Tag Archives: wow

Damned If You Do

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Are you considering changing the reputation system?  So many dailies are burning us down from the game.  Tabards back?

When we tried limits, folks said we were playing nanny.  When we tried nothing, folks said they didn’t have anything to do.

Blizzard has an interesting problem at hand.  This quote from Ghostcrawler, has a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” mentality to it and I can empathize to some degree.  When you have nearly 10 million clients, you can’t keep them all happy.  When you integrate disparate systems, you’re going to upset some people.

Excluding Lich King, most of WoW’s trajectory has been aligned with the more hardcore activity crowd.  Tangible goals and rewards.  This makes sense in terms of accomplishment and sense of place – makes a bit less sense from a financial perspective if you want to keep 10 million people playing.  The casuals clearly are the majority in games (even 80% of EvE players have never touched NullSec) and therefore subsidize the activities of the hardcore.  Blizzard’s challenge over the past few years was expanding on that casual market – which is has in terms of player ratios.  Keeping them around is a challenge though, especially when you have quality competition on the market (F2P for one).

So for years the hardcore have had the upper hand in terms of game direction.  This expansion is clearly not aimed at their efforts.  Kung-Fu panda and pets does not scream hardcore.  Yet in order to keep that group occupied, they integrated hardcore activities into casual content.  The best raiders have a “need” – real or artificial – to complete casual content in order to progress on the hardcore front.  A true shoe-on-the-other-foot issue if I’ve ever seen one.

Who do you please?  The casual market who is bringing in the dollars?  The hardcore market which consumes the most and gives you the highest visibility?  I mean, does anyone in their right mind care that the Will of the Emperor is a raid boss MORE than the fact that there are hundreds of pets to collect in-game?  The battlefront seems to have changed and you’re never going to please the masses.

When Wrong Enough is Good Enough

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Storm Legion comes out soon (2 weeks!) and a common question that I see is how Trion is able to balance all the souls.  The answer is simple, they don’t.  Rift has quite a few quirky mechanics that beg to be balanced but aren’t.  It won’t ever be an e-sport or try to (*cough*WoW*cough*).  It won’t have heroic raids.  It doesn’t put an arbitrary line in the sand and say “only the best of the best can do this”.

WoW’s largest flaw is also its largest pull – the generic homogenization of everything.  The outliers who specialize, Rogues and Warlocks namely, are massively shunned by the gaming populace.  I remember reading a population breakdown and with 10 classes, both combined were under 5%.  The generic classes (Druids and Paladins) took over the largest chunk by far.  WoW took the design decision to balance everything and so doing, made everything taste like Vanilla.  WoW gives you two talent sets because that’s enough.  I could give you 6 others, they’d be the same as the first two.

Rift is like the Harry Potter Jelly Beans.  You really don’t know exactly what you’re going to get.  Might be great, might be earwax.  It’s the reason they give you 6 talent builds and a very easy way to swap between them.  I’ve played a Bard with pets.  I’ve done a ranged tank warrior.  I’ve done melee mage (and will formally in the expansion).  I’ve DPS healed (before Monks made it cool).

I love Lego.  So does my daughter.  You can pick and choose what you want to use to build what you want.  Rift almost gets that but being a themepark, comes as close as possible.  It’s the possibility of failure, of spectacular and gut wrenching mistakes that makes the success so much more tasty.  When you can’t fail, you can’t really succeed.

Level 90 – At Last the Beginning!

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WoW Vale of Blossoms

So late Friday I hit 90, about 2-3 quests into Townlong Steppes.  Odd name that, for a zone that really has next to relation to actually steppes.  Those are supposed to be large expanses of fields, instead I get giant hills, caves, trees, swamps.  Still, 2 quests in and I had already unlocked the Vale of Eternal Blossoms, which is the final super zone, with the new islands’ capital-ish cities – or as I like to call the zone, daily-quest hub central.

Since in the end, reaching level 90 is really the beginning of the expansion.  I think only 1-2 dailies opened up during my travels but once I hit the magic number, it’s like an explosion of blue quests.  I can raise a dragon, I can maintain a farm, I can fish, I can cook, I can kill insects, I can collect flowers…I can be a professional go-fer.

I took the time to try out the last 2 zones and get a feel for their stories.  So let’s sum up the entire adventure a bit, knowing that I’m missing the final end pieces to two zones.

Jade Forest – A decent introduction to the denizens of Pandaria, with temples and mountains and lakes.  Jinyu (advanced Murlocs) play prominently, as to the actual Pandas.  There’s no real progress in the zone, barring 1 quest that has you destroy a giant statue.  Looks great, plays awkward as it’s the first time you’re using the new questing mechanics.

Four Winds – Basically you’re an animal killer throughout.  The entire zone is one giant farm.  Other than the quests on the west end, bordering Dread Wastes, there’s nothing of note here.  But those quests are amazing.  Also, quite short.

Karasang Wilds – Hello Stranglethorn Vale v. 5!  You finally get to see a town build up in phases, which is cool.  You also free another spirit, the Crane.  That portion is WAY too fast.  Like 5 quests and bam.  I didn’t understand this zone.

Kun Lai Summit – (well, there’s a mini zone with 3 quests before this).  This is the meat and potatoes zone.  You get to meet everyone, help build up a bunch of towns, see temples, explore the lore.  A couple quests in, all of a sudden I’m sent to 7 different hubs to try my luck helping.  The story is great, if disperse.  You really get an understanding of the workings of the population here.  Plus, there’s a Yak Wash.  You unlock the Tiger spirit here (cool in concept, horrible in execution).  You also need to complete this zone to unlock the Vale.

Townlong Steppes – This is a giant battlefield between the Pandas, the Sha and the Mantid insects from the south.  I’m about ¾ of the way through now.  I have a great dislike for everything in this zone, from the story, to the mechanics to the flow.  You’re supposed to unlock the Ox here (I can see him).

Dread Wastes – This is the insect home and you play with a faction that’s trying to restore order to the chaos.  If you’ve seen Starship Troopers, you know what to expect from the bugs.  There’s a central hub for the faction and everything just seems to “gel” throughout.  Seeing the links to the other zones is good too but the best part is the story. There’s a lore reason for everything here, meaning you actually have a purpose for the quests.  Refreshing.

Vale of Eternal Blossoms – Other than a small section in the middle for daily quests, this is a lore and city zone.  The picture above shows me standing in the fields.  Everything looks great.  Sadly, there’s a disconnect between why you’re here and what you’re doing.  What is cool though, is the Lore.  I learned more about Pandaria in 20 minutes than I learned over the 30 hours of leveling.  Who are the Mogu, why there’s a giant turtle, who are the Hozen, the Grummles and all the others.

Here’s my crystal ball though.  The Dread Wastes are going to be the main lore driver for the rest of the expansion.  The Mogu could not be more generic and are massively overused.  The Mantid – just wow.

WoW and Rift Targets, Over Time

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Using the Casual Hardcore argument, let’s take a look at two PvE MMOs:  WoW and Rift.  They are in direct competition with each other as they are both fantasy, themepark, PvE-primary MMOs.  WoW certainly has the massive lead with close to 10x the population levels but also 6+ years of a head start.

WoW Rift Compare

WoW Vanilla was built with old EQ gamers in mind.  They wanted the hardcore activities with a bit of the casual stuff thrown in.  Raids and PvP (other than world PvP) weren’t even in the launch client.  It was ambitious but at the time, they provided the only casual friendly fantasy themepark.  I don’t think we’d call it casual by today’s standards mind you, but back then it was certainly true.  Anyone who remembers the consumables-dance and resist gear-shuffle can attest to this.  Vanilla saw the largest player growth in terms of percentages.

WoW TBC focused heavily on the hardcore playstyle and activity set.  The gating system, factions, lots of raids, outdoor and inside along with a steep learning curve made it that if you wanted any level of success, you needed to play the game their way.  It provided some casual aspects of dungeon running for rep and rewards but even that gate was fairly difficult to traverse.  TBC saw decent player growth.

WoW LK flipped that around.  There were certainly raids but they removed the gating system, added tabards, hundreds of faction items, daily quest explosions and most glaringly, the LFD tool.  Every hardcore item, except for PvE raids (which added a heroic difficulty) was given a casual system.  Even the stat system was simplified.  LK saw the final player growth and cap at 12 million subs.  The sub drop was massive when Blizzard took a year between the final patch and the next expansion though.

WoW Cataclysm again flipped the target.  There were some casual aspects in the levelling game (which prevented you from grouping most often) but once you hit level cap, there was near nothing to do.  Only a couple factions actually had reasonable dailies and casual rewards (Ram’haken for one).  The focus was on the hardcore crowd up until patch 4.3 and the LFR tool.  Before that tool launched, less than 1% of the playerbase had completed a heroic raid, less than 20% had completed an at-level raid.  Subs peaked on launch but dropped continually until MoP.  The last numbers had the game at a 25% loss from their peak in LK – even with the year sub option for D3.  Which starts expiring this week.

WoW Pandaria is a casual approach, once more – plenty of dailies, a very good levelling system, a low gate of entry for dungeons, factions all over and the pet battle system.  The hardcore players have to navigate through this casual playground to get to their stuff though, making for some mad hardcore players.  Let’s see how that turns out.  I personally predict another 2-3 million player drop from now until March (when the D3 offer expired).

Clearly, WoW has been all over the map.  From a centrist idea to the outsides and back in either says that the market has changed drastically every 2 years or Blizzard’s strategic direction team doesn’t look farther than 2 years down the road.

RIFT now.  Rift launched with a mixed approach to casual and hardcore players.  Plenty of dailies, lots of rewards (pets and collections), factions, rifts, LFD and zone quests helped the casual folks.  A consistent approach to raiding and dungeons that required attention helped the hardcore crowd, though noticeably less than the casuals.  We’re 11 patches in though, which is where WoW was at the end of Lich King.  Many casual options have been sent out now; fishing, instant adventures, personal raids, LFGuild tool, mentoring, free character transfers, wardrobes, pre-built characters.  Hardcores have a new PvP setup, a new raid every other patch with quality content.

The Storm Legion expansion pack is certainly aimed at the most casual crowd though with player housing, triple land mass, new towns, new collectables.  Hardcore players will get more raids and a stat increase but no real new systems.

Though Rift only has one expansion pack on the graph, the 11 content patches all fit into the same general quadrant.  This shows consistent strategic direction, though certainly this is over a smaller time frame.  Rift has fit nearly 5 year’s worth of WoW content into 18 months.  We’ll see how the game does in a few more months.

Punch Out

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The little one decided to sleep all night, so I got some time in tonight.  I finally had the chance to finish up all the quests in Four Valleys, which was quite an adventure.
WoW Insect ColossusChen Stormstout and I ended up in the Brewery taking on some neat mini bosses.  One I needed to knock barrels over his head to slow him down, another I needed to AE the entire zone to get started and the final one I had to periodically run over bubbles to drop the boss’ shield.  I rather enjoyed that portion as you had to pay attention and I was finally NOT OUTSIDE.

The final quest is related to the picture above.  Once you finish all the quests in both Karasang and Four Winds, you end up on the west side of the zone, fighting a massive insect invasion.  That big blue guy, a colossus appropriately, knocks down the wall and insects plow over.  These guys hit like trucks, I died on the first multi-pull, so I had to change strategies.  You end up with a group of guys you’ve been talking to since you landed on the island and take down some more mini bosses before finally heading for the big guy.

Well before this though, you have a sub quest to practice your martial arts – namely chopping blocks with your fists.  It’s a fun quest with an interesting mechanic.  Once you get to this big guy, like 50 quests later, you get shot into his stomach.  Inside, you use this same block chopping mini-game to kill him from the inside.  Which I must admit is cool in notion (a bit less in practice, since you know, inside the stomach and all).

I was quite pleased with the end of this zone quest.  There were a lot of ups and downs along the way but as a story arc, I’ll remember it for a while.

Progress, Perhaps

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So here’s a picture of my monk giving this Hozen a massage.  A 100 fist massage.WoW Monk Fists

Last night the little one decided to drink for about 4 hours.  Due to that, I got to play on a raft for a bit and punch some monkeys around.  If it wasn’t monkey, it was sharks.  Or cats.  Lots of cats.

Previous expansions, there was a reason for  being a mass murderer.  Sure, you attacked boars and bears and beasts but for the most part, it was humanoids.  And they were out to kill you.  In Panda land, I find myself more often than not, killing mass patches of wildlife, just to collect a pile of feathers for some monk’s collection.  The sheer amount of birds I’ve killed is staggering.  I lasso them, I take their eggs, I take their feathers, I take their flesh.  What’s with this bird slaughter?

A bit like the previous post, Hemet and pandas have something in common it seems.  A hatred of anything that moves and can’t talk.

That being said, I did see a couple quests against the Sha.  HP Lovecraft slimeballs of hatred.  But 5 quests in the 60 (or more) per zone is more like a side quest.  I spent more time collecting items to build a raft, go out to see, kill sharks and hunt treasure than I did fighting a guy 30 feet tall made of slime.

So I’m done with the Jade Forest and Karasang Wilds.  I’m back in Four Winds to finish the story, with only a couple steps into level 88.  I did 2.5 zones (or so) in 3 levels, with 4 zones to go.  Wonder what will happen at 90.

The Myth of Auctions

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I am a stupid min-maxer when it comes to money.  My wife can attest to that, certainly.  This remains true within the MMO space.  In most games, I will select the reward that gives me the most money or best reward for long term use.  WoW even had add-ons to show you which reward was worth the most gold, which is pretty useless in Panda-land, since you only ever get 1 reward.

There’s a joke in my circle of friends that I do everything with spreadsheets.  Chalk that up to my real world job of analytics I guess, but my in-game antics follow the same method.  I have spreadsheets for WoW, RIFT and TOR.  One page has all my base mats, the other pages are the crafted mats I can make and their sale price.  I calculate their cost, minus their sale and get a profit.

In TOR, this number was usually negative, sometimes massively so.  It’s the reason everyone takes Slicing after all.  RIFT is a bit different in that practically anything you can make at max level makes money.  This is mostly due to a smaller subset of players crafting.  WoW is the outlier here and it feels like I’m competing against China.

Multiple reasons here.  First, is that there are really only 4 skills that make anything useful for players – enchanting, inscription, food and alchemy.  Every other crafting skill is basically useless after the first month.  Second, and linked to the first, with only 4 skills to use and players having access to 3 of them at any time, there’s a pile of competition out there.  Finally, within a given skill set, there are maybe a half dozen items worth making, at most a dozen.  Not exactly a lot of choice here!  Plus, we’re in the first month, so people are still levelling rather than buying.

I use mods to do my spreadsheet work and find profits.  I also use them to find items to buy and help post.  I don’t see why anyone would ever do this manually.  Still, the profit levels are horrible.  My jewelcrafter has yet to make a single gem that sells for more than the crafting cost.  Inscription is barely making a cent.  I’ve run both daily (for about 10 minutes total) and make about 300g a day.  My monk however, has made over 7000 gold going from 85 to 87.  Hmmm.

I remember in Lich King where I made an attempt at breaking 100k from the auction house alone.  The Tundra Mammoth at 10K was a lot back then!   Took about a month to train the skills and get the tools, but I did it.  Now I’m kind of wondering where the money is going in the game.  If crafters aren’t making money, then the farmers are.  People as a whole have more money (way more) than every before and there just doesn’t seem to be a place to spend it.   From levelling alone, you should be able to buy all your glyphs, all your flight training, mounts and train up a crafting skill or two to max level – with cash left over.

Guess the time of min-maxing the AH is pretty much over for me.

Well That Didn't Go As Planned

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My littlest one took over 2 hours to take her bottle last night, so I didn’t really get a chance to do much with the Monk other than some Nesingwary quests.  Which I’ll talk about briefly.  Hah!

In the original incarnation of WoW there was a place called Stranglethorn Vale.  It was huge.  Dying was a major pain in the butt as you’d have to cross 5 minutes of land to have a chance to find your body.  Usually in a bad spot, and you’d die again.  I played on a PvP server for a bit and this zone made me quit that idea after being ganked for the 5th time.  Anyways, STV as it was called, had a camp with Nesingwary – a hunter. He and his crew sent you around to kill various wildlife – cats, crocs, raptors.  All told, there were ~20 quests in the chain and it finished with 4 elite kills.  Everyone grouped for those.

BC had him come around in Nagrand for some more killing.  Again, a ton of quests, way too much blood.  LK had him in Sholazar Basin with a few less quests within his sphere but more like the leader of a small town.  In Cataclysm, he was an NPC in a quest in Hyjal but didn’t offer any real interaction.  The real change was STV becoming tolerable.

Anyhow, Hemet’s murderous ways are back in Pandaria and way more like STV than should be healthy.  He (and his cronies) sends you to kill some mushu, stags, cats and foxes.  The catch is that these buggers are a combination of any of the following: a) in groups, b) invisible, c) low spawning, d) in the middle of other hostile enemies.

What would normally be a 2-3 minute quest turns into a 20 minute murder-fest of crazy proportions.  Seriously, the area should be called “fields of slaughter” for the masses of corpses strewn around.  Side note – I pull out my Shaman skinner for this zone.  He just stands in one spot, skins like mad, makes profits.

People think that the Lich King or Deathwing were massive killers but I stand by the idea that Hemet Nesingwary is responsible for more deaths than any other character in WoW.

Hemet Most Wanted

The New Curve

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I finally hit 85 with my Monk the other day, which means that Pandaria is open to me.  Let’s meta first.  Monks have a daily quest that gives a 1 hour buff for 50% exp boost.  Every 10 levels (it seemed) the quest became available again and refreshed the buff plus added another hour.  I had full heirloom gear plus accepted a random level 25 guild invite, giving me something like 70% experience boost.  I also created the monk and waited a day, to get some rested experience (monks rested exp lasts twice as long as other races).  So take all of that in and I was sitting at nearly 350% experience boost for the first 60 levels.

I rather enjoyed the “new” 1-58 portion.  It linear, granted, but the stories were much better.  Especially in the underused zones.  Punching Deathwing in the face or riding a motorcycle with a babe into the moon is pretty funny.  58-68 is the Outland stuff.  I barely entered Terrokar (3rd zone) before I happily left.  There’s one town in that zone, when I first entered, had a solid 10 quest givers hungering for me to help them.  It was like  Christmas Tree had lit up.  Next up was Northrend.  I did one starting zone, then the game quests pushed me through 2 zones in a flash, with me ending up in Zul’Drak.  The experience gain here was crazy.   I missed some of the more involved quests, like the one where you blow up the zombies with an abomination.  Cataclysm is still behind a level 80 wall but once in, you only need 2 zones (out of 5).  Now this is linear questing!  I chose Hyjal to avoid the 3d mess of transport in water-world.  The story here is pretty cool and getting to take on massive bosses (with the help of other bosses) is awesome.  Fighting Ragnaros is a massive letdown though, as you’re just a gopher.  “Slay these bugs while I hit this massive wall of fire”.  Like they couldn’t kill them with a blink?

Deepholm is next, which is my favorite of all Cataclysm zones.  WoW has a penchant for keeping all single player zones above ground and all dungeons underground.  I guess people like the feeling of an “open” zone.  Well, this is a massive cave under the Maelstrom, full of fairly rich lore that hasn’t yet been abused. I remember the original WoW and the first dungeon patched in – Mauradon.  I played that with friends a whole bunch of times, it was a blast since it was an open dungeon.  I found Theradras to be a damn cool idea as a boss.  Earth elementals, to that point, were a collection of random rocks.  They remained that way until Cataclysm (while Fire and Water were used in Molten Core).  Deathwing lived underground for millenia.   Why only 1 zone?  Bah!

Level 85 opens the Pandaria stuff.  I zone in, get on a helicopopter and start nuking some things. 2-3 quests later, I’ve killed some horde bad guys then this massive wall of gunk comes alive.  I’m 1 zone through and I’ve never seen another horde enemy.  I thought this was the Horde vs. Alliance expansion pack?

Anyhoot, I’m having fun.  The quest structure is a lot better.  I get sent all over the map to discover new zones and enemies.  Some are silly (the SI:7 quests), some are somewhat serious and others are just strange (stomping bookworms).  A few times though, I’ve run around without any quests in my log and no direction.  That was the most fun I’ve had to be honest.  I haven’t really “explored” WoW since Vanilla and having to get off the rails for a bit felt good.  I had to cross half the zone before I found the next breadcrumb quest.

I have leveled 3 characters to 85, 2 more to 80 and 3 to 60 over the years.  If I were to rate the leveling curve experience thusfar, I would go with Pandaria > 1-60 (post-Cataclysm > Lich King > Cataclysm >1-60 (pre-Cataclysm)>>> Burning Crusade.  The 1-60 (pre-Cataclysm) isn’t really fair since the game wasn’t even a themepark back then – at least not by today’s standards.

The next few posts will probably cover my experiences from 85-90. It’s an interesting ride.