World of Warcraft: Advantages/Disadvantages of Belong to a Low/Medium Population PVE Server

Posted on June 18, 2013 by keithyw

I used to belong to an older, medium-high population PVP server called Ner’Zhul. We were afforded some nice benefits as well as having a fair amount of disadvantages too. Later, I transferred to an Oceanic server called Saurfang. Over time, I’ve pondered moving back to a higher population server in the US but wanted to weigh my options. So I figured writing a blog describing the advantages/disadvantages of being on such a server might help me and other people who have similar experiences or are looking to transfer or create characters off/on this type of realm might have some insight from someone who has belonged to both worlds.

Disadvantages

  • Low social activity. I feel that a lot of people on my server prefer doing things on their own. A lot of people in my guild rarely talk and with the exception of a few better known people and guilds, it feels quite dead overall.
  • High Auction House Prices. The first thing that shocked me in coming to this server was the prices on glyphs. But that was just the start. Most items on the Auction House are probably priced far higher than on other servers, especially crafting goods. Since Blizzard has done a lot to ban bots as much as possible, crafting goods become a higher commodity
  • Lower frequency buyouts. Along with the high prices on the Auction House, you’ll see far less activity when you put stuff up. It’s still competitive but the buyouts only occur during certain times of the week.
  • Less opportunities for doing world bosses. My server can still down Oondasta, but as the week flies by, the chances of getting into good Oondasta groups dramatically decreases as the quality and quantity of players dip over time. Pretty much you have to do everything the first few days at peak hours. But as time passes less people will be motivated to do any world bosses as most will end up getting enough gear for their mains.
  • Faction Tagging Griefing. This is strictly a consequence of being on a PVE server ironically. The thing is you’ll occasionally find allies who will tag or even pull bosses and mobs to wipe out raid groups for encounters like Galleon. You end up seeing people accidentally getting PVP flagged and causing raid leaders to go bonkers, since the opposite faction can now go to town on that person. I’m certain if this was a PVP server, the natural response would just be to nuke the opposite faction members in question. And this situation does not have to occur just on world bosses but even in situations where you might accidentally AoE members of the opposite faction and get your PVP flag inadvertently turned on.
  • Not many people willing to do faction raids. It happens from time to time but it’s pretty rare these days. I think most people are far more focused on dailies, LFR or other PVE related activities. I think since this expansion lacks a world PVP zone like Tol’Barad or Wintergrasp, there’s not as much motivation to get faction members together for an easy, fun and organized PVP event.
  • Difficulty in Grouping. Since most people on the server are pretty anti-social, it’s very hard at times getting others to join up for other forms of group activity, even stuff like questing. That isn’t to say that you can’t group but I just find it to be a far rarer activity than when I was on Ner’zhul.
  • No faction pride. Again another PVE related consequence. I’ll help the opposite faction in doing rares or certain quests (like the 4 mobs you need to kill in the Temple of the White Tiger dailies) However, when the opposite faction does some dumb shit to aggravate you, no one responds with, “Hey, let’s go fuck their capital up!” Or rather you might only see 3 people who are interested. It’s pretty lame and disheartening.
  • A lot of terrible players. It feels as if a lot of people start on these servers because they’re probably suggested as an “easy” mode to get newer players started. In turn though, the player quality feels far inferior compared to my old realm at least. I think when you’re on a high population PVP server that is old and has a pretty even distribution of faction members, the quality of players is far higher as those players are constantly forced to think on their toes in the face of constant threat from all types of directions. Since the content has become easier over time, newer players don’t have to deal with the tougher issues that veteran players faced. Furthermore, without high level players ganking you, or even facing people who are near your level in a PVP setting, there’s no real threat to force you to improve your game play. On top of that, you feel that there’s just less faction pride so there’s less reason to band up and protect each other on such a server.

Advantages

  • Fast and easy questing. Because there aren’t many people around, you won’t find things like kill stealing a frequent issue. It might happen at the beginning of a patch or expansion, but this issue dies down quickly. In a huge way, this makes the game very enjoyable because you’ll never have to worry about being ganked or griefed.
  • Plenty of resources. I rarely have issues finding nodes. Maybe in Cataclysm there was some competition. But on average, I just see tons of gathering resources all over the place.
  • Easier to make gold. Although the advantages of questing go hand-in-hand with dailies and the gold you can make from them, the bigger jackpot is when you can find some rare item and put it on the auction house. If you’re lucky, you can make bank. If you’re even slier than that, you’ll focus on crafted professions like enchanting, jewelcrafting and inscription to keep your cash flowing.
  • Never have to worry about queues. I’ve seen servers that force people to wait in a queue just to log in. This is one issue I’ll never have to deal with.
  • You can farm rares and mounts. It’s not my thing but I do know players who want those remaining achievements and will camp certain zones. It’s completely doable on a low population server.
  • No ganking. You’ll have the occasional butthead doing stupid things like invading Orgrimmar or causing mischief. But you never have to watch your back. It’s a totally different world playing on a server like this because people will mostly leave you alone.
  • Mostly nice people. If there’s one thing I can say about Ner’Zhul, it’s that it was full of assholes. A lot of immaturity and trolls that filled up trade. I did meet a few decent people but the community in general just was embarrassingly childish. On my current server, I will say that the people I end up meeting feel more mature and handle themselves well. I think a lot are World of Warcraft lovers who are older but lack the time to really put into the game. But when you do have the opportunity of meeting a few, they are for the most part nice to you.

I suppose you could argue from looking at my list that if you’re focused on solo’ing content, prefer questing for leveling and enjoy professions, the low-medium population PVE server is probably right for you. But if you want to do any type of social activity, especially those that require a lot of people, these servers are pretty abysmal.

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World of Warcraft: My Top/Bottom 5 Looking for Raids for Mist of Pandaria

Posted on June 18, 2013 by keithyw

Okay, so it’s list-a-mania time. I wanted to list out my favorite/most hated raids thus far in this expansion. I’m going to not include world raid bosses, although Oondasta has to be the one where I’d love to permanently punch the designers face in, if you can imagine that. Regardless, this comes after mindlessly doing them for so long that I wanted to vent a bit. So here it’s goes:

Bottom Raids

5) Dark Animus – This fight is more of a chaotic mess than anything. You can barely see anything going on and it feels more like a case where people just run around with their heads cut off because there’s too much crap everywhere. The sad part is that it ends up being a really simple fight where once you get passed all the nonsense, you just have to tank-n-spank the big robot thing. I think the best thing I’ve heard about this fight is someone calling it “Dark Anus” then another person responding, “That’s what she said.” Yeah, that one.

4) Lei Shi – This boss gets my vote as the #1 annoying boss just based on the voice acting and let down leading into the Sha of Fear. Lei Shi feels so out of place as a boss overall. It’s more like sick comedy. But the developers are laughing at us not with us. From an encounter point of view, it’s frustrating because you have to time your cooldowns right. If you don’t time them correctly, you end up wasting them. Part of me feels that the asshole developers have created an algorithm where they detect how many people pop their cooldowns at a certain time before Lei Shi enters into one of her annoying phase transitions. Add to the fact that so many people die from simple things like standing in front of the boss, or the tank not swapping then dying and the elementals not being marked. It’s really an easy fight but with some basic communication flaws and mistiming, the whole thing can go down the pit. But here’s the topper: Lei Shi has an enormous loot table, some of which are piled up for certain classes. Let, on average, you’ll just get gold for all the trouble of this stupid encounter. Again just a really fucked up, stupid boss.

3) Garalon – This encounter should go down better but it rarely does. Too many idiots triggering the Crush ability, tanks not taking blows in front of the boss, dumb asses stealing pheromones, people unable to kite, no one attacking the legs, morons not moving after killing the adds just before the boss and initiating the fight before people can adequately prepare, and of course all the people getting locked out just before the fight. Even with the nerfs, this boss must definitely be one of the most hated around. The fight is designed with far too much margin for error. And I’m certain most people won’t forget how everyone would drop out of LFR before the nerfs came in. That was before the Determination buff too.

2) Durumu the Forgotten – Someone had the bright idea of introducing a “puzzle” encounter. I’m not sure if this was the “puzzle” encounter or Dark Animus, but that person needs to be beaten up, thrown into a trunk then driven into an active volcano. For the most part, the encounter is fine because most of the mechanics are more or less straight forward….right up until the stupid maze aspect. The maze is horrible because it’s not very obvious and you don’t have much time to learn how it works and react appropriately. You know an encounter is pretty horrible when you’re forced to nerf it, even with a mechanic like the Determination buff in place. That said I get great joy out of imagining the designer for this encounter’s head put into metal crushing device where someone is using a crank to slowly smoosh his skull in. And I’m 100% certain everyone who does this encounter feels the same way. Fuck you.

1) Amber-Shaper Un’sok – I’m certain by now that the person who did all these encounters is the same person (actually, the guy does have a name but I’ll withhold it despite the fact that I’d love to hear about a public lynching over this stinky asshole). But I ranked it #1 mostly because it’s a lesson in extremely poor UI. Most bad encounters, imo, are the result of bad UI, although some of them might be cases of overtuning. In this case, there is one situation which makes it stand out almost further than the others on the list. It’s that you’re turned into a vehicle with four buttons. The buttons have descriptions, but you’re in the middle of a fucking fight and have a responsibility. Who the hell has the time to sit down and read a paragraph when people are dying in an encounter? I will crusade forever on this topic because I hate poorly designed UI.

Here’s the thing. If you ever have taken any class whatsoever on the subject of User Interfaces, social computing or work on front end development, you’ll realize very quickly what a challenge good User Interfaces are. I am a front end developer and have been doing front end development along with back end development for 13-14 years now. I have a pretty good understanding of the issues in situations like this. And it’s simple: when a person has to rapidly change environments, they will fucking hate it! Why do you think Facebook constantly gets all types of shit from users? It’s because they keep rearranging shit and making their interface even more unfamiliar than what people are used to. Same with YouTube’s constant front page layout changes, Amazon’s clusterfuck product pages, etc.

People need time to learn how to adjust to a new environment. They need tools or practice for getting used to the new environment or system. Here, you’re thrown into a boiling point situation and suddenly something happens unexpectedly. You have no time to react and you’re expected to perform on the spot. If the UI isn’t made obvious then it shouldn’t exist. It’s just unnecessary stress.

Top Raids

5) Will of the Emperor – When I first did this fight on my paladin, I struggled a lot on the dance aspect. However, somehow in recent days, I finally figured out how to handle the dance and find the fight far more enjoyable. In fact, I actually like playing a melee class just to do the whole dance part. It’s a good mechanic because it’s not an instant death thing that penalizes you but actually provides something like a bonus objective where you can do extra damage for correctly avoiding all the blows. It’s actually a well thought out mechanic that isn’t too difficult once you get the basics down and encourages a nice reward for performing well.

4) Imperial Vizier Zor’lok – Once you get through the horrible trash mobs (which may very well be the worst aspect of Part 1, even worse than Garalon), you get to this guy who has some pretty decent mechanics, none of which are all that challenging but does provide enough flavor for a reasonable encounter.

3) Horridon – I would rank this encounter as my personal favorite at the moment just because the fight as one person put it is quite dynamic. There’s a LOT going on and at first I thought it was going to end up being a horrible clusterfuck. It is a horrible clusterfuck but what makes this encounter interesting is that you’re constantly on the look out for something. I think the fact that you’re in something like an arena with a lot of open space provides the opportunity for better movement and flexibility, whereas other encounters are too claustrophobic and just try to funnel you into a tight space where you can easily jack up the raid by a simple misstep.

2) Tsulong – I think the guy from Big Nash Gaming made me partial to this encounter, saying that it was well done at the time (well he did say Lei Shi was fun too, but read my write up for my hate on that encounter). This one isn’t bad. No stupid trash pulls, just kill the Protectors, stand back and you’re right at the encounter. There’s a lot of movement in this encounter but people have multiple roles, especially in the light phase. There are ways to make this encounter really painful like tanks aiming the dragon into the light beam or where almost everyone stands in the light beam, triggering a nightmare effective right in the light beam when you have 9-12+ stacks. But it’s not boring to say the least.

1) Sha of Fear – I’ll admit it. This encounter is boring (Empress is that way too, maybe even more so). But it’s where LFR needs to be to be honest. As sad as this sounds, this encounter is at the level where most people can handle the mechanics. Visually, it’s not that bad of an encounter where there’s enough happening without the horrible distractions and mess of shit hitting you from all over. The “worst” part about this encounter is just being pulled in randomly into the pagoda building where you have to down the mini boss. Outside of that, as long as your tank is up and standing in the glowing circle, your healers doing a reasonable job and people occasionally killing adds, the fight is a breeze.

But that’s the thing is the elements in this encounter are pretty self-evident. It’s not a situation where suddenly you have your head cut off and you’re running around for no apparent reason. It’s a fight where you can go head in and pretty much do well the first time through with little to no explanation.

See my thing is that I don’t mind a challenge but I hate frustration. And I hate needless frustration even more. That’s what a lot of these encounters feel like to a degree. But what makes the encounters needlessly frustrating usually isn’t the encounter themselves at the end of the day. It’s the way the group operates together in this type of environment. Take Garalon for instance. By this point, I’m more convinced that the group cannot kite and will have a pretty chaotic encounter based on my experience. I’m sure I’m not alone neither in this situation. But the elements that allow for these situations to occur compound the frustration exponentially. And it’s that frustration that makes me just want to walk away and play something else.

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World of Warcraft: Pre-Throne of Thunder Raids Loot System Broken After Patch 5.3?

Posted on June 18, 2013 by keithyw

I noticed something once patch 5.3 came in: the loot drop rate feels like they’re back before patch 5.2. I don’t know if Blizzard has bothered testing whether or not the loot drop rate is still at the new level but it’s pretty bad again. Hopefully, enough players will complain to Blizzard because I’m seeing very poor results. Either that or Blizzard bate and switched most of us after the first week or so when the drop rate fix was in place. Since there’s no way of seeing how the rolls are handled, it’s impossible to accuse Blizzard of cheating (which is what I feel is going on to get more people to play).

That said, I still advocate some sort of icon to indicate the bad luck streak buff. At least it would indicate to us our increased chances. Right now, there’s no way of seeing how bad we’re performing. Having that icon would help a great deal and put a little more faith into this mysteriously bad loot system.

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World of Warcraft: Mage at 90 and Theories of Gold Spending

Posted on June 17, 2013 by keithyw

I hit level 90 on my mage a day ago and used my own guide to gear her up quick. I got pretty lucky in doing a Galleon group which drop some excellent starting boots, helping to take my ilvl to the minimum for entering Mogu’shan Vaults. After that, I farmed vaults using Elder Charms I obtained from the Treasure Room. In the end, I was just slightly off to get into Heart of Fear and I had a decision to make: spend gold to buy a trinket or just wait until the reset?

Here’s where my gold spending theory comes into play. I know there’s quite a few people who end up hoarding gold. However, I find hoarding gold to be useless if that’s all you do. Just like IRL, sometimes you need to spend gold as an investment because the returns in the end will outweigh any benefit to keeping it. In this case, waiting one day would mean less potential loot as well as missing out on valor points, gold and just spending more time in a linear progression mode.

The thing is that I could’ve waited that extra day, killed a rare on the Isle of Thunder and obtained more Elder Charms to farm a single item. But what if the item wouldn’t drop? It’s not even a great item so that time is wasted. Also, I might be wasting good Elder Charms on crap gear. I’d prefer to make use of those Charms for the best gear I can get at the moment.

In the end, I dunked 15k into a trinket, figuring that I’ll make it back in the near future no matter what. The game has numerous methods to make gold. You can easily get 800-1k gold/day just from doing dailies on a single toon. So it would only take two weeks to make it back. But now that my mage is in the rotation, that just gives me more opportunities in general.

At any rate, it’s nice having 8 level 90 toons. My next target is to get my rogue to 90. I might take a small break to focus on my 90s. Having that many 90s takes a lot of time to manage. But I’m finally enjoying Throne of Thunder (when the runs go right). It feels a lot smoother since I’m more familiar with the mechanics and fights now. Some fights still are a pain like Dark Animus, Durumu and Lei Shen to a degree. But overall it’s not bad. I’m finding though that melee is a lot more fun than ranged in these instances, mostly because a lot of fights have heavy moving mechanics. Either way, a lot more to do in the upcoming weeks..

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World of Warcraft: (Observed) Characteristics of Players

Posted on June 15, 2013 by keithyw

Originally, I was going to center this post around PVP players. However, the more I thought about the topic, the more I realized that there was no way to write about just PVP players without going into tangents on other players in the World of Warcraft.  So I decided to revise the topic to players that I’ve encountered in the game. By no means is this article a pervasive psychological study of players in World of Warcraft. Instead, it’s my own observations of the different people I’ve met or have watched on a stream.

First, I think it’s good to talk about my own personality in relation to World of Warcraft. I’m a heavy alt-a-holic and someone who primarily focuses on PVE content. I started back in Wrath of the Lich King with a tauren hunter since a friend of mine was playing a paladin. My thought back in the day was to have a ranged fighter type to back his melee oriented class. I started on a PVP server, Ner’Zhul and didn’t know much about that style of play for a while. I struggled initially in learning the hunter class (and it definitely was harder back then), which ended up frustrating me. In turn, I ended up creating a mage and druid, then later everything except a paladin (since that was my friend’s main). Outside of the hunter and death knight, I never reached level 80 on my alts on that server since I ended up quitting just before Cataclysm came out.

When Cataclysm came out, I decided to switch to a PVE server (which unfortunately was on an Oceanic realm as one of my friends supposedly was playing on there). Eventually, I transported my hunter there and ended up with 10 level 85 alts, most of whom I ended up gearing up with the first iteration of LFR. The switch to a pure PVE server allowed me to focus more on the content as opposed to constantly watching my back. However, I think my gaming style is the result of my personality type and what I seek in games.

I think of myself as someone who focuses more on goals in a game and personal achievements as opposed to pushing for world first. I like attempting to max out as much as I can the aspects I enjoy such as LFR, Pet Battles, leveling, etc. to really partake in content that fits my play style. Although I enjoy the social aspects of gaming, I am a loner for the most part in the game since I realize that people may not share my preference for a certain activity most of the time. In a way my gaming preference matches me a professional level too. Although I can deal with people at a job, I feel far more effective in general when I’m doing things at my pace on my own.

Another thing about me is that when I do have a goal in mind, I like to hit it hard. For instance, when I level or want to gear, I really want to focus on that aspect for as much as I can. It can get mentally taxing at times but once I get in that mood, I find the activity to go by pretty fast. The hardest part is just switching into that mode since it’s a major commitment.

When it comes to other players, I wanted to talk about aspects like higher end PVPers. I have a few friends who almost exclusively PVP. The ones who exclusively PVP strike me as people who enjoy the dynamic style of PVP, especially in arenas and BGs. The really high end PVPers have an additional competitive streak in them where they focus on a single class and attempt to master everything about that class to eventually become number one with that toon. They tend to have better overall reflexives and I suspect that when/if they do try another class, their abilities end up being mapped in a way that matches what their main class does sine their memory muscle most likely is embedded with that one class.

However, I did notice that a lot of PVPers really are bad at PVE. And it’s not really difficult PVE but things like questing. The PVP players I’ve seen on stream quite often will admit to having attention deficit disorder, which does surprise me. It feels as though they need that instant gratification and constant, in-your-face action. So questing and level pose immense difficulties for PVP players as they lack the attention span and focus necessary to really handle that type of activity. For instance, I remember when Swifty first started leveling a death knight, he had immense problems just getting through the starting zone. It was pretty embarrassing to say the least watching him since doing the quests just requires a little reading. Then you have someone like Reckful who leveled his druid through just mindlessly grinding away at killing monkeys because he hates questing. Those who level just do it through instance grinding. I’ve been slightly suspicious about this aspect and believe that these players instance grind to avoid world PVP. At any rate, it’s funny too because to me both ends of the spectrum are grindy.

But I think that a lot of people who enjoy high end PVP are those that focus more on the competitive aspects. Gear to them functions more as a badge of honor as opposed to the end in itself. Either that or gear just exist to get you to the next door opening to meet your goals for hitting the high end PVP content. In any case, their personalities demand for themselves to be the best at what they do.

Then there are those who enjoy world PVP. I consider these people the trouble makers. I find these people to be constantly looking for victims. In some ways, I feel that these people have a lot of mental issues, especially those that camp people for hours upon hours on end. In some cases, camping might be the result of getting revenge. However, the ones that just hover or actively seek to cause people grief are the ones that probably need to see a psychologist. Now, I’ve also heard about groups of gankers. These people remind me more of gangs. Considering that the game does promote gang violence and racism (don’t you dare lie to yourself about this either!), it’s easy to see how perhaps people who were predisposed to gang violence or are/were in gangs, might end up utilizing this aspects to satisfy those dark desires. To me this is probably some of the darkest aspects of the game with regards to the player base.

Moving on, I want to return to the world of PVE and talk about high end PVE players (i.e. heroic raiders). From what I’ve seen from streams, the one common thing I’ve noticed is that outside of having that competitive streak to them, none of the high end PVE players ever look happy. I feel like I’m watching a nazi internment camp whenever I watch high end PVE players. There is a lot of stress because one fuck up will cause raid wipes. And you can see those happen for hours maybe even days. When a group beats a boss, it rarely feels like a real triumphant moment. Instead, it feels like a “glad that piece of shit is over; oh well, I guess we get to do it again in a week. People can’t fuck up now!” When I watch high end PVP players, they look like they’re having fun in their activities, even if they’re doing something competitive. But not in the case of PVE.

But when it comes to raiding in general, one thing I have heard is that there’s a certain level of camaraderie in raiding compared to something like LFR, which is what I suspect most raiders dislike about LFR the most. In between the wipes, you have a lot of interesting conversations that go on, especially when it comes to more friendly/social guilds. I think when you have raiders that fit this mode, the idea of raiding ends up becoming a lot more fun, despite the fact that you’re constantly dying.

Then you get some of the quieter players. I consider myself quiet but not entirely anti-social in the game. There are some people who just never respond no matter what. When I see people in my guild like this, I tend to shun them since they really aren’t fun to be around no serve any purpose outside of just getting the benefits of being part of a level 25 guild. Many won’t even do things like LFR, scenarios nor heroics. The ones I’ve seen doing this end up just getting their gear from valor points and quartermasters, grinding out every point via daily quests. Although there’s no real right nor wrong way to play, it kinda makes me sad with regards to these players since it feels that they’re missing out on a huge chunk of the game as a result of their reluctance to interact with others.

Beyond these types there’s also newer vs veteran players. One thing I’ve noticed about veteran players is that some are pretty crusty about things. It feels that because they’ve played the game for so long, they have a certain entitled viewpoint on the game. Not all of them but the ones I’ve heard grumble all the time. However, I feel that some of these players probably just have been at this game for too long and need to take a break to gain a fresh perspective.

New players really vary as each expansion and patches had changed the game in so many different ways. So the later you end into the game, the less you could see the evolution of how the game was designed. Although it can be argued that the game has become simplified over time, I think newer players, depending on the expansion where they started, no matter what will miss out on some aspect of content. This is a terrible flaw that came in Cataclysm where just way too much had been thrown out the window. So now, there’s real way to compare the game unless you go to a private server.

 

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NSA Spying Situation

Posted on June 13, 2013 by keithyw

Something I wanted to talk about that has garnered quite a bit of attention lately is the whole NSA “spying” issue. A lot of people are offended and perhaps even shocked. That said, all things considered, I really have to wonder why people should be surprised and even offended. People talk about their privacy being violated from a national security point of view as if they really had any sense of privacy. I value my own privacy but I can’t get overly mad at the government for doing this. Not in the way people are.

The whole thing to me is that pretty much unless you’re planning to do something against the government or some other illegal activity, the average person shouldn’t really care. Yes, there is the 1984 Orwellian aspect but I think that dystopian vision is only worrisome if the country becomes overly oppressive in handling its citizens for banal cases. There are distinct differences between a plot to slay a key political figure vs shooting from the hip and saying that you want to kill someone for pissing you off while you were driving.

Now, again I’m not a complete proponent for any form of spying but I think people are being somewhat impractical, looking at themselves as if they were criminals. The only thing I can think of where most people probably feel insecure about their own government (at least in the US’ case) of spying on them is the whole RIAA/MPAA downloading thing. In this situation, I really feel that if the corporate lobbyists from these scumbag industries are bribing the government to spy on citizens just for a few measly downloads, then the government should go fuck themselves for wasting taxpayers’ dollars on such a frivolous activity that only favors a few elite while true criminals that pose a real threat are on the loose.

The other case I can think of are private sex phone calls and related activities. Besides pedophilia and some cases of prostitution, I seriously doubt that the government cares how you fuck at your home or what kind of dog shit eating porn you enjoy. Again, most of these activities really are to look for people creating plots against the government or its citizens. I mean, you can look to Minority Report as an exaggerated version of how this can all be used, but that’s the case of where the government is abusing this power. At any rate, you have to look at the overall picture to correctly criticize how this works out.

Quite honestly though, I don’t get how people can be surprised by this at all. In fact, I pretty much expected this from the government. Now, whether or not companies like Google or Facebook are White Knights in all of this is the real question.

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World of Warcraft: Continuing to Progress on My Paladin and Hanging Out with Yoni

Posted on June 13, 2013 by keithyw

I spent an overabundant amount of time playing my paladin the last two days, especially yesterday. He had been neglected for some time as I’ve spread my love of my toons all over the place. But my paladin sorta is my favorite and I really enjoy pushing him the most. So I finally had the opportunity to complete all of Throne of Thunder LFR on him, winning a few items in the process. Last night, I spent far too much time getting valor capped for the week so I could both pick up a new 522 belt and allowing my other toons to get a much needed 50% Valor Point boost for the rest of the week.

But the best thing was being able to play with Yoni the past two days. Usually, I play by myself. I have a few friends that I occasionally play with but I tend to do all my LFRs on my own since everyone has their own schedules. I thought it was really cool being able to hang out with one of my Twitch TV heroes, even if it was for something like LFR. But that to me is the point of livestreaming where people can interact with their favorite streamers. Also, getting to help others via livestreaming is another big thing to me. I really like providing advice and getting advice from people to improve my game play and their’s.

For me personally, I thought it was interesting going into LFR with Yoni because she also plays a Retribution Paladin. So I thought it would be good to compare someone well versed in PVP with myself who has reasonable PVE gear. I kept my eyeball on Recount and was pretty amazed to see how she kept up or pretty much would beat me in the DPS meters at times in various encounters, even though she’s geared in pure PVP gear. On boss encounters, I tended to fare better just because I’m a little over the expertise and hit cap as well as not having stats like PVP Power on my gear. My only other advantage in LFR outside of gear is having a reasonable idea of most of the encounters. I’m certain if she had the same gear, she probably would beat me consistently because she probably knows the class better than me. Either way, it’s good to see how I can improve my game play by watching someone else and gives me some motivation to do better in the future.

Going back to my paladin, one project I had been working on is gearing up his protection side. Right now, the only thing I’m missing is a shield. But I managed to obtain all the other pieces such that he probably could tank most of the older LFRs reasonably well from a gear point of view. Not sure if I would fare all that well since I’m only familiar as a DPS with the encounters. But at least I have an option to play as a protection paladin in the future.

After all this I’m hoping to get back to leveling my mage. After reading the patch notes, it seems like the Golden Lotus dailies are disappearing. So I think to take advantage of things before patch 5.4 I’ll have to really push the rest of my toons to 90 (except my monk). I feel like I’m so behind on everything and lack focus. But it’s one of the consequences of managing so many toons.

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World of Warcraft: Raid Boss and Quest Design Theories

Posted on June 13, 2013 by keithyw

I’m a pretty big critic when it comes to game design since I’ve dabbled a bit in writing my own home grown modules for games like Shadowrun, Dungeons and Dragons and even games with a customized aspect. So when it comes to playing games I do enjoy such as Diablo 3 and World of Warcraft, I have specific opinions on what I like and dislike. Today, I want to delve into some idea for how I think raid bosses and quests should be designed.

When I look at this expansion and think about how raid encounters have evolved, the first thing that comes to mind is that it feels like stuff just ends up getting tossed together without a real flow at times and having an uneven sense of difficulty. Take for instance, Durumu vs Primordius. Many people argue that Durumu would’ve made far more sense as the end boss for part 3. Similarly, others have mentioned that Horridon, while presenting a very dynamic and fun encounter for some, also presented a huge wall for normal mode raiders.

People want to compare Throne of Thunder to Ulduar, which many people claim as the best raid ever created. But I think the defining aspect for Ulduar is that the difficulty level ramped upwards and really presented a sense of progression as bosses. To me that’s probably the best design since you want to feel like you’re going up a slope rather than finding yourself in an uneven situation where you’re hitting a wall too early on, which might end up discouraging people. Although I never did Ulduar when it first came out, I can see how the fights would present more and more mechanics that made people enjoy the lead up.

I think that’s how long raids should be built. In the case of Throne of Thunder, it’s what I call a “long raid” since all the progression happens in a linear experience. Compare that to Cataclysm where you had some flexibility in the first tier. Throne of Thunder, at least the LFR version, is a real mixed bag in terms of the rhythm. I mean, it starts off well with Jin-Rok being a pretty simple tank-and-spank encounter. Then suddenly, you get to Horridon for the first time and it’s a wild mess. Afterwards, you fight Council which turns out to just be four mini bosses that you down in a certain order. But because of the way Horridon is designed, it’s one of the few encounters that feels really dynamic and can be more difficult than other encounters. Whereas when you get to Twin Consorts, the encounter feels more like a cock tease until you hit Lei Shen, where the difficulty level can spike back up.

Something I read a while back is that some encounters had certain purposes like DPS checks, heal checks, gear checks, etc. Part of idea is to ensure that people not only could handle the mechanics but didn’t just blaze through the content without having enough equipment and enforced more farming. The thing though when you have elements like DPS checks, etc. you also have to take into consideration how all that blends with mechanics. The way I look at this aspect is like the old saying about college: you can have good grades, a life, a job, belong to a club/fraternity/sorority, get sleep and have fun. However, you can only choose two of the above.

Similarly, with raid mechanics, I see the situation in terms of layering with the same theory applied. You can provide for so many mechanics and checks but you’re allowed only so many per encounter. I mean, they do it already in terms of difficulty, but it does feel somewhat off balanced at times. Also, timing when a mechanic occurs is imperative. A lot of the tuning that seems to go on outside of damage and life are the frequency/timing, especially if the mechanic involves some sort of one shot death blow. But the way I see a fight is that things gradually open up, leading to a nice climax. If you watch pro-wrestling, you can see how this works. Good pro-wrestling matches have slow builds, starting with minor moves that lead up towards bigger moves since the idea is to dominate an opponent through gradually wearing them down, then applying the killing blow.

Along the lines of mechanics, it’s important to talk about the visual components of an encounter. I tend to discount audio since many people end up turning their sound down. When it comes to the visual design of encounters and interface, World of Warcraft is structured is to partly distract you at times intentionally. Although that isn’t a bad thing necessarily, I do think that somethings end up becoming indiscernible. For instance, in the trash pull to the first part of Heart of Fear, you can barely see what’s going on, hence why a lot of people end up inadvertently dying. And of course, we have the horrible Durumu encounter, which up until the maze pretty much isn’t a bad encounter. However, once you get to that point, there’s just too much going on both with the encounter and other special effects. Even Elegon has been reported to cause FPS loss because it’s simply too intense. I think the thing that bugged me the most was when someone who mentioned that he had a color blindness issue had an impossible time handling the Durumu encounter. To me, that’s a game breaker.

Another thing to consider is the idea of making things so complex that they require an entire video for an explanation. I think part of the problem with World of Warcraft is that you have high end groups putting out videos that are still more or less in the Beta stages. Although the how-to market for content is huge, I’m a little bit disappointed that the game almost warrants the need to watch or read the equivalent of the Cliffs Notes for encounters. I feel as though you really don’t get a chance to enjoy an encounter. It’s more like rush through to get through to the finish line as fast as possible because everything occurs so suddenly requiring you to respond with some automated system. I might be guilty of doing this myself but it’s the experience that you’re once again funneled into that makes me angry and it’s not really pleasant.

I remember doing Amber-Shaper the first time and getting transformed into a big yellow glowing thing. Although I do remember hearing about this ability, I wasn’t prepared and certainly didn’t like it. The worst part was just being put into this vehicle with four buttons that have incredibly detailed pieces of text. There’s no time to pause and really read which button does what. Of course, you could just go to a video or some site like WoWHead to figure out what to do beforehand, but what’s the point? To me it’s just a really poor gaming experience.

Compare that to Ji-Kun where you have the nest encounter. In that situation, people can volunteer to handle the mechanics. At least, people are given the option to do things they feel comfortable with as opposed to a clunky UI that can make/break an encounter easily. I don’t mind getting a clunky UI as long as I have some time to train for it. And in this situation there isn’t anything that helps prepare you outside of watching a video or reading up on an encounter. And you can’t rely on people doing either.

Let me move on now to quest design. Questing is obviously more integrated than ever into the game design for World of Warcraft. It seems that from Wrath of the Lich King, questing has really taken a precedence, especially in the leveling experience. However, I think that the questing experience has really evolved from the old kill/collect/talk to XXX model to give it more flavor. Now, you have quests that can involve things like using vehicles, stealth quests (aka Call of Duty/Black Ops), even racing and puzzle quests.

That said, one of my complaints is that the designers tend to box you into a certain linear progression when it comes to quests. Take for instance, the four storytellers in the Jade Forest. Obviously, the three storyteller quest givers from Badlands, which proved to be popular since they were unique and had a sense of comedy to them, more than likely influenced this style of quests. However, after the first time or two doing them, I found them to be not so enjoyable. In fact, I tend to take a break just as this quest hub starts since I don’t find it amusing. Part of the reason is that a few of them are clunky and one has a severe bug. Yet you can’t really avoid them.

Uldum had a few quest disappointments. There was the stupid stealth quest or the completely broken crocodile quest. Those sucked big time because pretty much you had to skip the rest of the area once you got to them. That’s a pretty shoddy experience in my book.

So how can you rectify scenarios like that? My thing is that you can create quest hubs but make them independent of each other in terms of telling a story. I feel that Cataclysm attempted to make each zone tell too much of a story and forced a far too linear experience. While you could go from one zone to another, the zones themselves tried to have epic endings. But I felt that mood didn’t really capture it in every case, nor did it have to. I think you should be given the option to split off between sections of a zone.

Isle of Thunder tries something like this by providing the option for PVE or PVP questing. I think that this idea needs to be further expanded upon. For instance, split the quest hubs up based on the type of quests people enjoy. If people prefer problem solving, create more complex quests. If people enjoy killing monsters, focus more on that. You can mix and match but you don’t want to make the pivotal quest be the thing that prevents people from progressing.

In Pandaria, the problem that I think people had was just the overwhelming number of quests with a horribly linear progression. People liked Lich King because you had two major zones to choose from. Even Cataclysm allowed you to pick between two starting areas once you hit 80. You have nothing to look forward to except for the same boring path.

Right now with the level reduction, you get some choice in which zones to do your leveling whereas the experience necessary to level pretty much forced you to do all the zones except Townlonge Steppes and Dread Wastes, where you could switch off. Again though my complaint is that you had to go straight through, unless you grinded mobs. If anything it was a poor experience because mentally it felt really taxing. Most of the quests really had no rhyme nor reason; it’s just busy work. Couldn’t a lot of those quests just be cut down? Why have so many stupid gathering quests? What’s the point?

I would prefer if you had leads to do a group of quests that lead to gaining sufficient experience, rather than just enforcing you to be a completionist. I liked the older Vanilla system because leveling was spaced out better. Got tired of questing? Just hit an instance or try a slightly more challenging area. That would allow for more variety of rhythm something that really doesn’t exist right now.

Another aspect I want to discuss is the whole Daily Quest fiasco. It was a fiasco and I think a lot of people ended up burning out and even quitting over them. There were so many problems in the design of these, from the varying difficulty, to the actual zone they were created in as well as the various gates. Before they came out, the creators seemed really proud in improving the experience from the Molten Front. Molten Front had it share of issues too but most of the problem specifically was over the time investment aspect.

The creators said that they realized that the one month grind was something that probably needed adjustment. They adjusted it alright….in the wrong direction. Maybe they thought that people obtained rewards and the result too easily because the new dailies had such horrible rewards. I’m not talking about the quartermaster valor gear; I’m talking about the miniscule reputation and valor that were awarded. And pretty much if you wanted to get anywhere (especially at the beginning of the expansion), you needed to do them every day. Forget what all the defenders and PR people say about them being optional. The truth is that you had to grind them out if you wanted to keep up. On top of that, the time requirement to really maximize these were horrendous.

When the Isle of Thunder came out it was the Golden Lotus all over again, except worse. Now, you couldn’t even fly and had to experience tons of mobs. It’s like they saw players hating the little cave for the Dominance Offensive and realized, “Hey, let’s create an even crappier experience to piss them off even worse!” But these dailies pretty much lack any point. The rewards aren’t even useful from the reputation. On top of that, add some near raid-like boss encounters for certain quests and it’s just non-stop frustration.

The whole thing should’ve been weeklies. With that many hubs, it would’ve been a far better experience just to allow players to choose which hub to do, get their rewards then pick another one. If the dailies didn’t consume so much time (like the ones in Uldum or even Twilight Highlands), then the daily aspect wouldn’t have been so terrible. But these dailies are just far too time consuming and there’s just way too many for them to be worth doing on a daily basis. I mean, why kill the same damn boss every day? It’s not really fun after a while.

At any rate, I hope the designers consider some of these points. They probably already do have some of these standards in place. But it feels like they aren’t really enforced.

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World of Warcraft: PTR for Patch 5.4 Announced, Timeless Isle, Proving Grounds and Virtual Realms

Posted on June 12, 2013 by keithyw

Blizzard has announced the beginning of the new Patch 5.4 in terms of some of the upcoming features for PTR coming up. While the Flex Raid was already mentioned as one of the biggest new upcoming features as well as the Siege of Orgrimmar raid, we now can see a few big features beyond these as well as another zone called the Timeless Isle. At the moment, outside of a Battle Arena provided at the Timeless Isle, no other information has been provided on the subject matter, but perhaps it’s still one of the remaining areas in Pandaria that will be unveiled (despite how the developers mentioning there probably wouldn’t be any new aspects added to Pandaria after Patch 5.2).

The Proving Grounds is one of the newer features that has a great deal of promise. The idea behind the Proving Grounds is to function as a training area for class roles, an aspect that has not really been seen since class quests back in Vanilla (maybe some of the later Legendary quests could be viewed as a training thing but I would argue that you had to know your class by that point). These will not be class specific quests but rather role specific training, allowing players to really learn their role better without having the pressure to group up. There will be four difficulties and provide scores that can be compared to others that you know.

For myself, I really like this idea because there really isn’t any opportunities to learn how to push or learn roles like tanking and healing outside of just running instances and raids. In short, traditionally you’re thrown into a tank of sharks.  And unless you have a close group of friends where you can practice your craft, you pretty much can get brutalized by others in instances for underperforming a role. I think that has led a lot of people to play inefficiently or be pretty intimidated to step beyond their comfort zones.

Now, they haven’t gone into detail about when these Proving Grounds will be made available to a toon or if they will function like an instance/single player scenario. However, it feels as though a feature like this ought to be flexible in terms of providing challenges for all levels, not just max level. It might seem pretty useless for say anyone under level 15 or so since you really have no abilities at that point. But I feel that the earlier you can get started to learn you role, then the sooner you can smell what the Rock is cooking.

The other major feature announced is Virtual Realms. Virtual Realms sound like the long awaited band aid for saving low population realms. These realms will take a few realms and almost merge them together such that players can use each others’ auction houses, guilds and group up for instances/quests as if they were on the same realm. The only difference is that their toons will have a hash mark (#) next to their name.

So I’m really curious how these Virtual Realms will be selected. It really seems aimed low population servers where people might have incredible amounts of difficulty finding groups for raids or where the Auction Houses are dead. But will we see these realms be connected to high population servers as well? We already have Cross Realm Zones so how will Virtual Realms impact CRZ? And how will people’s names be affected? Lastly, will this remove low population servers entirely and instead introduce a feature where people create characters on the Virtual Realms as opposed to picking something like a low population server? This is a feature that in PTR might seem invisible compared to production server reality.

Of course, the big thing everyone is anticipating is the Siege of Orgrimmar. Although no details have emerged officially from the PTR notes, the forums have already began talk on some of the upcoming bosses. Two notable bosses outside of Garrosh are General Nazgrim and the Klaxxi Paragons you rescued as you quested in the Dread Wastes. A huge emotional thread has sprung up over General Nazgrim, indicating that what I mentioned in a previous post is something that Blizzard had considered and implemented.

Now, why is it that making General Nazgrim a potential boss so important here? Although the encounter details are non existent as this point, I will speculate that the Horde needed an emotional impetus to create some meaning and catharsis for the upcoming raid. Although people will have mixed feelings over Garrosh, he generally was built up as a jerk over time, with perhaps a single redeeming moment since Cataclysm.

On the other hand, General Nazgrim has been your typical pawn and Warchief Garrosh’s personal bitch. While Garrosh mostly was nowhere to be seen, just like your typical corporate manager, General Nazgrim has been by your side for quite a while. From what I remember, you see him back in Grizzly Hills as a sergeant, gets promoted to Legionnaire in Cataclysm with his quests in Vashj’ir and eventually makes it to General, leading us in Pandaria. Heck, we even get him as quest buddy in the Jade Forest. One person described Nazgrim as “part Saurfang and part comic relief” which obviously shows that the guy is quite likeable.

That’s what makes him all the more tragic in this and probably a good candidate to meet his end, at least storyline wise. At the beginning of Mist of Pandaria we see him possessed by some sha spirit so it demonstrates how he’s not just manipulated by Garrosh but other beings against his will. As a character with extremely loyal characteristics and a sensible head, it’s really hard to hate him. The whole story arc with General Nazgrim isn’t an overly fancy/complex one, but it’s simple and an outcome from wars where most people end up playing unwitting pawns, a tragic theme universally seen in wars.

Lastly, I’m hoping that encounter from the Alliance point of view does not end up making General Nazgrim appear to be a simple loot pinata. Although he has not said the most favorable words towards the Alliance, he hasn’t entirely been a jerk either with his aim being to merely serve the Horde. Beating someone like this in battle is like fighting any other respectable character in fiction.  In some ways, he reminds me a bit of Beast-Man back from He-Man with Garrosh playing Skeletor. You couldn’t really hate Beast-Man entirely for how things turned out with him and Skeletor (or how he would vie for power in competition with Evil-Lyn) and almost pitied the poor guy as you knew He-Man would always kick his ass. Here, everyone has the opportunity to put a knife permanently into this character but I’m not sure how much of the Alliance have had the opportunity to encounter General Nazgrim. Either way, he deserves a proper send off.

Then we come to the fight with Klaxxi Paragons. Since there are quite a few, I’m wondering how this encounter will play out. It seems a little awkward considering you just helped them escape and that they end up becoming quest givers over in Dread Wastes. Not that I have any loyalties/feelings towards them but it just seems odd outside of the message about where they would select their loyalties at the end of the day. Thing for me is that the little story regarding “the gods are not your gods” and the Klaxxi’s loyalties probably played too short of a story arc and sounded like something that might’ve been better tied up in another expansion. I suppose that with the expansion coming to a close, it’s not unreasonable to expect that this story should close out here, but the ominous remarks made me feel something more epic should be in store for us.

I saw a few more names in that forum posts on the encounter. But not too much to say at the moment beyond how the encounter looks to be starting the Vale of Eternal Blossoms with the Golden Lotus quest givers as possible bosses (revenge for all the dailies?). I think storyline-wise there’s some interesting things coming up for this raid.

Overall, it looks like the end of the expansion with this patch. I’m hoping that with this new raid and patch that the expansion does attempt to answer the question “Why do we fight?” But at the same time I don’t want the answer just to be “to protect our homes.” From the Horde’s viewpoint, it might be easy to see this, especially with the encounter with General Nazgrim (as I mentioned with all of my various reasons). I really believe the Alliance need to be vested in Siege of Orgrimmar too. The end battle shouldn’t just be “OMG, if Garrosh gets what he wants, then the world will be destroyed!” We see that storyline far too much and it really has lost its impact in the obsession over epic battles. Instead, we need something that’s more grounded even for the alliance with a stake in it. Some people suggested having the King’s son slain but that really does not beckon the answer; it simply reiterates what the Shado-Pan monk (forget his name) in the final scenario on the Isle of Thunder has stated about why the Alliance and Horde war with each other. Vengeance by itself is not such a black and white tool that can be used in a good story arc. It has to be an internal, very personal message that resonates universally with people. So I hope that when the outcome is shown, we all can learn something profound by doing such an encounter rather than go, “Hey, check this epic sword I just got from slaying General Nazgrim!” Honestly, that aspect only goes so far.

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World of Warcraft: Finally Finished Throne of Thunder (LFR)

Posted on June 11, 2013 by keithyw

I had been procrastinating on doing the last leg of Throne of Thunder for a while now. But it wasn’t as bad as I had imagined. The Lei Shen fight was more annoying and a clusterfuck but I could see that it was definitely doable. Main thing is just making sure people were marked, communication is relayed to people who don’t understand the fight and in general just having a good group. My group downed it in one shot, which was great. In fact, the only thing done before the fight was marking a few people. Beyond that, everyone pretty much knew their roles. Probably, the only thing that was really annoying was the pushback effect on the last phase. But it wasn’t impossible.

Now, that I have that out of the way, I might start running it on the rest of my guys. Usually, once I run something like that 2-3 times, I’ll start seeing the basic patterns of the fight and most of it ends up becoming quite easy. Sure, it can still be annoying but the fights are just a matter of positioning and doing things at the right moment.

For the other two fights in Part 4, they weren’t really that bad, but again just annoying. Like Iron Qon for the most part is pretty easy. The difficult aspect is just watching out for the stuff on the ground and the phase where you have to move around to strike him with all the shields. Maybe the other aspect that can make a fight like that difficult is the damage output, but that’s more of an issue with the healers than something a DPS guy like myself has to handle.

The Twin Consorts weren’t bad either. Just tank and spank and again most of the encounter’s difficulty was avoiding things on the floor. Heck, I even managed to win the helmet token for my death knight on the reroll (which looks nasty and not in a good way). Sure, there are other mechanics that you need to be aware of but at least they are not enforced on you compared to say Amber Shaper Un-Sok encounter.

In having seen the overall LFR for Throne of Thunder now, I will say that most of it isn’t terrible. My main complaint is just that there’s just too much crap everywhere. When I was on Durumu a few nights ago, I lagged out so badly and I suspect that it’s because of the number of effects and elements that were going on simultaneously. The thing about these encounters is that the mechanics themselves are not difficult to understand but the UI is just so poor in communicating what’s going on to the players that it all meshes together in an incomprehensible manner. I realize that at times these encounters are designed to be distracting but visually it’s really overwhelming for no good reason outside of adding more shit that you can’t really appreciate.

Going back to the Lei Shen encounter, I get the feeling that Blizzard wanted to make the encounter feel really epic. Instead, I feel like I was on a Disneyland ride, even more poorly done than Dragon Soul in some ways. It feels very melodramatic in how Lei Shen constantly would proclaim himself as the “Thunder King” but all these things end up getting lost on me since I’m too focused on the encounter to really take in the experience. Everything is just so rushed that you can’t appreciate anything.

I know Hobbs hates LFR partly because of this issue. In this case, I really can’t blame him. You’re pretty much in a race the moment you enter just to get to the loot. Now, I have to admit to being a bit of a loot whore. But I enjoy gearing up. I don’t enjoy the constant farming. To me these encounters are really just loot pinadas. The encounters themselves aren’t challenging because of the mechanics; they’re more like endurance runs where they try your patience in having to do the same thing for a long time while periodically having the occasional curve ball tossed in.

I will admit that many of the newer encounters feel more dynamic. For instance, I really like the Horridon encounter. At first, I thought it was going to be impossible. But at the end, the fight is pretty exciting since you have the opportunity to fight all types of adds and must make quick decisions to tackle one add or another.

At any rate, I’m glad I’m done now in doing each wing and boss. I’ll definitely start farming these LFRs more often on my alts, especially with my other guys getting leveled to 90 and gearing up.

On another note, is it me or does it feel as though patch 5.3 rolled back the increased drops for stuff in pre-Throne of Thunder LFRs? I spent a great deal of time trying to gear my warrior for the past two weeks and just had an awful time getting anything, even on reroll. It’s really frustrating since I’m just one point off from being able to enter Heart of Fear. I did cheese a lot of her gear to boost it up, including retaining some tanking items in her bags. I suppose I could just do a bunch of dailies, get some rep and pick up an older piece of gear for the extra point. But it’s just so painful and I really don’t enjoy doing dailies at the moment.

I would like to get my mage up to 90 soon as well. Right now, she’s sitting at level 88 and I’m about to ignore the remainder of the Valley of Four Winds and take her straight to Kun-Lai Summit. I thought about just doing Krasarang Wilds to mix things up but that place is just so dreary. The good thing is that as a cloth wearer, I was able to craft most of her gear, which is mostly 415s. So there’s no real point in doing Krasarang Wilds just for gear. Even when I hit Townlonge Steppes, I should have enough gear to get me to 90. Can’t wait for that as I’ve got a lot of recipes ready for her.

After that, I just have to level my rogue and priest. Then I’ll focus my attention on high end content and probably pet battles. Looking forward to finishing all of that. Hope it won’t take that much more time.

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