Tag Archives: Joyia

Mechanics vs. Play style

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As a game designer, it is generally accepted that at least 30% of my job is getting the player to do what I want. (Some would say even 90%.) Want the player to slow down and be cautious, make the area dark and play some kind of sound off to his side. If I want the player to move, I drop something nasty where his feet are. So on and so forth.

Blizzard generally does this very well. They want people questing instead of just grinding on kills. So they make it more worthwhile to do a large number of close quests instead of just killing mobs. They want the player to limit their playtime, so they add in the rest bonus to “reward” the player for switching to an alt, or not playing for a while.

Mechanics are used to alter  play style. If a player is rewarded for doing something, they are going to continue to do it. This is especially true when the rewarded play style is the path of least resistance. Players will always find the path of least resistance. Period.

So what this brings me to is raid boss design in World of Warcraft.

Blizzard seems to have forgotten that their game is about playing with your friends. And sadly, not everyone is friends with players who are awesome at WoW. In previous raid expansions there was the “dead weight” slots. These were raid slots that needed nothing more than a warm body in it. A decent raid team could “carry” several players without too much problem. This number changed based on the size and skill of the rest of the raid. It was generally accepted to be 2 slots for 10 man and 4-5 for 25 man. There were even achievements to support this “play style.”

Why was this so important?

Because it meant that even if you were friends with a really nice, but completely brain dead guy, you could still raid with him and do well. No, you wouldn’t be bleeding progression. No you wouldn’t be getting every achievement or even hard modes. But you could fight and see the raid.

But someone at Blizzard decided he was sick and tired of carrying his brain dead buddies. So the raid boss design stopped being about play style and started being about mechanics. (Either that or was just really annoyed at Sarth 3D zergs.)

Sartharion with 3 Drakes:

This fight perfectly explains the mechanics vs. play style debate I feel is very important to WoW raid boss design.

Mechanics: The players clear out the trash, then pull the main boss, with all 3 mini bosses still alive. As the fight progresses, the three mini bosses join the fight and the players have to deal with added fire, void zones, damage, etc etc.

Sarth 3D as it was dubbed was very difficult for 10 mans. It required 3 tanks, which is too much for a 10 man raid. It caused a great deal of raid damage, which required 3 healers. Now, more than half the raid is just there keeping the raid alive, meaning that without 4 amazing dps, the fight would be un-winable for most 10 man guilds. (To be fair it was done, just by a bleeding edge guilds.

Then some enterprising raiders discovered something very interesting.

Play Style: If instead of focusing down each of the mini-bosses as they joined the fight, the players could just focus Sarth and as long as they could burn him in the 90 seconds before the second mini-boss spawned, they would kill him before he became invulnerable.

So they ignored the mechanic of the fight and brute forced it. They made the game about they way they like to play. Burn hard and fast and win, or not quite hard enough and die to purple fire. Even with a decent group, this strat was not easy. My guild at the time would always wipe 4 or 5 times before pulling it off. But we could do it. And it was fun for us. It was still a challenge because pulling that much dps that quickly was not easy.

Of course, once this strat hit the internet, everyone did it this way. It was much easier, if less consistent than the normal strat. Does that make it inherently bad? I say no.

As a game designer it is my job to get the player to kill the boss. Not to jump through hoops until the boss dies. It is supposed to be fun and challenging. Sarth Zerg was still challenging, it just stripped away all the excess “fluff” of the fight and made it what it should have been. A toe to toe battle to the death between us and this huge dragon. It also made us feel like we were playing the game on our own terms. We were playing the game the way we wanted to.

Now, in Firelands the fights are tightly tuned. No more “dead weight” spots. Not only that, if even one person fails, the entire attempt fails. Brain deads need not apply.

Even more so, the fights are very very mechanics based. There is no edge for play style changes to strats. Trying to alter the strat even the smallest bit leads to an insta wipe.

The correct answer is somewhere in between the two ideas. Where people can try to do things their way or strictly stick to the intended way. It makes it feel more like a conversation between the designer and the player.

Blizzard says “Bring the Player, not the Class” but what if the player I want to bring is not awesome? What if the player I want to bring is a good friend but only a mediocre dps? Should I replace my friend with some douche bag who can pull 20k?

The big thing to be worried about when trying to force a mechanic instead of play style is that the path of least resistance might be right out of the door and never playing your game. A bad thing for any social game.

Red Leader Standing By!

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About 3 weeks ago my 25 man guild finally made the decision to downgrade to 10 man raids. It hurt. This guild *just* went from 10 man to 25 in ICC. For most of Cataclysm we have managed to keep ahead of the raiders leaving and replacing them. Unfortunately, OLN suffers from the fact that we are casual.

We don’t require attendance. We don’t require specs. We don’t have DPS thresholds. We are here to have fun with all our friends, not to chase server firsts. The problem is, only about 2/3rds of our raiders are the kind of people who go and learn every bit of info on their class, min-max, and know every boss video before we ever walk in. the other 1/3rd are very nice people, but aren’t pushing the envelope, can’t be bothered to show up, and our realm sadly does not have a good pool to pull raiders from.

As all raiders are pretty aware, the days of really only needing 8 of 10 or 20 of 25 of the raiders on point are long gone. Even the smallest mistake can lead to a wipe. One person not notice and keep nuking Magmatron? Kiss the raid goodbye. Miss the jump, die in the water, and you were the interrupter on your Nef platform? Game over. Firelands is just as bad. Didn’t see that trap? Too bad, the tank is already dead. Accidentally attacked the wrong foot? Even one person can lead it astray. Regardless of how you feel about this design (I hate it, just fyi), it has had an effect. Finding 10 competent and focused raiders is much easier than finding 25.

So we took our good, consistent, and still present raiders and put their names in a list. 16 raiders. Uh oh. There are only 10 spots. Lucky for our raiders our GM and Officers had no intention of just booting 6 people. However we don’t have enough to form 2 10 mans. So the GM decided we would be rotating people around.

This first week of this was TERRIBLE. We had several people raid 5 days that week, and several people only raid 1 day. The natives were restless. I spoke in a message to my GM and was like “dude, you need a system.” His response: “I KNOW! I just don’t know HOW…” So I decided to apply my game designer brain to this problem.

Our raiders broke down to 3 tanks, 4 healers, and 9 dps. First thing I did was cut “normal” raid nights to Tuesday through Thursday. Previously these were our 25 man nights. So now they are our standard nights. Sunday and Monday, our “cleanup in 10s” nights, became “wipe learning” nights. Sunday and Monday teams are formed based on who is on, and which boss we are trying (so stacking the proper dps for those fights).

Generally the tank situation just worked out. And if all 3 did manage to show up on the same night, they would just discuss it between themselves and sit out. They handled themselves essentially, but we decided to set it up to “rotate” them around. So Tank A tanks Tuesday and Wednesday. Tank B tanks Wednesday and Thursday. Tank C tanks Thursday and Tuesday. But they can switch up as they want or need.

With healers, we were really lucky in that handle fairly well on their own as well. One of our heals even has a super tank offset, so he fills both roles. So that just worked out.

But 9 dps… That makes life tough. They were the hard part.

Joyia’s Plan:

Split the DPS into 2 teams.

Team 1: Warlock, Warrior, Kitteh, Boomy, and a recruit. (Most times it is a great shadow priest, but this spot can be filled with any ranged clothie or mail wearer.)

Team 2: Warlock, Pally, Rogue, Mage, and Hunter.

Then, have the teams switch off nights.

So Week 1: Tuesday is Team 1. Wednesday and Thursday are Team 2.

So Week 2: Tuesday is Team 2. Wednesday and Thursday are Team 1.

Seems a bit complex, but here are the reasons:

1. It stacks the dps to be most efficient in gear drops. With the exception of clothies, each ac is only represented once.

2. It stacks melee vs. ranged and aoe vs. single target. I also stacked the weaker dps with the stronger dps, and the more likely to die with the more likely to survive, so neither dps team is “better” in a sense. They are quite well balanced and hit the same numbers. The aoe vs single target damage makes gimmicks like Rageface still do-able. It balances classes with high burst with classes with slow ramp up.

3. People who run earlier in the week have a good chance of getting several easy bosses and loot. People who run later get 1 or 2 bosses, but have to wipe on progression, however this means they might get to be in the kill group.

4. Even if the week goes badly, raiders know it will only be 1 week before they see another loot drop.

5. Each dps is part of a paired set. So if one warlock is going to miss her night, the RL can just contact the other warlock and ask them to show up. Regardless, most of us are connected on RealID so any holes can be filled quickly.

6. The warlocks are the two toons working on the legendary. Since they are in different groups there is no poaching embers.

7. If you are on the team not running that night, just can just log on at raid time, and check to see if the team running needs any holes filled. If they form up, you can go do dailies, randoms, or even level alts.

 

It just worked for us. Now, 3 weeks in, we have downed 2 new bosses, in two weeks, and are making great strides on Aly. Everyone is learning all the fights. The dps teams are becoming teams and learning to work well with each other. We have even started making red team vs blue team jokes. Because there has still been a ton of overlap on tanks and heals, including alt runs on off nights, with both teams making up the alt run, we are still a community as opposed to cliques. None of the raiders have left, and most seem to like it as well. By taking Sunday and Monday off the schedule, we don’t have to worry about people showing up those nights either, but generally we have 10-11 people on for those nights, then usually someone just offers to step out. 10 man’s are a bit easier to do this with.

Now this doesn’t perfectly fit with every guild. The team balancing just fell into place for us, but with a bit of thought, and even possibly scheduling which bosses are being done on Tuesday and then on Wed/Thurs to balance the number of bosses downed. It’s a slightly odd way of doing it, that might work.

What are we supposed to use? Harsh language?!?

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I was a bit distracted by Transmogrification but something else radical happened in WoW last week. Threat was essentially singled out at a bad mechanic and buffed to the point of being inconsequential. Of course, as with all things WoW, some people loved it, some people didn’t care, and some people cancelled their subscriptions immediately. *queue nerd rage*

I reposted the threat changes on my guild forums and it was met with happiness and ambivalence. No one was opposed to the change. In fact a few people responded with, well this will make randoms so much easier.

Of course, I try not to comment on things I haven’t done. The only comment I made on this was “Cata raiding, meet Wrath Tanking” because that is what it sounded like to me.

So this weekend, I decided to try out a bit of this change.

On my DK, I tanked quite a bit in Wrath. I ran a random every day on her, and used her to help guildies farm up ToC and FoS/PoS/HoR gear. I could easily go into a HHoR and tank the instance with my ICC geared buddies, who would nuke away to their heart’s content. Only occasionally did I have to use my taunt, and only occasionally did I have to use things like blood boil as a reaction. All in all, it was pretty easy. I didn’t mind doing it. There was still some skill, tabbing around, keeping my dots up, cooldowns, and the occasional army, but tanking wasn’t so difficult I was unwilling to do it.

When Cata hit and I decided to level my dk, I, of course, thought, “Oh! I’ll just queue for randoms! Insta queues, plus I am helping others get dungeon runs, it’s a win win!” I had this feeling for all of about 60 seconds and then the ugly truth raised it’s head. I was level 80, in level 80 gear. Not terrible for BRC and ToT, but not sufficient to deal with level 81 and level 82 dps who had replaced large chunks of their Wrath gear. I spent 90% of my time chasing mobs (does anyone understand what threat reduction skills are for? Does anyone understand run TO the tank NOT AWAY?) and fighting to keep threat. If I targeted a different mob, even just to taunt another mob, the first one would be ripped away. Of course, dps would die, healers would get upset and leave, and I would feel like crap. Maybe it’s my level and gear I thought. So I leveled up to 83, replaced all my Wrath gear and got down to business. Oh god, Stonecore… after about 5 or 6 runs, I was done. I sent all my dk’s gold to my main, emptied her bags, and cleared her mailbox. She was effectively going on the shelf of unused characters.

When they introduced the CTA bags, I thought, OH! I should go level her now! Surely things are better. Haha, the naivete of youth. Not only were things not better, they were arguably worse. It was a dark time for my dk. I knew how to tank, I just couldn’t actually do it. No amount of death and decay, no amount of outbreak+pestilence, no amount of runestriking and death striking. Those dps were going to pull aggro without trying and there was *nothing* in my arsenal I could do about it.

So I didn’t play her. Until this weekend. Nervous and a bit stressed, I decided not to change anything, to just go in the way I was and see if this 300 to 500 actually made a difference.

Oh did it make a difference.

The only time the dps (including one rather shockingly well geared for regular VP level 85 mage) pulled aggro was on a multi-pull and even then, as the mobs ran through my D&D they would snap over to me. I made it through VP with very few mistakes (most of which were me not remembering how to position mobs). The experience was… dare I say it… enjoyable. Imagine that, enjoying playing a game. Enjoying it enough, I queued again. I went and bought some upgrades and… queued again. At this rate, I was going to max out my jp for the week.

Of course, as with all changes, I looked at the screaming of the ragers to see what the possible “side effects” of such a change were.

“It’s going to be soooo boring to tank.”

Because pressing 1-1-1-1-2 is so exciting, amiright mages? Because staring at five green bars, waiting for them to turn yellow and then clicking on them is the height of adrenaline rush. Because doing the same dungeon for the third time that day is brand shiny new!

Okay, nothing is that bad. But then, neither is tanking without having to worry about threat. There are still cooldowns, there are still adds to pick up, there are still huge pools of bad to stay out of. Only now, the most annoying part of your job is gone. The part that not only annoys you, but also annoys the whole group. No more dps having to stand around wishing they could do their job. No more healers having to heal the sudden clothie tank. Just a meat shield doing his job, while everyone else gets to enjoy doing theirs.

“Way to dumb it down to Wrath levels Blizz…”

Why do dps have 45 minute queues? Why, even at the HEIGHT of CTA, did I still have 25 minute queues? There are 4 tanking classes: Pallys, Dks, Warriors, and Bears. That’s almost HALF of the total classes. Ever seen one of these classes wait in the dps queue? (I have.) Tanking is hard. Tanking is thankless. And tanking is generally not fun.

So there is a tank shortage. Blizzard tried the bribe. It didn’t work. So now, they had to try something else. Honestly, the difficulty needed to be nerfed. The player base simply did not have enough of the kind of people who wanted to do that job at that stress level. I don’t think it was dumbed down, but I do think that by removing one of the more annoying aspects of the equation, it made it easier to understand at do at a level good enough for randoms.

Tanking is still going to be difficult in raids. It is still going to be a challenge in heroic modes. It is not going to be a faceroll (especially since people still have their rotations). But it is easier, especially for people who don’t have the gear or experience.

This is going to solve the tank shortage problem much better than a bag with extra items. It has already brought me back into the fold of tanking on my DK.

Guild Etiquette Part 7: Updates

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It’s been 2 years since I sat down and wrote down what I truly believe are the 6 most important things a GM has to deal with. However, WoW is not a static game. So these things need updating every so often!

Part 1: Newbs

I am more and more convinced that as a guild you have to recruit and invest in people you know are going to be in your guild for the long haul. Not every recruit is going to be this person. But when you identify this person, hang on to them. They *will* *be* the perfect stone that fills in the hole when you lose someone important.

Newbs are great. But remember, even if the newb is awesome, fun, fits right in, and seems like they are gonna be a permanent fixture, they might not be. Never allow your guild to get in the situation of relying too much on a single person. Are the main tank and off tank a “set”? (Friends or even a couple?) Do not, under any circumstances, allow them to be the only tanks. Train and gear other tanks. You never know when people might take a break from the game. Or worst case, decide to hold your guild hostage.

Part 2: Noobs

Still pretty up to date. Of course, I caution GMs to look for “troll” noobs. These are people who do this on purpose. Excise them, immediately.

Part 3: Guild Chat

This is still completely true. Of course there are culture exceptions. Since writing this, I have joined a rather large guild. They pretty much admitted at the beginning that their guild chat rivaled trade. There were multiple players who seem to have Tourettes of the finger. I identified these people and put them on ignore. Easy as pie.

Part 4: Consideration

Be considerate with guild items and repairs. Many guilds now have guild repairs thanks to the Cash Flow perk. Check with your guild about the thoughts on using that for things that aren’t “guild” deaths. In my guild, we have a sufficient amount of funds that the GM doesn’t care. Some guilds might not.

Check the guild website occasionally. Especially on Tuesdays. And if someone says something in gchat you are unaware of, and you ask a question, only to have them reply, I posted on the forums about it… do not pass go, do not collect $200, go to the forums and read what they posted. They are trying to help the guild, be aware and support it.

Part 5: Who gets to go?

Wow, this is so applicable now. My formerly 25 man raid team has been cut down to a 10 man. We have 16 active raiders for 10 spots. After a week of struggling and just switching people out at seemingly random, I decided to take matters into my own hands and proposed a system that divided the dps up into 2 teams. (10 of the raiders are dps.) Then scheduled the boss kills accordingly so that the difficulty was split between the two teams. This insured that each dps would get a chance to see at least one boss kill each week. And then the teams would switch off bosses each week.

Yes, it’s complex. Yes, it’s weird. But it worked. And it allowed us to stack the teams with the proper mix of melee vs. ranged, aoe vs. single target, and armor classes. The tanks (3) and healers (4) generally sort themselves out with no problem as there is usually one night someone can’t make it. It boosted our progress and helped everyone figure out when they would be raiding and when they could play other toons.

Part 6a: Epics

I am now also convinced that KSK is the *best* loot system when you can’t do small group loot council. KSK is essentially a system that randomizies a list of all the raiders in your guild. Then when an item drops, the person at the top of the list gets first dibs. (Of course sticking to people who can use that item.) So if that person takes the item, they get “suicided” to the bottom of the list. If they pass, the next person on the list gets the option. It’s glorious. Easy, simple, and does not allow for inflation.

If you miss a raid with KSK, you simply stay frozen in your spot and the people who did show up move around you.

We even implemented a system that allowed us to punish people who signed up for raids and didn’t show by knocking them down a spot on the list.

When you hit a new raiding expansion, you simply re-randomize the list. When you get a new raider, you just roll them up a random number and toss them in. At the height of loot going out, when nothing was being sharded and everyone was getting upgrades, it took me 2 raids to move from last, back up to first. Loot gets evenly distributed. Everyone knows where they are on the list.

Part 6b: Legendaries

Hello can of worms!

How to decide who gets your guild’s Legendary:

1. “Best” class. The current Legendary is a dps caster staff. First, you should chose a pure dps. Why? Because that’s all they *can* be. They will *always* be using the staff for it’s intended purpose. I love my priest and I love dpsing on her. But most of the time in a raid, I am gonna be healing. The legendary is wasted on healers.

2. Tenure. Do not give the staff to someone who has only been in your guild for <3 months. They could take embers and leave. Or even worse, get the Legendary and leave.

3. Attendance. Don’t pick a person who is known for disappearing for long periods of time. Don’t pick a person who only makes one raid a week. You want to get to a legendary as quickly as possible and try to get more than 1. Focus, and work on getting it for that person who is *always* there and ready to raid.

4. Always make sure the raid has one of the collectors in it. In my current guild we have 2 people collecting embers, because we have 2 teams of dps. No this is not the most efficient way, but it works with our system. We just have to make sure there is always one of the two people in the raid.

5. Someone willing to do the leg work. Legendaries are not easy. They take time, money, and a great deal of extra work. If the person isn’t willing to shell out their own 9k for the sands, then they shouldn’t be offered the staff.

Take these ideas and sort your possible legendary wielders, and have the list approved by officers. Then post it, so the guild knows what is going on.

Transmorgrify!

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Blizzard announced stuff about new 5 mans, a new raid, and cross-realm raiding. Is anyone talking about that? No. Why? Because they also announced a thing that changes very little, and yet somehow changes *everything*.

I remember getting an armor dye drop back in DAoC. It was black, and for metal. It sold for about 100g. A veritable fortune at the time in that game. My healer wore a rather lovely mix of dark green armor, so it was worthless to me, but amazing for someone else. When I later started playing WoW, on my very first character, I got some hideous brown robe and immediately asked my friend “Oh god, where do I get dye? This thing looks like baby poop.”

“You don’t.” He said, then explained that everything in WoW was set. I was exceedingly happy a level or so later to get a green robe to replace the other. Now, I am aware that many people think this is a girl thing, but it’s not. I even know a rather masculine man (he was a football player, so huge) who refused to wear any “of the Whale” items, because that implied he was fat. But regardless, for many of the same reasons people chose certain races or sexes in the game, we wish we could chose gear.

Guild tabards are hotly debated among officers to “look good.” People will match their pets to their mounts. (My hunter was furious when they took away her pet while mounted.) Everyone who went from Vanilla, with lovely armor sets, to the rainbow barf that was leveling in Burning Crusade had some moment of thought along the lines of, “Ugh, my character looks ridiculous.” Our characters are an extension of ourselves. We wouldn’t go out into public looking like that, why would our characters?

So why did Blizzard insist on limiting the armor colors and styles? Why didn’t they have an appearance tab like LotR Online and other MMOs? Why didn’t they add armor dyes? Why didn’t they give the community what was begged for?

They claimed the reason was dedication to the art. They wanted things to look correct. No pink hello kitty Darth Vaders here. And the Silhouette theory. This is best explained by looking at just the outlines of characters. Can you tell what kind of character it is by the outline? Then the Silhouette theory is working. The idea being that you could just glance at someone and tell, are they friend or foe. Are they Horde or Alliance? Heavy or Medic? This is why the shoulders in all the armor sets are so distinctive and large. So that player can not only tell at a glance who is who, but also how well geared they are.

It was a good argument… With a few gaping holes.

1. What about Noggenfogger? It changes everyone’s silhouette! As does Deviate Delight. Arrr!

2. What about Orb of the Sin’dorei? I love my orb. I used to be a Blood Elf. But then I faction changed to play with friends. I miss being a blood elf. So I use my orb with shocking regularity. I love using it in Tol Barad. Has it ever saved my life? Not even once.

3. Rated Battlegrounds.  For those who don’t run them, every so occasionally your team will get matched up against a team of the same faction. So it just slaps a buff on you that says “Horde” or “Alliance”. That’s it.

The other comment made was that with the armor sets being static, you could tell someone’s “epicness” just by looking at them. Which was great, back in Vanilla. But ever since Wrath, and the great design shift to allowing everyone to see raids, this has created a huge problem. Yes, those shoulders DO look cool. And everyone else and their BROTHER is wearing them. It was the sparkle pony all over again. Everyone looked the same. (I think this is also the time that “town gear” also rose to wide spread popularity, where you carried a set of gear just for wearing about town.)

Apparently though, Blizzard re-thought their stance and came up with an amazing compromise. No, we still can’t dye our armor. BUT we can make it look like another piece of armor in the same armor class. And the masses rejoiced.

I have never been so glad or my hoarder mentality of tier sets. I have never been so glad I have my bank stuffed to the gills with old and interesting armor. There is literally NOTHING in my bank that isn’t soul bound. Everything else sits on my bank alt.  Joyia has all 24 slot bags, and not a single space to spare. But she also has all the warlock sets. I will have these ugly tier 11 shoulders looking like tier 5 so fast it will make Joyia’s head spin!

Ah Corruptor Raiment, I have missed you. I cannot wait to have my shoulders bedecked with skulls once more. My hunter is gonna wear this one. And I will no longer have to deal with the fact that my dps is lower because I refuse to use one of those noisy guns! I may even try to raid with her now! I have all the starter DK gear sitting in my DK’s bank. My priest will be looking all angelic in this set. I am already excited about wearing these armor pieces again. I am already thinking of running old instances to get nifty looking gear.

But that just changes me right? That doesn’t change the whole of WoW. But it does. I already have friends who are planning on re-subbing when the patch hits. They are already planning THEIR ARMOR SETS. The invites for old school raids have already started. People are already compiling lists of nifty items and where to get them. Oh and the Destiny sword I have been listing for a month that hasn’t been selling? Gone for 500g. So I listed a Brain Hacker. I couldn’t sell it for 100g 3 months ago. Today, it went, in 15 minutes, for 500g. Lovely Dresses (despite not having stats so possibly not being eligible for the transmogrification) all sold for 100g each. This feature isn’t even in yet and people are already creating ripple effects in the game.

The best part about this change? It sets a precedent. Blizzard said no and gave reasons. Then later came back and said, okay, we found a compromise. No Pandaren? No dual faction races? There could be more compromises. Breaking the armor silhouette sets them up to break the race silhouette. This could be the beginning of a whole new World of Warcraft.

Now, I have to go stare lovingly at my t5 warlock set, sighing over the thought of wearing such lovely gear again.

Games I Played This Week

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I really should have considered prior to deciding that I wanted to do a weekly post about games I played that it does happen I get stuck in playing several games that are very enjoyable.

I am still cracking away on DQ9. I now have multiple grottos available and am clearing out at least 2 every day. Sadly, my characters don’t seem to be leveling very fast. In other DQ9 news, I convinced my mother to purchase the game and she is *quite* addicted at this point. She keeps calling me and asking me questions so I am able to track her progress quite well. This game is definitely going on my list of games to suggest for people who have parents that play DS.

I will likely be grinding on the multiplayer while at home with her in May.

I am also still playing a game or two of the Pokemon TCG trainer every day. I finished with the Fire Deck and I am now halfway through with the Water Deck. I am also noticing that they keep having “overloaded” messages, so clearly I am not the only one who is loving it.

I have been playing quite a bit with my 3DS, mostly showing stuff off at work. Also I am loving the Street Pass, though it makes me long for PAX where there are more people to encounter.

In WoW both my Priest and Shaman are now getting in on Alt runs for Tol Barad. My server has reached critical mass for being able to field successful pugs for TB which is a huge help for my alts. Our guild has also started some TB alt runs. I managed to down Atramedes on two different toons this week, thanks to needing a healer for our 10 man run on Saturday and then needing a DPS for our OTHER 10 man run on Sunday. My guild is actively recruiting.

Joyia finally got bracers from BoT trash and exceptionally luckily managed to get the +spirit wand off Chimareon. Two upgrades in one week! We made some fairly serious attempts on 25 man Elemental Monstrosity, the RNG fight of doom. (Not from Hell, that’s Al’Akir.)

I also volunteered to get a new guild website set up for OLN. I decided to use WoWStead and it took me all of 45 minutes to get everything up and running. Bonus points for WoWStead’s usability.

Finally, I have taken some time this week to start re-reading some Julia Quinn, to inspire me to work on some of my writing. I had a fairly dramatic plot break through on Wasteland, which I hope wraps up the inconsistencies and allows the story to have a conclusion that isn’t completely depressing.

Achievements – You’re Doing It WRONG

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One of the first things you learn as a game designer is: Be Consistent. If the player does something, and gets a response, they need to get the same response every time. Game Rules need to be consistent across the entire game.

Blizzard has NOT been consistent when it comes to achievements. They are not being consistent when it comes to rewards either. They need to PICK A POSITION and STICK TO IT.

Example 1: Hand of Adal vs. Starcaller/Kingslayer. Hand of A’Dal doesn’t even have an achievement associated with it, but it was removed. Blizzard claims they “didn’t want people to get the title who didn’t earn it in the period it was intended to be earned” and so they removed it. But Kingslayer and Starcaller were just as difficult, and intended to be just as exclusive, and yet remain in the game.

(Note: Q: Will you ever bring back the mounts for achievements that were removed (Naxx Glory runs) as you didn’t remove the later mounts? – Joyia (North America/ANZ) A: This is a tough one. On the one hand, we know there are a lot of players who would still like to get their hands on these mounts. On the other hand, we were pretty clear that they would only be available for a limited time, and we hate to go back on our word because we know some groups went through heroic efforts to get them before the door closed. This is the kind of thing that is not set in stone and player feedback might eventually convince us to change our minds.)

Example 2: Achievement Drakes. Yes, I was the Joyia who asked about the Naxx Drakes on the achievement Q&A thread. I was a part of a guild at the time that was working on the achievements for said drakes. It nearly ripped our guild apart. It lead to multiple people leaving and joining more progressed guilds. It lead to me LEAVING a guild I liked and almost leaving the game. The stress of attempting to get these achievements BEFORE they were removed was insane considering this is a GAME. That’s right, it’s a game. It should be fun. But on multiple occasions, Blizzard insists on making the game not fun by putting time limits on achieving things. (Theoretically the ZA Bear and ZG mounts fall here too, despite not being achievements.)

When it came down to it, I resolved myself to the fact I wasn’t going to get these drakes. I resolved myself to the fact that I wasn’t going to get the Ulduar drakes. I just wasn’t that kind of player. I got my purple protodrake, and I was happy. But then, I managed to achieve the bone drake for ICC 10 man on my mage. Success! Joy! And then… they didn’t remove the achievements. Last week, a bunch of goofballs in trade pugged up a 10 man group and succeeded in getting the SAME drake I had worked so hard for.

What makes my Bloodbathed Frostbrood Vanquisher LESS special than the Naxx Plagued Protodrake?!? Wow, way to be a hypocrite!

To head off the comments of whiny elitists saying “I want my mount to be rare!” There are three things with this as well. One, stop being elitist. You can always climb on your little box and show off your e-peen by saying “Well I got mine two weeks after the raid was released!” Two, it is punishing to players who change mains, re-roll alts, or start the game late. Even the new people deserve the chance to get something awesome, this is after all a game that wants to be accessible, NOT elitist and exclusive. Three, rarity is a FALLACY in WoW. That’s right, it’s not real. Rarity is a RELATIVE concept. Meaning, something is only considered rare, if and only if, the people you play with do not have it. I have posted this example before. When the Sparkle Pony came out, only 2 people in my guild bought it. So out of about 20 players, only 2 people had one. Meaning that the people we hung out with and were likely to pay attention to their mounts, count as the audience. That gives the Sparkle Pony a 1 in 10 rarity. Now, the Deathcharger’s Reins had been farmed up by about 10 people in the guild, meaning it has a rarity of 1 in 2. the entire World of Warcraft does not count in the rarity, only the people you are likely to interact with do.

BE CONSISTENT. Seriously. I am willing to accept the decision one way or the other, just PICK A SIDE AND STICK TO IT. This endless waffling and inconsistency just frustrates and annoys players and is just BAD DESIGN. Best case, Blizzard realizes it’s hypocritical responses and opens the Naxx Drakes back up. (Theoretically they could add the Tiger and Raptor mounts back in some form of grind or in the CtA bags – which to be honest would be FAR more effective in getting people to run it. They could even add the ZA bear back to a timed run of the new ZA dungeon.) Worst case, they remove the ICC and Ulduar drakes, and people got them “unfairly” after the period, but at least now, that will not happen again, because they decided to be consistent.

Carrots on Sticks

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Even More Update Goodness: I have read several other blogs about the subject, but here is one of the best. His whore analogy is just superb and spot on, and his arguments are valid. The thing is, I understand why Blizz would never do as asked. Maybe they will consent eventually to add raid mounts to the bag (Ashes of Alar might just be enough to drag that bear back in) but for the TCG they *can’t*. If they do, it devalues the TCG and takes away one of the major selling points of the cards. And don’t get me wrong, while I would love to have those mounts available in the bag, it will never happen, because Blizzard makes too much money on the licensing fees for the card game.

I really feel the biggest drawback of this fix is that it doesn’t allow the tank to queue with anyone else. Even allowing the tank to queue with just one other person might take the sting out of it. Pocket healer, trusted cc-er, or just that one person you always play with. You are still taking 3 other people out of the queue, so it is still a win, but seems less… whorish… than it is forcing them to queue alone.

 

UPDATE: Blizz announced that the bags WILL IN FACT BE BIND ON ACCOUNT. As I said “Make the bags Bind on Account so we can pass them off to our alts. (Then I would be 85 on Pandara in a heartbeat.)” my response to the announcement was “BRB LEVELING”.

 

I have talked about the Tanking problem a few times. Since the dawn of the Random Dungeon Finder the players of WoW have developed a skewed vision of dungeon running. I barely remember running a few dungeons on my warlock prior to the introduction of the LFD tool. They were simply too time consuming, too prone to failure, and far too difficult to find a group for.

But LFD changed all of that. Dungeons were readily accessible in a matter of minutes. Loot rained down on the World of Warcraft. It was wondrous. And it spoiled us all beyond repair. Seriously. We are spoiled rotten little children demanding more things when we have already been given the world.

The average time to get a pug group together PRIOR to the LFD tool? 4 hours. And then 2 more hours to clear the dungeon because the chances of everyone KNOWING the dungeon was slim to none. The average time I have to wait in the DPS queue for a dungeon? 40 minutes. Which is just about the time it takes to do all of the Tol Barad dailies, killing every fox along the way.

But nooooooooooo people gotta complain about something, so they chose to complain about their 40 minute queue times. To be fair, the queue times for LFD have been slowly increasing through Cataclysm. I have talked about this before. So Blizzard decided to answer the problem with a carrot on a stick. It worked for Oculus right?

Here’s the thing though… I have a tank. I have debated on leveling her. Why haven’t I leveled her despite having leveled 2 healers and 2 dps at 85? Tanking sucks. I hate random healers who aren’t very good. I hate random dps who can’t wait two seconds. I hate RNG fights where one mistake leads to me dead on the floor. So now Blizzard offers me a carrot. Am I going to level her and roll through dungeons with her now?

Nope.

But I LOVE minipets! I LOVE rare mounts! So why wouldn’t I leap at the chance to get them?!? Oh right, because like MOST other collectors, I collect my pets and mounts on ONE character. I collect them on Joyia. Who is a Pure DPS. If I could tank with Joyia, I would be all over this like a starving man on a steak. Bad DPS, rude healers, wipes would all be ignored with the joy of working towards a rare mount. I don’t want those mounts on Pandara, I want them on Joyia

There are so many other solutions… offer it as a reward for any dps who has to wait more than 40 minutes in the queue. The tanks are already being rewarded, with an instant queue. Make the bags Bind on Account so we can pass them off to our alts. (Then I would be 85 on Pandara in a heartbeat.)

Or they could fix the real problem. Wrath proved that the problem isn’t there aren’t enough tanks and healers. My dps queue during peak times in Wrath was 15-25 minutes, HALF of what it is now. Why was that? Oh right. Wrath dungeons were easier. Wrath tanks had better threat generation, gear, and to be honest, their skills were better tuned. Revert Swipe to it’s old cooldown (none). Give Thunderclap back it’s massive aggro. Increase the threat of Death and Decay and Blood Boil. Revert Consecrate back to it’s Wrath glory. Lower the CD on all tank “panic” buttons. (Just by 1/4th or 1/3rd.)

Or even give classes the ability to tank. Make Beast Mastery like Feral Druids. There are talents they take to get a tanky pet or to get a dps pet. Bam. One more tank. Make Demonology like Bear tanks. Metamorphosis is a form a lock goes into to tank. They have their “big” health pet that splits the damage through soul link, and their skills in demon form generate aggro. Bam, one more tank. Enhancement shamans – they are already halfway there! Give them a few modified skills, and a crit proof skill, bam, tanky tanky.

Another option is to change the group size going into 5 mans. How much of a change would pulling in an extra dps do? 1 tank, 1 heals, 4 dps. Not only would this eat up more of the surplus DPS, but also it would mean less caring when one dps isn’t pulling their weight.

I don’t think their solution is a solution. I think it is a bandaid on a gushing head wound. They need to address the problem, not the symptoms. The problem is role imbalance. And this addition, isn’t going to get more tanks running dungeons. It is just going to get people who *don’t* like tanking and healing to tank and heal, which just exacerbates the problem by having under or poorly geared people, filling roles they don’t know how to play, and causing frustration all around.

 

Note 1: This would be an EXCELLENT time to bring back lost pets like the vampire bat, scorchling, etc etc. It would also be a great place for rare mob drop pets like Gundrak Hatchling, Whelplings, Foxes, Sewer Rat, Crawler…

Note 2: Would it be different if they added super rare/unobtainable mounts back in? (A la ZG Tiger, ZA Bear.) OH HELL YES it would be different. Tank would be leveled and tanking like NOBODY’S business. Not only would I do it, but I would SERIOUSLY campaign for the ability to have a paid mount transfer service.

I’m sorry, Do I know you?

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It was a pretty exciting day. Patch 4.0.1 was a BIG deal. It was the change from Wrath to Cataclysm. It should have been a day of celebration, exploration, and excitedly discussing things with guildies. But the day was marred by the unexpected.

I logged in, double checked my gear and immediately dove into specing my new talent points. Alright, all done, summon up my felpuppy and start heading… wait a tic.

“Who the hell are you?”

The felhound standing at my side was called “Rhuudym”. MY felhound is called Phryluum. This… IMPOSTOR… was wearing the tag <Joyia’s Minion> below it’s name.

“You are not.”

Weirded out by this impostor, I decided to summon my Imp. Maybe Laztip would know what was going on. At the end of my spell, Paztog answered my call.

“Ahhhh! What happened to Laztip?!?” The imposter imp said nothing. I was really feeling terror now.

“Blue, don’t fail me…” Calling my voidwalker into existence. Poof!

“Oh thank the gods, Klath’dok! What the hell dude?!? Where did everyone go?”

“Sorry mi’lady. There was some catastrophic event that ripped through the nether. We all seem to be hearing different names and voices calling through the magics to us. It’s bedlam down there.” It was all I could do not to hug the big blue guy.

“I have a raid tonight. Arthas and all that. What am I supposed to do? I don’t know that felhound! He might try and take my hand off.” Klath’dok had no advice for me. I mean, I know I am a warlock. We are inherently evil and not to be trusted. Even the very demons I was trying to call were originally enslaved by my fel powers. But in some twisted form of Stockholm Syndrome we had become friends. We trusted one another. We worked as a team. We were connected, and not just by soul link, but by health funnel and dark pacts!

I summoned back the impostor, who just glared at me balefully.

“Alright you. I don’t know you. You don’t me. But I have this thing to do tonight. It’s lots and lots of killing. You should like that right?” He seemed a bit more interested.

“So truce then? I’ll take care of you for now, and we can both just muddle through until the Nether Guardians get this ‘mix-up’ figured out.” He blinked his eyes, but made no other response.

“Either agree, or I am gonna have a new felhound pair of boots. And I’ll use the imp instead.” He chuffed, and finally bowed his head and tentacles slightly. Good enough, I thought.

It would eventually take a week for my friends to return. Their return was met with joy and celebration, on both sides of the bond.

This event resonated several important things within me. First, Warlocks do have a heart, despite it being madly in love with destruction. Second, we knew their names. Not just one, but all of the demons we enslave. They are as much a part of us as our spikes, skulls, and bloody robes (not our blood). Third, despite years of howling for the ability to rename these little snots we had become accustomed to their names. We knew them. And when they were unexpectedly changed, we rebelled in one voice to change them back. There was the most heartbreaking thread on the forums, Warlocks looking for their lost minions, asking that someone, anyone care for their loved companions until at such a time this error could be reversed.

Welcome back Phryluum, you were missed you ugly little mutt you.

The Crypts of Karazhan

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As a fan of Lore and writing in World of Warcraft, I have read many of the novels and extra material written on the game. One such novel is The Last Guardian, which covers the story of Medivh and his tower, Karazhan.

In the Burning Crusade Karazhan (more commonly shortened to Kara) was added as a 10 man raid instance. It was essentially the starting point for fresh 70s wanting to get geared and get to raiding. By the time I hit Kara it was already on farm by my guild. I loved Kara. Even after 5 months worth of running Kara every single week, I *still* love Kara. It was exceptionally well designed, with beautiful attention to detail. Not to mention all of the bosses and NPCs were heavily tied to the story of Kara. Knowing Moroes from the book, then fighting him in the instance was beyond cool for me.

The only minor point I objected to was the fact that the in-game Kara had no “mirror”. In the book, the character Khadgar discovers that Medivh is actually possessed by Saragas (the biggest bad in the Warcraft Universe), and below Kara there is a mirrored version of the tall eerie tower. They must battle to the depths of this mirrored version to trap and defeat Medivh.

Then one day, browsing the main WoW forums I stumbled on a fascinating thread: The Hidden Places of WoW. It detailed out of bounds areas that a player could go and visit. These were mostly unfinished areas that had interesting areas around them like the Greymane Wall. Here I found mention of a place called the Crypts of Kara. Apparently behind Kara there is a graveyard called Morgan’s Plot, and a crypt that had a doorway, with rooms beyond it, but the door wouldn’t open. The poster explained that you could get beyond and explore the area, by using a simple trick.

By entering a duel with another player you could be feared through the invisible barrier. Once inside you can explore as you wish. I watched several videos and decided I had to go visit. So I gathered up some guidies and away we went.

The very first thing we noticed was the atmosphere, seemingly without much effort put into making it detailed. I am not sure if it was the lack of mobs, the lack of sound effects, the minor use of dark Duskwood music in one back corner, or simply the knowledge we didn’t belong there, but this area felt far more eerie and disturbing than anything else in WoW, including areas like Scholomance and Stratholm.

The first area is called The Well of the Forgotten.  I immediately noted that the name was printed in yellowy orange text. As opposed to the standard white. This room contained a well, without a barrier preventing someone from falling down it. One of my guildies immediately jumped down. The rest of us turned and investigated the next area The Pauper’s Walk.

This looked like something out of the Paris Catacombs. Niches in walls filled with bones, dirt floors, and low ceilings. It opened into a larger area, that looked like it could be a space for mausoleums and other crypts. Our guildie was messaging us about the huge pile of bones. I returned to the well, and leapt down. Despite falling what felt like a character killing distance, I landed, barely alive, on a huge pile of bones. This area was named The Pit of Criminals. Well, at least now we knew what the Well of the Forgotten was used for. The Pit contained pools of water, and huge piles of decaying bodies and putrefied remains.

We continued to explore, finding the Tome of the Unrepentant. (Perhaps it was supposed to be Tomb?) This is the first point where I really began to feel that this area was rough pass, unfinished work. This design had been abandoned before it could even be truly blocked out.

Then came perhaps the creepiest thing I have ever seen in WoW. The Upsidedown Sinners. The flooded room was filled with dark green water. Chains crossed the deep room. From these chains hang hooks, slightly animating, moving back and forth implying a slight ebb and flow to the water. There were also bodies. Dozens of them, suspended upside down. Some by their feet, with weights on their body pulling them downward, some by their hands, their arms distended with the pressure.

My guildies asked for my water breathing spell, so we could spend more time, floating about and taking pictures. After a long stay in the deeply disturbing room, we returned to the surface and swam out, to the final area, the Slough of Dispair [sic]. This room was a deep earthen pit, that clearly was designed for the final boss fight. When a player moved into the pit, the view of the door and walls passed out of view. It truly made me feel like I had been pushed down into this great gaping mass grave, from which there would be no return.

We took our pictures, said good bye to the creepy area, and returned to Shattrath, and the rest of the world. Everything seemed so much brighter, friendlier, and safer than we remembered.

The Pertinent Question

[quote=”Henghe“]So Joyia, you’re a level designer. Is it common for game designers to spend tons of time creating sounds and layouts, and to put them in games, that they then don’t give people access to? :lol:[/quote]

Yes and No. Yes, it is EXCEPTIONALLY common to spend tons of time creating areas, polishing them, pouring your heart and soul into them, only to have them violently ripped from your hands and discarded due to time, money, or just poor fit with the game in general.

No, those abandoned levels usually do not make it into a game. They are deleted from the game files usually to save space or install time/footprint. Especially for WoW where 12 million people have to download it. Yeah its only 20 mg worth of area, but how much bandwidth is it for 12 million people to download?

After looking a several videos, working diligently to overcome my WoW geekery, and inspecting the video a bit more, I have hit on a few ideas of why this level might have not been completed, and why it might be in the game. All of the following however is sheer speculation on my part.

Theory 1: Shares Space with Other Areas

So first off Blizzard makes WoW with a modified WC3 engine. These proprietary engines usually do not have an in-engine ability to make geometry, meaning you have to have a program like Max or Maya to make all of the walls, items, trees, etc in the game. Then you import these models into the engine which is an open terrain area. (In fact their terrain stuff is very similar to what is used in Unreal, very cool.) So what this means for WoW is that most of the buildings and stuff like Kara are actually created by an artist sitting next to the designer. This likely means that all of the major geometry in Kara, stuff like floors, ceilings, walls, and columns are all one piece, or at least are exported together so as far as the game is concerned are one piece. So it is possible and plausible that the Crypts were intended to be a part of Kara, another wing. However they were cut due to time and polish and could not be removed as they might share geometry with other parts of Kara.

Game developers tend to have the thought that if it’s not broken, don’t fix it. A single change can bring cascading bugs or problems. If they don’t have to remove something so the game fits on the disc, it is generally safer to leave it in.

Theory 2: The Depths of Depravity

Also as I stated before, these areas are much darker and have much darker names than normal WoW. It could just be that they decided it had gone too dark and they needed to reel it back in. It is also possible that this area was cut due to the dark tone and possible “teen” rating issue. Ratings are often based not only on the appearance of things, but also the frequency and detail. Though at times I think the rating theory doesn’t really wash, because all the human hanging models are used in other locations (like Scarlet Monastery) and they have done far worse things in Cata and Wrath. Perhaps it was merely the feeling at the time and since has changed.

Theory 3: Time and Scope

It is also possible as these areas have a very unfinished look about them that they were scrapped due to not having interesting enough bosses, not enough time, or possibly the quality of the area just wasn’t matching the rest of the dungeon. Kara was a Burning Crusade launch raid. It was the first expansion, and likely they over scoped. They got it to alpha stage, realized that they couldn’t finish all they started, and chose to pick something else instead of that (likely polish to Kara itself).

The design, while interesting, does not compare as far as quality to other WoW dungeons. With the exception of the Upsidedown Sinners room, of course, but even this room… why does it belong?

Theory 4: Lore

How does it fit? What is the lore behind this area and why is it tied to Medivh? I could see all of this much better under Stormwind’s Cathedral, which has an empty and accessible dungeon. (You can get a Scarlet Crusade quest there and in Cataclysm there is now a section of the Twilight Highlands feeder quests down there.) As it seems more likely for clerics and priests to place labels like unrepentant and sinners on something than Medivh.

On further reflection and re-reading the book, this location is not only completely wrong for Inverse Kara, but it is in the wrong location, has the wrong layout, and has the wrong entrance. The names and locations do not come close to meshing with the original idea. And even if they took liberal adjustments, this doesn’t even remotely resemble the layout of the in-game Kara, which it theoretically should.

We may never know the real reason this area was scrapped and closed off (though if I ever get an interview there, this is the FIRST thing I am asking them). It appeals to our sense of exploration, horror, and mischief. And for that, we love it, in all it’s unfinished glory.

(Note: This post was written in 3 parts over 3 years. It has been sitting in my drafts folder forever, and was only updated today and posted due to the WoW Insider post here.)