Finding the Fun – Facebook Edition

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Recently I decided to wade back into the putrescent and vile waters of Facebook gaming. I clearly did not have high hopes. Most Facebook games seem to be a small step above Progress Quest with monetary purchases that either completely unbalance the game to those who buy or have no worth. It seems to be an all or nothing deal which I believe is indicative of an overabundance of marketing/business people and a dearth of true game designers. The thing is, I can *see* the potential. Much like I imagine early game designers saw the potential in 3d graphics, online multiplayer, and motion control. This *could* be the next great stage of gaming. This could be the thing that pushes gaming into the wide main stream and silences all such arguments about the “outcast violent gamer” stereotypes.

I don’t even want to say how disappointed I am that such a cultural shift might come from something as absurd as Facebook or even any other social networking site. It feels like a thing that should come from the indie community, or from a AAA publisher. But I will take it any way I can get it.

Square Enix released a Final Fantasy “Mafia Wars” type game. I did not believe that this game would be true FF quality, as I was fairly positive it was outsourced to some for hire studio. But it was possible it had at least improved upon the quality of Facebook games.

To begin with, this game has very little to do with Final Fantasy, with one major exception. You have classes, and each of these classes are able to be changed out as you play. It seems even like one of the major goals is to gather new classes. The art is simple drawings, without a single animation. You go on accept quests, with no narrative and collect gear that simply allows you more access to new accept quests. You collect 7 of randomly dropped items for collections which are then converted to a new class medallion. They could and should take this about 10 more steps forward in complexity and make class decisions an actual choice with independent leveling in true FF style.

The interesting thing was, not much varied from other games of it’s ilk, except for a bug. This bug allowed you to add “companions” of other players without adding them to your Facebook friends. It allowed you to ask for help on click quests and such, without having them be friends. Now, you couldn’t send free gifts to each other, but you could send items you had already acquired.

And I was having a blast. I had added almost 400 random people from the discussion boards and was merrily tromping through quests and pvp fights with the greatest of ease. I didn’t know any of those people, but I gifted extra items, clicked on chest links, clicked to help with quests, and gifted action packs. I was wildly enjoying my progress quest, even though it meant very little, because I had all these friends helping me.

Of course, the company eventually fixed the bug and I lost all my ill gotten friends. Now it is me, and the lowly 4 people I managed to convince to play with me. And to be honest, it isn’t as fun or as consuming. I can still win at pvp, I can still quest with the greatest of ease, it’s just not as much fun because I don’t have 400 people to share it with. I don’t have 400 people to share items, help on quests, and give power packs to. I had found the fun in a game that had no business being fun. Then the developer ripped that fun away.

Now the true question is: How do I replicate that in a game, while still retaining the marketing desire for you to peer pressure your friends into playing?

The Wrathgate

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As a game designer, one should always be on the look out for really good ways of doing things. Always playing new games to get new ideas and learning new tricks. Each exceptional game you play is merely a lesson in how to (or sometimes how not to) do something.

It also shows the mark of a good company when they are able to take a tried and true formula and improve on it. Blizzard did this with a sequence of quests in the most recent expansion of World of Warcraft, Wrath of the Lich King. Now there is still the standard fetch and fed-ex quests, but then there are quests that are clearly the main course of this expansion. One series of quests leads the player through the Dragonblight and hits several minor lore points before culminating in the event of the expansion.

Not only do they reward the player for their persistence with a glorious cutscene but it is followed up with a quest where the player attacks Undercity alongside King Varian and Jania, if you are Alliance, and with Thrall and Sylvannas if you are Horde.

Wrath of the Lich King, as an expansion, very much seemed to have the design philosophy “Make it feel like you are changing the world.” Phasing, a technology that allows the developer to change an area for each specific player was widely used in the expansion. As a player completes quests in a zone the NPCs, locations, even enemies change and shift to reflect the actions of the player. Quests chains tend to be much longer, far more lore steeped than before.

In the Battle for Undercity, it uses phased zones of the three major cities: Orgrimmar, Undercity, and Stormwind, to keep the player from being distracted by standard gameplay. It also pushes the player to complete the event immediately, as they can’t choose which phase to enter. Once completed, the player receives an achievement, Veteran of the Wrathgate. Then from that point on, the area surrounding the culmination of the quest in the Dragonblight is forever changed. Fire burns, bodies are strewn about, weapons lay alongside the fallen. It looks like a battle has been fought, of truly epic proportions, and your character participated.

It should say something that I always make the effort to complete the Wrathgate series on every character I level in Northrend. The lore, the cutscene, the sheer beauty and poetry of the quest line and event is a treat I am unable to pass up. And I have done it 5 times. Each time I revel in the quests and get very excited as I approach the end. I watch the entire cutscene and feel the tears prick my eyes.

Blizzard has managed to take a standard formula, make it exceptional, and make it endlessly re-playable. It leaves my appetite for Cataclysm whetted, with the hope they not only continue to do this kind of thing, but expand and improve it.

(Note: This is also very true of the Death Knight starting area. I honestly wish that people could get a trial version of the game and just play a Death Knight until they were out of the starting area. Yes, many of the jokes and references would be missed by new players, but it is still one of the most well designed and interesting parts of the game. The starting area does many of the same things that the Wrathgate does, minus the cutscene. Unfortunately one must have a level 55 character and Wrath to be able to even start a Death Knight. My fingers are crossed hoping that the starting areas in Cata are at least similarly well done, if not exactly like the DK starting area.)

To Be A WoW Killer

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It comes up shockingly often. Someone or some post talking about such and such being a WoW killer. World of Warcraft is a game with 12 million players. Each of these players pays 13-15 dollars a month to play. Simple math leads us to believe that they make over 150 million dollars every month. It’s probably a bit less than that, but even so, it is a rather large pie that other companies would like to get in on.

Oh how they have tried. Turbine, Sony, Mythic, Cryptic, ArenaNet, NCSoft… They all want a piece of the WoW domination. They have all done fairly well in various aspects, but none have even come close to the level of WoW. The funny thing is, every time a new MMO comes out and every time a new company starts up, there is always someone who says “This is gonna be the WoW killer.” They said it about Guild Wars. They said it about City of Heroes. They said it about Warhammer. They said it about Age of Conan. And while all of these games share a measure of success, they are no where near WoW killers.

Some people point to gameplay. The gameplay needs to be better they say and so hope to kill WoW. The thing is, WoW covers a wide and varied set of gameplay. Don’t like farming dungeons? Do quests. Don’t like questing? Pvp. Don’t like Pvp? Try being an auction house mogul. WoW has nearly everything, and has 10 years worth of polish to it’s gameplay. Gameplay alone will not kill WoW. But it is vital that the game being made looks to WoW to see what has been cut, and what has been added.

Some people point to graphics and beauty. Graphics are important. But if your graphics are so powerful they fry video cards (I am looking at you Champions.) then your player base is cut. There is a reason WoW is designed to run on older machines. There is a reason thy focus on low poly high rez texture models. If it were graphic alone, Aion would be top of the pile.

Some people point to licenses. They say, well Warcraft was an established license. We need that too! To that I respond with Star Wars Galaxies. Not a WoW killer, with a much more recognizable license. True, I don’t think that license was handled well, but it was still far bigger than Warcraft with a much more rabid fanbase.

So how do I think you kill WoW? I don’t know the exact answer. I don’t have the magic potion to throw into your game and make it the WoW Killer. But I might know the question you have to answer:

How do you convince someone who has What a Long Strange Trip It’s Been to stop playing WoW and start playing your game?

Okay, that question is a bit specific, but it gets the point across. How do you convince someone to leave a game they have invested years in to come play yours? What a Long Strange Trip It’s Been is an achievement that takes a full year of WoW playing and determination to get. The reward is a large, beautiful mount that flies faster than all the other mounts in the game. It’s not easy, it’s not for the faint of heart, and it is a great badge of pride once you have it. But it took you a YEAR to get. So why would you leave it moldering on your WoW toons only yo go play another MMO, and have to start over from scratch?!?

I am a lifetime subscriber to Champions Online. I like Champions. I like the art style, I like the skills, I like the fact I don’t need a mount I can just FLY. I love the character creation too. I might even be convinced that visually, Champions is a prettier game. The super hero license appeals to my sense of fantasy. And the gameplay is solid and seems a bit more varied than WoW. But I only played Champions for about 3 weeks. Then I went back to WoW. I had this moment, while trying to get mats to make bigger bags in Champions where I went… I have done this. I have leveled this skill. I have leveled this character. I have done this exact thing before. All I have to do, is log out, and log back into WoW and this problem is solved.

The path of least resistance leads me back to WoW. Where my characters are already max level, have lots of gold, have maxed professions, have purple gear that makes them look awesome, and have the vanity items that makes people whisper me going “Where did you get that?” And even more WoW has my friends, who I don’t have to try to convince to come play another game with me.

Solve that problem, and you have solved how to make a WoW Killer. Of course, while you are solving that, people are earning more cool things, leveling more characters, getting more gear… and generally becoming more entrenched in WoW.

Sunflowers are my Friends

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Game Designers play games excessively. Always with the small voice in the back of their head trying to quantify the “fun” and identify what is causing it. It is after all, our job to create this, so it helps to seek it out in other examples of our medium. The problem is after a while you get very jaded. More and more you see only the flaws and bugs within a game. You have to work very hard to see the fun. It even becomes easier to watch other people play and see the fun that way as opposed to playing it yourself.

Every once in a while though, a game comes along that is truly stellar. These are the games Designers cling to and play obsessively. They become rabid fans and insanely loyal to the games, the developers, and the mechanics. Just ask someone about the Dreamcast or Skies of Arcadia and watch them suddenly become the most vocal opinionated person you have ever met. Obviously, I feel this way about WoW. I talk about it incessantly and often try to convince people to play it. But even so, WoW is not perfect. I can see the imperfections. There is just so much to the game that I can ignore it.

A game that is perfect though: Plants vs. Zombies. Plants vs. Zombies is a casual game from Popcap, who has already proven with Bejeweled and Zuma, they know how to make addictive casual games. The basic premise of PvZ is that you are in you house and the zombies are coming. You have to plant plants that will fight the zombies. In truth the game play is very simply old school tower defense with the resource being sun and the weapons being plants. But even that simplicity is polished to such a high degree that the game is simply stunning.

Day, night, pool, roof… These are the changes in the terrain that make different plant choices critical. There are always different ways to do the same thing, the true skill coming in knowing how to mix plants that do multiple things for you. Knowing which zombies are weak against what. When is it better to plant versus out right kill a zombie.

The animations are stellar and add to the already adorable art style. The music is quirky and memorable. The art is cute and colorful, making the game feel good in general. The personification and icon-ization of the plants and their damage types is inspired. The player knows what plants and zombies do, because it is clear through the visuals. The hud is simple, and easy to read and use. The objectives are clear and concise. Even the opening levels, completely easy and wonderful for a tutorial.

In addition to all of this, they have a Zen Garden, where you can grow plants and earn money to buy upgrades. I would be lying through my teeth if I didn’t say I come back to the game every day to tend my Zen Garden.

I cannot point to anything in this game that makes it worse. Now a few things could be added to make it better, but the absence is not such that it makes the game worse. I want my Zen Garden to be bigger, even if it is just adding new “pages” that are exactly like the default ones. I want more plants in my Zen Garden. I want the snail on every page. I want *way* more puzzle levels, like five times as many. The endless survival is *awesome* and could be extended with more space to add to the frenetic joy.

I sincerely hope the geniuses behind PvZ are working on a PvZ2. I also strongly recommend this game to everyone, tower defense fan or no.

Bejeweled Blitz on facebook

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So today I received an interesting message asking if I had hacked Bejeweled Blitz. I generally have the highest score for the week of my friends and apparently it has gotten annoying for at least one of them.

First, let me say, I would never hack a multi-player game to give myself an unfair advantage over other players. Boo to anyone who does. This is why I would never buy gold in WoW unless it was offered by Blizzard and *everyone* could get it. I like the playing field to be level.

Now this brings up the question, well if you didn’t hack it, how is it that you have *such* high scores *all* the time. So here is my guide to winning Bejeweled Blitz.

1. Play all the time. I have BB on my iPhone. Sitting on the ferry. Waiting at the ferry building. In line. Anywhere I am waiting, I can play a run or two while waiting. For those who play on a computer, this is *probably* a good reason for *why* you have lower scores. 50% of doing well in BB is simply getting a good set up. The more games you play, the more likely you are to get a good setup.

2. Know when to concede the fight. If your current high score is 100k, then any match you play where you are going to get under 100k is a wash (unless you are still training at spotting the matches). I usually watch and if I am below 25k at 30 seconds, I go ahead and restart the match. After a few days, I will restart if I don’t have a 3x (or greater) multiplier and 50k+ at the 30 sec point. This allows you to squeeze in more games and thus have a better chance of getting the really good setup.

3. Multipliers are everything. You will see the gems show up with a number on them. These, once matched, go to the upper right corner and multiply the bonus for groupings. So instead of getting 500 for matching 3 gems, you get 1000, and so on. Also, blowing up a multiplier with a power gem counts for adding it to your side.

4. Well then, how do I get multipliers?!? The multipliers appear based on the number of gems cleared from the screen in the last few seconds (I think it is somewhere between 10-12 in a single cascade). The best way to get them to appear is to cascade or get a power gem to blow. Cascading is when you make a match and as the gems fall they make other matches. Power Gems are formed when you match 4 gems and it gives you a firey gem. When you match the firey gem, it blows up itself and all the gems touching it. If you form a corner (so 5 gems that form an angle) you get a super power gem (it glows) that when match will blow all the gems in the same row and column as the super power gem. These are far and away your BEST asset for getting a high score.

5. Hypercubes, not as awesome as you think. All of my highest scores are rarely if ever gotten with hyper cubes. Hyper cubes are gotten by forming 5 in a row, then you swap it with a single gem and it blows up all the gems of that color on the board. Sounds awesome right? The thing is, those gems that get blown up *don’t* appear to count for the multipliers showing up. And unless you cascade (which I usually don’t too much) now you have a weird board with not alot of clusters. Hyper cubes are best left alone and then blown when you have multipliers of the same color on the board. For example you have 2-3 multipliers that are all green. There is a green gem next to the hyper cube. Blow green and get those multipliers.

6. Basic matching. You can’t beat just clearing gems. If you don’t see at least 2 matches on your immediate screen and you are just starting, restart. If you spend more than 5 sec looking for a match (so your hint pops) restart. If you are matching like mad and aren’t getting any cascades, restart. I always get this feeling like I am working too hard to match, and usually my score is in the 10-20k range and I am 30 seconds down. This is why I say if you are so far along and your score is so low, restart. Also you have to train your eyes a bit to look for the “odd” matches like when you have two gems on either side of a different one, but a matching gem above or below the center mismatched one.

7. Horizontal is better than vertical. Not sure why, I am sure some mathy person can explain it. But regardless, horizontal matches yield more cascades than vertical ones. So if you can match something horizontally or vertically, go for the horizontal.

8. Play from the bottom up. If you play at the bottom, the gems move more. More cascades, more points!

9. Don’t focus on that one setup. I watch other people play and I see them trying to wrangle the gems to set up a hyper cube. Don’t do it. You can’t control the gems. You will waste more time. You only have a minute. Focus on making alot of small matches quickly. And as it turns out, 4 matches or angled 5 matches are *better* than the hyper cube.

10. Play fast. Match as quickly as possible. This includes the fact you can start matching as soon as the gems appear BEFORE the game begins, gaining you 3 precious seconds. Also if you hit the blazing fast event (where the whole screen turns red) all your matches explode for massive cascades and points. Also you can make matches on other sides of the screen while your last match is clearing and cascading.

11. Tailor your gameplay to match your focus. Paying too much attention to the score and timer? Ignore it then. Noise bothering you? Turn the sound off. But as you get better try to add in attention to things, like looking over the whole screen to see several matches. I can pay attention to my score and time without losing focus on matches, and that is a valuable skill in all games.

There are likely more hints and tricks, but these are the ones I use. How did I figure all these out? Well I played the game a great deal. And I tend to look for the rules and goals of a game more critically due to being a Game Designer. It is just second nature. I notice trends and percentages. I think about how they code the game.

So now you know. I expect to see some competition. 🙂

Loremaster Joyia

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Loremaster

In simpler terms, completing the Loremaster achievement means that a player has completed 90%+ of ALL the quests in World of Warcraft. It is 90+ because Loremaster doesn’t count repeatable quests, dungeon quests, or sometimes just a random quest.

Not a big deal you might say. You do alot of quests when leveling you might say. I decided to do Loremaster on Joyia, my main Warlock. I had leveled her through all the major Horde areas doing quests. I like to quest. I like the quest text and I don’t mind “killing x of y” and “gathering a of b”. It might have something to do with watching TV while I play WoW, but repetitive just doesn’t bother me most of the time. So of course, I chose Joyia because she was the one who was most likely to have done a large number of quests. When I started she was over 600 quests away from *just* the Old World quests!

(For those who don’t play WoW: Old World is Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor, the two continents that were the original game. Outland is the Burning Crusade area, added with the first expansion. Northrend is the Wrath of the Lich King area, added with the second expansion.)

Needless to say, I had quite the uphill climb ahead of me. So I turned on my Low Level Quest tracker and got to questing. As I slogged through dozens of quests I realized several truths right up front.

1. All the best quests in the game are hard as hell to find.
If you have ever played Alliance and done the Scythe of Elune quest line (both parts, one in Duskwood, the other in Ashenvale) you know what I mean. There are these utterly fascinating and wildly detailed quest lines coursing through the game, and yet, most start from some random item or odd place. As a game designer I am shocked they would hide their best work in such a way. To be fair, they have corrected this quite a bit in Wrath, but still.

2. Sometimes revenge is a dish best served at 80.
During my journey I traveled to Silverpine Forest. As I was killing spiders and bears, I saw out of the corner of my eye an Elite, Son of Argual. I started to move out of his path, without even thinking about it, then realized… I am level 80! This once fearsome creature may have been the bane of my existence at 18, but now… NOW is time for PAYBACK! I would be lying if I said I didn’t begin to think of zones that had particularly annoying patrolling mobs or groups with the thought of going there next to quest.

3. As you near the end of your quest for quests, you fall MADLY in LOVE with the “Go talk to that dude standing right over there. – Okay, here take this thingy to that guy right across the room for me, thanks.” Type of quests.
It is true, when leveling these quests are mildly annoying and even bothersome, as they seem like such a waste since you don’t get exp for them. But for the Loremaster wannbe, these quests are like diamonds, in truth not worth much, but so wonderful because of their rarity.

4. WoW Quest Designers were originally unorganized or needlessly shoddy.
Preface this statement with, and likely WILDLY overworked. WoW classic shipped with THOUSANDS of quests, thousands of items, a hundred or so zones, and dozens of dungeons. I am perfectly aware of the likelihood that they had dozens of designers working their fingers to the bone for this game. Also keeping a design team focused and on the same page is like herding cats in a rainstorm. However, when the ENTIRE Silverpine and Trisifal Glades areas are a part of Kalimdor despite being located in the Eastern Kingdoms… Really? Really? And so much so, that they simply classified quests as either Kalimdor or EK, so that you can’t have it broken down like the Outland and Northrend quests. On top of this there are at least a dozen non-dungeon, non-repeatable quests that don’t count for EITHER achievement.

At least with this one you can point to BC and Wrath where they improved. One hopes with Cataclysm this trend will continue.

5. Loremaster as an Achievement is WILDLY undervalued.
If you add up all the achievement points for getting Loremaster you get 50 total. 10 for EK, 10 for Kalimdor, 10 for Outlands, 10 for Northrend and 10 for the meta. For all the work, grind and sheer frustration for finding that last quest, this achievement should be one of the most rewarding in the game. That’s 50 points, just for the meta. 25 for each of the sections. Then we are approaching the level of detail and focus involved.

As of this point I have achieved Loremaster of Kalimdor, I am 2 quests away from Loremaster of EK, and I am about 30 quests away in Outland and about 100 away in Northrend. Here’s to Loremaster colors in the new year!

Paying to Play

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I have odd views on paying for games. It probably spawns from the fact I am a game developer. I make a living creating these games and as such, I see the purchase and acquisition of games a bit differently than most. For example, I don’t buy used games unless the game is no longer availible new. Why? Because I would rather pay 5 dollars more and know my money goes to the developers of the game instead of the suits at Gamestop. I am also aware that games are not made to be art, challenging, for fans, or even for fun, but rather to make money. It is one of the soul crushing truths reinforced time and time again at the Guildhall. You are making a commercial product and its sales directly affect your future with the company.

I am very diligent about making my love and support known for a game with my wallet. I own at least 4 separate copies of Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time. I own 2 copies of KotoR and Morrowind. I own no less than 4 copies of Bioshock. Why would I do this? Various reasons, many are on different consoles, or different versions of the same game. But more importantly, because I want sequels. I want similar gameplay to these games. I want publishers to know that I, as a gamer, am a fan of these games and am perfectly willing to put my money where my mouth is. So when a game comes out I want/like/love I buy it. Immeditialy, and occasionally a few copies to give away. I tell others to support game developers by buying the game.

But this truly only applies to standard games, console and pc, game where you buy the game and you are done. Now we are deeply into the world where Downloadable Content and Premium Content is easily added to games and they ask for additional purchases. In my opinion, DLC and Premium are both good things. Additions to games that I have already purchased and loved, a way of extending my gameplay. Now having said that, I do not expect to pay 1/6th of the cost of a game for 1/12th the content I got with the original game. Also as a developer I have been in meetings where we discuss DLC and people actually say something to the effect of “Let’s hold that really cool thing back and make it DLC.” I usually get into a shouting match with that person. Planning DLC into your game is a good thing. Planning additional levels, items, etc, for your game is good. Gimping your original release to sell DLC – should earn you a place in the special hell. Exclusives are annoying to my collectible side, and DLCcan be used quite effectively to make people like me feel better.

For MMOs a subscription model has become standard. Every 6 months I pony up my 78 dollars to Blizzard for both my accounts. I pay it because I feel the game is worth it. I am also aware that Blizzard as a development studio is *not* pocketing the 150million+ in subs every month, but rather that their publisher, Activision is. Most other MMOs will get my money for a month, maybe two, but after that, it is no longer worth it for me to pay by the month to keep playing. Some complain about the initial game cost (50 dollars) and then having to pay the $15 subscription on top. To be fair, you are paying for the 3-5 year development time, and recouping losses from people who will only play the first month. And you usually get the first month free, so really you are only paying $35 for the game, a bargain in this day and age.

Many people point to the Free-mium model as a great way to make money, and it is. I dislike this model because usually they charge you far *more* than a subscription for much less. And the game is inherently broken into chunks and you have to pay for each chunk or you are missing a large portion of the game. Plus the spoils go to whoever has the most money to throw at the game. Great for making money, but seemly at the cost of your soul.

The brouhaha began Wednesday when Blizzard offered, for the first time, a direct purchase of an in game item from the Blizzard Store, for real money. And suddenly the community began to scream from the top of their lungs. How dare Blizzard add micro transactions to a game we already pay a subscription for! How dare they make us pay for content twice! *grabs pitchfork* Or so they said. I was too busy typing in my credit card number. Then I was too busy /bowing to my newest mini-pet to watch him bow back. The next day I responded to this post on WoWHead with an affirmative Yes, I would buy pets from Blizzard, but only because they didn’t have a I already bought them option.

First, my point of view on Blizzard selling pets independent of the game -> I heartily approve of this instead of the alternatives. Non-combat pets do not add anything to actual gameplay and are just to follow the player around and look cute. All other non-combat pets are acquired through rep grinds, farming, purchase (easy), or the TCG loot cards. First off, I despise grinding reputation to begin with. Being forced to grind a reputation *just* for a pet is irritating. Farming, the repeated running of the same old thing waiting on the RNG to show you some love… well, I hate it even more than rep grinding. At least rep grinding has a hard cap. Mr. Pinchy, Disgusting Oozling, Whelplings, Firefly, and Phoenix, and many others besides, all take killing the same mobs, running the same instances over and over can over again, hoping they drop. Most give you nothing to make up for the time spent either. Some require dungeons you can’t solo. Would I rather farm Magister’s Terrace trying to get my Phoenix or just pay 10 bucks? WHERE DO I GIVE MY INFO?!? TCG cards are a “form” of paying someone else for a Mini-Pet instead of Blizzard. I pay Upper Deck how much to try and get a Hippogryph? And in the end I pay Joe Blow in Ohio 50 bucks for ONE of said mini-pet. The ones Blizzard sells I get on every single character across the account! Yes please.

Now, having said that, I really only feel this way because it is a mini-pet. Mounts, tabards, standard outfits with no stats, and flavor items, all are legit items for Blizzard to sell. They don’t change the game. You aren’t “progressing” any by having these items. If Blizzard tried to sell heirloom gear or tier gear, I would be right there on the third option of “This is the third sign of the apocalypse.” For people who argue and say “I already paid for content” I must point out, you did. And you got a ton of it. In the scheme of things you can get over 100 mini-pets *without* ever buying one. 100. You aren’t getting robbed on content. You have 100 other mini-pets to choose from, many who are cute and lovable just like these guys. Now if they released a dungeon and asked you to pay for it, yeah, I get that as a point of contention, that is gameplay. This is frivolous fluff!

I do think it is interesting that a third of the respondents said they *would* buy mini-pets from the store. If a third of the population of WoW buys said pets, I am sure we can expect this to become a big part of the game. I do get a third of the people saying they wouldn’t. I know people who hate mini-pets. They think they are a waste of space and polys on screen. I also think these are people who steal candy from babies.

Regardless, as always, I voted with my wallet. And thus I get to /bow to my Pandaren and watch my KT zot critters.

I have a soul. Look I have a whole bag of them.

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“You have no soul!” accused a druid running along side me.
“Yes, I do.” I insisted.
“You enslave beings and cast curses!” The druid argued.
“I have a soul. I have a whole bag of them. Want one?” I responded. At this point I desperately wished I could emote opening my soul shard bag, reaching in and pulling out one of the bright pink shards and holding it out to the horrified druid.

Warlocks are a class playable in World of Warcraft. My main, that is the character I play the most and generally attempt to do the cool stuff on, is a warlock. The warlock class is focused on doing damage, or damage per second (DPS). In most games you have three main types of characters, tanks, who take damage, healers, who obviously heals, and dps, who tries to kill things as fast as possible. Warlocks are ranged, meaning they do most of their damage from a distance. They also have a pet, any one of seven demons that they enslave and call to do their bidding. These pets have some specialized skills like the Voidwalker can create a shield that protects the Warlock from a few thousand damage, or the Succubus who can seduce another player and essentially freeze them in place.

Warlocks do damage in a slightly different way than the other classes. A majority of their dps comes from Damage Over Time spells, or DOTs. DOTs are curses that are placed on a creature and then “tick” every second doing x amount of damage. Some DOTs are front loaded and do their damage early. Some build up over time. But best of all, most of these DOTs are instant cast spells, meaning they can be cast while running across the room dodging attacks from bosses.

So for four years I have played my Warlock, happily blasting things away, roleplaying my “evilness” and thoroughly enjoying myself. The only thing that mildly annoyed me was the soul shard mechanic.

Soul shards are warlock unique items that are used to do many of the things that makes a warlock special. The lore behind them is that a warlock drains the soul of a creature just before it dies and traps it in a small shard then uses this shard to power their spells. Soulstones (an item that allows a player who has died to immediately respawn with health and mana where they died), healthstones (like health potions, only on a different cooldown), demon summoning (the pets), player summoning, and even some of their damage spells all require the use of soul shards. They take up one inventory slot and do not stack. All warlocks carry a bag that is slightly larger than normal bags but only holds soul shards. So we lose a bag, and we have to “farm” soul shards by going out and killing creatures to drain the soul, just in case we get stuck in a situation where we can’t get more shards.

However at BlizzCon last weekend they announced they are changing this mechanic to be more like the Death Knight Rune system. Meaning that there will be 3 soul shard icons below the character portrait and they are used when a spell uses one of them, then they slowly recharge over time. Be still my fluttering heart! No more shard bag. No more shard farming. Now they will work as empowering modifiers to my spells!

I am scouring every post and bit of information about them and will continue to do so until Cataclysm is released. But I, for one, am glad to be a part of the new Warlock Overlord Class. 🙂

Midsummer Fire Festival

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One of my grand vices is World of Warcraft. I started playing about 9 months after launch and with the exception of a few months here and there, I have played ever since.

Originally I played with a few friends in real life on Hellscream, Alliance side. After a brief foray onto a PVP server I returned to Hellscream, took advantage of a free transfer and popped over to Madoran. My Hunter reached level 70 and I nearly quit the game. However right about this time I got a new job and there my boss played WoW as well. Only he played on Uther, Horde, with a large and active guild. So I rerolled on Uther.

The longer I played on Uther the more I liked it. There were plenty of interesting and active people in the Guild and it was quite a different game than I was used to playing, especially when I got to 70 and started raiding Karazhan. I decided to make Uther my home and used the Recruit a Friend promotion to level a ton of alts up to 60.

I now have 14 characters across two accounts on Uther. Until recently I raided 3-4 days a week and spent any excess time running Heroics and leveling alts. The we crashed into the Wall of Ulduar. As a Guild we did quite well up to this point, we even did well back in Burning Crusade, taking down Kael and everyone but Vashj, Archimonde, and Illidan. However Ulduar was a different story and the formerly wonderful Guild became a pit of despite and malice. After a particularly poor run I got fed up with the way I was being treated, esp since I had not wanted to raid that night and only came because they were so short on heals, and logged off. When I logged on the next day I had been kicked from the Guild.

So I quit WoW, knowing full well I would be back eventually. I spent a few weeks playing other games and enjoying myself quite a bit. When I restarted to do the Midsummer Fire Festival, I expected to fall right back in. Only it turns out, the game just isn’t the same anymore. Oh it is fun, especially when you have help, going around stealing fires, infiltrating capitals and whatnot, but for the most part the game is the same old boring game.

The design philosophy of Blizzard has also changed. Nerfs are prevalent. The attempt to make everything viable in PVP and PVE has weakened both and made certain classes and specs completely unbalanced. The desire to make things “special” has lead to 1% of the population getting all the best things while those who do not make the game their life or serious are left with the crappy looking stuff and trash that no one really wants. Not to mention exceptionally buggy patches, inconsistent changes and stances, and just poor planning all the way around.

Is this the beginning of the end? Will WoW pass into oblivion? I suppose they have to make room for their next MMO…

Legends of Zork

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I mentioned it in my first post, but today I would like to go into more detail about Legends of Zork. LoZ is a browser based casual massively multiply game. It is similar to Kingdom of Loathing.

In LoZ you step into the role of an employee recently laid off and now turned to adventuring to make money. Were you a glove salesmen? Goggles? Swords? Which ever you choose changes the items you begin with and gives you some small bonus to exploring.

The game is steeped in the lore and flavor of the many Zork games. From the locations (the White House, Dark Forest, Port Foozle, GUE Tech…) to the weapons (Frostham Bearded Axe, Pen Knife, Elvish Sword…) you find connections to all the old games. Launched on April Fools day, this game tries very hard to take everything with the humor and insanity of Zork. While it is not a traditional Zork game, with no winding passages and lanterns to keep track of, it is a delightfully enjoyable game that brings the quirky humor back into browser based games.

The game is not perfect. It has UI issues, severely broken pvp, and some balance issues that would capsize a aircraft carrier. But in the end, the developers seem to be listening to the community for the large part and trying to make their game better.

If you want to read further thoughts and information on LoZ head to the official LoZ forums or the Worn Jorunal, my blog as the leader of one of the largest Clans in LoZ, The Old Guard.