Signs of hope?

I barely dare to entertain the possibility, but a few things in MMO-champ today made my dying WoW spirit flicker. First, Rob Pardo hinted that he would be getting "deeply involving [sic] with WOW again."

Now, I'm pretty sure that at some point I read an interview with Rob Pardo, after his appearance in Time Magazine as "one of the 100 most influential people in the world." In said interview, he spelled out Blizzard's design philosophy - first make the game deep and compelling, then worry about accessibility. He identified that (rightly, in my opinion) as one of the big reasons, possibly the biggest reason, for the company's success.

Unfortunately I can't find the interview to save my life. I'd like to, because it displays something that I think Blizzard's been getting sloppy on... it was a pretty simple page, with yellow or orange background, a picture of Pardo in front of a PC, and in the interview he talked about his daughter playing a warlock or some such.

It's probably a far shot, seeing as Pardo was already lead designer for the previous expansions that damaged the game for me. But who the hell knows, maybe his coming back would signal the return of some measure of "elitism" to the game, to counteract the sickening trend of using the lowest common denominator as a benchmark.

**DISCLAIMER** Let me state very clearly that I don't want to "ruin everybody's fun." However, I do believe that there must be real differentiation between players and characters in order for the game to be compelling. One of the best ways to do that is for there to be a large potential difference between them, in each of WoW's many dimensions. That way more people can dedicate themselves to something that might make them feel a sense of accomplishment. Of course, it also means that you'll feel a nagging sense of jealousy, because you can't be equal to everyone at everything. But I think that state of affairs, far from "ruining the game," is a fair price to pay. ** END OF DISCLAIMER **

Another thing that made me look up in disbelief is this tweet:

"It's often easy to make players happy in the short term but not the long term, even though the latter is more important."

This was in response to someone complaining that no longer having increased run speed in ghost form was annoying. Wait... wha? Blizzard is cutting back on "quality of life" and putting their foot down? I'll be goddamned!

Then there's this tweet:

"People keep saying there was a blue post confirming the periods of time in which Galleon can spawn? T or F? I can't find any." - Player

"I dont't [sic] know if we posted that, but it doesn't seem like the kind of think we'd want to spell out. Game needs more discovery IMO." - Ghostcrawler

You mean you want to encourage people to stick their necks out and experiment? What happened to Blizzard "We don't want players to think too hard, it might fry their brains" Entertainment? Not that I care, not at all. It can go die in a corner and lay there, its dark deeds remembered only as mistakes not to be repeated.

And just to make sure I'm not wistfully cherry-picking the facts, let me just go and pick a random tweet to see what design philosophy is implicit in it.

Well, darn. Got a PvP conversation about Pummel/Heroic Throw silence effects. Since I know so little of PvP, it's hard to bootstrap any insight on overall game design from that... still, let's try.

"Silence on pummel was just as skillless as h-throw silence + cc spam and also having two spell reflects." -Player

"We don't think HT silence is "skillless." It was just too much with all the other tools and we didn't want to hurt e.g. mobility." -Ghostcrawler

That's kinda technical. Still, it says something that he's parrying the accusation of silence being "skill-less." One of the rallying cries of the bads is: "X doesn't take 'skill.' " Here GC is thinly implying that "skill" consists of using the available tools to solve the problems at hand. Saying that an aspect of the game is "cheap" and needs to be nerfed/removed is a lame excuse. In other words, L2P.

But this is GC, and he has a habit of taking a "L2P" stand on design issues, even if sometimes he's irritatingly ambiguous, trying to lead people to obvious conclusions without spelling them outright (that might be the work of the evil PR department). GC took a stand on dungeon difficulty in early Cataclysm, making a very polite post that nevertheless screamed "stop complaining and L2P." I still go back and read it sometimes, and I always applaud. But in the end it didn't do any good. The "gimme my weekly valor!" crowd ultimately had their way.

So yeah, in spite of this alarming urge to go and install WoW again, I think I'll stay skeptical a bit more. I hope I'm wrong and things really are looking up, but as I pointed out, many of the things on which I place much of the blame for WoW's current underwhelming state are still in place with no sign of being mitigated or removed. Namely: easy leveling and the dungeon/raid finders. Actually, I'll add to that list the complete obsolescence of old content as soon as a new patch comes out.

Plus, this is the beginning of an expansion. WoW is naturally at its best at such times. Things are new, and there are relatively few bored people clamoring for "quality of life improvements" so they can go back to piling up alts and buying valor gear. This kind of thing typically picks up after the middle of the expansion pack. Then the nerfs start.

If, against all odds, things are still improving several months from now, I might just come back. A good proxy indicator would be their stance on flying in Pandaria at 85. If they're still holding their ground on that issue by, say, February, it might be worth reconsidering my stance. We'll see.

The social aspect of WoW, from a nerd's standpoint

In my journey through WoW and social games in general, mostly I tried to play solo whenever possible, and only grudgingly joined a group when there was something I wanted badly and couldn't be done by myself. Sometimes such behavior led to a good deal of wasted time, but it was also gratifying when successful. For example, killing the keepers in the Altar of Zul. Good times...

Eventually I realized that killing undead by the hundreds in Andorhal and hoping for a world drop wasn't really the right way to play the game. Aiming at greater achievements, I mustered enough willpower to leave my little shell and search for a raiding guild. And even though I never really managed to reach the loftier heights of WoW endgame, it was still pretty rewarding to meet people and learn to work with them.

By contrast, it's implicit in WoW's modern design that players are supposed to play with their friends from outside the game, if they want to play with friends at all. Other gameplay options have been steadily transformed into an anonymous, streamlined experience - first dungeons, then raiding, and now even group quests.

Like I pointed out before, Blizzard likes to say that such things actually improve the social aspect of the game by making it easier for more people to meet and play together. I don't know if they actually believe it, or if it's just the CM party line, but a bit of digging shows that's really not how it works.

At least part of what drove players to meet each other was necessity - there were obviously many things in-game that couldn't be accomplished without teaming up. Because there were transaction costs involved in such teaming up, people tended to band together with guilds and friends lists. And even those people who were not in your close-contact group wouldn't always be complete strangers. You'd cross them leveling up, in the city, in trade chat. This generated the elusive "feeling of community".

To nobody's very great surprise, except apparently Blizzard's CMs, reducing the need for interaction didn't have much of a positive effect on WoW's community. People can play without the hassle of having to deal with other people, and so they don't. In that respect, the only recent counter trends are real-ID friends lists and Challenge Modes, which actually require teaming up. That and normal/heroic raiding are the only remaining bastions of voluntary interaction amongst players. And again, as Blizzard likes to point out, relatively few people do these things.

In my view, whatever socializing still exists is nowhere near enough to make up for the lost server communities. Those were an integral part of the "sense of belonging", which is now in shambles. The game no longer feels like a self-contained parallel world, which was, for me at least, a major reason for sticking around. Nowadays WoW is more like Diablo: get in, find a random group, kill things, get loot, brag, get out. All very efficient. And boring.

Once upon a time, the game won me over as a "prosthesis" of sorts for my sorely deficient social life. Now it's just another game. An old one at that.

Why MoP Doesn't Cut It

In a few days - a week, if I'm not mistaken - Mists of Pandaria, the fourth WoW expansion, is launching. Its self-imposed mission is reversing the dreary boredom that (most everybody pretty much agrees) drove away a lot of players in Cataclysm. For that, the standard leveling->dungeons->raids scheme is being complemented by things like challenge modes, pet battles, scenarios, dailies and maybe something else I've forgotten.

I still care about WoW more that I should, but the way I see it, there are two major things right now preventing me from jumping back in. Unfortunately, neither is being addressed in MoP. If anything, they're being made worse.

First is the utter joke that leveling has become. I used to enjoy making a new character, with the prospect of a long journey ahead. Reaching the end of that journey, max level, was a worthy deed in itself. Having a full stable of max-level alts wasn't something everyone and their mommy could accomplish. Personally, I never had more than one active max-level character before Wrath of the Lich King.

Paradoxically, too, even though you needed a lot more experience to level up, exploring all the zones thoroughly was significantly harder. No mounts until 40 and no flying mounts until 70 - or no flying mounts period, even! Mobs would actually give you a tough time if you pulled too many or if your gear wasn't up to par. Quests were grindier.

Leveling-up dungeons weren't a joke, and they weren't meant to be ran over and over again - they felt like an adventure. And even though they weren't trivial, there was good reason to do them at least once. Getting a blue item from them was a significant boost to your character power, helping burn through quests faster. And dungeon quests were a good way to earn precious XP. There were even some flavor epics to be had in those places... imagine that.

Thus an alt had more replay value - you could, say, skip Terokkar if you'd already done it on your main, and instead go to Blade's Edge Mountains. Or, if you had skipped Maraudon on your first run to 60, because it was too remote and you'd only ever heard of it in passing, you could do it the second time.

I really miss this feeling of not being able to see everything the world has to offer, this perception of depth. It dares the player to clench his jaw and march through the leveling process again, in order to make a bigger dent in the game world. Yes, I know, it's a deception... but what are you doing playing a fantasy game, if you don't like being deceived in such a way, at least a little?

If they un-nerfed the leveling process, forced me to take my time making my way through the world, I'd be back in a jiffy. It's probably what I miss the most. Sadly, the chances of that happening are next to none.

The second point is dungeon difficulty, and raid difficulty too, to a lesser extent (though I was never much of a raider). Now hold your horses, I know Challenge Modes are hard. The problem is... that's about all they offer.

They're different versions of the same dungeons you ran before - much like heroic raids. Nothing new story-wise, and even though I'm no big fan of Metzen's work for the most part, story helps to keep things in focus.

Another thing that bugs me immensely about them is that they're competitive and repetitive. Now, racing against the clock is a nice twist, and even a good-natured loner like me enjoys a bit of friendly competition. However, sometimes I like to approach dungeons as if they were a puzzle to be tackled carefully - something whose reward is reaching the end, not seeing how fast you can get there. Think of Dire Maul, BRS and BRD.

Sadly, dungeons these days are designed specifically with the goal of being ran over and over again - for the sake of weekly valor points. That's something I can't abide. In trying to make the whole game more streamlined and friendly, they've turned dungeons - something I once faced as a challenge - into a chore.

Storytelling suffers immensely as well: there's no mob chatter, no NPC dialogue, no intricate quest descriptions, no books lying around waiting to be read. Just kill this guy. He's bad. The over-the-top, vainglorious, and unimaginative yelling from bosses is basically what passes for story these days. "I grow tired of these games! Witness the true power of Boogiezax, servant of Nasalgtha!"

Moreover, another feature of Challenge Modes that falls way short of my expectations is the concept of it being gear-neutral, and rewarding "bragging rights" instead. I've went over this before - the "special snowflake" thing and all that. My view hasn't changed. Gear is the one thing that matters in the game, as far as performance is concerned, and trying to normalize it across the board stinks of socialism, which is to say, the politics of envy.

Achievements and clothing simply don't do it for me. I'm not the sort who buys an expensive car so I can park it in the driveway and make my neighbors green with envy. An expensive car should make other drivers green with envy - especially the obnoxious ones who think they own the road. Or, in WoW terms, the mediocre kiddies who think they're the coolest thing ever.

Something tells me that these two things - making leveling and dungeons meaningful again - are connected. Unfortunately there's not even a whiff of either of them happening in the foreseeable future. So WoW is bye-bye for now.

Evidence of the Clueless Executive's Spreadsheet of Doom

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-19110144

Not surprising, I know. Annual passes are beginning to wear out and the game is, what, nine months into the Dragon Soul patch, which had arguably the crappiest lasting power since Patch 3.2 (ToC). Bear with me for a moment, though. This article provides a very interesting piece of info: the name of Activision's CEO, which also became Blizzard's CEO following the merger in 2008.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Kotick

Some people have said for a while that the merger damaged Blizzard's ability to deliver quality content, but I never took them seriously. First, Blizzard was already controlled by a public company, Vivendi Games, before the merger. Second, it was said then and now that both companies retained their respective structures, independent of each other.

But here it is. The guy's "commenting" on WoW's sub loss, which was supposed to be out of his administrative umbrella. The wiki article says very clearly that he is the CEO of the combined company. And I don't know about you, but my experience with these career bureaucrat types is: if they have an idea of how to make things better, they don't hesitate to pass down the "suggestion".

Coincidence or not, he became Blizzard's official CEO months before the release of Wrath of the Lich King, AKA Wrath of the Casuals. Since then, there has been a marked change in Blizzard's attitude - they became less relaxed and more like a regular public company. It's hard to define, but here are some examples.

They became more statistics-driven. Their public-relations department tightened control. They increased the push to "modernize" several aspects of the game (i.e. make it more streamlined - Random Dungeon Finder anyone?). They introduced several cash-cow "services" and promotions, some of which were once unthinkable, like faction and name changes, and a massive experience bonus with the recruit-a-friend program. The game began to actively rely on things like pets, mounts and events, things that had once been mostly decorative. Got the idea?

Admittedly, this is mostly speculation. It's likely enough that these moves towards "EA-ization" were actually the result of a spontaneous shift of opinion within the company, "moving on with the times" and whatnot. Still, it sounds fishy.

Blizzard's development policy, one of the things that made them, well, Blizzard, was to make a compelling core game before anything else. Then they'd worry about accessibility and cute doodads and stuff. Do you see that happening nowadays? Yeah, thought not. MoP is all about providing "alternatives", which suggests they really have no clue as to what they need to focus on.

Blizzard's old development policy was the kind of philosophy that defines a company. Companies that have a successful, cherished vision rarely change them as drastically as Blizzard has done, unless the change is imposed from the top by someone who believes he knows better. I'd wager that's what happened in their case.

So, was the merger the occasion on which the spreadsheet came to Blizzard? We'll never know for sure, unless an employee tells the world how it really happened (throwing his job out the window in the process).

All I can say is, hope Valve remains privately held.

Knights of the Old Republic and MMOs, or, WHAT HAVE THEY DONE TO REVAN?!?!!1

After watching quite a few wanna-be "WoW killers" come and go (and having foolishly gotten my hopes up for at least one of them), I tended to be on the side of the skeptics during the hyping-up of SW:TOR. I haven't played it, but from the look of things, seems like there was good cause for skepticism after all.

People said, "give it a chance, after all, it's BioWare, right?" Wrong. It was Darth EA, the master Sith Lord manipulator who turns developers to the Dark Side or kills them if they resist. The alarming changes from DA:O to DA2 were warning enough, if you were paying attention.

Though, to be honest, nowadays it's hard to tell what is really BioWare and what is a contemptible attempt by EA to liquidate the former developer's reputation by breeding it (liquidate: turn an asset into money. So EA are essentially throwing BioWare's reputation in the dirt to make a quick buck. If you're surprised, you need to get out more.)

But suppose for a moment that the "EA factor" was nonexistent. Even then, there was something to be wary of in the idea of turning KOTOR's fiction into an MMO. To put it simply, Star Wars, and KOTOR in particular, aren't really cut out to be "massive".

To understand what I mean, think of the original SW movies, and even the newer ones, reviled though they are. They're essentially about a handful of people that really matter and a crap load of "filler" characters that are either cannon fodder or scenery. The magic of them was in making the viewer identify with the main characters, who were human and likable, but also had great and tragic destinies.

The novels that tried to introduce a multitude of new characters and plotlines from (literally) another galaxy failed to be as meaningful as the movies because they turned the simple, inspiring story into a jumble.

Now, I haven't played many BioWare games. Only KOTOR (the first) and DA:O, in fact. I aim to fix that shortly. But from the little I've seen and heard, BioWare's game-making talent fit almost exactly with the original concept of Star Wars: start with a player character who is initially a likable Jack Nobody and take him on a journey of exploration and self-discovery, along with a small but diverse party.

I think it's beyond arguing that KOTOR did that extremely well. It certainly did a hell of a job portraying the Dark Side, making it seem less like an unfathomable evil and more like something lurking in every human's mind. And it did so by the simple expedient of making the player's own character a fallen Jedi. Not quite original, seeing as episodes I, II and III do exactly that (except that, of course, Anakin is a future Dark Jedi). Still, amazingly well done on BioWare's part.

In an MMO, however, this crucial Star Wars-y feeling of being the most important person in the story, or at least one of the most important, is hopelessly gone. You're a permanent Jack Nobody, reminded of the fact by the countless other Jack Nobodies hopping all over the place. You're constantly struggling to acquire another piece of Epic Underwear of Epicness from the Epic Glorified Hallway of Epicness - so you can be marginally less of a nobody.

Now, there is nothing necessarily wrong with a MMO where you're a Jack Nobody. I had my fun with them and maybe will have again. Perhaps it would even be possible to have a cool Star Wars MMO where players are cannon fodder or very nearly so. I'd like to play that very much.

Unfortunately, BioWare (or, again, whatever passes for BioWare these days) seems to have gone with the Blizzard approach. Instead of acknowledging the reality of a MMO - that the player is really just another guy in a sea of guys - they tried to compensate for it by stroking the player's ego every second of the experience.

You can't blame them for trying, especially since Blizzard seems to be doing well enough by putting their money in such a strategy. Still, it ultimately doesn't seem to have served them very well, as the subscription numbers don't seem all that great and there's talk of going F2P floating around the web.

Still, the greatest damage, as far as I'm concerned, is not the forgettable experience of SW:TOR, but the cheapening of KOTOR's great story. Since I haven't touched the MMO, I don't know enough specifics to say much, but I feel pretty confident in saying that a great many forgettable characters have been created and struck down, while some not-so-forgettable ones were used in forgettable ways.

That's the curse of a MMO that tries to tell a story - the beast is too complex to allow developers to truly advance the plot. That is especially true of MMOs where players choose between opposing factions. One faction can never gain the upper hand because it would be "unfair", and so what passes for "story" is essentially a perpetual stalemate.

So, to sum it all up, SW:TOR doesn't do justice to KOTOR's story, and it might end up destroying TOR as we know it, in much the same way that the post-episode VI Star Wars novels damaged the future of the traditional SW timeline, by making up a convoluted story that doesn't rime with the movies.

Maybe it's time to let go of TOR, like I'm trying to let go of Warcraft (with some success, I am happy to say). I'll try to keep the original games in mind as fond memories and regard whatever comes after as just that.

Special Snowflake Syndrome?

When prowling around the WoW forums, one thing you're bound to hear sometimes is "special snowflake". Usually it's inserted in a mindless rant against "elitists", and in the large majority of cases (in my experience) accompanied by a wealth of spelling and grammar errors.

Yes, I judge people by their spelling and grammar - I know, I know, how horrible! I'm so ashamed of my proper English that sometimes I want to write like a 10-year-old on purpose to hide it.

It's surely one sign of things going down the drain when people who do things properly are openly shunned for it.

Anyway, after this digression, which was not as random as it might have seemed, there's one specific case that breeds accusations of "U JIST WANT 2 FEL LIEK A SPESHUL SNOWFLAKE!" like no other: people complaining about Challenge Modes only awarding vanity rewards.

I'll try to get to the root of the problem. The game today seems to be all about "fun". If it's not "fun", then it's not worth using gear to bribe people into doing it. Gear, apparently, has become as reviled in the eyes of WoW's mainstream as capital in the eyes of Hollywood liberals. They might acknowledge... grudgingly... that the world doesn't function well without it. But boy, do they wish it did.

Since they can't do away with it, then, they try to reduce its role as much as possible, and replace it with "fair" but utterly dysfunctional rules. Hence Blizzard's bending over backwards to normalize gear acquisition rates across all levels of dedication and skill.

Of course, in my view, the whole idea that gear is a "cheap" part of the game is ludicrous, especially in a game that's (supposedly) about improving your character's power. It's like outlawing V6 engines in small cars because, after all, a 1-liter straight-4 does the job perfectly. If you want something with more kick, you're obviously an "elitist" who wants to feel like a "special snowflake" and "ruin everyone else's fun". Boo to you.

Sticking with the analogy, Blizzard's solution (Challenge Modes) was to give everyone 1-liter engines (well, okay, maybe a 1.4-liter if you're really that adamant) and package it in a Ferrari body. It still can't run for crap, but hey, at least now you're special! (Add condescending pat on the head for emphasis)

For the lowest-common-denominator crowd, the whole idea is the best thing since sliced bread, of course. It gets them all comfy at the idea that those nerds who are only better than them because they have no life and live in their moms' basements and (...) won't be able to best them this time. No, sir. Let's see how they do with equal gear! (Insert mentally retarded laughter for emphasis)

Because they consider the "no-life nerds" to now be in their proper place, they'll react that much more vociferously if someone complains about the lack of incentive to run Challenge Modes. Even after all the bragging rights and vanity rewards and (BlizzSpeak on) cool stuff (BlizzSpeak off), you still want gear, gear, gear! Your selfishness is revealed!

Well, duh. Look, if you think that improving one's power is bad because it means that person just wants to show off, I suggest you stop eyeing other people's failings and start looking into your own. Starting with, say, envy. Of course people want to feel special, dimwit, and as long as they don't hurt anybody, what's the matter with that? Oh, they hurt your ego? Well, sorry, but if that's the case the problem is not that others are out to make you feel bad, because by and large people have better things to do. Most likely your sense of self-importance is too bloated and sensitive.

The people who benefit from "gear socialism" are just as selfish as the "elitists". Actually, I'd say the former are far worse. A successful player got there on his own, and whatever injustices he might have committed on the way there - rudeness, guild hopping, ninja looting, et cetera - were localized. An "equalizer," on the other hand, is readily willing to screw everyone else without exception in order to raise his own boat in relative terms.

The excuse, of course, is that it's okay to screw the dedicated players out of their feeling of being special because they "don't really need it" and also because "it will benefit the 99%". As in real life, one should be extremely careful with those who pose as a selfless heroes for the poor and downtrodden. More often than not, they're one of three things: fools, crooks, or psychopaths.

There's a miasma of mediocrity hanging over WoW (and Western society in general). It is revealed in such things as kindergarten children being taught that "everyone is special", or welfare bums claiming that it's "society's" fault they can't pull their own weight, or envious WoW baddies shrieking against challenges with rewards because it would "ruin the game for everyone".

The Trouble with Trolls

And by that I mean the rehashed raids, Zul'Gurub and Zul'Aman. Yes, it's a completely outdated topic, but what can I do, my head doesn't quite move at the speed of Internet.

First, a brief assessment: as I recall, ZG/ZA were meant to bridge the gap between blue gear from heroic dungeons and epic gear from normal raids. They were relatively long (though pretty linear), taking around an hour for a competent but inexperienced group to finish. And... they rewarded valor points for completion.

Let me stress that: they rewarded valor points for completion. In fact, they were the only way players could get close to the weekly valor point cap without running raids. The original Cataclysm heroics, besides dropping only 346 blues as opposed to the 353 epics of ZG/ZA, only awarded half as much valor per week. The inevitable result: non-raiders (which, as Blizzard likes to remind us, make up a large part of the WoW population) flocked to them massively.

ZG/ZA were called "long and difficult". And the problem wasn't the length or difficulty in themselves, mind you. There was a legitimate clamor at the end of WotLK for more challenge in Cataclysm. But the trouble was the LFD, a system designed to encourage and deliver fast dungeon runs.

Getting rid of the LFD was unthinkable. Too many people had forgotten how to manually move their characters to dungeons; and even more importantly, I think, the random LFD allowed for a pretty spreadsheet with large numbers of players evenly distributed over each dungeon. You know, the kind of thing that brings a smile to an executive's face ("this will look smashing in my slideshow presentation at the board meeting!!!").

The original Cataclysm heroics, when attached to LFD, had been bad ideas. ZG/ZA were abysmal. They were longer and arguably more difficult; there were only two of them; they were both troll-themed. Couple that with the race-to-the-end, daily-valor LFD mentality and you have frustration on a massive scale, followed by boredom on a massive scale.

The interesting and sad thing is, the troll dungeons could have been perfectly viable if they had been kept off the dungeon finder/daily valor scheme. The fact that not everyone raided, and the 353 epics that dropped there, were enough to draw people looking for some upgrades.

Sure, if that had been the case, ZG/ZA wouldn't have been ran as often as the LFD heroics... and that would have made the spreadsheet lose some of its luster... but it would have added diversity to character progression. The way it actually happened, it simply raised the mandatory "bread-and-butter" of daily valor up to a new, more frustrating level.

Now, the failure of the troll dungeons might have been a reason why Blizzard decided to go ahead and implement the misbegotten LFR. In their view it wasn't the LFD that screwed up the difficult dungeons but exactly the other way around... so they went in the direction of less difficulty and more LFD. Yay. That was my cue.

It's An Exogenous Variable, Really!

I know I'm supposed to be getting detox'd from WoW, but this struck me like a blow to the face:

We're with you in that the game is just more fun when you have friends and guildmates to run with. The issue we run into is, "what happens when they're not available but you want to do things?" So the most we can do is facilitate the means to get with others easily. We can connect you to other players, but we can't force people to talk or be social. It's going to take effort from the community itself to make it a more social experience by being social. I don't think what you're referring to is a design issue. And if you think it is, I'd love to hear your thoughts on how it could be improved. Just keep in mind, if you share some thoughts, they should keep in mind the current structure of the game. Without taking anything away or putting new restrictions out there, how would you go about doing it? Because as it is right now, it's easier than ever to be put into contact with other people. It's just a matter of then getting those people interested in interacting socially.

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/5271781124?page=3#50

http://blue.mmo-champion.com/topic/224603-woes-of-the-older-gamer/

It wasn't a particularly happy thread (like another poster noted, you don't have to be "old" to dislike the direction games in general and Blizzard in particular are headed), but the blue response is intriguing in that it sheds some light on Blizzard's attitude towards the "death of community". Apparently they blame the "community" itself. Players can talk to each other, plan events, run dungeons with friends, and take their time instead of racing to the end. They don't do those things because they don't want to!

Oh, right. So instant teleports to dungeons have nothing to do with the death of world PvP. Grouping with people you won't ever see again totally does not encourage lack of interaction. Also, such anonymity has absolutely zero to do with the terrible attitudes you often find in LFD and LFR. Forcing people to do dungeons they might not like, because "random heroics" are far and away the easiest source of mandatory "valor points", is completely unrelated to players wanting to be done as soon as possible. Oh, and by the way, there is nothing, nothing preventing players from turning off that 15% debuff.

It's one thing to say: "the majority of players prefer fast access to dungeons and gear over an engaging experience, so we have to oblige". That is true, I wager. Convenience rules supreme. But believing or pretending that the game's structure, built by Blizzard alone, does not affect players' attitudes is baffling. It's like Keynesians and their laughable belief that there is nothing structurally wrong with economic booms, and that they could go on forever if not for those pesky "animal spirits" and "expectations". And not unlike Keynesians, Blizzard here resorts to second-rate "psychology" to try and give their claims some credibility. Yes, people all of a sudden became less communicative. It's a "social" issue. Suure.

In short, my opinion remains the same: Blizzard is doing themselves and their players a disservice by assuming that everyone must experience heroics, everyone must have epics, everyone must have something "fun" (again, definition disputable) to do at a mouse click's distance, no matter the indirect costs. It's a condescending way to treat their players. "Here, maybe you're too lazy or incompetent or socially impaired to do this, so we'll dumb it down and force everyone to put up with it." But if this post by Nethaera is representative of the company's attitude, how can Blizzard do anything to stop the dumbing down process, if they don't even acknowledge they have a hand in it?

The Mists of Pandaria Press Tour

So I’ve been going over the MMO-Champion summary of Blizzard’s MoP press tour. One thing that drew my attention was their stated goal of bringing the “feeling of adventure” back into the game. They are talking about the original open-ended World of Warcraft, where there was no single unifying storyline (as there have been in all three expansions so far), and a lot of the things to do were not in-your-face – they required a bit of learning and preparation.

Even if you learned everything from other players or Thottbot or Allakhazam (anyone remember those? It’s strange to think that Wowhead wasn’t always there), having to get there by ground, and finding interesting (and often dangerous) things blocking your way lent a feeling of exploration and of actually being out there in the world. Obviously the fact that the game was new played a substantial part.

It’s a laudable goal, and I wish one could believe in their commitment to it, but given the devs’ behavior pattern, it’s tough to buy what they’re selling (literally). Several problems stand out embarrassingly close to their noble stated goals: flying mounts, readily available once a player reaches maximum level; this, coupled with the (forgive my candor) joke that leveling has become, essentially guarantees that people will trample each other on the race to level 90 and then proceed to farm their sacred dungeon and raid finders, seldom bothering to leave the cities and doing so in their 310% fliers when they do.

(Those things are, in some ways, like Social Security and Medicare: long-term bad ideas that nevertheless become untouchable once they’re in place. With time, their adverse effects become more pronounced, but by that point people have become, by force of habit, unable to imagine a world without them. So the farce goes on until the system dies, with either a bang or a whimper. Well, Blizzard has sold their scheme as effectively as Western governments, with the significant difference that you don’t go to jail if you refuse to pay your WoW bill.)

Ultimately, the determining factor in my negative opinion of Mists of Pandaria remains the fact that they’re very clearly moving towards a “standard pace of character power progression for everyone”. Everyone from Jackie Rendspam to Julian Worldfirst gets their periodic fix of item level increases, with the difference between them boiling down to a handful of stats and a lot of vanity. Here, come do hard modes, there’s a differently colored dragon in it for you! How cool is that, huh?

Sorry, but I’ll pass. “Bragging rights” as a reward is a concept that makes me ill.

WoW, an unhealthy relationship

Looking at what’s happening in WoW is beginning to give me a curious feeling that I only experienced before in one situation – thinking about my ex-girlfriend. It goes like this: first comes an urge to inflict physical harm, then a realization that even thinking about it makes you slightly ill with disgust, and finally an exasperated indifference. I suppose it’s a standard reaction to feeling betrayed by someone or something that once was important.

And not unlike the girlfriend parallel, coming to see Blizzard and their product for what they really are (or have become) is refreshingly liberating. It makes you wonder why people still play the damn thing when they have to grope for reasons to do so. It’s an addiction, plain and simple, just like “love”, and it becomes self-fulfilling. The player is no longer playing to level up or collect gear or defeat bosses – he’s doing those things in order to keep playing.

I think that’s the source of the dreaded “nothing to do” syndrome which (if the forums and my own experience are to be believed) is afflicting WoW right now. If you have an important goal that takes a lot of work to reach, you’re going to bend over backwards to get there. Which is why people such as myself sacrificed school, social interaction, work and a lot of other little and not so little things in order to level up, gear up and raid. The damn thing drew you in – the goal of becoming more powerful and defeating a string of complex encounters in a (considering Metzen, blissfully blurry) lore background can be intoxicating.

As I’ve said before, this “give players a goal” approach seems to have been forgotten in some back room at Blizzard. Now it’s all about the “fun”, which means playing the game for its own sake. If playing the game is the goal, there’s nothing much that needs to be done to achieve it. Just turn on the computer, fire up the program and there you are. Objective accomplished! Except now, you need to find an excuse for being there. And finding excuses is always harder than finding something that needs doing. But since finding an excuse is easier than actually doing something, it turns out to be a net win in the end, right? Right?

In EVE the only tangible goal is to make money – but it’s there, there are plenty of ways to do it, and most importantly, it’s impossible to have “enough”. I understand a lot of bored people are taking that approach to WoW. Maybe it’ll become a more money-focused MMO in the future – I can see that being a smart move by the devs, considering how messed up their “beat bosses” model has become.

The fact is that Blizzard have very clearly shifted gears from trying to draw players in, to milking the players already in for every penny they can extract. Is such a policy cause or consequence? In my opinion, both. It’s a positive feedback loop that’s certain to sink the game eventually. Maybe that’s the objective.

In any case, it’s good to feel WoW slowly washing out of my system. A guy in my guild, a really nice fellow and very competent player, even tried to “cast” the Scroll of Resurrection on me. Problem is, with the state the game is in, and having realized it, it was pitifully easy to resist. Too bad. He really was a nice guy.

Dinosaur

Fallout: New Vegas, WoW and The Witcher.

Yes, they are all RPGs - very observant, here's a cookie - but they interact in a way slightly funnier than that.

Fallout 3, New Vegas's predecessor, was significantly less than impressive for me - the only positive memory of it are the side stories, which for the most part were quite interesting (the one in the museum was really nice). Well, come to think of it, the scenery and atmosphere were actually pretty inspiring too. But that's about it.

The main quest, on the other hand, was - apologies for the bluntness - a turd. If you thought that recycling FO2's bad guys and somehow transporting them from the middle of the Pacific to Washington D.C. wasn't funny enough, well, Bethesda actually managed to recycle the Enclave's objective AND largely the method they would use to accomplish it - while adding a couple of dramatic twists that, while touching (I'm a sucker for cute, kind-hearted girls and tragic endings), weren't really very Fallouty.

In the end, I played through FO3 once and never looked back. Yet the meaning of the fact that Fallout, my teenage years' primary fantasy, had been turned into a console blockbuster - I don't mean that in a good way - was somehow lost on me.

Now, this past weekend, somehow lacking the spirit to work the calluses on my fingertips philosophizing about WoW, I found myself looking at Fallout: New Vegas. Obsidian Entertainment developed it using the Fallout 3 engine, and the result was (as is often the case with Obsidian games) praised for its story and spat on for its technical issues. Well, technical issues don't annoy me very much. I'm such a save/load addict that gameplay interruptions are really part of the experience.

So, succumbing to the whispers of that dreadful imp of consumerism, I shelled out $40 for FO:NV's "ultimate edition". Turned out to be disappointed. It's pretty much the way one would expect - nice background fiction, characters are more worthwhile than in FO3 - it's more "Fallouty" all around. But it's still miles away from the originals simply because it sticks to the abominable Bethesda RPG-FPS model. Best not go into detail. Bottom line is, it got me thinking about the drawn-out death of introspective, artistic gaming and the rise of mass production.

If you rear your head a bit to look at the overall state of gaming since the turn of the century, the trend is clear as daylight. The most noticeable thing is that the number of players boomed (and as a result, the number of games being pumped out by developers), as computers became cheaper and easier to use, and consoles even more so. The "nerdy age" (which could also be called the "romantic age") of gaming was drawing to an end.

WoW is a great example of that trend. Starting out as an "accessible" alternative to, specifically, EverQuest, it quickly rose to the stratosphere in popularity. And it continued to climb as more and more conveniences were added. When Blizzard put down their collective foot and drew a line in the sand - "it ends here!" - the market turned on them with a vengeance. Mindful of the almighty money, they quickly brought the game back on the path to Farmville.

From the moment when I stepped away from WoW because the 4.3 heroics and LFR disgusted me, up until this past weekend, I held on firmly to the belief that Blizzard could not possibly get away with dumbing down the game so much without suffering consequences. But then came New Vegas. And then what finally made my mind snap: a re-run of The Witcher.

Now, The Witcher is incredible. In many ways it goes back to the roots of RPGs, though not without making concessions to accessibility. In the game, you play a witcher (yes, really), a magical mutant engineered for combat and rendered infertile in the process, who (in theory) wanders the world killing monsters for money. But the world is changing. Humans are increasingly numerous; the elder races (elves and dwarves) are being persecuted, and their numbers are dwindling; witchers themselves are increasingly seen as freaks, and common people are largely finding ways of making do without them; plus, the secret of their creation (for it was a secret) has been lost.

It's hard not to see the parallel. Games were once something special, too. Only those willing to shun "normality" were allowed. To those outside it seemed like an arcane world, and in many ways it was: setting them up required knowledge of computers; being drawn in by them required an extraordinary amount of "suspension of disbelief"; and the difficulty was often unforgiving. Fast forward to today, and gaming has become incredibly mainstream. Every average (and below-average) Joe out there can pick up a game at Wal-Mart, stick it in their mass-assembled computer and start blasting away at the bad guys ("here! It's red! It's ugly! Shoot it!"), reveling in their newfound power. As much as one may despise Joe's simplicity when it comes to games, however, his money is just as good as anybody else's.

Mass production is a curious thing. There can be no doubt that it substantially increases the standards of living of the vast majority of people. Yet those who enjoyed something of a monopoly before the advent of mass production can't help but feel that something is missing. Is that true?

In The Witcher's world, the dying elements of a time past are without a doubt impressive: witchers with their strength and lightning reflexes, sorcerers with their fearsome magic, elves and dwarves with their peculiar idiosyncrasies. There's a clear sense that the world is, in some way, poorer with the fading away of such things and the rise of the average Joe.

It's not so clear in the real world, however. Coming from a free-market, pro-capitalist worldview, I often find myself at odds with people who bemoan the current industrial civilization and yearn for a return to the olden times. Clearly, industry made living standards skyrocket across the board. Necessity and luxury goods became available to incredible numbers of people who would have died in other, less affluent times. It's hard to fathom how anybody could want to go back to pre-industrial times.

And yet, funnily enough, here I find myself sad at the realization that gaming has passed through that exact same process of massification. And it's probably fair to say that something is lost in the process. Character and originality become far less important than digestibility and compliance with accepted industry standards.

Sad though it may be, it can't be stopped. Who knows? Maybe "mainstream" gaming is only a temporary fad that will go away. It's healthy to be a long-term optimist. For the moment, however, it's best to resign oneself to this fact of life, trying to make the best out of what the software factories produce. It's not all bad, and besides, it's useless to argue. In the end, scarcity (represented by money) wins the discussion simply by talking much louder than all the other arguments combined.

Loot Envy - root of all evil?

I apologize in advance for all the sarcastic quotation marks, but the concepts in them are so ill-defined and twisted that I can't afford to leave any doubt.

"Casuals versus hardcores" is an age-old problem in WoW. Obviously, it's an issue of envy, as it usually is with "the 99%" calling for the expropriation of "the 1%". Funnily enough, today we're through the looking glass: so many demands of self-titled "casuals" have been made reality that the "elitists" are the ones complaining.

According to "casuals", it's a case of "special snowflake" syndrome. The "elitists" are upset that they are no longer special, so the argument goes. Keep in mind the base, malicious envy with which this is said. It isn't an argument in itself, but it pays to be wary of people who gloat over others' misfortune.

Anyway, the "special snowflake" syndrome. Using this as an argument for homogenization is a classic case of begging the question: if one assumes that wanting to be special is bad in itself, why, the makers of rules have their work cut out for them. Be they Blizzard or the Politburo.

The thing is... distinctions will exist. And simply by the way the world works, these distinctions will usually result in a small portion of the population being a lot better than the bulk in some way. And that is not a problem in itself, especially if the majority are doing perfectly fine by themselves.

That's why I'm highly suspicious of Blizzard's motives in dumbing down the game. The underlying argument seems to be that players will leave en masse if they're not showered with epics. It suggests that the developers believe, on a fundamental level, that more "equality" is inherently better. But saying so assumes that envy is the prevailing feeling amongst those less successful in the game.

I dispute that. Envy is not a dominant emotion in most people. If it were, human civilization would have gone to hell a long time ago. Sure, it's there in all of us, just like base lust and hatred. But - and this should be obvious, but apparently it isn't - that darker side of human nature is to be ignored, and fought when it boils to the surface.

The fact that Blizzard is a business, not a political organization, doesn't change the basic nature of the fact: catering to envy is a bad idea. It can never be satisfied, and will destroy any system if allowed to grow.

Thoughts on progression

It's implicit in Blizzard's development and their statements regarding the topic that they see the progression of players and characters as a relatively straight line from leveling to Heroic raids. It's something like this: first you level to cap, then run normal dungeons, then run heroic dungeons, then LFR, then normal raids, then heroic raids. A few parallel activities are available but this is the basic form of the PvE game.

A major topic of contention nowadays is the LFR. Believing that it should be ripped out of the game altogether is unfortunately outside the realm of "respectable opinion" or what passes for such in the WoW forums. But what is the LFR? If anyone believed for a moment that it was meant to "teach players how to raid", they were thoroughly disabused of that notion over the weeks following the release of 4.3. The primary purpose of LFR is, clearly enough, allowing people to "see the content", so the development resources that went into making the raid aren't "wasted" on the minority¹.

The fact that the LFR is really just a glorified loot vending machine creates a gap in the road of progression. By Blizzard's own admission, normal dungeons are going to disappear and be replaced by easy heroics². After that, what is there to keep players improving themselves³ on the road to normal and heroic raiding? People end up with no incentive to play their class well, even more so than before. Of course, leveling could be made slower and less forgiving once more, but... heh, yeah, right. Like that's happening.

But I'm straying from the point. Suppose for a moment that there was a working progression path that took players from starting fresh all the way to heroic raiding, which is, as I see it, the way Blizzard want it to be. The choice of such a linear system probably stems from the theme park design of WoW.

Yet at the point in time when this model was conceived, there was no such thing as "casuals versus hardcores". True that WoW was possibly the beginning of it all, with its proposal of accessibility; but while mostly anyone could get into the game, there was no such silly thing as the notion that everyone was entitled to finishing BRD⁴ because of their hallowed $15 a month. The game was meant to draw players in and then challenge them, as per Blizzard's design philosophy of making a game accessible at the fringes but complex at the core, in order to provide lasting entertainment value.

Here we are, nearly 8 years later, and the simplistic fringe has expanded to the point where it's gobbled up most of the challenging core. The developers probably have not completely forgotten the importance of challenging players, else the game would be going downhill a lot faster than it is now. Yet they clearly place a much greater focus on extending accessibility. And it doesn't mix well with the linear progression path, as it flattens most of the difficulty curve and causes it to become exceedingly steep at the higher end.

This alienates those players who want to stay somewhere in the middle - say, someone who likes a 5-man that will test their limits but doesn't want to raid (me). It also makes players accustomed to trampling everything up to a certain point, which will result in burnout when they invariably find the first significant barrier, normal raiding. As such, it requires an increased rate of content output, but that is unlikely to be enough. Thus the model also ends up calling for the flattening of the difficulty curve further over time, which partially explains why Blizzard now assume that it's their job, not the players', to ensure progression: a lot of people have become incapable of accepting failure or even delay.

This can only end one way, if the rules of the game and players' perceptions continue on this road. And it's an ugly end, whittling away and eventually killing the significance of the "content first, accessibility later" philosophy (if it's not dead and buried already).

Some people in the forums seem to think that the next expansion pack will do away with a substantial part of the problem by implementing "sideways progression", represented by the pet battles and challenge modes. That is unlikely.

First and foremost, creating alternate meaningful development paths would imply in a major redesign of the game. The pet battles system, for example, would have to be as complex as Pokémon, or something of that magnitude, in order to have any staying power.

Second, even if there was meaningful, time-consuming progression down each and every path, they would be liable to fall to the same issue we see today in the tired old "beat bosses, get gear" model: players feeling entitled to advance but no longer able to, requiring Blizzard to change the rules in their favor.

As an aside, the pet store would inevitably bring cries of "foul!" if pet battles ever did matter. That is, if Blizzard isn't banking on boosting their pet store sales that way in the first place.

Third: besides the a priori reasons above, there isn't much reason to believe, from the information we've been given, that these new features will be anywhere near as important as traditional character progression.

I would like to believe that Blizzard are really trying to give the (apparently large) portion of the player base who feel entitled to progression, but are not really ready to work for it, something to divert their attention from PvE and allow the developers to put it back on track. But after their statement that MoP "heroics" will be more Wrath-like, and the disappointing challenge modes⁵, it's hard to be optimistic.

If the devs really want to diversify the game, I believe they would be better off adding branches to the traditional development path. I'd like nothing better than a couple of BRS or BRD type dungeons, with attunements and keys, tricky and hard-hitting trash, lots of quests from all over the world, simple but tightly-tuned bosses...

Sorry, daydreaming. Anyway, in a nutshell: Blizzard has their "on-rails" character development path, and it currently depends on fast content output + steady nerfs, a probably self-defeating formula largely because of evolving player expectations. The primacy of gear-based character progression is very unlikely to change, and if it changes while continuing with the current difficulty curve paradigm, it will add to the problem.

Perhaps I've got everything out of proportion, or perhaps Blizzard sees the problem and plans to tackle it slowly, so as not to upset the entitled masses. But when I try to be optimistic, things like that dreadful quote from Bashiok hang ominously above like a storm cloud.

¹ There may be other reasons, too. It may be that the Blizzard fear competitors' accessible content (many of them being fresher and/or F2P), and so feel pressured to make their crown jewel, raiding, available for anyone in order to retain an edge in the subscription MMO market. Or maybe they actually believe in "democratic raiding" for its own sake... here's hoping that's not the case.

²Which strongly suggests that the only thing heroic about them will be the name. And the fact that it gives valor points.

³Notice that I'm talking about players improving their skills, not characters improving their gear.

⁴A mere dungeon! Today Blizzard is scared of requiring from players even so little as the trouble of forming their own groups, and God forbid they should fail to complete the instance in less than an hour.

⁵I plan to make a post specifically about that.

"Grindy is not difficult": the lazy player's excuse

A line that's repeated practically every time someone brings up the fact that WoW was "harder" in Vanilla and Burning Crusade is this: "Vanilla and BC weren't hard, they were just huge grindfests." It seems that many people like to draw a line between skill and dedication.

Two points to be made. The first is that the distinction is artificial. There are many dimensions to "difficulty", and a task that requires more time than another is obviously more "difficult" in that respect. Many forum posters seem to think that it is not a legitimate type of difficulty, however. They often deride the people who are willing and able to spend a lot of time in the game as "virgins living in their moms' basements".

That is an obvious and worthless ad hominem that oozes envy with every syllable. Not unlike what you would expect from school children trying to establish themselves as "the cool ones" in an attempt to offset a perceived inferiority somewhere else. Or people who believe they are better than others, and find ways to diminish the merit of those who have climbed to greater heights.

It's very simple: the more effort you invest into something, the better you'll get at it, other things remaining equal. You spend a lot of time at parties? Have lots of friends? Never stay at home in the weekends? Good for you. Your social and sex lives must be a bajillion times more interesting than mine. But when you log into WoW, don't expect your success with "the chicks" to translate into being superior to a nerd who plays 6 hours a day. Just like he shouldn't expect women to be attracted to him for playing WoW and living in his mom's basement.

But of course many in either field (and others) don't accept that. They believe there is one right way to live (their own way) and those who follow it must be rewarded with every amenity available to man. It's curious, really; it would make more sense from a practical standpoint to acknowledge one's limitations and focus instead on one's strengths. I suppose it doesn't work like that because humans are social creatures, always struggling to appear smarter and righter than the next fellow in every possible way.

Anyhow, back to the point. If you can't commit several hours a day to the game, which would be necessary to achieve something, then that is a barrier, and therefore difficult. Difficulties are named that way because they can't be overcome without sacrificing something - in this case, one's time. If you were unable or unwilling to pay the price, then you failed to beat this difficulty. Instead of swallowing it and learning to live with one's inferiority (or trying to get better), a member of the entitled generation will be quick to come up with a story that explains:

1) why his failure was the result of "bad luck" or the world conspiring against him, and not his own lack of competence;

2) why those who managed to become better than him didn't really deserve it;

3) why his preferred style of play deserves to be propped up by Blizzard.

And this brings us to the second point, which is that these complaints are not arguments, but excuses. The wrongness of long grinds is just one that's been repeated so often and for so long that it became accepted as truth. But there are plenty of others.

For example: one day, the "gimmicky" mechanic that needs to be abolished is the necessity of grinding reps, consumables and resist gear (excuse: "I have a life"). The next, it's challenging trash (excuse: "I play for the bosses, not the trash"). Then boss mechanics (excuse: "it's not fun to be one shot"). Which leads to mana management (excuse: "we need to heal bad players"). And downhill from there.

Bottom line: that old adage is very true. Those who want to get something done find a way to do it; those who don't find an excuse.

This isn't really an argument against nerfing things, although since excuses naturally tend to flow from the laziest amongst us, it usually works that way. Still, it's perfectly reasonable to think that a particular difficulty is overtuned, because they can very well be, by a variety of subjective standards. The problem is players who believe that anything they don't like or can't do must be wrong in a cosmic sense, and anyone who thinks differently must be evil or pathetic or in some way worthless.

I like to think that nobody really listens to these people who can't keep their overgrown egos in check, but you never know. In many ways Blizzard does seem to expect the worst from a large portion of its player base.

Accessibility is as accessibility does

Listening to Vanilla WoW music and complaining that the sense of adventure is gone from the game sounds suspiciously like a typical, acute case of nostalgia. But (there is always a but) there are enough reasons to believe it isn't just that. Much of the "world" has been taken from the World of Warcraft, owing to flying mounts, dungeon finders, streamlined questing and other such conveniences.

Why did the basics, particularly leveling content, become so fast and easy? Why did Blizzard implement a supertanker-load of "quality of life improvements", when they surely know better than anyone that putting time-consuming and random obstacles in the way of players is the meat and potatoes of any game, especially a MMO?

The most obvious factor is veteran players' complaints that they have been through it and it's ridiculous to have to do it all over again. It's inevitable that once a person understands something, they see the little annoying details as gimmicky and unnecessary impediments ("familiarity breeds contempt").

In the real world there isn't much that can be done. You may no longer be a child awed at the world or an idealist striving towards something; you may think that everything sucks and just want to lie down and sleep all day... but you still have to get up in order to sustain your continued existence. It's not up for discussion.

In WoW, on the other hand, you can go to the forums and argue that it's your God-given right to lie in bed all day, because you're already doing a lot by existing. This argument comes in many different shapes, flavors and magnitudes. You may ask for something as simple as a 10% reduction in the health of a quest mob who's giving you a tough time. Or you may demand free maximum-level gear "because you pay for the game just like everyone else".

Nerfing is a slippery slope, the worst sort of slippery slope: the one where you keep going willingly, because you've bought into the premise. Poison mixing isn't challenging, just a repetitive mandatory meta-game. Attunements are not real checks of a player's skill and dedication, only barriers that unevenly affect new players and casuals. Resistance gear is just a poorly conceived time sink, do away with it. Why is this quest in the middle of nowhere, it's such an unnecessary trek.

This idea that the game can be "improved" by making it more convenient is really just a disguise for a classical human ploy to improve their lot: if playing by the rules seems like too much work, attempt to co-opt the people in charge and make them change the rules to favor you. This goes on until the rules are so out of touch with reality that things begin to give.

This doesn't mean that everyone who wants the game to be easier or less time-consuming is a rent-seeker, or to put it another way, a lazy bastard who just wants free epics. On the contrary, a lot of the people who think so, especially the ones at Blizzard, are really sincere. They believe that making things more accessible will make more people able to get stuff faster, and thus be happier.

Such a view simply assumes that loot is good, and anything that stands in the way of loot is bad. It supposes that players are simpletons, who get home after their daily toil and want to bash some things, earn some shinies and talk smack with their buddies without straining their minds too much. The concept of a dedicated player who faces the game as a challenge to be beaten and a puzzle to be solved becomes ridiculed, as if this were only a tiny minority in a sea of "give me stuff" baboons.

Notice the drastic change in perspective, which was nevertheless accomplished quite subtly. From the idea that it is unnecessary to demand too much from players who have already gone through a lot, the discussion has shifted to a fear of demanding too much from players who are too lazy to help themselves.

This isn't a leap, it's the inevitable result of the "let's just make this more accessible" mindset. It's not unlike charity. It may sound and look pretty, but it has a rather ugly tendency to make its beneficiaries come back for more... and more... and more. They begin to feel like it's the donor's duty to give them stuff. And when he realizes that it's getting ridiculous, and puts his foot down and says "no more", he gets to find out just how nasty those "poor, helpless people" can be.

That is not an attack on poor people or comfort-seeking players in particular. Anyone can acquire comfortable, bad habits and become loath to abandon them. But combine this unpleasant human characteristic with the benevolent desire to alleviate suffering, and you have a peculiarly ugly way of having well-intentioned initiatives go sour. So it is with adding conveniences to a game.

Blizzard's music

I've long been of the opinion that Blizzard's in-house composers are one of the company's most important aces up the sleeve. Of course, the company has always been known to be exceptional at "polishing", including such things as textures, models, animations, responsiveness, and balanced combat. Music could arguably be called an "extra layer of polish", although it seems unfair to say this in Blizzard's case.

Why? Because the company in the whole is (or has acquired a reputation for being) exceptional at making solid, polished games, although they fall a bit short in the "originality" criterion. While that may sound uncharitable, it really isn't meant that way. Originality is overrated - brilliant ideas are a dime a dozen, but making them work is exceedingly tricky.

But back to Blizzard's music. Even if you are a sucker for uniqueness, their composers can hold their own. Granted, that comes from a complete noob in musical matters, but bear with me. There is no sense of staleness to their compositions, not in the sense of "I've heard this one before, somewhere." And even though they obviously know how to stick to what works, they also have some rather experimental tracks, much of which fits amazingly well with the environment they are meant to represent (Karazhan comes to mind).

So while Blizzard can be called a very solid company in most respects (notable exceptions being storytelling and their recent "STUFF FOR EVERYONE!" attitude), their music really shines through as exceptional. And I contend that there is reason to believe that this outstanding music has had much more of an impact in the company's success than one might think.

The prime example is the original World of Warcraft's title screen track. It really is difficult to gather enough praise. The tune takes you by the hand and asks you to follow it into this world of adventure and promise, in a voice that is as pure and musical as that of an elf-maiden in the Silmarillion. It gives listeners a soaring sensation and makes them feel like nothing could be more right than following the voice's advice - like falling hopelessly in love.

That may sound excessive, and of course there is a good dose of nostalgia involved, but it gives a pretty good idea of how well the track fits the opening screen of a large world to explore and brave. The composers expertly use music to augment the emotions that the game transmits to its players. Sometimes they manage to take a flimsy game element and turn it into something memorable, be it a place, a character, a plot or another.

I won't say that locations in Blizzard's games are not awe-inspiring - the zone/level/terrain design team are also very good at what they do (it's a shame it means so little with the current dungeon design and flying mounts in the open world). But the game is sorely lacking in compelling characters and story arcs. If Blizzard's ability to take tried-and-true formulas, beef them up and make them look great has failed somewhere, it's in storytelling. Their games tend to be not only unoriginal but stale in that respect.

And while some may dismiss a game's story as merely a prop for the actual mechanics, the opposite is true. Humans search for meaning and continuity in everything they do, and while it may be sufficient for some to simply "win", I feel pretty safe in saying that very few people, if any at all, are completely oblivious to the development of plots in the video games they play.

In that context, the music of Blizzard takes on an even more important role in their games. It helps keep players connected to the story and the world around them, and lends some sorely needed substance and credibility to those things in the process. Of course, that music has a crucial support role in movies, video games and other multimedia is nothing new. But I feel that Blizzard's composers bear on their shoulders a greater portion of the larger work of which they are part than the average musician. They are certainly largely responsible for making a good deal of storytelling that would otherwise be quite forgettable sound deep and moving.

As a disclaimer, allow me to add that I still think that challenging gameplay is the largest factor that lends "meaning" to a game and its story. But as far as their slice of the responsibility for making games memorable goes, I /bow to Blizzard's composers.