The Case of the Lost Paladin

Once upon a time there was a paladin who thought he needed a break from raiding. He was geared enough to run Ulduar, and that was one of the reasons why he didn’t feel any motivation to keep running Naxx. He wrote a small note about it to his guild leader, and this letter ended up engaging not only his guild, but thousands of WoW-players all over the world. (Which probably didn’t come as a complete surprise to him – after all he should know that his GL was blogger at heart and this was definitely blogging material.)

There are currently three major posts discussing The Case of the Paladin: World of Matticus, Greedy Goblin and Tobold’s, and each one of them has caused a major debate. Most readers condemn the behaviour of the paladin, considering it egoistic, while a few think that he was in his full right and didn’t have any obligation whatsoever to help out his guild once he had got the gear he needed. (Gevlon has now come up with another post, where he has slightly changed his opinion, but he still think he doesn't own his guild anything.)

Different perspectives
I’ve thought a great deal about the issue, trying to sort out my own thoughts and feelings. However, I’ve found it pretty hard to take a position. I can neither criticise, nor defend him vehemently.

In the end it’s all about different perspectives on raiding, different mindsets. Like Map writes in his comment: “This runs into a central division of types of raiders. You have people like Wayne who raid to get gear. You have others who gear to raid.”

I belong to the later category, but who am I to condemn people with a different approach to the game? They pay subscription fees like me, they invest time, and they’re entitled to decide for themselves how to play it, as long as they don’t lie and take advantage of others.

A question that comes into my head is how this paladin looks upon the purpose of his guild. Is the guild most of all a business operation, something a group of people agrees to run together as a mean to get access to things in the game (gear or achievements)? Or is it a social institution, a bunch of friends or even a family, who enjoy spending time and doing things together (in this case raiding)?

It isn’t necessarily wrong to see raiding and membership in a guild as tools that you use to reach goals for your character progression. It’s fine with me – as long as the player is honest about his intentions right from the beginning. Let the greedy goblins play make guilds of their own. As long as the rules are clear and everyone knows what to expect, it will work. It will be a bit like a PUG, although better organized. It’s a bunch of loosely connected strangers who agree to cooperate to get the job done, without any emotional involvment whatsoever. End of story.

I wouldn’t want to be a part of it though. You see I expect my raiding guild to have a soul, and I know it sounds very vague and irrational to Gevlon, who doesn't believe in spirits whatsoever. But I'm human rather than a machine, and I you want to laugh at me for this childish notion, so be it.

To me raiding is hardly at all about enhancing my character. Of course I rejoice at upgrades as anyone else, but it’s not my motivator, it’s a side effect and most of a way to help to improve the overall raid performance. No, raiding to me is best described as entering a different state of mind. When I raid I lose myself in time and space and I become a part of something bigger – an organism of its own. I raid because I love the activity of raiding in itself, not to get a salary.

If you ask be.imba I don’t need to run Naxx 25 man since I’m geared for more difficult tasks. And yet I wouldn’t dream of “taking a break” from it like the paladin. As a matter of fact I hate the nights when I miss a raid – not because I can’t bid on possible drops – but because I’m cut off from the raiding body where I belong.

Growing together
When we raid we grow together as a group. The glue is trust and the bricks are our common experiences. They’re our glorious first kills, the magic nights when everything worked and everyone played a bit beyond our limits. But they’re those horrid wipe nights when nothing worked and everyone sucked and the RL finally freaked out and yelled at us. They’re our solved conflicts, our mishaps and cryouts, our laughter and our silliness. The soul of the group is built out of everything we encounter in the raid.

This is why I keep listening to TS if the raid is oversubscribed and it’s my turn to sit it out. It’s not only about keeping me updated on our current boss strategies. It’s about being in touch with what’s happening to the guild and staying connected.

If you’re on a longer break it’s inevitable that you’ll be a bit lost if you come back. A guild changes and develops a little with every new raiding experience it gets, with every new members that comes or old member that leaves the raiding team. If you’re not a part of it you’ll come back to a different guild than the one you took a break from. It will take a long time to find your way back into the organism. And if the trust is lost I doubt it's even possible.

So what’s my final judgement about the paladin? Well, most of all I feel sorry for him. I think he misses an important aspect of raiding. It's not about the epic loot, but about the epic experience of being a part of a tightly knit group, step by step exploring Azeroth while growing in skill, maturity and coordination. Perhaps it isn’t his cup of tea. But it definitely is mine.

The extra boss in the DK wing

The tanks in our guild has established the nice habit to write posts in our guild forum after every raid, evaluating the encounters from a tank’s point of view, discussing lessons learned and things to think about for the next raid.

Normally this is pretty serious business, however there was a few lines in a recent posting about our first 25 man raid in Naxx which made me giggle:

We moved onto to the secret final boss of the DK wing - the 4 horsemen chest. Simple tactic, just hard to execute. Basically, everyone has to loot their badges and gtfo before the raid leader enrages. I think we finished just within the enrage timer.

How true isn’t this? Normally we don’t use many curses in the Pink Pigtail Inn (this is a non-combat zone, mind you), but honestly, I don’t get the idea about those bloody chests. Everyone opening them to loot badges at Chess in Karazhan was time consuming and annoying as it was. And that’s nothing compared to doing the same thing in a 25 man raid.

As we were looting it you could hear the frustration and annoyance grow on TS. And this was only our FIRST time opening that chest. I can imagine how we’ll feel about it once we get to the stadium that we try to make Naxx into a one-night-clear-event.

“I’m sure they’re going to fix this in an upcoming patch”, someone said, hopefully.

Well, you can always hope. But the patch notes for 3.08 doesn’t say anything about it, as far as I’ve read them.

Why I’m still a horde virgin

Recently I wrote a response in a comment, which shocked one of my readers more than I could have imagined. I mentioned the fact that I’ve never ever played a horde toon (well I once levelled a little bloodelf mage to 9, but that doesn’t really count, does it?). I’ve never explored the horde capitals, more than the glimpses you get from the recent quest The Battle for the Undercity.

How can I just skip more or less half of the game? It’s quite incomprehensible if you ask David at Alt Fanatic.

And of course he’s quite right. I had a look at my statistics tab the other day (which I actually find much more intriguing than the achievement records) and noticed that I’ve already done 77 5-man instances in Lich King. I’ve killed Cyanigosa on heroic nine times. Since the statistics feature was introduced I’ve completed 267 daily quests, most of them definitely in the expansion, since I hardly did any dailies towards the end of TBC.

I could argue the way I usually do, that every instance run is slightly different, depending on the group composition (especially the players, not the classes so much). But the dailies are definitely very repetitive. It’s their nature.

When you think about it, much of my game play is about repeating content over and over again, while a big part of the content, maybe even the majority of it, still is unknown territory to me. Isn’t this a bit of a waste?

Supporting raiding
Now there’s a difference between David and me. He has played the game since 2005. I started two years later, which means that I’ve had essentially less time than he to explore the content. And while David loves to level alts, I’m caught by the raiding bug, which is nothing less than a curse since it is so time consuming. Most of my limited gaming time has to be spent on things that directly or indirectly support my raiding. Levelling an alt would be OK, as long as it gives me access to another profession. For instance my upcoming herbalist rogue will provide Larísa with mats so she can make the necessary flasks for raiding.

Levelling a horde character just to see the content “on the other side” won’t support raiding in any way. It’s a side project, which could compare to playing another game altogether or playing on another server. It wouldn’t connect to the rest of my playing and it would feel like a bit of “a waste of time”.

You could argue that this is a silly way of thinking. There isn’t such a thing as a “productive” way of playing WoW – it is all about entertainment and leisure and if we start to think about it as a job we’re getting it wrong.

On the other hand – if I didn’t think this way – if I mindlessly fell for every idea I got into my head and started alts of every class and race on every kind of server – I would see a lot of the newbie zone content, but not so much of endgame raiding. So maybe I’m not totally wrong after all. I’m constantly struggling to balance real life with gaming, finding ways to reach my goals in the game, even though circumstances suggest that I should be playing on a more casual level than I am. This means that I have to sacrifice content and make priorities.

Where everybody knows my name
However I think that my main reason for staying on the alliance side is the social one. How lonely wouldn’t it be to start a horde character and not knowing anyone at all? It isn’t only the Barrens and Ogrimmar that would feel alien to me. The general chat would. The unknown guild tags would. And the totally empty friends list and the “you’re not in a guild” message would. I can hardly think of anything lonelier. I would have to start from scratch to get into some kind of social context. Why would I do that when I know that I’ve got a bunch of friends who are online at the alliance side?

I guess most of my readers are old enough to remember Cheers? One of the best things about that series is actually the signature melody. The lyrics describe pretty well what my guild and my friends list means to me, and why I hesitate to try a horde character just to see the content. (By the way it also describes my vision for this blog, but that’s another story.)

Sometimes you want to go
Where everybody knows your name
And they're always glad you came
You want to be where you can see
Our troubles are all the same
You want to be where everybody knows your name

Slowly poisoned by achievements

I thought I could resist it, since it’s pointless and a huge time sink, but lately I seem to have been pulled into the achievement business. It’s like if I’ve been dotted. I won’t go down instantly, but it’s infecting me and putting silly ideas into my head.

The Merrymaker
The first step on my road of surrender was the arrival of the title Merrymaker, which had some odd attraction to me. I never cared about the Hollowed title only a month ago, but this one was obviously meant for Larísa. Suddenly I found myself doing some stupid rescue reindeer quest in Searing Gorge, something that would never have crossed my mind before.

Having a goal, I could suddenly feel the pleasure of seeing the greyish achievements in the log turning colour into a brighter shade as I completed them. The message that I’d done it made me smile. It wasn’t as big as dining, but it was definitely more fun than just completing a quest.

Another step towards achievement illness was that I started to take an interest in the challenges offered in the heroic instances. There’s no doubt that those little twists to the fights, the risen difficulty, the special strategies you have to figure out, make it more challenging and fun. Killing the boss isn’t enough anymore. I want to kill him with finesse.

Old Kingdom
I’ve got a couple of guildies who are achievers on an entirely different level than me. They’re on good way of completing all the heroic instance achievements, getting a red proto drake for the Glory of the hero achievement. I doubt that I’ll ever reach that far. But I’ve done enough of them to get a taste for it.

A few nights ago I joined them in the hunt for Volazj's Quick Demise in Old Kingdom , and it turned into the most fun achievement experience I’ve had so far.

I can’t say that I love that boss on heroic – that part when you have to nuke down yourself and your party members during insanity always causes me trouble to survive. My friends assured me that I probably wouldn’t have to go through those struggles. There was supposed to be some kind of easy mode. If you made the boss into a focus target you could keep nuking him even during insanity and he would go down quickly.

It only took us one try to find out that this information either was wrong or outdated after a hot fix. There were no shortcuts anymore – this boss had to be done the proper way, which meant insane nuking from the beginning to the end. And I would have to deal with the adds, no matter what I thought about it.

The kick of killing
We did a couple of tries and I felt ashamed – I thought it took me way too long to deal with the adds and I didn’t take down all of them on my own. I was convinced that it was my lack of speed that slowed us down and I even offered to leave my spot to some more skilled player than me. But the other party members assured me it wasn’t just me that was struggling – everyone else was too. We just have to improve and dps the best we could. So we had a big feast, making sure everyone (me on my mage, a druid tank and three dps-ing shammies, no healer) was buffed up to a maximum. And off we went, nuking like insane to get him down as far as possible before the first insanity.

This time for some reason I took down my first load of adds a bit quicker than before, and so did probably the others. I don’t know if it was the feast or just that we had practiced a few times. A second insanity arrived and I felt like if I was affected by slow as I slaughtered my mates. But at least I survived. Finally back to the boss – about 10 percent of his life remained and the same amount of seconds. And behold! We grabbed the achievement with the amazing margin on one single second!

The kick of that kill was definitely on par with any first kill on raid bosses! This was an achievement in its true sense.

Poisoned
Merrymaker and defeater of Volazj – those dots seem to be enough to make Larísa fall into the achievement trap. I keep fighting it, but I must admit that I’ve already run Deadmines and Stockades without having any good reason for it except the achievements. And why on earth was I completing the exploration of Northrend the other night? There was no logical reason for it. Only those stupid, pointless achievements.

I’m dotted. How long will I resist? Will I end up doing tedious things as exploring Barrens and Durotar by my ground mount? Is there any rescue from this curse?

Time will show. I suspect that my best defence will be the upcoming raiding season. When I’m not raiding I’ll be gathering money and consumables for raids and I won’t have time for this nonsense. Hopefully.

Feeling at home with the rats

Finally I gave in and moved my hearthstone to Dalaran, which doesn’t make sense since I’m a mage and can teleport there anytime I feel like it anyway. It would be more natural to put my stone either in Wyrmrest Temple or Wintergarde Keep, for quick and easy access to the raid instances, or possibly in one of the far away corners of the world where I go to make dailies, such as Howling Fjord, Borean Tundra or Sholazar Basin.

But I followed my heart and put it where I currently feel most at home in the game, which is in Underbelly, the underground city in the sewers of Dalaran.

Cooking quests

When I first visited the place I mostly saw it as a spot where you could pick mushrooms for one of the daily cooking quests. Then I found out that this also was a good spot for another of the dailies, where you’re supposed to collect a piece of cheese and six glasses of wine. This quest is very annoying if you try to complete it on the surface, since there are way more players doing the quest than there are glasses around. But if you go to the inn of Underbelly you’ll get your glasses in no time at all. And there's even a third cooking quest which is supposed to be delivered to the inn keeper in the sewer.

It turned out that I had a reason to visit the sewers more or less every day for the cooking stuff, and little by little I got to know the place better. From being confused and pretty annoyed since I found it hard to orient myself, I started to change. I found myself looking forward to those visits – I was even falling in love with the place.

Those are the things which appeal to me in Underbelly:

• The lack of lag. Dalaran on the surface will mostly show itself in 10-15 fps to me, which isn’t exactly enjoyable. Down in the sewer it’s more like a normal questing area.
• All services in one spot. Well there isn’t any AH, but on the other hand there isn’t anyone in the regular Dalaran either. I suspect Blizzard will never ever make another one, since they need to give us a reason to go back to the old world. Or maybe they will, it certainly would brighten up the rather empty and dead Shattrath. But Dalaran won’t get one for sure. But if you count out AH you'll find more facilities in the sewers than you may think of when you first see it. There’s a bank right next to the inn. You may repair and buy any reagent you need, even vials. You may even cook for free by the stove in the nice little bedroom.
• The atmosphere. In spite of the darkness, the stench and the sewer rats running around, I find the sewers very cosy. There are just enough other players to keep you from feeling alone, but not more than that you can relax and enjoy the tranquillity when you’re in mood for that.

Fishing achievement
So what can you actually do in Underbelly, except for cooking quests, repairing and sorting out your bank? Well, one great thing you can do is fishing. If you’re waiting for a Wintergrasp battle to start, or looking for a PUG, you could as well fish in the sewer on your own as standing in the crowd by the fountain on the surface. The catches aren’t amazing, but at least you can level your fishing, and if you’re addicted to achievements you can try to catch a Giant Sewer Rat.

And one you’re done and want to get out and get some fresh air and sunlight, you don’t have to make your way through Dalaran to the flight point to be able to mount. No, Underbelly has a sweet take off ramp of its own, if you prefer your own mount to the public transportation systems. Just follow one of the pipes downwards, watching your step so you don’t go too far and fall (if you’re a mage you could put on slow fall, just as a precaution). When you reach the end, mount up and enjoy.

The only complaint I have about Underbelly is that it seems as though the Postman is afraid to wet his feet and refuses to go down there to deliver the mail. At least I haven’t been able to find any mail box yet – you have to get to the entrance to find one. But even if it’s a bit annoying, it doesn’t take away the grandness of Underbelly – the hidden jewel of Dalaran where I’ve found my home among sewer rats and shady dealers.

The Pink Pigtail Inn list of 2008

A new year has arrived, but I’m not quite finished with 2008 yet. Before letting it go I thought I should make one of those lists to help us remember a few of the WoW and WoW blogging higlights of 2008. Here we go:

Best raid instance: Zul Aman
OK, technically ZA was realeased in the patch 2.3, but not many players were geared enough to run it until 2008. I really loved that instance. Being outdoors was nice for a change, the trash wasn’t overwhelming or boring, they had their own little gimmicks, like that hill you ran with all the birds or the annoying scouts that you had to grab really quickly or you would wipe soon. The bosses were varied and challenging in different ways, and as we geared up we could still get a thrill in there, running against the timer. It was easy to forgive that some gear that dropped there looked stupid.

Least successful raid instance: Sunwell
With the risk of being accused of not knowing what I talk about (I never did one single boss there myself) I’ve got the feeling that this instance never became a favourite with anyone. Very few players did it before the nerf and from the ones who did it I never heard any enthusiasm. Blood elf style was never a hit.

Silliest gold sink: Gold Eterium Band sold by Haris Pilton.
Have you ever heard of anyone buying it? If I had that gold I’d rather hand it out to begging newbies in Goldshire. Seriously.

Most longed for instance: Magisters Terrace
At the point that this one was launched we were all pretty starved for new 5-man instances. We could do Mechanar, Slave Pens and Botanica asleep. It was nice and Priestess Delrissa was a challenge to begin with . But it only lasted a few weeks. Then we started to crave for more.

Most juicy guild drama: The merging of SK and Nihilum into Ensidia and the fuss that followed.
This blog post from a former member is full of accusations and I don’t know if there is even an inch of truth in it. But no doubt it qualifies for this title.

Biggest addition to the game: Achievements
There have been a lot of new ideas and content brought to the game. The expansion brought a new class, the phasing technology, vehicles and a lot of other nifty stuff. But the most game-changing invention in 2008 was the achievements. It brought life back to a lot of the game that has been dead and deserted.

Best quest: The Wratgate questchain incluiding the video we’ll never forget and The Battle for Undercity.
This brought our expectations about what questing can be like to a new level.

Ugliest tabard: Competitor's Tabard, offered during the Olympic Games.
The Olympic circles have nothing to do in Azeroth, they just don’t belong. I trashed it immediately after getting the pet, which on the other hand was very handsome.

Favourite non combat pet: The Phoenix Hatchling from MgT
A real beauty which brightened up some rather gloomy runs in the darkness of the lair of Gruul.

Most charming Blizzard employee: Ghostcrawler
Not always telling the news players wanted to hear, he still managed to gain the respect and love from the WoW community. Honesty, humour and a talent for communication was the recipe for his success.

Best podcast: Twisted Nether
Bre and Fimley brought the community to a new level of intimacy. Together with The Twisted Nether Wiki and BlogAzeroth it has become the power center of the WoW blogging community.

Biggest blog facelift: World of Matticus
It’s amazing how much development one blogger can manage to do in one year, while still keeping up his own raiding and real life duties. Good job!

Most memorable blog post: Noob world reorder and the follow-ups.

In a series of posts James Wallis explained Azeroth from a scientific point of view combining wittiness, intelligence, game knowledge and a slight amount of insanity to a very entertaining stew.

Most noticed breakthrough: Chick GM
She took the Blogosphere by storm, entering almost every single blogroll within a few weeks of her debut.

Most solid content provider: Tobold’s
He proved once for all that content >looks when it comes to blogging. With a simple, not to say non-existing layout, he’s got subscriber numbers that few other bloggers can dream of.

Most hugged blogger: Big Bear Butt was more or less lynched when he dared to question some aspects of PvP. The Blogging community reacted strongly, giving him the biggest collective hug ever seen. Don’t touch our bear!

I could go on like this forever. One year in WoW provides quite a lot of content when you think about it. What have I forgotten? Who deserves a mentioning on the PPI list of 2008? Please feel free to nominate candidates for new categories you come to think of or make up your own lists!

The easier it gets the pickier we become

Lately there have been a couple of posts about pugging which have caught my attention.

Keen at Keen and Graev’s Gaming Blog wrote a post about a new and increasing phenomenon in the game, that people ask you about your stats before joining an heroic five-man PUG. In spite of the fact that he had sufficient gear and had completed the instance before he has been denied more and more often, since the PUG leader won’t settle with less than “imba” gear.

He finds this attitude quite frustrating, since he needs to do those instances in order to upgrade his gear. This is a new approach, according to Keen. You would never have seen it in Old school WoW – or in any other game.

A few suggestions
WyldKard at Mendax wrote another post, commenting on Keen’s complaints. He shares Keens objections, and points out that it resembles to how people play their alts. You’ll rarely find a player doing instances in the “normal” way, at the appropriate level in an equally levelled and not overgeared party, making it a challenge. If players levelling alts bother to run instances at all, they’ll be likely to get help from guildies or other friends with higher levelled toons, more or less boosting them. They want a smooth run and get over with it quickly, and they think they’ve had their share of wipes and struggling when they did the instances “for real” levelling their mains.

WyldKard things this attitude is quite harmful to WoW and has a few suggestions what Blizzard should do about it. One of his more wild ideas is to disallow two characters on the same account on the same server. Hmm… Alts forbidden… No I don’t think that would be a hit, to be honest.

His second idea is more interesting, though I don’t think it’s flawless. He suggests that you gimp characters so that their characters will be reduced in power if they’re running a low level instance. I can see a point in it – it would allow friends with characters at different levels to play together and have good, entertaining instance experiences, in spite of the level gap. They won’t be referred into the pretty boring boosting industry.

His third idea doesn’t make sense to me, especially not with the achievement system alive: he says that players should be locked out from endgame instances way below their gear level.

Being spoiled
Now over to my take on this. Where does this pickiness come from? It’s hard to say, but I’ve got the feeling that we’ve become a bit spoiled. It wasn’t too long time ago when a run in Shadow Lab heroic was a whole-night venture, which you could expect would take at least two hours and a number of corpse runs. But we seem to forget about that quickly. Towards the end of TBC pretty much everyone was overgeared for the instances and we ran through them in no time at all. In the expansion the instances have turned out to be fairly easy and above all short. If you get a spot in a party for an instance it’s quite common that you’ll end up doing two or three in a row, since they’re so short.

You could think that since the instances are quite easy and short, players should need to be LESS picky about the other PUG members then they used to be in TBC. But the effect has become the opposite. The easier it gets the pickier we become, starting to ask for stats as if we were about to make a try on the hardest 25 man raid boss in stead of just running a simple dungeon.

Honestly, I can’t help thinking that we’ve become a bit lazy. Do we expect everything in the game to be a free ride those days? Where is our appetite for challenges? Have we forgotten that a few wipes in the beginning makes the killing of the boss so much sweeter in the end?
And when did we become so obsessed with gear? If we want guarantees for an easy PUG, good gear definitely won’t give the whole story. You may found extremely lousy players dressed up in the shiniest purples if you’re unlucky.

Reasons for being picky
Do I ever ask for gear stats myself when I’m about to start a PUG? Normally I don’t. But I must admit that I’ll throw a glance and inspect my fellow players before starting. I only remember once when I’ve had objections. But that actually was in a PUG raid in Zul Aman, before the last nerf patch. We were supposed to do a timer run for mounts and I noticed that one of the healers was all in green and blue quest rewards. It was obvious that he would be a big burden to the raid so I informed the raid leader and he removed him.

If I’m doing a heroic PUG just for badges and rep I won’t be picky about gear. But if I was going for a certain achievement it would be a different matter. There are achievements which are designed as dps races, where a certain level is required, no matter of the skill of the player.
A little while ago I did a half pugged timer run in Stratholme. It was late at night and we formed the group with a couple of guildies and a couple of pick-ups. It turned out that one of the outsiders was a hunter with terrible gear. His poor dps slowed us down and we didn’t make it against the timer. If we had only remembered to check him a bit better before I’m sure he’d never have been invited; we would have waited another ten minutes, found another one and reached our goal.

My conclusion is that there are times when asking for stats for a PUG makes sense. But unless you’re going for achievements it’s often overkill.

Edit:

After I wrote this Gevlon came up with a post on this topic, sharing his goblin PUG rules. They seem pretty harsh to the softhearted merrymaker Larísa, though I must admit most of it makes sense. And I must credit him for not demanding overgeared players in all purples. Blue gear will do according to him. Non-performing players won't do though.