Draenor Perks

From the patch notes:

Draenor Perks is a new feature that adds rewards for leveling. Over levels 91 to 99, you will earn these 9 new Draenor Perk in a random order. Each class and specialization has a different set of 9 Draenor Perks.

The perks for Holy Paladins are:

• Empowered Beacon of Light - Your single-target heals heal your Beacon of Light target for 10% more.
• Improved Daybreak - Increases the healing from Daybreak by 100%.
• Improved Holy Light - Increases the healing from Holy Light by 20%.
• Improved Denounce - Increases the damage done by Denounce by 20%.
• Empowered Holy Shock - Increases the damage done by Holy Shock by 20%.
• Enhanced Holy Shock - Your Holy Light and Flash of Light have a 10% chance to cause your next Holy Shock to not trigger a cooldown.
• Improved Flash of Light - Increases the healing Flash of Light by 20%.

As you can see, these are small passives that boost your abilities. Something to make up for missing talents while leveling. Something you gain at each level. Yet at max level, every character will have all the perks.

The only problem I have is with the fact that the perks will be given out randomly. I don't think this is a good idea. It will lead to more disappointment.

To see what I mean, imagine you are a masochist and leveling as Holy during the expac. You look at the perks at level 90, and you really hope that you get Improved Denounce or Empowered Holy Shock at 91, as those two will greatly help with questing.  However, you only have a 2/9 or 22% chance of getting what you want. 88% of the time, you will be disappointed.

Randomness is not a good idea for one-time rewards. Imagine that there is a quest which rewarded 1 of 3 different mounts. But the mount a player gets is randomly determined from those three. There would be great unhappiness, as 66% of the population would not get the mount they wanted.

Another example happened to me in Diablo 3 a couple days ago. The first time you kill the last boss in D3, you are guaranteed a Legendary. I got an amazing staff, with 50% more DPS than my current weapon, gobs of intellect, and two other much-desired stats. Unfortunately, I was playing a Crusader.

(At least my Enchantress follower is happy. On paper she now does twice as much damage as my Crusader.)

The same principle was involved. A one-time reward was determined randomly, and the potential for disappointment was higher because of it. Randomness really only works when content is repeatable.

Blizzard should either allow us to choose which perk we get as we level, or give out the perks in a set order. The perks are not an appropriate place for randomness. People will end up associating Draenor Perks with disappointment. It is very unlikely that they will be lucky enough to get the Perks they want when they want them.

Tank Vengeance and Resolve

Most of the WoD patch notes are fairly straightforward. But there is one part I don't really understand:

• Vengeance has been removed and replaced with a new passive ability, Resolve. 
• Resolve: Increases your healing and absorption done to yourself, based on Stamina and damage taken (before avoidance and mitigation) in the last 10 seconds.

I understood Vengeance. Vengeance boosted the damage and threat of the tank who is actually tanking, not one acting as DPS. It was important to differentiate between the two types, in order to prevent tanks from pushing out actual DPS characters from the raid.

However, as I understand it, Resolve means that a tank who is not taking damage is squishier than a tank who is taking damage.

But if the tank is not taking damage, does it really matter that she is squishier?

Or to put it another way, there's an equation that should balance in a successful fight:

Incoming Damage = Healing from Others + Self Healing/Mitigation + Healing/Mitigation from Resolve

Why not just remove the Resolve term?  You could directly boost the self healing/mitigation or lower the incoming damage, and the equation would still balance. Removing Resolve would simplify things, and not create weird situations like a successful parry/dodge streak that causes Resolve to drop off.

I understood the purpose of Vengeance, and why it was structured the way it was. But I don't understand the purpose of Resolve. I don't see what it adds to the game.

Warlords Alpha Patch Notes

Blizzard released the Alpha patch notes for Warlords of Draenor, yesterday.

There are lots of changes. In particular, they are ruthlessly purging a lot of abilities. They also look to be separating out the specializations a bit more, with more abilities become specialization-specific upgrades.

Crowd control is getting significantly scaled back, with many CC abilities getting the axe. Healing is seeing a large reduction in instant spells and smart heals. Some cooldowns and debuffs are being combined with others into fewer abilities.

There aren't really a lot of paladin-specific changes, though, other than the above. It looks like the paladin will be more or less the same as it was it in Mists.

I do like the change to Major Glyphs. Getting a few default ones while leveling will make using glyphs so much easier when making a new character.

Really, there's so many changes in these notes that it is somewhat overwhelming. It might be better to just read through them and let them digest for a couple of days.

Thoughts on Wildstar

I've been in the Wildstar beta since December, though I haven't really played it in the last month. I didn't really like Wildstar, for several reasons. I never got particularly far in the game either, so take my opinion with a grain of salt.

First, you know how everyone in PvP runs around in circles like a madman? Wildstar is bringing that to PvE. I don't see this as a positive.  Maybe I'm just getting old, but going nuts with the telegraphs like Carbine did made it a very tiring game.

And to a degree, Wildstar is a more difficult game than I think people will accept. I look at their dungeons, and I have zero desire to throw myself at that. In some respects, I think I'm just not skilled enough for Wildstar, so I may as well stick with more forgiving games.

Second, I never found a class that I enjoyed. I'm not really sure why. Just none of the classes seemed to have that factor which made me want to play them. The closest were the stalker and the engineer, but even they were missing something.

I don't really know how to explain it, but it feels very much like the classes in Warhammer Online. Those were well-crafted classes mechanically, but they just left me cold. Perhaps it is a matter of archetypes, of not having literary characters that match up to the class. Perhaps I play paladins because of Paksennarion, Michael Carpenter, and Uther, and not because of the mechanics associated with the class.

Finally, this is a very small thing, but in some ways it was the straw that broke the camel's back. I really, really do not like to be sworn at. It's just a reflexive distaste. So when the level up effect involves profanity, it just puts me off completely.

As well, if you think swearing is necessary, at least have the courage to swear. Bleeped swearing is a poseur's game. All it says is "we're trying to be edgy, but not too edgy." If you have to bleep your swearing, you really should just rewrite your content to avoid profanity.

So those are the main reasons I disliked Wildstar. I did not like their combat system, their classes left me cold, and the swearing on level up was a complete turn off.

Wildstar does have several good points. The graphics are colorful and cartoony. The game performance was good. The factions were reasonably interesting. The questing was pretty decent.

I also really liked the Settler path. I really enjoyed upgrading each quest hub with buff stations and building up the fences, and generally making the camp look better. The other paths were okay, but didn't really have the pull of the Settler path.

So those are my thoughts on Wildstar. I did not like the game, but it is not a bad game. If you like the combat, and find a class you enjoy, it will be a fun ride.

Flying and Warlords of Draenor

Blizzard is being awfully reticent to say how flying will work in the next expansion. This is leading some people to speculate that we may not be able to fly at all in the expansion.

I thought it might be instructive to look back at the past to see how flying was handled.

Burning Crusade - No flying while leveling. Able to fly at max level. No flying in Sunwell Plateau.

Wrath of the Lich King - No flying while leveling. Able to fly at max level. No flying in PvP zone.

Cataclysm - Can fly any time. Old world remade to allow flying. No flying in PvP zone.

Mists of Pandaria - No flying while leveling. Able to fly at max level. No flying in Isle of Thunder or Timeless Isle.

Mists is actually more interesting than that. Ignore leveling, and look at where max level characters are supposed to spend their time outside instanced content.

5.0 - Dailies across the continent. Flying allowed.
5.1 - Karasang Wilds. Flying allowed.
5.2 - Isle of Thunder. No flying.
5.3 - Battlefield Barrens. Flying allowed.
5.4 - Timeless Isle. No flying.

I think Blizzard has decided that these "max level areas" are better off without flying. And it's hard to argue with that. Isle of Thunder and Timeless Isle were the best max level areas in the expansion.

Then add to that a new PvP zone, which traditionally does not allow flying, and a problem begins to emerge. If Blizzard allows flight in WoD, they have to sequester off the new max level areas. They can't use the main area of the continent. Instead we'll get something like:

6.1 - Isle of No Flying 1
6.2 - Isle of No Flying 2
6.3 - Isle of No Flying 3
6.4 - Isle of No Flying 4

All connected to the main continent by portals or similar.

So I think Blizzard is at something of an impasse here if they want to avoid this. Either make substandard max level areas that allow flying or disallow flying on the new continent. Disallowing flying will make a lot of people very unhappy in the immediate term.

I think Blizzard's best strategy would be to say that there will be no flying until 6.3. Then in 6.1 and 6.2, they can use the continent for max level areas. In 6.3 and up, they can make new content be on the islands of no flying, and allow you to fly in the old max level areas.

Giving a definite time after which flying will resume will quiet the fears that flying will be taken away. It probably won't stop the complaints, but I think that most people will be willing to settle down and wait for it.

Back!

April 1st is probably not the most auspicious day to resume blogging. But whatever. I missed writing a lot actually, rather more than I expected to.

I did join Twitter, but 140 chars is pointless. You can't say anything interesting. Details matter.

My other project didn't really work out. Work got unexpectedly crazy right after the new year, so I spent much of my time there. I just ended up playing games again when I got back from work. Perhaps I'll try again in a little while.

What I'm currently playing:

The Old Republic

A rash of absences caused my raid team to miss several days. That in turn pushed several people to retire. We're trying to recover, and merged with another guild team which went through much the same thing. But we're still on the edge of viability. We're trying to recruit, but I'm not sure I hold out much hope.

Final Fantasy XIV

I finally got my relic weapon. It took me effectively two months of trying to beat Titan (Hard Mode), though I started near the end of November. Of course, this was because I was signing up in Duty Finder. I would sign up once a day, fail, and then go do something else. I finally ended up in a pre-made group that was able to down him.

It's interesting, because in some respects that experience has broken me in the game. I have not even tried the fights after that (King Moogle, Ultima Hard, Coil). I think about signing up, but then I go and do random other stuff in the game.

Right now, I'm basically leveling other classes and doing other easy content like dailies.

Diablo III

I'm currently playing through Reaper of Souls. I started a Crusader when RoS launched and have finally got her to Act V, where I'm a little ways in. I rather like the Crusader and RoS, and will probably write a full post on it soon.

I'm actually leveling her using my D3 ability challenge, where I am always using the latest ability and rune to be acquired. I'm only playing on Hard, but it's been an interesting experience. Every level requires you to adjust tactics slightly, and you get a good feel for all the abilities. (I groan whenever I see a Smite rune come up.)

Conclusions

It's good to be writing again. I hope to write several posts in the near future, rehashing all the controversies that I missed.

Heart's Desire

The one thing you can't trade for your heart's desire is your heart.
- Lois McMaster Bujold, Memory, 1996

I've been contemplating that Bujold quote for quite a while now. I'm a gamer. I have been a gamer since I was ten years old. Chess, board games, RPGs, computer games, MMOs. It is what I enjoy doing, what I enjoy thinking about it, as the last eight years on this blog attests. It is probably as close to a "heart" as I have.

And yet.

I'm contemplating a new project. A "heart's desire", if you will. But to be successful with it, I believe that I will have to give up gaming. I do not think I will be able to afford the time spent gaming, or especially the mental effort spent thinking about games. Perhaps someone else could balance the two, but I have never been good at balance.

Since it is the New Year, it seems like an appropriate time to try this new direction. To stop playing games and try something new.

Accordingly, this blog is going on indefinite hiatus.

Of course, the odds are likely that I'll get terribly bored and start posting again in a couple of weeks. But if I don't, well, it has been a fun ride. Kill some dragons for me.

Player Commendations in FFXIV

FFXIV introduced a new system to try and promote good behavior in groups. It is a new currency called Player Commendations. At the end of the run, you can give a give a commendation to whichever other player you want. You can use these commendations to buy various unique items.

I'm sure that you are all thinking of the myriad ways this system could be exploited. However, Square did something brilliant here.

You can only give give a commendation if you queued up for the run in the group finder by yourself!

If you queue up as part of a group, you can receive commendations, but you cannot give them out. So to get a commendation, you have to rely on the goodwill of a perfect stranger, someone who you may never see after the run. As well, you only get the commendations when you leave the instance, and you don't see who gave you the commendation.

I think it is an excellent system considering the balance of power in a group. The solo player has the least power in the group, but since she is the source of commendations, that is incentive to at least try to be nice.

As well, the solo player has no stake in who gets the commendation. She will never see these people again. So she may as well give the commendation to the person who deserves it.

Now, I don't know if it has made a large difference in the quality of groups. My groups are always nice, and mostly competent.[1] I've gotten 12 commendations so far. However a good deal of that comes from the fact that I play a tank, and so am pretty much the default option for commendations. I've tried to make an effort to recognize good dps. Judging by the forums, others are making the same effort.

I think the Player Commendation system in FFXIV is inspired. I hope that Square stays with the notion that solo players are the only source of commendations. In my view, that restriction is what really makes the system work.

[1] Except for Hard Mode Titan. No one expects success in Hard Mode Titan, so the overall mood is not very happy.

The Ghostcrawler Legacy, Part III

The Ghostcrawler Legacy, Part I
The Ghostcrawler Legacy, Part II

Continuing on, here are more system changes that occurred during Ghostcrawler's tenure.

4. Tanks move from threat to active mitigation.

In Vanilla, a tank would gear for survival, but her basic gameplay would focus on generating threat. The tank essentially limited how much dps the damage dealers could put out. A good tank allowed the dps to go full bore. A poor tank throttled her dps players.

However, because the tank always geared for survival, a lot of tanks felt like they were fighting themselves. With the introduction of Vengeance, threat became less and less of an issue. Tank gameplay has shifted to "active mitigation" where the tank has more control over how much damage she takes. The tank takes generating sufficient threat for granted. Ironically, now that the focus is on active mitigation, many tanks now prefer dps stats on their armor.

Unlike a lot of the other changes, I am not certain that this was a good change. Threat linked the tank and the dps in a party. They had to be aware of each other, and interact with each other. I am not sure that "isolating" tanks from the rest of the party in this manner has been good for the game. I play a couple of other MMOs which are still threat-based (TOR and FFXIV), and I do think the basic group gameplay skeleton in those games is stronger than the current group dynamic in WoW, especially in small group dungeons. Using crowd control and focus fire is much more fun than simply AoEing everything down because the tank has infinite threat on all the mobs.

(Not to mention the beautiful tension between threat and mitigation that a tank finds in a game like TERA.)

As well, if the change was to make tanking more attractive to the general populace, well, I think it has failed on that level too.

5. Replacing talent trees with exclusive choices.

I'm not really sure if this idea originated from the WoW team, or if Blizzard as a whole came to a consensus. But pretty much across all their games, talent trees were replaced with a series of exclusive choices.

I think this is a stronger model for making interesting builds, especially at endgame. WoW does have some issues because the choices have to serve for all three specializations.

However, talent trees were a bit more interesting while leveling. There was a sense of being able to "build" your character which is missing in the current leveling game.

6. The gradual elimination of restrictions.

In my mind, this is the greatest weakness of Ghostcrawler as a designer. (Though I rather imagine that a lot of the players will disagree with me on this.) I do not think Ghostcrawler had a proper appreciation of restrictions, or he was unable to communicate the necessity of restrictions to the player base.

In a lot of ways, what you cannot do is more important that what you can do.

To take a simple example, for years paladins could not attack from range. You had to spec deep into the Holy tree to even get one range attack. This restriction made playing a paladin a fundamentally different experience than playing any other class. You had to learn about body-pulls. You coveted Linken's Boomerang.

There were things like this for every class. Hunters used to have a "dead zone" where they could not attack someone who was 5-8 yards away from them. Then the dead zone was removed, and an expansion later the close range restriction removed entirely.

Casters used to have a lot of trouble casting while moving. Then they got more and more instants and abilities to allow them to cast while moving. Healers got more and more AoE healing tools.

Restrictions chafe players. Players petition hard to have those restrictions removed. In my mind, one of the key jobs of a dev team is stand fast against this tendency, and stick with restrictions in the face of player opposition. Restrictions lead to interesting gameplay, and watering down these restrictions is not good for the long term health of the game.

In my view, this was the greatest failing of Ghostcrawler. He was unable or unwilling to insist upon the necessary restrictions on the players, and the gameplay in WoW did suffer for that.

Again, I am sure that a lot of players will disagree with me on this. Indeed if you look at any single restriction in isolation, I'm sure that an excellent case can be built for removing it. But I do not think the cumulative effect of removing all these restrictions has been good for the game.

Conclusions

By and large, Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street did an excellent job with WoW. I disagree with some of the changes made during his tenure, but I also heartily agree with others. As well, he set a new standard for communicating with the players, which was greatly appreciated.

I look forward to seeing his next game or project.

The Ghostcrawler Legacy, Part II

In Part I, we looked at Ghostcrawler's interaction with the community. In this section we will look at Ghostcrawler's influence on the rules, how the rules of WoW changed when he was in charge. Now, Ghostcrawler isn't solely responsible for these changes, they were the work of the entire dev team. But he's the man with the title and the face, so he gets the responsibility.

I'm going to break this down into areas of major change and look at each separately.

1. Bring the player, not the class.

If there is any phrase Ghostcrawler will be remembered for--other than "Nerf Ret paladins. TO THE GROUND!"--it will be "bring the player, not the class". The basic idea is that a decent player could play any spec of any class that she found in group content and not be a total liability. She would not be forced into a specific spec at endgame.  For the most part, save the very edge of content (and even here it is much better than it was in the past), this has come true. Pretty much every spec is viable.

Perhaps it is difficult for newer players to understand what an enormous change this is. I have been a paladin since Vanilla. Back in Vanilla, there was only one choice for endgame paladins: you healed. Didn't matter what spec (and for some reason Kings was in the Ret tree), you couldn't tank or deal damage. Your job was to heal. And most of the time you didn't even wear plate. If you look back at the history of the blog, the first three years are railing at this restriction, and eventually coming to terms with it.

Now, paladins can tank if they want, or hit things with a giant two-handed hammer if they prefer. I still heal, but I choose to heal, and am not forced to heal. For this alone, I will always count "bring the player, not the class" to be huge success.

If you look at any modern MMO where classes can play multiple roles, there is an unstated assumption that the devs will at least try to make each role viable. I hold Ghostcrawler responsible for this change of attitude in the MMO industry.

Now, there are concerns with this idea. This, in conjunction with smaller raid sizes, has led to some homogenization among classes. Classes can no longer be as unique as they once were, for fear that those classes will not be present in the raid.

2. All specs and classes have an interesting rotation.

The paladin rotation in Vanilla was ... unique. You put up a Seal, cast Judgement to start the fight and recast another Seal. Then 30 seconds later, if the mob hadn't died to your auto-attacks, you could cast Judgement and re-Seal again. Other classes were all over the map. Some were crazy complex, others were very simple. I remember the days where the optimum Warlock rotation was to sacrifice your Demon and spam Shadow Bolt.

All modern specs have a rotation of at least moderate complexity now. Usually you use 3-5 spells, and there is a proc or resource you have to account for. The rotations are different enough to give the different specializations their own feel.  Each class is at least moderately interesting to play, and not as terribly simple as paladins used to be.

For the most part, this has been a good change. The only concern I would have is that sometimes it feels that each specialization is "too" unique. For example, did Destruction warlocks really need a second nuke in Incinerate? I have always thought that Shadow Bolt was good enough.

3. Current tier instead of progression.

Vanilla was built on the idea of progression. No matter when your guild was formed, you started in Molten Core, and moved up raid by raid. The problem with this was that often guilds got stuck on bosses and couldn't move on. Only a small minority of raiders saw all the content.

Starting in Wrath, WoW essentially moved to a "current tier" model. The raid that was released most recently was the tier that everyone did. Each raid was available in multiple difficulties, allowing groups of different ability levels to see the entire raid. As well, buffs or nerfs would often occur to keep groups from getting stuck.

I think in a lot of ways this is the most controversial of the changes during Ghostcrawler's tenure. Progression "feels right" in a way that is somewhat hard to articulate. There is this sense of "being on the path" that no longer exists in WoW. Right now, I'm playing FFXIV, which has a progression-style endgame. It feels "right" to be moving up slowly through the content, that each challenge is similar in difficulty to how it was at release.

But the truth is that it feels "right" up until the point where you get stuck. My first serious raiding guild shattered on Lady Vashj, and I've never forgotten that. The current endgame promises guilds that they can stick together. It promises that you don't have to make the choice between playing with friends or seeing content. In Vanilla/TBC, this was a very real and present concern for players.

To Be Continued

There are other changes that happened during Ghostcrawler's tenure. I also want to talk about what I think was his biggest failing or weakness in terms of rules systems. Hopefully this post won't take me another couple of weeks.

The Ghostcrawler Legacy, Part I

Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street has announced that he is leaving Blizzard for a new opportunity. Ghostcrawler has been with Blizzard for about six years now, and was an important part of Blizzard's interaction with the community. This is a look back at Ghostcrawler's tenure.

Ghostcrawler essentially held two different jobs at Blizzard. He was the Lead Systems Designer and he also became the public "face" of the WoW dev team. Let's take a look at each aspect separately. In this post, we'll look at the public nature of Ghostcrawler's interaction with the player base.

Public "Face"

Before Ghostcrawler, devs really did not interact with the playerbase. All communications would go through the community managers or public relations people. As a result, communication was rare and somewhat opaque, tending not to be specific. Under Ghostcrawler, that changed. He was willing to talk specifics, to talk math with the theorycrafters, and outline Blizzard's reasoning on issues.

There were three primary mediums in which Ghostcrawler communicated. Each had their positives and negatives. This is how I saw each medium,.

In talking about each medium, I'm going to reference a technique called 5 Whys. In engineering circles, this concept is used to find root causes of problems. X happened. Why did X happen? Because A. Why did A happen? Because B. After asking Why about 5 times, you get to the true cause of the problem. I find that this technique explains a lot about what Ghostcrawler got right and got wrong when interacting with the player base.

Forums

The first place Ghostcrawler started posting was the WoW forums. He would jump in threads and answer questions, or provider the developers' point of view on certain topics.

I regard this era as the best era of communication with Ghostcrawler. His posts could go into detail, and convey some of the nuance and trade-offs. Because he was always responding to threads, his posts were always directly on point for player concerns.  In terms of the 5 Whys, I felt that these posts would often cover the second through fifth Whys, the root causes, and not just the surface cause. Almost every Ghostcrawler post was insightful and worth reading.

However, Ghostcrawler's presence warped the forums. People ceased to make threads to communicate with other players, and made threads to "bait" Ghostcrawler, to get him to respond. While Ghostcrawler's posts were always worth reading, the rest of the forum often became worse, and more noise than signal.

Dev Posts

After a while, Ghostcrawler gave up on the forums and tried writing regular columns on the WoW site. While these were okay, they suffered from two problems. First, Ghostcrawler wrote at too high a level. Essentially, he would talk about the problem and the first Why. But what we really cared about were the deeper Whys. Dev posts need a certain level of detail, of getting into the weeds and nitty-gritty. Ghostcrawler's dev posts often eschewed detail and talked about changes as high-level, obvious concepts.

The second problem was that Ghostcrawler was no longer responding to players. He was initiating the conversation. Thus he wrote posts on topics that no one really cared about, or that were obvious to the player base.

The best posts that Ghostcrawler wrote in this era were the ones where he went through the patch notes and explained the reasoning behind each change.

The lesson I would draw from this era is that dev communications are best when they start from concrete detail and examples, rather than high-level concepts. As well, they need to respond to player concerns, not what the devs think are player concerns.

Twitter

After a while, Ghostcrawler moved to Twitter. Here, pretty much everything he posted was a response to a question from the community. But the major problem was that nothing he tweeted was worth reading!

I don't really fault Ghostcrawler for this. I think it was just a limitation of the medium. 140 characters are not enough to get into details, into nuance and trade-offs, to talk about the deeper Whys. Most of his responses are facile "first Why" responses.

In my mind, Twitter is a good medium for quick answers, to point to better sources, or to be snarky. It is not a good medium to try and convince people of things. You need long form writing to be able to do that.

Conclusions

Ghostcrawler created a new template for dev interaction with the player base. He showed that he could talk reasonably to us, to outline the devs' thoughts on issues, and that the players would respond favourably to this. He may not have been perfect ("Nerf Ret paladins TO THE GROUND!"), but he made talking about the game and changes far more insightful and interesting than they were previously.

Unfortunately, Ghostcrawler could never capture the same magic as his forum posts. His two other attempts, dev blogs and Twitter, did not work. In my opinion, they failed because he was unable to reach the proper level of detail, to delve into the 5 Whys of issues.

Wildstar's Interrupt Armor

Yesterday, Syl tweeted about a video demonstrating some of Wildstar's combat mechanics:

#WildStar Raiding Rampage - https://t.co/JJ3FVDJoLL ...very nice insight into bigger battles and the telegraph mechanics.
— Syl (@Gypsy_Syl) November 28, 2013

The second mechanic discussed is intriguing. Some bosses have "Interrupt Armor". Essentially, if you want to stun the boss, you have to first reduce the interrupt armor. Each stun you apply reduces the interrupt armor by one, and the armor regenerates after several seconds. So if the boss has interrupt armor of 2, you need to use 3 stuns to get through the armor and actually stun her.

This is the inverse of most systems used to keep Crowd Control in check. TOR has resolve. WoW and FFXIV use diminishing returns. In these systems, the first CC used has full effect. Subsequent CCs have shorter and shorter durations, until they cease to work at all.

In the interrupt armor system, the first CC has no effect. In the diminishing return system, the first CC has full effect.  The defender has more of an advantage in interrupt armor, while the attackers need to coordinate their attacks. The defender can take action to escape the battle and hide, allowing her time for her interrupt armor to regenerate.

I think that interrupt armor might be a better system for handling CC than diminishing returns. It makes CC rarer and require more work. But it still allows CC to be used.

As well, it offers more "knobs" to make abilities more unique. For example, you could imagine a long-cooldown stun being able to remove 2 stacks of interrupt armor instead of just one.

Interrupt armor is a very interesting solution to the problem of chaining crowd control on a target.

Legendary!

I finally got my legendary cloak, [Jina-Kang, Kindness of Chi-Ji]. I really liked the last quest, where Wrathion and Lorewalker Cho told the story of your adventures in Pandaria. It was a really elegant way of underlining Wrathion's philosophies.

I also like the way the last few people to get the Legendary are shown outside the room:

That was a very nice touch.

I have seen some grumblings about how this Legendary is too accessible, a "Legendary for casuals", if you will. I think that sometimes the hardcore forget that skill is not the only virtue. Dedication and perseverance are virtues too, and worth rewarding.

I should mention that this is my first Legendary. I was always the wrong spec or too far down the depth chart for the others. We actually gave 2 Val'anyrs to people who left the guild before ICC. So I may be biased towards a model that actually allowed me to get one.

I think this model for the Legendary is a very good one. It keeps it within reach of every demographic. You only get the legendary in the last patch, mitigating power concerns. The questline is long and involved, and very satisfying. I like how you had to do a bit of everything, even PvP. I know a lot of people didn't like the PvP part, but I thought it added to the scope of the challenge, making it more worthy of being a Legendary.

I hope a similar model is used in Warlords of Draenor.

Ever, Jane Kickstarter

I like Regency novels, so I was intrigued when I saw the Kickstarter for Ever, Jane. This is the first Kickstarter that I have contributed to. They are aiming to build an MMO based around Jane Austen's novels, with a specific focus on social interaction and manners.

They have a demo, which is pretty rough around the edges, but is still interesting.

Honestly, I am not too sure how successful this project will be. However, I think the MMO world does need some work on non-combat systems.

Combat systems are very well developed these days, with lots of variations, types and experimentation. Of course, there are many good reasons this is so. But non-combat systems are much less advanced. There has been some interesting developments in crafting and economic systems. Still, these systems, and even social systems tend to be far more rudimentary than the combat systems in most games.

My hope is that a game like Ever, Jane, with strong connections to the source material, might come up with a good, interesting social mechanic. Something the larger games will find worth stealing.

Warlords of Draenor: Featured Heroes

Scene: A meeting between Rob Pardo, Chris Metzen, Dave Kosak, and an unnamed junior developer who happened to be walking down the corridor outside.

Pardo: Hey guys, thanks for coming. Marketing wants to feature 10 existing characters that will be playing a role in the new expansion. You know, to get the players excited about seeing old faces.

Kosak: Well, the seven orc warlords, of course. Everyone loved them in the RTS games, and they're the focus of the expansion.

Metzen: How about some of the strong orcish women? Garona and Draka? Dave, I know your team has done a great job with their characterization.

Kosak: Great idea! Maybe Ogrim Doomhammer or Rexxar for the last spot?

Junior Dev: What about the Alliance?

Pardo: ... Alliance?

Junior Dev: Yeah, the other faction. Shouldn't we feature some of their heroes too?

Crickets.

Metzen: Well, I guess if we have to. What Alliance heroes are there?

Kosak: Maybe one of the Draenei, they do have a minor role in the story. The leader, what's-his-name, Velen!

Metzen: Man, I love Velen. It was so awesome when he went back in time to create Minbari society and founded the Rangers.

Junior Dev: Uh, that's Valen from Babylon 5.

Metzen: Oh. Then who's Velen?

Kosak: He's like an ancient priest and prophet.

Pardo: Sounds boring. But I guess we'll throw him in. Now for two more Alliance heroes.

Metzen: What about the King? The dude with the Chin?

Pardo: Marketing has asked us to back off Varian. He has his new book, Soul of the Wolf, coming out, and they don't want to over-expose him.

Kosak: Oh, yeah. That's the book where Varian teaches Taran Zhu how to control his emotions, defeats Lei Shien in single combat, then leads the Alliance attack on Ogrimmar and personally subdues Garrosh.

Metzen: I'll never understand the cries of Horde favoritism. Look at all the crazy things Varian does.

Pardo: In any case, what about the son, Prince Goody-Two--I mean, Anduin?

Kosak: Yeah, Anduin is in the expansion. He has that long chain where he meets Corki and the two of them get captured by the ogres over and over, while the player continues to rescue them.

Metzen slams the table.

Metzen: OH MY GOD! I've just had the most AMAZING idea!

Pardo: Oh?

Metzen: What if Garrosh kidnaps Thrall's baby son before he goes back in time? The boy is raised as a Hellscream, and is a teenager when the players reach Draenor!

Kosak: Brilliant!

Junior Dev: Wasn't this a plot line on Angel?

Metzen: It's got drama, pathos! The kid is a savage prince for a a savage land! How will Thrall react? The rest of the Horde? The father-son dynamic will be incredible!

Kosak: Amazing idea! I'll start dropping bread crumbs in the current content, and we can go full bore in Patch 6.2.

Metzen: Yeah, we can even set the kid up as the future Warchief. Garrosh done right!

Junior Dev: What about Vol'jin?

Metzen: Why would a troll be in charge of orcs? It doesn't make a lot of sense. We'll just have Vol'jin be corrupted by an Old God or something.

Kosak: Yes! That way we can have a troll dungeon in 6.3. Zul'Durotar!

Pardo: Great idea, Chris. You've still got it! But we have to go back to the featured heroes. We have Velen. We need two more. Ideas?

Kosak: Let's back off Anduin, we used him heavily in Pandaria.

Metzen: What about Khadgar? Lots of stuff with portals in this expansion.

Pardo. Sounds good. Khadgar is our second Alliance hero. Now for the third?

Crickets.

Kosak: Maybe we should look up the other Draenei on Wowpedia?

Metzen: Man, where's Red Shirt Guy when you need him?

Junior dev brings up Wowpedia, and they look at the list of existing Draenei characters.

Metzen: I don't remember any of these people.

Kosak: Just pick one at random, and I'll make sure he's in a quest.

Junior Dev: Okay, how about this Maraad guy? He's still alive.

Pardo: Great! Maraad it is then. I'll send this list to Marketing. Thanks for attending, everyone.

Metzen: I still think we should have featured Garona or Draka. We did a really good job with them.

Hard Mode Corrupter Zero Strategy

Corrupter Zero is the fourth boss in Dread Fortress, the first of the new Oricon raids in The Old Republic. On Hard Mode, it's a bit of a blocker. My group beat it for the first time last week after a few weeks of wiping. Our strategy is a bit different than the standard strategy, so I thought I'd post about it. I contributed a fair bit to the design of this strategy, and I'm rather proud of it.

The standard strategy and boss abilities can be found at Dulfy. This is for the 8-man version.

Rationale:

The key to this fight is handling Concussion Mine. Concussion Mine is a debuff the boss puts on a random player. The debuff starts stacking every second and doing a short-range damage pulse every second as well. As stacks increase, the damage from the pulse increases. The debuff goes away when a pulse hits the boss.

Basically, your raid and tanks cannot afford to take the third or higher pulse of damage. It just stresses healing and everything goes badly from that point on. Ideally, the very first pulse (the lowest damage one) is the pulse which hits the boss. This strategy is focused around the idea of eliminating Concussion Mine as a mechanic you need to think about. Ideally, you should not need to watch your debuff bar for Concussion Mine at all.

Basic Strategy:

1. Tank the boss in the center of the room. Everyone stacks in melee range of the boss. You can also have everyone stack in the center and the boss be tanked just off the center. You don't need to worry about facing the boss away.

2. Tank swap on Heavy Slash. Heavy Slash knocks the current tank away, so if the second tank taunts while it is casting, the boss should stand still. Tanking on Heavy Slash also keeps the tank debuff stacks low.

This positioning eliminates Concussion Mine as a mechanic. Concussion Mine goes out, the first pulse is guaranteed to hit the boss, and the debuff drops off right away. As well, being in the center of the room means that the ranged can reach all the adds without moving.

3. Burst the Elite add first. When the adds spawn, drop large AoE so the ranged gets aggro over the healers, and then burst the elite add first, interrupting his ability. Your ranged should not have to move.

We are ranged-heavy, so I am not precisely sure how melee should play this. You could leave one melee on the boss. If the melee is on adds, they should save their speed boost or leap for Concussion Mine (run out to the adds at normal speed). Then they should jump back to the boss as soon as it starts casting, rather than waiting to see if they get the debuff.

We do have one tank go out to the adds and aoe taunt to get a little bit of aggro before he comes back to the boss.

4. Run out of Anti-Gravity Field. If you see a red circle, run out of it. Run back in as soon as the cast is finished. This ability is on a strict timer, which makes it predictable. The first anti-gravity field will occur 1 minute into the fight, when the boss changes from ranged to melee. The second anti-gravity will come 30 seconds later (at the 1:30 min mark).  Then there are no anti-gravity fields until the next range to melee change at 3 minutes, then at 3:30.

That's the general pattern, once when he changes from ranged to melee, and then 30 seconds later. There will be a concussion mine right before the change, so wait for the mine before running out.

5. Avoid the really big laser at the end. Run to a corner, see where he lands (use the mini-map) and then run to the channel where he isn't. Then switch channels as soon as the laser finishes. Try to kill the adds if you can, but avoiding the laser is key. Once the lasers are done, you can mop up and finish the fight.

Final Notes:

Note that this strategy does mean that the raid takes extra AoE damage from the various other mechanics like the Missile Barrage or Massive Slam. Your raid should use defensive cooldowns as appropriate, especially during Missile Barrage. However, your healers should be able to heal through this. In exchange for taking this damage, you minimize damage from Concussion Mine. What we found was that extra ticks of Concussion Mine was what led to wipes.

I think someone in my guild took a video of our kill. If so, I'll link it when he uploads it.

Warlords of Draenor: Leveling

The big news in leveling is that WoD will give every account one free level 90 (I gather you can boost any one character to 90), allowing them to completely bypass the old leveling game.

I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, if you want to play with your friends, 90 levels is a pretty huge barrier. Plus, your friends can help you adjust to the flood of abilities at 90, not to mention that you can play with Proving Grounds and the 10 levels of Draenor.

On the other hand, I believe that a game should not offer a shortcut for it's "central fun", and leveling is certainly a very important part of the WoW experience. As well, it's a lot easier to adjust to all your abilities when you get them slowly over time.

On the third hand, leveling has been sped up and simplified so much that it is a hollow shell of the leveling experience in Vanilla/TBC.  There's really two opposing viewpoints here. One side feels that leveling should take time and effort. The other side believes that leveling is an inconvenience before getting to endgame. In the past, Blizzard has attempted to split the difference, making you level, but increasing the leveling speed so that you reach endgame fairly quickly.

I don't think this compromise has satisfied either side. One side is unhappy that they are outleveling their quests, while the other side is unhappy that they have to level at all.

I hope that Blizzard takes this opportunity to recalibrate leveling to something more sane. Something that may take longer overall, but the pacing of individual zones more closely matches the older experience. After all, everyone will already have at least one 90 that they can use for endgame. And probably this will get offered as a character service for an extra payment.

Then you can skip it leveling you want. But if you want to level, you get a proper, non-rushed experience.

Warlords of Draenor: Lore

As Mists of Pandaria progressed, and the Alliance complaints about "Horde favoritism" got louder, I bet there were some Blizzard developers looking on with dismay. Unlike the rest of us, they knew that the upcoming expansion--with production already in full swing--was Horde-centric, dialed up to 11.

After the WoD reveal, I think that even the most die-hard Horde supporters have to concede that the Alliance has a point about faction focus in the storyline. Still, hopefully there will be some interesting elements about the Draenei and some paladins running around smiting orcs.

As for the expansion topic itself, eh, it seems okay. Instead of time travel, it's probably easier to think of it as a "Mirror Universe" version of Draenor.

The one thing I am a bit concerned about is that Blizzard seems to be focusing on their core properties a little too much lately. Hearthstone is Warcraft-skinned. Heroes of the Storm uses the Warcraft/Starcraft/Diablo universes.  Now WoD hearkens back to the original Warcraft games. Admittedly, it does come after Mists of Pandaria, which ventured into a new direction.

Nostalgia is all well and good, but sometimes you need to look forward, not backward.

 I would like to see Blizzard come up with a new Intellectual Property. Their three universes all date from the 1990s. Perhaps Titan would have been a new IP, but that's been sent back to the drawing board.

Warlords of Draenor: Raiding

As predicted, flexible raiding kills normal raiding and takes its stuff.

In WoD, there will be four raiding modes, each on separate loot lockout:

1. Raid Finder

More or less the same as now, with a little bit of scaling tech. I'm not really sure what the scaling will really add, given that every role but tank fills pretty fast. I don't really see fights scaling down from 2 tanks to 1.

What I would like to see is for signing up for multiple instances to be the norm, more like Dungeon Finder. For example, let me sign up for all of the Siege of Ogrimmar instances at once. As long as I get put in an instance that still has bosses I haven't killed this week, life should be okay. It would mean that the pools for each wing would be much larger, and raids able to form quicker.

Also, I would like to see four tanks, but that's very unlikely.

2. Normal Raids

What's currently Flexible difficulty. Scales from 10 to 25 people.

The only really interesting thing here is the loot system. Apparently Personal Loot will become an option like Master Loot or Need Before Greed. Otherwise the amount of loot you get will scale. I gather this means that--if you get 1 item per 5 raiders--11 raiders would mean you will have a 20% change of getting 3 items, and an 80% chance of getting 2 items.

3. Heroic Raids

What's currently Normal difficulty, but with flexible scaling. Scales from 10 to 25 people. Pretty much the same as WoD Normal, but more difficult.

4. Mythic Raids

Current Heroic difficulty. Fixed size of 20 players. Having a fixed size should allow Blizzard to make more inventive fights. As well, the race (at least in the West) will have a common format. One nice thing about 20 players is that you should be able to take your bench along when you farm a Heroic Raid.

This does suck a bit for current Heroic-10 groups, but the scaling of the lower level should allow them to work back up to size if they wish to. As for current Heroic-25 groups worried about cutting people, the truth is that there is always churn around expansion time. Some people will want to retire, some will want to come back. The drop from 25 to 20 should be taken care of with normal attrition.

There are also several high end raiders worried that the separate lockouts will mean that they will need to run every instance. I think that the fact that the lower difficulties are flexible will make it easier, it make showing up more optional. You can have smaller subgroups run the lower difficulties, without really affecting things.

Personally, I like separate lockouts because you don't have to worry about time as much. You just finish one instance and then start on the next. When you want more time on a specific instance, you just drop a lower instance from the schedule.

Questions and Conclusions

I wonder what will happen with Thunderforged/Warforged gear. As well, how will Valor be handed out? I wonder if it wouldn't be better to just drop these two ideas altogether. Just go old school and rely on drops entirely.

All in all, I think this is a solid plan for raiding. I think the Flexible raids will make roster and attendance issues much less of a headache for all non-Mythic guilds. Even Mythic guilds should find that the Flexible nature of the Heroic raids will make organizing farming runs a fair bit easier, allowing them to focus on the truly difficulty content.

Warlords of Draenor: Itemization Changes

Blizzcon has come and gone. Lots of information about the next expansion, Warlords of Draenor, was released. Let's take a look at some of the changes.  WoD will see a fairly large overhaul of gear. Here's a summary of what's coming.

1. Armor with different primary stats is going away.

There will be no more "Strength" plate or "Intellect" plate armor. Instead, plate armor will have both Strength and Intellect. If you're a Holy paladin, you use the Intellect. If you're a Ret paladin or a warrior, you use the Strength. The same thing will happen with mail and leather (Agility/Intellect gear).  Set gear will use the bonuses for the current spec.

This is a brilliant solution to the Intellect plate problem. It makes armor usable by far more specs. It allows Blizzard to make lots of armor with different combinations of secondary stats. It makes life a bit easier for gearing up secondary specs.

All in all, a superb solution. A veritable Alexander's sword cutting though the Gordian Knot.

2. Hit, Expertise, Dodge, and Parry stats are going away.

Juggling the Hit and Expertise caps has long been an annoying problem. So these stats are being removed. I imagine that special attacks will always hit, while white attacks may have a small miss chance still.

The tanking stats are also being removed. It looks like tanks are going to focus on active mitigation. One thing to note is that it looks like there won't be "tank" armor or "dps" armor. Each spec might be prefer different secondary stats, but it won't be as obvious as it is now.

3. Reforging is being removed.

I called for the removal of reforging (and hit/expertise) back in 2011. I've never liked it. It's been an ugly hack, and I'm glad it's gone.

The only concern is that the differential between the Best-in-Slot piece and the second-best piece will be slightly larger. But everyone chases BiS anyways, and the game got along fine with this gap back in Vanilla/TBC.

4. Tertiary Stats

This seems very vague at the moment, but Blizzard is looking at putting new small unusual stats on items. Maybe things like movement speed increases. Possibly gem sockets will become rarer and less important.

I dunno, I wonder if one of these small stats will be overpowered and then everyone wants it. Somewhat like some procs on current gear. But I guess we'll have to see more concrete items to judge.

5. Item squish

It looks like all the numbers will be reduced in size, by at least an order of magnitude. It seems mostly cosmetic, with assurances that old content will still be soloable.

Concerns - Spirit?

All this looks pretty good. The only concern I have is with Spirit. I don't see how Spirit can go on armor. Since DPS and Tanks get nothing from Spirit, Spirit gear would be automatically tagged as healer gear, and then non-spirit gear is not for healers. This seems to cut against the whole reasoning behind combining armor types. Not much point in getting rid of Intellect plate if Spirit plate takes its place.

But if armor doesn't have Spirit, that means the total Spirit a healer can have is a significantly lower proportion than she has now. So I'm a bit curious as to how Blizzard will handle regen. Maybe they'll just tune mana regen for the lower amount of spirit.

Or possibly this is a signal that the devs are looking to reign in mana regen, and conservation and triage will once again be part of the healer vocabulary. I personally am in favor of this style of play, but it was a large part of the Cataclysm intro dungeon/raid debacle. I am not sure if the community will approve of making mana more important for healers again.