The Price of Progress

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When writing for a site that earns money based on hits, the best thing you can do is write a controversial and slightly inflammatory post you KNOW is going to get commenters riled up over.

Bravo Holisky, you did it perfectly!

200 comments and still growing. *slow clap*

That being said. I totally agree with you. More than that, I honestly believe it is PAST time for World of Warcraft to implement a buy a character store.

So let’s review the arguments people have for why there SHOULDN’T be a character store then review the arguments for why there SHOULD.

This is a terrible idea!

1. You need the 90 levels to learn how to play your character correctly!

There are more ways to level than ever before. You can level through PVP, Pet Battles, being power leveled, etc. Even so, playing at 90 is very different from leveling. It’s two different games. People who come for the leveling will still level. People who come for raiding will get to jump right to the meat. Pve is not the same as Pvp, so why would someone assume leveling is the same as raiding?

Two stories – The first is about me. I leveled a hunter to 60 in vanilla, then leveled a mage to 60, then a priest, then a warlock. What can I say, I like ranged DPS. When Burning Crusade hit, I leveled the hunter to 70, then the Warlock. Once my warlock hit 70, I was a part of a raiding guild, and one night they drug me along to Karazhan. We were fighting the trash before Moroes, and one of the healers asked, “Joyia, why aren’t you Life Tapping?” I responded, “Why would I do that? It just leads to me dying.” I had never used Life Tap. I didn’t even have it on my bars. I had leveled that character, but had no idea how to raid with her. Fortunately, our other warlock took me under his wing and taught me how to play as a raiding lock.

Second, in Wrath, I was running random heroic dungeons on my priest. I got into a dungeon with a level 80 DK. He started pulling and I had the hardest time keeping him alive. I was an ICC geared healer, and this was one of the starter dungeons. It should have been cake. I looked at the tank’s gear. He was wearing a mix of spirit plate and other plate (maybe dps or tank, I don’t know). He had not spent a single talent point. I asked, “Dude, what’s up with your talents?” His response – “What are talents?”

Leveling teaches a player virtually nothing about playing well at level cap. Especially since some of the most important spells players only get at level cap, or the rotation relies on secondary stats being at a certain level.

2. You will miss all of the STORY!

Way back in vanilla, there was a mod *everyone* had. Everyone. I played for 20 minutes, before my friend helped me download and install it. It did several things, but mostly it made the quest text instantly appear instead of slowly appearing. That way I could just click okay and follow him to the locations. Even now, I rarely if ever read quest text on my first run through. I am blitzing my warlock to level cap as quickly as possible. Especially with all the new map and tool tip stuff.

People don’t read quests. They don’t watch cutscenes. I know people who didn’t know who Tirion or Bolvar were in ICC.

Not everyone cares about the story.

3. Professions/Gold/Gear

For about 30 seconds I thought this was a good argument. Then I remembered… It’s not. I have power leveled professions on multiple toons. It’s *always* easier at level cap. Also, dailies make earning gold a snap. As do scenarios, dungeons, and LFR. All of which give gear too. They will likely start the players with a set that is equal to the lowest dungeon blues, but that’s fine. It will get replaced rather quickly anyway.

Even better, this would help server economies, as there would be tons of people buying up all those low level mats. OR even better than that, Blizzard would implement a catch up systems like Thanksgiving for all the professions. (Actually they kind of did with Ghost Iron recently, remember?)

4. Everyone starts near the top, there is no one to help. (Really? What game are YOU playing?)

Wow… so someone tried to say that players like helping new players and that if this is implemented there won’t be anyone to help or the only people to help will be mouth-breathers. UM. First off, what game are you playing? Because as far as I can tell WoW is definitely NOT a game where people like to help strangers. Guildies, of course. RL friends, always. Strangers? GTFO NOOB. Also, they make it sound like those level 85 players won’t know anything and that’s a bad thing. How exactly is it different from a level 10 asking where the auction house is compared to a level 85? Level is just a number at that point. Will it be rough for the first 3-4 months? YEP. But then the good people will come out of the woodwork and the newbs will help other newbs…

5. Guilds will suffer from bad players!

They already do. Even worse, they have to keep the bad players because that’s the ONLY option they have. The influx of new accounts to WoW following a character buying system would lead to hordes of players, including many who would learn quickly and potentially become excellent raiders.

Let’s say 1 million people join the game just because they can skip leveling. If only 10% of them are decent THAT’S 100,000 NEW RAIDERS. That’s 10,000 NEW RAID TEAMS. As a guild officer, that idea positively makes me want to shiver in excitement.

6. It’s pay to win!

You can already do it. It’s just difficult. You can already pay for power leveling. This just streamlines the process. This takes it from being illegal and makes it legal. This protects the players by making it a Blizzard offered service.

Also, if you agree that the “winning” of WoW is downing the last raid boss, then actually it’s not. It’s pay to skip the grindy bits to get to the real part of the game. Everyone says the “real” game begins at level cap. Well, let’s get to the real game then.

7. It doesn’t take any time to grind to 90 ANYWAY! Just do it!

Well, if it only takes 2 days, then why gripe if someone skips that? Also people love to bring up heirlooms, forgetting that totally new players wouldn’t have those. Nor are they likely to be in a guild with the leveling buff.

Real arguments against it:

Button overload! – This may even be worse than starting fresh and facing x amount of hours to 90. There are a ton of buttons in WoW at level cap. It would be very daunting.

Solution – Perhaps a scenario like the DK one, that teaches and adds abilities as you go. Honestly WoW could use a “solo scenario” set that is directly targeted at teaching players to play their class and spec well. Match the player with an NPC of the same class and spec who leads them through a dozen or so scenarios to teach them skills, talents, glyphs, etc. I would like this EVEN NOW, so I could really learn to play a melee class well.

No additional leveling content or updates.

Oh this is actually a good one. If everyone can skip the old content, there is no reason for Blizzard to update or add to it. But then… have they really done that much anyway? Other than Cataclysm, have they *ever* added mid level content since Vanilla? And even with Cataclysm, how many people replayed all of that content? Blizzard has the stats. Clearly it wasn’t *that* great or they would have updated more or updated Outland. (Now what, Friday they are going to announced updated Outland.)

So why should they do it?

1. They sort of already do allow it with Scroll of Resurrection.

2. They have exp gear and potions in China. Precedent has been set.

3. Sudden influx of *tons* of players BOTH OLD AND NEW.

I sit next to a guy at work, who would love to play WoW. He doesn’t though because he doesn’t have TIME to level a character. He would raid with us, two nights a week for 4 hours total, but he can’t play anymore than that. He’s a smart guy. He would learn fast.

I am an officer in a casual guild. We have existed as a raid team since May of 2013. Now, 5 months later, we are 2/14N and 10/14 Flex. Why are we not further along on Normal modes? Because we only have 11 players. 2 tanks, 3 heals, and 6 dps. If ONE of our tank/heals is out, we *have* to flex. And life gets in the way all the time! We recruit nearly constantly and yet our gains are almost always met by losses. New babies, new jobs, new school schedules… there is always something. WE NEED MORE PLAYERS. That is the truth. I can’t wait for our realm to be coalesced with another one.

4. The average age of WoW players is increasing. These people have lives, jobs, kids. They don’t have time to play a game for a month just to get to the real game, and gear for a month, then to be able to play with their friends. It’s too much of a time sink. To hook new players, you have to lower the barrier to entry. Lower barriers equals more players. Which would you rather have – a game bleeding subs year over year, or a game with tons of new players every month?

I also don’t think there should be “requirements” like having a max level character. Maybe limiting it to the “previous expansion cap”. I could get behind that one, but really this service needs to be more for new players than for old. Old players are hooked. They have the heirlooms. They have the experience of knowing leveling zones, dungeons, friends, etc. This service should be targeted at new players to draw them in, get them into the game, and then they will stay here. WoW is at heart a peer-pressure driven addiction. Why does it continue to be the 800 pound gorilla? Because even if there are better games, WoW is where your friends are. Your friends pull you back. Now let us pull in new players and get them to the cool stuff asap.

DAMMIT BLIZZ. YOU HAD ONE JOB.

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Thanks to Misanthropology for pointing this out.

SERIOUSLY. How do people NOT get this yet?

The whole “She’s a 6.” or “She’s a 10.” is incredibly insulting. You are boiling a woman’s ENTIRE worth down to a 10 point scale BASED ON HER LOOKS.

Even worse, this is a PLAYER that NPCs are critiquing. Take a minute Blizzard Bark Writer who wrote this and consider… you have ~8 MILLION players. about 3M of them are female. How many women in that group have been insulted by men who called her a 4?

I have. It was a COMMON thing at my college (filled with all those lovely Christians learning to be ministers but that didn’t stop them from sleeping with every woman on campus, passing around gonorrhea and generally being jerks) for guys to call women by their number. Mine was 4 apparently.

My roommate was a 4 as well. Except the one semester I lived with another girl who was barely able to pull mediocre grades, in the freshmen level classes, but she spent 2 hours getting ready every morning… She was an 8. (Her nose was “unacceptably large” – ie it was FINE, but not pug like they wanted.) I was “too fat” at 160 pounds. I was also too “GINGER”. Didn’t matter I had a PERFECT gpa, was active in a dozen clubs, tutored people in subjects I DIDN’T TAKE, and singlehandedly put together TWO yearbooks… Nope, I was a 4, just because I was “fat” and ginger.

Thanks Blizz, you just offended me. You just INSULTED the appearance of the FANTASY character I play. The one place I ALWAYS feel beautiful and amazing… AND NOW I FEEL LIKE SHIT.

I have two accounts. I have *every* piece of WoW clothing from J!nx. I am LITERALLY sitting here in an Alliance hoodie and a Healer shirt. But now I want to go home and change. I want to get my Illuminati hoodie. I want to cancel my accounts.

All because some douche on your team is too stupid to understand THIS IS NOT OKAY. Being sexually harassed by randoms on the street, NOT OKAY. Where is the evil review overlord who should have looked at this and say, eh, not a great idea.

I would think this was just an isolated incident… EXCEPT… I have had to talk to writers about changing THIS EXACT LINE IN TWO OTHER GAMES. I worked at TWO companies where TWO different male game developers thought this was okay. Even more so, when I said, hey you need to take this out, it’s insulting to women, he said and I quote “Uh no it’s not. It’s being complimentary, so it can’t be insulting.”

YES. YES IT CAN.

The point isn’t the NUMBER. THE POINT IS: You are boiling a woman’s ENTIRE worth down to a 10 point scale BASED ON HER LOOKS.

Also, why is it I can’t attack these guys? I want to spread their blood from Orgrimmar to Uldum for this insult.

As I write this, I am getting angrier about the whole thing. I see the trend. I see the casual sexism that has been smeared across the characters in the game. Tyrande removed from her position of power in favor of Malfurion. Told to hush and she listens. I see Sylvanas called a bitch and virtually absent from the expansion. I see Jania on the path to being a raid boss and constantly belittled by Varian, Thrall, and even now Andiun. I see Tiffin in the refrigerator. I see Aggra demoted from badass Shaman to Thrall’s wife and offspring machine. I see Garona demoted to mother of Med’an and lover of Medivh. I see Moira forced to rule with two male dwarves DESPITE having right of succession. I see Vareesa consumed with her husband’s death and vengence instead of CARING FOR HER TWINS. I see Alexstraza is only known for her role as mother. I see Lorna, strong, but then reduced to an object and bargained over.

You know what I don’t see? A SINGLE WOMAN WHO IS NOT DEFINED BY THE MEN IN THE GAME.

(I literally went through the entire list and found: Ysera, Lady Liadrin, Valeera Sanguinar, Maiev may have some of her own back now that Illidan is dead, Shandris, Lillian Voss to an extent – she is very defined by her father and is “subjugated” by Gandling, maybe Aegwyn, but look at how she is portrayed with her interactions with Aran, Medivh, and Saragas? *yay mystical pregnancy* ugh.)

Anyone else notice ALL the offspring of major lore characters are male? Varian, Moria, Thrall, Rhonin and Vareesa… ALL WE HAVE ARE SONS. Sorry boys… you’ll never get married cause daughters are unwanted.

Even worse, is with the exception of Sylvanas, Tyrande, and Jania, it seems like all of the “growth” of these female characters is completely out of game.

I started looking for strong females who didn’t lose their agency when they fell in love or completely become subservient to the men around them and I had to LOOK. I had to go to Wowpedia and look through the Major Characters list. That’s how I found Lady Liadrin and Shandris, the only two who fully fit the bill of having their own strength, power, and NOT becoming a wife/mother at the complete loss of all their own agency. (Even more terrifying is I started doing the count on Major Male Characters to Major Female ones… At the point I stopped it was 10 to 1 and GETTING WORSE.)

Yay. Thanks Blizzard. How about you hire a WOMAN to help on your writing team? Hell, get Christie Golden if that’s what it takes.

I was uncomfortable with the torture quest. I was WILDLY uncomfortable with Keristrasza’s entire quest line and story. (Really guys? NO ONE thought this wasn’t really something we should do?) But each of these hit as an isolated incident. Each of these passed under my level of “Too Far”. However, over the years I have become more sensitive to women’s portrayals in media and games. So I see it now. I see it and it sickens me.

I love WoW… but really taking a look at it… UGH.

THIS IS WHY WOMEN LEAVE GAMES. THIS IS WHY WOMEN DON’T PLAY GAMES. THIS SHIT RIGHT HERE. THIS IS ONE MAJOR REASON WHY. YOU ARE ACTIVELY ALIENATING WOMEN WHEN YOU DO THIS.

I am one of those insane WoW fans, but I think I might be done. Done with this bullshit until devs can learn to STOP TREATING WOMEN LIKE CRAP.

 

Update #1:

Well, they hotfixed it out. That’s a step.

The inherent problem remains though. Are they going to hotfix out Tyrande Hush? Are they going to hotfix in a proportionate number of major lore characters who are women to the men? Are they going to find someone ANYONE on their team to check their shit BEFORE it goes live to say, hey maybe don’t do this. We haven’t forgotten Ji Firepaw yet. This problem is not solved. It’s just hidden once more.

 

Update #2: More lovely words – http://www.applecidermage.com/2013/09/12/can-we-not-razor-hill/

I can’t believe that just happened

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Your most memorable experience in World of Warcraft… GO.

When I first read the title, an event popped into my mind. I often tell that story as the coolest thing that ever happened to me in WoW. The more I thought about it, the more events that popped into my mind. How could I chose just one?

I have been playing WoW since the fall of 2005. That’s alot of time to cover. That’s alot of playing. Every expansion, raiding, pvp, soloing, nearly every class… I have built a large number of WoW experiences, many of them quite memorable.

I’ve talked about the Corrupted Blood Plague before. I also talked about the Zombie Invasion. Both of those were amazing events. I will never forget going to Ironforge to see this “plague” that was killing everyone, then dying to it myself. (I was level 30-ish.) The sea of bones, the spam of messages in trade. What a day. I will never forget forming the raid of zombies and going into Stormwind and turning it into a scene from 28 Days Later.

I’ve been to the Crypts of Kara three times, and I am seriously considering yet another venture.

I invaded the Outlands. I tanked Illidan. I defeated Vashji, Kael’thas, Arthas, Kel’thuzad, and even Deathwing. I have seen the natural beauty of Kalimdor, the burning wastes of Silithus, and the lush tropics of Stranglethorn. I have flown with Val’kyir, I raised dragons, I saved orphans.

The first story that always pops to mind though… it’s nothing a designer sat down and planned though. In game design there is always the argument of systems versus scripting. Do you script and plan every event, or do you create systems that then interact? Player Stories vs. Designer Stories and all that.

I was playing on a PVP server, with friends, during Vanilla WoW. I was a priest, level 32. Of course, I was specced holy, since I was generally running dungeons to level. World PVP is the worst, and so I generally avoided it.

One afternoon, I was killing trolls in Stranglethorn for their ears. There are three camps of trolls, but I was at the largest one. You have to collect 25 ears, and not every troll has them apparently, so it usually takes 50-60 troll kills to get them. I was merrily smiting trolls to death, when a warrior ran up and attacked me. He was Horde, I was Alliance, this is how these things go. I successfully defended myself and defeated him. I hugged his still warm corpse, and continued killing trolls. A few minutes later, he showed back up, then sat and drank while watching me sit and drink. Of course, as soon as I pulled another troll, he attacked once more. It’s a good tactic. Now I have to fight him and the troll. But sadly for him, I am an amazing priest. I defeated them both.

Despite the fact I was on a pvp server, I had no desire for battle. I am not terribly aggressive when out leveling. But after a few months on a pvp server, I knew exactly what would happen. This warrior was determined to beat me. As he couldn’t on his warrior, he would be back. With friends. Or maybe with another one of his own characters. The troll camp didn’t mean that much to me, there were two others after all. I decided that discretion was the better part of valor, and headed west, towards the coast, for one of the other camps. As I was passing by tigers, another player rode up from the south.

This player was level 60. Raid geared. And epic. You can tell, as the raid gear matches, and looks quite impressive. His skeletal horse had armor, mean he had epic riding. The gear immediately tipped me off that he was a mage. I was dead. Oh, he hadn’t killed me… yet… but I knew I was a dead priest walking. The chances of me even fighting him off were nil. I only had one chance. The chance that he would decide I wasn’t worth the effort to kill.

No luck. He dismounted right next to me, and used his Frost Nova ability. (It freezes enemies in place.) I pressed my Psychic Scream ability. (It causes enemies to be feared – they run in random directions for 4-10 seconds.) In WoW, players have the ability to resist spells cast at them. Miraculously, I resisted his Frost Nova. Even more miraculously, he did NOT resist my scream. This had to have been a one in a million shot. At his level, his resist should have been so high, my spells should never land. At my level, there should have been nothing more than a sliver of hope that I wouldn’t be frozen in place.

But he did fail to resist, and I succeeded, so while he was running about like a chicken with it’s head cut off, I ran the opposite direction. I rounded one of the huge trees and hit Shadowmeld. Shadowmeld is a racial ability that let’s a Night Elf “fade” into the shadows. It’s a stealth. The mage appeared mere moments later, spamming is aoe attack. He knew I had likely shadowmelded. The only way to find me was to break the meld by doing damage. The thing was, he was too far forward. I was too close to the tree.

After several minutes, he finally gave up, and moved on. Leaving me hiding. I immediately crowed about my accomplishment in general chat. Ninja priest for the win!

This encounter could not have been scripted. But because of the systems in place, well designed, I was able to do something extraordinary, that I tell people about all the time.

When /G goes silent

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Last night, I did my usual evening routine. I put my kid to bed, I grabbed a beer, and I logged into WoW. I spawned in and typed my normal greeting: /guild Hey guys! How goes?

<You are not in a guild.>

Wait. What?

Sure enough, I was unguilded. No more Villainous tag under my name. What happened? I opened my friends list and pinged my RealId friend who had also been in our guild.

“What happened?”

“Oh hey, yeah, Spart logged on and just booted everyone today. We are trying to figure out what to do.”

I felt like the rug had been yanked out from under me. The floor disappeared as the floor on Lich King could vanish. I didn’t even have my friends on my friends list. Why would I? They were in my guild. Finding yourself un-guilded, unexpectedly, was bad enough. But the night it happened… that was worse.

In December, 2012, I got a whisper from a RealId friend asking if I was still working on the legendary staff from Firelands. I told him I was, and I was halfway through Stage 2. He asked if I wanted to go? “Does the pope wear a funny hat?” Of COURSE I do. So I jumped in. Turns out, this close knit group of friends ran old content most every night. Just for fun, achievements, and titles. After 3 weeks, I decided I should transfer servers. After all, these 9 people were helping me get a legendary staff, I should share the rewards, specifically, the mini-pet that the guild gets from the guild achievement for having someone with the staff.

$25 later, I was on a new server, leaving my 21 alts behind. (I have 9 level 85s, and 19 toons over level 70.) We rolled through all the old content. Everything from Ulduar drakes, to Sinestra, to ICC LK Heroic. It was great fun. Most of the guild were people who were friends in real life. Over the course of the two months, I progressed into Stage 3 of the quest and got a few dozen other achievements from other raids. Then, I realized, I was ONE clear from the Staff.

I pointed it out and everyone got excited. We actually PLANNED the night we would run Firelands, instead of just winging it like normal. That way, everyone who wanted the pet, and wanted to see the event could be present.

The night we planned to run Firelands – that was the night our GM logged on and booted everyone.

Heartbreak. I am sure everyone felt much the same way I did. We logged on, ready to have fun, ready to celebrate our guild doing something Legendary, and instead, we were met with abandonment and betrayal.

It’s just a game, but it felt shockingly similar to being laid off at work. The worst part was asking in TRADE CHAT if we had missed anyone in our guild.

I pinged my friend, and discussion was had about what we were going to do, but to be honest, most of us were just hurt. So we formed up a raid, and we only had 5 of our normal guildies. The others had disbursed. I almost cried. So close to the staff, and now so far. My triumphant night had been disbanded just like the guild. Our raid leader, contacted another guild, and asked if anyone would be willing to run Heroic Firelands. Five players stepped up. I cannot express the heroism of these 5 players. They all had Firelord. They had zero reason to help. They did anyway. They gave up 2 hours to help someone they had never met, never raided with. HEROES OF AZEROTH.

Silver linings and heroes aside, the night was still marred by the loss we had all suffered. A few people drifted to an alt guild. A few others ended up in alt bank guilds. Worst of all, the mini-pet I had transferred to allow people to get was no unavailable, to all of us. So now I am left trying to figure out how to guild hop between guilds to get all my new friends a pet.

Here I am, 24 hours later, and the one thing I can’t let go of… This should not happen. There IS a design solution to prevent someone booting everyone else in the guild and making off with a level 25 guild, with bank filled with mats, gold, and gear. Even if the guild had been okay with a dictatorship, most of us now aren’t. We don’t want someone else to be in charge. We want to be able to TRUST the person in charge. Our guild leader, he wasn’t just some guy. For most of the people in the guild, he was a REAL LIFE friend. He was a real life friend who got rejected by one of his other friends and decided he didn’t want to deal with it. He destroyed the guild because another guildie had flirted and then broke his heart. In return, he broke our hearts.

Why can’t we decided to have a guild that has a co-gm or council? Why can’t we chose our own leadership?

There has to be another way. Before the days of guild levels, it would be a simple matter of pestering a GM to restore our stuff and gold. But now, we have to start over or join another group. It’s like, hitting level 90, having your friend leave the game and suddenly you are level 1 again.

Once bitten, twice shy.

Battling the Spirits of Pandaria

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The first few trainers are fairly easy, simply matching up the proper elements leads to victory. However, once out to Northrend, that strategy doesn’t work anymore. So here are a few teams to help beat the high level trainers, broken down by trainer.

Aki – The Master Pet trainer in the Vale of Eternal Blossoms.

She uses a Cricket (critter), a Dragon, and a Golden Civet (aquatic).

So let’s break down each pet. The cricket is a critter, and uses mostly swarm. Anything that does well against a critter is good. (Especially anything with beast powers.) Most efficient is a Humanoid with Beast powers, because they can take out the cricket and be ready to deal with the dragon.

Stormlash is a pain in the butt. And he is sure to call lightening which will kill your team quickly. You want a humanoid with a nuke. Panderan Monk is a good option, I use Murkimus, because I can use his Heroic Leap to avoid damage.

Lastly, take out the Golden Civet with a flyer, especially one with Lift Off, so you can dodge his dive. I like the Cenarian/Hippogryph Hatchling for this. Most efficient is a Magical Pet with Flying abilities (jade owl? I don’t have one, so I can’t be sure).

My team:

Murkimus, Hippogryph Hatchling, Fluxfire Feline. FFF vs Chirrup, Hippogryph vs Civet, and Murkumus vs the Dragon.

Flowing Pandaren Spirit – Dread Wastes

Water Spirit (Elemental), Marley (Aquatic), and Tiptoe (Critter).

Marley is a standard aquatic with pump and dive. Pull out your Cenarian Hatchling and use his liftoff to avoid the big nuke of Whirlpool and Dive on the third turn. Again a magic type with flying abilities is most efficient here.

The Critter is easily taken out with a magic pet with beast abilities. I use Spectral Tiger Cub, but alternatives are Twilight Fiendling and the Baneling from the SC2 HoS CE.

The water spirit will generally show up last. Try a Rapana Whelk or a magic type with aquatic abilities (like Legs).

IF you have a Disgusting Oozling, Jade Oozeling, Oily Slimeling, or Toxic Wasteling, try them first, and use Absorb/Corrosion/Acidic Goo. Place the two dots on and then absorb. I find I can EASILY solo all three pets with a single ooze. So I end up being able to level a lower level pet on this trainer.

My Team:

Disgusting Oozling, Spectral Tiger Cub (or leveler), Hippogryph Hatchling.

Burning Pandaren Spirit – Townlong Steppes

Fire Spirit (Elemental), Crimson (Dragonkin), and Glowy (flying)

First off pull out the Rapana Whelk against the Fire Spirit. His critter family, plus his aquatic abilities make him very powerful.

A standard humanoid will do nicely versus his dragon, but really, the best choice is a dragonkin with humanoid abilities. He will cast a cyclone ability that will heavily damage any aquatic pets you have on your back line, so don’t have any. Most efficient pets here, Soul of the Aspects or Death Talon Whelpguard.

Glowy is fairly easy to beat with anything with a nuke, but most efficient are Dragons with Magic abilities. Bust out a Nether Faerie Hatchling or an Emerald Whelpling and tear him up.

My Team:

Rapana Whelk, Murkimus, and Emerald Whelpling.

Thundering Pandaren Spirit – Vale of Eternal Blossoms

Earth Spirit (Elemental), Sludgy (Critter), and Darnak (Beast)

I hate this guy.

First off, his Earth Spirit will stun the crap out of your first pet. Pull out the Rapana Whelk and make him pay.

Sludgy is the perfect foil to a Fluxfire Feline, so bust that one out when your Whelk dies, and watch Sludgy die quickly. Now your FFF isn’t going to last very long against the third guy, BUT if you haven’t rezzed yet, and still have enough time to get off 3 moves, you have this fight with just these two pets. Just be sure to PASS on your turn if he is burrowed and your attack is all queued up.

Obviously, mechanical is very strong against Darnak, but he is very strong against Mechanical. So if your FFF has taken too much damage, try the Cenarian Hatchling with his liftoff timed to avoid the burrow.

My team:

Rapana Whelk, Fluxfire Feline, and Hippogryph Hatchling.

Whispering Pandaren Spirit – Jade Forest

Dusty (Critter), Whispertail (Dragonkin), and Air Spirit (Elemental)

Dusty hits weak against dragons and is weak to beast abilities. So best here is a dragon with beast abilities like the Dragonhawk Hatchlings. Alternaitely use a strong beast pet, but watch out, he likes to cocoon and you don’t want to waste your best shots.

Whispertail is again a dragon, so here is another use for your humanoid. If you are lucky enough to have a Death Talon Whelpguard he shines here since he is strong against Whispertail’s attacks, and uses humanoid attacks.

The air spirit is a pita, just because of his self healing. A Rapana Whelk does well here, with its own healing, but the fight can drag on for a while. Alternatively use a FFF or a dragon with a huge nuke.

My team:

Rapana Whelk, Emerald Whelpling, Spectral Tiger Cub.

 

As you will notice, I use several pets over and over again, thus it’s worth your time to go and get a rare and level them up:

Rapana Whelk

Death Talon Guard

Fluxfire Feline

 

Store bought pets:

Pandaren Monk

Cenarian Hatchling (a copy of the Hippogryph Hatchling TCG pet)

 

These 5 form a very nice base that will allow you to take out all the Pandaren trainers. See my post about leveling pets to get them leveled up quickly.

Is this going to improve the game? – A Design Question

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“If someone says, ‘It would be cool if…’ tie them up and throw them in a closet until the game is done.”

That might be a bit of a harsh reaction, but if there is one thing I have learned in video game design it is this: ALWAYS CRITIQUE YOUR WORK.

Is this thing you are doing, this choice you are making, is it *vitally* important to the game. Will it make the game better as well as not break or make the game worse?

Let’s look at a few examples:

Skylanders: Spyro’s Adventure, I worked on the Darklight Crypt expansion. One of the things I chose to do early was have a “boss” fight at the end. Most of the other levels, if they had bosses, they were against Kaos, and all done by another designer. But Darklight Crypt was an adventure pack level, meaning the user would have to spend extra money to get the toy for it to unlock the level. The theme was dark and very haunted crypt castle kind of place. So the boss I created ended up being a huge eyeball.

Queue the jokes. “I see you!” The boss would shout and kids would burst into fits of giggles. Was the boss fight the best? Nope. It was a super simple push the button to make the boss vulnerable and then hit him with the big guns, repeat three times, and win. The fight wasn’t the reason to include it. The ability to cleanly mark the end of the level with a climatic moment was. The addition of a bad guy the player could see and interact with was pretty important too. The humor that tagged along turned out to be vital to the level as well, but at the time we didn’t know that would happen.

The inclusion of the boss was risky. I was new to the project and studio. The fight was a complex bit of scripting. There were a dozen things that could have gone wrong. There was bad choices made within the fight (locking out players from using two cannons at once). BUT in the end, we can see that it added so much of the heart and character to the level, it wouldn’t be the same without it. When I suggested putting it in, I made these arguments for it: It makes the level feel different from the main game, with a boss fight at the end. It gives the player a firm target and goal, that is clear from the beginning of the level. It wouldn’t detract from the level, because it would give it a climatic moment and would be very simple for the player to understand.

I think, for the most part, it was successful. One thing that we did fail on, and learned our lesson, was using the main mechanic of the level, switching worlds, in the boss fight. Occulus, while awesome on so many levels (did you notice after him, there comes Eyebrawl?) didn’t fit within the switching mechanic of the level well. I shoehorned some switching in, but it felt out of place. In Giants, we did this MUCH better with the boss at the end of Wilikins Isle, the new switching level. I worked with the designer who did the boss fight to make sure that it incorporated switching in an organic way. Of course, it helped that before I ever suggested it, I knew he was an Ikaruga fan. It made it very easy to convince him.

So why is this so important?

Because not every game can patch out their problems. You have to put every design decision under the microscope. Think about the player and how they are going to have to deal with each decision you make.

Another example:

World of Warcraft recently added pet battles. All the minipets crazy people (like myself) had been collecting as pure vanity items suddenly became the source of gameplay. They essentially turned pets into Pokemon, complete with elemental affinities and weaknesses. Pet battles is an amazing feature, that needs a great deal of polish. Deciding what parts need polishing becomes very clear the minute each decision has to be defended.

One of the major things to do as a pet battler is go out and fight Trainers. Much like Pokemon, these are NPCs that have a team of their own, that you, as a player can challenge and beat for rewards. One design decision, that looks good on paper, is that the early trainers have set orders to their team. The order that their pets fight in is always the same. This allows the player to start off on a good foot, by stacking their first pet against the trainer’s pet. As the trainers level though, their pets begin to appear in a semi random order. Meaning that they will choose to use one of two of their pets seemingly randomly at the beginning of battle. I know, I hate random. But in this case, it is clearly worthless.

Let’s say I go up against a trainer that can bring out either a critter or a dragon first. Well clearly, I want to stack my first pet to be against one of these two. So I pull out my humanoid, who is strong versus dragons. I initiate the battle. The trainer brings out their critter. I could, and it is clearly designed that I should, switch pets, forfeiting one turn to the trainer, to have my strong pet out. BUT they allowed us to forfeit the fight entirely, with no punishment for doing so. So instead, I just forfeit, then re-initiate the fight. Repeat until the trainer brings out her dragon first, then battle away. Sound tedious? OH IT IS.

At this point, the designer should defend their decisions. They have made two. 1. That pet trainers should pull out pets randomly. 2. That forfeiting costs the player nothing. First, look at the source design, Pokemon. In Pokemon, the trainers always use their Pokemon in a set order (also generally having a team with nearly all the same elements). Also, if the player wants to quit a fight… they have to lose all their Pokemon. So there is a conflict with the source design on both points.

Which feature makes the game better? If you could only have ONE, which one would you chose: Random pet order or forfeiting? I choose forfeiting. It’s never very fun to realize that your entire team is all wrong and then just have to suffer through being bludgeoned to death so you can try again.

So what about the random pet order? Well, defend it. 1. Does it improve the game? The argument could be made that it makes the fights more challenging. 2. Does it break or make the game worse? The ability to forfeit negates the challenge introduced in point 1, and the constant cycling to try and get the “correct” pet up first makes it tedious, so yes, it makes the game worse.

At this point, CUT IT. Rip it out. Not only are the battles less tedious, but also they make the fights easier on the players. If there is a need for challenge, do that in the numbers with a systems designer, or have the trainers use more “dual affinity” pets (like dragonkin who use all magic abilities, super tricky!). It takes some of the randomness out, and improves the flow of the mini-game. Designed is always better than random.

Unfortunately, according to patch notes, Blizzard has already decided to create a punishment for forfeiting. Now each of the pets on your team will take some small amount of damage when forfeiting. So rather than streamlining the game, they left the tedious part in, but increased the time it takes to get past it. NOW players will forfeit, then wait for the 8 minute timer on the ability to heal their pets to come up, heal the pets and try again. Or they will just stop fighting the trainers completely. (In explanation, they will not just switch out pets, because the high level trainers are so tightly tuned that even one miss or dodged attack can lead to the player losing even WITH the first pet being stacked to win.)

No design decision should be made without first asking, “Does this make the game better, without making anything worse?” Would the game be better without this feature?

Once the game is shipped, the players will see it, and rip it apart. They won’t ever know about the features that were cut or didn’t make it in their original state, but they will see the broken or bad features that are present.

 

Leveling Pets Quickly

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Reached a trainer with a vicious setup? Discovered a new pet you want to make a part of your main team? Want to sell leveled pets at a premium price?

These tips are targeted at players who haven’t reached the point in pet battling where they have a team that can just roll the Pandarian Tamers.

First, prepping the leveling process: One thing players seem to keep forgetting is that battle pets are account wide. It doesn’t have to be a level 90 engaging the fight. Now is the time for judicious use of alts! I have an alt sitting beside each of the Tamer Dailies that give bags. (Lydia Accoste, Karazhan; Stone Cold Trixxy, Winterspring; Bloodknight Antari, Shadowmoon Valley; Major Payne, Argent Tournament; etc) But for leveling, I only use the first two Grand Master Tamers.

To begin leveling a new pet, start at Karazhan. Load up a low level pet and two level 25 pets. The high level ringer pets must to be able to handle all three of the trainers pets. They have to be 25, as opposed to level 20-24, because if they are capped, they won’t “steal” experience from the low level pet. If two pets eligible to receive experience participate in the battle the amount of experience they would have received is split between the two, so leveling one pet is twice as fast as leveling two. The low level pet should be at least level 5 or so, to prevent being one shot. It only needs to be able to survive one round in the ring. If I am starting with a level 1, I pop up to Duskwood real quick and fight a few battles to get it up to level 3-4.

NOTE: The pet being power leveled has to be present for an entire round. It can’t start on the field and switch out immediately. Use any of its abilities, but debuffs are nicer, since they help the replacement pet.

Taking down Lydia’s trio (critters are very strong against her team) should get your newbie pet up to 7 or so. The next trainer is in Winterspring. The fastest way is to just park an alt there and switch over to them. Fly down and battle Trixxie. It’s possible for the trainer’s pet to one shot your leveler, even at level 7-8. Trixxie’s dragon is the most likely to do it. It’s never good, but it happens. If it does, forfeit the fight, heal, and try again.

The problem with the subsequent trainers that give bags is they all really need a strong team of 20+s to take them down. Generally the team even needs to be stacked specifically to fight that trainer.

The fastest method of leveling pets at this point is to battle all the aquatic pets rolling around the Vale of Eternal Blossoms (Shrine of Seven Stars for the Alliance or Shrine of Two Moons for Horde). Take your main, load up a team with two flying level 25s, and the pet you want to level, and go to town. The aquatic packs respawn fairly quickly and there is a stable master right by the flight master at the Shrine for when your flyers get knocked out. Until level 15 or so the low level pet will get 1 level per fight. At 15 it starts taking 2 fights, then at 20 or so it will take 3 fights per level.

Use this method to level a team specifically stacked and prepped to battle the Pandarian Tamers. With some luck in catching rares, it is possible to build a two pet team that can take out the Pandarian Tamers, at which point it might be worth it to try to level a third pet through them, if you are going to be killing them daily for bags anyway. I tend not to do this though, as re-starting the battle over and over to get the right starter pet, unlucky crits, unlucky misses, and it ends up taking longer than just grinding in the Vale.

Prime Targets for Stones

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With Battle-Stones, Blizzard introduced an easier way to get a rare pet. Simply capture a pet of any rarity, then use the Battle-Stone on them to make them rare. They also allow players to improve pets that have set rarities. There are two kinds of Flawless Battle-Stones, one that is boe and generic, and ones that are bop and limited to a family type. (Yes, there are Polished Battle-Stones, however, this article is focused on the ones that get pets to battling shape.)

The question becomes, once receiving a Battle-Stone, which pet is it best to use on? In the end, it should always be whatever pet you most want to use it on. This is simply a list of potential targets that might make a bit more sense than others.

In general this is how I prioritize stones:

  1. Hard to farm pets. (Minifernal, Giraffe Calf, Baby Ape, etc.)
  2. Pets that cannot be farmed as rare. (Like the Children’s Week pets.)
  3. A pet needed to make a team overpowered. (Minifernal, Mana Wyrmling, etc.)

So here’s my top picks for each family:

Humanoid:

Flayer Youngling – These guys have a long spawn time, and tons of campers, so they are a prime target for an early stone.

Peddlefeet – A very good battle pet, and he only comes in uncommon rarity

Dragonkin:

Emerald Proto-drake – Both a good battle pet, and a rare spawn.

Infinite Whelpling – Rare spawn, rumored to be a good battle pet, and heavily camped.

Flying:

Darkmoon Glowfly – Not only is this pet good, but he can only be farmed one week out of the month. It is likely going to be a huge pain to get him.

Gilnean Raven – A vendor pet with some very interesting abilities.

Tirisfal Batling (or Bat) – The Tirisfal Batling can only be learned as uncommon. The Bat can be farmed rare, but has so few spawns, it will likely take a great deal of time. Both have the Reckless Strike ability which is great for killing aquatic battle pets quickly.

Undead:

Ghostly Skull – Vendor pet, and good at pet battles.

Infested Bear Cub – This pet so rarely spawns as it needs a momma bear to do so, and even then, not all momma bears spawn the cub. It is worth it to kill the infested bears to force respawns of the bears themselves to increase the chance of a cub spawn

Critter:

Egbert – Only obtainable during Children’s Week, he is also uncommon when learned. He has a very powerful move set.

Wolpertinger – Only comes in uncommon and limited to Brewfest.

Magic:

Minifernal – Not only insanely difficult to farm, but also one of the best pets to counter the Fluxfire Feline.

Mana Wrymling – Also good against Fluxfire Feline, and only comes in uncommon.

Elemental:

Fel Flame – Rare spawn

Tiny Twister – Rare spawn requiring special circumstances.

Beast:

Baby Blizzard Bear – Only uncommon and only from the Anniversary achievement.

Baby Ape – Rare spawn requiring special circumstances.

Giraffe Calf – Rare spawn, that like the Infected Bear Cub, requires a momma giraffe to spawn.

Silithid Hatchling – Rare spawn requiring special circumstances.

Aquatic:

Wanderer’s Festival Hatchling – Rare spawn requiring special circumstances.

Emperor Crab – Strong battle pet

Fishy/Tiny Goldfish – Strong battle pet, and they only come in uncommon

Mechanical:

Fluxfire Feline – Currently the most broken overpowered pet out there. He might be nerfed to oblivion in 5.2, but will still be strong. Spawns fairly slowly, and is heavily farmed due to his current strength.

Anodized Robo Cub – Rare spawn, heavily camped.

Any of the engineering pets are also good targets for Battle-Stones as they are all uncommon. (Personal World Destroyer and Mechanical Chicken are the ones I would pick first, as both have Supercharge.)

 

There is no wrong answer when choosing a pet to boost, just some that might make life collecting easier.

Beating the Kittehs

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It’s getting patched in 5.2, but at the moment, the Fluxfire Feline (FFF) is the reigning champion for the title Most Overpowered and Broken pet.

Snagging a rare one of these cats, and then leveling it to 20+, grants a pet that on turn 3 can do 1800+ damage with very little drawback. Simply use their level 20 ability, Supercharge, followed by two Wind-Ups. Adding insult to injury, this ability negates resurrection passives as well, so no mechanical pets popping back up, no one turn to get a last shot in for undead. (This may or may not be a bug. Blizzard hasn’t commented on it.)

In 5.2 this combo move will be nerfed. But if we take a minute to look at the math, the nerf may not be enough to bump FFF from the Title. Currently, the Supercharge multiplies damage by 150% then adds that to the base damage. The Wind-up increases damage done by 10% and then on the second hit does ~702 damage. ((702 + (702 x .1)) + (772 x 1.5)) This gives us a base damage of 1930. Ouch. The proposed nerf will make Supercharge only multiply by 125%. (702 + 70 + 965) Giving FFF a base damage of 1737. This is still enough to one shot most pets.

The other change will extend Supercharge’s cooldown to 4 turns, but even so, chances are one pet will die very quickly.

The initial thought is to simply load up Elemental pets and give the FFF a triple fireball to its furry little face. But from my experience, pet battlers have gotten used to that, and so they will have a Magical Crawdad waiting on the sidelines to take out the Elementals. Surge, Shield Shell, and Wish make him a formidable opponent on his own, and versus Elementals, he is nasty.

So how can the FFF be countered?

Shimmering Wyrmling and Mana Wyrmling. They are the same pet. They have the same abilities, and are both magical pets. These two things are important. First, because they are magical pets their passive kicks in and hamstrings the FFF’s one-shot. Magical pets cannot be dealt more than 40% of their total health in one hit. At this point it is actually better for the FFF owner to just use Wind-Up. Second is their exceptionally interesting level 20 ability, Reflection, which reflects the damage back on the attacker, so it’s not only a block, but will one shot the FFF as well. Players tend to focus on rotations. They get in a groove and just let muscle memory take its course. If they do this versus the Wyrmlings, they are going to be on the receiving end of their own hyper boosted Wind-Up.

The Shimmering Wyrmling requires either gold to buy it off the Auction House or doing the Argent Tournament Dailies to the end. The Mana Wyrmling is a mere 40 gold in Netherstorm, but starts off uncommon, so it will require a battlestone to boost it to rare so its stats are competitive. The Wyrmlings are also pretty weak attackers on their own, so once reflection has gone off, it’s best to switch them out with a more tank like pet or a high damage pet.

Swapping the Wyrmlings back in for later parts of the battle to reflect again is just bonus, especially if they use other pets with buildup attacks (Pump for example).

It’s also worth trying to get a Minifernal of any rarity and using a battlestone on him, as he is not only a magical pet, but can use Immolate and Immolation, two Elemental attacks, against the FFF to deal out massive amounts of damage. He is, however, one of the excessively camped pets right now. Additionally a Flayer Youngling is a strong pet, with Reflection, but requires precision timing to get it off to stop the Supercharged Wind-Up.

The FFF is a powerful glass cannon, and well worth the time to tame and level, but is not impervious against a well-planned defense.

Blizzard, Lua, and Addons.

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After a rather amusing Twitter discussion, I realized that the little addon I wrote back in Wrath of the Lich King, to make sure I used Focus Magic, Mark of the Wild, and Trueshot Aura, when on those alts, was still something that was clearly needed for some in Cataclysm.

I hadn’t updated it, because honestly, I didn’t care. I only raid/run dungeons on 2-3 toons now (as opposed to Wrath when I ran the daily dungeon on *every.single.toon*) and so I didn’t need the reminders as much.

After someone mentioned wanting an addon to remind them to take off their chef’s hat, and someone else brought up the Dalaran rings, and then someone else mentioned forgetting their pets, it was clear I needed to buckle down and fix up my addon.

The things I learned this weekend:

1. I hate Lua when compared to the scripting language I use at work.

2. And/Or checks are always the first place to look for a mistake.

 

I got started by trying to figure out how to check for low level items. I hard coded it to pop on anything below item level 300 for a level 85. Seemed like a good marker for Cataclysm. I already did hard coded checks for Chef’s Hat, all Fishing Poles, and Dalaran Rings. If it found any, it would boot it out and give the player some snarky comment in their chat box about the item.

Then I hit my first problem. The little loop would run along fine, until it hit my character’s shirt slot. For those who don’t play WoW, there is a chest slot for armor, and a shirt slot for a shirt. The shirts in the game are a very specific piece of gear that is only worn there, and has no stats. So in this instance, it didn’t matter at all. My character doesn’t even *wear* a shirt, that’s how unimportant it is.

And that’s what caused the problem. See, the script would return nil on the shirt, then break trying to compare the nil value to 300. So I tried what I would have done at work. Essentially saying check the slot and if it’s the shirt, ignore it, and keep going. This would mean that it would never return on the shirt. This lead me to discover 2 things: 1. There is no way to get the slot number for a specific slot on the equipment screen without either just using it’s number or using it’s string name. This means I had to hard code it to just say, if it’s slot 4, keep going. Which lead me to number 2. Lua doesn’t have a “continue.” There is no way to say ignore this, and keep going on the loop, if it returns nil. So I had to go up and say, if this is nil AND this is slot 4, then handle the exception so it wouldn’t break the loop.

Now yes, I understand that it is good programming to handle exceptions like that, but at work, I could have simply scripted it to say, if nil, flow out 2. Meaning, if this would break, we are just going to ignore it, and move on to the next iteration of the loop. Is the way I was forced to code it better? Sure, it means that I know every single exception and deal with it. It means that if an item isn’t equipped, and one *should* be, then yes, it should return a warning.

After getting this running, I tried it out on several of my characters. It worked great. Sure, it got a bit spammy, and it would instantly remind you as soon as you equipped your fishing pole, but it seemed to do what I needed it to do.

So then I tested by logging on to several of my alts. All good, all good. OMG SPAM FROM HELL. I had logged onto my druid. My level 85 druid, who had exactly one item over level 300. I had gotten her to level 85, but I hadn’t even thought about her gear. So she had horrible gear.

Time to rethink my design.

So I went back to the code and instead, pulled the average item level (the same one used for queuing for dungeons) and instead checked to see if all your gear was within 30 points of that average. If it was lower, then it would warn you. This worked much better.

Alright, so on to testing.

As I played, I noticed something very odd. I was using an event, essentially a thing that triggers when something happens in game, called Player_Enters_World to recheck all the stuff RememberAll was supposed to be checking. This way, every time you hit a loading screen it would remind you of all the stuff you might need to change.

But every time you loaded in, it would trigger 3 times. I also noted that the information coming from my addon was doing very weird things. Including spamming once, correctly, then spamming a second time, only this time saying you were missing all the buffs you should have had, regardless of if you had them or not, then spamming a third time, once more missing all buffs.

As it turns out, when a player in WoW hits  a load screen, they are unloaded from their current zone, triggering the Player_Entering_World event for some reason, load into a “void zone” where the player exists, but they do not have buffs, etc, and then loading from there into the actual world, once it has been loaded in.