild takes you on runs. The application and acceptance does not require an existing friendship. Both sides understand that they are taking a chance on strangers.  

A lot of people don't like guild apps because they are impersonal, but that distance sometimes makes things easier. The guild app process provides a path where strangers can become friends through raiding together. Every new app is a stranger to the guild as a whole, not yet a friend.

In contrast, breaking into someone's circle of friends will be very hard. They'll be raiding with their friends, so you can't play with them. The barrier to entry for raiding could become much larger, and the barrier between strata of raiders could become even higher. If you're a Royalty raider, is it better to raid with another Royalty raider from a different server, or take an effective stranger from your current server?

Now, you could say that this future isn't likely, that no one will prioritize Friends over Guild. (Though, wouldn't many people say you should prioritize Friends over Guildies?) But one never knows how people will react. I would have never predicted everyone rolling Need in LFR, and subgroups funneling loot to their own members. And obviously, neither did Blizzard. But that happened.

As well, prioritizing Friends over Guild does provide two distinct advantages. First, you get to play with friends, as opposed to people who are still strangers. Second, your pool of friends is often higher quality (and a known quality) than new guildies.  If you're friends with someone in Paragon, bringing her alt is more likely to lead to success than taking your latest guild recruit. And as we've seen time and again, WoW players always take the short-term success, even if that leads to issues in the long run.

So that's the case against cross-realm raiding in the current tier.  If it goes badly, it has the potential to seriously damage the method through which people get introduced to serious raiding, as well as one of the major methods by which strangers become friends in the game. It has the potential to see the raiding stratas become very tight cliques, which become harder and harder to break into.

Raiding needs new blood to keep going, and anything that has the potential to damage or block that intake should be looked at with great trepidation.

Preview: City of Steam

Last Monday, Andrew Woodruff from Mechanist Games gave me a little tour of their upcoming MMO, City of Steam.



City of Steam is a browser-based game. But it doesn't match traditional notions of a browser-based game. It's a fully 3D game, with pretty decent graphics, and is very responsive. Mechanist Games is focusing on making as easy to jump in and play as possible, with very fast loading times.  It's actually quite an impressive technical feat, in my opinion.

The setting is a more steampunk-ish, Victorian or Industrial Age fantasy. There are humans, elves and orcs, but the orcs and goblins form the working underclass. It's similar to Troika's Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura.

Mechanics-wise, it looks to be a themepark MMO using the trinity. The main classes are Gunner (ranged dps), Warder (melee dps/tank), Arcanist (mage), and Channeler (healer).  Gameplay is quest driven to start, but there are lots of dungeons. Also interesting is that the dungeons have challenge modes, which change the objective of the dungeon. One challenge mode might be to kill 200 enemies in 5 minutes, or break 100 barrels, or make it to the end before the timer.

I tried out a Gunner for a bit. The animations were nice, and the early part was fun. I didn't get very far, and only got a peek at the customization options, which look very extensive and looks like complicated fun. People who enjoy tweaking their characters should enjoy this aspect.

Somehow, even though it is a 3D over-the-shoulder perspective, I got a very "Diablo II" vibe. I'm not sure entirely why that is so, it may just be how the UI is laid out, and the fact that there's lots of barrels and crates to break. But that's probably a good sign.

In keeping with the extremely accessible theme, City of Steam is going to be a F2P game.

All in all, City of Steam looks like it will be an interesting game. It's definitely worth checking out, especially to see how far the brower can be pushed, and how quickly you can just jump in and start playing. It really drove home just how much more powerful modern computers are.

Leadership and Effort

In a comment to my review of The Guild Leader's Companion, Bearness writes:

The book sounds helpful and thorough...and very disenchanting. I feel intrigued and disgusted at the same time. At what point did running a gaming guild become so business-like? I understand that a guild, especially a big one, has a lot of social dynamics and requires some leadership and organization to run properly. But, I feel like it can be done without dehumanizing guild members into "human resources".  

I do appreciate certain efficiency in my gaming. If I play for x amount of hours, I'd like to have something to show for it. At the same time, it's just a game, which means the main purpose is to have fun. For me, even if I didn't kill the boss or get that "phat" loot, if I had a good time hanging out with fellow gamers, mission accomplished. But, I guess everyone has different expectations.

Making things look effortless requires a lot of effort.

No matter how you slice it, leading a guild is work. You have to recruit people, deal with drama, keep things running, and keep people happy.

If anything, one could argue that running a serious raiding guild is easier because the expectations of people are much more concrete. Everyone expects to log in and raid at time X, that loot will be distributed according to the system, and the goal is to kill bosses. You're all on the same page.

A casual guild, on the other hand, can't really count on any of its members to show up for anything. Some of them might, some of them might not. And that is even more soul-destroying to a guild leader who's trying to make the game fun for her guildies.

Maybe this is an outdated idea, but I've always felt that the point of organization is to make life easier, to make it run more smoothly. Which ends up allowing you to have "more fun". You can concentrate on having fun, and the rules and structure take care of the necessary elements.

It's kind of like money. Sure, you can go through life running on the edge, using a credit card or borrowing money to pay for stuff and then paying it back. Heck, I've done that before. But it's astonishing how much easier a small cushion of savings makes your life. Even just a couple months of living expenses stashed away makes a radical difference in how smoothly your life can flow. It may even just be a psychological benefit, not having to worry about things as much.

That's the same role that good rules and good structure plays in a guild. Ultimately, it makes life easier, and allows you to have more fun.