It came from the Bar: Buff me up bro and the curse of choice

Today we have a new poster who wants to share some thoughts with the other frequent guests hanging by the barside at The Pink Pigtail Inn. His name is Reptile, and he describes himself as a "geek with attitude". Reptile plays a DK in a raiding guild on a EU server in the lower tiers of the aristocracy, to follow the classification made by Rohan of Blessing of Kings. Since our innkeeper actually was planning to rant a bit a bit on this topic herself, we'll get a comment from her as well after our guest has spoken up.

Reptile:

Last night we managed to kill Sindragosa. On normal. It took us 3 hours and 12 wipes total from the moment we first saw her. It was epic and the RL on vent saying perfect while people were standing on their proper positions while being frozen was becoming trivial. So – she is dead now, and I am very pleased that we were able to pull it off before the buff. I think that the buff is in the “nice idea, horrible implementation” category. Why? Well here is my opinion on it:

It affects hard modes. Now – nerfing content so all can see it is good idea. But heroic difficulty was supposed to be the elite guilds’ sandbox where they are the only players. So – if my guild kills heroic Saurfang with no buff – it will be the same encounter which Paragon did 3 weeks ago. The community already saw first heroic LK 10 man with the buff. Congrats to Paragon for doing that. And admitting they used the buff. But here comes speculation – was the kill really in their grasp, would they have been able to down it if the buff was not implemented and so on.

There is no way to prove that your kill was pure – no achievements, no nothing. So every hard mode from now on will be discriminated by its date – you are guilty till proven innocent. Everyone will assume you have used the buff.

It is a guild breaker – what happens when half of the guild wants the buff and half of the guild doesn’t? Drama – that’s what. This is curse of choice – if blizzard just shoved the buff down our throats and said deal with it – it would have been better. Right now every new lockdown will be a source of friction between people that want challenge and people that want progression. Decoupling progression from challenge is another bad side effect. Which guild is more progressed the 8/12 with no buff or the 9/12 with it? And it requires immense amount of will not to use it.

It is way too powerful – 5% is huge – it decreases the encounter difficulty by almost 20%. 30% = insane. It will make even some of the hard modes easier for pugs and trivial for guilds.

It is pointless – it will not make the content more accessible – one person in pug is enough to chain freeze the whole raid while fighting Sindragosa. One person in melee with afk brain will wipe all of melee when fighting the Blood Queen and he gets the blood link. And the bite order will still be problematic. The raid will still wipe on the Professor if tanks don’t kite and rotate properly in third phase. Assuming they get past Rotface – which is the pug grinder currently. These big oozes will still one shot people. No matter what. And healers will still have to harvest buff stacks on Dreamwalker.

Who is this buff aimed at? It doesn’t help the elite – they prefer level playing field, it doesn’t help pugs much – not all encounters become brute force tank and spank. It decreases the firepower requirement but not the skill one. So it only help casual guilds that can stay out of the fire, but lack the DPS to make the enrage timer – are there really so much of them ?

A better solution?
How would I have done it – well simple – keep the buff away from hard modes for 2 or 3 more months – this way more of the really good guilds would have had a fair shot at them. After that create some kind of pure achievements for normal and heroic – if you down the boss with no buff – you get one of them. If you down the boss with the gear level encounter was designed for – you get the second achievement and the mount of überness.

P.S. Lich king – beware – I am coming after you. Hopefully without buff.

Larisa:

I can see where you're coming from. This is yet another version of the nerf countdown we've been fighting so many times before. I remember the pride we felt as we downed Mother Shiraz pre-nerf in Black Temple. And the disappointment that we didn't get another few weeks before the final mega-patch, which made all our shadow resist gear we so painfully had gathered suddenly become unnecessary over night. We knew we could have made it to Illidan without the nerf. We just never got the chance to prove it.

Agreeable, this way of putting up the nerfs is way better than how it used to be. At least you have a choice now. You CAN get rid of the buff, although I doubt that more than a handful of guilds really will come around and do it. The temptation to get the bosses down a bit easier is just too big, since there's absolutely no incentive at all not to use it. If we only could have gotten some way to distinguish a guild that didn't use the buff from a guild that took advantage of it, for instance by an achievement, like you suggest, or by some particular sort of gear drop, it would have been an entirely different question. But as it is now, no one will ever know. And since most guilds that are fairly serious about raiding also have a competitive side, comparing themselves to other guilds on their server, it's quite unlikely that they'll cripple themselves in the hunt for their first kills, without any reward for it whatsoever.

However, I'm not totally against the concept of making the instances a bit more accessible after a couple of months. The ranking site Guildprogress, which keeps track of 125 000 guilds worldwide suggests that somewhere between 3 and 4 percent of the guilds have killed Putricide in 25 man. 85 percent of the guilds haven't gotten as far as downing Saurfang. Mind you, there are several sources of error in this. I have no idea about how relevant their database over guilds is; many of those guilds might have ceased to exist and hence aren't progressing anymore. Then there are other guilds which might have killed a couple of bosses back in time, guilds that are still ranked, but in reality have lost their interest for raiding.

Still I think the tendency is correct, judging from what I see in recruitment ads on the forums and in the general chat; very few guilds have progressed at all further than the first four bosses in ICC, two months after it was released. It's no wonder that Blizzard wants to push the general progression a bit further. Doing the same four bosses over and over and over again certainly give you some badges and a shiny reputation ring, but it's kind of boring in the long run. So I think that we just have to live with nerfs in one form or the other.

Two things could have been made to make the ICC buff work as intended without being forced down the throat of every single raiding guild, either they needed it or not. One thing has already been mentioned: to somehow recognize the non-using of the buff. This would have given us three available difficulty levels of the encounters: buffed mode, normal mode and hard mode. It's just like taco sauce: some like it mild, others want it spicy and then there are all those boring medium types, like me. Something for everyone.

The other thing I'd like to change is to switch around, so that you don't get the buff by default. You shouldn't have to talk to an NPC to get rid of the buff. You should have to talk to him to GET it. I believe that this would make guilds think twice before using it; do we really need this or can we do without?

It's just like with children. You can't hand out candy and then tell them to think over if they really want to keep it. It's easier to say no when you don't feel the chocolate smell in your nostrils.

It came from the bar: The Simple Pleasures.

Once again one of the guests frequenting the bar of The Pink Pigtail Inn has decided to speak up and share a story with us. As a matter of fact, this voice is getting quite familiar, since it's the same guest writer as the previous times, Holly Elizabeth from the US Feathermoon server. New or not, she's very much appreciated by the innkeeper who takes the opportunity to slack a little bit in a corner, just listening to the buzz, sipping a pint.

This time Holly has done something rarely seen at The PPI: she has included a bunch of fancy screenshots. Now, Blogger isn't exactly the best tool for doing flashy goodlooking posts with a ton of screenies. And as if this wasn't enough: Holly also wanted to provide a link to a video. "Imbed it", she said.

Larísa has been scratching her head, trying to figure out how to make the pictures and the video look if not glorious, at least decent. There's a distinct risk however that this won't work as intended. After all: this blog was made for writing walls of text, not for publishing pretty pictures. Anyway: if it looks horrible, we just want to let you know that Holly is innocent. Blame Larísa.

And now... take away your eyes from Larísa and listen to Hollly's story!


Hello again! After doing a mind numbing amount of heroics on my newest 80, grinding old world dungeons on my lowbie (it has tree form now!), and questing for a few hours on my lowest of lowbies, I started to get bored of yellow question marks and looking for dungeon queues.

It was about this time I realized something, I hadn't really just enjoyed the World of Warcraft in a long time. It had become to me, all about progression, get to the next level, get to the next item, get to the next raid, get to the next...well anything, when was the last time I, to coin an old addage, stopped to smell the roses?

I realized it had been a very long time, burning crusade long actually. I remember after grinding island dailies for many many moons, getting my slow flyer on my priest and flying for hours. Flying was so cool then! I used to tease Honor Hold and see how long I could stay with the debuff dodging the things they shot at you, dive bombing on unexpecting players and see if I could surprise them, teasing the felreaver by aggroing him then flying out of his reach! I had hours of enjoying the beautiful skies, and hitting the flight barrier and watching my mount have a heart attack.

My drood engineer made it's roflcopter and I enjoyed sitting idle in the air, watching the engines cut off (it's idle animation) it dropping only to be saved at the last second by the engines coming back on in Blizzard's sick way of saying 'we -could- have made this malfunction too!.'

So when was the last time I just really had fun looking around? It'd been a while, and I was going to fix it. The question was, where to start. I actually just spent about four hours flying around Northrend and outland, turning down every dungeon invite I got, explaining to people I couldn't run their lowbie through stocks because gosh darnit, I wanted a day to just play.

I then spent another three hours or so running around Azeroth, and I had -fun-. I went to try to find places I hadn't been before, like if you head south from Feralas via ocean, on the very southwest tip of Sillithus is an empty tauren village, and an empty cave! I had heard about it but went to see it for myself (yay for levitate.) It occured to me towards the end, when I was visiting some of my favorite places, to actually take screenshots to torture you with! And also luckily the sunnart viewpoint art add-on I use makes the perfect place to post commentary to burn your eyes!

Have you just given up with the fast paced dungeon from time to time? Maybe go farming for a pet you wanted for a while, or visit some of your favorite locations? I recommend if you do, putting on classical music (I did Pachelbel's canon in D mostly because of the rant I'm going to link below because it is -hilarious)

I highly recommend if you're getting burned out with the 'gogogo' attitude, if you find yourself longing for Cataclysm for some fresh air to just....stop, and go play in the world, it's massive! There are so many fun things, go hang out with Mario and Luigi twins in Un'goro. Explore some of the caves in sillyfish! Have fun and just see what -you- can find, or look up some of the references in Warcraft, and go find them for yourself!

Hope that made you giggle! It did me, now I'll give Larisa the spotlight back, even though it's so pretty, and warm, and makes my lunar festival drink even sparklierererest. . . nooo don't take it back, my light! my light! gah! stupid unhumanly gnome strength *sad face*

Holly over and out!

It came from the bar: Roleplaying or Role Playing?

This is yet another guest post written by Holly from Feathermoon (US). As opposed to the innkeeper, who is a closet wanna-be-one-day role player, Holly does it for real.

The Difference Between Roleplaying and Role playing
What can a simple space mean in the world of roleplaying, at least to a silly little Holly bear? To me it means how serious you are about getting into the role, and what rules you're willing or enjoy breaking. Does your character fit into the world designed, game or not? Do you use out of character knowledge? Is the roleplay dramatic, comedic? Did you stick to the genre, or do something way out in left field?

Don't get me wrong, I don't think there's a wrong way to roleplay. It's just that depending on your style and seriousness of it, finding a group that accepts and enjoys what you do can do is the real challenge.

My Roleplaying Experience; Old, Older, and Present. No not presents, the present
Since well before joining World of Warcraft, I've often found ways to sneak into a roleplaying community. Sometimes it's erotic, sometimes fantasy, sometimes futuristic, but I've never been short of far too many identities to count. When I found World of Warcraft I started on a normal server (argent dawn, partly because it was the beta server) but soon moved to a roleplaying server (Feathermoon, mmmmm, Feathermoon)

I've hopped guilds a few times, and something that amazes me is the difference in roleplaying style and seriousness from group to group. Sometimes you have to do world RP and guild chat is restricted to out of character talk. Sometimes guild chat is in character and you don't world roleplay much, sometimes you get things like guild chat is in character officer chat is out of character, and then there's the seriousness of the roleplay.

The hardest thing I think when roleplaying is figuring out how much fourth wall you can break, and how much you limit yourself to the game mechanics. I've often found these two things tend to make or break how fun roleplay is. I've made many characters, serious and silly in various guilds, I usually take them from my stories (they're terrible, trust me, you don't want to read them.)

Lately though I've actually found myself in only one roleplaying guild, where the roleplay is so drastically different depending on which characters are on that it's mind boggling, sometimes it's more serious if our resident headmistress mage comes on. Sometimes it's so ridiculously off the wall when our waffle loving moonkin logs in and starts waving her kinetic waffle iron about. And my only real character, a mute, illiterate pallygirl raised by trolls (she's secretly a tauren pally in blood elf disguise***) fits somewhere between the two. I often wonder how I'd do in a more serious roleplaying guild these days.

I'd like to think I'd step up, and really get into character, a beautiful backstory, and not breaking the fourth wall, trying to stick to only in game references and knowledge. But honestly, lately my creative juices for roleplaying have mostly been run dry. The desire to slip into someone else's head is severely lacking and I think both my writing and my roleplaying has suffered greatly because of it.

Seeking Inspiration.
Normally when my creative juices run dry, and my desire to slip into another skin is a little light, life deals me a lemon, and that escape becomes much more desirable, lately though, the lemons I've gotten haven't helped inspired me.

Sometimes I find reading, either blogs, forums, books, magazines, anything I can get my hands on will get me in the writing mood. There's something about seeing words so eloquently written, ideas being converted into language everyone can understand, wonderful descriptions that transport me away from my little 6'x8' room in the middle of nowhere to rolling plains, beautiful skies, raging seas, or intimidating mountains, or climaxes that have you sitting on the edge of your seat, crying desperately in your lover's arms, or feeling a blissful moment lost in more wonderful thought, that can really get my creative juices flowing. I wish half the time I could write a tenth as well as some of the people I read (resident innkeeper included.) Lately though I've found my lack of skill at grammar and my usually generic ideas has left me feeling more bitter than creative.

So lately I've been trying to find a new inspiration, fire the old muses and hire a new one. I've been looking up beautiful works of art, to see if a visual muse might help me gain a passion for writing since my ability to draw doesn't extend far beyond stick figures. Because when I get the inspiration to write, I can, by association get the inspiration to get inside characters. I've tried opening myself to new experiences, trying new foods, new shows/movies, expanding my musical knowledge, etc. . . .

I hope to find my own inspiration soon, till then I have found the inspiration to send another post to the sexy gnome who, when she mans or womans the bar, needs a stepladder to see the customers and reach the bottles.

In closing I'd like to ask a few questions, okay?
To those who roleplay often, where do you find your inspiration? What type of roleplay do you enjoy most? Do you roleplay in game, in guild, in a private channel, or away from WoW altogether? Do my grammar and poor language skills make your eyes bleed? If your answer is yes, how do you type so plainly with bleeding eyes? Will I stop asking questions? Will Larisa bap me if I continue in this manner? Do gnomes really make a squishy sound when punted? How is a raven like a writing des-*ow!* Okay, stopping now, how do gnomes swing bar stools that ha-*ow!!!* Really stopping now, Holly over and out.

It came from the bar: World of Raidcraft.

This is a guest post written by Holly from Feathermoon (US). Her goal in the game is to “try a little bit of everything”. Consequently she has characters in different classes, both on the horde side and alliance side, dealing with everything from serious raiding to roleplaying. This is her first appearance at the PPI.

Holly:

“In all honesty I'll admit I'm not nearly the hardcore raider I was once, or that I'm even knowledgeable of all the encounters (princes? I thought you said princesses, I was waiting for them to turn into Goomba's and tell me to check another citadel) But what I have noticed is how the mentality in raiding is shifting, and wondering what is to come.

Shall we take a moment to let an old bitty's mind travel waaay back to the days of molten core? I remember running back if you wiped 5 at a time through BRD, trying to get 40 people to show up at the same bloody time, beating our head against the wall because enough people couldn't get it through their head that if you are the bomb, you had to run away or you killed everyone. Some very bad memories, rolling off between eleventy million other players of the same class for that stupid benediction quest item, those were good.....mediocre...playable days.

Some major things back then was how clearly the roles were, and how squishy -everyone- was. CC was a must, banishes, polymorphs, traps, etc... . there was no digging into a mob right away so that gave people time to do their CC's, sit a second, wait for the second thunderclap, and then dig in, but watch a threat meter, be prepped to go to wand, or sit down for a bit, no hurry.

If too many things were left unCC'd the tank went squish, the tank was not neigh invulnerable, it didn't take a boss hitting for 80% of their hp to make them cringe in fear, no, every mob was dangerous, they were just a little better suited for taking damage, see: dps plate wearers these days.

In those days it was less about reactionary playing, and more about planning. Assigning which mage to the general's healers, who was on back-up if one should die, which of the 18 tanks would tank the boss, etc. . . . It was more about cunning, and less about power.

We fast-forward to BC in Kara, CC was much less important, with blizzards ideas that pallies should no longer be glorified buffbots, but contribute much more, they could tank, dps, and heal now! threat generation was way up, even from warriors, and it was much easier to dig in, and to skip some cc on trash, the tank would hurt, the healer would cry, but save for some really tough mobs, cc wasn't required on every pull, and your wand became a stat stick, mmm, stat stick.

These days though, I'm noticing a trend of less planning or more reacting, there's no deciding which needs to die first unless there's a healler, crowd control isn't even on most people's bars, and success or fail of the encounter is less on strategy, and more on gear and making sure to get out of the fire.

Now please don't think that I'm one of those that thinks this is a bad change, it's a change, what I do think is bad is how people have been reacting to it, I'm noticing the most desired dps isn't a good player, but the flavor of the month that can shave a couple more hundred dps. Tanks are even getting benched or pulled out because their class can outdps other tank classes and they just need the dps. In the end it makes for a much faster, more adrenaline based system. You are getting fewer people coordinated, fights are less unique and more 'it's like XT only with fire’ or "It's like the guy in UP only with fire and bone thingies” And everything is much more gear dependant.

There was a time when you had to have fire, frost, and arcane mages, and despite the fact that fire mages did ridicu-dps, you had to have all 3 because about half the mobs are fire immune or resistant, frost immune or resistant, and arcane mages well, they go boom boom dead.

These days if fire mages do the most dps, it's almost expected of you to be fire, even if you love arcane. Don't put out the 'dps you should?' Then screw you, get out of my raid, dps are a dime a dozen.

In the end I wonder where this could lead to, maybe trispec with each fight tuned so one of them will do more damage. Will Blizzard work to make it so dps are a little more appreciated? Make it so tanks do less damage so none will be benched for it?

I have to admit when Icecrown citadel launched and we could one or two shot every boss in there I was very....disappointed almost, it’s the peak raid of wrath, and the start makes it look like anybody with half a brain can make it to the lich king?

Then we get to plague wing quarter thing, and suddenly there's a fight that reminds me very much of Illidan, and it's tuned so hard that only 100 something raids across the 18 million realms Blizzard had could down him in the ten attempts? I had such a flashback that my brain spun, is this what we should expect from Blizzard in the future? Are they going back to making fights much more than just 'don't stand in the fire'? If so, will the community react positively or negatively? It's food for thought.”

New Voices – It Came From The Bar

I got the sweetest letter from one of my readers a few days ago. It was titled “Very sorry if I’m bothering you”, which made me shake my head a little bit.

“Bothering”? Do I seem like someone who is easily bothered? Do you think I’m drenched in mails from people, to busy to care or notice? How do you really picture the life of a blogger? I’ll tell you the truth. We’re not bothered at all by this kind of letters. At least not any blogger I know of. Any reader contact totally makes my day. “Someone is reading my thoughts and reacting to it. Yay, I exist!”. Listen to the logic of a blogging mind.

Anyway: back to the letter. It was written by Holly, who had noticed that my bartender had left his position and wondered if I’d be interested in getting some guest posts. She wanted to try out blogging, but couldn’t post often enough to keep up a blog of her own.

I told her the truth: that I’m currently not looking for a new regular co-writer for the inn. On the other hand I wouldn’t mind if a guest occasionally would hit their glass, calling for attention. On the contrary, it would be nice if people wanted to share what’s on their mind with the other ladies and gentlemen hanging by the bar disk. My only requirement is that the content and tone in the post should be somewhat in line with the ordinary posting, and it must also be interesting enough to grab the attention of the innkeeper herself.

So I’m hereby introducing a new label at the inn: “It came from the bar”. This will be like a Speakers Corner, where wanna-be-bloggers-maybe-one day can get a chance to clear their throat and let out their blogging voices. Some of them might find it enchanting and interesting and rewarding as I do and move on to start their own blogs one day. And for some of them it might be a one-time-only experience.

We’ll see what will come out of it. It is an experiment. Maybe it will end up in a one-time-only event. Maybe Holly – and other inn visitors – will speak up again. No matter what I promise it won’t take over the blog in any way. The PPI is and will remain Larísa’s domain.