The End of Side Quests?

There was a surprising tidbit on MMO-Champion yesterday:

• The Jade Forest quests had a very clear story, but it also had a lot of side quests that could bog you down.
• In Warlords of Draenor, your map will show you where to go to continue the main storyline, along with the locations of bonus objectives.
• The bonus objectives no longer have any story text that go with them, just a list of objectives. Now when there is quest text, you will know that it is really worth reading.

I am more surprised and dismayed by this than anything else I've seen about WoD.

I know a lot of people skip quest text, but aren't there a fair number of us who don't? Back when it was still an option, I used to turn scrolling quest text back on when leveling so I could focus on the story.

I am not really thrilled with this decision. In fact, I thought a major complaint about Cataclysm was the extreme linearity of the zones. A single main storyline sounds like it will be even more linear than Cataclysm was.

I also liked side-quest stories because they would often give different perspectives on the situation. Maybe the three quest givers would send you to the same place, but each had different priorities. Now there will always be one quest and one priority.

This was one of the complaints I had about Guild Wars 2:

What I find is that this lacks context, lacks those small stories that weave together. For example, in Elwynn Forest in WoW, I really enjoy the Young Lovers questline. It's nothing amazing, you take a note from Maybell Maclure to Tommy Joe Stonefield, get Grandma Stonefield to direct you to her old suitor, the alchemist William Pestle, kill some mulocs for ingredients for an invisibility potion, and give the potion to Maybell so she can elope. Nothing amazing, just a short little story. But I guess I'm a romantic at heart, so I always enjoy doing that questline. 

The thing is that, so far, the hearts in GW2 really lack that. They're just a bar on the screen to be filled with repetitive tasks. And the tasks don't really build on each other to form a story, except in the vaguest, most general sense. (There are bandits attacking the farm. You kill the bandits. The farm is saved.) It's also very UI-driven. At least normal questing has a semblance of interacting with the people in the world. 

Now, in the end, maybe normal questing is just the same. That the stories of side quests are just an illusion, a fig leaf over reality, and it's all about filling up many smaller bars instead of one bigger bar. But it turns out that I like--and maybe even need--that illusion. 

GW2 Hearts are quests for people who think that skipping through instant quest text is too much work.

Now WoW decides to follow in those footsteps. Apparently quests in WoD are quests for people who think that skipping through instant quest text is too much work.

The Long Wait For Warlords of Draenor

It's pretty apparent to everyone that the current drought of content in WoW is going to be the longest since the game began.

It's rather interesting in light of how the expansion began. The first few patches came really fast. Almost too fast, in my opinion. Blizzard could have easily added another month to each of 6.1, 6.2 and 6.3. That would have spread out the content better.

But they didn't. At that point in time, Blizzard obviously believed that they would hit the deadline for the faster schedule. So I wonder what changed.

My theory is that they had to scrap a lot of already designed work and restart at some point. Maybe it wasn't up to their standards, or just wasn't working out.

Another possibility is that they wanted to make significant technical changes (perhaps the change to the new file format), and that ended up taking significantly longer than expected. Though I am not really certain that significant technical changes would have held up all the content generation.

I don't think, however, that Blizzard is delaying the expansion because they can, or because the "suits" felt it was the path to maximum revenue. Rather, I think something happened after the start of Mists, probably after 6.3, that made delaying the expansion the lesser of two evils.

Azeroth Choppers

I often find the MMO community to be rather snobbish and close-minded.

Take Blizzard's latest advertising venture, Azeroth Choppers:

It's an interesting effort to cross over into a market that may not have yet played WoW. At this point, the gaming community is probably saturated, with everyone at least having tried WoW.

Plus the existing mechano-hog/chopper in game are very popular mounts, especially since they were the first ones to allow passengers with the sidecar.

I think Blizzard should do more of this style of marketing. Some of it will work, some of it won't. But I think it shows some degree of inventiveness.

Heh, I think Blizzard should make an effort to sneak a Warcraft novel into the romance section of the bookstore. A full-out bodice-ripper. They could hire a recognized author in the romance genre. The trick would be to downplay the Warcraft part enough so that the bookstores don't automatically class the novel as fantasy. It would be interesting to see if they could pull that off.

Actually, to me, the most interesting part of Azeroth Choppers is that Blizzard is comfortable with giving a reward to only one faction. Or put another way, giving the reward to all players, but only allowing characters of one faction to use it. Both those formulations are the same thing, but they sound very different.

Holy Paladin Talents in Warlords

Let's take a look at the upcoming level 100 Holy Paladin talents in Warlords of Draenor.

The first thing to note is that Blizzard is effectively making different talents for each spec. The three Holy talents are completely different than the Retribution and Protection talents. Retribution and Protection do share two talents, but have a different third talent.

Beacon of Faith - Mark a second target as a Beacon, mimicking the effects of Beacon of Light.

Pretty straightforward, but also very easy to use and understand. Great in raids where you can simply beacon both tanks. In 5-mans, it's probably weaker, but you can always beacon yourself and not have to worry about your own health.

Note that if AoE healing becomes significantly weaker, this might prove to be quite powerful, as you are now healing three people at the same time with your single-target spells.

Beacon of Insight - Places a beacon of insight on an ally, increasing their healing received from your next direct single-target heal within 1 min by 30%. When consumed, or when the target reaches full health, it moves to the most injured ally within 40 yards. Limit 1.

One of your injured allies will always have a buff giving a boost to your heal. However, it is a little unpredictable in practice, as it will bounce around the group. But as it always bounces to the the most-injured ally, that probably is the one you should heal.

Heh, in some respects, this reminds me of that old Vanilla mod which would arrange players by health, and the healer would just heal the top bar. You could probably do a semi-decent job just by chasing the beacon around.

One open question is how Blizzard defines "most injured". Is it most injured as percent of health, as absolute amount of health remaining, or absolute amount of health lost? Each of those scenarios results in slightly different patterns in the bouncing. For example, absolute amount of health lost means the beacon will usually jump to a tank. Absolute amount of health remaining means it will probably bounce around the dps.

Saved by the Light - When you or your Beacon of Light target drop below 30% health, you instantly grant the injured target a protective shield, absorbing up to 30% of their maximum health for 10 sec. You cannot shield the same person this way twice within 1 min.

I will assume that this means that if you drop below 30%, you get a shield. If the beacon target drops below 30%, she gets a shield.

This is excellent for single tank fights, giving your tank another emergency cooldown. I don't think the personal shield will see much use in PvE, but it's always helpful to have. I can see this being the talent of choice in PvP, though.

The thing about this talent is that if things go well, it will never be used. But it might also be the factor which prevents a wipe and results in a successful kill. It's very strong against unexpected spikes.

On the other hand, the other two talents will straight up increase your throughput. That increased throughput might prevent the tank from ever getting that low in the first place.

Conclusions

I think all three talents are pretty interesting. I would probably use Beacon of Faith for raids, and one of the other two for 5-mans. But I can see it depending a lot on the fight and what your assignment is.

First Impressions of The Elder Scrolls Online

I am not yet sure if The Elder Scrolls Online is a good game. But if you have any interest in MMOs from an observational or theoretical point of view, you really should give this game a spin.

ESO does so many things differently from what has become the norm. It is worth seeing exactly how things change.

For example, there is no minimap. I found this to be a surprisingly huge change. Apparently I primarily navigate by minimap, rather than looking at the world. The loss of the minimap seems to force you into the world a bit more, make you navigate by recognizing landmarks.

It's also amusing that your character uses a map animation when you bring up the map. So a very common sight is seeing other adventurers standing around looking at their map. Everyone is slightly lost and trying to figure out where they are.

ESO is the first game in a while that feels like it is in a world once again, rather than a highly-choreographed play or façade.

Character Creation

Character creation is pretty extensive. There are 9 races (though most are variants of human and elf) that give you a base to work with. There's a billion sliders where you can change your face and body shape.

I'm beginning to hate these slider-based character creators. I'm terrible with them. I simply cannot make a decent-looking character. I'll get something that is not bad, but then I'll log in a day later and it just looks worse and worse.

Sadly, I'm beginning to look at extensive character creators as a negative. The game company artists are much better than me at this sort of stuff, and I would prefer to leverage their expertise.

Basics

The game can be played in first or third person. I switched to third person pretty quickly, mostly because it is what I am used to. The mouse is locked to the center of the screen, and pretty much everything is handled by targeting the element and pressing E.

The color scheme is more towards the realistic, rather than the cartoony. It seems fine to me.

There are tons of barrels and bags that you can ransack. Most of them have pretty useless stuff, but this seems traditional for an Elder Scrolls game.

Abilities

The ability system is pretty interesting. It's a cross between a point-based system and a use-based system.  Basically skills come from a lot of different areas. Some come from your class, some come from the type of weapon you use, some from armor, some from your race, etc. You can invest points in picking up skills, and put 5-6 skills on your bar. Those 5-6 skills level up as you do stuff.

The skill system is a bit wide open. You can take healing abilities as any class, or tanking abilities. Of course, the class skills emphasize the role, so I don't know how effective going against type will be.

Combat

Combat consists of your hotkeys, plus left-click to attack, hold left-click to do a big attack, right-click to block, right-click + left-click to interrupt.  It is certainly serviceable, and is "good enough".

However, my first thought after engaging in combat was "I wish the TERA team had done this combat." Combat is very similar to TERA combat, only TERA combat is far superior in performance and responsiveness.

Heh, in a lot of ways, ESO world-building and design, combined with TERA combat, would have been an amazing game.

Questing

Quests are interesting. There are relatively few of them, but they are long, multi-stage affairs. You can only track one quest at a time, which somewhat forces you to focus.

As well, there's lots of activities that aren't tied into the formal questing system. For example, I found a treasure map on a pirate I killed. It showed a sketch of a tower on a hill, with several large rocks in the foreground. As I was wandering around, I saw the tower. I found the correct perspective that matched the sketch, and dug where the map was marked. And I found treasure!

All that didn't involve the formal quest system at all.

Conclusions

I am not very far in yet. I cannot tell you whether The Elder Scrolls Online is a good game or a bad game. But I can say for certain that it is an interesting game. And sometimes, that's enough.

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.