Tag Archives: Joyia

Games I played this week

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The 3ds came out this week, so there has been quite a bit of goofing around on it.

Pilotwings is pretty stellar. Much better than one would expect with the resort title.

Lego Star Wars 3 is simple great fun, just like all it’s predecessors.

The AR stuff on the 3DS is nothing short of magical. I hope they full support this and do tons of cards and games.

Of course I am still rocking the Dragon Quest IX. I got to the point where I am digging through grottos as quickly as possible. I can’t wait to hit one that is more my level.

In WoW, I was a part of a guild 10 man that downed Atramedes, a boss in Blackwing Descent that has some odd sound mechanics. It was quite the challenge as I was the gong ringer to interrupt the Searing Flame. We are still hitting the 25 man content pretty heavily. I am a bit depressed at the state of Affliction dps and considering trying some Destruction so I can blame my poor placement on that. My shaman may have finally reached the gear “tipping” point. One hopes. My priest is still rolling right along, and I have started doing Tol Barad dailies on both of them when possible.

My friends at Electrified Games went into Open Beta with their game, Pokemon Trading Card Game Online. It is quite fun for me, as I enjoyed the Pokemon TCG but haven’t had time or people to play with in a long time.

I picked up several games, multiple Dragon Quests, Nintendogs +cats, and some other older DS games.

 

Warcraftpets.com

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They don’t add stats. They don’t give bonuses or buffs. They don’t *do* anything but sit around, play some animations and sounds, and look cute. So why am I so obsessed with collecting them? Why does my mom collect salt and pepper shakers? Why does my grandmother collect Snow Babies? I have no idea, but at least mine is digital.

Joyia has 153 mini-pets. Mini-pets are small critters in World of Warcraft that can be summoned and then follow the player about. They are called mini-pets, non combat pets, vanity pets, and critters. My collection began soon after my first character, Birgitta, a night elf hunter reached Darnassus. After talking to an npc I noticed he sold three little owls. I bought one, nearly beggaring my first character. I pulled out the little owl and immediately fell in love. This was in the days of Vanilla WoW, before pets were items that once used became learned spells. Each mini-pet took up a bag slot.

I collected a few, but not to many, as bag space was at a premium. I didn’t buy the snakes, cockroaches, or rabbits, because I already had all the owls and cats. Soon after beginning to realize I needed to have my collection spread out across multiple characters, I was browsing the general forums and discovered a post by a player named Breanni, who had started a pet collecting website called WarcraftPets. I went to the site and loved it. I became a member and began tracking my collection, and voting on every single pet. I was thrilled to see my idea of collecting pets across various alts was not only a good idea, but Breanni’s method as well.

Then came the patch for pet collectors. No longer would pets be items taking up valuable bag space, but instead they would be learned spells. Glee does not even begin to describe how I felt. I quickly learned as many pets as I could on Joyia and started my grand pokemon quest, to catch every single mini-pet in WoW. Breanni’s site being my mecca of information and support.

Near the end of Wrath I went on a binge of boredom and decided to work towards filling out my pet roster. I collected the rare drops. I farmed up all the whelplings. As I collected each pet I added them to my collection on Warcraft Pets. Just after Cataclysm hit, I was lucky enough to be able to purchase 3 of the tcg cards that had pets and also quickly gathered the new additions. One day I logged on and suddenly got a whisper from someone I had never met.

“Hi! Did you transfer to this server?” I hesitated before responding but finally answered that yes, I had transferred to this server, but that was more than a year ago. As it turns out, this was the Alliance alt of a Horde player on the server, and he wanted to know when I had transferred over as I had “suddenly” risen in the ranks and passed him as the person with the most mini-pets on the server.

I did what now? It took me a while to figure out there was a way to sort by server, and who had the most mini-pets. Now, this isn’t Blizzard information, or even crawling the armory to find the statistics, but rather, anyone who enters their info on the site, and the moderators checking against the armory if someone is suspiciously high. But of all the people who entered their collection into the site, I was the highest for Echo Isles. Awesome. Meaning it is entirely possible I do in fact have the largest mini-pet collection on EI.

I only have 11 pets left to get that are reasonable for me to get. (I am not paying 2.5k to get an original WoW collectors edition, though it would net me 3 pets.) I keep fishing in the sewers, doing fishing dailies, and killing foxes with the hope of rounding out my collection before they add new ones to capture. That and I just like the little things. They are so cute!

My favorite pets, in no particular order:

The Phoenix Hatchling

The Firefly (still flying)

The Singing Sunflower

The Spectral Kitten (to match her sister!)

Withers

The Gryphon Hatchling

All the whelplings

The Baby Boomkin

The Hippogryph Hatchling

Speedy

Ah, who am I kidding… I love em all!

Respond, if you please

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Video games tend to draw controversy. It’s okay, we ask for it. We know we are asking for it and deal with it when it happens. This is how the ESRB was born after all.

The thing that bothers me though, is when a video game gets a ton of bad press, then makes attempts to correct the “problem” and receives no response from the media or sites that complained so loudly to begin with. I get why national media doesn’t do this (though really with everything on the internet they could at least make a small post). But what stops small blogs from responding?

The example that spawned the thought for me is the “Torture Quest” brouhaha in WoW. When Wrath of the Lich King launched, players tore into the content, much as they always do. A few weeks after launch, someone wrote a blog post about a quest: The Art of Persuasion and about how horrible it was and how they were going to stop playing WoW over it. The quest requires you to “torture” a captured enemy for information. For whatever reason, many players (ironically most had done the quest, but never really paid attention to *what* they were doing) latched on to this and got *bent*. How dare the developers force them to TORTURE INNOCENT PEOPLE. Rawr! Pitchforks! Torches! Bad Blizzard Devs!

To which I replied with “Really? THIS is where you draw the line?” Seriously. We are discussing a game where my main character, Joyia has 181,866 TOTAL KILLS. She has KILLED almost 200,000 THINGS in the game. (I also want to point out her kills that yield experience or honor, ie meaningful kills, are at 67,405, meaning that she has killed 114,461 creatures/humaniods/players that were only for loot and sometimes not even that.) In that same zone there is a quest to collect HUMAN EARS. In Hillsbrad they have you poisoning some farmer’s dog. In Hillsbrad again they have you COLLECTING SKULLS. These are just the thoughts off the top of my head. My first reaction was “What’s a little torture on top of the wholesale slaughter of thousands of creatures, many of whom were unarmed or non-aggressive.”

My second thought was “Well, okay, but this guy, NOT INNOCENT.” And he isn’t. He is an evil wizard attempting to destroy the WORLD. Imagine a crazy, powerful being, attempting to launch every nuclear weapon in the world at once. It’s your job to stop him. Would you step down the dark side to prevent it? Even if it meant my own death at the hands of Justice, I am pretty sure I would. This isn’t puppy killing we are discussing. This guy is a mass murder (as much as any player character) and is actively killing puppies himself.

Regardless, after a few months, the furor died down and no one really talked about it again. Fast forward to Cataclysm. Early in Hyjal, one of the introductory leveling zones for level 80 players, there is a quest to capture a harpy (a known and common enemy mob throughout the game)  and interrogate her about her master’s plans to reincarnate an ancient for the bad guys. Ancients are super powerful beings. Having even one on your side is the equivalent of bringing a tank to a knife fight. The player, once damaging her to about 25% is given two “speech” options. One to “Soften her up” the second to “Ask her about their plans.” The first results in a bit of “smacking around” and some comments from the npc holding the harpy in place for you.

This is very obviously Blizzard’s response to the fuss over the Persuasion quest. First, the player doesn’t need to “rough” the npc up to get her to talk. Just asking her she volunteers the information the player is looking for. Second, if the player does “rough” her up, the npc has 8 canned responses, 5 of which could be construed as negative towards the player for using violence. Finally, at the end of the conversation with the harpy the player is given the choice, to kill her or spare her. Both options return a “positive” response from the npc. “It’s your call, <name>. Marion brought this on herself when she attacked our matron’s sacred shrine.” and “You’re a better person than I, <name>. But I suppose the harpies are just pawns here.” if you choose to kill or spare respectively.

It allows the player to play as they chose, as opposed to following the designed path. I love it. This is a prime example of  “Player Driven Stories” as discussed at GDC this year. The player drives the story. Both of my healers let her off, sparing her life. My DK and Warlock both killed her. My DK chose to soften her up until the npc said something to the effect of  “Okay, we still need her to answer questions.”

Regardless, it was a superb response to player’s comments on the “interrogation” from Wrath so why couldn’t the detractors at the very least acknowledge that Blizzard took their concerns under consideration and made an effort to appease them. Although I still feel it is a bit hypocritical to run around ripping out skulls then get squeamish at a bit of shock therapy.

Hell is other players…

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Over the past month many a friend has left WoW. The new expansion was easily leveled and to be honest, really didn’t add much to the game itself. The new zones are fascinating. The new races enjoyable for a while. Archeology interesting for a short while then becoming locked in combat with Fishing for the most boring profession. Now we are back to the grind for gear which has slowed to a glacial crawl due to the difficulty of Heroics and Raids.

First off let me be the first to say, I enjoy a challenge in WoW… for about a week. After a week or two, I am tired of bashing my head against the same old wall and just want to move on to something else. Now, two months after Cata’s release ending up in a Heroic with players who do not grasp the basic concept of “Stay out of the stupid” just makes me get angry and annoyed at the rampant stupidity of other players. Sadly, it seems like a Boolean event too. Either the group is fast, efficient and effective, or they are completely incompetent and you wonder how they even managed to turn the computer on, much less level to 85. The amount of frustration I feel at people who can’t be bothered to learn one really shouldn’t stand in the blinking yellow stuff can’t possibly be healthy.

I try to defend WoW to people who have left, but honestly, I am not sure why I even try. I have been raiding for weeks and have managed to lose every single roll on gear. People who were unwilling to even work to get rep epics are winning rolls on the few pieces I can’t buy or get with rep. When I run dungeons I invariably get stuck with players who don’t understand concepts like stay out of the bad. All in all it is a highly frustrating experience.

So as always, I turn my eye towards the question – How would I fix this?

1. Variant dungeon difficulty, that can be clearly marked by an item level. So we already know the dungeons are “ordered” as you level from 80 to 85. You always do Blackrock Caverns and Throne of Tides first. Then move on to Stonecore and Vortex Pinnacle, then on to Grim Batol, Halls of Origination, and Lost City. Why then are they *wildly* different as heroics? Arguements could be made that Stonecore and Grim Batol are by far the hardest heroics, and yet each one has a fight that is wildly difficult and “group breaking”. This happened in Wrath too (anyone remember AN before the ToC patch? *shudder*). Would it not be more logical to have the heroics progress in the same difficulty curve as the regular versions? This way the instant someone hit 85 they could pick up enough gear to queue for heroics (329) and then would be put in a BRC or ToT, which would be tuned to be *slightly* more difficult than the level 85 regulars, but almost always beatable by a non-idiot group in full 329. Having a second number to hit (335?) for Stonecore and Vortex, then a third number (341?) for the final “tier” of heroics. Not only would it make more logical sense, but it would also help people ease into heroics, as opposed to hitting 329, queuing and getting thrown into a Grim Batol, virtually assuring your group’s failure.

2. Get rid of the random drops (to an extent). I am sure anyone who reads this knows how much I hate random, and to be fair, I usually try to contain it to vanity items. However when you run a Tol Barad and have hunter gear drop (that is items with the class limitation hunter) and there isn’t a single hunter in the 25 man raid… Well that’s just a waste. I was a part of a Halls of Origination run where literally every single item dropped was plate or mail. Much to the joy of our Warlock, Priest, Mage, and two Druids. Really? An hour and a half and not a single usable upgrade? It’s not even like it dropped something useful that everyone already had, that’s at least acceptable. We are talking about every single person in the group choosing to run this instance to get specific items and having every single item sharded because no one could even equip them. I am not saying make the perfect gear drop, I am saying “cheat” the system out a bit so if there are no plate wearers, plate doesn’t drop.

-Heading off the comment – Some might point out that there aren’t that many drops on bosses, so if they weed out all the plate/mail drops then something might increase to a 50% drop. This is easily fixed by simply having more variations of gear. Every Resto Shaman will tell you there needs to be more healy boots. Every cloth wearer will tell you there needs to be more 346 bracers. (There are currently two 346 cloth bracers for DPS in the game and NEITHER has haste.) There are gear gaps that need to be filled. And while we’re at it, what is with all the belt drops by the dozens for clothies? There are two easily crafted belts available at large for clothies and yet there are 6 346 belts, two of which can be purchased from the Justice Points Vendor, not to mention all the early purple belt drops in raids.

3. Tanks and Heals are at a premium and it is only getting worse. We have 4 classes that can heal and 4 classes that can tank. Tanking assures an instant queue. Healing assures a short queue. And yet, every week since launch my queue time as dps during peak hours has slowly risen. It went from 25 minutes at launch to 40 minutes now. During peak hours. I thought, well clearly this means I should be tanking or healing. Unfortunately, warlocks can’t do either. So I worked pretty hard to get my priest up to heroics level and finally got in to heal. And man did it *suck* on so many levels. DPS stood in stupid, tanks couldn’t keep aggro, I ran out of mana faster than a dog eats a treat, and to top it all off, when the +spirit trinket dropped that I so desperately needed, the shaman needed on it saying “Whut? Spirit converts to hit for me…” And of course won it. Is it any wonder Tanks and Healers aren’t wanting to queue?

I understand the desire for a challenge. I really do. But challenge != frustrating. And currently, that’s how it feels for heals and tanks. At the risk of saying, screw the hard core, make it easier… Well, make it easier. The more people who feel they can tank without being subjected to the ridicule of other players when they lose aggro on a mob, the more tanks we will have. In a raid, this is clearly a different situation, but in heroics, we need more tanks. The only way I can see adjusting this for both raids and heroics is to require raids to have 5 tanks, 5 heals, and 15 dps, as if they were broken down into 5 micro groups. I don’t really think that is an answer, as it is already complex enough to get 2-3 tanks geared for raids. I really feel that heroics and raids should be tuned differently when it comes to healing and tanking. A heroic should be able to get by with a mediocre tank while a raid never should. Also, to be fair, a majority of your players are DPS. So they have fun melting faces. Fewer tanks and heals means fewer melted faces.

Also, throw your heals and tanks a bone, add in the ability to offspec roll on items in heroics. When something is very clearly a tank or healing item, the tank or heals should get preferential treatment, since they are putting up with the added stress of healing and tanking. If a +spirit item drops and the healer needs, the dps should only be allowed to roll offspec. This makes it far more rewarding to run as a tank or healer if you are attempting to get that gear, as you are sure if it drops you will get it. As an added bonus this assures that tanks and healers across the board will gear consistently as well, thus overpowering the encounters and making things *easier*.

4. Give us something new. Not to sound negative or anything, because it is clearly still a challenge for some people, but so far Cata’s raiding seems to be “Don’t stand in the fire.” As much as I hated it, at least the vehicle fights threw a bit of a twist on things. But honestly we need more Dreamwalker fights. More Festerguts. Way more Lootships. This that are the norm to break up the don’t stand in the stupid. So far on this raiding tier I have seen little innovation. Omnitron is trying, but really is just 4 bosses thrown together. Conclave of Winds so far is one of the only mildly original ideas… but they drop random stated loot. Yes that’s fun, never knowing what you are going to get. Not to mention that even one death means a complete and total wipe. (Really you should be able to 8 or 20 man all raids once a majority of the people are geared to the level of the raid.)

Even if the new is something old. Deadmines and Vanessa Vancleef – amazing. Very very interesting. So where is the raid encounter? *imagines fighting Patchwerk right after running the raid through Frogger*

5. Overhaul crafting. Okay this isn’t as easy as adjusting some loot code to make loot drops worth it. But seriously. Crafting could be so much more. And it could be the answer to people who really just like to farm, play the ah, and make things. It can also fill in gear gaps, ease entry into heroics and raids, and stabilize economies. Crafting always seems to be the spot that has the most potential, and yet Blizzard seems content to let it sit. Especially if the new crafting takes time and effort, it could be a great boon to players looking for something new and Cataclysm is all about the overhaul.

6. Stack the groups for success. Towards the end of Wrath, I noticed a trend. I wondered if it was just coincidence or if it was intentional. It seems to be gone in Cata, or maybe it just doesn’t work with everyone at such low gear levels. In Wrath, more often than not it seemed like if the tank was *wildly* overgeared, the healer was not as much. If the healer was overgeared, then the tank was not as much. And invariably, two of the dps would be complete and total face melters while the third was always fresh and barely geared. It *felt* like the system was specifically putting groups together that could carry the lesser geared member. Every time my tank queued, I was always paired with a Kingslayer healer. It seems odd, but really, if the system isn’t doing this, it could be. My warlock more and more gets into groups with everyone completely geared, and so they go exceptionally smoothly, while my lesser geared priest gets stuck with people in full crafted pvp sets.

These are just a few ideas I have had on how to make WoW more fun and more engaging without inherently changing the game (except for the crafting). But even so, I almost feel like they are moot points. At the end of the day, the bad parts of WoW are directly related to bad players, with bad attitudes. The social aspects of the game aren’t quite enough to overcome the trolls, griefers, and haters. Everyone starts the expansion with their own goals, play times, and focuses. People aren’t as willing to help or play together because it is all still so new. One hopes as patches are released and players migrate back that we will have lost our singular focuses and return to the group whole. I miss my friends though, because hell is other players.

You never know who is behind the mask…

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Without being in a guild with someone or they follow the lovely every character has a similar name, it is generally difficult to connect various characters in WoW to the people behind the name. Recently joining a new guild, I have found this to be wildly true. Learning new people, then learning their dozens of alts has been a challenge.

But what about people who aren’t in your guild? People you generally don’t run with every day? Sometimes they connect themselves, for example, I have several toons named Pandara, Pandari, Pandare, Pandaree and so on and so forth. Clearly these characters are likely connected. Other than that, there really is no way to tell.

So?

Why does this matter? Well, you never know who you might be talking to.

A real Azerothian example. I was leveling my main through Hyjal on launch day, someone I didn’t know whispered me and asked me where something was in a quest. I, in my usual standard annoyance for people who ask others for help instead of doing the legwork themselves, told this person “Look at your map.” And went back about my business. To be fair, any quest objectives are in fact marked on your map in WoW. The person gave me an equally curt reply and that was the end of it. Or so I thought. That night, as I hopped into a guild group with several close friends, one of them commented “Yeah, especially meanie Joyia, who is rude to people asking for help.” Turns out, the person whispering me had been his wife, and she asked me because I had been nice to her previously.

I pointed out that she had not identified herself, nor had she ever played that toon with me, not to mention that the toon wasn’t even in our guild. She was only one of dozens of people who whispered me that day with various idiot questions. I had no reason to be nice to her. As far as I knew she could have been anyone.

Looking back and thinking about it, I was entirely wrong.

I had every reason to be nice to her. I didn’t know who she was. I had no clue as to her allegiances. What if she had been my grandmother? What if she had been R.A. Salvatore (who has been known to play WoW). She could have been *anyone*.

I have even had times where someone was blindingly nice to me on one character only to be exceptionally rude to me on another.

In a world of magic and digital trickery, we need to remember, the people behind the avatars are people. Until proven otherwise, assume they are someone kind and deserving of respect. Perhaps if everyone acted like the person behind that character was someone they liked, the World of Warcraft would be a much nicer place.

Feats of Nerdity

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My XBox 360 Gamerscore is less than impressive.

My WoW achievement score is quite impressive. Especially if one takes into consideration achievements across multiple characters. Not kidding. I have spent a stupid amount of time and an even more stupid amount of gold getting various WoW achievements.

100 Mounts? I got it. Ring of Dalaran? Yup. Loremaster? Check, check, check, and check. Minipets? At least one on every.single.toon.

Today’s Breakfast Topic on Wowinsider discussed what achievements *should* be in WoW. A great topic to discuss. Many of the suggestions for Burning Crusade raids were exceptional. (Nobody Move – awarded for no one moving during Flame Wreath on Aran. Brilliant.) But many were suggestions that while could mildly be interesting would be terrible WoW achievements. Of course, not to fault the people writing them in, but Blizzard themselves seems to not have a standard for achievement and achievement changes.

Bad WoW Achievements:

1. Any achievement that cannot be completed by every class/race/faction combo. Allowances can be made to have the 2 version achievements for Horde and Alliance. This means no achievement for x amount of spells cast.

2. Any achievement that can only be earned during a single short time. Though having Feats of Strength instead of achievements seems to work well for this.

3. Any achievement that requires leaving the game or something outside of the game.

4. Any achievement that effectively locks out level capped players.

Now having said that, I feel that Blizzard is very arbitrary on achievement creation, criteria, and removal. There are achievements that are wildly specific. And then some entire areas of the game that are ignored. They give achievements for gold loots, but not item loots. There are achievements for professions as a whole, but not for mining x ore, or disenchanting x items.

Of course, due to the fact that they added achievements in Wrath, they didn’t add many of the smaller more interesting dungeon achievements to old world and outland dungeons and raids.

When they remove achievements, for the most part, they make them Feats of Strength (but not all of them, see The Keymaster achievement). Also if they remove an achievement that was a part of a criteria for a meta achievement, they generally remove it from the meta (again not always, look at the Naxx achievements.) They also have been inconsistent with removing rewards from achievements, then not removing rewards from the exact same style of achievement. (See Naxx drakes vs. Ulduar/ICC drakes.)

They need to make achievements consistent. They need to make the removal (which is fine) consistent. They need to make the addition of achievements a part of each major content patch, even if it is just filling in old holes and gaps in the system. Imagine if they simply added a section now that gave a player an achievement for soloing all the classic dungeons?

Like it or not, achievements became a huge part of people’s enjoyment of WoW. Now they need to make it work across the board instead of just being shotgunned across expansions and spurts of creativity by designers.

BlizzCon The Aftermath

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EDIT: This post was mostly written the Monday after BlizzCon, but wasn’t posted due to the hacking.

One thing about conventions, you are always gonna sit in line. We started our BlizzCon experience sitting in a massive line outside the convention center. Everyone standing around had their passes on, many with their names. Most conversations started with the question “Horde or Alliance?”. Then asking about classes, number of 80s, and if you raid or pvp. Of course this caused small groups to break off and discuss their specific World of Warcraft love.

An hour later, after meeting several interesting people, a liar, and witnessing an e-peen contest, we were on the move towards the doors. First greeted with a huge statue of a Terran Marine and large sign marking it as Blizzcon. In the distance was a second sign proclaiming Starcraft 2. The hall, extremely massive, had been divided into 4 sections, a Main Theatre, Diablo, Starcraft and Warcraft. We knew the opening ceremony was soon, so we just glanced at the huge banks of computers as we moved towards the main theatre. There about 10,000 chairs sat in front of a huge array of massive screen. We managed to find a seat near the back and waited for the event to start.

Being there, in a room literally filled to the brim with people who were fans of all the same things I was. Of course we noted the interesting costumes. We talked excitedly about what we hoped to see. I looked through the schedule planning on what all I wanted to see that day. Veterans of the event kept telling us to go to the Loot Elemental or this or that.

We listened to the opening speech, excited beyond measure. Even the Demon Hunter video, for a game I likely won’t play that much, was thrilling. Once it was done Pinecone and I decided to take a pass of the convention floor. We walked the whole thing. There were huge statues from the various games scattered throughout the halls. And so many people. Lines snaked and meandered through the room, none of them seeming to even have ends, though one can assume they knew where they were headed.

We found our way to the Steel Series booth after browsing the halls and met up with the woman in charge of the contest. She took our picture (it was later posted on Facebook) and then asked us if we had time to go around to the partners booths. We figured we had nothing better to do, might as well. She also dug out two of the SteelSeries Cataclysm mousepads. You know, the giant ones that are specially designed to just work better? We both thanked her profusely. I snagged the Worgen one, and handed the Goblin one off to Pined. (I love the Worgen, but wish all the Goblins had drowned.) We followed JoJo through the crowd winding over to the Brady Games booth.

Apparently at BlizzCon they do a “Quest”. Where each day you go to all of the booths, and if you do, you get a little tag that lets you scratch off and maybe win a prize. Brady Games was our first stop. We just walked up to the table, bypassing the HUGE line of people waiting. The Brady Games rep gave us two scratchers, insisting we need not do the quest. We scratched and got Green, (the colors were based on the item colors in WoW) and so got patches. They were so swamped the rep asked us if we could come back later when they weren’t busy. We agreed, and headed over to Jinx.

A bit of background… I love Jinx. I am a Champion of Jinx’s site, mostly from purchases. I order at least one huge order every year and occasionally small ones. They are the reason I can go for 3 weeks wearing nothing but WoW shirts without repeating. In fact my t-shirts all come from one of three places: Jinx, Think Geek, and Woot.Shirt. I own all of their WoW hoodies. The Jinx booth, as the others had a huge line. They, once again, jumped us to the front. The nice guy from Jinx smiled through me gushing about the company and how much liked it, while handing us order forms. This is what I was here for. I quickly marked several of the new t-shirts and a hoodie. I couldn’t *wait* to wear my shiny new murloc hoodie. I pulled out my credit card and waited with a smile. Pinecone marked an item or two and handed his form back as well. The rep looked at my form and nodded. Then looked at Pinecone’s and goes: “Uh, dude, don’t you want more than that?” Pinecone looked a bit surprised, as I thought, wow hard seller here. After making some comment that he couldn’t quite afford more than that, the rep laughed and says “No no dude, it’s all free. Here.” And hands the form back. I blinked. I had almost $200 worth of stuff marked already. He made more waving motions. Well, if you insist I thought…

We walked away from the Jinx booth with quite the load of gear, both of us, wildly shocked and a bit dazed. We made our way over to the arena competition area and got some lunch. As we sat and ate we watched one of the pro arena matches. Now, I am one of the first people to say that people getting paid to play WoW is just absurd. But what got me was the fact that the team was a druid, shaman, warlock. I have played all three. I played a warlock at 70 raiding and 80 raiding. I played a shaman at 80 raiding as heals and elemental. My MAIN is a warlock. And I could *barely* follow what was happening. He was using spells in ways I had never considered.

After this, we wandered the hall a bit more and then headed over to the main hall once more for the Dungeons and Raids panels. Three cheers for being able to admit that you built some bad ideas and correcting them. After this, I was quite exhausted and wanted to head back to the hotel to drop off our loot. Once done there, we headed back to the convention center, and stopped in to the Lore panel. (Yes, I saw Red Shirt guy ask his question, it was pretty funny to be present for that.) We then camped our chairs for the Live Raid, and met Murky, a wonderful girl. She and I talked about mini pets and such for quite a while. I also stopped by the WoW magazine booth and renewed my subscription for a lovely green murloc.

The live raid was hilarious, despite not really being a raid, or even that interesting as far as mechanics. We went back by the Brady booth, now cleared out and introduced ourselves again. The rep was excited to see us and gave us free Razer headphones and a SteelSeries mouse. Once more loaded down with loot, and thoroughly excited, we decided to search for food.

Pinecone and I headed out, and decided to eat at Mortons. While exceptionally good, I am fairly sure I like Boca better. We then took a stroll down to Disneyland’s entrance, stopping along the way to talk to WoW-ers and take pictures of costumes.

Thus ended day 1 of BlizzCon. We headed back to our hotel room and took the time to log on and run Horseman from my teeny Netbook. (Did I mention I had installed WoW on a Dell Netbook, so we could make sure to run the Horseman event every day? It’s hilarious playing WoW on a screen that small, but I got the horse on TWO of my 80s, so it was worth it.)

We got up the next morning and headed over, excited to see more. The line was much much shorter and as such we were fairly close to the beginning. Only this time we were surrounded by a group of idiots that were very clearly the source of trolling on their server. Fortunately we didn’t have to wait long and we were inside, once more bee-lining to the Main Theatre. We watched the Cataclysm cinematic panel in awe, from our great seats right up front. I, of course, got goosebumps at the Worgen cinematic. Nothing really beats seeing it on a 15 foot screen with an insane sound system. As we were still tired, and had *great* seats, we decided to sit, and took turns venturing out into the convention hall. During this time I took pictures of costumes, statues, computer banks, huge posters and so on. I also took a moment to pick up an item or two from the Blizzard Store.

The Q&A panel might have been more interesting if it wasn’t all about Pallys, so we got up once more, visited the large meeting stone, made our mark on the wall, then decided to head back to the hotel. Exhausted we decided to just head on back to the airport, so we wouldn’t have to rush. We packed up our loot (now our suitcases were near to bursting) and headed to the airport.

TSA has a shockingly understanding attitude about women dressed up as murlocs. They laughed, asked me what I was supposed to be, and waved me on through.

Our plane was delayed twice, though we got to play WoW on the Netbook, taking turns back and forth. It was great fun.

After PAX, I can say BlizzCon is a very focused show. It’s all about Blizzard products. I felt a bit bad, as I am not a huge Starcraft fan (and thus didn’t care Fruitdealer was there) or Diablo fan (the demon hunter trailer was cool at least). I enjoy PAX and I like that I can enjoy PAX with a majority of my friends. But really BlizzCon seemed almost lacking in that respect. I am very glad I took Pinecone, as my husband would have been quite annoyed to sit through all those panels, and likely would not have taken me bypassing all the SC and Diablo stuff with such grace. (Not to mention all the loot would have been lost on him.) I suppose it might be different if it were an expansion announcement year. Or if I took part in one of the contests. But I think, if I have to choose a convention, I will choose PAX. (And GDC of course, but that one is work related!)

I have to say though… if you are going to go to a convention, doing it as a contest winner is the way to go.

That’s why they are called “heroic”

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The great race began at midnight, then barreled on into Tuesday morning. Camping spawns, blitzing from zone to zone, barely reading quest text. All in the hope to be 85 as soon as possible. Of course, it isn’t just getting to 85, it’s all about the epics. Those lovely purple items that make a character so powerful and makes them truly feel like a Hero. This means getting what gear is available and running dungeons until the player’s eyes bleed. In true Blizzard fashion, dungeons come in two flavors, Regular and Heroic. Heroics drop better gear and points which can be exchanged for gear.

In Wrath, many players complained that Blizzard went too far into the “welfare” epics. Implying that by having an epic item drop off the last boss of a heroic instance, allowing players to buy epics with badges dropped from heroics, and having “major patch” dungeons drop the mid level of epic, they had made epics less awesome and amazing.

First off, the belief that something in the game is “rare” or “special” is a fallacy. Nothing is difficult to get, provided sufficient time and persistence. Want all ICC 25 gear? Join a guild that has ICC 25 on farm and show up every run. Want Kingslayer? It was sold on many servers for less than 10k gold. Also rarity in this game is completely relative. Take the Celestial Steed and Rivendare’s Deathcharger for instance. The Celestial Steed is obtained from the Blizzard Pet store for $25. Rivendare’s Deathcharger is a notoriously low drop rate mount from Stratholm. The average number of Stratholm runs to get the mount is 100. Most players give up after about 20, especially since it is not a guaranteed drop after 100 runs. Pinecone of Echo Isles will point to his 242 runs to acquire this mount as proof of the vileness of the RNG. (Random Number Generator.) Logic dictates that the Celestial Steed then would be more common, thus less rare than the Deathcharger’s Reins. Over the entirety of the game, this is likely true.

However, the player base is split across four regions, hundreds of servers, and two factions. So in reality, the rarity of something in relation to a player is really only drawing from a few thousand players at most. In Booze Hounds, of Echo Isles, the Celestial Steed was dubbed “too expensive” for many of the adult players with children. To that end, only 4 of the guild members had the purchasable mount. In contrast, many of these same players were completely willing to spend downtime in the game farming Stratholm, and as a result there were no less than 8 of Rivendare’s coveted mount. In this small sample the Celestial Steed was more rare than the Deathcharger, despite the ease of acquiring it. In the end, when playing WoW, it doesn’t matter what the entirety of the game has, it matters what you, as a player has and the people you play with (generally your guild). The rarity is relative. Was Kingslayer rare? Not in BH, where nearly everyone, including a few alts had the title.

Now, having explained this odd view of rarity, back to the epics.

In Cataclysm, Blizzard returned to the “older” way of thinking. Epics no longer drop in Dungeons, Heroic or otherwise. Epics can no longer be purchased with badges (though likely this will change when the second raid tier is implemented). And Heroics are… frustratingly difficult. The key word is frustrating. Something can be difficult or challenging, but not be frustrating. In the Lich King fight, Defiles made the battle difficult, as the players have to spread out at just the right time, in the proper fashion to prevent chaining the effect. A challenge, with 10 people, but if the effect did chain, everyone knew why. It was obvious.

Heroic Deadmines presents a boss, Admiral Ripsnarl, who spawns adds after he reaches 75% health. These adds have 60k health and must be killed within a few seconds or they double in size and health. If they double 3 times, they explode, wiping the group. Logically, the dps roles all turn and burn these adds down as quickly as possible. When attempting this with my dungeon group we repeatedly failed miserably. In an attempt to understand what was happening, I looked at the various people in our group. Every single member was over the 329 item level required to queue for heroics. Most members were even up in the 340 item level range, in addition to 3 people having the achievement for Cataclysmic Superiority, meaning all of their gear is the blue level to start this expansion. We were a full guild group, with vent, and understood the mechanics of the fight, but it was very clearly beyond our ability. It’s possible we needed more burst dps (with 2 warlocks, we were in the killing things slowly but surely) but hasn’t Blizzard’s motto been “Bring the Player not the Class”? Our tank was well geared, even gemmed and enchanted. Our healer was well geared and healing efficiently. All our dps was doing 10k+. It felt absurd that we couldn’t take this boss down.

The frustration of this fight ruined the night. There was no explanation for why we failed. Everyone was geared at the level the game said we should be. Everyone was playing efficiently, avoiding damage, and fulling their role. This lead me to one conclusion. Either the gear requirements were “off” or the boss was. The boss needed a nerf, or the item level required to queue for the dungeon needed to be higher. With a well coordinated group, on vent, well balanced, we should have been able to succeed with minimal wipes. According to Wowhead, Ripsnarl is a gear check. Does your group have the gear needed to succeed. Blizzard said yes, the boss said no. The inconsistency needs to be addressed.

I don’t think heroics should be easy, I do think they need to be doable, with an understanding of why you fail. I do think that the gear required needs to be clear. In Wrath, a stair stepped gear requirement for harder instances was implemented and understood. Perhaps they need to revisit it for Cataclysm. The worst part was, when someone pointed out that we were wiping more than we had in Heroic Raids in Wrath. And even so, we weren’t fighting for Epics, we were fighting for blues… The group almost immediately fell apart due to the morale dive bomb. Say what you will about Wrath welfare epics… At least the game was fun and I didn’t go to bed more bummed than when I started playing that night.

A Questing We Will Go!

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Azeroth is Shattered. (For those of you who don’t play WoW, this means that the patch applying the expansion hit, despite the fact that the expansion doesn’t come out until the 7th.)

Rather than having an entirely phased world, Blizzard decided it would be better to “force” the changes on everyone. Especially since this is essentially an upgraded version of the Original WoW. WoW 2.0 if you wish. So all the changes were pushed to all the players. And man, were there a metric ton of changes. As a long time player, and a fan of clearly undervalued achievements, I had already completed Loremaster on my main, Joyia. I was excited to see in the flood of new achievements, zone specific achievements for the Original WoW quests. (Previously all of the Original WoW quests were merely lumped together into Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdoms, now they are broken down by zone, with the Kali and EK achievements being metas requiring all the specific zones.) I couldn’t wait to watch all the dings from them when I logged in.

However, when I logged in, I didn’t receive a flood of achievements. Oh one or two, but not the 40 or so I should have gotten from all the quests I had completed. As it turns out, Blizzard made *far* more extensive changes than most players originally assumed. Instead of updating a small number of quests and adding new ones, they updated about 95% of all the quests in the game. In addition to adding new ones. This means that a majority of the quests were re-numbered in the system. So while my “quest total” lists at over 2000 quests completed, I have barely 50 total listed under the various zones.

I grumbled a great deal about this change. But, I looked on the bright side, at least now I had a good reason to go back and see all the changes. So I went to go see Duskwood, my favorite zone, and started to re-run all those quests.

To say I was impressed would be an understatement. Not only did they adjust the flow of quests to be better for the player (gather several quests, make a lap of the zone, return to turn in quests, repeat) but they also updated the quests to take into account things the player did in the previous incarnation of the zone. If you were a fan of the zone before, now it is better.

(Spoilers!!!! – Can you even believe what happened to Sven?! That was AWESOME! –Spoilers DONE)

I might have complained about the quest re-numbering and wipe originally, but now I am thrilled. I will be sure to re-visit each zone, read all the new quests, and experience all the new shiny the game has to offer. Also it makes it a great deal easier to get my Seeker title. Bravo Blizzard, for not taking the easy way out when updating the old world. For taking the time to revisit each quest and make it fit within the new design ideals solidified in Wrath and Burning Crusade.

You are likely to be eaten by a grue.

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Game designers love surprising the player. They call them “Gotcha” moments. The general assumption that this means the death of the player is not always true. A treasure or cutscene can be a surprise. The thing is, most designers are the diabolical type. A tad masochistic and definitely sadistic, we like watching player struggle on difficult tasks. Well, most of us do anyway.

One common surprise tactic is to have the “BAM, you’re dead” moment. This can be a falling rock, a hidden sniper, or a bridge that falls when you walk across it the seventh time. My level design professor once said that we should always be careful with such moments and make sure the player receives plenty of clues. If you are going to have a sniper hiding to get the player, have bullet holes on the wall, or dead corpses in the street. Then, from that point onward, you can play on the player’s fear. Want them to slow down and stop? Place some bullet hole decals and a corpse. Even without the sniper, a player who has died that way before will stop in their tracks and look around before proceeding.

World of Warcraft does this same thing, in a slightly left handed fashion. When the player begins leveling, the areas are safe, contained, and kind to the player. Once they hit about level 20, Blizzard slowly introduces the idea of “danger” to the player by having mobs tied to other mobs, so when you pull one, you always pull several. Nothing drives home the idea that you are not safe more than the random wandering Elite monster.

Elites are super strong monsters, generally named, that are designed to be killed by a group of players. This can be anywhere from 2 to 5 players. Commonly they are the goal of a long and complex quest chain in the area as well. As a designer, I can see that the point of such mobs is to teach solo players they can’t do everything alone. They need help. As a level 20 player, soloing and exploring, wandering across one of these Elites means certain doom.

WoWInsider posted about revenge being a dish best served cold at level cap. They talked about the various elites they encountered as they leveled that created interesting reactions in level capped players. As soon as I read the title, I smiled. They were talking about the Sons of Argual. Oh, not specifically, perhaps (the writer stuck to Mord’lam, an monster in Duskwood), but as a young leveling mage, the first time I ever encountered such a creature was a Son of Argual, in Silverpine forest. He had a tasty mage snack that day.

I learned to be careful. I learned to watch mobs that were moving. I learned to zoom my camera out as far as I could. And I learned that sometimes your only option is to run like hell for the road.

Much later, after two expansions, several level 80 toons, and a faction change, a friend and I were riding through Silverpine to go to Undercity to steal the fire for Fire Festival. As we passed the Sepulcher, I started looking for him. Sure enough, as we crossed the bridge, there he was, in all his level 23 glory. I dotted him with all my most powerful spells. His death was almost immediate. I mounted up to my friend asking, “What was that about?” “Just some unfinished business.” I responded. As an Alliance player, born and bred, he wouldn’t understand the hatred of this mob. But he would understand if it were Mord’Lam, the Fel Reaver, the Storm Giant, or any one of the other dozens of such Elites that patrol the world and make it perilous.

It is worth noting that this post has 9 pages worth of comments, an excessive number for WoWInsider. Many of which are a single name or “This” as a statement of agreement.

Yes, revenge is a dish best served at level cap. But even after 3 years, my anger at that NPC wasn’t cold. It was still red hot. But the wondrous truth is, we level, they don’t.