Verified Identities and Archeage

One of the major MMO stories of last year was the launch of Archeage in the West to a reasonably welcoming audience. However, Archeage was overrun by spammers, hackers, and bots to such a degree that many people gave up on the game.

Many commentators pinned the blame for this on Trion, the western publishers. Trion in turn, said that they required help from the developers, XLGames, to combat these problems. Most commentators seemed to feel that this was just Trion trying to cover up for their mistakes.

But what if Trion was right? Most MMOs these days need to build in anti-spam, anti-hacker, and anti-bot defenses. What if Archeage didn't have these defenses that we in the West take as normal?

From my quick research, Archeage Korea requires three extra items to create an account:

1. A Korean IP Address
2. A Korean mobile phone
3. A Korean Social Security Number (some sort of number assigned by the South Korean government)

These three external requirements tie the Acheage account to a very specific person. What if Archeage in Korea doesn't need built-in software defenses? What if these external requirements are enough to reduce spam, hacking, and botting to acceptable levels, or eliminate it entirely?

Perhaps companies in the west need to come up with a way to create a verified identification before allowing account creation. Of course, the problem is that there are multiple countries, all with different identification documents and numbers, and legal restrictions on how those identifiers can be used. You might be able to do something with a dedicated third-party company, which the game companies support.

Rather than a software arms race between spammers, hackers, botters and the game devs, verified identities might be a more successful strategy to pursue.

Crowfall

I saw some teasers for an upcoming MMO, Crowfall.

It's just the barest of teasers so far, but they look to be creating something in the vein of Ultima Online and Star Wars Galaxies. Trying to get back to "world" aspect of MMOs.

For example, in an interview at mmorpg.com, they say:

There are a ton of lessons to be learned looking at games like Star Wars Galaxies and EVE Online which had and still have success with their crafting and economic loops. From a very high altitude, crafters need to be able to: craft unique items, explore new recipes and profit from the results of this exploration, and create customized items for all styles of play. Crafters must have an audience to buy their goods. The loop between crafter and combatant has to exist! And, ideally, crafters need to be able to “mark” their product so that they can build a social reputation and a following. 

The very concept that players can and will lose their items at some point is required, otherwise the game loop breaks. It is a very controversial topic for those who don’t like the potential of losing their items, and we understand that.  But sometimes you have to embrace ideas that may not be popular at first glance, because they open up amazing areas of gameplay that are otherwise not accessible.

That's a pretty bold statement, but it might very well be correct. Inconvenience drives sandboxes.

The dev pedigree is also somewhat impressive: J. Todd Coleman, Gordon Walton, Raph Koster. We'll see what they come up. There are many ways an MMO can screw up, and these devs aren't exactly known for prioritizing performance and responsiveness.

Still, I'm kind of interested in Crowfall, and it's mostly because of a single picture:

That Templar just looks good to me. It's clean, attractive, in solid, functional armor that still has a surprising amount of detail. It's stylized, avoiding uncanny valley effects, while still retaining proper human proportions.

I just really like the design intent as exemplified by this Templar. If the rest of the game matches this aesthetic (and performance/responsiveness is strong!), Crowfall just feels like it will be a blast to play.

Elder Scrolls Online Goes Buy-2-Play

The other recent news was that Elder Scrolls Online announced that they were switching to a buy-2-play model (with an optional subscription).

I've seen some people saying cynically saying that this was the plan all along. That ESO was just trying to milk as much as money out of subscribers as possible before switching. As Azuriel points out, F2P has the unfortunate side-effect of engendering cynicism among the players.

This imputation is probably unfair to the devs behind ESO. If anything, B2P would have been the backup plan. If ESO had stabilized at a high number of subscribers (0.5 million, 1 million, whatever), they would have been more than happy to stick with being a subscriber-only game.

Oh well. It will make life easier on the console, though.

I'm not sure if I will take another look at ESO. My problem was with the combat, and I don't know if that has improved or not. If any readers are still playing ESO, feel free to chime in on the state of the game.

Melee Builds and Treasure Goblins in Diablo 3

My current Crusader build in Diablo 3 is a Holy build. It's a build that has a relatively large amount of ranged damage. However, the Crusader archetype is a sword-and-shield melee fighter. So for a few Paragon levels, I tried out a build focused around melee skills and blocking, with lots of things like thorns (reflective damage).

This melee build was actually a lot of fun, and effective against enemies. It was especially fun with large packs of enemies, as you just wade into the packs, get surrounded, and then everything around you blows up as you block all the damage.

However, there was one mechanic in D3 which made this melee build extremely frustrating: Treasure Goblins. Treasure goblins are enemies which have a large amount of loot. But they don't attack you. Instead they run away from you and attempt to open a portal through which they escape. Currently there's an event where the Treasure Goblins can be found in pairs or packs.

Treasure Goblins were supremely disappointing with a melee build. While chasing down one goblin, the others made their escape. I was basically only able to kill half a pack of goblins. In contrast, the ranged Holy build can usually get all of them.

It was very frustrating because Treasure Goblins are somewhat rare, and very rewarding if you kill them. So despite the fact that the melee build was fun and performed well everywhere else in the game, I switched back to ranged. After all, the ranged build dealt just as well with regular enemies, and had the advantage of making it much easier to kill Treasure Goblins.

This illustrates how hard it is to balance melee against ranged in these sorts of games. Melee classes or builds have a fundamental weakness built into them. Ranged classes or builds need a similar weakness. When they don't have that weakness, the balance tilts too heavily towards the ranged classes and builds.

Paying for Access in a F2P Game

Is it okay to charge for access for a Free-2-Play game?

Blizzard is offering a $40 bonus pack for Heroes of the Storm. It has some heroes, some skins, and most importantly, Beta Access. If you didn't get an Alpha invite, this is pretty much the only way to get into Heroes of the Storm.

I got an Alpha invite, and I've played a little bit of Heroes. MOBAs are not really my cup of tea. I've never actually played League of Legends or similar. So I can't really tell you much about the gameplay.

But in my opinion, the label "Beta" is a misnomer. Heroes is pretty much ready for launch. Any company other than Blizzard would have launched already. I'm sure they're going to add more heroes, and do the occasional balance tweak. But that's par for the course for a modern online game.

One could say that Heroes is launching. It's just going to cost $40 for the first couple months and then go free. Essentially, you're paying to play it at "launch". If you're willing to wait, the game will eventually become free.

I don't think this is a bad thing. The Old Republic does this with early access for features for subscribers. Books have traditionally done it with expensive hardcovers coming before cheap paperbacks. Heck, one could say that games do it with sales, especially the eventual Steam sale. The only real difference is that at the end, the company offers the game for free, instead of a nominal $5 or whatever the Steam sale price is.

I also think these types of schemes have other benefits. It rations everyone into the game slowly. Rather than have a massive rush of players at launch, you have several generations. New blood comes in to refresh the community as people start to leave.

In fact, consider a scheme like the following: For the first month after launch, the game costs $60. The second month, the game costs $50. The third month, $40. In the seventh month, the game becomes fully Free-2-Play. I think such a scheme would be straightforward and beneficial, rather than masking the current state by calling Launch "Beta".

Updates

Well, so much for resolutions. Not a whole lot has been happening on the gaming front here.

In SWTOR, my guild lost too many people to attrition in the run up to Shadow of Revan. Sadly, we didn't get a boost from the expac, either. So the five or six of us who were left all moved to a new guild. Hopefully this one works out and we can get back to raiding somewhat regularly.

I've pretty much put World of Warcraft on the back burner. I'm logging in occasionally to do the garrison story, but am not really doing much else in the game.

For some reason, I've started playing Diablo III again. I'm trying to get my Crusader to a decent standard. One problem with D3 is that it's pretty hard to find intermediate builds. All the builds I see say things like "requires 6-piece Akkan's set". I just got a second piece this week. So it's really hard to tell what's a good build or not for my gear level.

Right now I'm running a Holy build built around Fist of the Heavens and Heaven's Fury. I'm only in Torment II, but it seems pretty decent. Luckily I got one of the new Ancient Legendary weapons, which has been a big boost.

Otherwise, not much else to report. I am looking forward to the latest FFXIV patch which came out today.

WoW Plex

Over the holidays, Blizzard floated the idea of introducing an item which can be used to give a month's subscription, and allow that item to be sold in-game. Essentially taking Eve Online's PLEX and applying it to WoW.

I think this is a bad idea.

I think this is similar to Diablo 3's Auction House. There the problem was with third-party trading, and Blizzard introduced the AH to combat scams. That worked, but ended up warping the game even farther. WoW PLEX would be similar. It would be introduced to combat Real Money Transfers from sketchy sites. But it does this by turning players into RMTers, by warping their incentives.

You can see this in Eve Online. Eve has a significant problem with scamming, lotteries, multiboxing and similar shenanigans. I believe this is because PLEX helps incentivize these actions, not just among the illegal third parties, but for regular players.

A lot of Eve partisans will say that PLEX has been good for Eve. Truthfully, I am not so sure. I think PLEX has masked a lot of problems with Eve, especially on the resource production side. Problems which would have been exposed and fixed a lot earlier without the bandaid of PLEX.

As well, I don't believe that it is good for the game to have one segment of stronger players play for free at the expense of other weaker players. Right now, the playing field is relatively equal. WoW rests on a broad base of subscribers, and we are all relatively equal. The necessary monetary support is divorced from the in-game universe.

PLEX for WoW is a bad idea. It warps the incentives for a significant fraction of the playerbase, and creates a real divide between those players who free-ride, and those who pay. I urge Blizzard to reject this idea.

Edit: I posted this in the comments. Hopefully it makes the parallel with D3 and WoW more clear.

D2 had a problem with scammers. D3 introduced a mechanic (the Auction House) to combat that problem. That mechanic warped the incentives for the larger playerbase. The cure was worse than the disease.

WoW has a problem with 3rd party RMT. WoW is proposing to introduce a mechanic (WoW PLEX) to combat that problem. That mechanic will warp the incentives for the larger playerbase. The cure will be worse than the disease.

A New Year

Happy New Year to everyone!

As the new year arrives, I find myself in a bit confused as to what direction I should go in. I'm currently playing 3 MMOs, but at a low and rather unsatisfying level. The big problem is that I'm not in any stable groups. I am essentially playing solo at the moment.

World of Warcraft

Most of WoD has been good. But 5-man Heroics are absolutely terrible this time around for me. They just don't feel right. The tanks are playing crazy, and healing feels terrible. It feels like Cataclysm Heroics, only instead of killing the DPS when they do something stupid or mechanics are ignored, they just take extra damage and strain the healer more.

It's just a bad experience entirely. I blame active mitigation.

LFR is pretty boring. So if I want to stick with WoW, I'll have to apply to and join a raid guild. Yet I'm not sure I want to do that again.

The Old Republic

I did not like Shadow of Revan. I thought the story was pretty terrible. I also realized after my last post that I don't really feel in control of my character during conversations anymore. If you play the original stories, every time your turn comes up in the conversation you get a choice. It's pretty rare that your character makes an automatic response. In SoR, it feels like your character makes more and more automatic responses, and you get fewer choices in the conversations.

Essentially, story-wise it feels like TOR has been drifting further and further away from the original design. But I liked that original design, and it was the main reason I was playing TOR. I don't really want to play "WoW with lightsabers and a few more cutscenes."

As well, TOR has had real problems with responsiveness since the expansion. To me, responsiveness is key. A game that responds badly simply makes playing an unpleasant experience. For example, my sniper has a channeled ability called Series of Shots. If Series of Shots finishes its entire channel, a second ability Followthrough is enabled. Lately, at least half the time there will be lag during the Series of Shots channel, and Followthrough will not trigger.

The upside to TOR is that it's the closest thing I have to an existing raid. It would be much easier to get into a steady operations group in TOR than in any other game.

Final Fantasy XIV

There's nothing really wrong with FFXIV. I just don't seem to be excited about it. I log in whenever there's new content, but don't really feel keen to work on my gear or Relic weapon or new classes.

Resolutions

Three resolutions this year:

1. Write about other subjects - I'd like to start a non-gaming blog, maybe write about programming or other random things.
2. Write more - I've been pretty erratic about writing this year, and I would like to write more often.
3. Be willing to write about controversial subjects - I usually shy away from controversial subjects. But I am not sure that is the correct approach. As well, the outlines of a controversial subject post often stay in my head, and keep me from thinking and writing about other topics.

In any case, I hope 2015 is a great year for all my readers.

Should Team Games Prevent Trash Talk?

These days, most competitive team games don't allow you to talk to the opposing team. Instead, you can really only communicate with your own team. The idea here is to prevent trash talk and make the game more civil.

But has this strategy really worked?

Sure, it has cut down on cross-team incivility, but sometimes it feels like that was replaced by incivility from fellow team members.

I think it feels a lot worse when people on your own team are berating you. There's a sense of betrayal when that happens. If the trash talk was coming from the other team, well, they're the enemy.

In fact, it might even be more helpful for team cohesiveness to be verbally attacked by the opposing team. It would strengthen the sense of "us versus them", instead of the enemy being faceless, robot-like opponents.

Obviously, the best case scenario would be for there to be no uncivil behavior at all. But from our common experience of random groups in online competitive play, that seems like an unrealistic fantasy. Given a choice between being taunted by the opposing team or being berated by a fellow teammate, I'd rather take the taunting.

Shadow of Revan

This post may contain spoilers for Shadow of Revan. I will try to avoid major ones though.

The Old Republic launched it's latest expansion, Shadow of Revan, last week. I've gone through the main story on my Imperial Agent. The servers were a little rocky and buggy, but overall the mechanical experience was decent. I did like the single player flashpoints that were part of the leveling experience.

However, the story was terrible.

First, the basic plot felt like something from the low level planets. Infiltrate a pirate gang, make nice with some natives. Really? The player is a Dark Council member, the Emperor's Wrath, the ghost of Intelligence, the Warden of the Jedi Order. And we're doing random pirate shenanigans? Then the standard "track down the big bad and kill him before he unleashes his superweapon" story to finish things.

It felt like a Chapter One story, not a Chapter Five.

This is further exacerbated by the fact that all the consequences are off-screen. In theory, Revan's plot has bad effects. In practice, they're happening somewhere out in space, while you are wandering around a paradise.

Compare to Makeb where the Imps are stealing valuable material from the Hutts, who are worthy villains. Then stabilizing and saving an entire planet. Meanwhile the consequences of not saving the planet are being visually demonstrated as the planet starts shaking apart with the ground quakes.

As well, every conversation in Shadow of Revan felt off to me. It was like they were each missing one or two lines, and overly abbreviated. The lines themselves were terribly cliche, especially anything Theron Shan said. To be honest, Darth Marr was the only character to redeem himself. I just don't think the dialogue was up to Bioware's previous standards.

The ending, while in theory should be exciting, didn't make much sense. The main villain was hoping for Event X to occur, and he has a plan to deal with it. Event X occurs anyways. The main villain does not execute his plan for Event X for no real reason that I could see.

Overall, I would hope that Shadow of Revan is an aberration for the TOR team, and that their future efforts return to their previous standards.

But then again, maybe the fate of F2P games is a spiral downwards as quality and effort slowly bleeds from real content to the fluff that people spend Cartel Coins on.

10th Anniversary Molten Core

I ran the new version of Molten Core the other day. It was a lot of fun and rather nostalgic.

It was pretty funny how similar it was to MC back in the day. Herding 40 people, with about 20 being competent and carrying the rest. Wiping on trash. Pulling trash and bosses at the same time. Begging the mages to remove curses.

Our first wipe happened because we pulled 2 corehound packs together, and the got caught in an eternal resurrection cycle. Otherwise it wasn't too bad, I don't think there was any more outright wipes, though there were a lot of deaths.

The bosses were fairly easy, probably easier than the trash. It was good to see Ragnaros again. Plus you get a helm and a mount.

All in all, the new Molten Core was a fun experience. It's worth gettting to i615 and trying it out before Blizzard removes it.

Nagrand, Initial Dungeons

Nagrand

So the triumphant conclusion to the Alliance storyline was a cutscene featuring two orcs duking it out. Outstanding, Blizzard.

Aside from that Nagrand was a pretty good zone. Lots of varied quests. I'm not so sure that having several final bosses run away with "See you in Highmaul" was the best of ideas. But it does tie the first raid to the zone.

Initial Dungeons

I did Silver Proving Grounds and my first heroic dungeon. It was the Grim Depot with the railway. A clever dungeon design, really.

However, something just feels wrong with WoW's small group content. I'm not sure what it is exactly, but it hasn't felt right for a couple of expansions now.

I think it has to do with how the exact makeup of the trash doesn't matter anymore. It feels like every trash pack is the same--even if they are made up of different mobs--and is dealt with the same tactics.

Also, as a healer, it feels like I am lacking in control. Which is an odd thing to say, because healers never really controlled anything. But I can't really describe it any better than that.

Level 100, Spires of Arak

Level 100

I finally reached level 100 with Coriel. I also upgraded my garrison to level 3, though it took all my gold. I haven't touched the max level dungeons yet. My plan is to finish questing in Nagrand and then see what I want to do.

I did do the Bronze Proving Ground for healing to get a decent healing weapon. It was fairly easy. I haven't tried Silver yet.  I did also craft my first i640 epic: a healing ring. The secondary stats are terrible, but whatever. I'll fix it after I craft the i640 necklace.

Spires of Arak

I liked this zone a fair bit. It did seem like a little bit of a side-trip, focusing on the Arrakoa instead of the Iron Horde. But I liked the mythology behind the Arrakoa gods, and also the legend of Terrok. As well, the followers of the Raven Mother were hilarious.

I disliked the goblin quests, but that's because I dislike WoW's whole take on goblins that appeared in Cataclysm. It's too anachronistic for my tastes. Gnomes are kind of similar, but they lean more to the steampunk vibe instead of modern corporatism.

I'm also not super-thrilled at what they did with Admiral Taylor. It feels like Blizzard saw the various complaints that Nazgrim was killed while Taylor was left alive, so they decided to balance it in the most ham-handed manner possible. At least Nazgrim got a good death, and sparked a fair bit of discussion and debate. Meanwhile Taylor gets killed off-screen by some random warlock. (And then becomes a ghost follower? Really?)

Cutscenes and Characters

I'm currently playing three story-based MMOs: WoW, SWTOR, and FFXIV. I've noticed one major difference between WoW and the two other games. In WoW, a lot of the time the NPCs dominate or overshadow the player in the story.  Take the intro to Warlords of Draenor, or as I like to call it, the Khadgar Show.

There is no real equivalent to anything like that in TOR or FFXIV. WoW wasn't always be like this, too. The NPCs really only came into prominence in Wrath and later expansions.

My theory is that it has to do with how each game handles cutscenes. In TOR and FFXIV, cutscenes are done within the game engine, and the player character is always in the scene. That allows TOR and FFXIV to make the player character the focus of the cutscene. Even in FFXIV, when two NPCs are talking to each other, the camera often cuts to the player character to get a reaction shot.

Doing this ensures that the player character is the center of storyline [1], and is not overshadowed by NPCs.

In WoW, though, the player character is not in the cutscenes. I'm not sure if this a deliberate choice, a limitation of the engine, or because the cutscenes are pre-rendered. But because the player character is not in the cutscene, an NPC must become the focal point. Thus all the final, pivotal moments in WoW are rapidly becoming the province of NPCs. Tirion and Arthas. Thrall and the Dragon Aspects at the end of Dragon Soul. Vol'jin and Varian at Ogrimmar. Compare that to endings of the class stories in TOR.

To be honest, I find WoW's practice here dissatisfying.

In some ways, I think Blizzard learned the wrong lesson from the Wrathgate. That was the first major use of an in-game cutscene. Despite the player not being in the cutscene, it was a huge success. But I think the Wrathgate was an exception to the general rule. The Wrathgate was a tragedy, and as such the player's role was witness, not participant. That is what made that cutscene work.

But in every other event after that, the player is a central participant, and should have equal billing with the NPCs. Instead the cutscenes, and then the game lore, diminishes the player's role.

This didn't happen in Vanilla and TBC, mostly because there were no cutscenes and everything was done in game. Take The Great Masquerade, for instance. If that event had been implemented in modern WoW, I think it would have been a cutscene focusing on Bolvar and Windsor. The player would be "offscreen". Because that option wasn't available, it was implemented in game, and the player was just as much a part of the event as the NPCs.

1. Well, maybe not in FFXIV's Hildibrand questlines. There the player's role is not so much main character as it is horrified spectator.

Talador, Leveling Dungeons, Tarren Mill vs Southshore

Talador

A welcome return to form after Gorgorond. This was a solid zone with some interesting quests and lore. It was very nice to see the contrast between WoD and TBC here. I'm up to level 98 now.

Heh, about a year ago I asked what happened to the Alliance paladins? It seemed to me that the Alliance story had lost a lot of its identity when the major paladins dropped out of sight during Wrath. This expansion we got a new Alliance paladin in Yrel, and the story picks back up. Coincidence? I think not.

Leveling Dungeons

I've done the first three leveling dungeons as Holy. They're okay. Short, quick dungeons with reasonably interesting bosses.

However, I am rapidly coming to the conclusion that--as a healer--I strongly dislike active mitigation. My job is to keep the tank up, and active mitigation makes healing a weaker (lower-skill) tank a much harder job than it really should be. All three tanks seemed very squishy to me, and I had to chain cooldowns constantly to keep them up.

You could tell it was playstyle, because after a wipe the tank suddenly becomes much easier to heal. Why they didn't play like that in the first place, or why they are chain-pulling like crazy, I don't know. It's incredibly annoying to see a tank's health falling rapidly and to know it's because the tank is playing improperly rather than anything I'm doing.

Honestly, I think Blizz is cruising for a Cataclysm-style unhappiness effect, at least from the healer perspective. The environment doesn't have the one-shots of Cataclysm, but I think healing will turn out to be unreasonably hard for random groups, and will need to be buffed. How they're going to do that without damaging the balance of pre-made groups will be interesting.

Tarren Mill vs Southshore

This is a temporary battleground for the 10th Anniversary. I've played it twice, and I think it's a lot of fun. It's very simple, just a straightforward zerg between the two towns. No unique mechanics to learn, which is very refreshing. I've won once, and lost once. The loss was very close, about 5 points.

The first time I played as Retribution, because I didn't realize you can't switch specs inside the battleground. Melee is at a bit of a disadvantage in these types of zergs, but I tried to pick off stragglers and run in, do some damage and throw a stun, and run and back out. The second time I healed.

I really like the catch-up mechanic. You start as a Private when you respawn, and every 10 kills you rank up and get a tiny buff to damage and healing. However, killing high ranked players nets you more points. The team in the lead usually has more higher-ranked players. This makes it easier for the team behind to catch up to them. It's an elegant, natural system. It's also a very nice nod to the old PvP ranks from Vanilla.

"This is EVE" Trailer

CCP put out a new trailer for Eve Online, and it is really good. Warning: this trailer has a lot of swearing.



As befits a sandbox game, the focus is squarely on the players. I really like that they included a middle section with non-fleet activities like transporting goods, industry, and mining.

It's interesting that CCP did not shy away from the strong language and Eve vocabulary. The focus is on the emotions behind the voices, and not really what the voices are saying. There is no real effort to make the video "accessible". I think this was a good call, as it adds to the authenticity of the video.

It's notable that the usually fractious Eve community absolutely adores this video. As well, it seems to be working for CCP, as new character creation in Eve is up significantly.

I also think this trailer taps into a truth: that we play MMOs over other games to play with other people. Lately it feels like the genre has forgotten that, that it is more important to "mediate" between players. That the default is that playing with others will be a bad experience, and all the new dev effort goes into systems to mitigate that bad experience. This trailer takes a bold stance against that line of thought, unabashedly declaring that playing with other people is fun.

Gorgrond Questing, Garrisons, Sub Numbers

Gorgrond Questing

I was out of town for most of last week, so I have not advanced much farther. I did finish Gorgrond. I'm not sure what I think about choosing one quest path based on which outpost you build. It felt like you only got half the story.

I chose the Sparring Ring and ended up being sent to the north. Overall, Gorgrond was decent but not really memorable. I did like seeing alternate-Rexxar and his animals.

Garrisons

I really like Garrisons. I like them a lot more than housing in other games. For me, I really like the way different parts of the Garrison work together to produce things. Housing very often feels so static me. You place a chair and then you are done. But with the garrison, the mine produces ore which feeds the jewelcrafter. Lumber gets turned into resources. NPCs are dispatched on various tasks. It's a lot more SimCity that normal housing, and I think that makes it more attractive.

I also really like how Blizzard brought back old NPCs to help populate your garrison. The best was seeing Maybell Maclure-Stonefield and Tommy Joe Stonefield. I've mentioned before that I love that quest from Elywnn Forest, and it was really well done to see the results.

Sub Numbers

So WoW is back up to 10 million subscriptions in time for the 10th anniversary. There's some pleasing symmetry to that. Also, no wonder the servers melted.

I wonder how much of a role Elder Scrolls Online and Wildstar played in this. I think there were a fair number of players who were burned by both those games, and they may have retreated back to WoW, the comfortable, dependable game.

Warlords of Draenor Launch

Warlords of Draenor was released on Thursday. As is tradition, the servers promptly melted. Thursday and Friday were pretty bad. The few times I was able to get in, the lag was so bad it was nigh-unplayable. However, the server maintenance Saturday morning seems to fixed most issues. Aside from queues on the high population servers, everything seems to be going well now.

All in all, it just emphasizes that one should never take time off work for the launch of an online game.

My paladin, Coriel, is level 93 now, and I've done the first Alliance zone: Shadowmoon Valley. It was a pretty good zone with a decent story. I like the mix of quest-driven gameplay combined with more open "Timeless Isle"-style activities like rare monsters and treasures. It's the best of both worlds, and it's always exciting to see a skull pop up on your mini-map.

I must admit that I was caught off guard by how central the garrison is to the leveling experience. It's well done, and I think does a very good job of establishing your character's role in the expansion. I rather like how all the NPCs call you "Commander".

I really have no idea what I'm doing with the garrison, but hopefully it's working out. I like recruiting new people and sending them on missions. It's simple but very well done.

I also like the randomness as applied to quest rewards. It's neat that green quest reward can randomly upgrade to blue or purple. It's a very good use of randomness.

A very bad use of randomness, on the other hand, is the Draenor Perks system. My first Draenor Perk for Retribution was Improved Forbearance. As I predicted, this was very disappointing.

All in all, WoD is going reasonably well. Blizzard says that demand was much higher than they anticipated. Which I suppose is good for them. However, I can't help but think that the lesson that will be drawn is that "SAVAGE! Orcs, orcs, orcs!" is what the players want. And maybe that is what we want.

Mists of Pandaria, in Review

Overall, I thought Mists was a pretty good expansion. It never quite pushed over the line into "great" though. This was one expansion that I really did not do a lot in. I never raided seriously, and I ended up leaving WoW at the beginning of this year.

The Good:

• Initial questing - I thought all the initial zones were very well done, and quite interesting.
• The Pandaren - Everyone expected a joke race, but the pandaren turned out surprising well.
• Patch 5.1 - I really like the way the story was woven into the dailies in this patch.
• Thunder Isle - Another good zone.
• All Raid Instances - All the raids were pretty well done, I thought. There were no tiers that were distinctly disliked.
• Flexible Raiding - An outstanding innovation.
• Legendary Questline - I really liked this questline, and how it worked over the course of the expansion.
• The Farm - I really enjoyed building the farm and those series of quests and dailies.

The Mushy Middle:

• Dailies - I know that a lot of people would put this in the bad column, but I think that is excessive. The dailies were very optional, in my mind, and were fairly fun to do if you did a faction at a time or so.
• The Isle of Time - I didn't really like this zone, but it seemed like a lot of other people did. I just prefer zones with stories, rather than random wandering around. Basically, if I wanted self-directed gameplay, I'd play Eve or another sandbox.

The Bad:

• Pacing - Each of the early patches should have had an extra month, and the last patch should have been a couple of months shorter. The length of time Siege of Ogrimmar was current was way too long.
• Spoiling the End Boss - I think the biggest mistake Blizzard made was revealing Garrosh as the end boss before the expansion even began. They should have done their best to keep it a secret until 5.3/5.4. I think revealing it so early caused people to overlook Pandaria itself, instead focusing on the ultimate end.
• Excessive Focus on the Horde- Orcs, trolls, orcs. This expansion was too focused on the Horde side. There is a whole other faction, Blizzard.

There was a lot of stuff I didn't try this expansion. I didn't do any challenge mode dungeons, or any raiding other than LFR. Basically, I was super casual. But the Pandaria core of the expansion was lots of fun. However, the pacing and later focus on the Horde weakened the overall experience.

Jedi Consular Done!

This post contains significant spoilers for the Jedi Consular storyline in Star Wars: The Old Republic.

I finished the Jedi Consular story yesterday. I played as a Light Side female Jedi Shadow tank. I used the 12x promotion, so I leveled strictly by class missions.

When you see most rankings of the TOR stories, the Consular story is often near the bottom. I disagree with this. So far, the Consular story is my favorite Republic story. It's not as good as the Agent story, but it's solidly in that second tier with the Jedi Knight and Sith Warrior.

However, I can see why some people don't like the Consular story. It's focused inwards, on the Jedi and the Republic. It's all about healing and diplomacy. I actually liked it a great deal. I really liked the hints of history in Chapter One. And then slowly building your alliance and armies in Chapters Two and Three. Corellia was very well done too, as you got to see the payoff of your recruitment efforts.

As well, I do not think think that going Dark Side works with this story. It really feels that you have to be Light Side, to unironically embrace the Jedi code and philosophy.

There are other minor criticisms. Tharan Cedrax is an excellent character, but his "Did you know I'm a pacifist?" is excessively annoying. I know he's supposed to come off as somewhat annoying, but there is a line, and the overuse of that phrase crossed it.

The main villain was very predictable. But even so it was very well done, with a nice twist.

The story also does suffer slightly from early choices constraining the future. It would have been nice for some of the characters from Chapter One, especially Yuon Parr, to come back in later chapters. But because killing them is a Dark Side option, they don't appear again, even though you saved them if Light Side.

Those are pretty minor criticisms. Overall, I thought it was an excellent story. However, I also think that it is not the best story to do first. It works really well as a later story, because of the perspective it provides on some of the later planets, especially Belsavis and Voss.

Force Persuade

If Obi-wan Kenobi had not been the one to use Force Persuade in the first movie, do you think it would have been considered a Dark Side action?

After all, you're literally overriding the mind and will of your target, forcing them to obey you. If you had put a shock collar on them and forced them to obey by threatening shocks, there would be no doubt that is Dark Side. Is Force Persuade so much better?

Maybe Force Persuade is really a Dark Side action. That makes for an interesting perspective on Obi-wan, with him being a little more "gray" than he first appears.