The Blank Pages

The List Every Game Designer Must Make

noreply@blogger.com (Ember) — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 22:22:00 +0000

When people find out I am a game designer, the inevitable question will come up: What is your favorite game?

I always pop my eyebrow and ask: What's your favorite leaf on that tree? Or something similarly snarky that requires them to choose a single item from a huge mass of similar items. It is easy to have a favorite color. There are about 10 basic ones, and you can easily experience them all and they all have a distinct difference from one another. There are over 100 games released every week. And that's just the ones with publishers! Not to mention all the indie games.

But as a Game Designer, it is my job to play lots of different games and "find the fun." Once I find the fun I can then figure out why some people find it fun and how to make a game that appeals to those play styles. So I am left with a list of games I love and a list I hate. I am not saying these are the best games ever made (though many of them are considered such by others), but rather these are the games that are ones I look back on and see true genius and a great deal of fun. To simplify matters, I am placing them in order of my discovery.

Kings Quest - To be fair, this should be Kings Quest 2. But it is an excellent series, so lets include them all. My earliest memory is watching my brother play this game on our computer. Late one night I was jolted from my sleep and informed, "I made it through the third door." I leapt from bed, so go see what was going to happen. My mother, coming home late from work, was quite furious at us for being out of bed. But when my brother quietly stated that he made it through the third door, she joined us at the computer for a bit of late night game completion. Roberta Williams was the designer on this game and I often site her as an influence in my gaming career.

Zork - Zork is a text adventure from the days of green screens and floppy discs. I played Zork endlessly for most of my early years. Not only did it inspire my imagination at an Underground Empire, but I learned a great deal of vocabulary and reading from this game. I actually had an argument with a teacher over xyzzy being a word. I can also recall her shocked face when I called her overly verbose. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.

Myst - Myst is the game everyone loves to hate. I love Myst. It was the first game I ever beat on my own. At this point I thought, I can play games too, not just my brother. I loved it. The environments, the puzzles, the sheer story that exuded from the setting. I also encountered the books and read those. This crossover of books and games was the first step to my fascination with the meta-game.

Legend of Dragoon - LoD was a Final Fantasy like game on the Playstation. I was never into Final Fantasy, so this game filled that void. I saw the potential in timing based gameplay, learned the best way to "kill" a character in an RPG, and learned that bosses who are wildly overpowered feel like cheaters. I have also beaten this game from beginning to end about 6 times. That includes the insanely difficult side bosses.

Suikoden - Suikoden is a turn based RPG with large scale rock paper scissor battles, with a dash of collecting thrown in. You can have a party of 6 various characters and must recruit 107 characters to your cause. An inspired game, with a heart wrenching story, and this game consumed a great deal of my time. Including going back and replaying the entire thing to save those two idiot characters. You know who I am talking about.

Morrowind - Morrowind is the third Elder Scrolls game and is a perfect example of an RPG fantasy world done well. I purchased Morrowind just after getting a new computer. Then proceeded to play it approximately 4-6 hours a day, more on weekends, for the next 6 months. Also I never beat this game. I literally got completely derailed with stealing *everything* that wasn't nailed down. I do mean everything. I robbed the rich, the poor, the merchants, the monsters... if I could pick it up, it got picked up and re-located to my "house", which was really just an empty building I could drop stuff in.

Knights of the Old Republic - Not only was KotoR the latest in a series of excellent RPGs from Bioware, but it was also Star Wars. Annoying female characters aside, I enjoyed the world, the Pazzak and dear God, HK-47... The *best* character of all time. But this game truly made this list because of the writing. I actually cried at one point because a bunch of polygons told me he loved me. Absurd I know, but wow, did it make for a good game.

Symphony of the Night - I never played Castlevania until this game. I have played this game enough to possibly make up for it. Alucard was not only beautiful, but the animation was glorious. The different forms and the sheer genius of just flipping the castle! So awesome. I have been told Super Metroid is essentially the same game, but the theme here is so much more compelling.

Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time - For years this was the only game I had on the N64. I love all Zelda games, but this one holds a special place in my heart for two reasons. 1. It was the first one I beat on my own. 2. I didn't have a rumble pack. The lesson learned from Suikoden about beating a game at 100% was instilled far enough. I wanted to get all 100 skull spiders, but I didn't have the pack. What I did have was a walkthrough guide borrowed from a friend that showed screenshots for those last two locations. Commence bombing like mad in those areas to find the last two spiders. Note to game designers - random bombing is *not* fun.

Eternal Darkness - Eternal Darkness did so many things well. The game intentionally messed with the player, was scary and creepy, and managed to reuse environments in entirely interesting ways. The sanity meter was an excellent addition and I have to say they got me. If you tried to save when you had low sanity, you had a chance to see a message that said "Deleting all saved games." I leapt across a coffee table and started ripping everything out of the front of my GameCube. Well played Silicone Knights, well played. The player took on the role of 8-10 different characters, and rehashed the same 4-5 locations, to great effect. You truly felt like you were a part of a struggle for the ages.

World of Warcraft - How can I write about my best loved games and not mention WoW? If I told you what my /played was, you would likely think me quite insane. WoW takes all the best things from RPGs, character classes, lots of skills, epic fights, mad loot and combines that with achievements, collecting, crafting, and socializing. I find that playing WoW is an awful lot like being in a well known club. I go to the coffee shop and I get extra caramel because the guy making my latte plays WoW. I start a new job and nose out the WoWers and next thing I know we are running dungeons over lunch. Millions of people play WoW, and I am one of those. The truly great thing is it gives me a common experience with people I encounter.

Bioshock - Bioshock should more rightly be called System Shock 3. But it is also the first FPS I have ever enjoyed. The designers worked diligently to allow the player to play the game the way they want to play. I set up traps for Big Daddies and take them out easily.

Valkyria Chronicles - I stop playing WoW for 4 days to take the time to beat this unique and yet completely familiar Strategy game. The art style was glorious and the game play was enjoyable. I especially enjoyed the third person view they used for the combat. It was a wonderful way to add a new look to a strategy game.

Plants vs. Zombies - Tower defense with a hint of whimsy and a dash of hilarity. Popcap is good at making easy games that play great and this one is no exception.

Persona 4 - Mix JRPG, with some Pokemon, and a bit of dating sim and you get Persona 4. Which is a terrible explanation. Just go buy it and play it. It's a terribly unique game.

Sunflowers are my Friends

noreply@blogger.com (Ember) — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 23:10:00 +0000

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 become 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 incessently 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.

Hero of Ages

noreply@blogger.com (Ember) — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 20:48:00 +0000

I finished the Mistborn series and as such I am compelled to review the final book. Let me start with *SPOILERS* for this and many other series I have read. (Mistborn, WoT, Harry Potter, Mithgar.)

I must say, the first two books were exceptional. I strongly recommend them for anyone interested in fantasy but bored by the overabundance of the same old thing.

It is difficult to end a series and end it well. Do you end on a positive note? Do you conclude the entire story? Do you leave it a bit open ended? Do you have the final chapter saying "Where are they now?" When J.K. Rowling was finishing book 7 she said in an interview she was tempted to kill Harry. Not because she didn't love him or felt he needed to die, but because she knew that would *end* the series. Without him, there is no continuing.

To go ahead and spoil it, at the end of Mistborn, Brandon Sanderson proceeds to kill off the MAIN character and her husband, who is essentially the second main character. Now I am a Joss Whedon fan. I am used to losing characters. But the ending seemed... wrong. These were not the first two characters to die. In fact, several other major characters pass in the telling of the story. But all of them "felt right" meaning that when the character died you were left with a sense of resolution and completion. You missed the character, but you could see how the death was required to make other characters stronger and progress the story. Much like Dumbledore must die, otherwise Harry will never strike out on his own and become the man and wizard required to defeat Voldemort.

So why did the ending of Hero of Ages leave me bereft? Well to begin with, I read fantasy, as opposed to Non-fiction, for enjoyment and the happy endings. I like when good conquers evil and all the good guys go home, get married and have babies. It just feels nice. It is, after all, the fantasy of any hero. Kill the dragon, save the princess. But even this isn't 100%. When I read Voyage of the Fox Rider, I was distraught at the end of the book. Aylis was dead. Or presumed dead. But then, I understood. I knew there was a slim chance, but even if she had died it was necessary for Aravan to move forward. (Fortunately, she did not die and they were reunited 8 books or 8000 years later, depending on how you look at it. Which let me tell you, was a very emotional time for me.)

Near the end, Vin, the focus of the story, is imbued with the power of Preservation, one of the two gods in the story. (Up until this point the book is beyond excellent.) She becomes a god. At this point I immediately thought, well crap. Unless she could make Elend (her husband) a god, she was already irreparably separated from him. Then it occurred to me. No! She has to give up the power! I mean, after all, this is the crux of the story. Ruin was trapped and needed to be freed. He changed the legends to say she needed to give away the power. But what if Ruin didn't change it much? What if instead it meant she had to give the power over to a person who could use it properly? But of course! That is it. Knowing that knowledge of religion and belief was a major theme of the book, this made sense to me. She would give the power to the one character who truly understood religion, natural and otherwise, and had all of the knowledge needed to make everything right within the world, Sazed. Ah ha! and so I kept reading.

But then the unthinkable happens. Elend is beheaded. In a short, one sentence clip, this character, so vital and central, dies. With nary a whisper. Of course, I expect Vin to go revenge mode. She doesn't. And in fact states something to the effect of "Well you just got rid of the only thing I had to fight for." and proceeds to suicide against the strength of Ruin, killing him as well as herself. I can honestly say I stared dumbfounded at the book for at least 5 minutes. The essences of Ruin and Preservation float down, Sazed takes over, and makes everything right, using both powers. Of course the book ends with the implication that Vin and Elend have gone on, and are happy in the after life, but all that remains are a ton of minor characters.

First, if you plan on killing the main character, you had better have a backup ready and loved. In Harry Potter, Rowling had Ron and Hermoine. If Harry had died, we would all look to those two and feel better. At least they made it. Sanderson had no such backup. Who cares if the world was saved if all the characters we truly cared about are dead? Even having Vin die, with Elend you would have had someone to hang on to.

In the end, I am left with a sense of loss, failure, and the question of why. Why were these two deaths necessary to the story. I can only answer that they weren't. Vin could have given up the power of Preservation to Sazed and become normal once again. Ruin was *still* thwarted by Elend and the Allomancers burning all of the Atium. Sazed still had the power and knowledge to restore the world and it's ecosystem. He didn't *need* Ruin to do that. What of Ruin? Well, considering the Atium crystals were destroyed and all the Atium burned... He is going to have to wait a few thousand years to regain the power to destroy the world. Plenty of time for Sazed to build power or to figure out a way to balance against Ruin once again. Essentially return to the status quo. But instead Sanderson takes the easy way out. It is a final win, but at that point you don't care. It would have been better to allow for the short term win, with the survival of the characters you know and love, with the knowledge that in a thousand years, another battle will be fought.

The only thing I can conclude is that he wanted the story to be done with. No hope of returning or falling back on the series. We have all seen the fantasy author who writes one or two good books then proceeds to write way past the point the story can sustain. But is that a good reason to slaughter your main characters? I say no. Even with the short term win, we know all those characters will die of old age. We know that when the battle is fought in the future, that will be with different people. And even so, with one minor change, don't allow the Atium crystals to regrow, you can prevent that to begin with! To this possible explanation I say, get some self control and be done with it!

Now I am wildly concerned about the end of Wheel of Time. Please, please please let RJ have written a list of who survives, who dies, and why. Otherwise we may see the mass slaughter of dozens of characters we love.

Bejeweled Blitz on facebook

noreply@blogger.com (Ember) — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 20:33:00 +0000

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. :)

Pewter Drag

noreply@blogger.com (Ember) — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 00:13:00 +0000

After two months of crunching on my current game project we were given two lovely weeks off at Christmas. Interestingly enough after spending so much time so intently focused on one thing it makes it exceptionally hard to focus on nothing. During this odd strange feeling like I should be doing *something* I picked up my copy of Mistborn, Brandon Sanderson's first novel in the Mistborn series. I purchased it over a year ago when I first heard he was going to be working on Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time. I read Elantris, and was pleased, so I put the other books on my shelf and carried on as normal.

Sitting down to read Mistborn, I slogged through the first few chapters, once again annoyed by the belief that some authors have come to that they should simply immerse their reader in the world they have created and let them figure out what is going on by themselves. And while this *can* work, it doesn't always. Unfortunately I felt this way about many of the new ideas introduced in Mistborn. Fortunately, I tend to be stubborn and persisted. I kept reading.

And kept reading.

Next thing I knew, I had reached the end of the book. At the dim area just before dawn. I had read the entire book in nearly one sitting. Something I rarely do anymore. I got up, put Mistborn back on the shelf and pulled The Well of Ascension off the shelf. I double checked the covers to make sure that it was in fact the second book. The second and third books seemed oddly named to me. Once again, I felt a compulsion to keep reading.

Within a day I had finished the second book. 1400+ pages in less than 2 days. I felt odd. Strangely empty, and without thought. I had returned to the same feeling I had after working for 9 days straight.

In the book, there are characters who can do magic. They are called Allomancers and their magic springs from the ability to "burn" metals within themselves. One such metal is Pewter. An Allomancer swallows pewter and then "burns" it, and it gives them strength, health, and speed. As they use the strength, health, and speed, it burns away the pewter and when they run out, they can no longer magically enhance themselves. At one point in the story two Allomancers must travel a long distance very quickly, so they "pewter drag" which is essentially burning this metal at a high rate for a long period of time. Imagine it is a great deal like sprinting, only for hours using an outside force to keep you awake and moving. When the characters arrive at their destination, they have to keep taking the pewter, otherwise they would fall unconscious from the stress they had just inflicted on their bodies.

As I sat, debating on getting the third book down, I pondered the world, the magical system, and the writing. I pondered, as always, what I would do if able to use this magic. What risks would I likely fall to. Of course, Pewter Drag came to mind. I was sitting on my couch, exhausted, but I wanted to keep going, just like the characters. At work, I had become used to the long hours, but wanted more sleep. Pewter Drag. In fact, if you consider the effects of caffeine and the quantities to which I am addicted to it, I find this metal magic system completely believable. And the repercussions believable.

As I begin the third book, I look forward to seeing how the series ends. But I also feel an odd sense of kinship to the characters as I feel a greater connection to them. We have both after all experienced Pewter Drag.

Good Manners

noreply@blogger.com (Ember) — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 21:36:00 +0000

I have heard Psychologists call this the Age of Entitlement. The implication is that due to the "everyone is special" teaching practices of the last 20 or so years, we have an entire generation of people who have grown up believing that they are more important than others or entitled to special treatment. This mentality is common enough that I recognize it, even if I don't apply it to an entire generation. I encounter people who honestly feel it is all about them. These are people who max out their credit cards to buy expensive clothes rather than buy something from Walmart simply because they could never been seen in Walmart clothes. These are people who scoff at economical cars. These are people who look at the unemployed and say "Well I have a job, obviously you are just lazy or aren't trying hard enough."

Most of the time, when I encounter these people, I think to myself, I hope karma shows them otherwise, then shrug and walk away. But these "entitled" have begun to worm their way into my holiday and my patience is growing thin. They have the belief that they are more important than others and as such have lost basic Good Manners. They get angry when you wish them a Merry Christmas because offense of offenses they don't believe in God or Jesus and instead they celebrate a Holiday.

Well wonderful for them. Now they can shut up and go away. As a kid I was often threatened with a spanking if I was rude or mean to someone older than I was. Even now I find myself saying Sir or Ma'am to someone who might remotely be 5 minutes older than me. My mother always told me to be polite, and so I try. Some movie, I can't remember which, had a character who said "Good Manners is simply a way of telling someone you respect them and you want them to be comfortable." My, what a revelation! Showing respect for someone you don't know and trying to make them comfortable?!? How un-entitled of you.

I celebrate Christmas, with a bit of religion thrown in. But if someone wished me a Happy Hanukkah I would smile and say "Thank you! Happy Hanukkah to you as well!" I don't celebrate Hanukkah, but good manners says I should respect others and their holidays. This means not assuming that they know my beliefs or customs and not being offended when they are wishing me good things in their own way.

We need a little less entitlement and quite a bit more good manners, and some understanding that everyone is someone worth respecting, holidays and all.

Merry Christmas and BAH HUMBUG!

noreply@blogger.com (Ember) — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 19:45:00 +0000

So I saw a quiz on Facebook that terribly concerned me.

Do you get offended when someone says Happy Holidays?

I looked at this and thought, wow, what an idiot. Who would make a question that was so obviously one sided? Then I read the results. Shockingly 20% of the people said Yes, they were offended when someone said Happy Holidays. Are you KIDDING ME? I am all for political correctness, but this isn't about being correct or polite, or non-offensive. This is about Christmas.

Put aside your feelings on religion or commercialism and think back to being a kid. There is a reason "like a kid at Christmas" is such an apt comparison to people who are happy and excited. At the very basic level Christmas is about family, friends, celebrating, and doing nice things without the expectation of getting something in return. Christmas is joy, love, peace, and hope all rolled into one ball of well wishes. A beautiful tree, with brightly colored bulbs, bright lights, a cup of cocoa or coffee, snuggled under a blanket looking down at the wrapped packages knowing you are going to get to open them in the morning. Knowing you got someone something they will love and get to see the look on their face when they open it.

When I wish someone a Merry Christmas, or a Happy Holidays I am telling them, I wish for you all the best things this season. I wish for you to spend time with people you love, eating food you love, opening presents you love, and generally just have a wonderful moment in an otherwise normal year.

I am NOT saying you have to believe in Jesus, not saying worship at the altar of capitalism, not saying I think your religion is inferior. I am wishing you a Merry Christmas, in all of the Hallmark sense of the word. I usually respond with Merry Christmas or Happy Holidays depending on what you said to me. To me they are interchangeable and mean the exact same thing.

For those of you out there who get your panties in a twist over someone saying Merry Christmas or Happy Holidays, shame on you. Get over yourself for ONE MINUTE and stop to consider the fact that someone who likely doesn't know you from Adam, just wished you joy and happiness. How often in this day and age do you get a kind word from someone just for the sake of being nice?

Loremaster Joyia

noreply@blogger.com (Ember) — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 18:04:00 +0000

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!

I am a Browncoat.

noreply@blogger.com (Ember) — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 22:07:00 +0000

Copied from my journal from September 20th 2002.

Firefly, my new replacement for Buffy, is not Whedon's best work. To be honest it was confusing, jumbled, and how the hell did the chick get out of the box? I feel like I missed something. Is this even the first episode? I am sure I didn't miss one... but, it feels wrong somehow. The only redeemable part is when this dude gets kicked into the atmospheric engine. (Though oddly this doesn't seem to hurt the engine at all.) Other than that the show is a confusing wash of characters and actors I don't know why I should care about. I kind of like Kaylee. And River (the girl in the box) is delightfully weird. Ah well. I suppose I will keep watching it if Ben does. Also I hate the theme song.

I cannot even begin to describe the hilarity of my review of Train Job, the first episode aired on TV for Firefly. To be fair, it was in fact a replacement episode written in a weekend to replace Serenity, the true first episode. After weeks of commercials showing the girl in the box I was curious about her and here came the first episode and she isn't in the box. I was less than impressed. If not for a dearth of other programming to watch during my college time I am sure I would not have continued. But there wasn't anything better to do on a Friday night in a dry county so I kept watching. As each episode progressed I came to care for the characters and truly enjoy the show. Right about the time I felt it was good enough to encourage my family and friends to watch it, it was canceled.

I have trouble letting go. I started participating in letter writing campaigns and massive Internet petitions. Once the show came out on DVD, I purchased it on day one, then proceeded to purchase a half dozen other copies for friends and my mother. No one I convinced to watch Firefly thought it was a bad show and many of them became fans just like I was. About this time Universal was rumored to be thinking of making a movie. It was gas to the fire of my fandom. I emailed Universal insisting that if they made a Firefly movie, not only would I see it in theatres at least 3 times, but I would also buy the DVD the day it came out in stores. I am pleased to say I kept both promises.

I was quite lucky. Universal did 3 rounds of pre-screenings of Serenity. The third round included a showing in my hometown. I missed the ticket sales, but a Firefly fan in AL had purchased tickets he could no longer use and I got them. My mother, brother and I showed up for the 10pm showing at 6pm, and started the line for the movie. Needless to say, we were *quite* excited. We had even made t-shirts, with the Serenity logo on the front and River quotes on the back. It was June 23, and Joss Whedon's birthday, so we all signed one of those huge cards to send to him.

That fall when the movie came out I went to a midnight screening. And then again the next day. And then again the next weekend. I bought the shirt Hot Topic sold. I bought everything with Firefly on it.

Once it came out on DVD I not only bought it, but I also purchased the UMD copy, and the HDDVD versions, despite not having either player. I bought the toys, I bought the shirts, I bought the posters. I tried to vote with my wallet as loudly as I could. I loved Firefly and desperately wanted it back.

To this day I buy shiny new Firefly things that come out. I buy the shirts, books, comics, figures, ornaments... I buy each new version of the DVDs. Even the bluray ones, without having a bluray player.

While in grad school I built a level in Quake 4 that was a modified Serenity. The sheer number of phone interviews I have gotten off of that one piece of work is amazing. The number of times Serenity and Firefly come up in interviews and at work is unbelievable.

I love Firefly, and believe it may in fact be Joss' greatest work.

Joss Whedon is my...

noreply@blogger.com (Ember) — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 21:05:00 +0000

I first knowingly encountered Joss Whedon as a young high school student through my best friend. She introduced me to Buffy the Vampire Slayer and after a few episodes I was hopelessly hooked. The funny thing is, I didn't even have cable, so she would record it on Tuesday night and I would watch it Wednesday when she brought me the VHS tape.
By the end, I was still a fan, but the many twists and turns along the way had made me quite a bit less rabid than the beginning. (Dawn, Xander and Anya, Potential slayers...) I felt that there was a great deal of good, but in the end, not enough to make me want the show to keep going.
As part of Buffy ending I prepared by moving to Joss Whedon's new show, Firefly.
To say I was a Firefly fan would be an understatement in the extreme. I should take time to tell that whole story, but for now, let's just leave it at that.
I was of course crushed when Firefly was canceled and couldn't believe they would do that to my favorite show.
Years later I decided to fill the void with Joss' new show, Dollhouse. It looked interesting and had a ton of Battlestar Galactica alums in addition to the usual Whedon group. The first episode left me... unsatisfied. But I persevered. After all, Joss Whedon was my Master Now. Also, I wasn't exactly impressed with Firefly when I first started watching. After a season I was left with the feeling that I had fallen out of love with Whedon.
Don't get me wrong. Firefly is still the best tv show I have ever seen. But Whedon is no Pixar. he is able to miss. And miss he did with Dollhouse. I have no idea if it is the fact that the side characters are more interesting that the main one, the premise, or even just the fact that the main story arc could never truly arc because the main character's mind kept getting wiped... But the show did not hold me. Oh there were good parts. And Epitaph was far and away one of the most interesting pieces of television I have seen in years. But unlike Firefly, this show didn't grow on me. Even when talking to others I was lukewarm in my support of Dollhouse.
I can't help but shake the feeling that I have betrayed my fandom though. Is this how Star Trek fans who hated TNG felt? Is this how fans of TNG felt about Voyager and DS9? Suddenly I remember the feeling I walked away from episode 1 with. While Dollhouse is nowhere near the betrayal that was, it still has the same feeling. Why Joss would you take such a wonderful idea and drag it into the ground? Why would you trust it to Fox of all stations?

Why are you not still fighting for Firefly, a far superior show in every form and fashion? You were once my Master... but I am beginning to lose faith.

Paying to Play

noreply@blogger.com (Ember) — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 20:11:00 +0000

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.

Persona 4

noreply@blogger.com (Ember) — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 19:31:00 +0000

Persona 4 is a third person game developed by Atlus. Notice how I leave out what kind of game it is? Well that's the best part of Persona 4. It is a weird amalgamation of games. Imagine if an anime movie mated with a dating/friendship sim, then picked up some Pokemon, and threw in some dungeon crawling rpg-ness for good measure. Then you are beginning to scratch the surface of what kind of game Persona 4 is.

You step into the shoes of the main character, a young male going to live with his uncle for a year. There are unexplained things afoot and you become one of the Scooby Gang trying to discover the culprit. The story progresses from there, and for the most part I will try not to spoil it, but needless to say the twists and turns will leave you constantly thinking, just one more day...

The game progression is based on a calendar year. Each action you do takes a block of time in the game and when the time passes, it becomes a new day. Actions are tied to certain times of the day and are usually mutually exclusive. The Early Morning block is usually filled with school, or cut scenes setting up story. The Afternoon Block is your own. You can run around an talk to people, but must decide to either work on your social links or enter the dungeons.

Social Links are exactly what they sound like. They are the rating given to your social connections with other characters in the game. Each major character is associated with a Tarot figure and you have to try to build them up to level 10, the max social link. Fortunately this time is not wasted as the stronger a social link is, the better the bonuses in the dungeon for it are. This is the dating sim part of the game.

Dungeons are worlds of nightmare and shadow you enter to save your friends and combat the darkness creeping into your own world. In dungeons you collect persona, all taken from folklore and myth, then you can blend and level these persona and use them in battle. This is very much the Pokemon part of Persona 4 and is not only complex but endlessly engaging as you get new Persona and out grow old favorites.

I, as a level designer, categorically disagree with procedurally generated play spaces. Too often they create confusion and jogging simulators (where you spend a great deal of time running doing nothing). Persona 4 has a majority of procedurally generated dungeons, and while they are not great, they are better than most. But unlike most games dungeons in Persona 4 seem to be focused on single run experiences. The most effective way to progress is to clear a dungeon in one night then come back and clear all of them in a row when you have quests and need for more persona. The cut scenes and encounters are all setup as if they happen in a single night. The lore of the dream world even supports the random shifts in the layouts and levels of the dungeons. It isn't great, but it doesn't impede the gameplay.

The largest fault I can find with Persona 4 is the cultural adaptation. When many of your social link progression matters on choosing the "correct" answer it makes it difficult as an American determining what the correct answer is. Many of the correct choices seemed needlessly harsh or mean to me. Or I will be give three options that all mean the same thing to me. The indication that you chose the correct choice is shown by music notes above your character's head. It almost enforces the save, then test, and take notes so you can reload and re-do with the best options, gameplay. Which is bad.

Persona 4 is a great step into a strange and unique style of game long popular in Japan, but not as much here in America. There are 3 preceding Personas but all have inherent design problems that were fixed for this game making it quite a bit better and cohesive.

Novel November

noreply@blogger.com (Ember) — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 19:20:00 +0000

Personally I have never heard of Novel November before this year. It is a new concept for me. Writing a Novel in a month. Of course the definition of novel in this instance is 50,000 words. People have asked if I am participating.

Currently my life revolves around work and the crunch period we are in, but even so, should I participate in an arbitrary contest and line? Does 50,000 words make a novel?

An article discussing the spirit of the exercise said it was about quantity, not quality. Don't edit, don't research just write. In retrospect one of the things that hangs me up most often when writing is dealing with simple things that I have to research and determine the "correct" answer for. It bogs me down and slowly I lose focus until the story is lost. In that respect it seems to me that Novel November is perfect for me. Perhaps I should, just to force myself to write differently. I write this blog after all to flex my creative muscle and write things down. Is this not the same?

But does quantity, even in this instance trump quality? Is a sentence a collection of words? Is a novel a collection of 50,000 words that have some reason for being together? Or is a novel an experience better planned and organized? Perhaps it should be called Novel Rough Draft November, then Editing December.

The Gathering Storm: My thoughts

noreply@blogger.com (Ember) — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 19:48:00 +0000

I finished The Gathering Storm on Thursday and after a few days of reflection I wanted to express my feelings and thoughts on the book. First off, there are going to be spoilers. If you haven't finished, stop reading this and go finish first. Second, I liked it. Truly there is no replacement for RJ, but that doesn't mean I don't think someone, specifically Brandon Sanderson, can do it well.

I dove into the book with enthusiasm and excitement. I am willing to admit this may have colored my view, but I can honestly say the opening scene brought tears to my eyes. It didn't have anything to do with the main characters. It didn't have anything to do with minor characters, but it was poignant. These common people had every reason to ignore the events, or even run away from them. But instead they turned and faced the fight that was coming. This is the theme of Book 12 that echoes in every chapter and every character. They all stop running. They all stop scheming. They feel the weight of the Last Battle baring down on them. They turn and face their destiny and do what they must.

For the first time in several books the story spends a majority of its time on Rand. Many have complained that Rand was "too dark" in this book. I must disagree. This is the first book I have felt Rand was finally beginning to show the true strain and stress that he feels, both in his heart and on his soul. For the first time in this series I felt like the Dark One might win. Not through outright battle, but because Rand was crossing the point where his "the ends justifies the means" would lead to his fall from grace. Ishmael was not called the Betrayer of Hope for a reason. And in this book Rand has lost hope. Why does his tavern power no longer balance the bad with good? Because Rand himself no longer balances his belief that the battle is good with the evil that chases him. He no longer sees the good in the world. I have a strong suspicion in the next book we will see Rand capitulating more. Bowing to Tuon, Egwene, Cadsuane, Elyane... He has finally come to the same conclusion Egwene did while she was being punished by Silviana. Her own pain and suffering is laughable when compared to the pain and suffering of the world. Who cares is she is beaten three times a day? Everyone should be far more concerned that the Last Battle is coming and taking time out to quibble over punishments or who is higher rank than who is just absurd. If it took the Lews Therin side of him realizing that Ilyena might not be dead yet in this age and he needs to protect her, then I say it is about time. It seems so obvious to us that Min, Elayne, and Aviendha are the "three who are one" of Ilyena.

A goodly portion of the rest of the book revolves around Egwene and the White Tower. Talk about exciting! With each page Egwene strips power away from Elaida and convinces the Ajahs to support her. One of my favorite, mildly over looked points, was the fact that each Ajah attempts to convince Egwene to join them (excepting Red and Blue, for obvious reasons), once she is raised to Aes Sedai. What a stroke of genius! The Amyrlin should be of all Ajahs and yet none. Egwene was never a part of an Ajah, and yet, they all view her as one of them. Add this to the other events, including her Dream being so shocking proven true, and the use of Verin Sedai's work. I will never forget that chapter beginning with Egwene considering the stilling and execution of the Black Sisters in the Rebel Camp. What a blow to deal the shadow at this late hour! What an event! With so few words, Sanderson slams home the truth that no darkfriends will be allowed to survive. Suddenly the Rebel Aes Sedai are sure of two things. They can at least trust all of them are not dark friends and that there are yet dark friends in the tower. This gives them power and strength. They are all on the same side and have removed the worms eating at their core.

The deaths of two Forsaken are handled almost carelessly. The use of the True Source during one of these all but ensures that the Dark One really doesn't care if his Chosen are lost. He can get new Chosen, perhaps ones that aren't as arrogant or foolish. The strength of the writing for the scene where Semirhage is broken... I could *feel* the shame and embarrassment Semirhage felt. Mother's warned their children using her name for thousands of years and here, an upstart nobody with a tenth of the power, turned her over a knee and spanked her like a child, in front of a child! In an instant Semirhage lost all her power to Cadsuane. Imagine being known as the Aes Sedai who punished one of the Forsaken! As if her legend needed more ammunition.

While reading the book, I had several moments where a character would say or do something (usually say something) and I would laugh aloud. The snarky response or odd comment bringing the humor to the fore. In these moments I truly felt the difference between RJ and BS. RJ always kept a sense of decorum for his characters. They were never snarky or sarcastic, even when they had right to be, or should be. His dialog always came off as strong or angry. I was jarred from the story by this uncharacteristic depth to our beloved characters, but oddly, it wasn't followed by the feeling that they *shouldn't* be this way, but rather that they hadn't before!

My second complaint is the omission of several characters. I realize that this is directly contradictory to my happiness with focus on Rand and Egwene, but to omit Lan, Elayne, and Birgitte entirely, not to mention secondary characters like Taim, Loial, Galad, and the other Forsaken? I can only hope this means they have stronger parts in the next book. I will wait until then to truely decide if this was a negative for this book.

Finally, and this is truly my complaint, some things were too "neat." I know, I shouldn't complain too loudly. We were given answers to so many questions. Is Verin Black or Brown? What is with the "too young" Sitters? What will happen with Siuan and Gaerth? What about Gawyn? Literally dozens of conspiracy theories and sub plots were resolved in this book. But many of them were neat, clean, concise and practically tied with a bow. As if the author frequented theory boards and thus knew exactly every point that needed to be addressed to resolve them without quibble or qualm. Which is likely. And while I am pleased to be right on all accounts that I argued... I sometimes wonder... is this the "truth" as RJ saw it?

At the end of the day, I do not care. Having an answer printed in black and white is good enough to let me sleep at night, not always wondering what could have been. Minor issues aside, I am pleased with the book, and with Brandon Sanderson's writing as a whole. Long Live the Dragon.

Rule #2: Double Tap

noreply@blogger.com (Ember) — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 18:10:00 +0000

According to the folks at WoW.com it has been one year since the Scourge Invasion. This time last year, the denizens of Azeroth got to experience World War Z in it's least destructive form.

But to truly discuss what happened, we have to step back even further, to the introduction of Zul Gurub, better known as ZG. ZG was a new raid instance for max level characters. It revolves around trolls attempting to call up Hakkar, an evil god and bring him into life in Azeroth and essentially take over the world. Heroes had to go in, kill his followers and eventually kill him as well. Part of the final battle was a disease, called Corrupted Blood, that would inflict a few hundred damage on the carrier and pass it over to others standing nearby. This made for an exciting and challenging boss battle. But then something happened that the designers at Blizzard did not intend. The pets, minions of the Hunters and Warlocks, could also get Corrupted Blood, but unlike players, they could be dismissed, banished to a place where their state is saved and any diseases on the pet is retained, timers paused, until at such a time as they are called forth by their masters again. In places like Ironforge. Ironforge, that was filled with hundreds of lower level characters that could not survive the several hundred points of damage each second inflicted by the disease.

Within hours the major cities were covered in skeletons. The game ground to a halt as GMs worked feverishly to cleanse the disease from players. Oddly, the events made national news, drawing the attention of the CDC, who suddenly became very interested in the possibility of studying the effects of an outbreak without needing to deal with it. Strangely, the virtual world mirrored the real one in the fact that people reacted in similar manners to this threat. Some hid, running to the far corners of Azeroth, hiding from any player who might have the disease. Many flocked to the cities, to join in the revelry, especially those of a high enough level to withstand the disease, they came to watch the "show". The unscrupulous intentionally went and contracted the disease to bring it back to uninfected locals and spread it around, gleefully watching their fellow adventurers die.

In the end it took a hotfix and dozens of server resets to purge the disease. But the memory lived on. Many players, even those inconvenienced by the plague, looked back and remembered the sheer terror and fun that had reigned those few days. So of course, when planning what Arthas would do to usher in the age of the Lich King, what else but a controlled, planned version of the Corrupted Blood Plague?

The Zombie Invasion was brilliantly planned. The first day there were just a few crates in the neutral cities and if you did get infected you had 10 minutes to cleanse it off. The second day there were crates in the major cities and plagued critters in the neutral cities but now the plague only took 5 minutes to turn you into a brain hungry zombie. By the third day there were few places in Azeroth without Zombies and if you were infected you had a minute to get it off, before you would change and become one of Them.

When it first started I sought out a crate, then turned back to my city to create more zombies. It was sadly unfulfilling. There was too great a chance of it getting cleansed. Other people were able to kill me too easily. In short, not that much fun.

By the second day however, it was much much easier. Suddenly there were dozens of zombies instead of a handful. Enough of the ground cover to keep us alive. Enough of us to nom someone to death quickly. While alive, I fought the good fight. I tried to kill zombies, I cleansed the disease, I healed those fighting the horde. But once I died... Oh, you wouldn't heal me? NOM. You! You undercut my auctions! NOM. Idiot who always spams trade??? NOM NOM NOM. the sweetest revenge in a horde of not so mindless zombies. By the third day, all semblance of the game had broken down. It was a challenge to find someone *alive* much less do anything once you found them. Needless to say, I was not helping matters any at this point. I lurked near common log-in locations, leaping on the fresh meat as it appeared. We formed a massive raid and stormed Stormwind, killing NPCs and players indiscriminately.

There are some who look back at WWZ as a time of griefing, bad gameplay, and are still annoyed at the loss of time. I look back and think, I was a part of something amazing. I remember this historic event. Say what you will, but I was *there*. Four days of normal ho hum grinding traded for days of excitement, uncertainty and memories I fondly look back on a year later? Can I remember what I was doing two weeks before the WWZ? Of course not. But I remember this week with clarity.

I can only hope the Cataclysm event is as much fun.

Channeling His Spirit

noreply@blogger.com (Ember) — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:43:00 +0000

September 16, 2007, Robert Jordan passed away from a terminal illness. I had to pick up the phone and call my mother and tell her Robert Jordan had died. It was one of the saddest phone calls I have ever had to make. I felt sad and bereft. I spent the next week moping about and crying at odd times when I looked at the bookshelves in my apartment. My husband was horribly confused.

You see, I had never even met Robert Jordan.

He is most well known for his exceptionally long running and long winded series The Wheel of Time. At the time of his death, he was working on the twelfth and final book, A Memory of Light. For the next few months I lived with the knowledge that one of my favorite authors had died, without completing his series. A series I had read from beginning to end over 10 times from 2001 to the present. 8429 pages worth of fantasy at its best. I even had multiple World of Warcraft characters named after obscure characters in his books.

Harriet, Jordan's wife, promised his fans she would find someone to take the reams of notes and all of the information he dictated before he died and have the series completed. But how could she find someone who could possibly hope to fill Jordan's shoes? In December of 2007 it was announced she had chosen Brandon Sanderson to complete the series. At first I was heartsick. I had never even heard of Brandon Sanderson. I went and purchased his first novel, Elantris. After completing the book, in a single sitting I might add, I no longer felt worried. If he pulled off Book 12 at the same quality of Elantris, it would be good enough to handle, if just to know what happened.

Last Tuesday, The Gathering Storm was published. This is the first part of the final book, which had grown too large to print in a single volume. I acquired it immediately and sat down to read, apprehensive of how it would feel.

Now, 600+ pages into the book, I am certain that not only was Brandon Sanderson the right choice, he is perhaps the perfect choice. In 600+ pages I have only had a few small moments where something was worded a certain way, or character dialogue was written in such a manner that it felt "different" from Jordan. Not bad different, that is to say, most of the time I noticed it was after laughing out loud at the quick witted response of a character and thinking, they have never done that before. But for the majority, it still feels like Jordan is holding the pen. Maybe with a different editor, but still him. Brandon Sanderson said he wouldn't try to write in Jordan's style, but rather would write in his own voice and tell Jordan's story, but to this I say he mostly failed. Either that or he is channeling Jordan's spirit. In which case I say thank you, both to Sanderson for being so diligent and exceptional, and Jordan for letting him.

Tank, Heals, or DPS.

noreply@blogger.com (Ember) — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 21:23:00 +0000

Just recently I entered the newest chapter of the saga that WoW has been for the last 4 years of my life. I transferred severs, and factions, to join a group of friends and in doing so brought my tank to a place where she was not only needed but welcome.

When I first raided, I raided as a warlock. I was a die hard fan of affliction and yet, bowing to guild pressure, became a shadowbolt spammer in Burning Crusade. At 80, I returned to affliction only to be disappointed that I had to work ten times as hard to achieve the same goals. After a time I decided I had hit the cap as far as a Warlock was concerned and looked to changing over to a new class. I had acquired my second account by this point and so set about leveling to 80 with a shiny new Death Knight and Priest duo. The Priest simply followed while my Death Knight ripped everything to shreds. It was quite simple, after all the DK was more than over powered and only required the occasional heal. Once the duo reached 80 I entered the wonderful world of raid healing with my Priest. So this is the point where I feel I am finally able to outline the differences between the three roles.

DPS is very simple. Target the tank. Target what the tank has targeted. Kill it. With a few exceptions or special case fights where you attack other things, for the most part this is how you raid. Stay out of bad stuff and kill the big thing. Specs, rotations and cooldowns aside, you generally use a select few of your major class skills and kill whatever it is that needs killing.

Healing is much harder. You have 25 targets and have to keep all the green bars as far to the right as possible. To be fair, it is a very difficult thing to do and requires a great deal of concentration. But for the most part it is whack-a-mole, especially in a large raid setting. In Dungeons it is a bit easier, with only 5 moles to worry about, most focused on a single player. If people die, you get blamed. However, I have noticed, healers as a whole get blamed, generally not a specific healer. It could be a dozen problems, most likely a squishy DPS pulled aggro or the tank is trying to tank in the wrong presence/stance/spec/gear, etc.

But of the three roles, I have found tanking to be the hardest, most stressful, and least enjoyable.

First, my gear is focused on Defense, so I can never do anything "awesome". I don't kill things quickly, I don't have huge crits. Second, my repair bills are outrageous. DPS and Heals can avoid being hit and thus their gear lasts longer between repairs. After 3 heroics I have a 40g repair bill, without deaths. Third, it is apparently my job to save the stupid idiot who didn't watch where he was going and aggroed a second group. These are very similar to the DPS who are so focused on being the top of the charts that they ignore the threat they are producing. The worst of these will blame me for *not* producing enough threat, even though they have top tier gear and I have gear two levels below them. If I die, the healer isn't blamed, I am.

It really comes down to the fact that DPS can hide in a group of 15 (or more) other people, Healers can hide in a group of 8 (or more), but Tanks... well there is usually only one main tank and one off tank. You have your roles and if you fail, regardless of reason, you have 24 people who blame you. All the focus is on you. No pressure.

Help me Help you.

noreply@blogger.com (Ember) — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 20:44:00 +0000

Yet another WoW post based off my most recent experience in learning to Tank.

1. Omen is my friend. It is also your friend. Keep your friend close.
A good dps does great damage. A great DPS does good damage and keeps his threat below the tank's.
You could out gear me, I could have missed or been parried, they could have resisted, regardless I need to worry about rotations and building threat. Not chasing a mob across a room because you couldn't be bothered to watch a threat meter or listen to the loud crashing noise saying you are about to take threat. And before you say anything, I played a Warlock when they had 6 dots to track. Your job as DPS is to do damage, stay out of bad stuff, and not pull aggro. My job is to build threat, stay out of bad stuff, and focus on the 3 cooldowns and other special abilities I might need to keep the boss focused on me.

2. Speaking of running across the room...
If you do draw aggro run TOWARDS the tank, not away. My taunt has a 20 yd range. That is smaller than the range at which you can ranged attack the boss. I know when something big runs towards you it can be scary. Consider me your blanky. Cuddle me close when you are scared.

3. 3 Second Rule.
Healers have a 5 second rule. Tanks have a 3 second rule. If you are leading with a nasty spell that might crit for 15k, wait and cast it at a time that it doesn't land on the boss until the tank has had 3 seconds. If it is a DK or Pally tank and there are multiple mobs, wait 3 seconds regardless. They need the time to build enough aggro to protect you from pulling it if you crit.

4. Speaking of DKs and AoE...
I am a DK tank. Priests love me because I love the bubble. However if there are more than 2 guys you have to wait for me to drop Death and Decay (the big red circle thing) and give it 2 tics before blasting away with your AoE. If you are a DK, don't drop your death and decay until after you have seen me do Pestilence. Unless you feel like tanking.

5. How I generate threat:
As a DK tank I generate threat in three major ways:
Death and Decay: this generates an insane amount of threat for me. Do not cast your consecrate or death and decay in the same spot at the start of the fight unless you want to tank with me. If you don't see it go down, be worried, it means something got missed and I won't be building threat as quickly.
Rune Strike: this is actually my bread and butter. It generates a huge amount of threat on any one target. Problem - I can only use it if I parry them. (This is also why you might notice me leaning towards a balanced parry/dodge number.)
Damage: as a Frost tank I get some nice survivability in the form of three cooldowns that increase my armor and decrease my damage. I also get a great skill that increases the threat off my frost spells. What does this mean? Strength is just as important as Stamina to me. High damage is important because it means high threat. Guys who resist or are immune to water/frost damage... they are going to be a problem, hold off with the 15k crits until you see the black lines flow between the mobs. This means I have Pestilence and they all have dots from me ticking away on them now.

RNG - Why Random Isn't Fun

noreply@blogger.com (Ember) — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 17:41:00 +0000

I have always made comments that the Random Number Generator (RNG) hates me. I love DKP systems as they mean I don't have to rely on the RNG to get items I need and want. This brings me to the first "Bad Designer - No Twinkie!" moment I had when playing a game like World of Warcraft. Random is not fun.

You and four other players have valiantly battled to the end of a dungeon and slain the evil dude. And he drops... a rather nice piece of plate gear... for the three clothies, one leather, and one mail wearer. It's like getting a birthday cake with that nasty red icing. Or even worse, your grandmother gets the sugar free variety. Yuck. It is a random loot table with drop percentages that are not weighted or adjusted in any way.

What does it matter? You can run the dungeon again. Well not always. In WoW the best gear drops from raids that have 1 week lock outs. I have on more than one occasion watched a player run the same raid every week for *months* waiting for a single item to drop. It is like rooting for the underdog sports team. After time it becomes the entire guild's crusade. No one would even think of rolling on that item if the player was in the raid. It becomes the unspoken rule. If the watch drops, Brutality gets it. Period. The sad truth is, he never got it. It always seemed to drop when he wasn't in the raid. And we would give it to someone and say, "If you tell him you got it, we're going to hack your account and shard it." All the other purples he acquired during his raiding days were insignificant once he had spend months working towards a single item he never got. All his memories of Karazhan are replaced with a sense of disappointment and loathing because of a single item.

Blizzard has gone some lengths to fix this, like using armor tokens for tier drops so that fewer items go to waste, but it is hilariously funny to have 2 warlock/mage/hunter tokens drop and only have one player who can take it.

Hatred of the RNG has never been greater though since Blizzard introduced the Achievement system. There are dozens of achievements that can only be won through sheer dumb luck. The most frustrating of these are tied to the meta achievement: What a Long Strange Trip It's Been. Essentially it says "Participate in every holiday and get an awesome mount." How awesome is the mount. Well it is a 310% speed mount as opposed to a 280% speed mount. It goes faster. Alot faster. Previously the only way to get one was to be a hardcore raider or a hardcore pvper. Now you can get one for being a hardcore... casual player, as silly as that sounds.

I loved this idea, on principle when I first saw it. A way to reward casual players for participating in holidays. What Fun! Until I saw some of the achievements. Many require you to be max level. Well, okay, you really can't use a flying mount before 60, and they should include things that require all three expansions, but forcing players to do Heroic Dungeons? Those can be rough for casual players. Capping flags in EotS or capturing a location in AV? Really rough for non-pvpers. But you have two weeks to do these achievements and usually the first day is so filled with the people anyway you can wing it and be okay.

Then comes the sheer dumb luck achievements.
Toothpick - For the Halloween achievement you are required to get a toothpick from an innkeeper as part of the trick or treat, which you can only do once an hour. Doesn't sound hard does it? Well my first year I trick or treated like mad to try and get all the masks. Every hour on the hour while I was awake, even at work. I got the tooth pick exactly once. After 2 weeks of trick or treating? I got mine early so I really didn't think about it until someone is my guild was practically in tears because that was all they needed. And they had been getting up every hour of the night to trick or treat.
Roses - Not only does this achievement to get a bouquet of roses require you to run dungeons, but to do so until you get the bouquet! Which might require running them 10 or 15 times! Luckily they drop 100% from certain bosses, but still you could have a bad run of rolls. For most people it is a matter of begging others in their guild who already have it to run with them.
Sinister Calling - Another Halloween one. Originally both items only dropped from the Headless Horseman and both had low drop rates, then they hotfixed it so that both would drop from treat bags as well. Unfortunately those bags only drop about 60% of the time. The rest of the time it is costumes or tricks. Even if it is a bag it can be candy, a wand, a toothpick, or any one of the 20 masks. Needless to say this one is worse than most because even farming the Headless Horseman and getting bags every hour you could statically miss out on your mount because of the RNG.
Be Mine! - RNG strikes TWICE! That's right. This Valentines achievement was the first one I thought I might not get. Originally, when I got it, it required you to get all the candy hearts. First you have to RNG to get the treat bag, as opposed to the pet, basket, candy, dress, arrows, rockets, or rose petals. But just getting the bag wasn't enough, you had to draw the right candy from the bag. You can only get the gift once an hour, just like trick or treating. Oh right, and you only have 4 DAYS to do it.
Now according to WoWhead and the other sites the Lovely Black Dress and Peddlefeet pet both had lower drop rates than the bag of candies, such that they removed the Lovely Black Dress requirement from the Meta Achievement because it was "too rare". By Saturday evening of the event, I had not yet gotten my *first* bag of candies, but I had gotten 4 dresses and two pets. I proceeded to do the unthinkable. I set my alarm for 55 minutes and work up every hour that night to try and get the bag of candies. No luck. Sunday, now into the third day of the event, sleep deprived and frantic, I did not leave my computer for more than 20 minutes, activating the gift every chance I got. I got one bag and 6 of the candies, but remember at the time I needed all 8. So here we go, into Sunday night. Now you imagine explaining to your raid leader why you *have* to hearth back to get a gift. In the mid of the raid I got my second candy bag, but all 10 charges only yielded one new candy. The event only had 6 more hours. I was literally crying on vent about how horrible I felt. I was exhausted and my raid leader stopped giving me a hard time about going back. In fact he called a break on the next hour. Several members of the raid who had their Love Fool title switched them to something else. Everyone felt the pressure and depression of what was supposed to be a fun game, with fun achievements turning sour because of one person's bad luck. You can't trade candies so the people who had extra bags couldn't help, but just had to watch me suffer through the pain of wanting this one stupid candy. By 2 am I was mad. I was exhausted, having just spent my weekend, instead of resting, logging on every hour for some stupid RANDOM achievement. Oh and I wasn't the only one. The forums were full of other players in the same boat. One stinking candy away from a violet proto-drake. At 3am, with only 2 charges after the one I was about to activate my husband came out of the bedroom and asked me if I got it. I said not yet, and if I didn't he was to take my accounts, change my password and delete all the characters. I got my gift, and there was a bag of candy. The very first charge dropped the candy I needed and I got my achievement. Then I logged off and didn't play again for 2 weeks. It took me 2 weeks to get over what this stupid RNG had done. Oh and my count of dresses was 17 and 9 Peddlefeets.

Random isn't fun. Playing the game is fun. Leveling is fun, getting new gear is fun, getting crazy achievements is fun. Not fun - spending a weekend trying to get one stupid item. Esp. considering it is supposed to be the casual achievements. Even now that I have the achievement, and even the mount, I think the RNG achievements are horribly unfair. At least give the player some form of "grinding" towards it. Brewfest has tokens, why not have Valentine's tokens? If you are lucky, you get the drop from the innkeeper, if not, you spend 75% of the holiday farming the tokens and get the achievement anyway. You still participated. You still deserve the achievement. Weight the drops appropriately. In the end they adjusted the achievement, but it doesn't help much to those people who lost a weekend to it. Remove the randomness, make it achievable through perseverance and you will make a great number of people happy.

Guild Etiquette Part 6: I can haz Purplz?

noreply@blogger.com (Ember) — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 21:12:00 +0000

And finally it comes down to it. Epics. why do we raid? Epics. Why do we grind? Epics. What causes the MOST drama in WoW? Epics. (To be fair, Legendary counts here too, but there are so few and they are so hard to get, most of us are in it for the Purple, not Orange.)

Purples, lovely purple colored names that shout our awesomeness to the world. Lovely gear that is usually better looking than the average hodgepodge of blues and greens that make you look like rainbow barf. The look, the stats, the item level, these are the reasons we love purples.

Loot distribution is a variable thing. it is different depending on if you are in a PUG, 5 man all the way up to 25 man and changes depending on the "status" of a raid and the make-up.

1. People you don't know.
If you have PUGed anyone not in the guild and or "normal" run group you have to do several things right up front. First off, make sure the loot rules are clear. Second make sure they still have a chance of loot, or else they are going to leave.

Good Compromise: In 5 mans I generally set the "loot rules" to: A. Roll Need if you are going to put it on now and/or as soon as you gem/enchant it (main spec). B. Roll Greed for Off Spec and "flavor" stuff, but err to people who are going to use it. I may want said polearm to level my polearm skill with a good weapon instead of a sucky one, but I shouldn't take it away from someone who will use it as their main weapon for a DPS spec. C. No one is gonna need anything. With ToC this is more and more true. Here we just roll greed on everything. You can sell it, or if there is an enchanter you can hand it to them if they agree to disenchant it for you.

25 mans are a bit different. If you get a good 25 man pug rolling, first you are awesome, congrats, but it can also be a loot headache. A. Need for On Spec. B. Greed for Off Spec. (When considering dual specs you lean towards their "standard" main spec. So if someone is usually a Shadow Priest, they should Need dps gear not healing, regardless of what they are doing for your raid.) C. BoE items - Everyone Greeds. D. If you get an item, your name goes on the RL's List. You can't roll again until everyone else in your "armor class" set gets something. This requires a Keeper of the List who can quickly identify the 4 roles (Tank, Heal, Ranged DPS, Melee DPS) and how they apply to the various armor classes (Plate, Mail, Leather, Cloth, All). They group everyone together and then keep track. This also means raiders will wait to roll on a good upgrade over small ones. E. Tier Tokens are exempt. Everyone rolls on a tier token if they can use it. F. If it isn't claimed (wtf? how did this happen) it gets dis-enchanted and the shard is /rolled for, just like BoE items.

2. Guild Runs:
5 mans - Loot Council and Roll Offs. Aren't we glad we can trade? Fortunately we can hand off gear easily now. 5 mans are usually either only one player can use it, or very easy to loot council. Loot Council is the act of deciding who can use something more, or one person expressing a great need and everyone else passing. The only trick is, as a guild run, you really should consider passing all de items to the enchanter and then letting them keep any dream shards. Roll for Abyssal, but they use the dream to buy new enchants, unless your enchanter has them all.

25 Mans... And now everything changes.
First off, when something isn't taken it should be dis enchanted and the mats sold by a trustworthy guild officer to fund guild progression repairs.

What is the reason behind the majority of your guild's desire to raid? Progression or Purples? If it is progression then you will likely find a mix of DKP and Loot Council to your liking. DKP allows for players to get the specific items they want. This may fill an immediate need or complete a set. If using a zero sum system it also ensures that the only way someone can get exceptionally ahead of other guild members is to not get anything and raid an exceptionally long time. Which logically means they *should* get whatever they want. Loot Council allows a group to decide where the item can do the most good. Gearing the main tank and a spare, gearing the healers, etc first is a form of Loot Council. This can have two drawbacks though. One, there are no backups for these slots that can even hope to fill the void. If the main tank soaks up all the gear then there are no replacements for when real life gets in the way. Two, the people who get this attention tend to burn out faster. They have to be present for a raid to happen. They get all their gear quickly so they lose interest in the raid quicker. If your guild is just farming content, then go with rolls or DKP. This assures the widest distribution of purples among your raiders.

DKP systems:
DKP is a numerical way of tracking who should get the next item. DKP systems are wide an varied. A good system should follow these rules:
1. Easy to understand. If a person looking at your guild wants to know how long they are going to be waiting on gear it is good to tell them up front. This prevent disappointment later.
2. Obvious. When the spiffy sword of uber-awesomeness drops, everyone should be able to tell, without having the loot master explain, who is going to get the item.
3. No one gets too far ahead. No way to "bank" points. There are two things that cause someone to get ahead in DKP. One, they raid every single raid and then some. These people manage to get into pug raids and just badges to get what they need. By the time the guild is getting it, they already have it. To be fair though, these people are working twice as hard and putting into the raid without taking anything away, so they should have a ton of DKP. Two, Horders. These are the players you have to watch out for. They won't bid on items they clearly need to save dkp for bis items. How to combat them? Well it depends on your guild personality. A view I have seen taken was the GM taking the person aside and explaining that if they didn't start upgrading their gear they wouldn't we welcomed back to a raid. Letting an item get sharded because you want one specific uber item and then getting all your other upgrades while everyone else is just passing because they don't need it is just underhanded.
4. Timers. There needs to be a time limit on the DKP earned. Use it or lose it. 6 months seems to be a wide range for this. After 6 months purchases no longer count against you and earned points are removed.
5. Need is free. Hybrid classes make your raid flexible. Dual Specs do even further. But building three sets of gear instead of just one? Yeah it sucks. By allowing players to need on things for offspec they can gear with items that would otherwise get sharded. Off and Dual Specs. There isn't a great solution but one is to have your raiders register a main and off spec. They can change this setup with permission of the raid leader. This way they have to bid on certain items and can need on others.
6. Character specific *not* account specific. Why? Should the Raid Leader be able to build 2 months worth of DKP then bring his alt with greens and blues to a raid and get the uber-sword? That's why DKP needs to be limited to toons not accounts. Also it means if you need an alt toon (switching a dps for heals for example) it doesn't gimp the main toon to gear the alt.

What happens when something goes from Progression to Farm?
1. It depends on the make up of the raid. If more than 50% of purples are still going on players main spec and not to off spec or shard, it is still progression for that group, even if it is easy.
2. Once it is farm, let people still spend DKP if they want. Ever wanted something with a low drop rate? You know what I am talking about here. Even on farm these are contested items. Let people spend their DKP if they wish.
3. Alts begin to come out of the woodwork. Ever been on a farm raid that wipes due to low dps? Your alt percentage is too high. Run some ToC or 10s real quick on an off night to help with this, but ensure enough high level players are willing to assist to help with this.

Final words:
It needs to be fun for everyone. It needs to be fair, or at least quantifiable for everyone.
More drama happens from loot than any other. It is going to happen and not always be fair or friendly. Remember those bosses will drop that loot again.
Is it worth it to lose your guild and friends over a piece of gear you are likely to see again? Worth it to eventually not want to play WoW because of the loss of the people who make this game fun?
Don't be a douchebag.

Guild Etiquette Part 5: Who Gets to Go

noreply@blogger.com (Ember) — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 23:46:00 +0000

Raids are the pinnacle of difficulty in WoW. They are the place where you get the best achievements and the place you get the best loot. Every raiding guild has one goal. Get raiders and kick the crap out of whatever big nasty is the biggest nasty.

As sometimes happens, you can have too much of a good thing. So what do you do when you have 30 raiders show up to a 25 man raid?

Step 1: Is it progression or farm night?
This first question is required for determining who should be in your raid. Progression means you want your best raiders, most prepared, and best geared. If it is a farm night, usually you want to make sure your worst geared players get to go, but hang on to a core good group so it is still easy.

Step 2: It's Progression.
Sort out the required people first. Tanks, Heals, Buffs. Obviously you need your main and off tanks. Any extra tanks are told to switch to DPS. Tank healers, Raid aoe healers, and then fill in to the "max" number of healers needed, all else switch to dps. Remember with heals once you have your well geared tank heals, all other healers need to be spread out among the healing classes for maximum buff coverage while making sure to err on the side of aoe raid heals. Any remaining heals, switch to DPS. Now you have your vital people. time to whittle down the DPS. First pull your required buff classes that you haven't already gotten. Ones to watch out for: Warlocks with CoE or Boomkins. Shadow Priests with the +hit buff. Paladins, Hunters, Priests with replenishment. Once you have all these filled out, now you go for your big guns. Big guns are people who consistently top the DPS charts, listen well, and always come prepared. Fill in remaining holes with people who are consistently good at raiding.

Step 2: It's Farm.
First set aside your tank and heals. Now, ask if anyone is willing to step out. Pull the people with the worst gear and check how many there are. (Worst gear defined as people still wearing more blues/greens than purples.) 5 or less, put them all in the raid. Depending on the awesomeness of your core tank and heals, and possible high dps selection you should calculate how many "dead" players you can take. Assume all of the low geared players will die 2 seconds into the fight and *not* assist in any measure. Some guilds can take as many as 10 dead players. I usually try not to take more than 8. Then fill out as usual, erring towards the lower geared players end. You would rather take 2 DPS that put out 3k each and need gear from the instance than 2 who do 6k each and need nothing. You will still need a few heavy hitters, but try to bump the people who have zero or one upgrade left in the instance.

Step 3: Fair is Fair, roll for it.
Some guilds have all the remaining DPS /random for their spot. This is a fair-ish way to do it. But we all know the people who get screwed on this.

Step 4: Always give out some form of "raid credit".
Bad rolls, poor gear fall, or whatever, make sure that people who show up on time and ready to raid but get turned away don't have it happen to them again. If you show up ready to go and don't get to, give them a raid credit. Think of it as a ticket they can use to ensure their presence in the next raid. Limits should be put on this like it can only be used on the same instance (Naxx for Naxx or Uld for Uld, but no Naxx for Uld) and it has to be used within the next two weeks.

Step 5: Multi-night Raids.
In the beginning most guilds can't clear a raid in a single night. Raids like Naxx can get split over multiple nights. How do you pick who gets to go then? Always always give first priority to the people who are already saved to the raid.
Have everyone who was on the first raid whisper the raid ID to get their invite. Or simply compare the attendance list. This makes sure the people who cleared the first half get to experience the second half. Once you have them in the raid, identify needs and pull in to fill the holes following the standard selection criteria.

In the end, always choose your dependable people and make sure people get a good chance to raid.

Guild Etiquette Part 4: Consideration

noreply@blogger.com (Ember) — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 21:48:00 +0000

This signature from the official Blizzard forums sums it up nicely:

Your $14.99 says you can play however you want.
But the rest of the raid's $359.76 says to know your role

When you play WoW alone, solo, as if it were a single player game, I am all for doing whatever you wish. But when it comes time to raid, Courtesy is King. 24 other people are all depending on you to do what you must to see that this is a successful raid. Some laugh at the use of the word responsibility, but that is what raiding is, even for the casual crowd.

1. Be on time. If the raid starts at 8, be online at 7:30 and double checking your gear for the evening.

2. Double check your gear. We all do things other than raid. But be sure you are raid ready at pull time. This means PVP gear stowed, no fishing poles, no tournament lances.

3. Check your spec. Are you PVP specced? If you are one of several classes (like Warlocks) there are only so many of a certain spec that are useful in a raid, have you checked with the others to see what specs they are? Unless your raid leader has made it clear it is okay, be sure to not double up. Also be prepped to be either of your specs for the raid. Dual Specs make you valuable to a raid group.

4. Reagents, shards, food. The shame rank is especially useful here. If a Warlock shows up to a raid without soul shards... SHAME. It is simply inexcusable to show up to a raid without a vital part of your class' equipment. The tank doesn't show up without his weapon, you don't show up without yours. Reagents are needed and yeah, the cost sucks, but hey, that utility you prove with that reagent is part of why you get the invite. Everyone in the raid has some form of cost. As for food, bring stat food, regular food, or feasts, I don't care, but do not rely on Mage food. The one time you really need it, is the one time a Mage won't be on the raid.

5. Repair. Nobody likes the guy who has to leave the raid 15 minutes in to go repair. Do it before, when you check your reagents. Repairs bots are awesome for this.

6. Mods. Make sure all your mods are working and up to date. Some casual guilds don't require mods, but Deadly Boss Mod and Omen are so helpful and wonderful you should use them if possible.

7. Boss Strategies. Have you been to this instance before? Have you done the role you are about to do for this instance? Be sure to brush up.

8. Know YOUR ROLE. Dual specs allow raid leaders to pick and choose people, not only based on their ability to do their main role, but also their ability to do their secondary role. If you are a Holy/Shadow priest, know both roles and play the one the Raid Leader asks you to. Sure DPS is easier and more fun, but without heals, the raid doesn't make and nobody gets purples.

9. Learn to Role with it. Yes I did mean Role. This is best explained with a story.
Awesome guild goes into Naxx 25 for the first time. Gets to the first boss. Starts fighting. Right before the first insect swarm the warrior tank goes down. DK#1 flips on frost presence, taunts, and takes off running along the wall. Cheer! The raid is saved. Gets to other side, Off tank does his job with the add and here we go again.
Suddenly DK#1, hero of the hour, goes down. DK#2 flips to frost presence, taunts, and then takes off around the circle. (We have the boss at half health.) Someone laughs and says, hey, third and fourth DK, be ready. Not too long and the second DK goes down, and sure enough DK#3 took the raid leader seriously and immediately shifted to his new role, frost, taunt and run. In the real world this is called adaptive survival. You saw a need and shifted to fill it.
Back to the story. DK#4 gets his chance to be a hero, and the boss is getting pretty low. Suddenly the off tank dies and there is an add slaughtering the raid. The two warlocks, as a team, start scorching bursting the add to get aggro and kiting him around the room into the frost mage's aoes, effectively locking them down.
Then DK#4 goes down, with the boss at 2%. Bad-ass mr. pvp rogue steps in, pops evasion and tanks the boss just long enough for the mages and warlocks to burn him down. By this point all the ret pallys and elemental shamans are healing. Anu goes down with 8 of 25 raid members standing. Now any hard core raiding group would hate to be a part of this story. But for us, it is the thing of Legends and we talk about it all the time. If a raid leader shouts out in the middle of a raid to switch to x. Know your class well enough to switch.

10. Have fun. If you aren't having fun, find a way to have fun. Raids, especially progression raids can get wipe-y and tense. A good raid leader should call the raid before shouting starts, but tempers can flare easily. Remember this is still a game, and your guildies are your friends.

Guild Etiquette Part 3: Guild Chat

noreply@blogger.com (Ember) — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 02:02:00 +0000

Communication is everything. Communication in online games is vital to the success of a guild. Despite hating to have a ton of grammer nazi rules I find that setting boundaries for communication prevents problems later.

Prime Rule: Don't Be a Douche.

1. The assumption is made that you are a mature adult. If you aren't, then it is assumed that you either act like one or the mature adult in your life has your profanity filter turned on. The occasional curse here or there (or in the event of a <10% health wipe a great deal of it) is to be expected. However if someone asks you to stop, you stop (see Prime Rule). There is also a fine line between what you might think is okay and what someone else thinks is okay. Some people don't mind the B word. For me, it is the big red might as well be a summoning spell button. Err on the side of caution

2. Do not under any circumstances make it personal in guild chat. Ideas, suggestions, theories, all perfectly legit to argue with and say they are stupid. People, not. We are here to have fun, not be verbal punching bags for others. There is some measure of, oh we were just playing, but it if happens too often from one person, get rid of them. If I see it in my guild, you're gone. There are better ways to deal with something you see as a problem than to attack a person. Don't talk bad about other guild members.

3. If it is something that would be said in the Barrens or a bad trade channel day, don't say it in Guild. No Chuck, No Murlocs.

4. 1 4m 2 l33t 4 u. Anyone who still talks like this is a douche. See Prime Rule. In fact for that matter, I won't correct your bad spelling, the you're/your their/there/they're thing if you promise to use full words (2, u, etc).

5. Long winded rants about guild policy. There is a time and a place. That time is whenever, the place is the guild forums, behind the password protected part. Guild chat is not the place.

6. Arguments about loot. This should be handled in whispers. Specifically whispers to the Master Looter. Don't whisper the person who got the item. Don't whisper the GM. Whisper the master Looter and discuss with them first. If they agree, they will take it up with the person. If they don't, well that's for the Loot Etiquette part, but lets just say, look to Prime Rule.

7. We don't want to hear about your sexual exploits.

8. No SPOILERS! We all love movies, tv shows, books. If it ain't on DVD, keep it on the dl. Use a good 6 month rule of thumb or if it is on DVD. Then it is fair game.

9. Begging and Selling. Ask for help once. If you get it, awesome. If you don't, drop it. Have something to sell? Good for you. If you are offering a discount for guildies, you can pimp it in g chat up to a max of 4 times an hour. If it is the same price as the AH, shut it.

10. Bragging about breaking the law, talking about suicide, hurting people. If you don't want the cops to know, don't talk about it in guild. If you threaten suicide, I will take it seriously and I will notify a GM, who has your info and WILL call the cops. If you are having a rough time and need an ear to lean on, that's fine, but don't do it in g chat, that's what whispers are for.

Final Rule: There is an ignore feature for reason. I have been in several guilds where I have had people on ignore. I have also had those people on mute. I made sure my raid leader knew in the event that person might be a source of info the RL would know to repeat it. In the rare occurrence the person on ignore is the raid leader, make sure an officer or your class leader knows. Once I had the lovely joy of explaining to the only other officer in the raid why he had to do the loot distribution and make sure to repeat everything because I had the RL on ignore and he was originally the master looter.

Guild Etiquette Part 2: Noobs.

noreply@blogger.com (Ember) — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 00:39:00 +0000

A newb is someone who is new. A Noob is someone who does stupid stuff as if the were a newb, but really they should know better.

Every so often a guild gets a noob. You have to do something about these people fast or they will infect your good players and suddenly you will be living in Noobville and all of your raids will be Wipefests.

1. Identify the correct noob. This can be a bit complex in a 25 man raid. You might have to talk to your class leaders, or dig through Recount/WWStats to find them. Noobs are tricky, and no one likes being called a noob, esp when they aren't.

2. Compare noobishness across events. Is this person having an off night? Is this person *always* doing something stupid? Are they a problem in Heroics too? Or did they just decide to try raiding and drinking? This ties into #1, but when dealing with a Noob, it is always good to be sure.

Noob identified, now what?

3. Ask noob to chat with you in officer's vent or other private vent channel. Talk with them. Now this is a bit tricky. You have to be polite and root around for *why* they are being such a noob. Do you like playing your class? Are you having fun playing WoW still? Are you watching tv/playing Bejeweled at the same time as raiding? Frame it in concern. We noticed you seemed to be struggling, how can we help?

4. Gear Noobs. These people just don't get their gear. They also don't get why they need this gem over that one or that enchant over this other one. Best way to fix this, ask if they need help funding the enchant or gems. Offer to do the group dailies with them. Have the class leader do some research and post a best in slot list or a best non-raid list.

5. Spec Noobs. Simple - send them to Elitist Jerks for the cookie cutter spec. Talent Chic does a great job of helping them if they have a specific desired talent. (Note: Some people just want to play one way. This is okay. If you have an open slot and they are there, let them play their weird spec. But it is *always* good to have a progression rule. Ie - in progression raids you have to be spec approved by your class officer, or you get bumped if there is someone who is spec approved and you aren't even if you have better gear.) All of this also applies to Glyphs.

6. Don't Stand in the Fire Dude. Everyone has one. This is the guy who can't dance, gets hit by every flame wave, and moves on flame wreath. The best way to fix this noob in general is to have the raid leader have an announce program. This program should announce to the entire raid or even the entire guild that they screwed up. It also helps to have a shame rank. This is the rank you give someone when they do something seriously stupid. Pull a side in KT? Shame. Pull a boss while the healer is oom? Shame. Drop a Grobbulus bomb in the middle of a raid? Shame. Pretty much anything that wipes a raid can be worthy of a shame rank.

There are some specific ways to combat DSitFDs on certain boos fights. Best example: Heigan's Safety Dance. It can be tricky. So have someone drop flares in the center of each zone. then tell people to run to flares and stop until the next section pops and start running again. If they are well placed, you'll have a Safety Dance achievement in no time.

7. You're a great guy... but. Sometimes you just have to go out on a limb and hope the dude understands. Undying and Immortal are exceptionally hard achievements, and if you want to get them, everyone in the raid has to be on their A game. Explaining to a player that their noobish ways, while fine for farming, will not be tolerated in a progression or achievement run is hard. But if you are honest, specific, and offer a chance of redemption, it can go a long way to preventing a frustrating shouting match.

All of these are excellent ways to help deal with noobs. Just giving them the cold shoulder will cause problems, or letting them be the punch line will lead to trouble. Above all try to be remember, this person is a part of your guild and could be a great member. Identify the true problem and get with the fixing.

Guild Etiquette Part 1: Newbs.

noreply@blogger.com (Ember) — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 22:29:00 +0000

Not to be confused with noobs. That's part 2. This is with new people to your guild.

All guilds have some form of attrition. Real life, other games, other guilds all steal away your members and cut your numbers. If you have a good guild with good people, this isn't a huge concern. You will get new recruits just from people being attracted to the awesomeness. Or the fact you raid in a time slot that is good for them, they like someone else in your guild, they heard you took down Yogg, or they had a good experience with one of your guys who said, oh you should check us out if your guild is the sux. This influx is the result of people just looking for a home, for whatever reason, and it is where a large number of your newbies will come from.

Now here is the really IMPORTANT part. Ready?
These newbs are the foundation of your guild in 3 months or less.

Remember that all guilds have attrition. This is approx. 25% every 3 months with a guild of 60 or so active unique members. Which means every 3 months you lose a 4th of your guild. You have to replace these losses somehow and that is with these newbs. Each new recruit has the hidden potential to bring other recruits, be the main tank, heals, dps chart topper, pvp arena master, raid leader and officer. This newb is going to be important in the future of your guild.

So how do you keep your newb and turn them into a core member of your guild?

1. Do not greet them with foul mouthed jokes and jibes. Your newb may love joking around and goofing off. They may cuss like a sailor. But they might not. You don't know them yet and they don't know you. You have to get to know them.

2. Do not treat them like a second class citizen. Everyone understands that you aren't going to get bank access the first day, but make all the "limitations" clear. No bank access, no g or power leveling from members, no begging are all good limits to have. What isn't good is no vent access, no standard forum access, no calendar viewing, no ability to have input on discussions. I am not saying you should listen to every word your newb says and give it the same weight as your raiders, but if newb makes a good point, or wants to be a part of a discussion, you need to welcome them, after all one hopes they will be a raider soon enough.

3. Do not boot them from their first raid. If someone joins a guild to raid and then gets bumped from the first raid, no matter your reasoning, you have just told them they are not going to be raiding with you. Think of it more like Fight Club. If this is your first night, you have to raid. Also this is a great point to induct them into what is expected of a raider. Vent, Mods, Flasks, Food, Glyphs, Enchants, Gems, Strats, if your newb gets even some of them right, and rolls with what they miss, you might have a solid raider on your hands. In fact I once found a guild that made it policy that if you wanted to join as a raider, you were required to be present for the first raid lockout and if you missed even one night, they booted you from the guild. It was your way of showing your dedication to their guild, be there or be gone.

4. Make sure they get *something* on their first raid. It is counter intuitive, I know, but hear me out. It falls in with #3. If someone comes to a raid and walks away with nothing, how long are they going to put up with that before finding somewhere new? I am not saying let them grab every purple, or even that they shouldn't pay their dues, I am saying that people like Epics. If they get Epics, they will be back. They will jump through your hoops. They will get enchants, gems, food, etc, for Epics. They will bust their butt for you and the guild if it means Epics. My second raiding guild had a great DKP system that meant usually if more that a few items for a class dropped in a raid, the newb would get one of them. If the newb got it, they were stoked, and also pretty much guaranteed not to get anything else unless all the core raiders passed on it until they had been raiding for a month or so. (Note: This rule can have some shift if say for example nothing but bad gear for their class drops for the whole raid. I have been in Uld twice where nothing good for caster dps dropped.)

5. If you have *That Guy* in your guild, keep him away from the newbs. Every guild has one. For the most part they can be useful for identifying problems. These are the guys that wear the title of Elitist Jerk proudly. They know everything about most classes and they want to tell you what you are doing wrong. Have an officer or a GM pull this guy aside or in whispers and make sure he understands you value his services but if he doesn't keep his mouth shut around the newb for at least a month, you will find another EJ who can do his job. The best example for this was in the guild that had a newb rank: Foundling. A foundling was someone who was new, might be raiding, and was working through their newbness. Our EJ was not allowed to even speak to the Foundlings until they became full fledged members, unless they spoke to him first or asked for advice.

6. Try to include the newb. Explain guild in-jokes. Explain relationships. Explain the goober that keeps dying in every fight. The more you make them feel included the more they feel like home. If the newb understands who Rapido is, they will understand why it is your "Fail" rank. If your newb knows that Bubbles is a 40 yr old Marine and is married to Ieatbabies, they know *not* to hit on the chick with the hot voice on vent.

7. Not every newb works. This is vital for any guild. Newbs are important, but are also potential poison vials. Be ready to have to baby sit them for a few days and maybe even have some talks. At the end of their newb period it can even be good to let them go. You might need people, but they need you more than you need them. If they don't play well with others, politely show them the door.

Good luck, and happy hunting.