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.