Project Lore

Seriously, My Girlfriend Thinks My Hobby Is A Chore! I tried to get my girlfriend to join me in Azeroth with the best of intentions.  Really, I did.  We spend tons of time together, from cooking to working on our domicile to watching numerous TV series and movies.  Sure, we have our differences - Battlestar Galactica vs The Hills - but we find common ground in every facet of our life - STRIKEOUT Plants vs Zombies STRIKEOUT Dishes vs Laundry - we both hate them.  With that in mind I thought introducing her to World of Warcraft would be worth a shot.  After all, I am forced, arm-twisting and all, into playing hours of WoW a week.  Why not spend some of that time, and get some extra material, with my girlfriend? She thought the idea was cute and obliged with a long decision making session (a female-played female drawf!).  After that tiring ordeal we waited a bit before tackling the early levels.  We never got through them.  It wasn't the controls, the universe, the inability to level outside of combat or the massacring of defenseless animals that got to my partner in crime.  She didn't dislike WoW for any of the staple reasons.  Nope, it wasn't just WoW.  It seems that she'd hate nearly any MMORPG because it was the entire idea of quests, the openness of the world and always having something to do that got to Ms. iTZKooPA.  To her, all of the content that we crave was seen as a "chore"! From a game design standpoint, I'd place the blame on WoW's lack of an engaging story.  Looking back the designers should have included an early storyline, preferably started in the opening cinematic, that would capture players right off the bat.  Extremely casual players like Lesley need to be enthralled with fun or entertaining mechanics (Tetris, Super Mario Galaxy) or a well-crafted story in the first 20 minutes or they are lost.  As most of you will agree, there is little in the way of memorable storylines or exciting gameplay in those very early levels.  Thus, the Lilyterrain experiment was an utter failure (I wish I was tauren so I could say udder and get away with it), but I am glad we attempted it. It looks like I will remain the sole player of WoW in the house, but it isn't then end of the world.  We do plenty of other activities together to keep us both happy.  Having your own little slice of life to yourself isn't a bad thing either.  I wonder what the success rate on converting your partner to an MMOG is.  How many of you have tried and failied?  How many of you have pulled off this life achievement?  How many dare not try for fear of ruining your "me" time?

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Also didn't expect a nose ring.

When I introduced my girlfriend to the classes of WoW, I had two guesses in the back of my mind, a druid or a hunter.  This may seem stereotypical of me (sorry to the bra burners out there, but it seems that many women like playing a nurturing role even in their high fantasy), but my assumption was based on my girlfriend. Although, the statistics did play a part.  I have known a few locks played by women, but the whole aligning with dark magic and demons just doesn't fit her. Despite the high probability of Lesley selecting a hunter, I honestly thought she would go with a druid.  This guess was based more on the knowing her part and less on the numbers and graphs I love so much.  She is a rather earthy person, doing her best to be one of Al Gore's minions, giving to Goodwill, hiking around the planet and things of that nature.  The keyword there is nature, she loves it.  Perhaps it was the "primal connection to the beasts of Azeroth" that drew her to the fold of ranged DPSers.  Now that I have dwelt on this further, I should have had a Shaman in the running. Race selection was a little less straight forward.  At first she was leaning towards rolling a Tauren rather than the short and stocky Dwarves.  Apparently the switch was influenced by me a bit.  My description of the Alliance versus the Horde possibly labeled one side as the "bad" guys and the other as "good" guys, although that was not my intent by any means.  In lieu of describing the factions at all, I should have just pointed her to Blizzard's description on Horde versus Alliance and the races.  That would have rendered any subconscious feelings I have about the "misunderstood" Horde moot. A little personal history, I wanted to roll Horde from the start, but all of my friends went Alliance...After being forced into my faction choice, I was then forced into my racial selection by my ex-girlfriend.  I had basically no choice when I entered WoW. T_T.  Lesley's perception of the Horde may have been swayed a bit, but I had little to do with her selection of a stocky female as her avatar! I am a bit baffled as to why she settled on a Dwarf, or even the Tauren for that matter.  She has had little experience with high fantasy (or, and possibly more accurately, never really cared for it) as evidenced by not knowing what an Orc (or Ork) was.  In conjunction with that, aside from viewing SolidSamm in action, Lesley knows nothing about Warcraft either. Despite my best efforts, there is a slim chance that I ruled out her playing a human.  When we first started discussing the whole prospect weeks ago, I mentioned how unimaginative selecting a Human as a race was to me.  Who knows if she took it to heart, or even remembered it though.  Night Elves, Gnomes and Dwarves may have been all that was open to her.  Draenei you say?  Space goats may have gotten ruled out for being such an oddity until Ms. iTZKooPA becomes more familiar with the universe and its lore.  Perhaps as an alt if we get that far. For reasons unknown to me, it ended up being a stout, female Dwarf hunter.  I highly doubt she looked over and analyzed the racial traits and figured that a Dwarven Hunter would get a small bonus.  I would love to be surprised by such a fact though! The whole process took more than an hour to complete, and at that point we packed it in and called it a night.  Lilyterran, the fierce dwarven hunter with generations of training, has yet to encounter a single quest, or even load the opening cinematic.  Now to walk the fine line of helping while not hand-holding...A battle for another day. Oh, and I forgot to sign her up via Recruit-a-Friend.  What an idiot I am!  Think Blizzard will let me beg my way into it?  And thanks for the tips, keep em coming!

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Last week my planned piece was interrupted by news of the awesome Heirloom Items.  The article was almost further delayed by International Talk Like A Pirate Day, but Juggynaut handled that topic.  So without further delay is my first Designing A Dungeon post. The goal of these posts is to try to come up with creative dungeon ideas, from a gameplay stand point.  Feel free to link in any boss fight designs, lore, art aspects or things of that nature, I will simply be speaking from a overview gameplay standpoint.  That also means that these dungeon ideas won't be concerned with petty details like “guild ruining”, just creative semi-original designs.  If you have encountered a dungeon like the one I am talking about in another game (or perhaps the Wrath of the Lich King beta), by all means mention it!

PvP Racing Raid

I thought of this dungeon shortly after Blackwing Lair was released and yet it still has not been implemented anywhere I know of.  Players who dislike blending of PvE and PvP probably won't be a big fan of this design but I think it sounds like a lot of fun. The idea is to have a short, linear, indoor, raid instance.  For the sake of the instance's longevity it should be created to be the hardest instance in the game for sometime.  Therefore, it would have to be a launch instance or part of a large content patch. After downing the “end boss” players will be able to open a gate into a giant PvP Arena - think the Coliseum - to fight an outdoor raid boss.  Here's the catch, the outdoor boss is outside the instance and actually an outdoor boss.  This encounter would naturally have a loot table that is a bit better than the instance and the boss should have a very large model. The design basically forces raids to race to finish the instance as fast as possible so they can get to the outdoor boss.  The encounter with the outdoor boss would be designed to take a fair amount of time to complete.  This would promote the epic struggle of two or more raids going after the same boss, while having to deal with each other.  That kind of battle is the ultimate goal of the design. The racing would definitely be an aspect that only very hardcore guilds would concern themselves with but I believe the hardcore deserve a little more “exclusive” content.

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