Project Lore

In the past month or so, I've had a lot more time to really sink my nails into playing WoW. While getting caught up in the hype of gold, dungeons, scoring a hot new flying mount and figuring out how to best spend my emblems is fun, more and more I'm coming to realize that there are so many amazing, intricate aspects to gameplay that I've come to expect to the point of no longer appreciating. Now let me preface this by saying that Blizzard knows its business. If executives want WoW to remain the top MMORPG out there, they undoubtedly know that they have to stay on top of their game and keep coming out with challenging, fun, cutting-edge material to keep players engaged. And, for the most part, they do. There's always insatiable audiences who constantly demand more content, but all in all, I think Blizzard pretty much tops the industry in keeping subscribers happy. Let me also say that I am in no way informed about the actual process behind creating content. I'm happy with myself when I can just successfully get an addon functioning, so make what you will of that. So perhaps I'm in the minority when I say that sometimes, it's those simple things in the game that can most amaze me. I think a lot of this has hit me during my recent jaunt in exploration. Sometimes the large size of a zone would be daunting while leveling. And yes, even annoying. Running back and forth across an expansive area to complete quests wasn't my favorite aspect of the game. But by the same token, I wouldn't have enjoyed the actual questing if everything was crammed into one tiny, crowded area. I remember when flight paths were a godsend. Each discovery of one of those tiny green exclamation points was reason to celebrate. But eventually, they grew to be expected. And when there were areas without enough flight points, it was disappointing because it would throw off my leveling agenda. Certainly I'm not the only one who has felt this way; the Patch 3.2 implementation of mounts at lower levels makes me think I'm in the majority, not the minority. I'm not ashamed to admit that I suppose I also can be demanding of Blizzard. Why shouldn't I be? As subscribers, most of us probably do feel entitlement in some form or another. I just try not to be an ass about it because in the end, I'm still having fun playing. But its during those instances of annoyance that I try to remind myself of just how awesome this game is - without even going into the expansive lore, which alone is enough to draw me in. When I can't find an NPC because (lightheaded isn't working and) their location isn't clear enough on a quest description, I instead find joy in the hunt. When I was leveling and couldn't squeeze in all the quests I wanted because they were so spread out, I instead popped into an inn and decided to make up the difference on rested XP another day. And (before the days of being able to trade BoP items with raid members) when I had to put in a GM ticket to swap a piece of loot, I focused on the fact that Blizzard cares enough about keeping players happy that they will do something trivial like allow me get a gear upgrade. Now I'm even more amazed by some of this after reading WoW.com's report the other day that Blizzard tracks 180,000 bugs at any one time. That's a hell of a lot of content to be weeding through and still find time to make one individual's gameplay experience a priority. So perk up and show some appreciation. We'll always find things to complain about, but there's so much more to be excited about. If you need further proof, just take a look at Project Lore's blog page on any given day and learn about what Blizz plans next.

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Blue Stew is a new semi-daily column bringing you a delicious concoction of developer news, thoughts, and opinions straight from the boiling pot that is the official World of Warcraft forums. The highlights of each day include additional commentary by Project Lore staff. It's once again been a few days since the last update, but don't fret! After having some Chili from Wendy's for lunch, I was inspired to make this Stew extra chunky! Goodbye World of Warcraft You thought you had a bone to pick with Blizzard? Well, I bet 10 gold Pureheart's got you beat! Besides wanting to turn Azeroth into a communist state, he also manages to represent just about everything wrong with the worst of the game's players. Mindless whining? Check. Anti-social attitude while playing a social game? Check. Unfounded sense of entitlement? Check. Need to make his inane opinions known before allegedly "quitting" the game? Double check. Let's see precisely what he has to say about the nature of guilds, raiding, and the resulting rewards:

"First of all its not fun when other players have something you cant get, its bad enough having to put up with this in the real world in the form of rich celebrities who have everything like nice cars, money, etc... unfortunatley the game design doesnt allow for the majority of players to be successful at the game."

OK, let's be completely straight here. Even in a fantasy world, you've got to work for what you earn. The real treat is that instead of waiting years for that promotion or pay increase, you can obtain a new piece of gear or a few achievements in the matter of a few hours. The game needs to cater to various types of people willing to put different amounts of time or effort in. With tons of solo-friendly content in the game, I don't understand why someone like Pureheart can't be happy with what he is able to obtain.

"Also the game used to be fun, but now it just seems to be a gear competition, who has the best gear... this is not my idea of fun or cool. Like i said the game is very good, i love the raid boss fights but, the amount of stress and effort involved in getting there isnt worth it for me personally."

Yakov Smirnoff wants his schtick back! Gear envy is an interesting phenomenon to me to me, though. Pureheart seems to disply an innate resistance to the mechanics of the end-game, but the problem is that the gear he seems to want is rewarded to players so that they can progress farther within it. Rarely does Blizzard throw a new encounter into the game without taking into account the best currently available gear, ensuring that said progression functions much like a step-ladder. In other words, gear that drops from Flame Leviathan, Razorscale, and XT-002 in Ulduar should prepare you well enough for the fights later in the dungeon. We often forget that high item-level equipment serves a function beyond looking cool, and that's where Pureheart's contradictions kill me. He rails against the very kind of person he reveals himself to be: a loot whore. He hates that World of Warcraft has turned into a gear competition, and yet, he seems angry because he feels that he is unable to obtain the gear that he desires.

"To sum up, to many annoying people and factors in the game, i cant handle it anymore and i dont want to waste time and effort trying, and i cant play without joining a guild because its to annoying when other players have better gear/mounts than me, so all the fun is taken away from this once rich and beautifulk world i really used to enjoy being in."

So fun is taken away when the game tries to challenge you? Would it honestly be better if any piece of gear was handed to you anytime you want? I suppose it does for this player, who so desperately wants to "[escape] the capatlist society of real life." Moving on. Tank Balance And Encounter Design Speaking of raiding, how do we feel about the difficulty of the dungeons? Even though this is a surprisingly insightful thread, I don't bring up Lyesmith's post specifically to talk about tanking. Rather, to shed light on the ways in how players react to, and shape, new encounters designed by Blizzard. Lyesmith's beliefs can be summed up as such:

"TL;DR: Tank balance has two sides: the player and the boss. If the bosses favor a particular style, then it will show up player side."

Essentially, his argument is that despite what Blizzard reps might say about tank choice ("bring the player, not the class") that certain encounters overwhelmingly favor one type of tank over another. For instance, Mimiron has several abilities that can instantly kill the tank, making a class with more "oh shit buttons" more efficient at taking the brunt of the damage. However, Nilzen claims that encounters are designed the other way around:

"But the truth is, players act a specific way due to encounter mechanics. Encounter mechanics are designed a certain way because of what Blizzard sees that players can do. Avoidance levels were too high. Blizzard makes bosses hit for 80% of a tank's hp because they otherwise avoid too much. Tanks stack stamina. Blizzard makes Impale and other mechanics to counter stamina stacking."

So, instead of creating bosses intentionally designed to favor certain tank or class combinations, he asserts that they're designed due to the way the players have reacted and dealt with encounters in the past. Both posters are more or less correct, as game balance is a never-ending cycle created by this dynamic relationship between trend-setting players and the raid design team. So, is there a way to keep tanks on their toes without relying solely on stacking one stat or another? Lyesmith and Nilzen both offered up the idea of making certain boss abilities slightly more random. Therefore, skill and reaction time would be more important than what class currently seems to be leading the pack. Other fine thoughts included increasing raid damage in order to taxs the healers (so keeping the tank up would become even tougher) and tuning down player stats across the board This brings me to the second point that I wanted to touch on, and it more directly relates to difficulty. You can argue that raids have gotten fundamentally easier over time. You can also argue whether or not most players have simply gotten better at playing the game over time. But one thing I don't think anyone can deny is how extra-mechanical elements such as mods and strategy sites have made "figuring out" any given encounter a lot easier than it once was. It seems that Ghostcrawler feels this way, too:

"If it feels like you aren't struggling to learn these fights as much as you used to, then that's probably true: there are now many sources for videos and strategies that have become a lot more robust and user-friendly, as well as pretty sophisticated UI mods to help you track everything going on. The whole raiding community is just more well-connected than it was in the MC and BWL days. Many casual raiders could name a handful of cutting-edge guilds these days, which just didn't happen 4 years ago."

Just think for a second how much tougher certain encounters might be if you didn't have Deadly Boss Mods counting down the time to the next use of an ability or even if in-game warning didn't flash on the screen when the boss was about to use a raid-wiping mechanic. Sure, add-ons like GRID might be slightly more kosher, as they primarily improve play control, but even they offer quick access to data that you'd otherwise have to click on individual players to figure out. The reason for the popularity of these mods is because they fundamentally reduce the innate chaos of an encounter by giving you access to information in an way that is much easier to process. If information is power, then it becomes even stronger than the best gear in the game. The problem is when said information becomes too convenient and starts outstripping its basic ability to reduce the chaos. At that point, it just plain makes a fight easier. And I haven't even touched on top-level strategies that are quickly formed by the best players and then posted on the internet for everyone else to follow. Usually, unless an encounter is changed drastically on live servers, these tactics are learned on the PTR, so you end up with the sort of situation we encounter time and time again where new bosses are being downed the first night they're widely available. I feel like I'm sort of making up for a few days of Blue Stew absence, but the fact of the matter is that this post is already running longer than it probably should be. If you're interested in this subject, I'd go ahead and read the rest of the thread as it's linked above, and I'm always up for rapping with you guys and gals in the comments section if you'd like to explore things further! Until next time, ta-ta!

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