Ask Larísa: How do I help my better half to become a better player?

The other day I got a letter. It came from a fellow blogger, Zekta, from P3P.net, who wanted a piece of advice. From me of all people! I can assure you I grew several inches. He seemed to think that I was some sort of Guinan figure, standing in her bar, listening to the customers, cracking sound advice with a touch of eerie mystery. Of course I'm not anywhere close to be anything like her. But it's nice to pretend!

I thought the best way to deal with this letter was to post it here, giving the other bar guests the chance to add their two cents to help out Zekta. And with this introduction I'll give the word to Zekta:

Question:

Dear Larísa,

This is Zekta from P3P.net I would like some advice. I guess many people had asked the same question before, but this really puzzle me, and I don't know where to look for the answer. So here I am, in the bar talking to you. Being one of the most intelligent Gnome I know on Azeroth, may be you can shed some light on the mist.

Last year, my better half decided to join me in Azeorth (with her hunter and after I asked too many time), so that we can "stay" together in our gaming time as well. Everything goes well, I had to teach her most of the thing and protect her on some dreadful situation. We enjoy every bit of that, and We dash thru Azeorth, Outland and finally Northern.

Finally her toon is now 80 level, and as we all know, there aren't much thing left to do. I am sure PVP is not her type, cause she value more cooperative gameplay, But I am hesitate to bring her to the PuG as well. Most people in PuG is in a rush and unforgiving, I wonder how she would learn the skill of a decent player. While we are so get used to it, avoiding danger (The classic don't stand in the fire), OT and DPSing may not be as simple as it looks. I expect much from other PuGer myself as well, so I am not sure where to take her to, while I can guide her thru the moves.

I had tried couples of dungeon (including Lord Ahune) run while I run with my Restro Shaman (While I can reduce the chance of wipe), I hardly had time to provide advice while I am busying filling health bars. I don't have much RL friend in game that are still playing, so there aren't any "training session" I can organise. (Unless it's 70-level).

What should I do? Queue up PuG with a DPS with her? Pug on normal? Solo run 70- instance? Or do you happens to know where I can look up information for a new player.

I personally had a Hunter as well, so I know the class In and Out. But the basic instance run info, It's hard to explain for me. (Since we are too used to it)

I really want her to enjoy the game... But I gotta have place to let her know about the basics, so that if any player complains at her, she'll know if their point is valid. (And we know that how many clueless Pug finger pointer is out here)

I think there are many other people had the same problem too. The instance difficulties now is too easy for old player(Us), but still kinda harsh for new player...

Regards,

Zekta Chan

Larísa's answer:

Dear Zekta,

I don't know you and you the lady of your heart in real life, so please forgive me if I'm jumping into the wrong conclusions after reading your letter. But to me it appears as if you're very protective towards her. You seem to be anxious to make sure that she's having a good time in Azeroth and that she won't stumble into some jerk, calling her names, making her feel uncomfortable. You're also very keen to shield her against potential failures, going as far as to play a healing shaman to compensate for her possible mistakes.

The question is: has she really asked you for all this help? Are you sure that she wants it? Could it be so that she might need a little space, so she could get the chance and the pleasure to figure out a few things on her own?

You see: the barkskin of a player doesn't grow overnight from nowhere. It's like learning to ride a bicycle. You need to fall a couple of times before you get it. Doesn't she deserve to enjoy the learning process like you did once upon a time, without feeling the pressure that she should catch up with you so you can play harder content together?

I've never played together with my better half. But I've read quite a few blog posts on the topic. Some bloggers obviously have a fantastic experience playing together as a couple. They enjoy having an interest in common and whenever they're online they're in a team. My impression though is that many of those happy gaming lovers actually don't live together. They use Azeroth as a way to see each other online between their real life meetings.

On the other hand - I've read more than once about couples where both play WoW, but on different servers and even on different factions. Sometimes it's because they enjoy different parts of the game, but there's also an element of getting personal space for themselves. As Spinksville noted in a blog post, where she described how she and her boyfriend were living in a small one-bedroom flat, where there wasn't much "solo room" for anyone. "And sometimes, being logged into the computer and playing a single player game almost felt as though it genuinely did add some virtual space to the house."

This quote is taken a bit out of context, but I still think you should really think about it carefully. Helping your girl friend is absolutely a good thing to do, but you might want to do things on your own, just for your own pleasure from time to time. And the same goes for her.

Ways to coach
With this out of the way: let's move on to your question. If you both agree on that you want to play together, if she really wants your help and if you enjoy being her teacher, where should you start to help her climb in the learning curve?

Well, to me it sounds as if you think that she might still lack a few basic skills that an all-round hunter should master. Maybe she needs to work out and practice on things as rotations, misdirecting, kiting and putting up traps. You can do this in several ways and I think you should try to vary it as much as possible.

Above all: don't worry at this stage about character advancement, loot drops or achievements. It's not important. What you want to do is to give her the chance to practice and improve in a non-hostile environment, where she'll get experience and hopefully also a little boost to her self confidence, which many new players need.

Seek out challenges that you can do as a duo to begin with. Do whatever group quests you can find in Northrend, just the two of you. At least the five-man quests should give you some resistance. Training sessions in a low-level instance is also a great idea.

Also remember: you don't have to be in the same group as her when you want to coach her. Try to vary the coaching a bit. You could for instance let her pug normal level 80 instances on her own. Instead of playing on your toon you could sit beside her, seeing exactly what maneuvers she does with her mouse and keystrokes, what spells she takes, how she reacts in certain situations. You can even ask her to comment on what she's doing aloud, letting her explain why she does what she does. With the knowledge of her actions and her reasoning, you'll be able to give way better feedback to her.

Another variant of this could be to switch roles. You said you know how to play a hunter. Well do that! Borrow her toon or pick out your own hunter if it's still around. Show her how you play it, tell her exactly what you're doing and what's going on in your mind.

Yet another idea is to find a few good instance videos that you could show her, preferably with hunters around. Watch them together and guide her through them, pointing out essentials that you think she could learn from.

Talking about online-resources: provided that she doesn't mind reading - why don't you send her to the blogopshere? I know The Hunter's Mark and Aspect of the Hare both have guides on different aspects, but there are surely many others as well. For some reason hunter's seem to blog and podcast more than other classes. They're there to be read and used!

Not overdoing it

Last but not least: there's nothing wrong with putting up a boot camp to get her going, helping her to grasp the basics of the game. Just be careful not to overdo it, not to be too pushy and enthusiastic about it. And know when it's time step back and let her try her wings in a PUG without you hanging around in the party trying to save her.

Zekta: you should put some trust in your girl friend! She can probably do much better without you than you imagine already. Eventually you have to give her the chance to grow on her own. She deserves it like every player does.

Cheers,

Larísa

So this was the answer that your innkeeper could come up with. But if there are any bar guests who have more suggestions to Zekta, please speak up!

Private WoW teacher for hire

A little more than a year ago, I asked: why is it normal to consult a teacher when you want to learn how to ride a snowboard, but you won't see anyone offering to learn you how to play a tank in WoW? It's acceptable to take skiing lessons, but we expect everyone to learn how to master the game by their own means.

My idea about veterans offering lessons in WoW was pretty well received in the comments, and some experienced players shared stories from their past where they had been the mentor for a newbie player, and how much they had enjoyed doing this.

I never wrote clearly how I thought the willing teacher should be paid; actually I never thought about it much at the point I wrote the post. I guess I assumed that it would be payment in gold, similar to how Gevlon paid for raid spots at that time. People are paying gold for boosts, why not pay for knowledge? And my readers probably assumed the same. The real life commercial side of it never became any issue in the discussion.

Coaching for money
Now I’ve seen this teacher-for-hire idea come true for the first time, thanks to a post at Consider This. The story is that a fury warrior, who seems to be well known in warrior circles, deeply involved in the EJ forums and a raider in one of the top guilds of the world, is offering coaching services at 24 dollars an hour.

Consider is very critical about this, and concludes that “no player out there is so dim-witted whereas they need a paid service and no player is so amazing that they’re worth paying for such a service.”

His major objections are:

1. The game is fairly simple and there are a ton of free resources to help you out if you need
2. The warrior in question isn’t that great. Why pay for someone who isn’t actually the best?
3. Others can’t teach you to react to the unexpected – which is what being a good player is all about. To be truly competitive with the best, you’re going to have to be able to think on your own, and a coaching service doesn’t make you do that.

He finally offers anyone who needs advice on how to play their DK a free service – through mail, MSN or even on vent.

“But whatever else, please god, never pay someone for such junk. Not for a game. Not for WoW.”

Why I don't mind
So what’s my view on this? Well, not so surprisingly, considering I suggested WoW teaching services in the first place, I’m not as disturbed as Consider.

It certainly makes more sense to me to pay 25 dollars for personal tutoring of one of the 100 best players in the world than to pay the equal amount for a silly sparkling pony.

The way I’m playing the game, I don’t see any need to consult such a teacher myself, (provided that there was one available for mages).

I’m playing in a guild which although it’s The Best in its kind and holds my heart, honestly can’t claim to be on the bleeding edge of raiding. I don’t have any ambitions to make a WoW career, aiming for a spot in Ensidia. I’m not going anywhere. But suppose I did? If I really had that drive, if I really wanted to become the best in the world in my class, why wouldn’t I try an hour of personal coaching? I’d soon enough find out if it actually resulted in any improvement.

I agree that there’s a ton of information available for free. Provided that you have unlimited of time at hands you could probably learn most of the stuff that this coach could tell you by looking it up yourself. But at least the mage forums at EJ (I can’t tell about the others) is currently a mess, a jungle to get lost in, a time sink I could live without.

I don’t think that this guy is scamming players. He’s made an offer and if people are happing to pay for the service, I don’t mind.

Will it work?
The next question is: will the warrior get any customers?

To be honest I doubt it. The players who are ambitious enough to want to learn from the best are probably a little too cocky to admit that they have a lesson to learn. And the casuals who know that they’re not the best, aren’t motivated enough to pay to get better.

The biggest problem however is the timing. It’s summer and there’s end-of-expansion-blues in the air. The people who are still into progression raiding are pretty clear by now on the best specs, gear and rotations. The market will probably be better once Cataclysm has arrived and people are still in confusion, trying to navigate through the information overload.

But I still think that most players are pretty reluctant to pay real life money for this. In game gold would work better. On the other hand – these days when the gold is flowing on the streets I suppose that very few top players would be willing to sell their time for such a trivial reward.

Does jumping straight into heroics at 80 make me a leech?

Do you always pull your own weight in a group? Does it make you cringe if you don’t? And how do you tell if a healer is carried in a five-man group? Can he or she basically be carried at all? And is it OK to jump straight into heroics as soon as you’ve dinged 80? This is the topic for today’s discussion at the Pink Pigtail Inn.

I’m in a confessional mood today, so let’s start it from there.

The shame of being carried
I can as well tell you right away: I haven’t always pulled my own weight in groups over the years I’ve been playing. There have been moments when my mage has been crawling in the sewer below the tank, barely beating the healer on the damage chart.

And the funny thing is that for a long while I had no idea that I actually was carried. I didn’t have any damage meter or even know that such things existed. I felt ashamed when it dawned upon me, Swedish as I am.

You see one of the most conspicuous national traits of our people is the obsession with the idea of being self sufficient. As a good Swede you’re not supposed to owe anyone else anything at any time. This shows in situations which probably would look pretty hilarious to an outsider.

In other countries – as I’ve been told – it’s considered normal, polite and expected that if you’re visiting a restaurant, someone will take the bill for the entire party. They know that next time someone else will pay and eventually it will even out. But so not in Sweden, oh no! In a Swedish restaurant, the bill will be split up. And sharing it evenly isn’t enough; every one will scrutinize the receipt, not hesitating to ask the serving staff for a calculator if necessary to make sure that no one by accident will pay a single cent more than they should. I’m not kidding. I’ve seen parties ending a lovely dinner spending 15-20 minutes or even more on the payment procedure.

Coming from this, you can imagine how I feel if I notice I’m falling behind in an instance party. It makes me cringe.

It happens – rarely - that I’m in the opposite situation, topping the damage chart in my PUG group thanks to superior gear. I don’t mind at all. I will carry my less fortunate fellow dps:ers and I’ll smile happily on the way! All I ask for is that they do their best, contributing with whatever they can. So what if it takes us a little bit longer to beat the content? Given the choice between being carried or carrying others as a dps:er, I’ll go for the last option, any day.

Struggling in normals
However: the last few days I’ve once again found myself in the role of a leech. At least I think I’ve been leeching, I’m not entirely sure. Judge for yourself.

The story is that I’ve finally gotten my third character to level 80 and like most players in this situation, I boldly ventured on my dungeon-grinding tour, hoping to gear up the druid, improve my healing skills and have some fun on the way.

To begin with I only signed up for the normal modes, even though the dungeon finder would admit me into several of the heroics. After all, I was dressed in blues. Shouldn’t I at least get myself some emblem gear and a few crafted purple pieces, maybe buying some BoE:s, before stepping up in difficulty level? As the “good girl” and Swede I am, I wanted to make sure that I did the “right thing”.

And maybe it was morally correct, but it certainly gave me a headache. Far from being easier than the heroics, those normal modes were rather a super-hard mode. Every single time I ended up as the only level 80 in a group where everyone else was level 78 or 79. The tanks were without exceptions death knights, and suddenly the name of the class got an entirely new meaning. Death was the word, and my heart sank whenever I saw their squishy little bodies go “splat”. I couldn’t help blaming myself (healer guilt, you know), and I wondered if I had been foolish to believe that I would have what it takes to become a reliable tree. I won’t lie to you; it was pretty depressing.

When I mentioned this to a guildie, he just laughed at my foolishness, saying that I was doing it wrong. Why didn’t I go for the heroics, like everyone else? People are so well geared these days, he said, that they don’t need that much of healing. I would be fine in there.

Reluctantly I gave it a try. It would offer me better loot and more badges, and after all – why should I distrust the gearscore that is built into the dungeon finder tool? If I wasn’t prepared to run a certain instance, I would be locked out from it.

Leeching in heroics
My legs trembled nervously as I entered my first heroic, which turned out to be Gundrak. I greeted the party, and couldn’t refrain from babbling insecurely, asking them to take it a bit careful since I was new to healing and badly geared. They just laughed it away: “No problem, we all have to start somewhere!” and with concern about me, they also made sure to take time to do the extra boss, so I could get a couple of more badges.

My friend had been totally right. The full epic geared warrior tank barely got a scratch, regardless of how big packs he pulled. I dutifully kept dotting people with HoTs, as a safety measure, giving me something to do. But it was barely needed. We reached the end quickly enough without a single death.

Was I carried through the instance? I suppose I was. I doubt the run would have been as smooth if everyone else in the party had been at my gear level. I was relying on them.

Did the group feel that I was a burden, dragging them down? Probably not. I don’t think a better geared healer would have made a huge difference to the run. They might have skipped the extra boss if I wasn’t there, but that’s all. As long as the party stays alive, can you really say that the healer has been carried?

Strengthened by this experience I checked the heroic box for the next instance. And then I did it again. And again. The results were similar: it worked just fine. I wouldn’t do this as a tank, and possibly not as a dps, but I tell you - as a healer, you’re way better off in a heroic instance than in normal.

Yet I can’t rid myself of the nagging suspicion that I was a leech after all. In the end, there were other players who took a bigger share of the bill. I heard this little voice telling me that I should call on the waitress, borrow a calculator, and settle my debts.

This doesn’t prevent me from keep signing up for heroics though. Why would I pick the normal one when all I get is a repair bill and severely bruised self confidence?

Carrying or being carried
A final thought on carrying and being carried. It’s easy to get blinded by the dazzling, seemingly scientific, unquestionable numbers on the damage chart, forgetting about everything else. But the truth is that the guys who are subscribing for the first place in your raid sometimes are carried by they ones who always dwell in the bottom. Only in another sense.

Who is the one who provides the spirit, the force and the giggles that keeps your guild going through times of hardships? What is he if not a carrier, and what is the constantly disgruntled, unsatisfied guy who never provides anything but negative energy, if not a leech?

There are many ways to carry. There are many ways to be carried. And maybe we should do as they do abroad: take turns in paying the bill and feel confident in doing so. It will all even out in the end.

Friday Emotions – and a teaser about my LOTRO experiences

I’ll warn you right away; I’m in an emo mood as I start writing this Friday night musings post. I don’t know why. Or maybe I do, to be honest.

A clash with a reader
The other day I clashed into one of my readers in a discussion in the comment section, which somehow touched on the good old elitist-casual tension.

Normally I can handle criticism pretty well, (or at least I tell myself so). Like Gevlon I keep it at a healthy distance from me, thinking “they can’t hurt me. It’s just pixels, words.” But this discussion for some reason went out of my hands. Which actually was a good thing, as things turned out.

What happened was that we decided to take our little conversation away from the public eye. We sort of sat down at a table of our own where no one could hear us, talking through emails rather than through comments. And you know what? We connected in a way that I don’t think would have been possible without that initial clash. Everything is fine on both sides I’d dare say. But I still feel a bit shaken up after the episode. Emo.

A letter from Gevlon
And here’s another story from the week. The other night I created a little mage alt and had her join Gevlon’s latest experiment guild. I don’t know if I’ll ever run a raid with her, considering that my available time is so limited. However I thought it could be fun to at least have a look at the guild from the inside while levelling her. I’d like to see with my own eyes how the chat might look in this guild where normal social behaviour such as saying “hi”, “bye” and “gz” is frowned upon, a guild full of goblin minded people.

Today I got a concerned letter from Gevlon, asking me if it was the real Larísa and not an impersonator who had joined the guild. He just wanted to make sure, which I can fully understand since he’s been a victim of such pranks himself. I assured him that I was the “real” one indeed. And somehow his question touched me. It made it so obvious that he despite his image actually cares about other things in the world than just gold.

The state of the guild
A third part of my emo state of mind is caused by the condition of our guild. I think we’re still in the post-shock phase of our leaders stepping down. There are so few of us left – 26 active raiders as it is now – that we realistically only rarely will be able to put together a 25 man group. Yesterday we finally could make one for the first time in quite a while. We were a few players short, but still managed to oneshot 10 bosses in 2.5 hours, which isn’t bad, not even with the buff. It was just so sweet to be together again, almost all of us, and the fact that we don’t know how long it will be until next time this happens only added to the sweetness of it.

It’s a rough time for all raiding guilds, but I think everyone who is left with us has a strong wish that we’ll get through this, survive, and make a glorious return in Cataclysm. Thinking about it makes me a bit emo though.

My first dip into LOTRO
As some readers have noticed, I downloaded LOTRO a week ago and signed up for a 14 day free trial. The reactions to this have been fantastic, yet another reason to get a little bit emo. All those concerns! All those comments! I’ve even got several personal letters, encouraging me to try this, suggesting servers and offering help. Thank you all! It really touched me.

Some readers who also are LOTRO fans are a bit worried about what I’ll eventually write about my experiences. Barrista wrote:

“As for your lotro post, I hope it is truly fair, although I don't expect it to be. WoW was my first MMO, but I tend to evaluate things for what they are. I did a bit of "oh blizz does this better", but to do a true evaluation I realized I had to take it as it was. Plus, this is a WoW blog.”

Well, I suppose that my impressions inevitably will be coloured by my WoW glasses. It’s impossible to disregard of them. WoW is the only game I’ve played and see all the time how it partly helps me, partly plays me tricks. I don’t know for instance how many times I’ve tried to open my bags, pressing “B”, getting annoyed when nothing happens.

I don’t think I’m the right person to write a proper full size review of this game, even if I had played it for more than 14 days. I’m just not qualified. But I will write a post in the area of “What a WoW player first will notice when she tries out LOTRO”. I think it might have some sort of interest to all of you who consider to check it out once it goes free.

I’m not ready to do it quite yet though. I need to spend a few more hours in the Shire to make up my mind.

But I can tell you one thing already: It’s hard to wind down from the pace in WoW and I have to struggle a bit with myself to do it. It’s as if you’ve been running around for a long time with tense shoulders and now are trying to relax, letting them down. They’re like stuck. I have to assure myself that it’s OK to run around delivering hot pies and solving riddles, picking the eggs in the right order. I do enjoy this, if I only can allow myself to relax and smell the flowers, watch the clouds (which are incredibly well done and beautiful by the way.)

One more thing: I love to kill mobs by music. It looks so silly that I crack up every single time. And it seems as if I can vary it; If I grow tired of my harp I can grab my flute! I don’t know if there’s any difference in how well they do their job. And I don’t care! Because I’m not planning to max out anything here except for my level of entertainment.

Who can be emo and melancholic when there’s a merry little hobbit is jumping around, playing a ballad? I can’t. So let’s cheer up a bit!

I hope you’ll all get a wonderful weekend, wherever you choose to spend it – in Azeroth, the Shire or maybe out in the real world.

Cheers!

The Defias were scary enough to me

"Give us harsher death penalties!"

No, this view doesn't originate from me. I think you knew that. I'm just referring one of those ideas that pops up in the blogosphere every now and then.

This time it's Wolfshead who has picked it up in an - as always - interesting and eloquent post about the lack of real risks to the player in modern MMOs. Once again I can't unconditionally make a /sign on what he says. But on the other hand, I guess that's just as good, because if I could there wouldn't be much of a discussion.

The dumbed down game
I must admit that I'm a little bit surprised to see this coming from Wolfshead of all bloggers. After all he has earlier described himself as some sort of spokesman for the casual gamer, and he has always talked passionately about the need for virtual worlds and not just theme parks. Guild houses and that kind of fluffy, cute and far from risky things. Now he sounds more like an elitist minded veteran jerk, complaining about how the casuals and noobs have ruined it all, longing back to vanilla WoW when only the REAL players had access to the raid instances and you had to work HARD to EARN your EPICS.

He says straight out that the MMOs (read WoW I suppose) have been dumbed down:

"MMOs are dying a death of a thousand cuts as the unintended consequence of meddling game designers eager to “improve” their MMOs by dumbing-down their mechanics has eviscerated the end user experience that made MMOs so unique. The sense of challenge, danger and mystery has been replaced by a feeling of entitlement, security and predictability."

He accuses the MMOs of today for giving the players praise and status they don't deserve, granting them too easy character progression, showering them with loot and de-emphasizing player ability and skill.

Gosh. I don't think Wolfshead would like to have me in his raid. I can vividly imagine how he'd call me out when I failed at a defile. "LTP, noob! You don't deserve to be here!"

As a symptom of this "convenience-driven" gameplay, Wolfshead talks about the "trivialization" of the death penalty.

"Because of this, death has been rendered meaninglessness in most MMOs. Players lose any respect they had for dying and death itself. Failure has a token cost of a few coins. Players lose any respect they had for dying and death itself. Failure has a token cost of a few coins."

Wolfshead argues why an element of real risk - and the fear that comes with it - should be brought back into the games, not just because it fosters better, more skilled players, but also because it's more fun.

"The ability to risk is what separates the men from the boys. The potential to lose everything is what makes high stakes games worth playing."

Rose-colored lenses of nostalgia
As so often with Wolfshead, his post has sparked a very good discussion in the comment section. I find myself most of all agreeing with Scott from Pumping Irony, who says:

"There can be plenty of risk but the bottom line is not all of us who used to have all day every day to play these games can do so anymore. We’ve grown up just like the developers have grown up. The new kids might actually be kids with the time we used to have but the companies still want us playing because we’re the ones making the money. I don’t want to have to run a corpse around to get my stuff. It’s just boring and yes, it is absolutely inconvenient. I don’t need to “win” every battle but I don’t feel a need to be further punished for “losing” one either. "

Wolfshead argues:

"Don’t people want to feel excitement, danger, the thrill of living on the edge at least virtually? That’s what I used to feel when I first played MMOs. Seeing my first Ancient Cyclops, camping for my Ghoulbane. Seeing Sand Giants for the first time. The awe and wonder are gone."

Scott counters bluntly that Wolfshead simply is looking back through the rose-colored lenses of nostalgia:

“Seeing” your first Ancient Cyclops? “Seeing” your first Sand Giants? Of course the “awe and wonder” are gone. They were gone the second and third time you saw Ancient Cyclops and Sand Giants, as well. There’s no “risk” in “seeing” things; there *might* be “risk” associated with getting to where these things are, however, and that has not changed even in today’s MMO’s

Like anything else when it comes to nostalgia, “you can never go home again,” or "nothing compares to the first love,” or any other number of quaint catch-phrases to sum up the fact that a substitute will never recapture those raw emotions we felt on the First Time

Again, someone could make your Perfect MMO with all the risk, challenge, whatever else you think you want now and it would all pale because you’ve been there, done that. That’s just life man."

Enough of quoting, I hope I've tickled you enough to read the post for yourself and make an opinion about it.

Larísa's view

I'll also add a few thoughts of my own. As I've hinted, I believe the death penalty in WoW, consisting of a repair bill and a loss of time, spent on corpse running, is big enough as it is.

Take progression raiding. When I'm engaged into beating a difficult encounter, the world outside of it ceases to exist. I'm involved, present, committed and motivated to do my very best as it is. I, like any other raider HATE to fail and to lose, especially if it's "my fault", and I take every single try very seriously, trying my best to control my emotions of disappointment and frustration when we miss out. When we finally, after all those endless corpse runs succeed, I tell you I'm triumphantly happy about it. It doesn't take permanent loss of gear or xp to get me there. I'm excited anyway.

But even if you look in the other extreme end of the game, there's definitely room for fear in WoW as it is now.

I'll take take an example from my first experiences in WoW, in the beginning of 2007, when I rolled a paladin, my first gaming toon ever. Wolfshed, I assure you that I went through a ton of trouble and that I was scared and frustrated enough.

The Defias band members kept running after and killing me over and over again, while I helplessly tried to understand how to control the camera, the mouse and what the concept of questing meant. And I actually was pretty close to giving up and quitting the game when I believed my character had become infected with an incurable disease. (The yellow/red man in the vanilla UI, meaning you need to repair, which I couldn't figure out.) I hoped it would wear away, but it didn't. My character just kept dying if someone as much as looked on her and I wondered if I'd ever learn to play this game. Finally I decided to desert her, rolling a new toon, a certain mage, which still is alive and kicking. I was still pretty scared of the mean trolls in Don Morough, but at least I learned how to repair.

Admittedly the mobs in the starter zones are yellow these days and won't aggro unless attacked, so probably new players have no reason to be as afraid as I was. A good change if you ask me. But soon enough they'll reach Duskwood, where the wolves and spiders still are hungry and aggressive and the corpse runs are endless. They have every reason in the world to be cautious.

I can still remember the excitement as I brave but clueless ran through it, dying quite a few times on the way, not really knowing what I was doing or where I was going, only that it was scary as hell. If I had lost XP and not just gotten eaten by the wolves, would that have made it more fun? Not very likely.

The second time around

I don't think the problem is that the games have become slightly less annoying and harsh, and that this has destroyed the experience. I think the issue is that every player eventually will change as they've learned and seen the basic concepts of MMOs. You can try to evoke thrills with increasing amounts of stimuli, but I only think it helps you to a certain point.

You can't ever repete the very first love experience you get with an MMO.

I'm currently having a brief and curious look at LOTRO. It's very charming in many ways (I'll write a report on my impressions soon, I promise!). But it's not the same thrill as it was to enter WoW.

This is not because the lack of risks as I'm delivering pies and eggs in delightful little quests within the Shire. It's because it's the second time around.

And no death penalty in the world can change this.

Was it Greed or Need That Made Blizzard Kill their Darlings?

Lonomonkey made a very colorful post where he analyzed the real reason why Blizzard cut out the Path of the Titans and the Guild talents from Cataclysm. He pictures the Blizzard staff as slaves

"dressed in rags, skin taunt against their bones, eyes wild and beard gone unshaven for too long. They're bound to their desk by ball and chain to make sure no escape is possible. Behind them a taskmaster is beating the drum to set the pace.... Welcome to WoW Cataclysm development!"

Lonomonkey estimates from figures from Warcraft realm census that WoW is down to 6 million players, a loss of half of the playerbase. (Personally I'd dare say the loss is bigger; have you really counted on the loss of Chinese players?) He thinks that it's the pressure from the investors that has forced them to this decision. The game is losing players too quickly, so they have to ship the expansion as soon as possible. And the motto of "When it's ready" went out through the window.

Is he right? We've all seen with our own eyes how it looks on the servers and what has happened to our guilds and friends lists. Can they really be completely unaffected by this? For a couple of months over the summer - certainly. But I've got the feeling this has been going on for quite a while now. It's hard to believe they'll go unaffected through this. They're a business and they're expected to pull more than their own weight.

On the other hand: the sparkling pony surely must have given them quite a revenue. Shouldn't that be enough to keep the shareholders silenced for a little while, buying some more time and resources for further development?

Ghostcrawler's comments
Ghostcrawler sticks to the official version, saying that they're following their ideals just as they've always done. They do what they think is necessary for the game. Period.

He has commented on the official forums:

First in this post:

"Nobody wanted to see a feature that felt like it delivered on half its potential. Nobody wanted to be thinking about how we were going to "fix the flawed Paths system" in 5.0. If we can come up with a design we like, then we'll try again in the future.

A big part of game design is triage -- knowing when something is good enough, knowing when something can be good with just a little more work, and knowing when something is a lost cause... at least for now. There are very few WoW features that we kill outright. Most go into a design parking lot, and we get together every few months to review those features and consider what to work on next.

Fortunately, one of the benefits of being Blizzard is we don't have to ship a product until we think it's ready. Our marketing department works with us on the game, but they understand that when the game is ready is ultimately up to the team. We didn't
cut it because we ran out of time. We cut it because we didn't think the design
we had was fun. At the high level we still like the idea, and if we can solve some of the problems we might bring it back in the future."

And then in another one:

"If you were a game developer, perhaps you'd make different choices in our shoes. It's a subjective business and if you were super passionate about guild talents, perhaps you could have come up with a model that solved all of our concerns. Sometimes those concerns are visible early and sometimes you really have to get into the meat of the implementation before you realize the problems. We think the Blizzard development model has worked pretty well for over 15 years. Part of that model is being willing to cut something (features, or even titles) that isn't working out, no matter how much effort we've put into them. Keeping a feature that didn't work but that was clearly the pet feature of some developer has marred several potentially good games.

[...] As I mentioned in the above response, we have killed entire games and even game worlds before. If you go back and look at previous expansions of World of Warcraft, and certainly vanilla, there were features on the list that eventually were scrapped or changed into something completely different. As with much of our design, the alternative is not to share any information until we are 100% sure it is going to come to pass. That would mean you would know almost nothing about Cataclysm at this stage though, which would also be pretty frustrating. Every good game studio I know cuts features (and titles!) all the time.

It's like sculpting in stone. It's like good writing. You carve away until what you have left is the best you can make it. "

Blizzard's core values
It was easy to agree on Lonomonkeys conclusion that it was greed that made them take the decision. But then I read Ghostcrawler's passionate reassurance that they're doing this only for "need" reasons. They're just doing what they think is best for the game. Should I believe them? I don't know. I know one thing: I sure want to! I like Ghostcrawler better as a sculpter than as a slave.

I've always loved Blizzard's core values. Commit to quality. "At the end of the day, most players won’t remember whether the game was late -- only whether it was great."

I want to believe and I can't help once again wishing I could see Ghostcrawler and his friends in person. Polished corporate clichés is one thing. But his eyes would reveal the truth.

The Press Event at Blizzard – Did They Actually Show Anything at all?

From a point of efficiency I suppose it was a great idea to bring all the “press” to Blizzard’s headquarters at the same time.

Not that I’m sure that “press” is the right label to put on them. Are those sites really what you would consider independent, objective, stand-alone media, committed to follow the code of ethics for journalists? But let’s say they’re “press”, to keep it simple.

I can see why they wanted to gather them all at the same time. You make that guided tour. You do a bunch of interviews in a row, sticking to the story, the message you want out this time. And you give everyone the same NDA until the point you’ve chosen. It’s handy, easy to manage and won’t take a ton of your time.

From the reader’s point of view however, bunching up all the media like this was a tad disappointing. The result is a little boring and I’d so much prefer them to make an effort and let them get their interviews at different points.

The coverage of this event reminds me of the interviews you see with directors and main actors on the promotion tour of a new movie. Every interview lasts at the most 15 minutes and the result is thereafter. There’s no way you can establish a real connection between the reporter and the interview person, there’s no way you can break through the surface and find some new, revealing insights they haven’t shared before. Inevitably it will become thin, polished, repetitive and void of presence and soul.

Disappointing reads
The interviews coming out from the press event so far have been quite disappointing reads. Yeah, I see they met Ghostcrawler, but not in the sense that they really *met* him as a person. They just kindly wrote down the few things he had decided to share, which really wasn’t much new under the sun. I don’t feel as if I’ve really seen or even caught a glimpse of what’s going on either in his head or in the rest of the Blizzard headquarters. He’s about as slippery as liquid soap, impossible to get a grip of.

We’re given the impression that Blizzard wanted to open up the doors, but did they really show anything interesting at all? Even the Crown princess of Sweden – who probably is one of the most media trained persons on this planet – is way more revealing, personal and in-depth when she gives interviews. Maybe this is thanks to her huge routine in media handling; she knows that if you share a bit of yourself you’re more likely to get better press than if you just shy away from it.

I hear someone’s objecting over there at the bar side:

“Come on Larísa, admit it – you’re just being jealous of not being invited! Would you have done a better job yourself, given the opportunity to interview Ghostcrawler et al?”

Frankly I don’t know. Maybe I would, maybe I wouldn’t. I want to believe that my age, routine and professionalism would have made me better fit to find new angles and not fall flat on the floor, overwhelmed at the honor of just being invited to the captains bridge. Given the opportunity, I'd like to try to crawl beneath the skin of GC, revealing that he's just as much a human as a professional ghost and spokesman of Blizzard.

On the other hand – not even the brightest reporter can easily make a good interview if you only have 15 minutes at your hands in a tight schedule, where other interviewers standing in a line, waiting for their turn.

“But Larísa, you have to stop your whining now! At least Blizzard is finally doing something to reach out and communicate with the fans. You have to give them cred for that! Recently you complained that they didn’t care about their fansites like Warhammer, who invited some major bloggers to a guided tour. Now they’re doing exactly this and you’re STILL negative!”

Oh. Yeah. That. I hear you and you’re right I suppose. One step at a time. And this IS a good start, no questioning about that. It’s just that I would like to see something more. Something different. Something unexpected. I dream of finally reading that well written article that would give a truthful, insightful picture, exposing how it really is to work in Irvine, showing what’s in the mind of one of the masters of the most successful video game in the world.

Maybe we’ll see this article written one day in a far distant future, when WoW is an historical artifact and there’s no need to keep an NDA on anything, since everyone has moved forward to something else. On the other hand, will anyone want to read it by then?

Ghostcrawler and the forums
Well, enough of grumbling now from my side. In the end there were at least a couple of things in those interviews that caught my attention and I thought I’d point you to it.

Wowhead talked quite a bit with Ghostcrawler about his frequent posting in the forums, and we learned that this was on his own initiative, something he asked for permission to do, and that he enjoys doing it in his free time. Currently he thinks it’s a bit of a drag because it’s a bit too quiet in the forums. People need more information to have something to discuss. He says that he really doesn’t want to be a “PR bot”, but want to have real discussions with the players. And he also says that the developers care a lot about what’s said in the community. They read ALL forums, not just the official Blizzard ones.

“We have a pretty good idea of how the community feels, and often we agree with them, even if we can't always go and instigate change that second—if people think there's a big problem, chances are we do too”

The failure of ToC
Eurogamer had a chat with Ghostcrawler too, this time accompanied by Alex Afrasiabi.

I don’t think I’ve ever before heard them ever before admit so openly that ToC was a failure, causing a burnout among many players:

Alex Afrasiabi:

“We want a raid to be a raid. We don't want you to feel obligated - and when I mention certain things that we viewed as failures, Coliseum's one of those zones that we have mixed feelings about. The design itself was really cool, we liked a quick raid which was really the intent of it.

But something we learned, it was a harsh lesson, was: four lockouts. That had some pretty negative repercussions, because to maximise, if you were a player that was min-maxing the zone or min-maxing your character, which a lot of raiders do, you had to run that zone four times. The whole purpose of it being a quick, short, cool, fun raid was obliterated.”

And GC chimes in:

“Our design for Lich King was to give players a lot more flexibility, both in terms of the classes that they brought and whether they preferred to do 10 versus 25. The problem was the way we set up the rules, we were actually encouraging people to run both 10 and 25 every week, which just got to be a little draining.”

“Well, they're gamers, so they're trying to game the system. They're kind of trained to do that. So it's up to us to put in a system that rewards the kind of behavior that we want players to do and that a lot of players would prefer to do.”

The view on new players
I also was a little bit surprised to read just how noobish the developers seem to think that the new players are, one of the reasons why they skipped the Path of the Titan concept, since it was considered too complicated.

I’m quoting GC again:

“We have players who've been with us for six plus years, because they started in the beta, who want something new, they want to see different things.

And then we have new players, particularly younger players... A lot of the original WOW players came from other MMOs, and now we're getting new players who've never played an MMO before. They may have played console games, and to them even mastering mouse movement is really difficult.

And then to look at all this, I mean it's just a gigantic game, so it can be very intimidating.“

I don’t know if I should laugh or cry at this. OK, I’m not a youngster, but basically GC is talking about me. I’m one of those players without any previous MMO experience, I haven’t even played any console games (apart from that TV game where you played “tennis”, trying to hit a ball that bounced back and forward on a black-and-white screen back in the 70’s. If that counts.) I don’t deny that I had to do a ton of learning on my own, making an effort of my own, as well as using the wealth of knowledge there is on the community run sites (since Blizzard’s own is so terrible.)

But you know what? I didn’t mind! The learning process was actually a part of what made the game fun to me in the first place! Gaming to me is about overcoming obstacles and if you smooth everything out so much that you don’t even notice the bump in the road, it starts to become a bit pointless.

I honestly think that they’re obsessing a little too much over the accessibility issues, anxious to scare away any potential customer.

With all the tutorials and the built in quest-helper they’ve already added to the game, there’s definitely no need at all to worry about it. Show WoW to your granny or your 10-year without any gaming experience. They’ll figure it out.

I would rather worry over the opposite. If WoW becomes so easy that it feels like a game intended for very young and clueless children, I think they’ve chosen the wrong path.

More interviews

What else have we seen so far? World of Raids had a chat with Tom Chilton, but it didn’t contain anything that stuck with me.

However Gameplanet released two pretty long and detailed articles, which actually are a pretty good read, probably the best ones so far.

Ghostcrawler gives a bit more information about how reforging is going to work, and also talks about the guild reputation system. If you’ve got a guild master with the habit of guild kicking players temporarily “for fun”, you don’t need to worry too much about it. It turns out you won’t lose your guild reputation points until you join another guild.

It was also new to me to hear that the designers initially didn't expect WoW to last more than two or theree years. The designers of today think that there might be a ninth or tenth expansion eventually and are adjusting the game with that in mind, trying to keep it as clean as simple as possible, avoiding to add complexity to the game with every expansion.

The second interview at Gameplanet features Cory Stockton. What caught my attention in this one was especially the last part, where he outlines the upcoming launch event, which he says will be huge and spectacular and include an invasion of elementals.

“If you take the Scourge invasion, imagine that, and then multiply it by ten – possibly in major cities! – and the way we want it to work is very similar to the way the plague worked, where we’d start it up a few weeks early, and then you’ll see a build up… build up… build up, and then in those last two or three days before we flip the switch, Azeroth will be in chaos, and any player who didn’t know the cataclysm was coming will definitely know something’s going on!”

Wow, that sounds just so exciting to me! I just hope we won’t have to wait until October to see it.

It remains to see what the next few days will bring. I have no idea how many fan and gaming sites that actually attended the press event. Maybe there are more and better interviews incoming. I keep my fingers crossed.