Questing for Immersiveness in MMOs

Sometimes when the light dawns it hits you like a ton of bricks.

Mike Schramm at Wow.com wrote two posts recently (here and here) noting with approval the trend in MMOs to de-emphasize text, particularly quest text, in favor of a more visual model. The ultimate source of inspiration for these posts appears to be an interview with Warcraft creative lead designer Alex Afrasiabi where he repeatedly denigrates the importance of the "the story" to Warcraft. While I have a more fundamental disagreement with Alex that I'll save for another time, I want to focus today on the implication in Mike's post that the purpose of questing is to immerse players into the story.

Damn, that hurt.

Seeking Immersiveness

It never occurred to me before that the purpose of questing in a video game is to immersive players into a story. It's strange to me that anyone would ever think that having the text scroll across the sc r e an l i ke th is c o ul d create an immersive experience. Presumably some developer made it the default in an attempt to give quests that "olde" aura. Yet the reality is that slow speed text is irritating. The first time I ever used the escape key was to find a way (I hoped) to speed up the scrolling. It's a good thing the instant quest text feature was there because otherwise I might not have made it past the trial account.

If Warcraft designers think that quests should create an immersive story they have bigger problems on their hands than just slow scrolling text. The word immerse means to plunge into, to dunk, or figuratively to be absorbed by. There is nothing in the game play design of Warcraft that makes the story absorbing. There's nothing that makes it flow. Warcraft seems designed to break up flow, to force us to experience the story in bits and chucks, in pulses. Go out at night and stand in front of your car and have your partner repeatedly flick the headlight on and off. That's not immersive; it's irritating. Sometimes irritating can be another word for attention getting but attention getting is not absorbing. Attention has to be held continuously for absorption to occur.

If we define immersion as the state of flow, the state of absorbed attention, then it should be obvious that the enemy of this desired state is interruption. Yet the game play design constantly interrupts one's attention on the story. The failure of questing to absorb me into the story has nothing to do with the way "the story" is written or the fact that it's text based.

Breaking up is easy to do

First, the nature of questing itself is disruptive to the story. When you take a story and chop it into a 4500 bits, throw those bits to the four winds where they are picked up by it hundreds of different NPCs, and then ask your average person to recreate that story in their own head over the course of months or even years you are simply asking too much. I can't do it; I'm confused; I don't get it. It's no wonder that people want the quest text out of the way as fast as possible. You have given the average user an impossible task and so they brush on by it. And I'm only speaking about intellectual comprehension. If the story is so disjointed and chopped up that people can't understand it, why would anyone expect people to be absorbed by it.

Here is a challenge for Alex and Mike. Take the novel War and Peace and rip every single page out. Throw those pages off the roof of the Blizzard headquarters. Collect them all and read one page every day in the order they were collected. If you find the story (notice I did not say the task) immersive after one week, you too can be a Warcraft game play designer.

Second, consider all the interruptions to the story from a purely mechanical point of view. One of the biggest disruptions to game play is inventory management. I'm supposed to kill ten rats to help save Stormwind from the plague yet five minutes later I'm not back in Stormwind to report to the quest giver that the rats are dead; I'm back in town because I need to dump all the garbage that I collected because my bags are full. Then there is the whole issue of leveling professions, trading on the auction house and dealing with a character's talents and abilities. Yes, I grasp the technological reasons for limited bag space. I get the fact that much of the trash that we pick up is designed to heighten the realism of the game world and give us a monetary start in life. But with all these distractions and interruptions it's no wonder that some people get their story by reading the paperback novels.

Third, if game designers are seeking player absorption in the story I can't think of anything less immersive than daily quests. Third, if game designers are seeking player absorption in the story I can't think of anything less immersive than daily quests. Third, if game designers are seeking player absorption in the story I can't think of anything less immersive than daily quests. Third, if game designers are seeking player absorption in the story I can't think of anything less immersive than daily quests. Third, if game designers are seeking player absorption in the story I can't think of anything less immersive than daily quests. [ACHIEVEMENT]

Seriously, how many people curl up by the fireside with their favorite book and read the same scene over and over again for hours at a time. Yet that is what we do with dailies; that's what we do with heroics. Such behavior might absorb us into the game but it's the antithesis of what it takes to make a gripping story.

The Point of this Story

The point I want to get at here is that it bewilders me why anyone would think that the point of quests is to immerse players in the story. I've always seen questing--as I've seen killing mobs, playing the auction house, running instances--as tools to absorb me into a fantasy, an alternative world. It's the game itself that holds my attention. I think that placing the burden for story cohesion and player absorption is asking too much from the questing mechanic as a function of game play design. Questing is a lousy way to tell a story.

In saying that I don't mean to suggest that the story, the lore that serves the basis for the game, doesn't matter. I think the story matters a great deal. I think the written story matters most; that's my fundamental disagreement with Alex that I hope to get to in another post. But when the creative talent makes the lore inaccessible in the game it's two faced to claim that the players don't care about the story. The game design itself discourages us from caring. When Alex tells his new talent "nobody cares about the story" it's a vivid example of blaming the victim.

Why Mr Chilly doesn’t work as intended

On the paper it was a great idea. Blizzard wanted to reward the players for switching to a Battle.net account.

The thing is that there was a solid stick hanging over our heads, or maybe I should rather call it broad-axe. Switch before November 12 or you can’t play any more. Period. That’s what I would call negative enforcement!

Somehow they realized that they to put needed some sugar coating into this. They wanted to take away the focus from the blackmail situation. So they gave us a treat - something that should compensate us for the hassle of having to create a new account, no matter if WoW was the only Blizzard game you were playing.

They ended up offering us a carrot – a real one to munch on, not just something hanging out of our reach as the ones decorating the Northrend turtle ferries.

The measure could have been taken straight out of am instruction book about marketing and customer relations. It was absolutely the right thing to do. The only thing is that they picked the wrong reward. They gave us a pet. And I’m afraid that doesn’t work as intended. It clearly shows that Blizzard hasn’t understood the basics of the psychology of pet keeping.

Character customization
One huge incentive for keeping pets is that it’s one of the few tools you have to customize your character and turn it into an individual, not just another twin to the other 5 percent of the population that is running around with a similar race.

This doesn’t mean that the only pets that are interesting are the ones that barely anyone else has, such as the Azure Whelpling.

One of my favourite pets is the very plain, cheap and common rabbit which can be bought from a vendor in Don Morogh. There’s something in his innocent, fluffy appearance that speaks to me and fits into my character. Theoretically he’s available to anyone (at least on the Allience side) to buy, simple and cheap. But since not everyone cares that much about pets, not too many will bother to do it. In fact it happens quite rarely that you ever see a Snowshoe happily jumping around the legs of someone. Whenever I let him out for some exercise and fresh air, I can easily live in the imagination that he’s quite special, that he’s sharing his destiny with Larísa and not everyone else in the game.

Mr Chilly on the other hand will be the least exclusive pet we’ve ever seen. While the baby Blizzard bear (which I adore since it’s so beautiful), was sent to huge amounts of players just for logging on a certain day, this one is sent to literally everyone. And just to make sure that no one misses it, they’re spamming us. There’s one pet in the mailbox for each character and once you’ve learned it, it’s still there as a BoA for a reason I can’t figure out. If I ever create another character I know there will be another Mr Chilly in the mailbox for this lvl 1 as well. So what am I supposed to do with the ones that are not consumed?

Theoretically we can from now on expect to see an army of penguins marching around in Dalaran, which will make my mirror image+voodoo mask trinket combo look like a small crowd. In reality I don’t think we will, because who would want to show a pet which is as common as a nose on your character, with the difference that it looks exactly the same for everyone? I wouldn’t. Especially since I’ve already got another penguin with much more interesting eyes (until now, who came up with the idea to change them? :()

Need for more RNG
But if Mr Chilly is a “meh” to Larísa, what could Blizzard have done to make the carrot tastier? Well, I think it wouldn’t have hurt to put in some RNG to the event. Instead of handing it out to everyone – make it to a lottery with a few different pets dropping. Perhaps Mr Chilly would be the most common one, but there could have been a few other, more exclusive pets as well. Or just make him come in a bunch of varieties, with different colour combinations? They could either be random or vary depending on class and race of the owner.

Just make it more fun and attractive. Because considering the initial problems with the transfer (for instance we had a raid night spoiled because of this last week, since European players who had merged couldn’t log into the game), they certainly need some goodwill.

Mr Chilly doesn’t work as intended.

Why I don't want to hear another "WoW is too easy" statement

She began her post in the best way you can if you want to stir up some feelings and cause a bit of buzz in the WoW blogosphere, tossing out a classic torch:

Here’s a dangerous statement: Wrath of the Lich King (Wrath) made World of
Warcraft/Crack/Crass(WoW) too easy.

The words come from Mimetir, a guest writer at World of Matticus, who has written the first part in a planned series of articles about the social effects of WotLK. Like many a good blogger she invites the reader to a discussion, concluding in a question: "How easy is WoW these days and how do you feel about it?"

And of course I can't resist to take the bite and rant a bit about it. Because to be honest I'm pretty much fed up with the constant whining about that WoW has become too easy. What annoys me so much is that the loudest criticism comes from players who themselves are far from having cleared all the current raid content.

Hands on heart, how many of you have actually killed Yogg-Saron 25 man? Not quite that many. As a matter of fact, people seem to have given up about him altogether. I haven't got any scientific evidence that this is the fact, but from what I read on the blogs, it appears that most raiding guilds have stopped aiming for an Ulduar clear. They make ToC, Onyxia and not much more than that.

Why? Well, I guess they find him too hard compared to the upgrades he offers. The wipe/gear quota isn't favorable. And fine, that's their choice. But don't come and tell me that the raid instances in Wrath are too easy!

The choice is ours
I've praised the hardmodes before and I do it again: they're there for us to be able to put the bar at exactly the level where we want it to be to get the kind of gaming experience we're looking for.

Sure, there are people who don't enjoy wiping and prefer to kill bosses in one or two goes, pick up the loot and rejoice at their epics. The normal modes are there for their pleasure.

Then there is this other kind of raiders, who enjoy playing under pressure, who want to curse and be cursed at, who want to be frustrated and grind their teeth, who won't hesitate facing a long learning curve, who always try to bring their very best performance and who rather raid to enjoy the sweet first kills than to get gear. The hardmodes are for them.

And of course there are all sorts of shades and nuances in between. Actually I think we're all moving a bit back and forward between the categories, depending on our mood of the day. In our guild we've stopped raiding Ulduar on normal mode, but keep going for the hardmodes, since we've still got one more boss to see there. We do the normal ToC every week, in spite of the lack of challenge, after all it's hard to resist the T9s. It's a lot of loot for very little time, just above an hour. But I think everyone enjoy the following hardmode attempts more. That's where the real raiding is.

Some players could argue that doing both normal and hard modes in ToC will be too repetitive and boring. But then I wonder: since when did it become mandatory to run the raid instances on normal mode? Is there anything at all preventing you from skipping the faceroller raids altogether and stick to hardmode Ulduar and heroic ToC? Nothing. Nothing at all.

I know that there are many players out there who are much more skilled than I am. And maybe WotLK is completely sickening easy for you. But speaking for myself, I'm still challenged over and over again.

Enjoying the learning
I'll give you an example from my everyday life in Adrenaline. It's what I would call a "good" raiding guild. We've never topped the ranking lists of the server, and we probably never will, but we're steadily among the 10 best raiding guilds on the alliance side, which is fine if you look at how much time we spend on our raids.

In the last week I've had a couple of wonderful learning nights. One night I was lucky enough to get into a 10 man raid for Ulduar hardmodes on an offnight. We did Freya+3, and although the guild had done it a couple of times, it was the first time for me and some other raid members. It was such a thrill, going from wiping on one of the first waves, then slowly getting longer and longer into the fight, and then finally, after quite a few wipes, nail it, exhausted, with a big smile on my face.

A few days earlier we had the same kind of learning process and Thorim hardmode 25 man, the Lose your illusion achievement. We had to work for it, just as we had done the weeks before when we got our Hodir and Iron Council hardmode kills. We worked for this kill, not only in the raid situation, but also in between, when we were tweaking strategies and discussing what we needed to improve.

Finally, this Sunday night we started to work seriously on Northrend Beasts hardmode. Previously we had only made it through the first phase. After one hour of tries we got a glimpse of phase three. Yay for progress! I'm sure we'll get it right pretty soon. Easy? I don't quite think so.

Message to whiners
In my opinion the only players who really are entitled to say that the raiding in WotLK is too easy are the ones that are farming Algalon and clearing ToC hardmodes without any effort. How many are those? Well, according to WoW Progress 0,13 percent of the guilds have done A Tribute to Insanity (25). I'll be prepared to listen to what those players have to say about the skill level in WotLK.

The rest of you whiners? Go grind something. Switch to Aion. Or give yourself a challenge in the WoW They're still there for you, if you want them. Trust me on that. But please (and now I'm going to use one of those horrible abbreviations, which I normally detest, it's just that it's appropriate this time) - STFU.

Tickled Pink: Are we solving a puzzle or living a fantasy?

Euripides at Critical QQ wrote a post where he talked about his lack of enthusiasm for lore when he's raiding. While he appreciates a well told quest chain, it's irrelevant in a raid situation. Kael'thas could as well been a featureless blue cube named "final boss" with abilities called "Phase one ability" and "Phase two ability". Raiding isn't about storytelling, it's about laying a puzzle. This post tickled the raider Larísa and the non-raider Elnía.

Larísa:
I'm torn when it comes to lore. I really am. Let's put it this way: One part of me wants to pay attention to it, wants to get involved, wants to live the story. Isn't this what playing an MMO is about? Escaping into a distant world, seeking the adventure, playing our roles in the history. But no matter how hard I try to listen, my mind starts to wander when it's time for storytelling in WoW.

The first time I saw Lord Jaraxxus, I found it a bit amusing to see that little gnomish warlock and then the huge dude incoming. But not even at our first date could I focus long enough on the dialogue to actually hear what they were talking about. Because when I raid - I raid. I don't care about stories. I care about performance. No matter what hero or anti-hero or bad guy or whatever we're going to face, my mind is somewhere else. I ask myself: am I at the right position? I double check my buffs and players I'm supposed to buff one more time, just to be sure, even though I've checked it a dozen of times before. I plan for my opening attacks. And above all - I pay full attention to the pointer, to see when it changes to a dagger, the signal for me to throw my favorite starter - mirror images. All those speeches - with or without excellent actor performances - is just a background noise. The only voice I'm listening to is the one of the raid leader and the only text that matters to me is the raid chat, the mage channel and the ranged channel.

So to be honest Euripides, I'm quite with you. Jaraxxus could as well look like a cucumber - I wouldn't notice much of a difference as long as his abilities were the same.

Unfortunately this lack of interest for in-game storytelling doesn't only appear when I'm raiding. I'm afraid there are a ton of great stories you can get through the quest lines which I've missed too. I'm reluctant to admit it, but it's very rare that I stop and read what the NPCs are trying to share with me in those let-me-tell-you-a-story-quests. Normally I click it through as quickly as possible, impatient to get to the yellow question mark and head along to the next quest. Maybe it's because of my lack of experience of game storytelling, maybe it has to do with the game mechanisms and the incentives to constantly progress our characters. Or maybe the narrative parts are rather poorly written. I just know that there is something that doesn't work. I fail to lose myself in the story of Azeroth. At the most I see a hazy version of it in the far distance.

If I'm going to become involved I have to do it outside of the game, by reading Warcraft novels. Thanks to a generous donation from Ixobelle I've read a few and I enjoyed them a lot. They haven't got Nobel prize potential - to be honest they're rather crappy written - but they tell the story about Azeroth well enough to make me interested.

Still I can't say that I listened more carefully to what Ilidan had to say in Black Temple just because I had read about him. Once I stood in front of him I looked at him and thought to myself: "hey, there's a celebrity", in the same manner as I would have looked at one of the wax figures at Madame Tussaud's. And then I went back to my normal raiding mode, thinking about what this "Final boss" would do in phase one, two and three, not giving a damned about who this guy was, what he had done and why I was fighting him.

I'm sure I would look differently at it if I was playing at a RP server. Who knows, may I will one day? But as things are now, I'm definitely not living a fantasy. I'm solving a puzzle.

Elnia:
I don't see myself as engaged in solving a puzzle or living a fantasy. I do understand the puzzling part because I have done five man heroics and some of the fights can...well...could offer some puzzling challenges. I say could because I have been level 80 for only about five months and what I have learned about running heroics is that patience is the primary challenge. Whatever strategic decisions might be needed usually go out the door once you either find an over-geared party or become over-geared yourself. The best evidence of that is the fact that I have most of the achievements for the red protodrake and never once have I been in a PUG that deliberately set out to get those achievements. They just...happened. So unless you happen to do heroics at level they are basically /faceroll; no puzzle at all.

Nor do I really see myself living a fantasy, although that is the more appealing direction. As I mentioned in my post about improving questing the problem I have with the story is that it remains discombobulated to me. I think Larisa's point about the boss being a "celebrity" is spot on. For me, the Lich King is akin to Paris Hilton; someone who is famous for being famous although I couldn't actually tell you why. His name is on the box cover; I see his picture on the loading screen; but he has no relevance to what I do in the game outside of one or two quests. It's strange to me because as a non-raider I would think raiders would care more about the deeds of the summit bosses than us little schmucks in the trenches; after all, you guys are killing the bosses; don't you even care why? But it appears you don't.

At the level we are speaking about Warcraft is a game. I enjoy playing it. I like to explore the world; listen to the music; complete some achievement in the game to give me a feeling of accomplishment. Maybe there is a sense of a puzzling but it's the entire game universe that's a puzzle. How does the mechanics of this class work; where does this road go; how do I defeat this mob; how can I make 10,000 gold in one day. Yet there is also a sense of wonder, of being in a different space and time; of projecting myself into my character so much that when she gets whacked from behind I jump in my seat. So in that sense it's a fantasy too. So do I play for the intellectual challenge, for the imagination; neither fully and both a little bit. Let me quote that grand-papa of gaming, William Shakespeare, who had Hamlet solve a much more serious riddle with this immortal strategy: "The play's the thing." Yes, the play is the thing that reveals the consciousness of the king. I play to play; it's enough.

How I turned into a grinding moron

Did you believe that Larísa is one of those players who think for themselves? Did you think that she wouldn’t behave like a mindless sheep? Did you expect her to stand above the faceless crowd of morons and slackers?

You lived in a lie. Gevlon, listen to the breaking news and get your illusions shattered. Larísa has transformed into, if not slacker, at least a moron.

Since a week back, I’ve joined the squad of Bar Addicted Players. And this is not a side effect of my membership in the Brew of the Month Club. I’m referring to another kind of bar – an old-school, hypnotizing reputation bar.

Yep. I’ve decided go ahead with one of the 33 things I want to do before I quit the game. I’m going to get myself the ultimate symbol of grinding and vanity in Azeroth: a completely useless and pointless Winterspring Frostsaber mount. The only way you can get it is by grinding yourself to death to become exalted with the Wintersaber Trainers.

Waiting for a PUG
What sparked this project was one of those lonely nights when I once again spent hours trying to find a 10-man PUG. While I know that there are players who don’t mind walking around in Dalaran in circles while waiting for something to happen, I’m not one of those. It gives me rashes all over the body - I have to DO something. I want to have a goal and a direction, something to hold on to.

A natural one would be to level an alt. Who doesn’t like to see the ding-sparkles all over the screen and then head to the trainer to see what yummie little gifts he has in mind for us? However, the LFG system doesn’t allow that. I can’t disguise my lvl 67 druid as a full-epic-mage looking for a 10-mangroup for ToC. So that isn’t an option. My main is always my first priority and she needs badges, period.

Another idea of things-to-do while waiting is to quest randomly, doing a huge bunch of quests that still remain for to do in Icecrown, Grizzly hills and ZulDrak. But for some reason I can’t find the motivation for it. Since I’m not heading for the Loremaster title, I don’t see any goal to strive for. It’s just a time-killer. And even though you can make some gold on it, there are more efficient ways to become rich.

Why not AH?
The most sensible thing would probably to spend the time at AH, trying to make some good deals. The advantage of this would be that I would still be in range to read the Trade channel, where some players (for a reason I don’t understand) prefer to announce their runs rather than using LFG.

I normally don’t need to gather gold to keep myself fit for raiding. By simply transmuting an epic gem every day I’m online, I get enough to cover costs for repairs and consumables and I’ve been steady around 5k gold for as long as I can remember. However – if I doubled my fortune I could buy some crusader orbs and get myself a new shiny dress before I manage to acquire enough dkp to get it from the guild.

The only problem is that I hate, simply hate the AH grinding activity as such. I more or less fall asleep every time I try to go through the lists for business opportunities. I’ve never cared about the stockmarket in real life either. And that’s why I’ll never escape into AH while looking for a group.

The final alternative of what-to-do could be PvP – and it happens from time to time that I do it. But it lacks something – the feeling of progress, either towards a goal, or skillwise. I just don’t get anywhere with it.

And this is how it comes that I ended up looking at my 33-list and decided to go for the frostsaber. I wanted to do it at some point, why not now? I’ve always liked the crispy winter landscape, and since I was in a lonely mood, it seemed fitting to physically move myself to the most empty and remote area of all.

I imagined there would be no one there except the trainer and his pet, forever at watch high up on the rock. And so I set out for my lonely mission out in the wilderness.

An altered state
Somehow this grind isn’t quite what I expected. The burnout and sickness of the whole thing which I had thought would arrive after just a few runs is still missing.

Admittedly, I’m doing the same thing over and over again – currently two quests, which require me to kill bears, those butterfly-like flying creatures and two sorts of guys in a village. However, something strange happens after a while: I slip into an altered, meditative state of mind. I come at peace, void of troubling thoughts. It’s soothing. And even if I still want to find a group I’m not quite as frustrated as I was before. I’m not in any hurry.

Sometimes the grinding coma is interrupted by the presence of other players. Obviously I’m not the only one who has gotten this bug. When the peace is broken by horde players, I usually grumble a bit to myself, wishing I could teleport them to any other spot of Azeroth by pure willpower. KEEP YOUR HANDS OFF MY SHAMANS, WILL YA!

When the other guys are alliance, things become more complicated. It definitely pays off to group up for the kill x amount of mob-quests. The respawn timer is horrendous, not at all like the one associated to the Son of Hodir quests, which adjust depending on the amount of present players.

You have every reason in the world to keep competition to a minimum and join your forces. But on the other hand: if I do so, I will lose my spot in LFG and no one will know that there’s a mage who is willing to bounce into ToC any minute. In a group, this mount grind will turn into my major activity instead of a sidekick while I’m waiting for the real stuff. And I’m really not that insane. Not quite yet.

But I’m on my way. The bar is steadily growing. Just two more rounds and I’ll be honored. It makes me feel strangely good about myself.

Say hello to Larísa The Moron!

Cataclysm Release Date: February 1st, 2010

I have been an advocate since before Blizzcon that Cataclysm will release before March 1st, 2010. The purpose of this post is to share my reasoning with you.

(1) Given that Blizzard has already announced Cataclysm at Blizzcon 2009 it makes no sense that that they will wait for yet another Blizzcon to go by before the release. In fact, it makes no sense for them to announce the new release and then wait an entire year before the product comes out. Whatever suspense they build up with the end of Wrath will be dissipated if there is a six month gap between the end of Warth and beginning of the next expansion. Further, the summer is the slowest season for playing the game and it makes no sense to release a game at a time when people have no desire to play it. In short, it's inconceivable to me they would release after May 1st, 2010.

(2) There is precedence for releasing a game in mid-winter (Northern Hemisphere). The Burning Crusade was released January 16th, 2007. In fact, with Wrath being released in November 2009 both expansions have been released in wintertime. So another winter-to-early spring release is in keeping with that pattern.

(3) After Wrath came out Blizzard publicly stated that their goal was to make expansions on a yearly basis. While it is true that Blizzard does not always keep its word in such matters, there doesn't seem to be any particular reason to think they can't keep that pace. Furthermore, Blizzard stated at Blizzcon 2009 that they had already started working on Cataclysm before Wrath was even launched. Anything in summer of 2010 would mean that the company was not merely off target; it would mean that the third expansion took just as long as the 22 months it took to complete as Wrath. That's unlikely.

(4) Patch 3.1 dropped in mid-April 2009. Slightly less than four months later patch 3.2 dropped in early August. Patch 3.3 is on the PTR and a four month gap means it would drop no later than December 1st. A release day after March 1st, 2010 would create a yawing gap of content. In fact, all three patches have been essentially raid patches with no new solo content to the game. The idea that Blizzard will go six to eight months with no major updates (either raid or solo) to the game is inconsistent with recent practice.

(5) A release date after March 1st misses a landmark sales opportunity: Christmas. Christmas is the busiest shopping period in North America. With Patch 3.3 coming out no later than the beginning of holiday season it's inconceivable to me from a business point of view that any company, let alone Blizzard, would fail to have some major Warcraft product for sale during that time period. A release date of the first three months of 2010 allows them to market and sell pre-orders during the holiday shopping period.

I could go on but for me that's enough. There is a constellation of reasons why it's highly improbable that Blizzard will release the next expansion after March 1st, 2010. Given the release status of Patch 3.3 I expect it to drop mid-November, a public announcement of the release date of the next expansion during the holiday season, and the next expansion to release February 1st, 2010.

Why scaling may not be such a brilliant idea

It’s time to start scaling encounters in MMOs!

The sender of this message is no less than Wolfshead, who in an – as always – very well written blog post argues for a flexible raid design, where the encounters scale seamlessly. According to Wolfshead, it shouldn’t matter if you are 9, 11 or 12 players who want to kill a certain boss. Let the hp and damage change with the numbers and don’t force people into fixed sets of 5, 10 or 25.

When I first read his article I was all on his line. How many times haven’t I been in a situation where we’ve cursed the current model for raid design. If you’re the 11th or 26th person who has signed up for a raid and it’s your turn to sit out, I assure you you’re all up for scaling!

But after thinking about it a bit closer I can also see another side of it. Not everyone would benefit from scaling, and I thought I could as well share this perspective with you. Not because I disagree completely with Wolfshead, but after all – it takes two for a discussion, and hopefully it can help Wolfshead sharpening his arguments even more.

Giving odd players a chance
So why doesn’t Larísa think that every raid encounter in WoW should be flexible?

Well, one thing is because it might work the opposite way to what Wolfshead suggests. He wants to make sure that no one is left out, that everyone who wants to raid will have a chance to do so. And if you’re only seeing raiding as something done in close knitted guilds, this may be true. But how about the newcomers? How about the guildless, the lone wolfs, the players who can’t quite fit into the regular guild raiding schedule because of job or family?

Today those players can get their raiding fix by PUGing it. Sometimes you can find a pure-from-the-scratch PUG. At least ToC and Onyxia are PUGed these days at 10 as well as 25 man on normal mode (hardmodes is another story). But there is also the option to grab one of the last few spots in a semi-PUG. You can benefit from those guilds who manage to get 8 players together but not 10 and be a “filler”. The entrance level won’t be astronomically high. They’ll be happy with whatever additional contribution you can make, since the alternative had to do it with too few people, something that could award honor and achievements, but not any additional loot. This is a wonderful chance. And if you grab it and prove yourself a good player, it may even be your entrance ticket to apply to the guild.

What would happen if they scaled the encounters? Would those 9 friends find it worth it to open up and let an outsider join their party if the only reward is slightly better loot? I don’t think so.

More room for goblinism
I also think this system could risk to create a very unforgiving environment, where everyone is required to carry exactly his own weight in every single situation, or else they’ll be kicked from the raid.

There wouldn’t be any room for people who are slightly further down on the learning curve or gearing process than the rest of the party. Just by their added number they’ll burden the rest of the raid with increased difficulty. The benefit of adding them won’t outweight the cost and then you could as well kick them.

Mind you, of course I too embrace the principle that everyone must do their share of the job in the raid, that there shouldn’t be any people getting free rides. But there will always be people who are slightly worse than others and I think the scaling principle risk to be pretty harsh for them.

Lack of flexibility
Another worry about the flexible scaling encounters is actually the lack of flexibility they provide. If the resistance and difficulties you’ll encounter will decrease and increase with the number of players you have, there’s no way for you to increase the challenge by your own initiative by undermanning an instance. Today you can 8-man for instance the 10-man Naxx, enjoying the difficulty and the small room there is for mistakes. It takes some thinking tweak the strategies and think of the best way to compose a party when you’re doing it on fewer people. This possibility will be gone.

My final objection is that it will be harder for guilds to benchmark themselves to others. Yeah, I know, it’s politically correct to say that we’re only competing with ourselves, and if you’re in a very casual guild that is also the truth. But I think most guilds that are somewhat serious in their raiding are at least a little bit competitive in this. This doesn’t mean that topping the progression lists of our realms is our main goal, absolutely not, but it’s quite common practice that raiders throw a curious glance at the list from time to time. When we climb a few steps on the ranking after a new boss kills it makes us proud, especially when we know that we have a lighter raiding schedule than some of the guilds below us.

But how do you benchmarks guilds that have done the encounter in different scales? Wolfshead suggests that the encounter should be slightly more difficult the bigger it gets - more difficult than the calculated added strength because of more players would be. How long would that curve be stretched? Would the guild with the biggest raiding force get the highest ranking?

Conclusion
I’m not convinced that a not settled amount of players for an encounter is desirable, in spite of the good arguments that Wolfshead puts up. However I think it would be interesting to see more of it in some sort of non-instanced raid encounters. Once upon a time there were outdoor world bosses in WoW (well, technically I think they're still hanging around, but they're doomed to oblivion). I never experienced it myself, but it sounds like fun.

And I can’t help being tickled at the thought of the EverQuest event that Wolfshead describes, when 200 players defeated a supposedly unkillable dragon. I definitely would like to experience something like that – provided that they found a way to keep server stability up and lag at a reasonable level. It could give us back some of the adventure feeling we're missing, to quote another great post from Psychochild.