Could someone make the dummies less dumb, please?

So, I’m back at the dummies in IF, doing my homework, struggling to become the swift, quick footed quicksilverish player I’ve always dreamed about to be.

In my imagination I can see myself running around like one of those buzzing rogues you see in the BG:s, just as quick, annoying and painful to meet as an enraged wasp.

I would be constantly on my move, at the same time mysteriously enough being able to toss off my 3-sec casting time nukes without stopping up at any point. (Don’t ask me how it’s done, but others do it obviously, so why not me?).

To be honest I’ve got quite a long way to go before I reach my goal. It’s so distant that I sometimes wonder if I’m not just lying to myself with my mantra “you can learn anything if you just determined enough”.

Tobold’s reflections
The other day Tobold had a post where he made a reflection about the combat system in WoW, and I found myself nodding, recognizing my own issues. Tobold calls it rather twitchy and says that the outcome of a fight often depends more on speed and reaction time than on tactical decision making. This suits teenage boys with a ton of experience from fps games better than all those middle aged people, who actually constitute quite a large proportion of the player base.

This post got quite a few comments, of course. Many readers want to declare the superiority of mouse turning compared to keyboard turning. And they also think the game would be less fun for many players without this feature. It would be too slow, too easy. But the best comment is actually from Tobold himself, where he highlights how the new player is introduced to the game.

“So why is there keyboard-turning in the game in the first place, if that is so "crippling"?

What use is first offering different control modes to your players, and then telling them: Ha, ha! Gotcha! Only one of these control modes is actually useable! If you chose the other one, you just gimped yourself and you'll have to start over!”

I’m totally with you on this one Tobold! I feel cheated. I had no previous experience of gaming when I entered Azeroth, so how was I supposed to know that one way of steering my toon was far inferior to the other one? Now I’m facing the painful and time consuming process of relearning. It feels like such a waste and I can’t help wishing I had gotten it right from the start.

The dumb dummies
But no matter of what relics of the past such as Tobold and myself think about it, the game is designed a certain way, and it isn’t likely that it will change shortly. Keyboard turning is OK if you think conquering the AH market is the most fun thing WoW has to offer, but if you’re a raiding junkie like me, there is no alternative but to adapt and learn how to move.

However, what I would like to see is a better tool for this than the dummies that are currently offered. Since I spend quite some time running back and forward in front of them, I naturally start to reflect upon their appearances. And I’ve come to the conclusion that they don’t only look stupid. They ARE stupid.

The dummies may be great for running live tests to check if Recount confirms the optimal gear set and spellrotations suggested by RAWR. But it’s not great for improving your hand-eye coordination, swiftness, reaction time and moving-while-casting ability. Not at all.

I try to picture that I’m not facing a defenceless, immobile statue, but something else that forces me to move. I pretend that this is the first boss in the Thorim gauntlet, randomly throwing fire at me, and that I have to move from side to side constantly, while still constantly nuking, counterspelling and switching targets. I imagine that I’m at Hodir, I’m just about to get an iceblock in my head and I must find the buffed guy or at least a decent beam to stand in – asap. I try my best to put myself into the right, stressful, adrenaline-pumping raiding mood. But it’s quite hard to be honest. When you don’t get any feedback on how you’re doing, like if you’re getting hit by the fires or not, how can you tell that you’re getting better at what you’re doing?

What I wish for
What I would like to see is dummies that give you an opportunity to practice and improve on your playing skills in somewhat challenging situations, without risking death penalty and repair bills as you get if you’re doing it on real mobs. What I want is the combat situation as such, without any loot or benefit from it, and therefore also without any punishment or cost for failure.

They have taken steps in this direction at the jousting area, where you first learn to joust at dummies that will try to hit you, but which won’t kill you. I’d like to see a development of this, but much more advanced (and not involving riding a vehicle).

Imagine there was a dummie that sent out a randomly rotating beam, resembling to the Mimron one. If you got hit you would see it, either by a hit-counter, stacking up a “buff”, or possibly by losing health, as you do in a duel. You could go down to 0 health, but never die. It’s a dummie after all, so no penalty. Another dummie could have some randomly appearing ability you’re supposed to interrupt or dispell. Maybe you could add a few “adds” around this dummy, allowing you to learn to apply a focus target and quickly switch targets.

I remember when the dummies were launched. They were certainly a huge improvement compared taking the long journey to Dr Boom, where you also had some annoying adds walking around which you had to make sure wouldn’t mess up your session. But now it’s time to take this idea a step further. It’s time to give people like me and Tobold a chance to improve ourselves without risking corpse runs or the ridicule of other players.

Dear Blizzard Santa Clause, please add this to Larísa’s wish list for Cataclysm!

Breaking the chains of habit

Captain the First at NoobDing made an interesting observation in one of the major cities. He watched the trail of people rushing back and forward between AH and the closest mailbox. Or rather: AH and the SECOND closest mailbox. No one seemed to notice that a new mailbox had been added to Orgrimmar in the last patch, cutting the distance to run into half, if you just noticed it. But they apparently didn't. They kept walking the beaten path, as they always had.

And Captain the First asks the disturbing question, which is about more than just the mailbox example:

Has all this practice and experience with wow in fact made us blind to unique playstyles and new experiences that we could have if we just did things 'differently'?

Speaking for myself I think that I spend a little bit too much sleepwalking in the game. During the raid offnights there's nothing that stops me from trying out new experiences, such as respeccing frost, working my ass off to solo some big nasty mob, even though there isn't an achievement for it. No one prevents me from trying to find someone who is drunk or stupid enough to want to be my partner in an arena game and check out what it's all about.

Instead I join the trail to the daily heroic dungeon quest giver like everyone else, doing a couple of dailies or making my daily transmute while looking for a group for it. I behave as predictable as if I someone had programmed a "Larisa offnight macro" and then just hits it with a keystroke to get it going.

The pet discovery
How many equivalences of the undiscovered postboxes do I walk by everyday without noticing? Quite a few I bet.

Actually I found one of those "how did I miss that things" the other day, in the pet shop in Dalaran. A guildie of mine said that a new non-combat pet had been added in the last patch. And there was no self torturing grinding of tournament quests involved in getting it. Just 40 bucks and the pet would be mine. Since I'm a sucker for useless vanity pets I couldn't resist it, so I dropped by to pick up my own little creature. And would you believe: the pet shop didn't just sell those new pets - Breanni also kept an assortment of adorable, completely useless but oh-how-cute accessories for pets! A look at Wowhead made me realize that those things had been around in the game for ages, I just hadn't noticed.

I used the Happy Pet Snack and watched how my little Blizzard bear suddenly started to express his love for me. Touched by this I decided to play a bit, casting the Fetch Ball for him to catch. Then I gave him a bath, thanks to the Pet Grooming Kit and suddenly he started to sparkle like a precious quest item. And when I put on the Red Ribbon Pet Leash my pet was suddenly knit in a beautiful, elastic red rope, so he couldn't run away from me. I was delighted! This was one of those silly, childish, pink pigtailed fluffy things I love most about WoW, apart from raiding. But at the same time I hit myself in the head wondering how come that I haven't even bothered to visit all the shop keepers in Dalaran until this day. Compared to Stormwind, the city is smallish. It shouldn't take long to explore it. What had kept me from doing it?

Breaking habits
But after all, I guess it's no wonder. Very much of our gaming is built on habits and constant repetition until we're playing more with the help of our muscle memories than out of well considered decisions .

This isn't necessarily a bad thing. Many situations in PvP and challenging raid encounters actually demand that you act so quickly that it's rather out of instinct than a result of a deeper analysis.

However, the habits we develop when we first enter the game aren't always the best one from a result oriented perspectives. This has become painfully clear to me recently, when I after doing some analyses on how I could improve my damage output in raids, have come to the conclusion that I need to learn move quicker, more efficiently and still keeping up casting whatever instant I can come up with. The key to this is to completely change my keybindings and the way I use the mouse and the keyboard for moves and spells.

I know there's a not-quite-settled debate about the benefits of using a mouse or using keys for turning and moving and I won't go into that one. But I think that few would argue against the benefits of strafing. Moving sideways without turning around isn't only quicker, it's also better for casting, since you don't risk to end up facing the wrong way.

How to do it
Belghast wrote a post about how to do it properly, using the qwe-keys and some tricks with the mouse. Until now I haven't come around to use it in my own gameplay, but finally I've come to the conclusion that I have to. Considering the high amount of movement in many of the WotLK fights (think Yogg-Saron or Hodir), you won't get many seconds to stand on the same spot, just calmly throwing your 3 sec spells. The world has changed. And it's time that I change with it.

Now, if you start messing around with things like this, you mess around with all of your keybindings. The moving commands aren't isolated from the rest. If my right hand is occupied with the mouse and my left hand is supposed to do things that make Larisa strafe, I have to put they keybindings in such a way that the left hand can reach the spells ever so easily, just by reaching out a finger.

This is easier said than done. My willpower and thought says one thing, but my hands and fingers seem to have a will of their own, or are rather slaves under a much stronger will than mine: the habit.

My combat companion team
I can't see this happening over night. It will take long time and many, many hours of practicing and trial and error in front of the dummies in Ironforge. This will be a repetitive, frustrating and lonely task. But it's a price I'm prepared to play for breaking the chains of my bad habits.

And after all I've got some 65 adorable pets to keep me company. I just spoil them some of the newly discovered treats and give them a brush up, and they'll sparkle and shine for me, loving me to death, no matter how I fail at the strafing, brightening up the shady, gloomy corners of the military quarters in IF.

We've left the beaten path, me and my combat companion team. And I tell you - we sparkle!

Au Clair de Elune

Human beings are creatures of light. Viewed from physics, our human substance is just light at a particular density. It's not simply that we need light to see, it's that we need light to exist at all. Our most basic hunger is for light. It starts with the process of photosynthesis in a plant; light turned into matter. It ends with the biochemical process that turns a deer into a human femur, a trout into a eleemosynary neural synapse. Without light life as we comprehend does not exist.

Biologists say that human beings are on top of the food chain or that man is an alpha predator. All that's really saying is that he is farthest away from the sun as a food supply; he eats the being who eats the being who eats the being that eats light. Of course, when we eat lettuce or some other vegetable we are getting much nearer the source of light conversion. The truth is that man is an omnivore, a polite word for scavenger; he'll take whatever source of power he can find to live. In this sense there is a basic kinship between all living things; we are all creatures of the sun, creatures of the light. From dust we have arisen and to dust we shall return; what animates that dust, what makes it living, is light.

Light of the Mind

It is not surprising then that light is an important image, a vital symbol. When we achieve a state of mental clarity we say, " I see" or "the light is beginning to dawn". The moon in Western culture has always been a symbol associated with the feminine. Jung, borrowing from alchemy, used the concepts of Sol and Luna as symbols for the ego and the unconscious; what we are unconscious of we do not see, it's the place where the light is dim. Historians speak of the Age of Enlightenment, economists talk of "enlightened self-interest;" the state of Buddhist transcendence is called "enlightenment". Enlightenment, literally to become light; to return to the source of all living things.

A biologist would take it as a matter deserving of only the most basic comment that the senses of animals work in fundamentally different ways. The bat and the dolphin use sonar to echo-locate, the dog has a sense of smell up to a million times more sensitive than a human's, the soaring eagle's acuity of sight is legendary, most invertebrates are dependent on a sense of touch. But if anything that evolution tell us is true, then it must be that animals are not merely products of their environment they are more precisely the product of the response of their minds to their environment. As a raw physical matter, no one claims that the brain of the dog is the same as the brain of a frog or the brain of a snake is the same as the brain of a human. Even if we assume that there is an objective fixed reality no one claims that the way the cat perceives that reality is identical to the way a bird perceives it or the way an alligator perceives it. If there is any truth whatsoever to the claim that there is a mind/brain connection then it must be true that fundamentally different senses produce fundamentally different brains which then produce fundamentally different minds.

This reality is beautifully expressed in Druid shape shifting. The different talents, powers, and skill rotations between cat, bear, tree, and human all reflect the reality that when a Druid changes form it changes its mind. Cats prowl, bears maul, there is healing power in the leaves of a tree. The Druid doesn't just master minds, it masters fundamentally different minds; yet it is always remains a Druid. Dying shape shifted reverts the Druid to human form.

But what does a creature do when it wants to express a difference in mind but has no ability to change form? The human answer has be to concoct a wild mixture of totems, heraldry charges, signs, and symbols. We need to communicate in a visual way that our minds see in a different light. Given that we eat light, are light, light glows from within as well as without. If one thinks of the mind as a prism then the range of symbols humans produce becomes a beautiful cascading rainbow of lions, eagles, dolphins, trees, and flowers.

A Gentle Light

I wrote here about how I enjoyed watching the sun set over the ocean in the world of Azeorth. It's not coincidence because I love to watch the sun rise and the sun set outside of Azeroth too. One realization that has come with age is that I'm as much a sun worshiper as the world's worst hedonist. The difference is that I like my sun gentle, fading. I don't do noon. The height of summer is not the time to be basking on the beach covered in oil, drinking margaritas; it's time to be huddled indoors, the air conditioner blasting. The perfect illustration of this truth is the date of my Warcraft anniversary: July 3rd. Even as a child the seasons I loved best were Spring and Autumn. Sun kissed I'm all for, sun burnt no thanks.

Even though I wasn't conscious of it at the time I think this was one of the things the attracted me to playing a Druid, to becoming a creature of the moon. The moon is the ultimate in faded light. I never considered myself acquainted with the night before but since I have started playing Warcraft I have found myself more and more attached to the world of shadows, the world of the indistinct. I joke to myself, does this make me a lunatic now.

The fading light I have come to see is not only beautiful but like all beauties it represents a challenge. Noon is easy. The lack of light makes the way seems dull so the senses must be sharp. This understood the night elf racial passives reveal themselves as fitting: quickness, elusiveness, melding into shadows. Low informational density increases risk; rather than the snap judgments of the desert noon decision making in the moonlight is based upon hints, guesses, hints followed by guesses.

Glowing eyes, prowling cat. Footfall of padding bear. Rustling trees in the wind. Are you nervous my friend. Listen: cry of the crow. Are you tense. Why you jumped. It's only the blur of the cheetah; there is no cause for alarm. See, horns from the stag; feathers from the owl; kin to all living things. Here in the moonlit forest glade; that was me, Elnia. Each time, Elnia. One mind and many minds. Elnia. Come friend, walk with me. Walk by the light of Elune.

Tobold being funny

In a post today Tobold claims that he doesn’t only run the blog under his own name – he’s got another one as well: Greedy Goblin.

So what should we make out of this? One way or another Tobold is having fun with the community. If he would be telling the truth, he would have been mocking us for quite a while. That would include me – after all, I’ve always felt a bit like a mother of Gevlon. He was born as a blogger in front of the cosy fire of PPI, I was the one who once upon a time encouraged the long time commenter Ghosboci to create a blog of his own, giving him a few pieces of advice when he started. People have questioned my love for this greedy little creature, I’ve stuck to it and I still do. He’s got a special seat reserved in this bar, like it or not.

The other possibility is of course that the only lie is this post, that it’s just an entertaining and thought-provoking post by Tobold, where he’s making fun of Gevlon, while at the same time making an important point about the nature of blogging. Currently I'm leaning towards this theory, that Tobold's revelations is a fake, a set-up. Among other things I think it would be too much of a hassle for Tobold to put in grammar and spelling errors to the posts that he writes as "Gevlon" when they don't appear when Tobold is writing. And the final words of Tobold's post are the essential ones:

Just shows you can't believe everything you read on the internet.

If the Tobold= Gevlon theory had been true, it would have been an "And Atlas Shrugged” experience, a Cataclysm to the blogosphere bigger than the Ferraro debacle. But I think we can settle the issue now. There's no confirming post on Gevlon's blog, as a matter of fact he has already commented on it:

“PS4: Tobold is being very funny today. My comment on the topic is this, and no more, all comments on my blog about Tobold's joke/experiment will be deleted”

The nature of blogs

With this prank Tobold highlights what I pointed out a week ago: bloggers aren’t journalists in the normal sense. They share opinions, they entertain, they give food for thought – either the views are authentic or faked, as Tobold now claims that Gevlon’s opinions are. All of this has a value – it creates a discussion and thought exchange that makes the world into a more interesting place to live in. It increases the intelligence with people. We should enjoy and appreciate the blogs for what they are but beware of seeing them as truth holders.

Think for yourself

Tobold being or not being Gevlon wasn't the only available option by the way. A third possibility struck me: Tobold and Gevlon could be different bloggers, as we always thought they were, but they could have agreed to put up this little charade together, just to make a point about the sheepish character of some people in the WoW community. The message is: never ever stop trusting your own intelligence and judgement, don't just accept whatever story is served to you.

Even if Tobold and Gevlon always have taken opposite approaches in most issues (although not all), one thing they have in common is that they’re challenging the audience to use their brains in a way that few other bloggers manage to do.

And with this post, Tobold, you’ve certainly succeeded in that mission and given us some giggles at the same time.

By the way, Larísa is still Larísa, same innkeeper as always. If you don't believe I exist, just drop by and say hello to me at the Stormrage server! But am I really the one I claim to be, that 40+ Swedish woman? Or maybe I'm just some 16-year old guy who enjoys to dress up in his mothers skirts? You'll never quite know. The truth is out there.

Edit: The hoax wasn't out for many hours before Tobold admitted it's true character. What a shame that you told it so quickly! It would have been interesting to see how far out in the Blogopshere the rumor about Tobold=Gevlon could have spread. From my professional life I know too well that once a false picture is "set" in the mind of the audience it's very, very hard to change it with just reason and information.

The potential of the new PUG wormholes

Will the upcoming cross-server PUGs turn into the paradise of ninjas and morons in general? It's quite likely if you ask Ixobelle, who thinks this is a "horrible idea". Besides he suggests that it doesn't solve any problems. If there's a surplus today of dps and a lack of tanks and healers, this won't change. The disproportions of the roles in LFG will still be the same, even though it's spread on several realms.

And of course it's easy to agree with those points. If you're playing on the same realm, you still can act as a jackass, but you have a reputation to care about. The word will no doubt spread if you have behaved like a jerk. You'll end up on ignore lists and someone may contact your guild master. There are ways to make life unpleasant to people who deserve it. But with a cross-server PUG this will definitely change. The chances that you're ever meet again are infinitely small and protected by the anonymity, this may bring out the worst sides in some players.

Ixobelle is worried about the change and could only think of one good thing about it: that there's a bigger pool of players to draw from when you're looking for a group.

The wormhole revolution
Now, I wouldn't say that I disagree with Ixobelle. After all he's one of my absolute favorite bloggers. But I think there are some potential benefits from this change that deserve to be mentioned.

As I'm writing this, there isn't any detailed information available about how the multi-realm LFG will work in practice. So all my suggestions are very hypothetical. The outcome depends on how they chose to implement it. There's a huge difference if the LFG pool only is drawn from a few realms in your battlegroup, as they do it in the battlegrounds, or if you can pick people freely from any realm within EU or US, as long as they have the same language.

But let's say that they actually WILL give us the opportunity to not only get players from any realm on our side of the ocean, but also to pick actively from the people listed in the LFG channel, instead of getting them automatically added to the group. If that is the case, this means that Blizzard finally has decided to break up the server barriers by building those worm holes. And this, my friends, would be a revolution.

There are many players out there who have friends on different servers - game friends as well as real life friends. So far the only way they've been able to play with them without making server transfers, has been to create alts. A solution like this would mean that friends could team up with their mains., forming the group through LFG.

The possibilities are infinite. Who knows, one day I might join a PUG of EU-bloggers from different realms, checking out one of the new 5-man instances together. How awesome wouldn't that be?

But not only friends would benefit from this. It would also make cross-server guild recruitment infinitely much easier. Just run a couple of instances with the applicant and you'll soon enough see if there is any mutual liking. The risk of wasting money on failed transfers will decrease. You can always check out several games and do some research before you decide, finding a realm that fits with your play style.

Who wants loot anyway?
What about the risk of losing loot to ninjas then? Would Larísa even dare to join such a PUG?
Well, I'll ask a return question: how many of you are running instances for gear anymore? Who wants the loot anyway? I don't. If I pug an instance on my main character, it will mostly be the daily heroic, and the only thing I want from them, apart from entertainment, are the emblems of triumph, which no ninja in the world can steal from me. And this is not just the case with my mage, who is well geared and deep into endgame. It's exactly the same thing if I'm running a PUG with my lvl 62 druid alt. The major reason to do it is to get XP, maybe to get a quest done, or just to get experience of group healing, seeing the instances I've run before from a completely new perspectives. I certainly don't run them for drops. I know that the gear will be replaced many times anyway before it's time for endgame at some point in the future. And then, I can always gear up by emblems and heirloom items.

With the amount of gear currently available in the game, there isn't as much potential loot drama around 5-man instances gear as there used to be. Most of the gear I see drop in pugs goes to shards, if there's a disenchanter around, or if not: to a vendor. I don't think this will be any different just because the players come from different realms.

What possibly could be a source of conflict is the issue of leadership though. Without giving us any details, they've hinted that the PUG leaders somehow will get a reward for their job. And as soon as there are rewards I think there will be many more people who are more than willing to lead. The question is if the other players are willing to be led, missing the reward. It's hard to say until we know more about what they have in mind for this.

Social drawback
But don't I see any drawbacks in this, like Ixobelle do, apart from the lack of social pressure that can bring out the worst in people?

Well, If there's any disadvantage, I would say that it's the social one. Running a lot of pugs is a great way to get to know more people on the realm, building up a list of friends and acquaintances. It's quite unlikely that you'll develop friendship bonds with people from other realms. This will be more like "one night stands" with strangers who you meet once and never will see again. How are you supposed to get to know your own server if you're playing with random people at others?

It will also be harder to predict the outcome of a PUG just by looking at the guild tags. To be honest I always pull a sigh of relief if I see that most of the players in the group are from one of the 15 most progressed raiding guilds on the realm. I know it isn't any guarantee. Just because you have a tip top main it doesn't necessarily mean your alt is as viable, gear- or skillwise. But still - the guild tag normally works like a sort of certificate. This player has been approved by a guild which is probably somewhat picky. There's a big chance that he's got a clue about what he (or she) is doing. With a crossrealm PUG you can't benefit from any general knowledge about the guilds on your realm. But it isn't any worse than that you can look up the player in armory and take a peak to make sure he's good enough for the task.

Finally: I find it hard to believe that Blizzard completely would replace the ordinary LFG channel with this new feature. It's more likely that it will be a complement, somewhere you can look if you're really desperate for a last player to your group.

And now we can only eagerly wait for more information, probably sooner than later, since they plan to implement it in the same patch as Icecrown. Maybe it will turn out to be a disappointment, as clumsy and random as the BG raid formation process. But it certainly has huge potential. I'm looking forward to see if they'll give us those wormholes after all.

My guild is looking for more

I’m sorry for spamming this blog with guild recruitment ads, but I really need to since we’re quite low on people currently and we don’t get much result from using the ordinary recruitment channels. Everyone needs to help out the way they can, and this is my contribution.

So to put it brief: we’ve got some open positions in my alliance guild Adrenaline at Stormrage/EU (PvE). We’re looking for experienced tanks – DK or warrior and for ranged dps: a balance druid, a mage, a warlock and two elemental shamans. A rogue would also be welcome.

If you know your stuff, are geared to do all of Ulduar (we’ve downed Yogg 25 man and are working on some hardmodes), if you’re comfortable with a raiding schedule of 3 times a week, with minimum 2/3 attendance, and if you enjoy a serious raiding environment where we mostly keep the smalltalk out of the raids not to lose focus, feel free to apply!

This is a link to our website and this is a link to information about how you make an application for us.

That’s all I wanted to say. Back to ordinary inn small talk.

Cataclysm: Triumph of the Social

The big picture take away message from Blizzcon 2009 is simple: solo content is dead. The real cataclysm is not to the the physical geography of Azeroth but to the entire game experience. Solo questing as a major game mechanism is finished and guilds moves to the center of the game play experience. Love them or hate them what Gevlon terms the social have won a decisive victory in the future of Warcraft.

The Guild

The key development in Cataclysm is the new guild system. As Ghostcrawler said in the Game Systems panel, "They want people to be in a guild. The game is more fun when you're in a guild." As a de facto matter, the only question will be what guild you will join, not if you will join a guild at all. While it will still be technically possible to engage the game as a single player the penalties will be so decisively punitive that only die hard masochists will try.

The list of already announced guild bonuses include:

(1) a straight up 7% additional gold and experience for guild members over soloists.
(2) guilds will earn experience separate from player experience which will be convertible to gold
(3) significantly reduced repair costs for guild members over soloist
(4) Crafted guild heirlooms that will fit any gear slot and be soul bound to that guild
(5) The complete elimination of the need for the gathering professions for guilds as they will be able to by such items directly from specialized guild vendors.

One thing that remains unclear is whether the gold the guild will earn will be freely distributable to members or can only be used within the guild for crafting heirloom items and buying from guild vendors. But this is only a question as to whether the huge benefit to being a guild member is in direct cash or indirectly though potions and other crafted items. If that was not enough to kill solo leveling the panel made it clear that once you are in a guild they don't want you to leave. If you purchase stuff for the guild you will not be able to take it with you. No more ninjas. Again, Ghostcrawler, "we don't want people to bounce around from guild to guild." All of this focus on the guild will be enhanced by the new guild user interfaces and a new Looking for Guild tool.

Once this is understood its easy to see why there are only five levels to the expansion. More levels means more quests which means more soloing. Rather, to get players into situations where they group the amount of levels have been reduced from ten to five and the additional resources switched from questing to raids. Cataclysm will launch with four full new raid instances as well as two revamped version of old world instances. To balance this lack of solo action the designers have placed an increasing emphasis on the visual identity. There will reforging, which will allow you to changes the stats on individual items; the new talents trees are designed so that the player picks talents to be enhance the visual actions of the characters rather than game stats; the coup de grace being that the dance studio is finally becoming a reality.

Cataclysm

In one sense, it's difficult to argue with these changes because they certainly put the multi back into multi-player. Yet one of the strengths of Warcraft was the way it appealed to both the people who wanted to participate in a guild and those who did not. This reality has now been swept away in a maelstrom of historic proportions. Players have been asking for a new class and they, in effect, got one: guild manger. The new guild leveling, achievements, and talents; combined with the huge in-rush of previously unguilded players, will complicated guilds so much that the administrative burden will increase significantly. My own suspicion is that we will see the advent of a few super mega guilds on each server as the penalties for casuals not belong to a guild are so strong they will have to go some place.

The other big shake out will no doubt be to gut the auction house. I give props for this evil genius move which I did not see coming. The primary way to get rid of gold sellers is to create a system where there is nothing to buy. If you can't eliminate supply, eliminate demand. In effect, the new guild system turns each guild into its own mini economy with no real need to interact with the rest of the game. The guild vendor system effectively guts the gathering professions as a means of individual wealth accumulation as raw material will be able to bought from the vendor. This leaves only crafted items to be exchanged. But with the guilds being able to create full gear sets of heirloom items there will be no need for crafted gear of any type before end game. The primary buyers of gold were always the casuals who had more money than time and those guilds struggling at the high end who needed to buy consumables. The casuals will now have no need as the guild will become the endless nipple and the high end guilds will be able to now buy directly from the vendor and craft their own. Again, like soloing I don't mean to suggest the AH will die out completely. But the days where someone like Gevlon will be able to amass a fortune are dead and gone.

The whole cataclysm is so profound that it's hard to argue as to whether it's good or bad for the game. Warcraft is simply not the same game anymore. It's not so much an expansion in that sense as a discontinuity. I entitled this the Triumph of the Social but it easily could be called the Genocide of the Soloist. Welcome to the new WoW, most definitely not the same as the old WoW.