A couple of words about that mount

I guess I should write something about the topic on everyone's lips today. But Ixobelle and TotalBiscuit beat me to it and I haven't much to add really. Read Ixo's post and watch TB:s movie and have a laugh. Basically they cover it all.

It felt absurd to watch the army of horses hovering over Krasus Landing tonight. Exactly how special and imba could those kids really feel? As I pressed my random-mount key and took off riding my classic epic gryphon, I felt like a truly unique snowflake compared to the others. It didn't cost me a single extra cent. And it felt SO good.

But my heart is bleeding a little once again because I'm reminded of what I feel about RMT connected to WoW. They aggro me pretty badly there. As it appears Blizzard is getting greedier and more daring. There surely must be a line somewhere but I wonder where it goes.
And that's all I have to say.

Now to the post I had planned for today! Some more Blizzard bashing actually.

Skiing vs WoW – different views on difficulty and entitlement

I spent my Easter week the same way as I've done the last few years: downhill skiing in the Swedish alps.

Most of the time I had my mind set on other things than WoW. I marveled at the view of the mountains, covered by miles and miles of unbroken snow reflecting the fresh spring sunlight. Pure arcane power if you ask me. I kept a watching eye for suicidal three year olds, heading directly towards me like a flame orb in time warp speed, apparently with no clue about where to find the break (in the unlikely case they'd notice me.) And above all I fought the increasing symptoms of a really bad cold that cunningly had picked my vacation for an evil disease attack.

But a couple of times it happened that my mind drifted away towards Azeroth as the ski lift slowly pushed me to the top. I came to think about similarities and differences between skiing and WoW playing - especially when it domes to the mindset and expectations of the people involved. I’d like to share a few of those thoughts, for whatever it's worth. I might even come to some sort of conclusion. Or maybe I won’t. See for yourself!

This post will be mostly about different views on difficulty levels, expectations and how we’re entitled to certain experiences. It will be a wall of text, so we’d better get started.

The view of a WoW player
First we'll have a look at the WoW community. The more vocal part of the playerbase has always been pretty much obsessed with the issue - constantly arguing about exactly where to put the difficulty bar in the current and future content. The claims and demands from various groups of players shift wildly and are often contradictive. The game developers try to adjust accordingly as well as they can, in an act of balance, providing "a little bit for everyone", so much that I'm afraid that they sometimes get a bit lost in their own long term vision for the game.

It appears as if the lowest common denominator is ruling most of the time these days, and because of this, raid instances are in a process of constant nerfing, accelerating towards the end of an expansion, just to make sure that "everyone" will be able to do "everything" so they can "see" what they've paid for, since it's their “right”.

This doesn’t stop some players from thinking that the content wasn’t nerfed enough, they couldn’t see what they wanted to see, and they’ll make no secret about this.

In the other end you find the hopelessly bitter veterans who never grow tired of mourning a game they think basically has been destroyed by this Army of Ignorant Noobs (which is referring to people like me, without any pervious background in gaming, and therefore in need of a slightly more forgiving learning curve.). Those veterans will glorify any stupid game mechanism from vanilla that has been changed or removed, regardless of the fact that they actually hated it in the past and wanted it to go away. To change the game is to dumb it down, and any change that makes the game accessible to more people is a personal insult to these guys.

The view of a skier
Now let’s move on to the skiing resort. When you put the WoW player view on differences in difficulty in the context of skiing, it looks rather absurd.

At the place where I spent the previous week, you would find about 30 different ways to get down from the hilltop to the valley, and the span of difficulty was enormous. You'd see slopes where you'd happily put your old grandmother who has never seen a pair of skis before, and you would see others, which looked like a death trap, a lethal wall, making you nauseous if you as much as threw a glance at it.

And do you know what? The skiers seemed to be completely happy about this variation!
Did I ever hear anyone who spent their days in the black labeled ski trails whining about the existence of green slopes for the beginners? Of course not! The thought was absurd. Did I ever hear a beginner complain over the fact that they missed the fantastic "content" since they couldn't view the black slopes, demanding that this should be made easier and more accessible, by building some sort of ramp so it wouldn't be so steep and scary? Definitely not! Such a claim would be laughed at.

There was content enough for everyone to be happy. And the fact that the content came in such a variety even seemed to make people easier at mind since it meant that they could bring all of their friends and family, certain that no one would end up being either left out due to noobishness or bored to death because of lack of challenges.

Not once in the lift did I hear anyone commenting negatively on the choice of gear or skill level of other skiers, laughing at signs of clumsiness, ignorance or foolish bravery. As long as you're not violating the rules, putting other skiers safety in danger (the equivalence of hacking, I suppose), skiers don't care. They've got their hands full focusing on improving their own performance, so why would they bother about others?

Approaching WoW like skiers?
So what do I make out of those observations?

I can't help finding the skiing view on levels of difficulty and skill a bit more... let's call it "mature" than the whining you hear from WoW players. A ski resort is a pleasant environment to be in, no doubt. The question is: would it be possible to somehow let this approach sip into the WoW community? Could we encourage Blizzard to design raid slopes in all difficulties, ranging from green to black-black? Could we convince the players to find this design acceptable or even attractive?

I don't know, but to be honest I doubt it. For some reason I don’t think you can expect WoW players to behave like skiers. Someone with deeper knowledge in economics would probably explain it in terms of business models. I’ll refrain from this and just point out a few fundamental obstacles for an ever-smiling WoW audience.

One major thing is the need for grouping in WoW. While skiing is purely individual - you don't even need a buddy to ride the ski lift - you have to cooperate with people in most things you do in WoW. And when you force people together, you will also create tensions, when the interests of the individuals clash.

Imagine you couldn't ski down the black wall-slope on your own, but had to hold hands with 24 other people, running it in a long, unbroken chain. I bet you would be rather annoyed if a first-time skier with no clue whatsoever suddenly broke into your chain and insisted on bringing him with you. But that’s not the case. Skiing is more individual, so people can afford not to bother about others.

Another explanation could be the costs – in money as well as in time. If you break it down to how much you spend per hour you are entertained – in my case how many hours I actually was skiing – the cost for my holiday was absolutely horrendous. No doubt would I rather spend those precious hours enjoying myself, skiing as much as possible, making the best of my time, rather than looking for errors and reasons to complain, worrying about other people’s business.

Since it’s so expensive, I’m also very keen on feeling happy about my choice, so I’m also likely to convince myself that it was a good one, that I enjoy what I’m doing and the level entertainment justifies the costs. It's the mechanism of “commitment and consistency”, as the psychology professor Robert B Cialdini would have labeled it. And since I pay so well, I’m certain that the company that runs the ski resort will do everything in their power to keep me as a paying customer, making a good profit on me. Blizzard on the other hand makes only a smallish marginal benefit from my subscription, so even if they want to make a broad-market game, they’ll not be extremely anxious about meeting the expectations of the individual Larísa.

And finally: WoW playing as opposed to skiing isn't limited in time and space; it's more of an alternative existence in a parallel universe. I bet that if we didn't just visit the ski resort one week a year, but on a daily bases, year after year, I would be more inclined to discuss and have opinions on the overall planning of the trail system. I might even whine a bit when I grew bored, feeling “burned out” on skiing, having nothing else to replace it with to get the thrills I’m used to.

A sort of conclusion
My conclusion, if there is one, is that even if I admire the atmosphere at the ski resort, I can’t expect to find it in Azeroth. Nevertheless I think it wouldn’t hurt if we got a little bit of inspiration from it: Blizzard in the terms of customer care. And the player base in the terms of accepting that players these days come in many different shapes.

Some like it black, others pick the green trails. If you don’t like the easy slopes, there are always others to try. Live and let live.

And if you get bored - try some off-pist wowing. As opposed to in the alps, falling won't hurt you. In case you'd forgotten.

Maybe an addon will fix it?

No. Arcane Brilliance doesn’t seem to cut it. Nor does the gnome racial increased intelligence.

No matter how much I try to expand my intellect, I’m simply not cleaver enough to understand the idea of Blizzard’s new “Mana Adept” concept for arcane mages, to be launched in Cataclysm.

Frankly I feel rather stupid. The only comfort I have is that I’m not alone in being clueless. Not even the gurus at Elitist Jerks seem to have figured out what to make of it yet, judging from the discussion.

Mana managing game
For all of you non-mages who may not have heard of it, the new idea is that arcane mages will deal damage based on how much mana the mage has. A mage at 100 percent mana will make more damage than at 50 percent.

Mind boggling, isn’t it?

But before I start this little piece of classic mage qq, I want to point out that I don’t have anything against Blizzard putting some more emphasis on the noble art of mana managing.

It’s always been a task for arcane mages to make good use of our limited sources. We squeeze out as much as we can of our pool, altering burn phases with conservation. We evocate at the proper moment and we strive to end up with a more or less empty mana bar as the boss dies. The mana game is a part of my arcane identity and I enjoy it.

The problem is that the mana game that is now presented to me looks more strange than fun. For instance: exactly at which point in a fight are you likely to be at 100 percent mana, and because of this enjoying your biggest damage output? Yeah, I thought so too. Right in the beginning. Personally I have yet to see a fight where you’re expected to go all out right from the start. At least I think the tanks will have objections.

In my world you’re normally expected to top off towards the end, sometimes fighting against an enrage timer. Now imagine spending the entire boss fight anxiously managing your mana bar to be absolutely sure that it’s filled to the top for that short period. That doesn’t sound challenging or interesting at all to me – only frustrating and counter intuitive.

When I think about it they might as well have done the opposite construction – adding more damage to the mage, the less mana he has left. It would probably have some backsides that I don't think of, non-game designer as I am, but at least it would make sense.

To be honest I wonder if the Blizzard devs really thought this over. Doesn’t it sound a bit like one of those ideas you may crack as you’re hanging around a coffee machine: “What if…”?

EJ thinkers or a new addon
For my own part I can’t see myself mastering the Mana Adept challenge, at least not based on the information we have for the moment.

If someone replaced my brain with a calculator I might be able to figure out when to keep nuking in spite of a shrinking damage output and when to stop for refill. Maybe. It would be a complicated equation with many factors tto consider though. There’s not only the mana pool to worry about, but also the cooldowns – my own and others. Has heroism been cast? But wait – it will just burn my mana quicker. I’ll soon hit the not-so-good-damage percentage… maybe rather evocate? What about arcane power? Adding more damage – yes, but at the cost of more mana. Use it or not? Maths, maths, maths.

But I tell you: I’m just a gnome with a normal pinkish soft brain. I’m not a borg. And my head gets all dizzy when I think about Mana Adept issues.

Hopefully the great EJ thinkers will figure something out during the summer and have a new shiny spellcasting cycle ready for us when Cataclysm launches.

If they fail, maybe someone will make up an addon that can come to my rescue, telling me what’s most beneficial for me at the moment – evocating or nuking. It doesn't sound like entirely fun to let an addon decide my actions, but what’s an un-mathematical arcane mage to do?

Or I could of course just give up and go back to the so-much buffed fire tree.

Meh.

I’m glad there’s a long time to go to Cataclysm. Hopefully they’ll have some time to sort this out better – or to even throw the whole thing in the trash bin.

Time Warp goes Swoosh!

So, in case you've missed it, mages will get a heroism equivalence in Cataclysm, called Time Warp.

This raises some questions. Like: exactly how many tears will the shaman community shred over this? Will it exceed the mage outcry when they got their frog spell?

Another matter of discussion is what will the time warp spell sound like? I would vouch for some sort of "Swoosh!". But it could as well come with a "Bang!", like a starship taking off at warp speed. Who knows? The truth is out there.

The sound effects
To make a slightly (but only slightly) more serious take on this: regardless of what the sound turn out to be, I know I will learn to love it, the same way I love the cheering crowd that accompanies our heroism sessions.

It's not the sound in itself I enjoy so much of course - some people even argue that the bloodlust sound, which is supposed to be in the line of "gar-gar-gar" is way cooler. But I love what it represents. I suppose this is a perfect example of Pavlovian conditioning at work. When I hear it I don't exactly salivate, but not far from it. It's not only my toon that gets a boost from it - I do as well. It calls me out: "Focus! Action! Go for it! Just do it! Now!".

For you who aren't into raiding, and might not have experienced it, I'll try to describe the feeling of it. You see, the moment when the heroism is cast in a raid encounter is like the tipping point at the top of a roller coaster, at least if you're playing a dps class (I have no idea about if it's the same for a tank or healer.). The sudden acceleration, the huge damage increase, the short but sweet period where you know you have to squeeze everything you can out of your character and push it to the edge. The thrill is fantastic.

Actually I dare say that the psychological effect of it - triggered by the sound - probably is more important than the spell itself. Or as the blue poster Eyonix put it in a discussion on the forums about heroism a couple of months ago:

"It certainly feels like a big boost when it happens, but part of that is because so many groups use the Bloodlust/Heroism moment as the time to blow all their cooldowns and go all out. While it is unarguably a buff (though for some specs more than others), it’s role as “blow everything!” is significant too."

Mage power at last
And who wouldn't like to be the guy or girl who pulls the trigger? Until now it's been the privilege of the shamans, adding to them a certain aura of exclusiveness and power. But finally - FINALLY - the turn has come to the mages to shine. God knows we've been waiting long for this, almost as long as the gnomes have waited for their glorious retake of our capital.

When was the last time anyone really took any notice of us? Honestly? Has anyone ever asked for a mage or bothered about what we were doing standing in the back in our sissy robes since we tanked HM in Gruul? Don't think so. We weren't even wanted for the world first kill of LK heroic. (sniff)

But we're approaching a new era, my friends! As I'm casting my first Time Warp, I will pay a thought to the short statement at in the header of Euripedes blog that I've always admired so much, because it has Attitude:

I am important.

And then I'll proudly and loudly make the announcement - the obvious callout to make when you're about to enter a Time Warp.

"Engage!"

Then there will be a Swoosh! Or a Bang. Whatever.

Edit: I think I need to add a little disclaimer. Like some other community members (for instance TB) I DO have doubts about how wise it is to make all the classes more or less similar, - the same stuff in different shells. The Bring-the-player-not-the-class concept can easily lead to a pretty boring game in the long run. If I'm truly honest.

Nevertheless: speaking from my strictly selfish Mage perspective, I can't but smile thinking about my new incoming power buff that will put me in the captain's chair. Cheers! It was about time that we got a little bit of love. Then there's some other stuff going on with the mages that is less promising. But I'll leave that to another day.

The Return of an Innkeeper

Knock, knock, knock.

Is there still someone hanging around here?

I left quite suddenly a week ago, without giving the readers any previous notice. There were no prewritten posts for you to chew on, although I had hired a stand-in to keep an eye and chase away any trolls. The mountains were calling me, that's all I can say.

I came home with a cold that makes me resemble to one of those about-to-explode slimes at Rotface. So honestly I'm not quite as re-energized as I had hoped for. But I guess it made me good to replace the view of the raid instances with some breathtaking real life sceneries, drinking sunlight rather than coffee for a few days.

The Game

I'm trying to pick up what has been going on in Azeroth during my absence. To be honest I hadn't expected too much to happen. The previous week, the one before Easter, had been incredibly quite - so quiet that Totalbiscuit had to shorten his Blue Plz! show since there so few things to comment on.

This week seems to have been a bit more busy, especially with all the Cataclysm Class Changes being presented. For the more information-theorycrafting heavy blogs out there, this gives a ton of stuff to talk about. For the PPI it doesn't mean that much. I don't play any hunter and I couldn't care less if they have ammo or not. I have no idea about if our DK:s play in frost or blood or whatever - as long as they keep the mobs away from me when they're tanking, I'm all fine whatever way. Sue me.

Of course I DO care about the classes I play though, and most of all I care about mages, since that's what I am and will remain until I put down this game for good. I'm way too lazy and slow to learn new things to change classes between expansions. A couple of hours ago they released the mage information, which made me both smile and frown at the first glance. I'll probably make a separate post about it. It doesn't happen often, but once in a while it happens that PPI reveals its true nature as a mage blog.

The guild

What else have I missed? Well, two first kills in my guild: Lich King in 10-man and Sindragosa 25 man. It would have been nice to be there, since I've worked so hard and wiped so much on both encounters, but those things happen. It's a part of raiding and you have to learn to live with it. You can't always be there. Actually I'm most of all excited about it; I can look forward to face LK 25 man in the next raid, and the heroic modes are finally open for us in 10 mans. That's awesome.

The Blogosphere

And then there's the Blogosphere to catch up on, and there's especially one blogger that currently has my attention. Ixobelle. My hero. He hasn't just kept an eye at the inn during my vacation (thank you once again!), he has also been busy on adventures of his own, making it all the way to an interview for a dream job at a gaming company. Yes, his brave attack at the Blizzard HQs paid off. It's a fantastic story and I hope it has a happy end. Or I'd rather put it this way: I know for certain it will have an happy end; I just don't know if we're about to see the end right now or if we'll have to wait a bit longer for it.

Upcoming posts

And now I'll just rest a little while here in front of the fire, letting out some more slime out of my head before it explodes. But I'll be back in the bar again soon, serving you some thoughts about the mage changes and about some new perspectives on the game that the skiing gave me.

I had planned to make some sort of Tobold's Open Sunday thread while I was on vacation, where you could put some orders for things you'd like to see discussed here, but never got around to do it. It isn't too late though. Just write in a comment if there's something special you'd like to read in the next few weeks, and I'll see what I can do about it.

Cheers!

OH SNAP, Ixo's got rhymes!

Come pull up a seat and an ale,
And I'll weave you a short rhyming tale,
I've been left with the keys,
While Larísa's on skis,
Let's all hope I can dodge a LOLFAIL?

She told me to watch out for spam,
But she didn't say "NO GUEST POSTS" (dammmnnn!),
So forgive me bar patrons,
And Larísa, our matron,
I'm the first to admit, I'm a ham.

---

So what have I been doing in WoW?
Why, I'm riding the Honor Grind Cow!
My game time (recently),
Has been all PvP,
And I'm having a blast... ummm... Ka-Pow?

I used to roll eyes at those ding-dongs,
"PVP TAEKS MOAR SKILL!" are their themesongs,
But I have to admit,
That each comp needs new wit,
And the prep time doesn't take quite as long.

Log in, invite Vessen, and queue,
So far it's been all Two Vee Two,
The queue times are fast,
And each match is a blast,
Even when we lose points, no QQ.

Nobody complains of repairs,
Or runs for the door (or the stairs),
During a wipe,
We just break down the fight,
And adjust to new strats from our chairs.

My UI has ne'er been so clean!
No spare buttons or crap on my screen!
I need to see all the action,
Much to my satisfaction,
Only two moles to whack!? Grid looks LEAN!

Used to hate getting trained as the priest,
But with so much resil I'm a beast!
I can tank all the damage,
"Ves, commence pew pew spammage!"
And our shiny new ranks have increased!

Last night I turned down Lich attempts,
And I'm absent from YE OLDE GUILD VENTS,
4 hours at a time?
It's too hard to align!
Plus the raid gear is trash, no resilience!

So I apologize to my fellow crusaders,
I've crossed over to the dark side (just like VADERZ!),
I've become what I hated,
My Bloodlust is now Sated,
A PvP douche; no time for the raiders. :(

In my defense, I've a 19 month man,
And my wife just got back from Japan,
I just can't commit,
To an all evening sit,
40 minutes, 10 matches? That's the plan!

My limerick rhyming grows old,
And my story thus far has been told,
I'll watch out for spam,
just like Jean Claude Van Damme(!),
Till Larísa returns from the cold.

---

One last bit before outward I duck,
And I hope you'll all wish me good luck,
Game design interview!
38 Studios' crew!
Help design Copernicus? OH FUUUUU*****

I fly Cali to Boston on Monday,
I hope Tuesday will turn out a fun day,
I'm nervous as hell,
But it's all just as well,
They can see I'm sincere, so that's okay..?

Maybe this time next week, new employment?
Apartment search drama deployment?
We'll see how it goes,
Crossing fingers and toes,
Brand new paid MMO-based enjoyment?

As I bow out this blog posting gimmick,
If you comment, it MUST be a limerick,
If it's hard to be clever,
Make the last line whatever,
rhymezone.com helps if you get stuck and can't uhhhh...

find ... a word...

that rhymes with Limerick...





Crap.


: /

Homesick for Blizzcon

Are you going to Blizzcon this year?

Oh, you are? Good for you. Or rather: I hate you. Because there's no chance in the world that I'll be going and it bugs me.

Did you notice how cleaver I put that? By writing "this year" I kind of imply that I won't be going now, but that I've done it many times before; this year is just an exception due to some unforseen circumstances. It suggests that I'm a dedicated WoW community member, so of course I plan my life and set my priorities so I can attend the yearly we're finally coming together as a huge-family-event.

Why I won't go
But to be honest that's not the truth. I won't be going and I can't see myself going anytime soon. Even for an established adult person with a decent income the cost for participating in such an arrangement is enormous, especially if you're living in Europe.

I'll make you a quick list:

• Flight tickets across half of the world.
• Outrageously expensive hotel room since sleeping on the floor or coach of some fan living on the location, as we did when I was a SF fan in my youth, just doesn't cut it anymore. I'm old, spoiled and squishy compared to how I used to be.
• Astronomical costs for food because you can't really bring your own or put up a camping kitchen at the convention, but have to accept whatever junk food they're offering.
• Ridiculously overprized franchise stuff sold at the event - silly, but hard to resist.
• And of course the convention fee not to forget.

The biggest issue however, which effectively keeps me away is that I really couldn't use several of my precious days of paid vacation just for my own amusement instead of spending them with my children.

I may be a WoW fanatic, but Blizzcon is definitely out of my reach.

And you know what: even if I haven't ever been there, I feel homesick about it, because I believe I have a pretty decent picture of what it's like.

SF conventions
As I've told you before I have a passed as a member of the Science Fiction Fandom. I never went to any of the world conventions, but for several years I attended the national ones, in a community that resembled a lot to the World of Warcraft blogosphere. Our panels featured SF writers, publishers and such rather than game developers, but in the core I dare say it was the same kind of event: geeks meeting up around a common interest, enjoying the company of each others.

Some of the participants were pretty classical nerds, the stereotype of a no-lifer living in his mothers basement coming alive. Some of us on the other hand led a life outside of the conventions that appeared to be pretty normal - including having a job, wife, kids, car and house. But deep inside we all had a hidden geek that needed to be let out in full freedom.

Arriving at the conventions was always a feeling of homecoming. For a couple of days we were in a protected area, where we could speak and think for hours about our passion, without any restriction whatsoever. We could use fanslang expressions and make references to books and TV series and expect everyone else to get it. We didn't have to apologize, we didn't have to make excuses, we didn't have to explain anything or try convince skeptics that what we were doing was acceptable. We didn't have to pretend to be normal. We were safe among friends.

Every convention was like a little bubble and all those bubbles tied together like a pearl necklace. It was sad when we parted, but somehow when we came together the following year, it was as if no time at all had passed. Geek conventions have a time logic of their own.

Size matters
Maybe I'm completely wrong. The conventions I attended never held more than 700 participants and Blizzcon hosts thousands and thousands of people. Size matters. The SF conventions were arranged by fans and were non commercial - Blizzcon is big business.

If I as by a miracle was given the opportunity to attend Blizzcon 2010, it's definitely possible that I'd become utterly disappointed. I imagine you can easily feel a bit lonely and lost, because of the scale of it.

On the other hand - there will surely be some initiatives to make smaller, more cozy meet-ups for the community during those days. I know Twisted Nether are planning for something, and there will be others.

Actually I think that's the part of the convention that I'm most envious of - the opportunity to hang out with people in the community in real life.

It was the same thing with the SF conventions I used to attend. Many times I didn't bother all that much about the official scheduled program. It was nice that it was there; I might watch a bit of it. But the best conventions were often the ones where I missed almost every single panel or speech since I had too much fun sitting in the bar, talking to other fanzine editors, just relaxing.

Wil Wheaton's homesickness
The other day I stumbled upon the brilliant blog by Wil Wheaton. (BTW I must have been living under a rock to miss this one for so long, it's really a shame.) He quoted a few lines from the keynote speech that he held at PAX, some sort of gaming convention that was recently held. And I couldn't help smiling, because I could recognize his sentiments so well:

All of the things that make us weird and strange in the real world? Those things that people tease us for loving, those things that we seem to care about more than everyone else at work or school? Those things make us who we are, and when we’re at PAX, we don’t have to hide them or explain them or justify them to anyone; instead, we celebrate and share them.

We have come here this weekend, and we will go to PAX Prime in Seattle in August, and we will be back here in a year, and back there next year, and the year after, and the year after that, because just playing games isn’t nearly as fun as playing them – together – surrounded by thousands of people who love them as much as you do.

And in the post he also added a few concluding lines as he was sitting in his hotel room and the convention was about to end:

as I sat on my bed in the hotel, zoning out at something stupid on television while my HP and Manna bars slowly climbed out of the red, I began to feel a familiar sense of ennui. I feel this way every time a PAX is over: a sense of sadness and loss that I've never really been able to identify more eloquently than "post-PAX blues." A fellow PAX attendee e-mailed me this morning, though, and summed up the feeling in one word: Homesickness. I'm home, yet I feel homesick. I know that may sound weird, but it perfectly sums up how I feel today.

Wil's post is about PAX and not about Blizzcon. However this is exactly how I picture it would be for me to go there.

I've never been to Blizzcon. I probably never will. But the thought of it makes me homesick.