Confessions by a Clueless Ghoul

Have you ever been turned into a ghoul? I have. Seven times to be more precise, according to my statistics page. I can’t remember last time it happened though. It seems to be more and more rare these days.

I wish I could say that my current lack of ghoul appearances is a consequence of own improved survival ability. Maybe I just don’t die as much mid fight these days as I used to? Maybe I get out of green crap and fire, knocking up an iceblock in case of emergency, but basically staying alive? Gnome is up, so no need to turn her into a ghoul!

Or perhaps – on the more realistic side – I can attribute it to our increased amount of druids in the raid, spoiling us with battle resurrections?

Given up on me
To tell the truth I think our DK:s simply have given up on me. They can’t be bothered to even try raising the gnome anymore. Why should they? For all their efforts and wasted global cd:s they don’t see any huge impact in the raid dps output.

You see, I have a confession to make. I don’t know how to play a ghoul. As a matter of fact I’m more or less clueless about how to handle that vehicle disguised as a body. For someone watching me I probably looks as if I’m just standing there, doing nothing.

From my own horizon I’m busy indeed, frantically hovering over the new action bar that suddenly appeared, studying the tooltips, trying to figure out what to do next.

I’m delighted, a little bit flattered to have been considered for a raise, and excited at the perspective of being able to actively participate in the fight again, not just looking from the sidelines. I assure you: I’m not lazy to play a ghoul, but I lack the knowledge.

However: regardless of reason – in the end it’s the result that counts and I can’t blame the DK:s if they’re disappointed with my efforts.

Ghouls doing nothing
I’m definitely not the first person to appear as an idle, clueless ghoul. I wouldn't be surprised if the DK community has given up on ghoul creation altogether. As I prepared this post I did a simple search to see if I could find a link to an easily accessible How-to-ghoul 101-guide. I found none. Not even WoWwiki could help me out.

What I found though was a thread in the MMO-champion forum, where a DK bitterly complained about players like me:

"Topic: What's up with people and Raise Ally?

It seems as if every single time I use Raise Ally on some dumbass who got himself killed, they just stand there.. Doing nothing.

Does this happen with you guys?

I honestly don't get why people would do that, by controlling the ghoul, the encounter won't take as long as if you were dead, so you won't be dead as long, and you get to do something instead of staring at people. Surely that beats doing nothing, right?

I don't think I'll ever truly understand what goes on in these people's minds.. "

Many of the answers are on the line that people who have died either will alt-tab to watch Facebook or grab the opportunity to a bio-break. Others blame the UI, saying that it isn’t evident enough that you’re turned into a ghoul – people might just not notice.

One comment differed. It’s apparently written with the purpose to troll, but nevertheless I found it slightly amusing:

“Keep your stinking DK hands to yourself and leave my corpse alone tbh.

I don't play your class i play my class, i don’t want to go chew on someone or make myself explode so IF you feel the need to use the ability you had best lose all hope of it being put to good use and take it as a bonus when it is.”

Further objections
Troll or not, apparently there are more players around who don’t appreciate the idea to be ghoul raised. In my search for how-to-ghoul I found a discussion thread in the official forums, initiated by an apparently die-hard roleplayer:

“I am a paladin, I consider being raised as a ghoul to be a hostile act. […] I know anything relating to RP and Lore is considered a joke by a lot of people, but this is still an MMORPG.”

Ouch. I never thought of this. I reckon a servant of the light doesn't want to mess with the dark powers? Somehow it makes sense.

A few final words on the ghoul mechanics. Some players apparently think it’s annoying and insulting; for my own part I find it fun although a bit confusing.

But I’d sure appreciate if someone bothered to throw up a how-to-ghoul-post for me. The self-implode button is surely tempting for an experimenting gnome, but I’d rather be useful to the raid. If I remember it rightly there are several buttons around in the UI.

So help me out on this one – how can I maximise my ghoul performance, making my DK willing to raise me as a ghoul when the druid BR is on CD?

25 man raids in Cataclysm - will anyone bother?

OK I promised the other day that I would try to cut down on my question-mark titled posts. But I'm afraid that I'll have to break the oath right away. It's just a little bit too early to make the definite verdict on the announced changes to raiding in Cataclysm.

So I'll leave it with a question mark, just to make clear that I'm worried but not in the state of nerd rage when it comes to the future of 25 man raiding. Not yet. We'll have to wait and see a bit more.

10 man vs 25 man raiding
The topic of 10 man vs 25 man raiding - if it should be considered equally difficult and if they should be rewarded the same way or not has split the community for a long time. I would dare to say that which stance you take in most cases corresponds to if you're doing 10 mans or 25 mans yourself.

If you're in a 10 man raiding guild you're likely to say that 10 mans are exactly as challenging as 25 mans - if not more, since the failure of one single player will have bigger impact of the outcome in many fights.

If you're in a 25 man raiding guild you'll probably argue that getting 10 people come together and play as a team is a piece of cake comparing to the administrative nightmare of arranging 25 man runs. Apart from that it's way more likely that one out of 25 will screw up or just get dc:d in an encounter with tight margins, than that someone will fall off when you only have ten people to worry about. The effort is bigger and the risk for a wipe as well and because of this the reward should be better. Without the incentives, the 25 man raid is likely to die.

So where do I stand in this? Well, since I'm a 25 man raider myself and would like to remain so if possible, it's hardly a surprise that I look at this from the 25-mans-must-have-better-rewards perspective.

This doesn't mean that I don't like 10 man raiding or that I somehow look down to it. I enjoy 10 mans immensely - especially since they normally offer better teamwork in a more closely knit group. And I have full respect for those who prefer it to 25 mans - with special kudos to the 10-man-gear-only strict guilds.

But at the same time I believe that the law of the least resistance is what basically rules WoW and if the incentives aren't enough the 25 man raiding will die off, which I think would be a shame.

Gold and emblems don't cut it
Now to the question: will the advantages that Blizzard has announced to 25 man raids be enough to keep them going in Cataclysm?

They say that the loot table will be exactly the same. The only difference will be that 25 man raids will get more gold, more emblems and a yet-to-be-determined higher chance to drop items. This is supposed to make 25 man raiding a more "efficient route", if you manage to gather the numbers.

I have my doubts about this. I really have. Even mentioning the gold factor sounds like a joke to me. Have you ever heard of anyone raiding for the joy of gathering gold, apart from when you could solo Original Onyxia for a short period of time before she got her remake? If you play the gold game you're more likely to do it at AH than raiding.

What about badges then? Well, if they continue the path they've chosen in Cataclysm with badges dropping all over the place, from daily randoms, from weekly raid quests and from quests inside the instance, I don't think that it will have any huge impact on the motivation to arrange 25 man raids. Possibly it will feel important in the very beginning, but it doesn't take that long before people have more badges than they can use.

So the final incentive then, the increased gear drop. How attractive will that be? It remains to see. It isn't exactly like we've been starved for chances to get good gear easily in Wrath. Epics are raining from the sky and if you'll get 3 drops in a group of 25 instead of the "2,5" that it should be to be equivalent to a 10 man raid, I don't think it's enough to keep them going.

Other incentives
There are other incentives than gear and gold though, that motivate players to bother about raiding in the bigger scale, namely prestige. While not everyone cares about it, many raiding guilds will throw a glance at the progression list of their realm every now and then. It simply feels good to see that you're in a guild that is doing well compared to others. In this new situation, where Blizzard has declared that not only the loot table will be shared, but the level of difficulty will be the same in 10 man and 25 man raiding, I can't see any reason why the progression charts won't be shared between 10 man guilds and 25 man guilds. And guess what will happen in that case?

/nods

The 10 man guilds won't just get the world-firsts. They're also likely to dominate the realm ranking lists. Irrelevant? Yeah, maybe if you're already in a ten-man guild. But to the more advanced 25 man guilds I'd dare say it matters.

I'll quote a randomly picked comment at MMO- Champion:

"This means basicly get the best ppl from you 25 man raiding guild , kick out all others , and focus on 10 man raids? less troubles with organisation , less drama , more chance on raiding since you don't have to count on that many peeps."

Yeah. I think we might see those things happening. Especially if it will help your guild to climb on the ranking lists.

There are other incentives for 25 man raiding than the ones I've mentioned though. Such as the experience as such - the way you perceive the fights. There is a certain grandness of fighting a big badass dragon with 25 people in your army, which I've never seen in a 10 man fight.

I know I'm not the only one to enjoy the epic feeling (and I yes - I know it was even more epic with 40 people). Because of this I would rather keep raiding 25 mans than scale down to 10 mans, regardless of the loot. But on the other hand I'm not a raid leader or organizer. It's not my headache and it's not my decision if 25 man raiding still will be worth the effort. I really wonder what's in the minds of the guild leaders worldwide right now. How many guilds will fall apart due to this announcement?

Guild leveling incentives?
I realize that this post contains quite a bit of gloom and doom, and I suppose it reflects my gut feeling in this very moment. But my guts are wrong sometimes! Hence the question mark, right?

I haven't yet condemned all the 25 man guilds to die a horrible death. Not yet. There are still some unknown cards around. One is exactly what the increased drop rate will mean. Another card yet-to-be-seen is more precisely what the guild leveling will be about. Maybe they'll give a few more incentives for 25 man raiding that way? It could happen. We don't know yet.

And even if I'm a bit worried, there's also some really good stuff in the announcement. I love the idea of making more but smaller raid instances. This will grant more variation in the weekly raid schedule and keep players from boredom. I also approve of that 10 man and 25 man versions will share the same lockout. This will prevent players from feeling compelled to run the same instance in every possible version just to keep competitive with the gear. I suppose they learned from the ToC debacle, where some players ran the same instance four times a week and grew incredibly bored with it in a very short time. The lockouts will prevent it. And you may call it patronizing and that we should be able to make that call for ourselves, but I still think it's a wise call to help us to keep the fun in the game.

Blogosphere reactions
The first few reactions to the announcement I've seen in the blogosphere have mostly been on the positive side. Restokin is even more worried than me, but Hatch, Cold Comfort, Nibuca , Big Bear Butt and Screaming monkeys all seem to be very happy about the changes. And for good reasons, looking from their angles.

Maybe they're right. Maybe I'm just a protective, insecure little gnome, worrying more than necessary about where she'll end up in the mighty tides of the change?

Deep inside I think we're all wondering a bit: Will there be a raid spot for me when the dust has settled and the new raiding landscape has been shaped after the cataclysm?

We won't know anything for sure. The question mark is hanging over us. And the discussion has only begun.

The Concept Art Gallery Lies!

Did you notice the title? It’s not a question – it’s an exclamation.

This makes me feel slightly uncomfortable. I’ve never claimed to hold some kind of Truth and I definitely don’t have the urge to sell my ideas to the world. If anything I suffer from indecisiveness, looking at things from different angles, arguing back and forward in my posts and my thoughts. The one who spoke last always seem to be so right, until someone else says the opposite, sounding just as cleaver.

And the older I grow, the less do I find that I know. Everything flows, panta rei, as Hereclitus used to say. It's weird.

One of the reason why many of my posts have question titles is that I’m actually interested to get some further input from the readers who might sort it out for me and help me to come to a conclusion. However Krizzlybear wrote a thoughful post the other day, showing why question marks in the titles might not be such a good idea. And even though he kindly enough said that PPI is an exception and was excused, I’ll listen to his advice and try to cut down a little bit on the question marks. That’s why this post looks like a yet-to-do quest and not like a turn-in.

Ouch, this was a strange way to start a post! When am I getting to the point?

I’ll blame the Casual Friday atmosphere at the inn for this. In case you didn't notice, the bar is open and we have happy-hour prices for a while longer. Right now I'm just slacking with some of the guests in the armchairs in front of the fire, enjoying the perspective of a job free weekend. No wonder my tongue and thoughts will drift away in different directions.

Focus Larísa, focus!

The Concept Art Gallery
So. Back to business. This post is supposed to comment on the new Concept Art Gallery which Blizzard launched this week. This is a treasure box filled to the brim with pictures from various Blizzard productions such as World of Warcraft, including some pen sketches, but also very impressive full-coloured all-out paintings, which are absolutely stunning in their beauty.

The gallery offers eye-candy to any Warcraft fan, and especially the Cataclysm pictures give me thrills. That dragon in fire looks so bad-ass, not to speak of the underwater scenes, which makes me want to dive, even if I hate swimming in games (more about that another day.) Gief. Now! I want to explore that world, I want to face those creatures, I want to play Cataclysm! In this aspect the Concept Art Gallery definitely works as intended.

However there’s a back side of giving us all those pretty pictures, namely the fact that the game doesn’t quite live up to the expectations they awake.

I come to think of those frozen ready-to-eat potions that can help you out in an empty-fridge-and-no-time-to-cook emergency. They look so tasty in the store. The box shows a delicious dish in lustrous colours. But when you open it you’ll just find a pale copy. You could even call it a lie.

The image and the truth
It’s the same with those concept pictures. Howling Fjord may be a pretty zone, but hands on heart, it doesn’t look like it did in the pre-released pictures.

While we’re at it, let’s also look at some of the cinematics that Blizzard has done over the years. There are the machinima-looking ones, with figures that look more like in the game, and I suppose they’re not too far from the truth so I don’t argue about them. I loved the in-game cinematic introducing Wrathgate. But the motion pictures are different. They suggest something that that the game won’t deliver.

On one hand I cried out loud of happiness and excitement when I saw the cinematic introduction to Wrath. It was so alive that I almost could touch it, smell it, push the snow to the side for myself and shiver with cold. I was excited to start out my new journey into the winter landscape.

On the other hand – as I continued to the actual game, I couldn’t recognize myself from the movie. Arthas isn’t exactly an actor walking around, making the ground tremble. He’s just a small cartoon figure. Northrend is a pretty world, no doubt, especially if you have a computer that can handle to set the graphics to a high level. But the “for real” feeling from the 3d version just isn’t there.

Tricked and disappointed?
Do I feel genuinely tricked and disappointed at this? Am I upset because Blizzard are trying to fool me with their simple marketing devices?

I wish I could say “YES!” since it would make a funnier read. But to be honest I’m not all that devastated.

After three years in Azeroth I’ve grown used to the concept. I love the world for what it is and I’ve learned to be realistic as I look at the exciting movies that comes with a new box, well aware that the game waiting behind will be more ordinary, far from a holo deck-alike experience.

I try to regard the Concept Art and the movies as a source of inspiration for my own imagination rather than as a table of contents for the game.

The Concept Art Gallery is a lie. But a nice one.

And those words will finally put this post to an end and call for a toast for the upcoming weekend.

Cheers all!

Does Blizzard suck at communicating? And if so - does it matter?

My post about Blizzard’s disinterest in WoW blogs sparked an interesting discussion in the comment section. Some agreed with me that they should make an effort to acknowledge and encourage the community and fan sites more. Others pointed at the risks. Blogs can be expected to be personal and opinionated and put your company in an awkward situation if you accidentally link to material that is against your policy.

Learning about social media
I’ve been working in public relations for over 15 years, but I can’t claim to be any expert in social media strategies. I’m still trying to make up my mind how they fit into the media mix and how to interact with them in the interest of my employer. One of the underlying reasons for me to start this blog in the first place was that I didn’t have a clue about what blogging was about. Over the last couple of years I’ve been learning by doing, but I’m still very humble in those discussions, eager to listen and get new perspectives.

Bristal, a long-time reader and commenter at PPI was one of those who argued against Blizzard putting too much attention to social media. He said that WoW is a brand and that you couldn’t expect a company to endorse fan sites without having direct control over them.

In my reply, I begged to differ and reminded him that I believe many marketers of today make huge efforts to get on good terms with bloggers, since they see the value of viral marketing. I also referred to an article about how you can work strategically with social media and a video where a Coca Cola representative shares his views on this.

The view of a marketer
The other day I got an e-mail from Bristal, who now had shown my post to his wife to get her opinion. She is not a gamer, but unlike me she has a solid background in marketing. The last three years she has been incorporating social media strategies to her corporation. To my delight it turned out that she agreed with me:

“Wow...no pun intended...there is so much wrong here. Here's some of what I thought when I was reading this blog post. IMHO (and in the HO of many social media experts), the #1 rule of any social media is, Don't start it if you can't devote resources to monitor and contribute to it. The #2 rule is, It's a conversation; you don't always hear what you want to hear so be ready for that. And the #3 rule is, Content is king. Or in the case of WoW I think it's, Content is big fat purple drops. There is no "obligation" but I do wonder why, as a virtual business, Blizzard would start a social media strategy and assume it would sustain itself without their help. They should know better.

The other thing is about the Blizzard website. It sounds, unbelieveably, that they created an online brochure without a strategy for what they wanted their site to do for them. Some of my thoughts on effective websites are they need to be sticky - visitors need to have a reason to hang around and come back again and again. For Blizzard it could be for shopping, fan connection (like the blogger said), previews of coming attractions, goofy games, news, free downloads of stuff...things to get new players engaged. Also, I think websites need to continuously add content or new info (see Rule #3 above) in order to remain relevant. And, they should include some level of optimization strategy - people need to be able to find the site even when they're not specifically looking for it.

I wonder if Blizzard has devoted all its resources to the game and has little left over for other projects. WoW is, by itself, a sticky social media site that is continuously being updated. Still...I expect more from them.”

The lack of strategy
Now, to be fair, I should say that some of the features that she asks for already exist on Blizzards community website if you look closer. There is shopping. There are some previews and downloads. Wallpapers. Music. Movies. Contests. Stuff like that. But it all seems pretty random, the structure is messy and updating is unreliable to say the least.

Just like she says, it’s hard to see the underlying strategy for the overall Blizzard website (which I've bitched about earlier) as well as the WoW specific site. They don’t seem to know for themselves what they want to accomplish with their web presence. This includes their fumbling efforts to Twitter, where they arrange developer chats occasionally but not very much in between. And why do we have to look into a gazillion of blue posts and putting things together for ourselves if we want to understand the minds and intentions of the developers better? Wouldn't it be way better to let them have their own blogs? Have they really thought this over?

The structure is wild and confusing, branching out in all directions. New features are launched, but they don’t seem to pay any thought whatsoever to if they have the resources it takes to sustain it. It’s easy to find horror examples of neglect. A podcast with something in the lines of two episodes a year, can you really expect that to be much listened to? A newsletter where the latest issue is from March 2009, what’s the point?

Lack of updates
What is worse and even harmful in my opinion is that there is so much outdated, flat incorrect information floating around at the official website, misleading new players who are pointed to look at the website if they need further ifnormation than what comes with the instruction book. That's nothing but a shame.

I guess the company lacks resources for proper updating, or maybe their website system is so old and clotted, which happens to most websites as time passes, that they’ve lost the overview.

Regardless of the reason behind it: you don’t have to poke around long to find stuff that is so old that it smells. Like when they give the basics about partygrouping, and don’t mention the new LFD tool with a word, but still are referring to LFG and LFM. That’s not cool, especially since the information lacks a time stamp. There is no way that a newcomer can judge if this information is valid or not. I would be truly embarrassed if I was the one who was responsible for this information.

A reflection of Blizzard’s failings
I’m far from the first one to notice the weakness of this site. It’s one of the reasons why we have such an abundance of unofficial resources which are way more accurate, in-depth and useful than Blizzard’s own information.

As Tim Howgego commented, those third-party services are a “tribute to Blizzard's own communications and design failings.”

The eco-system, including everything from fan sites and blogs to wikis, movies and addons, has grown crazily huge and wild and Blizzard doesn’t yet seem to have figured out how to handle it. What is the best strategy for the future? Have things gone so far that they can’t take control anymore? Should they do like I suggest, encourage the community efforts more than they do now? Or have they got a valid reason to ignore it? Could they incorporate more of the community into their own sphere? Or will we see them fighting more to maintain control over their intellectual property?

I don’t know the answers. If I did I suppose I wouldn’t write blogposts but apply for a job at Blizzard.

What I do know is that Blizzard has a lot of strengths and opportunities, but also weaknesses and threats to their communication with fans and customers.

In the very end the sales figures will reflect how well they have succeeded.

I look myself into the mirror, trying to be humble and objective. Could it be that I under influence of my own professional hybris overestimate the value of good communications?

Blizzard doesn't seem to have that much clue about their website and what to do with it. But how much does it matter?

38 speeches and we’ve only got started

So we’re facing The Lich King. The final jewel of this expansion, the last chapter in the book unfolded. I’ve listened to his minute long introductory speech 38 times by now (only counting the 25 man raids) and I expect to hear quite a few times more before I finally will make him shut up.

In TBC I think we had about 100 wipes before we finally killed Archimonde, and I wouldn’t be the slightest surprised if LK will turn out to be something in those lines.

A worthy opponent
In case you’re living in the illusion that all the normal modes in ICC are ridiculously easy, using the Gunship fight as your benchmark, I’ll tell you something: LK is playing in an entirely different division. Not that I mind - on the contrary; LK is the final of the final, a legendary boss in the Warcraft universe and as such he should doubtless be a worthy opponent for even the top-end guilds, not a loot piñata.

Apart from the whispering role playing, which is tedious to hear 38 times, not to say 100, the fight is just as varied, challenging and complicated as I expect it to be. Really well done, Blizzard!

The obstacle we’ve run into is the phase where you’re supposed to slow and kill val’kyrs that shamelessly kidnap your raid members, planning to drop them into the big void, while you also avoid an aoe-damage-thing called “defile”. This defile targets an individual but can wipe the entire raid if you make the slightest of error. The reaction time is one of the most unforgiving I’ve seen in WoW. Twitchy, to say the least. You need the reaction time of a teenager brought up on Nintendo and FPS games as well as a very good, lag free internet connection, or you’re screwed.

In theory you have two seconds to move away – not just a few steps, but getting a good distance between yourself and the raid, dropping the dreadful black pool at a good spot and not in the way of the flight path of the kidnappers. In reality the time is even less, since some of this time will get lost due to the communication back and forward between the client and the server.

The ICC buff doesn’t make any huge difference to this. Surely, we will be able to kill the val’kyrs quicker as our damage output increases, but it won’t help us against the defiles.

Incoming nerf
I will stick out my neck and make a prediction: I think Blizzard will nerf the defile mechanism in a not far distant future, probably by prolonging the casting time or the pace for it’s growing. If they don’t, this will turn out to be exactly the kind of brick-wall that they don’t want to see around anymore in the normal modes (heroic modes being an entirely different matter). They’d surely like more 25 man guilds to get LK down than the current 1,78 percent according to the charts at Guildprogress.

Will we be able to get LK down before the nerf hammer hits us? Maybe, maybe not. I think we have the capacity, but we’ve also got the same issues as many other guilds have these days, struggling with signups and slow recruitment. We’re definitely in a better situation than Matticus writes about today, but we’re all facing the challenges of keeping up morale, motivation and spirit towards the end of an expansion.

Hardmode reward
Do you know what’s funny? I haven’t thought that much about what loot LK may drop. That doesn’t matter. What matters so much more is the fact that he’s the guardian that keeps us from starting out hardmode versions of the lower wing bosses. The reward to get access to those is way more tempting and motivating than anything else.

A bunch of spiced-up, challenging encounters are waiting for us on the other side of the LK. We just have to figure out how to manage those defiles. It probably means that we’ll have to listen to his yada-yada another 60 times (do you realize that we’re spending ONE hour of game time on it?).

But we’ll get there. We’re not sissies. We’re Adrenaline.

How Blizzard could make extra profit from a rich middle-aged geek

Tobold commented on on the connection between the sparkling pony and the changing dempographic in MMORPGs. The players who once upon a time enjoyed Dungeons & Dragons in the 80s aren’t unemployed or students these days – we’ve got jobs – often even well paid ones in science or engineering.

We may appear a bit childish and still look upon ourselves as geeks. But let’s face it. We’re grown-ups. Rich grown-ups with way more money to spend than then monthly subscription fee allows them to.

There’s a huge potential for the gaming industry to find up new services to sell to those this player segment with much more money than time at their hands. Tobolds predicts a future where we’ll see more merchandising, more virtual goods and more premium services.

So far we’ve seen a sparkling pony at 25 dollars. The 100 dollar sparkling dragon is waiting around the corner. This is just the beginning, according to Tobold’s prophecies, and I believe he’s quite right.

Me – a cheapscate
I suppose I am the kind of player that Tobold speaks of. I’m middle-aged and employed, and considering how much I’m willing to pay for activities such as skiing and holidays abroad, there’s no reason why Blizzard shouldn’t try to get their share of my wallet.

Their first attempt failed however; the sparkling pony didn’t cut it. I imagined myself riding around on it and realized that it wouldn’t make me feel entertained, excited, happy or proud – only awkward and embarrassed. If my children had played WoW and wished for a horse it would have been a different matter. When you get an opportunity to treat your children and see them smile, principles about good or bad game design go right out through the window. But since that’s not the case, the ponies will stay on the shelf.

What about a 100 dollar sparkly dragon than? It says itself that fewer people would be willing to pay that kind of sums, so it would probably work better as a status symbol. It could be The Rolex of mounts (mind you, coming with a not negligible risk of mockery for being a pillock).

To be honest I’m not tempted. I guess I’m a bit of an old cheapskate, more or less immune to vanity stuff that mostly is about to make an impression. Sorry. Admittedly I DID buy the collectors edition of WotLK, but then I’m a complete sucker for behind-the-scenes material of any kind. The extras for the LOTR movies were the best ever. The more of it the better and you could charge me almost anything for it.

What they could offer
The question is: how could Blizzard make me want to pay more for my WoW playing, apart from making good behind-the-scenes stuff for me to devour? What extras could they possibly tempt me with?

My time shortage is definitely a niche that could be explored. People in my age are constantly juggling, trying to fit our gaming into an already cramped schedule with job and family commitments. The time we can devote to WoW is limited and we’re very keen on spending it playing, having fun, getting challenged and entertained. We don’t want to spend it messing around trying to solve technical issues on our own or waiting for customer service in a queue of unknown length.

Yes, there is a potential market for premium customer services. In a comment at Tobold’s post, Peregrine recalls the original Everquest, where they apparently made a special server with a higher level of GM support in exchange for a higher monthly fee. I suppose it wasn’t a huge success, considering that we don’t see it in WoW. But I wouldn’t be surprised if they would come up new concepts in line with this.

Time has passed since EQ, the MMO-community has changed and grown older and the playerbase is way bigger, including people with little previous experience of gaming and limited knowledge of computer issues.

Maybe they could package this kind of services in a different way. Some players might like to play at special servers for the rich people, where you maybe could be protected from spam in the general channels thanks to more present GM:s. Others would probably like to get access to fast-queues for GM assistance, but would like to stay on their home services where they have their guilds and friends.

Paying extra for a higher level of service from GM:s sounds fine to me. What if you could get granted in-game chat contact with a GM within a certain amount of time – let’s say one hour – bypassing the normal ticked queue, which can take anything from a couple of ours to a week?

Individualized tech support
Another area of interest is out-of-game tech support. I’d like to see something more individualized, that helps me more than handing out generic answers that are supposed to be for everyone but are to shallow to really solve anything.

I’ve lost count on how many times I’ve bee suffering from problems with everything from lag and reoccurring disconnects to problems with new patches and UI headaches. The help you can expect from the Blizzard support is the three standard solutions: reinstall the game, delete the WTF and Interface folders or go whine at your ISP provider since they suck. Those suggestions will take you infinite amounts of time (yes, even the delete-interface-folder takes time if you want to rebuild your UI) and you can’t be certain they will help you in the end.

I may be an old geek, but I come from a world where I spent my time making fanzines with a manual typewriter and a mimeograph rather than messing around with a C64. I’m technically daft and I don’t know how many hours I’ve spent manically googling and browsing forums full of techno-babble looking for if not a solution, at least a clue.

More than once have kind guildies or even blog readers come to my rescue, giving me good suggestions or talking me through what to do, step by step over the phone. However it makes me feel like a parasite. My guildies value their time as much as I do and they could spend it in a better way than baby-sitting me. A pay-service from Blizzard? Yeah, why not? I’d be totally fine with having a personal servant, my own Jeeves, always on his toes and doing his very best to help me out of technical emergencies. Service with a smile, as they say.

Crazy ideas
Finally a couple of ideas more on the crazy side. A year ago I talked about the lack of equivalence of snowboard teachers in WoW. My idea at that point was that experienced gamers might offer some sort of in-game services. But what if you could buy personal tuition from the ones who should be best at playing the game, Blizzard themselves?

We recently saw a service where you could pay crazy amounts of money for a dating-service where you basically partied with a girl sitting in front of a webcamera. But let’s imagine another sort of dating service. Exactly how much would you be willing to pay to have an online meeting with a few of the Blizzard developers, maybe like the twitter chats they’ve run now, with the difference that it would just be you and a handful more of paying people allowed into the chatroom? Or a web-cam date with Ghostcrawler himself? I wonder what price tag they could put on that. I know from real life that some people are willing pay anything just to attend the same dinner or seminar as some celebrity, not even being granted to talk to him/her. I wonder if that would apply to WoW? How big is the stardom of the prominent staff members and how much is the community willing to pay?

I guess there isn’t any urgent need for new premium services right now. For the time being the sparkling pony has given Blizzard more revenue than they possibly could have imagined. Hopefully this gives them room to focus on old-fashioned game developing for a while, giving them a respite in the demands of making instant profit.

But sooner or later they will come back with more offers to the middle-aged rich geeks. Be sure about that.

Has Blizzard put the WoW blogging community on ignore?

A little while ago WoW.com put together an excellent list of WoW resources, providing links to good news sites, databases, blogs and podcasts devoted to WoW. I’m sure there’s room for improvement – a short description of every linked-to resource wouldn’t hurt for instance. But they've made a good effort.

When I saw this list it came to my mind that I should go and check out the equivalence at Blizzard’s official fan website. I was curious to see what resources they would link to. I knew they had a Fan Site program and was wondering which blogs and news sites had made their way into it.

Ugly and thin
Before even looking I was prepared for a shorter list than the WoW.com one. Surely they would have to be pickier, checking up on the quality of whatever got their Blizzard approval stamp.

But what met me was far tinier than anything I would have imagined. There were so few Blizzard approved sites that it resembled to a joke.

Sure you’ll find a few favourites on the list: Wowwiki, Wowhead, Tankspot, The Instance and a couple of addon-download sites. But apart from those it’s void of content. They link to a couple of “news” sites that are pretty much useless as far as I’m concerned, since all they do is repeating the official announcements from Blizzard’s own site, without having the slightest ambitions to add something of their own to it such as an analysis.

Why would anyone want to visit those sites? I have to be really creative to find up a reason. Maybe if the official site is blocked for you at work and the copy-news sites aren’t? That could possibly be a reason to visit them. But it’s not a reason for Blizzard to link to them.

It’s also worth mentioning that the European Fan Site Program there are links to a couple of resources in other languages such as Polish, Serbian and Turkish. I can’t evaluate those sites; maybe there’s a need for them if people don’t understand English in those countries.

However my overall impression is that Blizzard’s fan site program isn’t only presented on an extremely messy and ugly, not to say hideous website; it’s also so thin that it’s close to non-existing.

The Fan Site Guidelines
When you look at the guidelines for what it takes to qualify for the Fan Site Program it appears that many of the sources listed at WoW.com could be included.

These are the requirements:

The site must be entirely about WoW, be up and running, updating at least once a week, be run by someone over 18 years old and not link to content that violates or encourages to violating the WoW Terms of Use.

Not too difficult, is it? And if you get elected, you won’t just get linked from the Blizzard website, you’ll also “receive regular updates and heads-up on news along with some additional surprises from time to time.”

To help aspiring fan site creators, Blizzard offers a free kit that you can download, including not only a bunch of pretty nice pictures, but even templates to help you get the right WoW-feeling on your site.

That is as far as Blizzard’s love for the community goes and to be honest I think it sucks. It sucks badly.

Writing to Blizzard
To give them a chance to explain their views on this – maybe they just weren’t aware of the existence of the blogs – or maybe they had some new upcoming link list in pipeline? – I wrote a letter to them. Or to be more precise: I left them a little note. The contact form to get in touch with the Fan Site Program staff only allows you to write 500 letters, which is cool for the Twitter folks, but a joke for a blogger.

Anyway. I wrote them and asked why there weren't any blogs in the program. And here’s the answer I got:

“Unfortunately our Fan Site program does not have capacity to lend support to individual blogs or websites that consist mainly of blogs. This is due to the (in many cases) limited interest they hold to our community as a whole, the limited amount of content and low update frequency, and lastly also due to the sheer number of these websites.

That being said however, we are not against mentioning and linking to individual blogs in our weekly Community News, and fact we have often linked to various WoW related blogs that someone made a post about in our Events and Fan Creations forum. We go through that forum every week to look for interesting things to mention in our weekly news updates: http://forums.wow-europe.com/board.html?forumId=110221&sid=1

Kind regards,
The Community Team
Blizzard Entertainment Europe”

Why they won’t link blogs
So let’s look a bit closer at this. In the first part they list the reasons why they don’t link to blog. They blame:

• the limited interest they hold to the community (translated as “they suck”)
• their lack of content
• their low updated frequency
• the big amount of them.
  

While I agree on that there are a ton of awful blogs out there which aren’t really worth spreading to a bigger audience, I still think the answer is inadequate.

“There are too many of them”. What kind of answer is that? I can’t imagine that they’re drowning in applications from bloggers. And even if they received many requests, how hard would it be for them to check them out and weed out the good from the bad? As a matter if fact I think there are many blogs out there that provide way more substantial content than those copy-paste crap news sites they have linked to so far.

The Community forum
Now let’s look closer at the second part of their letter. They say that they’re linking to WoW related blogs in the Community News if someone has posted about it in the Event and Fan Creations forum.

Right. It’s possible that they’ve done this in the past, but if it happens, it’s a rare event. I checked out the forum – which hasn’t got any equivalence on the US side as far as I can see – and noticed that it’s not exactly a vibrant one. The posting is rather slow and is more about promoting ingame-events than blogs. I can’t see any mentioning of blogs in the Community News. Of course we could try to change this a bit. We could start to promote our best blog posts through the forum and see if it will result in some link love in their Community News letter.

The Mythic example
But even if Blizzard would start promoting not only comics and machinima sites, but also to WoW blogs once in a while, they still have a long way to go if they want to develop a closer relationship with the blogging community.

Other gaming companies show a far bigger interest for their fans and understand the PR value they can offer them.

Mythic recently announced that they had invited four leading WAR bloggers to a special visit to their studio, where they would meat the design team. Here’s a quote from the announcement:

Everyone knows that here at Mythic Entertainment we love our blogging community. The close and personal ties that each of these wordsmiths have to WAR is a constant source of inspiration and motivation to all of us here in the studio. As a continuation of our close relationship to the WAR Blogging community we’ve selected four of our most active bloggers to receive a special trip this week….

I can’t help letting out an envious sigh as I read about it. That kind of attention is never showed even to the biggest, most influential podcasts and blogs in the WoW community. They won’t even get as much as a Beta invitation or a presscard to Blizzcon.

Has Blizzard put us all on ignore? Not entirely. It happens that they read blogs. We can see that from a couple of in-game references they've made, paying homage to the ex-bloggers BRK and Resto4life. Every blogger isn't on their ignore list.

Still I think they could do a lot better. I think they could pay back a little of all the love and help they get from the blogging community, which keeps promoting their game and helping to educate the playerbase, making it a better experience for everyone. They do it for free. All we're asking for in return is some link love.